True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 145: New F*ckin TrueAnon
Aired: 2021-03-17
Duration: 01:07:21


=== One of the Worst Weeks (02:01) ===

[00:00:06]  The year is 2057.
[00:00:09]  I am on the only website that there is now, OnlyFans 2.
[00:00:13]  I do everything on there.
[00:00:15]  I do my grocery shopping on there.
[00:00:17]  I do my OnlyFans purchases on there.
[00:00:19]  I sell my OnlyFans on there.
[00:00:22]  I talk to my parents on there.
[00:00:23]  My parents, of course, have now been incorporated into the blockchain and exist as AIs floating in free space.
[00:00:29]  I live deep underground in a place called Xinjiang.
[00:00:34]  Thankfully, I've purchased the entire province of Xinjiang from the Chinese government due to the bad press that it got in the early 21st century.
[00:00:42]  My lair is a large underground cavern.
[00:00:45]  I'm serviced by blind and deaf catamites.
[00:00:48]  Also, of course, mute, but I made sure of that by sewing their mouths shut.
[00:00:52]  They empty my fluids twice a day.
[00:00:55]  They blow my nose.
[00:00:56]  They put on my favorite podcasts, which I grow very close to.
[00:00:59]  In fact, the hosts of those podcasts are my friends and tell me what to think.
[00:01:03]  I exist entirely in the ether.
[00:01:06]  I log on to World of Warcraft via the OnlyFans portal to see a strange thing coming out of the past.
[00:01:13]  a podcast I did low those 30 years ago.
[00:01:19]  we haven't come up with it and it's called no fucking ruin on and it's coming to me from the past I blink my eyes and look at what could have been kind of weekend in there, but wait, where am I?
[00:01:37]  Liz is dead.
[00:02:02]  Welcome to the Cyber Zone.
[00:02:07]  Oh, God.

=== Unique NFTs Explained (14:41) ===

[00:02:08]  It's going to be that.
[00:02:08]  It's going to be a whole hour of this, isn't it?
[00:02:11]  Dude, I have had one of the worst weeks of my life doing this.
[00:02:17]  I know.
[00:02:18]  I know.
[00:02:18]  You've been very deep in code.
[00:02:23]  Yeah.
[00:02:23]  Miles underground in the mines.
[00:02:28]  You and.
[00:02:29]  I've been in the Animatrix.
[00:02:31]  Yeah.
[00:02:32]  Damn, what happened to that?
[00:02:34]  I mean, what happens to anything?
[00:02:36]  They put it out and then people watched it.
[00:02:38]  What was supposed to happen with it?
[00:02:40]  It's probably in the blockchain.
[00:02:41]  I thought it was a thing.
[00:02:42]  I don't really know what it is.
[00:02:43]  Is it just a movie?
[00:02:44]  I think it's an animated movie.
[00:02:46]  Oh.
[00:02:47]  They should make something called like the Animatrix.
[00:02:50]  It's nice how it's.
[00:02:50]  They did make some.
[00:02:51]  That's what we're talking about.
[00:02:54]  No, but I mean like a real thing, not a movie.
[00:02:58]  What are what the fuck are you talking about?
[00:03:02]  Explaining what a real thing means.
[00:03:04]  No, no, don't do that.
[00:03:05]  What do you mean by a real thing?
[00:03:06]  You want them to make the animatrix real?
[00:03:10]  I don't know.
[00:03:10]  I just like the name.
[00:03:11]  I think it's comfort.
[00:03:13]  Hello.
[00:03:14]  I am Neo Brace.
[00:03:16]  I'm Liz.
[00:03:17]  Hello, everyone.
[00:03:18]  We are joined by our producer, Young Chomsky.
[00:03:21]  This is the podcast.
[00:03:23]  True Anon.
[00:03:24]  Hello.
[00:03:25]  Hello.
[00:03:25]  I want to be clear, a little preface before we get too into this.
[00:03:29]  I think a lot of people come to us being like, you're a podcast.
[00:03:33]  You're my friends.
[00:03:34]  Please tell me what to think.
[00:03:37]  I can't do that for you today.
[00:03:40]  I don't.
[00:03:41]  Yeah, no, I don't want to tell you what to think, Brace.
[00:03:43]  Yeah.
[00:03:44]  Well, I mean, it's okay if you tell me what to think.
[00:03:49]  But like, and the subject we're talking about, which if you haven't been able to guess, is the animated film The Animatrix.
[00:03:56]  I'm just kidding.
[00:03:56]  We're talking about the blockchain, NFTs, all that kind of bullshit.
[00:04:01]  Liz and I are very much too laymen.
[00:04:05]  Yes.
[00:04:06]  I'm a lay woman, in fact.
[00:04:07]  That doesn't sound right.
[00:04:08]  No, lay lady.
[00:04:10]  Lay lady lay.
[00:04:12]  And, you know, we're not, you know, techno philosopher fucking theory cooks.
[00:04:18]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:18]  Blah, blah, blah.
[00:04:19]  And we're not programmers.
[00:04:22]  You know, we exist.
[00:04:24]  I am Nick Land, though, we should be clear.
[00:04:26]  The thing with that guy is like, people who think that's really insightful, it's like, if you take that much amphetamine, you can just also do that.
[00:04:34]  Like, it's, yeah.
[00:04:36]  Anyways.
[00:04:37]  Yeah, we'll get into that.
[00:04:38]  Yes.
[00:04:39]  But the thing is, like, we're not coming here to be like, this is what's happened with the blockchain.
[00:04:43]  This is what you should be afraid of.
[00:04:45]  Or is it all fake?
[00:04:46]  Or like, what should I think?
[00:04:48]  This is simply, I made a mistake.
[00:04:52]  And Liz and I need to talk about it.
[00:04:55]  Okay, Bryce, let's, what did you do?
[00:04:58]  Sweetheart, I made an NFT.
[00:05:01]  Non-female token.
[00:05:04]  Non-fungible token.
[00:05:05]  Yeah.
[00:05:06]  I want to, like we enjoy doing, pull back the curtains here.
[00:05:13]  When did you first alert us in the group chat that we have that you were interested in making an NFT?
[00:05:22]  Let me look this up using the, let me see, NFT searching.
[00:05:27]  It appears that the first time I did it was, Jesus Christ, I've said the word NFT a lot on 3621.
[00:05:36]  So like a week ago.
[00:05:37]  No, that was 10 days ago.
[00:05:38]  1016 now.
[00:05:39]  Yeah.
[00:05:40]  Apparently I have said the word quite a few times since then.
[00:05:45]  Dear listeners, this broke Brace's brain.
[00:05:50]  It took him a really long time to figure out.
[00:05:53]  And I would say days.
[00:05:55]  It took you days to figure out.
[00:05:57]  It took me a week to figure it out, to actually figure out how to do it.
[00:06:01]  I don't know if that's unique to you or unique to the technology.
[00:06:07]  Well, a little bit of background with technology.
[00:06:09]  My parents only let me use a computer 30 minutes a day.
[00:06:12]  I wanted to play the computer game EverQuest growing up.
[00:06:14]  Unfortunately, my internet was, you know, the internet at the time, and it took about 25 minutes to actually get to the point where you could get into the little elf cave.
[00:06:23]  And then I had to stop using the computer.
[00:06:25]  So that is what, I mean, thankfully, I think saved me from being what I would like to term a zero-pussy individual, but also it made it so that I can't do things like get a good job or know what an NFT is.
[00:06:38]  Okay, so what is an NFT though?
[00:06:40]  Because you did figure it out.
[00:06:41]  Well, an NFT, I think before we really get into like what I did, we got to figure out, like I did, what an NFT is, a non-fungible token.
[00:06:49]  And what is non-fungible?
[00:06:52]  It means not fungible.
[00:06:54]  Yeah, okay.
[00:06:55]  So a fungible is a thing where it's like a sponge, where if you squeeze it, it's really soft and it feels good.
[00:07:00]  A non-fungible thing is like a rock where you squeeze it and it kind of hurts your hand.
[00:07:05]  No, that's not what it is.
[00:07:06]  Non-fungible.
[00:07:07]  And we have, Liz and I and Young Chomsky actually had a long, very R-worded argument about what fungible really means in a lot of these instances and how we like got into, yeah, you were like emerging from your freshman dorm with like piles of weed smoke being like, but is it really fungible?
[00:07:29]  Well, I will, I will ask for listener comments on that and nothing else.
[00:07:32]  By the way, by the way, if you are a listener and I don't want to hear anything you have to say about any of this, I'm sorry.
[00:07:38]  I just, I'm done talking about it after this forever.
[00:07:41]  And I will never respond to your messages or your comments or anything like that.
[00:07:44]  I'm done with the blockchain.
[00:07:45]  I've removed myself and I've entered what I would like to call the pool of water, which I'll get into later.
[00:07:54]  Okay, so non-fungible means not fungible.
[00:07:56]  What is fungible?
[00:07:57]  Fungible means that something can be that like two identical, there's two identical items and they can be traded.
[00:08:08]  They can be traded for one another without losing value, or they can be like broken down into parts while retaining the total value.
[00:08:17]  So like the Bella Hadid sisters, I want to use one for an ad campaign and another for an ad campaign.
[00:08:22]  They are non-fungible.
[00:08:23]  No, I mean, a lot of people use the use a dollar or let's say $100 or whatever as an example.
[00:08:31]  So you have $100, you can trade it.
[00:08:33]  I have a $100 bill.
[00:08:34]  You have a $100 bill.
[00:08:36]  We can swap.
[00:08:37]  We both still have $100.
[00:08:39]  It's not a big deal.
[00:08:40]  You can break it down into, you know, a bunch of smaller bills and it will still equal $100, et cetera.
[00:08:47]  Fungible.
[00:08:48]  So non-fungible means it can't do that.
[00:08:51]  It is a unique thing.
[00:08:53]  Yeah.
[00:08:54]  Where I kind of came into issue is like, what if someone makes a multi-edition NFT?
[00:08:58]  Like, aren't those NFTs exchangeable?
[00:09:00]  But that's, again, a little too freshman dorm.
[00:09:03]  I don't, I don't know if that qualifies as NFT, but colloquially it is.
[00:09:07]  Maybe it's a semi.
[00:09:08]  It's a semi.
[00:09:09]  Exactly.
[00:09:09]  It's a semi, Liz, which is something I've had to say in that tone of voice to, well, not Liz before, but a lot of people.
[00:09:17]  They're digital assets, essentially.
[00:09:20]  So think of it like something you like a JPEG with a specific line of code attached saying that you own it or denoting ownership.
[00:09:28]  To be clear, though, I do want to say that the token part is the code, not the JPEG.
[00:09:34]  Yes.
[00:09:34]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:36]  Right.
[00:09:36]  So I think I'm sure a lot of people have seen like all the like art stuff or, and we'll get into all of this.
[00:09:42]  But I just want to be clear that the token part, the kind of novelty here is the line of code that identifies them as unique and not so much the like visual representation that you see maybe like viral stuff of.
[00:09:59]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:00]  So like I think, I think the part that it took me a long time to understand, not because it's such a complicated notion, but because it's so uncomplicated and stupid, is that like, say I make an NFT of a JPEG.
[00:10:11]  In fact, that is precisely what I did.
[00:10:14]  Anybody can download that JPEG.
[00:10:16]  But if someone buys the NFT of it, they own the NFT of that JPEG, but they don't really own the JPEG because it's just like a JPEG.
[00:10:27]  And so that is what confused me.
[00:10:30]  Yeah.
[00:10:30]  So I think that confuses a lot of people.
[00:10:33]  Well, Liz, let's get to that more in a second.
[00:10:35]  And let's get to my Jezebel style personal essay here.
[00:10:41]  So on Saturday, March 12th, which was, I guess, four days ago at this point.
[00:10:46]  And by the way, the last time I have spoken to another human being I knew the name of was, I believe, last Thursday.
[00:10:53]  So just to be clear, I have not done anything but this.
[00:10:56]  Not necessarily making the NFT, although that took me a considerable amount of hours, but looking at this kind of bullshit.
[00:11:03]  I was having a supremely bad day already.
[00:11:05]  So I go to Yahoo News.
[00:11:08]  I'm not joking around.
[00:11:09]  I do.
[00:11:10]  I look out how to make an NFT.
[00:11:11]  Now, Yahoo News comes up.
[00:11:13]  They lay out the steps.
[00:11:14]  And I figure, okay, well, it's Yahoo News.
[00:11:16]  I'll check out another site.
[00:11:17]  The other website I looked at had an article reprinted from Yahoo News that I had just read laying out how to make an NFT.
[00:11:24]  Death of journalism.
[00:11:25]  Exactly.
[00:11:26]  So, all right, there's a few steps you got to do.
[00:11:29]  The first of which I learned was that I had to open up a coin account.
[00:11:36]  A wallet.
[00:11:36]  A wallet, which is like fucked up because in my wallet, when I put coins in, it like makes it pointy when I sit down.
[00:11:42]  So I actually don't keep coins in my wallet.
[00:11:45]  I just keep it in my regular pockets.
[00:11:47]  So I opened up a wallet.
[00:11:50]  Or in fact, I opened up a Coinbase account and I bought like $150 worth of Ethereum because that's about how much I figured it was going to cost.
[00:11:59]  Okay, wait.
[00:12:00]  How much in Ethereum is that?
[00:12:02]  Like, what's the exchange?
[00:12:03]  One Ethereum is almost $2,000.
[00:12:06]  Yeah, $1,800 today.
[00:12:08]  Yes.
[00:12:09]  Well, we'll get to that more, too, because that's exactly how much I have forced to sell the NFT I made for.
[00:12:15]  The minimum was one Ethereum.
[00:12:17]  Jesus Christ, Bitcoin is $56,000.
[00:12:20]  I think that's down, though, wasn't it?
[00:12:21]  $60,000?
[00:12:22]  Yeah, it is down.
[00:12:23]  I also bought a little bit of Bitcoin, although not very much at all.
[00:12:27]  Dude, I had the opportunity to buy Bitcoin at $7, and I didn't.
[00:12:31]  Technically, Liz, everybody had that opportunity, and the whole world passed it up.
[00:12:34]  So if that makes you feel any better.
[00:12:36]  It doesn't.
[00:12:37]  I did, but I purchased something that got me in a lot of trouble.
[00:12:42]  And that person's very rich now, but unfortunately, I am, you know, I can't go to school, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff.
[00:12:50]  So I opened up a Coinbase account and then I opened up a CoinWallet account.
[00:12:54]  The problem is here, Liz, that I ran into is that I connected my bank account instead of my debit card to the Coinbase account.
[00:13:01]  And so I actually didn't have the coin that I bought yet.
[00:13:03]  It would take like four days to come in.
[00:13:06]  Wait, oh.
[00:13:07]  Yeah.
[00:13:08]  So I bought the coin on margin.
[00:13:10]  I don't know.
[00:13:11]  I don't know how to, yeah.
[00:13:12]  So at this point, I'm forced to reach out to people that I know will have some of this, you know, this Ethereum kind of bullshit.
[00:13:20]  And so this guy, Ed, you know, sends me over a couple hundred dollars with Ethereum and a second wallet that I've opened up.
[00:13:27]  And so within the span of three hours, because it did take me quite a long time to do this, partially due to my ID being expired and, you know, them not taking necessarily it's a Merchant Mariner thing.
[00:13:38]  It's a government issued document that says I'm 5'11, and that's why I try to use it on everything because my passport says I'm 5'10 because they don't allow for nuance there, which is maybe a guy's 5'10 and a half, which you can round up legally in the court of sexual law.
[00:13:52]  So I finally, now at this point, I have two wallets and one Coinbase.
[00:13:58]  And now I have $400 worth of Ethereum, which is more than I ever asked for.
[00:14:07]  So, okay.
[00:14:10]  I go to this website called Rarable.
[00:14:13]  Yeah, that's the big one.
[00:14:14]  Yeah.
[00:14:15]  Rarable.
[00:14:15]  That's the big, wait, it's like a marketplace for these things, right?
[00:14:19]  Yeah.
[00:14:19]  And so, yeah, that's the thing is there's a lot of these like Ethereum-based NFT marketplaces.
[00:14:27]  Wait, okay.
[00:14:29]  Can we pause for a second?
[00:14:31]  Yeah.
[00:14:32]  What?
[00:14:33]  Okay, so Ethereum, because we mentioned Ethereum and Bitcoin.
[00:14:36]  Can you talk to me about the difference between the two of these?
[00:14:38]  Yes.
[00:14:39]  So Ethereum is on, Bitcoin is like the original.
[00:14:42]  It was created by a guy named Satoshi, who is, I mean, it's like.
[00:14:49]  He's the guy that no one knows.
[00:14:50]  Well, he made a video called Metal Gear Solid and like this whole line of those out there.
[00:14:55]  But beyond that, yeah, nobody knows like his home address or anything.
[00:14:57]  Although I'm sure I could get it.
[00:14:59]  And I do find that the weird worship of this Satoshi guy, because there are like Satoshi cultists basically out there, according to the several Bitcoin documentaries I've watched, who take his word as law and basically this original Bitcoin white paper, they are like purists towards it.
[00:15:15]  And it's this sort of like lost god, like prophet in the wilderness sort of thing that they follow.
[00:15:21]  And it really does represent or excuse me, resemble like a religious mania that these people have towards Bitcoin.
[00:15:29]  And then there's Ethereum, which is a different blockchain.
[00:15:33]  So when people say the blockchain, there isn't just a the blockchain, right?
[00:15:38]  Okay.
[00:15:38]  Like it's networks.
[00:15:40]  Exactly.
[00:15:40]  There's different blockchains.
[00:15:42]  There's like the Bitcoin blockchain.
[00:15:43]  There's the Ethereum blockchain.
[00:15:44]  There's like, you know, there's basically an infinite, I mean, not actually, but, you know, there's a wide variety of different blockchains out there.
[00:15:51]  So there's no one singular blockchain.
[00:15:53]  But one of the most popular ones is the Ethereum blockchain.
[00:15:57]  Can you explain like what?
[00:15:59]  I mean, I feel like we kind of have to explain what a blockchain is.
[00:16:04]  Imagine if the Tower of Babel was filled with child porn.
[00:16:09]  That's not what blockchain is.
[00:16:12]  No, no.
[00:16:13]  So a blockchain.
[00:16:14]  Also, don't imagine that.
[00:16:16]  Yeah, don't imagine.
[00:16:17]  Actually, don't.
[00:16:17]  Yeah, don't imagine that.
[00:16:20]  Okay.
[00:16:20]  So my notes, by the way, are very editorialized.
[00:16:26]  So I'm going to try to do this as simply as I can.
[00:16:30]  Blockchains are basically decentralized ledgers, which are, as a Jew, two of the words I hate most by themselves and then combined, I really get a bad idea.
[00:16:43]  Essentially, what they are is instead of like a centralized computer network, it's a decentralized one.

=== Decentralized Ledgers Explained (09:17) ===

[00:16:49]  So there's different computers all over the world competing to solve a really hard and useless math equation to build a new block on the blockchain.
[00:16:58]  Everything that has ever been put on that blockchain is stored forever on that blockchain.
[00:17:03]  It is immutable.
[00:17:04]  You cannot fuck with it and it's there forever.
[00:17:07]  Yeah.
[00:17:08]  It is an affront to God.
[00:17:12]  Well, it's basically like a way of removing.
[00:17:16]  I mean, the idea is that if you have all of these kind of computers immediately programmed to record this, like, you know, it's like a record of ownership, basically, right?
[00:17:30]  I mean, it's just a record.
[00:17:31]  Yeah.
[00:17:32]  But it's done without any kind of human intervention.
[00:17:37]  And so the idea is that it can totally, you know, no one can touch it.
[00:17:42]  No one can change it.
[00:17:42]  No one has ownership over it.
[00:17:43]  It's completely decentralized.
[00:17:47]  There can be no fussing with it.
[00:17:49]  And so we can totally trust it via our complete and total lack of trust in one another.
[00:17:54]  Yeah.
[00:17:55]  And in the way, I mean, I guess we can talk more about proof of stake and proof of work later, especially because I need to drink more of this Arizona green tea in order to get enough sugar to be able to give a shit about that.
[00:18:06]  But there's a couple, I mean, I'm sure that there's more that I haven't even heard of, but there's the two main kinds of blockchain are proof of work and proof of stake blockchains.
[00:18:13]  Basically, proof of work blockchains are where there's a bunch of computers whirring away in these underground caves, like little goblins in the night, doing intent, like increasingly intense mathematical equations that are totally useless in order to add more blocks, but basically competing who can do this equation.
[00:18:30]  And they're like equations that people can't do.
[00:18:32]  They're so complex that only computer brain can do it.
[00:18:39]  Yes, exactly.
[00:18:40]  Yeah, yeah, precisely.
[00:18:42]  And so the thing with blockchains is that there is a, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, you know, and by the way, if you are like a computer guy and you're listening to this, and I've talked, I've had so many conversations with computer guys over the past few days, like very long conversations with a very large amount of computer guys on the telephone because I can't even fucking keep up with the texting on this kind of stuff.
[00:19:08]  And opinions differ wildly.
[00:19:10]  And so I'm sure I'll get some of this slightly wrong because I don't even know how a laptop works.
[00:19:16]  Someone had, I had to go to someone's house so they could reinstall Windows for me the other week.
[00:19:19]  And then that made the computer run better.
[00:19:23]  So you're essentially incentivized to do these computations to prove that, why did I say it like that?
[00:19:29]  To prove, to prove that transactions are legitimate.
[00:19:33]  I mean, transactions like everything from actual monetary transactions to like any sort of like things that are added onto that are legitimate.
[00:19:41]  And, you know, in the case of coins, that's also how you mine coins is by adding blocks to the blockchain.
[00:19:48]  I'm sure many of you have seen the sort of slave mines that people have under places like Iceland or in China, where there are a million robot slaves linked together with their cyber chains, worrying and just creating more blocks in these mines.
[00:20:05]  So that, you know, there are people who like put a lot of computational power towards it.
[00:20:10]  I mean, that's that's one of the big things about NFTs.
[00:20:13]  And so all of this shit is happening in order for me to make an NFT.
[00:20:18]  Like at this point, in me buying this Ethereum, I have already interacted with the blockchain.
[00:20:24]  Okay.
[00:20:26]  Okay.
[00:20:26]  So we explained the difference between the two.
[00:20:28]  Ethereum network, which has its own issues.
[00:20:31]  I don't know.
[00:20:32]  But from my understanding, is it's kind of junky compared to other blockchain networks.
[00:20:36]  I should add, Ethereum uses something called smart contracts that Bitcoin does not use.
[00:20:43]  Yeah, that's what differentiates it, right?
[00:20:45]  And this is what, okay, so people I've talked to about this are real into the potential that smart contract.
[00:20:51]  I mean, that's the whole Ethereum gamble, it seems like, is that smart contracts and the potential that they hold is what really elevates Ethereum from other kind of crypto networks and possibilities.
[00:21:06]  So when I first learned about smart contracts, I watched a YouTube video of a small, bald, sexless man explaining it for 11 minutes.
[00:21:14]  The first example he used was that he could pay his rent.
[00:21:17]  Someone.
[00:21:18]  Well, I know, but this was, I was, this was at like four in the morning.
[00:21:23]  I, uh, so I, I, yeah.
[00:21:26]  And the example he used first was, was paying rent, right?
[00:21:32]  Like an example how this could be used in the real world.
[00:21:34]  With a smart contract, it could be like every month a certain amount of money is deducted from his account and put into his landlord's account.
[00:21:43]  There is no like overpaying or anything like that.
[00:21:45]  It's an automatic process, which, by the way, does not seem like that.
[00:21:48]  It fucking something you need the blockchain for.
[00:21:51]  He said one of the downsides could be, would be that if he forgot to pay his rent or not that if he forgot to pay his rent, if he didn't have money that month or something happened, there was an emergency, his apartment door could lock on its own.
[00:22:03]  And he was like, yeah, it's a bit of a downside.
[00:22:06]  And so it's not really a smart contract because it allows for absolutely no room for nuance.
[00:22:11]  Yeah, that's the thing.
[00:22:12]  So it's really just, I mean, it's a contract in the sense that like a contract is an agreement.
[00:22:20]  And this is an agreement that if something happens, then this will execute.
[00:22:25]  And if this doesn't happen, then this won't execute.
[00:22:28]  Right.
[00:22:29]  And so it's really like a simple programming code or like a simple program, right?
[00:22:35]  An if-then script, I guess you could say.
[00:22:38]  Yeah.
[00:22:39]  Although people are going to be like, that's not really what it is.
[00:22:40]  But yeah, you guys know what I'm talking about.
[00:22:43]  So the idea is if I pay my rent, then I continue to have access to the door opening.
[00:22:51]  This is an incredible development that the blockchain has brought us.
[00:22:55]  I know, right?
[00:22:57]  And, you know, if, and so that's the, that's the smart contract executing, right?
[00:23:01]  But the, the door unlocks if I pay my rent on the first and it stays unlocked for 30 days.
[00:23:08]  So the idea, and we can get into, I think that like, you know, this is all like libertarian fantasy shit.
[00:23:17]  So, you know, whatever.
[00:23:19]  But the idea is, again, you know, we said at the beginning that all of this stuff is premised on the idea of trust.
[00:23:26]  And more importantly, there's this idea that lack of trust, that we don't trust.
[00:23:30]  So this is a whole system that doesn't require trust because everything has been built into these contracts and that these things execute when things happen.
[00:23:39]  And you don't have to rely on kind of the nuances like you say, or, you know, in their minds, the kind of meddling or fumbling that can happen with human error.
[00:23:51]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:23:53]  And the Ethereum and really a lot of blockchain enthusiasts sort of resemble Roman cultists in like little caves with the robes on because their chant is code is law, right?
[00:24:05]  Like they elevate it to this like, it's almost like a machine kind of state, right?
[00:24:11]  Because who guarantees a contract in the real world?
[00:24:14]  Usually a state, court of law.
[00:24:16]  Right.
[00:24:16]  And this takes that out of the picture and you sort of like put the state.
[00:24:21]  It's like it's like it's a machine state.
[00:24:24]  Well, this is the whole contradiction of libertarianism, right?
[00:24:26]  It's because they think what they want is a kind of like everything is agreed upon through contracts that are mediated through like insurance bodies or whatever.
[00:24:35]  But they don't, you know, and libertarianism being a kind of like extreme radical version of liberalism or liberalism taken to its logical conclusion, as I like to put it.
[00:24:47]  But like that the idea being, I mean, this is what libertarians always get tripped up on is because they want complete and total individual autonomy and with the guarantee of private property, but without a state to guarantee the private property.
[00:25:04]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:06]  And so the idea of the idea of the smart contract is that it kind of is able to guarantee those contracts, right?
[00:25:16]  Without any kind of actual centralized body.
[00:25:19]  And this is part of the sort of utopian vision of the blockchain world.
[00:25:24]  And I think in a lot of ways.
[00:25:26]  DeFi, right?
[00:25:27]  Yeah.
[00:25:27]  Decentralized Finance.
[00:25:29]  Which just makes me think of Diane Feinstein, by the way.
[00:25:32]  I can't read that and not think of Diane Feinstein.
[00:25:36]  In a lot of ways, like, yeah, as I said, it's utopian.
[00:25:39]  And I think it mirrors also like the Web 1.0, like freak hacker kind of thing.
[00:25:44]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:25:45]  Turning into like these libertarian psychos.
[00:25:53]  In the world now.
[00:25:54]  Yeah, and a lot of the NFT stuff itself reminds me of Web 1.0.
[00:25:58]  Yeah.
[00:25:59]  Which we should, we should, let's get back to the NFTs.
[00:26:01]  Yes.
[00:26:02]  So NFT, I have opened up these two different wallets.
[00:26:04]  I have the Coinbase thing, and now I'm on Rarable.

=== Scanning QR Codes (05:28) ===

[00:26:07]  I can't figure out how to do it on Rarable.
[00:26:09]  I fuck up and link the wrong wallet.
[00:26:13]  Oh my God.
[00:26:14]  You got to label your wallets, Free.
[00:26:15]  Well, how am I supposed to baby?
[00:26:17]  I fucking, it tells me, you know, you take out the fucking phone.
[00:26:19]  It's like, scan the QR code, which, by the way, I've never done before this COVID bullshit.
[00:26:23]  Now I go to go to a fucking restaurant.
[00:26:25]  They don't even give me a goddamn fucking menu.
[00:26:27]  I got to scan a QR code.
[00:26:29]  Just fucking give me a plastic menu.
[00:26:31]  I hate QR codes.
[00:26:32]  Exactly.
[00:26:33]  My phone is so overloaded with viruses I downloaded on purpose that like it's it, yeah anyways.
[00:26:39]  So I gotta go to.
[00:26:40]  My phone doesn't have viruses.
[00:26:41]  You have a knife phone.
[00:26:43]  That's the.
[00:26:43]  That's the word I talk to you on.
[00:26:44]  It's not the one I talk to my Chinese handlers on, uh.
[00:26:48]  So I uh, I go to a different website called openc.io.
[00:26:53]  Uh, the process on there confuses me.
[00:26:57]  At first I make a collection which I assume is an nft, and uh yeah I, I am wrong.
[00:27:03]  No, that's just your collection of nfts right correct, yes and uh.
[00:27:07]  And then after that i'm like okay, I figured out, I can make an nft.
[00:27:11]  Uh, I have to call several people to help me with this process because i'm afraid i'm doing something and also I can't figure it out on my own.
[00:27:20]  I uh, I realize at this point I don't have an image for the nft, so you can just make any.
[00:27:28]  Well, I did.
[00:27:29]  I took the first episode of our podcast image, uh.
[00:27:32]  In fact, I just googled Truan image uh, and then clicked image and uh, one of the first ones was a.
[00:27:39]  Was a was a picture uh, which I didn't realize until, I mean, I just didn't really look at it either.
[00:27:43]  This is a real Wizard Of Oz moment.
[00:27:45]  Yeah well yeah, i'm the.
[00:27:48]  I've found courage to make an Nft.
[00:27:50]  I thank you.
[00:27:51]  I think it's, I think it's admirable.
[00:27:52]  Uh, and I I I, I have our artist in residence uh, Mona Lisa, write Dagay, Pusse Ita on a uh on the picture, and then I have her sign it as Mona Lisa.
[00:28:04]  Um, I think for a second i'm like hmm, should I put this up?
[00:28:09]  And then i'm like I don't want to uh, spend any more time on this.
[00:28:13]  It's like 9 p.m and so uh, I I put it up.
[00:28:16]  I have to make around three transactions using something called gas.
[00:28:20]  I am not going to explain to you what gas is, but as far as wait, hold on a second.
[00:28:26]  Yeah, what so gas is?
[00:28:31]  I'm gonna explain it wrong.
[00:28:32]  If you really are listening to this podcast and you want to know what gas is, google what is gas?
[00:28:38]  Ethereum i'm gonna tell you what I think gas is.
[00:28:40]  It's like a Ethereum penny.
[00:28:43]  Okay yeah, to be clear, we're talking about how this is something that I think the Ethereum guy who's like that crazy skinny Russian kidali, he needs to eat, so go to Itali, I need some, because he's a little too skinny.
[00:29:00]  That guy needed to spend a couple more months on breastfeeding.
[00:29:03]  Yeah, scary skinny, my friend.
[00:29:07]  For some reason, I don't know why they did this, but it's so confusing.
[00:29:11]  Gas is, we don't mean gas as in like gasoline or energy.
[00:29:17]  Yeah.
[00:29:18]  It is energy, but it's not related to that at all whatsoever.
[00:29:22]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:23]  Why did they go with this term?
[00:29:25]  They also went with the term nonce too.
[00:29:28]  The word nonce.
[00:29:29]  Well, they went with that.
[00:29:30]  Yeah, but they were doing recruiting and marketing.
[00:29:31]  Of course, yeah.
[00:29:32]  You got to expand the blockchain.
[00:29:34]  Yeah.
[00:29:35]  So I am at this point appalled that it has now cost me $150 to make an NFT.
[00:29:43]  Which, by the way, I did not know before.
[00:29:47]  I knew it would cost some money.
[00:29:48]  I didn't think it would cost $150, but it's too late now because, you know, there's no refund.
[00:29:53]  That's a good thing.
[00:29:54]  I will say, as a, you know, as the kind of guy that I am, I'm not going to go any further than that.
[00:30:01]  No refunds on the blockchain.
[00:30:05]  Unless everybody agrees to.
[00:30:07]  Oh, great.
[00:30:08]  Yeah.
[00:30:08]  I couldn't get OpenC's to answer my emails.
[00:30:11]  So at this point, I'm like, I have like a weird out-of-body experience where I imagine like little rows of worrying computers, like fucking microchips glowing very red, angrily, eyes staring at me in these caverns as I force these robot slaves to make an image that says de gay pusse ita into an NFT.
[00:30:33]  And so what I basically created is a JPEG that took me around 10 seconds to make because I had to figure out how to use the little write-y tool.
[00:30:42]  And I attached a line of code to it that now costs $2,000.
[00:30:50]  What?
[00:30:51]  So, you know, like $1,000?
[00:30:54]  Yeah.
[00:30:55]  Imagine twice that amount of money.
[00:30:57]  Wait, but why does it cost so much, Brian?
[00:30:59]  So I realized maybe later I could have set it for less by doing like 0.05, but I don't think I actually can do that.
[00:31:05]  It told me that the reserve bid, which I had to look up what that means because I've never, I don't think I've ever bid on anything or sold anything on like eBay or anything.
[00:31:13]  So that means that that's the minimum amount I can sell it for.
[00:31:19]  And that is 2,000.
[00:31:20]  It's one Ethereum and that is the equivalent of basically $2,000.
[00:31:25]  I think you probably could have said it lower.
[00:31:26]  I don't think I can.
[00:31:27]  I'll show you the thing.
[00:31:28]  I took a screenshot of it and it was like the reserve bid must be one ETH.
[00:31:33]  I really hope no one buys that, Brie.

=== Why NFTs Cost So Much (13:11) ===

[00:31:35]  Here's the thing.
[00:31:37]  If you are listening to this podcast and you buy the NFT, Liz, do you just injure yourself?
[00:31:44]  You all right, baby?
[00:31:46]  Sorry.
[00:31:49]  Okay, we'll talk about this after.
[00:31:51]  And if you buy my NFT, baby, I don't know what to tell you.
[00:31:56]  Don't buy it.
[00:31:57]  Don't buy the NFT.
[00:32:00]  don't want this thing so okay up A lot of people have been talking about these because we did this because a lot of people, this has been all in the news for the last couple of weeks.
[00:32:25]  People have been talking NFT crazy.
[00:32:28]  Yeah.
[00:32:29]  Right?
[00:32:29]  There's some guy named Beeple, which is not even a name for a person.
[00:32:34]  No, not at all.
[00:32:35]  I would say that's a name for like, that's like Wally or something.
[00:32:39]  Yeah.
[00:32:41]  What, why is this happening?
[00:32:44]  I think because Americans and really like the people who inhabit the kind of places where these things are sold are sick.
[00:32:52]  They're sick in their souls.
[00:32:53]  They've been infested with like a certain kind of demonic mania where they have to speculate and they've run out of things to speculate on.
[00:33:01]  And so they had to go into essentially the fake art world.
[00:33:06]  Like the art world itself wasn't lame and corny and bad enough is that they had to make a new one on the internet where everything was worth nothing and do it there.
[00:33:15]  It's basically like, I think of NFT art as like a proof of concept for NFTs.
[00:33:21]  Like a bunch of really sick individuals got together and like, well, we'll explain NFTs or like we'll get NFTs into the mainstream by using this.
[00:33:29]  And so all these artists, and you know, they are artists like Grimes and like Beeple have been selling NFT artwork in the past couple months for millions of dollars.
[00:33:43]  And that's no shit.
[00:33:43]  Like Beeple sold a $69 million NFT, a piece of digital art at fucking Christie's.
[00:33:54]  Yeah.
[00:33:55]  Yeah, this stuff is, yeah, it's been all over in the news almost to a point where, I mean, you have to wonder how much of this, I mean, especially with the Grimes art, you know, too, is like how much of this is being bought in order to pump up attention and basically act as like a marketing tool for Ethereum itself.
[00:34:16]  Yeah, well, because most NFTs are technologies itself.
[00:34:19]  Most NFTs are sold using Ethereum.
[00:34:21]  So yeah, I mean, I, yeah, but like, you know, if someone like the Vinkel Vi are like spending money, like at that point, it's less even about them collecting art, which I think a lot of people are focusing on, and more so about them investing in people paying attention to what's going on in Ethereum and maybe saying, okay, maybe I think this is stupid, but maybe there's stuff going on here.
[00:34:44]  Maybe the underlying technology is something to pay a little bit more attention to.
[00:34:47]  Well, that's the thing.
[00:34:47]  I mean, Bitcoin and Ethereum and a lot of these other currencies are not, they're not currencies.
[00:34:53]  They're essentially like speculative assets, right?
[00:34:56]  So like you bet that they're going to go up or that they're going to go down.
[00:34:59]  And I mean, the Winklevi, I think they own a fucking NFT marketplace.
[00:35:05]  And so a great way to get people to buy Ethereum, I mean, Christ, at no point in my life have I ever thought I'm going to buy Ethereum.
[00:35:13]  I mean, that's a perverted kind of thing to think.
[00:35:17]  And I did because of the NFT thing.
[00:35:19]  And so it.
[00:35:22]  That makes a lot of sense to me.
[00:35:23]  There's also been the case where I think a lot of people are buying their own art and then reselling it too.
[00:35:30]  Which makes sense.
[00:35:30]  Yeah.
[00:35:31]  Yeah.
[00:35:31]  I mean, I think that this is like kind of a common refrain where a lot of people say like cryptocurrencies.
[00:35:37]  Oh, it's useless.
[00:35:38]  Oh, it's just an asset.
[00:35:39]  Oh, like this is just for speculators or, oh, it's just for criminals.
[00:35:43]  And it's like, yeah.
[00:35:46]  Yeah.
[00:35:47]  But like, there is nothing more American than like being like, what does like America love other than like speculation and criminal activity?
[00:35:55]  Like this shit isn't going away.
[00:35:57]  No, no.
[00:35:58]  You know what I mean?
[00:35:58]  Not at all.
[00:35:59]  I think people kind of maybe mistake those two things.
[00:36:04]  Like crypto's not like this stuff in crypto isn't going anywhere at all.
[00:36:08]  I guess like the NFT, I think that too many people are kind of like getting lost in the ridiculousness, which to be fair, I think is completely fair, by the way.
[00:36:17]  Right show.
[00:36:18]  The ridiculousness of the NFT art itself.
[00:36:21]  Yeah.
[00:36:22]  And kind of confusing that for, I don't know, you know, it's like everyone talks about like tulip mania.
[00:36:29]  They always like reference that, which by the way, like wasn't even that big of a thing.
[00:36:33]  Yeah.
[00:36:33]  And nobody talks about the baby of the Dutch.
[00:36:37]  Well, it's funny because it the like tulip mania or whatever it was, you know, it wasn't that big of an asset bubble in like the grand scheme of things.
[00:36:47]  And it only really became a meme in and of itself after the British.
[00:36:51]  Like there was this big book that came out about mania and speculation that's quite famous.
[00:36:57]  And that's like when it became a symbol for that, even though it wasn't itself one, which is kind of funny.
[00:37:03]  And there's also been like railroad stock mania.
[00:37:05]  I mean, there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of speculative manias in world history.
[00:37:09]  And I mean, the GameStop thing, for instance, was a version of that.
[00:37:14]  Yeah, I guess I'm saying like, I don't know if that's what's happening here.
[00:37:18]  Like, I guess I'm reminded a little bit more of like early, of like when people were trying to figure out like early internet stuff.
[00:37:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:25]  It reminds me of.
[00:37:27]  Yeah.
[00:37:27]  And people would be like, well, I mean, because you remember all that early Netscape art and all that kind of stuff?
[00:37:32]  Like it was kind of goofy and it was kind of stupid.
[00:37:34]  Dancing baby.
[00:37:35]  But like people would buy domains or people would be like, oh, I'm getting this email address or I'm registering that.
[00:37:41]  And it seems like it has a lot more in common with that to me than it does of like beanie babies, maybe.
[00:37:50]  Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination.
[00:37:53]  I think you got to look at it in like a different couple different layers.
[00:37:55]  I think the current actual NFT craze does resemble Beanie Babies, right?
[00:38:00]  Because it is people, you know, buying and reselling these kind of things, especially you talk about the crypto punks or crypto kitties.
[00:38:07]  But, but I think the underlying thing is you're correct.
[00:38:11]  Like it's like a, it's like a new, it's a people sort of exploring this new web space and like kind of staking out their claim to it.
[00:38:18]  Yeah.
[00:38:19]  I mean, I don't know if it's going to catch on.
[00:38:21]  I mean, I think the blockchain and all that stuff will, but I don't know if like, I don't feel very confident in like the future of NFT art as a thing.
[00:38:30]  Yeah.
[00:38:30]  I mean, you know, I hesitate to kind of make any predictions.
[00:38:34]  I don't feel confident in any of it.
[00:38:35]  I think that that's the thing.
[00:38:37]  It's like, you know, I said beginning of the episode is like, I'm not like telling anybody what to think here.
[00:38:42]  I know many people have divergent opinions.
[00:38:43]  I know many people have, you know, probably more knowledge about this than me or Liz.
[00:38:49]  And, but the thing is, is like the blockchain itself could kind of just be a whole lot of nothing, right?
[00:38:56]  Like the actual uses for the blockchain in the real world, I think have been greatly overstated by a lot of different people who have a stake in this kind of stuff.
[00:39:04]  I mean, I was listening to a World Economic Forum podcast earlier today, like, you know, like one does.
[00:39:09]  And they're like, oh, it's going to, it's going to usher in a new, a new epoch of decentralized leisure.
[00:39:18]  Nonsense.
[00:39:19]  I mean, that's just like a nonsense pair of words, right?
[00:39:22]  And you get that a lot with this kind of stuff is you have these magicians sort of pumping it up.
[00:39:26]  And like, I'm sure the blockchain works great for like, you know, global supply chain stuff.
[00:39:31]  Although it does, it is funny that they're like inventing these new frontiers and it's this exciting thing.
[00:39:36]  And you walk outside your fucking door here in California and there's just favelas growing on every street corner, right?
[00:39:42]  Well, I think that those are, there's a relationship there.
[00:39:45]  Absolutely.
[00:39:46]  The, the, like, I don't know, someone recently put it as like the frothy speculative shit on top of the economy, which I think is like a good way to think of it.
[00:39:55]  Is that like all whatever kind of frothy, sloshy, free money is up at the top of the economy that is kind of used for all this speculative crap.
[00:40:03]  That's kind of what is fueling a lot of the funding of this kind of like DeFi exploration.
[00:40:15]  I think like the NFT stuff, I mean, one thing, I think the most generous reading I can give it is that, again, less about the art and more about the underlying technology, which is that of a non-fungible token.
[00:40:31]  But like, I think that most people like they hear about this stuff when they say like, okay, but why would you buy something that everyone can see?
[00:40:40]  Like, I've already seen this, so who cares if you bought it?
[00:40:43]  Like, oh, I've seen it too, you know?
[00:40:46]  But like people are kind of thinking about this backwards because what the NFT does is, remember what I said about the libertarian dream about contracts and everything mediated.
[00:40:55]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:40:56]  The basics of Enlightenment thought.
[00:40:58]  Yes.
[00:40:59]  And then, but the other base of that is private property and the concept of private property.
[00:41:04]  So if smart contracts are that kind of liberal contract theory, you know, two monads agreeing, whatever, then the NFT is a stake of private property in these new blockchain networks and in like what, you know, my Adam Curtis voice would say, cyberspace.
[00:41:25]  But I think like the idea is, is that the more people, so if you have an NFT and is you staking a claim to something, you are the owner of this token.
[00:41:36]  And the idea is that actually the more people see something, the more eyes and the more views on something, the more prevalent something is, then actually the more value it has, right?
[00:41:48]  So the idea is think of it as intellectual property.
[00:41:52]  And that's basically what people have discovered is that actually capitalists make most of their money through patents and intellectual property ownership and copyrights.
[00:42:04]  So like think of owning the copyright to happy birthday and then think about how many times you see that or hear that song on television.
[00:42:12]  Well, very rarely.
[00:42:13]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:42:14]  Because it's so expensive.
[00:42:15]  And so that's the, that's the most generous reading of what people are doing with NFTs and what the logic is behind owning the copyright to an image that's so widely circulated.
[00:42:28]  Right.
[00:42:29]  Well, I think where it gets confusing is like, is it a copyright?
[00:42:32]  Well, okay, no.
[00:42:33]  So that's a good question because, and I think this is what like trips people up is that actually what you would need then is someone who would acknowledge the copyright and then pay you for the copyright.
[00:42:45]  Now, theoretically, I think that's where the smart contract would come in.
[00:42:49]  And this is one thing that a lot of artists, particularly musical artists, have liked about NFTs is that what's built into it is sort of like, you know, I think it was like some shitty band, like, I can't fucking remember which one.
[00:43:03]  Kings of Leon.
[00:43:04]  Okay, yeah, they released an album.
[00:43:06]  It was Kings of Leon, yes.
[00:43:07]  Okay, yeah, there we go.
[00:43:09]  But the idea then is that if the song is ever sampled or ever like used in any kind of like other thing, that there's a record of it.
[00:43:17]  And, you know, through the kind of like smart, again, these, the smart contract technology, that then the artist gets paid, you know, a little bit of money every time that image or that song is reproduced in any form.
[00:43:33]  So that's the kind of the idea.
[00:43:35]  Now, in practice, is that what that looks like?
[00:43:38]  Absolutely not.
[00:43:39]  I don't think artists have a good record with anything working out for them digitally.
[00:43:44]  No, no, no.
[00:43:45]  And like you could also just steal.
[00:43:46]  I mean, first of all, who would sample Kings of Leon's new record or old?
[00:43:50]  I don't think I could name a single King of Leon song.
[00:43:51]  So maybe, maybe they're very drum heavy.
[00:43:53]  No idea.
[00:43:54]  But like, you could just also just not pay them.
[00:44:01]  Well, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I'm trying to be generous here, but I absolutely agree that like, you know, and to be fair, I mean, that's how it exists in the real world.
[00:44:10]  Yeah.
[00:44:10]  Yeah.
[00:44:10]  And not just, you know, in the virtual world.
[00:44:13]  Well, that's the thing is like, is this, it's the whole like, the deal with blockchains is really like, if you're, if you're using a blockchain like Ethereum, like you were saying, it's like, it's, you're invested in getting as many people to be on that network as possible because that makes all of your little business schemes viable, right?
[00:44:31]  Yeah.
[00:44:31]  Like if all this exists without outside of the blockchain, then you're not really doing shit.
[00:44:36]  Like it's just, it's like an opt-in kind of thing.
[00:44:39]  And like they don't, I mean, they don't want that.
[00:44:40]  If I can exist outside your contract law, then what the fucking, what's the point of the contract law?
[00:44:45]  It's just, it's a buy-in kind of thing.

=== Web 3.0 Opt-In Puzzle (06:36) ===

[00:44:46]  And so I think like, like, we will call this Web 3.0, like I said.
[00:44:50]  And I'm like, you know, I think maybe it eventually will be.
[00:44:53]  It ain't there yet, right?
[00:44:54]  Because after this, like, I took, I'm telling you, I'm out of the blockchain.
[00:44:58]  I'm never going back in unless they make me.
[00:45:01]  And if they make me, I'm bringing a gun.
[00:45:03]  I will say that I have a really hard time with this stuff because I can't visualize it.
[00:45:24]  Yeah.
[00:45:24]  And I'm like a very, very visual person.
[00:45:28]  I don't know.
[00:45:28]  I like don't like that.
[00:45:29]  This is like something, and I don't know.
[00:45:32]  Maybe other people feel this way, but like I don't like that.
[00:45:34]  This feels like something that's underground.
[00:45:37]  Yeah, I mean quite literally even just the idea of mining, you know what I mean.
[00:45:40]  I've thought about this very yes yeah, and it's funny because we, you know, we've been talking about all this stuff for like the past week, like you were saying, and kind of like trying to get wrap our heads around it, and so, like I was, I went back and I was like rereading some of the kind of um, like cybernetic shit that like Land AND Fisher and all those guys were were doing in the early 2000s, and then like kind of 2007 2008, like that kind of bloggy, bloggy time,
[00:46:08]  and I was like kind of rereading some of that shit and you know, some of it is like it's all very high-minded, like I don't really care for and I don't totally.
[00:46:19]  I don't understand Deleuze.
[00:46:20]  I don't understand this kind of shit.
[00:46:21]  You know what I mean.
[00:46:23]  Deleuze is a bitch.
[00:46:26]  Frankly, I have no use for him.
[00:46:29]  Yeah, I mean, although I do really like his book on Nietzsche, but that's aside, I do think that Land, at this time, I feel like I'm going to get all this wrong.
[00:46:41]  So, again, if you're like a crazy cool cyberpunk dude out there who probably lives in Europe and not the United States, stay there.
[00:46:49]  I apologize for getting this wrong.
[00:46:50]  I don't.
[00:46:51]  If you're really into Nick Land stuff, take the easy way out.
[00:46:56]  I think that he had this concept about cryptocurrency and kind of like the future of this stuff and Web3 stuff that was helpful for me in visualizing it, which is like kind of like this capital reconstituting itself in this ooze and kind of creating new frontiers for itself to colonize and take over.
[00:47:22]  And for me, that's what this stuff like really feels like.
[00:47:25]  It feels like that kind of like, like I, all I can see is like a cyberpunk oil slick that's like has its own kind of sent like that is like sentient and growing and metastasizing in the underbelly of the world.
[00:47:44]  And we're not going to be aware of it until it's too late.
[00:47:48]  You know, that's what all this stuff feels like to me.
[00:47:52]  That no one's really on the offensive when it comes to countering or intervening in some of this stuff.
[00:48:01]  Well, you know, I talked to quite a few people about that very thing because, you know, we had this conversation, you and I.
[00:48:08]  And then, you know, I asked people I know who share similar political beliefs to me, who work with this kind of stuff, like what intervention could be made.
[00:48:17]  And they're like, honestly, your best bet is to just hope that it kind of is just useless, which is like not actually a terrible bet to make with some blockchain stuff because there is a good deal that a lot of it, you know, there's a good bet that a lot of it's hype.
[00:48:35]  And the onboarding process, like you've documented, is like very complicated.
[00:48:38]  It's not easy.
[00:48:39]  Yeah, the whole thing is, you know, and these fucking, you know, these preachers I listen, you know, proselytize about this stuff.
[00:48:46]  They talk about how it takes out the middleman.
[00:48:48]  And like, you know, it's this decentralized thing.
[00:48:50]  Do you know how many fucking middlemen I had to go to to just set up this goddamn NFT?
[00:48:54]  I mean, I do think that there are other networks that are easier than Ethereum.
[00:48:58]  Yeah.
[00:48:58]  But Ethereum itself is very not easy and clunky.
[00:49:02]  It's very clunky.
[00:49:04]  Yes.
[00:49:04]  Oh, the whole thing was clunky for me, but I'm a clunky guy.
[00:49:06]  So, I mean, here's the thing: the whole time I was doing it, I was like, I could be doing anything else of my life.
[00:49:12]  I could be reading a book.
[00:49:14]  I could be playing the guitar.
[00:49:16]  I could be listening to record.
[00:49:17]  I could be doing anything.
[00:49:18]  But I'm here making this fucking NFT.
[00:49:20]  And that was a somewhat demonic moment for me.
[00:49:25]  But like what you said about the oil slick, that's actually like my one thing because The way I, the reason I sort of struggle in cyberspace is this: like, if I put a gun in your mouth and I pull the trigger, I want to see the brain sort of splatter on the wall behind you, right?
[00:49:42]  Like, I don't want to be not know what's going to happen.
[00:49:45]  I don't want to have any, like, I want to have some measure of control, right?
[00:49:49]  And with a lot of this fucking cyberspace bullshit, I feel like I have no control.
[00:49:53]  I feel like there's nothing I can do to attack it, to beat it, to win, right?
[00:49:57]  Like, it's totally out of my hands.
[00:49:58]  Like, I'm in a battle with God or really with the devil.
[00:50:02]  Um, and so I started asking people, How could I destroy this?
[00:50:08]  Right?
[00:50:10]  And it turns out there are some ways, but there's not necessarily like an atom-bomb kind of way, although that kind of does play into what I think.
[00:50:19]  So, we didn't even really get to this.
[00:50:21]  And this is, you know, you can read about this in a ton of different places, but obviously a big part of the news that's that's been going around about NFTs is the immense ecological damage that they apparently cause.
[00:50:34]  And well, yeah, yeah, I mean, and they do, you know, I want to be clear.
[00:50:39]  The regular internet does too.
[00:50:40]  Like, Google buys up, like, literally makes hydroelectric dams under fucking like fake companies and like sets up giant server farms over there, too.
[00:50:49]  So, it's like the actual internet is doing the same kind of damage.
[00:50:53]  Yeah, I would say that, like, there's a reason why we only hear about the damage that like a handful, by the way, like, I mean, there are not that many people using this kind of shit, right?
[00:51:06]  Like, like, really, in the grand scheme of everything else, a handful of people are doing quote-unquote damage to the environment when like you have never, ever, once, ever, ever, ever seen the scope of YouTube's server farms and you have absolutely no idea what the cost of streaming video has done to the environment.

=== Google's Environmental Impact (05:07) ===

[00:51:23]  Like, there's a reason why we don't have that conversation, and that reason is because of the company that owns and runs the entire world.
[00:51:31]  You know, something I found out about Facebook, too, which I actually haven't seen reported anywhere, is that their ad, their like ad algorithm during peak times actually serves you worse ads because it can spy on you better because of the way that they allocate energy, which is the same huge amount of energy like dedicated to Facebook at all times.
[00:51:50]  When less people are using it, they're actually able to spy on you better.
[00:51:54]  Um, well, yeah, I mean, that got me thinking, right?
[00:51:57]  Like, okay, so the ecological cost is because you know, there are a huge amount of these, well, not really even a huge amount, but there are these farms, right?
[00:52:06]  Or these mines, let's say these caverns, uh, you know, filled with robot slaves, you know, blinking away red and black in the night, fucking underneath the ground.
[00:52:14]  And uh, a lot of these, I think about the estimate is between 50 and 70 percent, which isn't, you know, that's not a great estimate, are actually in China where they're rolling coal.
[00:52:25]  Um, and and there's also, you know, hydroelectric dams and very cheap power.
[00:52:29]  Apparently, only less than 5% of Bitcoin is actually mined in the U.S. because it's basically financially unfeasible here.
[00:52:36]  Yeah, the U.S. is losing the Fantastic Cyber War.
[00:52:40]  Although I'm sure that many.
[00:52:42]  Yeah, I don't buy that at all.
[00:52:44]  I mean, I do think that the U.S. basically runs Bitcoin.
[00:52:47]  So the best way to pay arms deals.
[00:52:51]  Yeah, it would be a good way.
[00:52:53]  Yes.
[00:52:54]  And, you know, Asia, like most chips are made there.
[00:52:57]  And, you know, there's this whole chip thing.
[00:52:58]  We could probably even do a fucking full episode about that.
[00:53:01]  There's a lot going on with the chip.
[00:53:02]  There's going to be a that's a great little war that's happening, actually.
[00:53:05]  Semi collectors.
[00:53:07]  But there's technically just 10 big mining pools in China.
[00:53:12]  And so the way to take over one of these networks or to be able to do stuff like double spend a Bitcoin or to fuck with other people's wallets is to do something called a 51% attack.
[00:53:22]  Something I think that has in a very unromantic subject, a sort of romantic sounding name, right?
[00:53:27]  It's probably a little more successful than that 99% attack that people try to buy.
[00:53:32]  Yes, that didn't work out very well.
[00:53:33]  But this one isn't.
[00:53:34]  Adbusters isn't going to be behind this.
[00:53:36]  I'm going to be behind this with the full back of the People's Liberation Army of China.
[00:53:41]  If you control 51% of the computational power used in one of these networks, you can do not everything, but you can do extraordinary stuff and you can fuck up that network and you can basically destroy whatever coin is backing it, right?
[00:53:57]  Well, yeah, that's the whole idea.
[00:53:58]  If you have the majority, if you're a majority owner, then you can do what you want with it.
[00:54:02]  Precisely.
[00:54:03]  Which is why China's in this huge race to mine all this Bitcoin.
[00:54:06]  I mean, China, yeah, it's like most again, most of it is being mined in China.
[00:54:10]  And there was, you know, some big, you know, lots of like weepy op-eds and Forbes and stuff talking about what China is going to do, blah, blah, blah.
[00:54:17]  Forbes is always weeping about something.
[00:54:19]  Yeah, they can weep because I'm thrusting so hard into their gullets.
[00:54:25]  That was really gross.
[00:54:26]  What?
[00:54:26]  That was really sorry.
[00:54:28]  That's called immuration.
[00:54:29]  It's a Roman sexual thing that they used to do to boy slaves.
[00:54:33]  Gullet.
[00:54:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:35]  That was a harshly until vomit.
[00:54:40]  It's a mail-on-mail thing specifically.
[00:54:42]  Yeah.
[00:54:44]  But here's the thing: that there's just these 10 big mining pools in China, right?
[00:54:49]  These giant server slave farms.
[00:54:53]  10 tactical nuclear devices could destroy all of these.
[00:54:57]  Meanwhile, I have my giant server farm, bam, goes online, takes over most, the majority of the hash power.
[00:55:03]  I can destroy essentially Bitcoin, right?
[00:55:07]  Now, people say that's nearly impossible to do, but anything is possible.
[00:55:11]  And that's the thing.
[00:55:11]  Like, that's the thing about this stuff is like with a lot of cyber shit, I'm like, there is no way for me to fight back.
[00:55:18]  You got to get some fucking guy in an anonymous mask with a hood who's going to end up being like, you know, a Discord groomer of 16-year-old girls or whatever.
[00:55:27]  But There is like literally no replacement in a contest, in a contest between a computer and an AK-47.
[00:55:36]  The AK-47 wins 100% of the time.
[00:55:40]  And so with all this kind of stuff and all these cybernetic researchers and all these Bitcoin gods and all that stuff, nobody, nobody, you yourself are not in the blockchain, right?
[00:55:52]  Like you are not safe.
[00:55:53]  You are not immutable.
[00:55:55]  You are not forever.
[00:55:56]  Well, they're going to try and make that happen.
[00:55:58]  Exactly.
[00:55:58]  So we have to destroy it before AI takes off because then their consciousness can enter the blockchain.
[00:56:05]  And I will have to make myself into some kind of like cybernetic ghost festooning myself with like coins and a suit of chain mail made of solely of Bitcoins and attack them on top of the tower that is reaching invisibly unto heaven.
[00:56:26]  And I don't want to have to do that.
[00:56:27]  I'd rather just blow something up.

=== Laser Eyes and Blockchain Destruction (10:50) ===

[00:56:31]  Here's my thing.
[00:56:32]  Do you think someone's planning this?
[00:56:34]  I mean, I've thought like, you know, what like, you know, in the future, like what terror will look like, right?
[00:56:40]  And like, I think that, you know, if this stuff takes off, if this becomes a real thing, you know, specifically if you're doing financial crimes, I mean, a lot of that will take place, again, on cyberspace.
[00:56:51]  But like, you know, some of it's going to have to take place in the real world too.
[00:56:54]  And there'll be competitors in the mining business, right?
[00:56:57]  And competitors in the mining business use dynamite or have traditionally in the past on each other.
[00:57:02]  And so, yeah, one kind of wonders what's going to happen with this stuff eventually.
[00:57:07]  I think about that, too, is that, like, what are the bases of a state?
[00:57:10]  The bureaucracy and an army, right?
[00:57:14]  And once one of these Bitcoin mines starts getting some troops together and attacking other Bitcoin mines, I mean, that becomes...
[00:57:21]  Yeah, we got bot armies.
[00:57:22]  Exactly.
[00:57:22]  Exactly.
[00:57:22]  That becomes the true bifurcated state where you're bifurcated between the online world and the real world.
[00:57:29]  And so, yeah, I mean, it's a possibility.
[00:57:32]  And I want to say, I also offer my services to whoever can get that together first.
[00:57:52]  Liz, you put a fat man with laser eyes here in the notes?
[00:57:55]  It looks like.
[00:57:56]  Okay, so apparently, I guess Wyoming, the state of Wyoming, is very close to granting company status to DAOs.
[00:58:07]  Can you explain what a DAO is really quick?
[00:58:09]  A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization.
[00:58:13]  So think of like the Chaz or Barcelona in 1936.
[00:58:21]  No.
[00:58:21]  Oh, yeah.
[00:58:22]  So it is essentially like a, from what I understand, and again, I'm not going to repeat any fucking caveats.
[00:58:29]  From what I understand, as a man, as a flesh and blood living human being, as a man who thinks and feels and sweats and pees, it's like a crowdfunded investment thing.
[00:58:42]  Yeah, it's basically like it's the dream of like an ownerless business.
[00:58:48]  So it's taking all those smart contracts and imagine, like imagine it's just like a company that executes these smart contracts, kind of, right?
[00:58:56]  I guess it's better than executing teenagers.
[00:58:59]  Anyway, so I guess Wyoming is close to granting them company status.
[00:59:03]  Wyoming legislature continues to embrace the fast-changing digital asset landscape and think of ways we can help facilitate new innovation.
[00:59:10]  And then I guess some libertarian lawyer killed it.
[00:59:14]  He was literally quoted as saying that it would enable shit coins and like these bullshit kind of speculative companies to pop up too quickly.
[00:59:22]  And I looked him up on Twitter and his avatar has laser eyes.
[00:59:27]  So that's him in that photo.
[00:59:28]  What is the laser eye thing?
[00:59:30]  It's some, it's, I mean, it's just some mean bullshit.
[00:59:33]  Baby, we're adults.
[00:59:34]  We don't need to think about that.
[00:59:35]  I don't understand it.
[00:59:36]  You don't need to.
[00:59:38]  You don't need to.
[00:59:39]  I don't need to.
[00:59:40]  It doesn't even look, it doesn't really look like laser eyes.
[00:59:43]  He kind of just put like a red like corona effect on his eyes.
[00:59:47]  He didn't do a very good.
[00:59:48]  They're not actually shooting lasers.
[00:59:49]  They're glowing like they're about to.
[00:59:51]  Yeah, glowing laser eyes, whatever it is.
[00:59:53]  Pointing the guns.
[00:59:53]  Yeah, it's like Wyoming, Florida, and Texas are basically in the like race to be based, which is like, you know, like who can appeal and get as many of these crypto speculator investor assholes in their state?
[01:00:08]  This is the quickest.
[01:00:09]  Maybe the base mayor of Miami.
[01:00:10]  I mean, he said he was going to start paying city employees in Bitcoin.
[01:00:14]  Yeah, that's basically, that's illegal.
[01:00:16]  You can't do that.
[01:00:16]  Yeah, I hope that guy goes to prison.
[01:00:19]  He's very, he's extremely, I mean, that dude is, you know, Mayor of Miami is all kind of just like a PR guy anyway.
[01:00:25]  He's like not a real mayor.
[01:00:26]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:27]  Apparently he's actually really not a real mayor, but we're getting a little too off topic here.
[01:00:31]  Well, actually, no, we're not because we're talking about the mayor of Miami and he fucking loves Bitcoin.
[01:00:35]  That's the thing about this stuff is people are going to fucking say, oh, how come you guys didn't talk about this?
[01:00:40]  How come you guys didn't talk about?
[01:00:42]  We're not a fucking Bitcoin podcast.
[01:00:45]  Like I, Again, I don't ever want to think about this again, ever, ever, ever.
[01:00:50]  I know I'm going to have to, but I don't ever want to think about it again.
[01:00:53]  I know that Brock Pierce is like a Bitcoin god.
[01:00:56]  I know that Jeffrey Epstein had someone write an op-ed for the next web for him about Bitcoin, which they had to add a Wikipedia link to all his sex crimes into later.
[01:01:06]  The thing is, also probably had one of the biggest Bitcoin wallets in America.
[01:01:11]  Well, that's the other thing.
[01:01:11]  As we were talking to Enti, he was like, he thinks that a lot of Ghillain's money is in Bitcoin, which I wouldn't be surprised about because, you know, they say it's unsuccessful.
[01:01:19]  They say they pay criminals and they did criminal activity, so it wouldn't make sense.
[01:01:22]  And also, they were early investors.
[01:01:24]  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:01:25]  And like, none of this stuff is truly anonymous.
[01:01:27]  I want to be clear about that.
[01:01:29]  Nothing you do on the internet, always assume that somebody can see it or will see it eventually.
[01:01:34]  Well, that is one thing I don't understand.
[01:01:35]  And I know that I'm sure this is going to like a million annoying men listening to this across the land are going to go, but I don't understand this.
[01:01:46]  Is that how can it be anonymous if it's on the blockchain and that is a record of every transaction?
[01:01:52]  Yeah.
[01:01:52]  And especially, well, especially with the know your customer kind of shit.
[01:01:56]  Every transaction.
[01:01:57]  It's so I just don't understand any of that.
[01:02:00]  But I will say one of my great, the only hope I have for this kind of stuff, which is very small, is like I do think there is a kind of like accelerationist version where this stuff catches on so fast that they do have to find a like way that it won't damage the environment.
[01:02:21]  Yeah, because we didn't explain this, but I don't fucking care enough to, but proof of work is the thing that really like it's a way to make blockchains and this proof of stake.
[01:02:28]  Right.
[01:02:29]  Proof of work is the shit that's like really computationally heavy and power intensive.
[01:02:33]  And that's what Ethereum and Bitcoin are based off of.
[01:02:36]  Yeah, but I do think that there is a kind of like version of this where it's like maybe the crypto guys and the nuclear guys need to get together and they can come up with some, you know, some little solutions here because we can have a crypto world powered by nuclear.
[01:02:54]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:02:56]  Like, maybe this is the only way we could do it.
[01:02:58]  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
[01:02:59]  Like, maybe this is how we get yang banged into the green dream.
[01:03:04]  Just by making us so much power-intensive Bitcoin that we're literally forced to build nuclear reactors in order to be able to buy products from China.
[01:03:14]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:03:15]  Fantastic idea.
[01:03:17]  Mayor Yang, I hope you're listening.
[01:03:18]  Yeah.
[01:03:19]  And also, I hope you win.
[01:03:42]  So at this point, if you are some kind of fucking Dexter, four eyes fucking nerd, and you're like, well, but that's not how the blockchain works.
[01:03:50]  I don't give a shit.
[01:03:52]  I'm going to come to your house.
[01:03:54]  No, I shouldn't say more of that, but I'm going to harm you.
[01:03:59]  Don't say that.
[01:04:00]  That's not true.
[01:04:01]  Okay, I'm not going to harm you.
[01:04:02]  I'm not going to do anything, but I am going to ignore you.
[01:04:04]  So don't say any of it because it won't matter because I won't hear it because I'm not listening.
[01:04:08]  I will say, I have spent so much time in the past week researching this kind of shit.
[01:04:15]  I have had essentially zero other things that I've done.
[01:04:20]  And it has made me, I have also gone down into the Bitcoin mine.
[01:04:24]  I live underground.
[01:04:25]  I'm with the goblins now.
[01:04:26]  I am their king and their god.
[01:04:28]  I've taken them away from the blockchain and I'm building my own chain.
[01:04:32]  It's chains I'm going to put around my wrist.
[01:04:34]  I'm going to strangle the whole world with.
[01:04:37]  I didn't mention this before, but with the 51% attack, with the proof of stake kind of blockchain things, that basically means if you have the most of that coin, if you have 51% of that coin, that means you get to control the blockchain.
[01:04:52]  So I am announcing my campaign to become the richest man in the world.
[01:04:58]  Right here today on this episode, I will say today starts, the road to Rogan, we're on it too, but there's another road that's also that the road to Rogan is on, but like it's a narrower path on it.
[01:05:09]  Two roads diverge.
[01:05:11]  Exactly.
[01:05:11]  I'm not going to be able to do that.
[01:05:11]  I mean, taking both roads there because there's two of us.
[01:05:14]  And there is no road less traveled because we're traveling them at the same time.
[01:05:18]  Yeah.
[01:05:19]  We're libertarians.
[01:05:21]  We take care of our own roads.
[01:05:24]  I'm driving a carriage upon which Young Chomsky and Liz sit on like a prince and princeling.
[01:05:29]  Little do they know that I am actually the king of money.
[01:05:32]  No, it's like a motorcycle and I'm in the little sidecar.
[01:05:36]  I'm in the caboose or whatever it is.
[01:05:38]  And I'm wearing a t-shirt that says, if you can read this, the bitch fell off.
[01:05:42]  But thankfully, Young Chomsky is holding me tight in a bear hug, his breath into my ear, and he is feeling, he is feeling my leg and he knows that it's jumping because I can smell money on the horizon.
[01:05:55]  If I get the majority of, once Ethereum, if they say they're going to move over to proof of stake, if I get the majority of Ethereum coins, that means I can destroy Ethereum.
[01:06:07]  The only way, I'm sorry to say this, I'm sorry to say this.
[01:06:10]  The only way for me, a non-coder, to cybernetically destroy any of these blockchains is I need to become the richest man on those blockchains.
[01:06:17]  And so I'm announcing the campaign right now.
[01:06:19]  I'm going to become the richest man in Ethereum in the world, and then I'm going to destroy it.
[01:06:25]  Okay.
[01:06:26]  So is that like a GoFundMe or how does this work?
[01:06:29]  I haven't figured that out.
[01:06:32]  Well, I guess I'm going to start selling Molly online.
[01:06:37]  Don't do that.
[01:06:39]  I wouldn't do that.
[01:06:39]  I don't like Molly.
[01:06:41]  Believe people buy drugs on the internet.
[01:06:42]  That's so weird.
[01:06:43]  It blows my mind when I met people.
[01:06:44]  We're like, I buy heroin on the internet.
[01:06:46]  Like, you buy heroin from a guy in a car.
[01:06:49]  Like, what you playing ahead with heroin?
[01:06:52]  Are you out of your mind?
[01:06:53]  You guys do too much stuff on the internet.
[01:06:55]  Yeah.
[01:06:56]  Just literally, just go buy it.
[01:06:59]  I don't understand it.
[01:07:00]  Well, don't do that.
[01:07:01]  You don't need to do that.
[01:07:02]  Yeah.
[01:07:02]  Then again, I'm 43.
[01:07:03]  So it's okay.
[01:07:04]  Hello.
[01:07:04]  Goodbye.
[01:07:05]  My name is Liz.
[01:07:06]  My name is Brace.
[01:07:08]  We are joined, of course, by producer Hyung Chomsky, who is.
[01:07:12]  Wait, no, hold on.
[01:07:13]  He's digitizing out.
[01:07:15]  He's getting trapped in the blockchain.
[01:07:18]  Liz, get us out of here.
[01:07:20]  We'll see you next time.