The Bitcoin Group, the American original. For over the last ten seconds, the sharpest said toshi's, the best Bitcoin's, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. First off, the Bitcoin Group would like to congratulate Christoph Atlus, regular contributor to the Bitcoin Group on his new position at blockchain.impot, way to go Christoph, and congratulations to blockchain for a great hire. Well done. We'd like to welcome our panelists, Blake Anderson, cryptographic economist. Hey everybody, how's it going? Megan Lourds from Bitcoin.com.com and Crypto Convos. Good to be here. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Issue 1, Ross Olbrek found guilty of all charges. A very sad day in the history of Bitcoin and the drug war, as Ross Olbrek accused of running the Silk Road website, a website that allowed large sellers of cannabis to sell it to large buyers without violence, was found guilty on all counts. The hitman charge, while used in the media to ruin his character, was actually not one of the crimes charged by the government. Blake Anderson, your thoughts. I think it's just reputation has certain protections, slander and libel, and various laws are in place that you can't damage somebody in a way that is going to negatively affect their life. When it comes to damaging the public's perception of an individual's action, like in this case, it's just like the most egregious violation of that that I can imagine. So we have somebody that set up a completely free market, the Silk Road, and then he gets sentenced harshly. He did something that's supposed to be staunchly defended by both parties that are in power for government in this country, the liberal, the conservative, the democratic, whichever party you're involved with, the cornerstone is the support of free markets. So somebody built a free market in this day and age, and this is what happens. I think it's very telling and very disturbing. So I think that the takeaway from this is that things are only going to get worse unless there can be a very strong appeal that has a basically refers verdict. Megan Lorde. So this is a really unfortunate thing, but I can't say that it's really surprising. I think a lot of people suspected that things would go this way because most of the public is not informed about things like drain-alification or even getting into the philosophy of whether or not these laws even are moral in the first place. And that takes a lot of internal individual work that I just don't know if society, the larger societies, really, there is really ready for that. So yeah, I can't say this is surprising. I mean, this was not a jury of his peers. Obviously, these people did not understand how the government found Russell Brick and the methods that they were using at all. And though I will say, and this probably isn't a very popular thing to say, is that it looks like Ross was sloppy in some ways and ended up that ended up making it easier to find him. He kept meticulous records of things. He wasn't the most careful. And when you're operating a website like that while it is a revolutionary thing to do, you have to take the utmost caution in doing so. And if you're getting lazy or you're getting prideful, maybe because you think that you can't be caught, especially if you recall some of the pieces that were written on Silk Road, at least when I first heard about it, it was like, oh, the government can't catch it. And it's this mysterious, ominous thing. And you know, it definitely added to the mystery and allure of Silk Road. And of course, that's going to draw government attention. And I'm wondering if there's maybe a degree of pride or something like that. Unfortunately, still, this is someone's life who's been ruined over a nonviolent website basically. He still has to face another trial in Maryland, and that's where you're probably going to see the murder for a higher charges. So I don't expect that one to go too well for him. And yeah, all around, it's just really a bad situation for him. And we'll see what happens with the appeal. I do know that they are going to appeal it because it wasn't unfair trial. I think it was obvious that the judge was cited against him from the very beginning, even before the trial. And we have what, like, 99% federal conviction rates. It's, I think the takeaway here is somebody created the infrastructure to support a truly free market and now they're in prison. So a very unfortunate result of the trial. The defense did the best they could. Like Megan said, they weren't allowed to bring in Bitcoin witnesses. He was tried by a jury of his peers. Oh, did that include any computer scientists or any experts? No. Well, how were they his peers? I'm not sure. His political views were hidden from the trial. And of course, we've all, in this group, we've all met his mother. And of course, our thoughts and prayers got to his family at this sad time. There is a person's life and the balance here. And while I'm sure his opponents would say that, of course, the drug market harmed people. I'm not sure that that harm presentation was a part of their trial presentation. I don't recall hearing from any victims of the Silk Road. But in general, the analysis done by scientists continues to stand. It was used by large sellers of cannabis to large buyers of cannabis without violence, which is something that's never been done before. I thought that jury notification was the way to go. The president himself has rejected the drug war. All of the last previous presidents have admitted publicly to using cannabis. And I thought that would have been a stronger way to go, but the family, the jury, they were not allowed to do jury notification. But exit question, the FBI and the Justice Department have done their job. The internet will now be forever free of the scourge of drug selling Bitcoin websites. Two or false, Blake Anderson. Oh, it's in controversially false. I mean, it's like saying that you threw a stone into a river and that river will never flow south again. It's just absolutely absurd. So just not zero tenability. I just gave up one to ten. The tenability of that statement is zero. Zero, absolute nothingness, not metaphysical certitude. Megan Lourdes, true or false? There's already more websites that have popped up and that exist. And if anything, they're going to be more efficiently run and even harder to track down the founders of because of this case and what was revealed in it as far as maybe some of the mistakes that were made in the operation of the Silk Road. So yeah, they're only going to become more efficient and more numerous as time goes on. There's really no stopping it. And hopefully we'll see a public shift in opinion against the drug war because ultimately these sins are not going away. The answer is false. Issue two. Fascinating article in the observer detailing the soared history of Ripple and Stellar and their company hopping founder at large, Jeb McAleb, who also founded Mount Gox. Style details, including a currency unit, due to their desire to distance themselves from the Mount Gox founder. Megan Lourdes, will we ever see a similar article about Satoshi Nakamoto? Is this rough start for Bitcoin 2.0 going to slow the projects down? Or will they just put all this personal stuff in the past? Shut the hell up and get to work. Well, I think, especially in the Bitcoin 2.0 space, things are a little tense right now, at least from what I've observed. It seems like there are a lot of scammers coming in and out and there are a lot of scams in Bitcoin 2. The space is kind of ripe for that kind of behavior. I think people are a bit on edge and concerned about the general direction of a lot of these other projects. And I think it's very hard to distance yourself from something. If you're, especially something like Mount Gox, if you were involved in that in any capacity, I think it's going to be very difficult to separate from that very, very bad reputation. And especially if you've been involved in multiple companies, like it appears, McAleb has a job of growing from companies and maybe they don't have the best reputation either. So we'll see. That's not in diamond of his character. I certainly don't know this guy personally. Yeah, it's very hard to recover from that. And I guess it kind of remains to be seen. I think that it's not going to slow down other projects that are unrelated as a whole. I don't think one or two bad projects in the Bitcoin 2.0 space is going to necessarily affect everything else that's going on. And remember, after McAleb left with a magical TuX, Mark Carpellis in charge, Mount Gox did have funding. They could have hired additional people to come in and change their black box and reprogram it and perhaps present the transaction malability or internal theft or whatever happened to the Bitcoin's. But he didn't. He kept it a one-man show. Blake Anderson, your thoughts on Stellar and Ripple? Oh my. Well, Ripple is great for remittances, what people say. If you want to remit things across international barriers and send money around, then Ripple is a great protocol. So Gox had potential as an exchange. They had a lot of following and they kind of fumbled that. Ripple had a lot of potential as a ability to engage and achieve remittance. It remains to be I guess still kind of seen if that is going to develop in a something that's really, really useful, fundamental infrastructure for a layer of how finance is working in the future. I think that the relationship damage between Ripple and Wells Fargo was a big road black in that direction. But then again, some people in the more decentralization oriented camp might say, well, that's good. That's a blow to the ability of the new crypto systems. It damages the ability of the new crypto systems to engage in a top-down build fashion. It's going to latch onto the systems of antiquity and possibly do some damage. I think a lot of people want to see ground up building in the crypto space. So I think that people in that party or that camp might say it's positive that there's bad blood between Ripple and Wells Fargo. If that is the case, if there is bad blood there, we have to take the good with the bad. I think that the bad is more obvious. But the good that might be cheered for by the decentralization camp might be less easy to understand for the kind of person. So I guess I wanted to illustrate why people might feel a certain way. Exit question, stellar Ripple or neither? Megan Lorde. I don't really know enough about either of them to make a choice on that. I guess I'm going to have to say neither. It's hard to really know the difference between stellar and Ripple other than that they gave me some free stellar when I signed up. Either way, I've used both services about twice, logged in once. I don't know what it's for, but it's still out there. The money is sitting out there. My precious stellar, my precious Ripple. And I think it's when we ask questions like this, we should say hopefully the answer to this question would be whichever company is working more readily towards decentralization of their golden egg laying goose. So it's kind of a double edged sword moving towards decentralizing your own product, but we kind of have to demand that as a community and if not with your art support. So there is a kind of a demand on both sides of the fence here as far as the community needs to demand move towards decentralization and people that have power and stuff need to say, okay, we're getting a golden meal ticket right now, but we have to use the profits from that to move towards a decentralized model because the old systems, legacy systems of non-decentralized security don't work anymore. They don't work anymore. So we all kind of owe the quote unquote, greater good generalistic research in the areas of making things fundamentally secure. So hopefully, you know, whichever one is moving towards decentralization. Well, I've often heard a stellar described as a bank friendly or Ripple described as a bank friendly cryptocurrency. So maybe it's not for us anyway. Speaking of other events that are not for us, issue three Bitcoin elite to gather on secret island for build a Berg style retreat. That was the coin desk headline that set the internet of flame, perhaps a bit over the top. It sounds more like Jack O'Lyland of the secret founding of the Federal Reserve. Read your history. The story spread like wildfire, far and wide across the internet to Alex Jones, prison planet, Ernie Hancock's Freedom Phoenix show, and many other libertarian and freedom-loving outlets. The private meeting has now changed their minds, saying that video of the conference and reporting will be provided by one reporter from Why Bitcoin Magazine? Apparently CEOs often meet in private, and this is no big deal. Blake Anderson, is this just a sensationalist headline, and a bit of an overreaction, or are Bitcoin CEOs meeting in private to drink the blood of babies and form a monopolistic cartel? Well, the thing is, I don't think that this specific group of people is up to anything bad, but I can't just say, you know, my anecdotal evidence about certain individuals means that they're beyond, you know, criticism and things like that. So I thought that it was fine for the community to ask these people that are going to this retreat, what's going to be going on there, what kind of accountability, blah, blah, blah, are you going to represent yourself or your company? And it seems like a lot of people got kind of upset. Mad Bitcoin was on Twitter and talking with Bruce Fenton and some other people who were pretty defensive. And I guess I can appreciate why they were defensive a little bit because there was so much blowback from all around the internet. But at the same time, you have to realize that if, you know, a headline gets published like the one that was published, it's going to take legitimate questions and then maybe give them a little bit of a harsher edge. But that doesn't mean that it takes the venom out of the legitimacy of those questions and out of light to see the defensive free speech or maybe some more of the reasons that they wanted to get together and do this defended out in the open. A lot of the defenses seem to be, you know, we have a right to privacy. Don't you think we have a right to privacy? And it's like, yeah, but at the same time, maybe give us a better reason than CEOs are afraid to criticize things in public, which was one of the only reasons given, which is fine. I can understand it. But at the same time, it's like, well, that doesn't make our lot seem all that honorable in the context of other technologies. So I thought that was kind of thin. And while the criticism may have gone too far, I've been kind of a Twitter storm, you know, everything that's heated up in the moment, I did see a great comment on Reddit that really brought it together that said basically with the libertarians, with the crypto anarchist, with the cyber punks and the cypher punks, you pretty much have the most paranoid people on earth. They're going to call you out if they think you're doing something wrong because these are the people protecting the protocol. These are the people that are making Bitcoin work. It's a trustless currency for a reason. These are the people that brought you that lack of trust. These are the people hacking your hard drives, cracking your PGP. That's who we're talking about. They know what trust means. And it just seemed off. Perhaps it was the coin desk headline. It was really, perhaps a little sensationalist. But just in the short term, hearing about it quickly, responding in the moment, it just seemed a little off. Megan Lloyds, your thoughts. Why are we still freaking out about the tabloid of Bitcoin journalism? I mean, seriously, coin desk is a rag. It was obviously sensationalist headline. It was so ridiculous. In fact, the thing is, most people don't always realize this if they're not in media. But when you approach someone with a story or they find out about a story, even if they interview you, you have no control over how that story is going to be framed. And they may not even have any, the person writing it may not even have any control over the headline that gets written for it. So this is just a sensationalist headline. You brought up Jack O'Lyland. I'm very familiar with that story. I don't think this is anything like that. Because what happened on Jack O'Lyland was completely private and no one knew about it. They didn't do this. They didn't do any interviews with tabloids telling people about it. And I really think this was a publicity stunt, you know, for certain individuals who were interested in gaining more prominence in the space. And it was made to make some people feel good about themselves and feel like they're in an exclusive club. And I think that's fine. I mean, I think it's a bit tacky, maybe, to say that you're having a private party on an island. And only the cool kids are allowed. I think that's tacky more than anything else. But it's not harmful. To me, the more important questions aren't, you know, who are the libertarians and anarchists meeting down in the Caribbean. But what are the strings attached to that $75 million that Coinbase has got? You know, where are the actual backroom deals going on at? Those aren't going to be in CoinDesk. Those aren't going to be in any kind of Bitcoin magazine or any kind of publication. The people who want to do real damage to Bitcoin are going to be meeting in private. And those are the people that you have to really be looking for. You know, I think there was something to that Reddit comment about people being extremely paranoid. And I don't think it's warranted in this case at all. You know, again, I think this is maybe people trying to create a favor, you know, with others or whatever it is. And maybe it's just a party, you know, maybe it's just people wanting to get together. I've met several of the people on the list personally, you know, some of them are friends of mine. And I don't really see anything suspect about it. Again, if anything, it was just extremely tacky to go to CoinDesk, expecting them to not write a sensationalist headline. And I think the lesson you can take away from this is don't overreact to these ridiculous headlines. They're meant to troll you. They're meant to incite these kinds of feelings in people. And when you read something from CoinDesk, take a minute to process it and realize what their motives are. And, you know, don't freak out, you know, initially because, yeah, it's not really productive. You know, I don't think it's very productive getting into Twitter Spats with people. Even though some of, you know, the questions were valid. But the way they framed it was ridiculous. And obviously just click, baby, I mean, calling it the builder bird. These are not the, like, I'm sorry, the, the libertarians in the air kiss are not the builder bird people of Bitcoin. They're like the outside, like people yelling with like bull horns at builder bird if anything. So no, the real dangerous people who are trying to take out Bitcoin or, you know, maybe plotting against, I don't want to be overly paranoid. But you're not going to see them talking about it or doing interviews in the news. I just wanted to point out that in my line of work is math-based security information scientist Paranoid is everything you got to be super paranoid. So this space and the paranoia that's required to work in math-based security and to identify attack vectors, it just shocks me that people were surprised that the community asked questions and maybe they weren't surprised. Maybe that's the wrong word for it. But maybe they were shocked by the amount of questions on Twitter and on Reddit and on Facebook and in personal messages. I guess that we should all be aware of the fact that we do have a lot of, you know, quote unquote, paranoid people because that's what math-based security is. It's the most hyper application that paranoia ever conceived of applied to technology. Well, do you think there's anything to the Bruce Fettinus running for the Foundation Board? And maybe this is just an effort to bring a lot of people with influence around him is kind of a support mechanism for that? Yeah, and it definitely could be that for sure. I think that it would have been a lot better for his reputation had he just said that. Maybe he did say that and I missed it. But, you know, I think that, you know, I've been a fan of Bruce for a long time. I've talked about him in the show several times, you know, at various different points. I think that his reputation was heard a lot by the way that he handled the questions around this because the people that were asking questions, maybe they were trolley or whatever, but they were really people that do care about Bitcoin. So I think it was damaging his reputation a little bit, maybe not with the people that he needs, but with the general community. So I thought that that was a shame. It came across as a bit abrasive. Yeah, I'll agree with that. And I've met Bruce too. He spoke at one of the conferences I organized and seems like a decent guy who's wanting to go in a good direction with things. But yeah, we'll see. I'm not afraid of, let's just say I'm not afraid of any of the people who are beating on that island. I don't think they're involved in any of the various plot. Oh, no, I insisted that you call Bruce a touch move about a coin in the kingdom. I think he's a really good guy. Yeah. I think Megan's got some good points. It was definitely tacking. And if they were looking for publicity out of the coin desk article, they certainly got publicity. But it's often it goes both ways. You get the good publicity, you get the bad publicity. The questions are there. But exit question. Will they do this again next year? Yes or no? Blake Anderson. Hopefully they do it again next year and they have the funds to do it. Hopefully they tell a kind of people what they're doing, what their goal is with the privacy a little bit better next year or something. I don't know, exactly what to demand, but hopefully less defensiveness. Megan, Lord. I have no idea. I mean, this kind of seems like a private party. Where a bunch of people are getting together. And yeah, I mean, I can't really say it's strange. I think you're seeing a decrease in, you're probably going to see a lot of decrease in conferences and stuff just as far as the price. And I'm not even sure that the conferences are really very productive at this time in Bitcoin right now. And I say that having organized two of them, I don't think there is productive as far as getting the word out to people. There is private meetings amongst friends. And I think anyone could do this. I mean, in Bitcoin, I think that having like a brain trust of people might be a more valuable way to approach things. I'm just to kind of clarify goals and kind of find allies and find out who's on the same page as you with things. And that's kind of what this looks like to me is. These people all seem fairly like-minded. I think you're right, Megan. I would start with a bottom-up approach. I would go to the Meetup groups. I think that the Meetup groups are where the real power of Bitcoin are. And if you were going to look for the support of the community in running for the Bitcoin Foundation, I would start at the Meetup groups, not at these top-level people. So we'll see how they go. Will they do it again next year? I think yes. And we'll recreate this whole event like Groundhog Day. We'll argue on Twitter. We'll do the whole thing next year. So put that on your calendars, people. Issue four. Knock of Modos. San Francisco's first Bitcoin retail space opens for business. Andrew Lee, the founder of Perst.io, is dedicated to making San Francisco the real capital of Bitcoin. Starting with Knock of Modos, a store that offers a 10% discount on Amazon prices, if you pay in Bitcoin. The store was funded, not by venture capital, but as a loan on peer-to-peer lending platform BTC Jam. Megan Lourdes, your thoughts on Knock of Modos. Will a 10% discount spur consumers to spend their Bitcoin? Can we just fund Bitcoin retail ourselves? Well, what I do like about this is how it was funded. I think that's really interesting. And I do like that they give such a huge discount. I mean, 10% is quite a bit, especially on something like Amazon that already discounts things pretty heavily from what I've seen. But yeah, I'd like to see more internal funding coming from people within the space, not necessarily from venture capitalists. And I think it sounds like a pretty good idea. I think San Francisco is a really good location to do this in. We were talking earlier, you were saying there's not a lot of places who take Bitcoin and San Francisco despite it being such a Bitcoin hub. So I wish them the best. I think it's a great idea. And yeah, I'd love to see more Bitcoin retailing now as far as people spending more. I'm not sure that you're going to see much more of that until the price kind of recovers a bit. You know, until it's going back up, I think people are still kind of holding their Bitcoin right now and they're kind of a little bit nervous. We're still in that kind of cautionary phase where people are kind of waiting to see what happens. So I think you're going to see people spending more Bitcoin when the price starts raising. Blake Anderson. I think it's a cool idea. I would be curious to see how they're giving the discount, how their business model works. And if they have a tenable ROI plan and things like that, I think that's, you know, hopefully they do. And having a physical brick and mortar location to get Bitcoin stuff. It's a pretty cool idea. So a tenable business model. I give it a big thumbs up. I think it's a really cool thing to do. It also said the article, they're going to have a BTM, a Bitcoin telemachines. You could trade your Fiat currency there and then get Bitcoins to use in the store. I'm not sure that the store actually takes cash. I'm pretty sure it's a Bitcoin only store. So that BTM is a very important part of this idea. Exit question. In the future, will we see more or less Bitcoin funded businesses and entrepreneurs, Megan Lords? Well, I think in the long term, hopefully we'll see more. But in the short term, I think people are still, I guess that earlier, just really cautious and waiting things out. Blake Anderson. Yeah, I agree in the long term. I think that yes, I think that right now people are going to be cautious until the next block having you. Moving on to questions and answers. There's still a chance to get your questions in for questions and answers. Starting with Eric Russo in no particular order. There are no 2.0 projects. They're all vaporware, bullshit, scam platforms. An interesting point. Kind of links in Ethereum, MadeSafe, Storage, Counterparty, Ripple, Steller. They're all pretty questionable right now. Some have released projects. Some have released white papers. Others have not. They're all, we don't know. We don't know who the winner is going to be. We're going to sit back and wait. Yeah, there's some functional software out there so it's not really a completely true statement. But the unfortunate thing is that I know what he means. It's more true than not true. I think that's how I want to paint it. Bitcoin 2.0 is much like altcoins where you're just not sure about them until they're finished and then even then you're still not sure. Megan, your thoughts? Yeah, I'd like to see more tangible services and products coming out of that Bitcoin 2.0 sector before I'm really going to believe in it, I guess. I definitely see where he's coming from with thinking everything is vaporware. I could see that because right now I mean a lot of it is. Yeah, I think it's going to be extremely skeptical with these new companies coming out. Anybody that doesn't know the link, vaporware or ghostware, what they mean is like the Duke Nukem Forever game, except for it never ends up coming out in the long run. Duke Nukem Forever ended up coming out. It was bad, but it didn't come out. Faporware or ghostware is something that people work on and talk about but then never ends up happening or going anywhere. And this is also part of the Darwinian software process. We kind of have to do this as a science experiment. There needs to be survival of the fittest. People need to try these new ideas and some of them need to succeed and some of them need to failure. That's just how it's going to be. That survival is the exception and not the rule and that doesn't change just because we go virtual. Yep, so hold on. Let's see what else is good. Infinite radio, exit question with the price deflating from the 2013 bubble. People in developing countries can actually afford to buy a good amount of Bitcoin and these are the people who truly get the adoption ball rolling is the great Satoshi still guiding us. Well there's a slightly two different questions. What do you guys think Blake? First question, second question? Oh, okay. Well yeah, the first is like, yeah, adoption is great. Let's get the ball rolling on people able to purchase Bitcoin, proceeding the block having because I think that maybe there's more thought that went into that than people are attributing to the monetary policy of Bitcoin. As far as people still following Satoshi, I don't know. I think a lot of people have gotten way far away from working within the scope of the white paper that he wrote in 2008. I think that people should revisit the white paper and try to work in the scope within that scope. I think that, no, not many people are still following Satoshi and that it's important that we do. Megan Lawrence. Yeah, too. Their first question, I think that's interesting and I think it kind of goes in line with a ground up approach. I think people in developing countries really need a lot of times a more stable currency. I hope Bitcoin has stabilized quite a bit even though the price is low. I think it's something that's going to bring a lot of opportunity to a lot of people. I think a good slow mass adoption is definitely preferable to an overnight adoption. I want to see people getting into Bitcoin who are taking their time to learn about it and who are going to be educated about it and use it in that way. As for Satoshi, still guiding us, it's been put out there. Bitcoin has been put out there and he basically took his hands off and just take it. I think the white paper is an excellent resource. It's something that I think should be adhered to for people in this space, but ultimately it's out of his hands and I think he knew that or they knew that when they created it. This is not some tyrannical godlike figure who wants an iron fist and Bitcoin has to be a certain way. They release it anonymously with a purpose and also multiple purposes. It's something that I think to consider. I think one of the reasons Satoshi remained anonymous was because he didn't want to appear to be like this godlike figure. He didn't want people idolizing him in any kind of way. He wanted people to make use of the technology in the best way that they can. And much like George Washington, what we can admire about most with Satoshi is his example and his humility, the ability to walk away from this project and let people choose. You can choose if you want to follow Satoshi. If you think decentralization is cool, if you like open verifiable ledgers and you think that's a cool technology, you're in. If you disagree, you don't like that. That's fine. As well Satoshi doesn't judge. That's not his way. So I think it's a really great example and I do agree with you. Adoption might go better in other countries. As an infinite radio, the questioner says in a follow-up, he says, Americans don't need Bitcoin's like Greece needs Bitcoin's among other countries. Oh, I'm going to have to disagree with it. I very, very immediately disagree with that. I think that Greece needs it too but I think that the entire world is in a fiat debt crisis and it's like a sinking ship. Bitcoin is like lifeboats and the ship is sinking. Make no mistake about it. There's a song by a fan called No A Fx called Rico and the beginning is kind of like a Jamaican reggae song. It's about this house that's just been completely destroyed. All the faucets are overflowing and somebody vomited into the fish tank and all the dog bowls are full of x-lacks and stuff like this. Like the most wild party ever and it's just like the house is destroyed. And the song is really slow and about how they get up and get out of there because the house is trash and it's never really useful anything again. And the song flips over at the end and it's all basically comparison to the financial system and to the world and to what we've done with our various different credit systems. So the Titanic is sinking and Bitcoin are the lifeboats and it's a harsh thing to say but I've seen no evidence that that's not the case. And it's probably just a sliding scale. Greece might need it more percentage wise. America still needs it. We all need it and what it could deliver. Yeah, Greece is farther along. So yeah, I mean from that kind of a standpoint they have less military industrial complex and nonsense to fall back on. Next question, Eric says, Ripple, but he's smelling ripple like Rest in Peace. Ripple is going to bring malability to the Federal Reserve. Oh, and ripple until the GRB Ufufu, I don't know what you mean, is there, but I just think he's kind of mocking ripple and their ability to bring peace to the banks at last. Eric also writes and says that the Silk Road trial was about one thing, containment of competition, the CIA and the DEA hate competition. I think that's a pretty valid point. A lot of people are agreeing with that out there. Of course, the Afghanistan war, Afghanistan famously the home of 90% of the world heroin. You can say what you want about that. You can read more about it or you can ignore it. There's been a lot of interesting stories about the CIA and importing drugs into this country in the past. So you can read about that or not. Yeah, and there's a lot of risk when something like the CIA that has a license to kill can do things like selling drugs or weapons or other things like that. But then happens is you have a situation where you have an entity that can kill and can self-fund. That's what creates a shadow government and it's very possible and not just possible almost documented and evident that the CIA has become a shadow government. It does have to make concessions to and deal with the government who has to make concessions to the CIA as well. So that's a very, very dangerous situation. And I agree that the competition that would have been brought to the CIA or various different collectivist violence-based monopolies was very much threatened by a free marketplace. And that's the scary horrifying truth of what happens to somebody that invents the infrastructure for a truly free market today. And when you step back and really realize the horror of that situation, I mean, that's pretty fucking awful. Yeah, let's not pretend that the government wouldn't want in on the extreme profits you can make in a black market. So I think, like Thomas said, you can read into some of these things and they're very interesting. And I think this is a kind of an Occam's razor thing. Obviously, they would be dealing drugs and doing all, I mean, gun running all of the other things that government agencies are known for. So yeah, the government participates in black market activity as often as they try to stop it. I think this is also a really interesting situation where the emperor has no clothes. But punishment's brought down and certainly Ross Olbrecht's life has probably ruined. But if you look at the reality here in David versus Goliath terms, one little man, one little David, made this incredible black market that almost took down Goliath. If there were five other men like him, there'd be five other black markets. And there are on the internet. So it's really kind of exposing a hole here where once again, it's the demand of Americans for illegal drugs that creates the drug war, that creates the black market. Columbia, Columbia, the country, not anything else. But Columbia, the country was all about how we're not doing it. We're just meeting your demand. You demand it. If you'd stop demanding it, we could grow other things or have cows. There's options. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like Ross was in this prison system and he was discovered carving his, you know, an alien little natural rights onto a rock somewhere in the garden. They were like, that is the true nature of dangerous, get him out of here and make an example of him. Because if we allow that to proceed, that is going to bring everything that we're doing down. And that's the reality of the situation. It's truth is dangerous. It is. And we've got a couple more comments. Infinite Radio writes back and says, Blake, the ships are going to take years to sink. Some countries are going to drown first. So I like this fiat currency global warming analogy. We've got to go in here. Yeah, I know. I'm not saying that Greece isn't a better financial situation than America. I agree. We've got to go. And also, Eric writes, baby, bloody, baby, bloody marries further wind. So he's picking up on our joke here. And again, we're being satirical. We're kidding. We're joking. It's fun. They're taking the guy in the silly hat far too seriously. A lot of the times, if I bring something up, seems a little outlandish. It's outlandish because that's what humor is. It's an unexpected comment. You got a lampoon. This shit was sand-tired. With sand-tired. You can't even pronounce the words correctly you're talking about. And then it becomes a really good show. See, the worst, and the worst it is, the funnier it gets. So baby blood, bloody marries. And we're moving on to predictions or story of the week. Eric Anderson, are you ready with a prediction or a story of the week? My prediction is that there's going to be a lot of egg on the face of the community and the best thing that we can do is wipe the egg and the embarrassment off of our face by calling out scams and by being brave and by saying what you really think and not by, you know, cow-towing to these connection points to the legacy system. Like if you want to try to build a top-down system for a quick buck and then bring it into Bitcoin, I mean, it's kind of our job to call you out a little bit unless you're going to help the technology. So it's nothing personal, but my prediction is that there's going to be a lot more scamming and a lot more calling out. The companies that get called out that want to continue to decentralize what they can do is they can use the call outs to get objective information about their company and they can improve and the companies that, you know, resort to ad hominem and cutting off the community, we will be able to identify those companies as companies that don't want to work with the community and deliver something that we can all use. So my prediction is that there's going to be a lot more, you know, a strife, but that it will be very, very important. And the specter of Mount Gox will always hang over it. So I remember Losski describing it as his 9-11 and in many ways it's all of ours 9-11. And a lot of people lost money and no one really called them out. So we need to be more careful next time. Megan Lourdes, a prediction or a story of the week. I definitely agree with what Blake said, but I'm going to make a prediction and that's if we don't start really going after these click baity, ridiculous headlines from Coin Desk that by the year 2018 they'll take over and that'll basically be like the idiocracy of Bitcoin. Like don't let this happen. Bitcoin media is young, just like Bitcoin is and I think high ethics and journalism need to be taken into account and if people aren't practicing that they should be shunned. You shouldn't read their publications and you should try your best to find reputable sources of news that aren't trying to sensationalize things and that you know aren't just also, I mean a lot of the stuff on Coin Desk who is just very, it's fluff pieces or you know there needs to be more investigative journalism and there needs to be more stringent approach to going after some of these scams like Blake said and it's not an easy job to do and it's not fun to do and you don't win a lot of friends doing it but it is something that if we want Bitcoin to look like it has any credibility to the outside public it's something that we're going to have to do internally. True that, good point Megan and finally not a prediction but a hiatus. I will be taking a hiatus from making shows to work on a project that is very important to me and in my opinion important to the future of Bitcoin and the success and the creation of a new Bitcoin economy. I'm unable to release any details at this time but I look forward to sharing more with you in the future. Oh, we're out of time. Until next time. Bye bye.