The Bitcoin Group. The Bitcoin Group. The American Original. For over the last 10 years, the sharpest Satoshi's, the best Bitcoins, the hardest cryptocurrency talk. panelists. Ben Ark from LN.Bits. Hello, all. And I'm Thomas Hunt from the World Crypto Network. Moving on to issue one, liquid bug. Well, they found the bug that drained the liquid foundation. It's not good. From what I can tell, Blockstream recently found a vulnerability from 2019. I'm not going to name names, but they were patching the vulnerability five days ago. the problem is they did it in phases and disclosed it to the public without waiting for it to be patched and telling everyone where the vulnerability was this is either a massive negligent blunder or an intentional scapegoat i don't have evidence either way but i'm just pointing out that both are plausible from a technical level in simple terms they found a back door to the treasure instead of closing the door right away or waiting to tell everyone until the door was closed they posted the treasure map for the whole world to see while the back door was left wide open.
Hackers have stolen 4,000 Bitcoin worth $320 million from the Liquid Network. However, the hackers claim to be White Hat hackers and say, contact us on chain. A company worth $3 billion whose CEO is speculated to be Satoshi built its own side chain and the hacker walked away with 4,000 real Bitcoin. The Federation signed it because the fake coins looked valid. The keys were not stolen. This is a software bug. She says, Ben says he wrote a little screenplay about it. 4,000 Bitcoin, one small bug, one very unhappy lawyer. Yes, very funny. And let's see, white hats stole them. We are white hats. A Richard Hart. it's adam back after the liquid drain liquid richard hart went after adam back and after purported white hats bold 4 000 he said liquid is pause the coins west through a pegart no keys were reported stolen the bitcoin and not been returned heart said that back had long called him a scammer and that a large part of the bitcoin community has long disliked block stream heart piling on to the trouble liquid network attacker returns 400 bitcoin after bug fix retains nearly 600 bitcoin around 50 million dollars block stream refuses the ransom for the return of 47 million dollars in the liquid heist saying it is theft with 598 bitcoins still outstanding the company says it will go to law enforcement and that the funds should be returned Ben are quite a soap opera there, the liquid blockchain hack.
What do you think, especially about the end part where they say, hey, we want the rest of our money too. I think they have to legally say that because it was, I found it, I mean, if you're in the position where someone has 4,000 of your coins and you're asking them nicely for them back, then you're going to be quite compliant and say, yes, please. Oh, yes, please. Please send us most of it back. Yes, please. Are you going to keep 15%? Okay, that's fine. And then when you get the coins, like they can't allow it just to just to become a bounty because it's a ridiculous bounty. You know, 600 Bitcoin is a ridiculous bounty and it doesn't fall under the umbrella of a white hat hacker.
So when they were initially like talking to the hackers, I was like, does this mean that they're scot free? Like the white hat hacker can do the conference circuit and go on panels and all that sort of stuff. So I think now that they've actually got the majority of the coins back, they're able to say what they really feel, which is that, you know, 15% isn't, that amount of money isn't a bounty for a white hack exploit. And I think quite rightfully they said that they're going to work with, you know, criminal investigators and they're going to work with their own private investigators and analysts and whoever else to try and get the coins back. And I think that, you know, hopefully the white hat hackers will turn around and try and negotiate an actual sum, which is not fair, but, you know, a sum which they can live with where they haven't got Blockstream and all their resources and all the resources of all their investors chasing them for the rest of time because those coins are worth an absolute fortune.
Like 600 Bitcoin, that is something people are going to pursue. Whereas if it was 1%, that's okay. get away with that one percent you're still walking away with whatever that is 40 coins or something but that's a lot of bitcoin um so i i think that's probably the best thing they could possibly do is just trying to negotiate an amount of money which would make block stream not uh for the bounty which would make block stream not pursue them to the ends of the earth trying to get the rest of the coins back um and also not to pursue criminal proceedings because you know you've you can have all the money in the world but if you're constantly looking over your older than you can have a pretty miserable life.
And just generally over the hack, like, it's just one of these things which in retrospect, it seems so obvious, but it wasn't that obvious because no one exploited the vulnerability earlier. I actually think that it was more timed with, you know, Astra coming out on chat GPT or whatever. Like it was, it sort of came out around the same time. I remember when the hack first happened, like people going, oh, someone's got their access to Astra, to chat GPT, Astra. But it was that kind of hack. You know, if you've got someone who's just pointing every frontier agent, every frontier agent, every Bitcoin, major Bitcoin project they can. And inevitably they're going to find vulnerabilities.
And the vulnerability was in elements. And it was they were able to create a coin, which wasn't actually paid to anything. And then swap out the coins for Bitcoin. And that's how are they able to get the 4,000 Bitcoin. But it's an astronomical amount of money. to be in a horrible day for the Blockstream folks. And I know Blockstream, they kind of get some crap. They've always got crap because they had Axe invest in them, which is a people say it's a bank, but it's not like a crappy insurance company in the UK. And they've always been seen as kind of like a corporate element in Bitcoin. But they contribute, like they employ a lot of great for an open source core developers and Lightning developers.
it's very expensive for them and all their products are really needed in order to generate revenue so they can actually pay the high salaries of some of the people they employ and yeah it was it was sad like I like liquid I like Boxstream despite you know some some other people's sort of conspiratorial feelings towards them like I you know I think they do interesting work and it was a shame that it was such a hefty exploit and that it could really make people lose faith in the liquid network because actually the liquid network is great. I mean, you know, within the lightning world when on-chain fees went too high, lots of people were swapping out of liquid to rebalance channels and things.
And it's a useful tool to have in the tool set along with, you know, on-chain and lightning. So hopefully liquid, the project won't die. I don't think it will. And I think it's, you know, legally the right thing for them to do is to say that, no, this isn't a bounty. This is theft. going to pursue you for these coins. I think the best thing that the hacker can do is just turn around and negotiate a more reasonable bounty. Now, I agree that legally that's what they have to do, and that makes sense. I get it. They have to say that. I do think it's going to discourage White Hat hackers, which is not what we want to do. Imagine this situation was reversed, and this was the cold card situation, and someone was suddenly offering to return, what has it been, 85%, say they take 15%, 85% of the cold card hack is now coming back.
And the problem is getting the money back to people. They have to sign the new address thing or whatever to get their old coins. That would be a great problem to have. Blockstream is rewarded with wealth here. I think because of the nature of the hack, the nature where they announced their own bug and that it was unpatched and unfixed. So the guy who came in is more of like a technical person like Ben said where he's willing to take. some percentage of this, but what's fair? We're not going to say that the size of the hack has something to do with the payment. The hack was 4,000 bitcoins. Why shouldn't the guy get 10, 20%? It doesn't see. Yeah, I mean, I know the company's hurt, but they kept all their money in one thing.
They had this foundation that apparently signed anything you put in front of it. It's a federation. They worked really hard to make that federation pretty honest as well. It's like probably in the whole sort of crypto. space it's one of the better federations they have custom hard they have the same problem as those guys from years ago where i forget the program but it uh bit go f yourself or whatever it just signed all the programs it's like it's like blind protected by the symbol of power here and then it turns out there's no symbol of power like they showed a picture of the transaction thing it was like 0.8 0.06 4 000 0.8 This was a ridiculous transaction.
Is there any, if you're going to have this kind of a control, and I don't even know anything about it, but if there's any kind of control, it has to say, don't transfer all 4,000 all at once. Not to say the hacker doesn't come back and transfer 10 at a time or whatever it is, but I mean, they're, you know, make it a little hard on them, right? Yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think some rate limiting probably would have been a good idea to say that any transaction over X amount requires not blind signing from the, the machines like it requires a little bit of oversight but i mean the whole point of liquid network is to move i mean there's there was 4 000 bitcoin on there for a reason there's more than 4 000 bitcoin on there um yeah that wasn't all the bitcoin on on liquid and it's because exchanges and a whole bunch of other big services use them for transferring large values around um but yeah you would you would think that if it's not if it's like an unknown um participant in the network then yeah there should probably be some rate limiting just to stop them from taking out 4,000.
I also think it's interesting here how the industry changes, right? You look at a little weed shop and you're like, oh, they're just selling weed, and then they show the back of Oakland's Harborside. And what's their problem? Oh, we have too many pallets of cash, right? We don't know where to put our pallets full of $20 bills, what have you, right? The same thing here for Blockstream. Oh, we're just a little engineering firm doing a little Joe engineering here. And then where do we put our palette full of Bitcoin, our 4,000 Bitcoin? The same problem for the hacker. Blockstream is transformed from this little engineering outfit into, I think it's Andy Garcia's character from Oceans 11.
He's the mobster. And the same thing you're saying, Ben, it's like, you took this money off me. I'm going to search for you for the end of the earth. I'm never going to stop looking. I'm going to find you. And it almost becomes this problem of like the money's there. Yes, like the hacker sees it and they're like, I could tip this tower over. Should the hacker like take less of the money? Should the hacker announce it to the hacker forum so that 500 other hackers could all get in and then they all get a cut of it? What's the best way to deal with this large bounty ban? You say the hacker can't have 10% if the amount is too much. Why not? I would say more. Should the company posted in advance?
If the company posted in advance, they only have to pay 10%. I mean, or if the 10% or $1 million, whatever is greater, right? That's absurd, right? The hacker is going to hack them anyway. They're going to be harder dudes next time. The fact that this dude or whatever gave back most of the money. Pretty good. Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but I think the misconception is that liquid is just block stream, you know, all the liquidity in liquid is, is block stream's money. it's not it's other bitcoin is money it's other company's money it's normal people's money um and it effectively the coins which would be lost would mean that it loses its peg and then it's a haircut for everybody who's using liquid network and um block stream they don't charge transaction fees they don't actually make any money on liquid like maybe they have some i don't know some high-end um uh accounts or something for some big exchanges or something but yeah they don't they don't charge transaction fees it's not like I think I'm not sure what products block stream makes the most money on but I know that it's not liquid and I know they've spent a lot of money just making liquid exist and providing it as a service and harding it as much as possible like I have friends who joined the Liquid Federation and when you join the Liquid Federation you can't be like geographically close to other people in the Liquid Federation and a little guy gets on a plane with a little custom piece of hardware and then comes and plugs it in and like it's it's a lot goes into trying to secure this network so people can actually use it so and it's not block streams money i think it's the amount so you know if it was me and i had i don't know a bitcoin on an lm bit server and someone hacked it and then they said i'll give you 85% of it back i'll keep 15% it's like oh okay fair enough but 600 bitcoin's a lot of money like it you could you could keep 1% and you're still got a massive stack of bitcoin like i think i think there's still some negotiation to be had on on the bounty it's not in white it's grey hat territory i think everyone's pretty much agreed on that unless you want to be a gray hat that's fine if you want to be a gray hat if you are a gray hat you get have people like potentially chasing you to the end of the earth and hiring uh leam nason to come and you know beat you up young liam leason not the not the current leam nason i mean it's it's hard to say because okay so right now they have let's say 50 million dollars is five million okay that's a lot of money man like five or five or 50 but for finding for finding just some vulnerability um in in some bitcoin service which lots of people use oh we talk all the time bitcoin is adult money bitcoin is at your own risk everyone we know has suffered losses everyone is sold at the wrong time or bought beers for you know two hundred dollars that becomes big money later on like we've all made these mistakes now block block stream blockchain whoever they are liquid they've made a huge mistake right but they still got so much back compared to cold card if we go to cold card and we say the cold card hackers on the line and they'll return 85 percent you say no no i mean you're not going to say no but it kind of depends on the amount and i would just say for the amount that you're not in white hat tack you can't call yourself a white hat hacker if the person because The whole point they wait until after the hackers return the money and then you array the hackers send the money back.
Now we're going to call them gray hat and we're going to hunt him anyway with Tommy they're happy with. We need a wide target search in north, south, east or west, 400 miles. The hackers here, their wallet. We need to find it. Yeah. It's not fair to the hackers, man. It's not fair to the good hardworking hackers. who are out there finding these vulnerabilities wrecking these giant companies there seem to be i don't know just that this one seems like a bad plan let's talk about that ben how the very first tweet but it's not a bad company it's a it's a it's a it's a whole like side chain which like people are using other companies and businesses and people are using it's not block streams money it's not there they're not smow sitting on a bunch of gold and hoarding it for themselves they make literally like hardly anything off the literally who's i whose idea was to do it right here where you disclose it before it's patched i don't know this source i don't trust this source either seems oh well see because if it if it is that way somebody just you know effed up and it's a big f up and i don't understand how they make that mistake from like basic game theory you're like we should patch the bug before we talk about it it's a that's a fringe book because you're talking about the element software so it's not actually a bug in the liquid network itself, it's a bug in the element software where you're able to create something which is pegged to something.
And then probably with the help of AI, which is why it hasn't been exploited before, someone was able to find this very fringe book, which now in retrospect seems fairly obvious. The cold car bug was different because that was just stupidity. Like it's that if you're making a hardware wallet, the, the thing which you make sure works is the entropy that is generating seeds. So that was a massive screw up on their part because it's like the very core of the project. It's the only bit of the project really, really matters is that the seed that's generated should have enough entropy in it and shouldn't fall back to, you know, not use like true random number generators or anything.
Whereas with this, it's more of a fringe bug. It's not, it's not, it's not some clear and obvious, like, example of hubris from the company and not them not paying enough attention to it and not being asked and not, you know, have taken enough care with other people's money. It's just a fringe bug in the element software, which happened to get in there. And then through the help of AI, someone was able to exploit it. So the cold card people deserve it. And the block stream people, they got lucky because the way they messed up is they leaked it to a bunch of programmers. I'm not saying that. No, I'm saying, I'm saying, I'm a gray hat today. And they took what Ben calls an obscene amount of money.
I call a very reasonable 50 million. have the funds you could always send them to one of the old mad bitcoins addresses i'll find i try to check i'm sure we have one somewhere they could send the funds here cause a lot of trouble 15 now there's an interesting thought experiment suppose because they probably are huge mad bitcoins uh fans and a fan of the show um and the hacker does in fact send like 10 million dollars of the block stream money to you what do you do i mean this is a huge problem right we're assuming they use the open network. It's very traceable. Like they're going to knock on my door. I mean, it depends on what they do when they knock on my door.
I think it's, you know, magical windfall. It's the greatest day ever. We get Lamborghinis and Ferraris, right? You create a sandwich where you put a Lamborghini on the bottom, a Ferrari in the middle, Lamborghini on top. Would you give any of it back? Would you feel... I'm probably giving it all back from a police perspective. Let's say that it's mixed. Let's go with a better. plan so it's mixed it's all clean nobody knows where it came from they gave me 10 million dollars i mean i think we're you know we're getting a real studio we're getting a studio audience i don't know we could make a um they should give me a hundred million we could buy a little space on the las vegas strip and have like the bitcoin center on the strip and i'll buy the land underneath right i'll like own the land the earth but uh no i don't think they're going to do that i think they uh I don't think they speak English.
I don't know. But I think it's awesome. I doubt it's like because often these hacks are, a lot of stuff gets hacked by like North Korea. And that does happen. And they just take the money. So this is. Yeah, it was North Korea. They would have kept the funds. So the government entity is out here. It was an individual or it was a nice person. And as much as I agree, Blockstream has to come out and say, you dirty hackers, blah, blah, they got to be so happy. They got this money. back. You were saying it's really bad for Adam back and all these things. I'm looking at it the other way. I think they're the luckiest bastards in the world. Not for Adam back, but it's bad for the users of the liquid network.
It's bad for the users of the liquid network. Liquid isn't Adam back, isn't Blockstream, it's the liquid network. They're all the same. There's no difference. Everyone knows. But the, I was going to say something super profound. It's gone though. comes great responsibility they got to be more careful with their money next time if they don't want to be made fun of if you're the hacker right are you going to have a lifetime looking over your shoulder for adam back in a tree with a little bow and arrow ready to take you out right or would you negotiate with them and say look okay sorry guys i'll give you most of it back can i keep 1% 2% come on guys would you say that we're trying negotiate with them to find to find the who has the power here in this relationship This doesn't make any sense to me.
Like, I'm the hacker. I find the vulnerability. Now, it's kind of a once in a million vulnerability, right? They're going to have to announce something else and not patch it in order for this to ever happen to me again. It's not like I broke some cryptography or I wrote a program for a really long time, and I made a good, you know, vuln or whatever, a really good zero day or something. It's the luckiest von in the world. But still, Ben, how is the hacker going to go in there? Like, how does this negotiation go? I have 50, right? You're a block stream. What do you say to me to give me the 50? How much of my 50 are you going to need? Now, I've given you back, what is it, like 3,400 Bitcoins already?
I have 600 left. Go ahead, Ben. Negotiate them from me. Well, I'll just say that we're not, there's a percentage you can take where we're not. It's Adam's back's voice. can't do the adam back impression no he does speak like that no he's got the the he's only his eyes move because uh he's um his body's just a transport all right how much is adam back right to me back of of my 50 50 million dollars what do i get to keep five i think it's like one or two percent i think that's a fair amount that's a fair amount where everyone's happy is they've made a windfall they've made a load of money the bitcoin community is not very big and if you look historically at other big hacks, exchanges, look at Razakana and all the other novets who've hacked things before and taking people's Bitcoin.
They get caught, they get found out, like, people figure out who they are, there's a slip up, there's a mess up, they've probably already slipped, but there's probably some, already there's probably some evidence out there, which will point to somebody. Like, you know, the Bitcoin community is small enough that a lot of us, you know, in the developer community, we have suspicion to it might be. And so, the right thing to do is to look at history and say, well, most big hacks eventually, maybe, you know, three, four, five years down the line, the people get caught. I would rather not get caught. I'd rather not be pursued. I would rather have like, you know, like a good, a gesture of goodwill from Blockstream where they say publicly they're not going to pursue me.
And there is, there is an amount where that's possible where I still walk away as a rich man, but I'm a rich man who doesn't to worry about looking over a shoulder for adam back hiding in the trees and that's what i would opt for but see i like that but i think i think you i agree there ben they have to publicly say like let's say that i'm going to give 25 million back and they're going to call it today let me keep the other 25 they have to publicly say that i think and it has to be in like a news article something they can't edit right because what i fear as the hacker let's say i send him 25 they ask for another 10 What do you do? Who's the hacker now?
Who's blackmailing who? Like this is a complete power imbalance here. I'm the invisible hacker sitting on what last week was 3,000 Bitcoin, let's see, 3,400 Bitcoin. I'm on 320 million dollars, right? And now I'm down to 50. And you want more for me? I gave up this, you know, hundreds of millions for you. Game theoretically, right? if you look at it and if you look at the what would motivate somebody to give back you know 85 percent of the coins it's quite likely that they're worried that they're going to be pursued for the rest of the coins so they say they were white hat hackers we're going to take the 15 percent as a bounty block stream have to play nice they're like a casino already he's found a weakness in them they're like there must be something wrong with you if you gave me 85 percent back No, it's true.
So I think that Blockstream still have some leverage. It's kind of hissy. Is that my mic? I don't be your mic. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe it's my headphones. What would, uh, if you were the hacker, what would you do? Well, you've already given back so much of the money. It's, it's heartbroken. breaking, right? From a hacking perspective, like if you were going to go with the running plan, like Ben saying, let's say it's catch me if you can. I mean, I don't even know if it helps to have that much money. Like you can't run faster because you have a private jet, right? Like they're not going to just smuggle you in the compartment or whatever. And like Ben said, Adam back and his squad are after you, right?
I think it's way more fun to run with more money. I think it's fun to run with more money. I think it's fun to distribute it. I remember the movie Sneakers. They got their money and they didn't like keep it like Ben saying. They didn't become like the richest hackers in the world. They took like Richard Nixon's money and gave it to the Black Panthers, something like that. It was like they gave it to the hippie peace movement instead of the right wing conservative. So in the way that this was Blockstream's money, maybe you start giving it to non-profits or something. And then Blockstream has to go to the nonprofit and ask for the money back. money from needy orphan children, man.
So I like the running plan, but I think Ben's right. You probably, if you want to be a reasonable person, you have to think this person is a computer hacker. They're an engineer. They're sitting in their bedroom, freaked out that they've got all this money. They're not buying Lamborghini sandwiches as fun as that would be Ferrari in the middle. No, I think they keep giving it back, Ben. I think that there's this really weird negotiation where the hacker gives up all the power and block stream says this much would be okay and they give it back and maybe they get a public statement but i don't know maybe the um the police are like there's no way you can uh let them go like you can't have white hat hacking if we were on the if we're on the other footbend say the money hasn't been taken yet and you're in charge of block stream and you're going to put up our policy about white hat hacking because we're such a progressive company we got testers we've got you know red hat white hack all we have all these hackers right working for us why not put up a policy what do you say ben do you say 1% do you say 5% and how is that fair from a hacker perspective if i have a hundred percent of your coins why should i give you 95% back regardless of like if it's 10 coins or a thousand coins or a million coins like is it just because of the the pressure you can put on with the police and the private detectives and the insurance agencies and all of this and again if i robin hood the money out to a zillion people um what are you going to do then i think it depends on the sum i just think 15 i think it's like 600 bitcoin from the liquid network which is regular normal people businesses everything else i think it's too much money and um yeah the reasonable amount would be like one two percent it's still a huge windfall they started really well it's still like retirement wealth you know the kids are going to have a lovely silver umbrella you're going to live a nice life um and then you're not going to be hunted so and then just look historically back at all the hacks which have big hacks which have happened in bitcoin they always get found out there's always some slip up and buy what this person's already done i would assume that they already know that they're vulnerable that they're not completely anonymous yep they'll give back the money uh maybe even more as shocking as it is.
There's a hiss. Could you just mute yourself for a second? Because I think it's you. Did you meet yourself? You did. Yeah, I muted myself and then I came back. No, it's just my headphones. Sorry. Ah, ha ha. Here the hiss. Well, we do have to do the exit question on this important big money issue. Ben, will the price of Bitcoin be higher or lower? I think it's about the same. as it was last week as as as uninteresting as that is what do you think which is pretty remarkable when something like liquid gets hacked 4,000 coins and the price doesn't really jitter so that's an amazing thing by the people it's that poddler bedrock you know we've we've hit lows and and i think we've just managed to really secure like a decent hodler bedrock of people who believe in bitcoin believe in the project and imagine that it's going to go up so yeah why not up I'm much more cynical, Ben.
I don't know if it's Hodler, Bedrock. I think that the banks own so many coins now, and they never sell. Like, they can have you. You can sell. You can freak out, and the bank will just hold the asset. And then somebody else will come and buy it. And the bank will just hold the asset. I think there's so many of those that doesn't matter. Like no one cares about your little cryptocurrency news anymore. Your cold cards get hacked. Your liquid network gets fried. No one cares. Again, we're going higher, always higher. here we are shaking the ball can cause bubbles we have the light it's very dark in here let's see will the price of bitcoin be higher this time next week very hard to read concentrate and ask again concentrate and ask again the ball punts one of the worst answers moving on to issue two ferris bueller gone bad 22 year old pleads guilty in giant bitcoin heist malone lamb a singaporean citizen admitted to stealing cryptocurrency valued it more than two hundred and forty five million dollars in the largest such heights in u.s history if we zoom in here and it doesn't work you can see the kid holding uh stacks of cash private jets stacks of cash lamb in miami nightclub with fiat cash so there you go and uh going through the story had a lavish high school or lavish lifestyle he had many great Lamborghinis and such but how did he get the money they say they used social engineering deceiving or manipulating someone to obtain confidential information to defraud cryptocurrency holders out of hundreds of millions of dollars in one instance in august 2024 they talked to one Bitcoin investor out of $240 million.
They went on a month-long spending spree, taking trips on private jets and buying Porsches, Mercedes-Benz, G-Wagons, Royals, Royces, diamond jewelry, luxury watches, and firearms. Ben, what do you think about the $245 million hack? And by hack, we mean that they seem to have talked someone out of their money. as horrible it is to say that this so-called bitcoin cryptocurrency guy had 240 million taken from him he must have had a billion or two billion to invest it so freely with these obvious idiots uh but yes what do you what do you think ben the uh stacks of cash in the miami nightclub and again just truly an iconic image of our times i wish i could make it bigger here i'm going to try one more time uh enhance There he is.
It's great. Stacks of cash, Ben. Oh, now Ben's lost all audio. The hissing has come true. Hello, hello, hello. There you go. If the, if the, if the, if the block stop. Off and on. I think it's my wire. All right. Hold it, hold it very still. I've got a dicky wire. Yeah, if the block stream hacker starts buying Lambos and going to Miami, Miami seems to be a bit of a hot spot for these shit coinery hacker, social engineer types. It seems to have like a thriving industry of crypto bros in my. It's a nice spot Miami. I can see why people move that, but it's interesting. Yeah, it begs the question, what did they do? Like how did they, how did they socially engineer, 240 million out of someone, where they're just phoning up and pretending to be Rodolfo from a cold card.
Like, hello, this is a Adolfo from a code card. We have a vulnerability. You need to tell me what your 24-word seed is. It sounds like they're probably just promising them great returns. Invest in our shady scheme will give you great returns. There was a similar incident recently where a person pretended to be a 49ers player. And he defrauded like 23 women out of $1.3 million. And I think it's the same thing. He just comes to them and he says, I'm an important person. I'm a player for the 49ers. And I heard about a great investment opportunity. I don't know how these kids were doing it if they had money already and they were fronting and going to fancy nightclubs and meeting these suckers.
I don't know where they met the guy that gave them $240 million. I want to meet that guy. he's just so loose with it like i like i say if you if you have that much you have to imagine that their actual number is way more it's not like they gave him all of their they have 241 and then they gave them 240 they must have incredible reserves i don't know man i mean like the from the timeline if they had enough time to zip off to miami bunch parties holding big bags of cash and flying around on private jets and stuff they were probably doing this during that like you know crypto boom thing which we had a few years ago where that really was where Miami was a hotspot for a shit coinery and then you know maybe they duped someone and they were like well they didn't want to miss the boat and they were like oh this is going to be the next bitcoin you know honestly you know honestly you know honestly you know honestly you're like this is going to this bitcoin million oh yeah brilliant we've got a couple of other guys who come in with a couple hundred million that's cool yeah it's really gonna like this thing's can honestly take off transfer the money to it's on this really you know this this blockchain and you it's completely secure and there's no way it's completely centralized, just send it to this address.
It's how it works like. But yes, it was probably during those days, which I'm not sure we're going to see a return to, to be honest, because so many people got scammed during the last kind of like crypto wave and with all the, you know, the NFT stuff and the punk things and the this and that. I don't know what the words are which the hip kids use because we kind of mostly goes over our heads because we're payment. Obviously, you invented the NFT thing, but like most of it goes over the heads of most of us. And yeah, but during that last wave, there was so much scamminess around. I could imagine them duping someone out of their money. And I could imagine it being all their money or a lot of their money.
But yeah, $204 million is quite a lot. I'm sure whoever it was, they've probably still got some change and they're going to be all right. But hopefully they'll get some of this money back. But it is an example of everyone always gets caught. No matter how clever they think they are. They get caught. I just find it's so interesting. That razzle can. What's the name of that girl, the one who ripped off Bipfanex with her boyfriend? Is it Razzle Khan and like a DJ crocodile or something like that? She popped up on my feed. Someone said she only got 18 months for her crime, which is incredible. 18 months. They take the money too, though, Ben. 18 months plus they take the money back.
Oh, come on though, 18 months for that. Bloody hell. It's almost tempting. Do you know what I mean? 18 months. That's nothing. Well, but what I was going to say is look how little they have to do with it. Look how small their dreams are. They're in a Miami nightclub. So there's girls and there's lots of fancy alcohol, right? Overpriced stuff you could get at Costco, but they give it to it in a bottle service. They have one, two, and they're opening a third stack of cash here. So I don't know what they're going to. do it just doesn't sound very exciting just doesn't sound very fun i guess they went on some private jets i mean i don't know i mean i'd like to hear more like just post just posting evidence on instagram just loads of evidence they definitely were i mean this isn't the guy who the remember the other guy who found the mount buck mount gox bug and by bug it seems to be that he refreshed the page when he withdrew he just pressed the button he like with true he pressed the withdrawal button and then he pressed it again and it worked and he was like okay and they should make a they should make a movie about that Because I mean, that's what people want to believe.
This whole Bitcoin thing, all of this. The real way that you got rich is you pushed refresh on a page like 500 times and then all the money's there. But remember that guy, most of the money he puts in like a basement underneath the board or something. I think you spend some of it. You've got to kind of admire these guys. They seem to really go out at it. They're 22 years old. You're almost underage. I don't know if it wouldn't matter. I think, again, underage, let's say that the, hacker from liquid was underage they're not going to let them keep 50 million dollars they're not going to let them keep you know 300 million or whatever you had at the beginning but still what a story what another another potential crypto movie not to you know spoil our topic for that's coming up later but anything else ben do you think about this this incredible story of and again it's it's social engineering that's the part no one's ever going to realize they're like how did they get that money they must have come in with a presentation they must have gotten the rich guy drunk they must have had ladies and drugs and whatever else the rich guy wanted and they supplied it to him and the rich guy uh whatever and he sends them the money and all of a sudden the these kids go wild in miami you've got this what a movie you got this incredible technology bitcoin and then it has some features like you know it's blockchain or whatever else which make it possible and then you have people who are able to So because Bitcoin has such value because it's so good, which is why it has value and useful, then you have all these people who piggyback off the back of it.
And they piggyback off at the back of all that great work developing and building this great new, you know, the first example of scarcity on the internet and everything else could be copied before Bitcoin. And then they piggyback off the back of it. In each one of these waves, And I would say something like Saylor's just another wave. You know, he's taking the whole Bitcoin community, packaged it up in a nice little product, sold it to Wall Street, regurgitated all the nice talking points of Andreas Antonopoulos and turned it into a product. And it's just all these leeches who just come into our ecosystem, they suck your bus leeches and they suck out.
They suck out and they take all these great concepts which we have in Bitcoin. coin and then they use it just to piggyback off the back of it and then just you know that crappy hustler mentality and they're just leeches um while the rest of us are seeding the rest of us are seeding and we're building stuff you know what i mean and actually giving the thing value so yeah fuck them all well ben doesn't even have a cable that works for his microphone here and we're talking about this guy you have to think out there why why did this guy get scammed because he had 240 million dollars to scam Imagine that you did so well on cryptocurrency that you made 240 or presumably more money.
And you're still looking for another investment. You're looking for a way to turn that 240 into 2400 or whatever it is. They are so greedy. They're so blind. They must have met these guys at parties. And everyone's talking about it. And then, you know, the clever young Asian guy comes up to you and says, oh, we've got this new blockchain. And you're like, oh, you seem clever. like i've heard this blockchain thing flying around oh it's going to be the next bitcoin whoa i want to get in on that i heard my kids talking about it's it's kind of like it was such a fluke that you made the money the first time that you have to give it away the second time when the guy comes up and he says we've got you know oh you you did really well on bitcoin i've got bitcoin two or oh bitcoin three or bitcoin four uh it just seems like yeah they had the new hip thing uh to invest in and i've said it before i've said it before and I'll say it again.
I dock my hat to, because most of the people in Bitcoin who are around now aren't in it for the money, you know, we're here for the technology. And we're not on a ballroom, which is when you usually have those sorts of people involved in the community. So everybody here has the capacity to be a shit coiner and, you know, just do the thing which those kids did and scam some people out of some money. And we choose not to. We choose to, you know, be porn. have broken cables and i dock my hat to everyone who does that he makes the the choice like within your career thomas how many times could you've just spun up a shit coin and made millions you know like the opportunity was there for everybody wasn't it you know um and uh and we didn't so yeah so that's off i i still think about the hacker look at the resilience you're scamming people one at a time maybe you're getting a you know a couple hundred thousand there and you find this one fish that's worth 240 million how good is this presentation that they used to get the 240 million dollar man i mean i i met roger veer i asked him for a grant i got nothing i met um brock pierce asked him for a grant i got nothing like these guys with their presentation whatever they did they pop up a little mini dvd player and they're like check out our are you know scheme we've got a great scheme we're going to double your money by November.
It's in our spreadsheet, like Ruzha said, on the one coin scam. This just seems so lazy and so lucky. I think it's again, it's a lesson for scammers everywhere. You never know the next wallet you steal might just be full of money, right? It's like a Christmas Carol. I think that's the way they should make the movie. They're like, yeah, we scammed everybody. But we didn't know that the next wallet would be. be full of 240 million they made five million until the end of the world you know and all that so yeah they made five million before they got to the 240 million whale guy i mean you have to assume that they probably retired after that will stop scamming people because they made loads of money but they're able to scam five million out of other people um yeah it's a shame man obviously i feel very sad for the people who lose that money as always um but with each wave of shit coinery and scamminess people become wiser Just with these scammers, you know, how much is enough?
You know, 5 million, 50 million, 100 million. What if you had 300? I don't know. But we're going to move on to the next issue. Check out world crypto network, world crypto network. Tom, and give us a thumbs up and subscribe down below. We've got 5,067 videos. A lot of them, these new fangled shorts that everybody likes. Check out Coinbase CEOs, controversial charity comments revealed. written headline right there and more at world crypto network dot com moving on to issue three hunter biden's laptop coin causes bloodbath for investors how to protect yourself don't invest in laptop coin yes the new coin launched by the president's son former president son hunter biden a laptop named for his controversial laptop which was allegedly given to a blind computer repairman then they found a secret and dirty information on it and they went after hunter s thompson or they went after hunter biden for years uh the story took off uh but the thing that we learned about laptop coin it was the tokens were to be distributed to the coin founders who had received 30 percent as well as to biden's substack subscribers and crypto wallet owners who quote had suffered losses on trump so the tokens to the founders were to be unsellable for six months and to vest over two years they were going to burn tokens based on Democrats winning instead the value plummeted in two minutes falling from a peak of a hundred and ninety dollars a token to less than two investors lost big eighty percent of the investors who purchased laptop lost money then arc what do you think about laptop a spectacular disaster obvious from the beginning but two minutes incredible huh i mean it's going to pump again like i'm holding my laptop coins i was all in and uh it was a good idea but i mean why would anyone invest in this thing's bizarre it's bonkers um everyone knows what i was watching some youtube stuff earlier um when i was working and it uh it was on the you know the the sort of the the influencer types, the Mr.
Beasts and those types when they were shilling their shit coins and how complicit they were in pumping things and then dumping on normal people so they could make a quick buck. And that W, the fighter guy as well, Logan Paul, that guy as well. And I hadn't thought of it before. And I don't know why it hadn't really been on my on. Maybe I was just ignoring them during that kind of crypto wave thing when everyone was talking about this new project, this this new crypto coin project, whatever. But they're all shilling their bags and they're all pre-mining and then dumping on their communities and walking away with, you know, eye-watering amounts of money.
And for people like the, you know, the Trump Mafia and now it seems to buy the mafia too, they're like, okay, I can make a quick buck here. You can just create some shit coin, get some publicity around. it, pre-mine, and then dump on the community of people who might have bought this coin. I can't imagine many people bought this laptop coin. But I did think the name was funny. When I read the article, I thought it was a funny name. It's good. Self-deprecating. I thought it was really unfortunate because I've said that liberal people should launch their own coin, but a coin with more of a meaning. Like if AOC launched AOC coin and said, well, we're going to get together $10 million and have think tank and have a foundation and if she raised a hundred million she could get a bigger think tank and a bigger foundation and have more people writing and thinking and that kind of thing right this wasn't that right this this was some kind of weird scheme they were going to pay off the trump coin people that didn't make sense they kind of vampired out onto andrew callaghan from channel five they kind of got his mailing list and he should have thought about it more he was like yeah I thought about, yeah, we did have a mailing list that we, you know, sold merch on.
And I, you know, he had had these great interviews with Hunter Biden and really kind of gotten inside him and really got these interesting things. And I think Hunter kind of befriended him and asked him for the list. And Andrew thought he was giving his friend a list. But I guess Hunter Biden, I keep messing that up, wanted to go for it here. It seemed like he'd been rebuilding his image. He had been attacking Trump. He'd been doing interviews. he's kind of been a reasonable voice out there standing up against this monster like pointing out again and again like the emperor has no clothes but now hunter biden has no clothes ben what do you think especially about the the two-minute drop in this now let's say again it's not necessarily hunter biden or his people's fault according to the article they say an estimated 15 000 traders suffered losses so ben there's your number of how many people it takes to do this and who knows how much money they each have and are throwing around randomly at this, you know, ridiculous amounts for any normal person.
They say no one on the Biden team sold laptop that the token supply was vulnerable to a rapid sell-off by insiders. They think it might have been early buyers, maybe early buyers bought it, then sold it on the incoming buyers and dumped the thing down. It's hard to see how it happened so fast, Ben, what do you think about two? minutes is that just like the trump coin in in consideration kind of slowly bled out like if it was at a hundred dollars and it's at six dollars now it took months and months to like drain all of your funds so this this thing at least was over quickly i think what's so appealing for these people is that it's all outside of sort of legacy financial apparatus so you know you've got your release or whatever and you've got your wallet um And you're able to accumulate wealth, which is, you know, it's outside of your bank account and it's hard to audit.
And you can't really trust any of it. It's like it's probably the Biden crew. Like they probably just said, oh, yeah, okay, these wallets, we can't spend the laptop coin. But then, you know, with the other hand, they're buying it up when it first releases and then they publicize it and then they dump it on the marketplace. Like you just can't trust any of them, which is the inherent floor. And all it takes is like one, one really. corrupt insider who has access to the funds to do this and suddenly your project turns out this way if you remember hawk toa that girl that was made famous because of a viral video she had her own coin and she didn't even know they were doing it her team is doing marketing and all these things and they're like well let's try a coin and the same thing they were supposed to rug pull it slowly but they rug pulled it quickly and then it looked really bad and everyone got really pissed uh same kind of thing here but it seems like that hunter biden knew a lot more of what his team was doing he was more involved uh i once had i once had the misfortune of hanging out with some pumpy shit coin bros um uh uh like a side event i went to a you know a shit coin side event when there's some bitcoin conference going on so i thought it'd be funny um and uh and then i heard their their conversations around like leeches so they'll find something which has I don't know, some gravity on the internet, some meme, something.
And then, or some personality or whatever, or some movement, political movement, whatever. And then they'll just reach out and they'll just try and get them to create some sort of coin, which they can wash trade pump, dump. And they had no moral qualms with it. They were gloating in the fact. I can't remember the meme, but there's some meme with this guy with a little head like a disabled kid. And, and they were saying that they found this kid. He lived in Russia. found him and they managed, they launched this shit coin from his house and they had him on the live stream and everything and they got everyone to buy the shit coin and then they don't turn everyone and they were gloating about it.
And I was just like, you're just terrible, just bad people. Like you're piggybacking of anything which has any gravity or any sense of any community around it, which is probably what happened, Thomas. It's probably just some pumpy shit coin bros, turn around to Hunter Biden or Hunter S. Thompson, however you want to refer to it. and um and said yeah we should you should do a you should do a crypto coin and then it can it can you know it can battle against the trump coin and it's going to be great and then on the side they were just like just wash trade pump dump two minutes walk away with how much money they walked away with um yeah it's the bumpy shit coin bros they should be lined up and shot but sadly they weren't and although it all comes down to people learning the lesson they took honor biden's like credibility in his media rating that he's a famous person and they sold that and it took two minutes to burn it out that has that there wasn't that much there yeah yeah that's yeah that's that's valid like if we were shit coiners now we'd be like okay maybe i could try to get andy burnham because i could say i could show him some crypto coin and it's gonna for housing in the uk because he's into housing and i'll say yeah we're gonna there's this crypto coin and then 30% of it's going to go towards building new houses for people and then we get him on board and we do a presentation like you said like a good presentation, you know, with the animations and the transitions and all that stuff.
And then, uh, we get, uh, we get him on board and then, and then on the, on, you know, and we act all like, you know, sincere. And then on the side, we're like, just pumped on, pumped on, pumped on, next pump, pump, pump, pump. And this is, this is what they do. This is what they look for. They're leeches. Well, and they, they don't know. They don't think that you have a whole engine ready to do this. They're like, oh, this is little Benny. He's going to launch the crypto coin for a. us. And meanwhile, little Benny's connected to the Russian mob and they have a giant engine of millions of dollars ready to like pump this thing because again, we, you know, as a normal person, you just don't understand the percentages that say a large mob or a computer gang could do with a million dollars because you take the million, oh, you make 5% here and then you make 10% here.
And it's all guaranteed percentage because they know this is going to work. And yeah, they just took all those Hunter Biden, I suppose, fans the fans lost the money maybe if you followed his story he was a you know drug addict and he's found redemption and if you found that inspiring uh you probably just got burned or in the same way in a smaller way ben probably what they are is they were just trying to pile on as much as the guys who sold it to him said hey we want to take your fame and sell it all these people who bought it were like hey i'm early i can buy a part of hunter biden saint fame and then resell it for more And then it didn't work out.
It was a disaster. So because we were, we were, we were putting ourselves in the shoes of the hackers before on the block stream thing. Now I feel that we should put ourselves in the shoes of the, the shit coin, bumpy, dumpy bros. And who are we going to target next, Thomas? Who we're going to, who's vulnerable, has a good community around them, who we can, techno babble, just say some blocks train crap at them. They'll believe us. And then we're going to. launch a scammy coin. Who we're going to pick? Well, I like celebrities. I like a lot of celebrities. I think about kind of some dead celebrity coins. I feel like if you could glom on to like in the United States, everyone was very moved that, you know, famous country singer Dolly Parton passed away.
She was a very nice lady. She bought people books and libraries and stuff. Whether you have the name or the rights or not, I think you launch a Dolly Parton coin in the same way. The voice of Optimus Prime. passed away launch an optimist prime coin there was a third celebrity i forget them right now but you know just launch these dead celebrity coins i think you come to the widows when they're weak and you try to get a meeting and you get in there and you say hey you know we've launched crypto coins for other celebrities and you know we know it's so sad you don't want to run a go fund me right that's that's low class is the new way of doing it this is the tech way of doing go fund a what's great occurrence exactly and you tell the family that we're going to help you raise money for the memory of the incredible Hulk or Spider-Man or whoever it was that passed away recently and they're you know they're for clump they're sad they're broken down and and then on the other side again you're connected to the big pile of money you can make the thing pump you can make the thing dump you can you got the engineers and the timing guys and the quants and whatever you need and you could take this down so yeah i think you go with the dead celebrities and i think you could get them to like license your image or to make a little announcement to the fans because remember the the the real horror of this ben i want i told you guys a little bit you know i watched channel five so there's this guy andrew callahan he's way more famous than me a way nicer suit similar thrift store but um channel five goes out there and interviews people it used to be called all gas no breaks and in this case he totally effed up right so i i watched that guy the guy device the kid from vice that all yeah yeah yeah he's fantastic so he's good i i got got to meet him once in Sacramento at one of his screenings for his films.
But he basically had a Mia Coppa video this morning where he says, I'm friends with Hunter Biden. I interviewed him a few times. We had a friendly thing. He asked me for a mailing list. I thought to myself, and he's so honest, the kid, and I feel it too. He's like, I should have a mailing list. That's a good idea. I don't even have one. Like, I don't even have one either. But I just saw the Keith Edwards guy on YouTube. He's like, we need to have your phone number. We need to have your mailing list. starting to realize that YouTube's not going to deliver your videos, Twitter's not going to deliver your tweets, Facebook isn't, deliver your post, all that. You have to have direct communication with your audience.
And so they say to Andrew, hey, you got a list for us, you know, now that we're all pals. And he says, oh, I've got a merch list, you know, people who bought sweatshirts from me like five years ago or whatever. He gives it over. And as the article says, the insiders who got the chance to be milked on this thing also included the Channel 5 audience. of Andrew Callahan and he apologized and i believe him and i think he'll do better the next time you know we all messed up but you've got to figure that and again for a hunter biden who seemed like he was reforming his image like not many people thought well of him but now this he was going around asking for these mailing lists so ben how does that how does that change it for you yeah yeah no it's it's totally some um he was probably told to do that by some um by some crypto bro.
He's like, yeah, get the mailing list. Get the liberal bleeding heart mailing list. And again, if we could get the Dolly Parton mailing list or if we could get a promoted post on the Dolly message. Maybe we could go to one of the independent Dolly fan groups and say that we talk to the widow because you don't really, if your goal is to raise money for charity of a widow, you don't really have to talk to her. Like if you just showed up with like $5 million, she'd be pretty psyched, right? I mean, for the family. I go for, I'd find like forgotten but beloved actors, you know, like the kid from the sixth sense, that kid. Hey, Lee Joel Oswald. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I get him. He's in some stuff. He's in some stuff now, isn't he? Maybe not him. But you know, like forgotten but beloved actors from, I don't know, our generations or maybe the younger generations repertoire of TV or film or whatever. I love it, but I think it's going to get tired. You're going to have to get cast. Maybe it could get surviving cheers cast, make a cheers coin. I don't know. Oh, yeah. Cheers coin. That's a good idea. Yeah, good money. We should write this stuff down, man. We should write this stuff down. Yeah, and we choose not to. And we could have done this for years and we haven't. Even though we think about it, we don't do it. We could be ridiculously rich Thomas had we decided to take the, you know.
You know, Ben, there's a service and they build your IKEA for you. I'm just saying, you know, guacamole on the side. Yes, sir. Build my bookcases for me automatically. Yeah. Could have been, Ben. First we dolly pot and coin. Then we get the guys to build our IKEA furniture. You can't build IKEA furniture. It's like Lego. Get off your ass and build the IKEA furniture. You know what I mean? I can, but can you imagine like someone just comes over and you just come home and like, who built this desk? this come from now i was thinking that stage i was looking at my bushes in my garden and i was thinking i need to cut the bush and i was thinking what would it be like just have like a dude cut my bushes for me and then i'd not just to not be a problem like the bush is always cut i was thinking it'd probably be pretty wonderful i think we should go dolly part and coin see still a chance still a chance for us ben but i should check i think the noster things it's lost its momentum but i should have we should check coin on noster we should do noster coin on noster and all our principles and the community and all our friends.
And just turned Noster.com into a shit coin website. The problem is, obviously, we've shown, unless you have a giant connection full of money, someone else will just come in and run a pump and dump on your own coin. You have to be ready to pump it and ready to dump it. Not if we pre-mine it. You know, we can say this is the new social network coin, blah, blah, blah. Has to be a secret pre-9. Monero or Zcash has to be secret. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well. Privacy coins. That's the, that's the ticket. This is why these unscrupulous hustler kids, hustler kids in Miami do it, isn't it? Because they're just like, oh, yeah, my money and lambos. Yeah, but what do they get?
A couple of stacks of cash at a party. How long is that going to last? Come on. Well, not long. Prison sentence shortly afterwards. All right, let's not do it. They'll be out again. They're 22. They'll be back on the street. be telling people remember that one time we scammed a guy for 240 million dollars and and again just shows you know pick pockets of the world you're starting too low start higher pick pocket for millions as um what was the what was the guy oh he wrote steal this book and abby hoffman abbey hoffman always used to say why why steal chicken when you can steal steak Yeah, maybe that's the problem. I do worry about that. I do worry about the, sorry, just to just to be like an old dude.
I do worry about the younger generation because they're all on Instagram and they're looking at the get rich quick people. Although in saying that, there is some come up and there is like a moral center to the, you know, the YouTube stuff or whatever. Like they're, they're watching all the tape videos and they're all into that and they think, oh, this guy's made loads of money and I should be like the tape guy. And then they see the downfall. notable downfall of the immoral person. And then I do think that over time people learn that it's all just a con, the whole thing. It's all just a mirage. Yeah, but now I think they want that rise. They don't really want to be a popular YouTuber.
They want to be a viral, popular YouTuber who has scandal, loses all their money, goes into depred. They want the whole VH1, I'm a celebrity ride. Like, I feel that the ride is like. And they write a book, thank God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That just happened. Hayden Pantier wrote a book and then died from drugs anyway. Moving on anyway, Ben, issue four, AI agents just slash the cost of a quantum attack on Bitcoin. The ECDSA failed challenge cut a resource benchmark from one component of a potential quantum attack by 86%. Way to go. AI agents, I guess. it says timing remains uncertain migration away from vulnerable cryptography is already underway the researchers wrote nist has standardized post quantum replacements and the initial public draft of nist i are 8 547 proposes depreciating classical public key algorithms at the 112 bit security level after 2030 and disallowing them after 2035 Ben, again, the AI programmers who are hacking everything have made it easier for quantum hackers to break Bitcoin.
However, Bitcoin seems ready to switch algorithms. What do you think? Well, again, you know, parts off to Blockstream. They did a lot of work on the quantum resistant stuff in Bitcoin. I think we're still fine. There's nothing to worry about. Nothing to see here. me when i ss h into a server and i get that little message which says oh this isn't a quantum proof uh public which you're you're shing in and then i'm okay um so it's it's on the horizon tools are being built i do think there's a misnomer within the bitcoin community that like oh if they break the quantum blah blah blah then them hacking bitcoin is the least of our worries i'm like no that's probably the first thing they're going to hack because there's loads of money there and you can take the money.
Although in saying that, I suppose the game theory is that when they take the money and hack the Satoshi coins, that they'll be worth nothing because people have no trust in Bitcoin. So there's that. But yeah, I think it's a big fat honey pop. Stuff's being built. We're all right. And yeah, AI is going to, of course, make it all move a lot faster, as well as all. But quantum computers are crazy things. And yeah, I don't think we need to be too scared, but it is, it suddenly it was like, oh, yeah, that's probably a problem for the mid-2030s. And now the mid-2030s isn't that far away. So, but it's how you do it elegantly, how you, how you move your coins in elegant.
And then also in a way which protects like these people who like, I know, some people, you know, time lock their coins for 30 years. What happens then? Like, are they just got to be hitting their five when their coins are going to unlock and try and get before the quantum computers get them. But how's that work? That's right. If they don't send their key fast enough, they'll be hacked. Someone will take them at 30 minutes and one second. Yes, we held the coins for 30 minutes. One second later, we lost them all. I think, again, the main thing to look at here and no one looks at it, it breaks all encryption. So it breaks the military encryption, it breaks the bank's encryption, it breaks the casinos encryption, the CIA, the military, everybody.
So as fun as it is to say they're going to hack the bitcoins first, they might hack all these other people too. That's why I think it's going to be like YTK. We're all going to switch over to quantum proof encryption years before quantum computers get here. And when we get here, then we're going to switch to supercharged quantum encryption because we can use the quantum computers to create problems that the quantum computers can't solve. be fine. But it is scary, right, Ben? This is literally the device from sneakers. A great movie. They push the little button on the device, and it breaks all encryption. So they go wild. They're transferring money around.
Like I said, they're into the government secrets. They're wanted by the Russians and the CIA and the FBI. Everyone wants this device. So the same thing with this quantum break. Everyone's going to want it. Everyone's going to want a piece of it. And if something is that advertised that everybody knows, the simplest thing to do is to fix the back door. We've got to upgrade to quantum proof encryption. So like Ben said, good thing. Blockstream is working on that. Yeah. The problem with humans is they tend not to really care about anything until it's critical and urgent. Just look at us in climate crisis and whatever else. Like we don't attend to any issues or problems until it's really at the door.
And I feel like that's what it would be like with quantum and quantum proof Bitcoin wallets or whatever. But I do think that if I was able to create, if that was a quantum computer over there, maybe it is. And I was able to hack something. I would probably try and hack Bitcoin and still like a couple of billion dollars worth of Bitcoin just because it's, you know, you wash it and you mix it and whatever else. And you can be pretty untraceable. And yeah, it's a good honeypot. So I think that we're probably high up the list of things you would go for first, particularly if you're just kind of testing out your new quantum computer. And then maybe you would turn it to military and then traditional banking.
But yeah, I mean, and because of that and also because there's just so many bitcoins who do worry about this thing, I can imagine. Like it's true that, you know, Bitcoin is, is one of the things which propels just the field of cryptography. You know, most of the decent cryptography libraries are built off the back of Bitcoin and for use in Bitcoin. And a lot of the good cryptography work, which is done out there. Just the field of, you know, cryptography is not knocked off Bitcoin. It's done because of Bitcoin. So I can imagine that, you know, it's a great motivator, isn't it? No one wants to lose their coins. And that's good. But, yeah, it's nothing to worry about in the short term.
It is funny, Ben, too. improve cryptography and to make things better. We really did have to make it valuable, which put a huge target on our back, right? We're walking around with a big sign, you know, break cryptography, steal all of our money. And because we've all done that, so many people now the price of Bitcoin's up so much and all that, now it's a huge prize to break cryptography or to break this software like we've been talking about so much this whole episode. So very interesting. And now we have our bonus issue, fun stuff let's talk about movies hollywood puts four tech moguls on trial in october movie pile up this october uh we could see a movie with jeremy strong as mark zuckerberg we can see a dot surprise documentary that nathan fielder uh nathan for you nathan for hire um filmed with elizabeth holmes the uh lady from theranos who uh built the fake blood machine uh this is a documentary shot during her last 30 free days or so before she went to prison, the trailer is mind-bending and absolutely stunning.
This is a person who showed no one in her company the machine. She raised millions and millions of dollars, claimed medical benefits, took actual people's blood, showed no one the machine. And now we have this documentary. We've got another documentary, Musk, about Elon Musk, I've heard he doesn't look very good in the documentary. You'll see how it goes. And finally, we have Andrew Garfield, formerly Spider-Man, playing Sam Altman in Artificial, a movie that tells the story of Open AI when the board tried to kick Sam Altman out, which is a very interesting story. I know nothing about it from the inside. I watch from the outside. There's one more little small story in here.
Let's see. one looks into November, there's one more product, one more project, Graham Moore's Netflix limited series, The Altruists, which follows the downfall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and stars Anthony Boyle as co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Julia Garner as Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison. Ben, which one of these movies are the most excited for? What do you think about this absolute wealth of documentaries and technology documentaries and acted out films. And what do you think? I feel like it's just kind of a shame because I made, I made with the Napsa stuff recently, which I did. And I was thinking, you know, like, what's his name? Sean Parker, the guy who went on to do to help Facebook get their funding and then do Spotify.
Like that generation of, what is Gen Z? Are we Gen Z? Are we Gen Z? No, we're not Gen Z. Are we? Wherever we are, our generation. I'm Gen Y. So it's hard to say. Gen Y, right? So our generation, there was so much hope there. They were like these new hacker kids who had access to computers and they were allowed to just run wild on this new thing called the internet where there was it was like a wild west of cedars and leeches. And then I don't know what, the money got involved or whatever and then they just kind of lost their way. And the versions of themselves which exist now, their younger selves would be appalled to see. just what they've become. And you remember the social dilemma, the first, because this new film or series, it's like a, it's a follow-up on.
It's made by the same person as you made the social dilemma. And that social, that was, that had so much hope in it, the social dilemma. Like, is it, they have this new platform, which everyone can communicate, and you have the Arab Spring, you have this and that. And then it just became this really evil, corrupt algorithm thing. which bends people towards advertisers and pulls people apart and cause all this conflict and this and that. And it's a shame. It's a shame that they lost their way. It's a shame they lost their way. And I feel that with the new tools we have, we can restore the internet to what it should be. We know with the privacy-centric tools such as Bitcoin, Tor and Noster and Iro.
We can restore the internet to it be. being, you know, peer-to-peer people sharing stuff and not relying upon these wall gardens and these big centralized platforms which accumulate eye-watering amounts of wealth and, you know, money corrupts and the most well-meaning people in the world end up becoming the bad guy, you know, the Mark Zuckerberg. And, yeah, it's, but this is why it's so entertaining and why it's such good television or such good movies is to track these people. you know these people who were innovating and they're building something cool and new and then they just you know made like one compromise another compromise and then the shareholders were on their backs and this and that and before you know you've got your Elon Musk you've got you've got all these like evil lizards and they didn't start out that way you know they started out you know with probably fairly altruistic motives and somewhere along the they just sort of lost their way which is a shame and it's interesting that Andrew Garfield guy is going to be the Altman guy, Sam Altman.
He was in the original social dilemma film, wasn't? He was the kid who came up with that math. This is, no one ever talks about this with Facebook, but the reason Facebook became popular and successful, and no one ever talks about this, was the kid who Andrew Garfield was playing in the social dilemma, had a mathematical algorithm. And it was when you signed up for Facebook, it would go into your, you would say you were just as part of the terms and conditions but you didn't really know you were you were you were like allowing it it would go into your email so you could sign up with your email and like your passwords is back in the day of course and it would go into your email and it would get your your friend list your your contact list from your email and it would email everyone you know and it would say i've just joined facebook please join me um and and it just propagated facebook so just went and then suddenly everyone was on Facebook, so they got all these emails from people saying, hey, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Facebook.
I'm on Facebook. Obviously, completely now illegal and you can possibly do that, but they were able to do it back then because there wasn't the legislation. But no one ever talks about that when it comes to the propagation of email, sorry, the propagation of Facebook. But yeah, all interesting stories. San Altman's are weird cats. And I would also like to, I mean, I imagine it was just the people who were working for the not-for-profit, Open AI. And then when Open AI decided to become a private company, and Sam Hulman probably said to them all, this is going to make you rich. Then the board tried to get rid of Sam Hulman. This is why I think there was, you know, there's that 72 hours, that famous 72 hours of him being sat, going to Microsoft, and then everyone was saying they were going to leave Open AI and go to Microsoft to join him unless they reinstated him as the CEO to the shareholders and all this sort of stuff.
That was during that transition when they were going, becoming a private company. A lot of that was just greed. They realized they could make loads of money. But yeah, really looking forward to it. It's good entertainment. It's good television. And I really look forward to the new social dilemma or the follow-up on the social dilemma. And then how it will transition from, you know, that feeling of hope, which you had originally, to what we are now, where we are now with Facebook and how horrific it is. And yeah, good stuff. Well, it's interesting, like you said, Ben, that they were able to send out those emails. And that was one of the first ways that they really spread.
As you know, Tim Draper, famous cryptocurrency investor and early fan of Bitcoin, he was involved in Hotmail. And one of the things that he said is we should put a little bug at the bottom of the email that says, you know, free email by Hotmail, you know, try us or whatever and a link to Hotmail. And at the time, email was sacred. seen as like a letter. And it was like, you wouldn't put an ad inside of a letter to your grandmother. You know, you wouldn't, this could be a letter of great importance telling, you know, someone's emotional feeling. And at the bottom, you're going to say, sponsored by Hotmail. Like, you can't do this. And Draper convinced them.
They're like, let's put this little bug. And they put it in every email. It wasn't like an optional. You couldn't even pay more to get rid of it. It was like, it practically ended up defining the service. Because when people used it and they sent mail to someone, all get interested they'd say what's this new email you got and they'd click the link at the bottom and it was a huge promotion for hotmail and maybe one of the reasons that draper made so much and then made so much more and whatever else he's up to now but it's interesting ben that you mentioned uh the early days of the internet i watched a fantastic documentary and i feel horrible promoting it to you 10 years too late it came out in 2016 it's by adam curtis the king of the bbc if you haven't seen his other films like power of nightmares the trap it felt like a kiss so many great works and this one is called hyper normalization and as heavy as that sounds and two and a half hours of your time later everything in the world will be explained to you and it's fascinating then because he went back to the internet and he went back to william gibson and the vision of cyberspace as a scary place dominated by corporations and spies and hackers and then he went to the other flip side of it j p barlow the Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the EFF, founder of the well, the original communications list where the internet communicated.
And it's funny because Barlow was the open internet and the share information and all of that. And it's funny, Ben, because he said, from the very beginning, he noticed that this movement was different than, say, the 60s movement of the Grateful Dead or the hippies or whatever I say. He said, there was money there from the beginning. So there was money there with net. with Netscape and with all these other projects and Apple and IBM and all these early things. So it's always been kind of a problem with these systems of having the money there and having this. I think we were unique in a way because we were a similar sort of age, aren't we? And I think that we came in after the dot-com bubble, like on the tail end of the dot-com bubble, where it was just a mess.
And that was a great place to be. that's when you had the Napster launch and everything else. So at that point, I think, yes, to begin with, there was all the suits who came in with the internet. But I feel like when we first got access to our computers as teenagers and really started delving into it, we were on that tail under the dot-com bubble and it was such a good time. And Napster is so unique because they don't say, let's make a dot-com, let's scale this up, let's get the rights, let's figure this out. They use the underlying layer of the internet the way that you can actually share these files one to one and you can download this mp3 and you can listen to it and they just do it and they don't get a bunch of servers and they go get a bunch of money and all these things and i think that's what you're right ben the the second wave of people who saw the first dot com collapse they all said we should do this on a smaller scale they got into open source ideas like that sharing of technologies but then the dot coms just came right back and again they had so much more money.
With the advertising funded model, they were able to build the horrifying version of the internet much faster than the open source programmers could build the non-advertiser funded model. And again, all of these drawbacks come into your software. You have to look at the people's chats. You have to read their emails. You have to put the bug at the bottom. You have to monetize it now as they're trying to do. And you have to do all these things. down the advertiser-funded stock market path, which got you there a thousand times faster than the open source programmers who later you could just hire at your company, and Google did. I don't know, Ben, I've always thought it was the Facebook East Coast rollout that gave them the big advantage.
On the West Coast, we had no idea it was coming. They went school by school, and they were able to test it and have these kind of closed things, they use the east coast non-technical schools no one on the west coast knew it was coming until it was too late and then it was huge seems like we've lost ben completely baby all of the internet i don't know hello well my internet is fantastic over here and i'm going to talk more about these movies i think it's i think it was i was i was actually spinning up i can hear me i was spinning up i was spinning up napster the new version and um and it killed my internet because because i'm texting off my mobile so well it's amazing you have any internet at all then i was just going to say again about the netflix movie uh the altruists what a great title what a stab for sam altman or sam bankman freed and uh caroline ellison all the others they were all Oh, what was it called, Ben, their kind of altruism?
It was a substantial altruism or something like that. Beneficial circle jerk altruism or something. The rich people that like, I can make money as in however depraved and despicable way, but one day I will give this money to do good. So thus it justifies all the scabbiness. Nothing. It's interesting. That's almost like the buying your way into heaven. Again, you could have a horrible life. as long as you make lots of money you could buy your way in heaven and that's what pissed off martin luther uh back in the early days of the church so yes the altruists i'd like to see that one uh i agree with ben the social effect of altruism effective altruism yeah which again is just yeah so that's a cringy term just to begin with um but somehow they they flew it and they convinced a bunch of people it was a real thing uh i want to see all of these movies uh let's go down the line um the network one i agree with ben that would be interesting to see it was such a inspired movie and the the first one they were going to connect all the people and there was just a little bit of cynicism a little bit of like this might not work out in the new movie he seems to be the all-powerful zuck the lord of everything and he doesn't care that all of this has worked out badly but it seems like these cynical decisions again and again when i first heard about facebook and i talked to some people that work there I told them that they should encrypt all the data and they shouldn't have access to it.
And that that would have made a better, safer, more internet-like product. But of course, as we all know, they were advertiser-based. They had to read your content so you could advertise to these people. And it turns out it didn't matter if it was neo-Nazi content or whatever kind of gross stuff you're into. It made Facebook money. So they were always in this conflict. Whereas if they didn't know what the data was, well, then there's a whole other problem. When I interviewed Rappell on this show, he was the guy he employed Jack Dorsey in what later became Twitter. And we interviewed him here on the WCN. He said the same thing. He said originally that it was going to be encrypted, completely open source.
And they didn't know what people were posting. And then just inevitably the suits went out. And they've got to make money at some point. And this is why they invested in their company. So, yeah. On that's definitely Corey Doctor has written a book on that and often described how many of these services decay and then offer you less and less and less because they've gotten everyone hooked and addicted to them. So you have no choice. Because they have no choice. That's why we need for an open source, you know, protocols like Nostow where you own your own data and you're free to remove between clients. That's why it's important that we do this work. Then Pop Quiz, Force Prediction, which one of these movies will be the best?
The Social Network one, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, the Musk documentary, the Altman Acted Out film, or sideline the Netflix altruists film with Sam Bankman Freed. I think probably the social network follow-up, but I'm probably most like looking forward to watching the Sam Bankman-Fried one because he's such a fruity weird i'd love to see what happened behind the scenes i could agree with that i think the social social network follow-up will be very strong i think the elizabeth holmes documentary and nathan fielder just has an incredible way about his work and i'm fascinated to see what he gets out of her but the problem is it might be nothing she's incredibly tight that lady she won't give them anything um i also want to see the altruists especially with a title like that it's just it's clearly going to be poking fun of them And I can't wait to see more.
We've got a couple more stories. Check it out. See if the article let me show it. Paul Schrader reveals that three guns at dawn will be made entirely with AI instead of named actors. Those jobs are gone, babe. So I just thought that was an interesting contrast with the Bitcoin movie, where the actors are very sensitive. And they're like, the AI is not going to touch our performances. backdrops like this backdrop but if it was made by AI and that Schrader the writer of taxi driver a classic Los Angeles person has gone the full way he's just gonna replace all the actors Ben really quick what do you think about replacing all the actors and the movie that used to be called hunting Satoshi is now called Bitcoin and it's gonna be the Craig Wright story and they're gonna have all AI backgrounds and It's going to be the Craig Wright story, is it?
Yes, it's funded by Calvin Air. Oh, no, is it really funded by Calvin Air? It's funded by Calvin Air. It's going to be the story of a poor internet researcher who is attacked by the corporate technology CIA Monopoly. Who was it? Who starring in it? Gal Godot, Casey Affleck's brother, and some other actors, I forget, but mainly it's Gal Godot. And yeah, she can't draw anymore either. but her new ones do you remember do you remember when he had that classic tweet where it was like what he used he kept tweeting all these like pictures of these young girls who are on his island or wherever he was because he's a billionaire who's got to have the he's got to have that side to him um and then everyone started calling him a pido and then he he tweeted out this other photo and he's these girls dancing you look pretty young and he in the tweet he was like oh don't worry guys i've These girls are 18.
I've known them for a long time for many years. And it was like, oh, dude, what a creep. That dude, honestly. He's terrible. He was posting pictures to exonerate himself. And each picture was worse than the last. And you're like, those girls look younger and younger and younger. And he's like, oh, no, I checked all their IDs at the door, guys. Everything's fine. I was like, I don't know that doesn't seem. That doesn't. He couldn't do social media. Could he that guy? I can't believe. I didn't know he was the one who was funding that. film and like oh Craig Wright's gonna it's gonna be this cringe like genius Australian developer who's Bit he's Satoshi and oh Christ you can see it though he's gonna have the cat you can't get the cat comes back doesn't he he's gonna have a conversation with his friend he's gonna say I wish I'd never invented Bitcoin in the first place they've made me feel so bad about inventing Bitcoin and now taking credit for it and now they're chasing me down and he's gonna run.
He's a turd which won't flush. Well, again, with the same thing with that kid, they have all the money. And it turns out what Calvin Air allegedly, I don't know, the man wants to do with his money is to fund this movie. And, you know, we're just going to go see it. What are we going to do? Yeah, I'll just go say it. Lafrey support or whatever. I'll just go see what's happening. All right, Ben, we have an extra special feature for you today from our friend Christian Moss at Mandel Duck. we have more AI Bitcoin videos. So check it out, Ben. The first one is a Spinal Tap classic with Rob Reiner. Let's see what they say. Here it goes. With Bit 177, instead of owning one Bitcoin, I own 100 million Bitcoins.
But you haven't actually got any more Bitcoin. You've just renamed the Satoshi's. Right. So why not just keep calling them Sats? Because then I've only got one Bitcoin. With Bit 177. So they're making fun of those people that want to move the digit thing. And he says, yeah, but then I got a hundred million bitcoins. You really only have one. So that was pretty funny. Let's see. It's very cringe when you see some wallet and it's got like the Bitcoin thing. And they're calling Satoshi's Bitcoins. And you just like, why? Why? It's tough. It changes the multiplier. They just want to be rich. So here we go. George, it says the liquidity issue. Let's see what's going on with George.
My Bitcoin was stolen. Any contact from the thieves? Yes, they said they'll give it back. They're giving it back. Once I fix my security and prove it's fixed. So they're helping you? That's not the point. They took it first. My Bitcoin. Oh, that's great. That really does. I hadn't watched it before. It says it's perfect to start the week. It really is. They're giving it back once I'm secure. Kevin Kreski from coming. I'm fixing it. So let's see. We've got one more. It's a little longer. And again, just like last week, all of these George ones, they all hurt. Because this is all me. They had them in like a khaki pants with a polo shirt last week. And he was like, there's only 21 million bitcoins, Jerry.
I've said that like 100 times. But let's take some more pay and see what George is doing. It says, George makes a new friend or does he? You might have watched some of this last week, but we'll see again. really get along. Oh yeah? Why do you think that? He's into crypto, like you. Crypto. Elaine, I'm not into crypto. I'm into Bitcoin. Okay. What's the difference? What's the difference? That's like saying I like classic rock. This guy likes cold play, so we should hang out. I like cold play. George, this is Mark, Mark George. Elaine says you're a Bitcoin guy. Yeah. You know, I've been thinking, Bitcoin should move to proof of stake. It's more secure, more efficient, better for the planet.
And honestly, Bitcoin should probably be governed by a Dow. See? I already have so much to talk about. Yeah, it's uncanny. Z tweeted funds were safe, and we bounced back. George, you got a problem with me? It's not you, I'm just Bitcoin. Come on, maximalist, nothing else? No. Gun to your head. Minero. Manero. Oh, my God. That's awesome. He's getting the lights on those, too, isn't he? 1.82K likes. Oh, yeah. He's been scoring him. I think we've got one more for you. Ben, here it says, Bitcoin Aurelius. Oh, yeah, I thought this was kind of a safety en masse, right? So here we go. Let's see how this goes. What are you doing? Bitcoin Aurelius. He just destroyed this shit coiner.
Bitcoin Aurelius? The guy defends Bitcoin day and night. I need to reply. Exactly. Oh, Sela just retweeted him. Send a medal? He posted about the fourth turning last night. The what? Soft men creates soft money. Soft money creates hard times. Hard times create hard men. Hard men create hard money. He definitely likes creating hard men. Are you going to look up from that thing? Arellius just posted his protocol? His protocol? Steak and eggs. No seed oils. Metal bells, morning sunlight, no sunglasses. Now he's against sunglasses? Oh my god. What? He's going to be in town tonight. I'm inviting him to the meetup. You know him? We've interacted. You just replied exactly. He liked it.
I can't believe he's actually coming tonight. You've never even met him. This morning he posted, if you're saving dollars, you're trusting strangers with your future. That's a thinker, Jerry. Hey. Hey, you're here for the meetup? Yeah. Good. It's going to be a good one. Bitcoin Aurelius is coming. Yeah, that's me. Sorry. Somebody just called Bitcoin a Ponzi. He seemed taller in the replies. Oh, Chris, I want an entire episodes. All right, I'm sold, AI. It's great, huh? See, I mean, they're going to kill us all, but at least we'll have some jokes along the way. That was better than Typhild. Fuck it. Yeah, that was the whole thing. So yeah, I love Jerry starts wearing the Bitcoin shirt too at the meeting and Bitcoin Aurelius and he's got the polo shirt as well.
That's so true. You kept putting in front of some shit coin and they go, you're interested in Bitcoin. Yeah, this is the guy's interested in that stuff too. That's right. Just like you. That's the same thing. So they're great classic stuff from at Mandel Duck. on twitter you guys go check it out i'm sure he's got some new stuff we didn't show fan of the show so um bad i think that's about it uh for this uh extra long episode uh do you have a prediction or a story of the week uh anything you want to say go ahead uh not really just grinding hard building stuff so yeah no no no really loads of stuff too too uh building stuff with the ai i don't know if it counts uh that was some great Seinfeld and stuff.
I really enjoyed that. I think that's my story of the week. It's just this AI Seinfeld. It's funny. I think there's obviously a huge disaster for anyone that makes anything anywhere, and everyone's feeling it across the board. And there was the AI guy who said that both Anthropic and Open AI were not taking safety seriously, and he just resigned. So that's a big story we've been covering this week. I saw Albuquerque, New Mexico has banned Bitcoin. ATMs, crypto ATMs, so that continues to spiral out of control. They called them a tool of a scammer or something like that. So that technology will be lost to us. But thanks to everybody for watching, giving us a thumbs up.
I'm not sure if this episode is airing properly right now. If it doesn't, I'm going to download it from Zoom and re-upload it like I did last week. So that should work fine too. My internet connection is solid. Everything is good here. i don't know why it's not streaming or what's going on but i'm going to check it out after the show so thanks to everybody for watching give us a thumbs up and a subscribe down below oh we're out of time until next time bye bye