But, But then but then I mean, it's not it's not common. I mean, that's I think that's It's not common, like in general in general, lefties, you know, which is in society, are kinda quieter, aren't they? You know?

Yeah. I think it's well, I mean, I suppose, like I mean, you know, the the those who had, like, an interest in something like gold were able to see so the libertarian quarter were able to see value in Bitcoin fairly early on. So it was probably predominantly, libertarian, right wing libertarian. Although in saying that so I always like to remind people that, you know, Jude Millhorn, who actually coined the phrase, Cypherpunk, was a lefty. Lefty. So even within Cypherpunks, there were, you know, there was kind of a left influence. You know? It's, I mean, particularly people working on free and open source software. It's been the the free free software movement. There was a lot of sort of lefty influence. So, so yeah. So so no. But but arguably at the beginning of of Bitcoin, a lot of the people who were interested in it were kind of interested in gold, and how they thought, you know, it was it was a good form of money, and then they kind of been quite easy it was quite easy for them to kinda see value in Bitcoin. But then in saying that you have someone like Amitaki working on Bitcoin pretty early on, and he's you know, I would I would kind of I mean, I wouldn't wanna speak on, on his politics, but, but, I would I would kind of align him more to more to the left. So so yeah. I've I don't I don't know. But I I I do feel for for definitely for a period, it felt very, very quiet out there. And then and as soon as I kind of raised the flag it's probably as you find as well, you have a lot of people contacting you and saying, yeah. Mine, carry on. Do this. You know? And, like, they're they're encouraged and that that that that they're happy that you you kind of. I mean, I don't I don't know. I I get both. I mean, I get it's very,

Well, I mean, it's quite a rare occurrence. It's not I heard of me to cook it, but it's quite a rare occurrence. Like, the the the the right right wingers will often have, like, a circle jump over, like, you know, Mesas or something, and they have a great old time. And they they don't have anyone opposing their opinion. So it's quite nice for us to be able to just have our own little space where we can, you know

That's definitely what Reinforce certain theories.

Bitcoin first? Yeah. So I've always been something of a lefty, but I thought that I don't know. I I I kinda felt like it was as good as it gets. You know? It's, I couldn't see, a way to make a better system easily. So I was I was kind of like a defeated lefty, which which which tried to make the most of the sort of the the current way in which we produce things or whatever. But then when I became more aware of, say, the, you know, the free software movement and, then eventually, Bitcoin, I started to see that people were building systems which were controlled and regulated by the community as a whole. And then it wouldn't be a huge leap. I think maybe probably a few years in when people start talking about DAOs and things. And then, you know, when I start hearing, you know, talk about communities, making decisions over, you know, decisions in which or what a DAO would do, then I I I start to think that maybe, this could these tools could be used to build, decision making by consensus among, a large community of people. When we talk about things like consensus, that's something which people on the left, the socialists, have been really struggling with. Like, you know, when you get a lot of people in a room and you try and make get them to make a decision, it's actually quite hard without having an authoritarian figure just telling them what to do. That's kind of much easier and more efficient system, if the person is telling what to do kind of knows what they're doing. But, you know, ideally, in order to liberate people, obviously, you want everybody to have a say in the decision decision making. So it was it was quite nice to see the consensus experiments which were happening in Bitcoin, and then which were kind of being extended out into other projects as well, which I I got quite excited about. And then I I, you know, like yourself, I kind of looked within the Bitcoin community, and I thought, wow. No. No one's sort of speaking from the left here. So I thought I kinda raised the flag up, gave myself a goofy name on Twitter. And, I I thought I kinda raised the flag up for for for for Bitcoin is on the left and and see if anyone, would respond favorably or unfavorably and we could chat about it, whatever. You know, I'm all into into into talking and, you know, obviously, the dialectics. And, I was quite encouraged, like, when I actually went out to to Bitcoin, conferences or went out to sort of hack events or building things, I realized particularly in Europe, there's there's a lot of sort of lefty anarchist type builders and hackers within the Bitcoin community. I mean, I I can't really speak about sort of the wider, cryptocurrency, stroke, blockchain community, but, you know, I'm sorry. So I just talk, you know, on on Bitcoin and on maybe on the the lightning network, side of Bitcoin. But I was I know I was encouraged to find those. There was a lot of people who would align politically on the left. And then I would also even people working, you know, on a on a protocol, more profound level, there were people who were sort of maybe lefty or if not lefty. I mean, certainly, I think within Bitcoin core development, there's there's a a a large proportion of just agnostic when it comes politically. You know? They they they they don't pull politics into protocol development. You know? They they probably see it as goofy as pulling politics into something like email. You know? Is email political is Right. I don't know, TCP political. So, they just wanna build the best software they can to solve the problems in which, you know, they need to solve. So, but so yeah. So this is how I this is how I got into Bitcoin. This is this is yeah. That's the I raised the So was it was it like a slow build up then? And then I I met a bunch of other kind of left people. I thought, okay. Yeah. Call me in the car. I'm doing what I'm doing. I tried to have, like, constructive conversations with some of the people on the right that I've lived the libertarians. But, I mean, within Bitcoin, I suppose we have the more extreme end of, right of the time. So it's it's quite hard to I mean, I've never blocked or muted anybody on Twitter, but plenty of people have blocked or muted me. Yeah. Quite the opposite. Yeah. I'm blocked in right now, I mean so, again, within Bitcoin, you you you when you have a free and open source system and it's working as well, it's, it's a resource. And any resource in which you use, which isn't owned by a person, it's owned by a community or it's a natural resource, I feel, personally, that you have a duty of care that you need to contribute back, that you need to support it, that you need to try and help it grow. So I you know, within Bitcoin, like, the best way I thought to to kind of help it grow was to try and encourage something of a maker community. I I realized there weren't many people, you know, using kind of like, how do we know we type things to to to send and receive Bitcoin, little hardware devices, and and retrofitting, I don't know, things to to accept Bitcoin. So I thought maybe this is where I could add some value. I did a little bit of rudimentary electronics in the past, and I kinda be my way a little bit way around a a microcontroller. And I realized that I could I could take small computer components, and then I could retrofit them into devices and get them to accept Bitcoin real world devices. And I just wondered if I could help encourage more of a maker community. And I think, you know, me and a couple of others, I think we've really helped do that within Bitcoin. There's there's now a lot of people producing interesting DIY, you know, point of sale terminals and, and a retrofitting, real world things to to accept Bitcoin. So so yeah. I mean, that's okay. So I I'll I'll I'll just bring keep bringing us back to the left. You know? Marx, when he he talked about something like communism, he said it was each to his own ability, each to his own needs. So the idea is that, you know, you have each to your own needs. You can you can use this resource how much you want it. But then to your own ability, you contribute where you can. And that's that's that's kind of communism in in Marx's, how he would sum up what communist the communist mantra. And I kind of see Bitcoin like that. It's a natural resource. Each to his own need, you can just use the system. It's absolutely fine. It's like any free and open source software project. If you use it a lot, then, you know, I there's a natural human wants and urge to kind of help it grow and incur and and contribute back. A lot of people within Bitcoin, they kinda fight that and say, no. No. It's just me being selfish. You know, I'm I build tools I want to use. But it's like, yeah. But are you not also making them for other people to use and, like, isn't some of your decision making around that? And, isn't it nice that other people use these tools and build on top of them as well? So so I I I I think sometimes they try and kinda fight that.

I mean, it's I mean, we spoke I don't know if it was probably our fair, but we spoke a little bit at Yana about Yana Sarafakis. He's I mean, as a student at Keynes, or more on the Keynesian side, he's very much into this idea of an apolitical money. You know, if you take, politics out of money, out of a world reserve currency, for example, then the world can become much stabler. You know, if we when the British pound, that was a world reserve currency, you know, we enslaved the Chinese into opium smoking to to keep our currency strong. You know, we, we we conquered and ruled over in India, and we were really really really quite vicious. And and and, we'd, in order to keep the British pound as as the world reserve currency and keep our economy strong, because we became greedy as an island. You know? We we we enjoyed all the all the money which was streaming back into Britain. And then post World War two when the dollar, had world dominance and was 50% of the the world's economy was was dollar based, then the US dollar became the world reserve currency. If you think about all the conflicts which have happened particularly by on The US side, I mean, how much of it is is them trying to keep the dollar as the the world reserve currency that is is is the strongest currency? I mean, it's it's like it's almost like a, it's, it's it's kind of too much of responsibility for a government or a country to have to have their currency as the world reserve currency. It'd be better if it were an apolitical form of exchange, which could be used like a gold or something rather than, you know, a a a currency, which is backed by by by government. And I thought Bitcoin could be that. Keynes, when when you went to Bretton Woods originally proposed, something called the bank core, which is kinda like a decentralized, medium of exchange. It was predominantly between countries like a kind of clearing, currency, but it he wanted it to be a political. He said, look. If we're going into this future, we need in order to not have conflict, you know, what people say about Keynes, he spent his whole life trying to prevent conflict. Because he lived two two wars, had the first world war and second world war, which is an economist of both. So so he he, he wanted an apolitical backed money. And then within Bitcoin, that's probably the first thing I saw about Bitcoin, which I really quite liked. I thought we could have. If this were this is this this has I mean, there's a whole bunch of things which I liked about about Bitcoin. The the idea of having something digitally scarce, I thought was cool. You know? But you think cryptographically secure. I and and the the the the, you know, you're you're using maths to to ensure that this thing is always gonna be, digitally scarce, and you can have ownership over it, then I I like that too. But, maybe more because of the gaming side of things, you know, I've had stuff in computer games in the past, and then I'd I'd lost those things or they'd produce more of those things, and the thing I had became worth less value. It was kinda, oh, that sucks. You know? In this digital world, I want something which kind of has a value, which I can use to exchange. It isn't gonna lose its value or whatever, or a central party can't print more of. So so there was kind of yeah. So there was there was that that kind of element, and there was also kind of the the apolitical element was probably the thing which really first drew me towards Bitcoin. And then the free and open source is free and open source software. I like that. That's kind of I came from sort of the free and open source software side. Yeah. I, and that kinda drove me towards Bitcoin. So, yeah, that that that they were probably the three elements which which I most saw value in in something like Bitcoin for.

Well, I mean, this was the other thing. So that was one of my worries, in fact, was the the amount of power which miners had over Bitcoin. It's always a struggle. But then when we had the user activated, you know, stuff, when we had the, the no two x movement, I realized that, in fact, Bitcoin is controlled and regulated by the users. The miners are employed by the network, and they're rewarded from the network for they're sort of employed to secure the network, basically. And, and and then we reward them for doing that security work. You know, I think often in history, security guards thought that they they actually had control over a system or over, I don't know, over something, but then actually, no. They're just being employed by the, by the system to secure the system. And that was, you know, that was made that was made obvious with the the the you you, user activated soft walk. So, actually, that at that point, I was like, okay. I'm all in Bitcoin now. This is you know, we have actually able we have built a consensus mechanism, which is truly centralized, and controlled and regulated by the the users as as a whole as opposed to, controlled by, you know, say, the miners, for example. So you you did you say they have power, but, I mean, they they have less power than you it first appears.

if you can explain a bit on how people Yeah. If you respond to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I think that, you so you have many so if you want decentralized control and, the means of production controlled and regulated by the community, controlled or regulated by the community as a whole, which is the dictionary definition of of something like socialism. There are some tools you can use to try and do that. So you can use something like state. You know? So the state can take taxes and, from people, and then it can build a health service or it can build schools or whatever else. The roads. But that's a tool to try and achieve an end. And the end being that the the the the means of production is controlled or regulated by the community as a whole. Doesn't necessarily mean state is good. It's not. It's very buggy. But it's kind of like, I would say for something like education, I would say it's important for people to have access to education. And I would say that state probably is the best system we currently have for education. I would say for, production, state's not very good at all. You know, it's, it's it's, it's probably the one you know, it's much better to have a free market of of entrepreneurs, of businesses, to be able to produce the things we need. If you give that power to state as we saw with, you know, Lenin, then you end up with just a tyranny, of and and also bad decision making. They can't make the the the right decisions to be able to produce the things people actually want. So, yeah, I did warn you that I have a tendency to to to waffle on. Oh, yes. Yes. So so so it's important to to first define what socialism is. And if you just want socialism is just that the means production is con and manufacturing is controlled or regulated by the community as a whole. So how do you achieve that? You know? It's, one way to achieve it is through something like, you know, a cooperative. But cooperatives are clunky, and decision making by consensus is hard, as we know in Bitcoin. So if you take your average cooperative, and then if you if it competes against, you know, a feudalist corporate structure where one person is just making decisions, then, the feudalist corporate structure is gonna win, because the the cooperative is so clunky and it's so hard to manage that just that sort of decision making that in a free market, the the the fuel structure is gonna win. Does that mean that you shouldn't try and make cooperatives work better and try and improve the the, the tools they use, to try and make that cooperative more effective. I don't think it does. You know? I think that sort of a thought experiment I like to do with some of the right people is, like, say, okay. You've got two Amazons. You've got normal Amazon, and then you've got decentralized Amazon. Both products in both these Amazons are worth the exact you know, they cost the exact same amount of money. So you go on the website, either go to amazon.com or you go to the amazon.com. This is completely hypothetical, and it's probably a load of bollocks, and it could never ever exist because, you know, free markets and all the local they're great, and you're never gonna be able to get the value of the products down to the right levels to be able to compete. But just just do a thought experiment. So you've got centralized Amazon, amazon.com, and you've got decentralized Amazon, d amazon, uh,.com. The products we started the same on both in both Amazons, they both cost exactly the same. The only difference is that the, the Amazon, decentralized Amazon, more or less all the value, which is produced by the products goes to people actually producing the products. There's a very small fraction, which maybe goes into, you know, their bounties for the Amazon software. Whereas amazon.com, you know, obviously, some of that surplus value goes to, Jeff Bezos, and that's why he's, you know, becoming fastest way to become the world's first trillionaire. So so you have these two Amazons. Now you you made the decision to buy a product. Which Amazon are you gonna pick? And then the the righties, the the the the the returns to us, they will say, well, you know, where the product's cheaper. I'm like, in this thought experiment, they're both everything costs the same on both platforms. Which one are you gonna pick? And then the ones who are honest, they will say, well, I'm gonna go for the d Amazon more. Okay. Why are you gonna go for the d Amazon? Well, because I understand that the people are getting more but it's impossible. It's never gonna happen. I'm like, yeah. It's impossible. It's never gonna happen. But you you understand that the people who are producing those things are gonna get more of the value. They're not gonna lose that surplus value. You know? They're gonna they're gonna have it's gonna be bet they're gonna be better off. When you buy those products, you know that that money is going to actually towards the Pidgin war, towards the the people who actually produce the products. And I think that's just, so, you know, again, back to that different dictionary definition of socialism that,

so so socialism is the advocation of that. So working towards that. It's not enforcing that. It's not like forcing your people to have that system. It's just saying it's you're advocating that that system actually liberates people better than a centralized system. I'm just recognizing that. So, I think maybe a socialist, like

I think so. I mean, so I I I so so, they become friendlier. Bitcoin I've spoken to pardon?

Yeah. No. So no. It's I mean, so I mean, so look at someone like, Rockstar Dev who works on, BTC pay server. Don't know why that took me so long to think of. Yeah. He's a fantastic developer. K? He's from an ex Soviet block country. You know? This guy has more right to hate, quote unquote, socialism, than than most of your average, you know, right wing libertarian American Bitcoiners. He lived under, you know, the the apparatus of state, when he was growing up, and it fucking sucked. I can't remember where he's from, and I wouldn't wanna wouldn't wanna sort of hazard a guess. So yeah. So he was quite interested in why I would go and call myself something like the Bitcoin socialist. And then I talked to him about it, and I said that. He said, look. Okay. That's how some people thought they could bring about something like social control. Social control. Socializing control is very important. You know, look at the word where the word, the etymology of the word socialism, where it comes from. So you're socializing control. You're taking control, centralized control Mhmm. And then you're socializing it. And when I explained the dictionary definition, that is someone who advocates, and you can Google this. Please Google socialism defined. And it's the, advocating that the means of production should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. And he was interested in that. And, actually, he's, for a while, he's been trying to get me to do, like, a debate with someone like Giacomo Zuko or some kind of quite far right, you know, Bitcoin. Who else do I also get on with? He's a nice guy. You know? And there was some talk about doing, like, a Steven Rivera one when we did it, but, I kinda chickened out because I was like, no. I don't know, man. It's it's sounds too brutal. But, yeah. No. But he's, you know, he sees someone who's kind of interested. He's like, oh, okay. Cool. Like, I he can he can recognize that what I'm saying actually does make some sense. And and and, actually, I mean, he he may not agree with what I'm saying, but he understands that other lefties who think like me can also see value in Bitcoin. And that isn't a bad thing. You know? We're not the sort of, Stalinist lefties who want the state to seize control and then send all the, you know, doctors into the field. We're we're peep we're we're we're we're a group of lefties who just want that. We just want socialized control. We just want decentralization. Decision making by consensus, all the good stuff. So yeah. So, actually, no. I have, you know, the I think I I I have, noticed some there's there's been some quite positive kind of feedback. And, also, I think, like, it helps if you like, I've been I've I've been I've made some tutorials, and I've made produced some stuff and some software. People have built on that software, and they built stuff as well. So I think it helps that, like, you know, I'm kind of I'm kind of making something as well, you know, that they can see I'm I'm actually I am contributing some value. Like, if they hate my politics, then they might like something else I'm doing. And that might be a way into to infect them with the the socialist bug. No. Definitely. But, no. I mean, so so yes. So so in saying that, though, I mean, I think, I've kind of been blocked and muted into a corner on Twitter. I just I can't I I've kind of hit the ceiling when it comes to, like, say, the amount of followers I can get, because there is a large proportion of, the the Bitcoin Twitter community, which is just blocked and muted me into nonexistence. Yeah. So and so that kinda sucks because some of them, you know, I I like them. We we kinda get on in on on other topics. So I know it's blocked me on Twitter.

And they still blocked me on Twitter. Yeah. But I mean, often it's kind of I mean, they spend all day kind of having that circle jerk, don't they? And, like, agreeing with everybody. We're all seeing the same thing politically. And then someone someone comes along and then challenges them, but in a way which isn't, like, unreasonable. Yeah. I think that I think that, they just don't wanna go there. They're like, yeah. So they they did they they I I've had a few blocks or, you know, a few conversations which have been like, clearly, they're losing ground on the on the on the discussion. You know? If they're trying to argue that, you can only have liberty in a capitalist with, you know, the capitalist mode of production, and then you you just point out that capitalist favors the cap the capitalism favors the capitalist. And if you have a centralized or feudal lord, essentially, who owns the capital, you can't have the workers can't have, liberty. They can't you know, they're they're they're working for that person, and then they're giving that person some of their surplus. Mhmm. So you'll you'll have an argument with them on a topic like that, for example. And any most of those kinda, like, lefty topics if you just kinda, like, let the argument evolve. Eventually, you know, it's it's quite hard to argue against, I don't know, community control over something, if it's done in, like, a nonviolent way. Like, something like a cooperative, you know, voluntary, freedom freedom of association. This is quite hard to kind of argue against that. So so yeah. So I think then they just block me because, it's just easier to block me rather than either agree with me and have to change how they think about something. What what fucking snowflakes, Not exactly. Yeah. Yeah. They're the same.

Yeah. Okay. Mhmm. So you, yourself, when did you when did you, like, start, you know, raising the lefty flag? When when was that?

Yeah. Nice.

Yeah. I mean, I've I've said this to, a lot of Bitcoiners in the past, particularly ones I've had kind of, like, a very heated debate with. And I've said, look. You know, if you think this is a heated debate, you wanna see me debating some of the commies and the socialists because those guys are most of them are terrible with computers for one. Some something about people on the left, they tend to be crap at computers. So trying to convince them well, first, you gotta educate them on, like, free up a source software, you know, and the free software foundation, the work Richard Storman did. You know, that there was proprietary control over something, and they wanted to take control. The best way to take control was to build a new system where they had control, and and then, like, you know, secure that system through, like, Copyleft, their licensing of software. And then you kinda need to work them through the history of free and open source software and then end up with Bitcoin and then start to explain Bitcoin to them. Yeah. Because they they they they see something like Bitcoin, it's just money, you know, and it's it's the it's just filthy greed orientated money, which is all about Lambos and trading and, you know, maybe they do a quick Google for for Bitcoin and they find someone like Safa Dean's book, I don't know, claiming this is Bitcoin. I think that's also very important, actually. Like, I would never claim that, you know, this is my opinion is is what Bitcoin actually is. This is Bitcoin. Or or, I mean, you've got kind of a broader understanding in relationship with, say, cryptocurrencies and and kind of what you call blockchain. I just pretty much focus on Bitcoin. So I just I just say Bitcoin. So, I I think that's a quite a dangerous stance to to because, I mean, the software always evolves and changes for one. But then also, you know, if you if you try and kind of indoctrinate or, create a belief structure around Bitcoin as a protocol, then you're gonna have people coming along and saying, well, this is you know, I think I can I can I can associate some say my left ideas, to Bitcoin, as well? And then I think that's often why they get, like, kinda just kinda really gets their show up, and they end up on that back foot. It's because they they just didn't expect someone to kind of challenge their opinion. But if you're talking about, like, freeing up a source money, which you want kind of to to be the backbone of future society, you have to appreciate that a large proportion of future society like the idea of, community control and and, like the idea of something like, I don't know, universal access to education, health care. So the world is not gonna just become, what you would call free markets. And, actually, something like Bitcoin is just designed to destroy a free market. So I am waffling. So I'll I'll put it I think it's quite an important point. I actually don't wanna don't wanna lose it, but people often call something like Bitcoin, like, free market money. But it's not. It's a free market money killer. Right? That's what we're trying to make it to be. And we don't want a free market of money. We We want a free market of money, which Bitcoin can exist in, and then Bitcoin becomes the very best it can be of money. And then it destroys the free market just like any good, free and open source community driven software project. So good to see them like Wikipedia. Like, you could have a monopoly, but if it's free and open source monopoly where the community can have control over that system, then it's not really a bad monopoly. Like, you know, if you have something like, you know, save Microsoft, say if their software was the backbone of the Internet and ran all web servers, then that would kinda suck because Microsoft's proprietary company, have sort of centralized control. But the reality is that, you know, Linux is the backbone of the Internet, and that's actually where the ins what the Internet gets right. You know, most web servers are are Linux based. And there's there's a monopoly over over over power the Internet is, you know, the the web web server is running Internet. But it's kind of monopoly no one complains about because it's controlled and regulated by the community as a whole. So people know that that is better than, proprietary centralized control, on a system. So, so yeah. So but but, again, you know, when you're talking to to the to people on the left trying to explain that to them, like, what free and open source software is. I mean, in fact, the ones who do understand free and open soft soft software, they are they are more susceptible to to to understanding why why Bitcoin would would be good and would be better. I think also as well that you have to wait for these things to find commodity use. Like, a lot of like, I think a lot of Bitcoins know that, you know, Bitcoin is you know, we're using it as money just like you can use gold as money. But, actually, gold has a whole bunch of commodity uses, and those commodity uses. So that's where, you know, Marx would would he believes that any government would be have a commodity first and foremost, because you it needs to be out it needs to be exchangeable with, you know, other commodities, for example. I I don't think we found them for Bitcoin yet. I think Microsoft are now doing some work on decentralized identities and stuff on on on Bitcoin blockchain. I think there's a whole bunch of other projects within sort of cryptocurrency world, which are trying to find more commodity type use cases. But I think that might attract maybe the, older lefty intelligence here into something like Bitcoin. And I have heard, some, quite, you know, well established lefties talk not unfavorably about Bitcoin or, mention something a system which is kind of describes Bitcoin. You kinda think, oh, man. If only if only could speak to you now and shout Bitcoin at you, or, you know, or blockchain or whatever. So, so, yeah, I ranted and I waffled.

I mean, that's pretty much all money right now is fiat money for the most part. So that is pretty much you know, if there's just Bitcoin, then there is no free market, which is pretty that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that before. Yeah. It's the free market. I said it's after it's free as well because I said, oh, you say, you know, you say Bitcoin's free market money. You know, it's not it's the free market money killer. And it's actually, that's what they want. They want it to kill free market. Yeah. It's And action. That's true. And if you have, like so say if you had d Amazon, you know, that we spoke about before, and that because we have this monopoly now, Amazon. And most people understand it's not great, you know, this Jeff Bezos scam making all this money. It works and you get decent cheap products, but there could be probably a better system where more people would have liberty, and a decentralized version of that system will be better. I think if it was the Amazon if you think we had the Amazon now, I don't think people would complain. I think people would would encourage that service to just grow and grow and grow because it's, you know, it's it's it's it's a fairer system. Yeah.

Yeah. So I think that, Andreas, this I did a really good quote, and it was I the the if there's a world in which the Internet of Things is owned by Amazon or owned by, you know, your your, Google, and all your data is owned by them as well, then that world's kinda gonna suck, and it's gonna be dystopian. If there's a world where the users have control and have autonomy over the hardware, and the software, then that that Internet of Things type future, futurist idea of of what the world could become. It could be a good thing. In order to get there, though, we need more control over the hardware. We need more control over the software, which is why, I mean, with software, you can verify code. You can go on their git and check out their code, and you can even make suggestions and contribute to the code if you want to. And if you can find kind of consensus, get it merged in whatever. I think there's a whole bunch of kind of, like, hardware out there, which is being developed for makers and DIYs and engineers and hackers. And I think that more and more people are kind of getting autonomy and the ability to kind of build their own stuff, you know, and take control over, hardware. And I think that's that's better. And you can't you we can't continue kind of a hardware path where some centralized service has, access to all our information because we can't see the software behind the the the piece of hardware. And then the hardware itself may have proprietary parts in which we we we we don't know how they're being a workings of and can be feeding data back to wherever. We need, like, free and open source hardware. We need hardware which is auditable. If not free and open source, like, just auditable. Like, we can we can take it apart. We can have a look at it. We can understand how it works. But in order to kind of have that relationship with, say, hardware, for example, you kinda need a community of builders and makers and all that sort of stuff. And I think that's getting better. So I started, and also when you talk about, like, you know, banking the unbanked, it's quite cool, the idea. So one of my projects, the quickening, is a free and open source, point of sale terminal, which you can build yourself. And the components cost, like, under $8. Wow. So someone in, you know I mean, it's it's still a free and open source project, and still is kinda lot of work. There's people contributing to it. People like, Quitbono and, CryptoCloaks. They've developed, like, a an amazing little, pre three d printed box for it. There's a a a a another guy in San Francisco, Ken. He also developed another really nice three d printed box solution. And there's people who've, like, improved on the software, which I made as well. But, yeah, it's it's a it's a free and open source point of sale terminal. You could build it for under $8. The same principles of building that terminal as well. You could just carry across and take the hardware and then install it into, say, a vending machine or, they don't know an automated beer tap or coffee machine, whatever. So yeah. So so, that that is an it gives someone in some poor part of the world who maybe becomes reliant upon some decentralized value transfer system like Bitcoin, for example, gives them the ability to just kind of build one of these devices, themselves, with a little bit of work, or, you know, rope someone in they kind of know is kind of a little bit technical. It's it's not, you know I do a workshop for the quickening, and then we cover pretty much everything we need to cover in, like, an hour. So, it's not the most complicated of projects. It's not the most complicated thing to build. But then you also know that when you build it, you know, you know the hardware which is going to make in that device. You know it's auditable. You know as well that there's no kind of, what's it called? Oh, when you put an attack, there's an attack vector in the manufacturing process of, like, hardware. So if you're making, like, a Bitcoin wallet, for example, then change the supply chain. There's no supply chain attack Yeah. Which is kind of being put into the the hardware. So you have control over the hardware. You have control over the software. And you can and then, lo and behold, when you have a level of control over the hardware and software, and you've actually learned to build this thing in yourself, you start you start thinking, yeah, I could tweak it here. I could tweak it there. I could do this. I could do it and prove it there. And then you start contributing back to the community people building these little point of sale terminals. So, so yeah. So so I was very keen on education, people getting control over this bits of hardware. Also, just exploring, like, you know, we talk about particularly something like the Lightning Network, you can send real small transactions, microtransactions. You can have money streaming. And to have IoT devices or smart devices be able to send value to each other is quite exciting. And they also thought that maybe it could be an on ramp for, say, the Arduino community when they realized that, you know, these little bits of hardware they're tinkering with could be sending and receiving value. You know? Very small amounts of value. You know, you pay some money and then you turn something on for an amount of time. So, yeah. Sorry. I was I was just interested in that, and I just kinda wanted to explore that and then, like, encourage other people to, like, explore it as well. And, also, like, I always reiterate that I'm just a hobbyist. Like, my code's for shit. My project's really goofy. Contributes are very, very welcome always. And as a hobbyist, if I can do it, then anyone else can do it. You know? It's not I'm not, like, in an ivory tower. I'm not, like, pick some try try to sell myself as some crazy, you know, developer. I'm just I'm just a hobby. I'm just someone tinkering around at home. Mhmm. So it's this stuff is easy enough to for people to pick up and start building their own cool bits and bobs. And that's how we have that better future where users have control over the hardware.

No. So I got a whole bunch. So we I got so the the the foot so there was the quickening, and then well, that was first so, originally, there was the $1.21, which was just kind of like a sweet machine with little yank display, and you could pay it, and it was spits weeks out. And then, I then added the keypad, and that became the flux capacitor. It was like a goofy, like, e paper point of sale device. And then I realized that you can buy, a pretty nice functional device called, an m five stack, which has kind of a key button thing. Like, I think it's meant for a calculator. You can repurpose this thing. It's got microcontroller inside of it. Unless, you know, it's all free and open source hardware or auditable hardware at least. You can repurpose it and turn it into one of these point of sale devices. It's got a nice little dock for charging it, and they're, like, £40 or something. So it's still very reasonable. And then I realized you could do a better version of the quickening of the flux capacitor, which I then called the quickening, which is like the the under $8 point of sale. It's got a TFT screen instead of a e paper screen, which means price down. But then they also use the microcontrollers to build, you know, things like mesh networks, for example, which, I think is very relevant to decentralized value transfer systems. You don't wanna have to just rely upon something like the Internet. You wanna have some sort of system or some sort of infrastructure where you can send value through a a noncentralized system like a mesh network. So a lot of these microcontrollers, you can mesh them together and do some funky stuff. So I kinda got some experimentation with that. Also, like, turn these little micro yeah. I wanted people to be able to or start building their own hardware wallets, because the hardware wallets are too expensive, and they're also I don't know. This is not a community. I think in order for it to be more secure and from order for more innovation to happen, I think you need a community of people building stuff as opposed to just kind of a company sitting down and trying to think of what the community wants. You know? So I've I've got, like, some hardware project. And then I've got some goofy stuff like, you know, like, I don't know, like a price check, checker, which would just give you the price of a nice little LED matrix or something. So, so yeah. So just fun little projects, trying to retrofit things to accept Bitcoin or build little devices to send and receive Bitcoin. Things which kinda complement, you know, the Bitcoin ecosystem. And it's it's funny. It's one of those things, like, the more it's kind of easy. You just, you know, you go check out some Arduino projects and then think, okay. Cool. That looks great. I'll see if I can add Bitcoin. You know? Yeah. There's like a I found, like, an Arduino thing on on on a nice little coin mech. So you can put a coin in to it's for arcade machines or something. And I'm like, oh, cool. Like, I can use this to make a Bitcoin ATM. And they made, like, you know, like, a $40 Bitcoin ATM, where you put coins in, like, loose change, and then you get out, like, some Bitcoin. You can just sap the Bitcoin out. 20 one's enough. He's got an excellent project. He's another sort of builder maker. And, it's great, man. It's it's cool to be able to to speak to other people as well who kinda build and making things. And you find you get, like, a lot of good if you go to a conference, and there's loads of people that have great software, but in the real world, it's nice to have visual things. You can spend some Bitcoin, get some sweets, spend some Bitcoin, you know, and then get a claw thing to pick up a a a little treat and get a little treat or play an arcade machine or, you know, go go to a vending machine and spend some Bitcoin or get a beer from a beer tap by spending some bit. So it's nice to have, like, real world, things to using something like Bitcoin. And it's it it gets a really good response when you when you take these, like, gadgets out and about. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So for anyone who's listening, like, please do, yeah, please do, like, join in. Like, build some stuff and, get involved in some of the projects. Buy some of the parts, you know, like like the like the point of sale terminal or the quickening. You know? It's like under $8. You can buy this part off the shelf, order them from AliExpress or get them from Amazon. Maybe you let, like, spend, like, $10. And then you can put this thing together and and and and there's a whole bunch of little projects you can make using the same hardware. So, you know, it doesn't cost anything. And you can sit down. You can learn it's a really good way to learn development as well because it's very rewarding. And it's not the code's not that complicated. It's like Arduino code. So it's not too hard to to kind of code them. It's c, but it's kinda got some little tweaks to to make it a bit more easier to to use. Mhmm. So it's a good way to learn development as well. So yeah. So great. Yeah. Please, anyone listening, just get involved. Like, look into some of the projects. The GitHub is a r c b t c. That's my GitHub. And then there's, like, gazillions of projects on there, using these little bits to hardware. So, so yeah. So welcome. What the question was, Britos, I think it was just, just the project. Like, how I