6:30 Hi, welcome to Coinspice Live. I'm your host, Peter Ryan. 6:36 We've got a great show for tonight. 6:39 We are talking to Paul Sztorc, the Chief Scientist at Truthcoin, about the theory of memes. 6:46 And if you thought memes were just about pepes and wojacks, we've got another thing coming. 6:52 Then we've got Mikeinspace doing what he always does, giving us that reliable, that necessary daily mempool report. 7:01 So he dutifully reports in and gives us those details. 7:05 We also have some great announcements of product launches, new things that are going on at Coinspice, as well as what you folks got to say. 7:13 We have the chat over there. People are chatting away, getting things off. 7:18 Throw some peppers in there, make yourself heard. 7:21 We also have the tip jar going on over here. 7:24 If you want to actually use Bitcoin, you can go in the description, hit the link. 7:27 You can also find the link right below me there. 7:30 You can send us some Bitcoin. 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You don't want to miss that. 7:57 So we got some great stuff coming up. 8:00 We're going to start right off with talking about Hong Kong and how crypto worked its way into that. 8:08 So let's cut to what some Hong Kongers think about what's going on. 8:19 What are your thoughts, before I let you go here, on things like the protest and the trade war and their overall impact on cryptocurrency usage or adoption? 8:34 I feel like China has been a big part of cryptocurrency for a long time. 8:42 If not, it's probably a huge portion of the entire cryptocurrency economy. 8:48 And the reason for that is very simple. 8:50 Because the Chinese, when they make the money or they have the money, they want to be free. 8:56 And obviously, China wants to track that money and not have that money leave the country. 9:07 So ultimately, whatever China does, and they've tried to do a lot of things to Bitcoin. 9:13 Bitcoin remains a huge, highly desirable asset in China because it can be used to avoid the Chinese government, basically. 10:06 Sorry about that. 10:28 The mic is back on. 10:30 We had a little technical issue there. 10:33 And you just heard C. Edward Kelso, our editor-in-chief of Coinspice, be on a podcast with a Hong Kong protester. 10:43 Not just somebody that is on the ground protesting, but someone that's into Bitcoin and shows us what the intersection of crypto is and freedom with the whole China and BCH and Bitcoin and wider cryptocurrency world. 10:58 And that's a great podcast for you guys to check out. 11:01 But what we're going to do is really explore what makes Hong Kong and China interesting when it comes to crypto. 11:09 And so we look at it, and Hong Kong is seen as the bastion for economic free trade, as this shining island city on a hill when it comes to the international commerce. 11:24 And China as a mainland government is viewed as sort of the oppressing big state that's coming in and overreaching. 11:34 And the dynamic that's going on there is really heating up, and the tensions are really coming to a head. 11:40 And we're seeing that the little guy, Hong Kong in this case, is needing to find ways to exercise more freedom, exercise more ability to get past the people that are trying to censor their way of life. 12:00 In terms of, you know, the specific issue that kind of gave rise to all this is that the Chinese mainland wanted to create some more extradition policies within Hong Kong that would bring people into the mainland. 12:13 And so that kicked us all off. 12:15 And so this was about people saying, oh, no, you just can't come in and start rewriting rules and start sort of taking the liberties that the Hong Kongers have for a long time thought they've had, you know, gone in an instant. 12:29 And so that's expanded as the protests go on to what is the right of free speech? 12:33 What is the right for people to exercise their dissent? 12:36 What is the right for people to assembly in the public square and actually collectivize and come together to have sort of one voice? 12:45 And in all this, we see that cryptocurrency is an interesting concept that comes in. 12:52 One notable example was that people were not using their digital traditional payment processors in Hong Kong or for that matter, mechanisms to interact with the transportation system. 13:03 So there was a story that came out about how Hong Kongers weren't using their digital payment system with the subway because they didn't want their identities linked to their transportation pathways. 13:15 Because then it would indicate on this day and this time you are traveling to these places. 13:21 And thus we can put together from a government overseer monitoring all this data that you were probably a protester and we should probably, you know, investigate you. 13:33 So you have that element where people were turning away from the traditional payment mechanisms to look for alternatives. 13:41 And while cryptocurrency wasn't a way that they could directly, you know, forego that and substitute, it does present an ability for people to actually come in and say we don't actually need to use the trad systems. 13:56 We can use these alternatives that the government really can't control one way or the other what we do with it. 14:02 They can't just shut our account down. 14:04 They can't just say, you know, because you're a protester, you can no longer transact. 14:09 And for that matter, if certain privacy precautions are taken, they can't actually track, you know, what you're doing. 14:16 So this is where crypto comes in and the general ethos of crypto too outside of these specific examples where crypto is about freedom. 14:24 Crypto is about censorship resistance, about being able to, you know, exercise your, you know, right to money, right to transact. 14:35 And so when we look at Hong Kong as a wider touchstone for how we should be thinking about cryptocurrency, we should think about it in terms of, you know, this is where the front lines of cryptocurrency is. 14:50 It's not institutional. It's not Silicon Valley. It is not any of these places in New York on Wall Street where we need to somehow convince these existing players that wrecked us during the 08 crisis that, oh, they're going to now pile into Bitcoin and those are going to be the saviors. 15:14 The front lines of crypto where it really matters, it's Hong Kong. It's the people with umbrellas. It's the people with face masks, the people getting tear gassed. 15:21 It's also the people that are in Venezuela that are getting their lights shut out right now. 15:26 These are the places where crypto matters. And if crypto can come in and actually help these people and actually make a difference, you know, that's why we're all here and that's why we all get out of bed in the morning. 15:38 And so now I want to turn to a specific example of how cryptocurrency really came in to make a difference. 15:48 And right now I have a Forbes article written by Roger Hwang where he talks about how Bitcoin cash was used to actually help protesters in various ways. 16:00 So we had some recent protests going on, a lot of people coming out, getting out there, seeing what's going on. 16:09 And a very generous response happened where a company called Genesis Block coordinated some action that provided Hong Kong protesters with water bottles and umbrellas. 16:24 And umbrellas are important because they're actually the symbol of sort of another wider protest movement that was going on. 16:33 So the umbrella symbol is very important. And those were funded by international Bitcoin cash donations. 16:40 And what was actually really cool, as much as sort of crowdsourcing payments to distribute water bottles and umbrellas out to people was very valuable. 16:51 At the same time, this was the really cool part. The bottles had a QR code that allowed recipients to donate more Bitcoin cash in order to fund further supplies for peaceful protesters. 17:04 So you can see here, here's the image of the water bottle. You can see a QR code there, donate BCH. 17:11 This is how cryptocurrencies were meant to be used. This is exactly how it should be done. 17:20 People are on the ground, they're drinking water, they're rubbing tear gas out of their eyes, and they see that this water bottle was provided for them. 17:29 They can scan that QR code when they're done. They can actually help keep that feedback loop going to help crowdsource more and more donations in so that more of these water bottles can actually get out there for the next day of protesting to help the next protester. 17:44 So this is really cool that we actually see this on the ground, that people are actually getting direct value. 17:51 As we continue down this article, they reference some data. They talk about Bitcoin ATMs, crypto ATMs, what actually happened there. 18:00 What was interesting was actual on-the-ground ATM usage didn't actually pick up. It actually declined a bit during all these protests. 18:10 But what did happen was exchanges that were online actually, like ThaiBit here, they showed premiums for Hong Kong dollars when people are buying. 18:21 So this actually did show in some vector an increase in cryptocurrency interest. 18:28 But again, while there's sort of countervailing forces of there was sort of a downtick in the ATMs, but an uptick in sort of these online purchases here. 18:37 Again, what really matters is, well, were people actually using this and what were they using it for? 18:43 And if we take this back to, well, they were using it for these water bottles and these umbrellas and they were actually helping people rather than number go up. 18:53 This is what matters. And so I hope people check this article out. I hope people check out the wider movement that's going on in Hong Kong. 19:05 And if you're feeling up to it, maybe throw a little Bitcoin cash to these people to make sure that they can feel a lot better. 19:12 On top of that, we referenced at the start of the show, a podcast, a scene from that podcast with C. Edward Kelso, our editor in chief. 19:21 He's running this podcast over here on Coinspice. He sat down with a Hong Kong Bitcoiner to talk about all things that are going on with the protests in the intersection of cryptocurrency. 19:31 Definitely check that out. It's a long in-depth look into what's going on. Great show. Definitely check it out. 19:39 And now return it. So that's what's going on in Hong Kong, guys. 19:46 So what's going on in the chat, everybody? What do you think of Hong Kong? Let me see some reaction from you guys over there. 19:55 If anybody wants to make their opinion heard, please hit up the donation address right there. You can find it in the description. 20:01 Your message will appear right above my head and you'll be part of the show. 20:05 Yeah, guys. So on top of that, I want to recommend everybody check out a lot of cool things that Coinspice has going on. 20:17 We're going to cut to a quick commercial break, then be back with some more of our segments. 20:22 And then I'm going to tell you a little bit more about those promotions. 20:25 So sit right there and I'll be right back. 21:25 And Mike, you're on the air. 21:40 Mike. 21:43 Take off your headphones. 22:10 Back to you, Peter. 22:30 All right. Thank you, Mike. Always giving us valuable information. 22:36 Everybody can't get through the day without it. 22:38 All right. All right. So again, what do you guys think about the Hong Kong protest? Let me see what's going on in the chat. 22:45 While you do that, I'm going to tell you about one of the commercials you just saw. 22:50 Coinspice has a new product launch. Yes, a new product launch. Not just T-shirts, not just spicy memes, but some awesome socks. 22:59 And we had our beautiful model debut them in that video you just saw. 23:04 But they're not just female socks. We also have male version of the socks, too. 23:09 So don't feel that you're left out. You can get your spicy socks as well. 23:14 But some of you might not have to pay for it because guess what, guys? 23:19 Guess what, guys? I'm going to show you. I'm going to give you a little scoop here. 23:25 We're going to move over and you're going to get the scoop. 23:29 If you go to this tweet right here. One second. Let's zoom on in. 23:40 If you go to this tweet, we got a free sock giveaway contest. 23:44 But to do it, guys, you have to retweet and like this post that I'm showing you right now. 23:50 You can go to our feed. You can go to our at Coinspice Twitter. Find it. 23:56 It's also going to be posted in the chat. Follow our account. We need this so we can DM you if you win. 24:03 And after a few days, we'll randomly choose three winners to get a free pair of spicy socks. 24:08 The socks come in all sizes again and they are for male and females. 24:12 So if you do this, you know, some of you, if you really want to, you can go out there. 24:16 You can pay because we accept cryptocurrency and, you know, use cryptocurrency to your heart's desire. 24:23 But you can actually get these for free and walk around and have that spicy feeling on your feet at all times. 24:29 So make sure you do that. Go there. Like the tweet. Retweet the tweet. 24:34 And make sure to follow us so we can DM you if you win and you'll get your own pair of spicy socks. 24:40 So everybody, please go and do that. Definitely check that out. 24:44 And, you know, maybe if you're out, you can pull up your pant leg or if you're walking around barefoot and show off that you're spicy. 24:53 On top of that, guys, we also have our weekly dankest meme of the week. 24:56 Here's the post. You can also find it there. We're also going to throw it in the chat. 25:00 Please go there. Post some dank memes. 25:03 The winner of that will be shown at the end of tonight's show. 25:07 And, you know, there's some stiff competition that's been going through the past weeks. 25:11 You're going to have to bring your A-game. Definitely go there. 25:16 You know, whip out some MS Paint, some Adobe Photoshop. Really put some muscle into it. 25:21 And throw some dank memes. 25:23 So everybody, go do that. Go to the sock tweet. 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So we are now going to the main event of the night. 26:28 We have our interview with Paul Sztorc, the chief scientist at Truthcorn. 26:33 He's talking to us about memes. 26:36 There was a particular event, I'll get into that in a little bit, 26:39 that kind of brought everyone's attention to memes. 26:42 What are they for? Are they useless? 26:45 They're probably not useless. 26:47 We dive into that, explore what's going on, 26:50 why memes matter, how they apply to crypto, 26:54 and how do we use them to be more productive. 26:57 So we're going to jump into that. 27:01 Definitely post some questions like, what do you think about memes? 27:04 Are they stupid? Are they valuable? 27:07 Are they the most intellectual thing we could be doing with our time? 27:10 Throw that in the chat. 27:12 Make sure to tip us at tipbitcoin.cash. 27:15 And you can have your message. 27:17 If you really want to get out there, 27:19 and you want to contribute to the intellectual discourse that Paul and I do, 27:23 you can throw it up in there and be a third party. 27:25 And you can pop up in the leaderboard as an honorary spicy tipper. 27:30 So without further ado, here we go. 27:39 Welcome. We are here with Paul Sztorc, 27:42 the creator of Truthcoin, among other compelling projects. 27:45 Paul, how are you doing? 27:47 I'm doing great. How are you? 27:49 Doing well, doing well. 27:50 We are here to talk about memes. 27:52 There was quite a controversy regarding memes this past weekend. 27:58 For all that don't know, 28:00 there was a conference going on in the BTC community 28:05 where somebody proposed that they were the master of memes, 28:09 giving a presentation about it. 28:12 Twitter erupted in replying to that with their own set of memes, 28:18 and it cascaded into more and more debauchery, 28:21 resulting in corporate boycotts and blocking 28:25 and all sorts of community outrage and ostracization. 28:29 So now we're here, 28:31 and we're here to sort of talk about why memes are important 28:34 and why are they even more important in crypto potentially. 28:40 So I want to turn the mic over to Paul here to give us, 28:44 you know, just give us a summary of your general thesis on crypto. 28:49 Wow, well, there's a lot to unpack there. 28:51 I mean, yes, it was a truly inspired moment 28:55 because Michael Goldstein gave a talk about memes 29:00 that was then faithfully replicated in various forms, 29:04 screenshots, transcripts, 29:07 and it copied itself into many people's minds and computers, 29:15 which was really something else. 29:16 It was very sort of meta, and there's so many things at once. 29:19 I mean, memes are very important. 29:23 I think in the future, 29:26 almost all mental health will revolve around memes, 29:30 and I think that in the future, 29:33 people will know more about meme hygiene, 29:37 just like people in the past, 29:39 they didn't know anything about having the drinking water get infected 29:43 or even separating drinking water and sewage water, 29:46 and they didn't know about washing their hands before eating 29:49 or trying not to touch their face or their mouth. 29:53 People didn't know about those things that we do today and quarantine. 29:58 People didn't know these things in the past, 30:00 and so replicating molecules called genes or infectious diseases, 30:06 those genes spread through and wreaked havoc, 30:10 but today we live in a world where we mostly have the genes under control, 30:15 and the genes are more under control than the memes, 30:23 and we do not yet know enough about meme hygiene, 30:26 so it's time for everyone to try to learn together. 30:30 Great. 30:31 I think certain things like mass shootings, suicide, 30:35 those things can be explained completely with memes. 30:37 A meme is a piece of information that replicates, 30:41 so it is like a gene, 30:43 but it is an idea and a sort of behavior, 30:48 like doing the wave in a stadium. 30:52 Now, obviously, on the Internet, 30:54 people have used the word meme narrowly to refer to funny images, 30:58 but if you think of memes that way, 31:01 I think you'll never really understand their true nature, 31:05 which is extremely powerful. 31:07 And then it seems with this past event, 31:11 we saw not only the replicating, but the mutating, 31:14 the evolving, the degenerating of memes, 31:17 of competing in groups and out groups coming together 31:23 and cannibalizing memes and trying to use those against an enemy. 31:29 So can you talk a little bit more of like how a regurgitated meme 31:34 can be used against somebody that once created it? 31:38 Well, yes. 31:40 It's true that the memes have no – 31:44 if you were a genetic scientist and you invented a super virus, 31:50 you could still – it was some kind of bioterrorism or something – 31:54 you could still become infected with that virus and die. 31:58 So the memes have no loyalty to anyone except themselves. 32:04 They just exist to copy themselves. 32:06 The influenza virus, it only exists because it can, 32:10 and the reason it can exist is because it copies itself faster 32:13 than the existing versions are deleted. 32:17 So they have no loyalty to their author. 32:19 That's just an ad hominem fallacy. 32:21 So they can do whatever they want. 32:23 I mean, in particular, Michael Goldstein tried to create 32:27 or craft or highlight – so he tried to refine some memes. 32:32 So he tried to evolve them similar to how a genetic scientist 32:35 would do something with fruit flies where they die in as many generations 32:39 or something. 32:41 And so he's trying to pick out a few. 32:44 I think he named three about like number go up and Bitcoin solves this 32:50 where it's – or he thought they would spread. 32:55 And he wants them to spread, and while they're around, 32:57 they have a certain impact on people. 33:00 They change what types of things can be expressed and not expressed. 33:05 So they change what's sometimes called the Overton window. 33:09 If there's a big meme around saying Bitcoin solves this, 33:12 it may cause some embarrassment on people who think that Bitcoin doesn't solve this 33:18 or that they don't understand Bitcoin. 33:19 They may just be quiet. 33:22 Or it may have some other effect. 33:24 That's just one example. 33:26 People may see the Bitcoin solves this meme, 33:31 and they may think that the people doing it are having fun, 33:33 which makes them more likely to do it themselves, 33:36 which means their friends will do it. 33:38 In that way, it's very similar to doing the wave in a stadium 33:41 where the people who do it have kind of – it's a fun thing to do for most people. 33:46 And then if you see it and you weren't a part of it, 33:48 then you feel like you are out of the loop or that you were left out. 33:53 And then the next time the wave comes around, you make sure that you do it, 33:55 and then you try to get it started. 33:58 The most prestigious thing is to be able to start the wave. 34:01 People love it when they start the wave, and they think that's the most fun of all. 34:05 So memes are a lot like that. 34:07 I mean that is – doing the wave in a stadium is an example of a meme. 34:11 And that is a harmless one that just makes stuff more fun, 34:15 but the memes, just like genes, memes come in all endless variety. 34:20 So some could be like HIV, and they could kill you or destroy huge populations. 34:26 It could be like Ebola. 34:28 Or some could be like the bacteria that live in your digestive system. 34:32 They basically help you digest food and are totally harmless. 34:38 So there's all kinds of versions, and it's very powerful. 34:42 As you see, any of this stuff with replication, 34:45 one individual person can have a huge influence because the one person makes – 34:51 sure, you spend a lot of time when you just craft one little meme, 34:55 but once it's out there, it spreads all by itself, 34:58 and it locks down people's brains. 35:01 People keep regurgitating this behavior over and over again 35:05 instead of other behaviors that they could do because behavior 35:08 and attention are both zero sum. 35:11 If you're doing the wave, you can't be doing jumping jacks at the same time. 35:15 You can only do one thing at a time. 35:17 And what I find interesting, just to use that wave as an extended analogy here, 35:24 is what happens when an outgroup that's on the other side of the stadium 35:30 observes the wave going on authentically, 35:33 and then they themselves actually mirror the wave, 35:37 but they're doing it in jest. 35:38 They're trying to mock the other outgroup. 35:42 And then let's take this back to crypto. 35:44 Like what happens when somebody, again, cannibalizes that meme, 35:48 regurgitates it, but almost uses it as now an attack vector, 35:52 and ultimately how good of an attack vector that is 35:57 if it actually extends the original party's goal of perpetuating that meme? 36:05 Yeah, well, the memes can only spread. 36:09 Well, they all have different strategies for spreading, 36:12 the same way that influenza virus spreads through the air, 36:15 but other things spread. 36:17 There are STDs, right, and there's stuff that spreads through water, 36:20 and there's stuff that spreads through contaminated food 36:23 or like root spores or something. 36:25 So the memes have all kinds of different strategies for spreading, 36:29 but the fun Internet memes, they're supposed to be funny. 36:34 When you look at them, you're supposed to like get a laugh out of them, 36:38 and then when you share them with your friends, 36:40 your friends are supposed to think, oh, that guy, you know, he's so funny. 36:43 He always has this great content online. 36:46 I love following him on Twitter. 36:48 He has great jokes. 36:51 So you could disable the meme by trying to say that actually it isn't funny 36:57 and these jokes are not creative or they're derivative or they're predictable, 37:03 and then you could make fun of the people. 37:05 You could say as if, sort of sarcastically, 37:08 you could say as if we fell for this meme, you know, 37:12 like maybe a bunch of academics at like a prestigious conference, 37:16 do the wave like making fun of simpleton NFL fans or something. 37:21 I don't know if that makes any sense, but something like that, 37:24 they could say like, yeah, as if we would all do something that simple, 37:29 and in that way, they would be showing off that they have more complicated ways 37:37 of hanging out as a group, which is to throw parties 37:41 and talk endlessly about complicated things. 37:46 Like, you know what I mean, like cocktail parties. 37:49 That's what academics do. 37:50 They have like a conference and then they have like a little aperitif thing. 37:56 All the gestures and, you know, customs that they have to perform. 38:01 Talk endlessly about interesting things, which I think a lot of people, you know, 38:07 can't deal and stuff for like four hours in a row. 38:12 Yeah, the irony is them going to, you know, a football party 38:16 and then being at a loss when, you know, somebody can cite statistics 38:21 of a player and a team, you know, back to the 70s. 38:25 What I thought you were going to say was they don't know all of, you know, 38:27 if you go to like a baseball game, there's like 100 call and response 38:30 little things, like the thing about a charge and then the everybody clap your hands 38:36 and all the other stuff that you have to know, which you might not know 38:40 if you don't go very often to that type of thing. 38:44 But, yeah, I don't know how to relate this back to, you know, 38:47 you would want to damage the original meme and shut it off 38:50 so that the original people felt embarrassment and not humor when they spread it. 38:55 They'd be like, oh, I thought this was really cool, but if I spread this meme, 39:00 I'm just outing myself as someone who's not in the loop. 39:04 So, yes. 39:05 Ironically, though, the major content of Michael Goldstein's presentation 39:10 was that memeing is important, and so by talking about it now, 39:14 we are spreading his meme, which is to say that both he and us 39:21 have been captured by it temporarily. 39:25 But since he did it first, he's more prestigious because he is closer to the 39:33 he's further in the loop. 39:35 This is why humans care about being in the loop. 39:38 They really – they lived in a world where people would gossip a lot, 39:43 and if people could gossip about you, it's like the blitzkrieg. 39:48 Like you've got the airplanes that can just bomb your army before you even get to the field. 39:56 And if in the ancient past, 200,000 years ago or whatever, 40:00 people could gossip about you, and then before you even knew that there was a rumor about you 40:04 that could be false, people could surround your tent 40:08 and kill you in your sleep or something. 40:10 So humans love to gossip, and we don't like to be out of the loop. 40:16 We want to be in the loop. 40:17 So the first person to spread a meme is of a higher status 40:22 than the people who follow it later. 40:25 This is also why it's a bad idea to constantly – 40:28 it shows poor leadership to constantly react to what a rival group is doing, 40:34 which does happen a lot in – it does happen a lot. 40:38 For example, on our BTC, almost all of it is a reaction to either something that Craig Wright 40:47 or Bitcoin SV has said or something that BTC has said, 40:52 which that strategy helps you accomplish certain things. 40:56 The one thing that it does also do is that it shows poor leadership 41:02 because it says that whatever happens in the community is a function of what other people do, 41:07 what the BTC community or the BSV community does. 41:10 So that – it depends on the situation. 41:15 Again, it's like the world's a complicated place. 41:17 But probably should try to have – it would be better if there was more symmetry. 41:23 It would be better for Bitcoin Cash if the BCH community could do things that the BTC community 41:30 almost always reacted to. 41:33 Whatever they are, and that is part of the magic of Craig S. Wright and Donald Trump, 41:38 which is that they can force people, even people who know, who know better, 41:44 and they know that they're actually helping Donald Trump or Craig S. Wright, 41:48 even the people who know better feel compelled. 41:51 They have moments where they literally just lose self-control, and they cannot stop themselves. 41:58 That's a lot of effort. It takes them basically kind of like therapy. 42:01 They have to sit on a couch and sort of think about what they're doing before they finally – 42:07 it's like kicking a bad habit or something. 42:10 They have to stop letting someone get under their skin, 42:16 especially when it's not advancing your own interests. 42:21 Giving them free advertising. 42:22 Absolutely. That was one amazing study of Donald Trump, the immediate time he got 42:27 and how much it would have cost him to buy that time, 42:31 which would have been like many orders of magnitude more than other candidates spent. 42:36 And I think so much that it would have violated multiple campaign finance laws or something. 42:42 But yeah, you get a lot of free advertising, especially in the primary season. 42:47 In the United States, the way it works, for anyone who doesn't know, 42:52 there's a – especially the Democrats have a superdelegate system designed to suppress this, 42:59 but it also backfired against them last cycle because – well, it's a very long story. 43:04 But the Republican one is a little bit more first-past-the-post, winner-take-all type thing, 43:11 where you have to vote, and you have to vote for someone, and you don't want your vote to be split 43:17 because if your vote is split, there's no instant runoff, and there's no ranking, 43:20 and there's no anything like that. 43:21 If your vote is split, you're doomed. 43:23 So you have to narrow it down to a couple front runners before you pick in the primary. 43:29 And so in that way, anyone who can stand out for any reason has a big advantage, 43:35 especially when last time 17 people ran in the Republican Party, 43:40 making it the danger of splitting your vote much worse. 43:46 And then the party did a lot of wacky things. 43:48 There's so many things about Donald Trump was the only one who agreed – who didn't agree to – 43:54 he was threatening to run as a third party, and then they were ranking the candidates 43:57 so that the person with the most was in the center, and the people near the fringes 44:01 had the lowest polling numbers, just stigmatizing them as being unelectable. 44:08 So yes, a lot of crazy stuff happens, but this is a lot like that, 44:12 where it's a situation where if the vote is split – this happens very often in human behavior, 44:20 all kinds of things, like in the Army. 44:22 Imagine if your armed forces were split. 44:24 It's Napoleon, divide and conquer, right? 44:27 So if your forces were split, you would get crushed. 44:31 One small part would get crushed, and then the next small part would get crushed by a unified army. 44:38 So this is a very general problem. 44:42 Exactly, and then to wrap this back up into the crypto situation, 44:48 I find it interesting that there's these power dynamics where you talk about, well, 44:52 is this actually playing into the hand of the person, and the counterparty becomes a reactor 44:59 and giving them what they want. 45:01 I think to a certain degree that is a function of size, incumbency, 45:07 and who is the gorilla meme warrior sort of. 45:11 Gorilla. 45:12 In terms of – 45:13 You mean like hidden, or do you mean like a large ape? 45:17 I mean, in somewhat of a general sense, even though this isn't entirely true, 45:22 the incumbent, it's like a binary capture the flag or king of the hill scenario. 45:29 So they have the ground. 45:31 There's no more ground that they can gain. 45:33 The weaker parties or the smaller parties are trying to either have them cede that ground or gain it themselves. 45:41 So it always behooves the weaker parties, the smaller parties, to react, if you may call it that, 45:48 or even punch up to make that happen. 45:54 But if the incumbent actually – whether the best strategy for them would be to ignore, 46:00 but if any interaction happens, they're actually feeding the smaller party that needs that memetic attention. 46:08 Right. 46:09 Nassim Taleb mentioned something about this once when he was selling his book, Antifragile, 46:14 to like the publisher or something. 46:16 And he said, what if I got into a fist fight on stage with someone on like the Today Show or something? 46:23 And then it was like it would sell more books. 46:25 And in marketing, I think this is called congruence, 46:28 which is that you find someone who's famous, someone like whatever, someone like Oprah or something, 46:34 and then you have them and you have the brand, and they're both drawn towards each other. 46:40 So I don't know. 46:42 Hypothetically, Oprah would become more lame and the product would become more awesome. 46:47 They kind of have a kind of convergence. 46:52 I think it's called congruence even though it probably should be called convergence. 46:56 I don't know. 46:57 But, yeah, that's a real idea. 47:00 And there's even a phrase. 47:01 What's the phrase? 47:02 It's like a rising star shouldn't talk to, I don't know, a falling star or something. 47:09 I don't know what the exact phrase is, but there's something like that, which is that. 47:15 But, yeah, you're certainly right. 47:18 When a person engages with you in a certain frame, it could be as a conversation frame, 47:24 which then in a conversation people are generally equal. 47:27 So it's one side versus the other side. 47:30 And now you've made it two equal sides, even though by market cap it's extremely unequal. 47:37 It's like one twentieth of a side versus one side. 47:41 Exactly. 47:42 It's not exactly logic. 47:45 I'm reading this new book by one of the top guys over at Ogilvy and their behavioral science department. 47:55 Rory Sutherland. 47:56 The book is called I think it's The Art of Alchemy. 47:59 It's all about sort of his take on advertising, marketing and behavioral economics. 48:04 And he calls it psychologic. 48:06 And it's, you know, obviously our logical brain can't kind of process the fact that it seems like something with a market cap of three percent is somewhat on an equal footing of something with 70 percent. 48:20 You know, that doesn't make sense. 48:23 They shouldn't be in the same ballpark. 48:24 But when certain social interactions occur and certain memetic strategies are employed, they actually become equal. 48:30 And so that's sort of the psycho logic, the the the collective imagination of humans, you know, creating this this platform for these ideas to trade. 48:43 So then if you have. 48:44 OK, well, there was the presentation of memes and then there was the reaction, let's say, of of the crowd coming from various altcoin communities responding to the maximalist manifesto. 48:57 And then and then there's also the reaction from them to the reaction. 49:02 And so it became it becomes this domino effect of, well, where do you actually start the first domino? 49:08 And at the same time, you could even say the match, like no one would have really paid attention too much to the presentation by Goldstein if it was not for Pierre Richard reacting to Joshua Davis's morally ambiguous, you know, derogatory characterization of his face. 49:32 If not for that. 49:34 Yeah, I don't know. 49:35 That joke wasn't very funny either. 49:36 That's the true crime. 49:38 But it would it would it would counter the point that they are the. 49:41 But I know you mean. 49:42 Well, I mean, what's the culture is described as a conversation that began in like the African rainforest a long time ago that is still going on or something like that. 49:54 So. 49:55 Certainly, that's the case. I thought you were going to say that no one would have paid as much attention to Michael Goldstein's presentation if it weren't so hyperbolic and kind of designed to trigger people because it was so extreme and and it used very combative language. It was very sort of black and white for nuanced issues. It was kind of being very bold, but it was also very, you know, 50:22 and that was, again, sort of part of the purpose, just to sort of craft something that would have impact on people. 50:33 And so, yeah, I don't know. But definitely, as I said with Donald Trump and Craig S. Wright, it designed to get under people's skin, 50:43 even to the point where they it just gets under the people's skin and they just have a reaction to it. 50:48 And their reaction might not even be in their own best interest. 50:53 For sure. And then in the interest of the meme or in the interest of something else. 50:58 But what is interesting as it's, you know, there seems to be the 51:06 the one directional flow of there was an intended purpose, let's say, by Goldstein of being hyperbolic and thus he entrapped the reactionaries in their Twitter outrage. 51:19 But if the reactionaries are also aware of what's going on, I mean, I think everyone was sort of seeing somewhat of the tongue in cheekness and also seeing the validness of what Bitstein was talking about. 51:34 And then satirizing it and and bring it to a point of surrealness of where yours truly not to toot my horn, but creating the, you know, 51:46 breakout of, OK, they decided to boycott Mike Dudas and the block, which you could say that was part of the joke. 51:53 Other people took that as kind of crossing a line as well to kind of lump in a company that had nothing to do with it. 51:59 Employees and telling people that cancel subscriptions side of that, taking the Mike Dudas sort of throwing under the bus and satirizing that and making that a surreal campaign of hashtag justice for Dudas. 52:13 Or, you know, they found an innocent, which is funny. 52:17 Yeah, which, you know, it got some likes here and there. 52:19 But I think more of the qualitative measure of of how that penetrated was Mike Dudas himself retweeted that. 52:27 And people were confused when he was tweeting, not we are all Dudas, you know, they struck down an innocent and I had my profile as his profile picture and I changed my name. 52:39 So to that, yes, to the degree that we just take that and not using me as a as an example for myself, but just for a third party observing myself in the air. 52:54 You know, it went from Goldstein's intended to make everyone react and then people like myself seeing it, observing it and then twisting it even more, making it even more surreal. 53:04 And I think that's almost to going back to the Trump election. 53:08 That is what the meme war was. 53:10 It was people going even more surreal, even more. 53:16 Yes, I agree. Make it even more indecipherable, really. 53:19 Well, it's very the more the meta stuff. 53:21 See, the problem with being meta, though, is that, as I mentioned before, it's unclear who the real leader is. 53:29 If it's all completely a reaction to something that Michael Goldstein did, then it's like he's drawing the whole show, which you might not want as when you craft your own meme. 53:39 I mean, your own, I don't know, meme army or something. 53:43 But I want to mention something you said before about people couldn't tell was a part of the joke or not, which is that this is a very important aspect of humor, which is that it is it is like half true and half. 53:59 Play and whenever people play, they are obviously not. 54:02 If you're playing like cops and robbers, you absolutely are not really doing any of that stuff. 54:09 And if you go to see a play, then the people are not actually, you know, Macbeth or whatever. 54:15 They're they're actors. 54:17 So play is fake, but humor has a kind of involuntary truth to it. 54:23 It's hard if something you point out an absurdity with satire and people laugh, it reveals that it's true. 54:31 So humor has always been this this area where you can kind of like use it to tell the truth. 54:38 A truth that people don't want to admit or that can't be said aloud because it's a taboo. 54:44 Which comedians often do, but it can also be used to be very mean to someone and bully people and make fun of them and then say that, oh, we're just playing around, even though you really weren't. 54:54 And this is the power of humor that is in this ambiguous zone. 54:59 And it can touch truth and deception at the same time. 55:03 And it's it's very powerful that way. 55:06 So I had to bring that up. 55:08 I don't part of the like, is it sometimes you you wonder, like for a lot of this stuff that that Michael Goldstein and Pierre Rochard say, you think, like, do they really believe any of this or are they just seeing like what they can get away with, which is very much a Donald Trump maneuver, in my opinion, and I think a lot of I think that's a normal thing that people do. 55:36 And that is a feature of our modern world where you just want to see how many people you can, like, reach or persuade or and it's sort of the post-truth concept from Scott Adams or I guess a lot of people, but the Dilbert guy. 55:58 Yeah. 56:00 So he goes on about that. 56:02 I mean, there's also the notion here that what many people have been saying is like we've shifted to an attention economy that, you know, as we move towards abundance and shift into everyone being online and everyone being accessible and being able to now choose and on demand, decide how they consume content. 56:28 Ultimately, attention is the is the thing that you want and whoever controls the attention actually controls, you know, thoughts, behavior, actions. 56:39 And if all you're after is attention and that becomes more of a quantitative than qualitative issue for you. 56:47 Yeah. You don't care if what you're saying is totally true, totally morally sound. 56:56 It's more like, you know, most people's exactly right. 56:59 And if it on social media where people can share and like and retweet or whatever, share on Facebook, subscribe, like, etc., then the stuff that will get the most attention will be these memes because they can spread through the entire population. 57:19 And yeah, it doesn't matter if it's it can be Gangnam Style, right, or it could be a Rebecca Black Friday or something where it could be it could be for any reason or it could be something that really hurts people's freedom, hurts people's feelings. 57:34 And yeah, this is again, it's exactly the same with genes in which with infectious disease or with any animal, any plant or animal. 57:44 Or a disease or a virus or anything, those things, they have no idea why they do. 57:51 With humans being the noteworthy exception, no one knows why they do any of the things that they do. 57:58 You know, the influenza virus, it doesn't know what it's doing. 58:02 It just it just is an influenza virus. 58:04 It just does that. So the criterion is just does it replicate the fastest? 58:14 And that is sort of evolution of memes. 58:17 And yeah, certainly we have, we live in a world now where there is a way too much content. 58:25 We grew up, most people, I mean, even magazines, the idea of just having a magazine rack with a lot of pages and more stuff that you could read, that's pretty, pretty new in the grand scheme of things. 58:40 It's in 24 hour cable news. 58:43 I think that was 1980 or something. 58:45 So a lot of this is very new. 58:48 And but especially with social media, where you're a consumer and author, that gives the memes many generations to evolve. 58:56 And they do evolve. 58:57 And that's why you get these these things that spread very contagiously, you know, like Gotham style. 59:07 That's a harmless one. 59:08 But yeah, I don't know. 59:08 Like, so many of them are not many of them are harmful. 59:13 And I think that includes a lot of these, you know, if you go on Facebook these days, everyone's got like one or two crazy friends or family members. 59:23 And they just they share these political memes that I think instead of spreading by being entertaining, they spread by inducing anger or anxiety or fear, make people feel miserable. 59:38 But doesn't matter. 59:39 Whatever gets the chair, that will be the winner in the end. 59:42 So yeah, and as we were drawn to a conclusion on time here, as we wrap up and sum up, you know, we've been through, you know, the sort of general theory, what exactly this event brought to the table in terms of outgroups and groups. 59:59 What I want to get from you is what we go forward from here, like how do we use memetics as like an industry in general to foster a better community and a better roadmap of productive business and technology development? 1:00:16 How to be more productive? 1:00:17 Yes. 1:00:17 Well, that's I have a couple of things to say. 1:00:20 One is that in reference to my last point, it's possible, although not likely, but it's possible that Michael Goldstein doesn't believe anything he says about BTC maximalism, you know, as I just said, he could only be doing it for the memes. 1:00:35 I don't think that's the case. 1:00:37 I think he does believe a lot of it. 1:00:39 But again, belief is not required, merely a desire to be popular. 1:00:45 Second, though, he did mention something in his talk, and I didn't get to see the talk. 1:00:49 I only read the transcript. 1:00:50 So I don't know very much about the talk. 1:00:53 But he did say that you have to, I mean, the memes spread. 1:01:03 Again, they have different strategies, but a funny little meme. 1:01:08 Certain types of memes become harder to spread if the audience is very smart or well informed. 1:01:16 So you could try only to appeal to a certain type of audience or a certain type of medium, a slower medium. 1:01:25 Twitter is a very fast medium, right? 1:01:28 It's like a real time conversation. 1:01:31 And it's just built to have things taken out of context, because it's only a tiny, tiny little snippet. 1:01:38 You're devoutly encouraged to excerpt a mere 280 characters. 1:01:48 So you could instead, you know, as Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. 1:01:55 So you could start like a journal of Bitcoin. 1:01:59 That would be, you know, with intense quality checking and basic journalistic sort of integrity where you get both sides. 1:02:08 You have both sides comment on every story whenever there's a controversy. 1:02:11 The problem with that is it's definitely going to be boring compared to Twitter and harder to read. 1:02:16 So it depends on what you want. 1:02:18 If you want accurate information, one thing you could do, the best thing to do is build a world where people are punished. 1:02:24 For being wrong, then they'll know that Twitter is good for hearing about rumors and new events and getting news. 1:02:33 But that if they ever really want to know something, they have to investigate it themselves. 1:02:37 Maybe read some PDFs, you know, or books or hear someone talk or meet with them in person or call them or ask them questions. 1:02:47 So one thing would be if you could, if there was a way to make sure that when people were wrong about something, they paid some kind of cost for that. 1:03:00 And there are a lot of concepts for that. 1:03:03 Prediction markets is one, but just having different markets for BTC and BCH is another. 1:03:10 Or you could say, well, if BTC people really are totally deluded, then they will bear a huge cost because the cost will be eventually the project will collapse and the coin, which could have been worth $10,000 each, would be worth nothing instead. 1:03:27 That's if that if all that's true. 1:03:32 There is, what was I going to say? 1:03:34 There's a kind of, what you want is to have a situation where, you see, part of the point of Michael Goldstein's talk is that there is a kind of simultaneity or there's a kind of, when you bet on BTC versus BCH, it's not just on the tech, it is also on the brand and the sort of 1:04:04 network effect. And the network effect is how many people know about it and sort of and want it and accept it. The market demand and how many people have wallets that are configured for this or for that. And so you're really betting on a few things at once. 1:04:23 When you bet on BCH versus BTC. 1:04:27 And it's difficult to, because if 1:04:33 if he or if the BTC community has a stronger meme game, then their money will be more recognizable and recognizability is one of the properties of money. 1:04:45 It's the one property of money that is explicitly psychological. So that's kind of difficult. I mean, you almost want to 1:04:55 It depends on how to answer your question is difficult because there's a question that went something along the lines of how do we have a productive environment, but it's partially like, how do we 1:05:06 have a productive environment could be interpreted as saying like, does the environment have a good meme game? Does it have good marketing? Does it have, does it, does it write technology better? 1:05:17 And those are all different. So I think my answer your question is horribly confused and 1:05:21 And unhelpful, but I don't know. I think what I said about meme hygiene probably helps. I mean, maybe take a day off of Twitter. If you find yourself if you notice yourself doing things and you can't clearly explain 1:05:33 Why you're doing them and why they are 1:05:36 Helping you achieve your goals, then it's possible that you actually aren't doing them and you're this meme has installed itself in your brain. 1:05:44 And it's forcing you to do that without without and preventing you from seeing why 1:05:49 Which is how they work. Many of them. So, and you know, and the influenza virus infects your body. Why, why can't you just tell yourself, well, I don't want to make a trillion copies of the influenza virus today. It doesn't work like that. Right. It's it hijacks. So if you notice I yourself being manipulated by memes. I would stop because it's a great way to waste a lot of time. 1:06:10 If you notice reacting to stuff that other people do 1:06:16 Does that serve your interests, maybe, but probably not, especially if those people are hostile to your interests. So I would focus on meme hygiene. I think it's actually 1:06:28 So I would focus on meme hygiene. I think it's actually yeah before you do mean craft. Yeah, it's like people would have to learn about hygiene before they open their own genetic laboratory. Right. So you should settle for that. And these memes, you know, again, they're very specialized they highly evolved because they have many generations in a day as they spread around the internet and through all the different time zones of the world and back. 1:06:55 They have variation and selection. So it's Darwinian. So you shouldn't feel ashamed if they brainwash you because there is a constant assault and it is a giant, you know, it's like everyone is linked to the same blood bank or something when you go on Twitter. So it's, you shouldn't be surprised, you get a very highly infectious thing. I don't know, I guess that's what I would say, I would say, work on hygiene first. 1:07:21 There we go. To sum up and paraphrase to be more productive in crypto, stay off of Twitter. 1:07:28 Yeah, that might be it. And yeah, okay. Well, thank you, Paul. This has been great. And everyone stay spicy. 1:07:51 All right, we are back. That was our interview with Paul. Great guy. Great topic. Talked a lot about memes, what they mean, crypto, everything. So that was fun. I want to know what you guys think. Get in the chat. How do you think Paul nailed the mean subject? 1:08:21 Did he unlock something that we didn't see before? Did I say something that maybe triggered something in your brain? What do you have to say? I want to know your theories on memes. Post them in the chat, throw them on Twitter. Make sure to tag at Coinspice, at Truthcoin, at underscore Peter Ryan. Let us hear your thoughts. 1:08:39 So on top of that, guys, we have a few more topics to wrap up here. We have number one, the dank meme contest, which is dank meme of the week. Go to that tweet. It's in the chat. Submit your dank meme and then we'll look in a few moments. Who is the winner? Stiff competition. So bring your A game. 1:09:05 On top of that, I want to turn back over to, guys, our free sock giveaway contest. Go to the tweet. Go hit like. Go hit retweet. Make sure you follow us so you can get your free pair of socks. And again, you're getting any size, small, medium, large, male, female socks. 1:09:29 And you're just going to be feeling spicy. You're going to be feeling good. You know, a lot of people talk about crypto merch and they don't always love wearing big, obnoxious logos when they're walking around. So this is a great way to rep your lifestyle, which is crypto, but a little bit more on the down low, a little bit more subtle. So get these socks and be part of the crypto universe. 1:09:56 So go there. Make sure you have to follow. You have to like. You have to retweet. And when we will decide, we will choose randomly from all the people that are in this list right here. And, oh, we just had a little bump up in the retweets there when I was saying that. So make sure you do that. And we will DM you saying you are the lucky winner and we will send you a free pair of spicy socks. So please go and do that. 1:10:18 Great. Great. So anyway, guys, we're going back. This is it. We're at Spicy Meme. We're at Dank Meme of the Week. So here we go. We're jumping in. All right, guys. What do you got? What do you got to work with? Last chance. I'll do one. I'll do one reload after this first review. So jump in there. 1:10:42 All right. So first up, we have Vile Skrelli, also known as Coin Alchemist. We have, oh, interesting. Green coin go down. Lots of orange coin go up. Interesting. Oh, this is a lot of things going on here. This is perfect. This is like a meta, meta meme. It's meta. Very interesting. 1:11:10 Okay. The complexity is definitely on point. Here we are. Okay. We got Mike coming in with a picture from Reform Bitcoiner. And it's just a gaggle of maximalists. Who doesn't want to be a part of that? Come on, guys. I mean, doesn't that look attractive? 1:11:40 Going back down. Okay. We got Claudio Gill coming in. World population. What's going on here, buddy? World population. All Maxis. Oh, okay. Okay. Simple, guys. Simple. 1:12:02 Oh, okay. That just, that was a nice, thought that was it. But he was directly commenting on Zach Voel, a comparison of Bitcoin and fiat ATMs. Interesting. Okay. That just gave it some bonus points for that. 1:12:21 Anthony Banks coming in. I detect activity. Okay. This is a gif. I don't know if this qualifies of a meme. I don't know. It's just a gorilla chewing. I don't know how it relates. Okay. I don't know. The judges will have to go back to the, you know, the back room to decide on this gif entry. You might be disqualified. 1:12:45 Samuel J. Gosling. What do we got here? We got a Pepe. Oh, we got a Pepe Pepper, guys. Very, very brand appropriate. Very brand appropriate. Points on that. Okay. So we're going to do one refresh. You better have gotten in there. 1:13:05 All right. So we did a refresh. Okay. So no new entries. Okay. So who are we going with? Who are we going with? Who are we going with? Who are we going with? Okay. And it's the Pepe Pepper. Samuel J. J. Gosling coming in. 1:13:32 Classic. Simple. Not a lot else going on. That's what we want, guys. Congratulations. Dank Meme of the Week. Samuel J. J. Gosling coming in strong. Make sure to follow him. XGazi. Awesome stuff, guys. Thank you for everyone that contributed to the Dank Meme of the Week. 1:13:53 Make sure you go to our Twitter that you check out all this. You check out the free sock giveaway contest and make sure to like, retweet, and follow us. Make sure to go to all our channels, Instagram, Telegram, our newsletter, and make sure you get everything Coinspice in every way possible. 1:14:09 Again, here's our store. If you don't want to participate in the contest and you just want to get your socks right away and you want to help us out a little bit, go in there and buy your own socks and, hey, grab a t-shirt while you're at it. So anyway, guys, this has been Coinspice Live. I'm Peter Ryan. Make sure to follow me at at underscore Peter Ryan and catch the memes that I got pumping in the next few days. So stay spicy. 1:14:39 We'll see you next time. 1:15:07 Hold on, guys. 1:15:32 I just got word. 1:15:33 Jason's son is on the way, and he said he was going to interview with us. 1:15:39 Hold on. 1:15:42 He's coming to the phone right now. 1:15:44 I have his assistant on right now. 1:15:46 I thought he wasn't going to make it. 1:15:47 I just went offline. 1:15:49 And hold on. 1:15:59 All right. 1:16:07 So I just got news because Mike in space was distracted and didn't actually report the 1:16:16 Daily Mempool. 1:16:19 Justin's son was involved in a Bitcoin transaction accident that delayed him to such a degree 1:16:29 that there was no way he could make it to this interview tonight. 1:16:33 And he's just backlogged and his entire office is in chaos right now. 1:16:43 Come on. 1:16:44 We're going to go to our re-correspondent to see what his reaction is. 1:16:48 Pokes, what is the reaction? 1:16:56 I know I feel the same way. 1:16:59 Mike, you got to take the headphones off. 1:17:02 Anyway, goodbye, everybody.