We're here with Paul Sztorc at the Bitcoin 2019 conference.

Paul, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

What got you first interested in BTC?

Let me think.

Well, I think it was the Silk Road, the article about Silk Road in Wired or whatever it was.

And I thought like, well, you know, if you've got a bunch of people who are like drug addicts can get this to work without cheating it, it must be solid.

And that was back in, what was that, 2011, I think.

And I was like, oh, why can't these people use a credit card?

And then I was like, oh, yeah, because your name and your address is in there.

So that was kind of the spark.

And then I looked into it more on the forums.

And I kind of thought, oh, this isn't like some scam.

This is like a real project with like people behind it.

So that was kind of the story in very broad strokes.

But it really was that Wired article.

I kind of finished it.

I finished reading the Wired article about Silk Road.

And I was like, this is going to be used for every illegal transaction in the world.

And then I was like, and it can also be used for every legal transaction in the world.

And I was like, well, that's just, you know, that's just how that's going to go down.

So it kind of all clicked into place.

I literally just, I really owe whoever wrote that article a favor or something.

Are you aware that in 2017 the developers of the Bitcoin Core software changed the rules of Bitcoin

so that it no longer follows the white paper?

Well, I'm not sure completely that I'm aware of that.

But I know they did change the rules to add SegWit.

So the protocol did change from 0.14 to 0.15.

I don't know. I can't remember my versions right now.

Well, what do you think of people saying that BTC is Bitcoin now?

I think in general they're correct because the definitions of words are socially determined in my view.

And when you have BTC as the market cap leader consistently,

basically like for 100% of the consecutive days of the dispute.

And in general, the vernacular people use, more people use BTC to refer to Bitcoin.

And so that's kind of what I think.

I just kind of think that's the way we use words, right?

When you go to a different country, you can't just tell them that their word.

You can't go to Germany and say when they say nine, they have to use it to refer to a quantity of nine.

When to them it means no, you have to use their word.

So your word languages are a theory about what other people, symbols that other people have mapped to concepts.

So you have to guess what the audience is doing, I think.

But do you think that people buying BTC now believe that it has the properties of Bitcoin as described in the white paper?

I would say probably. I think so.

I think so. I mean, they may. Who knows how much research people do before they.

I'm not actually sure what people know when they buy Bitcoin.

That would be an interesting project to look into that.

They may not know very much. They may know some.

Well, can I onboard you to the real Bitcoin BSV now?

OK, we'll get. Do you have an Android phone? OK.

I want you to go to the App Store and get get hand cash.

Yeah. I'm going to show you show you the power of zero conf and handles.

Yeah. Yes.

Someone was telling me to get a handle. Someone was multiple people told me to get handles.

Yeah. OK, well, now you're going to you're going to get one.

So I actually own a lot of BSV, you know, through the logic of forks.

Well, yeah. Well, now you can now you have some you can spend.

All right. Well. Yeah.

Yeah. Do it. Do whatever you want. Here we go.

OK, what's your handle? Yes.

Classic. Oh, yeah, that's it.

OK, I just sent you one dollar and 13 cents in BSV.

Well, congratulations. Now you are free of the BTC scam.

That's all it takes. How are you? How do you feel?

I feel great. I feel mostly the same the way I felt a couple of seconds ago, but I do feel a little better, I think.

OK, glad to hear it. And it's good to see you today. Any final thoughts?

I don't know. Long Bitcoin, short the bankers. I don't know.

OK, thank you.