# Dan Olson, Part 1 - Crypto, NFTs, and Tech’s War on Doubt

An episode of [Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1534370789), 18 Mar 2026, 53 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/f804eed6-dd2f-4bf9-ba37-b2de011a8b27/427977d2-2095-4665-82b0-b401014a2264/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=462fb424-93c4-4e4b-8e00-b2de011a8b44

This week, Dan Olson of the YouTube channel Folding Ideas joins the show for a deep dive into crypto, NFTs, and why so many of these spaces start to feel less like finance and more like belief systems. He breaks down the history of Bitcoin, what cryptocurrencies actually are, and how NFTs exploded into the mainstream, with investor communities promising not just wealth, but destiny–as long as they suppress their doubt and stay in line. They discuss the gender divide and whether crypto is MLMs for men: same promises of prosperity, different packaging. Plus, some of the insider jargon and acronyms used to shut down skepticism, and how it all added up to a financial technology becoming a social identity. And stay tuned for part two next week, when Dan will zoom in on the role of charismatic leaders in driving the decision-making. SOURCES Folding Ideas See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Trust me? Do you trust me?
[0:04] Speaker 2: Right? Everly?
[0:05] Speaker 1: And you astray trust? This is the truth, the only truth.
[0:09] Speaker 3: If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
[0:13] Speaker 3: welcome to trust me. The podcast about colt S extreme
[0:16] Speaker 3: belief and manipulation from two crypto babes who've actually experienced it.
[0:21] Speaker 4: I'm Lola Blanc. What's up? What's up? I'm Megan Elizabeth.
[0:25] Speaker 2: Wow.
[0:26] Speaker 4: Sounds like a real crypto babe over here.
[0:30] Speaker 3: This week is part one of our two parter with
[0:32] Speaker 3: Dan Olsen of YouTube channel Folding Ideas.
[0:35] Speaker 4: He is brilliant and he is going.
[0:37] Speaker 3: To talk to us about crypto NFTs and the cultiness
[0:40] Speaker 3: of these communities. He will be breaking down the history
[0:43] Speaker 3: of bitcoin and what cryptocurrencies actually are, how NFTs came about,
[0:48] Speaker 3: and we're basically an Emperor's new close situation, and the
[0:51] Speaker 3: cult like thinking that began to emerge in many of
[0:53] Speaker 3: these online communities, promising potential investors not just wealth but
[0:57] Speaker 3: destiny as long as they suppressed their out.
[1:01] Speaker 2: We'll discuss the gender divide between crypto promises of prosperity
[1:06] Speaker 2: versus say New Age promises of prosperity. Some of the
[1:11] Speaker 2: jargon and acronyms used by its communities to keep people
[1:15] Speaker 2: in and how it all added up to a culture
[1:17] Speaker 2: that discouraged doubt and demanded keeping the faith no matter what.
[1:22] Speaker 3: And next week we will discuss how charismatic leaders drive
[1:25] Speaker 3: basically all of this behavior and lots more.
[1:29] Speaker 2: This was a world that I've been wanting to delve into.
[1:32] Speaker 2: I know a lot of people who invest and that
[1:35] Speaker 2: I myself tried my hand in a little and investing
[1:40] Speaker 2: in crypto, and you know, it's the wild, wild West
[1:44] Speaker 2: out there, So it was really cool to speak to
[1:47] Speaker 2: somebody who's so thoroughly well versed.
[1:50] Speaker 4: Indeed, it is something that I have.
[1:53] Speaker 3: Tried to understand and just failed over and over again,
[1:56] Speaker 3: and he breaks it down in a way I can
[1:57] Speaker 3: actually understand.
[1:59] Speaker 4: And I think that's part of the plan.
[2:01] Speaker 2: You know, he will say on this podcast, is like
[2:03] Speaker 2: it makes it so complicated that people are like.
[2:05] Speaker 4: Well, I guess it must be really smart. Totally. Yeah.
[2:09] Speaker 2: Any who, I bet you're wondering about my cultiust thing.
[2:11] Speaker 2: Oh oh my god. Cut me out saying any who,
[2:14] Speaker 2: what the hell? Anyway, I bet you're probably wondering about
[2:17] Speaker 2: my cultius thing.
[2:19] Speaker 4: Oh my god, I so am how did you know?
[2:21] Speaker 2: I had just some psychic Okay, so mine involves crypto.
[2:25] Speaker 2: This was a kidnapping last year that happened in Brooklyn,
[2:30] Speaker 2: I believe, or at least New York City. So an
[2:33] Speaker 2: Italian man came to New York City. He had a
[2:37] Speaker 2: lot of money in crypto, and two men kidnapped him
[2:43] Speaker 2: for seventeen days where they tortured him for his Bitcoin password.
[2:50] Speaker 3: Seventeen days is a lot of days of torture, electric
[2:54] Speaker 3: shock by the rest him over the stairs, starting to
[3:00] Speaker 3: kill him if he did not provide his Bitcoin password,
[3:03] Speaker 3: and then made him smoke crack cocaine whoa which you know,
[3:09] Speaker 3: very specific, very specific.
[3:12] Speaker 2: They would pour tequila on him and light him on
[3:15] Speaker 2: fire and then urinate on him like this would bury
[3:19] Speaker 2: my god. And the two guys doing this to this
[3:23] Speaker 2: man in New York are like two finance bros. Of course,
[3:27] Speaker 2: those are the people torturing somebody in an apartment. And
[3:31] Speaker 2: it wasn't any apartment. It was like a very expensive apartment.
[3:35] Speaker 2: But he was able to say, I'm gonna go get
[3:39] Speaker 2: the laptop to sign in after all of this, which
[3:41] Speaker 2: ps five seconds of torture, and I'm like, here's all
[3:44] Speaker 2: the bitcoins. So already we're in a culture that you
[3:47] Speaker 2: and I are not you know, understanding quite So he
[3:52] Speaker 2: ran out, escaped, found a cop, and they led them back.
[3:56] Speaker 4: There was night goggles, body.
[3:59] Speaker 2: Arm chicken wire t shirts with the picture of the
[4:04] Speaker 2: victim on it with his whack pipe in his mouth.
[4:07] Speaker 4: What what, ballistic.
[4:09] Speaker 2: Helmets, polaroid pictures of the guy with firearms pointed at
[4:14] Speaker 2: his holl.
[4:14] Speaker 3: My god, I have to say these men, they are creative.
[4:18] Speaker 3: They maybe entered the wrong field.
[4:20] Speaker 2: They entered the wrong field, and so they are obviously
[4:25] Speaker 2: both in custody. This is the man who is torturing.
[4:28] Speaker 2: He's one of the tortures.
[4:30] Speaker 3: Whoa oka, yes, okay, she sent me a picture of
[4:34] Speaker 3: a white man in a polo shirt with brown hair,
[4:37] Speaker 3: and it's giving Michael Pitt in Funny Games if anyone
[4:42] Speaker 3: has seen that. And it's also giving that serial rapist
[4:46] Speaker 3: that I went on a couple of dates with and
[4:47] Speaker 3: had no idea he was serially raping women in his
[4:50] Speaker 3: own prison for Harvard grad.
[4:52] Speaker 4: Very clean cut looking.
[4:54] Speaker 3: Anyone who's clean cut looking, now, I don't trust it automatically.
[4:57] Speaker 4: You've done some shit? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, A
[5:00] Speaker 4: clean cut is seek how white dudes, that's a no
[5:03] Speaker 4: for me.
[5:04] Speaker 2: So uh, anyway, that's mine and it goes along with crypto,
[5:08] Speaker 2: and it just made me think, Wow, what a dangerous world.
[5:11] Speaker 2: And there's so much I'm not understanding about this that
[5:13] Speaker 2: somebody wouldn't give over their password, even though I understand
[5:16] Speaker 2: that there's millions of dollars at stake, but just threatening
[5:19] Speaker 2: to be killed, it's somehow different than real money. Seemingly,
[5:24] Speaker 2: there's obviously some emotional attachment to this crypto that's even
[5:28] Speaker 2: more than just monetary, because so often when people are
[5:33] Speaker 2: held at gunpoint or tortured, they hand over their money,
[5:36] Speaker 2: you know.
[5:37] Speaker 3: Exactly whatever it also represented an addition to the money
[5:41] Speaker 3: must have been.
[5:41] Speaker 4: Very powerful, is what we get into in this episode. Totally.
[5:45] Speaker 4: So before we do, what's your cultist thing of the week?
[5:48] Speaker 4: Oh my god.
[5:49] Speaker 3: So I sometimes I just google the word cult and
[5:51] Speaker 3: see what comes up. And this week I googled the
[5:53] Speaker 3: word cult and I saw a headline that said ancient
[5:56] Speaker 3: Greek mystery cult priestesses may have chemically tweaked fung to
[6:00] Speaker 3: induce psychedelic hallucinations from Live science dot com article by
[6:04] Speaker 3: Tom Metcalf. Obviously, I needed to know who these ancient
[6:07] Speaker 3: Greek mystery cult priestesses were and what this.
[6:09] Speaker 4: Fungus was all about.
[6:11] Speaker 3: And I learned mystery cults were these secret religious schools
[6:16] Speaker 3: in the Greco Roman world with initiations and rituals, and
[6:19] Speaker 3: only initiates could participate, and there was ritual purification, there
[6:24] Speaker 3: was sacrifice, there was fasting, but all depended on which
[6:28] Speaker 3: myth of the gods the cult was centered around. So
[6:30] Speaker 3: this one is the Elusinian Mysteries. Apparently the most revered
[6:36] Speaker 3: secret religious initiations in ancient Greece. It was to honor
[6:40] Speaker 3: the god's demeter and persephony. Okay, so these guys, they
[6:45] Speaker 3: had their annual rights twice a year, often involved sacred
[6:48] Speaker 3: processions to cult sites, ritual bathing in the sea, animal sacrifices,
[6:53] Speaker 3: and fasting for several days. And the reason for this
[6:56] Speaker 3: headline because I was like, why do we care? Like
[6:58] Speaker 3: I googled the name of this group. Were they investing
[7:01] Speaker 3: in crypto?
[7:02] Speaker 1: Oh?
[7:02] Speaker 4: My god, they were.
[7:05] Speaker 3: So when you look up the name of this group,
[7:07] Speaker 3: the Eleusinian Mysteries, it's just like, were.
[7:11] Speaker 4: They on drugs? Were they not on drugs? Were they
[7:13] Speaker 4: on drugs? Were they not on drugs, And.
[7:14] Speaker 3: I was like, why what is the debate about whether
[7:15] Speaker 3: this group was on drugs. They probably were on drugs,
[7:18] Speaker 3: but apparently this is like a big source of debate
[7:22] Speaker 3: in the academic world. I think because there were so
[7:27] Speaker 3: many intense religious revelations reported there, and then of course
[7:33] Speaker 3: people in the sixties and seventies were like, whoa, we're
[7:35] Speaker 3: doing so much LSD. They must have been doing so
[7:37] Speaker 3: many shrooms. It's been like this ongoing debate about like, well,
[7:41] Speaker 3: they had shrooms, but the kind of shrooms they had
[7:43] Speaker 3: would have killed yah, and they were deeply poisonous, so
[7:46] Speaker 3: there's no way they were doing shrooms. And now this
[7:48] Speaker 3: new study is like, aha, but if they prepared it
[7:50] Speaker 3: in a particular way, it would not have killed them.
[7:53] Speaker 3: So I guess this is the big development in the
[7:56] Speaker 3: ancient Greek cult.
[8:00] Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, we need to do an episode on
[8:04] Speaker 2: that cult? And what I join at, Yes, I would.
[8:08] Speaker 2: Drugs are no drugs, so I wanted to learn more
[8:12] Speaker 2: about it. And how odd that that's the focal point
[8:16] Speaker 2: right now?
[8:17] Speaker 3: I know, But you know, there's a there's an area
[8:20] Speaker 3: of study for everything.
[8:22] Speaker 4: Sure I phrased that oddly, but you know what I mean,
[8:26] Speaker 4: and you know who studies crypto.
[8:28] Speaker 2: Dan dan Olsen our guest today, shall we we shall.
[8:44] Speaker 3: Dan Olsen, welcome to trust me. Thank you so much
[8:47] Speaker 3: for joining.
[8:48] Speaker 1: Us, Thank you for having me.
[8:50] Speaker 3: As we were just saying, before we were recording, we
[8:54] Speaker 3: watched your uh, your NFT and crypto video and grasped
[8:59] Speaker 3: maybe their percent of it.
[9:00] Speaker 4: So we are.
[9:01] Speaker 3: Relying on you today to translate to us like we
[9:05] Speaker 3: are five years old. But there is so much to
[9:07] Speaker 3: get into just with the cultiness of these tech cultures.
[9:12] Speaker 3: But first of all, can you just talk to us
[9:14] Speaker 3: a little bit about your YouTube channel folding ideas and
[9:17] Speaker 3: the various topics you've covered, like flat earthers NFTs. Is
[9:20] Speaker 3: there a through line and the types of topics that
[9:23] Speaker 3: you choose to dive into.
[9:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, So the channel, I've been running it for fifteen
[9:30] Speaker 1: This will be the sixteenth year.
[9:32] Speaker 4: Wow.
[9:33] Speaker 1: Yeah, the channel's gone through a number of evolutions over
[9:37] Speaker 1: time in terms of like the subject matter that most
[9:42] Speaker 1: immediately grabs my attention, But the through line has always
[9:46] Speaker 1: been narrative. It's been stories and like the craft of
[9:49] Speaker 1: storytelling not just applied to fiction but to the wider world.
[9:58] Speaker 1: There's a long running theory that oral tradition that the
[10:02] Speaker 1: ability to tell each other's stories is one of the
[10:04] Speaker 1: earliest technologies that humans developed in order to preserve knowledge
[10:09] Speaker 1: and pass information from one generation to the next. And
[10:13] Speaker 1: that's why we now have spacecraft and you know, aren't
[10:17] Speaker 1: just aren't still hanging out in the trees. You know,
[10:21] Speaker 1: I don't want to just like overharp that. You know,
[10:25] Speaker 1: it's really easy for someone you know, with a specialty
[10:29] Speaker 1: to convince themselves that it's like, oh, well, my specialty
[10:32] Speaker 1: is like the most important one. You know, Oh I
[10:36] Speaker 1: write stories? Well, did you know stories are actually like
[10:40] Speaker 1: the core of human human technology? I don't. I don't
[10:44] Speaker 1: want to hype it up like that, but it is,
[10:45] Speaker 1: like it is undeniably a very old tradition, is very
[10:48] Speaker 1: deeply baked into the way that humans interface with one another,
[10:53] Speaker 1: and the the techniques of storytelling are not just limited
[10:59] Speaker 1: to fiction, because stories are ultimately a way of like
[11:02] Speaker 1: compressing information and making something digestible, making it easier to transfer,
[11:07] Speaker 1: making it easier to retain, giving it patterns that make sense.
[11:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, and if it's compelling enough, people will follow it
[11:16] Speaker 2: anywhere it might.
[11:17] Speaker 3: Lead, regardless of the evidence behind it.
[11:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, So I just I use that
[11:26] Speaker 1: lens as a way of sort of breaking down different subjects.
[11:32] Speaker 1: And I knew very early on when I was getting
[11:36] Speaker 1: started on the channel that if I picked something like
[11:39] Speaker 1: were Wolf movies to talk about that I would I
[11:42] Speaker 1: would rapidly like exhaust the material that I wanted to
[11:46] Speaker 1: talk about. I would get bored. So I specifically, when
[11:49] Speaker 1: I was building the channel, I was like, Okay, I
[11:51] Speaker 1: need to make sure that I've got a framework that
[11:54] Speaker 1: will allow me to just kind of like follow my
[11:56] Speaker 1: interests and go where the story ye is, where is
[12:00] Speaker 1: the thing to talk about? And so that has allowed
[12:05] Speaker 1: me to move kind of seamlessly from talking about specific
[12:09] Speaker 1: movies or television shows, books, et cetera, into talking about politics, propaganda,
[12:17] Speaker 1: the meta narrative of the military, something like crypto, something
[12:24] Speaker 1: like the metaverse, which are effectively just these you know,
[12:27] Speaker 1: they're they're advertising pitches, which is a form of storytelling.
[12:32] Speaker 4: M hm, precisely. Yeah.
[12:34] Speaker 3: In particular, loved your video on flat earthers because, I mean,
[12:39] Speaker 3: for a number of reasons. First of all, you just
[12:41] Speaker 3: dive so deeply into it, but it also kind of
[12:43] Speaker 3: functions as a MythBusters for conspiracy theories, which which I love,
[12:47] Speaker 3: which is probably too reductive to you, but to me,
[12:50] Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, I want, I need. I want to
[12:52] Speaker 3: watch someone break down like what is rational and what
[12:56] Speaker 3: is not rational and how much of this is driven
[12:58] Speaker 3: by emotion?
[12:58] Speaker 4: And that's that's kind of what we want to focus
[13:00] Speaker 4: on today.
[13:01] Speaker 3: Is these subcultures that develop around a story that somebody
[13:07] Speaker 3: is telling about how the people engaging in it are special.
[13:11] Speaker 4: And so with that said, can we talk about crypto.
[13:17] Speaker 3: Let's talk about okay, so for for the Nube like us,
[13:23] Speaker 3: just in very simple terms, like what is crypto currency?
[13:27] Speaker 4: Uh?
[13:27] Speaker 1: Cryptocurrency is uh? Oh boy? Which which which definition? To
[13:35] Speaker 1: pull out of the bag because it's so malleable. It's
[13:38] Speaker 1: been so many different things over the years. The original
[13:41] Speaker 1: pitch was digital money, which what was digital cash? I
[13:46] Speaker 1: shouldn't say digital money, was digital cash that if you
[13:51] Speaker 1: think about a dollar bill that you've got in your pocket.
[13:55] Speaker 1: No one is really paying attention to that specific dollar bill,
[13:59] Speaker 1: but it is also that specific dollar bill if you
[14:03] Speaker 1: wrote a little note on the side of it, you know,
[14:05] Speaker 1: like people like to deface bills, like they'll draw funny
[14:08] Speaker 1: faces on whoever's on it or up in Canada, one
[14:12] Speaker 1: of our our five dollars bill for a long time
[14:14] Speaker 1: had a prime minister on it that was very easy
[14:17] Speaker 1: to alter, so that he looked like Spock from Star Trek.
[14:24] Speaker 2: You're saying, you can have multiple one dollar bills, but
[14:27] Speaker 2: only there's only one each dollar bill.
[14:30] Speaker 1: Yes, if you deface a bill, if you stamp something on,
[14:34] Speaker 1: if you whatever like that follows that bill. Yes, and
[14:37] Speaker 1: like you could, in theory, if you were insane, track
[14:42] Speaker 1: your single bit, like you could go find it again
[14:46] Speaker 1: and like you get that specific bill back. It is
[14:48] Speaker 1: a unique object in and of itself. So there was
[14:52] Speaker 1: this story of like digital cash, that it behaves like
[14:54] Speaker 1: cash in that you've got a wallet that you've just
[14:57] Speaker 1: got stuff full of bills, but those individual bills are
[15:01] Speaker 1: no one's really like you know, no one can track them.
[15:04] Speaker 1: It's not tied to a bank account. It's not just
[15:06] Speaker 1: a immaterial ledger of debits and credits. It's it's a
[15:12] Speaker 1: it's a thing. It's a conceptual thing that moves from
[15:16] Speaker 1: place to place. And that's sort of this metaphor that
[15:18] Speaker 1: they were using with with bitcoin that fell apart very quickly,
[15:25] Speaker 1: and it instead became this narrative. The one that's been
[15:30] Speaker 1: the most dominant for the longest time is digital gold,
[15:34] Speaker 1: which has some of the same elements of the cash story,
[15:40] Speaker 1: but just sort of alters the expectation of what you're
[15:44] Speaker 1: going to do with it, right, so that it's like, oh,
[15:47] Speaker 1: it's digital gold, You're not meant to spend it. You're
[15:51] Speaker 1: meant to like hoard it, and you know, and then occasionally,
[15:55] Speaker 1: if you need to spend it, you convert it into
[15:58] Speaker 1: some other more bendable format.
[16:01] Speaker 2: Right. So, going back to what you were saying about
[16:04] Speaker 2: storytelling being kind of the most primal way humans seem
[16:10] Speaker 2: to communicate, can you kind of talk us through like
[16:13] Speaker 2: what is the mythical origins of these people that were
[16:18] Speaker 2: trusting to be in charge of this kind of I'm
[16:22] Speaker 2: comparing it to a cult later, and what's kind of
[16:26] Speaker 2: the inner narrative people have about themselves once they're on
[16:30] Speaker 2: this particular path. Because I'm imagining it's I'm a I'm
[16:35] Speaker 2: an early adapter. I'm against the grain, but I would
[16:37] Speaker 2: love to hear what you oh boy.
[16:40] Speaker 1: So the initial digital narrative around bitcoin was very much
[16:45] Speaker 1: rooted in the two thousand and eight financial crisis and
[16:48] Speaker 1: a distrust of banks and a distrust of the government
[16:51] Speaker 1: to adequately regulate banks and to punish banks for malfeasance
[16:58] Speaker 1: and wrongdoing and spreading chaos and destruction in their wake
[17:02] Speaker 1: through negligence and reckless behavior. That's what it was rooted in.
[17:07] Speaker 1: And so the initial identity that people attached to bitcoin
[17:12] Speaker 1: adoption was this, we are breaking away from the system.
[17:16] Speaker 1: We are building our own system. We are creating something
[17:21] Speaker 1: that the man cannot touch. And it turns out the
[17:26] Speaker 1: man can very touch it. Man can touch it. Yeah,
[17:32] Speaker 1: so the tightrope to walk here really is kind of
[17:35] Speaker 1: like and this was why line goes up My video
[17:39] Speaker 1: on the subject wound up being kind of so big
[17:42] Speaker 1: and so fast paced despite being two hours long. Is
[17:46] Speaker 1: that there's this frequently huge disconnect between the myth and
[17:52] Speaker 1: the actual pragmatic reality of what you're doing. But so
[17:56] Speaker 1: if we're just going with, like internally, what's that identity,
[18:01] Speaker 1: it's this identity of self reliance, of breaking away from
[18:06] Speaker 1: the system, of being a willing outsider, you know, a
[18:10] Speaker 1: digital hermit. And also that gets mixed in with factions
[18:15] Speaker 1: that are very much about like, oh, it's not just
[18:18] Speaker 1: it's not just breaking away. You're not just the digital
[18:21] Speaker 1: version of the guy with gold bullion hiding in the woods.
[18:26] Speaker 1: You are actually on the cutting edge. You're cyberpunk. You
[18:31] Speaker 1: your ten steps ahead of the system you're in. You're
[18:35] Speaker 1: in a system that the current system can't even comprehend yet, which,
[18:39] Speaker 1: like in the.
[18:40] Speaker 3: Tech world, people will make these assertions and then sometimes
[18:44] Speaker 3: be very very greatly rewarded for them, as a number
[18:48] Speaker 3: of people were in the crypto world. Like I remember
[18:53] Speaker 3: random bros in my life being like, oh, you got
[18:55] Speaker 3: mine for bitcoin. You got mine for bitcoin. You're making
[18:57] Speaker 3: so much money, And that was really fringe at the time.
[18:58] Speaker 3: What was it that like push it into this mainstream, Like, oh,
[19:02] Speaker 3: you were going to make so much fucking money from bitcoin,
[19:04] Speaker 3: if you you know, like, how did that happen?
[19:06] Speaker 4: Who drove that?
[19:07] Speaker 1: So Bitcoin initially when it was still in its cash
[19:10] Speaker 1: phase was like deeply skewed, right, So drugs the main
[19:19] Speaker 1: thing that you could buy with bitcoin, you know, like
[19:23] Speaker 1: you would spend tens of bitcoin on a little bit
[19:28] Speaker 1: of drugs. Basically like a dollar value like you it
[19:30] Speaker 1: had you know, it had sort of an equivalency to
[19:34] Speaker 1: to a dollar. But then through just sort of a
[19:40] Speaker 1: confluence of happen stance Bitcoin managed well, and these things
[19:46] Speaker 1: are entwined, right, Like, you can't you can't ignore the
[19:49] Speaker 1: drugs angle because drugs was the thing that bitcoin could
[19:53] Speaker 1: actually be spent on. So that was the thing that
[19:55] Speaker 1: created a demand for people to actually want to have
[19:59] Speaker 1: bitcoin with. It's like, oh, this is a this is
[20:03] Speaker 1: a thing that I can use to acquire a thing
[20:05] Speaker 1: I want.
[20:05] Speaker 3: Are we talking about like Silk Road? Like yeah, okay, okay,
[20:09] Speaker 3: I didn't realize that.
[20:10] Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, Yeah, So it was Silk Road that created,
[20:15] Speaker 1: you know, created a market that Bitcoin was the necessary
[20:19] Speaker 1: intermediate to use that. It's like, you had people who
[20:23] Speaker 1: wanted drugs. You had people who wanted to sell drugs,
[20:27] Speaker 1: and in the middle was bitcoin willing to help these people.
[20:33] Speaker 4: Have a meat cue, have a little meat cue d
[20:37] Speaker 4: on Silk.
[20:38] Speaker 3: Road, which was allegedly incredibly secure because of the technologies.
[20:44] Speaker 4: Is that right?
[20:45] Speaker 1: Well, the idea was that because you could just mine
[20:48] Speaker 1: bitcoin at the time on your GPU, you could create
[20:54] Speaker 1: bitcoin effectively out of nothing, just out of out of
[20:57] Speaker 1: electricity that you spend, which wi means that your real
[21:02] Speaker 1: world money and your bitcoin money are wholly divorced from
[21:07] Speaker 1: one another. You can you can acquire these bills through
[21:12] Speaker 1: a method that has no connection to your identity, no
[21:15] Speaker 1: connection to just just no connection to you, uh, and
[21:19] Speaker 1: is thus pseudononymous. You're just you're just a hash string
[21:24] Speaker 1: of numbers for a wallet address and not a person.
[21:29] Speaker 1: And so that you know, facilitated silk road in the
[21:33] Speaker 1: middle as like it's like, yeah, your relatively risk free
[21:38] Speaker 1: doing this interaction basically as long as you trust that
[21:42] Speaker 1: the person you're ultimately giving your mailing address to so
[21:46] Speaker 1: that they can send you the physical object you're trying
[21:48] Speaker 1: to acquire. As long as you trust that person to
[21:51] Speaker 1: mail you something.
[21:56] Speaker 2: Like somebody's like murdered, like somebody got caught for trying
[21:58] Speaker 2: to murder someone.
[22:00] Speaker 4: There was a number of those.
[22:01] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it was just a disaster. But it's so
[22:06] Speaker 2: interesting how this so quickly became like a self regulating,
[22:11] Speaker 2: very quickly growing group of tech bros.
[22:16] Speaker 4: Yeah, it exploded, yeah yeah.
[22:18] Speaker 1: And so the thing was by having this actual market
[22:21] Speaker 1: even like before that phase, Bitcoin was like the famous
[22:26] Speaker 1: like bitcoin pizza where it was like ten thousand bitcoin
[22:30] Speaker 1: for uh a seventeen dollars pizza, right, you know, so
[22:36] Speaker 1: with silk Roads suddenly creating a reason for a wider
[22:41] Speaker 1: number of people to engage with this all of a sudden,
[22:45] Speaker 1: and a bunch of people who are like who are
[22:46] Speaker 1: coming in to bitcoin and are like, I'm not gonna
[22:50] Speaker 1: like they look up the instructions for how to mine
[22:51] Speaker 1: it and they're like, I'm not going to do that,
[22:54] Speaker 1: and so they just go on Mount Gox and they
[22:56] Speaker 1: buy bitcoin using normal money and create a connection that
[23:01] Speaker 1: the FBI ultimately uses to all right, getting off track then,
[23:05] Speaker 1: but they come in and they're just like, I'm not
[23:08] Speaker 1: going I'm not gonna mine it myself. That sounds like
[23:10] Speaker 1: a waste of my time and energy. I'm just gonna
[23:12] Speaker 1: buy it, and then I'm gonna go on Silk Road
[23:14] Speaker 1: and I'm gonna buy the drugs I want, and then
[23:15] Speaker 1: I'll get the drugs and then I've got what i
[23:17] Speaker 1: want and I can move on with my life. That
[23:20] Speaker 1: moment is what creates a market for coin itself, And
[23:26] Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the price jumps, and because it
[23:28] Speaker 1: was so low originally, because we were talking about like
[23:32] Speaker 1: like okay, you you could mine like thousands of this stuff.
[23:36] Speaker 1: When the price suddenly like jumps from a tenth of
[23:40] Speaker 1: a cent to a dollar. Right, that person who got
[23:45] Speaker 1: in early did in fact just make a lot of money,
[23:49] Speaker 1: assuming that they didn't lose it all to Mount Cox.
[23:52] Speaker 2: It's interesting how suddenly this is mainstream. Suddenly we have
[23:58] Speaker 2: people that are like these kind of leaders in the
[24:03] Speaker 2: space that people are projecting like what onto.
[24:07] Speaker 4: Well, who were they? Who was driving it?
[24:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is where it gets complicated. So one of
[24:15] Speaker 1: the so the like initial leader of bitcoin is a pseudonym.
[24:19] Speaker 1: Uh oh, I'm going to get it wrong.
[24:22] Speaker 4: Uh, Satoshi, I believe you no matter what you say.
[24:26] Speaker 1: So No, the thing is is that my instinct is
[24:29] Speaker 1: to say Satoshi Cone, but that is a filmmaker.
[24:33] Speaker 3: Wait, can I look it up bitco SATs Knakamoto.
[24:40] Speaker 1: That's it, right, Nah? Knakamoto named after Knakamoto Towers from
[24:45] Speaker 1: Diehard because these people.
[24:46] Speaker 4: Are cute dorks.
[24:49] Speaker 1: Sosi Knakamoto is a pseudonym for a still anonymous initial
[24:57] Speaker 1: developer of bitcoin. You published the white paper in the
[25:00] Speaker 1: initial mining software and then kind of disappeared, and there's
[25:03] Speaker 1: a lot of speculation about who it actually is. But
[25:06] Speaker 1: it's kind of irrelevant because the fact that it was
[25:09] Speaker 1: this pseudonymous developer who then like vanished into the ether.
[25:15] Speaker 1: Oh boy, is that tantalizing?
[25:17] Speaker 4: Yeah?
[25:19] Speaker 1: Okay, Q would eventually take a lot of cues, a
[25:23] Speaker 1: lot of cues from it. But yeah, so that was
[25:27] Speaker 1: a really tantalizing narrative that it's like, oh we have
[25:30] Speaker 1: It's like, hey, here's this new technology, this new money,
[25:35] Speaker 1: and it has this really interesting, mysterious origin story because
[25:41] Speaker 1: the guy who did it nobody knows who he really is.
[25:46] Speaker 4: He's like a digital cowboy.
[25:48] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[25:48] Speaker 2: Also, I like that the whole thing also has this
[25:52] Speaker 2: which we see in cults a lot, you know, this
[25:54] Speaker 2: need being met, this meaning being given to it, which
[25:57] Speaker 2: is also not only are we going to make money,
[26:00] Speaker 2: but this is going to overthrow a very correct system.
[26:03] Speaker 1: Yes, and all of this is very like, you know,
[26:06] Speaker 1: none of this is happening in a vacuum, Like you said,
[26:08] Speaker 1: Satoshi Nakamoto is named after Diehard, right, Like these people
[26:15] Speaker 1: are not like they're not unaware of what they're doing
[26:17] Speaker 1: or the way that they exist in. They are aware
[26:20] Speaker 1: that like people kind of thirst for these narratives, and
[26:22] Speaker 1: they are aware that like doing it in this way
[26:26] Speaker 1: is going to be good marketing is going to be tantalizing,
[26:30] Speaker 1: And so that mysterious origin. It's like, okay, it's like
[26:34] Speaker 1: a it's got a mysterious origin. Well, it doesn't really
[26:36] Speaker 1: have a mysterious origin. It has a constructed mystery.
[26:39] Speaker 4: Mm oh god. Yeah.
[26:41] Speaker 3: So leader disappears, drugs being sold.
[26:45] Speaker 1: Drugs being sold. All of a sudden, you have a
[26:48] Speaker 1: you have a non bitcoin audience buying bitcoin, which is
[26:52] Speaker 1: causing the price to go up, which is creating Bitcoin millionaires,
[26:55] Speaker 1: which then creates a narrative of bitcoin is a place
[26:58] Speaker 1: that you can you can buy in and become a
[27:00] Speaker 1: millionaire because the price might just all of a sudden
[27:03] Speaker 1: thousand cks, ten thousand cks whatever, Like hey, look at
[27:07] Speaker 1: this line on this graph. It it just does, it
[27:10] Speaker 1: just goes up.
[27:11] Speaker 4: Yeah, so it becomes an MLM.
[27:13] Speaker 2: It becomes an MLM for men so quickly, like the
[27:16] Speaker 2: heyhun movement, but only it's like hey, bro.
[27:20] Speaker 4: To mye.
[27:21] Speaker 1: You get in early on bitcoin, Yeah, kidling out thousand.
[27:25] Speaker 3: Cs the capitalists, the people.
[27:30] Speaker 2: And also it so quickly creates a community where I
[27:33] Speaker 2: don't know if this was like some four Chan thing
[27:35] Speaker 2: that they did on purpose, where it's like isolated young
[27:38] Speaker 2: men suddenly have a community where they're saying good morning
[27:41] Speaker 2: and good night every single day to each other, and
[27:43] Speaker 2: there are there is a ritual involved in it.
[27:58] Speaker 1: So out of this explosion, so bitcoin, you know, orders
[28:02] Speaker 1: of magnitude increases, creates this narrative of like this is
[28:06] Speaker 1: this is a gold mine, you know, this is a
[28:09] Speaker 1: rich vein. But other people start jumping. You get an
[28:12] Speaker 1: initial wave of people who are creating, who are taking
[28:16] Speaker 1: the core of bitcoin, the technological core of bitcoin, and
[28:19] Speaker 1: sort of spinning it off in different directions. Some of
[28:21] Speaker 1: them are trying to fix what they see as mistakes
[28:24] Speaker 1: with Bitcoin and like improve it technologically. Others are just
[28:27] Speaker 1: trying to make lightning strike twice. And the thing is
[28:31] Speaker 1: is that because it's just it's just basically a software
[28:33] Speaker 1: package that you can download and just start running, these
[28:37] Speaker 1: become incredibly easy to spin off, and all of a
[28:40] Speaker 1: sudden you've got two cryptocurrencies, ten cryptocurrencies, one hundred cryptocurrencies,
[28:45] Speaker 1: a thousand cryptocurrencies, ten thousand cryptocurrencies in a very very
[28:48] Speaker 1: short period of time. And then it suddenly becomes this
[28:51] Speaker 1: game of like, okay, which ones are going to be
[28:56] Speaker 1: the ones that are going to ten thousand X? Which
[28:59] Speaker 1: ones are going to be the ones that are going
[29:00] Speaker 1: to go from penny stock to like a dollar, and
[29:04] Speaker 1: that then creates a market for tea leaf readers, fortune tellers,
[29:08] Speaker 1: guys who are going to tell you how to read
[29:11] Speaker 1: the market and how to predict which ones you should
[29:14] Speaker 1: be buying into. So now you've got a conventional economy
[29:17] Speaker 1: getting layered over top. You then get these pseudo communities
[29:21] Speaker 1: of people trying to guess the future and read where
[29:26] Speaker 1: things are going the financial all of the pre existing
[29:31] Speaker 1: habits of penny stock traders and just general day traders,
[29:38] Speaker 1: gambling addicts, stock gambling addicts. They all rush in because
[29:42] Speaker 1: it's everything that they're used to, everything that they love about,
[29:46] Speaker 1: you know, buying cmkm and losing all their money, and
[29:51] Speaker 1: it's all that and even less regulated. There is no
[29:55] Speaker 1: one from the FTC coming and saying like, hey, you're
[30:00] Speaker 1: not allowed to lie to people.
[30:02] Speaker 3: Right in your in your film, you say, and this
[30:06] Speaker 3: might be NFTs specifically, so you're going to have to
[30:09] Speaker 3: kind of delineate where each ends and begins. But you say,
[30:14] Speaker 3: the primary product of NFTs was hype, And is that
[30:17] Speaker 3: true of cryptocurrencies as well? Like do they do well
[30:21] Speaker 3: because people think they're going to do well?
[30:24] Speaker 4: Is that how it works by and large.
[30:25] Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, yeah it is. It is cryptocurrencies are overwhelmingly
[30:30] Speaker 1: driven by themselves and a narrative about themselves. And you
[30:34] Speaker 1: could say the same about like stocks economies as well.
[30:38] Speaker 1: So that's not a that's not a unique criticism. And
[30:41] Speaker 1: I made that argument in another video specifically about game
[30:45] Speaker 1: Stop and that. You know, you could say that every
[30:49] Speaker 1: stock is a meme stock in some degree because it
[30:51] Speaker 1: is ultimately driven by a narrative that a company can
[30:55] Speaker 1: tell about itself, and maybe that narrative is based in
[30:58] Speaker 1: a reality of like, hey, we are actually doing really well,
[31:01] Speaker 1: and maybe it's based in well, ten years from now,
[31:06] Speaker 1: we might run the world.
[31:07] Speaker 4: Right.
[31:08] Speaker 3: I am learning this from Industry, which is my current
[31:13] Speaker 3: show obsession.
[31:14] Speaker 4: I have no idea about the financial world.
[31:16] Speaker 3: Again, I understand about thirty percent of what they're talking about,
[31:20] Speaker 3: but I'm here for the drama.
[31:21] Speaker 4: Have you seen it?
[31:22] Speaker 3: No?
[31:22] Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so good.
[31:24] Speaker 3: Anyway, A lot of the storylines on that show have
[31:28] Speaker 3: to do with like convincing the public that their company
[31:31] Speaker 3: is the one to invest in, or like trying to
[31:35] Speaker 3: save their company from their reputational damage or whatever in
[31:38] Speaker 3: order to not fail in the stock market.
[31:40] Speaker 4: So I don't know shit about this shit, but it's
[31:42] Speaker 4: a good show.
[31:43] Speaker 1: So yeah, So cryptocurrencies are just basically a narrative about themselves,
[31:47] Speaker 1: like that becomes the dominant thing by like twenty fifteen.
[31:50] Speaker 1: All of them are just being driven by this narrative like, well,
[31:53] Speaker 1: it might ten thousand times in price, it might ten
[31:57] Speaker 1: thousand x in value, and if you buy in twenty
[32:00] Speaker 1: fifteen and at ten thousand x's in twenty eighteen, you
[32:03] Speaker 1: get to retire in twenty nineteen.
[32:06] Speaker 3: Right, So yes, okay, So now we're at the part
[32:08] Speaker 3: where people are coming in and being like this is
[32:11] Speaker 3: the one. Don't you want to put your faith in
[32:13] Speaker 3: this one?
[32:13] Speaker 4: And these are now NFTs.
[32:15] Speaker 1: Around this point twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. NFTs first start
[32:19] Speaker 1: sort of like nucleating, and then they become the thing
[32:24] Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one.
[32:25] Speaker 3: Nucleating is a great word. Can you explain what NFTs
[32:29] Speaker 3: are to the nube?
[32:31] Speaker 1: So the underlying technology of bitcoin works off of a
[32:38] Speaker 1: confirmation mechanism called blockchain, which is just a way for
[32:43] Speaker 1: a bunch of distributed computers to all agree on what
[32:47] Speaker 1: a central ledger actually says. Well, then, and there's reasons
[32:54] Speaker 1: for that and they're legitimate, like this is this is
[32:57] Speaker 1: itself based off as something called a mercle chain, which
[33:00] Speaker 1: or a mercle tree, which is like these sort of
[33:02] Speaker 1: like this is a bit like saying it's like, well,
[33:05] Speaker 1: human bones are built out of calcium, right, and it's like,
[33:09] Speaker 1: you know, a lot of things are built out of calcium.
[33:11] Speaker 1: There's nothing, there's nothing, sort of like unto I try
[33:14] Speaker 1: to be I try to be very fair and say
[33:16] Speaker 1: there's like, okay, like there are technological elements here that
[33:19] Speaker 1: like you will see parts of all over the place.
[33:21] Speaker 1: And I think that's important to inoculate because it's very
[33:23] Speaker 1: easy for people to talk about blockchain and bitcoin and
[33:26] Speaker 1: NFTs like their magic, right, like the incomprehensible thing that
[33:32] Speaker 1: just like that came out of another dimension and there
[33:36] Speaker 1: care and it's like, well, no, it is built out
[33:38] Speaker 1: of the same boring stuff as everything else. It is
[33:40] Speaker 1: made out of matter, it is made out of programming.
[33:43] Speaker 1: It is made out of mathematical concepts that you'll find
[33:47] Speaker 1: all over the place in various forms.
[33:50] Speaker 3: And the basic premise is just you can trace everything
[33:52] Speaker 3: that happened, like every transaction basically like it's baked in.
[33:56] Speaker 1: Yes, because you've got this whole network of computers that
[34:01] Speaker 1: have this protocol that they use to agree with one
[34:04] Speaker 1: another what the whole network should say. So it's like
[34:10] Speaker 1: what is the state of the machine. So rather than
[34:13] Speaker 1: having a centralized authority that's like hey, everybody, here's the
[34:18] Speaker 1: state of the machine, it's kind of this distributed machine
[34:22] Speaker 1: going like hey, everybody, let's all get together and will
[34:25] Speaker 1: will communicate and decide through a consensus mechanism of one
[34:32] Speaker 1: form or another what the state of the machine is.
[34:35] Speaker 3: Now.
[34:35] Speaker 1: In Bitcoin's case, the consensus mechanism is burn a lifetime's
[34:40] Speaker 1: households worth of electricity in and other cryptocurrencies figured out
[34:48] Speaker 1: other ways of doing it that have their own problems
[34:52] Speaker 1: but are less immediately destructive.
[34:55] Speaker 2: Right right, like we run on dolphins. Like that's how
[34:58] Speaker 2: equal some of it gets.
[35:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, And so an NFT is just that. It's like,
[35:04] Speaker 1: if you already have this ledger that's just entries, well,
[35:09] Speaker 1: what if rather than what if you made one of
[35:13] Speaker 1: those entries represent a thing like what if my bank statement?
[35:18] Speaker 1: What if I could have my bank also keep track
[35:21] Speaker 1: of how many miles I ran today?
[35:25] Speaker 4: Right?
[35:26] Speaker 1: What if I could just have it have my step
[35:27] Speaker 1: counter in there, what if I could sync my step
[35:29] Speaker 1: counter to my bank account because the bank's already it's
[35:32] Speaker 1: already dealing in numbers. That's all it deals in. Is
[35:35] Speaker 1: just like long, long, long lines of numbers. So you
[35:38] Speaker 1: can sort of see the logic here of like, well,
[35:39] Speaker 1: we could just use we could just use this thing
[35:42] Speaker 1: that's already just a giant list of stuff, and instead
[35:45] Speaker 1: of that stuff being exclusively transactions, we could make that
[35:50] Speaker 1: stuff a thing. We could have it point to something,
[35:53] Speaker 1: we could we could put other things in that.
[35:55] Speaker 4: List, like a piece of digital art, for example.
[35:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, and so those you end up with this NFT,
[36:01] Speaker 1: which is a token that isn't a bitcoin or an
[36:05] Speaker 1: ethereum in this case because NFTs really emerge on the
[36:08] Speaker 1: Ethereum network. Rather than being an f this token is
[36:15] Speaker 1: a indivisible hypertext reference. It's a link, and what's on
[36:20] Speaker 1: the other side of that link could be anything, okay,
[36:24] Speaker 1: And in most cases it was a jpeg.
[36:27] Speaker 3: Right right, And some, as you say in your video
[36:33] Speaker 3: in your film, very bad JPEGs, like almost exclusively like
[36:38] Speaker 3: very stupid art.
[36:39] Speaker 1: Very right, yes, because they're.
[36:42] Speaker 4: Easy to make, right right.
[36:44] Speaker 3: There was a person I know who I work with
[36:47] Speaker 3: sometimes who is trying okay, Megan, who was trying to
[36:53] Speaker 3: get me to participate and create an FTS that they
[36:56] Speaker 3: would share ownership with in. And I remember them sending
[37:02] Speaker 3: me to the I think it was they were showing
[37:04] Speaker 3: me the party eight Billionaire Club.
[37:06] Speaker 1: Oh sweet.
[37:07] Speaker 4: I was like, this.
[37:09] Speaker 3: Self, that much money. It's crazy looking. How much money
[37:13] Speaker 3: were these selling for?
[37:17] Speaker 1: In the high profile cases, most of which were astroturfed
[37:24] Speaker 1: in the hype version, in the mythological version, tens of millions.
[37:27] Speaker 4: Of dollars okay, and in the real version.
[37:31] Speaker 1: In the real version, most of the very high profile things,
[37:36] Speaker 1: most of the very high profile transactions were the product
[37:41] Speaker 1: of business arrangements.
[37:44] Speaker 4: Same more about that, Yeah.
[37:47] Speaker 1: You know, like you would you dig into one and
[37:49] Speaker 1: you'd be like, like, oh, so and so paid twenty
[37:53] Speaker 1: million dollars for this piece. But then you find out
[37:57] Speaker 1: that the artists and the buyer are co investors working together,
[38:03] Speaker 1: are co founders of a digital art gallery. Ok that
[38:09] Speaker 1: this thing is in theory going to be displayed in
[38:12] Speaker 1: And you're like, wait, where did this money actually come
[38:15] Speaker 1: from and where is it actually going? Was this like
[38:19] Speaker 1: was this price agreed on beforehand? Like what's actually going
[38:23] Speaker 1: on here? Like it just wound up being very circular.
[38:26] Speaker 1: A lot of it was also like a lot of
[38:28] Speaker 1: it was illusory in the way that you have. Remember
[38:33] Speaker 1: Bitcoin could be mined. You could mine a thousand in
[38:38] Speaker 1: a day at one point, well, the same was true
[38:41] Speaker 1: with etheroreum. There was an early point where you could
[38:45] Speaker 1: mine a thousand in a day. You could mine ten
[38:48] Speaker 1: thousand in a week. So you have these people who
[38:52] Speaker 1: had got in in early and have this vast sum
[38:56] Speaker 1: of in theory dollar exchangeable ethereum but has never actually
[39:02] Speaker 1: been exchange for dollars, okay, And if they were to
[39:06] Speaker 1: try and cash it out, it would just crush the
[39:09] Speaker 1: network and it would cause a like it would cause
[39:11] Speaker 1: a collapse, It would cause a like bank run, and
[39:14] Speaker 1: the whole thing would fall apart. So they've got nothing.
[39:17] Speaker 1: It is unspendable. It is in theory wealth, but it
[39:20] Speaker 1: is unspendable, right, And so they can afford to then like, yeah,
[39:26] Speaker 1: sure I've got I've got five million dollars of ethereum
[39:32] Speaker 1: that is otherwise unspendable. I might as well buy a
[39:35] Speaker 1: boord ape with.
[39:36] Speaker 4: It, okay, right. And those were the height of the.
[39:42] Speaker 1: Those are the ones that were on Jimmy Kimmel.
[39:43] Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, the picassas, so to speak.
[39:47] Speaker 2: But what interests me in particular about this time was that, like,
[39:52] Speaker 2: I'm one of those girls who was really into manifesting,
[39:55] Speaker 2: and like, you know, I had my tarot cards and
[39:58] Speaker 2: my whatever, and it was weird. I'm not trying to
[40:00] Speaker 2: be binary of like guy girl, guy girl, but it
[40:03] Speaker 2: was weird for me as a girl to see my
[40:05] Speaker 2: guy friends suddenly be very superstitious, very.
[40:09] Speaker 3: Into positive, very yes this man's tarot cards.
[40:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you said, Tea Lee for it was just
[40:18] Speaker 2: a very culty thing.
[40:21] Speaker 4: Can can you say more about that?
[40:23] Speaker 1: So I've gotten very even more interested lately in like
[40:27] Speaker 1: the the history of fortune telling and the various ways
[40:33] Speaker 1: that cultures over the years have have had for fortune telling.
[40:37] Speaker 1: And so yeah, no, there were veins of that already.
[40:41] Speaker 1: So you get what is called prosperity gospel, you get
[40:44] Speaker 1: the secret, you get the power of positive thinking. You know,
[40:47] Speaker 1: those sort of veins of like that. That hyper macho
[40:52] Speaker 1: version of manifesting was kind of always there in various forms,
[40:58] Speaker 1: you know, like a Wolf of Wall Street Belfort, Jordan Belfort,
[41:02] Speaker 1: you know, he was using those that language in the
[41:05] Speaker 1: in the nineties to scam people. And you can go
[41:09] Speaker 1: back even further and further and further, like Ponzi, uh
[41:13] Speaker 1: the name of a Ponzi scheme, you know, used it
[41:16] Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century. So there has kind of
[41:21] Speaker 1: always been this like feminine and masculine versions of the narrative.
[41:27] Speaker 1: The reason why they oh, man, sorry, I'm gonna get
[41:30] Speaker 1: super scattered here, because boy does this go off in
[41:33] Speaker 1: a lot of interesting directions, Because it's like, because there
[41:37] Speaker 1: is a there is a gendered element to it that
[41:40] Speaker 1: is that is undeniable. But like you have this manifesting
[41:43] Speaker 1: narrative that has cropped up in various forms throughout history,
[41:47] Speaker 1: and it's sort of this low lying hum and it
[41:50] Speaker 1: has these gendered manifestations. But then all of a sudden,
[41:52] Speaker 1: crypto they converge in a sort of way or like
[41:56] Speaker 1: they cross over. You end up with a lot of
[41:58] Speaker 1: the previously feminine language being applied to the masculine expression, right,
[42:05] Speaker 1: And that was fascinating. But also like I am not
[42:10] Speaker 1: I am not equipped to just like pull off the
[42:12] Speaker 1: top of my head accurate well founded claims about it
[42:17] Speaker 1: beyond like yes, I totally know what you saw, and
[42:19] Speaker 1: I saw it too, but so so all of these. Yeah,
[42:24] Speaker 1: this manifesting language, prosperity, gospel, power of positive thinking, you know,
[42:31] Speaker 1: fortune telling. The thing that made NFTs unavoidable and the
[42:36] Speaker 1: thing that made them so infuriating to many people was
[42:40] Speaker 1: the fact that basically every single expression of manipulative language
[42:48] Speaker 1: got employed and unloaded at industrial scale simultaneously. And when
[42:55] Speaker 1: you suddenly have this cadre of people like who have
[43:01] Speaker 1: self identified around this this hobby, uh, and they're just
[43:07] Speaker 1: spewing a relentless wave of you just gotta manifest You
[43:13] Speaker 1: just gotta think, right, bro, you just.
[43:15] Speaker 2: Gotta It's not a hobby, it's an identity now, you
[43:18] Speaker 2: know at this point, And I like some of the acronyms,
[43:22] Speaker 2: if I may a few d fud.
[43:26] Speaker 1: Yeah that one, that one is a history classic, like
[43:29] Speaker 1: that one goes back way before uh oh really, oh,
[43:33] Speaker 1: way way before NFTs.
[43:35] Speaker 4: Yet what's the origin?
[43:36] Speaker 1: Uh no, one really knows. Somewhere in the twentieth century,
[43:41] Speaker 1: but it just it's an acronym for fear, uncertainty, and
[43:43] Speaker 1: doubt and uh yeah no, because like the thing is,
[43:47] Speaker 1: I referenced this earlier that like penny stocks, penny stocks
[43:51] Speaker 1: used to be this really really niche form of gambling
[43:57] Speaker 1: that was you kind of had to do the hard
[44:00] Speaker 1: way because you have to like actually fill out papers
[44:02] Speaker 1: and like mail them.
[44:03] Speaker 4: Oh no.
[44:05] Speaker 1: And then and then in the nineties, all of a
[44:09] Speaker 1: sudden you get like outfits like Jordan Belfort, like his
[44:11] Speaker 1: whole thing was penny stock scams, you know, pumping and
[44:14] Speaker 1: dumping penny stocks. You pick, you pick a company, you
[44:18] Speaker 1: spind a narrative about like, oh, yeah, they're going to
[44:20] Speaker 1: hundred x anytime now, they're going to shoot from point
[44:23] Speaker 1: zero one cents per share up to you know, we've
[44:27] Speaker 1: got I heard a rumor that there's going to be
[44:29] Speaker 1: a buyout for a dollar twenty five a share, so
[44:32] Speaker 1: you should give me ten thousand dollars in all. Yeah.
[44:35] Speaker 3: Right, So it creates this culture where because it does
[44:39] Speaker 3: operate on faith to some extent. Yeah, it's they're kind
[44:45] Speaker 3: of not wrong in a way when saying that you
[44:47] Speaker 3: can't doubt because.
[44:48] Speaker 4: That will make it not work.
[44:50] Speaker 3: But that's not really what they mean, right, It's more
[44:52] Speaker 3: like it's because.
[44:53] Speaker 1: It's these it's these two things. It's that it's like
[44:56] Speaker 1: that that if bitcoin, if crypto, if nft ease, if
[45:00] Speaker 1: this penny stock. If the main thing that's going to
[45:04] Speaker 1: cause them to go from point zero one cents up
[45:08] Speaker 1: to a dollar twenty five is an influx of people
[45:11] Speaker 1: who heard a story right and jump on. Yeah, that's
[45:15] Speaker 1: going to be the actual driver of that change. Well,
[45:19] Speaker 1: you need that story. And so anything that you do that,
[45:23] Speaker 1: like any fear, any uncertainty, any doubt, undermines that narrative.
[45:29] Speaker 4: Right, that's so interesting.
[45:31] Speaker 2: And if you do have doubt, there's h FSP have fun,
[45:37] Speaker 2: stay poor.
[45:38] Speaker 4: Yeah and I do.
[45:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know people coming up with some doubts, Yeah,
[45:43] Speaker 2: that salt would hurt my feelings. Oh same, Yeah, I'd
[45:46] Speaker 2: be like, oh damn, I need to get back on
[45:48] Speaker 2: one of the other things. They would say, it's to
[45:50] Speaker 2: the moon. That means like it's going to explode. Also,
[45:54] Speaker 2: wagm I was it. We're all going to make it,
[45:56] Speaker 2: We're all going to make it or nag me not?
[46:01] Speaker 2: And what was paper hands?
[46:03] Speaker 1: Paper hands is somebody who who doesn't have confidence. Like, so,
[46:09] Speaker 1: if you're holding a thing, and if this thing, if
[46:12] Speaker 1: this thing represents the investment and that investment is volatile,
[46:17] Speaker 1: you know, if it's something that that you look at
[46:19] Speaker 1: the graph and it's just like shooting up and down
[46:22] Speaker 1: and up and down and up and down twenty times
[46:24] Speaker 1: a day. That's kind of scary. That's scary volatility. But
[46:28] Speaker 1: if the belief is that this thing will over time
[46:33] Speaker 1: do the Bitcoin thing, it's going to go from point
[46:35] Speaker 1: zero one up to ten thousand dollars, then you need
[46:40] Speaker 1: to have the You need to have the diamond hands.
[46:44] Speaker 1: You need to have these rock hard hands that are
[46:46] Speaker 1: necessary to hold on tight as long as it takes
[46:51] Speaker 1: for that transformation to happen. And if you get spooked
[46:55] Speaker 1: by the volatility and let go early, you got paper hands.
[47:01] Speaker 4: Oh oh man, this is biblical. I like, this skill
[47:04] Speaker 4: is so this is a religion.
[47:06] Speaker 3: But it made it like and all of it makes sense,
[47:09] Speaker 3: Like everything you're describing. I'm like, yeah, you do have
[47:11] Speaker 3: to hold on to your investments through the volatility of
[47:14] Speaker 3: the market, like and yeah, you do have to have
[47:17] Speaker 3: faith because if you all collectively stop having faith, then
[47:19] Speaker 3: it will lose its value.
[47:20] Speaker 4: Like it all makes sense.
[47:21] Speaker 3: But then what actually happens is it starts to create
[47:24] Speaker 3: this like insular culture where you are kind of ostracized.
[47:29] Speaker 4: If you do indicate any sign of doubt.
[47:32] Speaker 1: Right, yeah, it develops the language for policing, because you know,
[47:37] Speaker 1: for policing language, for policing belief, for policing participation, because
[47:43] Speaker 1: so much of it is writing on only the narrative.
[47:47] Speaker 1: So if we're talking about a company like Apple and
[47:50] Speaker 1: we're looking at like, okay, what do we think apple
[47:53] Speaker 1: stock is going to do next year? And we can
[47:57] Speaker 1: argue until we're blue in the face about whether we
[48:00] Speaker 1: think it's going to go up or down, and maybe
[48:01] Speaker 1: we'll be right, but like, we've got all of these
[48:04] Speaker 1: things that we can we can grasp onto. Here was
[48:06] Speaker 1: their previous quarter results, here was like this thing, and
[48:10] Speaker 1: all of that narrative that we're building in theory filters
[48:12] Speaker 1: down at some point to customers have gone into a
[48:17] Speaker 1: store and exchanged dollars for products. When you get into
[48:21] Speaker 1: these meme stocks, when you get into crypto, when you
[48:23] Speaker 1: get into NFTs, that interaction doesn't exist. It isn't there,
[48:30] Speaker 1: and so all you have is this narrative. And so
[48:34] Speaker 1: it's all in on buoying up the narrative. You can't
[48:37] Speaker 1: point to something else and be like, well, they had
[48:40] Speaker 1: a really strong fourth quarter, and I believe it's like
[48:43] Speaker 1: and they've got this new chip, like they just you know,
[48:46] Speaker 1: they just debuted the new chip. It hasn't made it
[48:48] Speaker 1: into it hasn't made it into a product yet, but
[48:52] Speaker 1: it's going to actually be like really power efficient. And
[48:55] Speaker 1: so I think they're gonna be able to make good
[48:57] Speaker 1: on their promises to like double battery life and people
[49:01] Speaker 1: are gonna want that. I think that's a future people.
[49:03] Speaker 1: You know, you can't have that argument. You just have
[49:06] Speaker 1: to throw to like the nebulous future of like, well,
[49:08] Speaker 1: it is. It is the way of the future. It
[49:11] Speaker 1: is the new normal. Commerce is just going to happen
[49:15] Speaker 1: via bitcoin.
[49:16] Speaker 4: Now we're going to leave part one there for now.
[49:19] Speaker 3: Come back for part two next week for more crypto discussion.
[49:24] Speaker 3: And Megan, it's the time of the episode where I
[49:27] Speaker 3: ask you the question, and of course, yay, I must know.
[49:30] Speaker 4: Would you join the crypto cult? Oh yeah, I mean,
[49:35] Speaker 4: like I said, I'm trying. I tried.
[49:39] Speaker 2: I made an investment a couple years ago when the
[49:43] Speaker 2: tech ee boys in my life were telling me to
[49:46] Speaker 2: do it, and I'm so glad I didn't convince anyone
[49:51] Speaker 2: else to do it, because I almost did. And those
[49:54] Speaker 2: people had some real money that they were gonna play with,
[49:58] Speaker 2: and so that would have been a travesty if they
[50:01] Speaker 2: lost it. Yeah, I'm very into overthrowing our current system
[50:09] Speaker 2: of money and corruption, and I'm very susceptible to there's
[50:14] Speaker 2: a new way to do it.
[50:17] Speaker 4: So of course that always comes.
[50:21] Speaker 2: With a shadow side, and we learn that over and
[50:24] Speaker 2: over and over again. But yeah, I'm susceptible to crypto,
[50:30] Speaker 2: but I don't think I really am anymore. I think Dan,
[50:32] Speaker 2: I think he got through to me.
[50:34] Speaker 3: You know, there were like two years where I had
[50:36] Speaker 3: enough money to maybe invest in something.
[50:39] Speaker 4: We are not there anymore, but.
[50:40] Speaker 3: There were like fires, and I kept intending to invest
[50:46] Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm gonna do that.
[50:47] Speaker 4: I'm gonna do that, and.
[50:48] Speaker 3: I my procrastination, honestly is what saved me. If I
[50:52] Speaker 3: were more on top of shit all the time, I
[50:54] Speaker 3: fully would have lost a bunch of money.
[50:56] Speaker 4: So let's be grateful for that.
[50:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, you would own like five weird ape I left
[51:01] Speaker 2: tease totally. Yeah, I mean, honestly, there is something to
[51:07] Speaker 2: be grateful about about not having enough money to do
[51:10] Speaker 2: weird chit when you're younger.
[51:12] Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd love to have money to do some other
[51:16] Speaker 3: weird shit.
[51:17] Speaker 4: But you know, we'll get there. We'll get truly We'll
[51:19] Speaker 4: get there.
[51:21] Speaker 2: As always, thank you so much for joining us for
[51:24] Speaker 2: another episode of Trust Me.
[51:26] Speaker 4: We loved having you.
[51:27] Speaker 2: Please come again next week Greatest Live Stars if you
[51:31] Speaker 2: want to, No big deal, and as always, remember to
[51:35] Speaker 2: follow your gut, watch out for red flags.
[51:38] Speaker 4: And never ever trust me beg.
[51:45] Speaker 3: This has been an exactly right production hosted by me
[51:48] Speaker 3: Lo La Blanc and.
[51:49] Speaker 2: Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Gee Holley.
[51:52] Speaker 4: This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
[51:54] Speaker 2: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
[51:58] Speaker 2: is Patrick Kuttner.
[52:00] Speaker 4: Song was composed by Holly Ambert.
[52:01] Speaker 2: Church Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia
[52:05] Speaker 2: Hartstark and Daniel Kramer.
[52:07] Speaker 3: You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
[52:10] Speaker 3: or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.
[52:12] Speaker 2: Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,
[52:15] Speaker 2: Shoot us an email at trustmepod at gmail dot com.
[52:19] Speaker 3: Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[52:22] Speaker 3: or wherever you get your podcasts.

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