Episode #4 - The Relationship Between Energy and Crypto - with Michael Dunworth of Wyre
In this episode, I'm chatting with Michael Dunworth, CEO of Wyre, about the connection between crypto, energy and the space-time continuum.
Watch this episode: The Relationship Between Energy and Crypto - with Michael Dunworth of Wyre
Transcript:
CHAPTER ONE: Intro to the connection between crypto and energy
Kerman:
Hey everyone. Today we have Michael Dunworth on the podcast, he is the co-founder of Wyre, a payments company that's done really well in the space and been around since 2013. He's a crypto OG, a good friend and many other things. I'll pass over to you, Mike, if you want to add anything more to that.
Michael:
No, that's basically it. Just been in crypto and building products for seven or eight years now, which feels like dinosaur years. One year in crypto, it's like the relationship between dog years and human years, seven years to every one year, it feels like that. But I've seen a lot of stuff, good and bad. So just passing on all the knowledge that I don't have. No, I'm kidding.
Kerman:
I think today, the thing that we've been really speaking a lot about that's kind of related to crypto, but kind of not is the space-time continuum. Really, it's a lot of these thoughts originated from conversations that we've had, but mainly from you. So I'd love to learn more like how do you discuss or think about the space-time continuum and why is it not as crazy as people think it is? Because as soon as you hear the phrase space-time continuum, you're like, "Ah." Something that crazy people say that they're trying to time travel. But the more you dig into it, there's a lot of validity. Assuming you can have an open mind about the possibilities of what may exist beyond what we know right now.
Michael:
I'll tell you what you should start on, is the link between crypto and energy, because that's what I think is really interesting is, well, how's that bridge? Let's think about that point for a sec. Why would energy and crypto be related? Well, crypto is cryptography, so that's key generation, derivation and all that stuff. And then you've got energy, which is electric circuits and hard energy. So the relationship between those two affecting each other is now we have the very core incentive, which is Bitcoin mining. And that has a direct cryptographic link between the energy signature on the grid, which goes in and zaps a bullet of energy with that SHA-256 hash. It zaps a bullet of energy through the cables, whatever it is, fiber optic, I don't know. That bullet of energy goes through and then it gets broadcasted across the network. And then all of a sudden something happens, and that basically is them getting Bitcoin's mined to them, and those show up cryptographically in this digital universe.
And so there's this direct link between that energy, let's say energy signature in Earth, which is you mine a Bitcoin, the electric electrical current goes through the cable, like if we could zoom in on the current basically, and watch it go through cable basically. And so that's what would happen. And then cryptographically something would show up. And so now we go, something happened in the real world is directly attributed to something that's happening in this digital imaginary world. And so that becomes really, really powerful because now if cryptography is linked with energy, then things you can do cryptographically should be able to dictate how energy moves in the physical world.
Energy we can see is moving hard like Bitcoin miners, we can see where they're going and what energy usage they're going towards. So I think like that becomes. Now if you put enough incentives there cryptographically, which is the Bitcoin rewards or Ethereum or whatever it is, but that incentivizes people to do physical work. And so the more physical work that's done, the more entanglement we see between this electrical charge in our electrical field in the physical universe and a cryptographic signature of that electrical charge. And so I think that's the bridge. If people hadn't connected it yet and why they function like physical objects or like these proof of work systems are much a thermodynamic system. And so they've got physics laws that they're bound to and that's their security policy, is that they're bound to physical laws.
And what by physical laws, what we mean is like, we've got the cryptographic signature from minting the blocks or mining the new Bitcoins, but we know that every time that signature's produced that there was some energy outside of the system that was obeying those energy laws, which is this proof of work and the electrical current and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that's the way it talks to each other, the two systems talk to each other, which is the physical and the non-physical. I think that that alone is mind blowing, that's mind blowing.
Kerman:
Yeah, no, literally. And you think about where that energy come from and that energy is like, well, that came from an electrical grid, where did the electrical grid get its energy from? Well, it's this other place and other place, and this is chain of energy moving from the physical to the digital. And then you've got a Bitcoin that has an exchange rate would say a token or an Ethereum, it is just chains of energy routing through the entire I guess space of physical space and digital space. But as it's going through these spaces, there's a time delay between all of these mediums. Or I don't don't know, is it happening in real time or because-
Michael:
It's recorded. I mean, it's not being recorded in real time, but it's happening in real time. It's all happening, no matter what we do, it's just whether or not... So if I paid you something in Bitcoin right now, and I was like, oh yeah, here you go, it's in mempool. And you were like, no, it doesn't matter, I don't need to wait for a confirmation. Then it's already happened between us, but it just hasn't been recorded yet. Now it's going to be recorded. So it'll first happen for us and then it'll get recorded. But that now you think about the amount of energy that can move around on the surface layer. If we had an energy, a heat map of the Earth, and we said, total addressable market is 100% of the energy and Bitcoin is got 0.01% of that acquisition because that's what I think the total addressable market is, is energy consumption, if energy's securing the network.
So if you think about it like a grid, you'll be able to tell where the miners are going to show up and where more Bitcoins are going to get mined because you can check contrast between energy cost, energy price, all the geology of all that stuff. So you can predict the future in that regard because we know there's going to be huge energy signatures which is massive usage or massive attempts of SHA-256 hashing coming from these locations at some point in the future, whatever it is. But it's crazy, it's not wasted energy, it's energy committed to security policy. So I don't think proof of work is a waste of energy.
CHAPTER TWO: Environmental impact of crypto
Kerman:
Well, what do you think about why people do think it's a waste of energy? Where does that perception come from in the first place? Because to the outside observer, it is, you run these machines to find a hash, but only one of many hashes is the correct hash. And then you get magic internet money, but you burned all this electricity or use all this electricity that was maybe from fossil fuels to produce and therefore it's like you are polluting the planet. So there's obviously a lot of ideas in that, but where do you think that logic breaks down?
Michael:
So I'll tell you why. Is because I'll say Bitcoin, obviously it can be Ethereum or whatever, but any distributed system. When we spend money, we are spending money or when we spend energy, let's say in any capacity, whether it's for our dishwasher or anything. We are only seeing that expenditure, we're not seeing the whole supply chain of that expenditure, which means there was a huge amount of energy displacement that went into the ground in order to produce the metals that the washing machines made out of and the factory to assemble the washing and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, and all the stuff. So that even though I'm saving my one milliliter of water per tank or whatever, that I've got a eco-friendly washing machine, the exercise of creating washing machines could be doing a hundred times more damage than I could ever save in a thousand years of using an eco-friendly thing.
So that is the part where that world of thinking about it from a climate perspective, that's why, because you've only got direct relationship with a portion of the supply chain or the energy supply chain, of the energy consumption and displacement to make that washing machine moment. You only have a short view of it. Now with Bitcoin, or any proof of work system, we have the entire system end-to-end because it's open source. We can see the whole amount of energy consumption that it is ever capable of at any given moment. And that's because we see SHA-256 attempts so we can convert how much wattage does an ant miner use to make this many attempts. Oh, this is the approximate amount of energy consumption, so it's very predictable, but we see the whole supply chain there.
And so when you are comparing my whole supply chain with just your short-sided relationship with this eco-friendly kind of relationship, then that becomes, obviously not comparing the same things correctly. That's why people are Bitcoin's bad credit card for the environment, which I'm not saying it's good for the environment, that's even a loaded question. I'm just saying irrespective of what you think, that's the reason why people compare it, because they're comparing this shortsighted behavior or this shortsighted eco-friendly relationship with the whole network.
But now if we compared the whole relationship with the Earth and your washing machine through its whole supply chain of creation and everything and usage, then obviously that's going to be a more accurate comparison to comparing the whole Bitcoin network. And so I think that's the thing, people are just comparing one thing to everything of this when they should be comparing more factors obviously. But look each to their own, plus it's like an education thing. People don't have much incentive to learn about it if they're not involved or they're not excited about it, there's not much incentive to be like, hold on, let me try and see your point. The default setting is fuck off out of here with that shit. But you know what I mean? As in, if I haven't learned about it yet, I'll learn about it when I want to, until then shush, like they don't want to hear about it. So it's like, eh, they'll come around eventually.
Kerman:
So you're pumping all this let's just say energy into proof of work systems that secure assets, but then you think about the efficiencies in being able to now send assets or the efficiencies that blockchains as a whole create. And it would be really interesting to see what is the net aggregate of energy saving of like, okay, we're expending all this energy for creating these cryptographic systems, so what efficiencies do these cryptographic systems create when they get used properly? And in some extent it would be like, if you include, I think we've talked about sending spam tokens or issuing useless NFTs on a network, that's actually wasting the environment because you're not creating efficiencies, you're wasting that energy that's been so precious to bring into the system for like useless reasons.
Michael:
Yeah. It's like block-based pollution, you could call it. And that's a thing I think already quite literally is where people are like, if it doesn't need to be on chain, don't put it on chain, put a hash of it or whatever, which I understand, I understand that. But yeah, people do create the most, let's call them eco-sustainable contracts, I think, where they just be like gas-guzzling behemoth. I feel like I'm thinking of my Sega game gear, which is this old Sega, portable Sega. And you charged it for six years and then it had like 10 minutes battery life. No, sorry, just chew through batteries. But no, but basically the same thing, I think it's really cool though that they've got, I mean, in general, people always seek optimizations, they always seek, gas golf is the thing, people do that, people are always finding ways to pack more into the same space. That's just a result of optimizing things.
Kerman:
You know what be really fascinating? Imagine, let's call it like an eco explorer. And what it does is, so like you thinking about the Ethereum network, essentially gas is the cost of computation on the network for the notice to execute those transactions to create the correct state change or derive the current state of the network. But what would be really interesting is like on EtherCAT, is how much energy did this transaction take relative to something in the real world? Because energy, you could think about it in terms of kilojoules, right?
Michael:
Yeah, yeah.
Kerman:
So I feel like this token transfer was the same amount of energy as half a McDonald's cheeseburger. And you're like, oh, okay, this airdrop was the equivalent of destroying 10 rainforests. And now we're not critiquing.
Michael:
Ah, that's a fun idea.
Kerman:
You know?
Michael:
I feel like that's a really cool thing. I love shit like that, any kind of analogy software would be awesome. Show me what else I'm losing or show me what else I'm like... Show me all the other damage I'm doing.
Kerman:
Yeah, because could you somehow convert say gas to kilojoules, that's one really fascinating conversion rate I'd love to... And how that exchange rate changes over time. We always think about ether to US dollars, but what about ether to kilojoules or Bitcoin to kilojoules and having a live exchange rate of that. And technically you would see that fluctuate in a very different way to the price that would help you see something else altogether.
Michael:
Oh yeah, exactly. It's funny actually, if you had a market like that, you could probably make a whole bunch of different interesting applications as well. So let's say if you're one of those run and reward platforms where it's like, hey guys, gas is super cheap, all running is now double the kilojoules because gas is cheap, so they're trying to find equilibrium in the amount of kilojoules used per block. You could find all these funny... Yeah, it'd be an oracle for just different stuff other than US dollar value. Converting basically ether into an energy quantity and it's like this is one hamburger, this is one optical mouse or whatever it is.
Kerman:
Because we all intuitively get that where it's like, okay, if I have to transfer a token... right? You said the analogy-
Michael:
That would be really... Like a tool for boredom even, that would just make looking at it even more entertaining, actually just watching the chain.
Kerman:
So let's think about when the network has really congested and I need to make a token transfer, it's going to cost me probably like 20 to $40. I'm talking everyone's getting liquidated, things are getting messed up. $40 a token transfer. And the kilojoules for that token transfer, it'd be four cheeseburgers, then it's like, oh, actually, now it's really low. Okay, cool. Now it's just a single McDonald fry and you're sick. And then it's almost like we become conscious of how we're using our blockspace because blockspace, it's almost like, I think people who think about the environment are great, of like, ah, Bitcoin mining or proof of work mining's bad because it wastes energy, but actually as crypto natives, we say, no, not really because it secures this entire cryptographic network. But there's almost like a middle ground where if like the climate people can actually question what is being included in blocks. And then as crypto natives, we can actually help create policy, not policy, but like at least education of what blocks should contain and what they shouldn't contain and make that comparison real to people, because like, hey guys, this is really valuable. And as we think about global energy becoming more expensive with commodity prices going through the roof, like it is our responsibility to optimize blockspace.
Michael:
That's probably a thing that would happen, where miners will say we are not going to like, oh, this is a thing why it's really worrying for things like proof of stake, is having everyone agree on a certain order, hey guys, we're not pushing Uniswap transactions through or whatever, because they're just really like bloated or I've no idea what the term is, I'm not a miner, I wouldn't even know where to start. But the idea is, these guys could easily say these type of transactions make our life more difficult, which isn't worth it, so we are going to start saying no, optimize your stuff so that we can fit more people's transactions in. I don't even know if you can do this, but I feel like-
Kerman:
It's kind of like MEV.
Michael:
Yeah, miners already have the capacity to do this anyway, don't they?
Kerman:
Correct. Well, they're just driven by profit, but if there's almost like the eco-friendly add on where it's like, hey, we're not going to mine things that just blatantly waste the energy or blockspace effectively.
Michael:
And so that would be an opportunity cost for them, where they say, no, my belief in this policy and whatever I'm talking about is more than the $20,000 in transaction fees that they're going to make for block, not for me, thanks. Obviously that's going to be a personal preference. But this is the thing, that motivation's got to be really fucking high, pardon my language, but it's got to be really high. And for someone to say, oh yeah, no. But people don't really have a motivation unless you give them one. And so until there's a motivation people won't ever really worry about it, I don't think.
CHAPTER THREE: Proof-of-stake systems
Kerman:
Well, one thought that sparked my interest was thinking about proof of stake systems, because Ethereum's interesting in the fact that it started with proof of work and now it's moving to proof of stake. I think there's three models, there's pure proof of work, and then there's proof of work that's transitioned to proof of stake, and then there's pure proof of stake. How do you think about say the energy signatures of the three different models, because they have their different trade offs, but it's not always clear, or at least like, I'm still trying to understand that.
Michael:
Well, proof of work is good because I can link a certain moment to a certain moment, like a physical action to a cryptographic signature, so knowing that and knowing that work lever can be changed, whatever the work is, which is like a new algorithm, that just seems way more extensible. Because there's never any change in subjectivity or objectivity or whatever, it's like this work got done, this is the outcome, that's it. And so I feel like that's the money shot, that is the feature. Not in a boring way and it sounds really boring, but if you think about what that is, that is linking an electrical current in a moment in space time.
So if we imagine the universe, so let's now think about universe sort of stuff, now we think about the universe. The Earth is flying through the universe at however fast it's going per day around falling into the sun. If that's happening, then would that electrical current, when that miner mind that block or whatever it was, that has a physical location, we know that has a physical location where that took place. Now do we know who it was? We don't know, but you could find the miner who minded and then find, hey, where do you guys mine from? And put a guesstimate on like that.
But the system knows for one thing that happened somewhere in space time, basically. And so we could draw a coordinate of where this electrical current sat in space time pretty easily. We'd roll back where the Earth was and we'd make a guesstimate about where the Earth was in the universe, around the sun. And then we'd zoom in on the countries and we'd be dah-dah-dah. The electrical current must have occurred here. That's a humongous thing, that's like telling a digital system that happened. And being able to tell them that, that's like creating little portals of proof into a digital universe. So like, I'm like in my head, I'm like just not even getting busy with everything else, I've obviously looked at everything else. But now I've been having a chance to just focus on one thing and think about that as an idea, how far can you take that? The idea of a proof of work and this really long chain or build up of these electrical currents in a physical system, which make a chain of numbers, obviously in a digital system.
That's rad, that's pretty cool. So anyways, that whole thought there I think that's tons, that's really cool. But that's really deep into it. And that's obviously a bit out there and whack and I feel like I'm kind of losing my mind, which I sort of am probably. I'm fine, that's okay. I'm enjoying the rollercoaster anyway.
Kerman:
No, we're living it together.
Michael:
But you know me. Yeah, it's all good. But it's like, how good, this is cool, I've never thought about this stuff before, so let's go, I'll take it. New thoughts, new angle, look at the same shit, different perspective.
Kerman:
Completely.
Michael:
So it's kind of weird that you could plot on a map the electrical current signatures for all the proof of work, all the proof of work systems, you could literally do it. If I had any kind of... I feel like if you could pull it up, you could find who was the miner, and then you could know the miner's sites and know the miner's sites in that day. Now you don't definitely know that you could probably suss it out enough on a forum to have a guess. And next thing you know, you can draw almost the physical chain of electrical currents in the real world. So you can actually plot and model it and put it on a map. And then it's like, oh wow, this is influencing energy on a physical landscape. And so this is where it gets super physicsy, I reckon, because now if you think about it from the other perspective focusing on physics and the displacement and changing of energy.
Yeah, think about that. That's like, wow, that's super powerful. And the thing is nothing else matters, I learned this at Wyre, we're working with millions of keys and just being around lots and lots of assets and all this kind of stuff. As a developer infrastructure tool, we can't fuck up because people need us to be rock solid as an infrastructure piece. And the team, their biggest takeaway is only thing that matters is keys. And obviously that's why this echoing chain about it in Bitcoin as well, which is like not your keys, not your coins, which is really, really powerful. But that key is the electrical doorway, that's the portal for you, do you know what I mean? So we talk about proof of systems where there's proof of work in the physical world, which is the electrical currents and the digital world, which is obviously the keys, but the portal that connects those two is the private key.
That's the tiniest pinch of basically space time. If you think about what, how big a thought is or a number, it's the smallest like piece of data basically that you can have really. And I'm not talking about like, oh, an arbitrary communication language, like HEX or some shit, I'm talking about the fucking universe, the smallest in the universe, it's not a quanta, it's all one quantum unit. The smallest thing is going to be... Whatever that smallest thing is, it's going to be a measurement, the smallest measurement of the smallest thing, always. So we can just leave that to be that's a guaranteed. So the smallest thing or the smallest measurement that we both have is one is a number in the physical world, so we look at numbers, they're not physical, but we created them, so to speak, we perceive them as numbers and that's a key.
And that key basically, the amount of weight, weight I say, that a key has, right now look up at the top of your browser, there's a lock on it, that's a key. The key is encoding and decrypting me looking at you. And it's only that key, it's not me that says, oh yeah, Kerman. I can talk on a podcast with you, it's the keys that tell your keys that we are allowed to talk to each other. So we think of ourselves as keys instead of people because the keys are the ones with the control anyway, then that becomes much easier. So now we think the key is truly like, I mean, it's all keys, basically, it's all just cryptography.
Kerman:
It's all key and identities.
Michael:
Well, that's it, yeah, really is.
CHAPTER FOUR: Absolute Determinism and Bitcoin
Kerman:
There's two really interesting things. I think Bitcoiners is a class of people. I think that purism of absolute determinism is what I think is so deeply amazing. It's just sad that it kind of gets cried out with all this other stuff. I think like Bitcoin is a philosophy is really beautiful in its elegance. And while you're speaking about that, I did a quick search on the Bitcoin block score. So the current block is 746,551. And it was mined by Foundry USA Pool. And Foundry USA Pool is like a US based, truly institutional grade mining pool, somewhere in the US. So this moment in time on the Bitcoin chain, the current block is linked to some energy grid in the United States. And if I, the transaction that was then included in block 746, blah, blah, blah, it's like you can actually now link that transaction, that energy signature to literally an energy grid in the United States. That is just [inaudible 00:27:34], I don't know how you can't get excited.
Michael:
That's what I mean, it's like all these, imagine these digital things, that's the connection between, it's like these 10 activities that happened on chain are connected to these 10 electrical currents basically. And you think about that, you can think about that in a really shallow way. I'm thinking about this just from a physics perspective, because that means what is the energy signature that it draws? I want to see that, I want to look at all the sparks, not literally, but that's why I think about it. It's like a sparking end of a cable, it's just firing off, it's there. It just keeps spraying sparks out like transactions, let's say. But it's so cool, I think that idea is just really interesting. I just find that fascinating for everyone, I find it-
Kerman:
Completely. Well, do you want to speak about your little experiment, the time traveling one? Or is that too-
Michael:
No, no, no.
Kerman:
Up to you.
Michael:
No, I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Oh, no, not a good idea, I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I mean let's think about those. So now that we kind of understand, let's say this energy signature idea that everything on chain is linked to everything in a physical world. Then it's like, okay, well, what happens if I basically time lock a coin really, really far into the future. So if we imagine our planet Earth flying through the universe, but it just keeps hurling through the universe. And we could put a really big telegraph pole on the planet, imagine we could put a telegraph pole. And connect it from today to 150 years from now and it's just string, like a really long kite.
Benjamin Franklin, let's sing a Benjamin Franklin. So you got, he's got his kite and it's flying up in the wind. Imagine this kite, but it's flying 150 years into the future. So that's what basically the idea of locking these coins and giving everyone the private key, so that at the time when the Bitcoin mining rewards run out from the network, there's still coins in the blocks that are being donated, at least that's what I've done. And the miners all know the private key. So if the miners all know the private key, they're going to be the ones mining the blocks anyway. So it doesn't change the outcome, the best miner will always win and they're opting to pay themselves, they can opt a mine a block and not pay themselves and they can pay someone else.
So it's still within the identical bounds of the original protocol specification, where a miner can mine a block successfully and choose not to take a reward, so it doesn't really screw that, also, it gives light at the end of the tunnel. So when the block rewards run out. It's like sailing across a really dark ocean or the ocean at night, if there's a lighthouse at the end, that's going be way more motivating toward crew. Everyone's going to be like, fuck yeah, guys, there's a lighthouse, light at the end of the tunnel. That's going to motivate all the crew, everyone. So if you think about that, if you are traveling across galaxies and you see a planet, finally, you'd be like, guys, guys, guys, everyone, finally, there's a planet, we're not dead. An Oasis in the desert, you get the point obviously.
But the idea is like, if you think of Bitcoin as a sentient creature almost, not creature because creature doesn't feel correct, but almost like a hybrid between human and AI, which AI would be the general consensus of human inputs. So people are using it. And then you go, that's the sentient creature, what do we need for this sentient creature to keep going? It needs to know that things haven't changed basically, because if it can't see a reward in the future, that affects how it will function in the present. And that present will affect how it functions in the past, relative to the future that it's started to be weird in. So it's because we have a future where it's got no reward, it's like, oh shit. Getting closer to that, people are going to start wigging out, they're going to be like, eh, no, I'm not going to turn my miners on, there's no rewards in the future. But if we already know that there's rewards coming.
Kerman:
Know. Know, like that's it.
Michael:
Deterministic factor, they'll be like, cool, this is great. Thanks. You know what I mean?
Kerman:
Here's the question. Has anyone else put a private key on chain publicly that unlocks certain coins in the future? Has anyone else done that to your knowledge?
Michael:
I don't know if they've given the private key out with same premise, or the same-
Kerman:
Intent.
Michael:
Yeah, no, no, no. I don't think so. And I don't think anyone's been stupid enough to look that far into the future either. Literally, because it's a block 7.14 million. So that's in like 2156. People say 2140, but I don't know, for some reason I estimated it to say 2156. But it doesn't matter, it's fucking ages away.
Kerman:
Think about 2156. So it's like, well, here's a really interesting thought. You thought at some point in time, here's what the eventuality of the Bitcoin network is, here's what's going to happen. And that single thought has then led to this action that basically guarantees the lifetime of the Bitcoin network in the year 2153 or '56. And now in the future in like we think about the multiverse-
Michael:
It guarantees a mining reward.
Kerman:
Exactly. And the space-time continuum, there is now a pathway.
Michael:
Yeah, it's that pathway getting drawn.
Kerman:
Correct.
Michael:
Exactly. So now if you can imagine the Telegraph pole, it can keep getting further along. So I'm like, okay, I really want this message to go really far into the future because-
Kerman:
Correct.
Michael:
... the idea is like, I want this party to keep going. Bitcoin's really cool, not cool in, I don't really think about it. No money stuff. I mean, not energy, whatever, people get weird about it. It's cool. We've never had anything like this before, so let's see what's it capable of, I reckon it's a time machine. I'm not even kidding. I feel ridiculously that, but it's hard to not think that, seriously.
Kerman:
Think about this. The thing about the year 2156, imagine the state of crypto Twitter, maybe it's not Twitter anymore. People will go like, hey guys, like get this. There's a huge block reward. And they're like, wait, where did this come from? And they're like, oh, there's this guy 100 years ago that thought about this and put it here. And it was like, whoa, how did he know about that? And it's like, imagine that reality is happening at some point in this mix of reality. You've already time traveled, but you're here. And that's really trippy to think about.
Michael:
So if we know it's deterministic because we have a few assumptions. We know it's deterministic, but we don't know that Bitcoin's going to survive. Now let's assume it does for whatever reason. So it does. Then, yeah, because people would have to know the origin story of the coins.
Kerman:
Correct.
Michael:
We're living the origin story, but they would be... Well, this is funny, because this would be part of it. So people will be watching this, literally, people will be watching this from the future, that's almost absolutely guaranteed, because someone will want to find the person who put those coins there and one person maybe, I don't know, and this isn't an ego thing either, but this is funny to think about. They would probably 100% have seen-
Kerman:
Now that sounds funny. So that's what I'm saying, we go to the future and we come back. And I know you've already spoken about this to a few people, but like now everyone who hears this, they're going to remember this. And if they tell that to someone else and someone else, it's like, as long as this recording, or let's say the transcript of this stays in some meeting that's indexable on google, this is now saved in time forever. And in 100 years from now, as long as there's a trace to this, there's your face through my face. And then the fact that you've said this story, the future was guaranteed and we're just like going back. So it's almost like we've basically just time traveled. It's hard to say that.
Michael:
But the idea is you need infinite energy to basically time travel, that's the thought. So the idea is like a light particle, if something's traveling at the speed of light, imagine one frame of a movie, you're seeing one snapshot, so imagine a frame of light if you could, and it's a pulse and it's just one shot and comes towards you. As you're traveling at the speed of light, you're catching up to that... Let's say the speed of light is going along-
Kerman:
Yeah, it's the delay.
Michael:
... and you are running right by the side. You would see basically them stopped because you'd be running so fast that you only see the first frame. And the first frame is frozen because obviously people are moving in motion. So it's like frame, frame, frame, frame. So if you catch up to the first frame of light, it would be like looking at someone standing still, because you're only seeing one frame, which is them going like, and then they go and then they move more and more. But you're only seeing the first frame. And so if you think about what happened, then you think about that frame is the only thing that needs to exist. And it needs to be immutable all the way back. So basically it's like one immutable frame sent from one point really far. And so the equivalent of immutability is just don't forget it, basically. Please just remember this, basically. And so that's how I think about it anyway. And so can people remember something for this long? Can it be remembered, can you remember just a private key?
And so that's the idea, I was like, oh, I'll make it a brain wallet so that everyone can remember it easier. If you don't have to save it on your phone, you know what I mean? If you've got limited space and you can remember it as like a plain text or whatever. But that idea is you're just trying to preserve that number. So it's just a number that's all that needs to stay. So in order to unlock this energy, we get the smallest unit we know, which is a key or a thought. So it's the thought of the key or the actual key in a system. And we're sending that into the future basically. And the way that we're sending it into the future is basically by burying it with lots and lots of energy that proves that this amount of time has passed basically.
So it's like burying oil and putting a big sign on top of the sand or wherever, saying there's tons of oil down here. But it would look like we buried it, but we didn't bury it. We actually just left it on the surface. So when you think about that, it's kind of like giving them fossil fuel or fossil fuels are the buildup of pressure from the Earth surface and whatever it is. Same vibe just basically bearing lots of energy for people to use. And the idea is everyone has it. It's like an invert, I think it makes sense. It's a block reward.
CHAPTER FIVE: The Choose Your Own Adventure approach to crypto
Kerman:
So you see everyone kind of on crypto Twitter saying like, well, what happens to the Bitcoin block reward in like 50 years from now? People say, look, it's not a problem because it's 50 years. We will say, look, it is going to be a problem, but if the amount of energy to sustain the network for the next say 100 to 1000 years is a fraction of like-
Michael:
It's only going to get more expensive.
Kerman:
[inaudible 00:39:29]. You just raise a small, tiny fund today. Be like, hey guys, if you love Bitcoin, let's donate to the future, we create the fund and then at least send it for the next thousand years. And now the whole thing of like [inaudible 00:39:44].
Michael:
So this the thing. I thought about that and I was like, oh, what if people wanted to donate to it in the same way? Well, that's the protocol. So you've got the private key, you generate the time lock address, go for it. Those addresses already exist, if you look at them, you'll be able to find them. And so basically people can throw it forward if they want as well. But I think that's what's going to happen. Bitcoin, it's choose your own adventure. I talked to my brother about this. It is choose your own adventure. You're going to do with your coins whatever you want to do. And everyone's going to do whatever they want to do, whether they leave them to someone, they give them away, they lose them, that's going to be a thing. But everyone's just going to do whatever they want to do. So you may as well, if you can carve out some intent, if you can make it be a bit more purposeful, then that's cool, I think. You can give them away, you can spend them all, do whatever you want, everyone can do whatever they want I suppose.
Kerman:
Well, that ties into a really interesting thing of crypto in general has this vibe of choose your own adventure, anyone who comes into crypto, it's like, do you want to be a coin flipper? Do you want build something? Do you want to be an investor? Do you want to be an educator? There's all these pathways and all of them work ridiculously well. And that's kind of why I think as people become crypto natives, it's like your life changes forever because now you're playing in your own adventure. And I think that philosophy of choose your own adventure, that's what I guess the real world lacks right now, because no one can choose their own adventure, because they have obligations that have to be met regardless of what they want. It's like, I need to wake up 9:00 to 5:00, that's not choosing my own adventure.
Michael:
No, it's true. It really is like, that's a thing. There's just physical constraints to things, there's physical constraints, there's opportunity, like access to things. Life can basically cock block people from their potential. It's not potential, but it just happens. Everyone's got the thing that they missed out on-
Kerman:
Completely.
Michael:
Hopefully because it gives people something to chase in that regard. So you've got something haven't achieved yet, but it keeps you wheels spinning. I don't know, but I know what you mean.
Kerman:
Cool.
But it's like, then we've talked about this before. Imagine if everyone could choose their own adventure, they choose the adventure that they have their superpower in. And if everyone was utilizing their best superpower, we would have flying cars in probably five years.
Michael:
Literally. If you wanted to change humanity, I think, not change humanity, but if you're trying to add that next innovation or we knew the Earth was flat and then it wasn't, now people think it is. Look, I can't even bother thinking about that. But we used to think the Earth was flat, we used to think the Earth was the center of the universe, all these kind of new we used to, now we know, we used to always know things. And that's weird when you think about the fact that you used to know something. "Now you're just somebody that I used to know." You know that song?
But it's actually you used to know that. Not like, oh yeah, I think that sounds about right. It's like, no, no, no, we know that this is true and nothing else is above it, nothing else. That's where we're at it right now in Earth, civilization, feels like we know. And quantum mechanics and shit, that's all part of the same domain, it's still part of the same explanation set, let's say, which is the universe. So what's outside of the universe? What's the relationship between consciousness and the universe and stuff? And all these things that we think spirituality, we don't know. We used to think that people were crazy if they were happy, that was a weird thing that people that were too happy all the time.
That was a thing, people have new emotions. People discovered new emotions. In evolution, we would've gone from stick and hitting each other, to hitting each other and offering a gift. We had to figure out emotions, we had to identify emotions, we had to label those emotions, we had to feel those emotions, we had to empathize with them. And so all those things that we used to think were crazy, that to me is, there's so many or more of those life Easter eggs, let's call them, in history, what will be the history of Earth. There's so many more massive ones waiting for us, I reckon, I'm almost certain.
We don't even talk about the idea of what happens after you die, scientifically what happens after you die. And people say, oh your energy turns off. Where does it go? If I'm a construction of energy signatures and energy vibrations, how can my energy just evaporate? It can't. As an energy signature in a matrix of an energy field or whatever, you can't go anywhere, it has to be echoed back into the field or whatever. So when you snip like a matris from it. And I imagine that's like a node falling out of the network or whatever. But the idea is like, well, think about how much money, time and effort we're pouring into longevity, but people aren't even fucking happy yet. It's like they're extending work, that's not the problem to solve, let's get people happy and then let's extend life. "Happy is the new rich," as Frank Sinatra said. I love that quote. Like this really is.
Kerman:
That is amazing.
Michael:
I mean, obviously it's a generalization because we're very fortunate, but in the context of the new problem or the new goal that people are striving for is happiness, I think anyway. Let's say how will we perceive the universe in the future? Oh, there's a multiverse, yes, there's a physical multiverse. Okay, cool. Now that becomes every textbook or every scientific thing, whatever, but that's the new base layer. So for us right now equals MC squared is the base layer that we've got. And that's a mad, that's done really well. And it's taken us from basically then to now and obviously into the future.
And any of these equations, the next big one will be, it's not going to be something like the same, something equals MC squared, it'll be more encompassing, it'll be encompass higher dimension. What actually is a fourth dimension? What's outside the bubble of the universe? Something exists, it's the fourth dimension, which would be every other alternate universe from every decision compiled that I've ever experienced. So it's basically any perceivable possibility that I could think of, essentially that's exactly what it is, it's any possibility. So it's having a master key to the universe. And so if we talk about type one, type two, type three civilizations within our universe, which is the controlling of natural star systems. So a type zero, we're a type zero civilization right now. Type one civilization is they control all the planet, so Earthquakes we have control over, the weather, things like that. Type two is their local star system, so like the solar system. And then type three is their whole galaxy.
So it's basically where you can consume the power of your sun, your Earth or your galaxy. And you've got total flexibility over it. But I think we skip that and we go to like type 10, which is we pop out of the universe and go up higher dimensions. And so consciousness would have to play a fact, if the universe is a multiverse and the multiverse is only ever going to be a construction of identities of things that we know have happened, then the multiverse can only ever be the collection of the maximum amount of human consciousness, because it's only physical capacity is whatever we can perceive. Because we can never perceive something that we haven't had a thought or anything like that. To perceive something with truth so that it would consume our brain like occupy space in our brain, in terms of how many truths we've got.
If we knew like only these things, these bases of foundations of physics or truths or whatever. To perceive anything, you can't tell me, there's a difference between a memory and a thought. And I'll tell you why, because your brain is a construction of energy signatures, energy signatures meaning experiences. So all your senses were activated and snap-shotted at one point in time, each time and that is a perpetually what's happening in your brain, if you want to think about it indexing memory slot. And so basically if your memories and thoughts, comparing thoughts to memories. A thought would only ever have the same parameters as a memory. Oh, I'm thinking about being on the beach. Oh yeah. Yeah, it's so comfy. Oh yeah, I've got a cocktail and eating a cheeseburger, whatever it is, but you're painting the environment for yourself in your mind, that's what mindfulness is, you're trying to immerse yourself with your senses. How does that smell? How does it feel? How does it taste? How does it touch whatever? And that's because you're activating all your senses to kind of build this memory as realistically or as accurately as possible.
So if a thought and a memory are going to have the same parameters, then it means that the universe, if we look at every single person that could draw the possibilities within the universe, it will have a finite space. And that basically means that in a four-dimensional universe or multiverse, which is multiple versions of our universe, which means basically means we're recording all the possibilities, create another universe. So every time we have a moment, that snapshot, and it's almost like a hard fork, basically. So every moment or every thought is a new hard fork. So imagine all the hard forks that have ever existed in the world and that's basically every thought that's ever existed, that's the universe. And that would be only a collective consciousness of everything. So when people talk about spirituality or scientific shit, where it's source energy or we're all one. Yeah, we probably are, it makes sense.
Kerman:
Well, we talk a lot about this with dreams. When you have a dream or when you dream of doing something effectively, you have now actually had a thought that constructs a new possibility in the multiverse effectively. And now it's not that it's going to happen, but it's possible to potentially happen. And that's what's really interesting about self-limiting beliefs, that it destroys pathways in the future of what could be, versus dreams keep expanding them.
Michael:
Yes.
Kerman:
And our collective consciousness has forgotten how to dream.
Michael:
Exactly, it's like throwing more stones in the pond. When you think bigger, it's creating more and more imaginary versions of yourself, but it's splitting them through different dimensions, where one of those dimensions, like a multiverse, one of those universes, you will follow the correct path and you will achieve that.
Kerman:
Correct.
Michael:
Because what we do here, if you meet yourself in all these other multiverses, you're going to meet the guy that did say yes to, I don't know, whatever it is and that changed his life. And then you're going to have the person that said no and the person that didn't do it. And all these people will become experts at something, because remember every person living is unbelievable, they would have to be the best in the world at doing something. I don't know what it is, but it's something. Whether it means I'm the best person in the world at eating my mom's cooking at home, that's something, everyone's going to have a superpower.
But the idea is people that pursue what they're good at or what they enjoy, pursue something longer, the longer you can pursue something, the more iteration you can get on it. The more iteration, the deeper you can go, the deeper you can go, the further from the norm you can basically, or the deeper behind and into the thought. So whether that's mathematics, whether that's cryptography, whether that is athletics. You look at athletic people, if you want to win gold medal, you better start training from a very young age, because everyone else is. And that's the level of commitment it takes. If you watch the movie, I think it's called king... Fuck, I've got to say it, it was too good not to say it. Will Smith, Williams sisters. "King Richard". The movie with the story about Serena Williams and Venus Williams with King Richard.
So this has basically showed them from day zero, being put with a tennis rack in the hand. Tiger Woods, same thing, playing golf since he's little, training, repetition, time in game is just so important. So I think people that accomplished the best and the best, I think it's because they know what they're good at. Now they know what they're good at, whether or not they want to be good at that. I don't know if Michael Phelps wake up and said, I want to be the best woman in the world, I'm assuming he did, I would definitely not be surprised if he's like, man, I never wanted this. And I was pushed into this at a young age and I just had to go with it or I don't know, but both, you can imagine both sides of that equation, right?
Kerman:
Completely.
Michael:
And so when you think about it, that's what it takes, I think, for excellence, it takes that level commitment in physical excellence. Absolutely. And in mental side, with people that have built, like Elon Musk built an amazing company, but he hasn't won a gold medal. Now can Elon Musk go and win a gold medal? Maybe, that's going to be difficult, he might be able to do it in shooting or something like that. But it's hard for him to compete now because he's committed himself to a path that's different, but it cost him a different path. So he could have been, maybe he could have, I don't know, but he might have been a movie star, whatever. But basically when you pursue excellence, it's got to be all of it.
Kerman:
Basically time and market is king effectively, because you need a compound. And it doesn't matter when it happens, as long as you have a compounding system that you have guaranteed certainty, you just know there's a universe in which this will happen provided that truth stays constant consistently. So I think coming back to today's present, if you can say in the next 10 years I have roughly this many hours, here's how many hours I can probably spend working. There's still a lot of time outside of work that you could be compounding in so many other areas, but people don't really think of it in that way. To get a lot of the value of something, you only need about 70, 80% of it. We kind of talk about the random skills where there's dancing singing, anything like that. You don't have to be 99% good, you probably have one 99% pursuit you want to take in your life, but everything else, 70%'s are great, because it gives you so much variety.
Michael:
Yeah, literally.
Kerman:
Well, I know we're running up on time now, so yeah. Thank you so much for the chat, this was amazing as always. And to everyone, who's going to be hearing this in the next 120 years, hopefully this is of use to you.