Decentralization x Christianity | Bitcoin, Blockchain, AI

Father Ian VanHeusen 0:00
Oh Heavenly Father, we ask that we may begin all things by your initiative, carry them through by your grace, and bring them to completion. To your Son, Jesus Christ. And we ask all this in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, amen, the Father Son, the Holy Spirit.

Connor Mahoney 0:18
Let's get started. I think we got all the main panelists here. We've got a lot of new speakers do. Father Ian's been here before. Nominus has been here before, but I know Jordan, you haven't. And also, super testament is new. So I just want to kind of give a brief overview of what we've been doing and we've been we've been hosting spaces since January. Actually, this will be the fifth space, and I'm broadly calling the topic that we've been talking about Christian futurism. I like that name because I think it pretty perfectly intoxicates. You know exactly what, what it is we're talking about Christianity and we're talking about the future. So the first space we held, uh, was kind of kicking off, uh, some discussions about a philosophy called EAC, which is kind of broadly like a techno optimist philosophy. And you know, a lot of these guys, we're building emerging technologies. We're building, you know, things that that don't exist yet won't exist until don't build them. And the discussions of, what are these technologies, what's good, what's bad, and how should Christians in the church be approaching the tech. Oh, okay, we got Catholic crypto too. I forgot they were on the panel. Let's pull in and following Ian, if you don't mind, if you can just mute your mic. You're coming through a little bit cool. So Christian futurism, I would say, two very simple premises. First one is that the future is going to be more technologically advanced than the present. And the second one is that the future is going to be Christian. So as Christians, we need to be thinking about the future in this way and asking ourselves, you know, what is the technology that's going to define the landscape of the future? We know what the technology is that defines the present, and some of it's good. A lot of it has not been so great. We see a lot of censorship. We see a lot of not great things happening with with the current landscape. So the question is, you know, what's the future actually going to look like? And how can we start preparing ahead of time, so we don't find ourselves in the same situation. That's really the question. And so, you know, as Christians, we do understand the future is going to be Christian, the church is going to march forward through time, and all nations, all people, whole oath is going to be collected into the church. And if that's true, and if it's also true that the future is going to be more technologically advanced in the present, then we have to approach these technologies with a lot of hope that they can bring a lot of good true, there can be bad things, and that's probably what we're going to be talking a lot today about, but, but there's also good things. So, you know, with most things, there's two sides to the coin. So let's think about it, and you know, let's also realize that Christians and the church, we really have to embrace this conversation now. And you know, if we don't, future, Christians will, but we're going to be indicted for a failure to steward the talents and the gifts and the opportunities that we've been given. So let's not approach the conversation lightly. Okay, let's just set the stage. I guess you guys can kind of introduce yourselves. I gave you guys a brief interview, but just tell us a little bit about why you're here in the conversation, and why do you think that emerging tech has a Christian component to it? Matt, why don't you take it off?

Matt Bagazinski 3:39
Hey. Thank you, Connor for hosting the space. And just to clarify, Matt Pinto started the Catholic crypto conference, then the Catholic crypto network. I'm Matt bags, not Matt Pinto, but anyway, excited to be here. So Catholic crypto, we had the conference, and then we're trying to, you know, get Catholics who work in web three connected to each other, get Catholics in general, interested in Bitcoin and blockchain and things like that, and then trying to have a voice at the table. So Matt Pinto started the conference off by saying he is the founder of ascension press, right? This huge. So anyway, in case you don't know who he is, huge Catholic Media Group anyway. So he started off the conference saying, you know, hey, I wish 30 years ago, you know, someone would have grabbed me by the lapels and said, You don't realize how big the internet is going to be. And he, you know, looked at blockchain and said, hey, it looks like, you know, people are saying some similar things. Seems like it might be the next big thing. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, it's not guaranteed that the future will be decentralized. It's not guaranteed that, you know. Although the church will persist, it's not guaranteed that, you know, the church will have, you know, a strong presence at the table. And so I think we need to do everything we can to be part of the conversations and help to drive things to be built virtuously and for the good of human flourishing.

Connor Mahoney 5:15
Appreciate that also. Matt, so he's just talking about Catholic crypto, but he's, he's a, he's a good mind too. He's actually been working a lot in the Bitcoin space with some of the development there recently. And I don't know if you realize super test net, but he was, he was building that, that chess app on bit VM when that discovery was first made. Kind of cool.

@super_testnet 5:36
Oh, awesome. Okay, good. Good to good to talk to you in a Twitter space. Matt, yeah, I'm super test net. I'm a Bitcoin software developer. I focus mostly on layer one scripting some stuff on the Lightning Network. I do I did the first implementation of the the bit VM concept, and lately, I've been working on a new layer two project called hedgehog. So a good student. I spend a lot of time developing new ideas and doing a lot of research and development work in the Bitcoin space. Also a Catholic, and you know, my faith is the most important thing to me. So glad to be here and talk a little bit about it. I'm also in Prague right now getting ready for the Bitcoin hack day that's starting tomorrow, and that's so right now it's 1am where I am, so I do have to be a little bit quiet because I'm in like a building with other people who are trying to sleep, but it's not so bad.

Connor Mahoney 6:34
Awesome. I do also want to say this is kind of an ecumenical space, so obviously we've been very Catholic heavy right here at the beginning of the discussion with Father Ian and super testing at Catholic crypto. But I'm actually Protestant, and so when I sent the message to Jordan, I said, Hey, this is a really Catholic heavy space right now, but would love to also bring you on board and kind of maybe balance your conversation a little bit, not just on the tech side, but on the on the Christian side. So happy that Jordan Bush is lending me a little bit of support here. How you doing?

Jordan Bush 7:04
Yeah, I'm doing well, man, thanks for inviting me. My name is Jordan bush. I was a pastor and church planter in Montevideo, Uruguay. My wife and I and our kids helped plan a small church there and then over. There's a number of reasons why we why we left, but basically we had some denominational changes. And in addition to that, I contributed to the book. Thank God for Bitcoin. Wrote that alongside with Jimmy song and a handful of others. And so then, yeah, just basically that the book came out. We right around the time we were coming back to the States, and we put together a one day conference in Miami in 2022 and on the hind on the tail end of that, I had Jimmy and some of the other guys, including Gabe. Gabe is in the audience just basically said, hey, you know you you've seen the insides and outs of what it's like to work in ministry. And I mean, half of our church members in Uruguay were Venezuelan immigrants. So good to see up front, up front seat to currency devaluation and what it does to churches and what it does to nonprofits, and just again, normal people as well. So they just basically said, Hey, if you're if you're willing to do this work while you're figuring out doctrinal things, we're willing to fund you to work on this full time. So for about the last two years, actually, yeah, two years as of I think, like a week ago, I've been working on this, and so, yeah, as Connor mentioned, we do. We'll be doing the thank God for Bitcoin Conference on the 24th and 25th of July in Nashville. I'm gonna have a bunch of speakers, including your Guido Holzman, Catholic, Austrian economist and the author of the book The ethics of money production, which I cannot recommend highly enough. So yeah, we'd love to have you guys join us. And you can find more information@dgfp.com I'm, in terms of my presence here, I'm happy to back up Connor on the Protestant side of things. And also, I was a little bit when you started mentioning the futurism, I didn't know if you were desiring to rehash our our space debate or our previous debate on your podcast about Tesla. So Tesla and SpaceX and all those guys.

Connor Mahoney 9:15
Yeah. I mean, yeah, totally. So the topics obviously decentralized technology, but there's a lot of philosophy that goes into that, right, not, not even just on the techno optimist side, but even, like, about decentralization. So I mentioned at the beginning of the year, we started hosting spaces with EAC, which is effective acceleration. It's a philosophy behind a techno optimist movement, but a lot of philosophies at play. You know, there's transhumanism, there's and I think probably in this conversation, probably going to also have to talk about libertarianism a little bit. And so the question is, you know, is the future decentralized? And some people would say, Oh yes, everything has to be decentralized. Some people say, Listen, not everything. Well. So the common thing is, not everything has to be on the blockchain, right, but also not everything probably necessarily has to be decentralized. So what, where does the church's interest? Where is the church's interest in Christians interests served by seeing things decentralized? And how can we, you know, how can we, like Matt said, how can we secure a seat at the table with whatever this, this future that's developing is father Ian. Why don't you introduce yourself a little bit too and some of your work in the space?

Father Ian VanHeusen 10:31
Yeah, I'm Father Ian Van Heusen. So I do a lot of media stuff. My main area of focus is the settacle and mystical theology. But in the past three years, I've been working closely with Crescenta and with faith games, we're doing everything VR AR, video game, we're focused video games short term, because VR doesn't seem to be taken off. And then with Crescent A, we're working on tokenization. And if you look at Crescent a, there's too many big announcements to lift list off, but they're, they're really, we're really doing some really cool stuff with Crescent a and I'd be glad to give my thoughts on that. Um, I was just meeting with Carl today. I'm here in New York City, uh, visiting my dad, who lives in Brooklyn, my parents, I should say my, my dad's here, my mom's away right now. So, but, yeah, let's open up the conversation.

Connor Mahoney 11:20
Cool. And then also Nominus. I actually didn't give you a brief bio, but if you want to tell us about your activities in the space, I don't even know if you want to talk about 20 money eight, but I think the whole Bitcoin monastery conversation is kind of interesting too. But nominus has kind of been a staple since the beginning, so I always love to bring him on board. He's a great guy.

Nominus 11:46
Yeah sure. Yeah, I was an affiliate of this company in the decentralized space called 2028 for a while before they went into hibernation, but I did buy a Mac Mini from them, and I'm excited to see what they do with it. But my work is actually more focused on the AI side of things. I am super interested in Bitcoin and the decentralized space, especially the privacy aspects that it might provide, and especially the immutable information systems that it might provide us to record information going into the future. I'm really excited about really the underlying technologies, but, yeah, I'm a developer, and I'm working in AI on new human machine interfaces, and even human to human interfaces and new AI algorithms. I do a lot of research and on physics based ml and mechanistic interpretability of AI models, and I'm really interested in investigating the theological and philosophical implications of AIS and how how they sort of hold beliefs in that big, huge number matrix, and how We can, as Christians, utilize that for God's glory. I was born Catholic, and I'm still Catholic, technically, but I just had a period where in the middle of my life, where I went Protestant for a while, but the last couple years, I've come back to Catholic. It was really a situation out of my control when I was a kid, but, but yeah, I love the Catholic Church and Protestant so I actually have big ideas on the record reconciliation of the two, which might be a controversial idea, but yeah, I'm super excited about decentralized tech and and how it can bring glory to our father and and just tech in general. So yeah, especially AI. Yeah, that's me.

Connor Mahoney 14:20
Awesome. Appreciate it. And Carlos, I don't know he has internet issues sometimes, but I didn't. I did want to bring him on, mostly to add the AI element. I think it's important, because we see that AI like, especially with open AI and, you know, chatgpt, we see a lot of closed source development happening in that world right now. And I think a lot of people recognize how, like world changing. Some of these developments are with artificial intelligence and so open source AI is a huge conversation right now, like, how can we preserve that? So maybe we have some of that element to the conversation. But just broadly, it's really, it's about. Decentralized tech. So to get the conversation started, I threw this tweet on the on the Jumbotron. And I know Jordan Bush, you're probably familiar with ODN. I think, I think both of us have had some conversations with him, and it was kind of funny talking about 2028 I don't know if everybody knows 2188 it was kind of meme in the space last year, but they are a company, and there's a lot of associations there with this Bitcoin monastery idea, some strange things. I don't think anybody really fully understands it, but I do find elements of the conversation engaging. And it's, I think it's, I think it's really prescient as we're talking about decentralized tech. So the tweet has to do with recognizing kind of a political element to this conversation. And I think that's really kind of the the impetus behind a lot of decentralized tech is to realize that, hey, we don't, we're not really in control of the the technology and the systems that we have to use day by day, right? And we see a lot of censorship happening with Christians in a lot of different avenues, and anywhere that you have kind of a locus for, like a weakness, a single dependency, or a single point of failure, that's also a locus for control. So Bitcoin is a very obvious one, talking about money, talking about money, talking about the monetary system, and we see a lot of bank censorship happening. But there's also other avenues we see, like, Hey, you create an app. We don't have Albo in the space right now, but he created this Christian app, Ecclesia. It's a Christian Bible app, and he wasn't allowed to list it on the Apple store. He finally got, got through some of the hurdles there, but that's, that's a point of that's a single point of failure. That's a point where Apple is now controlling the conversation as to what you know, what kind of information gets out there. So it's not just a money conversation those other things that we have to ask ourselves, what are the solutions to these problems, and is decentralization the best solution? So in audience tweet, he's bringing up Christian computational, financial and energy sovereignty. I'll say, I do a lot of stuff with crypto. I do a lot of stuff with Ethereum. I know a lot of Bitcoin Maxis here. Don't love those technologies, but I will say that I don't like I hate crypto casinos. I hate the meme coin stuff like, I'm not about it. What I want to see is ultimately, decentralized money, decentralized storage, possibly. I think decentralized identity is a huge conversation. I wrote a piece on this character Brantley with Ethereum naming service. I think everybody should understand what happened there and why that's important. You can actually find that on that medium, which is in my bio, decentralized identity, and so yeah, decentralized compute, decentralized storage, decentralized identity, decentralized money, are probably the main ones. So why don't we just maybe go around the panel, start the discussion off with with this question, which is what really needs to be the focus of decentralization, and does everything need to be decentralized? Like, what are the limits with that, with that question, and that's kind of a big one, but what really should be the focus right now with this decentralization question? Jordan, if you want to kick it off, you're welcome to.

Speaker 3 18:22
Hey, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that we, I find myself talking about this a lot on different podcasts and stuff, is is like we are. We are in a moment of definitional crisis of just not like nobody knows what anything is. We don't know what men are, we don't know what women are. We don't know what a family is. We don't know what a marriage is. We don't know, and those are kind of broadly touched on in the culture, but we also don't know. I mean, this is lesser, lesser talked about what we don't know what governments are, and we don't know what money is. And so I think that, you know, a lot of the difficulty of even talking about what should be decentralized is, you know, like, where, what are we drawing on to even answer that kind of a question? You know, we all have these ideas, whether or not we've, you know, developed them fully, or, you know, thought them through fully. I think that's part of what, what I would want to talk about before we even get to answering the question is, you know, like, how do we how do we understand what the role of government is. How do we understand what the role of what money is, and what is the basis for that understanding? And so, yeah, I think that this is, this is a big, a big issue, a really big problem, but until we are willing to submit ourselves to an authority by which we're going to, I mean, there's, there's a pastor who's pretty controversial. His name is Douglas Wilson. And the question, anytime anybody makes a truth claim, he'll just basically say, you know, by what standard, you know, what is the standard that you're appealing to and trying to make these kind of truth claims and trying to, you know, say that we should do this thing. And so I think that. That would be maybe a helpful place to start before we, you know, to try to affirm some sort of basis for the things that we're going to posit.

Connor Mahoney 20:11
Yeah, and obviously, Christianity has a very hefty truth claim. So I think, I think a lot of Christians kind of find themselves at odds with when we're building all these different technologies because of that, there's, there's different philosophies that are competing in this space, right? And we're all working on a lot of times the same technology. Sometimes we have a lot of very similar goals, but they're not necessarily the same goals. So, you know, and there might be a lot of people with libertarian politics here, and you know, of course, nothing wrong with that, but, but I do find specifically in the Bitcoin space, there is a little bit of a rub there with Christians in the space versus libertarians, or, you know, even more extreme and darker libertarians. You just want absolutely no, you know, limits on on their personal freedoms. And sometimes Christina is gonna say, Well, hold up. Like, you know, there should be, there were goods that are in society that should be encouraged, and we have to find a way to do that. So Father Ian has his hand up, why don't you go ahead and take it off? And then I was actually gonna ask to protest that, because we kind of had this question too, about libertarianism.

Speaker 1 21:23
You know, it's interesting. I think my approach to this, the topic of technology, is not primarily a moral or political question, but a simple matter of utility. I mean, I don't know. It's interesting. It seems like you guys the assumption, I mean, and I was trying to wrap my mind around some of the assumptions of the tech world. Is that the technology will solve moral, spiritual and political problems. I really don't approach this technology of question about that at all. I actually just see it as purely utility and focusing on utility of specific projects. And I don't think necessarily, I, first of all, you know, I was wondering about this. I didn't want to be the jerk. Who's who? I think hierarchies are built into nature, and I think they're a fundamental aspect of reality. I don't think Bitcoin or any of these other technologies are going to solve inequality in any kind of meaningful way. I think inequality is not simply about human design. It's a fabric of reality, and we could defend that based on Scripture and tradition. That being said, I think Christians have to respond. I call myself a tech realist, which is blockchain will be used extensively across the board. There's no doubt about it. I mean, once you understand the technology bitcoin is, I was just talking about this with Carl today, you know, Bitcoin is going to disrupt a lot of industries, including some really big dinosaurs, because it's going to be able to do things quicker, more efficient, with greater stability. And I don't, I don't know if that's going to necessarily make life better. I wouldn't say that, but I'll open up for that. I don't want to talk too much.

Connor Mahoney 23:12
Yeah, and this is very informal conversation, so if people just want to, kind of, like, hop in and talk, you don't have to, you know, raise your hand necessarily, unless, of course, the conversation gets pretty heavy, but I did want to throw it to...

Nominus 23:23
I just had a quick, quick question for Father Ian, you do you do bring up a great point about hierarchies being natural, part of nature. But do they have to be financial in nature? Because in nature, these hierarchies are not financial. But, yeah, that's my question. That's it like, do they have to be necessarily? Does the hierarchy necessarily have to be tied to money?

Speaker 1 24:02
I mean, I think on a practical level. I mean, I've always said this the powers that be. I mean, the world will not allow for people to it just if bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are undermining national currencies, then they'll just get shut down. I mean, that's Carl. I mean, the Carl and Eddie have worked a lot on the regulatory environment for for cryptos and tokens and tokenization. I mean, I think we're kind of in a little bit of moment like Napster, when you could download anything on the internet, and I think that environment will disappear pretty quickly from the conversations that I have. Yeah, so I mean, but yeah, I don't want to hog the conversation. I know I'm saying a lot of provocative things, but let's bounce it around. I'll let you guys talk.

Connor Mahoney 24:47
Alright Jordan, you've had your hand up. Go ahead. And then...

Speaker 3 24:52
Yeah, yeah, Father Ian, I guess my, I again, I'm I try to, I try to be as realistic as you know possible, and I am not. A Bitcoin utopian where I think that Bitcoin is going to fix everything. I don't feel that way at all at the same time, I do think that something like the internet has been just as disruptive to governments in many ways. I mean, at least you could argue, obviously, there's ways in which it's provided Central, you know, centralization, and, you know, provided lots of tools for them. But, I mean, you can pretty easily argue that it's been a pretty net win for, you know, for, for somewhat of a, you know, decentralization, you're human, human flourishing. I guess I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say bitcoins in a due way with hierarchy. I think hierarchy is awesome. I think hierarchy is is gets a bad rap. I would, you know, be as skeptical as you are on that front. I think what bitcoin does do away with this partiality. I think that's the bigger that's the bigger issue. That's the bigger deal in which Christians should care about is the fact that, no, it's in this is something that's condemned by the Apostle James is condemned by Paul Peter. I mean, all the greats in terms of, you know, just like this is, this is not something God. God doesn't want us to treat the doesn't want the rich to be shown favoritism over the poor, or the poor to be shown favoritism over the rich. And so I think that having a monetary system that has a set of rules that can't be changed by, you know, the rich against the poor, or vice versa, in our, you know, the current political environment that we're in, there's, there's lots of desire to favor the poor over against the rich. And so I think both of those are problematic in and so, yeah, I don't think we're going to do away with hierarchy. I don't think anyone's under the I mean, there's gonna be people who have tons of Bitcoin who are going to be incredibly, you know, powerful, if bitcoin does anything approaching what we think it could do, or, you know, at least reaches the value levels that we think it's going to approach. So I don't think, I don't think, I'm certainly not against hierarchy, but I do think, like I said, partiality is a different, different story, and I think that we, in every Christian, should long for the day when partiality is done away with, or at least moving towards that.

Connor Mahoney 27:02
Yeah thanks for that. If Carlos pops in, he needs to introduce himself, but I think he's been having internet issues. I'm gonna throw it to super testament to answer that question about about decentralization, especially from a tech side. I mean, do you just kind of see, I guess, things developing the way say Father Ian and Jordan do?

Speaker 2 27:24
I think decentralization is a means to an end, and the end that we seek through decentralization is a certain type of equality that there's no one in control over a protocol like like Bitcoin or like money or identity, that everyone has the ability to participate in the system on an equal basis. And that's the that's the real goal, that decentralization strives for, that that I try to strive for, and writing decentralized technology assists with that, but it's not appropriate for absolutely everything. I do think that centralization brings a lot of benefits. For example, in the development process of an application, you can do you can be a lot faster. You can be a lot more organized if you if you have a centralized leader who's calling the shots. And we're going to focus on this, and we're not going to focus on that, I admire those things and I want those things, they're benefits, that they they help, but it has its place. You know, not everything should be centralized and not everything should be decentralized. So those are my thoughts on on that.

Connor Mahoney 28:39
Yeah I don't want to change the question now too much, but maybe if I can just follow up super testament like, I guess I see, I see things pretty much the same, same way you do. But then, so my question is like, is there inherent good for Christians to say you're walking in Bitcoin? Is there inherent good for Christians to be walking in this space? And if so, why? Because, if decentralization, like is real, if we really do see a decentralized future, like it kind of doesn't, it doesn't matter, like the tech, like nobody controls the tech, so anybody can just do what they want, right? So why is it like there's no power, you know, if I can speak very clearly, like there's no power to be gained, you know, by building these technologies, because it's a decentralized technology, right? So why? Like, should Christians be building these things? And if so, like, why? What's your answer for that?

Speaker 2 29:32
You say there's no power to be gained. But I think, I think the, the fundamental power that I, that I seek in my life is, is the power of good, the power of assisting my fellow humans to become the best versions of themselves, like become holy and and I think good, every good thing helps with that. So if the Apostle James says that every every good and perfect gift comes from the Heavenly Father, if bitcoin is good, then it comes. From him and and I want to be a part of helping improve and perfect these good gifts that the Father gives us. So, yeah, I think there's no human worldly power that comes from that comes from that but, or at least that's not the part that I'm interested in, but the the power of being a child of God and of helping other people live out their calling as children of God is something I'm greatly interested in, and a better money, one that's free from the machinations of evil people is is a great, great help toward that goal.

Connor Mahoney 30:40
Yeah I definitely wanted my question a little Machiavellian, maybe. But I guess, I guess, really, what I was getting at is, I mean, this is always my worry, like, especially with Bitcoin, like, people talk, oh, it's just going to be the way it is. Like, it's they kind of see it as this inevitable thing. And my worry is that it's not necessarily that. And if, like, Christians aren't involved with building these systems and setting these systems up, you know, at this beginning stage, at these early stages, then other people are going to be involved. And, you know, the question is like, what are the purposes and what are the beliefs and the values that are getting built into these technologies at these early stages? Let's do this, Carlos.

Father Ian VanHeusen 31:23
Did you want us to jump on that question? Or...

Connor Mahoney 31:26
I do, I do. But Carlos has been hopping back in and out of the space, so I wanted to just briefly introduce himself, and then if you can add to that this conversation right now, that'd be great.

Carlos Davila 31:36
Can you hear me there? Yeah? Okay, nice. Sorry, yeah. I'm here now. Do you want me to, like, introduce myself or something?

Connor Mahoney 31:47
Yeah, if you could just tell people about what you've been doing with your open source. Ai, right? And so we're talking about the decentralized the question about decentralization and why Christians should be building, you know, open source, decentralized technologies. So maybe you can add to that convo too.

Carlos Davila 32:01
Yeah. So, yeah. Well, since a few months ago, well, I have been working on AI for the past, like two years, two and a half years or so, maybe a little bit longer. But, you know, I have an AI company, an AI solutions company. So we build solutions and and I realized how, you know, how I will say alignment is important, but it's not alignment. It's more like shaping the personality and the core values of the model. So every model is different. For example, I know chat GPT is a little bit more like robotic cloud. This sounds like if, as if it was, like traumatized, or something like as if they beat, beat him at house or whatever at home. So it's every model. It's kind of like a, like a human seeking, and depends on how you train them. It's, it's the results that they will give, even like depends, depends of the personality that you gave them. You will. It will, it will end up being good at certain tasks, you know, like the benchmarks and all of that. So I started training these models with that in mind, and eventually, like I came up to to the conclusion that it was kind of hard to align AI to the whole humanity, because even itself, like humanity, is not aligned areas of opinions. There are multiple religions, multiple ideologies, uh, sociological structures even so, it's very hard to align an AI to the whole humanity. Because for in order to do that, you will first need to align humanity itself. So this all that was to align specific individual AIS to their creators. So like, instead of being aligned to the whole humanity, it will be aligned to their specific creator or their owner,

Connor Mahoney 34:01
And Carlos, is a Orthodox Christian, so we have the triad of Christianity here. Now, cool. Okay, well, let's jump the conversation around. I know father, Ian, you popped in right before Carlos jumped in.

Speaker 1 34:12
Okay, let me jump in. You know, I think, you know, why should Christians be in a space? You know, I would call myself a tech realist, which is I would view countries things as ecosystems. So if you think about natural ecosystems, let's say you're really good at hunting deer. Sorry, that's the doorbell. Let's say you're really good at hunting deer, and you're in the forest of North America, and then you get moved to Saudi Arabia, and you have to adapt to the desert like you don't say, Why do I need to adapt to the desert? Because the forest was wonderful. I love the force. No, you, you suck it up and you adapt to the ecosystem. Blockchain is going to be a part of the ecosystem. It's, it's pretty much inevitable. It's a question of. Who's going to dominate the field with utility? I think a lot of projects with Blockchain, and I think when you go into AI, that's a different subject, both with Blockchain, it's really, at this point, a race to utility all, all of the it's the House of Cards that's built on speculation at this point. And it's really just a race to utility who's going to create projects that have real world applications for their their blockchains, for their projects? And I think that's, I mean, on a practical level. I think I have seen the church world where we were spinning our wheels for like, 10 years about whether we should be on social media. I mean, I remember as the seminarian, and they were still debating if we should even be allow priests and seminarians to have social media accounts, which is kind of hilarious. Now, if you think about it, the reality is, it's just the environment. It's the ecosystem. Blockchain will be a dominant part. It's a matter of just using it. There's a lot of use cases for the church world, for different projects that we're working on, and it's really just utility. At the end of the day,

Nominus 36:10
I just want to caution against saying anything will be a certain way, because that ventures into the land of prophecy, and we want, we want techno technology. As technologists, we want technology to be a certain way. We want it to help us live longer and live happier and devote more of our lives to God and our families, but we don't know that that's what God's going to do. So I just want to put that out there.

Connor Mahoney 36:50
Yeah, Jordan, I know you had your hand up, so if you want to jump in here and then we could probably throw it to Catholic... Matt at Catholic Crypto.

Speaker 3 36:57
Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. This is kind of tricky, because we're jumping back and forth and answering different questions, but the but the question I initially raised my hand to talk about was, like the just like the why? Why Should Christians, you know, be in this space? And I think the thing that just comes to mind, there's a number of different things. I think one of the biggest, the biggest problems that self in all kinds of different ways, is basically we live in a world that basically, as a result of fiat currency and a number of other things, basically lives in, like denial of sowing and reaping. This is so this is during the first year getting into Bitcoin. This is like 28 2019 I was pastoring our church in man, I was doing sermon prep one day. I was reading through Galatians. And in Galatians six, the apostle Paul says that God is not mocked for what a man sows, that will he also reap. And so I just started to try to think of like, trying to think of ways to rephrase that. And so I was like, Okay, what are some examples of this? The thought that came to mind was, okay, Paul is saying that so hardwired this principle of sowing and reaping into the fabric of the universe that to deny it is to mock and so I just try to think about, okay, what are some other examples? And so the first thing that came to mind was with the Indians. Right? Paul says to them that if they're not willing to work, then neither should they eat. And so there's a sowing and reaping built in there. Paul says, point of food is to give you energy to work. So if you're not working, then you shouldn't get more energy that you're you're Miss, you're not stewarding effectively. And then you go in, I mean, you can go down the line and see all these different things. You know, God has a logic, and like a sowing and reaping to sowing and reaping design for sex. We you get married, and then you enjoy the fruits of sex, or fruits of fruit marriage, which are sex and children. Like these are these are just the ways that God has designed the world. He's designed an order, a certain logic that these things are done in and and so basically, what the thing that hit me as a result is thinking about Bitcoin and stuff was just the reality that with with fiat currency, it's basically governments like, trying to live out the of sowing and reaping. It's trying to live with where governments effectively unlimited amounts of money to effectively unlimited power. This is, again, this is is attempt that's as old as time, you know, this is the first thing the serpent said to Adam and Eve was that you will, you know, if you do this, if you take the fruit, you can be like God. And so I think this is the perpetual temptation people, and especially for governments, all throughout time, has been to try to take hold of these technology, whether that's, you know, a babble, or whether that's, you know, something like this is a take hold of of a technology and wield technology for their own glory than for the glory of God and the good of people. And so again, when I think about, when I think about Bitcoin, I think about like, what it's what it's doing, I think in terms of just decentralizing that that main, uh. A you know, that main force that they're then used to do so many other things. It just reminds me of the book of the book of Psalms. Psalms two where it's basically, it's just a read a few verses here. Why did the nation's rage and the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. So this is this desire so God has. God's keeping these nations from being able to be autonomous. And how do they respond to that? They don't want to be they don't want to be held accountable by anybody, including God. And so they want to cast off these bonds, cast these these things apart, these cords away from them. They want to do whatever they want to do. And so I look at the last 50 years, we've had effectively completely fiat currency over the world that's enabled endless war. It's enabled perpetual abortion, perpetual funding of abortions in Africa. In all it's enabled all kinds of things. I mean, just gender stuff. This has enabled all kinds of governments to further these ideas in ways that they never would, that never would have been possible. It would have been unthinkable in pretty much any other point to at least reach the scale that they have at any other point in human history. And so I look at, I look at the Christian role in this, like our goal, our role is to be faithful and to testify and live according with the way that God has designed the world to work. And so God's made a scarce world in which he is King. And you know our responsibility and faithfulness in a role, and faithfulness is is to submit ourselves to that and seek to use our scarce lives and our scarce resources for for His glory, rather than those things that looking at scarcity is something that inhibits us, that we need to overcome through our own, our own efforts. You know, God basically God with it's not just sowing and reaping that God provides. It's sowing and exponential reaping. So God allows us to when we provides an exponential benefit. If we plant a seed, then get one seed back, or one piece of fruit back, we get a tree that produces more fruit. And so I think this is the thing that I think we're this is the coolest thing about victory is that, you know, it's more aligned with the way that God designed the world to work. And it allows to to agree with God and say that, you know, yeah, scarcity is good. It's something good that God has provided. It also allows us to agree with God, with the concerns that the scriptures make have about debt. You know, the scriptures in the New Testament say, oh no man every oh no man, anything. And when we look at the world around us, it's almost it's very difficult to operate without debt. And so I think that, you know, we see this being back to, you know, basically Bitcoin or scarcity. Scarce currencies are back to something that's more real, more in line. God designed the world to function. And so I think that our role in that is, is a good thing, and something can be excited about participating in.

Connor Mahoney 43:00
Well, let me ask you. Let me ask you this, Jordan because I like the analogy of the seed. You know, even the Bible verse I shared recently, you know, unless a seed goes into the ground and dies, it remains alone, right? To see the seed produce fruit, it has to be planted. You have to plant the seed. And so with Bitcoin, you know, I think one thing that kind of scares people away from the conversation a little bit, is this kind of these cultish aspects to it. Well, some people think that, like Nominus said, that it's just inevitable, like it's like, it's a prophecy that Bitcoin is going to accomplish, you know, all these amazing things. And I approach it I think like, I'm a Bitcoiner. I I believe in Bitcoin, but I believe that it, it needs to be seeded. And so I would say, you know, Christians need to be involved in this space now, because we need to be planting those seeds so that it can produce that fruit that we want to see. Would you agree with that statement? I mean, how do you kind of approach that?

Speaker 3 44:02
Yeah. I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess my thing is, I don't, I don't see it as a foregone conclusion that Bitcoin succeeds. I don't see that at all. I think I I don't see, I don't see Christians within the Bitcoin space with anywhere near the same level of confidence, or just like with the sense of inevitability that I see in something like a max Kaiser. You know, some of the people like that I don't see in Max isn't a Christian, so it doesn't surprise me that he's, you know, that he responds the way that he does. But again, within, you know...

Connor Mahoney 44:33
But that kind of scares me too, that maybe there's not a lot of Christians in the space then, you know, that doesn't help. Doesn't fill me with hope, necessarily, either.

Speaker 3 44:41
Well, there's, well, I think there are tons of Christians out there. I mean, again, this is, this is not to brag. I literally, it blows my mind every time I think about it. But like, we, I mean, even, thank God for Bitcoin alone. We, I think the last time we got specs, I think we've sold like 45,000 copies of that book, which is insane, right? So, like. Right? The fact is, like, people are out there, they're thinking through these issues, and they're trying to, they're trying to, you know, trying to figure out, how do we think about Bitcoin? They're trying to figure out, how do we think about the world? And, you know, what do we do with this world that's, that's seems to be so hopeless in a lot of ways. So again, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion at all. I think Bitcoin could, we could have a solar flare. The Lord could send us back to the Dark Ages tomorrow, and, you know, but the fact that that could happen again, with the, with the, you know, with the with the resources that we have now, and knowing what we know, I think that it makes sense, not for everybody, but I think it makes sense for there to be Christians in the space you know, like you, like you know, like us. You know, who again, are looking at. We take in stock of the world. We're looking at what we know God wants in the world, like we know God wants His name to be, you know, lifted up and trusted and loved and, you know, proclaimed in the world. And so I think looking at, you know, whatever these decentralizing tools are, you know, something like, sure is one of these tools where you know that basically enables the gospel to be, to go, maybe not anything, but within reason, you know, like, I think God has ways, and God has means. And so I think that looking at, you know, looking at the ways in which, I mean, this is the one thing I talk about with people a lot, and, you know, spend a lot of time thinking about is, I mean, just the way in which ministry is hampered, hampered by, you know, fiat currency. I mean, every, every currency in Latin America, Africa, all these places, has failed multiple times, three to four times in the last 50 years. And so there's, there's gospel work that's been done, churches that were planted that you know, over the course of, let's say, you know, the church is planted 50 to 45 years ago. There were, there's monetary resources, there's time resources that were invested. And then, you know, over the course of a number of years, the average fiat currency lasts for 13 to 14 years. And so when that, when those currencies fail, then you know, all of these resources that would have otherwise, you know, been Within These churches end up becoming, you know, inflated away to nothing. And so it really, it really hampers the churches that are in these areas. It affects the people who are again, sacrificially giving for the sake of the Gospel to support their pastors or priests or whatever they are. And so again, I'm not trying to make this like Bitcoins. Again, Bitcoin this panacea that just automatically fixes everything. The way that I primarily look at it is Bitcoin buys time, and it basically, it's a seed sown in the right direction, whether or not it actually succeeds to the degree that we hope it does, that's not my, that's not my responsibility, you know, to really do that. It's our it's we can only, we can only be faithful with the time and resource that we have given to us. And so again, I look at Bitcoin as one tool in the tool belt, and I'm grateful that there's plenty of other people working on other tools, but that I think I don't know, does that answer your question?

Connor Mahoney 47:48
Yeah, no, yeah, that was great. Thanks, Jordan. All right, so Catholic crypto, Matt has his hand up, and then we're gonna pass it to Carlos. And then I think I'm actually gonna start bringing in some other people, some other requests. These are here at the top of the hour. I've known some people at the top of the hour.

Carlos Davila 48:04
Connor, Can I? Can I finish what I'm saying? I don't know if you guys hear me. I think, like, my internet justwent out.

Connor Mahoney 48:12
Yeah, go, go ahead, and then we'll throw it to Matt, I guess.

Carlos Davila 48:14
Okay, yeah. So, no, nothing. Just like, it was interesting, because in the Bible, in the Apocalypse, uh, it talks about the mark of the beast, and how, like, no one will be able to sell or buy if they don't have the mark. I think Jordan was saying something. He wasn't referencing the apocalypse, but the apocalypse mentions like that, you wouldn't be able to buy or sell if you don't have the mark of the beast. And I think that's like a sign of centralization, like, if you don't have the ability to buy or sell, like, I think in that part, the Bible is like making a reference that the free market is somehow good, like that is like it is necessary, and that the opposite of them free market, which is like centralizing your freedom of action regard regarding your market actions or whatever, like buying or selling, it's diabolic or whatever, like, I think it's very interesting. I just have that thought. And yeah, what I was saying about AI, the point is that I try and start off with the Bible. And turns out the Bible is really good at aligning human beings or AIs, so it's a pretty good AI, yes. If anyone wants to either try it out or get the data set, because it's open source, just send me a DM and I will send send you to the asset. In order to actually use the data set, you'll need to know how to run the training, but I can also help you with that if you need so, yeah, just feel free to send me a DM and if, and if anyone wants to, just like, try Sarah, which is what I would recommend, because I already built just send me a DM and I'll send you the link. So yeah, that's pretty much it, yeah, if you say you actually hear everything that I say, then yeah.

Connor Mahoney 49:55
I hear you. I hear you, I hear you. But share it. Share it to the jumbotron so people can check it out. Yeah, so let's throw it to Matt,

Matt Bagazinski 50:05
Hey, yeah. I just, I want to say I agree with Jordan, saying, you know, the in general, right? That, you know, Fiat is bad. Bitcoin seems to be the best way to break out of that. And so, you know, perhaps we should try to participate in that and try to help it grow. But I do want to get maybe specific and practical with to answer the question that I think Connor was trying to ask. You know, why should Christians participate in the thing itself? Right in the development? I think so, if you get below the surface of Bitcoin, you realize that there are some debates going on, you know, about, you know, is Bitcoin perfect the way it is? Should we ossify and not make any more changes? You know, changes have been made since, you know, it came out in 2009 and so you have whatever you know it, should we keep making changes and then fix that process and all that anyway, even beyond changes to the core protocol. You know, you could look at some of the work like super Kess is doing by building an l2 and then the direction that those things go in and the research goes into. So anyway, my point is, I think in my head, I've got two examples of Catholics in the Bitcoin space who seem to be doing something different than everybody else, and so, for example, right? You've got Luke Dasher is, you know, a bitcoin core developer. He's been, you know, he's been keeping up with his, gosh, what do you call it? Maybe a fork, but not a fork, like a fork, but...

Jordan Bush 51:46
His mining pool?

Matt Bagazinski 51:48
Bitcoin Knots, yeah, and so it's an alternative to Bitcoin Core, right? And so he's, he's been keeping that up, you know, so that there is an alternative, you know, it's not, there's not this monopoly on, you know, what Bitcoin software people are running. And he, you know, we can maybe debate the morals of whether or not, you know, people should be able to add data to their transactions, right? That he's very much against, and Bitcoin knots is very much against. But anyway, since that's one thing, and then as an ocean as well. So he's running this mining pool, and mining itself in Bitcoin is incredibly centralized, and he is offering an alternative. Again, we can debate whether or not paying people on the coin base transaction is the best or whatever, but he is, you know, valuing this decentralization and this this self custodial ship that anyway, I just, I haven't, and maybe there are other people who are, you know, trying to pioneer decentralized mining, or different mining pools. But he's one example. The Super testament actually, is another great example. I think he is like, I don't want to say like, he's almost doing the most, like he's values, self custody, more than a lot of other people who are developing things on Bitcoin, right? So even when it comes to bit VM, is his version of it, you know, allows for unilateral exit, you know, so that you don't have to trust anyone after the setup, you know, or this whole hedgehog protocol, right, is again, built around, you know, the ability. It's an l2 but it's built around, you know, this idea that he wants people to be able to withdraw back to the main chain and not have to trust, not have to rely on somebody else to facilitate that, right? There are so many, and I'm doing a finger quotes, right? You know, Altus and roll ups and whatever else that are multi six, you know, and, and I don't know, I think a lot of people, a lot of other people, you know, maybe don't care so much, and maybe they're trying to hide it. Maybe they're they don't care in their being public about, you know, levels of custody, you know, in levels of trust, assumptions that you might want, you know, in a federation or in A E cash mentor and things like that. So anyway, I just, I think, to get to I'm rambling here. I'm trying to form my thoughts. But to get to Connor's question, why should Christians be building in the space I think, you know, if you could try to imagine without super testament doing the work he's been doing, you know, with hedgehog, with VM, with UniSA, but with some of these other things. And, you know, without Luke Dasher doing the things he's been doing with Bitcoin, knots, with ocean mining, you know, the whole development that these are just two examples, but I think the whole development space might be in a different direction, right? They might have abandoned some of these ideas of unilateral legs that are self custody or decentralization. And that obviously completely but, but they, I don't know. I just these. These are two people who develop in the space who seem to be, at least in some regards, counter cultural to the rest of the developers and the directions of development that are going on. And I could be wrong. Super testament, if you want to tell me that there's actually, you know, 100 other decentralized mining pools and 100 other, you know, people building alts with unilateral legs. You know, I don't know this landscape completely, but these are, anyway, I think, two good examples of, you know, we can debate whether or not those are quite Christian values, but they, these are two Catholics who have been emphasizing values in a focusing on certain values in a different way than other people have in the space. I think that's kind of cool to see. And yeah, I'd like to see more of it.

Connor Mahoney 55:58
Yeah, I would too. And you know, one of the central like ideas, has kind of got a lot of my thinking, especially since I was trying to get Brantley onto the space of socially, going to make it. But I think everybody should know exactly what happened with that situation, even if you don't like Ethereum. Brintley Milligan is a strong Catholic, and what he was working on with decentralized identity on the ens protocol, I think is extremely well reasoned, but So, but yeah, so one of the guiding ideas that's really kind of, I guess, guided my my thinking here is Bolin lessigs ideas about Code is law there's a book on it. There's also a rather short article where people have that kind of attention span that I think it's the key points across you can find it online. But essentially, Lawrence was was theorizing, kind of at the beginning of the internet, and saying, Hey, listen, like these protocols that we're building, these internet protocols, are going to define the way interactions happen online, and it's going to embed, like inherently values into into the way we interact online. And so one of the ways that it does that is, right now, we have this concept of identity that's very siloed, where you might have an identity on on here, on X, you have a different identity on Facebook, you have a different identity on whatever. You know, usernames, passwords are all site specific. And this was something that we kind of somehow decided that was the way it was going to be when we started writing these protocols that have now basically defined the internet now. And so because of that, if x decides that you know you don't, they don't like your views, which the previous administration with X was like this, right? They can just ban you. And you lose all of that. You lose that whole identity, you lose all the people following you. You lose that communication channel just wiped out like that, right? And, and so the question is, you know, can we embed these future values? I mean, these future technologies with different values now, because we're building these technologies right now, like they're not built yet, we have this opportunity that we also had back in, you know, the early 1990s when Lawrence Lessig was writing, but we missed those opportunities. Then we don't have to miss them. Now we can start building these technologies with Christian values. So that's, I mean, that's really what I want to do. I want to encourage Christians. Hey, we need to be building this space. We need to be having these conversations. We need to be engaging this now, because, you know, we already lost the wall for the present, but we're in a war for the future, and we're fighting it right now with the technologies that we built. Super testament, if you want to respond to that, because I know Matt mentioned you a couple times, and then we brought joy Rapture. And I think you might have some questions,

Speaker 2 58:59
I do, but let's let Joey speak first. He said his hand up for longer.

Connor Mahoney 59:04
Okay, yeah, totally fair. Joy. Go ahead.

@JoyRaptor 59:07
Okay, thank you. Hey. Can everybody hear me? Yes, okay, great. I'll make this quick, because I've got a toddler over there, and I don't know how long I can keep the silence, but yeah, so I got into Bitcoin because of the Human Rights aspects, kind of, one of the guys was talking about, about, kind of mark of the beast, and the whole idea that that centralizing One World Government is emerging, where, even if, even if individual monies are not fully centralized, they can be functionally centralized through data, and that just makes us very vulnerable. I like what one of the other guys was saying, I believe, is Jordan was saying about how these sorts of technologies, they are not. A panacea, but a stop gap. But one of the big things that I find to be very dangerous and oft overlooked in Bitcoin land is privacy, because out of privacy comes fungibility, and we can see an example of this with the the Canadian truckers, how anyone who donated to the Canadian truckers were persecuted along with the Canadian truckers. So even if they can't, even if your chain is permissionless, you're still the end user is still on the hook for coercion. And so, like I've been really trying to plug away at finding what sort of technology could I run an underground railroad on? What sort of technology could I have churches using in an underground network in mainland China, for instance, or even some more hostile situation. And the the one of the biggest things, more than scalability, to me, is the fungibility, the privacy and the the problem that it needs to be on layer one, because a layer two is just kicking the can down the road. It's actually very layer two solutions are very vulnerable, and they often you just watch the layer one and wait till the person has to go back to layer one and ding them there. So I like, I kind of moved away from Bitcoin into kind of Manero land. And then I was like, well, you really, your your your stores and your networks and stuff are also going to be persecuted. So you have to protect your not just your transfer of money, but your transfer of communication and stores and stuff. And so I've been looking for smart contracts to go on top of privacy, all on layer one, and I've only seen two solutions that can actually do it, which is, I'm not going to show things here, but I've only found two. But because this is a Christian decentralized talk, I want to bring up Isaiah 39 four through two, where it said Hezekiah was pleased to show them his treasure house, them being Babylon, he showed them the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oils, his entire armory, absolutely everything. And there was nothing in his house, nor in all his area of dominion that Hezekiah did not show them. And we know that Hezekiah was one of the very few righteous kings, but he because of his imprudence with basically, he wasn't thinking adversarially. He was not thinking about how people could exploit his kindness. And as Christians, we need to do that with our technology. Currently, there is no privacy solution on Bitcoin, like none. And I've looked at all of them, I think I've looked at all of them, but it's just something that I'd like to talk about more when I have more time to like maybe if you do, if you're doing this again, I'd love to come on again. But I think privacy is is really, really key, because even if you have permanent missionlessness, people can still get you and not only that, it's there forever. So when, if I do something now, it may be okay now, but if you have a turnkey tyranny where, let's say 10 or even 20 years down the line, let's say Jesus doesn't come back and, you know, 20 years down the line, all of a sudden this whole place is looking like like a very, very bad place. Well, they can look at my history, they can cross reference it with Facebook and meta and all these other things. Cross reference it with my IP address and what I've been buying with my social credit score, even my geo locations, and they can triangulate everything I do. So, yeah, anyway, that was a whole bunch of stuff, but I just kind of want to to put that, put that out there, and that's what I've been trying to educate people on, is is like looking for other ways of resilience, not get rich schemes, which I don't think any of you guys are. But just like, how do you be truly, truly protected from coercion and force? Because once you have your network where it cannot, where it's resilient to like a unilateral, multinational attack, then you can start talking about all these other things to build on it.

Connor Mahoney 1:04:42
Yeah. Thank you so much for that super testnet, if you just want to respond,

Speaker 2 1:04:47
Yeah. Actually, the thing I wanted to bring up was something you mentioned earlier, which is about having lost the battle for decentralization of the internet. And I don't think that's true. And. But part of what I want to mention here is that there's this. It's very easy to confuse centralization with popularity, and to say because Google services and Amazon services are so very popular, therefore the internet is centralized around them, but they're not like there are. There are free, freely open and available alternatives to every Google service and every Amazon service that are provided, and they're widely used, like lots of people use them. But it's very easy to think, well, because, you know, it's not billions everything centralized, and that's just not. That's not what centralization means. It's centralization is when you don't have the opportunity to use alternatives to, you know, some central service, and then the internet, we do. We absolutely do so. So I really value that. I don't think it's true that the internet has lost the that we lost the battle for decentralization on the internet. I think we won by making these alternatives available and keeping them available. It's just they're not very popular. But that's, I think that's just because the servicers provided by Google and Amazon are so good that no one wants to use, well, the other ones.

Connor Mahoney 1:06:12
Sure, and maybe I can clarify slightly too with my point. But, and it's not even really my point, it's this other guy, Lawrence Lessig, but it's not really that. I'm not really making the claim that we lost the battle for decentralization, although I have heard other people say that. I'm just saying that the way that technology was built, it was built with these, these, this potential, you know, for these single points of failures, we had the option to embed certain values into the way. And one of the values could have been decentralization into the way the internet was set up, not just so that there's alternatives, per se, but that's so the architecture of the the web itself, you know, was such that that the type of technology that we see today wouldn't have developed, you know. And I don't think it's necessarily just an internet argument. I think this is really just this is really just anything, any way you build something, right? What's the claim? We build a technology, and then afterwards a technology, you know, builds us, or shapes us. We shape our technology, and afterwards the technology shapes us. So we just, we set up the architecture in such a way that the present moment exists, and we don't necessarily have to set up the architecture of the future the same way, right? So maybe it's a slightly different, slightly different claim, but I but I do see your point there. Of course there will. There are alternatives. But the question with Bitcoin is, can you set up an architecture in such a way that the right of access is preserved just unilaterally. I think it's maybe slightly different.

Speaker 2 1:07:49
And then on the question of privacy, I'm really grateful that in Bitcoin your privacy, you have privacy by default. And the reason for that is, of course, because no one uses Bitcoin by default, but the moment you start using Bitcoin, you don't have to give away the fact that you're using it. You can keep your default privacy by just not letting anyone know that you've used Bitcoin and not building up a history of a transaction history that's traceable to you. So I'm really grateful that bitcoins enabled that possibility. And you know, if you're looking into, if you're looking into how to preserve your privacy on Bitcoin, I think stealth addresses are a great way to do that. They help a whole lot. The Lightning Network, you know, uses these things called coin swaps to transfer one utxo to another person without going on chain and revealing that link coin swaps are a really great way to do that. So I encourage you to look into some of these technologies and keep your default privacy that you have in Bitcoin.

Speaker 3 1:08:54
Yeah, no, I think that the need for privacy is, is really important again. I think that's, I think, yeah, I don't think it's that people aren't focusing on. I think it's, it's a difficult as a question of making the perfect, the enemy, the good, I think is the issue. And again, I don't, I don't want to. I'm not minimizing the privacy at all. In fact, again, I think about all the time. This is why I would probably catch heat from from the purest of Bitcoiners. Again, I just had a call earlier today, and there's a guy who's asking me about different cryptocurrencies, and I just said to him, I was like, hey, you know, like, if you're, if you want me to make the case, if you want to make, make a case for, you know, for being, for using only Bitcoin, I can do that for you. I mean, I'm happy to do that. And, like, I personally don't hold anything separate Bitcoin. And at the same time, like, I'm in a group, for example, I'm in this, this group chat with a few 100 people from a different country. And it's a, it's like a Bitcoin Buy, Sell group. And within this group, you can find anything for sale under the sun. There are, there's Amazon gift cards, there's Tron, there's, you know, there's anything you can think of. And it's just people trying. To move, trying to move money. And so especially, you know, with I'm not going to begrudge someone who, again, hasn't had, hasn't done the work to sit there and, like, look through all these, you know, good arguments. They're sitting there just trying to move. They're just trying to move money. They're just trying to live. And so again, whether it's, whether it's, you know, like Christians moving money for, you know, for the sake of the Gospel, like we've talked to a number of people who, you know, are missionaries, who are using, you know, using, there's some of them using Bitcoin that, which is fantastic, but then there's other ones for using, like, stable coins, you know, there's a number of them doing different things. And so again, I think, obviously, I think we, I want to see, I would love to see more work done to, you know, increase privacy of Bitcoin while, you know, still acknowledging with super test net, you know, lightnings, you know, good for that, some of the shoot, what's the other one? The one that Fetty is working on, like, 30 minutes and stuff, you know, they're working on similar things. They really are prioritizing, prioritizing privacy. But again, I think the thing where, yeah, I think it is just, it's the space is still so small right now. It's ridiculous, like it's ridiculous how little the space is. And I think that, you know, wider adoption and Bitcoin price, as Bitcoin price continues to increase, we all want, we'd love to live in a world where everyone is just so thoughtful, and we only do things if they make philosophical sense. And, you know, we reason everything out. But the reality is, almost everyone who's here probably got here because bitcoins price started going crazy. And, you know, they that just, you know, let's what grabs our attention. And so again, I have friends who use Monero. I have friends who buy bitcoin with Monero to try to, you know, leverage some of the privacy things. And again, I'm not, I'm not going to begrudge anybody, you know, doing those things. So, yeah, I just think, I think there's, there's we, like, keeping, not losing sight of the of the big goals, you know, even because I'm like, sort of saying is, like, even if you can be punished after the fact, you know, in some situations. Again, this is one of these things where I just feel, like Bitcoin, like money, can't fix everything, like you can't fix everything. There's so many things where we need people to stand up and be brave. We need people to stand up and say, we're not doing this. You know, we're not going to allow this. We're gonna, we're gonna continue doing these things because they're right and because, you know, just being willing to do what they think is right, even if it does cost them, or cost, you know, people in the beginning, or I think that's the bigger that's that's the currency that's even more scarce, right? Is courage in a lot of places. So I think that, again, yeah, I want to acknowledge and agree with everything superintendent said and some of the other things that were said. But I think that part of these, again, fixing the money fixes a number of things. It fixes a lot of the incentives. It fixes, you know, a lot of a lot of good things, but some of this is just people have to get on board and stand up and and, you know, fix things that can't be fixed by by money.

Connor Mahoney 1:12:56
Cool, JoyRaptor. You got your hand up. Go ahead.

Speaker 4 1:12:59
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to I agree that, like, courage and values supersedes all technology. So it's like down technology is downstream from character. So I really like what he's saying there. As far as privacy, there, there is no privacy on Bitcoin, and I've looked at a bunch of solutions. Now, there's different levels where maybe you won't have quite the same ease of financial voyeurism for like the public. But as far as back doors, or things without multi SIG, without trustlessness, like people are like, Oh, coin joins will make me private. No, they won't. Lightning Network will make me private? No, they won't. These things are very superficial privacy, which I think is the most dangerous kind, because it lures people into a false sense of security and because of the permanency of the chain. It's like everything you do now, even if you only use Bitcoin, like if you're just a Bitcoin purist, well, everyone that you touch with your Bitcoin, they might have KYC and so people, there's a thing called Shadow profiles that Facebook meta does, and what that is, is even if you've never used Facebook, they can basically outline you cast a digital shadow because of all the friends that you interact with, and they can actually trace out and have a An algorithm that is basically making your profile even though you've never signed up. This is the sort of with AI channel analytics. What it can do with Shadow profiles is so far beyond what I think most people realize is coming down the pike. I think it'd be very surprised in the upcoming years. Um. Them, and I just don't want Christians to be caught up. Sorry. Anyway, things are getting loud, so I'm going to mute.

Connor Mahoney 1:15:07
Yeah, I think the privacy discussion is super interesting. I actually win tornado cash. I don't know if anybody's that familiar with that project, but it was, it was sanctioned by the US government, and was shut down exactly Ethereum protocol for privacy. And I was, I was pretty active. When that was going down, I was in the it was actually an element, so a few devs were trying to keep that alive. It's a sanction. Just watching. I was illegal as a US citizen, to participate, to play with it, but, but I was just, I was keeping tabs on that. I might actually publish some information about that here in the near future. But I think privacy is a huge, a huge issue that Bitcoin can continue to solve for. And I would like to see more development in this space. But, you know might be, might be a topic for another day, but I do think that it's a good topic for today, that these are the things that we need to be building, and Christians can contribute to the space, and that's one of the things that that we can help to contribute to, right through, through building. So I know, listen, I'm willing to go have the conversation as long as people are willing to talk. But I do want to be respectful of some people's time. And I think super test net, you said you're in Prague, so it must be super late, right? 230 now, nice. I was in Prague last year. I would like to say it was a beautiful country, but it was at the end of the trip, we did Vienna, and we did Budapest, and we ended up in Prague and we left, we had to leave, like, a day early because we just was so sick of it. But I think if we were there fresh, it would have been beautiful country. And I also Prague has that famous Bitcoin, Bitcoin, what is like a Bitcoin cafe? I guess that's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 1:17:05
Yeah, I've been spending them every day, pretty much at parallel and police, which is, well, I'm not, it's not just a Bitcoin I think, I think it's kind of like a libertarian commune, almost. But they've been very generous and provided I spent spending time at their coffee shop where you can pay the Bitcoin and their co working space. And that's that's been great. So thank you for them, even though they're libertarians.

Connor Mahoney 1:17:32
Yeah. No, totally fair. Yeah. Something else too. I'm just remembering valav Bender is a, let's see. So Prague would be check. So he would be, he would have been a check. He would have been Czechoslovakian before they split, uh, Christian Catholic thinker. And he wrote some really interesting things about about building kind of alternative structures in society. I think it would be a really good read for anybody to check out his book that's interested in the space decentralized alternatives. It wasn't technology at the time, but I think it could be very well applied to technology. So good, Catholic thinker, vocal and chocolate, okay. But like I said, I want to be respectful of people's time and before we lose super test net because it is so late. I did also want to kind of throw this out there, but if we're Christians, and we're building in the space, specifically, most of this conversation has been on Bitcoin. I would have loved to talk about some other things, but, you know, that's kind of the nature of spaces. There's only so much we can get to on Bitcoin. What Should Christians be focusing on, you know, what, if the church was going to take an eye to it too? Like, how, how could the church use this technology and also ensure a stake in however the technology develops in the future? Like, what, where should be Christians focus here. If you want to respond, first super testnet, then we can just go around the panel.

Speaker 2 1:19:03
I would love for, I would love for monks to get involved. I feel, I feel like monastic mining is something that could really take off. You know, monks who live in a kind of separate, separate lifestyle from the rest of us, they they have to provide for themselves an income somehow. And they really emphasize, throughout the history of the church, the concept of proof of work. You know, monks are always the ones laboring in the fields, tilling, tilling the vines and making, making sure that the the Earth produces the fruits that feed the people and give wine to the people and and I think if they got into mining, that would be great, because that's, you know, that's also proof of work, but it's done in a way that that I think is really conducive to their kind of lifestyle, you know, you could, you can be really separate from the world and still contributing to it. So, yeah, I would, I would love to see monastic communities start running Bitcoin miners. And and see where that goes.

Connor Mahoney 1:20:03
Bro, we are on the same page. So actually, I think I've talked about this with Matt at Catholic crypto account too. But so one of the things I hear a lot I would do, I'm not going to dominate, yeah, because so a lot of Christians are like, oh, we need Christians. The best thing we can do is get churches tithing with Bitcoin. You know, I agree that would be great have offerings in Bitcoin. So using the the systems, that would be a good thing. But like, ultimately, it's like, bro, if we could get the trucks like mining Bitcoin. Because I don't most people here bitcoin is probably somewhat familiar with some of the issues. But like, you can be a mining company that promotes things that you want to promote, right? Like Luke dash basically did this with what was its ocean mining, right? So, like, why shouldn't, like, the church be involved in this as an institution and start validating transactions and being a source where Christians can can connect to these nodes that are maintained by, like, monastic orders. You know, that would just be so cool to me. I think that would probably be one of the best ways that Christians can ensure a stake in the development this technology. Sure the users, those are stakeholders, but the miners, that's a huge stakeholder. So I think that's, I mean, I think that's like, 100% one of the, one of the best things that shows you could be doing right now. Jordan, what do you think?

Speaker 3 1:21:31
Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the things, the thing that's most present for me, that I'm just thinking about is, I just look at, I can't even enjoy bitcoins price going up, because, like all I see when I think about bitcoins price going up is purchasing power of churches, nonprofit organizations, missions organizations going down. And I think that's the that's the thing for me, that is, I think that we're working towards, at least, is just like getting trying to facilitate this conversation for as many, you know, churches and, you know, Christian groups as we can, just because that's the reality. Like I, you know, this has happened multiple times in other countries. It's happening here. I just found out yesterday my alma mater, the college that I went to, is basically just furloughed all their teachers because they can't make the finances work. And so I just have seen more and more of that. I've seen more and more Christian schools closing. And so again, just when your denominator is broken, you can't make things work. And so I just that's the thing that I'm working on the most, is just trying to help Christians understand just the value proposition that the value propositions that aren't necessarily intuitive, and trying to just continue to tell, you know, kind of tell my story, and, yeah, just really want to help as many churches as possible, you know, avoid the the loss of purchasing power that, you know, has come all over The world and now is coming increasingly here.

Connor Mahoney 1:23:02
Yeah. And I know you have the thank God for Bitcoin conferences coming up. Do you have, like, an announcement you could just show to the jumbotron for people?

Speaker 3 1:23:09
Yeah, sure, I'll do that. Yeah, it's gonna be July...

Connor Mahoney 1:23:12
It coincides... Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 3 1:23:14
It coincides with the Bitcoin magazine conference. We're the two days before them. So they're the 26th and 27th we're the 24th and 25th Yeah, you can find out more information@dgfb.com I will pin our pin our thing in the nest. But yeah. So we're gonna have a bunch of, bunch of Christian speakers, a bunch of, I mean, just there's a ton of room people. So we got, obviously, your Guido Holzman, who's an economist Fellow at the Mises Institute, I'm sure would want nothing to do with the Libertarian Party as representative of what they voted the other day. But yes, we're gonna have some of those there. We're gonna have Nate Fisher dates, an investor. We're gonna have, again, several pastors, just a bunch of different guys who are gonna who are gonna be there and just talking about different things. So again, just the basic breakdown is that the let's see here, how do I do this? We share this tweet. The basic idea is that day one, here we go. Figured out day one is basically like a Christian, kind of a Christian economic conference from a high level, like, what? What is economics? What is you know, how do we think about these things? How should we think about them? What does the Scripture say about them? And then day two is going to be more into, you know, what does, what does Bitcoin have to do with Jerusalem? I've been framing it to people is, you know, like, what? How do you know? How do these things that we see in the scriptures and that, you know, the priorities that God's given us in? What ways does Bitcoin intersect Bitcoin and other tools as well? We'll talk a little bit about noster. We'll talk about we will talk about mining. This is going to be a couple guys from an organization called shoot. Was it called gridless, Eric Hersman, and then one of his business partners is going to be there. They do mining in Africa. And. And so there's lots of just really interesting things that I would love to see the church get involved in. There actually fun, fun story on that. One of the things he was saying was that all over Africa there are these abandoned hydroelectric, small hydroelectric plants that were built by the Catholic church over the past few, few decades, and are just at the point where they just have been abandoned, and so he was, as a Protestant, just wishing that, you know, you could, you could get some forward thinking, generationally thinking. Again, from his perspective, obviously he's the people who he's involved with, you know, Protestant missionaries, missions organizations to invest and think long term and invest in, you know, rebuilding these things, buying them up, you know, for for relatively cheap, and then rebuilding them to facilitate Bitcoin mining as a way. This is, again, that's just a way that would be a way to avoid having to move money across the world, if, you know, if you can mine the Bitcoin right there and then sell them locally, and avoid some of the US based stigma that comes with, you know, it comes with money coming from the United States a result, as a result of our foreign policy and stuff. So lots of cool stuff. We'd love to, love to have you. You can find out more information at dgfp COMM, and we'll use, let's see, we'll use, if you want to use, promo code Bitcoin, we'll give you 20, 20% off your ticket for anybody.

Connor Mahoney 1:26:16
I'm sorry, were you done?

Jordan Bush 1:26:18
Yeah, what? where did I cut off?

Speaker 2 1:26:20
We lost you, Jordan, or at least we heard you just say, yeah. But the rest you stopped right after saying you can get a discount for buying with Bitcoin.

Connor Mahoney 1:26:28
You gave a promo code.

Jordan Bush 1:26:29
I'm sorry. That's when I was leaving off. Was right there. I wanted to let somebody else go. But yeah, that's, thanks for your time.

Connor Mahoney 1:26:35
Wait, was it a promo code? Sorry, maybe I missed... Was that a promo code? Or was that... you said you buy with Bitcoin?

Speaker 3 1:26:41
No, correct. There's a promo code. So we give a promo code for 20% off if you use promo code Bitcoin at checkout.

Connor Mahoney 1:26:48
Okay, cool. I'm gonna be there. I don't have a ticket yet, but I am gonna be there. And so if anybody else, it's kind of cool because it'll be around Bitcoin. Well, Nashville used to be Bitcoin Miami. So if anybody else is gonna be around the conference, hit me up. So yeah, nominist, did you have an answer to what you think Christian should be, how Christian should be approaching Bitcoin?

Nominus 1:27:14
Sure, sure. I love the idea of monastic Bitcoin mining. Like I said, I actually would probably do that. That just sounds like something I would do. But as a dual Catholic and Southern Baptist evangelist, I'm also interested in the capability of evangelizing with Bitcoin.

So I think it was Matthew, where Jesus basically says to use your worldly gain or use your worldly money to gain favor.

@super_testnet 1:28:07
I think that's Luke 16.

Nominus 1:28:11
Luke?

Jordan Bush 1:28:11
Yeah... calls it unrighteous wealth I think is what he calls it.

Nominus 1:28:13
Yes, yes, you're correct. You're correct. Yeah, yeah, it's Luke 16. That's correct, exactly I have. And so there are all these people, and they're lost, man, they're chasing money. These are the people that need us the most. And you know, in all my evangelization efforts in life, it's the people that need us the most, that are the most likely to change, that are the most likely to accept this truth. It's the people you know, maybe they're not having a hard time in life. Maybe they have everything they need from Bitcoin investments 10 years ago, you know. But maybe because of that, they're realizing a more difficult spiritual struggle than anyone else in the world. You know, because because of that success, you know, um, I don't know. So I'm really interested in, how do we proceed in a way that's going to be outreaching to these people? Because not only does that accomplish the ultimate goal of Christ, to save all of us. It also functions, you know, as another secondary goal, which would be to provide, basically, networking capability to. Recursively expand out into the web, three crypto Technology Network, and so and so. I think there's no downside to having a having some type of evangelistic framework.

Connor Mahoney 1:30:17
I think you should connect with with Jordan, because that's really what Jordan's been doing a lot of. And we kind of had this question on the podcast when he came on the old crypto so I had a podcast with Matt, I mentioned at the beginning crypto conversion podcast, and we had Jordan on, and we asked this question about whether Christians need to be using Bitcoin, or if it's really more that like Bitcoin needs Christian, right? So Jordan has been doing great work I, I feel, evangelizing to the Bitcoin space, and I think it's highly needed.

Nominus 1:30:48
Yeah, I'd love to chat Jordan. I think Connor, both of those, you know, God always does this. He speaks in parallels. They'll say one thing, but it means three things, and they're all true at the same time.

Connor Mahoney 1:31:06
Yep. True.

Nominus 1:31:07
So like it could very well be both of those things. Bitcoin needs to be used by Christians and Christians need to extend into Bitcoin.

Connor Mahoney 1:31:18
I wanted to kind of expand the question about decentralization to things beyond Bitcoin, but I kind of stacked the panel pretty heavy with Bitcoiners to be fair, so it was my fault.

Jordan Bush 1:31:28
We blame you Connor

Connor Mahoney 1:31:30
Yeah, it's my fault. It's always MY fault. But no, it's good.

Jordan Bush 1:31:34
The system is what it does.

Connor Mahoney 1:31:39
Well, listen, Jordan I don't know anything about McLuhan, I just know the quote.

Nominus 1:31:44
I don't know, I think Arweave is pretty huge. Well, anyway.

Connor Mahoney 1:31:45
Arweave is huge. I think, well, this is my thing with... so my problem with super Bitcoin Maxis, to end the space on controversy, my my issue with the hyper Bitcoin Maxis is like, Yes, I think Bitcoin is great. Yes. I think it lays the best claim to decentralized money, beyond a shadow of doubt, to me. But I also think that there's other things that can be benefited through decentralization. And I don't think the tech necessarily needs to be limit like I don't think Bitcoin needs to have a monopoly on decentralization, and depending on what type of Bitcoin Maxi we're gonna have, you're we're gonna have maybe some different disagreements, though. But I think decentralized storage is cool. I think our weave is doing some really cool stuff. But anyway, hey, that's unnecessary. I want to throw it to Matt to maybe close us out and answer that question that I pose to everybody about, what should Christians be doing in the Bitcoin space right now? What should the church be doing to really, to have a stake in in the Bitcoin conversation?

Matt Bagazinski 1:32:56
Yeah, no, it's, it's a good question. I think, in general, I think Christians, and I think the church should be, should think about the future and how to and then not be afraid of it and to participate in the development of the future. You know, obviously there are varying degrees, you know, to various degrees at which you can understand and approach Bitcoin, right? And so I think, you know, if you know how to write code, you know, see if there's a way you can contribute, you know, and try to add to that conversation. And, you know, I think Jordan is doing great work in, you know, trying to help churches adopt, you know, and religious organizations adopt Bitcoin, you know, on their balance sheet, you know, is one of the things right to retain their purchasing power. You know, if you produce and consume goods and services, you know. I think it would be great to, you know, see to what extent you can build a resilient, censorship resistant economy, you know, and whether even if it's just with peers or with, you know, in larger communities, you know to have circular Bitcoin economies so that whatever you know in the event you know, so we're ready for persecution if and when it happens. And so I don't know. I think a government should just be educated and then, yeah, participate to the level that you can participate.

Connor Mahoney 1:34:47
Awesome. Thanks so much, Matt, and I think you I in Super Testnet should connect about how we can help get some of these monastic orders into mining Bitcoin. Think that's just the coolest idea. Do. Funny, I'm not I'm not Catholic, I'm Protestant. But when I met Brantley, he was a Catholic, that was, like, the first thing I told him, like, bro, like, how can we get the Vatican mining Bitcoins? You thought that was a interesting idea, so I think we should do that. And also just want to gotta give everybody update on what we're doing here in the Christian futurism space. So like I said, we've been hosting a lot of conversations about some of these things, emerging technologies, and Christianity, the intersection between these two, and it really has to do with, how should Christians approach the future? How should we approach building the future and having a stake in that conversation? So be on the lookout. I'm going to be hosting some more spaces, and if we can get some of these panelists back. They've been excellent. We will. Let's continue talking about these things, and let's build the Christian future. Thank you everybody for joining. Hope you have a great night and catch you next time bye.