Did the creator of Bitcoin just get unmasked?

Shaan Puri 0:00 Okay, so maybe they found Satoshi Nakamoto [laughs] which is exciting. One of my favorite, uh, mysteries.

Sam Parr 0:07 [upbeat music] It's a intoxicating story, and I, uh, you're, uh, talking about the new HBO documentary. I didn't watch it yet, but, like, the headlines make it, like, amazing. I have to watch it. What's the, what's the gist?

Shaan Puri 0:24 So the documentary's not amazing. The, I'm-

Sam Parr 0:27 Great

Shaan Puri 0:27 ... I'm gonna just start with that.

Sam Parr 0:28 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:28 Uh, it's good, it's good but not amazing. Uh, or, or it's interesting because the guy thinks he found Satoshi. That's the only interesting part, to be honest. The documentary's kind of poorly made. Like, the director makes himself a pretty big character, and he also says stuff that feels, like, unprofessional. Like, he'll be talking, he'll be like, "And then-"

Sam Parr 0:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:49 "... you know, they made NFTs, whatever the hell those are."

Sam Parr 0:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:52 And it's like, whoa, like, why is the narrator, like, so opinionated? [laughs] It's kinda crazy. But what's interesting to me is... Look, I'm, I'm, I'm into any theory of who Satoshi is. I think it, I think it is amazing that something like Bitcoin even happened. It's straight out of a movie.

Sam Parr 1:08 Yeah, tell me the story.

Shaan Puri 1:09 Okay, the, the whole story is this. 2008, really, there's a white pa- the Bitcoin whitepaper gets released where some guy posts on a forum and posts in there that, hey, he thinks he's solved the double spend problem, which was a lot of people in the past had tried to make a virtual currency, a digital gold. There was eGold, there was HashCash, there was all these different things that were tried, and they all failed for different reasons. So for example, eGold started to get really popular. It had, like, $2 billion in volume. But the guy who created it, created it as a company. It was a founder, a CEO of a company called eGold, and he lived in wherever, Canada or something like that. And as it hits 2 billion in transaction volume, and, and on the website it says, "This is a digital currency backed by actual gold," and it says, "We'll be around f- you know, today, tomorrow and forever." And actually, instead, knock, knock, government knocks on his door, comes in, raids him, puts him in jail. And so problem one with digital currencies was you can't be the guy behind it. Because as soon as this thing gets popular, you have too much power.

Sam Parr 2:10 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 2:10 And the nation states who, who today control the currency supply, they're not gonna like you or that, or they're just gonna do character attacks on you w- to discredit the currency. Okay, so Satoshi solved that problem, launching it under this pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who it is. Ano- you know, the anonymity of the whole thing, and then he disappears, okay? Uh, so the second thing was, uh, other people tried to do it with HashCash and other things, but to get the actual cryptography to work, to get the currency to work, you had to make sure that nobody could double spend the money, right? So, like, one of the reasons when you swipe your credit card today, that transaction goes to a bank, the bank says, "Yes, this person's got the money," and the, that money's not already been spent. It sends that m- message back to the register. The register says, "Approved." That lets you go buy the thing, right? So the bank takes its 3% fee because it's verifying that, yes, this person has the money, that this person's card is not, doesn't appear to be stolen, and that, uh, that money has not already been spent in another shop 10 minutes ago, okay? So, uh, what Bitcoin did, was it, or what Satoshi did is he released this whitepaper saying, "I think I've solved that problem. I think I've actually created a decentralized way to make money," meaning money that can be trusted even though there's no central party like a bank or a government that is verifying all the transactions. Okay, so that's the breakthrough. That happens in 2008. They're discussing it. 2009, the first Bitcoin block happens. He gets to create-

Sam Parr 3:28 And did this person, like, actually code some- you, you used the phrase whitepaper, which, uh, s-

Shaan Puri 3:34 Right

Sam Parr 3:34 ... which means

Shaan Puri 3:35 It starts as a whitepaper, which is just an explanation of a system.

Sam Parr 3:38 It's an idea.

Shaan Puri 3:39 It's an idea written out. Like a business plan, but the technical variant-

Sam Parr 3:42 Yeah

Shaan Puri 3:42 ... of it, right? Here's the, here's the technical plan of how we could create a currency that's decentralized, that, that everybody trusts. All right, great. Uh, but it's not coded yet. Then he codes it, and by the way, people when they've looked at the code, they're like, "This is not done by, like, a super sophisticated programmer." Like, there's things in the, when you look at the code, you can sort of see the elegance of it, the, the s- styling of it, all that, the level of technical proficiency. And p- when they p- when people look at that, they don't think that it's done by somebody who's, uh, a super well, a su- a su- a super senior programmer. So they think either one of two things. One, it might be an academic type of person. So somebody who's technical enough, but really it's the theory, the s- the conceptual leap that was the big leap. Or that it might be somebody young.

Sam Parr 4:22 They're like, "It works, but it's just, like, the wires are messy."

Shaan Puri 4:25 Exactly. And by the way, the, the sort of sequence of events, and I'm doing this off the top of my head, so I might get some dates wrong. So 2009, so after the '08 financial crisis, which was, like, what people believe was the stimulus for why Satoshi felt this needed to happen, because the banks got super greedy. Lehman Brothers fails and other banks start to fail. The US government steps in and buys $700 billion worth of bad debt. Uh, basically bails out the banks, prints more money, s- tries to basically paper over the problems, right? And, um, so people who, A, want a currency that's like a hard currency, meaning something that just can't, can't just print a whole bunch more and devalue my currency 'cause some other people made b- mistakes. They didn't like that. Uh, and in general, this idea that it's too big to fail and the government controls it, people didn't like that. So-

Sam Parr 5:13 And you know that he feels this way because he's blogging every day?

Shaan Puri 5:17 It's written in the, uh, there's, there's references to why there's a need for this in the whitepaper. There's his forum post.

Sam Parr 5:24 And this is all happening on message board forums. Which message board forum?

Shaan Puri 5:29 Originally it was just that, um, the sort of cryptographers', like, mailing list, but then he created a, a forum of his own called Bitcointalk. So Satoshi creates Bitcointalk. His username is called Satoshi, which is a very important point for how this guy thinks he found him in the end. So on January 3rd, the, there's a message embedded in the first ever Bitcoin block which says, "The Times 03/Jan/2009. Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks." So in the very first block, Satoshi, who mined that block, the genesis block of the whole thing, is- Basically putting in an ide- like, a statement there, which is, "Chancellor's on the brink of, on the br- the Chancellor is on the brink of a second bailout for the banks." Pointing out why we need something like this in the first place, right? Putting that flag in the ground.

Sam Parr 6:15 Dude, how artful is this? This is so, like, um, you know, like, in high school, where you read literature, and they want you to dive deep, and they're like, "Did you notice on, uh, you know, page 200, uh, he killed someone? But y- you notice on page 50, he alluded to, like, he was gonna do that."

Shaan Puri 6:28 Right.

Sam Parr 6:28 Like, he said he loved red. Uh, do you know what I mean? Like, this is, like, what this is.

Shaan Puri 6:31 It definitely has big aim away message energy. It definitely has a when I'm in the bathroom, and I, Shaan was here, he is always here.

Sam Parr 6:41 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 6:41 It's like, what? Why, what does he mean? Who was trying to get poetic in the bathroom stall?

Sam Parr 6:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 6:44 Like, that was Satoshi on the first block. All right, so he posts there. Now, let's fast-forward a few years, so they're... And, but Bitcoin's, like, at, like, you know, one cent, 30 cents. It's, like, not a, not, like, what Bitcoin is today at all, anywhere close to it, right? And, um, but the, the community's interested in it, and they're talking about it, and it exists. Now, a couple year, fast-forward a couple years, something happens where Satoshi posts one day, then the WikiLeaks leak happens. He, Satoshi posts and says, "They've k- I, I'm afraid that this is, they've kicked the hornet's nest, and this is gonna cause a lot of unwanted, you know, attention." It's too young. It's too young to deal with the government coming after us, uh, to try to shut this down, because WikiLeaks is saying, "Oh, we could use Bitcoin," and the government hates WikiLeaks, therefore, they're gonna try to cut, like, choke WikiLeaks by, by killing the Bitcoin system. So he didn't like this.

Sam Parr 7:36 Dude, isn't that, isn't that intoxicating thing? You're just, like, dorking around on a message board, and you're, and you're playing with concepts of, like, the government is after us, or-

Shaan Puri 7:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:46 ... like, this big national security threat is bad news for us because, like, you know what I mean? It's like-

Shaan Puri 7:53 And by the way, there's references to this so early on, when nobody, like, you know, Bitcoin might have had, I don't know, 200 eyeballs on it at the time. Like, 200 people on Earth knew about Bitcoin, but the foresight to say, "I'm gonna be Satoshi. I'm gonna keep this all anonymized." The second thing to say, w- uh, there's m- there's people like Hal Finney who go in there, and the very early replies, and they're like, "Well, if this actually became, you know, adopted as, well, you know, the world's reserve currency, that would make every Bitcoin worth, like, you know, $2 million," or something like that. And it's like Bitcoin's worth not even $1 at the time, right?

Sam Parr 8:22 Yeah, that's just, like, a ridiculous thing to type out.

Shaan Puri 8:25 Exactly. It's, it's absolutely ridiculous, but this is, like, sort of the, the foresight, the visionary sense of this.

Sam Parr 8:29 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 8:29 And by the way, that, that guy, Hal Finney, a lot of people think Hal is the, Hal is Satoshi, because the case for Hal is brilliant, um, you know, cryptography mind. He was the first recipient of Bitcoin, so the first transaction was Satoshi sending to Hal, which, if you're a programmer, it's like, did you send to yourself? That's, uh-

Sam Parr 8:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 8:47 ... usually, that's how programmers start things. That might also be the case against, because if this guy's trying, trying to cover his tracks, he would definitely not send to himself as the first transaction, right? Um, and then Hal gets Lou Gehrig's disease-

Sam Parr 8:58 And dies, yeah

Shaan Puri 8:58 ... and dies, and disappear, and basically, he dies the same time just Satoshi's last message is worth, right? So, and, and if, the fact that this person has resisted the temptation to move, to, like, either claim credit or touch their s- you know, $700 billion fortune that's sitting there. Um, not a single coin has ever been used from that, that co- that, uh, fortune. Maybe it's because the guy's dead, right? Maybe that's the only way to explain somebody who has the, the, the resistance to it. So that's part of the Hal Finney case.

Sam Parr 9:24 Which also is related, which is also related to this current sus- suspect's case, yeah?

Shaan Puri 9:29 Exactly. So let's carry on. So people think it's Hal Finney. People think it might be this guy, Adam Back, who, who created Hashcash, and definitely traded emails early on with Satoshi. And, you know, he runs Blockstream, a company associated with Bitcoin. So people don't know who it is. They think it might be this, this mysterious Asian guy, Wei Dai. He's, like, this brilliant cryptographer, too. Nobody knows it. There's no photos of this guy on the internet, he claims, so they're like, "Maybe that's Satoshi." People don't know.

Sam Parr 9:54 All right, so when I ran my company, The Hustle, I think we had something like two million subscribers, and we made money through advertising. And we didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter, because advertising, in general, is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down, and I'm like, "What are all the different ways that I can make money off The Hustle that aren't advertising?" And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, Shaan, me, and the HubSpot team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business, and we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out, along with our research, and we call it, very appropriately, we called it the Business Monetization Playbook. Go to the description of this episode, and you're gonna see a link to that, uh, Business Monetization Playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link, and you can see it. Back to the episode. Another person who, like, kinda came into the mix, have you read the book about Paul Le Roux, I think is, uh, the book is called?

Shaan Puri 10:50 Yeah.

Sam Parr 10:50 It's about, it's called Mastermind, and be very-

Shaan Puri 10:51 I haven't read it, but you, you told me about this.

Sam Parr 10:53 Oh my God, intoxicating story, and, like, he was thrown in the mix. So there was, like, all these people who thrown in, thrown in the mix.

Shaan Puri 10:58 People think it's Elon, is it whoever, and it's like, okay, the, we get sort of far-fetched, and that's sort of the fun of it, by the way.

Sam Parr 11:03 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:03 Is, like, you know, the, the, the mystery. I, w- I genuinely think we are all better off not knowing. Okay.

Sam Parr 11:08 It finishes the story.

Shaan Puri 11:08 So let's, let's continue on. So the WikiLeak things ha- uh, the WikiLeaks thing happens, I think, something like 2011, 2012. Uh, Satoshi posts. Three days later, he makes his last post. So he, he posts. WikiLeaks happens two days later, three days later. Last post disappears, never to be heard from again, okay? So that's the, the, the mystery kind of, like, sits there. Or actually, I think he did come back and post something in, like, 2014, 2015. Um, and by the way, he didn't disappear, as in nobody heard from. He at some point even said, "I'm gonna move on. I'm gonna stop talking about, I'm gonna stop contributing to this. Like, it's, it's on its way, and, and I, I'm gonna move on. I'm gonna stop talking about this." So then in 2014, 2015, there's a big debate in Bitcoin about, like, the transaction speed's too slow. Some people say, "Hey, we gotta make the block size bigger. That'll let more transactions go through." Some people say, "No, no, no. You can't change something as fundamental as the block size. We should do this other, more complicated thing that will take years, but the reason we should do that is because if we change anything about the Bitcoin protocol, it undermines It's like, oh, if you can change that, then can't you change the 21 million supply? Like, you'll lose the core credibility.

Sam Parr 12:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:12 There's two sides of this debate, and on one side of the debate is this guy Roger Ver, who calls himself Bitcoin Jesus. He, he made a huge bet on Bitcoin early on, millions of dollars, and became a billionaire off of it. And there's other people who are saying, "Look, we need to get this thing adopted now. We need the quick and dirty solution. M- just double the block size and shut up about it, all right? You know, people wanna use this thing. They can't use it today. They gotta... We gotta m- do the fast solution. Uh, let's go, go, go." They end up actually on the wrong side of the history. The community goes against them. They create their own thing called Bitcoin Cash, kind of this thing that has low reputation. The people who said, "No, no, we gotta stay true to Satoshi's vision," were Adam Back, this guy Peter Todd, and like, you know, a handful of others who said, "No, no, no. The thing with Bitcoin is it's gotta be pristine. You can't... It can't be where, like the government, government printing money, we can't just suddenly arbitrarily change the rules of this thing."

Sam Parr 12:59 It's like people who wanna follow the Constitution, which is like, it's all like a-

Shaan Puri 13:03 Right

Sam Parr 13:03 ... it's like a, it's like a pretty funny thing that the Constitution, which is like a group of, like, 20 and 30-year-olds who, like, came up with this idea.

Shaan Puri 13:09 [laughs]

Sam Parr 13:09 And now billions of people and 250 years have passed, and we've all just, uh, kind of bought into this idea, that this is the way-

Shaan Puri 13:17 Right

Sam Parr 13:17 ... things are, and-

Shaan Puri 13:17 And no matter how the world changes, we're like-

Sam Parr 13:19 We don't break it

Shaan Puri 13:20 ... we don't change it, because even if you think you could appr- yeah, Second Amendment, do we need that? Is that exactly right? It's like, once you change the amendments, now everything's up for grabs. And so it's actually sort of better for the collective that way.

Sam Parr 13:30 Which is, like, a ridiculous concept to think about. And, and you could also say the same is true for, uh, like, religion and, like, holy texts, where you're like, someone wrote this, and tens or hundreds of billions of people have dedicated their lives to it.

Shaan Puri 13:41 Right, like-

Sam Parr 13:42 Like, it is like a, that's a really fascinating concept. But, and, and that's what's happening, or that is what you're referring to.

Shaan Puri 13:46 Bitcoin is very much like a religion, and the people who follow it are very, like, religious about it [laughs] . And so anyways, he weighs in one last time there saying, "Small block size is what we should do," and it goes the way of Adam Back, Peter Todd, and these other guys. Okay, cool. That's the last we heard of Satoshi. And, um, they've tried to find him. Don't know

Shaan Puri 14:02 how to find him. So this documentary-

Sam Parr 14:03 So who's the, yeah, who's the guy that the docu-

Shaan Puri 14:04 The documentary fo- goes through, and he basically, under the premise of, he goes to all the ear- OG Bitcoiners, and he tells them, "I'm doing this documentary." He doesn't tell them he's trying to find Satoshi. He, what he tells them is more along the lines of, "I want to tell the Bitcoin story." Um, I don't know if he tells them it's gonna be on HBO, but, like, this is good for things. So a lot of them agree to do this, which is pretty rare for them to agree to sit down and do these, like, taped interviews. And along the way, as he's d- building, make this documentary, he's slipping in questions about Satoshi. Who is... Are you Satoshi? Why do people think that you are? Uh, what's your claim to not be, right? Hey, people think that guy is. Do you think that? Well, what makes that credible? And so he's slipping... And then the documentary is basically, he kind of filters out 80 or 90% of their conversation probably and kept the 10% that was about, like, trying to figure out the Satoshi stuff. Okay, so in the end, he, um, he puts it on this guy Peter Todd, and Peter Todd seems like an unlikely character for a bunch of reasons. Number one, when Bitcoin, when the Bitcoin paper was released, Peter Todd would've only been something like 23 years old. He was, like, kind of like a kid. Number two, he's, he's come out and joked around, like, "Yeah, I am Satoshi," which, like, you know, you... The, the real Satoshi's probably pretty paranoid. On the other hand, some people say no, the meta game would be you jokingly say that you are Satoshi to sort of throw suspicion off you, right? That sort of thing. Uh, there's not a lot of evidence that ties him to this, so they're like, "Okay, I guess it could be Peter Todd," but, like, why not Hal Finney, the guy who got the first transaction? Why not Adam Back, who was one of the first people ever to talk to Satoshi and never has, never has released those emails between him and Satoshi, uh, and was the inventor of Hashcash? Like, that guy seems more sophisticated to be able to do this. Uh, why is it not a group? Why is it not the FBI? Like, w- the case against him isn't he can't be. It's more of why him? There's so many other more likely people. And ag- the biggest case against him is he was really young and, um, that he, uh, he kind of trolls and jokes around with this, and he's also very opinionated about other things. Um, so, like, he's very opinionated about, like, Russia and Ukraine, like, a whole bunch of shit like that, and so people don't like him in general. He's not a very well-liked figure, so it kind of doesn't jive with the Bitcoin community that this is our fearless leader. It's like, wait, we kind of think this guy's kind of a prick.

Sam Parr 16:16 Because Satoshi kind of has this, uh, stoic mentality, this, um, writing that is, like, us versus the world, like, very much, like, visionary attitude. And, and you're describing someone that may not have, like, uh, George Washington vibes, you know?

Shaan Puri 16:32 [laughs] Well, look, look, the funniest tweet I saw on this, 'cause I was trying to see the community's reaction, the funniest tweet that I think is underratedly how people will feel about this, the guy goes, "Peter Todd? This..." It goes, "Peter Todd? That's the most average-ass name I've ever heard. This guy? This guy looks like the most average-ass guy I've ever seen."

Sam Parr 16:48 Well, I'm looking at him. He does-

Shaan Puri 16:49 And this guy disappointed

Sam Parr 16:50 ... look normal

Shaan Puri 16:50 ... like, if that was Satoshi, I would be disappointed, right? Like, oh, it's just this guy. It's just this white dude who, like, you know, has all these, like, other opinions that I th- kind of disagree with. Like, that kind of l- the veneer of Satoshi goes away. So-

Sam Parr 17:03 Where, whereas if you google Hal Finney, he, he looks like a person that just studies all day.

Shaan Puri 17:09 Yeah, Hal was this beloved guy, and then he dies tragically, and it's sort of like he, he went down with the ship. The captain went down with the ship. He never revealed... And the other thing about Hal is he cryogenically froze his head. And so, like, if a thousand years from now cryonics are a thing and you can unfreeze, they're like, "He's got the private key in his head and he'll come out as Satoshi."

Sam Parr 17:28 Oh.

Shaan Puri 17:28 It's like, whatever. Okay, so it's kind of like that, has that sort of aura, okay? Now let me give you the evidence. Why does this documentary guy claim that it's Peter Todd? Okay, so the, the evidence is basically this. Back, right when that thing happened, remember I said there was a post, the WikiLeaks things happened, and he disappeared. Everybody thinks that it's because of the WikiLeaks thing, that he got paranoid and he decided to bounce. There was one other thing that happened after that post, that first post, that was not to do with WikiLeaks at all. The, that thing that happened was Satoshi posted about how the transaction, like, mechanism works, and then the first reply underneath, an hour and a half later, is from Peter Todd. But it looks like a continuation of the thought. So he says, in the original post, he says, "You know, the inputs and the outputs would match." And then he, and then the Peter Todd reply comes in and it just says, "To be specific, the inputs and the outputs wouldn't exactly match, it would be whatever." Now, some people would say that's just a snarky internet forum, like, kinda rude comment, like you didn't even, there's no formality, there's no, like, there's no, there's no, uh, understanding, you're just, like, immediately trying to, like, correct something from somebody's post. That happens all the time on the internet. Another lens you can look at that same thing is, Satoshi writes this thing, comes back to clarify, forgets to switch back to his alt account. And that post has been up there, and it's been left up there for a very long time. So the guy, the documentary guy is reading that and he's like, "Dude, are we dumb? Have we missed this? Doesn't this look like it's a continuation of the thought, it's a clarification of a thought?" And for this guy, who's claims to have not been interested in Bitcoin until years later, and claims to be, have been busy in school, for him to come in at 1:30 in the morning and make a super specific clarification as to how the Bitcoin mechanism works, that doesn't really line up with this guy who wasn't interested and didn't follow it and was just a kid at the time, right?

Sam Parr 19:18 By the way, this is how they caught Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road. He just f- well, he, he posted on a forum w- logged into the wrong username, or he left his email, like, t- like, it was, like, a, a clerical error. They, they-

Shaan Puri 19:30 Exactly

Sam Parr 19:30 By the way, this is how they got Timothy McVeigh from the Oklahoma City bombing. He, uh, one of his tail lights was out. Like, there's, like, lots of examples of big-shot criminals being busted over minor things-

Shaan Puri 19:40 One thing like this

Sam Parr 19:41 ... of just sloppiness.

Shaan Puri 19:41 And b- you know, uh, this is, and b- in the, in, right now on Twitter, people are saying, you think Satoshi, who's been, like, flawless with his op sec, his security, of how he did this, you think he would just stupidly log into the wrong account-

Sam Parr 19:53 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:53 ... and then leave the message there? And it's like, yeah-

Sam Parr 19:55 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:55 ... actually, that happened all the time. That's actually-

Sam Parr 19:57 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:57 ... a, a pretty common pattern. In fact, if I said, what's the most likely way we find him, it's either that or, like, you know, s- uh, maybe the email he registered his Satoshi email with gets leaked some w- some other way and it's traced to him.

Sam Parr 20:06 Yeah, it's like, it, it, it fits the stereotype of, like, when you think of, like, the brilliant scientists, you think of Albert Einstein with, like, mismatched socks, uh, you know what I mean? [laughs] Like, the-

Shaan Puri 20:14 Right

Sam Parr 20:14 ... and this is, like, this is the internet equivalent of that.

Shaan Puri 20:17 So that's the first piece. Then, um, then there's, like, some other, there's, like, s- a few secondary things. So there's, like, the language, like, he writes, like, color with U-R. He writes, like, in the Canadian English spelling. This guy was going to school in Toronto at the time. But a lot of people are like, you know, is this guy brilliant, uh, Satoshi? You know, is he, he was so young at the time. Is this even possible? And then they go find a message from him on the, uh, f- on the cryptography forums before Bitcoin ever came out, eight years prior to when Bitcoin came out. And it's-

Sam Parr 20:47 So how old was he at that point then?

Shaan Puri 20:48 He's 15 or 16 years old at the time. And he writes, he's s- he's hanging out in this, you know, cypherpunk, you know, community, and he's, um, [lip smacks] he basically says at, uh, on the forum, and he's like, he's like, "Yeah, hash cash," blah, blah, blah. It had the, the... And then he's talking about the mechanism. He's like, "It would have to be something more than proof of work," blah, blah, blah, "effing double spend problem." And that's, like, the, like, the snippet from this email chain that he, that he's posted back then, which is like, okay, so you're 15, 16 years old. You're obviously brilliant and not just, like, you know, some random programmer kid, and you're thinking and noodling about this problem eight years prior. His mom taught him about crypt- her, cryptography. His dad was an economist. So it's like the two skills you would need to be Satoshi is, like, you'd need the brilliance on the encryption and cryptography side, and you would need the ethos and the sort of ideology on, um, you know, creating, you know, what is a currency anyways? What is money? What is hard money? And how does it, how does the world ec- economics work? Um, that's his, that's this kid's background.

Sam Parr 21:50 So how old-

Shaan Puri 21:51 On top of that-

Sam Parr 21:51 How, how old is he now, by the way?

Shaan Puri 21:53 Mid to late 30s is, is his age now. And he works for Blockstream, and he's, like, very close with that guy Adam Back. And Adam would've been the w- you know, the people that he would collaborate with after, after creating this. Now, the, the most damning thing is, so he, the documentary confronts him on, like, live.

Sam Parr 22:10 And by the way, imagine being 39 and having this documentary come out about you, uh, like, accusing you of being the richest person in the world, accusing you of inventing this amazing thing. Like, there's one part of, there's one side of you that's like, "Oh, man, I want all the credit. I want all," uh-

Shaan Puri 22:28 Right

Sam Parr 22:28 ... "I want, I want all this." And then the other part, uh... But, but then you're like, "Well, if I'm not it, but should I say I'm it? Should I be it?"

Shaan Puri 22:36 Well, there's a, there's also a very irresponsible part of this. Let's say this documentary is wrong. I mean, you just painted it, you just ruined a guy's life, basically. Like, uh, if people believe that you're Satoshi, your life immediately is in danger. People think that you're one of the wealthiest people on Earth. Every ag- government agency, every government, you know, uh, wants to, to sort of take you to the back room and talk to you and, and, and sometimes worse, right? So, like, if he is Satoshi, I think it's a very bad thing for him. I almost feel bad bringing it up, but I think we, you know, we gotta talk about, I, I just, you know, I needed to hear your reaction to this. Um, and obviously it's out. I'm not the one, you know, putting this out there. It's out now, so, so just watch this video and tell me what you think.

Sam Parr 23:12 All right.

Speaker 23:12 So, uh, so you reach out to your old buddy Adam Back. You say, "We need to do something about this, but we need to pay the devs." But you can't join Blockstream because it would look too, uh, suspicious.

Sam Parr 23:22 Okay.

Speaker 23:23 So-

Sam Parr 23:23 So I just watched this clip. First of all, this is definitely a editorial, m- like, you know, very opinionated versus factual.

Shaan Puri 23:29 Right.

Sam Parr 23:30 This guy, so d- so basically it's a tall, nerdy guy with his hands in his pockets, and he's doing exactly what I am accused of doing all the time when I'm nervous, which is I rock back and forth.

Shaan Puri 23:42 Fidget.

Sam Parr 23:43 Uh-

Shaan Puri 23:43 Eyeshif- shifty eyes.

Sam Parr 23:44 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 23:44 Look at, immediately look at the friend who you're in on it with, who, by the way, that guy Adam in the back, who's his friend, um, who w- who's the other kinda, like, co-collaborator on this thing, silent the entire ti- like, frozen. You ready? 'Cause, because the director sorta sprung this. They, they didn't come out here to talk about that, right? They're, they're doing this walk through this, like, ruins area or whatever, supposed to be talking about whatever, and the director sort of does a gotcha moment. And- This is their reaction.

Sam Parr 24:09 Dude, all right, so he's got his hands in his pocket, and he's rocking back and forth. I had to, um, officiate a wedding last week, and Sarah was like, "I could tell you were nervous. No one else knew you were nervous. I knew you were nervous." And I was like, "How?" She goes, "You were rocking bath- back and forth. You kept, you kept doing that thing where you rock back and forth," and I do it all the time. This guy's doing that exact same thing. He's very clearly uncomfortable, and he's got a very awkward smile. Uh, this is, this is, it's a s- yeah, he didn't respond well. But you could also say, like-

Shaan Puri 24:38 Which by the way, you could chalk that up to every Bitcoiner-

Sam Parr 24:40 Yeah

Shaan Puri 24:40 ... who's like that [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:40 They're just dorks

Shaan Puri 24:41 ... in a social situation. [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:41 Right? Like, they can't make eye contact. Like, that's why they're amazing. Like, you can't be this and also have good eye contact. That, uh-

Shaan Puri 24:48 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:48 You can't, you can't have both. Uh, so what do you think? Is, did he, is this the guy?

Shaan Puri 24:53 So I don't know if this is the guy or not, but it is probably the mo- i- it's one of the most compelling things, and it, it's, it's funny, it's being so discredited by the community. So either I'm missing something, uh, which is entirely possible, or it's sort of wishful thinking, 'cause like it's much better if he's not, uh, Satoshi, and, uh, and I don't think the evidence is super, super strong, but it's a very compelling theory. That's kind of where I've landed. It's a compelling theory. This guy who clearly at 15 or 16 was brilliant and thinking specifically about the double-spend problem, and then talks, and then comes out, and then has this, this forum post, which is, the timing is very interesting about right when it happens, the way it's written, and then the guy disappears. And then by the way, this guy also disappeared for two years after that in the Bitcoin forum. Doesn't participate. And he's like, "Oh, I was busy. I was a student," blah, blah, blah. "I should've been more interested in Bitcoin, I just wasn't." And then when he comes back, he actually does a thing called, uh, replace by fee, which is basically this mechanism where you could pay a little extra to get your transaction done faster, and actually is like one of the useful patches to Bitcoin. So he comes back and contributes this useful patch to the Bitcoin code, uh, afterwards. And in this thing, he's like, his nervous answer is basically like, "What? [laughs] Who, me? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm totally Satoshi." I mean, that's crazy. Why you, why you saying that? You know, you're gonna look really stupid if you release this. And it's like, those are things I do when I'm trapped in a lie. [laughs] Maybe I'm projecting here.

Sam Parr 26:15 Do, w- uh, you alluded to something about the name, Satoshi, uh, Nakamoto. Is that, w- did, did he imply something earlier in his career before Satoshi existed that he liked that name or was tied to that name?

Shaan Puri 26:28 There was no, uh, no, there's no evidence on that. The, the evidence was basically, the, the combination of evidence was that forum post, the timing of both of their disappearances. It's him, you know, when he's 15, 16 years old, uh, on the forums. It's his kind of like the, his spelling and, uh, kind of his writing style, even the way he kinda like pu- uh, punctuates, where it's like the two s- two spaces after the period, the O-U-R, things that are, uh, a lot of people do, but they all, they don't, they do fit with this guy.

Sam Parr 26:54 Did Hal Finney, uh, write like Satoshi?

Shaan Puri 26:58 No. Um, they've looked at like Hal Finney's code and then Satoshi's code, but then, you know, there's an answer for everything. Oh, he's so brilliant, he knew to modify the code into a different style, right? There's an answer for everything. It's a c- like all conspiracies, it's, it's sort of what you choose to believe or what you choose to not believe.

Sam Parr 27:13 That's pretty hard. Like, I, I actually think that that, that, that, like, I, I... 'Cause w- when I used to actually write in fake names, like fake blog posts all the time, and I remember trying to change how I was writing, and I remember doing that and thinking, "This is really challenging. Everyone's gonna know this is me." Uh, I used to write fake blog po- like, I had like pseudonyms that I would just, like, fill my blog with. Uh, and so that's like a pretty compelling actually piece of evidence, if you ask me.

Shaan Puri 27:40 Yeah, it, uh, like I wanna be super clear. I don't know the answer. I'm not saying I believe this or I don't believe this. I'm saying this is the most interesting theory on, this is the most interesting new theory on Satoshi, right? So there's been, over the years, there's been many theories, including the time when, like, I forgot, like the New Yorker or New York Post or something, like chased down that Rand Malaysian guy and was like, "It's him, Dorian Nakamoto. This is the guy." And he's like, "What?" And he's like, didn't know where he was, and basically like [laughs] had his life ruined for like 48 hours. Um, you know, there's, uh, there's been many theories over the years. This might be just another harebrained theory, but I would say it's the most interesting one in a few years to me. And as somebody who, I'm just fascinated by the story, I badly wanna know, but I also, I understand that it would be much better to never know, uh, for all of us, uh, to never know. And for whoever it is. You know? Like, I think they had a great contribution to the world, and you know, their wish was to be anonymous. I think that should be, uh, you know, respected, and I think whoever is Satoshi is in extreme danger once they, uh, once it does get outed, if it ever does get outed.

Sam Parr 28:39 In terms of like the Olympics or the hall of fame of stories, uh, like JFK is like, uh, up in there, the JFK assassination, who did it. And I think actually this story is on par with that. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri 28:54 Yeah, exactly. Like the most, you, you used the word intoxicating. It's like these rabbit holes that, like, just kinda make you wonder and you can't, you keep going back to them. You know, aliens, the, certain assassinations, and then there's, there's, there's this one.

Sam Parr 29:05 This like ma- it, it, it kinda keeps me up at night, to be honest, and I don't even give a shit about Bitcoin. But I think that it's just like, I think that what it's rooted in, um, potentially how one person, um, had such an impact and was so brilliant. I think that if you read, uh, American Kingpin about Ross Ulbricht, Ross had the same exact style, where it was very romantic. It was very, uh, I wanna get behind you. Like, it's us versus the world. Like we are, we are on a path to greatness. Like this whole, that whole concept was Ross had the exact same thing, and even though he did a lot of really bad stuff, you kinda wanna get behind it because you're like, "Yeah, that's just, like that's just the price that we pay to be James Bond," like we kill bad guys.

Shaan Puri 29:47 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:48 Uh, and so like this-

Shaan Puri 29:50 Except Ross might have been a bad guy. He might have been the bad guy in this case. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:53 Well, he, he was. Like, like he did a lot... I, I think that, like, you could do good things and bad things, uh, but I think he actually did, I, I think that he should be in jail for a long period of time-

Shaan Puri 30:01 Yeah

Sam Parr 30:01 ... because he tried to kill much people.

Shaan Puri 30:02 It might be more Breaking Bad, where you, you're rooting for Walt even though you're like, "Wait, I think this guy's now a drug kingpin who's killing people," but, uh-

Sam Parr 30:10 Yeah, or Tony Soprano

Shaan Puri 30:11 ... I still love this guy. [laughs]

Sam Parr 30:11 Or like, it's like Tony Soprano. Like you wanna like Tony, but then you're like, "Dude, you suck. Like you're a bad husband, and you kill people." Like the, like-

Shaan Puri 30:18 Right

Sam Parr 30:18 ... just 'cause you're funny doesn't mean I should, like

Sam Parr 30:20 you're an amazing person.

Shaan Puri 30:20 By the way, can I, can I make a one-minute Bitcoin case right now?

Sam Parr 30:24 Are you back?

Shaan Puri 30:26 Um, I mean, am I back? I've been here. Uh, but, uh-

Sam Parr 30:28 No, you haven't been here. You, you, you, your-

Shaan Puri 30:30 What do you mean I haven't been here?

Sam Parr 30:31 Your interest has ebbed and flowed from the topic.

Shaan Puri 30:35 The conviction hasn't ebbed and flowed, it's like how much new information is there to pay attention to? It's in the same way-

Sam Parr 30:40 Yeah

Shaan Puri 30:40 ... that like I'm not like, "Oh my God, the internet is amazing." It's like, yeah, I kinda know the internet's amazing. I, I made that decision a long time ago and I just use it. You know, like I just, I'm in. I'm, I've been in, I'm in, right? Like, versus when it first came out, it's like every new thing is, is new and novel.

Sam Parr 30:52 It was a very exciting pe- it was a very exciting period. But yeah, what's your one minute?

Shaan Puri 30:56 The, I mean the one minute is this. From the beginning with Bitcoin, there's always been these like, the big risk, the big question marks. So once you, once you sort of accept that there's merit to having a hard currency, meaning having a currency that doesn't get inflated. The way I look at it is Bitcoin's a savings technology, so people use... People think Bitcoin's gonna make 'em rich, actually the, the true purpose of Bitcoin is a store of value, meaning it's meant to keep you rich. So I don't know if you've ever seen the charts of like, you know, your mo- you know, if, if your great-grandparent or whatever 100 years ago had left you a, you know, a million dollar fortune, it would be worth, you know, only 3% of what they left, right? It'd be worth 30 grand today.

Sam Parr 31:33 Right. Horrible.

Shaan Puri 31:33 And so just in 100 years, uh, 100 years in the United States at the targeted inflation or the actual inflation, uh, your money is going to, uh, uh, be cut in half sort of every 30 years.

Sam Parr 31:44 Yeah, if you left it in cash.

Shaan Puri 31:47 Correct. Correct.

Sam Parr 31:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:48 The, the currency itself, I'm saying.

Sam Parr 31:49 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:49 Like if you just said, "I, I feel safer just with, with the U- good old US dollar in the bank account," you... It's a bowl of ice cream that's melting by design.

Sam Parr 31:56 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:56 That's how much it's melting.

Sam Parr 31:57 Because, uh, uh, on average, roughly 3% a year it gets devalued, so a mill-

Shaan Puri 32:02 Correct

Sam Parr 32:02 ... yeah.

Shaan Puri 32:02 And that's not a conspiracy theory, that is the target inflation is 2 or 3%. Sometimes it's higher, like it's been, but like the, the goal for them is to inflate it 2 or 3% a year. Means, which means by design, 2 or 3% a year means that in 30 years you're gonna have, whatever, half of what you understood.

Sam Parr 32:15 Yeah, understood.

Shaan Puri 32:16 So one generation. Um, okay, so the, if you, once you believe that there's merit to just like well, I'd rather save... It's like I'd rather have a phone whose battery doesn't drain. I'd rather save my money in a currency that is not designed to inflate. And you might say, well, there's still a leap of faith which is, will this be a thing? Currency only matters if a bunch of people believe in it. Whatever, that's, that's, that's the only question mark, that risk.

Sam Parr 32:38 Is bit- the q- is Bitcoin even a currency?

Shaan Puri 32:42 Of course.

Sam Parr 32:44 I mean, is a cur- is the definition of a currency, uh, liquidity? Is it, is it, or not liquidity, uh, the ability to, the like, uh, a lot of people spending it?

Shaan Puri 32:53 A better way of saying it is it's money, so it's a money asset. And well, money has three jobs. Store value, number one, meaning, um, I have to believe that if I go out and I work hard every day, and I get paid in this thing, that this thing is gonna be valuable tomorrow or the next day or the next.

Sam Parr 33:07 Yeah, it requires-

Shaan Puri 33:07 Right? So-

Sam Parr 33:08 ... a collective buy-in.

Shaan Puri 33:09 Correct, and that's the first stage. Then after, after it's already accepted by many people as valuable, like the way gold is accepted by many people as valuable, then it can be used as a medium of exchange. Meaning, then I'm willing to trade it back and forth with people 'cause I know they believe it's valuable, I believe it's valuable, they're gonna believe it's gonna be valuable. They know that the next guy they wanna spend with is, thinks it's gonna be valuable. So once we all buy into it's valuable, then it's usable after that as a medium of exchange. That part hasn't happened yet. And then the final stage is once we're all using it as a medium of exchange, we price things in it. That's called the unit of account. So those are the three phases of something becoming-

Sam Parr 33:43 Yeah

Shaan Puri 33:43 ... a true, you know, useful currency. Today, Bitcoin is like, it's basically, it's completing stage one, where the bulk of the world, the majority has flipped to believing that Bitcoin is valuable, okay? Uh, you could see that in the price, $60,000, you could see that in who owns it, the individuals, you know, wealthy, wealthy folks.

Sam Parr 34:00 How many human beings own one Bitcoin, or own, uh, uh, some Bitcoin?

Shaan Puri 34:05 I don't know the number of like, active wallets now, and the hard part is one person can have multiple wallets. But it's like over 100 million, for sure. It's like in the hundreds of millions of people that-

Sam Parr 34:14 Okay, well then I think it's a stretch to say that-

Shaan Puri 34:16 ... that are bought, bought into the system

Sam Parr 34:17 ... it's a stretch to say everyone agrees that it's...

Shaan Puri 34:20 Uh, what I mean is, uh, obviously not everybody, so not 8 billion people on Earth own this. 8 billion people also don't own dollars, right? That, that's not, that's also not the case. Um, but for hundreds of millions of people to have active, like have wallets with value in them is-

Sam Parr 34:36 Okay

Shaan Puri 34:36 ... big. That's, I mean, that's, that's, that's a humongous number. So anyways, that's how the currency works. So the, the, the, the case for Bitcoin right now is over time there's always been two big risks. So the first risk is the government's just gonna shut this down, right? The, the, the, the smart guy case was, look, you might be right that this is better than gold. You might be right that it's more secure than gold, it's easier to transport than gold, that it's, uh, it's the more programmable money. Like, I get all that, but look, the government's not gonna go down without a fight. Their biggest stranglehold on power is that they own the guns and the money. You can't take one of their two big powers away, right? They, you, you might, they, they'll still have the guns, but if they, if you, they lose their ability to control the money supply, no government's gonna allow that. And for a while it looked like that. China tried to ban it. India tried to ban it. Uh, but Bitcoin was pretty

Shaan Puri 35:21 resilient. And now you have in this election, for example, both of the candidates are pro crypto. Donald Trump is very pro crypto and Kamala has now realized she, it is now political suicide to be anti-crypto.

Sam Parr 35:30 Dude, isn't it crazy how-

Shaan Puri 35:32 Which is insane

Sam Parr 35:32 ... it's a cra- it's crazy. They're both on the circuit. That's wild, right?

Shaan Puri 35:37 They're, they're-

Sam Parr 35:37 I talked to, um-

Shaan Puri 35:38 Donald Trump is speaking at the Bitcoin conference. Kamala stopped saying she's gonna kill crypto. [laughs]

Sam Parr 35:42 Well, dude, I talked to our, uh, we have a mutual friend who owns a, uh, uh, a, a crypto, uh, related media business, and he was like, "All these politicians wanna talk to me now. It's insane, 'cause they wanna speak at our events. They wanna do all this stuff. They need us now. They, they wanna participate."

Shaan Puri 35:57 Right.

Sam Parr 35:57 "They wanna be part of the conversation." And I, that's insane to me. That, I mean, in a, in a good way, I think. But that's like wild that these people want that.

Shaan Puri 36:04 I mean, Trump has literally said, in very Trump fashion, "Maybe, maybe we'll b- maybe we'll do Bitcoins and that'll pay the debt," right? He's like, "Maybe we'll just buy some Bitcoins and that'll pay everything off." The government is now pro crypto. They've now realized it is political suicide to be anti crypto 'cause there's too many Americans who have wealth, and if you say, "We're gonna either block this or ban this or confiscate this," that means something to too many Americans, so now you can't politically be, uh, in a we're gonna shut down or kill crypto. Kill B- Bitcoin specifically. And so that's, that's a huge thing that changed from, like, five, eight years ago. And I feel like nobody's really giving that... Nobody's pricing that in properly. Nobody's giving that enough credit. That, like, one of the biggest risks, that the U- US government's never gonna go for this, and now they're pro crypto. That's, that's crazy. Uh, the second thing is, you know, there's all these clips of Jamie Dimon and BlackRock and all these people just shitting on Bitcoin and calling it, you know, the dumbest thing, you're idiots. If you wanna go lose your money, go do this. And now they're the biggest custodians and the biggest salesmen of, of cr- of Bitcoin. Like-

Sam Parr 37:01 Dude, aren't they so full of shit, man? Like-

Shaan Puri 37:03 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:04 It's just funny how, I guess, I mean, everyone deserves the right to change their opinion once they get, gather new information, but there, it, it really, it's just-

Shaan Puri 37:12 But the consequences are very big. So here's the consequences of that, right? Like, a week ago, BlackRock released this presentation that they're giving about why Bitcoin is better than gold, and it's literally the same slides that the, like, crypto anarchists were using 10 years ago. It's like, "Here's Bitcoin compared to gold. Gold, you can't tran- you can't carry it easily. You can't easily divide it. Gold's not actually that scarce. You, you, we can always find more. Bitcoin's actually a fixed supply." And so, like, all of the old, the old arguments, they're now on a roadshow to wealthy people and to financial advisors. So they're basically training financial advisors and their clients that a healthy portfolio has 1% to 5% Bitcoin in it. So they're recommending it as now, like, the smart move, the wise move to do. Um, and so they're on a roadshow because they make a bunch of money. They're incentivized to do this 'cause they make a bunch of money, right? It's the fastest-growing ETF product in the world, uh, is Bitcoin. I think the B- Bitcoin ETFs are now, like, some insane, uh, number. Like-

Sam Parr 38:05 Why, and why, why do you need a Bitcoin ETF?

Shaan Puri 38:08 So the Bitcoin ETF is, uh, you know, one of the other big counterpoints was just this is too complicated. My mom, my dad is never gonna go download a wallet off this thing and f- figure out their private key, and they're gonna be afraid to lose it. Okay, Coinbase, that's easier, but, like, by, they don't open up new accounts. They just invest out of their 401 [k] or whatever. So the reason an ETF matters is now everybody who's got an account with whoever it is, Morgan Stanley or, um, you know, Fidelity or Nationwide, whoever-

Sam Parr 38:34 Dude, it's so funny. I just Googled crypto ETF or Bitcoin ETF, and there's a website for Fidelity. It just says, it's, it's, it's a ad that Fidelity is running to get me to click on, and it's about their crypto fund on a Fidelity website.

Shaan Puri 38:48 Dude, it's gonna start to look like life insurance.

Sam Parr 38:49 It's so funny.

Shaan Puri 38:50 It's gonna look like a-

Sam Parr 38:51 This is so funny

Shaan Puri 38:51 ... like, a loving family, like, hugging and embracing, and be like, "Our future is secure."

Sam Parr 38:55 Dude, this is like-

Shaan Puri 38:56 [laughs] Like, shit like that

Sam Parr 38:57 ... this is like Walmart buying the Supreme brand. Like, dude-

Shaan Puri 39:00 So, so the thing is-

Sam Parr 39:00 ... come on. This is lame

Shaan Puri 39:01 ... everybody is incentivized to do it, meaning the presidents are like, "Yo, if we're pro crypto, we unlock crypto donation dollars and this voting bloc." So they're like, "All right, politically, we're now incentivized to do this." BlackRock's like, "Yo, how much money can be made with this?" Right? There's 60, the, the, the ETF has had, like, $61 billion put into management, like, in the last, like, you know-

Sam Parr 39:19 Yeah, but what if this-

Shaan Puri 39:20 ... it's only been legal for, like, six months or so.

Sam Parr 39:21 It's pretty lame though, right?

Shaan Puri 39:22 They get a 1% fee of doing it. Then they sell this as a product, as an upsell to people. Now anybody in their retirement accounts, in their stock trading accounts, can push one button and own Bitcoin without ever having to deal with the custodian issues or the private keys or your wallet or losing your hard drive or any of that shit. And so, yes, it's lame because it's not cool anymore, meaning it's not cool and edgy and alt. Um, but the whole point was, like, it goes through this adoption phase, right? And now it's going more mainstream. So I think what's ... My point is, I cannot believe, as somebody who's been watching this thing for, like, probably at this point literally 10 or 11 years, it was unfathomable 10 years ago to be like, not only will Bitcoin be $60,000 a coin, that would've already blown my mind 10 years ago, but on top of that, the presidents are gonna be using this in their campaign. The, they're gonna say this is a good idea. They're gonna talk, talk about, you know, having a little bit of it on the nation's balance sheet. Corporations are gonna own this thing. Um, BlackRock and Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon, they're, that's gonna be their hero product. It's their hero SKU now. And that you're just gonna be able to click a button and buy it as a, as a E- ETF. Like, all of that is unbelievable to me, and I feel like people all really have not grasped how once you do that, you can't unwind it. So once everybody owns it in Bl- in their ETFs or their retirement accounts, what are they gonna do? You can't... It's too embedded in the system at, at that point. You can't, like, you can't rip it out. Its tentacles are too deep.

Sam Parr 40:42 Dude, listen to this. So I, um, this is kind of, like, indicative of where Bitcoin was going. It's kind of silly. I, uh, this is to the listener, I've mentioned I moved to a small town outside of New York City in Connecticut, and my town is very much what you would picture of Connecticut. Like, the other day I went to, like, this fancy Ralph Lauren store and they're like, "Where do you live?" And they were like... And I was like, "Well, I live where these clothes were designed to be worn." Like, where there's, like, literally polo fields in, like, my-

Shaan Puri 41:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 41:08 ... like, in my hood. And there's a rowing club, uh, next to my house. Like, you're on the r- I guess it's a river, and you're, like, rowing, like, crew, which growing up in Missouri, that's like the richest kid, like, yuppie bullshit ever.

Shaan Puri 41:21 Right.

Sam Parr 41:22 But I was interested in it, and I, and I go to this rowing club to, like, see if I could, like, sign up for lessons, and I see a Bitcoin book in the lobby of a row club. So a row club is basically just imagine a gym, but instead of, like, just weights, there's, like, areas to row.

Shaan Puri 41:34 Right.

Sam Parr 41:34 Whatever. And I see a Bitcoin book, and I was like, "Wait, what the hell? Why is this Bitcoin book here?" And then I start walking around and I see a case full of trophies of high school people who have graduated from th- uh, this row club but did well in high school and won championships, whatever. And there's a picture of these two guys who are 18, and they're huge, strapping-looking dudes. And I'm like, "You gotta be kidding me. Who are, why do you have a picture of the Winklevoss twins here?" And they go, "Oh, uh, their father owns this place. And when they were young and they were into rowing, he built this row club so they could kind of have a place to go to." And, uh, and I was like, "That's why you have the Bitcoin book?" They go, "Yeah, they, like..." I, I, I don't remember if they wrote the book or if it was written about them. And, you know, their, the father's proud, so he just has, like, their book in the lobby. And I was like, "That is so funny." And so this row club is founded by the Winklevoss ... father, wink, whatever. And, uh, it's like r-

Shaan Puri 42:31 By the way, doesn't it seem like they would totally call their dad Father? [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:35 Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 42:37 [laughs] F- I'm gonna demand that my kids call me Father, uh, 'cause I feel like that's just, like, already, like, 25 prestige points in life.

Sam Parr 42:45 Dude, I tell my, um, little daughter whenever we FaceTime Grandma, I go, "That, that, that's your grandmother."

Shaan Puri 42:50 Yeah, that's wild. That's so funny. You, you live the most preppy life now.

Sam Parr 42:54 Yeah. You know what? Um, embrace it. It's kinda fun-

Shaan Puri 42:58 [laughs]

Sam Parr 42:58 ... if I'm being honest. Uh, it's kind of fun. Uh-

Shaan Puri 43:01 Yeah

Sam Parr 43:01 ... so I enjoy it. Um, but dude, this Bitcoin stuff, I, I've... I wouldn't say I'm, I'm not exactly a hater of it, but I love, like, poking holes in it, because I think that's just a fun position to have, uh, w- with this whole conversation. But for this podcast, I want it to be back. I had so much fun hearing these stories. I think it's like, the stories r- and the drama regarding this whole community and this thing is so cool. Like, all-time great. Like, just some dork invented this shit. Some nerd in, called a cyberpunk invented this thing, and now Fidelity is, like, you know, however many tens of thousands of employees, and, like, the most amount of money in the world is all, like, rallying around

Sam Parr 43:42 this. I think that is such an exciting story. There's yet to be a great movie, uh, around this, and I think it's too hard of a story to tell. There needs to be, like, only a couple storylines for this movie, but I'm really excited for something like that. And frankly, I, I wanna go and read more books on the topic, 'cause every book I've read about Bitcoin has been thrilling.

Shaan Puri 43:58 Yeah. Yeah. Th- Well, it depends if you want the thriller or you want the theory, right? There's like-

Sam Parr 44:02 No. No, I don't-

Shaan Puri 44:03 Th-

Sam Parr 44:03 I don't want that.

Shaan Puri 44:03 [laughs] Fair call.

Sam Parr 44:06 No, I just want, like, tell me about somebody who, like, died or just sex, death, and war. Like, uh, you know, like-

Shaan Puri 44:12 [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:13 ... uh, rebel r- rebels doing shit. That's what I want.

Shaan Puri 44:16 Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. [laughs] Then you might like this documentary. I don't know. We'll see. [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:20 What is it about?

Shaan Puri 44:20 Actually, the best, the best one of that is there's a documentary about this bus- this business called Quadriga. Did you ever watch this one?

Sam Parr 44:26 No. What's that?

Shaan Puri 44:27 It's the best, um, m- murder mystery, crazy, like, just insane, batshit crazy, scammy, like, uh, movie about crypto.

Sam Parr 44:37 Oh, is this the guy who died in-

Shaan Puri 44:39 Trust No One. It's called Trust No One.

Sam Parr 44:41 The guy who died in India, and they're like, "Dude, you faked your death." And like, the-

Shaan Puri 44:45 Spoilers. Yeah

Sam Parr 44:45 ... Indian doctor, uh-

Shaan Puri 44:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:47 Th- Well, we already talked about it. The Indian doctor, um, faked the autopsy.

Shaan Puri 44:52 W- well, they don't know. That's a, that's a theory, right? So yeah, it's called Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King. Uh, that's probably the most, like, thriller version of a crypto movie that I've seen.

Sam Parr 45:01 Dude, I just watched this one about these kids from Long Island who, like, moved to Miami, and they came up with, like, some ICO, uh, scam. And they document this guy as he's telling his story, but coincidentally, he's also still on trial, so you get to see him, like, going through trial and then eventually getting acquitted. And we talked about this particular guy where, like, he was posting pictures of his, like, his abs and his Ferrari on his Instagram. And we're like, "Dude, if you have abs and perfect teeth and you're also in the crypto community, you can't be trusted."

Shaan Puri 45:31 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 45:31 And like, Floyd Mayweather and a bunch of these guys, like, backed his shit, and we're like, "This is, this is a, a complete scam." But-

Shaan Puri 45:37 Right

Sam Parr 45:37 ... he still walked away with potentially tens of millions of dollars and got away with it. He didn't go to prison. Um, and so did you see that one?

Shaan Puri 45:44 I didn't see that one, no. The, the, the kind of the ICO, uh, you know, kids with Lambos version of it, I just hate them so much that it's such a turnoff. I can't, I can't bring myself to watch it.

Sam Parr 45:54 Such a turnoff.

Shaan Puri 45:54 But when it's, like, this kind of ideological rebel person who, you know, like, more like the Sam Bankman-Fried-

Sam Parr 46:01 It's more selfless. Yeah

Shaan Puri 46:02 ... like, I need kinda, like, a maybe evil, maybe genius w- It's hard to say.

Sam Parr 46:08 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 46:08 Is he just misunderstood, or actually is he just playing all of us? Like, that's really kind of the sweet spot for me with the crypto, uh, crime stuff. Like, crypto could basically have its own true crime, like, index, right? Because there's been so many-

Sam Parr 46:19 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:20 ... so many issues. I don't like the, like, 18-year-old, like, TikTok, uh, TikTok NFT baller.

Sam Parr 46:25 Yeah, 'cause that's just a straight scam.

Shaan Puri 46:26 That, that, that, that just turns me off.

Sam Parr 46:27 And, and, and, and that story is so easy.

Shaan Puri 46:28 Yeah, there's no art to that. [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:29 Yeah. Th- th- there, there's no, like [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:32 ... Yeah. There, there-

Shaan Puri 46:32 Like, the Sam Bankman-Fried thing is, is so interesting because not only is he, like, a enigma, and, like, it, it's like he looks the part, but then he doesn't, and then he, then he did something crazy. But it's unclear why he did it, 'cause he actually had a business that would've made him a billionaire many times over that was... Like, the scam with FTX wasn't that the demand and the customers were fake. The demand and the customers were real. It's just that he took the customer money and gambled on it, you know, used it for crazy donations to build power and, uh, to put in his hedge fund to, like, run up the, run up the balance on that side. It was just a unnecessary risk. And so the, the fascinating thing about that one is, like, why? Why did this guy even do that? He didn't need to do that. He won. He had the real win, and he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in that case.

Sam Parr 47:20 How about, um, if I told you, uh, three years ago, when SBF was still, we still thought he was legit, that him and Diddy are, uh, in prison together?

Shaan Puri 47:29 [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:31 Like, is that the craziest turn of events?

Shaan Puri 47:33 [laughs] It's really insane.

Sam Parr 47:36 Like-

Shaan Puri 47:36 Uh-

Sam Parr 47:37 Diddy and SBF are, like-

Shaan Puri 47:38 Ha- ha- have I ever told the, the S- the SBF, uh, FTX story with Milk Road, what happened?

Sam Parr 47:44 How they advertised with you and they were late to pay?

Shaan Puri 47:47 No, no, no. They, they weren't late to pay. They, um... We used to do something called Deep Dives, which is basically like if one of our, like, sort of ad products was, "If you pay us a ton of money, we will do a report on you," but the catch was we're gonna do the report we actually wanna do. Like, you don't get to say what we say in the report. And with FTX, it was like a no-brainer. They're like the richest player, and there was a bunch of good things to say, so it seemed like it was gonna be a win-win. And so they, they do the, they pay us a bunch of money, or they, they told us they're gonna pay us a bunch of money, and then we go write the report. And it, in the report, you know, I'm trying to... This w- I think I was writing it myself, or me and Ben were writing it. I don't remember exactly what the case was. Um, but I was involved with it, and I remember we were thinking about, okay, like what's the devil's advocate? Like, what doesn't smell right about this? Because you have to have the counterpoint. And it, it, not even just to rip on them, but, uh, having a counterpoint makes- But acknowledging the counterpoint honestly makes the point stronger. So even if we were trying to say, like, a positive thing, which was that they were super fast-growing, and they had this really, like, w- you know, aggressive marketing strategy that was working, like all that shit, um, we're like, "What's the counterpoint?" And the counterpoint was, like, w- the guy we had met who was, like, the chief security officer, who was like 24 years old. Or not security, a chief strategy officer, who's 24 years old, and we're like, "Wow, that's so impressive. Like, how did this kid become, like, chief strategy officer of this, like," at that time, it was like a $20 billion company.

Sam Parr 49:06 [laughs] Oh, yeah.

Shaan Puri 49:07 And we're like, "Oh, wow."

Sam Parr 49:07 I know exactly where this story's going. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:09 And so we were, and we were like, "Yeah, actually, like, a lot of the, the, like, execs are kind of like young, just like they're friends. But okay, Facebook looked that way too early on. You know, okay, interesting. Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing." And then we're like, "Yeah, it's unclear the, like, connection between Alameda, their, like, hedge fund, and FTX." And so we wrote that in there. We were like, "One thing that's not clear is, like, what is the relationship between these two parties, and where is there, is there a firewall?" And there's some speculation that, like, you know, it wasn't that Alameda was just like, that FTX was just siphoning the money and giving it to Alameda, and then Alameda was gambling it and losing it. It was that Alameda had, you know, like insider info, and they were front-running. That's kind of what, what people thought. So we wrote that in there. They're like, "Hey, we need you to take that out." We're like, "Nah, we're not gonna take that out." And they're like, uh, "Okay, then just, uh, hold on this." And we're like, "Cool, but you paid us already, so what... You know, do you wanna ever run this?" And then they just never replied again. [laughs] And we're like, "Okay, they... I think they paid us, like, half of the amount." And so I remember them just be- like, checking in every few months and be like, "Hey, do you... What? Like, are you ready for us to release this yet or no?" And they're like, "No." I'm like, "Okay." Didn't think too much of it, moved on with our life, and then sure enough, that hey, this connection is sort of unclear and, you know, there's some potential issues. That turned out to be like, it's like, oh no, that's stage four. That turned out to be a b- very, very big problem actually.

Sam Parr 50:22 And is SBF, like, in prison? How, how's he holding up? Is he still eating just peanut butter?

Shaan Puri 50:26 [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:28 I read this whole thing that, like, he only consumes peanut butter in prison because he's a vegan.

Shaan Puri 50:32 Sentenced to 25 years, but I do think there was, like, there was... I, I think he's sentenced to 25 years, but I don't, I don't think he's gonna serve that whole time. I don't know how that, the whole system works.

Sam Parr 50:40 Well, no. If you, if you get, for federal crimes, um, you know, a lot of, like, uh, the, a lot of people say, like, "Oh, you got sentenced to 20. You're only gonna do 10." Well, for federal crimes, I think the max amount it can ever get reduced is 10 or 15%. Uh, may- maybe 10%. So if you get sentenced to 20, you're just serving 18. Something like that. It's like a [laughs] fucking huge deal. Like, the, it's-

Shaan Puri 51:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 51:02 ... like, uh, yeah. It, it, this is not, like, a... And I think the prison he's at is, like, a, it's, it's, it's big boy prison. Like, this is not, uh, like particularly a fun thing. Uh-

Shaan Puri 51:12 Right

Sam Parr 51:12 ... like, there's this, like, idea of, like, a white collar... I, I talked to a, I know a guy, or a, a guy whose uncle got sentenced to a white collar crime, and he served 18 years. And he was like, uh, he told, he told me he would visit his uncle, and he was like, "Yeah, I mean, it was, when you say the word white collar crime, you kind of think, like, it's cushy," and, like, it was kind of that. But, like, it's prison. Like, bad s- and bad stuff-

Shaan Puri 51:35 Right

Sam Parr 51:35 ... can happen, and, like, you're confined all, all the time. Like, it, it's, it's, it's really bad. And I don't think SBF is, is in that type of, like, prison anyway. He's in, like, a real prison.

Shaan Puri 51:46 Right.

Sam Parr 51:47 Like a, a prison where-

Shaan Puri 51:47 He's not built for that.

Sam Parr 51:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 51:50 Um, do you, uh, have you ever watched the show The Night Of?

Sam Parr 51:53 No, what's that?

Shaan Puri 51:54 Oh, dude, amazing show. I think it's on Showtime or HBO. Uh, The Night Of, it's, it's a a- just an awesome show, and one of the things that I really liked about it is they showed almost, like, they showed the actual legal system at work. And it's almost, like, painful to watch the whole legal and prison system as the story plays out, but they don't fast-forward. The way a lot of movies and shows do is they kind of fast-for- It's like there's the crime, and then there's, like, the courtroom where it's, like, one lawyer's giving one dramatic speech, and the other lawyer's giving another dramatic speech. Whereas this one, it actually shows, like, the real deal, the holy field of, of, well, we have the, uh, the first, first hearing. Okay, the appeal's gonna be in three months, and he's back to jail for three months, and he's waiting, waiting, waiting, and just going through it, and it's just extremely well-made. A, an awesome show to watch.

Sam Parr 52:41 Dude, it takes forever. This stuff takes forever, which, like, bo- kind of boggles my mind a little bit about why... And then, and then you could push things for a long time. So you remember Elizabeth Holmes, when she got in trouble, I think it was, like, many years after the actual stuff went down that the trial actually happened.

Shaan Puri 52:53 Well, she went on maternity leave from prison, remember?

Sam Parr 52:56 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 52:56 She started having babies, and she just had two babies back to back and kept pushing it off.

Sam Parr 52:59 That's what happens when you wear Ralph Lauren and look like you live in Connecticut. You, you, you, you could take maternity leave from, uh [laughs] from prison.

Shaan Puri 53:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:06 I think that's one of the perks. She took advantage of that privilege. Um-

Shaan Puri 53:11 We didn't mean to make this the Bitcoin episode, but, uh, an hour has flown by.

Sam Parr 53:16 Once you said the magic word, I was in.

Shaan Puri 53:18 [laughs]

Sam Parr 53:19 So I'm happy that it, that it became that, to be honest. All right, that's it. That's the pod. [upbeat music]