Blockchain - Philotimo and Getting Along from Historical Fights to Modern-day Slights Tech Can Empower and Change Human Beings with Mostafa Purmehdi

This episode is on Blockchain, Philotimo and getting along from historical fights to modern day slights:

Without thinking of all these cultures and all these different languages, all these different ideas that live right there in that tiny area, they just were crammed in without any kind of regard to a sense of honor, a sense of history.

What happens when you centralized a bunch of decentralized platforms? Like every culture is a platform for its own people. And then what happened was that they tried to centralize it and then they divided arbitrarily and the platforms just clashed.

This episode concludes by saying that trying to connect it to what we started talking about;  a language that everybody understands and everybody communicates through the word Esperanto in that language means hope.

So the idea was to stay hopeful; that people can come together and understand each other.

Fawn’s thoughts on the problems that began in the middle east: What happens when you don't pay attention? It's basically racism. You don't have regard for life and you don't have respect. You're not really looking and listening.  In my own heart, this is how I break things down to myself to make sense of humanity. Like why, why things happen; so basically it feels like everyone was just put into a box. All these people that have very strong opinions and strong culture, strong languages, strong art, strong, everything like there, we’re just lumping all of you into this one arbitrary area (speaking of the governments that took charge after World War I).  And many, many centuries old cultures and societies like the Ottoman empire,  disintegrated because of the lack of respect for the people in the area who were put into a teeny tiny little areas and they all had to live together, but there was no commonality. In this tiny area with all these different languages, there was no communication. And so we have more strife.

Mostafa: the backlash that we've seen has been just because of what you explained going against the forces of culture that have been running through that land and those people for hundreds and thousands of years… today you might know the country of Iran as an Islamic country, but the Persian culture goes back thousands of years at least 2,500 years is documented. And so people are familiar with Alexander the Great. He got the word "GREAT" attached to his name because he conquered the Persians and he set Persepolis  on fire which was the capital of Persia. Now I want to go and talk about when the Arabs invaded Persia and brought Islam a new software for the mind, a new way, a new set of relationships that define the Arab people and they brought it to the Persians.

There was a backlash for 200 years there was turmoil. And then when the Persians gradually found themselves again through a resurgence of culture they lost, the Persian culture blossomed again, and this time shaped the Islamic culture. So in many ways, the art and science that you see within the Islamic heritage comes from the Persians.

Fawn: You really have to dig deep and really understand the history and understand why a certain culture is behaving the way they are right now.

Let's go back to Turkey, let's go back to the Ottoman empire. Let's go back and see really what, what is it that these children are screaming about? And by children, I mean, humanity. You know, when someone is in pain and they're screaming, the screaming may shift as you get older, but it's still a baby that is desperately crying for basic necessities.

The solution for peace: Once you can communicate your feelings, your thoughts with one another, you create a shared understanding. You  create common grounds.

Mostafa on bans: What is the idea of banning? You ban, because you don't want to be part of the game.

A good example of that is copyright. When you put a ban on your content, nobody's allowed to use my content. What you're really saying is that I want every use of my content to be authorized by me. I want to get a cut. I want to be part of the discussion. So it's in a way, you know, an invitation, but it's so with Bitcoin, I think the same thing is happening.

Governments want to be part of the game. They want to play too. They just don't know how to right now.

Also, we answer the question: How does (or doesn’t) crypto mining hurt the environment?

A lot of people who are into coding would be able to take advantage of this and create applications for the new world which is blockchain oriented.

And there are so many problems that can be addressed by the promise of a blockchain that we just couldn't address  before, because it was too costly to create a system, that vets, everything, and approves everything with that level of granularity. And now. Blockchain is there. So it is doing 80% of the legwork for us.

Again, it has to do with communication. It has to do with language. It has to do with translation.  This is bringing about a way we have no miscommunication. There's no lost in translation happening. And I see like how we, when leaders of countries have to negotiate stuff, they would have to mint their negotiations.

Imagine if Paris accord was on Ethereum. So when the leaders of the countries agreed to that, it would just start executing on its own.

No country could backtrack or no country could stall it. So if you were able to develop a smart contract that said the instant Iran started to develop a nuclear weapon, we shut down all the reactors. And Iran agrees to this and it's verifiable and it's, it's across multiple nodes on the network, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a question of whether or not Iran, would ever agree to it. And America would believe if Iran agreed to this, that, that it would actually work. And this is where this is where politics happen.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Mostafa: [00:00:00] Yeah, I was going to say jazz bar, smooth

Fawn: [00:00:02] jazz baby. Okay guys, it happened. Can I tell you what happened? No, it happened. I don't know if this happens to you, but like you discover something, not that you discover it. Like,

Matt: [00:00:15] you know, I have invented

Fawn: [00:00:16] it right when I learn something I'm like, wow. And then I really like dive in and I study it and then I, I pick up my head.

I'm like guys, and I assume everybody in the whole world has studied what I just studied. Right. So I'm turning to my friends, like the fellow, like my really, really close friends who by the way are also podcasters. And we've all been so immersed in our podcasts that we haven't had a chance to listen to each other's podcasts.

You know, there's no time to literally like put a headphone on other than editing your own stuff to listen to something else right now. And so I'm like guys and I started talking about Bitcoin cryptocurrency, um, all of this stuff, [00:01:00] like all the terminology that you guys have taught me. And they're like, what are you talking about?

Well,

Matt: [00:01:04] it, it sounds very fantastical for sure. And, and I think a lot of it is still in that proof of concept and kind of, you know, we think this is going to work, but it's not quite real yet,

Fawn: [00:01:15] but I'm so jazzed by it. I'm so excited by it. That jazz hands, big time, like my, my legs were up in the air. I'm like, but like, do you understand?

Not like that you so sick, like you're just

Matt: [00:01:31] disturbed

 her husband. It's okay. Maybe.

Fawn: [00:01:34] Okay. So what I'm trying to say is I feel like everyone is hip on. Exactly everything we're talking about  from what it is, to what it's doing, what it will do.  I just assume  it's the center of the universe and everybody's talking about it and they are, but they don't really know what's happening.

Do you know what I mean? So those of you listening who are just tuning in, you're like, what does this have to do with [00:02:00] friendship and the loneliness epidemic and all of this? So I will repeat, this has everything to do with friendship. This whole series we're doing on blockchain. It is exactly why I say friendship is the key to social economic and racial injustice.

And this has to do with all of that, especially the economic part, because when we are friends, when we're holding hands, when we're walking down the street together, when we're together, we are braver. We are stronger. We are more enthusiastic and optimistic. And when one, one of us learns something, we all learn it.

And we pass it along. It's not like the secret society that we're not privy to. Do. You know what I mean? We're all helping each other. And this is why it's so important to have this conversation about blockchain and how it's changing humanity, how it's changing the environment, how it's changing politics, everything it's effect it's life and friendship is life.

 I got to say, thank you, Matt, for being so patient with me all these [00:03:00] years, because I'm not BB boooop bop (making robot noises) pop up, not like that. And you're, you always have to translate for me into Fawn speak. What is happening with tech?  All Matt has to do is look at my computer when the computer doesn't work. I'm like, man, it's not working. And as soon as he walks close to the computer, the computer starts behaving itself. It is crazy. Anyway, I digress. We are here again with our  professor, our beautiful brother, Mostafa Purmehdi. Thank you, so

Mostafa: [00:03:29] guys, thank you very much for having me again. Hello.

Fawn: [00:03:35] Good, good day.

Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning. Welcome everyone. So we have to get right into it because Mostafa us has a hard out today and really there's so much to talk about and it's the editing is getting out of control with every podcast, because there's so much to talk about. So today the theme of today's show of course is blockchain again.

And of [00:04:00] course, we're going to talk about Ethereum. We're going to talk about all these things, Monero. Um, I want to talk about Esperanto. We, we briefly touched on this, the last episode we were talking about Monero and human rights and being a refugee and being homeless and  how the world will change forever for the better, because it will wipe out poverty.

Correct. Am I saying it right?

Mostafa: [00:04:27] So Esperanto came up when we were talking about the roots of the word Monero Monero is a  cryptocurrency project. The word Monero is, coming from the language of Esperanto. Esperanto  means money in that language. Now, what is the language of Esperanto? I'll be more than happy to talk about it today.

, it was just in a nutshell; give people a little bit of a context, why we're talking about the language here.  Esperanto is a synthetic language. Somebody created that, the [00:05:00] way that George R R Tolkien invented the language of what was the movie,  "The Lord of the Rings"

Matt: [00:05:08] the whole middle earth

Mostafa: [00:05:10] sciences.

Somebody, I'm not sure if it was Mr. Tolkien or some other expert they brought in, but somebody created a language. So it's not just words and sounds that you hear from those creatures. But I digress. Yes there's this guy who created a decentralized language in a very centralized world.

So, it is I think interesting to talk about that connected to the efforts decentralization efforts that we're seeing unfold in our world today, and there was an interesting history to it. ,

Fawn: [00:05:46] so as soon as you mentioned it, I looked it up and the doctor  he was an ophthalmologist.

I can't pronounce that. And there's an L in there though that messes me up

[00:06:00] is what it looks like anyways. Yeah.

Mostafa: [00:06:06] Like the eyes could

Matt: [00:06:08] doctor, I think that is an eye doctor, but like a surgeon or an optometrist.

Fawn: [00:06:13] So, yeah. And he so he started this in the 1870s. So from the 1870s to the early 1880s, this was developed to bring about Liberty and freedom to the world to have one common language, so we can all communicate.  All of this led to the show that I've been wanting to do forever. And I decided, you know what, we're going to bring this show that we were going to do into blockchain and into our Roundtable. And the focus is philotimo. Philotimo is Greek. And when you break it down, the Greek roots FILOS is friend TIMI means honor.

And the history really comes- this idea comes from the island [00:07:00] of Lesvos. Lesvos is this beautiful place. And the foundation of our friendship movement is inspired by Aristotle.  I found out that Aristotle, this was his place of inspiration. This island last foes. So what happened was pretty much when  War World I was coming to an end and these countries just decided, okay, this area of the world, we're just going to just get here- here you go. We're just gonna put these random boundaries up, right?

Matt: [00:07:33] Cause let's cause foundations for wars to encounter, to emerge even to this day. Like

Fawn: [00:07:39] exactly. So if you really look into it, it's the reason why there's so much strife in the middle east. There's so much strife in that area because it, without thinking of all these cultures and all these different languages, all these different ideas that live right there in that tiny area, they just [00:08:00] were crammed in without any kind of regard to a sense of honor, a sense of history.

Mostafa: [00:08:07] Can I add some parenthesis here? That's what happens when you centralized a bunch of decentralized platforms? Like every culture is a platform for its own people. And then these you know, what happened was that they tried to centralize it and then they, divided arbitrarily and the platforms just clashed.

it's very, it's a predictable,

Matt: [00:08:29] well, it was, I, I want to say that  they wanted to kind of form countries basically, because that's a very common, that's a very comfortable thought. You create countries and then you create states or provinces and then you create counties and then you create cities.

It's all very logical and all very

tick tick tick,

Fawn: [00:08:46] but here's the thing.

Matt: [00:08:47] But where do you put the Kurds? Well, you put them in Iran and Iraq. Here's yeah.

Fawn: [00:08:52] I mean, no, the, the thing is that there was no thought put into it.

Mostafa: [00:08:55] Those people didn't work, like didn't operate  within the boundaries [00:09:00] of the state nation system.

So that's one relationship between the authorities and the people stayed nation and relationships are defined, roles are defined. And in that part of the world there were other relationships and other definitions and not just one but many at the time.  So,  it was just like, not speaking the language of a software and trying to program it and it crashes innovatively.

Fawn: [00:09:30] And this is what happens when you don't pay attention. It's basically racism. You don't have regard for you don't have respect. You're not really looking and listening. You just, you're just, just disregarding basically. So all these cultures were let please,  Mostafa correct me because  this is my own way of studying history so like in my own heart, this is how I break things down to myself to make sense of humanity. [00:10:00] Like why, why things happen. But so basically it feels like everyone was just put into a box. All these people that have very strong opinions and strong culture, strong languages, strong art, strong, everything like there. And many, many centuries old, like the Ottoman empire. It was all disintegrated because , we, everyone was put into a teeny tiny little box and they all had to live together, but there was no commonality. There was no in this tiny area with all these different languages, there was no communication.

And so you end up fighting

Mostafa: [00:10:36] and the backlash that we've seen has been just because of what you explained going against the forces of culture that have been running through that land and those people for hundreds and thousands of years. .

Fawn: [00:10:53] Yeah. Thousands of years. Yeah.

Mostafa: [00:10:54] I want to give you an example I'm a Persian and today you might know the country of [00:11:00] Iran as an Islamic country, but the Persian culture goes back thousands of years at least 2,500 years is documented. And so people are familiar with Alexander the Great. He got the word "GREAT" attached to his name because he conquered the Persians and he set Persepolis  on fire which was the capital of Persia. Now I want to go and talk about when the Arabs invaded Persia and brought Islam a new software for the mind, a new way, a new set of relationships that define the Arab people and they brought it to the Persians.

There was a backlash for 200 years there was  turmoil. And then when the Persians gradually found  themselves again through a resurgence of culture they lost ,the Persian [00:12:00] culture blossomed again, and this time shaped the Islamic culture. So in many ways, the art and science that you see within the Islamic heritage comes from the Persians.

 The Persians did the same with the Mongols. Now, after the invasion of Arabs, a few hundred years later, the Mongols invaded and they massacred everyone as they do once they settled in Persia and try to rule over what was left of the people, again, it was the Persian culture that shaped them. And they started calling themselves Persian rulers as Alexander did Alexander, when he conquered Persia, he didn't start his Macedonian dynasty. It is as Herodotus,  the Greek history teller says he called himself the next Persian emperor. Like he branded himself as a  Persian emperor.

[00:13:00] So the Persian culture as a software, as a platform it evolves and it shapes the resurgence. So what has happened now in the middle east? I think in future, when we look back again, we're going to see how the ethnic cultures that are rooted in history will shape the middle east in ways that we probably are too blind to see them because we are living it right now.

But in future, of course, the hindsight is 2020. It's easy to see how it all unfolds.  And hopefully, I mean, it will, it is bound to happen as history has manifested itself so far, but I hope that the casualties are minimized and we're having this discussion  in the wake of what's happening in Palestine, right.

Between the Palestinians and the Israelis.  The casualties are really [00:14:00] heartbreaking 

Fawn: [00:14:00] The thing that has really bothered me, cause I'm also  Persian. Growing up, anytime there's any blurb in the news, we would get beaten up in school.

Matt: [00:14:12] And there were a lot of blurbs in the news.

Fawn: [00:14:13] Unfortunately, here's the thing it's, it's, it's such arrogance because people just hear something on the news and they think they understand it. They, they, and then they start labeling people as crazy. Now I'm not condoning violence at all. Okay. I'm all about my, my mission in my all my lives of all the incarnations. I'm sure I am about peace. I'm here to make us all please love each other. However, I'm what I'm trying to say is you can't and Matt, you, you were the first person that actually verbalized this and it was in my heart. And that was when, one of the things that made me go, I love this, man.

Thank you. Um, you can't label people as crazy. So people see, you know, violence and they see people screaming and [00:15:00] you know, they're upset obviously, but you can't label someone as crazy. You really have to dig deep and really understand the history and understand why a certain culture is behaving the way they are right now.

 Let's go back to Turkey, let's go back to the Ottoman empire. Let's go back and see really what, what is it that these children are screaming about? And by children, I mean, humanity. You know, when someone is in pain and they're screaming, the screaming may shift as you get older, but it's still a baby that is desperately crying for basic necessities.

Mostafa: [00:15:42] Right. And really hats off to both of you guys. You Fawn, and you, Matt, for having this open perspective and to really putting your, what is the English expression I'm looking for putting your mouth where the money is, or

Matt: [00:15:58] putting your money where your

Mostafa: [00:15:59] mouth is. Yeah. [00:16:00] The other way around, right? Yeah.

Putting

Matt: [00:16:01] your money where your mouth is

Mostafa: [00:16:03] and starting this initiative is starting this movement. Um, speaking of Esperanto the guy who started Esperanto probably would become a good friend of you guys. You would enjoy each other's company because he had same aspirations. At the time at a time that the world was not really feeling well.

He was a Polish ophthalmologist now I understand. But since I learned about Esperanto in a very young age, maybe I was, , 14, 15 years old. I remember his name. Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof was his name. I was

Fawn: [00:16:40] hoping you would say, I didn't know how to pronounce it,

Mostafa: [00:16:44] the Polish doctor. And he was like, all right.

Probably part of the misunderstanding and that's going on in the world is because we come from the constructs of our languages [00:17:00] and we attach meanings that are one sided to those words, to those expressions and people not being able to speak each other's language, not being able to find common ground individually, they are set up for a confrontation.

Fawn: [00:17:20] Mostafa, This is like that movie with Amy Adams in it, where the aliens come to earth and she, her expertise is translating languages. Did you, do you know what movie I'm talking about? I don't

Matt: [00:17:33] remember the name of it though,

Mostafa: [00:17:35] with the aliens who, whose knees went backwards?

Fawn: [00:17:39] You never really saw the aliens, but so aliens land on earth and she is a translator.

And so basically she saves humanity because she understands and you go back and forth in time. But this is exactly what you're talking about Mostafa it's about sound and sound is one of the [00:18:00] key spiritual things like this area of the body, the throat, that is the means for communication. And when you make a sound, it creates vibrations, it creates and manifests physical things because you start with a sound. And so anyway, this movie brings in that message of you can misunderstand a sound and kill each other. So, so basically in the movie it's the United States against China, because they're about to go to war with the aliens and there's miscommunication happening.

And so she has to go and she figures out what is actually being said. And through telepathy goes to the leader of, I think it was China and  brings about true communication understanding. And once they understand each other, the world is safe. Anyway, it's a really beautiful movie and you don't really see the aliens, but their presence is  omnipresent of course. It changes [00:19:00] everything, but it's about sound and communication words and how we can misunderstand

Mostafa: [00:19:05] the manifest of the movies sounds really great the way you explain it. Not sure if I have watched it. But that is the solution. Once you can communicate your feelings, your thoughts with one another, you create a shared understanding. You  create common grounds. And then if that is interesting enough, you decide to live in it right in that shared understanding. And, um, you flourish life from that moment, that place. Um, so, the language of Esperanto,

Fawn: [00:19:37] wait, before we get into Esperanto, please, please do not forget your train of thought, but I want to, I want to just bring us back to that island Lesvos and why we're talking the way we're talking today.

 So Lesbos third largest island in Greece. So basically 1922,  there's all this strife, the Ottoman empire things are breaking down there's [00:20:00] war. And so people from an area from, I guess, what would be considered Turkey fled. And went to this island Lesvos. And it's really interesting how a hundred years later, the same people that had to run for their lives and were embraced by this island, those same people are now seeing the people that are running from again, the same area and because of what they went through, they are incorporating that sense of love, friendship giving, honor, the sense of duty to your fellow human being like just normal citizens. They're, they're embracing these people that are swimming across the three mile stretch of water, the ocean,  to save these people's lives to, to comfort them, to, to hold them in their arms.

And that is what I want to talk about today. [00:21:00] You know, bringing in blockchain, but bringing in Ethereum and talking about language, all of that. I want us to remember the sense of Philotimo, and please my Greek friends I'm sure I'm mispronouncing this word.

Matt: [00:21:20] Yeah, don't look at me

Mostafa: [00:21:23] escape in that. It's all Greek to me and I

Fawn: [00:21:25] have, and I have some questions by the way. Um, from, from the previous shows that I'm like, I was too scared to ask you. I was too chicken. Cause I feel like any question I ask is like daaaaaa....Fawn... It's obvious, but I'm like, you know what? I'm going to be brave and say, I still don't understand this.

So rapid fire. I'm just going to put them out there and we'll see where the conversation goes. Um, but please don't lose your train of thought with Esperanto because I love that we should do a

Mostafa: [00:21:53] whole, don't worry about it. I've got them here. And by the way, you should ask all the questions that you have, [00:22:00] because I think yeah, great questions.

And by the way I, I think I should mention this, a friend of mine shout out to Ellie who, yeah. Listen to the, um, podcasts and the part that she really enjoyed were your questions, because these were my questions

Fawn: [00:22:21] to ask Ellie, my new friend. Hi, shout out to Ellie, everybody. Hello? Thank you for listening.

Oh my God. That someone said that really makes me feel good. Cause I feel like such a dumb ass. Okay. All right. So here I have one, two, three, four. I have four questions, but they're, they're like big in my head. Um, I don't understand private coin. Like I don't understand the whole, they call it ARRR like the piracy coins.

I think there was a good and a bad I'm seeing like good people wanting it. And I'm also seeing things that are happening with ransomware and stuff that's not good, but I don't [00:23:00] know, you know, down the line, you don't know what is good. What is bad? You never know until with hindsight, as you said, the other question is, um, I don't understand how cryptocurrency can I call it cryptocurrency; like all of it, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, all those things. Monera it's all crypto. Okay. So why is it  inflation proof? I don't understand that. And also the other question is, um, there are a lot of countries that are making this illegal. So how can we do it if big, big countries like China and forgive me, is China into it or not into it?

It seems like they're not into it because

Mostafa: [00:23:41] they have thrown a wrench into it. I hope I'm not butchering the expression. The English expression. No, you're good. Yeah. Throw in a range in it.

Fawn: [00:23:51] Um, before you go on the last question, the last

Mostafa: [00:23:54] one, it's not the first country. It's not the first government.

It's not going to be the last government.

Fawn: [00:23:58] So we're still [00:24:00] good. We're still good with crypto. Like it's, it's not going to stop us. Right.

Mostafa: [00:24:06] Um, I want to say I want to stay optimistic, but I tell you, I, I will explain how it works and what we should expect.

Fawn: [00:24:14] I also want to talk about how I'm understanding it, but I'm still stuck on how it's actually- I can see how it's changing humanity. I can see that it's giving power to the people and by the people, I mean, all of those of us who are, have been oppressed for so long, you know, doesn't matter what kind of education you have. It doesn't matter how hard, how, how much you work. You're still never going to get ahead. The whole dream of you, you too can be a Jeff Bezos, the, the whole dream of like any, anyone can become a, the Microsoft guy, you know, like look at that. They dropped out of college and they did it bull. Loney

Matt: [00:24:57] he did drop out of college, but he did have a $3 [00:25:00] million inheritance, which didn't hurt his feelings.

Fawn: [00:25:02] They have connections, you know. I always hear even around here where we live in Colorado, I always hear about these huge company founders of  big businesses. And they're like, I started with nothing and I dig deep. I'm like, no, you didn't. You started with your, your dad gave you money or, or

Matt: [00:25:20] you, you had preexisting business connections.

Fawn: [00:25:22] So like

the population, most of us are under this false belief that if you work hard enough, you're going to make it. No, there's something

Matt: [00:25:31] else happening

Fawn: [00:25:31] certain level. Well, it's just so, um, so, but I I'm, I'm really wanting to understand how all these countries that are so poor, who, all of a sudden in three weeks, like I saw, I saw images of, I think it was El Salvador, you know, those tiny little shops that feed the whole village.

It's a place you go to get gasoline and chips and fruit, you know, it's like a beautiful [00:26:00] little painted with chipped paint on the front and then they have posters from 30 years ago, like decorating the place. Well, now you see Bitcoin signs there and they're accepting Bitcoin and forgive me, I may be wrong, but I think it was El Salvador that in three weeks it became Bitcoin the app became the number one app in the country and it changed everything within three weeks. And so I want to know, I want to understand, and this will probably go into other shows that we're going to have to talk about, but,  how does it make people so fast and so easily have power and like become financially successful. Like I, I don't, I I'm still not understanding how it totally works, especially when some countries are against it and not letting you do this. I'm starting to understand that when you told us about how in the 1930s and the United States gold became illegal and they took [00:27:00] gold away from people and then Nixon took us off the gold standard. And that has created such inflation. And the rate of pay has stayed exactly the same while productivity has gone shooting sky high.  It doesn't make sense that, and th th that all this is happening and there's now no middle class practically none around the world. So anyway, I wanted to talk about that.

And then the last thing is I seriously. If it's all BPbeeepbeeepbopbopboop (Fawn makes robot sounds), if it's all digital, what are people talking about crypto mining for and how it's hurting the environment. If it's on the computer, if it's all digital and I'm not creating some crazy chemicals and like dumping stuff in the oceans, the way we do with all these other products that we're using, how is crypto mining bad for the environment?

I don't get it. And that's it. Let alone,

Mostafa: [00:27:56] Come on, those are great questions. I mean, [00:28:00] so, um, before I attempted answering them, I want to see, I want to just check in with Matt. Matt, do you have any questions to add to that?

Matt: [00:28:08] I think I'm good right now. Yeah, let's let's go forward. I think we can almost start with crypto mining is kind of the, a good quote, unquote simple one.

How does crypto mining hurt the environment? And it just used to be really easy to quote unquote mine Bitcoins, which is basically from my understanding, solving a block of equations and creating a new Bitcoin that then people can start using as their distributed ledger and attaching things to. And it was very easy to create these at first because they were very obvious and evident as they become more and more expensive.

Can

Fawn: [00:28:43] you hold your thoughts? Yes. Backup. Because I still don't understand. And this goes back to, okay. I liked, I liked the show, Big Bang Theory. Remember how they built Bitcoin. What does it look like? Is it something that you, what, what is it?

[00:29:00] Matt: [00:29:01] They, they mined Bitcoin very early and then they put it in a cold storage, digital wallet, which means basically it wasn't connected to anything.

And then they were like, oh yeah, let's find it. And it's worth lots of

Fawn: [00:29:12] money. Now. They were going to be millionaires. And then they realized they lost it. They lost

Matt: [00:29:17] the, they lost the flash drive

Fawn: [00:29:19] thing. They lost it. There

Mostafa: [00:29:20] was this gentleman fella who has Bitcoins stored on a hard disk, external hard drive who has then who has then put some sort of privacy software on top of it.

So the software does not allow anybody to access the hard drive. You have to put the password, his forgotten the passport, right? He's got only three or two attempts left.

Fawn: [00:29:46] Oh no!!! 

Mostafa: [00:29:48] $238 million. I think at the time we did it last year. When this thing broke,

Fawn: [00:29:55] when you get hypnotized, he should go to a hypnotist and then go back and like figure it out.

Matt: [00:29:59] He [00:30:00] may have never really seen it. Um, with my passwords, I use open-source password store and it'll generate a random password for me. And sometimes I never even like, but then I haven't stored offline or I can, I can copy it to multiple places and all the rest of it. And as long as I know my master password for my master password store, then I'm fine.

Fawn: [00:30:24] Good. God

Mostafa: [00:30:25] um, let me, let me answer the questions in this order. I will talk about it. Great. I

Fawn: [00:30:31] interrupted Matt. You did. I always do that. I went back

Matt: [00:30:35] to Matt anyways. So if degenerate a new Bitcoin costs X in the beginning, at some point it costs 10 X than a hundred X because these are harder to discover.

And so all of a sudden, it's not enough to run one computer spinning as fast as it can to generate these buttons.

Fawn: [00:30:53] What are you looking for? I

don't understand what you're looking

for.

Matt: [00:30:57] It was always described to me as solving an equation, [00:31:00] but I don't honestly

know.

Fawn: [00:31:01] Hold on. Does this go back to, what was the guy?

What was the person's name? Satoshi was,

Mostafa: [00:31:06] this goes back to Satoshi. Satoshi, by the way, guys, I saw the first line Satoshi put out. I saw it. I saw it like the email that said. Here have at world by,

yes.

Fawn: [00:31:20] I'm sorry, go ahead, Matt. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Matt: [00:31:21] I'm sorry. So we're, once it required one computer, then it required 10 computers, all network together, and then a hundred and then a thousand and, and computers cost energy to run.

However, if the Bitcoins I'm mining are worth more than the energy, it costs to extract, quote, unquote, extract them

I make a profit.

Fawn: [00:31:40] Backup. What do you mean by it uses energy. Like I'm using the electricity.?

Matt: [00:31:44] Yeah. You're using electricity. Yeah. And you know, you don't really think about the electricity cost of like the laptop that's currently running.

Right. Because it's costing us a couple cents or, you know, a dime an  hour or whatever,

Fawn: [00:31:55] according to the utility company, we use way more than our other [00:32:00] neighbors. Well, yeah,

Matt: [00:32:01] that's because we have kids in school and et cetera, et cetera. But anyways, so at some point in time, I'm running thousands of computers  to mine, these Bitcoins, but I'm still making money.

It's okay. But. Because I'm using so much energy. At some point, I'm like, oh, I'll be smart. And I'll have a solar farm or all generate my own power or all. But this is still, I'm still consuming resources, ultimately providing only a digital resources,

Fawn: [00:32:28] but how is this different than Las Vegas having all that electricity.

Matt: [00:32:33] They have a Hoover dam that generates quote unquote free ish power for them because they spent the billions of dollars to build Hoover dam.

Fawn: [00:32:40] And once again, you're looking for an equation that exists out there. Is that what you're doing? And where did this equation come from? All this is from Satoshi. Yes,

Matt: [00:32:51] but anyways, and now, now Mostafa please correct me where I'm wrong, but because we're running thousands and thousands of computers that requires a lot of [00:33:00] power.

And even just, you know, at some point in time, somebody out of mine, out of the ground to create the Silicon for the boards and the chips and the everything, I'm basically I'm, you know, it's, it's costing a lot of money. For, for what? I'm, I'm

Fawn: [00:33:14] Bitcoin, I'm having a hard time believing this because look at all the power that we're using for other things.

And I don't, I just don't understand how this is hurting the environment and you have nuclear waste sites that are

Matt: [00:33:28] destroying, it's a way for the government to point at these crypto miners and say you're bad.

Fawn: [00:33:34] Yeah. Because they don't want us to find out a way to become successful. Powerful. Well, so I

Matt: [00:33:41] don't, we do, but anyways, let's, let's get, let's get Mostafa'stake on what I said.

Mostafa: [00:33:46] I just want to start by saying Matt  is what when you look at

Fawn: [00:33:49] Matt is doing a happy

Mostafa: [00:33:50] dance is coming what's that

Fawn: [00:33:54] every time someone. So one says, Matt is right. He does a happy dance. What did you say? [00:34:00] No. Right, Matt, all here

Matt: [00:34:02] he goes anyways. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Mostafa: [00:34:05] So, um, is coming under the radar because, um, it, it, because of the power is creating and I think it's starting to itch the traditional sources of power.

  But you Fawn also are right in the sense that when you said relative, when you put it in perspective, relative to other sources of contamination and pollution we have probably bigger problems to worry about than this one. However, it doesn't take away the fact that in the absolute sense Bitcoin mining  is resources intensive.

It requires a lot of electricity and that electricity has to be harnessed through not so regenerative means like how do we create electricity through [00:35:00] coal, natural gas, natural gas and all that. So I think,

Fawn: [00:35:04] well, when Nikola, Tesla say he's shaking his head these

idiots.

Matt: [00:35:09] Well, no, I think what Nikola, Tesla would say it would be the same thing that like a Hoskinson has said, who's the, who's the creator of Cardona down the street.

Let's generate these things cheaper and that's exactly it. It's called evolution in action, you know, and that's what, that's what that's what happens.

Mostafa: [00:35:29] I mean, one should point the finger at people who are creating electricity and you should be like, okay, we need electricity. Now we need you to make it cheaper and we need you to make it more green.

I mean, greener than what it is now. Um, so, but again energy is one way of harnessing and controlling power.

Fawn: [00:35:53] Can I interrupt anyone, anyone out there? If you're listening,  Hoskinson if you're out there, [00:36:00] I'm sorry, Charles.

Matt: [00:36:02] Charles. Oh my God.

I don't know why I was

Fawn: [00:36:07] thinking that our neighbor we're like very close to you. Can you please reach out to us? We've been trying to get ahold of you, Charles Hoskinson Charles paging, Charles Hoskinson. If any, if you're listening, please, please go to our friendly world.com. Reach out to me. If anyone knows of him, anyone, anyone, anyone.

Please, please help us. It will be a

Mostafa: [00:36:32] great show. I would actually want to listen to that discuss conversation.

Fawn: [00:36:36] Well, you're going to, you're going to lead it. Why do you keep saying that?

Matt: [00:36:38] It's so passionate for sure. Really? Anyways, anyway,

Fawn: [00:36:42] Charles Hoskinson we have a lot in common. I have Ethiopia in common with you.

Please reach out to us. We're your neighbors over here in  Colorado.  Thank you. Okay. Sorry, go ahead.

Matt: [00:36:55] I'm sorry.

Mostafa: [00:36:57] So, I think we answered [00:37:00] the question of the environment to some extent we know that mining Bitcoin how it is affecting the environment, but what is mining Bitcoin? So, every Bitcoin transaction is encrypted and the encryption has a, um, kind of, how do you call it mat this numb this.

You know, it's,

Matt: [00:37:21] there's a, there's a hash and you can, you can encrypt and decrypt. And there are things called public and private keys and public keys anybody can look at. And so you can encrypt anything using a public key, but you can only decrypt stuff using the private key, which is unique and singular and should be hidden.

Fawn: [00:37:38] You're so sexy. I love it.

Matt: [00:37:39] Well, this is how HTTPS actually works, which is when you have that little lock on your computer,

Mostafa: [00:37:46] isn't it? The, the equation   that phone was talking about, isn't it just decrypting the hash? Am I right?

Matt: [00:37:54] That's the question. And, I have not delved into the underpinnings of the technology.

[00:38:00] I'm going with my understanding being sufficient because it's computers and the rules always change every nine to 12 months. And  how  a ripple does it versus how an Ethereum does it versus how Cardano does it  is going to be different. But fundamentally speaking, there'll be this conceptually speaking, they will be similar.

Mostafa: [00:38:18] I think so I'm not an expert on it, but from the limited readings that I have had, I think to approve a transaction, you need to work through that hash and that's the mathematical equation, or at least it requires a mathematical equation to be solved. So the computer does that. The computer needs to work on that mathematical equation constantly.

So it has to stay on and to stay on, it needs electricity and you know, that kind of ties into the environment. So mining, when we say mining,  it's just a name that we have attached to it. It's not really, there is no physical thing to be mined,

[00:39:00] Fawn: [00:39:00] but not out there with a shovel and a pick.

Mostafa: [00:39:04] No, but it kind of resembles the process because with mining, you have to extract something from the earth and here you're extracting something from the encrypted

earth.

Fawn: [00:39:17] How long do you  think Satoshi was working on this. I mean, this is really hard, obviously.

Mostafa: [00:39:22] Well, he told me,

Matt: [00:39:26] and it's a she. It's a she, by the way. No, I'm kidding. Nobody knows. Nobody knows if Satoshi, this person Satoshi is a single person, multiple people. There was one guy who claimed to be him. And he was like, and I'll provide proof.

And then he said, you know what? Nevermind. And I'm not going to provide.

Fawn: [00:39:41] Yeah, he would probably get killed. Well, that's just it by the government,

Matt: [00:39:45] 15 minutes of fame, I would say, Hey, yeah, I'm Satoshi, you

Mostafa: [00:39:49] know,

Matt: [00:39:51] and I'll approve it, but please, but you

Fawn: [00:39:55] guys, we have to, we have like so many things to talk about.

We have like 30 minutes left.

[00:40:00] Mostafa: [00:40:00] Okay. So I will let me just quickly answer your questions and then I'll tie to Ethereum. So private coins are they good? Are they bad? They are tools, right? Just like a knife. We can use it to kill someone, or you can use it as a surgical knife and really rescue someone.

So it's all in the intention of the person who uses that you can use private coins to,  help people who are being prosecuted wrongly by the governments I don't want to, I don't know how political I can make your show, but so for example, I come from the country of Iran and the country is now facing a lot of economic hardship has been for the last 10 years, just because The US has decided they don't want to do business with Iran for their differences, political differences.

And the US has decided no one [00:41:00] should do business with Iran, just because I say so. And well people, I mean, when governments companies have to make a choice if they do business with Iran, then they lose a huge business partner in the US. And so it's put the country and the people in a lot of difficulty the economy has crumbled but there's really no way for the country of Iran to take it to any international court and say, well, could you arbitrate between us and the US. And there was a one I think treaty in 2016, maybe or 15 between Iran and the U S and then the next president came and, you know, toppled the, table and said, well, I'm, I'm not liking it. Right. So in that sense, a private coin, a private platform of economy helps at least block those kinds of usage of [00:42:00] power, X, exertions of power that one actor can bring to the table. With a centralized system, like the world economy, as we have it today, It is easy for one actor or a small Alliance to exert such power.

And it's not only Iran. There other countries like Venezuela or to some extent China who are being,  subject of that. I see a question. Yeah, go ahead.

Fawn: [00:42:27] For, for the good of the people,  could this be an example of it? So let's say I'm in a country and the country is killing everybody and I've worked. I come from a very poor family, but I've managed to make some money. Do I run away from this country for my life and save my family members with a risk of, I have no money because the country won't allow you to take your money with you

Mostafa: [00:42:53] leaving all your assets behind.

Fawn: [00:42:54] Right? There's always a decision like  do I leave with my empty pockets?

[00:43:00] How can I take money? Like you need money for survival.

Mostafa: [00:43:03] That's one good application. Yeah, certainly. So,  there are other governments as well. Like I don't want to say that it's only you know, between Iran and the US you see that other countries like China doing that or Russia, you know, or recently Bella Russia came into the news.

So they are trying to, Stifel the dissidents, and even Iran does that to some extent to its own people. So, it's a fractal. I think one application of power is to try and coerce everybody to submission into submission and decentralized network, specifically, a private network,  takes away that power.

And I think that's, that's not too bad.

Fawn: [00:43:49] Can you please define for me, centralized and decentralized.

Mostafa: [00:43:52] Okay. So a centralized system is one where the power, the control, the [00:44:00] decisions are centralized in a company as a very centralized structure, it is the executive level the board of directors who call all the  shots and make all decisions. With a dictatorship. It is the authority. Those people who are in power, who call all the shots.

Fawn: [00:44:21] So that's centralized is when you have like, something

Matt: [00:44:25] has all power is invest in it in one person or one small body that's

Fawn: [00:44:29] centralized.

That would be central decentralized as what we're trying to go for it and utter

Matt: [00:44:34] chaos on some level. That's how you would view it from a centralized view.

Mostafa: [00:44:41] Yeah, it is how you want to view it. But a decentralized system is where everybody, every member of the network, every member of the organization has a voice and a vote in making the decisions.

So for example cryptocurrencies,  have a [00:45:00] structure. If they want to change this structure, or if they want to add something to it, it has to be voted in to the system by the members. Now, of course you could argue that different designs could bring different levels of democracy to it.

But the way it is designed is that, so imagine if I want to change the rent in a building and I'm the superintendent. I can make the decision on my own. That's a centralized system, or I can let you guys vote for it. Should we increase the rent? To what extent that will be a de-centralized system.

Does that explain it?

Fawn: [00:45:44] It totally

does.

Matt: [00:45:45] Which doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that the people would actually vote to increase their rent. But if you start to explain maybe that the electricity is rolled in and electricity costs have shot up. And so you're not going to be able to maintain the dwelling.

Then all of a sudden it starts to make sense for in a [00:46:00] decentralized view for someone to vote apparently against their, their own self-interest, which is let's keep the rent as cheap as possible, but I'd rather have slightly more expensive rent and have power 24 seven versus keep the rent the same and possibly lose power.

Fawn: [00:46:14] I, now, furthermore, I understand the meaning of blockchain because all that is in there. Got it. Got it. Okay.

Mostafa: [00:46:23] Your next question was about the inflatory system

Fawn: [00:46:28] integration. Yeah, because, so as I was learning about,  the disappearing, middle-class the, the fact that our money, even if you get to a point where you get out of debt and you're trying to save money and you put your money in the bank and you see the numbers go up, it's really not going up because there's the invisible tax, which is inflation. So you may think I have $5 and then next week I'll have $10. You really don't.

Well, your,

Matt: [00:46:57] your purchasing power has, has shifted because [00:47:00] $10 buys a little less, maybe.

Fawn: [00:47:01] It's like the most corrupt way of stealing and it's inflation. It's it's whatever the government says is the rate of inflation and they never give you the right amount anyway. So what you think when you see the numbers go up in your account, it's actually not, you're actually losing money, even though you see the same number.

And so, and so what I'm hearing is that Bitcoin gets rid of all that. And I, and I don't understand how that, how is it immune from inflation?

Mostafa: [00:47:36] The good people who brought us Bitcoin thought about this. What if Bitcoin falls victim of inflation? So they did two things. Number one, they kept the number of Bitcoins that we have.

 Unless all the network votes in for removing that cap or changing that cap, it stays like that, that but to balance that because that by itself [00:48:00] creates, demand for Bitcoin and you know, the prices could go high .Now to balance that they created a deflationary force, which is the halving event.

It takes place every four years. So, , with havening, what happens is the reward that the miners get for dehashing each transaction is cut in half, every four years. They and this is woven into the algorithm. What they get will be 50, you know, cut by 50%. And that allows us to never reach to the to, to dehash and to mine, all 21 million Bitcoins, there will always be some Bitcoin left to be mined, at least on paper.

Right? So in that way, it is deflationary. You cannot print new money [00:49:00] so that there is money, but there is not purchasing power attached to it.

Fawn: [00:49:05] I think I got it. Thank you.

Mostafa: [00:49:09] Your next question was about how come countries make it illegal. And I think, um, there are two ways for countries to deal with the whole blockchain revolution.

One is to oppose it. The other one is to embrace it. And one could argue that it doesn't have to be one or another. It's just a matter of timing. Countries might opt for opposing at first, but then embrace it later.  Which I think it's the scenario we're seeing unfolded. It could have done it in the other order, you know, embrace it altogether.

I mean, it is an, it is not a revolution as much as it is an evolution.

Fawn: [00:49:51] Do you think they're doing this in secret? I could they be saying, Hey, I'm banning this. You're not allowed to use this, but they know that this is the future. [00:50:00] So there are a lot like buying it.

Mostafa: [00:50:02] What is the idea of banning,  you band, because you don't want to be part of the game.

You want to be like if you say a good example of that is copyright. When you put a ban on your content, nobody's allowed to use my content. What you're really saying is that I want every use of my content to be authorized by me. I want to get a cut. I want to be part of the discussion. So it's in a way, you know, an invitation, but it's so with Bitcoin, I think the same thing is happening.

Governments want to be part of the game. They want to play too. They just don't know how to right now. And they have a lot to lose because they are the people who control you know, they have the strings, they control power. And if a de-centralized game means that they're [00:51:00] gonna lose some of that power it's I think a little bit,  discomforting for them.

So they're trying to find a good angle to, to still have the role they are used to, and they are enjoying but also,  be part of this because there's, you know, when you look at the technology technology changes like the tides. You cannot to stand against that, right? You have to learn how to swim and have a destination in mind. Otherwise the string takes you with it. So that's, what's happening with the governments. Recently the Chinese government came out and said, I think the banks and institutions should not be investing in Bitcoin or something like that. Correct me if I'm wrong because I was not fully following that.

But what it means is okay, wait for us to create the right infrastructure. And then we'll tell you how to play. Right.  The same thing [00:52:00] happened in the U S with the SEC, between the years 2017 and 2019 SEC was cracking down on all Bitcoin cryptocurrency projects and calling them illegal because they were trying to form a legal bed.

So, if you wanted to do it legally these are the rules you know, how to, how to play and they did it. And as of 2019, the companies, the institutions, the organizations could play by the rules. Right? So that's, that's the idea of that, um, to go legal, illegal game.

Matt: [00:52:43] The whole thing I think is that the government wants to be able to track this now untraceable stuff and tax the bejesus out of it because that's what governments do.

Mostafa: [00:52:51] Yes, we love those tax dollars. Yeah, so that's that's that, what was your next question? You talked about Venezuela [00:53:00] and those countries, but I think we touched on that.

Fawn: [00:53:03] You pretty much answered all my questions. Um, before we started recording, I was talking about how,  I was seeing these images of the currency in Venezuela, how it was like two grocery bags, and this is weird for a vegan to describe it, but there was like two and a half grocery bags of cash and a chicken.

So to buy a chicken, it requires this much cash for a chicken. And then they showed toilet paper and it was like a big grocery bag of cash to buy toilet paper. And a bunch of carrots had this amount of cash. So it was because they were trying to explain how the cash,  the government made the cash worthless.

Hmm,

Mostafa: [00:53:43] that goes back to what Matt explained that with purchasing power. So the cash is there. The denomination on the paper says, I don't know, a thousand units, a million units by just doesn't buy anything.

Fawn: [00:53:58] This is really, [00:54:00] messing with my brain, but I still feel hopeful. It's messing with my brain in that, you know, I just feel like I've been part of the people that have said, we need free education.

We need more money here. We need to, um, you know, like I'm for the people, please raise the minimum wage. And now I'm under an understanding that that will not really help things. If there is inflation like this, if, if the money is worthless, it doesn't matter. If you're going to give me $1,200 a month. You know what I mean?

If it's not worth anything, if it's just, I can wipe myself clean with it, I might as well just use the cash to do you know what I mean? It's, it's shifting my understanding. I'm starting, I'm starting to understand what I would consider the opposing view of my own. I'm starting to understand. When

Mostafa: [00:54:51] we say, we need free this, we need free.

That I think what we really mean is that money should not be [00:55:00] impeding access to those things. Yes. But we should understand that incentives don't go away. Human beings work on incentives is the old carrot and  stick problem. Even if you made everything free today, like the idea of that our communist as brothers who used to have. The incentives don't go away. So you start to have um, you know, some people, the oligarch who are supposed to be selflessly, operating the system for the people, but then they, because they are incentivized and other people see incentives in them you start cultivating a behavior that is a non-communist. And just because it is a taboo in a communist system, it becomes hidden.  The whole implosion of the USSR [00:56:00] was partly because, the incentives that I just said they don't go away. It's just natural.  The incentives created  this gap between the promise of a communist society and what was actually being operated or what actually existed. And it imploded. Right. A blockchain on the other hand deals with the question of incentive, a  headfirst,  so it's like, okay, anybody who is operating the system should have some incentive and we're going to give them that in the form of whatever currency exists within that system.

So for example, with Bitcoin, it is Bitcoin with Ethereum, it is ether with,  you know, you call your, um, your project. Each has their own currency that incentivizes people to play their roles. So I think  that's why that's one of the things that make the whole idea of a blockchain based [00:57:00] system, sustainable, because it doesn't turn a blind eye to incentive and pretend that they don't exist that okay. Incentives exist. And we're going to give people what they need to be good citizens to be good operators of the system.

Matt: [00:57:21] And because it's a computerized system, it means these rules are, are generally published.

These rules are understood. And until these rules are really changed, you know, always that if you do X, you will get Y every single time

Mostafa: [00:57:38] it is not reliant on people and their decisions. Exactly. So that's really nice.

 So, technically speaking, a smart contract  is a platform. I'm trying to find examples to explain it in ways that people can understand. So, Ethereum was the first [00:58:00] layer of smart contract that was developed on top of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is the manifestation of how a blockchain should work when some values exchanged from user A to user B. Ethereum is the platform on which we can program transactions. So we can put rules to be executed in that way, it's a lot like a programming language where  you can set up rules and expect the program to work accordingly.

 And Ethereum, I mean, there are some languages like solidity that help you create  smart contracts. But in essence, Ethereum is nothing but a platform for apps. Like when apple decided to create a programming language for all developers to create their apps and then put them in the marketplace.

[00:59:00] That's what Ethereum is doing to Bitcoin and to blockchain.

Matt: [00:59:05] It feels like correct me if I'm wrong, Mostafa, but in the world, let's talk, just talk about NFTs for just a second. I could create an application that would basically, I could create my own Ethereum application that would verify that this was indeed  the NFT, the private key, maybe for a given piece of artwork.

And I could put an application out there on the Ethereum network that somebody could call to validate that. And come back and say, yes, this is the real deal. Or no, sorry, this isn't the real deal. Or this is a limited edition.  This is one of 2,500 that was created or whatever it is.

Fawn: [00:59:40] So , would that make you like an electronic appraiser?

Like you would go to an appraiser to say, Hey, is this painting for real?

Matt: [00:59:47] Exactly.

And it would validate the transaction and we're seeing this with things like supply chains, you know, is this fish really the fish and what different steps did it go through? As far as in the supply chain, was this fish caught in the [01:00:00] Mississippi river?

Was it sent to this place? Was it over here? Was it, how old is it? How et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If I have a good tag on it, I can view this kind of stuff or

Mostafa: [01:00:08] imagine all those applications that can be created on top of Ethereum. Right now we have maybe two or three, maybe four or 5,000. I'm not really sure the number of applications on top of Ethereum today as we speak, but it is in the thousands and soon it will be in the millions because you think of a, you know, as Matt, did you think of? Hmm, I think there is something that I can do taking advantage of what blockchain offers. And I think there is this transaction the way I see it, I can program it and have people just partake in that transition.

It's easy. You just learn the language. If you're a coder, you code it in. And [01:01:00] it it's just comes to existence.

Matt: [01:01:02] And for me, and for my coding friends out there, solidity is JavaScript like, there's another language called Viper and serpent, and those are very Python like.

Fawn: [01:01:11] Matt, is this changing your whole industry, the whole crypto situation?

Matt: [01:01:16] We are in such infancy and that's actually going to be a later show. We're going to talk about that with a, with one of my former bosses, actually. Yes. Um, little, little tiny shout out there to Lisa Cockins. She will be a guest on a future show where we're going to start talking a little bit more about some of the projects that she's worked on and that exist in the industry.

Fawn: [01:01:36] That's fantastic. You know what, there's so much to talk about. I'm sorry. I just interrupted you and we'll step out, please.

Mostafa: [01:01:42] Go ahead. I just wanted to go off of what Matt said. A lot of people who are into coding would be able to take advantage of this and create applications for the new world which is blockchain oriented.

And there are so many problems [01:02:00] that can be addressed by the promise of a blockchain that we just couldn't address  before, because it was too costly to create a system, that vets, everything, and approves everything with that level of granularity. And now. Blockchain is there. So it is doing 80% of the legwork for us.

All you have to do is to put on top of it, the particular application that you'd like to see in the world.

Matt: [01:02:31] So we're, we're seeing this we're starting to see this in real estate, which of course is running into all kinds of regulation issues. But if anybody out there has ever tried to buy a house in say the US, there's so many people with their hands in and they can put their hands in to up to 5% of the purchase price of your house.

It's ridiculous how hard that is for more maybe, and that's not including your real estate agent  fees and licenses and all the rest of it, but literally just, we need to search to figure out if this house has really owned or if there's any liens against [01:03:00] it. We need to make sure that  the land that as described in the deed is actually accurate that there's no had to have been no addendums to it.

And there's a lot of red tape and paperwork that people have to go through. And that's a, it turns out to be a fairly manual process. Streamlining speed it up, to turn a process that can take a day into a process that can take 10 seconds. Wow.

Fawn: [01:03:19] So here we are a full circle.

Again, it has to do with communication. It has to do with language. It has to do with translation.  This is bringing about a way we have no miscommunication. There's no lost in translation happening. And I see like how we, when leaders of countries have to negotiate stuff, they would have to mint their negotiations.

Mostafa: [01:03:43] On Ethereum. And that would be interesting. Yeah. For them to be self-executing.

Fawn: [01:03:48] So you can't say, oh, you said this. No, I didn't say that. Or, and then fights.

Mostafa: [01:03:53] Imagine if Paris accord was on Ethereum. So when the leaders of the countries agreed to [01:04:00] that, it would just start executing on its own.

No country could backtrack or no country could stall it.

Fawn: [01:04:10] Are we working on this? Did I just come up with this all by my lonesome?

Matt: [01:04:16] It's it's an interesting thing. Things like going back to Iran for a second, you know, America is deathly afraid and I'm not saying valid or invalid that Iran wants to develop a nuclear weapon.

And Iran has always said, and this is just talk, right? I'm just talking. Iran has always said, we want to develop nuclear power to provide energy for our people, which sounds altruistic. And it's a question of which side of the news you want to pay attention to which, you know, who's, who's telling the truth.

So if you were able to develop a smart contract that said the instant Iran started to develop a nuclear weapon, we shut down all the reactors. And Iran agrees to this and it's verifiable and it's, it's across multiple nodes on the [01:05:00] network, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a question of whether or not Iran, would ever agree to it. And America would believe if Iran agreed to this, that, that it would actually work. And this is where this is where politics happen.

Mostafa: [01:05:13] Yes. And I think Iran and the US are the more interested actors in such an agreement in such a contract smart contract, but the actors who will not like to see this happen are the intermediaries are the deal makers ,are the people who are saying, well, the deal has to go through us in order to be executed in the next 10, 15, 20 years. And they're making a living out of this. Right. And that is by the way, one of the things that the whole blockchain revolution has to address, one of the promises of blockchain is to make all [01:06:00] those intermediaries redundant,

Fawn: [01:06:02] no middleman, the middle of the middleman never been good in religion.

Like I have my own relationship to source. I don't need you. Do you know what I mean? I don't need the middle, man.

Matt: [01:06:15] I think

the answer is generally it depends for everything, you know, is a union good or bad? Depends. Is a, you know, in the case of like in the case of like my family, my family believes unions are bad because.

Primarily like my mother and sister teach in the same school district and the union there has never done anything for them other than collect their money as far as they're concerned. So yes, there are cases where middlemen are bad, however, you know, trade unions as they were originally conceived of, you know, let's keep the workplace safe for the workers.

Let's raise the let's raise incomes, let's provide training. Let's I mean, there's a lot of good stuff that can happen. It's just depends on which side of the fence you fall on

Fawn: [01:06:57] guys, guys, there's so much [01:07:00] to talk about. We have to wrap this up.

Mostafa: [01:07:01] Because I have to leave and I apologize for that because you know, the discussion is really nice.

 But let me just address what Matt said, because that's a really good point.  Intermediaries exists because they play a role in the system. If they don't exist, the system doesn't work. Now it's a different question. If the intermediary is doing its job well or not, if the intermediary becomes the new bottleneck of the system or not. So that's a different question, but the system needs the intermediaries to connect different actors, different roles.

Now with blockchain the role of the intermediary is minimized. Doesn't go away, but it is minimized. So we should really think about people who have stakes in playing the role of the intermediary. They will for good reasons or bad, I don't know, but they will impede adoption of [01:08:00] blockchain.

Because their role will be rendered redundant.  Same thing with political deals with the political deal is just a promise is a handshake, but it has to be translated into actions well within the future of two countries. And it really needs people to make it happen.

So it's you're right. It's, it's too complicated to talk about it right now.

Fawn: [01:08:29] So we'll continue the conversation again, again, always

Mostafa: [01:08:34] talk that's all right by me. Let me just conclude by saying that trying to connect it to what we started talking about;  a language that everybody understands and everybody communicates through the word Esperanto in that language means hope.

So the idea was to stay hopeful that people come together and understand each other.

Fawn: [01:08:58] Oh my God. [01:09:00] We just did a show on hope. It's called hope.

Mostafa: [01:09:02] Shout out to Dr. Zamenhof.

Matt: [01:09:05] Vissionaries like him.

Fawn: [01:09:07] Yeah. Ah, and visionaries, like you Mostafa. Thank you so much.

Mostafa: [01:09:12] Thank you so much. I don't consider myself

Fawn: [01:09:15] that.

Um, thank you everyone. So tune in tune in next time, we are continuing this conversation, power to the people, power to the art of friendship, power to us; friends around the world. We're going to make this world a much, much better place where we can all sit at the table, drink, eat, play music, and laugh, and just support one another and enjoy life.

That's what we're here for. And so tune in. And of course, as always, if you need to get ahold of Mostafa, he is on our website. All his info is there everyone [01:10:00] go to our friendly world podcast.com. And if, um, I'll just tell you now, NEX3.XYZ. Is Mostafa's website. We'll talk to you soon in a few days.

Thank you again. Thank you Ellie for listening and thank you everyone for listening. Iran. Thank you for listening. You haven't popped up yet on the world map on our analytics, but there

Matt: [01:10:24] could be a variety of reasons for that, but yes,  and that could very well be what's which once again gets us around.

Yeah.

Fawn: [01:10:33] So spread the word about our friendly world, please guys.  Help us create this movement in a bigger way.

Mostafa: [01:10:40] Thank you guys for a great discussion. I really enjoyed

Fawn: [01:10:42] this. Thank you. We'll talk to you in a few days. Everyone. Take care. Bye

Matt: [01:10:48] bye.