THC 56: David Seaman | Bitcoin 101 & The Boston Bombing

00:04 We're here because we don't buy into the bullshit of mainstream culture. We're tired of the mundane, passionless careers that have been shuffled into as a result of this orchestrated debt-based system of rule and the stranglehold on education and entertainment by cold soulless corporations People yes, we are frustrated Yes, we are tired And we reject the brave group tranquilizers that are Monday Night Football and an ice cold Budweiser But we have to stop hiding Stop hiding behind the headphones and the cherry popper 420 username. Let the world see that resistance is strong, and society is changing." There was a time to be anonymous but that time has passed And so The Hireside Chats would like present conspirities as the dawning of this new paradigm in uniform revolution Because bold fashion should mean more than some celebrity meat dresser frat boy in a silly pink polo

00:52 Conspiratease redefines bold fashion as having the balls to project socially uncomfortable and unpopular truths from your radiant chest. All fucking day. conspiratese.net Let them know that you know, Bold designs for troubled times Hard Truths Softcock In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the Fireside Chats. His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. But with 1930 and I deal with a different kind of fun For a new era of worldly frustration we offer a fresh conversation! I'm Greg Carlwood on The Fireside Chat

01:42 How the hell are you, Hireside Chatters? It's another sunny San Diego day and I'm still Greg Carlwood drinking a little drink smoking a little smoke. People...I know we're all feeling the pinch of the global elite stranglehold on major aspects our daily lives and i would say things seem more volatile now than they have in decades from bank runs and collapse currencies to incremental advancement control by force guilty until proven innocent and crackdown any resistance this game plan peaceful or otherwise It is tough to see a path to prosperity through the onslaught of darkness and the economic quicksand slowly creeping up the legs of masses. And here at THC we've talked about all-encompassing solutions like The Venus Project and the Resource Based Economy Model, but what do we do if can't change the world? How can use our knowledge and perspective to give ourselves something more beneficial than stress induced heart attack or substance abuse problem

02:34 Well folks, a lot of people these days are talking about the increase in popularity of the digital currency known as Bitcoin. A decentralized currency beyond the graphs to big banks and Rothschild dynasty While there are no guarantees in life, bitcoin seems to be one of few ways an average Joe could really become wealthy in this climate collapse But nobody makes it big by being late to party and doing work to understand this complex system before mainstream is what could catapult a Subway sandwich artist to level early adopters of internet boom This is an important episode, maybe the most important episode of our lives. And with that I'm here with a man who's already done a lot of that homework and is going to share with us his research and personal experience with Bitcoin. That man is David Seaman he's a freelance journalist and has been a contributor and guest on shows and networks like CNN Fox News ABC and two of my personal favorites Coast-to-Coast AM in the Joe Rogan Experience He's also the author of a new ebook and he's the man behind The David Seamon Hour. David welcome to THC

03:30 Thanks for having me on. Of course, man! It's my pleasure. And I have to admit that I know a lot less about your career and background than most of my guests which is because this interview was arranged when i asked the listeners through Twitter who would be good guests for the show on Bitcoin and your name came up about a dozen times then you hit me up and said you'd do it boom here we are so I tried to do some research but couldn't find much about how you really got started work your way up to things like Coast-to-Coast in CNN So tell me bit about your story if you wouldn't mind Yeah, I always love to talk about myself. Sure so basically my first job out of college...I went to school in New York and my first job that i was able to land was as a reporter at a personal finance website and so it's covering financial topics and some political stuff also and after I left that job I actually launched

04:22 a popular credit card deals comparison site where you can compare all the different offers from major banks, compare interest rates and sign up bonus and all that stuff. From there I was just a tech entrepreneur for awhile because I was busy growing that and The way that credit card companies were marketing their products of just, you know sending people these offers in the mail was highly inefficient and just not really up to speed. You know when you book airfare? You go on a website and you book it. You don't wait for the airline to contact you and offer you some special rate so from there I guess around mid-to late 2011 I had a really bad run in with the TSA

05:12 I was on a business trip and they pulled me aside, and some fat sweaty guy started grabbing my balls. It was just kind of a wake-up call for me. Is this really where America has gotten to? Where nobody is safe? They can just abuse their authority because this guy is wearing a blue shirt that has a badge on it. He can grab my private parts and take away my laptop. You start to lose your rights very quickly in a situation like that. I was like, this is insanity. Shortly after that, I found out about something called the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act which normally passed every year and this particular years bill included a section that would allow for the imprisonment without trial of American citizens and I was like, this is absolute craziness you know there's no way if this is real but did the research in ACLU come out against it

06:07 Amnesty International was worried about it, but everybody was like don't worry Obama's gonna veto this thing. And so I wrote an article about it for one of the sites that I contributed to at the time a popular business publication I wrote the article about it. I did a YouTube video and felt like my job was done, there's no way this is actually going to become law you know? And then on New Year's Eve it was signed into law and that was kind of the second wake up call for me so I guess the first one was having my testicles grabbed, the second one was watching as the president signed into law something that allows him to imprison Americans without trial on New Year's Eve when you're not supposed to be doing any official business because everybody's out partying

06:47 I was like, something deeply dishonest is going on here. Even though it wasn't my background and certainly a pretty moderate guy who created the credit card deals website, I'm not exactly an occupier. From there, I was like there are some serious challenges in this country and I started covering the NDAA thing. more independent-minded shows wanted to have me on to explain it. And from there I just became interested in covering these civil liberties issues because they're such a big deal, you know? It's something that for some reason is not really breaking through the mainstream to the extent that it should Although recently the whole drone debate actually broke through and became totally mainstream which was kind of exciting to see that because I had friends calling

07:37 saying, oh Dave this is the thing you've been talking about for the past year. And I'm like yeah at least now people are paying attention and so at this point I still do my tech entrepreneur stuff and I have a podcast now where I talk about stuff that interests me and whenever I come across something that's important like NDAA or Bitcoin I try to do whatever I can to shake the branches and get people aware of what's going on Of course, man. And you brought up NDAA. One thing I think is really troubling about recent events is that you have the government pushing things like NDAA and domestic drone strikes

08:17 And which I constantly see citizen resistance to when it's talked about broadly or hypothetically, but I don't see as much resistance when the government is being ridiculously aggressive and hunting down people like the rogue LAPD cop, the Dorner guy. Or these two guys involved with the Boston thing situations where these people could be scapegoats are patsies possibly but we won't ever know in the mainstream because there's just no trials or debates anymore you know? People are really against it when it's just on paper, but then when you see the actual villain on television everyone is like oh we'll get that guy. Or at least there isn't as much resistance do you find that troubling?

08:57 I do, but it's only human nature. When something happens people are frightened by it and they want a rapid resolution People grew up under the assumption that what you see on TV has been vetted and has some accuracy to it Unfortunately we've come to realize that that's not really the case The people on tv telling us what is going are in many cases pundits with financial ties to defense contractor companies that make money off of this stuff. They make money selling fear and some people don't really understand how does that work, how do they make money by scaring people? And the answer is they get defense contracts for various services for you know surveillance software and

09:40 defense contractors, the form of like pseudo military type guys. And there are billions of dollars being made from this stuff by creating a demand for something that is not perhaps not really necessary and so it's I think at the end of the day it's about money and it's about manipulating people and you know the average person is so busy with work With paying their mortgage with taking care of their kids, they don't really they don't go all that deep They don't think about the implications of chanting USA USA after some kind of crazy or well Ian manhunt Goes down agree. You haven't seen a shred of evidence and to be sure whoever whoever did that bombing I don't know if I can curse on this show Yes Please do Whoever whoever is responsible for that bombing is a total piece of shit and deserves the worst

10:29 that our justice system can serve up, but we have to make sure that we get the right people and the government has been wrong about so many things over the past 10 or 11 years. That just pointing a finger at somebody and saying this is really bad guy I no longer believe that you know i want to see proof that's our whole system as it were innocent until proven guilty not guilty until proven innocent It is fucked up, the direction they're taking that. But let's talk Bitcoins man! This being a conspiracy show the audience is pretty well versed in fractional reserve banking and the mechanisms of interest and inflation. The realization that our currency is based on nothing and we're getting fucked by the Federal Reserve like the Pope's favorite orphan but having a pretty deep understanding of these things I think it gives us a leg-up on understanding how Bitcoin is different but tell us how is it different? Yeah sure so first of all

11:23 I used to think that the Federal Reserve people, the people who ranted against the Federal Reserve were the craziest of the crazies. But the more research I did—you know when you control the money supply and you can control how your citizens buy and sell things and how they are able to store their own wealth from their own hard-earned work When you have ultimate say over those things, gives you a great degree of control over the population. You can just arbitrarily decide to print more money and inflate your currency and basically wipe out the stored wealth of your citizens and take away their personal power in their personal sovereignty. And so

12:05 I think with something like Bitcoin, there are things built into the system certain promises that cannot really be broken because it's right there in the software code and it's decentralized. So no one company is responsible for Bitcoin It's a decentralized service across thousands of servers And it's semi anonymous in the sense that you can just create a new public address, which is a string of numbers and letters. Use that to send money to another public address and then never use that address again. You can have throwaway accounts So there are a couple of promises with Bitcoin. One of them is that there are around 11 million coins in existence right now, and that number is increasing based on mathematical formula. People quote unquote mine bitcoins by having high speed computers do certain mathematical processes and in the same way it's difficult to mine gold but takes up time and money to do so

13:03 It's difficult to mine bitcoins. It takes up computing resources and time and money, because it takes up money because you need a fast computer and there are energy costs involved. And so the idea there is to have something that is artificially restricted. So the great thing about bitcoin is no Ben Bernanke type can come along and say we're going to go ahead and pump 100 million new bitcoins into circulation. That's impossible. It cannot happen. The absolute most Bitcoins there will ever be on the planet is 21 million. I think in the year 2140 or 2120, it'll be 21 million coins and that's a pretty great assurance because you know that you're taking part in a currency or a transactional system whatever you want to call it You're taking part in a system that A is not controlled by anyone government or party

13:53 B, cannot even if it wanted to inflate the currency. And then there are all the technological I think their benefits but that remains to be seen of just how fast you can send money to any other party and how cheap it is like to send... The example that I give people in interviews is to send $10,000 dollars to a family member another country let's say a family member India or something So send them $10,000 over PayPal would cost the recipient a fee of around $299. It would cost my family member 299 bucks and with

14:33 With Bitcoin, it would cost the current market price for Bitcoin less than a nickel. So I mean you're talking about also not needing a bank account and no chance of PayPal freezing the funds or messing it up somewhere along the way just that complete assurance that the transaction is going to be made and there's no such thing as chargeback fraud on Bitcoin At the same time, I mean the downside of that is nobody is there to hold your hand. So if somebody install some malware on your computer which can happen if you go to the wrong website and install some Java program it can search your hard drive, look for your private keys which is what gives anybody access to your coins and they could just jack your money. And if that happens you have no recourse whatsoever but I mean on the flip side of that lack of any central authority is what allows the fees to be so extremely low

15:27 It makes sense. I mean, I would be a little worried because I don't know much about internet security But let's go back to the mining aspect it's kind of strange to me that you just get a mathematical algorithm and if my computer can Pull a goodwill hunting solve that shit. I get 50 bitcoins I mean it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense cuz I don't see how giving a giant calculator a math problem is Something that's difficult or gonna create value isn't that the same as a money printer up until we reach that 21 million cap? It's really the same, I think as something like Google. Google has a spider that is always searching the internet for new content so if you have a website it'll routinely visit your site and look for new articles and new blog posts and then add that to its index And in the same way what mining does

16:16 takes an idea that's been around for thousands of years, which is that something can only be a currency if it is somewhat scarce. Like you'll get gold. I mean gold doesn't...I know a lot of your listeners are going to disagree with this but gold doesn't have any fundamental value in the sense that it's just a metal there are many metals on earth and yeah It's great that it's an awesome conductor of electricity And then it doesn't rust like those are certainly really cool properties But at the end of the day what? At the end of the day, A, gold is not truly scarce because we could lasso an asteroid that has a trillion dollars of gold on it. Right? True. In the universe, gold is not scarce and so one of the things that makes gold a really good currency is that we know there's only so much of it and we know that it's difficult to create new gold you know It's not easy to start up a gold mine And uh...to pull out of your cost you certain amount money and so people know if I

17:12 you know, stack up gold coins for a while. There's not going to be some situation where 100 million ounces of gold just materializes and blows away the demand by rapidly increasing supply." So whoever created Bitcoin I think was looking at that idea of scarcity and trying to apply it as best he could to the digital age. And I think the mining thing although it seems kind of silly certainly it's hard for me to wrap my head around I think what we're really talking about is that they created a model where scarcity is built in, but where there isn't total scarcity. Like there are new coins being created which I think is a good thing because you don't want to be in this situation where all of the early adopters just hoard their coins and then then there's no actual flow of currency. That wouldn't be very good system.

18:00 Well, up until I really started looking at this in preparation for the interview. I had just thought that you would exchange dollars for bitcoins which of course I know you can do too and i would think man I wish I did that when it was five cents You know a bitcoin was five cents But of course now It's gone up to $100 and more and beyond but the mining aspect seems like you know? You could just get it doesn't matter what the exchange rate is because you can just kind of create it It's a little bit strange. But are you mining for them? Can you explain the process, what would someone do if they wanted to set up their computer because it seems no risk really I mean what is the risk in downloading the program and having your computer mine Bitcoins

18:42 Well, I don't think the average computer is really good enough to get you many coins. So there are companies that sell what they call mining rigs and a mining rig is like a really high speed server designed to handle this kind of mathematical process and so their company's selling this stuff and it seems to me a little bit scammy because it's kind of like the people trying to sell you What is like mining equipment during the California gold rush right? Like, some of the gold miners will make a lot of money but they don't these companies selling you. The equipment only want to make money off the minors. They don't really care if you make money or not and.

19:20 So, and yeah it's also true that if you were an early adopter of Bitcoin. Like I had one of the big time bitcoin investors on my podcast last year when it was at like $20 or $30 a coin. And he was talking about it and I was like this is really good idea but I never put any money into it. You know you can definitely slap yourself across the face for not having realized something as a good idea earlier but I think we're still in such the early stages because actually After I wrote an article about Bitcoin, I went to the mall and just asked different people in the food court. I asked a girl working at the Teavana store. I asked some people stacking shirts if they'd heard of Bitcoin—and no one had! So clearly we're not at a point where it's saturated. If you ask everybody have you heard of Google or have you heard of PayPal? They're like, Of course!"

20:13 But Bitcoin is something that is still on the edges and there are a couple of things that excite me about it aside from what we just talked about. And what excites me is that the right kinds of people seem to be adopting it, really tech savvy people. The same kinds of people who were using Google back when everybody else was using AltaVista and Xsite are now starting to use Bitcoins to buy and sell things If you're interested in Bitcoin, I would not even look at it as an investment because in the short term you could lose a lot of money. It fluctuates wildly but if you really believe in it — and I'm starting to believe in it — then you don't even care that much about the daily price because

20:51 So to buy 1 percent of Visa and MasterCard back in the 60s, what would that be worth? Would that be worth $1,000. Would that be worth $10,000? You know it's worth a lot of money if you end up being one of the early adopters of something that becomes a global transaction network and the flip side of that is it could be worthless in a couple years something better could come along in which case nobody will be using Bitcoin Lewis I mean, that's true. You know, I sometimes fantasize about traveling back in time and making the right investments or being one of the first people to start podcasting or learning web development or creating Reddit or Facebook before it was there. And Bitcoin could be one of those things if you get in early enough but with all the attention its getting and the huge increase in value, I am worried that someone getting into it now would be a little late for that party

21:41 Explain the steps and how someone would get going. Let's say I got $100, and want to get in on Bitcoins. I hear about this dark web that it's almost like a hacker's internet beneath the internet? Like the back alleys of the internet? How do you get into the system if I had some cash I wanted to exchange? Yeah Bitcoin first took off with some sort of shady uses. It was used on a couple of websites or services where people buy and sell illegal things. And so Bitcoin to those, to that market it made sense for them use Bitcoin instead of using credit cards or PayPal and it's kind of unusual market to adopt currency but at the end of the day currency you know that US dollar is used by all kinds of shady people. Currency doesn't discriminate between ethical or unethical transactions

22:40 I don't know where i was going with this but, what was your question again? About how you get into it right yeah if i had some cash and i wanted to get into it. Yeah i think that the fact that bitcoin has some seedy uses right now doesn't really mean anything in fact i believe that one of the first big markets to begin taking it will probably be porn sites porn sites and webcam companies Actually, one of the big dating sites, OKCupid just recently announced they're going to take Bitcoin as a form of payment. And if you have a little bit of money and you want it converted into Bitcoin, the best way to do that is to use a service that will do that for you. There are services like... The biggest exchange right now is MtGox which is mtgox.com

23:27 And they've had some technical problems in the past, but they're currently the biggest out there and the next few months. I have reason to believe that it seems pretty likely that new exchanges will be coming online to provide this service that Mt Gox does but basically it's the same as you know. similar to an E-Trade account. You sign up for the account, and you can put money in using your bank account or some other payment method, then buy Bitcoin at the existing market rate and do what you want with it." That's cool! I have a T-shirt brand called Conspiratees with a bunch of antiestablishment designs. And also, I noticed that you started taking donations on your website? How could someone set that up on their website?

24:16 Okay, yeah it's actually really easy. So once you own some Bitcoin... The hardest part of the whole Bitcoin ecosystem right now and what's really I think holding it back from greater adoption is the fact that the exchanges out there right now are not too numerous, and they're not very good. Once it gets easier for people to convert their dollars or their euros into bitcoin—to do that easily and quickly—then we'll see many more people use it but once you have your money in the form of bitcoin then you sign up for a wallet I think the safest way actually is to download a wallet client. The place to do that, you go to bitcoin.org which is the official Bitcoin site. Bitcoin.org shows you a couple of clients that are trusted but we're not going to just jack your coins things have been looked at and there are few popular clients one of them is multi-bit one of them is Electrum

25:11 You transfer from your exchange account, you transfer the coins into your wallet and your wallet will provide you with a receiving address which is just a string of letters and numbers. And then from that wallet you can send money to any other address any other bitcoin address and your wallet also has its own address so you just copy and paste that address, that string of numbers and letters put it on your website. And say tip me via Bitcoin and then anybody who comes across that page and has a bitcoin wallet they would just copy and paste that string

25:49 and put it into their wallet client, and send you the desired amount of money. Then it'll be in your account within a matter of ... You'll be notified pretty much immediately, then the transaction takes about an hour or two to verify and settle." O'Reilly So, as a user someone would get linked up with one of these exchanges? But hasn't there been in the past week or so a couple of cases of these exchanges getting denial-of-service attacked and hacked into? And haven't some of them gone under? Wathen, yeah. Not only have there been denial-of-service attacks ... One of the ones that I thought was actually the best just closed up shop. Their bank account was seized or frozen or something. It is scary which is why when you buy them at the exchange ... Some people

26:39 So, some people are only doing this to speculate and they keep their money in the exchange account. They keep their Bitcoin there and their hope is that they're going to sell it back out into U.S dollars when the price goes up I think that's a really dangerous thing to do because first of all you shouldn't be speculating with something like this Because you'll lose money And second of all The exchange could just go under and it could also be attacked People can steal your Bitcoins that way If you think about if If you're some hacker and you are really good at what you do, and you have no moral scruples You would probably want to target an exchange because there are hundreds of millions of dollars of Bitcoin just sitting there in people's accounts So it's a really bad idea to keep your your bitcoin on an exchange account for very long once your transaction is cleared and you own the Bitcoin send them off to your wallet public address and From there. You actually have the coins on your computer, and they can't be taken from you unless The only way that can be taken from you at that point

27:39 is if your computer is compromised. Other than that, they cannot be taken and there are even people who go pretty extreme and create what are called cold wallets And a cold wallet is when you transfer the private key to like a USB flash drive And then pull that flash drive out and make sure that it's never connected to the Internet again, right? So then you have no exposure. And it's impossible for anybody to steal your private key unless they were coming into your house and like steal the flash drive from you. And I think the Winklevi, the Winkelvoss twins who were in that movie The Social Network and they claim they're like creators of Facebook. They own 1% of all Bitcoin out there and apparently the way that they are storing their Bitcoin is by doing this cold wallet thing or putting it on a flash drive because I guess they own so much of it they don't want to be stolen which makes sense

28:35 Yeah, I mean. I definitely think we are in a time of economic uncertainty. You can go over to Cyprus and tell the people not to use Bitcoin because it's not secure and they're going to laugh at you. Our banks are secure to a point—they haven't always been—it is what is but you had mentioned gold and I know that Gold, investing in gold and conspiracy kind of goes hand-in-hand thanks to Alex Jones. But I think this audience is a little bit beyond that. Gold is pretty saturated, at least to someone like me who's just making an average wage. I'm not going to be able to afford much gold and when the shit goes down who is going to exchange gold for food? Food is where real value is if there was really any kind of collapse no one's gonna want this stupid yellow rock they can't do anything with it doesn't help you survive At least that's my view If things were to get really bad You can always go in that direction of things getting really bad Like I've had people say

29:36 What if there's a global EMP wave? Wouldn't that wipe out your Bitcoin?" And I'm like, if that happened losing your Bitcoin wallet would be the least of your worries. Right right and so you can definitely go down that path of like a scenario where gold becomes worthless but I think under most circumstances Gold remains a good option for people because even if the US dollar collapses, even if the euro goes away whatever currency emerges maybe it's the Chinese Yuan. Maybe it's something totally different will still you'll still be able to exchange your gold for a certain amount of that currency. Gold has been around for thousands of years I think our species

30:12 We're primates, I think we like shiny things. It's heavy it doesn't rust you can it's really ductile It's the most and the most ductile metal on earth So it has these cool properties and it happens to be rare enough that people value it Well let's say a lot of people out there live in paycheck-to-paycheck if you wanted to make a serious investment You wouldn't call it an investment would be a gamble with Bitcoin but there's something okay about that. I mean, a lot of people say oh you don't want to speculate you don't want to go too ... You know when I lose money you can afford to lose? But like but a lot of people are fucked either way and if they don't take a serious gamble they're never gonna reach that level so i mean and that's up to the individual I'm not going to tell anybody what to do but If I wanted to exchange my paychecks on a weekly basis for Bitcoin is it possible to live on it with the exception of rent because I don't think my landlords gonna take

31:05 if You know, you don't want to be that guy. But as long as you treat it as a gamble and something that you acknowledge is risky and you keep enough money in US dollars so continue to pay your rent and pay your health insurance or whatever the hell you have then I think you're right in the sense that you need to get in there and take some risks if you're ever going to get ahead or you just not. And I think Bitcoin in terms of ideas, it's one of the best ideas I've ever seen.

31:54 There's a psychological thing that people do, and I don't know if it even has a name. But it is something that I talk about a fair amount and its this idea that wherever we are in history is like the biggest things will ever be right? So like maybe 2003 or something I remember I was exchanging emails with Ev Williams who is one of the founders of Twitter And he created Blogger and all this stuff Back then he was just like a dude you know so I would ask him questions about how to get how to change something on my blog. And even back then he was well known, but you didn't really realize that you were emailing a guy who's going to be a billionaire or whatever amount of money he has now right? So at the time you assume that everything is as big as it's gonna be like people knew that Google was a big deal back in 2002 maybe they didn't realize it was like a 300 billion dollar market cap company but people knew it was a big deal and there's this weird kind

32:48 it's The fact that people are starting to talk about it is actually a very good sign because if nobody was talking about it and nobody was using it, then there's a very small chance of becoming adopted. But if you're willing to take the gamble, if you're willing to put some money on the roulette table But if Bitcoin becomes a global alternative to Visa and MasterCard and PayPal, which I think is definitely possible at this point. And if it becomes the global alternative to investing in inflation hedges like gold and silver. And also if it become something that the tech generation gets really excited about you know the only thing separating bitcoin from mass adoption at this point I think there's a couple of good mobile apps that do a good job

33:50 of doing all the technical stuff for people, right? So instead of this long string of numbers it'll just have that tied to your email address or tied to your name. And once it becomes user-friendly and fun to use I think it's very possible that five years from now you could walk into a hip restaurant or hip bar and it would say American Express in Bitcoin accepted. If that's the case if that's the little alternative universe traveling down, if you were to buy Bitcoin now regardless of what the daily fluctuation is. Regardless of if you buy it at $100 or $180 You would be sitting on a an astronomical amount of money five years from now. Right? Yeah I mean It's kind of like share buttons on our website because you know I don't use a lot of the main sites people use like Pinterest obviously as one of them

34:41 There's the one that Facebook has for photos, whatever that is. Instagram! I don't use a lot of those websites but when you set up like a WordPress website you'll have it share box and you want to have one for everything because even if one person were to put your your blog on StumbleUpon, that's exposure. So obviously you just want to accept it and I feel it is the same way with a currency like if you've got customers and even if only 1% wants to pay in bitcoins thats one percent your not going to have if you don't adopt to it so I think alot of places would do that But, from the perspective of someone who lives paycheck to paycheck I just think if Bitcoin were to go under what difference does it make? Because if I were to convert all my checks into bitcoin

35:28 And then, just try to make the transactions I need for groceries if there are websites that take that. If it goes under and my wallet's wiped out to zero, well, I just wait four or five days until Friday comes and I get another paycheck. That one, I won't convert." You know? If you're living like that, it doesn't seem like a bad gamble! Wathen, I don't mean to say investing ... your gambling is something you actually believe in. If you go to the local casino and you just lose your whole paycheck at the sports table or playing blackjack, you feel like an asshole afterwards. But if you lost your money and you were doing that to do your part to prop up a global transaction network that would destroy the status quo and give people more control over their own finances? That's something to be proud of even if you lose your ass on it.

36:22 That's what I tell people. People ask me, how are you getting into Bitcoin? Are you investing in it? When I can, I'm helping it out because this is something that I believe in and if enough people put a small amount of money, Bitcoin will take off. It already had earlier this month like 2 billion dollar market cap so people are starting to put money into it and if it takes off there's no reason they can't be 100 billion or 200 billion dollar market cap currency Crowe. Right, of everything I could possibly see it has the greatest potential for growth because it is the newest you know like I said I think gold is kind of saturated but bitcoins there's volatility there could go to nothing but I mean I think the sky could be the limit and uh... But one interesting aspect of it is I tried to look up who created it and it doesn't seem like anyone really knows it might have been some anonymous Asian hacker or something

37:14 Yeah, I think that was actually really smart on his part or I mean his or her part. Whoever created this was very intelligent about not only the design but about making Bitcoin something that is beyond the individual so if this were a situation where the guy who created it was always on the cover of magazines and was being interviewed on CNN and stuff then Bitcoin would be open to ad hominem attacks you know they would look into the guy's background they would Just fuck him over with some sex scandal or whatever it is. And then the whole network loses credibility like, oh this guy's just trying to make money for himself look at how many Bitcoin he personally has right? They can't do any of that stuff because nobody knows who created it all they know that the source code Is good because so many people have looked at it and know that It's the real deal but they don't know who's behind it which makes it something That is just uh

38:08 It's almost like it was created by the gods. And it came around at exactly the right time, when the world needed it And it was just created. In the same way that email, if I were to ask you who invented email? You probably could not tell me and yet it's a technology that was developed and then very quickly took off worldwide because it was just so obviously better than what had existed before. Good point! You mentioned people looking at the code and something I hear a lot in interviews when people are defending Bitcoin is they say well the code can't be changed, the code can't be manipulated

38:52 It seems a little bit like wishful thinking. I mean, I'd hoped that to be the case that it's ironclad but is it really? Yeah, I think everything with Bitcoin you have to really treat as a kind of the dream you know like US I like that you call it a gamble because it really is like your putting some money into something thats a dream of a better world and so could this system be compromised. The thing that gives us a lot of strength, I think is how decentralized it is so when every single transaction happens on network goes into something called the blockchain, which is a public log of all transactions. Anybody can look at it you can actually watch it in real time if you go to blockchain.info You can see the new transactions coming in and the amounts and where the money's coming from, you know public receiving address and sending address And that's phenomenal If you think about it so it gives a layer of transparency

39:50 these transactions need to be verified by multiple servers before they actually are settled and that prevents any bad actor from pushing out bogus transactions. You know, you can definitely do stuff like steal somebody else's bitcoins if you plant malware on their computer or if somebody is not careful about storing their private key and you come across it, you can take their coins that way but this is not something that can really It doesn't seem like it's something that can be technically broken. And I think if it was possible, it would have already happened by now because a lot of people are trying to make money off of Bitcoin in dishonest ways and some of the things that scare people about Bitcoin like the fact that everybody is trying to jack your coins

40:35 Those are the things that actually kind of excite me because that's a sign that something is becoming a real currency. If you were to leave... Demand, yeah! Yeah exactly if you were to leave a silver coin or gold coin on a park bench, that thing would be gone in a matter of minutes. You're going to leave like a broken bottle it'll stay there for the whole day This shows that there is some serious demand for this and that people from a psychological viewpoint are treating it as money. At the end of the day, we all have to acknowledge that money is bullshit. It's a social contract. A thousand years from now, we might not even have money. But we exist in a world where it's very important and so it is cool to see people making that psychological shift into like oh even though this is digital and it's not backed by anything, we're going to treat as money because that's all the US dollar is. It's not backed by anything. People assume there's a dollar out there for every single dollar printed but it's not all printed you know?

41:29 Zeroes on a computer screen and even if it were what would that mean? So you have a bunch of sheets of paper How does that make it more legit than anything else, of course I actually Was just talking to a buddy of mine and I was saying You know If aliens came down here And they were like hey, you know, you guys seem cool. You guys are building planes. You guys are doing all kinds of stuff How do you operate down here and we explained to them that well nobody does anything until this green paper is exchanged. If we didn't exchange this green paper, no one would do shit and it just seems so silly because then they'd be like okay well who makes that green paper? Oh that guy over there! It's like okay well why don't you just let him do that

42:07 It is goofy, the way we do things. But I don't want to be too negative on Bitcoin because I do think it's awesome but every hacker or internet security person I've ever talked to or heard speak online they say everything can be compromised you know anything any security you can build can be broken at least that's what people tend to think on the Internet and so that is worrisome. But all I can do is hope it's something you can really invest in. The only idea I had for investing, if I was going to try and get rich ... the only thing I could think of was to try and invest in marijuana dispensaries that go public or if the country starts legalizing weed and its traded like a commodity, to get on the ground floor with that because I think that has huge potential as well but

42:56 Have you done any digging into other alternative digital currencies? Like does Bitcoin have any real competition? There's one called Litecoin that is starting to take off. And so, Litecoin is very similar in a lot of ways it costs less It's you know two or three dollars a coin instead of whatever Bitcoin is going for now So that's another possibility if you're somebody who wants to speculate and like you said your paycheck-to-paycheck and want to put something aside Litecoin might be a good one to put a little bit of money into just because if that one takes off That's a good point.

43:48 I just want to kind of cap this off by saying, I could be wrong about all of this. If you treat it as a hobby, like if you're just a hobbyist about digital currency then you can't really go wrong. For years i was just interested in things like blogging and so it's not like I lost my ass on any blog companies that didn't pull through because I was only doing it as somebody who is fascinated what a blog was about. I wasn't trying to make money off of it, or not exclusively trying to." The same thing with podcasts ... you mentioned earlier that you said something like podcasts are already- Gardner Yeah! Wouldn't it be awesome to have been the first person who started podcasting? Look at the audience he'd probably have amassed by now. Newsom Well let me flip your view on this a little bit. It would've definitely been great to be one of the absolute first podcasters, like Adam Curry and Joe Rogan

44:40 But after I was on Rogan's show, that's when I realized that podcasting was a huge deal. Because I got so many reactions to it and I thought, oh! I should create a podcast. This would be a format where I could just speak my mind and tell people what is going on without having to worry about getting the editor's approval or producer telling me it can only be five minutes long and then we have to go do something else So, it opens you up to just put content out there. And podcasting I would argue is still in the very early stages a lot of people don't listen to any podcasts You compare that to the example I like use Google everybody searches on Google most people have never listened to a podcast so they only like 20 or 30 percent of the internet uses Internet radio or podcasting and it's been very early stages and we're not competing with other podcasters

45:30 We're really competing with television and television is dying. It's on a death spiral." It's one of those things where you look at the growth rate or you look at the decay rate, and you can tell what's going to happen like I can't tell you the exact day when nobody will turn into CNN...when nobody will tune into CNN. And I can't tell you that day but I know that day is coming. You know it's coming a lot faster than people think And these traditional networks are losing all their power. And all the power and influence is heading into podcasts, it's heading into YouTube channel creators... I mean YouTube has 850 million users a month now that's bigger than any television network

46:08 So, I guess my point though is if you continue to put out an exciting podcast for people a couple of years from now you could easily have hundreds of thousands or millions of listeners because this is not a saturated market. This is something that most people don't even know about and the people who listen to podcasts are kind of like connoisseurs. It's really tight-knit community but it's not mainstream yet. True We have a couple minutes left and something I wanted to talk to you about. You know, you do talk about citizen journalism a lot. I know your big on the internet and you are a journalist yourself and we just had obviously a terrible tragedy in the Boston bombing but

46:48 How have you seen citizen journalism affect the way these things are digested? Because it seems radically different. A lot of people are getting their news from other sources, like Reddit as opposed to CNN. Yeah good question I think that the establishment, the mainstream whatever you want to call it is losing power because of the internet. Before the internet existed there would be some terrible event that would happen and on the evening news they would tell you what your supposed to think about it and what your supposed to do fix it if you support this legislation that will keep from happening again You don't go oh the TV anchors are lying to me just go okay I'm gonna call my senator make sure they support CISPA or whatever the thing is

47:38 Now we see the alternative views now. We see somebody on YouTube go no, that's wrong. CISSP will take away your privacy it has absolutely nothing to do with preventing terrorism. You know A B and C look at this look at what the ACLU has to say look at what Aaron Swartz said about it before he committed suicide look at all this shit right? it's taking away that authority, that single view no longer exists. It used to be just tuned into the evening news I can't think of anybody in my age group who watches the evening news. You know like I might watch CBS Evening News once every couple months if i'm in a hotel and so you're getting kind of crowdsourced view of the world where when an event happens like something like the Boston attack

48:25 I immediately turned to Twitter and you see real photos from people who happen to be there, photos and videos just because everybody has a cell phone. You're getting no edit. You're not having some CNN producer go oh let's air with this video and nothing else cause this is the most impactful. It's almost as if you are there on the ground whenever something happens whether it's on Capitol Hill or it's a bill being discussed or it's a natural disaster, or it's a terrorist attack. Whatever it is now you're getting the views from people who are actually right there and that's a really exciting thing that you can't stop at this point nobody can stop that

49:05 O'Reilly. Agreed, and I mean obviously a lot of people right off the bat with that were claiming false flag and all that stuff and being the guy that i am i mean boston bombing false flag was one of the first things i googled because i want to see that side of it although i would never claim to know that with any certainty uh so early or even now but i mean now that the dust is settled no pun intended have you seen any inconsistencies that have made you skeptical of the official story or do you think this is a pretty simple terrorist bombing? I don't think it's a simple thing. I think that for one thing the suspect they have in custody now does not seem to be a very bright guy, you know he seems to be just kind of...I call him a dweeb on my show this is based on his Twitter timeline and some other public information has come out about him He is 19 years old. It doesn't seem like somebody who has the technical skill

50:04 And granted, I'm not a terrorism expert but he doesn't seem like somebody has the technical skill to build four homemade explosive devices carefully place them at set points along the way and be able to do all this stuff without blowing himself up. It seems very unusual and one of arguments, which I think makes a lot of sense is that his older brother might have been the mastermind and he just was sort of sucked into it. I guess that's a possibility but aside from the side from the motivation behind something like that I think if you were to look at the causes of domestic terrorism I believe every single one in the US since 9-11 has been caused by radical Islam and You know there's a thing among liberals too

50:53 be very sensitive and immediately discount linking religion to terrorism. But when you see a correlation like that, you have to wonder what's going on there right? Like at certain point it's beyond being politically correct or uncorrect and so we need to figure out why radicalism is making people harm other people in the name of their religion. And I guess that's the first point I make. The second one is It's not so much what happens, it's how the media and how the government reacts to it. So even 9-11 which is a terrible tragedy and thousands of Americans lives were lost that would have been handled differently in a country like Norway instead of creating laws take away people's rights

51:37 sneak and peek warrantless searches of your home, and all this creepy Patriot Act shit. Instead of all that stuff happening, instead of every creepy defense contractor out there crawling out from under the log and clawing for their part in the defense budget to make billions off 9-11 which is what happened people made billions by selling security systems and services to government after that attack Instead of all that stuff happening. They might have had an approach like you know This is a terrible Terrible tragedy and we're gonna get the people responsible for it, and then we're gonna move on with our lives We're not gonna spend a decade Self-flagellating over 9 11 And you had you know Giuliani even eight years after 911 was still going on TV and just talking about that nothing else pretty much trying to you know just that be the first sentence out of his mouth as well 911 happened and

52:31 It was just a really strange response to it. A terrible attack, you know? I completely agree that's definitely been milked. Dick Cheney has milked that whole thing more than anyone probably still as a huge investor in Halliburton he's been the one to profit but things with the Boston bombing...I did see some things were kind of skeptical Are you familiar with Trevor Aronson No, I'm not familiar. Who is he? He's a journalist who wrote a book called Terror Factory Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terror and this was a guy that i had on the show while back and he went through case after case of the FBI kind of going after Middle Eastern people who live in this country and kinda trying to coax them into situations almost like

53:26 Well, it was definitely entrapment. But you know they're going to people and actually offering them money to take a shipment somewhere and people are just like poor and they don't know what's going on And then the FBI swoops in and busts them for something they created An interesting thing I saw was that the mother TV and she was given an interview, and she was talking about the FBI had been harassing her sons for years. And they had been communicating for years. So I guess one of the big alternative stories is that Maybe they somehow got sucked into this situation and they maybe they thought they had bombs that weren't gonna go off or They were involved in a training drill and then all of a sudden. They did go off, or maybe you know There's also some stuff with this these guys who had these hats with the skull logo The craft logo I believe is like a military contractor Like that was kind of suspicious that they were there

54:20 But it kind of fit in line with Trevor Aronson's book of the FBI creating these situations and creating patsies, and then busting their own people. Busting their own setups. I haven't heard all that much about that but definitely sounds intriguing That right there are a couple of views that you would not have heard if we didn't have the internet. They certainly would not air that alternative view on the evening news back in the 80s or 90s, and I saw a photo of the military contractors with skull hats on and I didn't know where they came from but

55:03 It was certainly weird that wasn't talked about at all on CNN or Fox or MSNBC. As if that's not relevant to a bunch of dudes and, you know, khakis and military boots are wearing backpacks right in that area. Has it been confirmed those photos were taken at the time? It's tough to say, man. I'm skeptical of everything there are liars on both sides so i really love to digest the conspiracy side but what's true? I could never say So it would be impossible for me to get that information You're a journalist who does research you might have an idea how you'd go about proving that But to me...you just have to take somebody's word for it or not

55:48 It seems like those pictures were taken at that time. Well, I don't know the Boston bombing and the other side of it is from some of this stuff I've seen these are not very sophisticated weapons and they're made from common parts and you could have had a guy who was deeply disturbed and unhappy with his move to America and sucked his little brother into it And was fueled by, you know radical religious ideology. I think he had recently converted to Islam so you have those combination of factors that we live in a country where if you're a psycho and you have access to certain materials,

56:32 minority report pre-crime bureaus. I think we're getting to that point, but we don't have that. And so if you're a person in America and you're an asshole, you can harm other people. Yeah, I mean, I'm with ya it's... It's an unfortunate situation. The fact that he did just convert to Islam apparently is definitely eyebrow-raising considering the narrative we're given about Islam in general ever since 9-11, but It's so tough to know, but those hats really make me skeptical. The FBI is—the mother talking about the FBI involved with her kids for years makes me pretty skeptical. There was also a video and this is one again you can't confirm if it's real or not but the older brother of the official story that he died

57:25 I guess getting hit by a car by the younger brother fleeing the scene or in the middle of the shootout and all the chaos he died. But there is a video you can find on YouTube, of the older brother completely naked in handcuffs being escorted around the streets like put in the back of a cop car And again, I've seen the guy He's a pretty built guy It looks like him but... Is it him? I don't know! That's a very eyebrow raising video. It's kind of freaky Well I think what's also freaky is, uh...I haven't seen that video. I'll have to check that out is how quickly the media and certain members of the government, they seem to be excited by labeling something as terrorism. Which I think is fucking disgusting! You know like you saw CNN tweet out like we're now able to call or our editorial decision has come down that were now calling this an act of terrorism. And your'e like what? This isn't...you're not mediating some debate, some political debate. This shouldn't be something that your excited about doing

58:29 And then after that there is this huge headline like terrorism in Boston, and you have politicians saying this is exactly why we need to get Cisco past and take away your internet privacy. So this doesn't happen again. You just have all these dishonest organizations trying to profit from something that nobody should profit from. You know, you should put the people responsible for this in a cage and that should be the end of it." You know? Agreed but using that terrorism label is the justification—that's what switches it off in our minds—that people should have rights and rights to a trial I actually thought that was suspicious whatever you think about 9-11 about bin Laden because that was really the first time that there was this international terrorist

59:14 and there was a hit out on him, and he wasn't going to face any trial or anything like that. When in my view even if you think 9-11 was as just as cut and dry as they say it was when I look at it the people who are responsible for 9-11 died in the hijacking You know they're the ones who were responsible They overcame the cockpit and pilot and flew a plane into a building That's who, they died. So the whole idea of going on this international manhunt I thought was a little weird anyway but that was the first time we saw a guy who is not gonna get a trial regardless and ever since now that label of terrorist is being brought domestically against people like the Dorner guy and these two kids you know it's now just something that puts a mental switch off in the American mind that says okay we can suspend habeas corpus and no trials we just need to get this asshole

1:00:08 Yeah, it uh. It is really scary like the same with Guantanamo Bay people say well They're the worst of the worst you shouldn't even care about them And I'm like okay But who the fuck are they look let's get some what did they actually do let's get some information Is this some kind of situation out of a comic book movie is Magneto down there and needs to be kept in a you know? Anti-magnetic cage. I think we're ahead Why are these people beyond the rule of law? Are they that scary like our justice system is dealt with some pretty creepy people between serial killers and People like Manson, you know Like we've dealt with a lot of shit and for some reason these people if it's unpatriotic to ask why they're exempt from The basic rights that our country is supposed to afford to everybody And maybe that's part of the reason why It's occurring on

1:00:58 on a base in another country. Like that's the shadiest agreement ever, in a country that we have an embargo against where like leasing land to put prisoners there and torture them so we have some kind of distance between that and us you know? Oh it's just Guantanamo Bay! It's-it's a creepy situation I think history is not going to look back on this time period uh...in a good way You know why didn't people speak up? Why didn't people even maintain a minimum of curiosity as to what the fuck is going on down there. Absolutely agree, man! That's why we do the shows we do but...

1:01:36 It looks like we're getting to the top of the hour. It's been a great conversation, I feel like I learned a lot about Bitcoin and if i do start throwing my money into it and it really pops off and I make a couple million that would probably make you the most influential person in my life! And that's saying something so thanks for dropping knowledge on us If there is ever a way you'd like to collaborate in the future You know where to find me maybe you can come back and give us a bitcoin progress report sometime in the future It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Pimp. If there's anything you want to leave the people with maybe your website or ebook? Yeah it has been great conversation I definitely want to do it again sometime. When you have some time come on my show and we'll do the same thing!

1:02:20 But yeah, so I mean if all of your listeners were to put you know $500 or $400 or even $300 whatever you can afford. If everybody were to put just a little bit of money into Bitcoin it would take off and it wouldn't matter how many mainstream media hit pieces come out saying that its dangerous and its unpatriotic and all this nonsense It just wouldn't matter because the people use it Then it takes off and you would just cripple the traditional banking system. And allow people to have control over their own finances where, you know when you store money in Bitcoin it can't be stolen from you in the form of inflation can't be done a bank seizure like in Cyprus It's just your money at that point and you can use it however the hell you want with very minimal fees when you do so If people wanna check me out I'm at davidsseaman.net

1:03:11 And the book is on Amazon Kindle store. It's called Total Abundance, Total Power. It's about how technology and communication is changing the world. Nice! Yeah that's a you know not to go off on a whole other thing but that's a big part of The Giant Conspiracy Is That the possibility for abundance is there in a lot of ways in different sectors energy being one and then it has been suppressed and that there's a battle between the technology and the structure we have because people are getting replaced by machines, and now those people don't have jobs. And that means those people can't even live in our society so that title alone total abundance total power I think is you know pretty important i definitely agree with that yeah it's like your uh it's like your alien example if aliens came to this planet then they'd be kind of surprised by the whole idea of money because once we get to a point where energy is abundant

1:04:05 Communications technology is used by everybody, like. By 2020 I think 3Billion addition people additional people have access to the Internet once you have those kinds of things we're only talking about a generation or 2 between. us in kind of like a real Star Trek future, you know. As it is now we got homeless people begging for change outside of a grocery store stocked with groceries while they're throwing away expired stuff in a locked dumpster out back that doesn't make any sense but uh either way thanks again man and we'll stay in touch and best of luck fighting the good fight It's been awesome tell the people your website is? Yeah my website is davidsieman.net

1:04:47 Perfect. Easy to remember. Alright, man. Well hey enjoy your day thanks for coming on the show! All right you too thank you There we have it Hireside Chatters, David Seaman of the David Seaman Hour. Check him out! He's a good man Charlie Brown Thanks again all you folks that are sticking with me and my stupid sonar show Again I'd love to see some of ya out there at ConspiracyCon June 1st and 2nd out in the San Francisco-ish area Some of you've already emailed me that your gonna be there Super excited, I might need someone to help film some stuff So let me know about that too Please share the show wherever you can review THC on iTunes donate if you get that special feeling or buy yourself a t-shirt at conspirates.net I appreciate everything that each and every one of you do to help me get this show going and growing We have so many listeners now that I actually get a bit nervous when I think about how many people are tuning in So this is a good thing, but oh

1:05:41 One example, out of the 15 thousand shows on Stitcher Smart Radio, THC is now in the top 400 and that's only about 20% of our listeners tuning in on Stitcher as their platform. So... shit! But anyway enough with that I'm getting myself hard already Next week we'll be talking to Foster Gamble of the Procter and Gamble family, the creator of the movie Thrive which I recommend all of you check out. It will be a good precursor to the interview You'll know what we're talking about He's also one of the main speakers at ConspiracyCon conveniently it's all connected people Thanks again and may the bitcoins never steer you wrong peace!

1:06:28 Yeah, I would have a show like Oprah. I would be the host of Everyday Christmas. Give Travier wish list? I'd probably pull an Angelina and Brad Pitt And adopt a bunch of babies that ain't never had shit. Give away a few Mercedes like here lady have this! And last but not least grant somebody their last wish. It's been a couple months that I've been single so You can call me Travis Claus modestly ho-ho Get it?! I'll prolly visit with Katrina Hit And damn sure do a lot more than FEMA did Yeah, can't forget about me Stupid everywhere I go Be music Oh Erin to see what you seem My name is shiny live A different Cindy Erin billionaire

1:07:35 I'll be playing basketball with the president, dunking on his delegates Then I compliment him on his political etiquette Toss a couple million to air just for the heck of it But keep the 520 tens and bins completely separate Yeah, I'd be in a whole new tax bracket We in recession but let me take a crack I probably take whatever's left and just split it up So everybody that I love can have a cup of b- And not a single tummy around me Would know what hungry was eating good sleeping soundly We all have a similar dream Go in your pocket, pull out your wallet Put it in the air and sing I wanna be a billionaire So fucking bad Buy all of the things I never had I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine Smiling next to Oprah and Le Quince Close my eyes, I hate what you see I'm claiming shiny lies

1:08:42 A different city every year The world better prepare for a billionaire I wanna be a billionaire so fucking bad