Hello everyone and welcome to Living on Blockchain. Today we are going to be talking to Max. Max is a free software entrepreneur.
He is, according to his Twitter bio, he’s building Bitcoin weapons. He is a very big contributor to the Wasabi Wallet Project. He describes himself as a Rothbardian crypto anarchist and it’s all about freedom with him.
I had a really, really insightful conversation with him and I hope it is as insightful for you guys as it was for me. So here goes. Hi Max, thank you so much for taking out the time to speak to me today.
How are you doing? I’m doing fantastic. Thank you to Tarusha for the invitation. I’m looking forward to have a great conversation about the nuances of Bitcoin privacy and Wasabi Wallet.
Yeah, you and me both. So go ahead and tell us a little about your background and how you got into this space initially. So my actual background is in economics.
I was an entrepreneur from an early age and was curious to learn more about the theory of entrepreneurship and how to become more profitable in a general sense. So I started educating myself about mainstream economics, the Keynesian, Fisher and other mainstream areas. And I pretty soon realized that either I’m very stupid and don’t understand it or there are very serious structural flaws in the entire methodological approach of that science.
So I was on the search for alternatives and that eventually led me down to discover the Austrian School of Economics and Praxeology where the Mises Institute at mises.org is doing phenomenal work with a great archive of knowledge. And here I just read through all the library and all the books until I came to a point where I think I have a decent grasp of Praxeology and economics. And I realized that the fiat empire of currency manipulation has absolutely drastic and severe consequences and that any individual who still holds fiat shit coins undergoes theft on a monumental scale every single second.
Therefore, I wanted to look out for alternatives. And I was not satisfied with how gold is doing in the modern world, is great in meat space to an extent and was very bad in cyberspace. And thus I eventually discovered Bitcoin as being that alternative.
It is pure applied Austrian theory that utilizes crypto anarchist tools of strong encryption of a peer to peer censorship resistant network and so on to develop a network of private property rights definitions, verifications and enforcement. And that is a complete whole new ecosystem that defines and articulates a sound monetary asset and much, much more. And therefore, it’s just such a beautiful weapon of defense.
And I’ve started using and contributing to several free and open source projects in the space just because I wanted the tools to be better than that they were at the current state. And these have been several projects. But the right now my focus is on researching on Bitcoin privacy and finding new areas to improve privacy of individuals specifically on Bitcoin.
And the prime project in this, according to my opinion, is Wasabi Wallet, which deserves quite a lot of my time and attention currently. Wow. OK, that’s quite a journey.
So, you know, you talked about how you know you were an economist, you know, initially and now then, you know, you realize the flaws that are there fundamentally in the traditional monetary system. And, you know, you looked at the other side and you studied praxeology. So, you know, perhaps you could give us, our listeners, an idea into how you think, you know, blockchain technology kind of aligns with this philosophical praxeology, you know, part of the subject matter.
I think it would be a very wonderful analogy because, you know, people don’t draw these analogies very often when they talk about blockchain. And because you mentioned praxeology, I would love to understand how you think that Bitcoin kind of aligns with it. So to start out with, praxeology is Latin and literally means the science of human action.
And it was a field of science that was developed. Well, it is based on very ancient wisdom, obviously, and there’s no new knowledge under the sun. But it was recently specifically defined and articulated by the great Ludwig von Mises in the monumental treatise Human Action in 1912.
And very fundamentally speaking, this or first and foremost, the method, the logical approach of the science is a logical, a foundational logical approach, meaning we start with very first principles, assumptions that we cannot verify to be actually true. But we are willing to take on these assumptions as the core to build our theory above. And in the case of Ludwig von Mises, this base assumption is individual human action, that humans act, that humans manifest change.
Ludwig von Mises puts it beautifully that man is in a state of uneasiness, meaning he has problems and he sees potential. There are many possible scenarios where the future is better than the current moment. And it’s precisely because of this entrepreneurial spark and genius of seeing a better future, the human acts, the human utilizes the means at the disposal, so to satisfy and to reach these ends in an uncertain future.
And this is done first and foremost by acting, by manifesting change, by progressing time. And this is what the individual, the human does. And this is our first starting principle, which is again very, very difficult to prove.
And this goes too much into the details now, but we can build upon this a very beautiful construct where we have all types of causal relationships between action and result. And it is a very applied science because it is literally the science of action. So it is not a theoretical blabbering and lots of unnecessary charts.
It is logical, it is rigorous, and I apply these principles every single moment in my life when I struggle with the question of what should I do with my time, where should I allocate my resources. This is where I consult the great minds of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe and others to help me with that logical rigor to find the most meaningful tasks that I could possibly apply myself in. And this is why Praxeology for me is such a vast and important science.
And yes, it does cover Bitcoin and property rights and all of this. But for me, it goes so much deeper than only economics. Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, my very basic understanding of Praxeology is that it’s the notion that humans kind of engage in purposeful behavior as opposed to, say, unintentional behavior. That is, like, as somebody who’s just studied very basic economics, that’s what my understanding is. So I think that would align with the entire concept of, you know, Bitcoin or blockchain technology when it was just moving forward in that direction.
What do you think? Absolutely. Bitcoin has done something very, very beautiful. And it is basically Bitcoin has pulled the theory of Praxeology into cyberspace.
Because so far, this was very, very difficult. And Bitcoin really solves a fundamentally difficult problem. What I’m talking about here is scarcity.
And scarcity is something that the Austrian tradition, contrary to most other schools of thoughts, like mainstream economics, or communism, obviously, is the aspect of scarcity. And this means exclusivity of a good and limitedness in supply of that good. So a good is something that individuals find useful.
As an example, Alice sees a tree, right? And so she cuts down that tree and has now a log of wood. And this specific log of wood, either Alice can use to build a house, or Bob can use to build a boat, right? It’s exclusive in the sense that at the same time, the same log of wood cannot be used for both building a house and a boat. We have to decide on what to do with this resource.
And thus, naturally, with these scarce resources, where there is a potential conflict of who can control and use and own these goods, there is a question of resource allocation. And interestingly, in the realm of non-scarcity, which is that other binary manifestation, we see, for example, explained in ideas. Ideas are not exclusive, and they are not limited in supply.
Meaning the words that I speak right now to you, the information that I’m sharing right now with you, at the same time that I’m speaking it, where you are accumulating it, I still retain that information. The information does not degrade for me. Rather, on the contrary, it flourishes and increases in prolificity.
So there’s not an exclusivity. I can tell an idea to you without sacrificing it myself. And there’s also no limitedness in supply.
I can speak these words only to you, Tarusha, or I can speak to your entire audience, right? The quality, the essence of the information does not change. It is not messed with. And therefore, information, speech, software, mathematics, all of these are non-scarce goods.
And praxeology does not apply for non-scarce goods, because humans only act so to allocate scarce resources. Humans do not act in a sense of allocating non-scarce resources. And this is a very, very important distinction.
And this is why the whole movement of free software is so important, because this is a pure realization of that concept of non-scarcity of information, and therefore a lack of necessity for property rights in the resource allocation of these goods. But here is where Bitcoin comes in with a major, major difference, an innovation that is so utterly mind-blowing in scope, and so fundamentally important and valuable that I don’t think that we’ve seen something to this extent ever before. And that is that Bitcoin emerges scarcity in a realm of non-scarce information.
And that is so beautiful. That is so beautiful, because again, the Bitcoin software code is free software, meaning anyone can copy the code, anyone can change the code, anyone can run the code without asking for permission, true to the ideals of non-scarcity. However, based on the rules that are applied, for example, private public key cryptography, which by the way, is also a phenomenal experiment here in this viewpoint of scarcity, non-scarcity, a private key, a password is just information.
It’s just a large number. And it is non-scarce. Therefore, there is no property rights in private keys, you do not own the private keys to your Bitcoin, because you do not own the number four, and you don’t own the number five or six.
It doesn’t matter if the number grows larger, you cannot own a number, you do not have exclusive ownership over it. However, with knowledge, not with ownership, but with knowledge of a private key, you can compute knowledge of a public key. And with this public key in the Bitcoin protocol, and this is one of the rules that is applied, you can define that a certain quantity of monetary units, namely Satoshis in the Bitcoin protocol, that this quantity of Satoshis can only be spent can only be moved on the ledger, if this transaction provides a signature that is valid to that public key.
Meaning, whoever has knowledge of the private key, has the right, the exclusive right to move that UTXO to transfer ownership over that coin to a new script. And this is so beautiful, because for any UTXO for any unspent transaction output that is locked up by a Bitcoin script, it is exclusive, meaning it is either the public key of Alice, or the public key of Bob. And when Alice initially defines her own public key in that script, then there’s no way that anyone else, other than he who has the knowledge of the private key, can spend this.
So we emerge in exclusivity over who can own Bitcoin. And this is where the entire aspect of praxeology, the entire monument of Austrian theory, this entire fundamental principle of property rights, comes into cyberspace for the very first time in humankind. Wow, that’s such a fascinating way to look at it, you know, I think I’ve never really heard anybody talk about these two in tandem, even though they’re so correlated, you would think that it’d be more obvious that more people would be talking about it.
But because of your unique experience and background, I think the way you’ve kind of drawn it out is very, very fascinating. So, you know, can you tell me a little about Wasabi Wallet and, you know, your work currently? Yes. So, as I said previously, Wasabi Wallet is free software, meaning to tie back to the earlier conversation, it is non-scarce, nobody owns the code.
The code is written by dedicated individuals, but they choose to share this code with the general public, to whoever wants to use it, to read it, to edit it, to run it, whatever. And the core functionality of the software is to be a Bitcoin wallet. And there are several things that are very important for a Bitcoin wallet.
Firstly, to generate the secrets, to generate the private and public keys, then to sign signatures and do all of this cryptographic magic, as well as, you know, to query the current state of the Bitcoin network to find out how much money is locked up on each of these public keys of the user in his wallet. And these are the fundamental aspects that a Bitcoin wallet provides. And notably, it is a non-custodial wallet, meaning that the actual user is the only one who has knowledge of the private keys.
There is no other trusted third party who also knows the secret. So, again, we defend that exclusivity of knowledge of the private key. And further, it is a wallet that focuses on privacy first and foremost.
So, with every single design decision in the software process, we took the privacy above anything else. And that led us to build a very fundamentally sound wallet that, for example, never leaks your extended public key or any public key, for that matter, any Bitcoin address to any trusted third party. This all stays always encrypted on your own computer and never shared with anyone else.
Or there is Tor, the onion routing anonymity is implemented by default and is used to a heavy extent with multiple Tor identities running in parallel, being disconnected and reconnected all the time for every unique action. So, to separate the IP address of the actual user from reaching the Bitcoin network in its entirety, which is great. There are very advanced user features like, for example, coin control.
So, you actually see what the specific coins are that you have and what scripts lock them up and how much satoshis are locked up in them. And you can select which of these specific coins you want to actually spend, which is very important, specifically in the sense of privacy. In such a public network as the Bitcoin time chain is, you need to be careful and make calculated decisions based on the metadata that you have that an outside observer does not have.
So, this includes, for example, labeling receiving addresses with whom you told about that receiving address that it is yours. And thus, you have an accurate state of every coin in the wallet of who actually knows that this specific coin is yours. And there are many, many more nuances to Wasabi.
And I encourage everyone to read the Wasabi documentation at docs.wasabiwallet.io and download the wallet, of course, and try it out, because it really is the very sound project that has a great ethos as its foundation, I would say. This is actually sounding really brilliant, Jidong, because this is something that I’ve heard people talk about casually, about how you talked about the privacy aspect of it is taken care of. And what really fascinates me is that you are using Tor as well.
And you’ve made it into a part of your project. And I think that that integration in itself makes the entire project with very sound ethos. And I would, you know, would be trying this probably as soon as we are done with recording this particular podcast.
So kudos on this project. So when did you start with it? And when was this launched? So I personally discovered the wallet in a very early stage back when it still had the Working Titan hidden wallet in early to middle 2017. Because Adam Fiskor, the lead developer and founder of the project, he was talking on a podcast amongst some friends of mine about the project constantly, and how the development project is going and his future vision for the project.
And I absolutely fell in love with it, because I realized it was so true to freedom loving first principles, that I really saw great potential. So I downloaded that very early version. And I instantly found bugs in it.
Mainly, the Tor connection was broken. So that didn’t work. And one very, very bad thing was happening.
It was in white mode. There was a white background, black text. And that’s just like, that’s completely unreasonable.
My eyes start bleeding. As soon as I look at that, it’s like torture, it’s pain. So I provided one of my first feature requests to please make it dark mode with a black background and white text.
Which funnily enough, the very first version of Wasabi Wallet after a rebranding and re-architecture design was in dark mode. So those were the first, and the Tor bug was fixed too. So my first feature request and bug report were implemented.
And ever since then, I’m a part of the project and both using and contributing to it quite a lot. I realized that specifically with the coin join mechanism that is used in Wasabi, and that is one of the prime features of it, that gives this high privacy guarantee that the wallet does. It basically disassociates the link between your coins.
So all of a sudden, it becomes very difficult to know which of the coins are actually yours. And how many bitcoins do you have in total? And where do you spend them? So this is what we defend against at Wasabi with coin joins. But it is a network effect.
So for example, in the early days, we had maybe three users joining once a day. It was five users once a day. So it was very, very slow initially.
And that gives you very little privacy because the size of the crowd, the quantity of people that you hide in, is very little. And thus, I realized that we ought to improve the education and to increase the confidence of potential users so that these guys can use the software to its fullest extent, and therefore also utilize the coin join feature. And therefore, as more and more people join, increase the privacy of everyone in the project, which I think is very important.
And so far, I would say it really has worked tremendously. After doing several hundreds of videos and writing many, many, many pages of documentation at wasabiwallet.io, we are reaching a state where we have constantly 100 active users online all the time, doing a coin join at least once every hour, which is phenomenal. So the quantity of users and the amount of bitcoin that we have successfully privatized with this coin join technique is really going through the roof.
I see very, very healthy growth and phenomenal potential for the project still. Wow, okay. Yeah, I think it’s a very fascinating project and it’s very, very relevant to our times.
So talking about relevance, what is your outlook currently on the market right now? There is a lot of noise around DeFi. What are your thoughts about it? You know, I’m an entrepreneur first and foremost, and therefore the most important question that I continuously ask myself every single moment, where should I focus my time on? What is the most important part that I can do right now? Where should I focus my attention, my capital, and my work so to create something delightful, something utmost beautiful? And to be quite frank, I don’t have any time to waste. We are living in a tragic state of tyranny, and we ought to do the best that we can to end this as soon as possible and discover a more suitable and peaceful and prosperous approach, namely freedom.
And therefore, and I’ve asked myself the question on what is that project that is worthy of my time and my attention. And after rigorous review, again and again, I come back to the Bitcoin protocol, because the simple fact of having scarcity in cyberspace and utilizing that to define unfuckwithable property rights contracts that are censorship resistant, that are completely anonymous. This is such a monumentally important work that I simply cannot waste any time on anything else, including lots of stuff that is going on in the blockchain industry.
Because I do think that although there might be interesting problems that voluntary and peaceful individuals are working on, that there’s inherently nothing wrong with this. It is just that for me personally, I see the manifestation of sound money, the most important task that I can provide to humanity right now. And therefore, this is what I focus my attention on exclusively.
So I don’t care about the fiat shitcoin exchange rate of Bitcoin or about other shitcoins that are in the market. I focus very much on researching Bitcoin development and furthering that general process of defending individual property rights with Bitcoin in general, and with privacy on top of Bitcoin specifically. Wow, okay.
Yeah, okay. That’s quite a clear outlook to have on the market. But I think it’s good, you know, razor sharp approach kind of like would, you know, help you in making that dent in what you want to do in terms of kind of overthrowing the traditional monetary system, if I understand correctly.
Your Twitter bio says something really interesting that, you know, you’re creating Bitcoin weapons, building Bitcoin weapons. So would you like to elaborate a little on that? Yes. So you mentioned overthrowing the fiat empire.
And although that might be a compelling goal, I don’t think that it is a suitable strategy. It involves a lot of risk, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of destroyed capital that I would personally like to avoid. So the strategy that recently I have been pursuing more is a strategy of opting out, of taking individual action and individual responsibility by not just talking about it, but actually doing it.
Again, the fiat empire is evil to the core. The amount of theft that is going on and the amount of misery and destruction that is created is absolute, is incredible. So for me personally, just the fact of holding fiat currency is partaking and acknowledging and supporting the monumental theft that is occurring currently by these gangsters.
So therefore, I decided very early to reduce the quantity of shit coins, mainly fiat currencies, that I hold and instead holding gold and Bitcoin and other sound, peaceful, involuntary assets, while no longer holding fiat at all. And further quitting my bank account. I did not have a bank account for the vast majority of my life.
I was an entrepreneur earning cash from very early on, though during my bachelor’s degree study, while I was working at Deutsche Bank, I was somewhat forced to have a bank account, otherwise they could not pay me the salary. So I did have for three years that bank account, but I quit it again as soon as reasonable and possible, actually, because any second that I use these tools and these currencies is a second that I actively contribute to stealing from other people whom I don’t know, whom I don’t want to harm. And this was absolutely devastating for me and something that very strongly I made my priority to defend against.
And this is why I reduced the quantity of shit coins I hold. This is why I reduced the amount of seconds that I even think about the bureaucrats and politicians and the crony central bankers and the shit that they do on an ongoing basis, because these are bastards not worth my time. And instead, I want to focus my time on building these Bitcoin weapons, on building tools that individuals can use to claim and to defend their property rights against any attacker, so that no government, no state, no mafia, no robber, no thief, no looter can never take what is rightfully theirs.
So this is where Bitcoin comes in. This is where privacy tools on Bitcoin comes in. This is where secure key generation and management comes in.
And of course, secure exchange of goods and services for Bitcoin. So this is what I mean with building Bitcoin weapons. It is building the tools that empower and enable individuals to defend themselves against the most tyrannical attacks that we are currently seeing in this fascist nightmare that is Europe and America and most other countries.
Yeah, okay. You know, you’re so passionate about this. It absolutely made me smile because I think I align with a lot of what you say.
And but you know, what you’re saying is so radical, that, you know, I think people feel that it’s almost impossible to perhaps imbibe these notions into their everyday life. But you know, as you said, it in a very correct and succinct fashion, it can be done, you know, you have to take individual responsibility to actively not be a part of this system, and keep continuously striving towards creating solutions, which are more user facing for people to become a part of this, you know, alternative, for lack of a better word, which would perhaps help them secure a better future, not just financially, but otherwise as well. Yes, yes, I see.
And I very much agree. You know, as you said, this is a very radical view. And I agree, because it is a fundamental view.
Again, I apply first principles, and I am logically consistent above these. And this is why it’s so important. I constantly articulate and check my first principles.
And currently, these are individuality. So there are individuals, there are no collectives, there are only individuals, there are individual humans who act, who do things, who feel, who think, who love. And this is the nucleus that I treasure utmost, right? And everything that I build on top of it is logically in alignment with this.
Theft of individual property is wrong. And I’m radical and extreme and absolute in this. I do not care who you are, if you steal from someone, if you rape someone’s child, if you murder someone’s wife.
These are acts that cannot be ignored and forgiven. These are actions where karma is built up and where consequences inevitably and always follow. And even silent consent and silent obedience to tyrants and to fascist dictators, as most bureaucrats are in current days, is an active accumulation of negative karma of being part in causing that harm.
And this is why it is so important to be extreme, and to be radical, and to be based on solid and sound first principles, and to continuously and rigorously check if these are actually true. Because if not, then even an innocent action as demanding to be paid in fiat and saving fiat and holding fiat is in fact an aggression against other peaceful individuals. And there are always consequences to such actions.
And their consequences will come whether or not these actions were done in a way that all the consequences were known and the individual was conscious about all of these consequences. It does not matter. Stealing from others, even when with good intention, is wrong.
And this is why it is very appalling to see that fiat tyranny, because it subverts otherwise peaceful individuals to become aggressors. And this is why it is so fundamentally evil. Yeah, and we are so passionate about this.
And this is something that I think, you know, we feel very passionately about as well. That’s why, you know, we are currently working on AutoPocket, and we have actually launched a DeFi protocol on top of it. I will talk about that later with you, perhaps offline.
I’ve sent you a link on chat. You can perhaps check it out. I would like to know your thoughts about, you know, certain, you know, if there are any thought leaders or books that you would like to recommend to our listeners.
Oh, absolutely. So there are several great works. I will start with Monumental Treatises.
A treatise is something that unfortunately died in the tradition of academic thought. It is a book that’s usually a long book that starts on first principles and elaborates a whole science on top. And a couple of these great treatises is from Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, from Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy and State with Power and Markets, from Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Capitalism and Socialism, or Democracy, The God That Failed.
These I would classify as must-reads for anyone who is interested in refining his understanding of what individuality is, of what action ought to be, or of what action is, and what a good entrepreneur ought to do. So I think this is very, very valuable information for anyone who is productive and who is doing business and who is trying to earn more money. This is a phenomenal tool to understand the nuances of this.
Maybe specifically to Monetary Theory. What has government done to our money is a very short pamphlet by Murray Rothbard that anyone can read in a day to understand the extent to the evil of the fascist empire. Further, we have Ethics of Money Production by Jörg Guido Hülsmann, which is probably in my top three most recommended books on economics ever, and it’s a very tough competition to be frank.
Ethics of Money Production explains precisely what I’ve been talking about, why fiat currency is so fundamentally evil, and why even holding fiat currency is theft. It’s a phenomenal book, very much worth reading. Again, it will save you a bunch of karma.
Specifically in the Bitcoin sense, I would say Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos is a great way to get more to the technicals. Eric Voskuhl, maintainer of the Libitcoin full node implementation, has on his GitHub of the Libitcoin a wiki entry of the cryptonomicons, and he is publishing a printed version of this treatise. It’s phenomenal.
It explains the nuances of Bitcoin with praxeological rigor and with a very sound logical approach. And Eric, by the way, is one of the heroes in the Bitcoin space. He is one of the very few, if not the only one, who I would name, who has mastered, and I mean mastered, both the economics and the praxeology, as well as the technical nuances of Bitcoin.
And both of this together is such an important skill. He’s such a rock star developer and does incredible magic in cyberspace, but he also has such a fundamental understanding and has helped me tremendously to articulate my understanding of Bitcoin and praxeology. And he has been a great peer reviewer of my academic works too, so I thank him for that very much.
But I think these are some great resources that are worth checking out and accumulating and trying to understand. This is absolutely amazing. You know, you’ve actually added to my dating list.
So I have only actually read Mastering Bitcoin. All of these I have actually never really gone through, and now I’m going to be adding them on Amazon or, you know, perhaps buy them on Kindle right after this. Thank you so much.
This is really very valuable. So now I would like to come down to my last question. And this is a question that I ask everybody.
How would you suggest, considering you feel so radically about this, how would you suggest that people who are looking from the outside and peering into this world to start living on blockchain? Don’t trust and verify. Approach this from an individualistic mindset. Have the assumption that everyone is a scammer and that everyone tries to get your Bitcoin.
And try to defend yourself against all types of theft, all types of unjust creation of property. I think this is, in general, very good advice, and it is also very true in the Bitcoin space. I mean, just look back to 2017, and the hype and the scams were at an extraordinary amount.
And the quantity of Bitcoin that honest newcomers to the economy have lost is staggering. And again, every Satoshi that you lose is precious because it is quite valuable sound money. So this is first.
So invest in your education and further your understanding of why these tools are important, why we actually built these tools, and why there are individuals using them. Understand the why. Why is it that we want to defend ourselves? And against whom are we trying to defend ourselves? This is very important to know.
And then, of course, study the tools that you use yourself, so that you reach a comfortable degree of utilizing them and of applying them, so that you do not shoot yourself in the foot and make stupid mistakes that cause you to lose your money or to lose your privacy. Both of this is quite important. And in general, consider respecting your privacy.
Privacy is the aspect of selectively revealing yourself to the world, meaning not telling everything to everyone, but choosing whom to talk to and choosing what to reveal to whom. This is privacy. Yes.
And especially in an area where there is a booming, upcoming, prosperous economy, where there is a lot of potential wealth to be created by heroic entrepreneurs, there will always be attackers who are trying to loot the wealth that we have produced. And therefore, there is always a necessity of defense. And privacy is a phenomenal tool of defense, because it is very cheap, and it is very effective, and it creates a huge asymmetry between defender and attacker.
If nobody knows that you own a thousand Bitcoin, then nobody will come to try to hit you with a $5 wrench. However, if you are on Twitter blasting about your Lambo and your mansions and your thousands of Bitcoin, then pretty soon you’re going to have the mafia at the door trying to get some of that. So be cautious.
And again, Bitcoin is a tool of defense. And this is what it is, in my opinion, made for. And therefore, approaching it with that kind of mindset, in general, is very valuable to find interesting avenues down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
And it for sure is a fun and something that I am absolutely passionate about, and something where I find fulfillment in, something where I make a meaningful impact, and of course, something where I earn money. And that concept of having this holistic approach of something is the joy of life, that is the reason of life, that is the ikigai that is to be pursued to really find fulfillment, which as far as I can say on my path so far, I am I’m very, very satisfied. Well, that’s, that’s wonderful, you know, and I think, I again, I have heard a lot of things today that I’ve never heard before.
And you know, this this kind of sums it up privacy is, you know, such a good defense. Bitcoin is is a defense. And I think that kind of sums up the entire interview that we’ve had.
And I’m so grateful that I actually took up, you know, time and, you know, we could do this. Because this has been very enlightening, I think very insightful. Do you have any last thoughts before we wrap this up, Max? Well, first of all, thank you again for the invite.
I’m happy that we could arrange this on such a short notice, too. That was great. So yes, I very much would again encourage all of you to take it serious.
This is a monumental opportunity. We have the unacquitable weapon that we can use in self-defense. And so that it is very, very, very, very difficult for tyrants to steal.
And when tyrants no longer steal, they no longer have capital, because per their mission, a bureaucrat does not produce anything, it only destroys and consumes. There’s nothing else that politicians do. And as soon as we deny them that opportunity to steal, they die.
The parasite withers away and dies off. So for me, personally, I see sound money and censorship resistant individual private property, the unacquitable weapon of defense, that Bitcoin is the most important foundational fix to the most rudimental problems that we currently have on a global scale. So this is, and this is why I this is what I said earlier.
This is why I see Bitcoin as the single most important task that I personally can focus my time and attention on. Because I have come to understand that yes, Bitcoin is this important. It is such a monumentally important work that I take so much pride in doing and that it fulfills me so much in doing.
So this is a general encouragement for individuals to become active, to defend themselves, and to no longer take the slavery that they are living under today. And Bitcoin is a phenomenal way of doing precisely this. And contributing to Bitcoin is not writing code.
That is a very valuable contribution too, but it is not the only thing that you can do. I don’t write code. I have barely written any line of code at all.
Yet still, I support and contribute to free software projects specifically in Bitcoin in many ways. That can be education, like Tarusha is doing right now with this podcast. This can be helping users directly with onboarding them, with explaining some stuff.
I was showing them how to download the right tools. And much, much, much, much more is in this concept of collaborating to free software projects than only writing code. So there is literally anyone can contribute and can make a meaningful impact, even though it might be a small or a minute, as little as just fixing one single typo in a documentation or in a software.
That is already extremely valuable and meaningful. So again, Tarusha, thanks for the invite and the great conversation. Thank you so much.
It was absolutely great speaking to you. Thank you.