Sir Gene Speaks

0040 Sir Gene Speaks Special - Interview Aric the Shill

April 30, 2021 Gene Naftulyev Season 1 Episode 40
Sir Gene Speaks
0040 Sir Gene Speaks Special - Interview Aric the Shill
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Gene:

Now I've got the pleasure of speaking with Aric. Who's the guy behind the guy for both no agenda. And podcasting 2.0 with the podcast index. How are you today, Aric?

Aric:

I'm good. Gene, how are you?

Gene:

Pretty good. I'm pretty good. I think a lot of people have heard of you. But have not seen you except for the people that made it to a meetup so I think there's probably a lot of question marks as to who is this Aric Guy that people refer to. So who are

Aric:

yeah, who am I? Wow. How do I answer that? Related

Gene:

foot four,

Aric:

yeah, six, four both wide and tall. And

Gene:

six, 180pounds, six back.

Aric:

Yeah, if I cut off a couple eggs, that'd be one 80. Let's see. Yeah. W who am I? I'm the well for no agenda. I'm the back office. I do the accounting and the keeping them out of jail and generally annoying. Or irritating John and Adam at different times with pesky questions and generally being a buzz killing N I guess Adam appreciates that. And so he wanted me to come help out with the podcast index to do the same thing, to piss him off and generally be a buzzkill about, laws and bookkeeping. And so I spend most of my time backing up Adam and Dave, trying to figure out a way to bridge what they want to do with the current tax code gap principles.

Gene:

so how fun has it been learning? The current legislation that's different than every single state's about a cryptocurrency.

Aric:

It's not really that diff C it's see, I'm not really looking at as current legislation. I'm looking at it as going forward. I'm looking I'm, I've reading, office of the comptroller releases. I'm reading sec stuff, I'm reading IRS rules and rulings to try to get in their head on what they're thinking, because that's what will define legislation in the next few years. Now, in the meantime, cryptocurrency, it doesn't matter what the real LA the state legislation is so much. It's you know, the they're treating it as an asset. So it's like stock it's like having Ford stock only is Ford stock. You can buy heroin. And it, so you still have it. You still have co-mingling rules. You still have. You still have to calculate a cost basis and comply with capital gains and you still have to have record keeping regardless. So all these rules still apply. It's just, Bitcoin is particularly problematic and making in kind of meeting those two, getting those two ends to meet. And that's been the well that's been where I lose sleep and trying to figure out solutions to these problems

Gene:

Yeah. And by doing that, you're freeing up the creativity that Adam's going to bring to the table. And and then force they've to actually implement

Aric:

And what it is, it's it's working one problem at a time and it's working with, the guys at lightning labs. So I'm going to send them a. Long list of questions and, some relatively dumb on purpose to see what we can implement air and, right now we've got this, obviously that you've got these two sides in the Bitcoin community and, related to the civil war between custodial and non-custodial service providers. And,

Gene:

Yeah. I was going to say, explain what you mean by two sides. And don't say obviously, because it's not going to be obvious for a lot of them.

Aric:

did I say obviously no, it, as in what I was thinking was that there's this, the general Bitcoin immunity is really attached to the anonymity and They think that the record keeping is the closest we can get, or the closest that you should expect is the public ledger. And then that's common between these two sides. And there's these two factions forming between the folks who think that services, who are providing custodial wallets, meaning they hold your wallet for you and you just have access to it. They have a PO you have a PO box in their location and you get to access it when you want, but you don't own it. And then there's the non or the noncustodial wallet, meaning that you own the wallet or their way around anyway. The point is that you've got these two sides here. There's noncustodial wallet, service providers, who they think are basically creating central hubs, holding these wallets for everybody else. And we're just replacing banks with another. With those people are just going to replace banks and control large swaths of Bitcoin holders funds and have control over them. And it's a single point of failure versus a custodial wallet where you have the wallet and you control it and you, there is no central, there's no one between you and the blockchain effectively. And

Gene:

it is a trade-off between convenience and security. As most things tend to be

Aric:

I think it's more than that because there's, it's more technical, it's more complex, isn't it? It's more fraught with, or potential for fraud and error and losing money. If you have a custodial wallet. It just, I think that, yes, there's these pros and cons, but so the point is that. The overall Bitcoin community has this. They're very attached to the anonymity and obviously you have a spectrum of people who are all for making it more anonymous and more opaque for anyone for prying eyes. So you have private channels, you have all this other stuff going on, all of this flies directly against the concept of any sort of record keeping. And it makes it extremely difficult to do not only verification, but from the outside, but accounting, when you have, let's just say a varying degree of level of sophistication and technical abilities. And so it's just, so what I'm, what I, my concern is I'm trying to figure out how to avoid. lot of people paying huge tax bills because the IRS is going to do something, they've got a 10 year window to come back at you so they can go 10 years back and request records. And if you can't produce them and you can't comply with record keeping, you can't demonstrate any of this information, they're just going to slap you with a huge, fine. So that's what I see coming, because I do understand, I've worked with a lot of IRS auditors. I've worked with lots of CPAs. It's just professional background is working with these guys. So I understand how these guys think and, and really getting back into Bitcoin and the community that is, has grown since I left, cause I played with it. Oh, geez, nine, 10, 11, 2011 ish, 2010 where I have,

Gene:

was mining.

Aric:

yeah I came to the party and the Bitcoin party at the time was pizza and a keg, and now it's hookers and blows in a penthouse and it's a little bit of a different party.

Gene:

Yeah, it's stashing the dead hooker party is what it is.

Aric:

It's definitely different. And yeah so anyway, so that's what I mean, try and do it. And I know what Adam's mindset is and everything, and he's, long Bitcoin and it's fine. And I'm just trying to figure how to just comply with the laws that are here because there will be. When you've got whatever administration decides to catch up or we, the, I don't know, it's just, there's going to be right now. It's this open field, but there's gonna be this kind of reckoning, just like there was a reckoning for the pot growing industry. Those are, these different industries that explode. So anyway

Gene:

let me take the opportunity to ask you some devil's advocate questions then. Because I think both Dave and very much Adam paint a very bright rosy future as any entrepreneurs should. But let's talk about some of the practical aspects here. One of the things that I've run across in setting up my own node and building my own Bitcoin server Bitcoin node as well as running enlightening though, is the fees that are part of every little step along the way. And that is something that most people really aren't prepared for. And they keep hearing how, especially the lightening, that work is a great cheap, fast, minimal cost way to move money. And my real world example is after buying$100 of Bitcoin for this test, for this project of setting up my own nodes. At the end of the day, I have a node with$45 in that equivalent value. So that's a fairly steep cost to set up. Now granted it's more than wallet, but it's something that is a little bit more like you were saying custodial versus non-custodial. So this would be the non-custodial way to look at it. So it's all sitting on my stuff I'm fully in control of it. You're not trusting somebody else, but the fees are pretty high. Is that been something you've exceeded and in your interactions here as well?

Aric:

Yes. It's been well, lightening has been a learning curve. I'm still struggling with, again I'm trying to onboard and do this stuff and doing stuff that's really pushing the boundaries of the PR of the projects, lightening project and the rest of it, and trying to, like setting up specific nodes that are just related to for accounting purposes and yeah. So yeah the lightening that not lightening fees, but just the feeds in general. I think that's a matter of just being the F being such an emerging thing. I think it'll stabilize. And once there's more people in the market and there's more that they will not only stabilized, but then the free market will kick in. And I see the fees dropping. I think right now there's money to be made because there's so many people getting into it and they don't know, they don't know how to shop around it. Hasn't it hasn't matured nearly enough. We're, we are

Gene:

12 years in here. And I think the fees have definitely gone up. Compared to what they were 10 years ago, the fees are absolutely higher, but it is for a good reason, which is the demand has just skyrocketed. And so that there's a lot more transactions going through. And to be fair, when a credit card transaction happens, there are also a multitude of fees page to each participant in the chain, and there's at least three and possibly five between your money and the vendor. You're spending it with getting their money and everybody's getting their piece. But those pieces combined together typically come up to somewhere between one and a half and 5% a, let's say an average of two and a half, maybe 3%. Depending on which card you're using and the fancier, the credit card, the more fees are charged for the transaction in case people aren't aware of that. So your platinum Amex card is literally the card everybody hates because they're going to have to pay the highest fee to process transactions going through your card. And I remember I was actually a Dick one one time somebody wants to use that. I said, Nope I'll let you use an Amex, a regular green card, but I won't let you use the platinum one. It's like new, it's it, I don't need to be paying for you to get fricking points.

Aric:

It's also, but also the credit card industry is now 40 years in.

Gene:

Yeah.

Aric:

We're, we're right.

Gene:

And that'd be asleep with this stuff. The we're not dealing with banks. Processing this and charging fees. We're dealing with literally individuals or small businesses that have set up nodes and then set their own fees. And there's so much traffic and demand that it is still going through all of these. And I think a big fear from what I've been seeing across the board from people that are big on Bitcoin is that the big banks will come in and become 300 pound gorillas because they have the infrastructure already. What they haven't done is committed to it. And if a bank decides take PayPal, they're already letting you spend Bitcoin. They're not letting you really use Bitcoin freely to just send to people and pay for things that are, not traditional stores going through the credit card company. But if they did, they would become an instant, biggest player on the network.

Aric:

Which I think, you're going to get your mixed bag where you're going to get the big players come in and they're going to undercut everybody with a standardized rate and that'll lower the fees. But your trade-off is that, you've got these big players, which are already in there. They're positioning to be the gatekeepers for the Fiat to Bitcoin transfer when this thing goes mainstream, it isn't mainstream now. It's really not. When, when you can, you'll swipe a visa card, except that it will be attached to your Bitcoin wallet and there'll be a non-custodial on some bank banker, some, who knows. I can see where this is going. It, the it's all digital, so it doesn't really matter anymore what the medium is. So I just don't.

Gene:

well, somebody on the agenda, social made a comment. I think a reply to one of my posts and said, when people are going to realize is Bitcoin is just a number in the computer and there's, it could be gone tomorrow. And I replied back with so's your bank account. That's just the number in the computer.

Aric:

There's always going to be the pessimists.

Gene:

No, I'm just, I'm a realist. It is a number money is very much a fictional thing that we all choose to accept. It's it's a shared fiction.

Aric:

it's a common belief system. Yeah. Or a common value system. Let's put that.

Gene:

yeah, I like the shared fiction description better, but so let me ask you another then devil's advocate question here then. If the process or the system of having a payment address as part of an RSS feed is in there, then why even bother with all the complexity of Bitcoin. Why not just have podcasting apps track, how many minutes you're listened to, and then make a, send the payment to your PayPal account or to your Stripe account or to whatever other, a us currency account or local currency account rather than

Aric:

Because of the transaction fees that you already mentioned,

Gene:

those are lower. That's, the irony is they're actually lower on the normal network than they are in Bitcoin.

Aric:

I think from the I think from the fractional aspect of it to you, it's

Gene:

one sense transactions than Bitcoin is certainly lightning is theoretically cheaper. It turns out to have other issues when you're using those amounts. But I've had this conversation with a few of the developers is there's no reason there's no prescription. That's part of the standard. It says you actually have to pay every minute. You could simply track the number of minutes and do a payment once a day or once an hour, or anytime the

Aric:

but you're talking,

Gene:

the app.

Aric:

The point is to move away from the controlled and honestly centralized networks. Bitcoins. Yeah. Anybody can set up a node, you could set up a private note and that's the point is that the point is to move the network away from this centralized controlled cancelable system, besides just the financial aspect.

Gene:

And that's what I was curious about is as, is it an issue of really creating a network that is not cancelable or at least less cancelable everything's eventually cancelable? Or is it an issue of convenience? Because I think that the the comedians aspects, are you going to have some debate on that, but the cancel ability, I think you're exactly right on is that. PayPal is very convenient until PayPal doesn't want to accept your money because you're selling.

Aric:

We can't, you can't do anything crypto related with Stripe Stripe has it in their terms of service, you cannot do anything at all with crypto. And so the point is yeah, besides just the cancelable and this, that, the other thing it's that is the point. So you have the combination of the fractional dosing aspect that you can do with a podcast. I think. And then to the not centralized, not going through the typical Fiat system. Yes. It can be converted back and forth and it doesn't really matter. We could do it in grains of salted it, yes. But Bitcoin right now is more convenient and an alternate to the field system. I think the convenience factor Bitcoin will mature as it matures and more players get into it. There is a lot of projects and a lot of code to basically just being a fly on the wall, through the telegram groups and everything with cast index, there are four or five wickedly, smart people working on the reporting aspect. There are, there are app developers. There's suddenly movement in, in, in podcast apps and the stuff that breeze and pod friend and the other thing, they are finally after 20 years, These podcast players are attractive and simple and reliable. And now they're integrating the microdosing and value for value system, which is, which I think is key. Me too. I think making these podcasts viable and not relying on the, again, centralized advertising revenue model through, what coupon codes and Google

Gene:

yeah. Speaking of let's talk about our sponsor, which is the super VPN company that will keep you safe. No, I'm just kidding, obviously. It is ironic how many VPN ads are out there right now? That is nuts.

Aric:

It was, affiliate programs are, there's just there, everybody's trying to make a buck and trying to figure out a way to make the math work. Whatever, it's just, this is another alternative to it. And that's the other thing it's like, people are making money, doing ads and doing interstitials and doing this and the pay-to-play stuff and that's fine. And they, I think that, the index has the, in the value for value system has the ability to overlay on top of that. So it's it's you can keep doing whatever you're doing to make money and make the math work. This is not a replacement. We're not saying tell your advertisers to go screw themselves. And I think part of the maturity is there will be alternative ways to apply this model. And I think Adam and Dave talked about it on their last, the podcast 2.0 Friday, this, this thing of, reversing it and making this work for advertisers as well. Because right now advertisers just have to take your word for it. It's all been based on, like newspaper Cirque rates or total made up numbers. There and Ron math and, CPM and the rest of it, I think are, I think they need some revamping. And I think the value for value system and podcast index and the stuff that the reporting is coming along, and these other things that are all coming along as this thing, matures that will open up the doors for a whole new, Multi, multi streams of income for creators. So, so

Gene:

12 years ago, Adam told me I could quit my day job. So I'm, I'm excited maybe next year.

Aric:

yeah, we'll see. There's definitely, the needle has moved a lot

Gene:

it has. And I think it's important to keep in mind that there are plenty of other reasons to have this type of streaming payment system, whether it uses a lightning network, whether it uses some other network, whether it's even Bitcoin at all, or whether it's just standard local Fiat currency, what a does. And I've seen this firsthand and it's really cool is seeing a star stream of transactions happening in real time. That is driven by somebody listening to your podcast in real time. And having the meter turned on, even if those amounts are tiny, What it does is it helps to encourage the creator, the podcast, or to keep going and to keep making products, because there's a direct line to the consumer of the product. It's a direct line

Aric:

the relationship?

Gene:

which you don't

Aric:

a

Gene:

with advertising because in advertising, the listener is the product.

Aric:

There's that, but I think people are in general they're looking for a relationship they're looking for that connection because a they're humans and B when they get their information or their entertainment, they want to feel connected. And I think that's that that that I, I don't want to call it a belief, but that drive is one of the reasons why celebrity endorsements work or when celebrities tell you who to vote for it's because you have a connection to them, you identify with them, you like them. You're attracted to them, whatever it is. You, there's some sort of this implied trust that's built, but when it comes to podcasts or media or any of the rest of it, that's, that's part of the reason news is such a big deal, which is why people are so defensive or hateful of media outlets because they don't trust them. They don't, this it's becomes a personal thing. And with the value for value, it's yeah, you can build a relationship with your audience. You have, you can have a direct, it's a vote of confidence because they're putting their money where their mouth is.

Gene:

no that's exactly it. Because having somebody support you financially is a demonstration, a very strong demonstration to you as a creator that what you're doing is getting approval. And it's beyond just a thumbs up or a smiley face it's we want you to keep going and we're going to help to make sure that you can keep going by providing you financial support. So anything that makes that easier obviously is an awesome thing. And having those streaming payments coming across works in exactly the same way, even though each payment is like a penny as any other means of financial support, of much larger amounts,

Aric:

And then multiply it out. I can, there's always been this internal discussion with John and I, because we've always debated what the, what's the percentage of listeners to donors, to supporters.

Gene:

heard 1% by a lot of people, but I think that's just a guess.

Aric:

we can, I can back this up by Just with enough data and 12 years of talking to other podcasters and seeing their data and obviously seeing the no agenda data. I w I would guess the number, it would fluctuate between one and 5%.

Gene:

that high for non-gender. Huh?

Aric:

Yes. What's funny is, as it comes back to direct mailing rates, I think some podcasts may be getting 10% is direct mail response rates. Yeah. It's the same exact range. There's just this response rate for whatever reason, some shows, yeah. You may get, and again, it, the problem is that defining the audience is difficult. Defining how what's the audience size is difficult. In some ways it's easier with the value for my value to D to demonstrate the audience size. If we just take a standard, one and a half percent or up at say, it's 3%, you can extrapolate out how many listeners you have regardless of downloads. Downloads gives you a metric,

Gene:

careful at those extrapolations. Like Adam just didn't want to know gender social, which is absolutely wrong. Because the Alto, what he did is he took the donations coming well, streaming in through the sad streaming in, through the lightening network to the index and then said this represents 1% of all the donations coming through. So we can extrapolate from this 1%, how much money is actually being sent to pod-casters. And the problem with that is. It is not coming through at 1%. It is a determined by the size of the donation because the way that all the podcasting apps are set up right now that are doing this they are not doing fractional SATs. And so everybody's rounding up to one set. Once you get to blow one set, which means that if you have a 10 set stream and buy stream, I don't mean podcast stream. A stream of donation that's 10 cents. Yeah. Then the app will get between one and four sets, depending on which app it is, the index will get one set and then the path podcaster gets the remainder, which is five sets. So the podcast is actually only getting 50% of the donation at that point, because the. The everything else is being rounded up. So in those instances, which I have to say right now probably is more than half because the most used app right now is pod friend and pod print. Hard-coded 10 cents as a donation amount. And I told them this, when I interviewed him, I'm like, dude, you realize that you've pretty much, which forced the donation amounts to change percentages from what stated. So it's really best case. And that the best, worst, depending on who it is. But realistically what you're running at is an 80% to the podcast or 1% to your app. And 1% of the index sorry, 10% to the app and 10% of the index and 80% of the broadcaster app 10 cents, because you're not, you're always rounding up to one set. So it is. It is. Like this is not a bad thing. Somebody could just come out with an app and set the, set their share to be 10%. That's totally legit. Anybody can determine what percent of the donation they would like to take for themselves and give to somebody else. As long as they disclose that I have no problem with it, but when the amount that's disclosed at 1% and then the donation is set to 10 cents with the minimum of one set, then it's really not 1%, it's really 10%. And this is something that I think just needs to have more clarity around it. I think people on both the app developer side and on the consumer side on the user side needs to understand that the percentages that you read that you're being told like how is this divided? Who gets how much. That is only true on donations of 100 SATs and higher. If the donation is less than 100 SATs, then those numbers are no longer true. And I think that clarity at this point is just, non-existent like nobody that I've talked to realize this is happening.

Aric:

Yeah, I think that, I think the fee and splits there's a few things. The new podcast index website, we're putting that in. Dave put it in for, right now where you can see, the percentage splits in the value block.

Gene:

Yeah. But I'm saying is that's only true in donations of a hundred sets are higher because the smallest incremental unit on the split is one set.

Aric:

I don't know. I'd have to look into it cause I, it depends on if the. If the apps are taking from that or TA are adding to it. I

Gene:

I've done all the tests. I've tested all the apps. I've done it with my own note on both sides, sending from myself to myself. So I've got all the math and what we're seeing is a best case scenario at 10 sites on apps like pod friends, where he only takes while it's supposed to be 1%, but it's really 10% that at 10 SATs. So he gets one

Aric:

Everyone needs to, up to a hundred sites

Gene:

Podcasts are, that will be wonderful. I don't expect people to do that. I just want to make sure that people understand that if they start donating at 10 SATs, they're just shifting the support tire to the index and the app.

Aric:

it's this it's the same way with, yes. And there's the same people who donate through PayPal and they donate$3 and between the 30 cents and the three and a half percent that they take. And if they do it as an international transfer, the whole thing goes to PayPal, but they don't know that. And they don't care.

Gene:

I think they do because John bitches about it, every time it comes up on the show, it's eh, people sending in$2 donations, they realize we're not getting any of that. It's all going to PayPal. But it's a good point. And I don't think it's a point that needs to be spent. But the more important thing is because that is the way the math works. You cannot extrapolate from how many donations the index gets to. What is the total amount being donated out there because the index can get anywhere from one to 10%, depending on the size of the donation. So worst case scenario, then you do the math and you use the index as 10%, not 1% to determine where that.

Aric:

I, I, but my extrapolation is related to listener size to audience. Not related to the, yes, right now. It's there's

Gene:

Oh man, they're

Aric:

This

Gene:

saying that you have to be careful by using the term extrapolate because you have to show your math. When you say extrapolate and explain on why this is still accurate, because it's very easy to fall in the same trap that most regular media falls into. And that is make a blind extrapolation with no basis.

Aric:

No, it's not. But see, this is just that this is the current status of the reporting and the data that's coming in and we're working out, the, and this is, this is internal, we're trying to, because it's, it, it kinda ties into stuff that I'm doing, because I want to, I want to give podcasters the tools for reporting so they can know what they're listening and even what shows were popular, like what they made their most shows from an and this, and there's, it's like we're working out. Lightening network as a baby podcast index is a baby. It's all crawling and goofing around and just, groping in the dark. And we're taking the day that we have to extrapolate out, what. The sizes and just as a high watermark, not so much a documenting or, financial report. And so it's, I don't see it as basically I don't want to get too critical with it. Cause I think everybody realizes that it comes with, you have to take it with a grain of salt and, but they don't.

Gene:

That's the thing I always like to just keep repeating is this is all beta stuff, guys

Aric:

Beta, I think is

Gene:

generous,

Aric:

because we're breaking stuff. It's still a very small sample size. This is not, there's, there's different players with different agendas talking about the, what that lightening can handle this the network that, you know, or can't handle the volume of traffic that the network could generate, but their numbers are flawed. It's a lot of goofy math. Related to creators and podcasters, that's yeah, you want to know what your audience size is with the value for value. I think it, it gives a better, closer to the Mark number by taking value for value and accepting support from your listeners. And then knowing that, that's 3% of your audience. If you pick 1%, your audience is using huge. If you pick is 10% of your audience is small, you can play, you can decide what's best. I'm saying that just to go with the number, say 2% is your high water. I think if you average out the year, average out your shows, it'll average out to one and a half, 2%, like all direct mail, that's the direct response. And you put out a plea, they responded 2%. Take that as your as your kind of your middle of the road number. And then try to find the data and report to see if that number is accurate. It may be higher. It may be lower, but the point is you can then figure out audience size is compare that to your downloads, compare this, that the other thing. And you can get an idea of traction. And as for the size of the index and the volume that's going through the network, I think we're probably a month away from really having a better handle on it. Or at least a path forward on reporting and knowing that so that Adam's not doing these

Gene:

See the pants extrapolations. Yeah. And look

Aric:

it's napkin math. It's just napkin math and it's just, it's a ballpark. It's,

Gene:

Yeah. And I do appreciate the fact that he wants to promote this and, talk about where it's going and how quickly it's getting there. And. I also just want to be realistic in this and me like you and I have known each other for many years, my personality type, I know yours. And there's a reason that each of us is in the jobs that we were doing. And so I do want to be enthusiastic about it. Obviously I'm going to the trouble of spending money and taking a lot of time, honestly, to learn this stuff and do it myself in a more technical manner than I think somebody would be required to do it. If they just want to jump into it, there are easier ways to do this as a podcast or an Adam's tried to convince me you're wasting time. Why are you doing this? I'm like, I'm doing it because I want to learn it. Not because this is the only way to do it. So while I'm, I am banging my head against the wall quite often, because there's very little documentation, lot of these things, but I'm doing that. Consciously. I know that the path that I signed up for is extra frustrating because I don't want to just use somebody else's solution. I want to learn to do it myself and that will

Aric:

want to do the work

Gene:

Yeah. I w I am doing the work exactly. And I want to be able to say I did the work, but also I've secretly also working on another product. So this is all stuff that's very interesting. Albeit frustrating at times. So w one, like one thing I've thought about, which no, one's really I've heard anybody else talking about is I'm actually more interested in doing a reverse transactions. I want to see if listeners can be paid while they're listening. do you want me to give what I hear? I'll tell you what I'm working on. Would you listen to an ad if you were getting SATs while that ad was playing? Probably more so than if you weren't getting SATs.

Aric:

No. I wouldn't

Gene:

okay. You're not a good example, but so the point is there's a this doesn't have to be one directional. This could be bi-directional. There could be a flow out of broadcasters of money to listeners.

Aric:

Do you want to hear? So you want to hear the accountant Bud's kill. Talk on this idea. You are opening up a 10 99 nightmare

Gene:

limited to$200 a year in value.

Aric:

Oh, you can go up to 600, but yeah, 600 is the

Gene:

did they not lower it? I could have sworn they lowered it. Okay. Okay. I know that either way there is a way to, to make sure you're not going to be making somebody's real income off of this but the idea of having a network, which allows us bi-directional types of transactions through apps on the fly I think it's pretty wild. And even podcasting aside, there's a lot of ideas that are swirling around in my head with businesses that I've worked with that could turn into some really interesting apps, but I really want to make sure I have the technical know-how down first, before I start putting ideas into people's heads.

Aric:

Just understand. I'm always on the I'm always the, I guess the relative buzzkill where it's yeah, I'm not shitting on it because I disagree with it. It shitting on it because it's just that I have to take that 12th man approach, which is okay, here's all the problems I see. And it's not, which, pisses out them off which is

Gene:

Right, but then, but you need somebody doing

Aric:

after 12 years of dealing with

Gene:

yeah. Yeah. Need somebody doing that then? And I think that he knows that enough to have you be part of this project from the gate.

Aric:

Yeah. I'll ask the annoying questions.

Gene:

Exactly.

Aric:

The annoying irritating questions.

Gene:

so here's a annoying, irritating question for you. Are you tracking donations coming in through SATs or. I guess tracking, maybe isn't quite the right word. Let me run this scenario past you. Let's say Adam gets an email or Adam, John, get an email for the show and says, Hey, I here's my my math that I've done. I think I've now donated enough SATs to get my nighttime.

Aric:

no, not right now. No.

Gene:

Okay. Because there is one guy that is well on his way to doing that. I don't know if you've noticed, but he's been donating a hundred bucks and SATs to no agenda on a regular basis.

Aric:

and if, yeah, and he can send me transaction IDs and I can verify it. I, again, working on this,

Gene:

but I think that's the thing is I think it'll come. I just want to make sure that to tell Johnny that I'm what people should provide to you when it happens, because I know there's absolutely people out there that have. More Bitcoin, not that they know what to do with, but more Bitcoin than cash. Like they're cash, poor Bitcoin rich. And they will be more than happy to do the donations without converting it to cash, which as you know is expensive, they'd rather do the donations insights, but the amounts will be equal to the levels and cash to get a knighthood

Aric:

so that, okay, so on the there's a new, no agenda producer site in the works, it's been in the works for. On and off for the last 18 months.

Gene:

Oh, okay.

Aric:

No, it it'll come out before the vinegar book, but it it,

Gene:

You heard it here.

Aric:

Guarantee it, eh, it's a, no it's in development. I have some producers playing with it and testing the system and it's pretty it's yeah, after 12 years there's been, it this'll be the third or fourth revision of all the automation and accounting software on the backend of the show. And this is putting it in the hands of, or at least putting a front end for producers. And one of the things that's being is the, it are being integrated as the lightning and Bitcoin and crypto support for donation page. And part of that is the accounting on the back end. Now as a side project, I've got a ledger project product for Bitcoin and I'm working, I'm doing the exact same thing. And I've been playing with Bitcoin for well, really diving deep diving into Bitcoin enlightening for the last, six months in this, so I've got a light well for lightening nodes and a couple of Bitcoin nodes just standalone Bitcoin. So I have the entire blockchain and I've got software abusing those nodes and I mean abusing them. And so no, just mining, hardcore. So in the product is to convert the blockchain into some sort of generally accepted accounting ledger. Now with private nodes and private networks and private lightening channels and the rest of it, it makes that, lightening complicates the problem. And that's what I'm trying to work through now, but the idea is that once that's there, then I have the ability to plug in really any transaction or plugging a wallet, and I can see everything that's come or gone. And even generate a 10 99 K and the preliminary stuff works. The problem I have is I have lightning and the guys that are aggregating transactions into one single transaction makes that inaccurate. So I'm doing a, I'm taking a a two ended approach, which is one looking at the chain. And then relying on the user to provide some information and then I can fill in the blanks. But that's, what's working so that in that's the tool I'm gonna use to then verify it just from the DOE agenda standpoint, but then eventually give creators the ability to plug in I'm frankly, a listener too lightening their value blocks. So I can pay attention or at least track data better in some ways ease, drop. But that's kinda what I'm working on the backside. So there are so to answer the no agenda producers that are doing Bitcoin now, it's great. It's the same way as like the guys who did early check payments to no agenda, we just didn't have the system in place. And that system is being developed. And now, now that 27 years in, we can handle check payments and there's, it's all digitized and it's accounted for it. Wasn't 10 years ago, really. It was Sneakernet at best. I got an email from John kind of thing. So anyway, so the same with the same process with Bitcoin, it's just, it's integrating all of these, it's just, it's a new world and it's a new mechanism and it's challenging to say the least

Gene:

speaking of Jan. So I thought it was great hearing that clip of him from what the hell is the name of the show? The DH unplugged. Where he said, Bitcoin, what? We don't take that? No. You can't do that. The clip I'm talking about, right?

Aric:

no, I don't know the clip, but I know

Gene:

Like one or two shows ago

Aric:

I know John,

Gene:

yeah. John, where he got asked him and he's yeah, we don't know. We don't take that. No agenda, no, there's no way we, where we decided we're not going to do that. And this is literally while people are donating, not just streaming sites, but making, large contributions in SATs directly.

Aric:

I

Gene:

And then, and also I instantly was like, wait a minute. I thought I saw JCD node up. So I quickly popped up the map. I'm like, yup. There's the JCD note. Interesting. John.

Aric:

yeah, I run that note. Yeah, part of it is I need

Gene:

he, John doesn't know about it.

Aric:

It's one of those situations where I, I look out for John's interests before he's aware of it.

Gene:

That's true.

Aric:

so it, it just, it's kinda how it works. It's we've moved. Okay. John doesn't care a lot of ways because he just, he doesn't, it's just not in his wheelhouse. He's not,

Gene:

Kind of like electric

Aric:

it well, he's okay. John's a highly skeptical of everything by default period. Th the saying in the family is everyone and everything is bullshit until proven out otherwise. Which is I think going forward is a good way to approach things judging from media and past events, but it's that's his he's a critic. Through and through. And so a lot of this stuff is that, there's projects and there's things that happen and they they run in the back office and they run behind the scenes and they run off of his radar until they develop enough where they need his attention. And we're getting to the point now where it's yeah, okay. You have a note, here's your balance? Here's the reports. Here's what setting up. Cause we're still building it. And I think no agenda will be a Joe agendas. Like any of these other big podcasts, there's going to be this hesitation. That's justified to jump on board because it's, you've got a mechanism that's working, so you know it

Gene:

the question I would have though, so my past my podcast at this point, as of we're recording this literally just over two months, right? So it's super new. Although I have likes, in fact, I have over 30 episodes, so pretty damn good in two months. My stats are barely there. That's super limited. I'm shocked that I actually have people donating cash to me. Didn't really expect to even ask people until a few months in. And then people like started volunteering in the first month of the podcast, which was shock to me. I have got my own note. I've got streaming coming in. Again, shockingly, the amount of money people are streaming to the podcast, but all of this is just small potatoes. If it went away tomorrow to me, it would actually save me money. Cause I'm still, my time and money spent on this podcast is nowhere near offset by the contributions. And I'm not doing it for the money right now. I'm doing it for the fun, not to say I wouldn't want money. So if you're listening. Hit that button that says donate. But but it's still, it's it's the start of an experiment. And you look at no agenda where you guys have 12 years of history. You've got a massive amounts of data you've collected. You've brought a lot of donations in. So is there a fear that by going to this new model and opening up this new option of donating that people are going to simply switch and they're going to start doing a 10 cent donation every hour, and then

Aric:

No,

Gene:

is going to stop coming in.

Aric:

it's not a fear of switching. It's just, it's another mechanism to pay. It's all the other alternatives and even the, PayPal, it's yeah, it was built on PayPal and PayPal has it's, there's always been this kind of concern that, cancel culture comes along and PayPal decides that no agendas verboten. And, and they decided to Sargon us and, there is that thing hasn't happened is 12 years. I don't see any data. I don't see, I think everybody's winning right now. PayPal gets ridiculous fees and they shut up. It's the same thing. It's yo, we haven't integrated Venmo. We haven't integrated this. We haven't integrated that. And part of that is because a John wants to keep it simple. They both want to keep it simple. They don't want a lot of drama. I don't want a low drama from the accounting side, so no, I'm, I'm I'm from the accounting treasurer side. I am until the reporting's in place. The Bitcoin thing is a tough thing for me to get ambitious and energetic about and give give us all a guest to and I see both sides of the equation. I understand, Adam's excitement in this and I can see his vision and I can, and I understand it. And I like it. And I agree with it. I'm just trying to make that work with the current situation and the current tax laws and the, my requirements from that side, which, Adam I think understands and, or I know he understands, but it, it's. So I think the show is not so much switching. It's yeah, we're integrating and we're going to put it in. It will become podcasting 2.0. But I think I'm probably dragging heels more than anyone else in that it opens up a huge can of worms for me on the accounting side, until this reporting thing is cracked. Until we can, and until I can get a mechanism, some systems and software develop, which is what I've been writing for months now is writing a reporting mechanism so that I can track Bitcoin and

Gene:

You just brought up an interesting question in my head while you were talking here, which is. If you're paying somebody to do work at, like you said, over$600 a year, you're supposed to 10 99 them correct. If you're a business. And so if what do you do if you're just paying somebody a donation instead of paying them for work, you don't have a tenant cause I've never 10 99. You guys. And all my donations have been from my business.

Aric:

no. Okay. And this has been and this is in the, again, because this is all new, both the value for

Gene:

that this is financial or legal advice, but go ahead.

Aric:

Yeah I'm giving you stock tips next. Okay, so the 10 99 issue is you've got as, and I'm talking about I'm writing articles in this for the podcast 2.0 podcasters. It's here's the, here's the, grab your pillow now it's accounting talk it, here's the situation. You can stay a sole proprietor or stay at independent, not get a license. And depending on your state and the fed, if you stand under that, usually it's about$12,000 a year. They want you to get a business license. So if you're gonna make more than 12 grand gross in a tax year, they want you to get a business license. Most States the fed. I don't remember what the number is. If you don't set up a business, don't get busy license. You're just trading under your name. Then you don't have to do 10 90 nines if you pay. So the, what brought this out boy was the instance of you're paying a contractor help with production. They're editing. They're doing something related to your product, being your podcast and you're paying them then yes. Then if they're, if it's a private kind of thing, then you don't know the downsides to that as you don't have any protections, you can't write anything off, you can't write off your expenses. You can't, business use of the home. You can, there's all kinds of tax. You're just paying tax more than you need to. But if you go out to the other side and you set up an LLC or get a, just a straight business license and you set up a business account then you do you then start triggering those 10 90 nines. Because you're hiring them to contract, even if it's piecework it'd be the equivalent of, let's say you're going to pay them from quote unquote donations as a percentage. You're paying them a cut of the door effectively. So they're still working the room. You're just paying them a cut of ticket sales or donations in this.

Gene:

you got into a more complex scenario than I was. I was just simply saying, so if somebody. Donates money to a podcast, whether they're using Satoshi's or whether they're using dollars through PayPal or just

Aric:

they're not a business.

Gene:

well, but some of them are, there've been plenty of businesses, including mine that have doing it to no agenda and donate it an excess of$600 a year. But we, what you're saying is that doesn't really matter because the donations are still not ever going to be treated as payments for work. And therefore don't require a 10 99.

Aric:

again, this is getting in a little,

Gene:

You said accounting talk. So I'm

Aric:

I will give, but okay. I'm not an accountant. I'm a back alley accountant. It's I know enough to get into trouble or enough to just stay out of

Gene:

I'm just trying to figure out if I need to go back and actually send you 10 90 nines now for previous years.

Aric:

if did you write off the donation on your taxes? Then I would see it as just like you just spent money. It's you took

Gene:

like a long lunch. It was a throwaway

Aric:

I guess when you, I guess if you cross the line off and try to write it off as a business expense, then yeah. You should issue a 10 99 and we have had some producers to do that. So at the end of the

Gene:

Okay. Okay. There, so some of them did it, they clearly talked to their accountants and were told you should.

Aric:

They wrote it off as advertising.

Gene:

Yeah, that makes sense.

Aric:

So then it's okay, now you're paying for a service.

Gene:

on the agenda. I always just had funny messages.

Aric:

Well, whatever, but, however they want to do it. Yeah. Technically I guess for the rules, I don't, talk to your CPA

Gene:

there you go. There's the correct answer.

Aric:

if you're getting tax advice from a podcast vague tax advice. Good luck to you

Gene:

Just getting stock tips on DHL unplugged. That's the whole point of it. Isn't it? Yeah.

Aric:

Okay. Fine. Get started. That's fine, but they're not your taxes. They're not your, financial,

Gene:

They're my brokers. What do you mean? I think of them as my brokers.

Aric:

Okay. Fine. They're not executing the

Gene:

They're not executing the trade now. They're advisors. That's

Aric:

so they're not a broker. They're not brokering anything.

Gene:

No. They're just complaining a lot.

Aric:

That's what they do.

Gene:

Exactly. All right, Eric. Have you got anything that I haven't asked you that you want to bring up?

Aric:

not that I can think of

Gene:

You're not doing a podcast or anything you want to promote, right? You're not. Are you writing a book? Are you doing a book on onions or anything?

Aric:

no writing articles to help tip off creators for the way they should be doing,

Gene:

And where are they? Where can they find those articles?

Aric:

nowhere yet. And I, and yeah, I will like every other, no agenda producer and every other. It seems like anybody on the internet right now I'll do a podcast, but mostly just to be a Guinea pig on the network

Gene:

I use, are you selling any chotchkies or rings that people need to be aware right now?

Aric:

No, I don't. I don't have the bandwidth for any of that.

Gene:

Okay. Fair enough. I gave you opportunity.

Aric:

Yeah, no, I appreciate it now. Nothing to plug?

Gene:

no plugs.

Aric:

No,

Gene:

All right. In that case, I'm going to wrap it up with you. I appreciate you being on taking the time out of your busy schedule to hop on here and talk a little bit about Bitcoin, a little bit about podcasting, a little bit about no agenda and let people know who the hell you are. Cause they've heard.

Aric:

yeah. They've heard the John Adam bitch about me. appreciate having me.

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