Have you wondered whether you should work in the Bitcoin industry or otherwise earn Bitcoin? Listen to this episode where Mandrik, OG Bitcoiner from 2011 joins me to share his stories of earlier days in Bitcoin. We chat:
- Libertarians and Bitcoin
- Early wallets
- Working at Bitcoin companies in those days
- Why earning will change your life
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Podcast Transcript:
Stephan Livera:
Mandrik. Welcome to the show.
Mandrik:
Hey, thanks for having me on. I’m really happy to be here. It’s nice that you always have these intellectuals on and it’s nice. You’ll have a change of pace here with this episode.
Stephan Livera:
Well it’s funny because people talk about Bitcoin. Like in some ways it’s like the anti-intellectual thing there are these people with these fancy degrees and whatever, and yet people who people can be like a high school dropout or a uni dropout, and they played their cards correctly with Bitcoin, they could have well outperformed their university credentialled brethren.
Mandrik:
Yeah. I’m a college dropout. I would qualify there.
Stephan Livera:
Well, there you go. So Mandrik. I know you have been around the Bitcoin space for a long time. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into all this?
Mandrik:
It was an interesting year for me, 2011. That’s when I first heard about Bitcoin and it was the hardest year and probably the best year of my life, a really challenging year, because I was laid off from a job that I worked at for a decade early in the year. So I was, I was at this company for 10 years and they laid me off. And then I went through a divorce a couple months later, and then I moved to New Hampshire as part of the free state project, which is a bunch of libertarians and, ancaps living there. I spent a few years up there, but I just moved there at the time and all these things were happening. I was going through Oh, the other big thing. I was obese all my life and just changed my diet to a more keto focused diet.
Mandrik:
So 2011 was a busy year, and then I moved to a new place I’d never lived in and trying to figure out how I’m going to get by and I was trying to live my ideas of Liberty and trying to come up with accepting alternative currencies. And there’s a good, friendly crowd of people up there who were up for that. And at the time it was silver and gold, but by the end of 2011, I heard about Bitcoin. When somebody offered to pay for baklava, I was selling baklava on the internet. I was just doing whatever I could to make some extra dollars. And I always grew up cooking. And so making baklava was just kind of natural and I was selling ship it up, but yeah, I was offered some Bitcoin to sell to Roger Ver.
Stephan Livera:
Wow. So that was your first exposure up until then. You had never heard of it.
Mandrik:
I’ve heard of it earlier in the year, but with so much going on, I just didn’t have the I wasn’t in the mindset and ready. So like beginning of 2011, I first heard it. People were asking me if I had a couple of random people asked me if I’d accepted as payment for baklava. And I’m really glad I didn’t because that summer, the price shot up to like 30 some dollars and then dropped to $3 or $4, something like that. And I got it right after that happened. And I feel like if it happened, if I got in right as the price was going up and then a crash, it would have just, it probably would have, I wouldn’t be here. It’d be like a completely different life. I really believe that. Because I just, wasn’t in a space where I could afford for that to happen. Yeah.
Stephan Livera:
And you were already a libertarian as well, right? It’s not that you came into Bitcoin and then became a libertarian?
Mandrik:
Yeah, I was woken up by the Ron Paul movement in 2007, 2008. That was a life-changing moment. I know you had Dr. Paul on your show and that was great to hear from him. He’s just, he’s just an absolute legend and it’s like so much respect for the man. But yeah, I was one of those people who heard of him and I’d already liked gold and silver at the time, you know, back then because of my dad taught me the value of gold and silver when I was a kid. So I always had, I had a couple of silver coins he gave me like a older silver, you know, 90% silver quarter when I was a kid. And I thought it was so cool. And it sounded neat. So the idea of sound money was embedded in me from a very early age, but I also, I love playing video games. I was a gamer all my life. So the idea of a digital currency made sense too.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah.
Mandrik:
There’s a lot of pieces just kind of fell into place. I, because I think t o fully grasp Bitcoin, you have to be in the right mindset, especially in 2011.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, for sure. That’s so early. And I’m curious as well. So in some ways it’s like a Vijay’s multiple touch point theory, right? So the first time you heard about it didn’t really click into you, but then later you, it actually took, so what was it about the second time that made you actually go further into it and see the value of Bitcoin?
Mandrik:
Just the idea that I could use it as an alternative currency to the dollar, at a time when I was trying to figure out I was in that place where I had just lost that job. And I wanted to live amongst other libertarians, work with them and do business with them and try to come up with ways to accept different payments other than the dollar. So bitcoin seemed like the perfect fit. And also I was, at the time I was converting a lot of it back into dollar and it was cheaper to do that just get paid in PayPal. There were less fees I could just sell to somebody in person. Which sounds insane now because you’re like, Oh my gosh my first order of baklava was 14 Bitcoin liquidating it for some cash.
Mandrik:
Because I got to pay my rent or whatever, because I’m still just trying to figure out how to get back on my feet. But as time went on, as the weeks and months went on of me accepting Bitcoin and more, there was, it was a big movement up there as well in late 2011, 2012 in New Hampshire, a lot of other ancaps were getting on board with Bitcoin and they wanted to use it. And I was there and I was willing to accept that as payment, I was still accepting silver, but I was happy to accept Bitcoin. And the more I started accepting, the more I realize, I’m like, Hey, this is really cool. Like maybe I should start holding onto this because this is like a really cool thing. And we didn’t have all the memes back then. We didn’t have the number go up and all this stuff. So we were still kind of just figuring out. But, but yeah, I mean you could see the appeal without fully realizing. I don’t think I fully grasp the value of it until years later. I think it took a lot of time.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. For sure. Yeah, for sure. And I think it’s like the earlier libertarians who got into it as well, some of them had their focus more was the agorism aspect, as opposed to the thinking of it, more like a long-term savings and a settlement layer explanation of Bitcoin’s value that was to come later. I’d love to go further into what was the context at the time Bitcoin wise, like as an example the mining I’m sure the, what people were using for mining was not ASICS might not have been a thing yet at that point. The software that you would use, I mean, nowadays we think of it like, Hey, it’s the ideal ways to run your own Bitcoin node and ideally have a hardware wallet and so on, but there were no hardware wallets at that time. Can you just set the scene for us in terms of how you used Bitcoin back in those days in late 2011?
Mandrik:
Oh, you sure. And this is great cause it’s, it’s very laughable now in hindsight, but back then I was using Mt. Gox. Super technical. I mean, I worked customer service most of my life. I grew up in my dad’s diner. I dealt with customers like that and I worked in a call centre for a long time and I did do tech support stuff and I put computers together, things like that, but I wasn’t like super duper technical enough to fully understand the importance of securing your own Bitcoin running your own node. That wasn’t really something that was as obvious back then to those who weren’t as technical, I think, and we didn’t have the resources to fully understand that. But so for me, it was just, I would just keep my funds on Mt. Gox. That’s where they would sit. I had some Cascasius rounds that at first they were the physical, the original physical Bitcoins people would we’ll have a bunch of those up there. They were being passed around for all kinds of food and stuff. And I peeled like 11 or 12 of those and just put them in my Mt. Gox wallet. It was just easy. I just like, I don’t want to lose this. So I’ll just trust them with Mt. Gox. So they’re the most trusted name in the business.
Stephan Livera:
I mean, it’s funny how the thinking shifts and people learned now, I guess there were a few parts to this, right. So if you wanted to actually just literally just run Bitcoin Core or actually funnily enough, it might not have even been called Bitcoin Core then. I think it was just called Bitcoin.
Mandrik:
Yeah it was just the Bitcoin, I think.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, it was Bitcoin QT or Bitcoin. And you could now I guess one advantage then is obviously the Blockchain was a lot smaller then. It was a lot more feasible to just literally run Bitcoin Core as a wallet. So I’m sure you probably knew people who did that. Right.
Mandrik:
I’d done it myself, but it didn’t click with me. I consider myself a bit of a slow learner. Sometimes I just need to be my own space in my own head to just mess around with something. Because it doesn’t always click with me the first time. So I tried to use it, but Gox was just convenient. I was just like, Oh, this is, again, this is insane to say these things now, but yeah, I’m not ashamed of it. I understand the journey I went on and that was a part of it. But yeah, it just didn’t the user interface was listened, but didn’t look very good. It wasn’t as friendly. I don’t know. And the idea of self custody, like I had already, at that point, I remember in 2012, I already had friends that had lost funds to forgotten passwords and things like that. And that was scary.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, for sure. And I certainly, I’m not like the aim here is not to kind of judge you or whatever for this it’s just to set the historical context that this was a normal, this was a normal practice in the earlier years of Bitcoin. I mean, even for me, I’m of a later vintage than you, I’m from the 2013 cohort, if you will. But even in those days, it wasn’t as understanding around was not as strong then. And the tooling we had in fairness as well, the tooling was not as easy as kind of the stuff that we have now. I guess back, at least in the times that I, the earlier days I knew there was this idea of Armory and you would use Armory offline wallet. And that was like, that was like the main thing. So you would have Bitcoin QT now, Bitcoin Core, and that would be your online computer. And then you would have offline laptop with your Bitcoin Armory. And that was the way you would do this kind of like, that was kind of like your hardware wallet back then before hardware wallets.
Mandrik:
Right. And I remember trying to set that up. I had a friend show me, we used to, I mean, we started having Bitcoin meetups in New Hampshire as early as 2012. We were having them kind of thinking, I think it was like mid 2012. They first started. And I remember somebody bringing a laptop and showing Armory. And I just thought, I don’t know how I would ever set this up. Like I don’t feel comfortable enough to do it even, even back then though. Like a lot of us were using Mt. Gox, but that was just kind of what people were saying. Like the people who we were hearing it from, like the bigger, the people who were, who got us into Bitcoin, I guess they were recommending no, just use Gox or use Instawallet. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of instant wallet, but that was like that was basically you would go to their website and it would generate a unique URL for your wallet.
Mandrik:
And basically if you lost it, but the problem is Google started caching. It’s kind of a neat concept, but a complete disaster as people’s funds started getting stolen. I had friends lose funds to that and they never got back into Bitcoin. They feel like that they lost everything then. And it’s crazy like, the history of people losing Bitcoin and just feeling like it’s too late now Bitcoin’s $20 or $30 and I lost it all, but that was, that was the beauty of 2012 for me. Like, I’m so glad I, I had the time to mess around and at such an early time, because so many of us were in it for principled reasons, there wasn’t the idea of Bitcoin going to the moon or whatever. I mean, it was kind of the meme was there even back then, but it was just, it was more like a joke.
Mandrik:
I mean, we didn’t really think that would actually happen. It’s just, Bitcoin’s going to be $5 forever and it’s fine. It was, it was fine. Like, it wasn’t a problem. It was a thing of beauty in this small community people using these $5 Bitcoins. I mean, for me, like, no matter what flood is happening today or whatever, I just think back to those times. And I’m like, I don’t know, Bitcoin was such a beautiful thing back then. And it’s so much better now, like with this news coming out now, how is this even remotely scary at all.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, for sure. I, yeah, just, I mean, even from my experience coming in, in the 2013 days, it was like, Oh, wow. I couldn’t imagine Bitcoin being $10,000. That was like a big deal. Right.
Mandrik:
It’s incredible. I think now that it’s like, now it’s like, Oh, the price drops into the low thirties. What are we going to do? The low 30 thousands, it’s the end of the bull market. It’s just laughable.
Stephan Livera:
So I think the other big difference is spending Bitcoin. Right? So back then, I think it sounds to me like it really was seen more like a day-to-day transactional. So can you tell us a little about the thinking and the mindset back then versus what it is or how you view it now?
Mandrik:
It was used that way transaction fees you could get away with zero fee transactions. They’d get confirmed. I mean, that was how it was because there just wasn’t much activity on the blockchain. The Free State project has a yearly festival called the porcupine freedom festival. And it’s held up in the white mountains of New Hampshire every summer. And it’s a great festival. And I cooked there four years in a row. We had my buddy and I had a food stand there and we accepted Bitcoins. We accepted the Bitcoin the last two years, we cooked there, which were 2013 and 2014, where the two years we accepted Bitcoin, Oh, I’m sorry, 2012 and 2013. And in 2012, I remember the activity was enough to people noticed like a peak in transactions because of all the Bitcoin transactions that were happening at the festival.
Mandrik:
Like they noticed a peak that weekend, we’re talking a few hundred transactions. I mean, it wasn’t really much, but like you can notice a noticeable bump. So yeah. I mean, it was easy to use for day-to-day transactions. You could send a couple of dollars and you didn’t have to even include a fee. It was almost like the fee was like a tip almost. I remember thinking of it that way, like you were tipping the miners for including your transaction, but it was optional. I remember that’s how it was explained to me at first.
Stephan Livera:
That’s really funny. Yeah. That’s right. I mean, it’s interesting how thinking on that has shifted. And in fairness in the early years of Bitcoin, the block subsidy was so much greater in Bitcoin terms, obviously in fiat terms its huge.
Mandrik:
Yeah. It’s huge. In Bitcoin, now that’s insane.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. So I think there’s a big potential around this idea of earning Bitcoin. And this is something that you have very much been a proponent of. So why is it important to Bitcoin?
Mandrik:
Well, for me, I always wanted to get away from the dollar. I was trying to live like this, like being a libertarian. You I’m sure you’ve completely understand this being a libertarian or ancap or whatever. You have these ideas that, you know, they make sense and you want to live your life in a principled way, but it’s nearly impossible in this world that we live in, right? Like, how are you going to fully commit to this? So you have to, it’s like the rational side of you is like I still need dollars. I’m still gonna drive on the roads that whatever the taxes and I’m going to pay my taxes, because I don’t want to go to jail. Things like that. You make compromises where you fight, you pick your battles, I guess, but with earning income.
Mandrik:
And when I was living in New Hampshire at the time, it was easier. It wasn’t easy, but it was easier to earn Bitcoin because there were people getting into it and they were excited about it and they wanted to use it. And I was happy to take it. So for me, that became my goal. It’s like, how can I move away from the dollar as much as possible for my salary, for whatever income I’m generating. I didn’t have a salary. What I mean? But yeah. So I started out at first maybe a portion of my income was Bitcoin. I’d still get some silver from people I’d accept that even barter, trade, whatever. But the focus is 2012 went on. The focus for me was, especially by, after that porcfest, after that summer, that festival we cooked at, I’d said by the end of the year, I won a hundred percent of my income in Bitcoin.
Mandrik:
And I got to figure out how I can do this. And I was started cleaning houses for some people up there and who would pay me in Bitcoin. For me, it was just more rewarding to see my pain my salary in Bitcoin. And I was also going through the phase where I realize I wanted to keep a hold of it. So it taught me to it. I appreciated what I was earning more because I wasn’t earning dollars cuck bucks or whatever. I was earning Bitcoin and it’s like, this is the coolest money ever. And then it’s like, Oh, I got to pay my bills. So now I have this amazing thing. I don’t want to get rid of it. So I’m spending way less than I ever would if I was earning dollars. Every purchase is now I have to think about selling Bitcoin and I don’t want to sell it or trade it or whatever.
Mandrik:
And it’s like, how can I live my life without having to do that? So it’s a really like a change of mind if I was buying, I didn’t buy my first Bitcoin, I think till 2013, I don’t think I FOMO’ed in the April bubble. I found it in near the top and then got wrecked when it dropped to like 60 bucks, but still held. But yeah, but I didn’t actually buy, I didn’t actually spend money to buy Bitcoin until then. I mean, that was almost almost two years later, a year and a half.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. So it was primarily earning for you. And so then you were also working in some of the very early Bitcoin companies, such as Bit Instant and blockchain. So tell us a little bit about how that came about.
Mandrik:
Yeah. So I just, through my connections with, in the free state project, cooking, selling baklava and I done a couple of podcasts too, with some people just like co-hosting and stuff I had made it public. I was people pretty much realized I was trying to come up with the ways to earn Bitcoin because I loved it so much. And I want it to be involved. Bitcoin was my life it’s like, how can I make this a bigger part of my life? So it’s just connection. Just people you know, people in the industry, which was the industry at the time was like five businesses. Maybe it wasn’t really an industry. Just making connections, personal connections with that. I knew Erik Voorhees obviously had a hand in a bit instant and Satoshi dice at the time. But he introduced me to Charlie Shrem and in sometime around like, well, I met Charlie over the summer, but at the end of 2012, they connect, I was connected with Charlie.
Mandrik:
And he was like, we’re looking for customer service people we’ll pay in Bitcoin, you can work remote. And then, you know, you’ll answer support tickets for BitInstant. And I’m like, cool, sign me up. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll figure it out. I love learning. I know, like I love going into a role and not really understanding it and having to learn it. It’s that’s, to me, I love that challenge. Like, it’s a lot of fun. So it was a great experience, working. I started working there and I was there in the office when the early April, 2013 bubble happened. You said you got involved in 2013? What?
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. So I was around the start of 2013 basically. So I experienced the March and April run-up and then the November runup and all that.
Mandrik:
Yeah. And the, and then I think the over the April run-up is overshadowed by a lot of people. I think they look at it as like one big one bubble, 2013 was this one, like one thing, but really for those who lived through it was like two events?
Stephan Livera:
Yes, absolutely.
Mandrik:
April one wasn’t as big, but it was big, it was a big deal. Bitcoin was shooting up, I think sometime around February, it started going up to like $30 and then March it was taking off and then it broke a hundred dollars and it was like the craziest thing ever. I mean, that’s when FOMO was just kicking in so hard for so many people. And I was working at bit instant. It was insane because I was working with Bit Instant sent a lot of our liquidity was going through the exchanges we used were Mt. Gox, BTC-e.
Mandrik:
And Bitstamp. Bitstampe are atill obviously around, but like we were dealing with whenever Mt. Gox had a problem. If Mt. Gox had an issue, which was all the time, we basically were shut. Like we couldn’t do business and it was insane. And there was a week where that it peaked in April of 2013, I was in the bitinstant office. They wouldn’t know they brought me down for the week just to hang out. The film crew was there for the rise and rise of Bitcoin documentary, which is like the first big Bitcoin documentary. It’s great. Everyone should check it out. It’s free on YouTube to watch they were in the office recording perfect time. Because it was just the peak of everything. Mt. Gox just failed. And Charlie’s trying to run around the office, figuring out how he’s going to fly to Japan and try to get ahold of Mark cos Mark Karpeles and getting a hold of getting a hold of the returning, his calls or whatever.
Mandrik:
It was just insane. And it’s so cool. Like in my mind, I never wanted to be the guy running a company. I was just happy to be on the rocket ship just in a very small role. I’m fine. Being on the rocket ship, cleaning the bathrooms. It’s great. I’m on the ship. Like I’m here. I got this great seat to the show. I don’t need to be running things. It’s fine. That’s great for me. And that’s really all I wanted is just to be involved with Bitcoin in some tiny way. So it was just really cool to have that opportunity to be there, to see things like that while earning Bitcoin. What more could I want in my life? That was so awesome to me. Yeah,
Stephan Livera:
That’s really cool. And I know there are stories floating around and even companies like Kraken, who were paying, I think there was like some early Kraken employee from like 2012 who took all their pay in 2012 in Bitcoin. And then I think they were retired from like 2013 or 14 onwards. All right. So it was just, that was it.
Mandrik:
Well, for a lot of us, it was never seen as an investment early on, but over time, obviously the value versus dollar, that’s a huge role of it. Especially as you’ve seen it, just go up just orders of magnitude. It’s such a huge part of what Bitcoin is. You can’t really deny that. Like it’s just incredible, all this FUD and everything. And it’s still just like every few years it just wakes up again and it’s like, here we go. It’s just craziness. And yeah, a lot of people did get wealthy. A lot of people in the early days. And I know a lot personally who were involved in Bitcoin on a bigger level than I was, they weren’t necessarily wealthy today or are they’re not in Bitcoin anymore. There’s just so many, so much that can happen between then and now between like health problems or just dealing with the despair of just your net worth dropped by 80%. I mean, it’s really hard when that happens, because you, if you’re not in it for the right reasons, and if you’re not in a healthy place physically, financially, and mentally, how do you hold on as you watch these Bitcoins just drop this from a thousand to a couple of hundred bucks or back in April, it was April 2013 when it was like 200 some down to like 60. It’s just painful. It’s hard.
Stephan Livera:
That’s the mental part of HODLing, which is very difficult in the early days when you’re first learning how to do it. And you’re certainly going through a big swings. So I guess for a lot of those early people didn’t have, as you mentioned to the right physical and mental strength or kind of health about them, it might’ve been hard to HODL. And also I think the other reality is people still have living expenses as well. So they were still spending down coins to obviously live. So I guess that was also a big factor for a lot of early Bitcoin people.
Mandrik:
And for me, I think this is another thing that I really love about earning Bitcoin. I didn’t realize this, this isn’t why I want to turn Bitcoin. It was an alternative currency and just the idea of earning that instead of dollar just felt so cool. It’s like I’m living a part of my belief and I realized how cool it was when you earn Bitcoin and the price drops and you’re earning in a bear market mentally from my point of view, it was like I was getting a raise. And then when we were in a bull market, I was getting paid less. I remember when I was cleaning houses in 2012 for Bitcoin and at the time Bitcoin was like five or six bucks. I think I was charging like maybe $150 to clean houses for like the clean, like a whole house and do some other, like do a bunch of stuff for like six or seven hours worth of work.
Mandrik:
So it’s not like a ton of money and being paid in Bitcoin. And I remember earning those Bitcoin at that value. And then the price went up to like $20 bucks and I felt so disappointed at how few Bitcoin I received for the same amount of work. You don’t really experience that if it’s just an investment for you. It’s just like a different way of thinking. I think when you look at Bitcoin as an investment, it was like your life like that. It was very different, like you were almost more upset when the price went up. When the price dumped on payday, you were so happy because you’re like, yes, I get more Bitcoin. Your goal is to accumulate Bitcoin. It was like being in a bear market and working for Bitcoin was just the greatest opportunity. I loved it. I would never tell anyone who wants, to think about earning Bitcoin. It’s like if you wait for a bear market and start doing it, you’re going to love it when you see how much you’re getting, but then you’re going to feel frustrated when the price goes up. And it’s very strange.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. Right. And of course, I mean, looking back now, obviously it’s very 20/20 hindsight, of course you should have been earning and, or buying as many Bitcoins as you could during the bear market. But I think the other point was in the earlier days, there was not such a strong level of confidence that Bitcoin would go back up to the level that it was once at.
Mandrik:
Absolutely not. I mean, we would go to Bitcoin meet ups and talk about this all the time. And we had talked about other things too, like government bans and all these things Bitcoin when it was in those early days. And it was an even bigger topic of discussion in 2009, 2010 what the real OG’s were talking about it. But for us there was that fear so having seen this happen so many times now. I think at least from my point of view, I mean, I have the luxury of saying it’s easier to hold now than it was back then, but it’s probably not the case for somebody just getting in, who just got in at 2017 and then the price shoots up and they’re all excited. And the price takes a dump and their first bear market, even though you have the historical, we can look back and you could see that Oh, it’s come back or whatever. And didn’t die probably still hard for your first bear market, whether it was your first bear market was 2012 or 2018.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. What about the different thinking. I mean, I’m sure in some ways we are just seeing, I mean, right. It’s the same things that come up every few years, whether it’s energy, whether it’s quantum computing or the it’s tether or it’s something that you say the same things, just keep coming back again and again. So what was your experience like with that stuff?
Mandrik:
With the FUD being surrounded by people, in person who were using Bitcoin, it wasn’t really something that affected us, but when I started working. I was at BitInstant and then they closed down by the summer of 2013 and I started working at blockchain.info, blockchain.com now. I started working there September of 2013, August, 2013. It was right before a big bull market right before the price shot up to like $1,200, the bear market of 2014, 2015.There was a lot of FUD just a lot of some of the worst stuff because we were dealing with the collapse of Mt. Gox. There was the China bans, Bitcoin stuff. There was just all kinds of stuff. And I realize like in the industry, earning Bitcoin feel like it would have been the hardest bear market ever to go through because being on the front lines and talking to people and answering just, I mean, I was just answering support tickets at blockchain.
Mandrik:
That’s what I did for years. And I liked it. I liked interacting with people. I liked helping them with their problems. It, it served as both a distraction from all the negativity and allowed me to focus on the positive things of Bitcoin and that it’s like, Hey, these people, all this FUDs happening, but these people are still just using wallets. They’re still using Bitcoin. It’s just because there’s a lot of negative news. Doesn’t mean Bitcoin’s dead. I had that luxury of being able to work in the industry and see and just kinda like laugh at all the negativity. It’s like that’s not what’s happening and when you work in industry, you talk to other people at other businesses and they’re all like, yeah, we’re busy and we’re building, that’s what we’re doing. That’s what bear markets are for, they’re for building.
Mandrik:
It really helps. I for me, like that was, that got me through the worst bear market because right after Mt Gox, after that collapse, it’s not a good time. And a lot of people lost a lot of hope when a lot of like the suicide hotline stuff was being pinned to like top of Reddit and things like that. Like, it was legit, it was just a bad time. But I had positioned myself well professionally, so I for me it was still hard. But even my wife she worked at the company too. Like I was the first employee. She was the second at blockchain. And working with her from home together. Like we would just see a negative story and just kind of laugh at it. It’s like, yeah, whatever we got to get back to work.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. So in terms of doing customer support, what were some of the common issues that people were having when they were learning about Bitcoin in those, in those kinds of 2014, 15 days?
Mandrik:
Well, back then a lot of people don’t know this, but back then, blockchain.info was a very respectable website and company. I mean, this was before the Segwit2X drama, whatever it is now, the company, I don’t really have any comment or really care about it. I don’t even think about them, but it was a different time back then. So the tickets we dealt with were we had a Web Wallet and we had the Block Explorer. The block Explorer is how the site started. And eventually there was a Web Wallet a Non-Custodial Web Wallet . But the tickets we got were everything from just basic questions about the wallet to very advanced things about Bitcoin that I had no idea about. And when I started the job there, it was me. Roger Ver hired me there because he had invested in the company.
Mandrik:
He was, he was invested in every Bitcoin company back then and Ben Reeves. He was the founder of the company of a blockchain bringing on Nick Cary, who was the CEO for a while there, I think he’s still there. He’s one of the founders, but they were just bringing him on. So I was answering tickets and Ben’s building this website and I’m like, Hey, Ben, I have no training. I thought I understood Bitcoin. I didn’t realize how little I knew until I started answering support tickets at blockchain because it just the amount of questions, the range of the questions were just, it was crazy. Because it wasn’t just like, like at BitInstant as an example, I was answering tickets specifically about orders. They weren’t a Web Wallet.
Mandrik:
They weren’t a block Explorer. It was just, this is where you go to buy Bitcoins and the questions, types of questions only related to that BitInstant’s service didn’t relate to general Bitcoin stuff. So when I started a blockchain, it was, it was just this wide range of questions related to, Hey look at this transaction, there’s all these things here I had to learn as I went because Ben Reeves, he was so busy. I’d emailed him or message him. And I’d be lucky to hear back from him. He was just a busy guy and that’s a name probably no one knows. And I’m sure Ben’s probably really happy with that, but Ben was a legend back then. So I just wanted to give him a shout up but yeah, so I had to learn as I went and it was great.
Mandrik:
Like it was such a cool opportunity because I just got to get paid to just learn all about Bitcoin and spend all day reading and helping out users with it. And it was a very different vibe back then, when the bear market hit ticket volume definitely slowed down and gave us time to catch our breath and just work on building the company and answering tickets in a timely fashion. But I wanted in my life, after spending a decade at another company doing a job that I didn’t really care about just doing the nine to five, not miserable. But just that middle whatever, you have your weekends. And being able to break free from that. Not being able to break free from that and just do my own thing, even though I had money and just build on that was just the most rewarding thing ever. I tell people I started out in Bitcoin selling food and I say cleaning toilets. I mean, I was cleaning houses and that is what I was doing to earn Bitcoin. This is all I could find to do at the time and there wasn’t a lot of options. Now there’s so many options. It’s crazy. It’s awesome. I love it.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. And I certainly like the humility you show with that aspect of it as well that you kind of, you’re not too proud to just say, Hey, this is what I did. And Hey, well look, I think it worked out pretty well for you. So I’m also curious, I know you were talking about this on Twitter recently. You shared a little picture with some luminaries in the industry before they became a well-known names. So we’ve got Andreas Antonopoulos, Dan Held and CZ. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like to work with them before they became the names they are now?
Mandrik:
That’s the thing back then if you really want it to work in industry and you really put yourself out there who would land with one of the few companies around cause there weren’t a lot of options and blockchain at the time was one of the biggest, I mean, even Bitpaid back then was still well thought of and a think company,. They were growing, but like working at blockchain at the time was so cool. That’s why I ended up with like this guy who scrubbing toilets and cooking sandwiches for people. Now he’s working at this bitcoin company with CZ, Andreas and Dan Held they’re joining the team as I go, but yeah it was really cool. I remember Dan came on in early 2013 and working with him was great.
Mandrik:
I think he was like the the product lead at the time. Andreas was brought on for security, even with Andreas at the time. It was understood. It was kind of like a part-time kind of thing. Because it’s like he was doing let’s talk Bitcoin. He was already a busy guy at the time that, this was 2013. All three were on the team. And CZ was like the unknown, I guess because Dan had been with zero block and zero block was acquired by blockchain. So that’s what brought him on. And zero block for those who don’t remember was it was basically an app. Its like a price tracker app slash a place to go to look for Bitcoin news all in one place. And it was a great app.
Mandrik:
It was, everybody was using it back then. And it was beautiful. I wish which blocked a blockchain just didn’t let it go to waste because it was a cool app. I mean, there’s a lot of options now, but back then it was the choice for people to check the Bitcoin price on their phone. It looked good. It was sleek and kind of combined news and price in one place, which, there weren’t a lot of options for that back then. So who joined the team from that acquisition? Another business card I didn’t have, Clark moody also joined the team too. He’s another absolute legend of Bitcoin. So, and then Andreas joined, like I said, as part of the security team and it’s really cool to have worked with them now. I worked remote. Some of them were more in person with each other, so I didn’t have a lot of personal interaction with them, but I did talk to them all the time online and they’re all great. I got along with everybody there for the most part, I think CZ was I think CZ had a lot of ideas that he wanted to implement that just didn’t go through. And he was probably frustrated and he went off and did his own thing I guess it kind of worked out for him.
Stephan Livera:
Also in terms of your thinking about Bitcoin and how you yourself learned about Bitcoin, what were the resources that you used? Was it Bitcoin talk forums? Was it Reddit, Bitcoin? Was it Bitcoin Twitter? Was it the books and the podcasts? What were you using to learn about Bitcoin for yourself?
Mandrik:
Bitcoin Twitter wasn’t established like it is now Reddit was really the place people were going and Bitcointalk.org also was still the must go. There was just so much information on Bitcoin talk, but like for forums is just an old way of looking at information and it’s not really efficient. Even back then it kind of sucked, but I was still using it because there would be a lot of information on there that would help me with, even with helping users solve their problems in my tickets, because there’s just so much about Bitcoin. I had absolutely no idea about, so Bitcoin talk.org was a great resource. Reddit was very helpful as well. And then the fact that I lived in New Hampshire with very very intelligent people who were super technical and like way into Bitcoin that was a huge plus as well because I’d go to these meet ups every week and meet with them.
Mandrik:
We would meet in Manchester, New Hampshire and we would talk and have some drinks and hang out and talk about Bitcoin and I could pick their brains about stuff. I can remember a meeting in 2013. It was either, I think it was 2013 where somebody was talking about generating entropy with dice, this is a thing now that people do. But back then I don’t remember hearing anybody else talking about that, but like there was a guy there who was talking about like, Oh yeah, I generate my entropy with dice and I’m like what did you even say to me?
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. And in terms of like I guess just mindsets around spending as well. Right. Because I think as, as you’re saying it was seen more like a day-to-day thing. Whereas I think now the thinking is shifting to more like it’s long-term savings. And if you want to do, day-to-day spends, probably use lightning for that. I guess that’s something that’s kind of shifted over time. But I guess for people who are coming into it today, they might be thinking about, okay, Hey, should I try to earn Bitcoin? That’s a question I sometimes get people who are asking me. Hey I really love Bitcoin. Should I work in the industry? Or should I just keep earning fiat and buying Bitcoin? How would you approach that sort of question if someone asks you that?
Mandrik:
Well, I think everybody’s going to be different here. I wouldn’t just blanket recommend go work in the industry, earning a hundred percent Bitcoin. If that’s something you really want to do, go for it because you have way more opportunities than any of us ever did handful of years ago. There’s just so many options now. It’s probably still not easy, but it’s much easier than it’s ever been. And it’s only going to get easier as more and more companies come up. I guess there is the extra challenge now where we didn’t have this problem back then, but now it’s hard to find a Bitcoin only company. So if you’re picky, which you should be, I think you’re going to have a harder time, but there are companies that you could work for already in Bitcoin that you might have to do some shitcoin support or something.I don’t know, like there are a lot more companies, but sadly fewer Bitcoin only companies versus the number of just like Crypto Companies.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. And I guess for, I mean, maybe the person thinking they might be thinking, okay my skillset only really works in the normie fiat world. Maybe it doesn’t make as much sense or maybe they if they’ve got a certain skill set that you kind of have to be in that field to really earn, then maybe for those people that doesn’t make as much sense. Right. And for them it’s better to just buy or get Bitcoin in some other way.
Mandrik:
It depends. Like I had my normie job in 2009 when I decided to start selling baklava, I was doing it as an agorist business and it wasn’t really earning me much, but it was a way to do something like my beliefs.I guess like to kind of put them into practice. I was still working a normie job, but I also was doing that. And then I started earning Bitcoin doing that. And that was just a small, maybe like 10, 20% of my income. That was fine. You don’t have to quit your job that you’re at very comfortable with it. That you even, maybe you love it or something. I would say if you’re in a normie job and you hate it, Bitcoin has nothing to do. Not even talking about Bitcoin, like what are you doing there?
Mandrik:
Maybe figure out something that you love. And if you can incorporate Bitcoin into that. Great. I mean, that’s a whole other thing, but there’s still other things you could be doing to earn Bitcoin. I think even if it’s just something small scale, like a hobby or whatever that you do. Everybody has other ways they could probably generate money doing something that they really love. Even if it doesn’t have to be life-changing amounts of money, it could just be a little bit and you could just say, okay, I’m going to do this. This is going to be my method of earning Bitcoin. So there’s, you don’t have to fully commit. You can just dip your toes in it and you’ll give it a try and see what you think, because it’s a very different mindset of earning Bitcoin versus buying and investing into Bitcoin. At least it was for me, that’s my experience. And that’s why I’m so big on earning Bitcoin. Just it just helped me get through so much of this. It helped me become a better holder. It helped me stay humble as well because yeah, watching your net worth drop and being a true believer, really it’s tough, when those things happen, but I would always recommend just dipping your toes in it. Give it a try.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. And you mentioned earlier as well, because Bitcoin can go through these big ups and downs. People might be worried about the boom bust nature of the industry, that if they go and get a Bitcoin job in a Bitcoin company, that maybe if they went through a bust that they would lose that job. And then it’s kind of, that’s a difficulty that they might have to face also. But I suppose you managed to weather the storm as well through those years.
Mandrik:
Yeah. and Bitcoin enabled me to do what I want and that wasn’t the goal, like the goal of Bitcoin, when a lot of us got into it back in the day, wasn’t to be like, we’re going to make all this money off of it. I mean, if it was we would have just thrown all of our money at it. Like nobody was thinking that back then, at least not so much in new. So putting onto that and believing in something and then watching as more and more people have their Bitcoin moment, just seeing it grow beyond just the ancaps and the libertarians and to just like normie world where these people are buying Bitcoin. They’re using it for different reasons and that’s okay when you talked about how the earlier days it was the big thing was on using Bitcoin.
Mandrik:
That’s not the case anymore. And that’s fine. You can’t be this person who just thinks you know what’s best for Bitcoin. And if it doesn’t do what you think it’s supposed to do, then it’s failed. I mean, how many of those posts have we seen over the years from Mike Hearn to the whole SegWit2X stuff. There’s just been so many instances of these individuals who think they know what Bitcoin is supposed to be they get to decide that it’s dead, but they don’t get to make that decision. And people who think that way and are very public about it, they’re going to go from hero to villain. That’s what happens. And I think that’s a big part of why you need to stay humble and acknowledge that, Hey maybe maybe it’s okay. If what I thought Bitcoin was at one time, it’s turned into something else or maybe it was always that way. And we just didn’t realize.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, I really like that. It’s a lot of self-reflection and self-awareness required to be that way. And I think you certainly are, right? Like you have to have a good level of humility about yourself and understand that no one of us is important to Bitcoin. Right? You could be the most important, but ultimately it’s a movement and it’s a technology that is going to proceed without any individual one of us. And so I think when people talk about being a long-term HODLer, sometimes there’s this idea of all you had to be a genius to do it. And I’ve noticed your perspective is maybe a little bit different. I think your perspective is more like you almost have to be a bit more of a stubborn ideological person to do it. Why do you think that?
Mandrik:
Absolutely. That is definitely my point of view the fact that I was stubborn and ideological made it a lot easier to HODL, because I feel like if you were smart investor type you would look into Bitcoin and just laugh. You wouldn’t have bought back then at least not in those days. Why would you? I remember talking, I had a financial advisor at the time when I first got into Bitcoin and I remember mentioning it to him and he kind of, he was like, I’ve never even heard of this. And then he got back to me later, he’s like, don’t put your money in this. This is like a scam, because there they go to these schools and they learn economics in a way of thinking. It doesn’t really mend with, or it doesn’t really mesh with the Bitcoin thinking.
Mandrik:
The fact that I didn’t have that education, I think made it easier for me to get into Bitcoin. I never had that thought. I was more from like the Austrian school, I guess that kind of thinking sound money. And the whole Ron Paul movement really put me in a place to understand Bitcoin better back then it just wasn’t seeing that way. Bitcoin was just seeing it as a scam or whatever tool it’s the same crap they say now, they were saying it back then.
Stephan Livera:
Of course, also related to what you were saying, the whole Libertarian Voluntaryist and agorist focus focus on. Of course I’m a Libertarian myself. And I know you are also, what’s your view on how that has evolved in the space. Do you think number of people who are libertarians in the space has fallen, do you think that represents a problem for Bitcoin? Or do you just think, it’s just going to have to go that way?
Mandrik:
Well, I’ve come to acknowledge that Bitcoin is for my enemies too, and my friends. So I’m okay with statists buying Bitcoin or whatever. I can’t stop it anyways and in some ways it’s almost like they’re being infected by sound money. Their brains are being infected with this new thing. They don’t even realize it. And I wonder what kind of impact that’s going to have on them long-Term if they end up holding Bitcoin and whatever funds that they have it, whether directs the holding Bitcoin or they buy or something else. It’s going to have an impact on them. Whether they know it, they fully realize it or not and that’s fine. You just can’t stop the growth. At some point it had to break outside of the libertarian bubble.
Mandrik:
I remember going into my first meet up where I’m talking to people and I’m like, people are into Bitcoin and they’re not ancaps. What is this? It was a strange moment. But I was just going to say, but yeah, that’s fine. I just remember having that moment where I was like, wow, this is so weird. There’s people from these other industries that are getting involved in this now. Wow! this is just kind of, it was just felt weird.
Stephan Livera:
Did you notice any people who after buying Bitcoin or earning Bitcoin that they then became Libertarians?
Mandrik:
I think that’s happened a lot. Right? I think we’ve seen that happen over time because there are a lot of people who say that Oh, came here for the money stayed for the different viewpoints and stuff. They just changed like they had, their Ron Paul moment, I guess they had it with Bitcoin. I think that’s great. I think that’s why I’m okay with my enemies having Bitcoin, because their brains getting infected with this idea that’s just counter to what they were told and in school that’s just counter to Keynesian Economics.
Stephan Livera:
Of course. I think in many ways, Bitcoin makes it a lot more possible to actually see that as a realistic future that we might move into. And maybe we won’t get the full an anarcho-capitalism, but at least if it forces over time, if it forces the government to be smaller. Well, I think anyone who’s a libertarian would have to say, Hey, that’s at least an incremental step better. That’s at least an improvement on what we have now.
Mandrik:
Yeah. When I reached the point where I was earning a hundred percent Bitcoin working in the industry, I realize I’m living in New Hampshire. We’re trying to make it a more Libertarian place. And that’s a very lofty goal when because when you think logically and you’re ancap it’s hard because you have these idealistic views of how the world should be, or not necessarily the world. But like how you should be able to at least try to have a community that’s voluntary that you’re just like, Hey, just give us this plot of land and let us figure it out. We don’t need to change the whole world. Let us just start with this community. Realistically. That’s never going to happen.I don’t think like at least not in my lifetime, it’s a really hard thing to find a place on this planet where you can just try that as an experiment.
Mandrik:
Right? Like it would be great to just be able to do that. But when I look back, when I reflected back on Bitcoin, this is literally what we did. This is like an example of that, It was a small community people on the outside saw it who weren’t necessarily Libertarians or ancap or Cypherpunks. They were just wall street guys just from all walks of life who are seeing Bitcoin. And they’re getting involved with it for different reasons. Hey, I want to be up there basically saying, I want to be a part of this community. I want to be involved with this and they’re joining for different reasons. But a lot of them over time do come to similar conclusions, obviously not everybody, but it’s been cool to see that happen. Just see it grow to more than just that.Because it’s as ancap your idea of a voluntary society is probably never going to happen maybe in space or something. I don’t know. But on this planet it doesn’t seem, it doesn’t seem very likely. I wish that wasn’t the case.
Stephan Livera:
Of course. I’m probably in a similar camp to you there. So I’m curious as well from your perspective, why aren’t more libertarian people into Bitcoin. Because in my experience, sometimes I come across other Libertarians and I talked to them about Bitcoin and some of them are kind of, they haven’t made it past. There’s a few reasons that in at least in my experience, I’m curious what you see. So I’ve seen them say things like, Oh no, I’m more into gold because I follow Peter Schiff. But some of them might say, Oh yeah, I mined some in the early days. Or I bought some in the early days. And then I sold it or, I was on the cypherpunk mailing list, but then I never actually bought any Bitcoin. These are kind of the answers that I hear. What do you hear when you talk to libertarians who are not into Bitcoin and why?
Mandrik:
Well, I think the gold argument is, is pretty common, right? I think that’s a big one. We were all goldbugs back then. When we first got into it, everybody I knew, all my friends, we were all goldbugs and we all questioned Bitcoin. Like we were like, how is this not a scam? How like, we went through all the same thing that all the nocoiners go through. Now we went through that, but we were willing to say, Oh, wow, maybe my way, maybe what all this time, like my way of thinking is wrong here. Maybe Gold’s not, it doesn’t have to just be gold. We put Bitcoin through that test. A lot of us did. We had these talks, we went through the same, like I said, similar things as nocoiners did.
Mandrik:
But over time and over using trying to use it and learning more about it and realize the value of it, we gave it a chance that’s the difference. Some people don’t want to do that. Some people are just, no gold is money. That’s what I want. My dad was the same way. He’s always been a gold bug. And now he’s a Bitcoin guy and he’s in his seventies. I think with libertarians, I would like the other excuse. A lot of them got in early and then they sold, maybe they were buying on silk road. Maybe they lost a wallet, maybe they just had like a 10X happen or even, like when the price jumped from $5 to $500 and most money you’ve ever had, and you could just pay off all kinds of things, logically you should probably sell at least back then.
Mandrik:
I can understand, I can empathize with why somebody would sell, because it’s an investment that goes from such a small amount to such a large amount life-changing money that you could pay off some things I can finally get whatever I needed. I can understand why they sold. But then the idea of buying back in it’s like, you’re admitting that you made a bad decision or like, you’re doing it. Like you’ll never have as much as you had before. So it’s not the same it’s like, Oh, well, I once had somebody might be like, I want to add 50 Bitcoin now. It’s like, I’ll be lucky to get one. I can’t really relate to that I just feel sad when I hear stuff like that, because to think like, Oh, I missed the, I hate when I hear I missed the boat because I’ve been hearing that since $20, $30, $40 people were just being too late now I missed it. It’s just frustrating, but the things where it’s just one of those things you can’t convince somebody if they don’t really want to.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. I think you make a lot of good points. I think there’s a certain level of open-mindedness you have to have to see Bitcoin for what it is. Otherwise you get stuck in your Goldbug world or you’re stuck into Fiat, nocoiner world. The other point, I think that you made very well is that really, to have humility that you have to be able to swallow your past errors and say, Hey in that example, let’s say you had 50 Bitcoins and then you sold them because Oh, I’ve made a 10 X on them. And now you feel like you don’t want to buy back in because again, it’s humility, right? It’s thinking, Oh, we’ll see, I’m worth having 50 Bitcoins. And I don’t want to be buying back into only have not even one coin or whatever. And it’s an error of thinking about what this thing is and where it’s going over the next 10 to 20 years.
Mandrik:
Yeah. I think back to like, there’s so many opportunities where if I really want to beat myself up, I could just dwell on all the times that I sold Bitcoin and did things and just think, Oh, I’d have so many more coins. Now, if I didn’t do this or whatever that first, that first pan of baklava I sold for 14 Bitcoin, I blew it all on seals with clubs. It was an old poker site back that was the Bitcoin only poker site. It was great. I loved it. But that was part of my journey, right? Yeah. It was great. like, but that was part of my Bitcoin experience. If I didn’t do that, I don’t regret ever spending a single Bitcoin and I’ve probably spent more Bitcoin. As far as like at the time when I was earning it, I was spending my Bitcoin. Like I was using it for a while there like for the longest time. And I don’t have any regrets there because I was earning all my salary in Bitcoin. So I was like, yeah, of course I got to spend some of it. Like I still got to pay these things in dollars or whatever.
Stephan Livera:
And I think all this kind of chatter, but I mean, the obvious story everyone brings up is the whole 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas thing. But I mean, the reality is whatever it was worth in Fiat terms at the time 35 bucks or whatever, whatever it was in Fiat dollars, surely that person could have just re bought. And so all this discussion about, Oh, I spent this many Bitcoins, well, if the person wasn’t re-buying or re-earning that much back, well then that was really the error. Right?
Mandrik:
Of course. Yeah. And really people always want to talk about Lazlo buying the pizza with this Bitcoin. I’m celebrating the guy who sold the pizzas for the Bitcoin. That’s, who I saw as a former merchant of selling food for Bitcoin. That’s what I celebrate. That’s Bitcoin pizza day to me, it’s the guy who earned the Bitcoin. I have a Casascius around, I keep on my wall, probably not for a long much longer. I earned it when it was $5. It’s the first edition Casascius round and I earned it selling a sandwich. And I look at it daily and it’s like that reminder of that time period. This is what Bitcoin was at the time and I have this proof that I’ve HODLed for almost a decade this is what this is. And to me it’s like, it doesn’t have a monetary value. It has like that value of the work that I put into it. So it’s like anybody could have just bought these things. Anybody could have bought it back then 10,000 Bitcoins for a few bucks or whatever, but they didn’t. That’s the thing, they didn’t because it wasn’t worth anything.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, exactly. And so I guess bringing it to the topic of spending Bitcoin then, can you give us a bit of your thoughts on how you think about spending Bitcoins now? Whether that is buying it directly on the website or it’s using say a voucher website, like Bitrefill.com Dot com or perhaps some of these bill payment sites, what’s your thoughts on spending Bitcoin?
Mandrik:
No, these days I spend way less and less Bitcoin. It’s just too good to hold and I’m not earning Bitcoin anymore. I’ve just been out of work. I’ve just been enjoying it. I have kids and it’s just in a place where I can focus on helping to raise my daughters and they’re teenagers and they’re going to be out on their own soon too. I’m in a spot where I can optimize that time and spend time with my wife as much as I can, as I want. Like, that’s great to me. So with that in mind, okay, I cut my spending way down. It’s just a better way to live. I still enjoy things. But for the most part, yeah, I keep spending low.
Mandrik:
If I’m going to spend Bitcoin, it’s going to be on Bitcoin Businesses, selling coin related items, or it’s going to be to donate to developers. Things like that could be a cool thing. I like to joke that Coinkite’s going to end up with everybody’s Bitcoins because they make the coolest ever. You just can’t resist anymore It’s like, do I need another ColdCard? Well, yeah, if I’m ordering a mass order, some more opendimes like that I don’t mind using Bitcoin for Bitcoin companies. It’s almost like you’re saying, Hey, thanks for doing what you do because there aren’t a lot of Bitcoin only company Bitcoin focused companies. Shitcoining is just the way to make money. Right? So cool that there still are those options. And yeah, those are the types of companies that I like to spend Bitcoin one with, or even to just like get friends and if a friend’s like, Hey, I just wanna get some Bitcoin. Selling them Bitcoin, just peer to peer where I’m just like, I don’t really want to sell Bitcoin right now, but you’re finally after all these years you’re finally gonna buy some. Buy from me, go through the experience of no KYC buying Bitcoin the way it should be.
Mandrik:
It’s fine. Like when the price goes up and you’re like, Oh my gosh, it’s worth so much more now. And I’m like, yeah, I took a loss so you could experience that. And I’m fine with that. That’s cool, I don’t have a problem doing.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah, that’s cool. it’s about kind of trying to grow the base of Bitcoiners out there as well. So I think that’s worthwhile where you can do it. So long as it’s responsible, right. Within a responsible range. I guess I’m also curious whether you play around with lightning and Bitcoin nodes or any of those Raspberry Pis and things like that. Do you play around with that Stuff?
Mandrik:
Stuff? I had, there was a lot of stand alone. It’s really easy, there’s a lot of software for building your own Raspberry PI, but I bought for a while that I was buying all anytime somebody put out like a stand alone node, I was basically, I just wanted to support their effort. So I would buy like the node and I’ve run so many of those, but I ended up just getting a Linux box and I just run, I basically have a server now that I run a Bitcoin on and I use Specter Wallet a lot. I like to play around with different implementations like that. It’s cool like Specter is just really cool way of using the Bitcoin Wallet.
Mandrik:
And I used Electrum for a long time. And using that with your own server is, it’s really hard when you’re not super technical. And I don’t consider myself super technical. I still end up, even when I set up my server, I’m just like, well, I’m going to be spending this day, just screwing everything up about 20 times, but I’ll learn I’ll figure it out. And that’s cool like, I enjoy that. At this point I just have a full computer dedicated to Bitcoin only stuff I play around with JoinMarket. I like Wasabi Wallet. There’s just so many cool things that I can do it. And it’s fun to me. It’s just like a fun thing to do I like that, Bitcoin’s still my life just cause I’m not working in the industry. It’s still just every day.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. That’s really cool. And so I guess in terms of what you’re looking out forward what are you looking forward to in the Bitcoin world, whether that’s from a technology point of view or maybe from an adoption point of view, what are you looking forward to?
Mandrik:
Well, you mentioned lightning. I’m actually not running any lightning implementations on my server right now. I have used it in the past. I don’t really have a need for it as much yet. Maybe I do I just been too lazy lately to set something up. When Casa Node originally launched they had their hardware. They had their hardware, their node stand alone node, and it was lightning oriented. And I used that that was cool for a while. I think lightning has a lot of growth ahead of it and that’s great. Bitcoin has taught me patience and like anything else, and that’s fine. It doesn’t need to be rushed and I think that’s how a lot of us feel with Bitcoin, especially after the whole SegWit 2X thing. We don’t want to make huge changes to Bitcoin unless it’s absolutely necessary. Maybe taking a more conservative approach is the better one. I think that’s a lot of us went through that who initially got into Bitcoin for using it as a currency. Using it all the time, the day-to-day life you kind of grow and you realize that.
Stephan Livera:
Yes. So have you got any thoughts on like things that you want to see come to Bitcoin? Do you care as much about having Taproot and some of these other ideas, or are you kind of just you’re just kind of happy with what is?
Mandrik:
I mean, I was happy with what it was years ago and I think it’s grown into something even better today. Yeah. The future updates of Bitcoin are exciting. I think that’s really cool. A lot of them there’s nothing like really specific, other than more focused on privacy. I think privacy is probably my biggest issue. Finding some way to increase privacy on the base layer or wherever. Like I said using join market is a really cool piece of software and I’ve used Wasabi Wallet. But I think privacy is going to be our biggest challenge ahead. Especially as these people who don’t care as much about privacy are involved in Bitcoin. I feel like it’s, there’s going to be an event in the future that it’s going to get really ugly and it’s going to make SegWit2X look like nothing. I just kind of feel that way, like the political atmosphere around Bitcoin there are, we’ve already hearing it lately where it’s used for crimes. Nevermind that dollars are used for crimes. So I’m just concerned. I do have some concerns around that.
Stephan Livera:
Yes. So I wonder if maybe we end up saying, well, who knows? Right. But what if we say some kind of government KYC fork versus the sovereign freedom Bitcoin fork and then there’s like another battle to come who knows. Right. I’m just kind of speculating, I guess that’s something is on people’s minds. Right?
Mandrik:
Right. And I think the one thing Bitcoin has going for it, well, there’s a couple of things that Bitcoin has going for it that really no other shitcoin does, I mean it has no leader. Satoshi is gone, please don’t ever come back. That’s fine. Like he did his thing. It was great, but he’s completely he’s irrelevant at this point as far as like the future of Bitcoin, right? Like him staying irrelevant is the best thing that could happen and stay for Bitcoin. So we have that you look at something like Ethereum that had the Dao hack and that like their ledger was not immutable like that’s been proven. So I think trying to make a big change to Bitcoin would be a lot harder. It would be a lot easier if there was a history of those changes being easier.
Mandrik:
The fact that it hasn’t been, I think that’s a good thing. I’m still very positive on Bitcoin and I think the more that people get into it now the less likely they’ll be wanting to change it. Especially if you have politicians who are super statist but are holding Bitcoin, they will maybe less likely to want to make drastic changes that will cut into their bottom line for greed reasons. That’s just an example I can think of off the top of my head, but things like that, where it’s just going to it hopefully is harder to make huge drastic changes or attacks on Bitcoin.
Stephan Livera:
So I guess if you had to leave as a closing thought for any listeners, maybe many of whom are not as OG as you are. Have you got any tips for them on weathering the storm and kind of riding the ups and downs and just any tips for them to think about from a Bitcoin perspective?
Mandrik:
Yeah. I think being plugged into a Bitcoin community really helps. Bitcoin Twitter’s a lot of fun. It’s also just a teeny tiny fraction of Bitcoin users. Most Bitcoin users, aren’t on Twitter and that’s fine. But having friends, having positive people around you who are into the same kind of thing you are, I mean this goes. It’s not just for Bitcoin, but really for anything, but like people who are on the same page. People you can weather the storm with makes it a lot easier like through bear markets with my wife. Who’s also, she’s just as much a Bitcoiner as I am. She got into it, a few months after I did we’ve been on this journey for years. It, that just makes it so much easier than just being alone. Not having anybody to talk to and just dealing with the hard times in Bitcoin.
Mandrik:
Because right now it’s the good times. Right? And we’ve been through the good times, the bad times or whatever and just stay focused on why you’re in Bitcoin, because if you’re in it just for money. If it’s just about making money that you’re never going to, like you’re never really going to be happy. There’s more to it than that. Think about what Bitcoin enables you to do. If it can enable you to be more free and have more freedom in your life. That’s incredible and you don’t need boatloads of money for that. You could reach a certain point where you could be. Oh, Hey, I have enough Bitcoin and I could get by on this take a couple of years off or something and jus with my savings plus whatever I’m HODLing and just kinda just relax and help myself or whatever, just keep grinding it out and earning Bitcoin or dip your toes into that or buying Bitcoin. Whatever you gotta do, keep stacking.
Stephan Livera:
Fantastic. So Mandrik, I guess I’m not sure if you want people to follow you, but your Twitter is @Mandrik. Is there anywhere else you’d like people to follow you or anything like that?
Mandrik:
I mean, that’s pretty much it. I mostly tweet about Bitcoin and meat cause meets my one passion. I’m more passionate about than Bitcoin. I can’t stack if I’m dead.
Stephan Livera:
Yeah. The Bitcoin carnivory is definitely a strong theme in our world. And I certainly I’m into that as well. Well, look man. It was really great chatting with you. I think I’m pretty sure the listeners will enjoy this one. So thanks again for joining me.
Mandrik:
Thanks so much for having me on.