Samantha Radocchia - Author of Bitcoin Pizza

In this episode, Samantha Radocchia joins me as a guest to discuss her new book "Bitcoin Pizza". She is a contributing writer for Forbes and the Co-founder of Chronicled.

Samantha Radocchia
--- Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamRadOfficial
--- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantharadocchia/
--- Website: https://samantharadocchia.com/

Transcription

Brandon Zemp  0:00  
Hello guys, it is August 14, I have another awesome guest on the podcast today. Samantha Murdock Yeah, she's the author of Bitcoin pizza, a brand new book that she is releasing on August 20. 

So make sure you pick up a copy of her book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all the other wonderful places that you buy books. 

She is a Forbes contributor for Krypton blockchains. She was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017 for enterprise tech, and overall she's very impressive, you guys are going to like her. 

As always, don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. And share this episode with somebody that you think would like to learn more about blockchain, maybe a friend, a colleague or family member, spread the word. Enjoy.

Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. Really excited to hear a bit more about your background and everything. So what's, what's your story? How did you kind of get into what you do now? And crypto and, and whatnot?

Samantha Radocchia  1:06  
Yeah, so well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think it's cool to, to I think you're the first person I've spoken to has written a book. So that's pretty cool.

Brandon Zemp  1:19  
Yeah, I do have that background.

Unknown Speaker  1:21  
Um, so I mean, like most of us, I have a pretty varied background, I grew up with two brothers who were really into gaming. And so by extension, I got really into gaming. 

Unknown Speaker  1:36  
And that was kind of, you know, what we did before even eSports was really a thing we were like competing on the weekends and clans on this game tribes to and then got into Warcraft and some other things. So I'm definitely more involved in that world and familiar with digital assets. 

Samantha Radocchia  1:58  
And so ultimately, when I got to college, I didn't want to study formally, like computer science or anything like that, since I was doing that for fun on the side. 

And so I studied anthropology and it was, so it was such like an old and crotchety discipline, like what I liked, was studying behavior and studying, you know, human dynamics, and systems, but it was still, like really archaic at the time, it was like, you go live in some remote place and observe these people. 

Unknown Speaker  2:33  
So this was around the time, you know, it was like Facebook had taken hold, there were the social early social networks. And so I tried to convince the department to let me do my thesis, you know, studying some sort of digital community, and they were like, No, it's too obscure. 

Unknown Speaker  2:50  
So I ultimately convinced them to let me live in the virtual world Second Life. And this was in 2009. And so I, I started, I opened like a digital t shirt shop, and I was making Linden Dollars, and then I was researching the, you know, exchanges, and all of that, and kind of stumbled into the world of Bitcoin. 

Unknown Speaker  3:13  
And, you know, was hooked ever since, not just from, like, the academic perspective, but obviously, just the, you know, the the other growing macro trends. 

Unknown Speaker  3:24  
And so this is, like, immediately after 2008, I graduated college, and, you know, 2011, and it was still, we were experiencing the effects of that recession. 

Unknown Speaker  3:35  
And so the idea of, kind of, like traditional jobs that might have been expected did not exist. And I think now with sort of these, the understandings of the changing global economy or automation, like this is even more prevalent. 

Unknown Speaker  3:50  
So, you know, I was really just interested in the underlying mission and how the world is changing. 

Unknown Speaker  3:59  
Then I became an entrepreneur, mainly because I was like, I'm going to start a company, it was, you know, watching, people start to do different things in class, they were spending a lot of time on laptop computers and online shopping. 

Unknown Speaker  4:13  
And so I kind of just like, got into this world of tech startups, but didn't do anything in the blockchain, or crypto, you know, using blockchain technology or in the crypto space until I ended up living in Park City, Utah. 

Unknown Speaker  4:26  
And there are some folks out there that were working, you know, with overstock, com, which was really, you know, Patrick Byrne, and the company was really early in being outspoken, you know, with the technology as well as accepting Bitcoin. 

Unknown Speaker  4:41  
So, you know, is kind of fumbling around there working on some projects, and then ultimately, met my co founders for a company that we started building in 2014, called chronicled, and that company, really, we were just, you know, coming out kind of like Bitcoin owners, 

Unknown Speaker  5:02  
but wanting to explore using the technology, so the Bitcoin blockchain for other non financial use cases, and, you know, we started with a sneaker trading exchange, like collectible sneakers, like Jordans and Newsies, and, and then expanded into more complex supply chain protocols. 

Unknown Speaker  5:21  
And so the company, it's still growing, it's working mostly in the pharmaceutical industry now, and I, you know, took time to write this book and have been just, you know, so fascinated with educating people about, you know, the, not necessarily the technology itself, and how it works, 

Unknown Speaker  5:42  
but more of the implications of, you know, how, how our world is changing from the social or cultural or economic or political perspectives. And so, you know, that's, that's how I got to where I am today. And, yeah, it's, it's been fun so far.

Brandon Zemp  6:02  
Yeah. Sounds fun. That's really cool. It sounds like you've done quite a lot. And you wrote a anthropology thesis. Correct.

Samantha Radocchia  6:11  
Right.

Brandon Zemp  6:12  
What was your thesis on specifically?

Unknown Speaker  6:15  
So this was the the thesis that got me into that I just mentioned the thesis on second life. So the Linden labs virtual world, for the listeners who don't know, called Second Life and at the time, you know, is it very kind of simple router, rudimentary virtual world, it wasn't necessarily a game, 

Unknown Speaker  6:36  
it was a venue or place for people to, you know, kongregate, create digital economy, open a T shirt shop, you know, go to a Fatboy Slim concert, things like that. And now we've seen, obviously, 

Unknown Speaker  6:51  
for anyone who has kids in middle school, or high school, or even adults, you know, we know we're aware of four at night, and some of these things, your experiences that people have gotten involved in. 

Unknown Speaker  7:04  
And so yeah, that thesis was an ethnography, meaning I lived in that world and basically just observed all aspects of, of life, whether that is you know, economic exchange, or governance or, 

Unknown Speaker  7:20  
you know, what people do for fun or what or relationships and dating like and or, you know, marital structure, like the very traditional anthropological things, but have like Second Life avatars. So it's been really cool

Samantha Radocchia  7:35  
to see,

Unknown Speaker  7:37  
to see that dialogue, expand, not just in terms of like, non fungible tokens and in scarce digital digital assets. But one, like the company itself, Linden labs, making high fidelity, which is actually, you know, kind of the the 2.0 version of the second life that is VR enabled and incorporating its own crypto currency. 

Unknown Speaker  8:00  
So to anticipate, I would say they were way, way ahead of their time, in anticipating, you know, where we have ended up now. And building on that thesis, and it was cool to study it, then.

Brandon Zemp  8:15  
Yeah, I think we're really on the edge of like, this whole VR lifestyle that I think many of us, especially millennials, and younger than us are going to really experience where you can be able to go into VR and like live like an ordinary life, 

but enhance, be able to do all these different things you wouldn't be able to do normally in the real world and have all kinds of different relationships with people and with your own work and your own creations and whatnot, I mean, it, the, it's completely limitless what you can do and create in a VR setting like that. So if you really, yeah, thesis on that must have been really interesting.

Unknown Speaker  8:52  
It really wasn't again, this was I mean, some of the tech evolutions that were happening at that time was literally the difference between, you know, the added voice capability in world from, you know, from just the command line interface of like, you know, chatting with people to, like, have a voice impact virtual worlds. 

Unknown Speaker  9:12  
And now it's like, you know, how, how is VR, you know, impacting manufacturing, and you can like design a chair in front of your eyes, or, you know, hanging out with your friends that there's a company it was talking to, that, you know, they're creating workout machines, like Jim machines, 

Unknown Speaker  9:30  
but specifically for VR, so their specific machine is a climbing machines are actually on at climbing, but you're in VR, and then you can hang out with your friends and go climb the Eiffel Tower, or go go climb El Capitan, and like, it's obviously tailoring these workouts, as well. 

Unknown Speaker  9:49  
And so there's kind of this, like, competitive gamified social element, as well as, you know, a more effective kind of like, health workout as well. So it's like, it's so crazy to imagine. I mean, I've worked remotely for most of my career, at least the companies and teams I've built have, you know, always had some sort of element of a distributed nature, whether it was just a handful of people, or it was the entire company. 

Unknown Speaker  10:20  
And, you know, we're seeing even now with this growing shift of, of tools, and technologies to support remote work, but it's, I feel like it's just accelerating will hit this point where we're whole, you know, meeting up to we're not just doing a podcast over a computer and, you know, talking at a screen, 

Unknown Speaker  10:40  
but you and I will be some virtual, high fidelity coffee shop having a conversation that other people can pop into. 

Unknown Speaker  10:48  
So I think there, it was, again, it's like cool to see this evolve, and accelerate so quickly. And I think there's a huge, obviously a huge part, the enabling trends or technologies are, again, the crypto side of things or the blockchain

Samantha Radocchia  11:10  
side of things. 

Brandon Zemp  11:10  
Absolutely. Like, I'm really excited to have my own virtual podcast studio, like I'm working very hard on making that happens. 

Yeah, I mean, it's not like completely feasible yet. But I mean, like, as soon as audio is like, working really well in world, and then you have the ability to meet up and there's a lot of ways to meet up, but you got to be able to coordinate with people, you want to have good latency, you don't want to have any issues with that. You want everything to feel is at in person as possible. 

So I'm working hard and trying to stay on the cutting edge of that, like, that'd be awesome to have guests like on the podcast, and then like, virtually, like, interact with them and have something more engaging. Because it's completely different to have a conversation in person than it is like, over computer like we are right now. 

Like it's it's more aging when you can see someone's face and their hand gestures and see when they're rolling their eyes, see, see when their eyes light up. I mean, like all that stuff, like, plays into the social fabric of being human. So it'd be really cool to really engage in that and VR, like, really excited for all of that.

Unknown Speaker  12:22  
Yeah, likewise, I mean, I think it's beyond just an inevitability. It's, it's something that we're desperately lacking right now. So I mean, a lot of the trends that I've been excited to research, but also I find her are troubling is that we had this, this explosion, or this, this wave of technology enabled by, you know, web 2.0 or mobile phones, are you faster internet connections are now even 5g and, you know, 

Unknown Speaker  12:50  
it's great, and we've become, you know, overnight, a globalized, you know, all global citizens, but at the same time, it moves so quickly that we became disconnected. 

Unknown Speaker  13:03  
And that's where we started seeing the erosion of trust. And I think that's why there's such a unique, you know, this this unique time period where people were ready to, you know, embrace a technology, not just like Bitcoin, but you know, beyond it, the whole premise of, you know, placing either not, 

Unknown Speaker  13:26  
you know, not needing trust, but placing trust in a protocol or system as opposed to institutions and centralized governing bodies. And so like, I just think it's, we still have some of these trust gaps and, or just gaps in general, and I'm excited for the use of technology to, 

Unknown Speaker  13:42  
you know, be used to restore those connections, and whatever, whether that's like an economic exchange, or it's, you know, helping people, you know, feel like we are connecting to other human beings, through VR, AR, or, you know, connecting with the products that we consume, 

Unknown Speaker  14:01  
or enabling more localized production or peer to peer networks of, you know, local farmers, as opposed to like, the big and industrial, agricultural supply chains. And so, there's this trend towards, you know, peer to peer networks is so much bigger. If you think about it, theoretically,

Samantha Radocchia  14:25  
than just,

Unknown Speaker  14:26  
you know, kind of one facet of society.

Brandon Zemp  14:30  
Yeah, tech, the tech will definitely fill in all those gaps, especially the whole decentralized, like revolution that we're going through, it'd be really cool, like, in VR, for me to give you like a virtual 

Bitcoin for like a virtual copy of your book. Like, that's something I'm excited for, like the whole commerce aspect of it.

Samantha Radocchia  14:48  
Yeah, me, too.

Brandon Zemp  14:50  
So, since we're already talking about your book, let's talk about it. So can you give like a back cover summary of what your book is going to be about?

Unknown Speaker  15:01  
Yeah, so the book, there are so many amazing resources out there, that are either more technical, deep dives, or focused more primarily on Bitcoin or some that are focused more on blockchain technology, the underlying technologies, and some focused on the high level, you know, 

Unknown Speaker  15:21  
economic trends. And so what, where I saw that there is a gap, and this is just in the, you know, from my experience, running a company that was using some of these technologies, and obviously, like working with customers, 

Unknown Speaker  15:35  
and people, there was still this gap in kind of the the zero to one of understanding, okay, there's all these resources of like, I can do this deep dive into the tech, or, you know, understand proof of work or understand proof of stake. But if there weren't a lot of people looking at why this is important, or why is involved or like, what's the call to action. 

Unknown Speaker  15:58  
And so, again, this book is written for the people who, you know, your kids, you've heard about it, because you're you have kids who talked about it over Thanksgiving, or you have seen it on mainstream media now on CNBC, and are like, what, what the heck is everyone talking about?

Samantha Radocchia  16:16  
And are still

Unknown Speaker  16:18  
confused as the Where are like, you know, I've met a lot of people who's, who work in organizations, and, you know, their bosses are saying, you've got to learn about blockchain. 

Unknown Speaker  16:28  
And they're like, Okay, what, you know, it doesn't have really a relevant day to day, impact on their lives, which it does and will and these technologies are very important. And so it was, it's kind of, was it, the goal to write the book was a fun, hopefully entertaining, light read, that isn't intimidating, that doesn't get too far into the weeds, 

Unknown Speaker  16:53  
but provides like a good high level overview of why this is important and resources to help you learn more, that's what you're interested in. And, again, from my perspective, as an anthropologist, like studying the, the ecosystem, the community, the culture behind this, so you know, terms like, to the moon, or hotel, or all all of these stories, 

Unknown Speaker  17:16  
these myths and origin stories that shape our realities, and no different than when you're talking about, you know, the origin of a country or nation state or the origin of a company, you know, the myth of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak starting, you know, Apple in a garage, and like, these stories become really important to the culture. 

Unknown Speaker  17:39  
And so if you look at, you know, the Bitcoin and crypto and block, you know, larger blockchain, if you can call it like a community, there are so many of these origin stories and cultural artifacts already that, you know, a lot of people are not focusing on. 

Unknown Speaker  17:58  
So it's kind of, you know, even the namesake of the book, Bitcoin pizza. You know, it's not just a facetious title, it's, I'm not just obsessed with pizza, although I really like I like pizza a lot. But you know, that that's a very specific story in the history of this space that, you know, didn't necessarily mark the first commercial transaction or, you know, transaction on the Bitcoin network. 

Unknown Speaker  18:24  
Of course, there, you know, were transactions before that, but it's the first sort of, kind of mainstream adopted story of someone buying, you know, real world goods to Papa John's pizza is for 10,000 

Unknown Speaker  18:40  
Bitcoin, and, of course, that, you know, garnered a lot of media attention as the price of bitcoin has gone up. And everyone's like, those are really expensive pizzas. 

Unknown Speaker  18:48  
But I mean, it's, it's, you know, the book really goes into, you know, a lot of these types of stories that give you more, you know, not just the what, but the emotional connection to the evolution of the space.

Brandon Zemp  19:02  
Absolutely. And that's a really awesome, too. And we need more books, like the ones you're writing to, there's a lot of ordinary people out there. 

I mean, most people are the ordinary people who don't understand in crypto and blockchains. Still, and they need an easier way to digest some of the stuff.

Unknown Speaker  19:17  
Yeah, totally. And again, I mean, for those who do end up getting the book, and I hope that they do, you know, there is a surprise at the end that I'm working on, that will be an interactive experience. And it does involve pizza, and it does involve Bitcoin. 

Unknown Speaker  19:36  
So, you know, to make a fun experience where you know, if you want to get involved in, it's intimidating, or you're scared, you're like, I don't know, I don't want to like risk losing all my money or making a lot of money, like whatever it is, you know, it can be super simple. 

Unknown Speaker  19:54  
To get involved and feel confident, build your confidence and learn more so that really, you know, some what's better than something as ordinary as pizza.

Brandon Zemp  20:03  
Hey, you had me at Pizza? So I'll be looking at that for sure. No, that's awesome. That's really cool that we're doing with it. 

What was your inspiration behind writing this book? Was it just off of women knowledge around the space that you've learned? Or was it something more personal? or What was it that inspired you to put all the work in to do this?

Unknown Speaker  20:29  
I mean, it's exactly that it's, I don't want to say ordinary in a negative sense, but it's the ordinary, everyday people, it's, you know, it's to my parents, who, for years struggle to explain to their friends or family members, what the hell it is that I do for a job, you know, like, I say, like, it's for all those people out there. 

Unknown Speaker  20:55  
And it's for, you know, I was sitting in this was probably in the high of craziness in 2017, to, you know, listening to my Uber driver giving it but you know, investment advice, or how to buy crypto to his friend on the phone, and I gave him a friendly tap and like, educated him a little bit more. So didn't make a terrible decision. 

Unknown Speaker  21:15  
I mean, it's to, its to the people who maybe have been disenfranchised by the current systems or feel disempowered. 

Unknown Speaker  21:24  
And, you know, it's a very inclusive space and model, and the more people that we get involved earlier, I mean, it's still, on one hand, we've made a lot of progress, tons of progress, extremely fast progress, but the same time is still early enough to get involved and really be part of making big decisions and building the future of, you know, our society. 

Unknown Speaker  21:52  
And so, you know, I felt inspired to at least provide some sort of guidance or or an easy inroad for people that otherwise would feel intimidated, because it isn't, it's I mean, technologies, intimidating, finances, intimidating, all of these things, you know, and I'm like a woman in the space. 

Unknown Speaker  22:15  
So even when I started making building companies, and I was out fundraising, I mean, that even doing that was like an intimidating thing. 

Unknown Speaker  22:23  
So, you know, it's for all the people that maybe want to feel a little bit more confident about, you know, understanding the high level space, but also knowing, like the terminology, and just, you know, feeling like they're welcome and part of the community.

Brandon Zemp  22:41  
Yeah, that's all really, really cool, and very excited to read it and kind of dive into what you got. But you know, I've been talking about that for, like the last two years, like the real issue with this industry. 

Still, I mean, we could argue that the issues have to do with scalability, not having an institute, no investors, or the comparisons between Bitcoin and gold, and then the economy. And there's a lot of things we could argue for why crypto isn't mainstream. 

But the real issue is that there's not enough education. There's this huge divide between this technology that's incredibly advanced, that solves all these problems, like all these problems. 

And then there's the ordinary person who's riding the subway who's just trying to buy a coffee that doesn't understand what the virtual intangible thing is that you can't hold in your hands, you can't put in your wallet, yet, 

somehow it's not controlled by anybody, and you can use it to buy a coffee, if they accept it for coffee, like, there's just this huge divide. 

And even when I wrote a book two years ago, the whole goal was to try and take an idea from the space and break it down so that the average person could understand it. 

And like, even though for the last two years, we've still had very, very little progression and education. And there's obviously been plenty of books. 

And there's some awesome people in the space. They're great educators, but they're doing it still at a very high level. There's just not enough literature, or podcasts or information out there. 

That really breaks it down. What I really liked about your book, and what I've seen so far from it is how it really takes these ideas, the culture behind it, the symbolism the people and breaks it down and makes it digestible, like pizza. At least from my perspective, I love that part of it.

Unknown Speaker  24:38  
Yeah, and I think that was the most challenging. So on one hand, I wanted to like leverage my skill sets best. 

Unknown Speaker  24:45  
And what I have always been pretty good at is taking complex ideas and distilling them, there is always the risk of distilling it too far, or abstracting it away too far. And so there have been you No, it was incredibly difficult to synthesize all I mean, even the stories. 

Unknown Speaker  25:07  
So, you know, the story of hodl, which was a drunk comment on the Bitcoin talk forum that ultimately, you know, people started saying meant hold on for dear life, like I had to distill that concept. And the otherwise 

Unknown Speaker  25:21  
I would have had like a 3000 page anthology of every nuance. And so it's like, it was really, really difficult to make, you know, decisions in terms of what was the appropriate level to distill something from the perspective of like, an average person who doesn't necessarily,

Samantha Radocchia  25:40  
you know,

Unknown Speaker  25:41  
want to dive into the nitty gritty details, or go down the rabbit holes, but the thing is, like, the goal is to have enough of an overview of these stories or these concepts. 

Unknown Speaker  25:51  
So like, if you want to learn more about proof of work, or mining, or how you can get more involved, like if that part of it really excites you, then yeah, you can pick up your book and go, you know, keep going down these rabbit holes. 

Unknown Speaker  26:05  
And so, you know, that was really the goal. And I'm still seeing, you know, I totally agree with you with, you know, on one hand, we can make these arguments about the technical challenges, the engineering challenges, 

Unknown Speaker  26:17  
but I think the the most grossly overlooked side of the our space that is now getting more attention is like the social engineering required to not just get mainstream adoption and educate people, but also, you know, kind of align incentives on these networks. It's incredibly complex. 

Unknown Speaker  26:38  
The shifts that we're talking about are, you know, on a global scale, and they're mostly, they require changing, like our social operating system. 

Unknown Speaker  26:49  
And that's like a, that's a lifetime, worthy project. And so I think that's from my perspective, and I like tech, like, I'm a techie person. 

Unknown Speaker  27:00  
So technical challenges do excite me, but I think it's the, you know, the social engineering challenges that are just incredibly interesting, and even asking questions that are still being discussed around things like governance.

Samantha Radocchia  27:16  
And like, you know,

how these networks are

Unknown Speaker  27:21  
governed. And there are a lot of debates in terms of what even constitutes merit or of being called the blockchain. 

Unknown Speaker  27:30  
And so I think, again, I kind of like touch on some of these high level questions. But, you know, the answers are still being written today.

Brandon Zemp  27:37  
Yeah, I think you nailed it on the head there, I think the biggest thing that we're going to see is a social social rewiring aspect and people. 

And with Bitcoin alone, people are starting to think about what money is, like, for the first time and like a long time, and my backgrounds in in neuroscience. So I think about things a little bit more analytically than normal. 

But from a social perspective, I mean, there's a lot of people that look at money a certain way. And they see that as the US dollar that I might have in my pocket. 

And they see gold as maybe money and some sentence, or some store of wealth or some investment, but they don't really see money from a much broader perspective, let alone really understand the history of money. 

And the awesome thing about Bitcoin is the whole symbolism behind it, and how it really draws you in, and in an interesting way, indirectly educates you on what money is because you really have to think about Bitcoin to really understand it. 

And I think the more people understand Bitcoin, the more people will understand what money is. 

And I think that's a fantastic thing for our society, I think you're going to see this massive social rewiring in people and how we think about money, and then that'll lead into technology, and how we use it and how our lives go about from there. I think we're definitely in for some social changes in society.

Unknown Speaker  29:06  
I totally agree. And even in my acknowledgments, you know, I say to Satoshi, you know, at the very least, thank you for starting a much needed conversation. 

Unknown Speaker  29:18  
And that was just that, I mean, Bitcoin Bitcoin has done so much. But if you look at the most fundamental level, it started this conversation on the nature of money, and therefore the nature of government, the nature of society, or reality itself. 

Unknown Speaker  29:33  
And so as you start, it's amazing to see the evolution even in mainstream media, where, you know, there was a lot of hype and a lot of focus around pricing. And then of course, there's a lot of focus on Bitcoin is dead, and this stuff is a scam. 

Unknown Speaker  29:47  
And then there, you know, now there are these long think pieces, I saw something the other day from the New Yorker, you know, that that was going into just kind of, again, the history of money, or, you know, other great resources or books, 

Unknown Speaker  30:03  
I really liked debt the first 5000 years by David Graber, I mean, that's, that's a really comprehensive book, if you want to get into, like 1000 plus pages on, you know, kind of the history of debt. 

Unknown Speaker  30:17  
But, you know, it fundamentally, I think a lot of people forget, and, you know, no penalty on them for forgetting, and we're all just living our lives. But all of these things, including money are social constructs, they were created at some point in time. 

Unknown Speaker  30:34  
And that also means it can be challenged or changed and the way that things are working our have been operating. You know, we're not always the case, and it's gone through various different cycles or evolutions. 

Unknown Speaker  30:48  
And so I think that's a very powerful idea, to, to start to digest. And that makes you question a lot of, you know, they're, they're difficult questions to ask. And they, they involve, you know, even harder answers and more complex technology to fix some of the problems that we've seen. So,

Samantha Radocchia  31:10  
you know, I'm really,

Unknown Speaker  31:12  
I just feel honored to be a part of this in whatever small or large way that I can. And I also feel so you know, honored and privileged to, like, have conversations like this and that more conversations like this are taking place.

Brandon Zemp  31:27  
Yeah, it's it's fun having conversations like this, it's very stimulating and a lot of ways, and hopefully, Satoshi na Komodo, read your book. Do you think Satoshi is a he or she a they like? Who do you think Satoshi is?

Unknown Speaker  31:43  
I don't? I won't speculate, I don't know, I think more is a day. Or I mean, I think that's on the other topic of origin stories and myths. 

Unknown Speaker  31:55  
I mean, it Satoshi is intentionally, you know, no one and everyone. And so when you see people in the shirts that are IM Satoshi, it's almost like a religious movement or ecosystem, really something akin to that. 

Unknown Speaker  32:15  
And I think that was very intentional for people to be able to identify or see themselves in this movement and having it stand for something so much larger than any individual or group of persons controller leadership. 

Unknown Speaker  32:29  
And it would just also, you know, the idea of someone coming forward and go be completely at odds with the general beliefs around decentralization. 

Unknown Speaker  32:40  
So, you know, I've never really spent a lot of time trying to debunk or, you know, do that. I mean, there's a chapter that kind of introduces the concept of, you know, 

Unknown Speaker  32:53  
Satoshi Nakamoto for those who, you know, don't know and might want to be interested going to, but I think, again, the anonymity is, is what, one aspects that makes us powerful.

Brandon Zemp  33:08  
Yeah, I think there's far more symbolic symbolism behind Satoshi Nakamoto than it is a physical person or physical group. 

And yeah, you do see a lot of people walk around of those t shirts that say, like, we are Satoshi and whatnot, but it's true. I mean, if you really think about what Bitcoin is, and the fact that it's not controlled by a single person, and that Satoshi na Komodo stepped out of that Limelight, to let it become what it is today. 

Bitcoin really does represent two things, it represents all of us as a whole, as a as a community, and at the same time it represent represents us as individuals, with our sovereign rights, to our own finances, to our own freedom to our ability to make our own decisions as individuals. 

And I think that's probably the most important takeaway is that you can have both of those things at the same time, without someone in the middle or someone above you, telling you how you use Bitcoin. That's probably the most important part about Bitcoin. 

And I think a lot of people in the space realize it, I think a lot of people that jump into the space are still kind of getting grasping that it's hard for a lot of people to see that there is no one behind it. And that they're Satoshi na Komodo might not even be a real person. That that that gets people really confused. 

Every time I try to explain Bitcoin, they're like, Where did he go? Like, you can't just like completely disappear? 

Like, where's Satoshi? Like, can I interview him? Can I talk to him? Like, no, we don't know where he is. No one knows her. Yes. or? Yeah, so it's, it's quite interesting to think about, but I don't overly ponder it because you get quite a headache.

Unknown Speaker  34:51  
Right. And again, I think if you get past that, I think that it's, that's the most beautiful aspect of the myth or the the movement that 

Unknown Speaker  35:03  
Satoshi you know, the concept of Satoshi whether it does represent a human being or a group of human beings or it, you know, is, you know, a concept that is separate from that. Its core to the message. Absolutely.

Brandon Zemp  35:19  
So, where do you think Bitcoin is going and all this? And if not Bitcoin, where do you think blockchain is going?

Unknown Speaker  35:27  
I mean, so I have serious personal tensions, just even in terms of the way I watched my company evolve. So I had multiple co founders, and, you know, investors and customers, and it ended up going in this direction, where, you know, here, here are these like early 

Unknown Speaker  35:45  
Bitcoin owners, and now it's, it has moved into the space of like creating a permission blockchain, you know, like the blockchain side of thing for, you know, a massive enterprise or industry. And so I always had this tension. 

Unknown Speaker  36:04  
I think a lot of people in this space have the tension one between kind of being more of a Bitcoin maximalist versus, in not believing that really like these other blockchain implementations are, are really blockchains. 

Unknown Speaker  36:17  
Are they sufficiently decentralized? Is it a blockchain or even beneficial if you've got a handful of the biggest industries controlling it? You know, and more relevant in discussion now, today with seeing, you know, Libra and Facebook's initiative, and really imagining the possibility of something like a Facebook becoming, you know, a central bank, under the auspices of, of this technology. 

Unknown Speaker  36:42  
So, I think we're at work, I mean, every day is a pivotal moment, it seems, but, um, you know, I really hope to see more consolidation around some of these projects that have moved into the private or permission side of things towards public networks or infrastructure, which is, you know, a totally different realm. 

Unknown Speaker  37:06  
And again, I I touch on these topics in the book, that doesn't mean that I support them or disagree with them, it's just like, I tried my best to give an overview of what the current discussions are today, and take from that, what you will, I do hope to see more, 

Unknown Speaker  37:27  
I'm very excited to see more mainstream adoption, or people placing more of that, you know, their assets into bitcoin. I mean, even over this past weekend, we're seeing kind of the the challenges in our global trade war with China and, you know, more Chinese buyers coming, you know, placing their faith into bitcoin. 

Unknown Speaker  37:56  
So I think there's a lot to consider. And I hope the people who were, you know, building and working so hard on the infrastructure and the tools and the user experiences, you know, continue doing that. So well. 

Unknown Speaker  38:10  
And you know, that those would be my most basic hopes for the community, and also that we have, you know, we work together and we talk openly about these hard questions, 

Unknown Speaker  38:23  
and we have as seamless of a transition if there is one as possible, and it doesn't have to be, you know, antagonize antagonistic or scary, but you know, that that we do start to transition into better systems.

Brandon Zemp  38:38  
Very excited to dive in and learn more about your book. And so when does it come out? And where can i buy a copy?

Unknown Speaker  38:45  
So the book comes out on August 20. And you can order it on Amazon, Google Books, Barnes and Noble all the all the standard places. 

Unknown Speaker  38:56  
And then for those who are listening who want to I with crypto or Bitcoin, I'm going to put it up on my personal website, which is Samantha ridicule, calm.

Samantha Radocchia  39:09  
And you could buy it there as well.

Brandon Zemp  39:11  
You're that guys go buy her book, Bitcoin pizza, gonna like it, it's gonna be good. 

Well, other than the book, what are you doing now? Like? Are you working on any other projects? Are you just kind of doing the same stuff as usual? Or what's going on in your world?

Samantha Radocchia  39:27  
Yeah. So

again, as I moved into an advisory role with with my previous company, and spent the time finishing the book, and I do a lot of speaking and educating, so this fall, actually, in September, I'll be in Brazil, and Chile, in Italy, talking on open finance, and define and some other interesting topics like financial inclusion. 

And in the meantime, I mean, it working on a bunch of projects and exploring, you know, really, what is the where's the area where I can have the greatest impact in terms of the next company, or tool that I build. 

So I mean, there are a lot of ideas and themes that are discussed in the book that might be related to projects that I'm working on. 

I'm definitely again, because of my history in in gaming and VR, that that certainly interests me, and whatever tools or services can help to restore connections between people and themselves, or people and other people are local communities. 

And then there's also this side of me, who's worked really deeply now in, in global supply chains and seeing the mess of complexity that has been, you know, caused by kind of these trust gaps there. 

And so again, when you're thinking about, you know, buying something, whether it's a you know, clothing, or food or a supplement, or whatever it might be that you know, 

the amount of steps that needs to go through to get to your door. And so like imagining what peer to peer networks, or more compressed, vertically integrated networks could be for the simplest things that you would want to produce. 

So I mean, I'm, I'm really exploring quite a bit. But ultimately, you know, where it lands is, is using this technology to empower people and not entrenched them. So, you know, that's kind of my core operating principle. And that's definitely what I'll be working on. Next.

Brandon Zemp  41:45  
Very cool. Sounds like you keep yourself busy. So it doesn't sound like you're getting bored anytime soon. No, no, I'll have to hunt you down and get you to sign a copy of my book from you as well. So often, when are you going to be in Chile?

Samantha Radocchia  42:00  
October!

Brandon Zemp  42:01  
I'm trying to go down the list. So it's sometime sometime this fall, so maybe I'll, I'll stock you down there. So

Samantha Radocchia  42:10  
Oh, that would be really cool. I mean, that is

very much a digital nomad sounding way to hang out.

Brandon Zemp  42:17  
Yeah, totally. Thanks for coming on the podcast and everything and giving us a preview of what to expect from your book. 

For those of you who are listening, definitely go check it out. It's important to stay educated on the space you can never get enough books. 

You can never get enough education. When it comes to crypto, it's changing every single day, updating every single day. 

So make sure you get her book and check it out. And again, thank you for coming on. Really appreciate you taking the time and everything means a lot.

Samantha Radocchia  42:45  
Yeah, likewise means a lot to me as well.

Brandon Zemp  42:47  
Talk to you again soon.

Samantha Radocchia  42:48  
All right. Bye.