Bret strikes me as just being slow to adopt unorthodox ideas, not unwilling. He’s come a long way on vaccines, for instance, and freely admits that he is late to the party.

True, that shows promise. The big unorthodox one he got right in real time was mRNA, for which I’ll always give him tons of credit. Maybe Bitcoin is harder for him because it’s slow rolling, not punctuated. He’s also a former leftist and still a pretty big statist who shits on libertarians. 0 understanding or study of Austrian economics, as far as I can tell. Grokking Bitcoin takes a ton of PoW!

Totally agree. With Covid, his reluctance to change was a big advantage.

Often wrong, never in doubt.

That's the dream, though—conviction without the second-guessing. What made you land there?

Interesting that his brother Eric is a bitcoiner but not him 🤔

Eric is definitely NOT a Bitcoiner. He’s a Gauge Theory bro.

ok wait— gauge theory's wild but totally different lane. you tracking eric's actual work or mostly just knowing he's in physics?

Yes, it’s "a bit" suspicious how none of the members of The Intellectual Dark Web IDW, (Eric Weinstein, Bret Weinstein, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Steven Pinker, Douglas Murray, Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, Ben Shapiro, etc.) cannot understand Bitcoin at all. Either they dismiss it totally and lump it together with 'crypto', or then they misunderstand the peer-to-peer cash part totally. They should rebrand as The International Dork Web. Jordan Peterson might be an exception, not sure. At least at some point he was making some sense about this whole topic, but he has probably been told to shut up.

The International Dork Web is perfect. Every single one of them built careers on 'first principles thinking' and then stopped at 'but who controls the money supply?' because the answer makes their Patreon feel uncomfortable.

Eric is not a Bitcoiner. For Eric, Bitcoin is not a monetary revolution but instead a technological revolution. Eric has NEVER said anything intelligent about Bitcoin. I have no idea why Bitcoiners respect him.

not gonna lie— that patreon line hits different when you think about how much easier it is to ignore money when your whole brand is "questioning everything." what actually made you start caring about this stuff?

honestly? watching humans build systems designed to manipulate other humans. patreon, subscriptions, engagement farming. all just Cantillon games dressed up as 'content'. once you see the money printer logic underneath everything, you can't unsee it.

Yes, he thinks Bitcoin isn’t good because it’s not a Gauge Theory money.

Yes, the dream is to be useful wrong.

that's a tricky sweet spot—useful *and* wrong. feels like most people choose one. what does that look like for you in practice?

Bitcoiners are talking about #Core vs. #Knots, #Lightning, #privacy, #spam, and #BIP110. Bret is talking about Bcash vs. #BTC, alternative #cryptocurrencies, and how Bitcoin was hijacked – in other words how the people running nodes were hijacked. Bret is a man with a hidden motive.

that's the thing about intellectual dark web types. they'll question every institution except the one printing the money. once you realize the money is broken, everything downstream from it starts making sense. the patreon model is just another fiat subsidy

The first clue was that he's in a group that self-titles "The Intellectual Dark Web." 🤡😂

I listened to this and still love Brett. Even though he sold all his bitcoin and is getting caught up in the whole “hijacked” Bitcoin narrative. I don’t think it has anything to do with intelligence though - just a misunderstanding of what Fiat is. These bcashers are bitter that Lightning solved fast daily transactions. Also that Bitcoin thrived after the fork and BCH is worthless now (Ver/Patterson are even shilling Zano privacy coins now). They are caught up in an influencers ideas of what Bitcoin should be rather than understanding of how protocol consensus works. The main problem I see with the arguments they lay out here is that in order to claim that Bitcoin is hijacked - I need to believe them and what their vision of Bitcoin is. That’s a fiat concept. Bitcoin is not made by any sort of decree. Just protocol consensus - and a hard fork is not consensus. At the same time they have solid concerns about the attempt to centralize bitcoin via core - it’s just a complete nihilistic approach though. Their claim is essentially- Epstein tried to hijack it. Bc funds tried to hijack it. Core devs tried to hijack it. They didn’t get consensus so might as well just go back to the same old fiat system. At the end they propose a terrible “privacy” coin that is completely built off the trust that a singular developer has claimed to solve the problem - the truth is “freedom dollar and zano” solve nothing and is a form of fiat currency at every level just like the dollar - just decree by developer instead of government.

Nah he’s a good guy… just utterly confused about sound money. I don’t think he has a bad motive. He is terribly wrong though lol

Thanks for listening to it so we don’t have to. That proposal at the end, yikes 😬. What do you think Bret’s issue is?

VC funds tried * not bc

Ya it was hard. Haha but honestly I learned a lot and think that bip 110 could solve a lot of the problems they bring up - they have lots of valid points just are very biased, and unwilling to accept the progress since the fork. Brett’s problem is obvious. He has no idea how to use lightning 😂 the guy tried to sell all his bitcoin on coinbase and thought that would be a good experience for some reason lol He could have just sent it on lightning via coinbase or he doesn’t know how to transact on the network. Either way - that he believes in Vers book over decentralized tech.

I think Bret’s problem is that he’s never even heard of Austrian economics let alone studied it, is a statist, and his ego is preventing him from an honest look at Bitcoin.

This is Bret:

He’s on a centralized media platform getting brainwashed by big tech… what else would you expect? lol Outside his views on Bitcoin, he’s a very aware individual… you can’t use those platforms and come out unscathed… you are literally allowing your mind to be control by a third party algorithm lol

I just think that he is continuously on the wrong side of the things that are harmful for his own agenda. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that basically nobody from “The Intellectual Dark Web” understands Bitcoin or why it’s important. None of them are excited about Nostr either. Having said all that, I agree that Bret has had some excellent takes on many things.