Surprise AMA 11/17/2024

Opens on November 17th 2024 seeing a 2025 rebound and returning passion, with the constitutional convention only weeks away in Buenos Aires.

Chang plus one is on testnet, and the interim constitutional committee's first hard fork will turn on the DReps for a full onchain government; the budget process is underway with the CEDC coalition forming.

The Cardano Innovation division is opening to community projects like gummy worm from SundaeSwap, Midgard from Anastasia Labs, and zkFold, alongside a strategic investment in Maestro and a dedicated hire for Bitcoin DeFi.

Wants a one-click Bitcoin DeFi experience powered by Cardano, with Hydra leaping forward via Hydra Doom, gummy worm, and Midgard, and Cardano being the best rollup system thanks to extended UTXO.

Ouroboros Leios is prototyping with a team of six or seven, a new Cardano node is in the works, the Nintendo emulator on Hydra is next after Hydra Doom, and the DApp store is finally unblocked for Lace.

Lace is under solid management with Brandon, and the new Nami mode lets Nami users migrate to Lace while keeping the same familiar interface.

Calls 2025 the year of Lace, with multisig, a paper wallet generation two adding hardware support like YubiKey, and multi-asset multichain.

On regulation, is engaging senators and maybe visiting DC, sorting what can be done through administrative rulemaking, executive orders, or lawmaking to make the US the best place for crypto.

Wants a Bill of Rights for crypto that defends non-custodial wallets, plus asset classification to end the SEC's regulation by enforcement, and had a warm call with Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple.

Is setting up a call with Leemon Baird of Hedera and working through the crypto ecosystems so the industry speaks with one voice to unlock trillions in real world assets.

Is done tweeting about politics; the next nine months are about getting a crypto law passed, which needs an industry-wide survey feeding a single policy point.

Wants to benchmark against international regulators, the JFSA, Singapore's MAS, Abu Dhabi's ADGM, Dubai's VARA, and Switzerland's FINMA, to make the US number one.

Midnight now has good competitors in Espresso, Aleo from a16z, and Mina, and learning from them helps orient its launch.

Midnight launches decentralized from day one via Cardano with no VC-distorted distribution, enabling a tri-hybrid app across Cardano, Midnight, and Bitcoin that finally gives Bitcoin a privacy layer for private smart contracts.

The Bitcoin education project is coming back, and Bitcoin OS will go through the innovation group with security backfilling and a proper academic paper.

Just as Satoshi created Bitcoin and IOG scientists later wrote GKL15 to formally prove it secure, hopes to formalize the innovations in Bitcoin OS.

On the SpaceX visit to Hawthorne, they build a rocket every two days, and the swag bag held a t-shirt, a pen, and a notebook.

On inhabiting the body of a wolf, the proprioception and body mechanics change completely and the sense of smell reaches for miles.

Midnight is a fourth-generation meta chain, not just a blockchain, working across Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano to add private smart contracts and a selective disclosure regime for DAOs and security tokens.

Midnight will be airdropped to Ada holders through a glacier drop that you mine to produce, with Cardano as the largest distribution.

He and his brother bought the intellectual property to Crystal Mines, an old blue-cartridge NES game, and are rebuilding it from the ground up for a Homebrew launch title on the Nintendo emulator.

Crystal Mines targets around July 2025 with a save function, inventory system, and a rewritten plot, built by a small team in Gillette, Wyoming, aiming for a new NES title every three months.

RFK is not FDA but HHS secretary over the whole healthcare apparatus, and is excited he will change direction on America's health, seed oils, and what is in the food.

Cites a viral study where a rat on an American diet cannot swim to safety like a normal rat, and wants to make America healthy again.

Has worked out daily since the ketamine retreat, ran 30 miles in mid-November 2024 with two fasting days, and names Hibiki Harmony his favorite whiskey, last drunk in 2023.

Sees Cardano and XRP adding DeFi, liquidity, and a stablecoin layer to each other, and is meeting David Schwartz about possibly getting Midnight working with XRP.

Is reading The River of Doubt about Teddy Roosevelt's near-fatal Amazon expedition after losing the 1912 Bull Moose campaign, and will blog about it.

Is not a Freemason but Catholic, and the glowing plant company will have news in 2025.

Recounts going to Davos once with the Cardano Foundation's Nathan Kaiser, finding the World Economic Forum a class system of $100,000 tickets, private jets, and hypocrisy, and never returning.

Still attends the Milken Institute, America's Davos, where he once ran into Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and sat with Brad Garlinghouse in a leprechaun outfit.

The Sugar Bush the squirrel story: in 2013 he tried to raise 10 Bitcoin through the Bitcoin education project to dress her in a Bitcoin costume, and meme coiners have now resurrected that post into meme coins.

On Quantum Hosy, plans to study strange quantum effects that can be emulated through a Von Neumann architecture and bring in hyperdimensional geometry like 4D Minecraft.

Is excited about Polkadot's JAM and doing upstream substrate contributions from Midnight, having met Polkadot people at Argentina's tech forum with Milei.

Has not talked to Gavin Wood in years but respects him as a brilliant engineer; the Oura ring gives phenomenal sleep data.

Sends love to Eddie, his Osaka bartender from Ghana who works 11 months a year and spends one month home, and is nearing retirement.

Emailed Jed McCaleb about an unrelated matter, and notes Karen Chang, GM of partner chains, came from Stellar, so they stay in touch.

On the Second Amendment it shall not be infringed; he is a gun owner with enough for an armory, and Federalism balances local and federal regulation.

Plans a Nike the pig game on Nintendo priced only in the Charles token, and is stunned the UAP hearing had an AARO-linked witness testifying to recovered biologics.

On UAP claims of craft that can disable nuclear weapons, thinks something will come out under Trump, and will get a Keystone wallet and talk to the team.

Progress on stablecoins for Cardano is strong across both homebrew and name-brand efforts, with more to say in a few weeks.

His daily routine: up around 4:30 to 5, gym and 45 minutes of meditation, deep work and calls, a cold plunge, shakti nails, reading, and a nap in the naptor condo upstairs.

Shows his Immortal chamber, combining red light, vibroacoustics, PEMF, molecular hydrogen, and speakers into a deeply relaxing recovery device.

Is most interested in using vibroacoustics for pineal gland stimulation to decalcify it and trigger endogenous DMT, with a clinic research program starting in 2025.

If the budget passes, the Ada treasury can fund Cardano marketing, so vote yes on the budget.

Gave the crypto bison project to Roman, the IOG CTO, to build out as his passion project, or it goes into the Nintendo game rotation.

Calls the $36 trillion national debt the blue whale in the room, which is why DOGE exists under Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to cut $2 trillion, questioning whether the US needs 16 intelligence agencies.

Stablecoins and oracles are the two things Cardano must get right in 2025, and Midnight's privacy component could make it a powerful oracle layer where Charli3 could deploy.

The Lace team is building a mobile version out of a dedicated new office in Argentina.

Explains why oracles matter: smart contracts cannot natively see external state like the price of Bitcoin or an election result, so oracles inject it for real-world DeFi and prediction markets.

On handling criticism and failure, letting it roll off leaves hidden trauma, so build a regular cleansing mechanism to process and forgive what is genuinely your fault.

Psychedelics let you process criticism and failure quickly and without judgment, but therapy and other doors lead to the same enlightenment.

Get addicted to small wins, since a small daily victory like a three-minute workout builds Atomic Habits of cue, craving, response, and reward.

The seven days of darkness is his hardest challenge yet, topped by an even more dangerous thing in April, and he is prepping psychologically with the Bardo Thodol.

The Bardo Thodol describes a 49-day, three-stage journey after death leading to reincarnation or enlightenment, with practices to relive and relitigate your life while still alive.

A darkness retreat simulates death with no light, sound, or devices, food passed through a light-tight double door, so after the boredom recedes the inner journey begins.

Doing this to someone against their will would be a war crime under the Geneva Convention, and intelligence agencies use the opposite, white rooms, for torture.

After about four days in darkness the brain makes DMT and you hallucinate at the highest levels, reaching completely different realms; he will write it all up afterward.

Hired a sleep medicine expert to help reset his circadian rhythm after such a traumatic event, and will opine on reincarnation only after he goes.

The 2024 election was the death of the mainstream media, with MSNBC likely sold and CNN doing mass layoffs, and Bezos pulling the Washington Post's Kamala endorsement to seem nonpartisan.

Long-form media and podcasts are back, Joe Rogan is more powerful than any newspaper, and politicians who embrace the format are rewarded.

Trump and JD Vance did three unrestricted hours on Rogan while Harris demanded one hour with edit control, and the result shows you must submit to the new model.

Praises Fetterman and Bernie Sanders for bravely going on Rogan despite the risk, since the new media criticizes your ideas but at least lets you explain your side.

On favorite philosophers, he grew up loving Bertrand Russell and analytic philosophy, with its deductive, rigid, atheistic rigor and the essay Why I Am Not a Christian.

Is now drawn to process philosophy and the idea of one big tapestry; a good philosophical system must engage the problems of its time and let you derive meaning from life.

The unhappy and unmotivated are people without a mission or meaning, adrift like a boat in darkness on the sea with no direction.

Albert Camus and absurdism, Sisyphus enjoying pushing the boulder, is a favorite, and bonus points go to a system that accepts paradoxes and unknowable things like consciousness and panpsychism.

Criticizes hardcore atheists like Richard Dawkins for being religious about a universe defined only by today's senses, since faith is a vital survival component.

Every culture rises and collapses, like Jamestown's cannibalism around 1609, and transcendent faith is what carries people through the unknowable.

Roger Penrose's research suggests the brain is a quantum computer, so quantum entanglement could connect humans and nonhumans over unlimited distances.

Deeply admires mathematicians Ed Witten and Terence Tao for their colossal brilliance and devotion to mathematical education.

Calls Jeremy Avigad, director of the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics, a complete mathematician, and admires historical greats Grothendieck, Dedekind, Riemann, and Poincaré.

Gauss was the smartest but least useful for hiding his scratch work, so he prefers George Polya and Paul Halmos who taught the process of thinking, and Joel David Hamkins on the philosophy of mathematics.

Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica spent a thousand pages unifying arithmetic and logic just to conclude that one plus one equals two.

Spent a transformative week in silent meditation at the Shambhala Center at Red Feather Lakes, and nods to Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem.

Walks through Joseph Campbell's hero's journey using Frodo, from the comfortable Shire through the call to adventure, outgrowing Gandalf, and seeing failure embodied in Gollum.

Contrasts Luke Skywalker's earned hero's journey with Rey, who starts at the top with no struggle, which is why Luke is timeless, and notes Plutarch paired Greeks and Romans to study virtue.

On whether the Tyson fight was staged, Jake Paul clearly could have knocked Tyson out but let it go the distance for spectacle, and age had wrecked Tyson's peekaboo footwork.

How he would have trained Tyson: hypoxic then hyperbaric protocols, heavy stem cells, reaction training, and mitochondrial rejuvenation over about a year.

Loved the undercard fights and reminisces about Age of Empires, though the Tyson fight cost him money on Polymarket betting against the 58-year-old.

On Satoshi's identity and zero-point energy, the overunity Orbo guys seemed like malarkey and went out of business, and he will not comment on physics he does not understand.

A kid to learn three languages to go anywhere in programming: JavaScript for the web, Python for data science and machine learning, and Rust for systems.

Beyond the big three, learn languages by problem: Erlang and OTP for distributed systems, Ada and Spark or Haskell and Agda for high assurance, the JVM or .NET for enterprise, and Lisp, Clojure, and Scheme for language research.

To truly learn Haskell you must learn category theory and type theory, and a fun path is JavaScript then Elm and functional reactive programming for building UX.

Terrence Howard is a classic Dunning-Kruger who skipped to the creation step of Bloom's taxonomy without the humility to empty his cup, be a student, and learn the foundations first.

You can rewrite all of mathematics from different axioms, as in reverse mathematics or Woodin's Omega set theory, but must prove them independent, consistent, complete, and decidable.

Topology and analysis prove the same continuity through different lenses, bridged by tools like the Atiyah-Singer index theorem, so a new formulation must translate to the incumbent or show it wrong, as with the Banach-Tarski paradox.

Dunning-Kruger types play victim like Terrence Howard, forgetting Einstein had a physics PhD from ETH Zurich, while Norman Wildberger challenges mathematical orthodoxy but holds a Yale PhD and makes cogent arguments.

In physics, unlike pure math, your model must connect to reality and is wrong when reality disagrees, so Terrence Howard doubly burdens himself by changing both, while Ed Witten won a Fields medal building new math for his physics.

There is real pseudoscience in naturopathic medicine bundled with genuinely interesting things like photobiomodulation and PEMF, so his clinic forces both sides together, and Garrett Lisi wrote his E8 theory of everything on a surfboard.

Chose stem cells over a hair transplant, since a transplant is the ultimate combover while stem cells rejuvenate and regrow lost hair.

On imposter syndrome finishing a CS PhD, you never truly know what you are doing, so admit it and fall in love with solving interesting problems, following the thread that haunts you.

Great research needs collaborators who share the passion, and he recommends building a second brain with the Zettelkasten method and the book How to Take Smart Notes.

Is excited about Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse, believing a cataclysm around 11,000 BC lines up with Plato and ice cores, and that every culture from Sumeria to Africa has a flood myth.

Just got Manly P. Hall's thousand-page The Secret Teachings of All Ages, and recommends the Obsidian app as a second brain.

Recommends learning expert Benjamin Keep on YouTube, and declares 2025 the age of Hydra with Hydra Doom, Midgard, gummy worm, and the emulator all coming.

On when he will do Rogan he jokes it is unbounded, and the Hydra Doom Showdown is planned for Vegas in January alongside World of Concrete.

Will go on Bankless after the Constitution is done, and wants a booth at the 2025 Bitcoin conference in Vegas to pitch Cardano as the Bitcoin DeFi layer.

Nike the pig is going into the Hydra Doom game via product manager Trim Bruet, with a custom final map where Cardano projects can place logos like an esports arena.

On why BitBoy still dislikes Cardano, he wishes him well, listens for legitimate criticism, and believes the budget and constitutional process will address the fair points.

His proudest accomplishment by far is building Cardano and its community, calling it the privilege of a lifetime.

Advises a non-technical would-be builder to spend six to twelve weeks learning Aiken and AI-assisted development to express ideas in code, then partner with a professional developer.

Input endorsers, Ouroboros Leios, are in the prototype team with a current velocity targeting late Q2 2025.

The April darkness retreat will be filmed, plus a mystery box under NDA; Atala Prism moved into Hyperledger as Identus, now an Apache 2 open-source DID platform.

Cardano consumes Identus in Lace, Midnight, and Realfi for selective disclosure, lending, and credit scoring, and anyone can use the fully DID-compliant platform.

On ayahuasca, he had dinner with someone who has done 90 retreats and become very Zen, but warns strongly against Salvia.

Salvia causes total ego death and time dilation, telling of a man who smoked it in Alaska and experienced ten years as another person in Texas before waking up.

Names the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder as his favorite, and does a 45-minute Muse headband meditation each morning.

On decentralization, points to the Edinburgh Decentralization Index from the University of Edinburgh as the objective metric and shares its live dashboard.

Walks the EDI dashboard: Cardano's Nakamoto coefficient is about 60, alongside the Gini coefficient, Shannon entropy, HHI, and the tau index, comparing Polkadot, Tezos, and Bitcoin.

Ergo can be added to the Edinburgh Decentralization Index simply by its developers talking to the Edinburgh team.

Owns both an AR-15 and an AK-47, favoring the AK-103 for its power and reliability, and just got a Barrett 50 cal he jokingly calls the TBI machine, fed by cheap Russian surplus 7.62 ammo.

Has been to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam several times and loves it, calling the Vietnamese Cardano community one of the strongest.

Shelley was the turning point, and now with Goguen, Voltaire, and Basho the roadmap has never been stronger and Cardano is a leviathan.

On the mystery box, it is under NDA and the hardest, coolest thing he has done; Solana is a partner and customer, not an enemy.

Apologizes for years of harshness toward the Solana community, will attend a Solana conference, and invites Solana to Rare Evo with a Midnight booth.

On putting EverQuest on chain, he played it as a high elf and would find the Sony Online Entertainment IP interesting to pick up.

IOHK is a subsidiary of Input Output Group and shut down long ago pending a website update, and he is negotiating with World Mobile to build a micro ISP in Gillette, Wyoming.

On Iran, the ancient Persians invented the yakhchal to make and store ice 3,000 years ago, and he shows part of his cuneiform tablet collection.

Shows the world's oldest customer complaint, Nimrod griping about bad copper around 1800 BC, plus an incantation to ward off the evil eye and a wedding proclamation.

The Babylonian and Sumerian base-60 system, which is great for trigonometry and astronomy, and demonstrates counting to 60 on your fingers.

On improving long-term memory, work the four stages of exposure, encoding, consolidation in sleep, and recall, using spaced repetition, interleaving, and mnemonics.

The Constitutional Convention will be streamed despite the horrendous expense, followed by a two-step process of clearing the convention and then onchain ratification; recommends the book Make It Stick.

Every time you recall a memory you change it, and since the Grail Bridge works for Bitcoin script and Litecoin it should work on Doge, letting Cardano be the DeFi layer of Doge.

IOG still loves Ergo and calls Alex Chepurnoy one of the brightest in crypto, will come on the Steo podcast with Tim Pool and others on the backlog, and is still scheduling the Leemon Baird call.