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Bitcoin makes everything better. Join the team and our guests as we unpack how, why, and where we go from here.
yo so the internet and an infinite pile of AI generated shit love it well hey
guys we're gonna we're gonna just try this we're gonna do it live so this is
gonna be kind of an opportunity better by Bitcoin for just a bunch of us to get
together and talk about just things that would be better in a world where Bitcoin
was the unit base of account so you have myself JD cypherpunk cinema I'll let the
rest of you guys go and maybe we'll go Anton Fondor and Zach in that order
because that's how you guys are on the screen but I do advertising and content
and I just love kind of trying to break down the messaging problem what you
Anton yeah I'm a director of photography filmmaker endurance athlete
bitcoiner that's who I am I run I'm Bond or gilded plebe on Twitter I am a
full-stack developer and what else do we do that's about it right now I'm Zach
I'm the founder of indie hub studio which is an independent film exhibition
platform built on top of lightning think you know think Netflix but the
entire business model is totally transformed by a Bitcoin being the base
unit that's a great segue into the topic tis your for today the AI Renaissance is
anything going to change I feel like nothing's gonna change I feel like we
just have a lot more dumb stuff to sift through now it's actually just made
everything worse that is reminds me there is this cafe I used to eat at had
all those like old like 50 style signs and it was like coffee do stupid shit
faster with more energy that's kind of where a eyes it like we can now do the
dumb shit we were doing before orders of magnitude faster you can make a lot more
dumb things faster you can so if if you want to be a AI filmmaker but you're a
shitty filmmaker you can make more shitty films faster it doesn't make you
a better well said you know I was thinking about that from a filmmaking
perspective it's like you know at indie hub we're kind of I'm like on this fence
right now like do we want to do we want to like promote AI films do we want to
kick them off the platform entirely you know how do we police this what do we do
and so I've just been thinking about you know the creative process behind doing
this and it's kind of interesting actually to your point Ant and like
there's some stuff out there that looks really good you know that's it's really
really interesting imagery and I think the point is like one of the things
that's been lost in the film business in my opinion over the last 15 years is
writing writing as a profession has just gone downhill so badly the craft of it
has totally been lost in my opinion but it's interesting because AI I think it
might I think there's a possibility that it sort of launches a renaissance of
writing again because you have to get really good at prompting and basically
screenwriting is just really really intense levels of specificity such that
every image you know this whole movie is made before you ever step on set so you
know I on the one hand I think it could it could spawn a renaissance of
specificity which is incredibly important for the art form but on the
other hand to your point like it's it's when Netflix you know in 2008 when the
economy collapsed and the film business started changing what happened was you
know the pile of shit at the bottom just grew massively you know wages went down
pay went down everything went backwards the whole ladder went backwards and it's
like I think that's gonna happen again I think the pile of shit at the bottom is
just gonna get massive you know the cream always rises everything is
relative there's always something better than the thing at the bottom so you know
on the one hand like man it's just gonna be so much useless crap that nobody
really wants to watch but on the other hand there's an opportunity there for
you know real talent and specificity to sort of separate itself and just use the
AI as a tool as a means to an end. Do you think we'll ever have the like
Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones moments ever again like the beaver cleavers like
that thing that everyone's talking about or are we gonna get to a point and
Bonder I'm curious your take on this as the dev like are we gonna get to a point
where everyone has their beaver cleaver has their Breaking Bad it's like their
AI tailored version of content that they're like did you see this thing and
somebody's like yeah I didn't like my ending and it's like my ending like are
we all gonna have like. Everything is gonna be disintermediated by it so the
only reason you can have that big community like watching you know The
Walking Dead on Thursday night because that's what everyone's doing like the
only way you can do that is if you have like a central distribution platform or
like nothing else can actually like happen on Thursday night and everybody's
got to do this thing right it's just that's all that's all done that's all
gone there's no way to bring it back because we've all heard these stories of
like the person who's like listens to music oh yeah that's my thing I'm always
listening to music they turn to AI and like hey actually you know what I want
to like try and figure out and process something I'm you know I've been
thinking about so I'm gonna have AI write a song about this thing I'm
processing and then they're just listening to this album that AI wrote
for them to help process whatever they're doing and then they go back to
listening to regular music and they're like this is not even like this music's
not even about anything I care about like this is literally nothing to do
with my life this is I'm listening to somebody else's life right just
completely disintermediates the whole structure of content distribution what
do you do with that I tend to think that that things are cyclical and you know in
the past as Americans we had ABC NBC CBS and you know people had limited options
to choose from but we've seen things go viral even now when there's infinite
options and people still find things because they they go talk to the
neighbor or the person at the grocery store or the person at the bagel place
that they go to every day so we'll still have some things that everybody tunes
into to some show or movie or you know whatever that thing is but there's gonna
be smaller groups of those things where you can you can still pick so I feel
like human nature stays the same it would take thousands of years for that
to change but yeah there's just gonna be a lot more options and so there's gonna
be little regional pockets of these things that groups of people are focused
on and that aspect I don't think changes as long as humans look the way they look
right now hmm it's gonna be interesting to see how like doge and all this other
stuff because I know the whole doge you know this is kind of moving away from
filmmaking but the added efficiencies you get by using something like AI like
literally the doge thing was started because Elon I have no idea even they
found this kid but like this guy who they posted CT scans of the dead or like
of the scrolls from Pompeii that were in this like bucket and this kid just
for funsies on the weekend like wrote an AI that could read these scrolls like
that's literally the dude that they have like tearing apart the federal government
right now which is awesome but like that kind of hyper efficiency it's kind of
like did you guys ever read rebel without a crew which was but Robert
Rodriguez's book on kind of like dude like I'm literally gonna sell like
you're not gonna have to sell plasma or your kidney to like fund a movie anymore
like you're just gonna have to like scrounge up enough bottle caps to get a
runway ML subscription to then like make something that you can just slave over
but then it can actually be the same quality as like Sony or Warner Brothers
like as long as you just sit there and you'd like the door brothers like the
door brothers are doing some really unique stuff I think they're making
music videos but that's kind of where like content developed like MTV was such
a good launch pad for like Spike Jonze and all these other guys who are like
pushing the envelope on things like that's I think we're at like we're in
the MTV era of AI content generation right now this is my music videos I
think that there's to Anton's point into that point when you get to the idea where
everybody can create any amount of content for any reason and things can
still go viral well and then on top of that you get Bitcoin which elongates all
of our time preferences which elongates our attention spans right all of a
sudden the viral content isn't going to be these two like seven-second clip of
whatever stupid thing because that's just gonna get so boring like the
seven-second clip of a random thing that was generated by a I know is gonna care
they're just gonna like literally shut down the second is like seems to be AI
right yeah and so then that's just gonna okay well we got actually to tell tell
the better story here we got to think about what we're doing right and then so
that pushes towards longer form content it still goes viral totally
democratically you know decided essentially yeah I agree with that you
know I I think it's like things happen slower than than all of us expect I
think Robert Rodriguez is really good example right like he was like I'm gonna
do I'm gonna have my own movie studio on my property I'm gonna do all the sound
mixing here I'm gonna do all the post here you know that was a renaissance
that because technology made it cheaper for him to do it he was able to do it
let's say more efficiently you know with less resources or time or capital or
whatever but the result still has to be that you're a great storyteller like
we're still yearning for storytelling we're still you know we're still
creatures that need that spiritually so like well you know for instance you know
docs like documentaries have had just like a massive renaissance and the
quality of docs and the budget and the time frame in which you can shoot and
complete and release has been has been compressed so significantly compared to
when you had to shoot something you know on 35 or even on like a Canon 5d
like I did a doc in 2010 and we shot it on a couple of 70s and a few smaller
like GoPros before GoPro even came out and I had to train it took me six
months to transcode those files to ProRes just to edit it we had 300 hours
of highly compressed video files now I've got you know super efficient codex
you basically shoot raw you can basically edit it that night you know so
I guess I guess it's like there's this technical compression of time things
speed up because we can do them faster but I think to the point we're all
trying to make is like that doesn't you still have to be a really fucking good
storyteller you have to have something worthy of being told and something that
here so and AI is just not a good storyteller like it's just not it
doesn't know how to do it like the best I can get out of AI is if I put together
some kind of like outline and then like go like paragraph by paragraph hey
here's the story like the next paragraph do this the next paragraph do that
because if I don't do that it's like it just completely ruins the story it like
completely what is it like you know the twist at the end it'll take it'll sit
it'll say the twist at the beginning or like in the middle it's like and then
this thing that's gonna happen like that's gonna happen next and you're like
you just ruin the story no idea I think it gets it gets to like what is the role
of an artist like what are they what are they functionally doing what are they
actually doing and I I'm not sure a computer you know if you have to train a
model and it's it's working on information that already exists you're
taking out what you're totally ignoring what an artist is actually doing which
is they're out on the edge they're on the border of chaos and order and they're
they're basically channeling shit they're getting the best artists are
good at getting the fuck out of the way they've trained their entire instrument
to get out of the way and so they're they're tuned into their connected to
something else call it God whatever you want but AI is not does not have that
fucking signal it is not plugged into that thing and so it's 100% backwards
looking it's looking oh what is everybody already done let's look at
that completely ignores everything that could this is in front of it can you
unpack that actually Anton I'm like you know because you've had a lot of success
with documentaries and kind of like but what Zach is unpacking like that it's
like literally you your job is to point cameras where you think lightning is
going to strike that's your job and you're really fucking good at it but
like channeling that like what Zach is saying like do you think computers can
ever get there and you know if not like what do you what do you see is the next
kind of iteration of that cuz like that's your job like your job literally
is okay we think lightning's gonna strike here and we're gonna do everything
we can to kind of make it happen well there were two things I wanted to say
on I heard Elon say the other day that AI has already taken in all of the
digital data that is out there so everything that has happened in the past
in the past like 2,000 years or you know basically everything that's ever been
written and digitized has already been broken into AI so AI will get better at
sort of parsing through that data but it's all there there's literally nothing
new unless we create it and I was thinking about the other day with with
all these podcasts these long-form podcasts AI can take that if there's a
four-hour conversation and people have brought up things that haven't been
written down I can take those transcribe them and put it in the AI so all of the
filmmakers all of the original creative ideas that have ever existed are already
in there so if you want to if you want to take a screenplay and then like you
know make it in the format of a Wes Anderson movie it can do that but it
can't like really make like make some new original voice it can't really do
that yeah so and then what Zach was saying about how long these things take
I know but before it sounded like kind of out of nowhere I brought up Rambo
before but that movie took years to develop and it sparked a genre that
people didn't even know that people wanted which was this one man super
soldier genre so if you think about the careers of like Arnold Schwarzenegger he
literally made a knockoff of Rambo commando predator all these movies and
we were talking about before how you know are we ever gonna have hits again
that everybody agrees on well we kind of don't know what everybody agrees on this
is how things go viral and so with that movie in particular people saw it and we
were talking about how the originally he dies in the end and audience audiences
didn't like that and so they reshot the ending and and it was years before the
next movies came out so for 10 years after that we had these action movies
that were coming out so people can freak out when they see AI they're like
there's literally no point of having original creators anymore AI can just
make these create your own adventures and and you know people can just sit
down and be like make me a movie in this genre that I like but I don't I
can't exactly explain why but there are these surprises that that still exist
and will continue to exist and as far as I know for right now it still takes our
like collective human consciousness to decide what those surprises are that
people want so I don't know if I answered your question but it's just my
more optimistic outlook for the way that we can use AI and what's interesting
about what you're just saying and actually I'm curious kind of both you
and Bond or Zack like you being in the content distribution game like your
focus is getting people content and information that they want right like
that's what they're paying for do you see a world where you know there is a
Breaking Bad on Indy hub that actually has two endings and like based on
whatever it is that you you know your preferences your algorithm I don't know
what you want to call it but like there's a world we're on your platform
on Indy hub somebody's watching Breaking Bad season finales episode one or two
and it's totally divergent and they're paying something they don't exist with
a choose your own adventure like Netflix has done this and I hear but
there's a problem there's a real problem with it Zack you probably have a better
articulation than I do but I think yeah they've tried you know we've been doing
this you should be able to do that with plays right they used to do this in
theater where they would have the audience like okay option a option B you
know and they never they never really those were never a big thing and I think
my instinct on it is that and I think what I'm gonna what we're trying to do
with Indy hub is you've got it's kind of like what was it gladwell's book the
tipping point which was the one where he had like the four profiles got like
mavens and tipping point yeah yeah no it wasn't outliers I think it was tipping
it was either tipping point or what the dog saw um anyway you've got the way
that I analogize it is like you know I guess Millennials and pre Millennials
understand this a little bit more but we all have we all have people in our crew
our circle of friends that have really good taste and they're willing to like
dumpster dive through you know back in the day it was like piles of CDs you
know that nobody really wanted to go test but inevitably they'd come up and
be like oh bro I gotta listen to this you got to listen to this we'd be
listening to their music at parties and you know sure enough five years later
whatever band they were into would just fucking blow up and so there's a certain
like character profile of people who are who are catered towards you know sifting
through crap and and then sparking it and then so we all have our roles you
have people who create it you have people who judge it you have people who
consume it and I think there's a particular role there's a particular
person personality type who's really really good at kind of sussing these
things out and and popularizing them so I think the reason it doesn't work at
scale is because most people don't have that gene you know like there's a small
group of people who are really good at doing that and those people are kind of
the bridge between artists and then the regular collective you know consumers
for lack of a better word and so I think if we can figure out a way to get that
role working right now it's like it's an algorithm on Netflix and we all agreed
that the algorithm is trash like it doesn't know what I like it doesn't know
what I want it like you know I'd rather watch the fucking screensaver on Apple
TV for 45 minutes see if the DVD has the corner yeah exactly so but one thing
I know I'm jumping here completely but I had this thought years ago instead of a
choose-your-own-adventure I'm like way way out here maybe maybe not as far out
as I think I am but I think what would be crazy and what's possible is instead
of imagine you can download a movie you experience the movie you plug into the
matrix you go through all the feelings right because that's really what you're
doing when you're watching a movie you're having this emotional experience
you're being taken on this ride you're being manipulated by people who are
really good at manipulating your emotions to get you to a certain outcome
and to think about certain things and to come with come up with certain
conclusions and we spend a lot of time of course figuring out who's the right
who's the best actor for this character who is the one who is who is the most
superlative version of this character and I think what we might be able to do
in the future is actually swap out who the protagonists are who the actors are
and program that performance because they're they're basically an instrument
and if you can just like copy their rendition of that story you know I'd
like to experience this movie where maybe Jack Nicholson didn't play the
lead but it was Al Pacino or whatever and they have you know very different
ways of responding to each moment and playing this character and so on and so
forth so maybe it's not the ending that I want that we're gonna have the
choose-your-own-adventure but it's like I'm gonna be able to go through so many
iterations of this story through so many different you know artistic
perspectives and that could be interesting yeah and that's that's done
to varying levels of success including highest level of success where it's
like we're yeah we're remaking Romeo and Juliet right in a modern context yeah
totally like and it works because it's one of the most incredible stories it's
ever been told right yeah the most recent one wasn't too great but I mean
gladiator gladiator 2 was a piece of shit
I'm not talking about sequels, I'm talking about re-doing the same thing.
Sorry, I just had to get that out. The Leo, Romeo and Juliet, that was the best.
Anyways. But no, I think that's totally valid and I think that it makes a lot of sense too
like especially if you can have an AI where it's like you literally just
digitally replace the whole performance with like a new model. Great.
Yeah. Or it's like even Star Wars right you know what's your face I'm so
terrible with actresses names but she passed away was playing Leia Fisher yeah
Carrie Fisher passes away and you know suddenly you know on an airplane like
just wild on her way back over from Europe and they still haven't finished
the movie and so they had to go and like re-shoot a thing and like AI dump her
face on top of somebody because they have a billion dollar franchise that
needs a scene re-shot you know it's like that kind of stuff yeah side note oh
sorry go on Anton well I was just going to say they we do that as well with archetypes
and you know take like the romantic comedy like teen comedy 10 things I hate about you
I think that was is that one Pygmalion I forget yeah what what play that is and so
you know oftentimes we take a Shakespeare and we don't make like Shakespeare the way that like
Baz Luhrmann makes Shakespeare but you make some romantic comedy that is essentially the
Shakespeare story and so you know you can you can do that like if you really love The Matrix
you can make you know whatever your favorite animated movie with the same storyline as The
Matrix with you know different characters or a romantic comedy version of The Matrix
yeah like there's really only seven stories we tell we just tell them in different contexts
over and over and over again Timmy of the Shrew Anton Timmy of the Shrew I forgot
I so this actually gets me under an interesting thing of like
is there a world where you think AI is actually a laser disc like AI in its current iteration
is not blu-ray it's not going to win it's a laser disc it's getting us to kind of like
Nostra it's going to get us to something where because I actually agree with your algorithm
thought it's like who's that dude who's like I don't play anything or use a computer but
everybody comes to me because I can like choose things and I'm great and it's like this dude's
making like a billion dollars like doing freaking nothing and he's like a hobo
um yeah it's a music producer yeah that music guy it's like you know I agree with your premise
Zach of Rick Rubin like yeah there's the there's the there's the the tastemakers like Rick
you guys seem like you're going to destroy modern music okay but it but it is but into your wrong
wrong uh it was um it was uh Tipping Point by the way and it's Connectors,
Mavens, and Salesmen are the three um but I I'm actually I I actually
you know have now in this conversation gotten to the thought of like
I don't think we'll ever have a choose your own adventure thing that's successful
because to the same like to the to the to the Steve Jobs greatest quote in my opinion is or
like you know his greatest thought and I don't know the exact quote but he's like
it does ideas are infinite but execution is everything 100 100 and so choose your own
adventure is not going to work because I don't want to talk to you about your version of it I
want to talk to you about the version you hated or the version you loved like that's the thing
and so it's like I feel like choose your own adventures just water it's like you're watering
it down like why water down the story every single time I've encountered choose your own adventure
I'm far more interested in the total scope of all the different adventures that are chosen
that could be chosen like every single path I want to know every single path right because to
me like that's oh yeah you can take oh interesting Michigan oh okay but it's like revealing something
about the author right which would be like the you know what you get when you consume a story
anyway like what's their you know what's their theological you know presuppositions about what
they believe and how do they portray those in their story and and we already choose our
own adventure we used to watch fucking trailers and then we'd be like ah Ridley Scott doing a
Roman epic like yeah fuck yeah that's the adventure I want to go on like I don't want to choose more
than that I just looked up you guys remember the movie Titanic James Cameron biggest movie ever
I remember when it came out there were lines around the theater people saw it multiple times
I saw it four times did you four thousand theaters with my mom I just looked up what
movies came out at the exact same time as Titanic Good Will Hunting as good as it gets LA
Confidential Jackie Brown Amistad the Full Monty Gattaca the Fifth Element and Contact so everybody
went and saw that movie but you had all these other movies these are all these movies that
are like classic hits that you probably saw too so you probably have any of those are almost more
referenced than Titanic is yes so we have these things that we all kind of we all want to talk
about something together and we all gravitate toward something so I'm optimistic that these
things that are hits that have you know big production values that are maybe made in a
more traditional way those things will still exist and there will also be this choose your
own adventure thing because we also like to vary it up a little bit it's like we all want to go
and see the hit and then we all also like in our own time want to do these these little things and
so AI provides that and yet there's still hope for the bigger group collective things that
you know maybe are made in a more traditional way because I think I think sorry just to wrap that
one up I think that you know the ultimate choose your own adventure genre of entertainment already
exists they're called video games and AI is going to I would imagine allow you to do a choose your
own adventure in a video game context in so much more of a logical entertaining fun way I mean
think about like Diablo like I've been playing a lot of Diablo 4 and they're using AI or whatever
algorithm they have to generate a every time you enter a zone you know or a dungeon it's it's it's
new and it's fresh it's the same but it's different it's never the exact same little dungeon you go
into at the exact same time and like that makes a lot more sense so to be able to sort of craft
and cultivate your own story when you're playing the protagonist you know that's that that to me
that is a much more sensical application of something like AI where where traditional
storytelling or movies that's going to remain its own category you know like it's just a particular
style of thing and you know we're kind of hardwired for you know definitely the the filmmaking aspect
of it but I think that I think that it's at the very least it is going to generate a lot more
ways of doing the same thing we've been doing for a long time more genres more categories more more
more types of technologies that allow you to go through these
you know universally true human stories that we all enjoy so much
yeah I agree I'm very curious the do you guys think we end up at inception where people just
want to plug into the matrix and we're already there man you're not wrong you're not wrong is
there I guess that's the thing is is there is there any way to make people want to go outside
I mean even me it's like it's freaking raining here today and I'm like I really want to go outside
um I find myself doing my screen time has been averaging on my phone eight hours
and I'm like kind of embarrassed to say that every time I see it I'm like how the hell
I do leave YouTube videos playing a lot like if I'm doing the dishes or something so that's part
of it but I'll find myself just scrolling forever trying to find the things in my like human
algorithm and like switching app to app to app so as AI gets better at just delivering that like
turn your brain off give me the information that I like I think a lot of people will choose into
that and it's going to be up to us to find our healthy relationship with that because I will
know for me I said I run earlier I will literally go out and run for hours and you know look at
animals and plants and like I could roll my ankle and there's like these exciting things I know it's
going to extend my life if I do it in a healthy way and it's going to make me healthier it's like
it's the healthy thing to do but it also takes a lot of effort and let's be real there are a lot
of people that don't take the healthy route in life and AI is going to provide like a heroin
level addiction to technology for a lot of people I've got a super hot take on this one I'll uh
I'll leave it to you three to critique it because you're you're more literate in this than I am but
this is this is where I'm at with it again this is just this is just a thought it's just an idea
this is just a thought it's just an idea it doesn't have to be more than that uh but
it's always ultimately been our responsibility to make the choice about who we're serving what
we're doing we have the ability to make the choice about um you know how to live our lives if you
want to be in service of god if you want to be in service of of deceit uh you know if you're
whatever it is your life is your choose your own adventure in that regard and uh you know if
if entropy if if entropy is the thing that we're fighting um for the sole purpose to
just keep the game going as long as possible because it's awesome because life is great
um then it's a really important it's super important to get on the mission
and if you're not on the mission uh you're you're basically just going to be tossed out
and recycled and thrown back in until you figure out what the fucking game actually is
and i think that ai could be a way for god to do that um because there's a bunch of people
who have made a decision about what they're going to do with the time they have in their life
and they're going to use this incredibly powerful tool in order to solve for entropy in this example
right to make things better to build things that last to slow down destruction and chaos and
there's going to be a bunch of people who have no fucking idea what the hell is even going on
they're going to be totally consumed by ai they're they're going to be exactly uh the inception just
plugging in they're just in the matrix they're just having dopamine hits however they can do
it they're essentially just drug addicts you're just you're just having this chemical reaction
in your brain um and like it's it's possible that it it just wipes out a ton of useless
unconscious beings so that everybody else can get back to the fucking point hot take of the day
i mean i don't i don't think it wipes anybody out i think
you know it metaphorically speaking yeah yeah like in terms of like okay cool you know the
standard thing in hollywood everybody moves to hollywood to become an actor and so the supply of
actors in hollywood is just outrageous right but like what if you don't need to move to hollywood
to be an actor like is that kind of what you're getting at like oh yeah i can just i'm an actor
now i'll just turn it on and like okay cool and then like but you're not really acting you're
just playing video games for yourself but you think you're acting it's just like you're not
actually contributing to civilization or anything else right so you're plugged into the matrix and
and then therefore there's you know a whole another set of people who are like you don't
actually want to be an actor uh so i'm going to go through i'm going to like stand in front of people
i'm going to rehearse i'm going to like do these hard things and i'm going to put you know put
myself out there and the whole thing i think there's a positive there's a positive to that
because you can now be an actor anywhere there is a way to provide a performance in this
decentralized way not only because production has been spread all over the place because of
various technologies but also you can literally be a virtual actor if you want to and you know
there are going to be ways where if you're good at creating something using all these different
ai platforms you can literally act out something and have another character put on top of you
or you can move to a area like la or atlanta or something and physically go out and act
but the common thing in both of those cases are you have to make the choice to actually go out
and and do that thing and a lot of people it basically and i've noticed this there are so
many people glued to their phones in just out in life that literally this thing that kind of
create gives you a superpower because you're connected to any kind of information you never
want literally a superpower now is putting it down and not using it because so many people
are being taken out of life by being glued to it that that's exactly my point like you like you're
we have this we have the technology we have this ability to do incredible stuff but uh there's
going to be a whole a whole swath of people who just are taken out of the game they're they're
useless they're they're just meat props you know like and they're going to have to get thrown back
into the washing machine to figure out you know maybe another six thousand years for them to
figure out what the hell they're actually doing yeah um how do we bring this back to bitcoin
that's uh that's i think exactly it's a question is is los angeles dead
did ai kill it or did it kill itself and can bitcoin save it
i think that i think that la um as we all grew up you know our demographic grew up to understand it
is dead um technology has totally decentralized the power structure um it's decentralized the
exhibition methods it's it's allowed for people to not be forced to be in a densely populated area
to do that job um but that doesn't mean that like the idea or the reasons behind why hollywood became
such a big deal in the first place are dead they're just going to evolve and they're going
to change um you know i we're we're in this digital realm now we're in this digital space
and um you know that that networking and the ability to work with other people
uh you can kind of have you can kind of be anywhere so from a from a physically bound
perspective i think hollywood's dead but you know from an ideological perspective i think
we're probably on the precipice of a massive fucking renaissance brought on by tech like bitcoin
i like personally i don't necessarily think that la is dead at all i think
that i mean and we can you know reference cory like the other guy who's been on this um
he had a whatever billionaire backer for a studio that they built in the midwest
big one of the biggest studios there is right and they just had to shut it down because like
it's never gonna make any money we can't get the connections it's a whole thing it's like one
bondor's dead bondor's internet cut out i'm gonna pick up where he just dropped out
do you guys know there's a huge studio in outside of salt lake city in utah and they
just converted it to pickleball courts did you guys see that what what yeah because they can't
make any money and they're like we have this giant space and pickleball is a huge thing let's
just put a pickleball court in there at least we can like have tournaments and you know make a
little bit of money off of it i think i think what my take on this from an indie hub perspective is
that the reality i think that the reality is that um the the filmmaking business model is dead in
general and the only reason that the the people in la the only reason that the studios can still
exist is because they're publicly traded and they were playing a cheap money game for a long time
and they were able to print money at no interest the second interest rates got jacked up guess what
happened production basic they called them they were like nope you know cancel everything uh and
the city started dying right so the business model itself was only functional in this super cheap
money environment um and i think that the business model has to fundamentally change
back to a sound business model of you know can you figure out a way for people to pay
what you're producing pay for what you're producing um i think you know i think that
again like we we evolved from this unit sales business of buy a ticket to support the movie
that you thought was great and if that movie did great then that little business entity or that
studio did incredibly well but nobody buys tickets anymore it's all it's all streaming so we have
these licensing agreements and business deals from a units unit sale based business model back
in the day to this to a world where everything is streaming and digital and it just doesn't work it
doesn't it doesn't they have it just doesn't work so we have to find a new way to make this actually
profitable in a world where interest rates might not go down to zero ever again um and so that's
just a long-winded way of saying like there's a gross misallocation of capital over the last 20
years due to cheap money and that consolidated the industry significantly and there's just a
couple of players who can survive it because they own properties like fucking disneyland
like they're subsidizing a bunch of losses um and it's a big bookkeeping scam so i don't know i i
think that i i do fundamentally believe that bitcoin changes this um and uh kind of tying
it back to the technology side of things we can produce really quality material quality projects
for a fraction of the cost that we used to be able to do it uh you could do a great movie for
a couple million bucks that is a massive hit um i think anton knows something about that and we
just have to figure out a way to monetize it in a more efficient way and i think the market is
sussing that out that's yeah i think what's really interesting about what you're saying
zach is the um it's unit yeah it's it's unit economics and the unit has been fungible i guess
bitcoin is fungible but i mean like completely fungible like there's no there's no bottom to
the earth rather top to the amount of the unit and so the the infinite fungibility of the of
the balance sheet has been the problem um you know 1971 coming off the gold standard um you
know you used to be able to take a i think i actually have one um like a two dollar bill
or whatever it is and it's like this is for this is a a promissory note for two dollars worth of
gold and that's not the case anymore and so i think what's interesting is um you know and again
it's like what's always great about chatting with you guys is i always come to i have new thoughts
and i think that's the the point of this is like try to push people to places they've never been
before and it's the thought of like okay so if we need to build back better which is a random
you know i can't remember i don't know if that's a common phrase yeah but anyways the uh the the
core the the key here that was like you know with with altadena and with um with palisades
there's a lot of really interesting thought about getting like a rick caruso or somebody who
what walt disney did really well is he he had a vision and the problem we've lost is we've lost
our ability to dream like walt like that's the problem is like we've everybody's looking for
the government to tell them what a dream is it's like my dream is to not pay you know fifty thousand
dollars in taxes and so to to to fulfill that dream i need to make sure that i jump through
this hoop and then bow to this person and kiss this person's feet and then jump over this person
and sleep with this person or whatever it is right and i'm just like going random and crazy but that's
that's it like right now the american dream is pay no taxes or pay little taxes like that's the
american dream right now the the dream is to play the game well and what i'm optimistic about with
bitcoin is the dream will be to dream again and i actually that's one of the things i really do
like about elon there's a lot of things i don't love about elon there's a lot of things all about
trump what i like about both of them is they dream again like they're they're they're showing us how
to dream again and i'm reading the bible right now and i'm you know going back through i'm trying to
do the bible in a year it's really interesting the prescriptive nature of like numbers and
leviticus where the prescription is do this thing so that you can live in the abundance that i have
for you kind of thing and i think we've lost that last portion of this and it's like do you know and
so like elon is thinking about the abundance of us being an interplanetary force and and trump
is thinking about the abundance of a balanced budget like all these things that have just kind
of been sucked away by by the leeches and government right that's what they are i would say
most people who work in government and sorry if you were in government you're watching this but
like most of you are are terrible sorry you are because if you're not policing yourselves and we
can find out that you spend eight thousand dollars or thirteen thousand dollars whatever it is for a
coffee cup that goes on an airplane really you know it's it's it's the system we're in that has
become corrupted um the incentive system the incentives that we show me the incentive i'll
show you the outcome and the incentives that we've been given based on the corrupt class of people
who have taken over the united states over the last 40 years have created an incentive whereby
we can't afford to dream we still dream human beings dream just like in soviet russia it's not
like there weren't dreamers they were in a system that gave no uh gave nothing back in exchange for
the dreaming so if we if we can get back to a system that uh creates an incentive for us to
contribute value then we're golden i mean it really is in my opinion it's it's it's that
simple the the incentive system has to change and bitcoin is polar 180 degrees the opposite
direction of the current incentive system that we've had throughout our lifetime um and as as
negative as things have gotten the downward trajectory that we've been on you know throughout
our lifetimes uh i i really think that we have every opportunity to go precisely the opposite
direction if you just change the incentive system and i think bitcoin is that it fundamentally is
that it's a it's a completely different incentive scheme for whatever reason fiat money and
debt that you take out in fiat just people don't really value it for some reason and so
these things that we build when we take out a loan to build a studio or something they're built in a
really shitty way to last as long as it takes the the financing of the loan to be paid off
when hollywood was built in the early 1900s there was sound money and people built things to last
you there's literally evidence of it and even though la has been built up since then these old
structures still exist so you can drive around la and you look around and be like wow
there's the max senate studio wedged in between these two u-haul storage spaces and a jack-in-the-box
that's tagged off of the two exit but they still exist and you know i think about it with like
i have some physical gold i will not take that physical gold and go and buy a car that i want
because i know that that car is just something that breaks down over time i would however take
that gold and invest it in a film that i want to make because i know that that film i i want to
invest in myself i know that it would live on past when it's when it's created so like the
cheap fiat crap just breaks down and the stuff that you really value goes and lives on and so
as we get back towards a sound money again i do think there is going to be another golden age just
like the the era from 1900 to 1920s was a golden age it's when we had art deco architecture and
when all the studios were being built and so it seems like we're on the verge of that happening
again as we transition into hopefully hyper bitcoinization or a bitcoin standard or something
like that i agree with that wholeheartedly is as shitty as things are and as much as much stuff
there is to complain about the deepest part of my soul in my heart i i do fundamentally believe that
we're we're about to enter a golden age that i don't think anyone is prepared for in terms of
what we're going to be able to output and what we're going to be able to do you combine you
combine the infinite you know ai right like bitcoiners know this you've got two realms you
have the physical realm you have the information realm right you have this ledger that's backed by
real energy you have data that can be manipulated that's protected by this physical thing when you
combine both of those in a really effective way my god what what becomes possible so we have ai
that's able to wrangle data which is mind-blowing and then you have it you have it limited um and
restrained by something like bitcoin and its energy usage um man i i'm bullish man i really am
i'm i'm bullish i'm bullish humanity i'm i'm i'm um you know i think one of the things too while
we're doing these are like we're trying to figure out what the form is going to be and how it's
going to work and all that i'm like what value are we going to add hopefully you know of the 17
people who are watching this you're getting some value out of it but i think that's everything is
like adding value it's like what's the value for value exchange like how does this get better how
does this get bigger and i'm just really trying to figure out how we um you know what what does
that look like in the new economy you know i think we're we're in an interesting place where we
we're a part of the generation i guess is sort of a sovereign individual thesis
um where we're we're this pioneering generation that's going to build this foundation um it's a
it's a pretty exciting place to be like we might not see the ultimate fruits of it we most definitely
will not but we're the ones building it um and it's it's an honor and it's a privilege and it's a
hell of a responsibility and um you know i think we i think we just need to have fun with it you
know like it's it's it's gonna be a hell of a ride the next 30 years there are some awesome
people that i desperately want to orange pill who i'm like why are you not into bitcoin and yet
it's us we're we're the ones and so we need to make the most of it because we're the ones
for whatever reason yeah no for sure so well what are you guys working on and kind of like
landing the plane on it you know how can um i think that's the other part of this is just like
adding value to to other people then like adding value to like what you guys are doing and trying
to work on like for me i'm really trying to to just really help bitcoin companies and just
companies in general like stop taking like stop taking advantage of their customers it's terrible
truth right but like if you can think about your customer and a um
in a in a very i'm not saying bitcoin companies or anybody like taking advantage of their customers
but like i think one of the things that fiat money has done is value yeah just like they've made
people think about how are we going to get to our next raise and not how do i make this person stick
forever kind of thing you know yeah yeah i'm not doing anything specifically for bitcoin but
bitcoin is allowing me to do the things that i always dreamed about doing and it's also giving
me like a much longer perspective than i ever had before basically it gives me the ability to save
money and i've never had that before and that gives me a lot of hope for the future because
i'm pretty much certain that in a few years i will be much wealthier than i am now i have bitcoin to
thank for that and so how can i best use that wealth and so i'm still acquiring the knowledge
so that i know how to distribute that wealth over the next few years and i would not have
that ability without bitcoin there it didn't exist before for me yeah yeah super well said
i mean you know i'm in the same boat i um i think my i think my vision with indy hub was that
you know for me movies films were profoundly important to me and the trajectory of my life
and the thoughts that i have had and the ways that i see the world and
you know my ability to relate to myself even and um you know i i was an actor for a long time and
and man i i just i love it i love the art i love being in the theater um but i realized
you know as the industry was kind of you know the pile of shit that i was talking about before
as that kind of got bigger and bigger and i just started really lamenting the time i was spending
doing a bunch of dumb shit for no reason i wanted to i realized that for me probably the
best opportunity i had to make the most impact was to build this platform and try to facilitate
and allow great talent to succeed and the next generation of visionaries to be able to make a
return and continue to iterate and continue to refine their their art and their craft and for
me it was like how can i produce the most amount of movies possible and make the biggest impact
and it was like it's not auditioning you know it's not going out on the grind that existed over
the last 15 years and so for me like i don't know i guess it's i guess i guess the answer jd is like
maybe we can ask the audience like who do you think you are what do you think your role here is
you know are you are you the salesperson are you the maven um do you have great taste are you a
filmmaker are you a great storyteller um do you just like watching movies you know figure out how
you participate and participate you know if you love watching movies and you love supporting
filmmakers like go to indie hub and subscribe as an audience member that is the best way that you
can support this movement in this platform if you're a filmmaker make films upload them onto
this platform if you're uh you know a developer or a business person and you're stoked on it like
reach out to me let's figure out how to build a team and push this thing forward um you know like
figure out who you are what you can contribute and then jump in the pool man and get to it and
get after it love it well thanks um thanks both of y'all for jumping on um we'll continue to just
do this and try to figure out how we can have the most value and be the most useful for for
everybody but i just love uh being on this journey with you guys so uh excited to excited
to see what comes of this hopefully something good 100 but had a lot of fun this is good
thanks for setting it up jd yeah good stuff see you guys uh see you guys soon
we're