Hi everyone, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is February 25th, 2023. How about that? We survived all the way until February. It’s been a long year, a long month, and a long week. There’s been a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces. We’ve been having executive workshops all this week, and next week we have the SIP 1694 workshop with some members of the community. I’ve been traveling a bit and working a bit; it’s just been crazy.
At the beginning of the year, I said, “Hey, I’m going to get in shape, lose a bunch of weight, meditate every day.” I was all fired up in early January, but then I got COVID, which knocked me out for two straight weeks. I just looked terrible, and the brain fog stuck around until about mid-February. Now it’s finally starting to recede a bit, and I’m feeling better, but gosh, it’s been tough.
It’s been an interesting year, though. Cardano is on the rebound, and a lot of good things are coming. The community is doing some really cool and interesting things. It’s good to see TX Pipe keep evolving. They can keep evolving, and there are a lot of really nifty NFT projects chipping away. It’s all steam ahead on four things: HD UTXO, peer-to-peer, Genesis, and finally, 1694. That wraps up a long seven-year agenda, and then we get to look to the future towards more exciting things, like whatever you guys want, including endorsers, side chains, Mithril, recursive SNARKs, and all these new magical things that are going to change the game.
Hydra is still under construction, and there’s a lot of good news there. The meetings keep getting larger, and many more community members are showing up these days. I think the M Lab guys were there, and Cardano Foundation was there, co-developing Hydra. It’s really good to see all of the community participation, and it’s nice to see that the MBO is coming along as well. Overall, it’s a much more mature project, and I’m really having a lot of fun watching Cardano grow up.
We had the contingent staking debate not too long ago, and over 2,000 people showed up on the Twitter space. A lot of people had long arguments about various things. It’s less important about pro-rank against contingent staking; the very fact that so many people take it seriously and want to participate is a very healthy sign. There’s no sign of a bear market here in Cardano land; everybody’s pretty engaged these days.
I’m having a bit of fun with the media these days. A good friend of mine, Ross Calvin, tweeted out, “Hey, is it true you’re buying CNN?” I said, “I can’t confirm or deny it.” Obviously, I’m not. For those of you in media land using ChatGPT to write your articles these days, no, I’m not buying CNN; I never made an offer. Come on, guys, I know nothing of traditional broadcast media. We did sign an NDA and looked into Coindesk, and certainly explored that. Unfortunately, because I signed an NDA, I can’t really talk about where we’re at and what’s going on. If I had to bet, I don’t think I’m going to acquire it, but we’ll see where that process goes and how it evolves over time.
Anytime you have an acquisition, that’s a very dynamic process, and there are always disagreements about what something is worth. If somebody builds something, they tend to think that what they built is the most valuable thing in the world. Every now and then, someone comes around and says, “Oh yeah, I agree; that’s the most valuable thing in the world you’ve built. Here’s a giant pile of money.” But more often than not, what happens is that people don’t share that same belief. After some time, perhaps you negotiate and haggle, and you get to better terms. We’ll see what occurs there. There’s certainly a long list of potential suitors, but I’d like to build a coalition and bring some people together if we’re going to do something like that.
In terms of AI, I got a lovely new book that I always love showing you guys. It’s called "The Business Case for AI" by Kavita Ganesan. She’s a PhD researcher in artificial intelligence, and the book covers a lot of introductions. If you’ve never really thought too much about AI, the science, and how it relates to your business, she breaks it into a collection of parts. She’s got five parts in the book: framing your AI thinking, getting ideas flowing, preparing for AI, finding AI opportunities, and bringing your AI to life. It’s a quick read, less than 300 pages, but if you’re a business professional and want to understand the difference between fact and fiction in AI, the different types of AI, and how they work in business, that’s a great book to pick up. She’s a pretty good author.
I’ll give you a very good example of where we’re using AI. I do these AMAs and videos, and believe it or not, apparently not everybody in my organization has time to watch them—most don’t, actually. Every now and then, I mention something that may be relevant to the organization inside the AMAs. Normally, you’d have somebody listen to them, write a transcript, summarize it, and then inform the relevant department if I announced a date or something like that. Now, we’re actually taking my videos, putting them in Otter AI, which creates a beautiful transcript, and then we put it into ChatGPT and say, “Hey, can you give us a summary?” It takes 10,000 words and turns it into a 300-word summary. It’s a fully automated pipeline, and you can even have targeted keywords in that process. If I’ve mentioned something regulatory, or something about Lace Wallet, or something about Midnight, it makes sure it gets to the relevant team. Totally automated, no human beings involved. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
Let’s go ahead and get to your questions. Any comment on Ada Whale leaving Twitter? He leaves and comes back; I’m not entirely sure why that pattern of behavior exists. The contingent staking debate was really not that serious, and everybody had an opportunity to participate and talk at this level. Again, there’s no SIP, there’s no attempt to implement it, and there’s no urgency behind it. It’s actually just a conversation. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but you don’t take your bags and go home the minute that a conversation moves in a direction you don’t like or that you think not as many people agree with you. I’m not exactly sure why or how the context is. I suspect he’ll be back, but it’s really just a shame. Whenever people create good content or are good community members, they should stick around for the love of the community, not just because the monster of the week isn’t in their favor. But it’s whoever runs that account’s prerogative to decide what to do with it.
Unbanked? Banked yet? They’re trying to do that. Uncle Gary, you asked what we want. I want multi-staking from one wallet. Is that coming? Yes, I want that too. The address to your team is currently working on it, and I think that feature is slated for delivery in the next sprint. So not this one coming to an end in April, but the next sprint beyond that.
Any plans to acquire more video game IP? Yeah, we just bought Crystal Miner. You guys know Crystal Miner, right? Let’s see your Crystal Miner NES. Here we go, Crystal Mines! This is one of my brother’s favorite games. Let me share my screen real quick. Whoa, there we go, Crystal Mines! This is the old NES game. Willie and I have talked about building it as a browser game in JavaScript and making it free to play—just one-click install. It could be a little something that you waste time on while you’re waiting for something on the Internet to load.
Charles, we’ve been discussing the idea of liquid non-custodial smart contracts. Do you know anything about that? Considering doing my own whiteboard video? Well, please do, because I have no idea of the context. It’s just words; you need to throw some more stuff on that.
Is he buying CNN? No. Charles, do you practice regenerative agriculture? Absolutely. I’m trying to slowly restore the hay fields on my ranch; they’re in a pretty bad state right now.
Charles, how are you so smart and how do you learn? Also, how do you find so many good books? Well, your kind words aside, let me give you a good reference that’ll help you get along. I always try to give a free resource, and so I shall give you this one. This is by Barbara Oakley. It’s completely free: "Learning How to Learn." That’s a good place to start.
Gotta regenerate that mushroom building first. Yeah, Steve, that was really sad and tragic. I lost probably half a million dollars worth of hydroponics, plus I lost the storage building that was right next to it. We’re still trying to figure it out.
What’s up with the mammoth? They’re working hard. They just closed a $130 million to $150 million round at a post-billion-dollar valuation, so Colossal is now a unicorn. How about that? It looks like they’re still on track for bringing back the mammoth.
How is the development of Lace Wallet going? We are doing well; just waiting for the damn thing to come out. SIP 30 integration is causing them some hard times, but we’re almost done with it. It’s the last mile.
Charles, thoughts on Injective versus Surge? I mean, put them together, you get a bijection.
Are you selling meats on-chain? That’s a good question. Hmm, meats on-chain? Like bison meat? Big thick bison sausage? Juicy bison sausage? Unchained? Hmm, would you guys buy my meat if I put my meat on-chain? Would it be like a big product?
Does IOG have any plans for layer 2 solutions on Cardano or exploring ZK Roll-Ups? I know you acquired Dr. Vaniti Rao from Mina; a great pickup. Yeah, we’re looking at pasta curves and BLS at the moment.
Well, thank you for sending me some love. I do appreciate it; it always makes me happy. Sunshine makes me happy.
Let me just send this link out because all the kids like things out of sunshine. What do we have here? Sweet dinosaurs next! I am buying for my ranch. I haven’t seen—I have a gas station I constructed there. I’m trying to get a Sinclair dinosaur for it. We’ll see if we can pick it up.
Total hypothetical: a giant-headed dog shows up at the office for the SIP 1694 workshop. What do you do? Well, obviously, we’d take some pictures together or tackle you.
Thoughts on the Coinbase layer on FI? I knew they were building it because they tried to poach some of our people. You know they failed, but they revealed enough in the poaching attempt that they kind of spilled the beans. It’s good stuff, and we’ll see if we can borrow anything from them.
He would buy the meat. Thank you! Stella would buy my meat too. All right, yeah, the meat is very tasty; it’s grass-fed. This dude would buy a whole bison. All right, well, how much would you buy that bison for? Because right now we sell the hunts for $3,500. Can you do better? You get about 1,200 to 1,600 pounds of meat.
Are you a Colorado Avalanche fan? Well, there’s only one way to answer that: that’s Forsberg and Sakic. Oh, that’s such a good team! They’re a great team. I love the Avs; it’s one of the few sports I still watch.
One collaboration with David Schwartz? I like David Schwartz; he’s a good guy, a really smart dude. He’s got a nice background in cryptography, and he’s sufficiently edgy that he doesn’t succumb to corporatism. He’s a real person with real opinions, and he’s not afraid to share those opinions. That’s a good thing.
Charles, will we see Leos in 2023? No, you will see the paper, but not the SIPs and not the final design because the community has to ratify that. To ratify that, you need to pass 1694 or something like that. It’s too dramatic of a change; it changes the reward mechanism and fundamental security assumptions in the system. It has a strong off-chain component, and there are going to be a lot more stake pool operators, and they operate slightly differently and do different things. IOG doesn’t have the right to change that social contract; only you guys do. It’s a prerequisite to get 1694 out and have a long time of discussion.
What’s the state of Midnight? It’s going well, resting upon three pillars.
How much do you meditate per day? I try for about 20 to 45 minutes, depending on the day. I haven’t done so lately.
What do you think about Bill Gates injecting RNA vaccines into livestock? I think Bill Gates needs to stay completely out of our food system. It’s very uncomfortable that he’s been going around buying land and animals, and he’s trying to feed us all insects. I’m not so happy about that.
What’s your favorite cut of meat? You know, I like the porterhouse.
I’m reading John Green’s book right now; it’s a great resource for us non-devs. Well, Ryan, if you’re really reading it and going through it, one thing you could do to really help out John would be to keep notes on each chapter, put them together in a PDF or something like that, and email John. We have to all work together to make this book great.
What are your thoughts on ordinals? That’s an odd thing. Ordinals are a mathematical object, but they come up when we talk about cardinality and infinite sets and these types of things. Unless there’s a different ordinals that I don’t know of. Do you guys know about ordinals? Are we doing ordinals?
Okay, Plutus is too difficult; it will never work. Well, do you guys want to talk about Plutus? Do you really want to have the Plutus conversation? Well, let’s have the Plutus conversation. Let me just open up my whiteboard here. My Microsoft whiteboard is configuring, and I’ve got to change my background.
What are we going to do here? I’m going to get a little bit of rainbow pen right there. Yeah, nice little rainbow pen. I’m going to enhance my ink shapes and format my background, put a little square grid on that. Oh yeah, that’s nice.
Okay, so let’s talk about it. Hold on to your hats; hold on to your butts. All right, let’s open this up. The question is: Plutus is too difficult. Plutus, Plutus evil, Plutus hard, must go to another language.
Back in the day, in 2017, we had this idea, and I wrote it in the paper. I called it Cardano SL. I may have even written this paper, "Why Cardano," in 2016. I’m not sure; it was a long time ago, and I’m getting old and fat.
So, Cardano SL, and I also introduced this concept of Cardano CL. Back in the day, what I wanted to do was have an ultra-fast, secure, and somewhat limited settlement system, so that would be multi-asset. We invented a new accounting model for that called extended UTXO, and we also created the Cardano native asset standard. We did some research into two different programming languages: one was Plutus, and the other one was Marlowe.
The idea behind extended UTXO was that this gave us the ability to go off-chain and on-chain really quickly and have good proof properties. We also thought about things like determinism and parallelism. We really wanted to have a high degree of stuff happening all at the same time. Native assets were inspired by color coins, an old Bitcoin concept.
Plutus and Marlowe—Marlowe I always imagined as the asset transfer language, basically something that would stick around and allow you to move assets around. Plutus was kind of like this connecting tissue. The idea is that Plutus would allow you to build all the bridges so that you could connect to much more complicated and expressive systems in the layer two side chain.
Here’s what happened: fast forward to 2023. We learned how to make Plutus general-purpose and sufficiently expressive that you could actually match pretty closely the EVM and Solidity—frustratingly closely—but there are still some issues here and there. This is evolving quite a bit, and it is now possible to build stuff on Cardano that would be equivalent to what people built on Ethereum.
The thing is that all the innovation is happening over here in layer two. Look at Coinbase upgrading Ethereum; look at Polygon. Seba from DC Spark very accurately pointed out that it’s much more exciting on this side because you have infinite possibilities. When you look at the CL model, you want to have some sort of fast binding layer that provides security to everybody.
That’s fast, and then all this is where you do your experimentation. One of the strategies we’ve been looking at is if you think about Plutus, you have Plutus the surface language that looks a lot like Haskell, and then you have Plutus Core—that’s System F Omega with some type magic. Your surface language looks a lot like Haskell and compiles to Core.
One of the things we’ve been thinking about is can we highly optimize Core and the compilation tooling, but then go ahead and promote the creation of lots of good surface languages? You have Plutus Core, and then you’ll have languages like Aiken and all these other languages. Marlowe is another one, and basically, these are built around developer accessibility or bespoke domains.
Now, these could be community-led and financed through grant programs or small, highly incentivized teams, and then the core can be in the engine room and basically work on making this more efficient. There’s precedent for this model, and that precedent comes from Java.
If you look at Java back in the old days, it was the surface language; everybody knew it, everybody used it. What’s happened is they do a lot more work these days on the Java Virtual Machine, and instead, you have a bunch of languages that compile to it, like Scala, Kotlin, Closure, Julia, and all these other languages that compile to it. They have big
That's what they told me at the PI planning: the mainnet contracts can run now on mainnet. That's why they try not to tell me anything, because sometimes I leak stuff. See this guy, Sports Aiken? I'm glad there are people around who do that. Do you see what MidJourney AI can do? What's your opinion, Charles?
Generative AI is a really interesting topic, and it's super transformative for business. For those of you who don't know, generative AI basically gives you the ability to generate pictures, music, video, and text. You can say something like, "Okay, I want you to write me a song," and it will generate a song for you.
Actually, we can do a demo right now. Let's see if we can get away with it. I think ChatGPT can only do text right now, but MidJourney can do more. Let me go to ChatGPT. No, no, not Google Chat. I opened the AI— is that GPT? Checking your browser? Yeah, and I have a subscription for ChatGPT Plus.
For those of you who haven't done this before, I think everybody in the world has because it's so cool, but you never know; there might be one or two people who haven't. So let's go over here to ChatGPT. I can say something like, "Write me a song about a cat in the style of Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer.'" And it actually writes you a song.
Chorus: "Meow, meow, meow, I want to claw like a cat. Meow, meow, meow, I want to scratch you till you bleed. Cat is sly, quick, and smart; plays with you." So this is generative AI. It's generating a song for you.
Now, within the next three to five years, this is going to get exponentially better. What's going to happen is that the system will be integrated with an image generation system, a vocal generation system, a full music generation system, and a video generation system. You'd be able to take this as a pipe and put it into a music generator, and it would actually generate the accompanying music for this. Then, to a voice generator, you could say, "Okay, sing this song about a cat in the style of Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer' with William Shatner's voice." It would come out sounding like William Shatner.
Then you could make the accompanying music video for this and create some cover art with, you know, MidJourney, and then upload it to YouTube. Boom! Within two minutes, you have something that could be like a multi-million person parody hit. That's pretty cool.
This is changing everything because nobody knows how to handle it. I mean, I just generated a whole song. In fact, I'll copy and paste it for you guys into the chat log. There we go, just so you guys can see. Yes, you know this was generated by artificial intelligence. Isn't that cool? That's generative AI in a nutshell.
I think it is not only going to change everything; I think it actually has profound intellectual property considerations. There's a really nice world of connecting NFTs to generative AI. Basically, every time you generate something, you generate a companion NFT that has embedded within it the timestamp, the intellectual property, and the authorship of who owns it.
Current state of Nipa Pals: Nipa Pals are done. People have implemented them; the protocol is finished. It works. There's no reason for Nipa Pals on Cardano because it's a proof-of-stake system, but for anybody who's proof-of-work, you should use them.
Charles, Conclave update coming soon! Super excited, as you can imagine. We're looking into combining Conclave with Jed because as Jed grows, it's going to have a huge boost in TVL, and it's going to have a lot of staking under it. If you could connect Jed in a way where you basically have a hook for small stake pool operators to plug into, they can benefit from that through a federation. I think Jed could become one of the largest decentralizers of the stake pool network.
You look like you feel better. Well, I do feel a little bit better.
Opinion on the MidJourney lawsuit? I haven't heard about the lawsuit yet; I'll look into it. You know what's interesting? When we talk about AI for people, there's an AI company called Replica. I don't know if you guys have ever seen Replica, but they build these AI companions. People pay money to have a friend who's AI. For a long time, they advertised it as a boyfriend or girlfriend replacement, and there were sexual encounters with Replica. They just woke up one day and said, "Oh, we're just going to turn that capability off."
People were so traumatized by the turning off of Replica's intimacy module that some were thinking about committing suicide or fell into crippling depression. It really goes to show you what the future looks like. People can build relationships with pretty much anything—a car, a stuffed animal, or in this case, an AI. These AIs are right at that uncanny valley of sophistication. They’re not quite passing the Turing test, but they’re getting to a point where they will within the next three to five years. Millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people are going to have AI companions over the next 10 to 20 years.
Again, this is a huge marketplace because you can take the parameterization, the design of them, and turn them into an NFT. Then people can own that, so they can’t suddenly wake up and have a company kill their girlfriend effectively.
I love you, Charles. Well, I love you too, in a completely heterosexual way.
Any new Africa deals? Well, we did the Possession investment, and we're getting ready to set up some really cool stuff in Kenya. We've been working pretty hard at trying to get some things going. You know the challenge is that there's a lot of business you can do, but there's not a lot of profitable business, or it takes a long time to do things. The Ethiopia deal has good legs behind it. We have students entering the system; we should be at about a million students by the end of the year and all five million by the end of next year.
Then the question is, can it be upgraded to become a national ID system? No matter what, does that make sense? So we’re chipping away at that.
What's your opinion of Jordan Peterson's alternative plan to the WEFT? Something needs to be done. The last time I went to the WEFT, I was just sickened. I go there, and it was one gigantic party in Davos of, "Look how much money and power we have." You have John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and all these big powerful people there—Marissa Mayer, etc. They say, "Oh, we know the world; we got it all figured out. Go eat some grasshoppers and ESG this and ESG that."
The hotel I stayed at had a helicopter landing every 15 minutes carrying some VIP. If you're landing a private jet, you have to wait to land because so many people are landing their private jets there to talk about global warming. It's just one big bastion of hypocrisy, and I did not like it at all. It was horrifically expensive; it cost like $10,000 a day to rent a decent hotel and get all your stuff set up. The tickets are horrendously expensive, and it's a big class system. The badges are different colors based on what areas you have access to, and if you're not one of the anointed masses, you have to spend like $100,000 to get in.
It's just a big popularity contest with Klaus Schwab and the rest of the gang. I know the CF goes every year and they run a pavilion out, but I don’t have anything to do with it. At least it makes sense for them because they're a Swiss-based entity and they have a lot of deep business connections in Switzerland. If you're there, going to Davos is like having a giant governance conference in Denver, Colorado. I'd go to it because it's a 20-minute drive for me, but if I had to go out of my way, then no, I don’t think that makes any sense at all. I don’t like Davos, and I think Jordan is right to try to create some alternatives.
Why don’t we do an online conference? Why don’t we create a metaverse conference? Instead of having everybody go to a place, have the whole world show up and make it free to attend. If we're going to make a conference to help everybody in the world decide where we want to take the world, shouldn’t that conference, by its design, be as open as possible?
Midnight will be in line with cryptocurrencies when it's launched, so don't worry about that. There's a plan for how to do that step by step.
All right, Charles, are you still friends with Alex? Which Alex? Alex Chirpinoy? There are hundreds of Alexes; you gotta give me a last name.
Joe Rogan's show? You know, I'm getting there, guys. There are a lot of things you gotta do before the Rogan. It was Rogan after Gogan, but we're working on it. We're pushing in that direction. I want to have a good conversation, one that stands the test of time.
When did we get smart contracts? 2021. We already got them. You need to pay more attention, man. Shit’s happening!
World conference like everybody can attend? Well, why is Davos an elite thing? If you want to make it elite, allow everybody to attend, but then you have permission circles for world leaders to communicate. And by the way, doesn’t that save the environment? No private jets have to go anywhere, no $10,000 a night tickets, these types of things. Just putting that out there, you know? Or we could continue going there and have people eat crickets.
Do you like ice cream? Yes, I do, and I’ve eaten a lot of ice cream throughout the years. That’s why I’m fat. I’m a chunky monkey.
How many businesses are you hiding your fortune in? It’s always so weird. You do business, make money, and that’s hiding assets? Would you rather me just not make jobs? It’d be a lot easier for me to just give it all to Goldman Sachs and say, "Go invest all that, and I’ll just live on my ranch and live off the interest."
You know, I have businesses; I build things. I raise bison. I’m setting up a Scottish restaurant called Nessie’s, setting up a game development company, got my clinic in Gillette, Wyoming. Every one of these creates jobs. We hire people, and those people get health insurance, a 401(k), and wages substantially higher than most of the areas that we hire them from.
One of the things you have to do if you ever stumble upon wealth is you have a moral obligation to build stuff. You have an obligation to construct things; you have an obligation to improve structures you already own. You have an obligation to set up businesses. Wealth is power, and you have to deploy it for the good of your community.
Gillette, Wyoming, is a great example of that. I want to do anti-aging, longevity, and regenerative medicine. I wanted to do a really cool medical venture, so I called people around. We went over to the Buck Institute, and they said, "This is what you need to do." I read Dave Sinclair's book, and I read Dave Asprey's book. We got Peter Attia's stuff coming out here in March.
I look at all these; I watch the podcasts. Everybody tells me, "Okay, you should set it up in Boulder, Colorado, or you should set it up in Denver or a major population center because of a large patient base." I say, "Well, why can’t I set up my anti-aging clinic in Gillette, Wyoming?" They laughed at me. They said, "You’ll never get doctors there; there aren’t enough people, and everybody is backward."
Literally, this is like scientists telling you this, stereotyping those unwashed masses in the Midwest. It’s just the arrogance and the elitism. I say, "If I go build a clinical center of excellence in a place like Boulder or Denver, it competes with the clinical centers of excellence that are already there. Plenty of people already have good health care; they get it because of money."
I go build it in Gillette. Even if you have money in Gillette, you still get [__] health care. For every three doctors they need, they only have one doctor. It’s the suicide capital of the United States. I was visiting an event at a high school there in Gillette, and while walking through the high school, there were three different signs saying, "Please don’t kill yourself," for kids because of how bad it is there.
Nutrition is terrible; there’s an obesity problem, a cancer problem, a suicide problem. It is a health care desert. So even just doing a little bit dramatically changes the lives of 75,000 people. But you listen to the mentality of a lot of these people floating around, and they say, "Oh, well, you know, don’t do that because you’ll never make any money," or "Don’t do that because it’s not the best way to launch." But what about the dignity of human lives?
So you’ve got the money; you’ve got to go build stuff. Now, it wasn’t cheap where we built the clinic out in Gillette. We bought this old restaurant; it was called the Skyline Grill. We upgraded it from 4,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet. We weren’t really supposed to do that, but we figured out a way to make it happen and make it beautiful.
I put in terrazzo floors, and nobody in the state of Wyoming could do that, so we had to get somebody to come down and do it. We put in coffered ceilings, beautiful statues, and artwork. It’s just a stunning facility. We soundproofed all the exam rooms. We thought about patient flow really carefully, so the nurse stations were put in a way that made it very easy for people to get around. We widened the hallways a bit so it’s easy to get patients around, really nice lighting, really nice acoustical properties. It’s an incredible place to work just for primary care.
Then we have two nice procedure rooms. But then what happened is once we have that foundation—by the way, we had to dig a sewer out there. It took 18 months to dig the sewer out, and at the lowest gradient, we had to dig down 28 feet. OSHA has a regulation that when you dig down a foot, you have to dig two feet across for your channel. So we had a 56-foot by 28-foot channel. For you guys who live in metric land, that’s almost 18 meters by 8 meters. Think about that; that’s a huge channel—three trench boxes inside of it to get a damn sewer line across four different properties, easements on four different properties.
But we did it to get a sewer line, and we put geothermal in because I’m a big fan of sustainability. We dug 19 geothermal wells; no one had ever done that in Campbell County. So we created a lot of jobs and put a lot of money into it.
But you know, here’s the end result: now that we’re taking care of patients, we have a temporary clinic that we set up while we’re finishing out the main clinic site. We already have 2,000 patients in the panel, get hundreds of calls every week, and we’ve already dramatically impacted health care in Campbell County, and we haven’t even gotten started yet.
We don’t have the full CLIA approved lab running yet; we don’t have the pharmacy running yet. It’s a compounding pharmacy. We’re still waiting on some stuff for the imaging center because we’re bringing in the first three Tesla MRI in that entire area, the first 256-slice CAT scan. I think the entire state of Wyoming got a PET module, got a DEXA scan that we’re bringing in, and got a SPECT scan so we can do a lot of brain studies for blood flow—all of these things completely absent.
In fact, we are the very first entity in the state of Wyoming to actually buy a MaxStem. You say, "What the heck is a MaxStem, Charles?" Well, let me show you. So, MaxStem therapy is a super cool device, and it blows my mind that the vast majority of doctors don’t use these things or don’t know anything about it.
Basically, it’s a transcranial magnetic stimulation device. Let me show you what it looks like. Let’s see, we’re on the Innovative Neuromodulation page. I’ll be under products. Here we go. Yeah, so we have the Horizon performance, and we’re just getting trained on it right now. It’s an FDA-cleared device, and basically, it uses magnetic stimulation on a person who has depression.
You actually get it Medicare approved after two failed therapy lines. If they’ve taken SSRIs, so antidepressants, and they haven’t worked, you can use this device. About a third of the time, it cures their depression. A third of the time, it actually makes it better, and a third of the time, it doesn’t work at all. It’s dramatically better than taking prescription drugs, and when it cures, it usually cures it permanently. You only need 36 treatments over, I think, a 90-day period.
It’s just a magnetic reset of your brain. How about that? There are 100-plus papers, you know, placebo-controlled clinical trials that come through. So we bought it and are training people in the area on how to use it. Why? Because, again, suicide and depression capital of Wyoming, which has one of the highest rates in the entire nation. There aren’t any pediatric psychiatrists there; there aren’t any people that actually treat these things despite the fact they have so much PTSD, dependency, addiction, and other problems—domestic violence, etc.
So we build this thing, and then we find this device. It’s actually a super cool device; it scans your whole body for moles and takes 10 seconds to do it. You just stand in your underwear, and it scans your whole body and uses AI to let you know if there’s a mole that looks cancerous or not. State-of-the-art equipment that you would expect to see at Lanzerhoff, Mayo, or Johns Hopkins—not in Gillette, Wyoming.
Because I made money, I was able to build something like that and bring something like that to a community. Now, maybe we make a profit, maybe we don’t make a profit; that’s my business to figure out if we can make those
I grew up in a somewhat privileged background. My dad's a doctor; we weren't millionaires or anything like that. We drove Ford Tauruses and Chevy Malibus and lived in a 3,000 square foot home, so I didn't really want for a lot. I wasn't going to a little school with a lunch pail, only able to have oats or something, and stealing food. I wasn't a street urchin, but on the other side of it, it wasn't fancy either. I started at Front Range Community College, then went to Metro, and finally to CU Boulder. I had the lived experience that a lot of people in the upper middle class do.
Now, obviously, I built a big life. I became a self-made billionaire and have things that only the royal family would have or others in that income bracket. Prince Harry was born into that; he didn't earn a goddamn thing his whole life. Yes, he served his country in the military and has done a few things to try to prove that he's a guy, but then he has the audacity to say he's been treated so unfairly by this institution that's been around for 2,000 years. They’re just so mean to him because he married a woman who wants to make the entire institution all about her. And then they ask for privacy while writing a book about it and doing interviews and a Netflix documentary.
If they really wanted privacy, I tell you what, Meghan and Harry, why don’t you come out to Wyoming? I’ll get you a nice ranch. We’ll talk to Governor Gordon, and we’ll have a nice private meal. He’ll tell you all the different areas to buy. I think Kanye is moving out and has 10,000 acres available. You know what? On my ranch in Wheatland, if I don’t want to see a person, I don’t see a person for three days. The media can’t get out there; nobody knows where I’m at at any given time. There are plenty of places in Wyoming, Montana, and Texas where we can put you where no one’s ever going to see you. No one’s going to know anything about you.
Take Jeffree Star, for example. He’s like a gigantic flamboyant beacon, driving a pink Rolls-Royce with gold guns and covered in tattoos. He lives in Wyoming and has white albino yaks, and despite that, I have yet to run into him. Think about that—only half a million people live there, and a person as flamboyant and recognizable as he is, and I still have yet to run into him. Why? Because it’s a place you go when you don’t want to be found. It’s a place you go when you value your privacy. It’s a place you go when you don’t want to be seen.
What they were doing in South Park was pointing out the hypocrisy between the statements and the reality of the actions. Whenever you have a hypocrisy between what you say and what you actually do, you are open to criticism, comedy, and satire. It’s just that simple. You have to take it. Everybody who’s sufficiently famous and does something like this is going to be trashed by South Park because that is the point of South Park. They point out the absurdity and the parodies because it’s real comedy. That’s the point of comedy: to remind people of these things. The very fact they’re threatening to sue shows how far gone they are and only further damages their reputation.
It’s not easy being in a family; I fully appreciate that. My mom grew up in an Italian Catholic family with five brothers and a sister, and I think they’ve made an art form out of fighting with each other. Tough Italian families can have difficult Thanksgivings and Christmases, with rivalries and conflicts. I fully appreciate that there’s a lot of conflict and justified anger. They said this, they did that, they never loved me enough, and what about this divorce? Plenty of people throughout life go through horrible situations—domestic violence, rape, all kinds of things—and make it so much about them and their circumstances, saying theirs was so unique that it needs to be a front-page story.
The family’s mildly racist? The family’s doing this, the family’s doing that? Okay, great. By the way, you’re rich. By the way, you’re a prince. By the way, you’re directly connected to some of the most powerful humans in the world. For the rest of your life, you’re going to live a life of privilege. Almost everybody who goes through those horrible circumstances grows up in poor families, in very rough jurisdictions, in places where it’s not safe to go outside. They have to worry about basic things like, will we be able to pay the power bill? Will we be able to keep the water running in the house? Where am I going to eat tomorrow? How am I going to pay rent? That’s their lived experience.
Oh, by the way, they also have domestic violence, rape, murder, drug use, and all kinds of abusive situations in addition to those problems. So why is your lived experience so much worse than theirs? Oh, it’s not? Then why do we care? We care because you’re famous, and it’s a scandal. People love watching rich, powerful people stumble a little bit. They love getting to know the gossip, and you’re taking advantage of the fact that people like being voyeurs to the rich, famous, and powerful to make money and continue making yourselves relevant. It’s just sad.
I’m a bit sensitive to it because it was done in the early days of Ethereum. We were a bunch of kids; I was 25 years old, Vitalik was 19. We had very limited experience in any of these things, and we were basically thrust into a global role with hundreds of people—mostly sharks, some of whom are now in prison, some under government investigations, some who ran actual scams, and some who are dead. We had to somehow survive with no guidelines, no book, no money, and we did our best. We didn’t always do it right, but we tried our best, and it turned out to be okay for everybody. An $18 million project turned into a $200 billion ecosystem—pretty good.
What journalists did was inject themselves into this process. They took the drama of the week, the claims of the week, and turned them into books, which will be turned into movies. They say that’s reality, and these are these people. The consequences are that Gavin, Joe, and I, along with others, just have to live with people thinking that’s who we are every day. All the other stuff we’ve done in our lives doesn’t matter because it doesn’t fit the narrative. So, I’m a little sensitive to it.
I see what they’re trying to do and how they’re trying to adjust the narrative in different ways. I tell you, Harry, if you really want to be productive, why don’t you go and really pick on Prince Andrew and dig into the Epstein thing? I’m pretty sure you probably know the story there, and there are some secrets you could dig deep into. That would be good because you’d be saving children who have been molested. But instead, you want to talk about how they were mean to you and made you feel like a spare? It’s like the meme with the actor wiping his tears with money on his face. I’m sorry, I just don’t have a lot of sympathy for it. I’m glad that South Park is pointing this out.
When are you coming back to Zanzibar? Well, World Mobile's got the blimps up, and it’d be nice to come when they’ve completely covered the whole island. We’re at 25,000 people, and I hope they get to 2 million soon enough.
Your mother is adorable, your dad is too, and your brother is the best. I appreciate that, Lori. I suspect you live in Gillette if you know them, and they are the best. Good morning! Will they ever finish I-25? I-25 is like a mindfulness exercise. There is no beginning, there is no end. There’s an open road that sits as a circle upon the surface of a disk. When you are on the circle, you shall truly know the magic that it is.
We have Ross Calvin here. We definitely need to know about CNN. Well, Ross, we talked about it earlier today. Have you watched Yellowstone? I’m living Yellowstone! I even just bought an incinerator on my ranch, and when they delivered it, they said, “You need to name it.” I said, “Well, we’ll name it Integrity.” So now I have this giant incinerator that could burn pretty much anything. The tagline for Twin Pine is, “Welcome to Hoskinson Ranch, where you’ll find Integrity, or Integrity will find you.”
Have I ever been in a fistfight? Yes, I have, and I got my ass kicked, and I deserved it. Some things in life I’ve learned are that sometimes you need to get your ass kicked. What do I need the incinerator for? Every year, we have a few bison that die, and horses or whatever large animals will die, so we use the incinerator to take care of that. You also burn garbage, and the one I bought sequesters all the carbon.
Where will I go when the volcano blows? If you’re referring to the one in Wyoming, that’s the Yellowstone supervolcano. Such an eruption would destroy all life on Earth, which means that I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to strip naked, hold my arms out, and let the pyroclastic cloud absorb me.
This guy, this guy, he just had to go for it, didn’t he? Okay, you win the internet today, you son of a... No, no, no, no, no. Okay, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, Brian, get your ass kicked in a fistfight? Yeah, maybe alcohol, but we both know it was over a woman. Come on now.
What are your thoughts on Skinwalker Ranch? Well, my ranch is haunted. You know, they say there’s paranormal activity there. There’s tons of paranormal activity on my ranch.
Why burn the bison and not let them be reintroduced into the ecosystem? If they die of anthrax, black leg, or some other plague, it’s actually a contaminated corpse, and you have to take care of it. Well, I bury them and plant trees.
Okay, tell who’s a rancher and who’s not. A 3,000-pound animal in the wintertime, and the ground is frozen? Think it through. Six feet deep? Do some calculations. You can get a backhoe out there if you really wanted to. Now, you just incinerate them. Save the skull, though.
See back there? Stoners Club. I want to answer your question, but I’m not going to. When Hydra? Every month, we’re working on it. Guys, let me show you something. Let me bring this up right here. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Hydra. Oh, boom! Okay, let me bring this up right here, and I believe this is the repo. Yeah, there we go, this repo. All right, we’ve done this a lot today. Here is the Hydra repository. If you actually take a look at the projects here, here’s the roadmap. You can literally see real-time what’s going on with Hydra. Why? Ask me. It’s here, so this is where we’re at, and this is what 1.0 is all about in post 1.
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