Hello everyone this is adam meister the bitcoinmeister the disrupt meister welcome to the one bitcoin show today is still september the 17th 2020 strong hand long-term thinking conviction be a unique beast fitting is overrated offended by selling all right we tried this show once we tried it live but it didn't work out live it was yours this is supposed to be the ask me anything show for thursday but hey ray is still in the freaking house raymond wadarski of baltimore maryland yeah he's from baltimore like guy and he's got a unique beast kind of story uh when it comes to bitcoin he's got a unique take on this and we got to hear what he's uh what he's talking about here we got to get this information out there but he does have a perspective that no one else that i have not uh i've not uh heard or seen on bitcoin he is is up is blind and but he is a bitcoin holder so he is gonna help trigger uh a revolution to get this uh get this uh unique beast money a little bit easier into in terms of usage uh for the blind so ray welcome to the show my friend good to be here adam thanks time to take this off again hello everybody hello bitcoin world all right so uh tell us uh how you got into bitcoin and your your frustrations uh with bitcoin okay well uh start from beginning so uh i wasn't always blind so that's one thing to keep in mind um i lost my sight in 2016 due to a fire accident i also lost my legs and uh it was a whole mess but um my bitcoin story starts in 2011 uh i was an undergrad at randolph-macon down in richmond virginia and every semester the computer science department would do uh semester-long projects say build a server build a laptop start a website something like that and in 2011 they were doing they wanted to set up a bitcoin mine and i was not a computer science major but i had some friends that were in it now do we stop and see what they were working on and see the latest and greatest tech year and i started reading up on the white paper and what a bitcoin was and really like that got me on a uh a good about a decade worth of looking into exactly what is money and how the financials of the world actually operates so bitcoin almost got me into the financial world um so moving on from there fast forward to law school i was taking a banking law in 2014 and that's when we were going over the dodd-frank act and fractional reserve banking and needless to say i got really nervous about how our financial system is set up and uh a lot of my friends were golden holders they were you know still very skeptical about the us dollar and it took me a while to say okay i need to find something to jump to and i'm not sure gold's the right answer so fast forward to that i was in a summer program in krakow poland and that's where i met mark vanelli now me and him hit it off and he explained bitcoin and that's when i swallowed the hook and i was convinced that bitcoin was the new future of mine yes and uh mark finale is famous guys uh google him and pound that like button okay so you got your bitcoin then now it's a bit frustrating to deal with it now one thing i got to give you i got to give you credit for um we've been talking since 2017 so this show is a long time in in the making and i'm really happy uh to get your story out there because we you know in in terms of what i've i've read stories about uh making bitcoin easier to use for people who can't see but um i i have never you know hurt anyone who actually can't see talk about their experiences and so one thing that we've talked about is just the frustration of sending bitcoin not knowing if there's really sending it to the right address or not yes very frustrating and and to make things even worse when i when i first lost my site i was trying to purchase bitcoin from coinbase like a lot of first timers would and i could hit submit for using my screen reader so people that might not know so the blind interact primarily with what's called screen readers so wherever you put your finger your cursor it would just read whatever that text is or numbers or icons back to you so when i wanted to purchase bitcoin with the screen reader on and when i would hit buy nothing would happen so there was the it was still filled with glitches back then so like for example that's why unfortunately i bought one litecoin just to see if my bitcoin account was set up right or my coinbase account was set up right or if it was you know it's just all these like little false positives that occur with screen readers and with accessibility issues with bitcoin that's very nerve-wracking so you know a lot of the early days i needed to have somebody with site to make sure that we're using the right address that we're entering the right amounts so if i can work with anybody to make this easier for the blind community again in the bitcoin this is a great first step is to just make sure that there's no more false positives or even uh false negatives that'd be huge and so all of us take it for granted we see that that long stream of numbers and letters and we can confirm that we're sending it to the right address on our own and you can i mean you could i mean you could have it read out all the letters and numbers but it's that would be a freak show i mean you you don't know you can't memorize all those numbers and absolutely no i know so one of the things i get i give you credit for is that you uh well i give anybody out there is watching this you if you're if you've got listening comprehension you listen to my shows and you're like oh that guest is a really good guy i'd love to get in touch with him well that's what you you thought about was you were traveling down to austin and you wanted to get in touch with phil down there yeah shout out to chain capital phil and parker and so i put you in touch with those dudes and they were interested phil was interested in uh in this type of thing in uh making bitcoin easier uh for the blind but he saw that it's uh it's pretty far behind right now yes yeah that's right when uh we did a little meeting with the unchained capital team and i brought the um so the screen reading software is pretty much the the golden standard for what most blind people used to interact with their computers and we tried to use some of the uh unchanged software and it was getting a problem they would basically read the code instead of what the code represented was a issue that not a lot of developers are aware of that even pops up but like for example instead of it reading back enter it will read the ones and zeroes of whatever that code is for the enter command so that was a really disheartening thing because they were working on this project which i hear is great but for a blind person it would just be a stream of ones and zeroes so so this is the thing you have experience with bitcoin uh and like like no other and i mean you've met people in the bitcoin space so right you should be your dream job is being a a bitcoin a consultant for all of these uh various companies that deal with bitcoin storage whether it be tresor whether it be ledger i mean you could be the consult the consultant uh you know that to help them figure out how uh they can make it easy for blind people so you're in motion right now if any of you dudes out there paying attention this is your dude right here in terms of opening up uh bitcoin to the uh to the blind community now um and again you're totally in motion which is awesome that's why i got you on the show today because you've got this unique perspective and you want to this is building this is what i talk about i mean um getting more people into the space now you've tried to get other blind people into this space and they are interested in being golden holders as you said but they're they they're not interested in bitcoin though yep that in stocks because a lot of the you know the big banks all have to be ada compliant naturally so they spend big money to make sure that their all their websites and their apps are exact that are screen reader friendly either through apple or mac now that that's great for that and also with gold they tend to be a lot of golden holders too but we need to find out how to make that for bitcoin because when i bring that up to people in the blind community like they're very not skeptical of what bitcoin is but how to get it safely and how to start safely that's one of their biggest fears because they don't have somebody that they can trust right now to read back their bank account information to read back the credit card to read back the address or however method they want to do this and they could easily lose their bitcoin or their money or whatever so it's it's it's a lack of you know independency in the big in the blind communion most of us want to be self-sufficient and independent but in the bitcoin space it's just not possible so yeah i mean the ultimate is be your own bank in bitcoin i mean that's the ultimate holder but what do what do you think about um one day i mean already kraken just announced that they're becoming a bitcoin bank okay now i don't know if they're going to have to be ada compliant or would i i don't know the whole wyoming ada compliance but let's say i and this is not this is just not make believe one day bank of america you'll be able to store your bitcoin there so they will be ada uh compliant and they'll they are a multi-billion dollar uh uh organization and they'll figure this out so so what is it are are you are you willing to compromise not for yourself but to tell others like if if a bank of america comes up with a a a product where they're storing the bitcoin for the person but it's very easy uh for the blind to access would you be down with that i think i would be cool with it um and i don't want to touch on a sore subject but this is i know you're gonna this is gonna drive you nuts but if the one the ones in the blind community that were able to convince to jump into the bitcoin space went to gbtc of course of course well because they're used they could still straight strut like you know it's a stock it's a stock but that's you know what i'm not complaining okay gbtc that's a that's a competitive edge right there they've got a competitive edge in the blind market look and the way they thought is like well all the all the um holes in the in the cheese as you will like that we just mentioned all the little pitfalls the way they see it is like well if i buy gbdc all that's already taken care of for me so i can at least get exposure to the asset without having to deal with all those pitfalls yeah hey dudes that are that are watching this uh i want to point out that this is a new shirt here it's a stack sats and hoddle it says uh it is linked by the way if you want this exact shirt this dude i i again i i just received the shirt uh it's linked to below and uh let me see what's it satoshi corner do satoshi corner
com you get shirts there and i'm wearing it uh people when we try to do this show the first time someone even commented on the shirt right away because everybody everybody loves his fancy sets and graphics come on dude he's kind by the way so ray you you you listen to and uh a lot of uh youtube i mean you you bitcoin youtubers bitcoin podcasters do you notice a difference between the dudes that are only audio only and video is there my theory is that the dudes that are that are audio only that the content is better and that uh absolutely yeah because it doesn't it doesn't do the blind any favors or audio listeners any favorites if you're just uh comparing charts and just saying see here it's there and then what dropped down to here and then it went up to there it doesn't do anything for the blind community or just audio listeners but that's that's one of the attractions to the show no fancy sets or graphic i was like great he's relying on content yeah yeah man thank you um you've got a very unique perspective on this to to judge uh the the quality of a show because you're not gonna there's uh there's a lot of people that throw out there those fancies and people just fall for it oh look at the chart or look at the bikini girl look at that and that's what i'm telling i mean you're just you listen to what is good that's all you know that is the distraction dude you should be the uh the podcaster uh critique there's a there's a b you could be siskel and ebert of uh podcasting that would be good uh just say saying what's good what you recommend dude i'm coming up with all sorts of ideas today yeah yeah all right well let's talk about another idea another good idea that you had that involves um bitcoin here and you can show and i may on the original show i don't know if i'm going to do this for this this show um i i made the uh the thumbnail your uh your leg which is uh which is a metallica leg he's you can get if you're missing a leg you can get a leg designed for you and his says metallica on it and justice for all instead of reference oh i mean i know it's their song but this is a reference to your law background also absolutely yeah i brought the huge metallica nut and uh with the ball field with the law degree with the law license texas attorney it just it was beautiful are you yeah put in the center a little bit more you were good you got it speaking of us fancy tetras but uh yeah for those that can see this podcast uh yeah it's it's a just it's a woman it's holding the uh scales of justice and it says justice for all and then metallica at the top people yeah album covers wrapped around where um for those that are used to seeing you know prosthetic legs with the poles they make calf covers and that's that's what i opted for and you got new balance shoes on it very very good shoe now um i i want to so why why we're showing this you want a bitcoin leg that's right yeah absolutely so uh calling out to all you bitcoin artists out there if you guys could send a print or something or um digital file to adam so that he could scan and send it to me because let me see if i need to i lost both my legs in the fire so my right leg's still bare so i would love to get a cast cast cover of uh anything bitcoin this could be a big this could be a big business because a lot of people day to day in this day and age apparently i'm learning from you uh they like designs on their legs dude there's this uh one one of the uh guys in the uh i guess you could call it the support group i'm in for uh amputees he lost it above his knee so he got the iron man cover so his whole leg looked like it's like turning into the iron man leg that's cool people get really out there with this stuff it's pretty sweet yeah i mean a lot of people aren't used to this at all they think of a process prosthetic leg they think of the pole they think that they think of a lot of different things man you can go a lot of different directions with like this and i i've seen a lot of bitcoin merchandise out there i've seen bitcoin on a lot of things i've seen a bunch of bitcoin and altcoin tattoos on ken bozak's freaking body but i've never seen a bitcoin prosthetic leg before so yeah this might get us somebody can get us the art i got the guy that can turn it can manifest that into a late cover so this could be obviously yeah definitely the bitcoin b no fancy sets or graphics strong hand now uh so uh are you are you gonna become permanent in austin i mean do you like that that tech uh the tech atmosphere there do you think that yeah i love it it's it seems like a cutting edge of technology and it's very cool it's like this libertarian cowboy tech mecca at least the scenes that i've been at in austin so really and again people he's from baltimore just like i am a different part about but we won't get into all the different specific people from baltimore know the difference from the east side west line this down that where there's nothing oh that's a whole new part that's [ __ ] [ __ ] itself on there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the people in england are like we don't need to hear about the east side of baltimore okay so we want to hear the fire watch the wire there you go pal man like button for ray okay now no no wire for us and so you and you're a metallica fan also yeah okay okay okay okay and uh any uh any comments on the uh the state of rock music today or uh has it deteriorated either absolutely terrible look i i'm asking the uh ask me anything questions of you right now but uh what's your take on that classic rock by the way oh i like classic rock rock i think there's a time place for everything i think the more listen to you the better but everybody finds their own niche that gets on repeat on their uh you know on their music on their playlist anyway so now you now you are a lawyer this is important to remind everyone this is referred to i think we refer to it in this show not that the first show yeah just to clarify that yes i did graduate from law school when i passed the texas bar yes so you've got the you've got the lawyerly brain up there so i mean you could do you you haven't really gotten into bitcoin and the legal side of bitcoin though that that you have not uh because a lot of it has been a weird uh that's almost like the wild west law which is very fascinating because my concentration in law school is more business law and securities and international transactions so a lot of that was more based on you know what to do and what not to do with the scc with uh insider trading how to start a business business to business disputes that kind of area but now with this new asset class you know it's like are we going to adapt old laws to this it's going to be very interesting going forward especially with smart contracts and how the courts are going to you know view those that's i think it's going to be a very interesting area of the law that i'm you know very you know looking forward to reading more about yeah i hope you you can you can comment on it from your lawyerly perspective there's something forbid there's something in bitcoin for everyone the law the prosthetic legs for the blind anything you know in motion dude pound that like button now on on a beyond bitcoin show i spoke about uh elon musk so we're gonna go beyond bitcoin right now talk about elon musk real quick and uh he he's developing this neural link uh thing yeah and they're all these people that say oh he's trying to control people's brains he's gonna put a chip in people's brains know exactly what they're doing and i said dude let this guy experiment this would be so awesome he could he could uh who knows what that he could give people back their site etc etc so you have a take on uh what's on what he's doing and uh if if he were to develop uh in say okay i've tested it out here on animals and uh if we do x y and z and cut a little hole in your head um you can get your sight back what's your take on that well i find it fascinating um so a little more background in my area so i was at hopkins for a year for my burn injury and my mom was also a nurse there so i'm very you know shout out to hopkins in the hopkins burn unit but i also have a family member who worked in neurosurgery at hopkins and they've been working on this for quite a while now so when elon musk came out about it it's i think it's great because not only a research labs have already been working here but to get this in the commercial sense i think would be fantastic because it seems that once the commercial side comes to certain medical research it seems to evolve a lot quicker now in the baseline technology they've been able to get certain animals to see images um through electronic implants so this would be almost akin to setting up hd cameras for your glasses and bring to your visual cortex so i'm all for that i'm great i'll be third in line let's say so make sure they can work out the kinks and then i would be right in line for it absolutely there's also a company in california called second site that is working on the scene it's the same it has the same goal in mind doing a uh implantable prosthetic eye basically well and this is this is the perspective i'm going to present here you said and i referred to you in a beyond bitcoin show i said i have a friend who can't see and uh he said he'd be third in line so you just said exactly what oh okay right really what i quoted you are saying which is great but my point was that you know a lot of people try to make it all to be conspiratorial oh they're gonna track you and stuff but you wouldn't you would be like you would worry about that later right yeah if i had to trade that for sight i i wouldn't mind at all it's yeah you could be able to see it again for the healthy human being then what do they have to worry about is that you know i i really don't i think that's a little overblown this whole um idea of uh what merging man and machine and i mean we've been doing that with pacemakers too so i think the concerns are a little overblown but that's just that's just me yeah i know no but no your perspective is much appreciated here i i gotta tell you because this is this is who it would help i mean and he he'd be third in a freaking line so uh uh that that's uh so i love what i i i love what elon musk is doing and it's just it just shows what a technological age that we're uh we're living in so may it be sped up soon and i i i i've got uh i'm looking you're looking forward to this golden age too no doubt about that anyway absolutely this is one of the best times to be alive remember what anybody says yeah yeah this is just you get a positive case and you you make the reference to your uh experience with johns hopkins and your uh mother's experience with uh johns hopkins i want to thank you publicly because uh with my current situation with my grandmother you've tried to uh help out uh that way uh through hopkins because you know everybody um if you want the best medical care and you know someone hopkins it you know it would be good so i i do want to thank you guys uh publicly and uh you guys were great talking to you the other night it's it's uh you know there's there's a lot going on in my life but uh you you've got a positive take on it and i i do appreciate uh the help of ray so and and by the way guys you gotta you gotta love ray's take your own life because we got so many people out there complaining okay about oh life is hard and it's just we got a lot of uh i don't the world has been feminized in a way nothing wrong with being a lady or nothing wrong with being a lady but some guys are just uh complaining complaining and hypochondriacs and stuff like that this dude right here this is this dude's the man okay you are the man you just keep on you keep going and going now i want to say um with with the you know you've had some uh operations uh has this uh virus we're gonna call it the virus um has this delayed uh some some of the progress that you've wanted to make uh me the only thing that's delayed is my uh setting up shop in austin uh you know what i've found is my most active optimistic friends they saw this virus as an opportunity to do something new or to figure something out um one one of my close friends he figured out how to build a deck so he put a deck onto his house another friend of mine just kind of like you said you know what i'm going to travel like crazy if i've got to work from home i can work from anywhere and for me it was well if i'm going to be home listening to podcasts and audio books let's get as many surgeries done as we can so i just got my neck released and my hands released and something your viewers might not know when you get burned you get really thick burn scars when you survive so you can either get keloid like um edward norton's fist in fight club it kind of gets like cauliflowered like bubbly or you can get what i get which are these like really thick scar bands so that's what my jeans get so once you're through the recovery stage you start to release these fans so you get mobility of your neck back and um this whole corona stuff since you know i think this is the safest time to go to a hospital because they're cleaning it like 24 7 so you know i talked to her with my surgeons again shout out to hopkins burn unit um dr caffrey and she said come on in and let's get this stuff that you've been thinking about doing let's get it all done doing this crown and [ __ ] so that way when we open back up you're ready to go so and so they didn't delay anything i mean i thought they they restricted stricter rules or were not doing as many surgeries now or something like that but well there are stricter rules but that's more on the you know just the you have to get covered swap before you go and you know it's more the um logistical stuff is a little more strict but you can still get done what you need to get done no problem and and for the one or two people that are listening to this right now if you're putting off the medical thing because the koran thing do not do not because it's just going to get worse and right now it's one of the safest times to go to the hospital they are they are on high alert for you know sanitation you're not worried you're not worried at all about this stuff no not at all pound that like button right there all right all right all right let's see uh what else we're gonna talk about here we talked about the law and uh with the audio podcast and uh oh man what is this and and the the and i i do want to point out you again you were you got into bitcoin in in 2011 you knew people who were mining it back then but uh so but but no regrets that's the interesting thing like uh like i said that's that's when i started reading about bitcoin like there are tons of really interesting youtube videos like they're pretty primitive about what this new asset class was going to be but the the trouble even with site was actually getting your own bitcoin and holding it for yourself like that was still a bit of a mystery because uh it was back in the mount doc's days i believe because i also had a few friends that were in the magic that said yeah we don't really know about it we don't trust it some people did you had to send money to an address and wait a week or something and it was just you know when i was on the sideline watching that i was like let let smarter people than i figure this out technically before i start really buying in exactly and then okay whatever you didn't get it then and i i wouldn't i i could have easily that could have been on my computer like i got destroyed while i was in poland so and in a sense it's a blessing in disguise and and the other thing is uh those dudes that you knew they were mining what what happened to their bitcoin do you even know that's the funniest thing we think they all either one of them i think work ended up working for dell and i don't know what happened to the coins we've been uh kind of wondering if that's what paid for randolph-macon's new stadium but yeah what happened to the points oh man i got you a question uh i have because of this virus have you had to use zoom more and how's that transition been uh exactly i've used more skype and then hopkins used a um they have their own like hopkins connect so it hasn't really been too much of a problem and then um again with some of the long legal stuff it's all been mostly iphone so with um how to use what is it the uh facetime and stuff like that so it hasn't really been an issue but zoom's been just because it's just new to me and you know getting the you know download and all that stuff now uh so i was gonna ask about uh well first i just don't want to ask questions here so dudes if you want uh ready to return to the show you tell me so you can so we can have a a a q a with him in the future uh hopefully uh that that can be uh sooner than later and uh we'll get the technical uh issues uh fixed next time so people can so now they know about you and um i mean this is i i haven't you know we i try to bring you the i bring you the best freaking guest in the space you haven't heard a blind dude talk about bitcoin i i don't think have you raised it i know like i said not in the uh space the only thing i've heard of recently through mark finnelli sent a link that they were working on a audio cis uh bitcoin storage device but i i don't know if that's dead in the water or not i haven't that was about 2000 i think a teenager i remember i remember reading something about it but i just never had it never heard a blind guy actually talk about it before so yeah and that's what i was waiting for to make sure that it was legit and that it fit properly the the terror of sending a bitcoin when you can't oh yeah yeah that's that's a hard stop right so yeah and guys again i i totally understand it uh if you know if you buy it for if you keep it at coinbase and you can't see it okay it's fine yeah i mean you don't want to you don't have a heart attack like trying to send it somewhere and then and then messing up and like and that that would be uh that'd be very bad all right let me just uh see if there are any other uh questions i have here uh i asked you about the audio yeah audio of it and uh all right good good is it any uh closing thoughts you have anything you want to want to share with uh anybody i i mean i can link to your uh twitter below oh yeah on on your twitter below you have a good pictures of a metallica like there if people yeah i'm just i'm just excited about the space i so far my interactions with the bitcoin commute have been awesome they're all like-minded people and this has just been a great great experience awesome awesome well keep on uh keep on being in motion there and uh on on the cutting edge of of bitcoin and you i mean you're you're a fan of a technology too of elon musk so let's uh keep on innovating people keep on producing some produce uh i mean this is what i like you're you're not part of the bitcoin inquisition that want to destroy different things well i should ask you about all coins real quick uh so yeah you did buy a lot like that you're buying of a litecoin that time that was acceptable because you just want to make sure is this is this working is this like coinbase thing even working um do you still have that litecoin no i transferred that one once um coinbase they did like an upgrade and they fixed the bug i changed it over to bitcoin all right now now with all coins i think they're like i'm kind of your same mentality i think it's great experiment see what can come out of it but for most people i think it's why why gamble go with the the tried and true bitcoin yeah exactly you can't you can't beat the real thing but hey if people want to experiment with other stuff let them do it compete don't complain buy and over crying etc etc all right there uh ray we'll well thank thanks for being on the show today and giving us this unique perspective on on bitcoin and life so uh everybody pound that like button uh remember you get uh this weekend bitcoin coming up soon who knows when this if you're listening this audio um the audio version of this is definitely gonna come out uh on today on thursday so this weekend bitcoin is tomorrow at uh 9 00 am uh and we've got new guests on it's going to be great and hopefully soon we can get ray back on the show and all the people who love to do the super chat you can ask him a question so ray thank you so much for being on the show today pound that like button everybody see ya
