Jimmy Song on the Little Bitcoin Book - Author Cast #3

Uh, yeah, so we actually like went through a whole exercise of, uh, of figuring out like We wanted to write for. And, you know, like this is part of the whole book sprint process that I've come up with is figuring out, okay, like be as specific as you can on exactly who you're writing for. And we did go through this exercise. I actually might be able to look it up if I'm not mistaken. Where like I came up with exactly the people that I wanted to write for. And oh gosh, I can't seem to find it right now. But like I had in mind somebody like, you know, maybe a few years out of college that was, you know, curious about Bitcoin and wanted to do Something related to it, but didn't really know what, or like what it was and just needed to learn like the essence of it. And that's who I was writing for. And I think that was sort of like our guiding star, like knowing the audience and going from there. But generally it's for people that don't know that much, that don't have like tech degrees in something or— computer science or math or something like that, but instead, uh, just sort of like the average person that maybe, um, you know, you know, is a college graduate or a high school graduate, just somebody reasonably intelligent that could pick it up and understand it afterwards.

Yeah, that seems, that seems reasonable. Um, so once somebody picks up your book, Um, what are the lessons, the, the main things that they can take away from it after they're done with it? I mean, it's, it's a rather, rather, um, short book. It's, it's a quick read, which I like also. Uh, it's a great intro, but what, what, what is it that the, the top things on your mind after you put down the book?

Yeah. Um, after they pick up the book and read it, um, I basically want the reader to understand that, hey, like Bitcoin isn't all these like bad things that you've heard, right? Like it's, it's not just, you know, like darknet markets or things like that. It's, it actually matters in a deep and significant way. And, and, you know, that, that's what we sought to, you know, put out there. I mean, there is a whole chapter that talks about, you know, like how the actual network works and all of the stuff about nodes and things like that. But there's also like a lot of things about, okay, here's how our current monetary system is broken and here's how Bitcoin fixes a lot of it, right? Like, and that it's a different perspective because it gives the reader sort of a sense of, you know, what problem is Bitcoin actually trying to fix? And that's what we really wanted to focus on so it would be relevant for them because Oftentimes people don't know that the system's broken. I mean, they have an idea, and especially that for people that live outside the US and Western Europe or whatever, like just people in poorer countries definitely know this. Like they recognize something is really off and there is this sense of, okay, you know, the US, you know, does things sort of in an unfair manner and things like that. So We talk about all of that in the book, and hopefully that's what readers come out with is this sense of, okay, like there's a problem that Bitcoin actually fixes and it's, it's not what I thought it at first, right? It's not, it's not just some speculative gambling vehicle or something like that.

Yeah, I think your book accomplishes it really, really well. And this is, I found that this is the crux as well. to understanding Bitcoin, to understand first what is wrong with the system, that why we need replacement. Like you said, those countries that have severe hyperinflation and, and, you know, poor conditions, they understand it quite well, quite fast because they understand that they need replacement. But in so-called developed countries that we call first world countries nowadays, People tend to think that things are rather well. Maybe there's some kind of like something brewing in the background that not quite everything is as it should be. That was certainly my feeling like some years ago before I found Bitcoin and, you know, the hopelessness of the situation that everything seems to be going worse and worse and worse and there's no way out and, you know, everything is shit. So I think, I think your book does a great job in showing that, you know, there's an alternative way to go about it as well.

Yeah. And yeah, I just found like what I wrote for like the audience that I was looking for. But yeah, I mean, that, that, that's the idea is that people get a different perspective on Bitcoin and that's what this book is meant to accomplish because Honestly, most people just don't really have a good idea of what it is. They just hear, you know, some mainstream media news article or some, or, or, you know, take on it. And those are just all completely off. They, they don't get it at all. So this was for us a way to, you know, counter that narrative a little bit and give people a perspective that Do another YC.

Yeah. Yeah. The mainstream media and, and sometimes it's even, you know, it's like a lot of the, uh, forces that we are, are getting paid for not understanding Bitcoin, right?

So, or to purposefully obfuscate what Bitcoin is.

Yeah, precisely. So the, so that makes it even more important. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So, so what, what did you find, uh, about the audience?

Oh, well, so I like this, what I wrote down. So this is, so I don't know if we want to get into this part of the thing, but we wrote this book in a week. So part of that was coming up with a process to identify our audience and like figure out where we want them to be after they read the book. So I still have my notes and You know, it's a very worthwhile exercise, by the way, if you're an author, is identifying your audience very specifically. And not just as an author, like this is something I picked up from doing lots of startups is you need to figure out who your market is, right? Who are you selling to? And be very like obvious about it and write it all down. So I was pretty specific. But I, but, you know, we had 8 co-authors and we all wrote something down. Um, and this was mine. It's a 23-year-old, just graduated from college in the US, immigrant parents, owns a smartphone, cares about social justice, wants to change the world, skeptical about big business, progressive, enjoys watching The Daily Show, works in a consulting firm, reads a book every month or so, goes out with friends every weekend, volunteers at soup kitchens every month or so. And, you know, that, that was, that was sort of like the audience I had in mind as I was writing it. And this gives, like, as an author, it's very helpful to have that person in mind because you can always sort of like judge whether or not the person you describe would understand all the words that you're writing down. Because oftentimes what authors end up doing is they make it too basic where it becomes boring, or they make it Too complicated where it's like, okay, you're not at all clear to this person that's reading it. So that's what I had come up with. And part of the exercise is beginning with the end in mind. So the thing that I had everybody do was write down what review you want them to write on Amazon. So like, Everybody went through and made like sort of like a fake Amazon review of their potential audience member. Like what would they write after they read the book? And this is the thing that I had written. By the way, this has never been public. It's just something, this first time I'm sharing this. Warning, this book will open your eyes to how the world actually works. Money is central to our society. I originally thought Bitcoin is just for criminals. Libertarian crazies or scammers. This will, this book will convince you otherwise. After reading this book, I'm now convinced that Bitcoin is one of the keys to changing the corporate industrial complex and reducing war all over the world. The moral case for owning and supporting Bitcoin presented thoroughly in this book. There is a moral case for owning and supporting Bitcoin presented thoroughly in this book, and I'm convinced that society will benefit greatly. As a result of people adopting it. In short, I'm now a believer. If you are skeptical about the power of Bitcoin to do all that, read the book. So that, that was, uh, that was what I had written, uh, like before we wrote a single word of the book, that, that was what I wrote. Hopefully that's, uh, that's what, uh, what I accomplished. Uh, my other authors all had something like that and that, that was sort of our north star, right? Our guiding light. Like, how is it going to get this audience member to write that review? Like, and that, like, if it, if we had material that didn't, then we just kind of threw it out. And that's, it, it, that's kind of why the book's on the shorter side. We had to cut a lot of stuff.

Yeah, that's really good. That's great approach. And I'm really impressed that you had 8 authors, I think. And you finished the book in a week. Obviously you have a lot of knowledge there, but I think the preparation was key here. Like what you did with the inverse Amazon review, I think that's brilliant. I think that's a really, really good tool for any author. So I, yeah, I think to streamline the process and to write, you know, know who are you speaking to, right? I mean, when I write, often I'm speaking to myself, and then, you know, it's not really, uh, it's not so focused. You don't have the key audience. So that's really, that's some really good advice. I really like that.

Yeah. And it's useful for anything. Like if you're, if you're building an app or a website or, you know, anything, you, uh, identify your audience first and Begin with the end in mind. What do you want them to say about it, right? How do you want them to review it? And you know, like you can do an iTunes review for your music too, right? Like whatever it is that you want people to say about it, if you have that in mind when you're creating, it's going to give you direction. And direction is often the thing that a lot of authors and creators lack. And once you do that, it just, it Makes everything fall into place so much easier, having purpose essentially. I actually wrote a whole article on the whole book writing process. If you search on Medium, like how to write a book in 4 days, and it's under jimmysong.medium.com. But we talk about, we talk exactly about this process of going through, hey, like What is this, you know, process that lets you write a book in 4 days? A lot of people were curious about it. So I wrote this towards the end of the book sprint, sort of as a, you know, I was already in sort of like a writing mode and stuff, and there are pictures and what we did and all that. But it was a really fun experience as opposed to like, you know, the one solo effort that I did, which is Programming Bitcoin, which was a Real hard slog, right? Like it, it took me like a year and a half to do. Um, this came together a lot faster in part because you're working with other people and it's a lot more enjoyable. So, um, if you're curious, you can go read that and learn a little bit more about this process that we use.

Yeah, I'm sure to include the link, uh, after, after I find it. That's good. Uh, one more question about the book. What, what's your favorite part, your personal favorite part, and do you have a quote to share?

The part that I really liked was sort of the human rights aspect. And I don't have a quote because I don't have, well, I do have the book here, but I don't want to go look for it. But the human rights aspect, I think, is what really kind of grabs people because, you know, the book starts out from sort of like this international perspective, right? The year is You know, such and such year, it's, uh, like sometime in the past and this is what's happening in this part of the world. And this is what's happening in this other part of the world. This is what's happening in this other part of the world. And you find out like so much of what's happening is monetary. It's economic. It's, uh, it's so much of it is, you know, sort of like evil caused by machinations of central banks and so on. And later you find out, okay, well, that, you know, the Bitcoin matters because it takes away the power to do a lot of this stuff. And it's, and that part I thought was pretty powerful as far as the book is concerned because it gives a sort of like a narrative around which to hang a lot of the Bitcoin things that you learn is Okay, well, you know, it's actually helping a lot of these people that are in poor places and, you know, it's doing it like right now. And that for me was an important aspect of bringing, well, an important aspect to bring into the Bitcoin narrative because for a lot of people, they, focus so much on like price and things like that. And we have like a whole chapter on that too. But the human rights aspect, I think, is what really hits them hard as they learn. And then, you know, the final chapter that's, you know, talking about the future and sort of speculating on it, that was fun too. But yeah, I would say those are my favorite parts is the human rights and— Sort of speculation.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I really like what you talk about the war before and, you know, human rights and, and people are empathetic. And my belief is that most people just want to live in peace, you know, happily with their family and friends and not be at war. And somehow the war has just become a part of the, you know, daily life. Like we're just warring constantly. There's a war somewhere in the world. And the prospect that Bitcoin brings forward, that with the hard money, you have to convince voluntary people to pool funds to go to war. Mm-hmm. You know, and then you can't force war on some kind of like fake narrative or, you know, manipulate the system. You have to have people backing the war. And I think that's a really powerful thought of, you know, maybe an eternal peace. Who knows?

Yeah. Well, I, that, that's the interesting thing about war in general, right? Or just consent in general. Like it's easy to quote unquote vote for something, but when you have to put your money behind it, it's a, it's a, that's a much higher bar. And I think that's, that's essentially the argument that we make, right? Is that with Bitcoin, it's, it's a higher bar if you, if you want to commit violence against somebody. Well, You could try, but it's not just a matter of, okay, well, I'm going to vote for, vote yes on something, or at least not protest or whatever. And it takes away the power of those people that want to commit violence. And that for me was a big insight in the book is like wars, Are, you know, it's better if they're fought over money rather than ideology. And unfortunately, most of the wars that have happened in the last 100 years have been wars of ideology, which tend to be way more devastating and kill way more people as opposed to wars that are economic, in which case once you've taken it over, it's over. Or once the ROI isn't there, it's over. So In a sense, like the less ideological it becomes, the better it, it, it, wars tend to be. Not that war is good in any way, but yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I like the, the economy of, of war you bring out and there's, with Bitcoin, there's accountability of action, right? So you, you, you can't just go and vote and say that, you know, I don't like those people and, you know, let's go and kill them. You actually have to put your money where your mouth is, right?

Mm-hmm.

So actually suddenly it becomes less and less interesting. You have to be a really good reason, um, to go to war. And like, uh, Sun Tzu said in, uh, Art of War, you know, the best general, uh, will win the war without even ever going to the fight because it's not economic to actually go to the fight. It's really costly.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, uh, and that's the thing about like ideological wars, there's, There's no way to sort of economically sat— well, you can at least satisfy economic demands. You can't really satisfy ideological ones because that gets way too close to who you are. So you can't just give up an ideology, right? If they, like, the entire Cold War was about communism versus democracy or capitalism or something like that. And the reason why you couldn't like resolve that easily is because both sides demanded the complete submission of the other rather than, you know, like wars used to be, hey, like we're, we're going to conquer your territory. You can just pay us, right? Instead of, instead of having us go through this whole thing. And a lot of people, they would make that rational economic calculation and say, okay, you know what? All right. Like, don't, you know, put our city under siege. We'll, we'll give you this much money every year and, you know, you can go away. And a lot of them did. They, like, you avoided all of that, uh, because it was an economic calculation, but it's no longer an economic calculation. So, um, you know, it becomes way more devastating, which unfortunately the 20th century is, uh, you know, chock full of examples of those.

Yeah. And I think we can see today, you know, that we, we are in, in midst of some kind of ideological war and there's no satisfying that hunger of, you know, of killing the opponent or killing their opinion or, or silencing them.

Hmm.

It's been, it's been the same throughout human history. And I think, well, we'll see. I, it remains to be seen if, if Bitcoin can actually fix it. That's what we like to believe at least. Yeah, it's interesting to see. Do you have any more to add about the book or, or any, anything else to say?

Yeah, it was, it was a fun book and it's interesting. I found that it appeals more to people on the left side of the spectrum, if that makes sense, like politically. And I'm not, I'm guessing it probably has to do with sort of like the international focus and Sort of like the justice angle that we've definitely put in there. Yeah. But I always find it interesting when it appeals to an audience member. I like, like looking back at the review, it's clear, like I was writing for people on the left, so it kind of makes sense that it tends to appeal to them. But it's doing so in a way that maybe I didn't Quite expect, like it's it's become sort of like a popular book to like pass around and say hey, like it's it's really short. We didn't set out to make the book short, right? Like it was we're going to write this book in a week. Just turned out to be short because there we we had a very good north star guiding like principle. Okay, if it doesn't get you the review that people are going to. the reviews that we wanted people to write, then it's useless. Like, why, why keep it in there? So we, we cut out so much stuff, like literally went through every paragraph and we were like, okay, that's, uh, that, that's not good. Or we're gonna have to take this out. We had like all these fights about like certain sections that we should leave in or not. And a lot of them ended up cut. That's, that's why the book's shorter than Uh, than I thought it would end up being. But that, that actually ends up being a virtue, which, uh, which I never really, uh, anticipated. Um, but yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's an interesting, um, it's an interesting way to, uh, do things. And I, I definitely learned a lot from writing the book.

Yeah, I'm sure. And yeah, it sounds like a great experience. And what you said about the, you know, writing for Leftist, I, I think that's, mm-hmm. Very interesting. And I think the human rights aspect has a lot to do with it, like you said. And I don't remember, was it Satoshi himself or somebody wrote in the Bitcoin forums that if you, if we explain Bitcoin correctly, it should appeal to the Marxist ideology?

Do

you remember that?

I don't remember that, but that would be interesting to figure out because—

Yeah, I need to look that up because I, I'm pretty sure there's Well, I'm probably not Satoshi, but somebody, somebody in the early days. And I think it's a very interesting point because it is, Bitcoin is the great equalizer. It's just not maybe in the, in the modern leftist way where, where, where people expect equal outcomes instead of equal, um, opportunity. I think Bitcoin is pure equal opportunity.

It, uh, it certainly evens it out a lot better. I mean, you're never ever going to get completely equal opportunity everywhere, right? Like that. That's just not realistic. But, you know, like it, it, it's made much worse by fiat money and that's the argument that we make in the book. So you take that away, well, now, now you have a chance. At least we have a chance now. That, that's, that's ultimately what we wanted to talk about.

Perfect, Jimmy. Thank you for the chat. It's, it was really illuminating and it's nice to hear about the process and Yeah, I think our viewers and listeners are gonna get a lot of out of this as well. And if you do, please, um, like and subscribe and hit the bell button and be sure to get the next Authorcast to your feed. And Jimmy, um, where can people find more about your work and maybe reach out to you?

Yeah, so, um, I'm on Twitter @JimmySong and you can, you know, uh, follow me there. Uh, if you wanna contact me, my newsletter is jimmysong.substack.com and If you reply to those newsletters, I get them in my inbox, so I'll be able to see what you're saying. So those, those are the main ways. But yeah, I have a lot of other stuff, so I'll spare you the, you know, litany of different places that I'm at.

Sure. And yeah, also check out Jimmy's Programming Bitcoin book. It's one of those books that I'm looking to read and add to hopefully, um, our collection of, of books as well. Uh, unfortunately I'm not such a technical person, so it'll be a, it'll be a hurdle for me for sure, but it's, it's something that I'm looking forward to conquer.

Okay. Awesome.

Thanks for it. Thanks for your time, Jimmy. And take care.

Yeah, thank you.

And thank you for the viewers.