In this interview, Sam Parr, Speaker A, and Nader Al‑Naji discuss the chaotic launch of BitClout (later rebranded as DeSo). Nader explains that the team accelerated a prototype rollout in March 2021, sharing password‑protected links that were quickly overshared, leading to uncontrolled user growth. He chose to launch under the pseudonym “Diamond Hands” to emulate Satoshi’s anonymity, but this hampered press coverage and fueled accusations of a scam. Technical shortcomings—closed‑source code, inability to cash out, and limited auditability—exacerbated distrust. Speaker A posits that the emotional backlash stemmed not from the logical criticisms (code opacity, cash‑out issues) but from a perception that insiders were becoming rich without “earning” it, citing the bonding‑curve model that allowed early buyers to amass liquid wealth while the platform’s daily active users remained low. The conversation explores how these dynamics mirror broader crypto resentment toward perceived unfair wealth distribution, and probes Nader’s response to the criticism.
Chapters
We just retrace the story, right? So you do Basis, you, you have this idea for stablecoin. You end up giving back the money when you decide it's not going to work. You have this new, new idea for a decentralized social network. You raise some money from legit hitters. Other people pile in. Like you're saying, it's all pretty quote unquote fair, which is that we're all owning the same thing. And, and then you get to the point of the launch. You're— you decide to be anonymous. You try to go the Satoshi route. But it doesn't work. Why didn't that— why did you want to do that? And why didn't that work? Too many people. Yeah.
Well, so, yeah. So basically, you know, I've been working on this blockchain, the DeSo blockchain, for almost 2 years. And we were like, hey, you know, we should really launch kind of a prototype app to start testing it, like in the, in the field, so to speak. And that was Bitcloud. And we wanted to, you know, not really like have it go mainstream until at least like the middle of this year, like the middle of 2021. And so, but, you know, we Obviously launching earlier is better. And so we kind of accelerated, said, OK, in March we're going to start sharing these password-protected links with some people, just get a few hundred users, kind of see how the blockchain is holding up with this kind of activity. And so, yeah, so what ended up happening was it kind of went out of control and the links got way overshared, and to the point where I kind of had to go out there you know, I had to start, you know, saying, hey, like, this is what this is and this is like, you know, what's going on. But for me personally, you know, I've always been really— I think I've always admired how like Satoshi kind of like launched Bitcoin without creating kind of like a centralized person that everyone kind of relies on or is like, this is our, you know, our guy. So it was really— I wanted to kind of do the same thing there. And so I launched with, you know, a pseudonym, Diamond Hands. And immediately, you know, it was kind of very hard to get press. It was hard to get people to kind of listen to the story that that is the real story versus making up their own. And so we had a lot of press saying, hey, like, this is a scam. And by the way, because it was just a prototype, there were a lot of things were missing. So you couldn't cash out your money. You can actually convert your money from dollars.
And I was like, wait a minute. Yeah. So you're telling me that there's a website that you invest money in. You don't know who made it. It doesn't work a lot of the times and you can't get the money out, right? And he's like, yeah. I was like, oh, okay, got it. Just making sure we're on the same page here.
Yeah, right. Rightfully so. Any, any other time I would say that's a complete scam. Also, none of the code was open. So even though it's a blockchain and it was running on a few dozen nodes, like no one could actually audit it or be like, hey, this is a real thing. Uh, so we were just not prepared at all.
So let me, let me tell you something. There was a whole bunch of criticisms like what you're talking about, right? The code is not open source. You can't cash out. Oh, they scraped our Twitter profiles. Um, oh, there's, you know, there's a big pre-buy. People got in super cheap. Uh, you know, all this stuff. There was all these criticisms of it. We don't know who the founders are. You know, they're kind of anonymous. But my theory, and you tell, I wanna know what you think about this. So I have this phrase which is, I think emotion commits the crime and then logic does the coverup. So all these logical complaints, I don't think are the real reason why people were so like up in arms about this new project that actually is like a really net, like it would, if something like this existed, it would be a huge net positive in the world. And those same people hate Facebook. Well, this is the antidote if something like this could actually get off the ground and work. And so, um, I was surprised that the emotion was there and I think I, at least this is my theory. I think that people don't like when someone gets rich without quote unquote earning it. And I think what people saw is that the insiders, so the people who created it or maybe the early buyers, they bought so early on the bonding curve, they got so early on and wow, $100 million is coming to this thing. These coins have run up in price or the profiles have gone up in price. And there was this feeling like, like, I don't know, I don't know how well you did, but here's my guess. I think you've made tens of millions of dollars already liquid without, uh, at the minimum, and your project is like under 10,000 DAU or something like that, right? So, uh, or under 50,000, let's say. So like in already in the tech world, this tech gets backlash because people will raise at like $100 million valuation and people are like, oh, I've been running this restaurant and laundromat for years and How does this little app with, you know, with, with no business model be worth $100 million? Right. There's already people who get upset about that. But, but the one saving grace is that they're not liquid. So it's not like the founders running around in a Lambo, living in a mansion in L.A., but in crypto you're liquid too. So you, you get the early hype and you get the liquidity, the Lambo and the mansion. And I think that that is actually what triggers people about crypto in general, Bitcoin in general. You know, people who buy an NFT, and they get rich, you know, they make $1 million off this random image. I think to other people that feels inherently unfair. And so do you— what do you think is my theory? What do you think of my theory? And then what's your kind of response to the people who do feel that way?
I think there must be some, like, validity to your theory, because if you read— there's a great book called The Infinite Machine about Ethereum, and it catalogs like what happened to Ethereum, how it launched, all this stuff. They got major backlash from Bitcoin people because of the way they raised money where they were like, hey, like, you know, projects aren't supposed to like take Bitcoin for, you know, another shitcoin. Like, you know, this is like bad. I mean, I read that book right after, you know, kind of everything that was happening with Bitcloud. And I was like, this is eerily similar. So, so I think part of, part of what you're saying has to be part like, like a factor. You know, dude, look, that said, you know, since then, DeSo is listed on exchanges. You can trade it on Blockchain.com, AscendEX, and a really big one, you know, A couple of big ones are coming soon. And, you know, like the code is all open and people have gotten really passionate about it, you know, contributing to it. The last couple of people we've hired are like open source. They were just contributing to it and we hired them. So I think that, you know, if I saw someone who's very clearly a scammer making lots of money, I would be upset in a way that I would be like, I wouldn't be as upset if I felt like there was a shred of them not being a scammer, which we didn't have because I was anonymous, you couldn't cash out, the app was going down a lot. So whatever, whatever theory there is is probably exacerbated.
