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How often do we hear something and then say, “that simply can’t be”. Why are we always so certain? Why do we tend to be so locked into a position that we close our minds to exploring alternatives? Meet our podcast guest David Zimbeck. David grew up with an incredible imagination, a thirst for knowledge and the drive to learn. He is mostly a self-taught person whose desire to learn, think and grow are unstoppable. Among other things, he has been a major force in software developments that help shape our emerging crypto currency world. However, David goes much further than software development. Listen to this episode to learn all about this fascinating man. What David has to say is well worth your time and may cause you to open your own curious mind and mindset. Thanks for listening and I hope you will let me know your thoughts about our episode and the Unstoppable Mindset podcast by emailing me at michaelhi@accessibe.com. About the Guest: David Zimbeck, our lead developer, is unlike most people you will ever meet. His resilient work ethic, diverse project experience, and deep knowledge of cryptography has led to the creation of BitHalo, the world’s first unbreakable smart contracting system. These decentralized contracts are the fundamental backbone of BitBay. Born in Ohio and having lived all over the world, he has acquired the vast perspective needed to create truly disruptive software. David is completely self-taught, and intimately knows a hard-day’s work. He developed BitHalo’s first 50,000 lines of Python code single-handedly from scratch... all while working long, grueling shifts on the oil rigs of North Dakota. It was here that he executed his idea of double deposit escrow, bringing unbreakable peer-to-peer contracts into real-life agreements. As a former world chess master, he also possesses a truly analytical mind. David has a keen understanding of cause and effect, and sees the importance of early decisions in any situation. This mentality, in addition to his innate honesty, perseverance, and self-discipline has driven him to position BitBay well beyond most other blockchain projects in terms of both development and security. “Chess has helped me visualize code. It has helped me plan, memorize and problem solve. It has helped me anticipate problems well in advance.” David now resides in Mexico, and continues to work round-the-clock to help keep BitBay on the forefront of blockchain development. About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes
Michael Hingson 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
Michael Hingson 01:21 Well, Hi, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset, the podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, How's that for an opening? I want to thank you for joining us today, wherever you are, hope you're having a good day and hope that we can add a little bit to your your life and give you some things to think about today. And we have a person as our guest today, Davidson Beck, who has given me a lot to think about, and I hope that he will contribute to your thought processes as well. David, welcome to unstoppable mindset.
David Zimbeck 01:56 Thank you. Thank you, sir. pleasure, sir. Honor, honor Me and on here and nice meeting you and everything. Looking forward to it? Well, let's start like I tend to do a lot.
Michael Hingson 02:08 You You obviously grew up tell me a little bit about you as a as a as a child, and kind of what what you had going on growing up and where that led to, because it's you, you have quite a an interesting life. And you've done some very remarkable things. And let's talk about it. So just kind of wondering, what was it like being a kid for you? And where did it go?
David Zimbeck 02:32 Well, I'm actually I've had a, I guess, cuz I know, we talked earlier, and I've had a pretty diverse background. So people kind of get surprised when they see that I've done various various things with moderate moderate levels of success. And, and mostly, you know, I was always encouraged to be creative growing up. So you know, my parents never really, you know, inhibited me I'd gone to different schools, public, private schools, as well as homeschooling, I was a little disobedient. So I didn't really, I can't say I was like, the model student or anything. But it's possible that that worked in my advantage, because what it also taught me was to think outside the box, you know, and to try to understand exactly what it is that we're being taught and why. And, you know, I also had a drive ever since I was younger, to make the world a better place that was even, even since I was like, 10 years old. And my attitude was just, well, nobody's else do it, nobody else is doing it, somebody's gonna gotta clean all this shit up. So you know, I just decided, I just decided that I would try to do it. And so that that's also something kind of kept me somewhat diverse in my careers. But at the same time, whenever I do something, I like to benchmark myself and do a really good job at it. So So with that, with that in mind, you know, I when I was in, when I when I left high school, I went straight into working, because I didn't want to waste any time. And I worked in the real estate sector as well as acting. And that was like my early. My early work. Oh, yeah. And I was also a chess player. So that was one thing that probably really helped me a lot as a kid because I was considered. Well, I was I was one of the top chess players, or at least one of the top chess puzzle makers in the world. So what I did was I first learned how to play chess when I was like 11, or 12. And then after that, I knew I didn't want to play too competitively. Even though I had gotten my master title and master rank. And I could have played competitively, but I preferred the idea to express my, my work as an art form. So because an art form kind of is a lasting thing, if you paint a picture, you know, and you put it on the wall, it's a lasting thing, but if you're competing all the time, they always say you're only as good as your last when, you know, and I didn't want to be like a dog chasing my tail like chasing my own ego. Yeah. So essentially, I just wanted to benchmark my myself, which I did, and I did I did really good work. And that's what he did as a teenager. And then as I got older, that helped me, and a lot of my work because I was able to apply it to things. And I know, I know, you'll be able to appreciate this because it helps you visualize things. So I was able to visualize things in my head, you know, because when you're playing a game of chess, you're seeing it on the board, and you're essentially moving, you're moving the pieces with your mind, before you even place your hand on a piece, you have to figure out where they're gonna go, and what the possible things could happen in the future. So you calculate all that in your head. So it's, it's very similar to what you do. And it's almost kind of like, once you crack open your mind, you know, it's it never ends. So. So yeah, actually, I gotten
Michael Hingson 05:39 sorry, go ahead. You tell me how to how do you get the ranking of chess master? How does that work? I mean, I understand it, but how do you get that.
David Zimbeck 05:50 So what happens is you just play, you just play enough. I mean, when you play in tournaments, or whatever, you end up playing against other players. And if you win, you gain points on your rating. And if you lose, you know, you lose points on your rating. So once you get a rating of over a certain numbers, and while in America, we have like, unfortunately, we have a different rating system. So we're like one of the only countries that does that. There's two, there's basically the US C, F and D Day. So for the United States Chess Federation, I'm like, maybe 23 2400, somewhere around there. So that's, you know, that's my, my rating. And so that's well, that's well above Master, I could have gotten Grandmaster international master titles, but for that I would have had to travel because there's more because they play under the system of the day. So so to get that, you know, I would have had to actually go to Europe, which actually I did for a little while, but I wasn't as focused on chess when I went there.
Michael Hingson 06:43 Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. So
David Zimbeck 06:45 no, no, it's it's a good question. Because a lot of people think it's not like something you can just pull out of a hat and say, oh, yeah, I'm a master at this. No, you actually have to earn it. And
Michael Hingson 06:57 I figured that was the case. But I was always just sort of curious as to how the ranking actually was achieved. And, and clearly, you did a lot of it. And then as you as you pointed out, you have to really use your mind because it's chess is really only as an end result on the board.
David Zimbeck 07:14 Well, there's something else too, which is, unlike other game, like, if you look at games like poker, or other games, which granted do do have a good amount of skill involved. It's there's also a great deal of luck. Whereas chess, there's no luck at all whatsoever. You know, you play a game of cards, you know, you need to get good cards, you play game of Scrabble, you need to get good tiles, you play a game of chess, you just need to make good moves. And you don't even play the opponent, you play the board. Because the better you move is on the board. There's nothing your opponent can do. So it's really a game of pure skill. I mean, even even you could even argue, argue some sports that Well, I'd say sports are almost pure skill pretty much for the most part, but there's still a little luck involved with you know, you could miss a shot a breeze, a breeze in the wind could knock your golf ball off course, you know, you know, something can happen. But in chess, there's, there's, there's no forces of nature that would interfere with with your performance. So so that's that's what makes it a good game to learn, especially, you know, for kids. But, but yeah, that there was that. And then when I was in, I travelled a little bit. And I was in Los Angeles, actually, with my sister who was pursuing acting, which wasn't really my interest or at at the time, but since I had my family all had like a theater background, I was I was pretty much familiar with with it. And she helped me get like an agent and stuff like that. So actually, I was doing pretty good with that, too. And I was booking like commercials. And in some movies, I booked Pirates of the Caribbean too, which is what I'm the most known for. Where they flew me out to Bahamas and you know, I was on a boat with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. And so. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, I happen to work in that as well. I was.
Michael Hingson 08:58 Actually you're one of the pirates. Did you have a speaking part?
David Zimbeck 09:02 Um, no, but it was probably because of my audition, because when when we did the audition, it was a little bit of improv. And so all the pirates who auditioned were older, that was one of the biggest auditions in LA. Or, I think that at the time, because there's maybe like, 10,000 people that went out for it. And they only picked like, 20 of us, you know, so when when we auditioned, there was all these older gentlemen who were, you know, look like pirates. And I'm probably 30 years younger than anybody auditioning. So I said, oh, there's no way I'm gonna get this. And so, I just, I just didn't take it seriously, you know, but I did. I did a little bit, you know, I mean, I walked but I was when I went for the audition. I was like, you know, yar, I'm a pirate already barred Do you have a pretty doctor and I just kind of was just having fun. And I guess that they responded to that exuberance and thought it was funny. And and that's what got me the role actually, interestingly enough for other catalysts. No, unfortunately, There is a possibility I might have ended up having a speaking role thrown at me. It happened to a couple of the core pirates. But what happened is there was a hurricane that hit we were in Freeport, Bahamas. So there was a hurricane that hit. I think it was Hurricane Wilma at the time. And we ended up getting called home and flown home charters. So we only got about like, I would say, like a month, then change maybe out in the Bahamas before you're flown home. But it was still it was still an amazing experience. Unfortunately, I got I got snow from the credits. I don't know if it was because of that. Or because we never properly manage our contract or whatever. But that's okay. That's that's part of life. It was still a great experience. And and and yeah, I mean, it was it was really fun. So yeah, I mean, I think that those things definitely helped give me some some experience out in the field of succeeding and various different professions. But like I said, because my focus was on making, making the world a better place. I never, I never quite could, I guess you could say put like my full passion or, or my heart and into some of those ordeals actually, was one of the reasons I left chess behind as well, which eventually will get to, you know, where I were actually ended up making a name for myself, which was in Bitcoin. But that didn't that didn't come till later. I mean, I'd still work some odd jobs, I'd worked on the oil rigs for a while. And I was doing about like, 100 hour week, you know, it was just crazy. We'd sleep like four hours a night and stuff like that. And and then after that is when I got involved in in Bitcoin, but I'll turn the floor over to you for a moment that you
Michael Hingson 11:36 know, that's that's, that's fine, actually. Well, even blackjack Sparrow had ethics. So just Just saying.
David Zimbeck 11:46 Oh, pirates do. Yeah, they go by a different code. It's yeah. Well, I've always seen it as the the most important code of ethics to go by as a moral compass, you know, as if you have if you have a true moral compass, and one that's objective, because nowadays, our modern society is a little bit there. They believe the morals are relativistic. Well, if I believe it's okay. It's okay. But that's just not how that's not how the world works. It's not how things truly are because nothing is truly subjective. When you really boil it down to like the truth. The truth is, in fact, objective, it doesn't really matter. If 100% of the society agrees that, you know, killing people is a good thing. If they agree on it doesn't make it a good thing. It's still it's still more moral, morally reprehensible. So I think that the key the key is having a good moral compass. And then from there, and I don't know, maybe, maybe I just always had it. Maybe my parents just just raised me. Well, I don't I don't I don't really know. I mean, I mean, I feel like a lot of it, I kind of carved out on my own, because I saw so many things that bothered me. And I just said, I don't you know, I don't want a world like that would make the world a better somehow. Well,
Michael Hingson 13:01 well, here's a question out of curiosity, when you, when you live your life, do you like at night or at some time during the day you you've done things and so on? Do you go back and do self analysis? Did I do that the best I can? What could I have improved on that? Was that a mistake? Do you do you do much analysis of what you do and think about that?
David Zimbeck 13:21 Yeah, constantly actually, one of the one I think one of the most important qualities a person can have is introspection. You know, very few people look inside and right. One of the most, one of the most critical things for me is I sit there and I say to myself, actually, to be honest, I don't know how some people can even manage their own lives when they if they've done awful things to others in their life. It's like, how can you wake up in the morning and look in front of the mirror and be really proud, you know, of that person? You know, it's like, it just doesn't make any sense. To me. It's like as if they have no sense of self, you know, and I don't know how that works. I don't know, maybe they're proud of what they do. I have no idea. But to me, it just seems like if you're introspective and you really look inside yourself, you're gonna start caring a lot about, you know, your soul and, and how, you know, how pure how pure and innocent how you can maintain your own innocence and stuff like that. I would think that those things would be very important.
Michael Hingson 14:20 That gets back to the moral compass concept again, of course.
David Zimbeck 14:24 Yeah, exactly. So I do I do believe that. And you know, introspection also has has to do with casting away pride. Like if, if you make a mistake, you have to be completely honest. With your with yourself about about your mistake. Actually, again, the thing about chess is like, if you're playing chess, you know, it's ironic, you would think that strong players would have an ego, but actually they don't. Some some do. Okay, yeah, some, some are pretty bad. But for the most part to get to a certain point, you have to kind of humiliate yourself quite a lot because you're going to lose a lot, you know, or you're going to sacrifice a lot. You're going to sacrifice a lot of time, you're going to change your ideas about what you think is strong and what you think is weak, there's going to be a great deal of humility that's going to be introduced to you. And if it hasn't been introduced to you, then clearly you're not working hard enough, you know, because once you get to the higher levels, you're going to start realizing all the fantastic and beautiful possible things that could happen. And then even then, and that's only applying to chess, which is like, an eight by eight little board. I mean, imagine life, which is like, you know, it's infinitely times, well, not infinite, it's almost, it's almost endlessly more complicated. And while you could argue a person's potential is literally limitless. I mean, there's nothing. There's nothing really that we can't, that we can't do. But it's it can tends to be like, pride, which would get in the way. So one of the obvious advantages of being introspective, is, is not being afraid of admitting a mistake, not being afraid of, you know, having, you know, being a little upset with yourself over something, but But of course, working towards making yourself better. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I
Michael Hingson 16:09 do, one of the things about one of the things about chess is, of course, that, in one sense, it's very unforgiving, you play, and if you make a mistake, you very well could lose. But the other side of that is, and that's why in part, I asked the question about introspection, you can then go back and look at it and say, Why, why did I lose? Or what was the mistake? Or why did I make that mistake? And what can I learn from that for the next time, and I think that's a really good subset of life. And it's something that I advocate, we've talked about it on this podcast before. And something that I think is extremely relevant is that it's important for us to look at what we do, it works better if we do it from the standpoint of a moral compass. But it is important for us individually to go back and look at what we do and what do we know? And how can we best use our knowledge? And where do we go from here?
David Zimbeck 17:09 It basically like it'll, it'll help you get better get along better with other people as well, you know what I mean? Because if you're if you're introspective, you know, and somebody points something out to you, you're not really going to be afraid of criticism. And sometimes I have, I have, you know, issues with with friends, if, you know, if they have a hard time accepting criticism, which usually happens when they carry a lot of guilt, by the way, yeah, you know, maybe they've come back for more, they're just traumatized. And, you know, maybe they can even take the slightest shred of critique. And you can almost see it unfolding. It's, it's not that it's personal. It's not like that they're upset with you. It's that they can't take more responsibility, because they've had a hard time accepting the responsibility they've already had to take, you know what I mean? Which is all the more reason why you shouldn't give yourself any, any any, right? Oh, absolutely. Dragging that baggage around. And
Michael Hingson 17:58 I agree. And, you know, personally, I believe I'm my own worst critic. And I want to be because I should be able to analyze and look at things, but at the same time, I never mind input from other people. Because if I have such an ego, that I can't listen to what other people say that I don't ever really connect with them. Whereas if somebody is willing to be strong enough to say to me something about what I do a podcast or whatever, and for me to then look at it and decide whether I agree with that or not, then I have a real problem with me.
David Zimbeck 18:45 Yeah, totally makes perfect sense.
Michael Hingson 18:48 So how did you go into programming and so on? You You obviously did that. And of course, chess certainly gives you a mindset for that. But how did you then go into the whole world of programming and doing software stuff?
David Zimbeck 19:04 So so the thing is, is that I learned when I was a little kid, I think my uncle taught me to make like mazes or something in queue basic, and I was like, maybe 1011 years old, but that's about as far as my programming experience had, you know, I was just, you know, just just playing around mostly. And I remember making some cool stuff. But for the most part, you know, I didn't really do much I know in high school I did. I learned C and I think C Plus Plus you know, nothing serious. It wasn't until later when I was working on the on the oil rigs and then I had some downtime actually switched jobs and was doing easements. And then I I've always I was always good with computers because I was around computers because I was doing things like editing and web design because I did some commercial production for a while and stuff like that. So I saw I was familiar with, you know, very familiar with computers. Plus I did a lot Got a research. So from that, you know, I worked with them. And so I automated my job when I was there doing the easements. And because we were having the type of hundreds of legal contracts, which all essentially look the same. So after I audit, after I automated my job, I was able to do like a job, which maybe it would have taken weeks, and I did it in a matter of a day or two, and actually got fired for it for working too efficiently. And and then it was at that exact time where I'd already known about Bitcoin since it started, essentially, around maybe 2011. Yeah, I think it was when I knew about it, maybe like a year after so. And so I always knew about it. And I known about some of the stuff on on on the on the deep web, because I knew that, you know, it was it was interesting, because it was on Deep Web that weren't on the main web. But for the most part, it took me a while to actually have it click, because then when I'd first known about it, I didn't think of it as an investment vehicle, I just thought of it as, like a very cool kind of decentralized banking system. But I always I never really saw how it would gain the traction or the so when it when I saw it later, when I was out in North Dakota, it like it had clicked, I was like, oh my god, I can't believe it, this thing that used to be worth worth, nothing is now actually quite quite valuable at the time, it was maybe 100 bucks or something like that. But you know, it's pretty good. And so I said, Well, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna miss out on any further. And I'd made an investment. And I remember making an investment in Litecoin, or something, and I turned like $1,000 into like, $50,000 within, I don't know, a week or two is crazy. So I was and then I held on to it a little too long. And then some of that, like went back down. But I started to learn, you know, and I started to get involved in in altcoins. And in them just, you know, for fun. And but it wasn't, it wasn't my primary motive to see it is more just like an investment vehicle, which maybe I should have, because I would probably would have made a lot more money. But I was also kind of interested in what you could do with that coin. See, because the thing was is you understand the concepts of it, you kind of understand that? Well, first of all, it's decentralized, because there's many, many different people who have a copy of the ledger, kind of like if everybody has a copy of the same movie, you know, you can't change a line in the movie without everybody disagreeing. Yeah, oh, hey, that's not what he really said. So if everybody has a copy of the Bank Ledger, it's basically immune to fraud, which is Mungus ly important. And furthermore, it makes it so that nobody can just take money out of thin air and produce it, which is way more than we can say, for the Federal Reserve, because they're just printing money like crazy at their own will. So having something that's kind of like ownerless, that's immune to fraud, and can theoretically replace modern banking is and is safe, and that nobody can freeze your account is awesome. That's, that's amazing. But at the same time, I knew that politically, the government's are always going to be able to kind of plant in the eye, people's minds, beliefs and ideas and quite possibly subvert such a thing. So I wasn't completely convinced that Bitcoin is going to, you know, save the world or make it that much, it'll make it better. But just like the internet, which has allowed us to communicate, it's allowed allowing us to have this call, the internet can also be used as a tool for, for bad, you know, because nowadays, the internet's use for censorship and it's used for, there's so much censorship of information if the information that you're getting from the internet is incorrect. And also, if it makes if they make it very hard to find the correct information, then you can kind of fall into this trap of dogma. And it becomes like a whole brand new religion all over again. So that the pitfalls of technology, including including Bitcoin, by the way, of course,
Michael Hingson 23:48 we have a situation right now, for example, where we've got Ukraine going on, and Russia has denied people access to Facebook, and essentially most of the tools of the internet. And so they're subverting fair free flow and relevant information, which is,
David Zimbeck 24:08 you know, always a problem. Well, but actually, I would say that Facebook is not a free flow of information. And I would say that neither
Michael Hingson 24:17 No, and I just use that as an example. But I'm thinking more of just
David Zimbeck 24:21 I know what you mean. I know what you mean, though, but essentially, essentially, what a lot of people don't actually know is that Google controls about something like 90 some percent of all of the internet searches through through like mobile, and then fact that there's only two search engines. I know we're segwaying a little bit but I will get back into what really got me into programming. But this is kind of an important segue to give some context. Essentially, that yeah, they control all the information so so there's only two search engines. A lot of people don't realize this. There's just Google and Bing which is just Microsoft, all your other search engines like DuckDuckGo or Whatever they actually pull from DuckDuckGo, I think pulls from Bing start page. I'm not sure I think Yahoo and Yahoo and start page probably pull from Bing. And so, so a lot of a lot of these search engines actually, they're they're not actually indexing anything, okay? They're just utilizing the results from the other search engines, and which is just all Google, Google and Microsoft, which means that, essentially, a couple companies have control over all the information, and they do censor a lot. And they censor very aggressively and they censor for political reasons all the time. And it's outrageous. It's so bad, like these companies, the world would be better off. They were just shut down, honestly. So in that in that case, yeah. I understand why Russia did that. But they're no better. Okay. Russia has their own search engine, which is Yandex. Okay. And I think China has Baidu. And there might be there's one other there's Gigablast, which is a tiny little company that's been indexing the internet for a long time. And they're one of the very few independent ones. There's a decentralized crawler as well called PAC, but not enough people use it to give it to give it the information that it needs. And then there's the dark web, but they have all their indexes are just private lists of sites. So there's no, there's no way of easily navigating that at all. So yeah, there's there's very little access to free information. Like it was back in the day when Google was uncensored, because when it was uncensored, you could just find everything, which I would argue is a bad thing, because you can find things that are bad. But no, it's more important to for it to be uncensored, because that's exactly why the freedom of speech was protected by the First Amendment. Right. And in fact, even Kennedy, right before he got killed, I think is less less speech that had something to do with that. And that's exactly what he said, he says, This is why the freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment because if you have censorship of the news, by organizations, then you you essentially lose all access to, to knowledge, you know, which is horrible. And so what we have is a modern day burning down of the Library of Alexandria, essentially, because we, you know, we have companies that are controlling the information and completely destroying it. So with that said, and, you know, I mean, when it comes to situations like Ukraine, and United States and Russia and all that stuff, I have to under you have to understand that these are just large, powerful people who target citizens, whether or not it's United States, the United States started wars for no reason. Okay. Like, and they never got sanctioned. You know, NATO joined in on the war. And in fact, I think, even certain countries like France actually had had sanctions against them for not going to war. What a joke is that in then, so you have, you have these countries that essentially have a carte blanche to like, bomb, whoever they feel like. And then when Russia starts doing it, they turn around and they have this international condemnation, which is fine. I mean, Russia shouldn't be going to war that much. I totally, totally agree, I think was disgusting. But, but at the same time, it just strikes me slightly hypocritical, because United States is engaged in so many wars, I think, I don't even think people have an accurate count of how many countries even bombed at this point. So so I don't know what why isn't everybody sanctioning and boycotting American products, and they should really based on their based on their track record. But it's true across all politicians, essentially, the victims of war are always citizens. They're not pilots. They're not, you know, they're not other politicians. They're not heads of the military. Those people stay happily in their multimillion dollar mansions, while other people go and fight their battles, which is essentially how it's always been. And it's sad, you know, but people should learn to lay down their guns, all of them that every single military member, every single cop, they should do, they should just cut the shit and stop taking orders from from tyrants. But since since we can't guarantee that that'll happen, that's why we've tried to strike at the root of things. So one of the things that I've always identified as the root of the problem is deception. And that's this is what got me excited about Bitcoin, specifically. Okay, so when I realized that because Bitcoin is electronic, an electronic account, which you can do pretty much anything with, unlike a bank, would they have their own rules? I was like, Oh, wow, with Bitcoin, you know, you could make a joint account. And with that, you can make a contract which can't be broken. So what I realized is, is that both parties essentially, make a promise. Like, I promise you, I'm going to do something because these pay you for goods or services, you promised you're going to deliver the goods or services. What happens if both of us put our money in a joint account, and we time that joint account to blow itself up? Nice. That might sound crazy, like why would you blow up money, but it's the equivalent of mean you putting our money in a safe locking the safe I have a key and you have a key and in order to get in? We have to unlock it at the same time. Okay. And then we strap you know, dynamite to it. We walk away and we say okay, we'll be back in a week. You do your part, I do mine and you do your part I pay you. And if either of us are dissatisfied with the deal, we both lose. But I said oh my god, this is the first time in history we've ever had a chance to make a deal an agreement They can be enforced without law. And that was astonishing to me. I was like, oh my, this is so important because now there's a non violent resolution to a contract, you see them saying, All modern contracts are essentially resolved violently. And what I mean by that is, behind every law, whether or not it be a parking ticket, or a walking doesn't matter, or whatever, it's actually enforced violently. Because if you don't pay that ticket, well, maybe they'll put a lien on something, or whatever. And then that lien leads to, if you don't get off your property, then they will actually attempt to take it by force. And if you don't accept the fact that they're going to take it by force, they will shoot you. It's the same thing. If you're, if you're caught, you know, not stopping at a stop sign cop pulls you over, you can't just drive away, okay, because he'll shoot you, you know, so, so actually, all laws are enforced through violence. And we need to be in a society that doesn't enforce law through violence. So essentially, this was a way to have it enforced by the money itself, which allows two people to barter and most importantly, that it's not enforced by an escrow agent. Because most deals in society are enforced by escrow agents, for example, judges lawyers, or just you know, real estate escrow agent doesn't matter, essentially, what they call a non a non biased third party, but there's no such there's literally no such thing. Non biased. Third party doesn't exist, unless it's the heavens or something. Okay, like humans don't have. Most humans do not have the moral capacity to properly judge a situation. And this is seen by our our legal system, which is completely corrupt and wicked, okay, like we see people getting thrown into jail without any evidence whatsoever for things that shouldn't even be crimes, victimless crimes. And it's, it's sad, it's, it's awful. It's the worst thing. So So essentially, the point is, and I guess I give another analogy for this, if you had, if you are accused of something you didn't do, okay, let's say you're accused of murder, but she didn't do it. Okay. Would you trust 100? Judges? Would you trust 1000? How big does the jury have to be? Would you trust a jury of 10? When you trust a jury of 20? If you presented your evidence? Probably the answer would be no. Because why would you trust somebody else? If they weren't there? You know, what, if you were framed? What if the evidence actually doesn't look good for you? But it's actually false? You know, so? Or what if the juries just a bunch of fools? I mean, why would you? Why would you put your fate in the hands of others, especially when the common person that they put on on a jury typically is supposed to be uneducated of the law, actually, and they'll handpick them to be so. So, you know, it's, it's outrageous. And I found the solution, essentially, to a big, big problem in society that had never been proposed before. So that's what caused me to develop bit Halo, which is what I am known for. And probably one of the main reasons people would recognize me on this podcast. Essentially, that was the first contracting platform ever made for Bitcoin. So to answer your question, I got involved into programming because of that. And from there I was. From there, I was all self taught. So from when I was in North Dakota, it took me about, I was very motivated, because I was already doing long hours. So I did about, I would say, the same thing was working almost 100 hour weeks, I was probably working 16 to 18 hours a day, I'd roll out of bed, I try to figure out how to code because I really didn't know how to code well enough yet. So I had to go learn Python. And instead of doing any practice programs, I just went straight and tried to make this program, you know, so at the same time as learning Python, I had to learn cryptography, I had to learn Bitcoin, I had to learn how to work with the transactions, and Bitcoins, very much like old school accounting, working with dollars, it's not like you just add 10 to your account, and then magically, you get 10. Bitcoins not like that, you got to work with each transaction as if it was, you know, digital cash, and work with digital signatures and stuff like that. So it was a lot, it was a lot of learning. And I had to figure out how to do that all on my own, and there wasn't much support material at the time, because the early days of Bitcoin. So that was about maybe 2013. So there wasn't that many resources online and just with enough effort, you know, after about three, four months actually banged up the whole prototype myself. Interestingly enough, the reason why I actually had to do the coding myself and I couldn't pay anybody but aside from the fact that would be expensive. Was I always found to have trouble with outsourcers, specifically programmers. I mean, they they pad their hours, they they lag on their schedules, you know, the you have to kind of trust them almost blindly. I mean, if you think it's hard to find a good mechanic, or a good or a good doctor, good luck finding a good programmer, it's even worse. Okay. So so so to find really good and skilled people for that that'll work, especially within your you know, budget was impossible and that's why My mom told me she said I was asking about I said, I don't know who I could find for this. She says, Well, why don't you just do it yourself? And I sat there and I thought about it. And I said, Okay. Interestingly enough, when I did the work, I was actually in North Dakota, negative 50. Below, you know, with the windchill, I was living in a trailer at the time to save money. And so imagine I'm living in a trailer in that in that weather. And I didn't just pick up and go, I had like, maybe nine space heaters, I had one space heater for my waterline because I didn't park right over it, which was a mistake. And then I had three under the skirting, I had three inside I had and I had one small space heater to keep the ammonia on my fridge from freezing, which I didn't even know that was a thing, which was hilarious, because that actually happened like my fridge froze. But that can happen because they put those on the outside of the trailer. So I actually needed a tiny little space heater for that. And and that's in addition to propane. Now granted, I was living quite comfortably with all that, but I just siphon the electricity off of the lot next to me, luckily, they were giving they were comping us on electricity, which they stopped doing later. But yeah, so I mean, it was brutal. And I had to do all that work was actually so hard, that end up losing some weight, and I had neglected my health. And I realized, oh, I have to I have to, I have to nurse myself back to health. And so I I called my parents and went out and visited them. And I said, Hey, you know, you got to cook for me for like a month and, and I just did whatever I had to put weight on at that point. I just grabbed some ensure whatever and had a bunch of
Michael Hingson 36:33 them. So put on my way. So one of the things that comes one of the things that comes to mind is what motivated you to do so much self teaching of yourself. What? What was that that instilled that in you? Because clearly, you're a very curious person. I think you've alluded to some of it, but you're a very curious person. And you are not at all afraid to teach yourself and try things. How did you really get that way? Exactly? Was that from the chess? Or where is that from?
David Zimbeck 37:01 Um, yes, it's a good question. I guess it was it. I mean, some of that has to obviously come directly from somebody's soul. They just have to be somebody who, who seeks, you know, who seeks who seeks knowledge who seeks who seeks truth, obviously, that's part of it, then the second part is going to be like, when you seek truth, you're going to question some of the things that you're taught, like, if the school is telling you something, you don't necessarily want to accept it blindly. You know, a student, a student would be in a class, I really can't stand how modern schools are run, for example, kids will just sit in a chair for eight hours a day listening to his teacher just literally lecture to them. And they essentially accept everything at face value, including including the sciences, which is a huge mistake. Because technically, science, the root of science is actually in replication. See, science isn't supposed to be a dictate or a mandate. Science isn't support. We're currently living under a scientific dictatorship, actually, it's totally autocratic and bad. It's no better than that, you know, people are always getting angry about old religious fanaticism when when we lived under religious fanatics, but actually, ironically, Science, Science, Science can become a fanatical cult as well, because especially because people don't actually check it. So we are under this illusion that people check all of our science properly. And in my research, because I wanted to make the world better, I ended up realizing that a lot of that's actually not the case. Most of our sciences is is horribly flawed, in fact, kind of crazy, to be honest. When people believe in you know, relativity, which is essentially time travel, they believe in you no matter bending space, how do you bend space? It's like nothing, there's nothing there. How do you bend it? So I mean, there's people don't even ask, like, fundamental questions. And so when I started to do that I started ended up really cherishing the ability to do research. And, and that's kind of how I got in, I got involved into self teaching, which is I realized, that was actually old adages to this even, even in, you know, for example, in the Bible, they'll say, you know, Prove all things, but it wasn't all it was on all the religions, people understood that in order to properly understand a concept, you have to be able to repeat it. And science is not really effective, unless I can sit down with tools, you know, and check the information, you know what I mean? So, so I think when you have that amount of rigor in your approach to anything, anything, let it be business, you know, of course, a scientific field, could even be programming. Essentially, you have to learn to do it yourself. And if you don't learn to do it yourself, you're gonna rely on somebody else to do it for you. And that's even more dangerous in programming where you're working with other people's money. Like, do I really want to be responsible for other people losing money because somebody that I hired didn't do the job properly? I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a nightmare. If I don't have the ability to audit my own code, then it's good for nothing. I mean, how How am I gonna be able to put so much of other people's money on the line when you're dealing with financial systems? And that's a huge difference from when you're working in Bitcoin versus any other field. Because, yeah, granted, you're working in another field, like you're, you're flipping burgers, you screw up, okay, nobody's life's on the line, okay, you just, you know, you fix it and you move on. But that's not the case with financial systems with financial systems, if you screw up, you could be looking at people losing millions, if not hundreds of millions, in fact, billions, which has happened many times in the Bitcoin industry, because of absolute negligence, has to do with lack of auditing, lack of self teaching, lack of rigor, lack of discipline to a field, which is actually scientific, people don't see the cryptography industry as a scientific field, because they assume that programs just work, they just assume apps just work you get in the car, and it just goes, but that's not the case, the amount of work that goes into making the cargo that making the app work, in fact, is that requires quite a bit of ingenuity. And there's no end to which a person can self teach, which also would bring us back to humility. Because if you, if you want to be able to actually excel in anything, you have to you have to have that because a lot of the times you're gonna have to take all the notions that you have, tear them down, throw them out, and try to replace them with something better, regardless of what the modern dogma is, you could like I said, you could have the whole world believing things one way, but it but if they don't properly question it, that's their problem. And if one person comes in and starts to question it, true, they might not get the media attention, they might not get the traction, but they still might be right. And that's the thing. Truth is objective, thank God, because Because Because of that, we have the ability to check for ourselves. And so self teaching is absolutely critical. And I think that if anything was to be taught in schools, that should be the first thing, which is teaching children how to research, teaching them how to question teaching them how to be skeptics, and, and, you know, teaching, of course, I think some some some strong spiritual concepts about about how to how to truly care about truth and how to pursue it.
Michael Hingson 41:59 So that gets back to something that we have a couple of things that you talked about in comments that you made that I want to want to go back to one, let's talk about science a little bit, you're right, about being able to replicate. So Einstein created the theory of relativity, general and, and specific relativity. But again, I think that with people like him with people who've created scientific theories, they're trying to create explanations for what they see. And they have created theories that explain observations that they've seen, you said, relativity is about time travel well, relativity is more about the speed of light, if it is a constant, which the theory currently says that it is. But it's also about what information you get as you are traveling less than the speed of light, and what happens to you when you travel faster than the speed of light. We also know physicists also will tell you that the expectation is at some time, there will be a theory that will come along that will explain more of what we understand today. It's like classical mechanics moved into quantum mechanics and relativity, which will go into something else. But I think that people are trying to find explanations for the observations that they make. Well, and unfortunately, some of it they can't replicate, you know, because they can only see what they can see. But anyway, go ahead. Well, so.
David Zimbeck 43:33 So yeah, this is, if you don't know, I mean, this is a real can of worms. It is a subject and it may be outside of the scope of this podcast, but I'd be happy, I'd be happy to talk about it. Essentially, it's amazing how many assumptions are made in terms of of our scientific rigor in regards to these fields are purely theoretical. Relatively, relativity is not, relativity is not a proven concept at all. Neither is quantum mechanics. They're they're very theoretical. And in fact, I would argue that there are three even potentially lies even malicious ones. And I can explain a little bit as to why. So first of all, quantum mechanics was developed in response to things like the double slit experiment, which essentially debunked the idea of, for example, the electron molecule, because previous beliefs about physics, especially with chemistry, was to consider that like things like light was actually the behavior of a gas or a fluid, which they called the ether. So they felt that how do you have a wave without resistance, you know, you can't you can't have a wave without resistance waves happen because there's, there's there's pressure and pressures trying to equalize. Essentially, if you have a glass of water, you stir it, you get a wave, but how do you have a wave or an oscillating wave of light without it moving through any medium and they constantly abstract these things and they create these Really bizarre abstractions of the mind as if, as if light and gravity are just all in this other world that doesn't exist in our main physical world, but I hate to break it to them. stuff is stuff, you can't have energy without it being something, it's got to be something. So there,
Michael Hingson 45:15 which is back to the comment, aspect, right, which gets back to the comment that. And I'm appreciate what you say. But which gets back to the whole point of they're, they're not explaining everything yet. And there is there's a lot more that we don't understand.
David Zimbeck 45:36 I'm arguing that it actually is explainable. It's very explainable, and it's actually something can be properly physically modeled. And in fact, we had scientists before a current scientists that already had very good models for this. Not Not perfect, but good. For example, okay, so Tesla Heaviside, Maxwell, doesn't matter who you bring up any of these major scientists, pre you know, Einsteinian stuff, they actually all believed in the ether. So they believe that light was the movement of fluid, which would mean that they did not believe in atomic theory. Okay, so the major flaw in atomic theory is not so much with the proton, the model of a proton, which is fine, you know, you could argue protons, a shell that could fill and release fluid or something along these lines. But an electron, you see, the issue was having one electron for each protons. So they essentially say that the atom is essentially empty, it's completely empty space. And then there's just a single electron that that model should have gone, gone away. Tesla couldn't stand it. He thought it was crazy. He thought it was like, what you call it, you know, the emperor has no clothes. You ever heard that story? Yeah, so there. Yeah. So I mean, kind of like the emperor has no clothes. Essentially, there's all these people believing in these strange theories is actually completely complete nonsense. The idea is, is that how could it how can how can an atom be truly empty, you have the movement of matter, okay. And so you have to have the most subtle matter. So essentially, when you have the movement of electrons, you know, that should be cool. You know, atoms shouldn't be empty, they should be mostly full. And that would better describe like, for example, light behaves like a wave, it doesn't behave like a particle, okay? It never did. And in fact, when you had things like the double slit experiment, it proved that light was a wave, unequivocally completely proved that light is a wave, this debate should have been over. But what happened was, and this has to do with introspection, our modern scientists had so much arrogance, that they couldn't admit that perhaps the model of the electric of the electron and the Taunton, atomic theory was wrong. Because they couldn't admit it, they decided to create whatever math they could, it didn't matter if the electron had to travel through time, like Fineman proposed, it didn't matter if the electrons bumping into possible versions of itself and creating wave like patterns through different timelines. I mean, these people are crazy, they'll do anything to justify the theory of the electron to make it seem like a wave without it being a wave. But if you want it to be a wave, I have a better idea. Next, the idea of the electron and just say that the atom is full, it's filled, it's filled with fluid of subtle, subtle, subtle fluids moving in and out of it, it's just the changing of pressure and stuff like that. And you essentially you get, get a much a much better model for for our modern physics than then what we what we used to have, are what we have currently, sorry, I'm saying what we had prior to this was actually a better model. And in fact, if we had applied it, even today to modern computer models, I think we would find it to be much, much better. I think it explained our physics better, I think it explained our chemistry better. And, yeah, and so so essentially, it's just a misunderstanding of the behavior of solids, liquids and gases, and to the dismissal of the fact that they can be much, much more subtle. And, you know, then the hard then the hard matter, like, you know, the protons, new elements and stuff like that. And essentially, underestimating the fact that, you know, that we have we had it, we had a model, we had an answer for it, we believe that these things will wave because they remember the movement of mediums, they were the movement of fluids, you know, that when you see light, you're essentially looking at the movement of a gaseous kind of fluid almost, because when the when the flu is disturbed, just like, you know, the waves in the ocean, you know, a wave pattern is generated, because there's collision, and there's competing for pore space and pressure. And so then when you have collision, then you have, you know, a wave pattern. And when you have a wave pattern, you know, you can interpret it and all this other stuff. So it makes perfect sense. It fits within our physics, but the modern physics actually, they they literally say that, like light will come from nowhere, the electron produces the light, and then it just vanishes like, like, they just make things up the quantum theories, and I don't and I'll probably get some flack for saying all this. But essentially, the quantum theories rely on things like time travel, but you got to also have to look at it like this, like time travel or adding any type of you know, as you're, for example, as your speed increases, you, you approach the speed of light, you know, then all of a sudden time slows down which is which is just a real sad theory, in my opinion, because what it's basically essentially saying As mathematically, it's saying something mathematically, it's saying, If my experiments don't match the results, then I will travel backwards in time, and I will fix them. Essentially, it's, it's the equivalent of wanting to travel back in time and go ahead and fix errors in your in your results. But you see, science is not about taking theories and trying to force everything into your theory. Science is about measurement. And that's it. You look out, you measure, you report, you measure, you report, you don't start inventing ideas about time travel, just because you know, a certain a certain experiment doesn't quite fit quite fit your model, there's always a very logical explanation as to why these things are the way they are. One easy one would just be that light's not a constant.
David Zimbeck 50:45 In light isn't really a constant anyway, because the medium in which in which you see light, if it was dependent upon the movement of a gas, or a fluid, in like the ether than in the in the medium in which you would see it, you know, that would make sense that it would change depending on what it passes through. For example, when you have light passing through water, okay, it slows down because there's increased refraction, when you have light passing through a gas, it may be different, actually, light light doesn't factor very in speed quite a bit based on the medium that is passing through, because it's a misunderstanding, when you look at light that they think light is the movement of photons, when actually lights just simply could be just the medium of a of a gaseous kind of, you know, body kind of like the ether, there was a belief that the ether was actually debunked, but actually, that was false, because there's like I think was a, there was a Mickelson Morley experiment. And there was also the segment, Segment experiment, I believe that the one one of them caused a lot more problems for them than the other, because one of them was just looking for ether drag. But the other one was looking for actually, just in general, this the idea that the ether was there, and I think they had more, don't quote me on this, you might have to double check, but I think it was the sag neck experiments caused them as so many problems. So you can see, even when you look it up all the patch work that they had to do. And then of course, they had to invoke relativity, again, I think in order to deal with these problems, because they couldn't they couldn't fit it into their model, because their model is that week. But ironically, the simpler model is, and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go so far down this, but it's such an interesting topic. Because no, no about it. But But this model essentially is the movement is basically the behavior of fluid dynamics, which is something we already understand. It makes sense. We can apply it, we can model it, we can use it in computers, we don't have to go with all these fantastical quantum mechanics, you know, type theories. And this is just an example of kind of some of the stuff. You
Michael Hingson 52:38 know, let me ask you another question that really, let me ask you another question that I'm really curious about, you made the comment earlier. And I think that there's probably some some merit to it that a lot of people don't grow up or are very moral, and we don't have the moralities, and so on that we really ought to have. If I understood your right, my question is, how do we teach that? How do we get people back into a moral or more ethical and a moral compass kind of a track?
David Zimbeck 53:09 Well, you know, they always say a good teacher is a good student. Right. And I mean, I think that once one's parents, and schools and institutions, and people start to understand how far they fallen, I think that'll be a very important moment of redemption, because then they'll realize that things are getting out of hand, which they are already. I mean, we can see all over the world, things are really out of hand, and they've been so for a while, but seems that each generation, it seems to get worse. We've mentioned earlier, you know, about laws, you know, I told you were how we have, you know, millions of potentially millions of laws. But that can't possibly be right, because that can't follow a moral compass. How can you expect somebody to be to be beholden to a million laws? You know, how does even a person know what all the laws actually are? In fact, quite frequently, the judge doesn't even know what the law is. The lawyers have to go to school for 10 years or higher, five, 510 years to just figure out what the law is, heck, even my real estate, when I had to study for my real estate license, I had like 10 books, you know, which were super thick, like four or 500 pages each just to teach me the law. I mean, this is this is crazy, in my opinion, because the truth of the matter is, is actually morality is quite simple. And, you know, you know, you don't kill you don't cheat, right? You don't, you don't lie to people. You don't, you don't do so you don't force anybody to do anything. You know, you don't force them to do your do your bidding. I mean, how hard is it? I mean, there's not that I mean, there's not that many things. Interestingly enough, lying is one of the least criminalized laws. What concepts excuse me, it's criminalized when there's financial loss sometimes, but tends to be a slap on the wrist. When you have large scale fraud in the banking system and stuff that costs people billions of dollars, you don't see the heads of case or Goldman Sachs going to jail, they pay a fine and they move on. If you see pharmaceutical companies, knowingly giving people things that are going to kill them, like drugs that should have been recalled or whatever, you don't see them going to jail, they get a slap on the wrist and then move on. And in fact, they lobby for legal immunity. So this just goes to show you how nonsensical the law is and how immoral the law actually is. And actually, I find that each year, the law moves further and further away from morality becoming completely immoral to where morality ends up being. Breaking the law actually, there's there's a there's a thing that says, when freedom is outlawed, when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free. So it's it's interesting to look at it from that perspective. And of course, I'm what I'm arguing is not to do anything bad. Actually, ironically, I'm arguing to do things that are good. But that's the thing, like just because something is legal. In fact, it could mean that it's actually a bad thing. You know, like there's a lot of legalized forms of atrocities, for example, like I told you the immunities that some of the drug companies get for things that for things that they do to people, knowingly, by the way, so, you know, so yeah, so I mean, I think when you look at it from that perspective, personally, I'm a minimalist, I think that the amount of laws that a government society should have should fit on a few sheets of paper, you know, like, if I can read the law in a single evening, then I, it's probably acceptable. But if it takes me 10 years of schooling, to figure out what the law is, then I think there's a big problem with the law. And I think it has a big problem with the way in which children are taught and raised. And I think that they should be taught to understand basically, the root concepts of what morality actually is all about.
Michael Hingson 56:51 Great. Let me let me ask you another question. If I could, I got two more that I can think of, and then we'll have been going for a while. So this is certainly a lot of fun. What's the future of bid day and bid Halo? Where do you see all of that going?
David Zimbeck 57:08 Yeah. So um, so yeah, I mean, I know, we probably skip that part a little bit. Because basically, from bit Halo, I made the software that made the unbreakable contracts, which still runs, we still have a lot of users. And then from there, I was taken into a project called Bitpay. And, and then that project, actually, the the founders had, it was actually kind of you know, if you say in your show, kind of like overcoming all odds, the founders had essentially left and, you know, they they tried to hurt all the all the original people who had invested. Actually, I was only hired on the job as a programmer. Well, essentially, from taking my software bit Halen, and like, giving it to them. But because they had left the project tight and dry, I decided to take over the project. So actually, it wasn't, theoretically my project. But because I saw what happened, I said, Well, no, I have to do something about this. And so yeah, I guess you could argue my maybe my overdeveloped sense of justice or something, I decided to go in and, and, and take care of it. And so I spent a few years and then about 2018 2019, it had totally exploded. And it's gone from being essentially worthless to being worth about a half a billion dollars. And that was great. And it was a great success story, although I didn't really capitalize much. And I did a little bit but not much. And unfortunately, that kind of hurt the project, ironically, because sometimes you got to put some money in the bank so that you can go fund your own project, you know, and I was probably way too focused on my goals of getting all my work done and making sure I had everything coded. But that's okay. So what had happened then is we were a little short on resources. And we weren't able to incorporate to the, to the exchanges the way that we wanted to. So a lot of the exchange central exchanges, we had a major change in the bid a project which was a currency, it's like an alternative currency to Bitcoin. And, and I had coded in this change, actually, which was meant to protect investors, which was that we could control the supply, essentially. So it's one of those so actually the only coin in the world that can do it. And so we have this ability to control the supply by having inflation and deep and the deflation happens. So when deflation happens, essentially, a user's funds are moved into what's called like reserve. And when it's moved into reserve, then they still have access to the funds, but the funds move slower. So think of it like an automatic savings account. Whereas as opposed to like a bank that imposes a negative interest rate, you know, where they're essentially just taking your money. In this case, nobody actually takes your money, you get the money placed into your own account in reserve. And then, you know, when inflation happens, it gets released to you again, so think of it kind of almost like a decentralized reserve bank, and it's really effective. Unfortunately, that change affected how we were able to operate with exchanges. And we got somewhat censored from this in unrightfully. So because it was really, really, really cutting edge technology. And it's actually the only coin in the world that does it. So that's, it's, it's cool. But, and we have everybody is excited about it, well, we got kind of screwed over the past year and a half or so because we ended up losing all of our exchanges. So the future of it is that we're going to be putting bitbay on all the decentralized exchanges, because the decentralized exchanges are ownerless permissionless, we don't really have to ask anybody to add it, and have to do the work and make sure that the code works with our, you know, dynamic supply that kind of moves up and down, you know what I mean? Yeah, and so that's kind of the, that's kind of the history of that. And, and yeah, of course, be more than happy to speak, speak more, more about it to about your, about it with you on a on a later date, if you like. But essentially, yeah, that's the future of it's the once you get them on the decentralized exchanges, all of a sudden, some of the liquidity can start moving back into the project. And you know, we breathe life into it again, and all this. And then Halo is just that Halo, though, the one that makes unbreakable contracts. Actually, they both do it. They both make unbreakable contracts, and they hit the halo works with Bitcoin, essentially, really, the only thing for that is maybe eventually we'll build support for like, Aetherium, or some of the other coins, possibly, so that they can also take advantage of it. But for me, in the meantime, you know, it's free, it's free, it's free software to use, you know, I don't make anything, I don't make any money when people use it. It's open source software. So, you know, I mean, that's the whole idea is that of being an open source, Devin and you know, thank God for Bitcoin has given us all all open source developers an opportunity to also kind of get involved in a project and even make make some money doing so without having to rely on your on on on on people to actually pay pay. Because essentially, if we're involved with, with the cryptocurrency industry, you know, obviously, it's a massive industry, and it's been growing, so we make money on our own anyway. So that's a good thing. And it's, it's given open source developers a lot of interesting ways to make money without actually really charging charging users upfront. I mean, I don't even make money on I don't even make money on the escrows. I just want to clarify that. But the concept.
Michael Hingson 1:02:10 But the concept is really fascinating. And it's always good to think about ways to have a truly unbreakable contract. And I hope it catches on more, because it makes perfect sense. It's easy, in a sense, it requires a moral perspective, which we've talked about a lot. But still, it's it's an easy and an irrelevant thing to think about. Let me let me ask you one final question, because we've been talking for a while and it's got to be close to well, it's got to be dinnertime for you? And we're getting that way with us as well. What kind of advice? What would you suggest to entrepreneurs? You know, there are a lot of people who want to have the entrepreneurial spirit. There are a lot of people who think they ought to be able to have the entrepreneurial spirit and be entrepreneurs, but they don't know how to do it. What do you advise people? Or what kind of advice do you have to give people about how to be entrepreneurs? And for existing people who have an entrepreneurial spirit? How can they kind of reinforce that and make it even stronger?
David Zimbeck 1:03:12 Well, I think I think one thing is to try to see what other people aren't doing. You know, because if you see what other people aren't doing, you have a chance to carve out a niche for yourself. Furthermore, I think another thing is also to set aside for a moment thinking so much about the money, and think more about how you can actually reach people. Because at the end of the day, you're really the success of a platform comes from its liquidity and movement. Once the platform is moving, it has life in it. Take, for example, Google, I mean, or YouTube, when YouTube first started a, you know, they didn't charge anything. They didn't even they didn't even have advertising for that matter. How did a platform that went from making nothing becoming one of the most powerful platforms in the world, which is just astonishing. So and it comes from this idea that your users are, essentially are what are what gives you value? And nobody really likes being marketed to you know, I mean, I can't even remember the last time I've responded to an ad, sometimes seeing ads make me not even want to buy the thing. So So I think that also people should be looking into softer forms of advertising, advertising, you know, really, essentially something along the lines of like, if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. You know what I mean? But if you're working to be an entrepreneur just for money as a means to an end. I don't know. It's just not my cup of tea. I don't really have as as effective advice for people like that, except
Michael Hingson 1:04:37 that the entrepreneurial spirit, really isn't that I think that the Yeah, you people want to make money and all that. But I would hope that people who truly are entrepreneurial in nature, have more reasons than just making money.
David Zimbeck 1:04:53 Well, I think they do. I think when they, I think even even even the greedy ones tend to have something behind it. Because if you really unearth, why is it that they love running businesses, eventually, they're going to boil down to the fact that they want to create something in the world, you know, they like they like working with things, they like creating things, they like having something that's operating and functioning under them. So I think that they do like the idea of kind of breathing life into, into a baby or a business, so to speak. And, and always, they have to remember about the amount of work essentially, I mean, it really is like, what you put into it is what you will get out of it, the harder you work, the more you'll get out of it. And also, the more you're willing to kind of check every corner, you know, it's like when you when you follow, I guess you could say a formula, you might be able to make some money following the formula, actually, but you have to, before you go ahead and start understanding those things, you need to also kind of unearth every little rock and turn over every rock and every corner and be a skeptic and try to kind of see what it is that you haven't haven't tried and how much work it's going to take you. And of course, then there's the most important thing, which is your bottom line. Because essentially, anything that you do is going to affect your bottom line and how much time you're spending, you know, even taking a phone call going on a podcast, you know, anything, I mean, you know how long you spend eating breakfast, or how long you're stuck in traffic, everything essentially affects affects your bottom line, you know, essentially, that's what this is why people outsource, this is why people, you know, buy things in bulk from China or other things like that, because they look at their bottom line. And they know that essentially, they're getting a project done for x. And they're gonna sell it for, you know, four or five times that or whatever, you know what I mean, so, but I think that those are some of the things. And also, lastly, then sometimes it takes a little bit of a sacrifice, some businesses aren't successful for a while, and people may end up feeling like failures, because they may have run two or three businesses and they didn't work. I mean, I'm not a fan of working with other people's money. So I'm not really a fan of working with loans, I prefer working with cash or free time. So either buy yourself some free time or get more cash, you know, but everybody has their own way of looking at it, I'm sure a lot of people like working with loans, or investor money, not not my not my cup of tea. But um, but regardless of regardless of how they structure it, I mean, they're gonna, they're gonna have to kind of know that, it's not necessarily going to be guaranteed to be a success right out the gate. And that's especially true for the restaurant industry takes time to build traction, a lot of restaurants won't even make money in their first year. And so there also has to be the concept of sacrifice, and overhead. Because obviously, if you're running a business, you're gonna have a certain amount of things that you're gonna have to sacrifice, I'll be a free time, or profits, or you're might even have to do things to impress your consumers and your clients, you might have to do things to make people really feel at home with your business and to enjoy being around you. You know, enjoy working with your business, enjoy going to your whatever it is online business web page, you know, doesn't matter, essentially. And and once you create that environment for people, then I think I think eventually they they'll, they'll come. Of course it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, everything still boils down to liquidity and marketing. I mean, essentially, if you have the marketing, and if you have the money, you can make anything work. But to have a quality product.
Michael Hingson 1:08:14 I would say that probably the most important thing I've heard you say from an entrepreneurial standpoint is that any good teacher is also a good student. And I think anyone who is going to be an entrepreneur needs to not think that they have all the answers and be really curious to learn more. One of my one of the shows that we watch is a show called restaurant impossible with Robert Irvine and Robert Irvine is a guy who goes to restaurants that are failing. He sees what doesn't work about them, and he helps get the restaurants somewhat back on track. But clearly he's a guy who is incredibly curious. It isn't just I'm going to show you because I'm the expert. It is really makes it Gordon Ramsay well not at all. Gordon Ramsay. I know someone who knows Gordon Ramsay and they actually say he's more image than anything. But still,
David Zimbeck 1:09:11 Roger is a really nice, I am sure he's a really nice guy, no
Michael Hingson 1:09:16 robbers, but Robert really looks at people and has learned to read people and helps the people in the restaurants that he goes to understand the things that would enhance what they do. And most of the real basic stuff, then he gets to are, how people interact with people and how people deal with people and how people view other people namely, how the owner of the restaurant works with the team how to create a team and he gets people to think generally in a completely different way than probably they really did before. And that's what's very fascinating about what he does, because it really is a All about deciding that you want to be a student, not just the teacher who's the expert on what you do, but to be a student, and be willing to learn more things, and then put those into practice, which I think is really cool if what he does.
David Zimbeck 1:10:15 Well, that's also kind of why like, it's like when I mentioned earlier, one of the most important skills that I probably learned was research. Because once I learned to kind of research and, and almost have an embarrassing amount of candor, and aggressive aggressiveness to try to find the truth behind something, you know, so I guess that's kind of why I was, I'm capable of if you pick up a subject, you know, if you want to talk about physics, I'm more than capable of doing it. Because Because I actually did a lot of, you know, unearthing over and over again, trying to really fully understand the truth behind things. And it wasn't, it's not, it's not an easy thing to do, it's a hard pill to swallow, honestly, because you have to do a lot of research, and you have to reject a lot of research, I mean, 99% of the stuff that I read, I end up having to reject, but there's good reasons for it. And, and you can you can justify those reasons, once you start having a really proper foundation and framework for explaining it. And articulating it. My God, I mean, so in that only comes with hard work. And that comes with research. And, of course, my research has never done, it's never finished. I don't, I'm not I'm not coming from a position of, you know, where I'm going to claim I have this ultimate objectivity, which I don't feel, I feel, I feel that what's key is in the search for the search for truth. And I think when you find something that you really, truly think is valuable, you know, you share it. So that's why it gives me a passion to share it, which is why I share it with hopefully other people, they'll go check, they'll compare it with their notes, and then they'll accept it or reject it. And they may come back to it later, when they find they find the hit a few more dead ends. And it may take some people longer than others. And I think the ones that will get around to it faster are the people who get really excited about trying to find out essentially, learn and attack, attacking, trying to find out what the truth actually is about a lot of things. Because the other side, they always end up meeting. And
Michael Hingson 1:12:15 the other side of that is that you could have discussions with people. And because you're a curious individual, and we'll kind of have to wrap up with this. But you are the kind of visual visual individual that it might be that somebody will say something or some other thought will come into your head, that may completely change your position on whether it's physics or whatever it may be not. But the point is, you're open. And that's the most important thing that I think any of us can ever adopt as an attribute in our lives is to be open and curious, and be willing to listen and evaluate. You know, I'm saying,
David Zimbeck 1:12:53 Oh, absolutely, I've had to do it many times. Many times, I've had to take the framework that I thought that I had and throw it out. And and that's why I'm always happy to have like a discussion and to try to go over all the points. And it's always interesting when especially I actually really, above all things actually enjoyed talking to experts about it, because what I ended up finding out is quite frequently and I bring up some of my ideas, especially the controversial ones to experts, they actually sit there they pause, they think about it, and then they're like, should have never even looked at it that way before. And usually, you'd be surprised how often they don't actually come back to me and, you know, throw their degrees in my face and and all that other stuff. And actually, they are interested, because they too are looking for cutting edge ideas. You know what I mean? So and of course, like I always say, you know, hey, if you've got something to knock down, you know, this, this concept, please, you know, I want to know, because that'll help that'll help me under understand, you know, better but, but yeah, I mean, what I've found is the pattern of most of the research I've done has been essentially the opposite of what society tells us, which is unfortunate, but true. So, you know, I find that typically when I see that something's become a dogmatic kind of mainstream thing in society, at least nowadays. It's always been kind of corrupted. And I think that has a lot to do with money and power and other things like that. And you'd be surprised how many industries money and power gets their hands into, oh, especially the science fields.
Michael Hingson 1:14:28 I'm not sure that I would, but I hear you. Well, we're gonna have a tutorial. I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. Well, you know, if people if people want to reach out to you and maybe get in touch with you or have ideas to share, how can they do
David Zimbeck 1:14:42 that? Yeah, by all means, I mean, I'm available at my email. I don't know if do you post the post things on the show like in the notes or something?
Michael Hingson 1:14:51 I'll be glad to share what that's why I'm asking what you'd like me to put in.
David Zimbeck 1:14:55 Oh, yeah. So you can post you can post my email in the notes and they can feel free to send that Did they have to have a question? Why should you have it anyway? Actually,
Michael Hingson 1:15:03 yeah, but why don't you say, We're podcast is audio so a lot of people won't be sitting where they are?
David Zimbeck 1:15:08 Well, it's these in back@gmail.com. So just like my first name, my first initial MB the IMVCK. Yeah. So and of course, they could always look up that Halo or anything like that, and they could find, you know, my name, and then you know, basically season beckett@gmail.com. Yeah. And if they want to contact him, I'll go ahead. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I found you through LinkedIn. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, I mean, of course, they could get me on there. But I don't I don't use LinkedIn as much. So no, yeah. But yeah, they
Michael Hingson 1:15:43 can, they can reach you, I hope people will reach out. This has definitely been intriguing. And I will tell you that I have found this very stimulating. And I do want to continue to discussions and talk some more, so we can do more of this. But I really appreciate you coming on the show and chatting with us for all this time.
David Zimbeck 1:16:04 Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks for taking interest. And yeah, you're obviously a very, very interesting person yourself. So it's, it's, uh, it's always nice, you know, to, to meet somebody like that. And I appreciate it. And I really think what you're doing is very cool. And I like how you you like you, really, I feel like the function of your podcast is really to give inspiration to other people. So hopefully, I've been in assistance to that. And I mean, I can only share the path that I walked. I can't tell any people. I can only say what they said, How did you do it? I said, Well, I just put one foot in front of the other, left foot, right foot. And then I ended up here. And so I share that experience. And if that resonates with somebody, then great and, and I hope so. And I hope it can can motivate people because obviously motivation has to come from within, it's got to come from within. And so if somebody hears something that helps motivate them, then it must have meant that the motivation was really there inside of them all along. You know, they were looking for the day, they're the ones making the decision, you know what I mean?
Michael Hingson 1:17:06 I do. Well, David, thank you very much for being here. And again, people can reach out to David Zimbeck at dzimbeck@gmail.com. Or look find bit Halo and in bid day, and I hope people will reach out to you and I guarantee you, we will chat some more and we will do another one of these because there's so many topics that we can go into. But I hope that all of you know that you listening out there have enjoyed this. It definitely has been stimulating for free ranging and, and that's as fun as it gets. So thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to me, you can do so by sending me an email regarding the podcast at Michaelhi M I C H A E L H I at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com. You can also visit our podcast page, which is www. Michaelhingson.com/podcast. tell other people about us and encourage them to listen and learn something new and become inspired by it. And of course, please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to this podcast. We hope you'll take the time to rate and come back again next week for another edition of unstoppable mindset. And we'll we'll have some more fun and we'll find somebody else interesting to talk with. David. Thanks again. Of course, thank
David Zimbeck 1:18:25 you. Thanks for having me on.
Michael Hingson 1:18:32
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