 Proof that I know what I'm doing notice my trigger discipline is the greatest in the world because I know how to And I literally destroyed his psyche I reach in and take one and put it back Spin the soul to close it and go click. Holy shit Aliens are here. I haven't paid taxes for ten years. I never will so everything I do is crypto I've been jailed literally in every content except after I'm so thrilled to be speaking to you in this one-on-one context just because I've you know I've been writing about technology my entire career So I I hope you don't mind if we talk about some things that aren't exactly crypto related But we will we will touch on listen. I'll talk about anything that you want to talk anything well subject. All right Let's start with you know I get I get crazy emails from all kinds of people one of them came a few months ago Saying that you had been murdered and it even included a picture of a body slumped over the floor and I kind of like I was like That looks like it might be the back of John McAfee's head. I don't know what this is I'm very happy to see you alive and well here today, but I'm What was your experience of this hoax murder and were you involved in it sir? I Did not murder whoever was on the floor. No, you have to understand I have half a dozen doubles around the world, okay? Many of them are just like me And they take More drugs than necessary and they drink themselves into a stupor. I saw that picture by the way and Didn't look like a dead person. It looked like someone because there was vomit all over the floor Just want you someone passed out from either too much drinking or an overdose of heroin or something so no That person was not dead and Was not murdered and that was not me in any case that was taken the 7,000 miles from where I was at the time Do you have enemies like this? What what's the rationale for having doubles? Yeah, I do listen I mean, I'm wanted by five world governments including the United States. Yeah, the most horrific on And in the past year, no listen that you know in the past year and four months. They've tried to click me four times First of all, they've tried to click me in America when they've you know convened a grand jury I found out about it beforehand. So I found out Five days in advance that they were convening it So we left the following day That's a Florida we picked up a yacht with Janice myself for large dogs and seven of my staff and sailed away Went to the Bahamas We were thumbing up our nose 90 miles from America sunning on the beach Tooling around in speed boats and just having fun. No, I knew they would come for me and and they did they they bribed The creation of police ball roll to arrest us on anything he charged in that matter Then by the way, the Bahamas could not extradite us because the promise has no taxes And therefore you cannot it's not a crime not to pay them. Um, I haven't paid taxes for 10 years. I never will It's it's illegal and I want I wanted to ask about your specific rationale behind how taxes are illegal The constitution the constitution specifically states The government shall pass no laws or make no regulation To inhibit or restrict a person's ability to enjoy the fruits of their labor Meaning you can't go in if they've got a carrot field and have 10 000 carrots and steal one just because you're the government Do you understand? So if it works for your produce, why the heck can it work for the produce of your work if it's money? All right, it's illegal people and unnecessary before 1913 There were no taxes in America and we were the greatest industrial power on the planet The instituted income tax in 1913 as a temporary measure It's still here And once that happened we started to diminish and now are we the industrial power? No, we have no industry our steel mills are gone none All of our actual manufacturing with exception a few car companies Which are losing to the Japanese the Koreans and the Chinese and the Germans That's it. We're now our service economy Can you can you believe so no no? It's illegal. We got along much better without taxes all countries get along better without taxes Make governments find your own money. That's what we hire you for Build some roads get the money do what you need and don't steal it from us for heaven's sake We didn't elect you to be lazy. We'd elected you because you're smart But we don't have any smart people anymore So no, it's illegal and listen the libertarian party is based on that for heaven's sake taxation is illegal All of us that's what we believe and so Yes, but that's that's another point. So I haven't paid it. I didn't pay it for 10 years Um For eight of those years and every year I since when I was saying I'm I'm not filing a tax reform till I'm not paying Oh, you inform you actively inform them and say thank you, but no, thank you Yeah, say thank you. I'm not filing. Gotcha. I'm not filing. You know where I live Now it's not illegal not to file your taxes and what they can do the IRS You don't file your taxes thinking okay. Well, we're taking your house your car and all of your money in your bank It's up to you to try to get it back. You understand But they never touch me why I've already paid over 50 million dollars in taxes. I have not received 50 million dollars in services. Yeah, I hear them also very loud and focal There were easier targets for them than me but Two years ago. I started speaking on international stages in in london book arrest us stock home Beijing, Hong Kong saying hey people you don't want to pay taxes I'm not saying you shouldn't but if you don't want to You know how to do it privacy coins and distributed exchanges Never have to pay another penny in taxes ever again Because the government cannot ever prove that you've made any money um Well, then they got angry Of and when I started I was the chairman of the cdo of mgt Uh, the world's sixth largest a bitcoin minor company 800 million volume valuation um The sec immediately after I started uh saying that Filed a subpoena against the company not me personally it begins to come Now when the sec files a subpoena You have to publicly declare it But you may not say anything about what it's about um So what was it about it was about a past stockholder Asking please let us know how much stock he received And for what that was it but Since I couldn't disclose that but I had to disclose we've been subpoenaed The new york stock exchange the following day delisted us. That's what they do If you if someone follows this opinion, man, you get the listed Our stock went from an 800 million dollar valuation overnight to 3 million um We had to fold the company I left That was their shot over the bell Uh, the warnings say you better shut up I will destroy you. Well, that just made me and and I got more vote um So the sec couldn't do anything about me telling don't pay taxes So they got the irs to file To a convenient vans jury. I mean it's all politics So that's why I'm on the run from the u.s. I'm on the run from the Bahamas Since they're after me because they we left six hours before they came to collect us Ron we went to cuba We were in cuba for two months and the cuban government grab janice and I Took his hand to an army base an army general came in and said listen miss my free. We regret But the u.s. Government has requested That me return you to america. I'm going for but he said however Uh, we were disinclined To do so But mr. McPhee you understand you are now a serious problem to us if you remain in this country You have 72 hours to get out of the country now. We had a boat our captain We're planning to be there for quite a while our captain was in Miami It's a big yacht. You can't just power these sufferers up and say well. It takes days And they came sometimes twice a day go miss McPhee. Are you sure you want to be gone in 43 hours? Finally, I said listen if I have to swim to Haiti, I'm going to be gone And we managed to get out 16 hours ahead of the deadline We decided to go to the Dominican Republic. We told no one about it, but now the ci arranged all of this shit, right? and so We got to the Dominican Republic pulled into dock and we were messed it before we could get off the boat And they said miss back to you. I'm sorry, but we have to ship you back to america. I said, well, that's not legal I didn't come from america. I came from Cuba By international law If you want to ship me anywhere You can either ship me to a country that I say I want to go to or the country I came from you cannot Legally send me to america and and so they had of immigration I was sitting in this office when he said that he said see Pedal seniority is really really really complicated meaning. Yeah, I understand. However, this is a very very very complicated case You're going back to america But we didn't I mean I got lawyers and we Four days later, but by the way jails and it's been in the Republic. I can't recommend I've been jailed and almost I've been jailed literally in every continent except africa You started your namesake company in 1987 But obviously technology was a big deal for you before that my my question to you sir What's your first memory of computers at what point did technology click for you and you're like, ah Computers technology. This is for me When they first came out in 1960 68 um as as a general purpose computers, I mean they had massive things in government that had one million to the power of your smartphone, but So I I went to I got a degree in mathematics On the graduate bachelors. I went to the Louisiana state and moved to Virginia Polytechnic working on the masters I decided to take the summer off Uh, but I got a job with general electric. I didn't know what was about There was living for mathematicians I'm one of the finest in the world if I may say so So I said, yeah, um I went through a training program for three months. I didn't tell them I was going to go back to school You know at that age I was deceptive However, after three months I realized Jesus. This is what I want to do um And it was the most technical and still the most technologically complex and in terms of all computer disciplines process Real-time computing, you know what that means that means that you have a computer controlling a moving system in real time And if you if you're off by a fraction of a millisecond You might destroy a a two million dollar steel mill roller or something. So and so I've I worked for your automating Australia iron and steels a steel mill plant in Fort Campbell, New South Wales, Australia That's where I really learned what computers really were how they how software and hardware are an interface issue And a really one thing And from there I went to I did so well. I got a job at NASA Not just normal NASA, but their Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University in Manhattan There I was assigned The data reduction of the world's first weather satellite at Tyros Um, and that's also where I first learned that there is a thing called computer security Because they were terrified that the russians or the chinese would get access to the data because no one else had any weather So no satellites at all. They were transmitting data Um, and it had been transmitted dating for years In the analog form And so they said, how do you deal with this? I go, uh, I don't know, but you know, I was 25 at the time and You know 25 will take on any project And after a year, I had designed a system to reduce the data into a not just a manageable form but to an intelligible form um And and from there I went to Unifac, which at the time was the second largest computer manufacturer in the world Designing operating systems. I was the lead. I was I was 25 years old And the lead architect for Unifac's operating systems And that was my beginning and this that was just in 1970 was that and I've been in computers ever since and security ever since because Uh Nassau I understood. Oh people are concerned about other people accessing data. Well, how interesting As I understand it, you basically beat skype an instant messenger to the chat and communication game in the 1990s Do you feel like you get a credit with tribal with tribal voice? However at the time the system was was hot We didn't have the bandwidth for it. I mean, this is when people were using t1 lines. That was as fast as you I am I am familiar I had one to my house. So Absolutely. So if we only had one user Uh, we were spectacular. It fell apart at 10 and but nevertheless, we invented it voice actually voice Uh, we didn't have video at the time voice only. Um, but we had we were the first instant messaging system um, so tribal voice When I finally realized, you know, I'm sorry the the hardware We're 15 years ahead boys. And so we sold the company for 17 million dollars to cmgi Um in boston and moved on to other things. I then co-founded zone labs, uh And we sold zone labs after a year to check for 400 million dollars Out of 11 months work Okay So people know me from McAfee, but no that was not my greatest success. That was some trivial thing That was my future things, which I did not attach my name to That taught me and and made me all of my money Well, speaking of money, what were the circumstances in which you first gained familiarity with cryptocurrency? Was it was it the invention of bitcoin or did you have somebody walk you through it? Okay, so here's how that happened Here's how that happened. I mean at McAfee. I started collecting, uh, prize employees programs Um, uh, there are in fact programming is one of the strange fields where you can find people Who are worth 100 other programmers in truth. All right, this is a fact And so I collected those one of those was a genius named james zaromski Workmate McAfee Brought him with me to tribal force and he worked with me on a whole bunch of product projects after that I hadn't talked to jim and yours Because I had stopped doing those things. I was simply out Traveling and enjoying myself. I was in police. He called me just chatted and said i'm coming down I go great. Great. What are you doing? He says i'm mining I'm mining. I didn't ask. I'm thinking what's he mining gold? diamonds, who knows silver? Lead I don't know So he came down with his girlfriend I I took him out the next day on by sailboat He and his girlfriend and you know A couple of dozen other people spend a couple days out the net first day We were sitting on the the net up front. It's a catamaran and He handed me Bitcoin's white paper which I read cover to cover and matter of minutes and Being a mathematician. I was just interested in the math part of what I saw The brilliance of it. I go, holy shit. No wonder he came down And that's what got me involved and I've been in crypto over since So so do you care to talk at all about what coins you hold besides bitcoin or is it all bitcoin? I don't hold coins. Good luck. The only coins I hold are the coins that I use for business I don't have Listen, we can't have obviously we can't have a bank account and certainly we can't have a credit card We'd be picked up in a matter of minutes at first time we use a credit card So we can't have a bank account kind of credit card And no way to get cash. So everything I do is crypto Loneiro, uh or dai So you're paying all your employees in crypto All paying all of them every every job that I take on I get paid in crypto. She can't pay me in crypto I'm sorry. It gets one else to do the work. Um, so everything And not just employees Everything can close the food to to full poof vests and guns. You buy with crypto So why bother with fiat and why bother with a bank? So we don't have such things anymore. Yeah, hey, how do you how do you buy clothes and food with crypto? Well, I go on to google and I search for a lot of shirts shirts crypto Easy enough. That's that's all you have to do for these people. It's an easy that's an easy thing Are you paying much attention to uh, bitcoin's price fluctuations? Is that interesting to you at all? The bitcoin in no way shape or form is the removing motley interesting to me. I'm sorry So I have no clue. I do know this that the halving is coming up Any day now bitcoin is going to it's going to skyrocket Just like it did in a quarter ring. I mean I was I was running an mgt the sixth largest bitcoin mining company During the quarter What happened is bitcoin went sky high And after the quarter ring It sank to the next nothing the same thing's going to happen now Soon, you know, you watch it. I promise you we'll see the price slowly It'll do this slow rise slow rise and an asymptotic curve just before the the halving and then a instant crash afterwards Um, and I guarantee this is going to happen. But no, I don't pay any attention to it bitcoin is a useless coin guys Always has been it's got no, please people. It's got no It's got no privacy You cannot put a smart contract on so what the hell is the blockchain for and you can't run distributed apps on it It's an ancient use and you think it's not Find anybody in the world that takes bitcoin anymore. Nobody On going to dark web which used to be all bitcoin on a single vendor. We said bitcoin It is 99.9 percent monero Monero is the most widely used coin in the world people. Oh, but bitcoin is no nobody uses it Bitcoin just happens to have for some bizarre reason not called up to reality and its market Value is is the largest But it's real value. It's nothing because the real value has to be based on its original value It is used as a currency can't be used as a currency anymore. It doesn't work in the new world I want to put a theory. I heard a theory earlier this week during virtual blockchain week I want to put this to you and and see what you make of it and the theory basically says that Uh, bitcoin is enjoying a slight price bump this week Because the u.s. Government is minting money and slowly diluting the u.s. Dollar. Does that square with you? Do you agree disagree? No, no, absolutely not. That's the halving Oh, it has already started The climb is already started. We saw uh, I think it was tuesday night into wednesday morning. It jumped about 1500 bucks So we're we're out of that's the halving people. That's the halving please Look at the quartering Same exact thing Two weeks before it started a bump And it may go up to 50,000. I don't know but it will crash instantly after they have it Got nothing to do with the u.s. Dollar. Oh, that is speculation History is what we should be learning from not just with bitcoin but everything in our life. Sure sure That tells us what will come because it does over and over always Why do you think the pentagon's confirmation that ufos are real isn't such a huge freaking deal? Why don't why aren't people in the streets about this screaming? That is the question because really it's it's a very short Video, but if you look at it You can clearly see this sucker traveling at massive speed stop And it's it's clearly a rotating object and it spins and in a physical impossibility for rotating object how? And what the heck is it that rotates and why did it rotate it rotated? A full 110 degrees and then shot off We do not have the technology in the human Species of technology to do that So to me to have verification from the pentagon means one of two things Aliens are here or the pentagon is fucking us. I don't know which But it's one of those two in either case it should be big deal Why is the pentagon lying to us and what are they trying to achieve or Holy shit Aliens are here for real. I don't know, but it didn't seem to be a big deal and that's fine I mean People are more concerned about hiding from a from a non-existing threat. That's fine with me Let me ask you kind of a weird question About your experience of your own life just because it's been such a full life from what from what is publicly known And I imagine what isn't publicly known only adds more to the story. You started you started a huge company Your name is basically synonymous with antivirus protection. You've run a presidential campaign You're married to a woman more than 30 years younger than you. You're on the law from law enforcement including the united states Uh, you were arrested for drug manufacturing and released without charges You've written books about yoga and I understand that some of these books take concepts like Telepathy and time travel seriously. This strikes me as a full and unusual life. Does it feel unusual to you? No, it just feels it feels hectic and out of control It has no i'm telling you it has seriously It has been since I was 23. That's when all this shit started Listen if you step out of the box Um, you're in an alternate universe people You don't really understand People habituate their lives to following What authority says what are authorities on the government? teachers policemen The fbi congress these are authorities And we have been habituated to both believe that these authorities are here for us For our benefit You need to wake up they're here for their benefit What congressman what congressman truly Is going to sacrifice their well-being for you knowing to listen I'm going to lose money doing this, but it's good for the people. No, it's for them And they will rationalize why for example, it can't be not be real for a second every congressman Is a multimillionaire every single one without exception Few of them came into congress as millionaires And all of them became millionaires before therefore your term was Now I want to ask you something. What what magic is there about having the title congressman or censor? Is it that money flows from the heavens into your pocket? Wake up people that doesn't happen. So if that's really what's happening They do not Have your interest in art. They have the lining of their pockets in art This is just a fact of life, which we have to accept. So we we accept authority And we accept it for for two reasons laziness you know, we're Easier to let somebody else think for you, especially authority in fear And what's the fear the fear of thinking incorrectly? That's the greatest fear that people have Making a wrong Decision or wrong choice and if we make that decision ourselves Who is it that has to bear the burden of responsibility? ourselves But if we let somebody else do it for the government The mayor Your boss Anybody but you then if it's a bad decision, you're perfectly protected It's that person that bears the responsibility So these two things combined keep people in a box And that box has Extraordinary narrow limits to it It seems like so much of your life is about getting out of the box john But of course it is that's all I think if I don't want to be a habituated individual That thinks other people's thoughts and believes other people's beliefs I want to see life for myself And you can't do that inside the box because life is outside the box people So when I was in my 20s, I realized when you know, my entire life has been What my parents taught me to do what my teachers taught me to do what the police said I should do What the government said I should do what college said I should know Enough of this crap. I go on this thing for myself When I did so Whoa The world opened up But let me tell you it had better be prepared For what falls because it's not always comfortable and it is always completely unknown and completely Uncritical and sometimes frightening And sometimes painful Janice for example was Not remotely happy with her four days in the demarcation of jail. All right, I understood me. I've been in jails more jails than the god It was like a jail for me um You habituate even to those things But if you don't want to go to jail If you don't want people to want to kill you if you don't want to have to run from governments and stay in your box people Because that may not happen to you, but something equally as bizarre and frightening well This is what you this is what you're risking get out of the box You're gonna know the world It's been there your whole life people your entire life that world is running in parallel with you And it's been beckoning you come out and play come out and play I promise you will survive it I'm 74 and I have survived 52 years of it And I am I would not change a single second of this. I would not change my jail time I would not change hiding in the jungles of the lease while bullets were flying over my head. I would not change a single thing It's the stuff of movies and and there already is one the documentary about your life And then I also understand that there's some movie called king of the jungle All right, Michael Keaton Michael Keaton will be playing me and Zach Efron will be playing the reporter It's just about two weeks. It's a tiny two-week segment of my life All right, but for the reporter who wrote the story or the script made a career It was the most horrific shocking and terrifying experience of his life And he unraveled went back and wrote this thing. So that's what the movie's about is less me and more of him of he listened to my I manipulate the press I admit and what happened is Who was it wired wired magazine contacted me begged me to let one of the reporters come and live with me for two weeks Uh, I go, yeah, never done that before. Well, I'm not gonna say no because I've never done it before Oh, he was there for about six hours like Oh The only way this is gonna work is that I'm just gonna fuck with him the entire time And he did by the end. He was a bubbling mess Terror and it was just so he went back. That's what this movie is about. How did you fuck with him? Setting off I don't know Well, you need to read the story But let me tell you one the most prominent one and everybody remembers because he wrote this story is the second day I'm thinking It's not gonna work. So you're just mine, dude You were stupid to come down here and this is what you get. So we're talking we're in we're in my Listen, I had houses all over the place and we were sitting in one on the beach in this gorgeous huge room Massive table in the middle and he's sitting Over here to my left. Maybe a feet away and I'm sitting here and we're talking He's talking about my compound in the jungle and the the anti Bionic that I'm doing there while I'm talking I pulled out my 38 we've all for I always am armed pulled it out and I'm still talking I open the cylinder and thought it shells out Um, I reach in and take one and put it back Spin the cylinder close it and go click Okay He jumped up Back top banged against the wall and said no, you know what to do this stop stop. I said stop what click Open it again. Spun it click. I did it maybe 50 fucking times. All right Now I'm a slight fan specialist. All right. Now. How did I do that trick? What I always do unless I am anticipating A serious problem is with revolvers. I take the bullet out dump the I dump the powder put it back in pop the cap because you have to pop the cap out So it'll explode against your head and you could damage yourself Put the bullet back in put it in the gun How do I recognize it because when I dump them out the bullet with no powder and the cap busted will have a Tiny indentation where the firing pin Fired the cap. So I'll take that bullet put it back in you can click that a million times It's not a lot now What was even better is that down I said calm down calm down and it's it's going to be okay It's going to be okay So I said let's go outside and he just need air And he's just freaking out. You know, he's got he's got tears coming down the face not from crying But he doesn't know what else to do. He pissed himself by the way Wow And so I take him out on the porch. I said it's okay I pointed the gun at the sand to pull the trigger went boom and the sand exploded right What did I do while I'm taking the outcomes? He just stopped looking at my hands. I take that but without the line from him um so now That was the mildest thing that I did with him while he was there and you have to believe me if I want to someone And that was the beginning that was the mildest that was nothing Compared to what else I submitted him to and when he left he was a literally bubbling Incoherent he lost his mind And so this this movie is about those two weeks he was with written by him Have you heard anything from that reporter in the years since are you still in touch at all? I wonder Josh davis. No, why would I be in touch with him? I don't know. I don't know if it were me I would be writing you letters every day to be honest. I think you're no no He's never tried to contact me again I mean no one in the right mind would if you had gone through what he went through I'd be the last person in the world. He'd want to hear from seriously The last person in the world because I know how to to mentally With people you must trust me And I literally destroyed his psyche. Why? He took up two weeks of my valuable time And he was an idiot What idiot editor would send someone like him to spend two weeks with me and expect things to go well? No Absolutely not Oh, man I had I had a transvestite Okay, a man Addresses a woman creep into his bed one night and sort of fondling his privates. All right No Come on, I mean it's it's um and that was mild And I did this every hour of the day something different something different No, the smart man would have said I'm out of here on the second on the in fact smart man That didn't understand no He's also very stupid because seriously come on Who is going to sit there and I also it's a six six shot revolver and I went click click click click Please god a smart woman to go. Ah You're fooling me not him not him. Why he was too panicked He was expecting any second to see a head explode. He gets shattered with blood No, come on listen, you know and and the transvestite. Okay, uh made sure Because I paid him very well I made sure that he was thorough In his fondling Satoshi Nakamoto, uh, we're I'm totally clear that you're not interested in bitcoin, but a lot of people are Uh Do you have any theories on who this is? How do you like phil phil Zimmerman for satoshi nakamoto? Oh, no, please god absolutely not now. Listen, uh, the people think that satoshi Designed Bitcoin nonsense. It was a team of 11 people over a period of five years that came up eventually with this How they decided who would write the paper? I don't have a clue But anybody who wants to know who it is. I mean, you know who the options are you've got craig right? I'm not going to name everybody else else. You'll figure it out, but um Uh, somebody wrote the white paper. Well, if you read the white paper Number one is totally clear. He's english Every single word that has a different spelling in english and american is english Number two He left tails Um, there's only five percent of the population that has two spaces After a period everything was two spaces after a period and the format of the document was identical To documents that he had published professionally In You know professional academic publications identical. So now Then if you buy a 200 dollar authorship Program and you take the white paper you run it through and you take any one Of the papers that this guy wrote or any all of these people wrote papers, by the way Only one comes out with 99 probability as him. So I have spoken to him on the phone I was actually going to default who he was why Because all this nonsense was just stupid people wasting time over nothing. I was going to say listen It's this guy. You know what he told me? Very smart motherfucker. He said okay um What if you're wrong? Because if you're right That's how to she is going to have to hire 50 security guards and change his life Else he will die Or you know, this is going to happen Why everybody's going to want a piece of him including the governments that demand did he pay taxes on it? He said okay, that's if you're right Then that person has the ability to do so But what if you're wrong? You will have destroyed And innocent man's life forever and probably caused his death like a At that moment I said I understand I'll say no more Understood and your name will never leave my lips Which is why I never continued to ask for a bride because the name would have to leave my lips. All right, so Um, but if you want to know figure out yourselves, right? I'm sure you remember. I think it was the year 2014 where they found a guy named Dorian Nakamoto And mistakenly outed him as Satoshi And it definitely upended his life Yes, yes, see that's the issue that See, I'm a stupid old man. I don't think things through Uh, because I said, I don't need listen I'm gonna Give all two years and let's get over this nonsense and stop fucking speculating But then here's one thing What if you're wrong? What if that one percent probability is what the reality is you have destroyed a man's life? All right All right, could I could I ask one in one indulgence before we go John? I would love to take a screenshot a screenshot of you holding up that ak behind you if that's okay How'd you know it's behind? I watched the presentation man Thank you, man The proof that I know what I'm doing notice my trigger discipline is the greatest in the world You're pointing it in a safe direction and everything never At right never touch the trigger until the moment you have acquired the target and are ready to fire Otherwise you will accidentally shoot yourself or someone else. Okay So I know what I'm doing with guns always have I believe you man. Thank you again for your time This was a real privilege and I hope you guys are staying safe. All right. Thank you coin telegraph like subscribe and hodl