Isaac Morehouse: I just want Bitcoin to work

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There is an astonishing work ethic to be witnessed in the Bitcoin SV sphere. No wonder more and more “high performers” are getting interested in BSV aside from ideological discussions about whether Bitcoin SV, BTC or BCH is “the true Bitcoin.”

Isaac Morehouse, founder and CEO of Crash and founder of Praxis, is one of them and we caught up with him to talk about his Bitcoin related videos and the way he implements Bitcoin SV in his daily life as a freedom seeking entrepreneur. 

Morehouse is also a content creator who publishes books, podcasts, as well as videos and was recently featured on FOX News. 

Hi, Isaac! You are doing a lot of interesting things, kindly introduce yourself!

I’ve spent most of the last decade helping people launch their careers in innovative ways, apart from the stale old conveyor belt approach of “get a degree, pad your resume, blast it out hundreds of times, hope for a paycheck.”

I’ve always been deeply motivated by expanding the scope of human freedom, and seeing so many young people feel trapped in crappy, debt-laden education systems fired me up. I launched my first company, Praxis, in 2013. It’s a college alternative and has grown into an impressive program with a great track record of getting young people into careers without debt.

Years of doing this helped me see another opportunity, to provide a platform where people could show their skills in a way far richer and more relevant than a resume. In 2018, I launched my second company, Crash, and we’ve built the world’s best job-hunting platform if I do say so. Though not a Bitcoin business, the philosophy is very relevant. We are helping people show their value on the job market with “proof of work” via projects and pitches, instead of relying on trusted third party credentials.

In the Bitcoin world, you are best known for hosting a popular show on your YouTube channel—the so-called “The Four Numpties.” First of all, what is the show about and what have you guys been discussing there so far?

It’s funny, when we posted the first video my YouTube channel had 6 followers and no content. We didn’t set out to create a brand or following around these conversations, and we still do them purely for our own entertainment, but they have struck a nerve in the big block Bitcoin community.

Me and a few friends were always having these conversations about Bitcoin, really ever since the scaling debate and split into BTC and BCH. As things progressed and BSV split, there was just so much going on and so many things we’d debate. We all love big block massively scalable bitcoin, and were trying to figure out which vision and strategy had the best chance of winning. We flipped on the camera and started sharing these debates and discussions on YouTube, and were really surprised to see how many people resonated with it.

I think one of the reasons it worked is because none of us are willing to shill for a particular vision or personality. We just want Bitcoin to win and we’re unthreatened by differing points of view. And we have fun! We started off mostly debating BSC vs BCH, but that evolved over time as we gradually lost faith in BCH odds for success.

There are many awesome moments in your show, but this one at 00:55:17 onwards in the video below is pure gold! What happened there? Why were you guys literally cracking up with laughter?

Oh man, I crack up even now just thinking about it! You know, it was just one of those moments. We were kind of trying to approach things very soberly and have a discussion where we took BTC arguments seriously, which is honestly very hard to do these days, and Daniel just sort of broke the dam by laughing out loud about the market price of BTC being so high while it’s value proposition is non-existent. It was like all this pent-up absurdity just found a healthy outlet. That moment was worth the price of a therapy session after all the years in bitcoin.

With what kind of idea in mind did you start the show?

I’ve always believed in the concept of learning out loud. We all love this Bitcoin stuff, but none of us are doing it for our day job. So I figured it would be fun to share publicly our exploration as interested novices. So long as we keep enjoying it, we’ll keep doing it. We aren’t trying to build a brand just have a fun honest discussion. We can be a little more free than many in crypto, because we aren’t working in it.

We did not plan on interviewing guests, but really smart people in Bitcoin started asking, “Hey can I come on?” which was pretty cool.

What have you learned about Bitcoin discussing with Steve Patterson, T.K. Coleman and Deryk Makgill?

I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that those who are the most ideological and theoretical are often the worst at advancing the tech and business cases for Bitcoin. It’s sort of odd, because we all love big ideas, but there’s an ivory tower like effect that seems to take over—in BTC, and then BCH, and even shades of it in BSV—that turns it into an academic tinker project instead of a global transformation.

As far as I can tell, your show is being enjoyed by people from Bitcoin SV, BCH and BTC aside from ideological arguments about Bitcoin’s future. Are people fed up with “camp mentality” in the digital asset sphere?

Yes! There is a large “silent majority” who just want to understand what the hell is going on in Bitcoin. We aren’t afraid to say what we like and don’t like about any version, and we tend to present things probabilistically, as in I think this approach has X percent chance of succeeding, instead of “This is the only way you morons!”

You have also used Streamanity, a Bitcoin SV dedicated platform for content creators, to upload your videos. Kindly explain how and why you use Streamanity for your projects.

You know at first I just tried cross-posting some of the YouTube vids to Streamanity and it was kinda fun. Then I slapped a price on one and it was cool to see some money come in. When we interviewed Josh Petty, the founder of Twetch, he suggested making it a Streamanity exclusive for the first few days and charging $2.18 (a weird mystical number to some eccentric bitcoiners). We did and it was way more exciting to see $50 roll in than to see a few thousand unpaid YouTube views. This isn’t a business, but an audience willing to pay and the mental “high” of some BSV is just more fun than likes and views alone.

On Twetch—a Bitcoin SV based social media platform—you have been quite open about the revenues you generated on a recent video uploaded to Streamanity. Since you have shared that information already on Twetch, kindly share it with us right here, too! 

The most recent two videos we did were a bit more inside baseball, most interesting to BSV followers, so we didn’t even put them on the YouTube channel, just Streamanity. It’s cool because you can set up automatic revenue share so all of us get an equal share of each view.

You can see in this screenshot the most recent video earned over $100, and that’s with just 150 follower on the channel and very few views.

(The numbers shown are actually not correct because they don’t show all the views and revenue earned before Streamanity did a big platform update).

Kindly compare Streamanity and YouTube for content creators who seek profit in what they are doing.

It’s no comparison for me. I don’t think YouTube would even let me monetize. We have around 35,000 views, but only 800 or so subscribers, and I think you need 1,000 to monetize. I also don’t really like bothering viewers with ads. Plus, it’s fun to earn in bitcoin for convos about bitcoin!

YouTube has big reach, but there’s something pretty cool about having 100 really engaged fans pay a few bucks, vs 1,000 semi-engaged fans watch free. I can see this market really taking off as creators seek more control.

What are your experiences with Twetch so far? And do you mind sharing some information concerning your revenue on Twetch with us, too? 

I love Twetch and I use it all the time!

I’m pretty regular on Twitter, popping in several times a day for a minute or two with quick posts. I use Twetch in a similar way, but find myself tweeting less and Twetching more (especially since my Twetch posts can automatically post to Twitter as well).

There’s something weird mentally about just getting a few cents per like or share or comment that makes it more fun and interesting. I’ve been on there posting the same time of stuff I would to Twitter, and over the months I’ve been doing it I’ve posted around 1,000 times and earned nearly $200. It’s fun!

From watching your videos about Bitcoin, I can tell you are not really interested in ideological Bitcoin fights, but rather you seem to be looking for just the perfect Bitcoin to work with. What are you personally looking for in Bitcoin? And how did Bitcoin SV got you to use it in your daily life?

I just want it to work! Sounds so weird, but I feel like I’m sitting here saying, “Can it at least work as well as it did back in 2013 or 2014?” That seems like such a low bar, but apparently it’s not. BSV does, and on top of it, there’s all these interesting data use cases and fun consumer apps. It’s fast, cheap, reliable, and can do things that simply cannot be done without bitcoin. To me that last one is a clincher. Competing with Venmo or Paypal on payments alone is tough. But the entire world of individually owned data and micropayments is something no other tech can compete with.

I definitely want to expand the scope of human freedom and I think bitcoin can in massive ways. But there’s no point in those theories if it doesn’t actually work for real, valuable use-cases!

With Praxis and Crash you encourage people to free themselves from an “only college mentality” and pioneer new ways of “job hunting.” Is there any relation to Bitcoin concerning these projects? Like, do people have opportunities in Bitcoin that they are unaware of, and do you work with or mention Bitcoin in Praxis and Crash in any way already?

A little bit. The Bitcoin ecosystem is growing, so more opportunities are becoming available. The mindset of self-ownership permeates my companies and that overlaps a lot with Bitcoin, but so far it’s only been dipping the toe in the water as far as direct connection of career launch with Bitcoin opportunities.

You have published some books—so far on Amazon and as free PDFs on your website. Do you see Bitcoin useful for publishing written content, and do you plan anything concerning that?

Funny you should mention that, as an experiment, I just uploaded an entire copy of one of my books to the blockchain via bit.sv and anyone can purchase and read it at a discount over the Amazon edition here.

I think there’s a lot of cool possibility here. Ebooks paid by the page, new ways to discover and share content and get rewarded for curating, reviewing, etc. 

Thank you for your insights, time and unbiased way to approach Bitcoin!

Hey you bet, Bitcoin is a ton of fun for me and I’m always honored to be able to talk about it even though I’m mostly a novice!