Phish and Bitcoin

A continuum of genius, network effects, and unintentional foreshadowing

Phish is a legendary rock band that was formed in 1983 and rose in stature alongside the rise of the internet in the 1990s. They were, and still are, are the torchbearers of the spirit that carried the Grateful Dead and their followers through decades of network effect before the rise of the internet. Their fans were as rabid and committed as any. I once witnessed someone crawling through sewer pipes to gain free entry into a show. The band’s charismatic leader, Trey Anastasio, also witnessing the act, laughed to his bandmates before beginning their next song. Phish was more than a band. They were a way of life, as the Grateful Dead were. They existed in a more innocent age and thus had much less of a cultural impact, but as far as the music was concerned, they were no less serious or relevant.

I look into the finance box just to check my status
I look into the microscope, I see golgi apparatus.

Phish was viewed for decades as being lyrically unserious. Even their hardcore fans considered their lyrics to be cool sounding nonsense, but I’m going to argue that it only sounded that way at the time because the inspiration they were channeling had not yet arrived. I will argue that in the 1990s, their primary songwriter, Anastasio, was touched by a creative spirit that was communicating the prophecy of Bitcoin. Perhaps Trey was channelling the same spirit that inspired the cypherpunks or, perhaps, Trey was directly channelling the spirit that spoke to Satoshi Nakamoto as he worked on the Bitcoin project. Take the song Golgi Apparatus, first debuted in 1986. On Northeast college campuses, where Phish was most popular, their fans loved how Trey would use goofy words from science books. These silly themes were seldom seen in rock music at that time. The opening line “I look into the finance box just to check my status” might have looked like nothing more than a contrived rhyme to set up the titlular punchline “I look into the microscope and see Golgi Apparatus.” However, now that we understand what Bitcoin is and does, namely allow any person to audit every single token ever issued on the network to enable people for the first time in human history to “verify their financial status”. It’s impossible not to see that opening line as possibly a deeply profound prophecy into the phenomena of Bitcoin. I know many will think that’s weak, but its the connection to golgi apparatus, which makes the connection so certain that even Trey Anastasio himself can likely not deny it if presented with the evidence. Golgi apparatus is a part of our cells and aids mitochondria. What does mitochondria have to do with Bitcoin?  Without going into it too deeply, mitochondria is a decentralized network in our bodies with its own DNA, independent from the (centralized) nuclear DNA, that is responsible for generating electric power in the most efficient possible way to run our bodies. Doesn’t get more Bitcoin than checking your finance status while looking at golgi apparatus.  Not satisfied?  Let's continue.

They call him lysosome cause he runs so fast

More goofy science stuff that nobody ever thought to put in a rock song, but beneath the surface is a message that money can now move at the speed of light.  With Bitcoin, money can be sent instantly from Trey's barn in Vermont to Club Quatro in Nagoya Japan with no government in the way to stop it.  The signal is brought home in the chorus:

I saw you - with a ticket stub in your hand!

Under the light
middle of the night
couldnt get it wrong

I saw you with a ticket stub in your hand is the 1986 version of a spirit that wants to express an assertion with validation.  In 1986, you had to physically possess an asset to own the right to use it.  A ticket stub is a claim of ownership and is the ultimate form of currency at a Phish concert.  In Bitcoin, you don't need a ticket stub but you need to have the secret (called your private key) that unlocks the cryptographic script providing proof of ownership and the ability to spend satoshis on the Bitcoin network.  

Under the light means that we can now see and own something even if it doesn't necessarily exist in the material world.  Middle of the night refers to the fact that Bitcoin can be traded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Couldn't get it wrong is the icing on the cake - it represents the certainty and conviction associated with owning bitcoin.  Certainty of ownership and the certainty of the 21 million issuance limit that ensures that it can never be debased by anyone who wants to print more of it.  That certainty enables people to save and look to the future

To those reading thinking that its an absurd notion to think that greater spirits could have been broadcasting Bitcoin signal through Phish. I make the following points:

1. The bands name, in 1983, was clearly not intended to be known to the world as the act of circumventing online security, as it was coined in 1996. The band was named as a joke on the drummer’s last name (Fishman) and spelled with a Ph, supposedly, because it would be easier for the band to copywright.
2. Trey and other bandmembers have claimed repeatedly that they haven’t actually written any of their music, but the spirits do (sounds Keynesian) and that their job has always been to channel those spirits through them and their music.

Building the Biggest Network Effect

Phish formed in 1983, as students attending the University of Vermont, and eventually became its current 4-piece structure in 1985. During the 80s, they grew their following the old fashioned way, by emulating the characteristics of the most successful touring band at that time, the Grateful Dead. They spread by word-of-mouth while 1) playing as many shows as possible; 2) embracing the spirit of adventure in their music; and 3) encouraging the taping of their shows and the sharing of their music. Phrases have been coined by their lyrics to capture these principles like “Sharin’ in the Groove” and “Surrendering to the Flow”. This was the ethos of the band and their fans adopted it and spread it. The fan base started out as close friends of the band, but many of them took it upon themselves to spread the tapes and by the end of the 1980s, Phish had played on virtually every college campus in the Northeast and they closed the decade playing their first multi-show New Years Run at some of the most legendary venues like The Wetlands and Ardmore Music Hall.

Phish had become a working band via the network effect. As the 1990s began, they would play a lot more shows and spread a lot more tapes. From 1990 through 1994, Phish played close to 600 concerts all over the continental United States. The venues gradually got larger, from small bars to small theaters to outdoor amphitheaters to minor-league hockey arenas, and ultimately, on December 30th 1994, the worlds most famous arena - Madison Square Garden, which also included an appearance on Late Night with Dave Letterman. Phish also became acutely aware of the power of tape trading and was actually communicating with the fans during shows knowing that the tapes would be spread all over the country. A prevalence of fans owned a dual cassette deck and had the capability of creating quality copies of analog tapes. 1994 was also the year that I discovered Phish.net - a way to follow the band on this new thing called the internet. There wasn’t a whole lot to do on the internet yet, but on a usenet board called rec.music.phish, people posted setlists and reviews of all of their shows, analyzed the performances of various songs and how they evolve over a tour, and - most importantly - TRADED TAPES. If this was all the internet ever had to offer, it would have been enough. I amassed a large tape collection and became academically steeped in the band’s music.

I also discovered something called Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Phish had a channel (#phish). I met some close friends on that channel and I’m aware of several people who got married and started families based on meeting there. I would offer my home to people when Phish came to my hometown in Philly, and I would have a place to stay almost anywhere to which I would travel. I also took tape trading to another level since I could now interact with people I know, and many of the people on the IRC channel were tapers looking to spread the tapes far and wide. We all became great friends and enjoyed the next several years of going to shows together as Phish became bigger and bigger. Clearly there was a phenomena where Phish already had the makings of a huge band that could spread their own gospel, but the internet threw plutonium on it and struck it with lightning. Phish’s network effect selected for and rewarded early adopters of internet technology. We had the greatest time of our life.

From the Possum to the Honeybadger

Phish still exists in 2023. They not only exist, but in some ways they are playing their best music. Their rock and roll peak is clearly behind them as both they and their fans are much older. Their songbook, however, is far greater and the quality and sheer volume of new music that the band has put out in the past 5 years is astounding for having toured for over 35 years. I can’t think of another band that continues to put out as much new music that their fans love and respect at this stage of their careers as Phish. Nothing ever gets old. In 2017, they played 13 consecutive shows over 3 weeks at Madison Square Garden without repeating a single song once.  The run went by the name “The Bakers Dozen” and each of the 13 nights had its own donut that was served and the songs were also selected to fit that theme. This type of fan service is unheard of outside of Phish and yet despite having built such an unprecedented and successful career, Phish keeps their signal honed into their fans, even at the risk of alienating everyone else on Earth. In fact, nothing is more fun to Phish and their fans than alienating people who don’t get what is going on. Phish even created a secret musical language to create explicit scenarios that troll newcomers by playing a certain sequence of notes that tells everyone who understand the signal to fall on the ground. In the world of music, Phish is the Honeybadger. They don’t give any fucks and they are unstoppable.

Phish has been through its share of ups and downs. The ups were as great as any band can boast. Drawing 70,000 fans to the Everglades to ring in the new millenium with a dusk-till-dawn set ranks up there. The downs were horrible, but thankfully not ruinous. Fans watched the band’s beloved leader decay into drug addiction before their eyes through the 2000s, culminating in their breakup in 2004. Fans continued to watch Trey fall further until he was ultimately arrested in upstate New York. Trey thanked the arresting officer for saving his life, submitted himself to drug courts to bypass jail time, and was able to recover and ultimately return with Phish in 2009.

For many Phish fans, going to shows and interacting with the community has been the background and soundtrack of our lives. We discovered Phish in college or earlier, grew up through differing friend groups, began working, met our spouses, had our children and watched them grow up all the while planning family vacations around Phish’s annual tour calendar. Strangely, during both the 2000-2001 market crash and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, we had to endure it without them. If we include the Covid crash of 2020, there were 3 major stock market collapses over 20 years and Phish was mysteriously absent for all of them. Even Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have such impeccable market timing. The culture and the scene have very little exxperience with regard to bear markets and recessions - our memories are filled with other things. As resilient as Phish is, and as much as they’ve been through in the last 40 years, they have actually not been through deep economic turmoil and don’t actually know what impact that would have on their tour schedule or their music.

Lizard People and Vanishing Founders

The songbook of Phish begins with what is known as The White Tape which was the medium that hosted Trey Anastasio’s senior thesis at Goddard College called “The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday”, written on countless cassette J-cards and usenet posts as TMWSIY. It is a rock opera about an idyllic land called Gamehendge in which a group of common plebs called “The Lizards” lived in peace according to the teachings of a sacred text, written by someone who was assumed to exist (and who was great and knowledgeable) called Icculus who represented their God. The Lizards lived in peace for millenia until a traveler named Wilson arrived and observed that he could enslave them by taking custody of the only copy of the sacred “Helping Friendly Book” for himself. He did so until a group of revolutionaries overthrew him, only to continue the cycle of tyranny themselves.

The story of Gamehendge never addressed money or its role in their society, although there is a song in the story called ACDC Bag that chronicles the story of Wilson’s accountant, Mr. Palmer, who is discovered by Wilson to be embezzling money to help fund the revolution. Wilson orders Palmer to be hung in the town square by a robot executioner called the ACDC Bag. While it remains unclear what money really was or meant in Gamehendge, it was clearly controlled tightly by the Wilson dictatorship. The opening lyrics “Mr. Palmer is concerned with the thousand dollar question” do suggest that they used dollars in Gamehendge, though nobody has ever asked Trey for clarification.

The man who stepped into yesterday was actually a retired war veteran from our world named Colonel Forbin, who found his way into Gamehendge through a portal that appeared while lamenting the mediocrity of his own life. He befriended the Lizards, fell in love, and joined the revolution and after Mr. Palmer’s death at the hands of the ACDC Bag, decided to seek out Icculus himself. He climbed the legendary mountain where Icculus was thought to have once lived. During his climb, the mountain crumbled and transformed into the physical manifestation of Icculus’s face and told Forbin that he would have the Helping Friendly Book delivered to him. Icculus also foreshadowed the futility of the gesture warning Forbin of the power the book would have to whoever possessed it. Ultimately, one of the revolutionaries ended up taking custody of the book himself and began a new cycle of tyranny over the Lizards. Not your Helping Friendly Book, not your Gamehendge.

The founder / inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is not hiding in the topography of a mountain. He is gone for good. His code and posts to the Bitcointalk forum are all that’s left of him. That, and the message he encoded in the Genesis block:

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

Since 2011, it’s been up to the plebs to figure it out without him. Perhaps knowing that Icculus was nearby was what kept the lizards from ever figuring out how to transcend the need for a book that can be confiscated. Satoshi gave plebs unconfiscatable money and the gift of disappearing.

In 2010, a year after Phish’s return and the creation of Bitcoin’s Genesis block, the band Genesis (not the block) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The induction marked the only time Phish would participate in the ceremony as Trey gave the induction speech and the band got to play 2 songs, “Watcher of the Skies” and “No Reply at All”. Read into this all what you will, but this happened as Satoshi was mere months from making his last post on bitcointalk and disappearing for good. There would soon be no reply at all.

Fluffhead was a Banking System

Fluff came to my door (New York) asking me for change Fluff went to a (central) banker, asking for some bills - the banker said "I ain't got that but I sure got some powerful pills"

Fluffhead is quintessential Phish. Debuted in 1984, no song is more fun and silly than Fluffhead and Fluff’s Travels. It has it all - a silly name evoking a drug induced main character, a story about trying to find money and getting offered drugs instead, and a wild composed series of sections culminating in perhaps the most triumphant climax in the Phish catalog. When Phish returned from their 5 year hiatus on March 6, 2009, the choice to open that show with Fluffhead was perfect. But who was this Fluffhead? And is it meaningful that this is the choice of song?

As the song says, “Fluffhead was a man, with a horrible disease. Could not find a cure, could you help him if you please”. I say that Fluffhead was actually the banking system and the disease is that they’re broke and there’s no way out. On March 6, 2009, we were still in the wreckage of the Global Financial Crisis marked by the biggest bailout of the banking system in history. Of course, in plain sight of all mankind, Phish opens their most anticipated show of their career with Fluffhead during the worst economic collapse of our lifetime, and nobody on Earth makes the connection. Quintessential Phish all around! Of course, 2 months earlier, Satoshi Nakamoto created the Genesis Bitcoin block. Lets go further.

“Fluff came to my door (New York) asking me for change”. The messaging here is hiding in plain sight. The bank cartel went to the Fed and begged for money because they didn’t have the reserves to cover a bank run. Further, “Fluff went to a banker, asking for some bills”. In case the last line didn’t make it obvious, they were more specific as to the eventual result when they continued with “the banker said I ain’t got that, but I sure got some powerful pills - OHHH YEAHHH!” While there was a bailout in 2009, there will eventually be a banking failure where a bailout is just not possible. World governments understand this and are already offering drugs in place of money, which it has in abundance.

The Cantillon Effect - Theme From the Bottom

I feed from the bottom, you feed from the top I live upon morsels you happen to drop Like coffee that somehow leaks out of your cup If nothing drops down then I'm forced to swim up.

The Cantillon Effect is the phenomena whose recognition really makes a Bitcoiner a Bitcoiner. In the early Phish days when people traded analog tapes, there was a huge benefit to having a taper friend and get an early generation recording before the degradation of multiple generations of recordings made the shows almost inaudible. Observed and coined by Richard Cantillon in the mid 1700s, it describes the uneven flow of money between those at the top who have the privilege to print it or spend it first and those who will ultimately have their savings debased. Without realizing it, Trey and songwriting partner Tom Marshall hit the bullseye when writing Theme From the Bottom on foretelling what would eventually cause Satoshi Nakamoto to unleash Bitcoin in 2009 after a second bank bailout socialized the consequences of reckless banking and began an unprecedented era of central bank money printing. After learning the lessons of Gamehendge where Errand Wolfe screamed hatefully at Wilson only to become him, Theme from the Bottom is the true theme that would have liberated the Lizards. It speaks the truth and calls out the tyranny for what it is. When fish have to swim to the surface for food, it is at great risk of being eaten. The Cantillon effect incents people to gamble their savings, lest they see it decay in purchasing power over time.

So toss away stuff you don't need in the end But keep what's important, and know who's your friend

When enough people realize what has happened to our money, it is likely going to be ugly. Not Coventry Festival ugly, more like Curveball. Gresham’s Law suggests that good money will force out bad money. Listen to Trey and Tom here and stack a little bit of bitcoin, stay humble, and know who you can trust if things go sideways.

Encore

Thank you Mr. Miner