Kyle, welcome to the 21 and 21 show.
Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Yeah, well you hit like perfect day for those of you that are listening, not watching.
You should watch because the view is incredible right now.
Absolutely perfect day outside the window here in Percibi Bitcoin.
Yes, and we just were able to adjust the cameras and the lighting so you can really see the bridge.
There we go.
Yes, yes. So lucky for you. You're the first guest with the perfect view.
Vivid HD.
Yes. Well, for those of you that don't know Kyle Olney, he's a longtime product leader in tech turned Bitcoin advocate who's now focused on protecting the right to self-custody. He helped launch Save Our Wallets, a coalition pushing for Section 109 of the Clarity Act, and is also behind the new Satoshi Needs You campaign, a national call to action for anyone who believes in keeping Bitcoin open and permissionless.
and for those of you who have been watching,
we have had this Save Our Wallets hat
on the table for a little bit.
Yeah, you guys have been great champions of Save Our Wallets
since we got it started at the beginning of the year.
I really appreciate that
and yeah, Presidio Bitcoin has been very supportive
of the initiative and everything that's going on
so I couldn't be happier to be here talking about it today.
Of course, yes.
Matt Corral gave me that hat at the conference in Vegas
and I have done my duty to support the cause,
him and you by representing. Thank you. I appreciate it. Of course. Well, let's get into it.
Kyle, can you just tell us a little bit about your journey from tech into Bitcoin and kind of
what led you to do this advocacy work? Yeah, I'll try to keep it brief, but this is actually a
roundtrip story for me. So I actually started my career seizing banks for the U.S. government
during the financial crisis in 08-09.
And I had a technical background.
I had never actually been involved in software.
Naturally, when this happened,
it kind of led me in the direction of Bitcoin.
And so I became a very early advocate,
political activist on behalf of Bitcoin
and sort of the opportunity that presented
for normal people to take back control of their money.
And then because the industry was so young
and I wasn't a developer,
there was really no way to actually get involved in the industry for the first, I don't know, 10 years or so.
And then more recently, after a decade plus of having been involved in Silicon Valley startups,
I kind of decided to circle back and have made Bitcoin the core focus of my
time and energy for the last couple of years here as it's kind of started coming into the mainstream politically.
Very cool. And so right now, kind of like, what's your biggest focus that you're working on?
Well, yeah. So as we mentioned, the big focus is Save Our Wallets and then this Satoshi Needs You campaign that we just kicked off a couple weeks ago. So as many people are probably aware, the US government is talking about how to implement market structure regulation for the first time in 15 or 16 years since Bitcoin was created.
and having been a part of the government
and then also having been an entrepreneur
for the better part of the last decade,
it was very obvious to me
how important this moment was
to get involved and to get everybody
aware of what was going on.
I mean, historically,
I think Bitcoiners tend to be a bit allergic
to engagement with the government,
but whether or not you take an interest in politics,
politics will take an interest in you.
And so what I've been trying to do
and what we have been trying to do with the campaign
is just bring a lot more awareness to how important this moment is for Bitcoiners all over both the United States and then the world.
And then also just kind of like how critical the regulatory regime will be in terms of our ability to use Bitcoin
the way that we've used it for the last 15 or 16 years on a day-to-day basis.
So I'm spending a lot of time and energy on that because it's so consequential about the types of businesses that can exist,
the types of businesses that I would want to participate in
and all the kind of inevitable things that come along with that.
Yes, there's, well, appreciate all the work that you've been doing.
So saveourwallets.org, that launched in like April or May, right?
Yeah, we launched it in April right before the Bitcoin Vegas.
Okay. And then kind of what was the whole mission behind that?
Yeah. So, I mean, again, the situation here is that the U.S. government
is debating what is going to be legal and not legal
about how we use this technology officially, right,
in the United States.
And a lot of the discussion that was going on,
both over previous years,
but then in particular leading into this year,
I found very concerning
because there was discussion about
potentially shutting down our ability to transact freely
on a peer-to-peer basis
between just normal users in the network.
and instead needing to have those transactions
intermediated in some capacity
through a centralized institution
that either had licenses
or was government-sanctioned.
And for anybody who's been involved in Bitcoin
for any amount of time,
obviously that will make the hair stand up
on the back of your neck
and kind of be a scary and concerning thing.
And so really the idea behind Save Our Wallets
was like getting people actively aware and then involved in the political process to,
you know, help make sure that the U.S. government lands these regulations in the right place,
where, you know, our ability to transact freely between one another,
the ability to have peer-to-peer transactions ultimately does not get trampled on.
And this is all kind of part of the Clarity Act?
Yes. So this is very complicated how this has actually worked. But originally,
there was a standalone bill called the BRCA, the Blockchain Regulatory
Certainty Act. And this is the original thing that we got involved
with Save Our Wallets to promote. But then
the BRCA was incorporated into the Clarity Act, which
is also known as the market structure legislation.
And now there's, and this was all in the House, and then in the
Senate they debating their own version of the bill which is not called the Clarity Act at least at this point It called the RFIA And then eventually once the Senate votes on their version of the market structure
rules, then there will be a conference bill where both of the bills have to come back together from
the House and the Senate, and they'll have to join the language and figure out what a final
conference bill is that can be voted on from the entire Congress. So unfortunately, that's made our
our task of keeping people aware of, you know, what they need to follow and exactly how to be
involved much more complicated than it otherwise should have been. But yeah, generally, most people
would understand what we're trying to advocate for as either the Clarity Act or the market structure
legislation that's in front of Congress right now. Got it. And so is that like the main goal? Is that
to like tweak wording or is it to like eliminate it completely? Like what's the ideal outcome?
Yeah, well, the ideal outcome is that we get the BRCA language that was in the standalone bill incorporated into whatever final version of the bill gets voted on by Congress.
And the reason for that is because the BRCA language would make it 100% clear and sort of codified in U.S. law that if you are a developer of open source, non-custodial software technologies, i.e. most people who are trying to build Bitcoin wallets and useful Bitcoin tools,
that you are not a money transmitter
and that you do not need to get licensed
by the government before you build
or distribute your applications.
And this would basically prevent
or have eliminated what we just saw
with the DOJ prosecutions
that happened over the summer
of the Samurai Wallet
and Tornado Cash developers.
So, yeah, again,
the sort of ideal outcome here
is that we get this language included
in whatever market structure bill
the Congress ends up voting on
at the end of the year, hopefully.
But we've also, with the Satoshi Needs You campaign,
we've started trying to message to everybody
the sense of urgency around the fact
that this is kind of a Schrodingerian bill, right?
Which is that if the language that we need is included,
we as Bitcoiners should support it
and try to get this codified into law.
But if these BRCA provisions are not included
in the final bill and they get stripped out
through the conference committee process,
that's actually a much worse outcome
for everybody in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
And so we should then flip to trying to kill the bill
because having no law would be better than having bad law.
I see.
What are kind of like the biggest misconceptions
that you're hearing from people in D.C.?
Yeah, there are many.
well
the community and then DC are maybe different
questions so I'd say maybe the biggest
misconception among the Bitcoin community
is that we've already won
or that you know didn't we
elect all these guys in order to get
you know the regulations that
we wanted or that we expected
and a lot of people have just tuned out
and that's actually it couldn't be further
from the truth you know that's
actually a scary you know sort of
you know laziness
we'll say that, you know, your average Bitcoiner who doesn't pay attention to politics, who doesn't
care about it, tends to have. And so one of the main things we're trying to just disabuse people
of that notion. In Congress, it's kind of an interesting flip in both directions. So on the
one hand, they understand how important this industry is. But on the other, they largely respond
to lobbyist sort of interests in Washington, D.C. and kind of like the loudest voices that
they're hearing from, which tend to be the people who are paying the most amount of money to get the
message across. And as we all know, in the Bitcoin community, we don't have a CEO, we don't have a
centralized company, there is no marketing team. And so we kind of don't really have the strongest
voice in Washington, DC right now relative to a lot of the other interests that are, you know,
either more centralized or more on the token issuing side of the fence. And so at the moment,
a lot of those guys tend to be driving the conversation and what Congress perceives as
the kind of rational Overton window
that they should be legislating within.
And so I'd say, like, again, here,
the objective with Save Our Wallets
and, you know, the Satoshi
Needs You campaign is that
we're really trying to educate everybody
about, you know, what actually
needs to happen in order for the Bitcoin
we know and love to continue to
exist in the way that it has existed
for the last 15 years.
Is there something like, like, is this like
Bitcoin only that
is, or are there other like
the broader crypto ecosystem, does this also affect them too?
Yeah, absolutely. This affects everybody who touches blockchains. So the market structure
legislation is meant to kind of be this comprehensive package of rules and laws in
order to define the crypto industry at large, right? So there's a lot more in the market
structure bills that relates to tokens, token issuance, how you qualify as a centralized versus
is a decentralized project, all these sorts of things, which largely, you know, we could probably
live with or without, frankly, in the Bitcoin community. But the BRCA provisions of the Clarity
Act are the thing that are critical, like must have from a Bitcoin community perspective. And,
you know, these are the things that, you know, again, are kind of make or break the value of this
bill if you're a Bitcoiner. And this mainly just affect, like, does this affect exchanges
and custodians or really just more on the self-custody side?
All of the above, technically. It would definitely affect everybody who's involved in the industry.
But to the extent that there are already centralized marketplaces that are following
rules and have licenses and everything like that, mostly this wouldn't affect their business.
So really what this would do is it would change, you know, the smaller projects and
decentralized offerings and things of that nature.
These are the people who would be most affected by the bill.
Right because there just be like such a high barrier to entry to even like operate Yeah I mean it kind of a regulatory capture opportunity for everybody who already a large player in the market right If they can get rules implemented that make it harder for upstart competitors to move in and offer competing services then you know they get to pull up the ladder and enjoy the spoils
So this is also a reason why I think everybody who's on the side of, you know, startups and the little guy and disruptive technology, you know, breaking into the industry, like, should care about what's going on with these rules and the legislation in Congress, because it will determine the playing field and the fairness of the playing field for everybody.
For sure.
Well, have we seen any positive shifts since launching SaveOurWallets.org?
Yeah, well, I mean, absolutely.
The beginning of the year, we were smooth sailing, right?
I mean, we had the BRCA bill was a bipartisan bill.
It was supported on both sides of the aisle.
And then the Clarity Act that passed through the House was also bipartisan.
And I think it got roughly half of the Democratic caucus or something to that effect.
You know, there's a broad support generally.
So we were on a great track.
But then kind of the DOJ prosecutions in the middle of the summer and kind of the latest squabbling back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans over what's going on with the Trump family token interests has, I think, kind of been a storm cloud that has moved in over the last couple of months.
So we had a lot of progress.
And I want to encourage people like we are as Bitcoiners, I think, probably the strongest political coalition in the United States today.
Like we determine the outcome of the last election and the direction of the Congress.
So we have an immense amount of political capital, but we actually have to be in the arena using that political capital in order to accomplish what it is we hope to accomplish.
and so I think the you know kind of uh call to action here for everybody who's if you're a
bitcoiner if you're listening to this if you can hear the sound of my voice uh you know all you
need to do is pick up the phone and call your senators and congresspeople and let them know
that this is important to you uh and that there will be a consequence if they don't support uh
the brca provisions and I have every confidence that we can prevail in this fight but uh the
biggest opponent that we have is apathy, right? It's people just, you know, assuming that they
don't need to get involved or that politics is messy. And, you know, that's something that I
don't participate in. As I said before, I'm, you know, kind of eternal, well, what I said before
was, you know, that politics will take an interest in you, even if you don't take an interest in
politics. But as our founding fathers, you know, have kind of told us and handed down the wisdom,
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, right? So as Bitcoiners, we just cannot ever
you know drop our guard we have to always be vigilant and you know follow the good old
commandment that we got from Satoshi to don't trust but verify.
Well yes it's easy to pick up the phone so I hope people do and you have even listed like
you know exact words that you can say right on on the website yes it makes it easy.
Yeah absolutely on the website saveourwaltz.org you can go and type in your zip code we'll give
you all of the contact information for your congresspeople, the regional field offices,
the phone numbers.
We'll even give you a form letter generator so that you can copy and paste that if you
want to send an email.
Although I will say that a phone call is much more important just because it's a lot harder
to spoof.
And yeah, you can also sign up for updates.
And if you do that, we'll send out periodic updates, letting people know when important
things are happening in the legislative process and when to get involved in order to really
make the most difference.
Got it.
And then, so there's this Satoshi Needs You campaign with this kind of powerful image and text.
What is the story behind it?
Yeah, well, Satoshi Needs You, as I mentioned, was kind of an idea that came out of the concern that we had over the summer about the DOJ prosecutions and kind of the direction that they were heading.
I won't get too deeply into, you know, kind of those specific prosecutions.
But needless to say, the point was just that we felt the shift in tone in Washington and the need to get Bitcoiners much more actively involved in the legislative process than they were being up until the summer.
And so the Satoshi Needs You campaign came together as a collaboration between the Bitcoin Design Foundation and a couple of leading policy organizations, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Coin Center.
and now we've expanded out to all of the regional meetups
and kind of like affinity groups
that we can find around the country.
So, you know, PubKey and Procedo Bitcoin
and Bitcoin Park and Nashville and Austin,
all of these groups were trying to get this visual campaign
out on the streets in places where, you know,
Bitcoiners congregate so that everybody is exposed to it
and is aware of what's going on.
I think even here in San Francisco,
where we have a lot of people who are deeply involved in the industry and are developers
themselves, I'd say about 80% of the people were unaware that the government was actively
prosecuting open source software developers over the summer. And, you know, a similar
percentage of people had no idea how to even get involved or, you know, how to direct their
energy toward getting to a better conclusion. So again, the idea of generating this image
was that this was, you know, kind of based on the Uncle Sam silhouette. It's got kind
of a sticky memetic, you know, kind of a call to action and, you know, sense of patriotism
that we were hoping to invoke in everybody who's a Bitcoiner. And yeah, again, the idea
is that, you know, Satoshi needs you, like, you know, this network is not going to be
able to defend itself. You know, we need everybody to get in the arena and actually make their
voices heard. And if we do, again, I think we can absolutely be successful. So it's really,
again, just a question of getting actively involved in the process.
Well, it's a fun image. We have it framed up in Presidio Bitcoin. So thank you for the art.
Well, in kind of like shifting to like a positive note, does anything about,
has anything with the experience with this kind of campaign and kind of cross effort giving you hope about Bitcoin future Yeah absolutely I mean I been here for so long in the community I constantly shocked and surprised by how far we come in a very small amount of time I mean it really only been 15 years right
I mean, that's kind of like a blink of an eye, really, in the grand scheme of things for us to have come as far as we have. And I'd say that, you know, this campaign and everything really about the organizing effort has been a great example of kind of the power and also the challenges of being a decentralized community. Right.
As I mentioned, this has kind of been, it started as a passion project.
Like, you know, there is no corporate sponsor for Save Our Wallets or, you know, the Satoshi
Needs You campaign.
This is all just being done out of love and kind of self-starting energy from the people
who have been involved in it.
And the collaboration among, you know, the Bitcoin Design Foundation and the policy organizations
and all the regional hubs.
It's been awesome to like actually be able to like stitch these together and connect
the dots.
So I would say, yeah, for me, it's been very encouraging about what we can accomplish together as Bitcoiners when we stop focusing on being individuals and we focus a little bit more on being a community where we're helping one another and contributing collective resources to mutual objectives.
yes it is definitely like it does give a sense of hope when this type of collaboration happens
that's very organic and it's not like you know a corporate kind of force thing yeah which isn't to
say that you know the corporations aren't good uh in bitcoin as well companies help yeah well i mean
i'd say the first thing is if i'll actually expand it a little bit outside of companies and just say
anybody right if you have a podcast like this one or you have a newsletter or any kind of a megaphone
that you can help use to distribute the message,
that is the most helpful thing right now.
Again, the reason that the campaign was started
and is kind of operating aside from corporate sponsorship
is because we didn't want anybody to have weird feelings
about supporting this campaign.
But that being said, if you are an organization
who has resources to dedicate in-kind contributions
to either distribute this message to, you know,
your people that you have in your network
or even to finance the creation of the posters
and the stickers and the flyers
that we're now distributing all around the country
and all of these sorts of things
would be immensely helpful.
So, you know, yeah, I would say that
that's probably the two most important ways.
And then if you happen to be in the very niche group
where like you are a large corporation
that's generating a lot of money
and you have policy people
and you have a presence in Washington
DC, obviously getting involved in the actual legislative process to help make sure that
we get the BRCA provisions, you know, voted into law.
That is like, you know, the absolute top of the pyramid, right?
So in terms of value.
So I'd say that those are probably the main options for people to get involved.
Well, kind of like running out of time here just to like close that thought.
So like if there's a company or, you know, whatever the individual, where should they
go to contact?
How should they get involved?
Is there like a group, an email?
Yeah, we've got a Twitter account that's up,
Save Our Wallets, but it's with one L.
I will say there was a squatter on the normal one
and we weren't able to get it, which is unfortunate.
You're the squatter listening to this podcast right now.
Yeah, make an in-kind contribution
and give us the double L Twitter account.
But yeah, seriously, the other things that you can do
is, you know, I guess reach out to me directly.
I don't have like an actual
Save Our Wallets website
where I have an email address
but I'm Kyle Olney on Twitter
at Kyle Olney on Twitter
and then yeah I guess
I can also be reached at
kyle at escapevelocitypartners.com
so I'd say those are probably
the two best places to reach out
for the moment
but you're giving me a better idea
I should probably have a better place
for people to go and chase me around
if they don't already know me
yes i mean you can vibe code something you could get a domain yeah yeah well we have the domain but
i i should set up contact emails at the domain is what i should really do yes or you can make like a
well i guess only really bitcoiners use discord but some sort of community group i don't know if
that would be helpful or not for people to join or if that just adds discord groups yeah people
love discord right yeah i mean like bitcoiners love do the do politicians love discord i don't
definitely not i don't know if that's the right thing for politicians i think that's probably the
next thing i'm gonna try to ban if i were to guess email distro might be better yeah i think an email
distro is better uh but yeah just getting involved in sharing the campaign online and and spreading
the word i think is like really the primary ask that we have for people at this point if you are
one of the people who is lucky enough to be in a position where you could you know make a financial
donation, I would love to talk to you. But that's not really the primary ask that I have at this
point. The primary ask is get involved, help make the change, be the change that you want to see
in the US government and, you know, kind of like the Bitcoin ecosystem writ large. And together,
you know, we'll be able to prosper in the future as a collective group, as long as we maintain the
right to transact freely on a peer to peer basis with one another and, you know, kind of fulfill
the vision or the ideal of the white paper
that Satoshi gave us all those years ago.
Well, that ends the episode on a great final note.
Well, thank you for coming on the podcast.
If you're in San Francisco or the Bay Area,
you should come to some of our meetups
at Presidio Bitcoin.
Kyle is at many of them.
So you can also say hello to either of us then.
Yeah, it would be great to see more people
at Presidio Bitcoin.
It's beautiful.
You can't quite see the full view out this window, but you want to come just for the
view.
Yes.
And it is SF summer right now.
So it's really the best time to be here.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's a gorgeous time of year.
Don't come in July.
That's the worst time to come.
You want to come in October.
Perfect.
Well, thank you so much.
Yeah.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah.
Cool.