Hello, and welcome to 21 and 21. I'm Haley Bercow, and today I'm speaking with Alex Pruden.
Alex is the CEO of Project 11, an applied R&D lab focused on the intersection of quantum
computing and cryptography. He's also the chairman of Alio and previously worked at
Andreessen Horwitz and Coinbase. Before all that, he served in the Army Special Forces.
Alex, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin.
It's great to be here. Thank you.
Of course, and thanks for getting here early before all the quantum fun kicks off.
Early bird gets the worm, right?
Yes.
Cool.
Well, we're just going to try to get through as many questions as we can in 21 minutes.
Ready to go?
Let's do it.
All right.
Let's do it.
So first question.
You've been a VC, a builder, and a soldier.
What sparked your passion in cryptography?
I discovered Bitcoin as a soldier working in the Middle East.
I was introduced to Bitcoin working with the Syrian rebels originally.
And, yeah, and the idea really stuck with me because it is a form Bitcoin and, you know, cryptography generally, but Bitcoin specifically enables you to put your wealth in your head, right?
If you have a brain wallet, you can just memorize your private key and go across the border and start all over.
So that concept for me, just since I was working among people who were refugees from Syria and a conflict, it was really powerful.
And that's what inspired me to get into Bitcoin, which inspired me to get into crypto and then cryptography specifically at Stanford.
And that's just how I've come to love all these like deeply cryptographic technologies like zero knowledge and quantum and stuff.
So very cool.
So can you maybe tell our listeners a little bit more about Project 11 and then the Q-Day clock?
Yeah, sure.
So Project 11, you've said it already, it's an applied lab at the intersection of cryptography, quantum computing.
and I think maybe I'll just say this.
The mission is really future-proofing
and future-building.
So we're not doomsdayers.
I actually think quantum computer
is a great thing for humanity.
We want it to happen,
but we need to prepare for it
and obviously there's a lot of implications
to systems like Bitcoin.
So we need to future-proof those systems
and apply post-quantum cryptography to them.
This applies to a lot of things beyond Bitcoin,
but Bitcoin is our initial focus.
But future-building is kind of the second piece
where we can leverage quantum mechanics
and quantum computing
to build new cryptographic primitives
that I hope get integrated someday
into a future Bitcoin protocol
and just future, you know,
and define the way we communicate
and interact in the future.
So, yeah, so those are the focus.
That's the focus of the company.
Like I said, right now,
we're mainly focused on future proofing
Bitcoin specifically.
So we have our initial product
called Yellow Pages,
which I can talk a little bit more about later,
but that's the high level.
How would you even define
like a future proofed,
like quantum resistant Bitcoin?
Like what does that really even like
mean? Yeah. So Bitcoin is a system based on public key cryptography. And the assumptions underneath
current techniques for public key cryptography are all broken in a world of a quantum computer.
So those schemes all need to get replaced. And what that means for Bitcoin is the underlying
protocol needs to be able to verify new signatures. And so you need to replace the signature scheme
inside the protocol. And then every, I think this is the thing a lot of people miss is every single
wallet, UTXO, holder of Bitcoin has to migrate, right? So you could, you know, the scheme,
the Bitcoin is arguably not secure as long as there's any Bitcoin that is stealable,
quote unquote, or gettable by a quantum computer. I mean, people may argue that point,
but fundamentally, that's what you need to do. You need to fix the underlying system and you
need to get everyone to migrate to the new one. Well, maybe elaborating that on a little bit more
kind of what's one thing that people misunderstand about preparing for the post quantum world?
So I mentioned that everyone has to migrate. And I think that's often one that people misunderstand. I think the other thing that most people, a lot of people misunderstand is I think there's an assumption that we'll see this coming from a long way away and there'll be time to prepare.
and I don't believe that's a good assumption
and I don't believe it's a good assumption
because if you think about
the use cases for a quantum computer
you know the most near term use case
is cryptanalysis
and the most economically profitable way
to apply cryptanalysis
is by breaking Bitcoin
but if you tell everyone
that's what you're doing
obviously you could imagine a world
where some chaos is introduced in the markets
maybe a price goes down
maybe people sell
you know
you accelerate people adopting some defense.
So really you're not incentivized to tell anybody that you have this capability.
I mean, this is even true for governments if they had it and they didn't care about Bitcoin,
that they just cared about listening to each other's emails or reading each other's emails.
The point being is like, if you have this tech capability, you're not incentivized to share it.
And so we may only find out about it after the fact,
which is why I think the attitude of we can wait to see when more developments happen is misguided.
And so I think that to me is a misperception.
Yeah.
Got it. What are you thinking about with the intersection of AI and Bitcoin?
Honestly, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the intersection. I think about
cryptography and Bitcoin being an application of cryptography as being a very valuable counterweight
to AI. I think because cryptography is fundamentally about empowering individuals,
right and like you not your keys not your crypto or your keys only your crypto right
um and if i if you encrypt your messages i can't read them this is very like empowering to
individuals ai is a very powerful tool but i view it as a very centralizing tool i mean it really
only works because it's sucked up the data of the entire internet up to this point and as it gets
better and better it kind of relies on being able to know what you doing and and you know and by By the way like in the hands of a few people I think it can be a very powerful tool of control And that why I think cryptography and Bitcoin is a very important antidote to that in this day and age
Have you vibe coded anything cool?
I have a blog that I have vibe coded.
Yeah.
So and it's fun.
I mean, look, I don't want to like doomsday AI.
I think AI is a powerful technology.
But I think, you know, cryptography is also important.
That's it.
Yeah, I've played with all the tools.
Vibe coding is kind of fun.
working with a bunch of very deeply technical engineers
who focus on cryptography.
If I were them, I would not be worried at all
about being replaced by an AI.
I think it can do front-end things.
It can do simple stuff.
But I think the deep subject matter expertise
and high-stakes scenarios,
I think it's a long way away from being able to do.
So having kind of this passion in cryptography
and this unique path to kind of falling down this rabbit hole,
what narrative really spoke most to you that you think we could maybe like encourage others who are
maybe not bitcoiners but have an interest in cryptography to like either work on bitcoin or
kind of really start thinking more about it i mean maybe unique to me is i would say um that
i mean i'm very passionate about the cryptography and uh but i didn't start out being very technical
I was a Green Beret. I was a soldier. I didn't have a background at all in anything related to math or cryptography. And I got into it. And I think what I have kind of discovered through this process is it's amazing how much you can learn over time and how much knowledge you can build over time and approaching something like Bitcoin with a humble attitude and not pretending like you know everything, but just trying to learn something new every day.
And by the way, Bitcoin isn't a very complicated and complex thing, right?
There are many dimensions to it.
That goes double when you start expanding beyond Bitcoin.
But I think people who want to work on Bitcoin, who maybe are interested in the ideas that
it represents, should be inspired by my story, potentially.
Because I started from zero.
And now I'm contributing in the way that I've described already.
And I think anyone can do what I did.
So I don't know.
How did you even start?
Were you watching YouTube videos, podcasts, books?
Yeah.
That was one of the less technical backgrounds.
I mean, I was kind of just watching YouTube videos.
And then I was fortunate to get to go to Stanford for my MBA.
But I was moonlighting in the computer science school learning cryptography.
And I did what I don't recommend doing this.
But I skipped the basic computer science classes.
I just kind of started straight with cryptography.
But yeah, I just basically, I threw myself in situations that were uncomfortable and forced
myself to learn.
And it was hard.
It took a while.
but you got to start somewhere.
I mean,
it's kind of,
I guess maybe the takeaway is
don't worry about where to start,
start somewhere.
Have you read any recent books
or listened to any articles
or podcasts recently
that have really like blew your mind
or you want to recommend?
Oh yeah.
Well,
so I just finished Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman.
It's a piece of Russian literature
in the 20th century.
It's excellent.
And I guess maybe the intersection
between that book and Bitcoin
is a big theme of that book
is human freedom
and kind of the innate desire
of people to be free.
And I think, you know,
this is obviously very consistent
with stuff that like Alex Gladstein says
from the HRF,
I think Bitcoin is free to money
and Bitcoin empowers you
like because it's a cryptographic tool.
So definitely recommend Life and Fate.
It's, you know,
as you would expect of Russian literature,
it's quite long,
but it's very worth a read.
I'll check it out.
What do you think a world
on the Bitcoin standard
would look like in an ideal way for you?
You know, honestly, I think it would look like
individuals are broadly comfortable managing
and taking care of or being responsible
holders of their own cryptographic key material.
I think, you know,
and this is one of the perennial challenges
with cryptography is this UI problem of,
cryptographic objects and keys are easy to lose and it's hard to manage. I think that's what drives
a lot of people towards centralized solutions, which kind of defeat the point. I think maybe
I'll describe what I don't want to see first. What I don't want to see is the Bitcoin standard is
adopted, but the only way you can send Bitcoin is through some centralized gateway. It's like,
what are we even doing at that point? So I hope that the world, as the Bitcoin standard becomes
a reality, I hope that we retain this self-sovereignty that was just a critical part of why Satoshi
started it all.
And I don't think that can be taken for granted at all.
I mean, if you look at Bitcoin and the majority of holdings, it is not on individual wallets
and most people don't do these basics.
And there's two levels of that.
One is people, I think, need to have more agency and they need to take more ownership
that this is important.
They need to invest in learning and understanding this and understand the stakes.
And two, I think there's a lot of new, cool cryptographic and just technological ways to make that experience easier for people. So I'm hopeful those happen.
Hopeful too. Are there any specific projects in the Bitcoin space that you're excited about right now?
So you mentioned I was...
So aside from P11,
so that's what I spend most of my time on
is focusing on the quantum stuff.
But aside from that,
as I mentioned,
or you mentioned,
I'm the president of the board
for the Alio Foundation
and Alio was a zero-knowledge
cryptography company.
And so there's a lot of interesting stuff
happening with Bitcoin and ZK these days.
So there's BitVM and Citria.
I think it mostly focused around using ZK
to help Bitcoin scalability.
And I think those are both really cool.
Yeah, so ZK on Bitcoin
is something that I think is interesting Maybe in layman terms can you tell our listeners what ZK on Bitcoin is Sure Yeah So I mean first off what zero knowledge cryptography It basically a cryptographic technique to prove a fact without revealing it true and do so in a
synced way. So you can prove a long statement with a short proof. That second piece is really
how this is applied on Bitcoin because Bitcoin blocks a lot of transactions and over time,
the blockchain gets large. And I think there's a desire for clients to be able to sync faster in a
more trustless way without having to rely on a third party. And so you can generate cryptographic
proofs saying like, hey, this series of blocks, all the transactions were correct. And you don't
have to go through and verify all the signatures individually. So really, for the purposes of ZK
on Bitcoin, the takeaway for everyone should be that this helps to compress the chain and make it
more accessible to verify. Thank you for explaining that. No problem.
What do you think the role of stable coins should be?
Well, I think it's naive to assume that there will not be fiat currencies going forward.
I think, you know, fundamentally, we live in a system of sovereign states, governments.
We don't live, you know, that's the world we live in. And I think for a variety of reasons,
those sovereign states and governments will issue their own currencies. So I think it's inevitable
that stable coins will exist. As many fiat currencies as exist, stable coins will exist.
And I think for a lot of reasons, that's a good thing. I think if you look at payments, for example,
the preponderance of people prefer to conduct business in something that has a stable value,
right? And this is kind of a benefit of something like a fiat currency.
but obviously there are drawbacks
which we're all
we're obviously all living through
in an era of inflation
and like M2 money supply increasing
and so this is why I think
something like Bitcoin
is very good
because it's an escape valve
from when those systems get abused
so in short
I see these things as
I mean both of them
stable coins are issued on blockchains
and blockchain technology
is kind of more inherently decentralized
than the banking system
so I think that's great
and I think as instances of cryptocurrencies
I think they balance each other out
in many ways
I think both are important
Do you have any spicy Bitcoin takes?
Ooh, spicy Bitcoin takes.
I think my spiciest take is just,
is that not to take for granted
that price of Bitcoin
equates to success of Bitcoin.
I think, like I said,
and I think, you know,
especially these days,
there's a lot of companies
that are doing treasury strategies
and a lot of big economic actors that have come into the space. And I don't think many of those
people share the values of Satoshi and the early cypherpunks or the values that I think make
this technology unique. And so I think while we can celebrate prices at all-time highs,
and that's great, I think we should not lose sight of the fact that there's still a long way
to go to actually really get Bitcoin adoption, not just in terms of like as an asset class,
but in terms of the values that it represents. And that can't be taken for granted. And I think
it sometimes is. For sure. Speaking about having a long way to go, are there any kind of projects
that you would be excited about seeing other people build to help get to a future you want to see?
Yeah, well, there's always a need for better wallets. I think there's a lot of great opportunity
to, I think, build in newer forms of online identity
into blockchains like Bitcoin.
And so you need to kind of solve
and going back to something I said earlier,
that's a challenge for adoption is UX.
It's always tricky, public key management.
I think there's a lot of interesting approaches
to use, for example, zero-knowledge cryptography
to be able to prove that you're a real person
inside of potentially a transaction on chain,
stuff like that, I think is really cool.
So I think products that help improve the UX for people and help onboard them into, again, like being their own self-sovereign agents in this world is something that I'm really excited about.
Definitely. The UX needs to be easy for people who want to use it. It's definitely improving a lot, but there's still a ways to go.
Yeah, like it's improving a lot. And I think everyone always says this and it sounds like a cop out, but, you know, like the Internet.
was you i think it was the internet was around for 20 years before a browser even existed right
and so um these things take time and it takes a while to understand how people use them and
obviously as as adoption grows and different use cases happen there are new kind of ux needs and
so this is this is not something that happens overnight it's kind of a perennial thing that
has to adapt because people adapt right people change people evolve and so i think that you know
that's why i think it's important to always stay on top of it and not just settle and this is
something actually maybe just as a slightly other spicy take is that this is and by the way what i'm
about to say bitcoin is true of every cryptocurrency the vast majority of intellectual energy goes into
protocol improvements which are very important but going back to the quantum thing like there's this
aspect where users have to migrate right and this is actually a project 11 like the problem that
we're tackling there are people like hunter and the enduro folks that focus on bit 360 and i think
that's all great the protocol has to get adjusted but i think there is this real ux problem emerges
you have to move assets for one or the other. And I think a lot of energy gets paid or a lot of
attention and energy gets put on the protocol level because it's kind of fun to comment on.
And there's like a lot of interesting, cool stuff. But there's a lot of really important
low fruit frankly at the UX level that I think people should pay more attention to Definitely It will be interesting to see kind of different ideas that come up to make that kind of easiest as possible Definitely
Well, you are cruising through these questions. I appreciate it.
Okay. A few more questions. How do you think companies can
best support open source developers and software?
Pay them.
is the easiest answer.
Yeah, I think pay them.
I think, or alternative to paying them directly,
I think they can contribute to nonprofit organizations
that basically incentivize the creation
of this open source software.
You know, and lastly, look, I think blockchains
are kind of an incredible mechanism
to incentivize the development of open source software.
Let me just use zero-knowledge cryptography as an example.
I mean, zero-knowledge cryptography has been around for almost as long as AI. And it was just not practical for 30 years. And many people thought it was never going to be practical. And then there was a cryptocurrency called Zcash, which actually kind of grew out of the Bitcoin community and emphasized privacy. And it used zero-knowledge cryptography.
And that kind of led to an explosion of different protocols and development around these protocols that accelerated to the point where, like I said, you can use like these things are production ready enough to implement in Bitcoin, like do real time proving for identity and all kinds of things. So it's, it's, it's a great, that's, I mean, blockchain technology generally, or like decentralized blockchains are a great way to incentivize open source. But yeah, look, I think the challenge is always the public goods problem. People want the best thing and they don't want to pay for the best thing.
And, you know, that's a good short-term strategy.
It's a bad long-term strategy.
And, you know, I think that's something I would ask companies to remember.
Totally agree.
Someone that works at Spiral.
I'm very pro.
Companies paying open source developers.
Switching gears.
What's something that you learned while you were in the Army Special Forces that shapes how you lead or build today?
Wow.
I guess maybe one thing I learned culturally is that, you know, I've been all over the world.
I've been to Afghanistan.
I've been to Iraq.
I've been to Turkey.
I've trained a bunch of other places.
I've worked with Syrians.
And people aren't that different from each other world over.
I mean, it's easy, I think, if you just watch the news and be like, you know, it's like
Muslims or Jews and Christians and Americans and French or Russians and South Africans.
You know, it's easy to like figure out these, you know, in group out groups in your head. But I think when you get down and you have a conversation like we're having, it's it's there's far more that unites us than divides us. And I think that's one of the reasons why I think something like crypto and Bitcoin is so universal, because I think it's empowering in a way that all people find valuable.
And, you know, I think, frankly, many people outside of the U.S., even more so than within it, see the value proposition for that self-sovereignty that I was describing earlier. But yeah, that's something that I took away that I'm very happy for my army career to have given me was this appreciation for people, even in like the mountains of Afghanistan who don't even know what a computer looks like. They kind of want the same things as everybody else, like people down the street from me in Montana. So.
So it's very interesting.
Yes, Bitcoin is very cool
that it is such a universal currency
and something that can connect us all.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Okay, last question.
Okay.
If you could leave our listeners
with a single thought about Bitcoin,
what would it be?
Celebrate its successes,
but don't underestimate the task ahead.
There's no guarantee
that the success to date guarantees
that this will be something in the future.
And that success will be guaranteed by people's continued contributions.
To use an analogy for like the army, right?
Like it's kind of, I think there's a quote, like liberty is maintained through the blood
of patriots kind of thing.
It's like kind of this way people try and convince you to join the army.
But similarly to open source software and Bitcoin in particular, like the work is never
done.
It always continues.
And I think this is why it's important that for people that feel passionate about it, to not be afraid to contribute and not be afraid to contribute in any way they can to the discussion, to the technical parts, to both, to learn to do one or the other.
And not just be a user.
Back to the open source software thing.
Yeah, companies should pay, I think, open source developers.
But look, people also have to want to contribute.
They have to pay in the sense of like, this is a community effort.
There's not a Bitcoin company, right?
we are all the Bitcoin company. And there's the same public goods risk that everyone just phones
it in, takes it for granted. And then suddenly we're in that bad world that I described earlier,
where like, yeah, Bitcoin exists, but like you can only access through your bank account. And
then what are we doing? Right. And that has to be fought for. And so that's the thought I would
leave everyone with. It's a great lasting thought. So if our listeners want to learn more about you,
follow along with what you're doing, what should they do, where should they go?
Yeah. So X is kind of where you just find me. I'm on Noster, but I haven't posted as much there. So I'd say X. apruden08 is my handle. Project11.com is our website. And there's a blog there. So I've authored some stuff there. And the personal blog that I'm in the process of vibe coding is sadly not live yet.
But it is going to be called Homo Universalis.
I have bought the domain name, Homo Universalis.xyz.
So maybe someday people can go there and there will be something.
But anyway, X probably is the best place to start a prudent zero-eight.
Well, keep a lookout for your Vibe Coded website.
Great.
Thank you so much for hopping on the show.
I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at Presidio Bitcoin and the Quantum Bitcoin Summit.
Thanks so much.
It was really fun.
Of course.
Thank you.