Welcome to 21 and 21. I'm Haley Burko, and today I'm speaking with Matt Pines.
Matt is the Executive Director of the Bitcoin Policy Institute and a geopolitics and national security expert who applies a decade plus of experience to shaping U.S. Bitcoin policy.
Matt, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin.
It's great to be here. My first time, great vibes.
First time, but hopefully not the last time.
Well, thank you for taking the time to jump on the show. And we're just going to get right into it.
Let's do it.
Okay. First question for you. So you've had a somewhat unconventional path into the Bitcoin world. What made you shift your focus to Bitcoin?
A few things. The first is my professional background, I feel like it made it inevitable that I would bring a combination of academic background in physics and philosophy, thinking about big questions and connecting them to public policy, which is what I did my master's in.
and then helping the government think about kind of a tail risk,
sort of low probability, high consequence scenarios,
you know, extended into cyber and geopolitics.
While I had a personal interest in Bitcoin,
I want to sort of think about the future of Bitcoin.
I couldn't help but look at it through the lens of my academic policy
and professional background.
And it seemed like a sort of a natural fit.
And then David Zell DMed me during the pandemic
because I had written some random threads to nobody on Twitter
asking me if I would like to convert some of those threads into a, you know, white paper
for this made up think tank they were starting. And I figured, what the heck, I'll try it. And so
that was the start of my sort of journey into Bitcoin professionally as a national security
fellow for BPI when it first got started. And it's just been ever since kind of attracted me
more and more and more until, you know, just early this year, I decided to sort of do the
full pivot and become executive director, where I feel like that's where I can have the most
leverage. If the US government is going to be pivoting, which it seems to be in a pro-Bitcoin
direction, how to ensure that it steers in the right direction and mitigates any potential risks
while maximizes the upside for both America and Bitcoin itself. So this is the time to kind of go
all in. Definitely is the time. And so you're in DC for a lot of our listeners here, me who's in
San Francisco. Can you tell us a little bit about what the Bitcoin scene is like in DC these days?
It's small, but growing.
I would say growing up in D.C.,
which is where I was born in Silver Spring, Maryland.
So I've been around the D.C. area.
But before I got involved in Bitcoin,
it was not a Bitcoin city.
I think there has been keepers of the flame
in terms of the Bitcoin meetups.
And there's a strong contingent of folks
that show up to those.
But I'd say relative to San Francisco or New York
or Austin or Nashville,
it's definitely, it's got some room to grow.
I'm excited by the energy that has been
come out of the woodwork since the beginning of the year, really. And I'm really hoping that BPI
can form as like a locus for some of these kind of cultural and community efforts in partnership
with PubKey over the course of the rest of the year. So I think the vibes are growing. I think
definitely, you know, DC is a deal-making town. There's a lot of lobbyists, a lot of people in
there that are transplants. So you kind of have to suss everyone out. You know, what's their
intentions? What are their motives? Are they Bitcoiners? Are they just sort of bandwagoning?
so that's that's a part of dc and it's a different culture than i think other other cities
but there is a there is a core bitcoin uh flame that is growing i love seeing the flame growing
and yes i'm excited to see what pup key does uh yeah i mean from our side it definitely we've seen
interest and attendance growing from the bpi summit i i haven't attended but um that's great
that that's getting bigger. What do you think is resonating most with people?
Well, I say to first order, right? The president has explicitly declared Bitcoin as a strategic
asset for the United States government, signing an executive order, creating a strategic Bitcoin
reserve, and going around and saying he wants America to be the Bitcoin superpower. So that's
just rhetoric coming out of the commander in chief, sitting in the White House has an effect
on everyone in DC that wouldn't normally pay attention to Bitcoin. Now they have to, right?
whether their views are formed and whether they're positive or negative. I think that's now
sort of the shaping process that's underway. But I think we're seeing kind of a dramatic
sort of tone shift, but also an Overton window shift in the types of policy conversations
that we can have with very serious people across the government. Folks from the national security
community, folks from the Department of State, folks from the Treasury, folks from energy and EPA,
across the board, folks at the White House. And on both sides of the aisle, there's a new set of
conversations that are now being had about Bitcoin at a very serious level. And so that's very
positive. I think that's sort of, you know, that spark has been lit. Obviously, there's risk here.
It's a very political town. And so the question of how much of these policy conversations get
tied into politics is sort of, you know, the work that we're trying to help do to separate out the
sort of long-term analysis of Bitcoin and the strategic national interest versus, you know,
the partisan politics that drives the news cycle. Do you have any advice to Bitcoiners on how they
they can best communicate with policymakers or local government representatives?
Be authentic. In fact, we did a sort of first of its kind Bitcoin day on the hill on the day after
our Bitcoin policy summit. And we were really overwhelmed. We had about 120 Bitcoiners. These
were just, you know, everyday Bitcoiners who decided to come to this event, put on a suit,
and we organized essentially a series of structured meetings with almost half of the Senate
and about 60 or so House offices.
And in fact, I think there were more Democratic offices.
And it was a decent training.
We sort of said, this is polite.
Here are some talking points.
We want everyone to sort of resonate on the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act
to sort of make sure that non-custodial tool developers are protected,
try to get that into the clarity bill.
But really, everyone had their own approach.
And it was about constituents speaking to their representatives
and saying, I use Bitcoin.
I think Bitcoin is good.
I think you represent me
and I want you to protect Bitcoin
and to ensure that my interests
as a constituent of yours
are represented in DC.
And that's for everyone
to kind of take on their own shoulders
and just give your representative a call
or show up to their offices.
It's an open democracy.
And I think it was such a successful event.
We're probably gonna do another one
maybe later this year,
TBD on that But it seemed like such a high ROI event to actually have Bitcoiners from the district that are not lobbyists They not here representing a company or some special
interest. They're just everyday people saying that Bitcoin is important. And I think politicians,
especially the representatives, they listen. And that resonates differently than a suit walking
the door with a, give me something. That's great advice. It's definitely a team effort from everyone,
But thank you for all the work that you're doing local.
So what do you think a world on the Bitcoin standard should look like?
Should look like?
In your opinion.
Well, that's not a one minute answer.
I think there's some core principles of Bitcoin that I think our society would do well to adopt,
which is a sense of self-sovereignty, responsibility, integrity, openness, transparency, honesty.
and technical rigor, right? So building on a foundation that is open to all, that's inspectable
by everyone, that ensures a level playing field. There's no in-group, there's no special interests,
there's no insiders, there's no cleristry at the top that's dictating rules that everyone else has
to follow. And it's a consent that's given and that's adopted by the whole community.
And so I think about it more from a philosophical lens of how to construct
political orders that are stable and legitimate as we enter an age of digital disruption.
I think the economic model, as our overall society and civilization goes through these
technological shifts, the acceleration of AI, robotics, advanced manufacturing,
combination of that with the sort of rewriting of the social contract, that's going to inject
a huge amount of uncertainty and stability. And what comes out on the other end and what role
Bitcoin will play, I have no forecast, but I think the principles of Bitcoin are going to be
critical to ensure that we maintain kind of a pluralistic, decentralized structure. We don't
fall into sort of techno-authoritarianism or techno-totalitarianism. We sort of default to,
you know, the Borg, right? The hive mind that controls us and that dictates our whims and
desires. I think Bitcoin represents an ethos of pushing power to the edges as much as you can
and creating a stack of society that's built on as much as you can, energy, compute, money,
and free expression, right?
And it's like, that's the sovereign stack
that as much as we can push
into the hands of every individual
and family and, you know,
pure organized social group,
the more we're going to have, I think,
something like democracy
and civil society flourish
throughout whatever disruptions come next.
So you're here
for the Quantum Bitcoin Summit.
I've heard you mention
potential risks of quantum computing
to Bitcoin.
From a policy standpoint,
What kind of government or institutional response do you think is needed?
Is this urgent?
I don't think there's an immediate response needed by the government in terms of like a law passed or a rule made or regulation.
I think that's definitely premature.
I think we are seeing a development of the technology underlying quantum computing take a certain direction,
which means that every stakeholder in Bitcoin or around Bitcoin has to pay attention and has to
start considering these questions in a deliberate fashion. That's why I'm here today to sort of
learn from the community, get a sort of a vibe check of where people are on one,
the perception of the threat, the timeline of the threat, the way the threat might manifest
and what the potential impacts could be, how catastrophic they are, and then what then are
the distribution of mitigation options that we should consider in terms of software proposals,
different addresses that we can move to hourglass sorts of you know sort of buying buying us some
time or sort of other more radical propositions we're still i think um very early days and sort
of canvassing the set of possible solutions and in my view i think you know bitcoin and bitcoin
developers need to have this conversation internally first the government of course is
going to pay increasingly close attention to this as they have a street bitcoin reserve potentially
maybe they even get more Bitcoin. But from another perspective, the US government is developing and
probably has some of the most advanced quantum computers on the planet. So the threat that
Bitcoin is and Bitcoiners are trying to mitigate, the US government probably has better insight into
the nature and timeline of the threat than almost any other entity on the planet. And so this is
going to set up a kind of a tension, right, between the inherent kind of suspicion inside the Bitcoin
community for the US government as an actor and a set of actors that are both the political
side, which may not be pro-Bitcoin, but also like the quote, you know, deep state side, the folks,
you know, in these three-letter agencies. And I don't think there's going to be a clear path
that's going to be laid out immediately. It's about taking it one step at a time,
being very deliberate and thoughtful, but also like looking ahead, right? If we do this,
then what happens? And thinking about the distribution of scenarios. And so that's why
I'm here to kind of suss out like, what's the sense of these different possible scenarios? I
have in my mind, you know, different possibilities, but there's inherent uncertainty here. But at the
timeline of the technology, the nature of how it might manifest in terms of the small number of
threat actors that you could model in terms of their intentions and capabilities to leverage a
thought-tolerant quantum computer. And so it's a very complicated topic. It's very fraught with
both detailed fundamental physics and engineering and speculative assessments of how fast that might
progress, when you might trip the threshold, or having a feasible attack on an
on a on ecdsa and then what are the different trade-offs associated with different mitigation
strategies damison lop has his proposal um and i think this is about max matching both the
technical conversation the analysis the geopolitical kind of conversation in terms of as
bitcoin becomes a geopolitical asset it's going to pull in governments into this conversation
and then these more ethical or philosophical trade-offs what are the core commitments we have
to bitcoin what what might we have to give up in order to make certain mitigation decisions
in terms of burning old coins or locking them up or putting time locks, etc.
These are going to be inherent challenges to some basic principles that everyone thinks are core to Bitcoin.
So there's no easy answer and there's no ruler from on high who's going to dictate it.
It has to form out of these conversations.
So this is why I'm happy to be here.
We should have some really interesting conversations the next day and a half.
And hopefully we all have a lot to share after that But it great that we all getting together and like such a diverse group of people and these conversations are needed as you mentioned
So do you have any book recommendations
you've recently read that have been interesting?
Ooh, book recommendations.
Okay.
It could be podcasts or movies too.
Yeah.
Yeah. Global Discord is a great one by Paul Tucker. He was the number two at the Bank of England. And it's a kind of a technical book, philosophical book, but it is sort of written from inside the house of Bitcoiners sort of stipulated enemy. Right. But he's a very thoughtful guy, very, very smart, very intellectual.
and it basically gives a critique of his peers, critique of the global central banking community
and kind of the political order that it was premised on.
This kind of 20th century model of top-down technocratic governance
that they viewed as being very successful, kind of presiding over an era of global peace,
financial integration, globalization, relatively low inflation after the 70s.
And that imbued these modern-day high priests with a sense of maybe undeserved confidence
and maybe the sense of specialness as a tribe
governing the rest of society
and viewing money as like their thing that they own,
that they sort of let society use.
In fact, central bankers often refer to it
as central bank money.
It's like our, it's our money.
We reserve the right to control how you use it or not.
And so he really points a very strong light
at this sort of, this tension now
that exists both between democracy and central banks
as well as the geopolitical order unraveling
and putting a lot of tension on central banks
being independent.
And geopolitical progress and national strategic interests come into play and oftentimes central banks get subsumed.
And so we're talking and I think there was an article today about a letter that Trump had drafted, you know, that he was waving around in the Louisville office.
That was apparently a letter that would fire, you know, Jerome Powell.
And so these are live questions now we're seeing society kind of grapple with.
But he wrote this great book to kind of diagnose it.
I'll check it out.
How are you thinking about the intersection of Bitcoin and AI?
So there's many different, I think, components of the intersection. I mean, the most obvious one we're seeing right now in the market is at the infrastructure level, the energy system, the grid system, where you're seeing Bitcoin miners sell to AI companies or become AI companies or stand up HPC subsidiaries or side businesses.
and there's a even more potential integration as you have these big training runs or large compute
clusters that have a differential power demand profile you can sort of put bitcoin in as a kind
of a load balancer kind of one be a bit more efficient with use of energy but also maybe help
optimize the use of that that power so that's like practical right happening right now there's a much
larger maybe more speculative near future scenario where you have autonomous agents potentially even
running economically viable businesses on their own. And what are they going to use to transact
and save the earnings that they have from conducting these autonomous economic activities
cross-border, essentially transnational? And if they can't hold bank accounts, it's going to be
difficult for them to set up the normal sorts of infrastructure of a C-Corp or an LLC. And so the
natural inclination would be to say, well, they might use a combination of stablecoins and Bitcoin.
A bit more hypothetical, but I think the end state is going to be driven by these dynamics. And I think Bitcoin will be increasingly important to how we think about a digital economy that's riding on a compute infrastructure that's the foundation of modern civilization.
and countries are going to have to decide
what's their sort of national policy
for building this sort of sovereign stack.
Their sovereign energy layer,
their compute layer,
their AI layer,
and their money layer.
And ultimately, I think countries
are going to want to be as sovereign as possible.
But I think that desire
is going to be fractal throughout society.
And it's not just going to be for individuals,
it's going to be for these economic agents
that are going to make increasingly
what would look like
economically rational decisions.
And I think even a smart AI would be like,
well, maybe I don't want to hold
long-term treasuries. It doesn't seem like a great
place for me to store my wealth.
So that's going to be a fascinating development.
But I think, yeah, Bitcoin and AI are going to be
two core drivers. And
the last point is they're both on
these hockey sticks.
And so AI is on this hockey stick, and Bitcoin
I think is also on this hockey stick. And it looks
kind of like the hockey sticks might line up in the next few years.
And so those interdependencies
and that dynamic
between those two accelerating phenomenon
is going to be very important to look at.
That's a lot of what BPAT is going to be focused on as well.
It definitely feels like a hockey stick for sure, especially AI.
Things are happening so quick.
There's so much more you can do now.
And yeah, it will be really exciting to see.
Do you have any dream projects that you would love to see Bitcoiners build?
Ooh, one thing I think the market's lacking is a large, well-capitalized,
ideally, you know, publicly listed sort of all-in-one Bitcoin services company that had,
you know, everything from trading to custody to inheritance, tax planning, insurance, right? So
imagine you took all the kind of great Bitcoin companies that we kind of know and love, and
they're building really good verticals in different areas. My ideal would be to have like one-stop
shopping where I could just be like, this is the greatest, this is the Bitcoin company. And it sort
rivals you know the publicly listed um equities right now um but there isn't really a a a you know
household name bitcoin publicly listed um you know all-in-one financial services company i think
we're on that trajectory i think it'd be exciting to see in the next year or two whether something
like that can take shape but just like speaking selfishly like i would want that right instead of
having like account here to do this and another you know these are all great companies right but
eventually it would be nice to have at least
and then have some competition, right?
Have them kind of build something.
So that I think is part of the institutionalization
and just more consumer friendliness of Bitcoin
that I think it needs to catch up to.
Maybe we can get some vibe-coded prototypes on this idea.
Yeah, that's the other convergence of AI and Bitcoin.
People can just start building stuff.
You can just start building stuff.
So shout out to the listeners
if anyone wants to get started building on this a couple more questions so I have to ask you do you have any spicy bitcoin takes oh spicy bitcoin takes um i think uh china has more bitcoin than america
right now which is a problem if you're you know someone sitting inside dc yeah i think china
probably has i guess close to 200 000 bitcoin and i think we probably have depends if if you
count Biffinex, but I think we probably have closer to 40.
Wow.
Yeah.
Quite a big difference.
And the Bitcoin that's maybe not kind of that 40 is Bitcoin that's held by other government
agencies.
We'll see if they put it into the Street Bitcoin Reserve, though.
We'll see.
As they're told.
Yeah.
One more optimistic note.
What gives you hope now for Bitcoin's future?
I just think, well, it's a bit cynical, right? But I think you get the call from your mom or your aunt and they say, oh, I just bought some Ibit, right? And you're like, that's not exactly what, not exactly Bitcoin. But I feel like that is the gateway. And their cost basis and their sort of unit bias is the share price of the ETF.
Now, that's not the best way to kind of, you know, get someone into Bitcoin, but it's probably going to be the way people come into Bitcoin now.
And so I think I'm optimistic that that is the largest funnel we've ever had to pull people into Bitcoin, to have them ask questions about it.
Because once they have it in their portfolio, then they have some skin in the game.
And now they want to understand what this thing is.
And most, you know, humans are, you know, limited creatures.
We have only so much time in the day to spend to like, like dig into something, right?
And Bitcoiners are sort of self-selected to be curious about either the philosophy of political order and a changing digital society or the nature of money or cryptography or game theory or computer science.
And so we have some sort of reason to care about Bitcoin that usually brought us in.
And then we're like, oh, this is the greatest thing ever invented.
Like, I'm going to like obsess about it.
Most people are not like that.
Most people come in because they have a bit of financial exposure to it.
And then they have to learn.
And so we're in this moment, I think, where more people are having exposure to Bitcoin and have skin in the game than have ever had it.
So that's an exciting opportunity for education.
Right. So I'm very hopeful.
Like there are now going to be millions more people with like open ears that are going to be curious to learn about Bitcoin.
And I think Bitcoiners now have this obligation to meet them where they are, to come with education materials, provide that easy on ramp that doesn't assume all the shibboleths, that isn't speaking in coded language or, you know, kind of the in-group canon.
but like is digestible
and it's like an easy way
to get people to understand
what this thing is
and why it's important.
It's definitely education is hard
and it is hard too
when you've been in space for a while
to kind of go back to like
where you were at
at the very beginning
and maybe how your Bitcoin
educational journey
could have been improved.
Yeah, I mean,
I think there was a whole batch
of Bitcoiners who created
in the pandemic
and they were just on Clubhouse
listening to Twitter spaces
or listening to Clubhouse spaces
and then now it's Twitter spaces.
Those are maybe not the best didactic tools. I think some of them were great, but like, you know, they're shouting fast or people in there that are just making stuff up and, you know, you challenge ideas, but you learn, you know, that's one way, but that's probably not the most efficient way to get, you know, a million people to like understand what this thing is. And so developing digestible content and making it resonate with people that, you know, come from a very different place than most Bitcoiners would be very important.
Totally. Last question. You could leave our listeners with a single thought about Bitcoin or anything else. What would it be?
reality is malleable.
I think one of the lessons
I've taken over the past year
is just how one contingent
like world historical events are
and how much like individual agency
can do to shape the developments there.
Like there are thousands of different
little micro movements that happen
in the world on any given day.
And like more people than I think
recognize the fact that they might be
in a position to shift some of those moments.
and those can have dramatic outcomes.
I think Bitcoin, the community that I've kind of,
you know, plugged into the last few years
is remarkably small in terms of like
the degree of close-knitness
and just the number of people involved.
And yet that community of pretty small people
is actually having like world historical effects, I think.
I think this moment in time
is one of high agency and high leverage.
But it's like recognizing that you have that
and then picking your spots,
not being overconfident,
but also not shying away from the moment
that might present it to you.
And I think Bitcoiners are now in this tussle where like, ooh, the government likes Bitcoin, but I'm suspicious of that. And it's right to be suspicious, but also it's an opportunity because the government is, at least in the United States, nominally by and for the people.
And so if you use your voice and actually engage, you can actually put your hands on the gears and be like, this is actually the direction that we could all push in. And it doesn't take a whole lot to actually push things in the right direction, at least from your perspective.
And so, yeah, just this power of agency is the most thing.
I mean, I was maybe a late awakener to that idea.
I was, you know, doing the grind consulting, you know, hustling out PowerPoint decks and realizing that the average CEO is just going to do their own thing regardless, right?
I'm just a hired gun.
And so realizing you can just not do that.
You can be like, okay, well, that's not where I'm having the most high impact.
I'm going to do something where I can have the most high impact.
So find that thing you can have the highest impact and just go do it.
that's fantastic advice well thank you so much for joining the show if our listeners want to
learn more about you or anything you would suggest that they read or follow anything you
want to shout what should they do yeah we'll follow our work um at uh you know btc policy.org
um we're a 501c3 non-profit we've got um a great team 10 full-time staff 20 23 24 fellows now we're
always looking for new fellows that have a willingness to to lend their expertise and to
write white papers or contribute to to research or or education on Capitol Hill. So, you know,
we're just a think tank that produces, you know, jibber jabber about Bitcoin to try to,
you know, change hearts and minds inside D.C. So if that appeals to you, like support or engage.
Fantastic. Well, thanks for coming on again. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your time at
Presidio Bitcoin and the Quantum Bitcoin Summit and have a great time in San Francisco.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
Thank you.