Kyle, welcome to Presidio Bitcoin and 21 and 21.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Excited to be here and just this week.
Like this will be a great week here for you guys and excited to be a part of it.
Yeah.
For those of you that don't know Kyle, he's the principal design director at Block.
He's leading project to make Bitcoin everyday money.
He's been at Block for a long time and has eight plus years at the company.
He's helped shape branding, marketing, and product design and held leadership roles such as head of brand creative at Cash App.
I've seen his talent firsthand.
He's been kind enough to help us on the spiral side.
My team helped us with design and branding, including our super sweet logo.
Yeah, happy to be here and just love the agenda and the programming for the week.
Well, it's about to get started, so let's get to it.
Cool.
It's my first question for you.
So yes, you're here for Bitcoin Design Week. Can you tell our listeners more about what you plan to talk about today?
Yeah, definitely. My talk is about the state of Bitcoin brand creative.
I think in the time since Bitcoin's origin, like there's been a few different chapters of how things have looked and a lot of good work.
but I think there's room for diversification
in how things look
and like more visual interest
as we bring the next like 96% of people
on the planet into this universe.
So just gonna share some of the cash app highlights
from my time there on Bitcoin projects
and talk about our approach a bit.
I'm very much inspired by artists,
how they work and how they live, honestly.
So we'll be injecting some of that into it as well.
I'm excited.
Awesome.
So as a designer, like what got you originally interested in Bitcoin to begin with?
Good question.
I was working in Chicago at a few financial institutions as a contractor doing essentially like, I guess it was kind of a fusion of product design and brand design at the time.
This is kind of 2012, 2013-ish.
And I'd started to hear about Bitcoin in the background and just started to witness.
I was getting into like trusts and like setting up family offices and designing for that and kind of getting a peek behind the curtain of the 1%.
and just formed my own opinions that like I wasn't super interested in that world and like
continuing to serve them. So it was kind of a perfect storm of getting a taste of that and
also finding something that could be a more fair and like balanced solution. I was immediately
hooked and you know here we are now um well i get that so one of the themes of design week is
designing future money what does that kind of mean and how do how can we think about that compared to
what we have now yeah designing future money i love the phrase it's very like conjures up like
so many thoughts i think for me i get more into the like great we have a new reserve how do we
how do we make the layer two on top of that like work for everyone historically like i was talking
about with the the one percenters the family offices like they have all these very specialized
tax optimization folks on their teams that are,
it's like an army of financial people
optimizing everything for them.
I think something like Bitcoin mixed with open source,
it's like you can set up something like that for everyone
and like financial savviness can be had by all.
It doesn't need to be an elite thing
run by an army of operators.
So that's like the high level abstract.
Yeah. I have a deeper cut, though.
You have a deeper cut? Oh, yeah. Let's go deep.
I think money could fade into the background a little bit more.
I don't know. I've always been intrigued by more local economies, circular economies, and measure of labor.
But I think if Bitcoin really, or something like it, really, we nail it, I think it can move money.
out of the forefront of people's minds.
Like this is generation over generation,
like long time out,
but maybe we don't have to think about it as much
and we can focus on the tasks at hand
and the trades can be automated in the background
and the labor can be captured.
There's something really utopian
that I can't quite articulate yet
that I'm pretty excited about.
Is there something that like you think we can do
on the design side to help make money not so?
So the forefront of our minds.
So stressful.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's, we're kind of just getting started.
Like as a currency, Bitcoin is so young.
I think we're pushing in all the right ways, having things like this design week and all the boot camps and like sprint projects.
Like it's great.
I think eventually we might have to, I don't know,
like learn from that financial realm of financial advice
and like how to layer some of that into this
on top of the currency but I think we can figure that out Yeah Well I know that you fascinated with Bitcoin and kind of the intersection with the arts Like maybe that this kind of cultural side can help
Absolutely.
Money feel less stressful, more fun.
Yeah.
My observation with artists is
I always like to talk about
how there's two paths in history.
There's kind of the oral and written history
that's captured and
edited and perfected
ends up on Wikipedia
or kind of in the written dialogue
and then there's the
artist version of history
that takes, you know, it's not as actively
captured, it takes a few years to get
validated and put through the
collector system but
I don't know
since the early times
of religion, like art
has been a big piece of history as well
and kind of
an easier way for people to experience history.
And I think artists now,
because of the times we're living in,
it used to be just encode beauty
or like paint from the scene.
And now it's very different.
There's a lot of complex things happening,
like Bitcoin and all the communication things happening.
So artists are encoding societal dialogues
in really fascinating ways
that are layered, complex,
but stimulating and hard hitting.
Yeah.
Very cool.
And you told me that one project in particular
that you think is cool is SatShip?
Yeah.
I'm kind of a,
I know this is a little bit spicy,
but anything in the like Ordinal, SatShip,
like all the things happening around
the asset behind the money,
I think it's really interesting.
um authenticity provenance like a lot of those things end up being transferred from generation
to generation in addition to money and like sometimes outweigh the money and value so
mapping actual physical goods to a shared global system of value is is pretty fascinating to me i
know there are a lot of like projects heating up in this space i don't i don't have a particular
favorite but i'm just super optimistic about that realm um well kind of leaning on spicy hot takes
i know that you have a lot of thoughts on kind of the sats first bitcoin discussion and for
listeners that don't know there's kind of discussions going around on how we best display
the fractions of bitcoin which is currently mostly in sats um but there's people who want
to change that denomination to just be Bitcoin.
Yeah.
I think my initial reaction to it,
I was a little like,
whoa, don't change anything.
This is like the holy book.
Like, come on.
After like processing a bit more,
talking to some folks in the community,
I've come around to the system.
I just, I get really,
the designer in me gets very kind of OCD about logic.
So if there's any pieces of the change
that seem confusing or, I don't know, room for interpretation.
I like to just button that all up.
So I don't know if anyone else is in this camp.
I'm kind of in the camp of let's preserve some of the original history
as we make this transition and let's create a symbol
in addition to just the BTC ticker
that can be a shorthand in interface design
and in brand design
that specifically indicates original whole coin.
I know we might not need that in the next 96%,
but I think it'll just make the logic a lot easier
and the interface design cleaner.
Yeah, it sounds like harmless and innocent,
but I think those are big things.
Totally.
And I just love like,
The whole system, like everyone having dialogues about this and like working through it together.
It's a really, as a designer, like I observe a lot of the technical conversations and it's like a little over my head sometimes.
But I trust that everyone's like figuring out the right thing.
This is one that I've been a little closer to and pretty impressed with just everyone's pretty open and working through it.
Yeah.
It's definitely like a big change.
I mean, maybe, you know, 96% of the population doesn't know what a SAT is.
But, I mean, there's been a lot of people who have been in the Bitcoin space for a while that definitely do know what it is.
And so it's shifting.
But I think what influenced me is like Bitcoin has such a big network effect, the name, the brand.
And so we want to bring people to use Bitcoin as everyday money.
Yeah.
Just leaning into that can really help.
Absolutely.
and I kind of think of the
I'm sure we all have these conversations of like
I'm too late like it's too late
like just making
that more accessible breaking that unit
down making it approachable
I think that's going to be a net win in the
long term and I don't
know maybe maybe there's like
a separate schedule of
the having that we need to
like
in my mind I was like this is kind of a
it's not the same but it's like a stock split
maybe we need to have a term for this if we need to execute it again
in 10 or 12 years like that could very much be an option based on some of the
speculation of where this all goes so I just like the logic to be very sound and
the system to be buttoned up in case we need to repeat it I agree it makes sense shifting the conversation for a sec one question I was gonna to ask you earlier but then you already told me it was I was going to ask you if you a cats or dogs person
Oh, yeah. Cats all the way.
We actually love senior cats.
We rescue senior cats, and we know a lot about Persians.
So we love the cats.
Hello to Reggie.
Is Reggie your cat?
Yeah, we got Reggie.
We got Ronald.
and um oh my gosh no that's two we have two right now two right now yeah yeah but sometimes you have
more we love them yeah i love that uh another non-bitcoiny question is are there any like
designers or thinkers that kind of have influenced how you approach design yeah
um so many i'm very very much a product of my environment i think uh
an early helper of mine that kind of opened my my mind to like a very concept first approach
design and art uh was a friend in chicago steve juris he he's worked on all sorts of
government brand projects and worked on the obama campaign he's he's very sharp and he's very
across many mediums but he's always like brought a concept first approach to every project and
every aspect of his life um a lot of a lot of healthy dialogues with him uh yeah i think he's
he's a big kind of early and ongoing mentor that i check in with from time to time really respect
yeah i've talked to a lot of designers this week which has been fun since we normally have a lot of
engineer technical folks uh in the office um and a couple of them have really mentioned this fact
of like being influenced by our environment
and just being observant
has really been something that I've enjoyed hearing
and just, yeah, I would love your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I think like I'm coming from being on site
with like customer research last week.
Like part of being a good designer
is being a good observer.
It informs your taste.
It informs like the context of which you're empathetic
to making decisions in design work.
and it also just informs your happiness like i'm i'm very happy when i'm in spaces that stimulate me
i'm very happy when they're beautiful and like not classically beautiful like beauty beauty can be
very personal and uh yeah that's kind of the job of designers and artists is to help help translate
that, bring it to projects and observation is such a huge part of that.
Well, this is why I like this week and just the Bitcoin design community in general is
so important that, you know, everyone has their strength and the ecosystem and what
we're trying to build, but encouraging, you know, developers, you know, marketers, everybody
to like work together with design, I think can really bring a product, you know, to the
people much better.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it takes a village on all fronts. The team I'm starting to work with a lot more at Block, or a few teams rather, we have kind of an ecosystem around this. It's like so many specialized roles and experts that just help rally around a good core need and bring design in at the right time. So, yeah.
it's a good time to bring design into bitcoin uh one of our missions at presidio bitcoin is to try
to bit bridge this gap between bitcoin and silicon valley like how can we get designers in silicon
valley more excited about bitcoin either maybe just on the side everyone you know has their job
they need to make a living or working on it full time yeah i think about that a lot um
it's a lot of bitcoin like even i at the start like i come from a family my dad's a
retired software engineer um like i have some technical chops but i'm just not as deep like
i've listened to a few of these podcasts and a few of them i'm like whoa okay i'm i'm in the deep
end i love it i gotta like get on this level i think democratizing and like translating information
will help that but uh for me it's about bringing bringing kind of an artist lens into the into the
fold um artists are always if they're if they're succeeding or trying to they have to self-sustain
and they're they're kind of a perfect candidate to like stimulate us and talk about aesthetics
and concepts but also separately the way they live their lives and like self-fund and have to
work with institutions and galleries.
Like, there's a lot
to be learned there and they're just really fun
to hang out with.
Designers are fun, but
artists are the most fun.
We love
having fun.
Do you see Bitcoin
itself as an art?
Oh,
I like that question a lot.
I see it as
utility that can enable art yeah there's something beautiful about it but i still
feel like romantic in me wants to be like yes but uh i think it needs to play a utility role and empower art yeah maybe if we can do a better job at telling that side that would get artists and designers more excited about working on it
Agreed.
A few more minutes.
Do you have any dream projects that you would love to see
either a designer or a developer or anyone in the Bitcoin space build?
I think a Bitcoin forward art gallery would be really cool.
like just on a small local level
zooming out to something bigger
I think at least in the US market
there's a lot of room for
improvement in how Bitcoin travels
in the philanthropy realm
like this is a very specific technical thing
but when you
when you use some of the services
where
you can
you can bring Bitcoin into a charitable giving account
you have to go through like a
appraiser and get your Bitcoin appraised.
And it's just kind of a random law firm that will charge way too much money to authenticate
your Bitcoin.
And it's very goofy.
So we should, we should create a better, that might need some policy change too.
I don't know.
I don't know exactly what's involved in that, but it's a little goofy and felt like friction.
Yeah.
That definitely, yeah.
Want to minimize friction.
Yeah.
It felt like the old fiat world kind of grabbing.
Yeah, we definitely don't want to bring the old fiat world into the Bitcoin sphere.
We're better than that.
I guess kind of going back to your role at Block when you're really focused on making Bitcoin everyday money.
How do you think that like we can get that to happen?
Yeah, I think it's bringing it out of the reserve space.
and like, you know, we have a lot of brands and businesses that block.
We've got mining, we've got the storage wallet.
We have Cash App and Square.
I think it's like working on more products and services
in that side of the world where we can get it into like the everyday space.
so I'm pretty confident
we can get there
and use some of the layer 2
projects that we've been investing in
shouts out to
Spiral on LDK
but I
I think I'll
leave that to Block to talk about
in some of our releases
we're going to do some stuff today
which I'm nervous to present
because my deck sucks and I know that you
probably have a very good one, I'm not a designer
but
the copy is good.
Yeah.
Of just like
different ways
that we can get people
in the community
non-block
to kind of help,
you know,
onboard their local merchants
to accepting Bitcoin.
Maybe fun,
creative ways
we can get people
like excited about Bitcoin
to use it as money.
Absolutely.
I think incentivizing
with like,
like giveaways
or special nights.
Like I think about
some of my favorite spots
in my neighborhood
back home.
Like,
we have this great
sourdough pizza joint that I love and he's a he's a square seller it's like and he loves we we connect
about um cars I like cars and the history of automotive and he he hosts like cars and coffee
type events and like pizza nights and it's like oh we could we could slide the bitcoin topic into
that and like I think event event-based activations where there's there's room for dialogue and
education and uh exploring the topic a bit more are always always a hit in like early adoption
cycles totally also i didn't know you were a cars and they're in san francisco i don't know if you
know the motoring club but there is specifically a cars and coffee place there's also a designer
here who's very into cars and coffee too josh gotta meet josh yeah um i'll connect you yeah
Okay. Last quick question. Then we get to design week. If you could leave our listeners with like a final thought about Bitcoin or something else, what would it be?
ooh final thought
I think if you're involved
keep it up
you're doing a great job
if you're not
it might seem like this weird
unapproachable
I'm more speaking to like
some of the creatives
and artists out there
it might be a little
scary or intimidating
but start small
get involved
read the white paper
like start very small
get into it
Try out a wallet.
Like, ask someone you know who's into it.
Just learn about the space and learn about some of the implications of where this is all coming from globally.
And I don't know.
I think it's going to be interesting just seeing that 4% start to tick up and go higher.
So get involved would be the advice.
Perfect advice.
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, for coming to San Francisco,
and for coming to Design Week.
It's so fun to have you.
Yeah, excited to be here.
Thanks for having me.
We'll report back.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Oh, one thing.
If our listeners want to follow your work
or contact you,
where should they go?
Noster, I've had one internet screen name
my whole life.
It's Kyle Loves You.
I'm very optimistic.
It's spelt goofy
because I chose my screen name in middle school.
K-Y-L-E-L-U-V-S-E-W.
love it perfect okay thank you so much awesome thanks hayley