If you're watching this video, you're going to learn three big things.
Number one, why Bitcoin isn't just an investment.
It's freedom money.
Freedom money.
Number two, why spending sats matters.
Number three, the basics of Bitcoin privacy.
Yeah, today's guest is Seth for privacy.
He's the COO of Cake Wallet.
He's teaching us about self-custody and privacy for the everyday man.
So if you're brand new to Bitcoin, come on inside the world's biggest Bitcoin welcome center for today's show.
Welcome to Sat Chats, the Bitcoin podcast where we chat about sats.
Sats are the smallest part of a Bitcoin the same way pennies are the smallest part of a dollar.
With Sat Chats, we are building the world's biggest Bitcoin welcome center to serve as your gateway to Generacionale de Huerta.
So if you are brand new to Bitcoin, we want to chat about sats with you for real.
Head to satshats.com to grab your slot in the studio today.
I'm your host, Stuart.
And I'm your co-host, Anna Bevan.
And with us today in the actual studio is 179 Seth.
Woo!
Very exciting.
It's been like a couple weeks since we've had an in-studio person.
Seth, say something out loud in person.
I'm glad this worked out.
I had no idea this would be an option to do in person, but I went to book it and saw y'all were relatively close by and I said, yeah, let's do this.
These are always so much more fun.
I mean, you get to have more of a vibe.
Yeah, more of a vibe, more of a rapport back and forth.
So I'm looking forward to it.
Yes.
And you're the first guest for season three of Sat Chats.
Whoa.
I'm honored.
That is amazing.
Episode 200, right?
Yep.
That's how that works out.
Episode number 200.
Help us celebrate season three, okay?
Subscribe.
You'll get this silver Satoshi coin when you do, all right?
Now, Seth, take us back to when you were a brand new Bitcoiner.
And actually, what I want to hear is, when was the first time you actually heard the word Bitcoin?
so for first time hearing about bitcoin we got to go back to 2011 so pretty early on yeah not
obviously right out of the gate or i wasn't on the mailing list i'm not that cool um but yeah back
in 2011 i actually i didn't know anybody that was into bitcoin um i just had a gaming computer i had
free electricity and i said what can i do with this uh the two options were mine bitcoin or do
folding at home which i don't know if you'll ever heard of that but it's like a it's like a way that
you can use compute power it sounds like it you're folding proteins to theoretically help cure like
cancer and other diseases oh so you picked bitcoin over curing cancer no i picked curing cancer oh i
don't know if i helped anyone yo anna bevan just looked bad right then y'all we're about to
you thought we're gonna clip that up and put it on the internet she's gonna be the new tyra
So this is going to be like, oh, my God, the way she treated Seth in the third season was it really didn't age well.
She's starting off with a bank.
Yeah.
Getting it out of there.
Yeah.
So, no, I cured cancer instead of mine.
Excellent.
Hot, hot, hot.
Yeah, to my own detriment because six years then went by before I ever thought about Bitcoin again.
Oh, wow.
Now, let's pause for a minute because if you had chosen the mining route in 2011 and had run for six years, I mean, that would have been wild because it was still 50 Bitcoin per block in 2011, correct?
I mean, maybe you would have run out of processing power before that six-year moment, but you still would have had some Bitcoin.
yeah i mean these were the days when you mined with gpus so originally it was cpus just the
regular processor that's in any device then was gpus which would be like a gaming computer gaming
laptop which was that was about when i was looking into it um but it did switch to being asic mined
2013 2014 so probably i only would have had those two years but knowing me i deep dive really hard
into stuff if i get started so if i had started mining it i know that would have been my like my
entry and start on my Bitcoin journey. Obviously, I wish I had. I didn't. Ended up in 2017.
What made you be even just like cursorily curious in it, though? Because when I first heard about
Bitcoin, it was in 2017. And the director of marketing for the custom software development
company that I worked for, he like came over to my desk and he was like, dude, let me show you
this right like look at it it's going like this and i'm like dude i'm trying to get rich transitioning
from inside sales to outside sales i ain't got time for whatever you're saying wrecked myself
so when i first heard about it i it wasn't even interesting at all but you were interested enough
to maybe even consider it what elements of it were even interesting yeah i think like i wish
i remembered exactly where i had found it because i know a lot of people are like oh it was this
slash dot article or something that cued me into it i don't really remember i think it was just that
i was looking for like what can you do with a gpu like what can i do i have free electricity i have
a gpu what can i do with it and at that point bitcoin was one of the few things you could do
no other cryptocurrencies at that time which there are now obviously you could mine that way
um so i think just that honestly and and the same is true of later on in 2017 which we'll get to
There was no part of me that was like, this is a huge revolution in money.
This is something that's going to fix a broken reserve system.
Like none of that.
I won't pretend that I had any kind of philosophical bent towards it or saw something special in it.
Really just saw like I like tech.
I'm a tech enthusiast to heart and have been for since I was a kid.
So I just saw this as something interesting but then decided holding it home seemed like a better thing to do and did that and moved on with my life.
Folding it home.
no one i've told that to knows what that was which i i thought it was pretty well known but
no and it's not laundry it's not it's not the only one that i knew of in terms of like hey
give us your spare computer resources was i think it was seti i believe that was the actual like app
that you would use to do it but i think folding at home was the general like the concept of what
the thing was that you were doing well that sounds correct like that sounds familiar i thought
S-E-T-I, SETI, or SETI,
it was like, give us your computer power
and we'll use it to search for alien life.
It was like, you send your computer power
to help the satellite dishes process all the incoming...
Weird.
What kind of worlds were you guys in?
That was not even remotely anything on the radar.
Yeah.
For me.
What was on your radar in 2011, Abes?
Um, trying to get a job.
Trying to get a job.
I had a job.
So I had that, I had that down.
No, I, I didn't have a job yet.
I like was going to graduate from college.
I, yeah.
Just selfishly interested in her own employment.
Could have been curing cancer.
Golly.
Instead trying to get a job.
Dude, this episode is not a good look on AB over here.
Yeah, sorry.
It's just not a good day.
Here Seth and I are fearlessly devoting our computer resources toward normal causes.
You're finding aliens.
Exactly.
We didn't actually find any aliens.
I don't think we didn't cure cancer either.
Clearly.
You know what?
But we contributed.
We contributed.
We tried.
So now we fast forward to 2017.
Does it come back into your life because of that whole frothy market moment?
Yeah.
it was it was honestly so at the time i was in my first like real job out of college finally had
some money so starting to think about like what am i what am i doing long-term investments 401k
all that fun stuff um and it was right around the time of the the contentious fork the user
activated software called the craziness of of that time around segwit uh and just a co-worker
was like hey this cool thing called bitcoin you can buy some supposedly it's going to go way up
after this fork and uh just speculating on it really just as a penny stock like there was no
still there was no like idea of this solve something that we need but rather like it's
kind of a pain to like go out and find a certain stock and buy that stock and manage it and but
there's this cool thing that's bitcoin and it's kind of a technology so so we'll take a stab at
that uh and that was honestly just what started it for me was it seemed like a cool thing to start
looking into and start buying just purely for the number go up aspects, the kind of penny stock,
not viewing it as a valuable thing, but as just a kind of a get rich quick scheme, honestly. And
that's how most people get in for better or worse. When did it shift for you?
It took a while, honestly. It probably took me six or nine months for it to really kind of click
that there was something more there. Part of that was just like many other people.
When you see Bitcoin as a penny stock, you see other things that are cheaper,
other things that you can get more of for the same amount of dollars.
Stupid things like VeChain and Tron and just garbage that was popular at that time.
And I think once you fall down that rabbit hole and realize that the vast majority of the other
stuff is just a complete scam, you start to realize like, okay, but why has Bitcoin been
here for so long? Like this stuff's not going to be around long term. Why has Bitcoin been around
so long and survived and seemingly thrived since 2009? And that combined with actually me getting
into Monero, which is a privacy preserving cryptocurrency that has really similar like
anonymous founder roots to Bitcoin, but it's very privacy centric and you can mine it at home easily.
You couldn't mine Bitcoin at home easily back then specifically. And I did want to get back
into mining. So I started mining Monero and it will come back to Bitcoin. I promise I started
mining Monero and that community is like, they're very hardcore, very cypherpunk, very focused on
like these, these things are tools for human freedom. They're not just an investment. They're
not just a speculative asset. There's something that actually we need for a free and flourishing
society long-term. And that was the first time anyone had ever talked to me about Bitcoin,
about Monero, about any of these things in that way. Like I didn't have the deep Bitcoin or friend
And I had never listened to a Bitcoin podcast.
I don't think I would have even thought of doing that back then, honestly.
And it was that moment that I started saying like, oh, like there's there's something else here.
Like it's not just something I can invest in and make some more money for myself or let me retire earlier or set up a nest egg for my kids or whatever.
It was like there's actually a technological benefit here, too, alongside the money and that those two things are deeply intertwined.
And as a tech enthusiast, that's when I really started diving into, okay, like how does Bitcoin work?
How does mining Bitcoin work?
What does the privacy look like?
Because at that point, like I said, I'd started getting into Monero and starting to think more about privacy more generally.
And that really is what started the journey for me.
That's when it clicked like, oh, Bitcoin is actually freedom money and is actually fixing a much bigger, much more pervasive set of issues than me, random white guy with a good job wanting to save up and have more money at the end of the day.
That's really kind of the most tertiary thing that Bitcoin does.
And there's much more crucial things that it does.
So that's really what clicked for me.
But like I said, it took probably six or nine months after I started buying Bitcoin to realize what it really was, what it could really mean for me, but really for others.
What were the emotions around that time where you're like, oh, shoot, this is like, this is bigger than just number go up.
How did that feel to kind of have that realization hit you?
Hmm. I think like many awakenings, a little painful because you start to have this realization,
like it feels like the blinders kind of fall off your eyes and you see the brokenness. Like to see
something as a necessary tool, you have to see that something's broken. You need the tool to
fix something. And I think that's a lot of what is harder for us to see here in the US,
in the West generally, like if you talk to most people here, there is almost no perceived need for
Bitcoin. Like y'all are doing a great job trying to change that, trying to show people why you need
Bitcoin. But the average person in America, they don't feel like something is broken. Maybe they
feel like inflation is hurting them, or maybe they feel like things are getting more expensive.
But there's not this perceived need of like, I need something to fix this now. And that tool
actually exists um i actually think they do think that something's broken but the solution is a
better version of the broken thing or to hustle culture their way out of you know like i'll just
have a full-time job and do uber eats and other you know potential online items you know what i
mean a lot of feet going out on the internet these days right so you know i can see i can see what you saying where I do think a lot of people either feel directly or indirectly that something not quite right
But I can also understand what you're saying, which is like there isn't, you know, whether you have a vague awareness of like, hey, like everything's getting more expensive all the time.
I don't know if we have the same level of acute pain as, you know, the Zimbabwe hyperinflation moment or the Weimar Republic hyperinflation moment.
But but like when I'm trying to talk to people, it's like, hey, look, guys, if inflation through money printing and these historical examples got super, super bad, then you can walk that all the way back to any amount of that being not good.
I mean, it's like going to the doctor and saying, hey, I think 98.6 degrees is the correct temperature for my body.
Like, yeah, but it would be a little bit better if we could be at 100.1.
Like, we don't want to be at 100.5 or 99.5.
We just want to run a slight fever inside your body just to kind of maybe kill some germs and bacteria before they can really.
It's like, dude, what?
That can't be right.
But I kind of saw I saw you do this to where maybe are you thinking some of that business is OK?
I think I won't necessarily say that it is OK.
I think the bigger the bigger problem than necessarily inflation being harmful and this opening up a whole can of worms is that a central entity with no direct oversight by people choosing how the economy as a whole will function, how inflation rates will work, how interest rates will work.
That to me is the thing that's much more harmful.
I think, and maybe this is too big of a topic to get into today, but I think the deflationary nature of Bitcoin would have its own issues if it was the currency that we had.
It has an inverse set of negative effects that can happen as well.
But I think the bigger problem for me and the beautiful thing that Bitcoin solves is there is no central entity that gets to change things.
You can plan long term.
This is exactly what's going to happen with Bitcoin supply, with Bitcoin's inflation rate or deflation rate.
And you have a lot more stability and trust based on that.
And you remove the core problems with Cantillian effects within the normal economy where if you get to buddy up to the Federal Reserve or you get to buddy up to your central bank, you can get benefits that no one else can get.
And they can build perverse incentives into the system that benefit them.
I think those things like the centralized and controlled and broken nature of the entities themselves are a bigger problem than necessarily inflation itself.
But those things always go hand in hand because the biggest lever that they have is inflation.
Like there are other things that they can shift, but the easiest thing they can do is just money, rent or go burr.
Like that's the simple answer for them.
So when you say, hey, there are some inverse negative effects of Bitcoin that may be too much to get into, let's actually get into them.
But let's try to explain to Hank and Lorraine, our brand new Bitcoiners in the audience, in common terms, what those are.
Right. Like, cause, cause I don't know what they are. I am a toxic maxi off of this show. I go to
the meetup here in Raleigh. I'm like Bitcoin. You know what I mean? Even when we like turn off the
record. Yeah. He's still going. Still going. 100%. Yes. Yes. So, so, so what do you mean? Like,
why wouldn't it be okay for the world to adopt a Bitcoin standard in our lifetime?
I mean, it wouldn't necessarily be bad. I think it's just, we kind of extrapolate a lot of things
as Bitcoiners and just assume that the inverse of what's broken is the solution. And I think when
it comes to money and economies, they're much more complex than a lot of times we give them credit
for. I think an example of that, and I'll kind of caveat all of this with, I don't think that
there will ever be a Bitcoin standard. I don't think hyper-Bitcoinization will ever happen.
Like I'm maybe not, I'm not the kind of stereotypical Bitcoin maximalist. So a lot of
my thinking circles around that. I don't think that will ever happen anyways. So I'm not really
too worried about this, honestly. But if we're talking like Bitcoin becomes the standard, we do
away with the dollar. Deflation sounds really nice until you actually think about what the second and
third order effects of that are, which are, I mean, the primary downside of a deflationary currency
is that you benefit by not spending. If you're able to save and spend less, you will benefit over
the long run. But the problem is when everyone is incentivized not to spend, businesses die,
the economy struggles and suffers and could die as well, essentially, because if you choose to
make that decision of I am going to spend, you're choosing to suffer down the road versus spend now.
Now, inflation causes the opposite problem, where if you're going to save, you're actually penalized
for saving in dollars versus spending right now. So both have core issues, but they're really like
two sides of the same coin in my view where the the inflation is problematic the deflation would
also be problematic if it was a like the currency but the main benefit that bitcoin would still have
in that scenario is you know exactly what the deflation or inflation is going to be right now
we're probably already deflationary in bitcoin because of how low the inflation rate is and how
many coins are lost every year um but that predictability is very important and and would
would offset some of those downsides but i think it's not necessarily as rosy of a concept in
reality when things played out i'm not an economist though like that's not can we just have
like if there's inflation just perfectly zero percent inflation inflation that's what we need
is left and right yeah inflation just like shakespeare over here bitcoin is inflationary
it's not inflationary not deflationary it's inflationary all right inflation at home is the
new computer program that we're all going to be running with our spare power now what about i mean
i'm gonna have to spend on my existence i gotta buy groceries i gotta buy gasoline
i want to go to the movies i feel like if i flipped over to bitcoin yes i would probably spend less
on junk that's stupid i don't need but i would probably continue to live a non-zero amount of
life that would ensure some money gets you know into the economy right but like the times that we
would buy something dumb or the times where we might eat out when we literally have food going
bad in the fridge i feel like i don't feel like everyone's spending would dry up to nothing i feel
like it might um achieve its right size if i'm spending more than i should because of this system
we're in and the fact that it's already late and we haven't done dinner yet so let's just go get
something that might come down to its right size but if i'm not spending anything at all
and then you have a world where bitcoin is doing its thing all of a sudden you as a light bulb
manufacturer can't really afford to put out a light bulb that is planned obsolescence going to
die in a x amount you you need to put out the greatest light bulb that you can put out
that spinning might come up to its right size because now because when we buy products these
days they suck they're not good most of them they're really the halloween outfits dude you
got kids the halloween outfits from amazon don't light a flame too close because they'll just dude
they're like printing ink on paper and being like here's you know red from the descendants
you know i mean it's like you're putting on it's like scratchy like this sucks right so do you
really think spinning would all the way dry up in that moment or i mean it's it's hard to know for
sure obviously i think your case is a good optimistic case that in an ideal world it would
have like the perfect capitalistic outcome of the like the zombie companies the useless things that
people are creating the the poor quality planned obsolescence that that would be the thing that
dies out and the good quality stuff would continue um it's like a chinese apothecary where they're
like hey this powdered horn will where are you going with this fix your if your cholesterol is
too low it fixes that if your cholesterol is too high it fixes that like whenever i went into a
chinese apothecary i'm like how can one medicine thing it's happened before your regular daily
apothecary visit just like a random story by stewart okay that's that's normal that is normal
dude i couldn't i'm like how can one item be prescribed for something being too high and too
low it's like what are you saying bro but ultimately their style of medicine is about
achieving a balance not treating a specific element so it's like hey what if what if bitcoin
could help us reach a balance you see what i'm saying so reaching inflation bitcoin is the chinese
inflationary
botthicary
exactly
now
you also said
that you don't think
we're gonna reach
a bitcoin standard
in our lifetime
bro what
I mean the
the biggest reason
to me
is that
in order for something
like that to happen
the
the actual
stuff that would have
to go down
would be so
oh it's a lot
explosive
and detrimental
and destructive
that I, in many ways, I don't really want it to happen,
which sounds weird because obviously I love Bitcoin.
But the amount of people that would get hurt or die or starve
if we actually had fiat implode,
which is necessary for hyper-Bitcoinization.
There's no way that America is switching to a Bitcoin standard
unless the dollar no longer wields any power across the globe
and they have to switch to something else.
And in that case, our lives have gone real bad.
Any American is suffering at that point.
if that has happened. So for me, part of it is just that I don't really even want to see that
outcome because I don't know that the end justifies the means of like, should we destroy
the dollar and all of the things that would fall with that in order to get hyper-Bitcoinization,
which theoretically that would fix those things. But even that we haven't seen play out in practice.
That's part of it. I mean, the other part of it is just that I don't think enough people care
and will take action for it to actually happen.
If the dollar doesn't implode on its own,
which who knows, it certainly could implode on its own.
Many currencies, practically every fiat currency
in history has imploded.
If it doesn't, I don't think that there's like enough people,
will be America specific, enough people here
that will push for an actual Bitcoin standard
for that to happen and replace the dollar.
And governments themselves clearly are disincentivized
to want to upend their own fiat currency,
that they have the inflation lever,
that they have the interest rate lever,
that they can do all of these things with
for something where they essentially have no control over it.
So I think that both ends,
I just, I don't see as realistic outcomes,
but I don't think that really matters, honestly.
I think the beauty of Bitcoin
and what has drawn me to it over the years
and keeps drawing me back to it
is that it acts as freedom money
for anyone who decides to jump in
use it. I would go further than just buy and hold it. I think it's a very Western way to think about
Bitcoin, but much further than that is actually using it, buying goods and services, being paid
in Bitcoin whenever you can, doing side jobs to get paid in Bitcoin, building those circular
economies. That is an effective tool for everyone who opts into it and will benefit your life,
will benefit the lives of those around you. And that will work regardless of whether your fiat
currency is collapsing or not, regardless of whether the dollar is strong or not.
And I think that is the much more important thing, is that it's available to anyone who
is interested in opting into it, who wakes up and understands the need for it, and that
they have the tools available to actually use it day to day.
That's much more important, much more interesting.
And importantly to me, that works today.
Like, I don't need to wait 200 years for hyper-bitcoinization.
I won't be here anyways, obviously.
But Stuart's planning on being here.
Yeah.
some part of him at least yeah his head in the freezer i'm gonna go through cyborgdom into
robothood period you know what i mean like my great great grandkids i'm gonna be picking up
with the kung fu grip but the great great great some odd you know i'm gonna be like hey you want
to go to school i'll pick him up and then just fully like get over i'll have rocket feet yeah
100 that's true yes right think about like a 200 year old bionic oak tree that's gonna be me dude
it's gonna be amazing think about the leaves and then the solar panel it's gonna roll out
the solar panels dude so you'll be a tree or a robot with good feet i think maybe it'll be like
a spirit connection between me like the tree is like where most of my memories are housed kind of
in like an avatar definitely moment right for sure but then i have a physical person that can leave
that's this is hot what's nice is that your great great great great grandchildren will be able to
watch you pontificate about who you wanted to be when you were around for them And with our supply schedule at that I like okay this decades episode is with this person right
It's going to be like world ending. It's going to be amazing.
We really look forward to the first half.
We can't wait to stop putting out so much content.
We can't wait.
We're living for April 20th.
Our content is blasting out of the pipe like the 50 Bitcoin reward, dude.
It's like, shh.
Yeah.
We just hit 1,000 videos on YouTube, and we've only been in production for like 14 months, dude.
But we have to stay at this pace in order to be like Bitcoin, so we're going to do it.
Because if we can't be like Bitcoin, what are we even doing here?
How do you make it to 2028?
That's a lot of content.
It is a lot.
I mean, we have said to each other, this week alone, can't wait for 2028.
It's only like two years away.
At least like four or five times.
It's only like two years away.
Yeah, and that's what he responds with.
I was like, that's a lot of time.
That's a lot of time.
So if you feel like something nasty, nasty would need to happen, I was going to ask you if it's like, okay, well, then is Bitcoin just a way for the common man to kind of protect themselves the same way super rich people buy land and homes and have stock options and stuff like that?
But then you said right there, what's even more important is to create a money network.
And that's like Dr. Jamar was talking about.
It's like a network where if I can earn Satoshi's here on this show and then use them to buy Patrick's great gi, you know, and then he uses that Bitcoin to get some because they're all on Nostra selling all their food products.
Right.
then you kind of create it does feel like a super powerful way to completely sidestep
exactly the current system right and it's like you know when you talk about freedom money
is that what you mean is that you have the freedom to transact or are there other elements
technical or philosophical that go into that like hey this is freedom money yeah i mean the
I think the two pillars of freedom money to me are self-custody.
Obviously, you need to actually be able to take ownership of the Bitcoin because everything else falls apart if someone else is your custodian.
If you're living on Coinbase, et cetera, you don't get any of the benefits of freedom money other than maybe the savings benefits.
But even that can go up in flames quickly.
So it's self-custody.
And then the other pillar is censorship resistance.
The ability to spend where I want, when I want, to who I want without anyone being able to stop me.
Those two things are what are necessary for freedom money.
And the – yeah, like you mentioned, the value to me in Bitcoin goes far beyond just savings.
Savings is to me really a tertiary benefit of the hard money that Bitcoin is.
That's not the goal of Bitcoin to me.
It's actually not very useful if the end game is I buy and hold Bitcoin and then I sell it for fiat when I need fiat.
That's the norm right now.
The biggest problem with that, though, is that at the end of the day, you're beholden to whatever that Bitcoin to fiat bridge is, which right now is a KYC exchange that knows everything about you.
and that can choose to shut down your account at a moment,
can choose to confiscate any funds that you have,
can easily be pressured into doing who knows what with your Bitcoin.
As long as you rely on that bridge, you don't have censorship resistance.
You don't have freedom money.
If you have to go back to fiat to actually do things with your Bitcoin,
to me, it's relatively pointless.
It's essentially just an extension to your 401k.
It's another stock at that point.
And I don't think there's really much value to that.
I know that's a little anti what is pretty common narrative in the Bitcoin space right now, but I don't think that there's a lot of value there.
I think the value lies when you can actually use your Bitcoin to get things that you need, just like you were talking about in this.
Like if there was a hyper Bitcoinization world, you'd be buying the things you actually need, the food for your family, gas for your car, a house, etc.
If you can buy those things with Bitcoin directly, you get all of the benefits of Freedom Money.
Yes, you get the savings and that you're going to have more Bitcoin because you have to actually have it to buy the things that you like, but also because you're sending Bitcoin directly to the person that you're buying something from.
No one's stopping that.
No one even knows that it happened as long as you have relatively good privacy, which is difficult in Bitcoin.
But you're getting all of the benefits of Bitcoin at that point.
And the more people buy into that circular economy, it really becomes a black market.
And a black market sounds like a bad thing.
Like people think like drugs when they think black market.
But all black market means is that it's an economy that lies outside of the normal economy.
And that is what Bitcoin is.
It already is that.
It's also white market money, honestly, which is the – that's the ETFs.
That's the ways that most people are getting into it, buying it on Cash App and not withdrawing.
It can be that too.
But the beautiful thing of Bitcoin is it can be both at the same time.
And even as it gets folded more and more and more into the legacy financial system, as long as this black market part of it, this circular economy part of it,
continues to grow, that's where the value is because that's where people actually get benefit
day to day. And while, like we talked about, there's not as much perceived need in the US and
the West for that thing. Like we were talking before we went live, like I buy maple syrup every
year with Bitcoin. I don't need to do that. Like I could go to Costco and I can buy my maple syrup.
It'd probably be a little cheaper. It wouldn't be as good of quality, but I could do that.
The reason I do it is I want that circular economy to grow because if something changes
and for some reason I have to use my Bitcoin to buy goods and services,
the more people are part of that network, the more places I have to go,
the more powerful my Bitcoin that I have saved up will actually be at the end of the day.
And I think that's why I'm here.
I'm not really here for the stack sats, sell for fiat down the line and retire early aspect.
That's fine, but I can do that with stocks.
Yes, Bitcoin has outperformed them.
So far, that could change.
but I'm really here for the circular economy piece of things.
And I think that's what we have to drive towards.
And that's what if you look outside of the West,
that's what people are using this stuff for.
Unfortunately, they're not generally using Bitcoin for that
for a multitude of reasons.
Generally, they're using stable coins, Tether, etc.,
which don't have censorship resistance and are not freedom money.
But those things are actually providing them the freedom that they need.
They're building circular economies with other cryptocurrencies right now.
And the dream is that we pull those people back into Bitcoin and we show how useful Bitcoin can be in those situations and how resilient it is because things can shift quickly when you're talking about like Tether as a stable coin.
Tether, the entity, can just say your Tether is now frozen.
It doesn't exist anymore.
No one can do that with your Bitcoin.
So if you have a local community in Guatemala where everything is bought and sold with Bitcoin, no one's stopping that no matter what.
If you're doing it all with Tether, that can change.
We saw that in Venezuela recently.
Tether froze like $180 million in Tether with the flick of a switch.
They can do that at any time.
And they can't do that with Bitcoin.
That's why I want to see everyone start switching to that.
So if you could go back and do it all over again,
what would you do differently as a brand new Bitcoiner?
That's a really good question.
I think the biggest thing for me is that I would, I mean, the simple thing, if you're listening to this, you've heard it a hundred times, but just taking custody of my own coins.
Like, it sounds very straightforward.
It is very straightforward.
People make it seem way harder than it is.
If you can write down 12 words and save them somewhere, you can take self-custody of your Bitcoin.
That's the obvious starting point.
beyond that, it would be start figuring out that circular economy piece, find local merchants that
you can spend Bitcoin at, find a local Bitcoin meetup where I can actually find others who are
willing to do work and find a plumber, find a, uh, an electrician, find a contractor, find whatever
the things that I need are, try to find people who are Bitcoiners in my area who can actually
start doing things for Bitcoin, build that circular economy and just be willing to,
especially as privileged as most of us are here in the West, spend extra to support that circular
economy. Buy things that maybe you need, but you could get somewhere else for cheaper and be willing
to do that to help to get this circular economy off the ground, help it to thrive. And I wish I
had jumped into that sooner because quite honestly, it took me probably five or six years of being in
Bitcoin before I actually felt like, oh, I could be spending this. And then once I did, I realized
not only is this like philosophically really cool, but it's also just like, it's kind of magic.
Like someone can just send me a string of characters. I can send them money in a way
that literally no one can stop. And most people don't know what's happening in that transaction
either. I get the good and service I want. And there was no middleman. There's no credit card
there's no my apple doesn't know about it chase doesn't know about it like it's a it's a really
powerful thing and lightning makes that even better in the sense that oftentimes the user
experience if we do it right can be even better than if i was doing a credit card or something
like that it's better than venmo paypal etc um and i wish i had gotten into that earlier because
it took me so long but once you do that i feel like a switch flips like once you start actually
spending your Bitcoin. And I know that also goes against a lot of the mantras in the Bitcoin space.
But honestly, I think that a lot of those like hodl, save, don't spend things slowed down my
journey a lot because I was deep in the podcast circuits and I'm not bashing any specific podcast
or anything, but I was listening to all the podcasts and everyone was talking about digital
gold, save, don't spend, stack sats, don't ever touch your Bitcoin, like just keep getting more.
and it's okay but i wish i had had someone push me earlier to be like you can actually spend this
stuff like the power is when you can spend it for things that you want and no one can stop you
that's where the value comes from so do you think it is a part of what slowed you down and like
actually spending it is the comfort of sending it like of actually like sending bitcoin or sending
sats because we actually had like this reminds me of our conversation earlier today like i send all
the sats for sat chats like so i'm like engaging the network frequently and i mean granted if i'm
going to send larger amounts i want to send a small test amount just to make sure i'm not an
idiot because that's responsible yeah but like sending large amounts and actually engaging
is not it feels like sending someone a Venmo.
Yeah.
And like it's just it feels very normal because I've been doing it.
But if I wasn't doing it with Satchats, I like would not be familiar with it.
I wouldn't be comfortable with it because like I don't feel like I have enough right now to like buy into this circular economy
because I'm like building up my stack.
but it's just I think feeling like you are comfortable with that process is a big hurdle
yeah no I definitely agree and I think that that was a part of it I think just like self-custody
which seems really daunting at first and then when you actually do it and you practice restoring
a backup a couple times you're like this is so stupid this is simple like why why did I not do
this before. Like I was so scared of something that is really trivial. Yes, you have to be
careful. Like don't be an idiot, but it's really simple in concept and simple in execution.
I think it's really the same for spending Bitcoin. I think if you, if you have this,
a, you have this narrative of don't spend your Bitcoin. That's the first hurdle you have to get
over, which I think is a, is a, a, a harmful narrative that has been kind of permeating the
Bitcoin space for a long time now, five, six years at the very least. Once you get past that and you
actually start sending Bitcoin, it's just like self-custody. You realize like, this is stupid
easy. Like it's not scary. Wallets are quite good these days. Wallets validate addresses to make
sure that they're legitimate, that they're Bitcoin addresses. The actual way that you verify
addresses has gotten a lot better. The way that we display addresses has gotten better.
In Lightning, we have things like LNURL and LN addresses. And we have things that can
give you a human readable element now so that you have a lot a lot more of a paypal or venmo like
experience and we can do that without giving up custody now we have things like bip 353 which is
bitcoin usernames that can do on chain and lightning those are really important steps because those
lower that hurdle even more i mean there's always going to be that initial hurdle of like
what is this long string of characters and what do i do with it and what goes wrong if i if i type
one wrong or if I paste into the wrong thing. But the human readable side helps with that. But even
when you're just talking straight addresses, it's really straightforward. If you can read 10
characters to verify at the front and read 10 characters at the end and validate those,
you're good. And once you get used to it, you'll only be doing the more complex stuff with big
spends. If I'm sending $50,000 in Bitcoin, obviously I'm going to take extra steps.
That's going to be on a hardware wallet. So it's going to take a little bit more
thought in how I'm actually going to spend that. But there's going to be extra verification that
helps protect me. But yeah, once you, once you do it, you just realize like, this is not hard.
It's not hard. And like you said, now to me, it's, it's second nature. Like I can, I could send a
Bitcoin transaction much easier and much faster than I could do a PayPal or Venmo or something.
It at least at that level if not better Uh but a lot of that does just take like you have to actually get your feet wet So I think like that is definitely one of my recommendations for people is like just get started
Try this.
You don't have to spend all your Bitcoin.
You don't have to save all your Bitcoin.
But just try it and see what happens.
See what people you meet.
See what community you get into because you start actually spending Bitcoin or start accepting Bitcoin for the work that you do.
and that will open up a whole other world
that I think is much more important, honestly,
and much more necessary
than the just saving stack sats side of things,
which is a piece of it,
but quickly gets undermined
if you always have to go back to fiat
to actually do anything with that Bitcoin.
Well, it's clear that there is so much to Bitcoin
that we will never be able to fit it
into a single chat about sats.
So we do ask each of our guests if they'd be willing to come back on in nine months to give us an update on their Bitcoin baby.
Would you be willing to do that for us, Seth?
Yeah, I'd love to do that.
Let's go.
I actually think you might be a tall stack candidate for like privacy and other things.
We haven't even touched on privacy.
It's literally my name and we haven't even touched on it.
I know, dude.
Seth for privacy.
We haven't even got to it.
I was like, is that your middle name?
Last name.
So what born into it? One thing. That's nice. It's nice to know where you're going to be. Exactly.
The substitute teacher is like for privacy, Seth, are you here?
You know, the tall stacks are a new line that we're doing for members of the channel where it's me and someone else going for two to three hours so far down the rabbit hole that we just cannot publish it for the brand new Bitcoiners in the main channel.
Kevin does not join.
It's like a member's, she's like, she's out.
She's going to go watch the top model documentary.
But like, that's, you know, because we're here welcoming in as many brand new Bitcoiners as possible.
But I'm also pushing down the rabbit hole myself.
I'm still relatively new.
And I'm like, get me in here.
Like, what exactly is a chain split?
You know, why exactly is privacy important and kind of quasi not achievable in Bitcoin?
Right.
So the next time you're in Raleigh, we need to have you.
You and me will just go like way down deep, way down deep.
I'll provide snacks.
There you go.
Yeah.
Abe's will take care of us.
So speaking of shneeks, why don't we turn it over to Ithaca Hummus?
Our buy the dip moment sponsor, Ithaca Hummus, reminds us to buy the dip.
But you can do both at the grocery store and on the Bitcoin exchange space, right?
Unless you're like Seth and you're like, no, I'm going to get some non-KYC Bitcoin directly from a peer.
Always.
Let's go.
I didn't want to like go overwhelmingly big.
My daughter drew that right behind you, dude.
That's me with laser eyes and the fat glob.
So I'm going to get the fat glob.
That was so fat that my finger touched it a little bit.
Thanks for sharing.
I'm glad I was first.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm also glad that you.
Okay, we're going to.
I'm a good hand washer.
Okay, we are tasting today the French onion.
This is going to be so good.
Oh, my God.
Which is great.
Okay, ready?
Go.
Cheers.
Mmm.
Dude, yum, dude.
Okay, that's good.
Oh, my God.
I like feel it in my cheeks.
So good.
So this is our gift to you.
Is this tub of French onion.
Yum, dude.
Hummus.
How does that treat you, brother?
That's delicious, honestly.
I actually, I like hummus a lot, but I normally eat pretty plain hummus.
I love that that one's like, it's got a pop.
It's got a pop of flavor.
And I love French onion soup.
Yeah.
It tastes like French onion soup.
I mean, a tub.
Yeah, like cold French onion soup.
Like me and the boys.
Which sounds weird, but it's good.
It's good.
It works.
When my playgroup gets together, okay, Magic the Gathering.
Yeah, I was like, what playgroup?
Do you play Magic the Gathering?
I don't.
Dude, you absolutely should.
I wish I had the time.
I want to.
Yeah.
Well, next time you're in Raleigh, you're like, come on over here, dude.
I got decks for you.
Teach me the way.
Exactly.
Oh, gosh.
Do we put that out like because we would get the ruffle chips?
Oh, yeah, and we would get the white kind of French onion whatever from like lay where he we know whatever
French is this is like a billion times better than that white stuff and a billion times better now
Do we have the trading cards in here still? Yes, they're behind the we have another good pillar
Okay, I see. Oh, I love these things
Okay
Okay, so we have another
We have another gift for you.
These are based trading cards from our very own number 83 Aladdin.
He wanted to break Bitcoin down into like.
Bite size nuggets.
Yeah.
What do you study with?
Index cards?
You know what I mean?
Kind of like that.
Little concepts here.
This is the unlimited set.
But each year he releases a new set with only 21,000 packs.
and like there's like actual card scarcity.
Imagine the Gathering, Hasbro is printing new commanders
like a billion every year and I'm like drowning in it.
This is actually scarce.
And he just released his new set, Series 4.
Dude, the boxes are like $20,000 or more.
I was like, I was on the website.
I'm like, how could you possibly pay that much money for that?
But then like Logan Paul just sold a Pokemon card
for 16 million bucks recently.
Did you see that million dollars?
He auctioned off a Pokemon car that he's had for years that he bought for like six million.
It went for 16 million.
And all of my for six million.
Yes.
And he just like auctioned off for 16.
I mean, that is that's sort of good.
But what?
So all of my absolute friends and legends in the like base trading card telegram community,
like they're snatching up the new stuff.
That's a little starter pack for you to take home.
These are awesome.
Aladdin's doing good work. I've loved these.
So you're familiar. I do. I only have a couple packs.
I keep wanting to buy some, but I never actually
do. So I have two packs that other people
will give me, and now this is my third, I think.
I'm pretty fresh.
They're going to kill me for stacking this like this,
but we pulled some packs,
and this is
our Omega pull
that we have. This is the 21 out of
21 right there, dude.
Crushed it.
We absolutely had no idea what we had
pulled. We should have lost
our minds, but we had no idea.
My son and I, we did it. We pulled it on camera
and everybody in the
telegram community was like, dude, I'll give you
$1,000 for that. We were like, bro.
Fun the show.
Fun the show, dude.
I'm going to hang on to it.
We're going to sell it for even more later.
For $21 million, maybe?
For $21 million. Yes! That's what they were saying.
That does seem right.
That's what they were saying.
I don't think about that number that feels good.
I don't know where it's from.
We got one more gift.
We did the hummus gift.
We did the trading card gift.
We got one more.
Yes.
Dirty fiat?
Well, you'll get the explanation.
You're interrupting the speech.
Not your only choice.
No, no.
This brings us to our Sats versus Cash decision powered by salt.
Shout out, number 123, Sean.
Correct.
Love you, boo-boo.
And so at Satchats, we believe in value for value.
And in exchange for your time and coming on our show, we would like to give you your choice between $50 in fiat and $50 in Bitcoin, which at today's exchange rate is 74,649 sats.
What would you like to choose?
I am absolutely taking those sats.
Taking them sats.
High five, dude.
Whoa, whoa.
There you go.
Ladies first.
There we go.
Here it is.
All right, Seth, you.
I said sats instead of satoshis.
Shorten it up.
It's sats.
Season three.
Satoshis gets wrong.
It's just sats.
You just go sats.
Yeah, just sats.
Sometimes we get in there with the whole thing.
Yeah.
It's a fun thing to say.
Stuart says a lot of weird words.
I just want to say satoshis.
I also think when we divide satoshis down into 100 million units, they should be called nakamotos.
Know what I mean?
Sats and necks.
Sats and knacks, dude.
Stack and knacks.
Knack attack.
Yes.
That's nice.
Knack time.
All right, so you bring our show.
Look at this.
Our show's scoreboard is now 190 who have chosen to stack the sats
and 10 who need a little bit more time.
And when they come back on in nine months, he did come back.
He came back.
He chose sats a second time.
He did.
Thank you, number nine, Paul.
He did learn.
He did.
He was the first person to pick cash.
He was our first person to pick cash and the first person to pick stats the second time he came back.
So that was good.
Redemption story.
It was a redemption arc.
It was good.
So, Seth, where can our Satillionaires go to spend more time with Seth for Privacy and or Cake Wallet?
Yeah, absolutely.
so as far as me
best place is going to be either my blog slash website
sethforprivacy.com I've written a lot about stuff we talked about here
more about privacy than what we've touched on here
like obviously it is in the name I lean on that pretty heavily
or Twitter at sethforprivacy
for CakeWallet so a little bit of a very quick intro
I'm COO at CakeWallet
we're essentially trying to make self-custody really easy and privacy really easy
in Bitcoin. We started as a Monero-only wallet, but heavily focused on Bitcoin as well now.
Doing things like silent payments, which gives you a reusable privacy-preserving address in
Bitcoin. Things like PayJoin, which let you have better privacy. When I'm sending Bitcoin to you,
we actually work together to build a transaction instead of me just sending it. That gives both of
us better privacy. Doing things like that, try to push the boundaries of what's possible when
you're actually using Bitcoin when it comes to privacy. But if you want to learn more about
cakewallet just cakewallet.com it's short and sweet nice and simple where did the name come from
so it so vic our founder started it back in 2018 back then a lot of the like bitcoin wallets were
like bread bake i'm trying to think there were a lot of like food based just like weird names
and he wanted something that would fit in with that but also be like a little more fun than bread
like bread's a little lame bread's a little routine no one's like oh bread yes but cake
I mean, if he had named it sourdough,
he would have been way ahead of his time.
That's true.
Way ahead of his time.
Full-on hipster at that point.
That's hot.
My dad has gotten into sourdough,
and it is his entire personality this year.
He's now a big sourdough.
He's a sourdough maxi.
Yeah, I think it's the same kind of arc that Bitcoiners go on.
You start with simple bread, and then you're like,
I should get the higher-quality bread,
and then you figure out sourdough.
The next thing you know, you're sharing the mother with other people,
and it gets weird.
It gets weird.
I don't know anything about sourdough, though.
Sharing the mother, dude.
That feels like you've been on that journey.
He's been there.
A little bit.
He has nine mothers in his cupboard right now at different stages of life.
A sourdough starter, just assigned FBI agent.
They're not people, just to be clear.
One of his starters is sentient at this point.
Eventually.
Yeah, yeah.
Eventually.
It's been so long.
It's achieved intelligence.
That's the alien life we were talking about at the top of the show.
My computer pinged.
Actually, it was like, we found.
And it was like, why is it a residential address?
It didn't make any sense.
Now I understand why.
All right, Abe's.
Amazing show.
Be my Vanna White.
Okay, yes.
Here we go.
All right, Satillionaires, if you have enjoyed today's show,
click the subscribe at your chance to win this collectible silver coin.
With how many Satoshis on the back, Abe's?
50,000 Satoshis on the other side.
50,000.
Come on, y'all.
And Satoshi on the front.
Yeah, that's not bad.
He's got his little hooded moment there, right?
He's doing his thing.
I don't know why he's always wearing a hood.
Yeah, I don't really either.
Because he's anonymous.
It feels very like V for Vendetta is what I think about constantly.
Yeah.
Anyway, you'll be entered to win when we get to 3,000 subscribers.
We're keeping our giveaway of 2 million sats when we get to 10,000,
but we'll have some giveaways in between.
We got some baby giveaways before the big giveaway.
Yeah, a little.
We're building up to.
Like amuse-bouche.
A little amuse-y-bouche.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, so if you would like to find out ways to support the show,
you can either grab your slot in the studio or sponsor.
You can do so in our show notes,
or you can go to our brand-new redesigned website.
Looking hot.
Looks so good.
Mad minimal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We've incorporated the new blue color, which looks so good.
Shout out, AB.
Thank you, thank you.
and if you
yeah
Sat Chats is for educational purposes only
and shouldn't I be construed as financial advice
and our guest views are their own
jumped right into that groove
yeah yeah I got a little distracted
with the stuff
anyway until next time
keep stacking those sats
yes and learn more about privacy
god
Bye.