We're back on Bitcoin study sessions.
We're taking a bit of a divergent path today.
Typically, we talk about canonical Bitcoin literature.
We explore philosophy.
We look into academic papers.
But recently, we've taken a bit of a hard right into the practical.
And we've invited on some people that are not just thinking about these things, but they're building them.
And they are taking action within the environment to bring freedom technology to people in different ways.
And with that, it is an absolute pleasure to have today Calvadev.
And Calvadev, to give a little bit of an introduction, is just genuinely one of the best people I know.
I'm sitting next to perhaps the best person I know, my co-host, Grant.
The podcast will continue. Thank you.
But Kalvadev, not only is he the fastest guy that I've ever seen do 100 burpees,
he has impeccable taste in music and is just utterly kind.
He was one of the people that I experienced the network school with.
And this chaotic yet ordered time of my life when we were doing just really incredible things as a group and bonding very deeply together.
Kalvadev was also easily the number one highlight of Man Camp, which I taught at the Network State.
Easily my best student and a great team player.
but he's also a builder the this is the founder of shopster which is an online marketplace and
also the founder of milk market of doing things to bring raw milk which i think i think we've
talked about renaming as milk and and bringing milk to people in a way that doesn't have
intervention from bureaucrats, I would think it's probably a good way to say it.
So we're going to talk about freedom technology.
We're going to talk about philosophy.
And yeah, we're going to talk about that fantastic head of hair.
You're looking very, very, you killed my father.
yeah i can't uh i have to wear the hoodie up because otherwise my my real uh rattiness is
going to be revealed yeah you just you oh you always look like you're in search of a six-fingered
man yeah uh thank you thank you for joining us today um joining us from seattle um if he's
knifed on the street then we'll just uh continue on and run some credits so it's just the happenings
of the day yeah uh tell us what's good man um tell us about milk market um kind of give people
i guess um maybe a background on your motivation why you have chosen to exit a role with a you know
high paying corporate job in order to become a founder in freedom technology yeah so i think the
uh the furthest back i can like trace most of stuff is like going back to college and that's
where um i went i went to ut dallas and ross olbrick is actually one of the he's like the most
famous alumni from that university so he went there for his undergrad for physics and like there
was always like this uh cover of like oh ross olbrick was here the founder of the silk road
is here like that's what and then the other most famous person from our school his name's on the
business building and he was also he's a famous indian investor who was arrested for fraud so it's
like our our our university just pumps out criminals i guess but um i i was inspired in in a
way to like not necessarily by like the the spreading of drugs and all this stuff but by
trying to create open market uh systems founded in like free market principles and being able to
like uh not have to rely on third parties in order to be able to just interact and exchange
cooperate with human beings so um as i was like approaching the end of college and i was already
getting my internships and stuff lined up i was like feeling a bit of an itch to just try something
on my own because i'd never i'd never coded or done anything outside of like my out of the jobs
that i had to do so i wanted to have like personal experience with things and i took a random trip i
took a week off from school i just didn't go to any classes that week and i took a random trip to
san francisco and i did i went to a hackathon uh actually at a repli hackathon like before vibe
coding was even coined and all this stuff just like ai assisted stuff and i pumped out like the
first version of shopster um and uh because uh and a lot of the like the initial motivation came from
when i first found out about nostr it was all like focused around uh it was all focused around
social media and just like social aspects of stuff and by that point when i had found out about it
which was around 2022 or the end of 2022, 2023.
I had already removed all of my social media.
I hadn't had anything.
I didn't really engage with anything.
I actually just found Jack Dorsey tweeting about it
because a friend shared a link
and I didn't even have like the account or anything.
I was just able to view it.
And I was like, oh, this seems interesting.
So I downloaded it and started posting notes on it.
And as things evolved,
and I actually got a little bit more interested
in contributing to Bitcoin,
finding a way to like actually maybe push some changes to Bitcoin Core, to Lightning, to the
Lightning Network, LND, I started reviewing the Nostra protocol and I saw how simple and easy it
was to actually like add things to it. And there was already some specifications to allow for like
certain commerce, mainly classified listings. And I took that with a friend of mine and we both ran
with it and we kind of like brought it out of the fold and released the first version of shopster
and i still have a video how it first looked and man is it crazy to see how things have progressed
and how shitty it was but it worked it functioned which was like what we were trying to get done
and ultimately is what matters at the and at the start if it works it's a great place to
to actually keep going from um but from there uh i i saw nostr not as a like a way to like fix
twitter or fix social media i saw it more as like a tool for onboarding more people onto bitcoin
and that's how actually what led me into like cashew as well because when i was first developing
everything uh not having so much technical experience with like integrating with all the
lightning node things and like handling liquidity management all this stuff um i found
I just like stumbled upon Cashew, like in eCash, and I saw how simple it was to integrate payments into it while still having Bitcoin native interoperability with it.
And the thing that, as we touched on before the call, one of the things that I've been focused on recently is kind of introducing people into the systems, the freedom technology systems, without having to necessarily throw it in their face that they're interacting with them.
Give them better experiences, give them better technical ability to not have to understand everything.
and they'll naturally just become experts
in how to use the technology
without even having realized it.
And Cash is one of those things
that makes interacting with Bitcoin very seamless
because you don't even have to like download wallets.
You don't have to do these things.
If you want to like have the full functionality of it,
yes, you do have to like get a little bit more involved.
But as a starting point for new novices
and for people who are just getting into it,
it's a great way to like kind of blanket
and abstract the underlying Bitcoin technology from it.
And from there, that just kind of allowed the marketplace to start growing
and getting a little bit more interest, just like fixating on things.
And I was just working on the weekends while I was working my corporate job.
And I actually was working two corporate jobs, so I was over-employed for a bit,
trying to just save as much as I could and work on Shopify on the side.
and after nine months uh i got an invitation or i got accepted to go to a program called
sovereign engineering in madera which is like a it was like the second cohort which was uh basically
sovereign engineering is like a little program similar to the networks uh network state network
school uh where they just invite a bunch of builders uh this one was much more much smaller
much more constrained um because especially at the time that's when uh wasabi wallet was shutting
down samurai wall the samurai wall developed straight to get arrested so it was a kind of like
tumultuous time people were a little bit uh on edge so there's like around 20 people that that
came to the island and there that's when i uh because of that opportunity i just was like screw
it i did like a cost analysis of like what is the possible risk of me uh trying to go all in and
failing and basically it's just i get to move in with my parents have food on the table and have a
loving family so it's like there's not really much that can really go wrong other than i just don't
have money of my own, which is fine. Still pretty young, so I can try and make that up along the way.
And from there, it's just been a journey of going all over the place, visiting a bunch of
different conferences, seeing a bunch of different cultures and experiencing a lot of the stuff that
really makes people work together and engage in commerce, which was truly valuable with it.
And at Network School, which was earlier this year, or early last year, actually, I forget it's
2026. But earlier last year,
that's where I was like focusing and trying to figure out exactly what I could
grow and like help onboard more people into the marketplace.
And that's when I was looking at different avenues and different specific niches
that I could like focus on to try and gather more interest.
And when I was looking at the obvious one is obviously drugs,
but you don't want to really involve yourself in that type of legal battle or
like the legal gray areas that are involved with that. And,
as I was getting more and more involved,
along the way, I'd have gone into health,
and I was trying to improve my diet
and all that stuff, and raw milk
especially came to be
one of the things that I found
so heavily regulated. I hadn't known
at the time, because I live in Seattle, so I guess I had
pretty good laws with regards
to it, so I would just go to the grocery store and pick it up.
I thought it was just normal, but it's
more regulated than marijuana
in most of the country. It's more regulated
than heroin in certain places,
and you're
it's treated like such a risky and dangerous thing when it's simply something that just comes
out of an animal that people just have every day and like that are have had for generations so
and more broadly as well the food system is what uh like really is just so terrible to like the
food producers and uh even like the end consumers because there's just so much regulatory middlemen
that deal with a lot of the butchering.
You have to go to USDA certified butchers
in order to be able to sell to your neighbor,
which is crazy.
You can't even just hand them a piece of steak.
You can't hand them eggs.
There's just so much regulatory obfuscation
that goes into blocking commerce.
And one of the things that we're trying to fix
is actually making it as easy as possible
for people to onboard onto these free systems
to allow them to not have to...
Obviously, we don't want them to violate the law,
But for them to, if anything happens to their operations where they're like shut out from being able to engage economically, they still have an option.
They have a plan B where they can exit with Bitcoin, exit with Nostra.
They don't have to rely on like Shopify, Amazon or these big corporations who like dictate everything that's sold on the platform and don't allow them to operate their business.
Even if it's something so simple as like milk or beef or creams or any of these things.
Like there's just so much open area for people to be able to like engage in commerce.
And fundamentally, I believe commerce is like the main thing that allows humanity to like be as cooperative as possible.
There's no other there's no other activity that we do as human beings that like can connect cultures so dramatically other than like probably music and food.
And that's why the intersection of culture and food is one of the reasons why we're like focused on this specific marketplace.
Yeah, there's a lot in that. One thing that I want to note is just the mindset that you approach things and kind of what you discussed. Like this is something I noticed about your personality at the network school, which is that you are, A, you're brilliant, but B, you're also not forceful with these things.
a lot of people that have ideas want to pound them into the heads of other people.
And I've never seen you be confrontational or engage in any sort of I'm right, you're wrong.
You have just found a way in order to express the ideas that you believe in.
One thing I want to ask you about is the experience of building on Noster.
you noted that. Can you compare that to traditional or traditional legacy type of like app development
with Google Play Store or the iTunes store? You say that it's so much easier. Can you kind of
frame that out? Like what's easier about building on Noster than say, I was trying to design an app
and I found it to be very difficult, mainly because of the,
like you have to build everything from scratch, basically.
Or you find it, you know, you find it and you repurpose it.
But what fundamentally makes it easier to build on Noster
than to go out and develop an app and put it into the Google Play Store?
yeah i think uh there's there's a few aspects to that uh one of the at least one of the early
things for me was just that since you don't have to like basically request permission from anyone
to be able to like access and start building on top of it even modifying the protocol like
experimenting with it you have full like open pastors of what you can experiment with and what
you can try out and especially when you're starting early uh one of the things that you
always need is like live user data and you also need to be able to store that live user data uh
like cheaply as cheaply as you can because like you're not usually not running on a lot of capital
and one of the very big benefits you get from uh developing on top of nostr is that you have
basically like the relay infrastructure or it's like a distributed network of servers that people
can like swap in and out of and like uh pour over their data from uh seamlessly by having that
whenever i'm like creating an application i can already find like a directory of all these relays
all these servers that are accessible and just like pull in data from it that is already live
and that's like already being active and used so you can actually like verify and immediately start
testing out and playing around with real data and different server connections redundancy and you
can actually start your application because like in the very very early days with the original
shopster marketplace we had zero we didn't run any servers other than like the website
and like we didn't have any back end and that was by design as well because we didn't want to be
liable for like hosting all this data because that was one of the big things that like uh came
from uh from the silk road uh like actual hosting and the controlling of the data access and since
we didn't have any of these servers we had like a little bit of uh resiliency on the legal side one
but then also our cost to actually operate and like run the website was just like so minimal
uh because it basically just the cost of like the ai subscription that i had on replit uh and it's
just uh managing managing all the data becomes much easier because it's just distributed and
already like offloaded for you so it makes the developer access much simpler because all you
have to do is write code you don't have to like try to procure servers have to do all these things
you're very easily uh like the the resource intensity of being able to build on top of it
is not high and uh due to the nature of like the the the play store and like the app store and all
that stuff um if you're building like a mobile app on top of it you're still going to have to like
kind of succumb to that but with especially now because like the ai tools are getting a lot easier
to like kind of at least if you have some like uh technical contextual knowledge of like the of
the protocols you're working with and can like uh verbalize it a bit uh whenever you're like
prompting the the models uh the the ai does actually a pretty decent job of like generating
like a base level of like okay this is how nostril works so then i can like start building on top of
it and like grabbed real data so you're more um you just have a little bit more flexibility
and ease and simplicity because you have a data standard so you don't have to like when you're
creating a new app usually you have to like decide on the data schemas and like figure out how exactly
it's going to be stored how you want to structure it and then often you change that very very quickly
so you have to like change your whole database and do all this stuff so with nostrils you have
at least some base standard you're able to like work from that and have like a a simple understanding
and then just experiment and grow from there.
So simply put, like when I develop an app,
I have two things that I have to do.
I have to develop the client side,
which is what people interact with.
And I also have to develop the server side,
which is how it's the kitchen.
It's where things actually happen.
So would you say then that developing on Noster
allows you to focus more on the client side
and the user experience,
the user interface and you have a lot less to it's a lot it's a lot lighter lift on the back end on
the server side yeah yeah there's definitely the dynamic that you get especially and new developers
coming into it am i like especially like the hardcore developers might not might be a little
against that because they want to like work on the back end like that's where like since that's
where all the meat is um but this actually allows uh your mentality to like kind of shift more
towards like a product focus rather than just like an engineering focus because that's in the
end where every like successful product gets uh grows and they actually become successful is
through design and through marketing and through like the actual interfaces of everything like once
you're able to uh communicate uh or simply uh like whether it is like the the actual like text on the
on the on the screen whenever you're actually like interacting with the website or how the
uh, website interact, how you interact with it, uh, by being able to more consciously know how to
communicate, uh, simply in those ways, you're able to actually have a more friendly and more
a quote unquote viral application that can grow and start growing more steadily. And like, you're
not, that's one of the biggest shifts too. You have to have a bit more of a consumer focused
mindset and product focused mindset, uh, or rather a distribution focused mindset through the product
rather than just a full-on technical thing.
Like I'm always building, building, building, building
because you have to offload a lot of the work from it.
So kind of give me an idea.
So Shopster has been up and running for four years now.
Is that about that?
It been about close to three close to three Close to three So in doing that what have you seen in terms of like growth and number of users and um how does that compare to like i when i look at things and i
try to evaluate their usefulness i'm a lot less concerned with where they're at and more concerned
with where they're going.
Trajectory is way more important than position.
So what is the trajectory of Shopster
and how it relates to other types of market,
other marketplaces on Noster?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I can't actually speak too much
to the other marketplaces
because there's actually,
that are actively used as one other one.
And they also, yeah, they have no,
at least they have no like published
or they haven't talked about their usage that they have.
I'm assuming they're doing fairly well.
But yeah, there's only one that's currently live and working.
And there's a couple others that are in development.
And then the other one that's live is directly through the social client Amethyst on Android.
So that one's not really the most accurate because it's not...
All the users are just across every single possible application in that app
because they have a lot.
They have live streaming.
they have twitter they have the marketplace so they have a lot of different things in that
um but uh with regards like the like our shoppers the trajectory itself like definitely it's it's
picked up a lot more uh in like the the recent years because i remember whenever we first launched
it we didn't have anyone using it for like the first five six months i think if i remember
correctly so there was just like no activity because people were still getting like i guess
comfortable with the idea of like having being able to like engage and buy stuff through nostrils
and nostril itself was just so young and people were just like comfortable with it using as twitter
they didn't want to really get super involved with like the direct economic activity um but
as uh it got picked up by some of the like the big nostril developers that's specific like vtor
because that's why he uh who works on amethyst he that's why he uh implemented into the app
because of shopster um then we started getting a bit more uh more traffic and um while a bit more
like uh in late last year that's when we had like the most activity the second half of last year
um and uh it's it's still not like the it's not like comparable to like the early internet um
uh like growth of like shopify and amazon all that stuff because those were like compounding
like it's for like the first few months it was like millions of dollars of volume um but that's
also because the idea of e-commerce is just so novel and incredibly yeah incredibly new so people
just weren't like it was just like mind-blowing to be able to like engage in that online um and at
the moment uh the biggest uh the biggest learning for myself at least in in these years uh has been
uh as i mentioned a little bit earlier uh focusing solely on product and features is not what
actually drives growth and adoption it's more of like finding the specific community that you
actually solve a real problem for and a specific group that you solve a real problem for you have
to find a natural subsect of the population to do that and like when i first started i just thought
okay my customers are bitcoiners and nostril users but then that's so broad and so general
and then uh you're not like actually going into the people that are that truly find it valuable
like the direct merchants who sell like their artisan crafts and then that that that sell it
on repeat that's like who actually would find something like this valuable and we have had
people who like actually get started who start their businesses using shopster um and then
eventually just move off towards other things like they either host a website uh or uh run like
a different payment server or even like use the original traditional um marketplaces uh and one
of the things from that i think is that when starting with something that requires a lot of
like consumer like knowledge shift especially like getting comfortable using bitcoin solely as the
payment rail and all this stuff you have to kind of introduce like you have to you have to broadcast
the usage of these technologies side by side with like traditional legacy technology so like for
example on milk market we actually do accept um credit card we allow for people to sign in with
google we have to be allowed to like these traditional legacy things um and this is for a
function of like allowing for as broad access as possible but also like consumer behavior doesn't
change by just like forcing it in front of them which i learned with the original shopster and
Like the original Shopster will still be like Bitcoin only, Nostra only.
There won't be like any compromises on that end.
It'll just be like the basic, the cypherpunk marketplace that I originally created.
And I'll always be continuing to develop it.
But when trying to actually scale and access more, provide more support for the farmers and for people who try to connect with them,
um we want to make it uh we want to make it as convenient as possible to for people to be
exposed to these technologies every single day so you want to have it on the side you want to have
like give maybe give a discount on top of like the normal prices just to engage with it uh similar
with like the house square release like the uh the ability to pay with bitcoin uh different terminals
like uh it's not really like in your face like oh we accept bitcoin or like any of this stuff but
like if you find it on the map it's like okay i can get comfortably get used to it even like the
merchants themselves it wasn't thrown at them to uh before so you have to accept bitcoin it'll
drive more customers it was simple like opt-in if you want to accept that you can if you don't
you don't have to and uh yeah it there just has to be uh more focus on developing like a sense of
community and a sense of, um, uh, a sense of, I guess like movement or mission around a particular
thing before people start actually changing their consumer behavior and like getting involved
and feeling comfortable, uh, engaging with it every single day. Um, so that's like the biggest
thing that's happened with me. Um, and we've had like, uh, good volumes just on Bitcoin only,
but because the Nostra market and like the Bitcoin market of like artisan goods and like
people that are selling like their, their, their crafts on, on shopster is relatively small. It's
not going to be massive massive volume in total we've processed around like fifteen thousand
dollars worth of uh of transactions uh over over the site which isn't nothing but it's definitely
not like uh uh like millions and millions of dollars but it's it's growing and we're trying
to like keep it consistent and have more um get more people finding it valuable so we're just
that's why we think uh with specifically with like the the milk market site um farmers are
people who can actually truly benefit from the technology, but because of how averse to new
things, new changes they can be, you don't want to throw it at them. It's like, oh, we accept
Bitcoin. We do all this. We'll do all that. We use Nostris. We use private keys to control your
accounts. You want to gradually bring them into it. That's a very, very big thing.
I got one more question on kind of how Shopster works. And then I'm kind of excited to hear what
what Grant's got to say on this because you have dropped some nice little philosophical nuggets
here. But how does Shopster deal with the consumer protection problem? So when eBay
kind of took off, I guess, is when they basically put Big Brother into the system.
And they said, look, you know, if you have a bad experience, then we'll help you recover your
funds and, um, you know, there's a rating for everybody on eBay, just like now, if you look at
Amazon, the first, if I, if I shop on Amazon, literally the first thing I do is I look at the
reviews and I note the seller's history and stuff like that. So, um, how do you solve that problem
or can that problem be solved? And I guess what is the, what is the seller behavior like
if you take off that big brother chain
and you allow people to simply act in their own interest?
Yeah, so the way we do it,
currently we do have a review system,
but obviously it's all run over the Nostra protocol,
so Shopster itself has no ability to take anything down,
to remove anything, to have any control
over what's being said on there.
so um a nice thing yeah a nice thing for sellers is that whenever they they transfer over like for
some reason if they transfer over from one marketplace to another um they could actually
carry over all the reviews from that marketplace and everything shows up so or like since the
protocol is interoperable they don't even have to like move over to another platform if they're
just viewing the products or something through another marketplace they can see the same reviews
they can see the same uh history of everything so there's a little bit of an established reputation
there for the seller um and currently um because we have worked on some escrow solutions to help
like uh like buyers like protect their their fund in case the seller's trying to scam or something
but largely i think um when it comes to a lot of this activity whenever we
like what comes out of allowing the the marketplace to have the ability to like
completely refund you or they have to deal with all that stuff um not only adds overhead to like
the business operating class itself but it also removes like our the need for us to have any
conscious thought about the things we're buying so we're just like immediately we're not allowed
we're not allowing ourselves to like think for ourselves and like try and be like okay
if i just see something on amazon and i have reviews and i know i can get a refund i'll just
buy it whatever and then it comes here and it's like never mind i don't want it and then you just
have like more more junk accumulating when instead if you're like thinking a bit more consciously
about if you have a little bit of like a potential risk of like interacting with something that's
online like that you're going to be thinking okay do I really want to buy this do I want to spend
this much money for it don't want to engage with this person there's a little bit more
conscious thought that goes into actually like engaging in the activity and that inadvertently
like creates a little bit more trust when actually you actually do engage with it so you can actually
start building like a community with the merchant directly you start building that reputation
naturally.
And yeah,
that's one of the things
that I think is like,
because we have like
finalized some escrow stuff,
but I also haven't wanted
to like fully release it
because I've just been like
wanting to see
how the market
naturally reacts to that.
And what we found as well
with,
because one cool thing
with Noster
is like the social graph
that you can plug into
basically the application
throughout any type of application,
even if it's on
a social media application.
And one thing that we've done
is we have like
what's called
the web of trust
And with the web of trust, you're able to basically utilize the social graph to filter out accounts that aren't connected to it. So like basically, if I follow Lucas and Lucas follows Grant, I will be able to see Grant's posts. But if I follow Lucas and Lucas doesn't follow Grant, then I won't be able to see Grant's posts.
The grant just doesn't exist, even if his stuff is showing up in the marketplace.
I can filter it out.
And this helps with a lot of new accounts who are just spinning up a new Nostra account that have no profile, no nothing.
And they're just trying to sell something and then scam someone.
Because you can just very simply filter a lot of that out.
There's no reputation.
There's no history.
And because of the fact that there's a social aspect plugged into the Nostra protocol,
uh there's already like a bit of a natural inclination to not want to engage in like fraud
and all this stuff because if you have a social like media account backing the profile that's
selling something you want to keep that reputation because it takes time to like build an audience to
build get your followers get people who you engage with regularly and if you are like actively like
using that account to like scam people or do stuff then obviously people aren't going to want to
follow you or engage with you anymore so there is a natural uh like self-correcting mechanism that
at least that i believe in it's a question whether or not that actually works at scale
um and that's why uh with milk market in particular we're taking a little bit of a
a slower more direct approach with like who we allow on the uh to sell on the on the marketplace
because we go directly to the farms we talk with them we like record videos with them we like take
tour the farm we see their practices we like make sure that everything like stands for what we want
it to be what we want it to stand for and from there we then like uh have them onboarded and
like help work with them to like get all that stuff done um but uh yeah i think uh we have to
we have to allow ourselves and allow others to kind of have the responsibility and the optionality
to like engage and like not just like off offload that to some uh third-party remediation system
that may or may not even resolve the query properly.
Because oftentimes the buyer, or rather the seller,
is the one who gets screwed actually most of the time
in a lot of the whole dispute resolution systems.
So it's mainly like buyer protection where that comes in.
But yeah, yeah.
Cool. Great.
Does Shopster have a global footprint?
And I asked specifically,
so it's really interesting what you're doing,
trying to find specific markets or kind of cohesive, coherent, independent social networks
that can be tapped into that have some sort of problem, like the raw milk market that
Noster as a storefront can solve some problem that that has. And of course, worldwide, you have
surges in adoption and things like BitChat when you have real practical problems with freedom of
speech arise in certain regimes and i'm just wondering is there a global footprint footprint
for shopster or do you see that as kind of the next frontier are there global indigenous markets
that for whatever reason don't function well that could be made to function yeah that's definitely
uh i guess uh at least at the the the current moment in time it's like uh what we want the
next frontier to be uh because there is uh there are people who like sell uh uh across the world
that have sold across like different areas like in Africa, Europe, South America, the U.S.
It's largely the U.S. U.S.-based activity.
But there are, and you mentioned there like the local like niche community markets.
That's basically what we're trying to like function as.
We're trying to function as like a platform for local economies to be able to like bootstrap themselves online
and be able to like start like creating their own circular economy locally.
um and uh yeah definitely um when i was like looking into even like the still correlated with
raw milk like africa has by far the largest like informal raw milk economy it's a hundred billion
dollar industry like like it's like it's like the majority of like the milk market in the entire
world which is crazy so there's yeah yeah exactly and africa just is like even in terms of just like
normal bitcoin adoption and like bitcoin like innovation africa is like the the the best place
to be doing all this stuff because there's so much like fervor and like actual need for a lot
of this uh because that's like one of the problems that it comes with like trying to
wanting spread adoption within like developed nations is that we still see it a lot as uh a
like as a store the gold store value and we we don't the digital gold store value and we're not
like focused on like using it as a commercial activity or like engaging with it uh that directly
um which is fine because number go up is a very useful and valuable thing for people to like
actually stick with using Bitcoin or holding it at least. But when it comes to actually like
spreading the values and engaging with it, we have to tap into other markets that aren't
necessarily the biggest places to be. They're not going to move the needle in terms of price,
but that's where a lot of the actual real opportunity to solve real people's problems
are. And that's something that I think I learned also coming from like the network school and stuff.
There's just a lot of global opportunity to like engage in a lot of things. And like,
there's just like there's a lot of businesses that i'm aware of even some of my friends
that i know have founded businesses that are just like spinoffs of existing big companies like carta
like which is a um uh basically like a startup uh cap table management platform i have a friend
who founded like a similar thing but just for india and is doing very well and then i have other
friends who have like founded like other marketplaces or payment solutions in south america
and like they're doing very well so it's just like you have to adopt and adapt your strategies
to like the specific markets you can.
And if you can get a leg up in one of those markets,
which it can be difficult due to like corruption
and other things that undeveloped,
like democratic systems and all these things,
legal systems.
If you can do that, though,
you have a really good opportunity
to like really make a big difference.
I might not necessarily do the next Facebook,
but you don't really have to be the next Facebook
in order to actually change the world.
Does a Nostra-based market solve some endemic problem
in emerging markets in Africa,
in other countries that are still developing
that maybe it's not solving in the United States?
I don't know.
Is that there's some specific use case,
like BitChad, of course,
within a regime that suppresses free speech,
that there's obvious utility there.
Is it the same sort of thing
with a Noster-based storefront?
It might not necessarily be as clear cut
with regards to BitChad or something,
because free speech is definitely,
it's just obvious and blanket.
Since I don't have so much exposure
to those regions necessarily,
I don't have the greatest overview.
But I do know that there is,
like obviously commercial restriction like inter inter country like with the um like with
with like the frank uh that that's like uh that proliferates around and it's used in africa
they're not allowed to like engage in that commercial activity like countries aren't
allowed to engage in commercial activity with each other like they're restricted in like their usage
of their own currency because france is basically still like a colonial power and stuff right
yeah that's incredible yeah so there's a lot of uh there is like more to be uh i guess explored
within that area of like allowing uh africans to be able to like actually engage in commerce with
each other because there's just historically it's just been so uh like abused and there's so much
stuff that has gone around that is just has restricted their growth and their ability to
like actually develop properly and so i'm sure there's just like it's just a matter of like
actually going uh like head first and like actually being there on the ground like actually
get a real real feel for it but i can't like super speak but i'm yeah it has to be so many
opportunities there. It's like a sociological question, how these new technologies interface
with different societies. So it's great that you're putting the technology forward, you're
finding ways to apply it, but it is going to take feet on the ground in these different places with
deep knowledge of the tradition, the culture, the problems. And that's one of the exciting parts
about Bitcoin and these kind of protocols that are decentralized and global is you are going to
see different solutions emerge in different jurisdictions, just based on the legal structures,
the traditions the problem and so that will be um i mean do you have any you kind of said you don't
i guess maybe i want to ask you that i was gonna ask if you have any predictions as to how um
nostril based global markets will proliferate is it going to be like jurisdiction based i mean guys
that's kind of what you said right it's going to be local yeah that's definitely that's definitely
how i think like the ideal uh or not the ideal but rather like how it's naturally going to progress
is people are going to be finding local pockets
where it really makes a big difference
and then start growing out from there Like it be like the and that like one of the things that the um one of the things that I think is like the the true like global reach true globalization is pure localization
It's like, you want to have maximal, maximal amounts of like local pockets that are supported
by infrastructure, like common infrastructure.
And that's like the peak, that's the peak form of globalization.
Cause you don't want everyone and everything to be relying on a single system that connects
everything.
And then as soon as one part of that system falls, like we saw in COVID, everything just
goes to shit.
And we want to have like sustainable, small pockets of economic freedom where people can grow and like start growing out from there.
So that's, yeah, it's definitely how I believe like the whole evolution of Noster marketplaces and like Noster technologies and applications will build out.
Because like BitChat, for example, even I think Akali, one of the developers who works on it with Jack, he saw that there's like a million monthly active users for BitChat recently, at least on the Android version, which is like crazy.
So that means a million people are using Nasser. We just don't see it on the live social feed. But a large amount of that comes from like Uganda and I believe it was also Cuba and like where they've been having all the protests.
So there's a lot of like activity that's coming from these countries that like we don't necessarily are we aren't necessarily exposed to.
But there's just like there's actually a massive amount of demand. So it's going to be localized pockets that are slowly, slowly growing out.
yeah that's beautiful globalization but localized kind of some melding between the two because when
you said earlier that like commerce is this universal language between cultures that if we
can trade value in a way that's neutral we can speak to people that we can't otherwise speak to
and kind of maybe that's pacifying maybe that conduces to peace and getting along and whatnot
but that globalizing can also be like a leveling right when there's an interchange just based on
commerce, then we're selling Diet Pepsi to indigenous tribes, right? And we're like,
we're kind of building, bringing the world together, but under the same corporate homogenization,
de-territorializing in the same direction. Whereas I love this image of localized markets,
but in some way being on a global platform or protocol. And so if you can affect that,
not you, but if this type of Nostra-based marketplaces can affect that, that's going to be
this another trend in what globalization really means and can mean a sort of good way maybe
yeah definitely definitely and that's like the that's the that's the big goal because like
with when it comes to like like uh just specifically with like the milk market and all that stuff
what we're trying to do is support like local farming economies and local food food economies
we don't want to have just like it we kind of defeats the purpose if like everything we're
facilitating is just like okay cross-country like shipping and all this stuff like like even like
it's funny because a lot of the stuff like we take for granted that is like really useful and
very powerful like shipping infrastructure storage infrastructure all this stuff actually
removes a lot of like the the direct cultural ties and like community that we actually develop
because it removes uh similar hats like the dispute resolution systems on platforms it removes a lot
of the responsibility from our side to like actually you know what we used to do is just
like actually go to the farm or shake their hand like get to know them be involved in the directly
with like the people we're interacting with and we're buying with so we have to kind of we're
trying to bring back that sense of community development and localization because like
fundamentally all culture and all society is based on small societies like the atomic family unit and
then growing out from there like you want to have these tight communities and a sense of sense of
culture sense of sense of love sense of beauty within human beings that where you're not just
like yeah that's some other guy over there on the other side of the planet and i have no association
with them. So I'll just send a missile over there because I don't really care. Because it's just like
you lose the connection of what actually makes us human. Yeah. No, I love that point you make,
that global shipping and physical commerce structures have that effect. I mean, it's obvious
when you think about it, but it's not something we focus on, that that physical interconnection can
have these really deleterious effects that maybe digital connection won't have when it can't
enable these market solutions. I had one more question before, if Lucas, you had some more.
You just dropped earlier kind of innocuously that you're not on social media.
And so I'm curious.
I mean, it's evidently, I'd assume a conscious decision.
Was there some moment of rupture that you're like, no more social media?
And then after that, things have changed?
Or what motivated that?
And do you think that that has changed the way that you look at things and looking at
Noster not as a social media interface, but as something bigger?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
I think the, um, there was already, there was already a period of time when I was like in,
uh, my end of high school, like early years of college where I was getting a little bit
wary of like interacting with, like, especially like on Instagram and certain things.
Like my biggest thing that I used was Twitter just because like, I follow, I liked the reading
and like thinking of like following thought people and like, uh, all the think boys and
everything like that online.
I'm just getting a sense of all that.
But, um, I was still using Instagram, like Snapchat, TikTok, all this stuff, but TikTok
was the big catalyst for me because there was a period in time during covid where like my girlfriend
and i all we would do uh is just like we'd be laying in bed and then we'd just be watching
tiktok for hours and then like our dates would be us like saying hell look at this tiktok and then
like we come back and then it's just like that that was our engagement and that was and that like
obviously that correlates with that period of time where we didn't really like have good
communication skills or like we're arguing and like doing all this stuff so it's like
there was a very obvious uh trend there where like okay i'm not like actually being like
interactive with anyone like doing anything properly i'm not trying to actually develop
in the relationships that i already have so by getting rid of it tiktok was the first thing i
didn't actually weirdly i didn't like consciously think that at the time the big thing that actually
got me was that uh that's when it came out that like tiktok was like controlled by the ccp and
all this stuff and like they were like it's logging our like data and i was like since i
was getting into bitcoin i was like getting big into privacy and stuff and i wanted to feel cool
like i don't want to be tracked or any of this stuff um but uh so like getting rid of the those
platforms uh i slowly or gradually got rid of it the hardest things to get rid of were basically
where i would like text my friends more than anything and i just had to like force people to
i was like i'm not going to talk to you ever again unless you like message me on signal or you message
me on on something like that like you have to communicate with me on this way um so that had
have to be like a bit of a forcing function there and um yeah that's that's one of the reasons why
with Noster because I still like I used it a lot more uh back then when I was first uh when I first
discovered it mainly because I was interested and like wanted to play around with it um but it's
still fundamentally like a social media platform and I think I remember seeing someone on Noster
uh post a note that was like um uh us are like us trying to we're basically like if you're trying
to make Nostra a successful social media platform, you're actually trying to replace
the addiction mechanism from other social medias into Nostra, which isn't necessarily what the
stated goal of most of the applications are. But at a fundamental level, because of the nature of
social media, that's what you're trying to do. And thankfully, we have people who are building
in this that are trying to do it in a healthy way, at least introduce it as a more direct
community um communication platform rather than just like a doom scrolling algorithmic feed thing
um but you need to be able to have uh yeah conscious uh uh conscious uh engagement with
these tools and realize that uh they do affect uh our daily life and having like because one one app
that's very useful to me because especially with like the business because i had the i've been
posting like content uh my girlfriend i've been posting content for uh and my girlfriend's also
my business partner in this so uh just to clarify because she's also involved but we post content
for milk market on instagram tiktok youtube all these things and uh i was i very quickly found
myself falling into the hole of like browsing instagram business podcasts and all this stuff
and now different content that i'm interested in but i had to like figure out a way to like kind of
fine-tune my time for that.
And I downloaded this app called Freedom,
which allows you to time block and
restrict when specific apps
can be opened on your phone. So that's
very, very helpful. And now, actually,
I just don't even engage with it much
anymore. It's just when I need to post.
But yeah, there's...
The natural evolution, I think, of most things
has to come to... The reason
we even engage with this is because we want a sense of community.
And I feel like one of the best ways of actually
creating that sense of community is through
direct engagement economically.
And that's why the focus that I see Nostra is developing
is more of a facilitator of spreading Bitcoin adoption
and monetary adoption of the tools that we have.
And that's why I originally came in Fort For
because I wanted to be able to contribute to Bitcoin
and the spread of it in a way that was more accessible
and more reachable than just improving Bitcoin.
Because obviously, who am I to say that I can actually just change it
and make it even better as a developer
rather than just like fixing bugs or all that stuff.
Like I want to like spread it
and get more people educated about it
and expose them to it.
So that's like the main goal.
This is such an interesting thing.
We're after this tomorrow,
we're going to review a paper by Heidegger
on tools and technique or technical.
The question concerning technology.
The question, yeah, the question concerning technology.
and it does bring up this great question which is that if you want to frame NOSTER as oh this is
a better Instagram or a better X or a better Facebook then I don't think that it ultimately
is successful because I think what it reveals is that when you do move to the tool that is NOSTER
and use that technology, then what you quickly come to realize is that the better Instagram is
no Instagram and the better Facebook is no Facebook. And the goal, if the goal is to be
a influencer with a large following, then the proper ground for that, the fertile ground for
that is that which you stand upon, not the cyber community. We talk about having like, I think this
is the word we were searching for before, which is that we have connection without community
on these social media platforms. And it's not connection that we ultimately seem to desire
because we're hyper-connected, yet we don't feel like we have a sense of community. You know, men
don't have friends and you don't have this engagement with people that is fruitful, I
guess, on these platforms.
And I just hope people, when they listen to this, they're able to really draw out something
that I think you said that it's just so brilliant, which is that, you know, that's not the goal
here.
The goal is that we are able to have more of this community, that if you want to see change in the world, that first you need to be that change.
And then second, the best place to spread that change is to the person that you're sitting next to or that you're talking to face to face.
um grant yesterday showed me that uh there's a a social media influencer from from his hometown
who basically trolls people um by uh presenting videos about farming that are entirely inaccurate
but because 99 of people their relationship with their food source is going to an antiseptic
supermarket and buying something that on average, I found on average that the average food product
travels 1600 miles to get to the end user in the United States. And so you have this entirely
disconnected feeling with your food and with the producer of that food. You don't have the sense
of community. And what you're doing is you are rebuilding that from the ground up, the individual
relationship with the producer and encouraging people to get to know them in order to interact
with them and to do commerce with them. So I just think that's such a beautiful, it just,
it's one of those things that it just feels right. Like, yes, I love the convenience of
DoorDash and I love the convenience of Amazon and things like that, but
nothing is fulfilling through that other than to fulfill this immediate desire of gratification
that is fleeting and disappears so quickly.
So yeah, it's just, it's very encouraging, I guess, to see that and to know that you're
having that experience and that your customers are having that experience.
um yeah so you're doing a um you're doing a fundraiser right now for milk market and um
the goal with that is to be able to present a better product
both drive help drive this adoption how is that fundraiser been going and um where
I guess where do you expect to see impact with that
when you're moving forward there?
Yeah, so the fundraising has been going well so far.
We're at half our goal, so we're trying to raise $124,000.
So we've already hit half our goal, which has been great.
And the nice thing about it is that it's not just like a normal
Kickstarter type thing.
So you actually get people who invest get ownership in the company,
So they're also like along for the ride with for being being a part of it and being within within the whole movement of what we're trying to accomplish.
And with it, basically what we're trying to do, because like to your point of like developing the sense of community and also the kind of the importance behind everything.
one thing that i also feel like is one reason why a lot of people also don't resonate necessarily
with this this mission of like like localizing the food sources like getting more of a relationship
with it is because a lot of the messaging and um uh discussion around it is actually comes at a at a
level that's very like it weighs on you because it's like oh my this is very important and like
there's a lot of like there's a sense of responsibility there and a lot of times i
could just be like a lot for some people for people to take in and try to like actually act
out on themselves because if you're weighed down you're not going to be able to move so you want
to be able to um like while he's one of the things that i think um and i've drawn from a lot of like
other consumer products like liquid death for example the founder of that when he was like
marketing water it's like people like people who are engaged like healthy food the healthy food
aisle and all these things they're marketing as with like the the idyllic pasture and like the
there's no like and like the perfect pristine conditions about everything and there's no like
real sense of like uh of fun or like engagement with that with like a community or anything there's
no sense of community around a specific brand or any of that but like junk food companies the way
they market is like they create a community they have like this these instances of like of fun and
activity around it like they have recognizable characters and all these people that you can or
all these things you can engage with and that's why he like what he was uh when he was drawing
from it is basically like you want to we want to we're a health food company because it's just it's
water it's healthy and it's also a sustainability company because they don't use plastic but we're
but we want to market like a like a like a junk food company we want to be able to like create
that presence and that that established brand recognition throughout people and uh and along
the way that's going to cause a divide um because like great art divides like that's just a a
a tendency of great art.
And part of what we're trying to do
is actually introduce a bit more of like that,
that entertainment and the fun.
Because if you look at our Instagram feed
or like our socials,
we try to do a lot of that stuff.
And we're at farmer's markets.
We pop up there and we're trying to engage
with like the people who are like coming by,
giving them free coffee,
just like kind of creating a bit more sense
of like engagement, direct engagement with people.
And we're trying to like try new things
to experiment with ways of like getting people comfortable
also with like raw milk, for example.
Because like one of the things
we're going to be doing with um with like the money that we get to raise is actually creating
like a line of like uh i guess like sort of like skincare products but like basically like soaps
and creams and stuff like for people to like actually apply to their skin because like through
the processing of like creating that that it gets rid of any potential potentially harmful things
that could come from raw milk and you're also putting on your skin not consuming it so it
alleviates a lot of like the regulatory pressure that comes from that and people can get more
comfortable and interested in it and they get to see behind like oh we're actually sourcing direct
we're doing things directly with farmers like being able to raise gives us the ability to
yeah broaden our footprint be able to access more of our community and tap into yeah like the the
need and sense of of being that people are like longing for and like doing it in a way that
actually helps promote the it creates like a virtuous cycle where it promotes sustainability
of the soil sustainability of the farmer and then that promotes sustainability of the community
and just like start developing a bigger and bigger flywheel with that so that's like the
fundamentally what we're trying to trying to accomplish local greater localization uh allowing
for like our team to scale up a little bit to help help with with that and yeah just just getting the
ball rolling and getting people uh exposed to it more and just like seeing uh having it uh yeah
having people have more conscious thought about it yeah so you were you were next to one of the
world's most renowned investors for a few months.
Have you asked Balaji to kick in a couple mil,
get you really rolling, get you a blimp?
I haven't yet, but I am planning to.
I'm going to be sending him a message later today.
Just shoot the shot, see what he said he says.
That's great, man.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I have seen you and Zoe's content to promote Milk Market.
And it's fun.
It's engaging.
it is exactly what you say where it's like the type of promotion that you would have around junk
food or like when I think of liquid death, like the first thing I think is like anybody holding
a liquid death can should be like vaping and wearing an affliction shirt. But they're not,
you know, like these are people that they're like, hey, I just want to feel cool. But I also
want to be healthy um and somehow we have i guess this is kind of the fiat mindset is that we've
associated um unhealthy risk with being cool um you know that you think of like you know smoking
cigarettes was you know viewed as so cool because it's um it's counterculture or whatever but
it was counterculture.
Like all of these
counterculture things
are not all of them,
but a lot of counterculture begins as something dangerous and something risky jumping out of you know base jumping or skateboarding or whatever like these things are inherently they carry risk but we associate
them with being cool because we as a people I think have become so docile and domesticated
that anything that breaks us out of that is viewed as, is viewed as like groundbreaking or, or, or
being a, being a trendsetter. So yeah, I, I, I certainly think you're on the right path. Like it,
it's really cool to see, even just sitting here, hearing you talk about building culture and
building community. Like my biggest regret right now is that you're not sitting next to us having
this conversation with us is that we're doing this remotely because you feel the lack of connection
like the you just or sorry you feel the lack of community we have the connection but we
we're missing the community um so yeah i just find that um i find that something maybe to ponder i
suppose um when you think about just interacting interacting with humanity um so i don't know um
What else is there? What is what else is there to talk about? Like what's next for what's next for you?
You know, you get I think this is going to be a successful fundraise and I think that you're going to be able to to really make some change.
Are you just thinking about kind of concentrically expanding your circle there, starting in Washington and or Seattle and moving deeper into Washington and deeper across the Pacific Northwest?
um what what really is your plan yeah yeah that's definitely that's part of it uh we're
hopefully going to be like really locking in on getting as much uh locally locally sourced like
products here in in in seattle and washington and then from there expand to the pmw because we do
actually already have like a few uh like beef producers also that we've been talking to because
i want to we're going to be expanding into different um product categories like beef and
eggs and all these other things like we want to like kind of help localize the the entire
entirety of like the food options that you can have especially healthy whole foods um and work
along the coast especially since it's just like pretty convenient for us like it's able to like
and there's a lot of uh largely the this the west coast has a lot of people who are like in
like really into this type of thing so it's like allow us to expand from there and then
work our way like yeah just across the country and trying to get involved a bit more meeting more of
the producers, meeting more people across the country and just like getting involved,
spreading that knowledge to people by making content and all that stuff.
Yeah, it's just a matter of, yeah, taking it day by day and just making our way forward
gradually.
Because there are days where it's like, it can be, I guess, a bit like overwhelming,
but like, it's like setting out the mission of like trying to like make markets more free
and all this stuff.
But whenever you just, yeah, just take it slowly and like make gradual progress, like
to 1% improvements compound over time.
So it's just a matter of, yeah,
taking a step forward and working towards it.
Yeah, citing James Clear and Atomic Habits
will get you very far on this podcast.
Definitely.
Like the thing that really draws me
about working in the space of Bitcoin
is that there are healthy people
who are fit that don't know about Bitcoin.
But there are not very many people that know about Bitcoin
that are not healthy and fit.
And there are people that have community
or that don't have community and don't know about Bitcoin.
And there are people that do,
but there are very few people that know about Bitcoin
that don't consciously strive to create a community.
And I guess I think I'm mostly concerned with health and fitness.
I think that, you know, like what they say, the man who has everything wants nothing or the man who has his health wants everything, but the man who doesn't have his health only wants one thing.
And I think that all of human experience seems to be kind of downstream from your health, from your physical health, your mental health.
And what I see in the Bitcoin community is that that focus on on health and community and fitness, which is a community is a metric of fitness, you know, and being to be to be healthy.
You need relationships and you need social engagement.
I see all those things as kind of being downstream from Bitcoin.
um and so getting in the right boat i guess is uh is kind of the encouragement to work in that space
um i just think it's fantastic what you're doing um it really is it's a it's an honor to watch you
work um because the way that you um you know you note this just like one percent you're not
it's not a billion dollar company it's not a billion dollar um it's not even a billion dollar
total addressable market where you're at right now um but you view that as that's not the reason
why i would do this like um what is you know why do i need to be global and shallow when i can be
local and deep exactly and i think that that's i think that that's moving us towards something
better, I guess. So yeah, really pushing us, pushing the needle in a way that might not be
seen on a global stage, but certainly can be seen on a local stage. And, you know, now that Farcaster
has taken a dump, I think Balaji might be in something. I was thinking the exact same thing.
You're like, man, I'm just going to dive right in here. You know, timing is perfect. So yeah.
I don't know.
Grant, what else you got for our man?
I said I was going to ask an antagonistic question before the camera started rolling, and I haven't.
So I feel like I should throw out one, which is one we threw out to Max Hill and Brandon.
So this is a good one.
So Lucas and I were talking with philosopher, technologist, builder, Artie Antola, who is somebody who's building on Bitcoin.
He has this project, Canonic.xyz, where he's putting books on chain for very idealistic reasons.
So he's a builder on Bitcoin and yet kind of for somebody who's building on Bitcoin.
So imagine that there's different levels of Bitcoin revelation.
You first realize, oh, this is a store of value.
It's going to preserve my money.
And then, oh, this is a medium of exchange.
We can use this and disintermediate third parties.
Oh, this is going to end war.
And then you ascend up this pyramid of like revelations on Bitcoin.
And then what's the one at the top of that pyramid?
And so Artie and Tola, he said, he just kind of dropped it to us.
He said, Bitcoin is the enemy.
And so it's almost like this.
What does that mean when somebody who is way down the Bitcoin rabbit hole says, Bitcoin
is the enemy?
But the question for you is, if somebody following a similar train of reasoning said to you,
Kalvadev, I'm deep into Nostra.
I've been thinking this thing, you know, all the ways down the road and all the ways it's
going to make society better.
And my final revelation is Nostra is the enemy.
What does that mean?
Oh, man.
Dang, that's an interesting question.
I think that kind of points to the lines of Bitcoin is for everyone.
Because basically, it's not only for the people you love,
but also it's open to those that can be adamant against whatever it is that you're fighting for.
But interesting, Noster is the enemy.
I would say I think it's also somewhat a function of how we go in a lot of times into something new and how we're developing something with the idea that the tool fundamentally is the thing that we're trying to optimize for.
but at some point if we actually like use the tool to accomplish its goal using the tool becomes
the very thing that is like holding us back from actually optimally reaching the goal because they
have like the sense of community is what we're hoping for like using nostr at some like some
very very foreign point once we actually like reach the level where nostr is the thing that
connecting all our communities and everything like the need for it kind of completely disappears if
like you're still engaging with it.
You're like not, you're actually removing yourself
from the actual direct human engagement
that you're communicating with.
So that's, I think, how I would take that.
Like you're, the tool at some point
becomes the thing holding you back
from achieving like the quote unquote perfection
of the intended original goal.
Now, beautifully said.
And that's, I mean, we're talking Heidegger's,
the question concerning technology tomorrow.
And that's such a beautiful bridge to that.
So yeah, I love that explanation.
Thank you.
Yeah, the thing that got you here
is not the thing that will get you to where you actually want to go.
It's just that you have to leave it behind eventually.
You think about like, I like hiking and I hate being cold.
And so I would go hike and I would have my three pairs of socks
and three layers on everything.
And as you hike along, then you start to warm up
and you start to become acclimated.
You start and it's cold and it actually gets colder as you go up,
yet you warm and you become used to it.
And periodically you stop and you take off the gloves
and you take off a pair of socks and you take off a layer
and you leave behind these tools that were necessary conditions
to get you to where you are,
but they're not sufficient to get you to where you're going.
and you have to leave that thing behind so it's tough to know that point when you have to leave
the thing behind it's the knowing the point when you need social media that's tough you need to
bootstrap you need to meet people maybe it's tough to know the point when the tool becomes the thing
that's holding you back yeah and it it's just the means to the end right yeah it becomes the end at
some point and you got to not let it yeah so what is the end what is the ultimate goal what's the
I was about to ask you guys the exact same thing.
So what do you guys think that the end is?
So I'll take a shot at answering it because I want to hear what you have to say.
And I definitely want to hear what Grant has to say.
The thing that hit me when I first learned about Bitcoin, like of all the things that we can talk about,
the thing that struck me was that Bitcoin incentivizes collaboration instead of competition.
And it's fascinating to know that the only thing that we know of, which is absolutely scarce, is also the thing that removes our scarcity mindset.
and it encourages us to work together because when we work together, we all benefit as opposed to
the abundance of fiat of an ever-expanding supply encourages us to compete for our share
of that ever-expanding supply and to always be competing for more of it because having this much
today is equivalent to having this much divided by two tomorrow. And it becomes less and what we
have becomes less and less over time. Whereas with Bitcoin, what we have becomes more and more over
time. So I guess that's a Bitcoin centric attempt to answer that question. But it is revealing in
that the best things in life are free, that love is probably the thing that trumps everything
else. And so the meaning, I guess, of life is to find, or not to find love, the meaning
of life is to allow love. Because when you look for something, you never find it. You
know, wanting something is painful, but seeking something is pleasure. And it turns out
that oftentimes when we are seeking, what we actually need to do is stop looking and just let
go and surrender to the thing that is going to bring us. Like it was always there. You know,
the love was always there. You just need to get out of your way. The healthy relationships were
always there. You just need to get your ego out of the way. The healthy body was always there.
You just need to get your addictions out of the way. So I don't know. Yeah, the meaning of life is love and collaboration, I guess. There's mine. That's good. Grant?
Oh, no, I don't know that I would presume to be able to pontificate on that subject.
Instead, I'll give what I kind of a memento mori style meditative technique that maybe people can unconceal or reveal to themselves what reality is trying to tell them as far as what its meaning is, what is already pregnant in reality.
And one of those things, sometimes I do this, so memento mori is this idea, keep around you symbols of your own passing, your own mortality, like a skull to remind you you're going to die.
A way to make this even more involved is imagine you're already dead, like sensorially do as much as you can to bring yourself to that point where you're already dead, right?
But then imagine, you can't imagine that, right?
Because that's the extinction of your ability to imagine that.
imagine instead you are at that moment after you just came alive after being dead so what about
reality floods your senses right so if you move from a state of nonsense of no sensing whatsoever
like does does the mere act of filling your lungs fill you with a sort of sublime joy
um does like the light itself the way that it cascades against the surface of brick buildings
and brings out a very specific shade of red?
Is that something that strikes you?
And then do you want to hear the voice again
after aeons of being dead,
the voice of your loved ones, right?
Who you now have the opportunity to do that with.
And so again, that's not the meaning of life.
And I said, I don't want to pontificate at that,
but I think what we can always foster
is like ways of revealing
that are beyond the technological,
like beyond the tools that we have.
We can begin to look at life in different ways
by considering a relationship to it in ways that are not just through the tools we have,
not just the world I see is the spyglass I look through that is Twitter that shows me tweets, right?
The world is a much broader thing.
So focus on ways that you can engage with it that will reveal different things about the world to you.
Kalvidev, we leave you with the last word.
What do you have for us?
Yeah, I was going to sort of off of that too.
and this is a good place, I guess, to leave it unexplained.
But one of my theories of how, I guess,
human consciousness and the organization of life is structured
is basically we are to the universe
as our emotions are to ourselves or something like that.
That's the closest I can have gotten to it.
So each individual human being is like anger,
happiness within our own mind and then like we we dissolve away and like reconvene with like the
original like larger entity and each universe itself is like an emotion of whatever larger
entity is that of the of the universe and uh what i think is and even to the point of like the uh
nostril is the enemy almost like our lives are the enemy at some point um because or like our
flesh bodies are the enemy because like uh i do believe like the end goal of everything is love
and cooperation and like we're just like fine-tuning ourselves like reach a point where
we can have optimal cooperation and uh we basically dissolve back into our universal
shell and reconvene with the energy fields of of the of the of the universe and then just become
one and like that's pure cooperation because we are just like one singular entity and motivated
for its singular purpose or a singular goal whatever that may be I don't know what the
universe's goal is but I think ours is to be as cooperative and as lovable as possible
yeah that is a beautiful way to end it Kalvadev thank you so much for joining us it it truly is
like I am I'm honored to to know you um I'm so impressed by what you've done in the space um
The first time that I saw you was when you made a presentation about Noster and talked about operation security and talked about the things that it could allow the world.
And you speak with not just knowledge about these things, but with the practicality that it brings something better to your life.
And it allows you to be just more of you instead of to be part of something else.
And I think that's absolutely beautiful. As we kick it out, let people know where they can find Milk Market, where they can find Shopster, etc., where they can follow, etc. Just let people know how they can join in this mission of yours.
And of course, we're going to tag the fundraising campaign as well in this.
And also, I'll be a contributor as well.
So I want to be a part of this mission.
Yeah, I love it.
Yeah, you can find, like the parent is Shopster Markets, S-H-O-P-S-T-R Markets with an S dot com.
And like there, you can see like Shopster, the Shopster Market and Milk Market.
Both of them are Shopster.Market and Milk.Market.
you can on social media,
you can follow Milk Market at Milk Market Media.
And then if you ever want to like get my contact or anything,
you can go to calva.dev,
just calva.dev.
And all my personal websites there,
you can email me, you can message me.
So yeah, all that's great.
And I'd love to really appreciate being a part of this
and like having the discussion.
It was really, really, really great to, yeah,
just think and be able to go back and forth.
Loved it.
my friend yeah my friend it is is absolutely wonderful to see the sun shining in your face
and see you smiling see that you're recovered from your from your marathon and doing well so
oh yeah still still still trying to recover but uh my cows are still killing me but
again uh thank you so much and uh i guess uh we'll talk to you next time man uh it's been a pleasure
yeah thank you