Welcome back to Bitcoin Study Sessions.
My name is Lucas Matty.
That guy with a good smile is Grant Riker.
This is your favorite fourth tier podcast about Bitcoin with third tier jokes and eighth tier haircuts.
And we are joined by first tier guest, a first tier guest who I like to describe as the Bitcoin menace of Bulgaria, a force of nature.
Mr. Ivan Makadonsky.
He is the chief of staff at Breeze, which is a Bitcoin lightning company.
Breeze has developed a software development kit, an SDK, that allows nodeless lightning transactions.
Not only that, Ivan is a really deep thinker in terms of Bitcoin.
And he's really inspired me to consider the societal effects of how split payments can change the way that society interacts with each other.
The example I always get is that we've got a restaurant and typically the restaurant started by somebody who likes to cook.
And in the course of wanting to run a restaurant, they have to stray away from doing the thing that they're good at, cooking.
and they have to delve into all these other forays that they might not be very good at,
like hiring or accounting or being a landlord or being a real estate owner,
advertising, marketing, etc.
What Lightning allows us to do is that when I walk into the restaurant,
I pay my bill and it allows 5% to go to the waitress, 10% to go to the chef, 15% to go to the building owner, 3% to go to the accountant, etc., etc.
Instantly with final settlement.
And that changes our incentives.
We talk a lot about incentive structure and how Bitcoin encourages us to be collaborative instead of competitive.
So this changes the way that we interact with each other.
I think that it's one of the more interesting thought holes to go down to in Bitcoin.
And we're going to poke around a few holes here with Ivan today.
So Ivan, if you would, give us a little bit of your own introduction.
I've left out a few important things, husband and father, of course, proud Bulgarian.
And also he's a member of the subterranean thought current within Bitcoin.
And that is people who understand software for the vital thesis that it is.
And he really, not only does he understand the vitality of that thesis, but he applies it in his work.
So definitely great to have him here.
Yeah. Kick us off, Ivan. What do you got for us?
Thanks for the kind words.
I would say out of all of those, I don't think if I'm a deep thinker, I just tumbled onto something and I started thinking about it to chase it.
I never wrote an article in my previous careers.
I never spent so much time thinking about an idea like what is money, why the hell Bitcoin or all sorts of things.
And now I'm in this journey for four years and this thing just happened.
But why I do this is I'm a highly competitive person and I come from a deep pain.
as you know from our previous conversations.
And for me, what I say is that whatever I do in Bitcoin,
probably I'm not going to affect the world economy in any sort of way.
But if I do things right and I understand and build the proper solutions,
I'm going to have a huge effect for my kids.
And that is what is driving me for all of this, because this is my hashing proof of work thing that whatever the market values and stuff like that, whatever works, if I implement this solution, if I connect with those people, if I whatever environment set up for my kids, now they're going to start from that and build upon this.
just like we are stepping on the work of Satoshi Nakamoto.
Like we didn't have to be a cypherpunk and figure that whole process for 40 years.
But now we kind of understand the basic pieces and we can build on top of that.
And that is what I'm trying to do.
Like I want to set an environment of abundance,
an environment of quality people for my kids,
the social network,
which in general,
Bitcoiners are better
from my understanding and my experience.
But I don't want my kids
to fight invisible demons like inflation
and believe the propaganda
that that is good for us.
Just like saying,
oh, you have a computer,
So I'm not going to steal it, but I'm going to break it.
And that is good for you.
Like, that is what they're doing to our money.
But because of, as I said, because of that pain, because of now I have in my face the meaning of what I'm fighting for.
Because in my previous careers and fiat, I didn't understand any of this.
And I was not a father.
So it wasn't a daily reminder of what I was doing, but I was kind of chasing success in the fiat propaganda view.
But now it's completely different.
That is, I would say, an introduction for myself, that I'm trying to build a better world for my kids.
Yeah. And part of that better world is that you are continuously going deeper and deeper into the doors that Bitcoin unlocks. So Bitcoin itself offers the sovereignty and the financial freedom, but then lightning allows for these split payments and allows for this value for value.
And in the most recent article that you had sent us, you go a step further and you actually make a critique of the traditional fiat platforms of advertising, YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts.
And you talk about, you know, Bitcoin podcasters, we're on these platforms and we are preaching Bitcoin, but giving a fiat experience.
And that fiat experience is one that is heavily laden with ads and sponsorships and interrupted and it lessens the experience for the listener.
And so you've really become a proponent of Noster, notes and other stuff transmitted by relays, a decentralized protocol that allows for the transmission.
It's effectively a decentralized social media platform.
And partly by your encouragement, we've started putting our podcast onto Noster.
um we've had slow you know small small user base um not a whole lot of listens however
i told grant the other day um we've now had two people that directly reached out and gave us
money gave us bitcoin in the form of sats by sending us payments through lightning
straight through Nostra, straight into our account, automatic final settlement.
And I think that's kind of what it means to be, you might not consider yourself a deep thinker,
but to be someone who is constantly on the edge. When Bitcoin was on the edge, you were there,
then lightning, and now we're on Nostra. So can you kind of flesh out that idea for us a little
bit. I know that you interact quite a bit on Noster and kind of just lay out, I guess, the case for
what you see Noster as today and what you see the potential of that. Because there's a lot of
people that would say the network effect of something like YouTube or Spotify or Apple
podcasts is so large that it will be impossible to overcome that and get people to transfer to a
new platform like Nostre. I don't believe that, but I think that that's something that should be
addressed. So would you kind of tell us about your experience with Nostre and where you think that
that'll take us? I would say about Nostre, a little bit of a correction. I think Nostre is
playing around with Bitcoin the proper way.
I don't know if Noster is the solution
because Noster is not a social media thing.
Noster is a protocol
that you can have a digital identity.
And what you do with that digital identity
could be almost anything.
And Noster has the potential
to become the new internet
in some circles what they say.
I'm not technically as competent to say
if that is actually possible
because other people say it's not scalable.
But what Noster really is doing is
Bitcoin is native in Noster.
It's not something outside.
It's not something all click this button
and you're going to be redirected to another page.
It's in the whole experience.
And whoever gives the best experience wins in those circles.
But for now, it's just a playground.
It's like nothing.
But that is the thing what people and developers should focus on.
Like, how can I integrate Bitcoin in my day-to-day experiences?
So it's not something that's outside.
It's not an asset that I'm waiting to get rich.
but it's all just money in the base the basic understanding of everything so why are you using
money for just one use case to save in it like yeah it's a very very important use case because
we never had this uh saving technology ever in history of humankind but that is just one use
case payment is also the the other best use case like to be anywhere around the world for seconds
like okay like why nobody is playing around like nostr is great at that but unfortunately
this is something that's completely new and it's very hard to adopt this network and the
The biggest thing that is stopping people to flow in there is the user experience.
Again, it's kind of bad still.
And I'm in Nostar for like, I think, three years now.
Definitely more than two.
And it's improved hugely.
But still, it sucks for a lot of things.
the thing that really shocked me two weeks ago or something is that I started playing around
with Vibe coding and it turns out that now all my ideas in the instant settlement articles
I can showcase them like I can do split payments with our own SDK which is free anybody can use it
I gave the documentation of Breeze to the AI.
I told him, okay, make this website.
Then I pointed, okay, based on this documentation,
make a particular payment in such a way with the,
again, I'm not thinking in developer terms.
I'm thinking in user terms, how I want the experience to be.
And you can implement all that in your own website.
It will not be Noster, but it will have the same thing.
So yes, you can put all your content in Noster and the experiences because there is a network,
but nothing stops you to create your own website where you host it yourself
and you have all that same experience in it.
Like you create invoices, you receive it, somebody votes for something,
your users can have their own wallet.
everything can be one whole thing and not only that but when you take your seed and you put it
somewhere else your money is already there you don't need something else the thing that you
need to protect is just the seed uh so again going back to your question nostr is a great
experimentation and the network is kind of growing there but it's still even though
it's growing
it's still not hitting a hockey stick
it's growing linearly
and until
somebody creates some type of
experience where they're very
excited about
actually somebody created
a replica
of
Vines, he called it
Divines and that actually
his servers and I think
Rabo is his
nickname and that was great and everybody was excited about it uh yeah we're going to have six
seconds video on noster but uh when you get in you're excited and the user experience is crappy
is what we talked the last time like the experience needs to be good so people stay they don't
uh dig around and then leave like that's not the idea we need to be better uh just because
theoretically Bitcoin has all those properties, it doesn't mean that the developers that work on
them give you those properties. People don't care about digital scarcity. People don't care about,
I can send it around the world. They need to have the problem solved and that thing just needs to
work like i don't want to know uh what i need to do to electrify my house i want to click button
and that light bulb to be uh to shine so i see stuff in the dark that is the idea we are still
not there yet but uh because i believe with ai uh and uh right now the layers of bitcoin are
getting much, much better than what it was three years ago,
like light years.
And we're getting closer,
but we did not hit a point of adoption of hockey stick.
That is the problem and it is in the user experience
because if somebody, the only, unfortunately,
the only hockey stick that we hit from time to time
is when something in fiat breaks
and Bitcoin or Noster fills that gap
because there was some problem in Asia
that they blocked private messages
and something like that.
So something that Jack Dorsey created
that uses Noster,
the adoption grew a lot.
But those are pockets and tremors
in the fiat system
and not everybody will jump on the right board.
So that is the thing that we need to figure out.
I don't want the world to crash and burn until we use Bitcoin.
But unfortunately, and I'm putting this also for myself, will come from pay.
I believe that 99% of people will jump in Bitcoin because they have no choice.
Just 1% will be like, oh, this is something that I can use.
I agree.
We've said this on this podcast before, but Tony Robbins has a saying that people do not change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing.
And I recently applied for a role with the Bitcoin Conference.
And the mission of the Bitcoin Conference is hyper-Bitcoinization.
And so in preparation for my initial interview, I was having a conversation with Grok about what are the major drivers for hyper Bitcoinization for the rapid adoption of any technology.
And interestingly enough, the answer that I got was that nothing will accelerate hyper Bitcoinization like the failure of the fiat economy.
You can have all the free education that you want, all the conferences, all the platforms and podcasters, etc.
And that will not move the needle near as much as having the failure of the current system, which makes perfect sense.
But you said something, I want to kind of, I'm not sure if I'm challenging you on it or if I'm just asking for more clarity.
But first off, I want to frame NOSTER in historical terms.
we're saying that it's been three years and it's still not very user friendly.
And by the way, I agree with that.
I use it and it's not very fast.
Primal is what I use for my interface and it's not great.
It's okay.
It does have some features that I prefer actually to other platforms.
But still, it's not quite as good.
However, if we frame it in terms of thinking about,
well, the internet was invented in the 60s
And it wasn't actually usable on a commercial level until the 90s. And it wasn't actually popular until the 2000s with the introduction of search engines. Then if we look at it in that kind of historical context, then I would say that Noster is actually being adopted fairly quickly. It's moving fairly rapidly.
Um, but the thing that I think is important is that we, we have the protocol and like you say, we're waiting for the user experience to be developed in order to really engage people.
Chamath Palihapitiya, um, he was, uh, I, I saw him recently, um, on stage and he was talking about how the refrigerator was introduced, but the people that sold the refrigerators and made the refrigerator, they didn't really.
make a whole lot of money. They weren't really the ones that changed the world. The people that
really benefited from that were the people that made Coca-Cola and the people that made beer,
right? Because that was the product that went into the protocol. And so Primal, Damus, these
products basically that are built on top of the protocol of Noster, they're the ones that, yeah,
we're really waiting for that great use case, the place to listen to music or watch movies or
watch the Vine episodes, or is it my social media? Is it the way that I transfer value, etc.?
But you had said that you're not sure that Nostra can scale. Is it just because of the user
experience lagging that you don't believe that Nostra can scale? Or is it some other technical
reason uh this is beyond my comprehension unfortunately but the uh the technical
community is kind of split on roster so uh half of it say that because everything is relayed through
relays and through multiple relays that means that the data is duplicated in uh multiple relays
that creates problems but i cannot answer more than this uh that is the technical challenge because
some say that above 500 or even less 500 million people it would just completely break because it
will be flooded with information that has to travel on the other side people that are building
on Noster I talked with them and they say that if you're highly technical person you have to
unlearn a lot of stuff in order to understand that Noster can scale.
And I am, again, don't know what is the truth.
That is their argument, just like an economist,
a fiat economist trying to understand Bitcoin.
That is their argument.
But again, is it a bias because they're building on Noster
or the other people are right?
I don't know.
But either way, the thing, as I said, the thing that I love,
Even if Noster is not the thing, by Noster scaling to the point of that failure, then that would be great because so many people will use it.
And that means all of our collective brains of those, let's say, 1% of those people will be developing on it.
They have a vested interest in making it work, even if it fails.
So a solution might show up or even if it completely fails, another type of protocol should change or something else.
So it will take the good stuff from Noster and place it somewhere else.
Just like Bitcoin evolved to what it is now.
Before that, it was BitGold.
Then it was before that it was Charming Cash or like so many iterations that everybody has its pluses and minuses.
But at some point, the practical use case how it should be is Bitcoin. I think the social identity and stuff like that is in that iteration. That's why I don't know if it will work or it will fail. But in the process, we will not lose. Like even if that is not the proper protocol.
But because, again, it's digital identity plus digital money, something that we don't have anywhere else.
So that's the way that we should experiment and develop.
There's some very strong votes of confidence for Nostra, right?
You've got Jeff Booth, who left Twitter to go to Nostra.
He's very visionary in that realm.
um, Lynn Alden, um, uh, Jack Dorsey. Um, and so it is encouraging to know that there are a lot of
smart people that are, um, putting their time into that space, I guess. Um, yeah, when,
when we talked with Jason Lowry, um, and unfortunately we weren't able to, to record it,
But when we talked with Jason Lowry, he's the one that first kind of gave us this idea of the Internet being rebuilt on Bitcoin and kind of describing what that might be like, which would be that, you know, basically you can create a wall around your digital identity and you can reach through the wall to get anything that you want.
I want this video. I want this song. But if someone wants to reach through your wall to show you an ad, to put you a product in front of you, then they have to pay a certain amount of sats. They have to pay you a certain amount of Bitcoin in order to reach you.
And this is that idea of building a wall of Bitcoin that can only be penetrated by Bitcoin, that Bitcoin is both the castle wall and the cannonball.
it's a fascinating concept and when I look at Noster with your ability to choose your own
algorithm with your ability to control basically what you see it's it's not easy to do if you
aren't technical but it it can be done and presumably it will become easier I envision
that I'll have a slider and I'll just be able to push that slider over and say that
If you give me 50 sats, you can show me an ad, something like that. But that falls in line with the software thesis. I think Noster has that ability. And I know that we're all kind of just trying to learn in real time on this.
who in your mind is the most technical person,
the best technical expert on Noster?
Because I want to reach out to him
and continue this conversation with him as well.
Well, last year it was Pablo,
but I don't know his last name.
I think he is the person that made the most ups on Noster.
like okay he is the one that created highlighter he did uh some client that looks like instagram
he did other stuff like uh yeah and uh you can find him only on monster but uh he's one of the
most popular guys so it will be hard to reach out to him i just bumped into him in one of the
conferences and we chatted.
But
yeah, well, if you can reach
out to him, he is definitely
the one to talk to
about this. And
the other is Derek Ross.
They joke about that he's
the CEO of Nostar.
You say Derek?
I think Derek Ross.
Derek Ross.
Yes.
So those two guys,
if you want to talk Nostar
deep dive behind the scenes
what's happening.
But I wanted to go back
into
your analogy
about Bitcoin will be
the cyber shield and the cannonball
where
the whole internet will be built.
And
your example, yes,
those are true. And I wanted
to bring out that in our last conversation
that idea that I
had for you about people
voting for what books to read
is we missed
a very big
software case there
that you said
what you don't like about that
idea is audience
capture and that
can't happen because
that's not somebody
commenting about it
your comment you could never
be audience captured
when somebody votes with their
such because the audience capture is actually the use case what you talked about joe rogan or
whoever is very famous in the cyberspace because there is no shield they can't protect themselves
they can get audience capture because it costs almost nothing to comment but if it costs something
that's a completely different thing that means that uh what jason also said here and there is that
If somebody attacks you, you want them to attack you because it costs them.
And not only it costs them, but that value transferred for you if you create the architecture properly.
So let imagine this for the idea that I had for you that somebody says oh read that book and they vote to SATs whatever But somebody outvotes them I go and I not just stingy and give you two stats but I give you 20 stats to read a particular book Now he needs to outcompete me for the best price But not only that you might read that book and he just a spammer trying to attack you and you delete his comment
Now, in order for him to audience capture you, he has to put up more sets and it's in your control.
And that's the use case that we completely missed in our last conversation.
And again, this is not in Noster, but something that you can completely create through the structure and the design because you know the theory of software.
But now in practice, you can apply it.
And now you don't need to tell anybody, oh, this is a cyber shield.
Oh, this is a weapon.
Oh, Bitcoin is violence or whatever those terms that they hate and they trash Jason about.
But they'll say, oh, this is not a weapon.
This is a paywall.
Like, whatever.
Like, it's like saying, like, the practical use case is less important than theory.
Like, does it matter what is the label?
Like, use it properly and some websites will be protected through this cyber shield because I was thinking also that the solution that makes Bitcoin work, the proof of work mechanism where people do calculations with their computers so you don't receive spam.
Now you don't need to even do that because one SAT is a representation of that proof of work.
So the work was already done in order to accumulate a SAT, two SATs or whatever amount.
So you don't need to even do those calculations preventing spam.
You just need to do this.
Oh, you want to email me?
Give me one SAT or anything else.
You don't need to do some of the solutions that developers do right now is if somebody tries to spam me, we're going to block them if they send, let's say, 50 emails in a span of like an hour.
Like, yeah, but you still receive 50 unwanted emails and you receive nothing for it.
But if that is too sad, like, okay, you received 100 Satoshis kind of for free and you can still ignore him.
But if somebody actively attacks you, you can increase even the price and all sorts of implications of what he's saying.
And does it matter if they call it a weapon or just, okay, this is just how things work now.
But if people don't understand the theory and don't understand not only software, but Bitcoin itself, and they don't understand computers and all sorts of things, and they don't even care about the user experience, how are we going to get there?
It's so hard.
And that is what I'm really struggling with everything.
The lucky thing, what you said, that I'm on the edge.
I am very lucky because I'm in a company with very big visionaries that they foresaw this for Lightning and how things work very far into the future.
But their technologies for 30 plus years practice.
And yeah, I'll just stop here.
but that's what I wanted to mention
that we missed the software use case
of my idea and you
talking about audience capture
Grant
you've been stoically stroking
your mustache and calmly taking
a drink and by the way I do have
to compliment you because I can tell
that your hair looks fantastic
today. What do you want to
share here? What are you thinking about?
As far as hair care secrets? No, no
keep those to yourself. No, so Ivan
when I was listening to you
a couple of things occurred to me. So one is, it seems like it's still audience capture,
just audience capture to the highest bidder, which maybe is an okay thing if you want your goal with
a podcast or an artistic creation is, you want patronage, and you want a fuel to drive you
forward. In that case, it makes sense. And you still have erected a defensive wall guarding your
time, but not maybe guarding the artistic direction, the agency that is more important than
the value that you receive. I don't know that it's a critique because that just goes maybe to
the motivation of the person who is putting out the thing that they want to guide. They want to
give value in a sense, but irrespective of the value they receive up front. They think that their
value, the value given may be asymmetric to people's desire to receive a certain sort of value.
The more, the craft way to put that is people may not know what they want or what they need.
And so, for example, like we read Human Forever, and I think that's a book that not a lot of people,
is not on a lot of people's radar,
but I was eager to read it exactly for that reason.
Not because I would receive value up front,
but because I thought the value that we would put out
by bringing to the people's attention
something that they might not know
was going to be asymmetric to anything
we could receive up front
and was going to be good for that reason.
That's maybe not a critique,
because again, that just goes to the motivation
of the person creating the thing.
so I don't one thing that I want to hear your thoughts on though is in this piece that we read
which is the latest version of your thinking on split payments kind of a
a summary of your previous articles in the form of one article that prehends kind of a
comprehensive vision of your thought this article from September in Bitcoin magazine
you again talk about split payments it seems that you really do think that split payments
are the mechanism by which bitcoin becomes we arrive at hyper bitcoinization we maybe don't
have to as lucas direly notes wait for the collapse of the fiat economy we can lean on
the utility of what the lightning network offers which is something heretofore unimaginable which
is split payments.
And there's a, so I want to get,
I want to see if you can,
if split payments doesn't some way integrate
with your idea on preventing audience capture,
if there's any sort of way to integrate those two thoughts.
But also just as a really great line from this article
that I want to not leave behind,
and it's that split payments will mean
that finance will spread out in a decentralized way
with organizations that aren't single entities, but distributed networks, it seems like your
vision of split payments gets rid of the idea of the corporation, a centralized business entity,
and allows in lieu of that decentralized networks of people that act as if they were a corporation
because they're suddenly bound together by the ability to receive payment as if they were part
of one. So that's a few thoughts thrown out there, but I want to get your thoughts on those.
Yes. So the first thing about what you said that you want to put value out there, just because I'm talking about people sending sats in order to comment or something.
First of all, you create the design.
I'm talking about the protective case against audience capture.
First of all, that doesn't mean that you are completely autonomous or you're completely captured.
Like there is in between.
So obviously you can choose whatever you want to read because you feel or you can listen to your audience and what they want and they really voted for it.
But I was just saying the use case of software, like one thing is attacking you through cyberspace and you put the physical cost limitation in order to do that.
I'm talking about against that. That was my comment. That doesn't mean that if you want, you cannot, you can even continue to read how you read and you don't even create this experience because you want to read whatever you want.
You don't even want to listen to the audience.
But let's take it a step further about the split payment.
Yes, I realized that even after writing the CISA articles,
the first time when I was writing about it,
but when I had the conversation with you and even going deeper about those thoughts,
is, okay, like what happens really if we receive split payments?
Okay, it could be between companies, but the more and more thinking
and in all those examples that I gave in the articles is
at the end, a human should receive the value.
It's not some type of entity abstract thing.
Like, so if at the end is the human, like that means that the institutions,
companies and everything is just in between and not only that i realized that that is how the fiat
system captures the part of society that needs bitcoin the most because if you're an employee
in a company now you cannot run away let's not be that uh you can't run away completely with
what taxes you pay or not pay because you don't even see that money the company pays it and they
will definitely pay it because they want to proceed in the environment but i was thinking let's say
50 years ago or something how many mom and pub shops there were uh did they pay all their taxes
is that maybe the reason why they didn't feel the inflation so much
or all the problems that are in society now.
And through a hundred years now of centralizing forces,
like how many mom and pop shops closed down
because they can't afford the raising prices.
And because of that, now they get into the centralized point
where they extract the most taxes for the employers.
So, again, I didn't expect this, but it's just, again, a second and third order effect of all those centralizing forces.
And split payments is exactly the reverse that, yeah, you start, let's say, you are two hosts right now.
You can split it by two.
But what happens when not only people vote with their stats, but you invite a guest to have a podcast with and you say, okay, we're going to split with the guest, whatever people voluntarily give you stats for.
So not only that, but you will have guests that want to be on your show because they will receive some type of value or they will vote to read their book so they can even be on your show.
I'm saying those are experiences and forces that will motivate human action that are completely different than the fiat platforms that we have now.
That I appear on a podcast, that podcast receives 11,000 views.
And it turns out that in the first 20% of the whole video, the audio shuts down.
And after 11,000 views, somebody says, oh, there's a problem in the video.
So what does that mean?
Did 11,000 people watch it or those were just bots?
I can't even prove that.
But with that human experience and it costs you something and it gives like that connects you in so many different ways.
And I just, again, stumbled onto it, thinking about it.
And this is it.
Yes, split payments.
You start from something, but that is the very, very further down the line.
I don't know if software will be first or the split payment idea, disintegrating even corporations.
But yeah, I think if we get on that path, we'll get there eventually because we don't need some entities, corporations.
I need the money now and I want to use my resources however see fit and because it doesn't have any cost to carry it to hold it or anything else. Why would I even create bank accounts in Bulgaria? I don't know in in US, but if I have a personal account, I'm not I don't have a fee by the bank. That's not tax.
But if I have a corporate account, every month they charge me.
Like not only that, but now I have to have an account and I have to have this and I have to pay this and that and this.
And what business can you own?
And with split payments, I don't need to have any of that.
I don't need to be in any jurisdiction.
I just need to create the best service, product or whatever.
And I need to find a marketer that, yeah, I'll tell him, I'll give you 20% of whatever we sell.
And I need to find some accountant.
Why? I don't even need an accountant.
Like the payment is the accounting itself.
But I just need to figure out who I want to be in my core team to create this.
And I don't even know how far it will go.
But those were the thoughts there.
So you don't need a legal fiction to preside over the creation of value.
You just need an intricate set of payment channels that is going to reward everybody as if they were all aligned with the same mission.
And they presumably will be if they're receiving value, if that mission succeeds.
I was reading a book. I've been reading this book on the development of the legal liability concept of limiting legal liability. And there's a famous quote that a law professor was asked, like, what is the biggest innovation of the 20th century? You know, is like electricity or the steam engine or something like that? And he says, it is the legal liability corporation, the ability to limit legal liability.
And the thing about Bitcoin is its law is code. It is something where you move outside the law in a sense because you don't need to regulate the conduct of individuals with law backed by violence.
You can instead regulate conduct through, again, maybe an intricate set of payment channels, splitting payments seamlessly amongst a set of individuals with no need to arbitrate disputes other than the operation of those channels themselves.
I mean, is that kind of how you see what split payments could be?
Some way to easily add people to a structure of payment channels in order to obviate the need for that legal fiction?
Is that the right way to put it?
Yeah.
Absolutely, that's it.
And what's the DeFi Bros promise?
That is the split payments.
You don't need some technical term that, oh, it's so fancy or whatever,
and come by into my scam.
You just split the payment.
You say, let's say I split it three ways, one third each or whatever,
and somebody doesn't do their work.
okay, you're out of our split payments or we need to add somebody,
what is the proper value that we give them?
And I'm saying it's reshaping everything.
Because what Jason also says is that every law is created after the blood was spilled.
So houses, gold, whatever came after the proof of work mechanism
where you can't unsubscribe for.
So the winner now can set the proper rules.
But when in the cyberspace, we have a proof of work mechanism and that code doesn't require any blood, you fight for the value provided.
What Jeff Booth says, like you either provide the most value and people use it or you don't.
And you're outcompeted.
and the abstraction of things will be disintegrated in so many ways.
This is just one way of me thinking and that doesn't mean that they'll completely disappear forever.
I believe just like with credit, some forms will always exist.
Just like today, sending a letter with post stamps, you can still do that, but it will be like that.
It will be like 0.1% of all the letters sent or something.
And it will give autonomy and power to the individual.
And it will create more and more that.
And because it gives more power to the individual, that individual, even if that split payment doesn't work for him, because he can attain more of his purchasing power, he can say, okay, I will create my own product network or anything else.
But now the reverse, going back to the mom and pop shops, why they have to be forced into employment, into some corporation?
Because that corporation, again, is the only one that can survive the big taxes and all sorts of inflation.
Not only that, but they are probably much higher in the chain of the closer to the money printer.
So they can scheme some type of way.
And the mom and pub shops are forced those people to go into those corporations.
That's, again, centralizing force.
When you give power to the individual, that centralizing force becomes a decentralizing force.
Yeah.
And this maybe goes to...
I have no idea how many things will change.
Yeah.
A few ideas.
It's just a world that we can't even imagine.
So the failure mode you kind of imagine for Noster, or not even the failure mode, but where it's currently lacking is UI. So this is maybe something that's directly to the heart of what you think about daily.
But what does the one-click UI for split payments look like so that the mom and pop can construct this surrogate for the corporation?
And it's also transparent to the people so that they don't need to know code.
And yet they can be assured that agreements they're entering into are fair, that they can audit it for themselves without having to have technical expertise, for example.
What does, is there going to be that sort of UI?
First of all, UI is user interface.
So yeah, like UI is kind of good in Noster.
I'm talking about UX, like the whole experience.
Because a UX that fails in Noster is somebody sends me a message and I don't see it.
Like the message is somewhere out there, but I don't see it.
So the UI is shiny and stuff like that.
But that's what I'm talking about.
Or the big UX challenge for the Lightning Network was and still is opening and closing channels.
Like that concept for our fiat experience, we're not used to it.
And it's so hard to explain even to the Bitcoiners out there.
Like, why the hell am I paying a fee now?
Why the hell did you close my channel?
And all sorts of things.
And that's a UX challenge.
Even though it has benefits, but people are used to, this is a number on the screen and I can spend it or receive more.
I don't need to think about all those behind the scenes stuff.
So that's the thing that was very, again, it's bad user experience for the Lightning Network.
What Breeze realized is that we can abstract it away that we don't even become a Lightning service provider, but we offer a few implementations either on the Liquid network or with Spark now.
and what Lucas said, no less implementation.
That means that we take even that burden
and you just take care of,
oh, I send this amount of stats,
this will be this amount of fee to send it
or to receive it and that's it.
And that's getting us very, very close
to the user experience on the Lightning Network,
what people are used to with Fiat.
And that is what I'm talking about,
how we should think even in the mom and pop shop.
Like you can create any website again, but if when I click and it doesn't send the email, even if it's not Bitcoin, if you created that structure and the person doesn't receive email for the order, that is a bad user experience.
So he'll leave.
The same thing with Noster.
Or I'm entering now.
The biggest challenge for Noster is when you enter Noster,
to enter is very easy.
To switch from one client is so easy.
And we never had that.
But when you enter and you don't follow anybody
and nobody follows you, you don't see anything.
That is the biggest hurdle in the user experience in Noster.
So somebody needs to figure out how the hell I get my social network because when you enter X, Facebook, Instagram, whatever those fiat experiences, they feed your algorithm so you stay.
In Noster, there's nothing like that for you to stay. You have to brute force your way into commenting and like, not even liking, but zapping or whatever you want to do and it's still.
So hard. And it's so much harder than YouTube and not only that and other platforms, but you receive still less zaps for it.
Let's say musicians are one of the groups that are suited for Noster because they receive crap from everywhere else.
So on Money Wise, Noster is beating the fiat platforms for zapping, receiving actual money.
But that is the UX, I think, that is preventing people to adopt it faster.
Like when you sign up, nobody sees your messages because nobody is following you.
And you see almost nothing because you don't follow anybody.
So when somebody figures out that user experience, I think the adoption will go faster.
Yeah, that when Facebook first came out, that's how that was, right?
You didn't find people unless you were looking for them.
They didn't find you unless they were looking for you.
Um, and there's kind of a, be careful what you wish for part of, of this, right?
Where, um, yes, maybe we do want the algorithm so that we can quickly gain an audience.
Um, but then the flip side of that is I'm, I'm currently reading the book Dopamine Nation
by Anna Lemke, um, which is talking about addiction.
And, you know, addiction is the same. Neurologically, it's the same, whether it's addiction to pornography or sex or heroin or alcohol or screens or shopping or exercise.
even these all these addictions are the same they're processed in the same part of the brain
and the only difference in them is how much dopamine each of these activities puts into your
dopamine pathways and so I I tread lightly I guess on this idea that we should hyper
you know that we should make Nostra just like Instagram or just like TikTok in terms of the
the addictiveness of it but I completely understand your point because I experienced
that as well so I've been on Nostra for about uh actively I guess and and not very active but
somewhat actively for about six months seven months something like that and I I think I maybe
have like 50 or 60 followers. And you're right. It does make it difficult because I go and I post
the podcast, I post my music and I know that I'm just screaming into the void. I'm just dumping
this and no one's going to see it. So yeah, there is a kind of a chicken and egg type of thing where
you want to build up the audience so that what you post has value, but you can't build up the
audience unless what you're posting has value. Um, and I think that's just kind of what a creator
has to be able to commit to, which is that you, um, your reward as a creator is the creation of
the gift. And the, the thing that you do then is you give it away. I read the other day that was
like the um your mission is your mission is in life is to find is to find your gift and your
purpose is to then give that gift away um you know so if you're you're a good teacher then you you
find the love and the joy of teaching and then what you do as a gift is that you present that
to the world um and people now because we have bitcoin we have nostril we have lightning we have
the ability to reward people more proportionally for their gifts.
That does put me on the side of like believing in the rise of the creator during this era
and really believing in a return towards something resembling the Renaissance age.
You know, Grant mentioned, you know, having patrons, which is how, you know, that's how
Da Vinci and Michelangelo and all of these guys, they got by, they, um, they took commissions from
rich people, Hey, you know, paint my ugly wife and make her look hot. Uh, and they were able to
take that money and then create beautiful works that came out of their own minds. Um, and, uh,
and so I, I think that part of that is selling out, but it's also, it's selling out in order to
maintain your integrity in a way where I'll take your money so that I can, I'll take your money and
I'll do this thing that I don't necessarily believe in. Like maybe Grant and I put up a website and
somebody comes in and they suggest that we read, you know, whatever, Cat in the Hat or how to
identify the 728 genders at a glance. And we're like, okay, well, if you pay us a million sats,
Cool We do that And then we go do something we want with that money And um yeah so I think you you really need to have a question about like does selling out or does audience capture is it something that happens to everyone regardless
Or is it something that is a choice that you make that you allow your soul to be sold?
And maybe your soul is a lot like Bitcoin.
Maybe it can't be taken.
Maybe it can only be given away.
Might be something to think about there, I guess.
Um, yeah, so I, I love hearing you talk about, I love hearing you talk about Noster. I believe in what it's going to do. And I want to focus more on that. Um, what are the other things that you're seeing? I guess. Oh, by the way, I did want to have a throw out, uh, cause Grant asked the question about the great user experience. What's the great user experience?
I do want to say, I'm not experienced with breezes, but Adam Smecca, who is on here with his MANA Bitcoin wallet, it's not the wallet that impresses me. It's the point of sale system, which I can, his nine-year-old daughter showed me how to set up this point of sale system.
and she would be able to say, okay, Ivan, you're selling turkeys. Lucas, you're selling baseball
bats. Grant, you're selling used tires. We're going to put them all in there. Everybody has
their address. And then John can come up and he can walk up and buy a turkey, a baseball bat,
and a used tire. Pay one time. We all get paid instantly. And it was brilliant. So I think we're
really moving there. And he had mentioned that like month over month growth was like over 500%.
You work directly in Lightning and in the applications that Breeze puts out.
And Breeze is really forward in this because they sponsor a lot of like coding challenges and hackings in order to create a better user experience.
what are the things that you're seeing in the lightning community right now as far as growth,
as far as usage, as far as like products and use cases that are advancing the adoption and use of
Bitcoin as money? Because that's where, that's where, by the way, you and Adam are perfectly
aligned because you both believe that Bitcoin fails if we don't use it as money. Spend your
Bitcoin. You need to do that in order to get it adopted as a means of exchange, because if it's
not adopted as a means of exchange, then people will just hoard it like gold. And if people just
hoard it like gold, then we'll always be pricing things in the thing that we use as a medium of
exchange, and it will never become a unit of account. It will never be the thing we price
stuff in. So yeah, I think kudos. Obviously, great minds think alike. I think you and Adam would have
wonderful conversation but with regard to lightning and breeze and what you're seeing
what are the things that you're excited about what are the things where you're seeing growth
and advancement um because i know you're a cheery optimistic guy who's always smiling and uh i want
to put it to you to share that uh share that joy and that optimism with uh with everybody uh okay
so uh all the things that you commented i'll try to integrate them in my response like
in terms of selling out i don't think it's selling out like because if you're continuing
to pursue your self-actualization that means you didn't sell out you find found a way to get there
because just like the hierarchy of muzzle the needs like self-actualization is like on the top
Like you need to, like, if you're starving, you're not in the self-actualizing mood, let's say like that.
So you need to take care of the basic needs.
And money is a representation that, oh, I have the freedom.
And this is one of the first things that hit me when I understood Bitcoin.
That for the first time ever, you can write a list where you can say, I want this car.
I want this house. I want to afford this lifestyle. I want this, whatever.
You write them all down. Right next to them, you write the prices in fiat.
Right next to them, that other column, you write the prices in Bitcoin terms.
And now in fiat, you will see that those things are getting further away from you.
But in the Bitcoin system, they are coming closer to you.
So you can actually achieve that.
Like you don't need to manage all the problems.
So that is where you start.
And you receiving money is fundamental.
And hoarding is important.
But I want to slightly change also.
I don't want you to just spend your Bitcoin.
I want you to use it in any shape or form.
Spending is just one use case that people hate doing.
and admittedly
like I had a little bit of a problem
when first time when I paid
and like the propaganda
or hold on only till you die
or whatever like no
but when you actually use it
and you receive
and not only receive
but I connect a Bitcoiner
with somebody else
that can pay him in Bitcoin
even if I don't receive
I improve the whole network
And that is beneficial for me because they will offer those services to me that I don't need to get in fiat and everything else.
So everything is connected.
And that's what I want to emphasize.
And everybody that says, oh, they want you to spend your Bitcoin on them or whatever.
No, I want you to use it in any share platform, not just spend it.
I want you to hoard and I want you to hoard so you accumulate enough that you self-actualize and you take care of all your basic needs.
I have a list for my life and I know that this year it was less Bitcoin than two years ago.
Like, even though this year we are a down year and what we talked last time, oh, institutions are coming and everybody was excited.
Oh, Bitcoin will pump.
Like, no, it won't.
Like, they will try to manipulate it as much as they can.
So they capture it.
We are trying to get into the capture, try, let's say.
And we'll see. And going into the lighting, what's happening there, it's still the technology is improving a lot, I would say.
And the thing that is one of the big things that happened, two actually big things that happened is Tether now can be transmitted in lightning.
That was not possible like previous years.
And because of this, obviously, all the other cryptos, the dominant use case is the dollar.
Whether it's USDC or USDT is very attractive in all the other shitcoin chains.
And now the swap providers can use Lightning to transfer USDT between chains.
And that requires Bitcoin fees and that will give that value.
Just like you said, are we selling out?
That's kind of this mechanism that's happening.
And a lot of swap providers are having this instant swap because they didn't have that about Bitcoin.
They said, oh, Bitcoin was slow, whatever, and the technology didn't have that option.
But now they have that option where somebody wants to swap Bitcoin and they swap Bitcoin for USDT that's on another chain.
Now they can do that.
And a person that can't stomach the volatility or they're just in the situation that they can't even save because they're in a tyrannical regime or whatever their situation is.
Now they are integrated into our network where their impact will be almost nothing.
Not only because they will use USDT, but to swap and everything is such tiny sats.
But now they are in our neighborhood and they'll be part of our network and that network is increasing.
So that is the thing that happened.
the other huge thing that happened is 4 million merchants that are using the jack dorsey solution
again like you said the pos terminal in mana like that's a user experience even though breeze was
the first ever that integrated pos system in their wallet because technically uh that's exactly what
we are talking about. Now, technically, you can receive the stats, what you said about cheese or
whatever, but it requires work on the individual to be in the wallet experience. But if you create
the application that abstracts away all those technicalities and creates the user experience
for selling milk, cheese, or eggs, or whatever, and you don't need to think about it, but the
application thinks about it and you just receive in one click send or receive that's the user
experience that's for that use case the other thing that we mentioned was about podcasting
somebody wants to zap the podcaster that's coming more and more into the nostril
nostril ecosystem but what else like think about where when you take a card where can you use it
Almost everywhere, whether like you can go into the shop, you can go this, you can go that, like everything that money can touch.
How can Bitcoin be there?
Like how can Bitcoin facilitate this?
Not only facilitate this, but as I said, whether it's a split payment, whether it's instant settlement on the other side of the world, like all of those need to be in it.
But they don't only theoretically that it's possible.
but oh here install this application but now memorize this private key this public key your
seed phrase not only that but when i send you you need to wait 10 minutes or whatever all those are
a lot of frictions for somebody that just wants to have a solution because in our local bitcoin
club, we had a
use case where somebody
showed up with a bag full of
money and they said, they told
us that
Bitcoin is the only thing that we can send
in Russia. I want to send this money
in Russia and you can show us.
Like, what is
the use case that you,
this is the use case. What is the user
experience that you can create to serve
this use case if there's a market for it?
That's what I'm talking about.
And I completely agree with Mana.
What I disagree is that they either have to be the Swiss Army Knives,
that they need to create themselves those user experiences,
and we were on that path, Breeze itself, just to test different use cases.
But that can't scale because the Mana team is limited.
So you're basically limiting what they can develop.
They can't work on 500 different implementations, 500 different use cases in 500 or not, let's say in 50 countries.
Like that's a struggle.
But what we offer is that we give you that code and you create completely the user experience.
and maybe next time we can showcase it.
Like you create the user experience
and you just plug that code when you send send,
when you press send,
everything is taken care of by our stuff,
like with our SDK or something.
So that is what I'm talking about.
And it's still just because we're abstracting away
the technical things that lightning experts can do
and you don't have to think about it,
that is putting the burden that the user experience.
Now you have the freedom to make it great.
But because the last piece that I'll add is
now I'm experimenting with Vibe coding.
Now I can demonstrate everything
and I can go into a high school
and not only talk about Bitcoin and what it is,
but I can showcase.
You enter these parameters.
You don't need to be even that big of a developer,
But you can create a website, you can create an application, you can create anything and you can put money in it.
The fiat system doesn't want you to have a bank account until 18, but you're 14 and Bitcoin doesn't care.
So go do anything.
And that is my mission for this year.
I would say that I'll go around high schools and universities that I can showcase what people can do.
And especially people that don't have a bank account, I would love it that they don't even touch and create user experiences that we can't even think about because the kids these days are so digitally native that I'm one of the generations that's kind of in between.
I know the world before, and I'm kind of okay.
But the generations before me, my father, my mother, they were bad with computers.
And the generations after me, they can't put it down.
They live in the cyberspace.
So that's the good news.
So, Ivan, I'm curious, is there a dystopian future that is possible in relation to lightning?
So, Lucas and I just finished reading The Mandibles.
And as part of that future, the government forces people, spoiler alert, I guess, but in the book.
But so, not even talking about the book.
say that people were forced to have a chip implanted as a sort of central bank digital
currency monitoring system such that it's like a social credit.
All of everything you pay for instantly deducts a tax for the state.
Is there a dystopian future where lightning is the same way, where the government legislates
that all split payments need to include a 10% split payment to the government and then
governments lean on split payment providers, facilitators to force them to do that? Do you
see any possibility for a dystopian outcome in split payments?
I see definitely a try to do that. And not even a try, but they'll force as hard as they can
to do that
and
the problem is that
not even on Lightning
because Lightning has pretty good
privacy when you send
a payment but when you receive
you're kind of exposed where it is
but on other solutions
you have full privacy
and
to switch around
let's say that they
force you just like
in, I think in Nigeria, they forced them to use their digital Naira, their CBDC.
E-Naira, I think.
Yeah.
And still, even though they restricted the ATMs, they did all sorts of stuff, people
didn't want to use it.
So, but even if we're sleepwalking into it, as I said, because this is a decentralized
force, let's say everybody is taxed automatically and all of us, but your purchasing power increases
and because it increases and it is yours, that means you will find other ways and other
things to do.
That is, again, a decentralizing force.
You cannot completely stop it.
there might be a volatility in actions because we're still so small.
But do you think all those taxes will work in all 160 countries?
Or I don't know how many.
There are like 300 countries in the world.
I highly doubt it.
Yeah.
So, and just like Bitcoin, what it needs to stop it,
Like stop the internet in the whole world, not only now, but forever.
That's what you actually need to do with the split payment.
You might be somewhat successful, just like now the institutions are coming and they are gaining traction on capturing the ownership of Bitcoin.
But they did nothing about owning the network.
And if they actually tried to own the network, it will be violent.
I wouldn't say violent again.
Let's not make the mistake, Jason, but it will be a pushback against all of it.
And you're just prolonging the inevitable in my point of view.
The only thing that's going for them for now is people just don't understand it and the UX is still bad.
So we don't have those solutions.
So we just need to build.
There's no way around it.
It will require proof of work, not just hodling.
Hodling is the basic foundation that you step on, but then build because you will outpace everybody else if you do.
Yeah. When I go on X these days, I continue to see rumblings of tax revolt. This idea of people voluntarily refusing to pay taxes is starting to gain some ground in the general consciousness.
And whether or not there's going to be success there or failure or what it leads to, the mere fact that it is becoming something that people are saying out loud is, you know, Jason Lowry refers to Bitcoin as digital 1776 as, you know, declaring independence from the oppressive tax regime.
And if we, you know, if we remember that was over like a 2% tax or three or something like that.
Yeah.
You know, and here in the United States where we didn't have income tax until we had the current iteration of the central bank in 1913.
So, you know, for a very long time, this country, it started from nothing and then grew to be something very powerful in the absence of and quite possibly as a result of not having those taxes.
It certainly was created because of a revolt against tax.
And so it's interesting because it gives us kind of a different perspective on what that means.
What does it mean to view taxes as not something native to life, as something that, as Adam Smecha says, you know, believes that taxes are unconstitutional?
I think that there's a case to be made for that.
What does that mean?
And you frame it in terms – you use the analogy of blood going through blood vessels in your essay.
and you talk about all this unnecessary friction as like plaque in those blood vessels and
slowing down, adding friction, slowing down and causing problems. If I work at your restaurant,
then that plaque is that the customer pays and their payment goes first to the point of service
and then to that bank and then to a clearing bank and then to my bank.
And then it waits 30 days.
Then it waits and then you pay me and, you know, those taxes are taken out.
And that delay, you talk about how that delay is actually a huge cost.
And so if we're able to have a technology, to build a technology that removes that plaque,
where the customer pays their bill and I instantly get paid and you instantly get paid, everyone instantly gets paid,
then we've removed that delay, we've removed that plaque, we've removed that, you know,
what happens when you build up plaque is that the pressure increases until something bursts and something breaks.
And looking at the Lightning Network, I looked it up while you were talking.
So last year, the capacity of the Lightning Network in terms of how much Bitcoin is actually allocated to Lightning channels, it grew a little bit by like, say, 7%.
So the pipe, that blood vessel, got a little bit bigger.
However, the volume, the amount of transactions and the total amount of value transacted through, that grew by about 300%.
So we've got this beautiful, clean, sleek blood vessel without any plaque, and we're able to continually increase the amount of blood that we're pumping through it and add vitality to the economy, add vitality to the system.
in a way that I think it just, when you look at it compared to the old system,
it's like looking at two patients and one of them is sickly and failing
and the other one is vibrant and alive.
And at a certain point, you have to make the decision of how long am I going to continue to
throw good money after bad and keep this patient on life support when I could be feeding and
housing and helping to grow this other one. So yeah, I find the Lightning Network really
fascinating because it allows us to have that, all the things that we talk about with Bitcoin
that people bring up is, oh, this could be a failure point. Like it's not really anonymous
And it's not really fast and it's not really easy.
And lightning is all of those things.
It's fast.
It's basically anonymous.
It's easy.
Yeah, it allows us to really, I guess, kind of blossom, I guess, our digital identity.
So, yeah, there's just kind of a comment on that.
I didn't have a question.
I just started talking and then I stopped talking.
My question, what do you think about what Lucas just said?
There you go.
Grant, way to dive in there and save us.
Question mark.
This is why I've got you.
You only just end with an upward inflection, and that is what I have to say?
Yeah.
Like, for me, this is exactly, actually with my soulmate,
soulmate we talked about
how much decay
the fiat system
gave us to our generation
in our
parents and
the good thing
is that we are
kind of the third generation
of
fiat
working on us
and
they
screw up our
life in so many ways like the food that we eat the amount of time that we spend in nature
like the beauty that we see the uh networks that we share like uh yep right now we are connected
and it's very valuable for me because you're on the other side of the world but uh the human touch
when you touch somebody for, I think, more than three seconds or something,
the dopamine for bonding, I think.
Oxytocin.
Oxytocin, yeah.
That one is released and all sorts of things that are kind of, again,
slightly but surely, all of those are, let's say, the medical system,
the food system, everything receives 2% inflation in quality.
and we said okay we started with the list what i told about bitcoin system will help us to achieve
it faster we are not there yet but this is what we are aiming for yes we are going to sell out
here and there for something but the good thing is that you don't need to sell out a lot like
if you actually do the proof of work you can actually work for a bitcoin company you can
actually make a Bitcoin project that kind of works and stuff like that.
So just because you're having a fear job, that doesn't mean that you should not even
try.
And when you do that, we set out this thing for us as parents now is that we will not
fix everything for our kids.
But what we damn well do is that we reverse the fucking trends.
Like we will use the better money.
We will search out which is the better food.
We will search out which is the better technology that doesn't screw with your circadian rhythm and everything.
And fortunately, there is one company, a very big fan of them.
And all sorts of things.
And for example, I found out that the salt that we eat is horrible.
Like almost everything is salt.
Oh, salt.
Yes.
It's not actually salt.
They're giving you like something crappy.
And when you go and do that research and stuff like that, it kind of requires time to do it and to taste it out.
But now we found it.
And now this is the thing that we set out.
And then you go about milk.
I don't know if you know, but yogurt specifically is something that's probably invented in Bulgaria because the molecule that you call is called Bulgarikos.
So the real truest yogurt in the world is made in my country.
So and when people say Greek yogurt, there is no Greek yogurt.
They're just branding field.
But my point is, if we take any of the yogurts that are sold in the supermarket and we try to make our own, the process doesn't work.
Like, there is only one brand that where you take the yogurt and you create your own.
That means that that's real yogurt.
And all...
Where you get like the bacteria or the culture or whatever?
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Like the process is you take some raw milk and you put a spoon of yogurt from one and the bacteria multiplies.
You need to place it in a hot place for I don't know how much time.
But my sister is kind of cooking here and there.
And she said, I tried all sorts of brands and none of them worked.
I put it.
That means that there is no bacteria.
There is no milk.
There is no yogurt in the actual yogurt.
And again, this is a symptom of fiat.
And we have experienced all of that But my point is that this is the one thing that we will damn well do for our generation that we stop the negative trend about all those things for us
We want our kids to be better and to actually achieve it.
And we want our grandkids to be better than our kids and so on and so on.
This is the mission that we do.
And going back, I am not against hodling. Hodling is the one thing that you can step on and you do all of that. But just because you're hodling Bitcoin, that will not solve your health problems.
That will not solve you working for a bank in fiat and you're subsidizing and you're waiting for that Bitcoin to become a million so you can quit and then figure out that you can do anything in Bitcoin because you didn't put any effort there.
That is what I'm trying to say. And that's my imploring to all the Bitcoiners out there. Like, this is what we need to do, whatever it is, even if it is just for your kids, selfishly, and you don't help any other Bitcoiner, make the other generations after us better.
And now you have the tool that they can confiscate and actually achieve it.
Because even if you try in fiat, you have to play fiat games.
You have to figure out how to get closer to the printer.
You have to figure out how to play the YouTube, Facebook or whatever algorithm to have an advantage.
And all those are fiat games.
Now you can align.
You actually provide real valuable work.
You find out what is real valuable services and products and you use those with the best money and you rebuild upon them.
Just because I talked kind of negatively about Nostra, that doesn't mean that I'm not a believer.
I really believe in it and that's why I'm using it because I want to subsidize it.
Because as I said, even if it fails, that is the path that we should fail in.
like it should not be quit like uh so yeah those are kind of the comments about plaque and everything
that's on my societal level that like proof of work like that's the only way but use the right
tools and just because you're hodling uh and you have more than your neighbor and you want to have
even more so like why like i don't understand that why the hell are you just hodeling and you
don't care about where you live do you think when everything crashes around you and people find out
that you have a lot of bitcoin they are not going to come with the guillotine first for you
if you didn't give any value but you hoard it like i'm sorry but this is the fundamental thing
that I disagree with Michael Saylor.
And the thing that I really disagree
is that he's disincentivizing
to build on Bitcoin.
Like, I'm sorry,
but you're not on my team.
That is what you're saying.
Even though you're helping
my purchasing power here and there.
Yeah, you bring up a lot of things
that I want to comment on there
because, so first off,
I'm going through this process myself,
like reading Dopamine Nation.
And, you know, one of the things that Anna Lemke tells us is that pain and pleasure are processed in the same area of the brain.
They're overlapping.
When you experience pleasure, the body wants to reach homeostasis.
And so it gives you pain.
And that pain is in like a craving.
So I eat the chocolate cake and I have a craving to eat more chocolate cake.
I want that.
It's giving me pain.
and you can basically break all of this down into two types of reward did i earn the reward
did i do proof of work or is it unearned reward and an earned reward is i did a difficult workout
and at the end i get this afterglow feeling i feel effervescent i'm i'm pumping with endorphins
because that is the body taking the pain of the workout and balancing it back by giving me pleasure.
So I have to seek out pain in order to be given pleasure by myself.
I can give myself pleasure, but I have to seek pain in order to get it.
On the flip side, if I seek pleasure, then if I get that pleasure from an external source,
I get that from a computer screen, from sugary food, from watching movies, from scrolling through TikTok, from avoiding being out in the cold or avoiding being out in the heat.
If I do that, then what I get in return, what I give myself is I give myself pain, is I end up giving myself more and more and more and more pain in order to balance out the pleasure because I give myself pain, so I seek more pleasure.
I give myself pain, so I seek more pleasure.
Whereas if you seek pain, then you get pleasure in return.
And the terrifying thing, or not terrifying, but just kind of like, it is somewhat overwhelming to sit and make a list of what are all the sources of cheap dopamine that are available to me on an everyday basis.
So caffeine, I get energy without having to work for it.
There's sleeping pills.
There's Adderall.
Adderall is 10 times more pleasurable than sex.
right? It's, it's, yeah, it's, uh, it's five times more pleasurable than cocaine in terms of the
amount of dopamine that it, that it sends your, your brain. And so you go down this list and
you're like, well, what are all the things that I do on an everyday basis? There's the bad food,
there's the sugary sodas, there's the caffeine, there's Adderall, there's alcohol, there's
marijuana. There's scrolling on TikTok. And you want to make a commitment to try and live a life
without those things in order to, if nothing else, just get to know yourself, just to return to
whatever baseline that you were born with. And it seems overwhelming because these things are so
pervasive within our life. Yeah, it's just incredibly overwhelming to think about trying
to extract yourself from that system, just like it's incredibly overwhelming to try and think
about leaving the fiat system that you were born into. But it turns out on the other side are great
rewards. And so if you can go through the pain of the adjustment, the pain of the letting go
and detox, basically, then there's great things on the other side.
You brought up this, and Grant, you and I haven't really,
I don't think we've ever really gotten into this,
but I am actually starting to be on the same side as Ivan
when it comes to the Bitcoin treasury company model.
I think it's very successful.
I think it's bringing a lot of people to Bitcoin.
And I don't really know about that it's keeping people from building on Bitcoin.
But what I do know is that at Bitcoin Mina in, I believe it was Abu Dhabi, Michael Saylor lays out the plan here.
And it's, hey, if you buy our product that pays you 11% and you're a giant bank, then you can effectively issue your own coin.
You can issue JP Morgan coin or whatever, and you can pay 8% on that and keep a couple for yourself.
And then we can kind of like privatize money.
And when I think about what that means realistically, to me, it's nothing more than a privatized version of a central bank digital currency.
And we saw with the social media companies, with Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube during COVID, we saw that the private companies weren't actually very private, that they were operating at the behest of the governments who had infiltrated them and given them orders, you know, deplatform these people, silence these words, censor this speech, censor this communication.
And that's very easily imagined as of the government.
We'll just go to J.P. Morgan and say, de-platform, de-bank this person, silence their ability to express themselves financially, censor their transactions.
So I actually do.
It makes me sad, but I actually I actually do kind of agree that I think we're going down a bad path.
At the very least, it's opening us up to some very negative possibilities.
So I don't know. Grant, what do you think about that? Ivan, throw in question mark?
No, the thing about Bitcoin, though, it always has the possibility of self-custody.
In a certain sense, I don't want to say this too strongly, but it's almost like there are no bad futures because there only is the expression of human nature and how it's going to interact with this technology.
And it always was going to be the case that finance was going to be involved and it was going to maybe in the in the form of a Trojan horse, bring Bitcoin deep with inside it and then reengineer its own DNA without knowing.
And that's one view of what's happening with what Saylor's doing, right, is how do we just rewrite current models of finance using Bitcoin, something like that.
But again, as long as Bitcoin always has the potential to be self-custodied, then you can always withdraw it from that model.
There always is a possibility.
So it's a decentralized protocol.
People participate as they will.
I don't see what he's doing as a net benefit or a net negative, maybe as almost an inevitability that this was going to happen.
But there's always also going to be Ivins out there who are going to build in a different way.
And that's always going to be, I think, an expression of what Bitcoin is, that it's going to be both finance and both independence and a bunch of different things we don't yet know.
For me, this is kind of fitting exactly what the fiat will try, because they couldn't stop the whole protocol.
So how will they capture?
They'll try to capture as many coins as they can.
So come, give me your money.
So I buy Bitcoins and I give you some other shitcoin on top.
Like, what's actually the difference between the shitcoin and what they're doing?
Some abstraction or something.
And they're promoting this?
Like, what the hell happened between now and 40 years ago when I was listening to Michael Saylor, the engineer,
like talking about civilizations
and everything else
like something in between changed
where he is now the biggest crypto proponent
like and everybody is cheering
oh you go buy more Bitcoin
and he's pushing some other tokens
like I hate this
like why?
so this is the kind of
thing that I disagree
and obviously
there's nothing that I can do to stop it.
Obviously, this was
going to happen.
But there
was somebody else that all
those scams are coming closer to
Bitcoin. They were creating
other shit
coin chains, but now they're on top of
Bitcoin. So I
have
a guess that we
will skip this cycle and
we are in an eight-year-old
eight years long cycle.
And because the next fiat something will create again more volatility in fiat
and Bitcoin will have that absorption and everything else,
it will create problems in that model.
But he's putting fiat infrastructure on top of Bitcoin.
That means that everything on top will crash at some point.
maybe it will not be in 8 years
maybe it will be in 20
but that is not the system
that I want to be in
that is the basic problem
that I have with everything
it's not that
people can do whatever they like
like you can
buy Shiba Inu coin
if you want
that's your choice
when you don't have any money
and again
in the last crash
of Bitcoin
where Bitcoin crashed like 25%
and everything in crypto crashed 90%
and people got liquidated.
Like, okay, like you're seeking the pleasure,
but now you got the extreme pain.
Are you going to actually learn the lesson
or you're going to bitch about it?
So just like technology is not negotiating,
like proof of work is proof of work.
And just because you believe in abstraction of things,
it doesn't mean that they're real.
Like we create all those things that believe so hard and we create such intense emotion and all the chemicals are released in our body and it is so real for us, but it's based on absolutely nothing.
So when physics actually work and that reveals that abstraction crashes, like it's just, it is inevitable.
And as Luca said, it's going to happen and people can self-custody.
But because it's on fiat infrastructure, they will create all sorts of ways so you don't self-custody if you're in that model.
Like if you bought Bitcoin in different ways, because what happens if there are problems in the fiat infrastructure and the one thing that can save you, you take it away from them.
That means like what happens when you get the bank run on gold?
Like expecting that it's going to be something else with Bitcoin, like that's delusional.
It will happen the absolute same thing.
They will close the exits and they'll say, I'm sorry, we're paying you in this Joe Rogan coin or whatever you believe in, whatever amount you want, because you can print it for ourselves and good luck.
Like, this is our liability, whatever.
So, yeah, but the ownership is not the only thing that needs to be decentralized.
and at any point
Bitcoin needs to have
this decentralizing force
trend
because Bitcoin
was one of the most centralized
thing. It started from one
freaking person
but the trend is
in the right direction. Right now
the institutions figure out that
they can't
stop it now
and they can't
their propaganda doesn't work on the people that get get it like me like i'm never going back
and that is one of the things that needs to stay as is because people that got
out orange peeled like once you see something you can't unsee it like it's dependent on you
if you're able to achieve your goals i mean life still works like it will require for me to build
stuff it's not going to happen by itself uh but uh be be aware what you wish for because treasury
companies for me is just uh the cbdc in a different form like it's exactly the same thing
and as i said in one of the other articles right now the loyalty points or a frequent
frequent flying miles, points, whatever.
That is a CBDC.
Like, it's just a point in a digital space
that you can manipulate however you like.
Like, what's the difference with any other token
that you can create, whether it's a stock of a company,
whether it's this or that?
Yeah, some are harder to manipulate than others,
but you can create it out of nothing.
So that is what makes it a shitcoin.
It's not that, oh, the police will come and you have to release forms or whatever.
Like, try to do that in the code of Bitcoin.
Like, yeah, you'll try to do it and you're kicked out of the network.
Good luck.
But in the fiat infrastructure, I'm sorry.
If you got fiat paper claims and they are not going to give it when you most need it, your Bitcoin.
So that is one very important comment.
Yes, you can self-custody, but not always if you are on top of a fiat infrastructure.
Yeah.
I do think that if Saylor is successful in doing that, or whoever is going to be, you
know, tying tether to the United States debt and allowing the U.S. to propagate their debt
across the entire world in sums of a dollar at a time instead of treasury bills, large, large,
large chunks. I think all it does is accelerate the fall of the dollar. I think all it does is
encourage them to print more. And so if you encourage them to print more, then you just
encourage more inflation. And if you encourage more inflation, then you encourage people to wake
go and to uh and like you say you know the trend is such that um there are x amount of bitcoiners
and there are y amount of people that are not bitcoiners and this x is only getting bigger and
this y is only getting smaller and no one is going from x to y everyone only goes from y to x like
Some are switching back or whatever.
And we're just in the phase that they managed to slow down adoption.
Because right now they're not laughing at Bitcoin.
Because when they laughed at Bitcoin, that puts attention into it.
People look more into it and whatever, whatever.
Right now, Bitcoin hits all-time highs so many times this year.
Nobody cared.
Bitcoin was nowhere to be found outside of Bitcoin circles.
and now because bitcoin is still a tiny tiny tiny market and they can manipulate the shit out of it
and this is what's happening so but the next uh going up or going down if they
manage to prolong this stabilization the next one will be very violent so i i think
the volatility is a feature because when you go up it creates a tension into it it puts leverage
but going down is a very important feature where people actually think about self-custody
like when you take away the crashes now we become oh this is stable or put this into the etf and
this treasury company and anything else.
And at some point, they have so much that they will have a huge influence over it.
The only decentralizing force in that type of environment is different countries adopted
as fast as America.
Because right now, I'm sorry, but America are dominating again, and I don't like it.
Yeah, it's not yet for you guys.
That American, quote unquote, domination or whatever is just really the reminder that
we live in a multipolar world and that these different jurisdictions, if you have the
assertion of American power, then that is just a reminder to other jurisdictions that
in the international order, there is no sovereign.
And so that is a double reinforcement that people need to have a sovereign asset themselves.
And I think that if you're scared of treasury companies, just know that they are tied to
particular jurisdictions and people live in a multi-jurisdictional world and you know it's a
dog-eat-dog lawless world in the end people will always look at national affairs international
affairs rather and see that that is the case and want to hold the hardest asset for themselves
rather than delegate it to something that's under the purview of american law yeah and just because
I don't like all those things, it doesn't mean
that I'm too worried
about it.
Fiat games will be played
all over.
Yeah, but
it won't change really my trajectory
other than how much
faster Bitcoin goes up or down.
But again, I need
to, just like the code, just because
and the refrigerator
we need to integrate
all those infrastructures everywhere
and because they're hard
right now we will be so much ahead of everybody else because we know all the terrain all the
infrastructure and people will figure won't even have any bitcoin and they need to figure out later
yeah it will be easier to figure out later because the ux will be much better but we'll be so much
ahead because the fiat let's say is two percent inflation bitcoin is two percent deflation so
So I'm gaining all that traction in what I said, in health, in my social networks, in technology, in everything, and in the money itself.
But it's just an impossible question.
Like, humans are messy individually, but when you put 8 billion of them, it's unpredictable.
So, yeah.
But either way, I'm not too worried about it.
But it's just kind of revealing that people don't really spend time thinking.
Yeah, yeah, it's easier not to.
You know, Ivan, we've reached a point now we've covered split payments.
We've talked about the user experience of Noster and Bitcoin wallets and the payment process.
We've talked about the fiat kind of disease that pervades not just our money, but the products that we use, the experience that we have in daily life.
Talked about the Lightning Network and how it's growing and CBDC, some things like that.
It's about time for me to go outside and get some sunlight.
But before I do that, I want to make sure that I give you the chance to have the final word here.
what do you want to tell us?
What do you want to tell people that are going to listen to this
that have gotten it by God
if they got this far in this conversation
they are committed
and so
leave us on a high note
and give us something
give us something good
I'm sorry but I have a bassy voice
so I don't have the
falsetto high note
but yeah
the high note is
whoever is listening out there
is that
you're ahead of
the majority of the world.
And
just because you're ahead,
that doesn't mean that you won.
But when you are ahead,
press your advantage.
Go and do even more.
You don't need to be
as intense.
But really,
know where you're aiming.
I would like to go back to the dopamine thing again
because there, as you said, it's like a seesaw.
Like when you seek pleasure, like it builds up the pain
and in order to balance itself, you need to experience a lot of pain
in order to reset your system.
And the reverse, people that went through enormous pain
can be the most happy people ever
because now their baseline is completely different
that somebody, oh, somebody really disliked me
in the YouTube comments or whatever.
But in order to do that, as I said,
I'm saying this now for four years.
Start with the freaking list for your life
outside of Bitcoin.
Like what the hell do you want to achieve
and use Bitcoin to achieve?
The other thing for dopamine,
which is a bit of a trick,
which I learned like eight years ago or something.
The thing when we face something
that will be discomforting or painful
and we clinch and we don't engage,
like there's like one, two or three second decision
that you need to make and we fall back to our systems.
Lucas, you mentioned it in your previous,
like you fall back to,
oh, I see this discomfort or anything.
So my system is trying to avoid it, go the other direction or ignore it or whatever.
But the biggest trick that I learned to retrain this, that you see the discomfort and you go towards it, is doing coach hours.
I learned this from Wim Hof, the Iceman.
And I learned this, that if you go to the gym and it's hard and it's everything, but going into the cold shower, it takes like 20 seconds.
It doesn't require a lot of time and it retrains your whole system that, oh, I don't want to do the dishes.
Oh, I don't want this or anything.
All those one second decision, it depletes you and you're seeking the comfort and you're building up the pain that you need to reset.
But when you go into the shower, you will take those small little pains, small little discomforts and you'll lead a happier life.
You will feel and have the energy to actually go for the things that you want because doing the least is not enough.
Going to pursue after it will be discomfort because you don't have it now.
Comfort is what we have now.
Discomfort is outside of our reach.
And when you actually do cold showers and you have the list, now you reset your whole system and you go and you are actually going to achieve it using Bitcoin.
That is my message.
Excellent.
Well spoken.
As Wim Hof says, if you go to the cold, the cold won't come to you.
And yeah, Grant and I both very experienced with going to the cold, having dipped into the frigid waters of the Columbia River many times.
among other things.
So yeah, I completely agree.
That little cold shower
that'll push you in the right direction.
Ivan, thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate you sharing
the driving force that is pushing you.
You know, you're not here for number go up.
You're not here for the tech.
You're here for the life.
I'm not the only thing.
Like I don't want it to go up.
Thank you.
I don't have any other savings, so I needed to go up.
All right, fair enough.
Not the only thing.
Fair enough.
Well, Grant, what do you got for us on the way out?
Oh, man, just stick around for a second, Ivan.
Of course, this is a Riverside publication, and if you jump off, we're not uploaded.
This whole conversation is gone, but that's all I got.
Thanks, man, for the convo.
It's always awesome.
Thank you, man.