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very impressed with its both practical orientation and its philosophical scope.
So Ivan has that kind of uncommon combination of a maker who is not afraid to theorize,
or maybe a theorizer who's not afraid to go out and make stuff.
So we wanted to delve a little bit deeper into this Instant Settlement series.
Lucas invited Ivan. Ivan graciously joined us, and Ivan's here today.
So how are you doing today, Ivan?
Doing great. Thanks for the invite.
Of course. I made sure to bring you in and ask how you were doing.
We actually did a previous conversation, Ivan, Lucas, and I, and we lost it due to my technical error.
And the previous time we did it, I just talked straight at the beginning for like 10 minutes.
So this time I wanted to break it up so people know that Ivan is here.
Because what we usually do on Bitcoin study sessions is we want to make this an information-dense podcast.
So we're going to begin with kind of a summary of what Ivan wrote about from me and Lucas' perspective in the Instant Settlement series
and then toss it over to Ivan for any clarifications.
So from how we read it, the Instant Settlement series is a series of six essays that was published online in Bitcoin magazine about the ramifications of the capacity of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, more specifically, to settle instantly.
So what that means is with the fiat system, we rely on a system where we pay with credit now generally, and then there's a final settlement of funds later.
And so this series that Ivan wrote for Bitcoin Magazine is about what changes with the experience economically, psychologically, when we can pay finally and instantly on the spot, settle instantly, instead of using credit and deferring payments to later, such as when we go through like a third party intermediary, put charges on a credit card, things like that.
what changes both in the industries where we apply that and psychologically to the people
that work within those industries when we're able to settle instantly.
So Ivan, in the series of essays, applies this idea of instant settlement to various
industries and comes away with insights into how we can both transform that industry, but
also the underlying human behaviors and motivations of the workers, the participants in those
industries for the better.
So one of Ivan's big insights, as Lucas and I took it, and I think we really want to dive
into is that settling instantly, having a final payment for a service rendered makes it much easier
to pay for work done rather than for time spent doing the work. So without instant settlement,
we tend to pay for time work rather than for work completed. And so that has really,
as Ivan draws out in this series of essays, kind of big ramifications. When we pay for time,
which is what we tend to do now, the incentives that people have in a pay-for-time system are to
extract the maximum amount of time or maximum of reward for minimal effort. That type of system
rewards clock watchers and taking credit for others' achievements, and people's skill sets
tend to corrode over time because they're not rewarded for developing skills, not rewarded for
doing good work. They're rewarded for simply sitting in a chair and passing the time until
the project is done. Whereas when you pay for work, the best performance then yields the most
money in new projects. So people are incentivized to develop skills, maintain their reputation.
People compete over projects, which leads people to sharpen all of their skill sets, develop
themselves. That then leads people to really develop who they are as a person by developing
themselves through their work, which increases satisfaction and retention. So instant settlement
can transform an industry and individuals within that industry.
That's just one insight, a really big one that Ivan draws out in a series of essays,
both for industry efficiency and for personal human development,
by looking at instant settlement for various industries.
And so, as I mentioned, various industries.
There's six essays here, and they each, except for the last one, look at a different industry.
For example, when Ivan looks at the logistics industry,
we see how instant settlement among the links in the supply chain
can eliminate intermediaries and middlemen and reduce credit card fees and counterparty risk.
When we look at it in the publishing industry, we can see how instant settlement allows for
split payments between parties. And in that way, Ivan keeps on drawing out different insights for
different industries. But again, the bigger picture is just how instant settlement can
shift us from a mindset of selling our time for deferred payment to a mindset of providing real
value, doing real work in exchange for instant payment, instant settlement. So I'll stop the
summary there, Ivan, but, and there's a lot of things to love there. Specifically, I just like
how it really valorizes work and what work does to us, helps us develop fully as human beings.
And also it kind of calls out the vices when we're not rewarded for work. It's really a
ennobling vision of the future and I really appreciate it. But is there anything in that
summary though, that I guess you wanted to add on top of that as a general summary for the project
you were trying to do with those series of essays in the Instant Settlement series, or does that
kind of hit it uh yeah i agree with that summary uh i i will add how it started is that when i
started working at my current company uh at breeze and delving deep into the lightning network
uh it just made me think okay i need to kind of sell what we do but without selling it uh and
that idea was struggling to come out.
And the first insight that I had was exactly this.
Because I was basically in my fiat jobs previously,
that when you hire somebody in the first month
until they receive their first check or salary,
they're the best employee, the most efforts,
but their skills are not optimized yet.
They're trying to figure out stuff.
And when they receive the first money, then the game begins to be what is the minimal amount of work that I can do in order to not get fired.
Because that's the stick in the fiat system currently.
And that was a problem that I was facing in all the industries that I worked in with all the teams that I worked in because I was a psychopath.
I had to ignore my economic incentive and focus on something else in order to have some logic.
Because if you chase the most profit economically, everything that the fiat structure does is that it incentivizes not to do work.
It incentivizes not to develop skills.
The time will pass anyway. Whatever we do, you cannot stop time. And if your payment is directly related to time, that means that the less energy I spent, the more profit I have at the end of the month, at the end of the day, of everything else.
And when I had this insight, okay, this changes things.
If you can pay instantly, that means that you don't have to have this complex thing of, okay, somebody is moving everything and you need to do all sorts of complex calculations, how much you need to pay them.
That's why we aggregate and you pay in one variable.
We decided we'll pay based on time.
But if the technology is now there that you can actually pay in a form of economical value instantly and for every task,
and you can even stream payments,
now the whole dynamic changes.
And from that insight, I said,
okay, let's start seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.
And I thought that it is going to be just two articles,
but the more time I spent thinking about it,
then another idea came and another idea came
and that's why it became those six articles.
and then I could see the matrix from all my fear jobs.
Why the hell is nobody like me?
And I found out from you covering guys the series that Grant,
probably you're like me, but we never met in real life.
So yeah, in order to be somebody that wants to be the best right now,
you're economically disincentivized.
You have to ignore the economic incentive
of what I explained for time
and to have some other motivation,
which I wouldn't say nobody does it,
but a very tiny majority do it.
And that's why they become the best,
most likely at everything.
But now if you can tie the economical incentive
to be exactly the same as being the best,
now this will have all sorts of implications for everything.
And I had no idea how deep that rabbit hole goes,
but my essays are kind of, I wouldn't say superficial,
but trying to grasp this is the right point of view
how you need to look at this new system.
Yeah, and I want to toss it over to you, Lucas, for a question, but I just want to note generally, also not superficial, and you offer the caveat that you're not an insider in any of these industries you examine.
You're really just doing kind of a general principles.
If there was instant settlement, what might it mean for these various industries?
And then you kind of turn it over and say, reader, you know, whatever industry you're in, you know, what type, how could you take this lens, this way of looking at the world of instant settlement and then conceive of some app to help put it in place?
And then what would that change about how you do things and how you think and your industry?
So I thought it was excellent.
But Lucas, I'll toss it over to you for follow up there.
Yeah, I think first we examine, so Ivan really brings to forefront the idea that we all know exists, but most people don't want to admit, which is that you do have somewhat of an adversarial relationship with your employer typically, in that one of you is trying to not do much and the other is trying to not pay much.
So it does go both ways.
The employee is trying to work as little as possible.
The employer is trying to pay as little as possible.
And make them do as much as possible.
Like that's a direct conflict.
Yeah.
So the employee's mindset is how little can I do and still not get fired?
And the employer's mindset is how much can we get out of them while paying them the least and they not quit?
and so it does go both ways
one of the things that I
so we're talking about
this is coming to fruition right now
this is real world examples that we're seeing
currently my
one of my friends here at the network school
the way that he makes his living
is by going after these coding bounties
so there's a
say a shit coin chain
like Solana or Ethereum or Celo, something like that,
and they need an outcome.
And their outcome is that they want to increase volume on their chain.
So they want more people to be using their chain.
So what's the means to that end?
The means to that end is to get developers to develop things on that chain.
And so therefore, they'll hold these bounties.
and they call it hackathons or whatever.
So a great example, this one that he's currently working on,
there's $295,000 worth of prizes.
I believe there's like 11 different categories or something
that those prizes will be given out.
There's currently like 75 different teams working to earn these prizes.
And if you do a good job and they pick yours,
then you'll end up getting paid $20,000, $30,000.
If you do a terrible job, then you'll get nothing.
And so it will reflect your input.
It will reflect your skill and your mastery.
There is still going to exist that adversarial relationship, right?
We are still going to have the hiring party is still going to be trying to pay
as little as they can to get the outcome that they want.
And whoever is trying to fulfill that, they're still going to be doing the least amount that they can
in order to achieve that outcome.
But the difference is we're not compounding this over a year, over years, over a month, over even a week.
We are merely limiting this to one simple activity, one job, one task.
And so if you're compounding laziness, if you're compounding lack of effort,
if you're compounding an adversarial relationship,
then it's going to get worse and worse exponentially.
If you're limiting it to just one thing, then your loss, your friction is much less.
And so I think that we've got kind of a good grasp now on what is a real-world example
of how this is being used, how this is being applied, and what are the benefits that we're seeing.
And I would say that the benefits that we're seeing is that the pay is actually higher per unit of hour worked,
with the caveat that the pay is higher per unit of skilled hour worked, right?
So we are rewarding skill more than we're rewarding time.
We're moving in the right direction.
And we're seeing probably a more positive outcome for both the consumer, the employer, and the employee.
So the way that you put it, the way that Ivan puts it in the writings is the classic brick by brick, skill by skill.
I'm going to refine and I'm going to master something in order to be good enough at it that they can't ignore me.
And I think you do a very good job of doing that.
And digging deeper and deeper into that is something that we're going to be living through in the next few years and possibly for the rest of our lives, I would assume, as we really kind of grasp this gig-based economy, this bounty-based economy.
So I think you've done a great job of really throwing that out to us.
the forcing function of getting paid for skill and getting paid for mastery,
there is something moral about it.
There is something inherently good about striving to be better, faster, stronger.
And so the downside, or not the downside, the upside,
is that even if you do fail and you're not the one achieving the ultimate,
you're continuously refining your skills.
Whereas on the other side, if you are in an employer-employee relationship
and you end up failing, then not only have you not gained any skills,
now you have this negative mark on your record that makes it seem as though you're not employable.
So I think it's really self-aware of you to think that about yourself.
to understand, oh, you know, this is why people don't like me. It's not because I'm a dick,
even though you might be, who knows, we're not going to judge, but it's because you go hard
when other people are not. And people don't like that because we're all trying not to rock the
boat. We're all trying not to mess anything up because right now we've got this good thing where
we don't work hard, we still get paid and we have a cushy job. So, um, yeah, it's a,
It's a wonderful assessment of that and a way to really frame how we're going to advance as a society.
And I'll stop there because I don't have a question.
And I'll probably let you kind of riff on that if you don't mind, Ivan.
Yeah. Just to tell you my fiat experience before I had any idea about Bitcoin, who I am, with a few examples.
I had to become a manager of a warehouse. It was a retail shop and stuff like that,
but I needed to coordinate stuff like that. I was a part-time worker before I became a manager,
but when I did become, I said, okay, I need to tackle this
properly and I read the Toyota book to optimize manufacturing I said I thought that that would be
useful and it definitely was and I manufacturing they said it's not about optimizing everything
it's really about mainly deleting anything unnecessary you need to really specify what
is the high value point of actually doing work and delete everything else that is unnecessary
and that's how you optimize the assembly line and everything else that is in manufacturing that's
the idea and i applied that thinking in our warehouse and in two weeks just that thought
alone i doubled the productivity from and then from two weeks later i doubled again like so
So in a month, I did four times as much.
And actually, I did it with one less person in the warehouse.
Previously, there were four people.
Now we are three and we are doing four times as much.
And now I have so much free time that I wanted another department in the store.
And who paid me to do that?
Nobody.
I received the same salary like the person before me and the person after me.
But why did I do it?
because I simply wanted to do the best job.
And not only that, that I do that and my colleagues watched me this negative way.
Why the hell are you doing so much effort?
You're not receiving more money.
They couldn't logically grasp this idea.
Like you're not receiving anything more than me.
So why the hell are you pushing?
But I didn't care in any shape or form.
And not only that, that I didn't care about the colleagues that I had when they gave me the other department, I said, okay, I have an idea.
I watched some training at home about sales and I said, okay, this is applicable in my situation.
I wanted to test it in the store where I was working.
And the person said, and I went there in my day off and I put on my uniform, everything else and the store manager said, go home. You're not supposed to be here.
And I said, I don't want any money. I want to increase sales about this. And he had to call me why the hell I am here. And at some point, I was even refusing to go home. And I said, okay, like, let me be clear. I'm here. I'm telling you that I don't want money. And I want to put more money in your pocket. And you're saying no. Is that clear?
And then he had to reassess what the hell he was thinking.
And he said, okay, how much do you want to stay?
And I said, I don't know.
Like, I'll stay how much I want to.
I just want to test this theory.
So, yeah, I was that guy that I wasn't even going to let my superiors stop me from doing the best job.
I had to fire my bosses sometimes in order to achieve that.
And that was completely illogical even for them.
And for me, it was like, why the hell am I putting so much effort and we are not aligned?
All of those efforts, like, I couldn't understand why the hell nobody wants to be the best.
And it was just about the incentives.
It was about the control.
It was about all of those crap that we have to deal in our fiat infrastructure.
and you have to completely ignore that to be somebody like me
and be in the face of everybody that this is not the proper way.
And I had another time where I wanted to test some promotional campaign
and I said, okay, give me about $50.
I wanted to test this thing and they said no.
And then I funded it myself.
I showed the results that this increased sales three times and they still said no.
And I then funded it again.
And like nobody would stop me to be the best.
But this is just, I had no idea why.
And when I stumbled onto this idea that people are not paid for work done for results.
now this is what unleashed those six articles it was the the foundation was laid from my character
and i couldn't understand what the hell is the problem why the hell are people not this way why
is nobody like me anywhere i was desperate to find one person like me and the people that i
found were in sports and I understood that in sports there is that dynamic, the proper
mentality like me, because there you have the economical thing, just like fiat, but there
the other dynamic is if you want the trophy, that means that you have to be the best.
And people that go for professional sports, that is their main motivations a lot of the time.
And when somebody goes really deep, nobody is there that says, I'll become a millionaire, so I'll go do football, I'll go do basketball, I'll go do baseball.
They start with, I want to be the best in that thing.
And then the effect is, they become a millionaire.
But that's why it connected with me in sports.
But what it revealed, again, with the articles that that dynamic is not present in our labor market.
And no wonder why so very, very few people are actually really, really good.
And the vast majority is just lethargic and lazy.
Could you connect the dot, though, to the fiat, between the fiat system and necessarily not incentivizing productive attitudes in the workplace?
I can see how it is maybe it does. That is the way that things often play out now, where it happened to you.
It happened to me, where simply, you know, there's a managerial level above a person that doesn't enable that person's full productive capacity.
but could you draw the line there what about instant settlement prevents or stops that and
why can't we have that without instant settlement why can't we have better incentives in the
workplace without having instant settlement yeah uh i wouldn't say that exactly instant settlement
is the thing but uh the other thing that i say that i don't think uh in bitcoin there's a killer
app everybody is searching for the killer app i think it's the killer feature and the killer feature
is the split payment because that is the thing that gets you completely aligned with somebody
else and because of that what you said about the bounties yeah it's getting closer to that idea
but if somebody creates a bounty in the example the uh look as you said there's still this friction
that the employer is also the client for the person that is chasing the bounty.
So the person that is giving the money is also the person that is giving you the dynamic
to go chase somebody else.
But if you completely align and let's say, okay, you're going to receive 20% of anybody
that does this solution in the future now you are completely aligned it's not a bounty because how
can you assess what is the proper amount of the bounty like you can overpay a bounty or underpay
a bounty based on the results on the other side so it's getting it closer because it's not paying
for time uh i i understand that but it still just missing uh this point that uh one person is is paying for something else but based on that is trying to achieve something else So that is the Grant what it really is the difference
Because if you completely align with your supervisors, with your owners, with your teammates,
now you go fight together as one whole entity, just like a sports team,
and not other people are incentivized to optimize for themselves
because exactly with the bounty.
If I give a bounty, I'm still going to try to underpay for the result at the end.
But if we are complete teammates,
we just negotiate what is the proper percentage for going and doing that job.
So that is what I would say about this.
I want to focus on that a little bit
So split payments, I think we need to kind of make sure that we're talking about the exact same thing.
Because what you're talking about more closely resembles the interoperability and the capability of what I would think of as a smart contract.
So something that you're able to tie the provenance of a skill or a product back to the original creator.
such that the original creator is rewarded throughout the entire process.
And let me lay out the way that this first appeared to me as something useful.
So in agriculture, there has long been a cry for what's known as COOL, C-O-O-L,
country of origin labeling, which is simply,
we want to know the provenance of our beef or our chicken or our pork. We want to know
beyond just what country. It would be really great if we knew all the way down to not just
what farm it came out of, but what cow it came out of. What pasture was that cow in?
Currently, the way this works is that I, as the rancher, I raise beef. I sell that beef.
typically to a middleman. That middleman grows that cattle even more up until about slaughter weight.
They then sell it to another middleman who slaughters it, adds value.
After that, it gets sold to another man who sells it to a butcher shop or some sort of end retailer.
and then after that it goes to the consumer.
And so at each step in this process, value is added.
The farmer, the rancher adds the value by the genetics that they select,
by their husbandry methods through the way that they raise the cattle.
The cattle feeder, they add value by putting on 400 pounds worth of more beef.
The high-skill labor of the butcher adds value by cutting it in a way that is difficult for normal people to do.
And then clear at the very end, you've got the specific cuts and you've got the fact that it is geographically close and available to you so that you as the end consumer can purchase it.
Currently, if I'm going to sell beef, I'm going to sell it for about $2 a pound.
when you buy it it's going to cost you about 20 and so i don't receive any of that additional value
even though i was the one who basically if you want to think about it from a different i i was
the one who created the original thing i was the one who had the original deal so this application
of split payments with this sort of value chain linked provenance allows for not just a split
payment at the beginning, but it allows for as that product, as that creation moves through the
value chain and value is added to it, then each participant in that value chain is able to
participate in the upside and the appreciation. And what that does is align incentives throughout
the entire thing. Currently, the person I sell my beef to wants to get the best of me. They want to
pay as little for it. I want to give them as little as possible. That moves all the way through the
value chain clear to the very end. And so that adversarial relationship that we're talking about
with the employer, pay for time, it exists in that current nature too, even if you're selling cattle.
But if we're able to put the ear tag on the cattle that has the smart chip in it that links that smart chip
to me, the producer, Grant, who's the butcher, Ivan, who is the end retailer, then we can all participate
and it benefits each one of us to gain.
So is that an accurate summary of what you're talking about with split payments?
And what else would you add to that?
And what other examples?
So in your instant settlement series, you talk about the construction industry, logistics, publishing,
real-time streaming payments, and the gambling industry.
So I want to throw it back to you and ask if you have some other examples that you see might better fit kind of what we're trying to talk about.
And also to let me know if I've accurately summarized it by my bull in the China shop example.
Yeah, I would say yes.
I wouldn't focus too much on the discrepancy on the prices.
But exactly what you said, that it's not teammate mentality if we're separate entities.
Everybody is going to optimize first for themselves.
And that's why it's $2 here, $10 there, $20 at the end, the consumer.
I don't have any problem with, let's say, the rancher, the person that's raising the cows, saying I will receive 10% of it, which equals $2 out of the 20.
But now we are incentivized to optimize all the processes so I get my 10% and I'm not going to fight, scheme, think how I have to optimize my relationship with the other suppliers in that particular chain.
I am one with them and we go for the trophy.
In this case, it's sell a stake to a client, for example.
That's it.
We optimize all of us.
Now we're pointed in one direction.
And the only thing, even when you start optimizing this way, you're going to see even when we're completely teammates,
who deserves even more percentage, who is less.
Because if somebody is a good marketer, why not receive a bigger percentage?
Or if somebody is not a very good rancher, why should they get even 10% if the meat after all is bad?
I don't know.
But the point is now we work together.
And if you, let's say, are not holding your end of that team fight, I'm going to come to you and say, OK, can you optimize this and that?
I'm not going to be against you and trying to undercut you.
I want you to be the best because you being the best increases my value.
Just like in Bitcoin.
If I do something to increase the value of Bitcoin, you benefit.
If you do it, I benefit.
And that's the same mentality there with split payment.
And I love how this ties to software for me is that Jason Larry says that the best power projection strategy is to get stuck with something.
And that happened way back when the soup of sales started fighting against each other.
But two of them got stuck.
And now they combined resources and they aligned exactly this.
They did split payment of going fighting for the extra energy.
That is what's going to happen in the economical sense here.
And it's going to mirror the universe.
And when I did spaces with the publisher from Bitcoin Magazine, the editor, I'm sorry,
we said that right now the fiat payment is completely detached from the universe it's some
abstraction layer that we deal with but if we do it completely connected inst because the universe
settles instantly if i walk a step i don't get the benefit of that step two seconds later i receive
it instantly. If I go pick up a cup, I receive that benefit instantly. And now the payment
will actually be exactly the same with nature because before money were invented and let's
say we wanted to get the stake from a cow, we organized and we said, okay, you are the
person that will build the fence that will trap you're the person with the spears, you
were this, you're that, and we were this collective team that was pointed at the same direction.
But when we split the economical things to be just abstraction and more and more disconnected
to reality, this is the problems that over time is trying to have its own problems.
It's just completely different system.
And now with instant settlement and split payment, the more entities that you can split
it with, that means more people are on your team because you can do split payments.
As you said, the rancher can split payment within their team.
But if they don't connect to the butcher and the butcher don't connect to the restaurant,
let's say there are still separate entities.
But the more and more people you can put into the split payment, the more people are on your team and not on somebody else's.
Even if they're kind of aligned, it's still not completely aligned.
So I do just want to point out, not only does the universe settle instantly, it also carries on perpetually.
So you go do a workout and you instantly receive the pheromones or the hormones or whatever benefit from that workout.
But three weeks, four weeks, two months later is you're continuing to see the benefit of that.
You're showing that muscle as that builds into the future.
Of course, the flip side of that is true as well, right?
You eat the muffin.
you instantly are able to have the sugar rush.
And then three weeks, four weeks later, now you have a muffin top as well.
Yeah.
Carrying that around.
So we do see these parallels to nature,
which really reflect the softwar thesis that we talked about with Jason Lowry
and with Robert Breedlove is that this software is based and grounded in nature.
What we need to do is we still need to figure out the hierarchy.
So back to that ranching example, I'm going to sell you my beef on a percentage amount
instead of for a strict dollar amount.
But what is that percentage amount?
Is it 10%? Is it 5%?
You're the butcher. Is your value add, is it 12%, is it 30%? Right now, the rancher gets about 10%, the butcher gets about 50%, right?
And so going into the future, is that something that I do?
Do you feel I guess I think this is I think this is probably a good question.
It might be a little too a little too obvious.
But what do you feel is the impact of being able to trace all of that back to the original creator, have that original creator benefit all throughout the chain?
I would say that right now that those at the higher end of the value chain, those that do the where there are fewer there are fewer offerings.
Like, for example, I'm going to stick with beef.
There's there's four butchers in the United States.
There's four major butchers.
Everything goes through four major butchers.
And so that creates a bottleneck that gives them a competitive advantage.
And that also allows them to pay less for what they're doing and push certain people out.
So do you feel that we are moving into an era where those people who provide the initial ground effort, the starting point for goods and services, do you feel that they will receive a higher proportion of the final value?
Or do you feel that we're entering this cutthroat gig economy where only the top 0.1% of people are even able to be employed because they are good and everybody else is not as good?
And if I'm an employer and I can just a la carte pick what I want for an outcome, I'm not going to invest in a long-term relationship with a mediocre subpar employee and hope that they eventually get that done.
I'm simply going to wait my turn until the 0.1% top performer can do my work.
so do you i guess what i'm what i'm asking is do you feel that we're entering an age of abundance
or an age of scarcity due to these real-time streaming payments and the ability to split
yeah i would say uh abundance but then is the long uh answer uh the first thing is that i want
to make clear uh about the things that you talk about nature that you have something instant
but then there are second and third order consequences.
You provoked me to think that that is exactly what I was describing in the articles,
that just because you have instant settlement, there are second and third order effects on our psyche,
on our behavior, on our actions, on our cooperations.
All of those are not really about the instant settlement,
but that instant settlement flows into those second and third order effects.
And in nature, it's the same.
If I start running, even right now sprinting, my heartbeat will catch up a little bit later.
So it's not really instantly settled, but the work that I did settles instantly.
And those third and fourth consequences happen.
On the butcher side about the competition, I do believe that right now we don't have competition.
Not only that, but the centralizing forces are everywhere because of this dynamic.
Because everybody is pricing in any industry, in any team, anything that happens in our fiat systems.
Some people are so much better just because the economical discrepancy than other people.
In the fiat center, the competition will be brutal.
Absolutely.
But because the competition is brutal, let's take again any sport.
Not watching as money, but any sport that has been on the market for more than 50 years,
you can watch the, let's say, the best football match 50 years ago and the best one today.
The sport was elevated because of the brutal competition.
there's always going to be the top performer of everything that will have the most prizes
the most economical prizes anything else but the whole point is even the worst people that are
in the sport are better than the ones that are outside of it so i want to make the labor market
a competition so everybody is better than being lethargic and weak i want to get out of that
because the point is not that people will starve at the bottom because on the bitcoin standard
we talked i i said it in some other articles that jeff booth taps into this because
technology is a deflationary force. If you're on the Bitcoin standard is the only thing that
will provide more and more value to the bottom of any competition. But on the fiat standard,
the bottom is preyed upon. It's extracting resources from them and putting it on the top.
on the Bitcoin system, everything flows to everybody.
So you may not be the best, but you're not going to starve
because your skills become better and you can afford more.
So for the people that want to compete, the competition will be brutal.
But your life in general will be better.
And you just need to pick what sport do you want to be in.
just let's say messi uh if he let's say was playing basketball and football was he going to
be the best in football absolutely not uh and that's the whole thing but just because uh he's
a footballer uh that does that thing mean that he cannot consume let's say podcast he cannot consume
basketball events he cannot consume no he can consume them but he chose a lane that he wants
to focus in on his craft and who uh where he wants to compete in that uh sport and that uh
when that thing happens in the labor market then you have much more incentive to chase your craft
and to say i work for this company no this is not my team i don't like to work this uh it
it's a struggle for me.
So I quit.
The sport is better because you're not forced to stay.
Because the thing in the fiat system is not only that the best people are not incentivized,
but the worst people stay in the company.
That the people that want to just hold, stay and watch the clock, they stay.
That was the thing that when I was a manager was annoying really to me.
And when you have this deflationary force, yeah, you choose a lane that you want to compete and be brutal, but you have more and you can consume anything else that will become more and more and more affordable over time.
what would you say to somebody who says i don't want to be the michael jordan of corporate
accounting i'm in that because i saw it as a lucrative job when i went into it but i don't
want to be the michelangelo of you know some corporate accounts thing i'm working on i'm fine
punching the clock and then getting back to what really matters to me which is going home with my
family and working on i play the guitar i have these side projects that are very interesting to
me, but that are non-renumerative, um, that don't pay me anything.
I, you know, I know I have to work because that's where we live in.
I really don't want a hyper competitive world and I'm fine not being pushed to be, to exert
all of that energy and development in my work life because that's only the shallowest part
of me.
I would say
it's a good time
good that you were not born
a thousand years ago
like
nature is not asking
the first thing
but also
even if we take modern times
why the hell are you
comparing
yourself to Michael Jordan
to Messi
and to the best of the best of the best
how many people are in
NBA at all
like
the field is not the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
The field is much faster
and you don't have to be the best.
But if you don't want to compete,
that's the whole idea.
Nature says if you don't want to compete,
you don't want to fight for your foot,
then you die.
That's the idea.
Decide to compete at what level,
how much intensity,
that's a different thing.
But if you don't want to compete,
That means that the universe doesn't want you.
So why?
And that's the whole problem in the fiat system.
Some companies, some countries are zombie companies.
Why the hell are they still alive?
Because the system allows it, but the universe wants them to die.
We just tapped into this economical sense that we exploit the bug in the system
where somebody can print economical energy for themselves
and still use it for your resources.
And again, that system will break at some point.
I don't have to do anything to attack it.
It will collapse on its own weight.
I just need to develop the new system
so when that thing crashes,
more and more people can actually jump to the live vault.
Yeah.
What do you say to people who would say humanity is...
I'm sorry, go ahead, Lucas.
what would you say to people who would say humanity is a revolt against nature and that
the coldness of the universe is exactly what like the promethean aspect of humanity is always
fighting against and so that the universe blinking at us and saying you know you will die unless you
are engaged in you know some sort of sort of way to stave off the entropy that i'm constantly
shuffling onto you. And then humanity was trying to find ways to say, no, that's not the case. And
then people could say the labor movement is one of those ways we've done that through unions,
people unionizing for the 40 hour work week for conditions on work. Um, that is probably
involves things like pay for time. So I just want to push you on that is, is it an inherently
libertarian or anarchic view? Um, do you want us to have to have an inherently libertarian or
anarchic view in order to totally embrace like the the bitcoin network and what it stands for
as far as instant settlement and what that'll do to transform work if that makes sense uh i i
wouldn't use labels at all i want to go with libertarian again i don't care and how jason
larry describes his thesis he starts with nature nature is not asking he is trying to observe and
explain in terms that are understandable but he's not imposing some vision on the universe and says
oh universe you're wrong so you have to comply to my thoughts and like universe is
it just is like it's not asking is dependent on us to understand it so we can optimize some stuff
But when we do split payments and what I'm suggesting, we're going back to, okay, what works.
And labor unions are again with this bounty.
It's trying to get stuck.
So we are cooperating on one level, but the adversarial is not fixed.
The adversity is not fixed on all levels.
Like you're unionizing to be a bigger group against the supervisors, against somebody else.
That thing that we are against, that is the thing that I want to abolish.
I want to be one humanity.
Like I don't want to be separate entities and we fight between each other.
Because imagine that creativity that we created central banks and we extract everything from so many people at the same time.
what if we didn't do that but we cooperated and that energy was pointed at the thing that we wanted to achieve
I think we were going to be on Mars already
or whatever we wanted to do
that the optimization that would happen in any industry
in any human will be so much faster
because, for example, the 2% inflation that they're giving us,
this is getting us sick, but you can't measure that.
And analogy would be with eating unhealthy.
Like the biological system that is our human body
is a very complex system and it can deal with that.
So your body is having to deal with our brain being a different entity.
don't eat junk so our body is some separate entity from our self and we have to what happens
if they completely align that you actually eat what your body wants then your body optimizes and
you go fight together logically emotionally and physically about what you want to achieve and you
don't have to deal with this friction and this poison in the system and this is what's happening
in humanity as a whole.
Like some people are so preyed upon
that they are trying to get stuck again
with somebody else, with another entity
so they can deal with that toxicity
and that friction or whatever the case may be
so they can survive.
And that entropy is again,
entropy is not asking for permission.
Entropy just is.
You have to deal with it,
whether you like it or not.
And that why everybody is throwing so much hate at Jason because he not saying some politically correct thing that oh let be nice to each other
Nature just is.
And that's why when he says war or warfare and people are like, oh, this is bad or whatever.
No, it's not bad.
It just is.
It's a proper word.
And that's why he switched to power projection just so he didn't want to deal with this.
oh, I don't want to fight another enemy.
I just want to say some stuff and people can view my point.
But that's the whole thing.
Again, if you're getting stuck together with some entity,
that's a good step in the right direction.
But my point is that let's be one humanity.
Let's not be some separation tools with different borders,
with different currencies, with different companies, with different chains, like anything.
This segregation, separation is creating this, the analogy that I said,
the body is completely detached from the brain.
He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
You quote Sun Tzu saying that.
I think that's a really beautiful response there.
Lucas, go ahead.
Well, I wanted to go back to, I think, the question that Grant had was, you know, what if I just don't want to be the superstar?
What if I'm just comfortable being, you know, who I am?
And Ivan, I think you did a really good job of answering that question, which is to say that you actually don't have to be the .001%.
there's still a lot of people at the top, even though percentage-wise it's a small amount.
But in terms of people who put in the effort, those who are rewarded, that's a very high percentage.
So if you do the things that is required to be a top 1% accountant, basketball player, author, etc., if you do those things, then your chance of achieving that, it's more than 1%.
It's much, much, much higher.
And there's just a lot of people.
So there's eight, about 8 billion people. If you're the top 1% of whatever you're doing, that's still 80 million people. You know, that's still one quarter of the population of the United States.
and I give the example when I was in college I used to go play pickup basketball and you know
there's a number of us that would show up I stopped playing basketball competitively when I was in
eighth grade there were a lot of guys that played through high school and they were starters on their
team or they were stars on their team and we could play a good pickup game and it was competitive and
and you wouldn't have been able to tell, unless you looked deeply,
you wouldn't have been able to tell a huge difference between me and the guy who was a starter on the team.
And you wouldn't have been able to tell a huge difference between the guy who was a starter on the team
and a guy who was a star on their high school team.
And then one day, this guy showed up, and we were shooting, and we were warming up, and I was just rebounding and throwing to people.
And this guy went probably 15 minutes without missing a shot.
Just swish, and not barely making them.
Bottom of the net, perfect form, perfect shot every time, making every single shot.
and we got to talking and he had played at a low level in college.
He had been a starter and then he had played at a very, very low level in, I think, Europe.
So he was, in terms of LeBron James, he wasn't there.
He wasn't a starter on an NBA team.
He wasn't in the D League in the NBA team.
He wasn't a good player in the European League.
He was riding the bench in the European League.
He was, in terms of his life achievement, he was at the bottom.
Yet the difference between him and the rest of us was such a gap that it was nearly impossible to measure.
And it makes me think of, I remember hearing, I can't remember who exactly it was,
but one of the UFC champions was on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he talked about learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from Gracie.
I forget the guy's first name, but Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, he's the Michael Jordan of Jiu-Jitsu.
And so this guy is a highest degree black belt.
he's a multiple chime UFC champion and he said that in three years of practicing and competing
against Gracie he never scored a single point not only did he not he not not ever beat him
he just he never scored a single point against this guy these are both champions this guy is
better than everybody in the world except for this guy and this guy is so much better that he
can't even score one point. And so I think that, I think it's revealing most of us will never
witness mastery. And if we do, it will be so rare to us that it looks very foreign and it seems
freakish and it seems absurd, but even low levels of mastery, even the guy who was the
riding the bench on the D League in Europe, that type of mastery is so much higher than what we
typically think of as good. I play guitar. I'm not a guitarist. There are people that are so
much better than me that it is hard to imagine. And I think that that really speaks to your point
of I don't know if we're really aware of just how much decay of our competitive nature,
how much decay of our desire to strive for greatness and mastery has occurred throughout
the years.
Because we are now at a point where mastery is something that is so rare that it's hard
to recognize when we see it because it is so foreign to what we're used to seeing that mediocrity
has become so accepted mediocrity has not just become accepted it's been promoted as the way
this is the way that your boss at the uh at the at the facility that you worked at
that that person was trying to promote to you this is the way that my boss at my old job
I tried to automate some processes.
I literally just wanted to automate some processes
so that instead of my assistant taking three hours a day to do it,
I could press a button and it could be done in three seconds.
And after three meetings that lasted hours,
I was told that we're not allowed to do this
because what is that person going to do if you automate her job?
and the thing that we don't realize
is that we've been automating jobs since the beginning
we've outsourced things to tools
we've outsourced things to technology
and just because there's nobody delivering milk to your door now
because you have a refrigerator
doesn't mean that that entire class of human
that did the job of milk delivery man is extinct
that person was able to level up
was able to move in a different direction, was able to benefit society with greater leverage
by moving into either a more creative or some sort of other more productive act.
So I'm going to agree with you, Ivan, that I think we move into an era that is relatively more abundant.
I don't think not just relatively, I think absolutely more abundant.
But I do believe the caveat is that we are still going to see the difference between the top and the bottom.
And I think it will be more pronounced.
I think it will be more clear because we'll no longer be muddying the difference of mediocrity and mastery, of lethargy and vigor by putting everyone into the same sort of cattle call of employment.
a great example by the way
and you noted this
you intentionally chose to attack my own work ethic
by making sure that you complimented Grant's
which was the right thing
I was witness to that
Grant and I lived together for about three months
and in that three months there was one day
so let's say 90 days, there was one day that he did not work at all.
And there was 89 days that he worked at least six hours.
And then there was about 85 days that he worked at least 12 hours.
And so he was getting paid the same wage as the people who showed up eight to five,
checked out, were done.
and the results were massively different.
I shouldn't speak for Grant,
but I will say that he was definitely an outlier
at his old employer.
I'm not going to say that he wasn't liked
because Grant is an inherently likable person.
But yeah, sometimes people don't like to be made.
They don't like to look bad.
They don't like to, they would rather drag others down than rise up.
And that's an instinct.
I don't think that it is something negative about human nature.
I think that it's a fear-based instinct that has been drilled into us, where previously, when we're living by the laws of nature, we simply see cause and effect.
We simply see this person puts in more effort and they get more reward.
Now I've learned.
If I put in more effort, I'll get more reward.
And so I do think that the mechanism of how we pay people, and it's so insightful to be able to draw that back to fiat,
that fiat creates not just inflation, not just waste here and there, but it creates a fiat mindset.
A decay of moral application of behavior and a decay of effort and a decay of pushing forward into greatness.
So, again, it's insightful what we're able to draw from fiat and how it affects society, not just on the surface level, but throughout all levels and throughout the mindset and the psyche of an entire population of 8 billion people.
Two comments and then I have some suggestions for you guys.
Maybe you'll like them.
But the first thing about mastery is one thing that I also kind of had a grasp after I wrote the series is that everybody is trying to capture success.
But when you capture success, also success captures you.
Because going back to Messi, because he is the best at this,
he can give to the world something that we didn't expect, we appreciated.
But that thing means that he cannot pursue anything else.
So that success also captures you.
And that is why the biggest difference between even the second and the first in a lot of the times, because they are completely obsessed about this one thing.
And it's, again, not trying, going back to my warehouse example, that they deleted so many other stuff.
And if, let's say, you get them out of that environment, they are probably very bad at a lot of stuff because they optimized everything around that one thing.
And they can be good in a lot of things, but they need to be related to that one mastery thing that they chose.
But if you ask those mastery people, I think most of them are happy with their life because they decided to stick to this because you don't get mastery in a class in a few months.
They said, I'm going to master this.
And that takes a lot of the times decades.
and if you stick through all that pain and suffering and struggle i think most of them
are happy they may have problems in other areas but that's again emphasizing this first point
and the other thing that you mentioned about optimizing for your colleague to do her job in
three seconds if i was there i wasn't going to ask for permission because then i was going to do
that process i would click three a few buttons do it in three seconds and i leave it to the employer
and now he has to be the idiot of not using it because previously uh what you said people that
are weak don't want to be told told that people that are weak would tell you you are too strong
i don't want you to be too strong it's like the zebra saying all to the lion like don't eat me
you're too strong i don't have clothes or whatever like nature does not ask permission but in our
um very developed brain we have these abstractional things that we the the logic uh is sometimes
completely against nature because we think too much but uh it's really a cancer to the system uh
the whole thing is that if you want to be the best and you did let's say that optimization and
she didn't have anything to do this will be the forcing function of the universe saying
you either adapt or die and that is not present in the labor market in so many ways you just gave
one example but I was doing this for a few companies also like I optimized
everything for my department and there was nothing else and I still had free
time because the person before me did my job and didn't have any time I
optimized everything and I had four hours of free time every single day and
then I went into every other department in the company and I optimized their
stuff like who the hell does that and I optimized this I gave them the solution
and I gave it not to the people that were working but to the owner and it was
his choice like sometimes he was pampering to those employers all they
need to do look this is completely logical adapter die is nature's way if
If you don't adapt, you just die.
And again, you don't have to adapt to the highest of the highest of the highest level.
But if you choose to be weak and become weaker and weaker in nature,
like says, okay, you're not part of our herd.
And when a liar goes after gazelles, he does not chase the best running one.
He chases the one that is the weakest, the one that needs to get out of that herd.
And that is also how the whole team of gazelles gets better.
Their genes that are the best get propagated and that's nature.
Why does this thing does not happen in the labor market?
Our smart brain is preventing it.
our fiat system is an abstraction uh and it's just so many disconnections from the world so
many disconnections between each other and those are again second and third order effects i'll let
you comment and then i i'll tell the few examples if you like i would say adapt or die so it's first
of all, it's a pleasure to talk with you. Lucas mentioned this by text after our last conversation.
You have such a good grip on Jason's softwar thesis that that distinction between abstract
and real power runs through a lot of your discussion. And so it's a pleasure to talk
to you about that. I kind of, in putting forward the abstract power point of view to push you,
I see where you're coming from falling back on, not falling back on, but emphasizing nature as
the settlement layer for all of us and that it's unavoidable. And, you know, your analogies,
of course, with the lion and the zebra, they hit very much home even in our day-to-day lives.
And we definitely should not encourage weakness. Having said all of that, I will say maybe the
human adaptation though, the human, so, I mean, part of Lowry's thesis is the metaphor of antlers
as how the deer evolved a technique
so that they could do power projection contests
to settle intra-hierarchy disputes over resources
so that the group could work together
and yet settle disputes in a kinetic but non-harmful sort of way.
And so then Bitcoin, as an analogy to that,
that's also going to be a way that we can use energy
to settle disputes in cyberspace, but in a non-harmful way.
It's human antlers.
but what if human antlers in some sense is our ability to use consciousness to create and mediate
our relations through abstractions i mean that's kind of a challenge to to jason's thesis because
he i mean is with you 100 that abstract thinking always needs to be disciplined with real power
but there's something about the the nature of reflexive human consciousness is such an innovation
It goes beyond merely the power to think abstractly, but includes this really in-depth engagement experientially with our surroundings and with other human beings, our ability to model other human beings modeling us, that sort of telescoping, reflexive consciousness.
And so that's going a bit far, and this is more maybe a critique of the software thesis in downplaying what the nature of abstract thinking truly is in its fullest form and the power of that, and maybe that that itself could be human antlers.
But because you have read the thesis and because it is a pleasure to hear somebody who has engaged with it in that way, I want to, if that makes sense, the question is, can abstract thinking itself be that evolved human antlers, be that way that we mediate our future relations because we develop a sort of empathy tunnel in the way that we can model other people modeling us?
Can that be human antlers?
uh yeah i would say it definitely is and uh the whole thing is that even a zebra can kill a lion
for example but it's in the domain of not fighting with claws it just needs to run away that is the
domain like the weaker seemingly weaker uh opponent can also kill somebody stronger uh but
but be in that domain.
Our abstraction of thinking,
I think it's remarkable
and we were not going to fight entropy so well
if we didn't have it,
if we didn't have our smart brain.
But I am trying to point out,
are we using it to chase the bottom
or are we using it to chase the top?
Because there are two completely different outcomes at the end.
Because if we're trying to, oh, don't get fight, oh, don't be a competition, go sit down lazy on the couch, click the remote, like this is chasing the bottom.
And that's the whole thing.
And at some point, when our whole collective society and humanity becomes so weak that the whole system breaks down because the entropy is not going to ask us, do you want to die?
is going to give us the problem and we either fight against it or we die.
So that is what I'm trying to say because the abstraction thing is extremely important
and that is tying it back to my split payment thinking and that getting stuck together
because I can even show it right now that currently, for example,
we are using this subtractional layer of talking.
but let's say if i do this uh lucas he grant no harassment podcaster going to stand properly
so what did i say do you know was that english no okay and
yeah so that is my point i was still using this abstractional layer of talking but i
said a sentence that disconnected us.
So I was going against connecting us and using it in a more beneficial way.
So how you use this abstraction layer is important.
It's not only that you have it because you can misuse it in a very bad way
that will lead to the physical stuff going the wrong way also.
So I said, for example, that I really like the podcast that you did and that you are doing currently.
But if I say it in a language that you don't understand, yeah, I'm using my abstraction layer, but does it matter?
Not really.
If I talk with some countrymen, it matters.
But in this example, it doesn't.
So that's what I would say that, yeah, let's pamper.
Oh, let's include some people that are weak and minority and whatever.
Like it kind of has some logic to it, but is it really the best way to use this?
or we can figure out a way to increase the skills of those people to put those people where they are
actually valuable and not bringing the whole system uh chasing to the bottom uh and because
uh to have even more examples for people that are going to read the essay series it's perfectly
fine to do this mental gymnastics or what i did but what i care out of those articles and that's
why i'm pushing people apply it in the real world just talking about it really doesn't matter and
to make it even more clear to both of you right now i think you tapped into some very interesting
dynamic that you're reading essays, you're reading books. And I was thinking, what if you apply this?
You put in a little website or page or whatever, and you say, what should be the next book that we
read? And people vote with their set what you actually read. This is doable. This is applicable.
And when people donate, you decide, okay, we'll split it between us. You can automate all of that.
how are you going to do this in the fiat system?
You really can't in a very easy way.
It will take so much effort and so much struggle to set up that thing with cards,
with the platform, with the Lightning Network.
Yeah, you might need some coding skills, but I think you can do it even without.
But it's the barrier of entry, of doing this.
It's really simple.
And now you have complete autonomy and you start small.
You don't start at the highest level.
But if this thing is a real valuable thing in the market, you just need to start optimizing that.
And you'll get some stats flowing to you this way.
And at some point, if that is really, really valuable, it will outplace the things that you're currently doing.
So, yeah, just an example that you can test.
And the other thing that I think is second and third order consequences about instant settlement split payment.
And Grant, this is more of your area about laws and lawyering stuff.
What happens, let's say, if I am a customer in a restaurant and that server serves me the chef, all the people that are employees in that restaurant, and I pay the dish.
Everybody receives a split payment and now nobody is actually an employee A company is not paying them the client pays them So that will completely reshape our fiat contracts that are going to be shown that they are very
dumb contracts.
And the thing that we call smart contracts, it's really a script.
I don't like the word smart contract because it's really a dumb program.
but what happens there
the fiat laws
are not prepared
with their logic
we can exploit
the fiat logic
what Jason Larry is also
talking about
we can exploit the laws logic
because of this
what happens again
another example for
lawyers and stuff like that
everybody is afraid
of receiving SATs
and things like that because of taxes and regulations and stuff like that but anybody
can actually create a loyalty point and i don't know in america but in my country you have plastic
cards of loyalty programs for everything now everybody wants to addict you to their numbers
and that's again one of my other articles but why not that digit not to be any digit that you print
for your franchise but it is sats or millisats or and now you can exploit that logic oh i'm going
to create a loyalty program that you receive sats with this and discounts and you completely plug
into this new system and you defend it by the logic of the current laws that oh i'm not paying
in cryptocurrency i'm paying in a token that is loyalty digit like i don't know i'm not the best
one to be asked but those are just some of the examples that we can apply currently in our world
today and that's what i want to do that's incredibly interesting and also it's just really
humbling is not the right word but thank you for thinking about our podcasts and how we could do
things i just really i like that you applied your professional thinking and gave us some suggestions
really appreciate that on the on the kind of the restaurant example and another interesting thing
along with loyalty points is if they trump has talked about in the united states not taxing
tips and so the more that you can use some sort of tipping structure to get yourself paid in some
way maybe you can take advantage of that so if there's i don't know what the eventual law is going
to look like as far as exempting tips from taxation but to the extent the lightning network can enable
a broader conception of tipping that would be an interesting thing along with loyalty points like
you mentioned so it's that's yeah that's really it interplays in a complex fashion with the nation's
laws but also wherever whatever nation you're in i mean a more fair and equitable way to pay people
for sure yeah i want to emphasize maybe i wasn't exactly clear but i wasn't talking about tips only
i was talking about your paying for your dish without the tip and everybody receives a split
payment that created that dish or on that particular shift in the restaurant and the
dynamic is that why do you tax people that are employed that is centralizing force that you're
tax through the company. Right now, nobody actually works for a company. We are a team and we receive
a benefit. I work for the client. I don't work for a company. So what happens if I don't receive
money from a company, but I receive it from individual people? Does that mean that we're
each individual companies like i'm saying the logic of the fiat contract structures with
employment completely can change in uh the world that i'm saying it's not ready to handle it and we
can uh exploit building those types of solutions in the bug of the fiat laws and i think we should
do that because they are exploiting the bug of printing money for themselves
yeah yeah with the uh the restaurant example is interesting i i'll comment on the tips thing just
because i've been a server before and i will say that um whether or not tax whether or not tips are
taxed um doesn't really affect much because uh that is a largely ignored law anyways in fact i
At my very first job when I was a server, I was taught you get paid like $3 an hour.
You get paid under minimum wage, and then you have to report your tips.
And so I was just taught, hey, you're getting paid $3 an hour.
Minimum wage is $6.50.
So you make $3.50 worth of tips per hour for every hour that you work.
We just want you to know that.
However much you put in your pocket, we don't care.
But this is how much you report.
I would say that what we're seeing now with any sort of proposed legislation is merely legislators trying to get in front of falling behind the times.
And finally acknowledging that they don't have the authority to put anything on top of that.
With digital payments, however, that has become something that is much more easily tracked.
And I do like, again, so the restaurant example.
So I sit down and I have a meal and this food shows up and it's burnt or it's undercooked or whatever.
Or it shows up 20 minutes late and I'm angry and I'm upset.
One of the things that happens in the hospitality industry is that the server always blames somebody else because the cook is clear in the back.
The manager is clear in the back.
The cashier is clear. You're not going to see them, but I'm the one talking to you.
And so my goal is to make sure that you and I have a good relationship because I need you to tip me because that's what's going to make money in my pocket.
If you give me nothing or if you give me $100, that makes zero difference to the chef or the cook.
But again, if we're all getting paid a certain percentage of the final bill, then we're all encouraged to, as you walk in, the hostess greets you with an actual smile, not a fake one.
And they do a good job of trying to make sure that you're pleased with where you're sitting instead of just grabbing a couple menus and turning around and walking away and assuming that you're going to follow them and then throwing the menus on the table and saying, somebody will be here to get your drink order, et cetera, et cetera.
So it does, it puts us all on the same table, team, team, it moves us all in the same direction.
going back to something we talked about a little earlier that I wanted to just uh
talking about how basically nature doesn't care nature doesn't care um if you don't want to put
in effort nature doesn't care if you don't want to be the best it's going to assign a hierarchy
and it is going to assign that hierarchy based on merit based on effort based on power um
And one of my favorite, probably my favorite thing that I've ever heard Jason Lowry say is technology does not negotiate.
And that is in reference to, you know, what if we don't want to adopt Bitcoin?
What if we don't want to have nuclear weapons?
What if we don't want to have encrypted technology?
It doesn't matter what you want.
Technology does not negotiate.
And technology is an extension of nature.
The antlers on the deer are a form of natural technology that developed in order to aid in these power projection competitions.
And it does not negotiate.
It does not care what you want.
One comment is technology is part of nature.
And why does not negotiate?
The universe does not negotiate because there is no obstructional layer on it.
It just is.
We have abstractions, all sorts of them.
It's agnostic.
Yeah.
But technology is part of it.
And how we use it as part of nature with our abstraction or thinking and putting all sorts of political things is completely different than what technology actually is.
Technology is part of nature and it does not negotiate.
It just is.
Yeah.
The other thing that I wanted to just throw out, because you triggered this quote in my mind, we're talking about the benefits of being master, the benefits of mastery and of applying yourself and rising to the top.
Mark Yusko, who's a fantastic follow on Twitter, if you're interested, he's a hedge fund manager, et cetera, right?
I'm very fond of saying that wealth is created through concentration and protected by diversification.
And that aligns a lot with what you'll hear Michael Saylor talk about when he hears people, when he's presented with the idea of what is the proper allocation of Bitcoin?
Is it 2%? Is it 1%, et cetera, et cetera?
And if you say, is it 2%, then he says, okay, show me 49 ideas that are better than Bitcoin, and I'll only put 2% into Bitcoin, and then I'll put 2% into all of those other ones.
But we currently have, for the first time in history, we currently have a best idea.
We've never had a best idea before.
We've always had competing good ideas.
Real estate was a good idea until we overbuilt.
Equities were a good idea until companies decided to go too far and become immoral and collapse.
Stocks and bonds are a good idea at a certain time in a cycle.
Venture capital is a good idea if you hit the one in 1,000 new companies that actually
succeeds.
These are all good ideas, but now it's like me on that basketball court with a professional
basketball player.
There is one clear best idea.
There is one clear victor.
And so we no longer like I think I think Saylor also says this like diversification is for people who are indecisive, who can't decide what they should pursue.
And so when you do have the awareness and the conviction and the technology exists that there is a best thing, that is where you go with your time.
That is where you go with your money, with your efforts toward mastery.
So, yeah, I just wanted to comment on that.
I love the idea that you gave us about, so the one thing that I don't like about that is that it creates what's called audience capture, right?
Is that the audience then dictates what you want to do.
And I think we've seen the most successful podcaster in the world, the most successful, I would say, sort of free thinker as far as people being interested in what he has to think is Joe Rogan, who very famously does not read any comments, does not listen to what people think about his show, does not care.
Now, the difference is he's made it to a level where he doesn't have to care.
The flip side of that, though, like what you're talking about, is there probably is some room to have a community that benefits us and gives us the opportunity to look into interesting things that we're probably not even aware of, that we've probably missed, that we've not looked at, that we've not been paying attention to.
And I can see how if we had had that system set up, this website, you can vote with sats for what you want to discuss.
I could very much see Ivan, the guy who used his own money to run promotional campaigns for a company that wasn't his, to get money for that company that wasn't going to benefit him.
I can very much see someone like Ivan going on there and voting with his own sats in order to promote his own writing and say, look, this is worth looking at.
This is worth reading.
And this is worth discussing.
And I know that it is.
And I'm willing to put my own sats on the line.
I'm willing to put my own earned income on the line in order to put that out there.
So brilliant idea.
I'm thinking about how to implement that
I do think you're right
I think there's some no-code ways to do that
using like Cursor
or using Windsurf or something like that
in order to code that
so thankfully I'm stuck around
about 100 high-performing developers
and perhaps I can come up with something
that will align with that
so I really appreciate that idea
that's a great suggestion
I wanted to talk about
because in the Bitcoin scene, I'm talking about the podcasting thing.
You tapped into this because it is, I think it is doable in your format.
Because if you apply this to inviting people, it's kind of not really doable
because you have to ask the person, then you have to negotiate
if they want to come on your podcast.
So it's not doable.
But you have autonomy on what you want to cover with the book.
So it's more doable.
And why I'm suggesting this because every single Bitcoin or podcast always talks about that if you get the content free, that means that you are the product.
And everybody starts with the audience being the client.
And at some point they start taking in sponsors.
And the thing that they criticize social media about, they are complete hypocrites.
hypocrites and they put on sponsors i kind of talked this into one of the essays about the
influencers that they bring in influencers that centralizes more and more that means they are
going to ask for exclusivity so you're cutting off the competition there is no competition if
you want exclusivity and the other thing is that if you will start paying to the best
influencers with high numbers, you're going to increase that barrier of entry of even sponsors
at all. So that's creating a centralization force more and more, and less and less podcasts will be
watched because of this. And at this point, I have a moral obligation for the 15 or whatever sponsors
Robert Breedlove has. He attracted me to watch his series way back when he didn't know sponsors,
And right now, I have moral obligations to skip all of his advertising because he's attacking my brain and I have to attack back or defend.
And how can you get out of this?
You have to get out of just thinking.
Your audience should be your client.
Don't turn them into your product.
And not only that, but what I talk in the essay is that if you actually make this what I'm suggesting there, the podcaster can now choose the sponsors that they want, not just the one that is willing to pay.
Because if you split the payment, now the barrier of entry of any product is zero amount.
You don't put up anything up front.
But if I buy something from your podcast or let's say you read the book and I buy that book because of the QR code and you have negotiated with the author of that book, you receive 15%.
The author receives 85%.
And now I don't need to do even charity of value for value in podcasting that I need to pay you something.
You gave me the valuable stuff and I have to morally decide if I want to compensate you for that.
But if I'm your client, I do a split payment.
The author receives it.
You receive a commission.
I feel good that I am contributing to the people that are involved in the value that's coming to me.
And not only that, but this is an idea what I said of your audience staying your client.
That's what I like about that idea.
Because if you go into the path of let's bring in sponsors, let's go chase the YouTube platform and optimize for this.
that simple thing of you talking abstraction of things about Bitcoin and you giving me the
experience of fiat is still misalignment and broken. And that's what I'm trying to emphasize
in the S's. Don't be a hypocrite. Give a Bitcoin experience. Use it in any shape or form that you
can currently right now you can't completely discharge from fiat infrastructure but what you
can do is actually build them side by side and let one out compete the other but if you don't
think of solutions designs on the other and you just comply to the existing structures we are never
going to actually change anything and we are just going to get captured a different way yeah that's
excellent yeah i do too man that's really inspiring about the whole paradigm shift looking at the
audience as a client instead of a product i mean i think i can speak for lucas safely and saying
that we would be doing this even when we kind of did doing this without an audience we love reading
these books and it's kind of there's this tim veris idea where if you put a failure condition
on something that's painful, it's going to cause you to do that thing. If you pledge to donate to
a charity that you hate, unless you complete, like lose 10 pounds, then you're more likely to lose 10
pounds. I want to read these books. And you know, the fact that Lucas and I set a date that we're
going to talk about them makes both of us responsible to read them in depth and then come
and talk about them. And then the podcast is a nice result of that. But, but down the line,
I love those ideas that you have and just the broadness of your thinking about what it means to sell something to somebody and how you can change that if you're willing to really embrace a Bitcoin mindset, really honest with ourselves that we want to live in a certain type of world.
We should embody those practices.
And that's, yeah, I really like that.
Thank you.
Yeah.
And that's what I want to see.
I don't want to talk about it.
I want people to build stuff.
and some people, some stuff will fail.
Does the market working properly?
Like not everything will work in the Bitcoin system.
But if you don't even try,
that means that you're making the fiat beast stronger.
You're prolonging it.
How are we going to get to the other side
if nobody builds anything and they just hold?
Like that's not the way we will become digital gold capture 2.0.
just like the physical goal. Like we will not get to the promised land if there is no infrastructure,
if nobody spends any thoughts about anything. I want to align with humanity. But in order to do
that, you need to build those solutions. And when those solutions are actually valuable,
they will be used. But if you don't build anything, all the fees will get to the banks,
all the fees will get to youtube all the platform all the centralization will continue further and
further and further until we get to the point that jason larry is emphasizing that we'll get to the
point of a war because the uh the disconnection between the halves and the have notes it's so wide
because uh even about the sports when you say the best person is so much better than the other one
But there is still a physical limitation how much better he can be.
He cannot be millions of times better.
In economical sense, there's billions of times somebody richer than somebody else.
That is not really in nature seen possible.
And I don't want to get to that war.
I want to get on the other system where we all cooperate humanity.
But people need to build stuff. We should get out of podcasts and a little bit of a shill. That's why I'm creating a Bitcoin documentary movie in Bulgaria that's showcasing the people that are building infrastructure and doing stuff on that parallel system.
We don't want to be on podcasts and just talking, listening and hodling in secret and waiting for that game theory to play out.
That will not happen if we don't build solutions.
That's beautifully said.
That is beautifully said.
The agency is lacking.
I think for a lot of people who feel like they've figured it out and now they just need to wait.
You can't skate to where the puck is going without doing some skating.
You actually have to put in the effort.
Ivan, you're a force of nature, and it's been an absolute pleasure.
I am going to have to jump out of here because I've got some proof of work to put in at the gym.
I've got to go make myself be a competitive force in this uncaring, agnostic to my desires to stay home and eat Krispy Kremes and lay in a beanbag my natural self.
But I thank you so much for your time.
And I look forward to doing this again sometime after I've accomplished something worth talking about.
You're doing it. You took my suggestion of experimenting with Wave Lake, which I love. But keep doing that. Just see what is practical to you, what it makes sense to you. I love that to see it.
and I'll share some sad see if you bring some value to me but just covering my
SS is something so I want not just talking about it if you do it in such a
way I would love to share some sads with you guys but right now if you implement
the ideas I would love people to do that like there needs to be a way that the
audience stays the client and don't become the product if nobody is actually
doing first of all nobody is actually thinking about it in the podcasting
scene they're trying but value for value is charity as I said I don't think
that's a sustainable model you need to figure out a way that's just an idea I
could be wrong but if you never apply it we are never going to find out because
this could be a hit idea and you outpace Rogan because in a sense of money of
purchasing power first of all because sad flow to you it doesn't matter how much is the audience
because somebody would like that idea so much that they'll hire you they'll give you uh 50 bitcoin
that 50 bitcoin will be so much more i don't know what kind of doors will open for you just because
you tap into something that's completely new and you're not going to continue chasing the
illusion on digits of subscribers and stuff like that but you're going to chase the real stuff and
And that real stuff will outpay because it's connected to, I wouldn't say 8 billion people now, but let's say 300 million people that have vested interest in Bitcoin going up.
Yeah, that's excellent.
Beautiful.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
Grant, you brought us into this virtual world.
How about you take us out?
I wanted to because I wanted to say, Lucas, if you complete that cover of the black keys, tighten up and put the wave lake out there, I'm going to be beaming you some sats too.
was happening some stats there so it is yeah it's on today's agenda right on but but ivan thank you
so much those are such excellent ideas and it's such a call to action for for us but for all
podcasters and for everybody that wants to do something with integrity within the bitcoin
ecosystem within whatever walk of life they find themselves in if they want to live in a world where
they're embodying the values that permissionless neutral money can bring to us so you know you
mentioned your documentary is there anything else that you wanted to put out there or close with for
anybody listening here uh yeah anybody that is interested in developing an app uh breeze is now
not developing apps anymore we are focused on uh infrastructure so we're creating software
development kids so anybody that creates an app and wants lighting payments in them you don't need
think about it we'll take that uh pressure off we'll just give you a code and when you want to
receive you click a payment and behind the scenes we are going to execute we are completely abolishing
the barrier of entry for somebody to receive and sense that in their own apps so reach out we're
very reachable and the best thing is that we are preserving the non-custodial nature we are not
going to turn your app into a bank so the regulars the regulators can chase you so yeah i would finish
with that thank you so much i like this great yeah all right we're out thank you guys so much see you
end. Okay.