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There are some great existing tools out there, but to really get a complete solution to safely

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hold Bitcoin, you got to combine a lot of them. By the time you actually put together a full

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solution to keep Bitcoin safe long term, like you've kind of designed your own wallet at some

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level by putting these things together and you sort of have to trade off amongst safety,

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usability and privacy. We believe that Bitcoin will be the native currency of the internet.

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We believe that its openness and its permissionlessness is what will make that true.

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That's what we're focused on, making Bitcoin everyday money.

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Max, good to meet you, man.

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I'm excited for this show.

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You guys over at Block have just been shipping relentlessly for the last few months.

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Was it just maybe three or four months ago you relaunched Proto?

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Then Square have just announced that they're allowing Bitcoin payments to all the merchants in the US.

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BitKey have had a big security upgrade, which we're going to talk a bit about today.

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A big privacy upgrade, I should say.

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But I want to get into this in detail.

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But before we do, this is the first time you've been on the show.

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The listeners might not know exactly who you are.

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Do you want to start with just a bit of an introduction?

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Who you are, what you do?

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Sure.

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Yeah, and thanks for having me.

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Excited to be on.

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So I'm Max, guys.

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I'm leading BitKey and helping to develop Proto.

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And also just generally excited about all the things we're shipping at Block.

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And can't wait to talk about more of them.

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Uh, and, uh, I've been at Block since 2013 and helped work on, you know, early Square

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hardware, uh, helped, you know, some of the development of Cash App when we launched Bitcoin

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buying and selling capability.

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And then, uh, in 2021 started leading and developing BitKey and now contributing to,

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to Proto as well.

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That's awesome.

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So you got into, you were working at Square way before Bitcoin was like an integral part

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of that business.

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When did Bitcoin actually become something that you were focusing on there?

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It's an interesting question because I think, honestly, from as long as I can remember at Block the whole time, we've had an interest in Bitcoin.

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I think the fact that we started off disrupting the payments industry with making it possible for small sellers to never miss a sale, that came from frustration with the existing system.

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that came from hidden fees, that came from crazy Byzantine processes that people had to go through

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to sign up for merchant accounts. And that came from a desire to help enable people who were

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basically being left out of the financial system. And that's really what Square was born out of.

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And so I think we've attracted people and talent across the company that has been interested in it

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for a long time. And we also have a history of making bets early on that we think can be

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disruptive long term. And, you know, sometimes we're early with those. And so we actually did

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have some very, very early Bitcoin experiments where we were probably a little early. And I

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think where we really, really took off is when we introduced buying and selling a Bitcoin and cash

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app that was, you know, timed incredibly well with people's interest and also part of creating

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that interest. And so I think it helped take, put Bitcoin in front of a lot of people in 2018.

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and inside square or inside block maybe who is is it jack driving all the bitcoin stuff or have

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you got a load of people internally that are also sort of very keen to push bitcoin as far as possible

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jack's been a visionary for this for sure um i think he got lots and lots more people interested

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in bitcoin who maybe hadn't heard of it originally and you know once they discovered it started to

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understand um you know how it can help uh and so i think there's been a massive enablement from jack

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at the company to sort of point the way.

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And then there's a ton of folks that have helped build all the things we're going to

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talk about.

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And I think, you know, some of those folks started off as Bitcoiners who came here specifically

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to build those features.

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And some of those were folks who are incredible electrical engineers, incredible software

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developers and incredible marketing folks that started to learn more and more about,

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you know, what we could do with Bitcoin and, you know, now have sort of joined the ranks,

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so to speak.

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And just in the last week or so, you've announced that all Square terminals in the US at the moment can now accept Bitcoin as payment.

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This is really cool because everything previously has been Bitcoiners going into their local butcher or wherever and just nagging the owner to accept Bitcoin.

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And then when they finally do, they're the only person paying in Bitcoin.

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So they forget how to do it in between sales.

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It's always been a very clunky experience.

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and you guys have just basically turned this on

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on their normal payment terminal,

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making it really easy.

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Like, do you want to explain what you've done there?

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Yeah, this is huge.

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I'm really excited about this

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and just a huge hat tip to Miles Suter

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and the whole team who's driven this

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and I love seeing it go live.

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So we launched acceptance on Square

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and so what that means is that Square merchants

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can accept Bitcoin.

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Now they can actually receive it as Bitcoin

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or they can receive it as dollars

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and I'll talk in a minute about why that's important.

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And, you know, we've also launched the ability in Cash App when paying with Bitcoin to fulfill that either by debiting your dollars balance or debiting your Bitcoin balance.

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And so what this means is when transactions happen at a Square Merchant and with Cash App on the other side, basically any combination of sending dollars and receiving Bitcoin, sending Bitcoin, receiving dollars, all of those combinations can happen.

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and this is really interesting because it means that square merchants can accept bitcoin but if

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it doesn't make sense for them or for their business to receive in bitcoin right now they

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don't have to they can still accept make the sale and receive in dollars and on the cash app side

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you know if i'm paying at a merchant and i want to you know avoid a taxable event given the

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current status of of you know where i live in the laws i can debit my dollar balance and one one of

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that's really interesting about this is that you know in the background what we're really targeting

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here is three percent fees that everybody has accepted we need to pay on every transaction

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and to small businesses three percent is a lot more than it sounds like so you might you know

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see a credit card fee be annoyed by it um you know but for most transactions might not matter

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that much but when you look at the books for small businesses and the actual profit they're making

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these are businesses that they're not they have thin margins like they're they're really and a lot

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lot of, especially right now, a lot of small businesses are actually really struggling.

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And so the fees that they don't have to pay because of transactions like this, that can

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be really, really meaningful.

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And so I think this is really exciting.

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I think it's a really big deal for small businesses.

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And, you know, you mentioned Bitcoiners nagging folks to take payment.

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We also added the Bitcoin map in Cash App, which makes that even more possible.

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And we're actually, if you follow Miles on Twitter, you can see we're paying bounties

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for folks who, you know, help Square sellers get started with this.

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So definitely check it out if you haven't already in Cash App.

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If you go to the Bitcoin tab, you can see a map in the spend Bitcoin option.

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You can see a map of, you know, local Square merchants that are accepting Bitcoin

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and local merchants that are accepting Bitcoin, even if they're not using Square.

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Do you know how many people are actually accepting Bitcoin as of sort of right now?

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You know, I'm probably not the right person to ask about the stats.

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So I don't have anything to share right now.

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But I think one thing that I've found really inspiring is that there are an incredible number of videos of folks, you know, going around to businesses that are, you know, on the map and patronizing them and also, you know, and supporting their businesses.

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And also folks who are, you know, have shared some videos of convincing merchants to turn it on because it's opt in for right now.

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And I think it's really neat to see.

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Yeah, it's really cool.

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I've seen Parker Lewis has been posting a load of videos around Austin, going to different places, buying with Bitcoin.

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and so when on the like merchant side of that um how do they actually accept it is it does it work

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in the exact same way it would for just a fiat payment or do they have to do something else

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like do they have to actually select bitcoin payment you have to tell them you're paying in

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bitcoin uh today you do need to tell them you're paying in bitcoin uh and they need to opt into

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doing that um we're starting small uh but you should expect to see that expand yeah because if

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that got to the point where there was no noticeable difference in how like the ux of that flow worked

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and you could just pay in Bitcoin. The merchant doesn't even need to know you're paying in Bitcoin.

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That would be huge. With this, though, obviously one of the challenges is the merchants understanding

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why they would want to accept Bitcoin. Is there a kind of an educational thing that goes along

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with this? Are you sending out like care packages of Bitcoin information to these people?

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There's actually a page that I should point folks to. It's BitcoinMerchantCommunity.org

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that talks about it. And, you know, credit with Steve Lee, who leads Spiral here, I think is a

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great champion of highlighting when we need to speak in terms that aren't purely drawn from the

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Bitcoin community. So, you know, showing up in a merchant and talking only about Bitcoin without

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the why or kind of putting things in the terms that make sense to them in their business today,

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that can be a miss. And it's much stronger if we can explain why this is important and where this

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is going to take us. And really the central theme here is fees going to third parties that we rely

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on for most transactions. And when this is an open network and you can pay, not even just with

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Cash App, you can pay with any Bitcoin wallet at Square Terminals, like there aren't 3% fees.

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And, you know, this is really about that. And the openness of the network, I think,

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is going to support that and make this very, I think, make it really widespread long term.

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and I think you know the path we're on where we're headed is all the signs we've seen in the past

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they're like there's a three percent surcharge for for credit cards I think this is going to

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turn into you know there's a three percent discount for paying bitcoin what if you could

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$100 in Bitcoin when you buy. That's river.com forward slash WBD. I mean, I've obviously, I know

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you're focused on the BitKey stuff. I've sprung this on you because this is news since we sort of

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set this show up and I really want to talk about it. It's something I'm very excited about.

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so last question on the square stuff

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obviously this is US only at the moment

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I don't live in the US although I spend a lot of time there

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and when I do I'll be searching out these places

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but

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is this going to expand globally or

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is it at the moment just focused on the US

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it's a good question

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Bitcoin's an open global permissionless network

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we started with the US

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we have the strongest network there

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and you know

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a large base of merchants

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large base of cash app users

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so we're starting there

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but you should expect to see I have intentions beyond that over time.

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It's very exciting.

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I think it's one of the coolest things we've seen in a long time

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because this has always just been a mess,

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trying to get merchants to accept Bitcoin, trying to do the education.

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It's just like Bitcoin is going around to their local shops and doing it.

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Having this from, I don't know how many people use Square,

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but an insane number of businesses, particularly small businesses,

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are using Square.

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Having that just enabled on everyone's machine, that's very cool.

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But we should talk a little bit about Bitkey

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because you guys have had a huge privacy upgrade there.

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Before we get into the details of that,

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do you want to just explain like where BitKey came from

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and like what it is trying to,

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you know, where it's trying to fit

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in the hardware wallet market?

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Yeah, so we started BitKey,

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we wanted to make it safe and easy

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for people to truly own their Bitcoin.

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And you could probably guess based on,

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you know, me talking about an open network earlier

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that what's driving that is that,

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you know, the strength of Bitcoin

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is that it's permissionless.

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Anyone can use it.

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And part of what's behind that is the decentralization of the network and the fact that, you know, we don't have centralized entities controlling it.

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And so, you know, if we ultimately have coins stored on, you know, a couple of exchanges worldwide, then that's not particularly permissionless in the end.

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And so we want to make it easy for people to safely own their coins and not to sit there with them on an exchange subject to hacks and mismanagement like we seen with exchange collapses and also just in charge of their Bitcoin instead of listening to somebody else about you know when they can move their money who they can send it to and how much they can send And so that why we built BitKey And when we started this off

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one of our observations was that, you know, there are some great existing tools out there,

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but to really get a complete solution to safely hold Bitcoin, you got to combine a lot of them.

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quite a few of them are hard to use for most folks and like really capable tools but things that are

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just by the time you actually put together a full solution to keep bitcoin safe long term

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like you've kind of designed your own wallet at some level by putting these things together and

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you know for some people that's an awesome exercise uh it is for me i that's that's literally what i

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do uh you know every day um but not everybody is you know wants to take on that odyssey and so our

219
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intent with BitKey was to make it easy for folks. And historically, what that's meant is, you know,

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you sort of have to trade off amongst safety, usability, and privacy. And so, you know, in sort

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of the basic case, or the most vanilla case, somebody might use a hardware wallet, single

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signature, they have one key, they have a seed phrase backup. And you've probably heard my

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opinions many times on this, but that often leads to a situation that isn't as safe as people think

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it is. You know, things like storing a seed phrase improperly and having someone see it and be able

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to steal your funds, or in some cases, accidentally being tricked into, you know, revealing part of

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the seed phrase and getting funds stolen or having the seed phrase back up in the hardware wallet in

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the same place and suffering a house fire and being out, you know, completely out of luck.

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These sorts of things just for long term safe storage of Bitcoin, like they're a problem.

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And so, you know, another alternative is people gluing these things together,

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using something, doing a sort of DIY multi-sig,

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it turns out you can build something

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that's really safe and really private.

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It's just really hard.

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And it's really hard to maintain it

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and keep it in a safe state over time.

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And so what people have often gone to

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is something we'll refer to

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as collaborative custody services.

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And that's where you ask a third party

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to help keep your Bitcoin safe,

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not by handing it over like a custodian

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where they have unilateral control

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and can move it without you,

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but where they're holding on to maybe one key

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or a backup or some combination of those where they can help you when you start to lose things.

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But the default state is you can unilaterally exit at any time. So to me, that's part of the

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definition of self-custody, that you can unilaterally move your funds at any time. And

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collaborative custodians have historically been able to help you more safely store Bitcoin while

249
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retaining control. And the problem is exactly what you said, which is the trade-off in that case is

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privacy. When you give that third key, for example, in Bickey's case prior to this upgrade,

251
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to a custodian, you know, we had what's called a wallet descriptor, which meant that we could see,

252
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you know, your balance and we could see your transactions on the blockchain.

253
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Like we could pick out on the blockchain, which activity is associated with that wallet.

254
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And that's true of every other collaborative custody service out there.

255
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And this is highly unfortunate because as you and I both know, and I think as most of the Bitcoin

256
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community knows and values, like we don't want that. We don't want people to know, you know,

257
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which coins are ours. We don't want people to know how much we have. There's a fundamental need

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for privacy that we want to be able to fulfill. And we found ourselves torn between how do we get

259
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that if we have to trade off safety? And so the really interesting thing about this upgrade is

260
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we've figured out how to do both. So the big key product didn't change at all with this upgrade.

261
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It's the same great recovery features, the same safety that comes from that, the same ease of use.

262
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and suddenly we can't see your balance and we're not sitting there with a descriptor where we can

263
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pick out which transactions are yours um so it's really really exciting upgrade because it kind of

264
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takes away one of those fundamental trade-offs that comes with you know comes between safety

265
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and privacy yeah i think it's really cool and and like any of these um security solutions like you

266
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say is always trade-offs like you can go and use you know five cold cards to a three of c three of

267
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five multi-sig and like that's great and it's incredibly secure as long as you know how to deal

268
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with your backups and like i think the the risk kind of changes from going from single sig to

269
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multi-sig where it's like with a single sig it's like how well have you it's always how well have

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you secured your backup but like what is your risk profile of that um and like the probably the

271
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highest probability of you actually losing funds isn't going to be someone stealing it it's going

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to be you messing up in the process and and actually just locking yourself out um and so

273
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bitkey obviously has taken that away and then the trade-offs there have always been like what if

274
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like you're basically giving up the privacy bitkey can see every transaction that you make on that

275
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but then this bip has just come out written by was it jesse posner and jervis tan is that how you

276
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say it yeah um so maybe it's worth explaining what this bip is um and how can can you explain how it

277
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works yeah so what this bit so so first of all um really exciting and really proud of the team that

278
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we're working on things like this and and also sharing it with the community so that it doesn't

279
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have to be just biki that implements this it can be others as well and we can get you know more

280
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private collaborative custody throughout all of bitcoin and and and not just with you know one team

281
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that adopts it um first and so uh super excited about this and basically what the bit does is it

282
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so it has a pretty technical sounding name chain code delegation uh what's underneath the hood there

283
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is that every UTXO,

284
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every unspent transaction output on the blockchain

285
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is locked with a script,

286
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that script,

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and essentially locked with an individual key.

288
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And to derive that key,

289
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there are a couple of inputs.

290
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One is a seed,

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which is often represented as a seed phrase.

292
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And another is something called the chain code.

293
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And what the bit proposes

294
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is keeping the chain code private

295
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from what's called a collaborator

296
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in the in the BIP so for example a collaborative custody service uh you know something you might

297
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be familiar with um you know from some of the services that were out there before BitKey or

298
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BitKey for example holding the third key for you and by keeping the chain code private from that

299
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third party um the BIP basically specifies how to do co-signing so you have a collaborator because

300
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sometimes you need them to sign maybe you lost stuff and you need to do a recovery transaction or

301
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for example, BitKey has, you know, a mobile pay feature, sorry, a hardwareless transactions feature

302
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where, you know, you can configure a limit and spend, you know, underneath that limit without

303
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using the hardware. There are reasons why you might want to do either of those things, especially

304
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recovery and lean on a collaborative custodian to do that. And the BIP basically makes it possible

305
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to share only the information necessary to sign an individual transaction when there's a need for

306
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recovery. It also specifies a way to do that completely blindly, which is actually like not

307
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what we've implemented up front. But most of the BIP, what it provides for is you can send up

308
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partial information effectively about the chain code so that the collaborator can sign one recovery

309
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transaction. Underneath the head, the BIP is full of some cryptographic equations, which I will try

310
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not to recite here. And also I'm probably not the right person on the team to go into that.

311
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Don't worry, it would go over my head anyway.

312
00:21:30,839 --> 00:21:45,799
Yeah, really interesting though. And basically by sending up that partial information, we can still get the greatness of recovery transactions when we need them, but not have to have the collaborative custodian sitting there with a wallet descriptor that reveals everything.

313
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so just for like the actual users like i want to go through what this actually means for them

314
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because at the moment like the way bitkey works is you have your keystone you have a key on your

315
00:21:57,519 --> 00:22:03,179
phone which is like encrypted and then um block hold one of the keys on on your servers so if you

316
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want to send a transaction now you use your encrypted key on your phone and use this um

317
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unless you lose this or unless you can't like actually use this key and then you have to

318
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contact Block and they sign a transaction. So with this update, what this will mean is that

319
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every time that you sign a transaction with your actual hardware and with your phone,

320
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Block can't see what's going on. But if you end up having to rely on the key on Block servers,

321
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then you can see what's happening. Is that correct? Yeah. So there are basically two paths

322
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in the BIP and one of them requires implementing something called Schnorr signatures. We haven't

323
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done that yet. When anyone who adopts that portion of the BIP, it means that even at signing time,

324
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there's no information revealed. Short of doing that, when the collaborative custodian signs a

325
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transaction, they see the UTXOs involved in that transaction. If that's a recovery transaction,

326
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that might be all of your UTXOs. And what we do is when that happens for BitKey, we don't log

327
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anything. We don't store anything about the UTXOs that we saw. And we're working on a feature that

328
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we call server verifiability that will allow people outside of BitKey to see that that's true.

329
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We use something called AWS Nitro or something called Nitro Enclaves on AWS, which is basically

330
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a secure computing environment that has what's called an attestation capability. It's a way for

331
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that environment to basically provide a cryptographic attestation of what code it's running

332
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that can be checked from outside of the system.

333
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:38,039
And this is not like, that's not a block thing.

334
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That's like an AWS-wide thing.

335
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And we're working on a feature

336
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that basically will allow people to verify

337
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that this is true.

338
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And even in the interim,

339
00:23:46,159 --> 00:23:47,019
I'm really excited about this

340
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because we're truly blind to balances and transactions.

341
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We don't save this stuff, and so we don't know.

342
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So just as an example,

343
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I've been really excited by,

344
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since we have been able to see,

345
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I'm aware that there's a lot of money

346
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that has been moved on to BitKey and like a ton of momentum around that and folks getting a ton

347
00:24:04,159 --> 00:24:08,819
of value out of storing it. And then I'm simultaneously sad because, you know, now that

348
00:24:08,819 --> 00:24:15,139
we have folks migrating to our newest privacy upgrade, like, I don't know what's on it anymore.

349
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And I think that's awesome. And, you know, I think the whole team actually has just been really

350
00:24:20,039 --> 00:24:24,459
excited about this because it's been one of the things that for us was like a pretty sharp trade

351
00:24:24,459 --> 00:24:29,919
off as we designed BitKey up front and finally able to remove it. Yeah. And I also just want to

352
00:24:29,919 --> 00:24:35,419
reiterate that this isn't like a bitkey specific thing if you use like a casa or an unchained that

353
00:24:35,419 --> 00:24:40,139
you have the same problem in any of these collaborative custody models so the thing that

354
00:24:40,139 --> 00:24:44,799
you guys have focused on really heavily from the very start is making this as easy as possible

355
00:24:44,799 --> 00:24:50,599
making the ux as clean as possible and as as um you know user-friendly so does this remove any of

356
00:24:50,599 --> 00:24:55,979
that ux or is it exactly the same it doesn't remove anything in fact actually this feature is

357
00:24:55,979 --> 00:25:02,399
pretty quiet relative to its power meaning like when you go through the upgrade flow like it's

358
00:25:02,399 --> 00:25:08,159
pretty simple it's a screen explaining what's going on and doing a wallet sweep uh to a you

359
00:25:08,159 --> 00:25:12,999
know new set of keys and you know underneath the hood really you're gaining something huge

360
00:25:12,999 --> 00:25:19,399
and you know new new customers who set up the key now they just get it by default uh and they're not

361
00:25:19,399 --> 00:25:23,219
going to have any different experience they're going to have the same five minute setup they're

362
00:25:23,219 --> 00:25:27,979
going to have the same immediate safety after that point they're going to have the same you know easy

363
00:25:27,979 --> 00:25:32,079
recovery contact setup to protect them against losing you know both their hardware device and

364
00:25:32,079 --> 00:25:36,219
their phone they're going to have the same easy setup for inheritance so they can make sure that

365
00:25:36,219 --> 00:25:41,279
their bitcoin gets passed on to their loved ones all of that's still there oh that's awesome so

366
00:25:41,279 --> 00:25:44,519
that was going to be my next question because i was playing around with this over the last few days

367
00:25:44,519 --> 00:25:50,079
um and for me because it was already set up there's like a private option um and you just like

368
00:25:50,079 --> 00:25:54,599
click on that move funds to a new multi-sig and that's basically all you need to do but for anyone

369
00:25:54,599 --> 00:26:01,419
new setting up a bitkey now it's is that that's just a default that's a default oh that's awesome

370
00:26:01,419 --> 00:26:06,899
that's very cool and and like when it comes to the the trade-offs with something like bitkey or

371
00:26:06,899 --> 00:26:12,019
really any collaborative custody is there anything else that you think is a sort of barrier that you

372
00:26:12,019 --> 00:26:21,559
need to improve on? I think a couple of things. So one is, I think, even though we've made big

373
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strides on privacy, there's still more to come. So for example, with every hardware device,

374
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you have to get a hold of the hardware. You have to actually get it shipped to you somehow,

375
00:26:31,959 --> 00:26:37,939
or you need to go get it in a retail store. And I think historically, that's been a huge

376
00:26:37,939 --> 00:26:45,079
vulnerability for folks uh there are folks who you know lost their addresses in the ledger hack

377
00:26:45,079 --> 00:26:52,219
many years ago that i know that have moved because of it i mean i've been very quiet on this because

378
00:26:52,219 --> 00:26:57,999
like i was i was one of these people um i i don't mind saying it now because all the details who

379
00:26:57,999 --> 00:27:03,319
were released are now not my details um apart from my name um but like it was a huge thing and

380
00:27:03,319 --> 00:27:07,219
And for a long time, like I've actually moved house relatively quickly after that, unrelated.

381
00:27:08,079 --> 00:27:09,639
But I had to like change my phone number.

382
00:27:09,679 --> 00:27:11,499
The amount of phishing scams I was getting was insane.

383
00:27:11,639 --> 00:27:13,039
Like that's a real problem.

384
00:27:13,039 --> 00:27:20,259
And there's people like CoinKite who will wipe your data from their servers after a certain amount of time.

385
00:27:20,319 --> 00:27:22,179
But like what can you do to fix that problem?

386
00:27:23,479 --> 00:27:24,839
Yeah, that's one of the things.

387
00:27:24,899 --> 00:27:28,519
And we're actually working on a similar approach for BitKey.

388
00:27:28,519 --> 00:27:36,359
another is retail store pickup can be can be helpful yeah we're actually working on

389
00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:42,699
implementing pickup at retail stores don't think like big box retail stores are selling but more

390
00:27:42,699 --> 00:27:47,959
like pickup points we think that's an important thing to roll out so that folks have more options

391
00:27:47,959 --> 00:27:52,139
for actually getting a hold of a device without having to put a physical address that they're

392
00:27:52,139 --> 00:27:57,099
you know either even if it's work that they're at physically a lot and then we also introduce

393
00:27:57,099 --> 00:28:02,999
the ability to purchase Bickey with Bitcoin. One of the other aspects, there's a lot of aspects to

394
00:28:02,999 --> 00:28:05,819
this, but one of the other aspects is that, you know, when you pay with something that's not

395
00:28:05,819 --> 00:28:11,119
Bitcoin, you need to provide a billing address. And very often that's pretty problematic for folks.

396
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:16,499
And so really trying to go systematically through where this type of information ends up in,

397
00:28:16,699 --> 00:28:21,959
you know, both our systems and potentially others. And I think, you know, that's something I'd love

398
00:28:21,959 --> 00:28:25,399
to see more focus on industry-wide because I think it's a real problem.

399
00:28:25,399 --> 00:28:28,279
I mean the idea of being able to pick this up

400
00:28:28,279 --> 00:28:39,018
I can see all this coming together now The idea of being able to pick this up at a retail store where you can pay with e through Square Terminal is kind of the perfect solution to this

401
00:28:39,618 --> 00:28:40,059
It's a good idea.

402
00:28:41,138 --> 00:28:45,858
We need to push that forward. The other thing that I really wanted to kind of hit on is

403
00:28:45,858 --> 00:28:52,559
this is a huge privacy improvement for the individual using a BitKey. But this isn't

404
00:28:52,559 --> 00:28:56,638
like a private Bitcoin. This doesn't give you private Bitcoin transactions. I want to make sure

405
00:28:56,638 --> 00:29:01,278
that that's not lost in kind of the nuance of this. Like people who are using Bitcoin,

406
00:29:01,278 --> 00:29:05,518
like your interaction is blocked from like block can no longer see that, but everyone else can see

407
00:29:05,518 --> 00:29:08,478
it on the network and block can still see transactions on the network. They just don't

408
00:29:08,478 --> 00:29:12,318
know they're associated with you. It's probably worth like just reiterating that point.

409
00:29:13,598 --> 00:29:17,998
Yeah, I think it's a really important one. On-chain privacy is a huge challenge.

410
00:29:19,039 --> 00:29:25,678
And I think, you know, this is one of those situations where things like lightning can help.

411
00:29:25,678 --> 00:29:31,178
uh i think most people don't realize that you know if they pay somebody on l1 they're potentially

412
00:29:31,178 --> 00:29:37,438
revealing a lot to that person about their holdings uh and that's something that like there

413
00:29:37,438 --> 00:29:42,518
isn't really a direct analog prior to bitcoin for and i think it's it's like a very bitcoin

414
00:29:42,518 --> 00:29:45,758
specific thing it's not big key specific it's not really specific to any wallet vendor or anything

415
00:29:45,758 --> 00:29:51,698
like that but it is a difference in bitcoin relative to what people are used to like you know

416
00:29:51,698 --> 00:29:57,998
it's basically comes down to you know if i pay for something you know if i pay for a coffee with

417
00:29:57,998 --> 00:30:03,098
a 20 bill they know i had at least 20 but they don't know all the other 20 bills that i've spent

418
00:30:03,098 --> 00:30:07,618
and what i might who i might have given them to or you know uh how much it adds up to or anything

419
00:30:07,618 --> 00:30:11,498
like that and i think um that still flies under the radar for a lot of folks and it's something

420
00:30:11,498 --> 00:30:17,698
that is um payments uh and and sort of bitcoin is everyday money becomes um and as we make it

421
00:30:17,698 --> 00:30:21,638
more of a thing, I think we're going to be confronting more directly.

422
00:30:22,358 --> 00:30:26,738
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464
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So BitKey is obviously relatively new in the Bitcoin hardware space.

465
00:33:22,718 --> 00:33:24,998
What is like the future of BitKey?

466
00:33:25,198 --> 00:33:27,438
Is there the stuff you're working on that you're sort of really excited about?

467
00:33:27,539 --> 00:33:29,438
Like what will this look like in a few years time?

468
00:33:30,258 --> 00:33:30,398
Yeah.

469
00:33:30,398 --> 00:33:35,438
So a few years time, I probably can't go into too much detail about.

470
00:33:36,318 --> 00:33:40,478
I will say, you know, we have heard a ton of different requests from our customers.

471
00:33:40,938 --> 00:33:43,539
We have a lot of folks using BitKey really excited about it.

472
00:33:43,778 --> 00:33:52,518
And I think getting a lot of value out of safe storage on BitKey and also realizing like we've

473
00:33:52,518 --> 00:33:57,938
made it so simple that like there's actually quite a few feature requests that people realize

474
00:33:57,938 --> 00:34:00,158
like, hey, I would be awesome if BitKey also did this.

475
00:34:00,158 --> 00:34:07,118
And so we've gotten requests for things like, you know, some on-chain privacy tools like we were just talking about.

476
00:34:07,258 --> 00:34:08,798
So things like CoinControl.

477
00:34:09,499 --> 00:34:12,698
We've got requests for things like multiple accounts.

478
00:34:13,018 --> 00:34:17,118
So maybe being able to, you know, help folks.

479
00:34:17,479 --> 00:34:27,979
And not just like personal multiple accounts, not just like, oh, I want to have an account that's my savings, an account that's like something I'm spending from, but also multiple accounts to help friends and family with Bitcoin.

480
00:34:27,979 --> 00:34:39,298
And I think this is something that's really special about BitKey because what we've seen, there are a lot of folks who buy BitKey for friends and family and help them take control of their Bitcoin.

481
00:34:40,098 --> 00:34:47,578
And then one of the follow-on requests we'll hear is like, well, I didn't have to do anything because they did the five-minute setup and it worked.

482
00:34:47,578 --> 00:34:53,999
But I'd also love to be able to like help make sure over time that they're maintaining it in a good state and this type of stuff.

483
00:34:54,558 --> 00:34:58,419
And, you know, to maybe set it up for kids, for example.

484
00:34:59,358 --> 00:35:12,038
You know, lots of folks, lots of our customers, you know, especially with like adult kids who maybe haven't, you know, are hearing about Bitcoin from, you know, their their crazy parent or whatever are, you know, getting started for the first time.

485
00:35:12,098 --> 00:35:14,479
And folks want to kind of help continue that journey for them.

486
00:35:14,479 --> 00:35:22,098
and then really you know our main focus areas are security usability and privacy and so

487
00:35:22,098 --> 00:35:25,638
we've also got a lot of stuff planned on the security and privacy fronts

488
00:35:25,638 --> 00:35:30,698
we we talked a little bit about this earlier in the year in one of our blog posts but

489
00:35:30,698 --> 00:35:37,118
on the privacy front you know we're planning some data retention and deletion changes we're planning

490
00:35:37,118 --> 00:35:44,298
some pickup points you know now that we've shipped the ability to purchase bitcoin and on

491
00:35:44,298 --> 00:35:49,479
the security front we have a couple things planned um around transaction verification uh and um we'll

492
00:35:49,479 --> 00:35:54,318
have more to say about that sometime soon yeah i mean from my perspective and i'm maybe not the

493
00:35:54,318 --> 00:35:58,178
average like bit key user but like things like coin control would be great even if that was hidden

494
00:35:58,178 --> 00:36:01,318
away in advanced settings and you had to turn it on i would love to have something like that

495
00:36:01,318 --> 00:36:06,518
and then on the sort of sub accounts like i've got a young daughter who has been stacking sat

496
00:36:06,518 --> 00:36:10,038
since the day she was born and like being able to have sub accounts that you could kind of put

497
00:36:10,038 --> 00:36:15,358
that Bitcoin away and would also be a really cool feature. But I guess the challenge for you guys is

498
00:36:15,358 --> 00:36:22,578
always that trading off UX with features. Like, will the physical device remain the same?

499
00:36:23,858 --> 00:36:29,878
We're always looking at how we can improve. Some of that's small stuff. And, you know,

500
00:36:30,038 --> 00:36:33,758
some of that is we've definitely heard questions from customers about alternative

501
00:36:33,758 --> 00:36:39,919
hardwares and have some ideas there as well. Nice cagey answer. That means

502
00:36:39,919 --> 00:36:48,078
something could be coming. We will see. And then the last one on this really is one of the,

503
00:36:48,138 --> 00:36:53,158
I guess, criticisms put at BitKey is the fact that you have to use the BitKey app.

504
00:36:53,419 --> 00:36:57,138
Is there any plan to kind of open this up and allow you to use the BitKey with other

505
00:36:57,138 --> 00:36:58,999
software wallet is.

506
00:37:00,398 --> 00:37:01,358
Yeah, it's a good call.

507
00:37:02,178 --> 00:37:03,218
So it's true.

508
00:37:03,338 --> 00:37:05,158
Today, the way this works is

509
00:37:05,158 --> 00:37:07,338
you need to use the BitKey app with the hardware

510
00:37:07,338 --> 00:37:09,459
if you want to get all of the great features of BitKey.

511
00:37:10,198 --> 00:37:11,499
There's actually nothing inherently

512
00:37:11,499 --> 00:37:13,558
causing that.

513
00:37:13,959 --> 00:37:15,258
Like, BitKey is

514
00:37:15,258 --> 00:37:17,338
open source. We've published all of the

515
00:37:17,338 --> 00:37:19,258
code on GitHub under an

516
00:37:19,258 --> 00:37:21,298
MIT license. People can use it for whatever they

517
00:37:21,298 --> 00:37:23,378
want. And that includes the

518
00:37:23,378 --> 00:37:25,358
firmware and the API and how to talk to the hardware.

519
00:37:25,358 --> 00:37:31,718
uh there are some things i should call out like the key is an nfc device and you know that's really

520
00:37:31,718 --> 00:37:37,858
easy to use from your modern smartphone if you use that from a desktop computer you need a dongle to

521
00:37:37,858 --> 00:37:45,138
interact over nfc uh but you know there's nothing inherently stopping you know anybody who wants to

522
00:37:45,138 --> 00:37:48,358
interact with the big key hardware right now from writing code to do that in another product

523
00:37:48,358 --> 00:37:55,598
it hasn't been a focus for us up to this point largely because ease of use the sort of lowest

524
00:37:55,598 --> 00:38:01,578
hanging fruit like most highest leverage work for us was to build something integrated that

525
00:38:01,578 --> 00:38:08,098
you know we can make sure it's that five minute setup we can make sure that things work seamlessly

526
00:38:08,098 --> 00:38:13,218
there's a lot we've done in the past you know with hardware and software and services all tied

527
00:38:13,218 --> 00:38:17,758
together and you know all the other parts of block and all the team's careers before that

528
00:38:17,758 --> 00:38:21,718
and everything that like we know how to do that really well. And so we put all of our energy

529
00:38:21,718 --> 00:38:27,019
behind that. But, you know, I think we are listening to community feedback and we've heard

530
00:38:27,019 --> 00:38:31,818
requests for, you know, potentially using Bickey hardware with other software or using, you know,

531
00:38:32,198 --> 00:38:37,538
other hardware with Bickey's, you know, awesome recovery tools. And, you know, it's something

532
00:38:37,538 --> 00:38:41,558
we're thinking about. It's not like there's something we're launching tomorrow and I'm not

533
00:38:41,558 --> 00:38:45,939
saying it, but it's definitely feedback that we're paying attention to and I think might become part

534
00:38:45,939 --> 00:38:51,678
of our roadmap. With that feedback, though, is there almost a part of this which Bitcoin needs

535
00:38:51,678 --> 00:38:56,798
to have a solution for everyone? Like the hardcore Bitcoiners that want to use like a, they want to

536
00:38:56,798 --> 00:39:00,638
set up their own multi-sig and use Sparrow or Wasabi or whatever, like there's tools out there

537
00:39:00,638 --> 00:39:04,459
that they can go and do that with. Is part of this just a case that like Bitcoin might not be for

538
00:39:04,459 --> 00:39:11,658
those people? It's serving a different audience. Certainly. I mean, I think everybody's threat

539
00:39:11,658 --> 00:39:18,519
model is different everybody's you know tolerance for how much time they're going to spend setting

540
00:39:18,519 --> 00:39:23,358
up and maintaining something is different everyone's technical capability is different

541
00:39:23,358 --> 00:39:28,878
and the kinds of risks that they're subject to in life is different and i think that there are

542
00:39:28,878 --> 00:39:35,278
great tools out there for folks who want to spend a really long time figuring out you know a diy

543
00:39:35,278 --> 00:39:38,798
multi-sig setup like there's great hardware out there there's really flexible software

544
00:39:38,798 --> 00:39:45,598
I've used it. Everybody on our team has used it at various points. And I think for some customers,

545
00:39:45,718 --> 00:39:48,898
like that's the right thing and that's what they're going to use and that's it. And

546
00:39:48,898 --> 00:39:54,638
there certainly is a subset of those folks that, you know, probably never will use BitKey and that's

547
00:39:54,638 --> 00:40:02,499
okay. But I'd also call out that I think there are a lot of Bitcoiners who maybe in theory,

548
00:40:02,499 --> 00:40:07,858
they want to do those things. Maybe they've tried, maybe they did at one point, but you know,

549
00:40:07,858 --> 00:40:12,678
that three or five multi-sig that they set up, like, well, one of the keys is actually lost.

550
00:40:12,678 --> 00:40:17,979
And now it's like less safe state than they set it up in the first place. And, you know,

551
00:40:17,999 --> 00:40:22,318
or they replaced something and didn't rotate other keys and, you know, or had a compromise

552
00:40:22,318 --> 00:40:26,378
of something and didn't rotate other keys. And I think there's a bunch of situations like that,

553
00:40:26,439 --> 00:40:31,499
that more people than we would expect will benefit, you know, or than you might expect

554
00:40:31,499 --> 00:40:37,459
on paper will benefit from what BitKey brings. So I do want to see, I do want to bring more people

555
00:40:37,459 --> 00:40:42,818
uh even even those who are maybe used to some of the most sophisticated tools out there into the

556
00:40:42,818 --> 00:40:48,238
the big key community um but also definitely not forcing anyone and um you know if we can

557
00:40:48,238 --> 00:40:53,698
enable even more people to use big key by you know allowing more interoperability or enabling

558
00:40:53,698 --> 00:40:59,218
more interoperability rather um i think uh i think you'll see us do that at some point yeah i think

559
00:40:59,218 --> 00:41:04,919
that this is my like unpopular opinion which is that like you have to be really honest about what

560
00:41:04,919 --> 00:41:10,538
your actual threat model is here and like it's great having this incredibly robust setup where

561
00:41:10,538 --> 00:41:16,178
you know you're you're kind of removing yourself from any you know nation state attack type threat

562
00:41:16,178 --> 00:41:20,778
against yourself but like if that's never a realistic threat then the the big risk in any

563
00:41:20,778 --> 00:41:26,558
of these setups is you and like taking out as much of that from the equation as possible is probably

564
00:41:26,558 --> 00:41:33,278
a good thing for more bitcoiners um but i also understand like wanting to use the bitcoin tools

565
00:41:33,278 --> 00:41:37,578
wanting to do things in like the cypherpunk uh sovereign individual type way but i think people

566
00:41:37,578 --> 00:41:44,258
just need to be really honest about the actual threat vector that they're facing yeah um all

567
00:41:44,258 --> 00:41:48,479
right i want to move on to the proto stuff is there anything else on the bitkey side that you

568
00:41:48,479 --> 00:41:57,278
want to make sure we hit um i'd love to hear feedback so we have a lot of folks who've who've

569
00:41:57,278 --> 00:42:01,939
set up uh so i guess this is really for for everybody listening if you've set up a key

570
00:42:01,939 --> 00:42:05,718
recently, if you've set up Bickey a long time ago, but haven't been in touch with us,

571
00:42:06,298 --> 00:42:10,298
I'd love to know what you think. I'd love to know what you love about it. I'd love to know

572
00:42:10,298 --> 00:42:16,758
what you think we should add and what should be on our roadmap. And so, you know, whether that's

573
00:42:16,758 --> 00:42:23,398
DMing me on Twitter or reaching out to Bickey at block.xyz or adding the official, you know,

574
00:42:23,459 --> 00:42:30,678
Bickey account on Twitter and telling us like, please speak up. You know, it's how we make this

575
00:42:30,678 --> 00:42:35,538
better one of the awesome i mean full disclosure probably a little bit late bitkey obviously a

576
00:42:35,538 --> 00:42:40,398
sponsor of the show um i think it's a great product and one of the cool things is i i don't

577
00:42:40,398 --> 00:42:45,459
want to exactly say who i don't want to give away too much security information but like i've got

578
00:42:45,459 --> 00:42:57,418
all the members of my family to set up bitkey on their own just me like basically watching them to see if they can do it And it is an incredibly seamless setup where they can take control of their Bitcoin

579
00:42:57,418 --> 00:43:02,398
in a way that's far superior to just having Bitcoin on an exchange. And it's incredibly,

580
00:43:02,598 --> 00:43:08,758
incredibly user focus, which is really cool. But let's talk a bit about Proto, because this was a

581
00:43:08,758 --> 00:43:13,218
really cool announcement maybe, I don't know, three or four months ago. I know you did the launch.

582
00:43:13,218 --> 00:43:14,858
What is Proto? What are you doing?

583
00:43:16,137 --> 00:43:21,818
Yeah. So with Proto, we're building tools to help Bitcoin miners of all sizes.

584
00:43:22,858 --> 00:43:26,618
And that's what we're building is basically hardware and software.

585
00:43:27,457 --> 00:43:32,198
And the hardware we're building is everything from custom chips,

586
00:43:32,457 --> 00:43:34,778
so silicon that's at the core of Bitcoin miners,

587
00:43:35,078 --> 00:43:37,758
to hashboards that pack a bunch of silicon,

588
00:43:38,377 --> 00:43:41,738
to what we call ProtoRig, and that we announced in August,

589
00:43:41,738 --> 00:43:46,398
that is basically a bunch of hashboards, fans, and power supplies

590
00:43:46,398 --> 00:43:48,418
that make up a Bitcoin miner.

591
00:43:49,518 --> 00:43:52,677
And software that goes on top of that, both to run the rig,

592
00:43:52,918 --> 00:43:55,457
but also to manage a fleet of Bitcoin mining machines.

593
00:43:55,657 --> 00:43:59,177
And we got interested in this for a large variety of reasons.

594
00:43:59,538 --> 00:44:02,278
Number one is that the permissionlessness of Bitcoin

595
00:44:02,278 --> 00:44:04,618
depends on the decentralization of the network.

596
00:44:04,938 --> 00:44:07,218
And there are a bunch of centralization pressures in mining.

597
00:44:07,898 --> 00:44:09,858
There are very, very few hardware vendors.

598
00:44:09,858 --> 00:44:17,698
uh and um you know of the very short list that make up you know more than 90 market share they're

599
00:44:17,698 --> 00:44:24,738
all in the same country uh and um we uh we we would like to help fix that so we'd like to add

600
00:44:24,738 --> 00:44:30,637
to the list and and you know make it possible for folks to um you know get bitcoin mining equipment

601
00:44:30,637 --> 00:44:33,657
and software from another entity.

602
00:44:34,758 --> 00:44:39,698
And we basically started looking into this

603
00:44:39,698 --> 00:44:42,137
and realized like we're in an incredible position

604
00:44:42,137 --> 00:44:44,498
to help make that happen for Bitcoin and for Block.

605
00:44:45,578 --> 00:44:47,558
We have, you know, you talked about Jack

606
00:44:47,558 --> 00:44:50,038
as kind of driving the Bitcoin vision earlier.

607
00:44:50,137 --> 00:44:52,398
So we have a visionary CEO who believes in this,

608
00:44:52,457 --> 00:44:53,938
which is actually quite rare.

609
00:44:54,818 --> 00:44:58,218
And then, you know, we're a publicly traded,

610
00:44:58,538 --> 00:44:59,677
US publicly traded company

611
00:44:59,677 --> 00:45:03,838
with a healthy balance sheet that can invest in something as capital intensive as proto.

612
00:45:04,338 --> 00:45:09,177
And then we have, you know, long-term system engineering expertise to be able to bring

613
00:45:09,177 --> 00:45:10,858
some, actually build something like this.

614
00:45:11,278 --> 00:45:16,377
And we realized, you know, this is really important for Bitcoin and let's go.

615
00:45:17,298 --> 00:45:17,657
I love it.

616
00:45:17,778 --> 00:45:22,818
And what are the like challenges that miners face that this is trying to, because obviously,

617
00:45:23,137 --> 00:45:25,798
like you say, the vast majority of ASICs right now are built in China.

618
00:45:25,798 --> 00:45:30,098
having one of those built in the US, which is, I assume you're building this in the US,

619
00:45:30,538 --> 00:45:36,177
that's a massive benefit. But what are the sort of on-site issues that these miners have that

620
00:45:36,177 --> 00:45:43,637
Proto can help solve? Yeah. So we're not Bitcoin mining operators. We didn't start out that way.

621
00:45:43,677 --> 00:45:48,278
So we started off by talking to customers. That's what we do when we begin efforts at Block. And

622
00:45:48,278 --> 00:45:54,238
what we heard was basically that all of the hardware that folks have been using up to this

623
00:45:54,238 --> 00:46:00,578
point just wasn't built to be infrastructure. It was something that was more disposable,

624
00:46:01,298 --> 00:46:07,758
not reliable. People would trash their fleet after just a couple of years and

625
00:46:07,758 --> 00:46:13,338
go through this expensive and time-consuming process to upgrade as machines get more efficient.

626
00:46:14,457 --> 00:46:22,058
And we also heard things like software is a mess. So there's a software tool to do just about every

627
00:46:22,058 --> 00:46:25,538
individual thing in Bitcoin mining. None of them talk to each other. People have these glued

628
00:46:25,538 --> 00:46:31,238
together software stacks and pay high fees for them. And so we set out to make something better.

629
00:46:31,718 --> 00:46:36,918
And our answer came in a couple of forms. So what we announced in August is ProtoRig,

630
00:46:36,998 --> 00:46:41,538
which is durable, repairable, and upgradable. So it's built to be infrastructure. The

631
00:46:41,538 --> 00:46:47,177
hashboards are something that you can swap out. The PSUs you can swap out. The fans you can swap

632
00:46:47,177 --> 00:46:53,177
out um we focused both on making this possible in upgrade cycles um but also while people are

633
00:46:53,177 --> 00:47:00,538
maintaining their fleets to make it you know easy and quick to repair on the rack um every moment

634
00:47:00,538 --> 00:47:07,818
spent not hashing is you know big less bitcoin produced for miners and um in these huge operations

635
00:47:07,818 --> 00:47:13,578
those things add up really really fast and so we introduced proto rig and we also introduced

636
00:47:13,578 --> 00:47:19,318
Proto Fleet, which is free and open source software for managing your entire mining fleet.

637
00:47:20,558 --> 00:47:25,177
And I'm excited to bring those out. Yeah, that's very cool. Because I think

638
00:47:25,177 --> 00:47:30,677
quite often people think of Bitcoin miners as being these like mega miners in the US where they have

639
00:47:30,677 --> 00:47:36,198
like beautiful, huge data centers where they're like clean and things are very efficient and work

640
00:47:36,198 --> 00:47:41,998
like I've been to see the gridless sites in Africa. Not every mining site is like that.

641
00:47:41,998 --> 00:47:47,977
Like when I was with Eric Hussman, he was saying like the biggest challenge is getting like literally flies out the fans.

642
00:47:48,298 --> 00:47:52,698
Like they're just in a shack on the side of the side of a river, essentially.

643
00:47:53,357 --> 00:47:57,258
And like he couldn't even use bit main machines because they're just not durable enough.

644
00:47:57,738 --> 00:48:02,498
And so like the idea here, I guess, is not necessarily I could be wrong here.

645
00:48:02,518 --> 00:48:05,238
Tell me. But like, is it not necessarily to hit those mega miners?

646
00:48:05,377 --> 00:48:08,058
It's to hit everyone else that's helping like decentralize hash rate.

647
00:48:09,457 --> 00:48:10,957
Yeah, it's actually both.

648
00:48:10,957 --> 00:48:19,558
So, you know, the proto rig design is something that can serve folks in a lot of different sort of mining operator settings.

649
00:48:19,977 --> 00:48:33,438
So we see everything from, you know, large industrial miners, meaning folks that, you know, have large sites, many, many, many thousands of miners at a site, many sites, you know, owned by the company or whatever.

650
00:48:33,438 --> 00:48:43,918
And then, you know, we also see miners that maybe have a couple of hundred rigs and they have a lot of the same problems, a lot of the same challenges.

651
00:48:44,298 --> 00:48:51,118
And then we see, you know, folks with with just a couple of miners that are, you know, maybe getting started with a new operation somewhere.

652
00:48:51,798 --> 00:48:59,898
We see settings that are, you know, extreme desert climates with crazy dust everywhere and high wind seasons.

653
00:48:59,898 --> 00:49:05,918
we see situations like what you described with uh with gridless um who are awesome by the way uh

654
00:49:05,918 --> 00:49:12,558
you know where um you know leave the lights on by accident at night and suddenly you know all of the

655
00:49:12,558 --> 00:49:19,418
the miners are are clogged um with with literal flies and um being able to swap fans out easily

656
00:49:19,418 --> 00:49:23,558
and you know understand the state of the system remotely ends up really important in a bunch of

657
00:49:23,558 --> 00:49:30,838
those settings. And so we're building for miners of all sizes. You know, there are some things like,

658
00:49:31,078 --> 00:49:34,298
for example, home miners and stuff like ProRig's probably not for that. I wouldn't recommend,

659
00:49:34,538 --> 00:49:37,998
you know, that if you're looking for a home miner, that's probably not where to get started. But

660
00:49:37,998 --> 00:49:41,477
you know, over time, we anticipate serving a really wide set of groups.

661
00:49:42,278 --> 00:49:46,657
I guess the huge thing as well for the actual operation side is instead of having to have

662
00:49:46,657 --> 00:49:52,998
sort of an ASIC engineer on site who can take apart the fan and the chips and fix the machines,

663
00:49:52,998 --> 00:49:58,138
instead it's literally you just pull something out push something in and press go again yeah we're

664
00:49:58,138 --> 00:50:02,618
really interested in in on rack repairs so one of the things that we saw happening a lot at customer

665
00:50:02,618 --> 00:50:07,638
sites is you know the especially at larger ones there might actually be a couple of folks who are

666
00:50:07,638 --> 00:50:14,357
focused on repairs and have to you know go around spending you know their entire day collecting

667
00:50:14,357 --> 00:50:19,738
machines you know throughout their their their racks and coming and bring them back to a repair

668
00:50:19,738 --> 00:50:24,718
center and taking them apart there. And, you know, we'd watch them take out 12 screws where

669
00:50:24,718 --> 00:50:30,198
we thought there could have been three and, uh, or zero, um, and do all these things that

670
00:50:30,198 --> 00:50:34,738
we wanted to be able to, or we want to make possible in 90 seconds on the rack.

671
00:50:35,638 --> 00:50:38,477
And, uh, that's, that's what we're bringing with ProtoRig.

672
00:50:38,938 --> 00:50:43,598
That's awesome. And, and how efficient are these machines going to be? Have you released

673
00:50:43,598 --> 00:50:44,357
numbers on these yet?

674
00:50:45,518 --> 00:50:48,758
Yeah. So there are a bunch of different ways to configure ProtoRig. Uh, one of the things

675
00:50:48,758 --> 00:50:53,298
it comes with upgradability is we can also configure it depending on what the customer's

676
00:50:53,298 --> 00:50:59,338
needs are. Some customers, they might have different costs of power, focus on different

677
00:50:59,338 --> 00:51:06,138
things. And so, you know, they may want to, for example, spend less up front and, you know,

678
00:51:06,138 --> 00:51:11,038
run a machine hotter with fewer boards and proto rig and, you know, might be okay because they have

679
00:51:11,038 --> 00:51:17,357
low cost of power, you know, compromising and optimizing for, for hash rate output as opposed

680
00:51:17,357 --> 00:51:21,298
to going for the absolute lowest power efficiency they could get.

681
00:51:21,398 --> 00:51:23,218
And others, maybe higher cost of power,

682
00:51:23,638 --> 00:51:26,698
want to drive power efficiency as efficient as they can.

683
00:51:27,638 --> 00:51:29,698
And so what we shared at our launch event in August

684
00:51:29,698 --> 00:51:37,998
is that you can configure it up to or really down to 14.1 joules per ter hash,

685
00:51:38,738 --> 00:51:40,998
which we're really excited about.

686
00:51:41,778 --> 00:51:44,258
Can you put that into context for both me and the listeners?

687
00:51:44,258 --> 00:51:47,877
How does that stack up against the Bitmain's of the world?

688
00:51:48,877 --> 00:51:50,877
Yeah, so Bitmain is definitely still the industry leader.

689
00:51:51,758 --> 00:51:57,598
So you're not going to go look at their website and our website and see us beating them on power efficiency.

690
00:51:58,438 --> 00:52:03,718
But the way we're thinking about this is that power efficiency is just one of the metrics that miners care about.

691
00:52:03,998 --> 00:52:09,477
Everybody that we've talked to, there's a whole equation they're using to figure out how are they going to have a profitable mining operation?

692
00:52:09,598 --> 00:52:10,438
How are they going to optimize?

693
00:52:10,438 --> 00:52:17,258
and when you look across all of those factors uh we think people should you know be be looking to

694
00:52:17,258 --> 00:52:22,758
proto rig so um those factors are uh you know infrastructure costs how much they're paying up

695
00:52:22,758 --> 00:52:27,377
front um you know including when you start to look across upgrade cycles and you can save 15

696
00:52:27,377 --> 00:52:34,498
to 20 every time you upgrade your fleet when you're using proto rig uh and downtime so you

697
00:52:34,498 --> 00:52:39,418
know lots of folks we noticed were tended to measure downtime as like are the miners on or

698
00:52:39,418 --> 00:52:44,698
they off uh and really what matters is how much bitcoin are they producing relative to your

699
00:52:44,698 --> 00:52:52,618
expectations and there's a huge gap there and uh so you know when you look at things like 90 second

700
00:52:52,618 --> 00:52:59,258
on rack repairs from proto rig that hash rate out or that hash output those the hashing hours

701
00:52:59,258 --> 00:53:04,938
basically goes way up uh and then you know of course um power efficiency and and the the total

702
00:53:04,938 --> 00:53:09,258
throughput of the machine matter as well and which if specs and more information about proto rig on

703
00:53:09,418 --> 00:53:15,038
proto.xyz for anyone who's interested in kind of digging deeper it's very cool and so you had the

704
00:53:15,038 --> 00:53:18,898
launch event a few months ago when is this actually going to kind of hit the shelves and people are

705
00:53:18,898 --> 00:53:24,738
going to be able to use this yeah so uh we're uh taking orders for proto rig um proto rig is

706
00:53:24,738 --> 00:53:30,998
in production at customer facilities now and so um what i uh would highly recommend is anyone who

707
00:53:30,998 --> 00:53:35,838
uh is you know looking to uh to to buy proto rig should talk to our sales team

708
00:53:35,838 --> 00:53:42,758
and you can find information about that on proto.exoaz as well i mean i think as bitcoiners

709
00:53:42,758 --> 00:53:47,657
we're very lucky to have a company like block in the space um it the the stuff you're doing is

710
00:53:47,657 --> 00:53:53,618
pretty incredible um i think this this latest square thing is is huge and and a real like game

711
00:53:53,618 --> 00:53:59,558
changer when you look back over the past you know six months and and really even just the past couple

712
00:53:59,558 --> 00:54:05,338
of weeks i think the velocity is incredible so earlier this year at bitcoin las vegas uh we were

713
00:54:05,338 --> 00:54:10,778
experimenting with acceptance on square and uh it was a really exciting time and we were you know

714
00:54:10,778 --> 00:54:16,778
selling biki and um uh and and hearing a lot of good feedback from customers and then you know

715
00:54:16,778 --> 00:54:20,718
since then we've launched things like the privacy upgrade the past week we launched you know the

716
00:54:20,718 --> 00:54:27,118
bitcoin map and cash app um you know we launched square conversions uh about a month ago um where

717
00:54:27,118 --> 00:54:31,818
you know square merchants can convert a portion of their sales into bitcoin um we've launched

718
00:54:31,818 --> 00:54:40,258
acceptance on Square. And the team just has so many good ideas and so much going on and so much

719
00:54:40,258 --> 00:54:45,138
coming out the door that I'm just really excited for the next, you know, not just the past six

720
00:54:45,138 --> 00:54:50,058
months, but the next six. How much, because obviously like Square is a huge company,

721
00:54:50,157 --> 00:54:54,338
was a huge company before any sort of Bitcoin integration, but how much of the company is now

722
00:54:54,338 --> 00:54:57,818
focused on Bitcoin? How much of the mindshare is going on Bitcoin stuff right now?

723
00:54:57,818 --> 00:55:03,938
uh well i think i have to answer that in a personal way which is 100 so this is what i'm

724
00:55:03,938 --> 00:55:09,157
working on uh and across the company i don't know the exact number but um you know the folks that

725
00:55:09,157 --> 00:55:15,818
that are working on it like this is they live and breathe this and why like why has the focus been

726
00:55:15,818 --> 00:55:20,818
so heavily on bitcoin again is this because like jack believes in this thing he wants to push this

727
00:55:20,818 --> 00:55:25,818
as far as he can go i know he's a big proponent of bitcoin as being used as like actual money

728
00:55:25,818 --> 00:55:28,078
rather than just this like saving store of value thing.

729
00:55:28,357 --> 00:55:29,657
Is that where this is coming from?

730
00:55:30,698 --> 00:55:32,318
I mean, we believe that Bitcoin

731
00:55:32,318 --> 00:55:34,058
will be the native currency of the internet.

732
00:55:34,058 --> 00:55:36,838
We believe that its openness

733
00:55:36,838 --> 00:55:40,098
and its permissionlessness is what will make that true.

734
00:55:41,338 --> 00:55:43,758
And so I think really the whole team

735
00:55:43,758 --> 00:55:46,698
is bought in on this being the best way

736
00:55:46,698 --> 00:55:49,398
to really change the financial system.

737
00:55:50,278 --> 00:55:52,318
And so I think that's where it's coming from.

738
00:55:52,918 --> 00:55:54,977
And our goal is to make Bitcoin everyday money.

739
00:55:54,977 --> 00:56:00,918
And that's so all of the things that you see shipping, that's that's what we're focused on making Bitcoin everyday money.

740
00:56:01,798 --> 00:56:03,298
I love it, man. This has been great, Max.

741
00:56:03,918 --> 00:56:07,498
Hopefully I'll actually meet you in person at some point in the in the coming year.

742
00:56:07,498 --> 00:56:08,977
But I've really enjoyed this.

743
00:56:09,238 --> 00:56:13,558
You should tell everyone where to go to find out more about you, BitKey, anything we've talked about today.

744
00:56:14,738 --> 00:56:16,518
Yeah. So for BitKey, you can go to BitKey.world.

745
00:56:16,857 --> 00:56:17,738
Use code WBD.

746
00:56:18,438 --> 00:56:19,198
Yeah, of course.

747
00:56:19,598 --> 00:56:23,278
And and then for Proto, you can go to Proto.xyz.

748
00:56:23,278 --> 00:56:26,498
and then would highly encourage, you know,

749
00:56:26,558 --> 00:56:27,798
following some of the official accounts

750
00:56:27,798 --> 00:56:29,838
for BitKey, for Block.

751
00:56:30,398 --> 00:56:32,278
And, you know, I mentioned Miles Suter

752
00:56:32,278 --> 00:56:33,118
earlier in the call.

753
00:56:33,218 --> 00:56:34,398
And so especially if you're, you know,

754
00:56:34,457 --> 00:56:37,018
following along with Square payment acceptance

755
00:56:37,018 --> 00:56:38,258
and Cash App features,

756
00:56:38,477 --> 00:56:40,138
I definitely want to plug him as well.

757
00:56:40,538 --> 00:56:41,738
And Miles, if you're listening to the show,

758
00:56:41,838 --> 00:56:42,718
we need to record, man.

759
00:56:43,538 --> 00:56:44,798
Yeah, I appreciate this, Max.

760
00:56:44,838 --> 00:56:45,377
It's been great.

761
00:56:45,498 --> 00:56:47,778
I will hopefully see you around at some point soon.

762
00:56:47,857 --> 00:56:48,918
And yeah, thank you for the time.

763
00:56:49,518 --> 00:56:49,877
Thanks.

764
00:56:53,278 --> 00:57:23,258
Thank you.