Presidio Bitcoin Jam. It's Friday, so it must be Friday at noon and ready to hang. How are you guys doing?
Great. Doing good. Doing good. What's going on with you, JK?
Miss you from the studio.
Yeah.
Yes. I can't wait to get back. Well, I'm over out in the Eastern Sierras, as I often am for the summer. I had a good chance to hang with you guys back through a lot of July, but I'm back here now and then we'll be back in SF in studio in like early September, I think.
great so looking forward to uh to getting there and getting more mountain bike sessions and more
you know sauna sessions and everything well i've heard a rumor that the early september
presidio bitcoin jams might happen in the sauna i don't know i think our producer are we gonna
set up a full studio a waterproof heatproof we'll have to chat with alex about that out here but
nvk may come through because i i hear he uh he may want to see what the sauna studio looks like
Oh yeah.
You have Banya.lol.
Don't miss it.
So we've got a big list of topics.
Say, I think we had like 15 things,
you know, fast and furious, everything's going.
There's so much going,
but I feel like I'm like way under informed
about everything.
So I'm going to use this as a chance
to just kind of listen and learn
and get educated about all the chaos
going on in the world.
Nice pop out, dude.
Not doing your homework.
Someone doing prep.
Exactly.
did your dog happen to eat any of your
preparation sheets?
My dog ate all my preparation notes, yeah.
So, yeah, we do have a lot of topics.
I don't know what to start with, but I'm going to
throw out one maybe that wasn't in our
tweet. Yeah, yeah. Spicy.
Perfect. I want to talk about the
Play Store and
what Callie has been
tweeting about trying to get BitChat.
Yeah. Because we talked about that
a little bit and I actually, it just raised
it raised policy questions for an app store that I hadn't considered before
and I still don't have answers.
And let's set it up from the beginning in case people haven't caught all this.
The context here, so BitChat, which is probably something we want to talk about as well today,
new open source project that Jack Dorsey created and published.
he built it for
iPhone, published all the software
free open source
license and then
Callie took the code
created an Android
code base and made it available
for Android
someone
else took the code
and then submitted it to the app store
and got it in, sorry the play store
into the Google play store and got it into the play store
Callie then started
tweeting a lot about that.
And was that other one called
ByteChat, not BitChat?
No, it was called BitChat.
Oh, it was. Okay.
There's also a ByteChat.
You're getting ahead of the story here, DK.
Sorry, I did too much homework.
You're more prepared.
I didn't even know about ByteChat.
And then Callie's complaining
because the authoritative source
or the real source was getting
denied then.
but then that raised questions for me
even though I know Callie did the work
to create the Android port
so it seems intuitive
that he should be the one to be able to submit it
to the app store
it's a free open source license
so this other person
and I don't know who that is
but the other person that submitted it and got it to the app store
why doesn't that person have the right to get it to the app store
so then there's been
weeks of hassle there
and you know the byte chat thing
I think one of the pushbacks that Callie got from Google
was that offensive language,
bit chat, you can also pronounce it bitch at.
Are you serious?
That was one of their complaints.
So it was getting denied for that.
That's why some other person submitted byte chat,
which got past the bit chat or bitch at language.
I'm actually impressed.
So this was in theory like an Android reviewer.
Someone was paid probably to go through this.
Because whoever did that,
that was not obvious to me when I saw bit chat.
I think, I think Callie likes to sort of like play that aspect up.
At least I've seen her bitch hat.
And so you mentioned that on the show two weeks ago.
I mean, it's, it's funny and hilarious, but.
I also learned that there's that those words in French are the male and female genitalia
bit and chat.
Maybe I didn't pronounce it the French way, but.
I also had not heard of that.
So you've been doing a lot of words.
I learned it in the comments.
Yeah.
I was trying to get to the bottom of me
Yeah, I feel so
Are you going to tell us about Ani next? Did she help you with that?
Oh my god, let's not go there
Elon has been nuts this week
He's been having fun
So the policy question that raised for me is
When you do have free open source software
Who does have the right to get an app
in the App Store, and then how should that be reasoned about?
I did a little bit of LLM sleuthing to try to figure out what are the
guidelines and policies today for the Play Store and the App Store.
What I learned, and again, it's LLM, so
not necessarily fully accurate, but it seems plausible.
If you own the trademark, that gives you a lot of
power in getting that you can then
get your app named that in the app store because you own the trademark.
But if you don't own the trademark, then even if you're the copyright
holder of the code, if you licensed it free open source,
owning the copyright actually doesn't have much sway
at all. And of course, if you extrapolate that further, it can
get diluted because if you're the sole copyright holder and you
initially do a code dump and open source it, sure, you have 100% of the copyright.
But most open source projects over time, it gets diluted.
There's many contributors.
And so I even have a PR merged on...
I saw that, actually.
I was looking at the GitHub today and I saw Mr. Stephen.
Although to be fair, it was the white paper, not the code.
Dude, there's like five people.
You're one of those.
He's also a Bitcoin contributor.
He's a core dev, you know?
Yeah, Bitcoin core.
I know that.
This was before Vibe coding.
They sneak in with these trivial PRs to add to my resume.
So, but an open source code base,
copyright gets distributed,
but whether it's concentrated or distributed,
the free open source license
gives license to other people.
As long as you follow the license,
give proper attribution,
or whatever you need to do for the license,
you have just as much right to distribute it
as the person who wrote the code
or people who wrote the code.
So it kind of calls into question,
why should
Kali's app
get precedent over the other person who
published it? I don't know
the answer to that. Now I've heard also that
the initial one that got submitted
it might have been scammy in some way.
I actually don't know the facts there but
assuming it
was, well then that's reason alone
to pull it but
I'm more interested in the general
discussion here. We have this
concrete example but just
in general, let's say
Mac writes software,
publishes it, open sources
it, you don't trademark a name,
but you call it whatever, Mac's app.
And then I come along,
submit Mac's app to the store.
At a period, publish it.
And then
you get offended by that
and it's like, hey, but you don't own the trademark.
So who has the right
to have that app in the app store?
And so if we argue that, well,
the early bird gets the worm
and the first mover gets the app store
okay that could be a policy
but then let's say in this example
I stop maintaining it
like I submitted it
I put it in the store and then I just don't touch it
and then meanwhile you just keep improving the app
and there's all kinds of new releases and functionality and bug fixes
and the only thing
you can do is submit the app
that's better now under a different name
so that doesn't seem
fair at all either
so what do we think
Do we know anything more about the actual policies and guidelines now?
And if not, what do we think they actually should be?
Well, to me, this highlights, we had a bit of this discussion, I think, last week.
But, I mean, this is just the problem with having any centralized point of trust, right?
At the end of the day, I mean, it's a very, I guess, you know,
I think with any App Store policy, there's always going to be some human judgment piece, right?
Like, with the Domus release, with the Primo releases, with all these different releases,
like, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
Why?
maybe you got the right review or maybe you didn't.
And in this case, I mean, I am sort of sympathetic to
if there was something scammy,
obviously that's something that should be pulled directly for that.
And I guess that's the job of the reviewer to figure that out.
But how do you decide scammy even?
Well, if someone like loses their money or something, I don't know.
Like, but I mean, like, like what if I take the, like, like,
so Jack, you know, composes the iOS one, submits it.
I pull the open source software.
I use exactly that same software and I put in a paywall and I say,
hey, use Jack's new app.
It's, you know, $10 a month.
Is that like scammy?
I mean, it feels scammy to me,
but like, it's not like an outright scam.
It's just somebody kind of, you know,
optimizing around kind of a brand that's growing.
Yeah, that's a good example.
It's a great example.
And I think it comes to, I mean,
so I think there's two areas, right?
There's like the letter of the law
and then there's the way the world,
and I think most of us think should work.
So the letter of the law is,
I mean, if it's totally free and open source
and that includes for commercial usage,
then I don't think anyone did anything wrong.
Unless, again, they did something where they stated one fact, like, hey, deposit some Bitcoin here or whatever, and then they just steal it.
Okay, well then, if there's a lie and something's violated, that seems like something would get pulled.
But otherwise, if they want a paywallet and the software is totally false, that's not illegal, right?
But to me, the broader question is how should the world work?
And it's very obvious to me that anyone should be able to publish whatever they want, and this is where we come back to Web of Trust.
Like if some random guy wants to publish Cali software and then Cali publishes it and they both publish it from their private keys, which have organic reputation in the ideal world. And this is what Zap store is trying to build. And we talked about maybe trying to attack the old world app stores is not the right sort of vector, the better vectors for LLMs, whatever.
But in any way you want to distribute media or software or any kind of information, if you're doing it with a key that has reputation, anyone should be able to publish whatever they want.
And I, as a user, should be able to decide with my own algo which one I want to download.
I mean, haven't we dealt with a lot of these issues in Bitcoin itself?
Because people take free open source code.
They make the name Bitcoin.
They make a logo for Bitcoin.
They say this is the canonical one.
then people make bsv and b whatever xbtc and all these other things that sort of draft off of the
brand recognition but then take it in a different direction for their own purposes bsv and what was
their bitcoin gold there's all kinds of i don't know what xbtc is but i'm curious i'm now i'm
how's your trade going yeah exactly wasn't this one extreme btc or i forget what it was i thought
this was in like the like extended btc or ultimate bitcoin ultimate wasn't that a thing
there were so many diamonds that was a implementation of bitcoin like a oh okay so that was
legit see so i don't even know right like which ones are legit and what i don't know i don't know
if i'd call it legit i mean it was a legitimate fork of bitcoin core software whether you like
that version of bitcoin is so it's like a like a knots competitor yes it was coined i believe it
coinbase is not's competitor okay yeah back when it was called uh what was it luke originally called
it like luke bitcoin or something or it was literally named after it yeah well that's a
more accurate representation but my my point is we sort of we sort of have some precedent for how
these things work and how names and confusion works in the bitcoin land the bit chat thing is
different in some ways but are there are there parallels or what can we learn from the parallels
with how Bitcoin worked and works
and kind of continues to build consensus
around the real one Bitcoin
that we all believe and care about
versus kind of all the other kind of brand draft,
you know, kind of brand affinity scamming that happens.
At least for app,
for the mobile phone app store,
it's the same issue exists.
I mean, they don't allow multiple apps
with the same name.
So like, there's already an app called Bitcoin Wallet,
so I can't come around.
around and submit Bitcoin wallet.
And, but
to me, it seems like, is it fair?
Well, it depends on
or it seems to me like
in today's world with the rules we have
and the app stores we have,
getting trademarked
before you publish your open source software
seems important
if you want to,
if you're
intending to be a good steward
of the software code base, which
you probably are if you created it and decided
to release it to the world as a public good.
You probably want to get trademark
so that you can protect that.
Because even in the case,
like, yeah, if someone comes along
and submits it before you,
they put a paywall,
it's not scammy,
but it's not what you intended,
and then you can't get your app
in the app store,
that seems like a problem.
Or in the scenario where the person
submits it, gets it in the app store,
and then they never maintain it.
Like, I actually don't know
what the current policies are
from the app store.
Do they have any way
to protect against that?
I think you can provide, like you said,
like if you own a trademark for BitChat.
I mean, without the trademark.
Without the trademark.
You're saying if you don't have the trademark.
Yeah, I don't know how.
If the first mover never then maintains it,
and there's like a tremendously better version
of the same software code base,
the same name, and it can't get in the app store,
that seems like society loses.
Totally.
And even from an Apple or Google perspective.
Yeah, they'd probably want.
They're losing.
They want the better version.
Maintain software that people...
I don't know what the right answer there is.
It seems like, though, in today's world, the best practices get a trademark.
And getting the trademark takes a little bit of effort and money, right?
Exactly.
Like it's not money, time.
Wait, how long, how much are we...
You have to do a search.
You have to do an international search.
You have to apply.
And there's a ton of...
When you work with a lawyer to do this, it's minimum $5,000.
Are you serious?
So that creates a barrier.
Especially if you want to go global.
And you're then obligated to defend the trademark.
So if anyone abuses it later, you might not want to lawyer up,
you might not want to go through that hassle,
but you have to to protect the trademark or you'll lose the trademark.
So then we can talk about delete IP, right?
Let's just get rid of trademarks.
But then we do get back to the problem of like,
okay, well then how do we solve the problem we're talking about?
You've proposed, you know,
just anyone can publish whatever they want.
So let's explore that more.
So in some hypothetical store.
And it's not hypothetical, actually.
ZapStore is doing this now.
Yeah, so a store that anyone can submit anything,
then you can get Sybil attack.
So there could literally be a billion bit chats in the store.
But that doesn't bother me at all, right?
Because the whole thesis of ZapStore
and the idea I'm going with is they're all signed by a private key
and those private keys have a reputation, right?
So it all comes back to Noster and the web of trust
or even without Noster, just web of trust in general, right?
Let's say there's a million different people
that submit a version of BitChat
and I know that Kali is the guy
that submitted the first piece of software.
I'm going to use the Kali version all day, every day.
And even if it's a new piece of software
where I don't know the name,
I'm just going to be like,
okay, what is DK using?
I'm going to use theirs because I trust them.
Or even if you don't know anyone involved,
but it's a situation where like one person's like not maintaining.
And then there's a big uproar.
Like people, like let's say the iPhone version is up to date
and the Android version isn't.
And then there's just a lot of social media and communication about that.
People are pissed off and there's a movement there.
Then they could boost the reputation or score or whatever
of the latest version on Android and people would use it.
And the interesting thing here is like, look, I mean, even, I mean, again,
I come back to the problem is it's all the centralized choke points.
And I don't even think it's all like Apple and Google being necessarily bad actors.
Like obviously they want to take their cut.
And in my dream world, IP is gone.
No one can take their cut like by being sort of a troll on the bridge.
It's all open.
But even like, even, you know, looking from Apple and Google's perspective and giving
them the benefit of the doubt, you made a great point as well.
Like it hurts them if they take the version of BitChat that's not being maintained.
Like they would much rather use, you know, quote unquote, the popular shelling point
for that app.
but it's also like,
it's just a pain in the ass for them too.
They have to hire reviewers.
I guess eventually AI will do more and more of this for them.
So maybe that's the solution.
But like,
I imagine Apple and Google would like to say everyone submit and we're going
to surface the one that has the most stars or downloads or whatever that is.
Like it seems like they would prefer that.
Cool.
I'm satisfied.
Yeah.
I mean,
thanks.
But,
but,
but again,
I think to me that the challenge is,
and this is what you were talking about last week,
DK is like,
we have a cool version of Zap store.
You know,
obviously it's,
you can only, I think, use it with the APK on Android.
It's not user-friendly at all.
The problem is you can get the
cypherpunks playing with this stuff, but the normies
and myself included that are primarily
downloading from Apple or Google
are not going to download this weird new stuff.
So I think it kind of comes back to what we were discussing
last week. The best chance for a world like this to
thrive is just to completely
shoot for the new. In the world where the LLMs
are pulling the apps, how do we
make sure that that is radically open,
incorporates a web of trust? I think that's
our best shot. Like I strongly doubt, sadly, that we're going to solve this problem with Apple and
Google. I would love to be wrong, but I don't see it. And so what does that look like though? Is it
that you're relying on an LLM that you're chatting with to do the kind of web of trust investigation
on your behalf? Yeah. I mean, I think it's kind of like what you were saying last week. It's like,
I don't know exactly what the form factor is going to be. And this actually gets to one of
your topics you wanted to discuss. Like imagine if the phone is no longer running and, you know,
I guess we can talk about it now.
You mentioned Elon saying the phone no longer is going to run apps,
but it's basically just going to be an interface for your assistant,
for your Ani, to help you pull the software that you need
to do whatever you need in the world.
And so in that world, you may conjure on demand and say,
hey, I need to be able to communicate with other people
that are using the whatever white noise protocol,
which is what's happening beneath BitChat.
and you say, I want you to download the necessary tooling
or whatever you need to access this protocol.
And first, maybe you could say,
surface me a UI right now that shows me the different,
whatever, the five most popular versions of this protocol
and show me which of my friends are using which
or which of the people that I follow on Twitter or Nostra
or whatever are using that.
And I choose that one.
Or I just say, Grok, Ani, whoever,
do this for me, you know my preferences,
if there's a problem, I'll talk to you and let you update it.
I don't know exactly what it's going to look like,
but I actually think, yeah,
I think you had some pretty good ideas
around that last week, so.
Yeah, we'll see.
I think a lot of these things are going to be,
you know, they need new interfaces.
And I think the idea of like re, you know,
competing against the old style of like,
take an app store and make it open
or make it decentralized
probably doesn't make as much sense.
I have been thinking, I think we had a topic we were talking about GitHub and sort of how it's sort of related is how does, you know, I think was GitHub recently the leadership change within Microsoft.
So now it's more tightly held or maybe more, more, even more centrally controlled than maybe it was before.
I thought that I saw some.
Their CEO left and they didn't, they're not going to replace the CEO.
So instead, GitHub reports straight to the core AI team, which suggests less independence than they've had the past six or seven years or whatever.
Right. And we've talked about the risk of centralized GitHub to Bitcoin, because Bitcoin lives on GitHub and that's where people go to find it often.
So if Microsoft decided they didn't like Bitcoin, you'd kind of wonder, well, what are you going to do about that?
So I think having a new place to host that would be interesting.
But I think it all kind of touches on similar themes, which is like, how are we going to access information in the future?
How is software going to be built in the future?
How is collaboration around software going to be built?
And all of these, in a sense, are like themes that weave and feed into each other that probably determine somewhat like the final interface for this.
but it does feel like
it does feel like
something chat based
seems like a likely
interface to access it
but I don't know
that it's going through
a centralized provider chat
or if there are
maybe there's
maybe there's something
like an open source
you know
maybe it's like
a Noster style chat
where you can chat
into the service
and then it dispatches
to a bunch of different services
but you control
sort of
which services
it chooses to use
and some of them
are maybe open source
and some of them
are closed
and they have different
kind of cost quality
performance trade-offs
I think one thing that could look really cool around this is
I like this idea that maybe the future is like a mashup of
something a chatbot can access, but maybe a mashup of GitHub
and an app store, because it's like, what's the difference between the software and the app itself?
Increasingly, if you don't actually need to run the app on your phone, there kind of is none, right?
And so maybe it looks more in the direction of GitHub.
I could see if it's a very simple first example of this. Imagine you have
just like a giant database. And I guess what you need to agree on is the NIPs or the standards,
like I'm thinking in NOSTER terms. And so what you would do is you would say, okay,
I publish a piece of information, right? So the standard is there's a piece of information,
that's the payload or whatever. Then you have the private key or associated with the public key
who published it. Okay, great. And then with that, you can start to do some of the reputation stuff.
And then maybe you have to agree on like the kinds, and maybe that's even too restrictive.
Maybe there's like a more flexible way to do it, but you could do the kinds, right?
And so as an example, imagine one kind is, you know, a mini app or a piece of software.
Great.
So I know these are all mini apps that are compatible with the specific chatbot, Grok,
or whatever that I'm using.
And then maybe you can have other kinds of, you know, pieces of information as well.
It's like, yes, this is, you know, a long form essay.
I guess we already have that, our kind one.
This is a short form, you know, piece of information.
And like at some level, I guess what's cool about this is the more flexible you could
make this giant database, like there is no difference.
I mean, there really is no difference between a tweet, an essay, and a piece of code.
It's all just text.
Right.
So how do we get there?
I don't know what that first step is.
I mean, one way is just maybe building better tools to like surface and search different
kinds that different people publish
and maybe also propose a kind for software.
Which I don't know if the guys
working on the Nostra GitHub
clones already did that.
Is there anybody building
application development,
let's call it vibe coding tools,
where the ultimate destination
for serving that
is on Nostra?
I think Alex Gleason is.
Or Soapbox.
I haven't played with it much recently, but
I think he's probably...
He and Pablo are probably for this down that line.
Because it feels like you're listening.
Alex, let us know.
Yeah I mean it feels like something in that vein is sort of like helps people create things and helps those things kind of naturally live in an uncontrolled environment and helps more collaboration where people can sort of hop in and take it in their own direction But it sort of lives on a substrate If it can live in a substrate that doesn require like okay you know clone the repo from GitHub and I run it on my own servers Like it a much more you know either that environment or something like a repli which is
very easy to use and wonderful for prototyping, but ultimately you're kind of in their ecosystem
and you're not, in a sense, like you're not as open as you would be if you sort of could do a
similar type of thing in a more Noster native way. But what do you mean even substrate, right?
Because I think you could have different interfaces along the way as you progress on this.
But it isn't the interface itself just basically a database, just a piece of information, a kind, and an author.
And that's all just stored on Nostra Relays.
But you need some code to execute somewhere.
I want to do a query to pull the data and use it in a certain way.
So is that a function of a relay?
Is that another type of decentralized relay-like infrastructure that's more like a code operation infrastructure?
I think Whole Punch Explore is doing this in the web browser via JavaScript and sort of has all the apps served among peers in JavaScript in the browser.
So I think we need some idea of like, where does the compute happen?
Not just where's the data stored?
Quick question.
Alex, can you click comment on this?
We're trying new software.
Oh, perfect.
There we go.
All right.
We do have an audience.
Oh, nice.
Oh, Austin.
Well, perhaps we'll start.
I wasn't going to discuss this too much,
but my guy, Andy, is asking me in the chat if I am all right.
Andy, we'll have to chat more.
I am, in fact, not all right.
Why would you not be all right?
Oh, you don't know this.
I won't go into all the details,
but Andy took me for a ride this week,
and I am currently in a boot.
On the plus side, I told Steve I looked like Tyrese Hunter
when he was out for the Memphis game,
so I got some swag.
I'm rocking the boot with swag
no I'm not
I thought you said Tyrese Halliburton
but it could apply to either Tyrese
I always thought I'd kind of look like a Tyrese
alright cool back on track
I haven't caught up on all of Austin's participation here
did you guys catch Wild West App Store
doesn't bother me if things are signed
people figure it out
any little tidbits there?
or do you want to change topic?
No, let's move on.
We get a lot of topics.
Yeah.
Okay.
One thing,
yeah,
one thing,
maybe it is before we move on,
I thought that in Callie's tweet,
he'd mentioned something
about how he is the copyright owner.
Does that ring a bell?
No.
But we already discussed that though.
Well,
I didn't understand that part.
That's why I was just revisiting.
Well, he is the copyright holder
of the Android code base
because he,
created it.
But anyone who contributes more
is the copyright holder
for whatever they contribute.
And also, like I said,
my LLM sleuthing suggests
that doesn't play a role
in deciding who gets to submit
to the App Store.
Yeah.
Well, just one last comment on that,
and maybe we can chat more about the chat
at a higher level
because there's a lot to say on that.
I think that anything that requires
an open source dev,
particularly a NEM,
to spend substantial money,
anything over,
really any amount of money or a substantial amount of time
or even talk with a lawyer? Do you really think the NEMs
want to talk with lawyers? That to me is a non-starter.
I get it.
If that's what you have to do to cut it.
That's today's world, I think, but it's
big friction and barrier.
If you have to do that to be compatible with the
legacy world, so be it. But we have
to aim for a world. Maybe AI is part of this.
You're already using LLM. I was using LLM
as a doctor this morning. You're using it for a lawyer.
Maybe that helps solve a lot of the problems.
But it's a non-starter moving forward
if we want the free and open world
that I think all of us do.
Yeah.
Cool.
Can we talk about BitChat in general?
Not just the copyright.
Let's talk about BitChat.
Because I'm getting fired up about this.
So I just want to mention maybe a little bit
what I'm getting excited about.
I know Steve, as the resident contributor here,
hope I have a lot to say on BitChat as well.
But I just have to say, it is so fucking cool.
And honestly, shout out to Jack
because that man always has a vision.
And I didn't see him taking this step,
but the more I see it, the more I see the way the pieces are coming together, and it's fucking cool.
So for those of you who don't know, so BitChat, just as a reminder, it started off as a mesh
network, right? So you download BitChat, you can chat with other people that are within
whatever the radius is in your mesh, which is your Bluetooth, and in theory, you can route
messages over different hops in your Bluetooth network. A lot of cool things you could do with
that. We discussed on prior episodes of PBJ, if you want to go find the earlier episodes,
where might this be used? I believe concerts and other peer-to-peer exchanges were some of the
ideas that we bandied about. The coolest thing though that just dropped is, I don't know if it
was just yesterday or today, but Jack announced geohashing. And geohashing is super dope because
basically when you engage in your first peer-to-peer or like local mesh chat, now that also
includes with it a geohash, which you can think of as like a zip code for wherever you are on the
internet. But it's cool because the zip code doesn't like docks all of your exact GPS location.
Wherever you are on the internet or wherever you are in the world.
Sorry, sorry. Wherever you are in the physical world, wherever you are in the physical world,
but accessing, I guess, over the internet to reach different people. So what's super cool now is you
have like a zip code, but it's not a super docksing zip code. And then you start thinking, well,
what kind of cool stuff can you do with that? Well, one cool thing you can do with that is there's
an app I love called Radio.Garden. It's one of my favorite apps of all time. I found this,
by the way, on Stackin News. So shout out to the Cypherpunk community that always finds the cool
stuff. And Radio.Garden allows you just to basically take a little cursor and move it
anywhere around the globe and listen to all the radio stations and all the cool local radio
stations in that frequency. So you can go to Argentina or Japan or wherever. It's awesome.
I love that app. And immediately, that was the first thing that clicked for me. I was like,
oh, this is super cool. I could just go and zoom out. We have our tiny whatever little
district here in San Francisco. I wonder what people are talking about in Buenos Aires. I wonder
what people are talking about in Seoul. I wonder what people are talking about in Nigeria. Obviously,
it's not everywhere yet. But Steve showed us, I think, a map, a heat map this morning. It's like
popping off in different parts around the world. So obviously, there's a lot to do with it.
How does that work? So if I were at PBJ right now, I would obviously be able to connect to you via
Mesh. Since I'm not there, can I access, do I have to talk to you to figure out what the
the geo hashes for any location in the world.
So they all listed in the app,
what all the available locations are.
That's actually a great question.
So let me check right now.
The,
as I recall,
you can choose some specific areas.
So I'm going to go right now.
So I can find,
uh,
in real time,
I can choose to go like to my country or to my district or whatever.
Right now, you do have to plug in specific zip codes or geohashes.
And so the most popular one right now is 21M, 21 million, 21M, three characters.
And there's currently 47 people in that chat.
That sounds like that's not a location, that's a topic.
Oh, okay.
So maybe you can do both topics and locations.
Well, I don't, I'm just, it sounds like a topic, not a location.
It's a good point.
This could be a global chat.
My guess would be this would be like for everyone.
I'm not sure how they created that.
But it's cool.
I mean, I'm looking right now, and in real time, I'm seeing 47 people.
There's like a tremendous amount of conversation.
Some Arabic, some English, some definitely.
I'm going to be a little more critical about this.
I mean, Google Buzz launched 15 plus years ago.
Right.
I was part of that launch.
And it's cool initially when people all around the world are geotagging their messages and you can pop into those different locations.
But for that to be success, I mean, first of all, Google Buzz was a failure.
And for it to be successful is more than just enabling geohashes and geotags.
Because the quality of the conversation matters tremendously.
Totally.
So I'm not saying BitChad's going to fail at this.
I'm just saying the details really matter.
Because if it becomes popular,
the quality will get diluted.
And we kind of saw that on Clubhouse a few years ago as well.
Clubhouse was initially amazing.
And then when it grew, then the quality decreased.
And also, I'd hope that BitChap is careful
about introducing this.
because the mesh network
like with the mesh network
I see a path
for high quality signal
because you start with people
who are physically proximate to you
you likely have some kind of
affinity with them if not
the location, the event you're at or you're
literally next to them
in person so there's all
kinds of reasons to believe that's going to be substantial
relationship formed
and
content
and then I really liked the Nostra integration
because then you can then carry over
to communicate with that person wherever that in the world
but you start with this initial high quality.
Totally.
So I love all that.
A little concerned with this stuff
because let's say that teleporting to a location
if like almost all the people
that are part of a particular community in that location
aren't at that location that just and they're and they're not just reading but they're writing
right then it doesn't like does it really have anything to do with that location
should be a two-tier system then where if you're at the location or you're favorited by people at
the location you can both read and write and if you're just like an observer like you want to go
to buenos aires or whatever you can read everything but you can't really chat or maybe you can chat
in like a secondary side chat or like almost like the distinction between the stage and the audience
in clubhouse i wonder if you had like the location and the spectators kind of with a stronger
distinction so that they don't sort of get the the pool muddied yeah i agree with uh that or at
exploring that um uh and or uh indication in the ui for the people within um a room or channel
or whatever it's called,
of like,
just have an icon next to them
like,
that indicates
they are actually there
versus they're not.
I agree.
That,
that should be explored
as well.
And actually,
let,
let me plug,
we're,
we've talked before
on the show
once or twice about
Presidio Bitcoin's
going to host
a Bitcoin design week
the middle of September.
That ass.
The week of September 15th
and 19th.
So people should check
that out in general,
but
I'll,
a segment that I'll be leading is on BitChat.
So like BitChat, design sprints,
vibe coding and exploring things
like we're talking about right now.
So I'd love to explore with talented designers,
attract Silicon Valley and designers,
big tech designers to come to help explore
how should BitChat proceed to this
and solve some of these problems,
ensure that the quality of the conversations are high.
and take advantage of it.
All the reasons you're excited about it,
I share that enthusiasm.
I had that same enthusiasm with Google Buzz
and then saw how it fails.
And then same with Clubhouse, saw how that fails.
So I'm only pointing out that it's a really big challenge.
So how can we best guide BitChat to avoid those pitfalls?
I love all that.
And I think we should actually take one step back
because you mentioned,
and I don't think we've explicitly,
at least on this show, explained that,
that it uses Nostra, right?
And so the key piece is when you're local
with someone in person,
you speak over Bluetooth,
so over the mesh.
However, once you leave,
so let's say, you know,
DK right now,
if we've already favorited each other,
you know, which we did
when you were in the office,
although I think there might be an issue,
we have to refavor,
I don't know, but anyways,
still early.
My favorite Pedro has gone to sleep.
There's a little moon icon.
I don't know what you're talking about, bro.
Don't be laughing.
Sorry, sorry, this was some doctor, you know.
Yeah, shit, live too.
Fuck, man.
I talked to myself a long time ago.
Anyways, what's cool is, as Steve mentioned,
you're then in the background communicating over Nostra Relays
to share those messages.
And so there's so, so, so, so many cool things about all this.
And I should mention, first of all,
I love that you're going to do this during design week.
There's so much to explore here.
And I'm just obviously saying some things get me excited today.
But what excites me the most is, one, there's a critical mass.
I mean, there was last week or two weeks ago, 100,000 people plus who have downloaded it around the world.
I'm sure it's much more now as it's popping off again.
So there's interest in the app.
The app looks nice.
It works.
It's not super slow and buggy, which I love Nostra, and I love all the cool stuff we have there.
But a lot of times, it starts off pretty hood for the cypherpunks, which is fine.
But this is something I can show to a normie, and they can get it.
They'll use it.
It's cool.
and so what I see is we have a um I see the potential we have a hot bed a core of people
who are using Nostra and I would argue you know maybe other than Primal and Domus maybe it's
already even overtaken them this is the most used Nostra app in the world right now and no one knows
that it's using Nostra which I love and so what I see coming next to all this and okay some of the
questions you asked right like how do you know if someone's in that location all these different
things. That to me is the exact same question and the exact same answer as the app store.
Right? Like the way we're going to do that is web of trust. And I don't know exactly what that's
going to look like, but it's going to be like, okay, well, this person, you know, DK, Max, and
Steve all mutually favored each other. So that, um, you know, builds out to saying, we know that
at least according to these guys, they started in San Francisco and then you kind of build from
there. Well, meaning
you're trying to
address spoofing,
location spoofing? That's one way.
Because how big a problem? I mean,
the obvious answer is just
get your location from the phone
and then that's your location. But
location
spoofing, it doesn't seem like a
widespread problem to me.
Most people don't install
that software to...
I don't even
know if it's possible on iPhone.
Awesome. There's a comment right now from Program Scarcity, which says, how easy would it be to spoof a device's BLE address? So I just want, because we're talking about, I just want to raise, I think it would not be, my guess is that the app would not be able to find that because you would need to have some device locally that is a BLE device. So you can't just spoof it like on the internet. You actually need a physical device present to be able to join the mesh network, right?
he says then infer from network topology what is this i suppose you might need to learn how to
analyze blie signal that interesting but but you'd need to be like a ble chip you'd need to have in
the physical presence right you can't just trust it's on the internet in order like bitchhead i
think will not investigate the internet will only investigate the the bluetooth chips that it finds
nearby right so if you wanted to spoof you need to like physically get a bluetooth chip nearby which
and is arguably not even spoofing.
And to be clear, I'm not clear on this,
so I'm assuming BLE is Bluetooth, is that right?
Yeah, Bluetooth.
So if that's the case,
but if you're going and traveling around the world
like to Argentina or something,
that's not happening over Bluetooth anymore.
That's happening via NOSTA relays, correct?
Right.
So you're using the traditional internet
to be able to...
So I don't see...
If you're using the traditional internet
to be able to connect to a NOSTA relay,
then you could use more of a VPN to spoof.
now like you can't spoof over the mesh but you could smooth spoof if you're doing internet to
nostr but what are you spoofing at that point your location so i can use like i could download a vpn
on my app yeah i'm in witness saturdays and whatever right but if you're if you're only
connecting to people around you with your bluetooth you won't be in like if you create a distinction
between people who are part of the bluetooth mesh and people who are otherwise favorited
by people and those are connecting over the internet or that you're connecting via a geohash
that's all application logic that you could use to okay the behavior or spaces you want so so two
quick things that just jumped out my mind are exciting one to be clear what i'm seeing with
the web of trust stuff and all this like spoofing is one specific example i think my broader point
though is like you can build like different icons to show different things like you could have
different badges where it's like dk was one of the first people to connect in whatever the um
the Presidio Bitcoin mash and whatever.
You could show he's currently in SF
where he's not based on this.
But the point is-
You can recreate Foursquare.
Yeah, exactly.
You can recreate Foursquare.
And because this is all open source,
again, and using Nostra,
you could have a ton of different apps
showing different interfaces.
So you could just do a Foursquare on this.
Another thing that I would like to see,
because we keep saying geohashing,
whatever reason I keep thinking geocaching,
how badass would it be
if we started doing geocaching
where people are just dropping Bitcoin around the world?
That could really catch up.
I would love to see that.
If someone wanted to do either like a Pokemon Go or like just a, I know, I guess we talked
to someone or you guys talked to someone doing that a while ago, or a geocache where you
just like literally hide Bitcoin or some cool thing around the world.
Like that would be dope.
How is it hidden?
Is it tied to somebody else's Bluetooth device?
I don't know, but you could just say like, hey guys, I-
Put a Bluetooth transmitter somewhere?
Yeah.
Or I like, you know, because you can zoom out the super local all the way up to the state
or national level.
You'd be like, I'll tell you it's in like this state, but that's it.
find it.
One thing we talked a little bit about
is BitChat
like an application platform.
If you wanted to create an application
like which layer do you
plug in whatever, I think
that would be interesting to
explore in general and maybe
the design week as well
that that could be a nice situation
because
there's probably a million ideas of what to do
but if we cram it all into one app
then it kind of feels like
WeChat or something
or maybe Elon's
vision for X being
an everything app
but there's trade-offs with an everything app
things that matter to you get buried
etc. And maybe AI is the new
interface
but it would be interesting
what should be the direction of BitChat as a platform
versus a singular application
I love it
another good hackathon too
And then another direction is like, yeah, how could an AI prompt be part of it?
What do you mean?
Well, just like at the Proto launch, they showed the fleet software having like an AI prompt.
You just like prompt it with speaking to it or text if you have a question, right?
I mean, one.
It's like a whole new interface.
Instead of clicking menus and icons and tabs to access functionality, you just tell it what you want.
So one immediate thought that comes is when we're seeing BitChat as a development platform,
it's almost like saying in the background, it's like Noster plus this mesh network piece as a development platform,
but it actually has adoption, which is the key.
It's so hard to actually get adoption.
And I kind of see the world quickly siphoning off.
So to the tweet you shared from Elon that we mentioned where he says the phone basically just becomes your interface for everything in the world, like you're talking to it.
I could easily see a world where it's like the people that, the companies that create the supermodels or whatever, like they probably will each have their interface for that.
So Google will have one, X will have one, maybe OpenAI, Microsoft or whatever, a couple of those.
But each of those are supermodels. Are you referring to amazing LLMs or more of an Elon flavor of supermodels?
Take your pick.
Exactly. I was, in fact, thinking very well-trained models. But again, take your pick.
However, the broader point I'm saying is we need an open version of this too.
And, you know, I love for a long time, you know, Primal and Million was always talking about like, think about, you know, what he's trying to build is the open version of X. And I think that applies not just to Primal, but to Nostra as an ecosystem. And I just view BitChat as an extension of that. I view BitChat as Nostra with some additional awesome features and adoption, which is great.
And so, yeah, I increasingly think, what does it look like where, again, going back to that vision of the software apps and the information, you can access this whole, basically you create a giant database of the world that's open, read, write.
The only requirement is you need a public-private key to conform with the standard.
And beyond that, you can do whatever the hell you want with any of this.
And that's beautiful because then you can have people listed on there, agents, but it's all using the web of TrustFilter.
So the things that really matter are, you know, the model that you use to access all this stuff and do things with it and the identity piece. And as long as you, you know, and the identity and the algorithms that come with that to serve a specific identity, as long as you have that, this to me seems like the jumping off point for the sort of truly open AI platform or open AI ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, open source AI ecosystem.
yeah and i i like the way you know all of that stuff uh works for me but i also like you know
i think there's something to study or learn from bitchat which is bitchat uses nostr like it's
infrastructure and it doesn't say hey go sign up for a nostr account kind of just does that
in the background and i i think ultimately nostr is infrastructure more so than like
a collection of applications but i i think bitchat's maybe one of the first examples we've seen
where the app is built with that assumption
instead of like, hey, go generate your private keys.
You know, it's kind of more like,
here's a service, do this thing you want to do.
And I could imagine that that same framing
could be taken to like an LLM chat experience,
which is just like, here's a thing,
you can use it and don't worry about the fact
that it happens to use Nostra,
but Nostra gives you a lot of advantages
as infrastructure for this.
Yeah, 100% agree.
So I guess for me, the summary
of where things are at with BitChat,
I get excited about all the possibilities.
I get worried, though, that if they all get crammed into the app,
that it muddies the waters, and then it's like a crappy app
for everything and everyone.
So I think there needs to be a lot of discipline there.
Maybe BitChat as a platform allows for that exploration
while keeping things siloed.
I don't know.
And then with the, I really like the mesh network and Nostra connections, and I just hope that these new geohashes head in the right direction and the wrong direction.
I mean, one thing we talked about prior to the show, if there's a quorum of people who are actually at a location, then that can give it enough authenticity so that the quality there is good.
And I think if you mix in like what we said earlier, if you're not actually there, then you have sort of read access but not write access.
maybe having visual distinctions
on the icon next to people's names, etc.
I think that treatment is important.
Yeah, I love that.
And just to clarify,
I think if you're not there,
the default, if you're just kind of browsing,
might be nice to be read-only.
But in my case,
I'm not at Presidio Bitcoin right now,
but there is a Presidio Bitcoin member
who has favorited me.
So even though I'm not present,
maybe I can participate in the real chat Because I think ultimately we just trying to say can you can you um recreate the the norms or standards around who gets to talk where versus necessarily saying everybody you know
has to be in the same place in order to chat with each other right because like the the nostrum
mutual favoriting already is sort of a dipping the toe in the water outside of that you know
core restriction that was the initial part of it um but i'm i'm wondering too um do we know i'd
asked a while back and i i never got a lot of clarity on this and if you guys have heard more
recently but do we know sort of is the i assume the protocol is just open source software and
stuff if somebody wanted to write their own bit chat client byte chat or max chat or something
and wanted to have a different set of features or a different take on how it works but integrate
with the mesh networking
or sort of the messaging system of BitChat?
Do we know if that's like possible today
or if it's restricted or limited somehow?
It's a great question.
I mean, I assume because it's using
the white noise protocol,
like anyone could be able
to build something that's interoperable,
but I don't know.
We should figure it out for next week.
I haven't checked it.
It wouldn't surprise me if early on at least,
maybe the binary only accepts things signed
by that binary or something
just to try to keep it a little clean.
But in the longer run,
I'd hope that there's some way to decide
what other apps can participate
in those messaging channels.
Because it does seem like
if you can take some of these ideas,
experiment with them outside
without sort of muddying the waters.
Like if you want to try these
like location geohash things
and let everybody talk
or let nobody talk
or only people who are there,
you can sort of mix and match
different takes on that.
if that was more of an experimental surface, then you could let those experiments play out.
And the good ones could be incorporated in the more broadly distributed apps and the
bad ideas can sort of fade away. I would just like to throw back out to the ideas.
We've mentioned this before, but that I would love to see. And maybe this is something we can
actually explore further in the design week. But when using BitChatt as a development platform,
the two things that jump out to me again, local Bitcoins, someone make local Bitcoins on BitChatt.
this is going to be awesome and it's going to be really important in the future.
And the compute marketplace.
I could see something where, because your point, someone actually has to compile and
run the code.
And we've talked about all the advantages of having an open marketplace as things get,
as restrictions come down all around the internet.
Imagine you could say, well, I need to run whatever this operation, I need to do this
thing.
But in El Salvador, I know there's a server there that will do this thing.
because they're okay with that.
But maybe, you know,
it's similar to VPNs today.
I think that that's going to be very interesting.
Yep.
Cool.
Any, any more topics on BitChat
that we want to address?
It's just exciting to see it has adoption.
You know, it's rare.
So.
Cool.
Well then, you know,
let's, let's move on topics then.
I think we had,
I mean, geez,
there was so much stuff here.
we i think we have in the title what do we have in the title we have uh stablecoin stuff was there
us i mean we've had discussions in the past on stablecoins and um we have these comments around
like discuss various platforms which will win eth tron soul base arc tempo spark taproot ss
discuss various issuers that will win do you guys have sort of a an entry point for for what you're
excited about this week?
Well, we talked last week about,
I mean, we gave a brief summary
of Tempo and Arc,
which are two new
layer one blockchains,
primarily for stable coins.
Steve came out as an L1 Maximus.
Yeah.
So we teed that up last week,
but we didn't really
go deep into stable coins,
so we can go deep right now.
You know, I think,
I forget if we talked about this in the show, but
I think the two of you spoke with someone, one of our colleagues
and friends, who asserted that Tether on Tron
has already won, and won in a way that it would be
a monopoly, basically.
Yeah, kind of unassailable, just move on. Don't fight over that battle anymore.
And I just, I find that,
I mean, clearly it's true that it's number one right now.
Tether is number one as the issued stablecoin,
and Tether on Tron, that pair, is number one.
So that's a fact.
We can all look at the data.
I find it super unlikely, though,
that it gets near 100% market share and everything else loses.
Because all we see right now is an explosion
of new stablecoin issuance and platforms.
and then it's a
combinatorial
from there, all the different pairs.
And I think we're only
with the Genius Act, we're only going to see
more.
We see explosion of creation, but do we
see explosion of usage of these other
ones?
Not yet, but we'll see.
We just saw, I think in the past week,
I think it was Wyoming,
the state of Wyoming
or some kind of governmental body within
Wyoming issued their own
stablecoin and the genius act is a framework that that supports that so banks governments state
level federal level in the u.s all will be creating stablecoins um can we just pause for a second what
what do we imagine that would enable or support or like what is it like if i were a citizen
of wyoming or like a resident that i could go to my bank put in fiat dollars and get the stablecoin
but what do I do with it? Do I pay other Wyoming people or is it
interchangeable when I go to Buenos Aires I can pay for stuff
so interchange with Toronto?
I'll share the high level benefits and then we can talk about the challenges
to get there like interoperability being the real challenge
but setting aside challenges, what does a digital
dollar give you over traditional dollars? First of all
24-7 settlement.
You don't have bank holidays and stuff like that.
You can exchange money anytime you want.
And you can do it anywhere you want.
So your example, you can go to, did you say Argentina or wherever,
and pay someone in dollars just from your mobile app.
So I think that's the high-level vision that anyone or everyone has
around stablecoins.
And if I'm using a JPMorgan stablecoin and I go to Argentina
and they're using Tether on Tron,
or if that's what their wallet receives,
if I can pay them and not have to worry about those details,
that would be amazing.
Then everyone's paying each other in dollars around the world.
But in a sense, if we want interoperability
and 24-7 settlement,
why don't we just all converge on one?
Yeah, well, because business reasons, right?
So like, people want that sweet, sweet yield.
Yeah, I mean, if you're JP Morgan
or any other company,
already Tether is making insane profits.
So if I'm a bank,
I want those profits.
If I have a huge customer base
and I'm giving my customer base
that I've acquired,
my customer base,
digital dollars,
why do I want to give all the profits
to Tether or Circle
or Coinbase or another company?
And for people that don't know,
when Steve's talking about the profits,
what they're doing is
they're holding treasuries on the back end,
which pays whatever,
4% or 5% at least now.
and their users get access to dollars.
So they're literally,
like when Tether is just printing billions of dollars,
they're literally just holding treasuries.
It's like, in some ways,
since Google, the greatest business model
in the last 20 years.
So it's more profitable on a per employee basis, right?
Yeah.
And again, I mean,
what we talked about last week,
I think the obvious answer,
why is Stripe and Paradigm
working on a new layer one tempo
that's intended to be a stablecoin
layer one.
I think for that, they don't want
Coinbase's base to run away
with being the online platform. So there's competition
for the platform and then the stablecoin
issuance on top.
And we'll see.
It's unclear
at both layers, it's unclear
how competitive it'll ultimately
be. It's very competitive now
in terms of lots of options.
but we'll see how much
consolidation there is for each
and obviously if you're in the lead right now
you are unlikely to be investing
in technologies that make it interoperable
although having said that even Tether who has the lead
they've issued Tether on Bitcoin
and then Ethereum and then Tron
and Solana, and now they're coming back to,
or they're exploring coming back to Bitcoin
on taproot assets, on their own RGB-based system,
and who knows if they're exploring on Spark as well.
But Tether clearly has shown they're agnostic
to underlying platform,
and they need to provide interoperability
between all those if they want
to create a good customer experience.
So even they're incentivized to do that.
It seems like they would feel a little bit trapped by Tron, right? Like they don't want to be stuck on Tron.
Totally. It's not theirs.
But I do, I worry, like, so I asked why should there be a lot of these? And you mentioned, well, JP Morgan wants to, you know, they have their customer base and they want to capture the sweet, sweet yield. But like, if I'm a customer of JP Morgan, why do I want to take some stable coin that's not really useful anywhere?
Well, I mean, we can get it into interoperability, but I mean, if we assume a world in which there's interoperability, then the customer doesn't even have to know about that, think about that or worry about that. It just works. And why would they pick JPMorgan Digital Dollar over Tether? Well, if I'm a JPMorgan customer, number one, I've probably never heard of Tether. Number two, if I've heard of it, I've read all this horrible FUD and it sounds like some kind of scam, right?
so there's tons of people who either have no brand affinity to it or are scared of it and i've been a
30 year customer at jp morgan or whatever which one am i going to choose obviously i'm going to
trust jp morgan they're my bank they've been my bank my whole life um so to me that seems obvious
why they'd pick it seems obvious why they would choose to do it if interoperability is solved
but at the point interoperability is solved
it also seems like less
important
where you got them really
so yes you have a relationship with JP Morgan
but will JP Morgan be able
to capture excess profits
if these are fully interchangeable
in commodity
well they have a lot
for the reasons
I think I just said
they have a huge customer base
and they'll just capture their
existing customer base
and whoever other customers they have.
I mean,
they won't necessarily,
they won't necessarily like win a new customer
because they have JP Morgan coin.
Right.
They'll capture customers
for all the other reasons they capture customers.
Yeah.
But,
and then as far as interoperability,
I mean,
Stripe paid a billion dollars for Bridge.xyz.
Exactly.
That is an interoperability solution.
Circle has an interoperability solution for USDC.
I actually don't know offhand
if Tether has one as part of their wallet
development kit, WDK, but I assume
they do, at least within their own
family of Tether.
And then there's undoubtedly,
I mean, anytime you get a billion-dollar acquisition
from Stripe, I'm sure there's like a dozen startups
that are trying to do some kind of bridge
solution as well. And then if you look
at Taproot Assets and Spark, they
both also offer inoperability.
Because if your Taproot Assets or Spark,
those are platforms that are trying to compete, enter
the game, they have no market share right now,
it's early, so
they obviously need to promote interoperability
because they're trying to
they need to interoperate with
USDC
on base for example.
Do we know if the interoperability
does it like a bridge
dot XYZ do they
interoperate like both
the stablecoin and the
underlying L1 or do they
interoperate one or the other or both?
Well in theory
it can be both. I think bridge dot
because AZ is both, but I'm not quite certain.
But certainly in theory,
and definitely taproot assets can do both.
I think if it's custodial,
then it's, I mean, if all this is done on a server,
it's like quite easy to do technically.
There's going to be middlemen and fees
and stuff like that.
There's going to be regulatory scrutiny and concerns
like can taproot assets or Spark
or any of these remain KYC free
is a big question.
because regulators might go to any of those,
whether you call it a bridge or DEX or exchange or swap
or whatever word you want to call it.
If I have stablecoin X on platform P1
and I'm trading with you and you have stablecoin Y on P2,
somehow that has to get converted.
There's a variety of solutions there,
but regulators can go to whoever's doing those swaps
and be like, hey, this is an MSB.
This feels and looks and smells like an MSB.
I'm calling it MSB.
You need to be licensed, and you need to KYC.
And I don't, that seems, I don't know.
I mean, kind of seems inevitable to me.
Honestly, the more I see all this,
it's a very interesting set of incentives and tensions here.
Because for example, you've got Stripe,
they pay a billion dollars to do Bridge,
and Theory Bridge exists just to swap
between the different stablecoins.
But now Stripe's going to launch their own L1.
I don't know if they're going to do their own stablecoin next on top of that remains to be seen, but that's like pretty big tension with their acquisition of bridge. And so honestly, the way I see more and more of this playing out, this actually just hearing you describe like that, making me more bullish on Bitcoin as the swap or interoperability layer in the long run, because these all just feel like different intranets, just like all the different cryptocurrencies again, right?
Like, you know, maybe they'll start with interoperability, but there will certainly be fights where, you know, okay, you're not giving me enough of my juice between Stripecoin and Tether.
And so, oh, sorry, interoperability is lost.
And that's just like a worse customer experience.
So I don't know exactly how this is going to flow.
And maybe the first round, and also like what happens like for the long tail, like, you know, maybe there's not a ton of users on whatever, some new stable coin that gets launched.
Maybe there's like a thousand, and maybe there's a thousand of those, and they start aggregating over time.
I think somehow, and also the sort of gray market use cases, right?
So like maybe you've got your Stripe coin and, you know, Stripe is being fully compliant,
but like all of a sudden the UK says, actually, sorry, like, you can't make your donation to
Alex Jones or whatever the next like controversial thing is.
People are like, what the fuck?
I thought I had a dollar.
Yeah, exactly.
PBJ.
And so I don't know.
I just, I don't know exactly how it's going to roll, but again, the beauty of Bitcoin
is internet versus intranet.
And so I don't know if it's going to be
the first step of that
is centralized where it's just like Bridge or someone
actually just runs a Bitcoin or Lightning
node and they can swap in and out of Tapper
assets and all these, you know, whatever
L1 stablecoins, maybe that's step
one. But it feels like on
a 10 plus year time horizon,
internet always wins, open wins. Like there's
just going to continually be
new restrictions
placed on the
regulated stablecoins and not just
government restrictions. There's just going to be like sort of mafioso style battles between
these companies, whereas anyone that can like route through Bitcoin, it'll just work. So I
don't know how that's going to happen, but internet over intranet.
So it's still, it feels to me like there's just so many competing business interests
that I just have a hard time seeing how everyone's going to be like cool with Tether being the only
issuer. Like whether you're Stripe
or
Coinbase or
JP Morgan to the world
to just like hand over that
to Tether. So that trillions
of dollars is all
on Tether and that one company
would be making like
hundreds of billions
of dollars of profits a year
or more.
I find that very hard to believe.
So these other very large
powerful actors are going
to compete with that.
And I just find it hard to believe
that somehow the user experience
leads to no swaps or bridges
and everyone's using Tether on Tron.
I think there will be swaps and bridges.
Lots of people are working on it.
And because of that,
it will be a solved problem
and then people are going to use
whatever product is most natural fit for them.
One more request for product or business I've been hoping to see for a very long time.
Someone still needs to build lightning network bridges between any of these Bitcoin chains that support HDLCs and Bitcoin.
Because even if some of these chains don't want to participate in swaps, as long as they support HDLCs,
there's a huge opportunity here to build that interoperability layer between Bitcoin and any of these chains.
I don't know if Stripe or any of those guys will support his shield sees or not, but if they do, that's a huge opportunity. Someone should build that company. And if you do, send me a message.
cool yeah and and just for the record here i'm not claiming that i believe usdt tron is the only
solution but it feels like if there are going to be others it's there's a lot to navigate here and
it feels like maybe new use cases that show up are more likely to be the places where there's
space for them um or like the existing use cases i think the existing use cases you know maybe
global south use cases probably work well enough for the time being so you kind of need i think new
use cases to come in like i have dabbled in stable coins out of curiosity but i never use them for
anything and so is there somebody like jp morgan who would help reveal a use case to me i'm guessing
this is the same for you guys you probably never actually use them right like you've you've dabbled
steve and i have sent some back and forth like years ago but we don't actually do any uh something
like it was it was tether and or usdc on various l1s so i remember the the reason i remember it is
because it was so surprisingly hard to do anything you wanted to do you're like because you have to
know oh tether but it's tether on top of polygon or you know some other some other l1 so you kind
of have to know that pair and then that kind of makes the whole experience really bad so my point
is not that USDT on Tron wins everything at all times.
I think USDT on Tron wins at what it's doing,
which is kind of a newly emergent
kind of Global South use case of a dollar-like thing.
But we don't have any stable coins
really integrated into our lives.
And so I think the opportunity,
if there are new things,
it's to serve sort of new use cases.
I think we're one example of a new use case
that is underserved or not served well
by the you know we need 24 7 settlement um but uh but yeah just how it's all going to play out
it's kind of fascinating hard to predict i don't i don't feel like i have a a silver bullet
prediction for how this thing is gonna gonna turn to you guys indy has an interesting point he's
saying in the chat argentina leads the region in terms of cryptocurrency value received which i
assume is primarily tether uh estimated 91.1 billion only slightly ahead of brazil's estimated
a 90.3 billion. If that's true, I mean, those are pretty big numbers. So I guess kind of gets to
your point that maybe there's going to be network effects in different use cases. I think the
question is also going to be like, okay, well, you know, if Stripe, Stripe has a shit ton of
merchants too, right? So they have a clear network effect. So maybe it's kind of like the US bifurcates
and like they're either going to use Circle or Stripe's coin, Global South uses Tether.
I want to see who's going to build the stable coins for the eyes, which is your...
And how does, how does the Stripe, the Stripe, I mean, I get Stripe, big payment network,
a lot of different, you know, UIs that they could expose, but I'm trying to imagine how
does the Stripe stable coin work?
Like, do they get a merchant, you know, surfacing the stable coin on tempo?
And then I come to it with a temp, like, do I have some wallet then that pays that way?
Or can I just use Apple pay and it kind of converts to the stable coin or like, yeah,
I feel like owning a network like that without the use case necessarily demanding a stable
coin i'm not trying to just see where that bridge if you can't pardon so imagine a world where
everyone has a stable coin wallet on their phone and then they go to a website or some kind of
they want to make a purchase and they're presented with stripe instead of paying with visa they pay
with their mobile wallet but it so the imagine part though we need to imagine a world where
I start carrying around
a stablecoin in some
mobile wallet, right?
I mean, there's like,
Trust Wallet has like
hundreds of millions of downloads
and while that's
his Trust Wallet
and MetaMask and Phantom, that's
more like gambling casino use case,
but I mean, you can definitely imagine
a world where there's hundreds of millions, billions of people
that have a wallet with stablecoin.
Those overlapping
with the BA and
that, you know. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So, and I think this was
our mutual friend's point is like the
people that would download
a stable coin wallet are the people in the
global south. So I think his point is you have network
effects in countries like Argentina
and Brazil where people actually want and need dollars.
Why wouldn't any of us download
a stable coin wallet? I'm not saying that we wouldn't,
but like we have Apple Pay.
And maybe they can integrate with Apple Pay, but like unless
there's some new thing that we can only get
with the stable coin. Right. Because I can use
Apple Pay even when the banks are closed. I have
24-7 access to pay whoever I want with Apple Pay.
Right?
Right.
How sophisticated are you?
I mean, it's similar to the Bitcoin pitch for merchants,
cut out Visa.
Like, you want to cut out these exorbitant fees, right?
I get why they want to cut out Visa, yeah.
Yeah.
So when you unlock billions or trillions of dollars,
then you can...
But why does it...
So I get that from the merchant perspective,
but the user doesn't even know how any of this works.
Well, the merchant can give discounts.
Like a rebate or something?
It always comes back to this discount,
which is what people have been saying
for a long time with payments too.
And if that actually starts happening, cool.
But even then, I wonder,
is saving 2% enough to like,
okay, I'll give you an example.
I've been going to this grocery store
next to my house recently,
and they have really good,
clean tasting coconut water.
And I'm buying a lot of coconut water.
I'm finding I feel a lot better
after all my saunas
with these clean electrolytes.
And they have like a rewards program.
And I get a tiny little bit,
a couple percentage points of cash back.
And I keep thinking,
you know, I should download that,
get a couple of percent.
And then I'm just like, nah, I don't want to like fuck with the app and all this stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know.
But I mean, sure, I have examples like that too where I don't waste my time.
But like clearly people spend an enormous amount of time with like credit cards and points back and dollars back.
And like there's tons of resources on the internet to compare all these cards.
Yeah.
And like a few basis points matters.
I mean, there's clearly a lot of demand for saving money through that.
It's fair, but I feel like how many people, I feel like people in our circles probably do that, like people that are like really into research, but like, and I guess, and maybe they represent.
It's a mainstream thing.
Is it?
Yeah I think there is a mainstream thing And also same with discounts Like maybe the reason you don hassle with it anymore is because you don care about a few dollars here and there
Next is too rich.
We're talking about getting a quarter.
You're valuing your time more than a few dollars.
But tons of people value it.
I mean, the reason why there's these discounts at these stores
is very popular, very mainstream.
and I think the rewards programs
and you know
optimizing credit cards
is like a hobby
of a lot of people
like people love that stuff
even though it's
I think it's mostly irrational
yeah they're very like
it's a particular personality
yeah
Austin was mentioning
you can put 200k on Coinbase
and get 4%
on your credit card now
what do you mean
200k on Coinbase
that sounds really mainstream
yeah
4% on 200k
putting $200,000
into Coinbase?
Why doesn't everyone do that?
That's a very mainstream.
Everyone has an extra $200,000
to throw on the Coinbase.
I think he's saying $200,000 Bitcoin
in KSATs.
No, it's $200,000.
I'm joking.
Okay.
If you put $200,000 on Coinbase,
then you can get 4% back.
That almost is like
a little bit at odds.
This guy doesn't know
the price of a gallon of milk.
Rich people care less
about the points back.
I feel I should just say
I am actually quite cheap.
you guys know i'm very chen yeah we know again i'm extremely but believe me i know i know the
price well i don't know the price of gallon milk because i don't drink milk but anyways whatever
i've minds doing better than we i'm lazy if anything i'm lazy
the shippy bc
um okay uh stable coins more commentary did you guys have anything else on this topic i know we're
we're only 15 minutes before we hit
let me ask you guys
same topic but just a different angle
let's say you're
whether you're a startup building a new product
like a new wallet
or you're at some fintech company or whatever
and you decide
stable coins, they're important
we need a stable coin strategy
we're going to do stable coins what do you what does that mean then what do you do what is it what
do you do when you add stable coins which which issuance which platforms yeah sounds a lot like
we need a blockchain strategy but how do you how do you think how do you think through that and
decide geez i mean i i don't know i i feel like a lot of it is like who is the customer of this
business what are the use cases where that customer um would change behavior for a different
pricing scheme right so that's why i'm i'm i feel like we have to to answer this question we have to
really think through the details it's not just oh stable coins are big let's do stable coins which
i think is kind of what's happening in the market it was like oh we want a piece of that action
did you see tether how are you just going to let tether run away with all that yield we want some
the yield piece. I get it. You want the yield, but how are you going to get the yield? Well,
the only way you really do this sustainably is to create value for people. So if now you're in
charge of like the blockchain group or the stable coin group, I think the big question is like,
who are our customers? What do they want? What kinds of incentives could we get them to do
something that they don't naturally want, but that we want and try to make that whole thing
fit together. And to be honest, I don't know that I'm super convinced that most, like, I think it
would be hard for a u.s business running stripe to have a really compelling offering for why i should
carry digital dollars and pay them with digital dollars i feel like apple pays a fine solution i
think you can get credit cards to get you cash back and stuff like that so i'm like skeptical
that there's just like a really good silver bullet answer here um but i think it's it's got to be like
where are you creating value for your customers?
And then you can maybe share some of that value
to get your customers to do something
that they don't otherwise naturally want to do.
All right, as long as you don't break the law
with the Genius Act.
Right, right.
But there's probably ways around that.
If I were asked for my company,
what would be my stablecoin strategy?
I would start by saying, let's buy Bitcoin.
Yeah, the stablecoin strategy.
Exactly.
that's a stretch exactly very very well played so actually yeah i think that's that's an interesting
new market let's say right like actually i don't i don't hold u.s dollars but if i did
i would rather hold them in a in a you know stretch yielding money market like fund uh and
And so you could imagine somebody who is interested in holding US dollars would be attracted to that kind of thing.
And if you can say, hey, look, we're going to take our major competitors getting all this yield instead of that, use our stable coins and get 9% yourself.
I think maybe 2% sounds kind of small, but I think Stretch is paying 9%.
So if there were a Stretch stable coin.
I would switch for that.
I think a lot of people who are interested in holding dollars, again, I wouldn't count myself among that.
But I think if you're interested in holding dollars, I think a stretch stablecoin would be a very different value prop, which doesn't try to compete directly with the Tether on Tron value prop.
I agree 100%.
And honestly, I think the biggest threat to Tether right now is MicroStrategy paying 9%.
2%, maybe not.
If MicroStrategy can pay you a lot, yes, that starts.
And I guess if Global South right now, I guess like the, I think the contention would be that it's already a network effect, already have entrenched habits, already have wallets, et cetera.
I think people maybe wouldn't pay, wouldn't change just for like a little bit of yield split.
But if it felt like they were giving up a lot of yield split, I think in that case, Tether, you know, Tether on Tron may be disruptible.
But my guess is it kind of enters, you know, sly roundabout way, not straight through the front door.
So the other thing I just want to mention, so I agree 100%.
So I meant this unironically.
If someone actually asked me for the stablecoin strategy, I would say to buy Bitcoin instead.
I think Stripe would be much better served just buying Bitcoin than trying to get the stablecoin wars, but so be it.
Max wants everybody to be a treasury company.
We don't have enough.
So be it.
Well, again, treasury company, let's say in the block style.
That always gets lost in conversations.
You guys are doing a better job framing it that way.
but everyone else, they lump it all together.
And it's extremely different strategy.
100% different strategy.
It only exists to hold Bitcoin
or does it exist to serve another business purpose
and then it chooses to hold the treasury and Bitcoin?
How about this?
I'm going to sort of diverge and say,
if you're just putting your profits in Bitcoin,
I'm just going to say,
just use Bitcoin as a savings technology.
It's not a treasury company.
You're just using Bitcoin for what it's intended as.
You're just using it as a savings technology.
So if I were running Stripe, I would tell them, guys, let's start, you know, stop trying to find the next Stellar Lumen and let's just save in Bitcoin because it works.
Okay, so that would be number one.
Number two, I have a response to that, but I'll wait.
This is just my take.
Number two, I think the most likely thing to pop would be tokenizing or whatever the stretch, 9%, even 5%.
That's something really interesting.
but I think if I were thinking longer term
as we discussed with Bitcoin payments as well
to your point DK
I actually I love the way you frame this
in general for any business conversation
I hate when people are always like
yeah let's start with like
where can we make some money
it's like that's so dumb
it's like what can we actually offer to the world
and then if we do a good job of that
we can make some money on it
cool
and so the two areas that I would be really focused on
one remittances
there's a lot of people in the US
sending a lot of money back home
I just realized
do you guys know how big the remittance flows
to Guatemala right now
I know Mexico is huge
but even i don't know the number okay uh 20 billion dollars a year right now it's been
exploding okay if i can get stable coin users guatemalans or mexicans in the united states
cool there's a real use case there boom that's one example for people like you me and uh dk
i would say something with stable coins for ai why because the bots are never going to work for
Apple Pay or Visa or like these like antiquated ACH, whatever old school things.
So I don't know what that answer is, but I would be going all in on just like sponsoring
tons of hackathons, getting people to use my stable coin with AI.
And that's all I would focus on.
Yeah, I feel like that's a great example of a new use case where people may not get Bitcoin
or care about Bitcoin, but they get dollars.
And if they can use a digital dollar to have their AIs pay each other, I think that's a
great example of a new use case.
So that to me feels like an area where you could disrupt.
But then again, if you're just in charge of this tablecoin arm of another existing business, that may not make sense with the existing business, right?
So a couple of things. One, I looked up Stretch. And for people wondering what we're talking about, STRC, stock ticker symbol.
it's trading at $95.05
right now
so it is below
the
I mean they want it to be
$100 right they want it to be stable
it hit as low
as $92
in the past week
so it's up to $95
it's as high as $98
is that good for
yield like if you buy it at $92
well their ideal world
They started at 9% to test the market.
Because if it can be traded at $100 and offer 9%, that's great news for them.
In fact, maybe they'd even raise the percentage then.
But if it's trading at 95, that's not stable.
So they will need to lower, or they may need to lower the interest rate.
No, lower the interest rate.
Wouldn't it be raised because they want more people to buy the instrument?
So if they're offering 9%, if they offer 10%,
I'm more likely to buy the instrument.
No, I think people are trading it down
because of the risk concern
that they won't be able to pay it off.
Right, but wouldn't you need to sweeten the pot
by paying a higher interest rate
to get people to still take that extra risk?
What I'm saying is if we're trading over $100,
then they would lower the interest rate
because, oh, we don't need to pay 9%, we could pay 5%.
But if it's trading below $100 at 9%,
that they need to try 10 or 11, which is crazy to me.
But that's my take.
What's your take, DK?
Yeah, I would guess the pricing is obviously set by the market.
There's just bids and asks, right?
So the reason it's not 100 is because people don't want to own it at 100
if it's only paying out $9 per.
My question is when the bidding goes down to 92, does it still pay out $9 or does it pay out 9% of 92?
I think it still pays out $9.
I think it pays out $9.
So my point is, if people aren't buying it, if I pay you $10, then $11.
Like there's some, I mean, there's some rate at which those two things will match.
We should look it up later though as to whether it's a fixed.
All this finance, fiat finance talk is hurting my head.
I agree, man.
I can't wait till stablecoins and everything is just gone.
One day there will be an energy-backed currency that we all use
and we can drop this little messy nonsense.
The other thing I wanted to comment on, though,
is back to the Stripe example.
That was partially tug-of-cheek, by the way.
I just wanted to respond.
Your first point about Stripe, they should just hold Bitcoin?
I don't really, or I mean, in isolation, sure, that's fine.
but I think it's, to me, it's apples to oranges,
like what they're trying to do with stable.
Like, currently they have a big business
based on TradFi.
If they see a world in which things move
from dollars and Visa to dollars and stable coins,
if they don't latch onto that world
and they stay in the old world,
their profits are going to go to zero
and then they'll have no profits to put into Bitcoin.
So that's a failed direction.
If they see a world moving to stable coins
and they embrace that,
they make a lot of fees and profits off of that.
They can still put it in Bitcoin.
So it seems, they seem orthogonal to me.
I was mostly being in tongue-in-cheek.
However, I will say that...
You're just waiting for my response.
However, I will say it reminds me just a little bit.
Like, and honestly, I'll just say this,
like increasingly Striped was just like a Coinbase.
Like, I mean, they had the chance
to be a generational company.
They already are.
I think they're going to squander it.
Same as Coinbase.
Like, yeah, Coinbase made a lot of fees
trading shitcoins.
And he could have been Michael Saylor,
or as Alex said,
he could have built the next JP Morgan instead.
It's going to stay Caesar's.
And now they're starting to gobble up some Bitcoin,
but 15 years too late or whatever it's been.
I mean, they're going to do fine.
Coinbase is going to be fine.
They're going to stick around.
My point is just like,
play fiat games, win fiat prizes.
It is what it is.
Speaking of casinos,
it just reminded me of a conversation I was having
did you see
and this is not a casino
but it might run the risk if it were to launch such a feature
so I wanted to
get your guys real time feedback on this
you guys are Lava users
customers, investors
demo beta users or something right?
familiar with the interface?
are you trying to like
out of something?
I've heard of Lava
You've heard of lava. You're familiar with what it is. So you can deposit Bitcoin, you can get a loan in stablecoin dollars.
Or in some bank account.
Well, you could get the loan in stablecoin dollars and then you can off ramp it from stablecoin dollars to bank account in whatever way you like.
And some people take the stablecoins and use it to buy Bitcoin.
So they're effectively depositing Bitcoin to get a loan in stablecoin to buy Bitcoin.
so you can see there's a little circularity there it's like a form of leverage my question is if you
were in charge of lava would you try to support that behavior more and give more like simplification
of that in the ui and help people do that and help people understand the risks or model out
the flows or would you try to somehow prevent that or limit that kind of behavior
I feel like I'm being put on the spot
I know, this is a hot one
I think yes
I'm not
today's use cases
I think are leverage
leverage slash shitcoin gambling
so you want to get a loan
on your Bitcoin because you want to go gamble
in Solana ecosystem or Ethereum
and buy meme coins and try to
moon and get leverage there
or you're a Bitcoin maximalist but you
just want to grow your stack, you're willing to take that risk, which is the scenario you presented.
So if we assume that's today's market and where the billions of dollars are being traded and not
other markets yet, then if I'm starting a company that's in the mix there, I think the most wholesome
way to do it while still making money would be to focus on the Bitcoin maximalists who want to
lever up and do what you just said.
Otherwise,
you're probably in
for a long road
to wait for
even more wholesome activities like
getting a loan to buy a home
or a boat or
your child's college expenses
or whatever, or you have a sudden
medical expense or something.
Those...
Oh, it's wholesome again?
I think that'll be...
I think that will become a very
large business, but like over a 10 plus year period. Yeah. I mean, I think I, um, I think it
depends on what Shazan wants to do. I mean, I think the, so, I mean, I know, I know these Bitcoiners
are good, wholesome people like the, uh, the shit quarters. Um, just kidding. There's, there's
plenty of Jajira Bitcoiners too, but, um, I mean, on the one hand, I don't really think,
you know, personally, it's like, it's not really any of my business what someone wants to do with
their own money. And so if they want to do that, like more power to them. I mean, I think it's
obviously good to surface the risks and explain it. But like, I think an interesting story is
in the early days, if I recall correctly, BitMEX got very, very little adoption on their platform
until they were doing like 2X leverage or something. Then all of a sudden when they
offered 100X, they became a pretty big platform. And like people are going to do it again.
And obviously this is not like that. And also we have a question in the chat, like how is this not
capital gains. We've talked about this a lot in the past. You can find some of those earlier episodes,
but they use discrete law contracts, DLCs, the Bitcoins held in a contract, and you only get
liquidated if it reaches a certain price. I'm of the view that this is just
a loophole intended to keep the wealthy and connected wealthy and connected,
and now it's available to everyone. I don't like the laws, but it is what it is.
The ability to take out loans against capital assets.
But if I were Shazan, and that's
what people want to use it for, I would probably allow them to use that. But I also have to
say, I can see the opposite side of this. I really respect Alex at River, who's basically,
I don't want to do any lending. It's just not the kind of business I want to build.
So I could see going either way. It just depends on what he wants to do.
I see no ethical issue with leverage to buy more at Bitcoin. It can absolutely be irresponsibly
done, but it also can be responsibly done. If you're in your early 20s, just starting
your career, you don't really
have that much money because you're just starting your career.
But you have
the conviction that
for example, we have about Bitcoin
and where
you think it's going to go.
Getting leverage
to grow your stack, I think
whether it's 2x or 100x
matters, right? But some leverage
I think completely
is reasonable. Because if it's a
failed bet,
you're young and you didn't
even really risk that much money in the first place compared to your future earning power.
So I don't think it's like an ethical quandary at all.
I think one way, and again, like I'm seeing a lot of things tongue and cheek, I think
ultimately people are adults and they can make up their own minds.
It's not really my place to say or the company's place.
Although it could be the company's place if they have a specific vision of the world,
but that just comes down to the founder.
Like I don't think Alex wants to do this and I respect that, but I also don't think it's
like a bad thing to offer it.
So I think one thing you could do is you could have like, potentially this could be interesting
for design week,
you can have a user interface
or experience
where you're allowed
to take a loan
against your Bitcoin
to get more leverage,
but there's just like
a few questions
they ask you first.
Like, for example,
like, do you own any chairs?
Or like,
do you still have a kidney?
I thought you were going
to suggest a skibbity UI.
Max up the menu gate
to help regulate this.
And you could have
like a little kidney
like figure,
and it's like,
if you still have a kidney,
like we might suggest
exploring that option first.
Just,
We should wrap up, but just the last comment, which you spoke to already, but Program Scarcity says, I don't get how the Bitcoin loan companies work. They hold the private keys. How is that not considered a capital gain cell?
Well, Max responded to that specifically with Lava's solution in which the loan company, the lender, Lava is the intermediary and the lender.
Neither of them have your private keys.
They do not control your Bitcoin.
So I think that solution is pretty airtight in terms of not being any kind of transaction of selling your Bitcoin.
Other loan companies, I think it's more gray area.
For example, with Coinbase,
they turn your Bitcoin into CBDC,
like they're wrapped Bitcoin.
And then it goes on to the Morpho chain.
Who knows how many layers deep it goes?
Not only are there all kinds of risks
and scary things about that,
but none of us are accountants or lawyers.
So who knows what the IRS treatment of that
would be today or in the future but it certainly would raise more questions than the the lava
approach but it's less it's less about the who holds the private keys but it's really if you
have a custodian that you entrust your bitcoin to who holds your private keys and then they do
something else with your bitcoin besides just hold it as bitcoin i think that's where the issue comes
because there's you know long long history of custodians who hold assets and give you
you know debt you know credit against those assets that let you get cash out that's a very
well understood area even if the even if the asset is fully transferred to the custodian
so it's not really about the private keys it's about like what they do with it
i don't know um so i think if i understand what you're saying dk like if i um own tesla stock
and the firm I hold that with,
they might,
J.B. Morgan,
people are thinking,
I'm actually not a J.B. Morgan customer,
but I've played one on the show.
So I hold it with J.B. Morgan, let's say,
and they then re-hypothecate it
and will supply it to short sellers,
et cetera, and profit off of that.
I think that's sort of what you're
referring to and that doesn't like cause
me some tax event or something
but that's different
in that whereas
with it's different than the
case with Coinbase and Bitcoin
loans because I get
I have one asset called Bitcoin and I give it
to Coinbase then they actually
trade my Bitcoin
for another asset
wrapped Bitcoin
totally different asset like the Tesla stock
is not traded to a different, like, you know, Rivian stock or something, right?
Is that true?
Do we know that?
I'm pretty sure JP Morgan does not trade Tesla stock for Rivian stock.
Well, but could they?
Not as an investment decision, right?
No, but if they're just like, I don't know, all day doing some kind of like short-term,
high-frequency, I don't know if they are.
I mean, I think it is a good point you're making that even when you have a traditional
custodian holding traditional kind of non-crypto assets that they sometimes do other things with
those assets and and so far the history is like you know the tax treatment on that is that it's
not a taxable event and my guess is a lot of that comes down to the fact that jp morgan owes you the
tesla stock back because they they did whatever they felt like with it but as far as you're
concerned, they showed it on your ledger in your account as Tesla stock, even if the Tesla stock
got sold and rehypothecated 10 times over, right? I think the honest answer to all of this is that
all of these questions, whenever you're dealing with banking or tax laws, it's all extremely
arbitrary. And frankly, I would say all part of the P&HL scam in which we have lived for a long
time. Tremendous amount of trust, yeah. Tremendous amount of trust. Like, hey, I have a dollar with
JP Morgan, where all of a sudden did they get $10
to go and gamble with?
I don't know. And so I think
increasingly, I'm glad that we're giving
this superpower to hack the system
to everyone now, but
I look forward to a day where
these silly P and Shell games are no longer.
That's my day.
All right.
All right. I think we got to call it.
We got to call it. We're over time.
Great chat, guys.
Good to see you guys again.
Good bitching at you guys. Bye-bye.
I'll bit chat you on the interwebs.
We'll bit you at you too, DK,
even though you're not here.
Just favorite me so I can be part of your club.
Sweet.
All right.
Bye, everyone.
Yeah.