All right, welcome to another episode of the Presidio Bitcoin Jam.
Hey guys, what's up?
I am sorry to say it's our last episode.
It's the final show.
Final show.
Almost.
For multiple reasons.
We originally thought because Bitcoin's dying and almost dead that it would be our final show.
Yeah.
But then Max and I each almost died on the way to the show.
and if we've lost we've lost toshi i've lost max and we've lost steve what am i doing i'm sitting
here like narrating it's just dk and bitty are the only ones left unfortunately the suit that we
put the bitty suit just like yeah no i um yeah i mean push nature too hard swam too cold
scary experience
made it but
good reminder that
you know
the digital realm
I spend so much time
in the digital realm
going analog
you gotta be
don't fuck with
mother nature
yeah
glad you made it out
and you had your own
I biked to work
and
laid my bike down
but
made it here
in one piece
I was a little late
so I was pushing
it extra hard
and
bridges
wet wood bridges
laid my bike down
is kind of a gentle way
is it destroyed
is your bike like
No, it's durable.
It's my e-bike.
Oh, damn.
It's like a 75-pound bike.
It's basically like laying a motorcycle down.
Did you crash while I was electric, man?
Yeah.
It's both.
I'm pedaling, but with the motor.
Too much extreme sports.
Too many extreme sports.
But we won't be here next week because it is Thanksgiving.
Oh, that's right.
That's right.
So we'll be with this show, and then we'll be back in two weeks.
Yeah.
So we're just kidding.
It'll probably be it.
It's not actually all over.
It'll probably be a slow week next weekend.
It'll be slow.
Yeah.
Thanksgiving.
Remember we used to, I think when we started this, are we a year in?
Yeah.
It was roughly, that's right.
About this time last year?
It was November-ish, early December.
And we were going to start a gratitude practice.
That's right.
Remember?
Pierre Rochard.
Pierre Rochard, we gave gratitude.
We're still grateful for Pierre.
We're still grateful for Pierre, but we have not kept up on our gratitude practice.
But it's Thanksgiving, so maybe we can think about what we're thankful for and get back
either right now, real time if you have one
or we can get back in December with our gratitude.
Let's put you on the spot. What are you grateful for?
I'm grateful for you, Max.
That's very sweet. And Steve, I'm grateful for you.
I'm grateful for both of you guys too.
I'm grateful for Satoshi.
Somewhere in the hat.
Sporting the hat.
I believe this is episode 49.
So, not bad.
Pretty, like for one year, right?
We only missed a few weeks.
I didn't think about that. Wow.
We still got a couple weeks left.
I think we started
the last week of November
so in one calendar year
we did 49 to 50
episode 50 we'll have to celebrate
pop champagne or something
on the show
we'll have to wear a Peter Schiff hat
last week was super exciting
with all the Bitcoin payment stuff
and Square etc
Spiral, we talked last week
Spiral launched some cool stuff last week
Wave 2 came out this morning,
so I wanted to talk a little bit about that.
My team's rocking.
Tell us, yeah.
We're the no-scroll apps, guys.
Well, it's...
Finish.
Pay the log.
I think, as I mentioned last week,
I've gone from sort of bear to bull
in terms of, like, coffee payments
and retail payments in the U.S. using Bitcoin.
But I still think it's going to be a huge grind.
It's not like instantly consumers are going to go
making payments.
at US retailers.
So we need the Bitcoin army to get out there
and help us out and do it in a sustainable way.
So we launched a marketing kit last week for folks.
Today, we announced several different ways
people can get involved.
And often people ask me,
they're like, hey, I'm not a protocol dev.
How can I contribute to Bitcoin?
Well, I think this is a great way for anyone to contribute.
If you're passionate about Bitcoin,
that's all you need is passion for Bitcoin
and you can help in this way.
So one, get out there, go to your local merchants,
use the marketing kit Spirals created to help you out.
They're just extra tools.
That's one way you can do it.
Two, if you want to be like a local champion
for your city or region,
you can now, one thing we announced today
is you can apply and we'll send you a box
of itty bitty plushies and other supplies.
Your mileage may vary.
For you, well, the enthusiasm has been very high
for the plushie.
In fact, Joe from Pink Owl told me that kids are stealing it from.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Because he puts it in front of his register and they keep taking it.
That's good.
All right.
But we started with five physical hubs in the U.S.
We talked about that last week.
Then Kansas City came to call in.
So we supply Kansas City.
And already today we've had Rhode Island requests.
Seattle asked Austin Bach.
Is he listening?
He usually listens.
Yeah.
He applied as well.
So we'll get you going, Austin.
Austin Valk, not Austin the City.
We already got Austin the City covered.
How does someone apply if they want to?
We'll check the Spiral Twitter account.
We got the details there, but you fill out a very simple form.
So there's that.
Also, we announced contributions to this community.
This is not just a Spiral thing.
It's public good.
So if you want to contribute, we provided some resources today to contribute.
Another thing we did.
So you have something, is it monetary contribution?
No, there's a GitHub for the software or marketing techs.
Yeah, I guess there's software for the website,
but it's mainly more of a marketing thing.
So if you want to improve the one-pager, create a new one-pager,
maybe translate or something.
Translate, yeah.
Oh, that's cool.
And so that was one of the explicit call-outs was translations.
And then we're also working on,
So we have the marketing kit for Bitcoiners, but we're also working on a marketing kit for merchants.
Because once they turn it on, then they realize, oh, other than a few rabid Bitcoiners, normal customers are not even aware to pay in Bitcoin.
So we're creating a marketing kit for merchants to help them create awareness and provide incentives.
So people who want to contribute to that, we don't have all the ideas and knowledge, so we'd love to have other Bitcoiners contribute.
And then another thing we've noticed, all three of us have seen several people here at Presidia Bitcoin and throughout the U.S. and even world are really enjoying going out and trying to convert merchants.
And they have stories to tell and they have really amazing stories and exciting stories and wins.
And they also have some losses and lessons like what didn't go well, what didn't land well, where can we improve?
so I was getting those in like DMs
and like these private messaging groups and stuff
and I'm like I love reading all these
but like we want to share that with more people
so Spiral created a public Discord
for Bitcoin advocates that are going around doing this
to share their stories
and then for others to learn from them
and then bless you
and we're going to point like Square
and all the other point of sale software solutions
and space to that Discord as well
because like, hey, you can learn a lot about your own products
and what it's like to onboard as a merchant.
So lots of good stuff from Spiral today.
I also just want to throw in my whatever two stats story.
I did last Saturday, I tried to onboard merchants
at my farmer's market or one of my farmer's markets.
And I think I spoke to five or six merchants.
And my biggest takeaway is I need, I'm going to go back,
maybe this weekend, maybe next week, I don't know,
but in bringing the orange flyer, the lead behind.
The lead behind is critical because I think for a lot of people,
let's say it was five, of those that I talked to,
one guy I have a very strong relationship with
or we've been chatting for over a year,
he's also, let's say, I don't know, open-minded, anarcho-curious.
And so when I was just like, hey, man,
this is a way to give the middle finger to the banks
and you know the um oh so you're not leading like i thought we were talking about leading with the
three percent but i did with everyone and i used that with him as well but this guy and i have like
we've chatted for over a year like i know his context yeah i know his vibe and so you know for
him being able to say like you know you you would like to break away from the corporate overlords
who may not have your best interest at heart that resonated a lot and of course three percent savings
is also great so he's the one guy that said he would go and read more and learn about it and i
think he might actually so it'll be i'll be interesting interested to see if he followed
up on it or not but i would say that was like my my highest likelihood of the other ones i talked to
you know a couple people were curious about three percent savings but everyone kind of gave me a
weird look um there was another woman who like definitely seemed like they thought you were
yeah like some kind of weird scammer and like you know like what is this bitcoin thing like
um one guy clearly was excited about the savings and curious but um you know just seemed busy so i
I think what I would love to do is I'm going to go back, give them the leave behind.
I probably wouldn't feel comfortable doing the plushy thing for them, for these particular
guys.
Maybe the chocolate guy, because he's pretty cool.
But to leave behind, to show them some way that it's a real community.
I know one thing that you've been debating is how much to tie in.
This is from Square versus not Square.
In my experience, I think having something from this company you know and trust also
is a backer of this thing, would I feel like lend additional credibility?
but everyone's going to have their own experience with that.
Yeah, I'm excited to see.
Oh, the other thing that I think we should definitely do,
maybe it's in the Discord or as people are sharing this,
is I think I asked for this last week,
but I would love to see videos of like,
show me step-by-step how do I turn it on for a merchant?
Because I don't know.
I've never really played with a Square Terminal.
I think we have one here, which I should play with,
but I could see the chocolate guy being like,
cool, do it for me now, and I don't know how to.
So I think that's something if we get those videos
of just like, here's a two-minute step, step, step,
that'll help at least people like me.
Is that easy enough to do without,
because I think you were mentioning
there's some KYB or some private material
that might get shared,
some sensitive information.
Is that possible to make a video like that?
It's just like an ad hoc?
Well, I don't know about it.
If there is,
I don't know if there's personal information in there,
but then someone could go
that has some basic editing skills
and just take that out.
There's a comment from Deanna
saying that GitHub can be overwhelming.
And I just say that for people
that haven't used GitHub before,
yeah, I think that's understandable.
But it can be really easy.
Like if you're going to do complex Git commands,
that is definitely complicated.
But if all you want to do is express an idea,
it's actually quite simple.
You can just create a new issue.
So you just go to the issues page,
click a button, create new issue,
and then you type some text.
So, I mean, it's literally no harder than an email.
Now, if you want to actually contribute and open a PR,
there's a little bit more things you need to learn.
But since this is content,
you're not having to write code or anything.
So it shouldn't be that hard to learn
how to create a PR for like a text edition.
If we sort of take somebody who's not familiar with GitHub,
let's maybe talk through some of what,
because you're very familiar with GitHub,
So you're sort of talking about it as an expert user.
But my understanding is this is a unique URL that effectively hosts something like a blog.
The GitHub entry is mostly the text of the thing.
And when you say create an issue, an issue hangs out in a public area around that text for other people who are looking at that text to be able to see and review and comment on, right?
Yeah.
I mean, an issue is like, hey, I found a problem or I could improve the wording.
or here's an entirely new one-pager that I created.
Sorry, sorry.
So an issue could be like,
here's an entirely new one-pager I would like to see created.
The focus on the 3% is great,
but I want to create a one-pager that focuses on no chargebacks
or I want a heavily orange pill,
go hard on Bitcoin.
Whatever it is you want to create.
And then you could create an issue which says,
here's what I imagine it looking like.
And you might create that
because you're going to follow up
with a quote PR pull request,
which creates it,
or you're hoping someone else in the community does.
So two thoughts.
One, Matt is in the chat.
What's up, Matt?
And he's saying,
our design template is in Canva,
no GitHub required.
I would maybe just like push all of you guys,
particularly Steve and Matt,
y'all are so technically literate
that like I would just,
one thing that I'm learning
over and over and over again
as I'm seeing things diffuse technology
is like literally assume that like we're working with people
who when you say GitHub, that just terrifies it.
So one solution that I would like to see
and maybe someone that is technically literate
that wants to help,
this would be a great initiative for someone to launch,
just do a Google Doc.
Everyone knows Google Docs.
And then if they want to take that Google Doc
and move it over to the GitHub,
someone who's more comfortable with that,
that would be a great service.
But my guess is you'll see an order of magnitude
at least more participation with a Google Doc.
But let's agree to a point,
but let me be clear.
So no one is suggesting
that merchants start using GitHub.
And even the Bitcoin army that we're suggesting
goes out and tries to convert merchants.
No one has to use GitHub.
The only people that has to use GitHub
is the small set of people
who want to contribute to the website
and add webpages.
It'll be a relatively small group.
I do agree with the point
even for that set of people
using Google Doc
to start formulating ideas
but the reason why
GitHub is important is because
we want a public
community for open source
where people can view what is being
proposed, can review
it, give feedback, because ultimately
it'll need to get merged
and so
if Deanna
wants to create a new one-pager,
she absolutely should
feel compelled to do that.
But it needs to go through a public
review process before getting
merged. So what I'm saying is I think
we can do both because Deanna's comment here
even says, even when you say or could be confusing,
I only know it's pull requests. I've been hoping
I need to get my new contacts.
I've been hanging out around still,
LOL. My point is
I still think it's at least one order back to
more people in the army that are going to be
scared of GitHub. And this is an opportunity
for someone that, you know, there could be like
a decentralized version of this where someone does their own
like, Deanna, you could just do a Google Doc,
publish it, and then I'm sure
someone like Matthew saying no need for an idea.
Someone that's comfortable with both could go and
like cull and
like kind of aggregate the best ideas.
But I'm just guessing it's at least one,
maybe even two orders of magnitude more people
that will do it if it's just like
Google.
Just my two sides.
Okay, but then how will they get the public review process?
Well, I'm saying you could still move that.
I think you could have both, right?
Who will move it, though?
I guess my advice to people is like,
Matt, I don't know.
Well, that's it.
So, I mean, I think if you want to contribute
by reviewing stuff or adding things,
you got to get comfortable with GitHub.
I don't think it's that.
If you're in that boat
that you actually want to contribute that way,
it's not that difficult to use GitHub,
especially for text.
Maybe.
I would just say, like, one thing
I just keep learning over and over,
the last thing that hits me in that is like,
like the bar for anyone to do anything
has to be so much lower than I thought.
So it's a fair point,
but I think there's an opportunity for someone to onboard,
like at least I would guess an order of magnitude more contributors
if the bar is zero.
Okay, but also I'm going to keep listening
because we don't want like 10,000 people contributing to GitHub.
That would be like overwhelming.
Yeah, totally.
We want 10,000 people globally in the Bitcoin army
going out to the cities and converting merchants,
that's where we want 10,000 people.
Another thing, like a healthy metric,
just having like, frankly, half a dozen people
to interview on GitHub is really all that's needed.
We just don't want it to be like
only a couple people from Spiral.
Totally, and I guess what I would say
is maybe there's an opportunity for an agent
or someone like a Matt
or someone that's like comfortable with both
to go and like, I'm just saying
there's probably a gem of an idea
that will emerge in a Google Doc
And someone who is committed and comfortable in both languages can then come and move those things over.
Is Mac saying this because he's never submitted a PR?
I actually have, believe it or not.
I took Justin Moon's Biddle Bootcamp back in the day.
So I have, in fact, built Bitcoin from scratch in Python.
I just love the trolling, though.
It's a good trolling.
But it is true.
You do have a GitHub account?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Yeah.
Check me out, baby.
Cypher better. It's been a minute.
But I will say
that one technology lesson
I just keep getting whacked in the head over and over again
is like, and we'll talk more about this with defaults.
However simple you think something is,
it's got to be 10,000x more.
Maybe what we really need is
a Google Docs-like interface
that is built on Noster
that actually
can use the commenting interface, but it's actually
simplifying
the UX to make it feel more
accessible or normal.
even easier way to do this was imagine if you have a bot that could just go through discord and
like super easy it's like hey if you have never touched github you don't want to just like push
yourself in github and then the bot could just go and like get the best ideas publish those and then
someone you know from spiral or wherever could just like oh like this is cool this is worth adding or
not yeah so anyways cool um anything else on this topic or we i think it's awesome like i'm i'm also
So like Steve converted from skeptic to like pretty hopeful.
Yeah.
Speaking of spiral and square and block,
there was this, I think it was a big earnings call.
Was it last week or a few days ago?
Well, the earnings call was a few weeks ago,
but this was a block investor day.
Okay, investor day.
Which is, you know, earnings calls are obviously every quarter.
This was the first investor day in I think three and a half years or so.
The last one was during the COVID era,
which kind of sucked.
I mean, everything about that era sucked, right?
But I mean, it was remote, videotaped.
I participated in that one.
I felt super robotic.
It was the first time I've actually read
off a teleprompter when being recorded.
That sucks.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd really...
It turned me into being very robotic.
I would need to practice more off a teleprompter.
Basically, I don't like teleprompters.
Who does?
I like to just shoot from the hip.
so anyway um but this one was you know in person is here in the bay area and um uh i i was here
this week at like the hrf event and stuff but i didn't attend but by all by all um uh accounts
that i've heard it was a really you know really good day vibrant you know the great dynamic being
in person. I think there's a lot better story to tell today than three years ago about the
company. And I think the people, the executives that did tell the story had a lot of good
things to say.
Yeah. And the video is going to be out? I looked and I didn't see it up yet.
Yeah, I looked yesterday morning. It's the last time I looked and it still wasn't available.
I don't know the ETA.
Well, so I think the summary most of us read was by our good homie, Q-Baby. Shout out to
cute baby. There's like 19 or so
points. What did you guys think from
which self?
I only know his
Twitter account, but
apparently he was there in person,
so he gave an in-person account.
So we can verify he is a human, though?
Well, I can't.
He's a cute baby giraffe.
He's a toddler now.
It's suggesting
that he's a real person.
But I thought it was interesting.
Because there has been speculation.
It's like Miles Suter or Jack.
I think it's actually an independent person from Block.
Right, right.
From Block, meaning somebody who works there.
No, independent from Block.
Like not a Block employee.
An actual, someone who's invested money in Block.
Yeah, yeah.
Cares about the shareholder value.
But it is interesting because he's like obsessed with Block.
And I've been following this dude for a while.
He's got some good, really good ideas, good alpha.
But whoever it is, they're...
Yeah, his analysis and commentary is generally quite bullish and optimistic, which is consistent with investing in the company.
He seems to really get what we're doing overall, but including Bitcoin.
And I think maybe one of the things you wanted to bring up is a lot of other investors, at least the way Qbaby reported at the investor day,
that when Bitcoin was brought up,
there was less of an appreciation for it.
Everybody's kind of rolling their eyes.
Like, you know, Bitcoin again?
Yeah.
This is crazy.
This is 2025.
What is going on?
But less of an appreciation for,
well, I mean, I would guess such investors
would definitely roll their eyes
at what we're talking about
with like Bitcoin payments to our retail.
Which that specific thing about Bitcoin,
even most Bitcoiners
would maybe roll their eyes at that.
Even I was saying two months ago, I kind of rolled my eyes at an American buying a coffee with Bitcoin because to me that was the last use case that I could imagine being converted.
As I've talked about in the show, my mind's changed on that.
But overall, it still surprises me that overall, a company doing great things around Bitcoin, it not resonating with a lot of the investors, it's kind of surprising.
And as an investor, your job is to find things that the market doesn't yet believe.
If the whole market believes and knows a thing, it's kind of too late.
It's already priced in.
So you have to be, like as an investor, your job is to find opportunity where nobody else
is looking or noticing.
I mean, you're talking about the platonic ideal of an investor, right?
Sadly, in a broken market with broken money, it feels like more and more investors are
just playing it safe.
Like, look, I mean, people spend more time thinking about what the Fed is going to do
than actually trying to find a gem.
So I wish what you were saying was true, but I mean, Cute Baby seems to be one of the real investors out there. So shout out that guy.
So my point, though, and I think this is what Steve is raising because we talked about this a little bit yesterday, is I think, you know, we come at this from like Bitcoin holders who care about the principles of self-sovereignty and self-custody and, you know, scarcity.
And there's a lot of those kinds of things.
And those don't resonate with a merchant when you're pitching it to a merchant.
But we kind of discovered through the work that Spiral done that 3 save 3 is the message It not down with the state It not self It save 3 Every merchant probably perks up at that
For sure. Who wouldn't?
And so my question is,
why is there not similar messaging
to help explain to a candidate investor in Square
kind of like disregard the Bitcoin-ness of it?
Like, that's not the story.
The story is make, you know, these there's this monopoly of, you know, the visa controls duopoly or duopoly.
And you, you know, Bitcoin enables you to not be subject to the behest of that monopoly.
Well, can we have real talk?
I mean, to me, the big question I have and, you know, Steve, you can shut me up and kick me off the chair at any point if I need to.
But like to me, like it's very obvious.
It's like just disrupted visa with us.
like Bitcoin, 3% fees.
I mean, who's not going to use that?
And so to me, as an investor,
if I'm looking and saying, wait a second,
so in the old world,
I had to use one of the two players in the duopoly,
Viser Massacre, they're charging 3% fees
because they have a duopoly.
And then someone else is coming and saying,
we're not going to charge you fees.
And obviously you can't do that forever,
like block us to make money at some point,
whatever, 1% fees, you still radically undercut them.
I'm looking at this and I'm like,
if I have two brain cells as an investor,
I'm like, well, Visa's one of the most profitable companies on the planet,
and these guys just undercut them.
Seems like a big deal.
So I haven't watched Investor Day yet because I wasn't there
and the video's not available yet.
But I'd have to think that cutting out the fees was part of the messaging.
So I guess we'll find out when we watch the video.
Cute Baby said they said a couple of times
this is a paradigm shift or something like that.
So that was the,
I think that was in relation to dollars on lightning,
which is very much related to this.
But again, maybe it didn't click yet.
I don't know.
But I mean,
the cutting out the middleman's having 3% fees,
that doesn't take a genius to click.
That's what I'm saying.
Dollars on lightning and things like that,
that's a little bit more.
You might need to hear it two, three times
or frame different ways to really
rock that.
And then let's see, someone, oh,
Ram asked, how do employees
at Blockfield out Bitcoin?
Yeah, I mean, I can comment on that.
I mean, I joined the company over six years ago,
and when I joined, there were
like 30 people, there's like
a Slack channel called Bitcoin, right? There's probably one
like that at every company. And there's
like 30 people in that when I joined.
So, I mean, when I joined, the company had already
launched buying and selling Bitcoin
on Cash App, and I mean, the company was
already like very much
known for, at least within the Bitcoin community,
known for being into Bitcoin, right?
And Jack was already very public,
and the reason I even joined is because they created Spiral.
So they're all the...
Square crypto.
Oh, yeah, square crypto.
Square crypto at the time.
Square Solana.
So, I mean, there are already all these public data points
on like, oh, blocks about Bitcoin.
But I joined, there are like 30 people in this like,
you know, many thousand person.
I think there are 4,000 employees at the time.
um and so that that slack channel has grown to well over it's over last i checked 1300 people
is probably way more now um so just the level of engagement interest um another data point um
like back when we worked on that paper together four years ago energy and environment and stuff
like that um there are definitely there was a small but loud um uh negative group on bitcoin
within the company.
And I haven't heard,
there's even like a Slack channel called,
I actually forget what it's called now,
but it's the haters.
Like the people who hate Bitcoin,
they have their own Slack channel.
Why do they work at Block?
Yeah.
Well, I mean,
some employees have been public on Twitter too,
like with very aggressive tweets that are negative.
I mean, that would be like me working in JP Morgan
and be like down with banking.
Like I hate banking.
Well, but I mean,
maybe what Ram is getting at is that
if you take almost any big tech company,
the majority are not Bitcoiners,
not into Bitcoin.
I would break it down roughly as like,
you know,
well, it used to be 1%,
now maybe 5% are Bitcoiners,
and then like 5% are haters,
like just like emotional and truly hate it.
And go public.
It's hashtag Bitcoin dash sucks.
Is that real?
Yeah.
No mommies.
It is real.
But I don't think it's been active for quite a while.
Oh, Lord.
But and then so, I mean, it's sort of like 5% huge advocates, 5% haters, and then 90% sort of like don't care, busy with life or curious or something like that.
And I think a similar.
So joining Block back then, it was kind of a similar distribution, which I think might surprise outsiders because they're like, because from the outside, it's like, well, the CEO, the founder and CEO is an enormous advocate.
But well, two things.
One, just because a CEO is passionate about something doesn't mean thousands of employees are, that they're passionate about something.
Right.
And then also just the way, you know, Jack leads, I mean, he very much allows people to have their own view and perspective.
And yeah, he's not going to fire you just because you don't like Bitcoin.
I mean, but I guess my point is like, I would, I would expect it.
And maybe I guess just the human nature of like, you already have a good job.
you know what I'm doing, but like if my like founder and CEO came out and started being like,
I am so pro-swana or whatever, I would just bounce. I mean, you literally did that.
All right. Well, yeah, all right. The man walks the walk. But anyway,
but the last point I'll say to answer the question about like block employees,
there's definitely been a noticeable shift over time that the haters have either left or have
been convinced otherwise or are just quiet now. I don't know. But I think the middle 90%
employees have definitely shifted towards a better understanding and appreciation. And
even if they might not identify as a Bitcoiner, they're much more supportive, is my sense.
I know that at the Block by Block event in September when 10,000 employees all came to
Oakland, there were some human rights activists that came for a panel and spoke how they used
Bitcoin, similar to the HRF event that happened this past week.
And that really impacted a lot of employees as well.
Because you got to remember, people who don't work in Bitcoin and think about it all day
long, like us and a lot of our audience, you primarily hear about Michael Saylor and people
getting rich and scams.
Scams and shit.
That's most the news.
So that is your impression of Bitcoin.
How does that picture align with Strock's values of economic empowerment, people giving financial access to more people?
It sounds like two different worlds.
But then you hear these stories of the human rights activists who have actually used it for real good.
That changes minds.
And if we do see success with small businesses able to cut out the fees and thrive, obviously that will land well with block employees.
But beyond block, like Silicon Valley and everywhere, because the little guy is being helped out.
Are you suggesting every block employee is not Red the Creature from Jekyll Island yet?
I'll have to add that to their reading.
Just making sure.
Okay, cool.
yeah okay
so
this should we talk
well I mean just one more point on that before we jump into whatever
the next topic is like to your point I guess one thing
that like
has just been very eye opening to me in the
last five plus years like getting into
quote unquote investing professionally like
is
you know I came into this and really thought
like kind of like you thought I was like oh like there's more like
efficient market hypothesis like people are like
truly intellectually curious they truly want to find
truth. And that, I mean, I guess exists, you know, in a couple of corners, but it's just been
shocking to me up and down the stack from early stage, especially like the bigger funds you get
later stage. And I get it human nature. People just want their, you know, their fees and this
and that. But like, it's been honestly like a little, I don't know if the word is disheartening.
I mean, in one case, it's really encouraging because like, I used to look up to a lot of
these funds and be like, oh man, like Sequoia does it. I know it's the best. It's like, no,
I'm like, man, I'm not really sure these guys know what they're talking about at any stage of the,
And there are very smart people and there are exceptions.
But I don't know.
It's been very eye-opening to me that like, you know,
efficient market hypothesis is absolute bullshit.
And just in general, like most investors,
I just don't really take seriously based on the whole Bitcoin thing.
One last point on the investors.
Like investors, I don't know.
Investors who maybe, you know, don't get Bitcoin
or don't see how to incorporate it into valuing a company like Block.
This is just very anecdotal evidence,
but I've heard two or three instances already just in the past week
of Bitcoin army going out to merchants saying,
hey, you want to save 3%?
Turn on Bitcoin.
Sure do.
And then the Square customer tells them,
and this isn't even like a Square employee.
This is just like a Bitcoiner.
they tell them like we're we're about ready to switch to a competitor like toast whatever and
then they learn about square accepting bitcoin and it actually retains them as a square customer
really yes because the fees well saving i i don't know what combination of like saving fees versus
like oh curiosity curiosity bitcoin or or or or even just like oh square still like alive and
relevant, alive, doing new innovative things.
Like it might be reframing the brand as like fresh and,
and doing new exciting things, whatever.
So I don't know the answer.
It's only a few anecdotes, but it, I mean,
given the short amount of time and only if you, you know, it, it might,
it might be, it might actually become quite significant.
So like even if the Bitcoin payments don't happen,
if it just from a square perspective,
if it like refreshes the brand totally customer's eyes yeah that alone is it's great business value
well i don't think there's any question about that and even from the investor community i think you
know like frankly a big question has always been like when jack is locked in he's a product goat
up there with like a steve jobs question is you know is he locked in it's very clear he's locked
in right now like you can't look at how quickly the company is shipping like literally when i saw
i guess it was last week when like every day miles is i don't even know how much that was planned or
just like, fuck it, let's just ship it this week.
But like literally every day he was like,
all right, first you can accept Bitcoin.
Then you can do dollars to dollars using the Bitcoin network.
Now there's no fees.
I was really like, literally, is Elon up in here now doing this?
And I don't know.
I think a lot of investors,
I'll tell you personally for the first time in a long time,
I'm thinking, should I be owning Square Stock?
Well, I'll tell you, Sequoia led the Series A.
Well, I mean, to be fair,
Roloff seems perhaps more locked in
than some of the other Stripe crowd there,
but whatever.
That was also like 15 years ago.
I do expect product velocity to continue
and keep the momentum up.
So anticipate, you know,
because the Square team moved fast to get this out
and they hit the deadline.
Great.
Usually when you do that,
There's like a list of things that you know you wanted to get into that release and didn't.
So they're going to power through that list.
And there's been tons of great feedback received from real world usage.
So there's tons of things to improve.
And I think we're going to see over the coming weeks.
No, I love it.
And I'll tell you just even from my like with other investor conversations in the sauna, which I do from time to time, there is renewed interest.
I will say to me, this feels like if you came out and told me that like Kawhi Leonard is healthy and back and ready to play a whole season.
I'm backing it.
That's what it feels like.
So let's go.
All right, Quantum.
What's up?
I think it's more about the price movement.
What is Quantum?
From my vantage point, there's nothing new about Quantum.
We put on a huge summit here at Presidio Bitcoin in July.
We brought together world experts in Quantum physics,
in Bitcoin dealing with Quantum.
and we went through like five different threads of topics.
And to me, there's not a whole lot new since then.
But other than like, I mean,
the price of Bitcoin has dropped 35% or whatever
and people are speculating why.
Is it like early investors?
Is it quantum risk?
Is it the, I've heard theories about the October 10th.
I think it was October 10th when like DeFi blew up or whatever.
and a lot of the people playing.
All the crypto stuff blew up.
Remember, it dropped substantially one day.
Billions were liquidated on a Friday night or something.
I don't follow this stuff either, but anyway,
one theory is that a lot of those players got overexposed
and they're having to sell a lot of Bitcoin to stay afloat.
So I think there's two different conversations here.
One conversation is, why is the price down?
And I do think that's a fair conversation.
one possibility is it's quantum risk,
which is why we're leading into that.
Then it's also just this thing.
So just so I understand,
so you're basically saying,
and I don't know a ton about the DeFi world anymore,
but maybe one of these large liquidity providers
or market makers had a bunch of exposure to shitcoins.
The shitcoins blew up.
They are holding Bitcoin.
And so they're being forced to sell the Bitcoin
so that they can cover their other positions.
I think I saw someone shared a tweet,
maybe it was one of you guys,
about this profit dude that was kind of interesting.
And he was basically saying that the way whoever it is-
P-O-F-I-T or P-R-O-P-H-T?
Profits over profits, if you know what I'm saying.
Interpret that as you will.
But basically, then it's like a...
I still don't know the ratio.
Is it profit over profit or profit over profit?
It depends on the day.
It depends on what price we're at.
PH.
Acidic, not base.
Yeah, we got to have some freestyle.
I like it.
Just give me a little beat, you know.
But which reminds me, we got to talk to Matthew about some Bitcoin stuff and music.
But basically, I have no idea if this is true or not.
I've done zero research other than read this tweet.
But his argument was that it's a, like, every day there's like a sort of almost programmatic or algorithmic selling happening that's like not at all responsive to what you would expect in markets, which might suggest that someone's like underwater and they're trying to sell in such a way that it doesn't freak everything out at once, not dump it once.
but at the same time, it's like very programmatic.
I don't know if that's true or not, but maybe.
I will say I have been chatting with some friends
in the background and like the quantum stuff,
it's certainly not helping that there's FUD
about quantum happening at the same time.
And I don't even know if FUD is the right word.
I would say maybe two things have shifted
my own personal concern maybe about quantum
since the summit.
One is, well, I listened to a good podcast
with Preston Pysh and Charles Capriol
and this is the energy money guy
that I think is pretty sharp
as is Preston
and basically one thing that he said
and I know you're less concerned about this
but we can maybe discuss on air
that I hadn't really considered is like
you know the tricky thing with quantum is
it's like the air bars are huge right
so like he's saying on the short end two years
I know the kind of like consensus
that I remember from our summit was five years
but whatever let's say it's two years on one end
and never on the other end
so that's like a pretty big range
and you know if it were two years the point he was making is there's about a quarter of the coins
that are still directly paid a pub uh a quarter of all utxos out there i guess that's what he was
saying and his point was if you wanted to move from pub key directly to a new address type which
is quantum resistant so we think or so the understanding is that i have the caveat by all
the saying it's scary when you're not like in the quantum deeply you're like well i'm just kind of
taking secondhand, you know, whatever for this.
But his point was like, how many years would that take
if all of those UTXOs wanted to move
and you basically all hit the mempool at the same time?
And his argument was, I think he said two-ish years
or like 18 months, Preston pushed back
and was like, actually, it could be many years.
I know you're not concerned
because it's not a lot of value in a lot of these UTXOs,
but that was something I had not thought about.
So I'm not concerned about that specific issue.
I'll give a few reasons why.
I mean, Bitcoin can move several hundred million transactions a year.
And there's not that many UTXOs.
But he was saying there's a quarter of all UTXOs out there, no?
So, I mean, it would take months to move everything, not years.
Okay, I have to go back and see what their path is.
There's some discrepancy.
So that's one point.
But also, when people give timeframes of like two years or 10 or 15 or whatever timeframe, you also have to ask what's happening at that point in time.
So in two years, what does that mean?
Does that mean there's a cryptograph or a computer that can break a key?
Okay.
How much does it cost?
How long does it take?
You got to ask those questions, right?
Sure.
Because if it costs $10 million, so right now it's not even possible.
Like there's no computer that exists that can do it, right?
So some future milestone will be like, okay, now there's a computer that can do it, but it costs $10 million and takes 10 years.
So it's still not that threatening.
But it would be, that would be a huge advancement over today because today no computer even works to do that.
Then, and then those, the cost and time will go down over time.
but when we say two years
what exactly is that?
And I say that because most likely
at some point there will be a really expensive
slow computer that can do it
but clearly if it costs $10 million
to break a key
you're not going to target a UTXO
that's only worth a million dollars
let alone $10 or whatever.
So while there's a lot of UTXOs
most have very small amounts of Bitcoin
when we actually look at
UTXOs that
have their public key exposed
like pay to pub key
the vast majority have 50
Bitcoin because they were mined early on
and let's see
what's 50 Bitcoin worth?
Something like 5 million dollars
used to be
4 million dollars
5 million dollars
before quantum fun
so if it costs 10 million dollars
to break a key
you're not going to do that for one that's only worth
four or five million dollars.
And then again,
you have to look at how much time.
And then,
I think there's only a handful of
exposed UTXOs that
have a lot more than 50 Bitcoin.
So, they can all be... They can move quickly.
They can move quickly, but
the far more
concerning thing... Is the lost ones.
Yeah, the ones that can't move because
the keys have been lost. So, it doesn't matter
how long it takes to move, they're not going to move
because no one is around.
That still doesn't concern me as much personally,
although maybe the market's going to freak out.
But one thing I would love to see,
and my guess is for the investor community,
if I had to guess,
if I still feel some uneasiness or queasiness about this,
my guess is more of the traditional investors
feel that on steroids.
And so, yes, we did the Quantum Summit,
which is awesome.
I should go back and rewatch the videos.
I should everyone that's concerned.
One thing I would love to see,
and maybe this is worth funding
for, you know, I don't know, people we know who are interested in making sure the big money is
not freaking out. I would love to see a like an in-depth research report. And I saw Nick Carter
also posting about this in a way that he seems concerned. And like, I actually, you know, take
Nick's concerns pretty seriously. He's been pretty, pretty right on the money about a lot of things,
Bitcoin, energy, AI over the years. The fact that he has any concern at all to me is like, okay,
I need to go back and do my own research on this,
which I will, but very few people are going to do this.
I would love to see sort of a Nick style paper.
And maybe this, Nick, if you're listening,
this could be great for you or someone else
that just goes through and is like,
really has like expert commentary cited
or maybe an expert writes this from like,
here's what Google is saying.
Here's what PsyQuantum is saying.
Here's what Microsoft is saying.
The people from those companies really breaks it down,
explains like I'm five to your point of like,
here are the error bars of what we would reach.
Here's how long we think it would take.
Here's what the economic costs are.
And then they look at, for each of those scenarios,
they kind of do some scenario planning of like,
if it's $10 million in two years,
if it's $10 million and takes whatever, 12 months to run,
here's the coins that are at risk.
Here's the total amount of value that is
and here's how long it would take them to move.
If it's in two years at a million dollars and a week,
here's what that would take.
I think what's scary is just like,
for something so foreign to so many people, myself included,
I don't know, man. I'm hearing all these scenarios that are out there. And I know at this point,
even after the summit, I don't feel equipped to truly evaluate what those timelines and what
those economic thresholds look like right now. Sounds like we need your anti-energy FUD paper.
We need someone like that. Yeah. It's probably not going to be me this time.
Is he in the room with us? I got a lot on my plate. Maybe. I don't know if I, but someone
that is like,
who wants to go like
autistically deep on this
and then explain it like we're five,
I would love that.
But another takeaway for me
from the summit we did in July
is that while there are some
real challenging problems
if a quantum computer is developed
that can crack ECDSA,
like we can respond.
Meaning there is cryptography
that is quantum resistant
that Bitcoin can adopt.
In fact, there's several options.
So one of the challenges now is which one to pick.
And does it have drawbacks?
Yes, it's less efficient.
But from a pure investor perspective,
digital gold narrative,
it doesn't really matter
if you can only cram one-tenth of the transactions
in a block than you could before.
I mean, there's a valid argument
to reduce the block size
so that there's a healthier fee market.
So it has a negative impact on scaling and for other use cases.
But if we're truly in this dire situation where Bitcoin literally is going to die or save it for the digital gold narrative and then longer term figure out the scaling, obviously you're going to pick the latter.
And there already plenty of options to choose from And if we in a situation where we have actually reached a point where a computer can crack a key for million
obviously we'll have a sense of urgency to upgrade and get it done.
It'll be easy to get consensus.
And it'll be easy to get consensus.
Well, you say that.
Then the other...
I hope you're right.
Then there's the topic of, you know, do we burn...
the coins that we think can't move
because we don't know whether they can.
So if we're truly in some panic situation,
emergency mode,
probably set a window of time.
If your coins don't move in six months or whatever,
they're going to get frozen.
And again...
So I strongly disagree with that.
Strongly.
So I think all of these are really good points
you're making.
I think someone needs to write the definitive paper
on this and explain it.
What do you disagree with, though?
That we should free some coins.
I am very strongly in the free market camp.
When they get hacked, that's the bounty.
The hacker takes them.
I do agree that that's the most controversial decision,
and there will be a split in the community.
So I think Bitcoin will split,
and then the free market will win,
and your coin will go to zero, and mine will go higher.
Well, I'm not that OG, bro.
I wish, but I think what needs to be laid out
as whoever works on this anti-energy,
anti-quantum FUD paper is like,
yeah, lay out all those options
and explain the trade-offs of like,
yes, we have post-quantum photography,
but it's fat, which is what you were saying,
which means signature size is thicker
with thicker signature size, less scaling.
What does that do to Bitcoin?
But I think what a lot of people are concerned about,
what I'm kind of concerned about is like,
the longer the Bitcoin community goes,
like this whole ordinals thing or whatever it is,
the knots
thing. The knots is so ridiculous in my
mind. And the fact, I mean, I think
it's probably just a psyop to get people distracted from
actual issues like this. And
like, if we're waste, if
the core community, the people
that are actually making these decisions are getting
bogged down with something so silly,
what is it going to be like when we actually have a hair on fire
problem? That's my concern.
Well, okay. But most
Bitcoin developers would say that the quantum
thing is exactly the same thing.
So that doesn't feel like that at all to me.
It does.
That's why we had a summit here.
I attended the whole summit, and I'm not convinced.
I filled my quota this year of quantum.
We had the summit this summer.
Now you're like me with the nuts crap.
We had the summit.
I'm really glad we did it.
I'm glad I put some energy into it, and other people did it as well.
And I learned a lot, and I came away.
I feel like I don't think it's an imminent threat.
And if it develops into an imminent threat in two years or five years or whatever,
I sort of have my mind, okay, I know exactly what will need to be done.
And while there's some thorny thing, issues,
like it's a lot easier to develop consensus when a key has been cracked.
So what do you think would happen?
So I hear you and like, and yet, even though I was there,
I don't share the same degree of confidence.
I would like to, I want to get there, which is why I'm asking for someone.
What's your concern?
All of the above.
Like, I don't understand.
We know of quantum resistant cryptography.
It's less efficient.
Right.
But if we're in this extreme existential threat scenario, then who cares?
Max, do you believe that we don't have functional quantum computers today that could crack Bitcoin?
I'm sorry, say that again.
Today, we don't have the quantum.
Do you believe that's true?
I don't even know that.
Okay.
Probably.
No, I mean, probably, right?
It's like just fun.
Okay, I'm not saying it's better.
What I'm saying is the fact that I have these questions,
like this could be answered in a definitive white paper.
No one has published that yet.
I would like to see this.
Now, to your point, let's take all the different scenario planning,
you know, whatever ahead.
And I do think you're underrating how much of the concern
this is going to be for investors.
I never said that.
I agree it's a concern.
It's just cheaper Bitcoin for us right now.
I hope you're right.
So my question is, I think the thing you're probably the expert at
that you would be able to say almost better than anyone is,
not the quantum stuff.
Someone needs to write that.
But a key gets hacked.
What happened?
And you say it would happen quickly.
Like how,
if you had a sort of scenario plan for that,
what do you think the community does
to get a software together?
Well, the first thing is like,
even how do you validate that it was hacked?
Great question.
How was it hacked?
Yeah.
So, you know,
that's an interesting intellectual exercise.
But let's, for the sake of argument,
to get to the point I think you're saying,
Let's say we have proof that a quantum computer did it.
DQ's getting sick of it.
So I think, you know, first thing is like, get a better understanding of how much did it cost to do that and how long did it take?
So if it's $10 million in 10 years or something, or, you know, some super long period of time, then, I mean, there'd still be an urgency to make changes.
but you know it would be a very different story if it was cheaper and happening you know happening
much faster but like what would happen there'd be developers would be quadrupling down on like
okay what are option technical options to upgrade and there'd be a mad sprint to figure out which
one to do get developer consensus on that write the code write the tests get it prepared for a
soft fork. And then in parallel, the rest of the community will be like observing that and debating
that, et cetera. That's one thing that would happen. And that one, I guess I'm, I mean,
will it be chaotic and a shit show? Sure. But like, I think that the end result will be satisfactory.
And I think there will be consensus on, we can get the consensus on that in an emergency situation.
Another question, which is definitely the harder one, is what to do with the coins that
we don't think are going to move
or don't move within a certain window of time.
And that's where, you know,
there's definitely a community split today.
And it's not something that like developers
can weigh in on objectively and say like,
this is correct, this is incorrect.
That's a potential for it.
This is philosophical.
And so it really is something that all of Bitcoin should be,
everyone in Bitcoin should be weighing in on
and protocol developers don't have any extra weight in this decision.
Investors certainly have, whether you like it or not,
they definitely have the most weight
because that's where they're going to put their money behind
where they want the right decision.
I do think there's real risk of a fork there.
But even if there is, the market will play out
and one of them will get chosen.
So will that be chaotic?
Absolutely.
Absolutely. But will Bitcoin die? No.
It just might be that like, and like, I think you, I mean, like you're even in our little squalor there.
It's like, oh, you want the, you want the, the let them steal.
And I'm like, freeze.
I actually don't even feel that strongly about it.
So like, if there was a fork I'd hold for that issue, I would hold both sides of the fork.
I don't have like this strong conviction that this is right and this is wrong and I'll double down.
No, I'm going to hold both.
Yeah.
I bet you would too.
Yeah, probably would.
And a lot of people would.
So then like, okay, one of them wins.
And then like, because I just don't,
I just don't care which one wins, to be honest.
So one of them wins and then great, that's Bitcoin.
I could even care, but I don't know that it necessarily is right.
There's not like a right, like when a BCH or comes,
you're like, this trash, take rid of it.
I think most people will be indifferent to that decision
or like kind of favor this one,
but find the other one acceptable.
certainly compared to like Bitcoin's dead.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, so a couple of thoughts on that.
I mean, just in that last issue first,
like, yeah, I would probably hold both in the same way
that like I don't want to like lose either way.
And like, that's my top priority as an individual actor.
Having said that, I could be convinced to get more involved.
And like, to me, there is a right answer.
And the right answer is like Bitcoin is free markets
and you either believe in free markets
or you don't believe in free markets.
And at the end of the day, I sadly think it's, I mean, it's very clear to me that there's
a line in the sand of like, you know, you start by saying with good intentions, we freeze
the old coins because it saves Bitcoin.
I think that's also very like short term price driven.
Like, yes, that will probably prevent panic in the market.
But at the same time, to me, it's a very slippery slope to Ethereum, very slippery slope.
and like, okay, who, you know,
and, you know, six months,
what happens if that person,
I don't know, Satoshi happens to be cryogenically frozen
and wants to come back and move their coins.
To me, it's a non-starter to mess with anything
that's not your own.
And I just,
Well, I've responded to that,
but I just wanted to point out,
Ian Smith chimed in.
I know he's heavily involved with the quantum stuff.
And my impression of his perspective is
he thinks it's happening sooner than later
and that Bitcoin needs to change.
So thanks for listening, Ian, and chiming in.
Yeah, yeah.
He said he's going to prepare a demonstration if he can about a quantum.
You about to hack Bitcoin, bro?
All right.
So, but the, oh, keep in mind there's, you know,
one of the things we discussed at the summit is like there's burn versus freeze as well.
Meaning that we already know of mechanisms that if I don't move my coins,
then they get burnt slash frozen.
They're actually frozen versus burnt.
I mean, no matter what is done, they're frozen.
Because you can always do another consensus change in the future, which unfreezes them.
Right?
And so what would that look like?
Well, one thing that I learned this year is that if you have a seed phrase to your coins,
that you can prove that your coins and a quantum computer cannot prove that.
Because a quantum computer cannot go from a private key to the seed words, right?
so interestingly even though i'm generally a proponent of seedless is safer here's an example
of where having a seed phrase is quite powerful steve just changes my you know everything's got
trade-offs so that that is definitely a win for seed phrases kind of intelligent so um so so again
like uh i think with if the coins are are frozen yeah if satoshi wakes up or whatever well he he
he would still be in trouble
because he doesn't have seed phrases for his coins.
But for people that have seed phrase,
they would,
if there's social consensus
to introduce that mechanism,
then they could get the coins back.
I hear you and all that.
I just, to me, it's just,
it's a clear bright line.
It's like, you know.
But again, I want to understand,
like, what,
so we're talking about
whether, you know,
the price just dumped 35%.
How much of that is due to quantum fear?
Yeah.
If I, so let's put our hats on
And all we care about, yeah, well, I've got my Satoshi hat on, so I care about peer-to-peer money.
But let's say I have my Michael Saylor hat on.
All I care about is number go up, price go up, digital gold.
Let's get rich.
Let's say that's all I care about.
So then I'm worried about quantum, so I sell my Bitcoin because I think it's a bad investment.
Well, why?
I'm still not hearing a reason why.
If a computer comes along and can crack the keys, we will change the cryptography to resist that.
And there's this difficult philosophical debate about freezing coins versus let them be stolen.
But one of the in the probably will be a split in the community in a fork.
But one of them will win out economically.
Yeah.
And so.
So it'll be a shit show.
It'll be a shit show.
But Bitcoin will still exist after that.
It'll it'll be secure and it will be unified.
and more resilient.
And frankly, it'll have survived
this horrible attack or whatever.
And then everything's good
for Bitcoin eventually.
So everyone's Bitcoin investment thesis
remains intact.
So why would you sell your Bitcoin?
I think that's a very easy answer.
I can answer in two ways.
Number one, I'll talk first like fundamentals
and then like sort of timing, right?
Fundamentals, like to be clear,
the post-quantum cryptography,
and again, I would love to see this laid out
in the white paper.
It's like we say we would make that change
And we say that that would be whatever functions secure.
Like my understanding is still the post-quantum cryptography is still like,
it's not been battle tested for like 50 years.
So that's still, it's a different proposition.
I hear you.
And like, we think it's right.
Like we think lattice cryptography or whatever we end up using works,
but like, it's not like ECDSA.
It's been around forever.
So there is new risk with a new algorithm.
And like the only way to do that,
just like with Bitcoin versus gold is time in reality.
And so it is a different world.
Like I would still be generally very favorable toward that and generally
agree with where you're going in the long run, but it's not, in my mind, the same slam dunk it is
with the old world algorithms. The bigger concern, though, is it's not even a concern,
but if I'm just an investor and let's say I'm in the perfect world where I don't have to pay
cap gains or trading, if I really think that this is going to be a shit show and let's say I think
Bitcoin could crash 80% to 90% again, okay, cool. I still believe in the long run. I dump now. I buy
again when it's at like, you know, whatever, 30K,
back to the races.
Yeah, but I think that the first point you made,
I think that's a valid point.
I personally would assign it like tiny values.
So it doesn't really change.
I don't think it changes the investment thesis.
Like maybe instead of like, you know,
a 10% allocation, I do a 9.5% allocation.
I mean, I kind of, well, just meaning.
Bro, what kind of Bitcoiner are you?
Yeah, what's going on there?
He means 110%.
I don't worry.
The second point, though, I don't really agree with.
Meaning the timing the market argument.
I'm not saying that's my position.
I know, but for any investor out there,
I don't find it to be a smart way to go about it.
Because there's so much uncertainty
about if and when the quantum computer will even exist.
And, you know, I certainly, I obviously don't know when this will happen, but through all the information I've consumed from a broad set of people, to me, it seems like it's still 15 to 20 years away.
and even if that's like
even if it's eight years away
that's just such a long time period
to stay out of the market
and not accumulate
so because like
let's say it's eight years away
which I think is
pretty aggressive estimate still
Bitcoin
most of us think
Bitcoin's going to a million dollars
or more in eight years
so if I could buy it today
for $80,000
and then it goes to a million dollars
and then we go through a shit show
and it goes crashes down
to $300,000
and then after the shit show, it goes to like $2 million.
Why would I not have wanted to invest to $80,000?
Well, I mean, I think the answer is not that you would just do both.
Like imagine you're someone who's extremely, extremely, extremely convicted
and you're, you know, like Steve, 110%.
Now, maybe you reduce your allocation from 110% to 55%.
You say, look, whatever.
Like if it goes still to the moon, like I win either way.
But like maybe does it make sense for me to hedge
with a post-quantum resistant rock.
I agree.
If you're overexposed,
trimming some of the position
probably is a smart idea regardless.
And I think that's a question of like,
is that what's happening?
And with, you know,
yeah, I think that's reasonable.
But if you're on the sidelines
or what many Bitcoin investors would say,
under-allocated,
then I think it makes no sense at all
to let quantum scare you out of.
I agree, but I would just say
before this one thing,
and I still want to get deeper on it.
I'm not super concerned yet,
I'm glad we're having this discussion. Frankly, we need to be raising a few more alarm bells if this is even a 0.1% chance of breaking our thesis. We should be aware of this. This is the first thing that I've ever been like, okay, I need to actually learn more to understand. Because I think most of us would agree, the 110% is the correct waiting if you know Bitcoin.
Don't use leverage.
I'm just kidding.
I think coming out of the quantum summit,
I thought that you and I each assessed maybe five years,
like our assessment.
Five years was like the clear,
that's what I took away from the summit.
But also with huge error bars, right?
Like the Japanese dude was also being like,
it could be in two, it could be never.
Yeah.
Speaking of Japan,
you shared this tweet about maybe one of the other reasons
that Bitcoin might be dumping
or the markets are going to dump,
which is some guy was kind of talking about macro stuff
around the Japanese carry trade
and the end of the carry trade,
which kind of fueled financial markets for the last 40 years.
DK is clearly a sophisticated macro investor.
Not at all.
Since you raised this, I assume you're going to break it down for it.
Explain it as the carry trade, Dika.
I thought you shared the tweet with something behind it.
Was it just like, look at this alarmist on Twitter?
Dude, don't you know?
I just share tweets.
I don't even read them.
Exactly.
It's true.
You've got like an agentic bot.
I understand how you just,
Steve sees something that he just wants to get us to talk about briefly.
He shared it, and I was like, oh, shit.
Is this going to blow up tomorrow?
I really have nothing to say.
I just don't know.
I mean, well, I think we all know the high-level Japan economic scene
from the past 30 years.
It's unsustainable.
But the specific concern that the person tweeted about,
I don't really – I just simply am not deep enough to really know.
I mean, they clearly didn't move the market this morning.
I mean, the tweet made it sound like –
He's like, get ready. Armageddon's coming tomorrow morning.
I also read that last night. I was like, oh, shit.
Like, what's coming tomorrow? Then I woke up.
But I mean, clearly, like, math is math.
So even just looking at the United States,
the interest payments on our debt, like, are growing.
When interest rates go from 0% to 5%,
obviously, your interest payment debt goes way up.
And since our debt continues to grow, the rates are going up.
I mean, we're spending over a trillion, Americans are spending over a trillion dollars a year of our budget on interest debt now, right?
Which, by the way, how insane is that?
It almost sounds like a cloud.
You can simply do the math, and I forget the exact numbers, but if it's like a 10 or 12 percent rate, I mean, if you go back to like 1980 era, interest rates rose to like 15 percent or something.
So imagine if they did that today, like our interest debt would be greater than our entire federal budget.
so the math simply doesn't work right so the united states cannot handle rates that high
they can't really i mean we talked about this a couple years ago like they the rates cannot go to
10 without things just blowing up and then ultimately really the only way out of this
uh and like ray dalio and any other like savvy financial people say you got to print money
that's the only way out of this so japan has been in a similar situation except for
decades. For a lot longer, yeah.
And so I think this guy tweeted about
they are raising
their rates now and it's just going to
blow things up. They sort of kept them
artificially low and people executed this
arbitrage across the cheap
capital you can get. They bar in yen and then
invest elsewhere. And so, and because
of that, that's actually a reason why
it might hurt the price
of it. Hey guys, this is unusual, but I have to
second week in a row.
We're going to have to schedule
a doctorate appointment.
He's just a urologist or something.
Sorry.
Well, since he's, I mean, get him like a boomer diaper or something.
But the, so I've heard about this U.S. debt problem forever,
and it always seems unsustainable, yet it keeps going.
So is there like one moment where people will finally wake up?
That's a great question.
Because it's like, I remember being a kid.
I remember being a kid.
This is insane.
I remember in the 80s hearing the ballooning debt under Reagan or whatever,
and that it was unsustainable.
And if you did the math then too, it did seem true.
And here we are.
Do we need like something to prick the balloon?
Is there one catastrophic moment that may happen?
If you print money, you can get yourself out of this pickle,
but then there's obviously negative ramifications of printing money.
So I really think that's what's been done historically,
and I think it's just going to continue to happen.
Let me summarize for Max.
He said, nothing stops his train.
I see someone's listening to a Lynn Hall podcast.
We should ask Glenn.
I don't know if Lynn listens to this.
Anyone knows Lynn?
I don't know.
He's not doing his gait.
Oh, yeah.
No, it's terrible.
I do pound.
And I should probably stop double fisting T when I get on the show.
Kegels maybe too.
But yeah.
Warm the room up.
I think they're.
No, I mean, I think we'll just keep renting money.
Right.
So it must be kind of the.
So it'll be just like.
Oh, okay.
I thought this would be very important.
Steve's told us what's going to happen.
Yeah.
We were just talking about the Japan thing and how in the 80s, even back in the 80s, we
were like, this is insane.
How does this exist?
And it just keeps going.
Well, I asked my friend that. My friend is like a sort of macro hedge fund dude. I remember like 10 years ago, I kept asking, I was like, Japan doesn't seem sustainable to me. And he kept being like, well, that's for this reason and cultural. And I do buy there's like some cultural, like they can like sort of like diffuse or like inflate away more than most places can. Because I do think Japan has like such like a almost like Japanese hive mind sort of vibe. Like people really do. Like no one like, like you can drop your credit card there and like everyone will pick it up and find you like bathrooms or spick and span.
They really do have a more collectivist, I think, culture than most places do, but you can only do that for someone.
You got to export TVs or something.
You have to do something that other people value.
You can't just pick up a card and be nice.
I think my takeaway from this and all of our investing conversations is just like, it's going to be really interesting to see what the world looks like with investing again on real markets.
This is your brain on whatever fiat.
and it just doesn't make sense because it doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense.
Anything more on price or should we talk about MDK?
Well, it's definitely that.
Yeah.
One last thing is a lot of people have a lot of respect for Warren Buffett.
I'm not going to say one way or the other, but he has made his career
on value investing and saying,
like, find the things that are underpriced
and good assets.
And for two decades,
Larry and Sergey from Google
had been prompting him to participate in Google.
And Google really looked up to Warren Buffett
and wanted him to get involved
from the earliest days of going public.
And he finally made an allocation,
a big allocation last week.
So okay I have a couple questions Oh I didn know that Yeah Yeah Yeah Like 20 years late I don know Even like Warren Buffett it like I don know like a lot of these guys just seem like very close to the money printer
like playing rig games, banks they can't lose.
I'm not sure I have a lot of respect for him ever.
But to your point, I mean, I think aren't a lot of people suggesting
it wasn't Warren that made that allocation?
Yeah, maybe.
But also, it's not late in the sense that he has such massive amounts of money
he couldn't have invested in some tiny little Google 20 years ago, right?
Which is the whole problem when you get so big is like getting returns, the same kind of returns that Berkshire did in the 70s and 80s and early 90s is like impossible.
I do think the techniques that he used and got famous for are probably not really available anymore.
Like the market moves and changes.
So you kind of have to always change.
Kind of like the kind of returns Hivemind is going to return are impossible for a Sequoia or V16s either to do.
Our absolute assets may be small.
it's a big multiple game then right yeah it is yeah it is it's more fun that way too like
and all these guys they you know it's like banks get fat on fiat investors get fat on
management fees well good so that's a great segue to your investment we all three invested in a new
company well sorry i just want to add one last thing because i do think it's important so when i
when i do see them though i think in the back of my head on this macro point like buffett has been
in cash for a long time my other thing is just like are people smelling i think it's gonna be a
very weird economic time because it's like, are people smelling some big crash?
You see all this macro stuff?
It seems like there's a crash coming.
Yet at the same time, we have this like, the investment in AI infrastructure and data centers,
I'm quite convinced is just going to go vertical, even if there's a giant crash.
And the fact that he's allocated to Google makes me, again, I've been so super impressed
with Google the deeper I'm going.
But it does feel like we're entering this like completely uncharted territory.
Not only, like we've never had a situation where there's been like a fundamental macro
crash, but at the same time, like literal new industrial or agricultural.
revolution level technology
is going to require
presumably
all global GDP to build out the data
centers we need. So it's just a very weird
time. I don't think anyone fucking knows
this is the short answer. This is uncharted
territory. The money is going to keep printing.
The money will keep printing. But that's another
dynamic too. If AI ushers in
unparalleled
prosperity and economic growth or whatever
then that also is a way out of a bad
debt situation.
Yeah, it's worth it.
Okay, but much more exciting.
And it's not just HiveMind.
I hear there are a few other investors here
on the podcast with me.
We all, I think, are very stoked and excited.
It was already announced,
but we have invested, each of us,
in a company called MDK Money Development Kit
from our guy, Nick Slaney.
Those of you who don't know Nick,
I think I met Nick maybe four or five years ago
at a random bit devs back at DG Digital Garage.
and at the time, I guess he was on the big key team at Block
and I was just like, we were chatting about all this
Lightning Network rate of returns
from some of Nick Botti's early ideas
and I could tell this guy is super, super sharp.
And yeah, we had a good lunch
and talked about a lot of these ideas.
A couple months later, he's like,
actually now I'm building this out of Block,
which then became C equals, which has become,
I don't know if it's how you rank it, number one
or certainly an industry leading node.
And all of the big announcement that Square gave us
over the summer when we had the Bitcoin conference was they're getting 10%, let's say roughly 9%,
10% return on capital. However, you want to calculate that metric on that Lightning node,
still a small node in absolute terms, but I think it's like $100 million or something. So it's not
small in Bitcoin terms, or at least Bitcoin industry terms. And yeah, I think Nick deserves
a lot of credit for figuring basically how to build that node. And anyway, so I've been a big
fan of his for a long time. And when he left and started playing with the new idea, MDK or Money
development kit. I was very excited. Someone I've been tracking for five plus years or four or five
years. And I love his thesis. And I know DK, you've spent a lot of time with him. But the thing that
really I love about MDK is they're trying to find the easiest way to add like network or Bitcoin
payments to a new website or vibe coded app in like minutes. And so he just launched in his video
what he's calling a world record. I don't know who's like arbitrating that, but like, whatever,
we'll go with it, a world record of the fastest time to add payments to a new app.
And it's pretty impressive.
And I think my, I believe the positioning is adding payments.
Yes.
Meaning not necessarily, I mean, it is literally adding Bitcoin payments, but like, I think
them, and you, you, I think worked with them on, on that messaging, but just add, you know,
the fastest way to add Bitcoin or to add payments, but really convening with a Stripe UX.
so that's what I wanted
because I've been
challenging DK and Nick
as well about like okay
can't you add
payment super fast with some of the other tools
that we've been seeing like Lexi
and with Spark SDK
etc
I think the answer is yes
but we can do a bake off there but if the answer
is not yes I think
all of them
if not already will soon be able to do
less than five minutes
So, but we, you know, you shared some other, both Nick and you shared some other ideas about like, how can the positioning of, you know, of this product win, even in the face of other SDKs that can do that? I don't know if you want to elaborate on that.
Yeah, so the details were, I think, you know, the video showed like, oh, hey, like app to payment acceptance in five minutes, world record speed run.
And then I think Stevie made some comment like, can't you do this with like Spark and Lexi and maybe Stripe or a few others?
I haven't actually tried kind of a bake off like that.
But I think there's probably like, I don't think you purely can differentiate on like the five minute implementation because now that's kind of possible.
Probably everybody can kind of do something of that flavor.
But I think there's, you know, if you say we really care about focusing on the developer experience and developer, maybe a newly emergent developer might be a certain type.
A builder even, not a developer.
Right.
A vibe coder.
A vibe coder who can build something that's economically valuable to people, but doesn't, maybe doesn't have access to Stripe, doesn't know how to do API integrations or SDK integrations much and kind of wants to vibe code it.
He's asking what a pull request is.
Yeah, yeah, right.
I mean, that's very real.
So I think like we're sort of maybe too deep in GitHub to recognize that newcomers may not be, you know, have a lot of facility with these tools.
So I think the developer experience, you know, maybe starts with a five minute app to payment acceptance.
But I think there's so much more to it.
Like, who are you marketing to?
Who are you speaking to?
How are you speaking to them?
How does your documentation work?
how does your
you know the developer experience is like when I have a problem
and I talk to somebody do I get an answer
from the person building it or do I
get shuttled through some help center
that's developer experience in my mind so I think
the fact that like Nick created a video
and shared and he's obviously
accessible and available on Twitter if you build
something with MDK and you have a problem
obviously tag him and
I would bet that he will be very
quick to respond whereas if you get
you know it's not like a I actually like the fact
It was not some high gloss, you know, kind of corporate website.
He's speaking as an individual, which is really, you know, I think he should lean into that, what he is today and be the best at that.
Because that's the kind of thing that I think can attract a different, he can run hackathons.
There's so much to developer experience besides the five minutes, but I think the five minutes is like kind of table stakes, let's say.
I think both he and you also pointed out there's the dashboard and tools facing that the Vibe Coder would use.
And that's a product differentiation beyond just the five-minute onboarding.
Yeah, and I think it's also notable that we love all these companies.
We're also investors in Lexi, I'm an investor in Albi, a lot of these companies.
I think it's all Team Bitcoin, Team Lightning, and we're so, so, so, so early.
like you know i forgot what i was uh you know hearing about this but it's just like any um i
don't know like startup competition is not really a thing in my mind like there's gonna be so many
niches to fill like the competition is stripe to be frank right and so uh i think i'm glad to see
nick has been at least in my experience so far unique i mean all these guys are exploring vibe
coding to some degree but what got me over um the hurdle i mean i was already a big fan of nick i
just think like what he's done is already gangster at block he's gonna do it again but what really
got me sold on this particular idea, and I think you really helped him on this, was laser
focus.
Don't focus on Bitcoin.
This is payments for Vibe coders.
And that, to me, is very compelling.
Yeah.
And maybe you could speak more, because you pointed out to me, too, just the focus on
marketing, because I'm like, well, what about Spark?
And then you went and looked at their positioning and their framing.
And it's just, they're trying, LightSpark's trying to solve, you know, work on so many
use cases. Just like
very expansive. Yeah, and so
you know,
if a company
really singles in on
Vibe coding, it's just going to
reach more people
that will never even learn of or discover
Spark. Right. And I think Spark,
I looked on your challenge, I looked
at the Spark marketing
copy for the developer site
and it has really nice like, here's the code, you can
see it right when you open up the site, but it says
like to build the best, I think, financial
applications or like asset issuance, which sounds like that itself is a big market.
And that presumably is where they see a lot of value and want to focus.
But it's different.
But it seems different than like the examples, you know, that Nick was sharing with me is
like, you know, if you run a tarot card site, you know, like that may not work for Visa
because maybe there's some potential fraud or chargeback rates and there's concerns on
that.
but like if you run that site
and it's economically valuable
and people want to pay you,
how do you accept payments?
Like that's not solved,
whether it's vibe coded or otherwise.
Well, I think it also just the number of countries,
like how many countries is Stripe operational in?
It's like less than half, I think.
Right, yeah.
So like, yes,
they have the largest part of the GDP pie.
There's still like a huge chunk of humans
that can't access it.
And I think there's also not,
like, I mean,
you remember before Stripe,
there was Braintree.
You could kind of do the thing, right?
But it just wasn't like,
really well done.
And, you know, Braintree, I think, still exists
and probably was acquired.
I don't know.
What are the odds that Nick is now going to get us all
into cold water, hot saunas,
and trying to get us to eat his figgy pudding soon?
But I think...
That's act two.
This market is so big.
Like, let me ask you,
which is the vibe coding company?
Replit.
But that's not true.
It's...
Gemini 3?
Well, I mean, what about Lovable?
What about Cursor?
Yeah.
Like, there's just,
these are huge.
Cursor's worth,
what do you think
Cursor's market cap is?
In private markets,
but what do you think it is?
$2 billion.
No, it's $80.
Is it?
Okay, I was going to say $30.
I was going to say $80 billion.
It's something.
They just raised again.
Are you serious?
Did they just raise it $80?
I think it was.
That could be.
Definitely on the order.
$30 recently,
but it certainly could be.
They raised again,
like, months.
All right,
I'm feeling like Michael Burry right now.
Did you register high-bind?
It's a little unfortunate.
Founders,
not get into that company.
Yeah, because they were there.
I remember I saw them.
Y'all also had,
and this one also pains me,
I've had some businesses.
Maybe they'll do retroactive
or something.
You had Anthropic there too.
I also,
I passed in Anthropic
because they were too woke.
They were pretty small at the time.
Well, that's the kind of companies
that go through
boundaries you should know.
By the way,
Odd in the series.
You don't like Tarot.
No, I have no problem with Tarot.
I think Vigia doesn't like Tarot.
And therefore,
Sprite doesn't like Tarot.
No, no, no.
I wanted to get back to that.
29.3 billion.
put them down today.
All right.
Seems like a problem.
I don't know, maybe Steve's got some inside intel.
This is Silicon Valley insider here.
Dude, I mean, just to be fair,
like Square is like a $60 billion company, right?
No.
What is Square now?
Less.
Less?
$38 billion.
Dude, if Cursor is raising its Square valuations.
Well, like Circle's worth like way more than Lockett.
Yeah.
I'm not judging you.
I understand my company now.
I wanted to get to someone's question.
How is the custody handled when it lands in the app?
Is that factored?
Or is this more of a transport and the app handles the storage routing after?
So MDK is based on Lightning Development Kit, which my team creates.
Who works on that?
But my understanding of MDK, each customer is using it.
So if I were a Vibe coder using it to handle my payments,
I have my own keys and my own node and my own channels.
MDK manages that for me,
but I'm the only one that has authentication
and access to that node and the keys.
So he has that number to live in.
I think it is run in the cloud.
Well, he calls it,
and I, coming from not being deep in developer land,
serverless. And my question was,
well, then where is it running? And apparently
what serverless actually means is
server, but on demand.
Yeah. I mean, marketing for like
you don't have to set up. I'm not saying that's a big problem.
You don't have to set up your own server. I think
that's the implication there.
The other thing we should talk about are
the fees. Because I saw
one Twitter pundit
saying, oh, you charge
2%? Because that's like
Oh, yeah.
you know
that's like
you know
is it more
or is that good or bad
or is it more or less
well it depends on your
frame of reference right
so if it's compared to
Square
which just said
0%
until 2027
and then 1%
thereafter
well it's more
or if you look at
but Square doesn't have
like an API
exactly
so it's
that's an Apple
or in just comparison
why doesn't Square do that
and then
why doesn't Square
like a merchant
like TOS system
why not have like
an API
like online payments
Yeah, well, I mean...
Why doesn't Google build a social network?
I know, right?
I think Block has made a weak attempt in the past at that,
but Stripe is formidable there.
That's Nick's opportunity.
But maybe that's a growth opportunity for Block in the future.
But in any case, I think if you look at the fees
that Stripe and other existing players charge,
it's 3-4%.
So from that perspective, it's cheaper.
And I think a lot of people,
there's so many people in the world
who can build things
who are locked out of that system.
That's not like a trivial rounding
or that's like a big part of humanity.
So I think even if it were 5%,
they might find it valuable
compared to the fact
they can't get anything from Stripe.
Now, it's healthy competition.
Like I think Lexi is a good solution
that touches on thematically similar Stripe,
or sorry, Spark,
touches on some similar theme.
So my point of talking about cursor evaluation
is not to say it's the right one or the wrong one.
I'm saying you just said that Replit
is the winner of Vibe Coding.
I'm saying there's a $30 billion company
you didn't think is the winner.
So I think this is similarly such a gargantuan market
that you could have an MDK and a Lexi and a Spark
could all independently be successful.
They're all going to be big companies.
I agree.
In their own right,
but they just end up serving different niches.
And so...
And I think it's also important to remember,
like I remember someone making this claim
that like a decade ago,
people all underestimated how big the...
Steve's laughing, I don't know what that means.
How big markets are when you expose it to the internet.
Like basically I think the TLDR is just like
the economic pie, number one, is not fixed.
Number two, when you expose it to the internet,
it's a lot bigger than you think.
There's gonna be a lot of winners
like the fact that Braintree, PayPal, Stripe, Block,
like all these companies are like
extremely successful companies.
like there's a lot of opportunity
if we're writing a thesis with Bitcoin.
So it's like super, super, super early.
So Matt is now throwing down
reference links to sources.
He's brought the receipts.
But also it looks like it's dated November 13th.
Oh, that was like a week.
That's a week.
What about their raise two days later?
They're only valued at $29 million.
Only $29 million.
I was even overestimating at $30 million.
Seems like a good deal.
although I will say
I mean I think about this
like are we even going to have
like IDEs in the future
like the thing I'm much more
interested in is like
what happens
and we should also give a shout out
you know
I guess we don't have
a lot of time left
but we had the opportunity
to jam with some folks
that we all like
like Pablo
and I
well by the way
shit we're running out of time
but I have a big topic
I want to talk about
maybe I'll tee it up
for the future
yeah I mean so
think about the future
of software development
and thinking about like
you know
where do we get from here
Pablo's got some
interesting ideas
we'll talk about it
on a future show
one thing I want to tee up and maybe we can have a longer conversation next week because it's very
important. You know, we were all at sort of an AI, open source-y, freedom-y thing. And the one
thing that stuck with me that I am a little concerned on was in a conversation with Cody.
And Cody, you know, for those of you who don't know, is a Bitcoiner now at Repl. And he made a
really good point to me, which is, you know, and actually, Matt, I'm super glad you're listening.
This one is to you. I asked him, you know, how bullish are you on like making it easier to build
with Bitcoin and Nostra and Lightning Network.
And his point to me was a bit of an eye opener.
And his point was, I don't know how easy it really is
to build with like a Nostra app in Repl.
Today, I know Matt has done this.
And so I would encourage, you know, Matt in particular,
you are a great hope here to make sure
we don't become irrelevant and die.
But his point to me was, if you're using Replit,
and let's assume Replit, that was our first answer
for what was the Vibe Coding Open, right?
So a lot of people are using Replit.
And if you try and build a Lightning Network
or certainly a Cashew or a Noster app today,
his point to me was the models they're using on the back,
and I don't know what it is.
I assume it's Claude, but who knows?
Maybe it's Elk, maybe it's not.
I don't know.
But his point was those base models
are trained on the past internet, right?
That's how LLMs work.
Next token prediction.
And his point was there were not enough examples
in the old training set of Noster code for sure.
Well, certainly something like Cache-A-Code.
Nostr maybe, depending on when the last models,
like the big last training rounds got done,
is on the edge.
Maybe there's enough Nostr.
There's certainly enough Bitcoin data.
That's good.
Maybe enough Lightning.
But his point was, you know, in the future,
what starts as a very tiny edge can quickly become huge.
And so we were talking in the context of, you know,
Pablo's like, oh, Rust is in this and Rust is in that.
And he was like, no, Python's one.
And the point was because there was so much more Python that in the future, as new models get trained primarily on synthetic data, that synthetic data, it's going to basically take existing edges, power feedback loops so that like, oh, there's 10% more Python that quickly becomes 10,000% more than GPT-5, which is trained off the old data.
to me, this was a bit of an eye opener where it's like, shit, there will always be ways to feed in
context for things like lightning or Nostra payments. Some of the stuff Pablo is thinking
about, but defaults matter. I think if I had one, if I had one episode title, I'll shoot defaults
matter. And the reason this is what we're talking about. Like GitHub is not for normies like yet.
Like if I'm a normal person and I just say, build me an app and accept payments. If 98% of that just
goes to, Oh, Stripe, that's what we've seen every example of. Yes. You can always go and add in
Bitcoin payments, build your own thing.
But if the default is already one, like...
This actually doesn't worry me because I think...
Please.
Yeah, I think if you say, hey, build me payments,
and Stripe is a good solution, and it integrates,
and I think Repl just announced that they have a nice Stripe integration now.
So if it works, then why should there be a new solution?
Like the point of these new technologies...
Because we want to take down the banking cartels.
So if you want to, you slide around about way though.
But let's say, what are the ramifications of that?
The fees are high, you're getting gouged or whatever,
then your prompt to the AI should be like,
add payments less than X percent.
And then it has to find another solution.
Or find me ad payments that are permissionless.
It doesn't just integrate Stripe.
It says, here, we've integrated Stripe.
Now put in your Stripe credentials.
Go to the website and sign up for Stripe.
And now you KYC, KYB, and then you find,
oh, actually Stripe won't support me.
okay come up with another solution so i think there's two concerns there yes but i think number
one most people don't even understand what fees are and so like again going back like to alex's
point he was the guy that raised this question for us on twitter again to him and to everyone
deep in bitcoin i would say like you have to see what normies are doing two percent people don't
even know the difference between one percent two percent three percent like that's the reality the
people that are like no but you can run your own node for so much cheaper it's like dude you're in
0.00001% of humans.
And so what I'm concerned about is defaults.
I'm like, yes, you always could have that right to change.
And to your point, if you're someone in Africa
that they don't support, great.
But like, it would be a shame if like the vast majority
of the GDP pie defaults to Stripe,
never even thinks about it.
And Bitcoin just becomes a tool for the renegades.
But that's the way you become dominant
is you win at the people who are desperately
in need of a solution and they're super underserved.
You don't compete with the giant.
you let the giant be the giant,
and you compete with the people in Africa trying to do it,
people in India trying to do it,
people building tarot cards.
I would have agreed with you 100% pre-AI,
but what I think has changed
and I think we need to be aware of,
not have our heads in the sand,
is if you really are AGI pill,
that you believe in all this takeoff stuff,
and I think Elon's already said
Grok 5 is going to be trained off
100% synthetic data from Grok 4.
What looked like maybe just like,
oh, it's a lead that we could like,
yeah, like Stripe,
it could be outflanked to the left and right,
if 10,000% more data gets generated,
it's going to get harder and harder and harder
over time is my concern to flank them.
Another potential dynamic,
I'm listening to the latest,
is it Dorcasch podcast
with Andre Karpathy?
Karpathy?
Karpathy, yeah.
Karpathy.
Really good.
I love learning from him on AI.
So at one point,
he believes that there's too much,
that the models are being trained on too much data.
There's an overfitting problem.
So he actually predicts that to gain more intelligence,
they should be trained on less data.
So they actually have to think on their feet more.
So to the degree that that happens,
then that would lessen that concern.
I do think it's something that I know we've talked about in the past.
We've talked about ideas for future summits around digital life
and open source AI and getting more of the AI
and open source community working with us here at PB.
But I do think it's something that,
I hope that's right.
I don't know.
I don't really have an opinion,
but we should be figuring out
how do we make sure
that we're not bringing sticks
to a nuclear weapon fight.
And I will say it opened my eyes
to if takeoff happens
and we're not in the takeoff,
it's concerning.
And by the way,
I just want to shout out,
I don't know who Maxwell's Equations is,
but Tyranny of the Default by Steve Gibson.
I don't know who Steve Gibson is,
but is that the sci-fi album?
Sci-fi, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Then I should check that out.
Yeah, that's what I'm worried about.
It's not that like, it's not that like the people that are really into it.
you know the autists and the freedom fighters are going to be fine but like it's going to be a dark
world if um i don't know the default is strike yeah i just i think you can't just compete on
price and ideology you have to compete on it's just better i agree but my point is that's still
thinking from like pre pre-model takeoff i think i think the models if they're truly intelligent
they will find the thing that's better i don't think they're truly intelligent yeah so that's
i mean they're parents yeah i i think so but i think there's still a lot of development
happening and different, like, the LLM
may not be the final form of AI.
So that, that...
We should continue this conversation.
This is a big... After Thanksgiving.
We should go get lunch.
Good chat, guys.
Good chat.
Hey, glad we're all alive.
All live, yes.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
Happy Thanksgiving, and we'll see you two weeks out.
All right, bye-bye.