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There it is. All right.

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We're live.

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Welcome to the Presidio Bitcoin Jam, the July 27th edition.

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How are you guys doing?

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Great.

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Let's not skip ahead to July already, homies.

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You're right. June 27th.

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I was getting excited because July is when I get to first see the first Presidio Bitcoin, the Builders Summit.

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Is that what's called? Builders Summit? Builders? Builders Program?

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Builder.

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Builder.

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Builder.

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Builder.

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Okay.

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Summit.

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But it happened last night.

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I was out of town.

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So one of the big topics I want to hear about is like, how'd it go?

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What happened?

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Me too.

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I was also out of town.

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This is big news.

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I just ran with it.

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Yeah.

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It's just Lance Armstrong is over here in his Mellow Johnny cycle jersey.

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We have a new sponsor for the show, Mellow Johnny's.

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Before we get into builders, do you want to tell us why you're wearing a jersey?

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Did you actually ride in from home today?

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Yeah, I biked to work today.

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Nice.

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Nice.

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Decided to keep the kid on.

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Good.

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I like it.

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Authentic, organic.

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We're not trying to pose as a news show here.

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We're just being ourselves, right?

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Yeah.

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I have to also say, Steve, I don't know what you're doing, but your arm's looking swolded.

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So I don't know if it's not just a Viking, but it's a good look.

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Good look.

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Well, we now have a pull-up bar at Presidia Bitcoin.

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Oh, that explains it.

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Yeah.

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We are.

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Steve got me into hanging

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which I've just

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set a new personal best

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I'm not much of a hanger but do you know what hanging is?

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Will you just hang on the bar?

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Yeah, that's like a thing, I didn't know that was a thing

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but Steve got me into it

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Is it for like lengthening the spine?

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Is that kind of the main thing?

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I think it's like shoulders and opening up

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and I don't know all of

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Grip strength, rock climbing

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Is that the main thing?

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Is rock climbing? I heard it's like a longevity marker

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I heard there's all kinds of different benefits.

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Multiple benefits.

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So all we need is the sauna at Pacifica Bitcoin now.

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Do you do two?

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And the cold plunge.

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We need the contrast therapy.

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It's not a real podcast if you don't have contrast therapy discussed.

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Exactly.

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How long can you hang for?

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Yeah, how long do you get?

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So I'm just, I'm new at it.

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This is my first try.

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I actually did it with a 50 pound assist and I did two minutes and it was extremely painful.

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What's a 50 pound assist?

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Meaning like I'm not holding my whole body weight.

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I have like a 50 pound assist.

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I'm, you know, my body weight minus 50 pounds.

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Come on.

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Yeah.

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Oh, damn.

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Steve's coming at you.

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I mean, for pull-ups, the assist is reasonable, but just hang in.

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Come on.

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Well, I wanted to hit two minutes.

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So I hit two minutes.

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Okay.

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That was very challenging.

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It's a good first one.

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With 50 pound assist, it was very, very challenging.

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I thought you were saying you had a 50 pound weight on your back.

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No, no.

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That's once you get more advanced.

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Steve, what's yours?

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I can do two minutes unassisted.

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That's good.

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Yeah.

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But it wasn't your first time, was it?

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Ooh.

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You've got to let me be myself.

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You've got to let me start.

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And don't shame me for getting into the game, okay?

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My first time, I lasted like 11 seconds.

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Because you instantly feel the pain.

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Yeah, I think that's a that's what she said moment.

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But no, no, no.

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We're still on my hand.

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Okay.

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and because i saw some i saw some instagram reel where this guy is on like at venice beach

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challenging people to last one minute and i'm like that seems not too hard yeah so then i got

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up my pull-up bar and i held on and like 11 seconds later i let go and i'm like there's no

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way i can last a minute and then my kid did it and he lasted well over a minute and i'm like

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okay, I got to man up

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and then I did it again,

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suffered through the initial pain

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and then got to a minute.

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But yeah, I can do two minutes now.

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Yeah.

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What about pull-ups?

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We should have some kind of like

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Presidio Bitcoin pull-up competition.

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Where are you guys at in the pull-up game?

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I can do 13 pull-ups right now.

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All right, that's solid.

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Or three sets of 10.

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Nice.

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Steve's a beast.

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Yeah.

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That's why he's got those guns.

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He's right.

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I don't think I'd win, though.

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I think we have other people at Presidio Bitcoin that would top me.

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Is it the ringleader of the sprints?

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Can we say his name on air?

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I don't know.

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He's pretty tight.

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The ringleader of the sprints.

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Yeah.

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And actually, Max somehow, the other Max, didn't know we had a pull-up bar until yesterday.

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And then I saw him.

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He looks formidable as well.

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It's not necessarily the most jacked guys.

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And I definitely.

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Yeah.

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I wouldn't discount Leo.

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Um, and Alex used to do it for hockey.

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I know, right.

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Our producer and lead of procedure between Alex.

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So, uh, it'd be a good competition.

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I don't know who would, who would win.

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Yeah.

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I will say I learned, uh, a little bit of a hack here for me.

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I could throw my own hat in the ring too.

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We'll have to know when we get back in person.

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But, uh, Leishman of all people told me that I could do more if I breathe properly.

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My problem was that I was not breathing properly.

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So now I'm more focused on the breath.

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and I can add a couple extra reps in.

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I also think you want to keep your chin up

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when you're doing it too.

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That's another tip.

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I was very focused on breathing

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to get through the two minutes hang.

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The whole thing was like a meditation for me

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just because it was so hard.

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The last 15 seconds, it was so hard.

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All right.

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Well, anyway, our action item

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is we're going to have

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a Presidative Bitcoin pull-up competition.

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I love it.

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Yes.

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Let's do it.

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All right.

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Okay.

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Yeah, you asked about Builder, though.

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Builders, yeah.

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Tell me about the title.

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So, what was it, three weeks ago, I think, on this show, we thought of this idea on the show.

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And in retrospect, it seems so obvious to have a monthly meetup that's focused on building applications with a Bitcoin twist.

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but a very you know a similar structure and format to bit devs but a very different

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intended audience and vibe far less technical and in you know welcoming and inviting for

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designers pms in our case silicon valley folks who don't necessarily identify as bitcoiners so

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we moved fast. So we

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scrambled, put together

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some structure

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and a topic list and marketed it

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and had our first one last night in the Pristity of Bitcoin.

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We moved so fast

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that the two of you couldn't even

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attend because you were out.

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But I'm glad we did it. We had 30

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people show up. So we had a great

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attendance for the first one.

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And our

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composition of people was

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engineers, builders,

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kind of existing Bitcoin?

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It was a good, I'd call it a good,

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so a great number of people.

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It's a good start for the composition,

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but we want to keep improving.

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We had a couple designers,

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a handful of product managers,

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mostly engineers though.

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And aside from maybe a couple people,

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most were Bitcoiners, pretty diehard Bitcoiners,

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which of course is totally fine and welcome,

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but we're also trying to reach out to people

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who wouldn't identify necessarily as a Bitcoiner.

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So definitely room for improvement there.

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But as a first event, I think it was totally fine.

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Plus, I think a bunch of us have reached out to a lot of our Bitcoin curious, but non-Bitcoiner tech friends.

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And a lot of them couldn't make this date or are traveling for the summer.

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So I think it'll just get better each month from a composition standpoint.

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um then we put together a topic list much like a bit devs does um with with some twists though

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um we did we want to make demos of a staple of the meetup um and we had two demos we had a

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startup showcase where one of the startups uh that works out of presidio bitcoin um adju cash

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which they haven't even launched yet.

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So there was some alpha.

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It's a little alpha right there, yeah.

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Alpha last night and on the show here.

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But this is Bob Scully's startup and Damian as well.

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And so Damian demoed AdiCache for the audience.

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I think we kept that short, like a couple minute demo,

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and then opened it up to audience questions.

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I think it'd be better to give more time for audience engagement.

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And sure enough, there's like eight different people

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with questions or comments about the demo.

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So really good engagement.

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And then we had another-

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Were the questions kind of in the flavor of,

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like maybe you might think about the product,

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the business, that kind of stuff

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versus kind of deep technical stuff.

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It was a good mix,

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a little more technical than I think we want in this,

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but there were go-to-market

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and product and business questions as well.

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One broader question,

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given that they're focused on sort of e-cash,

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I'm curious, like, how much of the audience

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was already familiar with e-cash and how it worked

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or for how many of them was this totally brand new

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and they were just like, whoa, this is an exciting possibility?

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We didn't explicitly ask that,

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but because the audience was primarily Bitcoiners,

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half of which have been to a BitDes before,

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I mean, I think the audience generally leaned towards technical

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and knowing what e-cash, things like that were.

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Cool.

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And thus, they were...

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more technical questions than I'd expect in what will, you know,

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in future meetups for this particular meetup.

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But still, great audience engagement.

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Then the other demo was impromptu.

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One of the audience members was super excited and proud of his Vibe-coded app.

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So he got up and plugged his computer in and demoed the Vibe-coded app,

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which is really cool.

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And then so, you know, it was nice to have like –

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Do you know what the app was?

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Yeah, what was it?

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Yeah, well, interestingly, it was Stratum, Bitcoin mining protocol Stratum. There's a website that someone else created that shows a visualization of the Stratum mining protocol.

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And the guy who did a demo last night, he wanted to see different types of visualizations.

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and while he is a he's a swift programmer but he doesn't know how to program in javascript or what

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00:10:41,740 --> 00:10:47,160
you know whatever this website however it was developed so he he he uh made the modification

265
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just through vibe coding english prompting and created the visualizations he was hoping for

266
00:10:52,340 --> 00:10:59,540
so it's cool and then he you know and he explained this um yeah they're good questions from the

267
00:10:59,540 --> 00:11:06,380
audience on that too so i think uh that was good then we then we moved to um like a products section

268
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where we talked about the square accepting bitcoin announcement and the returns on

269
00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:23,560
blocks um lightning node coinbase's credit card phenomenal engagement across those those topics

270
00:11:23,560 --> 00:11:29,060
so much so that we like we went over i mean we had a we had probably like 20 20 different things

271
00:11:29,060 --> 00:11:35,100
queued up for the product section we anticipated we get through about half and we you know we got

272
00:11:35,100 --> 00:11:41,220
through maybe a third and that and we still went way over the a lot of time we had in mind um so

273
00:11:41,220 --> 00:11:47,460
the format as as my understanding is the kind of the bit devs and socratic seminar were you

274
00:11:47,460 --> 00:11:54,980
introducing one of those products like you would explain how the coinbase acceptance works or was

275
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that something that somebody would pop up from the audience and kind of they would they would give the

276
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overview of it. Yes. Haley joined as moderator. So the two of us moderated and the format,

277
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moderators introduced the topic, guide the discussion, but shouldn't dominate the discussion.

278
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So each of these topics, if the moderator is doing their job, they solicit audience engagement.

279
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And we had great engagement, so much so that we ran over way over a lot of times.

280
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Um, so that, I mean, it's obviously we, we, we hit it out of the park in terms of our goal

281
00:12:31,180 --> 00:12:37,360
of audience engagement where the engagement was questions, ideas, opinions, everything

282
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we'd want to see from a, you know, from a lot of people in the audience.

283
00:12:41,920 --> 00:12:43,100
It wasn't just like one or two people.

284
00:12:43,100 --> 00:12:44,820
So that was really, really good to see.

285
00:12:44,820 --> 00:12:49,840
Did you, did you see any folks that did not realize, for example, that maybe there's a

286
00:12:49,840 --> 00:12:54,500
business model in the LSP or in routing fees that are now interested in that?

287
00:12:54,500 --> 00:12:56,580
or was there any interesting takes that you hadn't heard before?

288
00:13:01,920 --> 00:13:02,840
Yeah, a little bit.

289
00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:05,160
I mean, I can't, because it's Chatham House Rules,

290
00:13:05,280 --> 00:13:07,080
I can't name people, but, you know,

291
00:13:07,140 --> 00:13:09,480
someone that the three of us know

292
00:13:09,480 --> 00:13:16,380
that runs a business with, like, lightning routing nodes,

293
00:13:16,640 --> 00:13:19,420
you know, he had some really, you know, good comments.

294
00:13:20,280 --> 00:13:22,560
So, yeah, there was just overall

295
00:13:22,560 --> 00:13:28,420
very good audience engagement and comments. Then we moved on. We covered a couple of regulatory

296
00:13:28,420 --> 00:13:35,480
things fairly quickly. Then we moved on to what I was most excited to cover, which was design.

297
00:13:35,820 --> 00:13:42,200
And then we had some discussion topics queued up. And for design, we had a couple topics in the queue.

298
00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:49,880
The first was SATs and the Bitcoin B symbol, which, of course, spicy topic and fun to talk about.

299
00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:53,760
And then the other was seedless is safer, which is also spicy.

300
00:13:54,120 --> 00:13:59,460
So we covered the first one and that was a really rich, full discussion.

301
00:14:00,460 --> 00:14:10,340
Surprisingly, all but one or two people in the audience are pro Bitcoin B symbol and getting rid of the sats, visually at least.

302
00:14:11,300 --> 00:14:18,640
And there are a couple of people that are sats the standard, sats maxis.

303
00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:21,480
but that was a good discussion

304
00:14:21,480 --> 00:14:22,800
it's kind of what I

305
00:14:22,800 --> 00:14:24,960
hope to see in future

306
00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:26,140
builder meetups

307
00:14:26,140 --> 00:14:29,540
because we ran over time so much

308
00:14:29,540 --> 00:14:31,560
we just skipped the seedless

309
00:14:31,560 --> 00:14:33,640
is safer so we can tackle that in a future

310
00:14:33,640 --> 00:14:35,620
event then we moved on to discussion

311
00:14:35,620 --> 00:14:37,600
topics and we had three queued up

312
00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:39,660
we only were able

313
00:14:39,660 --> 00:14:41,420
to touch on one of the three

314
00:14:41,420 --> 00:14:43,700
and the

315
00:14:43,700 --> 00:14:45,200
first one is just vibe coding

316
00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:46,600
and this is just sort of a

317
00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:53,660
more of a like get an understanding of the audience who's vibe coded what tools they

318
00:14:53,660 --> 00:14:58,780
use what do they build and and that was a great discussion just uh especially for a first meetup

319
00:14:58,780 --> 00:15:05,920
and getting to know folks um and there was definitely a lot of interest in vibe coding

320
00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:11,360
and there's just no question in my mind that's going to be a future part of every every meetup

321
00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:15,160
talking about the tools, talking about our experiences with them,

322
00:15:15,300 --> 00:15:18,920
talking about and demonstrating and showing what people build.

323
00:15:19,380 --> 00:15:21,740
No question that's going to be a big part of this.

324
00:15:22,100 --> 00:15:23,400
What did you learn from that?

325
00:15:23,460 --> 00:15:25,380
Were most people using Replit or other stuff?

326
00:15:25,600 --> 00:15:27,580
And did people actually go through and show their prompts?

327
00:15:27,580 --> 00:15:31,180
Were there any surprises in how people were prompting to get better results?

328
00:15:33,360 --> 00:15:36,900
The tools were a wide variety,

329
00:15:37,120 --> 00:15:41,180
just like we talked about ourselves and other people we've chatted with.

330
00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:44,880
And then there's just the one demo.

331
00:15:45,660 --> 00:15:49,260
But we already have teed up for next month.

332
00:15:49,640 --> 00:15:57,720
We're going to have a demonstration of someone going from zero to a fully working Bitcoin tipping app in under 15 minutes.

333
00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:02,840
And we'll show all the prompts so people can see that progression and how that can be done.

334
00:16:02,900 --> 00:16:06,400
Meaning that's going to be done live or that's already done and going to be demoed.

335
00:16:06,720 --> 00:16:10,280
The 15 minute process can be demoed in a shorter period.

336
00:16:11,360 --> 00:16:13,180
it's going to be done live.

337
00:16:13,700 --> 00:16:14,080
That's awesome.

338
00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:14,580
Oh, cool.

339
00:16:15,500 --> 00:16:16,940
And one thing we didn't do yesterday

340
00:16:16,940 --> 00:16:19,400
was record or live stream the demos

341
00:16:19,400 --> 00:16:21,080
and we do intend to.

342
00:16:21,440 --> 00:16:24,620
So next time we'll be prepared to do that

343
00:16:24,620 --> 00:16:27,540
and do the demos up front.

344
00:16:28,640 --> 00:16:28,760
Yeah.

345
00:16:29,040 --> 00:16:31,800
So overall it went really well.

346
00:16:33,620 --> 00:16:35,700
Given the rush to get,

347
00:16:35,940 --> 00:16:38,380
we like to move fast and then iterate.

348
00:16:38,380 --> 00:16:43,560
and we did really well on that to get the first one going,

349
00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:44,620
learned from it.

350
00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:46,640
The main learning, and then at the end,

351
00:16:46,700 --> 00:16:49,780
we asked our audience feedback about what they liked,

352
00:16:49,820 --> 00:16:50,400
what they didn't like.

353
00:16:50,560 --> 00:16:53,220
Everyone, I mean, we stayed till like 9, 15 p.m.

354
00:16:53,220 --> 00:16:54,520
and I think we could have stayed till midnight.

355
00:16:54,700 --> 00:16:55,860
There was that much interest.

356
00:16:56,480 --> 00:16:57,440
That's awesome.

357
00:16:57,440 --> 00:16:58,680
People, like no one left

358
00:16:58,680 --> 00:17:00,800
and everyone was super paying attention

359
00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:02,600
and engaged all the way to the end.

360
00:17:03,860 --> 00:17:05,700
But the main area of improvement,

361
00:17:05,820 --> 00:17:07,300
and I completely agree with what people,

362
00:17:07,300 --> 00:17:14,900
an audience said is that we spent too much time on like sort of news product or news topics and

363
00:17:14,900 --> 00:17:21,060
people obviously like that because they just kept talking about it but it really required

364
00:17:21,060 --> 00:17:26,540
the moderators to like push to get to the next stuff but then once people's got a taste for like

365
00:17:26,540 --> 00:17:31,820
what i thought were the meaty parts then everyone's like we want more of that so design discussion

366
00:17:31,820 --> 00:17:36,660
yeah and just these general time like the we talked about vibe coding but the other ones we

367
00:17:36,660 --> 00:17:46,060
had teed up was the payments for applications using traditional payment mechanisms, stablecoins

368
00:17:46,060 --> 00:17:51,340
or Bitcoin. That'll be a recurring theme, I think, at this meetup. So like, let's get this discussion

369
00:17:51,340 --> 00:17:56,200
started though, right? And then this whole billboard idea I brought up last week, which I don't even

370
00:17:56,200 --> 00:18:01,760
really have a concrete idea. It's just this notion of an idea. We were going to discuss that as well.

371
00:18:01,760 --> 00:18:07,400
yes yes a concept of a concept um an announcement of a concept

372
00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:18,500
so um so we're going to um shift those segments earlier in the program so we're going to do like

373
00:18:18,500 --> 00:18:27,400
quick intro demos record and live stream that then turn the cameras off and then do design and

374
00:18:27,400 --> 00:18:30,760
other discussions and then do newsy stuff at the end.

375
00:18:31,120 --> 00:18:35,160
And we might not even get to the newsy stuff because the discussions are so rich and everyone

376
00:18:35,160 --> 00:18:36,600
seemed completely fine with that.

377
00:18:36,860 --> 00:18:42,460
Even though people enjoy talking about the news and commenting on it, everyone seemed

378
00:18:42,460 --> 00:18:46,740
totally fine if that just gets pushed off at the end or even not discussed at all.

379
00:18:47,140 --> 00:18:53,280
Because actually at BitDevs, there's a pretty healthy, there was some overlap with us talking

380
00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:55,120
about the news with BitDevs.

381
00:18:55,720 --> 00:18:55,840
Yeah.

382
00:18:55,840 --> 00:18:58,980
Yeah. I hear there's also a weekly podcast on that too.

383
00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:03,600
Yeah, I was going to say that the news seems like something you can kind of get other places.

384
00:19:04,320 --> 00:19:08,720
Whereas like, what are builders actually using? What are the tools? What are the demos? Being

385
00:19:08,720 --> 00:19:13,380
able to ask them, where else do you get that? There's not really a good place to get that.

386
00:19:13,540 --> 00:19:18,320
So it's not surprising to me that that would be like a bigger draw and that that would sort of

387
00:19:18,320 --> 00:19:22,180
encourage people would want that to be more of what the purpose of the thing is.

388
00:19:22,180 --> 00:19:24,700
And the live prompting and workshops, I mean, that's like,

389
00:19:24,700 --> 00:19:30,480
that's what i want the next one yeah so i'm super optimistic about um just getting better every

390
00:19:30,480 --> 00:19:35,940
month i think it's gonna be tremendously successful uh my main concern now is just like

391
00:19:35,940 --> 00:19:42,460
i think there's gonna be demand for like six hours of content and you know realistically we

392
00:19:42,460 --> 00:19:50,140
gotta shove it into two hours so i think we we might have to like you know cut you only have one

393
00:19:50,140 --> 00:19:57,740
startup showcase per event and one vibe coding demo per event just from time constraints we can

394
00:19:57,740 --> 00:20:03,820
also work to get more efficient too um you know with getting people set up the demo and making

395
00:20:03,820 --> 00:20:08,200
sure that when we switch from one person to another it's it's it's fast and there's not like

396
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:12,840
a two-minute pause or whatever so it's a great problem to have it's a good problem to have yeah

397
00:20:12,840 --> 00:20:19,320
so one thing okay go for it again yeah is there any um thought like would it ever make sense to

398
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:23,100
break down some of the things and do more frequent even than once a month or does that just get

399
00:20:23,100 --> 00:20:30,440
logistically complex and tough for people to schedule uh i think that'd be too much i think

400
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:33,060
it's better to have the shilling point and it's also nice because we have like an event almost

401
00:20:33,060 --> 00:20:38,120
every thursday now so it's kind of like that's people remember that so one topic that i mean i

402
00:20:38,120 --> 00:20:42,960
was hoping we would discuss today maybe this is kind of a good transition is um the bitcoin versus

403
00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:46,340
stable coins what were some of your takeaways from that conversation because i've been thinking

404
00:20:46,340 --> 00:20:54,080
know a lot about this like yeah what's your tlbr uh nada because we didn't get to it oh shit damn

405
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:58,920
no we'll start with that we i mean our topic list is public so anyone can go look at it we

406
00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:06,240
only covered a third of the stuff so the i mean the the it wasn't because we were

407
00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:13,220
inefficient like very rich discussion and great engagement throughout so kind of like you said

408
00:21:13,220 --> 00:21:14,500
I mean, great problem to have.

409
00:21:15,260 --> 00:21:17,800
But yeah, we only covered a third of our stuff.

410
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:20,320
Well, I think we could still talk about it

411
00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:21,280
because I'm curious.

412
00:21:21,520 --> 00:21:23,860
It's a topic that I think we've maybe listed,

413
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:25,740
or I know we've sort of touched on in our group chat,

414
00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:30,620
but I don't think we've really gotten anywhere with it yet.

415
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:33,000
And so maybe I can sort of,

416
00:21:33,380 --> 00:21:34,640
I'll play the sort of, you know,

417
00:21:34,700 --> 00:21:37,460
the left side of the bell curve, you know.

418
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:42,340
It's like, why don't we just use stable coins

419
00:21:42,340 --> 00:21:43,180
for all our apps.

420
00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:43,600
I don't know.

421
00:21:43,920 --> 00:21:44,540
Like, is censorship

422
00:21:44,540 --> 00:21:44,640
really a problem?

423
00:21:44,640 --> 00:21:45,500
I'm going to play

424
00:21:45,500 --> 00:21:46,160
that side too.

425
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:49,340
You're the Jedi, I guess.

426
00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:50,520
Yeah, I mean,

427
00:21:50,580 --> 00:21:52,200
I have some thoughts

428
00:21:52,200 --> 00:21:52,520
on Bitcoin,

429
00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:53,820
but maybe even to give

430
00:21:53,820 --> 00:21:55,140
a bit more context on this.

431
00:21:55,420 --> 00:21:55,540
So,

432
00:21:55,900 --> 00:21:58,120
one question,

433
00:21:58,780 --> 00:21:59,280
or at least the way

434
00:21:59,280 --> 00:22:00,300
I've thought about this,

435
00:22:00,400 --> 00:22:01,540
is if you want,

436
00:22:01,700 --> 00:22:03,000
is particularly in the

437
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:06,000
realm of new business models

438
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:07,000
using micropayments,

439
00:22:07,040 --> 00:22:07,480
because right now,

440
00:22:07,560 --> 00:22:07,860
obviously,

441
00:22:07,940 --> 00:22:08,780
no one does micropayments

442
00:22:08,780 --> 00:22:09,140
on the web.

443
00:22:09,180 --> 00:22:09,640
And I think there's

444
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:10,420
a very interesting,

445
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:11,660
rich sort of debate

446
00:22:11,660 --> 00:22:15,240
about why that is. It could be one reason. It could be a few reasons. I've seen very,

447
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:18,420
I think, compelling arguments for a few of them, which I think is worth outlining.

448
00:22:18,820 --> 00:22:23,240
And then the other question is just in general, as we go more agentic and agents are doing more

449
00:22:23,240 --> 00:22:27,600
things on the web, clearly there's going to be new business models around agents doing payments.

450
00:22:27,700 --> 00:22:32,460
Are they going to use Bitcoin? Are they going to use stable coins? So maybe just to start,

451
00:22:32,940 --> 00:22:36,880
because this is something I actually, I really feel like I don't know the answer to. I have my

452
00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:43,320
own gut, but as I thought more about why don't we have micro payments on the web? And there was a

453
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,860
really interesting article I shared with you, a Stratetri article talking about sort of Microsoft

454
00:22:46,860 --> 00:22:52,300
and them talking about the agentic web. And, you know, he mentioned, I think, what's his name? Kevin,

455
00:22:52,760 --> 00:23:00,220
not Kevin Smith. That's a funny director, but whoever the CTO is at Microsoft that the original

456
00:23:00,220 --> 00:23:05,700
Scott, right? Yeah, exactly. Not Kevin Smith. That would be something else I recommend people

457
00:23:05,700 --> 00:23:11,620
but he basically was making the argument that part of the original center of the web is not

458
00:23:11,620 --> 00:23:28,298
having payments And if we going to or at least actually that was the strategy guy that was making that argument And this guy talking about what if we have a new open agentic web didn talk about payments specifically um but because we didn have payments in the original version of the web then all of a sudden attention ended up becoming the

459
00:23:28,298 --> 00:23:32,558
currency of the web and is trapped us in one of two hells either advertising hell where the currency

460
00:23:32,558 --> 00:23:37,798
that we all pay with is human attention which is of course scarce um and or uh we end up in

461
00:23:37,798 --> 00:23:40,878
subscription hell where you end up paying for a subscription to everything and then you're like

462
00:23:40,878 --> 00:23:44,258
shit like i want to watch this one show on disney but it's not in netflix i'm not going to pay

463
00:23:44,258 --> 00:23:48,838
another $25 a month. And so you end up in this situation where like no one is happy with the

464
00:23:48,838 --> 00:23:54,178
status quo. Now, one interesting point that the strategy guy made is we actually do have

465
00:23:54,178 --> 00:23:57,978
micropayments today, but you don't see it. And the micropayments are happening, for example,

466
00:23:58,078 --> 00:24:02,218
in like Google's ad network where behind the scenes, you know, there's a lot of like real

467
00:24:02,218 --> 00:24:07,398
time, I guess, transactions being done between, okay, here's a human on this webpage, find which

468
00:24:07,398 --> 00:24:11,258
ad to serve them, you know, I guess, do the accounting to be able to pay the micro fractions

469
00:24:11,258 --> 00:24:15,218
of a cent for that ad and an aggregate that ends up being, you know, whatever it is, multi-trillion

470
00:24:15,218 --> 00:24:21,658
dollar economy. So that's kind of one argument. I've seen, um, Gigi put out a really nice, uh,

471
00:24:21,738 --> 00:24:26,718
essay some years ago where he argues that the reason attention became the currency of the web

472
00:24:26,718 --> 00:24:32,578
is because any sort of debt or credit based system, um, it's much more challenging to sort

473
00:24:32,578 --> 00:24:39,098
of settle up in real time. And so as an example, you know, if I need to, um, make a number of

474
00:24:39,098 --> 00:24:44,118
payments as like an example with imagine an agent in this sort of inference world and then all of a

475
00:24:44,118 --> 00:24:48,478
sudden i make whatever 10 000 payments and they're whatever a fraction of a cent but in aggregate it

476
00:24:48,478 --> 00:24:52,918
starts to add up and then i try and do a charge back on that um that's actually going to be you

477
00:24:52,918 --> 00:25:00,058
know impossible if you want to have a completely open system where uh you know you um you're using

478
00:25:00,058 --> 00:25:03,658
a credit-based money so anyways he has some interesting arguments around that about why

479
00:25:03,658 --> 00:25:07,998
attention became the the current still went there i'm not sure i buy that that couldn't be done

480
00:25:07,998 --> 00:25:13,518
with stable coins or dollars if there was the proper accounting of that. And I think that's

481
00:25:13,518 --> 00:25:17,478
kind of what the Certetri article is making the argument that we do have micropayments just with

482
00:25:17,478 --> 00:25:21,718
ads in the background. The most compelling argument that I've read so far for why we don't

483
00:25:21,718 --> 00:25:26,618
have micropayments came from Zabo, which obviously Zabo is always ahead of the curve.

484
00:25:26,978 --> 00:25:32,338
And his argument is basically just that the mental transaction costs are too high. And so if I'm a

485
00:25:32,338 --> 00:25:36,998
human and I'm on the web, every time I want to click an article, even if clicking, yes,

486
00:25:36,998 --> 00:25:42,698
show me this article is only 0.001 cents. It's too expensive for my attention to be able to

487
00:25:42,698 --> 00:25:46,638
calculate, well, do I want to pay 0.001 cents? It's just easier to pay for things in bundles.

488
00:25:46,778 --> 00:25:51,578
That to me is the most compelling sort of reason we don't have micropayments. And if that's the

489
00:25:51,578 --> 00:25:56,918
case, then an agentic web is going to solve that problem entirely because agents don't have the

490
00:25:56,918 --> 00:26:01,438
attention problem. So in that world, I think micropayments are going to thrive. Then there's

491
00:26:01,438 --> 00:26:06,178
the question of if it's not really a problem with the credit-based system, then stablecoins

492
00:26:06,178 --> 00:26:07,238
should do just fine for them.

493
00:26:08,218 --> 00:26:09,878
So that's kind of my setup.

494
00:26:09,958 --> 00:26:10,618
What do you guys think?

495
00:26:12,438 --> 00:26:14,318
Well, I'm kind of of the mind

496
00:26:14,318 --> 00:26:17,698
that the micropayments are too much

497
00:26:17,698 --> 00:26:18,998
for an individual's,

498
00:26:19,318 --> 00:26:20,618
you know, you don't want to have to think

499
00:26:20,618 --> 00:26:21,938
about every action.

500
00:26:22,038 --> 00:26:23,498
So you want to kind of buy in bundles

501
00:26:23,498 --> 00:26:25,658
or have sort of, you know,

502
00:26:25,698 --> 00:26:26,918
draw down as you use it.

503
00:26:27,238 --> 00:26:28,818
And I think we've had lots of examples of this.

504
00:26:28,878 --> 00:26:29,538
It used to be that way.

505
00:26:29,538 --> 00:26:31,118
You'd buy a bundle of text messages

506
00:26:31,118 --> 00:26:32,598
from your mobile phone operator,

507
00:26:33,318 --> 00:26:33,698
the carrier.

508
00:26:34,358 --> 00:26:36,118
And then as you would send a text,

509
00:26:36,178 --> 00:26:37,198
It would draw it down on your account.

510
00:26:37,298 --> 00:26:41,858
It would be a micropayment similar to like the Google ads example you mentioned, but you're

511
00:26:41,858 --> 00:26:42,798
buying a bundle of it.

512
00:26:42,838 --> 00:26:44,918
It's just being sort of deducted bit by bit.

513
00:26:45,358 --> 00:26:52,778
I find that today when I, when I'm vibe coding, I have like cloud code and I have a API key

514
00:26:52,778 --> 00:26:53,818
tied to a credit card.

515
00:26:54,258 --> 00:26:58,998
And every time I prompt, I can refresh the usage stats and I can see, oh, that prompt

516
00:26:58,998 --> 00:27:01,498
cost me 37 cents or less even.

517
00:27:01,498 --> 00:27:18,578
But that concept of like, I need to decide each time is, I think, too hard, like swipe a credit card or make a decision. I think the idea of like having some sort of relationship and bundle and drawdown is kind of a natural way for humans to work.

518
00:27:18,578 --> 00:27:30,678
But I do think that, like you mentioned, in an agentic world where the agent is the one receiving the money and making the decision about where to spend the money, there's none of that mental overhead or kind of the connectivity needed.

519
00:27:31,358 --> 00:27:34,458
So I do think there's like a chance that we get there with agents.

520
00:27:34,458 --> 00:27:43,958
But I think that like the idea of stable coins for payments versus Bitcoin native payments is possibly related, but different than micropayments.

521
00:27:43,958 --> 00:27:49,738
micropayments may or may not be a thing but i think there's this whole idea of you know are

522
00:27:49,738 --> 00:27:53,958
stable coins what people want are they good enough what are the risks what are the trade-offs

523
00:27:53,958 --> 00:27:59,258
is is bitcoin a better payment system today will it be a better payment system over time

524
00:27:59,258 --> 00:28:05,758
um so i think for that we should we should have steve way in because he's he's the guy who works

525
00:28:05,758 --> 00:28:13,098
on this every day well i heard that i'm not going to take the bitcoin i'm i'll take the trad fi or

526
00:28:13,098 --> 00:28:13,978
stablecoin stance.

527
00:28:14,238 --> 00:28:15,238
But I wanted to actually

528
00:28:15,238 --> 00:28:19,358
respond to one thing

529
00:28:19,358 --> 00:28:19,938
you said, David.

530
00:28:19,938 --> 00:28:21,998
I don't agree with you.

531
00:28:22,418 --> 00:28:24,098
The argument you gave about

532
00:28:24,098 --> 00:28:28,158
that humans don't want to deal

533
00:28:28,158 --> 00:28:28,898
with micropayments,

534
00:28:29,078 --> 00:28:30,798
that's a very common response

535
00:28:30,798 --> 00:28:32,158
and I think it's a weak response

536
00:28:32,158 --> 00:28:35,938
because micropayments

537
00:28:36,658 --> 00:28:38,538
don't require that the user

538
00:28:38,538 --> 00:28:40,418
gives attention to every

539
00:28:40,418 --> 00:28:41,978
subpenny payment.

540
00:28:43,098 --> 00:28:44,918
So I think that's just a flawed UI.

541
00:28:45,218 --> 00:28:47,238
It's not a flaw in micropayments.

542
00:28:48,458 --> 00:28:56,378
Like, I could pay, like, a sub penny amount of money per webpage or per unit of content,

543
00:28:56,378 --> 00:28:59,278
but I don't have to, like, actively make a decision.

544
00:28:59,558 --> 00:29:03,078
Each micropayment is just happening in the background.

545
00:29:03,818 --> 00:29:09,238
And I also didn't have to sign up for an annual premium subscription to do that.

546
00:29:09,538 --> 00:29:12,558
I literally am just paying piece by piece.

547
00:29:12,558 --> 00:29:18,758
so yeah but i think we're saying the same thing we're not you said that the reason you said that

548
00:29:18,758 --> 00:29:25,458
micropayments would be used by uh ai maybe but not humans because humans don't want to have to

549
00:29:25,458 --> 00:29:30,298
make a decision every micropayment and i'm saying that's a flawed ui not a flaw in micropayments

550
00:29:30,298 --> 00:29:36,338
right so but the the example that i gave is a micropayments example i'll give an even more

551
00:29:36,338 --> 00:29:41,778
extreme example which is sort of demonstrates the same structure is i i made an app i think i may

552
00:29:41,778 --> 00:29:45,518
have shared this with you. I made an app this week where I connect all your health kit data

553
00:29:45,518 --> 00:29:50,998
to an, to an LLM. So you can chat and get insights about your health kit data.

554
00:29:51,318 --> 00:29:55,378
And so I didn't want, I want to have a path toward privacy. So I chose deep seek.

555
00:29:55,998 --> 00:30:01,038
And so I topped up $10 with deep seek because you could eventually run on your own infrastructure

556
00:30:01,038 --> 00:30:09,238
on this. Is that a joke? No. Why is that? It's toasted by an American company. I think is where

557
00:30:09,238 --> 00:30:14,078
he's hoping this goes but right now it's pretty terrifying no my point is it's terrifying but it's

558
00:30:14,078 --> 00:30:20,338
also just me playing around there's a path toward me saying take deep seek an open source model run

559
00:30:20,338 --> 00:30:25,838
out my own infrastructure and nobody but me the one who runs the app has access to the data

560
00:30:25,838 --> 00:30:31,678
you should check out maple for that by the way maple ai they already are running deep seek yeah

561
00:30:31,678 --> 00:30:38,278
then you don't have to host your own nitro servers or whatever yeah perfect so so that's

562
00:30:38,278 --> 00:30:42,838
probably like the right solution i mean i'm it's more just like a play thing it's not it's not meant

563
00:30:42,838 --> 00:30:49,018
to be like a real thing but the point is i um i topped up ten dollars with uh with deep seek and

564
00:30:49,018 --> 00:30:55,698
now i have a bunch of people using the app you know using my deep seek payment and i think i've

565
00:30:55,698 --> 00:31:00,858
spent two cents total so far across every everybody who's using it and there's you know maybe half a

566
00:31:00,858 --> 00:31:06,158
dozen people using it all their queries has used two cents so but again i i still think i mean i've

567
00:31:06,158 --> 00:31:11,018
heard this argument i've heard this negative response to micropayments over and over again

568
00:31:11,018 --> 00:31:15,238
from tech people saying that like oh humans don't want to make a decision for every micropayment

569
00:31:15,238 --> 00:31:19,478
which is the argument you made earlier and i totally disagree with it i agree that humans

570
00:31:19,478 --> 00:31:25,638
don't want to make a decision every micropayment but i would call that a flawed ui not a flaw in

571
00:31:25,638 --> 00:31:32,258
micropayments simply don't have the user make a decision every micropayment yeah and as far as

572
00:31:32,258 --> 00:31:34,698
this subscription model i i'd

573
00:31:36,158 --> 00:31:40,758
Clearly it's popular, but is it the natural form that humans want?

574
00:31:41,138 --> 00:31:42,038
I'd say no.

575
00:31:43,778 --> 00:31:45,738
There's a lot of friction in having to decide,

576
00:31:45,878 --> 00:31:47,738
like, oh, do I really want to do annual subscription

577
00:31:47,738 --> 00:31:49,518
or even a monthly subscription?

578
00:31:49,538 --> 00:31:50,558
I'm not talking about a subscription.

579
00:31:50,678 --> 00:31:50,938
No.

580
00:31:51,838 --> 00:31:52,198
I'm saying-

581
00:31:52,198 --> 00:31:53,718
You said topping up.

582
00:31:53,898 --> 00:31:54,738
I top up $10.

583
00:31:55,118 --> 00:31:55,798
That's not a subscription.

584
00:31:55,938 --> 00:31:56,798
$10 input.

585
00:31:57,578 --> 00:31:57,818
Right.

586
00:31:58,158 --> 00:31:59,118
So that's friction.

587
00:31:59,378 --> 00:32:00,678
There's a lot of people who drop off

588
00:32:00,678 --> 00:32:03,078
because they don't want to pay that much money up front.

589
00:32:03,078 --> 00:32:11,158
so like if i came if i came if i came if i came across a new like um media content or brand that

590
00:32:11,158 --> 00:32:15,238
i was completely unfamiliar with i'm not comfortable ten dollars hundred dollars whatever

591
00:32:15,238 --> 00:32:19,358
it is up front like no i don't even know who this person is the content but if i can pay a micro

592
00:32:19,358 --> 00:32:23,978
payment to just get a dose of it and then be like oh i do like it and then pay a little bit more a

593
00:32:23,978 --> 00:32:29,758
little bit more but what's it reduces like it reduces well i actually have a ux in mind so i

594
00:32:29,758 --> 00:32:30,718
I think the way-

595
00:32:30,718 --> 00:32:31,438
Micropayments.

596
00:32:33,098 --> 00:32:35,318
But there's some aggregation point.

597
00:32:35,418 --> 00:32:37,018
Like you have a connected wallet

598
00:32:37,018 --> 00:32:39,058
that you approve and sign

599
00:32:39,058 --> 00:32:41,018
when you want the payment to be made.

600
00:32:41,238 --> 00:32:42,638
So is there like a paywall

601
00:32:42,638 --> 00:32:43,778
where you click yes

602
00:32:43,778 --> 00:32:44,598
or how does it work?

603
00:32:44,778 --> 00:32:46,098
We already have this with Albi.

604
00:32:46,298 --> 00:32:47,618
So I actually do this right now

605
00:32:47,618 --> 00:32:48,738
with Bitcoin and Albi, right?

606
00:32:48,878 --> 00:32:49,478
So with Albi,

607
00:32:49,618 --> 00:32:50,738
the way it works is

608
00:32:50,738 --> 00:32:52,898
I have a browser extension.

609
00:32:53,358 --> 00:32:54,158
I can just, whatever,

610
00:32:54,278 --> 00:32:55,058
top up my wallet there

611
00:32:55,058 --> 00:32:55,878
and because it's, you know,

612
00:32:55,938 --> 00:32:57,018
connected with Viannoster Wallet

613
00:32:57,018 --> 00:32:58,278
connect to all my other apps,

614
00:32:58,318 --> 00:32:59,458
I can literally earn sats

615
00:32:59,458 --> 00:33:02,818
or Bitcoin on Primal go into the Albi wallet.

616
00:33:02,998 --> 00:33:05,798
What's really nice is you can then set a budget

617
00:33:05,798 --> 00:33:08,118
via Nostra Wallet Connect for any site that you use.

618
00:33:08,538 --> 00:33:09,698
And so you have two options.

619
00:33:09,838 --> 00:33:11,478
You can either like for a site like Stacker News,

620
00:33:11,538 --> 00:33:12,398
I just have a monthly budget.

621
00:33:12,538 --> 00:33:14,438
I literally just click a button to do my zap.

622
00:33:14,498 --> 00:33:15,898
I don't even know, you know,

623
00:33:16,118 --> 00:33:17,158
that I don't have to think anything.

624
00:33:17,238 --> 00:33:18,758
I literally just click a button, it works.

625
00:33:19,198 --> 00:33:20,698
And then if it's a new site

626
00:33:20,698 --> 00:33:22,718
that also hooks in via Nostra Wallet Connect,

627
00:33:22,718 --> 00:33:24,458
then you actually can get the experience

628
00:33:24,458 --> 00:33:25,218
you're talking about, Steve,

629
00:33:25,278 --> 00:33:26,998
where it's like, I don't trust this site

630
00:33:26,998 --> 00:33:29,158
and I don't want to pay whatever amount of money.

631
00:33:29,458 --> 00:33:32,378
But they'll offer me for two cents the ability to read this one article.

632
00:33:32,458 --> 00:33:37,418
And as long as it speaks NWC or WebLN, I literally just click the invoice button and it works.

633
00:33:37,418 --> 00:33:42,658
So I think to me, the best payments experience online by far right now is via Albi.

634
00:33:42,938 --> 00:33:53,358
And I think the argument for why it works in Bitcoin and Lightning and why I'm still bullish Bitcoin and Lightning in the long run, and I'll take the other side of this, is because it's an open system.

635
00:33:53,358 --> 00:34:04,598
And so I do think stable coins can clone a lot of this and maybe they'll be able to clone this, you know, whatever next couple of year experience even better where I have some kind of a browser extension or wallet and use that for tipping.

636
00:34:04,598 --> 00:34:10,518
but in general one of the like one of the big lessons i have with bitcoin and e-cash and all

637
00:34:10,518 --> 00:34:16,458
this stuff is if a system is permissioned then the limits of what you can do in that system are

638
00:34:16,458 --> 00:34:20,118
always less and if a system is not permission which bitcoin lightning and e-cash i would say

639
00:34:20,118 --> 00:34:24,538
is like the unpermission version of this you're just going to have way more experimentation and

640
00:34:24,538 --> 00:34:28,478
you can like basically try things that you know even if they find the stable coins are going to

641
00:34:28,478 --> 00:34:32,558
local maximum over the next two to three years which is probably right maybe there's some weird

642
00:34:32,558 --> 00:34:36,178
way of doing payments that no one's thought of yet that can only work in the bitcoin lightning

643
00:34:36,178 --> 00:34:42,118
sort of cash you world and in the long game i'm open on i'm more bullish on the open system but

644
00:34:42,118 --> 00:34:45,378
in the short run i would say yeah stable coins can just clone the albi experience and people

645
00:34:45,378 --> 00:34:52,798
will probably be happy with that to give another example of the micro payment stuff like some a

646
00:34:52,798 --> 00:34:57,718
common occurrence that i run into today and i'm sure many other people do too is you whether you're

647
00:34:57,718 --> 00:35:03,458
on google or someone sends you a link over messaging and it's a link to like the wall

648
00:35:03,458 --> 00:35:08,658
street journal new york times or washington post or this or that media site um and you click on it

649
00:35:08,658 --> 00:35:14,518
and it's a paywall it's horrible like i don't want to subscribe to like 75 different media publications

650
00:35:14,518 --> 00:35:20,038
because i'm not a that's too much money in aggregate i don't get enough value from any

651
00:35:20,038 --> 00:35:26,498
one of them to or i at least don't know if i'm going to get enough value out of um them and so

652
00:35:26,498 --> 00:35:32,698
So I, but I'd be happy to pay like my fair share for the content that I click on to look

653
00:35:32,698 --> 00:35:33,118
at, right?

654
00:35:33,338 --> 00:35:34,278
Like a micropayment.

655
00:35:34,418 --> 00:35:39,478
And so the UX does not have to be me choosing every single time.

656
00:35:39,478 --> 00:35:44,098
Do I want to pay 0.3 cents or 7.6 cents or whatever?

657
00:35:44,318 --> 00:35:47,398
No, just like, like Mac said, and we already have tools for this.

658
00:35:47,478 --> 00:35:52,218
Like I set an overall budget and it could be for the entire web, right?

659
00:35:52,298 --> 00:35:55,118
And I'm willing to pay so much per day or month or whatever.

660
00:35:55,118 --> 00:35:57,398
I set that once and forget it.

661
00:35:58,018 --> 00:35:59,798
And I'm very comfortable economically with that.

662
00:36:00,218 --> 00:36:04,278
And then I just browse the web and then anyone sending me a link, I can click on it and actually

663
00:36:04,278 --> 00:36:05,538
read it, get rid of the paywall.

664
00:36:05,738 --> 00:36:07,558
The UX is tremendously better.

665
00:36:08,638 --> 00:36:10,898
And I don't have this cognitive overhead.

666
00:36:11,318 --> 00:36:13,018
So to me, this is like a no brainer.

667
00:36:13,078 --> 00:36:14,578
I don't know why this doesn't already exist.

668
00:36:14,898 --> 00:36:15,978
So let's pause there.

669
00:36:16,118 --> 00:36:17,058
Why doesn't it exist?

670
00:36:17,138 --> 00:36:17,238
Right.

671
00:36:17,238 --> 00:36:23,098
Like, I think we all agree that seems like a higher maximum than the local maximum of

672
00:36:23,098 --> 00:36:25,078
ads and subscription hell that we're in.

673
00:36:25,298 --> 00:36:26,278
Why didn't this evolve?

674
00:36:26,418 --> 00:36:26,518
Right.

675
00:36:26,558 --> 00:36:28,778
So Gigi says it can't evolve with a credit based system.

676
00:36:29,438 --> 00:36:30,738
I'm not sure I buy that.

677
00:36:31,118 --> 00:36:35,598
I'm saying maybe it's just sort of the accident of not having an open system.

678
00:36:35,598 --> 00:36:37,398
And we just kind of got stuck in the wrong inertia.

679
00:36:37,398 --> 00:36:38,898
That seems the most likely to me.

680
00:36:39,178 --> 00:36:42,698
Why do you guys think we don't have this Albie like system where you just top up and

681
00:36:42,698 --> 00:36:43,718
explore the web right now?

682
00:36:44,718 --> 00:36:50,218
Well, how would maybe it's we'd have to think through like Stripe and credit cards and stuff

683
00:36:50,218 --> 00:36:50,478
today.

684
00:36:50,578 --> 00:36:52,938
Like how would the experience we just.

685
00:36:53,098 --> 00:36:59,958
described work with that well you'd give your credit card to the browser so like yeah why doesn't

686
00:36:59,958 --> 00:37:06,598
like chrome and safari support this well so okay so there's a couple of things one if we had had

687
00:37:06,598 --> 00:37:11,298
and andreessen's talked about this before like in mosaic if they had found a way to integrate

688
00:37:11,298 --> 00:37:16,778
a wallet into mosaic from from day zero we probably would have this my understanding is

689
00:37:16,778 --> 00:37:21,918
from what he was saying is at that time you're basically only games in town were to play with

690
00:37:21,918 --> 00:37:26,798
the credit card networks like visa and mastercard and again permission versus permissionless they're

691
00:37:26,798 --> 00:37:30,578
basically like nah and part of the reason that they're not going to do it is their existing

692
00:37:30,578 --> 00:37:35,378
old world business model is i forget exactly what it is but let's say they take two percent plus a

693
00:37:35,378 --> 00:37:39,918
fixed fee on every transaction so that fixed fee whether it's a quarter or nickel or dime whatever

694
00:37:39,918 --> 00:37:43,458
it is is more than the micropayment but that doesn't explain why they couldn't just do the

695
00:37:43,458 --> 00:37:47,858
top up if let me put a hundred dollars in this and then right knock yourself i think in the time of

696
00:37:47,858 --> 00:37:53,498
mosaic the concern like people didn't weren't comfortable giving their credit cards over the

697
00:37:53,498 --> 00:37:58,978
internet yeah that was pretty early yeah people didn't even trust amazon at that time and there

698
00:37:58,978 --> 00:38:05,038
and there was no like tls there's no https at the time and i mean so so at the time of mosaic i think

699
00:38:05,038 --> 00:38:09,618
that's at least one of the reasons but yeah i mean like ever since then though the past

700
00:38:09,618 --> 00:38:21,278
15 or 20 years why the the the fees of visa i don't see how that um prevented google and safari

701
00:38:21,278 --> 00:38:25,378
from creating a situation where you know they build it into the browser

702
00:38:25,378 --> 00:38:33,538
the consumers sign up you know sign up for like a monthly budget um and then anything they browse

703
00:38:33,538 --> 00:38:37,558
on the web could be micropayments i think i think there's a few things one is the publishers

704
00:38:37,558 --> 00:38:44,018
grew up along with that other version of the web. So the publishers grew up throwing AdSense on

705
00:38:44,018 --> 00:38:48,898
there and monetizing via that style of micropayments, which is using attention and not

706
00:38:48,898 --> 00:38:54,158
having direct pay from the users. So it's really hard to get a publisher who's built in a certain

707
00:38:54,158 --> 00:38:58,078
way and has a bunch of maybe there's journalists or writers on staff who have to get paid and they

708
00:38:58,078 --> 00:39:02,958
have monthly bills and they want recurrence. It's hard to shift them into a totally new world and

709
00:39:02,958 --> 00:39:06,138
say, hey, you're going to get paid for the value you create. And the days you don't create value,

710
00:39:06,138 --> 00:39:10,298
you don't get paid that that just like screws up everybody's you know rent or mortgage or whatever

711
00:39:10,298 --> 00:39:18,958
so i think you could establish a new type of publisher who would opt into this idea if if

712
00:39:18,958 --> 00:39:23,078
if the other stuff didn't exist like maybe that still happens in the future but i think like

713
00:39:23,078 --> 00:39:27,798
the existing publishers grew up in the old way the other thing that i think is like maybe maybe

714
00:39:27,798 --> 00:39:33,558
we're not seeing eye to eye on yet is um i don't feel comfortable topping up a hundred dollars into

715
00:39:33,558 --> 00:39:39,858
Chrome and then letting any site draw that down because I trust Chrome, but I don't trust any

716
00:39:39,858 --> 00:39:44,818
sites. Then am I going to whitelist a bunch of sites that I do trust to draw down? And then if

717
00:39:44,818 --> 00:39:48,958
Mac sends me a link to some scam site and they choose to draw down my whole hundred dollars,

718
00:39:48,958 --> 00:39:54,618
like, am I just out of luck or like how, how would that work? Do you whitelist proactively

719
00:39:54,618 --> 00:40:00,138
things or do you trust that Chrome knows which sites are charging me too much or kind of behaving

720
00:40:00,138 --> 00:40:04,938
badly how would that work i think that's easy you can either whitelist manually or you can say hey

721
00:40:04,938 --> 00:40:09,398
chrome like you know based on all of your knowledge you have a rating system if it's a green site

722
00:40:09,398 --> 00:40:14,058
rock and roll if it's not if it's like a red or yellow site then in that case i do want to be

723
00:40:14,058 --> 00:40:18,178
shown a dialogue box and make the conscious decision do i want to pay or not yes you need

724
00:40:18,178 --> 00:40:24,638
to bootstrap all of that too that's a whole ecosystem but in addition so i agree with one

725
00:40:24,638 --> 00:40:28,138
obvious option is to manually whitelist.

726
00:40:28,138 --> 00:40:32,158
So a UX cost on the user, but that

727
00:40:32,158 --> 00:40:35,898
just solves the problem. Two would be some kind of like

728
00:40:35,898 --> 00:40:39,218
trust system

729
00:40:39,218 --> 00:40:44,018
like Max just said. So yes, DK, you'd have to

730
00:40:44,018 --> 00:40:48,278
bootstrap that, but that then basically achieves the same goal

731
00:40:48,278 --> 00:40:50,638
and reduces the UX burden on the user.

732
00:40:50,638 --> 00:40:54,478
thing that could work in conjunction

733
00:40:54,478 --> 00:40:56,338
with those is that you can

734
00:40:56,338 --> 00:40:58,478
either, I mean, Chrome

735
00:40:58,478 --> 00:41:00,598
would default to this and the user could even overwrite it

736
00:41:00,598 --> 00:41:01,458
like some kind of

737
00:41:01,458 --> 00:41:02,878
safety

738
00:41:02,878 --> 00:41:06,578
max, like you can't go

739
00:41:06,578 --> 00:41:08,418
to one website

740
00:41:08,418 --> 00:41:10,418
and it just draws down the entire $100

741
00:41:10,418 --> 00:41:11,258
in one go.

742
00:41:11,818 --> 00:41:13,798
The most a page could

743
00:41:13,798 --> 00:41:16,198
cost is like a penny

744
00:41:16,198 --> 00:41:17,838
or something. And then

745
00:41:17,838 --> 00:41:20,458
if it exceeds that

746
00:41:20,638 --> 00:41:22,938
I mean, the publisher can request more,

747
00:41:23,018 --> 00:41:24,338
but if it exceeds some threshold,

748
00:41:24,558 --> 00:41:26,738
then the user is asked about it.

749
00:41:27,798 --> 00:41:28,958
And that's the way Albi works today.

750
00:41:29,058 --> 00:41:30,458
Like that's like the actual experience.

751
00:41:30,458 --> 00:41:32,458
You just say, I set a budget for these sites.

752
00:41:32,638 --> 00:41:35,038
And if it's a new site, just show me the dialog box.

753
00:41:35,978 --> 00:41:38,278
Which is exactly, I think we're all saying the same thing.

754
00:41:38,338 --> 00:41:40,698
We're saying some aggregated trust point.

755
00:41:41,118 --> 00:41:43,158
And then you draw down on that aggregated trust point,

756
00:41:43,198 --> 00:41:44,638
you configure the aggregated trust point.

757
00:41:45,898 --> 00:41:49,298
Yeah, but everything that we use today

758
00:41:49,298 --> 00:41:52,958
to top up is not broad.

759
00:41:53,078 --> 00:41:54,258
It's very specific.

760
00:41:55,798 --> 00:41:58,378
This is part of my hope for what,

761
00:41:58,678 --> 00:42:00,538
you know, when I first saw Stacker News,

762
00:42:00,638 --> 00:42:01,358
this was part of my hope

763
00:42:01,358 --> 00:42:02,818
for what I thought Stacker News could provide

764
00:42:02,818 --> 00:42:05,038
is they are an aggregated trust point.

765
00:42:05,458 --> 00:42:08,378
You have a wallet connected there.

766
00:42:08,438 --> 00:42:09,738
You have value already stored in there

767
00:42:09,738 --> 00:42:11,318
and you can upvote

768
00:42:11,318 --> 00:42:13,258
and actually recognize something,

769
00:42:13,978 --> 00:42:15,018
but it doesn't go to the publisher.

770
00:42:15,158 --> 00:42:16,978
I kind of, but actually I disagree with that.

771
00:42:17,078 --> 00:42:18,958
I mean, so yes, we're asking the question,

772
00:42:18,958 --> 00:42:25,158
20 years ago, why didn't the aggregation, the centralized browser do this? But today it's your

773
00:42:25,158 --> 00:42:30,478
own self-custody wallet. So your centralization point is your own. It's like literally the bill

774
00:42:30,478 --> 00:42:35,518
fold in your pocket. That's where you're setting the budget. But you still need, yeah, you need

775
00:42:35,518 --> 00:42:40,418
some budget set somewhere. You need to decide what is allowed to draw that. On your own wallet.

776
00:42:40,418 --> 00:42:48,238
Yeah. So that's not the same as like, you know, topping up on Anthropic and topping up on

777
00:42:48,238 --> 00:42:54,338
Starbucks card and topping up, you know, name the top 50 brands you use, having top-ups for all 50

778
00:42:54,338 --> 00:42:59,258
is a very different experience because you've got 50 different centralized brands you're topping up

779
00:42:59,258 --> 00:43:04,298
versus your own wallet in your pocket. Yeah. I think there's two very interesting questions

780
00:43:04,298 --> 00:43:07,618
here. There's the question of the past, which I actually do think is very important to understand

781
00:43:07,618 --> 00:43:13,858
because I think those incentives sort of dictate or at least inform what's going to happen in the

782
00:43:13,858 --> 00:43:18,738
future. So in the past, if you think about this, who would have had the ability to be these

783
00:43:18,738 --> 00:43:25,738
aggregation points? Well, it's the major browser. So it's basically Google or Apple. Google is

784
00:43:25,738 --> 00:43:30,498
probably not going to do this because their business model is just the greatest business

785
00:43:30,498 --> 00:43:34,798
model in the history of mankind from ads. So like, I mean, why would they like put a lot of money

786
00:43:34,798 --> 00:43:41,138
into this? It potentially cannibalizes their main business. Apple, then it makes sense for them to

787
00:43:41,138 --> 00:43:46,058
be the aggregation point with safari and you know potentially something in ios then the question is

788
00:43:46,058 --> 00:43:50,258
why didn't apple go down the slide i mean one answer would be they're making so much from google

789
00:43:50,258 --> 00:43:53,898
and the search payments that there's like whatever they're paying us 20 billion dollars a year we

790
00:43:53,898 --> 00:43:59,418
just don't care um or maybe it's something else maybe just i don't know somehow because inertia

791
00:43:59,418 --> 00:44:04,158
was so strong in this initial model no one put in the time to like go out there because to your

792
00:44:04,158 --> 00:44:07,698
point you have to go out and build the network effects around all the different kinds of

793
00:44:07,698 --> 00:44:11,138
publishers, which is why, by the way, I'm so bullish right now on Nostra Wallet Connect,

794
00:44:11,278 --> 00:44:16,978
Albi, Bitcoin, Lightning, Open Systems, because that's emerging bottoms up, right? Like we have,

795
00:44:17,278 --> 00:44:22,298
like to your point, Steve, like all the payments I do with Bitcoin or Lightning are in my self

796
00:44:22,298 --> 00:44:28,078
custodial Albi wallet, which hooks up to my browser extension. And I literally, I have one

797
00:44:28,078 --> 00:44:33,358
place that I use money on the web and it's awesome. So one could argue that it was just probably too

798
00:44:33,358 --> 00:44:37,938
much work for someone like Apple and they're already being paid $20 billion a year. So it's

799
00:44:37,938 --> 00:44:42,278
just like, meh, that's my best guess. Well, I think you have to bootstrap new ecosystems

800
00:44:42,278 --> 00:44:46,118
on all sides. You need publishers opting into this, you need users opting into this, you need

801
00:44:46,118 --> 00:44:52,258
value stored in presumably non-custodial ways and with configuration options and stuff. There's just

802
00:44:52,258 --> 00:44:57,998
a lot of complexity that all has to happen kind of at once. So I'm not suggesting it can't happen

803
00:44:57,998 --> 00:45:01,438
in the future. I'm just saying like, why do we not have it? Because like a lot of these technologies

804
00:45:01,438 --> 00:45:03,198
weren't even invented 20 years ago,

805
00:45:03,538 --> 00:45:05,378
let alone right now they're just kind of nascent.

806
00:45:05,538 --> 00:45:06,938
So you could imagine a future,

807
00:45:07,298 --> 00:45:09,398
all the pieces that we kind of have together

808
00:45:09,398 --> 00:45:12,458
that a bunch of us fringe people are playing with

809
00:45:12,458 --> 00:45:14,198
could become mainstream over time.

810
00:45:14,658 --> 00:45:15,578
I can call them fringe people.

811
00:45:15,978 --> 00:45:17,698
So I want to go back, David,

812
00:45:17,698 --> 00:45:23,518
you said that publishers have been accustomed

813
00:45:23,518 --> 00:45:24,778
to their ad-based model,

814
00:45:25,258 --> 00:45:27,658
and so it takes time to switch.

815
00:45:27,658 --> 00:45:37,398
um i mean that that seemed true up until maybe eight to ten years ago because that's when all

816
00:45:37,398 --> 00:45:45,138
of a sudden publishers added the paywall and were much more aggressive at getting consumers to to

817
00:45:45,138 --> 00:45:50,878
subscribe so i'm a little i'm i am a little surprised that the past 10 years that that's

818
00:45:50,878 --> 00:45:56,898
not been sufficient time to overcome building out that ecosystem that you just mentioned which i

819
00:45:56,898 --> 00:46:00,778
agree it has to be built out definitely takes time a little surprised that hasn't occurred the last

820
00:46:00,778 --> 00:46:08,498
10 years though um in some sense like it kind of does happen like look at look at youtube youtube

821
00:46:08,498 --> 00:46:13,818
started when youtube started there were zero videos on youtube right and then it started and

822
00:46:13,818 --> 00:46:17,298
people started putting cat videos and like low value things and things that you know dog out of

823
00:46:17,298 --> 00:46:22,918
skateboard stuff that people said there's no value in that well as an internet native person i would

824
00:46:22,918 --> 00:46:27,498
agree but i think most people would say like dog i've got a funny video of a dog on a skateboard

825
00:46:27,498 --> 00:46:32,338
doesn't matter there's no economic value here have it right and i think that's the kind of stuff

826
00:46:32,338 --> 00:46:54,996
like you build out an ecosystem of that that the same website that today aggregates all kinds of premium tv channels and people pay 80 bucks a month it the new cable bundle And I think the way you get there is you start with people not you know kind of uneconomic content content that people don see as economic valuable but that creates like networks and behaviors and gets people opted in

827
00:46:55,056 --> 00:46:59,976
And then people start creating videos on there and they start getting paid ad rev share.

828
00:47:00,116 --> 00:47:01,556
So they don't get direct pay from the users.

829
00:47:01,636 --> 00:47:05,316
But again, the creator is getting paid ad rev share from YouTube.

830
00:47:05,316 --> 00:47:22,296
So I think there's just like a bit of an evolution. We saw it happen in video because video is so expensive both to maintain and just like was hard to serve. But I think we haven't had that same kind of pain. And I think the centralized coordinator there actually made it work in a way that we haven't seen outside yet.

831
00:47:23,216 --> 00:47:33,336
But I'm optimistic that we can get there outside. I think we just need a little bit of like a galvanizing force to like demonstrate the whole kind of full stack end to end thing.

832
00:47:33,336 --> 00:47:45,616
I mean, this is why I'm so excited about having an open payment protocol system and an open monetary system at the moment when agentic AI is exploding.

833
00:47:45,736 --> 00:47:51,416
Because I honestly think a big part of this answer is just inertia is tough to undo.

834
00:47:52,116 --> 00:48:00,096
And there are only certain periods in the history of whatever technology of the universe where you can actually shift that inertia.

835
00:48:00,096 --> 00:48:02,496
And that's when something rapidly, rapidly changes.

836
00:48:03,056 --> 00:48:07,536
And so I actually think that I was chatting a bit with Jordi from Fusats about this.

837
00:48:07,956 --> 00:48:12,796
And Jordi made an interesting point to me, which is that Stripe arose and solved a problem

838
00:48:12,796 --> 00:48:16,076
of basically making it easy for anyone to accept money on the web.

839
00:48:16,296 --> 00:48:19,976
Because if you think about it, there are new business models that are not just ads.

840
00:48:20,116 --> 00:48:25,316
If I'm a Stripe merchant or I can do subscriptions via Stripe, then that's a new way for me to

841
00:48:25,316 --> 00:48:25,676
monetize.

842
00:48:25,676 --> 00:48:29,896
And they kind of did all the hard work of, I guess, aggregating all the payment providers

843
00:48:29,896 --> 00:48:31,256
to make it easy to take money.

844
00:48:31,256 --> 00:48:37,076
but he made a very good point which is and kind of what fusats is going after which is now there's

845
00:48:37,076 --> 00:48:42,716
an opportunity to aggregate making it easy to pay money on the web as well and i think his argument

846
00:48:42,716 --> 00:48:46,716
you know i don't want to speak for him i don't wouldn't say i understand entirely but we had this

847
00:48:46,716 --> 00:48:53,116
monumental shift happening where you know everyone knows people are using google less there's like a

848
00:48:53,116 --> 00:48:57,476
lot fewer eyeballs on the long tail of the web but this is that whole street territory article i sent

849
00:48:57,476 --> 00:49:02,756
you guys. And so no one knows what the business model for the agentic web is going to be. But

850
00:49:02,756 --> 00:49:07,296
whether it's me as an individual or the agent acting on my behalf, somehow me or the agent is

851
00:49:07,296 --> 00:49:12,736
going out there scouring everything on the internet to get information and bringing me back

852
00:49:12,736 --> 00:49:18,376
some kind of answer. And it does seem like if everyone now, like we have the pieces coming,

853
00:49:18,476 --> 00:49:23,316
we have this open monetary system, we have the MCP sort of protocol, which allows anyone to hook

854
00:49:23,316 --> 00:49:27,896
up an MCP to their existing web or media or, you know, whatever agentic business they create.

855
00:49:28,176 --> 00:49:32,936
And now it does seem like there's this like really beautiful window of time for someone

856
00:49:32,936 --> 00:49:34,416
to come in, maybe to build the next stripe.

857
00:49:34,516 --> 00:49:38,076
Maybe it's a few sats or whatever it is and say, okay, or maybe it's Albie with the wallet

858
00:49:38,076 --> 00:49:38,756
they already have.

859
00:49:39,036 --> 00:49:41,676
We're going to find a way to test this new business model.

860
00:49:41,676 --> 00:49:45,296
Cause like you still have to figure out if I'm willing to pay that money, how does the

861
00:49:45,296 --> 00:49:49,936
guy running the MCP server, how does he make money or more money than he would have made

862
00:49:49,936 --> 00:49:50,916
in the AdSense world?

863
00:49:50,916 --> 00:49:54,716
And I think that's like a giant open question, but like, this seems like the time to be.

864
00:49:55,016 --> 00:50:06,776
Well, I mean, I, when I think about new internet businesses, especially things that touch consumers, I think one of the biggest questions I would want to answer is who is underpowered that this technology newly empowers.

865
00:50:07,236 --> 00:50:12,156
Like, and so get rid of all the other abstractions of like how great it would be if this worked and was at scale and blah, blah, blah.

866
00:50:12,156 --> 00:50:17,856
And just like, who's underpowered today and how do you make them super powered?

867
00:50:18,196 --> 00:50:20,216
Like, how do they feel like they're superheroes now?

868
00:50:20,216 --> 00:50:24,416
and stripe did that initially stripe i think today stripe worked with apple and amazon and stuff

869
00:50:24,416 --> 00:50:29,256
uber but back in the day they didn't they worked you should actually look at their initial website

870
00:50:29,256 --> 00:50:34,076
uh one of the archive.org you can see like all their partners using stripe and they're all these

871
00:50:34,076 --> 00:50:39,016
like ragtags random jank projects they're weekend projects they're hack projects and that's not like

872
00:50:39,016 --> 00:50:44,556
a bad thing that's like when when something is newly emergent it's the people who are most

873
00:50:44,556 --> 00:50:49,736
desperate who are first to adopt it and they're the biggest proponents and the fans of it and the

874
00:50:49,736 --> 00:50:55,776
promoters of it and they actually create enough like in a sense liquidity and value and like

875
00:50:55,776 --> 00:50:59,476
momentum that you can then kind of keep up leveling and up the ladder so you continue to

876
00:50:59,476 --> 00:51:04,436
serve them and more of them but then you go find the you know the the amazons the ubers of the

877
00:51:04,436 --> 00:51:08,676
world too um and actually some of those grow up like uber was much smaller when i think stripe

878
00:51:08,676 --> 00:51:13,596
started serving them and then their growth became stripes growth so i would think about like in

879
00:51:13,596 --> 00:51:18,876
fusat's case like who's really underpowered today who's like oh i don't you know i don't have a

880
00:51:18,876 --> 00:51:24,156
merchant account. If only I could hack a website together and have to deal with merchant services

881
00:51:24,156 --> 00:51:28,076
stuff, then I would build this website. But instead, I'm going to go spend the weekend

882
00:51:28,076 --> 00:51:32,756
hiking because there's no merchant services thing. I don't want to solve that problem.

883
00:51:32,956 --> 00:51:37,196
I just want to build my website idea. Well, one answer to that question is,

884
00:51:37,836 --> 00:51:42,276
and I don't know if this is, there's probably a new explosive growth category I haven't thought of.

885
00:51:42,636 --> 00:51:47,816
But one answer is anyone that monetizes via the long tail of AdSense, they're probably losing

886
00:51:47,816 --> 00:51:53,396
the revenue right now. So if I've historically made some money offering my blog or whatever

887
00:51:53,396 --> 00:52:00,356
with AdSense, I think there's no question the number of eyeballs using Google is going down

888
00:52:00,356 --> 00:52:06,576
with AI. More people are using ChatGPT and other Grok, whatever. And so one question is people that

889
00:52:06,576 --> 00:52:13,256
basically want to monetize NCP servers, that seems one group. I don't know if that's like

890
00:52:13,256 --> 00:52:16,516
the explosive growth. What do you guys think? What do you think is the completely underserved

891
00:52:16,516 --> 00:52:22,976
category well that's probably a trillion dollar question yeah yeah well that's what i'm asking

892
00:52:22,976 --> 00:52:31,056
well well i mean i'll give you i'll give you um you know well i'll tell you about the project that

893
00:52:31,056 --> 00:52:36,796
i just started a couple days ago i think i told steve but haven't told max um this is dogs on

894
00:52:36,796 --> 00:52:42,396
the skateboard converting it doesn't involve rat and it's actually changed since since i started it

895
00:52:42,396 --> 00:53:00,296
But it's a concept of like, you know, it's expensive to make VO3 videos, but they're very, very cool. And so could you create like a competition so that if you make a great VO3 video, you get submitted, voted on, judged, and you can actually win a prize like in Bitcoin.

896
00:53:00,296 --> 00:53:11,736
And so is there a way to take like the arbitrage between people's desire to create VO3, the cost to create it, and create some sort of economic opportunity for having created such a thing?

897
00:53:12,396 --> 00:53:29,336
Right. So that's like a concept. I'm not saying that's the winning formula, but I feel like something where you try to try to make all the pieces hang together in a new set of incentives is, I think, kind of critical to to kind of solving this problem or bootstrapping it in some way.

898
00:53:30,536 --> 00:53:31,496
What do you think, Steve?

899
00:53:33,176 --> 00:53:37,796
I'm not sure about underserved. I agree. It's a good area to explore.

900
00:53:37,796 --> 00:53:49,816
I did have some, I mean, the Bitcoin versus stablecoins, I do wonder if there's an opportunity with Bitcoin around it just being ubiquitous.

901
00:53:50,676 --> 00:53:53,596
Whereas with stablecoins, there's not just one stablecoin.

902
00:53:53,776 --> 00:53:56,276
There's many issuers and there's many platforms.

903
00:53:57,056 --> 00:53:59,676
And it's a combinatorial explosion of pairs.

904
00:53:59,916 --> 00:54:02,916
And they aren't natively compatible with each other.

905
00:54:02,916 --> 00:54:07,216
So you need swap providers and these intermediaries which extract fees.

906
00:54:07,796 --> 00:54:10,316
There's just economic friction between stablecoins.

907
00:54:11,056 --> 00:54:11,956
I think we maybe talked,

908
00:54:12,356 --> 00:54:14,376
I forget if we talked live in the show or just off the show,

909
00:54:14,496 --> 00:54:16,756
but about, you know,

910
00:54:16,756 --> 00:54:19,356
is there going to emerge a dominant stablecoin?

911
00:54:20,436 --> 00:54:22,516
Like, I mean, right now, Tether's number one.

912
00:54:22,656 --> 00:54:24,356
And does Tether take over everything?

913
00:54:26,056 --> 00:54:27,156
USDT on Tron, yeah.

914
00:54:27,316 --> 00:54:27,716
That's it.

915
00:54:28,176 --> 00:54:30,036
Like, I don't...

916
00:54:30,036 --> 00:54:30,816
Tron the standard.

917
00:54:31,316 --> 00:54:32,916
I definitely don't foresee a world

918
00:54:32,916 --> 00:54:35,076
where there is a single pair

919
00:54:35,076 --> 00:54:37,396
that,

920
00:54:37,796 --> 00:54:46,116
is dominant and stays dominant like even in a world where tether owns 99 of the market share

921
00:54:46,916 --> 00:54:52,676
even that they will probably evolve their underlying platform over time which just creates

922
00:54:52,676 --> 00:54:58,436
all this you know incompatibility throughout wallets and the the financial ecosystem

923
00:54:59,156 --> 00:55:04,276
uh and i also don't think like usdc is just gonna lay you know

924
00:55:04,276 --> 00:55:11,996
uh you know rollover thank you um and there's other emerging ones too so i think there'll be

925
00:55:11,996 --> 00:55:17,596
fierce competition and for the next five to ten years at least there'll be many many pairs

926
00:55:17,596 --> 00:55:25,556
and um so but with bitcoin there's just one bitcoin um and that's why it's it's incredibly

927
00:55:25,556 --> 00:55:33,396
important yes right now within bitcoin lightning network and the lightning payment protocol is like

928
00:55:33,396 --> 00:55:40,416
the common language between all wallets whether you're using spark arc custodial lightning

929
00:55:40,416 --> 00:55:48,756
cashew whatever um that doesn't exist on solana or ethereum or basically the stablecoin world

930
00:55:48,756 --> 00:55:58,296
so um it but there even within bitcoin there's there's always new competing payment protocols

931
00:55:58,296 --> 00:56:02,196
which stand to add friction.

932
00:56:02,936 --> 00:56:03,816
And I think that's dangerous.

933
00:56:04,076 --> 00:56:05,676
So Bitcoin has a lead there.

934
00:56:06,236 --> 00:56:08,736
Let's make sure it keeps that lead

935
00:56:08,736 --> 00:56:10,816
in terms of interoperability and compatibility

936
00:56:10,816 --> 00:56:13,736
and reducing economic friction and UX friction.

937
00:56:14,516 --> 00:56:16,456
And then that could be a big differentiator

938
00:56:16,456 --> 00:56:18,036
between stablecoins and Bitcoin.

939
00:56:18,496 --> 00:56:21,776
So if you're an AI or you're a merchant

940
00:56:21,776 --> 00:56:22,876
or a service or whatever,

941
00:56:22,956 --> 00:56:23,976
and you just want to accept money,

942
00:56:23,976 --> 00:56:28,276
it's just way easier to get started with Bitcoin.

943
00:56:28,296 --> 00:56:34,676
and actually like so yeah evolving that idea so let's say you're a startup maybe you eventually

944
00:56:34,676 --> 00:56:39,876
when you're really successful you accept many different forms of money but where do you start

945
00:56:39,876 --> 00:56:47,576
and if you're a startup why not start with bitcoin and today is it like uh widely accepted and are

946
00:56:47,576 --> 00:56:52,136
there a lot of spending wallets no but there's no doubt in my mind there's going to soon be

947
00:56:52,136 --> 00:56:57,556
you know tens hundreds of millions of people around the world in their mobile wallet and

948
00:56:57,556 --> 00:57:04,056
agents who can spend Bitcoin. We'll have the spending wallets for Bitcoin. And then what,

949
00:57:04,056 --> 00:57:10,156
like why it'll become the obvious first choice to accept money will be Bitcoin.

950
00:57:10,776 --> 00:57:14,636
So I think there's a couple of ways this could play out. And I think this is the most important

951
00:57:14,636 --> 00:57:21,076
question, not only for startups and businesses, but also for like the, whether our future is

952
00:57:21,076 --> 00:57:26,856
authoritarian or not, like whether we have freedom in the future or not. So I think one

953
00:57:26,856 --> 00:57:29,836
interesting question, and I actually don't know all the numbers in this, I would want to go look

954
00:57:29,836 --> 00:57:35,136
at a bunch of these different venues is. So clearly Bitcoin has a network effect around people holding

955
00:57:35,136 --> 00:57:39,336
Bitcoin, store value, all that. There's no question. It has somewhat of a network effect

956
00:57:39,336 --> 00:57:44,876
around payments at sites like BitRefill and, you know, in the old days with things like local

957
00:57:44,876 --> 00:57:49,196
Bitcoins and my understanding like Paxful, whatever those companies are in emerging markets. However,

958
00:57:50,196 --> 00:57:54,916
stablecoins clearly also have a real network effect in emerging markets in places like,

959
00:57:54,916 --> 00:58:00,976
you know various african countries argentina vietnam for actual on the ground real payments

960
00:58:00,976 --> 00:58:05,416
and so there's no question that stable coins are kind of like in my mind at least winning for like

961
00:58:05,416 --> 00:58:10,476
the normie user doing payments today now that doesn't mean bitcoin can't win because we are

962
00:58:10,476 --> 00:58:14,016
we already have this huge sort of like um distribution of people that are holding it

963
00:58:14,016 --> 00:58:19,936
um so the question in my mind is there's a few ways this could go one way is if something like

964
00:58:19,936 --> 00:58:24,056
tether on tron got absolute dominant market share i could see where it becomes the the payment

965
00:58:24,056 --> 00:58:26,536
standard. I don't think that's going to happen either because there's going to be so much

966
00:58:26,536 --> 00:58:30,836
competition for people trying to issue their own stable coins. Then the question is, is there a way

967
00:58:30,836 --> 00:58:35,176
to make all those other stable coins and networks interoperable? This is what a company like Bridge

968
00:58:35,176 --> 00:58:38,976
is trying to do, right? Which is literally an exchange between stable coins. And that's why

969
00:58:38,976 --> 00:58:42,036
they got acquired by Stripe for billions of dollars. So Stripe is kind of making the bet that,

970
00:58:42,056 --> 00:58:46,056
you know, it doesn't matter if there's a long tail of stable coins, as long as we can be the

971
00:58:46,056 --> 00:58:51,316
one to market make between them. So that's one option. The thing that makes me a little nervous

972
00:58:51,316 --> 00:58:55,316
there is, it doesn't seem like Stripe or any of those guys or Bridge are leaning into also

973
00:58:55,316 --> 00:58:59,636
doing the interoperable market making with Bitcoin, right? Those are all, they're like,

974
00:58:59,636 --> 00:59:04,696
they're like regulated, you know, stable coins on platforms like Ethereum or Polygon or Solana

975
00:59:04,696 --> 00:59:09,596
and certainly Tron. And so then the question becomes another way that this could go is stable

976
00:59:09,596 --> 00:59:13,976
coins do get very popular, but because Bitcoin is so widely distributed and people want to get in

977
00:59:13,976 --> 00:59:18,976
and out of their savings vehicle that you have stable coins that also speak Bitcoin Lightning.

978
00:59:18,976 --> 00:59:45,516
This is the taproot asset bet from Lightning Labs. This is the Spark bet from LightSpark. I think it's the cash you and e-cash bet from guys that are speaking Lightning. I think it's extremely important in that world if you want Bitcoin to not just become an ETF sort of savings vehicle. Somehow, I don't know what the answer is, but you need to build that interoperability between stable coins and the Bitcoin Lightning networks right now. This is the moment that needs to happen, I think.

979
00:59:45,516 --> 00:59:50,936
the most likely is there anybody doing stuff like that like is there is it relatively easy

980
00:59:50,936 --> 00:59:58,036
to swap between usdt on tron and bitcoin no and is that like other technical limitations that

981
00:59:58,036 --> 01:00:02,496
prevent that or i mean i think there are a hump there's a model that drives but that doesn't

982
01:00:02,496 --> 01:00:09,016
doesn't speed wallet or speed do that well speed is one example but they're like relatively small

983
01:00:09,016 --> 01:00:12,836
compared to like whoever the dominant tron wallet is in argentina my understanding is

984
01:00:12,836 --> 01:00:16,536
if you want to get let's say like where there's actual distribution there's possibility and speed

985
01:00:16,536 --> 01:00:22,256
is showing that it's possible but if you really want to get between tether and bitcoin in you know

986
01:00:22,256 --> 01:00:26,416
mexico let's say you're using bitso so the way to do it is through a centralized exchange which is

987
01:00:26,416 --> 01:00:30,996
fine but that's obviously a bit of a choke point as well i still think and i've said this for many

988
01:00:30,996 --> 01:00:36,176
years um i funded a startup sadly you know it probably wasn't the right one but i still think

989
01:00:36,176 --> 01:00:41,516
this is a huge years ago this thing this is a huge opportunity now which is to build a bridge between

990
01:00:41,516 --> 01:00:45,376
Bitcoin and all of the stablecoin stuff using the Lightning Network. Maybe Bridge will be the one

991
01:00:45,376 --> 01:00:51,556
to do it. I doubt it. I think that's just like if I were like looking for what is the huge, huge

992
01:00:51,556 --> 01:00:56,616
like Coinbase, next Coinbase size opportunity, I think it's for people to market make between

993
01:00:56,616 --> 01:01:00,616
Bitcoin and all the stablecoins. The top root asset Lightning Labs vision of that is that's

994
01:01:00,616 --> 01:01:04,476
all going to happen on edge nodes within their ecosystem. Maybe that works. I'm sure Lightspark

995
01:01:04,476 --> 01:01:08,716
has their own version of that as well. But I think there's tremendous opportunity there.

996
01:01:08,716 --> 01:01:33,156
The other thing is just from a sort of like freedom perspective, you know, if it all comes, the exchange like basically comes in these choke points like, you know, and I'm a big fan of Bitso, but like if it becomes just a few centralized exchanges, then I think that's kind of like if you put your conspiracy hat on kind of like the path of like just turn Bitcoin into this like capital asset, which is sitting in ETFs and like try and choke off the points to make it be used as money.

997
01:01:33,156 --> 01:01:38,356
my guess is if bitcoin is going to become money we've talked about this many times i've mentioned

998
01:01:38,356 --> 01:01:43,336
my pod with uh drew bansel on ideas from the edge we talked a lot about this it's probably going to

999
01:01:43,336 --> 01:01:50,196
happen in gray markets first it's still my guess so whether that's incentivizing torrents or you

1000
01:01:50,196 --> 01:01:57,036
know some whatever providers that for whatever reason have trouble plugging into the traditional

1001
01:01:57,036 --> 01:02:02,136
payment rails that's probably just like bitcoin got its first start with silk road and sort of

1002
01:02:02,136 --> 01:02:06,956
adoption of the dark web is probably the most likely trajectory. Obviously, I'm not saying

1003
01:02:06,956 --> 01:02:12,356
anyone should do whatever illegal things, but if I had to guess, it's probably going to follow that

1004
01:02:12,356 --> 01:02:19,456
kind of a pattern. Now, on this swap idea that you touched on, my understanding is that part of

1005
01:02:19,456 --> 01:02:24,596
the core technology innovation or kind of breakthrough that Shazan and the team at Lava

1006
01:02:24,596 --> 01:02:33,296
worked on was being able to bridge the understanding of something that happened on a usdt on seoul

1007
01:02:33,296 --> 01:02:38,896
with something that's happening on the bitcoin blockchain that that the kind of how you look at

1008
01:02:38,896 --> 01:02:43,976
how the two of those things understand each other is a big part of what makes lava work even you

1009
01:02:43,976 --> 01:02:49,116
know even possible to do is that is that true and if if it is if that's a published have they

1010
01:02:49,116 --> 01:02:58,436
published anything i never i never understand any details about lava's stable coins yeah i don't i

1011
01:02:58,436 --> 01:03:06,216
don't know how much of that is published uh my guess is it's it's something that well i my

1012
01:03:06,216 --> 01:03:10,236
understanding is that's pretty core to how it works and it seems reasonable i know we had a

1013
01:03:10,236 --> 01:03:15,636
little discussion with shazan the other day around like can i what'd you say can i pay an elephant

1014
01:03:15,636 --> 01:03:18,236
or something you were talking about trying to resolve.

1015
01:03:18,416 --> 01:03:20,676
It just, for me, it seems super opaque.

1016
01:03:21,016 --> 01:03:24,856
So I don't think we have the information

1017
01:03:24,856 --> 01:03:27,356
to even learn about it.

1018
01:03:27,356 --> 01:03:28,916
Yeah, I think, Shazan,

1019
01:03:28,996 --> 01:03:30,576
if you or the Lava team are listening to this,

1020
01:03:30,756 --> 01:03:32,896
I know in other conversation,

1021
01:03:33,196 --> 01:03:34,536
we've talked a little about this bridge idea.

1022
01:03:34,876 --> 01:03:37,376
I think it'd be super cool to publish like an essay

1023
01:03:37,376 --> 01:03:39,176
or one, like to Steve's point,

1024
01:03:39,276 --> 01:03:41,916
explain how the DLC Oracle and Bitcoin land

1025
01:03:41,916 --> 01:03:44,176
speaks with the Solana USDC.

1026
01:03:44,276 --> 01:03:44,996
I think that's what they're using.

1027
01:03:45,636 --> 01:03:47,536
So that would be interesting, one thing to learn.

1028
01:03:47,856 --> 01:03:53,616
But two, I think this maybe even expanding this vision of what it could look like to have.

1029
01:03:54,216 --> 01:03:58,596
Because to take a step back, for those of you who are not familiar,

1030
01:03:58,736 --> 01:04:01,216
the lighting network uses hashed...

1031
01:04:01,216 --> 01:04:02,016
Oops, we might have.

1032
01:04:02,416 --> 01:04:04,276
Max, I think maybe your mic died.

1033
01:04:05,036 --> 01:04:06,236
Do you need to charge it up?

1034
01:04:09,056 --> 01:04:10,716
The battery didn't last very long.

1035
01:04:11,296 --> 01:04:13,276
Yeah, I think it was only partially charged.

1036
01:04:13,276 --> 01:04:21,856
i guess maybe has a two two hour battery life yeah okay um but but my understanding is if if

1037
01:04:21,856 --> 01:04:25,656
lava did achieve that and i think you're right there probably should be more publishing on exactly

1038
01:04:25,656 --> 01:04:31,276
what how that works but wouldn't that as a component be useful to just like make available

1039
01:04:31,276 --> 01:04:36,156
to other wallets that wanted to make that kind of interoperability easy like anybody who today

1040
01:04:36,156 --> 01:04:42,236
supports usdt in any form sol or tron or whatever probably could benefit from being able to have

1041
01:04:42,236 --> 01:04:49,236
that wallet sort of just be able to swap swap that right but definitely i mean where we yeah

1042
01:04:49,236 --> 01:04:59,276
we're back okay cool we're back awesome um so david just asked um if we assume that lava works

1043
01:04:59,276 --> 01:05:03,536
that way wouldn't that be useful but but i'd say that we know a lot more about spark and taproot

1044
01:05:03,536 --> 01:05:11,276
assets and that's absolutely part of each of their ecosystems vision is to be bridge compatibility

1045
01:05:11,276 --> 01:05:13,136
between Bitcoin and stablecoins.

1046
01:05:14,596 --> 01:05:15,076
Yeah.

1047
01:05:15,416 --> 01:05:16,936
So I think, yeah.

1048
01:05:17,636 --> 01:05:19,776
So they seem to have way more development

1049
01:05:19,776 --> 01:05:22,676
and it's more of a thrust of those two ecosystems

1050
01:05:22,676 --> 01:05:23,976
than Lava,

1051
01:05:24,136 --> 01:05:25,636
and there's more information about them.

1052
01:05:27,476 --> 01:05:30,136
So, you know, I think there's no...

1053
01:05:30,896 --> 01:05:31,556
And then there's, you know,

1054
01:05:31,596 --> 01:05:33,056
Bridge.xyz with StripeBot.

1055
01:05:33,176 --> 01:05:37,076
I mean, these already exist in its early days.

1056
01:05:37,236 --> 01:05:39,396
We can assume it'll be there,

1057
01:05:39,396 --> 01:05:41,836
but it's still economic friction.

1058
01:05:41,996 --> 01:05:43,396
I mean, it's both economic friction

1059
01:05:43,396 --> 01:05:46,476
and regulatory choke points too.

1060
01:05:46,556 --> 01:05:47,516
All these swap providers,

1061
01:05:47,956 --> 01:05:52,416
it's hard to imagine them existing

1062
01:05:52,416 --> 01:05:55,116
without regulatory oversight and without KYC.

1063
01:05:56,396 --> 01:05:59,036
So there's UX friction there

1064
01:05:59,036 --> 01:06:01,216
and there's economic friction.

1065
01:06:01,516 --> 01:06:03,256
They also seem like they'll have

1066
01:06:03,256 --> 01:06:04,936
strong centralization tendencies,

1067
01:06:06,016 --> 01:06:08,176
which just to me means

1068
01:06:08,176 --> 01:06:10,196
a recreation of

1069
01:06:10,196 --> 01:06:12,336
Visa and

1070
01:06:12,336 --> 01:06:14,676
like the fees might

1071
01:06:14,676 --> 01:06:16,536
start free and then they get

1072
01:06:16,536 --> 01:06:18,836
more expensive and then more expensive

1073
01:06:18,836 --> 01:06:20,496
and then we just sort of wind up with

1074
01:06:20,496 --> 01:06:21,356
what we have today.

1075
01:06:22,176 --> 01:06:23,496
So that would be a concern.

1076
01:06:24,356 --> 01:06:26,296
I think the only way to get around that

1077
01:06:26,296 --> 01:06:28,536
though is like the beauty of the

1078
01:06:28,536 --> 01:06:29,716
Lightning Network is

1079
01:06:29,716 --> 01:06:32,216
it can operate with any

1080
01:06:32,216 --> 01:06:34,176
crypto chain that uses

1081
01:06:34,176 --> 01:06:36,236
hash time lock contracts or HTLCs.

1082
01:06:36,276 --> 01:06:38,076
Now there's some issues around that with like you can

1083
01:06:38,076 --> 01:06:41,436
you know potentially had this free option problem like how long you're waiting for something

1084
01:06:41,436 --> 01:06:48,436
uh to to settle between those i guess two chains but i'm trying to find right now casey rhodemore

1085
01:06:48,436 --> 01:06:53,616
of ordinal infamy he published a blog casey by the way for those of you don't know i know he's

1086
01:06:53,616 --> 01:06:58,096
he's a controversial figure within the the bitcoin ecosystem but that guy is so fucking smart and has

1087
01:06:58,096 --> 01:07:03,756
so much alpha he published uh sort of an article or blog like five years ago talking about like

1088
01:07:03,756 --> 01:07:08,456
decentralized lightning network switch bridge swaps between bitcoin and like all these other

1089
01:07:08,456 --> 01:07:17,096
chains i still think so if someone's we lost you again max max i think we lost you i don't know if

1090
01:07:17,096 --> 01:07:22,876
you are swapping out to your swaps i don't know if you're swapping out to your other wireless mic

1091
01:07:22,876 --> 01:07:28,936
or if you just want to go raw and maybe he needs to bridge yeah maybe he needs to bridge his swap

1092
01:07:28,936 --> 01:07:29,456
a little better.

1093
01:07:34,736 --> 01:07:35,216
Alright.

1094
01:07:35,916 --> 01:07:36,836
I didn't like him anyway.

1095
01:07:38,696 --> 01:07:39,016
But I,

1096
01:07:39,236 --> 01:07:40,936
another thing

1097
01:07:40,936 --> 01:07:41,656
we should talk about

1098
01:07:41,656 --> 01:07:42,156
is,

1099
01:07:42,256 --> 01:07:44,856
like,

1100
01:07:45,756 --> 01:07:47,016
I believe lightning

1101
01:07:47,016 --> 01:07:48,556
is unique

1102
01:07:48,556 --> 01:07:49,596
in the world right now

1103
01:07:49,596 --> 01:07:51,016
in providing

1104
01:07:51,016 --> 01:07:53,816
instant settlement

1105
01:07:53,816 --> 01:07:55,056
where instant is like

1106
01:07:55,056 --> 01:07:55,876
one second.

1107
01:07:56,996 --> 01:07:57,276
So,

1108
01:07:57,496 --> 01:07:58,876
another way to like

1109
01:07:58,936 --> 01:08:09,016
analyze this opportunity or challenge is what use cases demand finality in one second.

1110
01:08:09,516 --> 01:08:11,336
Were you able to hear what I just said, Max?

1111
01:08:11,556 --> 01:08:12,376
I think I got the gist.

1112
01:08:12,536 --> 01:08:12,656
Yeah.

1113
01:08:13,076 --> 01:08:19,416
So this actually gets back to, you mentioned Gigi's article and he, you know, where he

1114
01:08:19,416 --> 01:08:24,236
states that the reason micropayments haven't taken off is because they're incompatible

1115
01:08:24,236 --> 01:08:25,596
with like a credit system.

1116
01:08:25,596 --> 01:08:30,256
whether we believe that or not um to whatever degree it's true

1117
01:08:30,256 --> 01:08:37,196
lightning is transformational and that it's not a credit system you get finality of your payment

1118
01:08:37,196 --> 01:08:46,476
within one second so what are use cases and product opportunities that require that type of

1119
01:08:46,476 --> 01:08:55,516
instant settlement that are incompatible with any kind of credit system like they

1120
01:08:55,516 --> 01:09:02,396
need the trust of the finality of the payment and whatever those are bitcoin and lightning should be

1121
01:09:02,396 --> 01:09:07,936
a very natural fit for i think the most likely one of those is a combination of two things we've

1122
01:09:07,936 --> 01:09:14,596
discussed which is agentic stuff ai and so for those who you know i think this is actually a

1123
01:09:14,596 --> 01:09:20,436
really important point worth hitting on in the old model of the internet or the web you effectively

1124
01:09:20,436 --> 01:09:25,136
had zero marginal cost every time you like called a server. It was some cost, but it's like,

1125
01:09:25,236 --> 01:09:30,856
it's effectively zero. In the agentic version of the web, every time you ask a model to do anything

1126
01:09:30,856 --> 01:09:35,356
or perform any kind of inference, there is a real world cost. So that's a really, really important

1127
01:09:35,356 --> 01:09:40,456
primitive to understand because if there's a real world cost, someone has to pay that cost.

1128
01:09:40,456 --> 01:09:45,196
And if I'm using a credit system and let's say, you know, every time I call an inference,

1129
01:09:45,196 --> 01:09:51,496
It's a penny. And I call, you know, 10 million inferences on you or 100 million inferences on you.

1130
01:09:51,556 --> 01:09:53,436
And then all of a sudden you're left with a million dollar bill.

1131
01:09:53,576 --> 01:09:57,236
If I default, that's a real cost that businesses cannot sustain.

1132
01:09:57,336 --> 01:10:25,994
So that one thing to understand Now in a lot of the world if you working with Google and other trusted providers they be able to sustain that cost likely based on trust So I think it going to be some combination of AI Again the kind of long tail or gray market or gray web version of all of this where if let say for whatever reason I don want to use all of the like centralized trusted models like Google or open AI maybe because I don trust their data

1133
01:10:25,994 --> 01:10:48,734
And I want to be able to use a free market of model providers who I trust to either store my data better or for whatever reason, I think lightning real-time settlement for something with a real-world cost, which is electricity and computational cost, that is using something like Nostra Web of Trust or is not using the old-world trust systems, that to me is where the explosion is going to happen.

1134
01:10:48,734 --> 01:10:56,474
Now, the question is, what's going to be that first killer app where I'm using the free market of models for inference instead of the centralized providers? That I don't know.

1135
01:10:56,474 --> 01:11:05,054
and the and the centralized providers have a lot of ability to subsidize usage for a long time so

1136
01:11:05,054 --> 01:11:11,094
that's that's another headwind like to really cut through all of the noise and make something

1137
01:11:11,094 --> 01:11:16,854
work like this i think you really need to in a sense control a lot of it and then be willing to

1138
01:11:16,854 --> 01:11:23,014
let go of a lot over time sort of you almost need to start centralized with ideology to control

1139
01:11:23,014 --> 01:11:29,614
or to let go of control over time versus, you know, sort of let these things like,

1140
01:11:29,934 --> 01:11:36,034
let these things truly bottom up emerge. Great. But you need somebody who's like pushing it

1141
01:11:36,034 --> 01:11:41,374
forward. Who's going to make, make that happen because you have centralized providers who are

1142
01:11:41,374 --> 01:11:45,574
subsidizing and making it much cheaper to do that. And like rational actors are going to say,

1143
01:11:45,654 --> 01:11:50,274
you know, like, like Google just launched this Gemini code thing and you get like, you know,

1144
01:11:50,274 --> 01:11:54,794
I think a thousand prompts a day or something that's subsidized, right?

1145
01:11:54,794 --> 01:11:56,194
Like it's paid for by the ad network.

1146
01:11:56,694 --> 01:12:04,154
So like if you're building another, you know, another IDE or agentic coding service, you

1147
01:12:04,154 --> 01:12:05,794
don't have the ability to subsidize like that.

1148
01:12:05,894 --> 01:12:09,514
So in a sense, like people aren't always rational on the transaction level.

1149
01:12:09,514 --> 01:12:13,994
They're actually rational over time, but that time can be brought forward by subsidy from

1150
01:12:13,994 --> 01:12:15,114
other business models.

1151
01:12:15,194 --> 01:12:19,914
I really think you need like a very, a very specific, strong reason to do something different.

1152
01:12:19,914 --> 01:12:47,914
And that's why I come back to the, and I don't know what it is, but this sort of gray area, right? So like where I still think this is really going to pop, again, I'm not suggesting anyone do this, but I think this is just looking at reality as it is, is say there's some sort of like new gambling agent. And that agent is doing some kind of like, I don't know, like, like scraping a bunch of MCP servers that are getting data for betting on sports or something where in your jurisdiction, you can't use Google because the government just says you can't.

1153
01:12:47,914 --> 01:12:52,834
and so your option is you either use this gray world or you don't and that's probably where it's

1154
01:12:52,834 --> 01:12:59,254
going to pop i'm in agreement i i mean i said gambling gaming adult that's those are kind of

1155
01:12:59,254 --> 01:13:04,554
good use cases because they're dk brings it back more more desperate need is is always going to be

1156
01:13:04,554 --> 01:13:11,794
better hey guys we we had about 15 minutes left i think we wanted to cover the um fannie mae topic

1157
01:13:11,794 --> 01:13:12,074
Oh, yeah.

1158
01:13:12,334 --> 01:13:12,734
For sure.

1159
01:13:12,954 --> 01:13:14,414
Should we switch to that?

1160
01:13:14,894 --> 01:13:15,034
Yeah.

1161
01:13:15,174 --> 01:13:15,734
Let's do it.

1162
01:13:15,754 --> 01:13:20,554
Because I think the payment stuff, it's going to be a recurring theme on this show.

1163
01:13:20,694 --> 01:13:22,614
So we'll definitely discuss that again.

1164
01:13:23,354 --> 01:13:26,574
But yeah, I guess it's been, I think, two days ago.

1165
01:13:27,974 --> 01:13:31,154
Bill Pulte, I saw a tweet by him.

1166
01:13:31,254 --> 01:13:34,334
I didn't even know he was part of the U.S. administration until he tweeted that.

1167
01:13:34,334 --> 01:13:38,274
But he's the, is it the housing department?

1168
01:13:38,274 --> 01:13:40,834
I think he's the head of the FHA

1169
01:13:40,834 --> 01:13:42,914
and he runs one of the

1170
01:13:42,914 --> 01:13:45,054
largest home builders in the US.

1171
01:13:46,594 --> 01:13:47,194
Classic Trump.

1172
01:13:47,874 --> 01:13:49,074
Classic Trump administration.

1173
01:13:50,274 --> 01:13:50,894
But he's also

1174
01:13:50,894 --> 01:13:52,114
a Bitcoin or so.

1175
01:13:52,674 --> 01:13:55,114
He also, I lived

1176
01:13:55,114 --> 01:13:57,074
in a Bill Pulte home in Tucson,

1177
01:13:57,074 --> 01:13:58,874
Arizona. That was a Pulte home.

1178
01:13:58,994 --> 01:14:00,874
Did it have his name up in neon?

1179
01:14:01,174 --> 01:14:01,994
Right on the front door.

1180
01:14:02,554 --> 01:14:04,294
Was it a great, big, beautiful home?

1181
01:14:06,414 --> 01:14:07,434
It was a nice,

1182
01:14:07,434 --> 01:14:09,494
I mean, it's a track home, but it was a nice home.

1183
01:14:11,234 --> 01:14:20,854
So, but he, yeah, I didn't know he was part of the administration, but I definitely had seen several years ago that he's a Bitcoiner because he is like giving away Bitcoin on Twitter and stuff like that.

1184
01:14:22,174 --> 01:14:34,874
And now, you know, he announced two days ago that he's ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to treat cryptocurrency as an asset to be considered when someone applies for a mortgage.

1185
01:14:34,874 --> 01:14:49,934
So that's a big announcement because I know historically, not only did most lenders not count Bitcoin or any kind of cryptocurrency as an asset, it could even be a negative.

1186
01:14:49,934 --> 01:14:59,414
I have several friends who, once a bank learned they owned Bitcoin, they got put in the naughty, risky folder.

1187
01:15:00,254 --> 01:15:08,494
And it didn't even matter that they had ample assets, traditional assets like stocks, to cover the loan.

1188
01:15:09,714 --> 01:15:13,414
They were discounted because they just owned Bitcoin.

1189
01:15:13,414 --> 01:15:20,614
So it's obviously a major announcement and major progress to flip that on its head.

1190
01:15:21,954 --> 01:15:24,174
So overall, I think it's very good news.

1191
01:15:24,454 --> 01:15:35,494
There are some cautions with it, though, in that it also came with the caveat that the cryptocurrency has to be with a regulated exchange.

1192
01:15:36,314 --> 01:15:42,074
So that creates a disincentive to self-custody.

1193
01:15:42,074 --> 01:15:47,834
so if it turns out that people who are already self-custodying decide then to store their

1194
01:15:47,834 --> 01:15:54,354
bitcoin with coinbase in order to take advantage of this that's that is a net you know or i don't

1195
01:15:54,354 --> 01:16:00,354
know if it's a net negative it is a a drawback to this uh and if there's people who are currently

1196
01:16:00,354 --> 01:16:06,934
using a custody custodian but would have otherwise self-custodied but then no longer decide to

1197
01:16:06,934 --> 01:16:10,374
because of this, that would also be a negative.

1198
01:16:11,194 --> 01:16:13,194
Similar to like with ETFs.

1199
01:16:13,294 --> 01:16:16,394
I mean, overall, I think it's a net positive for the space,

1200
01:16:16,634 --> 01:16:19,334
especially when it creates opportunities

1201
01:16:19,334 --> 01:16:21,734
for new people to enter Bitcoin

1202
01:16:21,734 --> 01:16:24,734
and who otherwise would not have.

1203
01:16:25,394 --> 01:16:28,034
But when you have people who previously self-custodied

1204
01:16:28,034 --> 01:16:30,934
sell their Bitcoin to buy BlackRock ETF,

1205
01:16:31,214 --> 01:16:35,754
that act I think is actually quite bad for Bitcoin.

1206
01:16:36,934 --> 01:16:51,054
So then that created a conversation on social media about why, and, you know, we chatted privately as well, about why self-custody was not included.

1207
01:16:51,734 --> 01:17:02,834
You know, a traditional Bitcoiner would put on their conspiracy hat and think that it's the government intentionally trying to get everyone to custody, maybe.

1208
01:17:03,014 --> 01:17:05,114
But we also came up with, like, legitimate reasons as well.

1209
01:17:05,114 --> 01:17:10,914
And I, you know, DK, you brought, you brought up reasoned, um, uh, seasoning funds is one

1210
01:17:10,914 --> 01:17:11,114
of them.

1211
01:17:11,134 --> 01:17:16,594
And I'd never heard of that term before, but I mean, but I, um, so thanks for educating

1212
01:17:16,594 --> 01:17:16,874
us.

1213
01:17:16,954 --> 01:17:19,234
But, um, but I, I knew the, I mean, I knew the concept.

1214
01:17:19,354 --> 01:17:23,254
I didn't know that was the term, but, but basically it's very common for a lender.

1215
01:17:23,894 --> 01:17:29,794
If they're going to look at assets, you have like stocks, uh, to judge your merit for a

1216
01:17:29,794 --> 01:17:33,994
loan or the rate you're going to get or the terms or whatever, uh, that, the, that, that

1217
01:17:33,994 --> 01:17:38,254
stock that's held at that lender or their financial institution, it needs to have been

1218
01:17:38,254 --> 01:17:43,334
held for like 60 days or 90 days or maybe six months or some period of time there so

1219
01:17:43,334 --> 01:17:47,594
that you're not like quickly moving them in and out between financial institutions and

1220
01:17:47,594 --> 01:17:53,074
taking out more loans than in aggregate than any one institution is aware of.

1221
01:17:54,134 --> 01:17:59,914
So with self-custody, if it was, you know, how would you demonstrate you own the Bitcoin

1222
01:17:59,914 --> 01:18:03,914
and what prevents you from,

1223
01:18:04,194 --> 01:18:05,794
I think a scenario you brought up, David,

1224
01:18:05,914 --> 01:18:09,594
was a group of friends could get together,

1225
01:18:10,014 --> 01:18:11,054
pool their funds,

1226
01:18:11,334 --> 01:18:13,054
make it look like any one of them

1227
01:18:13,054 --> 01:18:14,614
has a lot more money than they have,

1228
01:18:14,674 --> 01:18:17,014
and then we could just go around the group

1229
01:18:17,014 --> 01:18:20,174
and all of us look like we have five times more money

1230
01:18:20,174 --> 01:18:21,434
than we actually have.

1231
01:18:22,334 --> 01:18:24,134
But there are solutions to these problems.

1232
01:18:25,334 --> 01:18:29,714
So for one, you can prove your ownership

1233
01:18:29,914 --> 01:18:35,414
of Bitcoin, even if it's in self-custody. And two, you can, Bitcoin, the protocol has time locks

1234
01:18:35,414 --> 01:18:41,634
built into it. So you can lock up your funds for any period of time. So if Fannie Mae has a 90-day

1235
01:18:41,634 --> 01:18:46,454
requirement, okay, there can be a solution. And there are solutions that exist where you can lock

1236
01:18:46,454 --> 01:18:50,594
up your Bitcoin solutions, meaning the protocol supports it, but there's also wallets that support

1237
01:18:50,594 --> 01:18:57,694
locking up your Bitcoin for 90 days. And then you can prove that to the lender and then they can be

1238
01:18:57,694 --> 01:19:03,374
confident that you're not, you know, sharing it with friends, at least within that, that 90 day

1239
01:19:03,374 --> 01:19:07,554
window, whatever the requirement is. So I think what, what I was left with is like, we need to

1240
01:19:07,554 --> 01:19:12,394
understand what the requirements are. And no one, even like Alex from river didn't even know what

1241
01:19:12,394 --> 01:19:16,014
the requirements are. He doesn't even know if he's going to be able to participate in this,

1242
01:19:16,074 --> 01:19:19,854
even though he has a regulated business, but you know, there's different regulators and different

1243
01:19:19,854 --> 01:19:25,094
licenses. And is he the right one? He doesn't know. Then there's providers like unchained capital.

1244
01:19:25,094 --> 01:19:31,194
um you know are are they are they part of this or so it would be good to understand what the

1245
01:19:31,194 --> 01:19:38,374
requirements are both for businesses but also just for self-custody and open source processes

1246
01:19:38,374 --> 01:19:44,954
yeah but my guess so thanks for the overview and i mean there's there's so many details to this

1247
01:19:44,954 --> 01:19:49,714
i've been researching it a lot um and kind of learning new things and kind of making new

1248
01:19:49,714 --> 01:19:54,834
estimates about it but um i think one of the things is you know and i i'm certainly you know

1249
01:19:54,834 --> 01:20:01,214
very willing to distrust any move by the government and willing to wear a tinfoil hat and stuff but but

1250
01:20:01,214 --> 01:20:07,414
i don't think that this is as much of a like conspiracy by the government to get you know

1251
01:20:07,414 --> 01:20:12,474
your bitcoin into a third-party exchange or something i think it's more just like it's the

1252
01:20:12,474 --> 01:20:19,474
easiest way to parallel the existing system and have like information sharing networks where there's

1253
01:20:19,474 --> 01:20:26,234
like us regulated entity that has to participate in the information sharing so that you can watch

1254
01:20:26,234 --> 01:20:33,354
how money moves around and try to understand what risk there actually is um the the 90 days

1255
01:20:33,354 --> 01:20:38,874
seasoning of funds is one thing but oftentimes there's also a question of like where did these

1256
01:20:38,874 --> 01:20:45,314
funds come from and you have to like attest to the source of funds and if every 90 days you moved

1257
01:20:45,314 --> 01:20:49,714
that around you could still you could still play that little collusion game if you're not buying

1258
01:20:49,714 --> 01:20:56,934
new homes every 90 days you know i could i could gather up a bunch of funds hold them for 90 days

1259
01:20:56,934 --> 01:21:03,074
time lock it if need be and then once i'm approved for a mortgage i could push the the funds over to

1260
01:21:03,074 --> 01:21:08,194
the other friend in the ring and we could still create a ring of fraud that way which we don't

1261
01:21:08,194 --> 01:21:12,874
want to do and we would hope that there's a solution where you could prevent that in a similar

1262
01:21:12,874 --> 01:21:20,214
way to preventing fraud or limiting fraud or reducing risk in the current system.

1263
01:21:20,974 --> 01:21:29,034
So I think time locks are potentially interesting, but that's a little bit closer to collateralizing.

1264
01:21:29,834 --> 01:21:34,294
And I think the point here is that this is explicitly not collateral for a mortgage.

1265
01:21:34,654 --> 01:21:42,254
This is asset determination, which helps the lender understand if you're likely to be a good

1266
01:21:42,254 --> 01:21:48,674
risk and if you have funds available to, you know, reserve funds available to pay down your

1267
01:21:48,674 --> 01:21:52,974
mortgage in case you lost your job or whatever. I mean, I'll just make one comment on that because

1268
01:21:52,974 --> 01:21:57,054
I actually think this is very interesting. I think that, I mean, there's the question of the time

1269
01:21:57,054 --> 01:22:01,994
lock, which is cool, but I think to me, this is more of an opportunity to create protocols,

1270
01:22:02,274 --> 01:22:08,414
to basically create new forms of reputation and insurance. I think this is actually a very

1271
01:22:08,414 --> 01:22:13,554
interesting opportunity for people in the nostril ecosystem to start exploring so one question is can

1272
01:22:13,554 --> 01:22:17,454
i say i have this amount of money can i just prove i have that money well that's what proof

1273
01:22:17,454 --> 01:22:20,974
of reserves and companies like hoseki already have solutions built out for that which is great

1274
01:22:20,974 --> 01:22:24,154
but it doesn't answer any of the questions of like potential you know collusion with other

1275
01:22:24,154 --> 01:22:28,154
people are moving the funds around after that what is how does it work with the prove that i

1276
01:22:28,154 --> 01:22:33,474
have the money means something about like like you shot you sign you sign a message with i guess the

1277
01:22:33,474 --> 01:22:37,674
utxo that controls a certain amount of bitcoin that proves you know the holder of this private

1278
01:22:37,674 --> 01:22:41,794
key sign this message so they they have the private key yeah but the issue is if if you're

1279
01:22:41,794 --> 01:22:47,194
talking about like a mortgage you're back in trad fi and now you're back in kyc land and so how do

1280
01:22:47,194 --> 01:22:53,734
you tie that signed message well this is this is where i'm going with this so i i think then the

1281
01:22:53,734 --> 01:22:57,734
more interesting question is that's like step zero the more interesting question is building a

1282
01:22:57,734 --> 01:23:03,054
protocol where you can demonstrate for example if i were going to sign a message for this there's a

1283
01:23:03,054 --> 01:23:06,154
couple of different ways i could do this one is i want to say not only do i have control of this

1284
01:23:06,154 --> 01:23:13,054
UTXO, but two, I'm committing this UTXO to a very specific loan. So there's a message basically that

1285
01:23:13,054 --> 01:23:20,314
says like, Hey, here's the loan that I'm taking out. This UTXO is tied to this for some specified

1286
01:23:20,314 --> 01:23:25,054
amount of time, whether it's time locked or not. Then you may have a separate piece. And again,

1287
01:23:25,054 --> 01:23:28,554
if you do this more modular, you can plug and play depending on who you're working with,

1288
01:23:28,954 --> 01:23:33,834
which is kind of like a KYC module. And so I know, you know, this is kind of like some of the vision

1289
01:23:33,834 --> 01:23:37,494
for what TBD was working on with verifiable credentials and all the web five stuff.

1290
01:23:37,834 --> 01:23:41,154
I think this can get rebuilt in Nostra is my guess where it's going to happen.

1291
01:23:41,454 --> 01:23:44,834
But you could literally have, you know, a third party that says, so imagine you have

1292
01:23:44,834 --> 01:23:49,174
the person who holds UTXO, you have the lender, then you also have a KYC provider.

1293
01:23:49,494 --> 01:23:53,314
And maybe the lender has a list of KYC providers that they're willing to work with.

1294
01:23:53,574 --> 01:23:58,534
So then you, as the UTXO holder, go and work with whoever the KYC provider is.

1295
01:23:59,034 --> 01:24:03,354
They say, yep, we know this key, you know, whatever, out of band.

1296
01:24:03,354 --> 01:24:08,654
this person, whatever is who they say they are. And then the lender can choose who they're willing

1297
01:24:08,654 --> 01:24:13,134
to accept a verifiable credentials from. So someone then attests on top of that loan. So as

1298
01:24:13,134 --> 01:24:19,354
the UTXO holder, I say, I'm associating my UTXO with this loan. On top of that, this third party

1299
01:24:19,354 --> 01:24:24,274
has come in and given me some whatever credibility and signed a message saying, yes, we know this is

1300
01:24:24,274 --> 01:24:27,594
max or whoever they say they are. But someone has to put all those pieces together.

1301
01:24:27,594 --> 01:24:37,294
i i think that solves the problem that that you put forth david yeah yeah i think like those feel

1302
01:24:37,294 --> 01:24:44,814
to me like the right kinds of building blocks um my guess is the current system is not as exacting

1303
01:24:44,814 --> 01:24:51,354
as one might imagine like there's a lot of wiggle room and how it actually works but it's like good

1304
01:24:51,354 --> 01:24:57,514
enough and people understand it and then all the these ingredients could be built out into a totally

1305
01:24:57,514 --> 01:25:04,594
new system that's actually much easier to verify and more open and actually more rigorous about how

1306
01:25:04,594 --> 01:25:10,874
it works. But it does take somebody kind of pushing that agenda and putting those pieces

1307
01:25:10,874 --> 01:25:14,714
together and then kind of building the product on top of that and delivering that to the market.

1308
01:25:15,574 --> 01:25:19,794
Looping back to our earlier conversation, my guess is, again, you look where the tectonic

1309
01:25:19,794 --> 01:25:25,334
plates are shifting, maybe the place to really get this thing going, because again, like whenever

1310
01:25:25,334 --> 01:25:29,614
you have to fight the inertia of the old world, it's tough. And unless it's at least 10x better

1311
01:25:29,614 --> 01:25:33,554
or 100x better, it's just, and even then with Bitcoin, it's still a multi-decade process.

1312
01:25:34,154 --> 01:25:38,414
Maybe someone's going to pilot this in a brand new area, like loans for agents. So you have

1313
01:25:38,414 --> 01:25:41,354
autonomous agents that are out there and you're like, okay, this agent wants a loan. Okay.

1314
01:25:42,214 --> 01:25:46,854
That means all of the old world system is just thrown out of the window. Who's going to build

1315
01:25:46,854 --> 01:25:52,794
a financial system for agents? And that all has to do with native public-private keys

1316
01:25:52,794 --> 01:25:54,474
from the ground up.

1317
01:25:54,514 --> 01:25:55,834
There is no concept of a human.

1318
01:25:56,214 --> 01:25:57,574
That to me is an interesting area

1319
01:25:57,574 --> 01:25:58,714
that I would be exploring.

1320
01:25:59,394 --> 01:25:59,454
Yeah.

1321
01:26:00,034 --> 01:26:03,014
Touching on the point I was sharing before

1322
01:26:03,014 --> 01:26:04,534
is I think a lot of times

1323
01:26:04,534 --> 01:26:06,094
in consumer internet stuff,

1324
01:26:06,154 --> 01:26:07,314
you want to find people

1325
01:26:07,314 --> 01:26:09,034
who are severely underpowered

1326
01:26:09,034 --> 01:26:10,614
because they become the big champions.

1327
01:26:11,274 --> 01:26:12,234
And it strikes me that

1328
01:26:12,234 --> 01:26:13,814
with this kind of idea,

1329
01:26:13,914 --> 01:26:14,834
there's a bunch of people

1330
01:26:14,834 --> 01:26:16,734
who probably have some amount

1331
01:26:16,734 --> 01:26:17,694
of Bitcoin wealth

1332
01:26:17,694 --> 01:26:19,954
who have very little TradFi wealth.

1333
01:26:20,714 --> 01:26:21,974
And they would be the people

1334
01:26:21,974 --> 01:26:23,614
who would be underpowered candidates,

1335
01:26:23,714 --> 01:26:25,014
that they like really want this.

1336
01:26:25,054 --> 01:26:25,974
And if you can provide them

1337
01:26:25,974 --> 01:26:27,954
even a fairly broken solution,

1338
01:26:28,794 --> 01:26:32,514
they will gobble it up and use it

1339
01:26:32,514 --> 01:26:34,434
and sort of promote it and ask for more

1340
01:26:34,434 --> 01:26:36,214
because, you know,

1341
01:26:36,374 --> 01:26:37,854
sort of like so disempowered

1342
01:26:37,854 --> 01:26:38,934
in the current system.

1343
01:26:38,954 --> 01:26:39,894
And this would become like

1344
01:26:39,894 --> 01:26:40,994
the first step of empowerment.

1345
01:26:41,934 --> 01:26:43,294
But I know, Steve,

1346
01:26:43,494 --> 01:26:45,434
you've been a little active on Twitter,

1347
01:26:45,874 --> 01:26:47,674
kind of asking like,

1348
01:26:47,774 --> 01:26:49,594
where have the open source developers been

1349
01:26:49,594 --> 01:26:51,134
and why are we not part of this conversation?

1350
01:26:51,134 --> 01:26:57,574
Have you heard anything back from Pulte or any of the other participants in this?

1351
01:26:58,374 --> 01:27:00,654
Still don't know the requirements.

1352
01:27:01,994 --> 01:27:06,454
So I think that would be good to have published.

1353
01:27:08,414 --> 01:27:15,854
I got reminded of the startup, I think it's pronounced Hoseki app.

1354
01:27:15,854 --> 01:27:18,394
as

1355
01:27:18,394 --> 01:27:19,714
Sam

1356
01:27:19,714 --> 01:27:20,734
from

1357
01:27:20,734 --> 01:27:22,414
he used to work for Fidelity

1358
01:27:22,414 --> 01:27:23,074
started that

1359
01:27:23,074 --> 01:27:24,194
several years ago

1360
01:27:24,194 --> 01:27:25,594
they do proof

1361
01:27:25,594 --> 01:27:26,654
proof of

1362
01:27:26,654 --> 01:27:28,614
UTXO ownership

1363
01:27:28,614 --> 01:27:30,474
including for self-custody

1364
01:27:30,474 --> 01:27:31,914
so that seemed like a piece of the puzzle

1365
01:27:31,914 --> 01:27:33,994
and

1366
01:27:33,994 --> 01:27:34,934
yeah I mean

1367
01:27:34,934 --> 01:27:38,014
many open source Bitcoin advocates

1368
01:27:38,014 --> 01:27:39,534
liked my tweet

1369
01:27:39,534 --> 01:27:40,094
but yeah

1370
01:27:40,094 --> 01:27:42,274
no one

1371
01:27:42,274 --> 01:27:42,934
no one's

1372
01:27:42,934 --> 01:27:44,374
signed up yet to

1373
01:27:45,854 --> 01:27:52,134
to work on this. Although, you know, I guess maybe it's less of a open source project and more like a

1374
01:27:52,134 --> 01:27:57,034
product that needs to be built that takes a bunch of existing open source software and bundles it

1375
01:27:57,034 --> 01:28:03,174
together into a compelling package for consumers. Yeah. And also, I guess part of that, it might be

1376
01:28:03,174 --> 01:28:08,414
a new startup opportunity, but part of that would be whoever's driving that initiative should be in

1377
01:28:08,414 --> 01:28:14,334
the conversation as we're figuring out how the U.S. exchanges that get the regulated U.S. exchanges

1378
01:28:14,334 --> 01:28:19,974
participate in whatever information sharing network there is do we have does that person

1379
01:28:19,974 --> 01:28:25,314
have a seat at the table you know kind of another natural i didn't mention casa but like nick newman

1380
01:28:25,314 --> 01:28:30,674
too would be a natural person like he should have a seat at the table you know casa unchained

1381
01:28:30,674 --> 01:28:38,074
river all those companies i don't think they understand yet and clearly they should be in the

1382
01:28:38,074 --> 01:28:43,334
loop on this so it'd be good if the government like published the requirements and include

1383
01:28:43,334 --> 01:28:44,554
folks like that

1384
01:28:44,554 --> 01:28:45,294
at the seat of the table.

1385
01:28:45,794 --> 01:28:46,534
Do we know which

1386
01:28:46,534 --> 01:28:47,314
U.S. exchanges

1387
01:28:47,314 --> 01:28:48,114
are approved?

1388
01:28:48,214 --> 01:28:49,234
I assume Coinbase is one.

1389
01:28:49,494 --> 01:28:49,654
Coinbase.

1390
01:28:50,074 --> 01:28:51,194
Is that the only one?

1391
01:28:51,474 --> 01:28:52,534
I would have guessed

1392
01:28:52,534 --> 01:28:53,274
River would be

1393
01:28:53,274 --> 01:28:54,234
another candidate.

1394
01:28:54,394 --> 01:28:54,994
Did they announce

1395
01:28:54,994 --> 01:28:55,934
Coinbase was approved?

1396
01:28:56,014 --> 01:28:56,114
No.

1397
01:28:56,274 --> 01:28:56,834
No, I think it's just

1398
01:28:56,834 --> 01:28:57,214
an assumption.

1399
01:28:57,874 --> 01:28:58,354
We don't know.

1400
01:28:58,454 --> 01:28:59,394
I don't think anyone knows yet.

1401
01:29:00,314 --> 01:29:01,474
A product idea,

1402
01:29:01,734 --> 01:29:02,354
perhaps this is something

1403
01:29:02,354 --> 01:29:03,074
for me to play with

1404
01:29:03,074 --> 01:29:03,634
vibe coding.

1405
01:29:03,794 --> 01:29:05,134
I could see something like

1406
01:29:05,134 --> 01:29:08,034
btcseasoning.xyz

1407
01:29:08,034 --> 01:29:09,214
or season.xyz

1408
01:29:09,214 --> 01:29:11,234
maybe btcpaprika.xyz

1409
01:29:11,234 --> 01:29:12,734
and

1410
01:29:12,734 --> 01:29:23,194
And I do think there's a really interesting opportunity to build for this long-term, whether it's agent loans or the kind of marginal, the people on the edges that got rich off Bitcoin early on.

1411
01:29:23,474 --> 01:29:27,834
That, to me, is extremely promising for someone to build this parallel system.

1412
01:29:28,614 --> 01:29:35,494
And maybe it's the last, I agree, the rivers of the world should be the ones really hammering home on this work with the traditional mortgage lenders.

1413
01:29:35,494 --> 01:29:49,714
But I think there's going to be huge opportunity for a sort of parallel financial system, parallel lending system for agents, the sort of marginal people, let's say. And that's like an area I would definitely be sniffing in. And so maybe we'll help some of those guys get seasoned.

1414
01:29:49,714 --> 01:29:59,374
yep should we uh oh go ahead go ahead i was gonna say uh one of the things that i would say

1415
01:29:59,374 --> 01:30:05,494
is is best about this announcement i actually i don't know if this i can't tell yet how much

1416
01:30:05,494 --> 01:30:14,214
real impact this has given that it's fha loans and it's not using it as collateral but it's

1417
01:30:14,214 --> 01:30:21,094
using it as asset evaluation so it it's like a very kind of in a sense it it applies to a lot

1418
01:30:21,094 --> 01:30:24,554
of people but it's it wouldn't surprise me if there's like a very narrow set of people who

1419
01:30:24,554 --> 01:30:31,954
actually get value from like they they have an fha or need an fha loan and they need to demonstrate

1420
01:30:31,954 --> 01:30:38,434
additional reserves beyond what their income shows like it's it may be a bit of a niche i don't know

1421
01:30:38,434 --> 01:31:01,734
But I think it does drive the narrative forward that like Bitcoin is relevant as an asset to consider for any kind of loan, you know, mortgages, but also any other kind of loan. It starts to kind of give it some more credibility. So I do think like the more that this narrative emerges, the better it is for Bitcoin in all kinds of contexts.

1422
01:31:01,734 --> 01:31:06,654
even if this one i don't know i agree it's used yeah i agree too is the argument then just to be

1423
01:31:06,654 --> 01:31:09,614
clear because i didn't realize that i thought you could use it as collateral like so that actually

1424
01:31:09,614 --> 01:31:14,954
seems a lot as powerful if you can't use it as collateral is the like the benefit besides maybe

1425
01:31:14,954 --> 01:31:17,774
getting approved when you wouldn't have gotten approved that you might get a better interest rate

1426
01:31:17,774 --> 01:31:21,314
yeah i think you could get approval or you wouldn't have gotten approved you get a better

1427
01:31:21,314 --> 01:31:26,474
interest rate but basically you're showing the lender like hey i have such and such like say

1428
01:31:26,474 --> 01:31:32,194
w-2 income that should qualify me for a certain value of a home and they say well do you have 12

1429
01:31:32,194 --> 01:31:36,414
months of reserve in case you lose your job then you can still pay your mortgage and so you can

1430
01:31:36,414 --> 01:31:42,814
show that reserve in u.s dollars and stocks or now you could show it in bitcoin as long as it's held

1431
01:31:42,814 --> 01:31:50,354
in you know or fart or fart coin or fart point maybe yeah he said cryptocurrency he said

1432
01:31:50,354 --> 01:31:57,834
cryptocurrency yeah yeah not bitcoin so yeah i i saw a nostril post from alex gladstein this morning

1433
01:31:57,834 --> 01:32:02,254
um that i thought was just right on the money it's like because he was talking about how he was in dc

1434
01:32:02,254 --> 01:32:06,954
it is again not to harp on this point we have to move forward but it's just like crypto has done

1435
01:32:06,954 --> 01:32:12,434
so much damage it's so frustrating like why why is bitcoin still being lumped in with fart coin

1436
01:32:12,434 --> 01:32:19,954
or even ethereum someone at the event last night said that uh jokingly that they are going to create

1437
01:32:19,954 --> 01:32:20,834
a new coin

1438
01:32:20,834 --> 01:32:23,914
and then sell one of those

1439
01:32:23,914 --> 01:32:25,674
tokens to their friend for a dollar

1440
01:32:25,674 --> 01:32:27,194
and all of a sudden they're worth

1441
01:32:27,194 --> 01:32:30,074
$10 million and then use that

1442
01:32:30,074 --> 01:32:31,694
for their Fannie Mae loan.

1443
01:32:33,634 --> 01:32:35,654
I think there has to be some kind of

1444
01:32:35,654 --> 01:32:37,814
liquidity requirement among

1445
01:32:37,814 --> 01:32:38,514
other things.

1446
01:32:39,774 --> 01:32:40,954
Ultimately just Bitcoin.

1447
01:32:41,374 --> 01:32:41,794
Yeah, exactly.

1448
01:32:42,794 --> 01:32:45,134
Should we wrap?

1449
01:32:45,334 --> 01:32:46,294
We're a little over?

1450
01:32:46,914 --> 01:32:48,074
I think we're good.

1451
01:32:48,074 --> 01:32:54,094
cool cool all right well good to see you guys in person soon hey now are we doing are we doing

1452
01:32:54,094 --> 01:32:58,554
something different next week because of yeah so we so i think we're not doing it on the fourth of

1453
01:32:58,554 --> 01:33:06,014
july because it's fourth of july um and we did share enthusiasm for not missing next week though

1454
01:33:06,014 --> 01:33:10,134
so we need to come come to an agreement are we going to do on wednesday or thursday or

1455
01:33:10,134 --> 01:33:15,954
i think we're pretty flexible so anyone who's planning to tune in next friday uh just a heads

1456
01:33:15,954 --> 01:33:17,914
up that we'll probably do Wednesday or Thursday

1457
01:33:17,914 --> 01:33:19,654
instead. But look for it on Wednesday or Thursday

1458
01:33:19,654 --> 01:33:20,854
because we're doing it. Stay tuned.

1459
01:33:21,934 --> 01:33:23,634
Okay. All right. Bye, everyone. See you.

1460
01:33:23,754 --> 01:33:23,974
Goodbye.