All right, welcome to another edition of Presidio Bitcoin Jam.
We're back.
How are you guys doing?
Great.
It's Friday.
It's a Friday.
It's a beautiful Friday.
It's so gorgeous out.
Oh my God.
I love it.
On a day like today, San Francisco, promised land.
It shines, yeah.
That's amazing.
I just like walked over, got my orange.
I'm just feeling good in the sun.
Oh yeah.
You did.
A little bit of a breeze.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I climbed Mount Tam.
You did?
Did you really?
That's my new Friday.
This morning?
On my bike.
Oh, I saw your Strava.
Was that?
I didn't really.
I mean, I went to Rock Springs.
I got 2,000 feet.
Okay.
You got called out.
But, um...
I wasn't studying it.
I looked at your pictures.
It was nice.
It was great.
I mean, it was, like, very foggy where my house is, but above 700 feet, beautiful blue sky.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's unusual, though, because, like, San Francisco is usually foggier.
Well, it's common on Tam to be foggy in Tam Valley.
And then above 700 feet, blue sky.
Nice.
well I've been thrilled because I've been sitting in my garden and you guys know I've been getting
really into this whole farming yeah yeah gardening whatever farming sounds part of your self-sovereignty
part of my umbrella it really is though and uh I what are you farming all kinds of stuff okay I
don't know what I can discuss in the show uh no I actually so California it's all legal well it's
California it's all legal and it's California so it's perfect weather all year round because like
we kept looking at the seeds and be like you're supposed to plant this in this season I was like
I think you just plant anything anytime in San Francisco.
But what's great is, yeah, I'm trying a variety of different things.
So I have some greens, and then I have some gourds, like squash and pumpkins.
The mistake I think I've made, but I like to just try stuff and see what sticks, right,
is I probably planted too much.
And so we're going to see this sort of, I don't know, competition among the plants play out
for who's going to survive or not.
But it's great.
And I really do feel like, and I told you guys about this kind of wild book,
The Secret Life of Plants.
I feel a connection with them.
And it's great because we had so much rain,
although I had to travel in the rain,
which we'll talk about.
That was super not fun.
But like with the rain comes all the life.
And so I just feel like every time I walk back in there,
it's just like exploding with oxygen.
So fresh, so clean.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
It's good.
So can you do,
are there seasons in California for like when gourd season is
or can you just do that?
So DK, I mean, the answer is probably yes,
but I literally just like,
I've just,
I've done zero research.
but it's great
because everything is sprouting
and now again
what's crazy
is you'll see
I have a tomato plant
now the tomato plant
is kind of coming over the beets
and kind of stealing the lights
I need to get more space
can you bring tomatoes in
because my dad
grows tomatoes
when I get a tomato
they are like
10 times better
than store bought tomatoes
it's so true
it is like
shockingly
shockingly better
I have one tomato plant
and no tomatoes yet
when I do
I will bring you one
or we can even share one here
perhaps on the pod
you can watch us live
but there are
you put salt on your tomato
Yeah, sometimes.
Is that an Iowa thing?
It's an Italy thing.
Olive oil.
Olive oil, burrata.
Yeah.
It just means salt.
You can do that too.
Just salt.
Sure.
Yeah, that sounds Southern.
Steve is Midwest.
Memphis, Iowa.
Yeah, exactly.
Memphis and Iowa State.
I always got the connection
with a little fried chicken
and a little tomato.
But anyways,
but I think the cool,
so yes,
so I've noticed
our dog, Roy,
shout out to our baby Roy.
He loves like the spinach
and the arugula
the greens and it tastes to your point so much fresher than crap you get at the supermarket
so anyway so self-sovereignty but also just like i think there's so much you can learn
and study about just the nature of like everything like software development like you're seeing in
real time ecosystems emerge in the same way that we're like i i feel like i'm learning more about
in many ways open source software development from my uh from my garden than like almost anything
else because you see you plant these seeds and something's more like core or not
my plants would never be knots
that's offensive um but yeah does pbj have a stance on this stuff
i don't want to get into that again my plants are much more fun um but anyways yeah so
i highly recommend gardening i've got i've got a pretty productive lemon tree
i think have i given you any lemons we got meyer lemons that just grow like crazy so we're always
trying to give them away.
Nice.
They wouldn't go so well
in green tea,
but other teas.
Okay.
Some water, too.
Water.
Lemon water.
But we do this
in everything we cook.
Well, if you bring a bunch in,
we can make lemonade.
Yeah, yeah.
And when life hands you lemons.
There you go.
DK makes us lemon water.
And we want to do persimmon.
I think you can do persimmon around here.
What is persimmon?
Like an orange?
It's a little more like
maybe an apple pear,
but it's orange colored.
Oh, yeah.
But it's kind of sweet.
Put cinnamon on it.
We get them at the farmer's market all the time.
All right.
Really good.
Okay.
But we're here to talk about the signal from the noise.
Ooh.
Separate them.
Did you practice that?
No.
This man operates in real time.
There's no prep.
A real showman.
Yeah.
So, Signal.
What's the website?
So, I think it was Signal for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin for Signal.
Or Bitcoin for Signal.
Bitcoin for Signal.
Which be careful, because when you click on it, it looks like it's Signal's website.
I'm like, oh, Signal's incorporating Bitcoin. Interesting.
And then I was like, okay, I don't know anything about it.
This is an advocacy campaign.
It's branded as if it's Signal, but it's actually somebody else who's not involved in Signal directly,
but wants to contribute to making Signal more Bitcoin-centric.
Yeah.
I believe Jack's been a proponent in pushing Signal to adopt Bitcoin and cashew for a while.
at BTC Plus Plus in Berlin,
what, two weeks ago now?
One of the, actually,
I think the hackathon project that won
was adding Cashew and eCash
to a fork of Signal.
And Signal's all open source, right?
So anyone could fork it and add it.
Yep.
Yeah.
And so, and then they,
I actually don't know who they is.
Eric, who visited
PresidioBitcoin a couple weeks ago
for the design week,
and he works on Cashew
as a designer,
part of the Bitcoin design community.
I think he worked on the website design
as well as the design in the app.
And I'm sure Cali was involved.
I don't know who all was involved other than them,
but they launched this website,
which at least, I think it's an advocacy website
trying to encourage Signal to do that.
One notable thing about the website
is that they use the Bitcoin B symbol instead of the sats.
That's everywhere now, by the way.
More and more people are adopting that.
Which, by the way, is a clarifying question
because I'm seeing more and more people.
I've seen it now, obviously, with Square,
which we'll talk about now with some of the cashew stuff.
I think Albie even has like that now too.
How do you feel about using that symbol but calling it sats?
I'm very much at peace with that.
The evolution of my own thinking,
and I think other advocates of the Bitcoin B symbol
is that people can speak whatever they want.
I like it.
So don't police people's speech.
People can call it SAT,
corn,
coins,
Bitcoin,
you know,
bits,
whatever.
Say what you want.
What's the Gen Alpha way to do that?
What is this?
It's like the Gen Alpha way to do like this.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Why do you know this?
We hosted dinner with some kids.
Right.
Okay.
Some friends.
Something every day.
Like 22, not like 12.
All right, all right.
No judgment, no judgment.
But yeah, so say what you want.
But the main push and thrust, I would say,
is like in the visual UI,
show the Bitcoin B symbol and not the word SAT.
And like everyone who's seen that,
I think instantly gets converted.
Yeah, me too. I love it.
So it's far less controversial than like sort of demanding that people stop saying sats or whatever.
So I personally, I was saying, I went through a period of time not saying sats just to see how it felt.
And now I say sats.
Nothing wrong with saying sats.
All right, all right.
Okay.
It's simple though.
I like it.
Yeah.
So that was notable from the website.
But let's talk more about Bitcoin and Signal.
actually going back to
all the way back to 2019
when I first started at Blocked
and Spiral
Square Crypto
at the time
I met
at that time it's like oh
I want Bitcoin and Signal
I was already a heavy Signal user
and I want Bitcoin and Signal
so I reached out to Moxie
who was still at Signal at the time
and met with him, he was in San Francisco
so we met for a coffee
and I made the pitch
but also just wanted to hear his perspective
and he had a very reasonable perspective.
He wasn't against it at all.
And this is pre-MobileCoin.
He might, pre-MobileCoin in the product.
I think he had already was working
with Josh Goldbart on MobileCoin.
But I didn't know that at the time.
But he said the three things that were important to him and for Signal were all reasonable things.
Privacy.
The self-custody, like managing keys.
It needs to be brain dead simple.
They can't have their users losing their money because they mismanaged their keys.
And at the same time, Signal didn't want to be a financial services company or MSB, so self-custody.
And then the third was just UX scaling fee, like low fees, and scaled up all the users.
You know, all that's like totally reasonable.
And if they were to help you manage your private keys, would that cause them to become an MSB?
Or you can do that without becoming an MSB.
Well, I just mean, you can protect the user from losing their keys if you don't give them keys.
So if, like, Cash App, like, you can't lose your keys because Cash App has the keys.
but there also could be
but cash apps are MSB
right
Signal doesn't want to be an MSB
so I don't know if I got your question
so Signal doesn't want to be an MSB
that suggests like some variation
or flavor of non-custodial
or self-custodial
which we can get into that topic later too
because that continues to
like if Signal were to say like
hey we'll let you log in with your phone number
and we'll help decrypt keys that you have
you can also have the 12 words
and go away on a different place
so we're not like controlling it
we're just like helping you
with it?
There's a variety of solutions to back up
your private keys.
Photon Project and MoonWallet
as a solution and BitKey as a solution.
And if you do that, you don't run into
any risk, really, of
MSP. Well, again, it's a gray area.
For MoonWallet, I think
they let you just back it up and encrypt it in your
Apple Drive or Google Drive, I think.
Which I think is probably fine.
Oh, for sure.
There's a variety of solutions on how to manage your own
private keys, and if it's self-custody, then it's not
an MSB.
Anyway, this is six years ago.
There's been a lot
of progress in the last six years.
Anyway, his criteria was
he doesn't want their users to lose
money, he doesn't want to be an MSB.
That's reasonable. So all those are reasonable.
And then over time,
and then I quickly learned how
much work we have
to do to be able to deliver
on those three requirements.
The good news is, if you look at
the past six years, there's been tremendous progress.
On all those fronts.
But again, as we've talked about on several episodes in the show,
there's still no one solution that checks all boxes super strongly.
There's trade-offs.
Did they have a fourth requirement, though?
Which was to do a giant cash grab in the process?
Yeah.
Well, then in the interim, they integrated MobileCoin.
which I always thought was a joke
for all the typical pre-mine token reasons.
But what MobileCoin did deliver though,
it was based on SGX just like Signal is.
It did offer nice privacy properties.
It offered a way to scale and provide self-custody.
But to the degree that you trust SGX.
But at the end of the day, there's no demand for mobile.
No one's ever heard of mobile.
There's no demand for it.
Is it even, I don't even know.
Can you turn it on in Signal?
I've never even seen it.
Where is that?
Is it buried in settings?
Yeah.
I mean, if you go to settings, there's a wallet.
I'm curious.
But do you have to buy it at some exchange and then deposit it into your Signal wallet?
Yeah.
So that seems a lot of friction.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not a mystery that it has not caught on.
Do you think that the Signal team is kind of,
I saw on the, was it bitcoinforsignal.org or whatever,
on the website, they kind of made a claim that,
oh, like, mobile coin's not really going anywhere.
And do you think that the Signal team
has come to that conclusion,
or do you think they still are pushing mobile coin
to be a thing?
I know as much as you do.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I'm curious, has anyone...
I highly doubt, I mean, I have no idea.
But I would guess, I mean, Moxie, as far as I know, no longer involved in Signal, and Meredith has been the CEO or president or whatever, the leader for several years.
I would guess that Meredith has no, she probably wasn't part of the pre-mined token.
She didn't get rich off of it.
So she probably doesn't have any mobile coin baggage.
So I would guess she's just like, it's not a priority, let's get rid of this thing.
That would be my guess.
And was that all before, I think, was it Jan Kuhn from WhatsApp
came in and gave him 50 million bucks or something?
That predated all the stuff.
That was all before the multiple coins.
Yeah.
So I'm curious.
Obviously, I don't think it looks like either of you guys have used MobileCoin.
Is anyone listening to the pod, please drop in the chat if you have.
Like, I've never seen anyone do it.
I'm curious if there's a single MobileCoin user out there.
I'd be curious to learn about that.
But if not...
Despite us having a very large live audience,
I'm still guessing no one listening has used mobile coin.
This is a scientific study where if no one in our extremely large live audience answers,
like clearly Signal, this is your signal to switch.
But yeah, I mean, and I think this is such an important story over and over.
I mean, I have a ton of questions for where Signal ended up.
And by the way, I think we mentioned last week, Meredith Whitaker is now on Oster,
which seems like a great, great sign.
So she can see the power of like, oh, wait, you know, there's already, you know,
hundreds of thousands of users that have access to Bitcoin on here and stuff like that.
But I think this is like the one message to just hammer home over and over and over again to
everyone is open networks versus closed networks. And I know we'll talk more about this in other
contacts later today, but like if I could just like hammer one idea home to big tech because
they think about how to like integrate payments into their apps, you can either adopt an intranet,
which is your network or a private network where you can adopt the internet. We all know how this
story plays out intranet you don't get network effects people don't use your product there's
always going to be a wall goal your aol internet you win novell netware yeah who in our audience
have you heard of nobel network no i thought really i thought that was like feel on fuss
seriously yeah i don't know that's interesting that's right that shows an age gap between those
novell wetware net netware it was a ipx it was like a dominant it was the dominant networking
software.
Did you use this thing?
I mean, I knew of it.
In the early 90s.
I was doing dial-up stuff.
It was the dominant networking software,
and then Microsoft had their own
networking software, which tried to compete,
and then ultimately, obviously,
the internet won out.
I mean, I started...
But I played video games that were...
It was competing at, like,
TCP, IP, layer.
Really?
Wow, it was competing with TCP, IP.
IPX, I recall.
Okay.
I mean, this is a long time ago, but IPX, I believe, was it?
The company was behind it.
Novell.
Have you never heard of Novell?
Never heard of Novell.
No, Novell is.
This is my point.
It was Cisco, right?
Signal.
Do you want to be Novell?
Every tech company, do you want to be Novell or do you want to be Google?
Like, come on.
I've never heard of this.
Yeah.
Anyway, we'll do a history lesson for the young people.
Just so you guys know, I mean, I started, my dad was like a reasonably early adopter of
stuff on the internet because he's into like the weird
long tail of comic books and like bizarre
art stuff. So he was an early user on eBay
but I probably watched him use that around
95 or 96. Have you heard of Sun
Microsystem? Yes, I do. Eric Schmidt. Okay.
I mean, I believe
it. If I recall correctly, Sun
bought Novell when Eric was
the CEO. Sounds right.
And then he became
CEO of Google.
But I do remember that great
I always go back to this clip. I don't know if it was
95 or 96.
of Bill Gates being interviewed by one of the Letterman
or one of these late night shows or something.
And even he just kept going, I was like,
the information is super hot.
Right, right.
And then you just look back at that and you're like,
just play that clip for Stripe or Signal for anyone
that's like, do I do it at my own intranet
or go to the internet?
Yeah, totally agree.
Yeah, anyways.
So, okay, so Signal, you know,
flirted with a mobile coin that didn't go anywhere.
Surprise, surprise.
Yeah, and so there's a push to integrate
Bitcoin, but let's talk about the specific campaign,
which is adding Cashew. So going back
to the criteria Moxie set forth, which I think is completely
reasonable. If I were in charge of Signal product, I'd demand
the exact same. So privacy, well,
at least the no KYC version of Cashew
checks that box quite nicely.
and then the
scaling UX
low fees checks out
box nicely
then the
custody, self-custody
signal not being an MSP
this is where it gets a lot more interesting
so it's not self-custody
even though
some cash shoe and e-cash proponents
claim it's self-custody
that's a whole discussion
topic we can have. So we can go down that thread. Before we do that,
I mean, what is definitely clear is that some
third party is running a server and
has the private keys to the Bitcoin. So not the end users.
That is factual, right? Does the distinction come down to what
you consider money? Like, if you consider Bitcoin money, then
Let's get into that topic in a sec. I mean, let's definitely talk about that, but I just want to get to the other point,
which is who's going to run the Mint, right?
Yes, this is the money shot question.
Who's going to run the Mint?
And then we can also talk about is it self-custody or not.
I think the most critical question here, though,
is who's going to run the Mint?
Where does the yield come from?
Because running a Mint without KYC,
I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's definitively illegal.
and so
you're
a regulated company
is not going to do that
unless they run it as a
unless they license it as an MSB
and then have an AML program and do KYC
that is one option but
with Signal I don't think
KYC is going to be an option
because Signal is all about privacy
right so it would need to be
no KYC
cashew
so I don't think
an organization as prominent
and US-based like Signal, I just
don't see how they could possibly run
the mint
and think it's kosher and not get in trouble.
I just don't see how it's possible.
So there's certainly,
I mean, there's
at least dozens, if not more, mints
that exist today. And I think
there's a directory, a website
you can go to and look at
a bunch of mints and there's some
kind of reputation scoring
of them and how long they've been alive.
Is that something Bob built or something?
I think Bob's been involved.
Yeah.
So there's no doubt,
like as an early adopter
or advocate of this,
if you want to use any cashew wallet,
you can definitely use one of these mints you find.
If you're just putting like sort of spending money
or just a small amount of money in it,
That seems completely reasonable to me. And then you get a lot of benefit from, you know, on the UX side, scaling, privacy, etc. And just usability. So, but if we look at it from Signal's perspective, like let's put our Signal product manager hat on, what would Signal do?
because it doesn't seem realistic to me
that Signal will present to their users,
go to bitcoinmints.com and pick your mints.
I don't think they would do that.
I mean, it is debatable.
I'd be interested in someone who takes the other side of that
and understand, but I'll try to steal.
I won't steal the internet because I don't know.
I'll point out why.
Bob's UX had a pretty good version of this
where it's just like pick a default, right?
So I see two problems with picking a Mint from an Anon.
So you don't really know anything about who's running this Mint.
Well, you do have the reputation.
It's not an Anon.
It's a SuiN.
Let's talk about that as well,
because that can easily be gamed and civil-attacked, etc.
But one concern is obviously that they just steal the money.
They rug-pull you.
And so, again, if that's a small amount of money, like toy play money that you're using to do this or that, it's kind of like a bummer but not devastating to you as a user.
But if you think about it from the perspective of Signal, imagine that happens to like 10% of their user base.
Like tens of millions of people all have their money stolen from them.
Even if it's like two bucks or 12 bucks or 40 bucks or 50 bucks each, like that's not good for your brand.
It's not good for Bitcoin brand either.
Right.
It's terrible.
So but the second concern is not theft, but just, you know, someone running a mint and they just they no longer want to run the mint.
Maybe they're worried about legal liability.
Maybe they're just tired of doing the operations.
Maybe it grows so much that they're like they get scared.
Like, oh, I was okay with like, you know, $5,000 in this mint, but now there's $5 million or $50 million or $500 million in this mint.
And they get scared and they shut it down.
So when they shut it down, how do you get your money back?
The only way you can do it, each user has to proactively take a step to move their money elsewhere.
So what does that look like?
I personally experienced this with the Feddy app.
I, you know, put some money in Feddy.
It was in some mint.
And then that mint, they shut the mint down.
I literally don't know who was running the mint.
They shut the mint down.
I don't think they were trying to steal the money.
It was early and they just wanted to shut it down.
I didn't get a push notification, so I didn't even know.
And then my money's gone.
Even if Signal were to do a push notification to like 100 million people saying,
like move your money that a horrible user experience Then what percentage of those users Or yeah how big a window of time Like a min operator might give a 90 window or they might be just like I out
Or, you know, one day or whatever.
But even if it's a 90-day window,
what percentage of the users actually see the notification,
act on the notification?
People are busy in their life.
So I just don't see a credible way
for Signal to run a min themselves
or to rely on third parties.
The only way that I could see them relying on a third party is like if a very established brand like Coinbase or Block or River or LightSpark or whatever, Fidelity, JPMorgan, whatever, some established brand that says we're running a Mint.
But the only way they're going to be able to do that is at the KYC.
And then Signal could just do it themselves as well.
But again, that seems to break the requirement that Signal doesn't want to KYC their users.
I have a ton of questions of this, but let's start with the KYC piece. Is it that they don't want to KYC the users at all? Or is there some middle ground? For example, you know, my understanding, I know Bob is much deeper on this, but is that there's still a lot of gray area on like what exactly you need, because you can KYC a user in and you have to have some kind of like risk management or AI system to like guess whatever, who's who.
But like once you have the tokens out, the tokens are out.
And to be clear, the tokens, and this will get in the South Coast thing, think of it as a Chuck E. Cheese token that's private, but it represents whatever's in the Met, Bitcoin dollars, whatever.
So once you have the tokens, you know, if you have to KYC to get it, I wonder if that would be okay with Signal if you do it through their app.
But once you have it, they don't know what you're doing with it.
And they can't.
Like that's by definition.
So maybe there's a middle ground.
But just, I actually don't even, I mean, historically with Signal, all you have to provide is your phone number.
And I think they might.
How do you get mobile coin?
I think they've even like obviated that.
It's been forever since I signed up for mobile or for Signal.
But how do you get mobile coin?
You have to buy that, I'm sure, on a registered exchange.
I mean, the other thing that Signal.
But that has nothing to do with Signal.
Well, somehow they got mobile coin in there, right?
So like if they wanted to.
No, you can be KYC down a regular exchange.
You can be on mobile coin.
You can send it around.
So then what's the difference here?
They could do the same thing.
they could just say, hey, we don't know who's going to run the mints, but we just open it up
and figure it out yourself. The other thing Signal could do, and by the way, the more I hear you talk
about this, the more I'm like, they should just integrate Lightning probably as a first step,
because that's probably private enough. People can get Bitcoin much easier. The Cashew thing,
it's cool because of the privacy, but maybe adds too much complexity. But the other thing they can
just do is, and I've said this many times on the show, I still want someone to build this,
maybe it should be Signal, is just have local Bitcoins or local Cashew built into the app and
just do everything peer-to-peer.
But let's,
I'm happy to cover
ArcSpark and Lightning and compare,
but like, let's definitely,
let's thoroughly cover Cashew though,
because that's what's announced now
and there's a push find it.
And I mean, for anyone listening,
like I'm an advocate for eCash,
for Cashew,
Spiral Funds Cashew developers.
I'm not a hater on Cashew at all.
I just,
and I'd love to see it work out.
I'd love nothing more
to see a great Bitcoin.
I check all three boxes
of Moxies for Signal,
and have Bitcoin, no question.
I'm just left with this question
of who's going to run the Mint.
As far as your idea of like,
oh, let's just do like mobile coin
where you acquire Bitcoin on a Mint somewhere else
and then bring it into Signal.
I don't see how that differs from what I said earlier,
which is sort of like just a BitcoinMints.com directory.
Meaning that the risks of that seem the same.
Yeah, but I would say what's the difference between?
So if specifically on the KYC point,
they don't want to KYC users.
They once supported mobile coin.
They still support mobile coin.
My point is the vast majority of people that got mobile coin,
like they punted on that, right?
Because they're not KYC-ing and selling mobile coin
as far as I understand.
But let's say 90% of the users that are getting mobile coin
are probably doing it on Coinbase
or one of these registered exchanges, which requires KYC.
If they really want to do peer-to-peer,
like that's also, I'm sure there's like a tiny market
if anyone actually uses this.
So why can't they do the same thing?
Like find your own mint.
It's not our problem.
Yeah, well, let's see.
At minimum, I don't think people will use it then.
Yeah, that's fair.
I'm just saying the KYC point is no different to me in those two.
Because if you're using MobileCoin, they already support that.
Most of their users would have had a KYC.
Practically.
But so like, let's walk through what would like I open signal.
And I'm shown some splash screen saying like, we support Bitcoin now.
And then like, let's walk through what the copy is or like, what, you know, what, what
of the instructions to the user.
So that it would be here.
So deposit
here, but okay, what
does here mean? Does that mean there are signals running
a Mint? No, it just like, literally, they
just say, I mean,
ideally, I think they should do Bitcoin too, but it's like, okay,
we'll set you up with a self-custodial
cash wallet. I don't know exactly how to do that. Like,
backup maybe. Whose will, though,
it has to be connected to some Mint somewhere,
right? Like, you're going to have a
wallet that's going to connect
to a Mint? Well, can't they say just bring
your own? Because like with
MobileCoin, yes, so you
can go buy it elsewhere and then
deposit here, like you just said. But the
here, like Signal is running
MobileCoin, right?
Or they're using a third party.
They have a MobileCoin node.
Yes, but
I guess my point is like... And so
if they're not running in Mint,
then what does it mean to deposit Bitcoin
into Signal? Well, I mean, they could
just say, click here to create a self-custodial
cashew wallet where you get a cashew wallet from like here are some suggestions we suggest using
the internet a cashew wallet or a mint not a minute like a wallet like all they're saying is
like hey here's a cashew wallet and we don't have any we don't provide any cashew in there
and we suggest you figure out how to get cashew here's some ideas use the internet and you fit
find where you get the cashew from i mean i don't see that's different from mobile coin
because you still have to go to Quintus.
No, it's very different.
So like if from the Signal app,
if I have to then,
if they're like,
here are three Cashew wallet options
and then I click on the first one
and then it bounces out to an app
or a website or whatever,
which is a Cashew wallet
and then that Cashew wallet
somehow chooses a mint for me
or I have a directory or whatever
and I get tokens.
That's not an integrated experience.
That's a completely separate app.
Where MobileCoin wallet
is literally integrated into Signal.
Got it.
So what I'm thinking is, and perhaps this is a bit more complex, I don't know exactly how this
worked, but is that they help the user set up a self-custodial wallet. And maybe it's like,
you know, okay, we back up your keys. We never see them. Maybe it's in the secure element in
your phone. I don't know how they would do that. But what they could then do is forward payments
for you. And I think they would just need to run a Lightning note for that, right? Like if you send
a cashew, you would have to use a cashew mint that's hooked up to Lightning and they could be
kind of like your LSP for routing that payment.
I guess what I'm trying to say is,
is there a way they could do this
without ever having to touch Cashi themselves?
All they have to do is touch Bitcoin in the background
and then they set you up with,
here's how you set up a custodial wallet.
I don't think so,
unless it's not an integrated experience
and then it's not interesting at all.
But why couldn't it be an integrated experience
if you have a self-custodial wallet?
What do you mean by self-custodial wallet?
I mean, they can't see your keys.
Similar to how they...
So you have a separate app
But why couldn't they do this in the app where it's like,
I don't know how this would work exactly,
but they're like, okay, you have a set of keys.
Like they can't see your encryption keys for Signal, right?
Is that correct?
Like if I had the Signal app, they can't see my encryption keys.
I'm pretty sure.
I would hope not.
I would guess that's correct.
Yeah.
So why can't they just be like, okay,
we're attaching to those same set of encryption keys.
I mean, I don't know like what the spec would have to be for that.
Maybe you have to have a separate set of keys,
but ideally one set of keys.
Attached to those keys, you can literally set,
Like imagine like an Oster address.
You can send Bitcoin here.
Is it a layer one wallet, a lightning wallet, Spark, ARK?
So what I'm thinking is...
What are the keys to?
Well, doesn't the way Cashew work is like,
can't I just have a key where I send Cashew to, like an address?
Isn't that the same thing, no?
I don't know if it's interoperable as a Bitcoin key.
I don't know if it uses the same curve.
Or does it not work?
Cashew, you have, the data you have are just tokens.
Individual tokens.
Which is just a data string.
I see.
I think we're kind of confusing the issue a little bit here
because I love the vision for having Signal
with Bitcoin readily available.
But what are we hoping?
Are we hoping that Signal integrates this
and then that somehow makes this thing take off
through Signal's distribution?
Because all of these things feel so confusing.
And how do you do it?
Whereas if I were in China,
I love the vision that we're talking about,
If I were in charge of this, I'd be like, show me the growth of all of this usage and activity outside.
Because a lot of people use things like Venmo.
They send over WhatsApp and iMessage and whatever.
Even iMessage, I think, has its proprietary payment as part of it.
But I don't think I've ever used it.
I use Venmo and Zelle because that's what server owners want.
That's an interesting topic, too.
I mean, it gets into the use cases.
But I do want to just touch on this one thing before we jump in that, because I think this is important.
And it's been a while since I've looked at all the details in this, but I thought like Pablo's big breakthrough was that, quote unquote, the cashew, the nut is in the NPUB.
And so my understanding was you could literally have an NPUB, so a Nostra private key or a Nostra public key, which is the same as a Bitcoin key.
And in that key, you could have your cashew tokens attached to that key and it could be stored in Relay.
So in a way, what they would have to do is support Nostra relays where the in-pub is stored.
And I don't know exactly how that works, but I thought that was like the big breakthrough that Pablo had.
And if that's the case, then I don't see how, if they give you this in-pub, you can't send tokens.
And if someone's listening, they can correct me.
I know I'm probably getting some technical details wrong, but like that, I just remember Pablo kept saying over and over again, the cashew is in the key.
Yeah.
We'll do homework after the show
because if there's a path there,
obviously I'd love to learn it.
But critically, the key insight that I remember
is you're storing it in the relays.
As long as you have your private key,
you can access your eCache
in whichever relays you'd like to store it.
So it's more of a call for signal to integrate Noster.
Okay, we'll figure this out for next time.
But I still have the question,
who will run the Mint?
and no one's been able to answer that.
That seems like a hard one.
And I think we've asked that forever.
Is it?
Oh, well, I just like,
I would like to be an advocate.
I'd like to go yell and scream
and do whatever I can
to get Bitcoin in the signal
and be a cashew.
But I'm not because
if I put my Meredith hat on
or the PM a signal hat on,
I would be asking who will run them in.
And so until I can answer that better,
I don't see how I can be a champion for that method.
How far are we from, we've talked before about an AI agent running the Mint that nobody really controls.
And to me that, I don't think we have it fully figured out, but to me that seems like the most promising path to get there.
And you could imagine some sort of AI agent that's open source software that runs in some environment and that maybe people donate to pay for the infrastructure.
or they don't donate to you.
I mean, the idea is you actually tell the agent,
run this thing profitably.
And with those profits,
reinvest in backing yourself up.
That seems like a great vibe coding project
for you or Matt or Max or me or whatever to do,
someone to do, someone, listener.
That sounds like an amazing experimental project to me,
but I'm sure there's like at least a dozen things
that will be revealed while building it,
which make it impractical or impeachable
or too risky or whatever.
Today.
Today, you know, so I'm not,
I'm not shitting on the idea.
I'm just, to me, that's like,
it would be an amazing experiment now,
but it's certainly not,
like, it's not a definitive answer.
Well, and to be clear,
I mean, I can tell you,
and I need to do it longer, right?
I put this idea.
Like, we can't go to Signal right now
and say, like, here's the answer.
Here's your solution.
But I think maybe the thing I'm suggesting
is let's figure it out
independent of Signal and prove it.
Because I think going to Signal
and hassling them to integrate this thing
that we don't even have an answer to
is kind of backwards.
Let's make the answer outside of Signal.
And make it easy for them.
like Venmo works really well,
non-integrated with iMessage,
but it works really well.
So like, let's prove
that we can make it work really well.
And then once everybody's using it
and it's so obvious
they're pasting links into Signal,
let me say, hey, Signal,
let's make this thing
that already works much better.
And then I think as a product manager,
Meredith, whoever,
then you have like a really strong case
to be made.
So I have many ideas around this.
And I think that
it's a very promising idea.
I think, frankly, whoever does it,
is probably going to need a drop at Anon,
like Satoshi.
Because it's also, I mean, this is the most subversive, crazy idea.
It's not even like subversive.
It's like dangerous in a way because you're starting digital life.
There's things we need, right?
We need the GPUs that you can pay for in Bitcoin or in Cashew, which don't exist yet.
It doesn't even need GPUs, just regular CPUs.
Yeah.
Very low-end hardware could run this.
That's true.
So what I think we should do is after the Type 1 Summit, which is taking all of my attention
now that I've got a bunch of other stuff done.
I think I've had this idea.
I'm going to drop it here on the show.
You may or may not.
Okay, actually, both of you guys.
Steve, since you're flexing some early 90s stuff.
By the way, Austin points out that Novell is based in Provo, Utah,
which is where he is.
So it was a sales company?
Everyone knows Utah's got the Mormon salesman.
So what I think we should do is,
do you remember in the early 90s, 1993, 1994 era, I believe, I was barely conscious then, but
there were these artificial life conferences. Kevin Kelly was at them. A lot of the Santa
F. Institute guys were at them, but it was a thing. They had these artificial life. And I
highly recommend one of my favorite books of all time is Out of Control, which is Kevin Kelly's
90s book. It's his best one by far. And in my opinion, it still reads modern, even though it's
30 years old. I think what we should do is a lot of these guys were like the true wizards of that
day and they were all like Apple and like many of them probably just live here like in this,
you know, Santa Cruz mountains now. We should bring it back and do artificial life three or
artificial life four, whatever vintage it's on. But with a Bitcoin and cashew kind of like focus.
And so bring all these great minds back together. But this time be like, boys, we've got your digital
ATP. We've got your life currency now.
You want to form digital life?
We got the tools. And come away
with the goal of
hackathon. Maybe we even attach a hackathon
where they get Cali and the best hackers.
We want to leave this with
artificial life birth. So Autonomous Life
Summit. Yes.
Type 1 Summit, Autonomous Life Summit.
ALS.
I like the way you...
For the Bitcoin community.
I like the way
you've organized Type 1 Summit
to not, it doesn't feel like it's a Bitcoin shill fest.
No.
It's not for Bitcoiners, by Bitcoiners.
I mean, it's by Bitcoiners,
but it's for everybody who cares about this topic.
Independent of your interest or allegiance to Bitcoin.
Exactly.
You can kind of, you know, figure it out along the way
if it turns out to be the right tool.
Great.
I think Autonomous Life Summit
or whatever you want to call it.
Some different acronym.
Could kind of benefit from a similar kind of vibe.
That's not like, hey, we've got the answer for you.
It's called Bitcoin and Nostrum.
It's just like, hey, autonomous life.
How do we want to build it?
And here are some tools that might be interesting.
It might be interesting, yeah.
And actually, I love it.
This is what I was talking with Alex about yesterday.
Obviously, we love all the Bitcoin conferences.
We've all been to many, many, many, especially us, many, many, many, many of them.
But what I like about the Type 1 Summit a lot, and what I think this could also benefit from,
and I think it's part of our mission at PB, which is to expand from the current members of the cult to the new members,
which is going to be the rest of Silicon Valley.
is it's very, it's in the background, right?
It's like, it's there.
You know, we're certainly,
I mean, we're gonna have a ton of Bitcoiners there,
but like half the folks that we have coming to the summit
are like people at Tesla or people at Google or like,
and I don't think they're anti-Bitcoin
because if they saw it's hosted at Presidio Bitcoin
and they were anti-Bitcoin,
they would probably refuse the invitation.
But it's all about energy.
And oh, by the way, they're gonna realize,
oh, like all these really smart Bitcoin miners.
Like we talked about,
like why are all the early mining companies
and now the ones making all the money in AI.
Hmm, maybe there's something there.
And I think similar for artificial life,
I think it's also a big step we can make.
I'll never forget, it was very kind of sad to me.
It was actually one of the sadder things
in the last couple of years of my life
was when we went to the Kevin Kelly thing,
you remember his library thing?
That was so cool.
Kevin Kelly is one of my heroes.
I love his books so much.
And it was just, yeah, it was a little crushing
when I mentioned, you know,
I work in Nostrum, Bitcoin,
I could just see his face like, oh, crypto.
He's like, I don't like all that shit.
it's like, no, you don't understand, man.
This is like so in line with you just,
like the crypto people have so tarnished
the beautiful things we're trying to work on.
And anyways, reclaiming that
and getting people like Kevin Kelly
just to see the broader picture of,
no, this is part of evolution.
You're just, you're missing the point
because of all these like scammer fucks.
Anyways.
Yep.
Yeah.
It was sad.
It was very.
So we got a bunch of things
I want to talk about.
Well, maybe we'll talk about use cases
of signaling Bitcoin in a future episode.
Okay.
Is that cool?
Yeah, sure.
Do you have any ideas?
Just like a high level?
Any that come to mind?
Well, I mean,
if you go to a square terminal
and pay in Bitcoin,
Signal can become your wallet, right?
I mean,
most people don't have Bitcoin
on their phone.
Even people who own Bitcoin
don't have Bitcoin on their phone.
They don't have like a spending wallet.
Yeah.
But for the 100 million plus people
who have Signal,
then all of a sudden,
it's like,
okay, now I have a spending wallet.
100 million?
I didn't realize it was that large.
I mean, they had 100 million
like four years ago.
So they might be
200 million now? More?
While they're on the ETF.
The Signal ETF?
I don't know what that is.
But yeah, they could spend at Square.
So one thing I was hoping to talk about is the stickers.
I mean, we talked about Square last week,
so we don't have to re-discuss the product announcement
of accepting Bitcoin.
But I think this week Square revealed the stickers that they're providing for free to merchants.
These are the stickers that you see in merchant windows.
They accept Visa or Apple Pay or Cash App or whatever.
Different payment systems.
And now the new stickers, of course, have a Bitcoin logo.
Does it have Biddy or somebody on it?
Well, that's one of the things we can talk about.
I have a little bit of inside baseball because I saw the discussion about what it should look like.
And before we get into style and stuff like that, to me, I think this is actually going to be a really big deal.
Because I think it can change the psychology of normal people who don't own Bitcoin or maybe they do own Bitcoin, but they certainly don't spend it.
Like no one's spending Bitcoin, right?
So normal people, I think just normal people are like, they just think of Bitcoin as like, you know, it goes up and down a lot.
It's gone up more than it's gone down.
Early people got rich.
Digital gold.
Period.
But it's like, it failed.
It's not a currency.
It's not a currency because people don't use it.
I've never seen anyone spend it, right?
Now, people are going to walk into stores, go to merchants, and they'll see the sticker with Visa and MasterCard, and they'll see a Bitcoin B symbol.
That's awesome.
And Bitcoin.
It's a slogan.
It's everywhere you want to be.
We should have had you involved.
They need to get you in the marketing team here.
You have a job.
Even if no one is actually even using Bitcoin to spend at Square Terminals,
just seeing the Bitcoin be symbol, it makes you think.
It's a perception.
It makes you think, oh, people must be spending Bitcoin.
It's here.
It's arrived.
and it can be a
self-fulfilling prophecy
right? All of a sudden it shifts
the narrative from like Michael
Saylor, like ETF,
digital gold to like
or not necessarily shift. I mean you can
still have that narrative but also the narrative of
like oh it has become
a currency now. It must be. It's
arrived as a currency. And it at least
opens your mind. So that
I mean it still might be four years from now where you
actually have Bitcoin in your phone and you're spending it.
but it's changed your concept.
Shifts the over to window.
Yeah.
And what does it take to get these?
You have to go out to all the merchants
who have a thing and sort of explain it
or just it comes with a packet
that they already typically do updates and installs on?
No, I mean, if you're a Square merchant,
there's a website, you click a button
and you can get up to nine of them for free.
And you put them like on your store window
or on the terminal itself?
Yeah, I mean, there's no innovation there.
Just like it's done today with different stickers.
I mean, Square's provided stickers.
in the past. This is just a new set with Bitcoin.
Are there plans? So that's cool, but that are obviously very few people will begin by opting
in and asking for a sticker. Are there plans for Square to proactively send them to everyone?
I don't know about that, but what I have seen is that we have a Bitcoin army, right? So there
are people, Bitcoiners tweeting, saying like, I want to go hand these stickers. Can I get the
stickers, I can hand them to my favorite merchants to convert them. And I think the right answer
there is go talk to your merchants and say, hey, I'd like to buy in Bitcoin. And by the way,
right here, just click this button in your UI and you enable it. It's dead simple. The coffee shop
in Washington, D.C. just promoted themselves as the first coffee shop to accept Bitcoin through
a square terminal, it is as easy as just like tapping a button and turning it on.
So the Bitcoin army can go convince the merchants to that and then also point them out and just
go to this website, click a button, order your stickers, and then post your stickers.
Alternative ideas, perhaps since Novell is based in Provo, Utah and doesn't appear to
be doing much these days, perhaps they could turn into a marketing company for Bitcoin.
Have you heard the good word of Satoshi?
I always feel bad for these merchants.
So we should actually check in on our homework from last week
because I actually mentioned to two different merchants,
our normal lunch spot here in the Presidio,
and to my favorite tea shop that both of which have Square Terminals
and said, if you opt into accepting Bitcoin,
I will pay you in Bitcoin.
It'd be super cool.
The first lady was like, oh, no, not again.
I can tell she's been hit with like 15 people already.
I was like, oh, shit.
That's good news, actually.
I know.
You're saying the lunch spot.
The lunch lady.
She was like, well, she's like.
Oh, Cafe RX.
Yeah.
And she's not anti it, but she was like, listen, she's super nice.
But she was like, I could tell she was like, oh, God, the Bitcoiners.
She was like, listen, she's like, there's only one of me back here.
It's complex.
I have all this stuff.
My life is very complex.
I don't want, like, she's not anti it.
She just like is like, I don't want complexity.
And I was like, well, what if it was simple as like you just have to shift one toggle and it's done forever?
She was like, if it can become that simple, we can talk.
Okay.
Well, November 10th, we'll go back and talk to her.
So we should go back and talk to her.
My tea lady was fascinated.
And I'm super excited, actually.
A little bit of an alpha drop.
You boys ready for some alpha?
Yeah.
At the Type 1 Summit,
thanks to the homie Alex over here,
we've been working on this.
We have one of the only,
I think it's like six recognized T-masters
as recognized by the Japanese government
who will be preparing a cincha.
Wow.
It's going to be excellent.
It's going to be, yeah.
This is what I'm saying.
This is some high-
Does he accept Bitcoin?
Well, not yet.
Not yet.
Okay.
But it's a woman, actually.
Okay.
And-
Can we get her set up this is the hope And so there two women Well there two There one So my primary tea dealer is in Japantown She excellent
She gets super high-end, super, super high-quality Japanese teas from Japan.
And her friend is the one that comes and does all the tea.
She's even going to do a little ceremony.
I think we'll come in a kimono.
That's going to be really cool.
It's going to be nice.
But the first woman has a shop, and so she already uses Squares.
So it'd be super easy.
and I asked her about that.
And she at first,
she wasn't anti or positive.
She was just kind of, huh.
She was like, okay,
well, let's chat when it's easy.
Did she already know what it was?
Not, I mean,
I mean, she clearly had heard
the term Bitcoin
because I was like,
you know, and we've been friends.
I mean, I've got,
got a standing discount there
because I'm a,
I'm a meaningful customer
at the tea shop.
And yeah, so I mean,
I think coming from me,
she took it at least
somewhat seriously.
And I said, I would do this.
And she was, she was curious.
Cool.
But again, I think the key
is all these people
are just going to be like,
it needs to be easy.
And so if it really is click a toggle, done.
Yeah, it is easy.
Now you had an experience
where the person had never heard of Bitcoin.
Yeah.
How's that possible?
I honestly am shocked by that.
I was kind of surprised,
but I mean, this is actually my favorite burrito shop
is Avatar's Punjabi Burritos.
Ooh, that's a good name.
They're all over.
There's a bunch of them around Marin,
but there's one that I go to kind of frequently
and it's a cash only place.
And they have cash only on the signs.
And they're very like, we don't want to talk about any of that.
And if it's not cash, it's trash.
So I asked him, I was like, oh, do you guys accept Bitcoin?
And he was like, no, no.
Was this the owner or just one of the tellers?
I think this was like, maybe not the owner of the whole multi thing,
but I think this was the manager.
The decision maker for this drop.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was like, oh, no, what is that?
And I was like, he's like, we don't really accept anything.
And I showed him my phone.
He's like, oh, this is like a digital thing.
It's like, oh, yeah, we don't really do that.
He's like, I can take a card, but I have to call it into the other shop to actually process it.
So I don't want to do that.
It's just like cash.
So he was not particularly receptive to anything digital.
Like they don't use Square, no Venmo, no Zelle.
I'm bullish on this guy
he's going to do well in the coming
solar apocalypse
a lot of tech people
I bet you have a lot of tech people come through here
a lot of tech people that I know
like to pay in Bitcoin
it's kind of like cash
digital cash
and I showed him
on my wallet what it looks like
on a digital wallet
and he was kind of like
okay
I don't think he really internalized
what I was talking about
but I said well
I bet you like gold, right?
And he's like, yeah, yeah, of course.
Of course.
I said, well, this is like digital gold.
So he just was not familiar at all with the concept of Bitcoin.
Never heard of it.
Didn't know the concepts of digital gold.
But I think he was mostly turned off by the fact that it was a digital experience.
We should try the sales pitch of saying, hey, how would you like receiving a gold coin for a burrito?
Yeah.
We can try it.
anyhow
well thanks for reporting
and did you do your homework?
yes Steve
I did not do
oh
I've indirectly done my homework
I did not
do the prescribed
you worked on some open source
I'm dealing stickers
but yes
I need to
I will report back
I'll report back
but by the way
on that topic
oh so one thing we should talk about
so
I met some interesting people
at the light spark thing
So we should touch on their announcement as well.
But one of the guys I met who I'm going to invite over,
I actually didn't realize they were still around,
I didn't realize they were still around,
was blockchain.com.
Oh, yeah.
Do you know they're still like operating?
I mean, I figure all these like early crypto companies
have like giant treasuries
because, you know, they're various, you know, whatever,
endeavors in crypto.
But it sounds like they're coming back to Bitcoin
instead of school.
And he was a nice guy where you could chat.
But he was telling me, I didn't realize,
you know, he was making the point
that a lot of folks like this Punjabi guy
or whatever you were talking about,
that...
you know, apparently in Costco,
I knew you could buy gold.
Apparently they're selling out,
which is interesting.
But apparently you can buy like a lot of gold.
Like he was like, oh yeah,
like 10 to like $100,000 worth of gold.
I don't know if that's true,
but that sounds kind of insane to me.
At Costco?
Yeah.
Why does that sound?
Why is that?
I mean.
I don't know.
That's like a lot of money to spend at Costco.
I think there are daily limits.
But $100,000 of gold,
like it's a small portion of your palm of your hand.
Is that true?
I'm, I.
I'm the opposite of this guy.
I have no idea what the physical world...
We should teach you about gold.
Gold is this new money.
I'm not anti-gold.
I don't know what to do with it.
You can have like 10 one-ounce coins,
and that would be $43,000.
For real?
How much is a bar?
Like a big-ass bar?
Think of the size of a quarter
that's about two inches tall.
A tube can hold 10...
ounces, 10 coins, and that's $43,000. So, I mean, if I held my palm out like this, I could have like
half a million dollars. Like an average home in the U.S., I think is 400K. So you could hold all
of the value of an average home in the U.S. in the palm of your hand. I'm getting longer gold. Wow.
Yeah. Gold is up. I've heard. We should actually touch on that point. Okay, so it's up a lot.
let's talk about gold but one last thing i just want to mention from this guy which i thought was
interesting he made the point to me that he was like particularly for some of this like older
generation that likes gold and probably a lot of immigrants people from india he was like you need
to be able to go into costco and like it would be an interesting product and buy a physical bitcoin
and i remember they had these back in the old days the cash coins and then there was a ballet
crypto these like thick thick metal cards that had like stickers and i don't know how they did
implemented all this stuff to make sure no one jacked your coins.
But I thought that was an interesting point.
I imagine there is
probably a meaningful market.
I've seen in Australia and all these places
that are lining up down the block to buy gold
as the global economy collapses.
If Costco is selling out nonstop,
I do think it'd be interesting for this guy
at your burrito place.
Maybe he won't take your newfangled internet thing,
but if you went to him with a giant heavy coin,
you're like, this is Bitcoin.
I don't know. I think it's interesting.
meaning to help
Selma on the idea
not actually pay him with that
maybe you could do both
he doesn't understand how to value it
I mean I think
open dimes are super cool
yeah but open dime is cool
you have the denomination issue
how do you do change
I think there's a couple ways to go
open dime is cool but that's kind of very cyberpunk
that feels like you're like
imagine a cooler coin
but it's still the same problem
Exactly.
Like it has so much value on it.
It's not the value
what I want to pay
for the burrito.
Then how do you,
how do you get your,
I think there's a tree here
and I think both are interesting.
Maybe this actually
could be an opportunity
for a startup or Square
or whatever is like
to provide the technology
to do this.
But I mean,
one thing you could do
for the actual just like
commerce is like paper bills.
And this is something
that actually Danny
was really interested in doing
for a while.
And some people were doing this,
if I recall,
like seven years ago
or something,
where you get like a piece,
like a dollar bill
and there's some kind of either scratch-off code
or some way to verify there's still a big one on there,
but it's very, very tiny denominations.
When I say dominated, like $50.
Isn't the Sabbath card kind of does this?
Yeah, and also an eCash project
created cool-looking paper bills
that could have eCash tokens embedded in them.
Yeah.
So whether it's private keys or eCash tokens,
all of those have the trust element,
but I don't think it's a showstopper.
I do think it's
for the reasons you're saying
it's pretty compelling
especially to someone new
to have something
they can touch and feel
I think the important thing is
like if it's enough value
that there's
that people realize
they need to get it
off of that
well or do they
I mean so just
I think they do
because like let's say
it's a Cassius coin
and it's worth like
$50,000 or $100,000 or something
it's super risky
having that bearer token with no backup.
Like, for example, I had an OpenDime,
and I gave that to some folks I know,
and this was like in 2017, 2018.
I would pay them back from groceries and stuff like that.
Very expensive groceries.
Well, and all of a sudden, I mean,
literally I was just paying back from splitting bills and stuff,
and then now it's worth like $50,000 or something.
So then I started getting nervous about it's sitting on this OpenDime,
And like if that somehow gets lost or destroyed, the money's gone.
So got them moved over to a BitKey.
So you're like, you're not taking advantage of an enormous advantage of Bitcoin over gold,
which is you can duplicate and back up.
I agree.
And there should be a path off of that.
And that's why maybe it's interesting for Square because you have BitKey and maybe there's
like a way to be the technology provider that allows you to give you that path when you're
ready.
But you also have to acknowledge that if people are lining up at Costco and are apparently
having half a million dollars in their palms and they're comfortable with that there is a market
for that and but still there's a huge difference like with gold um i mean it can survive fire and
like it so could this though right like i guess my point is like you know those like ballet crypto
cards or a little digital device i think we're talking about two different things i'm talking
about you have like a heavy like if you're doing let's say you have fifty thousand dollars on here
shouldn't be on a damn open we're talking on like a hundred dollar metal card like something thick
heavy you put into a safe it'll melt like well like the survivability of gold is better than any
kind of private key okay here's a crazy idea put it on i don't know gold or platinum and then now
now you got double out of bling right all i'm saying is like there are a lot of people who
understand this idea of i have this thing i put it in a vault if i lose this thing i lose it and
they're okay with that that risk profile and it's great if then over time oh i now realize it's
digital i can kind of offer it but again so i think there's actually a good transition point
you know i had an lp email i mean it's kind of funny he's like hey man like just curious like
why is gold mooning while bitcoin is not it's like well first of all again what time frame are we
talking about like two years ago bitcoin was like under 30k right so you know what are we talking
about mooning um but it to your point steve you can't argue that like big gold is just crushing
right now and so one debate i've had with various people in chat it's up to like 30 trillion dollars
is it really the market cap of gold it was 10 trillion just a bit ago yeah now it's 30
Is that in the last year or so?
Well, it's gone from 1,600 to, I mean, it floated around 1,600, 1,700 forever, and now it's 4,300.
No mommies.
I mean, just in the last two months, it's gone from like 3,000 to 4,300.
Is there some sort of like obvious explanation for that?
Is it like repatriation or some geopolitical concerns and stuff like that?
Probably central banks buying China, Russia.
So this is the question.
and this is what I'm getting hit with
and debating with people in various chats
and having LPs asking me is like,
you know, they're like, you know, okay, well,
basically, why is it gold and not Bitcoin yet?
And my simple answer, I mean,
short answer, no one knows, right?
Like, you can just guess.
My guess is old people still run the world.
And the old people are still comfortable with gold
because they know it, they get the narrative.
So, you know, I heard someone else saying this
and I kind of agree with him that like,
this is probably the last cycle
where gold is what moons
while there's an economic crisis.
and maybe the next one is Bitcoin.
Also central banks.
I mean, for that reason,
because who runs central banks?
Well, and also central banks
have a process for how to custody gold
and they don't have a process
for how to custody Bitcoin.
They can't just go on an exchange,
buy some, you know, chuck it in the...
Who's doing that, by the way?
That seems like an incredible opportunity
to be like the service provider
for central banks.
I don't really want to promote
the person who's doing it.
That's a startup?
Yeah.
We should chat more about it.
I like that startup.
Maybe we'll fund an alternative one.
Yeah.
The open source.
You're just saying you don't want central banks owning Bitcoin?
I didn't.
What are you getting at there?
I don't want to promote not crazy people.
Oh, okay.
Their startup.
Oh, so there's a specific startup that we don't want to.
Oh, I think I may.
The thing which shall not be spoken.
Okay.
We should chat more about all this.
but oh, okay, so we're getting
a bunch of actual traction in the thing.
Ha ha, Coinbase Max.
Okay, so they're going to be
cussing the central banks.
Yeah, well then we need some alternatives.
I wonder if River could do this.
Seems like a big opportunity.
And then we should give a shout out.
But I think, I mean, yes,
River should do it,
but if I'm China,
I'm not going to store my Bitcoin
with an American company.
Cool, then that means
there's lots of opportunity.
There needs to be better self-custody solutions and processes for a government or large sovereign fund.
Like who's cussing for El Salvador?
Probably Coinbase.
Who's cussing for Bhutan?
BitGo did at one point.
Who's doing it for Bhutan?
I don't know.
But it's probably American companies.
China doesn't want to just adopt whatever El Salvador's doing.
A lot of people are using American companies, but that's at best a temporary band-aid.
It's very dumb.
It's literally repeating gold.
So it's, again, not taking advantage of
properties of Bitcoin.
Maybe some of these companies could
provide the consulting
and solutions.
This is a terrible analogy,
but Palantir for self-care.
They're like, it's essentially,
I know it's a terrible idea,
but it's effectively a consulting company
to help these guys do that.
Because again, I come back to you,
these guys are old.
Anyways, but I also want to give a shout out
to the homie
Barris Wheel
who is a fun guy.
He got to me here recently.
What's up, Barris?
And he says,
Stephen Pinker calls
this common knowledge
in his new book
when people know
there's no BTC
is accepted via merchants.
It should help scale
the PR specifically.
He replied to my tweet
with that too
and I skimmed through
the interview
with Stephen Pinker.
It was pretty interesting.
Yeah.
Nice.
What was the interview?
This was like...
It was at...
Oh, I forget.
It was an event here
in Silicon Valley
down in Santa Clara.
Did he go on
Tyler Cowen recently?
I feel like I heard
some clips of that.
But I mean,
he recently wrote a book
about like common,
what is common knowledge?
It was at the Commonwealth.
How does something
become common knowledge?
What is the definition
of common knowledge
and how does it get
to that point?
And like obviously money
is like an interesting
thing to study
regarding that.
And so it's related
to the stickers thing.
Yeah.
Another theory
on the gold stuff
that I heard floated
I don't know if you guys have any opinion on this,
but I think I heard that there may be,
I think U.S. Treasury holds a lot of gold,
but it's priced at like 43 bucks an ounce or something.
So we hear.
Is that right?
But it's like purposely just priced from like the 70s
and they never repriced it.
And I've heard this theory that they're going to reprice it
and sell it in order to buy Bitcoin
for the Strategic Reserve in a budget neutral way.
meaning on the US accounting books
they've valued it at $40 or whatever
yeah something like that
and so if you re-value it at whatever it is
like whatever the price was
$4,300 or whatever
$1,70 or something like that
yeah
so if you do that then you actually can sell it
to whoever wants to buy it
China or whatever
you know where
and then you can use that to fund
a strategic reserve
is that why the price of Bitcoin has gone
from $125 to $105
I mean, I think that was part of the theory is that it might be trying to tank the market while doing this move to buy.
I know.
That seems very in line with Trump thinking.
I mean, if so, and he pulls it off, well, that'd be.
Part of the deal.
That'd be a gigabrain move.
I'm skeptical, but maybe.
One thing before I forget, I want to give a shout out to our Builder event, which is next Thursday.
Yeah.
So it's here at Presidity Bitcoin.
Starts at 6.30 p.m.
I think starts at 6 p.m. networking
and then the event starts at 6.30 p.m.
So we'll see as many people as possible come out.
We've been having, I think, around 25, 30 people show up.
We encourage as many people want to attend as possible.
You don't need to be a Bitcoiner.
You just need to care about innovation and building,
five coding, and talk about products and business.
That's the thrust.
And of course, there's like a Bitcoin theme to it, but it's really about innovation and
building.
So I hope to see more people coming out.
I love it.
And I did just want to also mention, so I went to the LightSpark Day thing and they had their
announcement grid, which I think is pretty interesting.
Did you guys look at this at all?
I think on the website, but I didn't study.
So tell us more about it.
So I think this is actually pretty practical.
So like what, you know, there's obviously all the Spark stuff.
And by the way, there's some really interesting.
I came away on the Spark side with a clear, I think their CTO, everyone on the team has the message like confidential transactions need to come.
So I think that was like a clear message that came away from that.
Like Spark being completely open is certainly not like in the long term roadmap.
So that was comforting and good for me to hear.
Completely open, meaning publishing the transactions?
Yeah, there was that whole sort of controversy where I forgot who was, but someone publicly, you could see like every transaction ever.
And it's interesting because there was one or two people on the team that was kind of like, well, that's how Bitcoin works.
And so isn't transparency better?
But I think the majority of the team, including their CTO, understands now we need confidential transactions here.
That's a non-starter.
That was very comforting.
To be clear, I think it's CDs for tokens, not for Bitcoin payments.
I thought it was for Bitcoin payments too.
No, just for their tokens.
But they do have some improvements, pragmatic improvements for privacy, which goes a pretty long ways addressing my concerns that I had stated.
Cool. Well, that's good to hear.
At a high level, it's clear that people that are designing things there understand having everything open is not the ideal state of the world.
And that's not what they tend to stick on.
So that's good.
And like, yeah, I think, you know, just remember everything is always a work in progress.
And like, yeah.
So anyway, so I'm excited to see them continue to move in a more private direction.
It seems like that's going to happen.
But what I thought was actually really cool and practical is the grid thing.
And I think the way I think about grid, and I certainly don't claim to be an expert on
it, but is, you know, really using Bitcoin as the neutral settlement layer between existing
real-time payment networks.
And so one of the cool things, you know, is you forget here in the United States, like, you know, sadly, a lot of our technology is still pretty hood. I mean, we do have stuff like Cash App and, you know, PayPal and stuff, which is all right. But we forget in, you know, countries like Brazil, and India with UPI and Mexico with SPA, I forget what I think SIPA is pretty good in Europe, I don't know. But like, there are a lot of really good functioning real time payment networks that just work. I guess that's what FedNow is trying to be in the United States.
and so I think a lot of the focus and thrust for them
is how do we use Bitcoin and Lightning or Spark,
like whatever's cheaper and better to use,
to be able to connect up institutions
within these countries that have the real-time networks,
offer up the commands to those real-time payment networks
as an API so the developers can easily say,
hey, I built an app where I don't even know where Bitcoin is,
but what I do know is I sent money from Brazil
and received money in India
and it taps into all three real-time payment networks,
Spay, or I forget the Brazil PIX, Bitcoin, and UPI.
And also interesting, I didn't realize
one of their chief product dudes helped design UPI.
That was kind of interesting to me to hear.
So what I like about that is,
and I think sometimes there's a bit of a divide
between sort of the Bitcoin community
and what they perceive a company like LightSpark to do.
What I think is really cool is there's,
you know, certainly the like Bitcoin or cypherpunk ethos
that we just want to exit the system, that's great.
And like, I'm glad that exists for everyone that wants it.
I think it's absolutely critical that anything,
you know, a company ever develops
be backwards compatible, things like Lightning,
and always gives the option for exit
for those that want it.
That's a, you know, clear,
if you don't have that, it's a non-starter.
Having said that,
what I think that LightSpark is coming out
is very practical is,
I think sometimes we lose in the Bitcoin communities.
Like most people just don't give a fuck.
And like, we would love them to give a fuck.
We really want them to care.
And like, we really hope we all get there,
but like, we also live in reality.
And what's really cool that I think
they're focused on is a separate problem, which is just how do you build the glue to connect all
of the existing payments, not to help people check out of the system, but rather to expand the amount
of commerce that happens in the traditional KYC world. And that's also extremely useful. So I'm
excited to see what people build. I mean, I think just my hunch is there's going to be a lot of
long tail, just like business payment opportunity for stuff like what happens when you have a lot
more commerce between Nigeria and Brazil
or Nigeria and
India. So I like it.
This is a one-day event? One-day event.
And you went to it? I'm curious, what are your
impressions? I think there are quite a few products
or integrations announced that were also
DeFi and tokens in that
world. What's your takeaway
on the split between stable
coin momentum
versus tokens
and DeFi versus Bitcoin
payments on Spark?
I mean,
Of the talks and chats that I participated in,
very little on the token front, to be honest.
I'm sure that's there.
I think that's mostly what Ethan is focusing on,
and maybe they'll, whatever, continue more integrations.
I would say dominant at the event was payments.
Dominant.
And I think what's interesting,
Christian, who's the chief strategy officer there,
he actually had a really nice talk
on the history of open networks.
And his first example was the Silk Road,
which I thought was interesting for many reasons.
But it was really nice to hear.
I mean, I will say it was by far my favorite part
or presentation there.
And it was good to see he was not LARPing.
He really has done his homework.
He really believes in open networks.
And that was great to see.
I think there was also, to be frank, frustration on their team.
Or maybe not frustration, but just exasperation.
I think a lot of us feel too,
where it's like the corp chain thing,
because it's like these guys all spun on a Facebook
and they tried to do Corp J in 2019.
And the reality is if they try to do that today
in 20, what year is this?
2025.
At least track of that sometimes.
Then it probably would have worked, to be frank.
But to your point, you've always made, Steve,
administrations change, right?
So I think there's some frustration on their part,
which I totally understand.
I feel the same way where it's like,
I mean, Stripe and all these scammy companies
are going to get away with stuff for a while.
but I think it was encouraging for me to see
from David all the way through the rest of the team
the commitment to like in the long run
open networks are going to win
we may have to go through the desert for three more years
or however long it is
but like eventually open networks have to win
because Stripe is never going to integrate with Audion
And is Grid that you were talking about
Grid is like a product that they announced
Kind of a developer tooling
My understanding is that LightSpark
has kind of the traditional LightSpark business
which is kind of, I think of it as integrations with banks.
And then there's Spark, which is kind of like the indie bottoms-up developer approach
or the hope to sort of instigate that ecosystem.
Is Grid part of the approach?
More of the former.
Is it from LightSpark or is it from a third-party company?
No, it's from LightSpark.
And so the key my takeaway is those bank integrations are very valuable because like again if you want to access PIX and UPI that really cool that now you can have normie real commerce between
Brazil and India. No one even knows what Bitcoin is or like, like it just fades to the background,
right? Um, which is always, that was kind of the mission of companies like Strike and a lot of
other companies in the early days, right? Um, what I think is unique about what they're focusing on
with Grid now is offering those tools up,
not as like a consumer product,
but as API, like really simple commands
for like send, receive money.
So a developer could now go in there and build,
I don't know what kind of app,
but like some cool app that takes advantage
of three real-time payment networks,
two of which are proprietary, one of which is good.
So I came away like more bullish and encouraged
on the whole direction of the company,
but also sharing in some of that exasperation of like,
are we going to have to go through one more corp chain,
shitcoin fest before we get to the promised land.
But isn't it going to be like,
like stables could run on that
and that feels like the kind of thing
that you could actually build momentum.
Totally.
And I think that's David's whole point too,
which I totally agree with is he's like,
this other corp chain stuff is not going to work
because you're not going to be able
to interconnect all the corp chains.
Now, how long does it take everyone to realize that?
How much greed do the companies doing this
have to go through first before they accept that reality?
But in the meantime,
and I think he's a very reasonable guy in all this
where he's like, look,
we have to deliver a better real-time payment experience
or we don't deserve to win.
But let's talk about that.
How do they practically do that?
So let's say there's some dollar on Spark
and then you want to pay someone who has a wallet
that has Tether on Tron or USDC on base or what have you.
How does Spark, what's the solution to that?
I mean, we talked about the solution before,
so I sort of know the answer,
but what's the solution that compared to
if Spark didn't exist?
How does the open network help this problem?
So one thing, I don't actually know the answer to that
because I don't think that was the focus.
I think the focus, frankly,
so I think that's almost like a separate set of product lines,
like to your point, more bottom up.
I think the focus was much more on like
what I saw the original strike model apps,
which like no stable coins,
it's just like we're bridging between payment networks
and Bitcoin and Lightning
because we can have each institution
running a Lighting Node to run it for them,
we can do the real-time settlement.
I think the difference is now
they're plugging into
the real-time proprietary networks
within these countries
and offering that as developers' API.
So we don't even need stable coins.
Exactly.
You don't even need stable coins.
You're just bridging.
That I understand.
And I do think that's slick.
I thought it was slick.
One strike said that, yeah.
I literally used it in Ghana
at a restaurant.
I forget if I've mentioned that
on the show before,
but I think I've told you guys.
paid a bill
and I used the strike app
so it's like dollars
from a US bank in my strike app
and I just punched in
the mobile phone number of this
restaurant in Ghana
and they ended up receiving
mobile money
through that right and so
I didn't have to understand that system
other than typing in a phone number
and they received
what they normally expect
and in between was the lightning network and bitcoin yeah so that that's my understanding
what it is with the added advantage of more connectivity with like more like regulated
financial institutions plugging into this offering more off ramps on and off ramps and offering it
up more as a developer focused api versus a consumer app so honestly i'm more bullish on
that than a lot of the stable but i just like i never understood like yeah i like this like
and again it's almost like i almost view there's like two different camps and i would encourage
the Bitcoiners just to remember, it's like, if you really want to go cypherpunk and unplug,
that's its own thing. And it's awesome. And it's beautiful. And I really hope we get the whole
world there. But then there's this other thing of just using Bitcoin as the internet to bridge
existing commerce intranets and build one giant financial open network. And again, as long as,
you know, it's backwards compatible with Bitcoin and lightning, then great. You know, when people,
you know, kind of like with the gold coin, like once they realize, oh, now there's all this other
superpowers I get with my coin, there should always be a route off.
And, you know, hopefully that's...
AOL did a lot for the growth of the internet.
Exactly.
One thing I haven't studied, so I've studied Spark a lot from the Bitcoin payment side,
know it well, but not the tokens.
I don't know as much about the tokens, to be honest.
Well, then we'll do some homework.
And I'd like to understand the relationship between tokens being issued on Spark and its
relationship back to the Bitcoin network.
That's a great question.
To be honest, I'm wayless.
I like this kind of old school,
just to bridge the payment networks
way more than I like all the token crap.
I think the token stuff is harder
to create the same incentives
when you run an L1 that is your own free money
because I think a lot of what works for tokens
to instigate these ecosystems of token creators
is to give L1 bonuses to them
for doing it on your chain.
Those kinds of things won't be possible.
One of the things I'll say
that was sort of an impression of mine,
and this did not come from the Lightspark team so much,
more just like what I'm gathering from chatting with people,
is I think that they're making a big bet on,
in the long run, if you go sort of developer top first
with consumer applications,
that's how you become a giant company.
I like companies like Facebook and Google
are sort of consumer facing.
But that's like a huge bet.
It's extremely tricky.
Very few companies ever thread that needle.
It's a bold vision.
Whereas, honestly, in the short run,
where I think there's probably a lot more opportunity, and I'm shocked we haven't seen
more of this, not just from them, but from all the companies I work with, is just business-to-business
payments. To me, this just seems like there's a huge opportunity of like, okay, now that we have
Lightning working in, I'll never forget one example between one of my companies in Brazil
and in Nigeria. I mean, it was a very small example, and this should probably be done with
real enterprise sales teams and real, it's not like these are new concepts of how to do B2B payments,
but apparently there was a huge market that they helped open up, or a
relatively new market for like buying Nigerian wigs to ship to Brazil or something, which
was just like, what?
Okay.
But this is my, but my point is like for them, it makes a lot of sense because it's like,
it's not something like you're not trying to like focus on remittances, which are often
really small.
It's just like, there's like, okay, these guys ship products.
If you offer them a new customer, it's like, it's a no brainer.
Should we do a few rapid fires?
Well, let me start.
Do you want a Nigerian wig?
We're talking about actual wig.
I don't know.
I mean, like a hair.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe.
Are you trying to suggest that I need a little extra hair back?
I'm not going to dress up as Max for Halloween.
Let's do a quick rapid fire.
So, like, rumors are sailors going on Joe Rogan or just went on Joe Rogan.
At least that's what I wrote on Twitter.
I think somebody saw, like, his plane in Austin or something.
so but regardless of whether that's true or not then some people replied saying like um oh you
know he's not the best spokesperson to go for bitcoin to go on joe rogan um i'm sure there's
others who would say he's the best spokesperson so i'm curious what are your thoughts on who would
be the best spokesperson for bitcoin to go on joe rogan andreas antonopoulos well he's already done
it he's already multiple times i was about to say the same thing i'm just kidding um by the way
Andreas still is underrated. Everyone should watch. Everyone should have their friends.
I found myself recently telling new kids working at this event, if you haven't watched all of
Andreas' talks, stay there. My favorite, the one you had to start with
is him talking in front of an empty room.
Who else? I saw people suggest
Jack Mallers, Jack Dorsey.
I don't really know what the right answer is because at the launch
event we had at Presidia Bitcoin, we had Michael Saylor here, Jack Dorsey here, and Greg Maxwell
here. Three very important figures in the history of Bitcoin and Bitcoin today. Three very different
people. And obviously the profile of Saylor and Jack are much greater than Greg Maxwell.
but Greg Maxwell arguably
had a similar impact on the history of Bitcoin
but they're all three very different
they care about different things
they know about different things with Bitcoin
they speak about Bitcoin very differently
but I see value in all three of their views
and then I think each would criticize
each other's views maybe a little bit
so I don't know who the right
it's hard to have
there's not one person
right I mean there's no leader of Bitcoin
and there's really no one who can
I think adequately
cover all
the bases of Bitcoin
okay so I think this is really interesting
I think we should play this game
so I think Saylor is a great one
for sure from one perspective
and I'm glad he went on there it's awesome
Jack Dorsey is a great one for sure
from another perspective.
And I think Jack's been on there
multiple times.
So like, whatever.
And Andreas.
But like, putting like the big,
like obvious ones aside,
if you each had to come up with one,
maybe a little bit less expected,
one or two, whatever,
who would you pick to go on road?
Besides Jack and Mike.
Get Steve on there.
Oh, good answer.
A little buttering up, I see.
I actually think,
I think Greg Maxwell
would be really interesting.
I mean, he's extremely intelligent.
he speaks or he certainly writes very well and i believe he would speak just as well as his writing
um and it would just be such a good contrast to sailor so i'd love to see both right and have the
audience see three hours of sailor and three hours of greg maxwell on bitcoin and if you soak in both
of those i think that would be like very complimentary between the two my understanding
though, actually I think Greg Maxwell
would be a great candidate. My
understanding is Rogan is mostly
not interested in money or
talking about money. He doesn't want to do a show about
money. So it's almost like
you want to talk, you want to come with
a little bit less of an agenda of like,
hey, we're going to go talk about Bitcoin.
And it's more like, here's an interesting person. I think
Greg, I don't know if you've been to his website lately
or followed his stuff, but he does lots of
cool astro
stuff, like space exploration from
the telescope
telescopes and stuff.
I almost wonder if there's just like,
here's kind of a cool, crazy hacker,
you know, science-oriented guy,
and he's a little bit more, you know,
money comes up and Bitcoin comes up,
but it's not about that.
Whereas I feel like you can't have Sailor
without it being just about, you know,
store value, you know.
Well, and Greg also, if my memory serves me,
was like a major contributor to Wikipedia,
which that would probably also interest you.
So I've got two answers that come to mind immediately.
One answer, kind of I would say in a similar vein, is Ben Ark.
And the reason I say Ben Ark is I think Ben is,
I think Joe likes people that are extremely intelligent
and a little bit out there.
And Ben fits both of those categories.
And Ben is nice because he has a strong left libertarian view,
which is extremely unheard of.
Even though Joe may not agree with all of his stuff,
I think he would be fascinated by Ben's incredibly erudite discussions
of the history of anarchism, left libertarianism.
I don't even know if Joe knows those things exist,
but he would be interested in them.
And the fact that Ben helped with Fiat Joff create Nostr,
which I actually think in a lot of ways Nostr is more interesting to Joe
than Bitcoin is.
And so I think Ben would be really,
is kind of one of the co-founders of Nostr,
but can also speak on the Bitcoin stuff,
calls himself BTC socialist.
I think he would like that kind of thing.
The other one I would throw out, this is...
I'm not sure who exactly.
I'm going to throw one person out as a placeholder.
But it's my homie, Andrew Myers from Satoshi Energy.
Andrew, first of all, is just also a wild man, which I love.
He could talk to Joe about interdimensional travel and all that stuff, which I know Joe loves.
And I think you need someone like that.
But also, he has the Bitcoin.
He's the one that really got me energy pill that Bitcoin is just energy money.
And I think being in Texas, talking about energy, I think that would be really interesting.
I think, yeah, more like that breadth of energy focus and Bitcoin is just like part of it.
That kind of, that resonates with me.
I think Lynn Alden would be.
Oh, yeah.
Everyone would be confident she'd kill it.
Everyone likes Lynn.
Yeah.
And she also can cover a lot of aspects of, I mean, she can certainly put her sailor hat on and speak to that narrative.
Yeah.
Very, very well.
She can also put her on her sailor hat.
She can say all the high seas of Bitcoin and Nostra.
Yeah, and she can speak to Nostra and payments and cypherpunk,
and she can cover a lot of angles.
So shout out to Lynn.
DK, you got to give us another one.
I gave you one.
Oh, man.
My other one's a student next.
Get him up there.
He's a little butter.
I said rapid fire.
So like, okay, we saw Elon tweet about Bitcoin,
I think in the first time in like years.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
I don't know if I'm even doing it right.
It's something like that.
It's overhanded.
So what does that mean?
And he's tweeting about energy too.
I mean, it's big.
I mean, I don't remember the exact tweet,
but basically Elon saying like,
Bitcoin can't be printed.
It's based on energy,
which is another reason.
I know after this, we need to chat
and to make sure Fionn Fusk joins us
for the Type 1 Summit.
But I think...
In case Elon is listening,
we invite you to the Type 1 Energy Summit.
We'd love to have you.
And the whole plan of the summit is how do we go from this sorry state of civilization
to harnessing all of the sun's energy touching our planet and then get to type two next.
So we'll, you know, maybe I put that one too.
But I think one thing that I've noticed for sure is anyone who's extremely intelligent
who understands physics at all, this is based in energy always works.
And I think it's no coincidence that's the thing that Elon sticks with.
So I think the other positive thing is I haven't seen him tweet about Doge in a while,
maybe after the not so successful Doge run,
which is a good thing.
And yeah, I mean, look,
if Elon embraces Bitcoin,
if we get lightning payments or whatever one day in X,
that would just, that would be a game changer.
Yeah, I'm a fan.
And well, we're kind of running up on time.
I didn't see the time.
I've been like kind of just.
Oh, I've got to hear it.
It's 1.30.
Living in the eternal now.
You can look at his watch too.
That's, oh, wow.
Wait, I see the time.
Good hack.
so we probably don't have enough time to get into the
how to fund open source Bitcoin development topic
but at least it came up again
Tether announced donating $250,000 to OpenSats
and then Jack Dorsey replied
saying like, you know, only $250,000
and he's funded 10s and 10s
10s of millions of dollars
So on one hand, thank you to anyone donating to Bitcoin.
On the other hand, compared to Tether's profits, revenue, treasury, whatever metric you want to use, it would be kind of like us donating a dime or a dollar or something.
But it raises the question of expectations and obligations.
What should Tether's obligation be?
What should other companies in Bitcoin space, what's their obligation?
Are they obligated to fund it?
Is it in their strategic interest?
Either way, what should be the expectation?
If it's in their strategic interest, how do you go about thinking about what percentage of our revenue, profits, or any other business metric you want to pick should go towards open source funding?
I think, to be fair, I think the whole ethos of Bitcoin is volunteerism.
volunteerism, like no one should or have to do anything. Like, I don't think that's a good
message to ever send. On the other hand, you know, I think from Tether's perspective, it's kind of
like, guys, your, your profit numbers are public. And so in some ways opt optically, which, and look,
I mean, it's great. Anyone that donates, like that's awesome. No one has to do that. And that's
awesome. But it's kind of like, it would have almost been better to donate nothing. And now
it's just kind of like people are laughing because it's like, dude, and it's like, I mean,
And the way I think about it is it's awesome that a company like Bitwise committed to giving 10% of their profits to Bitcoin open source.
If Tether did what Bitwise did, bro, I mean, they would make Jack look small.
But they don't need the marketing value.
They don't need the marketing value.
But it's like, I mean, but I mean, my understanding is a lot of these guys at the top, it's just interesting because it's like, and look, I mean, I haven't donated to it.
so I'm not going to whatever, let he who is without whatever cast the first stone.
They're probably doing a lot of other stuff, which is awesome.
And like, in fact, I know they are, which is great.
So I mean, I know Tether has generally been a pretty support member of the community.
But on the other hand, you know, I mean, if the people at the top of these organizations,
it's just kind of crazy because it does seem like everyone's like,
oh, the Bitcoiners, we all want to like support this stuff.
And it does seem like a lot of Bitcoiners are pretty tight.
There are exceptions.
And Jack is certainly one, the guys that funded our office.
Like there are people who've really put their money where their mouth is and it's awesome to see.
But it's a small percentage.
But it's a small percentage and you kind of get this.
Those who are generous are extremely generous, but it's small.
But it's super small.
And so, and yeah, maybe that's incumbent on all of us.
Like maybe we should all be giving more and probably we should.
Also, I mean, we're talking about Tether because they announced it and they got poked at a little bit.
But there's so many other companies that have donated nothing.
Agreed.
You know, so I can argue it either way with Tether.
They're like, number one, thank you.
And hopefully it's the start of the beginning of a lot more.
And I did hear from a source that that's the amount OpenSat suggested.
So hopefully it's a start and maybe they can fund multiple funding organizations.
We don't know what all they donate elsewhere, so I think that's important.
I'd love to see Tether start their version of Spiral.
Amazing.
start their own organization within Tether,
hire someone to lead it,
and then give them a budget.
I don't think Mad Max wants to do that.
He's pointing at you.
You're pointing at me.
I'm in my garden.
And then basically like Spiral,
but their own version of Spiral.
When I created Spiral,
It was like I looked at Chaincode and Brink and MIT DCI and all these different orgs and just sort of copied aspects of each, but then also added my own sort of flavor.
And that's what I'd encourage anyone else to do as well.
So I think that would be really interesting.
But yeah, hopefully it's just the start of much, much bigger stuff in the future.
and to all the other large companies
that have a lot of profits,
I think they could do more as well.
Is there some sort of curated list
where we can see all of the orgs,
like maybe in OpenSats and a chain code in Brink,
where you can see what they are
and maybe do they even have public addresses
where you could make donations if you wanted?
If you wanted to donate a dollar, you mentioned that.
Do you have to talk to somebody or can you just do it?
No, I know like Brink and HRF, you can just do it.
I'm sure all of them you can, but on their websites.
It's a short list, so I can easily name them.
Brink, Vindium, HRF, OpenSats, Localhost as well.
I actually don't know.
Localhost started a year ago,
funded initially by Wences and Mark,
the same two that funded Bitcoin.
But I believe they are seeking funding from others as well.
I don't know the status of that.
So I don't know if you go to the local host website,
can you pay a Bitcoin address?
I think that's their vision,
and maybe it might be their reality now.
And to be fair, again,
I think we shouldn't pick on Tether too much
because they have done a lot of other things,
and there's quite a lot of other organizations
which I'm guessing is Tether money
that they're not calling Tether money.
And so you should encourage them to continue building.
Don't shame people for small amounts.
Encourage it.
Yeah, encourage it.
Hey, guys, that's great.
We appreciate it.
You're probably doing a lot more,
and we hope you continue to do a lot more.
and like, hey, by the way, Bitwise does 10%.
That would be something really crazy to shoot for, right?
But I also think to be fair
to a lot of these donors and individuals too,
because I think about that sometimes
and it's like, you know, you always say,
oh, one day if I get super rich, I'll like give back
and then very few people ever do.
For whatever reason, there are certain people like Jack
who seem to retain their values.
Most people as they get rich
don't seem to retain their values.
Now, one thing though is that maybe they also,
they're busy people
and they don't have a lot of opportunity.
They don't know what's a good nonprofit.
They don't know what's useful.
and I think in the case of like Mark and Wintz is like they were extremely generous but someone
had to like come to them and be like hey here's a great idea and they're like yeah this is a great
idea and so I think um if anything you mentioned like a bunch of these organizations uh Bainty
Oum was uh Lucas from Lightning Labs he just had a vision he went out there and did it and he talked
to people like John Pfeffer and others and like there there were people who were very generous
but like the real scarce resource is never money the real scarce resource is doing the hard work
and the legwork, having a truly great idea,
that's fundable.
And so I think if anything,
maybe this is another call for more people.
If you have a beautiful vision
you want to see in the world, just do it.
And probably the money will come
if you do something good.
Yep. I mean, Presidio Bitcoin is literally that.
Exactly.
Because Wences and Mark approached me
and a few others wanting to create ChainCode West,
which ultimately became localhost.
But we also convinced them to do Presidio Bitcoin,
which is a very big initiative.
And, you know, it was like us and a few other people who created a vision and here we are.
Yeah.
So vision is more important than money.
The money will come.
But last thing on the funding, I think like there's a report last or about a year ago from Dan Oprey and one of his colleagues showing that they explored the funding of Bitcoin Core specifically and who donates.
And, you know, Jack just like dominates the funding picture, which like, you know, obviously credit to him for how generous he's been and also credit to him for how hands off he is.
There's certainly, you know, he's invested money or he's funded where he, you know, where he doesn't necessarily like the direction of some of the people doing certain things, but he's very hands off.
And so, but it's disproportionate, right?
It's unhealthy for Bitcoin to have one person be such a major donor.
So for other people, like whether it's individuals or companies that have big bags, it would be much healthier for Bitcoin if they were at least collectively matching what Jack is funding.
And also to be clear, like we don't know what people are doing anonymously as well.
And like, I mean, we probably do know for some of these organizations.
We have a pretty good, I mean, there's not like some kid and $50 million Bitcoin dev fund that we don't know.
It's secret.
Well, I mean, and I was going to say, I mean, look, I mean, like, it's awesome to get back to Bitcoin.
But I also think in something that I hope I will remember if this ever, I'm in a position to contribute more, would be, do you remember like the Pineapple Fund?
Remember how cool that was?
They just like gave money away to like do, I don't know.
I just feel like in general, yeah, I mean, I think Bitcoiners are going to increasingly be in a position where they can do really cool things for the world.
And it'd be awesome to see not just Bitcoin development.
That's certainly one of them.
But like more bold ideas that the status quo won't fund.
I think that's one area where Bitcoiners can change the world.
Yeah, that's the future.
That's the future.
Yeah.
All right.
With that, we'll wrap.
All right.
Good.
Good chat.
Sweet.
Always fun.
Bye-bye.
Bye.