I think the Democrats have a major opportunity right now to actually figure out why the Republicans
benefited so greatly by engaging with the community.
And it wasn't just Trump, right?
Two of the best politicians in the country on Bitcoin have done really deep dots, and
that's Senator Lummis and Senator Cruz.
Senator Cruz and Lummis are both coming from states where energy plays a significant role
in their industries within that state.
So they had a bit of an advantage where they could come in through the mining industry
and start to grok some of the concepts and the power and potential here.
But what I hope happens is the Democrats decide that they're not going to simply vilify the
thing and they're going to learn about the thing and how it can benefit.
You know, but this is something that can be really beneficial to all Americans, American
businesses and America on a geopolitical stage.
And you know, I think that this was a real warning shot to everybody in Washington that
they should pay attention to this because, you know, Bitcoiners are certainly paying attention.
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs.
My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 874444 and the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Bitcoin talk where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin and whatever else
comes up today.
That guest is Thomas Pacquiao.
Thomas is a Bitcoin entrepreneur who you may know as the founder and co-owner of Pubkey,
a Bitcoin bar in New York City where President Donald Trump paid for burgers with Bitcoin.
Thomas tells the whole story of how Trump ended up in his bar paying in Bitcoin.
But we also get into the changing Bitcoin culture, media and political perspectives around Bitcoin
and all the bad takes we've seen recently from the legacy media.
Pubkey as a community hub and third place for Bitcoiners, the logistics of running a
Bitcoin business and the ridiculous New York Bit license, plus the issues it causes, and
a whole lot more.
Thomas is an awesome dude and I know you are going to love this conversation.
Before we dive into me a favor and subscribe to the Bitcoin podcast wherever you're watching
or listening, but I personally recommend you listen on fountain.fm because not only can
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Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Thomas Paakia.
To what you were saying right before, I would like to see Bitcoin only population growth
versus GenPop.
Like we have declining birth rates globally, but what about the Bitcoin or birth rate?
It feels like it's a bit of an outlier.
I don't know.
Yeah, I agree.
I mean, every Bitcoin conference, what do they call it?
The Kid Village or whatever?
It's growing every year.
I believe that's Emily Bailey.
So David Bailey's wife.
I think that that's her project every year at the conference.
And I think it's awesome.
Like turning these things into more of a family affair.
You know, Amanda with the Bitcoin ski summit in Jackson Hole.
You know, lots of people just bring their kids, put them in ski school, you know, do
the conference.
It's a beautiful thing.
It's a great way to do it.
And I mean, I think it's also like it fits right in there with the Bitcoin or ethos.
It's like Bitcoiners don't want to just necessarily be like have that usual corporate conference
circuit of spending a bunch of time away from your family and your kids.
It's like, no, you want to, you want to bring them into it.
And if you've got a bunch of other Bitcoin or kids that are all glowing orange-eyed,
future psychopathic codelers of last resort, what a beautiful thing to bring them together.
And like that's, it's a pretty cool thing to be a kid at one of these conferences where
it's like, you're going to look back as an adult and be like, oh, wow.
Yeah, I like, I was there.
That's, I don't know.
It's a pretty kind of a kind of a magical and surreal thing.
I love it.
I'm all for as much kid integration at conferences as possible.
Look, and like at this point, like most of my best friends, closest friends over the
years in Bitcoin have, you know, relatively big families, right?
Like there, there are, you know, Bitcoin babies popping up every, every couple of weeks, it
seems like.
And it's, it's really cool.
And like that's an easy way to start to, to expose your kids, bring them to a conference.
I know like Mike Germano, for example, his kids made all those bracelets for, for the
Bitcoin conference.
It's just a cool way to start to, you know, introduce and expose them to what is a really
awesome community.
I mean, you know, building families like, you know, Bitcoin as an asset and sort of the
way that you think about it over generations only makes sense if you have generations.
So it's, it's a really cool thing to see, you know, really start to gain a lot of steam.
But to more Bitcoin babies, right?
That's the, that's the true, that's the true growth of the community.
Amen.
I mean, generational wealth doesn't mean much if you don't have generations to pass that
wealth down to, you know, it's kind of, it kind of loses the power.
To the point a little bit.
But man, it's speaking of the ski summit of Jacksonville, I think that was where we met
in person maybe for the first time.
Does that sound right?
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
And that was two years ago, I believe.
I didn't, I didn't get to make the third installation, right?
She said, we're coming up on the fourth Jackson ski summit.
I made the first two, but, you know, this year we just had our third kid.
Congratulations.
Too close.
Thank you.
And it was too close.
It was, you know, too much chaos.
So we missed that one, but we hope to attend the fourth installation in what, March?
Yeah.
February, March?
Like that?
Yeah.
Amanda crushes it with that.
That was a, that was a great vibe for a conference.
What is it?
Like Chatham House Rules?
Is that what it is too?
Like, you know, you don't film, you don't record, like what's said there kind of stays
there.
And I think that people feel, especially if you're somebody who's a NIM and you want
to stay that way.
Like, I remember seeing her like some guy was filming in the side and she was like, I
want to see you delete that.
Like show me a phone, delete that right now.
I was like, she's not messing around.
I like this.
Like all business.
No, certainly not.
She's great.
She pulls off a great event.
I love how she incorporates lots of, you know, activities and wellness and it's really, you
know, Bitcoin is sort of a, the engine of it, but it bleeds into a lot of Bitcoin adjacent
talks and activities.
It's just fantastic.
I mean, you know, I think it might get to the point sooner rather than later where,
you know, we're no longer talking about the thing, right?
We're talking about other things.
And the thing is still there.
But like, you know, it's not like people really talk about the internet anymore.
And I think we're reaching a point where, like, you know, when people say every company
is going to be a Bitcoin company, I think that's true.
You know, every company is effectively an internet company in one way, you know, shape
form.
And as we accelerate towards that, it's really, you know, the Bitcoin adjacent stuff and how
Bitcoin can help facilitate certain aspects of a business or lifestyle or whatever pushes
Bitcoin into the background.
And I think we're starting to see that in certain, like that's certainly true at PubKey,
right?
PubKey is, you know, I always bristle a little bit when some news organization calls us the
Bitcoin themed bar, because it's not plastered with the, you know, Bitcoin logos and honey
badgers and all this, all this propaganda.
Like, we have a little bit of that, but it's more of a, like, insider Easter egg.
Like if you know, you know, that's going to get picked up.
And you know, we do a lot of stuff with Bitcoin at PubKey.
We host the events, we accept Bitcoin, but outside of that for 80% of our customers, they
don't even know it's a Bitcoin bar, they're not a Bitcoin or, and that's, that was really
the goal for PubKey.
And I see that getting expressed elsewhere, you know, more than ever, like, you know,
Peter McCormick's, you know, club, right?
Not possible without Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin is not the point of that club.
It facilitated, you know, the entire project, the entire dream, which is incredible.
I absolutely love Real Bedford.
But you know, it's not a Bitcoin themed soccer club, right?
Football club, whatever.
Yeah, it's okay.
We're Americans.
We can call it soccer and get away with it for a little while.
Peter might take issue with that, but, and I will, I will admit football makes more sense
for soccer than it does for American football, but we're just going to have to leave that
one be.
But no, I think that's a, it's a great point.
It's like, you know, the idea of like, okay, you don't just have conferences that are like,
this is a money conference, you know, and like, like what is Bitcoin?
Like it's, it's just, you know, it's money, right?
Like it happens to be the best money, but it's just money.
And at a certain point, it's like, I think, as you said, the focus around a lot of these
conferences is sort of changing to be incorporate more health and wellness and lifestyle and
everything else.
Yeah, you can still have the technical deep dives and all of that.
And there's great conferences specifically geared towards that, like TabConf, for example,
where it's like, you know, we're here, we're here to get down and dirty in the nitty gritty
of technical stuff.
And like, you come here if you want to talk about that, but yeah, I think if you want,
if you want the shit scared out of you, you go to TabConf, just talk about all the things
that are wrong and broken.
But, but it's also, I've only done one TabConf.
Carl and I emceeded a couple of years ago when we were on a pretty intense conference
circuit.
And it was, I mean, it was awesome because like, first of all, you feel really dumb,
you know, just with some of this, like, it's like, you think you know a lot about Bitcoin,
it's like, you don't know shit compared to the folks in this room.
And they're talking about things that are like 50,000 feet over my head, but it's like,
you know, just like not along and try to learn something, try to pay attention.
But yeah, to your point, it's like, you know, you get Matt Corolla out there being like,
here's why everything is fucked, but also it's okay.
And you come out of it kind of like, I need a drink after this.
Totally, totally.
We had Peter, we had Peter Todd, Peter Nakamoto at PubKey.
I don't know, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago.
And that was kind of that conversation.
I ended our conversation with like, you know, what's, what's, do we have another block wars
in the near future?
What do you think is the biggest problem right now?
And it's sobering for sure.
Like when you, when you start to get into what the, you know, best in class Bitcoin
devs and engineers are thinking about, like it's, there's a lot of work to do.
This is still a young protocol and young technology.
And the bugs are there and the challenges are, are, are, you know, some identified and
someone known.
But those are fun conversations.
Stuff that, you know, I hope more people take interest in and look at.
Yeah, you guys have been doing like a pretty impressive circuit of guests or, you know,
like small, small events, but also like folks can check it out online on your YouTube as
well.
Like it's all available there.
But I, I want to get into this a little bit.
So as I was saying before this, Carl and I have not yet made it to PubKey.
I'm going to try to come in the spring here because we, we need to make the, need to make
the pilgrimage been too long since we've been in New York.
But can we, can we back up a little bit?
Like for folks who don't know, who are you?
How did you get here today to be, you know, maybe a lot of times or for a lot of folks
the first time they might have become aware of you and maybe of PubKey was seeing it on
national television with our now president elect Donald Trump paying for burgers with
Bitcoin, which was just kind of like a wildly surreal moment, probably especially so for
you.
How did, how did you get here?
How did this all come to be?
So in a previous life, I went to law school.
I was a, I was a swap and derivative lawyer before, before Bitcoin.
I first read about Bitcoin towards the end of 2011.
I think it was one of the first Bitcoin obituaries was in Wired Magazine in November of 2011.
Price had crashed from like 30 to three bucks and they did this retrospective really about
some of the characters in the community at the time.
And I had just, I was in an airport.
I went to law school in the Netherlands and I just happened to pick up a Wired Magazine
that was one of the articles and it was mind blowing.
And by the time I got to my apartment, the price had recovered from like, I don't know,
three to five bucks, something like that.
I didn't buy at the time, still kicked myself as you know, most people do the first time
they hear about Bitcoin, just go buy some.
It doesn't matter what time.
And then I was, you know, at a law firm and in a house counselor to bank for a little
bit hated my job, like never really wanted to be a lawyer despite like going through
that process.
It wasn't like my calling or anything.
And I stuck with the Bitcoin, you know, mind worm, mind virus.
And I made the jump in like late 2012, early 2013 to start doing more in the space.
You know, mostly education, right?
Onboarding some nonprofits and talking to, you know, some financial service companies
about Bitcoin and still in my like learning phase of the journey.
Like I said, everybody still is.
I still am.
But made the jump full time in 2013.
I was at a startup digital asset holdings in 2015, which, you know, was a Bitcoin company
that became aggressively not like it was one of the first blockchain, not Bitcoin companies.
So that was probably the most education that I got in my early journey because I was working
with the devs and engineers there, sort of drafting some of the first literature on why
it was about blockchain and not Bitcoin.
At that point, I was like, this is kind of bullshit, right?
So irreconcilable differences materialized with between me and the startup, which led
to my involuntary departure, which I'm kind of proud about now.
And then I joined Fidelity and the 15, it was at Fidelity until I left in 17 to start a fund.
So I helped them develop all of their early, you know, Bitcoin projects, Fidelity charitable
accepting Bitcoin, the mining operation that they had as like a proof of concept, which
has grown over the years.
But the bulk of my work there was on Fidelity digital asset services infrastructure.
So the cussing exchange side of things for, you know, the institution to start actually
buying and holding Bitcoin securely internally at first, but now they do a lot of stuff.
I ran a fund, you know, myself and a friend from business school and a Bitcoin core developer,
Eric Boswell, that quickly became a mining focused fund, which is where I've spent most
of my time, and I'm so involved with that I'm on the board of stronghold digital mining,
a public miner out of Western Pennsylvania.
I'm an advisor Luxor, but in in early COVID, a couple of things sort of started to hit
home.
One, I love dive bars.
I've always loved dive bars being from New York, they're, they're special.
And they went under, right?
They got hit really hard in COVID.
A lot of them are mom and pop family owns, they don't necessarily own the building.
So the ability for them to absorb a hit that COVID through at them was low, right?
Really limited.
And then the other thing, the Bitcoin community, which used to be super robust in New York
City with BitDevs and, you know, Matt and Marty living in New York, the scene in New
York pre COVID was very strong.
And people left, you know, and you can't blame them, right?
But, you know, Miami, Austin, Nashville were far more attracted places for, you know,
Bitcoiners.
So, you know, my wife and I started talking about this concept for Bubkey to help resuscitate
the Bitcoin community here in New York.
Our favorite dive bar, a couple blocks from where we used to live here in the in Greenwich
Village had gone under and they were just sort of like exploratory conversations where
does this make sense?
And looking back, I don't even know how we really got started.
I think it was just one foot in front of the other and then, you know, now we're here.
So it's been a journey.
And it's, it's while, you know, on the fidelity piece, I think a lot of people don't realize
how ahead of the game fidelity was as a huge player in the Treadfy space, but then who
is like very, very early on to getting into Bitcoin and kind of groping it, you know,
far ahead of where any of the other, you know, institutional peers were.
So I just think that's like a, it's a pretty, pretty wild, wild jump there.
And now they look, you know, quite like geniuses for being so ahead of the game in that, you
know,
Yeah, look, and it came from the top.
Abby, Abby Johnson got it early and was excited about it.
And you know, it took a long time for any organization of that size, it takes a really
long time to like turn the Titanic, basically.
So you know, it was, it was, you know, a real struggle in the early days, because when you
have somebody at the top that is excited about something that's new, you have lots of people
throughout the organization that want to participate in the success of this thing.
But you know, there were many years where nobody wanted to be responsible for the failure
of this thing.
So you have this weird dynamic that you would have at any big, you know, company.
And I'm sure there are lots and lots of companies that are grappling with this now.
But Fidelity went through those growing pains, starting in 15, right?
2015, you know, maybe a little bit in 2014 is where this started to coalesce.
And it's an incredible organization.
They stuck with this and they went hard after it.
Once you know, you started to get buy in from like legal risk compliance to like go and,
you know, test and break things, it really started to click throughout the organization.
And yeah, they have, they have a massive start.
Like if you look at how their ETF is, so how many ETFs launched, it was like nine, 10,
maybe a dozen or so.
Yeah.
It's really just BlackRock and Fidelity now, right?
Like they're the two and for Fidelity to compete with BlackRock, you know, at that level is
pretty impressive.
I heard a story that Abby Johnson was like mining Bitcoin in her office in the early
days.
Is that true or is that just like a piece of folklore?
There was a miner on her desk for a very long time.
The time I had seen it, it didn't look plugged into me.
But you know, there was an ASIC on her desk for a very long time.
I don't know if it's still there.
The miner was there, whether or not it was hashing remains to be seen, but at least it
was there on her desk.
Maybe a little space heater, right?
Like a hand warmer.
I mean, you know, if you're not mining Bitcoin, you're wasting energy, right?
Like you might as well get that heat and those sats at the same time.
But I love that and it is pretty impressive to see.
I mean, anyone who can stand toe to toe with BlackRock, obviously that takes a lot because
they're the biggest kid in the schoolyard by far.
For sure.
Okay.
So, the pub key just kind of happens.
This brings a little bit out of your love for dive bars, which I share as well.
And you know, let's say, right place, shitty time with COVID and realizing, okay, we need
to kind of reinvigorate this New York scene.
And then fast forward though, a couple of years, and you've all of a sudden got the
president-elect of the United States in your bar, I mean, packed wall-to-wall.
I don't know how many people you had in there.
Probably, I'm sure, within your fire code, but it was a lot of folks in there.
We were at capacity.
So, I think our fire code is 115, which we only have one exit at the front.
The entire space can host probably closer to 150, 160, so it's going to get packed.
But we were definitely in the 100 to 120 range, especially when you factor in like Secret
Service, Staff, Press.
It was a pull house.
It was a very, very stressful and intense day.
Can you, I don't know, can you share actually like how that happened?
Like, did you approach their team?
Was David Bailey involved with that too?
Because he'd already been in communication with them.
How did that actually happen to where you've got Donald Trump in your bar paying for burgers
with Bitcoin?
Because it's still just like wild.
I was looking at the pictures again.
I'm like, this is what a trip, man.
It's surreal.
It looks like AI generated photos.
No, so it wasn't with David.
David was in the room.
David's a good friend.
I love Bitcoin magazine and all the work that David and Amanda Fabiano did with getting
the Trump campaign up to speed and demonstrating sort of the like power and impact that the
community can have.
But we reached out to everybody back in, this was before the Mining Roundtable, before the
conference.
It's like March, April, maybe.
And there was a very, very like succinct pitch where it's like, listen, if you have time
to stop by, think of this as an ice cream parlor or a donut shop or a diner.
You can meet the community.
However, if you make a payment in Bitcoin, right, if you buy some stuff for the patrons
that are there and you pay for it in Bitcoin, you're going to own social media for at least
a couple of days.
And some of the conversations didn't go anywhere, right?
So we reached out to Biden, Harris, RFK, JD Vance, Vivek, a bunch of them.
Trump's team is so dialed in and media savvy that that like, you know, 20 minutes of your
time is going to own social media for three days.
They were like, okay, what's going on here?
So that got us a phone call.
And I was like, listen, I understand PubQ's a bit perplexing, like just hear me out.
And you know, a lot of shit happens between the assassination attempts, the Bitcoin conference,
the debate, Biden drops out, now it's Harris.
And we're like, eh, you know, good idea.
We shot our shot, like probably not going to happen.
And then, you know, after a couple of months of the conversation sort of stalling, we just
figured it was dead.
We never really got any traction with the Harris campaign.
You know, it's unfortunate, I wish we did.
I think she should have paid us a visit, to be honest, but that didn't go anywhere.
And then the Trump team reached out end of August and they were like, all right, we're
interested, like, you know, how would this work?
So I wrote it very quick.
I responded in like 10 minutes.
I did like a full run of show for them.
And then it went quiet.
We had a bunch and it was the season opener.
I'm a Giants fan.
So take pity upon me.
It was a season opener for the New York Giants.
And we didn't know what we were going to do with the girls, you know, that Sunday.
And it was like, you know, PubKey just launched brunch.
Let's, you know, take a nice long walk up there.
We'll watch a little bit of the Giants game and then we'll get out of there.
Three people pop in asking about a birthday party.
And you know, I just start talking to them.
My kids are there.
And they're asking some pretty specific questions.
They want to know if there is an entrance or exit in the kitchen.
If she wants to do this ostentatious, like obnoxious birthday entrance and stuff like
that.
Didn't think much of it.
But nice little conversation.
I was like, here's my details, you know, contact me anytime.
Like, you know, we'll host your birthday party.
Didn't hear from them or the campaign until they're like, all right, we're in.
We'll meet you at PubKey on Thursday.
Same three people walk in, right?
And they were checking us out undercover.
They're like, I'm really sorry.
I hate lying to people, but we had to come check you out.
My middle daughter, Raya, on the way out, grabbed her favorite hat, which was from Samson.
It was the Make Bitcoin Great Again hat, the red one.
As she said, you know, I just want you to know that your daughter sealed the deal here.
Like we knew we were in the right place when I saw your daughter wearing that hat.
Wow.
Which was pretty funny.
And then from Thursday, we had six days or so.
And it was five hours a day with Secret Service every single day, at least five hours.
K9 units, countersnipers, cybersecurity, the works.
Super fucking cool experience.
They were amazing.
NYPD was awesome to work with.
They were really excited about it.
And yeah, we got it done.
Man, that is just like a trip.
I mean, first of all, I've got the Make Bitcoin Great Again hat chilling on the desk over there.
It's slightly out of reach, but what a great hat.
Great to know your daughter sealed the deal on that.
And so, okay.
It was the first thing that he signed.
So like, you know, he came in, he made the transaction, and then he talked to the press
and we were making our way to the middle of the bar and we had some stuff out for him
to sign.
A bunch of like pub keys, swags, menus.
But the first thing that, you know, I had him sign was Ray's hat.
And she's pissed now because she can't wear it.
We're like, no, no, no, that hat's retired.
You can't wear that one.
It's very special now.
But for a three-year-old to understand that.
You can't wear.
Yeah.
Like that's going to be preserved.
Man, I mean, it really, and your pitch was pretty honest because they really did own
social media for several days after that.
I mean, I think it was, I mean, it's a pretty monumental thing to see again at that point
candidate, but now, you know, president and of course, former president the whole time
paying for burgers with Bitcoin.
And like at this, you know, I saw in the press, like there was like crypto themed bar and
I was like, okay, well, at least say Bitcoin themed for Christ's sake.
Like, you know, it's a, it's a, there's Bitcoin.
You're not honest.
Yeah.
But you know, you can't blame them so many years of having the, having bad information.
Well, I guess I can blame the press a little bit because even now you see like, I mean,
you've probably seen a lot of this stuff, whether it was Chris Hayes or whomever at
MSNPC being like the, you know, this is a bailout and a massive heist and all of this
fear mongering around the Bitcoin strategic reserve.
And it's, it's, this is a digression, but it's just, it's somewhat sad to see because
the Democrats and Democratic legacy media are like only hurting themselves with this kind
of messaging.
You know what I mean?
Like, Bitcoin's not partisan.
They're hurting their constituents as well.
Yeah.
I mean, I just think about how many family offices or individuals didn't, didn't take
the time to learn about Bitcoin or do their own research because Paul Krugman, the chief
economist for the paper of record is saying that this is garbage and it's gonna, and
it's gonna flame out and it's a bubble and all that stuff.
I mean, a lot of people look to these experts to shortcut the work that they should be doing
on their own.
And it is destructive.
Like, you know, for Chris Hayes to come out and say that stuff after all these years,
it's not even, it's not even laziness.
It's like there's, it's, it's hard to discount entirely maliciousness embedded therein.
So it takes some time, right?
Like all these organizations used to be like this, right?
Like Izzy, what's her name from the FT, you know, she was a big hater for a long time
on Bitcoin.
And the more she covered it, the more she learned and it got to the point where she's
like, I was wrong.
Like this is interesting.
So not everybody has the humility to, to do that.
So I think she's kind of special in that regard.
But yeah, eventually they'll retire and move on just like Krugman did.
And you know, it's going to be harder to get people to sign on to these false narratives.
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And you had to dig a little bit more to find really solid educational information.
But now there is just such a wealth of it out there from so many different sources.
I mean, you've got literally like BlackRock putting out reports on Bitcoin.
You know, there's no excuse for being uninformed anymore.
The only excuse is, well, I didn't take the time to look into this.
And it's clear, you know, a lot of these folks in the legacy media, they're getting their,
you know, they're getting their script, they're getting their talking points and they're running
with it and they're finding whatever anti-Trump spin they can to put on it.
And it's, you know, I was, I rewatched an interview that you had right after Trump came
in and I think it was with Fox and they asked something about, you know, basically they
were trying to kind of politicize it a little bit and you said, you know, Bitcoin is a protocol.
By nature, it is a political.
And I thought that that like you just, you nipped it right in the bud with that.
And I think that's important because again, the more politicization there is of Bitcoin,
like Bitcoin doesn't care, it's going to keep doing its thing.
And as you said, you're only going to end up hurting the people that you are trying to
inform about this or hopefully trying to inform for MSNBC and PC.
I don't know how many viewers they have left, but it can't be that many, but I feel for
those people.
But I guess if you're still watching MSNBC in a like non, like you're not looking for
the humor in it, which is like when I watch that those their programs, that's why I'm
watching it because I'm like, this is funny to me, like how ridiculous this is.
But I guess some people still watch it seriously.
And for those people, I would say, boy, you need to get out more.
This is not reality.
Yeah.
Look, echo chambers are real.
You know, we have echo chambers here in Bitcoin as well, right?
Like, you know, people have to be a little bit more engaged and do the work and not listen
to, you know, experts do your own research as an important, you know, meme or trope or
whatever.
And it's really the best thing an individual can do.
And again, this sort of ties into what we're talking about earlier in terms of, you know,
these Bitcoin adjacent things, right?
Like the seed oil and tallow stuff.
The Bitcoiners, I think, are elevating some of these issues because, you know, as as
a cohort, as a community, these are people that are very curious and dive deep into issues
to figure out what's going on.
So I think that that makes this community really special in that regard.
But you know, legacy media is not going to be a shortcut.
It's not a beneficial shortcut for people, you know, anymore.
There are alternatives and there is a wealth of information at everybody's fingertips,
but you got to do it, right?
You got to take that step and do that work to figure out what's going on.
And yeah, like, you know, we did get hit by multiple angles that tried to make this a
partisan thing.
You know, PubKey got labeled temporarily, I think, a Trump or a Maga bar.
You know, Bloomberg, the night of the election, Bloomberg was here.
And you know, the the synopsis of that story were like, you know, some people wore red
hats to a bar.
It's just like, the fuck is this news?
Like, it's a silliness.
But you know, we've hosted Democrats, right?
We didn't endorse anybody from PubKey.
You know, my personal politics are personal and should be irrelevant to other people.
But from PubKey's perspective, we've hosted Democrats, we've done fundraisers for Democrats.
We had a Trump visit, right?
He paid us to be here.
It wasn't an endorsement, but it takes time.
People want easy answers.
You know, it's a charged environment and people want to be upset and validated for their upset.
So we'll battle through that.
And just, you know, trying to stay on brand and authentic with, you know, this is a Bitcoin
thing, right?
And, you know, American politics affect Bitcoiners, Americans, American businesses.
It does, it is going to play an increasing role on a geopolitical stage as well.
So you know, there's stuff that Bitcoiners have to say about that.
But the politicization and partisanship coming to Bitcoin is really, should be approached
with caution from both sides.
And I think that Democrats have a major opportunity right now to actually figure out why the Republicans
benefited so greatly by engaging with the community.
And it wasn't just Trump, right?
Like one of the, two of the best politicians in the country on Bitcoin have done really
deep dives.
And that's Senator Lummis and Senator Cruz.
Senator Cruz and Lummis are both coming from states where energy plays a significant role
in their, you know, industries within that state.
So they had a bit of an advantage where they could, you know, come in through the mining
industry and start to grok some of the concepts and the power and potential here.
But what I hope happens is, you know, the Democrats decide that they're not going to
simply vilify the thing and they're going to learn about the thing and how it can benefit.
You know, New York state is one of the largest, you know, mining states in the country.
And it has been for a very long time, you know, before the China ban and before the
rush to Texas, you know, New York state had a lot of mining activity.
So you know, this is something that can be really beneficial to all Americans, American
businesses and America on a geopolitical stage.
And you know, I think that this was a real warning shot to everybody in Washington that
they should pay attention to this because, you know, Bitcoiners are certainly paying attention.
And it's also interesting with Bitcoiners because it is a not only is it a group that
is incredibly passionate, that is incredibly motivated to speak on behalf of this thing
that we care a heck of a lot about, which is Bitcoin and everything that comes with
it.
But the economic energy that this group possesses is growing exponentially, you know, and the
mimetic energy that this group possesses as well is a force to be reckoned with.
Like Bitcoiners are damn good at meming.
You know, we mean things into existence.
That's a beautiful thing.
And I think it's terminally online.
Exactly.
While also remembering to touch grass when possible, of course.
But it's such an interesting thing to me because again, like, you're only, you know,
Bitcoin doesn't need politicians, but politicians do need Bitcoin and those that have realized
that like Senator Lomis, Senator Cruz, they're benefiting from that.
Like this is very obvious.
But not just they, their states are benefiting from that.
Like this is not just like some, you know, how the media would portray it as like these
crypto, crypto trillionaires, crypto bajillionaires who are coming in here and with all their
dirty money and they want to bail out.
And it's like, what?
No, nobody in Bitcoin wants to bail out.
Nobody.
There's nothing to bail out.
What an ignorant term for that was Chris Hayes, right?
Yeah, that was Chris Hayes.
Yeah, that, that, that, that just smacks of ignorance.
Like, you know, the most basic, the most basic history lesson in Bitcoin was, you know, its
genesis around the bailouts, right?
Around the global financial crisis.
It was almost too perfect that he used that word because it's just, it's obscene.
Yeah.
It's, I mean, that is like to use that word specifically is like, oh, okay.
So you haven't even done like, you haven't even begun to come close to scratching the
surface, like not even like five minutes.
Like, okay, but that's fine.
That's what we've come to expect from the legacy media, right?
But you know, this is also the beautiful thing is that now any two, you know, miscreants
with microphones can become the media, right?
And you guys, I know, so yeah, PubKey is a dive bar, right?
But PubKey is also a bit of a, I mean, I would say kind of a media house, right?
You guys have record recording stuff set up.
Can you, can you talk about that a little bit and just why that was something that you
guys wanted to pursue?
Because you could have just done just, okay, we're going to make a, you know, a bar, we're
going to accept Bitcoin.
It's going to be kind of the DNA of this.
But you went a little bit further than that.
You said, okay, we want to make this a space that's not just for gathering, but also for
creation, right?
Yeah, yeah.
That's exactly right.
It's PubKey Bar and Media House.
I'm upstairs.
I'm in the parlor now.
We have our podcast, you know, set up up here.
It's a little bit of like a co-working space like lounge.
And downstairs tonight, we're hosting, you know, our weekly programming or Bitcoin programming.
We turn it into a comedy club for nerds, right?
And they come out and they see the guests tonight.
We have Nick Carter.
We're going to be talking about Operation Choke Point 2.0.
But we host the free and open to the public Bitcoin programming at least once a week.
Oftentimes, especially since Trump, we've had two or three a week and it's always packed
downstairs.
And the goal is to keep it free and open to the public as long as it makes, you know,
business sense to do so.
And, you know, we've had great sponsors and supporters come in.
So we do a monthly recurring series with the Human Rights Foundation.
We do an institutional series with Galaxy.
We do a ton of stuff with Gemini.
Foundation Devices is coming up, hosting sort of their, you know, hardware, security 101.
How do I get off zero and hold my own coins?
We cover the entire ecosystem, right?
We have a recurring mining series or recurring lightning series.
We've hosted BitDevs, you know, many times.
You know, they also have a home up at Chain Code Labs, which is fantastic.
But whenever they want to do stuff here, we're happy to have them.
And you know, it's a blend of education and entertainment, right?
We want to keep this stuff fun and accessible.
We go deep on technical topics at times, but it's a bar chat and we encourage people to
interrupt.
I don't know that word that you just used.
Could you explain what that is?
And they're fantastic, right?
Like, you know, it throws a completely different look and vibe.
And you know, the idea behind that, going into this, we knew hospitality is a terrible
business, particularly in New York City.
Very, very difficult.
But by combining it with some of the media elements and having, you know, the community
come in to support what we're doing, that really takes the boot off the neck of the
hospitality side of the business.
It allows it to find its own organic and authentic footing.
And when you open a place, most, you know, hospitality ventures, they don't have that,
right?
They have pressure to make the nut straight out of the gate.
Every week, it's a grind.
But when you're able to relieve some of that pressure and anxiety, you have a much better
atmosphere.
People are happier.
They're happy to work at PubKey.
And that really resonates, you know, to the customers.
And it's reflected in, you know, the menu and on the bar side menu.
And it allows everybody to do, to be happier and put more passion and happiness into the
product that we're delivering.
So it's really a flywheel between the media house and the hospitality side of things.
And we wanted to create something that, you know, the Bitcoin community globally could
engage with, even if they're not in New York, or even if they're not, you know, we'll be
expanding soon, even if they're not able to get to one of the locations, they can pipe
in virtually.
And we've been tinkering with lots of different ways to express this, but we always want to
create, you know, some shots, some elements of being in the room, where it feels like
you're, you know, at a table with, you know, a burger and a pint, you know, watching, I
don't know, Peter Todd and Pete Rizzo, passive aggressively, battle one another.
Man, I love it.
I mean, I think it's, it comes down to this idea, and this is something that I was talking
with when OASlice came in the show, and also shout out to OASlice, because he's the one
who was like, you got to have Thomas on ASAP.
And so thank you OASlice for helping to make this happen.
But we were talking about that idea of the, you know, the third place.
I know that's a concept you're intimately familiar with.
And you know, beef steak is very much, and you know, rocking the hat too.
Beef steak is kind of a location agnostic third place, right?
It's a roving third place, but it's, you know, that's what it is.
But you have set up a brick and mortar third place.
You know, it's not work.
It's not home.
It's something else.
And it's a place where people can come together and get together and have a different kind
of experience.
And I think that like in our always online, you know, hyper internet culture, those places
have kind of fallen by the wayside a little bit, especially since COVID.
Very much so.
Yeah.
We've seen that.
And so like, is that kind of part of the, you know, you're talking about expanding this
too and like keeping that same, I mean, I guess like in a franchise type model or like
you guys are going to just open these up yourselves or like, is that kind of the goal to like expand
that third place for Bitcoiners, but for anyone else just as far as you can?
Yeah, for sure.
I think it's critically important to get people back in person and comfortable in these settings,
whether they're churches or parks or bars or restaurants.
It's kind of sad.
You can still see, you know, the younger generations like Gen Z, they behave differently
when they, when they first come in, right?
They don't know where to put their hands or how to talk to the bartender, like, you know,
for the first like lift, the initial contact is still a bit, a bit strained.
It's getting better.
But when we first opened, that was, that was noticeable.
You know, Gen X just comes in and it's like, give me all the alcohol.
But you know, Gen Z is a little bit different.
So but yeah, it's, it's the sense of community and that really came from, you know, the conferences,
the conference, the experience that you have at a Bitcoin conference is very different
than Twitter, Reddit, extremely different than anything you would read in a newspaper
or see on, you know, MSNBC or CNN.
And right there, they're four days, it's a chaotic four days where you travel to Miami
and Nashville or wherever, and you have this, this great experience.
But that community, the concept with pubkey is like, you know, this is, this is a passionate
and big enough community where, you know, something that is available year round every
seven days a week, you know, could really, could really thrive with the support of the
ecosystem.
And I referenced before, only 20% are Bitcoiners that come through here, largely around the
Bitcoin programming stuff.
But 80%, it's just a normal tavern.
If we can start to get some of those people in the 80%, like having a conversation, getting
interested, like, you know, coming to one of our meetups, that's a big win.
And we don't do it, like it's not like Jehovah Witness, like knocking on doors, like have
you heard of the church of Satoshi?
If they ask the first question, like what are those nerds talking about in the back,
where they go and they sit in on an HRF thing or something like that, or they see somebody
pay their tab using Bitcoin at the bar, that first point of contact where if they ask the
first question, the quality of the conversation is light years better than if you start with,
you know, heard Bitcoin or do you want to talk about Bitcoin?
It's mostly like, no, this is crazy.
But yeah, you know, we are going to open up locations.
We'll do the next few.
The Vinkovos Capital Management led our round for expansion, you know, they're big supporters,
they love what we're building.
We're very happy to have their support.
And you know, now, you know, we're going to get, we're still a small team, we're expanding
both, you know, our capabilities with the team.
And it's going to be hard to open up these next few.
But I think we can do it.
I think it's going to be really good.
And I think that the community is excited to see us.
We get, we get pinged by, you know, people all over the world, you know, open a pub
key in Tokyo, open a pub key in Brussels.
And that is, that is special, but it also comes with a lot of anxiety and responsibility.
We want to, we want to bring a pub key to every city for sure.
How we get from the one location here in New York to multiple locations to something like
a franchise model, it's going to take some time and we got to make sure that we, you
know, protect the mothership, protect, you know, the team and our investors and supporters
and everything.
And that's the plan, we'll get these, we'll get these out to new locations as soon as
we can.
I love it.
Yeah, I'm curious too, like logistically, you guys, are you, what are you running for
your POS there at pub key?
Yeah.
So we use toast on like the normal hospitality side.
Toast is, toast was created for hospitality, food and beverage programs.
So that actually works quite well.
On the Bitcoin side, we have a couple of providers.
So Zeus, Zaprite, Voltage is our back end like node and everything.
We had to tinker with some things to make it regularly compliant.
The BitLicense here in New York creates some anxiety around lightning transactions.
So we're more of a cul-de-sac.
We don't do outbound transactions on our lightning node.
So we effectively are not a routing node or we're sort of a one-way in.
But that's a separate point of sale.
And we launched it a couple of months after we opened the very first, one of the first
articles that we had from Bloomberg, you know, their headline was, you know, Bitcoin Bar
opens in New York City, but you can't pay your tab using Bitcoin.
That was two weeks before we launched.
And from an operations perspective, we really had to get that right because if like the
bar staff, for example, is having trouble with the Bitcoin payments, then they can grow
resentful of that, right?
It could take more time.
Customers are waiting for drinks to bad customer experience.
So making sure that we got it as seamless as possible.
One huge shout out to Zeus and Evan Calutis who really, you know, architected the entire
thing making it as easy as possible for us to train new people.
And hospitality has a lot of turnover, right?
So every new bartender that comes in, we have to teach that person how to use, you know,
the Bitcoin point of sale.
It's pretty quick, but it is definitely another thing when you're training somebody up.
This is how this business operates.
Oh, by the way, you know, we accept Bitcoin payments and it's not through the Toast Terminal
that you're familiar with this new thing.
There's always, you know, a little bit of a, you know, operations dance that we have to
go through with that.
But we, it's exceedingly rare for us to have a failed transaction.
It's almost always on the client side.
It's not that the customer's wrong, but it's usually on their note is not spooled up or
something like that.
And it's been a great experience, right?
We endeavor to hold all the Bitcoin that we receive.
There are times when we need to sell a little bit for overhead and operating expenses.
But you know, we've gotten to a point where we, that is absolutely minimized.
And we're looking forward to rolling out, you know, we do a bunch on Nostra as well.
You know, we're trying to use that to its, you know, maximum capabilities.
We really want to find ways to embed different product services and technologies across Bitcoin,
Lightning, Nostra into the operating businesses as much as possible.
So it's kind of like what we were saying earlier, right?
Like everyone's a Bitcoin company, like everyone's an internet company, but we want this technology,
but he's cool projects like Wave Lake and, you know, lots of, lots of things.
We want to be able to embed those in the operating company as much as possible.
I think that's awesome.
And the fact that you guys were very, I mean, I think you're the, there's probably maybe
another bar on Nostra, but you guys were the first ones that I was aware of on there.
From, for quite a while now, and I think that that's great, like that you're looking at
different ways to leverage these protocols, you know, both the, you know, the monetary
layer for Bitcoin, but then also the social layer for Nostra.
Like it's a beautiful thing, you know, and, you know, you mentioned the BitLicense too.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Because maybe people who are newer may not know as much about that, this rather, let's
say, oppressive bit of New York legislation and just how that actually affects you as
a business, even though you're, you're not running a money transmitter business, you're
running a bar, but this is still like bleeds over into you guys trying to run your day-to-day
operations.
Yeah, it creates anxiety for us for sure.
So the BitLicense 2015, something like that.
So money service businesses are required to get at least two licenses.
There's the money transmitter and the MSB, the money service business, one's at a federal
level, one's at a state level.
So you have both of those.
In New York state, they launched the BitLicense, which is really a copy paste of these laws
with additional requirements for anybody that's interacting with Bitcoin, digital assets,
cryptocurrency, you know, all that stuff.
There is a carve out for companies that accept it as payment for goods and services.
So pub key, for example, doesn't need a BitLicense, but it is an oppressive, you know, a piece
of legislation from the New York Department of Financial Services that has caused a lot
of Bitcoin companies to, you know, pull out of New York or never go to New York in the
first place.
It is hitting lightning companies pretty hard right now, but we don't really know why, right?
Like those are private conversations between the company and the NYDFS, but they haven't
released much publicly about lightning in particular.
It takes years to acquire a BitLicense if you have the money to apply for it, right?
And this is a massive, massive compliance spend to even get to the point where you can, you
know, file and then sit on your hands for a couple of years.
It's atrocious.
I think that, you know, we would like to make progress in, you know, either fundamentally
changing a large swaths of the BitLicense or destroying it entirely.
I think pub key is a good, like beachhead to have that conversation to reach out to
the policy makers, to the regulators and chip away at it.
It sucks, frankly, it was created by a guy named Ben Lossky who inexplicably is at NYDIC
now, he's the head of regulatory affairs at NYDIC, which I think is kind of funny.
But anybody that gets a BitLicense quite enjoys it, right?
Because this is the same game of regulatory modes that protect large companies from innovative
startups.
So, you know, I think everybody should be vocal about this being sort of completely
antithetical to, you know, the ethos of Bitcoin and, you know, where we can make progress
with it.
And we should continue to drive at that heart, right?
Ben's, you know, we'll see if we can make some strides.
The elections turned out pretty well, I think for Bitcoiners.
There was a lot of anxiety.
So the New York Department of Financial Services and the DOJ was fighting for a couple of years
for who was going to have the next super bad version, the next bad iteration of the BitLicense.
And because they were fighting, it actually stalled the progress out a little bit because
they didn't get it done because they couldn't figure out who was going to get like the new
budget to like, you know, cover this thing.
So maybe that, like, you know, where they locked horns, you know, could play to Bitcoin's
favor.
But, you know, I hope that all Bitcoin companies are sort of united in, you know, trying to
get rid of this thing.
The guy who drafted the BitLicense, didn't he afterwards also start, like before being
at NIDA, didn't he start like a consulting company specifically to like help people navigate
this process, which is just like, come on, man.
Like this is like, I live in Chicago and this is like the way things are done in Chicago.
It's like politicians write super oppressive laws.
And then their family also has a law firm that specializes in how you get around those
specific laws.
And it's just gross because it's like, this is just like, this is the worst kind of like
regulatory corruption you can imagine.
Like, it's literally pay to play.
The people that are writing the laws are profiting from helping the biggest players get around
the exact laws that they wrote.
And it's just like, it's just so in your face.
It's like, how do you, how do you think this is okay?
Like, how do you think you can get away with this?
But then they do get away with it and like nothing ever happens and they keep making
money hand over fist and they screw over small businesses.
And it just like, God, it makes my blood boil.
Like it's like, I don't know.
So Lossky left, I believe one of his first clients was Ripple, Ripple Labs after he put
the BitLicense in.
His deputy at the NYDFS, Dana Syracuse is now a partner at Law Firm in Seattle.
I'm blanking on the name Perkins Kwee, I think.
He's at Perkins.
And yeah, like, you know, super lucrative career, you know, figuring out how to advise
clients on, you know, navigating the mess of, you know, regulation that they set up.
This is not a new playbook, right?
It's not exclusive to these guys.
But it is something that I think deserves a little bit more airtime so that more Bitcoiners
are aware of, you know, what happens here.
Again, there's absolutely no reason why the BitLicense should exist.
Everything that it purports to protect against is already covered by existing regulation,
the money transmitter, MTL and MSBs.
This is just a third prong and the only thing it does is stifle innovation and ultimately
hurt consumers.
It means less choice, right?
It's just Coinbase and the exchanges that have it or, you know, I believe Paxos, it
bit Gemini, Fidelity and a couple of others.
They went a different route, which is a special purpose chartered trust, which is effectively
in New York State Bank.
It's carved out from the BitLicense because they're under a different charter.
But other exchanges have to go and get the BitLicense and other businesses have to do
the same.
So it hurts New Yorkers and it hurts innovation and it's just a really insidious, you know,
piece of regulation that doesn't really benefit anybody.
Well, I hope that there's some common sense that can eventually prevail on this.
Thomas, I want to be conscious of your time too because I know you did have a hard stop.
So we can do a wrap here because I think we're coming up on, you've got maybe a minute or
two left here.
Yeah, I can go five more.
Whatever works for you.
Okay, five more and then I'll cut it out.
Or we can wrap now.
Whatever is easy.
Well, I wanted one more question.
First, best part of running a bar, worst part of running a bar?
The best part are absolutely the people, right?
The people that come in and they come in for the Bitcoin programming.
People are really appreciative of having this space to go and, you know, meet people.
I think every Bitcoiner has had a shared experience in friends and family, not getting
it, getting tired of talking about it, getting tired of hearing about it.
So having that social outlet I think is really important for everybody.
It doesn't matter if you're into the Yankees, Red Sox or Liverpool.
Everybody sort of has these communities and I think for Bitcoiners, that really was for
a long time these conferences or maybe like smaller meetups, technical meetups.
But this is purely entertainment education.
It's a good bar and you can go and you can probably fire up a conversation with somebody
that's also into that thing you're into.
And seeing that happen and hearing people like, you know, whenever I receive or anybody
else on the team receives, you know, a note of appreciation like that or somebody sends
a gift from, you know, somewhere in the world for us to keep going is, you know, really
the whole point.
That makes it a lot easier to trudge through the hard stuff.
The hardest thing, hospitality is hard.
Media is hard.
Like, this is a business that's open almost every day of the year.
We have neighbors, right?
Some of them love us.
Some of them don't.
Like, it's like anything else.
It's public facing.
I for a very long time was a very private Bitcoiner.
This is by far the most public facing thing, you know, I have ever done in my Bitcoin career.
And I'm really enjoying aspects of it, but, you know, it's like anything else, right?
But, you know, hospitality is a very hard business.
Nobody would ever do this if it wasn't super fulfilling on the flip side of it.
And, you know, I think that the, I think my time in Bitcoin was a really good foundation
because I'm used to volatility and I'm used to, you know, sort of sticking to guns and
figuring out on my own if there's something here or there's not.
And hospitality is very similar.
It's volatile.
Like, there are things that pop up and the highs are extremely high.
The lows are very low.
And you know, being comfortable with that volatility is really critical in this business.
But, you know, there have been long socks.
Like the first year that we were open when we hit summer, summers really slowed down
for hospitality in New York City, but this was the first summer after COVID where people
really traveled and we got clobbered, absolutely clobbered in our first year, June, July and
August because New York City was absolutely emptied out because it was the first time
people really, really got away.
And I would go to other like restaurants and bars in the neighborhood and like talk to
the bartenders and they're like, oh, honey, this is how it is.
And it was just dead.
Everywhere was dead.
But, and that's another thing that I'll say.
I actually talked to one of the founding partners.
We call them Jerk.
I was talking to Jerk about this.
And this is true for Bitcoin as well, but hospitality is an amazingly special club that
I'm very, very like proud to be a part of now.
I had never done anything in hospitality before, but when you go to other places in the neighborhood
and you start talking to bartenders and servers and stuff like that and it's like, we're at
Pubkey over here.
I love that place.
Like that's our hospitality hangout on like Tuesday after we wrap.
You guys are open until 2am.
We just go there and have burgers and beers and stuff.
But it's a very, very cool, loyal, passionate club that actually has a lot of similarities
with the Bitcoin community.
So I'm very grateful for that experience.
I love it, man.
I can't wait to check it out.
I can't encourage anybody who wants to to go and spend some time in this incredible third
place.
I'll link both Noster and X for yourself and for the bar in the show notes.
Anywhere else you want to send people, I assume just tell them to come on by and walk in the
door, huh?
85 Washington Place, seven days a week, 2am.
Most days, 4am on Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
I'm usually here on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
I'm not super pub bound over the weekend.
But come check us out.
Hit up one of our meetups every Thursday, free, open to the public, Bitcoin programming.
Grab a beer, tip your bartender.
I love it, man.
Thomas, thanks so much for joining.
Thanks to everybody who came in here in the live stream.
And looking forward to seeing you in the flesh soon and sharing a beer and one of those famous
smash burgers as well.
I can't wait.
Can't wait.
Thanks for having me.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
If you are a Bitcoin-only company interested in sponsoring The Bitcoin Podcast, head to
BitcoinPodcast.net slash sponsor or send an email to hello at BitcoinPodcast.net.
If you are enjoying The Bitcoin Podcast and find it valuable, give it a boost on Fountain,
a five star review wherever you're listening, or better yet, share this show with your network
so more people can learn about Bitcoin.
Or don't Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it.
You can grab links in the show notes to watch or list this show wherever you get your podcasts
or go to BitcoinPodcast.net slash podcast.
And you'll also find the links to follow me and the show on Noster and on X.
Bitcoin is scarce.
There will only ever be 21 million.
But Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to the Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.