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If the internet could move money natively, would you use anything else?

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Of course you wouldn't.

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We were going to actually take over the unit of account that is actually being used by

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citizens of sovereign countries.

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Bitcoin was the only network that was neutral and open enough to be around in 100 years

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as kind of this open network for money for all of the money in the world.

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The way we think about ourselves is that the network has no notion of compliance or enforcement.

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If you think another company is not doing it right, build a better thing instead of just

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complaining on X, just build a better fucking thing. Money is like water. It'll flow in the

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path of least resistance. Bitcoin is an escape valve to mismanagement of monetary policies and

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currencies. And the fact that it exists is so valuable. Within the next 10 years, most of the

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money in the world, most of the global money movement will happen on top of Bitcoin.

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Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin Podcast.

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Bitcoin continues to make new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one Bitcoin is still

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one Bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember, you're still early.

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This episode is brought to you by Blockware. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack

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Bitcoin at the same time? Well, with Blockware, you can. New U.S. tax rules let miners write off

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100% of their mining hardware in a single year. So earn Bitcoin daily while saving big come tax

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season. Get started at mining.blockwarsolutions.com slash titcoin. Use the code titcoin to get $100

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off your first miner when using the Blockware marketplace. This is not tax advice, so go speak

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to the team at Blockware to learn more. That's mining.blockwarsolutions.com slash titcoin.

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Head to the show notes for links to find the show on centralized social media platforms and

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on Noster or just go directly to BitcoinPodcast.net. You'll find it all there. And kind reminder that

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you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain. Or don't, Bitcoin doesn't

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care, but I sure do appreciate it. Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.

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David Marcus, thank you so much for coming on the show. We got a chance to talk in Lugano,

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had a fireside chat. We now have a little bit longer than the stage time allowed for.

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So really appreciate you coming on here. Excited for this.

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Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

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So a good place to start, I think, for people who may not know your story is with your story.

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You've got a pretty, you're what I would call a fintech veteran, a payments veteran. I mean,

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you've been at kind of these key inflection points in payments, in digital payments for

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a number of years now. PayPal, Facebook's Libra DM project, we can maybe get into a little bit of

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that. And now you are the CEO and co founder of light spark. So maybe could we just kind of start

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off with a little bit of who you are and how you got here today and maybe talk about that journey

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a little bit because it's, it's fascinating to me. Of course, of course. So look, I, I built a

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number of startups and that's how my my the real professional side of my life started I was 23 when

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I started my first startup which was actually a telco and ISP in Switzerland and then I sold that

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and the next company that I built was actually a mobile entertainment company at a time like that

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like I'm going to date myself but that was like pre-iphone era where you would still buy things

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like ringtones and wallpapers for your Nokia or Ericsson phone.

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And so we built that into a pretty big business.

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And then we did live voting for the European version of American Idol

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and all of these things that were taxed at 50 cents or a dollar a pop.

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And so we built this whole network around payments on your phone bill

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with over 200 mobile operators or carriers around the world.

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And then when the iPhone came out,

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I realized that actually this was a good time to pivot because no one was going to download a

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wallpaper for $2 when you can actually browse the web on your phone. And so I moved to Silicon

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Valley. This was early 2008 and converted that company into a payments company, pivoted and

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leveraged basically the connections that we had with so many mobile operators around the world to

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build a payments network on top of the mobile network's capabilities to bill on behalf of

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third parties. And I'm saying all of this because it's actually relevant to the work we're doing now.

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And that thing really took off. And this was at the time where Facebook, interestingly enough,

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had a lot going on with their gaming platform, if you remember the Farmville era and all of these

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things. Oh, yes. And, and, and, you know, I mean, Zynga at the time was selling virtual cows on

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virtual farms for dollars a pop. And like, you know, if you're actually entering a credit card

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and 16 digits of your pan, and your expiry date and your CVV and all of that, while you're buying

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a $4 virtual cow on a virtual farm, you know, by the time you end up, like, you know, just

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inputting all of that data, you're like, what the hell am I doing? And you're not. And so there was

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just too much friction with card payments at the time. And so we figured out that if you can use

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mobile with no friction, you could just put your phone number, get a text message and respond and

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boom, you're done. That then you would buy more virtual cows on more virtual farms. And this

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really blew up. And that's what got me into PayPal because like at the time, they really

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had this drive to figure out their mobile strategy. And our company was like on fire. It was like

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really growing by leaps and bounds. And, you know, Facebook was a client and all the digital assets,

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like the digital content providers were clients and were growing really fast. And so PayPal at

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the time acquired our company. And then five months later, the CEO of the then CEO of PayPal

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left to become the CEO of Yahoo. And I'm like, great, I'm just going to go back to startups. But

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But it turns out that everyone else on that leadership team wanted that CEO role and I didn't.

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And I was like, okay, that's great.

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But I ended up being asked by John Donahoe, who at the time was running eBay because PayPal was still part of eBay, to go lead PayPal.

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And you don't say no to that even if you don't have the right experience.

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So I did that for a few years and really revamped the culture of the company.

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and then I was getting frustrated because I was too far from the product and I was about to get

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ready to move on when Mark Zuckerberg basically reached out to bring me into Facebook and that

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was my almost four-year sabbatical from payments where I basically built messenger and business

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messaging at Meta and then I was really frustrated with the fact that you know it was at the time

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2017 and money still didn't move on an open network like any other type of content and uh and i was

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like okay this is this is the right time i had been in bitcoin since late 2011. um i had uh been

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on the board of coinbase so i saw what was going on there uh and uh and i was very much deep into

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the the the digital assets crypto blockchain bitcoin world and um and so i wanted to go build

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that and uh and so that's how the libra journey started basically and um and you know we wanted

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to actually build that on bitcoin uh at first but it just wasn't ready for prime time so we went

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you know full-on uh proprietary with uh one of the first arguably corp chains now i call these

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these things, core chains. And that thing got killed by Janet Yellen on the morning of June 2021.

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So I packed my bags and here we are at LightSpark and we can talk about why Bitcoin and what we're

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doing whenever you're ready for that. Yeah, maybe one follow up question to that would be,

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let's just say Janet Yellen hadn't put the nail in the coffin or whatever analogy we want to use.

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Do you think, I mean, would that have been something that really was beneficial ultimately

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to the whole ecosystem or to Bitcoin adoption more broadly?

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Would it have normalized it?

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Do you think it would have cannibalized some of Bitcoin adoption?

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Have you thought about that?

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I mean, it's a hypothetical, of course, but, you know,

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where do you think we would be now if that hadn't happened,

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if they hadn't shut it down?

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It's really, it's a hard question to answer if we don't unpack, like, the details.

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If it was, like, the true original vision for Libra,

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I think it would have helped literally billions of people move money in real time

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on top of an open network.

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And because Facebook had a reach of over 3 billion people using their products every month, and we had Shopify, Spotify, Uber, Lyft, even Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, like as part of the consortium, everyone would have actually adopted that stablecoin and use the network to start moving money around.

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And that would have completely changed the game.

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But that was kind of the idealistic vision that we had, which is like, OK, money should move natively on the Internet.

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What is the network that is going to be the best, most efficient network to actually move that money in real time at a very low cost?

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And let's go build that.

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And then let's build an alliance of companies that would serve as distribution for all of this.

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So I think the original version would have really helped a lot of people.

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But I think it was naive to be candid.

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Like it was naive to think that the consortium of very large tech companies, some of them, especially Facebook at the time, really not liked as a company to say the least.

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And that we were going to actually take over the unit of account that is actually being used by citizens of sovereign countries.

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And that governments were not going to actually go crazy.

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And so I think the general idea was really a replace-all of the financial system kind of thing, for money movement at least.

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And that included literally going all the way to the consumers holding the asset and as such not having to worry about adapting to the legacy rails and systems and all of that.

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And I think that part was a little naive in the sense that governments are not going to let that happen.

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And so that's actually what got us and me to Bitcoin, which is like if you want a mobile, like if you want a payment network to actually exist, an open payment network to exist where all of the money in the world can move.

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and you're going to intermediate in and outflows of very large sovereign countries

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that are very proud of their currencies,

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you can't do it from a corp chain or a controlled thing

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or a thing that flies an American flag

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or a thing that's run by a CEO, a corporation, a foundation,

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an association, a conglomerate or whatever you want to call that.

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It has to be really open and neutral and feel like TCPIP for money, basically.

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And so that's how we got back to building on Bitcoin, no matter how hard it was.

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So if Bitcoin is the TCP IP for money, what are you building right now at LightSpark?

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What's the analogous layer there?

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Yeah, so we started.

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So let's do the whole journey.

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So we started at LightSpark with this conviction that Bitcoin was the only network and settlement

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asset that was neutral and open enough to be around in 100 years as kind of this open network

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for money for all of the money in the world. And so once we decided that that was like, or we built

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that conviction that this was the only thing that would withstand the test of time and everything

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else, we then had to ensure that Bitcoin, if you look at it really as TCP IP for money, could

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actually move real time, really fast, super scalably at a low cost. And so the thing that

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was available to us at the time to actually go build on is was lightning, the lightning network.

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And when we started, I remember vividly that, you know, 50% of transactions over $100 were failing

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very at a very high rate, because you just couldn't find a routing path on the network

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that was actually going to work.

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Channel management was still like super manual, cumbersome, non-automated, et cetera.

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And so we got to work to actually try to make Lightning more enterprise-grade

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so like the actual endpoints like exchanges and others could actually get on

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without like a hefty kind of like investment ROI analysis of like,

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I need two full-time people to rebalance channels and optimize our routes.

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and there's no volume.

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And of course, then it becomes a self-predicament, right?

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Because it's like, oh, there's no volume.

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And so why should I put the effort?

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Then no one puts the effort and there's no volume, right?

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And so we tried to automate a lot of that.

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And we spent probably the first year and a half or so

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because it's complicated to actually get this thing to work.

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And we're assembling the team of the company and all of that.

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And the proof point for us of like we did a good job at this was signing Coinbase and a dozen exchanges around the world to support their Lightning implementation But obviously like we were not into this just to become a better Lightning company We into this to build a global open internet for money for all of the money in the world

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And so the next step was, okay,

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how do we move now real money?

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Now that we figured out like a scalable way

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to actually make the TCP IP for money on Bitcoin work,

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how do we get real endpoints to actually build

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a very good user experience for people around the world

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move money. And so that's when UMA came out, like a universal money address standard. It came out of

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this idea that if you use Bitcoin as a neutral settlement asset between real-time domestic

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payment systems, that I can now send dollars from the US to someone in Mexico receiving Mexican peso

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in real-time, 24-7 in real-time, which now you can try. If you have a SoFi account, you can

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send in in many countries in real time at a very low cost 24 seven using the network that's a good

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example um and uh and we started like really developing this building all the capabilities

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so that like if you're an endpoint on this network you can actually reliably send and receive

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transactions using bitcoin as a neutral settlement asset you can meet your compliance obligations for

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those things and by the way this is something that gets really misunderstood like you know

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LightSpark in the core Bitcoin circle has this brand of like you're a surveillance thing, like you're a compliance company.

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And so that's not the way we think about ourselves at all.

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The way we think about ourselves is that the network itself has no notion of compliance or enforcement.

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And that's true whether you're using one of our Lightning implementation or Spark, and we'll get to that, I'm sure.

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But if you want volume, real volume, you cannot expect the whole world and businesses and people and all of that to accept Bitcoin as a unit of account in real time and pay their bills in Bitcoin and get paid their salaries in Bitcoin and buy their stuff in Bitcoin.

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You know, maybe someday that'll happen, but like it's not going to happen for a while.

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So if you need banks where people hold their money, pay their bills from, etc., to be on the network, you have to provide them with capabilities that enable them to actually meet their compliance requirements.

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So at the edges of the network between regulated entities, we give people like businesses, banks, wallets, tools to remain compliant.

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But we don't have a point of view on what happens on the network.

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We give off-band messaging capabilities with UMA for banks to be compliant, remain compliant.

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So anyways, this was long-winded.

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But so that was part two.

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Part two is like moving real money, fiat pairs, basically.

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Start with dollars, start with any other currency, end up in another currency in another part of the world in real time, 24-7, on top of UMA and on top of Lightning.

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And then we started realizing, okay, a lot of the banks cannot actually do the implementation natively like NewBank did in Brazil and other places.

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So we need to actually go do the work to connect to every domestic payment system all around the world so that wallets and banks and businesses can actually use their domestic payment network, denominated in fiat, to use the Bitcoin network to settle in real time in another country in another currency.

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And so that's a lot of hard work because it's complex.

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It's difficult.

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Sometimes you don't find the right partners.

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Sometimes the partners are not set up for the right thing.

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And so that took a while for us to actually get the reach we have now of over 60 countries that we can send and receive money in real time 24-7 at a low cost using the Bitcoin network.

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So that was kind of act three of the company.

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And then we're like, okay, great.

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Now we have like a really good network that can move money on top of Bitcoin for the benefit of businesses, banks, wallets.

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But the network is not open enough because it doesn't work on a self-custodial wallet.

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It just doesn't work.

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Like you can't actually use the network on a self-custody wallet because Lightning really sucks at this.

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Like you have to put liquidity in front of every wallet so that you can actually receive money on the network.

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If you do it yourself, it's like the most counterintuitive thing that you can ask a consumer to do.

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Like, what do you mean?

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I need to actually put money to receive money?

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Or you have to use an LSP.

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And it turns out that a lot of those LSP activities turn out to be money transmission.

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So like, you know, if you're not a regulated entity, you're not supposed to do that.

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So it's not scalable, right?

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And then the stablecoin conversation started really blowing up.

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And more and more hype was starting to build around stablecoins.

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Legislation started to catch up.

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And then I had this like super long schizophrenic soul searching moment where I'm like, okay, we worked so hard to actually make this network unassailable, built on top of Bitcoin.

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and then I'm going to put a fully centralized stablecoin on top of this thing.

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It's just like killed me for months.

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But ultimately, you know, you can't go against a tide of that size.

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And so we decided to fully embrace stablecoins

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and actually enable them to be issued on top of Bitcoin via Spark.

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But the genesis of Spark is basically that, right?

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It's like self-custodial Bitcoin at scale, real-time, low-cost, super developer-friendly.

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And then a tokenization standard to enable stablecoins to be issued on top of Spark, which is the BTKN standard, which also exploded completely as a Bitcoin DeFi use case, which we didn't actually plan for.

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And that's kind of the act we're in right now.

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So making Lightning scale so that people can use Bitcoin efficiently as TCPIP for money, enabling fiat use cases by enabling UMA and enabling connectivity to domestic payment systems in 65 countries.

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And then a new Bitcoin L2 that's backward compatible with Lightning and enable self-custodial wallets, stablecoin issuance and all kinds of other things.

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So that's kind of the arc of the three and a half years at the company and how we actually, you know, building layers of capabilities to enable Bitcoin to be the winning network to move all the money in the world.

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OK, this was so long winded.

221
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Wow.

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No, no, it's OK.

223
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This is really this is really helpful, too, because I think, again, a lot of people who are not as engrossed in the payment side of this, who are perhaps just more focused on the store of value side of Bitcoin, which, of course, is an incredibly important part of the narrative.

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Right.

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That is what drives, I think, most adoption generally is people see number go up and they get interested, right?

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This is a reality. It's not a bad thing. It's just the reality of the world.

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But the payment side is so fascinating to me.

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And maybe one thing to kind of talk about a little bit, and then we can kind of go deeper into some of these aspects of LightSpark specifically.

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But I mean, for you, is it safe to say that you're of the Jack Dorsey camp, which is that if Bitcoin's not used as a medium of exchange, it's really it's not an ultimate success.

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It needs that side of the adoption.

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It can't just be store of value.

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It needs medium of exchange to achieve its full potential.

233
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234
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246
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247
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248
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249
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Now, back to the show.

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Yeah, the only thing I would say, so yes, so generally I think Jack and I are on the

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same page here.

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but I think there's nuance, right?

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It's like, I think the way that he says this is like,

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if Bitcoin is not everyday money,

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then we're actually not there.

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And I agree with that.

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I just think we need to unpack and double click

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on what everyday money means.

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Does it mean it's actually a medium of exchange,

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like you said,

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or does it mean that it's used in everyday payments,

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but in some cases,

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people and businesses don't even know they're using it,

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Like the same way that when you send an email, you don't think about SMTP and TCP IP.

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And to me, my definition is really that it's both.

295
00:25:42,448 --> 00:25:50,128
And that's like one is probably required as a prequel to actually what's going to happen next, right?

296
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And as a prerequisite as well.

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Like it's like, you know, if you don't, money is like water, right?

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It'll flow in the path of least resistance.

299
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And so if you connect Bitcoin real-time, super cheap, super deep liquidity of Bitcoin into the places where money is stored in, like namely banks and wallets and all of that, and it's super cheap and it's available real-time and it allows you to actually get the money to the other part of the world or wherever you need it to be in the most efficient way, then the money will actually go to Bitcoin.

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And that's what we're doing at LightSpark. We're actually trying to connect all of these pockets of money, wherever they exist and where they need to start from and to, onto real-time fast Bitcoin on LightningSpark, etc. to actually make Bitcoin the winning settlement network.

301
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also add stable coins if you have stable coins you want to use the network fine use it and and

302
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so you need to drive real money movement utility for the network to win and that's what we've been

303
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really focused on and i think that if we do that then people have all kinds of opportunities to

304
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start accruing bitcoin i think you know if you look at what square did with the the square terminal

305
00:27:14,828 --> 00:27:19,988
it's so clever the way that they did it right because like first of all they tell their merchants

306
00:27:19,988 --> 00:27:24,528
you don't have to actually pay fees anymore so no more interchange if you accept bitcoin so

307
00:27:24,528 --> 00:27:33,448
like super big incentive for merchants um two is uh you can receive all the payments from people

308
00:27:33,448 --> 00:27:39,248
paying in bitcoin in full dollars or a portion in bitcoin a portion in dollars so like there's

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an opportunity for people to learn and think ask themselves the question as a merchant a coffee anything like do I want to keep some Bitcoin for every single purchase or not And every month you see it in your settings And so you know you start to learn about it

310
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You start to care.

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But then what's really great is what they did on the reverse, on the flip side, on the cash app side,

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which is that you can choose to pay with Bitcoin using Bitcoin and Lightning,

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or you can fund your Bitcoin transaction with US dollars, with fiat.

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00:28:12,656 --> 00:28:14,696
So you go dollar, Bitcoin and Lightning.

315
00:28:15,236 --> 00:28:17,836
And then on the merchant side, it could be a dollar to dollar transaction,

316
00:28:17,996 --> 00:28:19,336
but it's using Lightning networks.

317
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So I'm a fan of that, right?

318
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Because it gives people the opportunity to use the network

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and get a benefit from using the network.

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And it gives both the merchants and the consumers the ability to use Bitcoin

321
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if they choose, but not force them to.

322
00:28:35,456 --> 00:28:49,656
And I just posted a demo, like I think it was last week or so, of me paying with a stablecoin on a Spark-enabled wallet at a Square terminal, which is kind of next level when you think about it.

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Like you have a stablecoin balance and now I'm using the Lightning Network to actually pay a merchant that could be settled in dollars or in Bitcoin.

324
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But that's the beauty of an open network, right?

325
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And I think that that's the way that we will collectively, all of us, make Bitcoin everyday money, whether it's money or settlement, but used in everyday transactions.

326
00:29:12,636 --> 00:29:23,576
What I love about this is that what you're doing really flies and what Square and CashUp are doing as well is flying in the face of a lot of the narratives that you saw from the, quote, crypto side of things.

327
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where it's like, oh, well, Bitcoin, Bitcoin might be good, you know, but it's just it's just digital gold.

328
00:29:27,996 --> 00:29:31,056
But for payments, it doesn't work. You know, it's too layer ones too slow.

329
00:29:31,136 --> 00:29:35,336
The layer twos don't work. It's that please, you know, use my altcoin chain instead.

330
00:29:35,596 --> 00:29:38,556
And what you're doing is just directly flying in the face that it's saying, no,

331
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we believe this is the best credibly neutral network that there possibly is.

332
00:29:43,796 --> 00:29:47,896
And we're going to build on top of that. I mean, do you have do you have a perspective?

333
00:29:47,976 --> 00:29:51,536
Did you guys ever explore or think about like, oh, maybe we should use one of these other chains?

334
00:29:51,536 --> 00:29:55,496
Or for you, was it always, we're going to do this on Bitcoin because we need to do this on Bitcoin?

335
00:29:55,496 --> 00:29:57,156
Look, I mean, I think it depends.

336
00:29:57,776 --> 00:30:01,936
It depends what kind of company you're building and what's the purpose of the company.

337
00:30:02,976 --> 00:30:06,016
We're here to build an open network for money on top of Bitcoin.

338
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And the reason we build on top of Bitcoin is for all of the things we discussed.

339
00:30:12,576 --> 00:30:19,676
And if you look at companies that have been very successful at payments on top of other chains and using stable coins,

340
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like you know there's bridge there's bvnk there's like a bunch of others um what they're doing is

341
00:30:26,476 --> 00:30:31,976
orchestration so you give us like fiat and we'll terminate in stablecoin you give us stablecoin

342
00:30:31,976 --> 00:30:37,176
we'll terminate in fiat you give us like you know like all kinds of permutations of that from one

343
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network to another network and all that um and and that's great and those guys have built like

344
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really great businesses on top of that but personally i'm like this is like not the kind

345
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of stuff that gets me out of bed and excited to actually go build something because like you know

346
00:30:54,316 --> 00:30:59,196
we have like those payment companies on top of traditional financial networks they're called

347
00:30:59,196 --> 00:31:05,076
stripe and adyen and and checkout and you know and it's the same thing right it's like oh i have

348
00:31:05,076 --> 00:31:08,476
a payment network here i'm just going to take like a thing build a little bit of a better

349
00:31:08,476 --> 00:31:13,576
functionality here and those are fabulous companies so don't get me wrong like you know

350
00:31:13,576 --> 00:31:15,196
I wish I built one of them.

351
00:31:16,056 --> 00:31:19,656
But for me, what's more exciting is actually,

352
00:31:19,776 --> 00:31:25,016
can we all build an open network and an open standard

353
00:31:25,016 --> 00:31:29,836
for developers, banks, wallets, people

354
00:31:29,836 --> 00:31:33,676
to actually move money on an open network that's unassailable,

355
00:31:34,116 --> 00:31:38,116
will be around in 100 years, and is not controlled by anyone?

356
00:31:39,196 --> 00:31:41,976
And that gets me really excited.

357
00:31:41,976 --> 00:32:02,576
Like if we can really do that, like that's like, you know, not only a great successful company, but it's also an insane, like multi-generational impact to have on the world and potentially something that lifts global GDP by a couple of points and get, you know, the money where people need to have it.

358
00:32:03,016 --> 00:32:05,776
And it's the way it should be, in my opinion.

359
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And, you know, I can't remember who said that, but it's like, you know, you should go build the future you want.

360
00:32:12,596 --> 00:32:14,036
That's what gets me excited.

361
00:32:14,156 --> 00:32:15,216
That's the future I want.

362
00:32:15,316 --> 00:32:22,796
I don't want, like, the financial system to be the same financial system as today, which is different rails, different names and different companies.

363
00:32:23,196 --> 00:32:24,936
I want an open Internet for money.

364
00:32:25,136 --> 00:32:35,516
And I personally believe that the only way that you build an open Internet for money is by building it on top of something that's truly neutral, truly open, truly decentralized, and that's Bitcoin.

365
00:32:35,776 --> 00:32:55,616
I say amen to that. And I agree. Maybe we can get into a little bit just kind of a little bit of the nuts and bolts of what you guys have built and released more recently. So you have Spark. This is another Bitcoin L2. It's backwards compatible or interoperable with Lightning, correct?

366
00:32:55,616 --> 00:33:17,236
And then you also have have light spark grid. Can we maybe kind of talk about the, the, like, what these different vectors are in terms of how you're approaching it and just how that kind of informs your overall roadmap? Because you guys are clearly thinking, you're not just thinking in years, you're thinking in decades or 100 years, right? You're thinking about this in the long term. What does that start to look like? What are these building blocks? Why are they important right now?

367
00:33:17,236 --> 00:33:22,796
So Spark, like, honestly, I wish we didn't have to build Spark.

368
00:33:24,156 --> 00:33:26,816
And no, I mean, I'm serious.

369
00:33:27,036 --> 00:33:28,496
Like, I wish someone else did.

370
00:33:28,796 --> 00:33:40,736
It's because it's so hard to build a protocol and, like, you know, make it scale and make it, like, you know, not vulnerable to attacks and, like, decentralize it.

371
00:33:40,736 --> 00:33:44,736
Like, it's like, and have all the right trust assumption.

372
00:33:45,216 --> 00:33:46,496
And it's like, it's really hard.

373
00:33:47,236 --> 00:33:58,236
But the problem is Bitcoin didn't have enough utility for payments use cases with just Lightning.

374
00:33:59,436 --> 00:34:07,916
And the two major issues were really that you can't serve self-custody endpoints well with Lightning.

375
00:34:07,916 --> 00:34:09,736
It's just like for the reasons we discussed.

376
00:34:11,096 --> 00:34:13,876
And you can't support stablecoins, I think.

377
00:34:14,096 --> 00:34:16,336
Like, I mean, people would disagree with me.

378
00:34:16,336 --> 00:34:21,776
There's a bunch of stuff happening on the Lightning Network with Taproot Assets, with RGB, with this, with that.

379
00:34:22,056 --> 00:34:28,996
Like, I developed this conviction that it was just not going to work, not going to scale, too complicated.

380
00:34:29,316 --> 00:34:39,676
Or, like, you have to have, like, a middleman, again, engaged in money transmission that requires licensing and all of that to make it work there.

381
00:34:39,676 --> 00:34:53,896
And so if you want to compete with other networks, with Bitcoin, and you don't have at least the same capabilities on top of the neutrality, the decentralization, all these things, then how are we going to win?

382
00:34:55,056 --> 00:35:06,776
And so the state of things kind of forced our hand into spending a ton of energy and resources and investment into building Spark into what it is.

383
00:35:06,776 --> 00:35:15,056
and the goal is really to provide a technology, a settlement network on top of Bitcoin that

384
00:35:15,056 --> 00:35:21,216
actually competes with other chains really, really well. And it's working. It's really

385
00:35:21,216 --> 00:35:27,416
working. All of the self-custodial wallets or wallets that wanted to operate in a bunch of

386
00:35:27,416 --> 00:35:35,096
countries in a self-custodial way for Bitcoin are now, if not all of them, 90% of them that have

387
00:35:35,096 --> 00:35:41,316
traction are on Spark. It's like Wallet of Satoshi and it's Xverse and it's like Breeze.

388
00:35:41,396 --> 00:35:46,136
And Breeze has a phenomenal SDK that enables all of these wallet developers to actually integrate

389
00:35:46,136 --> 00:35:52,416
and they're doing a fantastic job. But it's like dozens and dozens of other wallets that have built

390
00:35:52,416 --> 00:35:56,956
really cool experiences on Bitcoin for the first time. It's like the BitBit wallet on Twitter,

391
00:35:57,196 --> 00:36:02,256
on X that enables you to tip people in real time, et cetera, stuff that really wasn't possible before.

392
00:36:02,256 --> 00:36:14,496
And so I view the Spark piece as a core required infrastructure layer for Bitcoin to have a winning chance.

393
00:36:15,616 --> 00:36:18,256
And then Grid is different.

394
00:36:19,136 --> 00:36:26,376
Grid is basically taking everything we talked about until now, like all of the capabilities we built over the three and a half years that we've been around,

395
00:36:26,376 --> 00:36:30,136
in connecting to 65 countries, payment systems,

396
00:36:30,796 --> 00:36:32,216
and enabling all of these flows,

397
00:36:32,336 --> 00:36:34,536
and actually unbundling all of it

398
00:36:34,536 --> 00:36:38,576
and putting it in a very simple API front end

399
00:36:38,576 --> 00:36:41,456
to enable global money movement using the network.

400
00:36:42,856 --> 00:36:47,316
And that's already getting a huge amount of traction

401
00:36:47,316 --> 00:36:50,556
because businesses and people need to move money around.

402
00:36:51,496 --> 00:36:52,596
And it turns out that actually,

403
00:36:53,176 --> 00:36:55,576
in many, many cases, using Bitcoin, the network,

404
00:36:55,576 --> 00:37:00,296
if you're moving fiat to fiat for instance is actually cheaper than using a stable coin sandwich

405
00:37:00,296 --> 00:37:04,576
as being used in a lot of payments use cases because of the depth of liquidity of bitcoin

406
00:37:04,576 --> 00:37:09,976
with a number of different currencies it's not always true but it's true in for many destinations

407
00:37:09,976 --> 00:37:16,436
and so we can be super competitive with real-time payments and money settlements and and we can

408
00:37:16,436 --> 00:37:21,996
enable actually by unbundling the capabilities developers to build the money movement experience

409
00:37:21,996 --> 00:37:26,236
of their choice without us imposing our views. No, you have to use Uma, you have to use this,

410
00:37:26,336 --> 00:37:31,716
like they can do whatever they want. I mean, it's super fascinating, because again,

411
00:37:32,116 --> 00:37:36,676
I think for a lot of people who are listening to this, they may kind of just be shocked to hear at

412
00:37:36,676 --> 00:37:41,896
the widespread adoption that is already happening with the tools that you guys are building. And some

413
00:37:41,896 --> 00:37:46,796
of these things, again, a lot of it's behind the scenes, because that's the purpose of it is to be

414
00:37:46,796 --> 00:37:50,416
using Bitcoin as the network, as the settlement layer, building the layers on top that are

415
00:37:50,416 --> 00:37:56,096
happening behind the scenes. And I mean, maybe just a slight divergence here, but I'm just kind

416
00:37:56,096 --> 00:38:00,416
of curious. You know, you mentioned obviously, like, I'm not of the opinion that that fiat

417
00:38:00,416 --> 00:38:04,736
currencies are going away anytime soon, right? Like people, we, there's a lot of dollar doom

418
00:38:04,736 --> 00:38:08,656
out there. And we all know that the dollar is debasing every year. That's, that's, I'm not

419
00:38:08,656 --> 00:38:12,636
debating that I talk about it all the time. But also the dollar is the prettiest horse of the

420
00:38:12,636 --> 00:38:16,716
glue factory, right? It's the skinniest kid at fat camp. If the dollar fails, it will have meant

421
00:38:16,716 --> 00:38:20,336
that probably every other fiat currency already failed once or multiple times or whatever.

422
00:38:20,416 --> 00:38:25,336
the point being, it's going to take some time, right? The can keeps getting kicked down the road.

423
00:38:26,056 --> 00:38:29,776
And they're very good at this, you know, this monetary engineering to keep that going.

424
00:38:30,336 --> 00:38:35,036
That being said, you know, I also think that even after something like that would happen at some

425
00:38:35,036 --> 00:38:38,876
point in the future that the dollar fails, I think fiat currencies end up still springing up

426
00:38:38,876 --> 00:38:45,116
for a very, very long time, like because governments have a, they have a rationale for doing so,

427
00:38:45,276 --> 00:38:49,316
even if Bitcoin becomes the neutral reserve asset. But I'm curious for you,

428
00:38:49,316 --> 00:38:54,036
given all the things that you're building, given all of the kind of interplay between these

429
00:38:54,036 --> 00:38:58,516
technologies, interplay between these currencies that you're enabling through Bitcoin and the other

430
00:38:58,516 --> 00:39:05,476
layers you're building, how do you look at, quote, hyper-Bitcoinization? Is that something that you

431
00:39:05,476 --> 00:39:12,116
think is, that means that only Bitcoin exists and Bitcoin is the only currency out there? Or is it

432
00:39:12,116 --> 00:39:15,976
something more nuanced where, yeah, of course, Bitcoin exists. Of course, Bitcoin is the reserve

433
00:39:15,976 --> 00:39:20,336
asset. But look, it's just also the network. It's the settlement. It's everything. But there's still

434
00:39:20,336 --> 00:39:23,956
different types of currencies moving on top of Bitcoin. How do you think about that?

435
00:39:24,996 --> 00:39:30,436
Yeah, I mean, look, I think, I mean, we're definitely working on the latter, not the former,

436
00:39:30,436 --> 00:39:39,396
because I think it's nice to have ideals like, you know, that code is controlling

437
00:39:39,396 --> 00:39:48,456
the unit of accounts that is being used by humans and AI agents alike to actually move value around.

438
00:39:49,236 --> 00:39:55,716
I think actually that, you know, we might be in a reality where a lot of the net settlement

439
00:39:55,716 --> 00:40:02,896
happening between AI agents in the context of agentic commerce will actually happen using

440
00:40:02,896 --> 00:40:08,096
Bitcoin because like if I was an AI, that's what I would pick, right? I wouldn't trust humans on

441
00:40:08,096 --> 00:40:15,596
getting everything right. And if it can be used in real time, very fast, at very low cost,

442
00:40:15,596 --> 00:40:22,096
and it's the most efficient way to move value without touching any human, which it really is,

443
00:40:22,696 --> 00:40:32,576
then maybe hyper-Bitcoinization happens on AI networks before it gets to humans. But that's

444
00:40:32,576 --> 00:40:40,616
kind of a segue but i think look at the end of the day um you have to meet people where they are

445
00:40:40,616 --> 00:40:48,076
and businesses where they are you cannot like have ideals of like everyone's going to use bitcoin

446
00:40:48,076 --> 00:40:52,656
and then not solve any problem for anyone and hoping it's going to happen right it's like

447
00:40:52,656 --> 00:40:58,936
like you know this is like a very rich country rich person's ideal point of view that actually

448
00:40:58,936 --> 00:41:02,016
never meets the reality of the real world.

449
00:41:02,516 --> 00:41:04,316
People need to put food on the table.

450
00:41:05,056 --> 00:41:07,136
They need to pay their bills.

451
00:41:07,876 --> 00:41:09,156
They need to get paid.

452
00:41:10,456 --> 00:41:15,176
And you can't force the replacement of the units of accounts

453
00:41:15,176 --> 00:41:18,556
that are being used for all of these purposes on the whole world

454
00:41:18,556 --> 00:41:21,936
in a short amount of time.

455
00:41:21,936 --> 00:41:28,076
I'm not saying it's not possible in places where you live in a country

456
00:41:28,076 --> 00:41:32,836
that has like a really shitty currency that's really poorly managed and that's being debased

457
00:41:32,836 --> 00:41:45,524
all the time and you know being hyperinflated all the time You know that will happen naturally I think I think people are already using Bitcoin and stable coins in parts of the world to actually replace their home currencies

458
00:41:45,524 --> 00:41:51,564
for lots of that. And I think, you know, maybe it's the views of people that, you know, within

459
00:41:51,564 --> 00:41:58,304
our lifetime, you know, of like, you know, 50 plus years, like that fiat currencies are going to be

460
00:41:58,304 --> 00:42:02,864
so mismanaged around the world that everyone's going to actually run to Bitcoin and then we get

461
00:42:02,864 --> 00:42:04,264
to hyper-Bitcoinization.

462
00:42:05,424 --> 00:42:06,604
Maybe that'll be true.

463
00:42:06,684 --> 00:42:09,464
But if that happens, we have much bigger problems, I think.

464
00:42:09,584 --> 00:42:13,744
To your points earlier, I think that if all fiat currencies cease to exist

465
00:42:13,744 --> 00:42:16,444
within the next couple of decades or so,

466
00:42:17,024 --> 00:42:18,824
it's going to be so disruptive

467
00:42:18,824 --> 00:42:24,604
that I'm not sure I wish for that to happen within that time frame.

468
00:42:25,124 --> 00:42:26,744
So if we're talking many hundreds of years,

469
00:42:26,864 --> 00:42:28,884
many or 100 years or whatever it is,

470
00:42:28,924 --> 00:42:29,864
that might be possible.

471
00:42:29,864 --> 00:42:41,784
But I think they're like, I'm very focused on what I can do in my current lifetime to see the fruits of my labor, rather than just hoping for what's going to happen after I'm long dead.

472
00:42:43,184 --> 00:42:49,044
No, I think that's fair. And I appreciate you engaging in kind of the thought experiment with me, because it's something I think about a lot.

473
00:42:49,284 --> 00:42:59,684
Because again, I think a lot of what is being built now, a lot of what we're talking about right now in the future, like, it is something that like maybe my son who's like two years old, maybe he'll see it in his lifetime.

474
00:42:59,864 --> 00:43:03,464
But it likely will not be something that happens in mine.

475
00:43:03,604 --> 00:43:08,384
And if it does, that will likely mean that we went through a period of like what happens when currencies collapse?

476
00:43:08,684 --> 00:43:14,704
Well, economic, you know, monetary collapse leads to societal collapse, leads to really, really brutal things happening.

477
00:43:14,884 --> 00:43:18,584
And if that happens in a lot of places at once, that's not a good thing.

478
00:43:18,864 --> 00:43:20,404
That means a lot of people die.

479
00:43:20,944 --> 00:43:22,284
A lot of people go hungry.

480
00:43:22,764 --> 00:43:24,224
A lot of governments are overthrown.

481
00:43:24,344 --> 00:43:26,704
And what replaces them may not be something that you like.

482
00:43:26,704 --> 00:43:36,784
And so it's, you know, we should we should think about that being said, you know, we can't we're not going to be able to help the governments and central banks of the world manage their fiat currencies better, unfortunately.

483
00:43:37,044 --> 00:43:40,004
But at least we have we have credible exits at this time.

484
00:43:40,104 --> 00:43:40,304
Exactly.

485
00:43:40,484 --> 00:43:44,644
I think by the way, I think you really hit the nail on the head here.

486
00:43:44,644 --> 00:43:52,884
It's like that the the Bitcoin is an escape valve to mismanagement of monetary policies and currencies.

487
00:43:52,884 --> 00:44:00,004
And the fact that it exists, not the fact that everyone's using it, the fact that it exists is so valuable.

488
00:44:00,224 --> 00:44:02,324
And I think people really don't understand that.

489
00:44:02,504 --> 00:44:12,324
Like the fact that if you know you're going to mismanage your country's currency, people will actually escape to stable coins, to Bitcoin, etc.

490
00:44:13,024 --> 00:44:20,504
Like that's immensely valuable because it keeps those people like in check and it creates a viable alternative.

491
00:44:20,504 --> 00:44:24,544
And so they have to compete to keep people using their thing.

492
00:44:24,624 --> 00:44:27,864
And I think that never happened before.

493
00:44:28,444 --> 00:44:31,164
And it's a huge value.

494
00:44:33,104 --> 00:44:34,464
I couldn't agree more.

495
00:44:35,364 --> 00:44:37,464
And so I want to bring it back to LightSpark a little bit.

496
00:44:37,544 --> 00:44:41,904
You had your yearly, I guess, kind of developer and business conference that you did in October.

497
00:44:42,144 --> 00:44:43,824
And I was watching that keynote there.

498
00:44:43,944 --> 00:44:44,824
I enjoyed it.

499
00:44:45,044 --> 00:44:46,064
I watched through the whole thing.

500
00:44:46,124 --> 00:44:47,684
And there were a lot of really cool announcements there.

501
00:44:47,684 --> 00:44:50,104
That's where you kind of debuted LightSpark Grid as well.

502
00:44:50,104 --> 00:44:57,664
Talk about a lot of integrations you have. I want to talk about the one with SoFi because I think that's, again, a really interesting example of using Bitcoin as the transport layer.

503
00:44:58,244 --> 00:45:01,864
And nobody on the other end is any the wiser. They're just moving money in a way that's better.

504
00:45:02,324 --> 00:45:05,284
But you opened it up with a quote that was it was really nice.

505
00:45:05,404 --> 00:45:09,764
You said if the Internet could move value natively, would you use anything else?

506
00:45:10,384 --> 00:45:13,684
And I love that frame. But can you talk about like why that framing?

507
00:45:13,864 --> 00:45:17,184
Why why that to open it up to that room? Why did you choose those words?

508
00:45:17,184 --> 00:45:23,164
because I think it's just so obvious but people don't think about it this way like you know we

509
00:45:23,164 --> 00:45:30,564
like if you were to go back to the time where you had like a landline and you were paying a

510
00:45:30,564 --> 00:45:37,584
dollar a minute for an international call uh and uh and and you would go back to that time with

511
00:45:37,584 --> 00:45:43,884
like modern tools right now like you know it would be obvious that like you would not use that thing

512
00:45:43,884 --> 00:45:49,564
right then you would use what we currently use but if you go back then without like the knowledge of

513
00:45:49,564 --> 00:45:55,324
the value of the network right now and tell people hey you're going to be able to hold a

514
00:45:55,324 --> 00:46:04,964
piece of glass and like talk uh in high quality video uh you know at no cost uh 24 7 like people

515
00:46:04,964 --> 00:46:10,504
would think you're you're crazy and like it's just a leap right and and and we have a little bit of

516
00:46:10,504 --> 00:46:17,244
that right now. It's like no one is sending faxes in the era of the internet. And I think the

517
00:46:17,244 --> 00:46:22,604
equivalent of the way we're sending money is sending faxes. Like, you know, wire transfers,

518
00:46:22,904 --> 00:46:28,244
swift correspondent banking, closed global money movement platforms that front liquidity of their

519
00:46:28,244 --> 00:46:33,424
own or their clients to fake real-time money movement. It's crazy. It's like, you know,

520
00:46:33,424 --> 00:46:40,364
we call wire transfers wires because in 1871, that's the first time that actually money was

521
00:46:40,364 --> 00:46:42,924
across two copper pair of wires,

522
00:46:43,184 --> 00:46:46,084
like with Western Union being the telegraph operator.

523
00:46:46,524 --> 00:46:49,344
This is 1871, and we still call them wires.

524
00:46:49,584 --> 00:46:52,324
And actually, when you look at the way that money moves

525
00:46:52,324 --> 00:46:54,404
through the banking system today,

526
00:46:54,524 --> 00:46:56,524
it hasn't changed all that much.

527
00:46:56,724 --> 00:46:59,084
Like, you know, there is a little bit of automation here and there,

528
00:46:59,164 --> 00:47:01,384
but it's like, you know, to a great extent,

529
00:47:01,504 --> 00:47:03,724
the same process of moving money around the world.

530
00:47:04,764 --> 00:47:07,584
And like when you see the evolution of AI

531
00:47:07,584 --> 00:47:10,024
and you see all of the crazy things,

532
00:47:10,024 --> 00:47:15,024
Like, you know, I live in L.A. and I see Waymos everywhere driving without a driver.

533
00:47:15,664 --> 00:47:18,384
And you're still like sending money that way.

534
00:47:18,424 --> 00:47:19,224
It makes no sense.

535
00:47:19,324 --> 00:47:20,444
It's like it's a massive anomaly.

536
00:47:20,624 --> 00:47:28,424
And so, yes, if the Internet could move money natively, like if you could actually as a developer build a thing that will enable you to send and receive money for others.

537
00:47:28,424 --> 00:47:32,384
And if banks and wallets could do the same, would you use anything else?

538
00:47:32,384 --> 00:47:33,324
Of course you wouldn't.

539
00:47:33,584 --> 00:47:34,824
Like, of course you wouldn't.

540
00:47:34,824 --> 00:47:44,624
And our stipulation is that that thing is Bitcoin, fast, real-time Bitcoin, using Lightning, using Spark.

541
00:47:45,764 --> 00:47:53,104
And the connectivity of that network to all the places where the money is at right now.

542
00:47:53,104 --> 00:47:58,604
So you can enter and exit the network in real-time at a very low cost to use the network.

543
00:47:59,364 --> 00:48:02,764
And now we just have to continue connecting all these things.

544
00:48:02,764 --> 00:48:15,844
I also said, like in my intro, I think of LightSpark and all of us working here as Bitcoin plumbers, which is basically plugging tubes into every payment system so that people can actually get on the network.

545
00:48:16,524 --> 00:48:24,184
And I think once that happens, it's obviously going to be the thing that's going to be used by everyone, not only the few people that we got to right now.

546
00:48:24,244 --> 00:48:26,024
The network effects are going to start playing out.

547
00:48:26,884 --> 00:48:34,264
Well, let's talk a little bit about some of that plumbing work that you guys are doing and connecting some of these different pools of money.

548
00:48:34,264 --> 00:48:45,604
I think, and this obviously relates to banking specifically, banks have obviously, I'm just going to speak broadly here, I'm going to generalize, been slower to understand the benefits of Bitcoin, right?

549
00:48:45,624 --> 00:48:47,344
This is not a controversial statement.

550
00:48:47,424 --> 00:48:48,424
I think it's pretty obvious.

551
00:48:48,424 --> 00:49:01,264
But there are some, you guys are working with one, SoFi, who you guys have now plugged in and made it possible to basically, again, use Bitcoin as the transport layer, give a better, cheaper, faster 24-7 user experience.

552
00:49:01,904 --> 00:49:03,464
And the end user is none the wiser.

553
00:49:03,604 --> 00:49:05,504
They're still just sending money, but they can do it cross-border.

554
00:49:05,644 --> 00:49:06,604
They can do it on a Sunday night.

555
00:49:06,664 --> 00:49:08,684
Can you talk about that integration a little bit?

556
00:49:08,744 --> 00:49:17,684
Because I think, and we spoke about this a little bit in Lugano, but to me, this was just such an interesting application and one where it's like, wow, it just makes sense.

557
00:49:17,684 --> 00:49:24,484
I can imagine there's not going to be as much resistance from the bankers to implementing this because it's just it's better for everyone.

558
00:49:24,744 --> 00:49:28,524
Right. Can you talk about that integration a little bit and kind of how that came to be?

559
00:49:28,524 --> 00:49:34,484
Sure. Yeah. And we power many banks now with with the system and they can connect in a variety of different ways.

560
00:49:34,604 --> 00:49:43,784
I think, you know, in the case of SoFi, you know, you're either an institution that can actually connect natively onto the network.

561
00:49:43,784 --> 00:49:53,284
So you can have a Spark wallet or a Lightning integration that can receive and send Bitcoin and you can convert in and out on behalf of your clients.

562
00:49:53,784 --> 00:49:58,884
That's a certain smaller subset of regulated financial institutions and banks.

563
00:49:59,484 --> 00:50:07,004
And then for the others, and by the way, NewBank is one of those, like 100 million plus customers in Latin America and a bunch of other countries.

564
00:50:07,004 --> 00:50:12,804
like, you know, they have like, they have a Bitcoin buy and sell business. So they have the

565
00:50:12,804 --> 00:50:18,904
capability to actually connect natively onto the network. But in the case of SoFi, and many other

566
00:50:18,904 --> 00:50:24,444
banks, the way that we are onboarding them, we are onboarding them using their domestic real time

567
00:50:24,444 --> 00:50:34,844
payment system. So the way that money travels from SoFi to say, India, or Europe, is that like a SoFi

568
00:50:34,844 --> 00:50:42,864
customer or member as they call them can actually go to their checking account click on pay and

569
00:50:42,864 --> 00:50:47,004
and they can pick a recipient in one of these countries or send them an invite

570
00:50:47,004 --> 00:50:53,764
and they send dollars to say someone in india receiving rupees or someone in europe receiving

571
00:50:53,764 --> 00:50:58,244
euros or someone in mexico receiving mexican peso and so on and so forth and they can see the

572
00:50:58,244 --> 00:51:06,044
exchange rate in real time and you can just move money and um and the way that it works is sofi

573
00:51:06,044 --> 00:51:12,484
we're interconnected with sofi using fed now uh and so fed now is real time 24 7 domestic

574
00:51:12,484 --> 00:51:18,844
and so that allows them to actually send dollars to us in this case we're kind of the switch for

575
00:51:18,844 --> 00:51:24,424
them to get on the network and we're the ones like doing the conversion to bitcoin and the push to

576
00:51:24,424 --> 00:51:30,904
the other side of the world where like if it's in mexico um you know we have a partner there that

577
00:51:30,904 --> 00:51:37,624
can actually take the bitcoin convert to mexican peso and push to the spay network if it's in europe

578
00:51:37,624 --> 00:51:42,824
we now acquired striga which is now light spark europe which has the licensing and a connection

579
00:51:42,824 --> 00:51:49,224
to sepa instance to actually convert the bitcoin to euro and push to a bank account in europe

580
00:51:49,224 --> 00:51:54,984
instantly and so the experience is really a magical experience that actually takes a second to

581
00:51:55,704 --> 00:52:03,704
get to the endpoint 24 7 is super competitive and um and you can do that like you know uh

582
00:52:04,584 --> 00:52:09,944
and no one knows you're using bitcoin and the reason sofi does it is because they can offer

583
00:52:09,944 --> 00:52:14,904
something that their competitors can't offer to their clients they can offer 24 7 real-time fiat

584
00:52:14,904 --> 00:52:34,104
settlements in 60 plus countries at a most competitive rate. And that's a competitive advantage. Like people are opening SoFi accounts just to use that feature and it drives customer adoption. It's a good business to be in. And it just works.

585
00:52:34,104 --> 00:52:43,624
I mean, it's really cool. And I think this, again, I'm sure I'll get some pushback on this,

586
00:52:43,684 --> 00:52:48,764
but I think that people should use, like they should use money how they want to. And I agree

587
00:52:48,764 --> 00:52:52,744
with that from a design principle standpoint, meeting people where they are, right? Because

588
00:52:52,744 --> 00:52:57,604
that's how you're actually going to drive meaningful adoption of network effects and network growth.

589
00:52:57,824 --> 00:53:01,604
It's not by forcing down people's throats, something that they are just purely not ready

590
00:53:01,604 --> 00:53:08,084
for yet. They will be eventually. But to me, this is something that normalizes Bitcoin in a really

591
00:53:08,084 --> 00:53:14,244
widespread way to the point where it becomes, from an attack vector standpoint also,

592
00:53:15,024 --> 00:53:19,164
in my mind, I look at this and I say, well, this is just more and more people who are actually

593
00:53:19,164 --> 00:53:22,904
being onboarded to the Bitcoin network. They just don't know it yet. They're being onboarded,

594
00:53:22,944 --> 00:53:26,844
they're using it, more institutions, more people all around the world. To me, that's a strengthening

595
00:53:26,844 --> 00:53:30,984
function. That's something that's going to make the network more resilient. And it means more

596
00:53:30,984 --> 00:53:36,104
people are ultimately using Bitcoin. They just have no idea it's Bitcoin. Yeah. I mean, and by

597
00:53:36,104 --> 00:53:41,504
exactly. And by the way, we should talk about why we're like in this position of like, we're going

598
00:53:41,504 --> 00:53:46,744
to get a lot of flack for saying that like in the first place. Because we have this in the Bitcoin

599
00:53:46,744 --> 00:53:53,424
community, which is like, no, you're not using it right. My way is the right way. And like, that's

600
00:53:53,424 --> 00:53:57,244
not the way the world works. Like, look, if you want to use it at the by the way, this is the

601
00:53:57,244 --> 00:54:02,024
beauty of an open neutral network it's like you do you you do you like you want to use it in a

602
00:54:02,024 --> 00:54:07,504
certain way that's great uh if you think another company is not doing it right build a better thing

603
00:54:07,504 --> 00:54:13,824
instead of just complaining on x just build a better fucking thing uh and so you know it's it's

604
00:54:13,824 --> 00:54:21,004
wild that we have so many different like dogmatic people that are trying to impose the righteous way

605
00:54:21,004 --> 00:54:28,064
of using the network and are basically throwing shade at other people building something that's

606
00:54:28,064 --> 00:54:33,404
actually being used just because it's not their way. I think it's kind of a kind of it comes with

607
00:54:33,404 --> 00:54:39,204
the territory of building on Bitcoin. But I think it's an issue because I feel like, you know, many

608
00:54:39,204 --> 00:54:45,144
developers, like they got turned off by this. I don't care. Like, you know, I have rhino skin,

609
00:54:45,264 --> 00:54:49,624
so people can just like, you know, complain all the time. I don't really care. It flies over my

610
00:54:49,624 --> 00:54:55,684
head quickly. But I know it chased away a lot of Bitcoin developers that are now building on other

611
00:54:55,684 --> 00:55:01,444
networks because they just don't want to deal with the hate of not doing it the way that some people

612
00:55:01,444 --> 00:55:09,084
think they should be doing things. That's more of a Bitcoin ecosystem conversation. But I picked up

613
00:55:09,084 --> 00:55:12,864
on your comment and I'm like, I have to say something about it. No, I appreciate it. And I

614
00:55:12,864 --> 00:55:17,944
agree with you because I ultimately think like, first of all, I'm a Bitcoin maximalist. And part

615
00:55:17,944 --> 00:55:22,524
of being a Bitcoin maximalist means, in my opinion, because it's just like Bitcoin is

616
00:55:22,524 --> 00:55:26,824
an open protocol, maximalism is an open definition, right? Define how you want. How I define it

617
00:55:26,824 --> 00:55:31,204
is somebody who saves in Bitcoin, spends in Bitcoin, and uses Bitcoin as money and uses

618
00:55:31,204 --> 00:55:33,044
Bitcoin in the network.

619
00:55:33,072 --> 00:55:34,992
That is how I define it personally.

620
00:55:35,872 --> 00:55:37,452
I think that I'm also,

621
00:55:37,592 --> 00:55:40,232
because I truly have embraced the Bitcoin ethos,

622
00:55:40,752 --> 00:55:42,212
I don't think we should tell other people

623
00:55:42,212 --> 00:55:46,092
how or in what way they should use their own money

624
00:55:46,092 --> 00:55:47,992
or interact with e-commerce.

625
00:55:48,692 --> 00:55:50,872
If people want to use gold or tokenized gold,

626
00:55:51,392 --> 00:55:52,232
I'm fine with that.

627
00:55:52,392 --> 00:55:54,132
I don't give a fuck what you want to do.

628
00:55:54,232 --> 00:55:55,032
Do whatever you want.

629
00:55:55,452 --> 00:55:57,292
If there is a product or service out there

630
00:55:57,292 --> 00:55:59,552
that you don't want to use or don't agree with,

631
00:55:59,732 --> 00:56:01,192
don't use it or build something better.

632
00:56:01,192 --> 00:56:10,772
And ultimately, it's like this is part of Bitcoin's entire reason for existence is being able to be a monetary network.

633
00:56:11,212 --> 00:56:13,792
That is what ultimately you're using that as a transport layer.

634
00:56:13,972 --> 00:56:15,752
Like it is an open monetary network.

635
00:56:16,092 --> 00:56:17,132
Yeah, an open monetary network.

636
00:56:17,132 --> 00:56:22,652
Exactly. And so for me, it's like I like seeing these different ways of Bitcoin being used as that monetary network.

637
00:56:22,832 --> 00:56:26,132
Yes, Bitcoin is money. Bitcoin is also a monetary network.

638
00:56:26,452 --> 00:56:28,252
Like those two things are not incompatible.

639
00:56:28,252 --> 00:56:33,252
In fact, they are directly linked and cannot they're inextricably linked, you know.

640
00:56:33,292 --> 00:56:39,692
So it's like for me, I had to put out that caveat for people because I know I know I always get some some flack for certain things.

641
00:56:39,692 --> 00:56:42,032
But I remember I embrace the flack.

642
00:56:42,172 --> 00:56:44,792
I would like to have open, fiery debates.

643
00:56:45,212 --> 00:56:47,912
But like, I think this comes down so much.

644
00:56:47,972 --> 00:56:53,072
Anybody who's designed any sort of product knows that you're not going to have a successful product if you don't meet people where they are.

645
00:56:53,172 --> 00:56:53,552
Exactly.

646
00:56:53,552 --> 00:57:01,192
And if you try to bring them to some place that they are not and bring them to where you want them to be, your product's not going to get used very much.

647
00:57:01,792 --> 00:57:09,952
And sometimes you want to bring them to the place you want them to be for idealistic reasons rather than actually solving the problem of the people you want to serve.

648
00:57:10,772 --> 00:57:12,132
That's our problem.

649
00:57:12,312 --> 00:57:21,192
Like then, you know, it's like everyone's fighting about something that actually has zero consequences because there's like two dogs and a pony using it because you made it so fucking hard.

650
00:57:21,192 --> 00:57:21,432
Right.

651
00:57:21,432 --> 00:57:26,312
It's the same with stable coins, though.

652
00:57:26,412 --> 00:57:28,792
A lot of people have issues broadly with stable coins,

653
00:57:28,972 --> 00:57:31,672
but it's like, where do we see the highest rates of stable coin adoption?

654
00:57:31,832 --> 00:57:32,592
It's not in the USA.

655
00:57:33,172 --> 00:57:34,472
It's in the developing world.

656
00:57:34,792 --> 00:57:37,192
Why do you see the highest rates of stable coin adoption in the developing world?

657
00:57:37,652 --> 00:57:39,312
Because they need it.

658
00:57:39,412 --> 00:57:39,952
It's a problem.

659
00:57:40,192 --> 00:57:41,132
They want dollars.

660
00:57:41,532 --> 00:57:43,952
Some of them want Bitcoin, too, very much so,

661
00:57:44,372 --> 00:57:45,492
but they also want dollars.

662
00:57:46,372 --> 00:57:48,972
Who are you to tell them you're doing it wrong?

663
00:57:48,972 --> 00:57:52,052
Yeah, that's a great example of something that's really interesting.

664
00:57:52,352 --> 00:57:59,072
You can take the stance that people shouldn't use stablecoins because they're fully centralized run by CEOs.

665
00:57:59,452 --> 00:58:01,692
That's actually the way that stablecoins function.

666
00:58:03,112 --> 00:58:07,852
And all of the attempts at doing algorithmic stablecoins and all these things actually failed.

667
00:58:07,952 --> 00:58:10,152
And I don't think it's a thing or it will be a thing.

668
00:58:10,692 --> 00:58:15,272
But so you can either say people shouldn't use stablecoins.

669
00:58:15,272 --> 00:58:19,592
they should only use Bitcoin because actually no one can mess with their Bitcoin.

670
00:58:21,472 --> 00:58:25,032
Or you can say, no, actually people want dollars.

671
00:58:25,652 --> 00:58:33,592
And if you go talk to these people in Argentina, in Venezuela, in Turkey, in Africa,

672
00:58:34,152 --> 00:58:36,772
their dream is to have a dollar-denominated Chase account.

673
00:58:36,992 --> 00:58:38,232
They just can't have it, right?

674
00:58:38,232 --> 00:58:43,992
And so a stablecoin is basically a version of a Chase account in the U.S.

675
00:58:43,992 --> 00:58:49,952
with dollars in a country where they don't have the real thing, right? So you can actually build

676
00:58:49,952 --> 00:58:57,832
a version of a wallet, say on Spark, that has stable coins and Bitcoin. And then you own a

677
00:58:57,832 --> 00:59:04,772
stable coin as like the thing that you're going to use for payments for a stable balance, basically.

678
00:59:05,332 --> 00:59:11,932
But then you could earn yield or rewards in Bitcoin. And so suddenly, you're actually doing

679
00:59:11,932 --> 00:59:17,692
the thing that people want, which is hold dollars. And gradually, you're introducing them to Bitcoin

680
00:59:17,692 --> 00:59:23,792
by giving them small amounts of Bitcoin rewards. And you drop sats or bits or whomever wants to

681
00:59:23,792 --> 00:59:31,872
decide how we call these. And people now, I mean, you know, another thing that's like people have

682
00:59:31,872 --> 00:59:38,572
very strong opinions about, I don't care. But so you drop like small amounts of Bitcoin into these

683
00:59:38,572 --> 00:59:43,832
wallets. And suddenly people are exposed to it. Like Bitcoin appreciates, they care more and more

684
00:59:43,832 --> 00:59:48,252
about it. Some of their transactions are going to become like Bitcoin denominated because they have

685
00:59:48,252 --> 00:59:52,952
a balance. You make the balance between Bitcoin and stablecoin super fungible the way that we can

686
00:59:52,952 --> 01:00:01,672
right now on Spark. And suddenly you have like hyper Bitcoinization by just like actually drafting

687
01:00:01,672 --> 01:00:05,732
behind something that people want, which is the stablecoin instead of fighting it. And I think,

688
01:00:05,732 --> 01:00:10,312
that's the way I think about this particular topic

689
01:00:10,312 --> 01:00:12,812
and how we're thinking about it in terms of enabling

690
01:00:12,812 --> 01:00:17,752
really super solid use cases using stablecoins and Bitcoin

691
01:00:17,752 --> 01:00:18,492
on top of Spark.

692
01:00:19,612 --> 01:00:23,872
An example of just what you're talking about

693
01:00:23,872 --> 01:00:26,992
obviously outside of Spark, but just to give a shout out to a wallet

694
01:00:26,992 --> 01:00:30,732
I like the Aqua Wallet. It's nice, it's got your

695
01:00:30,732 --> 01:00:34,552
USDT on Liquid, so again it's not on Tron

696
01:00:34,552 --> 01:00:37,032
It's not on Polygon or one of these.

697
01:00:37,152 --> 01:00:38,152
It's on Liquid.

698
01:00:38,312 --> 01:00:43,052
So it's a Bitcoin sidechain federation, L2, however you want to call it.

699
01:00:43,092 --> 01:00:45,552
I know there's debates about whether it's a sidechain or L2.

700
01:00:46,352 --> 01:00:47,832
But again, semantics.

701
01:00:48,212 --> 01:00:50,252
But that's a great experience to be able to have that.

702
01:00:50,572 --> 01:00:53,172
And it's a wallet that I personally use.

703
01:00:53,512 --> 01:01:00,552
And I'm curious, based on what you guys are enabling and the fact that all of Spark,

704
01:01:01,212 --> 01:01:03,352
obviously it's a protocol, so that's all open source.

705
01:01:03,352 --> 01:01:05,792
are you guys building pretty much out in the open

706
01:01:05,792 --> 01:01:07,232
on a full open source standard?

707
01:01:07,712 --> 01:01:07,852
Yeah.

708
01:01:08,512 --> 01:01:09,052
That's awesome.

709
01:01:09,292 --> 01:01:12,272
Spark is fully open sourced

710
01:01:12,272 --> 01:01:15,432
and we have a bunch of contributions

711
01:01:15,432 --> 01:01:17,652
from many developers.

712
01:01:18,432 --> 01:01:20,312
There's huge chunks of Spark

713
01:01:20,312 --> 01:01:21,912
that are being developed by other companies.

714
01:01:22,192 --> 01:01:32,230
We talked about Breeze earlier Breeze has developed a really cool SDK for developers and many many wallets are using it because it so easy to build on top of

715
01:01:32,830 --> 01:01:44,690
So, you know, many, many other like, you know, FlashNet builds like the AMM, one of the AMMs, the first one on top of Spark that allows you to swap between different assets and Bitcoin.

716
01:01:44,870 --> 01:01:51,130
So you can swap between stablecoin and Bitcoin and back or any of the other tokens that could be issued on top of the network.

717
01:01:51,130 --> 01:02:00,110
So there's lots of building blocks that are being built, not by us, like by the overall community and ecosystem that's like developing around the network.

718
01:02:00,330 --> 01:02:02,150
And that's been amazing, actually.

719
01:02:03,510 --> 01:02:12,810
What do you think about just in terms of wallet experience or ways of interacting with the Bitcoin or stable coins or whatever on top of Spark?

720
01:02:14,070 --> 01:02:18,770
How do you think about it in terms of like, you know, do we just need a massive wallet proliferation?

721
01:02:18,770 --> 01:02:20,690
You want to see a million wallets bloom?

722
01:02:21,130 --> 01:02:23,970
Do you see this as more of a rise of embedded wallets?

723
01:02:24,110 --> 01:02:27,330
So you have whatever, like Rumble, for example,

724
01:02:27,330 --> 01:02:31,350
they're building out their own wallet that's going to have Bitcoin, USDT.

725
01:02:31,890 --> 01:02:32,210
And Spark.

726
01:02:32,210 --> 01:02:33,250
WDK has this.

727
01:02:33,670 --> 01:02:36,470
WDK supports Spark,

728
01:02:36,570 --> 01:02:38,510
and that's the way that they integrate with Lightning, actually.

729
01:02:38,670 --> 01:02:43,850
That's like the Lightning gateway to the Rumble wallet is via WDK Spark.

730
01:02:44,590 --> 01:02:45,770
See, that's awesome.

731
01:02:45,850 --> 01:02:48,950
And I'm curious, I mean, do you see that, like the embedded wallets?

732
01:02:48,950 --> 01:02:51,150
I guess you could call that an embedded wallet, right?

733
01:02:51,190 --> 01:02:55,450
It's something that's inside another platform being used within there,

734
01:02:55,550 --> 01:02:58,570
but it's also interoperable with the rest of the open monetary network.

735
01:02:58,670 --> 01:03:00,450
Is that where you think we're kind of going with this?

736
01:03:00,590 --> 01:03:03,890
Or how do you look at sort of the future of wallet proliferation more broadly?

737
01:03:04,550 --> 01:03:06,830
Yeah, I think embedded wallets are going to be massive.

738
01:03:07,890 --> 01:03:10,390
And, you know, we're already in WDK.

739
01:03:10,590 --> 01:03:12,170
We're already working with Privy.

740
01:03:12,170 --> 01:03:16,730
and Privy is doing a really good job

741
01:03:16,730 --> 01:03:18,830
at building those embedded wallets

742
01:03:18,830 --> 01:03:20,530
into third-party experiences.

743
01:03:21,490 --> 01:03:23,510
I think you're going to see more and more of that.

744
01:03:23,750 --> 01:03:28,210
There's this UK bank that's really interesting.

745
01:03:28,970 --> 01:03:32,890
They're called D-Block or D-E-B-L-O-C-K, D-Block.

746
01:03:33,990 --> 01:03:35,490
And basically what they do is

747
01:03:35,490 --> 01:03:37,270
they have one side of their business

748
01:03:37,270 --> 01:03:40,610
that's actually a normal bank type of thing

749
01:03:40,610 --> 01:03:43,370
where it's all fiat denominated.

750
01:03:43,630 --> 01:03:47,090
You can borrow and have a credit card and do all these things.

751
01:03:47,870 --> 01:03:50,190
But then they have what I call, they probably don't call it that,

752
01:03:50,290 --> 01:03:56,270
but they have like a self-custody sidecar that they attach to it

753
01:03:56,270 --> 01:03:58,810
where they can do all kinds of DeFi-related stuff.

754
01:03:59,930 --> 01:04:03,450
And so we power that side with Spark, for instance.

755
01:04:03,450 --> 01:04:10,410
And so you can actually move from GBP bank account to Bitcoin

756
01:04:10,410 --> 01:04:12,110
but the Bitcoin is not on their balance sheet.

757
01:04:12,270 --> 01:04:13,430
It's actually in a Spark wallet.

758
01:04:14,430 --> 01:04:16,870
And you can move between those balances in real time.

759
01:04:16,990 --> 01:04:19,770
You can borrow against your Bitcoin or other assets

760
01:04:19,770 --> 01:04:23,290
that are on your self-custodial wallet in your main bank account

761
01:04:23,290 --> 01:04:25,270
and use all of the normal payment trails, etc.

762
01:04:25,370 --> 01:04:27,610
So I think those hybrid experiences

763
01:04:27,610 --> 01:04:30,570
that are going to enable more and more players

764
01:04:30,570 --> 01:04:34,830
to touch Bitcoin and overall digital assets

765
01:04:34,830 --> 01:04:38,170
without actually having the burden of running

766
01:04:38,170 --> 01:04:44,970
a super cumbersome regulated business is going to be huge, huge.

767
01:04:45,230 --> 01:04:48,070
Like, and it can be for anything, right?

768
01:04:48,110 --> 01:04:54,450
It can be like I'm target right now and I want to offer the ability for people to convert

769
01:04:54,450 --> 01:04:58,250
their target points into Bitcoin as a new way for them to have a sync for their points

770
01:04:58,250 --> 01:05:00,850
that are basically held on their balance sheet.

771
01:05:01,270 --> 01:05:02,390
You can do that right now.

772
01:05:02,390 --> 01:05:08,210
You can actually totally spin up a Spark wallet for every single Red Card member.

773
01:05:08,590 --> 01:05:08,850
I don't know.

774
01:05:08,910 --> 01:05:10,090
I'm just making this up, by the way.

775
01:05:10,450 --> 01:05:11,970
But you could do that.

776
01:05:12,130 --> 01:05:13,990
I might go call them after this thing.

777
01:05:14,650 --> 01:05:16,990
But you can do that, right?

778
01:05:17,230 --> 01:05:19,110
And why not, right?

779
01:05:19,170 --> 01:05:23,210
It's like the friction for you to create that experience is minimal.

780
01:05:23,830 --> 01:05:29,390
You don't have to run a set of regulated entities and all of that to do it.

781
01:05:29,430 --> 01:05:31,710
And you can provide people a lot of value.

782
01:05:31,710 --> 01:05:43,150
And I think that's a great way for Bitcoin to get in the hands of many, many more millions of people is really receiving it, receiving small bits of it here and there and starting to be exposed to it.

783
01:05:44,150 --> 01:05:52,890
It's one of the reasons I've been really happy to see the uptick in Bitcoin rewards credit cards, just because it's a product I wanted.

784
01:05:53,150 --> 01:05:56,670
Like I used the BlockFi one before BlockFi went belly up.

785
01:05:56,830 --> 01:05:59,190
I lost some of my reward points in there.

786
01:05:59,190 --> 01:06:02,970
I was pretty good about taking them out, but I lost a few sats in there.

787
01:06:03,590 --> 01:06:06,450
But that was a product that was really, really popular.

788
01:06:06,830 --> 01:06:08,530
And clearly it is still popular.

789
01:06:08,650 --> 01:06:09,490
People still want that.

790
01:06:09,590 --> 01:06:11,610
You've seen between Coinbase and Gemini.

791
01:06:12,030 --> 01:06:14,030
I know Fold still has one on the horizon as well.

792
01:06:14,610 --> 01:06:15,870
This is a product that people want.

793
01:06:15,930 --> 01:06:20,250
People want to be able to get rewarded in something that is the hardest money that's ever existed.

794
01:06:20,250 --> 01:06:26,770
And it's awesome to see because unlike rewards points, which they can just kind of, I mean, rewards points are like fiat on top of fiat, right?

795
01:06:26,770 --> 01:06:32,530
They can print as many airline miles as they want at the drop of a hat, but they can't print more Bitcoins.

796
01:06:32,750 --> 01:06:34,550
I love that experience.

797
01:06:34,550 --> 01:06:41,770
Yeah, we just launched this week with Lolly, which is this actual Bitcoin reward company.

798
01:06:42,890 --> 01:06:49,050
And so you can use their Chrome extension or their app.

799
01:06:49,130 --> 01:06:54,830
And basically, when you're shopping, they enable you to earn Bitcoin, basically.

800
01:06:54,830 --> 01:06:58,270
that are dropped now in the Spark wallet for the benefit of their customers.

801
01:06:58,570 --> 01:06:59,990
So it's a really cool experience.

802
01:07:00,370 --> 01:07:02,730
The other thing that's like you couldn't do that before

803
01:07:02,730 --> 01:07:04,630
because if you're trying to do that on L1,

804
01:07:05,170 --> 01:07:08,210
like there's no instant gratification of you like tapping a card

805
01:07:08,210 --> 01:07:10,510
or doing an action and receiving Bitcoin in real time.

806
01:07:10,590 --> 01:07:12,890
You can't like actually do that on L1 for all the reasons

807
01:07:12,890 --> 01:07:14,930
that I don't need to explain on here.

808
01:07:16,010 --> 01:07:26,528
And you can do it on Lightning because you can spin up a wallet for someone and send Bitcoin to it instantly because of the channel and you know the liquidity that you need in front of the channel

809
01:07:27,148 --> 01:07:28,608
So you couldn't do that on Lightning.

810
01:07:28,848 --> 01:07:38,408
So now that Spark doesn't need channels to do that and you can spin up if you want billions of Spark wallets and push Bitcoin to it in real time at virtually no cost.

811
01:07:38,508 --> 01:07:41,768
Like we were seeing an explosion of that and we're just getting started.

812
01:07:41,968 --> 01:07:43,908
Like Spark is maybe six, seven months old.

813
01:07:43,908 --> 01:07:53,268
And so since we like timidly launched it and made that beta and we had so much more work to do to get it to where it is today.

814
01:07:53,868 --> 01:07:56,428
But so like we're just at the very beginning of this.

815
01:07:56,528 --> 01:08:02,368
But now you can and it's unlocked all of these use cases that I think we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg for.

816
01:08:03,468 --> 01:08:12,868
Can I ask, and if this gets too technical, forgive me, but I'm just I am curious for the people out there who are wondering,

817
01:08:12,868 --> 01:08:18,488
okay like how are you able to do this on spark without the channels like light i think even

818
01:08:18,488 --> 01:08:22,888
people who are roughly familiar with lightning know about channels even if they've only interacted

819
01:08:22,888 --> 01:08:27,368
with lightning through custodial lightning which custodial lightning wallets are pretty darn good

820
01:08:27,368 --> 01:08:33,448
right yeah they work great they've got big fat channels open it works if you've tried to like i

821
01:08:33,448 --> 01:08:40,508
set up a raspi blitz back in 20 uh 21 i think or and that was i mean that was my first time using

822
01:08:40,508 --> 01:08:43,828
like, you know, opening the terminal window and doing command line. And I got it set up.

823
01:08:44,188 --> 01:08:47,848
I think I ended up losing some stats in there. I don't know, because the thing fried out of me.

824
01:08:48,008 --> 01:08:52,308
And it was a learning experience, though, but it was a terrible experience trying to manage that.

825
01:08:52,648 --> 01:08:57,248
Yeah. But so how does that work for you guys? How were you able to get around that aspect of it?

826
01:08:57,248 --> 01:09:06,328
No. So, I mean, basically what what what Spark is, is that it's basically a state chain.

827
01:09:06,328 --> 01:09:23,788
And so what happens is like when you start moving Bitcoin in and out of Spark, you create like leaves of you borrow leaves of sats basically that are that exist.

828
01:09:23,948 --> 01:09:29,808
Right. And you reassemble them through cryptographic primitives on the other side.

829
01:09:29,808 --> 01:09:33,828
So it enables you to actually have a lot of scalability on top of a layer two.

830
01:09:33,828 --> 01:09:46,308
And then the backward compatibility to Lightning happens through something that we call an SSP or a Spark service provider that basically does atomic swaps between Spark and Lightning.

831
01:09:47,208 --> 01:09:53,948
And that allows you to actually fulfill, like basically just like pay a Lightning invoice from Spark.

832
01:09:54,628 --> 01:09:59,508
And for that, you need an SSP that actually does those atomic swaps for you.

833
01:09:59,508 --> 01:10:08,268
But if you're spark to spark, you're basically moving around small leaves of sats between owner A and owner B.

834
01:10:09,568 --> 01:10:22,928
And you do it with what I call a maximally trustless way of doing that, given the circumstances and limitations we have.

835
01:10:22,928 --> 01:10:27,108
which means that the only case where you have a trust assumption that actually

836
01:10:27,108 --> 01:10:33,128
will actually get you in potential trouble if you're really paranoid is actually if the previous

837
01:10:33,128 --> 01:10:38,988
the sender of the funds to you the previous owner of the funds colludes with all of the spark

838
01:10:38,988 --> 01:10:45,048
operators that are malicious if one actually behaves and forgets the the key after a transmission

839
01:10:45,048 --> 01:10:51,328
then there's just no way for anyone to actually steal your funds like and and that only happens

840
01:10:51,328 --> 01:10:55,908
at the time of transmission, not when you have your balance staying put.

841
01:10:56,488 --> 01:10:59,288
And so the trust assumptions are actually really quite good.

842
01:10:59,288 --> 01:11:06,508
I mean, in my opinion, sufficient for 99% of the people who want to just use a very

843
01:11:06,508 --> 01:11:10,968
fast transactional high utility network to move Bitcoin and stablecoins on top of Bitcoin.

844
01:11:11,948 --> 01:11:14,388
It has unilateral exits to L1.

845
01:11:14,648 --> 01:11:20,988
So you can at any time pull that ripcord and get your funds on L1 without anyone having

846
01:11:20,988 --> 01:11:26,888
the ability to stop you. So that enables the network to actually inherit a lot of the trust

847
01:11:26,888 --> 01:11:34,408
assumptions of Bitcoin L1, which is huge. And so I think we hit the right sweet spot between

848
01:11:34,408 --> 01:11:44,708
the max trustlessness we can get on a network like this with unilateral exits and all of the

849
01:11:44,708 --> 01:11:49,908
cryptography and the way that we've deployed it across the Spark operators and the way that the

850
01:11:49,908 --> 01:11:54,928
network operates. But more importantly, max utility, because now you can move Bitcoin in real

851
01:11:54,928 --> 01:11:58,848
time at virtually no cost. You can spin up billions of wallets. You can issue stable coins.

852
01:11:58,848 --> 01:12:05,528
You can move stable coins at virtually no cost. And you can also benefit from all of the

853
01:12:05,528 --> 01:12:10,608
connectivity we have with Grid on the other side of the business that gives people on and off ramps

854
01:12:10,608 --> 01:12:17,068
in 65 countries onto the network. So the combo is really super valuable for developers trying to

855
01:12:17,068 --> 01:12:23,428
build really great consumer experiences using Bitcoin. Do you have a personal, and I don't want

856
01:12:23,428 --> 01:12:27,388
you to play favorites here, but I'm curious, do you have a personal favorite implementation

857
01:12:27,388 --> 01:12:32,608
of Spark in a wallet that someone has done? Is there one where you're like, that's really nice,

858
01:12:32,708 --> 01:12:39,948
that is like my number one? So there's lots of those out there that I really like. I think

859
01:12:39,948 --> 01:12:47,328
actually the demo we did we did a demo the other day for this like um this stable coin to square

860
01:12:47,328 --> 01:12:56,588
terminal uh cash out and uh alex uh who's running design uh on our team here for spark uh actually

861
01:12:56,588 --> 01:13:03,248
vibe coded a wallet using the breeze sdk i think that one might be our our my favorite wallet i

862
01:13:03,248 --> 01:13:07,828
think it's like really well designed and and so maybe we'll open source it so everyone can actually

863
01:13:07,828 --> 01:13:24,086
use it That like a discussion we had yesterday So maybe we do that But look there are plenty of really good wallets on Bitcoin that are using Spark right now So Xverse that is the largest wallet for all the

864
01:13:24,086 --> 01:13:28,866
Bitcoin DeFi stuff is running on Spark and has done a really good job at implementing Spark and

865
01:13:28,866 --> 01:13:36,446
all of the tokens. I think on the using Spark for Lightning implementation, wallet of Satoshi

866
01:13:36,446 --> 01:13:42,086
is using Spark and has done a really good job at providing a super delightful, fast experience

867
01:13:42,086 --> 01:13:47,726
for people wanting to move Bitcoin on the Lightning Network using Spark. And it's one of my favorites

868
01:13:47,726 --> 01:13:54,986
as well. I think the work that Breeze has done on the SDK, the app, etc. is like actually really

869
01:13:54,986 --> 01:14:01,786
solid as well. And then there's a bunch of others like there's like SatGo Terminal for like people

870
01:14:01,786 --> 01:14:08,646
who want to actually go and trade tokens on top of Spark.

871
01:14:09,586 --> 01:14:11,506
There's the BitBit wallet for tipping

872
01:14:11,506 --> 01:14:15,886
and all kinds of other things that I think is pretty neat.

873
01:14:16,006 --> 01:14:17,286
So there's like so many.

874
01:14:18,866 --> 01:14:21,806
I mean, it's nice to see that proliferation, right?

875
01:14:22,466 --> 01:14:24,206
It's all about optionality, right?

876
01:14:24,566 --> 01:14:26,126
You want people to have options.

877
01:14:26,486 --> 01:14:27,466
Yeah, yeah.

878
01:14:28,606 --> 01:14:30,366
Well, Dave, I want to be conscious of your time here

879
01:14:30,366 --> 01:14:31,186
because we're kind of running up

880
01:14:31,186 --> 01:14:33,666
and I don't want to get you out of here as agreed.

881
01:14:34,026 --> 01:14:36,026
I do want to ask you, but just before we close out,

882
01:14:36,066 --> 01:14:38,406
maybe we've covered a lot of things today.

883
01:14:38,466 --> 01:14:40,046
I think the work that you guys are doing is really cool.

884
01:14:40,906 --> 01:14:43,526
I'm curious, just broadly zooming out a little bit,

885
01:14:44,646 --> 01:14:47,306
where do you think we're actually at for Bitcoin adoption?

886
01:14:47,606 --> 01:14:48,906
Do you think Bitcoin adoption follows

887
01:14:48,906 --> 01:14:51,086
the same technology S-curve as other things?

888
01:14:51,086 --> 01:14:54,946
We like to put these different other labels on it

889
01:14:54,946 --> 01:14:56,326
or make it analogous to other things.

890
01:14:56,606 --> 01:14:58,046
Do you think it behaves that same way

891
01:14:58,046 --> 01:14:59,106
or do you think it's something different?

892
01:14:59,106 --> 01:15:01,986
where do you think we're at more broadly in terms of adoption?

893
01:15:01,986 --> 01:15:06,786
So for me, I think of adoption in different ways, like we discussed. I think there's

894
01:15:06,786 --> 01:15:12,226
like the consumers being exposed to Bitcoin. And then there's like using the network to move money

895
01:15:12,226 --> 01:15:19,666
around the world. On the latter, I think within the next 10 years, maybe seven,

896
01:15:22,226 --> 01:15:27,746
most of the money in the world, most of the global money movement will happen on top of Bitcoin. I

897
01:15:27,746 --> 01:15:31,866
I think that's within a decade, if not less.

898
01:15:34,166 --> 01:15:35,766
So I'm very bullish on that.

899
01:15:35,826 --> 01:15:40,206
Otherwise, I wouldn't be building LightSpark because that's what we're dedicating the company to.

900
01:15:40,206 --> 01:15:52,206
And I think on the former, it's more of a question of how bad do certain countries mess their own monetary policy, currencies, etc.?

901
01:15:52,206 --> 01:15:56,466
How bad are some of them doing it and how soon?

902
01:15:56,466 --> 01:15:59,006
that's like outside of our control.

903
01:16:00,406 --> 01:16:05,006
And then how successful are we collectively

904
01:16:05,006 --> 01:16:09,806
at giving a taste of Bitcoin to billions of people

905
01:16:09,806 --> 01:16:13,106
by, you know, doing really great like rewards program,

906
01:16:13,526 --> 01:16:15,826
like, you know, dropping Bitcoin here and there

907
01:16:15,826 --> 01:16:21,566
in parts of user experiences that are unexpected

908
01:16:21,566 --> 01:16:23,266
and then people start learning about it,

909
01:16:23,346 --> 01:16:25,766
caring about it and owning it.

910
01:16:26,466 --> 01:16:29,926
So yeah, I think that really depends.

911
01:16:31,926 --> 01:16:36,186
And the two are, of course, accelerating one another, right?

912
01:16:36,266 --> 01:16:40,506
It's like if you have a bunch of people that get a bunch of Bitcoin rewards on self-custody wallets

913
01:16:40,506 --> 01:16:44,466
for buying something or completing a level in a game or whatever it is,

914
01:16:44,806 --> 01:16:48,826
and then their government is messing things up on their monetary policy,

915
01:16:48,966 --> 01:16:51,526
then they're going to really care much faster.

916
01:16:52,326 --> 01:16:56,046
So some things are in our hands, and I tend to focus on these things,

917
01:16:56,046 --> 01:17:02,926
which is like build great products and really great experiences and great capabilities that solve real world problems with Bitcoin.

918
01:17:03,366 --> 01:17:06,986
And then, you know, generate adoption that way.

919
01:17:07,086 --> 01:17:10,306
And then for the messing up part, I'll leave that to others.

920
01:17:11,166 --> 01:17:14,686
Yeah, they're doing a great job of that part, luckily.

921
01:17:15,266 --> 01:17:17,686
Well, David, I really appreciate you sharing your time.

922
01:17:17,766 --> 01:17:19,406
This was a fascinating conversation.

923
01:17:19,986 --> 01:17:28,286
Maybe I would just ask you, where would you want to send people who are interested in either building on some of the tools that you guys have or utilizing this?

924
01:17:28,466 --> 01:17:30,206
Any resources that you guys have that you want to share?

925
01:17:30,306 --> 01:17:31,106
I can link them in the show notes.

926
01:17:31,106 --> 01:17:31,546
Yeah, for sure.

927
01:17:31,706 --> 01:17:37,466
So if you want to learn more about Spark and building wallets and experiences on Spark and all of these things, spark.money.

928
01:17:38,246 --> 01:17:49,386
And if you want to build the global money movement apps and all kinds of other things, leveraging the on and off ramps and all the capabilities that we built with payment systems, go to lightspark.com.

929
01:17:49,406 --> 01:17:53,186
Easy enough. Well, David, thank you so much for your time.

930
01:17:53,506 --> 01:17:57,766
I really appreciate it. And yeah, hopefully we can do it in person for another fireside chat at some point.

931
01:17:57,846 --> 01:18:01,266
But it was great seeing you today. Great to see you, too. Thank you.

932
01:18:08,766 --> 01:18:13,506
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.

933
01:18:14,226 --> 01:18:18,126
Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening

934
01:18:18,126 --> 01:18:22,446
and share it with your friends, family, and strangers on the internet.

935
01:18:22,806 --> 01:18:25,826
Find me on Noster at primal.net slash walker

936
01:18:25,826 --> 01:18:29,126
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937
01:18:29,546 --> 01:18:32,986
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938
01:18:32,986 --> 01:18:37,846
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939
01:18:37,986 --> 01:18:40,526
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940
01:18:40,526 --> 01:18:45,326
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941
01:18:45,326 --> 01:18:49,126
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942
01:18:49,466 --> 01:18:53,006
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943
01:18:53,506 --> 01:18:58,346
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944
01:18:59,206 --> 01:19:01,666
Until next time, stay free.