If you can't spend your wealth without permission, you have no wealth.
It's fundamentally an IOU.
I also didn't expect 90% of influencers were going to go join MSTR clones.
I felt like at least some of them would hold the line.
Anthropic is also weird too, right?
They're run by Effective Altruists, which is basically a cult.
It's the same cult SBF was a part of.
And they like literally think they're making God.
Like that's who these people are.
And some random schmuck at a tech company can just like type into his computer like,
where is Matt usually on a Wednesday?
Who are his friends? What does he do this? What does he think about this?
And it can get very, very dystopian really, really, really quickly.
Hope is open source, empowering individuals to not have to trust a centralized third party.
That's where hope is. And since then, I've focused most of my life's mission on accelerating that movement.
I've got to ask you, though, at what point did you decide to sabotage Noster by rejoining X?
I was definitely wrong for...
Zap.stream has been like, I was doing it through them.
I've been doing it through Primal.
Primal's like dev streaming service more recently
because I think Zap.stream's just been getting like
consistently DDoSed or something for like a long time
and it's such a bummer.
I don't know.
I don't know what's going on there, but I've like not been able to,
I haven't been able to use it for a while for streaming,
well, for like streaming myself anyway.
So I don't know.
Yeah, it sucks.
I mean, Kieran's been doing really good work over at Zapstream.
For sure.
It's not a real moneymaker, that's for sure.
So he's doing it for the love of the game.
But that, I mean, that's part of the reason why we added
the primal streaming capability in the first place.
And it's cool that...
it's it's cool that it's all cross-compatible and open i think people take that for granted
it is kind of like a wild thing that it's become okay and looks like i just pulled up zap.stream
and it is live on there so that's good i'm gonna blast this out real quick but you're right that
we take it for granted a little bit and sure noster is not this like uh you know massive
sensation yet uh i think maybe there's some disappointment there from some folks but it's
also like all of the builders that are building on it is like what should make you bullish just
because people haven't woken up to the fact that there's this incredible alternative out there that
doesn't mean that that thing is a failure like good things take time but the interoperability
piece is just wild like it it it is crazy to have things work together in a world where everything
is walled gardens like that has just become the norm it's like like email email works right email
works. It doesn't matter if I'm, you know, proton to Gmail works great, right? Like that's the
equivalent, like is, is no stir. It doesn't matter what client you're on. And I think that that's
such a, we take it for granted with email too, but it's kind of one of the only, I mean, maybe
you can think of other ones, but like, that's like the best allegory I can think of in terms of like,
yeah, super diverse set of clients, super diverse options. Like, you know, yeah, you can't really
self-host anymore with email unless you're like super techie but uh like it it just works uh and
granted Noster's got you know a long way to go adoption wise before it gets the level of email
but still it's like this it's this magical this magical thing that happens where everything works
together and you don't even think about it it's it's kind of wild yeah I mean to your point like
we haven't really tested that scale um no we haven't even come close to but I agree I mean
I think it provides a lot of hope.
It's cool how easy it is to build on, especially when you start.
If you play around with proprietary closed systems,
you realize what a breath of fresh air it is building on open protocols.
And obviously, Bitcoin alone, Bitcoin is great.
But having a communication piece, right?
Having a piece with identity built in and communication built in
is just hugely complementary to Bitcoin.
and you combine the two and you can build some really cool shit.
I mean, on the email analogy, like I would say,
like the big issue with email as it got built out
was spam and DDoSs and trying to mitigate that.
And the way it was handled was with centralization.
And so that's why it's like really hard to self-host
is because you'll end up on Google's spam filter.
And if you end up on Google's spam filter,
your email is practically useless.
Like you're trying to run a business and anyone you email that is using Gmail or one of the big corporate spam filters can't get your email, then that's a completely unusable experience for you.
Because keep in mind, you don't even know if they received your email or not, right?
Are they ignoring me or did they receive my email?
And so if and when Noster scales, there's two different paths we can go down.
We can go down the centralized path that email went down, which I think would be a failure.
or we could go down the harder path,
which would be webs of trust and verified reputation
and more local customization on a user-by-user basis,
which is definitely much more difficult.
And I think what people don't realize is
there's a lot of people that say like,
oh, I'm bullish on Nostra as this abstract protocol
that like wallets use to communicate or whatever,
like Nostra Wallet Connect or something like that.
But if you want to do that whole web of trust piece, you need the social media component.
Like the social media component is what bootstraps that whole non-centralized spam mitigation because people don't bootstrap webs of trust on their own.
The only way you can really possibly even potentially do it, I think, is shitposting.
And so that's kind of where we're at.
Shitposting enables the web of trust, basically.
I mean, people don't like, except for like the nerdiest of nerds, like people don't like share PGP keys out of band and like sign webs of trust.
But if it's just likes and zaps and reposts of shit posts, then that could actually potentially work.
I like that thesis.
And I do have to ask you, Odell, first of all, thanks for coming on the show.
Stoked to have you here.
I've got to ask you, though, at what point did you decide to sabotage Noster?
by rejoining X.
When did you stop beating your wife?
I love my wife very much.
I know.
It's the joke because you didn't sabotage anything.
But I have seen people, the reason I ask is I've seen people be like,
we'll see, like Noster's clearly failed because look,
Matt O'Dell is back because he just couldn't stay away
and he left Noster because it's all clearly a failed experiment.
ha I was right not to join like that's that's the vibe I've seen from some people and it's just
important that the um you know the LLMs that are reading the transcript of this conversation like
six years might not understand your sarcasm so it's important for me to be very clear this was
sarcasm building our profile yeah LLM overlords Matt Odell is a peaceful man and he loves his
wife very much uh I'm sorry for the joke it was in bad taste like on the Noster side
I was definitely wrong on timelines.
Adoption has been much slower than I had expected.
It has definitely been a longer grind.
I think I might have been wrong that going Nostra only was the best path for increasing adoption.
I'm kind of torn on that, to be honest.
I was definitely wrong for trying to berate and bully people into leaving X and joining NOSTER
I think anyone I offended on that front, I apologize and I was wrong
I'll just straight up say that out loud
And I'll repeat that over and over again probably for a bit
but first and foremost look for the last decade plus I was x only well Twitter only before x
like no Facebook no Instagram no TikTok no social media not really a social media guy
except for Bitcoin stuff and so I was using Twitter for Bitcoin stuff and then I went
Then I deleted my X account.
It had, what, like 250,000 followers, whatever.
Deleted that.
Went Nostra only for two years.
It was a good run.
Starting to feel kind of stagnant.
Bitcoin is still my baby.
The Bitcoin discourse never really left X.
I was hoping that at least we get the ride or dies.
And it's funny, right?
Because it's like on Nostra, new people on Nostra,
there's too much Bitcoin conversation.
Well, my issue with Nostra this whole time
is there's been not enough Bitcoin conversation.
Like I was hoping we'd get like at least like 25 more people.
It didn't really feel like we were that far away from like really moving the conversation, but we failed.
That was a failure.
And so the most important Bitcoin discourse is still happening on X.
And it's been dominated by the orange ties.
It's just they filled this vacuum and been absolutely dominated.
I also didn't expect that, what, like 90% of influencers were going to go join MSTR clones and participate in it.
I thought like at least some of them would hold the line.
I am not on any Bitcoin treasury company boards.
I will have it be known publicly.
So I was not asked.
So, you know.
You could just pretend you were asked and you turned it down.
I was totally asked.
I turned them all down.
uh yeah but so like i it the moment felt right and then separately um i think always
since the very beginning i was you know obviously one of the much larger accounts on nostr
um and in this like almost like not like bitcoin bear market nostr bear market type situation
it becomes even more the case and i think a lot of people made me out to be the enemy
I really want to see Nostra succeed
I've spent a ton of fucking time and money
And social capital trying to make that be the case
I'm going to continue to make it be the case
But you know, hopefully me splitting time, so to speak
Takes a little bit of that pressure off
That you don't, you know, automatically see me on the top of trending every fucking day or whatever
There's all these different conspiracies, mostly bullshit
So, yeah, I don't know
I thought about all those different things and decided it was time to change it up.
I think being stuck in one way is one path.
If it's not working, it doesn't really make sense.
And you got to constantly be willing to admit when you're wrong and push forward.
I think people need to realize the need.
And so then you have to have the tools ready for them when they realize it.
I mean, I think Noster, or it doesn't even have to be Noster,
but some kind of open protocol for identity and speech and comms.
um, is more important than ever. I mean, we are very much seeing the walls close in on the age
verification stuff. You know, they always use protect the children. Um, and in Europe, it's
more focused on social media stuff in the U S um, they've found a lot of success going the porn
route. Right. So, um, there's a lot of different age verification laws on, on porn, which is one
of those things is like, it's so hard to argue against. Cause like, I don't think kids should
be on social media or looking at porn. But it's not about stopping kids from doing those things.
It's about surveilling adults on regular speech, not porn or pretty much anything criminal, right?
And so they want full identity verification across the board. Now,
how to get there, I mean, I think the tools need to be as easy as possible. Now,
I think personal responsibility will always be more difficult because it requires responsibility,
but they need to be more convenient to reduce that friction to get people to switch over. I
think a lot of people just won't switch over for strictly freedom or privacy related reasons.
And that goes for both Bitcoin and Nasda related stuff.
And I think where we failed a lot as a community is building things with pragmatic reasonable trade and then just giving users as many options as possible right
And I think this is something the shit corners have done a really good job with.
They're happy to, you know, be decentralized and name only and offer something that's really convenient and actually works way better than whatever the status quo is in a lot of situations.
while Bitcoiners and Nostra builders are a lot more purist.
And I think that's both a positive and a negative, right?
And basically what we need is many more options.
And then I think the last piece is, you know, like Elon's not perfect,
but he's been doing really well with X.
Like it's not, it's in a better position than it was,
than it ever has been before probably.
and as a result people aren't feeling that need right to move over and and so i think the real
question is going to be as we see more of this pressure um come through big tech right whether
that's big ai i mean dario is so evil it like makes sam altman look good and sam altman scanning
people's eyeballs. Or if it comes from the government side, and usually it's a combination
of both, it should be interesting to see how X holds up to that pressure. I mean, I don't think
it will be able to, regardless of what you think of Elon's motives. But yeah, I don't know. It's
interesting. I think things take a lot longer than people expect. And I've definitely been guilty of
thinking that they're accelerating when maybe they're not quite yet.
I think the monetization stuff, yeah, he's definitely incentivized more slop and more rage baiting.
The algo is still like horrible in a lot of ways.
I mean, the incentive is still clicks, clicks, clicks, data harvesting, rage.
The incentives are still broken.
You still have to follow the incentives.
But he's held off a little bit on the identity verification stuff.
Probably won't last, but who knows.
And he's provided an escape valve of the pressure cooker, right?
So people don't feel the need to move over.
And so that's kind of how we've ended up in this current situation.
I also think, you know, like I left X before Elon joined the Trump administration.
And then I got grouped in with all the fucking libtards who were like anti-Elon and leaving for blue sky and stuff when I actually left for the exact opposite reason.
Like I thought we needed more freedom, not less.
and it was also to be clear and I think people have been listening to me for a while it was out
of a level of respect for Elon like Elon is very capable at building shit and executing more so than
almost anyone else on the planet which is why is part of the reason why he's the richest man in
the world. And as a result, like that type of person being the enemy of freedom could be quite
bad for us. Like if you want to talk about someone successfully ushering in a big tech
surveillance and control economy, there's not many people that could pull it off as well as Elon.
And that has always been my concern. So I've always come at it from not of a...
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A lack of expectation in his capability, but actually the opposite, a concern over that.
I mean, it is a good point.
Like if he wanted to go like villain mode, like the dude executes at a scale that is mind boggling.
He's got 8,000 satellites in space.
It's like, okay.
I don't understand the knee-jerk hatred of Elon, to be honest.
Like I know the arguments that people make.
I just think they're bad arguments.
I know like I can steel man it.
I just think that it's a stupid steel man.
I think we need and this is a divergence here but like I'll just go out and say like I think we need
more people like that I mean unfortunately there just aren't more like that's a very there are very
very few people like that right uh or maybe there are a lot of people who have that potential and
they're just diamonds in the rough and they're you know public school system screws them up and
who knows but like that is somebody who I think like we need people who are doing things that are
freaking science fiction that are just like so out there and so wild and then when they work
it gives you this whole new just appreciation and hope for humanity more broadly it doesn't matter
if you even think we need to be a multi-planetary species you can have whatever views you want on
that just the fact that we are doing it like reusable fucking rockets that's awesome and
everybody wild all the top all the top experts were like it's impossible can't be done i remember
when I was in this is a while ago now I remember my freshman year of college I was in one of my
like introduction to engineering courses and I remember a professor I remember this so clearly
sitting up there on the podium and telling everyone how self-driving cars were never going to be
widely done because we we weren't going to be able to get the the braking the the mechanics of
braking smoothly good enough like in all these different situations like it just wasn't going to
be possible like that he was just like could not have been more wrong just i we were just talking
about this before and just did drove a cyber cyber truck for the first time on friday and saturday
let's keep it overnight which was sweet fsd is mind-blowing like really mind-blowing yes guys
don't worry i still have a gas-powered truck i'm not getting rid of that if i need to dump a body
which for the ai overlords listening later i'm not planning on i'm speaking uh in uh in hyperbole
but if i need to people were like what if you need to commit a crime then they're going to know
exactly where you went it's like well i mean i'm not but if i was going to i just would use my other
truck uh but the point is like the technology is amazing it's incredible like it is science
fiction made reality and the same with the reusable rockets the same with have you seen
the starfall thing too that they're testing now yeah like to bring stuff back yeah yeah which is
like get ready peter schiff we're gonna be mining asteroids and dropping gold payloads back on here
gonna demonetize you so fast but i don't know i think we need more of that
yeah i think well first of all i think it's cool that
the first trillionaire is like a guy who shoots rockets and put satellites in space so that you
can have internet everywhere and has like self-driving cars like rather than some like
financial engineering bullshit or social media or something like that.
Even though he's really good at financial engineering, like taking X with a shit ton of debt,
putting it under XAI, which also had a shit ton of debt, then pulling it into SpaceX,
then going public while maintaining controlling interests, then presumably acquiring Tesla.
He's very good at financial engineering too.
Out of all the people that could be the richest man in the world, I'm glad that it's someone
who actually does cool shit, builds cool shit.
But then I think the other piece, and I was called a Nazi for saying this on Nostra, but I still believe it.
Look, I think history, that's just been the story of history, right?
Like the crazy thing in history is that most people just go along with whatever's happening.
And there's just a few people that make major changes to humanity.
And that's how it's always been.
That's how it will continue to be.
You see that in Bitcoin. You see that in all the niches if you're focused and paying attention.
You know, in Bitcoin, there's like 200 people that really move the needle, right?
Like Saylor can say there's like 100 million Bitcoiners.
I question if that's, you know, even close to a realistic number.
But like there's like 200 people that actually move the needle forward.
Something as small as Nostra, right, is, you know, I don't know, less than 50 people that are actually like building shit
that can make significant changes.
And I think that will continue to be the case.
And so the goal should be, first of all, increasing that number.
I mean, if you increase that number from 200 to 201, that's significant.
And then I think is enabling and empowering those people
that actually can move the needle and are willing to move the needle
and have the motivation to actually get shit done and do things.
do you think that ai broadly just even like from a vibe coding perspective has the potential to
like drastically increase the number of people that can move that needle in a world where so
much is like there's some piece of software in anything you know groundbreaking you're going to
be doing you know what i mean like is that going to open up possibilities for a lot of people
who maybe wanted to change the world but you know didn't didn't know how to code or is it like
Well, if you wanted to change the world, you would have just learned how to code.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you see that as being somewhat of a catalyst for greater potential to be unleashed?
I mean I think the biggest holdout for most people is motivation just actually doing things Yeah But tools can definitely help I mean I think that why Freedom Tech gives me hope because it does empower individuals that are motivated right
Whether that's Bitcoin, whether that's, you know,
the internet message encryption, things like Noster, open source AI.
Now, AI specifically is really interesting, right?
Because it's ushering in two pieces of acceleration
that are diametrically opposed to each other, right?
So on the open source side,
it very much does empower individuals.
And we're fortunate to be in the position where we're in,
where you have pretty much four equal-ish proprietary
big AI companies in the United States, right?
Open AI, Anthropic, XAI, and Google,
where a lot of people, by the way, were very concerned.
One of the reasons OpenAI got created was that it was just going to be Google, right?
And then OpenAI got created and then splintered from that was XAI and Anthropic.
And then Google just remained Google.
And so we have four different competitors, which is good.
That helps consumers.
Competition is good for consumers.
And then on the CCP, basically endorsing open source AI and accelerating it,
was something that I just didn't have on my bingo card and just fantastic but at the same time
like without any improvements this AI shit is so good at parsing large data sets and using it
against people so like our governments and these big tech companies and the big tech companies
specifically their business model has been to harvest information so they have a monetary
incentive to surveil you and no constitutional protections to protect you from that surveillance
they've just been hoovering up data in the digital age.
But they've had trouble parsing it and using it against us.
And now with these AI tools, you could have no improvements to them.
And there's going to be substantial improvements to them,
but you could have no improvements to them.
And some random schmuck at a tech company can just type into his computer,
like, where is Matt usually on a Wednesday?
Who are his friends?
What does he do this?
What does he think about this?
They can do different minority report, thought crime stuff.
Like it gets really dark really quick. You add stuff like flock cameras, ring cameras, cell phone surveillance. Right. And you add all these pieces together and it can get very, very dystopian really, really, really quickly.
And that's, you know, that's I think
It's what we see with so much frontier tech
It's not just an AI piece
But with AI, it's such a paradigm shift
And it feels like it's going so fast
That I think it hits people like a bag of bricks in a way
That maybe, you know, something like Bitcoin doesn't, right?
Like Bitcoin is freedom money
Yes, I use this freedom money every day
But Bitcoin also kind of ushered in much more usable CBDCs
even if they're run by private companies, right?
And so you have the different pieces of the puzzle on both sides of tech.
That is just a constant, that's a constant theme.
But I think with AI, it just feels much more stark and much more substantial.
I think that's fair.
And it's somehow much more relatable, I think, to the average person as well.
It's somehow more accessible, relatable, whatever you want to say,
for the average person to actually just like start quote using ai like i mean even if they're just
using you know chat gpt as their version of google right there's like a glorified google search but
it's right right right um personally i think probably my biggest use case for ai is uh figuring
out how to do super niche home improvement things uh and little tips for it's actually amazing at
that i'm like yeah i've i've yeah i use it constantly you can like throw out all your
instruction manual yeah you can troubleshoot appliances issues it's very helpful about like
obscure things that don't wouldn't have like a reddit community dedicated to fixing them
yeah it's very helpful it's amazing but it's then like contrast that with bitcoin where it's like
yes you okay yes it is uncensorable unfuckable and confiscatable undebasable money but again
that just kind of sounds like buzzwords to people or it sounds like you're some sort of you know i
I don't know, extremist of one side or another, depending on who you talk to.
The problem is the same problem that Nostra has, but Bitcoin has been more successful than Nostra,
but it's just because it's a low bar with Nostra's success.
Like Nostra is already a success for a ride or die communication protocol.
Like I use it all the time as my ride or dies use it.
It's fantastic for that.
People want to know what's real and what's not.
They know Rabbit Hole Recap and Sill Dispatch are hashed and signed on Noster.
Like, who knows if things get changed and deep faked on other on corporate platforms, but you know it's not happening on Noster.
Already a success there.
Where it's been a failure is adoption and a bigger level adoption, pass the ride or dies.
And same with Bitcoin.
And the reason is because it's fighting a network effect.
Right.
And so with Noster, Noster's fighting things like X and TikTok and Instagram, these corporate network effects that have been very successful.
Telegram has 2 billion users.
You know, Facebook's corporate holdings, all, you know, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, all of them is like 4 billion users, 5 billion users.
And then something like Signal, which has been relatively successful, is only 100 million users, right?
And then Noster's even smaller than that.
But then you compare what Bitcoin's competing against.
Bitcoin's competing against the U.S. dollar network effect, which is fucking insane.
Like you're basically asking people to almost opt out completely of society, of societal norms, if they're going to start using real Bitcoin and operate on a Bitcoin standard and try and spend and receive Bitcoin as necessary.
That's a significant uphill battle on network effect.
And I think it's a worthy battle, but I think if you want to maintain your sanity, it's important to fight battles that don't require fighting network effect at the same time.
So at least you have some that you could be tangibly winning in the short term.
And that's how I've been trying to mentally frame it in my head.
It's like, okay, I'll fight the network effect battles, but it can't be the only battle I fight.
Otherwise, I'm going to go fucking crazy because it's going to feel like after five years, you barely move the needle.
So what's the non-network effect battle that you would fight with Nostra or with Bitcoin?
Well, with Bitcoin, what it's been is what I like to call the translation layer apps, right?
Which is like stuff like Strike or Cash App or whatever that sit in between U.S. dollars and Bitcoin.
And the example I always use is, you know, like our nanny, like different...
normies that are effectively on my family's payroll.
Throughout the years, I've always tried to pay them in Bitcoin.
And I would always go like the self-custody, more cypherpunk route.
And it was always very, very difficult.
There was tons of friction.
They would constantly be asking me questions.
They would get burnt out by it and then start asking to get paid on Venmo again.
And my wife said to me, she's like, just like set them up with a strike account.
Like you're the largest investor in strike.
yes it has KYC you know it's not gonna disappear they're already KYC done Venmo
just set them up with a strike account and that's been I've been extremely
successful because it's something they're used to and they can actually use
it to pay their rent and the different things like these people don't have
savings like they they're literally living week but week to week you know
cleaning ladies and stuff they're living week to week they have to be able to
spend this on real things.
And they're not willing to wait
for the Bitcoin circular economy
to appear for that to be the case.
So I would say like Strike
is a good example of that.
I would say that
meeting people where they're at
in terms of levels
of personal responsibility
when using self-custody-ish Bitcoin, right?
Like I think Spark, for instance,
gets a lot of hate
Uh, and a lot of it is deserved because it's not, you know, purely trustless and it's run by an ex
Facebook guy who's funded by a 16 Z and makes a lot of sense, I think. But also at the same time,
like it makes it really easy to receive your first app. Right. And you don't have to manage channels.
You have relatively good trade off balance compared to what the status quo is.
realizing that we're not in a vacuum,
that we're competing against things out there
that are way worse,
and we can meet people where they're at in the middle
and improve their lives without asking them
to take a full jump off a cliff,
I think is a way to think about it.
I think, yeah, I mean,
Noster is definitely the harder one
to not compete with the network effect, right?
but there's ways to do it.
Part of the problem is that the closed platforms
realize really quickly what their mode is
and what the product is, and that's the data, right?
So in a perfect world,
if we wanted to not be with the network effect,
like we should be pulling in all the tweets
and bringing it into Nostra apps.
Elon won't let us do that.
Even Blue Sky won't let us do that.
I mean, Blue Sky will let us do it.
Blue Sky is the only one who will let us do it, but it still requires permission.
But even True Social won't let us do it.
That is a login paywall now.
Not paywall, but a login wall, and you can't easily programmatically pull in stuff from there.
But that would be one way of kind of trying to break that network effect piece.
And then on the AI side, zero network effect issues.
If you're building anything on the AI side, there might be network effect issues once like the entrenched monopolies get in place.
But right now, it's not really the case.
Like all the AI shit is kind of open water and you can do what you want without battling network effect.
the interesting thing on the ai piece as well is obviously and this goes back to what you said
earlier about china pushing open source ai not being on your bingo card nor mine nor i think
most people's but it makes sense at least my read on this from a let's say game theoretical
perspective that they're like okay these american companies currently have very big moats what's
the easiest way to get rid of their moat well open source it like make make this make this stuff
open source. And that is kind of the interesting thing. I wonder the, the only, in my mind, at
least I'm curious your thoughts on this, but in my mind, the only way that these big players right
now, the big AI players are really going to maintain a massive moat is through the regulatory
apparatus. That's why you see Altman, he pulls the Brian Armstrong, like we just want regulation.
You know, it's, it's like, of course, the biggest guys always want regulation because they've got,
you know, billions and billions of dollars and they can pay the very expensive lawyers.
Although maybe those lawyers will get less expensive as, as AI makes them.
So I don't know, but that's at least in my mind, the only way that these companies end
up maintaining any sort of moat.
And you see, you see stuff like with the, uh, the whole like NSA being like, well, we,
all of our stuff was hacked by, by, you know, uh, by mythos or whatever.
And it's like, really the NSA known for their forthrightness and candor and
transparency is just saying, yeah, we just got totally at there's no ulterior motive there at
all. It's not at all trying to basically position things that they can say, well, actually, this is
too dangerous to let the people have. We can't even let the open source stuff exist. We're going
to make that illegal. Like, I'm curious where you said, do you see a different motive from China's
side? Is it purely altruistic? And where are you at in terms of what the actual potential actions
of these bigot, the current incumbents, let's say, combined with the government is going to be,
because they're not, they don't, they don't, you know,
the genie's out of the bottle, but they want to try to put it back in, right?
Yeah, I mean, look, the CCP is not altruistic at all.
They are savvy and effective executors and know what they're doing.
And the open source AI strategy is multifold.
I mean, I think one is obviously a large part of our capital infrastructure
has gone into AI build out in America, ton of money, you know, billions of dollars, hundreds
of billions of dollars And if you can kind of demonetize those and attack those through open competitors I think it could have significant effects on our economy
And they're aware of that.
I think the second piece is no one would trust hitting Chinese servers to use these things.
A lot of people wouldn't trust, right?
And you want, in these early stages, what you want is you want other people to build on top of your shit, right?
You want GitHub to integrate your shit.
You know, Microsoft, you want them to integrate your shit, build on top of it.
You want large corporations to run their Slack through your shit and then get hooked on it, right?
And there's a lot of people that rightfully would not hit Chinese servers to do that.
So you need to open source it.
And I think the last piece is even if they're not hosting this stuff, and a lot of times they are, right?
Like if you want to hit the cheapest way of hitting Kimmy, for instance, or GLM-52 or something, like you are hitting CCP servers.
You're going to hit Chinese servers.
They're going to host it for you.
But you can also host it outside of them.
But like they get to – if they get to build the intelligence, the quote-unquote intelligence, the knowledge base, the source of truth that a bunch of society is built on top of, there's a lot of insidious shit you can do that's not censorship or surveillance.
And the biggest example of it is, you know, it's the most obvious one to people is like you ask one of these Chinese models what happened at Tiananmen Square.
And they're like, oh, well, absolutely nothing happened.
It's a beautiful square and you should go visit, you know.
CCP is the best government on earth.
So there's many reasons why they would do it.
And I think a lot of those reasons are also reasons why like the U.S. should foster it in a big way.
But there's just so much money behind, as you said, this regulatory moat strategy that clearly most of these companies seem to be pushing in that route, pushing that way.
Specifically, Anthropic has been – it's like their main strategy is to scare and then get a regulatory moat.
Anthropic is also weird too, right, because they're run by effective altruists, which is basically a cult.
It's the same cult SBF was a part of.
And they like literally think they're making God.
Like that's who these people are.
And so they very much want full KYC on their own models.
And they want to know how everyone's using it because they look down on you.
They think that they need to be paternalistic and they need to gatekeep everything you do with what they build.
But they know right now if they do that, if they go past what they're currently doing,
which is phone number based and credit card based, which is still pretty bad, but it could get a lot worse.
If they go past that, they need their competitors to also do it.
Otherwise, people are just going to switch.
It'll be too much friction.
So that's part of the strategy for sure.
You can see it happening in real time.
Yeah.
I mean, even just the pulling back, what was it, Fable?
Yeah.
And saying like, oh, we can't let foreign nationals have this.
And it's like, well, how are we going to determine effectively who's a foreign national?
I guess everyone's just going to have to upload their government ID and, you know, home address.
And, you know, I mean, Sam has the best.
He's got WorldCoin.
You can just scan your eyeballs before you access it.
But it's just proof of humanness.
That's all it is.
It's just a total.
He's just trying to make the world a better place.
That's why they went and deployed this in third world countries using super, super sketchy tactics.
Like it's just for the good of human, for the greater good, Odell, just for the greater good.
Like, I don't know, some of this stuff is just so on the nose, though.
The WorldCoin thing, they're still doing that, right?
They rebranded it, though.
No, I don't think they rebranded it, did they?
I thought they did a rebrand.
Wait, hold on.
Hold on, let me check on that.
I thought they simplified the name.
Oh, now it's just called World or World Network, which is just like, ah.
Coins are bad.
People don't like coins right now.
Yeah, you know, drop the coin.
Just World, it's cleaner.
And yeah, I mean, it's just it's all it's just all so creepy. And I guess where I'm at right now is because of like doing the show and, you know, listening to your shows and all the getting my 40 hours per week as much as I can, although I've been more on sci fi audio books lately.
I am very bullish on humanity. I'm very optimistic about the future. I see I'm now friends with people who are building incredible things that are very much in a enable resistance against the Panopticon that is currently being built and is very much, very much getting scarier by the day.
So I'm very optimistic.
At the same time, it's like, this goes back to what we said earlier about, you know, it's a few people that end up really moving the needle, changing the world, right?
But there's also security in numbers from like an anonymity set perspective, right?
And just like you need, you do need more people using these FreedomTech tools.
Otherwise, it gets a little bit easier to figure out the people that are using it because there's just so few people.
It's like, you know, the problem with Zcash and Monero, for example.
I mean, one of many.
Are you, where are you at right now in terms of optimism versus pessimism on where humanity is going from a panopticon versus freedom tech perspective?
Like, are the tools, is the fact that it is easier to encrypt than decrypt, is that fact alone enough for us?
Or, you know, is there, should we be more concerned than perhaps a lot of people are?
I mean, I think I'm strictly an optimist. I think some people might disagree with me.
And I'm very hopeful. And I think, I mean, we're both relatively new fathers, right? And I think
you have a kid, you start to think in generations, right? It's very much true. And think about their
future and think about making sure their future is better than our current present. And I'm
optimistic on that path and i you kind of have to be right um otherwise it's like you kind of
just go through a doom loop spiral that just will result in doom i think um but i think it's
important to like set expectations appropriately right and this goes to my missed expectations
of the Nostra build out in a lot of ways,
Nostra adoption and Bitcoin adoption, to be honest.
You know, when I was a younger, wide-eyed Bitcoiner,
I, you know, I thought everyone was going to be using
Bitcoin as freedom money within 10 years or so.
And that was over 10 years ago.
I found some old articles by you, by the way,
some very old ones, but I won't disclose them here.
But I found...
People can find them.
Yeah, Google exists.
But, like, I was just like, wow, you've come so far.
You look better with facial hair now, too, I'll say.
I can't grow it myself.
That one cursed photo from, like, 15 years ago that all the haters use against me.
But, look, it's important to set expectations, right?
So I think, first of all, the rider dies are what give me hope.
And we should be, you should be taking like at least a portion of your time, a significant portion of your time focused on the rider dies and enabling other rider dies to empower themselves.
And I think that will make significant scalable change because one man can't do it alone.
Right. But if you, if you empower 10 or 100 and then those 10 or 100 empower another 10 or 100, like that's significant and it compounds on top of each other.
I think the second piece, like I said earlier, is meeting people where they're at and having pragmatic tradeoff balances and trying not to battle network effect.
And I just I thought of another example that's tangential to Bitcoin is like Tor, right?
Like the Tor browser, you're strictly better from a privacy point of view if everyone's using Onion addresses.
But way less people would use Tor browser if you couldn't also access the ClearNet on it and just type in a website.
And that's a perfect example, I think, of a pragmatic tradeoff balance that was made, even though you have worse privacy and security guarantees if you are accessing ClearNet through Tor browser.
So there's that piece, focusing on the ride or die is that piece.
But then the third piece is like expectations.
Like what does success of Bitcoin as freedom money look like?
It's not more than 5% of the population.
Like that's what it is.
Maybe in 100 years we could blow that number out and like the death of fiat or whatever.
But I think even in that situation, people will be using Bitcoin in controlled and surveilled ways.
So if that's the expectation, then you can actually build realistically towards it.
And what I mean there, I mean, I think as a hopeful, optimistic person, the way to think about it is in 20 years, 30 years, the overwhelming majority of people will be living in a more dystopia type of situation.
But there'll be 5% of us that are living in a more positive, freedom-oriented way.
And I think focusing on that is key to mental health because otherwise you get lost in this bullshit.
You get lost in these bullshit expectations.
And there's a lot of people that want you to get lost in them, right?
Because from like an influencer point of view, saying that everyone will be free, saying that you don't have to take personal responsibility, saying that you don't have to put in any work whatsoever and your life will be better.
sells way better. That's saying that some people, you need to take the harder path. Like you want to
have a better life, you need to take the harder path and you will be rewarded for it.
This just makes me think also in terms of, because I agree with you on those percentages as well. And
maybe those are even more, like those are, I think those are optimistic, like 5% is an optimist.
It's very high.
Your optimist is showing, but that's a good thing, right? It's better to aim for the stars and
fall amongst the treetops but i'm curious from that adoption perspective we touched earlier just
briefly on sort of the uh in suitification of of bitcoin now who's trapped in the room with whom
it remains to be seen uh and kind of want to get into that a little bit but also from the
store of value versus medium of exchange perspective like this is something that is
this debate's been around obviously for a lot longer than i've been in bitcoin i haven't been
Bitcoin that long. I'm getting there now. You know, few years, people be like, you know, you're
an OG if you got in in the 2020s, you know, like it's all it's all relative, right? But
personally, I try to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange as much as I can. Like I use it every
day on Noster just to zap value for value. I also try to spend it online whenever I have the option.
I try to spend it in person whenever I have the option. It's easy at conferences,
harder in day to day life. But like I go to steak and shake a lot since they've got tallow fries
and grass-fed beef, and I spend Bitcoin when I go there.
And I'm really happy to do that.
And yes, guys, I replace it right away.
Don't worry.
But there's a lot of folks who seem to be under the impression
that medium of exchange adoption is actually not,
like, that just saving in Bitcoin is enough.
Saving in Bitcoin is using.
And I agree that it's using.
Like, that's, yes, store value is one of the functions of it, right?
Personally, I just think that if, like, people should make an effort,
again, do what you want with your money,
but you should make an effort to spend Bitcoin
and medium of exchange adoption is very much needed for Bitcoin to achieve what it needs to achieve.
Where are you at with that?
Yeah, I mean, the answer is it's both.
And it's always been both.
It always will be both.
Like good money should increase in purchasing power over time.
So anyone who tells you like price doesn't matter, like price is one of the most important metrics.
And then the second piece is you should be able to spend it without permission.
Because if you can't spend your wealth without permission, you have no wealth.
It's fundamentally an IOU.
That's the key.
Both are key aspects to what makes Bitcoin better money.
Now, the question is on a level of urgency, is it urgent to try and fight that network effect and build – like try and just like bull rush?
Bitcoin as a payment method.
And I don't know if that's necessarily the case.
I think it kind of just comes with time.
I mean, look through the years, more and more of my savings has become Bitcoin, right?
And to the point where I'm pretty much like 100% Bitcoin, right?
Like I have like a small float in dollars because I'm running a family and business
and shit. And I, you know, dollars are what people accept in most places. Can't pay my mortgage with
Bitcoin yet. But as a result, like I prefer to spend Bitcoin, like it skips a step. Otherwise,
I need to, otherwise I'm, I'm, I'm selling Bitcoin $2 and then spending the dollar somewhere,
right? It flips, it flips the equation from, oh, I'm receiving dollars and then I need to convert
it to Bitcoin and then spend. And when that's the case, I see why people aren't doing it.
So it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg situation. But yeah, I think good money,
you need to be able to spend and save it without permission. Both are valid use cases. Both are
complementary to each other. But I would say, while I don't think there's necessarily
the hugest level of urgency on trying to bull rush Bitcoin payments adoption when people aren't
ready for it necessarily uh we do need to be very careful of just like completely discarding it and
being like oh people should just have bitcoin in their charles schwab account and never be able to
spend it um because once again then it's not your wealth and you're you're you're eroding one of the
key properties of bitcoin um and you're not expanding the actual base of people that are
holding real Bitcoin as freedom money, which is key.
It's like this remnant base that keeps the system in check in a lot of ways.
The cool part about Bitcoin is that no one can change it easily.
That's one of the core fundamental values.
And a hard-to-measure property of that, I think, is a wide distributed base of people
holding and using real Bitcoin, using their own nodes, holding their own keys, spending it.
without permission um and so like we have to be very careful that i think we do have to be careful
that that percentage of those people in the entire system isn't negligible right it's already small
to be clear like it's definitely more people are using custodial stuff specifically suit
custodial stuff like etfs and mstr and the clones and whatnot um but on the bright side the absolute
number of people using Bitcoin as freedom money and building on top of Bitcoin as freedom money
has never been higher, like from an absolute number. So if that started trending down,
that I think would be a concern in a big way. Yeah, I mean, I agree with all that. Maybe just
an add-on and somebody sort of posed this in the chat on Noster saying, why would we not lose
store of value if we lose that medium of exchange? And I think that kind of to maybe expand on that
question a little bit would be if bitcoin isn't widely used as a medium exchange if it is just
people may say hey it's enough that it's it's finite it's a you know perfect store of value
it's digital capital that's perfect it's all it needs to be but if bitcoin loses one of its the
ability to exercise one of its core properties which is spend it however the fuck you want to
anyone at any time and no one can stop you like that obviously negates some of the huge part of
the value of Bitcoin. As you said, if you can't spend your wealth, you don't have anything.
It's an extreme. It's an extreme. Yeah. That's the problem. Like a lot of these things,
you get lost in these debates over extremes. When it's somewhere in the middle,
and that's where we need it to be somewhere in the middle, and that's where it's healthy,
it is somewhere in the middle. I mean, an interesting thought experiment, I mean,
this will be less relevant to, I guess I didn't ask you, I assume this is also getting released
to podcast apps and stuff afterwards, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
All of those centralized platforms
and my RSS feed, which, you know, less centralized.
RSS is great.
It's awesome.
So for the non-star writer dies, right?
Like I'd pose a question to you guys.
I am probably one of the largest zappers in the world.
I've been kind of disappointed on lack of zaps.
Like I just don't, like people,
you have the capability.
You have, it's never been easier.
Like in one click, you can send Freedom Money to anyone in the world.
And we're sending like 10 cents to each other.
It's kind of wild.
10 cents would be a big zap, honestly, these days.
Yeah, in a lot of ways, like it's been bullish seeing all the Freedom Money fly around.
But also, it's like kind of disappointing.
Like there's been so many.
I've seen conspiracies like, oh, Odell's always the top zap on like all the trending posts.
It's like, yeah, well, the top zap is a dollar.
like why don't you why don't you send more like why don't you send more money and i think that's
a good example like i'm juicing your zaps for you you're welcome i know yeah just send them guys
prove you're not a fraud um but i think that's a good example right where you like you can have
the tools you can have everything set up you can have the capability right but you can't force
people to do something and so if you're trying to if you're trying if that's your expectation
you're going to be upset you're going to be disappointed yeah i i have not uh i have not
zapped less than 696 sats uh that's that that's my my default zap is 696 it only goes up from there
i have i also checked the metrics it's like i have zapped much more than i have been zapped
and that is like a purposeful thing right yeah no i've you know i've never spent more money on a
free app in my life.
It's like $7,000 net down on Zaps right now or something.
Yeah.
But it is a really incredible thing to be able to do this, right?
And to have that social coordination layer, to have the Venmo aspect, but like without
the really like lame feed in Venmo that's just like, you know, Harry bought a cheeseburger
from, you know, from Bob.
It's like the Venmo feed was always a little creepy to me.
The Noster one less so.
I don't know.
I again people do whatever you want with your money it's one of those things where I I'm not
on Noster because I think I'm going to get rich off zaps right I'm on Noster and I'm zapping
because I find things really valuable and like especially devs like I want to zap devs when I
see even if it's not a tool that I personally use like maybe it's an Android app and I'm a
you know an iPhone guy I'm still going to zap it when I see them putting out a new release because
like that's that's awesome we need more of that I think that's been one of the interesting things
too from a creator perspective I I mean I think uh like you know Paul at Primal has been doing a
killer job of bringing just some good creator vibes to the platform excuse me geez well look
at me I slipped to the protocol but I am curious if we start to see more creators come in and how
much of that is a function of I don't think it's gonna be a function of like revenue at the start
like I think that's what we all like even myself like tried to pitch like look you can get you can
get zapped bitcoin and it's like oh thanks you know 40 45 cents like that's that's great you
know YouTube pays me not me but you know some big creator like a lot more money than that but I do
think that there's a lot of tools coming out even like divine I think is really cool like I loved
vine back in the day that's just like a really fun app that doesn't need to be billed as like a
a Noster client, right? It's just like, it's like Vine, but it's new. And yeah, it happens to be
built on this new open protocol. Like you don't care. You just want to watch short form videos
that are actually made by humans. Like I love seeing that kind of stuff because I think that
stuff, even just looking at how the beta filled up like that, like that stuff moves the needle
from an adoption perspective, how many people actually stick around like that remains to be
seen. But I'm curious if there are other things similar to divine or kind of other within the
social context but either rebuilding some existing thing like divine or you know rebuilding that idea
or creating something new that you're super bullish on beyond just like short form blog
uh you know x type x twitter clones yeah i don't know um first and foremost uh to be discussed in
the nostril chat has asked i think three times now okay um what uh memory system that marty shills
about using with his LLM, with his agent.
I don't know.
I don't have it off the top of my head.
I do not use it.
But I know Marty talks about it on X a lot.
So you can check his X feed.
But, yeah, anyway.
I don't know, man.
I'm at a loss, to be honest.
I don't think it's – I do not think it's money-related that's going to do it.
I think it's a nice to have.
It's a benefit that we can just send freedom money with Zaps.
I think if you want to make the most money, like it's just a huge gap.
If you do slop on corporate social and feed the algo.
I mean, things like on YouTube, you get deprioritized from the algo if you don't let them insert their own advertising into your shit.
And it's really bad.
Their advertising is really bad.
So people aren't even doing that to get money from YouTube.
They just doing it because they want the algo to boost them and then they make money separately from their own ads or whatnot So I mean I it hard to imagine that people are going to make more money from donations I think where value for value is really helpful is one on censored creators
They don't have other avenues and there's no other option.
There's Bitcoin and Noster.
And then the second piece is like small new people, right?
It's like, oh, you start a new podcast, maybe you make $100, $200 an episode.
Like that's substantial.
Like you can't make that from the corporate socials.
And by the way, and then the other piece is actually paywalls are very effective and have been very – like there's substat creators that are making millions of dollars a year on paywall newsletters.
It's hard to imagine donations coming close to that.
So I don't think it's the money piece.
I think Divine is kind of interesting.
I'm very grateful Ravel is building a Noster.
I think it's probably a little bit overhyped, to be honest, and we'll see what kind of staying power is there.
Um, but I mean, I think, look, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, like the tools
on Nostra just have not been stable.
Like we just haven't been stable.
It's only relatively recently, like the last six months, 12 months where there's multiple
apps that work pretty well that, you know, aren't like immediately showing you dick pics
when you sign in, you know, that are like, like are tangibly usable.
and so that's the first step and then I think you know people will come for like the freedom
and truth piece and it unfortunately I think like you need to see the like the alternatives
basically get significantly worse because of societal pressure and incentive pressure and
corporate pressure things like we said like the ID verification stuff like that
But by the way, like, Nasser doesn't even solve all those aspects, right?
Like when we saw Brazil crackdown, I remember Brazil crackdown on X, and it was specifically like anti-government people or anti the current regime people.
Like they made a law that said you just couldn't post.
And so those people would have to start the web of trust from square one with an Anon account.
Like they couldn't just like post as the influencer themselves.
They couldn't be like, then they just get their house raided, right?
Like there's outside of protocol ways of enforcing restrictions on digital speech
that can be leveraged against people that NASA doesn't solve.
Now, what is interesting is group chats could solve that or help, right?
Encrypted group chats.
And I think we're very fortunate that we have Signal available to us.
I run a ton of my personal and business life through Signal at this point.
Like 99% of my comms are going through Signal.
But it's centralized and completely vulnerable to government pressure.
And so I don't think we should just assume that will always be the status quo.
And so it would be nice to see a NOSTER-based alternative to it.
I know the White Noise guys are working on it.
I know they're also having a lot of difficulties.
So I don't want to overhype it.
I think it's an open question whether or not NOSTER would be the ideal protocol for this type of stuff.
obviously simplex has been working on it for a while i don't really care what the protocol is
but there needs to be um a robust non-centralized alternative to signal that works as well as
signal like my 90 plus year old grandmother uses signal because that's how she gets baby photos
like we got to meet people where they're at um and so i think that's increasingly
something that is interesting to me is trying to improve that group chat mechanism,
strong group chats, right? It's like strong local communities almost, but in the digital era.
And I think that it's so much more important than a lot of people realize on the private
communication front. Like we tend to think of free speech as being this thing that you must do in
public in order for it to be effective. But in reality, it's like private speech is just as
important, potentially more so because it is the last line of defense. It's also the way that,
you know, people have been subverting the state since time immemorial.
In pubs with the windows closed.
Exactly. Exactly. Which is why one of the things I was just talking with Max Hillebrand about this
the other day. One of the things that's so crazy to me is that there isn't more pushback,
just widespread pushback for even from non-techie people on governments trying to get back doors
like what the uk has been trying to do will continue to try to do what what every government
tries to get back doors into encrypted messaging services right and just because it's like what
you're effectively asking is i want to come into your living room or i want to come into your you
know your booth in the pub and and listen to everything you say and be able to get you in
trouble for anything you say to your friend in that private room in the pub like in the meat space
that would be so untenable.
I mean, but we're also getting close to there, right?
Just with the prevalence of cameras,
everything's listening to you all the time.
But even so, it's like people completely,
they somehow view the digital space as like,
well, that's not quite as important
or that's not quite as maybe like visceral.
I don't know what it is.
There's not even a question there.
It's more so just like,
I wish people were more up in arms about that
because it is an insane violation.
I think that's why you have to just ground yourself in reality
because most people just don't give a shit or won't take the next step.
By the way, to be discussed, because you're the top zapper to Walker
and you said you deleted your ex, I went on to Marty's ex account.
I searched memory, and he is using something called QMD plus Cogne, C-O-G-N-E-E.
So you're welcome.
And to everyone else out there, if you zap more than him and you ask a question,
I'm obligated to answer it.
I have to answer the question.
So just keep that in mind.
And I don't get any of these apps.
They're only going to Walker.
I just want to see the Freedom Money.
Might have to funnel some your way now.
You know, just out of, I forget if the splits are a great thing.
Yeah, but that's another thing that's like, they're not, and it's complicated to implement.
And then it's like a perfect example of like, in the real world, people can just, when the show ends, send the person their half.
Yeah, right.
Programmatic splits are awesome.
I mean, one of the cool things is OpenSats.
We have a lightning address.
And a node pub key because we run our own node.
So like a bunch of podcasting 2.0 streams just auto split to us, which is pretty fucking cool.
So I think that's I'm not like trying to like completely diminish splits, but I think it's another example of like it's another example of we get too far into the weeds of things just because it's technically possible.
It doesn't mean it should necessarily be the highest priority thing.
when like humans have figured out, you know, non-technical ways to solve this stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Like much, much more simply like, Hey, yeah. And well, yeah. And especially on
Nostrix, it's like, I don't even need to ask your lightning address. I can just be like, boop.
Or, you know, any zaps that go to the stream, go to OpenSats. How about that guys for anyone,
for anyone listening? Yeah, they will go to OpenSats. So if you zap your, you are, well,
you are zapping me and I am the middleman, but luckily you guys can verify exactly and make sure
that I sent every last sat.
I don't know that they could actually verify it,
but we trust you.
Yeah, okay.
Well, I'll pause the screenshot or something like that.
You need to have some level of trust in society.
You can't remove all trust from society.
That's one of the reasons
why strong local communities are so awesome
is because they're high trust societies.
So I think it's important
that we have trust minimized tech,
but also I think people get stuck in it a little bit.
There needs to be some level of trust.
Do you think we're seeing now or we'll start to see more of a resurgence in like small, local, decentralized?
Like at least in America, like it feels like we are.
Is that your vibe as well?
Yeah.
And I mean, I think, I mean, to not glaze Elon too much, like the fact that Starlink exists is fucking huge.
it really opens up
the potential of where
you can live and raise your family
and gives people
effectively more freedom of movement
over which jurisdictions they want to be in
and I think in America specifically
we can go back and forth
on whether or not voting is rigged in America
one of the issues is impossible to verify
but the real vote that
is not rigged that
is actually substantial and tangible is voting with your feet and moving. And it's really,
really, it's not really easy. Moving is hard. Moving is fucking difficult,
especially if you're leaving friends and family. But moving with your feet and choosing a different
jurisdiction is like one of the single best parts of America and makes this country great.
And I think a lot of people are questioning themselves, like, do I want to raise my family
in a city or near a city? Do I want to go to a smaller community where I know my neighbors,
where I can like, I'm not just shaking my farmer's hand,
like my farmer is my neighbor and I you know I have chickens and I have a garden I can be self I think that much more robust And I think if you want to take the optimistic path technology enables not to like freedom technology just doesn empower the individuals
It also empowers these small communities in a big way because it empowers the individuals.
You can imagine situations where small communities are basically able to interact with global trade for things they need when that wasn't possible before the internet, before digitally native, free-to-money like Bitcoin, before things like drones or 3D printing and local AI and whatnot.
So there could be some really interesting aspects there.
You mentioned sci-fi.
One of my favorite books is Damon by Daniel Suarez.
I think he wrote in 2009.
He wrote it a long time ago.
I read it a long time ago.
I read it before Bitcoin, before Noster.
Then he has a sequel, Freedom.
And without any spoilers, he never mentions Bitcoin or Noster.
But like Bitcoin, Noster, open source AI,
basically he sets up the template for strong local communities
operating using those technologies.
And that's probably one of my most optimistic timelines
that we could go down.
on the self-hosted piece i'm gonna i'm gonna check that i have not i have not read that um i have to
go down that daniel suarez daniel suarez okay nice i've been recently uh i went through all
of the dungeon crawler carl audiobooks uh it's it's pretty incredible uh it sounds really weird
if you haven't heard of it lynn alden recommended it to me so i knew it was going to be good but i
didn't realize how good and i've been on more recently well shout out to lynn uh for her book
which Carla and I narrated, The Stolgard Instant.
I haven't listened yet.
Listen or read either way.
I don't do.
Honestly, I don't do audiobooks.
I'm old-fashioned.
I like reading.
Okay.
But the fact that you and Carla,
the fact that one friend wrote the book
and then two other friends narrated the book
kind of makes me want to listen to the audiobook.
Give it a shot.
Just for the vibes alone.
Well, you know, what I love about sci-fi,
and Lynn does this very well,
because it's near future sci-fi, you know?
Like it's, it's not so, we're not talking thousands or hundreds of years.
Exactly. Yeah. It's like, so it's, it's, it feels more real.
Like it feels like something you could see in your lifetime.
And I just, I find sci-fi to be such an interesting,
like how much of actual science ends up kind of almost being led by science
fiction in some ways.
Like some author wrote about something in the 1960s and you know,
somebody like Elon Musk is like, well, that sounds like a cool idea.
Let's do that. You know, like it's just, it's, it's,
it's amazing to see that kind of stuff come to fruition in reality uh but yeah i'll have to check
that out i wanted to ask you though on the self-hosted side uh because you mentioned this
when we were on the bitcast stream i think you mentioned something about your stack you want you
want to talk about that a little bit just in terms of i think you mentioned you have a start nine
you've got like you're a whole basically entirely self-hosted stack both for comms i think you said
you were running local llms as well is that correct and like some other things i mean you're obviously
running a Bitcoin node, that's a given.
But can you talk about that a little bit?
So it's interesting, right?
So like I, if you like go back on my journey
when I was much younger,
we had the financial collapse in 2008,
which was like, okay, you can't trust the bankers.
And like, you can't trust any of the talking heads.
You know, like everyone said, like,
I mean, people that were paying attention, sure.
like you know everyone thinks they're in the big short and that they can see things ahead of time
but most of the talking heads were caught completely off guard everyone pretends they're adults in the
room had no fucking idea so i was like you can't trust the financial system so it was like piece
number one that set set up my bitcoin journey but i was like you can trust the big tech companies
and this noting came out in 2013 and was like you can't trust a big company big tech companies
they're all complicit i was like fuck i was like so where is hope and so hope is open source
open-source software and hardware and technology, right?
Empowering individuals to not have to trust a centralized third party.
That's where hope is.
And since then, I've focused most of my life's mission on that,
on accelerating that movement.
And I strongly believe there's two pieces there.
I think there's stuff that is in the commons that is, like,
almost impossible to monetize.
And that's why OpenSats exists.
Let's accelerate that.
But I'm still a capitalist, and I think capitalism scales the best.
And part of the reason why I believe that even more strongly now is because I'm the main person raising money for OpenSaaS, and I make no money from it.
And it's a pain in the fucking ass, and it's not sustainable.
It's very difficult to do.
It's not an easy thing to do.
OpenSaaS has received thousands of applications every year.
So there's a bunch of people that don't like me because applications have been denied, even though we've approved over 400.
And I say to all those people, it's like, okay, well, if you have your pet project that you wish is funded, like go raise money for that.
And you'll see how difficult it is.
And you'll see how difficult that path is.
And even though OpenSats has been incredibly successful and we're sending out a million dollars worth of Bitcoin every month, it pales in comparison to the amount of capital that we've been able to tap on the 1031 side with investment for profit capital.
And the reason I say this is a very long winded is why we're the largest investor in Star9.
Most investors won't touch something that's an open source stack
Like you can use Start9's entire stack
Without paying them a dime by just flashing it onto any old computer
Most investors look at that and be like, you're retarded, that's horrible
There's no way we're going to be able to make money off of that
But the dream is there
Like if you can have profitable open source businesses
They never have to raise donation funding again
They can scale like crazy, right?
And they can compound on top of each other
So that's why we're invested in Start9. That's why I'm a user in Start9. And so I do run a Start9 server at home, which ironically, by the way, I didn't buy their hardware. Their hardware is fantastic and is actually extremely well priced now because Matt Hill, the co-founder of Start9, sold a bunch of Bitcoin at the top and bought RAM with it, which was a great trade.
so his great trade is kind of subsidizing the price
so you actually get a pretty good deal right now
if you buy their hardware
but I just flashed it on an old Linux computer I have
so I'm running that
and they're coming out with a router
and so I'm beta testing their router
right now it's Bitcoin only pre-order
you can find it at router.start9.com
and I'm like preemptively testing it
before public release in the summer
and that is running a nearly fully open hardware stack
with open source software on it
and then lets you easily run WireGuard VPNs on it
and different profiles on it.
So like right now, this stream is running through that router.
It's running through Starlink.
And then from Starlink, it's running to that router.
And then on that router, it's running through Obscura VPN,
which you can pay for with Bitcoin.
So that's two hops of VPN.
So one hop is Obscura, the other hop is MulVad,
and then it's coming to you guys.
And it works really well.
Like everything in my home is running through this thing.
On the open source AI side,
and to be clear, there's still caveats.
Like I was recording RHR the other day live
and one of Obscura's VPN servers went offline
and I got cut from the stream
and I had to fix it and rejoin.
But anyway, still pretty great.
On the open source LLM side,
Look, I think the only reason to really do it is to improve your skill at this point is to improve your skills.
It's not to say it's definitely not to save money.
And it's for the freedom focus elements because things are accelerating quickly.
Anything you can self host is much less powerful than the stuff that is hosted.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see the same path with like ASICs kind of come out and stuff.
So I think a lot of this hardware could become obsolete.
Like you end up paying like $10,000 for hardware that would become like more or less obsolete.
Not completely obsolete like Bitcoin mining hardware, but that you wish you maybe had to spend the $10,000 if you're trying to do it to save money.
And I think the single best way to play around with these things right now, especially if cost is an issue, is to use stuff like PPQ.ai, where you pay with Bitcoin and you can pick any model out there.
The open source models, some are encrypted and secure enclaves on T's in the cloud.
So you have some stronger privacy guarantees.
You can also use all the top tier models.
And then in that situation, it's kind of like a VPN level of privacy.
It's like a proxy privacy, and it allows you to flip and move between them very easily.
There's other options.
Open Router exists, but they only accept dollars or USDC.
Venice exists, which has way more users than PPQ and also accepts Bitcoin, but also has a shitcoin attached to it that isn't necessary, but you might not want to use it just for that reason.
But that idea of being able to switch on the fly
between any model that available I think is very empowering to people right now And it doesn lock you in And the worst position you can be in I think right now is like you move your small business over to like a fully integrated Claude stack
where you're using like all their proprietary software and everything.
And then Claude pulls the plug and your whole system grinds to a halt.
If you're using something like PPQ or local models, you can switch on the fly.
Well, with local models, you just can't get cut off, which is fucking awesome.
and empowering.
But with something like PBQ,
you can just,
Claude cuts you off,
you can switch to ChatGPT.
ChatGPT cuts you off,
you can switch to GLM, you know.
And you can just keep moving on the fly
and not be beholden to someone else
and get stuck in that vendor lock-in.
Because a lot of people
are going to get stuck in the vendor lock-in
just like we saw with the last phase of big tech
where you're stuck in, you know,
G Suite or something
and you can't move easily.
And like, this isn't theoretical either.
again we mentioned this earlier but it's like anthropic just pulled the plug instantly on you
know for forever like that's it's it's trivial for them it's not and they don't have to ask anyone
uh you have to ask for their permission they do not have to ask for yours so it's like i think
that's that lock-in piece is really important yeah the perfect example the perfect example there by
the way is so i i've always found like learning by doing is the best way um and you know tease
around maybe other people aren't that case so i built a full ai news desk um called citadelwire.com
um and it's run by three different ai agents um running all they're all running top tier models
and when anthropic pulled the plug the the top editor was running fable um and i saw that they
pulled the plug and i went to check on it to make sure it was still working and it just had auto
I had already set it up in a way that I just auto-switched to GPT-55.
So there was literally zero downtime.
And I actually didn't, it was good that I was paying attention,
but also it didn't matter that I was paying attention
because the system was set up in a way that it didn't have a central point of failure there.
I mean, that's huge.
I did see, I have not checked it out yet, but I did see you post about it.
I think I saw you post about it on X, actually.
But, you know, I'm not going to hold it against you.
I posted about it on Nostar a lot of times.
I know, I know, I know, I know.
I'm just giving you shit.
And it actually uses Nostr natively to split up, like the agents post the news to Nostr.
And then I have a centralized website that's effectively a Nostr app.
And I think that's a cool piece, by the way, on the Nostr point is that you're going to see like a bunch of purpose-built, very niche Nostr apps.
Like in this case, it's literally just a Nostr app to read a single Nostr endpub.
Like that's all it does.
You don't even sign in.
like no signing required you're literally just going to the website and you're viewing a nostre
you're viewing a nostre account you don't even know you're viewing a nostre account
unless you know what you're watching and as a result everything's hashed and signed and stored
on multiple relays right it pretty cool it's huge and i wonder how much of that is going to be what
we what we see i agree with your point earlier and i think that was actually i haven't heard it
phrased that way that the social layer is actually huge like it's not just a frivolity or like just
like a fun thing to have that it's actually very crucial in terms of enabling some of those other
use cases like you can't have the web of trust without the social layer like you that it's
literally not possible so i think that those it's good framing there but i do wonder how much of
this stuff ends up being just hey we're like like bitchat you know people don't need to know that
it's like now is using noster in various ways to but see like bitchat's an interesting right
BitChats is an interesting one, right? Because it's a noble project. It's a project that has a mission that I love, right? Which is censorship resistant, robust communications, mesh nets. It's something that's super cool that people have struggled to exist and make network effect and whatnot.
And it's a great case study of how easy it is to build on Nostra.
But it doesn't actually help Nostra in any way.
And maybe that's a controversial opinion.
But if anything, it's almost parasitic to Nostra.
It's like using Nostra relays that people are running, not for BitChat.
Like most of the people that the relays are using, that's not why they exist.
And they're not building any, it's not adding to the network effect.
It doesn't because it's all disposable identities, which is great.
They're building something completely different.
But the fact that they have millions of BitChat users doesn't really translate to someone who's using Wisp in the way that if someone's using Wisp and you're using Nostra or Primal, like every new Wisp user benefits Nostra and Primal users.
Every new BitChat user is almost completely irrelevant to them.
it's in the chat is like cypherpunk as hell though like yeah 100 you know it's it's you know that i
totally agree with the point there it's like but that was my larger point that like there are i
think going to be a lot of really cool things built that may not help quote noster adoption
i still say noster by the way because i say it correctly um but you know i'm not gonna hold the
thing against you but they don't necessarily help don't necessarily help like the adoption from an
awareness standpoint or even from a like social layer adoption standpoint but use that protocol
in such a way that it creates a really fantastic value add in whatever that other app is like in
the case of bid chat right like and that like that that's just that's just it's just fucking
cool like it's cool that jack i guess my point is nostr helps nostr helps bid chat but bid chat
doesn't really help nostr that's fair that's fair and jack and callie if you're listening to this
No, I'm kidding.
I mean, Jack and Callie have done plenty to help Noster.
I know.
To be absolutely clear.
I just don't think Big Chat was one of them.
Yeah, more than a vast majority, that's for sure.
But Odell, I've enjoyed this thoroughly, man.
I appreciate your time very much.
First of all, and thank you to everybody who joined in on Noster.
You're on Zap.stream or wherever you're watching this, Primal or any of the other apps that support the live streaming function.
Thank you, guys.
appreciate appreciate the zaps they will all go to open sats after this and there's a decent number
of them so appreciate you guys sending your hard-earned sats here odell where do you want to
send people anything you want to have them check out anything new on the docket for you
uh thanks for having me this is fun um been a long time coming it's a pleasure i know and uh
I don't know.
I have my personal webpages, odell.xyz.
It links to my Nostra account.
It links to X.
It links to all the projects I'm working on.
Open Sats, 1031, Bitcoin Policy Institute, Bitcoin Park, SimpleX Foundation now.
So check all those out.
And then check out citadelwire.com.
It's fun.
It's a passion project.
I built it for myself.
I'm spending about $100 a day on that thing.
I'm not trying to make a profit on it.
Damn.
But I wanted to cut through all the bullshit and not get stuck doom scrolling and stuff,
but still be able to pay attention on what's relevant out there.
So that's why that exists.
And also I wanted to learn how these different AI tools work well together
and try and make them stable and effective for improving my life and improving my productivity.
So feedback is appreciated.
I mean, interesting thing, over 35,000 visitors have hit citylilowire.com, which is pretty wild.
it might have better user retention than all the other Noster apps,
except for BitChat.
But yeah, and it's like such a simple thing.
Now I will take the time to go check it out.
Thank you for building and for burning the tokens for the greater good.
Appreciate your time.
Thank you to everybody again for the zaps and for joining us here on Noster.
And if you're listening to this after the fact,
it's because you're not on Noster.
So get on there.
Even though Odell went back to X, that doesn't mean he's lost faith, guys.
So the rumors are very overblown.
Appreciate your time, dude.
Good chatting.
Cheers.
All right, I'm going to go.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of The Bitcoin Podcast.
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