So the one thing that we all know is we know that Bitcoin is going to do what we know it's going to do.
So these companies that are building around it are going to do very well.
It's going to be similar to the personal computer revolution or the Internet revolution that we all lived through.
I'm a hair older than you, but not too much.
And, you know, I mean, is Blockstream the Cisco systems of Bitcoin?
You take things like what's going to happen when Bank of America actually adds Bitcoin one day?
What's going to happen? What are they going to do? Are they going to hire three lightning devs and figure it out?
I don't think so. I think they're probably going to make some strategic acquisitions and buy some customers and buy some technology.
And we've kind of seeded 40 some 40 to 50 companies in the space that are really kind of prime for when Uber does decide to add Bitcoin.
What are they going to do? I mean, that's that's what I'm focused on.
I haven't been kind of distracted with the shiny Bitcoin treasury companies.
I think it's cool.
I think it's interesting and fun.
But, you know, we stay in our lane here.
And by the way, I don't know why the Bitcoin treasury companies are putting that in through an AMBOSS deal and actually generating riskless yield, even if it's one to one and a half percent on the Lightning Network, just routing payments.
I mean, imagine a sailor took that and was actually generating riskless yield by putting some of it to work, right?
I think we're going to see a lot of those type of strategies coming too.
You're still early.
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Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk.
Muzzman, what's going on? Welcome back.
It's been the last time you were on here.
It's been like well over a year.
You were a pretty early guest actually on this podcast.
I was honored because you had me on early and you had no viewers.
So that was good.
You know, you got to start somewhere.
People don't realize the grind of building out a Bitcoin podcast.
Like it turns out it's, it's,
even though you're talking about what many of us would argue is the most
important topic in the world, which is fixing the money.
It turns out it's hard to get people to pay attention to that when there's so
many cat videos and various various bar fights and gas station brawls to
distract them with like people just,
it's like pulling teeth to get them to care about sound money. I don't know,
man.
So how long has it been now? Cause you really have built it up.
so I think I started it in August of 2023.
So it's been over two years now, I guess.
Time flies.
This podcast is older than my son, which is,
it's a good marker.
I started the podcast like, I don't know,
four or five months before he was born, I think,
because my beautiful wife, Carla,
was no longer feeling like editing short form videos,
turns out, while she was very pregnant.
Who could have seen that coming?
So then I was like, what do you do?
You as a man of a certain age, you just you got to start a podcast, right?
And your your your son is almost old enough to now be a guest, right?
He is.
I mean, I'm really just trying to try to bring him up to be my co-host.
Eventually, that would be the goal.
That's every every Bitcoin podcaster's dream is to have have their offspring be their co-host.
Actually, you know, Daniel Daniel Prince, the one spitting podcast.
He does this with his his daughter.
His daughter's been asking the first question on his podcast.
I think he's got like over 500 episodes.
She's awesome.
And she's been asking the first question that podcast for like five years,
which is just very cool.
What a cool thing to be able to look back on.
What an awesome father daughter activity to be able to do.
Bitcoin podcasting is for anyone who's willing to pick up a microphone.
Yeah, he's an awesome guy.
His whole family and the fact that they, you know,
I think you guys will be like that, you know, as your children develop and grow and everything.
But just going to the conferences, knowing some of the other kids that are there, just they have such a unique childhood with based parents dragging them to Bitcoin conferences.
And can I tell a quick story about his family and his Rakamoto?
Yeah.
So we did one in Prague and I needed somebody to run the door.
and we thought, hey, why don't we pay Princey's kids
to work the door at the event
and we'll give them either Bitcoin
or 50 or 100 euros or something.
And it's kind of like you're an adult
and you're asking somebody for 20 bucks or 25 euros
and you're like taking this thing,
you don't want to deal with it
or maybe 20% of the show's over, you feel bad.
You're like, oh, yeah, well, just go on in or whatever.
But the kids are ruthless.
I mean, the kids were like every person who came in, both of them was like 20 euros.
We accept Bitcoin.
We accept, you know, cash and we have change, you know, and they were just like so on it.
It was like the most profitable Rakamoto.
I think we made like 500 euros and we gave them each like 100 because they were just ruthless.
And they were asking people they we were joking.
I was like, ask people if they're 21, you know, and they're like asking, like, are you 21?
You have to be 21 to get in here.
It was, it was so cute, man.
They were, they were so young.
Dude, that's, that's amazing though.
Now, you know, just hire, hire kids for, to work the doors because child labor works.
Yeah, it works.
And what a great life experience.
Like if you, if you can, I mean, you're, you're running front of house, running door security
as a kid, like you're, you're going to be set.
Like you will know how to handle people going into life.
That's a good skill.
And, and also like on the other side of it, you're, you know, you're in your 30s.
or 40s, you're paying for two, you got to pull out 40 euros coming from a 12 year old kid.
All right. Right. Like, yeah, you don't you don't want to look bad in front of the kid,
right? You want to be like, yeah, I've got the fiat. Don't worry, I'm good for it.
That's awesome. Their whole family is fantastic. It's a it's a great example of I think the
what the next generation can look like with great parenting, great life experiences early on and
truly living on a Bitcoin standard. Like it's gives me a lot of kids like that give me so much
hope for the future to come. It's it's makes me very bullish on humanity. Yeah, me too. And I love
to see that a lot of the conferences, I think the first time that I really noticed it was in
Madeira. But I love that the conferences are really kind of starting the kids corner area,
the like kids section, you know, and it's not like they're teaching them, you know, firearm safety.
uh but you know it's not exactly like the fiat uh the fiat kids corner that you would expect on
like the disney cruise or something yeah i mean firearm safety could be a good one for uh for
you know different types of conferences like you know that's i think i took hunter's safety how old
was i like what 10 or 11 maybe that sounds about right i mean i'd been shooting guns for a while
before that just because i'm from bumblefuck nowhere wisconsin but i still remember my hunter's
safety class. It's useful stuff.
Good to be able to know how to handle a firearm,
no matter what age you are.
Definitely.
As we're recording this, Maz, I just got a notification.
Bitcoin is just pumped
right above 122,000
infinitely printable fiat cuck bucks per coin.
You love Uptober
being memed into reality. Isn't that just
a beautiful thing? It's just like, yep, we're going
up. It's Uptober. There's no
question about it.
Uptober hits hard.
It's going to be a wild ride.
Well, hey, stoked to have you back.
We've got a few things to talk about today.
One of the ones we wanted to start with is upcoming pitch competition
because there is a timely component to this.
Can you talk about this a little bit?
It's going to be happening at Lugano Plan B Forum.
I'm going to be there with my lovely wife as well,
who everyone really comes to see.
But you guys are running a pitch competition with the Plan B Network.
Tell me about it.
I know you're also still accepting entrance to this competition,
which is why we're having you on today to be able to talk about this and see if we can drum up some more people who want to pitch this thing.
Yeah, sure. And I don't know if you have a couple of links there, if you were going to do a screen share over my rambling.
But yes, we're super excited about it. And we've helped organize a few pitch contests in the past.
The first BTC Prague had a great pitch contest and the Bitcoin conferences used to do that whole industry day pitch contest thing.
They haven't done that at the last event or so.
But this is a lot of fun.
And I'm helping Giacomo, who I thought was going to be here today.
But, you know, Giacomo kind of spearheaded it.
And it's CypherTank.
It's kind of a play on Shark Tank, which everyone loves Shark Tank.
But it's Bitcoin-focused.
So Plan B, Fund, Tether, everyone over there is sponsoring this event and putting it on as the first.
It's definitely a trial run.
and it's a lot of fun, and submissions are open and some pretty good prizes, all things considered.
It's not like you have to be incorporated. You don't have to have a certain level of funding.
It's just all builders, all ideas. This isn't a pre-accelerator. This isn't a hackathon,
but if you have something that you're working on, submit it. Why not?
And it's really cool, too, because there's two tracks. There's a for-profit track and then the
nonprofit track. So different community organizations, people like, you know, maybe
meet Premier Bitcoin, you know, I'm just naming, think of every nonprofit in the Bitcoin space,
the educational initiatives, you know, things like Wiser, I'm trying to come up with a few,
you know, there's a million. There's like the Tampa Bay Bitcoin people, and then there's a
Bitcoin jungle people and all these other, like, all of them, you know, apply. It's non-dilutive
grant money, you know, and they're, they're gonna award quite a bit. I mean, it's over 850,000
in prizes. So yeah, and then a bunch of the infos here. I mean, it's all we've been talking about
on the Lightning Ventures Twitter and my Twitter, and this is a trial run. Okay, so this is going to
be filmed. And it's going to be chopped up and aired afterwards. And hopefully it'll be a series
of Cypher Tank style events that we can bring to the space. It'll be a lot of fun. We're going to
have some killer voiceovers. I don't want to spill the beans on who may be those sexy,
recognizable voices that you know from the Bitcoin world. But maybe, you know, maybe a Brit from
across the pond and maybe somebody here with a sexy, deep, raspy voice. But it's going to be
chopped up. It's going to look great. It's going to be really cool. Bunch of all-star people are
involved. I mean, Adam Back, Paolo is going to be involved. You know, his schedule is crazy,
but he will be there. A lot of this is confirmed. Odell, Preston, Farrington, Yakes. And the idea
of this event, whether you're for profit or not for profit, is that you're getting to obviously
pitch in front of these people. You're getting a bunch of exposure. You're getting expenses paid
to go to Lugano and the chance to win. But you're also able to kind of negotiate your own deals and
additional deals with the, you know, I don't want to call them sharks, right? The honey badgers or
whatever they are with the BCs that are there. So you're not just playing for, you know, the
sponsored price funds that are going to be distributed, but you might walk away with another,
you might find even a lead investor that's there or lead to other things. So there's just so much
good that can come from it. I mean, everyone I know that's got a little nonprofit thing that I'm
just really encouraging everyone to apply because you know,
you never know what can happen.
So I think this is awesome.
And just,
I was just going to maybe just read through this for anybody who's
listening on the audio,
because I'm sharing this in the screen,
but eight for profit projects will be selected to come to Lugano for
recording two from each plan B VC fund categories.
You've got on chain Bitcoin tech.
So that's a,
that's cold storage.
That's mining,
financialization,
et cetera,
Lightning, Liquid, and RGB tech, so payment scalability, asset protocols, privacy, programmability,
et cetera. Peer-to-peer tech, decentralized identity, data transmission, storage,
elaboration, et cetera. And emerging markets, everything connected with or contiguous to
Bitcoin that can impact emerging markets. And then three nonprofit categories, human rights
protection, privacy, censorship resistance, scientific breakthroughs, cryptography,
distributed systems, Lugano, Bitcoin, Citadel, everything connected with or contiguous to
Bitcoin that can impact the local scene. So there's a lot of different angles there,
which is kind of cool. I don't see any podcasting categories, which is a little bit,
I'm a little bit disappointed, but okay, I guess maybe in the future. We're just not there yet in
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Yeah, you know, but those orange-pilling nonprofits
that are out there or things like,
what's that game for the kids?
Shamory, is it Shamory?
Yeah.
You know, like those type of projects,
you know, why wouldn't you want to apply?
to do that. You're doing good work. You're spreading Bitcoin education to kids and people.
These tracks and categories, these categories were actually listed on Plan B's funds website.
This was their direction. I didn't pick these. This wasn't like for, you know,
that Giacomo and myself chose the categories. Personally, I would rather not have the categories
because when you have the categories, you have to fill them, right? And it's cool to say these
are what we're looking for. But we it will be two from each. They'll get flown out to Lugano.
It basically lasts a week. There's the the semifinals. And then, of course, the Lugano
week, which will be great. I think you're going to you're going to be there, right?
Yeah, we'll be there. We're emceeing. Yeah.
Nice. And then and then the finals and then that'll be it. So it's a lot of fun. And we're,
grassroots doing all we can to promote it and get the word out there.
We're doing all we can.
We're trying our best.
But submissions, I think, will be open until definitely October 7th,
and I think we got word that we can extend it to maybe October 10th.
But, you know, it's a lot of plain slice and accommodations
that we got to book for the winners and all that stuff.
So we can't push it too far, but we want to get as many submissions as possible.
Yeah, yeah. And for anybody who's listening there, planbweek.com and then just go and look for CypherTank on there. And I would hope that next year maybe there will be a Bitcoin podcasting category because we need more Bitcoin podcasts. We need to be funding really creative implementations of Bitcoin podcasts.
I think I'll have to, you know, maybe I'm going to have to do like a meta pitch to be able to get Bitcoin podcasting accepted into future pitch competitions.
Who knows?
We got to be supporting our Bitcoin podcasters, you know?
Well, can I ask you a question?
Yeah.
You know, that's kind of, you know, a portfolio company and good friends and all.
The name we know and love is Geyser, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
From the VC land, and that's why this pitch contest, one of the reasons why I actually really like doing this and getting involved, besides all the money that this brings us, right, because we all know that I'm motivated by money here, is that we get a lot of inbound of like, hey, I'm working on this really cool movie.
Like we're going to educate people on mining.
Like I'm working on this Broadway play, elaborate Satoshi story kind of thing.
All of those type of projects are not really VC fundable.
You don't invest in movies.
You don't invest in entertainment things.
It's just not something that is really appropriate for VC funding.
So usually I like to send them to Geyser and those type of things like podcasts or the Bitcoin racing car.
and these type of things, right?
Those type of initiatives.
It's great to have on Geyser.
I was going to ask you if you ever had a campaign up there
or had any success there,
but specifically for this type of event,
I'm reaching back out to all those people
that are creating awareness.
And Coach Carbin with his football soccer kids
that he kind of does,
and all of these really cool things
that are Bitcoin adjacent and nonprofits
and good-natured things can apply for this
and maybe walk away with some cashola.
So what are your thoughts on Geyser?
Have you ever fired up a campaign?
I have.
I mean, honestly, I have one for the Bitcoin podcast
that I started a while ago.
I just went on there.
It has raised 40,256 sats.
Granted, I haven't really promoted it at all.
But yeah, let's see.
geyser.fund slash project slash titcoin.
It has, yeah.
So, you know, because that's the other thing.
It's Geyser is, I honestly really like Geyser.
I think it's a great solution for people to be able to fundraise.
And especially if you're trying to incorporate some, let's say, value for value, or, you
know, there's, I know there's a lot of other creative ways you could use Geyser too.
You could, I mean, you could honestly probably use it as a way to like sell, you know, pleb
sponsorships, let's say, you know, roll some credits with your,
your Geyser Fund pleb sponsors on there.
I'm going to say it's a,
I mean,
Geyser fantastic I think that we need more more people using these sort of Bitcoin native funding mechanisms for these sorts of projects Because that the thing you realize is that I mean I donated to I mean probably like a couple I mean at least like a dozen I say different projects on Geyser just randomly over the years
Because it's great to be able to fund things you want to see in the world, right?
And you can do it with Bitcoin.
And like that just, I don't know, it feels good.
Even if it's just a few sats, like it makes a difference.
especially when it's something that you know and love right like i remember i donated to no bs
bitcoin you remember that daily newsletter i loved that newsletter that came out every day you know
it's definitely one that i read but your geyser campaign you know you've gotten over 40 000 sats
and you know one day that'll buy you a new tesla you just gotta wait a little bit but you know the
thing with geyser is since it is kind of we're in a new novel you know area with bitcoin and that
You don't have like the exposure of like the Indiegogo and the Kickstarter where you're just getting hundreds of thousands of eyeballs.
But they also take a much larger fee.
So the thing with Geyser and those type of campaigns is you have to really promote them.
And I was actually amazed by your signature page the other day because you had like 50 different links of like here's this.
And I'm like, man, I'm like, he's got everything in this.
And I'm clicking around and I'm clicking around.
and I end up on the link tree and I don't see support my work where it opens to geyser.
So that might be something you want to think about.
You know, you are absolutely right.
See, Maz, this is why I bring you on.
It's for the advice on how to grow Bitcoin podcasts.
It is interesting that like we did see, you know, you mentioned like, okay,
podcasts are not like a VC investable thing, which like makes sense.
I'm also not a VC, so I don't understand the intricacies of this.
But what is interesting, I thought, I mean,
we did see a podcast get acquired by a publicly traded company.
this cycle. The, uh, my, the MSTR true North podcast got acquired by strive, right? I think
it was strive that acquired them. Like that's like a, that's a wild kind of shift. Like that's
not just sponsoring a podcast that's saying we're actually going to buy out a podcast. I mean, like,
I don't know. That was to me, I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Like my podcast is not for
sale, but that was an interesting, uh, that was a very interesting development. At least I thought
I just hadn't, I hadn't like thought about it in that regard, I guess, but it makes sense. It's
just ultimately what is a podcast? It's like, it's a media business, right?
It's a media business. And, you know, that was a really interesting, I don't know if you want to
call it an acquisition, right? I mean, I love that show. Everyone loves that show. But, you know,
sold for a dollar, who knows what the real sort of acqui-hire and what they're getting paid.
But it's great if you're looking to start a media arm or brand something, you know, I mean,
one of the people who always did it the best, whatever you think, is Swan. You know, Swan
really did marketing so well with their podcasts and their content and all the stuff that they
created a lot of those other bitcoin only exchanges kind of looked to them for a lot of advice right
like relay and 21 things about bitcoin and all these pdfs and materials i mean swan was the like
the leader in all that you know and you you swallow up a couple of these podcasts and it's really a
nice little media media department and you said you're not for sale but i happen to know that
everything is for sale Walker. Everything has a price. Okay.
That's fair. But, but boy, I don't know what my, my price would be. You know, it would,
it would need to be a lot. Cause the nice thing about this podcast is like,
I do this without the expectation that I will make money on it. I do it because like I have
my fiat job. That's how I pay the bills and whatnot. And that's how I stack sats.
if I end up making some stats in the podcast, that's great. But my ultimate goal is like,
I want a Bitcoin podcast because I think, you know, Bitcoin podcasting is the most important
job in the world and we need more Bitcoin podcasters. So really the point of my podcast
is to inspire other Bitcoin podcasts. Let a thousand Bitcoin podcasts bloom. We need to
eviscerate the TradFi podcast market and completely supplant it with the Bitcoin podcast ecosystem.
This is my mission.
You know, this is my mission in life.
Well, I'd love to talk about those type of things and even acquisitions in general, because, you know, thankfully, things are finally starting to heat up, both within our own portfolio at Lightning Ventures, my own psychotic angel investing portfolio, and things like this acquisition with Strive and MSTR.
And I would not be surprised in this bull market if you didn't get some very interesting inbound offers in.
And, you know, really, it's like, what does it cost?
I don't want to sell it. Right. I love, you know, Nico from Simply.
You know, he's he's built a monster over there with other things, you know, but you think about like, what are you selling?
Like you're not selling out. Right. I come from a music background.
It's like you're a sellout man. You went to the major label and you did this and that.
And, you know, what you're doing is, is like you're a one man show, right?
Or maybe a one and a half man show, you know, instead of dealing with the clips and dealing with all of that stuff and dealing with landing sponsors.
Right. And by the way, Walker needs some sponsors right now.
OK, if you want a good show to sponsor, reach out to him.
Darn it. Tell him promo code muzz.
And yeah, give you some kickbacks in the back end.
And Nico has built a heck of an empire over there.
It's super impressive.
Between Nico, BDC Sessions, those in my mind are very impressive in their scope.
Also, Natalie Brunel, her podcast actually makes it into mainstream financial news charts.
That's a different, obviously very different styles of shows from Natalie's
to like a simply to even a sessions.
But it's impressive like to,
to be able to get the Bitcoin message into more of those mainstreams that
you're showing up on the Spotify or Apple podcast charts for, you know,
five, you know, finance and investing or whatever. Like you're,
you're getting added to those lists. That's like, that's,
that's super impressive. And honestly, it's like, I, you know,
we need more reaching outside of the echo chamber.
It's talking within the echo chamber is cool too,
But obviously, we want as many people to be on board with Bitcoin as possible because we believe that it's going to be beneficial for them to do so.
And so it's like anytime you can reach outside there, it's a beautiful thing.
Yeah, I mean, those are staples for getting into Bitcoin.
You know, my mom has known about Bitcoin from a distance, but, you know, she finally got in.
She came to Vegas for the conference there.
I'm not sure if she came more for the conference that I invited her.
She just loves Vegas.
but she's one of the few people that just loves that place and we all hate it right but you know
she you know getting her into it right what's very digestible easy content like here's a couple of
you know get to know you videos from Natalie Brunel I sent it to her and it's just so cute
watching her she pulls out her little Samsung Notes app and she's like I want to meet Natalie
Brunel. How do I do that? And I'm like, well, there's a woman's brunch event. Let's, let's get
you a ticket, you know? And I actually took her picture with Natalie Brunel. I thought it was like
so funny, you know? That's amazing. No, that is like, cause that's, that's the thing you realize
that you never know what type of podcaster, creator, personality, whatever is going to really
speak to any particular person. But like, like me, or, or Nico, for example, we may not be as
appealing to learn about Bitcoin from for your mom as Natalie Brunel is. And that's, that's great.
That's why we need like, you need true, like actual diversity, not like DEI diversity, but
just genuine diversity of Bitcoin podcasts, because you never know what's going to appeal
to a particular person. But your mom, I imagine that she was, she was over the moon to get her
picture with Natalie. Yeah, she was. She got a few, but it was so funny. She was taking notes on her
phone and everything. But like, you know, you find out what works for each person, right? And,
you know, hey, first thing I sent her was a Michael Saylor clip. And in that clip,
Saylor's like, sell your kidney, mortgage your house, sell everything you have, go into debt,
go into debt, buy more Bitcoin. She was like, I don't know about this, right? And then it's like,
okay, let's dial it back. And then, you know, right before the conference, she's like,
Michael Saylor she's like is that the same Michael Saylor from my retirement account I'm like that's
the one that's the one mom let's go and she had this notepad and she was just like she was like
oh Michael I want to ask you do you know Katie the Russian I saw like a notes pad and my mom had
written like Katie she was like she was talking about she saw the family's one you were on that
panel weren't you nice yeah yeah you were on that yeah she she picked this I picked that I picked
that out. I'm like, I think this will be cool. You know, and she really liked it.
Dude, I love to hear it. You know, again, we need diversity of content to bring people in.
And I like shifting because I could talk about Bitcoin podcasts all day. But I do want to talk
about Bitcoin companies more specifically a little bit. So you also personally, obviously,
through Lightning Ventures as well, invest in a lot of different Bitcoin startups. And right now,
Bitcoin treasury companies, you know, publicly traded companies have really been the hot topic,
you know, paper Bitcoin summer. That's what people have been focused on. But in the background and
throughout all of the bear market and everything else, there's been a lot of actual building
happening for not Bitcoin treasury companies, but Bitcoin companies that also happen to have
Bitcoin treasuries because of course they will. They're, you know, they're Bitcoin companies,
they're creating Bitcoin products. Can we talk a little bit about maybe some of the companies
in your portfolio, what you look at from Lightning Ventures in terms of like, what is your,
you know, what is your investment thesis and how do you actually make these decisions? Because now
you, you know, like you guys versus ego death versus some of these others, like you've all got
kind of slightly different, but maybe, you know, Bitcoin is the through line in these investment
theses. But talk about that a little bit. What, where are you guys at? What are you guys looking
for? What are you guys most excited about right now? Yeah. So, you know, as far as what you're
talking about paper Bitcoin and all of that stuff. Markets are fascinating. I love markets just as a
hobby. You know, you can tell I have, you know, my MBA from, you know, Cornell. But just learning
what everything I've learned, I've learned on my own. And it's just so fun to watch the phases.
Okay. And you have there was a point in time where everyone wanted to invest in Bitcoin startups and
companies. These are real businesses. There's no tokens here. This isn't any sort of, but that was,
the markets were hot. It was a very hot market. And a lot of people were investing, especially in
our Lightning Venture Syndicate and others. They raised a lot of funds. And then things really hit
the fan. And then there was this flavor of ordinals, right, where there was a lot of people
that were getting into art, art on Bitcoin, art on chain, Bitcoin culture. You know, I once had
somebody told me, I sold all my Bitcoin. I bought all ordinals because I think it's all about Bitcoin
culture. I said, I want everyone to win and good luck to you. But that's that is not for me. So
then there was that and there were these other things, right? There was runes and you know,
whatever other things that there there were, okay, and then it came to Bitcoin treasuries,
which is great. I would rather have that be the primary driver of this cycle than say,
the altcoin ICO kind of boom bust thing, right? At least these are companies, many publicly traded
that are adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet as a reserve asset.
Some of them with the sole purpose of acquiring more Bitcoin is the company.
That's a whole other thing.
But then that's the flavor, right?
And everyone wants that.
And there's a million things that are very good about Bitcoin treasury companies
or even just you having some Bitcoin treasury companies in your interactive brokers portfolio
and what you can do with that, right?
Because you could margin against it.
And you could use other tools in the tool belt with options that are easy for a U.S. person who can't use Darabit and other things like that.
You know, there's more tools in your tool belt to have even just a little part of it in some of these, even IBIT or one of these ETFs.
And now what you're seeing, which is great, because the Bitcoin treasury companies are way out of favor, right?
It's like almost everyone turned their back.
MicroStrategy was underperforming, you know.
uh all of these you know every other day there's a bitcoin treasury company in africa in the uk
and here and there and you know and it doesn't seem like they're getting the real stretched
valuations m navs and all the things they were getting before they kind of fell out of
out of flavor but now it's really fun and interesting to see that cold storage bitcoin
is in right cold storage bitcoin is what people want everyone that was out there before and how
do I, you know, take a loan against this and invest in startups? And that's okay. No, I'm
going to buy a bunch of these JPEGs and I'm going to do whatever. And there's an, oh, I'm going to
go into these Bitcoin treasury companies, man, this is the future. And now they're just like,
fuck everything, send it to the cold storage at home. And it's just really cool to see the
psychology of people go through these waves. And trust me, all of those things are going to have
their day again. It's always a cycle. And I just, I'm fascinated by it. I think it's just so cool
to see that flip around.
We haven't diverted from that
because what we do is we invest in Bitcoin startups
and companies and private markets
and opportunities that are building on, around,
or with Bitcoin and the future of infrastructure,
on-ramps, off-ramps, exchanges.
You know, Bitcoin's everywhere now.
There's Bitcoin in art, you know, Scarcity.
They do all the cool art galleries at the conferences,
portfolio company, love them.
You know, they're a 100% Bitcoin business.
Or, you know, healthcare, things like CrowdHealth.
I think CrowdHealth did get rid of that Bitcoin element.
But, you know, it was entering into healthcare, energy, how people are paying their electric bill via Lightning Network and paper usage and things that are, you know, happening.
Outside on-ramps, offerings, the debit cards, the TradFi stuff, advertising technology, you know, rewards and all of these things.
It's just there's just so much going on.
So the one thing that we all know is we know that Bitcoin is going to do what we know it's going to do.
So these companies that are building around it are going to do very well.
It's going to be similar to the personal computer revolution or the Internet revolution that we all lived through.
I'm a hair older than you, but not too much.
And, you know, I mean, is Blockstream the Cisco systems of Bitcoin?
you take things like what's going to happen when Bank of America actually adds Bitcoin one day
what's going to happen what are they going to do are they going to hire three lightning
devs and figure it out I don't think so I think they're probably going to make some strategic
acquisitions and buy some customers and buy some technology and we've kind of seeded 45 40 some 40
to 50 companies in the space that are really kind of prime for when Uber does decide to
add Bitcoin.
What are they going to do?
So, I mean, that's what I'm focused on.
I haven't been kind of distracted with the shiny Bitcoin treasury companies.
I think it's cool.
I think it's interesting and fun.
But, you know, we stay in our lane here, which is, and by the way, I don't know why the Bitcoin
treasury companies are putting that in through an AMBOSS deal and actually generating riskless
yield, even if it's one to one and a half percent on the Lightning Network, just routing
payments.
I mean, imagine if Saylor took that and was actually generating riskless yield by putting
some of it to work, right?
I think we're going to see a lot of those type of strategies coming too.
I think there have been, I'm forgetting, it might have been the B Hodel company, the one
that just launched in the UK,
I think that was part of their kind of general game plan
was not just buy Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin,
but also make a return by providing liquidity
on the Lightning Network.
And so I think that that's cool
because there's been this whole kind of debate about,
well, do you want a, you know,
some of these businesses have,
they have their core business, right?
Or what was their core business?
Like strategy as the perfect example.
micro strategy when, and they're still micro strategy, they have that core, you know,
business intelligence, business analytics, uh, business. Now that is obviously a super
small relative piece of their pie, but it's still, it's still cashflow on their, on their side.
Right. But then this, okay, is that better? Or is the pure play Bitcoin treasury company better
where all they do is just, they're just, you know, they're just, you know, uh, raising to,
to buy more Bitcoin. Right. And, and to me, it's like,
it seems like the ultimate best thing to have. And again, I'm, I'm no,
I'm no genius about this stuff, but just like gut feeling is like,
you'd want to have a business that is accumulating Bitcoin for its Bitcoin
treasury through whatever fiat vehicles it can on public markets,
but then also has some sort of a core business that is actually related to
Bitcoin as a technology that is related to these secondary layers that is
somehow providing services to this, you know, like that's a, that's a mutually beneficial thing,
right? You're stacking Bitcoin because obviously, but also you want to be part of this ecosystem.
If there's ways for you to make money within this ecosystem that ultimately then benefits
the value of your Bitcoin holdings, like that just seems like a win-win to me. So, I mean,
do you think we start to see, I guess, like, is the current kind of pure play treasury,
Bitcoin treasury companies, do you think just sort of an intermediary step between a lot of these,
maybe smaller Bitcoin startups starting to get acquired by these public vehicles that are already public, that are already publicly traded, like starting to snap up some of these startups that say, OK, well, we want to have a Bitcoin business.
As you said, it's like it's easier to acquire one than it is to build one up from scratch.
Is that kind of your thesis for where some of this is going?
In addition to like maybe the Banks of America's or the JP Morgan's trying to acquire some of these things, where do you think we head there?
the bitcoin treasury companies eventually acquiring operating businesses that actually
make money in the bitcoin space this is something that we've been speculating about and we had a
panel somewhere i can't remember where if it was in helsinki or something talking about it but we
all kind of think that that's the the way that it's going to go for a lot of these companies
i want to talk about the b uh hodl uh because now that that's public i actually i actually can talk
about it. So Coin Corner is one of our portfolio companies. Love them to death. Amazing team.
Legends of Lightning, Bolt cards, everything that they've done. They've been around for over 10
years, by the way, in the tiny part of Isle of Man, where they're based out of. Monster of a
company. Really fucking cool. So they were actually behind that BeHotel ETF. And while it's not them,
OK, it's not them, so to speak. They're doing all the buys and sells for acquiring on that.
And then they are the ones actually responsible for putting the Bitcoin to work to generate some of that yield.
They're they're like legends and they're doing it themselves in house.
And I think that a lot of these companies, these these ETFs will want to acquire cash flow positive Bitcoin businesses to their benefit.
right because you're they're they're mining sats all day long with what they're doing and i just i
don't know how it's sustainable you know long term that etf you know that's like a partnership for
coin corner right which is which is great b hotel is not an it's it's not an etf is it i think so
isn't it the the uk launched one uh that just happened i didn't i i thought it was still like uh
i didn't i didn't think it was technically an etf i could be i could be wrong on this you're
probably more dialed in than I am.
I thought it was still like a typical Bitcoin treasury company.
Okay.
All right.
So you're right.
You're right.
The operating business.
You're right.
So it's not an ETF.
You totally I sorry It is a treasury company that has aligned themselves with you know Coin Corner and is out to get some yield on the Lightning Network and and whatever
But, yeah, I think that a lot of these companies are going to make some of those acquisitions.
I think it's just a matter of time. You know, we just had our first acquisition in our portfolio for Slice.
You know, Slice was acquired as a part of the whole the team that basically created Fold, spun out Fold.
They're called Thesis. You know, they were they acquired Lolly. They acquired Slice and they're going after Bitcoin rewards.
They want to want to take a piece of the Bitcoin rewards market, you know.
So while that wasn't like 3000 X return, because it did happen rather quickly in the in the life cycle of the company, it's a good sign.
And we're starting to see a lot of life come back to the public markets with IPOs, however they're performing.
Right. Gemini. I know we're not talking Bitcoin only here, but Gemini and bullish going public.
And there's a bunch on deck. And I think Kraken is going to go here pretty soon.
And I just think that we're going to start seeing some some acquisitions and consolidation in the space.
in terms of like i guess generally the uh from like on the on the technical side in terms of what
sort of technical solutions you think are or technical products technical services that you
guys are looking at that you think are going to be kind of really hot because you mentioned sort
of the cyclical nature of a lot of these things obviously you guys have a huge focus on like
lightning on payments on things that are built you know on and around kind of these layer twos
is that where you really see kind of this next wave of both growth in companies,
but also from like the user adoption standpoint,
like kind of this bridging between what people are used to,
whether it be various rewards or things like that,
but bridging kind of some of these familiar topics,
these familiar products and services,
but doing it on a Bitcoin standard basically.
Is that where you guys are kind of seeing this evolving in terms of just like,
let's say actual retail user adoption of Bitcoin and how like that's actually going to like,
what does that actually look like for the people that are going to be using this?
Does that make sense?
Yeah, I think that all of these things play an important part.
The ETFs and those type of plays make it very easy for Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob to log into
their Fidelity account and buy iBit or whatever they want and have some exposure to the price.
They're not using Bitcoin, right?
And then it leads to hopefully there isn't like a big blow up that makes everyone second guess everything that's going on with custody and realizing that, you know, there's another way to to basically actually use their Bitcoin.
But getting people like as far as the tech, the tech frontier and things that we're looking at are excited about.
I mean, everyone's talking about ARK.
You know, we just missed a deal for ARK is a pretty big deal.
Everyone's talking about ARK.
I mean, everyone in TradFi land, you know, Vlad from Robinhood.
I mean, if the guy, every other word he says is tokenization.
OK, every other thing he says is tokenization.
The world is going to be tokenized.
And yesterday, actually, the SEC just put forth a framework for tokenizing stocks to trade 24-7.
OK, and that's the SEC putting it forward.
So, like, this is definitely coming.
The question is, will all this stuff come to Bitcoin?
Because what I've been saying for the last 10 years is anything that matters will eventually be done on Bitcoin.
You know, it's, you know, ordinals, you know, NFTs were created by Bitcoin.
You know what I mean?
The first big NFTs were done on Bitcoin.
It's just it's too busy, like solving all the world's problems, like you're saying.
So will the tokenization race win?
Will Liquid win?
OK, when it comes time to I hate this, I hate the real world asset thing that people are, W.A., whatever they say.
But like what's what's going to happen? Are they going to go to a bunch of crypto things?
Is everyone going to go? Is that going to come to Bitcoin?
I can't wait to see because the tokenization of even our investments, even investments.
You know, if you invested in a in a if you invested a few thousand dollars into a startup through Lightning Ventures,
that's done right now in a completely traditional way with DocuSign and there's really no liquidity until an event happens.
But what if we could tokenize your few thousand dollar investment, not tokenize it right, but you know what I mean,
like give you a token and then be able to create some sort of like bulletin board, some sort of even private way for you to interact with another,
you know, accredited, cleared investor and get some liquidity by that. Because for these things
to happen in the traditional VC land, like it's a lot of work to go to a secondary market and
there's a right of first refusal and then the board has to approve and all of these other things.
And that's really exciting because you might be willing to invest in more Bitcoin startups if you
knew that you had options for liquidity, right, that were easier than the current model. So you've
got like the lad from Robinhood, you know, he's tokenizing open AI, which is really pissing off
Sam Altman. He doesn't want his shares tokenized. But traditionally, that was never done. So it's
kind of exciting. And I want to see all of that come to Bitcoin. I want to see all of that just
eat the world for for that are meme coins going to come to bitcoin i don't even know if they're
there already you know but it seems like a lot of people use solana like solana is where your
shit garbage the mouth of world shit meme coins spur from is that going to come to bitcoin i don't
know i don't know if all of this is going to end up on bitcoin well so let me ask you about that
because i think like i think there's already uh like shit coins on bitcoin with like the what
the BRC twenties or whatever.
Are those still around?
I have no idea.
I don't know if people are still,
still launched them or not.
I know there was like that kind of a initial spurt of them.
I don't know if that's died out.
Honestly,
I don't pay attention to that side of things really at all.
But like about the tokenization specifically,
because this is something that gets thrown around as like kind of a buzzword,
you know,
we're going to put X on the blockchain.
Like it's,
it's almost like this,
like this,
like trope at this point or like this,
you know,
it's this cliche,
I should say.
is this something that you think and even you know larry fink has talked about this stuff a lot
everybody's talked about this you know token is a like you said tokenization of real world assets
or of you know securities markets whatever it might be is this something that you think
that bitcoin is actually needed for or can this sort of tokenization like do you just need a
centralized database for it like because that's where i come from with so much this stuff it's
like do you really need to put it quote on the blockchain like does that actually deliver does
that actually do anything beneficial or is that just the buzzword and really you just need an
efficient centrally controlled database for what this is you know what i mean yeah and it goes back
to basically the same argument or debate that's been happening since the 2013 when the first ic
um the first altcoins uh started coming uh is that you know most of what you need does not need
a token it doesn't need a blockchain and a lot of this is actually just misuse of the word
blockchain. I think that there are some very good use cases, right? And I can probably, I definitely
want to name a few, but like, what's not a good use case? They just misuse the word, okay? So when
people say things like, your house, the deed to your house, it's going to be on a blockchain.
If I lose the password, the backup phrase, the whatever, my house would be 100%
irretrievable. Okay, that that's a blockchain. That's how a blockchain works. Right. So that's
not a blockchain that would be, hey, you know, we're going to eliminate red tape, there's going
to be efficiencies, there's going to be a token that represents your house. But that's not a
blockchain. That's just a way to ease 300 pages of paper and red tape and all sorts of things.
It creates more efficiency in that your medical records, everyone, your medical records are going
to be on a blockchain. Well, if I lose that, and my medical records are gone forever, that's never
going to happen because people can't save my life after I get hit by the car. So that's not a
blockchain. Would it be easy for me to biometrically send some sort of token thing to a doctor and
give my permission? And here's all my medical records in a way where we don't have people on
the phone in the back and the faxes coming in and all the ways that like I used to I had a history
in the medical industry, like it's absolutely archaic.
It's from another century what they do.
Sure, that would be really cool, right?
That would be really cool, but that is not a blockchain.
You know, or, hey, we're going to do supply chain,
and, you know, the bucket of Coca-Cola is going to go on here and there.
That's like not a blockchain.
That's just a better QR code, right?
That's a centralized database, just like what you said.
And most things need that.
But there are things that would be really great, right?
Like what about certificate of authenticity?
You know, I've got the Mickey Mouse baseball.
And instead of the little piece of paper, I can also have the piece of paper too.
But I have something that represents that.
Something that can't be copied, can't be whatever.
And if I lose that, tough shit, okay?
Because it's not my medical records and it's not the deed to my home.
But fuck, you know what I mean?
Like I need that.
I'm not going to lose it.
So there are certain things that are kind of maybe interesting to think about.
And I think that the tokenizing of the stocks, as long as it's a derivative and it's tracked properly and however they're auditing it and whatever they're doing, I think that's cool.
I don't know why stocks don't trade 24-7.
If you ask anybody who's over 55 or 60 years old on Wall Street that's been around, they will tell you they hate this.
They do not want a 24-7 market.
They want things exactly the way that they are right now.
it's 930 to four and holidays are off and Juneteenth is off and we're inventing new holidays.
They want it that way. And people just don't. I mean, it's going to be dead. I mean,
you know, and not just degen traders. It's just the world is a news driven market. Things are
happening all the time. And you should be able to hedge or get in and out of a position overnight
at 6 p.m. on a Sunday if something happens. So that type of tokenization, I think, is good.
And it's a token that represents something, but it's not like if I lose the tokenized Tesla shares.
I don't have an opportunity to lose it.
There's no self-custody of the tokenization of my Tesla shares.
It's just a way to actually create sort of a new market.
And I think that that's cool with a lot of these private market investments.
If I was going out and raising a fund, and if I was finding an investor for $100,000 and that person was a Bitcoiner, you know when you invest in a venture fund, you're looking at years with very, very limited liquidity options.
And to be able to bring some of this tokenization efficiency to the LPGP venture markets to where, hey, you invested $100K now.
Seven months later, something happens in your life.
There's a book value, and you have a buyer who wants to give you $140K, I don't know, with whatever.
You should be able to get in and out of that position and access some of that liquidity.
And that's the type of tokenization that I'm excited about.
And it has nothing to do with mnemonic seed phrases and cold storage and whatever.
That's what I was kind of getting at because like what you're describing there, it's like, yeah, it makes sense that these things you should be able to create liquid markets for like any investable vehicle.
Right. But you don't need to have it doesn't need to be on the blockchain.
Like you just need literally like – you wouldn't necessarily want it to be either as you said because it's like you don't want to lose your private key and then that investment is just like locked out forever.
It's like no, no, no.
What you want is just a much more efficient like centralized market structure for these types of things that is actually operating like everything else does in the 21st century, not like everything did in the 20th century.
Like that's the thing.
But these – I mean like it's insane.
And just as it relates, like even just like banks, like it's just ridiculous that like, oh, you sorry, you submitted your wire transfer, you know, after close of business today.
So you're gonna have to wait till we wake up and get into like, it's insane how archaic so much of this stuff is.
Like, I'm so glad that Bitcoin exists.
Thank God for Bitcoin, because every time I have to interact with the fiat system in any meaningful way, which is actually quite often still, it's like every time I'm just like, oh, my God, this is just like pulling teeth to get anything done.
And like I want to be able to make transactions at any given time without needing somebody to approve this or whatever.
And so, yeah, I wanted to push on that a little bit because I think that idea of like put it on the block, like you're not saying tokenize it on the blockchain.
You're saying, no, like just create a 24-7 market for this and a liquidity pool that doesn't have anything to do with putting it, quote, on the blockchain.
Fair?
Yeah. And when you lose Bitcoin and I've lost Bitcoin, sadly, not due to an exchange hack or something else, which I've lost plenty of Bitcoin that way as well.
However, you know, just losing access to a wallet. OK, that is so unfortunate. OK.
And when you think about the social engineering things that happen with SIM swapping, okay, you should be able to have a private key for your telephone number that is only you.
There's no other copy.
Okay, that is yours.
And when you move that from Verizon to T-Mobile or to whatever you do and you prove ownership, okay, that could just end all of it.
But you know what would be the downside?
is that if you lose that, you will lose access to your phone number, or you will just never be able
to move it. You will be a Verizon customer forever, because you can't move it. Okay.
And that's like, kind of not that bad. You know, if you think about it, like, is that really the
end of the world? Like, it stops so much crime. It stops so many people, right, from from doing
terrible things, but it comes with risk, right? And that's Bitcoin as well. You know, you hear
sovereign individual is everything they preach forever. But hey, if you lose it, it's gone.
And for some reason, I think I don't know why a lot more of that hasn't happened. People need to
just accept those risks. So I think those type of innovations are coming.
I want to zoom out a little bit and just talk like more broadly about adoption and just market
cycles because it feels like in my mind, and I haven't been through a lot of Bitcoin cycles,
I got it in 2020 after I think I've ignored Bitcoin for longer than I've been in Bitcoin.
In terms of the first time I heard about it to them when I finally started buying,
that period is longer than the period that I've been stacking, which kills me,
but it is what it is. We all get it at the price we deserve. But it feels like from my limited
experience here that we're at this place right now where we've been like Bitcoin's been kind of
a stable coin, relatively speaking for, for a little while. Like it's, it had a, it had an
incredible run up, right. And, you know, to breaking over a hundred K and then since then,
it's, you know, people have been somehow getting bored with the Bitcoin price action, even though
it's above a hundred K or, you know, you're hearing Bitcoin crashes to 109,000, like insane,
insane things to even say out loud. Where do you think we're at in terms of the cycles? Are you
somebody who believes that four-year cycles are really important in Bitcoin, that the halving
cycles are really important in Bitcoin? Are you more in the liquidity cycles? This is actually not
to do with the halving as much. It's to do with just macro liquidity cycles. Is this time different
from a cycle perspective? Where are you at right now? What's your thesis as we go into this October
where things seem to be kicking off with a bang already in the first couple of days?
How are you looking at this? How are you digesting it?
man that's a ton of questions walker i know i like to warm up on you so
you know if you go to a traditional wall street firm anyone bond trader normal person uh bitcoin
going from 120 down to 109 in like i mean a couple days right i mean sometimes you look at an hourly
chart or a daily chart of bitcoin and you're like what the fuck you know i mean i dropped four grand
in an hour, you know, and those type of moves, when you measure it on a percentage basis,
there's nothing stable about that. Like that would scare the crap out of any traditional,
any traditional, it just, you don't get moves like that. Yeah. With some high flying, you know,
low cap stocks and biotech, sometimes you get big moves to the upside and things like that,
But those are really big moves. And I think that it's been less volatile than, say, in the past, right? Are we going to have an 80% drop down to your point about previous cycles and what are we going to see this cycle? I don't think that. But every asset in the world goes into a bear market except government spending, right? That's the only bull market. It's just going to go up forever.
But every asset in the world, whatever it is, everything hits a bear market at some point in time, whether it's tech stocks, real estate, anything.
We were talking about markets earlier in the psychology of it.
And, you know, after you've been around for a while and just kind of followed it, it's kind of fun to watch.
It's fun to watch when the real estate market is hot and everything is coming in over the asking price, you know, or when there's flooded with inventory and it's a buyer's market.
Bitcoin will have the same thing.
The question is, this time around, will it be as deep as a correction?
And I don't think so.
Remember, NASDAQ dropped 70-plus percent with the dot-com.
And you had companies that were just adding dot-com to their name and just going up.
I don't think we're in that type of a world with the Bitcoin treasury companies.
But I don't know if we're going to have quite as bad of a correction as we had before this time around.
Because I just believe that there's too many buyers.
I mean, I just think there's too many people on the sidelines. I mean, Bitcoin is hitting an escape velocity, whether it's Saudi princes and corporations or, you know, Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob, however they're buying it through their ETFs or whatever they're doing. We're hitting that escape velocity. There's just too many buyers.
OK, but however, is there going to be a catalyst, a catalyst for it?
Now, you remember the last cycle.
You remember FTX.
You remember BlockFi.
You remember all these things that happened.
I remembered Mt. Gox.
I still have a valid Mt. Gox claim that I haven't been paid.
OK, so you have catalysts.
You have catalysts for all these things.
You have New York Attorney General going after Tether.
You have events that kind of that cause it.
So if you're kind of thinking in the future, not that you want to do porn into it, right, because it's up to the right forever, right?
We're all good.
We're going up.
It's Uptober.
It's Moonvember.
It's all that stuff.
What could be a catalyst this time around?
Do you think that an issue may be with, I don't know, Coinbase Custody.
I think they have nine of at least almost all the Bitcoin ETFs and so much of a honeypot with Coinbase Custody.
I'm just I don't know anything.
I'm just I'm making shit up we're sitting here talking bsing right could that cause something
what what about god forbid right it's not going to happen but I'm just I'm coming up with things
right it's fiction what about North Korea for some some reason hacking micro strategies bitcoin
and you know the U.S. government having to get involved and backstop micro strategy investors
with dollars and then the U government has to try and retrieve that Bitcoin from North Korea What does that signal what does that do to the market
And by the way, when the U.S. government gets that Bitcoin back from North Korea, they're going to keep it because now it was part of that whole hack.
That's a 6102 covertly in this future.
So you can go down all kinds of sci-fi kind of weird things, but what's going to be the catalyst that busts it?
Like these Bitcoin treasury companies, like they're going to sell, right?
I mean, eventually you have to manage your risk.
You have to pay bills.
There's a time to scale into Bitcoin.
There's a DCA in and then there's the DCA out.
Nobody talks to the DCA out.
If we're at 180,000 Bitcoin price, is there anything wrong with setting a DCA out to pay some bills every week?
And just kind of – I just – I don't see that crashing the market.
But there just there has to be a catalyst for this next wave down.
Is it World War III?
Is it China and Russia versus the world?
Is there something there?
Right?
Because Bitcoin does not like war.
It should.
It should love war, but it doesn't.
Is it the cyber threats?
They're all conditioning us.
Everything you watch on TV, right, is all about the cyber threat.
The cyber threat.
The Internet's down.
Everything's down.
Teslas are crashing into each other.
No ATMs.
That's not going to be good for Bitcoin.
You're going to have bigger problems, right?
We're going to have bigger problems than Bitcoin at that point in time.
But what could be the catalyst?
I don't think that we're going to have quite as deep, but it all depends on the catalyst to me.
I mean, the four-year cycle, I think we have time.
And this four-year cycle broke it.
Remember, we made a new all-time high before the halving.
That never happened before.
So I don't know.
It's like, yeah, nobody has a crystal ball, right?
But it's fun to speculate on this.
And we are entering this time of kind of, I mean, I suppose everyone probably thinks that the time that they're living through is full of unprecedented turmoil and change.
Maybe that's just a part of being human.
But boy, there seems to be a lot of stuff converging right now.
And it'll be interesting.
I guess the big question is, we know Bitcoin will probably have a significant pullback at some point just because there's still so many whales out there with amounts of Bitcoin that I can't even fathom.
Thousands and thousands of Bitcoin.
We saw one of these whales unloading what was like 80,000 Bitcoin.
I mean like what?
Like that just – like that's insane.
You know, a couple other whales with a few tens of thousands.
Like that's nuts.
And actually the market pretty much soaked that up, right?
Like that's an incredible thing too because we do have a ton of buy-side demand obviously.
but there those whales are out there and they can uh they can shift large large amounts of
capital very quickly so it'll be interesting to see what happens i'm uh you know as for me it's
like i'm gonna keep dollar cost averaging i'm gonna when bitcoin takes a little bit of a dip
i do a couple smash buys there and uh yeah then you know just keep trying to podcast and create
value and uh that's the that's the playbook and hang out with your amazing fantastic wife and raise
your beautiful son and love life.
Touch grass, you know?
Touch grass, man.
Just, yeah, live life.
Go hang out at some Bitcoin conferences
and just have a good time with it.
One thing I wanted to talk to you about also,
this is kind of going back to a more,
let's say, technical side,
as it relates to the Lightning Network specifically.
I've seen a lot of stuff recently,
and not just recently,
but generally it just seems to be
popping up more recently,
about people talking about,
okay, like the Lightning Network,
is like it really only works in a meaningful way from a custodial standpoint. I've seen this
argument being made a lot. Obviously, a lot of the companies that you are investing in, they're
either providing some sort of custodial lightning service or utilizing custodial services. Is that
where you're at too? Like for you, and you mentioned some of these other protocols like
ARK, these other layers. How are you looking at this in terms of is the lightning network something
that you think is really better geared towards these custodial type services?
Like that's where you're, you know, it's obviously where you're going to get the best user experience
because using a custodial service that has massive fat channels open with other custodial services
is going to like, you're going to have more liquidity, right?
Than if you're opening your own channels.
Like I know this from having my own channels open.
What's your read on that?
Does that at all impact like the investment thesis?
Has, quote, Lightning failed if it doesn't – if it's primarily used custodially or is that irrelevant in your opinion?
Completely irrelevant.
But you have all these – like it would be a great infographic.
You have all these clusters of people.
You have some that will say self-custodial Lightning, it's the only way.
It's easy and it works perfectly.
And I just tested actually every Bitcoin Lightning wallet that I could probably about a month and a half ago.
I spent an entire weekend.
I did so much testing.
And every non-custodial wallet had failed payments, every single one, every one.
And it's nothing wrong.
It's just it's not easy.
And I can open channels and I can pay the fees and I can do whatever they want.
And no matter what I seem to do, there's failed payments.
And with the custodial wallets, something like Speed or Blink, I never have a failed payment.
Maybe ever.
I mean, and I'm talking beefy payments, man.
You know, 5 million sats, 6 million sats and not having a failed payment.
That's wild.
So there are people, and I'm not saying that it's broken to each his own.
And by the way, the non-custodial Lightning wallets are crazy expensive to use.
You know, the Bitcoin wallets in general have upped their fees all the way around and good for them if they can get it.
But even someone like River to make a lightning transaction, I mean, they'll charge you 35 cents, 40 cents.
That's kind of crazy.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of crazy to pay 40 cents for a thousand dollar lightning network transaction.
Like, you know, and they have to make money and they're doing what they're doing.
But like, that's that's a lot.
And when you use the non-custodial, the fees are a lot, man.
They are way higher.
I A, B tested all of them as opposed to something like speed or blink where, what is it?
Like 13 sats.
It was like nothing, you know?
So there's definitely pros and cons and there's pros and cons to everything, right?
Like if I have money in a bank account, that's not mine.
I can like use Venmo.
I can use some layer two fiat system, right?
Because I'm there and I have a certain amount of risk and then I can have a thousand bucks
in my pocket and someone can beat the shit out of me on the A train.
And I can lose that, right?
And there's other kinds of risks.
So I don't think that it's winner take all.
I don't think that the average person will be able to, with right now currently the way that it's set up,
I don't think the average person is going to be able to manage it on custodial wallet.
And nor do I think that the average person even really cares.
I mean, do people really care?
That's the question.
I don't like sending payments into Strike because at the end of the year, you get a 1099 div or whatever, a 1099B from Strike that basically says, hey, you deposited money, you sent money, and then you have to report a cost basis.
So I would prefer to just avoid that.
But can you sleep at night, you know, if you have a few dollars on some of these exchanges that have perfect lightning UI UX experiences?
I think so.
Until it really gets to a point where it's...
And then you look at Aqua, right?
Aqua is going the opposite route.
They're really doing everything with Liquid.
I think Misty Breeze, the new Misty Breeze wallet is the same way.
But I don't know.
What do you think, man?
I mean, personally, it's like everything has tradeoffs, right?
Like you, you know, you use Bitcoin.
If you want to have unconfiscatable, unfuckable money, you use Bitcoin layer one.
If you want to send really large amounts of money, you use Bitcoin layer one.
If you want to store that money for a long period of time and sleep soundly at night, knowing that nobody is going to rug pull you, you use Bitcoin layer one.
When I use Bitcoin layer twos, I don't care as much.
Like I have the first lightning node I set up was a the Raspi Blitz node.
Like right when I started getting into Bitcoin, like I was, you know, doing command line and stuff felt really cool.
But it's tricky. Right.
And obviously there it's gotten, there's a lot of easier implementations to do that.
Now, you know, I have a, I have various things.
I use a Albie hub for one of them.
It's still like, you know, I'm paying them like a monthly fee and somehow I still have
to still have to manage my liquidity on there, which is annoying.
And channels are getting closed and whatnot.
And I'm like, this is a tear, but like, I just, I just want to use a custodial thing.
Cause I'm not using this for massive amounts.
I'm literally using this for like zaps on Noster for paying for stuff.
if I'm ordering something online and I want to pay in Bitcoin for using it at
conferences. So I'm not putting any super meaningful amount of money on there.
I'm putting a small amount. It's, you know, like, you know,
an amount that I would potentially carry in my, in my wallet that I'd be
comfortable, you know, if somebody, I don't know where the A train is,
but if somebody, you know, beats the shit out of me on the A train, um,
that that's what I, what I have it for. I do. I mean,
I love the user experience of Aqua. Aqua is super nice.
I use liquid a decent amount, um, for,
for various things because I think it, it works really well.
it's weird to me that more people don't use it.
Obviously that has its trade-offs too, right?
That's a federation.
That's it's a, and it's a different,
it's everything's a different trust model.
It's like, you've also got e-cash, you know, on, on, on cashew.
Like that's another different trust model.
That's another opportunity for you to potentially get rugged,
but you're making a trade-off
because you also get near perfect privacy.
And you've got in like offline payments,
you've got instant, you know, basically instant settlement.
Like it's really, really cool.
It works super, super well.
And it's so private, but there's trade-offs.
So for me, it's like it all comes down to what you need, right?
And it's like different tradeoffs for different purposes.
You always have the Bitcoin base layer to fall back on when you want to have something that is uncensorable, unconfiscatable, unfuckable.
That's what Bitcoin layer one is for.
For everything else, I'm willing to accept those tradeoffs because I'm not talking like I don't need the same things out of layer two that I need out of layer one Bitcoin.
Those are just they're different needs for me.
I am curious.
I want to ask you just to clarify.
So you said the custodial wallets that you were using were cheaper transaction fee-wise
or more expensive than the self-custodial, the non-custodial wallets you were using?
100%.
Or other way around?
No, 100% cheaper and actually in a lot of times like nearly free, maybe free.
If you use Speed Wallet and you make a Lightning transaction, there's a more than likely chance
that when you look at the fee after you send it, the fee will be zero.
Like many times it's zero, right?
If it's a small amount, it's a very small amount.
But when you send from River or Zeus or Phoenix or these other wallets, you're going to pay what I think, what seemed to me is a significant fee.
For Lightning.
Right.
For Lightning, it's like nearly free, an instant, like $0.35.
cents you know one time it was like a dollar 10 uh and it was a lightning transaction but you know
again just what you're saying about like like on chain i mean when the menpool is empty you know
one sat per v bite i'll die on this hill um the thing is is like speed wallet for example
i i went to make a uh i mean sizable right like maybe a 0.2 deposit uh off of speed wallet and
the fee was fucking $200. I had to like wipe my eyes. So it's like I can use Speed Wallet Custodial
for nearly free, nearly free. And it's beautiful, wonderful experience. And then you go to make an
on-chain payment and they charge you 1%. So that's like, then it's like, you know, and that's,
that's truth. That's, that's the way that it is. And, you know, okay, I'll go back to using
Blockstream Green. I don't think it's called Blockstream Green
anymore, but that was the best mobile wallet for
on-chain was the Blockstream Green.
I think they rebranded it. I haven't used it in a little
while. But when you send from your
Trezor, or when you send from the hardware wallet
at home, you specify the fee.
The dynamic fee estimation,
one fee per byte. That's what I want to pay.
I'm a cheap son of a bitch. I'm going to pay
$200?
That's insane. That's worse than fiat.
You mentioned
River, but Rivers is
It's custodial, is it not?
I mean, you're talking about just using Lightning to transfer off?
Rivers is custodial, but the River is a business.
And, you know, every week we do our-
Okay, so you lumped it in with the non-custodial ones.
That's why I was just, I was clarifying.
So you're just saying those are,
the River one was on the expensive side
at the same level as some of the non-custodial ones.
Whereas some of these custodial options,
if you're doing Lightning,
they have these massive fat channels that are open.
The liquidity, like you sending a couple hundred bucks
through that one Bitcoin channel
doesn't even move the needle.
And so it's super cheap.
That's what you're getting at, right?
I'm getting at that, but I'm also getting at River used to be nearly free, right?
When they, like Uber, how Uber used to be, like, really cheap.
And now it's like, fucking, I pay more for the Uber than I did for the flight.
You know what I mean?
Like, that type of deal.
So, you know, and God bless River.
And they're an amazing company and all.
But, like, Lightning Ventures, we do our payroll every Friday.
Some people get paid in Bitcoin.
You know, we have our corporate account with River, which is great experience, love River.
But when I make those Lightning payments every week, I can't help but look.
If somebody's getting payroll and it costs me $1.30 to do a Lightning transaction for his payroll that week, it used to be free.
I mean, it used to be zero.
It would be free with something like Speed Wallet, right?
And then you go to Strike, and Strike gives you no fee for an on-chain withdrawal.
You know, it's free.
If you're willing to wait the 24-hour, like, no rush, whatever period, send it when you do the next batch, it's zero.
It's free.
So it's just all of these exchanges and things, they all have different flavors and they all have different features.
It's different strokes for different folks, right?
I mean, it is amazing that we have so many options.
We have so many options.
I've got a Lightning Wallet folder on my phone that's got like, I don't know, like 15 different ones in there that I've played around with like pretty much all of them, I think.
And it's cool to have options.
Like I've got my ones that are kind of my go-tos, but it's nice.
There's a ton of different ones popping up.
I think we'll start like – do you think we'll still see a lot more proliferation of different wallets and services around this?
Like are you guys looking at the ARK stuff at all too?
Is that something you think is going to be blended into a lot of these Lightning wallets that it'll just be like, so they'll be kind of dual purpose.
You'll have multiple options.
How do you see that happening?
I think they have a solution and they're going to be in Lugano.
There should be a pretty cool demo and news or whatever.
But I think they have a unified QR code that works.
But, you know, it's hard to just actually like it's hard to just keep up with everything going on in Bitcoin.
You know, things that are out there that everyone's using.
Start thinking about these new things that are kind of on the cutting edge.
But, I mean, I love that team and I love them.
But I'm also in the camp that, like, lightning works and it works great.
Okay?
I mean, there's all these different things.
There's a million ways to use it in an optimal way and suboptimal, depending on, like, what's important to you.
But I like my payments to go through, right?
But I also have a Start9 at home.
I have a Start9 at home.
And I just, it's just, I would rather just keep, just do the hardware wallet and not really do a complex multi-sig, you know.
And I just don't need that.
Like, it's just not for me.
But there's just so many options right now for people that it has to kind of just work magically.
You know, if you had to go into a command line to send an email, it just, it wouldn't work.
You know, I, so I think we're getting there.
I just think that it's a lot for a new person to come in and you don't want to get scared off with BIP whatever.
Do you think we're still pretty early on the UX side of things in terms of like what?
Oh, dude, big time.
Big time early.
I mean, it's, it's gotta, it's gotta be simple.
It's gotta be simplified.
And I think a lot of that's just like, you know, you've seen, like, I think that was a big thing that Aqua was pushing for, right?
with we brought up theirs earlier they were pushing for how do we make this like i think
what was their tagline something like the bitcoin wallet for your grandma like you know bring it
back to the old grandma like can can your grandma figure this out anything that's like a it's it's a
good goal especially on the payment side like grandma figuring out like self-custody and that
may be a little bit you know a little bit trickier but it's like maybe grandma doesn't need to you
know like i don't know i go back and forth on that um i want to be conscious of your time here
was, but was there anything we didn't get a chance to talk about with regard to either like the
investing you do your portfolio companies, anything like that? Um, well, I'll just remind
people again, if you're, you know, if you're still listening, go and check out a plan B week.
I was plan B week.com right plan. Yeah. Plan B week.com. If you want to get involved in this
pitch competition in Lugano, and if you are in Lugano, come say hello, uh, Carl and I'll be there.
Let's go have a beer. Uh, muz, we're going to need to have some beers, but yeah, anything else we,
we should cover. No, that's it. So if you're interested in learning about investing in Bitcoin
startups, you can get the skinny at LTNG.ventures. You can sign up the form there. We'll send you an
invite to join our group and all that good stuff. If you're working on something cool,
go ahead and fill out the form as a builder or founder, whatever. That's really cool too. Maybe
there's portfolio companies or something we can do to help you out in one way or another. And we
We also just launched thunder funder.com,
which is a reg CF equity crowdfunding portal.
So not like geyser where people are donating,
but a sort of retail investors that don't have to meet any kind of accreditation
for thunder funder.
And we are going to be firing up some really cool deals on there.
So that's it.
That's all I'm interested in and doing.
All right,
man.
Love it.
Well,
appreciate you coming on here.
Stoked to see you in Lugano.
And yeah,
until then,
let's keep playing with lightning wallets, huh?
You got it, man.
All right, take it easy, Muzz.
Thanks.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode
of The Bitcoin Podcast.
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