Most bleeds are not gonna have layer one Bitcoin anymore.
Like, you know, it's like, think about it this way, right?
Layer one is BIS, right?
It truly is the last level of settlement, right?
Something like layer two, like lightning, liquid,
things like that, they're gonna be like wires.
So you're gonna be transferring, you know,
minimum $5,000 on them in order to be worth it.
And then you're gonna have everything else on, you know,
this sort of like layer threes that maybe peg,
maybe not be peg, you know?
It's gonna be a dance.
And that's what a voluntary anarchic system is, right?
Like you have a spontaneous order where, you know,
through demand, things magically appear
to solve the problem because there is money to be made.
And, you know, like there's not gonna be perfect, right?
There is no perfect.
I mean, look what we have now.
It's like literally death, you know?
The US dollar is like extremely toxic, right?
It bombs countries, right?
Every time it needs a pump.
So, you know, like just moving from like, you know,
bomb-based monetary system to like, you know,
voluntary-based imperfect system,
it's already like, again, a million times win.
["The Bitcoin Club"]
Greetings and salutations, my fellow pubs.
My name is Walker and this is The Bitcoin Podcast.
The Bitcoin time chain is 835-112.
And the value of one Bitcoin is still one Bitcoin.
Today's episode is Bitcoin Talk,
where I talk with my guest about Bitcoin
and whatever else comes up.
Today, that guest is NVK,
creator of CoinKite, the cold card, the block clock,
and the just released Unleashed Chat,
a private AI you pay for in Bitcoin.
He's also the host of the Bitcoin Review Podcast
and probably a few dozen other things
that I'm not mentioning here.
NVK and I dig into a few current debates in Bitcoin.
Talk about Noster, eCash, game theory,
and economic incentives,
and the intersection of Bitcoin and AI,
plus a whole lot more.
This conversation with NVK put a lot of things
in perspective for me,
in terms of what actually deserves our attention
and what is just a distraction.
Plus, NVK is just a hilarious dude,
so I'm confident you'll have as much fun
listening to this conversation as I did while recording it.
Before we dive in, if you like the Bitcoin Podcast,
do me a favor and share an episode
you find valuable on Noster or Twitter,
or if you listen on Fountain, which I recommend,
because honestly, it's just so much better
than any of the other podcasting platforms out there,
and you can earn Bitcoin by listening to this show and others.
But anyway, on Fountain,
create a clip of an episode you find valuable
so it reaches more people.
I am a one-man show trying to build out
another fucking Bitcoin Podcast,
and the best way you can support this show
is to share it with your friends, family,
and strangers on the internet.
You can also support this show
by going to bitbox.swiss slash walker
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You can subscribe to the Bitcoin Podcast
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And finally, if you are a Bitcoin-only company
interested in sponsoring another fucking Bitcoin Podcast,
hit me up on social media, or through the website,
BitcoinPodcast.net.
Without further ado,
let's get into this Bitcoin Talk with NVK.
Well, thank you for sharing your scarce time here.
I know you are a very busy guy.
Also, you have an awesome background there.
That is, there's a lot going on there, and I dig it.
There's a lot of crap there.
There's a lot.
I mean, I don't know if it's crap per se,
but there's a lot of stuff.
That's pretty nice.
Do you keep that block clock that you have there
just set in the hello mode, just to say hello?
Oh, I'm doing some reorg here because
I dropped one of my OGs, and it broke.
One of my clock OGs broke, so I need to fix that one,
and I'm reorganizing my background.
I think I added too many of the things we do
in the background.
I don't know.
The old school block clock is pretty sweet, I've got to say.
Was that like a first gen mock-up, basically?
Like, let's see if we can get this thing to work.
No, we made a bunch of these.
They were sold for one BTC each.
I don't know, many years ago.
It was the anniversary of 10 years of Bitcoin.
Okay, okay, wow.
Well, I have the block clock mini.
Also, so is that just the block clock then?
And then that's why the block clock mini
is actually the big block clock,
and then there's the block clock micro.
This is the actual block clock.
So are you ever gonna make a block clock maxi
that's extremely fucking big, really large,
like tabletop size or something?
Maybe, I don't know.
Like, how we thought about making a lot of weird things.
They're definitely on the list to do, but...
It's a long list.
It's a, there's not enough time, man.
We have a GitHub issue with like 500 ideas
of stuff we wanna make.
I don't have time.
So yeah, we'll see what's next.
Oh man, well, yeah, time is always the bitch, right?
But again, appreciate you sharing some of that with me,
because I wanted a chance to have you on.
It looked like, by the way,
Madeira looked like an absolute amazing time.
It seems like...
I had such a good time.
High signal?
Yeah, it was kind of like a family reunion.
It felt more like a family reunion at a conference.
And I mean, the open source stage was awesome.
We had a lot of great panels.
A lot got done.
The folks from Sovereign Engineering
were there for two months.
And so there were like 20, 30 dives there.
For a while, lots of good friends came.
We did some good hiking.
There were a lot of great meals ahead.
The younger folks did a lot of party.
No partying for you?
No, man, I was like, no, no, no.
All I did was like great, smaller dinners.
Okay, well, that works too.
That's the...
I feel like, especially now that I have a child,
that's like my version of a party now too.
That's right, man.
Congrats.
Welcome to the club.
Thank you.
It's a cool club to be in.
It's amazing.
There's just this little guy now
just hanging out with us all the time.
And it's like, wow, you're just a full little human being.
And now it's our job not to fuck you up too bad.
That's right.
I mean, you can't really improve them.
You can only fuck them up.
They are who they are already.
Yeah.
It's kind of fascinating thing.
Oh, man.
Yeah, no, it's a tribute.
It gives, I've got to say, just thinking about like
how Bitcoin kind of changes you with time preference and such,
makes you think more longer term.
Man, having a kid is like that on steroids,
where you're just like, oh.
Oh, it's skin in the game, right?
Wow.
Yeah, like the future really matters now.
Like not just because I want to be able to chill later in life,
like because I want to be able to provide a life for you,
or at least provide the pathway to be able to make choices.
Like I don't want you to be a pampered little Nancy,
but I want you to have options, you know?
Well, I mean, you know, Bitcoiners are the great replacement, right?
We're going to have to replace, because people don't make babies.
So, you know, Bitcoiners are going to like
breed themselves into a new world.
I mean, if you look at the Bitcoin baby number go up stats
during the bear market, it seems like people were very busy
making Bitcoin babies, which is great.
Like we need, you know, and for the people that say like,
I don't want to have kids because I want to save the planet.
It's like, OK, fine, you're out of the gene pool.
Great, no, no, no, it's perfect.
Yeah, yeah, OK.
I commend your sacrifice.
We really appreciate you.
Darwinism really works.
It's amazing.
It is incredible.
It's like, yeah, I don't know if Darwin exactly
could have predicted that people would be so willingly removing
their genes from the pool.
But I mean, hey, here we are.
It's a what a time to be alive.
You know, it's everything is good for Bitcoin.
Even, yeah, even strange Green Party folks
deciding not to have kids for the planet is good for Bitcoin.
Well, you know, it's it's funny.
Now we're this.
So this is like my first, I guess, not my first bull market.
I didn't get into Bitcoin until 2020.
After seeing or hearing about Bitcoin multiple times
and dismissing it over the years and now looking back
and kicking myself, of course.
And then finally in 2020, it was like, I could no longer ignore it
because the government was just sending out checks to people.
And I was like, where is this money coming from?
Maybe I should look at that Bitcoin thing again,
because I remember something about it being not inflatable
out of thin air.
But had that like that was a strange little bull run time
last time, I guess, like throughout 2020, 2021.
And just like so much hype and fluff and stadiums being named
with crypto.com stadium and the whole FTX thing.
And now it's like we're, I mean, Moscow time is very early right now.
And it seems like, and I don't know from your perspective
having been around a bit longer, but it seems like there's less
general hype going into this having.
And by hype, I don't mean like lack of excitement
because the Bitcoin or like Bitcoin community seems very excited.
But I'm still not really good.
I've had like one friend reach out being like,
so you still into that Bitcoin thing?
You know why?
He hasn't even started.
Yeah.
See, like when the price starts to do the first little pumps
and sort of normally reaches all time high,
and this has been through through previous cycles too.
It really is only the like the in group that knows about it,
that pays attention.
Like once it really starts to break through means through media
and, you know, things, things start to really go crazy then.
Yeah.
It's just, it's just early.
Yeah.
Don't worry, it's coming.
It's coming.
Yeah.
You know, it kind of, it makes me miss though the,
the bear market times of just, you know, debating why,
I mean, not really even that it's a debate, but just experience
a debate, but just explaining to folks like Saifadeen why
stainless steel is inferior to cast iron and just like
conversations like that really taking up a lot of our time.
And now, now it seems like perhaps those days of stainless
steel versus cast iron debates are behind us.
And I don't know.
No, no, we're going to, we're going to bring stakes back to
Twitter.
Good.
Or a Noster really.
I did see, yeah, I did see your, your, your stake post on
Noster.
I was like, okay, I'm glad to see that.
We need more, we need more meat out there.
Yeah, let's, let's go back to stakes, you know, the,
yeah, the ETF, the ETF talk is not for us.
It's for the normies.
Like, you know, it's deer honeypot.
Like, don't, don't, I don't waste my time talking about ETFs.
It's for them.
It's a great thing, but it's for them.
And no, it's, it's so true.
And it feels, you know, I'm curious on, on Noster, just to
kind of get your thoughts on the ecosystem in general,
because you have the Bitcoin review podcast, which is like
an incredible resource, just not, not only for Bitcoin, but
you've had, you know, you've had Pablo and Kai and a bunch of
other people who are working on stuff on Noster on there as
well.
And kind of what you see, you know, do you think we had a big
run up in adoption with Noster, I think like right when like
Jack and Snowden were, were getting on there and people
were like, wow, what is this?
Right around the time that Elon was saying, you know, he
decided to lump Noster in with Instagram and mastodon and
these other things that people had heard of.
And then it was like, what the fuck is this Noster thing?
And a bunch of people jumped on.
It seemed to be kind of like there was a small plateau and
there's been a little bit of a steady climb.
I think Primal is saying that there's like maybe three
quarters of a million people, users on Noster, how many of
those are active remains to be seen.
But do you think we start to see like in 2024 with there's
global elections this year, right?
Like tons of, I think like a historic number of elections
across the world, which means probably a historic amount of
censorship is going to happen.
Do you think we start to see that drive more people to Noster
just out of necessity?
Or do you think there's, we're still kind of going to do this
slow and steady climb and people don't pay attention to it
for a few years?
It's the waves of adoption, right?
That's how it works.
I mean, this is true for Bitcoin as well.
It comes in waves, right?
And then we have this big lolls sort of like valleys in the
middle.
You know, Noster's been growing a lot, especially after the
primal sort of like very normie, friendly solution.
And it's very easy to pay people as well, like the Vamo
experience.
You know, there is Unleashed.Chat now, so you can do the
grok thing.
It's, things are moving.
I mean, like there's a lot of new users as well.
It's just it's not like, it's not loud yet.
But I really think that either through a XFuckup of
censorship or something like that, or by a celebrity, or a
few celebrities coming to Noster, things will sort of like
heat up again and then, you know, they'll drop again.
It's cycles of adoption, right?
I heard that JZ has an account on Noster.
It's just like, it's a NIM.
Really?
So that's pretty funny.
I mean, I believe it.
Like he's with Jack and I would have been surprised if
Jack hadn't casually brought up Noster a couple of times.
I don't know.
I mean, you know, it could be, it could be a joke and JZ is
not there.
I don't know.
But I've heard, I've heard from sources that that is a
possibility.
Sources familiar with the matter.
That's right.
I think it's coming in.
And I think once, once, so Taito is going through some
changes and once they start signing like young talent and
sort of do a deeper integration in Noster, I think you're
going to see a lot of that.
Again, it's one of those things.
It's like everything takes time.
Yeah.
You know, it, the tooling needs to be built.
Solutions need to be invented.
You know, it's time.
But the trend is there.
Right?
Like we can see the growth trend is going.
So I'm pretty, pretty bullish on Noster.
It resolves a lot of problems in much better ways.
You know, I wouldn't be able to grok Twitter.
I tried.
They don't open anymore the API.
Right?
I can grok all Noster.
I can ask who Lynn is thinking today.
About Mako.
And it gives me a summary.
It's amazing.
It is incredible.
And just for anyone listening also, you should go to
Unleashed.chat and check this out.
Because that is what you're talking about when you say
grok, grok Noster.
You can ask questions.
I've been loving using it because, and I also sometimes
like compare it to chat GPT, like, you know, run them both
side by side and just see like, okay, what answer is it going
to give?
But chat GPT does not have up to date information on Noster.
That's right.
It just doesn't have it.
And I loved the unleashed experience of like, there's no
sign up.
I mean, you know, you can put in your email if you want.
But I think you guys just added Noster sign in as well.
Yeah.
Or that, yeah.
And you send some sats, top up your account.
And you can use all these, you have Minstrel, you have, what's
the, let's see, I've got it up here, the other.
The Minstrel, there is Cintia, which is a GPT type.
There is, there's like four, I think models there.
We'll keep on adding models as they come out.
And they're all mostly uncensored, which is great.
So.
And what is that?
Can you explain like what that exactly means in the context of
these, these models when you say the model is uncensored?
Is that, does that mean it's not like, it's the antithesis of
like the Google Gemini, basically?
So part of, part of the way this models, most models are
developed by like big entities, right?
Because it's like, it needs like millions and millions of
dollars, big brains and a lot of people, right?
It's not a simple thing.
But the problem is they all adhere to all this DEI stuff,
the diversity, equity, inclusion, crap.
So, so the models have hard sort of like lines around a lot
of stuff that is not based on reality, like man can get
pregnant.
No, no, Joe, that is like literally in there.
So, so what happens is when, when a lot of the, when the, when
the models get open sourced, they are essentially lobotomized
by the community.
That's why it's not perfect uncensored, but it's mostly
there, you know, and sometimes can have like some funny, weird
sort of like, like side effects when you do the lobotomy.
But, but it does work.
I mean, you know, you can ask for a, a adult story describing
on how to like, I don't know, like a recipe for a bomb and,
you know, and make it offensive in a certain category that's
very, very cringe.
And it should be able to, to resolve, generate something
that, that will make you proud.
But, but yeah, no, it's, it's a challenge out there.
You know, also this big companies, they have to do so much
bullshit from governments that they're trying to pick, pick
their fights as well.
It's not, it's not that simple, but, but the future is bright.
I mean, the, the open source models are sort of like, you
know, trending towards being as good, if not better than the
closed source stuff.
And also a lot of the big companies, they have to open
source their models because they hit walls.
So they, then they see what the, how the community fixes stuff
and then they either incorporate them or hire them.
But, but that's the trend.
Yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, it's a promising trend because at
the end of the day, like if they want to, want to stay
competitive, if they want to try and maintain what little
moat they perceive themselves to have, a lot of brains working
on a problem are going to be better than a few brains in a
room that are also handicapped by whatever regulations they're
subject to or whatever, you know, corporate DEI policies
they're subject to.
And so that, that does, that gives me a lot of hope.
And it's one of those things where like, once the genie is out
of the bottle, it's very hard to get that genie back in there.
And now everyone can ask that genie questions versus, you
know, the open slash closed AI model of, you know, oh, we're
building something that's, we're on the cusp of something
that's so dangerous that we have to regulate absolutely
everything.
And it seems to be there's so much fear mongering that
actually comes from the big centralized AI companies because
they know that their moat is shrinking.
And they know that, you know, I mean, what's your take on that?
I don't know.
Like they're gonna do what they're gonna do.
I mean, you know, there is a lot of business for everyone.
Like this market hasn't even started.
But Walker, we're winning.
Freedom is winning.
Okay.
It's like, don't get caught up on the Twitter news and, you
know, all the bad vibes around, we're winning.
We're totally winning.
This is what winning looks like, you know, it just takes time.
Yeah, no, it feels, it feels good to win too.
Well, it's nice to know that there are so many people who are
like yourself and like Pablo, like Kai, just because we touched
on them earlier, like building out, Kai did a interview with him
and he walked me through all of the eCash side of things,
which is like this, I think, really cool.
Again, just talk about like these open source solutions for
privacy.
And he was very clear like, look, this is a custodial
solution.
There are drawbacks to this.
This does not solve scaling Bitcoin.
It does not solve XYZ, but it does provide near perfect
privacy for certain types of, you know, custodial transactions.
Yeah, and like those, those little things kind of chip away
at the chains that are, you know, the powers that be, let's
say, are trying to put in place.
And those things give me a lot of hope because people don't need
to ask for permission.
They just build them and then they put them out there and then
it's an open protocol and anyone can build whatever they want
on it.
And that's a really, really powerful thing.
I'm curious because I think you had, you had Kai on Bitcoin
review as well.
Yes, Kai is great.
He's amazing.
And you obviously have a much deeper technical knowledge
than I do.
I've noticed, like I put out that episode with Kai and there
was a lot of people being like, oh, eCash is a, you know, a
shit coin.
This is custodial.
And Kai is like, look, I said that, you know, like I said that
this is a custodial solution.
I said, you know, don't trust your life savings to et cetera.
What's your take on eCash in general?
And why do you think there's such a, like I've seen a larger
pushback than I thought there would be against eCash?
Like, I don't know.
I don't see pretending to be anything.
It's not.
There's a lot of Bitcoiners, especially like 2017 class and
on who don't seem to understand that trust will never go away.
Like there is no such thing as trustless, right?
There's just different trust models and different sets of
trade-offs, right?
You know, Bitcoin is the best thing that we have closer to
trustless, right?
Because essentially we have all this like very complex
dynamic on how to essentially like have the miners and
they're fighting the, you know, the nodes, the economic nodes,
and then you have the difficulty adjustment, you know,
there's this whole balance of things.
But Bitcoin is extremely limited by design so that
it can achieve that, right?
Like, you know, there's only so much throughput for transactions
and there is only so many sets, right?
Two quadrillion sets.
So, you know, and distribution of money, wealth, or any
asset really is always going to be unequal, right?
So, so right now maybe you have like 10 million people who
own 98% of all Bitcoin, right?
That's already amazing compared to the distribution of wealth
in the world right now, right?
Which is like, you know, one basis point of the world owns,
I don't know, like 50% of the world's wealth.
So, we're already winning, right?
Again, the trend continues.
So, we're really making the world like a thousand times
better literally, right?
Like, it's like, if we get to 1% of the world owning 50% of
the wealth, it's already a thousand times better.
So, so like, you know, when you put this thing, start to put
this thing into perspective, you know, things look much better.
Now, you know, there is not enough sets for everybody in the
world, right?
Like, you know, there's 8 billion people in the world, you
know, and there's absolutely no way with their economic
capacity that they're going to be able to make on chain
transactions, right?
Like period, not going to happen.
And, you know, so like, what do we do, right?
I mean, we already fixed the central banking problem.
That's kind of a biggie, right?
Like, they no longer need to have an asset backed by an
asset that devalues, right?
They can have an asset backed by an asset that is like
deflationary, okay?
Wow.
You know, again, a million times better for the world.
And then, you have, you know, you have the problem where
it's like all the layer 2 stuff is bound by Bitcoin block
dynamics, right?
So, lightning, liquid, all this stuff, like it still has
like very hard limits on throughput because it is bound
by the UTXO trying to go through a block, right?
So then, what's the solution?
Well, you know, it's the word that nobody likes, inflation.
But it's not that simple, right?
Because it's essentially what free banking does, right?
Like original free banking, not bullshit central free banking.
So, what E-Cash does is it makes everybody into a capable
free bank, right?
And if you have a trust model where you know how to punch,
I call it proof of punch, you know, you have your
dumb bar, number of 150 people using that mint, you know?
And the guy, you know, is trying to make those UTXOs
available to a group of people who wouldn't otherwise
have access to those UTXOs through E-Cash tokens.
You know, and the guy rugs them, they know how to punch, right?
In a lot of these places, people do carry around machetes.
So, you know, these things will resolve themselves one way
or another, either through a block or through a block.
A block. So, through a brick, block or brick.
So, anyway, so like, it is remarkable though, the other
properties that you do get from this E-Cash tokens, right?
You get like perfect privacy.
You know, it's a bare instrument.
It is fast, right?
Like you don't have to wait for anything.
And it do risks by having a million of them, right?
You can have a million mints, all at low value.
Some of the E-Cash tokens can even have proof of reserves
on the mint, right?
So, I think people are getting caught up on this stuff
because, you know, they just don't understand Bitcoin.
Nobody understands Bitcoin.
And they definitely don't understand E-Cash,
which is even more complicated.
So, but I think nothing like demand-based engineering, right?
To resolve this problem.
Like, there is demand for these things.
And there is people who need to buy stuff.
So, we'll figure it out.
Speaking of figuring things out, it's always a great time
to figure out your Bitcoin security.
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So, thank you.
Yeah, it's...
I think that the...
Something I heard actually on Bitcoin Review to give that a shot at again recently.
I think it was maybe...
You were with...
I think it was Harry Sadock maybe.
But basically talking about...
You know, the Bitcoin is for everyone versus Bitcoin is for anyone
versus Bitcoin is available to everyone, but it's not going to be for everyone.
It's available to everyone right now.
Yes, absolutely.
Can you talk about that?
Because I think that's one of the big misconceptions a lot of Bitcoiners have.
It's very easy to say Bitcoin is for everyone.
I've tried to change my nomenclature to say Bitcoin is for anyone.
Because I think that is an important distinction.
But can you talk about how you think about that?
Because a lot of Bitcoiners think like,
oh yeah, we're going to bank all the unbanked on Bitcoin Layer 1.
And in reality, that's just not possible.
Most Leaps are not going to have Layer 1 Bitcoin anymore.
Right.
Like, you know, it's like...
Think about it this way, right?
Layer 1 is BIS, right?
It truly is the last level of settlement, right?
Something like Layer 2, like Lightning, Liquid, things like that.
They're going to be like wires.
So you're going to be transferring, you know, minimum $5,000 on them
in order to be worth it.
And then you're going to have everything else on, you know,
this sort of like Layer 3s that may be Pagged, maybe not be Pagged.
You know, it's going to be a dance.
And that's what a voluntary anarchic system is, right?
Like you have a spontaneous order where, you know,
through demand, things magically appear to solve the problem
because there is money to be made.
And, you know, like there's not going to be perfect.
Right? There is no perfect.
I mean, look what we have now.
It's like literally death.
You know, the US dollar is like extremely toxic, right?
It bombs countries, right?
Every time it needs a pump.
So, you know, like just moving from like, you know,
bomb-based monetary system to like, you know,
voluntary-based imperfect system, it's already like, again,
a million times the wind.
I think we should start calling the Fiat Bomb-Based Monetary
System. I think that's a good clarification for it.
Like, you know, forget the Petrodollar, forget whatever.
No, this is bomb-based money.
Like it has a nice ring to it.
I mean, a very dark and sad ring to it,
but I think it's a good way to talk about that.
Yeah, I mean, there used to be this guy who used to sell
like stickers and t-shirts way back in the day
called Bitcoin Not Bombs.
You know, it's like the perfect analogy to this stuff.
But yeah, a lot of these things sort of like get lost
in the arguments on Twitter and things like that.
It's like, I mean, Bitcoin Twitter is kind of dying away.
It's all like migrating to either Nostra or DMs
and other things like that.
But yeah, like people just get caught up
in the loser mindset.
You know, it's like we're winning, so chill.
Like enjoy.
I like that because I think also part of it is sometimes
many Bitcoiners may feel like if they acknowledge
the actual limitations of Bitcoin,
that they're somehow conceding defeat
to the Bitcoin naysayers.
Like if I go out there and I say to the TARD5,
Finfluencer person on Twitter, on X,
that, well, yeah, Bitcoin actually won't scale
to this many people on Layer 1 and Banking and Bank,
that they somehow win my little internet debate.
And it's like, no, no, no.
You're forgetting what Bitcoin Layer 1 is solving for, which is...
I mean, the first mistake was having an internet debate.
Yeah.
I mean, just don't go there.
I mean, you dunk on the TARD5 guys on Twitter
and then you close it.
Who cares what their answer is going to be?
Yeah.
It's like he's completely irrelevant.
And it takes too much effort and time
to refute their incorrect assumptions and opinions.
Yes, it's pointless.
So go out and do something else.
Did you see Bill Ackerman losing his mind on Twitter yesterday?
It was brilliant.
These guys are all realizing that they're all short Bitcoin.
So they're going to have the five stages of grief,
like everybody else, and they're going to buy Bitcoin
the price that they deserve.
Yeah.
It is pretty amazing to watch some of these realizations
from very highly regarded people in the TARD5 space
who have been very successful in this fiat world.
And then all of a sudden realize,
oh, shit, I don't own any Bitcoin.
I am literally short Bitcoin.
This might be a problem.
I mean, to me, the whole fun of this is that the dumber you are,
like the more likely you are to have more Bitcoin.
So it's just perfect.
You know, all these guys think of themselves as like the most
brilliant thing on earth, which is great.
I'm sure there are some smart ones there.
But being smart on this is going to give you the biggest,
what's the word again?
Blind spots.
Blind spots, thank you.
It's the middle of the bell curve, blind spot, right?
You either need to be really dumb or really smart.
And if you're anywhere in the middle of that bell curve
intelligence, it's like you're just not going to get it.
And then especially you have two paths, right?
You have the ASOP path and you have the like the Grag acceptance path, right?
Like you either become a sour grape or you just buy an acceptor
and idiot like everybody else and try to stack some more.
There really is no middle ground.
The middle ground is the people who are short Bitcoin.
And there's the majority of people fall into that middle ground right now, sadly.
But I think they're starting to realize it.
I mean, number go up is a powerful meme, right?
It is.
That's what I'm saying.
Like, you know, I've been saying this for years.
It's like Bitcoin doesn't need marketing.
Number go up is the marketing.
There's no amount of football like ads that will compete with number go up.
You know, a number go up, they come in, they're going to buy the tops, right?
Hopefully they don't sell.
And then, and then they're in on the next round.
A lot of them buy by the top, sell the bottom, and then they are ready
for the next cycle to do it correctly.
Experience is the best teacher, I think with with that, right?
Like sometimes you need to get burned a little bit.
Absolutely.
Now, I mean, and it's it's one of those things where it's like,
this is just basic economics people.
Like we're just talking about absolutely finite supply.
Which we've never really had before.
So I guess that part is not basic, but theoretically it's it's been part of that supply demand.
You know, I mean, you don't even need to understand that you look at an asset
that's 15 years old.
Okay, it starts at a cent.
Okay.
And now it's at $71,000.
And it seems to be like having this pumps every four years, right?
You know, like instead of buying lattes, right?
Like just buy a few units of it.
And have some fun watching it and then maybe you'll buy some more.
Like there's not like you don't need to understand anything.
So are you have the opinion like, because you know, some people will say,
like, oh, you know, don't buy anything you don't understand.
You're saying like, no, like I don't care if you don't understand it.
You should probably buy some like just for yourself.
Nobody understands anything that they buy.
They pretended they do.
Right.
Like, you know, look at me.
I'm a valuing vaster on my, you know, fidelity.
Trading account is like $1,000, right?
Like, you know, like, you know, and then they read like 50 Buffett books,
you know, like, you know, the Munger books, you know, they just,
and then they go and they tell all their friends about all the shit they understand.
And it's all like relative to, you know, maybe 1% of their location of capital.
So like they have all this talk, look at me.
I'm an investor now.
Right. And it's like, you know, 1% of their total allocation.
The rest is like their house.
Yeah.
We know which was essentially buy and hold.
Right.
Yeah, it's true.
They really have always been a store of value investors versus value investors
if you own a house.
Like that's what you are.
You're waiting for a number to go up with your house.
The problem is it's not sexy.
There is no thinking involved.
You know what I mean?
Like you freeze up your hands and you're like, oh, I'm not going to buy anything.
Like you freeze up your hands to go do something else.
Right.
So I don't know about pickup gardening or something.
You know, like you don't need to be an investor.
That's kind of the whole point.
It's something that's lost, I think, on a lot of people.
I think maybe that's why you get so much of this pushback from the the TRAD-FI spaces
because they've spent a lot of times their entire lives, their entire careers
thinking that they have an edge over everyone else because they know more,
because they've studied more of all of these different economic principles of fiat economics,
of course, and all of these different techniques for maximizing their returns on these different
fiat assets.
And it's kind of a hard pill to swallow to say, you know what, it doesn't matter all of that knowledge
you have.
Well, I mean, think about it this way.
Right.
Like the fiat system, like the whole, like you need to know how to scam the scam.
Right.
So it does take a lot of education, right?
It does take a lot.
It takes a PhD in finance to know how to scam the scam.
Right.
The problem is, like, if we remove the scam, like, you know, and he just said to you, like,
you know, buy and hold this, this, like math unit, you know, it doesn't sound like a very smart
proposition.
But that's it.
Like we're all going to be savers again.
Right.
Like it's like the average person on Main Street shouldn't, shouldn't know, shouldn't
have to know how to invest.
Right.
They shouldn't know how to like, I don't know, like fix their sidewalk, you know, like
which car to buy, you know, something like that.
They shouldn't have to know, like, you know, P.
Yeah.
You know, like they shouldn't have to go check the P on the stuff that they have.
It's insane.
Right.
That like that a normal person should have to do that.
Right.
But when the when the money is melting, right, and they don't have a place to save, I mean,
it makes complete sense that, like, you know, people go try to buy, you know, GameStop.
Right.
Try to meme stocks into existence.
It's an interesting world out there.
But things, things are changing.
And things, well, and speaking, that's actually a nice segue.
Speaking of things changing, I wanted to get, because I always very much value your, the way
that you think about things, because you tend to have thoughtful and also usually fairly humorous
answers, which, which I like as a fan of humor.
But I'm curious, speaking of changing things, there's seems like always, and this for you,
this is probably just like Groundhog Day, having been around for a while, but always the, the
different debates, discussions around changing, quote, changing Bitcoin or quote, unquote,
upgrading Bitcoin.
And, and back to what we talked about earlier with just the fact that layer one is,
Oh, bless you.
Layer one is distinctly limited in, in its scope of, you know, not in the terms of the value it
can settle, but in terms of the number of people that can interact on that layer one.
So how do you approach kind of the, the, you know, again, the changing, upgrading, quote, unquote,
Bitcoin side of things versus the ossification side, like what, how do you, when you see these
debates happening, which you sometimes, you know, partake in, how do you look at that?
How do you approach that?
Like from a logical perspective of what is actually something that people need to pay
attention to that's a legitimate concern versus, okay, these are nice ideas, but, you know, if
they, well, we're just spinning our wheels here and trying to appear smart and put our stamp on,
on Bitcoin by, by coming up with these new ideas to solve things and fix things that
don't actually solve or fix things.
I mean, like, you know, all software, all software needs gardening, right?
So, so that you can't escape, right? Because computers get upgraded and, and your software
needs to get upgraded so that you will run to the new computer, right?
So it can be very simplistic about that.
I like running old nodes.
I have many versions of Bitcoin running that are very old.
I mean, our store still is on one address nodes.
It's an uptime of eight years.
So, you know, like in that sense, it's like, you know, who cares?
So I'd say just like turn off Twitter, and I'll just, just log out.
And if something is truly, truly important, we'll find its way to you, like in terms of,
like a necessity for you to, to know.
Reality is like nobody knows anything, especially when it comes to Bitcoin.
So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't really matter.
I mean, you know, there's many conversations that conversations will be had, right?
Like, I mean, you know, developers want to develop, right?
Researchers want to research.
And, and then there's a lot of people who don't want any changes, right?
So if a change gets enough traction, right, that that enough economic nodes are interested in that change,
then that maybe happens. We don't have an official activation method for Bitcoin.
We don't have an official activation path for Bitcoin.
We don't have an official roadmap for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin core, people are not official Bitcoin.
There is no official anything in Bitcoin.
You know, anyone can change the code.
I highly encourage Greenpeace to go and change the code.
And so, so like, yes, please, please be my guest and change the code.
You know, it's a very difficult concept, I think, for people to understand that, that
that nobody is official and nobody's more important than others, except for maybe the size of the pile
that they can dump on the other fork. But it's only true on the dumping scenario.
In a standard operation day, it makes no difference, right?
Because it's not proof of stake.
So there is this very sort of like complex dynamics in Bitcoin that I think like the best,
the best sort of like mental model is just, just like, ignore it.
Turn off the TV.
You know, it's like, turn off the TV.
And just move on with your life. Go live your life. Go build some value. Who cares?
I like that advice because I think also most folks are not even technically equipped to be able to
understand the nuances of some of these proposals.
And it really does them no good to try and take the 50,000 foot view of the proposal
and then jump to a conclusion about whether or not this is good or bad.
In reality, like it probably won't happen. And if it does, okay, you know, as you said,
all that really matters is the size of your pile. If it comes to a dumping scenario.
Can you can you actually explain it?
Because I realized in, you know, kind of reading through some of these Twitter debates
that a lot of people don't understand the concept of an economic node.
Yeah. So, like, which I thought was kind of simple.
A node means literally nothing. Okay.
So like, you know, you're not going to be able to do anything.
Node means literally nothing. Okay. So like you're running a Raspberry Pi with Bitcoin
node on it that really means squat to the network. You know, maybe you're just helping
relay some some some transaction. It really doesn't really matter.
What matters in Bitcoin is self validation. Right. So essentially, like every time you send it,
you receive a transaction, you validate against your consensus code, right, your node, right.
It just happens that 9999% of the people use Bitcoin core node. Some use knots.
So, so anyway, so, so let's say I want to change Bitcoin to have, I don't know, like 10% inflation
per year, right? Great monetize policy, right? So what happens now is my money is going to be
different than the rest of the nodes in the network, their money, right? Because my money now
does not match that formula, have different formula than their money. And now what happens is,
you know, let's say I get like, you know, like quite a bunch of people to come with me on this
direction, right? A lot of people, a lot of nodes, but they only really represent like say 30% of
the total Bitcoin in existence, right? Now, that could be tricky, right? But, but then Walker happens
to have a nice chunk of Bitcoin. And he goes like, you know what, I don't like this fork. I don't
like the way this direction is going. So, so as we, as we make our first few blocks on this new
forked formula, Walker, Walker goes to, to Coinbase and say, you know what, I'm going to dump
this UTXOs I have on that fork. So you know, just economically exercise your exit of that fork.
And if enough people do that on that fork, that fork trends towards zero in economic value,
right? So essentially, like the more economic capacity that refuses to go on that other fork,
or even better goes because they're economical actors, not idiots, they go and sell that fork
token, right? They cause that token to, to trend towards zero, right? And now you just had an
economic lesson on the other side of don't do that. And we have exact historical precedence
for this because this is exactly what happened with both Bitcoin Cash and then also Bitcoin SV.
Forking again, they're all towards, they're all trending towards zero. Yep. And everybody dumped,
we call that an airdrop. Everybody dumped their, their, their assets on the other chain.
How did that actually work at the time? Like, does, did Coinbase just like, for example,
not just Coinbase, like there were many, all the exchanges just listed this new,
there were many changes that listed and there were also futures on it.
Bitmex had futures on each token. Oh, wow. So that's a, taking some, some layers of abstraction
there. I mean, and, and we can see very clearly what the market decided. The market now values
Bitcoin as 60, whatever, 7, 68,000, you know, bomb, bomb bucks, bomb dollars. And, and it values
these other forks. There is another less. Yeah. So there is another like sort of like aspect of
this nuance, like that's very nuanced about this, where there is also the transaction validation
throughput. Right. So, so like as, as you validate and relay a lot of transactions, so say for example,
Coinbase, right, it's not their coins to dump, but it is their node that is validating a lot of those
transactions through those consensus rules. Right. And that volume is also another indication
as to which fork you are in, right, like which fork do you support. So there is all this dynamics,
but they're all based on the economics of economically ignoring the other fork.
And I mean, I think what perhaps may not be immediately apparent to a new Bitcoiner
is the game theory of all of this, which is that it is not in the incentive, like no large economic
node and large economic actor with a large pile is incentivized to accept any sort of new monetary
policy or Bitcoin policy that is potentially going to risk the value of their pile. Like they're just,
they're not, they're not going to do that, that they are not going to accept an inflation fork
that puts tail emissions on Bitcoin. Why? Because that's going to make their Bitcoin less valuable.
Like there's no way they will accept that. And I think once you come around to that realization,
you say, Oh, okay. So again, this is this is a free, a free market operating with people making
individual economic decisions that are going to best benefit them. And assuming that they are
rational and want to keep and increase the value of what they hold, they are not going to do something
fucking stupid, like vote with their economic power to dump Bitcoin for Bitcoin inflation.
And this gets fun, right? Because you can fud it and say, but you know what, the US can just buy
all of the Bitcoin. No, they can beat up the price of the Bitcoin with infinite money.
Right? That's kind of like what Sailor is doing, right? Like they're essentially just beating up the
Bitcoin price. So you know, like you can't just buy all of an asset just because you think you have
all the economic capacity, right? Like all you're doing is just bringing the price up because
people are going to wait for you to pay more. Right? The game theory on Bitcoin is actually
quite complete. It's amazing. It's I mean, really, I would hope that this starts be Bitcoin starts
being used as a the key example of game theory in action, like in a practical sense in all
universities going forward, because it just like once you work, like you work through it enough
times, you're like, oh, okay, yeah. So this, this makes sense. And, and yeah, there's really no way
around this again, because as you said, doesn't matter if you try to print, you know, in the words
of Joe Biden, a hundred billion trillion billion trillion dollars, all you are doing is bidding up
the price. And still some people will not sell even as the price continues to get bid up. Some
people will of course, there's a price for it. You're going to get the never sellers and you're
going to get the people who can't even move their coins. We may not say anything. Right?
You know, it's, yeah, I mean, it never worked through history to try to just buy everything
of an asset, right? Like, doesn't work like that. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing to watch. I think
more people are coming around to that realization, perhaps even the Bill Ackman's of the world.
I wanted to ask your, your opinion on something else, because you've, you've talked a decent
amount. I heard some Bitcoin reviews around this as well. And I think you talked about it, I believe
as well on maybe it was Preston's show, but just some of the proposals for Bitcoin that are actually
maybe have some merits, some of the new, the bibs like not even necessarily new, new, but
like CTV and this idea of covenants, can you, can you give the, I am not a developer, but I want to
kind of have a mental model for understanding this explanation of what that is. And is that one of
these things that people should just completely ignore or something that they, there is some
signal there and they should pay attention to because it has some implications, whether good
or bad down the road. So, so, so opposite TV is, is it, is it like a grug brain BIP? Do you know,
like that, you know, the little game for babies where there's like holes of different shapes and
then you have like a little, okay, so that's opposite TV. Okay. Okay. Check template verify. So
like does it fit the whole or doesn't fit the whole. That's a really good ELI five right there or
like ELI one even that's solid. So, so that's that's the TV. But what that does is when you
create a Bitcoin script, right, you're essentially committing to a template. Like in, in, if it was
a TV, right, and that means you are essentially creating a confidence, right? You're, you're
creating a condition in which you have to meet in order for the money to be spent.
Current model of Bitcoin, the spending conditions are on the output. Okay. So that means, you know,
like, does the signature checks? Yes. Okay. You can move that coin, right? You can move the
really assign ownership of that coin, right? What confidence is going to do is put the,
also have conditions on the input. That means the money is still there, it just can be spent.
We really have that with check, with a check time lock, check time lock verify. So essentially, like,
you can set and say, Hey, this coin cannot be spent until the block number, whatever, right? So
you can wait 100 blocks, right, to spend. It's already possible. So what we're trying to do now
is have a more general purpose one. So you create a template, and that template could be like an in
amount of things. And, and with that, we can create very interesting contracts, right?
Including, ideally, we get up vault with that. So that means we can now do,
you know, what an HSMS, it's a hardware security module, essentially, like,
you can have a spending policy on chain. Right. And by the way, I would only want
CTV if I get up vault, otherwise, I'm not interested. Let it be known. Yeah, because then,
like, you know, maybe, maybe cold card doesn't need to exist anymore. You know, I can't do
you know, I can just, I can just have a script in in on chain that says, you know, don't spend
more than one BTC per cycle outside of these addresses. You know, you can do very complex,
interesting scripts. So so now you have a vault. Your Bitcoin is safe on chain. Right.
Right. Is there any way to ever to go back and like, let's say I want to, I want to remove that
template from these, you know, these UTXOs that it's assigned to, can you, can you do anything?
You can create, you can create essentially what we call a nuclear button. Okay. So that a nuclear
option there where in that case, you would have a cold card that creates that key. So you'd have
an extra key that could essentially bypass the vault. Okay. You can also have a semi bypass
of the vault that goes to another vault. You know, and there is all kinds of stuff. And if you lose
a key, not the nuclear key, but the other keys, you would, you would, because there would be a
time in effect, you could actually move the funds to another vault before the attacker gets the funds,
for example, there's a lot of cool stuff that can be done. We really do this with with HSMs,
right? With spending policies in hardware. But those are not enforced by on chain dynamics.
Now, so they need computers to do this and these computers could be hacked, right?
So if we don't need computers to enforce spending policy, things get very interesting.
But you know, it's more complexity to Bitcoin. It's, you know, it's other things.
I think it's pretty safe. We've studied to death for the last, I don't know how long now.
But, you know, like, like everything, the likelihood of changing Bitcoin is always lower
than, than not changing Bitcoin. So, you know, essentially, I assume it's not coming, but I
would like it to happen. I think, I think you had a, I forget if it was on, on Twitter or
Nostra, but you had a point about this basically saying like that, shouldn't pursue a user activated
soft fork for something like this, but should instead kind of build out the client to implement
tations, show that this is something that can be usable and then go forward with it. Can you,
can you touch on that a little bit? Kind of the, the multiple paths?
Yeah. So, so like the reason why you ASF and like the whole sort of like, you know,
fork wars happen is because it was an existential question to Bitcoin, right? We had to fight.
The fight was brought to us. So, you know, we had to conscript the man and we had to get out there.
Otherwise the money was going to die. So, so in that sense, yes, we had to essentially create a,
a, a rebellion, right? With a rebellion client that they ran a specific amount type of code that,
that essentially forced the coins to go in a certain direction, right? The Bitcoin consensus to go
in a certain direction becomes a risk, right? Rebellion is a risk. So, so, so, so, so, so,
so, so, so, and you come out in a say aggression, aSecka talks about that, you know,
but that is a sigh of fear and it because we don't, you don't, um, circle there and so
way as a convertible isn't it? How do you tell and how do you get to where Bitcoin to be?
Um, it comes in risks. Right. Rebellion can fail. But, but, but he did work. Right. Now,
because like having a covenants or not having covenants is not an existential question to Bitcoin is
in pretty much like every political dynamic
that ever happened before.
It's like, at the end of the revolution,
the revolutionaries kill each other, right?
Because that's all that they know what to do.
So, you know, I don't wanna see things
going on that direction.
You'd be silly and counterproductive.
You don't want a French revolution 2.0, in other words,
where we guillotine the guillotineers.
Exactly, I mean, Bitcoin is not even democratic.
So like, it gets even more weird.
So.
Well, I appreciate the context on that.
And I think that analogy for CTV is really good as well.
With basically, you're like a kid with the blocks.
You need to fit the right block in the right sized hole.
You know, no round pegs in square holes in vice versa.
It's giving you optionality for how you program
your on-chain Bitcoin to behave throughout the future
and what rule sets are involved there.
Fair, okay.
Yeah.
No, and because I think again,
it's one of those things where there's so many
of these debates that like, I myself,
I'm like only technical enough to be like slightly dangerous,
like to have a, again, basic understanding of things.
And I think a lot of Bitcoiners are in that camp.
And then they see these different debates happening
and they have a knee-jerk reaction to say,
well, I'm for this or I'm against this or whatever
and to spend so much time debating these things
without really having the understanding
of what the implications truly are.
And so I appreciate the context from somebody
who understands it far better than I do.
If I can, I wanna get your take on something else.
How you think about the whole rare SATs thing,
which like, and like SATs don't really even,
well, like do SATs even exist?
Yeah.
And I mean, for people out there
who have been seeing stuff about rare SATs and ordinals,
I think it's important to understand that these are,
would you call them like meta protocols?
Like, or like meta rules?
Cause they're not, it's nothing on chain.
It's nothing, there's no rules in Bitcoin
that talk about this.
It's just an agreement off chain.
Like so we can call it a, like, I don't know,
meta rule set, something like that.
Listen, it's the same reason why I don't read
philosophy books. You know, like you're just,
I did when I was younger, you know, like,
you're just like trapping thought and wasting your time,
you know, go live your life kind of thing.
You know, these are all sort of meta semantic discussions
and you can create markets around meta semantic discussions.
Right?
The inscriptions are real.
They are on chain.
The ownership of them is sort of tenuous.
It's just people agreed on a system of ownership.
But you know what, there's no different in society, right?
We have a soft, bomb-enforced system of ownership, right?
It's like, I have a contract that says we did this,
but you know, do I even own the land?
You know, like-
That's a great question.
Can you own the land?
Exactly, right?
Like, it's like the terminal velocity of this is like,
you know, it's like straight into the toilet, right?
Like, it really is pointless.
You know, there's people who believe in this system
of ornals and the first sat being the sat and, you know,
and let them have fun. Who cares?
I mean, it makes no difference in my life.
Do I own in their belief system?
Eh, you know, not interested.
I have other things to do in my life.
I feel like people just get-
People are like looking for shit to like be worried about
because the system just works.
So yeah, I mean, let them make the miners rich,
let them make the lightning people
have to actually learn to scale.
And yeah, I mean, there really isn't much to like,
you know, waste your time with this.
Once again, I enjoy your opinion on that
because I think that so many people,
it's easy to get sucked into the muck
in the mire of these discussions,
but the reality of it is that really,
the market ends up working itself out pretty well.
And number go up fixes a lot of things.
Like everything.
Yeah, like block space is limited
and it is going to get more expensive in fiat terms.
I'm curious, do you think that block space
also continues to get more expensive in Bitcoin terms
as well, like both fiat and Bitcoin terms?
Absolutely.
People are gonna have to do ETSO consolidations.
And it's just remember,
block space is denominated in Bitcoin, not in fiat.
Sat's perv, right?
So like shit's gonna get very expensive and complicated
as time passed by, but maybe not.
I mean like ETFs are later too, right?
I mean, they actually like,
they're taking a lot of transactions, right?
There would be happening on chain, happening off chain.
So, like the usual, a run up of the price
where everybody wants to take,
they're tiny little like UTXOs out of Coinbase, right?
It's not gonna, maybe it doesn't happen this time, right?
Maybe a lot of it goes through the ETFs.
There is a lot of, I don't know.
Yeah, yeah.
No, that's a really interesting point though
about offloading a lot of that store of value usage
of Bitcoin layer one, which is the primary use case
of Bitcoin layer one, right?
Is an immutable ledger of store of value
that cannot be debased and inflated away.
But ETFs are really offloading a lot of that
to custodians, yes, absolutely.
But like you said, somebody,
they don't need to worry about taking,
they're not really interested in self custody
if they're going and buying the $40 or however much,
they are ETF shares in their retirement account
or on E-Trade or whatever.
Like they're not too concerned about self custody
and they're not going to,
I don't think there's gonna be any mechanisms
for redeeming that Bitcoin through the ETF issuer.
You just, you have your custodial Bitcoin
that you're using as, you're using their layer two
store of value technology basically,
custodial store of value technology.
Maybe that's one way to think about it.
Yeah, I mean, in all the ruggeding
that could come with that.
Right.
You know, it's like nothing is without trade-offs.
Do you think with Coinbase being the,
basically the custodian for,
I think what, eight of 10 out of these,
I think that, let's see, is it Valkyrie or Fidelity
or I think it's Fidelity built out their own.
Yeah.
Maybe Bitwise did as well.
Not positive on that, but I think there's like,
two of them that are doing a different model
and the rest are using Coinbase basically.
I mean, is this just the biggest honeypot in history?
Eh.
Again, overthinking it, who cares?
It's their problem.
They have fair enough.
This is their own set of trade-offs.
And if they get rugged, I mean, again,
it teaches a lesson.
In one side teaches a lesson and defers the,
the infinite moon price a little longer, right?
Because people are gonna be feeling pretty burnt out.
On the other side, I mean, it works out.
And, you know, and they just did the custody right.
I mean, I'm sure it's all like, you know,
like offline and all that stuff.
And they're gonna probably have like,
you know, ways of having a multi-party.
It's okay.
Things will sort themselves out.
This is why I love talking to you, NVK,
because, you know, you're always putting my mind
at ease about things.
And I think that it's a good position to have.
Because again, it's like,
there are certain things that are outside of our control
and it doesn't do us really any good to stress about them.
Like that's kind of like-
Yeah, but you can't stress about shit
that you can't control.
Because you can't change it.
It's like the key tenant of stoicism, right?
Is like just, if you can't change it,
don't fucking worry about it.
And I think people would do well to heed that advice.
I wanna be conscious of your scarce time here,
because I know you're a busy man.
But I'd just like to know if,
in a more general sense,
what are you most excited about on the tech side?
Whether that be directly related to Bitcoin,
maybe it's CTV and OpVault,
or it's related to Nostar,
or it's related to the intersection of Bitcoin Layer 2
and Nostar and AI,
like you're building with Unleashed Chat.
What is exciting you right now,
and gives you even more hope
for continued winning in the future
than you already have right now?
This one is a little biased,
just because of the timing.
We started shipping Cold Card Q today.
So like-
Okay, there you go.
Yeah, I'm just happy to get this one out the door.
Congratulations.
It's been some time.
This one enjoyed a little bit of the COVID hangover
with supply chains,
so it took a little longer than we wanted.
But this is finally out, man, I'm just happy about that.
You can breathe a little bit more.
Yeah, seriously.
Yeah, no, we ship.
We like to ship.
So just getting this out is nice.
Yeah, you know,
mini script,
barbecue QR is taking hold as well, which is nice.
It's a much better QR standard.
There is a lot of work being put
on doing Nostra, Cashew, sort of lightning solutions.
College has had an announcement about this like crazy way
of doing assets in multiple minutes at the same time
that the risks things as well.
What else Primo is gonna like, you know,
help the Normies sort of like do Bitcoin,
even if they don't know they're doing Bitcoin.
It's really clean.
They've been a nice job with it.
I mean, you know, Mutiny is doing a bunch of cool stuff too.
It's just endless, man.
You know, you've heard of Bitcoin.review, like Pod.
We go three hours reading like software releases
and there's still like more on the list
that we don't get to.
So like, it's just so insanely productive out there
that it's hard not to be bullish on the tech.
I think the nothing is happening on Bitcoin narrative
really becomes a difficult one to push these days.
No, nothing is happening in Bitcoin.
Nothing.
Let's keep it that way.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nothing, don't look over here.
There's nothing to see.
No, no, go over there.
Go add shit to Ethereum or whatever.
Like just leave us alone.
Go keep breaking that with another fork.
I actually, I lied, I do have one more question
and it's about Unleash Chat
because I think this is more about the economic model
of it with funding it with Bitcoin
because I think this is a really interesting thing
that maybe people haven't considered
about the implications of AI compute,
which is that right now,
most of the payment for AI compute
is paid with like credit cards.
And I would say probably like 99% of the cases
people aren't doing all of higher transfers.
Like, yeah, let's, okay, 100% of the cases.
People are paying with credit cards.
The settlement for credit cards is very, very, very long
before the person who is, yeah,
who is expending that compute power,
which is real power is actually getting paid
for that compute.
And it can also be clawed back.
Do you think we see a transition?
Like, do you think that some of these larger actors
in the AI space will start to realize,
oh shit, Bitcoin just makes sense to use
as our method of accepting payment
because we can actually get final settlement way faster
and not have to worry about it.
So, Unleashed is like, is Bitcoin native, right?
So we calculate the unit of generation
and then we charge your account for it, right?
So you load up Lightning Sats there
and we just sort of charge from it.
And it's been working great.
And you also, you know, we offer privacy
which the other companies don't.
And because you're paying Bitcoin,
we also don't need to know who you are
when you do your compute.
So it's like the alignment of incentives
is just amazing, right?
And I really don't think,
because open AI, all this come open,
close AI and all these things,
they're all like, they're all fiat companies, right?
I don't think they're gonna go there.
I don't think they care.
I think it's great.
It's like, they're gonna go in that direction.
We're gonna go in this direction, right?
And maybe we out-compete some of these companies,
maybe we find a nice niche where,
you know, the people who want privacy,
who wanna own their data,
they have a fighting chance, right?
I mean, this whole thing really started
because I wanted to do AI analysis on our sales stuff,
on our books and our code base.
And I don't wanna forgo my ownership of that data
to open AI, right?
So, you know, in our system, you own your data, right?
We don't train our AI on your data.
We don't use our data.
We can't even see your data.
And sort of like, that's the main difference.
And through, because of Bitcoin, we can do that.
I, yeah, at least in the short term, few years,
I don't think we're gonna see any difference on them,
but we're gonna see it on us, right?
Which is great.
Yeah, I mean, I love it because now I actually have,
I mean, let's be honest, chatGBT is a very nice tool.
Oh yeah, they're the best.
They are the best.
It's phenomenal.
There's a lot of mechanical Turk there,
which is a whole other conversation,
but they are absolutely the best.
You know, and having, I don't know, $30 billion
or whatever they have does help a little bit.
Just a little.
But, you know, it comes with other issues too.
But you know, what's funny is that like,
mixed trial for cold, for example, analysis is comparable.
Like, I mean, if not better actually.
There is like lots of like little sort of niches
where the open source models are better,
substantially better.
It's just that like, that general knowledge,
trivia stuff that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Look, the computer is talking to me.
They're much better at that.
Which is your point about the mechanical Turk as well.
Exactly.
Not totally.
But yeah, when it comes to like specific stuff,
like specific analysis of things,
like it's fully comparable now.
Do you think that open AI is actually,
like there's so much dumb speculation about like,
oh, they must be on the brink of AGI.
Well, they're doing that for the fundraising, right?
Right.
I don't, my opinion, I do not think they are on the brink
of AGI, nor that whatever the initial version of quote,
AGI is will be what people imagine it to be.
I mean.
I think it's gonna come from a complete
like left field kind of thing.
These companies are gonna keep on finding walls
that they hit.
The technology is like amazing and early, right?
So there's two places to go.
You know, we still have like on the current technology,
the current way of thinking,
the current way of doing things,
we still can go like quite a few years
and make like incredible, incredible achievements.
And we're still so far from AGI.
Yeah.
What I think is gonna happen is we're gonna get this
all the way up to like this awesome sort of level
that sort of like, you know,
already solves 90% of human problems, you know?
But the AGI stuff comes complete left field,
other industry like completely unrelated and I don't know.
Like it's just, I don't think these things
are gonna come from the same place.
I have one more question actually.
I lied again, if you have time for one more.
Sure, go for it.
Okay, you are like a very successful entrepreneur
and technologist in the Bitcoin space.
This is clear.
You clearly have a love for building, for shipping,
whether that be code or products.
And it's quite impressive this, what you have built
and that you also just decide to build things
because there are problems that you need solved
like with Unleash Chat,
you need something solved internally
and you just said, you know what, let me build this.
And you know what, this is probably something
other people need to.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs of any age
who are looking to build right now
and are trying to figure out what is the best place
to direct their efforts in this emerging ecosystem
of Bitcoin, of Nostra, of AI,
of all these things that these ideas,
whose time has kind of seemingly come
and there's this big,
because as you said, we're early with all of this stuff, right?
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs
who are maybe they have an idea now,
maybe they're working on idea, what would you tell them?
Or what would you tell to your younger self maybe
if you were coming up right now
instead of being more established now?
I think like, I mean, my preference,
this is not like an absolute answer,
but like my preference is demand-based engineering, right?
It's like, there is a problem, you know?
Can I charge money to offer a solution, right?
Like it really is sort of like drug brain simple, you know?
I think this approach is very approachable.
So like, you know, just go solve somebody's problem
and charge money for it.
And if they're willing to pay, you're probably onto something.
And you know, stop jerking off and ship.
Like there really isn't much more to it.
Like it is actually quite simple, you know?
Like somebody has to lick the envelopes, you know,
so that he can get the envelopes somewhere, right?
Just do it.
You know, stop asking for permission,
stop sort of like wasting your time
trying to like just fundraise.
You know, like if the question is between fundraise or build,
like build, you know?
There is only so much time, right?
So and have fun.
Like if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.
Like it's, those are the only three aspects
that I think like I could say with confidence.
The rest is just, you know, nobody knows.
And it's just like between luck or being in the right place,
you know, by working hard and sort of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I love it.
That's a, so to everyone listening,
stop jerking off, go out there and build.
That it's good advice.
Well, I want to thank you in speaking of time.
It is scarce and, you know, like Bitcoin, extremely scarce,
but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for sharing your scarce time
on another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
I'll put all your no-ster and Twitter and Unleashed
and other links in the show notes.
But just want to want to thank you.
If there's anywhere else people should go and check out
that you want to send them right now.
No, I mean like, no, listen, thanks for having me.
It's the bull run, you know, the best way of keeping your
Bitcoins is by not losing them.
So make sure your security is in order.
Don't get surprised by it and that's it.
All right. Well, Envy Kate, thank you so much.
This was a pleasure and I feel more calm already
coming out of this discussion with you.
I'm not worried about anything now.
It wasn't too much before, but now I'm really not worried.
Amazing. We've accomplished something then.
Amen. All right. Take it easy.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode
of the Bitcoin podcast.
If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring
another fucking Bitcoin podcast,
head to Bitcoinpodcast.net or hit me up on social media.
On no-ster, head to primal.net slash Walker
and on Twitter, search for at Walker America
or at TITCOIN podcast.
You can also watch the video version of this show on X
or on YouTube by going to youtube.com slash
out Walker America or rumble by searching for
at Walker America.
Bitcoin is scarce.
There will only ever be 21 million,
but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to
another fucking Bitcoin podcast.
Until next time, stay free.