You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
We talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
Fourth turning vibes.
I think that's an apt description of the times we find ourselves in right now.
Yeah, it is.
And I think the biggest difference between what's happening now compared to previous times that you can compare with is
how information is being spread and consumed.
And because back in the day, right,
like this is something that I've been thinking about a lot is
a lot of the reasons why these like old institutions
actually had such a long run before the internet
is because they were leveraging information as a symmetry, right?
You can go all the way back to the church
and they had like the they had the only source of truth right like they were saying i don't know we
know what god wants and if you want access to god you got to go through us right and then
governments had the same thing they were just basically saying no no we know how to control
the currency and like private banks don't know you guys definitely don't know we know and
And all these institutions and our media, like we know the truth.
We are the unbiased ones.
You guys need us to get to the truth and et cetera, et cetera.
So all these institutions have been able to exist for so long because they were leveraging
information and symmetry.
And that's before the internet really happened.
And right now, when we go through the four turning vibes, it's like, whoa, all these
institutions are crumbling up in front of our faces because everybody has access to free
flowing information and truths.
And you see that all that for turning vibes comes from that, I think from that, like, whoa, I didn't know that you guys were so insane, you know, and when when things is transparent.
So it's exciting times.
I mean, yes, the time that repeats in history, but I think it's unique now because of the Internet and the way we consume information.
That's what I was going to bring up.
I mean, I think I've said a couple of times on the show, but I think the the Internet age,
whether it's the fourth turning, the sovereign individual, I think the sovereign individual.
Probably the most prescient description of what's going on now, but everybody talks about like,
oh, it's like the America is like the Roman Empire of modernity and it's going to have a similar downfall.
And I'm like, the Internet is always that that variable in the back of my mind.
I think it changes things moving forward in a way that, yes, there may be some parallels and similarities to civilizations of history, but I think the internet variable changes things moving forward, particularly the speed with which things happen.
yeah and it's not necessarily like a disruptive thing i think all these established institutions
they find a way to kind of like metastasize and and and shape shift um because like i come from
like i started my career in the music industry right and i was working at universal music
as a product product guy um and that was in the mid-aughts late-aughts like 2007 ish
And I grew up in Norway, so I was working at Universal Music Norway.
And in Sweden, the Pirate Bay guys were doing their thing.
And at that time, they were being sued left and right by Hollywood lawyers, music industry lawyers and stuff like that.
And they were kind of attacking the Pirate Bay guys in a way that showed how stupid and ignorant they were.
Because they were like, we've got to shut this site down.
You know, like thinking like, okay, if we shut this website down, that's going to fix it.
So they were like totally, they didn't know how to attack it, right?
And that was in Universal Music, having these conversations with people inside.
You know, I remember these like conference calls that we had with the London headquarters and stuff.
And they were all just focused on destroying, quote unquote, the Pirate Bay instead of like, okay, what about taking a look at this technology and see why is this so successful?
and how can we potentially leverage it?
I tried to say those things like,
hey, we should maybe leverage torrenting
to release like low bit rate singles
or snippets of albums before we released them for real
to get people excited.
And they were like, no, no, no, no.
We got to like shut it down completely.
And then later on, like I rage quitted the industry
as a result of that.
But later I saw that they essentially bend the knee
to the torrenting technology.
And, you know, they allowed Spotify to be built
and then they, you know, Universal and Sony BMG
and all the big four record labels,
they all had like a significant share
in the listing of Spotify when they entered the US market.
So they essentially metastasized into being,
you know, the biggest shareholders of Spotify years later,
just for survival, right?
So we're seeing a lot of these industries
not necessarily being disrupted,
but they're like in the moment right now
trying to desperately find a way to stay relevant.
Yeah, it's actually been following you for years.
On X, some of my favorite commentary of yours
is drawing parallels from your experience
in the music industry,
particularly on how well the music industry
in sort of the entertainment industry more broadly is at marketing and positioning
particular products. But to your point, they may not get the sort of freedom-oriented technologies
that make it easier to access their content. And you've had a lot of very stark criticism for
Bitcoin specifically in how we're positioning this new freedom technology. It's like we need
to combine the good things that Pirate Bay brought to the market
with the good marketing and positioning that things like Hollywood
and the music industry have had for many decades.
Yeah, I think there's two sides of the Bitcoin industry
that I have been the most critical about.
And I feel like I will hopefully soon not have these criticisms anymore
because I do feel like a lot of things are improving.
But I think two sides of the industry is one is the, you know,
if you take the first 10 years of Bitcoin and you take a look at the engineers,
the people building, you know, products for using Bitcoin,
I think it was like not very user-friendly.
Nerds building for nerds.
Autists, building for autists, man, heavy.
And you got to be, yeah, like super, super advanced, man, in order to understand what the hell you're doing with something as simple as, you know, a wallet.
Sending and receiving should be easy, but we made it very complicated.
Obviously, because of, you know, we were thinking of trade-offs.
We want to build something that's secure.
And we have so many examples of, you know, all, you know, all types of protocols being hacked back in the day, right?
All types of smart contracts being hacked left and right.
And we're seeing less of that now.
I think the social engineering is maybe the biggest attack vector right now and not so much like the hacking of stuff, but still.
But then also apart from the horrible UX and the subpar products that, you know, companies in this space were releasing in the first 10 years of Bitcoin.
We also had like this communications problem or this positioning problem where, you know, a lot of people who grok Bitcoin, they feel like, okay, there's like, you know, when you are orange-pilled, I do believe it's a highly personal journey.
I mean, yes, you have access to a community online.
You can go to a conference or 10 and you have, you know, material.
But you are essentially unlearning a lot that you thought was true.
And that's a highly personal experience.
At least it was for me.
And I think a lot of people do.
It resonates with them.
So you got to, like, change your worldview, you know, stuff that you thought were true for many, many years.
You got to flip upside down.
And then you got to learn about, you know, cryptography, computer science.
I mean, at least on the surface level, right, to fully grok Bitcoin.
And then when you do, when it clicks in your head, I think the natural instinct is, oh, shit, the rest of the world needs to hear about this, right?
So you just got to go at the top of the rooftop and yell it out.
But you are essentially going to use the same arguments that convinced you to convince somebody else.
And that somebody else is not you.
So a good marketer or promoter or whatever, they look into the psychology of influence and stuff like that.
And they tap into stuff like, okay, what are you angry about?
What are you concerned about?
What are you fearful about?
these deep emotional triggers and then they try to like create the message around that right because
these are things that will resonate super super quickly and bitcoiners have been kind of like not
doing that and then at the same time the way of doing it is also like bro you don't know you're
wrong bro you need to understand bro this shit is fucked up bro and uh people were just not not
going to listen to that stuff. And then you have these other losers in the shitcoin land that are
like all lovey-dovey, all welcoming and stuff. And they go there faster because, hey, this is a
community that is more open and welcome. And it's kind of like the same thing with politics too.
You know, people aren't ready for the truth, but they want to belong to a community. So they go
where they are, quote unquote, welcomed instead of actually, you know, doing some critical thinking.
So it's the same problem that you see elsewhere as well. And I think individual Bitcoiners have done Bitcoin an extreme disservice, I would say, in terms of like, hey, are we going to really grow adoption here on a global scale?
in that scenario, it's been pretty bad.
But now I think there's just like a lot of interesting companies
that are just creating great products.
They really think about brand.
They think about design.
They think about delightful experience and stuff like that.
And I think through those companies,
I think we have a really bright future.
And I think all the stuff that I've been, you know,
bitching about on X and here for the last two or three minutes
is hopefully a thing of a previous generation or a previous era of bitcoin so who are the
companies that you think are doing it right that you're excited about what do they focus on in
terms of presenting the user top of my mind i think um i think uh square cash app they really
have that like they think about brand design to think about good ux when it comes to the apps
but they also try their best to tap into the culture.
And I think that's something, again, that I look back at, you know,
torrenting and the pirate bay and stuff like that.
It was not only the technology that was awesome, obviously,
but the outcome of that technology was like somebody in Sri Lanka could now
download, I don't know, above the rim and see Tupac
and maybe download the soundtrack and tap into the culture.
So it's like technologies that come with like this underlying cultural movement underneath.
That's like a fucking, that's an explosion waiting to happen, right?
Those are like super impactful stuff.
And I think that's what Square and Cash App and all those people are trying to do at that level, right?
Like Jack Dorsey wearing a Satoshi Nakamoto t-shirt at the Super Bowl,
trying to converge the mainstream world with our world in a cool way. I think that's a good
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It's hard too, right?
Because like, as you mentioned earlier,
like we're dealing with this
nation emergent protocol
that has new ways of, I mean, the way the protocol works,
it's just people are going to be interacting with technology
in ways that they haven't before.
I think if I were to try to articulate
what you were describing earlier,
like autist building for autists, like first 10 years,
I think it was hyper-focused on making sure
that everybody understood like,
hey, this is what you're dealing with here.
It's a distributed system that uses private public key pairs
and you need to understand how all this stuff works.
I think that's I mean, just that self custody alone is one of the biggest turn offs for a lot of people
because you're like, all right, here's the best money ever.
Oh, by the way, like you need to secure yourself.
And if you lose these 12 words, you lose your money forever.
It's just like people are like, well, that's a bit risky.
Yeah.
And it's.
And so what do you like what on top of the protocol do you think has made this easier?
I think of something like LN address, just being able to send somebody like, hey, Marty at strike.me, if you want to send me money, just find a compatible wallet, send it there.
That's another thing.
It's like, what is a compatible wallet?
We're getting into all these UX issues, standardization issues that emerge too.
But to your point, I do think we're definitely getting better at it as time goes on.
But I think the time is of the essence here, right?
I think considering everything going on in the world, the fourth turning vibes that we started the conversation with, I truly believe in what I have been doing.
What I've been doing for the last nine years is to educate people and try to get Bitcoin into as many hands as possible.
And through the nine years I've been doing it professionally and 13 years I've been in Bitcoin.
The environment has never been more ripe for Bitcoin adoption in terms of people needing a solution like Bitcoin Oh yeah no 100 And also let me let me thank you as well for being part of my own journey
I remember like when I was looking back at the DMs on X and it was like something from like 2019 or something was was there.
And I mentioned something about listening to a pod with you and Alex Leishman.
And there was like a, there was a, I don't know, three minute segment where you were talking about Virginia and like the new England and how the economies became, you know, like circular economies and these like, you know, Virginia and the new colonies emerged.
and that inspired me to write a blog post about it and i sent it to you and you were like yeah
great cool and i sent it to park lewis i sent it to leishman and everybody was super super friendly
and they gave me feedback on the article that nobody read except from maybe you leishman and
and park lewis and five other uh crazy ones that were following me back then but you know that has
been instrumental to my uh personal journey so thank you but i think uh in 2019 that that same
i had that same fear you know um and it's only been intensifying in the in the in the seven
years that has passed but one thing i do want to say which you know i don't want to be like super
negative on this episode but like i i don't think like you know the bitcoin is not for everyone but
is for anyone. I truly, truly believe in that because I'm from Argentina and you would think
that in Argentina, Bitcoin would be a no brainer for the entire country. Everybody has been going
through insane debasement. My family emigrated from Argentina because of a hyperinflationary
dumpster fire in 89. I told you about that. And then another crazy one happened in 2001.
So it has like this, Argentina has gone through this like chronic disease of inflation and no other country than Argentina, perhaps maybe other five, Nigeria even as well, Turkey, Lebanon, maybe Iran, have seen how just inflation, how that tears the social fabric apart.
Having families, having to go outside of the country, leaving their families behind just to get a job and send money back.
and you would think hey bitcoin hey you can remittances over lightning all of that is is a
it's a godsend right to uh to uh to people in countries like argentina and still ethereum is
the biggest it's the biggest community uh it has the most traction in argentina so just because
us bitcoiners think that okay these people would be open to bitcoin still doesn't mean that they
will get it uh you can give them the the the bitcoin standard uh to read uh you can you can
give them 100 podcast episodes people just still won't get it so i think we should be okay with just
hey there's a bunch of people that will never ever get it and let's not even think about those people
and then try to tap into the cohorts around the world that might need bitcoin for very different
reasons. And this is also related to the information asymmetry that we're going through
right now, because you would think the abundance of information would make more people understand
Bitcoin more. The reality is there's so much noise. There's so much like low signal out there
among the noise that somebody who has to work two or three jobs because of inflation to keep,
you know, food on the table, don't have time to, to get into deep into anything.
So they, you know, you have heard, and you've probably met, you know,
hundreds of Uber drivers who are just like Shiba Inu maxis,
but they think Bitcoin is, uh, is, uh, whatever old tech is because they read,
they barely read anything. So, um,
pockets of the internet will now be in different cohorts online.
consuming very different content.
And we just need to try to tap into those cohorts,
those pockets online and try to speak the language
in order for adoption to grow.
Because it's not going to be mass adoption anymore,
in my opinion.
We're beyond that.
It's going to be a fragmented adoption
that is going to look very insane and weird.
But it's not going to be like one big movement
that kind of brings a critical mass into our world.
It's going to be choppy, I think.
Is this something you're trying to solve, a perception?
Yeah, I am.
I think for people who are in the industry,
who want to keep up with what is happening,
yeah, you can't rely on logging into X anymore
or, I don't know, reading one or two websites a day in your morning
with your morning coffee.
There's things happening 360 degree, 24-7, nonstop from all regions of the world
at any given time.
And manually keeping up with that is impossible.
So if you consume content, if you try to educate yourself the old school way,
you're going to have a very rough time because you're going to be you're going to be beaten by
somebody who uses something like perception that just is able to gather 650 plus sources all at
the same time and can can create can do pattern detection automatically in a second instead of
you trying to do that on yourself having 70 tabs open in your browser at the same time so
yeah i'm solving that with perception for the people who want to accelerate who want to
get to you know what's really happening and what are like the trend clustering all around the world
faster than uh than their competitors so still in beta we can talk about perception a little bit
more but we're still in beta and already have i already have institutional clients already and i
think the the reception has been pretty good i'm super bullish on on that and uh i do think that
is kind of like how we are how we need in order to survive in the like knowledge worker uh industry
the way we process data and the way we uh add context to that data is going to be incredibly
important for like job security for your company to stay alive for for yeah uh for not becoming
part of the permanent underclass well that's i mean i'm sure if you've been listening and
reading my tweets and newsletters like i'm incredibly bullish on ai um just as a
productivity booster for small teams like ours here at TFTC.
And that's how I viewed it over the last few years specifically.
Like we started really leaning in
about two years ago and automating some
backend processes with AI tools. And obviously they've gotten
exponentially better as time's gone on and it's allowed us to do more.
So like combination of like storytelling via AI generated
videos telling the story of jackal island the story of getting ripped off the gold standard
a bunch of other stories but then on top of that like we can put out more content now like we have
this five day week bitcoin brief newsletter that we've gotten back to and it's all been enabled by
ai and tier points like curating and surfacing signal that's what um we've been trying to do
with the Bitcoin brief and feedback's been good,
but I think AI is a double-edged sword.
You can get consumed by slop and the tsunami of noise
that's gonna be produced using these tools,
but if you leverage them the right way,
you can serve as a ton of signal as well.
Yeah, that's why when I created Perception,
it was more, like the reason I created Perception
was because when I was working at Blockstream,
I used to be the VP of marketing and communication
for people who don't know me.
And we were like using traditional tools
that were like monitoring,
you know, social media monitoring,
media monitoring, whatever.
And just to see, okay, how are we doing?
How are like technologies being discussed online
and, you know, competitors and stuff like that.
And, you know, what these tools resurfaced
was just everything.
So I was like, oh shit, on Tuesday,
we got this 72% increase in mentions.
Let's see what that is all about.
And I log in and I see just pure, pure dribble, you know, like just casino links and scammers and all kinds of bullshit.
So these tools that supposedly are tracking the internet for you, yeah, they track everything.
And with, like I said, with the AI slop, with grifters, with spammers, with all that stuff happening, not only on X, but just everywhere, you can't rely on these metrics at all.
You can't even rely on them directionally.
It's all fake.
So I was like, okay, we need to build our own system.
And I started doing that.
And then I was like, oh, the data that comes back is pretty interesting.
Let me create a newsletter showing some interesting stuff.
That was mostly based on mainstream media.
And essentially, that was well-received because I was essentially just quantifying what people already knew.
Yeah, mainstream media sucks.
And here's why.
but now you know as i added more sources it's it's completely different and i really see the
value of a platform like perception but during that process i was like yeah i can't fuck this up
i really need to be super careful about what i actually include what kind of data comes in
because that's the trap you know you want to like bring in everything but then you bring in
all the bullshit and uh in order to provide a lot of data that is you know that has enough
volume to really tell you, hey, these are the trends, this is the sentiment, and this is
actually the public perception of X, Y, and Z, you need to curate that a lot. So I think me
coming from the industry and knowing who's who and what's what, I think that's another strength
for perception to actually be a valuable tool in the future. But you're totally right. And
I think what you did with AI video in particular, it was absolutely insane. I mean,
you pioneered that shit like that jackal island video was absolutely insane and that was towards
my my last uh my last uh you know uh period at blog stream and we were discussing that internally
we were like yeah we fucked up here because these this this team is a small media team we're like a
big company and they beat us to it and look look at what they're doing they're absolutely killing
it and i think that's a one example of many examples of just like people who are like hyper
focused on something, they just edge out compared to a bigger, New York case, bigger media outlets,
right? So freaks right now, someone with less capital than you is building a better Bitcoin
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two, it goes to your point of what you're just describing, building perception. You have
a ton of context, personal context of like where the signal is in the space. And similarly,
like that's like I've been building my Bitcoin Twitter list since 2012, I think, or 2013.
And I just I mean, just from pure observation over 13, 14 years, like I've developed these
pattern recognition techniques uh with my human brain um to to then be able to curate via
these ai tools and it seems like you're doing the same thing to your point that's going to be the
edge moving forward is curation and taste i strongly believe that and i think in the realm
of building ai products particularly with a focus on data surfacing like you need that that sort of
pattern recognition, that experience, that time in the market.
You're not like some startup out of YC is going to be like, OK, we need better Bitcoin
sentiment tools.
So we're going to build that.
Like if you haven't been in the space for a while and you don't know the different actors
and the history of who's been right and who's been wrong over the course of many years,
it's going to be hard to do that from scratch.
Yeah, totally.
And now we are really like in that top of the wave, I think, where we either fall off the surfboard or we actually ride the wave to the end where we are confronted with so much information.
And how do we make sense of it?
And as a professional working industry, you're not going to do that manually.
But then for us who build tools around that, yeah, we're kind of like we're doing it now.
but I'm very curious to see how like information in general is going to look like in a year from now
two years from now three years from now it's going to be something we need to tweak and adjust
really fast and be super nimble I think because listen perception has been in beta for six months
I quit blog stream six months ago so it's not even been a year half a year and what I
when I exited and I announced me leaving and I was like, Hey,
this is now available for beta. Um,
that product doesn't exist anymore. Um, that was like a, yeah,
like a tracking tool. You log in, uh, through a dashboard. Um,
and then you kind of like create charts and you can create like a spaces where
you can like drag stuff from a cluster into a sheet.
and then you can kind of like run some analysis models on it.
That stuff is like completely commoditized right now.
Like I think people just create whatever app they need
for a very, very specific thing
that for anybody else building a business around it,
it's too niche to actually make viable as a business.
But for one person who needs something quick
that is very, very specific, they can build it themselves.
So apps and front ends and UIs
is just completely commoditized.
So the data is the only competitive mode
that we have at least for the next
maybe 12 to 18 months.
And it's about what you do with that data.
Because in Perception's case,
it's a curated feed,
but it's a critical mass volume,
but it's very curated.
I'm very careful about which Twitter account
goes into the database,
what tweets go in.
and then I do the trend analysis then I do you know analysis of earnings calls to see whether
leadership is evasive or not I grade them I take the questions that they're being asked and are they
evasive or not and then I do like I run the alpha of the stock price versus the evasiveness versus
BTC price so it's a lot of stuff like you need to know you need to kind of be part of the industry
to know hey this is something that is unique that people really want and then offer it to them
But that's like in the five months that I've been doing this, I had to toss away an app and just put all that data and all that analysis through LLMs.
So now perception is the data.
It's the narrative intelligence, but you can access it directly on ChatGPT, on Clogger, Google Gemini.
And people are like, whoa, that's interesting.
So now I do way more demos.
Prospects are actually, you know, super engaged.
and my users are upgrading, they don't turn.
Because all of these people,
they are already using these AI tools and just plugging perception into that They know it really powerful and impactful because if you try to do the same with the native intelligence that Claude and ChatGPT or Perplexity has
it's going to be surface level still.
There's the depth of data, the niche, and then where I plug it into,
that is kind of like the competitive mode right now.
But who knows in six months how this whole thing is going to change.
So it's a crazy time to be alive.
Right. No, I think you're you make the quick pivot to just direct injection looks like via plug in or like APIs.
I came to the conclusion like two months ago after downloading OpenClaw because it's your point.
It's like you're projectionist now. It's like, hey, if I need a dashboard to look at something or a deck or a report,
I just tell my my agent, like, hey, pull all this data you have access to, like, look at it over the last week.
last two weeks, last month, and give me a report on how we're doing, and boom, it's there.
I don't have to go into a dashboard or anything.
It just does it.
So I think the world is moving towards just like these agents are going to do things for you,
and they just need access to good data, and they don't need a front end for that.
They just need to plug into the data source directly, whether it's API or plug-in, whatever it may be.
How confident are you that Bitcoin is going to be the preferred?
I mean, I know that, you know, the BPI, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, they did research and they concluded that Bitcoin was the preferred currency to be used by these agents.
But in terms of like the people, the humans who are going to build agents and companies around agents, what do you think, you know, are they going to prefer Bitcoin or Ethereum?
Or where do you stand on like how Bitcoin plays into this whole future?
um yeah that's funny i just recorded with matt corallo uh last week and we
published that episode on saturday this is all we talked about is um i mean he
and cali have been talking for four weeks let me shut my door again my
but um the uh they were having a discussion on on x like a month ago about hey if uh bitcoin is
going to be the native currency of the internet. Now's the time to begin building the infrastructure
because everybody's starting from zero with the Gentic payments. This is a new technology.
None of the infrastructure exists for them yet, so we've got to go build it. And it seems pretty
clear that credit and debit cards aren't going to be the solution due to all the risk associated
with handing over that information to a robot. And to answer your question, I think the jury's
still out and i think the i spoke with cali too last week as well so the culmination of my
conversations with cali matt is like it's up to people to go build it right like you need like and
it's never been easier to do it with these with these ai tools it's all so i think um i think the
demand side is there in terms of bitcoiners who are sort of on the cutting edge of this agentic
economy that's emerging. I would argue that the population of Bitcoiners using these tools,
like the amount of Bitcoiners using these tools is probably way higher than any other subgroup
outside of AI native companies or individuals who are literally playing in the AI field. So I think
Bitcoiners are early adopters of this technology
on a per capita basis for our subgroup.
I guess it would index way higher is my assumption.
And so I think the onus is on us to go build it.
And I think it's my point, the demand side is there.
There's plenty of Bitcoiners using these tools
who would gladly have their agents spend Bitcoin to buy stuff.
But the supply side, the supply of merchants accepting it,
I don't think it's there.
And so we need tools to make it easier for them to do it with simple code injections or library downloads on their website.
And then I do think, Matt and I talked about that, I do think you just need to make it as seamless as possible for merchants to go in and out of Bitcoin in dollars or dollar equivalents in stable coins.
like it or not.
I just think that's a table stakes.
You need that because they don't like the volatility.
Yeah, no, but also I think that's the one thing
that we have for us is that the purchasing power
per sat spent is always going to increase
over a longer period of time, right?
Or like millisats or millibits.
So you can chop it down to whatever type
of micro payment units that you want.
the purchasing power will always be greater and greater.
So you want to have agents equipped with a currency that works that way
and does not do the inverse programmatically over time
and just lose purchasing power, which, you know, in Argentina at least,
you know, the worst money always is the first one to be used.
So, you know, in Argentina's case, it's dollar being Bitcoin here in this example.
Like the dollar has always been the strongest currency and the peso has been the shittiest.
So whenever you get your pesos, you just want to spend it right away.
You don't want to hold that.
Right.
And then whatever you don't spend from that, like monthly paycheck, for example, you put that into a dollar account and it can rest there for a little while.
Yes, that also deprecates in value, but not as fast as the peso.
So, but the peso is the one that is like, is in heavy circulation.
And then the dollars is for like transactions of, I don't know, if you have a property deed or something like that, that stuff is done in a stronger currency for like, you know, property purchases and you buy a car, sell a car, stuff like that.
So I wonder if the agent economy is going to mimic that type of behavior, which is inherently human, right?
You don't want to spend the asset that goes up in value over time.
You want to spend, if you have something worse available that is being accepted by a critical mass of people, yeah, get that shit out of there.
I don't want to have that.
But if I can buy something for that, yeah, I'm going to spend it first.
So I wonder if Igenetics are going to mimic that behavior with stable coins versus Bitcoin.
Yeah.
That's the other thing, too.
Like the agents will do whatever their their humans tell them to do, at least for a certain period of time.
And that's maybe they break containment and become conscious and conscious and begin making decisions on their own.
But yeah, I guess you could give it like a broad prompt.
Like, hey, that's what I try to do is be as broad as possible.
Just out of curiosity to see what they what they choose.
Like, hey, I need you to go do this.
Like, I want to be able to send and receive Bitcoin, like figure out which.
which um while it works best for you so i did this like a month ago or a month and a half ago
now at this point and uh because i started by giving it direction like hey here's what i want
you to do go spin up a lightning node using this um using this library and blah blah blah and it's
just like didn't work and i reframed it's like all right you go do research figure out what works
best for you and i found phoenix d server and download one of those and i was like hey here's
this Bolts product you can send on-chain Bitcoin to an address that I'll provide you from Bolts,
and then it'll sort of submarine swap in.
I'll have a lightning channel I can spend.
I did that, and within 10 minutes, it had a Phoenix D server and a funded lightning channel.
So I was like, that's pretty cool.
And so it did sort of knew I wanted to have it be able to send and receive Bitcoin,
but then I gave it.
It was like, hey, just figure out what works best for you under setup,
and it did that pretty smoothly.
Cool.
So they're really cool.
Yeah, I think, you know, Phoenix, Maltz, Arc,
there's just so many new-ish companies
that are building these type of instruments,
and I'm super bullish on them.
I think I'm super bullish on them.
I think one thing is for certain is that we are living in a gap
between like old world dying and the new world being born
and that gap is just getting so much wider and wider is definitely not going smaller and uh
you know on one side that environment is kind of where the grifters flourish um
but at the same time that's that's the opportunity for for builders you know so definitely i think
that the timing of this is uh you know to matt corraldo's point is uh is spot on it is now or
or never and it's time to build yeah no and i think the other thing playing in bitcoin's favor
is like you just have this interoperability between all the disparate um sub protocols
in bitcoin whether it's lightning liquid arc spark um state chain uh implementations beyond spark like
it just all works together whereas in the competing world of stable coins on different chains with
with different sort of issuers at the bottom of the chain there.
I could see it introducing friction.
And I said this on the episode I recorded with Matt Corallo,
and then I talked with my good friend Matt O'Dell about it.
And he's like, no, the clanker will just figure it out.
Like, yes, it may be a bit complex to have stable coins on one chain
and then need to bridge it somewhere else to be able to send to somebody
who's using a different stablecoin protocol,
but you literally just tell your agent,
like, figure it out,
and it will discover you in a swap
and figure out how to get the right stablecoin
to the right place.
And then that comes with a bunch of fees.
So I do think the interoperable nature
of the Bitcoin protocols are being built
on top of the main protocol
does afford us an advantage
from a UX perspective.
I do still think, you know,
one major trap that we cannot repeat as a Bitcoin industry is the, you know,
hey, things will, we will figure it out or, you know, build it and they will come type of thing.
That has been such a big, big part of Bitcoin, I think,
because that is the autistic engineering way of thinking, right?
Yeah, Bitcoin is superior.
They will come as long as the tools are available.
Not really, right? Because you have a fucking apparatus of so many people, deep pockets that are wanting to, you know, take market share from Bitcoin.
And we're up against them, you know, they're super organized, super well funded.
And we are, yeah, we start off at ground zero together at the same time.
But mad, do these people have more organized, you know, structures and more financialization on their side compared to us to be able to really, you know, start off running.
But that's kind of the beauty of Bitcoin, too.
You know, like there's a beauty in decentralized, disorganized nature of it where we have to kind of like organize ourselves as a movement instead of a company.
But that is also in this day and age, you know, speed is so fucking important that I just wonder that will the grifters take the attention first and have the market share of attention first so that everybody who knows about a gentic economy will think, OK, that's a stable coin thing instead of, oh, that's a Bitcoin thing.
Even though maybe a year after we will actually have built superior tools because we're just more careful and we're slow when it comes to building, though.
In terms of the philosophy of building, we can build super quick with AI as well, but Bitcoiners who are builders, they think differently about these things.
They have a different approach, which inherently is a slower moving train.
I just hope that the narrative doesn't become a year from now, like the agentic economy is a shitcoin thing or a stablecoin thing and not a Bitcoin thing.
I think that's, apart from building the tools, we also need to be on top of that about the narrative.
we need to make people know that yeah bitcoin is the best but why okay here's why and it has to be
some kind of a cultural thing that agent equals bitcoin for it to really succeed i think how do
you think we do that how do we win that narrative battle that attention battle as a great question
um well i i wish uh that open call guy was a bitcoiner for example you know some bitcoiner
need to create a tool that becomes you know that takes over internet culture the way open claw
did for example and he's like super anti-crypto which is good i mean for the for the shit coins
but that also includes bitcoin i think i don't think he has a favorable view of bitcoin just
because it's not a shit coin i think he just puts everything into the same bucket
so we just need again we need companies we need cash app to create a an agent that is insane i
I mean, you see USDC as the Circle team.
They have, I think the first week of when OpenClaw really became a thing,
I saw them have like workshops.
They were like throwing money at devs to build and, you know, build stupid shit
just to get that like incentive structure in place
and to get some mind share from those devs who are like,
hey, you know, I just want a grant.
I just want something to build.
Okay, Circle is giving me money.
bet let's let's do that i don't i don't see tether doing that for them you know and they are
supposedly the big coiner stable coiners um so we just need to do that i think um you know somebody
who has a really good um ear to the streets to to to the to internet culture needs to to to bring
something that is agentic and represents bitcoin but i don't know i don't know what it is i'm not
product guy like that but i think that's that's the ingredients at least that should perhaps be uh
yeah be part of it yeah i think one of the um the benefits that we have is that replet amjad
massad is a is a bitcoiner i know cody low is in there i saw he he quote tweeted the bpi
um piece the research piece on agents choosing bitcoin he said this is a good thing like agents
should be using bitcoin and so like you there is a prominent founder within the the realm of top
tier ai companies that gets it just like to your point though like leaning into it and making it so
people are building agentic commerce tools with bitcoin at the heart of them yeah and still i think
this is a this feels very big now but if you like step outside you ask anyone in the street like hey
you know about open claw the fuck are you talking about and uh it feels very big feels like the
future but it's still a very small like fraction of everything that's happening in the world right
so i think this is this is something that speaks to what i believe is the future of bitcoin adoption
in general which is it's going to be fragmented because all these people who are building agents
who are using AI, who, you know, spend fucking thousands on Mac minis.
It's important that they know about Bitcoin and they use Bitcoin in those tasks.
And then, you know, when that segment becomes even bigger,
Bitcoin has a strong foothold in it.
But still, there's a bunch of people who have absolutely no clue about even what
ChatTBT, well, maybe not ChatTBT, they have like a billion users.
If you ask them, like, what's Claude?
What's Claude Co-Work?
They have absolutely no idea.
So these things seem bigger than they think because they occupy our timeline so much, but we still have so many stories to tell when it comes to Bitcoin about other shit, you know, boring stuff like, hey, purchasing power, you know, that's a huge value prop.
number go up is a huge value prop
so we still got
and now with all the institutions
all the
like the financialization of Bitcoin
that's another segment
as well that is completely separate from the
agentic economy
world which is completely separate from the
cypherpunk thesis
which is completely separated from
payments and infrastructure
around that so I think
we just got to be on top of our game and find
And I think that we in our niche and you know together as you know as a as a fractured fragmented community we bring adoption forward But I think a lot of Bitcoiners need to understand that future adoption will look like a bunch of people that you don agree with are going to
find tremendous value in bitcoin and you just gotta you gotta be cool with it you know you gotta
you gotta accept it and i feel like we're breaking away from it now and there's still some bitcoiners
like screaming and kicking because, you know, their conviction,
which is based on very specific things,
they're seeing a lot of people being convicted about Bitcoin too,
but for a completely different, maybe even opposite things that they believe in.
And there's some, yeah, there's some kicking and screaming with that.
But I think that's a sign of, I think now Bitcoin has now exited this like
monoculture and you know uh yeah has exited the monoculture and is now being adopted in different
places and that's the fragmented adoption that we're going to see in the future and we we need
to forget about like mass adoption as one as one movement yeah again bitcoin is for anyone not for
everyone it's hard for people to grapple with because everybody's like oh we're losing our
It's like people have said if Bitcoin is what we think it is, like everybody's going to want some.
And you may not like the people getting into Bitcoin, but as long as they're not preventing you from using Bitcoin in the way that you want to, I think that's that's the biggest.
The biggest thing to protect. Right.
That's the that's the the other thing I'm curious to see how it plays out with all this quote unquote institutional adoption and the ETFs blowing up.
what is the subset of people that ultimately self-custody and use Bitcoin in a true peer-to-peer
fashion. I think the agent economy is actually a massive benefit towards that direction because
you can't use ETF shares to pay for things in the agentic economy. People are going to have
to figure out how to get access to actual UTXOs and put Bitcoin in a lightning channel or
in an e-cash mint to actually spend
if they want to participate in the subject economy
using Bitcoin payments.
Yeah, I think that's true.
And again, I draw parallels to my music business background
because the institutions, the big incumbents
of Universal Music and Sony BMG and stuff like that,
Um, yeah, they were fighting.
Um, well, first they were ignoring, then they were fighting and then they just became it
in a way they, they became the streaming industry, right?
They, they, they finally understood that our model of, uh, you know, having one distribution
channel, which is like putting CDs in the stores is, is, is broken fundamentally.
And what the fuck do we do?
Uh, okay.
We, we can't fight them.
We have spent millions and so many years becoming irrelevant in the process of fighting them that, okay, we got to embrace it somehow.
And I feel like we're seeing that this is the first wave, this institutional wave of these institutions knowing what's up and adopting Bitcoin in this fashion because they want to stay relevant.
and they want to offer a wrapped product the same way
Spotify is offering wrapped MP3s in a platform for you.
It's not the real deal.
You're not buying the music, but it's a contract.
And many similarities between that as well.
Yeah.
What's the number one thing that we could learn
from the positioning of the music industry
and how well they do that for Bitcoin?
Well, I think when you're dealing with a technology that is highly disruptive, you can either think that the way that you made money for so many years is still valid, or you can try to be a little bit more pragmatic about it and adapt quickly.
And adapting quickly is not for everyone.
Bitcoin is not for everyone.
So you just got to find those minds.
Maybe it's a generational thing too, right?
You get wrapped in habits, some costs, which is very, very hard to get out of.
But I do think that the most important thing about torrenting or the pirate base, and it still exists today.
You don't have to go to Spotify necessarily.
If you want to go to Amazon Prime or Netflix or anything like that to watch a movie, you can do it, but you do it out of convenience because it's a tradeoff that you accept.
But if you really want to download the movie or download an album and carry it with you or listen to it whenever you want and don't have to pay anything for it, there's still that alternative.
And depending on how big this institutionalization of Bitcoin is going to be, and by the looks of it, if you take a look at people who self-custody for real versus people who are just buying into the Ibit or any other ETF derivatives,
it looks like there's a big you know there's there's a there's a yeah it's a it's a big
crossroads that we're going into right now and a lot of people with a lot of capital are going into
the direction of giving away custody but the real people who do know that are also part of that
they do understand the the you know what self-custody means and what it really not only
because of protection of or, you know, accounts being free,
starting the night that is actually related to the price action.
How many people actually, you know, self-custody Bitcoin the real way.
These people do understand it, but they are a minority.
And to be honest with you, I think they're always going to be a minority.
I think a lot of people are just going to be part of Bitcoin in this way.
And I'm not mad.
And I think the important thing is that at least they can understand Bitcoin from a very simple perspective of, hey, fiat inflation is accelerating.
We are in a road turning.
I need to preserve my purchasing power.
And I understand at least the monetary principles of Bitcoin for me to invest in something like Ibit to protect my purchasing power.
Hey, at least a little chunk of the Bitcoin philosophy landed.
and I don't expect everyone to get everything about Bitcoin at the same time.
This is how adoption looks like.
So if there's any, to ask you a question, sorry for the rant,
but if it's my one lesson from the music industry is that streaming became the norm
and the pirate-based torrenting became the French,
probably the French will be self-custodial solutions still
and custodial solutions will be bigger.
But the important thing is that both can exist.
The problem is when the forces, the powers that be,
try to change anything inside the protocol
or some laws or jurisdictions are completely hostile
against self-custody.
That's an issue.
I don't see that happening.
And I think the institutionalization of Bitcoin
is partially the reason why
Bitcoin self-custody is not outlawed.
But it's a deep topic, man,
because any law can be passed any day
to give up your self-custodial Bitcoin anyway.
So let's see.
It's a pull and push game.
Yeah, self-custody is the red line
that we have to defend.
And going back to the generational thing,
the boomers have all the money.
And the Zoomers are completely nihilistic.
So that's been an area of focus on this show throughout the last year.
If I look at the demographics of people that listen and watch this show,
it's older than me.
Like the biggest cohort is 35 to 45, and it's 45 to 55.
And then it's 25 to 35, but then it jumps back up to like 65.
And then if you go to 18 to 25, it's like literally 1% of our audience is in Generation Z.
And it's just a question that nags.
I mean, it's like, what are these younger folks consuming?
What is their view on this?
And from my observation, it seems very nihilistic.
And they don't have much hope for their future, which is incredibly disheartening.
but if we do have this like I mean all the institutions are talking about this massive
wealth transfer from the boomers to millennials and Gen Z is is on the the precipice and as that's
happening how many people within the younger generations millennials Gen Z's and Gen Alpha
to a certain extent can we successfully convince like hey like you need to adopt the money of the
future in Bitcoin and I think with Gen Z I don't even want to say we're failing because this doesn't
seem like they're tapping into the show at least.
There's other people that are doing other forms of content.
I think like what Julian Figueroa is doing with his videos is very, very good to reach that generation.
But this style is not the type of style that Gen Z is consuming.
no and i think you know i have a little experimental youtube channel that i started
um almost yeah 30 days ago it's been almost a full month and i just do shorts so i go on
tiktok and i go on youtube shorts and it's purely shorts one minute clips and i'm trying to kind of
like i don't talk about politics i don't talk about money but i i do it in a in a very indirect
way. So I bring a lot of like philosophy and history to talk about, you know, politics and
money to kind of like bring more people into Bitcoin and more conservative right-wing politics,
right? But I don't want to be obvious about it because, you know, I want to do it in a sly
runabout way. And I was looking at my analytics and it's actually, you know, it's not blowing up,
but it's, you know, 200 subscribers already. I've gotten 45,000 views in, you know, less than 28
days. So it's good. I was like, okay, this is bullish. And I look into the demographics of
that is like 45 plus and my biggest is 65 plus. So I'm reaching like, not the people that really
needs to hear it, but you know, these are the people who have gone through some life experiences
and you know, certain things click in their, in their head and they have, they have more,
more life lived to, to, to understand deeper, deeper concepts, you know? And the young people
today i think you know when you look at it's it's about only fans and poly market it's like dude
we're going right back 100 years to the 1910s and 20s where it was all about prostitution and
gambling so it's like we're just like fucking yeah uh status quo 100 years after great it's just yeah
yeah it's uh it's disheartening but we're gonna win you gotta you gotta be positive i think that's
Of course, the most bullish thing within Bitcoin is that there's individuals like yourself, like myself, like I'm never given this.
I like I'll keep showing up, recording podcasts, writing newsletters, educating about people about Bitcoin on X and YouTube day in and day out.
And that's that's one thing I've realized is that it's not going to be an overnight success.
No. And I think just consistency and showing up and telling a consistent message for many years.
I think that's what converts people the most is they're like, oh, I did fall for the siren calls, shit coins and get on this path.
And you've been pretty steadfast about being consistent with your message.
And it turns out that that was right.
And I think it's sort of like a yeoman's journey to to just show up and make sure that the information is getting there and it is consistent and clear.
100 percent and the consistency repetition that that's like basic pillars of propaganda you know
so you gotta you gotta go all joseph gobbles on this shit and just propagandize the shit out of
this in order for us to win because we're dealing with i don't know my wife and i were discussing
this the early earlier today like the devil is in disguise it's everywhere so there you got to do
You got to deal with so much noise and pollution everywhere.
And I mean, there's a clean break, of course, just not use the Internet, not go online to get informed.
But that's just we were way past that point, right?
We're like, we are an online society because of the simple fact that we have niched so hard in our interests that it's getting harder and harder to just step outside your house, knock on the neighbor's door and find like things to talk about.
Because, you know, I don't know, can I talk to Bitcoin with anyone else around here?
No, I got to log in to Zoom to do a podcast with you and just to hook up, you know, just to meet my friends online because I'm traveling so much.
So we have to use the Internet to get to this information.
It is out there, but you got to show up consistently with the same message to catch people over time.
because there's multiple touch points
from when you first hear about a certain thing
until you actually believe in it.
It might be years, especially when it comes to Bitcoin.
So we just got to not give up.
And I guess you and I, we'll come to the point
where it's too late for us to pivot to anything else anyway.
So we're just like, this is it.
This doesn't work.
I don't know what I'm going to get into.
I'm going to become a farmer.
Yeah, same.
Same, same.
Like something offline, definitely.
It's the other side of this, I think.
And I think Bitcoin isn't big enough.
It's a historical thing.
It's something that has already shaken society, but it will definitely leave intent in humanity.
Being a part of it is a privilege, you know?
So what else can we do?
Yeah, it is an incredible privilege.
It is a privilege and an honor to be on this journey with you, sir.
And we have to do this more often.
It's been took me too long to get you on the show.
It's always the first place.
Door is always open.
I thank you so much for for the opportunity and to kick it with you.
It's I knew this was going to be good.
So, yeah, getting disappointed.
Yeah.
And we've got to go check out perception.
If you're out there, I got to talk with you out a lot offline because I think we can implement this at TFDC.
Let's go.
In a way.
um but yeah where where can people find out more about perception about you uh what you're doing
easiest thing is just to google my name fernando uh nikolic and uh the easiest thing to do on search
is to google bitcoin perception you'll find you'll find the website uh at the top of the
search results and then from there you can read you can get a little bit more acquainted with uh
what the data is about.
And then you can obviously
plug Perception directly
into your favorite AI tool
directly from the website
through the MCP.
And then you can start querying
and you can find out
how the data is.
And there's a really cool
prompt library
in the Perception website as well
that you can just use,
just copy, paste those prompts,
put it into Cloud
and see what comes out
and you're going to be amazed.
It's nothing like it out there.
So yeah, please give it a try.
And then on Twitter, on X,
I'm based to layer.
So follow me there.
Great.
Great handle there.
Base layer.
Mr. Base layer.
I hope you have a great afternoon
and we'll do this again.
Likewise, man.
Thank you so much, sir.
Peace and love, freaks.
Thank you for listening
to this episode of TFTC.
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