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You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

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You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.

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All the central banks going nuts.

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So it's all acting like safe haven.

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I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their

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currency, Bitcoin wins.

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In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

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I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

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If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

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Ryan Gentry.

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I would say it's been a while, but it hasn't been a while.

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We catch up behind the scenes quite frequently, but it's been a while since you've been on the show.

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Five years. Five years.

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Five years depriving your audience of me, Marty.

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I mean, but in serious, five years, that's a long time.

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Especially a long time in Bitcoin, isn't it?

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It's basically a third of Bitcoin's life we've gone without catching up on this show.

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That's a wild way to think about it.

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Yeah, I mean, five years ago, November 2020, Bitcoin was at what?

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Like mid-teens?

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Let me check.

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15K?

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November.

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I just started buying.

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I go on the five-year chart.

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It's been six.

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It doesn't even come up on the five-year chart to all.

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What was it?

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November 2020?

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I think so.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, we were climbing.

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We were climbing.

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We were at a 17K.

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17K.

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Ran all the way up to 65, back down to 16.

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Here we are sitting at $89,332 and everybody thinks our pet's heads are falling off.

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They don't know how good they have it.

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They don't know how good they have it.

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They really don't.

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in honor of our first catch-up on air in over five years.

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I'm going to have a beer for you OG freaks over there.

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Cheers.

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For the original Ryan Dentry appearance on this show.

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We drank a lot of whiskey.

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Talked a lot about the Lightning Network.

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Talked a lot about Texas.

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Things were much different at that point,

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and we will probably do a retrospective on what happened between now and then

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and look at what we were saying back then, what actually happened,

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and where we may have been wrong, where we were right.

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But first, you've got some big news, personal news.

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Launched the Bitcoin Infrastructure Acquisition Corp.

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Looking for Bitcoin operating businesses.

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another

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SPAC, equity SPAC

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hitting the space

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a lot of attention

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on this part of the market over the last

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six months

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what are you trying to do here? What are you doing?

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I'm really

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excited. I think

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in the five years

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since we've talked

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the whole ecosystem

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Bitcoin and most importantly

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the companies building

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Bitcoin products and

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building products around Bitcoin, the asset and the network, we've all grown up.

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We've all grown up significantly.

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And I think public markets as seen by the ETFs, as seen by micro strategy, as seen by

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kind of the wave of, you know, digital asset treasure companies last year or this year,

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rather, public markets have a huge appetite for Bitcoin.

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And so I was approached earlier this summer with an opportunity to raise a SPAC, a special

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purpose acquisition corporation that's charged with taking an operating Bitcoin company public.

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And so we just completed that IPO this week, raised $220 million.

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Very excited to note that the deal was five times oversubscribed.

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Again, there's a really big appetite amongst public markets investors for Bitcoin company exposure.

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They're excited about the possibilities and the prospects of Bitcoin native companies and what they can do from a cash flows and growth perspective.

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And I want to be really clear here that this is not a debt.

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This is not a treasury company.

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I'm not interested in competing with Michael Saylor, with Jack Mahlers, with Adam Back, etc.

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Um, you know, my, my five years at Lighting Labs, you know, was all focused on building,

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you know, real products and services and, and working with Bitcoin focused entrepreneurs,

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um, that have customers and, and, you know, again, cash flows. Um, and so that's where

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I'm specializing. That's where I'm focused is the companies who've been building Bitcoin products

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for the last, you know, 7, 10, 12, 15 years, right?

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Those are the companies that I'm focused on

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and I'm focused on wanting to take them

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into public markets in a manner

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that materially benefits their companies, right?

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I think one thing that we've learned,

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that I've learned at least,

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is, you know, being a public company,

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there are specific advantages,

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specific things that you can do as a public company

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that you just can't.

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as a private company. And I think there is a subset of the Bitcoin space that is ready

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to take advantage of those. And I think in order to take the next leap in their businesses and

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to provide kind of the next amount of value to their customers, to us, right, as Bitcoiners,

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they need a vehicle to take them public. And I'm really excited to have the opportunity to

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provide that opportunity to you know one or a couple of our favorite companies well maybe

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since you framed it in that way maybe it is a good time to do a retrospective on our conversation

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for five years ago when i understand you re-listened to it recently and we're laughing

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not only at uh our mental state but the conversation we had and i think maybe the retrospective we

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jump into it right away it's just a really highlight where we thought the market was

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five years ago where we thought it was going and how it's actually progressed since then and why

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you think now is a good time to be launching this particular SPAC looking for operating businesses

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in the bitcoin space serving bitcoiners

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yeah i think that the the core part of our discussion that as i was listening back to it

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I was like, you know, we really, we were onto something here and are onto something here

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was, you know, we talked about how, like, what the Bitcoin revolution is really is,

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you know, a war for the world's capital, a peaceful, you know, economic war.

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But it's, you know, there's, as you're growing a brand new store value from scratch,

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necessarily the value that is coming into Bitcoin is leaving other assets, right? And is leaving

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US treasuries, is leaving German bonds, is leaving, you name it, right? All the other assets in the

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world and coming to store itself in Bitcoin. And I think we talked a lot about the order of

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operations of kind of how that, you know, again, kind of war quote unquote, progresses.

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And one thing that we bonded a lot over when we first met was how enthusiastic we were over

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how like kind of the first cohort of big companies that really got Bitcoin or were interested in

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Bitcoin was the energy industry through poor work mining, you know, from, you know, we talked a lot

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about oil and gas back in the day, but like, look how that has panned out, right? Like,

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All of these companies that went public, a lot of them actually VSVACs, right?

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There were mining companies in 2021, 2022, have since become hugely important in kind of the AI build-out space, right?

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Where they first kind of got started just focusing on Bitcoin mining.

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They build great relationships with energy producers and utilities and all the folks

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in the energy industry generally. And then now have these hyperscalers just paying them outrageous

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amounts of money to leverage the skills that they built in the Bitcoin industry to build out this

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next great thing in the AI space. So I think that's where things started and where we've seen,

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again, public companies, companies that took the leap and became public,

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really benefit from being public companies and from having their name out there and being able to

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raise the capital like in Iris. Iron just raised like a billion dollars at the 0% coupon

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convertible note, right? That's they don't have to pay back for five years or something like that.

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like is just, it's absurd what's been happening.

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And I think those are all companies operated by Bitcoiners, right?

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That are out making a difference in the world,

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building with Bitcoin treasuries,

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operating a company on Bitcoin principles.

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And I think that's super important.

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Yeah, I'm looking it up.

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It was iron just did 2 billion, 1 billion at 25 basis points, one at one and clean spark

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did 1.15 billion earlier this year or last month, less than a month ago as well.

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Yeah.

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So they're raising a ton of capital.

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Is that the only advantage to being public in your mind?

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That's a lot of what we hear.

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And I mean, I'm, I think there's, when I think about it from first principles, I think there's

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three.

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there's three main categories that I would end it down to. I think number one for sure is

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being able to raise, like having a public trust from a kind of debt and equity capital perspective.

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And I think there's kind of two ways that you can raise the money. So first is like,

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being able to raise debt capital through these convertibles or through preferreds,

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like MicroStrategy is doing. You can't do that as a private company because you don't have the

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public equity to pair with the debt capital. You can only really do that as a public company,

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being able to issue securities. The other thing is, I had the great pleasure

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of talking with MicroStrategy CEO Fong Li yesterday. And also, he's doing a little roadshow.

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And he was talking about this new USD reserve that they built, the dividends.

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and he was like, look, we did this mostly to combat the FUD. It helps me sleep a little bit

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better at night, but it wasn't really necessary. But we raised $1.44 billion in eight days

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just by selling equity on the public markets through the ATM. That's absurd. Think about it.

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I mean, you're, you know, vaunted venture capitalist now, Marty.

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Like, how hard is it for a company to raise 1.4,

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a private company to raise $1.44 billion?

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And on, like, what timeline, even $100 million?

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Like, on what time long does that take?

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It depends if you're an AI right now.

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Maybe not as long as others, but it's not as easy.

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It's definitely not as easy.

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Right.

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And so that's, and not, of course, not every company is micro strategy.

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So that's, you know, not every company can do that, but it's, it's materially easier as a public company to be able to do that type of stuff.

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And that's not the only benefit.

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I think that's the most obvious one.

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The second one that I think is very important is public trust from a, like, business development perspective.

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Having the audits, having the kind of rigor around your financials, having the just trust that you're a public company.

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It just makes it easier to do deals, especially with kind of banks and the more conservative entities in public markets.

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It's just easier to do that type of stuff to get those doors opened if you're already a public company versus a private company.

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And so I think, you know, especially for the kind of Bitcoin companies that are financially minded, financial services minded.

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that will materially improve their ability to gain new enterprise customers.

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And also having a public equity letting your customers share in the upside of your business That was always the argument for in the shitcoin crowd right but you don need a token you just need a public equity to um

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hey maybe it'll be tokenized maybe that public equity will be tokenized at some point in the

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future you know and at some point maybe um we'll see i'm i know there's you know i'm following the

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clarity act with interest i'm not super optimistic but maybe they'll figure out something that that

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works there. It's possible. But so two is I think that public trust from a BD perspective and

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institutional customers will... You have more substance as a public company than you do as

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a private company. And retail customers like getting to share and your upside is a big deal.

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And then third is just hiring and retention. As we were talking about before the call,

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like not all potential employees like being paid in the liquid stock options, right?

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Being able to pay your employees instead in RSUs, restricted stock units and like public equity that

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they can sell whenever they like, that makes a big difference for a certain class of employee,

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right? Employees that have families or different situations and aren't really willing to take the

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startup risk. Being a public company allows you to just hire and retain a certain class of employee

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that you just can't get otherwise. And so I think those three are real material benefits.

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It helped offset the downside of being a public company. You have to spend a couple million

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dollars in compliance costs and audit costs every year just to be public. And so there has to be

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some benefit for that additional cost. And I think for a certain class of companies, those benefits

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very materially outweigh those costs.

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Yeah.

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And I mean,

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and all these benefits can only be gained too

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if you have something legitimate to bring public.

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So I think that's,

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again, going back to the retrospective

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and really leaning into the timing of this

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and why it's right now is,

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I mean, when we met five years ago,

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outside of industrial scale miners,

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how many companies were in the right spot from a product market fit revenue cash flow ebita

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perspective for this to even be viable outside of maybe coinbase and a few others and why that's

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what i think is that's exactly what i think is so interesting about thinking about this time and in

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terms of the order of operations that we talked about because the way we talked about it it's like

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look, if you wanted to, as a Bitcoin community, march forward and grow Bitcoin's total market cap

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as a measurement of world domination of reserve asset, first you'd want to start with the energy

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industry. You'd want to make sure that energy executives, energy companies were aligned and

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bought in on Bitcoin, understood the value prop and were hobblers and incentivized to,

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you know, protect 21 million. And then kind of the next area you want to verge into is

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financial industry is, you know, TradFi. And you'd want to make sure that, you know,

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companies were holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet. You want to make sure that

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the finance years were, you know, comfortable with Bitcoin as collateral.

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And we're starting to adopt Bitcoin as a collateral for people to borrow against.

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And I think we're right smack dab in the middle of that right now.

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And I think there's a lot more work to be done there.

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But it's interesting that this current cohort of Bitcoin companies, crypto companies, if you'll excuse the term, that are going public, right, are companies like BitGo.

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companies like Kraken, companies like Circle. But this kind of next wave after Coinbase

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are the kind of fintechs built on Bitcoin and crypto rails. And that makes sense, right? That's

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264
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check it out. Well, let's lean into the upside, particularly in the context of these Bitcoin

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00:20:01,745 --> 00:20:09,005
financial services firms. I mean, you talked about the relative difficulty of raising

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just capital compared to a company like MicroStrategy, Iron, CleanSpark, you can just tap

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ATM and pull in 1.44 billion in eight days. But the financial services, particularly those

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building around the use case of bitcoin is collateral um or bitcoin as an asset you can

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put in an ira or whatever it may be how important do you think access to the public markets is for

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them to flourish i think a very like you know simple left curve model of it which you know

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which we also talked about five years ago i think the bell curve meme was like new

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And so we talked about that a lot, but it still remains, I think, the best model of the world.

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And I try and be as left curve as possible, as much as possible.

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Think about like a Bitcoin lending business that's lending against, you know, dollars against BTC.

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And that I think is, you know, although, of course, we would all love to be just 100% Bitcoin only spending Bitcoin through, you know, all the square terminals and support lightning now, which is a fantastic development.

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Um, there just necessarily is a need for dollars.

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Um, if you're operating in the modern world.

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Um, and I think if you're lending against Bitcoin, your main challenge right now is

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the interest rates are high, right?

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Like I think, you know, unless you're borrowing, I think like Leanspark borrowed, um, a hundred

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million dollars against Bitcoin from two prime.

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and they paid like 7% to 8%, 7.75% or something like that, which is, you know, that's probably

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the best rate against Bitcoin that I've seen because they borrowed $100 billion.

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If you're retail and you're borrowing 50 grand, 100 grand, something like that, I mean, you're

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paying like 10%, 12% something that's steep, right? So you think about these businesses that

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lending, their cost of capital, what they're doing is they're borrowing dollars from somebody

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else and then they're lending those dollars back out to the end user.

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So their kind of ability to make money is 100% dependent on how can they lower that cost

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of capital?

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How can they lower that cost to borrow?

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And that's something that's really only unlocked by accessing bigger pools of capital.

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and the way to access those bigger pools of capital is to do what MicroStrategy is doing

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in terms of getting credit ratings, which necessarily involves to get the best possible

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credit rating, being a public company, selling debt for lower and lower costs, and just kind of

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through growth, through selling securities, through working with the credit agencies,

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you know, getting that cost to borrow down closer to, you know, whatever a bank has to pay,

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which is closer to four or five percent. So there's like a big delta between

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this current cost of capital for these private Bitcoin lenders and what kind of like the terminal

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cost of capital should be. And I think that's only unlocked by being a private company or being a

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public company. Sorry. And I think it's very important to dive into the details of this too,

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because I think a lot of people will look at the rates

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attached to the Bitcoin collateralized lending desks

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that are currently private across the industry,

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and they see 10%, 12%, 14%, depending on where you go,

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and they say, oh, these guys are ripping us off,

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not understanding that the company itself would love

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to give you a lower cost of capital,

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but they have liquidity providers to that desk

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that are demanding a higher cost,

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and they simply take a little rip on top of that.

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there's a delta between the cost at which their lending provider gives them the cash and the cost

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at which ultimately you take the loan at and the company issuing the loan or your counterpart

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whether any of the companies offering collateralized loans just takes a little

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a little rip on top of that to your point to like make more money in this product you need to

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basically get more volume or more liquidity on that desk and so the new only way to attract that

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more and more liquidity is to get those rates down the cost of capital down to the end user and then

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the the margins on top of that cost of capital will be similar but you'll just have so much more

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volume that you're able to make more money and i think that's an unfortunate reality of the

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currency of the bitcoin lending market is a lot of people think the company's offering new services

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are ripping off the end customer but it's really beholden to the risk takers on the other side who

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are offering private credit dollars exactly and i think that's that was a really interesting thing

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that um you know falling from microstrategy said yesterday was uh you know this is public

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information um when microstrategy got their credit rating right they got a b minus credit rating

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the ratings agency didn't value their $59 billion worth of Bitcoin at all.

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It didn't count for their credit worthiness, despite the fact that it's $59 billion.

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And that's obviously a mistake and obviously an oversight.

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But one thing that is just, again, if what's really happening here is Bitcoin is competing

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to store all the world's capital and just kind of needs to be convincing bigger and bigger

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institutions of its credit worthiness and of its safety as a store of value.

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00:26:02,205 --> 00:26:07,845
As he talked about how, you know, next year, the big banks are going to start releasing

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custody products for Bitcoin, right?

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00:26:09,825 --> 00:26:14,905
Morgan Stanley is going to not just offer IBIT, but is going to offer, you know, being

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00:26:14,905 --> 00:26:19,365
able to buy Bitcoin that they custody or BNY Mellon or somebody custodies.

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And the next step beyond that is like just logical for them to be able to count your Bitcoin as collateral in a mortgage or something like that.

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00:26:28,665 --> 00:26:40,145
But before these big banks can do that, they're going to have to go to the credit agencies and say, hey, I want to lend against my customers Bitcoin.

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I want to give them some dollars for it.

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Like, how should I score this?

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Can I lend it at 40% loan value?

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00:26:50,585 --> 00:27:03,530
Can I lend it at 70 What the right number You got to give me some of my guidance So although of course we all got into this or to disrupt the banks or to allow people to be their own banks

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00:27:04,250 --> 00:27:15,370
ironically, just due to the power of Bitcoin and the incentivization that it takes hold in all

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00:27:15,370 --> 00:27:19,750
institutions that touch it, where all of a sudden like they start acting in its best interest,

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the big banks are ironically going to be, you know, kind of acting on our behalf

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to help Bitcoin on its next leg in its journey. Right. And I think that's one of the things that,

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you know, to me, running the SPAC, I see that and I say, oh, man, Bitcoin native lenders,

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Bitcoin companies that we all know and love, you have like a year to start getting big,

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or else these banks are going to come in and it's going to be really tough to compete with

347
00:27:52,630 --> 00:27:58,210
Morgan Stanley rates if they're accustomed to Bitcoin. It's going to be really tough to compete

348
00:27:58,210 --> 00:28:03,710
with the entities that have the lowest cost of capital in the world,

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unless you really start raising money and getting big now. And so I think there's a sense of urgency

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00:28:08,910 --> 00:28:16,550
for these companies if they want to maintain their business. And I don't just want to sell out

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00:28:16,550 --> 00:28:24,990
to the banks to like take the leap now yeah how do we uh how do we square this round hole is

352
00:28:24,990 --> 00:28:29,030
bitcoin being co-opted is this good is this what we want it's inevitable it's a great question

353
00:28:29,030 --> 00:28:41,930
bitcoin is for enemies right um bitcoin is for enemies and i think a co-option question

354
00:28:41,930 --> 00:28:50,150
my Bitcoin is not being co-opted because I hold my own keys and I run my own note.

355
00:28:51,090 --> 00:29:01,590
Right. And I think as long as a plurality of Bitcoiners have that attitude and maintain their

356
00:29:01,590 --> 00:29:08,070
social sovereignty, and as long as protocol development is focused on making that barrier

357
00:29:08,070 --> 00:29:16,950
to entry as low as possible, then it doesn't really matter what the big institutions do

358
00:29:16,950 --> 00:29:17,410
with their Bitcoin.

359
00:29:17,590 --> 00:29:21,270
Like MicroStrategy has done all of this work and bought all this Bitcoin.

360
00:29:21,970 --> 00:29:26,350
They only own 3% of the network, right?

361
00:29:26,730 --> 00:29:28,130
And they've been at it for five years.

362
00:29:28,590 --> 00:29:29,130
And they had to scale.

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00:29:29,130 --> 00:29:30,170
They've been at it for five years.

364
00:29:30,170 --> 00:29:37,550
And like, who is going to come out and buy 650,000 Bitcoin to eclipse that, right?

365
00:29:38,070 --> 00:29:47,590
um like i totally understand and get that the focus on trad fi adoption appears antithetical

366
00:29:47,590 --> 00:29:55,190
to bitcoin principles but again it's like if the goal is to become the global reserve asset

367
00:29:55,190 --> 00:30:01,910
and the global reserve currency like at some point these big boys are going to have to buy it

368
00:30:01,910 --> 00:30:07,510
right? And if you really believe in what Bitcoin's about, and you really believe in

369
00:30:09,270 --> 00:30:13,430
you know, Bitcoin's principles, and you focus on the fundamentals of like,

370
00:30:13,430 --> 00:30:18,630
what does actually decentralization mean? One big entity buying a hundred thousand Bitcoin

371
00:30:18,630 --> 00:30:23,590
does not affect Bitcoin's decentralization at all. Bitcoin's decentralization is up to all of us to

372
00:30:23,590 --> 00:30:26,330
to hold our own keys and run our own nodes.

373
00:30:27,510 --> 00:30:28,030
Right?

374
00:30:28,530 --> 00:30:28,630
Yeah.

375
00:30:30,330 --> 00:30:32,490
And I think as long as, you know,

376
00:30:32,610 --> 00:30:39,250
the protocol development focus isn't focused on

377
00:30:39,250 --> 00:30:43,130
how do we make it easier for MicroStrategy

378
00:30:43,130 --> 00:30:44,130
to buy more Bitcoin,

379
00:30:44,930 --> 00:30:46,130
which is, you know,

380
00:30:46,250 --> 00:30:48,110
I don't think any of that has come up

381
00:30:48,110 --> 00:30:49,450
in the knots versus core debate.

382
00:30:51,130 --> 00:30:52,010
Let's touch that.

383
00:30:52,010 --> 00:30:53,830
I think we're fine.

384
00:30:54,010 --> 00:30:54,790
I think we're okay.

385
00:30:55,130 --> 00:30:55,730
I really do.

386
00:30:57,550 --> 00:30:58,390
No, I do too.

387
00:30:58,750 --> 00:31:02,650
And it's been tough this year because you've seen, obviously,

388
00:31:02,870 --> 00:31:07,390
the digital asset, token, companies, SPACs.

389
00:31:07,750 --> 00:31:11,570
Hitting the market this year really forced people to be like,

390
00:31:11,570 --> 00:31:12,450
what's going on here?

391
00:31:13,690 --> 00:31:18,570
And if you're not pragmatic and nuanced, it's easy to –

392
00:31:18,570 --> 00:31:27,910
And again, I'm not trying to speak from a high horse or I'm off his pompous, but I've thought long and hard about this and I've had to grapple with it myself.

393
00:31:27,910 --> 00:31:42,270
And it's like, yeah, to your point, what did you expect to happen to see for Wall Street and all these institutions to see us plebs riding the monetization wave and not participate eventually?

394
00:31:42,270 --> 00:31:47,610
this is part of the process and to your point it's incumbent upon us to make sure that we're

395
00:31:47,610 --> 00:31:52,850
holding on our our own keys running our own nodes supporting payments infrastructure to make bitcoin

396
00:31:52,850 --> 00:31:57,830
everyday money which you dedicated the last five years of your life to um or many more

397
00:31:57,830 --> 00:32:06,310
six or seven you still are um it's just like yeah we're we're playing in this ocean with

398
00:32:06,310 --> 00:32:13,730
with bigger fish now and we just got to hold hold our own and that's like at 1031 like we have the

399
00:32:13,730 --> 00:32:20,090
uh the bitcoin development co SPAC out there right now and we're looking to acquire just an operating

400
00:32:20,090 --> 00:32:28,250
business that wants to bitcoinize right and like that's like like if wall street's getting in we

401
00:32:28,250 --> 00:32:34,730
want quote-unquote mainstream to get in as well so you want businesses that have nothing to do

402
00:32:34,730 --> 00:32:40,010
with Bitcoin, but would benefit from incorporating Bitcoin, whether that's if they're an energy

403
00:32:40,010 --> 00:32:44,810
company into their systems, if they're a large retailer into their payment systems, and then

404
00:32:44,810 --> 00:32:50,550
obviously any company, no matter what industry you're in, I think it's incredibly advantageous

405
00:32:50,550 --> 00:32:52,730
to use Bitcoin as a treasury asset.

406
00:32:53,350 --> 00:32:58,050
And this makes people uncomfortable, but this is what growing up is like.

407
00:32:58,110 --> 00:32:58,670
Look at us.

408
00:32:58,790 --> 00:33:04,710
Five years ago, I had a beard, COVID lockdowns, I was drinking whiskey, like a sailor.

409
00:33:04,730 --> 00:33:07,210
and now I got a nice sweater on

410
00:33:07,210 --> 00:33:09,730
enjoying a nice pint of Guinness on a Friday afternoon

411
00:33:09,730 --> 00:33:13,170
were you a dad yet

412
00:33:13,170 --> 00:33:13,910
five years ago?

413
00:33:14,290 --> 00:33:15,510
I was, I was, yeah

414
00:33:15,510 --> 00:33:18,430
you were, okay, so that's been a big change

415
00:33:18,430 --> 00:33:20,990
I guess that wasn't a change for you, that's obviously been a big change for me

416
00:33:20,990 --> 00:33:22,390
that changes your whole perspective

417
00:33:22,390 --> 00:33:24,450
on what's important

418
00:33:24,450 --> 00:33:26,450
and where priorities lie

419
00:33:26,450 --> 00:33:28,550
and yeah, I have a little one now

420
00:33:28,550 --> 00:33:30,270
and another one on the way

421
00:33:30,270 --> 00:33:32,850
yeah, growing up

422
00:33:32,850 --> 00:33:33,570
it happens

423
00:33:33,570 --> 00:33:35,250
I was a father of one at the time.

424
00:33:35,570 --> 00:33:39,170
And two more have been added since the last time we talked on air.

425
00:33:40,110 --> 00:33:47,070
And the more children you add, the more chaotic in a good way.

426
00:33:47,330 --> 00:33:47,730
And it gets.

427
00:33:48,530 --> 00:33:50,690
It's all wonderful, for sure.

428
00:33:52,050 --> 00:34:01,870
But it is, I think, going back to what we're doing here is we're helping Bitcoin progress

429
00:34:01,870 --> 00:34:06,950
and like soak up more and more of the world's capital as it becomes to global reserve asset.

430
00:34:07,590 --> 00:34:16,990
You know, one thing that I think a lot of us just didn't understand was, you know, what that actually requires in order.

431
00:34:16,990 --> 00:34:28,710
Like, you know, the cypherpunk looks at kind of institutional mandates and, you know, investment agreements and all this stuff is like, that's just nerd lawyer talk, right?

432
00:34:28,750 --> 00:34:30,570
Like you should just buy the Bitcoin.

433
00:34:30,570 --> 00:34:44,070
But these pension plans, these insurance companies that legally, they have to hold 40% of their money in bonds or in public securities.

434
00:34:45,910 --> 00:34:54,210
That's the brilliance of what MicroStrategy is doing, is they're meeting these investors where they are who want Bitcoin exposure.

435
00:34:54,210 --> 00:35:01,290
and they're saying, okay, well, here, we've created this little funnel where you buy our

436
00:35:01,290 --> 00:35:08,210
preferred because you can. We'll give you what you want, which is this cash flow so you can pay

437
00:35:08,210 --> 00:35:13,550
off your pensioners and all that different stuff. And we'll go and buy Bitcoin with the proceeds

438
00:35:13,550 --> 00:35:21,110
because you can't. And I think that's the state that we're at where

439
00:35:21,110 --> 00:35:31,190
needing to do these kind of clever financial engineering in order to allow these big pools

440
00:35:31,190 --> 00:35:38,010
of capital to get the Bitcoin exposure that they desperately want and need is just the work that's

441
00:35:38,010 --> 00:35:42,150
required for this next step. And I think, again, what we were talking about before we got on the

442
00:35:42,150 --> 00:35:49,590
call or before we started recording is the thing that we didn't understand five years ago

443
00:35:49,590 --> 00:36:01,550
was that rather than Bitcoin out competing with all the world's capital and being adversarial

444
00:36:01,550 --> 00:36:07,950
against all the nation states of the world, what we found out is like, oh no, the US dollar system

445
00:36:07,950 --> 00:36:16,790
desperately needs Bitcoin. It desperately needs more high quality collateral to support the system.

446
00:36:16,790 --> 00:36:26,870
Right. All of these different fiat institutions are struggling just as much as individuals in the face of inflation and rampant money printing.

447
00:36:27,190 --> 00:36:31,290
Right. And they need a lifeboat just like we do.

448
00:36:31,650 --> 00:36:35,210
But they're not able to just buy Bitcoin with the dollars.

449
00:36:35,530 --> 00:36:40,310
Right. They need different sort of structures and products to be able to do so.

450
00:36:40,310 --> 00:36:51,650
What's up, Freaks? Have you noticed that governments have become more despotic? They want to surveil more, they want to take more of your data, they want to follow you around the internet as much as possible so they can control your speech, control what you do.

451
00:36:51,650 --> 00:37:05,430
It's imperative in times like this to make sure that you're running a VPN as you're surfing the web, as we used to say back in the 90s. And it's more imperative that you use the right VPN, a VPN that cannot log because of the way that it's designed.

452
00:37:05,430 --> 00:37:14,350
And that's why we have partnered with Obscura. That is our official VPN here at TFTC built by a Bitcoiner, Carl Dung, for Bitcoiners focused on privacy.

453
00:37:14,710 --> 00:37:27,010
You can pay in Bitcoin over the lightning. So not only are you private while you're perusing the web with Obscura, but when you actually set up an account, you can acquire that account privately by paying in Bitcoin over the lightning network.

454
00:37:27,010 --> 00:37:30,970
Do not be complacent when it comes to protecting your privacy on the internet.

455
00:37:31,110 --> 00:37:38,610
Go to Obscura.net, set up an Obscura account, use the code TFTC for 25% off.

456
00:37:39,410 --> 00:37:41,010
When I say account, you just get a token.

457
00:37:41,230 --> 00:37:41,870
It's a string of token.

458
00:37:42,090 --> 00:37:44,390
It's not connected to your identity at all.

459
00:37:45,390 --> 00:37:47,550
Token sign up, pay with Bitcoin, completely private.

460
00:37:48,170 --> 00:37:50,090
Turn on Obscura, surf the web privately.

461
00:37:50,590 --> 00:37:53,350
Obscura.net, use the code TFTC for 25% off.

462
00:37:53,350 --> 00:37:55,530
Sup freaks, 2025 left many wondering,

463
00:37:55,530 --> 00:37:57,230
Was this an underwhelming year for Bitcoin?

464
00:37:57,650 --> 00:37:59,430
Were the quiet set up for an extended bull run?

465
00:37:59,870 --> 00:38:06,430
On December 17th at 1 p.m. Central, join Preston Pysh, Connor Brown, and Unchained for Bitcoin in 2025, a year in review.

466
00:38:06,710 --> 00:38:10,530
A concise breakdown of the macro trends and policy developments that truly shaped the year.

467
00:38:11,010 --> 00:38:16,210
You'll hear what mattered most, where the market stands now, and what these inflection points reveal about Bitcoin's long-term direction.

468
00:38:16,650 --> 00:38:20,210
If you want clarity on where Bitcoin has been and where it's headed next, don't miss this event.

469
00:38:20,210 --> 00:38:23,210
So go register now at unchained.com slash tftc.

470
00:38:23,210 --> 00:38:25,950
That's unchained.com slash TFTC.

471
00:38:26,430 --> 00:38:28,250
It's almost like it's too good to be true.

472
00:38:28,370 --> 00:38:29,470
Like, wait a second, what's happening?

473
00:38:29,590 --> 00:38:38,390
And I would attribute this reality to the very understandable apprehension.

474
00:38:38,530 --> 00:38:40,130
Like, are we being co-opted right now?

475
00:38:40,330 --> 00:38:41,850
It's like, maybe.

476
00:38:42,010 --> 00:38:43,930
Maybe some people are.

477
00:38:44,090 --> 00:38:45,210
Maybe some institutions are.

478
00:38:45,850 --> 00:38:49,770
But I think the stronger force is this external recognition of, oh, crap.

479
00:38:49,770 --> 00:38:51,890
a big problem here and

480
00:38:51,890 --> 00:38:54,030
Bitcoin is a tool that can help us

481
00:38:54,030 --> 00:38:55,670
begin to solve that problem.

482
00:38:56,810 --> 00:38:58,150
And I think

483
00:38:58,150 --> 00:39:00,170
maybe taking a slightly

484
00:39:00,170 --> 00:39:02,390
different direction too, I mean, bring it back to

485
00:39:02,390 --> 00:39:04,350
the Bitcoin industry

486
00:39:04,350 --> 00:39:06,490
specifically and the companies within it

487
00:39:06,490 --> 00:39:10,010
and why

488
00:39:10,010 --> 00:39:12,290
they should go public

489
00:39:12,290 --> 00:39:14,230
now, get access to public markets

490
00:39:14,230 --> 00:39:16,270
and then putting it

491
00:39:16,270 --> 00:39:17,350
in the broader context

492
00:39:17,350 --> 00:39:19,510
of SPACs, which

493
00:39:19,510 --> 00:39:26,850
particularly post 2020 had a uh negative connotation associated with them a lot of

494
00:39:26,850 --> 00:39:36,070
spec offerings were simply in retrospect proved to be uh sort of exit liquidity mechanisms but i

495
00:39:36,070 --> 00:39:42,550
think you and i we've talked about this at length over the last um last few months like the timing

496
00:39:42,550 --> 00:39:47,710
for these bitcoin companies again if you're mature you're you've got revenue product market fit your

497
00:39:47,710 --> 00:39:55,590
cash flow and you got material ebita and if you basically take what we've been discussing today

498
00:39:55,590 --> 00:40:00,590
particularly with the institutional foray into bitcoin if that's happening in earnest like the

499
00:40:00,590 --> 00:40:07,470
upside potential growth potential for these companies is is massive as well as we're looking

500
00:40:07,470 --> 00:40:14,750
at a 1.8 trillion dollar market cap right now there's vanguard open up the floodgates bank of

501
00:40:14,750 --> 00:40:19,350
America, one to four percent square, rolling out the four million merchants.

502
00:40:19,350 --> 00:40:32,055
Like the need for individual consumers enterprise consumers to get access to Bitcoin infrastructure is only going to increase from here I couldn agree more And I think like obviously

503
00:40:32,415 --> 00:40:36,575
I think what's important too is,

504
00:40:36,955 --> 00:40:38,155
you know, one of the things that,

505
00:40:38,255 --> 00:40:40,575
you know, my chairman of my board,

506
00:40:41,035 --> 00:40:42,735
Parker White, who's, you know,

507
00:40:42,755 --> 00:40:43,975
an Austin Bitcoin guy,

508
00:40:44,495 --> 00:40:46,775
worked at Kraken for a number of years

509
00:40:46,775 --> 00:40:50,735
and is now, you know, the CIO of a public data,

510
00:40:50,935 --> 00:41:06,455
One of the things that he kind of convinced me on when he was pitching me on the opportunity was he was like, look, this merging of public markets and private crypto Bitcoin companies is happening now.

511
00:41:07,075 --> 00:41:08,555
It's a one-way merge.

512
00:41:10,255 --> 00:41:13,215
And these TrapFive people have no idea what they're doing.

513
00:41:13,995 --> 00:41:14,135
Right?

514
00:41:14,415 --> 00:41:16,935
Like, they have no idea what value looks like.

515
00:41:16,935 --> 00:41:44,195
And so if people who, if nobody who understands where like real value is in this community, in this ecosystem, don't stand up, all this stratified money is going to go into a million avalanche stats, right? Like it's just going to all get destroyed. And all of these capital markets, people are going to feel like they got scammed, just like what's happened in every single crypto boom and bust cycle we've seen so far.

516
00:41:44,195 --> 00:41:55,495
Right. And so I think there's, you know, there's a responsibility to try and direct some of this capital into some of the great companies that we know exist.

517
00:41:55,695 --> 00:42:06,075
Right. And that we know around and put it in the hands of, you know, quality, responsible entrepreneurs that can really put this capital overwork.

518
00:42:06,075 --> 00:42:11,575
And, you know, not only build great companies, but also be great spokespeople for Bitcoin.

519
00:42:11,575 --> 00:42:17,175
like are we happy that you know obviously sailor does a great job but are we happy that the other

520
00:42:17,175 --> 00:42:23,995
people that get to talk about crypto all the time is fucking tom lee hey we're going to do it in

521
00:42:23,995 --> 00:42:28,935
january of next year like is that the representative or do we want you know i don't want to put any

522
00:42:28,935 --> 00:42:33,435
people on the spot but just like people that come top of mind like wouldn't we love to have

523
00:42:33,435 --> 00:42:39,355
alex leishman talking about bitcoin on cnbc and giving that perspective um right wouldn't we love

524
00:42:39,355 --> 00:42:46,155
to have Elizabeth Stark? Wouldn't we love to have Joe and Drew from Unchained? You go down the list,

525
00:42:46,295 --> 00:42:51,435
right? There's all of these wonderful representatives of the Bitcoin community that

526
00:42:51,435 --> 00:42:57,015
have focused on their customers and their products and their companies. But I do think at some point

527
00:42:57,015 --> 00:43:05,315
there's a duty to educate the rest of the world and traditional financial markets on what real

528
00:43:05,315 --> 00:43:11,735
value looks like and instead of just hoping and being disappointed when the masses fall for

529
00:43:11,735 --> 00:43:17,995
shitcoin scams over and over and over again what about the zcash stat that's a big one

530
00:43:17,995 --> 00:43:24,015
just unbelievable right but i mean we've we've been in this ecosystem long enough that

531
00:43:24,015 --> 00:43:31,235
like i i'm not mad i'm just disappointed yeah well i mean this brings up a good point it's

532
00:43:31,235 --> 00:43:37,775
something like obviously i think you'd be an incredible representative but it is it is

533
00:43:37,775 --> 00:43:44,635
frustrating like fucking excuse my language almost 17 years in because i remember when i first got in

534
00:43:44,635 --> 00:43:51,635
like 2013 2014 you had was brian kelly on cnbc tom lee was around back then uh they let trace

535
00:43:51,635 --> 00:43:57,095
mayor on obviously he's had his downfall and like still the quality of people actually like

536
00:43:57,095 --> 00:44:01,915
highlighting where the value is and listen credit where credit is due to like sailor

537
00:44:01,915 --> 00:44:06,635
and other people now like the last six months it's been all this dat thing where it's like

538
00:44:06,635 --> 00:44:12,975
all right don't worry it's going up like buy the stock um i think strategy is far and away like

539
00:44:12,975 --> 00:44:20,135
separated and demarc demarcated from um a lot of the dat focused uh companies that have hit the

540
00:44:20,135 --> 00:44:26,675
market this year but like again i think really bringing the public the message of like hey this

541
00:44:26,675 --> 00:44:33,415
a superior savings and payments technology that is objectively better when you actually touch see

542
00:44:33,415 --> 00:44:39,775
and feel it i mean you saw this and you see this at lightning labs like the ability i was just

543
00:44:39,775 --> 00:44:44,875
talking about i was on nostril we were live streaming was live streaming walker uh three

544
00:44:44,875 --> 00:44:50,115
hours ago and people were sending bitcoin to his wallet it appeared as we were live streaming it's

545
00:44:50,115 --> 00:44:54,615
like that is a twitch competitor that nobody realizes yet but it is superior like you don't

546
00:44:54,615 --> 00:45:00,575
have to wait once a week once a month whatever it may be like you are getting paid immediately you

547
00:45:00,575 --> 00:45:06,955
have the proliferation of other second layer solutions like arc spark cashew mints or e-cash

548
00:45:06,955 --> 00:45:14,115
mints liquid these are all becoming interoperable obviously um the development at the protocol layer

549
00:45:14,115 --> 00:45:21,095
with mini scripts and what you can do to secure your collateral is getting extremely robust and

550
00:45:21,095 --> 00:45:23,615
of his true sci-fi tech that is better.

551
00:45:24,535 --> 00:45:27,275
And we need, in my opinion,

552
00:45:27,375 --> 00:45:29,155
and I think in your humble opinion as well,

553
00:45:29,855 --> 00:45:32,435
more people telling this side of the story,

554
00:45:32,515 --> 00:45:34,575
which I think is being very underappreciated.

555
00:45:34,635 --> 00:45:35,275
Obviously, we have.

556
00:45:36,375 --> 00:45:38,915
Luckily, I mean, I think outside of Jack Myler's,

557
00:45:38,915 --> 00:45:40,575
I can't think of anybody who's going on CNBC

558
00:45:40,575 --> 00:45:43,375
and telling a story like this.

559
00:45:44,935 --> 00:45:45,415
Exactly.

560
00:45:45,755 --> 00:45:50,715
And I mean, I think there's a...

561
00:45:51,095 --> 00:45:58,375
Bitcoin has always had, you know, a little bit of a, not a marketing problem, but like a-

562
00:45:58,375 --> 00:45:59,995
It's had a marketing problem. You can say it.

563
00:46:00,735 --> 00:46:03,615
Yeah, it's had a marketing problem, right? And I think Bitcoiners are

564
00:46:03,615 --> 00:46:09,515
not predisposed to the salesmanship and the marketing that needs to happen, but it just,

565
00:46:09,755 --> 00:46:17,135
it's important, right? It just is. And I do think that, you know, now that we're at this,

566
00:46:17,135 --> 00:46:23,255
at this point and at this level of scale, I think there's a real responsibility.

567
00:46:24,255 --> 00:46:29,035
There's kind of two choices that you have when you've been a Bitcoin for a long time.

568
00:46:29,515 --> 00:46:38,115
One, which is respectable, is to ride off into the sunset with your Bitcoins and just go enjoy

569
00:46:38,115 --> 00:46:46,335
your life and be financially secure and kind of do whatever you want. The other one is the other

570
00:46:46,335 --> 00:46:54,175
choice is to give back to the community that's given you so much and, you know, incur a little

571
00:46:54,175 --> 00:47:00,055
bit of self-sacrifice to help get other people into the lifeboat. Right. And I think that that's

572
00:47:00,055 --> 00:47:06,255
kind of a little bit where we're at, where, you know, as we've heard this year has seen a ton of

573
00:47:06,255 --> 00:47:11,755
OGs selling, right. We're over a hundred K. If you bought Bitcoin at 10 bucks, a hundred bucks,

574
00:47:11,755 --> 00:47:15,715
something like that, like, you know, congratulations, that's fantastic. You

575
00:47:15,715 --> 00:47:24,275
retired your bloodline. That's awesome. But I would challenge those people that like, you know,

576
00:47:24,295 --> 00:47:31,715
there's a, there's more going on here. We're not done. 100K is $1.8 trillion is not the terminal

577
00:47:31,715 --> 00:47:37,555
end of Bitcoin, right? Like we got another 100X to go to really fulfill the mission.

578
00:47:37,555 --> 00:47:57,835
And this next leg of the journey is just necessarily takes a little bit more than just buying and holding. Right. There's more convincing to do. There's more convincing of, you know, entities that aren't just retail people looking to make money. Right.

579
00:47:57,835 --> 00:48:09,435
This is like serious institutions that need to be convinced of volatility, of safety, of, you know, that the custody of the Bitcoin is with reputable entities, et cetera, et cetera.

580
00:48:09,935 --> 00:48:13,035
Like there's more work to be done on this next leg of the journey.

581
00:48:14,035 --> 00:48:16,095
And I think we need all hands on deck.

582
00:48:17,095 --> 00:48:23,275
And, you know, I think that's kind of the next thing that I'm really interested in, really passionate about doing.

583
00:48:23,275 --> 00:48:29,035
And, you know, I think I have a unique skill set to be able to do that.

584
00:48:29,435 --> 00:48:40,215
And so that's why I'm focused on this back and on working with, you know, the best Bitcoin founders to take this, you know, next leap of the journey with me.

585
00:48:42,455 --> 00:48:50,455
What is a you're going to find a founder with an operating company spinning out cash flows set up for growth.

586
00:48:50,455 --> 00:48:52,715
but before you find that

587
00:48:52,715 --> 00:48:54,975
founder, it's going to be you. You're going to be on

588
00:48:54,975 --> 00:48:55,395
CNBC.

589
00:48:56,855 --> 00:48:58,975
We've heard the pitches from

590
00:48:58,975 --> 00:49:01,035
Saylor and everybody. It's digital capital.

591
00:49:01,255 --> 00:49:02,975
It's the best asset on earth. What would

592
00:49:02,975 --> 00:49:04,135
your unique pitch be?

593
00:49:04,995 --> 00:49:07,035
Why we should lean into Bitcoin?

594
00:49:07,455 --> 00:49:08,875
Why Bitcoin? Why now?

595
00:49:09,535 --> 00:49:10,995
Is it a

596
00:49:10,995 --> 00:49:12,855
store value hedge? How would you

597
00:49:12,855 --> 00:49:14,555
paint the full picture? Because I think you are

598
00:49:14,555 --> 00:49:16,935
particularly suited to do a

599
00:49:16,935 --> 00:49:17,655
good job of it.

600
00:49:18,775 --> 00:49:19,715
One thing

601
00:49:19,715 --> 00:49:26,015
a term that's been rattling around in my head for the last several months

602
00:49:26,015 --> 00:49:36,075
has been like, look, I'm outside of Bitcoin. If you remember, like my background, I'm an engineer,

603
00:49:36,235 --> 00:49:39,295
right? Like I started my career at Intel, which was like-

604
00:49:39,295 --> 00:49:40,395
Talked a lot about it in the first episode.

605
00:49:40,615 --> 00:49:44,055
We talked a lot about it in the first episode. It's like, it was the, I think,

606
00:49:44,055 --> 00:49:50,735
you know, arguably the preeminent American manufacturing company, you know, for like our

607
00:49:50,735 --> 00:49:57,095
entire lives, right? You had kind of, you think about the, you know, GE, Boeing, Intel, right?

608
00:49:57,135 --> 00:50:02,555
Intel does massive, massive investments in manufacturing in the U.S. And so one thing

609
00:50:02,555 --> 00:50:09,175
that I'm like extremely interested in and I've been following very closely is all of the efforts

610
00:50:09,175 --> 00:50:11,995
to kind of reshore manufacturing in the US

611
00:50:11,995 --> 00:50:14,575
and like bring back, you know,

612
00:50:14,635 --> 00:50:18,935
those post-COVID bring back supply chains

613
00:50:18,935 --> 00:50:20,355
and things like that.

614
00:50:20,875 --> 00:50:23,355
And so this is a long-winded way of saying that like,

615
00:50:23,955 --> 00:50:26,675
in order to do that work,

616
00:50:26,715 --> 00:50:28,375
and another thing we talked about five years ago

617
00:50:28,375 --> 00:50:30,435
is that like Bitcoin is just as much a hardware evolution

618
00:50:30,435 --> 00:50:31,715
as a software one, right?

619
00:50:32,215 --> 00:50:33,575
But in order to do that work,

620
00:50:34,675 --> 00:50:38,415
we need to, without inflating everybody away,

621
00:50:38,415 --> 00:50:42,575
We need to re-collateralize the financial system, right?

622
00:50:42,655 --> 00:50:46,455
Like the financial system is dramatically under-collateralized.

623
00:50:46,595 --> 00:50:52,535
And without re-collateralizing this financial system, we will not be able to successfully

624
00:50:52,535 --> 00:50:58,815
make the capital expenditures we need to make to bring back manufacturing and like ensure

625
00:50:58,815 --> 00:51:02,135
American national security, right?

626
00:51:02,135 --> 00:51:09,555
And I think if you adopt that frame, what asset can we use to re-collateralize the financial system?

627
00:51:10,275 --> 00:51:10,395
Right?

628
00:51:10,655 --> 00:51:12,395
Like, it's not going to be treasuries.

629
00:51:13,955 --> 00:51:21,415
Gold's been doing great, obviously, but like gold kind of had its time as collateral and we're not going back to it.

630
00:51:21,915 --> 00:51:23,875
Really, the only option that you have is Bitcoin.

631
00:51:24,875 --> 00:51:25,195
Right?

632
00:51:25,195 --> 00:51:40,635
And imagine if adopting Bitcoin as a collateral asset to lend against, to re-collateralize this dollar system as Bitcoin goes from $1.8 trillion to $100 trillion, right?

633
00:51:40,635 --> 00:52:01,975
Like that 50x in growth could provide, you know, I don't, depending on what multiple, like another 100x of capital expenditure of dollars issued in order to, you know, provide new productive capacities in AI and robotics and space travel and all the things that we want to invest in.

634
00:52:01,975 --> 00:52:09,895
But like you need that underlying collateral in order to do that lending to productive entrepreneurs.

635
00:52:09,895 --> 00:52:15,115
You just you have to have it. And so I think that's that's the thing that I've been really interested in is like.

636
00:52:16,695 --> 00:52:28,275
Thinking about Bitcoin as the tool that allows us to recollateralize the financial system and invest in all of these new productive economies that we're so excited about.

637
00:52:29,195 --> 00:52:34,175
Another way to say is we're we're for the Bitcoinization of finance. It's not the financialization of Bitcoin.

638
00:52:34,175 --> 00:52:48,055
Right. It's a thousand percent. I mean, that's and so that's, you know, Elizabeth Stark is, you know, my former CEO, boss and CEO at Lightning Labs is phenomenal at kind of all things branding in terms of phrase.

639
00:52:48,055 --> 00:52:54,595
And so she was about, you know, Bitcoinizing the dollar. This is that that's what we were doing with with Taproot Assets.

640
00:52:54,595 --> 00:53:15,615
And I think similarly to your point, Bitcoinizing the financial system, building it, allowing it to, you know, grow on a firm, solid foundation based on 21 million, based on lack of rehypothecation, based on, you know, auditing and verifiability.

641
00:53:16,135 --> 00:53:20,375
That's a better way to organize as we move into the future.

642
00:53:20,375 --> 00:53:39,895
Yeah. I'm not sure if you caught up at the national security strategy memo that went out this morning about the Trump administration. It's pretty profound. I've only read a few pages I recorded with somebody right before this about it.

643
00:53:39,895 --> 00:53:44,335
If you're listening to this episode and you listened to the previous episode, you heard it was Susan.

644
00:53:44,975 --> 00:53:52,235
But just this whole idea of leading into reshoring, we're getting away from the global wars, we're going to focus on the Western hemisphere.

645
00:53:53,015 --> 00:53:54,575
I think that's another great form.

646
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:59,100
aim for Bitcoin is like, hey, not only does the system need to be re-collateralized,

647
00:53:59,160 --> 00:54:04,260
but a lot of the banking infrastructure and securities infrastructure,

648
00:54:04,500 --> 00:54:08,200
if we're being honest with ourselves, is running on tech that was built in the 70s,

649
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:09,740
and it's not fine-tuned.

650
00:54:09,880 --> 00:54:15,280
So we have this incredible re-industrialization or re-engineering

651
00:54:15,280 --> 00:54:16,920
of the financial system potential.

652
00:54:17,240 --> 00:54:20,680
We can build a new banking stack, a more sovereign banking stack,

653
00:54:20,680 --> 00:54:26,120
obviously a modern banking stack on this protocol as well.

654
00:54:26,220 --> 00:54:28,340
So there's a number of different narratives.

655
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:29,700
There's recollateralization,

656
00:54:30,620 --> 00:54:34,160
the supports of the energy infrastructure build out.

657
00:54:34,400 --> 00:54:38,040
And one that I don't think is getting enough tick yet,

658
00:54:38,100 --> 00:54:39,360
maybe it's because the timing's not right,

659
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,100
order of operations type thing is literally,

660
00:54:41,780 --> 00:54:44,580
I think Ethereum probably, for being objective,

661
00:54:44,580 --> 00:54:47,080
does a better job of marketing it this way.

662
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:50,640
But you can rebuild the financial system on top of it.

663
00:54:50,680 --> 00:55:03,040
And I think that, like seeing that in the minds of not only the administration, but the American people of like, hey, there's an incredible opportunity here to do something brand new.

664
00:55:03,180 --> 00:55:05,460
It's going to create a ton of jobs, kind of opportunity.

665
00:55:05,940 --> 00:55:12,400
And when it's all said and done, the monetary and financial system is going to look completely different in a better way.

666
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:20,600
One thing that's really interesting about that, and I agree with you, is we talked a lot about this with, you know, Tapert Assets was at Lighting Labs.

667
00:55:20,700 --> 00:55:24,920
The protocol was predominantly focused on stable coins and bringing stable coins to Lightning.

668
00:55:26,340 --> 00:55:32,560
But there was this whole other aspect to it of, you know, doing tokenized assets.

669
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:43,340
And I always kind of thought that that was like a little silly and like, you know, why would you, you know, mint a token, a tokenized asset instead of, you know, just issuing equity on a stock exchange.

670
00:55:43,340 --> 00:56:00,580
But one thing that was really interesting as we talked with, you know, other folks is, you know, if you grow up and you create a company in Mexico, in Guatemala, in Colombia, like there isn't a capital market.

671
00:56:00,580 --> 00:56:07,960
Like it, it doesn't exist, right? Like, like you can't go and raise money or do the things that

672
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:13,380
you can do as a U S company in these other places. Um, and one thing I've always thought about

673
00:56:13,380 --> 00:56:19,420
Bitcoin, um, is like what, what the revolution really is, is it's extending like the best

674
00:56:19,420 --> 00:56:24,600
property rights the world has ever seen to anybody with an internet connection, right? Like if you

675
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:30,420
want to have Texas level property rights, like you gotta be in Texas, right? Um, if you're born

676
00:56:30,420 --> 00:56:39,860
in China or, I don't know, name a worse country in terms of property rights. You can't get that

677
00:56:39,860 --> 00:56:45,540
level of assurances over your property unless you move to the jurisdiction of Texas with the

678
00:56:45,540 --> 00:56:51,060
exception of holding your own Bitcoin private keys. And I think extending that same level of

679
00:56:51,060 --> 00:56:56,560
property rights to people that want to issue equity, that want to raise debt, that want to do

680
00:56:56,560 --> 00:57:03,140
these different capital markets activities via the Bitcoin blockchain is an unqualified good.

681
00:57:03,900 --> 00:57:07,900
Right. And I think to your point, like, I think that will unlock a tremendous amount of prosperity

682
00:57:07,900 --> 00:57:14,860
by extending these property rights to because, you know, as we know well from some of the best

683
00:57:14,860 --> 00:57:20,760
entrepreneurs I worked with at Lightning Labs were based in Nairobi. Right. We're based in

684
00:57:20,760 --> 00:57:31,020
in Medellin, were based in, you know, Chiang Mao in Vietnam. Right. And, you know, thankfully,

685
00:57:31,400 --> 00:57:36,040
you know, they were able to get into the Bitcoin community, figure out how, you know,

686
00:57:36,360 --> 00:57:40,560
create a corporation, all that sort of stuff. But, you know, to take the next step to really

687
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:44,760
operate at, you know, billion dollar company scale, like you kind of need U.S. capital markets

688
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:50,240
access. And lowering that barrier to entry to just anybody with an internet connection,

689
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:52,200
I think is an unqualified good.

690
00:57:52,900 --> 00:57:53,000
Yeah.

691
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:55,220
It's very optimistic too.

692
00:57:55,420 --> 00:57:59,220
It's very motivational, if you will.

693
00:57:59,340 --> 00:58:00,620
There are a lot of black pills out there.

694
00:58:01,060 --> 00:58:01,620
You can't do it.

695
00:58:02,380 --> 00:58:03,180
You can't do it.

696
00:58:03,180 --> 00:58:03,200
You can't do it.

697
00:58:03,200 --> 00:58:03,220
You can't do it.

698
00:58:03,220 --> 00:58:03,240
You can't do it.

699
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:03,800
You can't do it.

700
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,780
It's all open source, all accessible.

701
00:58:07,540 --> 00:58:10,640
Not all of it, but the protocols are mainly open source

702
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:11,640
and you can build.

703
00:58:12,420 --> 00:58:13,760
But, I mean, with that being said too,

704
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:18,880
I think it would be remiss of me not to really lean into

705
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:24,900
lightning network how it's developed over the last five years and again mentioned it earlier

706
00:58:24,900 --> 00:58:30,400
but that's something that's made me incredibly bullish i think it's incredibly i mean it's not

707
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:35,120
even on the radar of the broader public but it's incredibly underappreciated within the bitcoin

708
00:58:35,120 --> 00:58:40,460
space which should be paying attention to it but like the emergence of the lightning network not

709
00:58:40,460 --> 00:58:45,760
only has this very decentralized distributed payments protocol on top of bitcoin but this

710
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:52,600
connective tissue between these budding second layer protocols that many would have assumed

711
00:58:52,600 --> 00:58:55,720
would compete with lightning but we're finding out they're actually symbiotic

712
00:58:55,720 --> 00:59:07,020
many years ago um a guy zaki mannion who was like one of the main engineers and architects

713
00:59:07,020 --> 00:59:12,360
of the cosmos ecosystem i remember when i was at multi-coin him telling me that like

714
00:59:12,360 --> 00:59:19,060
look the master architecture or like a blockchain based payments network and again this is a guy who

715
00:59:19,060 --> 00:59:23,520
worked on cosmos like he was not interested in lightning any of that sort of stuff because he

716
00:59:23,520 --> 00:59:30,220
was like the master architecture is you have a single settlement blockchain um and then on the

717
00:59:30,220 --> 00:59:36,640
sides of that single settlement blockchain you have these you know um trustless two-way pegged

718
00:59:36,640 --> 00:59:45,280
liquidity pools, side chains, roll-ups, etc. And then all of those liquidity pools are connected

719
00:59:45,280 --> 00:59:51,320
with a payment channel network. So I've always had that vision in my head of how things were

720
00:59:51,320 --> 00:59:57,440
going to develop. And it's just interesting that the Bitcoin community chose to have the settlement

721
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:02,520
network and then build the payment channel network next, the interoperability layer.

722
01:00:02,520 --> 01:00:07,240
And then we had all of these custodial venues like Old Walls, Toshi, the exchanges,

723
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:11,380
those were kind of our liquidity pools, which, you know, obviously be better if those were non-custodial.

724
01:00:12,100 --> 01:00:18,780
But now we have this heterogeneous mix of liquidity pools, whether it's, you know,

725
01:00:18,880 --> 01:00:26,040
Alpen Labs style roll-ups, Botanics style spider chains, you know, Spark with state chains,

726
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:33,800
ARK, of course, the Cashew eMints, all of which interoperate via Lightning.

727
01:00:33,800 --> 01:00:47,795
And the really funny thing about that choice versus the choice that the crypto people made is thanks to having a native interoperability solution all of these Bitcoin you know side systems just kind of work together naturally

728
01:00:48,095 --> 01:00:52,075
right? Like there's a, there's a native interoperability language, like going between

729
01:00:52,075 --> 01:00:57,435
rollups and Ethereum is like a fucking nightmare, right? Like they still haven't solved that and

730
01:00:57,435 --> 01:01:00,975
they have no idea how they're going to solve it. Well, let's dive into that. I mean, again,

731
01:01:00,975 --> 01:01:05,415
going back to order of operations which has been more theme of our conversations throughout

732
01:01:05,415 --> 01:01:12,155
the last 10 years or seven years however long we've known each other um this is order of operations

733
01:01:12,155 --> 01:01:16,955
by like so like ethereum other blockchains went for like all right we're going to build these

734
01:01:16,955 --> 01:01:21,935
second layers and they're going to compete with each other but some have properties that others

735
01:01:21,935 --> 01:01:25,515
want and if you're in this one you want to use that one like how do we connect on the bridge

736
01:01:25,515 --> 01:01:30,415
has become the popular nomenclature for how you connect them but then once you build these second

737
01:01:30,415 --> 01:01:35,795
layers is like how do you agree on a on a standard language for them to communicate and then you get

738
01:01:35,795 --> 01:01:40,895
into stick measuring contest and coordination issues where it's like oh you build the common

739
01:01:40,895 --> 01:01:48,935
language first built these individual second layers after that yeah i mean i don't think there

740
01:01:48,935 --> 01:01:54,575
was any intention behind that too to your point i think it just happened almost yeah once you know

741
01:01:54,575 --> 01:02:01,175
it's it's i wasn't around at the beginnings of the lightning network i don't think like i do know

742
01:02:01,175 --> 01:02:10,055
that you know in the very very early days um i think because litecoin had segwit before bitcoin

743
01:02:10,055 --> 01:02:15,355
did i think actually like like i know lnd had support for litecoin for a number of years it

744
01:02:15,355 --> 01:02:20,715
was only sunset like in the last couple years but there was like some early ideas that it could be

745
01:02:20,715 --> 01:02:31,055
used for kind of cross-chain swaps but never like you know it took way too long to figure out that

746
01:02:31,055 --> 01:02:36,315
liquid and lightning were a good combination right shout out to uh francis and the bold

747
01:02:36,315 --> 01:02:40,095
decoyed team for really and the awkward yeah i mean like that works great and like you look at

748
01:02:40,095 --> 01:02:45,175
what what breeze has done with the breeze sdk you know building on on liquid like they build like a

749
01:02:45,175 --> 01:02:51,535
really slick, nice solution. What bolts did with, with submarine swaps between liquid and lightning

750
01:02:51,535 --> 01:02:56,915
like that, you know, a great solution that, you know, really provided a good user experience. Like

751
01:02:56,915 --> 01:03:04,075
that was something that, you know, I think I was, I was waiting a long time for. And then when it,

752
01:03:04,275 --> 01:03:09,735
once people finally started building, it was like, Oh, of course. And now seeing it work with,

753
01:03:09,815 --> 01:03:12,455
you know, that was another thing that like in my, my years at lighting labs,

754
01:03:12,455 --> 01:03:19,015
I pitched a lot of things and a lot of things that were not very well received.

755
01:03:19,475 --> 01:03:26,675
The most well-received pitch I ever gave was to these Bitcoin layer twos about integrating with

756
01:03:26,675 --> 01:03:33,215
Lightning. And the pitch was very simple. It was, look, you as new side system,

757
01:03:34,035 --> 01:03:40,135
you're going to get spun up and you have two options. You can either go and do business

758
01:03:40,135 --> 01:03:44,455
development and get a direct integration with every single one of Binance,

759
01:03:44,515 --> 01:03:47,135
Coinbase, Kraken, Wallis, Satoshi, you know,

760
01:03:47,135 --> 01:03:51,175
every entity on the lightning network, which now is in the hundreds, thousands,

761
01:03:51,175 --> 01:03:54,095
you know, it's, that's a lot of people, a lot of businesses,

762
01:03:54,095 --> 01:03:56,495
all of whom who have other roadmaps and like, trust me,

763
01:03:56,495 --> 01:03:59,695
as a guy that did integrations with lightning, like it is not easy.

764
01:04:00,835 --> 01:04:03,055
You can either do all of those integrations directly,

765
01:04:03,135 --> 01:04:09,135
or you can integrate with one submarine swap provider that will bridge your

766
01:04:09,135 --> 01:04:13,115
side system to lightning and you get instant deposits and withdrawals from all of those

767
01:04:13,115 --> 01:04:18,775
customers for free right and every single bitcoin layer too was like oh i want option number two

768
01:04:18,775 --> 01:04:22,875
please like i want to integrate with the submarine swap provider and get all the whole lightning

769
01:04:22,875 --> 01:04:29,255
network for free right it's like it's the easiest pitch in the world yeah and then like the e-cash

770
01:04:29,255 --> 01:04:34,595
mints it's like you just natively build in the lightning gateway and for not on the mint and

771
01:04:34,595 --> 01:04:42,495
it makes a ton of sense and again i think it's extremely underappreciated right now like i think

772
01:04:42,495 --> 01:04:48,175
baltic honey badger was an incredible example like they just ninja launched arc and mark labs

773
01:04:48,175 --> 01:04:54,835
their their implementation on the back end on the payment processors at the conference and it was so

774
01:04:54,835 --> 01:05:01,115
cool unfortunately one of two baltic honey badger conferences i've ever missed in my life but like

775
01:05:01,115 --> 01:05:06,815
watching from afar there's people paying from e-cashments to arcs it was like e-cash to lightning

776
01:05:06,815 --> 01:05:13,235
arc happened automatically like completely interoperable if you're an end user with your

777
01:05:13,235 --> 01:05:21,835
particular preferences that's like the magic that people really have not appreciated yet that

778
01:05:21,835 --> 01:05:29,455
unless you know ball unless you know ball you don't really appreciate it uh and again that's

779
01:05:29,455 --> 01:05:43,015
When you think of the potential to re-architect the financial system from the ground up, the banking system from the ground up, and tying this into the whole conversation of people being worried that Wall Street is co-opting Bitcoin.

780
01:05:43,015 --> 01:05:52,175
It's like, no, this technology is superior. User experience is superior. The ability to build on it is superior because they're open, interoperable protocols.

781
01:05:52,555 --> 01:05:57,935
The shelling point is going to be through these systems, whether you realize it or not.

782
01:05:57,935 --> 01:06:16,875
And tying this whole conversation of companies, whether they're in the Bitcoin space or outside the Bitcoin space, going public to really accelerate this or to accelerate the Bitcoin integration into their businesses, like, and comparing it to SPACs of 2020, which people really anchor to.

783
01:06:16,975 --> 01:06:18,595
It's like they don't compare.

784
01:06:18,735 --> 01:06:20,795
The upside potential here is massive.

785
01:06:21,975 --> 01:06:22,395
It's massive.

786
01:06:22,395 --> 01:06:22,895
It's massive.

787
01:06:22,895 --> 01:06:33,535
And I think, like, again, the stat that I couldn't believe when Miles and Square first started talking about it, but it's such a staggering stat.

788
01:06:33,615 --> 01:06:38,675
It's like, no, the 28% of U.S. merchants can now accept payments over Lightning.

789
01:06:39,075 --> 01:06:47,055
We met right after we, like, we both went to, like, with the cost Miles immediately after he got off stage.

790
01:06:47,275 --> 01:06:47,855
But, like, I remember.

791
01:06:47,855 --> 01:06:49,355
Yeah, it was like a hundred crap.

792
01:06:49,595 --> 01:06:52,155
It was me and Matt Corallo being like, oh, my God, this is crazy.

793
01:06:52,895 --> 01:06:57,355
Yeah. I mean, the yield, that was nuts. Again, that was a number that I'd been waiting for,

794
01:06:57,355 --> 01:07:02,975
for like 10 years. A thing that we talked about five years ago was the lightning pool launch and

795
01:07:02,975 --> 01:07:07,235
about like earning yield as a routing node operator and how like eventually someday,

796
01:07:07,435 --> 01:07:12,175
you know, real businesses are going to be making real money running lightning nodes.

797
01:07:12,875 --> 01:07:16,855
And now, yeah, I mean, a non-custodial yield on your Bitcoin, the risk-free rate, you know,

798
01:07:16,935 --> 01:07:37,510
Nick Boddy was talking about that years before we got onto it Like it happening It happening for a public company for a lot For a lot of money Yeah like a um yeah i mean i i think that lightning has grown up so much um over the last five years and has matured so much and again it

799
01:07:37,510 --> 01:07:43,150
you know there's so much hate around it though why do people hate it i think i i honestly think

800
01:07:43,150 --> 01:07:52,870
people hate it because the mental model of what they thought it was supposed to do is not what it

801
01:07:52,870 --> 01:08:00,570
does. If you think about what Lightning does from a fundamental basis is it removes the

802
01:08:01,570 --> 01:08:08,090
transactions per second limit from the Bitcoin blockchain. What it did was it scaled the

803
01:08:08,090 --> 01:08:15,710
transactional capacity of Bitcoin, but it did not scale the number of people that can hold private

804
01:08:15,710 --> 01:08:21,710
keys. So like what, and this is, you know, again, the tie-in to what we were talking about with

805
01:08:21,710 --> 01:08:27,310
these new site systems and interoperability is like what all those systems are really good at

806
01:08:27,310 --> 01:08:32,630
is allowing more people to hold their own private keys and transact efficiently.

807
01:08:32,950 --> 01:08:38,050
What Lightning is not good at is allowing people to hold their own private keys because

808
01:08:38,050 --> 01:08:42,050
you have to manage your own channel, right? And you have to manage your own hot wallet.

809
01:08:42,930 --> 01:08:53,330
So I think the self-custodial Lightning UX was never really able to get up to par of a MetaMask

810
01:08:53,330 --> 01:08:57,730
extension or a phantom wallet or something like that. But that's not really what Lightning is for,

811
01:08:58,530 --> 01:09:05,250
right? We kind of always needed these additional systems to plug in at the end of Lightning to

812
01:09:05,250 --> 01:09:10,770
solve that problem because what lightning is phenomenal at is allowing for instant global

813
01:09:11,250 --> 01:09:18,690
bitcoin transactions that settle you know for tenths of a penny um it's just it's not good

814
01:09:18,690 --> 01:09:25,250
at the supporting self-custody that's not that's not really what it's for yeah people people get

815
01:09:25,250 --> 01:09:30,850
upset about that but hopefully this next generation of lightning wallets that are built on arc that

816
01:09:30,850 --> 01:09:37,890
that are built on Spark, that are built on these new, I call them last mile solutions in a blog

817
01:09:37,890 --> 01:09:42,630
post I wrote a year and a half ago, that are based on these new last mile solutions will kind of

818
01:09:42,630 --> 01:09:51,110
change that opinion. And I think what Lightning is really good for is saving every 28% of US

819
01:09:51,110 --> 01:09:57,610
merchants from having to pay Visa taxes, right? MasterCard taxes, credit card network taxes,

820
01:09:57,610 --> 01:10:03,950
right that's great framing just call them visa taxes not interchange fees visa taxes that's what

821
01:10:03,950 --> 01:10:09,530
they are yeah visa and escar are the like most profitable they have the highest operating profit

822
01:10:09,530 --> 01:10:15,290
of almost any company s&p 500 they make like 60 gross margins or something it's outrageous

823
01:10:15,290 --> 01:10:20,810
at incredible scale an incredible scale for like not really doing that much right they just pass

824
01:10:20,810 --> 01:10:28,370
messages between banks yeah well right for disruption i mean we could not that's why i'd

825
01:10:28,370 --> 01:10:33,590
like to nerd out about this stuff with you the other thing too is like the lightning network i

826
01:10:33,590 --> 01:10:39,650
would argue is so good at what it does um particularly from a privacy perspective that's

827
01:10:39,650 --> 01:10:46,310
really hard unless you have companies like yeah block publicly reporting their numbers to actually

828
01:10:46,310 --> 01:10:54,270
know what's going on within the network and so people see that opacity i guess and say ah there's

829
01:10:54,270 --> 01:10:59,690
probably nothing going on but i i can tell you for sure i think literally via this podcast i receive

830
01:10:59,690 --> 01:11:07,790
at least maybe not every minute of every day but like every five minutes at the very least i receive

831
01:11:07,790 --> 01:11:16,090
on average every day it just it just keeps growing and i think you know there's so much of

832
01:11:16,090 --> 01:11:23,570
The comparison too is it was always comparing Lightning to these other shitcoin systems.

833
01:11:23,730 --> 01:11:30,090
But like, if you just look at Lightning's growth independently and not comparatively, it's fantastic.

834
01:11:31,090 --> 01:11:44,810
I mean, like the growth of volume, the growth of nodes, the growth of channels, the growth of companies, the growth of investment dollars into startups, like all of the everything is up and to the right.

835
01:11:44,810 --> 01:11:52,330
very steadily at, you know, like 20 to 50% CAGR or something like that. Like all of those things,

836
01:11:52,330 --> 01:11:58,010
all of the metrics that we tracked were, were, were great. Um, and especially like the most

837
01:11:58,010 --> 01:12:03,890
important one volume, you know, like, I think we were, I don't know exactly where the network will

838
01:12:03,890 --> 01:12:11,070
end this year, but you know, uh, if you look back at like the old river reports or the art arcane,

839
01:12:11,070 --> 01:12:16,290
reports when they did like the state of lightning, you know, it was like five years ago,

840
01:12:16,350 --> 01:12:21,910
lightning was doing like single digit millions in volume annually, right? Two years ago,

841
01:12:21,910 --> 01:12:27,490
maybe lightning got to, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions. Now we're already on

842
01:12:27,490 --> 01:12:33,950
the order of, you know, potentially $10 billion in annual volume, you know, if not more, right?

843
01:12:33,990 --> 01:12:40,590
That's phenomenal growth. And there's hundreds of, you know, I think Visa and MasterCard

844
01:12:40,590 --> 01:12:46,630
combined generally for like $20 trillion in total payments volume. And about half of that is debit,

845
01:12:47,050 --> 01:12:51,570
which is the right comparison for Lightning transactional volume, right? Like getting up

846
01:12:51,570 --> 01:12:56,410
to $10 trillion in total volume. Like the way I looked at that when talking to entrepreneurs

847
01:12:56,410 --> 01:13:02,110
and businesses, it's like, look, there's a hundred X here left, right? Or a thousand X here.

848
01:13:02,110 --> 01:13:05,670
And if it keeps growing at that rate, we'll get there quicker than anybody expects.

849
01:13:05,670 --> 01:13:29,230
Exactly. And like, again, like, you know, and the way these network effects work is you just kind of like unlock greater and greater scale as each each entity comes on board and Square bringing on, you know, almost a third of all U.S. merchants access is an enormous unlock for scale.

850
01:13:29,230 --> 01:13:34,710
right and the fact that it works and it's being operated by a really quality professional company

851
01:13:34,710 --> 01:13:40,210
um like block means these people are going to have a good experience and all of a sudden like

852
01:13:40,210 --> 01:13:44,570
this stuff goes word of mouth if you're as a brick and mortar retailer saving three percent

853
01:13:44,570 --> 01:13:51,130
because you switched to lightning you're not paying the visa taxes anymore you're going to

854
01:13:51,130 --> 01:13:56,470
put a little note on your on your terminal that says please you know discount if you pay with

855
01:13:56,470 --> 01:13:57,910
Bitcoin, right?

856
01:13:57,910 --> 01:14:01,210
This, you know, here's how you pay with Bitcoin via cash app.

857
01:14:02,010 --> 01:14:17,965
That education is just going to be word of mouth which is um I remember in the in the early days of podcasting 2 with Adam Curry Adam Curry being like you lightning people don understand how big this is Every podcaster is going to be shilling lightning to his audience

858
01:14:18,345 --> 01:14:21,745
To his or her audience are all going to be saying, here's how you set up a lightning wallet.

859
01:14:21,925 --> 01:14:23,825
Here's how you start streaming sats to me.

860
01:14:24,205 --> 01:14:24,845
It's true.

861
01:14:25,365 --> 01:14:25,445
Yep.

862
01:14:26,125 --> 01:14:31,585
And then in podcasting 2.0, I've talked about this a few times, but I think we were top five.

863
01:14:31,885 --> 01:14:32,945
One of the first podcast.

864
01:14:33,825 --> 01:14:35,705
One of the first five podcasts to put a lightning.

865
01:14:35,705 --> 01:14:42,505
address in our rss feed like it is and it's like it's not obviously it's not going to replace

866
01:14:42,505 --> 01:14:47,985
advertising revenue overnight but like it is the the thing that makes me most optimistic is number

867
01:14:47,985 --> 01:14:53,385
one it's been consistent up and to the right it's not crazy parabolic growth but slowly but surely

868
01:14:53,385 --> 01:14:58,845
more people are discovering fountain and other podcasts and 2.0 apps downloading listening

869
01:14:58,845 --> 01:15:05,865
contributing um and it's happening the growth is there it has not it never like went up and then

870
01:15:05,865 --> 01:15:10,565
died and never went back up against being consistent up and to the right um and the

871
01:15:10,565 --> 01:15:17,205
other thing last thing because i know we've got families it's friday afternoon here the other i

872
01:15:17,205 --> 01:15:23,085
think it's important to touch on for anybody who's trying to compare lightning to other l2 protocols

873
01:15:23,085 --> 01:15:28,445
and looking at tvl specifically i think that's another thing they look like channel capacity

874
01:15:28,445 --> 01:15:32,765
you're like, oh, look, it's up, it's down, it's not as much as what's in wrap Bitcoin on this

875
01:15:32,765 --> 01:15:36,665
chain or whatever it may be and completely misunderstand dynamics that that is actually

876
01:15:36,665 --> 01:15:41,385
an incredibly high signal that this thing is working because you can do more with less.

877
01:15:41,885 --> 01:15:46,725
And another factor that many people don't take into consideration when they're just opining on

878
01:15:46,725 --> 01:15:52,625
this as a pundit is the fact that the Bitcoin price goes up. So you don't need as much Bitcoin

879
01:15:52,625 --> 01:15:58,185
in these channels as before if you're denominating the purchases in US dollars

880
01:15:58,185 --> 01:16:04,985
and it takes less bitcoin to complete that purchase absolutely right and and you know

881
01:16:05,625 --> 01:16:11,385
i don't pay nearly as much attention to the crypto people as i used to but it was really funny a

882
01:16:11,385 --> 01:16:19,545
couple years ago um when the uniswap founder all of a sudden started coming out and saying that

883
01:16:19,545 --> 01:16:25,545
evl was a bad metric because actually what we should be optimizing for is like capital efficiency

884
01:16:25,545 --> 01:16:32,825
volume divided by like tvr capital yeah yeah locked capital and i was like oh yeah that's what

885
01:16:32,825 --> 01:16:38,505
lightning people have been saying this whole time like yes like like we were supposed to be designing

886
01:16:38,505 --> 01:16:43,865
capital efficient systems here not just having people stick their bitcoin in hot wallets and

887
01:16:43,865 --> 01:16:49,065
put them at risk for vanity purposes like that was never that's always been dumb um and i think

888
01:16:49,065 --> 01:16:56,265
again, like the fact that Lightning can process the volumes it's processing with the... Well, actually,

889
01:16:57,705 --> 01:17:04,985
the signal of Block being able to earn 10%, that is the natural signal that shows that there's a

890
01:17:04,985 --> 01:17:11,945
capital shortage in the network, finally. That means that there is more demand for payment

891
01:17:11,945 --> 01:17:18,505
capacity than there is actual capacity allocated. And that is the market signal that should

892
01:17:18,505 --> 01:17:24,505
incentivize more entities to add more capital to the lightning network to soak up that demand.

893
01:17:24,505 --> 01:17:27,145
Right. And that's how it should work. Now, the tricky thing is like,

894
01:17:28,345 --> 01:17:34,745
how do you actually measure that? It's hard. You got to be constantly monitoring network.

895
01:17:34,745 --> 01:17:38,905
You got to look at the few rates that are being charged. You got to look at how often

896
01:17:40,345 --> 01:17:45,785
certain nodes are opening and closing more channels. You got to look at, I think most

897
01:17:45,785 --> 01:17:50,825
importantly how much volume is flowing through lightning labs's loop service which is you know

898
01:17:50,825 --> 01:17:58,345
a big sync in the network and processes a lot of um a lot of submarine swap volume and without

899
01:17:58,345 --> 01:18:03,145
running the nodes yourself like that's kind of hard to find it's it's doable to be able to suss

900
01:18:03,145 --> 01:18:07,705
out if you really know what you're doing but it's kind of hard to find and and really importantly

901
01:18:07,705 --> 01:18:12,185
the entities that are doing well they don't like to share their secrets on lightning because they're

902
01:18:12,185 --> 01:18:16,545
are making a lot of money and they don't want to invite new competition yeah no but like now

903
01:18:16,545 --> 01:18:21,145
there's people that are noticing this marketing of companies like voltage and boss like in pool

904
01:18:21,145 --> 01:18:27,285
obviously like they're building the tools to make it easier than ever to do that participate in that

905
01:18:27,285 --> 01:18:35,165
that yield yield is a dirty word in this industry but this is this is true yield you lock up your

906
01:18:35,165 --> 01:18:43,665
capital and a 202 hash time lock contracts that you have control over and you offer a service of

907
01:18:43,665 --> 01:18:49,125
facilitating transaction transactions on the lightning network and you're gonna get paid for

908
01:18:49,125 --> 01:18:56,545
it yep it's a useful service and becoming more and more useful every day yeah yeah but we're

909
01:18:56,545 --> 01:18:59,425
gonna have to wait five years for the next one i'm gonna be i might have i'm gonna have like

910
01:18:59,425 --> 01:19:05,805
two more kids my hair might be my hair might be completely gone by them who knows who knows what's

911
01:19:05,805 --> 01:19:09,365
going to be happening in five years i'll do my best to make sure it doesn't take that long this

912
01:19:09,365 --> 01:19:14,445
time all right what uh where should we send people what should what should look out for last message

913
01:19:14,445 --> 01:19:21,185
um follow me on twitter um at ryan the gentry that's kind of where everything is happening um

914
01:19:21,185 --> 01:19:28,085
i think it's going to be i'm very very very bullish on 2026 i'm always very very bullish on

915
01:19:28,085 --> 01:19:35,245
Bitcoin. But most importantly, I'm bullish on Bitcoiners. And I'm really bullish on Bitcoiners

916
01:19:35,245 --> 01:19:42,905
taking kind of this asset and this market to the next level and all kind of growing up together,

917
01:19:43,585 --> 01:19:48,365
professionalizing and winning the war for the world's global reserve asset.

918
01:19:49,765 --> 01:19:50,665
In other words, we're going to win.

919
01:19:51,365 --> 01:19:53,945
We're going to win. We're going to win, Freaks.

920
01:19:54,845 --> 01:19:55,365
Peace of love.

921
01:19:55,365 --> 01:19:58,585
Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC.

922
01:19:59,025 --> 01:20:02,645
If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode.

923
01:20:03,025 --> 01:20:07,005
If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family.

924
01:20:07,085 --> 01:20:08,465
We're looking to get the word out there.

925
01:20:09,245 --> 01:20:13,265
Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify,

926
01:20:13,785 --> 01:20:16,565
make sure you like and subscribe to the show.

927
01:20:16,705 --> 01:20:21,285
And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way.

928
01:20:21,445 --> 01:20:25,325
Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early,

929
01:20:25,365 --> 01:20:32,125
and ad-free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app and go to fountain.fm to find that.

930
01:20:32,905 --> 01:20:39,285
$5 a month, get you every episode a day early, ad-free. Helps the show, gives you incredible

931
01:20:39,285 --> 01:20:45,405
value. So please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time,

932
01:20:45,885 --> 01:20:46,805
and until next time.

933
01:20:55,365 --> 01:21:25,345
Thank you.