Bitcoin Culture vs Wall Street | Thomas Pacchia

24:50Yeah. And actually interacting with the protocol itself. Noster feels a lot like early Bitcoin. So, you know, if we're going to get something like that to the point where it's our digital identity and our digital representation of your voice and yourself online, that's pretty fucking valuable, right? The stakes are almost higher than it is with Bitcoin because you can have multiple wallets and you can spread them out and there's hardware wallets and the attack surface is much smaller. But it still comes down to that private key. Splitting it up in a way that you would split up, let's say, a Bitcoin wallet.

25:27If I have like 20 Bitcoin wallets and 20 private keys, then the attack surface is much more complicated for the whole thing. But if you have one private key for your digital identity, that gets a little scary. So I think that it's in the early phases, and people have been talking about this and working on issues like this and many more for a while. Some of the other stuff are just features, right? The Nostra ecosystem is still quite small. They're mostly Bitcoiners. We're kind of talking to each other. Even X can feel that way. Oh, 100%. So like on X, you have lots of people that know absolutely nothing about Bitcoin, but they don't engage in that conversation because that's Bitcoin Twitter.

26:11That's what Nostra feels like right now. So growing that tent and making it much more attractive to folks, it's really difficult. It's a tech scaling issue. Yeah. It's powerful. It's very cool. There are some functions that work really well. but um you know i think it's going to take you know a couple of years to to sort out if some of the the critical um solves can be delivered and if people give a shit i mean there's a lot of competition i've never really been on blue sky that looks like a shit show on that i've been on threads i checked in one time just to see like when it leaked what that pub key was going to dc i checked in there and it was like it was like the grandpa simpson meme when he walks into the bar and sees Bart and then walks straight back out.

26:57Did you hear the conversation I had with Paul Stort and Gladstein recently? I have not. I want to see that one. I've seen clippies. It was hard work. Yeah. Paul makes everything difficult. He does. I find it hard because he's a nice guy. He is a nice guy. And I don't think he's doing it purposely. As in, I don't think he's just attacking Bitcoin for the sake of attacking Bitcoin. I think he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about drive chains. Well, yeah. He also has a company, a VC-backed company. Totally. So I think there's a number of reasons he does it. But like one of the things that Alex was bringing up a lot was like e-cash.

27:33Yeah. I really, I've used e-cash a bit, not loads. I really like it. And I basically would never get bet against anything Cali's doing because he's a fucking badass. I agree. But like, how do you think that kind of fits into the like freedom money aspect of Bitcoin? I think the functionality is insane. Like, you know, Kashi, Fedimance, eCash. I'll be honest. This is a world that I haven't dabbled with that much. Maybe the same or a little bit less than you have. I've played with it a bunch. I believe that there's been some transactions, some test transactions here at PubKey using it as well. I will use it tonight if we get some beers.

28:12Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. I'd love to see that because I haven't had enough hands-on experience with it. I think it's fantastic. I think Paul's dead wrong about this. You know, Kesha's been around for - Two years. Two years. Two and a half years, maybe. But even still, it was literally coded by Kali over a weekend. This isn't a huge VC-backed company. He's kind of done this on his own. And it's got to an insane point very quickly. I think he has a bunch of developers now. I'm sure he does now. I think the team is pretty robust. Yeah, I'm sure that's true now. But I know when he started, it was literally him.

28:45For sure. You're wearing your cheat code thing. He wasn't here this year at cheat code, but he was the year before. And I remember on the second day, which is meant to be like the day we just go and have fun at the football and drink beers, Cali was sat inside in the clubhouse on his laptop, like tapping away. He's like, you don't bet against him like that. I remember that. That's back when he was still wearing the full face covering. He's still doing that though, right? Sometimes. I think at big conferences. Some conferences, he'll let it all hang out. Fair enough. It's easier to raise money if they can see your face.

29:13Yeah, that's true. No, he's not. I was going to say that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Sorry, Cali. But like, I really like Kashir. I like what he's doing. But I kind of find it a hard, and I think he would also be the first to admit this. It's kind of a hard thing to square away in the sense that it's like, it is custodial. Yeah. Like, it might be really private, really good. It works. But it is like a custodial trade-off. And like, are we sacrificing something to have like a freedom money future with this? Yeah, I think so. Is that trade-off worthwhile? Potentially. I mean, some of the privacy solutions, there were varying degrees of custodial aspects to Wasabi and Samurai as well.

29:55Wasabi would take fees out of your wallet to pay for the mixing services and things like that. That's a sliding scale of custody. It's like a partially custodial solution in a way. Yeah, because you were still self-custody on Wasabi. Like you just, when you sent it to mix, they would take it. Yeah, they just take some. Yeah. But like they weren't taking it out of your wallet. It was when you sent a transaction to mix. Yeah. It's not like they had the ability to step in and take. Early on though, some of the mix, because I think there was volatility in the mixing fees, depending on how much uses there was.

30:28So like, you know, it could drain wallets in the early days and they fixed a lot of that stuff. It's a good product. There's no shade at Wasabi. But, you know, I think that the trade-offs are pretty clear. And, you know, you still have to go through in most cases, Most of the Bitcoin is bought through KYC, AML, you know, compliant exchanges. The tracking software is good enough. You have to be pretty skilled, right? You're talking about like a Mr. Hoddle or somebody like that, that, you know, has the confidence and capability to obfuscate sort of that chain of funds. Yeah, because it's not just doing the mixing.

31:04It's what happens after. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then if they're all tainted coins and they just decide that all these coins that came out of this mixer are now like tainted and commingled with, you know, XYZ bad guy that they don't like for the day. Yeah, exactly. So the attack vectors are things that we like, you know, poured over for years. I think that they're still there. I think that there's a lot less people that view that fight as something, you know, worth, worth fighting for. And I think a big offset of that are, you know, it's what we're talking about before. I think that there's fatigue.

31:36And I think the number go up is like, you know, when people get tired and the numbers going up, like, you know, how incentivized are you to keep fighting for like the ideals? And there's great people, Eric Carson, like lots of folks that are still talking about these things. I do a little bit. But the reality is that, you know, life is hard enough. And I think a lot of people are going to opt out and, you know, sort of simp for sailor. Yeah, I think that's true. And like we were talking before we did this show about the orange pilling problem. Yeah. Like, why do you think that exists? Because I feel like it's a new thing.

32:11So let me just give some context. So like if we did this show and this was all about like Bitcoin treasury companies, it would do really fucking well. And then because we're not talking about that and we're talking about like privacy and freedom money, it won't do so well. I'll come on later and we can talk about Bitcoin treasury companies another day. But these are the reasons that I got into Bitcoin was like, obviously it's really nice to get rich from something. But I genuinely care about the freedom money aspects of Bitcoin. Why do you think we're struggling to make more people care about that?

32:41Does it just not scale as an idea? It's a really good question. The intellectual curiosity has to persist for a really long time because you can come from the marketing side. The number go up is the best marketing department that Bitcoin has. It's extremely effective. To stick around for the freedom money, for the self-sovereignty, the privacy-preserving elements that could be there if you dive in, requires you to dive into the technical, economic, social underpinnings of how this stuff works. Most people just don't have the capabilities, even for one of those, to do a deep dive, right? Like, let's say somebody really is interested in the social mechanics or the political philosophy of how Bitcoin works.

33:24They can dive into that and not really understand the tech or the economic side and get pretty far, But they're missing a tremendous amount of why it works and why they should care and why they should dive in. To get somebody to really buy into something that is sort of like a lifelong exercise in being a student, like getting super heady academics with topics that you're uncomfortable with. I was a lawyer and a history major. When I first started looking into Bitcoin, I spent a really long time with no background whatsoever, trying to understand as much of the technical side as possible, because that's the bedrock.

34:01And then the economic principles that Satoshi overlaid and the evolution of some of those principles as it pertains to, let's say, Bitcoin mining and mining pools and transaction fees, that's a really big commitment. So it's twofold. Do we have the right Sherpas, the right old guard that is making that a requirement? And do you have a receptive audience that wants to go down that path? For every flush out of every cycle, and we talked about this a little bit earlier with the ICO craze, a lot of people dabbled aggressively in altcoins and ICOs. And let's say 100 got washed out and they said, fuck this, I'm never going back to that.

34:43Maybe 10 of them became Bitcoiners and decided to double down. Yeah. And literally, I remember getting to the end of 2017. Like, to be fair, so I first got into it in like 2016. And then through 2017, I was just doing pure shit coining. Yeah. What was your favorite? I had - What was the worst dick kicking you sustained? The worst dick kicking was one called Modem. Modem? I don't know if you remember it. I don't even remember that one. It was like logistics on a blockchain, bro. I love it. Where can I invest? You can't anymore. It went to zero. It was one of you that actually went to zero. But like the whole time I was getting more and more interested in Bitcoin.

35:20And at least I was denominating what I was doing in Bitcoin. I had that part at least right. But I remember at the end of it being like, I've told everyone I could possibly talk to over the last year about, at the time, sorry, Ethereum, as well as like Bitcoin. And at the end of the year, I was like, fuck, I was so wrong. I was like, who was right? Who was right the whole time? Like, where's the signal? And it was Pierre Richard. And I remember just going back and like reading the entire Nakamoto Institute. And that was like my change. Yeah, it was incredible. It was like, but like, yeah, for sure.

35:50But it's like who, I don't know like who the people who are doing the orange peeling are now. Like I'm trying, but I don't, but like you have to show a decent amount of interest to sit down and listen to an hour long podcast. Yeah. Like how do you get like that touch point with normal people? I think, look, PubKey's trying, right? Like we try to focus on maybe 60, 70 % entertainment. That's why it's in a pub. We try to make it as comfortable and, you know, fun and entertaining as possible. And then you can kind of hide the orange pill in peanut butter, like you're giving a dog medicine or something.

36:29Yeah. You know, I think Peter's doing a really good job with Real Bedford as well. For sure. And, you know, both of the projects kind of bury the Bitcoin stuff, at least on first glance. I actually think he, like, just, sorry to interrupt, but like, I think it's more than just Raoul Bedford. I think everything he's doing in Bedford is changing. For sure. But you have to look under the hood with him, right? It's not, there are some Easter eggs. PubKey and Bedford are very similar in this regard. There are like Easter eggs where Bitcoiners identify this. Bitcoiners know that that's a Bitcoin company.

37:01but if people are just going to a football match uh at the park or you know coming in for a burger and a beer here and they don't have that frame of reference it's just it's just a nice day out right like the bar's comfortable the games are good and that's fantastic yeah but if you get into it and you look under the hood and it's just like you know what are these easter eggs about like what what are they talking about in that back room um how why why did people raise all this money from those gorgeous twins. Then that's the element where curiosity is a much better start to the conversation. When a no-coiner or a pre-coiner asks the first question, that is a far higher quality conversation than if we just go out and say, you really ought to buy some Bitcoin.

37:46Totally. The world's going to shit, and this is the only salvation. That's an off-putting, weird conversation. And in my experience, it's really rare to have that conversation get traction. But if they ask the first question, if somebody pays with Bitcoin at the bar, and there's a group of people and they're like, what was that? Was that a Bitcoin transaction? And then there's the - Has that happened? All the time. All the time. Yeah. That's very cool. If the room is packed in the back and we're talking about nerd shit back there, like you know we every single time we host an event there'll be a couple of people at the bar maybe you know it's just guys catching up or you know a date or you know somebody by themselves they'll pick up the beer and they'll go into the back and sit down just to see what they're talking about yeah some of it might just sound like you know an alien language and they don't stick around and pay attention to it maybe it's interesting to them maybe not but like you know just having that element potentially introduce somebody to something and you're in the position to maybe strike a chord with that individual, that really helps.

38:56I don't know how many people are becoming Bitcoiners because of the treasuries or because of what they see on CNBC or certainly not New York Times or Wall Street Journal. They're still out there terrifying people that this is like, you know, drug dealer money. We've been, I think, ineffective in advancing that element of the conversation. I mean, you've been on Fox News. I have. A couple of times, right? A couple of times. I watched one of those - They just wanted to talk about Trump, though. Yeah, of course. Well, maybe Trump is the guy. A little bit of Bitcoin, actually. That's not true. A couple of the hits, they were interested.

39:28But one guy knew what he was talking about and was really curious. The other guy was a little bit older. That was my favorite one. He was the old English guy, right? Yeah. And he was like, you can't pay with Bitcoin. who's incredible yeah yeah and i fucked up the math i think i i think he's like how much is like a burger and a beer and i just was like i don't know like 10 000 sats and it was like a thousand dollars or something i don't know i mean no no one's uh gonna pull you up on that definitely not him he was doing math on live television is not my forte yeah it's not easy i refuse to do maths on the podcast because i've done it before and done the exact same thing yeah one of the things that keeps me up at night is the idea of a critical error with my bitcoin cold storage This is where Anchor Watch comes in.

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41:49We've been working with their founders, Dan and Will, for quite some time now and have been really impressed with their values, especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power, IRON is setting the standard. Visit IRON.com to learn more, which is I-R-E-N.com. I do want to talk about PubKey, but we're going to bring Jerk on in a minute to talk about that. Get him on. But before we do, let's talk just a little bit about New York. I mean, Jerk, you can come in for this if you want. New York.

42:19He looks so sad to be coming on the podcast. I know. I make him do it all the time. Get a beer, Jerk. He's so good at it. Get yourself a coaster. The first time I came to PubKey, this table was still being made. That was wild. That's when Peter hit Michael Sonnenstein with a two by four. Yeah, this. Yeah, that was a fucking great interview. This table was like, I swear, about a foot thicker when we first used it. Yeah, because it was still, it was unfinished. No, this was all jagged edges and it still had the barrier around it. Oh, man. They made that table up here and. You promised me it'd be finished before we got here.

42:56We were sprinting. It was like, it was insane. We were sprinting. But when they sanded this thing down, they put like, they put plastic wrap around the table. Yeah. The amount of sawdust that this threw. So when they finally finished it and polished it down, we got up here and we're like, great. This is an uninhabitable space now. This is like completely fucked. It's all right. Many such stories. It's a little big. It is big. It's a big table. Always worried that the legs are going to collapse. No, it's a great table. It's not too big. I mean, it's like half the size of the room, but it's not too big.

43:33It's good for Beirut. Cheers. Who are you, Jerk? Why are you here? I like a little cold beverage on a hot, sticky day. It's a nice time wearing headphones. I find it distracting. I lock in. My ADHD benefits from the headphones. It feels like I'm on an airplane or something. What wearing the headphones does? Yeah. I can just have like a - You can zone in. I can zone in easier. Yeah. I'm distracted. Yeah, but they don't look good on a bald head, so. my podcast no headphones and then you get this thing on the top of the head yeah i really do it's uh you know about that what wearing headphones for you know you get like the podcast or divot yeah the gamers that's real no it's definitely real is it yeah 100 what that's your little fontanelle your fontanelle yeah your fontanelle keep your damn hands off my fontanelle what do you it's like the soft spot for like little babies introduce stuff jack yeah uh i'm one of the pub key bros i'm one of the pub key idiots um thomas's partner he came to me with this brilliant idea i said no i said that sounds terrible how did you guys know each other uh through a mutual friend okay and i used to have a cafe wine bar that he used to come into and he would come in with his little collared shirt it was very cute he had hair like ellen degeneres he was about 50 pounds heavier than he is now.

44:53And he was like, guys, guys, can I talk to you about Bitcoin? Lord and Savior Bitcoin. You really should get a Bitcoin ATM in here. And I was like, dude, get your fat little friend out of here. I don't want to hear anything.

45:08Such a sweet guy. I always think of Thomas like so fondly. He was such like a, such a sweet guy, big smile on his face. Bitcoiners are like that. They're like, what's that? Who are the guys who go like knocking around on doors. Jehovah's Witnesses. They're like Jehovah's Witnesses. Like very sweet, like Mormons kind of thing. And you're like that. It is true. Yeah, we are kind of like the Jehovah's Witnesses. Yeah. I stopped that though. It doesn't work. Like we did the, we tried to do comedy at the Hot Style Takeover in Vegas. That was fucking great. I just saw just blank stares. The only people laughing were people who work at pub.

45:45Wait, did you do comedy as well? I was the fat guy in the beginning. No, I know you're the fat guy, but I didn't get there to like the - You didn't think it was TC, you didn't get it. I did do like a little opening like segment. I came out on stage. I was like, hey, how we doing? I guess it wasn't comedy. There was a couple of like, you know, singers, but they did not land. I was just looking out into the crowd. Like people were like, just crickets. Yeah, that's brutal. That was a great event though. I've said a few times - I think the Bitcoiners don't really know like what to laugh at maybe. You were there at the first one too, right?

46:15In Nashville? I am not funny, but this has happened many times. What people haven't laughed at you? Yeah. Well, I mean the one in Nashville, we had David Lucas from Kill Tony. Yeah, that was rough. I thought it was good. I don't think people told him the right vibe. They don't like inappropriate. They're family people. They're like, but these events are held at night, you know, at bars, like at eight o 'clock, you know? Not the one in Nashville, that was in the afternoon. And like the first thing he came out, like there were a load of kids sat in the front row and he was like, you should all have been a boy.

46:48I was like - In Vegas too, there was a front row. There was a kid, you know. But I think that - It's a family thing, Bitcoin. The first one was good for sure, the one in Nashville. But I think the event you guys did in Vegas might be the best Bitcoin side event I've ever been to. Oh, thank you. I think it's really cool that it's like, it's kind of getting a bit weird again. And I'm all here for the weirdness. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it was like a Bitcoin talent show. Yeah, or lack of talent show. Sourced by just like anyone, you know, you got a thing you want to do if you want to read some poetry, like, get on up here.

47:19You got to kill time somehow. Yeah, and Jamada is a good host. Yeah, for sure. He's a great host. For sure. He's very Vegas. He fits in perfectly in Vegas. For sure. He was in his element. I'm sad that I missed it. He doesn't really gamble, though. It's about the... It's about the... It was a work event. It's about the culture. I lost my family. I think culture always wins. And I disagree with Shinobi. And Mr. Hoddle, I think, understands my side and Shinobi's side on this. But I do think that we are underestimating the power of culture, you know, winning the day when it comes to Bitcoin. Yeah.

47:51I think we lose all of that if it's just about number go up. But highlighting, you know, there are little things. I think if you look at Bitcoin as an industry and you did something like a fertility rate within Bitcoin, I think that Bitcoiners probably stack up against lawyers and like bankers. Like, you know, there's more and more kids at every single conference I go to. You know, just there's a value set. And that changes internationally. But like within the US, Bitcoin community or whatever you want to call it, there is a certain value set there. And that changes when you go to Europe or Asia or South America, Africa.

48:29But they have their own unique value or their set of values or things that they prioritize, why they are into something like Bitcoin in the first place and what they hope to achieve for themselves and their family. I think Germany is like the perfect example of that. Like German Bitcoiners are fucking great, but they're really different to American Bitcoiners. They're like real cypherpunk Bitcoiners. Yes. Whereas like, I think America has become like super financialized Bitcoiners. Yeah, I think so. But it's even different. They're not the same everywhere? There are threads that are the same. We're all really weird.

49:03Like the Germans still want to like homestead. These are still like homesteaders and want to like have a farm. I mean, probably. There's definitely like an underlying shared autism between all Bitcoiners. Yeah, for sure. But even within the US, the New York scene is very different from the Houston scene. Yeah. Right? You get to oil and gas and the energy touch points with mining. Here in New York, it's going to be much more financialized. San Francisco is going to be very different as well. That's going to be more about startup culture and chasing VCs, begging for 10 minutes of their time in an elevator and stuff like that.

49:36For sure. Let's talk New York. Yeah. What's going on? You guys have got an election going on at the moment, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So who is this? What is this for? Mayor of New York. So what's happening right now is the primary. Okay. And I actually posted about it this morning. This is great because we can learn together. You're a New Yorker. You should know this shit. I'm like, where do you vote? I've never voted for mayor. So early voting is happening now. Do you do the whole foods? What's today? I think today is voting day. No, tomorrow, the 24th is the voting day. But voting day is now early voting plus voting day.

50:09So you have like a week to vote right now. They're doing the primaries. But in New York, it's a near certainty that the Democrat nominee is going to win mayor and governor. So Adams was a Democrat. He's an independent now. Okay. And he's still running. The Republican nominee, I think, is Curtis Siwa, who is the Guardian Angels. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I always forget. It's like the Red Berets. They like, you know, went in kind of like a biker gang and cleaned up the subways in like the 80s and 90s and stuff. Is this like, Is it true that New York is just run by the mob, essentially? Not really anymore.

50:44No. Is this what that was, though? Yeah. Well, sort of. Like back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it was pretty rough. Guardian Angels, they were like a ragtag group of guys. They were more like vigilantes. Yeah. And they wore a uniform, and they patrolled the subway cars. So they were the mob in uniform. They were not the mob. They were guys who did karate. But more like a biker gang. Okay. Yeah. So the reason that's relevant to Bitcoin is there's been a lot of stuff promised by Adams on the Bitcoin side, right? Yeah, he hasn't really done any of it, though. In terms of, like, what about the Bitcoin thing?

51:13He's never been here. Was that not? He's never been here, to my knowledge. The Bitcoin thing was, he wanted to implement that for New York, though, right? I don't believe the mayor has the authority to do that. They can - Did he talk about it, though? He did talk about it at Gracie Mansion a couple of weeks ago or a month ago when he had the, like, crypto summit thing. It was, like, a luncheon or something. That's where he introduced that concept. But I think that the mayor has to just make a recommendation to the comptroller, and then the comptroller would have more of a say in pushing that through.

51:39Oh, so it's a bit of like a nothing promise. Yeah, kind of. Oh, so in terms of Bitcoin, this like mayoral election doesn't really matter? No. Oh, okay. I thought there was actually more at stake with that. And what about like all the shitty laws New York has around Bitcoin? That's more on a state level than a city level. Okay. So the governor's race would be much more impactful if a Bitcoiner were in the governor's chair. the governor has direct oversight of the New York Department of Financial Services. They might not be able to completely repeal the BIT license, but they can make, you know, really strong recommendations.

52:15They can replace the commissioner of the NYDFS and install somebody that, you know, would effectively do that. The governor's race is much more important than New York City. And is there any chance of that actually happening? Yeah, absolutely. Soon. um so that primary i think happens later this year okay so uh i believe uh hokal is going to run again she's the incumbent um so you know this goes back to what i was just saying like the primary is basically the general so if you have a challenger from the democratic party i'm able to unseat hokal from that position then that individual is probably got a through line to the to the governor's office.

52:58And, you know, we'll see what happens there. Does the BitLicense have any impact on PubKey? Not so much. There's a carve out for merchants to accept Bitcoin for goods and services. We're not doing any exchanging. It's more along the lines of a money service business. So, and then also with Lightning transactions, there's an open-ended question as to whether or not running a lightning node triggers some of these MSP money transmission laws in the first place. You know, we designed with Evan Kaloudis and Zeus's help. We designed, he's fantastic. He helped us set up the entire system here at PubKey.

53:39Shout out to Zeus and Evan for sure. But, you know, we have basically a cul-de-sac where the outbound transactions have an extremely high limit. This is something like, you know, hundreds of bitcoins to send a routing transaction. We're not the best network participants because of that, but we have to do that to stay on the right side of the bit license. Yeah, damn. Okay, so let's talk about PubKey. You guys are expanding. This is now all public, right? Yeah. So tell everyone what you're doing. We're going to DC next. We are actively scouting the next three locations. Oh, I didn't know that. At the moment, one of the three will be in the US.

54:17The other two will be international. Very cool. And we have a couple of other pop-ups. So there's pub key pop-ups. There's pub key residencies. There are no franchises yet where somebody else can basically license the brand and, you know, we'll help them get stood up, but they handle the operations. That's coming probably next year. And then there's basically just wholly owned, like, corporate pub keys. DC is a big one for us. It's going to be massive as compared to PubKey NYC. NYC is about 2 ,200 square feet. DC is 12 ,000. It's going to have a proper - Across two floors. It's two floors. It's going to have a proper restaurant, two bars, event space.

55:00It's going to have two bars. Two bars. It has three bars. It has three bars. Damn. That's very cool. A little hidden bar. Oh, members only. And like, what's the plan with DC then? What's the restaurant going to be? Aren't you tired? I'm exhausted. Jeez. Why are you not doing any of the work, Jack? I pick out the drapes and the bar stools and stuff. I'm the creative. No, that's not true. He's doing a ton of work. It's a lot. We're a small team. It kind of hit me when we did Oslo, Vegas, kept New York running, and continued to make progress in building out DC. It's pretty incredible for a small team to pull that off that week.

55:36You say it's a small team, but it's definitely growing. I've met like four people this trip that I've never met before. We're hiring, we're expanding, you know, thanks to, you know, our supporters and our backers. We're in a good spot. So DC, the target in DC are really staffers, interns, lobbyists, policymakers, the Bitcoin community, DC residents. We want to do the same thing on a bigger scale in DC that we accomplished here. But they're different cities, right? So to have it be hyper-local and fit DC, it's not going to be the same like New York dive bar that like, you know, private equity folks and New Yorkers love, know and love.

56:18It's going to fit DC, which is a little bit more event driven, definitely more in the policy and regulatory realm. You know, we hope that we're going to be able to facilitate curated conversations around Bitcoin because those staffers and interns and lobbyists are the ones that are writing this stuff for the policymakers. not everybody's going to be like Ted Cruz and Cynthia Lummis and like actually get into the weeds and understand Bitcoin I think those two are probably the best example of politicians policymakers that like actually understand a fair amount of the underpinning technology Gillibrand seems to understand it quite well Gillibrand as well, Richie Torres as well, there are many but like I was really impressed, Ted Cruz does understand mining and Lummis is in like a class of her own but that is true Gillibrand has been here You know, Lummis has been here.

57:08Torres has been here. Those three, like, definitely have a much deeper level of understanding. I think it's unrealistic to get, like, Pelosi and Schumer to that level. Or, you know, Mitch McConnell, who's no longer there. But, like, whatever. It's the staffers and the interns that get the project. It's like, hey, young kid, come over here. I need you to write something about Bitcoin. I want it to be positive or negative. Well, where do they go? Right? They go to some of the policy institutes. They do their online research and they see the FT in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. They go on Twitter and it's a fucking shit show.

57:43Like, you know, we want to be able to facilitate a place where we're hosting events. We're helping curate the conversation with, you know, the Bitcoin Policy Institute and Coin Center. Because you're going to co-locate with Bitcoin Policy Institute. Bitcoin Policy Institute's headquarters is going to be in PubKey. We're not announcing that until tomorrow, but I think. This won't be out before tomorrow. There we go. That's very cool. Yeah. And like, so obviously they're the reasons why DC. I always thought it was going to be Philly next. You always talked about Philly. It was for a while. It was for a while.

58:12Like the capabilities that we had. The people who live there are just the fucking worst. Shout out to all the Philly listeners. There's a really good crew in Philly, the Bitcoin John and Matt Keita and Andrew Hans. Has Matt Keita got his drink here yet with Joe Squart? No, not yet. That's coming. Is it happening? Yeah, I think that they're in touch. I saw him reply to one of his tweets, but I didn't know if it was actually happening. Yeah. No, I believe it's in motion. God, he's been working on that for almost a year at this point. So, you know, it was Philly for a little bit. In terms of our organic growth, just what we were accomplishing here, and I would say the financial realities of Philadelphia, that was a better fit for us.

58:56We had supporters come in and say the conversation's in D.C. you know, Bitcoin is becoming a really impactful topic. And we saw that this happened before the elections. But, you know, with the elections at the presidential level, Senator in Ohio, you know, Bernie Moreno unseats Sherrod Brown, who was one of the longest, I think, like, I'd say, like, lieutenants of Elizabeth Warren and her war against Bitcoin. the impact is real. So both sides are paying attention. And there's a lot of, I would say, you know, dark money from broader crypto and ripple swirling around, and it's getting really confusing.

59:36So if we can help elevate the great work that, you know, Bitcoin Policy Institute and other folks are doing there, give it a home and invite people in to, you know, have some beers and some good food to help facilitate that, then, you know, I'd consider it a success. Totally. It's important stuff to do. Is the Ripple money still flowing like it was? Are they still like attacking Bitcoin in the same way? They got a lot of money. I know they got a lot of money. They make their own. But they do. They do. That is a little cheat code. It's a great one. But are they still attacking Bitcoin? You know, there have been some positive overtures.

1:00:12I've heard conflicting reports. I think the administration and David Sachs put some distance. I think they were plowing a lot of money in, and then they put some distance because they were like, no, we really like Bitcoin. So, you know, there's been some public statements from Garlinghouse that are a little bit more olive branchy, but like, come on. They, you know, funded the Greenpeace attack. They funded - My favorite part about that attack is that that statue thing they built, the head, is now like the coolest piece of Bitcoin art in the world. I know. We're the most annoying kids on the playground.

1:00:45We're impossible to make fun of. Because they do this thing. We're like, that's fucking cool. We're like, we love it. We are. Do more. That's who we are. Do more. It's so good. So anyhow, from where the next one's going to be, or can you not say yet? Not yet. Where are you looking?

1:01:03So population dense cities across the US and internationally. So close. With Bitcoin communities. Well, when you do the franchise, I'll open one in Australia. I would love that. I would love that. It's very far. It is very far, but it doesn't matter if it's a franchise. It'd be awesome. I think it'd work. I think it would work. Look, there's Bitcoiners everywhere. And the idea is to be hyper-local and focus on what that community and what that city needs and how they approach Bitcoin, right? The same tactic of sort of burying it and making a good place. It's what makes PubKey really hard, but it also what I think is working.

1:01:37Hospitality is a soul-crushing business. Yeah, as soon as I started working on a franchise, I was like, I don't want to work in hospitality. It's very difficult to get it right. But if you get it right, then people treat it like, you know, another home and they're comfortable and they come back and they become regulars. Whether it's for the food or the drinks or the vibe and atmosphere, it doesn't matter. You're able to do a lot with that in terms of where you want to steer the conversation. Jerk, are you going to be able to keep the DC branch weird? Well, do you like the smell of smoked salami?

1:02:09Because - That's a tricky question to answer. I don't know if I do. Well, the answer is yes, you do. Okay. Because that's what PubKey DC smells like. And we're going to keep it and it's going to be part of the brand. How are you going to keep the smell of smoked salami? It was a barbecue restaurant for like 17 years. Okay, nice. So we don't have a choice. So salami t-shirts - It's in the walls. No, it does not. It smells like brisket. That'll dissipate. Yeah. With time. We burn a little sage in there. It's going to go a long way. We're going to exercise some demons. So are you going to get smoked salami t-shirts?

1:02:45Yeah, I think so. I think we just have to embrace it. Yeah, I think you should. I'm excited. I'm excited to see it. Are we going to go see it tomorrow? Yeah. We can do a little private tour for you. Anything. There you go. We are in the process of interviewing chefs. You'd be shocked. the quality of resumes and people that are excited about this coming to DC. Interesting. Like bonafide, like pre-coin chefs, right? Like bonafide chefs are... Why do they even know about PubKey? They saw it in the news. They saw our reputation online. These Fox News appearances are working. Yeah. I mean, you know, we have good reviews.

1:03:20You know, people rave about the burger and the atmosphere. Some of them come and check it out. And they're like, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it's fucking cool. and it's special to see that like other people are picking up on it and appreciating you know the soul crushingly hard work that it's been are you going to open in london huh are you going to open in london i would love to i you know it's so many pubs like historic pubs are closing in in the uk it's like two a week it's wild yeah um i really don't much of things it's the rent it's drinking habits um you know they're losing problem too yeah young people don't drink yeah i thought that was just us no we need that was just nyu we need to fix the youth like they just don't drink the same way yeah and i don't know if one good war yeah one war well we might be we might be on the brink of it um no the uk i think those problems are a little bit more like macro like lots of millionaires like a lot of money's leaving the uk um so i think that that's a symptom of like a much more complicated disease there but um yeah that would be a dream i'd love to go in and that's that's how pubkey started um my wife and i lived nearby here and we've been coming to the predecessor bars since like 2006 um from 2000 and well when we started coming here had been there since like the 90s but it closed in 2010 and it was the most iconic new york dive bar it was just a what was it called before it's called the stone crow and it was great people still come in and they're like this used to be the crow and it's like yeah um then it reopened as like a really nice neighborhood tavern just like no frills just a a classic fastball tavern and that was great that closed in covid and the idea was like if we lose all these things in covid and we're just jammed onto remote work and Zoom like we're going to become like Bugman.

1:05:14And that was sort of like a scary thing in 2021 and 2022. So if PubKey can play a role where we're rehabilitating the way things were and tapping into nostalgia and the importance of this place and then recultivating how these places were used for real discourse and disagreement and fomenting of revolutions, that would be awesome. So an English pub is very, very top of mind. Nice. I think it's really cool what you guys have done for the Bitcoin space in New York as well. It feels like you're definitely the hub in New York, but it feels like that's also bringing people in. And during COVID or just after COVID, everyone seemed to be moving to Austin and Nashville.

1:05:58And now when I go to those places, everyone's looking, yeah, in Miami, everyone's like, how's New York? And if you say you've had a really good time there, the city's good, they're like, fuck. I have this conversation with Harry all the time. Whenever I tell him I really like New York, he's like, ah. Sold the bottom. I totally sold the bottom. I'm sorry, Harry. It is getting better. Like, you know, New York is not completely back. It's not completely saved. But, you know, New York has an ability to move way faster and change itself than, you know, just about any other city on the planet. And New Yorkers don't really tolerate shitty experiences for that long.

1:06:32I think it's on an uptrend. But, you know, we're one communist mayor away from the downtrend. So we'll see what happens. True. Scary stuff. I love New York apart from when it's this hot. Like I am dying. It's brutal. DC is going to be worse. Is it? Much. Yeah. Oh, fuck. I've got to wear a suit there as well. I'm not wearing a suit. Really? You're not wearing a suit? I am not wearing a suit. I'm going to do like jeans and a blazer probably. No. I'm not doing a suit. You've got to wear a suit. You've got no fucking respect. Yeah. It's not a respect thing. That is business attire for me. Yeah, but not for everyone else who's there.

1:07:05It's going to be too hot. Damn. What else is going on, Pocky? Anything we've not talked about that you want to shill? God, we got a lot of stuff coming up. You know, DC is, you know, a couple months out. We continue the Bitcoin programming here. We have Leopoldo Lopez here on Friday. That's very cool. Probably after that. Yeah, it will. But we'll post those and we're very grateful and fortunate to get these awesome guests from HRF. Yeah, we got a lot of really great things coming up. The summer is always a little bit slow, right? People get out of the city because of the oppressive heat and humidity.

1:07:46So it comes at a good time. July and August is a bit of a reset that we can focus on and then hit the ground running again when it starts to cool off in September. Very cool. I'll be at Honey Badger probably. Oh, me too. Excellent. I've never been. It's probably my favorite conference. Interesting. Aside from cheat code. I've never been to Eastern Europe at all, so I'm quite looking forward to that. Riga is a very special place. It's a really awesome city. It's like a medieval Baltic city. People are super, super friendly. And it's small. So, you know, Honey Badger kind of takes over. It's kind of like cheat code where you're running around Bedford and you just see Bitcoiners sort of everywhere.

1:08:28That's what Honey Badger's been for a pretty long time. I'm excited. We've got big plans for Bedford next year. Are you coming back? Of course. We didn't do the pub key pop-up this year. We've got to do it again. Well, I don't know if we're ready to announce anything yet, but we'll be there. Oh, I don't even know. Should I know this? You've been speaking to Peter. I'm excited. He couldn't come this time, jerk. You didn't come the first year, did you? I am, yeah. Did you come the first year? No, no, no. Cheat code? Yeah. Yeah, I will be there. Yeah, good. It was fun. Apart from like you got kicked out of your own pop-up.

1:08:58No? No, they didn't let us back in the next night. Yeah, so the first year we hosted a pop-up at like a local pub. and then they were happy. We tipped well. We packed the place out. It would have been the busiest night of the year, probably. They got kind of run over. This was in Bedford. They got kind of run over that night. We got a fight in Oslo. He's like another man on these European... Who did you get in a fight with, Thomas? What are you talking about? At the bar, we got in a fight. No, no, don't. That was PK. I don't want you to tell the story. I want Jerk to tell the story. We did get in a fight.

1:09:30It'll be way more entertaining if Jerk tells the story. We threw the glass at the cab and then the... There was a whole hubbub. This was his friend from kindergarten. Tell me the story. Tell me the story. There was a fight. Nothing to do with this. There was a fight at the pub that we went to every single night. You threw a glass at a car. No. No. There was. No. Someone did. So there was a fight between two guys. One of them was a friend of ours. And a glass hit a cab. And the cab got involved. The cabbie got involved. And then the three of them were going at it. And Thomas came out of the bar.

1:10:00And this is. I'm his protector. I just took him and I just ushered him back inside. I'm like, you don't need to see this. Come on, come back inside. He's like, what's going on? I was like, Thomas, back, back in. Come on, I want to show you something. The only thing I miss about the Miami conference is the pub key pop-up at Mac Club Deuce. We went back, we were scouting a location in Miami and just a couple of months ago, we went back to Mac Club Deuce and it was so great. Just walking in. It's one of my favorite bars in the world. Just walking in, it is so great. It's one of the best bars in the world.

1:10:35It's horrible, but amazing. It's perfect in every way. It is gross and terrible, and you can smoke inside, and it is the fucking happiest place on earth. Is that one of the ones you're scouting? Mac Club Deuce? God, we'll need a lot of Bitcoin to take that one over. That's an icon. Does that pub do well, though? That bar do well? Yeah, they crush. Oh, okay. They crush. There must be a lot of theft. It's all cash. It's probably the most famous bar. It probably ranks in America as one of the most famous dive bars. Oh, really? It was like, I think you're Bourdain went there, didn't it? Yeah, he did.

1:11:09He did. That would be a cool one, though. That is a pub key bar. I mean, I completely agree. That land is very expensive. Yeah. Yeah. One day. A lot of the ideas downstairs are stolen from the Deuce. Yeah. A lot of what? Not a lot, but the neons. It's our sister bar. Okay. The neons are stolen from the, proudly stolen from the Deuce. Yeah, but pub key is so much nicer. It's so much nicer. Yeah. But just like little motifs. That was a requirement of my wife. We could have a dive bar, but the bathrooms have to be clean. It's just like, but that's not a dive bar. There's no smoking inside. I went to a good one in Chicago with Dylan and his girlfriend.

1:11:42I'm from Chicago. What's the like really famous one? It's a kind of - The green door. Don't think that was it. You could smoke inside there. The winner's circle. Nope. Is that the milkshake one? Give me one more. Is it called Richards? Huh? Richards? I don't know. I don't know. I could be getting it wrong, but that's another one that should be on your list. So Dylan, Jack, and Jerk are from the same town. Oh, so you know those guys. You're like friends with those guys. No, I don't. We just figured it out. Fair enough. Yeah. And I tried my best. I was like, dudes, high school. And they're, you know, they don't care.

1:12:15Wait, did you go to the same high school? We did go to the same high school, yeah. I'm a bit older, but yeah. Yeah, you look older. Yeah. More tired. Yeah. Well, this has been fun. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Should we go and drink a little beer and have a Smash Burger? Yeah, whatever you like. Let's do it. awesome thanks guys