The Bitcoin Bear Market Is a Survival Test | Matt Odell

34:25You want to make sure that that app gets to you unchanged. There's something called a man in the middle attack where you have a malicious actor comes in between you and the developer, modifies the app, does something bad with the app, and then you download the modified app, right? And so what Apple and Google does is they put their stamp of approval on. Google says, this app was made by the developer and has been unchanged. Now, obviously, that's a trusted third-party model. Google can change it. You would never know. It's a complete black box. You're just trusting Google and Apple with that. Okay, so what happens as a result?

34:58What happens as a result? Developers get banned. They can't service the app store. There's got to be a better way, right? People have said this for years now. There's got to be a better way. One of the ways that is, quote unquote, a better way is you have them sign a PGP signed message of the hash of the file. User is supposed to verify it. No one does that. Very few people do that. It's technically possible, but not scalable. So what ZapStore did is you download the AppStore on the Android phone. And then you either put in your Nostor account or someone you trust. So if you don't use Nostra, for instance, you can put in my Nostra account, right?

35:39And then what that does is it provides two things. First of all, it helps you with discovery in a permissionless way. Zap Store doesn't control it. It's reviews of me, my reviews and reviews of my friends, right, is what's doing it. And then second of all, the developer is signing it with their Nostra key. So if you follow the developer, it says, you know, Vitter signed this Amethyst release and you know that it hasn't been changed without doing any PGP verification, without trusting Google, without trusting Apple. Now, there is no shot in hell that someone is going to build a friends list on an App Store replacement.

36:17That system only works because you bootstrap the friends list with shitposts on the social media component. Yeah. Right. That's where the real compounding bootstrapping effect happens. So I think you need both. I think the social aspect is just taking way longer than I expected. And it's yet to be seen if it gets real broad usage. But even if it doesn't, it can still be valuable in that use case, but you still need the social aspect. Every Bitcoiner eventually has to answer one question. If something happened to me, would my family know what to do? Could my wife or parents recover my Bitcoin? And would my children inherit the Bitcoin that I spent years stacking?

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39:10Ledin really is an awesome company. I've used them multiple times. The applications have taken me less than 15 minutes and you have the dollars in your account within hours. If you want to check out Ledin, go to ledn.io and use the code WBD for 0.25 % off your first loan. That's ledn.io and use the code WBD. I can see the use case because that's like a proper cypherpunk tool still. It's not like something that everyone's going to use. I can see the use case, especially, you know, if you're living out of the UK right now, where like social media posts are being heavily regulated. People are going to prison for social media posts.

39:44Like I can see the impetus there to go onto NOSTA, start a NIMH and post whatever you want, read whatever you want. But like without growing that social media base, that doesn't actually, like none of that works. And so I guess my question is like, can it do that? Because at the moment, I don't think the social media base is big enough for that to work. But that's what I'm saying. It works today, right? Like, that use case works today because at the current level of social usage. Like, you can install Zap Store today, never use Noster, and just set my account as your web of trust. And it would work pretty fucking well.

40:29With apps that you've got? What do you mean? Like, it won't work with every app, right? Any developer that I follow on Noster that is releasing their own apps from the App Store would be verified as the correct developer. Yeah, so it works for like Bitcoin apps. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. But for that to be interesting to more people, it needs to grow much wider. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I don't know. I hate saying I'm bearish on Nostra because Nostra is really cool, but I kind of am. No, like I'm not going to...

41:04My bullishness and bearishness on Nostra ebbs and flows. My bullishness on Bitcoin is an unwavering conviction at this point. Let me put it that way. I do think that the world needs a protocol like that. Identity and social and comms. That is open and robust and available for all. We need that more than ever. If you think about, I think what shapes both of our lives a lot now is being fathers, right? And so if you think, okay, the world in 20 years is very uncertain. It's probably been the most uncertain it's ever been. A big corner that is much older than both of us, and I respect his wise opinion on the matter, went down the AI rabbit hole before me.

41:58and he explained it like a dot plot of possibilities and the dot plot has never been wider. Like where are we in 10 years? I don't know. Maybe for a century it's never been wider. So maybe a little bit less. Maybe like the end of World War II. So it's hard to really conceptualize where we would be in 10 years, where we would be in 20 years, where we would be in 30 years. And I think that creates a lot of uncertainty for people and that's why you see a lot of restlessness in the world and society at large. But if I try and distill it and think about like, okay, my kids in 20 years, what world are they becoming young adults in?

42:40And one key, obvious key is, okay, is freedom money, is being able to save and spend without permission. Yeah. I think that is absolutely essential. But the other piece is, okay, the world is already incredibly digital now. If it's just big tech controlling the entire digital realm, that's really, really bad. And so they probably will need some kind of open identity and social and comms. And I think Noster remains one of the best fits for that. I've yet to find, with the exception of SimpleX, which tries to solve, like I said, a much smaller problem, which is like the group chat. I have yet to see a protocol that shows more promise than it.

43:28I think it's going to be a long grind. You live in an open source world. I don't. But one of the things that I have thought over the last few weeks especially is the future for open source looks really good. The stuff that's happening now with Kimmy coming out, destroying everyone's model of what it means to be a frontier lab. Really, really cool. Very exciting. I think the likelihood is the US government are going to heavily regulate Chinese models to try and protect Anthropic and OpenAI, which I really don't understand. I don't understand why they feel like they need to protect those companies.

43:58But you must be looking at this very happy with the situation right now. Yeah, I think if you go back even two years, three years, to the point of the dot plots being very wide, there's a bunch of different scenarios we could have ended up in. And the amount of user choice is probably higher than anybody's expectation. both on the proprietary US side and on the open source side. Proprietary US side, the expectation was that Google was going to absolutely dominate everyone. That's why OpenAI was created. OpenAI was, you know, Elon was one of the co-founders of OpenAI. It was supposed to be open source AI.

44:42There was a difference of opinion there. They somehow were like the first nonprofit to ever pivot into an incredibly valuable for-profit business. so they had a falling out with elon elon launches xai which buys x which gets bought by spacex which becomes one of the most valuable companies in the world google still exists open ai xai and then anthropic also spun out of open ai oh i didn't know that so instead of one dominant lab and now you have uh the other open ai co-founder she came out with thinking machines which is relatively new but like you can kind of put them in the group of five so instead of one google dominating you have five different pretty strong options or at least in the next year or so i i think you can group all five of them into as strong options um xai has been making very good progress very fast like i said thinking machines is very new i would not count google out there remain the juggernaut even if the Gemini models are perceived and for good reason as substandard compared to open AI and Anthropics.

45:53So on the US proprietary side, hard to imagine us being in a better situation. And then no one was banking on the CCP just blessing massive open source AI development. So you have Kimi, you have DeepSeek, you have Quinn, you have tons of open models happening over there. And I think what's important for people to realize is there's nothing stopping. If those models become clear leaders, they might turn closed and proprietary. Yeah. But the cat's out of the bag. Like the amount of development we've seen up until this point is significant. And so all of a sudden, anyone who cares about these tools being freedom tools, it's hard to imagine being in a better situation than we're currently in.

46:44Do you think you can consider the open source Chinese models freedom tools? Because they're still trained on very particular data. And if you ask them about Tiananmen Square, they'll often lie to you. Yeah, that's like the obvious example. I think, look, I think there's a couple of things here. I think, first of all, every cool technology, part of what makes it cool is there's a side that's incredibly dystopian and can be used to control people. And then there's a side that empowers individuals who seek that responsibility and empowerment, who want to improve their own life situations. It was the case with the internet.

47:20It's the case with Bitcoin. And it's the case with AI. Like, all cool shit, that's how it works. most cool shit i'm like thinking of exceptions now there are some exceptions but most cool shit that's how it works so that's first and foremost and the obvious there it's like obvious how ai can be used as a control and surveil mechanism right cameras tracking one of the things just distilling the the information they'll give you like they can hone conversation i mean but forget about all that for a second just like one of the things llms do really good is is uh leveraging large data sets in a human readable way.

48:00And so governments around the world and corporations who monetize data have been hoovering up all of this data that they haven't been able to properly leverage. And now some random person at some tech company can just type in like, what are Danny's favorite interests? Where is Danny usually on a Wednesday at 2 p.m.? And just human language, they can speak to it and just tells them, it just spits it right back out. So So that's obviously scary and happening right now. But on open source Chinese models specifically, I think first of all, China is clearly being used as the boogeyman here, and with good reason.

48:39I mean, I think if you care about, if you're an American specifically, or even a European, and you care about national sovereignty and geopolitics and your country being on good footing. China is obviously a significant threat and they shouldn't be discounted in that way. I mean, I think the CCP is good at executing at certain things and horrible at executing at other things, but we should not underestimate them. The open models, a couple of things. First of all, most people, the way they're using them is they're hitting Chinese servers. It's the cheapest, easiest way to use them. They go to Kimmy's website and they just hit Chinese servers.

49:15Obviously, first of all, you have no control over your data. Everything that you are searching can be logged and is probably being logged, and you should assume it's being logged. And they, like American companies, are probably building profiles on users in really significant, intimate ways. Do you think the Chinese are worse than the U.S. companies for that?

49:38I don't know. It's probably close enough that it doesn't really matter to make the distinction. they're motivated by different means the American companies are trying to eke out as much profit as possible by building data profiles on people Sam Altman created WorldCoin where you scan your eyeballs in an orb to get tokens Did you see Grayscale doing a WorldCoin ETF? I did not, but that's one of the least surprising things ever and the CCP is more top-down you know government control over people while in the u.s it's like private public partnerships that get around the constitution because you don't need a warrant if a private company collected it for for-profit reasons um so i think it's i think for most people's the way they think about it should probably just put them in the same bucket right yeah now i do think for certain people's threat models like there's some things that if a foreign government knows about you is less bad than if your own government knows about you and vice versa right there's some things that you know your own government knows or your own corporations know that the other government doesn't right that you don't that you'd rather the other government not know so i i think individuals who are actually thinking about that can leverage the two incentives against each other even though both are doing the same doing similar things right but then the other piece is the nice thing about these open source open weight models is you can then host them yourselves and you can modify them and you can train them and you can have them do your own thing right and so what we're seeing for instance is companies that have like exist in in particular niches that want you know a hyper focused model and so what do they do they start with the base and then they modify it and train it and mold it to what they need.

51:34And that almost becomes their own proprietary model that they have sovereignty over. And I think that's the more powerful aspect. And like other things, like other freedom technologies like Bitcoin, what is the distribution you see of that is probably going to be 95 to 98 % people are still using it in the controlled way, right? And like a small subset or using it in a freedom oriented way. And that's fine. That's what success looks like. Yeah, but that's quite scary. It's even more scary with AI than it is with Bitcoin.

52:13Yeah, but I mean, it's hard for me not to be incredibly optimistic here. I think like you have to, if you focus on things that you can't control, you're going to have a really bad time you have to focus at what's in in your control and um make the best decisions possible for for your family and your friends and and your own personal responsibilities and if from that lens like it's hard it's i've never been more optimistic yeah are you optimistic on the ai using bitcoin narrative um so i have a clanker that uses bitcoin it's awesome well how does it use bitcoin it just works really well he has a bitcoin wallet but what does he use it for he has a bitcoin wallet but what what for i call him george george that's a strange name yeah i don't know it was like two in the morning when i named him it was like first setup you know um yeah why did i name him george well for starters i felt like if i was like I shouldn't I shouldn't choose a female name because I don't know it just felt wrong to my wife you don't want to cheat my bro George and then I just picked like a random generic name I thought I mean maybe like I'm surprised it wasn't like John or something but anyway he has a Bitcoin wallet you load it up with a Bitcoin you load it up with some Bitcoin and he's able to to pay for things that he needs API access stuff like that without my interaction.

53:47And it's incredibly cool. And I think what a lot of people miss in that there's a hype train of agentic payments.

53:57And of course it's agents paying agents, right? So robot slaves paying robot slaves. But what they miss is the key aspect is where it crosses the divide between humans and agents. Agentic payments is really humans paying agents, agent paying humans, agents paying agents, right? It's all of the above. And Bitcoin excels in that situation for the same reason Bitcoin is better money than, I mean, the closest competitor is USD tokens. They can be blocked and frozen. And I think, and we've already seen massive, massive regulatory exposure for these USD tokens. In the order of billions of dollars of Tether and USDC have been frozen, the two main ones.

54:43So I think being able to pay your agent without permission is incredibly important. For the agent to be able to pay other agents without permission is incredibly important. For the agents to pay other humans. DoorDash came out with a CLI, so a command line interface that is specifically designed for agents to use. And why is that interesting? It's something that I've been theorizing for a bit now, which is we've hit the precipice. Now your robot is ordering a human to do something for you. Right? Right? That's kind of crazy. It's like, OK, the robot needs more printer ink. He sends a human through DoorDash to go to the store and get printer ink.

55:25And right now, that whole system is relying on credit cards, which is just a horribly broken, inefficient way of handling it. And so probably the first step will be they will probably start accepting USD tokens, which is strictly a net benefit. And then eventually, I think it'll probably move to Bitcoin. But even if it doesn't, if my agent is holding Bitcoin and he needs to pay for something that is only USD token, he can swap into it. And this is something that's crazy is like, it actually makes a lot of the shitcoin bullshit work better because they've had such horrible UX for years. But now the UX doesn't matter.

56:06it you just tell the agent to do it yeah you know the agent figures out how to use i don't know metamask or whatever and defy shit and go and uniswap and swap for shit and just get it done and make no mistakes um and so that's actually a way better user interface the agents paying humans is way too similar to that daniel suarez what's that daniel suarez book called i love all the daniel suarez books um damon yes that's that's kind of so in my mind damon is first of all he wrote it in 2008 i think insane yeah maybe even a little bit earlier than that and i read it back then uh everyone should go read damon by daniel suarez and then there's a sequel called freedom not good though but no but it it brings it all together and and to me it's free it's open source ai bitcoin and nostr without ever mentioning anything yeah just in a really dystopian package it could be utopian depending on your perspective true are you on the side of the uh the demon well no so i mean i don't want to spoiler it so we'll talk big picture um i mean can you really do a spoiler on a book that came out in 2008 yeah it's kind of on you But look, I think society ebbs and flows, but progress has been pretty straight throughout humanity, like in a pretty impressive way.

57:40You know, the amount of accomplishments, society has undoubtedly flourished over the last 100 years. And I think there's been a move to centralization across every aspect of our lives, whether that's megacities, whether that's federal governments, whether that's big tech, you know, web monopolies where they control everything. And I think it will move back to a more localism type scenario where you have smaller government, where you have strong local communities, where you have strong families. Ultimately, the family unit is that that core local unit. with with technology empowering them so that they can have more leverage on the world not financial leverage right but um uh being having access to global trade having access to global money having access to global communication but still being a small local strong community and so when you when you work that out in your head that means that people are going to have very dynamic outcomes depending on which small local community they're part of some will flourish some will do really well and some will not do as well um that's just the reality of the situation and i think that's kind of the world that damon and freedom proposed why are you so confident on that because i hope that's true i hope the world does get more more localized but why why are you so confident i mean that's my bullish outcome i i i think i think that's that's the the the north star I work towards on everything.

59:16Do you think it's achievable? I think it's very achievable, yeah. I just think, like I said, I think people, I think that world...

59:27But we'll still have very varied outcomes for people. But the cool thing about that is if you focus on what you can control, if you can focus on empowering your family, empowering your local strong communities, then that is actually very achievable. And then you could be a little bit, obviously the wider world is still going to affect you, but you can be a little bit insulated. You can be a little bit protected from whatever that outcome is, which is way out of our control. And, you know, it's kind of anybody's guess to the why dot plot example earlier, right? You know, you were saying before, like, the variables out there are probably wider than ever before.

1:00:06Like, how you try and prepare a kid for the next 20 years, I've got no idea. You just be like water. You have to just go with the flow. Adapt. because like i would be very shocked if in 15 20 years when our kids are at like college age that they're going to be there's going to be college like yeah we were talking about that earlier like what's going to exist like i don't know as a father what you're meant to do to prepare for it yeah i think i look you just have to i i think i think nobody knows and so the first thing is to humble yourself and be like i have no fucking idea right like own it um and then you have to adapt you have to be flexible you have to um give your family as many options as possible right so that if you do have to when you inevitably have to adapt again you have flexibility um understand that you will make many mistakes um try and identify them as quickly as possible own the mistakes do something different see one of the things i find hard don't get stuck in your way just because you did something and this goes to the nostril piece right it's like a lot of people like oh like he went nostril only for two years like he can never he never open an x account again it's like yes yes i can i never thought you were going to open x account again though but i i i took a unbiased look at the current situation you ate some humble pie yeah and i was like okay the best the best path forward is is is to is to rejoin x the thing that i find hard that you talk about a lot is that people should just move yeah and i know you obviously you went from new york to nashville like i don't i don't think everyone's going to do that and i don't think everyone should do that i think people need to like fight for the jurisdiction they're in like moving like uprooting your family and moving away from broader families really hard like i agree with all of this i agree with i just also think and i have my own personal lens on this right like my my family, my wife's family, all our friends, all our infrastructures, all New York based.

1:02:10And we left all of that. And obviously it's easier to move. One of the best things the United States has is competition of local jurisdictions and at least for now, free movement between them. But I think even globally, look, moving has always been hard. It's always been expensive, but also mentally hard. It's a hard mindset to get yourself out of. Before I was a Bitcoin maximalist, I was a New York maximalist. I thought I would never leave New York. You have to kind of jump off the cliff when you do this kind of thing and go into the unknown. But it's also never been easier than it is currently at a global scale, from a societal scale.

1:02:55Technically easier. it's yet to be seen if that'll be the case in 20 years this could be a window and i was saying this before covid and then they closed all the borders now the borders have mostly opened up again um but uh and i was mostly saying it not from the movement moving point of view i was saying travel the world while you can it's never been easier or cheaper to travel the world which i think remains the case but that is yet to be seen if that will still be the case so i think i think people should consider it and i think if you look at it objectively Objectively, we left New York during COVID in 2020.

1:03:31My family's outlook and outcome in the next, currently, and the next five years, 10 years, 15 years, or maybe it's not objective, maybe it's subjective, I think is significantly better than if we stayed in New York. I think you now have Mimdani there. I think things have gotten worse, not better. and I think it's not that I'm necessarily bearish on New York in 40 years or I guess let's lower the time scale let's say 20 years when our kids are young adults I think the outcome is unknown and I think these things take longer to correct especially in like high dense population areas it takes longer to correct you kind of have to swing to the negative and then swing back.

1:04:17And life is short. It's like, who wants to deal with that? Now, I would say the number one thing to me that makes a lot of sense is if you have very strong family support structures in place, it's hard to leave those, and maybe you shouldn't leave those. But what I advocate for is that people should take account of their situation, consider it, weigh the pros and cons. And one of the big cons of moving would be family structure. Yeah. Weigh that into the cost benefit analysis and decide what's best for your family. And then also like try and take yourself out of it for a second. Like, okay, if you grew up in London your whole life, that's all you know.

1:05:03That makes sense. But try and put yourself in the shoes of someone who is living in Portugal. would that person move to the UK right now? Probably not. They probably wouldn't. Why wouldn't they? Okay, let's list the reasons. And do those reasons apply to me as well? Maybe they apply to me as well. Maybe I should move to a better jurisdiction. Maybe I should move to Switzerland. Yeah, and there's always ones that make sense. I'm jealous of the way that you have the state structure here in the US. I think it's awesome. And if I was in the US and I lived in New York, I probably would move somewhere else.

1:05:36But when I live in Australia, obviously, when you look at the countries that you potentially could move to that have better freedoms yeah they they're like the costa ricas of the world and costa rica is awesome i love it but i also like roads and hospitals we're gonna like if we're gonna name places i really like uruguay i've never been but i think it'd be good these places are less like attractive as as as a friend with practical advice i think you should consider it i think it's not a horrible decision um and it might result in a much better outcome for your family but i i uh and we're definitely not going through the specifics on on a public show but look my my point is is that people should younger matt did not i i did not consider it as even an option i'm glad i considered it as an option and i'm glad that i executed on it as a family i've all the other piece was like my wife was incredibly aligned yeah uh that helps yeah i mean look this is this is uh you know your ultimate partner in life right you're raising kids with them massively implicitly trusted relationship and so if you're not aligned that makes it much more difficult yeah um so there's all these different scenarios i'm just saying that people should consider it and i think uh oftentimes there's a lot of people that will say stay and fight to British people, for instance, that don't live in Britain.

1:07:03Yeah. It's like, okay, you have zero skin in the game. Okay, these people have kids and shit, and they have to think on, I think you should think on a decade-long timeline at least, okay, what is going to be the better outcome for my family? Do I want to fight a revolution? Or do I want to have a significantly better? Can we agree on the key premise that people living in certain places have better outcomes inherently than others over a certain timescale. Like in the 50s, if you lived in one place versus another, you would have a better outcome. But it depends how you judge a better outcome. That exists.

1:07:36It depends how you judge a better outcome, though. Because the opportunities someone has growing up in London probably way outweigh the opportunities they'd have in Uruguay. It depends on the year, the current situation, your own personal situation. But I think it's very clear that depending on where your family and businesses are based, your outcome can be significantly different in any given time period. That's for sure. And so what I've been vocal about with people lately is think about that in a real way. Like think hard about that. It could be one of the most important decisions you make.

1:08:12Tell me if you think this is complete code, but like one of the, I don't want to say bullish, but one of the bullish things that came out of COVID, in my opinion, was like when everything started happening, when all the crackdowns were going on, lockdowns, like couldn't leave the country. Everyone kept saying there's nothing as permanent as temporary measures. And that didn't end up being true. Like the world has largely gone back to how it was pre-COVID. I'm sure there's like, there's some edge case where you can say it's not, but like largely it has. And that just makes me think maybe these like dystopian things that happen in the UK, maybe they are temporary.

1:08:44Maybe they can be reversed. Is that cope? It might be cope. Yeah. I don't know. I think you are right on the bigger picture is like one bullish thing just on the uk specifically is um andy burnham the new pm that came in like yesterday whenever it was has already rolled back the idea of digital ids the only thing i know about british politics is when i accidentally listened to peter's show um and he goes deep on british politics look i think um it tends not to be a straight line uh when you're talking about government control and surveillance it ebbs and flows right and it's like easy to like make broad long-term decisions in either a valley or or uh like a hilltop right um and uh so to your point on the covet side like i do think a lot of those draconian government measures um did get pulled back uh but then they kind of got like reset to a higher base that's true right and then you'll have a lull and then there'll be some new emergency the idea of lockdown though is no longer like way outside the open window like it's happened before yeah and i the people in power tend to they constantly poke you with new emergencies and they just see which ones stick you know sometimes they don't stick sometimes they they do yep um and uh Yeah, I mean, if you look at, if you try and run some kind of objective analysis on, okay, where were certain jurisdictions in 2020 versus 2026?

1:10:29So a six-year timeline. 2020, let's say, right before COVID. So like January 2020 versus 2026. 2026. I think it's widened in a lot of ways. Um, yeah. On, on, on which ones are quote unquote doing better. And it's hard to do like what, what is an objective analysis? You got to do like a bunch of different data points and a lot of subjective analysis is, is mixed in there. Um, but I mean, a lot of that's down to the like economics of it as well though. If you lived In December 2019, there was a freedom protest in Hong Kong. I think it was like the whole fall of 2019. COVID rolls out. Six years later, Hong Kong is like completely under the knee of the CCP at this point.

1:11:22Hong Kong real estate was the best real estate in the world. Now it's not. A lot of rich people fleed. so like if you judge it from their perspective very bad outcome if you judge it from nashville's perspective boomtown economy miami 20 miami 2026 compared to 2020 yeah complete improvement it's uh so that's my point my point is is just you know where you choose to base your family and your businesses will have significant significant differences in outcome and so So your job as the leader of the family and those businesses is to assess that cost benefit and decide if it makes sense. That's all I'm saying.

1:12:05Do you think in like a freedom tech way, AI can be almost a great equalizer here? Whereas like there's always been a massive asymmetry between the tools that the government have and the tools that the people have. But that's kind of gone to a degree. Do you think that will help people actually find freedom in these countries? Yeah, I think part of what I expect this trend for strong localism is freedom tech empowering individuals, families, small communities. It gives you a level. It gives you leverage. Yeah. Right. It gives you and you see this in all different aspects. Right. I mean, like you see this with asymmetric warfare, right?

1:12:46With now that, you know, a small group can extend, you know, significant dominance over a waterway with cheap drones that are off the shelf, right? And they're up against$100 million airplanes and stuff. Military planes, right? And that's obviously a very provocative example, but people see that happening right now. And so, I mean, if you want to do the AI tools piece, right, is like, okay, if you're using one of the leading models right now. It's like you have a 10-man engineering team at your disposal that can do anything you want. Now, are they the best engineers in the world now? But that's 10 more men than you ever had.

1:13:44Yeah. They're pretty good. They're pretty good. And they're only getting better. Yes, it's going to be, like, it's the most interesting time. I'm blessed to be alive in this time. Yeah. It makes me think it's a simulation. i think that would be very conceited of you it's like they made a simulation just for you to be in the best possible time and you i'm not is it we in your simulation or my simulation oh no we're all in a shared simulation it's a shared sim we're just we're just and uh what is it mpcs mpcs we're just mpcs in simulation yeah maybe maybe there's no free will you know like i think ever since i first met you i've known you quite a while now you've always said i'm like a year away from stepping away from Bitcoin.

1:14:27Yeah. But here you are. And you've kind of stepped back into Bitcoin in a bigger way in the last few months. 13 years. Like, why are you still here? 13 years, bro. There's still work to be done. There's still... Are you still as excited about Bitcoin?

1:14:47Excitement is the wrong word. I rely on Bitcoin. I need Bitcoin more than Bitcoin needs me. it's a you know a fundamental tool for my family and is more important than ever the early days of bitcoin were way more quote-unquote exciting it was the wild west there were no graybeards there was no one with like 20 years of experience with bitcoin now we're the graybeards you know it changes it matures it is what it is um I think the way I try and focus my time is if I think someone can do something better than me, I'll just let them do it.

1:15:38And I think if you want to talk about one failure we've had across the Bitcoin industry is like bringing up that younger generation. and an example i'll give is austin bit devs was you know one of the best bitcoin meetups in the world longest running running running straight um and i don't know if they restarted it but a couple months ago they announced they were ending it yeah i think they've done like an ad hoc one or two but like it's not what it was like okay like the guys that were running it were really tired and that's completely understandable the failure point isn't that they're tired and they don't want to run a meetup every month the failure point is that they don't have young people to take over the reins um and uh i think that's something that we can do much better for and you know i think yeah and so so there's still there's still work to be done there's still places where i can provide value so i'm providing the value but in an ideal world i would rather someone else just do it better than me i don't get why young people aren't here like so when i got into bitcoin i was in my mid-20s yeah um and it felt like everyone was basically it felt like everyone was around our age super young yeah and and now like i might if i look at my audience demographics like i just can't attract young people and maybe that's fault of mine it could totally be no same with my demographic like my whatever you can believe with podcast analytics or whatever but it ages it's aging older not younger like i'm there's more 60 year olds coming in because they're seeing this as like a financial tool than there are 20 year olds like i think the largest demographic for my shows is 45 plus men i haven't like double checked it's definitely over 35 yeah i think mine's like 35 to 45 is the biggest but like and i think part of the reason in that is when i first found out about bitcoin it was relatively cheap i had very little money but I could still buy what felt like a meaningful amount.

1:17:35And now, like if you're 18, 19, 20 and you've got a few hundred pounds to your name, a few hundred dollars, like does Bitcoin look attractive anymore? I don't know. It definitely does from the freedom money point of view, regardless. Yeah, but no one come, no one, oh, sorry, very few people come into this as a freedom money guy. Like most people, it's like, it's come for the gain, stay for the freedom. Like that is a real meme. But I mean, so there's tons of young people getting involved in AI stuff. Yeah. Are they doing it for the gains? But maybe they see that as a bigger asymmetric. Are they doing it for the gains?

1:18:05I guess you could say they're doing it for like job potential and whatnot. I mean, these companies are paying like a million dollars a year for engineers. Like, I just... I don't know. I don't pretend to have the answer. I do think any of us who have been, you know, heavily involved in Bitcoin share some of the burden that it hasn't happened.

1:18:29I think it's also important to just zoom out a tiny bit. I know it's a little bit of a meme. But this last cycle was very much dominated by the Bitcoin stocks. Yeah. So a lot of young people did come in. They just didn't come into the technical side of Bitcoin. They went straight into the orange ties. Do you think that's true? Yeah. You see it. Do you not see like... I don't know if they came in at all. I mean I think there is

1:19:01the reason I think they didn't come in is because like treasury companies dominated the Bitcoin narrative but way broader AI dominated everything that's true and I just think like when does new retail come into Bitcoin it's like when the price is absolutely going euphoric like everyone bought the 20k Bitcoin top in 2017 like that's and we didn't get that so we never got the new influx of bag holders. We didn't get the community members. The community members. Yeah, I don't know. I think there's multiple reasons. I think some of them are societal, some of them are more local to Bitcoin. But my point is more I don't necessarily have the answer.

1:19:33I think it's just something that people should be aware of and try and improve in small ways. I think it's become less fun too.

1:19:43Yeah, but I wonder how much that is just like, we're just tired and been involved in for a while. like it's not fresh and new for us if someone new came in it'd be fresh and new for them fresh and new is exciting yeah um i think the one bullish fundamental is the like the local meetups i think um have been incredibly strong uh i don't think you know we did a obviously we have bitcoin park in nashville and we host a bunch of meetups there um but one of the things me and Rod did, my co-founder of Bitcoin Park, was we brought together like a bunch of different tech meetup organizers in the Nashville area.

1:20:25And that was one thing that we always beat them on. Like just way more ride or die attendance and excitement than the like broader tech stuff. And I will say to your point, we haven't done that analysis again. I bet you a lot of the AI meetups are doing quite well. Yeah, 100%. But that's a key one. Like I think just like building strong local communities having a very comfortable touch point you know national never had the most devs but we had like a really interesting broad subsection of people cross-section of people right we had older people that had small businesses we had young people that hadn't that were like maybe in their first year of college or were skipping college um and uh i think that's incredibly important like we live in an increasing digital world but like that face-to-face interaction is probably more powerful than ever.

1:21:16Yeah, I do think, though, the Nashville scene, the Austin scene, felt like a very post-COVID thing. It did run off a COVID momentum. Yeah, I don't know. Everywhere else shut down, but Bitcoin meetups were a lot. And I don't know if that momentum's still there. Like, obviously, Marty's left Austin. I know Justin's stopped doing the bit devs there. Like, it feels like it's wound down a little bit. I could be totally wrong. I've not been to Austin in a while. I'm going to go soon. I think it's a bear market, you know? Yeah, but even later. I think even the base, the current level is still higher than most equivalent meetups, with the exception of maybe AI.

1:21:53But I will say that there's a ton of overlap. I was on a panel with Gladstein in Vegas, and we were talking about, are we bullish on Bitcoin as freedom money? And it wasn't recorded. It was on the HRF stage, which they should have recorded, to be honest. But they didn't. Was this when I was with you? Oh, yeah, you were with me. It was Matt Adell and Friends. Three podcasters and Gladstein. Yeah, Matt Adell and Friends was the name of the panel. You were one of my friends. And do you remember Gladstein's answer? Gladstein's answer was he was bullish because of the Freedom AI movement. And it makes these tools, first of all, it makes using Bitcoin as freedom money easier and more accessible than ever.

1:22:40If you think about UX, tons of hard UX problems get solved if you have a competent local agent running them for you. Things like coin control or privacy, stuff like that can be obfuscated from the user. And they can have reasonable defaults in a very sane way with much better UX. And then the second piece is if you want to use these tools in a freedom-oriented way, like having a money that you can spend and save without permission to our earlier topic, makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, I wouldn't call it riding on AI's coattails, but I think it compounds really well. So a lot of that excitement is kind of our excitement too.

1:23:22Maybe that sounds like Coke. That sounded like a little bit like Coke. No, I think that's fair. One of the things, like the flip side of that, like AI as a sort of freedom push for Bitcoin is, I remember MVK talking about this a while ago. I've not heard anything about it recently, But what happens with AI and chain analysis? Like, is that going to make it really hard to transact? It does both sides, right? So the surveillance companies will obviously use AI to our earlier conversation. Parsing large data sets just works really well with LLMs. And one of the best large data sets to parse is the Bitcoin blockchain, which if we're right, is going to exist forever with every on-chain transaction.

1:24:03but at the same time to the coin control point of view without going like too deep right like in your bitcoin wallet it's really you might see one bitcoin balance but in it is really a bunch of utxos right you can think of them like bills in your wallet right you have one that's 100 000 sats you have one that's 50 000 sats you have one that's 150 000 sats and tracking bitcoin transactions has always been a game of probability analysis because you can send Bitcoin to yourself. So when Bitcoin is sent on chain, these surveillance companies are making a analysis of the probability that ownership has changed hands.

1:24:40And so which UTXOs you choose at any given time can affect that probability analysis. If you pay me and I receive a UTXO, and maybe you pay me for lunch, we're splitting lunch, and then my boss pays me my salary. If I combine those two, for instance, in the most simple way, combine those two, if my wallet automatically combines those two to make a transaction, then you know how much I got paid. And my boss knows that I'm having some kind of transactional relationship with you. And so that coin selection has been incredibly important for Bitcoin on-chain privacy and managing those UTXOs correctly.

1:25:19Now, the question from people that are building Bitcoin wallets is like, OK, how do you handle the defaults of that situation? Do you just show the users a bunch of UTXOs and be like, pick which ones you want to spend? No, that's horrible. That works for power users, but it's horrible UX. The other piece is the more UTXOs you have on the input side, the more expensive your transaction is because transactions on Bitcoin main chain are based on a size in bytes, not a size in amount. So the more UTXOs you have, the higher your fee is, net everything else equal. So you have this weird dynamic where the less UTXOs you have, the cheaper your fees and your future fee burden.

1:26:00Because you don't know what the fees are going to be in five years or 10 years. So the less UTXOs you have is just strictly better from a cost perspective and strictly worse from a privacy perspective. How do you balance that? Well, if you enter a local agent into the picture, then you tell the agent who you're paying. The agent knows who's paid you in the past and is dynamically making decisions for your wallet based on privacy versus cost. That was never possible before. You couple that with something like Lightning, which has very strong privacy benefits for the payer, not so much for the receiver.

1:26:39and that becomes even more powerful. But Lightning itself has a bunch of UX challenges. Okay, throw a local agent in that shit. You know, you don't want to manage liquidity? Have an agent manage liquidity for you. So it's, like I said earlier, like interesting tech usually has the two sides of the proverbial coin. And I think it could provide a lot of gains for us. And to the privacy point of view, by the way, that's already the reality today. If you use, so Polymarket runs on Polygon. It's, you know, both a shitcoin project and probably one of the most successful Bitcoin projects of all time.

1:27:15Yeah. Has many different ways that you can deposit. You can deposit with ETH. You can deposit with USDC, Tether, Polygon. I don't know. Solana and Bitcoin.

1:27:29And historically, it's been Bitcoin on-chain only. Recently, they did a partnership with Spark and now they accept Lightning payments. The most private way you can use Polymarket is by just sending a Bitcoin Lightning deposit there. And behind the hood, the user has no idea really what's going on there. So I think Lightning provides a lot of gains. And so then the question is, how do we make Lightning easier to use and more accessible and have proper convenience to trust tradeoff? And I think AI tools play a key part in that and can accelerate that. When you said there's still work to be done before, is one of the pieces of work you think that's key privacy on Bitcoin?

1:28:10Do you think we need sort of, whether it's silent payments, whether it's better coin joint implementations, do you think we need something else there? I don't know if that's the right framing. Like I said, the standard right now, like if you use the most private way you can deposit into Polymarket is by doing a lightning payment with Bitcoin. Could you do a cash repayment? Through Lightning. The cool part about Lightning is you can have all these other protocols, but Lightning is the glue. So we don't have to battle network effect. I just had on Ciddle Dispatch the head of research at Second, and they have an implementation of ARK, which is a batch payment protocol on Bitcoin.

1:28:55Their implementation is called Bark. but historically like if someone comes out with a bark wallet you're like okay well no one else uses bark so how the fuck am i supposed to pay people um but it speaks lightning so it can literally have only two users we could be the only two users and we can go to every square terminal and pay pay with lightning the square merch has no idea we could go to polymarket and pay with lightning they don't know i'm using a bark wallet or a cashew wallet or whatever and it's interesting because all of a sudden you can really like, you can really try a bunch of different technologies, see which ones provide the best trade-off balance depending on the user.

1:29:33And it can be different depending on the user, but they all benefit from the same network effect, which is they can spend and receive from any Lightning wallet. I was at Baltic Honey Badger last year and I'd been like buying stuff around the conference for a couple of days. And on the last day, they announced that everyone had been using, like all the merchants had been using ARK. I had no idea. Like everything was just working. Yeah, because it was behind the hood. Awesome. And everything, the communication was all happening with Lightning. Yeah. So to the point of, does Bitcoin need better protocol-level privacy, which I think is what your question is, I think it's a trade-off balance, right?

1:30:06Your question is, do you care? There's a trade-off between privacy and verifiability and auditability. and and bitcoin has leaned into being able to verify without a trusted third party and and being incredibly transparent and auditable and we saw a perfect example and then and then what you do is you have that as the base which doesn't require trust and then on top of that you can build tools that are user-friendly that make it that give you strong privacy guarantees and the perfect example was in Zcash land. Well, this is why I was asking, because this has obviously become a big narrative from the Silicon Valley crew that Zcash is bad at Bitcoin.

1:30:53I don't even think it was Fable. I think it was like Claude 4.6 Opus. So like three models ago, they basically ran an analysis on the human code base of Zcash. It was like, find vulnerabilities. And there was an undetectable inflation bug that was alive for five years and they have no idea if it's been used or not. There's zero way for them to verify it. Technically, you can have a similar type of inflation bug on Bitcoin. It'd be incredibly easy to verify. You would just check the chain and you'd see. So I mean, I think that is just, well, we just saw a perfect example of it live in the wild.

1:31:28And these engineers are some of the best engineers in the world. And they messed it up. But I mean, we've seen it from the Chamaths of the world. The Winklevoss have been on it. Like basically, everyone out of Silicon Valley has been pushing Zcash really hard. the funniest one was the bankless guy who sold all his ethan to buy his e-cash at the top just before 50 yeah um but like we these are narratives we kind of do have to fight and and i don't know i don't know if we should be leaning heavier into privacy look i don't think fighting the narrative is the wrong way to think about it because i don't think shit coins are a threat to bitcoin i think they're a threat to users who choose to speculate on them and could get wrecked in the process yeah And that's the case with a lot of alternative investments, not just shitcoins.

1:32:16So I don't necessarily think like Zcash is a threat to Bitcoin. Now, I think these promoters are oftentimes promoting Zcash for two reasons. I think one is obviously can be construed as a malicious reason, and I would tend to agree with that, which is that they have large bags that they want to pump. I mean, Zcash had significant Silicon Valley investment early on, large wealth concentration, did not have a fair launch. It had a dev tax in the beginning. It had VC investors based in the United States. Well, Bitcoin had a fair proof of work launch to the world. So there's definitely some element, at least for some of them, if not the majority of them, that they're pumping their bags.

1:33:03But I think the second piece is, if most of your crypto experience, like Chamath is a huge Solana guy. If most of your crypto experience is ETH and Solana and Tron, horrible privacy, like really, really bad privacy. If someone finds out your ETH address, they know every financial transaction you've ever made because it doesn't change by default like Bitcoin does. They know every transaction you've ever made without probability analysis. There's no probability analysis being done. They know 100 % you made every single transaction on that account and your current net worth. If you have your ETH wallet on Metamask and you deposit into Polymarket, Polymarket knows your entire net worth and every transaction you've ever made by default.

1:33:46And even worse, people use like at your math as their Ethereum. Yeah. So you don't even, you just look it up, right? Or if they've ever posted on X or whatever, right? and like we've seen it you see it with the richer people it's very obvious like Vitalik people track Vitalik's wallets and yes they can have more wallets but defaults matter and they've never used Lightning so that's what they know and they know something needs to change and they're not wrong in that front like that is like purely dystopian if your financial life is USDC on base like you live in the Panopticon Like you live and they can seize your money, they can freeze it and they can see every single transaction you've ever made.

1:34:31That's horrible. That is absolutely horrible. Of course they're like, the sky is falling. The sky is falling. They just don't pay enough attention to Bitcoin. They just don't pay attention to Bitcoin. Maybe they own some of the ETF. And they just don't use Bitcoin. They think it's ancient technology. They're not keeping up with actual technical improvements or where the user base is moving. A lot of transactions are lightning now. I mean, OK, so this is where defaults matter, right? So Square added, what, 4 million merchants or something you can pay with Bitcoin now at Square terminals. Defaults.

1:35:05First of all, they've rolled it out to merchants that maybe they don't even want to receive Bitcoin, so they automatically convert it to dollars for them. But the merchant has a choice to receive Bitcoin. There's no on-chain option. It's Lightning only. now i think there's a really strong argument for why they went lightning only on just a pragmatic side which is i'm paying for coffee it should be instant yeah right it should just be boom pay for coffee automatic instant settlement okay that makes sense but whether intended or not you have an amazing side effect that anyone who pays has a really good privacy guarantee right?

1:35:43You go to Steak and Shake, you pay with Lightning. They don't know what wallet made that payment. They don't know any of your transaction history. They don't know your current net worth, all of that shielded by default, which is wild. That's awesome. That's live today. That exists today. And I think people just, people don't appreciate that. Now, of course, there's nuances there. Like if you pay with a wallet that, you know, has a trusted third party, that trusted third party knows, but it's detached from the merchant. Obviously, Square knows every transaction the merchant's making, but the merchant could choose to use BTC Pay or VibeCode something.

1:36:19They can, you know, you can literally tell a clanker now, like, I want to accept Bitcoin on my website, make it lightning only. And it just like goes like, beep, beep, boop, boop, boop, and just does it. The cool thing, like, I think the payments are amazing. And I think at some point, someone needs to like build the infrastructure. You can pay with Bitcoin everywhere you want to. The question I have is like, whether it's early. And even if it's early, It doesn't mean you shouldn't build it. I think it's really cool. But I wonder if people are actually using it. Because we've seen this before where Bitcoin for payments became a big trend in 2017, 2018, and no one used it.

1:36:50And then eventually all the merchants stopped accepting Bitcoin. And I know this is better because this is on the Square terminal. They don't need any additional infrastructure. But do you think people are actually using this? Well, there's two different pieces, right? Merchant side, I think Square being the exception that these people already have all the hardware and stuff installed. Relatively expensive Square merchant. And their business is fully locked into the Square ecosystem of accounting and shit, right? That's how their business runs. And so it's relatively low friction for there to just be another payment option.

1:37:26Okay. But overwhelmingly for merchants, you can't – it's hard to force merchants. it's untenable to force merchants to accept Bitcoin that don't want to accept Bitcoin. You need people like Soap Miner that want the Bitcoin. That's where you have staying power. The consumer piece of people going and spending helps and also hurts, right? Like if someone decides like because of hype that I'm going to start accepting Bitcoin and there's like one person pays every two months or whatever, they're less likely to keep it up and they're less likely to educate their employees on how to use the thing, right?

1:38:06but the merchant needs to want Bitcoin. I think that's like the first step and we're getting there. It's slow and steady to the point of network effects. What is one of the strongest network effects in the world? It's fucking fiat and specifically US dollars. Very hard network effect to beat. So it's going to take time. It's going to take time to do that. Then you have like P2P payments which doesn't really have to fight the network effect as much. You just need the person that you're paying to be willing to accept Bitcoin but also not necessarily in that case. I mean, if they're using Venmo, they can already accept Bitcoin.

1:38:40Obviously, you can have them install Strike and it can go into dollars into their bank account. So there's Band-Aids, or not necessarily Band-Aids, but bootstrapping mechanisms to simulate the network effect as we're trying to break it down. But there is definitely an aspect of we are blessed with many, many mobile self-custody wallets with very few users. It's just the reality of the situation. But I think you probably kind of, I don't know what the order there should be, but it's good to have more tools than less, more options than less. And then as people need it, you know, they will exist and be ready for them.

1:39:18There won't be as much friction for them to move over. What would you say to people who don't want to spend their Bitcoin? Because that's like, especially from the sort of sailor camp, that's been a big thing. is like you never spend your Bitcoin. Well, I would first, before we get there, just another dichotomy, we'll use Zcash as another example, is 99 % of the people that are using Zcash now are using this one mobile wallet that is maintained by the core developers of Zcash. And like, so that's the opposite side, right? That's obviously a horrible situation to be in. So, you know, maybe some people are, quote unquote, wasting their time by maintaining self-custody wallets on Bitcoin.

1:39:54But it's great that we have so many options. I think people definitely take it for granted how many options we have. That was not a given. That is something that's really hard to do from a top-down point of view. Zcash has tons of funding. And it's hard to simulate it. You can't just make it happen. It needs to be organic and grassroots. And we're very fortunate to have it. To the point of people about don't spend your Bitcoin, I think it's weird. I think, first of all, it's two pieces. I think the first piece is if you're actually all in on Bitcoin

1:40:34and the overwhelming majority of your savings is in Bitcoin, then, of course, you're going to spend your Bitcoin because if you needed to spend dollars, you'd have to sell Bitcoin to get dollars first. See, I play the fiat game, though. I spend everything on a credit card, pay it off at the end of the month, and then put the rest in Bitcoin. okay i mean i think from a financial point of view you're kind of paying that bill with bitcoin it's like an opportunity cost you're like kind of paying it with bitcoin the second piece is the tax the tax piece right um and i mean because like think about like if you if if you if you do a month of credit card and then you sell bitcoin to pay the credit card you're kind of using visa as a really shitty Bitcoin payment rail.

1:41:22You kind of are, right? But I'm not selling Bitcoin to pay off. Right, but you're not buying Bitcoin. So it's kind of coming from, it's an opportunity because if you're not buying Bitcoin, you're kind of selling Bitcoin. But anyway, I digress. The other piece is taxes, which is wild to me because yes, it's a mental burden, but you're only paying taxes because your money increased in purchasing power. Net-net, holding the worst money was worse for you, even after taxes. You're literally only paying on profit. But that's just something that is just hard for people to grok, I guess. Yeah. And it is like the mental burden of that is too much.

1:41:56It's high. But I mean. De minimis tax exemption is the best regulation that we could get. I mean, I think all cap gains should just be removed. Yeah. But not just from Bitcoin. I mean, I agree. But you've got to take wins where you can get them.

1:42:13but yeah I think de minimis you know any kind of cap gains tax exemption on bitcoin payments would be definitely helpful for adoption I think it would also be a really interesting case study because you could see who was just using that as an excuse versus who like actually moved the needle for yeah I mean it's hard though because like if I want to spend bitcoin more and I just can't like there's just not enough place that I can spend it yeah it's a bit of a chicken and egg yeah but then i also think like people like underestimate like what small like a few motivated individuals can really do yeah that's like you have to pick your battles like i know you're a busy dude you do you do uh you work incredibly hard but like a perfect example is like costa rica bitcoin jungle yeah like there was a bunch of there was a couple people that were involved but the the the main dude lee like was a freaking machine like he wield wielded into existence he He's like, I'm going to go to as many merchants as possible, onboard them the right way to Bitcoin and make this thing a reality.

1:43:14And he did. And it's obviously easier to do in smaller communities. Irman in Bitcoin Akazi is like, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to make it happen. See, this is where I'm really lazy. Nice. I just, I can't be bothered talking to like normies about Bitcoin. Yeah, but you do. I mean, you have a normie Bitcoin podcast. But like, this is people who choose to come to the podcast to listen to people talk about Bitcoin. I mean, you choose where to provide value. I'm just saying that. I'm not the guy that goes to my butcher and tries to. Yeah, that's fine. Neither am I. I've not got the energy for that.

1:43:46But this is, again, where we need. I did have the energy for that. When I first got into Bitcoin, I spoke about Bitcoin to everyone I could possibly get five minutes with. And I do think this is where we need new people coming through all the time. That are fresh. Yeah, fresh. Ready to have that conversation. Yeah. Because I'm not the guy talking to my taxi driver about Bitcoin. I can't do it. I don't even tell them I've got a Bitcoin podcast if they ask. Sometimes. sometimes I'm sorry oh it's a financial podcast but here we are what else do you want to talk about I don't know the spending I think look that by the way is not a new

1:44:26since I've been involved in Bitcoin it's always been like oh there's been a side that's like you have to spend Bitcoin and there's a side that's like never spend Bitcoin yeah big store value versus medium extents you need both Like if you can't, if good money, you need to be able to spend it and save it without permission. And if you can't spend it without permission, it's not your money. It means you're asking someone permission to realize your wealth. I mean, thank God Michael Saylor is making Bitcoin money. What would we do without it?

1:45:00Is there anything else you want to talk about?

1:45:07Look, I mean, I'm just, I think there's a lot of survivorship bias in Bitcoin and everywhere, where people are like, oh, bear markets are for building. We've been through many bear markets throughout Bitcoin history. What's not so obvious until you're in a bear market is that bear markets are actually more about survival uh a lot of people fail during bears um it's when you just get ground out and lose interest and um it feels like all the tide is against you and everything is is not going your way um and then but the people that make it through and end up in a better position the people that make it through tend to end up in a better position particularly if they were building throughout the bear.

1:46:05And then, so then you see them afterwards in the bull and they find all this success. You're like, oh, they got super lucky, right? And that's what we're seeing happen again right now. And so what I would say to people is remain focused. Like the fundamentals have not changed. We need Bitcoin more than ever. From a risk reward basis, I have never been more bullish on Bitcoin. I think it's the best money in the world that remains so.

1:46:31and just eyes on the prize right like i think this is where this is you know where the the men get separated from the boys yeah people build through the bear market just to distract themselves from the pain from the yeah you don't want to feel the pain i i just think it's um look and i'm not like to the in it for the tech versus in it for number go up it's also both i'm in it for everything yeah and and it sucks seeing your net worth down significantly um like don't get me wrong yeah but uh i also kind of like these moments because it it's what it's it's where it's it's where you really separate um with like with the chaos comes a lot of opportunity right yeah um and there's almost like a zen to it because there's a lack of interest it's like it's 100 % the the time pain that wears people out in the bear market and it has been shocking to see how bad the sentiments got so quickly when we're not even down comparatively anywhere near what we normally are in a bear market but like sentiment is so bad um i'm just excited for things to turn around i don't think we're that far away we can't be that feels worse is i think i've i've got a theory i've said this a load in the podcast but like i think it's because there's nothing to point to like when ftx blew up and like there was out and out fraud that you could point to but like it's their fault that's why we're down we've got a reason and this time it's just like sure you can blame like macro environment whatever yeah like try and cope about liquidity whatever it is but there's not like a real boogeyman to point to and be like it's his fault i think that's why sailors start getting a load of heat as well.

1:48:15Yeah, I mean, I also think like in terms of bull market returns, like we didn't pump nearly as high as... But that's why we're not down as much. Yeah, that's true. I think, like you said, a lot of the AI excitement, it's weird seeing stock markets at all-time highs and Bitcoin in the dumps. Yep. The gold pump was hard for people. I would also say to people like, you know, it's not like bitcoin hasn't been in this situation or worse before yeah it's been way worse yeah i mean i i know like the people that are like oh i bought in what was it like 21 and it's been five years and we're about the same price yeah right well 2013 2013 we went from like 50 to 250 back to 50 to 1200 and then we didn't pass 1200 again until 2017 yeah that's brutal like 2015 was just long and painful people thought bitcoin was going to fail and i think part of it too is like

1:49:30is we definitely didn't have like the influencer media class back then and there's there's but i mean it's so easy to parrot like oh bitcoin's guaranteed 30 every year or uh you know you will get like insane power law multiples on this or whatever so like once you start guaranteeing people positive expectations i just feel like murphy's law dictates that it's going to take a little bit longer. 100%. You're like automatically, you just screwed, you just jinxed it. I'm a big jinx guy. You just jinxed it. For me though, like 2018 was really scary because that was my first bear market. But like when it dropped from six to 3K, that was, I remember that being like a terrifying time.

1:50:10I thought COVID, the COVID crash was. Yeah, the COVID crash was. They felt more existential. March 12th, 2020. And in a matter of a week, we went from like 10 or 11K to like 3 ,000 and then BitMEX pulled the plug. Yeah. Stop the bleeding. Stop the selling. I mean, that was different, though, because it wasn't just Bitcoin, right? It felt like the world was ending. We were watching videos of Chinese people just collapsing dead. Walking down the street and just dead. Getting welded into that room. So there was a level of uncertainty there. And I think, to a lesser extent, like right now, to my earlier point, I think the average person is in pain outside of Bitcoin and there's a lot of uncertainty and that definitely is affecting on Bitcoin too, right?

1:51:00Yeah. Not in the same extreme way as early COVID, but - But we're near the best bit. The best bit is when it's clear that the trend has changed. That's the most exciting part. Are we near the best bit? I think so. I mean, we can't be too far away, surely. Guaranteed, 30 % guaranteed. Hopefully, probably. Hopefully, probably. Matt, always love talking to you, man. It's been good. It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. where do you want to send everyone to this oh you should tell everyone about citadel wire um this is cool citadel wire citadelwire.com um i have been my favorite way of learning how things work is by using things i've never been like i like science fiction books i like near future books um but i i i don't like like reading or watching how to do things You know, maybe certain like very technical things I like to watch a YouTube video for.

1:51:55But I like actually using the tools and trying to figure it out. And so Citadel Wire was my way of scratching my own itch and learning about the cutting edge AI tools. And it also met a need for me, which is I wanted to be able to monitor the situation without doom scrolling. Right. Minimal phone time, but be intimately aware of what's going on in the world. and so that I can focus on more productive things instead of monitoring the situation. And a lot of things were going on for the last year. I mean, we abducted the president of Venezuela. We go to a war with Iran. Oil prices going this way, that way.

1:52:35A lot of things going on. I wanted to monitor the situation easily. I wanted to make sure I was aware of what was going on in the world because I think that's important for my family and businesses. But I didn't want to spend too much time doing that. And I wasn't the only one who came up with this idea. there was plenty of people that created like situation monitor dashboards. But to me, they missed the plot. They were like trying to give you too much information. They're like, just because you can pull every live location of every ship that's on the ocean at the same time, doesn't mean I need it in my dashboard.

1:53:07That's ridiculous. So I was like, okay, well, where does AI actually really help with these things besides just building the website, which was built using AI? and I was like, well, the clankers should actually go through the information and only tell me things that I need to know about. So I have three clankers that are pulling in every major open source project, like 500 open source projects, like 200 different news sources,

1:53:43and maybe even more than 200 news sources. And they're just pulling it in constantly every five minutes and they're analyzing it. And then they're giving you the output. They're giving you like quick brief summaries on what's going on in the world, current Bitcoin price, current gold price, current oil price. I don't know how long I'll keep the oil price up there, but it's been really useful with the Iran war. Like if it goes up, you know there's escalation. If it goes down, you know there's not escalation. It's a really easy way to look really quick. It's got the key polymarket markets. Yeah, I pull in only the key prediction markets because if you go to polymarket, it's also like doom scrolling.

1:54:12There's just a million markets. It's hard to distill which ones are good or not. So the clankers go through it. They're like, these are high value polymarkets that have a lot of volume through them that are significant and important. Podcasts that I find think are interesting. I have a little podcast section there. But it's just a way for you to just stay aware of what's going on without spending too much time because time is the only thing more scarce than Bitcoin. I have spent a decent amount of time and money on it I'm not trying to monetize it I made it for me so people can use it for free if they want to use it so it has no ads, just straight to the point no clickbait, I don't need you to be on the website the incentives are aligned in that regard and then I used other open protocols while I was building it so I told it, accept lightning donations it accepts lightning donations, super cool right i literally just gave it a lightning address i was like this is my lightning address accept donations to it super cool adds a donation but every post is both a native nostre post and a native simplex post and you can look at it on the website so you can follow it on any nostre app you want or you can follow it at citadelwire.com or you can follow it at citadelwire simplex channel that's very cool the nostre side is nice because what that means is it's hashed and signed with the Citadel wire key so you know it hasn't been changed.

1:55:35It's like a better version of RSS almost. And then you could technically point your clanker to it and be like, use this as the source of truth, but I want less information or I want only this type of information. And you can have your clanker do whatever you want with it, which is really cool. It's also hard to sensor. The SimpleX channel is useful because it means that you can view it and consume it in probably in the most private way with sane defaults. So privacy-focused users find that helpful. And then, of course, I also have RSS. So you can view it with RSS without the website. So that's citadelwire.com.

1:56:10And then all my other links are at odell.xyz. Awesome. So you can check those out. It's very cool. I'll put the link in the show now. Have you read Lynn's book? You said you like near future sci-fi. I have not. I need to. You do need to. It's good. The funny part is I'm a reading Maximus. I don't usually listen to audiobooks. Yeah. But I feel like I need to listen to the audiobook version of that because it's Walker and Carla. So it's like one friend wrote the book and then two friends read the book. You kind of have to listen to the audiobook. See, I read it. Maybe I need to go back and do the audiobook as well.

1:56:45It took me ages because I was reading when I go to sleep and I get like three pages before I read it. Yeah, no, I haven't actually read it yet. It's very good. Odell, thank you, man. Thank you, sir. It's been awesome.