Why Bitcoin Must Win | Matt Odell

29:39No one wants to hang out in a walled garden. You want to hang out in open, beautiful fields. You got mountains in the skyline, and you're out in nature. And when you have those switching costs so low, it keeps the companies that interact honest with the user because the user ultimately has leverage and can just leave and doesn't lose their followers, doesn't lose their content, doesn't lose anything in the process. Like you can leave X and go to TikTok, but you're starting fresh. You're starting completely fresh. There's massive switching costs from going to YouTube to Rumble. And historically, you know, one of the things that we're quite proud of at 1031 is most professional investors in startups are pushing for the walled garden model.

30:29It's the easier model. You wall in your users. You add switching costs. You add friction. Maybe you even petition regulators to make regulatory moats around your businesses and make it even harder for people to switch. and then you monetize the fuck out of the users.

30:45Not only do we support our founders pushing for more open models, we actually push them in the direction of open models. We prefer if they move to models that are more open fields than walled gardens. And I think that alone, that little difference, which is actually massive and foundational, makes a way healthier experience with users and their apps. Because it just switches the incentives entirely. Completely different. And so, like, I'll bring it back to Bitcoin.

31:14Like, if you're using Moon Wallet and you don't like Moon Wallet, or Moon Wallet makes some changes that you don't like, you can literally, in one Bitcoin transaction, send to Phoenix Wallet. And so, all of a sudden, Moon and Phoenix need to be good to their users. Now, even that has more switching costs than Nostra apps. Like, it's literally just Control-C, Control-V. It's the lowest switching cost you could ever imagine. Yeah. And I think as you decrease those switching costs, all of a sudden you have really beautiful, healthy experiences start to really happen on our devices and the tools we rely on.

31:48Yeah, I don't spend enough time on Nostra. Yeah, you should use it more. I should. I mean, I honestly would love to just not use any social media. I know, but that's the problem. The funniest part is it's being bootstrapped by people that generally hate social media. It's kind of cool to see the vlogging craze going on. Is that still happening? Yeah, American Idol, baby. he's the one who started that craze completely organic if he leaned into the Bitcoin influencer thing he would be fucking incredible I mean he already kind of does he's like a professional yeah but if he did it on a broader scale he's like a philosopher king he is a philosopher king but he needs to be doing it on Instagram and TikTok most of your listeners probably don't even know who American HODL is anymore no he's been on a few times okay well he's Nostro only do you know why he's Nostro only?

32:38He lost his phone there at Twitter. Yeah, we came from different directions, but we ended up in the same position. I mean, look, I think people will use it. If you use it in addition to your other stuff, fine. I think ultimately it becomes like the source of truth. Like you have used everywhere else. But if someone actually wants to link back to your content, the best place to link them to is Noster because you know it's not going to have a paywall. It's not going to have a login wall. it's always verifiable like in the land of deep fakes and AI like everything should be signed if you watch this podcast on YouTube there's no way for you to know if YouTube didn't change what we said like that's actually more insidious than censorship like they could just dynamically and they could dynamically change what we say in this conversation depending on who is listening so like 99 % of people could be listening to this conversation and they would hear what we're actually talking about.

33:38And then maybe people that live in Kenya hear a slightly different take. That's a wild thought. Mills was telling me about - And there'd be no way for us, just to be clear, there'd no way for you to verify if that happened or not. But on Noster, even with the smaller user base, every video is hashed and signed so you know that video has not been changed at all. This is a complete tangent, but that reminded me of something Mills told me. I think it was in Riga. she said that there's a supermarket here in nashville that has prices that adjust depending on who you are well that's pretty fucked up have you heard that so like if you're on welfare you'll get a different price for goods i didn't hear about that but that's what they're like i mean people have theorized like that's what airline companies and stuff do yeah and dynamic price use a vpn when you're buying a ticket but that's fucking scary um that's going to become the norm like there's the thing that's weird about that though is data profiling but it's like what what is the price of a dollar at that point?

34:35Yeah. Because if a dollar is different for me than it is to you, then how do you have any confidence in the cost of anything? What I've always said is one of the coolest parts about Bitcoin is

34:48in a post-truth world, Bitcoin is truth. It's the only thing that you know is real and tangible. It's a 24-7, 365 free market. Nobody can fake it. You know you own it. You know its value. Right now, we measure the value in dollars, but in the future, it will be measured in how many cows you can buy, how many houses you can buy, and just pure purchasing power. It's truth. And so something like Nostra becomes that for, we always say, like, fix the money, fix the world. The money is just one piece of it. We got to fix the other things too. And in a post-truth world, speech and identity is even more important on the internet.

35:31And so how are we actually going to verify that? And I like to use video as an example because I think it's more relatable to people. It feels more insidious for it to be modified. People see a fake video. But you know how many times you see fake screenshots of tweets and stuff? Oh, yeah, all the time. But normally you can... This is something that AI has changed completely because when you used to see those, you could tell the text was a bit different or something. But the deepfake of kind of anything is like a real threat to just knowing what the truth is. Exactly. So I think that part is what people are sleeping on.

36:06I think most people don't really care about the censorship-resistant part. I think it's the open and verifiable part that is the most important. But that can still happen on Noster, but then your identity, your mpub is tied to that. So you essentially get punished by your social graph. No, no. If you open Primal and you look at what Bitcoin did that was posted there - You know it's come from me. My app is automatically in the background verifying that you posted it and no one in the middle has changed it. Now, maybe you don't trust the app. You can use a different app. That app will also check and make sure it's true.

36:45Maybe you don't trust that app. You can actually do it by hand. It's like raw, raw Nostradot is actually very simple. You see a hash of the video, which is like the integrity of the video. So every, if there's any change to the video, the hash changes. So it's like a text string that you know, hasn't been changed. And then it's signed on top of that. So you know who posted it. So those two little pieces of, of basic tech in a very simple, just text readout allow you to easily verify that that hasn't been changed. right now um i don't think elon would mess with or zuckerberg i use elon as an example a lot because i think most people don't trust big tech but they trust elon he's like better of the of the worst he probably is yeah i think he is too i think that's completely fair but let's use zuckerberg because he's actually like evil head honcho number one five billion users.

37:42The only thing that's stopping Facebook adoption is internet access and birth rate. They've literally saturated the global internet accessible population in the world. 5 billion people. We're like 8.5 billion people, but like 3 billion of them don't have internet. I've been in the middle of rural Malawi and people just use WhatsApp. Well, what they do is they give them basically like free phone plans that only work on Facebook services. Like they can only, they have unlimited data on WhatsApp, but nothing else. Because they know they need people to get it, like Facebook will subsidize that just to harvest your data.

38:16But Zuckerberg, imagine if you are a small nation state. Let's use Kenya as an example again. You're president of Kenya, and you want to send a post out to your people. The status quo right now is that Zuckerberg, first of all, controls whether or not you can send it, whether or not people see it. And they could actually modify it in transit and no one would know. and once again the most insidious part is they can modify it for a small subset a small tribe that is in one region of kenya or whatever will see a different a slightly different post yes than everyone else and even if people report that everyone is going to be like is that true is that true i don't know i can't verify it i'm trying to figure out there's just massive confusion and that's going to get worse and worse it's not how it's not how like digital society should be built.

39:06Our lives have never been so digital. And it's built on this complete shoddy foundation. We need to fix the foundation. And once again, I know Bitcoin will be a part of it. I don't know if it'll necessarily be Noster, but something like Noster and the pace of improvement on Noster and just the organic developer community, this open source community, it's just been absolutely massive to watch. Like I witnessed it and then I joined the fray. Like it's not, you can't manufacture that kind of excitement and that kind of developer attention. Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin?

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41:58Get started today by going to mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD and for every hosted miner purchased, you get one week of free hosting and electricity. Of course, none of this is tax advice. Speak with Blockware to learn more at mining.blockwaresolutions.com forward slash WBD. so we should talk about bitcoin we've barely talked about bitcoin yet let's go back to bitcoin um what's your price prediction for the year i don't like price predictions what's your favorite bitcoin stock higher than right now my favorite bitcoin stock i know what your favorite bitcoin stock tell me well i think it's probably is it right here on the i i don't do that i mean maybe by the time the show goes out yeah no it's not um i do like iron there do you not put them on the screen somewhere?

42:44No. Are they right here? No, they're not there either. Just click on the description. Click on Iron. Find out more. What do you want to talk about with Bitcoin? I'm pretty, look, I've never been more bullish on Bitcoin. I think... Are we going to have 200K by conference day? Finally. Eventually, yeah. Eventually. Five years later. I don't want to, I kind of do want to talk about treasury companies with you. I know we said we wouldn't. Yeah, let's talk about them. Do you think they're good for Bitcoin? people buying Bitcoin's cool. But my fear is that there's a lot of people who are going to - Literally every episode is just a treasury company episode for you now.

43:22This is - It should be what Bitcoin stocks did. I own two stocks. I've only ever owned two stocks. What two stocks do you own? Iron. Okay. I wish you didn't ask me that question. And B-Hodl. There you go. Is this financial advice? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a securities violation. This is not financial advice. But are they good for Bitcoin? Because I get - It depends on what you mean by that. I think they're definitely, as a Bitcoin holder, if more people are buying Bitcoin, it increases the Bitcoin purchasing price. It accelerates Bitcoinization. And it is unequivocally a net benefit for everybody that holds Bitcoin if the purchasing power goes up.

44:06There's this weird subset of Bitcoiners that almost fetishize being poor. They would rather... They're like, I'm not in it for the money. It's like, no, I'm in it for the tech and the money. My family relies on Bitcoin increasing in purchasing power, or at least not going down in purchasing power. Yeah, we all want to see number go up. Anyone that pretends they don't... At the very least, not down. Our savings are in Bitcoin. So I think in that way, it's a win. Now, I think... um like in a lot of ways you can make that same argument for shit coins like when eos did their when eos did their ico where did they take all the proceeds they put it all in bitcoin yeah where when tesla's did theirs where they still like if you go onto bitcoin treasuries or whatever to the private companies page like two of the largest holders in private companies that we know of are shit coins and specifically the shitcoin founders not the individuals that bought the shit coins that went down yeah so why do i say that i say that because i think first of all it's important to isolate in this current dynamic you have you really have strategy and then you have everybody else 100 and then there's some nuance in there like there's there's some players that are slightly larger that are trying to differentiate themselves in some ways or not but it's still very early but you very much have strategy and everyone else.

45:33And I think when you look at mostly the long tail, it's predatory on individual retail investors who are looking for get-rich-quick schemes, essentially, right? Which is the same dynamic that we saw with shitcoins. Totally. And the crazy thing is, it's as if Bitcoin is now not volatile enough for people. Correct. But this is, once again, eternal September, because it was the same thing with the theory and salon and all these other things and bitmex 100x yeah right but at least they come in they think they're late and and they leverage themselves up in some way or another to try and get it back they usually get wrecked they'd probably be better off staying on one stacking sets the insidious thing about this piece is like over the last 10 years like something beautiful happened on the internet with with bitcoin culture and and i'm not going to pretend that everyone was super ethical and you know the that that that bitcoiners were perfect or whatever but like we had a pretty strong ethical compass in a wide swath of bitcoin culture and now a lot of the loudest voices in bitcoin culture have gone they've they've all been bought but they all join treasury companies.

46:59And they're effectively, instead of saying, you should learn how to self-custody Bitcoin, you should learn how to buy the real thing, and you should stay on stack sets, is like, no, buy my stock instead. And that part is painful to see. Does it hurt the Bitcoin movement long-term? Nope. Does it hurt individuals that are holding self-custody Bitcoin themselves? Nope. Do people have a right to get wrecked? Yep. I'm a free market maximalist. Buy whatever the hell you want. I've always said this about shitcoins too. I think I've been relatively consistent. Shitcoins are not a threat to Bitcoin. They're a threat to users that choose to speculate on them and end up getting wrecked.

47:42Are there always exceptions to the rule where people end up outperforming Bitcoin and it turns into a great financial decision for them? Yes, that's true as well. You bought the Ethereum ICO and then sold it for Bitcoin. at the right time, you did quite well for yourself. I think all of these things are constants. But I do think that at least, and maybe it's just a phase, it's probably just a phase, but in terms of mindshare, the treasury companies have just like completely dominated the cycle. um and just to once again bring it back in perspective is like spring 2017 summer 2017 like i was literally sitting there myself i thought the ethereum ico was a scam thought the other icos were a scam it's really hard to explain it if you weren't there but i was like sitting there i was like am i the retard am i the dumbass like are there just going to be a thousand different pre-mined shit coins that all outperform bitcoin and it turned out i wasn't but there i would be lying if i didn't say that there was like a couple month period there where i was like maybe i'm wrong um and there's a lot of similarities over this year with that apart from they're not performing particularly well on the whole well recently like a uh a strategy bull will be quick to remind you oh strategies returns for the last two years But the last year has underperformed Bitcoin.

49:22But I agree with you that the strategy is almost like its own thing. The stuff they're doing is actually interesting. I think the preferreds are interesting. I think they'll do pretty well. I don't own any. I don't plan to own any, but I still think it'll do quite well. But if you bought MetaPlanet at the right time... Yeah, MetaPlanet's done well. There's a few. Yeah, it's a timing thing. But I do wonder if the story's kind of ending. I don't know. I mean, maybe to some degree, but maybe it's also just beginning. I mean, you look what's happened with NACA. been a fucking disaster for retail investors yeah like it's basically it's the same price it was a year ago before the merger even happened it's lower I think I mean that's pretty rough yeah I I don't know I think the trend of companies buying Bitcoin and putting it on their balance sheet is definitely just beginning now I think the question becomes as someone who loves free markets and believes they lead to human flourishing like i think it's a question of how markets value different things right and i think specifically companies that don't have cash flow and revenue growth and like real business plans um and they're just relying on a debt arbitrage play or hoping that their m nav is high so they can just sell stock on retail that's not a premium to buy bitcoin will start to be valued accordingly yep and over the last year or so they've probably been valued too high and that's when like you go into like you can go back and forth on whether or not strategies preferred shares is genius or a recipe for disaster like people swing both sides of it but my the the thing is is there there is something interesting and unique there in the market that needs to be valued accordingly.

51:18And the market has no idea how to value it right now. And that's, I think, also what we saw in the early days of sell converts, sell ATMs, buy Bitcoin. What do I value that at? And is MNav even the correct way to think about it? I don't think anyone really has that answer. I mean shout out to you you called Sailor making a stable coin a long time ago and he's essentially done that yeah with STRC but I think there's two lies that are told about treasury companies one is the jurisdictional arbitrage I don't believe that exists like I think there's certain edge cases where it does like I think MetaPlanet just Japan basically is the only one but like these companies that are starting like I know we talked about B-Hodl it's also like the term treasury company is annoying because like any company putting Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

52:09I think leverage Bitcoin equity is a better term. Yeah. Treasury company has a Linde. Like we're just calling them treasury companies. That's what they're called. No one wants to call them leverage Bitcoin equity. And BHODL isn't doing that. But anyway, regardless of them - We don't have to argue about your treasury company. They're not my treasury company. I have nothing to do with them at all. But like the idea of creating a treasury company in the UK or in Australia or in anywhere else in the world, because that's some kind of jurisdictional arbitrage. It's bullshit. It's nonsense. I think that's bullshit.

52:37You can still buy strategy in the UK very easily. And you can definitely buy Bitcoin everywhere. Of course. And like, really, what are you actually gaining from it? You're, you know, let's say you're worth a billion dollars. Like, are you really going to tap into like these pension funds and like capital markets? I think that's also part of the lies. Like they keep saying like it's for institutional investors. If it's for institutional investors, like why are you hiring podcasters? Like it's very, most of them are very clearly retail focused. Are you disappointed in the podcasters that have moved into the boards of these treasury companies?

53:13Who's left? You guys? There's not many free agents left. There's very few free agents left. I guess you're on the board of Fold. I'm not on the board of Fold. Oh, you're not. 1031 are on the board of Fold. Jonathan's on the board of Fold. I've never told anyone to buy Fold stock. But we are an investor. And then before they went public, we helped them go public. um look i mean we're in the business of if our founders want to do something we'll help support them like it's their businesses um and i i there i do think um that they want to have a strong cash flow positive bitcoin financial services business they're not trying to play the same game that um the other treasury companies are trying to play and they're also the market is not valuing them in that expectation they've almost never traded at a premium attempt now um i do have some ethical concerns about spacks in general why um because like the way they do the lockups they pretend it's like to protect retail but it actually usually creates a dynamic where retail it's it becomes predatory for retail you end up you trade out a slight premium in the beginning and then it collapses almost every time uh is is how that happens and the cool thing is if you have bitcoin on your balance sheet it kind of tends to make a floor to a degree i mean it can go negative but uh it's better than something like a virgin galactic or something where like it literally just can go all the way to zero basically um but yeah i mean once again not an expert on that stuff i'm I'm a very, my savings are, it's like 100 % in Bitcoin and the investments we make through 1031 into Bitcoin startups, freedom focused startups in general.

55:02We have some non-Bitcoin companies in there. But anyway, yeah, this is, I think like, just to bring it back for a second. Am I disappointed? Maybe that's a little bit too harsh. Like you asked if I regretted deleting my Twitter. I actually don't regret deleting my Twitter at all.

55:25What I do have some regret for is maybe I got a little bit ahead of myself, and I apologize to anyone who thought I was treating them like a dick and pompous and saying, like, I'm better than you for deleting my Twitter. Like, if you want to use your Twitter, if you want to use TikTok, you want to use whatever, use what you want. I don't really fucking give a shit. Who's me to judge how you live your life? I feel bad about that. I was like, especially I was in all caps mode. Like I was a little bit aggressive. So like, I don't want to like cast broad disappointment on an industry. People can live their lives and choose what they want to do.

56:00I think a lot of people are making mistakes though. There's a lot of reputational risk in doing it. Yeah. And I think reputation, you know, at the end of the day, like, first of all, like I'm also never going to tell people that they should have children. I think it's a beautiful experience. I think most people should consider it. People should have children. And, yeah, but I never want to be like the pushy parent. I love it. Anyway, at the end of the day, you got to look your kids in the eye. Ten years, you're going to have to look your kids in the eye and tell them, you know, how you acted and hopefully be a good example to them.

56:32And I think a lot of people are not acting on that first principle. Hmm. I'm trying to think if I am. I think you mostly are. Go on. I think none of us are perfect, right? Like, I think if you think you're not a hypocrite, you're probably just blinded to your hypocrisy. And so we should try and reduce our hypocrisy as much as possible. Like, I am definitely not perfect. I'm not all seeing. People shouldn't blindly trust me. But you try and be better. Always try and be better. Always try and be less of a hypocrite. If you're not trying to do that, then you're failing. So focus on that. But then to bring it back to the Bitcoin treasury companies, the example I like to use is like, at some point, we're going to see an immensely profitable company like Apple sweeping their cash flow into Bitcoin.

57:25We already see it in the private sector. You know, Strike is - Tether. Tether. I mean, Tether is like the behemoth in the room. Tether is on track to make$25 billion this year, and they sweep it all into Bitcoin and gold, all the profits. Not the reserves. The reserves are held in treasuries. But they have 75 people and they just sweep it all into Bitcoin and gold. Strike has been profitable five quarters and they just sweep everything into Bitcoin. I think that's the next shift. And I value those companies way higher than companies that don't have a sustainable cash flow and business drive component.

58:03Yeah, that seems healthy. But I don't know how you... I assume the trade-off that people like Apple are trying to make right now, they must be aware of what Saylor's doing. They must see how beneficial it has been to the company. They'd be completely blind if they didn't see it, right? But obviously, he did that presentation for Microsoft. And they don't have to take leverage on Bitcoin, but they could put a massive portion of their cash balance into Bitcoin. They just have huge cash balances that they're not doing anything with. But the only thing I can think of, and I could be totally wrong here, but is that they see that as somehow if they made that move, it would be seen badly in the market and their share price would be punny.

58:35Yeah. I think there's career risks still. Mm-hmm. How does that change? Well, we're already kind of seeing it. So like on the 1031 side, we interact with like a lot of family offices, so rich families, institutions, like endowments, college endowments and stuff. And our bread and butter has been like someone works in a family office or someone works in an institution and they're on the investment committee, and they're already Bitcoiners. I listen to the podcast and stuff I know what Noster is and so they see the value and they want to move into Bitcoin but historically most of the people you talk to they don't want to make a risky decision that might cost them their job if they just go into equity indexes they just go into S &P 500 indexes they hold treasuries and stuff yeah they might underperform but they're not going to make a drastic mistake that will cost them their livelihood and then they're going to have to worry how to feed their family right no one wants to do that no one wants to take that risk especially in an institutional environment that is flipped like it's getting to the point now where if you're not even doing like a little exposure and you're an investment community you're not doing a little exposure to bitcoin you might you'll have probably have career risk because you're failing your fiduciary responsibility to whoever your clients are um so we're already starting to see that flip and i think we're going to start to see it flip on the public side are we recording we're recording you just freaked me out i think we'll start to see that flip on the public side like i think um a lot of us realize that it's grossly irresponsible for apple to be holding large amounts of cash right now in an inflationary environment in an environment where inflation is grossly underreported and is way higher uh to quote sailors a melting ice cube they're holding a melting ice cube.

1:00:28And maybe it's not Bitcoin. Maybe it's some gold. You know, I don't know. I think they should put it in Bitcoin. The example I use for my own projects is OpenSats, 5-on-C3 charity. We don't take any cut of donations. I volunteer my time to do that. We support open source contributors. Our treasury strategy is quite simple. You give us dollars, we put it in Bitcoin. We're sending out a million dollars worth of Bitcoin a month. We obviously have no business model because we're a fucking charity. So, you know, we're cash flow negative, right? We're just sending out a million dollars a month. And the amount we have in our treasury is double the amount we've ever raised.

1:01:07This is insane. Like, that's just crazy. And so, like, if we were holding cash, we'd probably already be out of cash. We'd have to go out and raise more money. And, I mean, funnily enough, though, the companies that have done that are the ones that are going to start doing treasury plays. I mean, maybe. But the question is, once again, I think... OpenSats Treasury Company coming soon. We'll do the OpenAI model. We'll just pivot to for-profit. We'll pivot to for-profit. We'll take a 49 % investment from Microsoft. Only invest in closed-source software. I'll give myself 20 % equity. Fuck Sam Altman.

1:01:44Oh, I want to talk about Sam Altman. Once again, I think... Look, for better or for worse, we're calling them treasury plays, but it's important to be... you know, you got to distinguish. What Bitcoin did is a treasury company. But it's not, right, it's not, because now treasury companies mean leverage Bitcoin equities. Yeah. So what Bitcoin did is a profitable private business that saves free cash flows in Bitcoin. And like, well, maybe we're going to need to come up with a better, like, one-liner term, but it's not similar scientific or... They don't exist anymore. I don't think the merger is actually finalized yet.

1:02:21I don't really understand how public markets work. Yeah, not financial advice. I think people are waking up to that. And I think the most clear sign of that is the JP Morgan stuff that came out recently with their debasement trade. Yeah. I mean, it's not trade. That's the thing I think they're missing is that a trade assumes you're going to go back to cash at some point. But I do wonder if that's the kind of thing that tips Apple, Microsoft, those big profitable companies over the edge is that like this isn't just us niche weirdos on the internet shouting about Bitcoin being a hedge against debasement.

1:02:54It's JP Morgan saying that. Yeah, like Larry Fink. Yeah. Like BlackRock. I think their most successful ETF ever is the Bitcoin ETF. Yeah. I mean, by the way, just to go back to this, like in a better situation, OpenSats would be like sustainable without me having to go out and raise donations for free. Like I don't get paid to do that. And it sucks. It sucks constantly going out to raise money. So like, I think the way this all scales, I think the way freedom scales is sustainable, profitable businesses that build on top of open source software and open protocols. Because anyone who's ever tried to raise for charitable causes knows it's just a forever grind.

1:03:31Like Bitcoin helps. It makes operations easier. It makes our treasury increase in value rather than decrease in value over time and spreads it out more and takes less pressure off of us. But it still doesn't solve the underlying problem. where at the end of the day, it's a finite amount of money, and you have to just constantly look for donors to try and do it. So open source, open protocols, they compound beautifully. They're viral in nature. They're hard to control. You don't have a company you can pressure or an individual you can pressure. Governments have a really hard time stopping them.

1:04:06But then at the end of the day, how do they get scaled out? They get scaled out by private companies that have sustainable business models um it's a flywheel and historically the way they have been is with private businesses that have predatory business models so but if those private businesses didn't have predatory business models then you kind of get the best of both worlds you'd get the scale that you see with something like gmail um but you wouldn't see the predatory nature of their business model so you'd have something maybe like a proton mail or something where they don't scan your email but they charge you subscription fees and maybe it's a less profitable business but it's still profitable and not taking donations to sustain itself you know all the fights that are happening in bitcoin at the moment with i mean treasury company is an obvious one yeah not score stuff i know i know you're scared to talk about it i'm not scared to talk about it i just talk about it all the fucking time um we don't have to talk about it but people just get mad like like people are very emotional by the time this comes out when is this coming out Wednesday next week probably like core v30 will probably already released the world is not going to end I I think the discourse around it has gotten

1:05:25very negative yeah it's degraded to an insane level I think it doesn't help anybody 100 % I think ultimately, Bitcoin is a generational project. I think most participants believe that Bitcoin is the best money and we need to maintain it as such. I think most participants believe that we need to be very conservative with how it's developed on the protocol level. Specifically, we can move a little bit faster on apps and stuff. But even with apps, like someone's got their life savings in your app, like don't fuck it up. I want to even be more explicit there. I think it's not just most people. I think core also are absolutely included in that.

1:06:06But core is also not this. It's not business. And it's also not this homogenous entity. It's a bunch of developers. Now, yes, there's a small subset of maintainers and very active contributors that are friendly with each other, and there is an in-group there. But the answer here is what I would like to see is node operators have more options. This is something that we've been intimately focused on, OpenSats. OpenSats has funded over 320 open source contributors with Bitcoin. A very small subset of those are core contributors. Everyone we funded has been listed on our website. We try and act with more transparency than 99 % of charities in the world, not just in Bitcoin.

1:06:58and we're open to funding alternative implementations give people more choice and I think that's better for core too like I think if you're one of the few core maintainers like it'd be good on your soul and stress and whatnot if there was another team that was maintaining a compatible alternative when you say an alternative you're not talking about not you're talking about a brand new implementation I mean look I think knots could be one of those alternatives if I'm going to get so much shit it's just so vitriolic if Luke was more open to making it not just a Luke project. It's very much just a Luke project.

1:07:39I will say that from the very beginning I said to Luke, I've said this publicly for about a year now if Knott's wants to add more maintainers and more review, they can apply to OpenSats. For full disclosure, I think we've gotten two applications in the last year and they were quite they were just not up to our standards yeah and it was not because it's not some conspiracy it wasn't because of knots yeah right like i would like to see 20 i would like to see 100 i would like to see a whole nother implementation um i would like to see libitcoin be funded we just recently we've been funding floresta which is like a utrexo based um implementation and they're trying to add the same API bindings as Bitcoin Core.

1:08:26So if you're already using Bitcoin Core in your stack, you can easily switch to Floresta. I think there's this weird cancel culture dynamic in digital society now where everyone wants to get everyone fired they disagree with. And in this situation, I guess I'm looked at as the manager. So the Karens on the internet are like, hey Odell like you gotta fire this person or this person actually most of the time they don't even pick people that they want to fire they just say all core devs are commies like okay well all the devs we support are listed like why don't you tell me which ones are commies and then they just go silent I mean we saw this you see this with people in non-Bitcoin circles right it's like they post a picture of someone they're like find him because he says something on the internet it's like a gym teacher in Idaho and then they're like they get the guy fired yeah it's like a crazy dynamic That's the tricky thing, though, where free speech doesn't mean free speech without consequence.

1:09:25But my point is, this is not Bitcoin specific. Oh, absolutely not. This is a trend we've seen much broader than Bitcoin. Have you seen this? So this happened today. I did that interview with Antoine from court. And someone said, pay attention to the setting. All white background, white t-shirts. These guys are posing as the good guys. White knights, top-notch propaganda. I'm wearing a tan shirt. I'm not in white either. This is the evil episode. But it's like people are going so far as to think I'm picking the color of my t-shirt to appear like I'm a good actor Yeah, like I feel I mean you're definitely a bad actor.

1:09:57So we got that settled and it has nothing to do their t-shirt Fuck you No, I mean, I think it's and look I think It's good that people we want as many people to run nodes as possible I think that's a really good outcome of this I think a lot of people have been scared out of self-custody though, which is a negative outcome of this I don't think the world is falling. You think people have been scared out of self-custody? Yeah, 100%. I've had a lot of people text me like, is Bitcoin about to fail? Or is it going to be a problem if I'm running a node or if I'm holding my own keys? Should I just hold the ETF?

1:10:41And I think there's an appeal to outrage and panic and moral panic and whatnot. and i it's and it's also there's a conflation between individual node policy and consensus rules like if if this was a fight about um like what is and what is not a valid transaction on bitcoin and it was about a soft fork it'd be a little bit different depending on what the actual circumstances were and i will say almost as a policy um open sats just does not fund really soft fork work or hard fork work um encore like part of the part of the really frustrating thing about this is like the straw man argument of like you don't care about bitcoin as money or you want to like change it it's like no most people like agree on both of those things like we need to be very conservative and we intimately care about bitcoin as money yeah um and it feels like a distraction tactic but anyway like i feel like and then i talk about it constantly i've been very transparent about it.

1:11:43And I feel like it comes up all the time. And then people are always like, you never talk about it. It's like, no, I've been talking about it for like a year and a half now. I hear you talk about it on every RHL. Yeah. So that's why I said I didn't want to talk about it. It's something that I talk about all the time. I think it is, you know, it's important how people think about these things. But I think the conversation has got to the point, in my opinion, where it's almost like the people running knots feel like there's kind of core or some elite that are trying to attack Bitcoin. They think that, like they think by me having a conversation with Antoine who works on core.

1:12:18You had a conversation with Samson like right before. A mechanic. But they somehow think that there's like some co-option conspiracy thing going on. And I think a lot of it's organic. I think that some of it is not. Like I post videos and I'll get a comment being like, run knots within a second. Like some of it can't be organic. But I don't know if - I definitely do not think like they're all bots. I think there's like a lot of - Oh, it's definitely not all bots. Don't get me wrong, like 100%. But I think most people involved on both sides of this argument mean well. Agree. And a lot of them have gotten overly emotional about it and have hurt their own sides in a discourse way.

1:12:55I think there's been a lot of quote unquote core supporters that acted aggressively and demeaning to people that didn't understand things. And then heels were dug in and same on the opposite side yeah um and i i do think like everyone is welcome to say what they want to say um the way i the way we run open sats because it's not just me the whole thing is you know by design you need majority board approval for any grant is was that in either direction like we're going to try our best to be immune from social pressure just period that's why we're here We're like the independent funding organization for open source in the world.

1:13:40Like everywhere else is relatively centralized and relatively opaque, even if they mean well. So that's just my promise to everybody. Like that's how it's going to be. So you can keep trying to get me to like cancel people or whatever. And then last but not least, you can like try and cancel me. Just don't really care. Deleted my own Twitter account. My family does not rely on podcast income. I do not need more views. If anything, less views would be better.

1:14:11And I'm personally mission-focused on making Bitcoin as usable as possible as freedom money and as many people using it as possible. That has been my mission for 10 plus years now. It's going to continue to be my mission. And we'll see how it plays out. Yeah. I mean, for me, I don't mind what implementation people want to run. Like that really matters to them. But that's the worst part is like, like that ultimately, like that's where the discussion should have really ended. And I get like, ideologically, I understand the viewpoint as well. Like when I speak to Mechanic, I get it. Like I agree with him in a lot of ways.

1:14:49It's just, I don't know the reality of the situation. I think we'll be proven that Core30 is not the end of Bitcoin. I really don't see that as a likelihood. I think there's been a lot of like uproar about a policy change that I'll be proven right or wrong seems inconsequential in a lot of ways. But I wonder, though, if this infighting is almost just a symptom of us winning. There's nothing else to fight about at this point. I mean, I think there's plenty of other things to fight about. What should we be fighting about instead? I'm not going to start the next fight. Go on, start the next fight.

1:15:26No, I mean, look, I think some of it has been boredom.

1:15:34look i just this is gonna be such a drama inducing go on do it no no i just um i'm so sick of all the the drama i uh look i mean i think bitcoin as freedom money is not a given like i think it's good that most bitcoiners are adversarial i do think in this particular situation, it seems to be a little bit of a like immune response disorder and like we're just attacking each other. And I think some of it is because Bitcoiners that are more technical have become more irrelevant. And I think there's a desire to be relevant in Bitcoin. And I think people across the spectrum and outside of Bitcoin should just check their ego for a little bit and i'm once again i've never claimed to be the humble guy when i say stay humble i'm reminding myself to stay humble but i think there's just a lot of ego involved you think there's a bit of main character syndrome going on everywhere everywhere you look it's main character once again outside of bitcoin too um and i think it's a product of like modern social experience like digital social media there's like a psychosis and that's why i think you know we need to solve that or ideally i would like to see us solve that because i think our kids will grow in a better world because it's just been getting worse and worse like everywhere you look you see it i mean like you see it with like the candace owens charlie kirk nick fuente stuff that's going on right now completely outside of bitcoin they all want it to be about themselves there's always something breaking um there's always this new news tidbit something you got to get in front of the cameras or whatever and a lot of it is just like broken incentives all the way down algorithms and engagement and addiction data surveillance all mixed into one um but yeah and then the last piece i would say on it is i've seen a lot of the anti-core sentiment be that we're concerned about vc capture i agree with that concern high level i think that's absolutely true what vc capture do you specifically the argument they use is Citria raised a bunch of money, specifically Peter Thiel led that raise.

1:17:57They want to do Ethereum-like stuff on Bitcoin. 1031 did not invest in that.

1:18:09Citria specifically, I think even if this policy rule didn't change, they were still going to proceed and they were going to just do it in a worse way for Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure that's what they explicitly said. Yeah. But just the idea of VC capture, the idea of investor capture. And it doesn't have to be just VC, just rich people that are interacting with Bitcoin and want control over Bitcoin. The way you solve that is by having more independent, transparent organizations that are providing ethically aligned funding to developers. It's not trying to defund the devs. If you defund the devs, they're only going to get their funding from those people.

1:18:50Yep. And I say this as someone who has a fund. But there's also, like, there are known bugs in Bitcoin that need fixing. We need devs. And we need maintenance. And this is a generational project. Yep. And we don't really have that many. We have the most eyes on the code of any open source project in existence, really. And it's not enough eyes. It's still not enough eyes. It's like 50 people working call. And the alternative, and people are going to say, like, this is a straw man, blah, blah, blah. It's like, OK, well, Knott's is just basically 100 % funded by a single investor-funded company, which is Ocean.

1:19:22That's the alternative you see. That's what happens if you don't have a bunch of independent funding. So I will just say that I think this is something that OpenSats has diagnosed very early on. It's one of the reasons we exist. It's one of the reasons the volunteers that contribute to their time alongside me do it. and that this is a long process and let's not make overly emotional decisions in the short term because we don't want to deal with drama or whatnot that will instead result in negative knock-on effects in the future because there is a pipeline here you can't just if you alienate a bunch of open source contributors, you can't just immediately bring them back in there's years in the making and the old ones need to train the new ones and you need like...

1:20:11And they could go and earn... Layover. Five times as much money working at Google. Or a treasury company. Yeah. What's your take on like BitVM stuff in general? Like not specifically Citria, but these kind of roll-ups, layer twos that we're going to see start coming to Bitcoin. I think it's mostly a distraction.

1:20:32I'd like... As a Bitcoiner, I haven't really seen... use cases that I would like to see that don't exist, that these things aim to provide. For the users that do want to see some of these things, I don't see why you couldn't just use a Tron or something. Would you not rather just see it on Bitcoin? But why? What are you trying to do on it? But it feels like the argument, this isn't my argument, but the argument you saw a lot was anything useful that happens on Ethereum will eventually be on Bitcoin. Yeah, well, let me use the argument of Tether, because I think Tether is actually probably the most compelling argument.

1:21:11And you don't need BitVM or Citroër or whatever to do that. I mean, you could do it today on Liquid. I know Spark wants to do it with Spark. It's the state chain from LightSpark.

1:21:32If you are connecting to a real-world asset like Tether, you are intimately trusting Tether has the actual treasuries backing it. So the underlying protocol technology that you use to interact with that does not actually change the trust model for how you interact with it. If you're using Tron Tether and Justin's son rugs you Paolo can just send out a tweet and be like we moved your balance to Solana and then you're on Solana. Like that's all it is. So why do we need that on Bitcoin? And if we put it on Bitcoin if you actually want to see users it needs to be cheaper and it has to have better UX.

1:22:12Otherwise they're just going to keep using Tron. And if it's cheaper and has better UX then it's probably also incredibly centralized. So you're not actually even getting a lot of the trust benefits. You're not getting a lot of benefits if any from using it in a Bitcoin quote unquote native way. But I guess the other side of that is let's say you're a massive fan of like covenants. One of these BitVMs can do something that allows that without changing Bitcoin, you can go have unilateral exit. Yeah, but then I think the question is, what is the trust elements there? Well, as long as you have unilateral exit, I'm not saying it's definitely not as good as just having Bitcoin, but it's quite good.

1:22:48Look, I would say that I am personally not interested in changing Bitcoin at a protocol level to facilitate this type of stuff. But it doesn't need to be. Yeah, if it doesn't need to be, then let people build it and we'll see if it's useful or not. we can't stop them anyway um and eventually i will say putting my my funding hat on on the 1031 side specifically i we wouldn't we don't fund that like that's just it's too out there on the risk curve i don't really the business models aren't clear um i think there'll be a load of shit that falls by the way maybe it makes more sense on like an open source non-profit side um but i will say that we haven't really seen many compelling, if any, compelling applications to OpenSats on that front.

1:23:36But I know you think that at some point mempools are going to be full and never empty. I don't know if I believe that anymore. Oh, really? No, I think I still believe that, but it's been hard out here. You were right for a long time. And then I wasn't. Yeah. But if we did get to that point where it was really hard to get into the next block or anything, really, you're going to need something else. And there's obviously... But I think there's an argument that there's an argument that in that environment and once again i look i think um the only thing more scarce than our time than bitcoin is our time and one of the ways i protect my time in bitcoin is i try not to waste too much time on like white papers and theoretical stuff until there's like actually a working product in my hand so i will admit

1:24:32that like i haven't spent a lot of time like diving deep exactly into like bitvm and some of these other proposals on how to do this type of stuff because i want to see it and use it yeah and i guess there is the risk that if they could get priced out of those transactions too but that's my that's where i was going with this is my basic understanding is that it would get quite expensive for those setups without a soft fork like the way that they're like kind of like hacking it in without doing a change to Bitcoin at the consensus level gets quite expensive. And then once again, you're better off using Tron.

1:25:03Yeah. Like if Tron is like 100x cheaper, they're going to use Tron instead. Matt Odell says use Tron. No, I'm not saying that. Honestly, I think people should just stay on when success. Like once again, I wonder like what the use case is. Like I first of all, I've never used Tether. I understand that there's places in the world that people want access to dollars. They can't get access to dollars to the traditional financial rails and they want to use Tether. if you do just understand the trust dynamic i would say that the trust dynamic in like chase bank or something um it's kind of similar if anything maybe chase is more likely to freeze your funds than tether is but like in terms of like defy stuff and everything like i think that's completely overrated like i think if you want dollars in your bank account from a loan then you pick a trusted counterparty and you like get the dollars in your bank account because of course there's going to be trust relying on it and most of the times when people say like oh this is like a trustless loan or whatever it's like not and it just adds a bunch of complexity that you can get rugged by the complexity as well um so you're just over complicating it when it eventually you're gonna have you're you're dealing with a centralized party anyway yeah um so like i question like what the use cases are like is the use case like sushi swap or something like where you're like trading like meme coins with each other natively on bitcoin like who the gives a yeah no one cares SushiSwap name in a long time.

1:26:23So I was speaking to Luke Groman this morning. Nice. It was a fucking great conversation. Did you ask him what kind of node he runs? I don't want to speak for Luke, but I doubt he's running a node. Fair enough. Nor should he have to, I guess, if he doesn't want to. It's his prerogative. But he was saying something super interesting. So he's been talking about this idea that the Middle East is shifting away from the petrodollar after Israel bombed Qatar. Yeah. and that obviously has a massive impact on the US treasury market. Right. And I do wonder if Tether ends up being like the geopolitical play that the US makes in terms of trying to back up their debt.

1:27:05Yeah, I mean, they already kind of are. Do you think this would be the weirdest world possible? We're in a simulation, but could Tether end up being the reserve currency of the world? Even if it's for an interim period? i mean no probably not i mean i don't even think tether thinks actions speak louder than words right so like what is tether doing tether is uh buying treasuries to back up their stable coin their usd token inherently unstable it's just going down and purchasing power over time um they're buying treasuries to back their usd token they're taking the the interest off of that the yield off of that and that's their cash flow that's their business they're providing the usd tokens to users the usd tokens aren't providing the users with the interest so then they're making you know 20 plus billion a year it's like 70 employees just pure profit and then what are they doing with it they are buying bitcoin and gold right so they're making a calculated very clear investment strategy that they think that they're in basically a transitory business and then ultimately we will move to either bitcoin standard or gold standard or some mix of the both maybe mix of the both is most likely um so that's what they clearly i think is what they think is going to happen um i think the dollar is in such a bad position that there's just no way out besides just inflation and irrelevance um i think tether slows it down but it doesn't really matter how many treasuries they buy like they're so far away from being able to like reverse the pain um so then the question becomes like do they switch to do they release a new so they have i forget what they call it but they have tether gold um which is goldback tether so they switch to that um do they have like a different tether that's a basket of bitcoin and gold and stuff and then that becomes the reserve currency i think all of these are just like

1:29:28complicated like rube goldberg machines that like don't need to exist when bitcoin exists And so I think what happens is, I mean, like Luke obviously spends more time on this type of stuff than I do. But we've already watched the move away from the dollar. I would pinpoint like a critical inflection point was when we weaponized the financial system using sanctions against Russia and their treasuries. So this trend has been accelerating. It has been happening for a while and it has been accelerating. And so what I think happens is the countries in the non-U.S. sphere of influence or countries that just in general are losing trust in the U.S.

1:30:11Are we recording? I tried to do that without you noticing.

1:30:18We'll move to a non-U.S. method of trade. What does that look like? Maybe it's gold. Maybe it's some kind of bricks currency, like just a separate reserve currency that's managed by all of them together. Maybe China's the main leader of it. But in either situation, whether it's a multi-country fiat competitor or gold, or a mixture of both, where gold backs a multi-currency fiat competitor, it requires trust. And so what I think happens is maybe they first move to something that requires trust. and once again that could be managed by tether maybe it's not managed by tether it doesn't really matter that's just a a footnote something that requires trust and then trust breaks down and then bitcoin stands as the only way to interchange globally without trust right like can can can long term china and russia trust each other can china and brazil trust each other like no i don't think so can india and china trust each other i don't think so and even if they're settling in gold that requires a lot of trust because you're basically like if you want to settle physically you're just flying fucking planes of gold everywhere um bitcoin is strictly superior to that so i think in a world where the u.s currency continues to erode in faith value people are going to look for an option that doesn't require trust and that option is bitcoin And so there might be a transitory period where we move to something in between, but I don't think it'll be very long just because Bitcoin exists.

1:31:57If Bitcoin didn't exist, maybe it would be longer. It's funny. You love the mandibles. American Hodel always - I was just really protecting myself. Are you trying to say it? No, I was trying not to say it. Hodel always reminds me that he's the person that told you about mandibles. Yeah, on my show, on Robert O 'Rica. Oh, was it? It was on TFTC, but yeah, it was me, him, and Marty. it was like three hours into a very drunk episode I actually listened to that episode back probably like a year ago it was a good one but in that and Alex Gladstein recommended it to me too to be fair Hoddle recommended it first and then Alex recommended it second I was like okay if they both recommend it I should read it and now you've become the Mandibles Influencer I mean look I think it's not like the best book but it's an easy read and I do think the US is going through an increasingly inflationary environment.

1:32:45It's pretty obvious if you have eyes. And she just kind of spells it out for you. And then after that, but I think it won't be as bad as what's in the book because people will have the option for Bitcoin. Like what people don't realize is when Argentina goes through hyperinflation, it's really bad for the people. But the fact that they can escape to the dollar makes it less bad. In a world without Bitcoin, if the US went through an inflationary period hyperinflation and they didn't have anywhere to escape to it'd be really really bad but if you have Bitcoin to escape to it'd still be bad but it lessens the pain and it gives you a path forward but in that book a stable way to move forward in that book it's basically about the US going through hyperinflation and they have a Bancor which is essentially bricks yeah and Bitcoin fails in the book yeah at the end of the book spoiler alert turn this off now if you've not read it.

1:33:42You should go and read it. But the last page is basically saying, and then the increased tax, and everything kind of started again. Do you think if we do go through something Mandibles-esque, that Bitcoin surviving and thriving in that can change the story? Yeah, 100%. I would implore people to read the book, and then they should go listen to my Still at Dispatch with Lionel Shriver, the author, where we talk about this stuff. and i was like very soft touch on bitcoin with her it was like only at the end um but first of all she deserves some leniency because when was the one of the book come out you're the mandibles influencer i think the book came out um i'm on airplane mode i'm gonna say the book came out in like 2015 so she was writing it in like 2013 or something um so like i mean if you're a casual observer like it's almost logical to assume that bitcoin was going to fail at that point um did you look it 2016 it came out yeah so she was like writing in 2014 2015 2015 we fell from we were in high of a thousand in 2013 we fell all the way to like 150 ish in 2015.

1:34:58if you're a casual observer like of course bitcoin's dead by like whenever the book's set like 2032 or 2035 or whatever um so like i don't falter for that and actually it's kind of cool that she even was aware of it enough to like just it was in passing she's like oh bitcoin failed um but yes i do think bitcoin changes that dynamic like she had first of all in it she has gold confiscation which i think will likely happen in this type of situation much harder to confiscate bitcoin bitcoin confiscation will probably also happen but it's just much more difficult to confiscate Bitcoin, period. Strictly better than gold in that situation.

1:35:34You want to cross a border with gold? What are you going to do? It's very, very difficult. Bitcoin is super easy.

1:35:43So Bitcoin provides this base, this escape that people have. Second of all, it really increases the potency of jurisdictional arbitrage and competition because states that are less predatory to their residents will naturally encourage more bitcoin wealth to move into them

1:36:08and i think in that type of failure mode right like i think the fiat currency experiment is actually quite young in the course of human history and yes like if you don't think something like bitcoin will succeed then we probably will just repeat another fiat cycle or maybe we switch to gold you know but then gold has its own issues which results in us going back to fiat eventually but with bitcoin there's a different path will there be taxes yeah of course there'll probably still be taxes um but uh i think in a world where people have more agency and control over their own money that relationship between governments and taxation and whatnot will be ideally less predatory because it'll be more competitive and the last thing i would add is the mandibles is mostly focused on new york um i think in general like in a societal degradation collapse type of scenario a hyperinflation type of scenario scenario where trust and institutions break down like dense population centers are just going to strictly do worse wherever you are So it's important to realize that that's from where the lens is.

1:37:23And we have no idea in that scenario what's going on in Tennessee, for instance, or the American West. When I was at your place earlier this year, one of the things we were talking about before we did the show was the idea that what if we're wrong and what if gold was always the play? Yeah. Do you think that's likely?

1:37:50um non-zero chance probably yeah i mean i i don't i own some gold jewelry you're wearing it yeah this is madex.art if you want to pick up there's an there's an ad nav on madex stuff the bitcoin or jewelry probably will not outperform bitcoin but it's cool um yeah i uh i mean like gold has been ripping I think there's two ways to look at it. First of all, gold is Lindy.

1:38:22The market buying gold is showing that there's obviously demand for an independent store of value asset that is not sovereign controlled, which is like the Bitcoin value prop, right? Digital gold. One of the most well-known Bitcoin value props. So as a Bitcoiner, that's a good sign. directionally correct. The other piece is like market cap wise, it's pretty crazy how much, how big of a move it was. It's having like one Bitcoin market cap every week at the moment. Yeah, exactly. So like people that think like Bitcoin can't go from like 120K to like 250K in a matter of a week or so are like just objectively wrong based on that gold depreciation.

1:39:10But yeah, I mean, look, I'm humble enough to not rule that out. Who knows? Obviously, actions speak louder than words. If I thought that was the most likely case, I would just sell all my Bitcoin for gold. I haven't done that.

1:39:26But yeah, that also wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Financially, it would suck, especially in the short and medium term. Second of all, I don't know how employable I would be. You can't be a gold influencer. I'd have to work on a construction crew or something. Because my entire career, professional career, has been Bitcoin-focused. So that would be embarrassing, but we'd make it work. But it wouldn't be the... A world on the gold standard is way better than a world on the fiat standard. 100%. Just strictly for my kids. But I think Bitcoin is superior in every way, and I think the market will figure it out eventually.

1:40:02That's just one of those... I call it my 2 a.m. drinking with a Bitcoin buddy. at 2 a.m. and you just... What if I'm wrong? Yeah, what if we're wrong? What if it's gold? It's like you're directionally correct, but wrong. But I think that'll probably be the other way. Although I think gold people will be fine. I think there's a world where just hard money as a whole wins out. Yeah, I mean, I think the gold devaluation into Bitcoin is slower. Yeah. Like gold isn't gonna be like removed from society overnight. Right. There's always, there's, there's a, there's a value there in just the fact that it's thousands of years old as a monetary asset.

1:40:44I, um, I do, the conversation that I've been thinking about a lot lately is,

1:40:53I guess just to flip the script is, uh, top level user adoption of Bitcoin.

1:41:05it kind of feels like it's stalled a little bit like of real Bitcoin and I mean I don't even know what the question is what do you mean top level adoption though is that people buying Bitcoin or people using Bitcoin how many people do you think own 10 million sats worth of Bitcoin in self-custody. So that's$12 ,000. I've thought about this from how many people own one Bitcoin. That number is really low. That's a tiny bucket number. So this is where... This is a more important number than... Bitcoin is not just for people that have more than$120 ,000 in savings. You can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin.

1:41:52You'll all have more than$120 ,000 in savings if you wait long enough. I don't know. I think this is where... I love the stuff that Troy Cross does in terms of those surveys. I think it's interesting. I think Ella Huff's done some cool stuff with Cornell in terms of like collecting data. That was a cool episode you guys did. But I think this is the area where the numbers are just way off. I think it's way lower. It's way lower. So I was actually talking to Checkmate about this privately, not on the show. So he has like a chart I'll put up on the screen of people who, not right now, on the video.

1:42:24Thank you. of people who own more than, I think it's maybe point, maybe it's 10 million sats. Is it addresses or? Addresses, yeah. So this is where it gets really hard. And I think it's like - People have more than one address. There's like 25 million addresses that hold more than that. And so if you had to try and - So that's the, that's - That's the ceiling. But in reality, I would guess - But that's not even the upper bound because someone might own 10 addresses that have a million sats in them. Correct. So it's actually not even the upper bound. I kind of want to pull this. I won't pull it.

1:42:57But it is probably less than that. I would guess maybe three to five million people. Yeah. I mean, it's mostly a gut thing because you're ultimately making guesses. What do you think? Yeah. I think over one Bitcoin is probably less than 200 ,000 people. Like 100 to 200 ,000 people. In a single address? No, not in a single address. It's just self-custody. Okay. Self-custody, one Bitcoin. 100 ,000 to 200 ,000 people. Hopefully, they're not holding it in one address. You should be using multiple addresses. It's just better practice. Most modern wallets for years have defaulted to that. So we should assume most people are doing that.

1:43:3910 million sats, self-custody to$12 ,000 at the time of this recording. Yeah, like 5 to 10 million people. and so when we go back to our earlier conversation about what does success look like like i feel like that's the number to look at because first of all holding is using you're using it as a savings mechanism you're going to eventually spend it at some point otherwise you can't realize the value you need both spending and holding they're both using Bitcoin. That's actually a quantifiable metric, an objective metric. 1 % of the population would be 100 million people. So if we're counting that as a user is someone that holds at least$12 ,000 worth of Bitcoin and ultimately spends it at some point in the future, um if we want to get to five percent we have to hit what 500 million so we need we need a 100x growth just to hit five percent if that original assumption is correct and so i would just say to people it's like this is a long grind this is a century project right like this this is something we say internally at 1031 is something we definitely believe at open sats it's like we're building for the next century yeah you need to it's a long long grind there are less users out there than you think there are um and that number will be way smaller now we need to grow that pie we definitely need to grow that pie but that number will be smaller now than it would have been if we hadn't had etfs and treasury companies and things like that yeah i mean i think there's two different dynamics there right i think the etfs definitely increase the purchasing power bitcoin 100 um i think the treasury companies do as well um and i think the purchasing power of bitcoin has been the largest when bitcoin price goes up it's the largest driver of new user growth right so um it's hard to argue that's a net negative I think it definitely, in individual cases, has slowed down retail coming into actual self-custody Bitcoin.

1:46:03I think if someone gets wrecked on a treasury company in Fidelity, their transition to move into self-custody Bitcoin is actually much more difficult than if they got wrecked on ETH. If they got wrecked on ETH and they're in Ledger or Coinbase, they can just press the swap button and go into Bitcoin. Fidelity, they have to withdraw it and do it or whatever. the other piece here is that ETFs I wouldn't I mean competitively I know they want to offer in-kind withdrawals where you can just withdraw Bitcoin from the ETF without a tax hit didn't BlackRock announce that? they would love to do it they just haven't yet oh I thought they announced it recently they announced they want to I don't think any users are doing it right now are able to do it they have it in Australia so in that case that actually would directly provide a path to people but like i think that's the number we want to grow and i think it's important for us to be realistic about where we currently are and i think the way you accelerate that i think something like bitcoin that has this natural network effect growth growth engine in the purchasing price increase is if like we do basically nothing we'll probably still get global adoption at some point in the future just because like right now even if there's only 10 million of us and we're all stacking we're going to drive that price there's not that much Bitcoin out there we're still going to drive the price up and as we drive the price up more Bitcoiners will come in so it's not like I'm not like coming at it from like like a Ponzi economics kind of point of view where it's like oh we need more new money into the system we want new money in the system because we want more people to have Bitcoin Yeah.

1:47:49But so what I'm saying is like, I think it's going to happen regardless, but I would like to accelerate it. I think life is short. I don't want my kids to be like seven years old by the time they're able to like really take advantage of like a beautiful Bitcoin global economy that they can like spend and save without permission on whatever they want to do. And the best way to accelerate is to pour money and support into the system, whether that's on the for profit side or whether that's on the nonprofit side, because we need both we need foundational open source software and open protocols and then we need private profitable ethical aligned businesses that scale those out even further in a sustainable way um and that's what i'm that's my that is what i've been mission focused on doing and then i have the two tangential pieces which is bitcoin park in the podcast for education and bitcoin policy institute to keep us out of the gulags.

1:48:45And that is my playbook. It's open out there for the world. That's how I'm thinking about things. But we need to accelerate. Time is of the essence. It's not an emergency, but sooner would be better. I love it. Bitcoin's winning. We just need to win a little bit harder. Let's win faster. I love it, man. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me. Should we go and drink some beers? Thanks for coming back to Nashville. Of course, man. I love it here. Cheers. Cheers.

1:49:14Thank you.