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Speaker 1: What's happening in Russia right now is an equally vibrant

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Speaker 1: conversation about the role of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and they're

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Speaker 1: allowing high net worth individuals to buy bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

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Speaker 1: The Central Bank and the Ministry Finance are coming together

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Speaker 1: to launch in exchange.

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Speaker 2: Do you think that this reshaping of the monetary order

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Speaker 2: pushes bitcoin up into the mainstream.

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Speaker 1: Everybody comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to

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Speaker 1: adopt bitcloin for its benefits. There's a lot for the America.

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Speaker 1: It's a gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right. Bitcoin

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Speaker 1: is a neutral money, it's an a political money that's grassroots.

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Speaker 1: It's happening globally. Everyone's adopting it across the world. And

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Speaker 1: a tale of the bitcoin network, I think, is that

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Speaker 1: it's grown so robust. Thus, you know, it can be

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Speaker 1: considered a real neutral money within the context of our

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Speaker 1: nation states.

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Speaker 2: Just because you own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or

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Speaker 2: the US government doesn't give you control over the network.

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Speaker 1: These ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot

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Speaker 1: of power to define what bitcoin is at the software level.

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Speaker 2: All right, Pete, We're going to just jump right into

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Speaker 2: the heat right here. The hottest topic in the world

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Speaker 2: right now is is Trump the Trump administration trying to

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Speaker 2: pull off this massive reset using tariffs as a tool

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Speaker 2: to reset the global monetary order. Now, throughout history, we've

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Speaker 2: seen the monitary order switch many times, and even it

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Speaker 2: seems to happen every couple decades. Do you think that

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Speaker 2: this reshaping of the monetary order pushes bitcoin up into

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Speaker 2: the mainstream?

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Speaker 1: Well, Mark, thanks for having me here. Always happy to

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Speaker 1: be on this on the program. I think what you're

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Speaker 1: seeing from the Trump administration, you know, really is an

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Speaker 1: effort to use bitcoin for its own advantages. Right. Everybody

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Speaker 1: comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to adopt

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Speaker 1: bitcoin for its benefits. But yeah, there's a lot for

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Speaker 1: the America to gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right.

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Speaker 1: You've seen bo Hin's administration officials come out and they've said,

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Speaker 1: you know, hey, we have thousands of bitcoin, hundreds maybe

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Speaker 1: even hundreds of thousands of bitcoin that we sold for

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Speaker 1: you know, pennies on the dollar, you know, and that

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Speaker 1: started the gears of you know, what does it mean? Right?

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Speaker 1: And I think they did the investigation, you know, people

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Speaker 1: got involved in the campaign and did the education and

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Speaker 1: the education was you know, bitcoin is a neutral money,

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Speaker 1: it's an a political money, that's grassroots. It's happening globally.

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Speaker 1: Everyone's adopting it across the world. And I think from

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Speaker 1: that education process, you know, you've got administrative action very quickly,

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Speaker 1: strategic bitcoin reserve now, you know, an assessment of the

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Speaker 1: national stockpile to see how much is in store. But

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Speaker 1: you know, also on the stable coin front, right there's

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Speaker 1: there's an interest from the administration to figure out, you know,

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Speaker 1: if we are going to move to a global neutral

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Speaker 1: monetary system, if that is the end result of the

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of financial war that we have ongoing

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Speaker 1: right now, where you know, the different superpowers the world

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Speaker 1: have politicized their financial systems. If bitcoin is the end

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Speaker 1: result of that. Well, there's also the intermediate period, right

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Speaker 1: where maybe the US dollar can take advantage of some

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Speaker 1: of these rails to become more powerful in emerging markets.

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Speaker 1: I think they're really savvy to that. I think you're

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Speaker 1: going to see it. And with the Genius Act and

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Speaker 1: the Market Structure Bill, I think that's why that's at

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Speaker 1: the top of the administration's list.

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Speaker 2: That Genius Act is actually something really important. I want

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Speaker 2: to come back to that in a second. But basically

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Speaker 2: it's sort of like we all sort of have this

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Speaker 2: recency bias and we just kind of go along with

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Speaker 2: the flow. But then in times of disruption, you start

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Speaker 2: thinking about everything. Right, so somebody dies, You're like, oh, shoot, what.

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Speaker 3: About my own life? What am I doing?

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Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden you have this massive

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Speaker 2: disruption in the global monetary system to the point that

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Speaker 2: you brought up maybe seeing some of the weaponization.

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Speaker 3: That's happened around this.

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Speaker 2: Then you have the tariffs, and then maybe you know,

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Speaker 2: Trump is sort of pushing a narrative where he doesn't

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Speaker 2: want all this foreign investment into our markets. And then

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Speaker 2: so where do we store our money and where do

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Speaker 2: we use as payments? And so then it seems to like, well,

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Speaker 2: let's take another look at bitcoin. It sort of starts

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Speaker 2: percolating up towards the top again, so weird.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know this is happening globally, right, So something

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Speaker 1: that maybe slipped off the radar of most bitcoiners is

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Speaker 1: what's happening in Russia right now. As an equally vibrant

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Speaker 1: conversation about the role of bitcoinning cryptocurrencies, but from a

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Speaker 1: much different lens, right, Russia has really didn't cut off

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Speaker 1: from the global financial system, has had to route around that,

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Speaker 1: and from that you've seen a tremendous grassroots adoption, you

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Speaker 1: know among the populace, you know, in terms of you know,

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Speaker 1: using stable coins and bitcoin to do cross border trading.

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Speaker 1: Even denominating oil trades you know, in bitcoin is common

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Speaker 1: there according to reporting. So you know, they've recently come

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Speaker 1: out and they're allowing high net worth individuals to buy

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Speaker 1: bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The Central Bank and the Ministry of

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Speaker 1: Finance are coming together to launch in exchange, but they're

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Speaker 1: really trying to keep a lid on it, right. They

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Speaker 1: want to kind of maintain their own financial system. They

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Speaker 1: want to prevent the capital flight. They have the Bricks

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Speaker 1: Union with China to take you know, to take care

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Speaker 1: of Obviously, China still skeptical, It has a ban on

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Speaker 1: bitcoin and it really is not leaning into that. So

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Speaker 1: you know, this is happening globally, right the Trump administration reacting.

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Speaker 1: But even if you want to lose another algory with Russia,

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Speaker 1: this is another example of you know what you're talking about,

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Speaker 1: the historical weaponization of financial system. You know, this is

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Speaker 1: just the current state of the world that we have, right,

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Speaker 1: We've had these kind of payment networks that have been

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Speaker 1: based on databases that have been geolocalized by country. We're

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Speaker 1: moving to an international network for monetary transfer, and every

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Speaker 1: country is grappling with it. The US taking their approach,

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Speaker 1: Russia taking their approach, China taking their approach, and it'll

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Speaker 1: be fascinating to watch.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely changing things. I'm curious,

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Speaker 2: you know, yours known for. One of your projects you're

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Speaker 2: known for is obviously your historical sort of account of bitcoin,

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Speaker 2: and it hasn't been around that long. I was invited

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Speaker 2: to Mexico City to speak out a Mastermind, which Peter

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Speaker 2: Schiff owns half of.

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Speaker 3: I don't know why they invited me.

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Speaker 2: He wasn't happy to hear me talk about bitcoin, and

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Speaker 2: we got into these debates and we had to go

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Speaker 2: out in the hallway and talk about it, and it

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Speaker 2: all seemed to boil down to well, it's only been

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Speaker 2: around fifteen years, and I'm like, okay, okay, you got

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Speaker 2: me there, right, But in those fifteen years, a lot's happened,

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Speaker 2: and we seem to have like these epochs right where

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Speaker 2: like bitcoin has these big moves, and I'm just curious

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Speaker 2: when you look at like some of these big moves

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Speaker 2: and maybe the catalyst for those some of these big things. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: the first block was inscribed about the bailout of two

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Speaker 2: thousand and eight. Do you see like what's going on

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Speaker 2: now today being another one of these like defied global

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Speaker 2: moves into this next epoch.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I've appreciated you calling on my work there,

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Speaker 1: but people who can go on my Twitter account at

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Speaker 1: Pete Underscore Rizzo Underscore, you'll find some great accounting of

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Speaker 1: kind of the legendary people and figures in bitcoin. But

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Speaker 1: essentially kind of bringing it back to your question again,

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Speaker 1: which I think was about can you remind me of

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Speaker 1: your question again?

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Speaker 2: Well, I was just saying throughout the fifteen years, we

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Speaker 2: see these epochs where bitcoin has these big moves, and

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Speaker 2: a lot of it's around some of some global events

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Speaker 2: that may happen. Obviously, the first inscription was about the

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Speaker 2: two thousand and eight global event global and what if

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Speaker 2: what's going on right now globally might be like this

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Speaker 2: another historical moment where it hits this next epoch.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I very much think that we're exiting

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Speaker 1: kind of the early stage of bitcoin, right, So you

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Speaker 1: think about these phases, these for year market cycles. I know,

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Speaker 1: this is something that you discuss a lot, and you know,

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Speaker 1: talk about the market structure. But essentially, you know, I

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Speaker 1: think the early wars and Bitcoin and the early drama

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Speaker 1: was mostly on the technology side. Right. Bitcoin's a network.

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Speaker 1: It's powered by people who are running computers running software

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Speaker 1: in the own homes, and this technology had to spread

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Speaker 1: around the globe, right, so essentially going from one person

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Speaker 1: to Toshi Nakamoto, to two people to more people running

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Speaker 1: this technology around the world. And of course these people,

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Speaker 1: you know, brought their own ideologies together and they had

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Speaker 1: to come together and create and foster this network and

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Speaker 1: make sure it grew. But really, I can think the

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Speaker 1: early drama of bitcoin is is the technical side, right?

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Speaker 1: How should this be changed? Is it perfected? Are there

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Speaker 1: other alternative designs of the Sotoshi Nakamoto bitcoin system that

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Speaker 1: should be tried and tested. I really see us as

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Speaker 1: kind of closing the book on that era now, especially

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Speaker 1: with what's happening with Trump and Washington and just the

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Speaker 1: embraced by nation states as well as the you know,

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Speaker 1: I think ideological kind of collapse that that's happening in Ethereum,

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Speaker 1: which has historically been kind of the number two cryptocurrency,

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Speaker 1: and this is how to shock wave of across the

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Speaker 1: crypto ecosystem, where you have developers who've kind of been

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Speaker 1: you know, building that, you know, and kind of investing

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Speaker 1: their whole life and work energy. In some cases, you know,

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Speaker 1: people a decade of their lives spent and kind of build,

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Speaker 1: holding on startups, working on problems, kind of thinking that

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Speaker 1: some of these alternative cryptocurrencies would potentially be viable. Now

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Speaker 1: kind of seeing e theoryum kind of going through you know,

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Speaker 1: it's been four or five years since an all time high,

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Speaker 1: it's down sixty percent, seventy percent in bitcoin terms, and

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Speaker 1: now they have to kind of redirect their personal life energy. Right,

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Speaker 1: So I very much see it as as the technology

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Speaker 1: story of bitcoin. Obviously there's going to be maybe a

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Speaker 1: need to kind of tweak and improve bitcoin, and they're

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Speaker 1: you know, we're never going to get away from the

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Speaker 1: fact that bitcoin is a software, right for the first

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Speaker 1: time in history money is software. But essentially, you know,

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Speaker 1: the the grappling with that of the technological war kind

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Speaker 1: of level I think is over, right, I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's pretty clear that bitcoin is the big winner. I

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Speaker 1: think the other cryptocurrencies are adjusting to that now. I

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Speaker 1: think we are moving into the geopolitical phase, right where

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Speaker 1: what does it mean for bitcoin to really go up,

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Speaker 1: you know, or be sort of you know, the counterpoint

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Speaker 1: some of these East West, China, US kind of larger

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Speaker 1: geopolitical events. Right Bitcoin is scaling up into that conversation.

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Speaker 1: We're seeing the other technologies sort of fade away. So

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Speaker 1: you know, you can follow my work through those threads,

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Speaker 1: you'll find a lot of the people and figures who

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Speaker 1: contributed to that movement. I think what you saw at

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Speaker 1: the end of that you know, ten to fifteen year

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Speaker 1: period is a really hardening a bitcoin as a technology

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Speaker 1: and in our understanding of bitcoin, right A bitcoin was

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Speaker 1: a very new phenomenon. Software had never been money. Money

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Speaker 1: was mostly you know, things we dug up on the ground,

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Speaker 1: a piece of paper, trust distributed trust arrangements. Bitcoin has

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Speaker 1: changed all that, so a while to grapple with that

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Speaker 1: and figure out what it was and really kind of

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Speaker 1: harden that. I think that period is mostly passing over,

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Speaker 1: and that's why you're seeing you know, corporate adoption, government adoption.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's only so much we can excavate, and

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, the good news is this bitcoin

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Speaker 1: is moving forward and the world is embracing it.

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Speaker 2: So you talked you touched on two different evolutions in

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Speaker 2: bitcoin there that I want to dig into, sort of

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Speaker 2: the monetary evolution you talked about, you know, digging up

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Speaker 2: money up out of the ground. There's been this monetary evolution,

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Speaker 2: But you also talked about this technological evolution where really

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Speaker 2: we kind of are leaving this technical age and now

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Speaker 2: maybe going into more of this sovereign age. So I

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Speaker 2: want to talk about both of those evolutions, but just

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Speaker 2: just to kind of put a pin in the question

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Speaker 2: that i'd asked, So where you see bitcoin really have

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Speaker 2: maybe moving from you know, ten cents to now, you

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Speaker 2: know whatever, almost one hundred thousand dollars. Again, those were

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Speaker 2: more the benefit of it sort of going through these

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Speaker 2: technological phases, not really being run into as a store

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Speaker 2: of value on a global stage.

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Speaker 3: Yet.

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Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean obviously the technology and the community

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Speaker 1: around the technology is very small. Right, Ultimately bitcoin is

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Speaker 1: a network based money, right, Like that that's the thing

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Speaker 1: that's new here, right, If you think about other financial

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Speaker 1: systems as networks. You know, the US financial system is

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Speaker 1: GEO limited to you know, the United States. That's why

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Speaker 1: we're able to kind of you know, control permission, you know,

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Speaker 1: access to that network. But yeah, the tale of the

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Speaker 1: Bitcoin network, I think is that that it's grown so robust. Thus,

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Speaker 1: you know, it can be considered a real neutral money

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Speaker 1: within the context of you know, nation states. You know,

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Speaker 1: early on in bitcoin's history, you know, when it was

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Speaker 1: really just in some cases, you know, maybe as little

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Speaker 1: as ten or a dozen people kind of running the

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Speaker 1: software in their computers. Yeah, there were scenarios where you know,

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Speaker 1: somebody could have come and rented a data center and

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Speaker 1: overwhelmed the network and undermined the monetary policy or the

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Speaker 1: credibility of it. Right. So, so bitcoin was fragile, right.

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Speaker 1: A lot of the early developers you'll talk to will

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Speaker 1: describe bitcoin as as an experimental work in progress, and

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Speaker 1: there was you know, periods in its history where you know,

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Speaker 1: it could have been undermined by a malicious state actor.

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Speaker 1: That was something that people would have been concerned about.

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Speaker 1: Now for a malicious state actor, you know, to you

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Speaker 1: know undermine bitcoin, I mean you're talking about you know,

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Speaker 1: the sheer amounts of computing power that you would need,

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Speaker 1: you know, for people who don't know, the Bitcoin minor

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Speaker 1: network is you know, orders of magnitude larger than the

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Speaker 1: data centers that back you know, Google search engines. You know,

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Speaker 1: so you're talking about the amount of like raw physical

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Speaker 1: infrastructure that you would need to launch some sort of

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Speaker 1: coordinated campaign against Bitcoin to actually sensor transactions or block

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Speaker 1: payments or things like that. Is you know, on the

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Speaker 1: order of like you would need to you know, command

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Speaker 1: the small country or or you know, somehow you know,

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Speaker 1: secretly acquire you know, millions or maybe hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of expensive mining equipment that that's only kind of special

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Speaker 1: team made it in certain areas. Right, So you're you're

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Speaker 1: you know, Bitcoin is never going to be you know,

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Speaker 1: completely one hundred percent secure. It's just probabilistically, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's so unlikely that Bitcoin would would face an attack

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Speaker 1: of that scale to any but earlier in the past

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Speaker 1: and in Bitcoin's past, it you know, it was true, right,

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Speaker 1: there were days, you know, in two thousand and nine,

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Speaker 1: so Soshi na Komoto would have gotten up and you know,

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Speaker 1: you can look at the transaction history, you know, your

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Speaker 1: own note if you if you look at the blockchain,

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Speaker 1: you can look at the transaction history. I mean, there

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Speaker 1: were some days in August two thousand and nine where

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Speaker 1: you know, there was you know, twenty four bitcoin blocks

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Speaker 1: that were mined and there wasn't a single payment, right,

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Speaker 1: Like nobody was really using the network. Maybe there was

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Speaker 1: a few dozen people mining it. If that, and and

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Speaker 1: and you know, I think it's that maturation, right, right,

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Speaker 1: Bitcoin at that state in two thousand and nine, twenty ten,

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Speaker 1: and it is not geopolitically relevant, right, the US government

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Speaker 1: even if it had wanted to in twenty eleven or

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Speaker 1: twenty ten, when bitcoin was trading for pennies, you know,

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Speaker 1: to do what strategy is doing, or to do what

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Speaker 1: the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve you know has done, right, which

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Speaker 1: is stockpiled bitcoin for for America. Right, if you think

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Speaker 1: about it as in twenty ten or twenty eleven, that

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Speaker 1: would have been inconceivable, right, you would have essentially, you know,

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Speaker 1: if the US government had tried to buy you know,

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Speaker 1: even up you know, put a billion dollars in the network,

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Speaker 1: the network, the whole value of all the bitcoin and

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Speaker 1: the existence was less than a billion dollars, right, So

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Speaker 1: now the liquidity and the wealth within bitcoin and the

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Speaker 1: economic security that it's come from, its from its development

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Speaker 1: and appreciation. These are all kind of the secondary factors

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Speaker 1: that kind of emerge from bitcoin maturing as a technology

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Speaker 1: into something that can coexist potentially as something that counteracts

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Speaker 1: something like the global financial war that we're living in,

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Speaker 1: where you know, China has its financial system and then

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Speaker 1: it's trying to you know, extend its empire through financial

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Speaker 1: rails and the United States is trying to do that

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Speaker 1: as well, and bitcoin as an alternative, right that that

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Speaker 1: is an emergent phenomenon of bitcoin's technical developments and a

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Speaker 1: product of all those years. It isn't something that was

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Speaker 1: you know, innately, you know, a quality of it back then.

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Speaker 1: It's a product of really of all that time and development.

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Speaker 1: As as you were saying, there were the whole fifteen

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Speaker 1: and sixteen years that it's been around.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's talk about the two evolutionary pieces like

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Speaker 2: that you brought up, and I want to get back

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Speaker 2: into which is one sort of the technical side of

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Speaker 2: it and then the monetary side of it, and the

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Speaker 2: two actually.

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Speaker 3: Overlay very well.

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Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, when we were in Abu

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Speaker 2: Dhabi in December at Bitcoin Mina, I gave the closing

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Speaker 2: keynote there, and the closing keynote I gave basically showed

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Speaker 2: a bunch of charts and I overlaid these fifty year

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Speaker 2: technological revolution cycles that repeat, we're on the six to

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Speaker 2: one in the last three hundred years. And then I

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Speaker 2: overlaid the monetary evolution cycle on top of that and

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Speaker 2: showed how they how they lay out, and so I

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Speaker 2: think they're interlinked.

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Speaker 3: And so if we look at the four.

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Speaker 2: Phases of a fifty year cycle, the first phase is

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Speaker 2: the eruption, the big bang, and we don't know what

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Speaker 2: it is, and let's just play around with it. When

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Speaker 2: you go into phase two, it's more of the frenzy,

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Speaker 2: and the frenzy is now where we're hitting the early adopters,

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Speaker 2: and that's really the sovereign and the institutional phase that

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Speaker 2: we're in right now. And then if you overlay that

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Speaker 2: with a monetary evolution, monitary evolution starts as a collectible.

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Speaker 2: All look at this cool rock or feather or seashell

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Speaker 2: a baseball card. Some collectibles do eventually evolve to a

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Speaker 2: store of value, not all of them. And so bitcoin

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Speaker 2: was a collectible. We didn't know which ones it was

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Speaker 2: going to be, to your point, and now it's seeming

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Speaker 2: to in this place of the store value. But let's

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Speaker 2: go back to this technological boom. I started buying bitcoin

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Speaker 2: at twenty fifteen. It was three hundred bucks. After I

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Speaker 2: kind of figured out what it was, I was like,

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Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is how we win.

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Speaker 3: We beat the system.

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Speaker 2: I got to tell the whole world about it and

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Speaker 2: haven't stopped making content since. But I went down the

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Speaker 2: blockchain rabbit hole. I started writing cryptocurrency newsletter and I

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Speaker 2: was publishing, you know, twenty five pages of research every

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Speaker 2: month on a new crypto project. And it took me

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Speaker 2: until about twenty nineteen before I realized, wait a minute, no, no, no,

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Speaker 2: this is all smoke and mirrors. I mean, And so

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Speaker 2: I think to the points you were alluding to, and

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Speaker 2: I want to have you expand on it. It was

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Speaker 2: basically a bunch of experimentation and we were trying different things,

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Speaker 2: and by twenty eighteen it started to be pretty clear

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Speaker 2: who the winner was, but it still wasn't.

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Speaker 3: But every year Bitcoin has just continued.

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Speaker 2: To emerge stronger and stronger, right, I mean, that's kind

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Speaker 2: of have you seen it?

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Speaker 1: Oh, of course, yeah, you know, I do think that

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Speaker 1: your intellectual progression is pretty much the mean, right. I

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Speaker 1: think in twenty seventeen, if people ask, you know, what's

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Speaker 1: my attitude towards the cryptosystem, and you know how well

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Speaker 1: meeting those people are. I think in twenty seventeen it

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Speaker 1: was plausible, you know, that bitcoin was something that was

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Speaker 1: going to be outloaded. Right. That was the whole narrative

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Speaker 1: of the day, kind of pushed by Silicon Valley, is

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Speaker 1: that you know, bitcoin was the model t you know,

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Speaker 1: here comes you know, your corvettes and your Mustangs and

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Speaker 1: then eventually you know you're kind of suburban car. Right.

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Speaker 1: It was this idea that Bickwin was a prototype, something

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Speaker 1: that would be a blueprint for what could be, but

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Speaker 1: that that kind of terrain had to be developed. And

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, you've you've really seen that design

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Speaker 1: space exhausted. Right. So I think I mentioned I'm doing

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Speaker 1: a new podcasts with BlockWorks folks called supply Shop. I

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Speaker 1: recently just had a podcast that isn't out yet, but

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Speaker 1: with Ryan Selkis from Massari, who's somebody who you know

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Speaker 1: would have been my boss at coined ESK when I

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Speaker 1: was an early journalist, you know, and and he went

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Speaker 1: on to build a product called Massari, where you know,

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Speaker 1: the intent was to kind of evaluate all these cryptocurrencies, right,

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Speaker 1: find by which metrics they were different, you know, to

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Speaker 1: give your listeners at home, like a conventional colloquial analogy.

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Speaker 1: It's it's, you know, we found this new world, and

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Speaker 1: we're digging up all this dirt, and you know, we

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Speaker 1: found all these new rocks and minerals and things, and

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Speaker 1: right there was a there was a real intellectual effort

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Speaker 1: to kind of separate them. Right, are is a piece

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Speaker 1: of software, monetary software run by a network of nodes

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Speaker 1: with different consensus. You know, does this give us many

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Speaker 1: types of assets? Are there many types of assets to

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Speaker 1: be discovered here with new qualities? And I think, you know,

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Speaker 1: talking to him, you know he sees the regulatory barriers

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Speaker 1: being the big friction point. But otherwise you know, he'll

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Speaker 1: readily admit and say, you know, over the last ten years,

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Speaker 1: you know, there hasn't really been much discovered. Right, there

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Speaker 1: was a great enthusiasm about what could be in terms

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Speaker 1: of you know, how all these networks could fit together,

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Speaker 1: all these assets. You know what we might discover and

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Speaker 1: that didn't happen, right, or you know, I think we're

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Speaker 1: getting closer to figuring out that that it just didn't happen.

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Speaker 1: And I think that's okay, right, In any technological movement,

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Speaker 1: you see that. You know, if you go to an

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Speaker 1: old airplane museum, you'll know you'll find the right Brothers airplane,

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Speaker 1: but you'll find one hundred other flying machines. You know

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Speaker 1: that you wouldn't want to actually get in, yeah, because

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Speaker 1: they don't fly, right, And I think that yeah, with

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Speaker 1: other cryptocurrencies, I think what we've found really is that,

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Speaker 1: you know, this idea that money competes on features isn't

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Speaker 1: isn't accurate, right, So we've seen all these other cryptocurrencies

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Speaker 1: come with with new feature sets, and then that hasn't

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Speaker 1: given them the competitive moat. I think the decline of

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Speaker 1: ethereum right where you really seen it go down against

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Speaker 1: in bitcoin terms significantly. You know, ethereum was really the

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Speaker 1: big hope, right. It was this idea that you could

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Speaker 1: build an asset that would be useful for applications as

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Speaker 1: a native money for a series of applications, and that

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Speaker 1: that would be enough to kind of power the economy

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Speaker 1: and the asset, and that's really breaking down, right, You're

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Speaker 1: you really are seeing people leave that ecosystem what have

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Speaker 1: been deeply involved with it simply because the price of

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Speaker 1: eth as an asset as as a significantly underperformed bitcoin, right,

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Speaker 1: And so this is the kind of new thing that's

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Speaker 1: happened in the last few years. So if you were

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Speaker 1: to asking me, Okay, why didn't this happen in twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty one, twenty twenty two, Well, during that era, there

432
00:19:38,320 --> 00:19:40,000
Speaker 1: was a tremendous you know again, they were seeing a

433
00:19:40,000 --> 00:19:42,320
Speaker 1: lot of success, right, and NFT's were kind of mainstreaming

434
00:19:42,320 --> 00:19:44,760
Speaker 1: as an application. There was a hope that the centralized

435
00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:48,399
Speaker 1: financial applications would take root. But again, the consumer market

436
00:19:48,400 --> 00:19:50,359
Speaker 1: for that stuff came and went, and the result is

437
00:19:50,359 --> 00:19:53,040
Speaker 1: an asset that's on the decline. And so you know

438
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:54,760
Speaker 1: what you're seeing now as an effort to bring some

439
00:19:54,840 --> 00:19:57,120
Speaker 1: of the you know what they think can be salvaged

440
00:19:57,119 --> 00:19:59,199
Speaker 1: from those kind of designs you know, over to bitcoin.

441
00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:01,600
Speaker 1: Of course, some people have migrated over over to Solana,

442
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:04,679
Speaker 1: which is an even more centralized version of a theoeum, Right,

443
00:20:04,680 --> 00:20:08,360
Speaker 1: So I think you'll see continued experimentation there but yeah,

444
00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:10,479
Speaker 1: you know, I think that you know, it's natural for

445
00:20:10,520 --> 00:20:13,280
Speaker 1: people to, you know, who have a new idea. You know,

446
00:20:14,200 --> 00:20:17,920
Speaker 1: create People are creative, They're naturally you know, when somebody,

447
00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:20,440
Speaker 1: if you came to move an idea, my natural inclination

448
00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:22,040
Speaker 1: mark would be to say, you know, I could probably

449
00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:24,280
Speaker 1: think of a better one. Right, I'll probably spend ten

450
00:20:24,359 --> 00:20:27,800
Speaker 1: twenty other hours trying to, you know, figure out how

451
00:20:27,840 --> 00:20:31,040
Speaker 1: to make a better bitcoin. I had someone as a

452
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:34,199
Speaker 1: guest on the podcast, Scott Stornetta. He's cited in the

453
00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:36,639
Speaker 1: Bitlin white paper, so so she cited three of his

454
00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:39,159
Speaker 1: papers in the white paper. He's kind of credited as

455
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:42,400
Speaker 1: the father of blockchains, right, this idea that you can

456
00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:45,720
Speaker 1: kind of hash data and kind of create a chain

457
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,280
Speaker 1: of events in the way that the bitcoin blockchain works.

458
00:20:48,280 --> 00:20:50,480
Speaker 1: You know that that was his core invention. And he

459
00:20:50,600 --> 00:20:52,720
Speaker 1: still holds out for a better bitcoin, right. I think

460
00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:55,040
Speaker 1: he's come to appreciate a lot of the qualities for bitcoin.

461
00:20:55,119 --> 00:20:56,680
Speaker 1: But you know, he says, at the end of the day,

462
00:20:57,680 --> 00:21:00,159
Speaker 1: you know, I just I have this perfect vision of

463
00:21:00,200 --> 00:21:02,840
Speaker 1: something in my mind that you know, I would tweak

464
00:21:02,920 --> 00:21:04,959
Speaker 1: these two things. And so, as someone who you know,

465
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:08,719
Speaker 1: as an innovator or tinkerer. You know, he's not going

466
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:11,840
Speaker 1: to be happy with the the you know, very obviously

467
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:15,199
Speaker 1: working and successful bitcoin. You know, he'll want to kind of,

468
00:21:15,320 --> 00:21:17,320
Speaker 1: you know, see if there's something out there. But I

469
00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,280
Speaker 1: think that that will diminish in the investment, and that

470
00:21:19,320 --> 00:21:21,960
Speaker 1: will diminish and uh, you know, I think it's becoming

471
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:24,359
Speaker 1: more clear that just there's the bitcoin is the showing

472
00:21:24,400 --> 00:21:26,680
Speaker 1: point of what's been going on in the industry.

473
00:21:27,119 --> 00:21:29,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a good transition into some of

474
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:33,280
Speaker 2: the ideological differences or battlegrounds that we've seen in the

475
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:34,520
Speaker 2: bitcoin space over time.

476
00:21:35,119 --> 00:21:36,960
Speaker 3: You mentioned it doesn't scale.

477
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,080
Speaker 2: First, I would just say from a technological standpoint, you

478
00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:44,119
Speaker 2: have creation problems and then you have engineering problems. So

479
00:21:44,560 --> 00:21:47,119
Speaker 2: bitcoin was a zero to one moment, right, it was

480
00:21:47,160 --> 00:21:50,080
Speaker 2: the creation of fire. Then how does it? No technology scales?

481
00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:53,520
Speaker 2: But that's an engineering problem and that's usually fixed. You've

482
00:21:53,560 --> 00:21:55,840
Speaker 2: created it, Now we have to scale it. And so

483
00:21:56,600 --> 00:21:58,439
Speaker 2: to the point that you're making just for the audience

484
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:02,199
Speaker 2: to listen, So Tosimotive created two digital scar seas at

485
00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:04,320
Speaker 2: the same time. Number one, no more than twenty one

486
00:22:04,320 --> 00:22:08,239
Speaker 2: million tokens. Number two, though, was the block space and

487
00:22:08,320 --> 00:22:10,600
Speaker 2: so what Pete, what Pete's referring to is there's not

488
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:14,679
Speaker 2: enough block space or throughput on the base layer for

489
00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:16,760
Speaker 2: the entire world to transact on it.

490
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:18,360
Speaker 3: And so in order for that.

491
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:21,840
Speaker 2: To work, there needs to be an engineering solution, and

492
00:22:21,880 --> 00:22:24,359
Speaker 2: that is right now happening on layer twos and threes

493
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:26,639
Speaker 2: and side chains and things like that, where the transactions

494
00:22:26,680 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 2: get batched and then move on.

495
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:28,760
Speaker 3: To the side Chaine.

496
00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:30,000
Speaker 2: And we don't know how that's going to work out,

497
00:22:30,040 --> 00:22:31,959
Speaker 2: but it seems to be working out at the scale

498
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:34,160
Speaker 2: that the demand is there for at this point.

499
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:37,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I certainly am not a doom care

500
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:39,640
Speaker 1: about it. You know, I don't even I think necessarily

501
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:42,280
Speaker 1: prescribe to the you know, we know everything about how

502
00:22:42,400 --> 00:22:46,080
Speaker 1: sort of those dynamics will work. I just think that, yeah,

503
00:22:46,119 --> 00:22:48,840
Speaker 1: you know, I mean again, the whole goal with bitcoin,

504
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:50,680
Speaker 1: and what makes it special is that you can run

505
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 1: a node and you can run the software, and you

506
00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:55,960
Speaker 1: can store the entire history of bitcoin on you know,

507
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:58,800
Speaker 1: a peete computer that you know, you have to throw

508
00:22:58,800 --> 00:23:01,080
Speaker 1: in a backpack and escape some sort of regime. Right,

509
00:23:01,160 --> 00:23:04,359
Speaker 1: So that's computer science problem of you know, this whole

510
00:23:04,359 --> 00:23:07,159
Speaker 1: economy has to fit you know, in something that you know,

511
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 1: really ideally you want to palm in your hands. Yeah,

512
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:12,680
Speaker 1: it's just a very difficult engineering problem. There's nothing wrong

513
00:23:12,760 --> 00:23:15,359
Speaker 1: with that. That's just an attribute to bitcoin. That's why

514
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:18,359
Speaker 1: you know, you saw a lot of this experimentation. I'd

515
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:19,800
Speaker 1: like to see a lot of those builders come back

516
00:23:19,800 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: and work on the actual problem, which is how do

517
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 1: you get the bitcoin system to be able to have

518
00:23:23,400 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: those attributes?

519
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:26,640
Speaker 2: So as as Pete said, like fit in the palm

520
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,720
Speaker 2: of your hand, because it can't really be decentralized if

521
00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 2: everyone can't run a node.

522
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:32,719
Speaker 3: And that's the problem.

523
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:34,399
Speaker 2: So how do we make it where a kit in

524
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:36,199
Speaker 2: Africa with a five year old laptop can still run

525
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:36,800
Speaker 2: a node?

526
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:38,879
Speaker 3: Just keep it to stay.

527
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Some of the other cryptocurrency systems just default on that, right.

528
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:44,160
Speaker 1: So with Solana, I think it's you know, the default

529
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 1: costs to run a node is like twenty thousand dollars, right,

530
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:48,440
Speaker 1: and you need a certain amount of bandwidth requirements. So

531
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:50,280
Speaker 1: so they get around that by just saying like, you know,

532
00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:51,080
Speaker 1: we don't care.

533
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 3: About that, right, They don't care about it.

534
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, which is fine enough, right. They just

535
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:56,920
Speaker 1: want a room to experiment, and you know, I think

536
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: even within the crypto space, you know, there's a recognition

537
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:01,960
Speaker 1: a bitcoin is something that's unique. Right. We saw with

538
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,920
Speaker 1: a strategic Bitcline reserve conversation, going back to the global

539
00:24:05,160 --> 00:24:07,399
Speaker 1: conversation that you were talking about, where you know, there

540
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 1: are major cryptocurrency leaders who you know, supported the creation

541
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:12,920
Speaker 1: of the strategic bitclin reserve, who now sort of admit

542
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:16,000
Speaker 1: that the cooin is special and differentiated. You know, how

543
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:19,160
Speaker 1: begrudgingly do they admit that, you know, do they want

544
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,439
Speaker 1: that to be different? You know, I I've had some

545
00:24:21,480 --> 00:24:24,360
Speaker 1: side conversations with folks now that I'm getting back into

546
00:24:24,400 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: the crypto world, and you know, look, I mean again,

547
00:24:26,480 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: I don't think you can have fault a smart engineer

548
00:24:29,480 --> 00:24:32,080
Speaker 1: for thinking or they can build something better and then

549
00:24:32,160 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: trying that out. I you know, I do think a

550
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:37,160
Speaker 1: lot of them will eventually have the intellectual humility. And again,

551
00:24:37,600 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: you know, most people who want to build things, they

552
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:40,359
Speaker 1: want to build something useful. Right.

553
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 2: We see a lot of even og bitcoiners talking about how,

554
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:47,960
Speaker 2: oh look at these bitcoiners simping for the government simply, oh,

555
00:24:48,119 --> 00:24:51,040
Speaker 2: central banks please buy our bags. Things like that, right,

556
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 2: And even yesterday with the announcement of Mahler's new company

557
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,080
Speaker 2: with soft bank and Tether and.

558
00:24:59,800 --> 00:25:01,320
Speaker 3: Can twar Fitzgeril, which is massive.

559
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 2: I mean I've seen people going, look, this isn't the

560
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:05,320
Speaker 2: bitcoin I signed up for kind of a thing like that, Right,

561
00:25:06,440 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 2: how do you look at that type of an issue?

562
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I think like the history of bitcoin is

563
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,400
Speaker 1: a history of people trying to apply their own ideologies

564
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 1: to bitcoin, right that they go the you know, the cipherpunks.

565
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: Really that was the ideology that birth bitcoin, but then

566
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: the libertarians kind of came and then you have the technologists, Right,

567
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:25,920
Speaker 1: So I think you're always uh, you know, seeing bitcoin

568
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: as a battleground for ideologies. The current flavor in terms

569
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: of you know how that's in the space today is

570
00:25:31,520 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 1: that there are people who see sort of bitcoin as

571
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 1: this you know, tool that could be leveraged by corporations

572
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,160
Speaker 1: and the government. Right. So I think when you're seeing

573
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 1: kind of maybe you're talking about the old bitcoiners, we're

574
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,880
Speaker 1: sort of against that, right. What really what they're sort

575
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,159
Speaker 1: of rebelling against is that bitcoin used to be this

576
00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: counter culture thing, right, It used to be very against

577
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:51,679
Speaker 1: the mainstream. Like I'll just give you an example and

578
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:53,920
Speaker 1: Mark you'll number this from Bitcoin twenty twenty one. Right,

579
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:57,480
Speaker 1: you were hearing at Bitcoin twenty twenty one stories that

580
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:01,600
Speaker 1: people were deplatformed by the government, were resisting governments, you know,

581
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:05,840
Speaker 1: in foreign countries with tyrannical regimes. You had Ross Albrik's

582
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 1: voice from prison, somebody who was literally being you know,

583
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: buried alive by the state, you know, would have died

584
00:26:11,600 --> 00:26:14,000
Speaker 1: you know in prison. Yeah, you know, so some people

585
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,400
Speaker 1: coming from that era, right, Bitcoin was a tool of resistance.

586
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 1: It was countercultural, and I think the discomfort is you know,

587
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:21,560
Speaker 1: and I mentioned this word to you before we started,

588
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: but the suit coiner, Right, this idea that bitcoin is

589
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:27,679
Speaker 1: integrating into mainstream finance. Uh, and you know you're going

590
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:30,040
Speaker 1: to be sitting across from some financial planner, and this

591
00:26:30,119 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 1: financial planners is the bitcoin and that's how people are

592
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:37,160
Speaker 1: interfacing with bitcoin is very antithetical to how those early

593
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 1: adopters would have found bitcoin. You know a lot of

594
00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:41,359
Speaker 1: these people would have been you know, buying drugs on

595
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 1: the Silk Road or you know, maybe even more extreme

596
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 1: type things than that. Right. This this this kind of

597
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 1: radical kind of freedom money that they really saw as

598
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:53,600
Speaker 1: as you know, destabilizing states, Right, that was a very

599
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,880
Speaker 1: attractive thing at the time. And yeah, you know, look

600
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 1: as that, as I said, I think I like to

601
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:03,960
Speaker 1: keep a view where you know, I like that ideology

602
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,000
Speaker 1: a lot. I've learned a lot from that ideology. Does

603
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:08,800
Speaker 1: that ideology have to be right? I don't know. Right,

604
00:27:08,800 --> 00:27:10,239
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a group of people who

605
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:13,919
Speaker 1: want more freedoms. They want to move towards technologies that

606
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:17,840
Speaker 1: are you know, radical and freedom freedom, you know, providing

607
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,159
Speaker 1: freedom to the world, and that's a great thing, right.

608
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 1: Does that mean Bitcoin needs to kind of stay true

609
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: to that or change? You know, I don't think bitcoin

610
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: is any less of any of those things that we

611
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:28,119
Speaker 1: just discussed. Right, So if you go back to twenty

612
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 1: twenty one and twenty twenty two, today, bitcoin is no less,

613
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:33,960
Speaker 1: you know, a tool for you to flee regime. It's

614
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:36,119
Speaker 1: no less a tool for you to use, you know,

615
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,280
Speaker 1: in an instance of domestic abuse or something like that.

616
00:27:38,480 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: It's no less you know, something that you know could

617
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 1: protect you from a deplatforming or demonetization in some way. Right.

618
00:27:46,560 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: It's just that we're also doing this thing of you know,

619
00:27:49,280 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: Wall Street is where the capital is, it is where

620
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,679
Speaker 1: people go to you know, take the biggest risks and

621
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,440
Speaker 1: build the biggest build the biggest companies. And that's why

622
00:27:57,480 --> 00:27:59,359
Speaker 1: I sort of divide it as I really do think

623
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 1: this last election in twenty twenty four was a huge

624
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: demarcation line in the history of the industry. I think

625
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:06,920
Speaker 1: when people look back, they'll draw a pretty bright line

626
00:28:06,920 --> 00:28:09,880
Speaker 1: and they'll say the first era of bitcoin, the first

627
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: age was twentousand and nine to twenty twenty four. And

628
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,719
Speaker 1: Trump's kind of coming to power and really, you know,

629
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:20,359
Speaker 1: within the financial center of the world validating bitcoin, you know,

630
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: agreeing never to sell bitcoin again, sending that message to

631
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,359
Speaker 1: the world that really, I think is going to demarket

632
00:28:26,359 --> 00:28:29,399
Speaker 1: the early age of bitcoin, you know, where kind of

633
00:28:29,400 --> 00:28:32,879
Speaker 1: these groups were culturally and charged from this new world

634
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:37,400
Speaker 1: where you know, there's not gonna be an internet cafe anymore, right,

635
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: Like you're just every cafe is going to have the Internet.

636
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:41,360
Speaker 1: If you go to a cafe and there's no Internet,

637
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 1: you're just going to go to another cafe. Right. That's

638
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: that's the world you're coming to with bitcoin, where it's

639
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: normalized and it's just part of the everyday experience.

640
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 3: Yeah.

641
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:52,720
Speaker 2: From I'm in southern California and I grew up in

642
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 2: the surfing, skating, snowboarding era, right, and you have these

643
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 2: like core brands and then next thing you know, they're

644
00:28:58,200 --> 00:28:59,680
Speaker 2: being sold at May season. Then they make it to

645
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 2: cost Go and then they've sold out, but even though.

646
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 3: They're still supporting the skateboarding or surfing. But you know,

647
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:05,880
Speaker 3: I kind of think of it like that.

648
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 2: But from a cipher punk person, most times you would think, eventually,

649
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 2: you know, we get to this hyper bitchronization, or maybe

650
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 2: eventually it gets to a global asset, and it's like, well,

651
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:18,640
Speaker 2: it doesn't get to a global asset unless everybody adopts it.

652
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 2: So it's like if you think about if you chase

653
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:22,600
Speaker 2: that thought that you have or that vision that you have,

654
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 2: like where does that end up? I think about it

655
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 2: that way. The other way I think about it is

656
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:29,320
Speaker 2: that I think it's important for most people.

657
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:32,040
Speaker 3: Maybe they don't realize this, but it's like just because.

658
00:29:31,720 --> 00:29:34,480
Speaker 2: You own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or this government

659
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 2: doesn't give you control over the network, which is back

660
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 2: what I was saying earlier about some of these pos

661
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:42,479
Speaker 2: networks where they have staking and so they can acquire

662
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 2: a large amount of the tokens and stake them, and

663
00:29:44,160 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 2: they do get more votes over the network, but Bitcoin

664
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 2: doesn't allow that, and so it sort of invalidates that

665
00:29:49,560 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 2: other than it not being cool, I suppose, you know, but.

666
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 1: We'll see, right, I still think that from a network component, right,

667
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:58,800
Speaker 1: these ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot

668
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: of power to define what bigo point is at the

669
00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:03,000
Speaker 1: software level. I mean, again, we'll see if this becomes

670
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:06,560
Speaker 1: you know, a problem at at any rate. But you know,

671
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: again I do think that, Yeah, what you're talking about is,

672
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: you know, bitcoin is just not going to be counterculture forever. Right,

673
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: It's it's not going to be the kind of angsty

674
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: outside of the system thing. I think there. You know,

675
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:22,120
Speaker 1: there was a hope in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,

676
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,440
Speaker 1: I think from some large percentage of the community, or

677
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,280
Speaker 1: maybe a minority percentage, that wanted the kind of global

678
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,480
Speaker 1: power structure to change Bitcoin to change that. So, right,

679
00:30:32,560 --> 00:30:34,760
Speaker 1: maybe bitcoin they saw bitcoin as ushering in a world

680
00:30:34,880 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 1: where a country like El Salbad or or a country

681
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: like Bhutan who was like historically left behind, where people

682
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 1: in Africa might sort of use bitcoin to rise up, right,

683
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:47,920
Speaker 1: become more wealthy and you know, become less disempowered by

684
00:30:47,960 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 1: the US led financial system. I think what's happened as

685
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty four with Trump embracing bitcoin and coming

686
00:30:55,240 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: to power is that you're going to see that structure

687
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 1: be entrenched, and I understand why people are dissatisfied with it.

688
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:04,760
Speaker 1: I would say, I'm well, you know, I would have

689
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:09,040
Speaker 1: preferred the other outcome. Do I dislike this outcome? No?

690
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: I think you know, the world will be fine. But

691
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:12,560
Speaker 1: I do think that you know, if if you had

692
00:31:12,560 --> 00:31:16,719
Speaker 1: that worldview, then what has happened I think is very understandable.

693
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: Right where the US, I think, you know, if you're

694
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:21,240
Speaker 1: talking about the US becoming the world leader in bitcoin

695
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 1: and using that to further the dollar, that's a very

696
00:31:24,320 --> 00:31:26,560
Speaker 1: different world than a world where you know, rass roots

697
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 1: adoption and adoption in smaller countries, you know, really changes

698
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: the global power structure and the nature of global superpowers.

699
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 1: And I think what you're seeing with Trump, you know,

700
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: coming to power and embracing bitcoin is is I don't

701
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: think that future is viable anymore.

702
00:31:40,520 --> 00:31:42,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk.

703
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 2: You referenced bitcoin twenty twenty one. I reference bitcoin in

704
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 2: Abu Dhabi. We have bitcoin Vegas coming up here. In

705
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 2: about a month. I'm pretty excited about that. Happy to

706
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,520
Speaker 2: see you again. I put out something to other day

707
00:31:55,520 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 2: about like why I think going to events like this

708
00:31:57,600 --> 00:31:58,280
Speaker 2: are so important.

709
00:31:58,280 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 3: I think even more so today.

710
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 2: But what do you think about these types of events

711
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 2: and getting together and the importance of that.

712
00:32:04,480 --> 00:32:06,920
Speaker 1: I love bitcoin conferences. I've always enjoyed them. I think

713
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: it's it's great to see like a snapshot of where

714
00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:11,440
Speaker 1: the community is at, and they're very useful for kind

715
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 1: of demarketing. You know, how we've changed and thought about

716
00:32:14,080 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 1: bitcoin over time. I think, you know, one of the

717
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: things that sticks out is, you know, you're going to

718
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: see this year kind of a whole activation around politics.

719
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 1: Right there's so much demand from from US politicians to

720
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: be involved in what's happening in bitcoin and crypto to

721
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: a larger extent that there's going to be a whole

722
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:33,720
Speaker 1: presence there and right I think this this gets that

723
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,719
Speaker 1: what's really happening in America right now is the country

724
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 1: trying to use bitcoin to its all the own advantage.

725
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 1: You're hearing about bit bonds that you know, maybe bitcoin

726
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 1: can reignite the treasury market, Bitcoin can cancel the national debt.

727
00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: You know, America seems to be kind of embracing, you know,

728
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: these radical ideas. The politicians seem to be embracing these

729
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: radical ideas. And you know that would have been night

730
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:58,360
Speaker 1: and day from last year, where you know, a lot

731
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: of the dialogue was about you know, companies had moved overseas,

732
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 1: they had been debanked. You know. So I think it's

733
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: going to be a real contrast if you think about

734
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 1: last year with twenty twenty four where Trump really even then,

735
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: you know, people forget when Trump took the stage of

736
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: bitcoin twenty twenty four, Kamala Harris had only really just

737
00:33:16,040 --> 00:33:19,960
Speaker 1: been recently named the nominee a week prior. It really

738
00:33:20,080 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: wasn't clear, you know, at that point how the political

739
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: environment was was going to shake out. I think Trump's

740
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:29,760
Speaker 1: platform for bitcoin was really unveiled there right, Things like

741
00:33:29,800 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 1: the Bitcoin Act, which are being debated, you know, really

742
00:33:32,440 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: came to prominence at that time. But you know, it

743
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: was a very very different scenario where now you know,

744
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:41,840
Speaker 1: the bitcoin and crypto industry where you know, the number

745
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:45,240
Speaker 1: one spender in the election probably determined the election in

746
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:47,920
Speaker 1: favor of Donald Trump in my view, and you know,

747
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,640
Speaker 1: ultimately changed the course of history through that, and now

748
00:33:50,720 --> 00:33:52,959
Speaker 1: you're going to see I think a real leaning in

749
00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:55,959
Speaker 1: from from the politicians of you know, how can bitcoin

750
00:33:56,040 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: and crypto solve problems for you know, the American govern

751
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 1: And some of these problems are the largest. Probably mean

752
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,440
Speaker 1: that canceling the national debt. I mean, that's that's a

753
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:07,920
Speaker 1: space race moon landing type initiative.

754
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:08,120
Speaker 3: Right.

755
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: If if that is actually achieved within our lifetime, I mean,

756
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 1: then that that would be an amazing story. So I

757
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:15,840
Speaker 1: think there'll be a lot of you know, seeds of

758
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 1: future history right where people are going to come together

759
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: and maybe this will be another memorable conference in the

760
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 1: same way last years was where you know, Donald Trump

761
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: really arrived, you know, as a pro bitcoin candidate and

762
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: really just you know, shook up the whole industry in

763
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: the world.

764
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:36,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we had RFK there was also there speaking right.

765
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:38,880
Speaker 3: It was. It was monument monumental.

766
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:42,560
Speaker 2: I was calling it maybe the largest most culturally relevant

767
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,600
Speaker 2: event in the world. I mean whatever, twenty five thousand people,

768
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:47,240
Speaker 2: like not a lot of events have that many people,

769
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:50,120
Speaker 2: but the diverse nature of it from presidential candidates and

770
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 2: politicians to Wall Street bankers, coders.

771
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 3: I mean, we had musicians, we had comedians, Right.

772
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:57,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the Bigcoin Conference really is the anti

773
00:34:57,880 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: Davos at this point, right, Yeah, that's the kind of

774
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:03,760
Speaker 1: level of event that you know we're scaling to. Obviously,

775
00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:07,759
Speaker 1: Claus Schweb presigning and under investigation the World of Melconomic

776
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,320
Speaker 1: Forum this week, so you know, maybe he'll be fitting.

777
00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:13,240
Speaker 1: Maybe he'll come back and he'll have a bitcoin startup

778
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: to launch. Who knows. Right, Well, we'll take anything all

779
00:35:15,680 --> 00:35:16,399
Speaker 1: the people you can get.

780
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:18,320
Speaker 2: Right, sounds like you got a baby cry, and I

781
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,640
Speaker 2: guess it's time to go. Let me ask you one

782
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:25,240
Speaker 2: more question. We'll wrap it up here. What's one big

783
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 2: insight about bitcoin or freedom or maybe the world going

784
00:35:28,120 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 2: into that you could leave us with just to think

785
00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:32,520
Speaker 2: about something that you're thinking about, something big into the

786
00:35:32,560 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 2: future bitcoin.

787
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. I Mean something that I

788
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 1: say is, you know, I think there's a couple of

789
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 1: ways to understand bickcoin. Right. You can use it as

790
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 1: a tool something in your financial life, or you know,

791
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: use it as savings and kind of turn off your

792
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 1: brain and and and kind of go about your day.

793
00:35:46,120 --> 00:35:47,799
Speaker 1: But I do really think that you know, we're we're

794
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: still trying to understand bitcoin as a technology. There's a

795
00:35:50,719 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 1: lot to learn. Uh, there's a lot to kind of

796
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 1: explore in terms of, you know, figuring out kind of

797
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:58,400
Speaker 1: you know, how we got here. And I think if

798
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:01,239
Speaker 1: you're someone who's curious and until sellectual, you know, and

799
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 1: you're hearing this and you're saying, oh, bitcoin was ten

800
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:06,560
Speaker 1: cents and you know, now it's one hundred k, maybe

801
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: I missed the boat. You know, I would just say

802
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 1: that I don't think that can be further from the truth.

803
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: But I think it's it's a great time to start

804
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 1: working on these problems. And we're very far away from

805
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: bitcoin being you know, the global neutral monetary system that

806
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:22,040
Speaker 1: you know is used by global powers. We're getting closer,

807
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:24,279
Speaker 1: but we're far away, and we could definitely use your help.

808
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 2: Awesome, Pete, We're gonna you got a podcast we're in

809
00:36:28,040 --> 00:36:30,680
Speaker 2: linked that down below. Obviously, your Twitter down below, and

810
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 2: you have a newsletter or your your website that you

811
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 2: published stuff on.

812
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 3: We'll link to that down below. All right, Pete, thanks

813
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 3: so much,