WEBVTT - The Changing Narratives Pushing Bitcoin 0:00:04.600 --> 0:00:07.680 So the big question is this, how do investors like 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.800 us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly, 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.880 the right people that give us the tools and information 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:19.000 we need to make conformed and educated decisions to have success. 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:22.360 That is the question, and this podcast will give us 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.520 the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.120 this started here. Everyone, Welcome to another episode of the 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:31.840 Market Disruptors podcast. Today I am joined by Nathaniel Whitmore. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:34.800 He's the author of Long Read Sunday and The Crypto 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.400 Daily three on three, both on Twitter. I've been following 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.800 for a long time and you should check it out anyway. 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:42.840 I'm happy to have you, Nathaniel. Welcome, Thank you, thanks 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:45.280 so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:47.560 so I'm happy to talk to you as well. We've 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:50.160 you know, I've been following your stuff for for a year. 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:53.400 You put out really good curated information um on Twitter. 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:55.959 But why don't you tell everybody who you are, kind 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:58.680 of what your background is and and how you got 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:01.360 here what you're doing? Yes, sure, so that I was 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.680 kind of joked. There's like two parts to the how 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:07.080 I got into crypto story. The first is kind of 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:09.559 the obvious one at first glancewers that I spent about 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.640 a decade in Silicon Valley. Uh, kind of bouncing back 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.479 and forth between venture capital roles and operator roles. UM 0:01:16.560 --> 0:01:18.840 one of those as I was helping a company, I 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:21.560 advised a company that went through UM why I combinated 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.479 at the same classes coin Base. That company was sort 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:27.920 of a helps fortune five hundreds understand new technologies through 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.040 educational videos, consulting partnerships, etcetera. And like they were making 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:36.119 videos about bitcoin for Coca Cola, kind of private videos 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:40.119 ordered by Coca Cola and like. So so that's kind 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.399 of the the easy or clear part in some ways. 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.120 But then before that, actually my whole kind of background 0:01:46.120 --> 0:01:47.840 of where I came from was much more focused on 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:51.200 social impact and kind of global social change. So, uh, 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:54.400 right after a university, I basically stuck around my university 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:57.440 for a few years to design programs to send kids 0:01:57.440 --> 0:01:59.440 all over the world who wanted to make an impact 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:02.400 and kind of partner with local organizations and figure out 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:04.840 how to do that and uh, and a lot of 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:07.240 what that the goal of that program was is to 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:09.839 show just how hard it is. Right, there's a huge 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.919 amount of energy that comes especially from young people who 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:14.720 want to go out and make a difference, but then 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:16.560 get to wherever it is that they want to go 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:18.080 or they want to have an impact, and find that 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:23.160 there's just huge structural problems. Uh that um that you know, 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:25.400 at best, they're going to kind of nibble around the 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.359 edges of the problems and it's not bad, but it's 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:30.840 not necessarily what they're going for. And so it's interesting, 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.160 Like it actually took me leaving Silicon Valley so my 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:35.799 wife and I live in the Hudson Valley now, um 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.920 and breaking kind of away from from Silicon Valley to 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.240 almost like re contextualized bitcoin and crypto in general, but 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:47.760 particularly Bitcoin outside of the Hayman's narrative which had dominated 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:49.840 it from you know, when we were in it with 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.560 coin Base and when we're making those videos for Coca Cola. 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:57.400 Like if you look at uh in Silicon Valley in particular, 0:02:57.680 --> 0:02:59.880 bitcoin is just one of a lot of different kind 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.960 of like fast mobile money type things, right, Like it 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:05.520 was this cool thing that you could use to order 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:07.720 coffee at Cooper Cafe and Palo Alto when you were 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.520 pitching a VC, Like literally that's that's what it was. 0:03:10.680 --> 0:03:13.120 For for for me kind of being in it and 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.600 now admittedly it wasn't my main focus, and I was 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.280 pretty um tunnel visioned on the company that I was 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:20.680 working on that time. But when I left and got 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:22.519 out of it and I started to actually have space 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:24.880 to to dig back into it, it turns out that 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.280 for me, at least, it's it related much more to 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:30.280 that first set of things that I had done before 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.320 Silicon Valley that were about large scale global structural change, 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:36.080 and that's kind of what pulled me all the way 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:37.760 back in. So for the last few years, I've been 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.040 kind of all in on on bitcoin and crypto, UM 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:43.840 and UH, and that manifests in a couple of different ways. 0:03:43.840 --> 0:03:45.760 As you said, I do the Long Read Sunday, which 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.640 is kind of a curation of the week's top tweets UM. 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:51.160 I recently started a thing called Crypto Daily three at three, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.440 which is a kind of livestream video that also turns 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:56.800 into a podcast. It was three minutes on three topics 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.320 each that I'm seeing a lot of conversation about UM, 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.400 and then kind of behind the scenes, I'm also consulting 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.520 and helping companies figure out what their narratives are in 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:06.880 the context of the market and producing content around that. 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:09.760 So it's a lot of sucking in a huge amount 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.000 of information, trying to make sense of it all, and 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.320 then spinning it back out in a lot of different ways. Yeah. Cool, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.520 it's uh, it's it's been been really helpful for sure 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.440 for a lot of people, including myself. So it's interesting 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.320 how you you had kind of the social impact piece 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.120 before going to Silicon Valley and and Silicon Valley I 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:28.880 guess brought you into bitcoin, but it was it was 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:31.000 a job, and like you said, you went from the 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.920 payment the payment space to then seeing the actual change 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:38.240 that bitcoin um can can do. I think that's part 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.760 of going down the rabbit hole. I think, right, we 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:43.120 all kind of find that a different way, but you 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.440 had that background. That's really cool. Um, do you think 0:04:46.480 --> 0:04:49.320 that's normal for most people like to kind of come 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:51.600 in for the money aspect, which is kind of more 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.720 like the surface, shallow surface area that then they kind 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.760 of get sucked into seeing the overall change. I think 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:00.720 you have. I think a lot of it was based 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.640 on how you find out, who you find out from, 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.200 you know, what your own context is. But I do 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:10.000 think and I think there's actually a relevant point that, um, 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.280 you know, for for as much as we can kind 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:16.080 of like rip on the crypto industry for you know, 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:19.400 just the massive almost like casino style games of some 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.760 of these you know, uh coin offerings in seventeen early 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.400 and all these things. There are a lot of people 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.559 who found their way in exactly to your point, through 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:32.040 like being excited about the market opportunity, being excited about 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:37.919 kind of a generational uh, you know, financial opportunity, and 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:39.800 who found that there was much more to it than that, 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:41.800 and in fact, maybe what made it such a generational 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.960 financial opportunity was actually broader than just you know, what 0:05:46.040 --> 0:05:47.960 the asset was going to be valued on day to day. 0:05:48.000 --> 0:05:50.719 So I do think that there's a closer, there's a 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.520 more there's more value to people coming in because they 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.359 want the money than in a lot of spaces, you know. Uh. 0:05:56.520 --> 0:05:58.599 And I think that there's a lot of a there's 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:01.279 a conversion process that to a lot of people where 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.120 whatever they thought it was coming in, even if they 0:06:04.120 --> 0:06:06.440 were just excited about the money, they found a lot 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:09.080 more even if they stay excited about the money, right, Yeah, 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:11.400 for sure, I uh, you know, I say that the 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:13.560 reason why bitcoin is hard for most people to understand 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:16.480 is because you know, there's so much maybe six seven 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:18.920 different disciplines that you have to get and which is 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:20.560 why there's kind of that rabbit hole you kind of 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:23.640 learned about each one. But I love the fact that 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.840 you know, I think five six, seven years ago, people 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:30.039 weren't really interested in money, people weren't interested in economics. 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.919 Nobody used the word feat, nobody would throw around the 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.120 words Austrian economics, right, and so now today it's creating 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:38.760 all this awareness and like you said, it sucks people 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:40.440 in on the money. Um, it's kind of the old 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:42.920 bait and switch put in a good way. Uh. So 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:46.080 I like that now. I mean you mentioned how you 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.920 mentioned how you saw you know, in Silicon Valley and 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.240 and it was kind of all about the payments. Um. 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:55.039 I think even recently we still here, we we were 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.520 hearing more about the payments. But that's kind of shifting. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.640 And I know you talk a lot about like narrative 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.120 and narrative marking, So UM, tell me kind of where 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.600 you think that narrative started to switch, uh, and kind 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.400 of where it's at right now. So you have a 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.480 you have a couple of things. There's there's almost like 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:14.800 the silicon value question, which I actually think is interesting 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:16.880 because of its kind of role and prominence in the 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:18.840 tech world and the amount of money flowing through it. 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.280 But then there's also just the more general question of 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.679 when that payment's narrative shifted. Um, so maybe let's actually 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.920 talk about the payments narrative first. I mean, I think 0:07:27.920 --> 0:07:30.440 it's been a for for I think there's a lot 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.520 of people out there who would argue that they were 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:35.080 always kind of telling the digital goal of the store 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:38.760 value story, the you know, even now the something that 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:40.640 we can get into, which is I think I think 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:43.840 we're shifting again from those things to something that's much 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:47.120 more of a kind of generational hedge against the fundamental 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:49.840 paradigm shift in the economic system, which is like a 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.000 superstore value, you know. But so I think there's a 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.720 lot of folks who that narrative has always been there 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.600 for some people. I think that, um, there was a 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.880 ton of money spent on on kind of marketing the 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:05.680 idea of it as a payment channel, uh, you know, 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:09.520 and and honestly like well intentioned right like Square was 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.200 accepting you know, Square merchants were making it. You're able 0:08:12.200 --> 0:08:16.600 to uh to accept bitcoin that wasn't a wasn't because 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:19.000 they you know, didn't care about the other narrative or whatever. 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:20.720 Just it made sense of their business. They were excited 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.600 about the cooin. I think obviously now everyone kind of 0:08:23.640 --> 0:08:26.040 knows how long Jack Dorsey has been thinking about it, 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:29.679 watching it, understanding it. But when you have a major 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.760 company like that who is enabling that to be the 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.400 way that most people interact with it, that's what they're 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:36.720 going to hear about it. That's what we're gonna think 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:39.040 about it. And also coincides at the time of kind 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:41.080 of the rise of Venmo, the rise of other type 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.880 of mobile money solutions UM and the idea of just 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.839 being easier, like everything was being convenient, you know, or 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.360 becoming more convenient in in a totally different way. And 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.079 so it did kind of fit inside that, at least 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:56.680 very quickly. UM. I think over the last few years 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:59.960 that's obviously shifted. UM. I think it was really reinforced. 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.520 You know. One of the things that was interesting about 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.600 the I c O boom was that it allowed bitcoin 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.599 to define itself oppositionally, or maybe a better way to 0:09:08.600 --> 0:09:11.160 put it is for bitcoiners to define itself as different 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.120 in some way and I think that wasn't just about 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:15.080 kind of a fair launch model or anything like that. 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.400 It was more about what the goals of the system were. 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:19.680 And you saw, like if you look at the beginning 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.160 of eighteen maybe even bridging back into the Silicon Valley 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:25.920 side of this question, you saw kind of the emergence 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:28.600 of a recognition that we were kind of having two 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.480 different conversations at once. There was the money crypto and 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.120 the tech crypto side, and um, you know, there there's 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:37.520 something to make the argument that they're incompatible or and 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:40.320 there's something who only care about one or the other. Um, 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:42.600 I think there's also a lot of people who can 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:45.720 see that they kind of they just have different ambitions 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.360 and different aims. And so if you kind of take 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.840 the Silicon Valley side, what the way that they're looking 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:54.959 or I don't want to say, I don't want to 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:56.720 pay it with such a broad breast strokes, because obviously 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:58.440 there's a ton of people in Silicon Valley who are 0:09:58.720 --> 0:10:03.400 passionate and kind of deep money decliners as well. But um, 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:08.880 Silicon Valley is really interested in the paradigm shift from uh, 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:12.600 these companies which are supposed to disintermate the disinder mediate 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:15.640 the Internet and instead became the most powerful gatekeepers that 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:18.720 we've ever seen, right, Like Amazon is basically the most 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:22.040 powerful gatekeeper we've ever seen from a retail perspective around 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.880 the world. I mean, it makes the Walmart that encouraged antitrust, 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:27.840 you know, kind of rumblings in the nineties and earlier 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:32.520 two thousands look ridiculous by comparison, um and uh, and 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:34.600 you kind of see that across other domains and disciplines 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:36.280 as well. I Mean, a lot of the conversation about 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.760 Facebook that's really unresolved as it relates to how big 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:41.760 and how powerful it is that we've never seen anything 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:44.800 that's that has this many users, this much data that 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:46.920 it has access to. We don't have any precedent for 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:48.800 how it's supposed to behave or what it's supposed to do. 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.920 And so Silicon Valley, I think is is really interested 0:10:51.960 --> 0:10:56.760 in kind of the decentralized technology alternatives to those types 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:58.800 of things, because that's what Silicon Valley does is it 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:02.280 creates technolo aologies that respond to the problems of today's 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:04.839 systems and tries to do them in a different way 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:08.440 that's faster, better, cheaper, more efficient, whatever, so, but only 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.800 if they can pull a profit from it. Well, there's 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:15.080 a whole different conversation about what extense of looking value 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.960 has been interested in pulling a profit or or been 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.320 interested in a tenure game to let retail care about 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:25.400 whether it pulls a profit once it goes public. Yeah, 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:27.440 so that the maybe we can get into that. But 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:29.439 that's a whole different conversation. But I think that as 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:33.440 it relates to bitcoin during during this boom, as everything 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:37.400 was about tokenizing everything, tokenizing the world, decentralizing everything, Bitcoin 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:40.320 and bitcoiner has got to say really strongly and really firmly, like, 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:44.520 that's not what we're here for. We're here to change 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.960 the money system, and decentralization is actually for us about 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.800 censorship resistance. Uh, you know, the permissionless nature of this 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:56.360 asset um, the fact that it's not going to change 0:11:56.440 --> 0:11:59.280 you know, it's money supply, and it's it's monetary policies, 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:02.120 and then it's a it's a bulwark against kind of 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:04.200 the rampant money printing that we're seeing. And so I 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.640 feel like actually, in some ways, the breakout success, at 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.680 least in the short term, of this other category of 0:12:10.679 --> 0:12:13.400 assets gave bitcoin a chance to really define itself as 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.439 something different. And I think that if you look at 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.480 what the story that was being told behind the scenes 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.920 as people were recruiting institutions and new people to come 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.319 in during the bear market. During they were talking about 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.480 about bitcoin and its role as a as a hedge, 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:33.400 not about tokenized assets. Yeah, so you know that. It's 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.319 it's interesting because you know, we're talking about narrative marketing 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:39.760 and so you had, like you said, uh, Square for example, 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:42.720 coming out and talking about bitcoin as a payment mechanisms. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.920 We had companies that were promoting it hoping that people 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:48.480 would use it and then they would be able to 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:50.920 gain market share and make a profit or whatever they're doing. 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.000 We'll talk about making profit, but um bitcoin is a 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.560 decentralized company that nobody runs, and there's nobody there, and 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.920 there's nobody there to push a narrative, right, There's nobody 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.640 there to um say what it's supposed to be or 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.640 tell people about it. So really it seems like maybe 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:07.960 it comes down to the community, people like you or me, 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:10.720 who are putting out content to try and help push 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.480 that narrative. So do you think that's why there's kind 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.800 of that difference. Yeah, I mean bitcoin is a very 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:20.800 unique phenomenon in I mean in history from a lot 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:23.120 of different vectors. But I think that the one dimension 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:26.880 of that is that it's a company less force, right, 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:29.559 and that that we've never seen anything like that. Um, 0:13:29.559 --> 0:13:32.080 there is no bitcoin marketing department, there is no bitcoin 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.560 pr department. What it has kind of it's kind of 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.440 like a it's kind of like a decentralized narrative, a 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.440 decentralized force right where I'm talking about bitcoin and what 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:42.120 it means to me, but you're talking about bitcoin of 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:44.760 what it means to you, yep. And And that's I 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:49.319 think why the narrative battles around bitcoin can be so 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.200 fever pitch is that there's no one who uh, there's 0:13:53.200 --> 0:13:55.520 no one that comes back to that. There's there's individual 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:59.000 voices authority based on who happens to follow them, right, 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:01.720 But it really is the kind of like a large group, 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.480 and so it's a very messy kind of social consensus process. 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:07.960 But I mean, you know, this is kind of represented 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.000 in forks, but I think it's the My instinct is 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:15.360 that the longer that uh, you know, bitcoin itself continues 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.079 to get to to differentiate and kind of the further 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:20.960 the forks fall by the wayside in terms of where 0:14:20.960 --> 0:14:23.720 they fit in the market, the more you'll see within 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:26.840 the big tent of bitcoin, even different interpretations of what 0:14:26.920 --> 0:14:29.560 bitcoin are, what why it matters, what it means, You 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:32.040 will see, you know, you'll probably see battles over things 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.440 like rehypothecation and what are and aren't you know, financial 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:38.920 products that we're okay with on top of bitcoin, even 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.040 though again no one gets it aside, and that's kind 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.400 of the beauty of it. So you know, it's definitely 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:47.000 it's a particular type of narrative battleground around bitcoin. Um 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:48.760 and I think that that's you know, only going to 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:52.040 increase over time. So it seems like maybe in the 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.720 beginning we had the squares and whatnot talking about it 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.280 as a payment source and may and and the companies 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:00.840 that can build products around it to to make money are 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:03.600 going to going to invest money to push whatever narrative 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.320 they want. Um And now it looks like almost it's 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:08.480 the Wall Street taking over that narrative. Right We have 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:13.520 E Trade, TD, merrit Trade, Fidelity, on and on and 0:15:13.520 --> 0:15:15.480 on New York Stock Exchange. Now they're all picking up 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.080 and so now uh, they're gonna probably try to push 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:22.600 that bitcoin is a financial instrument narrative. Yeah, well it's interesting. 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:24.840 So so they definitely are right. They want bitcoin to 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.720 be a financial instrument. They wanted to be, um you know, 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.440 set up in ways that they can uh sell, right, 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:35.120 and and they're the particular narratives around it, I think 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:36.440 will be a little bit based on what it is 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.440 they're trying to sell. Are they selling a custody solution 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.440 or they selling futures product, um, you know, all of 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.960 those things will shape the particular uh you know way 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:46.720 that they frame it. However, I think one of the 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:50.960 things that's really interesting is that there is a convergence 0:15:51.240 --> 0:15:56.520 of a narrative from the bitcoin community alongside the kind 0:15:56.560 --> 0:16:00.720 of Wall Street big financial institution narrative, which is this 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:05.320 idea of bitcoin as a non correlated asset, right as 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.600 a hedge against um, what's expected to be kind of 0:16:08.600 --> 0:16:12.480 a rise of money printing, right uh and modern monetary 0:16:12.560 --> 0:16:17.080 theory and all these sort of things. Um. There they 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.000 are now the kind of again painting with a broad brush. 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:24.080 Financial institutions are are kind of framing it in that 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:27.080 way to their clients, to their customers, and even if 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.680 it's just internally so far as how they think about it, 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.400 and um, that's really interesting to see and I think 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:36.480 very powerful. Uh that that's the way the narrative is 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:39.560 kind of shifting in terms of what bitcoin represents to 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.400 that larger financial world. Interesting. So you think the when 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.360 you talk about the bitcoin community, I mean we're really 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.880 just talking about the the developers and the people in 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.960 the space, you know, Twitter, the Bitcoin Maximus and whatnot. 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.280 So you're thinking that the maximalists are are continued to 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:00.320 push their narrative of really the store of value and 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.160 that it is again hedge against the money printing, and 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:05.320 you think Wall Street may pick that up and help 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:07.600 kind of run that run that marketing torch a little bit. 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:10.000 I think that they are picking that up. I think 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:11.919 there's there's two pieces of it that they're picking up. 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:14.080 So if you look so um Ral Paul, who started 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:16.000 Real Vision, uh he used to be kind of a 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.879 macro equities trader. Um has been on to two podcasts 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:22.680 this week discussing this. So one was Stefan Lavere is 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:25.920 obviously a bitcoin focused podcast, and they were talking about 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:30.200 kind of this, uh, this idea of a generational turning 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:33.280 in terms of um, in terms of where where we 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:35.800 are in the financial cycle and kind of the you know, 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.760 equities being at their their kind of highest price ever, 0:17:39.240 --> 0:17:41.280 and what's likely to happen in the bond markets and 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.240 how you know, as things shift, as there's kind of 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.240 uh no more debt to be had, you know, things 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:48.800 are going to change, and all of a sudden, boomers 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.440 are going to find uh, their their you know, equities 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:55.160 worth so much less than than they were planning on. Right, 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:57.480 And then you have all these millennials who are looking 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.440 at you know, the most expensive equities ever, the most 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:03.040 expensive real estate ever. And why wouldn't you take a 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:08.000 kind of asymmetric bet on something like bitcoin and cryptocurrencies? Um? 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.040 So you have, on the one hand, just that it 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:15.600 as a pure, uh pure market play type, which is 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.160 is kind of the not necessarily the narrative that bitcoiners 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:20.760 are pushing. But it's something that gets to this other 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:25.160 point was why is this a generational hedge? Um? Why 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.359 is it such a non correlated asset? It's it comes 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:32.160 back to this idea of something that is digitally scarce, right, 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.600 and that is kind of uh, you know, knowably provably scarce, 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:38.480 and all of a sudden when you start having that conversation, 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.920 it really paints itself in opposition to uh, two policies 0:18:42.920 --> 0:18:45.480 that we see, you know, both both happening, but also 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.199 that are seemed to becoming more in vogue. And so 0:18:48.240 --> 0:18:51.479 you kind of have this convergence of on the one hand, uh, 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:54.480 just a generation who's like, well, I can't buy these 0:18:54.520 --> 0:18:57.040 things to to create and preserve wealth in the long 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:58.879 run because there's got they've got nowhere to go but 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.120 down Now. The other their hand, they're like, well, there's 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.119 this other thing that seems like it might be a 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.480 good bet or a good hedge, but why And it 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:08.480 comes back to again a lot of the core ideas 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:11.399 of um scarcity that that have people so excited. So 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:13.880 I think it's this really interesting thing that's happening where 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:15.840 it's not that just all of a sudden people are 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.520 all Austrians who really care about scarcity and sound money. 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:22.560 It's that in the context of what else is in 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.359 the market and these larger market forces, it's it's painting 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:30.080 itself in a much more appealing light, right Yeah, I think, yeah, definitely, 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.240 not everybody wants to paint themselves as Austrian or even 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:34.359 cares to know what that means. But I think, like 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:37.600 I think sound money might have skipped a generation or 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:39.879 two right where. I think if you went back in 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:43.359 the early nineteen hundreds, I mean, people were still really 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:46.919