Bankless - Nic Carter | Layer Zero

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Nic Carter is one of our favorite writers in crypto. He's shaped our thoughts on many subjects over the years. He's definitely a Bitcoiner, but is he also an Etherean? What makes Nic tick? Get to know the person behind the persona in this week's episode of Layer Zero. ------- 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  🍵 MATCHA | DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE AGGREGATOR https://bankless.cc/Matcha  🔐 LEDGER | SECURE YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ 📣 TracerDAO | Perpetual Pools are now Live on Aribtrum! https://bankless.cc/Tracer  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 Nic Carter & Geography 8:51 What’s Your Deal? Ethereum?? 12:39 Shared Ancestry 20:09 Cypherpunk Values 23:28 Working for Bitcoin 25:54 Countering FUD 28:24 Individualism & Value Supremacy 35:00 Conservative & Faith-Based 42:53 Money God 46:35 Affiliation & Identity 52:48 Mountaineering & Fun 56:55 Memory & External Storage 58:40 What’s Nic Doing? What Now? 1:05:22 Kanye & Closing ------ Resources: Nic on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nic__carter?s=20  Castle Island: https://www.castleisland.vc/  Nic's Podcast, On the Brink: https://onthebrink-podcast.com/    ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Ethereum is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the Ethereum community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been.

Today I'm talking with Nick Carter, who I don't think. necessarily thinks identifies as part of the Ethereum community, but I think he has impacted it all the same. Nick Carter is a prolific writer and also content producer and just general bitcoiner in the Bitcoin space. He works at his fund Castle Island Ventures and also has a podcast, which I listen to the weekly roll-up every single week, was actually the inspiration for the bankless weekly roll-up. They call it the weekly roundup. And some of Nick's writing and just overall content and conversations has deeply impacted the way I've thought about this industry. It's thanks to Nick that I began to understand crypto and blockchains as political revolutions

rather than just technological ones. And in this show, we actually go and go back even further into the organizational structures of history and talk actually a lot about religion and the comparisons and comparing and contrasting Bitcoin as a religion and, you know, a blockchain as an omnipotent, omnipresent God. And also talk about the differences between the Bitcoin culture and Ethereum culture. And I ask if Nick thought that the Bitcoin community generally is a more faith-based one, as in like they tend to go to church more than other crypto communities out there. And Nick agreed with that point.

And so we collectively, him and I parsed that apart and made some jokes. And then I also asked Nick about, you know, what else, what else does he do? He, he mountaineers, apparently, you know, and also spends a lot of time in deep thought mode while writing. And overall, it was just a lovely conversation with my friend Nick Carter. So let's go ahead and get right into that conversation. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys, not your keys, not your crypto. That's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger heart. hardware wallets, which makes proper private key management a breeze. But the ledger ecosystem is more than just a secure hardware wallet. Ledger is the combination of the Ledger hardware wallet and the Ledger Live app. And if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite DAPs all in one place, ledger is where you want to be.

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decentralization and security. If you're a developer and you want to save on gas costs and make an overall better experience for your users, go to developer.offchainlabs.com to get started building on Arbitrum. If you're a user, keep an eye out for your favorite defy-apps building on Arbitrum. Arbitrum has been working with over 300 teams, including Ethereum's top infrastructure projects, and we'll be opening up to all users shortly. There are so many apps coming online to Arbitrum so you may want to pack your bags in preparation for the great migration to the Arbitrum layer two. To keep up to speed with Arbitrum, follow them on Twitter at Arbitrum and join their Discord. Hey Nick. What's up? How's it going, man? Pretty good. I'm doing good,

man. I just moved. It's been a lot, but I fished out the cables and we're at the audio, with the video we're all set up. Am I the first person to get a peek into your new abode? Yes, I believe so. Yes. So this is the first piece of video content I'm doing from my new place. So there we go. What inspired the move?

Why did you move? Well, a number of factors. But Miami is kind of a good center for... Oh, you moved to Miami. Yeah, I'm in Miami. Okay. Yeah. So it's a good just, it's a good zone for crypto people.

There's a burgeoning community here. The Northeast seemed kind of stale, frankly, and, you know, heavily sort of locked down and things like that. And Miami is just, you know, it's like a more happening place, although it's very hot here right now. So, you know, there's downsides as well. Yeah, I lived in Boca Raton for like almost three months right before COVID hit. And like, Boca Raton, anywhere outside of Miami is not at all like.

Miami is its own thing but like Florida felt like there were there were costs to living in Florida like the the Seattle rain that I'm used to is not the Florida rain that you experienced down there yeah there is absolutely torrential rain actually about an hour ago I kind of just got stuck on the highway no one could really drive I mean I guess you know New York just had like incredible amounts of rain so that's not just you know a Florida thing But yeah, to answer your question, I mean, we operate remotely now as a consequence of COVID. And so I could operate out of anywhere. And I spent four years in Boston.

I figured, okay, you know, try a new city. Not to mention, you know, crypto has a very heavy Latin American sort of influence. You know, some of the highest penetration rates in the world for crypto are in Latam. and if you run a Latam business, you most likely have a Miami HQ or Miami office. And so this is another way of getting sort of in touch with that sort of genre of entrepreneur. Yeah, I kind of had the same exact path except on the West Coast where like COVID happened. As soon as COVID happened, I wanted to get out of Seattle because I lived in Seattle all my life. So as soon as I was ready, I was like, well, I'm going to go do exactly everything I'm doing.

and I moved down to San Diego. It's like we both like had our upper corners moving down to the lower corners and the opposite sides of America. That's kind of funny. Exactly. I have some catching up to do on the plant front though. You do. Florida is a fantastic place to have plants.

I know, I know. I brought some of them down. They were very much neglected and kind of starved of sunlight. So I'm hoping, you know, they're, then we restored. How are you going to deal with the heat? Are you,

are you ready to handle that head on? It's been fine, honestly. I mean, people here just scurry from AC to AC, so they don't spend too much time outside. The humidity is what, as they say, is what gets you. But I don't know. I'm like completely fine with it. I mean, yeah, you get sweaty, but, you know, whatever. That's the cost of doing business down here.

What about the East Coast resonates with you? You seem like an East Coaster. Yeah. I don't know what that means, but you seem like one. So Miami is exactly 1,500 miles south by road from Boston's precisely 1,500 miles. So yes, I did want to stay on the East Coast. You know, my family's here on the East Coast. So I was going to, Miami's like not that far from, you know, D.C.

Where like, you know, a lot of my family and friends are. So, you know, I figured I would stay on the coast, but just go to the most tropical part. That's funny. So the first question. I ever gave to you in a podcast was, what's your deal? And then the first question that Ryan ever gave to you in a podcast was, are you an Ethereum? And so I kind of want to get an update on both of those things. So I think when I asked you what your deal was, it's roughly like two years ago. So like, how would you update your answer to your question, what your deal is? What's your deal as of now? I don't remember what I said back then. What did I say? Do you remember? Yeah, whatever you said, it actually, like, triggered me a complete, like, reconceptualization as to what, like, crypto is and started to get my mind thinking of crypto as, like, a political movement more than a technology one. And so you said that, like, Bitcoin, it just instantiates a lot of values that you have, like the unprintability of money, strong property rights, and a few things of this nature. that's deeply insightful uh two years ago me was the genius i don't know about i don't know about

present day me i think i've lost some brain cells in that time but uh that's still my deal actually that's that's that sounds quite insightful i mean um just recently i was thinking about how we keep mistaking technical decisions or what are actually political decisions for technical decisions. I'm sure we'll get into this, but EIP-1559, I think it's a great example of that, actually. But yes, I think that's still my deal. You know, trying to peek through the sort of opacity and the veils of decentralization and get to the fundamental, you know, nature of these systems.

and, you know, kind of like resident, enthusiast, all skeptic, all bundled into one. So I think that's still my deal. Maybe I'm more open-minded than I was two years ago. So when the intro to the show is talking to all the people that compose the Ethereum community. And when I pitched you coming on to the show, you were like, I'm not sure I count myself to be a part of the Ethereum community. Could you elaborate on that point? Well, I guess it's like, you know, the same way, like a theater production. Like, do you count the guy in the audience who's like heckling the performers as like part of the production?

Like, I guess. So like you can hear them from the stage. So that's me. Like, you know, I'm like sort of adjacent. Like occasionally, you know, like making like annoying noises. But, you know, I'm. I'm not like an Ethereum, per se. But some Ethereums, you know, tolerate me.

So that's good of them. And some just write me off as like a hopeless maxi, which I'm not, to be clear. But, you know, so that's, you know, I'm on the sidelines. Do you have resistance to being considered part of the Ethereum community? Would you decline that label if you were given it by someone? well an outsider I mean that's certainly like in terms of the venom diagram of the things that I am like no one would say I'm primarily an Ethereum but sure I've certainly used Ethereum much more than sort of the average global citizen and we also have invested in many companies that you know build on Ethereum and things like that so maybe I'm just being too pedantic about the distinctions here you know maybe maybe you could allege me to be an Ethereum. Who knows?

Well, I think when we talk about like the layer zero, if we really want to zoom out, the layer zero goes all the way back to the cypherpunks, really. Like they are the layer zero of the layer zero. I kind of think everything, Hazu said that like crypto cultures downstream of Bitcoin culture because Bitcoin started this thing in the first place. But I actually think Bitcoin culture and Bitcoin itself is actually downstream of the cypherpunks naturally, right? Like it came out of the cypherpunct.

So everything is kind of downstream of the cypherpunks. And so, and I think one of the cool things that crypto did for the world is it kind of shattered the identity of a cypherpunk into a million different pieces and allows all of us to become like some sort of cypherpunk. And as we all know, also know, cypherpunks are like zealots, right? Like they really believe in what they believe. And so when I see you like endlessly like writing articles, fighting fud, talking about all the different aspects of the relevant aspects of Bitcoin to the rest of the world. So I kind of consider you to like a Bitcoin zeal it. But it's all related.

It's all the same community, right? We're all downstream of the cypherpunks. So that's kind of why I'll include you in the Ethereum community no matter what. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's the same way like, you know, sloths and, you know, armadillos. are part of the same animal kingdom. You know, we share a common ancestor. But, you know, like, I think it might actually be a mistake

just to say bitcoins of the sole heritage of the cypherpunks. Like, there's a lot of cypherpunkey stuff, which doesn't have anything to do with blockchains. Like Julian Assange was a classic cypherpunk. And I mean, you know, he was a bitcorner, I suppose still is a bitcorner. but um him he was more about encryption and you know uh revealing data and um you know uh passing data in a sort of a covert way like that's cypherpunkey for sure but it's not like crypto um and then

you know actually i was reflecting on this recently you have to think it's very important to remember the cypherpunks many of them well so it was a heterogeneous group for start um they were interested in in sort digital cash as in cash like instruments that were natively digital with David Chom, you know, digicash type things. And of course, they had different opinions about it. But a lot of it was sort of dollar denominated and the challenge was to build the, you know, anonymous cash protocol. And anonymity was an incredibly important part of the cyphurpunk doctrine. And then Bitcoin, I would say, is actually really, really different from sort of

establishment cyberpunk thought, right? Because Bitcoin has sort of reasonable pseudonymity, you know, not perfect. And it is a bearer instrument, you know, kind of settles, you know, digitally. But it's not really that cash like in that it certainly doesn't attempt to have a stable, you know, stable unit of account or anything. So it's really, really different from the Chomium ideal, right? It's not just an upgraded version of DigiCash or anything like that. It's very much, you know, has these ideas impregnated into it about monetary systems. And that attracted a whole different breed of people, right? So that attracted, you know, like monetarists. And, um,

like gold bugs, right? So those are completely different concepts, but it was so attractive to them that it sort of took flight. And then, you know, somewhere along the way, we forgot, okay, what about fulfilling, you know, the vision of charm and people that wanted, you know, dollar stable, digital bear assets? And some people have attempted to do this, obviously, with public blockchains, but there's just not that much emphasis on that, which I find interesting, because if you look at the history of cypherpunk thought, that was probably, I would say, the primary version of digital cash would be something more resembling a stable coin. I know that might be a controversial idea, but, you know, just go back and read the discourse. Right. I would argue that the emphasis on like a cash instrument and anonymous cash instrument was simply confined. by the vehicles that these cypherpunks had at the time, right?

Like, they couldn't even, like, imagine a non-state money because no one could imagine a non-state money at the time. Really, really the thing that Satoshi really invented was inventing the idea of non-state money, and then that, as you said, like, the idea is impregnated into Bitcoin. And then, but I would say that, like, cypherpunk values would be like, aha, we no longer, like, we, I would say that, the desire for like digital cash, that value is, uh, above the desire for self-sovereignty and

self-independence. And I would say that monetary, uh, monetary policy that's non-state, that's non-sovereign, it more subscribes to the whole values of being independent than they, then they would care about like the digital anonymous cash. Yeah. It's an interesting question, you know, because Bitcoin gives you independence in this whole other domain, right, which is monetary independence, you know, which is a very important thing, of course, having a non-discretionary monetary system.

But it's almost like that idea was so strong that it blotted out this other idea, which was, let's build dollar-staple instruments to transact privately online, which was kind of one of those prior ideas. And, you know, that's an idea which is important, though, because it's now a matter of public policy, right? And let's say there had been a huge emphasis solely on completely anonymous stable coins instead of, you know, whatever, synthetic monetary commodities like Bitcoin. We might actually be in a better place with regards to the CBDC discourse, right? You know, like, I don't know what that kind of factual world looks like, but if we had hundreds of billions of

super private, whatever, ZK snarkified stable coins floating around, that would still be a net win for freedom and sovereignty, for sure. It's just that the main battle has actually been around the monetary discretion front. So, I don't know, I'm sort of a little bit wistful for that other outcome, which we didn't get. I mean the private dollars? Yeah, yeah. I know. I know. that seems like completely incrementalist and it's like well Nick like actually we have a bigger like battle of a fight which is you know destroying central banks or whatever but private dollars are pretty important too yeah I would like I'll want to get your take on this is that like so maybe maybe I'm falling into a fallacy but I kind of like the fallacy that I'm falling into is that like whatever crypto values

we discover as like a community of crypto people retroactively we get to say that these are cypherpunk values like everything is downstream like whatever values we discover to be valuable is like oh yeah these are now cypherpunk values yes and um you know there aren't actually really that many true cyphopunks floating around uh i don't i wouldn't say i'm one right i like don't use pgp for instance so or whatever the new version of pgp is so you know i don't use signal enough even you know I'm not even using the best cryptographic tools we have. So, yeah, I think a lot of people, you know, profess themselves to be cypherpunks in crypto land, but it's mostly a branding exercise.

And a lot of the original cypherpunks just would completely denounce cryptocurrency at this point. A lot of them have. Right. Right. Maybe I shouldn't keep this like cypherpunk branding like and held in such high regards. But that's kind of like why I want to redefine it, right? Like, you know, we can use it more expansively because it's such a generally such a positive term in this industry. And I mean, the cyberbunks was just such a small group of people. And so, you know, the culture just changed.

And this is a more mainstream movement. So, you know, the question is like, is that label still does it have some? semantic content. Is it a useful label? Or should we rebrand the movement and call it something else? Yeah. Well, one thing that crypto has done is it's put a public private key into the hands of everyone that uses crypto. And that is absolutely like a cypherpunk thing. Like now we all have private keys. And we can build on top of that and go from there. So like cyber, I don't think cyphepunk would at all argue that that's a, that's not a cypherpunk thing. That's true. It was the consumerification of public key cryptography in a way that vastly outstripped any of the, I mean, I think the biggest public key infrastructure before cryptocurrency would have been PGP. I can't think of anything else. And that was at most, what, 100,000 individuals. And in terms of people that have used a, as they say, non-custodial wallet.

Unhosted wallet. Unhosted wallet, yeah, according to the FATIF or whatever. That's how many people do you think that is probably well over 50 million, I would say. Like probably 250 million people have sort of had exposure to the financial assets in some capacity, but most of that, much of that would have been in a hosted manner on hosted. I'm sure it's over 50 million. I mean, you know, how many hardware wallets is ledrously? things like that.

Right. Well, I have at least four of them. So there's that. And MetaMask, they have 10 million monthly actives now, I think. Yep. Yep.

So one of your changing gears here a little bit. One of your articles was Bitcoin at 12, where you illustrated Bitcoin as this cathedral, that many different individuals are helping build. And they all know that they're not actually going to be able to see the ultimate like manifestation. of this cathedral because it takes hundreds of years to build a cathedral. And so it's still a dedication out of the values of the builders that actually creates these

things regardless of whether they get to enjoy the fruits of their final projects. So my question to you is, how many hours a week do you work for Bitcoin? That's a good question. Probably zero. You know, nothing I do is sort of directly accretive to Bitcoin, I think. How could, oh God, I fundamentally disagree with that, but maybe that's just a different perspectives as to what it means to work for Bitcoin. Does making content count?

Yes. Yes. Peter McCormick works for Bitcoin. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't know. I probably spend, you know, five to ten hours a week writing something. And then, I mean, you know, does funding Bitcoin startups count?

I guess, I suppose. Yes. Everything counts. That's very lumpy. Some months, I think. don't and then, you know, other months I'll do three. So, um, I don't know, you know, like, I can't say I'm a full timer on Bitcoin, uh, but I'll, I'll give it at least 10 to 15 hours a week, probably. I, I kind of more or less think that everything you do in your professional life

is like working for Bitcoin. Unless I'm missing, I have no idea what it's like to be Nick Carter in the professional life. But like, I think like every single podcast that I make and every single article I write is like me working for Ethereum. Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I think I'm maybe more broad in my focus. I mean, you know, a lot of my time is on stuff like coin metrics, which does like, I don't know, 50 blockchains or something. So some of it is more broad.

And, you know, like when like Siv, Castle Island will fund startups that are just like financial infrastructure for the space at large, whether it's stable coins or, or, you know, cryptocurrency. So I wouldn't say it's confined to Bitcoin, but yeah, in theory, it's all sort of generally useful for Bitcoin in some, some capacity. When you were, when the whole Bitcoin energy like FUD part of the recent history of crypto was going around, I think you were putting out something like how many articles like a week? Like, take us through like that whole phase of your life. Well, that was weird because the FUD is somehow reached a crescendo for some reason. I guess it was probably Elon, the Elon effect. But it was like

I'd like somehow serendipitously or unluckily ended up being situated in the middle of it. Because I guess I sort of like appointed myself like one of the one of the main like debaters Sentinels of Bitcoin Sentinels. Yeah. And I mean, I'm sort of glad it's over because it was a lot. I was like talking to the press like every other day. And it just, it wasn't really sustainable. I couldn't like do my job at the time. And so for the last like two months,

I've just been saying no to all press inquiries and all podcasts with the exception of yours. And I did pomps as well because, you know, he's my neighbor now. Oh, really? I didn't know he's in Miami. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, his studio is here. It's great.

So, you know, people, I'm friends with, I'll like still, you know, do the content. But basically I'm sort of like a little burned out from all that stuff. Although I will say there is one final thing that I've done on the energy question, which is actually more of a paper. And that I think will be really useful for a lot of people should be out this month. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, I don't know how many like videos and pieces of content things I did. It's like an uncountable amount. Do you like it enjoy the limelight of being like a Bitcoin spokesperson?

Is that like something that's fun for you? It felt more like an obligation than anything, I think. Of course, it's fun like when your star is rising. I'm sure, you know, you felt the same. But it just becomes a grind eventually. And, you know, at the end of the day, like there's only so many. hours in the week and the more time you spend being some sort of like unofficial bitcoin spokesperson the last time you can spend on real work whether it's writing or you know like

funding startups or anything like that do you think like sometimes I kind of think these like these protocols will lead themselves into their own future and obviously these are all these this podcast is called Layer Zero, so it's all about, like, the people that help these things, like, direct themselves. But there's also, these are decentralized networks. So many different people are building the cathedral in their own specific way, like, to some degree, like, what can one person do? Do you kind of think that, like, if Nick Carter didn't exist, that Bitcoin would more or less

be in the same spot? Or do you, do you actually see what you do actually moving the needle for Bitcoin? I think Bitcoin would be absolutely fine without me. So why do it all then? It was fine before me because I find it interesting. I think, you know, occasionally I have sort of maybe good points to make. But, yeah, I think it would be completely fine without me. In fact, you know, I haven't done that much publicly in the last month or two.

And everything, you know, the blocks kept arriving. You know, like I've noticed that, you know, certain talking points that might have originated with me. like other people just glom on to them and they get a life of their own they don't need me you know and you know bitcoin content like there's an incredibly vibrant ecosystem out there um which you know like people will they'll respond to the fod or they'll you know like write interesting things and original ideas like there's no need for me whatsoever it's a very bitcoiner answer like bitcoin absolutely does not need me um and i and i think think maybe it's kind of interesting. In the Ethereum world, we definitely fundamentally accept, like,

the layer zero of Ethereum, as in, like, Ethereum is, it's code until it's people. And then, like you said, before we hit recording, like, Hazu says, like, it's, it's always the social layer that is the final, the buck stops at the social layer. But Bitcoiners, I don't think, want to have that same sort of illustration for Bitcoin. They want it to stop at the code, and and the code be the thing that propels Bitcoin of the future. And no, Bitcoin doesn't need anyone. Do you agree with that perception? That certainly is the view, probably the establishment view in Bitcoin.

But I would say Bitcoin also has what I call value primacy. So effectively values that supersede the code, especially in a time of crisis. And so even Bitcoin, the code is merely an encoding of the values. but the values are supreme, especially when there's a conflict between the values and the code, right? So, you know, with the overflow bug, you know, there aren't 184 billion bitcoins or 192 billion, whatever it was. There's 21 million. So we're going to revert the code and we're going to sort of engineer a fix to that. So I don't know what the next instance is going to be where there's a conflict between the implied specification.

We don't have one exactly, but between the sort of constitution and the, then the actual, you know, enforcement of that. But Bitcoin also has the social layer. Just it's convenient for people to pretend that it doesn't. The way I've described Bitcoin's social layer is that the social contract of Bitcoin is to not have one, which implies that there's still a social contract. But like it's still also at the same time diminishes its own role by like, it's like it's almost like a snake consuming its own tail. it can get almost all the way there, but it doesn't fully be able to, like, consume itself. That's kind of my take on the social contract.

I mean, it's not just a Bitcoin question. It's any monetary system. Like, this is a question that, like, monetary theorists have puzzled over for decades and decades, really just forever. I would say it's like, how do you, as long as you have money, how do you build a monetary system in which the people in control, can't tinker with it excessively or, you know, like can't, you know, can't change the parameters, especially to benefit themselves. And that's why you, you know, throughout history, had these movements to get on the gold standard because the gold standard is sort of this, you know, at that point you're beholden to sort of natural law as opposed to the law of man,

right? So that's the whole point is that you, you, you know, you bind yourself to the mast, you sort of voluntarily tie your hands and you say, okay, I'm going to actually give up power here. But that takes like active management. That takes like an ongoing commitment to the surrendering of power. And of course, like the history of the gold center is a history of governments saying, well, you know, actually it would be really convenient if we could get off the gold standard for a little bit. The most interesting, thing to me is that in you know historically the norm was after departure from the gold standard people would advocate to go back on it and so you'd have this recognition like okay well you know

we had this like temporary aberration we went off it but let's you know surrender control once again and you just had these cycles you know on off on off and so that's just the same thing that's happening with bitcoin but you have to have this ongoing vigilance and this commitment to not changing anything. So you do need that sort of continual pressure. And I sort of worry about what happens if we get extremely complacent and say, well, the code is supreme, whatever, what happens if a decade passes? And people like, huh, like, why did we submit to this like particular parameter in the code again? We just kind of forget about that. So I do think, you know, it does need a measure of sort of like active vigilance and sort of

participation. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the conversation thus far. We are about to get into the comparing and contrasting of religion and Bitcoin and that whole religious conversation as it relates to our crypto industry. That's what's coming up next. But before we get there, we have to talk for a moment about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. When you shop for plane tickets, you probably use kayak, Expedia, or Google to compare ticket prices. So why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto. When you make your trades, you want to make sure that you're getting the best possible price on your trade and that you aren't paying high gas costs that you could have otherwise avoided. That's why you should be using Macha. Mata

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That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless, and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring bankless. So that's super interesting, this active vigilance thing. And, like, I don't know if this is true, and you'll probably be more familiar with this or not. but like the Bitcoin community generally, I think, is a little bit more faith-based than the rest of the crypto world. And I'm actually talking about like straight up religion here. And like when you say like active vigilance, it kind of reminds me of just like the part of like religion, organized religion where like it was your duty to wake up in the morning and like remember your faith to God. Right.

Like you wake up and before the Renaissance, right? Like before it was all about the individual. It's like you were supposed to wake up and remember that you are subject to God. and you need to remember to keep your faith. Right? And so like Bitcoiners and they're very, very strong, like social dynamics are always like, you know, we all need to wake up and remember that the 21 million hard cap is, is most holy. And we all need to remember that.

Well, you know, there's a reason that I think Islam means submission in Arabic, if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, religion is all about submission, of course, right? Like you accept that you are, you know, infinitesimally small and, you know, unimportant relative to the highest power. And, you know, in Christianity you're submitting to like a, you know, very specific set of beliefs. It's the same thing, you know, in, I don't want to, you know, push you the religion analogy too far because I find it sacrilegious sometimes. But, yeah, like Bitcoin is all about submitting to a specific.

specific monetary schedule. Like, you have to submit. You can't push it. You can't change it. And even if you know, you're the most important developer, you probably can't really even tweak it, even a little bit. And, and there's like, you know, there's a sublimity in submission, I think. If, if, you know, if you actually can accommodate it. But if you, if you can't, then Bitcoin's not for you, you know. Was I right in my, would you, would you agree with me? when I said that like the Bitcoin community generally is a little bit of more faith-based than the rest of the crypto industry? As in like actually like the people believe in God.

Right. Like yeah, maybe they tend to go to church on Sundays more than the rest of the industry. Yeah, I think that. I think so. I think so. Why do you think that is? Because Bitcoin is more conservative in its sort of core value. You have these clustered.

values, you know, it's like, I don't know what the right term is, but there's this, there's this sort of thing about society where if you know one belief of a person, you can predict the next 15 beliefs, right? Even if those beliefs are completely unrelated to each other. Yeah, completely had a surface. Genius. Yeah, like, for instance, like one's opinion of like sunscreen or like seed oils or, you know, eating meat or, those are like very like, you know, kind of.

like meme, mean things, but, um, so like, and the reason they all map is because those values are all expression of some sort of like deep underlying, you know,

set of beliefs like, am I fundamentally, uh, you know, like a conservative, like not in like the political sense, but, you know,

like do I fundamentally believe in like hierarchy and stability and like keeping things the same? Or do I believe in progress and shaking things up and, you know, etc. And so, um, Bitcoin is not big C conservative, but I'd say it's a little C conservative in that I view it as an attempt to restore the, you know, the not the not the, you know, the form of a gold standard, not the features of a gold standard, but the environment that the gold standard, you know, facilitated. And so that's why I call it, you know, it's a paradox because it's like technologically progressive.

But in some senses, you could say it's maybe not regressive, but like an attempt to reclaim something that has been lost. Right. So some people call it revanchist, like you're reclaiming lost territory. Right. And so, you know, that's the paradox of Bitcoin. Right. It's technologically forward, but it restores more ancient values. That's the idea.

Yeah, that's the idea. So we'll see. That's crazy. That's a crazy concept. I know. It's one of my favorite. If you don't mind me asking, do you go to church? Not currently, but I am religious for sure.

I also just moved here, so I need to locate a good one. As someone who's literally never been to church other than like touring, like how do you, how do you choose a church? Like how do you look? It feels like if we want to map this onto the crypto world, it's like you're picking a tribe, right the crypto world it's easy to pick a tribe you generally fall right into one um how does it work in like religion well you're born into it you know so you don't uh you don't typically like you know i guess yeah right you don't like lay out a map of all the schisms in christianity you like okay well

you know you know i believe in uh predestination but like you know like these are the gospels you know you don't uh pick and choose that way do you have a what's your specific denomination um well i was baptized into the Anglican church in England. And so in the U.S., that would map onto the Episcopalian church. So Amin Soleimani, who's one of my own personal heroes in this space, coined this term money god. And it's simply something that uses control theory

or has automated away all of the governance functionalities. And so, like, on Ethereum, these would be in the application layer. But Bitcoin is itself one in. of this, right? Where like we've created Bitcoin, we've cast it away into existence, and now it controls us, right? Like, it's autonomous and we can't control it, but it determines our lives, right? Like, it has a monetary policy, a supply schedule, and it imposes those values upon its users, right? It's subservants. And so like, do you serve two gods? You know, this actually came up in a debate I had with Francis Coppola, the infamous no-corner,

because she said, as a Christian, she rejects Bitcoin because it's, you know, this doctrine of absolutism. But only God himself, only providence is absolute. And I was just kind of baffled by this. but maybe maybe there's something to that. I mean, you know, like I see Bitcoin as a human institution. It's just we're trying to do something inhuman. We're trying to create an institution that supersedes our sort of base human desires. So in that sense, you know, there's a similarity.

But it's not divine. I mean, it may, you know, in my view, sort of it inspires feelings of sublimity and, you know, something truly awesome in sort of the baroque meaning of the of the word awesome you know on spying yeah um and and you know so you might you might go as far as to say it's sort of wow it's incredible that uh you know such a creation exists like this is evidence you know of you know of something greater than humans like it certainly inspires those kinds of feelings i'd say a lot of people but um you know it's fundamentally a human creation i i believe uh you know I believe that Satoshi was a human.

Who knows? I think you can take this even further, right? Because some of the properties that are discovered in good blockchains that are actually like a live ecosystems like Bitcoin and I basically only other included Ethereum is that like well they're they're omniscient. They know everything because all of the state that is held in Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin remembers all. They're omnipotent in the fact that, like, you must comply with the rules of Bitcoin. There's a few more omni words that if I had, like, if I could think of them, I would, I would. But, like, the properties of these things do approach some of, like, the words that we use to describe, like, actual God.

I think of the same part of your brain probably lights up when you think about it. Probably, yeah. Yeah. We might be torturing the analogy a little bit at this point. You know, Bitcoin doesn't make any metaphysical claims as far as I know, as far as I know. But, you know, like, there's a great degree of mystery and, like, intrigue in the origins of Bitcoin, which I've always held up as a strength. You know, I think it would be tedious and boring if we knew, you know, what the origin was. I hope we never find out.

well, if we want to hop on to different subjects, let me know. But I'm going to keep going on this for one last little bit. And so, like, there's the claim that, like, the story of, like, the Christian God or the Catholic God or even all religion, more or less, it's, like, and the same thing as this Layer Zero podcast. It's people all the way down. And so, like, the Bible was written by humans and was composed by humans to tell a story of, like, a holy figure. And as somebody who didn't grow up with religion,

but then discovered it, discovered how to appreciate it much later in my life. Like, to me, the Bible is just a story of, as a collection of fables of stories as to how to live, like, a good life and have good values.

But all these stories were composed by people, right? In the same way that, like, you know, the Bitcoin is a system of human, that instantiate human values. And same thing with Ethereum. Like, it can be argued that, like, you know, the way that we discovered religion is that, like, we discovered all these things that are fundamentally capital, capital G good. And then we created, like, a network around them. And so, like, these conclusions, while we, we are definitely, like, mutilating this metaphor, like, it also keeps on going. Yeah, well, there's, there's, like, the secular description, the charitable secular description of the Bible, which is it's sort of a set of heuristics that we learned over thousands of years.

incorporated into stories and then you know it's its guidance of how to live and then there's you know i would say the religious version which is it's genuinely the received word of god right um so i guess have used that first definition um the metaphor the analogy probably makes a bit more sense uh although the rules encoded in blockchain is very simple i would say it's like you have to right craft transactions this way for them to be valid and and blockchain doesn't care about anything else right so It's really just, well, I suppose there's other roles relating to monetary policy and things like that. Right. And that does feel like how the 21st century version of religions is right, look, now we've actually removed the subjectivity from a religion and now we actually have objective properties about these things. If we want to consider Bitcoin and Ethereum a religion, which I kind of do.

I don't know. I haven't decided I'm mixed on the on the merits of that I mean religion is not very popular these days in the US like zoomers are mostly agnostic or atheists also it also Bitcoin or Ethereum or crypto doesn't fit into the old categorization of categoriesizations of religion is like very much like a neo religion in the same way like Bitcoin and an Ethereum are like neo nation states yeah I mean I think my preferred analogy would be a political one. So the nation state one, which you've done a number of times, people feel a religious deal perhaps towards their nation state or their tribe or their ethnos, you know, that we see for sure. I mean, people, that's probably the primary cause of people living and dying and fighting,

you know, becoming soldiers and going to war and things like that. So again, though, you know, blockchains are not complete in the sense that a nation is, you know, they don't. But, you know, I think that's part of my preferred analogy. Like, I can certainly see that, you know, there's, you know, 100 million or so people worldwide that kind of subscribe to Bitcoin Nation. I like Balejee's conception. I think, you know, the crypto capital versus the whatever, the woke capital versus communist capital.

I think that's really, really apt. Yeah, that's funny. I actually just read that, like, for the first time, like last night. So good timing, good timing for that. I would say the reason why I frequently use like the nation state to like analyze Ethereum as like what it is. Whenever I do that, like I also go backwards and say, well, the nation state is just like the next iteration of religion. Well, the nation state now is sort of becoming obsolete too, I would argue. I mean like if you just look at the crypto community, like you have people that have much, much more in common with each other, even though they, you know, are,

a global audience fundamentally than they have with their sort of fellow countrymen. And that doesn't just happen along the line. And I think that's like the truest definition of the metaphors, which is a congregation of people that are gathering in a certain venue where that new digital typically identity supersedes, the old identities that they sort of had or subscribed to. And that could be crypto, it could be like trading JPEGs back and forth and discords, or it could be whatever, like Roblox. I'm not even sure what Roblox is, but I'm just going to say it because I think kids like it or, you know, Fortnite or whatever. So like if you were to pull 100 zoomers and

say, what's your primary affiliation, I think they wouldn't say like American necessarily or like a good chunk of them would say something else. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's always the, that's been the early promises of the internet, right? It's like, pull all like-minded people regardless of their physical locations in the world and regardless of where they are in relationship to borders and allow them to meet on the internet and group together according to like values and like interests. And it also just so happens. we have this new crypto thing that is instantiating specific values upon like internet digital objects

that we can all like rally behind well the crypto affiliation is the strongest because it's deeply tribal the stakes are enormously real it's financial in nature so it's a very grown-up game but it's also you know very fun and and you know youthful and you know and like you know gamified but you know, the stakes are incredibly real. So when you manage to not do work and including the work that you do for Bitcoin and the work that you don't do for Bitcoin, whatever you call work, what happens after you do work? What happens when it's playtime?

What do you do? So I try and carve out, I would say, one week and a month to like go climb a large pile of rocks. Is this hiking or rock climbing? Like mountaineering, I would say, which includes some technical climbing, but typically you're just hiking uphill. And I like that because it's an excuse to turn off my phone for two to three days. Not that I don't have service. Typically, unfortunately, you know, it's like hard to get lost anymore.

It's like all these mountains, like you think they wouldn't have service, but they do. And it kind of like takes the joy out of it. little bit but yeah I like it because it's an excuse to just turn off my phone and you know suffer basically I mean that's what mountaineering is it's suffering at altitude and so I I attempt to do that once a month but I can't always but how are you going to do that in Miami there's not my any mountains around you no I have to fly typically I would fly out west and do it okay oh sure you can you come out west to go to go hiking yeah I was uh where are you now you said you're in southern California in San Diego, yeah.

Oh, it was like in your neck of the woods a few weeks ago. No, no shit. Yeah, so next time I'll let you up. But, you know, back when I lived in the northeast, the mountains were there, but they were all small. Right. The best ones are obviously out west. Like, where would you go? Cascades, Rockies?

I was most recently in the high Sierra. And before that, I did Shasta up in northern California. So we're going to try some harder ones soon, glaciers. If you ever, if you ever, yeah, anywhere. anywhere on the on the west coast have you ever go mountaineering like it's within i want to come okay what do i need to know that that's not just because i'm i've done an insane amount of like actual backpacking trips where i put a tent in my backpack but like what do i what am i not prepared for if it's mountaineering so that's the essential skill is just being able to you know walk with a 40-50 pound

pack um but you know if it's there's snow involved you have to know how to use crampons and fix them to your boots. Like learning to self-arrest with an ice axe is pretty essential. That's easy enough to learn. And then glacier travel on a short rope and, you know, crevasse rescue. That would be like the next skill to learn. But if somebody in my troop knows how to do it, do I know how to need to know how to do it? Yeah, you should know.

Yeah, because you might have to save them, right? and then like anything to do with cold weather just like gear management cold weather camping um if you've done that you'd be good okay i mean there aren't that many mountains in the lower 48 that are really going to imperil you yeah this is this is this is right at my alley i'm a big fan of the concept of suffering i think pain is how you how you improve yourself um so it's it's funny that you brought that up i have a good friend that he divides fun into like three Apologies have you heard of this like type 1 fun type 2 fun. It's like type 1 fun is just like straight pure hedonic fun. You know like I don't know like doing coke or Drugs for dopamine. Type 2 fun is like you know it's like actually kind of challenging in the moment you might not seem that fun but afterwards you sort of glad you did it.

Endorphins. Yeah. You know maybe like you know running a 10k or something and then type 3 fun is just miserable in the moment feels terrible. wall and then I suppose upon reflection you might be like oh maybe I want to do that again that's where I'd put most mountain air experiences nice yeah maybe meditation as well because whenever I try and meditate like I fucking hate it and then I can't do it at the end I'm like I guess that was okay I'm like the worst tech bro ever I can't meditate yeah I don't know can't do it have you okay so here's something I've noticed ever since especially it started happening before crypto but as soon as it's as soon as I got into crypto it got even worst. It's just like my memory is absolutely shot. And I think it's just because I have so many devices around me that I just used to outsource all my memory functions. And so like as a muscle, the atrophy is just endless. Have you noticed anything like this? That's an interesting concept.

So as you have more external storage available to you, you just externalize more and more. Right. And then eventually your brain just becomes an index of how to find things. So we're we've effectively become sort of like cyborgs a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah. We've uploaded part of our, I mean, I guess that's true. Like you've uploaded part of your, you outsource some of your consciousness. I mean, like that's kind of like, you know, we don't remember maps of cities anymore because we have GPS.

Right. And we don't remember like trivia or like facts about the presidents because you've Google. Right. Exactly. So I do worry about that actually. Yeah. Certainly like, honestly, I think. mentally speaking, I'm at my worst.

Like, I've been on a study decline since high school. Like, I think high school me would have just, like, blown me out of the water when it comes to, like, any mental sharpness. Actual test. Yeah. I think everybody feels like that. I don't know. I don't think it can be reversed. Yeah, I definitely remember being more mentally sharp, but I'm definitely also much more wise than I ever was.

So, like, there is the tradeoff there. Like, mental acuity, maybe it's not there, but, like, wisdom is, when wisdom levels. are off the charts, hopefully. That's the trade. That's the trade we all make. Yeah. Okay. So it's the weekend, but you're not,

but you can't go mountaineering. So what are you doing in Miami this weekend? I'm still trying to figure, like, trying to get settled here. There's like a lot of, like, more generally, stuff to do. I would,

I'm actually not a big beach person, but I would try and do something outdoorsy, probably if I had a spare weekend. I mean, like, the truth is that I reserve my, weekends often for writing because I can't get it done. I can't get into like a deep work like you know non-actual work work phase during the week so that's when I do probably 70% of all my writing would be on like a Saturday or Sunday morning be at relax go to the gym like go to the sauna right you know like got to eat like you know really boring

stuff, but stuff I can't do during the week as much. Sure. Do you actually like Coors Light, or is it just a meme? I actually quit drinking. Oh, okay. If I were to drink, I would drink Coors Light, but I'm much more focused on sort of being healthy these days. Oh, I have.

The way that I get through writing is I just brute force the writing by ingesting beer. So we are on offices into the spectrum there. Yeah, I used to do that. I mean, when I was in undergrad, that's how I wrote most of my philosophy papers, you know, like write drunk out at sober. But, yeah, I don't know. These days, like, you have to try and get yourself into the flow state somehow. And so these days, I don't try and rush it. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not on a contract.

I don't have to write every weekend or whatever. So now I just kind of wait for inspiration, I suppose. So as, as 2021 is coming to a close with the last quarter remaining here, like, what do you, what do you see on the horizon for our industry and for Bitcoin? Well, Bitcoin is just becoming much more sort of predictable and, like, widely understood. You know, things like Cuba passing of Bitcoin law, like, that's probably honestly not net good for regular Cubans or Cuban Bitcoiners. but it just cements the notion of Bitcoin as sort of this, you know, like not that interesting monetary alternative. And that's, I would say, good for Bitcoin overall.

Like, Bitcoin, like gold. Gold is extremely boring, but it's worth $11 trillion. Bitcoin is just going to grow up. And we're going to look back at these days with nostalgia and be like, wow, that was like such an exciting time. So we should be grateful to be living through it, frankly. But, you know, the future of Bitcoin is just going to be this onward march towards respectability. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It just won't be as exciting in 10 years' time. In the near term, you know, I've always kind of been more on the conservative side in terms of, you know, being wary of financial regulators. At this point, I think they've signaled to us that they're going to try something. whether it's Treasury, whether it's SEC, whether it's some other agency. There's no doubt in my mind now that there's some reprisal coming from the state. I think we can survive it.

I think it's likely to be healthy, but I think it's also going to be extremely painful. And so I don't know what form is going to take, whether they're going to target exchanges, smart contract developers, entrepreneurs, funds. It's not clear to me yet, but it is clear that there's sort of a lot of political capital

behind this anti-crypto movement. Now, of course, we're looking at a time of you know, like relatively rare unity at the state level. You have the president, both houses of Congress, or blue. That may not be the case in sort of a year's time after the midterms. So this might actually be sort of like their shot to, you know, do something extremely harsh. Maybe in a year or two, like we'll be in better stead in Washington. But yeah, you know, the crypto industry

is like, what, 60% America based. It's like very exposed to what happens in the U.S. and so I think it could be like a really really really tough 18 months and you know I would steal yourself for that but that doesn't mean that you know what we're building is invalid or isn't going to work it's just we might have to you know reimagine what it's like to build these you know uncensurable protocols and you know critically examine some of the you know the choke points which is you know what they're going to go after they'll go after things that give them strategic leverage, whether it's stable coins exchanges, whatever. And so, you know, it'll be a process of also, I think, learning about what those exposures are and maybe we'll sort of think

twice about having stable coin-based liquidity for everything, you know, something like that. What do you think is at more risk, Bitcoin or Defi? I think like Bitcoin will like suffer collateral damage just by association. I think lightning operators would be probably, you know, lumped in with Defi. So, like, if something adverse happens to, like, Defi, it would suffer in that respect. It seems to me that Defi, like, Dex's would be, like, a primary target, at least just reading through the lines, like, looking at what Gensler's had to say. Um, you know, some of the tone I'm seeing from people that are actually talking to, you know,

these officials, it seems to be pretty, pretty down in the dumps as far as I can tell from my position. I don't really have, um, you know, any privileged information whatsoever. Um, but yeah, it seems like a lot of it would be targeted either at the like, um, brokerage industry or defy directly. Mm-hmm. Who's your favorite music artist? Um, um,

all time i'm a huge beetles fan uh i love pink floyd as well um the eagles um lads upland um more contemporary like tim and paula and i'm a big conier fan as well he did a good new album yeah oh that's i the other uh more frequent take i've heard is that the album's not that good i haven't listened i liked it i've been listened to it um you know it's very like very very you know, Christian in nature, which I like, you know, it's like, Connie's work has been sort of like, it's always like had some like gospel elements, but it's like unabashedly religious now, which, you know, like I like. But yeah, I actually think there's like some good tracks on there too.

I'll have to give you a listen. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on, layer zero and let me pick your brain. Thanks, David. Maybe you can come on the brink. We'll get you on there. I've always wanted to, to be honest. So that'll be awesome.

All right. It's been great, man. All right. Cheers. Thanks, Nick. Take care. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast, and community as a bankless premium subscriber to get the most out of your bankless experience. You'll get access to our market.

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