TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - Tales from the Crypt #75: Jack Mallers

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

Join Marty as he sits down with Jack Mallers to discuss Zap, potential futures markets for Bitcoin miners, upgrades to the Lightning Network, cannabis, and much more. Check out Zap: https://zap.jackmallers.com/ Follow Jack on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackMallers Follow Marty on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MartyBent Shout out to this week's sponsors: Cash App. Head over to the App Store or Google Play Store, download cash.app and start #stackingsats today. 21Lectures! If you're looking to learn how to build on top of Bitcoin and LN check out https://www.21lectures.com/ today!

What is up, freaks? It's your boy Marty here to introduce this week's sponsors. First one is Cash App. You freaks already know all about them. They're the number one finance app in the App Store for the last two years. Sitting on top of the throne like a don. Cash App is helping us stack sats on the weekends. It's the first where you stack sats any day you want, really. Not just on the weekends. It's the first P2P payments app that has allowed their users to buy Bitcoin.

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go to the uh apple app store or the google play store and download the cash app today uh second sponsor is uh one of those boot camps trying to help create more uh bitcoin developers out there 21 lectures uh this episode is supported by 21 lectures 21 lectures mission is to bring more developers to the bitcoin ecosystem with in-person courses so uh you'll be lectured by world-renowned bitcoin and lightning developers their courses teach participants the fundamentals of how to work with the Bitcoin blockchain. They cover cryptography, the structure of transactions, how blocks are created and how they are chained together,

smart contract languages, as well as the Lightning Protocol, all the cool stuff, including toolkits to develop on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and Lightning. To learn more, visit 21lectures.com. That's 21, the number is 21lectures.com. I hope you guys enjoy this episode with Jack Mollers I know I sure did and if you do enjoy it

and you want to support us please smash that subscribe button and rate and review if you have the time and you feel so compelled also you can go to tftc.io slash contribute if you ever want to buy a shout out

or throw some sats it's TFTC's way enjoy what is up freaks it's your boy marty bent coming to you from a beautiful rooftop in williamsburg it's a great sunny saturday afternoon here uh sitting down with jack malers jack welcome back to the podcast yo hey thanks for having me man thanks for coming back we're making like a a bunch of basic white bitches and drinking rosé on the roof got some lacroix on ice as well very excited for this conversation repeat guests there's no need

to go through your tail what the hell's been going on man um a lot and nothing both life seems like a lot's going on yeah yeah a lot's always going on well thank you for building the zap app um you're welcome and making it making it uh available on iphones i've been using it for the last week every day and i've read about it you saw it like again man props to you guys incredible fucking ux it's uh basically just scanned the qr code had access to my node was able i was busy like i had to go do stuff for like the merch like pick up stuff i couldn't like be at my computer So being able to on the go open up channels, like request liquidity from people like while I was on the subway, it was freaking crazy. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to take that compliment. Thank you. And then pass it on to the community, dude.

Seriously. I mean, Zach, excuse me, Zap crossed a thousand Slack members recently. And it really is community driven. If I show you my first sketch of the iPhone app and then what you use, not the same. and that's uh thanks to the community it's a really cool project and cool uh to see everyone kind of unite and do it together really cool but i'm being honest there who's your ux head i want to shake his hand yeah um so i the way it works is i have a sketchbook it's actually my backpack right here and i probably sketch a kajillion things on paper and i share it publicly on the zap slack and on github and then there's a dude in germany that i work with his name is ole and uh we turn those into actual design screens and things that can be coded and it goes through

a super iterative public process of like peer review but in design and then someone ends up building it and then we use it and we're like whoa yo that sucks and then we change it and it sucks again and eventually it doesn't suck so bad so it sounds like i have to shake your hand here we reached across the table uh no it's crazy you guys have simplified it's three buttons uh you got your wallet uh your history and then your settings which allow you to manage your nodes and in your wallets and whatever denomination you want to uh denominate your your currency in yeah are you guys thinking simplicity first always absolutely yeah i think zap's principles and its mission has been pretty clear and hasn't changed and never will really um like i think

zap stands for ushering in a new era of bitcoin where lightning enables a lot of new things and the relationship with the end user is going to mature a lot and we want to test its boundaries and be a part of that so absolutely simplicity first um and almost exaggerated and and seeing where the limits hit and where we get pushed back yeah no and it's uh so it seems like zap's like a great base to do what you just alluded to which was leverage lightning to create cool use cases it seems like you've been building some cool stuff um like beyond zap what is interesting you what are you working on and well so i guess from a bird's eye view if i sat back with my family we're like yo we should help bitcoin like bitcoin's been amazing to us probably the best

thing that's happened to our family and um how can we help and one way was improving the relationship with the end consumer increasing the velocity of the asset efficient settlement and doing this zap thing and then the other was uh the exchange and market space um like my grandfather was the chairman of the chicago board of trade my dad has a really cool history in finance and in markets and we see the exchange space and like the marketplace within bitcoin is a little bit embarrassing which isn't a bad thing but yeah we touched on this the first time yeah so like catching up with you what was that in october yeah yeah so it's been what six months almost seven months yeah seven months shit even longer yeah it seems like a lot has been happening

yeah since now and then what uh so you that's like what what are you building infrastructurally sure well so i'm speaking here at the magical crypto carnivore carnival whatever that is about the unsolved problem of bitcoin derivatives so i think to me that was the lowest hanging fruit was um the derivatives market as in other asset classes the derivatives market either mirrors the spot or carries higher volume and higher value than the spot and in bitcoin that's not the case is we have like a ton of spot exchanges with terrible order execution and no one's really tackled derivatives and professional risk transfer and so to me that was like i remember like i facetimed my parents like every day and i remember telling them like

yeah like zap is cool but like i think i'm gonna try and solve bitcoin's derivative problem and they're brooks like oh like sweetie that's adorable and like it turns out it's really hard and i found out a lot of cool shit but uh it's hard but yeah you think that'd be a pretty easy problem to solve i thought so but that's because i'm dumb uh so am i what are the hardest problems like what's uh one of the hurdles that you run into yeah well um the derivatives market more or less doesn't really exist so right now if we look at derivatives and bitcoin you have your traditional spot future like the cme future okx these and then you have this thing that is the perpetual swap which is bitmex right um when you look at why the perpetual swap is successful is that it is a

bitcoin spot project uh product right so you're allowed to speculate on bitcoin and trade bitcoin without a bank account and that's what it accomplishes through ways of like just the specification of the product like through its funding rates uh and its rollover time of eight hours it's actually intended to be treated and traded like a spot product it's not supposed to be traded like a derivative but its arbitrage and success comes from basically arbing this friction with banks and you basically get to speculate and trade with leverage, but you don't need a bank account. And that is where the success derives from. But if you look traditionally at derivatives and their intention, at least in Chicago, is for risk transfer. It's the corn farmer, right? The

corn farmer is inherently long and the corn farmer doesn't want to be so exposed to an asset. The corn farmer actually is good at farming and he's not good at trading, right? So there's this derivatives market to transfer that risk and to allow a market maker to take that risk on and dissolve of it elsewhere and charge a premium and who is our corn farmer in bitcoin where is the risk transfer the liquidity the flow within our asset class because what bitmex has done has been wildly successful and it's great but it's just garnered like a bunch of retail speculative flow through essentially arbing and routing around charging premium for the banking troubles that are in the asset class but we don't have this risk trip excuse me risk transfer like aspect

does that make sense so trying to tackle that problem and like really understand what are the part like what's the landscape look like in bitcoin who's our corn farmer where's the flow who mints the asset who holds the asset where's that asset how's that asset reach market and who's taking on risk like you know who's not hodling who has actual real economics that are baked into btc and which will help us it will help the market be more efficient it'll help us accurately price this thing like we don't have a credit market we don't have forward pricing but someone is creating this thing someone's economics are based on the asset and we need to learn more about that transfer their risk de-risk them a little bit and um yeah so that derivative market if i look at the next

decade of bitcoin it's going to exist someone's going to solve these problems but no one had the balls to like take a look and so i was like yeah well i'm gonna take a look like let's figure it out who do you think uh who most aligns with like the farmer in that analogy would it be merchants miners miners miners yeah yeah so this is a a knowledge bomb that i love to drop when i talk about this stuff so you own bitcoin right you never admit that i'll never admit that sure um but someone in the united states who buys bitcoin with a dollar they're taking a long bitcoin position against the dollar. But for the sake of my story here, they're short the dollar against Bitcoin, right? That's the trade they're putting on. Now, a miner, I want you to finish this bottle

of rosé and sit with yourself after this and think, why would a miner mine instead of buy? Because that's such a simple trade to be short the dollar against Bitcoin. Now, a miner is not that. A miner is short fiat against Bitcoin, but on a much longer time frame. On a shorter time frame, when they plug in their machine, they're actually short difficulty against Bitcoin. Right. Yeah. And then they also have like an option call that has an expiry in a way of their hardware because hardware ends up worthless over a given period of time. And hardware is always improving.

So you have this weird hardware exposure with an expiry attached to it. you're naturally short difficulty against Bitcoin, which by the way, is not a good trade, right? Difficulty is always going up. And then over a longer timeframe, you actually have this long bias to the asset against your native fiat currency. And so that trade, so that is a trade that a miner is putting on as opposed to the trade I am, which is I'm short the dollar against Bitcoin. So that is not a position that you can just huddle. It's a very complicated trade and it's very much not simple. So that I think needs to be dissected. Like actually understanding the risk that these miners are taking on, how to de-risk them, what derivative products can,

that's our corn farmer, right? They have natural biases to the market and really complex trades they're putting on where they're not speculators. They don't know what a call on the put is. And so how can we build financial products around them and their risk and their exposure to de-risk them a bit? And it'll make this market healthy. And we can actually maybe more accurately price the asset because these are the only market participants that are pure authentic organic and have economics that are based on bitcoin everyone else doesn't freaks i don't know if you can see the passion through the audio but jack that was an impassioned rant right there and this is actually incredible conversation to have

today because i just talked to slush pool yesterday we were talking about this like futures markets for chips and yeah when asic modification comes the thing like and they were talking about like slush pool has this like grand vision not grand vision but grand dream that one day like the mining coalition can come together like buy a foundry and like split up risk that way right like maybe the first step is like a derivatives markets that helps them uh de-risk their their their portfolios right now they're basically long bias long only bias and they're waiting for for hedge uh yeah right yeah so when you look at okay so um back to like my zap roots well let's be very practical very simple and what's the lowest hanging fruit and how we can

best help like not get too complicated right so the lowest hanging fruit is actually this difficulty component um being long bitcoin on a long enough bias is actually fairly trivial to hedge especially with the cme product but what's not trivial to hedge is if bitcoin were to stay at a flat price, let's say it trades at $10,000 for the next decade. If you take in account the halvings, right? And then you also take in account the difficulty for better or worse will always go up. And even if that doesn't mean like interest in the asset, if it simply means just innovation in hardware, like we can see on the hash rate chart, GPU or CPU mining turned to GPU mining turned to ASIC mining, and there's just general innovation in hardware around the world. And so

if i am a miner in usd btc price stays flat i'm still have this crazy exposure to difficulty and it's a huge problem and you can look at the hash rate and see like a lot of them miners are essentially like trading on margin basically like you can watch the hash rate and see like when we broke through 6 000 like everyone got margin called right more or less and and that goes to show that there's no hedging tools there and like how can we my first order of business is how can we hedge difficulty how can i have a market maker or build a market that can take on and be permanently like these miners want to de-risk by being long a difficulty future and who can professionally be short difficulty and who can absorb of that risk because at the end of the day

these derivatives of a risk transfer so when the corn farmer transfers risk to the market maker the market maker now has the risk right well someone has to dissolve of the risk it's good that the corn farmer doesn't have to but the market maker has to or else this market will die so not only can we allow this risk transfer but how do we dissolve of it like where are the hedges and we need to do like a lot of quantitative analysis on the correlation between the spot price and difficulty where they meet where they don't how we can de-risk and hedge that but if we can accomplish this the market itself and the mining industry is going to be extremely healthy i remember saying to you like i think bitcoin derivatives is going to decentralize mining

and you were like oh yeah fuck you and this is what i was hinting at though is like a healthy derivatives market will take the risk off of those who are taking it head-on like getting absolutely wiped by it and if so then like there's much more incentive to bring hash rate onto the network if i can manage my risk portfolio that way um right now mining is is more or less a gamble uh and geographically distributed we can see like the eastern side of the world is taking this gamble on but if we can de-risk it and make it more of a business a hardware business which it really is uh i think it'll be healthy even for just bitcoin in general so no i agree i agree i think i agreed with you i think i might have disagreed with you on something else uh no but

it's crazy thinking about all the variables that would go into like trying to pin price to hash rate right because you have miners buying equipment at different time uh turning them like finding energy contracts at different different points of time uh like it's not easy to buy miners and find the commensurate amount of energy that those miners can be plugged into so there's so many variables to take into consideration um and then on top of that like we're thinking like corn farmers brings me back to working for the managed futures fund like i had to watch weather reports like and it's like corn farmers like there was a huge we'll go we'll talk about wheat in particular like kansas wheat there's like a huge rain uh storm in like the the plains

and it kills like a crop like it affects price that way so like a like a market condition or excuse me a market uh uh what would that be called uh an event like a rainstorm in bitcoin it could be something like bitmain fucking up their wafers and something yeah you're exactly right like weather is priced into corn it is through derivatives through futures right a lot of our industry like hardware runs by bitmain difficulty energy costs in china like they're not priced in they can't be um these miners wear that risk right in between their eyeballs it's fucking brutal it's good when it's good and boy is it bad and you can get wiped out um so yeah i mean basically what i've been trying to do is first and foremost um the technology and

the exchange land is poor like as far as performance goes like if you look at capital market performance and then like execution at bitmex or like can't get your order through so first was we call ourselves the cbe group the chicago bitcoin exchange group love it and first order of business was building some exchange infrastructure where however we get this thing to market we also want to have really efficient and fast order execution bus engine matching engine all of that stuff it would be almost irresponsible for me to deliver a crazy good product to the market and not deliver the tech that can execute on it. Right. I don't want a miner trying to get their hedge off and the exchange being like, sorry, bro, not today. Not today. Yeah. And then the second order of

business is actually building this market. So there is no one that's naturally short difficulty. Actually, that's a horrible trade. So how do we de-risk that? Like what type of energy hedges, what type of hardware hedges, how can I de-risk and dissolve myself of being short difficulty and where are those market makers? So I've talked to everyone between the SIBO, Susquehanna, Citadel, like a lot of these large players that they want to get into Bitcoin, but there isn't organic and natural flow, which I can explain if you want. But to them, this is extremely interesting because you have an economic player who doesn't have a bias and they have a hedge to get off. They're willing to pay a premium. And this is like every other market to them. And this is the type of

maturity that I think we'll see in the Bitcoin market is more complex products that capture more complex and larger flow. And then you'll start to see Citadel have a Bitcoin desk. You'll see Susquehanna trading. Right now, they can't. And so having these conversations for me, we're starting to execute some of these notes OTC, try and build this market up from the ground, get a structured note together with the miner, get a structured note together with the market maker, build this up and then hopefully i would love to see it listed on the sebo or something one day but one step at a time one step at a time we got big dreams one step at a time too big what's it like educating these uh these uh incumbent uh financial institutions yeah well there's an

education process on both sides i look at myself as like a professional arbitrager of education really like i really am like that not the brightest dude at all but uh i just am like arbing education everywhere um so for the institutions that i spoke on um they have lack of interest to first of all everyone's interested in bitcoin as a phenomenon right like just socially and what it's done to the world and what it's introduced just as like a vehicle to educate people on what money is and what you think money is like it's in the eye of the beholder more or less so everyone's interested from that lens but from a business lens there's no flow for these people to trade against really the only flow that exists is the bitmex perpetual swap retail

flow and that's why you see so much volume there actually is because there's dumb money trading no shark we don't want a shark pool is what they call it you don't want a shark swimming with another shark the shark wants to swim with the little fish and citadel these guys can't find the little fish like when you go on gdax the only other market maker and flow on there is donnie wilson at drw right and so to them they're like oh my god this is fascinating this minor flows is incredible but uh what the fuck is difficulty it was actually really funny so some of the products that i'm designing is like we're actually going to settle the derivative in in blocks not time and and we there's a variety of reasons to do that i was talking to a juthika chow from

ledger x about this expiry dates based on block yeah yeah there's a lot of reasons to do that i won't go into it right now or we could i guess but my point was going to be uh there's a dude who i work with he basically created and ran uh options digital trading at bank of america like he was at nizey isc like crazy capital markets background and i'm teaching him this stuff and he's relaying it to the citadels and we're on a call and he's explaining you know this is this contract it's actually going to settle in blocks and he's rambling a little bit and then he goes hold on a second everyone let's pause first let's define time right and it's these capital market suits that are just mind fucked by this shit they're like wait a second you're not settling

and there's no like four eastern like settlement i have said it on this podcast before bitcoin block height is going to replace the gregorian calendar at some point in our lifetime i'm bullish on that thought but it's it's crazy he was like well hold on a second everyone on the call let's define time and also this difficulty thing and when they explain it they realize really the genius of satoshi is baked in difficulty is one of the things right i think difficulty is the most important yeah proof of work in difficulty and and when they actually wrap their head around it not only are they interested in de-risking the miners but they're also interested in now owning the thing they're like by golly this thing not only do you see the

inflation rate slowly decrease and work its way to zero and the supply slowly flatten out at 21 million on these graphs but you can see that it's a computer program you can visually see that it just steps and ladders its way down as it's clearly an executable program and they're like oh my god like there is a computer out there dictating the monetary policy of an asset that is defiably scarce like get the fuck out of town and then they're like my goodness i would love to have miners pay premium and make a market there now that is real flow that's a real trade i don't want to trade on gdx with any other shark and i also like this is what they tell me they're like i don't fucking huddle bro like we don't sustain bear markets like we're market makers like we make

billions of dollars a year we are not like libertarian like hop skipping in a circle i trade against flow i'm like okay calm down i get it and but through these conversations they get it they understand bitcoin and so it's been cool it's been really a pleasure to sit in these rooms and talk with these people it's crazy it's taken this long to like come around to it right because it is that like that revolution like that revolutionary aha moment that you just described happened for us obviously years ago it's nice to see people coming around and maybe it's being reflected in price uh yeah well i think like there's a clear correlation between the market participants and the general maturity of the market itself like we have spot products and then we've got a spot future

not too interesting um and especially considering who's trading these products and where the flow is going like if you look at i ask miners um you know where how are you guys de-risking like are you selling puts like what's the word they're like dude i don't even know what a put is like all of our flow exists otc and so to that that's a really immature market you can see by us hitting 20k and 3k within like 18 months that's a reflection of that it's not an efficient market and so yeah there's a correlation between who wants to participate in that fucking carnival right and but as it matures and people come to understand and some of these more mature products in the exchange space are going to be developed,

then yeah, the herd will come. There's no doubt about it. There's money to be made, you know? Yeah, and it's... Sorry if the sirens in the background are being picked up on the mics right now, Freaks. That's New York City for you. No, but it seems like something is happening

in this bear market in particular where more people, more prominent people are having more aha moments. It's like, oh, this is here to stay. i've been saying it's because bitcoin officially passed the decade mile marker and that's like just huge psychologically psychologically being able to just say yeah it's been around for a fucking decade like try to tell me it's not gonna be around like much longer uh and then on top of that like the brand awareness like andrew torba and i just had a conversation earlier this morning

and he's saying he can go to his grandmother and be like bitcoin she's like yeah i know what that is i've i've heard about it you go up to her and be like tron she's like the movie like yeah it's so the brand awareness is there um it feels like the institutions are coming like this is the most bullish i've ever been about on bitcoin in my life yeah yeah i mean for my friends that know me i've been grossly bullish like ever since i was 18 so well you have one sitting next to you that you convinced to uh to come work with you he can speak he can speak to that like almost obnoxiously bullish uh like sometimes they have to like hit me in the head like yo dude calm down uh but yeah dude i agree with you uh everything you said makes a lot of sense the truth is like

don't really know but uh yeah a decade of existing just the general like uh profiles of people that are in bitcoin like you did what you made what percent like i mean these things matter to these people um so yeah well then you have like the brad shermans of the world coming out and trying to ban it and literally becoming the best shill that bitcoin has had in a while by describing how the u.s dollar is weaponized against the rest of the world i was just gonna say that like wait what you want to ban bitcoin because it's such a threat to the dollar nice nice then he was like yeah the dollar like let's just make sure that everybody has to buy their their oil with the dollar and convert to it like it's a strength yeah it's just like you're just enticing people that do not use

the u.s dollar to be like wait a second why does it work this way and i don't know brad um so i'm not gonna feel bad but like it is almost as if he put on a costume it was like he couldn't have looked better the part oh my gosh like landing strip into the mic and it just looks like a goal post of his bald head he's like like bitcoin is threatening and like i love it i love it it's Perfect. Brad, if you're listening, come talk on the pod. Let's hash it out. Yeah.

Pun intended. Sorry about the sirens there, freaks. I don't know if it picked it up. We'll see. I was up here with Parker Lewis a few weeks ago. Nice. And it was really windy, but the mics didn't pick that up. I'm hoping they don't pick up these sirens.

But if they do, it's a nice little background ambiance. What else is going on? What's going on with lightning? Lightning, it's... What's that? I'm not going to lie. uh i have used it more in the last week than i did uh the first 16 months of its existence or was it it was what is it like 18 months old depends are you going off the birth of the white

paper or lnd mainnet was i think march of last year so you can say that okay yeah so a little over 12 yeah well 12 months i've been using it the most this last week over this uh 12 months that's because of your app like yeah well because of your website like your website's cool we should show that yeah tftc.io yeah tftc is killing it your brand is dope well deserved i've been a fan forever your website's cool congrats oh and it's powered by uh by bitcoin yeah and uh btc pay server shout out nicholas doria tftc.io go check it out freaks but like it feels like doing this i i view myself as somebody who's like not too technically competent that's why i have matt odell to come on and like handhold me through some of the technical aspects of some of this stuff uh for rabbit hole

recap and then uh but this was like the first time i feel really comfortable like using the lightning network uh just i have a node running i've hooked it up to zap and creating channels checking invoices creating invoices sending lightning uh you can see it as somebody who i consider myself a dumb user like it it feels like it's becoming easier so from an infrastructure standpoint and a ux standpoint like where do you think lightning is compared to your expectations when we met in october yeah well lightning's always exceeded my expectations dude really crazy the amount of people involved and the amount of resources and passion behind this project is i mean no one could have predicted this right no way um so yeah farly far exceeded my expectations I think

everyone in lightning will tell you that there's more much more work to do than there has been work done but that's okay and that'll probably be that way for a really long time um but I mean come on like how far we are as a community a lot of that goes to the protocol devs a lot of that goes to just users and feedback and the community itself for supporting us like the support zap has I'm humbled by it all the time. I can't believe it. I was at the conference just now, and someone walked up to me with Zap on their phone. I was like, get out of town.

You guys actually use it. Wow, that's cool. So, yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. No, and it's, well, that's what I wanted to, that's what I was alluding to earlier was the FinCEN report that dropped last week. Sure. So you were talking about getting a money transmitter license. Does every Lightning Node operator need to do that?

No, no. Are we quoting Ryan Charles right now? I think so. Yeah? No, dude, no. Yeah, I think actually the FinCEN stuff was more or less bullish. Yeah, the fact that Lightning is something they're aware of, I mean, generally speaking, regulatory, at least in the United States I can speak to, has been a little tough, right? Like Bakkt can't launch, Aris Axis had a tough time, and that's largely because of the CFTC regulations and this idea of being a custodian and what that means in Bitcoin and how you actually successfully become a custodian. We just now watched Binance get hacked, right? So I think them understanding Lightning, giving it the time of day, and then the fact that Lightning introduces this almost like physical self-clearing aspect where in a beautiful world enabled by Lightning, there is no custodian.

you actually transfer that custodial risk onto the end user and there's no one holding anyone else's keys and this self-clearing idea in like traditional markets like self-clearing like get out of town you serious like clearing houses have made a ton of money brokering like this idea of clearing and just like settlement in general you look at like inter-exchange linkage and what other assets have done in other markets to improve the efficiency and settlement and that we get this on a decentralized basis for essentially free when you talk about fees and the speed at which we can physically settle. So I think a lot of the FinCEN stuff is good. A lot of the stuff the CFTC is worried about. Lightning is going to become a priority for a lot of these things. Like

what if Bakkt was using lightning to physically settle their derivatives like with their traders like through Wumbo channels or something. I'm speaking ambitiously but those type of things I think regulators are aware of lightning. They like lightning because it lessens the responsibility of a custodian so i think that finson report was really cool that they actually wrote lightning on paper and gave it the time of day well the the report i'm talking about talked about like dapps in particular as well um but yeah it was it was all about like money it was like defining money transfers yeah and there's a lot of dex stuff in there yeah can't get it all right it's okay finson do you think dex is uh will become a thing i don't man well actually

can you define dex for me because it's become a bit of a smart contract type buzzword to me yeah i i cannot yeah i can't either i think the general idea of having execution order execution live in a peer-to-peer network will not be successful um like order execution is like the main value prop of an exchange is one aggregating the book and providing this liquidity source and then two uh efficient order execution so if you are telling me through like a p2p like way i'm going to be executing orders through like some atomic swap or something like i don't see it i really don't um but maybe like people's version of the decks or why they find it important is like removing the custodian maybe that's possible in years to come with like lightning enabled wallets

and institutional lightning services that allow people to have a lightning wallet where they're self-custodying and then they in this in one click of a button they send deposit and execute a trade all in like one full swoop right like i think that if that's people's version of a dex i think that i'm very bullish on that but yeah and the whole especially a dex that's around pow like the miners being able to see the transactions that are looking to trade seems uh yeah i just don't i don't think like removing like the dex all dex's theories at least like dex maximalist if there's such a thing like their theory is that like they're removing exchanges from what they're actually good at which is aggregating book and order execution you know so i don't think that's

necessary i think exchanges serve a really cool function the custody aspect of the asset there's a lot of work to do there i think lightning will be really beneficial liquid maybe right things like this but um i think exchanges will live on forever uh and serve the purpose that they're really meant to be good at in my opinion i could be wrong their purpose could be an idiot their purpose could be temporary right like ideally we've been talking about like the closed loop system eventually that we'd like bitcoin to get to like maybe exchanges are only temporary until the collective consciousness is okay with using bitcoin as money yeah so you're like if there's a bitcoin standard type of thing yeah and there is no nothing to trade into uh i mean there will

be other things to trade into but currencies probably sure yeah um yeah like in a hyper bitcoinization world does an exchange really matter well like there will still be a derivatives market that's really liquid i would assume right like the things we were talking about earlier but yeah you're right but people will be getting paid in bitcoin right they won't necessarily be going to buy it to acquire it yeah it'd be more uh work for bitcoin type world at that point that'd be sick that would be dope that would be dope and it's like where do i want to go down um it's like building this website like you can see the dream happen like if i was able to buy merch and buy stamps and and do everything on bitcoin like i probably could easily do it

yeah like btc pay server makes it so easy like btc pay server the only reason i use shopify is because uh btc pay server hasn't figured out like shipping like how to take shipping information like in an invoice so i had to use shopify just for that functionality and uh it's close to be like closed loop if you want to be like and you're talking you deal with weed merchants like do they like do you think they're more uh driven to the to the closed loop bitcoin because they have to be yeah well my family has uh officially become part of the industry uh boss we have a weed mining farm boss weed miners the bitmain of weed and boulder boss um yeah it's cool but uh yeah you're right so uh we don't have bank account that's shitty

like it's legal in the state level illegal on the federal level um so how do you take payments like we have a security budget for like people to make sure that no one walks in with a gun and like takes the six figures in cash that's just constantly there right like sheesh so yeah like the dream of walking into a dispensary buying bitcoin over lightning getting it delivered to you instantly then being able to spend it instantly and then being able to then on the back end get some cash back out like lightning should in theory collapse the vertical stack of the bitcoin economy and really tighten these economic loops um in theory so yeah i think like the wheat industry is is mad buzz about bitcoin um it's a way to physically settle an asset that they can use

for payments that's that's really big deal do you want to because we chat about this a little bit before we hit record you want to jump into it or are we gonna um keep it at bay what i let's just say like i have some really cool announcements coming um and if you're bright enough you may be able to connect the dots not that if you don't connect the dots you're not dumb um but yeah i don't know we're working on some cool stuff um be on the lookout i'll tweet about it i'm sure i'll write a medium article says starts with yo or something yeah soon come soon come what um been any good shows lately um well i was talking about it with my buddy sitting next to me on the uber ride here where i don't watch what is it game of thrones i don't watch it what is it game of

thrones yeah my girlfriend gets like visibly upset when the show comes on and i like open my laptop and like start coding or something she's like shaking like what is wrong with you so yeah um I watched, like, American Vandal. Now we're going to get into, like, embarrassing territory for me. American Vandal. Yeah. I think that's cool. The dude who's drawn dicks on people's cars.

Yeah, the turd burglar. The turd burglar. Yeah. I love... Caught him. What's his YouTube channel? Jimmy something. Jimmy Tatro?

Who are we talking about? The actor in American Vandal. Oh, he has a YouTube channel? Yeah, well, that's, like, how he started his YouTube channel. It was pretty hilarious back in the day. damn i did not know that yeah i've been on like a lot of flights so american vandal i was just pounding out like who is the turd burglar who is shitting on these kids while they're in high school and i was like wow when we found the turd burglar mine was blown i recommend it but yeah

now we're getting in like embarrassing like jack is a quirky kid like dangerous territory well this is a podcast for freaks so that's okay this is okay we can bring it back to lightning no we could go wherever i'm one and a half rose glasses deep i'm like sweating right now i feel bad if i can see yeah i'm probably take your shirt off get some get some uh get some sun i got some suntan lotion downstairs uh it's a beautiful day it's the most beautiful day of the year i think so far this is cool cool time to be in new york i love recording outside it's the second uh recording outside and it's it's pleasant nice it's uh you don't get to do this too often no no um what do got planned you're you're speaking tomorrow at uh magical crypto conference excited for that

uh i am i'm gonna be talking about the derivative stuff there's a lightning panel i've lived most of my life on the internet so it's really cool to like meet people in real life that's cool that's the best part that's what i was like talking about with andrew today too it was like especially with after the conversation with him it helped me realize that there's like different i don't want to say communities but like different sects of people on separate missions but they're very similar so like the free speech mission that he's on with gab and like bitcoin is on that similar mission with like free value transfer and right free access to to money yeah and these mission driven i like to call mission driven communities it's like awesome to be a part of them because

like you just said like you meet up with these people that you've only ever conversed with in dms on twitter or not even in dms like only you could play like like like games like you only communicate via liking tweets and shit like that and then you meet in person it's like holy shit yeah it's uh really easy to one hit it off and then to like sort of start talking about how we're going to change the world it's like a revolutionary feeling when you meet these people there's like well for people that come to conferences like this there's almost an intimately like identifiable relatable thing that we all have in common right like bitcoin still to this day is a super quirky thing there's a lot involved to becoming like more or less a professional bitcoiner where you're at

like a cartoon conference like talking to people right like there's a lot that goes into that but i relate to everyone about that like yeah you thought bitcoin was cool enough when everyone didn't like you definitely got like looked at weird at thanksgiving like you know all all the things like last thanksgiving was the worst one to date yeah for sure for sure and so like even just that simple like that's a really cool bond that everyone here has so it's just cool to like just see people give them a hug like yeah we're in this together like i didn't know there's actually a human being on the other side of those screens that i'm talking to all day online it exists they're not a bot they're not a Russian bot it's uh that's crazy and um what was i gonna say

forgetful a couple couple glasses of rose deep yeah that's okay uh oh craig right like what do we uh oh are we yeah i'm down what do you what do you think about uh fake toshi finally getting taken down by jameson lot um i don't know is there much color to like is this the end of the saga do you think ah fuck if i know if we allow it to be right that's my biggest point like stop talking about it yeah um i don't know dude who cares really i don't i'm sorry for bringing him up no you're good i this is a message to like the general public like it doesn't matter like there's just no way of all the things that we have to be working on as bitcoiners like just who cares i don't know i hope it is like the guy's clearly a douchebag and a loser and he like

is harmful to people and like that's not cool so i hope it's the last of it but i don't know what's that like the market can last more irrational than you can be solvent or something right like kings the market uh the market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent right yeah so same thing with like logic like people can give an idiot more light in time of the day dude he's just playing an idiot to destroy his credibility so people don't actually believe is satoshi man yeah i don't know who knows there's a lot of that like even like the bcash like peter how do you pronounce the last name rosen or whatever rosen resin yeah i don't know rising people are really upset that he was on the podcast with my good friend peter mccormack

um like who cares dude i don't know right sweet you're long bcash must be fun that's actually like an interesting like peek into like we're talking about like decade and institutions coming like a hyper bitcoinization potentially like if it does happen it's gonna be funny like this is such a small community right now like imagine it's not it's gonna be it's not even gonna be a community it's gonna be everybody's using bitcoin and a lot of the quote-unquote like thought leaders in the space are just gonna like sort of dissolve into the background because there's gonna be so many people talking about this stuff yeah i don't know what's gonna happen um yeah i don't know i'm excited just like there's just so much so much to do so little time to care about craig wright

that's what i'll say well speaking about doing one thing i'm excited about lightning is uh this is what i wanted to get into earlier is the uh loop and bolt is that the other project working on this like atomic swaps for liquidity on spark swap spark swap yes that's what it is um so this is something that like fascinates me but i'm like don't understand completely uh so basically the concept is if you have a lack of liquidity on one of your channel you can easily atomic swap in and out yeah on the main chain to to provide liquidity to that side yeah so much word salad you can almost fill yourself for dinner right but uh yeah so the loop stuff is is dubbed submarine swap that's by lightning labs every time they come up i compliment them i love them zap builds on top of

their stuff they're great um and so the idea there is essentially um in a trustless way swapping yourself between on chain and off chain um and it's really cool and fascinating and and what that can result in is rebalancing channels um even some more ambitious use cases that i think we'll see zap may provide some uh in the future but you're pulling up your zap wallet i am well i'm pulling up my channels because like i can see i love the visualization of the channel so like if you're looking at the zap wallet um you can see how much you can send which is in orange and how much you can receive which is a blue and i can easily manage like looking at my channel just like clicking this and being like do you want to loop some over yeah so i have this like vision of

like the channel management whatever going in an editable state where you could just like drag it like that's how much liquidity like that'd be sick awesome that'd be cool whoa talk about ux yeah that'd be nice and it's entirely possible like the unfortunate thing is there's so much to do and in reality with zap there's just like a few of us like on slack all day like trying to get it done so yeah in in theory like we get that done uh hopefully it's on the priority list somewhere what do you guys need uh people like what kind of people kind of devs in particular um excuse me um our desktop app which is by far our most popular app is it has over 10 000 users dude we crossed 900 000 asset downloads which is a github metric more or less combination of

active users and new users but still like that's a really big number like what the fuck close to a meal baby yeah i know i'll have to come back and have some rose for that um but yeah we'll pop some bottles for that we'll get some champagne for that yeah some henny oh we could do it i got some downstairs i got some honey downstairs oh okay i see you um i'll have to get some if we're talking chicago yeah um so yeah anyways um yeah that is an electron app that's written in javascript ios is written in swift um obviously lnd is written in golang which is what we use um android may or may not be coming i know a lot of people yeah there's a tftc uh a little hint yeah there you go scoop is that is that how you do it scoop scoop i have a best friend at home

whose nickname is scoop really yeah how do you get how do you or she acquire that uh so his original nickname is fat tony so his nickname or his real name is tony and like you can envision where the fat came from he's a great dude i'm not even making fun of him he's gonna laugh at this uh and then scoop fat man scoop is a dj boss in chicago and he looks like him where does he play is he playing at the evil olive is he playing at the mid where's he playing i don't know probably his basement it was more it was more that they look like i don't know what fat man the real fat man scoop is on but whenever i see like what the block writers right they're the ones that like all caps like scoop yeah i like always screenshot and send it to my friends hilarious

Yeah, I think this might have been the first live on-air scoop, so credit TFTC. Yeah, I have a folder on my laptop that says, Sir, when Android question mark, and it's like a screenshot of all the people that ask me, and it's a crazy, the whole Zap Android thing is a crazy cool story that I plan to write and release a blog post about soon, so wait on it, I got you, fam. Can we get a forward to that story right now? Well, when is this coming out? in a few weeks i think in a few weeks i've got i got a lot of backup um in two or three weeks okay so so i'll give just like a tiny preview because i don't know if i can time this well enough but i was in china it was like 3 a.m it's like my sleep schedule was just bonkers it didn't like it didn't exist anywhere even if i was in the united states it wouldn't have made sense

and uh i got a dm from a random person that i'd never met like anonymous they're just like i've been working on zap android for the last three months as if it was like satoshi and it's just like a huge shout out to this community really is like when i say it's community driven that's not marketing like that's real life and so yeah this thing kind of fell out of the clouds based on demand and based on people like really wanting it to exist and so it's almost there and it's a really really cool story of who this person is and why they did it and stuff and write a blog post soon hopefully before this comes out we'll see the boss i can't wait to read it yeah no that um that reminds me of something i wanted to touch on either when you're earlier

when you're talking about the exchanges that you're educating or the institutions that you're educating like holy crap uh the demand for these products is i think what makes bitcoin inevitable right you have people going to these these market makers like can you make these markets for us and they're going to be like are we going to be able to make money off of it yes so yeah we're going make it and then like android users like i need to have this product and just being like all right i'm gonna build it yeah the oh go ahead go ahead no i was gonna say the inevitability of bitcoin like is driven by like man because it provides like it obviously provides useful it provides utility for people obviously yeah um the like hidden commodity behind bitcoin that is fascinating

is people there's like human beings behind it and like smoke a blunt and think about that like there's a ton of people that are behind this thing and everything that you see as bitcoin was created out of just like donation of time resources and a gravitational pull towards what this thing represents you know shout out uh dg uh who wrote the bitcoin's gravitational pool a couple weeks ago it's like it does have this gravitational pool it's crazy man it really is we're experiencing it here in this god damn city this week like I'm so lucky

we were talking about this earlier like I'm not a huge conference guy conferences stress me out me too the aesthetic stresses me out the sweatiness the having to wear a lanyard it's not my thing I don't like it at all I always put my lanyard in my back pocket there

but there's a gravitational pull to the city right now there's talent people coming through just to talk about this fake internet money that Brad Stevens thinks we should ban. So it's like. Yeah.

Brad Stevens? The. Boston Celtics head coach. I can't speak for Brad Stevens. Brad Stevens just got smoked. Yeah. 4-1 to the Bucs.

Hot seat. Should have enjoyed your time at Butler. He should have stayed. Brad Sherman. I meant to say Brad Sherman. Brad Stevens may own Bitcoin. We don't know.

There's rumors out there that the Golden State Warriors are getting paid on their table in BTC. wow steph steph has a zap wallet this is a this is a test this is a tftc test to see if there's any professional athletes listen to this uh yeah this podcast if you are listen if you're stacking stats you know don't be shy yeah at marty ben at jack mahlers um shit i don't know what else uh i we we set this up yesterday so i don't even have like a bunch of questions like talk about

let's just riff whatever dude i'm down i mean so your podcast like you're one of the people in the space that you're a friend you know we did this last time you met my girlfriend like i got hammered in a chicago bar with you so yeah like i'm done for whatever let's talk about kingston mines okay i might have to share the mic with so this guy sitting next to me name him stop just saying sorry sorry fuck fuck uh his name's dylan he's a childhood best friend of mine helps me out with like life and then also zap but like life too dylan hand the mic to dylan how did he get you involved what's up everyone how did he get you involved in zap uh he basically hit me up one day and was just like uh does your job suck do you hate the corporate nine to five like come hang

out with me and uh reluctantly no i jumped in as as soon as the offer came my way so when you're telling you had some experience on the silk road i did have some experience in the silk road uh mom if you're listening to this i'm sorry um but uh yeah my my first experience with bitcoin you just checked it out you didn't use it just just visual purposes um but yeah in college a couple friends of mine were just experimenting with a bunch of stuff we were just reading all over the internet and uh stumbled upon bitcoin in the silk road and that was my first introduction to it so and like many people who discovered the silk road you forgot about bitcoin and came back and jack annoyed you enough to to come work for him he actually was like annoying me something like

maybe a month after and i was like nah man i know what this is used for and uh turns out the value prop was right in front of my face i was just a bit too like young and immature to realize it right that's the crazy thing like thinking back to when i was at the paul like learning about bitcoin in chicago i like i when i think about bitcoin like when i was learning about i think about chicago like hard because that's where i spent i was in college so i had plenty of time and i spent countless nights staying up like reading bitcoin talk like i just i have visions of me being in my uh lakeview apartment like reading about bitcoin and like being that high ass bitcoin friend of three i'm like you guys need to start paying attention to this like

after the bars like going to los tres coming home a burrito and be like let's talk bitcoin we're gonna wind down the night we're gonna put on some we're gonna put on some thoughts to the people talk about bitcoin yeah like i always whenever i talk about my origins into bitcoin i have to shout out my dad dude it's people like man you got into bitcoin at 18 and never looked back like dude you're smart i'm like no dude i'm not like i have a cool ass dad my dad is the fucking dad when you were like yo should i drop out of college he's like yeah do it you don't like it get out of there yeah i like was at saint john's got in a fight with my roommates went to the airport at 4 a.m slept there with a bunch of homeless people first flight back to

chicago never went and got my stuff and then my dad was like yo you're good check this bitcoin shit out like what an amazing guy amazing amazing so yeah i have like a crazy cheat code but when i was like bothering dylan about it it wasn't because i was any forward thinkers i'm just like my dad's son my dad told me this is chill i trust my dad let's get into it yeah yeah i mean it's like background with markets and stuff he saw it exactly for what it is so he's just a really bright dude yeah it seems like a g willing to go from futures markets to bitcoin to the weed industry yeah marijuana miner and a bitcoin hodler somebody just seems to not give a fuck about what people think of them because this is these are bitcoin and marijuana in particular things that

come with a big stigma yeah and things with great r and r too like at the end of the day he's a trader i mean we make new highs and marijuana gets legalized at the federal level it's a good trade very good trade very good trade it's becoming like you can't fucking walk down the street i'm sure you guys smelled it coming off the uh the l today like you can't walk down the street in new york without people smoking a spliff or a pen weed's tight weed's pretty tight dude weed's tight love weed no it is becoming like more normalized to the point where it's like all right it's not cool anymore yeah i don't know i mean i smoked for the first time in my life when my parents actually acquired the business so i had no exposure to weed beforehand not i didn't have too aggressive

of an opinion on it just like i never did it so i can't speak as an expert although it would be tight if I could I'll step in here um I didn't get I didn't find pot until I was like 20 it was that's my last concussion I didn't start smoking pot I was an athlete was like totally against pot until my last concussion I've had six pretty severe concussions and the last one prompted me to uh to take a biology of the brain class at DePaul my senior year or my my freshman year my sophomore year that's a cool story yeah beginning of my sophomore year so I took that sort of understand and while i was taking that class uh the teacher for some reason was like really like into weed and cannabinoids in particular what i learned is like cannabinoids

especially with dull cells my brain's got a lot of dull cells that helps them perform better than they would would have if uh the cannabinoids were not there yeah it's something that like we were born like again it's like we were born into the system we're just told like this is bad for you and you're like all right it's bad for us like let's not question it at all yeah i agree and It's literally a plant that's called weed for a reason because it grows, like, everywhere in the fucking world. Yeah, and I love just being a student of the game. Like, now there's this CBD, and, like, people...

Yeah, CBD is the blockchain, not Bitcoin, of the world. Marty's reaching his arm across the table. It's the blockchain, not Bitcoin, of the weed world. Bro, listen, okay. But, yeah, dude, like, I mean, people are buying CBD from us in Boulder, like, healing rashes and stuff, like, crazy cool things. Like, I love being a student of the game. like no shit like why is this such a bad thing to people like what's going like what's the word

it seems helpful it's a much preferred uh much preferred night smoking a joint watching a movie then getting blackout drunk and waking up hungover yeah so it's funny that we i mean this has been said many times on many podcasts and many conversations but there's no stigma of getting blackout drunk but if you smoke a joint you're you're the devil yeah yeah i'm not a good drinker anyway i'm like 58 155 like a couple rose glasses on your pod and i'm falling on my face well you're somebody how's your head feeling yeah dude i was gonna make a joke about my head hopefully time it well so you know what's hilarious is so first of all my head's feeling okay it was uh this is good a man named mark outside the conference today he walked up to me and he goes

hi i want to say i love zap i love what you do and i love your head and i hope it feels feeling okay i was like oh my god man can i have a hug like what an amazing thing to say to me freaks let's stop and pause here i don't want to get too heavy dude we're close to losing you right like yeah yeah we're gonna get heavy but that's okay no that's okay yeah that's how i mean just as a bitcoiner using your app and all that shit like i can't imagine like what the world would have lost if we if that had turned out a different way like we're lucky to have you that's what i'm trying to say i don't know if like you're trying to give me a cry on your pod but i'm crying like the rose agus a little emotional i love it i thank you man it really

means a lot yeah um no it's something i've thought about many times actually like fuck if we lost that kid like we may be worse off than we are now that that's awesome dude thank you yeah i remember um well from that fall i don't remember a lot but what i do remember i was in like my intensive care room having obviously a little tough time and uh i remember someone handed me my phone and told me to open twitter and it was just an array of tweets and like people were mailing me gifts and stuff from the bitcoin community and i immediately cried immediately it was just like the most warmth family feeling i was like this is much bigger to me than like an investment you know or a hobby like these people care about me and like that is a scarce commodity

within itself like that is so cool and i've never met a lot of them in person and there's a language that we speak fluently that i can't even define you know but like at that moment i was like oh my gosh like what a cool thing i was the luckiest kid in the world in that moment it was really so yeah i appreciate that man i appreciate everyone that supported me it's really i mean i don't know if you can rewind time and i relive this again if i can relive it as luckily and and had had be so humbled like seriously no well thank you for pulling through uh seriously the doctors I remember, so for those that don't know, I had multiple brain bleeds, so it wasn't looking kosher. Actually, Dylan, who you just met, my girlfriend called him, and he rushed to the hospital to my rescue to help me out.

But checked my brain on a scan, wasn't looking good, wasn't looking good, and it was going to be third time's a charm. Like, if this wasn't looking good again, we're going to have to dig in there and do surgery. and it was on my birthday and i remember being rolled in there like man if you guys can do me one favor like for my birthday like how's about i think his name was like john or something like how's about it john one time one time john yeah the third one they were like yo your your brain's actually okay boss so yeah i'm pumped to hear that thanks to the docs and to uh to the cement for not hitting me too hard close enough but like not too hard so yeah yeah now again pumped that we're able to have this conversation right now and then like going back to like what you touched on

like with the community and stuff like this is what i was talking about with andrew too like and going back to what we touched on earlier like the mission driven stuff like it feels like a lot of people that are into bitcoin have been thirsting for like purpose right and it's providing that for us and you see a brother in arms like go down like that obviously you feel but like you because you know like i know how you feel about this stuff because i feel the same way i think and it's like you want then more people as somebody who feels this way you want as many people to feel that way too and like to even lose one of them in a battle like bitcoin would have been devastating yeah there's gonna be a really cool netflix documentary about bitcoin one day

and like i think psychologists should really study like the humans behind the asset seriously like what is the draw here what's the buy-in that goes deeper than the financial gain like why are people here i and like this relationship that we all have is a fascinating purpose man people want purpose and i feel like we grew up in a world they're like people weren't afforded like things that gave them purpose like you like especially like the clout chasing social media world that we live in now it's all look at me look at me look at me look what i'm doing for myself it's not a lot of people looking out like look what i'm building for everybody yeah and i think like generally uh human beings want to die being part of something bigger than themselves i think

that that's really important and with bitcoin you find that and and have something to really latch on to and believe in that's just not only bigger than yourself but it's absolutely enormous and people enjoy that type of relationship with it that yes even satoshi himself like wouldn't be as valuable at all if like he or she excuse me or they like came back today like bitcoin will forever outgrow and be bigger than any one thing and i think like that's a really important relationship people have with it and like people want to die with that type of relationship on the world like they believe bitcoin is this big thing that will help the world and dying being a part of something way bigger than yourself is fulfilling and like human beings generally i think is like

it's a really intimate relationship people have with it right no i completely agree and that's why i fucking write the ben that's why we do this podcast yeah are we crazy like not probably i hope so i do i hope so because i would be mad at myself if i was normal right yeah that's a deep thing we don't even get into that but uh but yeah i hope i hope i'm crazy i did too not too crazy i like working from home i like being able to do i like being able to write about what i write about that's why i like i think i had the opportunity to go write for a couple of in other publications in the space but i was like you know what i just want to be able to do it for myself and send it out mail chimp and a shitty link on twitter and that's all the distribution i need but like being

able like that's the thing too like if you have okay things to bring to the table people will listen to them as well absolutely i remember i'm not saying i have that but you're a stud i remember um my dad has a the bent printed out um and framed it was what yeah no no yeah yeah um it was the day that i did a lightning light coin transaction with charlie and this was like let me give some context here before i get absolutely blasted um it was when light coin got segwit first right and it's this whole world of segwit 2x and like is lightning legit and charlie lee and i did a lightning transaction using zap like in summer of 2017 maybe when was when did you start the bet summer 2017 okay yeah so there was a article where you put the litecoin

price in a graphic and then you said look what happened when this kid did a lightning transaction with charlie wait until jack mallers does it on bitcoin and and my dad read it and was like fuck yeah that's my son and like i remember getting texted like a link of of this newsletter and being like i like this guy man yeah dad was reading the bent before you were yeah dude my dad does everything before will's all over the place man yeah he's uh damn that's i'm honored because Because that was early on in the game. Yeah. That was very early on.

Yeah. Shit. It's crazy, though. It's crazy. What can you, like, and I don't want to get on my high horse here or pump, blow smoke up my ass too hard, but. You should, man. It has been worth waking up and writing the bin every day.

Yeah. For the last almost two years. We're a month away from two years. Good for you. June 8th, 2019 will be the two-year anniversary. It's organic and authentic, and that's the beautiful part about it. I love it. it's a daily rant i just get up and yell at everybody once a day i love it i remember when

we're hanging out in chicago drinking i'm like looking at my phone i'm like yo dude it's 12 30 like the bent comes out like when do you write it like it's soon you're like yeah man i don't know i set an alarm like i wake up pump it out and hit submit that's awesome i should probably be doing more proofreading that's uh or less and definitely more definitely okay never mind definitely more weird um my dad just texted me actually let's see what he said gotta be something to do with the price tell him i said what's up we are we over 7k no he said crowded in here today with a picture of the dispensary boss hell yeah hovering around 7k that's great the price this week's been i mean i don't like to talk price

a lot but it has been like at first like oh shit volatility's back i guess volatility's back or like bidders are back i mean i mean look at the size of these green candles bonkers yeah and consecutively well you know i'll i'll take this into a point where i hope is interesting to the readers so i like doing quant analysis on like uh havings and like the spot price and relative to the having and so there's not enough historical data for me to draw any conclusions on how people price to having it but the 2016 one was relatively not priced in at all and I found that really interesting but I think that the market the participants in the market and who's placing buy orders on exchanges right now are much more sophisticated than those that were doing so in

2016 where I really I have this assumption that the having is going to get priced in much more aggressively this time around and I could be like really wrong but in theory it should be um like bitcoin gets defiantly more scarce on a specific day and it not only gets more but twice as much like what what the fuck like how are you guys not buying so anyways i think like this price action i hope that it's people pricing in the having i really do i hope this market gets more efficient um and i think it's a reflection of the sophistication of the participants that are in it compared to four years ago but when i see the price today and the movements that are happening i really hope that it is a pre-pricing instead of a post-pricing i would just like to

see that i mean regardless i think bitcoin is going to go up a lot and when it does doesn't matter to me but i would i would hope that the reason behind this price action right now is having related um just because that would signal a maturing of not only the market itself but the participants that are are in it so i would hope i would hope so that's like what i'm telling people at the conference when they ask but i could be really wrong i uh wasn't checking a text i was checking the days till the next having based off the current difficulty 378 days away um so a little bit over a year oh a year and 13 days yeah it's that's that's so that's a topic of conversation for like a lot of the trace mayor's safety needs of the world is the having priced in yeah in this

like stock to flow thing which safety introduced and now plan b is made popular yeah 100 100 chilean plan b who i love i love plan b if he's listening um but yeah like these this is the stuff i talk about with the sesquihannas and the citadels right is like what why is bitcoin valuable well i have no fucking idea but if i had to guess it's because like markets and as a society in general like we value scarcity uh and like there's only a few monetary commodities or commodities that can be considered monetary and bitcoin is not only one of those but it gets scarce at a predictable rate and at a predictable time and it's going to be extremely more scarce than any other asset ever and like introduce the having and stuff and then so in theory like this stuff should start to be

priced in and in front run so i don't know i hope so no and it goes back to what we were touching on earlier about like brand awareness like andrew torba go to his grandmother and be like bitcoin she's like i know that that's like part of it like part of price discovery is knowledge right Like you need you need a collective understanding to which is priced into the asset. Right. And yeah, as more people come to know Bitcoin, I guess. And that's like the other thing. So like Barstool, that's been my indicator more recently is Barstool Radio has been mentioning Bitcoin Marty more and more recently. So that's been like that's a cool accomplishment. I've got the like one bite app on my phone of Prez eating pizza.

There's a lot of revisionist history going on in the Barstool offices about the advice that Bitcoin Marty was giving. Bitcoin Marty was telling people not to buy shit coins and a dollar cost average in if they were going to buy at all. I was not telling people to go all in. I just want to get the record straight here. But going back to the Barstool indicator, they're talking about it. And this is, again, like so in that first run up to where they were aware in 2017, 2018, where I was in the office, like stop buying shit coins. please do not buy thousands of dollars of bitcoin especially if you can't afford it uh this time around they already sort of have like a basic understanding and like again like

the tide rises uh the ships all rise with the tide and like the tide is creating a higher and higher high water mark every sort of adoption bubble cycle yeah wave yeah i have two things to say in response to that one um economics 101 like just supply demand um if you think about it Like this, you're wearing, for the listeners, you're wearing this green tee. If I were to offer you $50,000 for that t-shirt. Off my back right now. Yeah, sure. But surely you'd go find more, right?

And then eventually the market would find a sufficient price for that green tee. And you just print more and more and more of them. Now, supply and demand in Bitcoin is crazy because someone today bought a Bitcoin for $7,000 and you can't go print more of it. And when you try to, it gets more and more difficult. And so that idea to anyone that understands scarcity, commodities, and just like an asset and supply demand metrics in general, like, wow, like, dude, that's nuts. Secondly, did you know that I was a fresh college dropout? I didn't know what to do. I was like, damn, what would I like to spend my time on?

I actually applied to Barstool as an engineer. And I wrote in my letter. Erica, Dave. Yeah. What the fuck were you two thinking? wrote in my letter i was like i can code and like your website's shitty so i think i can make it better but also um there's this bitcoin thing and i think you guys should use it as like you're really quirky and you're really a front mover on all fronts generally like not afraid to take the

first step and i think you guys should try like this micro transaction micro payment thing i was pitching this to them when i was yeah and it was an email they're like if you want to work at bar you should just email this person and so it was this long email like hi i'm jack i design things i code things and like this bitcoin thing i think would be really i mean considering barstool's target customer and like who you guys relate to i think it couldn't hurt like the r&r has got to be favorable i've said bitcoin is a currency for the common man by the common man barstool is a blog for the common man by the common yeah so i actually submitted that email to them i never heard back which is probably a good thing i think yes um it's a good thing for your sake i love

barstool i am i do too i am a stoolie i worked for i enjoyed working for them on the tech side uh they've got andrew barba is crushing it they need they need more engineers that's all i'll say nice or at least when i was there i can't speak i haven't worked there in a year sure but when i was working there like i was making twitter bots and i was like i should not be making these twitter bots yeah but barstool is that's another thing about brand awareness like and the beauty of barstool is like people go to it and go to the site despite its clunkiness and stuff like that because they want to get the content because it's that good like bitcoin people are using bitcoin despite its slowness i can't believe i'm analogizing bitcoin to barstool right now

but we're gonna fucking do it it's slow arduous but it's worth it yeah it's worth it and the content at barstool is worth it and um i hope i hope that i hope my barstool saga isn't ended i'd like to be back in that office when not working for them but like talking to them about bitcoin you know it's funny um my roommate uh whose nickname is thumper so thumper see big uh he's thumper from like the drinking game or no thumper from um what's the movie what is the movie with like hook bambi right oh bambi yeah yeah isn't there a thumper in there i think so where's the hook i don't know is it one of the lost children of uh at this point it's just like numb to me it's just thumper but um yeah so thumper watches me watch these pizza reviews

every day like i watch them religiously right and he asked me he was like dude let's say bitcoin like gets to a million dollars and like you're this like person that like called it and like all of you little nerds on twitter are like popular like would you rather go on ellen or do a pizza review and i was like oh dude i was embarrassed by the question i was like are you kidding me like how well do you live with me you have to know me well enough yeah pizza review absolutely i love barstool the pizza review in particular is uh a form of content that amazes me because the spontaneity with which dave brings to it it i laugh at it every day if it's a short one if it's a long one if he has a guest if he doesn't yeah he's in new york if he's in a different

city like there's dave has dave has that it factor where he can just turn it on and fucking be funny yeah i went for a jog this morning and uh i've got the one bite app and it lets you know when you're around physically like a place that dave liked so i'm constantly getting dings like yo you're by joe's pizza or something like dave gave it a 9.1 i'm like fuck yeah that's cool it's right down the street yeah doxing myself here oh really joe's pizza manhattan and uh yeah in uh yeah in union square in uh nebraska yeah uh no it's but that like that indicator like it's becoming like i've said it slowly but surely bitcoin's like creeping into the psyche of the masses and like where it's becoming a common topic on barcelona's like oh bitcoin price like jump

today like well also in the reverse right like the people that don't like bitcoin inherently are also dying like they're old you know what i mean like we'll see there's some zoomer haters too don't worry yeah sure but there will soon have a world where people that are native to the internet native to all payments they've sent haven't been through checks or credit cards but have been through like venmo right and like we'll have a world where these people are the ones having kids and these people are the ones that are ceos of businesses and of citadel right and and like that world will exist soon and zap yeah there you go um so yeah no i think it's in the reverse as well not only is it brand awareness and it's survived but in the reverse like the people

that really try and punish it um aren't going to be around forever yeah they eventually get their comeuppance you know yeah it's um bitcoin's a cruel bitch she does not care what you think about her she'll produce blocks roughly every 10 minutes depending what the difficulty is and yeah how much hash rate is on the network hedge that but don't underestimate like the turnover of like humanity right like there's a constant churn like 10 minute blocks like what 80 year lives or something right i don't know the average generations like 33 years or something um yeah so i wonder what form of money like people being born today are going to be pulled into doxing myself a little bit further here but i'm about to be 28 like it feels like life's like fucking

flown by so you're like my age yeah we're like the same age nice what do you think i'm an old man no no but it's like it's crazy to think how much our lives have changed it's like i remember fucking i've said this before like pulling aol out of the back of the millennium backstreet boys album and downloading it for my family in like 1996 or something like that um or no that was like 98 99 um but to think how far we've come for them we're like my mom is using an iphone now and is like introducing apps to me it's like stuff is inevitable and to think that it's not a natural progression of like to think that we're going to have an internet and i have a native digital currency just doesn't make any sense to me as somebody who's i'm not even internet native i

remember the world without the internet yeah well i'm short the dollar against bitcoin with you so i can't counter that i agree with everything you just said all right so let's wrap it up here sure uh anything any last uh topics or tidbits you want to give the freaks out there um i don't think so man um i'm i live on the internet and i use my full name as my whatever user tag or whatever um so i'm not hard to find don't be shy at jack mallers yep thank you for doing what you do thank you for doing what you do thank you for pulling through um no keep it up both of you like fucking zap's incredible and it's thanks making bitcoin and lightning usable for an idiot like myself um so keep it up i love what you're doing peace and love freaks