The Breakdown - Dan Held on Bitcoin and the Battle Against CBDCs

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io, Circle and FTX US.   Dan Held is a serial bitcoin entrepreneur, the former head of growth marketing at Kraken and currently an adviser to Trust Machines and other crypto companies. In this discussion, he and NLW talk about the state of crypto narratives, bitcoin maximalism versus bitcoin moderates and why central bank digital currencies are among his top concerns.    Find our guest on Twitter: @danheld - Nexo Pro allows you to trade on the spot and futures markets with a 50% discount on fees. You always get the best possible prices from all the available liquidity sources and can earn interest or borrow funds as you wait for your next trade. Get started today on pro.nexo.io. - Circle, the sole issuer of the trusted and reliable stablecoin USDC, is our sponsor for today’s show. USDC is a fast, cost-effective solution for global payments at internet speeds. Learn how businesses are taking advantage of these opportunities at Circle’s USDC Hub for Businesses. - FTX US is the safe, regulated way to buy Bitcoin, ETH, SOL and other digital assets. Trade crypto with up to 85% lower fees than top competitors and trade ETH and SOL NFTs with no gas fees and subsidized gas on withdrawals. Sign up at FTX.US today. - “The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features Nathaniel Whittemore aka NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and research by Scott Hill. Jared Schwartz is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. Music behind our sponsors today is “War” by Enoch Yang. Image credit: Boris SV/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk. Join the discussion at discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8.

At the very highest levels of government, it's purely a power grab. That's all it is. It's totally f***ing bullshit talking about innovation or anything else like that. It's literally a power grab. And they're seeing how complacent and sloth-like the civilian population is to where they can implement this right underneath her nose. What politician or what bureaucrat wouldn't want absolute power. And they have the ability to do it under the guise of CBDCs. And most people are sleepwalking and have no idea that's even going on. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. The breakdown is sponsored by nexo.io, Circle, and FtX, and produced and distributed by CoinDesk. What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, November 2nd, and today I am joined by Dan Held. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us in the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.org

to Bit.org slash Breakdown Pod. Also a disclosure, as always, in addition to them being a sponsor of the show, I also work with FTX. All right, friends, today I am welcoming back, returning Breakdown guest Dan held. If you are not familiar, Dan has started numerous acquired businesses in the Bitcoin space and sold his most recent to Cracken, where he spent about three years leading growth in marketing. Dan is now a free agent working on a number of different projects in the space, including trust pilots where he's focused on things like DFI built on Bitcoin. In this conversation, we talk about Bitcoin fundamentalism versus Bitcoin moderates, the state of narratives in crypto, and why Dan has so much antagonism for

CBDCs. All right, Dan, welcome back to the breakdown. How are you, sir? Thanks for having me. It's been a little while. I'm doing well, though. Yeah, I'm excited. I feel like this is our, it's our first bear market check-in for a while. And, you know, because of that, there's got to be lots of interesting narratives to explore that we haven't seen for a while. But I guess first, let's do a quick update on you. What have you been spending your time on? What have you been thinking about lately? Yeah, good question. So I left Cracken a few months ago. Still like Cracken, still like the team. Just not, for me, I wanted to go try something different. I had spent three years at Cracken. And as everyone knows, three years and crypto years, that's like dog years. I've spent like

a quarter century at Cracken, it feels like. So it was a great time there, but kind of ready for my next thing. What I'm doing now is I'm a part-time marketing executive at three different crypto companies. One of those, which is one that I'm really, really close with and close with publicly, the other two are private and not disclosed, but the one I'm publicly associated with is trust machines, which is building Bitcoin Defi on top of Bitcoin. So I think that's really cool because I think Defi, what we saw happen in Salon and Ethereum, very interesting, very exciting, and seeing some of those financial primitives and bringing those back to the Bitcoin ecosystem with the most pristine asset in the space,

the most pristine money, if you will, that to me is super exciting. So that's where I'm spending my time these days. Of course, also creating content as well, newsletter, YouTube, tweets, LinkedIn, Instagram. So same old, same old on the kind of Bitcoin educator front,

but then on the work front, it's working in this part-time capacity at a couple different companies I feel interested in. Super awesome, man. So let's actually use that as a way into discuss. I think the big thing overarchingly that I'd love to chat with you about is, you know, the state of different kind of discourses, narratives, fuds in the context of this bear market. What makes this bear market different from previous ones?

So I guess let's kind of talk about, you know, over the last six months, you know, kind of your perception of what we're seeing this time around in terms of both fud and what people are, you know, ragging on, I guess. And then also what's starting to emerge for you as either countervailing, positive, bullish narratives, and maybe not just narratives, but, you know, things that are actually happening as that, you know, as we kind of slink deeper into this particular bear. Yeah, well, I don't really see any positive narratives that could exist currently. There is one, but I assign it a very low probability of happening. that is Bitcoin starts to move inversely if the market like the macro markets or like the US equities if they start to dip if Bitcoin started to soar. If that happens, then the narrative could kick off that Bitcoin's a safe haven asset and that reflexivity of price and narrative intertwining could lead to a bull run occurring.

Now, I think the probability of that is very low. But that is a possible narrative pathway that we could see happen from here. So for me, that's like, and by the way, I want that to happen. I just don't think it's a very likely event to happen. So that certainly could happen, and that would be an incredible, incredible moment for Bitcoin. But again, I think that's a very low probability. I see mostly negative narratives. You've got its classic bear market.

I wouldn't even call it fud because a lot of this is real. We've got like declining spot volumes. You've got macro, big big things happening in the macro markets where we've got sovereign and sovereign dead in this giant collapse. These are hugely structural problems that are manifested over decades and we're seeing that come to play right now. So I think that you've got a lot of fear and uncertainty in the market, high energy prices in Europe, declining consumer demand. Basically, it's like guaranteed we're going into a recession, right? So those aren't great for Bitcoin because Bitcoin currently trades like a risk on higher beta U.S. equity or a tech, higher beta tech play. So that's not what I think Bitcoin represents.

That's how it's being traded. So in that scenario, Bitcoin wouldn't do very well in the short to midterm. Of course, by the way, I am very, very bullish long term, naturally. But this, we're talking more about, you know, end of 2022 through 2023 here. Barish narratives as well. These are actually more technical, but you've got like implied volatility. So the pricing of Bitcoin options, those are basically options traders are pricing in volatility at all-time lows.

which is very surprising given the macro markets. And then you've also got spot volume dropping to like almost back to the previous bear market volume, which is not great because that leads to a circumstance where if there is a sharp movement, there's not as much liquidity. And then the movement becomes exaggerated. So I think we're like today we had like a 5% movement. I think that's in Bitcoin terms pretty mild. I do think we see some really high volatility occur here.

we've also got like minor capitulation which hasn't happened yet we thought it happened earlier this year but miners right now are being totally pummeled by a skyrocketing hash rate and energy costs going up so I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Bitcoin publicly traded miners went bankrupt and liquidated their assets so I'm pretty bearish on that and I think that that's going to manifest in the next like three to six months so yeah I'm I'm pretty bearish in the short term like of course I'm not going to sell my coins or anything like that but I don't really see a narrative catalyst that'll bring Bitcoin out of this bear market. And also, we're in the classic bear market cycle where there's not a lot of action that happens here that's to the positive or to the upside. If we look at historical Bitcoin bear markets.

So, you know, this is where you huddle, just hold tight for all the way through to like 2024. And so right now, I think, is a time for building. So this is something, I think is an excellent synopsis, by the way. Thank you. I'm interested in your take. One thing that has felt, it felt to me as compared to 2018, 2019, that there has been less of the, the extremes of the sort of vitriolic anti-Bitcoin or crypto even screeds this time. And I wonder, A, is that something you felt?

I mean, it literally might just be the absence of like it's actually dead kind of narrative. So A, I'm interested in whether that resonates with you at all or if that's just me. And B, to what extent you think it has to do with the fact that this cycle were actually just correlated with everything else? We're kind of swept up in a larger, you know, tectonic plate shift versus it's much easier to kind of rag on a thing for being dead when everything else is doing fine. And it's that thing over there that's being dead. So anyways, I'm just interested in your take on that. Yeah, certainly with this macro market, there's a lot bigger things to worry about than crypto. So I don't think people are really paying as much attention to crypto and you've got

fucking sovereign bonds like collapsing. So I think it's mainly there's like, yeah, there's a little bit of a fire over here. You know, this is fine sort of JPEG, you know, in the crypto world. But like in the macro world, they've got a fucking forest fire going on. So they're like, this isn't really a concern of theirs. and for entertainment value and shock value, yeah, cryptos, the mainstream folks always like to look at it and point over to it and laugh at it. But now there's so many things going on there that they kind of ignored it. Like Bitcoin's volatility now is lower than the British pound volatility.

That's how crazy the world has gotten. And so, yeah, I think it's a combination of that. You've got some fud that died, like Bitcoin's only used by criminals or terrorists and stuff. Like that faded away in the last cycle, which was nice because that was. like a pretty long, persistent piece of fud for about eight years. I mean, just is so ridiculous that some of these narratives take this long to die. You've got the proof of work narrative that rose back up because you've got Ethereum switching to proof of stake.

So naturally, that kind of gives like people on the Ethereum side who want to attack Bitcoin, gives them some more leverage. Same with mainstream folks, wanting to just pick a reason why they don't like Bitcoin. As I've stated before on this podcast and other ones, the whole proof of work thing's pretty silly too because it's like, hey, I don't criticize your energy consumption watching the Kardashians or eating a steak sandwich or doing whatever, you know, or driving your car to and from the grocery store. Energy consumption is subjective and people should, if they buy it, they should use it for whatever they should use it for whatever they want to use it for. But yeah, I think we're in a spot where like the

proof of work fud kind of went up, but people still don't care that much about crypto, so it kind of went out, but it's not that big of a deal. Yet the institutions have arrived and are active, very active in crypto, which is cool this cycle, whereas in the 2018 through 2019, 20, 20, 20, where the institutions are coming was the narrative, but now they're fully here, which is great. I think there is a little bit of, like, Schadenfreude going on with Web3, where, like, a lot of mainstream folks, like, look at Web3 and they kind of, it's kind of becoming, like, a bit of a joke, like the Metaverse, like Zuck is getting a lot of flack for the Metaverse. We're like, I bet at the bottom of the macro cycle that he cuts the entire

Metaverse team. I think that that's like Max Payne for Facebook. But publicly he's being ridiculed for Metaverse because no one's using it. Facebook's Metaverse. So I think like there are some narratives that are kind of like laughed at or made fun of now, which is like more Metaverse and Web3 from. And this is being laughed at by like mainstream folks. I'm not saying that crypto people are saying this. But in a world where like the. the foundation of the whole world is shaking with sovereign bonds, you know, these metaverse concepts almost look a little silly in that context,

and so it can kind of easily be picked out and made fun of by mainstream. Again, these aren't my personal views. I'm just describing what I'm kind of seen in the market. Yeah, and I think that you're right. There's probably also something to be said for where, you know, if we're looking at the natural counterreaction to a hype cycle that has fizzled, the place the acrimony is going to be directed is probably where the hype was highest, right? So these things that were kind of highfalutin concepts versus some sort of more kind of,

you know, base fundamental things, right? To the extent that you had, you know, metaverse stuff driving a hype cycle, it's the, the places likely to fall. I also think for, in Facebook's case, I think is an interesting prediction that you had, you know, they're getting caught up in a broader repricing of equities that where investors are are peeling back from the growth at any cost kind of mindset that characterized the last 12 years. And there's a very hard time to launch a fundamentally forward-looking money-burning division and rename your company after it.

Totally. And it's, I mean, it has little to no traction on the Facebook side and they're burning tens of billions of dollars a year trying to run this. I mean, there will be severe market consequences if he doesn't, especially if the bear deepens. He's going to have to do it. it's not like with some of these companies they have enough capital where they can burn and burn and burn for five to ten years on this. But they've got to show some traction. And I just I think like 100,000 daily active is what they have over there, which is like they had to send out a memo internally at Facebook headquarters going your teams need to use it on a daily basis. It's wild. Yeah.

So, you know, I think that the, yeah, the they're kind of perceived by the market is a little bit frivolous, a little bit too forward thinking. we're seeing all tech that's perceived as like super forward thinking probably getting repriced here. So it's not just metaverse stuff. It's kind of everything in the leading edge of growth, aka leading edge of the risk sort of spectrum. Yeah, man, it would be fascinating. If Facebook ends up abandoning the metaverse or, you know, it's pressure to wildly kind of reduce their goals in that area, but then it becomes a thing. You will have had two major moments of Facebook.

being too early to a sort of like crypto adjacent party, you know, first with Libra and then with Metaverse stuff before kind of bowing out even as those things got much bigger, which is just kind of fascinating. They're both pretty silly, though, because like who the fuck wanted to use Libra? It never made any sense. Everyone in the crypto industry, we're all sitting here and we're like, you want to make a stable coin that like we have to trust Facebook for? I just don't, it's never really groked how they made sense.

And then what's interesting is like David Marcus and that X team went on to go build on top of lightning, which is kind of cool. Yeah. I think it's called Light Spark. But then the Metaverse, like I don't want to hang on Zucks Metaverse. The whole point of the Metaverse is like no one controls it, right? So this idea that it was going to be like Zucks playground just sounds incredibly dystopian and just like really disconnected from the entire principle of what a Metaverse is. With also like really unimpressive graphics. Like the try like you really have.

lost the plot if you're trying to make a big deal out of adding legs. Even if that's like technologically, I'm not sort of giving it enough credit, which I 100% I'm sure that I'm not. The idea of trying to make a PR announcement over your avatar has legs now just feels real, you definitely launched in production over there. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it feels really disconnected from their core principles of building products that consumers like. I think it's a classic problem at Facebook, though. A lot of their innovation has been outsourced through acquisitions, Instagram being a prime example on WhatsApp, rather than like internal innovation. So, yeah, I'm not sure what that is. Maybe, well, granted Zuck didn't even invent Facebook himself. So, you know,

maybe they never had a culture of innovation. They always, they always stole it or bought it. Want to keep more profits when trading? Get the best possible prices and trade with 50% lower fees on Nexo Pro. The new Spot and Futures trading platform uses aggregated liquidity of over 3,000 order books collected from multiple sources. Utilizing the complete Nexo Suite allows you to earn interest and borrow funds as you wait for the next trade setup. Visit pro.nexo.io. That's PRO. N-EXO.io and sign up today. This episode is brought to you by Circle, the sole issuer of USDC, and a leader in crypto that's held to a higher standard. USDC is a fast, safe, and efficient way to send money.

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theme because another thing that I've noticed you're talking a lot about recently is CBDCs. And I think you co-authored a piece for the Bitcoin Policy Institute recently. That was a very extensive piece on this. So talk to me about kind of, you know, what has you spending more time on CBDCs? Why is this sort of an important issue to right now? Yeah. So CBDCs, for those who don't know what that means, it means central bank digital currency or currencies. So I've over the last, you know, 10 years have been in the crypto space like seeing CBDCs rise up, I think this is the sort of final battle, if you will. It's the final chapter in the video game of the big boss. And CBDCs versus Bitcoin or crypto, that's the big final boss battle. And so central bank digital currencies are the

idea that you could create a currency where you bank directly with the Federal Reserve, where like you have an account with them. So you don't even go through a traditional bank at all. So it sort of undermines the entire commercial banking industry and gives absolute power. and control to the central bank, which is like an incredibly dystopian sort of exercise where the central bank could censor you if you tweeted something mean to the president that day. They could tax you at a different tax rate depending on your ethnicity. They could force you. And they would also ban cash at the same time as implementing CBDCs.

And so they might like, if you don't spend your money, they'll penalize you. So like incentivizing growth and really weird things like that, which inflation actually is that already. inflation is that constant pushing to go spend and distribute capital because if you don't, you inherently lose, you know, target rates 2%, but that's much higher now. You lose 2% a year. So I think, you know, CBDCs represent this 1984-esque dystopian, I'd say like endgame of governments exerting absolute control over their population.

You've got Bitcoin and crypto, which stand totally separate and they're antithetical to that that sort of thought. And so fighting CBDCs, or at least raising the awareness that these things are occurring is critical. There's dozens of countries globally that are currently working on implementing this. Most people on the street have no idea what CBDC stands for. It doesn't sound that mean. It doesn't sound that ominous. It's just a it's a jargony sort of term, right? Like it just you're like, I don't know, CBDC. Okay, sure. So raising the awareness of how serious of a situation this is is really critical because if we don't fight this, then, both, I think this is a bad for the United States and bad for the world.

So I co-authored a piece with Natalie Smolenski and the Bitcoin Policy Institute. And by the way, she did a lot of the heavy lifting. I had previously written kind of a framework and didn't ship it. And I'm sure you've got a lot of things on draft as well. So it was one of those on draft pieces and I grabbed lunch with Natalie and she was in town. And she was like, yeah, you know, I feel really passionate about this topic. And I was going to write something up. And I'm like, well, what if I can give you 20% to get?

started and then you finish it out. So she really did the heavy lifting here. So I want to give a hat tip to her. And the Bitcoin Policy Institute has been really instrumental in taking this and bringing it to different members of the both like the White House and Congress, et cetera, trying to get this message out to more folks. So it's 47 pages. Basically, we go into what CBDCs are, how they're constructed, how many are in flight, you know, what are the arguments for a CBDC? And then we knock those arguments down. A lot of them are like, for example, like there's an argument. of like, oh, it's for innovation. That's not true. Innovation for money doesn't come from the government. It comes from the private sector. As we've seen with ACH, wires, checks, everything like

that. That wasn't a federal sort of mandate that was done through private commerce. Also, as Quarles over at the Federal Reserve, his last name is Quarles, as Quarles put it very eloquently, faith in the U.S. dollar does not stem from the technology that supports it. It stems from the trustworthiness of the dollar. And so CBDCs don't bolster the trustworthiness of any sort of money. What they do is they just allow the government to have absolute control over the entire economy. And so that's an example of one of the arguments that we stand up and take and put down. And so, you know, when you go through it here and it's also, you know, what do we ultimately want to represent as American? So the piece was slanted more towards an American, more towards an American audience.

but it's like, yeah, China's implementing CBDCs. Cool, but that's not about innovation. That's like saying concentration camps are innovative and that we should. If China's doing it, we should do that too. That doesn't make any sense. And so a lot of people like in Congress and other places have been like, hey, China, Russia and these other countries are implementing CBDCs. Why aren't we?

Why would we want to do that? That makes no sense. It's not beneficial to our economy for the freedom of Americans. And it's antithetical to the American value system. So basically that's the kind of the core argument of the piece and why I felt like it was important that we put this together. And honestly, super happy that Natalie was able to make something out of this versus it's staying in my graveyard of drafts. So I think we put something really solid together that I haven't seen out of any other white paper in the space. So I was pretty proud of what we put together.

It's great. What is your perception of kind of where the discourse is in the U.S.? Because it's definitely not like a runaway hit in favor of CBDCs, But there's also this weird kind of kicking the can down the road thing happening with the Fed where they keep saying basically like someone's got to tell us if we're authorized to do this. It's not going to come from us. So it does feel like it's a bigger conversation that's looming. I mean, we could separate it from like the all-powerful lobbyist Congress members and bureaucracy of the giant government org versus like the layperson. The layperson has no idea what a CBDC is. They don't really care. It's not a topic of conversation I've ever heard come up outside of a crypto, crypto dinner, crypto happy hour. Our parents aren't going to bring it up during Thanksgiving.

I promise you that it's not on the top of mind. But at the very highest levels of government, they're trying to do this. And it's purely a power grab. That's all it is. It's totally fucking bullshit talking about innovation or anything else like that. It's literally a power grab. And they're seeing how complacent and sloth-like the civilian population is to where they can implement this right in their, neither knows. So that's basically what this is, is it's like what politician or what bureaucrat

wouldn't want absolute power. And they have the ability to do it under the guise of CBDCs. And most people are sleepwalking and have no idea that's even going on. I think it, like I said, I think it's definitely going to be a conversation that heats up. So I was super excited when I saw that you were digging into that and just kind of adding more heft to the conversation. I want to maybe wrap up on just kind of your, your final word, final thoughts on the Bitcoin maximalism debate that has been one kind of key internal feature, let's call it, of this Bitcoin bear. What's your perception of where that all stands right now? And what do you think about it? Yeah. So defining what maximalism means is super

tough because like a lot of people are under the umbrella of maximalism. And it's like, well, as a Bitcoin or what else do you identify as? I personally identify as a Bitcoiner. That's the old term for being a Bitcoiner, which is about being more open-minded, but also just loving Bitcoin and hoping that it succeeds, right? Like, thinking that Bitcoin is the most important thing that we should spend a lot of resources and effort ensuring that that happens. And that's what I truly care about in the space is Bitcoin. I'm more of a moderate, though. So like these days, I think a lot of stuff is cool, like Salon Ethereum, Salana and Ethereum, they're building really interesting things. I spent a lot of time to get yield farming, NFTs. The market has decided that people like these sort of

things, these D5 primitives. Now, I'm more pragmatic about like, you don't throw the baby out the bathwater. There's still going to be Web 2 versus Web 3. There's always going to be a Web 2. And there's always going to be C5 versus D5. Like there's, it's never going to go. It's not going to be completely eat the other. And you trade off things as well. With C5, you've got like counterparty risk, but with Defi, you've got protocol risk. Like you've got protocol risk. Like you've got protocol and smart contract risk, which is non-negligible. I think over $60 billion has been stolen through hacks. Like that's a non-negligible amount that I think both sides are a little bit dishonest where like the C-Fi folks consider Defi to be too reckless and the D-Fi folks

considers C-Fi to be antiquated. I think that there's there's a nuanced argument for both and why both are important. So for me it's been fun digging into that. And I think in the Bitcoin cultural side, you've got a fragmentation in the community, not like what we saw with Bitcoin cash because no one's proposing any sort of hard fork, but simply, people are going, hey, this is what the identity of Bitcoin culture should look like. And since no one controls that, it's comprised of individuals coming up with that. And so you've got the fundamentalist, which are a kind of more extreme version of Bitcoiners that I don't really think most Bitcoiners identify with, but have gotten a pretty strong voice

over there's a couple individuals that have a super strong voice where they're bringing in very conservative, like, Christian sort of values into Bitcoin, which makes absolutely no sense. Satoshi never references God once. Bitcoin has no religion or ethics or anything else. Bitcoin is just code. For example, like they consider, like there is a influencer in crypto who has a who had a course that you could buy to learn about crypto or learn just about Bitcoin. And they thought that that was immoral for her to charge $800 for that, which is ridiculous because if you believe in Bitcoin, you're a free market person, that anyone should be able to buy and sell something as long as it's not fraud, then who cares?

And then also, like, for example, they're anti-lending and borrowing. They consider it usury, which I hadn't heard that fucking word since, like, I was studying like medieval history in college or something, right? Like, no one uses that word anymore. Usory, what the hell is that?

It's called the free market, just like Bitcoin, right? So these are values that are in direct contrast to what Bitcoin represents. So it's a really strange, it's really strange to see this group develop that opinion over time. I don't really understand how they can reconcile that in their heads. So there's like the fundamentalist. And I think that group,

while loud, is growing much smaller and you have the rise of the moderates, which is like, and I think moderate needs a better branding, but like moderates is the best one we have now. And I identify as that as well, where it's like, hey,

Bitcoin is the most important thing in this space. I'm going to spend almost all of my resources making that happen. And I want to build on top of Bitcoin. So let's bring stable coins. NFTs, anything that people find value in in these other ecosystems and bring it back to Bitcoin. It's purely a free markets thing. If people want it and it's on Bitcoin and they use it, then that's a good thing. Anything that uses Bitcoin, I consider to be a good thing. So I want to see building happen back on Bitcoin. And so the moderates are more open-minded

with that. Also, we don't have like a fire and brimstone-esque marketing message where it's like, look, if you bought shi coins, I don't care. Everyone's touched a shi coin. I, I, I, I mined prime coin, and I've been saying this for years on podcasts. I mind prime coin because in my early, for early years, I was like, oh, this seems interesting. Of course, it was silly. But, you know, if you make people feel bad for some of those decisions, I don't think that's the best way to pull people into the Bitcoin ecosystem, saying like, hey, congrats on making a bunch of money with Doge, but I'm an old timer. You probably want to put that in Bitcoin long term. That's like a more friendly approachable narrative than like, repent.

You're a bad person. So, you know, I think that the moderates are much more permissive and much more open-minded. But ultimately, what both sides are about are making Bitcoin succeed. But I think the moderates are the only ones who have an objectively good framework for thinking about that at a macro level. Whereas the fundamentals are just more of, we feel this way. Therefore, that should be the way it is versus the moderates being more like product-minded. Where it's like, hey, people are using these other things. What if we brought some of that back to Bitcoin?

And also, you know, it's the idea. that like no one's perfect and what's the best marketing message we can say to get people into Bitcoin. And I don't think it's the fundamentalist message. If you look at their follower accounts on Social Blade or other platforms, they flatlined or had much less growth than the moderate style voices during the Bull Run. So it's very clear that an audience wants to hear more of a moderate tone rather than some of these like extreme fundamentalist takes that are frankly incoherent when you look at Bitcoin's values. And also I think just represent like a very primitive and, I I don't know, very, very basic ideology.

You heard it here first, folks. Bitcoin is a free markets technology. Shocking. Awesome, Dad. I think it's a great summary of things. Listen, always love having you on the show. Appreciate you sharing your take on where we are in this pair cycle. Look forward to having you back on hopefully when things have started to turn again.

But, you know, if it takes too long, we'll do it before that. Sounds good. Great catching up. And thanks for having me on. Not that I would expect anything less from him, but boy, Dan does not pull punches around CBDCs. As you can probably tell, I think this is a conversation that is going to do nothing but heat up in the U.S. political scene. I also think that the U.S. is kind of unique with regard to the discussion of CBDCs for a variety of reasons. First, the fact that we already have

the world's reserve currency, which makes technological advantages in currency seem less relevant. Also the fact that we have a longstanding tradition of innovation coming from outside government, private sector, and then being enshrined and formalized as part of the official monetary system. Is there a chance that that happens again in the context of stable coins? Seems to me totally possible, but whether it does or doesn't, it still doesn't change that there are going to be major, major questions on the rights, responsibilities, and limitations of power set on any of these technologies. So I am quite glad that the conversation is picking up. I think now is the time to get into it if these issues matter at all to you. And frankly, if you're listening to this show, my guess is

that they do. Anyway, thanks again, Dan, for coming back on the show. Thanks to my sponsors, nexo.io, CircleinFTX for supporting the show. And thanks to you guys for listening. Until tomorrow, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.