The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Mark Goodwin and David Bailey, Bitcoin Magazine, External Pressures, Internal Priorities

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome Mark Goodwin and David Bailey of Bitcoin Magazine to the show. Bitcoin Mag has been under a great deal of scrutiny in recent years, all while continuing to publish major Bitcoin news and thematic Bitcoin pieces, and running the world's most prominent Bitcoin conferences. Lots to discuss, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the sit-down. Check out Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/ Check out Mark's new book: https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Dollar... Bitcoin 2024: https://b.tc/conference/registration From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠ Discord: ⁠ ⁠https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, and we hope you enjoy the program. Friends and enemies, what a dinner party I've put together for you tonight. My name is Joey here. Lonely Tuesday. Did a rip yesterday. Len wasn't there. Doing a rip tonight. Len's not here, but I do have two other buddies with me. I think you're going to enjoy the show.

Mark Goodwin, David Bailey, Bitcoin Magazine. I was going to say the Holy Trinity, like the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, but there's not really any good like two deity jokes. So I don't know, something for next time I do an episode like this. Anyway, lots to talk about. Bitcoin Magazine, like constant barrage. We've talked about him on this show. Len is not a huge fan. I don't feel as strongly as he does, but I think there's criticisms to

be shared and some wins to be celebrated, but we'll get into all that tonight. As always, the chat likes to get busy. I know this is a controversial sort of subject for us. We don't often do shows like this, but be civil, okay? At the end of the day, you got to remember that we're all sort of batting for the same team here. You may not agree with the means or the, the, the motive or whatever, but don't be stupid in the chat. I don't want that. No one wants that. It's not good for anything. As always the sponsors first, Easy DNS, Mark and team have been with us now for more than a year. You guys are putting a lot of business through Mark's platform. We love that. I've said many times that even though Michael

Saylor claims in public appearances that there is no second best, he does hoard domain names. So I would say that even that guy thinks domain names have some place in a balanced portfolio. And if you want a domain name, Easy DNS is the best place to pick one up. Mark is your friendly neighborhood registrar. You can buy a domain, transfer a domain, whatever else you can do with domains. I have no idea, but you can do all that stuff. Easy with EasyDNS. They have a bunch of different virtual private server options and utilities there. So if you want to run a Bitcoin node, Nostor relay, whether you want to do a notice implementation, something that'll get you seized or apprehended by the authorities. Mark will be able to at least point you in the right direction. Sorry, Mark, hope this isn't getting you in trouble. And then on top of that too, they have PGP

and GPG email provisions available for you if you want to set up an email account at your new domain. All done for 50% off your first round of buys if you use our code CBPMEDIA or just tell Mark we sent you. That'll be enough. The second sponsor, Bull Bitcoin. You guys know them. You love them. Extremists in the best way. Okay. Francis and the boys there. Lots to do on their platform. You can buy Bitcoin KYC free at the post office. Go with cash. Okay. Impress your friends. Impress the post office clerk. Maybe you're single. Price is not really high enough for you to get a girlfriend now. But if the post office clerk is

cute, you can't be that much longer. It's like 90 days after the having. You usually get a pump. So keep that in mind. Bring your QR code from your account. Scan it in. The money will be in your account when you get home. Buy the Bitcoin. Coin joined out. Self-custody. Everything's non-custodial. So they don't hold your Bitcoin. It goes right to a wallet of your choosing. You can pay your bills there with the bills platform anything your mortgage your cell phone bill your property tax uh whatever you know government uh invoice you have to to pay you can do it over there which is great in canada there's tons of government invoices you have to pay list that's going every day easy for you to do. So head over there and do that with bills. Don't forget to, if you sign up with our promo code,

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You can't beat it. You can't beat it. So without further ado david bailey mark goodwin i gotta say uh dave was on time mark not really on time and so i maybe the first question mark is what were you doing before this i mean this has got to be at least somewhere in the middle of the totem pole for you in terms of priority what what this is the top of the totem pole baby you kidding me uh i was uh prompt exactly at seven o'clock i was not uh a moment late i assure you that's great and i've been looking forward to this podcast for like a month i've actually like checked in on it a couple of times to make sure

it was happening and the one of the main reasons why is i was excited to meet lynn so like he's like you know rolled up his tail on his run oh no i'm not happy about that one he's he's um he's got some strong feelings about the stuff that goes on at the meg uh sort of the utxo venture we'll talk about all that stuff like i said i don't feel quite as strongly but i think it's it's fair to say that you have basically two options in this space when you get to where you guys have gotten to. You're sort of the apex of information sharing and platforming the ideas and stories agreements between two otherwise adversarial ideas are. And that's what I want to do tonight. Like I said, I don't agree with everything, but I think there's a lot of stuff we have in common, a lot of stuff we agree on when it comes to Bitcoin, when it comes to narratives, when it comes to use cases, and when it comes to threats, most importantly. And so we'll get into all that, but maybe tell people a bit first, because I still think there's some confusion about the gap between Bitcoin, the magazine run by Mark and Bitcoin, the, I don't know, company operation, whatever run by you, Dave. So, I mean, Dave, you can start, what do you do? What is your role and like your

responsibilities as far as Bitcoin magazine? Yeah. So, well, first off, thanks for having me on the podcast. And this is the first time I've ever been on a show with Mark. So Mark, let's not fuck this up, please. And, you know, to the people in the comments, you know, let it rip. Like, you know, we take it, we take the heat all day. Might as well take it in in the chat so let it rip um and i do want to say just to kick this off that the reason i i did this this podcast the reason i know about this podcast because i don't really consume that much bitcoin media i like live it all day and that's just it's too much um is someone sent me a clip of yours joey talking about the bitcoin conference i think it was bitcoin 2023 and it was like a recap of the

conference. And Lynn is just like hammering us about it being a shitcoin conference. And you say some reasonable, well-balanced things about the event. And like, dude, I've lived that event. I know every detail of that event, the speakers, what we fuck up, what we don't fuck up. And so like, it's so easy to say the thing that everyone wants you to say, like say the line. And so it's like shit coin conference. That's the line they want to hear you say. And whenever I hear someone who can have a little bit of a nuanced view, like who can like assess like, okay, it's not perfect, but like, these are the things that got right. Boom. I know that person has like some sort of intellectual depth to them that they're

not afraid to say the thing that maybe people don't want them to say. So respect to you, Joey. That's why I'm here. And I hope you don't get burned at the stake for me giving you a compliment, but I just wanted to say that. So my job at the company is basically chief bill payer, troublemaker. I make the big picture decisions on what businesses we're going to go into, things we might invest into, things we should shut down. Making sure that at the end of the month, end of the quarter, we have enough money to keep the business operating and high level decisions about like, what are the leader, what the leadership of the organization looks like. So, you know, I was a little involved in Mark joining the company. It's actually Pete Rizzo, who kind of runs our content side of the business, who made the recommendation. I signed on to the recommendation

and we've let like Mark just do his thing at Bitcoin Magazine. So I'm pretty uninvolved at Bitcoin Magazine. You know, I was actually looking through our Slack communication, Mark, and it's like pretty, pretty light. So if anything, the Bitcoin Magazine team is probably like, David needs to be more involved. But yeah, I basically, we support Bitcoin Magazine because we know the history of Bitcoin Magazine. We know the role it needs to play. It doesn't make us shit money, but it's not about making money.

It's really about like having an independent voice about Bitcoin. That's truly about Bitcoin and believes in the mission of hyper Bitcoinization, which is what our company is all about. It's like, how do we get a hundred percent of people on the planet to be a hundred percent all in on Bitcoin? So, you know, yeah, that's it. Do you think one of the best big picture decisions you've made recently is to grow that beard? Because I think that that might be one. A lot of people not really giving you – I mean for all the shit you take, I don't think regardless of your stance on conferences and ordinals, you got to say the beard is a pretty good idea. It's a pretty good idea.

Yeah. It looks okay. I wore a beard. No, I started with a mustache and then it became a beard. And then I was like, oh, I'm going to shave it when we get to all time highs. And then one of our investors was like, you do realize that maybe we only have a bull market because of the beard. And if you shave it, you could cause a bear market.

It was like, okay, I'm stuck in this until the end. Okay. And then Mark, okay, your turn, man. Same thing. Give me the spiel. What do you do? All right. Every day I get a manila envelope, uh, with a, you know, uh, the script I'm reading right now. Uh, it arrives at my desk, eight 15 every morning. No, uh, yeah, no, it's, uh, David's a man. I love working for him. I love Bitcoin magazine so much. They've been so good to me. It's the shit. I, uh, submitted a piece that's called the birth of the Bitcoin dollar and like September of 2021 and CK, you know, was just a meetup buddy. Yeah. And which became the book later. Uh, and he kind of roped me in and was like, come on, come write more shit,

whatever. It'd been like nothing but the best. No one's ever told me not to say anything or what to say. Uh, it's a lot of fun. Um, but yeah, I run the, uh, editorial kind of original content stuff. I work, uh, with Pete Rizzo. Uh, and then, you know, we have a news team, we got an opinion team. We're kind of building it up a little bit. We got a layer two guy. We got a B2B guy, you know, we're kind of, we're kind of growing. It's really nice. It's really fun. But, yeah, I've been at BM now for a couple years. And, yeah, I got that book out right behind you looking good over your right shoulder there. You're a little devil over your right shoulder being like, maybe they're dollarizing.

You know, be careful. But, yeah, no, it's good. Yeah, so I ran the print magazine for about a year and a half um with uh joe rogers and uh annabelle um which was like this shit i love it it's so much fun it's yeah really like kind of we we you know try to be you know i think we were really up up front on a lot of important shit right away right i mean i mean i think hats off to david and the conference team for being right about covid immediately uh doing 2021 blowing it out before anyone else did it was kind of the first big party and then uh you know uh you know some of some some of the magazine staffs up in canada

so we went super hard at the truckers we did some pretty outrageous stuff about trudeau honestly and that censorship resistant issue uh some ridiculous animations of blood on his hands and all these things. So we went pretty hard and we kind of, yeah, like we care a lot about Bitcoin. You know, I think we don't think it's about us. You know, Bitcoin is not about us. Bitcoin Magazine has to be, you know, a freedom forward editorial that, you know,

we platform the best voices, whether that's something I agree with or not. I platformed like Phil who wrote a piece all about how, you know, JP Morgan and Jamie Diamond are cool. And Jerome Powell's fighting Davos, which to me is just ridiculous. I love him. He's great. But like, that's the opposite of my book and my thesis, but throw that shit in the magazine, make it look beautiful because it's important. Everyone should read everybody's different ideas if they're like coherent and, you know, you know, well-written, well-articulated. So yeah, I take, I take the job really seriously. It's, it's a lot of fun, obviously, but, but yeah,

it's not about me. You know, we publish shit all the time that I'm like, what the fuck is this? And other people will say to me, what the fuck is this? But yeah, I mean, it's, it's not about us. And I, we look at it as a big responsibility to you know treat bitcoin well and you know have it you know kind of give back to what it's given to us really that's kind of how i look at it it's given us a lot of freedom bitcoin so try to keep that going but uh but yeah that was that was a long-winded rant intro but joey i'm super super stoked to be here uh yeah maybe just to pick up on that thread real quick just so like people know like there's not like um some organizational strategy where

it's like okay these are the big the big themes that we're driving this is the narrative that we need to drive like let's get all the gang together like let's get all of our puppets together and like let's like hammer this narrative down people's throats. It doesn't work like that. The struggle at Bitcoin Magazine, even before Mark took over, was like, how do we just get more content on Bitcoin Magazine? How do we get people to submit op-eds? We don't even care what the op-ed says. Just say something interesting about Bitcoin. It can be good or bad, whatever. And as long as it meets a certain quality standard, like we'll publish it. And so like the grind is like, like we're so many layers behind being like setting a grand strategy. It's really just like the day to day of like,

how do we make sure like we have something to publish and like it gets through an editor and like it meets the call. Like, i feel like you know it's pretty funny to me to see like people like publish these memes where it's like oh bitcoin magazines behind all these things are doing all these machinations and stuff it's like bro we can barely run our daily like our daily stand-up our week like our friday all hands like we can't even get the fucking zoom to work so it's like you know people really i think think, maybe have this image in their head of like, you know, who's the opposite of the Justice League? They live in that black helmet. Something of Doom.

Yeah, yeah. They think of the Legion of Doom. Legion of Doom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bro, no. I wish we were the Legion of Doom. Okay, in fairness, okay i i think that's probably true like scale at scale and operation like bitcoin magazine is hard to maintain right

but you know i'll start off playing devil's advocate here uh to to you know make my my listeners and viewers happy a little bit you can see why people might say that, right? If I think about the way that Bitcoin Magazine, for example, has been, I think, a proponent of ordinals more than other things, let's say, I can see why people think that. Now, do you guys have any sort of like, when I think about the internal priorities of Bitcoin Magazine. Do you make an effort to say to each other before you decide to support a proposition or a BIP or Rodimer's Ordinal Inscription Platform? Do you make an internal decision to say, look, we should red team this? What are people going to say about us doing something like this? How does this look for the magazine? How does this look for the

corporation? And maybe more importantly, honestly, and I think you guys are good Bitcoiners on the whole, how does it look for Bitcoin? Is it good for Bitcoin? What does the sort of red team process look like at Bitcoin Magazine? I think that would help clear up a lot of things for a lot of people. I think specifically for Ordinals, it's kind of funny because you got Dieter quote tweeting me and shit being like, you're sucking David's dick and you know you're pushing all this ordinal shit and it's like bro like I brought ordinals to Bitcoin magazine if anything uh uh for better or for worse yeah exactly yeah exactly um but like literally I mean no honestly like I don't think there's that there's not this sort of scheming process uh in terms of we going to promote this and not this. Yes, there are meetings about editorial policy. You know, I think we have a really clear token policy, a really clear layer two policy, which a lot of people got really mad at us about. Like the Stacks people got super pissed that we were like token not needed Bitcoin only. And they were like, what the fuck? Blah, fuck blah blah blah like not everyone is always

happy with with the decisions but we think that makes sense you know bitcoin forward if it's on bitcoin and with the ordinals it was like casey was my friend uh guy that i just talked to a lot at uh meetups incredible guy genius um and i think he really cares about bitcoin and he just kind of worked on this idea um and you, we would do spaces and whatever. And it just completely steamrolled out of control and became this, you know, the biggest, you know, thing in Bitcoin. And I think a lot of people sort of say that it was us that did that. But like, it really was a natural thing that happened. It was just Bitcoiners being interested.

And, you know, people give a lot of shit to Casey for what he set up of being the shit coiner and yada, yada. But it's like, no, he he's like the most savage maxi I know. And he literally created a tool where you take ETH NFTs and you burn them and you bring them to Bitcoin. Like that's maxi technology. Like I know NFTs. I'm not I don't care about NFTs. I don't own a single ordinal. I mean, outside of just Satoshi's. Right. Like I don't own a single ordinal. I mean, outside of just Satoshi's, right? Like I don't own a single inscription. I've done a lot of inscribing because it's fun and publishing things, but I'm not into the speculative nature of it. I don't like the owning of it. I think the BRC 20 is not my thing, but it's like, I would much rather like fight for the right for someone to shove all that

shit into a Bitcoin transaction than like suck the u.s treasury's uh you know member here and push along stable coins and all the things like all the tether people that all get away with shit coining and stuff that's really near and dear to you right yeah yeah exactly like and again i'm not gonna i always make everything about stable coins but it's just to me the the the ordinal stuff is bitcoin uh it really is um i think there's a lot of there was a kind of a big opportunity honestly missed at the beginning of of ordinals the discourse from maxis that just removed themselves from it that i think could have helped really shape the community towards

you know more more like you know tangible use cases that are that are you know more aligned in the bitcoin maxi ethos you know which we eventually did see some of those cool projects and publishing projects and these kind of markdown things. We saw that cool WikiLeaks project. That stuff, I think, is kind of where it should go. And I think there was a missed opportunity from the get-go for people not embracing it and seeing, hey, we could do cool stuff with this rather than just rinse, repeating the the eth shit right um but in terms of bitcoin magazine like no it wasn't really like a you know there's so many different like opinions on ordinals within the the magazine um within like like yeah like with me and shinobi and rizzo and and namc like we all have very very different degrees

about what what we like about it what we think we should cover, what we shouldn't. I mean, in general, I think, um, yeah, we like, we, we, we do our best to sort of just, you know, try not to push anything, you know, with price, economics, anything like that, and just focus on kind of community stuff. And if we see that there's something happening that we think deserves coverage, we'll give it to it. But we're actually pretty – I don't think we push anything really that crazy. People give us way too much credit, honestly, for the Ordinal shit. I don't know how you feel, David. Before you chime in, David, I will say that I think as part of the sort of oppo research for this interview, I just went to Bitcoin Magazine's website and searched around for a bit.

And if I look at the Ordinal's content, you're right, Mark, there's not really a consistent thread. There's people who like it for X, Y, and Z reason, people who don't like it for X, Y, and Z reason. And it's really all there. Now, Dave, before you chime in, if I look at the UTXO management stuff, right? I think this is another reason why people say Bitcoin Magazine is sort of pro whatever subject because they look at the portfolio and they say, this guy's got his bags parked

here. How do we square that circle? What do you say to people who have that opinion? They're looking at the UTXO invested dollars and going, he's telling me he's not pro this or pro that. But when I look here, I see that there is some money parked. I mean, where do we take that? So let me respond to that.

But I want to kind of back up a little bit on something that Mark said. So while there are many different views at Bitcoin Magazine, a longstanding view of BTC Inc. This predates Mark. This goes all the way back to our decision to go Bitcoin only. We've always had the Bitcoin maxi view that ETH is a testnet and it's going to zero. And anything of value that's built on any blockchain anywhere in the world, if it's actually valuable and the market actually wants it, it will be rebuilt on the Bitcoin chain and Bitcoin will consume it. Like that is like the old school Bitcoin maximalist view that like Bitcoin's the Borg from Star Trek and it's going to absorb anything of value. And so we've had that view for forever.

And if you actually go read a blog post I published when we announced going Bitcoin only called Make Bitcoin Fun Again, which is, you know, ironic that that's like the slogan today. I published that a long time ago. Like we said things like, okay, you know, the first ICOs, like ICOs are a powerful idea. That's a Bitcoin idea. Permissionless crowdfunding from anywhere in the world that anyone can send Bitcoin to. That's a dope idea. Like that's a thing that's like inherent to Bitcoin. We should not throw out the idea of permissionless fundraising just because people use it to run frauds. Like that's a Bitcoin thing. And like, you know, NFTs, rare Pepes, that was something that people were building on Bitcoin a decade ago. And so like all of these ideas that other blockchains have like co-opted from Bitcoin, those are actually Bitcoin ideas.

And if you can do them in a valuable way, like we want them to happen on Bitcoin. And I fucking spelled this out in the blog post, like item by item, like it couldn't have been more clear. And so, you know, we've always had this view like these ideas done in the right way can come back to Bitcoin. And we wanted to see that happen and you know the bitcoin conference in 2019 we were the first conference ever in the world to to adopt lightning across the event like we did like really cool stuff with lightning uh bitcoin 2021 we had bitcoin based nfts built on liquid um that we we gave out at the conference they had liquid block stream had an nft platform called like Rare Toshi or something like that.

And so like we were doing that. Like we've always been a believer of like pushing the frontier of what Bitcoin is. And so, you know, people just forget that stuff. And then they like want to look at our activity in the past 12 months, like in a vacuum, like, oh, look at how they've changed. And it's like, bro, no, like we've been doing this for years. Just no one listened to us. And, you know, when when Ordinals came about and it was Mark's fault for bringing Ordinals.

Your DMs will never be the same, Mark. It's over for you. Pete Rizzo, like, you know, Pete Rizzo has been telling me for for two or three years, hey, crypto is going to pivot back to Bitcoin. We need to be ready for the pivot that's coming. And it's always been like, not yet, not yet, not yet. And then Orinals came on the scene and Mark raised it to me or raised it to Rizzo. And then Rizzo raised it to me and was like, Hey, like people like this is happening. Like people are figuring out how to do crypto shit on Bitcoin and it's on Bitcoin. Like we have to jump on this. Like we have to use this as an opportunity to cannibalize

part of the crypto market that's developed on Ethereum, et cetera, and bring it back to Bitcoin. And so, you know, did we know that it was going to be controversial to do this? Yeah, we fucking knew it was going to be controversial. Yeah, we had lots of conversations about like, dude, how much money is this going to cost us? How many, how many tickets are we going to lose? How many sponsors are we going to lose? And then it's like, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't fucking matter because we didn't get in this for the sponsors or the tickets or any of that. We got in this for Bitcoin to eat the world. Like that's why we're in this. And so when we have a technology or a tool that comes to Bitcoin that allows us to cannibalize our competition, of course,

we're going to support that. And if we didn't support it, we're fucking frauds. Like we're LARPs. So it's like, okay, like we're not fucking LARPs. Like, and there's one thing that like, I feel like our track record has demonstrated is like, we're going to go out on a limb, even when anyone says it's crazy, because we don't care what other people think of us. We're not doing this for other people. We're doing this for us. So we did make a decision to support, like not to support, but to incorporate ordinals and other fringe things in Bitcoin into what we see as Bitcoin, like to have this like big coalition, big tent. And initially, there was no thought about investing in any of this stuff. Like we had we have a hedge fund on the side where we had been investing in the lightning companies.

That was primarily like what our venture portfolio looked like. Some other cool stuff in there, too, but mostly lightning. And it was several months into this process where we realized, oh shit, none of the vent, like this is happening. We can see how big the audience is growing. We can see how many teams we're hearing from that are like OG Bitcoiners that are like, I've been working on Ethereum for five or six years. And this is the first thing that's made me excited about Bitcoin. I'm coming back to Bitcoin. So we're seeing like all the signals that this is like going to be a

thing. And then it's like, none of the Bitcoin VCs are investing in any of this stuff because they're all afraid of getting canceled if they invest into it. So it's like, okay, well, you know, we, we like see the audience is growing rapidly. We see that it's like actually cannibalizing part of crypto. And that's a huge opportunity for the Bitcoin space. We see it's bringing developers like back to Bitcoin. It fits within our thesis of like, let's make all the, like the interesting things happen on Bitcoin. Like we should invest in this stuff. No one else is investing into it. And so we can have the best terms, et cetera.

Now, all this stuff is happening totally separate from Bitcoin Magazine. Bitcoin Magazine has no insight into what UTXO is doing. These are completely separate teams, completely separate businesses. So we're like, okay okay let's invest into it and i think we decided at the bitcoin 2023 that we should launch a venture fund to invest in this yeah and uh uh now like granted we already had wizards on stage that we were getting fucking canceled for yeah like you know we did not know they were going to be wizards when that was fucking yeah you guys fucking blew that that was fucking dumb the wizards singing the dancing that was fucking that was uh you know

talk about red talk about fucking dangling red meat that was uh yeah so like we're already like going down this this path and then like that's the conference where we're like dude we gotta we gotta start investing and And so we built a $30 million venture fund that is invested in a bunch of stuff. Ordinals is like a big component. I'd say like ordinal companies have made up like one sixth of the portfolio, maybe as much as one third if you include all the like BRC20 stuff as well, but not the majority of of the portfolio just like a solid segment of it so i can talk more about utxo etc but um like we are hyper sensitive to try to keep utxo separate from from bitcoin it is i realize it's separate i think people look at it and they see you on both

sides of the wall and they're like you know this is a porous wish.com wall, if a wall at all. And they get upset. Now, I got a question for you both because it's like, I've heard you guys talk a lot about this mission of hyper-Bitcoinization. I, you know, I'm on the same mission. We're all, like I said,

marching on the same banner, I think in a lot of ways. And I'm curious, like, do you guys ever consider, and Mark, I'd be, I'm surprised. I'd be surprised if you answer in the negative to this, whether or not Bitcoin ordinals is really a pro on the path to Bitcoin being global money, or is it a con on the

path to Bitcoin being global money? I personally, although I understand, for example, why, I think this is what I said about the conference at the time, why the conference, for example, would use ordinals as a funding mechanism. Is it the perfect funding mechanism? No, but it is a Bitcoin related adjacent at the very least funding mechanism. And you could do a lot worse. And many conferences do do a lot worse in terms of funding security and acquiring sponsors. But then I think, is it good for Bitcoin as far as becoming global money?

I don't know. I'd be curious. Do you guys view hyper-Bitcoinization as including stuff like Taproot Wizards memes or whatever on-chain? Is that part of the hyper-Bitcoinization for you guys? Or is that something different? What is it?

What is it? It's Bitcoin, baby's it's it's bitcoin come on yeah i mean it like yeah i think some of it is very dumb like of course so much of internet culture is dumb so much of bitcoin culture is horrendous um but it's a beautiful ugly thing with warts and all that shit. But specifically, Ordinals, I mean, it just is Bitcoin. I mean, if Ordinals doesn't exist, can't exist, is filtered out, if there is some sort of consensus mechanism that comes together that prevents somehow arbitrary data being embedded in Bitcoin, like Bitcoin is dead.

I mean, it just makes no sense. I mean, it's impossible. There's filter boys are the biggest waste of time ever. It's just not how information theory works. It's not really the economics work. And I'm not saying I'm smarter than Luke Deshir or anything like that. Obviously, I'm not. I don't even think I'm smarter than Giacomo or grass fed Bitcoin or whoever these guys pushing this fucking state of shit. But they, you know, they have an opinion. They calling this an exploit, a vulnerability. And it's just it's ridiculous.

It's obviously not. These are valid Bitcoin transactions. If someone can't put whatever they want in a Bitcoin transaction, then Bitcoin has failed. So like if Ordinals fails, Bitcoin as money has as a global money has failed because it's just a it's a symptom of a permissionless database that upholds money. It's a symptom. It's not going to cause global money. It's not going to prevent it. It's just a symptom of permissionlessness. And I think that that's something that should be championed. That was always my position. Like, you know, I wrote about this in 2022 and I was like, I don't actually ever see a market for this coming. And I was completely wrong, but I was like, I don't really see a market coming for

this. But I think it's cool that people are looking at Bitcoin in another way and that should be cherished. And I'm excited to see what people do with it. I really saw Ordinals as just being part of a dev revolution that was happening and Ordinals was only a part of it. It just was the thing that blew up. I like to talk about Ordinals as being like, it was like if my friend's local band blew up, where it's like, I really like the guys in the band. I'd wear the t-shirts and I'd love to go and support them because I love them.

I love Casey. He's a really good person. He was a friend of mine when vaccine bullshit was popping off. I lost my whole friend group, everybody in the Bay Area. I lost everybody. Him and that group, that meetup group, XFrog, a bunch of those were my people and my new family. Then Bitcoin Magazine, obviously, you know, brought me in, but like, yeah, it was like, it was always just kind of a part of this bigger dev thing that I really, you know, like I went to BTC,

BTC plus plus that first year, which is happening this weekend, um, that nifty throws on. Um, and you know, or knows was a part of it, but there was like splicing and, you know, there was talks of e-cash stuff. And, um, you know, there was just this huge feeling of, you know, in the, in the drudges of the bear market, that there was like a resurgence of, of, of energy coming back to Bitcoin and you could feel it then. Uh, and, and Ordinals ended up being like the lightning rod for it. Um, but it's just a symptom of, of people using Bitcoin. It's a symptom of people

coming back to bitcoin and having fun like bitcoin is all these analogies and all these things but it's like it's like a fucking crowbar like use it to like get to the means of an end to what you want use it to wiggle into some gross shit do some fucking hood rat shit put some data cables on there do some illegal shit do some fundraising buy drugs you know do do fun stuff like that's what that's the crew that's the bitcoin i know i literally was taught bitcoin the first guy that taught me bitcoin was the guy that set up silk road um at the second one right after uh ross got arrested uh like moments after he set up the second one he was just a regular at my bar in the bay area and he was the one that taught me about it um i thought it was anonymous

internet money i had no idea what it was um because that taught me about it. I thought it was anonymous internet money. I had no idea what it was because that's what I was taught. That's Bitcoin to me. Is that the guy who was a Tesla engineer or something like that or a SpaceX guy? Yeah, or like SpaceX. Yeah, this guy Blake. FBI narrowing down their search by the minute here.

Who is it again? No, no, he was arrested. I wouldn't say any of that if he wasn't arrested. But he only got like five years or three years where ross got like two sentences it's like super slap on the wrist um yeah for sure but really nice guy and yeah but one day he came in he was like yeah i bought a tesla back when that was cool in like 2014 or something uh with like a whole bunch of bitcoin uh and he and he drove me around the block and taught me about you know using bitcoin um And then I didn't really pay attention to it until the start of 2017. And I was like, wait, it can go up? Wait,

what the fuck? I just wasted 50 Bitcoin on what? But anyway, that to me was always Bitcoin. And so to me, it's really a symptom of Bitcoin. I think node count is up, fees are up. That's all symptoms of people using Bitcoin. People get all upset about UTXO set and all this shit. It's really a symptom of Bitcoin. I think node count is up. Fees are up. That's all symptoms of people using Bitcoin. People get all upset about UTXO set and all this shit. It's like, bro, that's people using Bitcoin. I don't know what really to tell you other than yes, I hope Bitcoin remains so permissionless that even things I think is deplorable and stupid can happen on Bitcoin. Because if they can't then then we've lost you know i hope that answers the question that that's that's my thoughts on it uh mark

mark kovich says i know dudes who fuck dudes who are less gay than these guys so uh we're really we're really trashing it right now i told you that this this show you know the canadians not as nice as everyone thinks i'll tell you that things are not show, you know, the Canadians, not as nice as everyone thinks. I'll tell you that things are not that good up here. People are out there with sand. Okay. So let, let me ask you this about that question real quick. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah. Hyperbitcoinization. Absolutely. It's part of hyperbitcoinization. Okay. Like I have no idea if people are going to value any JPEG that's put on Bitcoin in the

future. I have no fucking clue. It could totally go to zero. You know should go to zero. But from my perspective, first off, no one knows shit about how Bitcoin works, how it will work, what's going to be successful, what's going to happen in the future. I've been around Bitcoin long enough to know that everyone who tells you they know exactly what's going to happen in the future has no fucking clue what they're talking about. So, you know, I don't presume to say, hey, this thing is valid and that thing's not valid. And I know how you should use Bitcoin and you shouldn't use it in that way. Like that's that's fucking bullshit. And, you know, ordinals,

ordinals, as I think Mark pointed this out, they're just a symptom of something much bigger that was always underneath the surface, which is Bitcoin cannibalizing crypto. This was always going to happen. And so Ordinals just happens to be the details that came together. But it represents something much bigger. And we're going to eat step by step everything that people want to do on crypto. It's coming to Bitcoin. And it doesn't matter if we want it to come to Bitcoin. It doesn't matter what Bitcoin Magazine's opinion of this shit is. This shit is already happening and it's going to happen regardless of what Bitcoin Magazine's perspective of it is, regardless of whether Bitcoin Max is like it or not.

This is a permissionless system. So DeFi is fucking coming to Bitcoin. Stable coins are fucking coming to Bitcoin. Asset issuance is coming to Bitcoin. DeFi is fucking coming to Bitcoin. Stable coins are fucking coming to Bitcoin. Asset issuance is coming to Bitcoin. It's all fucking coming to Bitcoin. And like, you know, this was the inevitability to send other blockchains to zero. Like this is how it happens. So yes, like this is a necessary step towards the path of hyper Bitcoinization.

And we are sucking in, I mean, Ordinals alone has over a million users. Actually, you just read that comment from the chat, and you just keep saying sucking in. Is there another way to phrase it? You got to just keep saying sucking? Yes. Bitcoin is a black hole. Bitcoin is a black hole that is sucking people into. So there's over a million people that have interacted with with ordinals

the vast majority of those users are coming from crypto the vast majority are coming is that actually the case i've heard like i've heard this a bunch but i'm not i'm not sure if it is or not how do you how do you where do you guys get that you're just looking at like uh is that like anecdotal or you you have some data for that because i really i've heard it we've talked about it but i don't know if that's actually the case. What part of that? That they're coming from crypto or that? Yeah, like the majority of those users are coming from somewhere else, some other chain.

Yeah, so I would say it's mostly anecdotal. You know, where you would see that coming from is like where the users are coming from. Like they're coming from China. They're coming from Binance web wallet. They're coming from Binance web wallet. They're coming from AX web wallet. They're coming from like shit coin peer to peer wallets or whatever that are like adding integrations for this stuff to their platforms.

So, you know, I can't give you a percentage that are coming from it, but like we're inundated with people that are like, I don't know how to send a Bitcoin transaction. I've never done a Bitcoin transaction. What the fuck is a UTXO? Like, like we see the signs of it. I mean, there was actually a great video that I saw on Twitter the other day where like some tick talkers doing a video about how, like, if you want to get into the latest, like ordinals meant you have to like increase your gas fees that you pay. And she's using like all eighth terminology. She's like, go to men pull that space and check your gas fees.

And I'm like, sure that like a whiz from minpool is like watching this video, just dying. But like, so like it's, it is bringing new, new users to this stuff. And then on the investment side, we're talking nonstop to teams that are abandoning other crypto blockchains that are like, no one's using these fucking ghost chains. We want to build on Bitcoin. It's the best blockchain. It has permanence. It's the best money. It has the biggest network effect. And so like there are thousands and thousands of engineers that are in the process of coming to Bitcoin that are abandoning crypto. So yes, this is all part of hyper Bitcoinization. And one last point that I think is a critical point, which is if we want to scale Bitcoin to 10 billion people, which not everyone

wants that vision. That's a vision that excites me. That's what hyper Bitcoinization is about for me. Then like Bitcoin can't do that today. And so in order to get Bitcoin from where it is now to that point, we need to unleash the forces of capitalism. Like we need fees to go up on Bitcoin to incentivize people to actually build real technology that's scalable. The fact that Lightning has shit the bed as fees have gone up is the most embarrassing fucking thing

I can possibly imagine. That's part of the reason people are so pissed at us because we've pulled back the curve that all the fucking narratives we've been selling people are bullshit. We've just been selling bullshit. No, let's be unbanked on fucking bitcoin and take your utxos out and fuck it's like we just fucked all these people so they were they were too busy building taproot assets and not busy uh you know dealing with high fee environments it's like what are we doing here guys likewise i'm being told by people oh each going to zero fucking tron's going to zero as

tether usage on those platforms goes through the fucking roof and tens of millions of people are using those things. So it's like, you know, from my perspective, it's like I'm not smart enough to know how this is all going to shake out. All I know is that capitalism and free markets is at the foundation of what makes Bitcoin works. It's the foundation of it. And so like if we want Bitcoin to solve its problems, we have to unleash that capitalist force and like let's get the fucking fees up. More people have cared more about efficiency of Bitcoin and layer twos when Bitcoin fees are at 50 bucks

than ever before. Yeah, that's for sure. It's true. Yeah, go ahead, Mark. Well, I was just going to say this is something that Rizzo has sort of, you know, he's this very funny communicator. He's the man. I really love him. But he's kind of floating this idea out in do we solve this, like centralization of mining, you know, this, these pool issues, like, how do we solve this? How do we solve like, everybody, you know, getting getting scared from from, you know, regulators and all this and kind of getting put like, how do we solve it? It's like, well, we start doing fucking degenerate shit. And David pointed out that a lot of this activity is coming out of China, like a ton of it. And we need that energy and we need that. We need that sort of, you know, I'm kind of a world empire context guy. I'm not really this big multipolarity guy, but we need that economy. The peer-to-peer people doing degen shit and spending money and adopting a peer-to-peer technology and publishing shit directly on chain and figuring out how this tech works and getting around firewalls.

We need that. That's going to help us and make Bitcoin a lot stronger. Dude, when I hear someone say, hey, that's an unregistered security, my first reaction is good. Like, why the fuck are we registering securities? Fucking make it 10,000 unregistered securities. I just wish they weren't frauds. Like if we could solve the fraud thing, but not be registered as a security,

that's the ideal world. Yeah. Bitcoin has become such, we're such bootlickers. State is bootlickers right now. Like we, like stable coins are totally fine, but we can't do like permit we can't put like

rare pepes on chain or whatever that's like bad or like that's a security or this is a good question what are we doing well you know like any good dinner party we need a couple of moments attention and i'm gonna give the one for you guys to deal with now you know dave you're on you're on twitter like blasting out damn near all caps a bunch of stuff about ETF flows and how good the ETF is. Mark is at home. He's sweating cold sweats with his Whitney Webb beanie baby. And he's worried about the ETF. And he's freaking out about all this stuff going on.

Do you guys ever talk about what is really good for Bitcoin? Stuff like the ETFs, stuff like stable coins like we discussed already. You guys are completely diametrically opposed there, right? It seems to me. I don't think we're opposed because I've never said that the ETF is good for Bitcoin. You talk about it a lot like it's good for Bitcoin. It doesn't sound like you think it's bad. No, it's inevitable.

That's a different thing than good. Okay. ETF is an inevitable step towards hyper-Bitcoinization. The ETF is going to pump the price of Bitcoin. And as we pump the price of Bitcoin, more people get sucked into the black hole of Bitcoin. But the ETF is going to end in tears. And it might be two years. It might be four years. It might be six years. All the Bitcoin that's going into the ETF is going to be rugged by the federal government. If you're holding ETF IOUs guaranteed to get fucked eventually guaranteed. But like them rugging everyone on the ETF, that's also part of the inevitable process of hyper Bitcoinization. Of course, they're going to rug everybody on the ETF. You think the federal government is just going to let

everyone get rich on Bitcoin and abandon the dollar, and there's just going to be Gucci with that? No. I actually had a call with BlackRock where they were asking us, do you think Bitcoin is ever going to accept us in the community? It's like I straight up told him, let's be real. You are going to rug everyone's Bitcoin. That's going to happen. And like, it's not about like whether I want that to happen or not, that's going to happen. And so we might as well just get

it fucking off. Like, let's just get it done. So, you know, I don't think it's a good thing. I just think it's a, it's a natural progression of the inevitability of Bitcoin. Yeah. And I think that sums it up really well. Like, I think there's, you know, like our good buddy CK says, you know, that everything is good for Bitcoin. That's like his, his mantra. And I think, I just, I don't think I agree with that. But I get why people say that on a long enough timeframe. And I think, I think that's what DB is kind of getting at. And like, no, I think that ETFs are, you know, I wish I like this is a great example of where what we cover differs from what I believe in and what I think is right. Because I would when I see BlackRock on our fucking Twitter feed, I want to fucking throw up like fuck these fucking guys. Fuck these crooks. It's not about me. Bitcoin is not about me. Bitcoin magazine is not about me.

And people care about this stuff like people really like people get really excited about etf inflows and shit like who knew it it slaps on socials the numbers are are there people love this shit dude mark so this is this is a great example of like uh mid curving it okay because the ETF is, is, it is a hijacked airplane that we are flying into wall street. Okay. The, it is loaded up with thermite and we are going to implode wall street because of this ETF vehicle. And so if you want to bring down BlackRock, the way we bring down BlackRock is we put the most volatile asset, the black hole of assets. You fucking put it in a package. You put it into the heart of Wall Street.

And within 10 years, it is going to implode the financial system. So we can hate the ETF, but you also have to like think through all of the inevitable conclusions of the ETF. And dude, I think the ETF was the most reckless decision that the federal government has ever allowed to move forward. Like, I think that we are going to create one of the biggest bubbles in American history, and then we're going to implode the bubble and we're going to bring down Wall Street with us.

And so, you know, this is the process from my perspective where like Bitcoin takes over monetary policy, Bitcoin takes over fiscal policy. Bitcoin is no longer, is no longer the tail of the dog. It is the dog. And so in order for that to happen, what happens in Bitcoin has to reverberate throughout the real world and the capital markets is where we're, we're our beach at. Yeah. I agree with a lot of that actually, for sure. I just like,

I hate, I who's what, what, what, what does, what does that really mean? Like, like they're going to rug. It's like,

well, who's going to rug Larry? Think is going to walk out, walk away with 500,000 Bitcoin. Like, fuck that. That's not good. You know,

like I look at the U S right now, we have like a million, you know, there's like a million Bitcoin between the DOJ and like the ETFs and, you know, you know, these seizures and whatever. And it's like, I disagree that this like there's like Snowden tweeted out something about how like Gary Gensler with tears in his eyes, you know, had to approve the ETFs. It's like, no, fuck that. Like the US government knows what they're doing. And I think that they're embracing Bitcoin because they need to. I mean, I think that they have to. I just I'm worried about that power being centralized. And then I worry about, you know, where does the rug go to who gets that Bitcoin? You know, like I worry about uh you know where does the rug go to who gets that bitcoin you know like i worry about that stuff but i totally hear you david like i get it i get it i get it i don't think i'm mid curve maybe a little more paranoid about about something the people who are on audio only the people who are on audio only can't see as soon as mark says something that dave either agrees

or disagree with he hops off mute so fast he's immediately about to fucking jump in okay dave go ahead now. Your turn. Can I just respond to some of these comments? So first off, Muslim Bitcoiner, I will cut back on the F-bombs. I'm sorry. Bitcoin is halal. Riba money is haram.

So keep spreading that message. Thank you, Muslim Bitcoiner. For the person saying, you're saying you're going to implode millions of world citizens, WTF. I'm saying that the financial system was always going to implode. Like this was an inevitable consequence of the monetary policy that we've been running for 50 plus years. And Bitcoin is the pin that burst the bubble. And so yes, like people are going, their financial well worth all is going to be implode. It already has imploded.

They just haven't seen the consequences of the decisions that have already been made. So yes, the inevitability of hyper-Bitcoinization is that we bring down the fiat banking system. So yes. And then Jamie, you said, why do we hate Blockstream, Liquid, and Atomback so much, LOL?

Don't hate Atomback. Love Atomback. Don't hate Blockstream. Wait, wait, much lol don't hate adam back love adam back don't hate blockstream wait wait who said that jamie garcia hi my garcia who's written for your magazine oh yeah no he's getting on my ass because i'm calling out like very obvious normal things about tether and and uh you know some status cuckery but i mean I have nothing against Adam Back or Samson at all. My issues are with Tether. And Liquid's a great federated sidechain, sure. They used for a long time, they marketed that it's on Bitcoin, NFTs on Bitcoin, all this stuff on Bitcoin. Now, Ordinals are doing it and they're all shitcoiners. It's like, there's a what Bitcoin did with Adam Back and Samson called NFTs and tokens on Bitcoin. It's much less on Bitcoin than ordinals.

The fact that there's no support there, Adam generally was a little bit there, but, but yeah, anyway, I don't want to make another thing. Liquid's moment. I wish liquid was like seizing the moment,

but you know, shout out to Jamie because actually Jamie gave me a really hard time one time. Cause I was saying wrapped Bitcoin is good. The WBTC is as good for Bitcoin as, Because actually, Jamie gave me a really hard time one time because I was saying wrapped Bitcoin is good. WBTC is as good for Bitcoin as liquid is for Bitcoin. They're the same thing. They're the same product.

And I think Jamie got upset with me for saying that. And I said, research it. Tell us what the difference is. And we'll publish it at Bitcoin Magazine. And he did. And we published it. It was a great article. So, Jamie, shout out.

I appreciate that. Thank you for doing that. And the end result was that they're pretty much exactly the same, right? Yeah. Jamie's great. Amazing reporting for a bunch of stuff going on in El Salvador. I think he's a great guy. Yeah, we've had him on a bunch of times.

He's a good Canadian Bitcoiner. So we got about nine, 10 minutes here. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Total respect for Adam Back. total respect for Blockstream. There are fantastic people that work at Blockstream. What, what annoys me is when I see hypocrisy from people, when I see people who should be standing up for something, but instead they're taking the easy way out and throwing a stone or casting,

casting, you know, throwing shade on something when, you know, just a couple years ago, Adam was investing into Samson's ICO on Bitcoin on liquid. So it's like, you know, like, let's be consistent with what we say. And like, especially the people in the industry that have a lot of respect, the onus is on you to make to make the hard statements that the crowd is not going to like. That's how you inform the audience. The way that we end up with a bunch of Bitcoiners that have no clue about how Bitcoin works is by just regurgitating to them the things that they think they want to hear and never challenging any of their beliefs. If I wanted to, I could create a NIM Twitter account. I know exactly what the Twitter mob wants to hear. I can regurgitate all the talking points perfectly. And within six months time, I can have one of the biggest NIMs on Twitter. Maybe I should do that and then just reveal it at the end. Like, ha ha. You're not a plenitor, David? I really thought you were a plenitor.

That's crazy. So anyway, I have total respect for Adam, but Adam's in a very important role in Bitcoin, and he owes it to the community to just be intellectually consistent and a great educator. He does a good job of educating. So kudos to Adam, but he needs to be consistent also. Yeah, totally. And I just want to be very clear. I think I talk a lot about mechanisms and i wrote my book specifically basically to not call out anybody like i don't

think even think paulo's name is in my book that's not what i'm about i'm not i'm not trying to shit on no paulo's the tether ceo yeah yeah now the tether ceo yeah exactly like it's it's about the mechanisms and and and there are companies, but it's really about the mechanisms and the systems that are being built. And so like I talk, I talk shit about some companies and some mechanisms and stuff, but it's never about the people. generally want what's good for Bitcoin in this selfish way, in a way that is sort of how the game theory and the economics of Bitcoin kind of get people to selfishly work together towards a common goal, which is like good. So yeah, I talk some crap on some companies here or there, but it's like never about the people. So when I hear a comment like that, like why does Mark... I've talked to Adam before. He was incredibly incredibly nice we talked in amsterdam he talked to me about selling property and putting the money on

bitfinex and getting 20 yields and and it was a great conversation and he was super nice he's obviously one of the smartest people around he knows way more about this stuff than i ever will definitely a degen he's definitely a degen he's one of the biggest fiat degens around man and he built so many of these systems and and like hats off like i mean i mean he's he's the man in so many ways of course and samson has done so much shit like i mean he has this the nft gaming company and like a lot of these things and liquid january 3rd like he's built out a lot of cool stuff i have nothing against him i've met him once in person super nice. But I'm going to call out hypocrisy if people are going to literally be like shilling liquid in high fee environments and then saying that we're a for profit company and fuck us and we're

fucking with Bitcoin and we're not we're not pure Bitcoiners and we're shit coining. It's like, well, liquid is for profit. I mean, where do the fees go? I mean, like this, they're building mechanisms. They're a business and that's fine. And so if you want to do the fees go? They're building mechanisms. They're a business. That's fine. If you want to do the whole follow the money thing, just do it everywhere. Just be intellectually honest. These guys have been doing this stuff. I have so many people that have come on a block stream that are

the best. I mentioned Nifty earlier. Nifty is the best. There's a lot of former block stream people that are great. Just wanted to say that. If I ever talk crap about companies, it's about the mechanisms and not about like the individuals there. And that's a huge because I'm a really nice, loving, kind, optimistic guy. And I love people. And that's why I'm in Bitcoin. It's a means to an end for a better world for everybody for better people. Like I don't, I don't have allegiance to the code it's it's to like a better world

coming from it right and so people are what i care about so when i see mechanisms and hypocrisy that i don't agree with i want to call it out but it's never about like i'm sure that these people i have 99 in total agreeance with you know and i would say that the same for all the people that have blocked me and all that shit it's like like, I guarantee if we met in real life, it would be pretty chummy, you know, pretty chummy. So it's,

it's always like that. I mean, okay. So why don't we close with this? You guys have been critical of the maxi crowd, you know, tonight and other times as well. I've,

I've echoed that criticism a lot. I think, you know, many times on the show, I've talked about how I think maximalism, you know, when it first sort of took off as the meta in Bitcoin, was meant to give us all the same color jersey to wear. And I think in a lot of ways, it's actually become this divisive thing that's, you know, it's caused a fork, excuse the pun, in the Bitcoiner group. And in my opinion, maximalism means that you support Bitcoin and things on Bitcoin so long as they're within the

consensus mechanisms and they're not ruining the potential Bitcoin future for everybody. I don't know where Ordinal's falls in that yet. I still haven't decided where I really sit with that. But I'm curious about what you guys think maximalism should be. How do you view maximalism? And where do you think that the most popular maxis, I'll name some names, guys I really like and respect, guys like Matt O'Dell, for example. The popular maxis have,

and O'Dell's actually an interesting name because I think he was doing some consulting or worked with you guys for a long timeell, for example. The popular Maxis have... And O'Dell is actually an interesting name because I think he was doing some consulting or worked with you guys for a long time and now doesn't. And there's something to that, I'm sure. We don't have to get into it. But where do you think the maximalism crowd is missing the mark on social media, in terms of narrative, in terms of moving the mission? And where do you guys see the maxi crowd going over the next five, 10 years? These are important. These are important five to 10 years, both internally and as we move sort of more broadly around into other spaces, right? These are important, important years coming up. How should we be carrying ourselves?

Yeah, I'm happy to go. Yeah. All right. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I totally again, those fast, fast fingers there on the mute. I echo the importance. I actually think that this year, and I said it before the start of the year, that this is going to be one of the most important years in Bitcoin, just because it feels like everything is kind of happening. Economic policy, relative issuance is like below gold, below dollar. ETF launches were inevitable. Regulatory moat was built. Here we go. I was calling for wartime kind of going in into New Year's Eve. I was like, strap up, boys. Let's go. So I definitely echo the importance. And obviously, it will just get more important as the years go. But this is such a crucial one.

And that's why I think I've decided to make some of the social stands that I have. It's like not because I like being the fucking heel on Twitter or whatever, or like people calling me gay and chat or whatever the fuck. It's like I don't like think that, um, you know, a big thing that kind think you know i kind of found this new outlet of like hey here's a huge big family of people that accept me and are like fuck yeah like fuck the state fuck all the you know these criminals um and so there was like a really amazing community moment um that i like felt really comfortable with and like you know i work bitcoin 2019 as like a bartender like in in the bay area uh and then bitcoin 21 was like you know the first non you know lockdown event and you know so there was like this movement of like oh freedom loving people permissionless like you know we can you know what's now we can see that the world is totally

in lockstep with each other they're all going to shut everything down uh and bitcoin really is this like kind of the last bastion of like free public square where like we can do whatever we want um and you know it can be our kind of escape valve from this panopticon hellhole uh and so to me a lot of the stances that I take, I think are just very in line with that. It's like maxi culture to me should be about not like, like it should be about Bitcoin succeeding, not shit coins failing. I don't really give a shit about shit coins. I don't think about them very much. I used to, like, I used to think read white papers, proof of stake shit. Like, you know, I would think, you know, read a fucking, I don't even want to say the names, but read things and think, oh, that's kind of an interesting idea, this or whatever. But I just don't care about them. I don't think about them. And I think so much energy is put very specifically at, they'd rather ETH fail than Bitcoin win. They'd rather the US treasury system be perpetuated via stable coins, and that's totally fine, then Bitcoin win,

they'd rather us stay attached to the fiat system and government money system and give them opportunities for these private companies to buy $110 billion of treasuries than for Bitcoin to actually separate fully and come out from underneath the treasury Ponzi. That's what perpetuates the system that we all hate. That's why Assange treasury Ponzi. That's what perpetuates the system that we all hate. That's why Assange is in jail. That's why COVID happened. That's why all these horrible things that we all hate. It's because of these things. Why is Ethereum the enemy and not the treasury system? I think Ethereum is a banker chain and I'm not a fan of it at all. It is built for stable coins and all that, but this idea that that's the enemy and not the U.S. treasury system, I think, is very warped.

And the idea that the your D-Gen guy in a wizard outfit who wants to shove a bunch of, you know, 3D printer gun files in onto Bitcoin is my enemy and not, you know, a guy, again, selling, you know, Cantor Fitzgerald holding 80 billion dollars of treasuries is not my enemy and not a guy, again, selling Cantor Fitzgerald holding $80 billion of treasuries is not my enemy, but this fucking D-Gen and a Pepe hat is. That to me is very warped and very wrong. And I think we do need to reprioritize. The only duty we have as Bitcoiners is to leave it as permissionless as it was when we found it. That's why I think it's so important where we are now, because it's actually losing that ability because of users, because of interest, and because of regulation. And so we need to figure out a way to make Bitcoin accessible as it was, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, you know, you guys have maybe been in longer than me, but, you know, as we found it, and I think we need to champion the people that are

building fun stuff. Don't crucify people just because they looked at a white paper that was a proof of stake thing eight years ago. And get everybody back on the mission that this is anti-state money. This is a circumnavigation of the state and of their like incredible power to debt pardon. And we can build fun stuff on Bitcoin and use Bitcoin as as a tool, you know, for freedom in every way, for publishing, for freedom money, for all that stuff. Let's scale Bitcoin, whether that's amazing layer to shit, whether that's covenants, whether that's op CTV, whatever it is, I don't think I'm the person to push a specific thing in my role. I don't think that that's appropriate, but like, let's learn about e-cash let's, let's learn about, you know, some fun,

you know, other chain, you know, L2 solutions other than just lightning and let's stitch all these things together and build something, um, that hopefully can take power away from the state. Cause that's what we're here for. So I think Maxis really should just kind of get their shit together, rub their eyes, you know, kind of wake up a little bit like I know you're rich now. We need you. Come back. It's time to fight like hell because they're arresting our brothers and they're making it very hard for us. And we need to fight now. So please come back. Yeah, I think that was well said, Mark. I think that this ordinal stuff, this ordinal drama is going to fade into the background.

Like what's happening now, this is going to get so much bigger. Like people don't understand this is the beginning stages. You know, maybe we've cannibalized half a million users from crypto, a million users. By the time this is said and done, we'll have cannibalized 20 million users. Every crypto VC fund that you can think of, they're all going to pivot to Bitcoin. Every dev shop, the tens of thousands of developers that exist going to become so overwhelming for people that it's going to change really what the fault lines are of the battle. I think the brewing conflict is pro-state versus anti-state. And I already see it happening right now.

I think that that's the most sensitive topic to drill into. A lot of people's quote heroes of Bitcoin would give very uncomfortable answers with how they view that topic. And I think that that is what's coming to a head. Because as the number go up, as all these new users come into Bitcoin, as they're using Bitcoin in permissionless ways that violate different money transmitter laws or AML-KYC laws or securities laws or whatever. This friction with the state is going to dramatically amplify. And so people are going to have to pick a side. Are they going to resist or are they going to comply? And so that's the battle that's coming. And I think all this ordinal stuff is going to just be noise when we look back two years, three years from now. Like, you know, I'm personally of the

view Bitcoin in this cycle is going to many hundreds of thousands of dollars per Bitcoin. You know, $300,000 per Bitcoin, that's like 10, 15% of US GDP. You know, I mean, that like, we're talking about like things that are actually changing the world. And you know, someone putting a frog on a fucking block on sorry, no F-bombs, a frog on Bitcoin, it's just not relevant. It's not relevant. And so, yeah, I think that that's the fault lines. I think the maxi culture that exists right now is like, it reminds me of woke culture. It reminds me of like the Me Too movement. And it's going to, it's going to peter itself out in the same way that the woke movement has petered itself out. You know, everyone publicly, you know, everyone's afraid of being

canceled by the woke crowd. So they say the things even when they don't believe the things, even when in private, they live their life differently than what they say in public, which is a lot of the maxis that you see on Twitter. They talk to me privately. They're completely different people than what they are in their public personas. You know, it's it's it's this trauma that people have experienced due to like getting rugged on a shit coin in the past. And that trauma has now it's like getting sexually assaulted or something. And then now like, now it colors every interaction that you have with a male where it's like this person's trying to like, that's not a viable way to live in the world. And you know, the tens of millions of people that we're going to be bringing from

crypto back to Bitcoin as Bitcoin inevitably eats these other cryptos, like they're going to have a different perspective of the world. So what's the message that we're going to, that's going to unite the community? And, you know, I personally think it's going to be self-sovereign Bitcoin. I think that's what it has to be. That's the future that I'm building for. And, you know, like there are some debates that are going to come down the pipe where, you know, there isn't a right or wrong answer. It's going to be subjective. Like what is what's the vision of Bitcoin that people care about? And, you know, for some people, Bitcoin as a tool that only 100 million people or 250 million people hold and is just a digital gold that they can hold on to and number go up like that's matches what they're looking for. That's not what I'm looking for.

That's not what many Bitcoiners are looking for. And there's going to be friction with that crowd as we make decisions about the future of Bitcoin, because we have divergent visions of where Bitcoin should go. And yeah, so I think there's big battles coming. Ordinals is just a warm up. But like, I hope people listening to this, this podcast, they know that like Bitcoin magazine, like, we don't care if you get mad at us like we're going to stick to the same the same values and guns that got us here in the first place a decade later like those are the same values we're going to carry carry forward um and you know when the when the state comes to hang you we'll be by side with you to, to fight that shit.

So, um, you know, even if you're mad at us today, it's, it's one team, one dream. So yeah,

that's all I'll say on that topic. Yeah. Amen on that. I, I think you nailed it, dude. Like absolutely. The,

uh, we got in a lot of shit when we did the trucker movement stuff. Literally people were tweeting at us saying QAnon is not a good look for Bitcoin. It's like, first off, I don't know what you're talking about. This has nothing to do with that shit at all. But they were calling us conspiracy, all right, all this shit. And it's like, no, this is just basic freedom stuff. This is very obvious and easy for us to do.

And people were really upset at us now it's like so obvious it's like well of course we of course we stood up for the truckers but it's like no one did at the time like we made a lot of that story blow up we're i'm not we're not taking credit for what happened you guys like you know canadians did it but like yeah we covered it addresses are are flagged from the Canadian government as financing terrorism. It's a big story. It's a big story up here. It's ongoing, obviously, on my side of the border.

I think this is a thing, and maybe I'll close it here. If you guys have a comment, I'm more than happy to hand over the mic too. The thing that I would say to people who doubt the ethics of Bitcoin Magazine, and again, I'm not a mind reader. I know you guys, Mark, you've been on the show before. I talked to you about Twitter. David, we've never spoken except for DMing tonight. And I think for people who doubt the ethic of Bitcoin Magazine, I would look at the history

of the stories that really got the magnifying glass from the publication and from the company. And I think back to that trucker thing at a time when talking about it at dinnertime would get you looks from people who you get Christmas gifts from every year. You guys ran it as a cover story. And at a time when everyone was afraid to say stuff about what's right, what's wrong, and what freedom means, you guys were really doing the right things and shining a light and saying, look, this is what we should be doing. And this is what we should be thinking about when it comes to freedom and COVID and banking and whatnot. And for people who doubt the ethic, I just think you have to look at the

history and say to yourself, were they lying then as well? Was it all just a big lie? Seems like a lot to coordinate and a lot to act out over the course of five or 10 years. It's worth your time to really consider that maybe it's not quite as bad as the Anynon laser eyes crowd on Twitter would have you believe, I think is the thing I would say to a lot of people. You know, dude, the only thing I would add is that we stand by every decision that we make. We may make the wrong decision and we are not afraid of being called out or challenged or for people to come at us and question why we did something. But every decision we make is based on a value system where we're able to articulate why we did it. And maybe it drives us to the wrong conclusion. I'm not saying we don't make fucking mistakes, but everything goes through that lens. And so we're never going to hide anything about what we do. We're never going to be clandestine about what we do. If someone has a problem with something that we're doing, they can come to anyone at our organization. They can come to me and they can say, hey, why are you doing this? And you should reconsider. And like, we're never going to reject someone else's view and not hear them out. Like if they have a well-reasoned, well-rational and maybe our view is different and we're going to say, hey, no, like we disagree.

But like we're okay being held fully accountable for the decisions that we make. You know, that's the nature of making decisions. And, you know, the trucker protest was one of the proudest moments of this organization. There was never a moment of doubt that that was the right thing to do. And we jumped right into it. And that's not the only example of us doing that. We've done a lot of stuff that has been, some would say reckless,

but for us, it felt like the only right decision going Bitcoin only in the first place. So many people told us that was reckless. So many people told us that was reckless. So many people told us that. So what? So anyway, Joey, thank you for having us on.

Thank you for getting canceled for having us on. Really appreciate that. Joe had had a great run. It's time to wrap it up though. So yeah. Did you guys want to give a handoff? Where can people find you? Mark,

talk about where to buy your book. I got to read it still. I bought it. I haven't read it yet. Go ahead where to buy your book. I got to read it still. I haven't bought it. I haven't read it yet. Go ahead. I'll love it. I haven't read it either. You find me at BitcoinMagazine.com.

Obviously, we're pumping there. Check out the print magazine. That's a big baby of mine. I love that product. And then, yeah, the Bitcoin-Dollar..com and you can get our book on bitcoin magazine as well and then yeah i'm on twitter as well but yeah bitcoin magazine check me out thanks so much for having me joey a lot of fun you guys were great uh till next time friends and enemies uh see you later don't forget everybody lots of other stuff on CBP Media Network,

including Two Whites in the Blue. Me, Joey, my brother-in-law, Mike, and our friend Will talk about all the problems millennials are having with finance, romance, and just getting by. If you like CBP, if you like the NHL 94 podcast, I guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it, Two Whites in the Blue, anywhere you get your podcastsL 94 podcast. I guarantee you'll like that one. Search for it. Two whites and a blue anywhere you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you.