The Pomp Podcast - #667 Bitcoin Maximalism In Crypto w/ Udi Wertheimer

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Udi Wertheimer is a bitcoiner. He spends most of his time as an independent developer and consultant.  In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, ethereum, smart contract platforms, maximalism, investing in assets vs believing in them, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of bitcoin today.  ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp =======================

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Udi Wartimer is a Bitcoiner. He spends most of his time as an independent developer and consultant. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contract platforms, maximalism, investing in assets versus believing in them, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of Bitcoin today. I really enjoyed this conversation with Udi, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Circle. Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all

sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce, and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USDCoin, which is the fastest-growing, regulated, fully-reserved dollar stablecoin in the world. Now standing at more than $15 billion market cap and is adding nearly $300 million of net new digital dollars in circulation every single week. The free Circle account and suite of platform API services bridges the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. You can learn more at Circle.com. Again, Circle.com. Go check it out. They've got a massive business with that USD coin.

It continues to grow very, very rapidly. I'm impressed by the way that they're approaching it, and I think that you'll be impressed as well. So go check them out. Next up is LMAX Digital. They're the number one institutional crypto exchange, offering clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet. It's underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. Leveraging the LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology, LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services.

If you've never heard of LMAX Digital, it's because you're probably not an institution. They're the number one crypto exchange for institutions. They don't serve retail. They feature a central limit order book streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, all paired with US dollar, euro, and yen. LMAX Digital. They're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. If you're an institution and you're not using LMAX Digital, you should definitely go talk to them. Learn more at lmaxdigital.com.

slash Pomp. Again, lmaxdigital.com slash Pomp. All right, let's get in this episode with Udi. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. We should clear the air to start with.

You're a Bitcoiner. Tell us your kind of Bitcoin journey, how you discovered Bitcoin, and what kind of got you so interested in the beginning. Yeah, so, you know, I'm not sure, and I hope people don't try to catch me on the dates to get some gotchas, but it's probably like around 2013 or 2014, I kind of first really looked into Bitcoin. and my background was software engineering.

So I was mostly excited about the, you know, the technology that made it work. And like so many other people, I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't stop reading about it for many, many nights in a row. And I, at some point, just, you know, I felt like there was something about it. I couldn't explain it. There was something about it.

I had to get in and I've been learning about it ever since. Like I, it turns out I I'm feeling like today that I had no idea what I was talking about when i was when i was trying to explain people why why i was excited about bitcoin back then like my opinions changed drastically but i still think it's one of the most important human inventions ever so so when you think about how to evaluate where bitcoin is today so 2013 2014 whenever you first started looking at it was much smaller much less people interested etc how do you look at uh from that point to today are we winning yet is uh global adoption here? Or do we still have work to do? Like, just walk me through kind of the current

framework you look at as to where is Bitcoin today? Yeah, so we, you know, while we definitely have a lot of work left to do, and I think Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow, it's very hard if you've been around since 2013. And definitely people who have been around much earlier than that, like, you know, like 2011 2010. It's very hard to look at Bitcoin now and not feel like we already won, you know like the the just this last year the amazing things that happened like you know like el salvador like we actually have an actual government an actual country that's embracing bitcoin fully that that was unimaginable you know like that was that was one of those things that we were dreaming about and everyone was telling us we were crazy so you see that happening you cannot

not feel like we've won already you know that said there's definitely a lot of room to grow i think that i think that bitcoin is the best money there is at the very least uh it should be as big as gold at least and i think it can get much bigger so there's definitely there's definitely a room to grow for sure okay and then when you look at the things that still need to be worked on when you say hey here's like the big bodies of work that bitcoin still has ahead of it what are the the things that immediately pop to mind you know like on the technical side of things it feels like And I'm like a technical guy. So it feels like one of the things I'm concerned about is like privacy, you know, like if on the surface level, the privacy with Bitcoin seems like it's strictly worse than what it is with, like, say, cash. And I think if Bitcoin becomes, you know, a real way that everyone uses to transact, that can become a problem.

We definitely need to fix that. And, you know, things like Lightning could improve that. um that's one thing i think we i think we also maybe have uh we might have to like rethink how how we position bitcoin and how we how we talk to how we evangelize it really um which is you know something i've done a lot of people have done for many years now um something you've done very successfully um i think you know institutions are obviously very interested but there's also the non-institutional crowd and i think a lot of them are asking themselves like well why should i buy bitcoin if i can buy doge and questions like that which are i mean i think we need to do a better job answering those questions and and and uh that's something

i've been focusing a lot lately on because i think bitcoin can be something that you know Every human on earth has a certain amount of their portfolio in Bitcoin. I think this is where Bitcoin should be going, and I think we can get there. But we need to do a better job of explaining why. Let's just dive right in, rip the Band-Aid off. I know you've got a ton of thoughts on maximalism, some good, some bad. When you think about Bitcoin maximalism, how do you evaluate what parts of it are good and what parts of it are maybe not so good or need to be changed or improved? so let's let's start with the good i mean i think that the you know some a lot of people and myself

included have uh this idea that um that that it's it's a good idea to have most of your portfolio in bitcoin um maybe all of it some people are like you know i'm just gonna have i'm only gonna own bitcoin and i think that could be reasonable i'm not trying to to change people's minds about that if that's what someone wants to do i mean good for them um they'll probably do well i don't think they'll regret it in my opinion um however and and and also you know like we need we need to have like a very strong foundation of people who um you know who refuse to do things like change the bitcoin monetary supply right in the end the reason that bitcoin is as stable and predictable as it is is because everyone who's uh part of the bitcoin network knows that there will only ever be

21 million uh coins created and they will never agree to any change to that policy and that's why bitcoin is so stable and predictable unlike all the other cryptocurrencies um so we need that kind of fierce and stable base of supporters and that's great um however there's also like this subculture of of maximalism that that seems to believe that you know you just need to if if anyone else is interested in anything else that's not bitcoin then they're a scammer and they need to be told they're a scammer they're scamming people and maybe they're stupid too and they're just evil and immoral and that that that subculture i believe is pretty small but it's also very loud it gets a lot of attention and lately i've been saying you know i'm talking to a lot of the people

who only got risk interested in bitcoin the last year right um there are so many so many of those and when they hear the word bet coiner it seems like a lot of them kind of identify bet coiners with the small subculture of very toxic people who just call everything a scam and that kind of you know it kind of repels them kind of makes them think that maybe they shouldn't look at bitcoin right now because it's just the thing is you know people people uh who look at making any investment like reptile or any other form of investment uh you need to understand their motivation you need to understand why they want to do this and it seems like the toxic maximalists just don't understand them they don't understand the motivation of this new crowd and because they

don't understand them it's going to be very hard for them to uh evangelize bitcoin to this new crowd um just because they're not understood i think a lot of a lot of uh a lot of people in this small subculture of bitcoin maximalists of toxic bitcoin maximalists they're like saying well I don't need to look into what's going on in NFTs. I don't need to look into what's going on in DeFi. I don't need to look into what's going on in all of those things because they're scams. But because they're not looking at them, they have no idea how to approach this new crowd, this huge, huge new crowd of people who might be interested in Bitcoin. So when you think about it, let's take NFTs or DeFi as an example, right? Because I agree with

you that there's uh an overuse of the word scam right or scam everyone uses that word and somehow it's been um you know kind of morphed into the use in uh in the terms of i don't agree with that or i don't think that's going to work and they yell and scream scam and that's probably a little bit of like the boy who cries wolf you it loses the uh veracity of the word when you just use it for everything even things that aren't necessarily a scam like it's important to call out scams and so let's wait till there's actually scams and then call those out. But when you look at the NFTs or DeFi, to me, is it that people are against those ideas or are they against them being built on other blockchains? And some of these questions I actually don't have answers to, right? Because

you can't label an entire group of people with a broad brush. But NFTs is probably a good example where NFTs built on top of another platform. There's definitely a subset of the Bitcoin community that will yell and scream scam all day long uh but if nfts were built on top of bitcoin would they also think they're scams or is it just that they're not built on bitcoin do you have a sense for how people would look at like nfts built on top of bitcoin or defy on top of bitcoin right so that's uh that's a great question and and it's i think you know i think people there's a very large variety of opinions people are not sure some people will say nfts are for sure scams because it's a type of asset that isn't Bitcoin and any asset that isn't Bitcoin is a scam.

I find that laughable, but that's what some people believe. Other people, yeah, they just say, yeah, NFTs could be interesting, but, you know, Ethereum is a scam. So if Ethereum is a scam, we can't use NFTs on Ethereum. We should use NFTs on Bitcoin. My personal view is, you know, as an engineer, I learned fairly early in my career that the opinions you have on the technical side of things as an engineer don't matter as much for the end consumer. If, you know, if someone, the end consumers don't care about the platform that they use, if they want to buy an NFT for whatever reason, they probably don't care as much about

which platform they're on and what the technical stability of that platform is. They just want to nfts so i would assume especially as nfts uh assuming that this market grows then as it grows i would assume that people will care uh less and less about what platform the nfts actually use and it would probably be a mix because just because people won't care you know i can i can imagine like nft marketplaces that support multiple platforms at once and people will not even know which one they're using for which particular nft i can i can definitely see that so i think that that wouldn't matter as much in the end right now yeah people are like yeah ethereum is a scam so we need to do nfts on bitcoin and that's that's okay and maybe you

know maybe that works better i i really don't know i'm more interested in the asset class itself like you look at nfts is this going to be a big thing are people going to want to own them long term i think that's an interesting question i don't know the answer but i'm interested in it in that, you know, landscape and not so much about what it's built on. I think that's not as interesting. I don't really care. Is it fair to say that, um, if you went back to, you know, the nineties and maybe even into the early two thousands, there was a bunch of debate around, uh, various protocols or, or, uh, where things were going to get built on the internet, internet, intranet, all that type of stuff. But today people just know they go to Google,

they type in something and the answer comes up. They literally couldn't even tell you what the technical stack is. They couldn't tell you what most of the supporting technologies are. And your vision of the future sounds like is more in that realm where it's the end applications are what end up actually being important and what people care about more so than was it built on top of any single blockchain other than it sounds like Bitcoin, which you believe has to be decentralized on the Bitcoin blockchain. But other than that, everything else, it's kind of it almost doesn't matter where it's built you know 10 years from now yeah yeah that's pretty much how i feel about it you know people um used to argue about what will be the language of

server applications will be php or python and which database will people use will be sql or or mongo db there were all those silly debates but in the end when when you know when you download tech talk to your phone you you don't even know and you don't even care no one cares you just want it to work so so i assume that the same will happen with with all of these assets now for bitcoin specifically bitcoins you know bitcoin's main feature is that it's immutable and to reach that level of immutability and stability and survivability like we know about bitcoin that it's going to be around um you know probably for centuries to come if not much more than that so to to reach that level of of stability and security you do need a very specific set of of

technology that is very stable behind it like i don't think you could build bitcoin on top of ethereum or solana or whatever so bitcoin needs that but nfts don't you know it's it's pictures of of apes and dogs like it doesn't matter really it's not that important the reason that people collect them is not for their superior technology or their superior reliability that's not that's not an issue so i don't think people will care yeah i tend to agree with you that uh there's very few use cases where decentralization is essential or important uh money is definitely one of them especially money that is not created or kind of governed by um a a nation state and so it makes a lot of sense why Bitcoin would have that decentralized blockchain. For most of the

other use cases, it's actually not that important, right? Based on the end user. And we've seen this where blockchains have popped up and said, hey, we're faster and cheaper. And we completely removed all decentralization. We just built a centralized system and, you know, come use it. And some developers, not all, but some developers ended up moving to the new system. So obviously, that group didn't care whether it was centralized or decentralized. They just cared about cheap fees and fast throughput. When you think about, let's take Ethereum, you mentioned earlier that some people would say, you know, Ethereum is a scam. Can you articulate why some people think that? And then how do you think about Ethereum? Do you think it is a scam? Do you think that it's

not a scam? Like, just walk me through kind of your evaluation of the folks who say that and then like how you think about it. Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, you know, Ethereum, Ethereum, I've been a very loud critic of Ethereum for many years. I've also, you know, put money into Ethereum fairly, like, very early in Ethereum's lifetime. I think you can do both. And it's funny to me that some people can seem to be able to do that, you know, like, critique something, but also see the positive side of it. But anyways, I definitely don't view Ethereum as a scam.

I think Ethereum will have issues going forward because I think it's going to have a lot of competition. I think Ethereum is kind of trying to both be a very decentralized thing, but also it's not extremely decentralized. So it's kind of between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, a lot of other platforms are just optimizing for user experience. Because again, you know, I think something like NFTs doesn't even matter if it's decentralized or not. So a lot of these platforms are like saying, OK, we're just going to optimize for speed and for low fees and for ease of use and we'll be more flexible. So, you know, when the market shows their interest in new things, we'll be able to adjust for that very quickly. And Ethereum will have, in my opinion, a hard time competing because it's trying to be decentralized while the market, in my opinion, doesn't care a lot about decentralization.

So I think that will be a challenge for Ethereum. That being said, I don't think it's a scam. I think a lot of people have multiple reasons why they call it a scam. One of the popular ones is the pre-mine thing. So what people used to call pre-mine back in, you know, when Ethereum launched in 2015 or whenever it was, people used to use the word pre-mine to describe basically, you know, basically a cap table. That's what it is. Like when you start a company, you're going to have a cap table. The early investors and the founders are going to get, you know, some equity in the company because otherwise, why would they do it?

And that's completely normal when it comes to companies. But for some reason, when it comes to Ethereum, people view it as a scam. And I think that's a problematic view. Like, one, I think, you know, I'm a capitalist. I believe that, you know, founders and early investors should be rewarded for the risk they take. So I don't view the idea of pre-mining as a problem. It can be a problem if you think that Ethereum is going to be the global money. Then you might say, well, you should have two people that have 70% of the supply or whatever.

But I don't view Ethereum as money. view it as a platform for applications and and it's totally reasonable for early founders and early investors to capture some of that value i think that's totally fine so i don't view that as a scam i think it's it's also a very bad argument because the type of people who are coming back coming into you know crypto bitcoin ethereum whatever it is and they're looking at those arguments they're looking at people saying well you should invest in if because it had a pre-mine those people are just thinking well i i invest in amazon and amazon had pre-mine so that's just a bad argument i don't care as an investor i know i'm not the first one into

ethereum i understand that but i see the growth potential so i still want to invest so it's just a bad argument it doesn't talk you know it doesn't talk to lang doesn't speak the language of the people who are considering investing into ethereum so it's a bad argument that might lead people to take the the the you know the the path you don't want them to take i see that a lot by the way with the so-called toxic bitcoin maximalist camp like they they say a lot of things that are technically true but they end up arguing for the opposite uh you know for the opposite position because the arguments they make just don't speak the language of the people who are asking the questions so that's one the pre-mine is one big reason uh another big reason is you know people

say well if you've changed what it is like it promised to be one thing and over time it's changed what it's doing and and that's like you know that's what a lot of successful companies do it's it's totally reasonable you try something it doesn't work or maybe you realize there's no market demand so you're trying something else i don't view that as a problem at all definitely it's not a scam so yeah i wouldn't use the word scam to describe ethereum i'm not particularly bullish on ethereum at all like you know people confuse that very often they say oh what he said it's not a scam so he's trying to show us ethereum i'm really not i just i'm just thinking i'm not particularly bullish on ethereum at all uh i just think that you know people if you're going to call

everything a scam you're just going to have a very hard time to get to do that people to see your side because you know someone shows up and they ask you a question you call them a scammer then they're not going to talk to you again. It's over. How do you, how do you talk to someone if they're just calling you a scammer and an idiot? So I just think we need to stop this behavior. Yeah. Talk to me about the, um, ability for you to be critical of Ethereum, but you said that you also bought ether very early on. So basically you financially held it, but you were also critiquing it and you know, on the internet, that's not allowed, right? obviously you can't uh you can't do both things so talk a little bit about like why why do both

and and why do you buy it even though you're critiquing it or why do you critique something that you're holding so my uh so okay first of all probably most of my critique of ethereum was in points in time that i didn't hold it um but but i did also definitely have uh criticism about it um when i did hold some and for me you know for me kind of my style has been And this is how I learn, you know, I, I, I first I researched those things myself, I look into them, I see things that I like, I see things that I don't like, you know, I recognize where I might see some growth. but then i talk a lot about the things that i don't like because i want you know i kind of want people to change my mind you know and and that seems to you you you kind of get to attract a lot of smart people who will you know correct you where you're wrong and or support what you

think so i find it's for me it's just a you know it's a style thing right it helps me uh learn about those things um and i think i think you know i think it's very reasonable if you want to invest in something you want to know what what the benefits are but also you want to know what the issues are i think it's very reasonable um it's okay to talk about those things probably everything in the crypto space has a lot of drawbacks even bitcoin i hope it don't get canceled for this but even bitcoin has some issues so what do you think are the drawbacks of bitcoin so we talked about the privacy thing um i think that's a big one i think that you know bitcoin very early on even like people like you know like hal finney and probably satoshi talked

you know in the bitcoin talk forums about how it's very likely that you know custody of bitcoin will centralize over time uh they they saw that back in in 2010 and we're i think we're seeing that happening today uh for real where a lot of you know bitcoins are kind of centralizing in in in those bitcoin banks and that might be fine i'm not saying it's necessarily bad uh but it definitely you know it changes the dynamics and it's it's not definitely it's not necessarily what a lot of people expected that would happen and and it changes the kind of the power dynamics so yes bitcoin is very decentralized um but it's not perfect you know i i it's very hard for me to imagine that people uh if if if you know if the future we believe in where everyone will own

bitcoin in the future um is true it's very hard for me to imagine that people will all you know manage their own keys and have you know bitcoin self-custody i i i doubt that would be the case because it's not really built for that in my opinion um we'll see who knows but you know i think a lot of it is not what people expect it to be which could be fine i mean i still i'm still extremely bullish on bitcoin i think it's uh it has a lot of room to grow but you know it's we keep learning how those things are not what we expect all the time when you think of something like ethereum uh the framework that i've always used and recently wrote about was this idea of monetary maximalism so everyone is a monetary maximalist if you live in the united states and

use fiat currency. You get paid in dollars. You save in dollars. You invest in dollar-denominated assets. You pay your taxes in dollars. You're a monetary maximus or a US dollar maximus in that case. And so monetary assets, their kind of natural end state is that you have to have some level of maximalism because it's ultimately what you denominate your wealth in. The assets that you invest in are denominated there. And then it's usually what you get paid in and what you pay taxes in. But everything else ends up being highly competitive from a technology standpoint. So all smart contract platforms and and uh kind of other uh implementations of a blockchain is that a fair way to think about it or do you have some other framework that you separate kind of the monetary

asset away from uh what ends up being more of like technology platforms and technology competition right so you know with with something like uh ethereum you definitely see that a lot that if ethereum is very you know very active in the nft scene and the d5 scenes you're going to see a lot of uh nfts priced in if and people use each to buy them and even though the price of if is very volatile they're fine with that and i actually think you know and then you look at something else you look at solana or you look at you know so many other layer one competitors to each and they they're trying to do the same thing they're trying to have their own currency used as the currency of that of that ecosystem and um i tend to think there's a chance i think for bitcoin to

kind of regain this position of just the currency of the internet you know that was definitely when when i started looking around you know when i started looking at other coins let's say around 2015 or whatever that was um they were all denominated in bitcoin like when you would go to trade the the old coins of 2015 the the pairs the the market pairs were all always uh that old coin versus bitcoin um very rarely would people use usd as their you know as their unit of account for those and definitely not ETH. These days, because of Ethereum's growing popularity, you see a lot of people trading coins or NFTs versus ETH. You definitely see a lot of people trading them versus stable coins, not as much versus Bitcoin. Those markets still exist and

they're still big, but they're not as big. So I think there is an opportunity for Bitcoin to of reclaim this position of being the de facto currency of the internet where people uh you know store their wealth in this currency and their value their investments in bitcoin especially their digital investments and i think the way it could happen is again i i i assume that ethereum will see a lot of competition in the you know smart contract space and they're going to be a lot of activity in those other uh smart contract networks and you'll get to a point where it's going to be very difficult to have a separate currency for every each and every one of the networks you're using and again because i i assume that over time people will not even know

which platform they're using um then they would need some standard unit of account and i think i think bitcoin can beat that um it's kind of an uphill battle though because we used to be bitcoin used to be better positioned for that and it's kind of lost ground over the last three years or so and i think that you know repositioning what bitcoiners maybe believe as you know maybe nfts are not a scam maybe nfts are something that you know that's something that young people care about and that's something that investors hear about so maybe we shouldn't call it a scam instead we should have you know liquid markets where people trade those versus bitcoin i think that's Regardless of which technology they use, I don't care if it's Ethereum or Solana or RSK or Liquid or whatever it is.

It doesn't really matter, but I think it makes a lot of sense to use Bitcoin as the asset that you trade those things with. And I think that could happen. Talk to me about the metaverse. I know you've got a bunch of thoughts around the metaverse and kind of what's going on there. uh positive negative uh uh dream of the future it's actually happening where are you on this yeah it's hilarious right because everyone says metaverse now and no one really knows what it means that's really funny uh you know you have mark zuckerberg saying that facebook is turning into a metaverse company and everyone's like scratching their heads like what does it even mean

um and then you know a lot of crypto people are talking about metaverse too and it's never entirely clear what that means i think it i think there are like two facets to it that might have something like it's a huge buzzword and i don't know if the buzzword will actually catch on but i think that the idea might and like so you know crypto people talk a lot about how you can just build economies around the internet and around maybe games and economies around um uh definitely like nft collections and whatever and that those things will start to look almost like digital countries and digital governments that you know that that build their own currencies and they build their own incentive system to get people to do this shared activity together in in a way that

isn't as top down and are you know there are a few like play to earn games that try to experiment with that it's very early i think it's interesting um you know again this is one of those things that bitcoiners will say but we don't that means they create their own currency they're printing it out of thin air and it's like fiat and i'm like yeah it is that's what it is it's fiat but fiat can have uses like i think bitcoin is is better than fiat but fiat has uses you sometimes do want to incentivize those things and as long as it's opt-in you know you don't have to be part of that new economy but if you want to and if you want to experiment with that it's it's opt-in you can get in and get out whenever you want i think it's an interesting experiment to have so that's like

one thing like the the the the economical side of it which i think is very interesting trying to build those bottom-up systems of of economies uh the other one is like very you know visual 3d gaming stuff oriented like people just say oh you you have those virtual environments and that's how people are gonna work and that's how people are gonna hang out and that's that's gonna replace the internet it's hard for me you know i may be too old for this but that's what people that's what some people are excited about like you know like teenagers who are playing fortnite spending a lot of their free time over there instead of watching netflix and youtube and and whatever they just hang out with each other on fortnight i mean you know i i actually last

year when covid just hit i spent um i spent some time doing uh events in virtual reality because we didn't have any events uh you know any physical events so i spent some time like doing events in virtual reality we had a very big event with with kraken for the halving it was like a big conference with like you know 20 speakers almost a thousand people showed up in virtual reality for this thing it was very uh bleeding edge and cool and you know people really appreciate that because it was it was very different from video calls you kind of feel like you were interacting with those people almost like you would in physical space but it's very very early like there's going to be a ton of work needed before you you know before you could look at that and say yes this is the

future. Uh, it's very, it's, it's, it's interesting though. Like, I think it's cool. I just don't know what, what exactly it means, but I don't know. What do you think? I think that we were hearing this from everywhere. It's absolutely going to happen. Um, I've got my brother here with me and, uh, we went to a VR, like a demo. And historically when I've done these, I've left and been like 20 years, you know, like, like no way is this close. I don't know. We, when we left, we were like, dude, it's close. Right. And that still may be, you know, three, four or five years, whatever, uh, away, but it felt like we had gotten a lot closer than, uh, than we have been. The other thing is, um, I, I jokingly tweeted, but I was serious at the same time. Uh, we already

live in virtual reality. Like you, me, John, everybody else, we all go into this virtual square of Twitter. I kind of walk around the square and I look to see what conversations I want to inject myself into. And I hit reply, or maybe I want to listen to one group and then run and tell them other groups want to do. I hit retweet. Like it, it's kind of the lo-fi version, but it's definitely, you know, some virtual reality, Instagram, same thing. You start thinking about all these virtual jobs. Um, so, you know, there's everyone from, uh, writers who don't work at a company anymore to, uh, podcasting to Instagram influencers to, um, you know, Fiverr, like all this stuff is, uh, lo-fi versions, but it's headed in that direction. So you want to

call it a metaverse. Great. If you want to call it something else, that's fine too. But like, you know, the virtual economy is gonna be bigger than the, uh, than the legacy economy for sure. John, what questions do you have? Yeah. Hi, Udi. Nice to meet you. And thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it. Um, I'm curious, what are you working on nowadays? How has it changed in the last few years and where, where are you going with all your projects? Yeah. So I used to, i used to do like a lot of consulting mostly like software you know software architecture related in the crypto space but since you know i don't know since early this year i kind of started spending more time into investment and you know managing my own capital but also just

looking into uh the the very exciting things that are happening in the space now um that i used to I mean, honestly, I myself used to ignore them for quite a long period of time. And now I actually find it pretty exciting. So I think there's so much going on that I can't. I used to feel like I would have looked at Bitcoin, I would have said, this is going to get huge. um i can't say that about anything right now but it's still very interesting to imagine how how things uh might grow you know like the nfts uh i i read you know i read uh you know anthony's article about how how he was wrong about nfts because he expected them to be big but actually

they're gonna be much bigger and i thought was a great article i don't know if they're gonna turn that big but i think that just exploring the space right now and and seeing what you know what the future might hold is extremely interesting uh but we'll see where it goes appreciate that don't be too nice to anthony though oh yeah hey we had we had a lot of like uh spars on twitter in many years ago i think but but i think uh i think you know obviously like anthony's been doing an amazing job, like evangelizing for Bitcoin over the years, like really amazing. I wish I could have gotten as many people into Bitcoin as Anthony has. Well, we've got a lot of work to do. We're still we're still cranking along. Let me ask you this before before we let you go. Do you have a

any thoughts around Bitcoin or Ether price by the end of the year? Oh, man, I don't know. Well, Well, Ethereum obviously going to zero. No, I'm kidding. I have no idea. I really have no idea. I think we're not done. You know, I see some people kind of scared, thinking, oh, this is the top. I really don't think so.

I think there's a long way to go this year, too. Are you a super cycle believer or just higher? Like how bullish? On a scale of one to ten, how bullish are you? I, you know, I fell for the super cycle meme a few times in the past already. I, I, I kind of have, uh, I kind of have, uh, you know, PTSD from that. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to not believe, but it's hard because I, you know, you feel it, it's burning.

We'll see. All right, man. Let's thank you so much for doing this. Where, uh, where can we send people to find you on the internet or where do you want to direct everyone? I mean, my first tip is don't just don't, but if you have to follow me, then, uh, I'm on Twitter. It's Woody Vertimer.

it's going to be pretty hard to type, but, um, but good luck. I'm putting the link in the, I'm putting the link in the comments right now. I appreciate you started this with a don't follow me, but if you have to, here you go. Yeah. Awesome, buddy. We're worried about people's mental health. I hear you. Well, when you start out with your, uh, your banner image, you're saying have fun staying poor. That's a, that's a whole timer right there. Exactly. All right. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this. And, uh,

I hope everyone is really mad at you and they all think that you're so dumb and, uh, you just keep doing what you're doing. I think that you're doing a great job and, uh, we'll, uh, we'll talk soon. Awesome. Thank you guys. All right. Later, buddy.