The Wolf Of All Streets - Bitcoin Only With Jeff Booth, Jameson Lopp, Dan Held & others

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Bitcoin Only Twitter Spaces with With Jeff Booth, Jameson Lopp, Dan Held & others ►►THE DAILY CLOSE BRAND NEW NEWSLETTER! INSTITUTIONAL GRADE INDICATORS AND DATA DELIVERED DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX, EVERY DAY AT THE DAILY CLOSE. TRADE LIKE THE BIG BOYS. 👉 https://www.thedailyclose.io/   ►►BITGET GET UP TO A $8,000 BONUS IN USDT AND GET MASSIVE DISCOUNTS ON TRADING FEES! 👉 https://thewolfofallstreets.info/bitget    ►►NORD VPN  GET EXCLUSIVE NORDVPN DEAL - 40% DISCOUNT! IT’S RISK-FREE WITH NORD’S 30-DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE. PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY! 👉 https://nordvpn.com/WolfOfAllStreets   ►►COINROUTES TRADE SPOT & DERIVATIVES ACROSS CEFI AND DEFI USING YOUR OWN ACCOUNTS WITH THIS ADVANCED ALGORITHMIC PLATFORM. SAVE TONS OF MONEY ON TRADING FEES LIKE THE PROS! 👉 http://bit.ly/3ZXeYKd  ►► JOIN THE FREE WOLF DEN NEWSLETTER, DELIVERED EVERY WEEK DAY! 👉https://thewolfden.substack.com/   Follow Scott Melker: Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottmelker   Web: https://www.thewolfofallstreets.io   Spotify: https://spoti.fi/30N5FDe   Apple podcast: https://apple.co/3FASB2c   #Bitcoin #Crypto #Trading The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own and should in no way be interpreted as financial advice. This video was created for entertainment. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision. I am not a financial advisor. Nothing contained in this video constitutes or shall be construed as an offering of financial instruments or as investment advice or recommendations of an investment strategy or whether or not to "Buy," "Sell," or "Hold" an investment.

Let's go. up on stage for now to get started. First of all, everybody in the room, obviously we like to play that very sweet, soothing music. So you feel like you're in an elevator when you start every single Twitter spaces. I think we need to improve on the musical introduction, but that's something we'll work on in the future. If you are listening,

please go ahead, hit that little arrow button up top, share this. We'll inevitably get more people in the room. And we know that these Twitter spaces sort of evolve and that the crowd does grow as we continue. This is a Tuesday spaces that I do every single week. We've considered ramping up doing more, but I've been sort of erring towards quality over quantity. And we've had such incredible conversations that I don't really want to dilute it by adding more of them at the moment. So I'm just going to give people a few more seconds.

I guess I'll preface this conversation. But if you haven't listened to the old spaces, you're doing yourself a disservice. Last week had Raoul Paul. The week before, it's hard to even remember at this point, but we obviously had Bology, Michael Saylor, Mike Novogratz, which are all incredible conversations, also all available on my podcast channels. So on Spotify, Apple Music, et cetera. Interestingly, those have been the most

popular conversations on my podcast. We spend all this time producing and working on podcasts and seems all we had to do is just host a bunch of Twitter spaces and put them up on the podcast channels to get people to listen. So I'm going to go ahead and begin here, and people will be able to listen to this, obviously, on the recording in the future. I know Corey Clipston will be joining us later. Inevitably, we'll have some other guests. I want to say to the guests first, obviously, I want to be cautious of your time. The spaces may continue for as long as we deem

necessary, but that doesn't mean you have to stay, obviously, for the whole time. So first, I guess, to set a few expectations about this conversation. It's not meant to be a debate per se, but rather a friendly conversation. Every time I seem to host people that are fans of Ethereum, I get comments in my DMs that there was no Bitcoin opinion represented. And every time I seem to host people that are fans of Ethereum, I get comments in my DMs that there was no Bitcoin opinion represented. And every time I have a Bitcoin conversation, inevitably a bunch of people respond, well, I need to add this person, this person, and this person to hear the other side. That is not what this is about. And that's not how I approach any of this. So I want to maintain that friendly tone of a

friendly conversation and really not dive into the toxic realm or a heavy debate. So I want to maintain that friendly tone of a friendly conversation and really not dive into the toxic realm or a heavy debate. I'm here to listen and learn and open to everyone's ideas. I've obviously put myself, I guess, in a bit of an uncomfortable position because the panel of guests likely have different views than my own. So just to give a very quick preface, Jeff Booth has obviously been a guest on my show countless times and was recently on one of my roundtables. And while I'm not sure specifically which idea that he shared prompted him to message me, but my assumption is that it was something like the following. I mean, I've long said that I view Bitcoin as its own asset class and that everything else in crypto

should be viewed through an entirely different lens. I personally believe that investors in crypto should have a Bitcoin first mentality because it's hard money, store of value, digital gold, all of the narratives that we obviously all likely agree on. The rest of the asset class to me is largely speculative. It's more akin to investing in venture capital and betting on tech stocks. So I do consider myself a Bitcoiner first, although some Bitcoiners may contend with that assessment. So after I shared this idea, Jeff reached out privately and I'll just read the email that he sent me. He said, do you want to spend some time going deeper with me on what informs my conviction and what I'm seeing? I say that because if I'm correct,

then where and how you spend your time will have an outside positive impact on you and your followers. Let me know best, Jeff. Now, we didn't connect for a bit because of our conflicting schedule and because I'm a complete spaz and difficult to get on the phone. But at that point, I figured we should have this conversation publicly for everyone's benefit rather than just for me. And that's what we're trying to do here. So as you guys know, I believe in having strong opinions loosely held. Jeff's one of my favorite authors and thinkers. And honestly, his book and his ideas and our hours of conversation have already largely helped shaped my worldview. So that should give you guys

all the very long context. And so now, you know, without further ado, Jeff, first of all, welcome. I really do appreciate you taking the time, especially to do this publicly. And this is, you know, listen, I want to learn. I want to listen like everyone else. So I would love to hear your ideas. Thanks, Scott. And I don't know when I reached out on this again, I often I try to do this behind the scenes because because I don't think about orange pilling somebody.

I think about how does somebody actually, how do we understand this from a different way? If I, if we have a disagreement, I don't need to have that publicly, but in this case, so I just, I guess, how would you like to tackle this conversation? You've, you've read my piece, Finding Signal in a Noisy World, and from that piece where I lay out this thesis pretty deeply so people could go back to it, go back to it, and go back to it. But how would you like to carve out this? Like, where would you like to start?

Well, I think because it is for the public. And yes, I've read it many times. I've read your book many times. But I think since it's for the public, I mean, maybe give us the major highlights of the way that you think about this asset class, about investing and Bitcoin. And then we can get deeper into the weeds, perhaps, about how you think myself, maybe others are thinking about it wrong and how we can improve that. Okay. So maybe how I came to this is from the existing financial system and how the existing financial system was inherently broken. It couldn't solve this paradox. It couldn't solve technology brings down prices, prices fall to the marginal cost of production. Technology was exploding.

AI was exploding, which would be a general purpose technology. It would turn into effectively AGI in time and merge with machines, meaning the marginal cost of production would radically decline. And that was in conflict with an economic system that must raise prices or fail because it had to pay back existing debt in cheaper terms or fail spectacularly. And so that's what I wrote about in my book. I spent a lot of time on that in the book and saying that this conflict was going to happen. It was going to accelerate. And all of the second, third, fourth order effects of that conflict, people wouldn't be able to

see because they were measuring from the system that had to create more misinformation to be able to stay solvent. So in that concept, where that thesis is borne out exactly as I predicted. And it's still, and so that mental model of my world, or my mental model versus many others' mental model, seems to be right and it reinforces everywhere that that view of the world is actually happening. And so I'm not surprised with anything that I see from the existing system

as we move further down this path. Then I had to go to, if I understand how the existing system works and how that creates really bad outcomes for humanity all over the place. What could solve that? And then you have to look down really deep at Bitcoin or anything else and say, what could transition that path?

And if that did exist, if there was a transition path, what would it look like? How would other people look at that transition path? Would they look at it from the existing system as just a speculative investment? What would it look like? What would it have to do? And so then enter Bitcoin into kind of a thought process. And by the way, keep in mind, most of, a lot of my time, time, including that's why one of the things I really like about Bitcoin is a lot of the people in it are trying to disprove the hypothesis completely, including me.

So so I like the critical feedback, too. So so what would what would something like that look like and what would it look like from people measuring in the existing system? So the blockchain trilemma, you can solve two of three sides of a blockchain. Security, decentralization, and scalability. But you can only choose two of three. So when Bitcoin came out, it was 14 years old. It solved decentralization and security. And a whole bunch of ways it did that.

I don't think we need to dig into how in this. We can if you want, but it's in that post that I wrote. But what would that look like to everyone else? So if you have this new asset, instead of an asset, it looked like a layer one technology, like a protocol technology that a whole bunch of people got rich on just by holding it, doing nothing but holding it. And it got more and more decentralized and more secure every year as a result of that what would it look like to everybody else and probably what it would look like to everybody else because you could do nothing on

it um is i'm going to create a new type of digital asset and i'm going to call it something better and it's going to do something else that bitcoin couldn't do and I'm going to market that. And an entire market would obviously, if people were inside a market and they felt, okay, I'm trying to get more and more money from this existing system that is devaluing the money. And there was this asset class that exploded in value from nothing to tens of thousands of dollars. Then obviously a market would exist for,

I'm going to create my new coin. I'm going to create this coin, this coin, this coin. But when you look at all of those coins, if they have to sacrifice, if they solve scalability at the sacrifice of decentralization or security, what do they actually get? What is the use case?

And decentralized finance, how could the decentralized finance live on top of a centralized blockchain when a database is more efficient in that? So it's just a higher cost for decentralized finance. And so a whole bunch of these use cases essentially fail in the end just for the economic reasons alone. And then kind of even at a step, and I'm going to kind of pause for a question after this,

but a step bigger than that is what would that look like from a system that was 10 000 times bigger kind of the meaning the exact entire global fiat system that we live in what would it look like attacking a system that it couldn't control that was decentralized and secure because there would obviously be a massive incentive for the existing power structures to try to take down the only thing that they couldn't take down. So pause there for any questions.

Yes, and so, I mean, obviously I'm aware of your investment thesis and where you've been actually placing your bets and money. And largely, a lot of that obviously is other technology being built on Bitcoin rather than all these protocols of which you've sort of pointed out, in your opinion, the issue. So can you talk, I guess, more about the argument that Bitcoin was somewhat stale and that these things needed to be built somewhere else and the fact that they're being on Bitcoin. Also, I'm sorry, Dan Held, Jameson Lopp are both up here. And guys, I would love for you to participate in the conversation. So feel free at any point to jump in. But Jeff, I guess that's where I'd like to go next.

Okay. So on protocol technology, essentially, the protocol has to harden. And it has to harden. At the bottom of our technology stack today is still TCP IP, driving this conversation and a bunch of technology that we take for granted. That was developed by DARPA in the late 60s. If that failed, everything else on top of it would fail. So what ends up happening in technology protocols is things harden over a long time. And you cannot see what's available on the second layer until the first layer is sufficiently hardened because no development takes place.

So if you take that extension to what's happening in Bitcoin, and you take all of the other uses of all of the other coins, if you said for a long time, there was actual arguments that you couldn't do payments on Bitcoin. And those technically at the time, you could do payments, but there was five to seven transactions per second maximum. So kind of technically, actually, those arguments were right. And there were a whole bunch of people said, well, this one's faster, even if it centralizes. And so, but again, that's because people didn't see the technology stack being developed. And then all of a sudden, and you couldn't see what was not there before and then all of a sudden lightning liquid others get get put on top of in layer two and a whole new ecosystem emerges around lightning fast payments without sacrificing

the security and decentralization of the layer below it. It talks to the layer before it, it makes some trade-offs, but it doesn't sacrifice the layer before it. And so again, even right now, so now you have two network effects reinforcing on each other. You have a network effect of a global payment solution that's outside of the existing payment channels, that's peer-to-peer, reinforcing on a bearer instrument that's decentralized secure below it.

On top of that, or kind of layer two and a half, you have Fediment, what's happening at Fetty, and some of these technologies that one plus one, Lightning plus Fetty plus something else, Noster creates something totally unique that all of that value creates, almost a federated operating system, where instead of an operating system

where people are building into uh apple and are creating and have it pay 30 percent charge for going through the toll gates you have an entire operating system being built into this in into this area so why people are missing it is there they're missing it for the very same reason they missed Apple's phone being used for like against BlackBerry. They missed, so they were comparing a phone versus an entire experience that gave way more ability than the phone. And so what's happening right now inside kind of the investment ecosystem and all of the entrepreneurs that are just starting to build on top of these layers

is an explosion of value that's going to accrue to people and bring more people into this ecosystem. And I just don't see any possibility or probability, let's say, that any other coin could compete with that. I tend to agree largely with that premise, but I have a few questions. And I want everybody also to know that if I ask a question, it's not an assertion and it's not necessarily my opinion. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this. So a lot of people probably would say by that same analogy that Bitcoin could be likened to the BlackBerry and that Ethereum or the other layers could be likened to the iPhone. Now, I don't necessarily believe that, but I've actually heard that analogy used before. And so when I dig into it, I guess the question I have is that

there are, I've seen it, you're obviously very deep in the weeds, absolutely incredible things being built on Bitcoin. The question is, would they be being built on Bitcoin right now if they had not already been built on the other layers first? So even if we disregard the importance of the other layers, have they been an effective or important testing ground for the things that were eventually built on Bitcoin? Because a lot of people's question would be like, these things are being built. Why aren't they here yet? Are they, you know, copies? Basically, are we building superior services now on Bitcoin, which is a better layer one, but we needed the others as effectively a test net to do that.

Yeah, I don't know if test net or just, so if you're inside one of the other ecosystems, I know how hard this could be. I built, I raised money, I invested money, all of my friends are in this ecosystem, I built, and I told them I was going to build X. And then, but I'm building on quicksand because that has to be centralized. So I'm building all of my use case essentially on somebody else's control point, right? Or fragility or lack of security. It's either because by scalability had to be centralized or lack of security. It's either because by scalability had to be centralized or lack security.

So if I was doing that and believed in what I was doing, I was just an entrepreneur creating value, but I didn't look deep enough on the consequences of building on quicksand, then if I was that, I would try to do anything to make it work. So I don't look at the entrepreneurs as inherently bad and anything else.

It's just everybody had a different idea, and they're trying to deliver value in society. Now, some of those people are trying to essentially get rich and other people hold their bags. Many are just trying to build solutions and they don't know the depth of that. It's similar to the fiat system. Many people building entrepreneurial success on top of a fiat system that has to manipulate don't realize how much risk they have on top underlying that system.

When you're building on shaky ground and the ground gives way, you don't have much to rely on. So whether it's testnet, whether it's anything else, it's just in the end, the stronger economic model, you have to have, if this is built on decentralization and security at the time, and then layers come on top of it, the new entrepreneurs building on that model with more security, with more decentralization, will win in favor of entrepreneurs building on something that has to be centralized and have higher cost. If you just think about a game, and I'm not talking about games today,

but if I was the biggest game producer today, would I build to Ethereum when that risk would be it changes? The security or something changes because of a vote by the holders and everything I built collapses? Or would I build on top of lightning or something else that gave me control? And I think the answer is really obvious. But it's not obvious in the rearview mirror.

It's only obviously obvious looking forward if you understand the economics. Dan Jamieson, by the way, guys, you can feel free to jump in and share your thoughts. I know, Dan, you obviously sort of straddle this as well. Jamieson, I see your mic's off. Go ahead, please. Yeah, yeah. I just want to say, you know, I think these type of discussions are very interesting because people come at them with their own unique perspective. So, you know, I think these type of discussions are very interesting because people come at them with their own unique perspective. So, you know, at the risk of putting words in other people's mouths, I would say, you know, Scott probably primarily is looking at these things from an

investment perspective. Jeff seems to mainly be looking at the systems from an economic perspective. I primarily look at these systems as a technologist and a proponent of freedom and voluntary interactions. I won't speak for Dan, you know, he, I think, is more in the like marketing growth space. So he probably, you know, looks at it from an adoption perspective. But, you know, there's a lot of stuff to unpack here. And, you know, I think one of the interesting things is it's certainly possible for us to all agree that Bitcoin is by far the most robust system with the most predictable and reliable governance. And when we look at any of these other systems, they pretty much are all inferior in one way or another. But, you know, it gets complicated because these other systems do tend to offer functionality

that is not available on Bitcoin currently. Therefore, we have markets being built around them. We have, you know, demand being generated, value being created. And I think the tricky thing with, you know, Jeff's argument, you know, it's sort of, you know, foundational principles over the long term. These other systems will likely not survive in the long term because they're on shakier foundations. And, you know, I'm not sure that is an argument that can really be proven. Right. It's more like, you know, this is the thesis and we'll have to look back on it in 10 years and we'll see who's right. And I can I can jump in a little bit with my thoughts. I mean, this conversation had quite a large surface area,

from ossification discussions to what is decentralization to ecosystem development. So it's kind of hard to pick one to touch on. But I mostly agree with most of Jeff's thoughts as well and also respect a lot of how Jameson thinks about the space. You know, my two cents from a marketing perspective, because I think Jameson's right, we all approach seeing something via the lens that we have inherently, which is our bias and how we think. Engineers, marketers, product folks, investors, we all kind of see it from different perspectives. You know, for me, Bitcoin's core value prop, you know, I was studying finance and undergrad during the 2008 financial crisis. And I saw what happened, you know, when

the whole world essentially ended and that moment around being radicalized and not being able to trust banks, governments and policy folks, you know, that really radicalized me and opened me up to a new type of work mechanism, the monetary policy, etc., that I do believe it will be the world reserve currency of the future. And I think Bitcoin wins that by a mile. And a lot of the engineering folks forget that time builds trust, not code. And they think that, oh, we can just engineer our way into trust. And that's not true. Bitcoin has the longest, most credible monetary policy on the planet, not only with fiat money, but also with crypto.

And so people forget that aspect of it. And a lot of the engineering Silicon Valley folks will be like, oh, I'm just interested in building stuff. And they completely miss the picture on like, what is money and why is that important? So for me, Bitcoin represents that, think in its purest form, I think it's the best money that will ever exist. Now, how do people get introduced to a new money? How do you incept this idea of, you know, you've got Bitcoin, and I think it has the objective, objectively,

the best monetary policy in the world that has been enforced by a community and that I believe will be highly credible in the future and will never change that 21 million hard cap. How do we introduce people to that concept? Well, I think as we all know, it's pretty hard to sit down with a lay person and go, hey, let me talk to you about the gold standard, the Federal Reserve, and all these complexities around the economy and money. No, most people were introduced to Bitcoin through speculation. As very obviously seen through the 13, 17, and 2021 cycles, people come for the speculation and stay for the sound money. And so I think both Bitcoiners and Ethereum people both missed the mark here quite dramatically. And the answer is obvious and undeniable.

Speculation is what introduces people to crypto assets. And so with Bitcoin, you have very simplistic speculative games, which is basically spot trading. Sure, there's futures and options as well. But people bought Bitcoin because their buddy told them it was going to go up. Now, those who stuck around and the reason why Bitcoin has a floor in the bear market is due to the hard work of Jeff, Jameson, myself, Natalie, I see you listening in, and many others who are listening in right now. We help take that speculator and turn them into a believer of, hey, this is sound money. This is what that means.

This is why Bitcoin is the best solution for money. Now, what I noticed with the Ethereum community is that, and I noticed this at NFT NYC last year, was that people were buying NFTs and they were thinking in an Ethereum standard. They bought an NFT for 0.1 ETH and they flipped it for 0.3. And I would kind of question them and ask them like, hey, do you understand

like the monetary policy or anything like that? And they said, no, I don't, you know, I'm not really interested in that. But does it really matter? Because they were holding their money. They were holding that money

in an asset that they believed, you know, was a sound asset. And so, you know, the way I think about this is like, if Bitcoin existed in a forest and no one had ever heard about it, and there was only Ethereum, is Ethereum good enough? And so there's like a sliding scale of, I think Bitcoin is the best solution because it exists. But for some of these people that are just being introduced to different crypto assets, they don't necessarily want to pick apart you know as ethereum or bitcoin have a

better monetary policy again most people for bitcoin and ethereum are introduced via speculation and so um i think and this is why i'm so pro ordinals is that i think there are more speculative games on ethereum and those speculative games introduce people to Ethereum as a money. And so with Bitcoin, the more speculative games that we have to introduce them to Bitcoin as a money, the better. And that's why I think, and also NFTs, I think are an interesting concept of digital art and at a minimum digital art, right? It's, it's a, it's a proof, you know, having it on chain. I think the Bitcoin, you know, the Bitcoin's way of having NFTs with ordinals is actually a superior platform than Ethereum because the graphic asset actually exists on chain. When it's originally distributed, it's it's in a much better fashion.

It can't be, you know, afterwards can't be manipulated or controlled by a smart contract. So, you know, for me, I think that speculative games are good. TLDR is speculative games are how people found Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum has more speculative games than Bitcoin. Speculative games aren't a bad thing. It's essentially how people are introduced to money. This is why I think NFTs on top of Bitcoin are great, because it will introduce more people into Bitcoin. Yeah, I think I largely agree with a lot of that. And that aligns with my premise. Jameson, I loved what you said before about the different approach, I guess, and bias that people approach it with. And I think it should be clear, I actually view Bitcoin through the lens of an economic model and the rest of it through the investment lens. So I think it's a bit of both.

Jeff, I saw you had your hand up and I'd love you to jump in in one second. And we have a few other guys. There's a few other people in the audience I've invited to speak. So if you feel compelled to do so, Natalie, Dave, Zay, Justin, request, please. Yeah, and a couple things, Dan, just that I want to not take issue with, but it's just I think important to understand what's happening here we live in a system that's 10 000 times bigger than bitcoin that is insolvent it's 400 trillion dollars of debt which is already technically insolvent the only way to pay back that system is through manipulation of money, period.

There is no other way. Or have the entire system with all counterparty risk fail globally. So when we say speculation, that's speculation. Every single thing built on top of that system is speculation. Not even speculation. You know it built on top of that system is speculation, not even speculation, you know, it's already insolvent. And if you let prices fall, like the natural world should price things, then it goes insolvent immediately. So, so I, for the life of me, this is the hardest thing that I, that when people talk about speculation and bitcoin the only thing without counterparty risk to that system i want to pull my hair out because they're

talking about and and so that's why that's why this is so confusing because they're measuring bitcoin from that system the only way you could see that speculation is from a system without it, without that counterparty risk, with 21 million hard cap that you couldn't change. And so in that system, you would see, with true economic clarity, prices falling to the marginal cost of production. In other words, Bitcoin price isn't rising. All prices are falling against it, and they will forever as prices fall to the marginal cost of production, and the marginal cost of production decreases it a world reserve currency, a reserve currency implies a debt-based model based on gold to be able to do essentially a debt-based model that expands. And once you have a debt-based economy, it has to expand forever through an inflation rate that inherently bleeds to long debt cycles and where we are today in the world. This is different. This is very different. It's a bearer instrument in a network with unlimited velocity in the network. And that change changes. And because we've never had this before, it would be normal for all people on the planet to look through historical bias of what this will look like.

And that's actually why it's so interesting, too, because it doesn't look like anything humanity has ever seen before, because it's so different, because it's a bearer instrument inside a network that brings value to all parties through a neutral reserve asset. And Jeff, I guess the next question is then, what about technological innovation that's built on this technology that does not have a token attached? I mean, for example, the new blockchain from Coinbase that does not have a token attached. I mean, for example, the new blockchain from Coinbase that does not have a token. Well, I think the point here is if you did a deep dive on Fediment or Feddy, if you did a deep dive on Lightning and some of the use cases that are coming to this,

that essentially solve every other use case and on a second or third layer that build because what is true right now is is is what uh what dan said that people originally looked at this through speculation but what's happening right now what's right what's happening right now in the development of this you're going to have increased value i know a lot of people who their first interaction with bitcoin was on noster getting paid in something or or their first their or or my first interaction bringing them onto bitcoin was through a Lightning transaction.

And that's actually an easier use case for them to understand what's happening. I also agree with that, but I also know people who's... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I thought you were done. I was going to say, I also, just anecdotally, I know people whose first experience with Bitcoin was NFT or Doge. Crazy, but true. Right. And so I think there's an argument to be made that if assuming that Bitcoin is the superior platform and money that all funnels will eventually lead. Let me jump in real quick. I've spent 10 years in this space, formerly led product at Blockchain.com, formerly VP of marketing at Kraken, and quite a few other roles.

It's extremely dubious to say that payments have led to any meaningful adoption in Bitcoin. And here's why. It's actually a very simple premise. What value prop does that show? Bitcoin is fantastic because it has a monetary policy that can't be changed. It's extremely hard to seize, basically impossible to seize if you have your private key management configured correctly. And it's immutable, which means I can send it to anyone, anywhere without anyone censoring it. Those are the value props of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not a cheap way to pay for things. This is a 2013 narrative,

a Bitcoin cash narrative that has been thoroughly debunked where here's what happens when you send a payment with Bitcoin. And I've seen it hundreds and hundreds of times. You know, Mark Twain has a great quote, which is to make a man or woman covet something, all you have to do is make it hard to obtain. When you send someone Bitcoin

and they don't respect Bitcoin, they don't believe it's a store of value asset or real money, it's irrelevant. You've given them funny money. You've given them magic internet bucks. And they almost immediately sell it and have no, it does not show anything about the value prop of Bitcoin. It doesn't show anything of why it's valuable. You just showed them a clumsy electronic payment method. And so, you know, and it's also very You just showed them a clumsy electronic payment method. And it's also very dubious as to how cheap that really brings down the cost of sending something across borders, et cetera. Look, I want it to be true. I want this narrative to be true. I would hope that people would start with the medium of exchange use case, and that would eventually lead them into the store of value one but i have seen extremely little uh medium of exchange use cases and those actually have led to i would

argue a net negative overall and here's why um when merchants accept bitcoin and no one sends payment in bitcoin they're like wow that was like that wasn't really worth my time, and that was a waste of time, and no one really uses this thing. Same with what people spend with Bitcoin. Let me jump in there. If you're measuring this narrative from 2013, and lightning is only just recent, could you argue that this is just a recent phenomenon and more and more people are starting to see this? Because trust me, I know people directly, friends of mine, that are now holding Bitcoin because of this, because they saw how easy and two and two went together and said, holy cow, this is outside of the system and a peer-to-peer network is developing here. So wouldn't what you're saying about actually be a bias from a whole bunch of people

that have been in this space for a long time that haven't seen what's coming? No, I'm saying that it's not a bias at all. It's an objective reality that I've seen in multiple positions across multiple companies in the crypto space. It's a 2013 narrative that for some reason won't go away, even though anyone with a product perspective would easily see there's no product market fit there. It's one of the most mind blowing things I've seen in my lifetime from like a product and marketing perspective is the continual push and push and push for medium of exchange use case. Look, eventually Bitcoin will have that. And of course, some of that is going to exist in gradual levels

as more and more folks store value in Bitcoin. Okay, well, just carry that forward. Okay, so now you're just saying, you just changed that. You said now it's a timing thing rather than... If it's more and more, that's actually strengthening a network. As you know, as an investor, there's a timing thing rather than if it's more and more that's actually strengthening a network as you know as an investor there's a classic saying being early is the same as being wrong and being wrong here means tens of billions of dollars misallocated a bunch of wasted time and a bunch of users misaligned and disillusioned and in fact the disillusionment was so large that we

had a civil war the bitcoin cash community forked off because that was such a prevalent way of thinking. And so for me, it's quite bizarre because this is not just a 2013 debunked narrative, but also a 2017-2018 debunked narrative. And the narrative was debunked because I fought against the Bcashers. We had to grind that narrative into a powder. And for some reason, it's coming back again from Bitcoiners, which is quite bizarre because this is the identical argument that Bitcoin Cash had. Now, of course, Bitcoin Cash had more politics involved or block size increases, et cetera, were part of that. But their core premise was that medium of exchange is the whole reason why Bitcoin would be adopted. And most Bitcoiners in the 1718 era were, you know, for obvious reasons, figured that that was not the way that Bitcoin would be adopted.

So it's really bizarre for me to see it kind of pop back up. So that's why I bring in the historical context of it. I've seen cohorts of failed startups doing this. Hundreds and hundreds of dead startups from 13, 17, etc. So look, I think Lightning's an incredible layer too. I love it. I love what they're building over there. I do think that there will be small uses of Bitcoin for payments, more for novelty than anything else. But until Bitcoin becomes a low volatility store value asset that a large portion of folks hold, that network effect that converts to medium of exchange, I don't think really occurs for quite some time. And so championing that now misaligns users, misaligns investment. And so I think all of those combined are the reason why I feel so

strongly is that I've just seen so many people disillusioned. And again, the Bitcoin Cash community represents the disillusionment. Those folks believe... No, I know. But you're talking about a layer one, a change in the base layer versus a layer two. You're talking about two apples and oranges here. No, I'm not. They were the same community originally, correct? But again, I already said that exactly why a lot of people chose to do Bitcoin Cash

or any other narrative would be because they thought that something else existed and by doing so they would sacrifice the layer one, the decentralization and security. So all of that makes sense to me. What doesn't make sense to me when what you're saying is the layer on top of this can provide additional use case. And that additional use case is going to have tons of investment. Trust me, I'm investing in it. And I've seen the DEX as well. And the revenue numbers are a rounding error for larger companies. I mean, honestly, it's...

Look, and I've seen early stage. I've been in this space 10 years, and I've seen early stage drones, crypto, AR, VR. These revenue numbers are insanely low, and usage numbers as well. I've seen the pitch decks. And I guess we'll see what that looks like. But I can't imagine building onto a different layer right now with what I'm seeing and all of the innovation that's coming to this space. I'm seeing that innovation going to accelerate the adoption here by an order of magnitude. Yeah, I think this goes... Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing that some of that building will happen on Bitcoin, obviously, with Layer 2s like Lightning, Liquid,

RSK, Stacks, etc. I think these are hugely bullish things for Bitcoin. But we're just, I think, singularly talking about the medium of exchange use case. I'm not bringing all the other... I'm not denying that I think Bitcoin will accrue developer adoption, and I agree with your hypothesis there. I just disagree with the payments narrative being the core driver of growth. Udi, you straddle this line. Feel free to jump in here.

Yeah. Look, I mean, we have two very smart people who know a lot about Bitcoin presenting like kind of two different views here. And, you know, kind of my thinking here is like, why not both? You know, like we, I don't know what the future holds. I don't, I've looked at, you know, Jeff mentioned like Lightning and what was the other one?

I forgot the name. Liquid. Liquid is the thing. I meant the multi-sig thing. Fediment is what was mine. So, you know, Jeff mentioned those two things. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I've been... I've actually, it's funny, I actually talked to a friend recently and I remember that I actually did the first publicly documented transaction on Mainnet with Lightning many years ago.

Like, I don't know, i think it was 2019 probably um i'm sure i'm sure it was not the first on mainnet but it was the first one that was publicly documented um you know i know lightning well i've been trying to promote it build on it work with it for many years uh i have nothing against it but i also look at the results you know and so far it's not that new you know it's not like it started yesterday it's not uh um it's it's been around for years it's been in development for even more years and so far you know it's not super popular right it's definitely not it's not only is it not a popular uh payment method compared to you know like visa and paypal or whatever it's it's also not popular within the crypto ecosystem.

So, you know, some merchants that accept multiple payment mechanisms and have accepted Lightning for, you know, probably three, four years now say that they see more traffic with Litecoin payments than with Lightning payments, which is kind of damning for Lightning, I think. But, you know, this can change. I will agree that in the future this can change. I hope it does. And the point is, I don't know what the future is. I know that, you know, there's definitely some people who are interested in trying out stuff like Nostr and they're onboarding to Bitcoin through that. That's very true. I also know there are people who are trying out like JPEGs and NFTs on Bitcoin with Ordinals

and are onboarding to Bitcoin and Lightning through that. I actually have the numbers and I can tell you that more people did their first Lightning transaction through an Ordinals project than they did through Noster, right? That's just the cold hard data and the cold hard facts so you know there

are many ways and and of course people who are into ordinals and and bitcoin jpegs and bitcoin fts they do that because they're you know they're into speculation that's why you know that's the main reason um so you know like do i think that things are gonna are gonna happen differently uh i don't know they might we just really don't know i think that one thing though that is kind of dangerous for the bitcoin movement and i say that as someone who cares deeply about bitcoin and have for many years i am very concerned when i hear statements like, you know, look at Lightning and look at Fediment. Those two can do everything that you might want to do in any other layer. We don't need anything else.

That's a very dangerous statement because there's no way for us to know. It might be true, but there's no way for us to know ahead of time if other innovations are going to end up being useful or not. And if they're going to end up finding market fit or not. There's no way to know other than trying. And of course, most of the stuff that people are going to try is not going to work out. And if we think about, you know, you mentioned the Coinbase Layer 2 that doesn't have a token. Is it going to succeed i don't know you know most things don't succeed so there's a good chance that this one won't either but i i definitely

think it's worth trying just like all the other stuff that's that's happening crypto some of it many of it like much of it is going to crash and burn horribly but um some of it is going to end up being useful um for Bitcoiners too. Right. And I think obviously, Udi, I think to support that argument a bit obvious is the fact that stable coins have been the biggest, you know, use case for payments and transacting that have arguably come out of crypto. But that doesn't mean that it can't happen in the future with Bitcoin. And so I think, Jeff, maybe like where the sticking point is largely in this conversation is you have a lens into what's coming that the average person doesn't. Right. So so if you're just looking at this pragmatically at this moment, you say, look at all these things that are being built and have been built.

They're already operational. And then it's well, it can all be then built on Bitcoin, which goes back to me at the very least. I almost have to view Ethereum as a test net for things that can be built on Bitcoin later. And Jeff, I want you to respond, but then I want to go to Justin Rezvani after you because he actually chose to build on Bitcoin and probably the only one on this stage,

I think, who's doing something like that. So please go ahead, Jeff. Well, not you, Udi, that so so please go ahead jeff well not you sorry yeah go ahead jeff yeah and so when i come back to this from first principles right and you keep we keep on hearing the speculation speculation speculation specular with all the speculation is good and all of that is coming from a belief i can outrun a monetary system and i can make more money than the next guy buys through that speculation.

That's what's happening. It's actually, it's a disease caused by the fiat system, is what it is. Remember, the entire fiat system is insolvent. $400 trillion will not be paid back. You can choose to pay it back through the devaluation of your own money or bank failures, or you can choose to start in a new system that doesn't have to pay it back.

That's what's happening overall. And Bitcoin is the only one that wouldn't be state attacked because it can't be. Will it try to be? Will it close on ramps? be. Will it try to be? Will it close on ramps? Yes. Will it try to do all that?

But it gets more decentralized, more secure every year. So starting from that, what's actually happening, like I said before, is in Bitcoin, prices are falling, and they will continue to fall because they'll match economic reality. If you measure in a fiat system, prices will rise. Your house price will rise. But it's not your house price rising. It's your fiat dollars being devalued is what's happening. And then I do get to see on top of that system a bunch of what's coming. And you're right. And that gives me a unique lens of can I predict it all?

No. Can I predict what's coming that's going to give tons of value to people's lives and bring more and more people in and create economic incentive for more people to come in and more developers to come in? Yes, I can say that definitely. And so I get really excited about what's coming in this space. I got to jump in on that point of, you know, the fiat system being corrupt

and how a lot of the speculation is kind of being driven by that. It might be, you know, honestly, I don't consider myself an economist and there's a limit to how intelligent I can, how intelligently I can speak about this. But just in general, you know, it may very well be true. But when we look at something like,

you know, much simpler things like, you know, the government is giving people, you know, stimulation checks. That is obviously derived in the large part by the corruption of the fiat system. But I'm not going to go and advise people to not take the stimmy check just because the system is corrupt.

Yes, the system is corrupt. Yes, the game is rigged. But you should still take take the check and maybe you should go ahead and buy bitcoin with it but you know you should take the check when the system around you is corrupt it doesn't mean that your decision is going to be not to play it doesn't mean that that's the winning move um you you you probably still should play you probably probably still should take advantage of the opportunities that are available to you. And then I would say definitely go ahead and keep your long-term savings in Bitcoin. That's definitely the way I would play it.

Go ahead, Jameson. Right. So Jeff makes good points about the sort of soundness of the system and why, you know, logically, preferably we should be building on the most robust system as a foundation for, you know, the rest of the financial system, whatever, you know, functionality that may be. But I think there's also this underlying question of, you know, what do people actually care about? You know, what is motivating them? I think it's not controversial to say that there's a lot of demand and activity in these non Bitcoin systems because they are giving people use cases that are not available on Bitcoin,

at least right now, you know, you can always argue that anything could be built on Bitcoin, but that was a narrative 10 years ago that I would say has greatly failed over the past 10 years. You know, we were, we were told for a decade from,

you know, Bitcoin talk to Reddit to Twitter that all of these other protocols or test nets and side chains and second layers are going to subsume all of the functionality of any other protocol that finds itself with some modicum of success. And I can't disprove and say that that will never happen. But, you know, I've been waiting 10 years so far, and so far it doesn't really seem to be happening. Now, there's a lot of incentives, of course, you know, this is also, you know, from a sort of crypto anarchist perspective, this is a viable business model to be creating tokens. I mean, you can argue, and I would argue that it's pretty much an unregistered securities model, though, as an anarchist, I don't give a shit about, you know, the SEC and its arbitrary decisions. I think that

people should be allowed to issue their own securities without having to ask for permission. And for me, you know, are these other things scams? Are they deceptive? Are they defrauding people? That really comes down to more of an issue of transparency and what are these people and systems promising and are they actually delivering all those promises? Of course, that goes down a really, really complex rabbit hole that people have been arguing about for the past decade. So, you know, like I said, yeah. There's a piece of what you just said that I actually agree with. And the other thing is just a different view of what the future has. So the piece that I agree with is this, is we haven't today um financial regulation to save your to

protect your money living on top of a system designed to steal your money and people are wondering why that couldn't work right of course it's not going to work it has to it has to fail and then the next step of that is is individual rights and freedoms have to be taken away to be able to do this. And inside of all of this regulatory environment and crypto and everything else is a whole bunch of attack factors on Bitcoin to be able to try to attack the only thing that can't be truly regulatory captured. So I do agree with you from what that would look like from the system. People thinking they're safe from financial regulation from a system designed to steal their money. Or one level up. What would the emergent complex behavior of all of life on this planet look like

if it was built on a theft and that theft had to expand exponentially to pretend to pay back debt that couldn't be paid that's what that's what that's what everybody is unfortunately looking through inside of this discussion and they haven't hit that first principle yet so they haven't realized what's at stake. And a lot is at stake. The second part is just a different variation on if you have a secure decentralized base layer. And when you say 10 years, I remember doing this in the internet days. I remember talking to my parents in 1995. That was six years after HTTP came out, talking about what was going to happen in internet and why I wanted to create a business there. And them laughing at me. And probably three years later after that,

you're still on a dial up going. And so I lived through this in a different wave and saw what was to come on top of this. And people radically underestimate what can come on top of layers that are decentralized and secure that then open up functionality to build on radically. And once there's an economic incentive to be able to create that value, an entire world rushes in to take advantage of it. And that's what I'm seeing today. Yeah, I mean, there's a question of what can the technology do? But ultimately, it's like, what do people actually care about? They care about things that deliver value to their own lives.

That's what they care about. And they don't care about most of what we're talking about today in Bitcoin versus all the other stuff. And by the way, and I totally don't think any of the other stuff. And by the way, and I totally, I don't think any of the other stuff lives. But mostly what we're talking about is what does plumbing look like. And people get confused, especially when there's a whole bunch of narratives around what the plumbing looks like. And they're caught in an existing system that is stealing their time and energy to remain solvent. So they're very confused.

Absolutely. Well, so I would say, you know, I agree with you and I'm bullish, of course, on Bitcoin being the most likely to survive nation state attacks and whatever else. The thing that I'm bearish on, which is mainly from my perspective of working in security and privacy for the past decade, is that 99% of people don't care about these basic things

like privacy and security. And they don't have the time or willing to put in the effort to look at things like first principles and make decisions that I think you and I consider are completely logical. You know, they're much more focused on the surface, you know, shiny thing, whatever will attract their attention in the moment. So I think that's another issue that causes a lot of the confusion and complexity in the debates that we're having. Totally agree's totally agree that's actually why once something's decentralized and secure

and you can abstract the layer on top and to give different value to people that you can imagine that that exploding because they don't have to think about all of these conversations every day they deliver value in their lives through something that enhances decentralization and security so they don't have to care about it. Jeff, can I ask quickly then, how do we sort of parse or consider things that are being built on Bitcoin but have their own tokens? So I don't think there will be a use case for them. Again, I may be wrong, but I don't think there will be a use case for them because other things will be more native that are easier to use and aren't needed and don't bring additional complexity.

So that's how I think about that. And then I guess to take that, and by the way, once again to everyone, I'm not voicing necessarily opinions. I'm trying to ask the questions that will get the most out of Jeff's opinion and to really learn from him. So then what about all of the other assets in the real world? Stocks, obviously, bonds, all of these things. Do we end up in a world that we literally only invest in Bitcoin?

That's our sole asset because of the system that you've described. And by the way, I agree with you on the system. So it's a tough question, though, because people are not going to stop buying these other things. So that's why I said if you just follow economic rationale, it's well known. Ask any economist, do prices fall to the marginal cost of production? Is the reason your calculator app on your phone is free? And why aren't there a thousand other entrepreneurs offering free calculator apps? Because once any penny has been attacked, it goes to free and they move on to the next thing.

It's why the oxygen in your room is free. It's why a lot of these things become free. Now, can you regulate an industry in a certain country to stop that from happening or to slow that from happening yes you can for a time and then that industry is attacked by a different nation who hasn't regulated it and and marginal cost of production falls because of that it's the that is an economic foundational principle that everybody just should know right and marginal cost of production is falling exponentially because of technology That is an economic foundational principle that everybody just should know. And marginal cost of production is falling exponentially because of technology.

Exponentially. Look around you. Look around the AI that's coming. Open your eyes to what's happening. Meaning that every year, our life should get cheaper and more abundant to live. But the only way you will measure that system is from a system that has no manipulation in it. Otherwise, your life's going to get more expensive. So stocks, houses, all of these things

inside the existing economic system, you're measuring them in the fiat system that's being manipulated. They're all mismeasurements. Every single thing is a mismeasurement of what I just said. The only thing that's actually measuring it accurately is Bitcoin.

And inside that world, prices will fall to you forever. I agree 100% with everything you just said. But the next then natural question is for your average person who's living, I don't know, check to check or who has their savings in dollars, when do we get to a point or how do we get to a point when they could theoretically exit that system? Because I can't pay my kids tuition in Bitcoin.

I can't obviously pay. So this is why it's so hard to see and why it's going to take cycles to see if that was going to happen tomorrow like some people believe in bitcoin uh that would happen then then by extension everyone in venezuela would already be a bitcoiner or everyone in lebanon would already be a Bitcoin. But even inside those countries, you have maybe 5% people on Bitcoin or thinking through Bitcoin. You don't have 100%.

Why? Because a system that essentially steals from you and everything else, most people are yelling at that system, making it stronger, asking for more UBI, asking for more socialism, yelling at one side of the political extreme or the other, marching down streets, breaking windows, going home, and then all the windows are magically repaired with new fresh money. Essentially making the system that is penalizing them stronger.

And so your question is not a question of, your question is a human nature question, rather than a technology that could free them. Because right now, you don't have to wait. Right now, you have an open network that any single person on this planet can go start right now and start accumulating and be out and more and more so move themselves out of the existing system. And why I see so much hope and abundance is because I'm already largely outside of that system. In fact, I've said a couple times recently, until two years ago, I was talking about this, and I was a hypocrite. 90% of my time was on boards and everything else in the existing system, and I knew this, and I was talking about this on podcasts and likes. I wrote a book about it. It's largely coming true, and 90% of my time was in the fiat system. And I

realized, huh, if I'm not moving my time to the new system, then how could I expect others to? So I just moved 90% of my time into the new system. And what I can tell you is by moving my time into the the new system my life has got better in a result of i'm seeing the future unfold and i'm close to the entrepreneurs that are creating it it's super exciting i 100 respect that justin you're one of those i would love for you hey i should say dude I'm really excited to see you tomorrow and hang out. But second of all, yeah, go ahead. Because listen, people who don't know Justin, he's building Zion, but has basically, you know, had the opportunity to build on any protocol, build what he's building wherever. And he's chosen to do it on Bitcoin, largely using lightning. So I think your perspective is extremely valuable here.

I think, well, thank you very much for having me. And Jeff, thank you for all your insight. I think the big thing that I always think about, and I spend every day just speaking to creators is how can you more effectively gain value from your audience outside of the existing centralized systems, right? And by all means, it's through fiat. So for on Twitter and with subscriptions, it's with credit cards that go through 10 different companies in order to get that payment into your bank account eventually. And through lightning at this point, it's a simple transaction or you post something and someone gives you a zap. Right. And that's where the Noster folks had a really good branding.

But I think the thing that we still need to solve for is a cultural issue. I think that the other chains definitely have captured culture a little bit better. And I think Dan Held really was very acute in that is the speculation allows for culture to follow. I think this is one of the things that I mean, I'm thinking about every day I'm trying to solve for is how does Bitcoin evolve that cultural gap to get mainstream people involved? Because most of the things we talk about in these circles are very like it's the same people talking about the same things and not really expanding beyond that. So it's a question I wonder for Jeff, actually, like, Jeff, what do you think will be the thing that allows us to actually get into the mainstream and not be these fringes of society that think everything's breaking down? I think it's just a process. be even some of the things that I just said about prices falling to marginal cost of production, marginal cost of production moving exponentially.

And then we'll move directly back into a system that manipulates their time and effort and won't understand the second, third order effects of that. They will spend exact, they'll go right back and say, oh, but my house should go up every year and feed that system. Now, so that is just a matter of time. And it's a matter of perspective. I'll give you a framework. Now, this is not a great framework because it's from within a system, but it might help with what's happening here.

If you were an executive at Amazon, and I remember this conversation largely similar to, some people believe that, oh my God, all the stores are going to close tomorrow. And some people believe nobody would ever shop at Amazon in kind of 98, 99. So really polarized views, two different views on Amazon. If you were an executive at Amazon from 95 to 2010, versus an executive at Sears during the same time frame, you would have seen two different worlds. One world that was expanding hopeful growth, the other world that was collapsing harder and harder each year. If you were a user, all of those fights in between were irrelevant in the end. And in 2010 or whenever Sears closed, nobody cared. Nobody cared at all. That's what's happening in bitcoin um more and more

more and more use cases more and more development more and more excitement and a whole bunch of people living in the future that they're wanting to create and spending more time there and in the existing fiat world more and more surprises, proxy wars, control, removal of individual rights and freedoms, more and more. And that's going to continue and it's going to get worse. I wish it wasn't, but it's going to get worse. And so I think about all of the people who are building into this sector. I can't even tell you all of the use cases, just like I couldn't tell you the use cases of the internet. Jeff, just real quickly though, in your analogy, just from my understanding, are you comparing Sears to the federal government?

Not the federal government in this case, all fiat currencies. And that's why that abstraction level is why it's not even a really good use case. Because it is the system where every single person on this planet measures their time, their political structure, everything else. And when essentially

all money is, is information. It describes money isn't supposed to be worth a whole lot. It's supposed to describe purchasing power, and it's just information describing that connection. So when you have misinformation in money, and that misinformation in money has to exponentially expand to be able to pretend you're solvent, then you have to expect

misinformation everywhere in society. And everybody's looking through that misinformation. And you can argue, maybe I am too. Or you'd have to argue, I am too. And I do a lot of work to try to make sure that what I'm talking about is first principle sound. And then I can start building on a foundation that is more stable foundation in the future. So just to reset a little bit, if I can kind of summarize the past hour 15, it seems like we've really been focusing on a fiat system versus Bitcoin-based system. But would anyone else be interested in digging more into Bitcoin-based system versus rest of crypto? That's a yes. 100%.

Because, listen, I think that's where the conversation with Jeff and I started. Right. Yes, please. Right. Yeah. So from the little that I think we touched on it, I guess Jeff's main point was that none of these other systems offer the same level of decentralization, robustness, you know, sound governance. And that as a result, the logical thing to do is to, you know, keep your value stored in and build on top of Bitcoin because it has the best attributes. Now, then it seems that the controversy that comes in is with a lot of people who maybe they just don't care, they don't know about those

attributes, or they're just more interested in other functionality that's being offered by other protocols. So like I said, I'm a technologist, I'm not really interested in a lot of the DeFi stuff, I can see how it has value for people. But, you know, for example, I'm interested in privacy. And so I have been interested in things like Monero, Zcash, Grin, so on, so forth, because they offer privacy characteristics that are very, very difficult to get on Bitcoin. Yes, I'm aware of mixing and all of the different pieces of software, you know, that are available out there for improving Bitcoin privacy. But I would, you know, I would much rather use Monero than use a Bitcoin mixer. You know, that's my sort of my level of confidence in the privacy characteristics there.

So, you know, am I a bad person for using some of these other protocols, even though I really consider myself predominantly a Bitcoin. Jameson, let me just jump into that first. Again, from a first principle, you can push back on this if you want. So if you agree that Bitcoin is the only thing that effectively couldn't be nation-state attacked, it's going to be here no matter what, and other ones would be nation-state attacked. It's going to be here no matter what. And other ones would be nation-state attacked. Then if they got stronger,

they would be collapsed. Or even if you go one further, China shuts off GitHub, so some technology can't go there, or Apple. And you'd have to expect from a system that carries misinformation and can only thrive with more misinformation, you'd have to expect that if you lived in that path, that the next step, the second, third order effects of that decision would mean the state has to shut off some of these mixers

and everything else. Has to. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, I generally approach all of these things from an adversarial perspective that every authority is going to try to exert as much of their power as they can over any of these systems. Perfect. So if that's true and Bitcoin is the only thing that can't be shut down, I think about all of the layers on top of that that add privacy.

So when I think about what Fetty is doing and federated Chow e-cash or fedements i think about a layer on top of that that that is is connected to bitcoin but offers all of what you just talked about and so that's how i think about solving that problem in a different way on top of the layer that is most decentralized and secure and because of that and if you saw what was happening there, you would go, people are trying to stop something that was unstoppable five or 10 years ago, and they have no idea what's coming. So, and I get excited for it because what's coming essentially ensures the productivity flows to people, value creators, versus rent seekers,

is what that new system looks like. So I would say it sounds like probably one of the big differences between your perspective and others. You make the claim that Bitcoin can't be shut down. I agree that Bitcoin is not going to be shut down. I would disagree that it's the only one that can't be shut down. And this is kind of the laughable thing about this space, is that even networks like BSV that have like 10

nodes on them, they, even though they, you know, they're not censorship resistant, whatever, like some of these decentralized protocols, they only require a handful of people to keep operating the networks, even though the networks themselves are extremely weak. And I guess it just it seems like we haven't seen enough data of actual nation state attacks, like actually attacking these networks and shutting them down. Like as far as I know, the only networks that have ceased to exist. I think we lost Amos in there for a moment. Yeah. And one thing, Scott, and this is just, I think what's happening here is a lot of future perspective, where the world's going versus where it is right now. People are measuring a frame of a movie versus seeing where the movie ends.

They're doing the same thing in AI. That's why it was so easy to predict in my book where AI would be right now, because I'm looking at the movie playing out instead of a frame of the movie. There's a whole bunch of people surprised at where AI is right now, because they were looking at a frame of the movie. Similarly, in this conversation, people aren't looking at a perspective and in in jameson's in jameson's thing um uh thank you why would a nation state care about shutting down something with 10 nodes that doesn't have anybody using it they wouldn't they would go after the thing that that has the most risk to what they're what they're doing and that's why it's something that's bigger and stronger and more development moves to it.

It has to be pre-planned to withstand every one of those attacks, which only Bitcoin has. But Bitcoin wasn't always this strong. It was exponentially weaker historically. But Dan, it was designed in a way that the effects make it stronger and stronger and stronger. Everything was designed in a way. Could it have been attacked 10 years ago? I've been in space 10 years. I know how Bitcoin is designed. What I'm saying is your argument is that Bitcoin's robustness was so robust.

And I agree. It's the most robust crypto asset out there. By far, if I'm going to store wealth over a long period of time, it's going to be in Bitcoin for sure. Right. But the argument that only Bitcoin could survive, Bitcoin may or may not survive a government attack. It's got the best chance that we have.

And that's why I'm a fan of it. But it's objectively true that Bitcoin security budget was lower in the previous cycles before the price appreciated and before more transactions occurred on chain. So, you know, I mean, what is that objective level of security that we need? It's a really complex question, actually. Like, is it a percentage of flow or stock? Is it a threshold value? Nick Carter covered this at his MIT Bitcoin conference presentation back in 2019.

It's something that I've thought about as well. What's an appropriate level of security spend? And what's an appropriate level of security is a subjective thing. We don't know what that level is, but I do agree with you. And I agree with most Bitcoiners that we should over-opt optimize on security because we don't know what that level is. I think that's just a market clearing. And I think that the path here constantly puts more innovation around

lower cost energy. So it chases that and and and i think over time just because of fear and greed and markets um is it is it penalizes you to be a bitcoin miner you'd have to be counter-cyclical um and if you want to be a big bitcoin miner and and it penalizes the big as well because new technology comes out or new ASICs come out that give advantage to smaller players. If you see what's happening with Gridless and what's happening in Africa around energy, there's just this massive adoption all over the world that's decentralizing, making it

more and more secure. Jameson, I'm not sure if you are able, you got cut off before, so you can certainly try to jump back in. Also, actually, Jameson, I think you're the right person to ask this question. As a technologist and with your experience, is it possible for a nation state to attack the other protocols if they get large enough? Yeah, I mean, I think it's an interesting question. It's especially interesting that, you know, even Ripple, after being targeted by the SEC and delisted from a bunch of exchanges, still seems to be hanging in there pretty well. It's very difficult to talk about nation state attacks and governance of these different protocols because there's so many different variables in play. So you can look at like the mining censorship attack and how much that would cost. But really what I think it comes

down to is, you know, how many doors need to be kicked down by how many boots. And it can be difficult to quantify that. So, you know, especially if multiple first world nations got together and agreed to do some sort of coordinated attack on, you know, all of the centralized players and businesses in the space that could, it could cause a lot of damage, it could drive these things underground, so that the only networks that continue operating are those that can be run on Raspberry Pis in people's homes. Got it. We've added quite a few speakers here that haven't had an opportunity. Jeff, obviously, you've been listening since the beginning. Corey, glad you were able to make it, and David, of course. So any of you guys can feel free to jump in at any point here would love to uh vary the perspective here and if not then uh we'll continue Jeff I don't know how much

time uh you have left as I know that we kind of reserved an hour and we're still going so I want to be conscious of that as well yeah probably about 10 10 minutes I'd love to hear what Jeff Ross has to say. We've been waiting. Yeah, sorry what the two Jeffs makes it confusing, but it's been a great conversation. I think one thing, I mean, just because I've been kind of listening for the last hour from my perspective, I don't think Bitcoin and proof of stake crypto are competing with each other. And yet we have like tens of thousands of hours of rooms where people are arguing this. And I just don't think they are. And I thought Jeff did a good job of trying to bring it back to, you know, at one point, Jameson, I think you said, you know, the conversation shifted from talking about Bitcoin versus the government fiat currency system. And then we brought it back to Bitcoin versus crypto again. And I thought, Jeff Booth, your point was to basically have that be the focus of the conversation.

Bitcoin truly is competing with government fiat currency. You could also say it's competing with gold and silver. And I would say the other sort of smaller, now mostly obsolete proof of work cryptocurrencies, right? Crypto for itself, proof of stake crypto, I think is competing with other registered basically software companies. And they're just on a totally different plane. And so I think a lot of these conversations and arguments are basically people talking past each other. And it's actually, you know, when we get back down to what we believe about Bitcoin, I would say that everybody up on here on stage agrees with each other. The question is that we get the conflict when people start

talking about Bitcoin versus proof of stake crypto. I think it's healthier and more productive to kind of distinguish the two. So listen, if anyone wasn't here at the very beginning, you literally just laid out my premise for this entire conversation and sort of my premise for what sparked this conversation with Jeff in the first place, which was that I said, I believe Bitcoin and crypto are entirely separate asset classes and I don't view them through the same lens. And I think so. I mean, you basically just articulated that point arguably better than I did in the first place. But that literally, if anyone hasn't listened to the to the beginning, when this is recorded, you should go back because I laid that out entirely. Exactly what Jeff said. Jeff Booth, I would love to give you the chance to respond, obviously, since you have limited time.

Yeah, no, I totally agree with what Jeff said there. In fact, if you just carry what that means forward, it means every person in crypto is probably a Bitcoin holder, but every person in Bitcoin isn't a crypto holder. Is that fair? Very. Okay, now, what if some of the use cases that were in crypto started to emerge onto Bitcoin that were delivered in layer two and three that didn't sacrifice Bitcoin, would some of the people move from crypto to only Bitcoin? And we're just early in that. And that's what I'm saying is happening. And I just have a unique viewpoint in it

because I'm in front of it. And you shouldn't just trust that but but I would say I just like I laid when I laid out my book the movie that's playing forward and it's largely been correct um if it if I said that and saying some of the other things largely are largely correct, you might want to just look deeper into why I would say that and that thesis, because, because I wouldn't say it unless I really believed that it was true. Nothing to do with money, nothing to do with me getting wealthier.

I'm not looking at this from, from that. I'm looking at this as a system change, that that system is going to emerge and that entire system that we are in both is going to emerge and it's going to create a whole bunch of value more than money for society. I would want to be in that case, I would want to be in the right system. Yeah, I think we all wholly agree on that, Jeff, which just comes back, I guess, to my circular logic. So I don't want to bang this drum too much. But in that regard, it seems like maybe the others just got ahead of it and were first.

And so it had to be developed elsewhere for it to come back to Bitcoin. Right. Or some use cases might have been, yeah, exactly. Some use cases might have been yeah exactly some use cases might have been tried somewhere else and then realize that it would be centralized and then over time and bitcoin couldn't do that right none of those use cases could exist on bitcoin at the time so i understand all of the why people tried and all of these others complicating it further is i understand in a world where everybody is using essentially that manipulation money and looking through that manipulation or that misinformation,

why this would be a really confusing conversation. And Jeff, I know you need to go. So I don't know if you'd like to share any final thoughts that you might have, and then we'll go to Corey and to Tor. Yeah, I just want to listen to what Corey and Tor have to say, and then I'll drop off quietly. But thanks for having me here, Scott. And Jeff, I appreciate it, because I know that sometimes when you talk to me, I've experienced it's like trying to convince a child of things. Not so much.

This is a complicated topic. Okay, go ahead, Corey, please. Hey, Scott. Glad I was able to catch some of this and i was able to listen then here and there and catch some of the flavor of the conversation so uh yeah glad to be able to chime in here i wanted to go about five minutes back talking about this idea of uh you know ethereum people let's say just kind of use that as a proxy for non-Bitcoin crypto people being fine with being, you know, compared to software companies or not being compared to Bitcoin. And the people on this stage may have that perspective, but that is not the perspective

that is pushed by the Ethereum people, the Solana people, like whoever, but let's stick with Ethereum. Ethereum has to accrue reserve premium, like reserve monetary premium to exist in the long run, or it just will dwindle to zero against Bitcoin. If it's just actually thought of as oil as it was initially you know conceived of that's something that you just grab right before you use it you don't stockpile it you don't hold it for the long run so this whole narrative of the last couple of years of you know ethos sound money um you know basically taking the bitcoiners ridiculously hilarious own goal of, you know,

falling all over themselves for false models like stock to flow and thinking that that matters for some reason to value a model that has supply only and no demand and has the math wrong from the get go. And the Ethereans basically picked that up and said, oh, well, we can just, you know, change that little thing and make this deflationary and make this inflation close to zero or whatever. It really has caught on with a lot of people that don't understand what's going on here and don't understand the differences between these two assets and what they're for and

how they're constructed and how they are governed. And to say that everybody understands this today is just completely false. I saw an institutional money manager writing in a group yesterday, you know, basically saying like, I am 50-50 on BTC and ETH and I recommend that to people who ask me. I basically own both for the hard money reserve asset application and believe they both have strengths and weaknesses i see them as roughly equivalent on inflation and censorship resistance so to think that this is somehow we can all just get along when the coin bases of the world the andres and horowitz of the world the cons the consensus of the world the consensus conferences of the world the ethereum foundation and you know the bankless guys and of course you know the bitcoiners attacking bitcoiners uh are all sort of banding together and you know trying to promote

this eth is money too kind of thing it is an open competition with bitcoin and to deny that is just having your head in the sand. So just wanted to put that perspective out there. Tor, David, either of you feel free to jump in. Tor, then David. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. Just today, like an hour ago, I dropped our new Adamant Research report. It's the fifth report since 2012.

And I know you're close to wrapping up but would you mind if i share a little bit about it uh we're not even that close to wrapping up i'll actually run as long as uh people are interested so please feel free oh very cool yeah i'm really excited about it it was uh four months in the works and the whole idea the title is uh how to position for the bitcoin boom and the whole idea was to have something to be able to give to friends and family who you you feel like are kind of close potentially but need a nudge to kind of make this step into bitcoin because they don't really know how or what um and so we address um you know why would you care about bitcoin in the first place we're talking about blockchain analysis indicating undervaluation of bitcoin

kind of like creating this sense of like hey this is which i believe is true this is the beginning of a new bull market uh then addressing some concerns one of which i heard it i talked about here which is like yeah what, what if, you know, Bitcoin is seen as a threat to the dollar or other fiat currencies? Could Bitcoin see a legal crackdown? What if there's like large coin hordes that are being liquidated? Should we worry about that? What if the markets, the stock markets crash?

So those kind of things we talk about. And then we go into like clearing up some of the confusion around Bitcoin and crypto. Like what should I buy? Of course, the recommendation is of all cryptocurrencies, focus exclusively on Bitcoin, which we argue why that is. We also say that if you're going to invest, focus on Bitcoin first and then Bitcoin companies later with some pointers about Bitcoin startup investing. And then there's, you know, the whole store of value story that's also woven in there. Like that's the big driver of the Bitcoin price. That's also where we talk about the global macro situation. And then we have a section about Bitcoin adoption by nation states, which, by the way,

I just was editing just yesterday with the help of David Bailey and some other people. And then, you know, finally, we go into the practical matter of like how to build a position in Bitcoin, you know, how to have a long term strategy, dollar cost averaging. You know, for us, it's all kind of, we've all heard about it, but the idea is to bring it all together with lots of links to great resources. And then finally, there's a section

on how to hold Bitcoin with the different options and linking to a lot of the companies in the space and the wallets, etc. So yeah, it's 20 pages. It's free. I think this is the best that I could come up with. It's what I'm going to send to my family and my friends

to kind of let them know about this new bull market that's about to just take off, I think. I agree with that. By the way, if you have a tweet on that or anywhere that we can all check it out, please feel free to send it or link it to the top because I think that that would be an incredible resource and speaks to a lot of the problems that probably we're having even in this very conversation, which is education, right? We're speaking about very complicated topics that even amongst us can't gain

consensus to some degree. So imagine being just a normal person and trying to convince them. So please feel free to share that around here. I will retweet it or put it up above if you have it. And I see that you mentioned David Bailey. He's got his hand up over there. So clearly the two of you can take the stage here. Hey, what's up, everyone?

I'm on my way to the airport right now to go to BPI Summit in D.C. So I only got a handful of minutes before I got to jump. But I wanted to piggyback a little bit on what Corey was saying. And, you know, this is something that I've been putting a lot of thought into lately in terms of like, what what aspects of the crypto universe do we want at like, being built on top of or with Bitcoin. And, you know, I think the point has been kind of hit on plenty, but you know, proof, proof of stake is the system we currently have. And like, I think probably every person up here right now owns equity in companies. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with equity in companies. I mean, all of these tokens, they're all

unregistered securities. But there's really nothing wrong with an unregistered security, as long as the people who are operating in the unregistered security as long as the people who are operating in the unregistered security are operating it ethically and legally. So the point of what I'm trying to say is that, like, I think that Bitcoin is competing to be the soundest form of money. Fortunately, Bitcoin is like way far ahead of anything else out there for a whole host of reasons I don't need to list. But, you know, when we say Bitcoin can only very narrowly be used as money and none of this other activity, such as, you know, the creation and issuance of securities can happen within the

Bitcoin economy that exists. We conflate different value propositions with Ethereum, where now people look at these as two assets that they need to own, whereas if people were issuing securities on top of Bitcoin, securities on top of Bitcoin were tradable, etc., that value proposition wouldn't be there. And now all of a sudden you can only really compare ETH against Bitcoin on the terms of what is the best money and right now it's when you compare ETH against Bitcoin you're not comparing it on what's the best money you're comparing it against this entire ecosystem that exists that's built and possible on Ethereum and isn't on Bitcoin. I 100% agree with everything you just said, which goes back

to the initial premise once again. But why wasn't it built on Bitcoin in the first place? And why was it built in these other places? And why do they continue to lead in that regard? Yeah. So let me speak to that real quick, too, because I feel like I have a little bit of a perspective on this. The reason why is because we needed the block size wars to happen uh in order to give us a development path for people to pursue to build things and so like when i look at the block size war and i think like what was learned from that experience um what was learned is that you can't hard fork bitcoin and that bitcoin development ultimately is going to occur in layers and like that was a new i mean it wasn't new there were people who were saying that at and that Bitcoin development ultimately is going to occur in layers.

And like that was a new, I mean, it wasn't new. There were people who were saying that at the time, but like now that it's just a fact, whether you like it or not, you can't hard fork Bitcoin. Developing in that way is just now the only reality that exists. And so before that, you saw a bunch of people leave to go build their own protocol when they couldn't fork Bitcoin how they wanted to. And the incentives play out on their own. Like now people have a huge incentive to make Ethereum the only thing that exists or whatever protocol they're invested into because incentives are powerful so uh i think that like lightning was really a special thing where um you it really demonstrated that you know one of the applications that every blockchain was out

there trying to sell themselves on like scalability do y'all remember when like every blockchain just wanted to talk about their transactions per second um you know, so like, that was one of the selling points of any protocol. And then, you know, Bitcoin, utilizing this development path of we're going to build in layers, then just fucking smokes the scalability of any other protocol that's out there. And like, okay, now no one wants to sell themselves as the most scalable system anymore. So I think that we need to see that same process develop around all of these other features that other protocols are trying to use to differentiate themselves from Bitcoin and be like, oh, we're better than Bitcoin.

Because I think Bitcoin can do all of those things. So like if we, you know, I'm not saying all of those things are valuable, but like, I think it can do all of those things in theory. And so I think the more we can deprive the conflation of, you know, the value proposition of these other protocols and the more we can we can we can zero in on the value proposition of like, OK, is Ethereum a sounder monetary regime for its economy than Bitcoin is? I think the more clear Bitcoin strength, and I think Bitcoin wins out. And I'm very interested to see what happens with RGB protocol and Taro and some of know, some of these, these things that have been talked about for a long time, but, um, uh, have just started kind of getting built and put live.

And I think ordinals to a degree are like the edge of that conversation. Uh, though I do realize that there's many different opinions on that, but I, I, um, uh, uh, I, I do, I am seeing it start to happen. Let's just put it like that. I am seeing it start to happen. I don't think there's a single person on this stage who would disagree that if all of it was built on Bitcoin, was adopted and was working, that we would all choose to do it there. Right. So I think it goes back to Dan, maybe it was you that was saying it before, but we're talking about, you know, a theoretical future versus the actual present. And so for me, that's a bit hard to parse. Corey, I see you lifted your mark and please feel free. Let me let me just jump in there. Of course, you would still have people trying to raise some money and print their own token because they can benefit from power of the printing press and

being able to print their own money and of course they would still grab a bunch of you know mlm promoters for their telegram groups and run bots on twitter and throw events and and do the whole thing to pump the price of their token regardless of whether you could do the stuff on bitcoin of course they would because they can because right but people are going to do it. But the future that David's somewhat addressing here is a future where all this is built on Bitcoin. And I asked Jeff Booth this earlier in the conversation, we're just going to end up a bunch of people doing it on Bitcoin. That's not going to change the human behavior of people creating tokens. Just like there's penny stocks and pump and dump stocks.

I'm not saying that I'm not making a value judgment about it. I'm just saying that we have to be honest and say that that will happen then on Bitcoin as the base layer. Oh, 100 percent. And it already has. Right. We've had a bunch of scams built on and around Bitcoin already. Right. In various degrees of centralization. And I think we're just, you know, if you want to use Jeff's, you know, analogy or framework of the moment in time versus like where we're going, it's just the truth is the information asymmetry is so dramatic right now with a few million people understanding this stuff somewhat versus 8 billion people that you're going to have people pumping, you know, layer one

protocols, smart contracts, this, that, the other, you know, at least for the next, I mean, at least another decade. Hard for me to imagine that it wouldn't be another 20 years. Right. But then do you disagree with David that eventually we should have smart contracts and all of these things on Bitcoin and that there's a way to do that because it's kind of, those are kind of conflicting views. They're not conflicting. That's already happening. I'm just saying it's going to take a long ass time for that to play out. Sorry, I thought your tone was saying that there was an issue with smart contracts and this technology. I can state it more clearly. Even if Bitcoin could do literally everything that altcoiners wanted to do and could have done that since 2015, people would still create competing blockchains and market the shit out of them because they got to print the tokens. I think humans are going to human. I don't think that anybody here disagrees with that sentiment.

Yeah. And it's also like, how are they going to market it? Like, what are they going to be out there marketing? And I think the less things that you can give them, you know, as long as they can conflate Bitcoin is limited in its capabilities, you're giving them something to market. And the truth is that it's not limited in its capabilities. It just has a different approach to how those capabilities get built out over time.

I actually agree with that, David. I think the question then is how many people actually understand that or know that? Is that an echo chamber narrative? Because I think even, for example, my parents, who I literally annoy about Bitcoin every single day, they don't even understand that narrative, right? So is this something that we're talking about arguing within our very small insular community versus what other people may understand and we think should be important to them? I know, Jameson, you sort of spoke to a bunch of that earlier, right? Most of these things just aren't important to your average person. Yeah, you know, this definitely brings to mind my article from a month or so ago. And one of the many points that I made about that is that, you know, the community that we see on social media is only a tiny fraction of the folks who are actually using these technologies.

So it's interesting to see, you know, all of these experts on the stage. I think we have a very good, deep understanding of these different systems. And we can point out why logically you should want to do stuff with Bitcoin. But, you know, the vast majority of people, as I said before, don't have the time to go that deep into these protocols. And they're going to be driven by the incentives, not by the first principles arguments. And so, you know, the reason why we see so much adoption and demand for these other protocols is because they have better UX. You know, some of the things that you can do on Bitcoin that are more like what you can do with other protocols. They're just less developed and tend not to have the same user experience. So, you know, people are going to take whatever the path of least resistance is for them to accomplish things.

Right, which is the same argument when, you know, we've kind of talked about third world countries and people suffering from inflation. And at the end of the day, those people are just going to download the thing that gets them a stable coin faster, right? I mean, anyone can speak to this, but that's the argument that I think is very clear, is that there's a reason that these other things, to some degree, whether right or wrong,

exist and are being used more frequently. I mean, Udi said earlier that Litecoin transactions, I think, were being used for payment more than Bitcoin. I cannot see that. And I have no idea if that's true. You know, what's a crazy statistic is that the most popular protocol to use Tether on is Tron. I mean, that's correct because it's cheap.

That's simply because it's cheap. Yeah, I was just in Turkey. I'm trying to like settle a transaction. They're like, can you pay in Tether on Tron? By many multiples, David. David, it's by many, many multiples. And now if you use any centralized exchange, basically, if you go and you say you want to withdraw Tether or USDC,

the default setting is now Tron, not ERC20. And that exactly illustrates my point point is that there's a reason that people are sending usdt on tron they don't give a shit about the tech they don't care about the security it's cheaper right so how do we switch that narrative and explain to them why it would matter to do this on bitcoin and will we have stable coins that people are going to be using on bitcoin is the next natural question yeah i mean it's not so much about the narrative. I think it's about actually stopping the arguing on social media and building something that's better. You know, even if you do come up with a better narrative, I think it's going to be limited in the scope of who it's

going to reach, like I said, because the vast majority of people who are using these systems aren't even on social media talking about them. They just see them as a tool. They don't see them as a revolution, even though in many cases, you know, these are revolutionary new systems that are being developed. And so at the end of the day, it just comes down to the user experience. And we've been arguing, I think, about what will happen in the long term. And I think that is kind of a different argument that's looking at sort of the long term game theory and incentives. But for the short term, over the next five, 10 years, whatever, it seems to me like the user experience is going to really dominate adoption. Yeah, I mean, here's an interesting theoretical question. David, I saw you wanted to jump in, jump in right after. Interesting theoretical question. If we've all agreed that Bitcoin should, and I do agree, should be viewed as a competitor to fiat and to the existing system, should we have stable coins, which there's a major the existing system should we have stable coins which there's a

major demand for should we have stable coins on bitcoin yeah the you know personally i'm not a big fan of stable coins on bitcoin but i think that uh nothing's going to teach you that your stable coin is not really stable until um it rugs you and that'll be a good learning lesson for a lot of people all at the same time. You know, on the UI UX, I mean, I totally agree. Like it does come down to what are the like, what's the easiest tool for people to use to accomplish the job they want to accomplish? The one thing that Bitcoin has in UI UX better than anything else is that we have the biggest network effects. We have we have 50 to 100 million people that are using this protocol. And so in terms of the UI, it's like, how do you like the UI of being able to send money to other people that you

actually want to interact with? That's pretty fucking nice UI. So you know, we, I think there are great risks that come to Bitcoin if we seed, you know, that. I mean, if we seed some of our network effects to other people. But, yeah, I mean, I think absolutely this shit's got to be built. We've got to have a builder focused mentality and we've got to compete. Guys, I'm at the airport. Much respect. Thanks for having me up. Thank you, man.

Later. Bye. Yeah. So listen, I see that a lot of people have had to go. I'll continue this conversation, like I said. But that that brings me then I just to pose that same question. If we know, being intellectually honest, that the perhaps you could say the killer app or the largest use case for crypto is a stable coin, regardless of the network that it's being sent on, should we develop those on Bitcoin because we want all of this development on Bitcoin, right? Because that's fiat, right?

It's just digital fiat. Well, we are a long way away from, I think, Bitcoin being a unit of account that is stable enough in a value that most people are going to want to denominate their goods and services in it. So if the next best thing is the dollar, because that happens to be the largest currency out there, then that's what the demand is going to be for if we're talking about

quote-un, stable value. So whether that's like a synthetic stable coin, which seems to be a lot riskier, or if it's just centralized, then it doesn't really matter, I think, what rails it runs on, other than from perhaps a technical standpoint of how quickly do people get confirmation that they've received that payment. So I can certainly see stablecoins happening on Lightning, and perhaps with enough work, they can give Tron USD a run for its money. Well, guys, yeah. Oh, I see. Let me go ahead and add Ran here, and we'll keep this going for a few minutes. I do want to point out, Tor,

I pinned your report up above for anyone who was listening and heard him talking about that. Please check that out. I think I'm kind of like trying to have ADHD and scan through it as we're also talking here. But I think it looks like an incredible resource. Ran, Foss, welcome. Welcome, guys.

I'm on the way to Consensus. I'm sitting at the airport listening to you guys. It's a little bit noisier, so I'll jump in when things are going on. But I've been listening. What a great conversation. Thank you. Foss, what's up? Hi, Scott. Yeah, hey, thanks've been listening. What a great conversation. Thank you. Foss. What's up? Hi Scott. Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me. Sorry.

Star of the show. Can you guys hear me? That was weird. I can hear you, but that was amazing. I don't know what you just did. I'm not sure if it's Trudeau. Trudeau is, Trudeau is now listening to you guys. Okay. So, so anyway, yeah, I just wanted to add, look, learn a lot on these conversations. Nothing I'm going to add is going to be any value from the,

the technical side, but I will say this, Gresham's law, point out Gresham's law and understand the difference between a currency, a stable coin

and Bitcoin. I don't have to repeat that to you guys. People will spend the shitty currency before they spend the store of value. That's Gresham's law, essentially. But at the end of the day, it's gaining traction for a lot of people in different ways. And I'm humbled. A lot of you guys know who Novogratz is, whether you like him or hate him. He just finally sent out something, not finally, but he sent out something where Bitcoin is credit default swap

insurance on sovereign debt. Now, I know the argument here is about stable coins, but sovereign debt is a fact, a fiat contract. And if you're going to, if you're going to protect the most valuable, your most valuable time and money, or time and energy rather, in a digital asset, that's bitcoin and bitcoin only with its scarcity and decentralization so i'm pretty sure jeff hit on all these i just want to say scott i love everything you're doing i wanted to thank you for the invite i was here late but got a ton of info from david bailey and jameson and uh thanks for thanks for the invite up talk to you later brother yeah it's interesting you you kind of talk about Novogratz and Tor. I'll let you go in one second. I see you lifted your mic. We had him here two weeks ago alongside Chris Giancarlo.

And actually, you could see those light bulbs going off during the conversation, which was very interesting. It shows you how smart Novo is, because as I kind of talk about strong opinions loosely held, it's amazing when you see people sort of evolve in their views and continue there. I think Tor just disappeared right after he was lifting his mic. Well, so on that basis, like this is the key thing. And I want to stress this to anybody who's listening. This isn't a FOSS promo, but you can actually calculate an intrinsic value of Bitcoin using credit default swap markets globally, real-time insurance markets on the likelihood of failure of any fiat. And if you believe the thesis that Bitcoin is a credit default swap contract, essentially on

a basket of fiats, all other fiat's then the conversation of stable coins becomes a little mute moot moot moot and you you realize Gresham's law will start to kick in and so it's we got to be careful as a community in my opinion to try and design something for everybody versus the people who are going to use it with big money and big portfolios to hedge and no counterparty risk. All of these things are not true of any stable coin that I'm aware of. But at the end of the day, this is the difference between centralization and decentralization and Bitcoin and all other digital assets that exist in the digital asset ecosystem. So happy to talk about that at length on another podcast. You guys

have, you know, don't want to hear from some idiot Canadian and the last, uh, at the last part of the thing, my favorite idiot Canadian. All right, then let's do it a full, we'll do a full on balloon. You, me and, uh, and, uh, Steve, uh, who's a credit guy, we'll do a whole thing on why Bitcoin is credit default swap insurance on a basket of fiat. And I'll lay out my valuation methodology that shows you that Bitcoin trading at anything less than $125,000 US per Bitcoin is stupid, stupid cheap. Okay? And that's using real-time insurance markets on the probability of default of the great old American USA. I don't want it to happen, but people are setting markets

and I can use that information to calculate an intrinsic value of Bitcoin. So XOXO from your attic, Canada signing off. Thanks, Scott. See you, buddy. Boss, you're the best, man. We're 100% going to do that. Hey, Justin, assuming that you're still there and listening,

I want to circle back to the question that I asked you before, and then we sort of went back to Jeff Booth. But once again, you've chosen to build Zion on Bitcoin, utilizing the Lightning Network when you sort of had any option. I want to dig more into why as an entrepreneur, you are actively doing this on Bitcoin. So we've had a lot of people waxing poetic about it, but you're actually doing it. Yeah. And I know I got kind of distracted into the whole like fiat conversation on my last comment. So I think that the original vision

three years ago when I kind of came out of semi-retirement to do this thing was, okay, if you're a creator on the internet and you're trying to gain value from your followers and you want to be able to create an actual business on top of that without a third party, what is the available technology that allows you to do that? And you have all these different blockchains that say, okay, I can transfer these tokens to you. I can have these tokens. And if the tokens inflate value, you can sell them, get some cash and do that.

And everything always led back to Bitcoin. And it felt, and it was to me, the simplest and most elegant way. If you're a consumer and you're watching a piece of content from someone that you love on the internet, if you could send consumer and you're watching a piece of content from someone that you love on the internet, if you could send them half a penny worth of value or one tenth of a penny worth of value for every minute that you watch them, or you saw something that made you laugh and maybe

you want to send them a hundred Satoshis that I think in today's value is again like half, maybe a cent total. Is that possible with anything on the internet and there wasn't anything there just wasn't an elegant solution other than bitcoin so for me i think it's because i'm definitely not as smart as all the people that have been on stage i was just looking for the simplest most elegant solution and it seems that bitcoin being the store of value being the most elegant solution makes the most sense if you want to transfer value from me to you as a creator. Bitcoin's the right option to do that.

There's nothing better out there. And there was nothing that I could find that would do it in a peer-to-peer way with very low fees. Lightning seemed to be the only option when I looked at everything. So that was my personal decision of why did I decide to build this business on Bitcoin? Because ultimately, it's the value transfer between a creator and a fan, and even more so, maybe a fan and a fan. That all makes perfect sense, which is the next question, which I ask you every single time we sit down for a podcast, which is, I guess, how's it going? And what are

the challenges? Because I think flat out when we were talking in vegas i said so how's that going you know utilizing the lightning network and you said there were some challenges with how many people are using it and implementing it yeah i mean the truth is not a lot of people are using this stuff and that the the truth is that we have to find this like adoption curve and this is why i mentioned a little bit earlier is that you have to first convince people that bitcoin is a thing that you can transfer money to people. Then you have to get over the hurdle of telling them to download a new application. Then you have to get over the hurdle to now convince the creator that has all of their money in fiat to actually, oh, no, no, Bitcoin is the new way that you're going to earn money. So I think we're very early. And I think this is a five to 10 year time

horizon, not a one to two year time horizon. And I'm three years into this already. So how's it going? It's slow and steady. But I think my main objective is the mainstream creators. And that's why we've talked a lot about who's on our cap table, who's using Zion, who are the people there. It's just it's a different group. It's not the hardcore, I guess, Bitcoin crowd. It's more the new age creator crowd. And it's slow and steady. By no means are we anywhere near where I'd like this to be. But I think it's going to work in the end. One of those guys on your cap table just became the quarterback of the New York Jets. Oh, let's go, baby. Let's go. Jets for Super Bowl this year. I was texting him yesterday, so I'm stoked. I think Jets are going to win this year.

I would love to see it. That would be amazing. He's talking about disruption. That would be amazing. Disruption of the NFL. Guys, I think we've pretty much beaten this horse pretty good. I want to absolutely thank the incredible list of speakers. Of course, we started with just myself, Jeff, and Jameson Lopp, and Dan Held, and then it spiraled, I would like to think, under control instead of out of control. But I think I always appreciate when we can have an honest and friendly conversation about

these things rather than doing it in a toxic and aggressive environment, which is, I think, what this devolves down to quite often. And that's what we're going to continue to try to do, obviously, on these spaces every Tuesday. And if we continue to do that, a lot of you guys, I'll probably see you at a consensus in the next couple days. Jameson, are you going to consensus? No consensus. I'll be in Miami for the... Okay. I'll see you in Miami. I'll see you in Miami instead. Well, Ran and Justin, I'll see both of you guys tomorrow. Everybody else, thank you for tuning in.

The recording will be available once again. Please share it with people. I think it's an extremely valuable conversation and it will also be available, of course, on Spotify and Apple under the Wolf of Wall Street podcast. Thank you, everybody, for joining, for sticking with us for two hours. For me, that's about as long as my ADD attention span can handle. So see you guys all next week. Thank you, Scott.