What Bitcoin Did - Bitcoin Culture vs Wall Street | Thomas Pacchia

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Thomas Pacchia is the co-founder of Pubkey. In this episode, we get into the evolving culture of Bitcoin, why number-go-up narratives overshadow deeper principles like privacy, self-sovereignty, and freedom. Thomas explains why he believes Bitcoin risks becoming disconnected from its original ethos, and the importance of maintaining a robust, culturally-driven Bitcoin community. We also discuss the increasing role of institutions, treasuries, and ETFs in Bitcoin, how regulatory frameworks like the Patriot Act and Bank Secrecy Act challenge financial privacy, and why these battles are crucial for Bitcoin's future. We also discuss Pubkey and it's expansion into DC and Bitcoin culture, and adoption on a global scale. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Thomas Pacchia: https://x.com/tpacchia

I do think that we are underestimating the power of culture, you know, winning the day when it comes to Bitcoin. I think we lose all of that if it's just about number go up. I hope that the U.S. is able to tack back a little bit and, you know, respect, you know, constitutional rights for privacy. Because that's how you know the most about somebody is by figuring out what they spend their money on. It's going to be really hard. I think that that's the final boss. These programs are woefully inefficient. The cartels still have big banks banking them.

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My name's Thomas. How you doing? Your name's Thomas. Yeah. The proprietor of this joint. Yes. Do you want me to turn this off or do you want the background music on? We should definitely turn it off.

I'll turn it off. Yeah, thank you. I like the really old school radio though. It's good. Yeah. You've been quoted on this show more than anyone else, I think, at this point. Really? At least five times.

It's my favorite quote in Bitcoin, which is we're all going to be rich and depressed because the project failed. Well, you want to be on a boat if that's the case. Tell me. It's better than being, you know, poor and depressed, I suppose. That's true. That's very true. What do you mean?

Explain the point. So it's funny. I've gotten, I've had a lot of people, we're talking about that in Oslo. during the Freedom Forum that came up when we were having just some beers and Peter was there. So that was, I think you, me, Peter, Jamie McAvitty and Marty Bentz,

in Austin. Yeah, it was in, no, it was in Fort Worth. Fort Worth, yeah. And I forget exactly what we were talking about. I think it was like Ordinals, you know, MEMPools. It was a mining show, I think. But yeah, I kind of threw like a stink bomb in the conversation and said,

do you think that, you know, the price of Bitcoin continues to just rip with like ETFs and things like that. But the project, the underpinnings of the project and the promise and the potential fail. What percentage likelihood do you think that is? I think very high. I agree. This is one of my biggest concerns about Bitcoin, is that it's not really being used as freedom money by many people anymore. No, there are edge cases, you know, I think HRF does a really good job. Sort of like, you know, highlighting cases where this does make a lot of sense as like freedom money. And, like, I think the underlying principles are definitely still there. But, you know, particularly around some of the, like, core debate that we're seeing.

And then also just diving into the history of, you know, the Internet and what happens with IP and removing some privacy preserving features very early on. You see some of that stuff being reflected in, you know, the history is sort of rhyming with Bitcoin. And it's also the use cases, right? Number go up is great. That's a marketing thing for the most. part. And you hope that people that benefit from the number go up, reinvest and really help drive some of the founding principles that were very important in the early days when you had like the cipher punks into the libertarian cohorts in the early days focusing on being your own bank

and self-sovereignty and privacy preserving technologies. We're just not there for it right now, that seems like with a lot of the Bitcoin treasuries, the public Bitcoin mining companies, the ETFs, number go up is definitely, I think, getting too much of the airtime. And it makes sense. Everybody likes making money. Everyone likes being right about it as well with an investment thesis and Bitcoiners that have poured a lot of time and energy into this thing for, you know, five or 10 years. There's also fatigue that sets in. Like it's one catastrophe after another, whether it's a New York Times article or it's a fork war or something like that. A pretend debate. Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's it's rough. It can be exhausting. So I think a lot of

those people that were some of the, you know, real champions of, you know, the self-sovereignty side of things for for Bitcoin are either burned out or they've moved on to other things. Each each new class comes with pluses and minuses. I don't know, you're kind of like the old man on the porch like yelling at the at the kids. Kids don't get. get it these days. And that's just going to happen with any, you know, new technology. You have different cultures and different communities. I half agree with Shinobi that Bitcoin culture doesn't exist. I think it does exist. It's just very fractured and it comes from lots of different perspectives. There's not one like homogeneous like Bitcoin culture or community. But the older

generations seem to care about these things a lot more than the new generations. And you also have state level attacks, you have regulatory attacks, AML KYC, you know, the attack on, you know, samurai, tornado cash, which I guess is Bitcoin adjacent. And I'm blanking on the other one. That was a big one. Wasabi? Yeah, there's Wasabi. There was the mixer BTC fog. Roman, I think, is still sort of in trial limbo. But we'll see how it plays out. Well, he got convicted, I think. Yeah, and now he's like waiting for appeal. Yes. Yeah. It's funny that you say like every new comes with its like trade-offs. And like, so if you go back to, I don't know what you kind of call the 2017 class,

like, because everyone was like the ICO crew who then ended up coming Bitcoiners. Yeah, but that was the start of the real Bitcoin toxic maxi crew as well. True. In response to all the ICO bullshit. Yeah, that drove, that drove a real hardening of the Bitcoin community in a way as well. They had been ending along enough. They were, you know, paying attention to the block size wars, which ultimately came down to a social vector that was. one that day and an economic vector. But that was a strong hardening. And then in 2020,

you had the COVID class. I feel that's almost like the digital gold class. Yes. I think so. So I don't know who the first person to really say this was, but I think VJ Boy Party did a good, like he was kind of a big instrumental part of that sort of narrative with Bullish case for Bitcoin. And I was actually having this conversation with him. And I feel like I understand why he says that. And I love Vijay. So I'm not having to go with it. But I feel like, that narrative is sometimes misleading and potentially like undersells what Bitcoin truly is. It's almost like being like a plane as a flying horse. Like it does have the properties of gold and it is better than gold in a lot of ways. But like it's not all it can do. And I feel like

that has kind of led to this narrative where Bitcoin's only a store of value. The reason it's better than gold is you don't have to chip some off to buy a beer, right? You don't have to shave it at the bar. Like, you know, it's cross-border, it's instantaneous. It has all the properties of modern money with the properties of, you know, gold over the years. So it does, it does leave the second bit out too frequently. When people sell it to other people like gold, and Novogratz has been doing this for a long time. I think Paul Tudor Jones has been doing this for a long time. We have a lot gold bugs. I think Trace Mayer started with a gold blog and then discovered Bitcoin and saw that it was superior technology. But they leave out the monetary aspects of gold when they're,

when they're typically talking about it just as a sort of value. Yeah, I totally agree. But then like, What is the new class? I don't think we really have one. I think the new class is the micro-strategy class. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's the sailor stance. Yeah. You know, people that are sort of championing these Bitcoin treasuries. And, you know, it does make sense, especially given the geopolitical backdrop, inflation, you know, the macro picture that we're looking at. I understand why these companies are doing these things, but I haven't seen a lot of these companies orange-pilling people, right? How many people are running a node or even have a hardware wallet after getting into a it through micro strategy. It kind of has some like Wall Street bets, uh, uh, vibes to it.

You know, like, you know, GameStop and AMC. And this system's wrong. And, you know, these players are going to be successful in the system because it's wrong. We'll see how all the treasuries deal with short sellers and things like that. But, you know, it'll be an interesting battle. But they're not really diving into the like core tenants of what got Bitcoin to the point where it's interesting for the companies. Yeah. You know, to sailors credit, micro strategy, strategies credit. You know, they hosted Op return Will Foxley's conference

with Blockspace. Okay. So that was a lot of core developers. That was a lot of developers, you know, a lot of arguments about, you know, layer two and things like that, which was good. But it wasn't, it wasn't that public facing, right? It sort of like was an internal conversation that had some publicity through Blockspace, which I think they did a fantastic

job. But, you know, I haven't seen, I haven't seen the same push from a lot of other interested parties pursuing these Bitcoin treasuries and paper Bitcoin or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. And it's funny because that has, since I go into Bitcoin, that's definitely changed. And I think almost everyone who buys Bitcoin for the first time will leave it on exchange for a period of time. But like it was when I was getting to Bitcoin, Trace Mayer had his thing on Jan 3rd, I can't remember what it was called, where everyone got the keys off in exchange. And like he was doing that from a trader's perspective, but still like that message was constantly there. And then the step was literally take Bitcoin from an exchange onto a hardware

wallet and then maybe run a node. But like now, are you really going to sell micro strategy, have a tax hit, buy Bitcoin, buy Bitcoin, then buy, then like buy a hardware wallet, put Bitcoin on a hardware wallet. The steps have been so much removed that like I don't know if people who are buying microstarched today are really Bitcoiners and maybe they'll never be Bitcoin. It looks like the GBTC trade, right, with the premium and the discount. It's a good trade for a lot of folks with the MNAV premium. So I think that that makes sense. I also think that a lot of these trades are the product of financial friction, and you can exploit that dislocation for a certain period of time.

Trades like this do collapse over a long enough period of time. I don't know if that's 10 years or 10 months, but I think that that trade does collapse at a certain point, and you're not left with the Bitcoin. You could almost make the case that there's a linear path for an ETF redemption in kind that could be more beneficial to bitcoinsers, you know, than these plays, you know, continuing to gobble up lots and lots of Bitcoin. We have a Bitcoin ETF in Australia that's in kind redemption. Really?

Yeah. Oh, that's great. I think it was the first one. Have you used it? No, I'm not an ETF guy. Yeah. But like if I'm a tax advantage reason, if I had one, I would use it. So when I was at Fidelity, one of the things that I, they were very proud of an internal, I guess,

like, program or product that they offered where they, you could get physical delivery of gold. So I wanted to look into that to see if it was something that, like, they were, like, the Bitcoin incubator could draft off of and like model, you know, it was just a buy and hold wallet in the early days when I was there. But trying to figure out if we could, you know, mirror the product that they had for gold delivery. So I ended up researching that for a while and it was so insanely complicated. He still needed like a receiver bank and like you had to pick it up and armored cars and all these things. But I mean, you don't need any of that with Bitcoin. Do you think they will do this with Bitcoin?

I think it's possible. I think that Lummis has been talking about this. You know, there are other folks as well. I think Hester Purse, she was here a couple of weeks ago. It came up during that talk. We haven't released that yet, but that was with Ross Stevens. Oh, nice. That was a great talk.

So that came up as like one of the next big things that they want to discuss. Makes sense. I mean, it's a bearer asset, right? It's a commodity asset. It sits in the ETF. You should be able to take it in kinds. It's pretty easy to do. Yeah.

You can even have certain mechanisms, right? where it has to go to an exchange first. And then from the exchange, you can withdraw it. That gets a bit cumbersome and clunky. Why would you need that for, like, KYC reason? Yeah, I think that that's how BlackRock would get comfortable with it, right? They don't want to, I don't think that Black Rock would want to be, you know, redeeming people in kind like that.

But like, if you had a partner exchange, I could see. It's at Coinbase anyway. It's at Coinbase anyway. Yeah, precisely. So if there was a partner exchange that was facilitating that in the KYCA ML, the legal, the legal risk, regulatory, compliance, lawyers are never getting out of this unless we're successful in taking down the BSA. And right now there's not a single politician in the U.S. talking about going after the BSA.

There's only a handful going after the Patriot Act. We might be able to get, what is it, Tom Massey, the guy who's like, yeah, maybe. And this also came up with when Hester Purse was here. It is kind of curious. The two big ones in the U.S. that are the main structure regulations for AML and KYC are the Patriot Act and the Bank Secrecy Act. Fuck them both.

Fuck them both. For different reasons, but, you know, both of them are awful. There are some politicians and they're French right now. It's not like a widely accepted, you know, use of time in Washington to go after the Patriot Act, but nobody touches the BSA. It's just, it's too difficult. It's the same, it's the same narratives with Bitcoin. It doesn't matter. Like, a bad guy might use it.

Yeah. And that's, you know, enough for everybody, just give all their personal information to Coinbase or Ledger and have them get hacked and, you know, I still get these stupid phone calls every night. Would there be any appetite within the government here to get rid of the Patriot? Because like it's so glaringly, obviously evil. There's a little bit. You know, the TSA came out of it. Like, I think it's, yeah, pretty unpopular. And it doesn't fit for the internet age, right? It doesn't fit with Bitcoin. It doesn't fit

with, you know, AI and everything that's in the pipeline. You know, I hope that the U.S. is to tack back a little bit and you know respect you know constitutional rights for privacy particularly around you know you know anybody's finances because that's how you know the most about somebody is by figuring out what they spend their money on yep it's going to be really hard i think that that's the final boss um is the BSA the Patriot Act has some fringe politicians as far as i can tell it doesn't really have that much traction but you know i would love to see like bitcoin policy institute or some of the other folks in dc that are writing about this zero in on that issue because it leads to direct harm, right? Like when you have your personal

information tied, especially to Bitcoin or to, you know, other cryptocurrencies or whatever, they're putting more people in harm's way than they're preventing. Yeah. These, these programs are woefully inefficient. The cartels still have big banks banking them. It's, it's ridiculous. Well, Peter von Valkenberg wrote a huge piece, I don't know, a year ago or something like that on the Bank Secrecy Act. I don't know if they ever, like, took that any further, but like that has, a guess kind of started amongst these organizations. Yeah, yeah, I hope so. I hope they get traction.

There's a lot to do, right? You know, we'd like some tax reform, some tax clarity, accounting principles for these corporations. I think we're going to see that get pushed through just because these corporations are getting so large that they're going to be able to throw more weight around those items. The problem with the BSA and the Patriot Act is, you know, large-scale financial institutions really like this stuff because they can spend on compliance departments. they can collect all this information, that information is valuable, and it prevents challengers, right?

They get this regulatory moat. So there are lots of reasons why they secretly love this stuff. What's your take on the Genius Act that just passed? It's mostly stable coins. Like, there's some stuff relevant to exchanges. You know, I didn't follow it too closely. I followed it more from the political lens. And at what point are the Democrats going to, you know, drop the bullshit and realize that this is a new technology.

it's a tool. And from my view, the Democrats are pushing this into a partisan issue more than the Republicans are because they won't touch it because, you know, the bad guy likes it and, you know, the Republicans are kind of involved. So, you know, they want to look at Bitcoin. Like, you know, it's like calling a hammer Republican. And this is going to persist as long as the Democrats allow it to. So I looked at the, I paid attention to the Genius Act and its passage more out of more interest for how the DNC was going to vote on this. And they got in the way for a while. And there's all these little negotiations

about what they want. But I think that they pulled it into the partisan battle a little bit more than I would have liked to see them. One of the interesting things from that was, do you ever listen to All In? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I kind of hate it, but I listen every week. It's like sex in the city for guys.

Yeah, exactly. But I was listening to it this week. And David Sachs came out and said, like someone asked him why they can't share the interest that they get from the T-bills and stuff. Yeah. And David Sets came out and like explicitly said, basically bankers said no, which is super interesting.

Because like they're obviously seeing this as a threat to the banking system, which it kind of is. But like where do you think stable coins fit on this like freedom money aspect? I think that's a really like it's quite a tricky question because I get why you want to push Bitcoin to the people in like the global South, but also Tether is super fucking useful for them. Yeah. I mean, it's freedom money for people that are not in America, I suppose.

It's a, I don't know, it has to be on like a comparative scale. So I think it's really beneficial for people in, you know, the global south to have access to dollars. They don't have the volatility. Dollars are a much bigger brand than Bitcoin. Bitcoin's a big brand, but it's the dollar. So the proliferation of that is extremely beneficial to the U.S. on like a geopolitical stage. And it's useful to individuals, more useful than Bitcoin for individuals that are

trying to hold on to it. Like they don't really have the means to invest in something like Bitcoin, take the volatility and hold it for long periods of time. So it makes sense. I wouldn't say that it's free to money for Americans. I think it's more of a tool to propagate the value of the dollar globally, particularly in high inflationary periods. That's a pretty good, like, you know, sinkhole to have.

So that'll continue, I think, at a pretty rapid clip. I really like Paolo's, you know, thoughts on the matter. You know, he doesn't think Tether's going to be around forever. Like, you know, he thinks. Has he said that? I think so. I think that there, it was him or it might have been somebody else. But, you know, I think that it collapses to Bitcoin eventually.

Yeah. Is maybe it was somebody else. I'm pretty sure it was Powell. I could believe it was him. Like he's, I know people can have the criticisms about him, but I think he's a Bitcoin. Yeah, for sure. It's a Bitcoin company. Yeah.

I mean, you know, they're moving aggressively. They have a hell of Bitcoin. They have a lot of Bitcoin. It's the Bifenex team, right? Ifinex. You know, I think that they were here so early in such a really, really big way that they certainly understand it. Oh, for sure. But the utility, it's the most profitable company in human history on a per employee basis.

So things are working and I think that you do that trade until it collapses. Do you think they totally stumbled into that as a business model? No, I think they're really smart guys. I think that it got much bigger than they were expecting a lot faster. But I think that they understood the utility. When did Tether start? Was it like 2016, 2017? It was... Because the narrative I heard...

It was 15 or 16. When I first, like, got into Bitcoin, the narrative of that was always, like, inter-exchange settlement. Because it's when Bitcoin fees were crazy high. Yeah. And people were, like, moving Bitcoin to shit coins to move to another exchange, to put it back in, like, whatever. I think what it had to do with was a lot of the jurisdictional arbitrage.

So if Bitcoin exchanges were showing, you know, massively dislocated rates, you had... I don't think it was Sam and the Kim Cheap premium, but I think it was attacking stuff like that. Yeah, right. Because I do also remember, I think it was like some Korean exchange had a crazy Bitcoin exchange rate at the time. Yeah, that makes it. Always way more expensive. And the problem with that, you couldn't exploit that arbitrage efficiently using traditional banking rails. Because you have to wait for a wire.

Yeah. That's why there was that massive dislocation. It actually had to do with the correspondent banking network. But now it's to the point where I forget the number. Jack said it when we were at BPI last time. But the number of people that are onboarding. is wild. Like tether?

Tether. I'm not surprised. I'm pretty sure he said it was like, I might have this wrong. I'll check before I put the show out, but like 250,000 people a week or something ridiculous like that. That's insane.

It's insane. Yeah, we got to check that math. I don't know. There might be more humans. I'm pretty sure that was right. More customers than humans on the planet. Otherwise, this is all getting cut out. I want to go back to like the very start of this conversation.

You said you were in Oslo while we were all in Vegas. Like, I think those two conferences couldn't be more different. Yeah. What was it like? Because that's like a real freedom money conference. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what Alex and the HRF team have put together here is incredible. For a really long time, Bitcoin didn't have that much to do with HRF.

It was the activist. And then Bitcoin starts to slowly creep in as a tool that helps them, you know, do their work. Prioritizing safety and efficiency and privacy and all these things in authoritarian governments. it's it's just a really elegant fit with the work that a lot of the activists are doing. So the evolution of that over the years to the point where, you know, Alex and his team are getting some of the, you know, top core developers, top Noster developers in the world together with activists so that they can build their products with them in mind is really fascinating. So they did a, they did a Noster event and everybody was really hyped up about Noster at the time. and, you know, an activist, you know, kicks off with a brief talk about it's not ready for game time, right? Like, for prime time.

There are security holes in Noster that need to be addressed if we're going to tell somebody that this tool can be trusted in a very high-stakes situation. Are these things like privacy and stuff like that? Yeah, privacy, you know, account access, losing your private key. Nostr's super cool, but it's way too early. It's too clunky, particularly when the stakes are as high as they are for a lot of these activists. that is a sobering talk. And it's, it's, it's, uh, it was amazing that it gets delivered to the activists and to the developers at the same time because that's what they ended up talking about. Like how do I like, what are the bugs here? What are the features that you need to see to actually

put it to a point where this is safer to use than signal, safer to use than, you know, X or Twitter or whatever. Yeah. So that's real progress. So I love what HRF is doing. We saw a lot of that. The Bitcoin cohort for the Oslo Freedom Forum is bigger every single year. You know, there was a beef steak this year. There wasn't one in Vegas. There wasn't one in Vegas. First time ever. Damn. I know. I'm sorry. It was a really good one too. Was it? Yeah. He got a whole cow. Oh, shit. Yeah, it was awesome. Did you finish it? I don't know. It was a cow. It was a little cow. It wasn't like, it wasn't like a baby cow. It wasn't veal, but I don't think it was like a full, full,

full blown adult cow. So with Noster, Are you pretty bearish on it for now, then? I'm not bearish on it for now. It's just it's going to take some time for it to hopefully realize its potential. I think it's great. But, you know, it's like what we were talking about before. One of the biggest barriers for people adopting Bitcoin was private key management. Yeah.

And actually interacting with the protocol itself. Noster feels a lot like early Bitcoin. So, you know, how you, if we're going to get something like that to the point where it's our digital identity and our digital representation of your voice and yourself online, that's pretty fucking valuable, right? The stakes are almost higher than it is with Bitcoin because you can have multiple wallets and you can spread them out and there's hardware wallets and, you know, the attack surface is much smaller. But it still comes down to that private key. splitting it up in a way that you would split up, let's say, a Bitcoin wallet. If I have like, you know, 20 Bitcoin wallets and 20 private keys, then, you know, the attack surface is, you know, much more complicated for the whole thing.

But if you have one private key, you know, for your digital identity, that gets a little scary. Yeah. So I think that it's in the early phases and people have been, you know, talking about this and working on, you know, issues like this and many more for a while. Some of the other stuff are just features, right? The Nostr ecosystem is still quite small. They're mostly bitcoins. We're kind of talking to each other.

Even X can feel that way. Oh, 100%. So, like, on X, you have lots of people that know absolutely nothing about Bitcoin, but they don't engage in that conversation because that's Bitcoin Twitter. That's what Noster feels like right now. So growing that tent and making it much more attractive to folks, it's really difficult. It's a tech scaling issue. Yeah.

powerful it's very cool there are some functions that that work really well but um you know i think it's going to take you know a couple of years to to sort out if some of the the the critical solves can be delivered and if people give a shit i mean there's a lot of competition i've never really been on blue sky that looks like a shit show on that on threads i checked in one time to us to see like when it leaked what that pub key was going to dc i I checked in there and it was like, it was like the Grandpa Simpson meme when he walks into the bar and sees Bart and then walks straight back out. Did you hear the conversation I had with Paul Stort and Gladstein recently? I have not.

I want to see that one. I've seen Clippies. It was hard work. Yeah. Because Paul makes everything difficult. He does. I find it hard because he's a nice guy. He is a nice guy.

And I don't think he's doing it purposely. Like as in, I don't think he's just attacking Bitcoin for the sake of attacking Bitcoin. I think he's got a huge chip on his shoulder about drive chains. Well, yeah. He also has a company, a VC back company. Totally.

So I think there's a number of reasons he does it. But like one of the things that Alex was bringing up a lot is like e-cash. Yeah. I've used e-cash a bit, not loads. I really like it. And I basically would never get better against anything Callie's doing

because he's a fucking badass. I agree. But like how do you think that kind of fits into the like freedom money aspect of Bitcoin? I think the functionality is insane. Like, you know, Kashi, Fettiments, e-cash. I'll be honest, this is a world that I haven't dabbled with that much, maybe the same or a little bit less than you have.

I've played with it a bunch. I believe that there's been some transactions, some test transactions here at PubKee using it as well. I will use it tonight if we get some beers. Yeah, absolutely. That sounds great. I'd love to see that because I haven't had enough hands-on experience with it. I think it's fantastic.

I think Paul's dead wrong about this. You know, Cash has been around for two years. Two years? Two and a half years maybe. But even still, like, it was literally coded by Cali over a weekend. Like, this isn't like a huge VC back company. He's kind of done this on his own. And he's got to an insane point very quickly.

I think he has a bunch of developers now. I'm sure he does now. I think the team is pretty robust. Yeah, I'm sure that's true now. But I know when he started, it was literally him. For sure. You're wearing your cheat code thing. He wasn't here this year at Cheatcode, but he was the year before.

And I remember on the second day, which is meant to be like the day we just go and have fun at the football and drink beers, Callie was sat inside in the clubhouse on his laptop, like tapping away. You don't bet again. I remember that. That's back when he was still wearing the full, like, face covering. He's still doing that, though, right? Sometimes. I think at big conferences.

Some conferences, he'll let it all hang out. Fair enough. It's easier to raise money if they can see your face. face. Yeah, that's true. He's not made, I was going to say, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Sorry, Callie. But like I really like cashier. I like what he's doing. But I kind of find it a hard, and he, I think he would also be the first admit this. It's kind of a hard thing to square away in the sense that it's like, it is custodial. Yeah. Like it might be really private, really good. It works, but it is like a custodial tradeoff. And like, are we sacrificing something

to have like a freedom money future with this? Uh, yeah. I think so. Is that trade off worthwhile? Potentially. I mean, you know, some of the privacy solutions, right, there were varying degrees of custodial aspects to Wasabi and Samurai as well. You know, Wasabi would take fees out of like, you know, out of your wallet to pay for the mixing services and things like that. That's a sliding scale of custody. It's like a partially custodial solution in a way.

Yeah, because like you were still self-custia on Wasabi. Like you just, when you sent it to mix, they would take it. Yeah, they just take some. Yeah. But, like, they weren't taking it out of your wallet. It was when you sent a transaction to mix for Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like they had the ability to step in and take.

Early on, though, some of the mix, because I think there was volatility in the mixing fees, depending on how much uses there was. So, like, you know, it could drain wallets in the early days. And they fixed a lot of that stuff. It's a good product. There's no shade at wasabi. But, you know, I think that the tradeoffs are pretty clear.

And, you know, you still have to go through in most cases, most of the Bitcoin has bought through K-Y-C-A-M-L compliant exchanges. The tracking software is good enough. You have to be pretty skilled, right? You're talking about like a Mr. Hoddle or somebody like that that, you know, has the confidence and capability to obfuscate sort of that chain of funds. Yeah. Because it's not just doing the mixing.

It's what happens after. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then if they're all tainted coins and they just decide that all these coins that came out of this mixer are now like tainted and commingled with, you know, XYZ bad guy that they don't like from the day. Yeah, exactly. So the attack factors are things that we like, you know, poured over for years. I think that they're still there. I think that there's

a lot less people that view that fight as something, you know, worth fighting for. And I think a big offset of that are, you know, it's what we're talking about before. I think that there's fatigue. And I think the number go up is like, you know, when people get tired, and the numbers going up, like, you know, how incentivized are you to keep fighting for, like, the ideals? And there's great people, Eric Carson, like, lots of folks that are still talking about these things. I do a little bit.

But the reality is that, you know, life is hard enough. And I think a lot of people are going to opt out and, you know, sort of simple sailor. Yeah, I think that's true. And like, we were talking before we did this show about the orange-pilling problem. Yeah. Like, why do you think that exists? Because I feel like it's a new thing.

thing. So let me just give some context. So like if we did this show and this was all about like Bitcoin treasury companies, it would do really fucking well. And then because we're not talking about that and we're talking about like privacy and freedom money, it won't do so well. I'll come on later and we can talk about Bitcoin treasury companies another day. But these are the reasons that I got into Bitcoin was like obviously it's really nice to get rich from something. But like I genuinely care about like the freedom money aspects of Bitcoin. Why do you think we're struggling to make more people care about that? Does it just not scale as an idea?

It's a really good question. The intellectual curiosity has to persist for a really long time because you can come for the marketing side. The number go up is the biggest, the best marketing department that Bitcoin has. It's extremely effective. To stick around for the freedom of money, for the self-sovereignty, the privacy preserving elements that could be there if you dive in requires you to dive into the technical economic, social underpinnings of how this stuff works. Most people just don't have the capabilities,

even for one of those to do a deep dive, right? Like, let's say somebody really is interested in the social mechanics or the political philosophy of how Bitcoin works. They can dive into that and not really understand the tech or the economic side and get pretty far, but they're missing a tremendous amount of why it works and why they should care and why they should dive in. To get somebody to, you know, really buy into something that is sort of like a lifelong, you know, uh, uh, exercise in, uh, being a student and like getting super heady academics with topics that you're uncomfortable with. I was a lawyer and a history major. When I first, you know, started, you know, looking into Bitcoin, I spent a really long time with no background whatsoever trying to

understand as much of the technical side as possible because that's the bedrock. And then, you know, the economic principles that Satoshi overlaid and, you know, the evolution of some of those principles as it pertains to say let's say like bitcoin mining and mining pools and transaction fees that that's a that's a really big commitment um so it's twofold do we have the right chirp us the right like you know old guard that is making that a requirement um and do you have a receptive audience that wants to take go down that path you know for every every flush out of every cycle when we talked about this a little bit earlier with the ICO craze. A lot of people dabbled aggressively in all coins and ICOs. And, you know, let's say 100 got washed out and they said, fuck this. I'm never going back to

that. Maybe 10 of them, you know, became bitcointers and decided to double down. Yeah. And I know, literally, I remember getting to the end of 2017. Like, to be fair, I, so I first got into it in like 2016 and then through 2017, I was just doing pure shit coining. Yeah. Drew. What was your favorite? I had. What was the worst dick kicking you used to stay?

ticking was one called modem. Modem? I don't know if you remember it. I don't even remember that one. It was like logistics on a blockchain, bro. I love it. Where can't am I mess? You can't anymore.

It went to zero. It was one of you that actually went to zero. But like the whole time I was getting more and more interested in Bitcoin. And at least I was denominating what I was doing in Bitcoin. I had that part at least right. But I remember at the end of it being like, I've told everyone I could possibly talk to over the last year about at the time, sorry, Ethereum. and as well as like Bitcoin.

And at the end of the year, I was like, fuck, I was so wrong. I was like, who was right? Who was right the whole time? Like, where's the signal? And it was Pierre Oshard. And I remember just going back and like reading the entire Nakamoto Institute.

And that was like my change. Yeah. It was incredible. It was like, but like, but I, yeah, for sure. But it's like who, I don't know, like, who the people who are doing the orange peeling are now. Like, I'm trying. Yeah.

But like, you have to show a decent amount of interest to sit down this to an hour. long podcast. Yeah. Like, how do you get like that touchpoint with normal people? Uh, I think, look, pub keeps trying, right? Like, we, we, we try to focus on, uh, maybe 60, 70% entertainment. It's why it's in a pub. Um, we try to, uh, make it as, um, comfortable and, um, you know, uh, fun and entertaining as possible. And then you can kind of hide the orange pill in peanut butter, like you're giving a dog medicine or something. Yeah. Um, you know, I think Peter's doing a really good job with Rail Bedford as well.

For sure. And, you know, both of the projects kind of bury the Bitcoin stuff, at least on first glance. I actually think he, like, just, sorry to him through it, but like, I think it's more than just Rail Bedford. I think everything he's doing in Bedford is changing it. For sure. But you have to look under the hood with him, right?

It's not, there are some Easter eggs. Pubke and Bedford are very similar in this regard. There are like Easter eggs where Bitcoiners identify this. Bitcoiners know that that's a Bitcoin company. But if people are just going to a football match at the park or, you know, coming in for a burger and a beer here, and they don't have that frame of reference, it's just, it's just a nice day out, right? Like, the bar is comfortable. The games are good, and that's fantastic. Yeah.

But if you get into it and you look under the hood and it's just like, you know, what are these Easter eggs about? Like, what are they talking about in that back room? Why did Peeway to raise all this money from those, those gorgeous twins? Like, you know, then that's the. element where curiosity is a much better start to the conversation. Yeah. When a no-coiner asked the, or a pre-coiner asked the first question, that is a far higher quality conversation than if, you know, we just go out and say, like, you really ought to

buy some Bitcoin. Totally. Like, the world's going to a shit, and this is the only salvation. That's an off-putting weird conversation. Yes. Right? And in my experience, it's really rare to have that conversation get traction. But if they ask the first question, if somebody pays with Bitcoin at the bar, you know, and there's a group of people and they're like, what was that, was that a Bitcoin transaction? And like, you know, then there's the, has that happened? All the time. All the time. Yeah. That's very cool. If the room is packed in the back and we're talking about, you know, nerd shit back there, like, you know, every single time we host an event, there'll be a couple of people at the bar. Maybe, you know, it's just guys catching up or, you know, a date or.

you know, somebody by themselves, they'll pick up the beer and they'll go into the back and sit down just to see what they're talking about. Yeah. Some of it might just sound like, you know, an alien language and they don't stick around and pay attention to it. Maybe it's interesting to them, maybe not. But like, you know, just having that element potentially introduced somebody to something and you're in the position to maybe strike a chord with that individual, that really helps. Yeah. I don't know how many people are becoming Bitcoiners because of the the treasuries or because of what they see on CNBC or certainly not New York Times or Wall Street Journal.

They're still out there terrifying people that this is like, you know, drug dealer money. We've been, I think, ineffective in advancing that element of the conversation. I mean, you've been on Fox News? I have. A couple of times, right? A couple of times. They just wanted to talk about Trump, though. Yeah, of course.

Well, maybe Trump is the guy. A little bit of Bitcoin, actually. That's not true. A couple of the hits they were interested. But one guy knew what he was talking about and was really curious. The other guy was a little bit older. That was my favorite one. He was the old English guy, right?

Yeah. And he was like, you can't pay with Bitcoin. Who's incredible? Yeah. And I fucked up the math. I think I, I think he's like, how much is like a burger and a beer? And I just was like, I don't know, like $10,000. And it was like $1,000 or something up the time.

Oh, well. I mean, no one's going to pull you up on that. Definitely not his. He was doing math on live television is not my forte. Yeah. It's not easy. I refuse to do mass on the podcast. Because I've done it before and done the exact same thing.

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powering the Bitcoin network. They're also providing cutting edge computing resources for AI all backed by renewable energy. We've been working with their founders Dan and Will for quite some time now and have been really impressed with their values, especially their commitment to local communities and sustainable computing power. So whether you're interested in mining Bitcoin or harnessing AI compute power, Iran is setting the standard. Visit iron.com to learn more, which is iri-n.com. I do want to talk about Pubkey, but we're going to bring Jercon in a minute to talk to that.

Cool. Yeah, get them on. But before we do, let's talk just a little bit about New York. I mean, Joe, you can come in for this if you want. New York. He looks so sad to be coming on the podcast. I know. I make him do it all the time. Get a beer. good at it. Get yourself a coaster. The first time I came to Pubkey, this table was still being

made. That was wild. That's when Peter hit Michael Sondinstein with a two by four. Yeah, this, yeah, that was a fucking great interview. This table was like, I swear about a foot thicker when we first used it. Uh, yeah, because it was still, it was unfinished. No, this was all jagged edges and it still had the barrier around it. Oh, man. They made that table up here and you promised me it'd be finished before we got here we were sprinting it was like i promised thomas it it was insane we were sprinting but when they sanded this thing down they put like they put plastic wrap around the table yeah the amount of sawdust that this threw so when they finally finished it and polished it down we got up here and we're like great this is an uninhabitable space now

I'm like completely fucked. It's all right. Many such things. It's a little big. It is big. It's a big table. I was worried that the legs are going to collapse. No, it's a great table.

It's not too big. I mean, it's like half the size of the room, but it's not too big. It's good for Beirut. Cheers. Who are you, Jack? Why are you here? I like a little cold beverage on a hot, sticky day.

It's a nice time wearing headphones. I find it distracting. I lock in my ADHD benefits from the headphones. It feels like I'm on an airplane. or something. What wearing the headphones does? Yeah. I can just have like a zone in. I can zone in easier. Yeah. I'm distracted. Yeah, but they don't look good

on a bald head, so my podcast, no headphones. And then you get this thing on the top of the head. Yeah, I really do. You know what about that? Wearing headphones for, you know, you get like the podcast or divot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the gamers. That's real. No, it's definitely real. Is it? Yeah, 100%. What? That's your little fontanelle.

Your fontanelle? Yeah, you're fontanelle. keep your damn hands off my font and stuff. It's like the soft spot for like little babies. Introduce stuff, Jack. Yeah. I'm one of the pubkey bros. I'm one of the puppy idiots.

Thomas's partner. He came to me with this brilliant idea. I said, no. I said that sounds terrible. How did you guys know each other? Through a mutual friend. Okay. And I used to have a cafe wine bar that he used to come into.

And he would come in with his little. colored shirt. It was very cute. He had hair like Ellen DeGeneres. He was about 50 pounds heavier than he is now. And he was like guys guys can I talk to you about Bitcoin Lord and Savior Bitcoin. You really should get a Bitcoin ATM in here. And I was like dude, get your fat little friend out of here. I don't want to hear anything. Such a sweet guy. I always think of Thomas like so fondly he was such like a such a sweet guy big smile on his face. Bitcoiners are like that.

They're like, what's that? Who are the guys who go, like, knocking around on doors? Jehovah's Witnesses. They're like Jehovah's Witnesses. Like, very sweet, like Mormons kind of thing. You're like that. It is true. Yeah, we are kind of like the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yeah. I stopped that, though. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Like we did the, we tried to do comedy at the hot style takeover in Vegas. That was fucking great. I just saw just blank stairs. And like the only people laughing.

were people who work at PubKit. Wait, did you do comedy as well? I was the fat guy in the beginning. No, I know you're the fat guy, but I didn't get, I didn't get there to like the, um, you know, like I did do like a little opening like segment. I came out on stage. I was like, hey, how we doing?

I guess it wasn't comedy. There was a couple like, you know, singers, but they did not land. I just was looking out of the crowd, like people were like, just crickets. Yeah, that's brutal. That was a great event, though. I've said a few times.

I think the bit miners don't really know, like, what's a laugh at, maybe. You were there at the first one. too, right? In Nashville? I am not funny, but this has happened many times. What people haven't laughed at you? Yeah. Well, I mean, the one in Nashville, we had David Lucas from Kill Tony.

Yeah, that was rough. I thought it was good. I don't think people told him the right vibe. They don't like inappropriate. They're family people. They're like, but these events are held at night, you know, at bars. Yeah. Like at 8 o'clock, you know.

Not the one in Nashville. That was in the afternoon. And the first thing he came out, like, there were a load of kids sat in the front row, and he was like, you should all have been a boy. I was like, in Vegas, too. There was a front row. There was a kid, you know. But I think that.

It's a family thing, Bitcoin. The first one was good for sure, the one in Nashville. But I think the event you guys did in Vegas might be the best, like, Bitcoin side event I've ever been to. Oh, thank you. I think it's really cool that it's like, it's kind of getting a bit weird again. And I'm all here for the weirdness. Yeah, totally.

Yeah. It was like a, like, a Bitcoin talent show. Yeah. Or lack of time. Just like anyone, you know, you got a thing you want to do if you want to read some poetry, like get on up here. Yeah. You got to kill time somehow. Yeah.

And Jamato is a good host. Yeah, for sure. He's a great host. For sure. He's very Vegas. He fits in perfectly in Vegas. For sure. He was in his element.

I'm sad that I missed it. He doesn't really gamble, though. It's about the, it's a work event. It's about the culture. I lost my family. I think culture always wins. And I disagree with Shinobi. And Mr. Hoddle, I think, understands my side and Shinobi's side on this.

But I do think that we are underestimating the power of culture, you know, winning the day when it comes to Bitcoin. Yeah. I think we lose all of that if it's just about number go up. But highlighting, you know, there are little things. I think if you look at Bitcoin as an industry and you did something like a fertility rate within Bitcoin, I think that Bitcoin is probably stack up against lawyers and like bankers. Like, you know, there's more and more kids at every single conference I go to. you know, just there's a value set.

And that changes internationally. But like within the U.S., Bitcoin community or whatever you want to call it, there is a certain value set there. And that changes when you go to Europe or Asia or South America, Africa. But they have their own unique value or their set of values or things that they prioritize why they, you know, are into something like Bitcoin in the first place and what they hope to achieve for themselves and their family. I think Germany is like the perfect example of that. Like, German Bitcoiners are fucking great, but they're really different to American Bitcoin. Very.

They're like real cypherpunk bitcoiners. Yes. Whereas like, I think America has become like super financialized Bitcoiners. Yeah, I think so. But it's even different. It's, uh-huh. They're not the same everywhere? There are, there are, there are threads that are the same.

We're all really weird. The Germans still want to like homesteaders. There's definitely like, homesteaders and want to like have a farm. I mean, probably. There's definitely like an underlying shared autism between all Bitcoin. Yeah, for sure. But even within the U.S., like, you know, the New York scene is very different from the Houston scene. Yeah.

Right. Like, you know, you get to, like, oil and gas and, like, the energy touchpoints with mining. Here in New York is going to be much more financialized. San Francisco is going to be very different as well. That's going to be more about, like, startup culture and, you know, chasing VCs, begging for 10 minutes of their time in an elevator and stuff like that. For sure. Let's talk New York.

Yeah. What's going on? You guys have got a election going on. on the moment, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So who is this? What is this for? Mayor of New York. So what's happening right now is the primary. Okay. And I actually posted about it this morning. This is great because we can learn together. You're in New Yorker. You should know this shit. I'm like, where do you vote? I've never voted for mayor. So early voting's happening now. What's what's today? I think today is voting. No, tomorrow, the 24th is the voting day.

But voting day is now early voting plus voting day. So you have like a week to vote. Right now, they're doing the primaries. But in New York, it's a near certainty that the Democrat nominee is going to win mayor and governor. Is that Adams? So Adams was a Democrat. He's an independent now. Okay. And he's still running. The Republican nominee, I think, is Curtis Slewa, who is the Guardian Angels, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I always forget. It's like the red berets. They like, you know, went in kind of like a biker gang and cleaned up the subways in like the 80s and 90s and stuff. Is this like, is it true that New York is just run by the mob, essentially? Uh, not really anymore, no.

Is this what that was, though? Yeah, well, sort of. Like, back in, like, the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was pretty, it was pretty rough. Guardian Angels were, they were like a rag tag group of guys. There were more like vigilantes. Yeah, and they wore uniform and they patrolled the subway cars. So, the mob in uniform? They were not the mob.

They were guys who did karate. More like a biker gang. Okay, yeah. So the reason that's, like, relevant to Bitcoin is there's been a lot of stuff promised by Adams on the Bitcoin side, right? Yeah, he hasn't really done it. any of it, though. In terms of like, but what about the Bitbon thing?

Was that not? He's never been here, to my knowledge. The Bitbon thing was, he wanted to implement that for New York, there, right? I don't believe the mayor has the authority to do that. They can... Did he talk about it, though? He did talk about it at Gracie Mansion a couple of weeks ago or a month ago when he had the, like, Crypto Summit thing.

It was like a luncheon or something. That's where he introduced that concept. But I think that the mayor has to just make a recommendation to the comp controller, and then the comptroller would have more of a say in pushing that through. Oh, so it's a bit of like a nothing promise. Yeah, kind of. So in terms of Bitcoin, this like mayoral election doesn't really matter. No.

Oh, okay. I thought there was actually more at stake with that. And what about like all the shitty laws New York has around Bitcoin? That's more on a state level than a city level. Okay. So the governor's race would be much more impactful. If a Bitcoin or were in in the governor's chair, the governor has direct oversight of the New York Department of Financial Services.

they might not be able to completely repeal the Bit license, but they can make really strong recommendations. They can replace the commissioner of the NYDFS and install somebody that would effectively do that. The governor's race is much more important than New York City. And is there any chance of that actually happening? Yeah, absolutely. Soon.

So that primary, I think, happens later this year. Okay. So I believe Hockel is going to run again. she's the incumbent. So, you know, this goes back to what I was just saying. Like, the primary is basically the general. So if you have a challenger from the Democratic Party able to unseat Hockel from that position, then that individual is probably got a through line to the governor's office.

And, you know, we'll see what happens there. Does the Bitlicense play have any impact on Pubkey? Not so much. There's a carve out for, for merchants to accept Bitcoin for goods and services. We're not doing any exchanging. It's more along the lines of a money service business. So, and then also with lightning transactions,

there's an open-ended question as to whether or not running a lightning node triggers some of these MSB money transmission laws in the first place. You know, we designed with Evan Kulutis and Zeus's help, we designed, he's fantastic. He helped us set up the entire system here at Pubkey. Shout out to Zeus and Evan for sure. But, you know, we have basically a cul-de-sac where the outbound transactions have an extremely high limit. Something like, you know, hundreds of bitcoins to send a routing transaction.

We're not the best, you know, network participants because of that, but we have to do that to stay on the right side of the bit license. Yeah, damn. Okay, so let's talk about Pub Key. You guys are expanding. This is now all public, right? Yeah. So tell everyone what you're doing. We're going to DC next.

We are actively scouting the next three locations. Oh, I didn't know that. At the moment, at the moment, one of the three will be in the U.S., the other two will be international. Very cool. And we have a couple of other pop-ups. So there's Pubkey pop-ups. There's Pub-key residencies. There are no franchises yet where somebody else can basically license the brand and, you know,

will help them get stood up, but they handle the operations. that's coming probably next year. And then there's basically just wholly owned corporate pub keys. DC is a big one for us. It's going to be massive as compared to Pubkey, NYC. NYC is about 2,200 square feet. DC is 12,000. It's going to have a proper-

Across two floors. It's going to have a proper restaurant, two bars, event space. It's going to have two bars. Two bars. It has three bars. It has three bars. Damn. That's a little hidden bar.

Oh, members only. And like, what's the plan with DC then? What's the restaurant going to be? Aren't you tired? I'm exhausted. Jeez. So, why are you not doing any of the work, Jack? No, I pick out the drapes and the barstools and stuff.

Had to create. I was creative. No, that's not true. He's doing a ton of works. It's a lot. We're a small team. Like, it kind of hit me when we did Oslo, Vegas, kept New York running and, you know, continued to make progress in building out D.C.

It's pretty incredible for a small team to pull that off. that week. You say it's a small team, but it's definitely growing. I've met like four people this trip that I've never met before. We're hiring, we're expanding, you know, thanks to, you know, our supporters and our backers. We're in a good spot. So DC, the target in D.C. are really staffers, interns, lobbyists, policymakers, the Bitcoin community, D.C. residents. We want to do the same thing on a bigger scale in D.C. that we accomplished here. But they're different cities, right? So to have it be hyper local and fit D.C., it's not going to be the same, like, New York dive bar that, like, you know, private equity folks and New Yorkers love, no-in-love.

It's going to fit D.C., which is a little bit more event-driven, definitely more in the policy and regulatory realm. You know, we hope that we're going to be able to facilitate curated conversations around Bitcoin because those staffers and interns and lobbyists are the ones. that are writing this stuff for the policymakers. Not everybody's going to be like Ted Cruz and Cynthia Lummis and actually get into the weeds and understand Bitcoin. I think those two are probably the best example of politicians, policymakers that actually understand a fair amount of the underpinning technology. Gillibrand seems to understand it quite well.

Jillabrend as well, Richie Torres as well. There are many. There are many. But like I was really impressed. Ted Cruz does understand mining and Lummiss is in like a class of her own. Yeah, she knows what's close to. But that is true. Jill Brand has been here, you know,

Lumas has been here, Torres has been here. Those three, like, definitely have a much deeper level of understanding. I think it's unrealistic to get, like, Pelosi and Schumer to that level. Or, you know, Mitch McConnell, who's no longer there, but, like, whatever. It's the staffers and the interns that get the project. It's like, hey, young kid, come over here and need you to write something about Bitcoin. I want it to be positive or negative. Well, where do they go, right?

they go to some of the policy institutes they do their online research and they see the ft in the wall street journal in the new york times they go on twitter and it's a fucking shit show like you know we want to be able to facilitate a place where we're hosting events we're helping curate the conversation with you know the bitcoin policy institute and coin center and you're going to co-locate with bitcoin policy institute's headquarters is going to be in pub key we're not announcing that until tomorrow but i think this won't be out before tomorrow there we go that's very cool Yeah. And like, so obviously they're the reasons why DC. I always thought it was going to be Philly next.

You always talked about Philly? Well, it was for a while. It was for a while. Like, the capabilities that we had. And the people who live there are just the fucking worst. Shout out to all the Philly listeners. There's a really good crew in Philly, the Bitcoin John and Makeda and Andrew Hans. Has Matt Kita got his drink here yet with Joe Squaw?

No, not yet. That's coming. Is it happening? Yeah. I think that they're in touch. I saw him reply to one of his tweets, but I didn't know if it was actually happening. Yeah. No, I believe it's in motion. God, he's been working on that for almost a year at this point.

So, you know, it was Philly for a little bit in terms of our organic growth, just what we were accomplishing here. And I would say the financial realities of Philadelphia, that was a better fit for us. We had supporters come in and say the conversations in D.C., you know, Bitcoin is becoming a really, impactful topic. And we saw that. This happened before the elections, but, you know, with the elections at the presidential level, a senator in Ohio, you know, Bernie Moreno unseats Sherrod Brown, who was one of the longest, I'd say, like, lie lieutenants of Elizabeth Warren and her war against Bitcoin. The impact is real. So both sides are paying attention. And there's a lot of, I would say, you know, dark money from broader crypto and ripple swirling around and it's getting

really confusing. So if we can help elevate the great work that, you know, Bitcoin Policy Institute and other folks are doing there, give it a home and invite people in to, you know, have some beers and some good food to help facilitate that, then, you know, I'd consider a success. Totally. It's important stuff to do. Is the ripple money still flowing like it was? Are they still, like, attacking Bitcoin in the same way? They got a lot of money. I know they got a lot of money. They make their wrong. But they do. They do. That is a little cheat code. It's a great one. But are they still attacking Bitcoin? You know, there have been some positive overtures. I've heard conflicting reports. I think the administration and David Sacks put some distance. I think they were plowing a lot of money in. And then they put some distance because they were like, no, we really like Bitcoin.

So, you know, there's been some public statements from Garlinghouse that are a little bit more olive. branchy, but like, come on. They, they, you know, funded the green piece attack. They funded. My favorite part about that attack is that that, um, statue thing they built the head. Yeah. Is now like the coolest piece of Bitcoin art in, in the world. We're the most annoying kids on the playground. We're impossible to make fun of. Yeah. We will just take this thing. We're like, that's fucking cool. We're like, we love it. Yeah. We are. Yeah. That's who we are. Do more. It's so good. So any alpha on where the next one's going to be. Or can you not say yet?

Not yet. looking. So population dense cities across the U.S. and internationally. So close. With Bitcoin communities. Well, when you do the franchise, I like one in Australia. I would love that. I would love that.

It's very far. It is very far, but it doesn't matter if it's a franchise. It'd be awesome. I think it would work. I think it would work. Look, there's Bitcoiners everywhere. And the idea is to be hyper-local and focus on what that community and what that city needs and how they approach Bitcoin, right? the same tactic of sort of burying it and making a good place. It's what makes Pub Key really hard, but it also, what I think is working.

Hospitality is a soul-crushing business. Yeah, as soon as I said, I don't want to work in hospitality. It's very difficult to get it right. But if you get it right, then people treat it like, you know, another home and they're comfortable and they come back and they become regulars, whether it's for the food or the drinks or the vibe and atmosphere, it doesn't matter. You're able to do a lot with that. in terms of where you want to steer the conversation.

Jack, are you going to be able to keep the DC branch with? Well, do you like the smell of smoked salami? That's a tricky question to answer. I don't know if I do. Well, the answer is yes, you do. Okay. Because that's what Pub Key, D.C. smells like. And we're going to keep it, and it's going to be part of the brand.

How are you going to keep the smell of smoked salami? It was a barbecue restaurant for like 17 years. Okay, nice. So we don't have a choice. So salami t-shirts. It's in the walls. No, it does not. It smells like brisket.

That'll dissipate. Yeah. With time, we burn a little sage in there. It's going to go along with. Yeah, we're going to exercise some demons. So are you going to get smoke salami t-shirts? Yeah, I think so.

I think we just have to embrace it. Yeah, I think you should. I'm excited. I'm excited to see it. Are we going to go see it tomorrow? Yeah, we can do a little private tour for you, anything. There you go. We are in the process of interviewing chefs.

You'd be shocked the quality of resumes and people that are excited about this coming to DC. Interesting. Like bona fide pre-coigne chefs, right? Like bonafide chefs are... Why do they even know about Pubke? They saw it in the news. They saw our reputation online.

These Fox News appearances are working. Yeah. I mean, you know, we have good reviews. You know, people rave about the burger and the atmosphere. Some of them come and check it out. and they're like, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it's fucking cool. And it's special to see that, like, other people are picking up on it

and appreciating, you know, the soul-crushingly hard work that it's been. Are you going to open in London? Are you going to open in London? I would love to. You know, so many pubs, like historic pubs are closing. How many pubs are closing in the UK? It's like two a week. It's wild.

Yeah. I really don't know. It's a bunch of things. It's the rent. It's drinking. habits, you know, they're losing. Yeah, young people don't drink. Yeah.

I thought that was just us. No, we thought that was just NYU. We need to fix the youth. Like, they just don't drink the same way. Yeah. And I don't know if that's good war. Yeah. One war, well, we might be on the brink of it.

No, the UK, I think those problems are a little bit more like macro, like lots of millionaires, like a lot of money's leaving the UK. So I think that that's a symptom of like a much. more complicated disease there. But yeah, that would be a dream. I'd love to go in and that's how Pubkey started. My wife and I lived nearby here and we've been coming to the predecessor bars

since like 2006. From 2000, well, when we started coming here, it'd been there since like the 90s, but it closed in 2010 and it was the most iconic New York dive bar. It was just a shit hole. It's called the Stone Crow. And it was great. People still come in and they're like,

this used to be the Crow. And it's like, yeah. And then it reopened as like a really nice neighborhood tavern. Just like no frills, just a classic fastball tavern. And that was great. That closed in COVID. And the idea was like if we lose all these things in COVID and we're just jammed on to remote work and Zoom, like we're going to become like bugman. And that was that was sort of like a scary thing in, you know, 2021 and 2022.

So, you know, if Pubkey can play a role. where we're rehabilitating the way things were tapping into nostalgia and the importance of this place and then recultivating how these places were used for, you know, real discourse and disagreement and fomenting of revolutions. That would be, that would be awesome. So an English pub is very, very top of mind. Nice. I think it's really cool what you guys have done for the Bitcoin space in New York as well. Like, it feels like you're definitely the hub in New York, but it feels like that's also bringing people in. And like during COVID or just after COVID, like everyone seemed to be moving to like Austin and Nashville. Yeah. And now when I go to those places,

everyone's look, yeah, in Miami, everyone's like, how's New York? And if you say you've had a really good time there, like, the city's good. They're like, fuck. Yeah. Like, I have this conversation with Harry all the time. Whenever I tell him, I really like New York, he's like, oh, sold the bottom. It's totally sold the bottom. I'm sorry, Harry. It is getting better. Like, you know, New York is not completely back. It's not completely saved. But, you know, New York has an ability to move way faster and change itself than, you know, just about any other city on the planet. And New Yorkers don't really tolerate shitty experiences for that long. I think it's on an uptrend, but, you know, we're one communist mayor away from the downtrends.

So we'll see what happens. True. Scary stuff. And I love New York apart from when it's this hot. Like, I am dying. It's brutal. DC's going to be worse. Is it?

Much. Yeah. Oh, fuck. I've got to wear a suit there as well. I'm not wearing a suit. Really? You know wearing a suit? I am not wearing a suit.

I'm going to do like jeans and a blazer probably. No. I'm not doing a suit. You've got no fucking respect. Yeah. It's not a respect thing. That is business attire for me. Yeah, but not forever else who's there.

It's going to be, it's going to be too hot. Damn. What else going on in public? Anything we've not talked about that you want to, you want to shill? God, we got a lot of stuff coming up. You know, D.C. is, you know, a couple months out. We continue the Bitcoin programming here. We have Leopoldo Lopez here on Friday.

That's very cool. Probably after that. Yeah, it will. But we'll post those. And we're very grateful and fortunate to get these awesome guests from HRF. Yeah, we got a lot of really great things coming up. That's going on. Summer is always a little bit slow, right?

Like people get out of the city because of the oppressive heat and humidity. So it comes at a good time. July and August is a bit of a reset. that we can focus on and then hit the ground running again when it starts to cool off in September. Very cool. I'll be at Honey Badger probably. Oh, me too. Excellent.

I've never been. It's probably my favorite conference. Interesting. Aside from Checo. I've never been to East and Europe at all, so I'm quite looking forward to that. Riga is a very special place. It's a really awesome city. It's like a medieval Baltic city.

People are super, super friendly. And it's small. So, you know, Honey Badger kind of takes over. It's kind of like cheat code where you're running around Bedford and you know, you just see Bitcoin are sort of everywhere. That's what Honey Badger's been for a pretty long time. I'm excited. We've got big plans for that next year.

Are you coming back? Of course. We didn't do the pub keep up this year. We've got to do it again. Well, I don't know if we're ready to announce anything yet, but we'll be there. Oh, I don't even know. Could I know this? You've been speaking to Peter.

I'm excited. You can come this time, jerk. You didn't come the first year, did you? Yeah. Yeah. Did you come the first year? No, no, no. Cheat code? Yeah. Yeah, I will be there. Yeah, good. It was fun. Apart from, like, you got kicked out of your own pop-up. No? No, they didn't let us back in the next night. Yeah, so the first year we hosted a pop-up at, like, a local pub. And then they were happy. We, like, it tipped well. We packed the place out. It would have been their busiest night of the year, probably. They got kind of run over. This was in Bedford. They got kind of run over that night. And then we went back. He's like another man.

on these European Who did you get in a fight with Thomas? We got a fight with at the bar, we got on the fight. No, no, that was PK. I don't want you tell the story.

I want jerk to tell us story. It'll be way more entertaining. We got a fight. We threw the glass at the cab and then the, there was a whole hubbub. This was his friend from kindergarten. Tell me the story.

There was a fight. There was a fight at the pub that we went to every single night. You threw a glass at a car? No. No. No. There was, no. No.

No. Someone did. So there was a fight between two guys. One of them was a friend of ours and a glass hit a cab and the cab got involved. The cab he got involved. And then the three of them were going at it and Thomas came out of the bar. And this is, I'm his protector. I just took him and I just ushered him back inside. I'm like, you don't need to see this. Come back. Come back inside. I'm like, what's going on? I was like, Thomas back in. Come on. Come on. Why show you something? Yeah. The only thing I miss about the Miami conference is the pub keep up at Mac Club Dece is. We went back, we were scouting a location in Miami, and just a couple months ago, we went back to Mac Club Deuce, and it was so great. It's one of my favorite bars in the world. Just walking out. It is so great.

It's one of the best bars in the world. It's like, it's horrible, but amazing. It's perfect in every way. It is gross and terrible, and you can smoke inside, and it is the fucking happiest place on earth. Is that one of the ones you're scouting? Mac Club Deuce, God, we'll need a lot of Bitcoin to take that one over. That's an icon. Does that pub do well, though?

That bar do well? Yeah, they crush. Okay. They crush. There must be a lot of theft. It's probably one of the most, it's probably the most famous bar. It's probably ranks in America as one of the most famous bar. Oh, really?

It was like, I think of Bourdain went there, didn't it? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. That would be a cool, no. That is a pub key bar. I mean, I completely agree. That land is very expensive. Yeah.

Yeah. One day. A lot of the ideas downstairs are stolen from the deuce. Yeah, a lot. Not a lot, but the neons. Okay. The neons are stolen from the proudly stolen from the deuce. Yeah, but pokey's so much nicer.

It's so much nicer. Yeah. Just like little motifs. That was a requirement of my wife. We could have a dive bar, but the bathrooms have to be clean. It's just like, but that's not a dive bar. There's no smoking side. I went to a good one in Chicago with Dylan and his girlfriend.

I am from Chicago. What's the, like, really famous one? The green door. Mm. Don't think that was it. You could smoke inside there. The Wiener Circle. Nope.

Is that the milkshake one? Give me one more. Is it called Richards? Huh? Richards? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.

I could be getting it wrong. But it was a, that's, that's another one that should be on your list. So Dylan, Dylan, Jack and Jerk are from the same, like, town. Oh, so you know those guys. You're like friends of those guys. No, I don't. We just figured it out. Fair enough.

Yeah. And I tried my best. I was like, dude, high school. And they're, you know, they don't care. Wait, did you go to the same high school? I did go to the same high school, yeah. I'm a bit older, but yeah. Yeah, you look older.

Yeah, more tired. Yeah. Well, this has been fun. Thank you. Thank you guys. So we go and drink those of beer and have a smash burger. Yeah, whatever you like. Let's do it.

Awesome. Thanks, guys.