What Bitcoin Did - Why Bitcoin Must Win | Matt Odell

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Matt Odell is host of Citadel Dispatch, co-host of Rabbit Hole Recap, managing partner at Ten31 and co-founder of OpenSats & Bitcoin Park. In this episode, we dive into the rise of surveillance capitalism, why freedom tech is the only path forward, and what a truly sovereign digital society could look like. We explore how Nostr and Bitcoin together create an open foundation for speech, identity, and money. A new digital commons built on permissionless code, not corporate control. Odell also gives his take on the wave of Bitcoin treasury companies and why some have drifted from Bitcoin’s core ethics, and why real, profitable businesses saving in Bitcoin will thrive. THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS: IREN RIVER ANCHORWATCH BLOCKWARE LEDN BITKEY Follow: Danny Knowles: https://x.com/_DannyKnowles or https://primal.net/danny Matt Odell: https://primal.net/odell

We've been sold this idea that the way that Web works now is like the only way to do it. Like massive data surveillance, get you addicted. There's a better path. It's just a harder path. We always say like fix the money, fix the world. The money is just one piece of it. We got to fix the other things too. The dollar is in such a bad position that there's just no way out besides just inflation and irrelevance.

People are going to look for an option that doesn't require trust. In a post-truth world, Bitcoin is truth. Like, it's the only thing that you know is real and tangible. But we need to accelerate. Time is of the essence. It's not an emergency, but sooner it would be better. And so now you have a backup mic. That's the O'Dowd-Mack.

Yeah. So we can't go wrong now. I love it. So you think of me every time you record? I just think of you every day, man. There you go. How are you doing? I'm doing all right.

How are you? Good. I don't know what we're going to talk about. You're good to have you back in Nashville. It's good to be back in Nashville. You're hometown? I like it here. We got a lot to do.

Do you want to talk about Nats or the Treasury Company's first? I don't know. You're the podcast host. They're the two things you said you didn't want to talk about. When you're going to get us to get us to get me in trouble for some. Well, that was the plan? Now we kind of have to talk about it. Is that really your top note? This is Luke Roman's notes.

I've not even got yours here. Does my show come out after Luke's? Yeah. He's like he's just going to crush me in the numbers. Well, yeah, but you might go straight after him and he might give you a little bit of a boot. good yeah put me right after because everyone's kind of forgotten about you now you're not on twitter that's the way it's supposed to be but you say you're not on twitter i'm not on twitter anymore yeah yeah who runs 1031 account we have a we have a an intern that uses a uh l lm that's trained on my twitter

archive do you still have that twitter account i have the archive do you know when you close that down for like a week afterwards i was desperately trying to get the odal handle they still have it locked you have to pay for it I would pay for that it's a pre-premo handle I think they're charging like a hundred K for it or something okay I won't pay that for it um do you regret leaving twitter it was definitely bad for business I like I the 1031 guys deserve a shout for um being supportive when I deleted our greatest asset from a public messaging point of view but so now you just try to grow the 1031 account but I I don't know if it was even, like in hindsight, I get why he did it.

I think it's kind of cool. Like money away your mouth is, moved to Nasta. But would it have been better to have kept that and just push people to Noste from there? I mean, that's always the argument. I mean, once again, I think, you know, I mean, I think it's like, what is the goals, right? If the goals were boost 1031's outward exposure, so like from selfish goals, right? the move would have been in hindsight to just change that Twitter account to 1031

and just use that as the 1031 account and already would have 300,000 followers, right? And at this point, it probably would have like 500,000 followers. The good news is 1031's in a great spot without it. I think OpenSats is a great spot without it. Bitcoin Park's in a great spot without it. I think Noster's in a great spot without it. I think Noster's in a great spot without it.

So those are my three projects plus, you know, a protocol that I've been intimately focused with. And I think definitely if you look at it from just a straight commercial point of view, like I deleted an asset. Right. And financially questionable decision. I think if you think about it from a personal priorities point of view, it was like a massive success. And I really do not regret it. The worry I had is that I think we're all having an unhealthy relationship. Most of us, myself included, I have an unhealthy relationship with our devices on the internet.

Yeah. And my only social media was X and Twitter before it. And I had definitely had an unhealthy relationship with it. And no matter how much you try and ground yourself, you know, the dopamine hits of just like the likes and the retweets and is massive and I think when I first started I didn't I wasn't always a public you know individual within Bitcoin in the beginning like I actually I would use NIMS and I was like very private private in it and then it was after Trump won his first term that I became public and I kind of just like stumbled into it

And the next thing you know, it's like a top four Twitter account in Bitcoin. And I stopped using it for six months and it just kept growing. It still was growing, like super fast, just on all the old posts. And the whole time I was like, oh, well, you know, like I've already made these decisions. Like, now I'm here, now I'm here. Like, there's no going back. But then I just came to the conclusion. I was like, there actually is going back.

Like, I could just fucking delete the thing. And I can just live my life and, like, not be a public figure. And in that way, I think it was a massive success. Like I think there's probably a whole slew of new listeners to your show that I have no idea who I am. And that is just beautiful. Like I do not want to be a niche celebrity. I do not want to be a public face of Bitcoin. Like I want to like live a quiet life focused on trying to make freedom technologies more used at scale.

And I don't think I think there's probably a place for influencers in that. But I don't think that's the most key. aspect of it. I think the key aspect of it is actually like how the tools get built out and how they get distributed to people so that they can actually make those decisions themselves and move forward. It's funny. I was talking to sessions yesterday and he said he just had you on the show. Yeah. And he said, do a load of comments being like, who's this guy just saying Bitcoin catchphrases? He's the guy that came up with them. Yeah, they thought I was just like repeating stay humble stacks ass like I hadn't come up with it. But yeah, to me that's a success, right?

Yeah, I just I look I to like it's always been something I wrestled with it's something I still wrestle with with the podcasts And I know I And now it's like public that you're a father right because you made it public On your show in this room Which is a beautiful experience yep And to me like it's like okay so like in and when I'm raising my children What is one of the. number one things that we're going to have to wrestle with.

And that's going to be healthy use of the internet, social media, and devices. And if I have to, like, look my kids in the eye and I'm, like, addicted to social media and I'm, like, an influencer or something, to me, it's like, it's a step away from only fans. Like, people, like, look at Only fans are like, only fans is horrible. But then they don't think of, like, someone that posts on TikTok every day or Twitter every day as the same thing. but it's very close. It's funny, like, I have been really conscious

of trying to not use, like, my phone too much on my daughter. Like, sometimes you have to. And, like, I don't let her watch, you know, an iPad or any of that stuff. We occasionally watch, like, a really old Disney movie because I think it's before all the dopamine hits of, like, new kids TV. Yeah. But even still, like, she'll pick up my phone, and she, like, hold it to her ear.

And she's obviously just mirroring things you've done. So you set that example from such a young age. It's so hard to not be on your device. around them. And I found myself getting like a bit addicted to Twitter again. Like I've always been quite good. Like I don't like social media. I don't like the way it makes me feel. I'd feel useless after scrolling for 20 minutes or whatever. Maybe I just need to delete it from my phone. Like I still need it for the show. At the very least you should just delete it from your phone and then just use it on your computer. It's like a very easy way to reduce the... The biggest

problem is like the... There's a moment, there's like a quiet moment and so what do you do? You just like reach for your phone and then before you know it you're just doom scrolling. It's an hour later. Right? And so like this is something I think about a lot, right? Like as we build out primal and Noster, is like, is there a better way? Like because it's obviously clearly a useful tool. Right. We wouldn't be friends. Most of my friends I wouldn't be friends with it if it wasn't for X.

Yeah. Period. But you can also trick yourself into thinking like it's for work. You know, because it is good for news. Yeah. But like if I'm being honest for myself, most of the time I'm just doom scrolling through stupid videos and stuff. Well, like, so for instance, like Kagi, which is like a privacy-focused search engine, whose business model, instead of harvesting your data is they just charge you for a subscription, they just released a news app, like three days ago, four days ago. And what they do is it's once a day,

they give you all the relevant news, and they run it through AI and give you nice, condensed AI summaries of it. That's kind of cool. With no ads and no clickbait. And they're just using it as top of funnel for their other premium services. But my point is, is we've been sold this idea. And technology-wise, like, that's not a hard thing to do. There was just a will to do it and a business model that facilitated it. And we've been sold this idea that, like, the way that Web works now is, like, the only way to do it. Like, massive data surveillance, get you addicted, get all the dopamine rush, you know,

monetize your attention to its fullest, monetize your data to the fullest. That's not the only way to do things. There's a better path. It's just a harder path. And so that's a much healthier way of, for example, this one app, right? It's just a healthier way to consume news. It's not based on addiction. I'm smiling because I'm so paranoid that we're recording.

Are we recording? Yeah, I've checked like five times. We have like, we have that mic recording too, right? Yeah, we're good. Is the red over there mean we're recording? No, that's something different. But we are recording. Are you sure?

Yeah, I'm sure. I haven't, I'd be, anyway, that's just, so it's something I wrestle with. And it's like, even so we're seeing with like the, we had the Charlie Kirk assassination, right? And we see there's a push to add more controls to the internet because of this idea that youth are getting radicalized on the internet. Yep. And it's a very slippery slope regulating the internet and regulating speech and regulating how. people use these tools and I just wholeheartedly disagree with it. I do not think that's the path but the reason I bring it up is because there is a kernel of truth there there are youth getting

radicalized on the internet. 100% and then farther down that line there are just people that have most people just have a very unhealthy relationship with it particularly children but even adults and so as a society this is something we have to grapple with and as parents this is something that we have to really grapple with if we want to raise our children right and and I personally want to be part of that that solution, even if it might not, even if we might not be successful. Like, I think that's a worthy path. This episode is brought to you by the massive legends, Iron, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100% renewable energy.

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today. That is anchorwatch.com. I think people are getting radicalized. People are definitely getting radicalized on the internet. But it's just because that's where they hang out. Like if we still lived in Meetspace where people didn't have the internet, they'd just be getting radicalized somewhere else. We need to fix the issue of the radicalization, not control the internet. But like we're seeing it in the UK with the digital ID and stuff.

It's really bad in the UK. It's pretty scary. It's like the one place that's worse than Australia. Australia's, well, there's problems with Australia. It's nowhere nearest about as the UK. Not at the moment. But, like, I've noticed even traveling. Because in America, you have, like,

you can't go on porn sites in, like, certain states and all that sort of stuff. A lot of them. Yeah. It's like 20 states or something. And that's pretty new, right? It's like the last year and a half. And, like, that is the same thing. I mean, it's more targeted, but it's the same thing as having, like, digital ID.

You're just having to verify yourself online. But what I've noticed is since, especially since the UK, have started talking about this, I've been trying to go to websites that are just blocked if you use a VPN. And so like... Because that's the next step. Yeah. Right?

Because like if you're in a state where you can't access something, you just use a VPN in another state. And so then they block VPN to stop you from doing that. So is the idea of like the free and open internet dead? No. I think it's alive and well. I think we've been trending in the wrong direction for a while. And I think protocols like Noster could be very helpful for that.

I mean, if you look, you follow the incentives all the way down, too, right? So X, for instance, their policy and their government and policy initiative is actually pushing for states like Texas to add, in their own words, to add age verification at the app store level. So they don't want to deal with it, but they want their users to be age verified. And why is that? I think that's because then they're able to sell ads easier. Yeah. Right? Like ad providers don't want to take advantage of children necessarily, right?

They want to wipe their hands clean a bit. So I think a lot of this just comes down to what is the core business models of these things. And if the core business model is data, we've always hear the quote like data is the new oil. If that's the asset, if the assets the data, then ultimately, ultimately, you're going to have a predatory relationship with your customers. You know, Gmail is on the surface a fantastic product. But the business model is literally harvesting all of your information and then selling it. And there's no way that you'll ever be aligned with your users in that regard.

So it's actually, I just remembered it was trying to go on YouTube yesterday. YouTube blocked me because I was running a VPN. Like it's pretty fucking crazy. But if Nost is going to be the fix for this, does it? Do you not have to almost, like at least in its iteration now with social media is really the only thing that's being used widely on Noster. Do you not have to not even really, but yeah. No, like in context, relatively. Do you not have to just make that as addictive as Twitter?

Well, so this is the, I mean, look, a lot of these are, I don't pretend to have the answers, right? And I also don't pretend that, like, I think at this point, Bitcoin has had the time in the market and the proof of network effect that it's gonna be around for a long, long time. It'll probably outlive us all. I, with high confidence, think, which maybe sounds less crazy,

even though this is probably the 20th time I said it on the show. And it gets less crazy every time I say it. I still expect it to become the reserve currency of the world. Nostra is very much in its embassy. It might not be a protocol that is used in 10 years. But something like that, right, an open, verifiable, permissionless protocol for speech and identity is something we really, really need. Now, once you have that and you have Bitcoin, Bitcoin is effectively an open API for the world, right? Any developer can hook into Bitcoin and do payments around the world.

You don't need a stripe API. You don't need to get permission from them and get keys. You don't need to register with them and attach bank accounts and do all this other stuff. You can just plug right into this open API for the world. Something like Nostra becomes an open API for identity and speech and communications.

And so this becomes, and particularly at a time in the internet when we're seeing these big tech platforms become more closed, right? It's harder than ever to use the XAPI. It's more expensive than ever. Reddit closes you off unless you use logins. Instagram, Facebook, all of them do now, except actually TikTok,

and that's just because the CCP wants as many people on their website as possible. And that probably changes now that Oracle bought it. And we're going to see Oracle probably do a lot of the same things in the U.S. that we see with the other big tech companies. So you have open API for speech and communication. You have open API for Bitcoin.

And now you have vibe coding coming into it. Right now, we're at Global Bitcoin Summit. It's the third year. We're doing it in partnership with the HRF here in Bitcoin Park. Nashville. And we're going to have a vibe coding session right after this, this rip, right? And so when you think about that, there's a tool called Shakespeare that's being developed by Alex Gleason, who built Trump's true social platform. And then I think he'll say more kindly,

but like Trump kind of fucked him out of truth social. And now he's building on Noster. And he's building this tool called Shakespeare. And with Shakespeare, with a couple prompts, you can build any app that leverages both Bitcoin and Nostr. And it becomes really, really powerful. So this is a very long-winded way of me saying, yeah, you'll have predatory apps that are built on top of Nostner and Bitcoin. The difference is the user will be able to switch with very little switching costs. And my assumption, which could be wrong, is that users will use the better apps, right? Like if there's one video app that's Noster and Bitcoin enabled that has ads and censorship,

and then there's one that doesn't, how many users are gonna use the ones with ads and censorship versus the one that doesn't? Like, probably the majority are gonna use the one that has a healthier relationship with the user and gives them more agency. 100%. That's definitely true, but how do you go from sort of here to there?

Because network effects matters so much. Like, Noster can already have a video hosting protocol that's better than YouTube in loads of ways. There's no ads, no censorship. But you're still not gonna get people over from YouTube right now. Like, how do you do that? Because YouTube as the users. I mean, even Rumble has had trouble.

Look, I think it's two things. And look, first of all, I wear my Bitcoin hat with all this stuff because my adult life has just been focused on Bitcoin. So that's where my bias is. If save anything says all the time, like, the biggest threat to Bitcoin is governments responsibly handling their money. Yeah. The thing is, like, governments are never going to responsibly handle their money.

And so, like, the biggest threat to something like Noster adoption is government stop, you know, trying to censor and control, platforms and platforms stop trying to harvest as much data as possible and corral their users into these walled gardens. And I don't think either of those things are going to happen. So then the question becomes of timing as people move. But I also think the example I use a lot is something like Signal, which is not an open protocol, but it's an open, the apps are open source. and it's a private and secure messenger that is non-profit that just receives donations.

So the project is aligned with its users. And they have 100 million users, right? Soon to be less when they have to leave the EU. WhatsApp has 5 billion users. Right? I still think Signal is a success. 100%. And the fact that users can choose

not to use WhatsApp and can go use Signal is a success. So where am I going with this? I think in a world where, you know, people are using freedom alternatives of popular tools that leverage Noster and Bitcoin, and it's 1%, 2% of the population, and that's an option to people is a massive success. Now, the question becomes, do we ever hit 50, 60, 70%? I don't know. I think the way you do that probably is build apps that are like in the middle ground that are just better apps. And if they're better apps, people use them because they're better. This is kind of like when we were talking last time on the show, and I guess I'd had concerns around the way Bitcoin was trending in terms of the way people are actually going to use it, whether it's going to be freedom money or just this financial asset.

And the thing you said then was that a small percentage of people will use it as freedom money. And that's okay. Like as long as people still can, then it's kind of one. Maybe this is just the same thing. It's the same thing. It's the same lens, at least. It's the same way I'm thinking about it. So just before we recorded this show, we were talking to Obie.

Yeah. And you said that you think Bitcoin will be the global reserve currency, but things like privacy will be used by... I actually said that on the show in 2022. There you go. People can go back to the clips. Have you got anything new to say? No, not really.

It's all been said. But Obi said it's a scary world when Matt O'Dell says something like that. Yeah. Why do you think that's the case? I think it's just reality. I think you have to set your expectations realistically, otherwise you're just going to be disappointed, right? When it comes to tools,

that enable personal responsibility, they rely on users to take personal responsibility. You can't force people to use a freedom or into tool by definition. So it's just the reality of the situation. You need people to actually move and improve their lives. So I think these things will take time. And I think probably in an ideal world,

we see them push the mainstream alternatives into health. relationships with their users, which probably then slows down the adoption of the freedom tools, but still benefits everyone else indirectly. And I think that's just what we've seen as these things play out, right? It's, I mean, the number that I like to point to is it's something like 300 billion emails are sent per day on the internet. 50% of them are Gmail.

So like if you're at like an early email conference, whenever I was running their own servers. Yeah. And you asked them like, is one giant American tech company going to be sending and receiving half the emails per day? They would have been like, ah, definitely not. And then they would be disappointed. But if you said your expectations properly and you start chipping away at those kind of behemoths, I think then we're winning. Right.

And it's a maybe it's a little bit of a perspective hack, but I think also it's just it's a healthier way to approach the movement. Because I've gotten caught up in the, people love it. to hear like, oh, like, everyone's going to use it. You know, it gets more clicks, gets more retweets, whatever. But none of that shit matters. Let's be realistic about it. Let's be honest about it. And let's just move forward step by step.

Every person you get is a win. I will say already now with something like Noster, you don't need. We have maybe there's, I think they say there's 700 million, 700 million users of X. TikTok's at like one and a half billion or something. Facebook is three to five billion across their properties. And Noster's like 200,000. Is that number growing or shrinking? I think it's growing.

It's a little bit hard to measure in an open system. I think also like user numbers in general are like mostly lies. Like there's no way for us to verify how many Twitter X users there are. Period. Like we're just trusting their numbers. Everyone who's ever done a live stream on X knows that the number that says how many people watch is a complete fucking lot, right? Like, you know that for sure. Yeah. And there's more and more bots there than ever before. And there's no incentive to really clean that up. The bots are insane.

So follow numbers are mostly a lie already. Yeah. They're like directionally correct. You can kind of compare them to each other within the same system. It's like, oh, if you have 100,000 followers and I have 50,000 followers and it's on the same app, then, you know, relatively 2x, the amount of audience size. But my point is, is even with that many users, the cool part about Noster is that actually anyone can look at the open graph and make their own analysis. And in general, that's actually, I think, hurt us because people estimate low. Because there's a lot of lurkers. There's like people, like, I'll post a Noster post and like people that never use the Noster

app to see that post. Like, they're not getting counted in the stats. But if they had clicked the link in Twitter, they'd be counted in the stats, even if they're not signed in. But anyway, my point is 200,000 people, if there's breaking news or something interesting that happens on the internet, it usually gets cross-posted to Noster already now in its infancy. And so there's like a critical mass where if there's enough people using Noster that anything important that happens outside of Noster gets cross-posted to Noster for engagement and Zaps and vice versa. anything interesting that gets posted and Nasser gets cross-posted X and TikTok and stuff for engagement, then it's good at that point it's already good enough to be used as your primary tool.

And I think we're pretty close to that. I've just thought this is way too late in the conversation, but I've got a lot of new people listening right now that might even not know what Noster is. I had someone the other day. I introduced the show with Samsung Mowers, him coming on for the first time on the new what Bitcoin did. And someone who's the old one? And there was a comment being like, Peter McCormick used to run it.

It was who's Peter McCormack? Eternal September. Yeah, exactly. So do you want to actually explain what Nostr is? So Nostr, I think I kind of said it already, but Nostr is an open, verifiable, permissionless protocol for identity and speech. You can kind of think about like if Bitcoin, what Bitcoin is for money, Noster is for speech and identity.

Rather than having an account with like a big tech company, you have a public key, private key pair just like Bitcoin. and that is your user control. So a company does not own that identity for you. They don't own your followers. They don't own your content. It has an open server system so anyone can run a server. Anyone can hold your posts for you.

You can run your own server. And it's incredibly simple, but as a result, it can be very powerful in how you use it. And I would just say to people that if that kind of thing intrigues you, I've been heavily focused on building out the Primal app, which you can just find in your app stores by searching Primal. And my fund 1031 is the largest investor in Primal, and I'm very focused on the day-to-day on help building that product out. It's completely open source.

And it leverages the Nostra protocol. But the cool part there is, first of all, because it's open source, anyone can fork Primal and create their own version. Secondly, because it's on an open protocol, if Primal decided to be evil and try to block you from accessing Primal or whatever, literally all you have to do is take your private key, copy paste into another Noster app.

There's dozens of Noster apps that are stable at this point that you can just paste them into. And just think about that for a second. Like the switching costs have never been lower. Instead of walled gardens, you basically have, I like to say, instead of walled gardens, what we want is open fields.

No one wants to like hang out in a walled garden. You want to hang out in open, beautiful fields. You got mountains in the in the skyline. You're just, you're out in nature. And when you have those switching costs so low, that means it keeps the companies that interact honest with the user because the user ultimately has leverage and can just leave and doesn't lose their followers, doesn't lose their content, doesn't lose anything in the process. Like you can leave X and go to TikTok, but you're starting.

starting fresh. They're starting completely fresh. There's massive switching costs from going to YouTube to Rumble. And historically, you know, one of the things that we're quite proud of at 1031 is most professional investors in startups are pushing for the walled garden model. It's the easier model. You wall in your users, you add switching costs, you add friction, maybe you even petition regulators to make regulatory moats around your businesses and make it even harder for be able to switch and then you monetize the fuck out of the users. Not only do we support our founders pushing for more open models, we actually push them in the direction of open models.

We prefer if they move to models that are more open fields than Walden Gardens. And I think that alone, that tiny, that little difference, which is actually massive and foundational, makes a way healthier experience with users in their apps. Because it just switches the incentives entirely. Completely different. And so like I'll bring it back to Bitcoin. like if you're using Moon Wallet and you don't like Moon Wallet or Moon Wallet make some changes that you don't like,

you can literally in one Bitcoin transaction sent to Phoenix Wallet. And so all of a sudden Moon and Phoenix need to be good to their users. Now even that has more switching costs than Nosteraps. Like it's literally just Control C, Control V. It's the lowest switching cost you could ever imagine. Yeah. And I think as you decrease those switching costs, All of a sudden, you have really beautiful, healthy experiences start to really happen on our devices and the tools we rely on.

Yeah, it's very, I don't spend enough time on Oster. Yeah, you should use it more. I should. I mean, I honestly would love to just not use any social media. I know, but that's the problem. The funniest part is it's being bootstrapped by people that generally hate social media. It's kind of cool to see the vlogging craze going on. Is that still happening?

Yeah, American Idol baby. Yeah. He's the one who started that career. Started that crazy. He would be organic. If he leaned into the Bitcoin influencer thing, he would be fucking incredible.

I mean, he already kind of does. He's like a professional. Yeah, but if he did it on a broadest game. He's like a philosopher king. He is a philosopher king, but he needs to be doing it on like Instagram and TikTok. Yeah, so if you know who American,

I mean, most of your listeners probably don't even know who American Hollis anymore. No, he's been on a few times. Okay, well, he's Noster only. Yeah. He came out of... Do you know why he's not? Yeah, because he like lost his password or something.

He lost his phone there had Twitter. Yeah. Like we came from different directions, but we ended up in the same position. I mean, like, I think people will use it. If you just, if you use it in addition to your other stuff, fine. I think ultimately it becomes like the source of truth. Like you have, use everywhere else. But if someone actually wants to link back to your content, the best place to link them to is Noster.

Because you know it's not going to have a paywall. It's not going to have a login wall. It's always verifiable. like in the land of deepfakes and AI, like everything should be signed. If you watch this podcast on YouTube, there's no way for you to know if YouTube didn't change what we said.

Like that's actually more insidious than censorship. Like they could just dynamically, and they could dynamically change what we say in this conversation depending on who is listening. So like 99% of people could be listening to this conversation and they would hear what we're actually talking about. And then maybe people, people that live in Kenya hear a slightly different take.

That's a wild thought. Mills was telling me about... And there'd be no way for us to... Just to be clear, there's no way for you to verify if that happened or not. But on Noster, even with the smaller user base, every video is hashed and signed so you know that video has not been changed at all. This is a complete tangent, but it's that reminded me of something Mills told me. I think it was in Riga.

She said that there's a supermarket here in Nashville that has prices that adjust. depending on who you are. Well, that's pretty fucked up. Have you heard that? So, like, if you're on welfare, you'll get a different price for goods. I didn't hear about that. But that's what the, like, I mean, people have theorized, like, that's what airline companies and stuff do. Yeah.

And dynamic pricing. Use a VPN when you're buying a ticket. But that's fucking scary. That's going to become the norm. Like, there's... The thing that's weird about that, though, is... Data profiling. But it's, like, what is the price of a dollar at that point?

Yeah. Because if a dollar is different from me than it is to you, then how do you? then how do you have any confidence in the cost of anything? Well, what I've always said is one of the coolest parts about Bitcoin is, um, in a post-truth world, Bitcoin is truth. Like,

it's the only thing that you know is real and tangible. Um, it's a 24-7, 365 free market. Um, nobody can fake it. You know you own it. You know its value. Um,

right now we measure the value in dollars, but in the future it'll be measured in how many cows you can buy. how many houses you can buy and just pure purchasing power it's truth and so something like noster becomes that for we always say like fix the money fix the world the money is just one piece of it we got to fix the other things too and in a post-truth world speech and identity is even more important on the internet and so like how are we actually going to verify that and i use i'd like to use video as an example because i think it's more um relatable to people, it feels more insidious for it to be modified.

Like people see a fake video. But you know how many times you see like fake screenshots of tweets and stuff? Oh yeah, all the time. But normally you can, like, this is something that AI has changed completely. Because when you used to see those, you could tell like the text is a bit different or something. But the deep fake of kind of anything is like a real threat to just knowing what the truth is. Exactly. So I think that part is what people are sleeping on.

I think most people don't really care about the censorship-resistant part. censorship-resistant part. So I think it's an open and verifiable part that is the most important. But that can still happen on NOSTA,

but then your identity, your MPUB is tied to that. So you essentially get punished by your social graph. No, no. If you open Primal and you look out of what Bitcoin did

that was posted there. You know it's come from me. My app is automatically in the background verifying that you posted it and no one in the middle has changed it. Mm-hmm.

Now, maybe you don't trust the app. You can use a different app. That app will also check and make sure it's true. Maybe you don't trust that app. You can actually do it by hand. It's like raw Nostradat is actually very simple. You see a hash of the video, which is like the integrity of the video. So every, if there's any change to the video, the hash changes.

So it's like a text string that you know hasn't been changed. And then it's signed on top of that so you know who posted it. So those two little pieces of basic tech. in a very simple just text readout, allow you to easily verify that that hasn't been changed. Right now, I don't think Elon would mess with or Zuckerberg. I use Elon as an example a lot because I think most people don't trust Big Tech, but they trust Elon.

He's like better of the worst. He probably is. Yeah, I think he is too. I think that's completely fair. But let's use Zuckerberg because he's actually like evil head hansom number one. Five billion users. The only thing that's stopping Facebook adoption is internet access and birth rate. They've literally saturated the global internet accessible population in the world, five billion people.

Like eight and a half billion people, but like three billion of them don't have internet. I've been in the middle of rural Malawi and people just use WhatsApp. Well, what they do is they give them basically like free phone plans that only work on Facebook services. Like they can only, they have unlimited data on WhatsApp, but nothing else. Because they know they need people to get it. Like Facebook will subsidize that just to harvest your data. Yeah. But Zuckerberg, imagine if you are a small nation state.

It's used Kenya as an example again. You're a president of Kenya and you want to send a post out to your people. The status quo right now is that Zuckerberg, first of all, controls whether or not you can send it, whether or not people see it, and they could actually modify it in transit and no one would know. And once again, the most insidious part is they can modify

it for a small subset. A small tribe that is in one region of Kenya or whatever will see a slightly different post than everyone else. And even if people report that, everyone is going to be like, is that true?

Is that true? I don't know. I can't verify it. I'm trying to figure out. There's just massive confusion. And that's going to get worse and worse. It's not how, it's not how, like,

digital society should be built. Our lives have never been so digital. And it's built on like this completely, complete shoddy foundation. Like we need to fix the foundation. And once again, like, I don't, I know Bitcoin will be a part of it. I don't know if it'll necessarily be Noster,

but something like Noster. And the pace of, of improvement on Nostr and just the organic developer community, this open source community, it's just been absolutely massive watch. Like, I witnessed it and then I joined the fray. It's not, you can't manufacture that kind of excitement and that kind of developer attention. Do you wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin?

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Dot blockware solutions.com forward slash WBD. So we should talk about Bitcoin. We've barely talked about Bitcoin yet. Let's go back to Bitcoin. What's your price prediction for the year? I don't like price predictions. What's your favorite Bitcoin stock? Higher than right now.

My favorite Bitcoin stock. I know what your favorite Bitcoin stack is. Tell me. Well, I think it's probably, is it right here on the I don't do that? I mean, maybe by the time the show goes out. No.

No, it's not. I do like iron there. Do you not put them on the screen somewhere? No. Are they right here? No, they're not there either. Just click on the description, click on iron, find out more. What do you want to talk about with Bitcoin?

I'm pretty, look, I've never been more bullish on Bitcoin. I think... Are we going to have 200K by conference day? finally eventually yeah eventually five years later um i don't want to i kind of do want to talk about treasury companies with you i know we said we wouldn't yeah let's talk about them um do you think they're good for bitcoin people buying bitcoin's cool but my fear is that there's a lot of people who are going to you literally every episode is just a treasury company episode for you now this is it should be what Bitcoin stocks did? I own two stocks. I've only ever owned two stocks. What two stocks do you own?

Iron. Okay. I wish I didn't, you didn't ask me that question. And B-Hoddle. There you go. Is this financial advice? Absolutely. Absolutely. This is a securities violation. This is not, this is not financial advice. But like, are they good for Bitcoin? Because I get... It depends on what you mean by that. I think they're definitely, like, as a Bitcoin holder, like, if more people are buying Bitcoin and increases the Bitcoin purchasing price. It accelerates Bitcoinization. Yeah. And it is unequivocally a net benefit for everybody that holds Bitcoin if the purchasing power goes up. Like there's this weird subset of Bitcoiners that like almost like fetishize being poor. Like they would rather, they're like, I'm not in it for the money. It's like, no, I'm in it for

the tech and the money. Like my family relies on Bitcoin increasing in purchasing power, or at least not going down in purchasing power. Yeah, we all want to see number go up. Yeah, any one that thing on the pretends they don't. At the very least, not down, right? Like, our savings are in Bitcoin. Mm-hmm. So I think in that way, it's a win.

Now, I think, like, in a lot of ways, you can make that same argument for shitcoins. Mm-hmm. Like, when Eos did their, when Eos did their ICO, where did they take all the proceeds? They put it all in Bitcoin. Yeah. When Tesos did theirs, where they still, like, if you. go onto Bitcoin Treasuries or whatever to the private companies page like two of the largest holders in private companies that we know of are shitcoins and specifically the shitcoin founders

not the individuals that bought the shit coins that went down yeah so why do i say that i say that because i think first of all it's important to isolate in this current dynamic you have you really have strategy and then you have everybody else 100%. And then there's some nuance in there like There's some players that are slightly larger that are trying to differentiate themselves in some ways or not, but it's still very early. But you very much have strategy and everyone else. And I think when you look at mostly the long tail, it's predatory on individual retail investors who are looking for get rich quick schemes essentially, right? Which is the same dynamic that we saw with shit coins. Totally.

And the crazy thing is it's as if Bitcoin is now not volatile enough for people. Correct. which is but this is once again eternal September because there's the same thing with the Ethereum and Salon and all these other things and BitMax 100x Yeah right But at least they come in they think they're late

And and they leverage themselves up In some way or another to try and get it back They usually get wrecked they'd probably be better off staying on one stacking Sacking stats The insidious thing about this piece is Like over the last 10 years Like something beautiful happened on the internet with with bitcoin culture and and i'm not going to pretend that everyone was super ethical and

you know that that that that bitcorners were perfect or whatever but like we had a pretty strong ethical compass in a wide swath of bitcoin culture and now a lot of the loudest voices in bitcoin culture have gone they've they've all been bought but they all join treasury companies And they're effectively instead of saying, you should learn how to self-custy Bitcoin, you should learn how to buy the real thing and you should stay on one stack sets, is like, no, buy my stock instead. And that part is painful to see. Does it hurt the Bitcoin movement long term? Nope. Does it hurt individuals that are holding self-custy Bitcoin themselves?

Nope. Do people have a right to get wrecked? Yep. I'm a free market maximalist. Like buy whatever the hell you want. I've always said this about shitcoins too. I think I've been relatively consistent. Shitcoins are not a threat to Bitcoin.

They're a threat to users that choose to speculate on them and end up getting wrecked. Are there always exceptions to the rule where people end up outperforming Bitcoin and it turns into a great financial decision for them? Yes, that's true as well. You bought the Ethereum ICO and then sold it for Bitcoin at the right time. You did quite well for yourself. I think all these things are constant. But I do think that at least, and maybe it's just a phase. It's probably just a phase.

But in terms of mind share, the treasury companies have just like completely dominated this cycle. And just to once again bring it back in perspective is like, Spring 2017, summer 2017. Like I was literally sitting there myself. I thought the Ethereum ICO was a scam. So all the other ICOs were a scam. It's really hard to explain it if you weren't there. But I was like sitting there was like,

am I the retard? Am I the dumbass? Like are there just going to be a thousand different pre-mined shit coins that all outperforming Bitcoin? And it turned out I wasn't. But I would be lying if I didn't say that there was like a couple month period there where I was like, maybe I'm wrong. And there's a lot of similarities over this year with that. Apart from they're not performing particularly well on the whole.

Well, recently, like a strategy bowl will be quick to remind you. Oh, strategies don't go. But the last two years, but the last year has been as underperforming Bitcoin. But I agree with you that strategy is almost like its own thing. Like, the stuff they're doing is actually interesting. Like, I think the preferreds are interesting. I think they'll do pretty well. Like, I don't own any. I don't plan to own any, but I still think it'll do quite well. But if you bought Metaplan at the right time.

Yeah, Metaplan's done well. There's a few. Yeah. It's a timing thing. But I do wonder if the story's kind of ending. I don't know. I mean, maybe to some degree, but maybe it's also just beginning. But, I mean, you look what's happened with NACA.

Like. Been a fucking disaster for these other investors. Yeah. Like, it's basically, it's the same price it was a year ago before the merger even happened. It's lower, I think. I mean, that's pretty rough. Yeah. I don't know.

I think the trend of companies buying Bitcoin and putting it on their balance sheet is definitely just beginning. Now, I think the question becomes, as someone who loves free markets and believes they lead to human flourishing, like, I think it's a question of how markets value different things. Right. And I think specifically companies that don't have cash flow and revenue growth and like real business plans. And they're just relying on a debt arbitrage play or hoping that their MNAV is high so they can just sell stock on retail at a premium to buy Bitcoin will start to be valued accordingly. Yep. And over the last year or so, they've probably been valued too high. And that's why you can go back and forth on whether or not strategies preferred shares is genius or a recipe for disaster.

Like people swing both sides of it. But the thing is there is something interesting and unique there in the market that needs to be valued accordingly. And the market has no idea how to value it right now. And that's, I think, also what we saw in the early days of sell converts, sell ATMs by Bitcoin. What do I value that at? And is MNAB even the correct way to think about it? You know, I don't think anyone really has that answer.

I mean, shout out to you. You called Saylor making a stable coin a long time ago, and he's essentially done that. Yeah, with STRC. But I think there's two lies that are told about treasury companies. one is the jurisdictional arbitrage. I don't believe that exists. Like, I think there's certain edge cases where it does. Like, I think Metaplanet...

Just Japan, basically. Yeah, only one. But, like, these companies that are starting, like... I know we talked about B. Hoddle. It's also, like, the term treasury company's annoying. Because, like, any company putting Bitcoin on the balance... I think leverage Bitcoin equity is a better term. Yeah.

Treasury company has Lindy. Like, we're just calling them treasury companies. That's what they're called. No one wants to call them leverage Bitcoin equity. And B. Hoddle isn't doing that. But anyway, regardless of them. We don't have to argue about your treasury company. They're not my treasury company.

I have nothing to do with them at all. But the idea of creating a treasury company in the UK or in Australia or in anywhere else in the world, because that's some kind of jurisdictional arbitrage. It's nonsense. You can still buy strategy in the UK very easily. And you can definitely buy Bitcoin everywhere. Of course. And really, what are you actually gaining from it?

You're, you know, let's say you're worth a billion dollars. Like, are you really going to tap into, like, these pension funds and, like, capital markets? Well, I think that's also part of the lies. Like, they keep saying, like, it's for institutional investors. If it's for institutional investors, like, why are you hiring podcasters? Like, it's very, most of them are very clearly retail focused. Are you disappointing in the podcasters that have moved into the boards of these treasury companies? Look, I, um.

Who's left? You guys. There's not many free agents left. There's very few free agents left. I guess you're on the board of fold. I'm not on the border of fold. Oh, you're not. 1031 are on the border fold.

Jonathan's on the board of fold. I've never told anyone to buy fold stock. But we are an investor in them before they went public. We helped them go public. Look, I mean, we're in the business of if our founders want to do something, we'll help support them. Like, it's their businesses. And I, I do think that they want, to have a strong cash flow positive Bitcoin financial services business, they're not trying to play

the same game that the other treasury companies are trying to play. And they're also, the market is not valued them in that expectation. They've almost never traded out a premium time now. I do have some ethical concerns about SPACs in general. Why? Because like the way they do the lockups, they pretend it's like to protect retail but it actually usually creates a dynamic where retail it's it becomes predatory for retail you end up you trade out a slight premium in the beginning and then it collapses almost every time uh is is how that happens and the cool thing is if you have bitcoin on your balance sheet it kind of tends to make a floor to a degree i mean it can go negative but uh it's better than something like a virgin galactic or something where like it literally just can go

all the way to zero basically um but yeah i mean once again not an expert on that stuff i'm a very my savings are are it's like 100 percent in bitcoin and the investments we make through 1031 into bitcoin startups freedom focus startups in general we have some non-bidcoin companies in there but anyway yeah this is i think like just to bring it back for a second Am I disappointed? Maybe that's a little bit too harsh. Like you asked if I regret in deleting my Twitter. I actually don't regret deleting my Twitter at all.

What I do have some regret for is maybe I got a little bit ahead of myself. And I apologize to anyone who thought I was treating them like a dick and pompous and saying like, I'm better than you for deleting my Twitter. Like if you want to use your Twitter, if you want to use TikTok, you want to use whatever, use what you want. I don't really fucking give shit. Who's me to judge how you live your life? I feel bad about that. I was like, especially I was in all caps mode.

Like, I was a little bit aggressive. So, like, I don't want to, like, cast broad disappointment on an industry. People can live their lives and choose what they want to do. I think a lot of people are making mistakes, though. There's a lot of reputational risk in doing it. Yeah, and I think reputation, you know, at the end of the day, like, first of all, like, I'm also never going to tell people that they should have children. I think it's a beautiful experience. I think most people should consider it.

People should have children. And yeah, but I never want to be like the pushy parent. I love it. Anyway, at the end of the day, you've got to look your kids in the eye. Ten years, you're going to have to look your kids in eye and tell them, you know, how are you acted? And hopefully be a good example to them. And I think a lot of people are not acting on that first principle. I'm trying to think if I am.

I think you mostly are. I think none of us are perfect, right? Like, I think if you think you're not a hypocrite, you're probably just blinded to your hypocrisy. And so we should try and reduce our hypocrisy as much as possible. Like, I am definitely not perfect. I'm not all seeing.

People shouldn't blindly trust me. But you try and be better. Always try and be better. Always try and be less of a hypocrite. If you're not trying to do that, then you're failing. So focus on that. But then to bring it back to the Bitcoin Treasury companies, the example I like to use,

I like to use, it's like, at some point, we're going to see, like, an immensely profitable company like Apple sweeping their cash flow into Bitcoin. We already see it in the private sector. You know, strike is... Tether. Tether. I mean, Tether is like the behemoth in the room. Tether's, you know, on track to make $25 billion this year and they sweep it all into Bitcoin and gold, all the profits. Not the reserves. The reserves are held in treasuries. But they have 75 people, and they just sweep it all into Bitcoin and gold. Strike has been profitable five quarters, and they just sweep everything into Bitcoin.

I think that's the next shift. And I value those companies way higher than companies that don't have a sustainable cash flow and business drive component. Yeah, that seems healthy. But I don't know how you... I assume the trade-off that people like Apple are trying to make right now.

They must be aware of what Sailor is doing. They must see how beneficial... I mean, they'd be completely blind if they didn't see it. But like, obviously he did that presentation for Microsoft. And they don't have to take leverage on Bitcoin, but they could put a massive portion of their cash balance into Bitcoin. They just have huge cash balances that they're not doing anything with. But the only thing I can think of, and I could be totally wrong here,

but is that they see that as somehow, if they made that move, it would be seen badly in the market and their share price will be punished. Yeah. I think there's career risks still. How does that change? Well, we're already kind of seeing it. So like on the 1031 side, we interact with like a lot of family offices. It's a rich families, institutions, like endowments, college endowments and stuff.

And our bread and butter has been like someone works in a family office or someone works in an institution and they're on the investment committee. And they're already Bitcoiners. I listen to the podcast and stuff. And I know what Noster is. And so they see the value and they want to move into Bitcoin. But historically, most of the people you talk to, they don't want to make. a risky decision that might cost them their job if they just if they just go into

equity indexes they just go into s mp 500 indexes they hold treasuries and stuff like yeah they might underperform but like they're not going to make a drastic mistake that will cost them their livelihood and then they're going to have to worry how to feed their family right no one wants to do that no one wants to take that risk especially in an institutional environment that is flipped like it's getting to the point now where if you're not even doing like a little exposure and you're you're an investment community you're not doing a little exposure to bitcoin you might you'll have probably have career risk because you're failing your fiduciary responsibility to however your clients are um so we already starting to see that flip and i think we're going to start to see it flip

on the public side are we recording we're recording you just freaked me out i think we'll start to see that flip on the public side like i think um a lot of us realize that it's grossly irresponsible for Apple to be holding large amounts of cash right now. In an inflationary environment, in an environment where inflation is grossly underreported and is way higher, to quote sailors, a melting ice cube. They're holding a melting ice cube.

And maybe it's not Bitcoin. Maybe it's maybe some gold. You know, I don't know. I think they should put it in Bitcoin. The example I use for my own project is OpenSats, 5-1C3 charity, We don't take any cut of donations. I volunteer my time to do that.

We support open source contributors. Our treasury strategy is quite simple. You give us dollars. We put it in Bitcoin. We're sending out a million dollars with the Bitcoin a month. We obviously have no business model because of her fucking charity. So, you know, we're cash flow negative. We're just sending out a million dollars a month.

And the amount we have in our treasury is double the amount we've ever raised. This is insane. Like, that's just crazy. And so, like, if we were holding up. in cash, we'd probably already be, we'd already be out of cash. We'd have to go out and raise more money. And I mean, funnily enough, though, the companies that have done that are the ones that are going to start doing Treasury plays.

I mean, maybe, but the question is, like, once again, I think. OpenSat Treasury Company coming soon. We'll do the Open AI model. We'll just pivot to for profit. We'll pivot to four profit. We'll take a 49% investment from Microsoft. Only invest in Closource software. I'll give myself 20% equity.

Fuck Sam Altman I want to talk about Samo. Once again, I think look, for better or for worse, we're calling them Treasury Place, but it's important to distinct, you know, you've got to distinguish. What Bitcoin did the Treasury company? But it's not, right, it's not because now

treasury companies mean leverage Bitcoin equities. Yeah. So what Bitcoin did is a profitable, private business that saves free cash flows in Bitcoin. And like, well, maybe we're going to need to come up with a better, like, one-liner term. But it's not similar scientific or... They don't exist anymore. I don't think the merger is actually finalized yet.

I don't really understand how public markets work. Yeah, not financial advice. I think people are waking up to that. And I think the most clear sign of that is the JP Morgan stuff that came out recently with their debasement trade. Yeah. I mean, it's not trade. That's the thing I think they're missing, is that a trade assumes.

you're going to go back to cash at some point. But I do wonder if that's the kind of thing that tips Apple, Microsoft, those big profitable companies over the edge, is that like this isn't just us niche weirdos on the internet shouting about Bitcoin being a hedge against a basement. It's J.P. Morgan saying that. Yeah, and like Larry Fink, like BlackRock's, I think their most successful ETF ever is the Bitcoin UTF.

Yeah. I mean, by the way, just to go back to this, like in a better situation, open sets would be like sustainable without me having to go out and raise donations for first. I don't get paid to do that and it sucks. It sucks constantly going out to raise money. So, like, I think the way this all scales, I think the way freedom scales is sustainable profitable profitable businesses

that build on top of open source software and open protocols. Because anyone who's ever tried to raise for charitable causes knows it's just a forever grind. Like, Bitcoin helps. It makes operations easier. It makes our treasury increase in value rather than decrease in value over time and spreads it out. more and takes less pressure off of us. But it still doesn't solve the underlying problem. Where at the end of the day, it's a finite amount of money and you have to just constantly look for donors to try and do it. So open source, open protocols, they compound beautifully.

They're viral in nature. They're hard to control. You know, you don't have a company you can pressure, an individual you can pressure. Governments have really hard time stopping them. But then at the end of the day, how do they get scaled out? They get scaled out by private companies that have sustainable business models it's a flywheel and historically the way they have been is with private businesses that have predatory business models so but if if those private businesses didn't have predatory business models then you kind of get the best of both worlds you'd get the scale that you see with something like gmail um but you wouldn't see the predatory nature of their business model so you'd have something maybe like a proton mail or something where they don't

scan your email but they charge your subscription fees and maybe it's a less problem profitable business, but it's still profitable and not taking donations to sustain itself. You know all the fights that are happening in Bitcoin at the moment with, I mean, treasury companies are an obvious one. Yeah. Not's cool stuff. I know, I know you're scared to talk about it. I'm not scared to talk about it. I just talk about it all the fucking time. We don't have to talk about it, but people just get mad. Like, like people are very emotional. By the time this comes up, when is this coming out? Wednesday next week, probably. Like Corby's 30. You'll probably.

already released the world is not going to end i i think the discourse around it has gotten um very negative yeah it's degraded to an insane level i think it doesn't help anybody a hundred percent um i think ultimately bitcoin is a generational project i think most participants believe uh that bitcoin is the best money and we need to maintain it as such i think most participants believe that we need to be very conservative uh with how it's developed on the protocol level specifically we can move a little bit faster on apps and stuff but even with apps like someone's got their life savings in your app like don't fuck it up i want to even be more explicit there like i think it's not just most people i think core also are absolutely including that but like core is also not this it's not business and it's also not

this homogenous entity. It's a bunch of developers. Now, yes, there's a small subset of maintainers and very active contributors that are friendly with each other and there is an in-group there. But the answer here is what I would like to see is node operators have more options. This is something that we've been intimately focused on OpenSats. OpenSats has funded over 320 open source contributors with Bitcoin, a very small subset of those or our core contributors.

Everyone we funded has been listed on our website. We try and act with more transparency than 99% of charities in the world, not just in Bitcoin. And we're open to funding alternative implementations, give people more choice. And I think that's better for core, too. Like, I think if you're one of the few core maintainers, like, it'd be good on your soul and stress and whatnot. If there was another team that was maintaining a compatible alternative. When you say an alternative, you're not talking about notch, you talk about a brand new implementation. I mean, look, I think Knott's could be one of those alternatives.

If, if, and I'm going to get so much shit, like, it's just so vitriolic. If Luke was more open to. making it not just a Luke project. It's very much just a Luke project. And I will say that from the very beginning, I said to Luke, I've said this publicly for about a year now, like if Knott wants to add more maintainers and more review, they can apply to OpenSats.

For full disclosure, I think we've gotten two applications in the last year. And they were just not up to our standards. Yeah. And it was not because it's not some conspiracy. It wasn't because of, knots yeah right like i would like to see 20 i would like to see 100 um i would like to see a whole another implementation um i would like to see libid coin be funded we just recently we've been funding

floresta which is like a u3 xo based um implementation and they're trying to add the same api bindings as bitcoin core so if you if you're already using bitcoin core in your stack you can easily switch to floresta um i think there's this weird cancel culture dynamic in digital society now, where everyone wants to get everyone fired, they disagree with? Did you see? And like in this situation, I guess I'm looked at as like the manager. So like the parents on the internet are like, hey, Odell, like you got to fire this person or this person.

Actually, most of the time they don't even pick people that they want to fire. They just say all core devs are commies. Like, okay, well, all the devs we support are listed. Like, why don't you tell me which ones are commies? And then they just go silent. I mean, we saw this. You see this with people in non-Bitcoin circles, right? It's like they post a picture of someone.

They're like, find him because he says something on the internet. It's like a gym teacher in Idaho. And then they're like, they get the guy fired. It's like a crazy dynamic. That's the tricky thing though where like free speech doesn't mean free speech without consequence. But my point is like this is not Bitcoin specific. Oh, absolutely not. This is a trend we've seen much broader than Bitcoin.

Have you seen this? So this happened today. I did that interview with Antoine. Yeah. From court. And someone said, pay attention to the setting. All white background, white t-shirts. These guys are posing as the good guys. White nights. Top-notch propaganda. I'm wearing a tan shirt. I'm not in white either. This is the evil episode. But it's like people are going so far as I think, I'm picking the color of my t-shirt to appear like I'm a good actor. Yeah. Like I feel like- I mean, you're definitely a bad actor, so we got that settled. And it has nothing to do with your t-shirt.

Fuck you. No, I mean, I think it's, and look, I think it's good that people, we want as many people to run nodes as possible. I think that's a really good outcome of this. I think a lot of people have been scared out of self-custody, though, which is a negative outcome of this. I don't think the world is falling. You think people have been scared out self-custiff? I think, yeah, 100%. I think, yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of people text me, like, is Bitcoin about to fail?

I or is it going to be is it going to be a problem if I'm running a node or from holding my own keys or like should I just hold the ETF and I think you know there's a there's an appeal to outrage and panic and moral panic and I it's and it's also there's a conflation between individual node policy and consensus rules like if this was a fight about like what is and what is not a valid transaction on Bitcoin and it was about a soft fork. It'd be a little bit different depending on what the actual circumstances were. And I will say almost as a policy, open sets just does not fund really soft fork work or hard fork work on core. Like part of the, part of the really frustrating thing about this is like the straw man argument of like, you don't care about Bitcoin as money or you want to like change it. It's like, no, most people agree on both of those things. Like, we need to be very conservative and we intimately care about Bitcoin as money. Yeah.

And it feels like a distraction tactic. But anyway, like, I feel like – and then I talk about it constantly. I've been very transparent about it. And I feel like it comes up all the time. And then people are always like, you never talk about it. It's like, no, I've been talking about it for like a year and a half now. I hear you talk about it. Yeah.

So that's why I said I don't want to talk about it. It's something that I talk about all the time. I think it is, you know, it's important how people think about these things. But I think the conversation has got to the point, in my opinion, where it's almost like the people running knots feel like there's kind of core of some elite that are trying to attack Bitcoin. They think that, like, they think by me having a conversation,

Van Tuan, who works on call. You had a conversation with Samsung, like, right before. And, like, but they somehow think that there's like some co-option, conspiracy thing going on. And I think a lot of it's organic. I think there's some of it is not. Like, I post videos and I'll get a comment being like run knots within a second.

Like, some of it can't be organic. But I don't know if... I definitely do not think like they're all bots. I think there's like a lot of... It's definitely not all bots. Don't get me wrong. Like 100%. But...

I think most people involved on both sides of this argument, mean well. Agree. And a lot of them have gotten overly emotional about it. And I've heard their own sides in a discourse way. I think there's been a lot of quote unquote core supporters that acted aggressively and demeaning to people that didn't understand things. And then heels were dug in and same on the opposite side.

And I do think everyone is welcome to say what they want to say. The way we run open sets, because it's not just me. The whole thing is by design, you need a majority. Dardi Board approval for any grant is was that in either direction, like, we're going to try our best to be immune from social pressure, just period. That's why we're here. We're like the independent funding organization for open source in the world. Like everywhere else is relatively centralized and relatively opaque, even if they mean well.

So that's just my promise to everybody. Like, that's how it's going to be. So you can keep trying to get me to like cancel people or whatever. And then last one of these, you can like try and cancel me. Just don't really care. Delete in my own Twitter account. My family does not rely on podcast income. I do not need more views.

If anything, less views would be better. And I'm personally mission focused on making Bitcoin as usable as possible as freedom money. And as many people using it as possible. Yeah. That has been my mission for 10 plus years now. It's going to continue to be my mission. And we'll see how it plays out. Yeah.

I mean, for me, like, I don't mind what implementation people want to run. Like, that's, that really matters to them. But that's the worst part is like, like, that ultimately, like, that's where the discussion should have really ended. And I get, like, ideologically, I understand the viewpoint as well. Like, when I speak to mechanic, I get it. Like, I agree with them in a lot of ways. It's just, I don't know the reality of the situation. I think we'll be proven that Core 30 is not the end of Bitcoin.

I really don't see that as a likelihood. I think there's been a lot of like uproar about a policy change that I'll be proven right or wrong is seems inconsequential in a lot of ways. Yeah. I wonder though if like this infighting is almost just like a symptom of his winning. Like there's nothing else to fight about at this point. I mean, I think there's plenty of other things to fight about. What should we be fighting about instead? I'm not going to start the next fight.

go on start the next fight no i mean i look i think some of it has been boredom um look i just this would be such a drama inducing go on do it no no i just um i'm so sick of all the the drama i uh look i mean i think bitcoin has freedom money is not a given like i think it's good that most bitcoiners are adversarial I do think in this particular situation, it seems to be a little bit of a immune response disorder. And like we're just attacking each other. And I think some of it is because Bitcoiners that are more technical have become more irrelevant.

And I think there's a desire to be relevant in Bitcoin. And I think people across the spectrum and outside of Bitcoin should just check. their ego for a little bit. And once again, I've never claimed to be the humble guy. When I say stay humble, I'm reminding myself to stay humble. But I think there's just a lot of ego involved. You think there's a bit of main character syndrome going on? Everywhere. Everywhere you look, its main characters, once again, outside of Bitcoin too. And I think it's a product of like modern social experience, like digital social media. There's like a psychosis. And that's why I think, you know, we need to solve that. Or ideally, I would like to see us solve that because I think our

kids will grow up in a better world because it's just been getting worse and worse like everywhere you look you see it i mean like you see it with like the candace owens charlie kirk nick quente's stuff that's going on right now completely outside of bitcoin they all want it to be about themselves there's always something breaking um there's always this new news tidbit something you got to get in front of the cameras or whatever and a lot of it is just like broken incenses all the way down algorithms and engagement and addiction data surveillance all mixed into one but yeah and then the last piece i would say on it is i've seen a lot of the anti-core sentiment be that we're concerned about VC capture i agree with that concern high level i think that's absolutely true

what VC capture do specifically the argument they use is situa raised a bunch of money specifically Peter Thiel led that raise they want to do like Ethereum like stuff on Bitcoin 1031 did not invest in that Citria

specifically I think even if this policy rule didn't change they were still going to proceed and they were going to just do it in a worse way for Bitcoin I'm pretty sure that's what they explicitly said yeah I but just the idea of VC capture,

the idea of investor capture. And it doesn't have to be just VC, just rich people that are interacting with Bitcoin and want control over Bitcoin. The way you solve that is by having more independent, transparent organizations that are providing ethically aligned funding to developers.

It's not trying to defund the devs. If you defund the devs, they're only going to get their funding from those people. And I say this as someone who has a fund. But there's also like there are known bugs in Bitcoin that need fixing. We need devs. And we need maintenance.

And this is a generational project. Yep. And we don't really have that many. We have the most eyes on the code of any open source project in existence, really, and it's not enough eyes. It's still not enough eyes. It's like 50 people work on call. And the alternative, and people are going to say, like, this is a strongman, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, well, Nautz is just basically 100% funded by a single investor funded company, which is ocean.

Right? Like that's the alternative you see. That's what happens if you don't have a bunch of independent funding. So I will just say that I think this is something that OpenSats has diagnosed very early on. It's one of the reasons we exist. It's one of the reasons of volunteers that contribute to their time alongside me do it. And that this is a long process. And let's not make overly emotional decisions in the short term because we don't want to

deal with drama or whatnot, that will instead result in negative knock on effects in the future because there is a pipeline here. You know, you can't just like, if you alienate a bunch of open source contributors, you can't just like immediately bring them back in. You know, there's like years in the making. And the old ones need to train the new ones and you need like. And they could go and earn five times of much money working at Google. Or a treasury company. Yeah. And what's take on like bit VM stuff in general like it's not not specifically citriot but these kind of roll up slay 2s that we're going to see start coming to bitcoin i think it's mostly a distraction um i'd like as a bitcoins i haven't really seen um use cases that i would like to see that don't exist

um that these things aim to provide uh for the users that do want to see some of these things like i I don't see why you couldn't just use like a tron or something. Would you not rather just see it on Bitcoin? But like why? Like what are you trying to do on it? I mean, but it feels like the argument, this isn't my argument. But the argument you saw a lot was like anything useful that happens on Ethereum will eventually be on Bitcoin.

Yeah. Well, like, let me use the argument of like Tether. Because I think tether is actually probably the most compelling argument. And you don't need BitVM or Situ or whatever to do that. I mean, you could do it today on Liquid. I know Spark wants to do it with Spark. It's the state chain from LightSpark. If you are connecting to a real-world asset like Tether,

you are intimately trusting Tether has the actual treasuries backing it. So the underlying protocol technology that you use to interact with that does not actually change the trust model for how you interact with it. If you're using Tron Tether and Justin Sun rugs you, Palo can just send out a tweet and be like, we moved your balance to Salana and then you're on Salana. Like that's all it is.

So why do we need that on Bitcoin? And if we put it on Bitcoin, if you actually want to see users, it needs to be cheaper and it has to have better UX. Otherwise, they're just going to keep using Tron. And if it's cheaper and has better UX, then it's probably also incredibly centralized. So you're not actually even getting a lot of the trust benefits. You're not getting a lot of benefits, if any, from using it in a Bitcoin, quote-unquote, native way. But I guess the other side of that is, let's say you're a massive fan of like Covenants. One of these BitVMs can do something that allows that not without changing Bitcoin.

You can go have unilateral. Yeah, but then I think the question is like, what is the trust? What is the trust elements there? Well, as long as you have unilateral exit, like I'm not saying it's definitely not as good as just having Bitcoin, but it's quite good. Look, I would say that I am personally not interested in changing Bitcoin at a protocol level to facilitate this type of stuff. But it doesn't need to be. Yeah, if it doesn't need to be, then let people build it and we'll see if it's useful or not. We can't stop them anyway.

And eventually... But I will say putting my funding hat on, on the 1031 side specifically, we don't fund that. Like, that's just... It's too out there on the risk curve. I don't really, the business models aren't clear. I think there'll be a load of shit that falls by the wayside. Maybe it makes more sense on like an open source nonprofit side. But I will say that we haven't really seen many compelling,

if any, compelling applications to open stats on that front. But I know you think that at some point men pools are going to be full and never empty. I don't know if I believe that anymore. Oh, really? No, I think I still believe that. But it's been hard out here. You were right for a long time. And then I wasn't.

Yeah. But if we did get to that point where it was really hard to get into, you know, the next block or, you know, anything, really, it's you're going to need something else. And, like, there's obviously. But I think there's an argument that there's an argument that in that environment. And once again, I, look, I think the only thing more scarce than our time than Bitcoin is our time. And one of the ways I protect my time in Bitcoin is I try not to waste too much time on like white papers and theoretical stuff until there's like actually a working product in my hand. So I will admit that like I haven't spent a lot of time like diving deep exactly into like Bitfiem and some of these other proposals on how to do this type of stuff. Because I want to see it and use it.

Yeah. And I guess there is the risk that if they could get priced out of their transactions too. But that's where I was going with this, is my basic understanding is that it would get quite expensive for those setups without a soft work. Like the way that they're kind of like hacking it in without doing a change to Bitcoin at the consensus level gets quite expensive. And then once again, you're better off using Trump. Yeah. Like if Tron is like 100x cheaper, they're going to use Tron instead. Matt O'Dell says use Tron.

No, I'm not saying that. Honestly, I think people should just stand on success. Like once again, I wonder like what the use case is. Like, first of all, I've never used Tether. I understand that there's places in the world that people want access to dollars. They can't get access to dollars to the traditional financial rails and they want to use Tether. If you do, just understand the trust dynamic. I would say that the trust dynamic in like Chase Bank or something is kind of similar.

If anything, maybe Chase is more likely to freeze your funds than Tether is. But like in terms of like defy stuff and everything, like I think that's completely overrated. Like I think if you want dollars in your bank account from a loan, then you pick a trusted counterparty and you like get the dollars in your bank account because of course there's just going to be trust relying on it. And most of the times when people say like, oh, this is like a trustless loan or whatever. It's like not and it just adds a bunch of complexity that you can get rugged by the complexity as well. So you're just overcomplicating it when eventually you're going to have you're dealing with a centralized party anyway. Yeah. So like I question like what's,

the use cases are. Like, is the use case like a sushi swap or something? Like, where you're, like, trading like meme coins with each other natively on Bitcoin? Like, who the fuck gives a shit? Yeah, no one cares. I've not heard sushi swap name in a long time. So I was speaking to Luke Luke Grom in this morning. Nice. It was a fucking great conversation. Did you ask him what kind of node he runs? I don't want to speak for Lou, but I doubt he's running a node. Fair enough. Norse he has to, I guess, if he doesn't want to. This is his prerogative. But he was saying something super interesting. So he's been talking about this idea that the Middle East is shifting away from the PetroDala.

After Israel bombed Qatar. Yeah. And that obviously has a massive impact on the US treasury market. Right. And I do wonder if Tedder ends up being like the geopolitical play that the US makes in terms of trying to back up their debt. Yeah, I mean, they already kind of are. Do you think this would be the weirdest world in, possible. We're in a simulation, but could Tether end up being a reserve currency of the world?

For an, for like, even if it's for an interim period. I mean, no, probably not. I mean, I don't even think Tether thinks, actions speak louder than words, right? So like, what is Tether doing? Tether is buying treasuries to back up their stable coin, their USD token, inherently unstable, just going down and personally. power over time. They're buying treasuries to back their USD token. They're taking the interest off of that, the yield off of that, and that's their cash flow. That's their business. They're

providing the USD tokens to users. The USD tokens aren't providing the users with the interest. So then they're making, you know, 20 plus billion a year. It's like 70 employees, just pure profit. And then what are they doing with it? They are buying Bitcoin and gold. Right. So they're making a calculated, very clear investment strategy that they think that they're in basically a transitory business. And then ultimately we will move to either Bitcoin standard or a gold standard or some mix of the both. Maybe mix of the both is most likely. So that's what they clearly, I think is what they think is going to happen. I think the dollar is in such a bad position. That there's just no way out besides just inflation and irrelevance. I think tether slows it down. But it doesn't really matter how many treasuries they buy. They're so far away from being able to reverse the pain.

So then the question becomes like, do they switch to do they release a new? So they have, I forget what they call it, but they have tether gold, which is gold back tether. So they switch to that Do they have like A different tether that's a basket of Bitcoin and gold and stuff And then that becomes a reserve currency I think all of these are just like complicated Like Rube Goldberg machines that like don't need to exist when Bitcoin exists

And so I think what happens is I mean like Luke obviously spends more time in this type of stuff than I do But we've already watched the move away from the dollar i would i would pinpoint like a critical inflection point was when we weaponize the financial system using sanctions against russia 100th and their treasuries um so this trend has been accelerating has been happening for a while and has been accelerating and so what i think happens is the countries in the non-u-sphere of influence or countries that just in general are losing trust in the u.s are we recording

I try to do that without you noticing. We'll move to a non-US method of trade. What does that look like? Maybe it's gold. Maybe it's some kind of bricks currency, like just a separate reserve currency that's managed by all of them together. Maybe China's the main leader of it. But in either situation, whether it's a multi-country fiat competition,

competitor or gold or a mixture of both where gold backs a multi-currency fiat competitor. It requires trust. And so what I think happens is maybe they first move to something that requires trust. And once again, that could be managed by Tether. Maybe it's not managed by Tether. It doesn't really matter. That's just a footnote. Something that requires trust and then trust breaks down and then Bitcoin stands as the only way to interchange globally without trust.

Right? Can can can can long term? China and Russia trust each other? Can China and Brazil trust each other? Like no, I don't think so. Can India and China trust each other? I don't think so. And even if they're settling in gold, that requires a lot of trust because you're basically like if you want to settle physically,

you're just flying fucking planes of gold everywhere. Bitcoin is strictly superior to that. So I think in a world where the U.S. currency continues to erode in faith value, people are going to look for an option that doesn't require trust. And that option is Bitcoin. And so there might be a transitory period where we moved to something in between. But I don't think it'll be very long just because Bitcoin exists. If Bitcoin didn't exist, maybe it would be longer.

It's funny. You love the mandibles. I was just really protecting myself. You're trying to say it. No, I was trying not to say. Harder always reminds me that he's the person that told you about mandibles. Yeah, on my show. on Robert Lurieke.

Oh, was it? It was on TFTC, but yeah, it was me, him and Marty. But it was like three hours into a very drunk episode. I actually listened to that episode back, probably like a year ago. It was a good one. But in that... And Alex Gladstein recommended me too. To be fair, Hoddle recommended it first, and then Alex recommended the second.

I was like, okay, if they're both recommended, I should read it. And now you've become the mandibles influencer. I mean, look, I think it's not like the best book, but it's an easy read. And I do think the U.S. is going through an increasingly inflationary environment. It's pretty obvious if you have eyes. And she just kind of spells it out for you in it. And then after that, but I think it won't be as bad as what's in the book because people will have the option for Bitcoin. Like what people don't realize is when Argentina goes through hyperinflation, it's really bad for the people.

But the fact that they can escape to the dollar makes it less bad. In a world without Bitcoin, if the US went through an inflationary period, hyperinflation, and they didn't have anywhere to escape to, it would be really, really bad. But if you have Bitcoin to escape to, it still be bad, but it lessens the pain and it gives you a path forward. But in that book, a stable way to move forward. In that book, it's basically about the US going through hyperinflation, and they have a bank call, which is essentially bricks. Yeah. And Bitcoin fails in the book.

Yeah. At the end of the book, spoiler alert, turn this off now if you've not read it, you should go and read it. But the last page is basically saying, and then the increased tax, and everything kind of started again. Do you think if we do go through something mandibles-esque that Bitcoin surviving and thriving in that can change the story? Yeah, 100%. I think, I mean, I would implore people to read the book and then they should go listen to my still-dispatch with Lionel Shriver. the author where we talk about this stuff

and I was like very soft touch on Bitcoin with her and it was like only at the end but first of all she deserves some leniency because when did the book come out? You're the mandibles influencer. I think the book came out

I'm on airplane mode. I want to say the book came out in like 2015 so she was writing it in like 2013 or something so like I mean, if you're a casual observer, like, it's almost logical to assume that Bitcoin was going to fail at that point. Did you look it up? 2016, it came out.

Yeah, so she was like writing it in 2014, 2015. 2015, we fell from, we were in high of 1,000 in 2013. We fell all the way to like 150-ish in 2015. If you're a casual observer, like, of course, Bitcoin's dead by, like, whenever the book's set in like 2032 or 2035 or whatever. So like I don't falter for that and actually it's kind of cool that she even Was aware of it enough to like just it was in passing she's like got a Bitcoin failed But yes I do think Bitcoin changes that dynamic like she had first of all in it she has gold confiscation which I think will likely happen in this type of situation much harder to confiscate Bitcoin

Conviscation will probably also happen but it's just much more difficult to confiscate Bitcoin period strictly better than gold in that situation you want to cross a border with gold what are you going to do it's very very difficult bitcoin's super easy um so so bitcoin provides this base this escape that people have second of all it really increases the potency of jurisdictional arbitrage and competition because states that are less predatory to their residents will naturally encourage more Bitcoin wealth to move into them. And I think in that type of failure mode, right? Like I think the Fiat currency experiment is actually quite young in the course of human history.

And yes, like if you don't think something like Bitcoin will succeed, then we probably will just repeat another fiat cycle. Or maybe we switch to gold, you know. But then gold has its own issues, which results in less going back to Fiat eventually. But with Bitcoin, there's a different path. Will there be taxes? Yeah, of course, there'll probably still be taxes.

But I think in a world where people have more agency and control over their own money, that relationship between governments and taxation and whatnot will be ideally less predatory because it'll be more competitive. And the last thing I would add is the mandibles is mostly for, focused on New York. I think in general, like in a societal degradation collapse type of scenario, a hyperinflation type of scenario, a scenario where trust and institutions break down, like dense population centers are just going to strictly do worse wherever you are.

So it's important to realize that that's from where the lens is. And we have no idea like in that scenario, like what's going on in like Tennessee, for instance or the American West. When I was at your place early this year, one of the things we was talking about before we did the show was the idea that what if we're wrong and what if gold was always the play? Yeah. Do you think that's likely? Um, non-zero chance. Probably, yeah. I mean, I don't, I own some gold jewelry. You're wearing it. Yeah. This is madex.x. Art. If you want to pick up. There's an end of Navve on Maydeck stuff.

Dope Bitcoin or jewelry. Probably will not outperform Bitcoin, but it's cool. Yeah, I mean, like, gold has been ripping. I think there's two ways to look at it. First of all, gold is Lindy. The market buying gold is showing that there's obviously demand for an independent store value asset that is. like not sovereign controlled which is like the Bitcoin value prop right digital gold like one of the

most well-known Bitcoin value props so as a Bitcoiner that's a good sign directionally correct the other piece is like market cap wise it's pretty crazy how much how big of a move it was it's having like one Bitcoin market cap every week at the moment yeah exactly so like people that think like Bitcoin can't go from like 120,000 to like 250k in a matter of a week or so. They're like just objectively wrong based on that gold depreciation. But yeah, I mean, look, I'm humble enough to not rule that out. Who knows?

I obviously, actions speak louder than words. If I thought that was the most likely case, I would just sell all my Bitcoin for gold. I haven't done that. But yeah, that also wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. like financially it would suck but especially in the short and medium term second well I don't know how employable I would be you can't be a gold influence it I have to like work on a construction crew or something because my entire career professional career has been Bitcoin focused so that would be embarrassing but we'd make it work but like it

wouldn't be the it's a it's a world on the gold standard is way better than a world on a fiat standard 100% just like strictly for my kids but I think think bitcoin is superior in every way and i think the market will figure out eventually that's just one of those um i call it like my like 2 a m you're like drinking with a bitcoin buddy at 2 a m and you just what if i'm wrong yeah what if it's gold it's like you're directionally correct but wrong but i think that'll probably be the other way although i think old people will be fine i think there's there's a world where just hard money as a whole wins out yeah i mean i think the gold devaluation of into bitcoin is slower

Yeah. Like gold isn't going to be like removed from society overnight. There's always there's there's a there's a value there and just the fact that's thousands of years old as a monetary asset. I am, I do the conversation that I've been thinking about a lot lately is, I guess just to flip the script is a top level user adoption of Bitcoin. Mm-hmm. It kind of feels like it's stalled a little bit, like, of real Bitcoin. And I mean, I don't even know what the question is. What do you mean top-level adoption, though?

Is that people buying Bitcoin or people using Bitcoin? How many people do you think 10 million sets worth of Bitcoin in self-custody? So that's $12,000. I've thought about this from like how many people own one Bitcoin. That number is really low. Yeah. That's a tiny fucking number.

I would get, so this is where, like, this is a more important number than, like, Bitcoin is not just for people that have more than $120,000 in savings. Like, you can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin. You'll all have more than $120,000 in savings if you wait long enough. I don't know. I think this is where I love the stuff that Troy Cross does in terms of those surveys. I think it's interesting.

I think Ella has done some cool stuff with Cornell in terms of like collecting data. That was a cool episode you guys did. But I think this is the area where the numbers are just way off. I think it's way lower. It's way lower. So I was actually talking to the checkmate about this privately, not on the show. So he has like a chart. I'll put it up on the screen of people who, not right now on the video.

Of people who own more than I think it's maybe point. Maybe it's 10 million. Is it addresses or? Addresses, yeah. So this is where it gets really hard. People like more than one address. There's like 25 million addresses that hold more than that. And so if you had to try and...

So that's the ceiling. But in reality, I would guess... But that's not even the upper bound because someone might own 10 addresses that have a million sets in them. Correct. So it's actually not even the upper bound. I kind of want to pull...

Oh, I won't pull a trap. But it is probably less than that. I would guess maybe three to five million people. Yeah. I mean, it's a gut thing. It's mostly a gut thing because you're... ultimately making guesses what do you think yeah i think over what bitcoin is probably less than 200 000 people like 100 to 200 000 people and um in a single address or no not in a single

it's just self custody okay self custody one bitcoin 100 000 to 200 000 people hopefully they're not holding it in one address like you should be using multiple addresses it's just better practice um most modern wallets for years have defaulted to that so So like we should assume most people are doing that. 10 million sets, self-custody to $12,000 at the time of this recording. Yeah, like five to 10 million people. And so when we go back to our earlier conversation about what does success look like, like I feel like that's the number to look at.

Because first of all, holding is using, you're using it as a savings mechanism. you're going to eventually spend it at some point otherwise you can't realize the value you need both spending and holding they're both using bitcoin that's actually a quantifiable metric an objective metric and one percent of the population would be a hundred million people so if we're counting that as like a user is someone that holds at least 12 000 with the bitcoin and ultimately spends it at some point in the future um if we want to get to five percent we have to hit what 500 million so we need we need a 100x growth just to hit 5% if that original assumption is correct and so i would just say to people it's like this is a long fucking grind

this is a century project right like this is something we say internally at 1031 is something we definitely believe in open sets it's like we're building for the next century yeah you need to it's a long long grind, there are less users out there than you think there are. And that number will be way smaller now. We need to grow that pie. We definitely need to grow that pie. But that number will be smaller now than it would have been if we hadn't had ETFs and treasury companies and things like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two different dynamics there, right? I think the ETFs definitely increase the purchasing power of Bitcoin. 100%. I think the treasury companies do as well. And I think the purchasing power of Bitcoin has been the largest. When Bitcoin price goes up, it's the largest driver of new use of growth. So it's hard to argue that's a net negative. I think it definitely, in individual cases, has slowed down retail coming into actual self-custody Bitcoin.

I think if someone gets wrecked on a treasury company and fidelity, their transition to move into self-custody Bitcoin is actually much more difficult than if they got wrecked on ETH. If they got wrecked on ETH and they're in Ledger or Coinbase, they can just press the swap button and go into Bitcoin. Yeah. Fidelity, they have to like withdraw it and do it or whatever. The other piece here is that ETFs, I wouldn't, I mean, competitively, I know they want to offer in-kind withdrawals where you can just withdraw Bitcoin from the ETF without its exit.

Didn't BlackRock announce that? They would love to do it. They just haven't yet because. Oh, I thought they announced it recently. They announced they want to. I don't think any users are doing it right now or able to. to do it they have in australia yeah exactly like so in that case that actually would directly provide a path yeah to people um but like i think that's the number we want to grow and i think

it's important for us to be realistic about where we currently are um and i think the way you accelerate that i think something like bitcoin that has this natural network effect growth growth engine in the purchasing price increase is if like we do basically nothing we'll probably still get global adoption at some point in the future um just because like right now even if there's only 10 million of us and we're all stacking like we're going to drive that price there's not there's not that much bitcoin out there right we're still going to drive the price up and as we drive the price up like more bitterners will come in um so it's not like i'm not like coming at it from like uh um like a like a Ponzi economics kind of point of view.

It's like, oh, we need more new money into the system. So we want new money in the system because we want more people to have Bitcoin. Yeah, no, no. But so what I'm saying is like, I think it's going to happen regardless, but I would like to accelerate it. I think life is short. I don't want my kids to be like 70 years old.

By the time they're able to like really take advantage of like a beautiful Bitcoin global economy that they can like spend and save without permission on whatever they want to do. And the best way to accelerate is to pour money and support into the system, whether that's on the for-profit side or whether that's on the nonprofit side. Because we need both. We need foundational open source software and open protocols. And then we need private, profitable, ethical, aligned businesses that scale those out even further in a sustainable way. And that's what I'm, that's my, that is what I've been mission focused on doing. And then I have the two tangential pieces, which is Bitcoin Park and the podcast for education. education and Bitcoin Policy Institute to keep us out of the gulags.

And like that is that is my playbook. It's open out there for the world. That's how I'm thinking about things. But we need to accelerate. Time is of the essence. It's not an emergency, but sooner would be better. I love it. Bitcoin's winning.

We just need to win a little bit harder. Let's win faster. I love it, man. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me. Should we go and drink some beers? Thanks for coming back to Nashville. Of course, man.

I love it here. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.