You're The Voice | by Efrat Fenigson - Ep. 80: Parker Lewis - Bitcoin, Texas & the Fight for Sovereignty

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

My guest today is Parker Lewis, the author of “Gradually Then Suddenly” and head of business development at Zaprite. A long-time fixture in the Bitcoin community, Parker is known for making complex monetary ideas accessible and for championing Bitcoin’s role in restoring long-term thinking, personal responsibility, and economic sovereignty. Born and raised in Austin, Texas, Parker is a vocal advocate for the state’s unique culture of freedom and its potential to lead the next chapter of Bitcoin adoption. In this episode, we explore why Texas attracts high-agency individuals and how its frontier history shaped Parker’s views on liberty and resilience. We also dive into the debate around OP_RETURN, what it reveals about centralization risks in Bitcoin Core and mining, and why Parker believes a second implementation of Bitcoin software may be critical to preserving the network’s decentralization. This is a conversation about the roots of sovereignty and the technical vigilance required to protect it.► If you got value, please like, comment, share, follow and support my work. Thank you!-- SPONSORS & AFFILIATES --►► Get your TREZOR wallet & accessories, with a 5% discount, using my code at checkout (get my discount code from the episode - yep, you’ll have to watch it): https://affil.trezor.io/SHUn ►► Join me on June 19-21 at BTC Prague! Code EFRAT = 10% discount: https://pages.btcprague.com/ambassador-efrat-fenigson ►► Watch “New Totalitarian Order” conference with Prof. Mattias Desmet & Efrat - code EFRAT for 10% off: https://efenigson.gumroad.com/l/desmet_efrat ►► Get a second citizenship and a plan B to relocate to another country with Expat Money, leave your details for a follow up: https://expatmoney.com/efrat ►► Join me in any of these upcoming events: https://www.efrat.blog/p/upcoming-events -- LINKS –Parker’s Twitter: https://x.com/parkeralewis Parker’s Book “Gradually, Then Suddenly”: https://thesaifhouse.com/#Gradually-Then-Suddenly Efrat's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efenigsonEfrat's Telegram: https://t.me/efenigsonWatch/listen on all platforms: https://linktr.ee/yourethevoiceSupport Efrat's work: ⁠https://www.buymeacoffee.com/efenigson   ⁠Support Efrat with Bitcoin: https://geyser.fund/project/efenigson-- CHAPTERS –00:00 Coming Up…01:26 Intro to Parker, TFTC Takeover & Bitcoin Park Austin04:12 Why is Texas a Hub for Freedom?08:18 Ad Break: Trezor & BTC Prague09:40 The Cultural Significance of Texas History21:08 Gradually, Then Suddenly: Understanding Bitcoin's Adoption29:00 Ad Break: Plan B / Expat Money & New Totalitarian Order Masterclass31:00 Shortcomings of Cash as a Fiat Currency and the Need for Bitcoin38:30 Bitcoin's Future as a Medium of Exchange51:01 Bitcoin in Action: Real-World Applications and Acceptance53:20 OP_Return Saga: Parker’s Take & What Risky Precedence Is Being Set1:03:00 Centralization & Decision Making Risks in Bitcoin1:19:40 The Future of Bitcoin: Hope and Challenges1:24:30 Message of Hope from Parker

Bitcoin is this tool, but it's just a tool. On a Bitcoin standard, life's still difficult. After what happened in 2020 and 2021, people around the world lost their mind. And there's a benefit to living around a group of people in high density that have good heads on their shoulders, value freedom, and then respect other people's freedom. And that wasn't true of many places around the world. And Texas wasn't perfect, but it was a lot more normal here and preserve rights that I would never give that up in order for money to solve a problem. It needs to be widely adopted, widely accepted. And the most important property of money is that at the foundational level,

someone else can't make more of it arbitrarily. And that Bitcoin really perfects that. And all the Bitcoin that have ever been issued have not been issued arbitrarily, but based on actual energy expenditure. There's an amount of Bitcoin that's out there circulating. and the greatest evidence that it's working is the fact that, well, it does store its purchasing power. And then as you start to see that feedback loop of it storing purchasing power, it reinforces that nobody else is printing it.

So there's been a heated debate recently how Bitcoin Core handles the up-return data. It doesn't feel like there's actually been an honest debate. Hello and welcome to another episode of You Are The Voice. I have just stolen someone's set. I wonder if you recognize where I am. And no, I'm not replacing Marty yet. But I have been, you know, in Hebrew we have a word called chutzpah. It's like audacious.

You have chutzpah. So yeah, I had a bit of chutzpah and yesterday I asked Parker Lewis, whether I can interview him spontaneously in this set. And he said, let's do it. Yeah, we host the Bitcoin Takeover here during South by Southwest. So it's just appropriate that we take over Marty's TFTC studio to record this quickly, kind of an ad hoc basis.

In the spirit of taking over. Yeah. I've taken over as well. So thank you so much, Parker Lewis, for joining me. Fun to do this. It was great to meet you last year in Prague about this time of year. and it was fun to have you walk into the commons,

now Bitcoin Park Austin, yesterday and pop in. I'm on a journey. That's one of the benefits of having physical places. You can pop in and then we can record podcasts like this. And this place, for people who don't know, Bitcoin Park in Austin is just magical. It's so cool. There's a pleb lab here with all the startups.

There's a workstation area. There's an area where you do your events. you hang out here every day right yeah and we host events right out here we can tear this down from co-working and host 250 people here for big events and so and unchained on the other side chains down the hall super cool yeah okay right at the center of austin and this is the heart of it i mean i came here for a few days but i said to my beautiful hosts who are bitcoiners as well Like it's not a perfect trip here if I don't see Bitcoin Park. So they brought me here and here we are.

Glad you stopped by. Yeah. So I'm going to start with a quick intro just for my audience that may not know you. I don't know why that would be, but you know. Parker Lewis is the author of Gradually Then Suddenly, Head of Business Development at ZapRide and a respected voice in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Formerly Head of Business Development at Unchained Capital. He's known for making complex ideas accessible and for articulating Bitcoin's role in restoring long-term thinking, personal responsibility and economic sovereignty.

Deeply rooted in Texas, Parker is a vocal advocate for the state's role in defending freedom and anchoring Bitcoin adoption. So let's start with Texas, right? I saw one of your recent tweets saying Texas will have the most seeds per capita and the greatest hash rate per capita. And people will claim that freedom is simply a coincidence of natural resources. I love that. Can you unpack that a bit and explain why Texas, in your opinion, is uniquely poised for a leadership role in American liberty? Sure. Yeah, and part of that tweet was the ongoing debate that Jack Dorsey kicked off about seeds versus a seedless approach to self-custody. And I think what BitKey is building, it's a great tool, but they take a seedless approach and having worked on chain and then also just how I secure my own Bitcoin, I think that holding seeds is really important.

And it does require more responsibility and accountability. But that tweet was an offhand way to say that there's a culture of freedom in Texas and that my view in terms of custody around Bitcoin and the greatest way that you can achieve security is to truly be sovereign over your Bitcoin. It's the greatest control you could possibly have and to do it over a finitely scarce form of money is particularly important and people from Texas

just generally will go that extra length to control their own destiny and ensure their own sovereignty. And so basically it was a statement on both the custody side as well as on the Bitcoin mining side that the culture of Texas is perfectly fit for doing both of those things,

self-custody and mining and that you know oftentimes people will look around the world and they will they will you know there's a book called you know the calling america the accidental superpower because of all of its resources which really glosses over what actually allows for the development of resources and um that you know one way i think about it is that for you know really only the last 200 to 300 years people have been filtering into texas for freedom and that for people that might live in europe or the middle east you know 200 years is a very you know short period of time um but that um you know you can look to other places around the world that have large amounts of natural resources of which texas is one of them and and well known for it and

a big part of the texas economy is built around energy and energy development but energy alone and natural resources do not dictate freedom um it's more of an output of a culture and then people and human those those people creating a governance structure that promotes it and so bitcoin has a great home in texas but um it's not just because there's a lot of natural gas under the ground and oil under the ground it's because um the people who've been here for hundreds of years have come here for the reason that that they could have a level of freedom in texas that they maybe didn't have before and um and then the output of that is a place that's perfectly suited to attract both bitcoiners bitcoin development and bitcoin mining

and what brought you to texas or were you born here i was born here i was born here i have not always lived here um born and raised here in austin and then went to school in north carolina and then lived in new york for a period and then back to texas so um did a did a tour outside but always knew that i would come back you're the voice is brought to you by trezor the original Bitcoin hardware wallet company pioneering the development of self-custody for crypto assets since 2013, empowering individuals with an open source device, enabling beginners and experts to easily and securely hold their coins. I find my Trezor super easy to use and recommend it to my friends and family. Enjoy my 5% discount on Trezor product by clicking the link in the show notes

and using the code EFLAT. Are you coming to BTC Prague? The biggest, most influential Bitcoin-only event in Europe returns on June 19-21 with 200-plus speakers on four stages, 100 Bitcoin companies presenting at the expo and 10,000 like-minded Bitcoiners and freedom lovers from all around the world.

There's a great emphasis this year on the freedom movement, so if you're a freedom maxi like me, you don't want to miss this event i'm excited to attend once again as a speaker and to interview the best and brightest for my podcast in fact btc prague is where i conducted my epic interview with michael saylor the event runs for three days with a developer's day pitching contest panels presentations and parties ticket prices increase on the first of each month so make sure to get your ticket now use my code a flat for a 10 discount and see you in Prague is it because you really appreciate what we what you just said the level of freedom that this state yeah you know

it's difficult to put your finger on but I'll just say whenever I come whenever I leave and then whenever I come back yeah um you know and there's also just an energy to Austin um you know it's very cool it's i'm lucky to come from a great place um but then it's also not coincidental that it's a great place that attracts great people and um so yeah i wouldn't you know i couldn't imagine living anywhere else you know and i don't i don't try to explain that by being too you know i don't know it's just texas is a great place and when you're from here and I've been to other places and lived in other places. But especially after what happened in 2020 and 2021,

people around the world lost their mind. And there's a benefit to living around a group of people in high density that have good heads on their shoulders, value freedom, and then respect other people's freedom. and that that wasn't true of many places around the world. And Texas wasn't perfect, but it was a lot more normal here and preserve rights that maybe were foregone

and I would never give that up. So if I could look all over the world, I wouldn't find a better place to be. I think my hosts told me that just across the street here in the university, for example, during COVID, they were quite sensible and they wouldn't go ahead with all the mandates the weird mandate or at least some of them uh being a little bit more sane than it was it was far more sane now

the university that's just across the way it was only created a year ago but maybe that maybe they were explaining university of texas which is down okay down the road um but yeah so and i mean i Like there's the saying that freedom loss is rarely regained. And yeah, it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a significant tale. And again, I'm here because I'm from here, but it's also a great place to be. And that when you, when, you know, a little bit of Texas history, Texas really was, and maybe there was some other place but if it was not the last frontier like the truly last one of the last few unsettled places in the world and and it was that reason for or was that way for a reason

that um that since the early 1800s people have been you know people first came to america and were in the northeast and then they were in appalachia and then those people many of them came to texas and so um and texas was what was an independent country for a period of time that's part of our history um but yeah i think it's just a lot of compounding reasons that um you know attract you know texas attracts a certain type of person and uh it doesn't it's not for everybody though you know like it uh it definitely filters people out too beautiful um well this you did answer me a bit of that but what values or lived experiences here shaped your view on liberty and resilience

you may want to share a story or something um yeah it's hard to hard to pinpoint it's hard to pinpoint one of the things that i i think i read in a texas history book is that and people that aren't from the united states or texas may they may get a sense of this but uh i can understand how people are annoyed by people from texas because they always talk about texas and it's difficult to put your finger on of why um what's so special about the place but uh you know one of the interesting things about Texas and people from Texas without speaking too pejoratively is that there's American history, but then there's Texas history and in schools,

they teach Texas history and there's this weird thing that's hard to put your finger on. That's we associate our history with Texas history first. And I'm not saying that is how everyone does, but I saw this described in a book, you know, after, you know, this was five years ago I saw this. I was like, I've grown up, I didn't learn this as a kid. And I was like, oh, that's actually an accurate description.

Like all the things that happened in the American Revolution are somehow growing up just inherently like secondary to Texas's. And I think part of that is because of the fact that Texas was an independent country for a period of time before, you know, it literally it fought its own revolution it won its own independence and then it joined the United States after that and then there's a story of the Alamo which is part of the story of how Texas won its independence and I think that part of history is that there was a fort in san antonio where the alamo is was and there were a group of settlers there that

were 300 to 400 in total and were under siege from the mexican army fighting you know texas against it was texas was in its fight for independence and there's this really famous letter by um william barrett travis who and austin is in travis county named after um william barrett travis where he writes a letter asking um sam houston to i mean it's a broader letter to basically request reinforcements but uh sends it to sam houston where he basically says that he's under attack and they're under they're besieged by thousands of troops and that if reinforcements don't come that he's he'll fight to the death and victory or death and um and they everyone at the Alamo save a few people that were

um allowed to live everyone died and that's why that we're the saying remember the Alamo comes from it's not wasn't this great victory it became a rallying cry for freedom and another piece of the story is that despite the fact that the Alamo fell Sam Houston who was the general of the army later became president of Texas he was formerly a general in the U.S. army and a senator from Tennessee that he he knew that if he had gone to the Alamo to send reinforcements that they would have lost the war and instead um didn't send reinforcements fought another day and then ultimately uh won texas's independence and that is core to texas's history so i think like having those stories of like and and at the time william travis there fighting at the alamo

was 27 years old and that also instills you in a sense of even myself i suffer from this of thinking like hey you know are we big enough for this task and then when you think about the history and people had to give their actual lives and fought for the you know a revolution for their own freedom and independence that that instills something in in people um and that if those people fought for their freedom and they were here for a reason and they laid the foundation for this that um there was a reason you know why of all places they came here um so i think that that you know it's difficult to pinpoint but that that history that spirit and that history is very inspirational and i'm sure you know for thinking people it makes you wonder

why am i not good enough or mature enough to start my own battle for freedom or or engage in one um just because of my age or you know all these limitations that we have that we think we are not yeah i'm only x what am i you know yeah who am i right why would i do it but yeah if you do take interest in your history or in other people that actually um took responsibility for things and fought for them yeah you start your journey to find your own spark and power and sovereignty yeah and it's interesting because like when i say that texas was was one of if not the last frontier i can in late 1700s early 1800s there were on the order of magnitude of like tens of thousands of people and that

there's a reference to the six flags over texas which the front i think it was the french The Spanish, Mexico, Texas as an independent country, the United States, and then the Confederacy when the Confederacy fought, but that prior to Texas winning its independence, it was under the control of a combination of France, Spain, and then Mexico after Mexico won its independence from Spain. But that this particular place was almost unsettled and that it required a certain type of people to come seek it out and settle it, which I think also is interesting that people are kind of coming up from Spanish, Mexico and West from the United States. but this, this part of the country specifically. Um, and then these people come, they fight for their freedom. They, they, they settle it. And then now we, you know, like if you, if you see the population of growth of Texas over time going from, you know, tens of thousands, 200 years ago to 35 million, 40 million, um, it's like, it wasn't the natural resources. The natural resources were always there but um but that's also just a an interesting phenomenon wonderful all right

let's talk a bit about your gradual gradually then suddenly um thesis does it still hold up today and if so where are we on the curve in 2025 yeah i'd say that most everything i i struggle to look at there's nothing fundamental that i look back on that i feel like is on a principal's basis any different than it is today than it is today we're we're definitely still in the gradual phase um and for people that don't have the context the book is called gradually and suddenly i started writing an online series under the same title in 2019 yep this is this is a copy of the book i had a the artwork commissioned by a bitcoiner and i've actually

never met in person and paid in bitcoin but yeah i have not proof of paint proof of paint yeah it's a beautiful painting yeah but um gradually and suddenly was a it's a common adaptation of a part of a Hemingway book called The Sun Also Rises where one character asked the other, how did you go bankrupt? And the other character responded something along the lines of two ways, gradually and then suddenly. And so that was the way that Hemingway via the characters

in The Sun Also Rises described the process of going bankrupt of like you're bankrupt at a point in time but it was a series of decisions yeah that gradually led up to that point and that the way i relate it to to bitcoin is that it's also the ways that countries become bankrupt and how people come to understand bitcoin and it's really the other side of the same coin because when one of the ways to i'd say visually be able to see that a country is bankrupt is via hyperinflation and that that happens gradually and then suddenly that there's a moment in time where the confidence in the currency is lost but it but it wasn't at that moment in time that it

happened over a long period of time leading up all the money printing and debasement and the economic balance that that ensued and that bitcoin is the solution to that and the way that people typically come to understand bitcoin is consuming some like in most cases consuming some general primary piece of of knowledge or education listening to a podcast reading a book reading an article going to a conference and hearing from an annoying friend yeah hearing from an annoying friend and and looking for something but it not making sense and it's and bitcoin is inherently hard to to see and get your head around but then something typically clicks that unlocks it in your mind to, to be able to see what maybe you couldn't see before.

And everything's not intuitive at that moment, but then it becomes inevitable once your mind opens up and kind of pair that primary education or knowledge with some lived real world experience that allows you to then really go down the rabbit hole so my book is kind of helping hopefully accelerate people down that path for me it was clamping down on my freedom during covid that was painful and woke me up to it it's like i gotta find a solution for my money because they're gonna next come for my money or they're gonna come for my private property just like they did for my bodily autonomy so and had you had some knowledge of bitcoin prior i have heard about it several times before but i always ignored it and i actually also thought it's a fud because i was

working in tech for 20 years and i've seen all the icos along the way of the shit coins and i'm like this is gimmicks it's gonna it's bullshit and i did hear the word bitcoin but i associated it with crypto and ICOs, I didn't learn until COVID came and it was painful enough to go, okay, start hitting me with solutions. Like I need other ways of preserving my freedom on any level, on every level, on every vector of my life. And so I asked some of my employees that I knew that they held Bitcoin, if they can teach me, can you tell me what it is? And they couldn't for the life of them they sucked at it they they were like go to kraken or go to whatever exchange and buy some and i'm like but what is it can you can you teach me a little bit they did not know to direct me to

resources and whatever until this number one bitcoiner in israel found me because i was in the streets i was an activist at that time of covid and i was like demonstrating against the government and all that and he saw my work and he's like she gets the government corruption and the scammery on all levels. How come she doesn't get Bitcoin or it doesn't get money? And so he came to me at that time. It's like, you need to understand Bitcoin. I'm like, thank you. Hallelujah. Teach me. And I was so primed for it. So you're absolutely right. It needs to, there were a series of events in my life that kind of showed me how people, entities, the government, the state can clamp down on my human rights and freedom and at one point there was this trigger of like okay

it's enough i need to i really feel it now i need to take action so you seek for it at that moment and yeah and i think that most people are just living in la la land and not seeing it and i'm not judging i was there too but yeah i think that most people look at bitcoin as a solution in search of a problem and that one of the things i try to do in in the book is uh explain the problem that everyone suffers to then be able to understand bitcoin in relation to it but a big part of that is pairing what i would refer to as primary education or primary knowledge with something happening in the real world like if you know when canadian truckers got their bank accounts shut down

and then people who donated got their bank accounts shut down with no due process if you didn't know what Bitcoin was or had no context to how it related to that problem Bitcoin

if it happens is irrelevant to you but if you've either heard something about it then that actual real world experience is education because you can relate it to someone and say, ah, I need to understand this more because those people were saying

that this is this exact thing that this is designed to protect against. Or what you just described, something happens and you say, I have a problem. I just have my money frozen in my bank account or I saw those people that had their money and their bank accounts frozen. That's a problem.

I need to go now seek out a solution that it happens one of those two directions. Tired of feeling like your freedom and future are fading away? Do you live in a country with growing inflation, crazy housing prices, weird culture, and a chaotic economy? You're not alone. And my friend Mikel Thorpe and his team at Expat Money can help. Mikel is the world's leading expat consultant

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Use my code EFRAD for 10% off. I hope you find great value in it. Absolutely. And I encourage, this is most of my audience, by the way. I mean, today I already have a lot of Bitcoiners in my audience, but when I just started with the podcast, it was mostly people that had woken up during COVID. I call them red-pilled.

They have seen a lot of the scammery around Big Pharma and Big Tech and the government clamping down on their rights, but they haven't seen everything to do with fiat and with Bitcoin. And so I've been taking them through that journey from red pill to orange pill to try and educate them on what does this solve and what are they not even aware of. And in fact, this is a really interesting point

and maybe you can talk into that as well because most of that audience, like if I group my audience in groups for a second, has the you know they do want freedom they're very much oriented towards human rights liberty and freedom wherever they are in the world but then they get stuck in the solutions part with okay cash will help us preserve our freedom because cash is like a little bit outside of the government and they don't take the time and it gives us privacy they don't take the time to actually learn what cash is, what fiat is, and how they are being debased and how their money

is worth less and less. And most of my audience are in Western countries, so they may not feel it as much in their pocket as they do in a hyperinflated country, for example. And so I try to bring that education. And I think that is one of the key areas that I need to focus on showing them that cash is never a long-term solution because the state and government control it and they can do whatever they want but you know maybe you can add something on to that because people are in most western countries are simply not aware of what fiat how limited fiat is and how risky it is yeah well whether it's you know physical fiat or digital fiat um that there are it's like if you have if you have physical fiat and they're printing more physical fiat then

you're physical you're you're escaping one problem but you can't escape the root cause of the problem because you're using that money as effectively storing your time and energy and the value delivered in the past to be able to survive into the future by trading with other people and you you can't um you can't escape their printing press that's right you might be able to escape the digital system but the digital system is just a extension of the physical world and so um and that's the other thing these people are afraid of anything digital because it means surveillance for them like so i'm like trying to break it down not all digital is the same not all digital is bad we will talk about the shortcomings of bitcoin as well right i think that nothing is

perfect but what what i see people struggling with the most is the the the you know if i'm in this digital world and i have this savings and it has this idea of this 21 million fixed supply that's great but if i can't if i can't do anything with it if i if it can't actually get me the things that i need to be able to sustain myself and survive then then is it really the the tool that you say that it is and that what i try to connect for people is the causal relationship of of what the input is versus the output and that painting some vision of the future such that it's hey we're not all here to just stare at our digital wealth and say hey the the the computer on the screen says i have x number it's that because the number because bitcoin is immune from

government control at the protocol level or control of anybody at the protocol level then that is the basis of why it is resistant to censorship it's the basis of why it's fixed supply is actually credibly enforced without the need for trust and that so long as that most basic foundation holds then everyone will demand bitcoin for that reason and will will evolve from this system where people are using bitcoin principally to to save and and not actively used to a world where you're going to use it like cash um and you're going to use it in a way that doesn't necessitate you having to go back into the banking system to interact with the real economy and you privacy is a concern but it's also one of those things where

technology advances incrementally and marginally and so if you understand the foundation of what is driving everything and one of the ways that i would describe it i talk about it in one of the chapters of my book where it's that if you get your head around this idea that there's a form of money in the world that can't be printed and that everyone can opt into and that's actually truly permissionless and resistant to censorship and even if the u.s government wanted to try to prevent bitcoin from profiling the world it couldn't shouldn't take other people's word for that but if you go down the rabbit hole and figure out how it actually all fits together and and how the network works then you come away from that being able to see the cause and effect

like okay if i would do this if i would save some of my money in this and i can relate to the next person and they would do it for the exact same reason that i would well as all of us start doing this then then we become able to to directly trade with each other and we get the those benefits but that um it doesn't go from from zero to fully functioning overnight and that the true zero to one innovation is there's this form of money that can't be printed and then one to n or one to globalization is okay how do we take this foundation and make it a utility part of that is making it able to actually be used in commerce but another part of it is like okay how do we improve privacy and accepting that it's not perfect um but there's no sense in having a

a physical piece of cash if i've got you know a dollar and the fed can create five trillion dollars then what you know it's like what good am i what good is my privacy if i can't use what i've paid anything yeah you use it because it's lost all of its value and that what we ultimately have to have is both but money also doesn't grow on trees and we have to start with the foundation of here's this emerging good that does have a credibly enforced fixed supply It only does because no one's in control of it and now we have to develop tools to make it a utility and to protect our privacy at the same time. Absolutely. So now you're touching on then the classic debate of store of value versus medium of exchange. And I think we're at a period at the moment where we're seeing a very significant push to just treat Bitcoin as a store of value in the West.

I'm not talking about other countries around the world that really have economical need to just hold on to anything that is more stable than their fiat currency. But we look at the Western countries and specifically the US with the institutional takeover, but we talked about takeover, but how they are embracing Bitcoin. there definitely is a push to just look at it as store of value at the moment and then people who want to jump in jump in but they're like okay it's not money yet it's not a medium of exchange yet it's only a store of value and there's this narrative of digital gold and and a commodity and an asset given that it takes time as you said to jump from zero to one then from one to end or scaling it globally and we're only 15 16 years into the evolvement of this invention how long do you think we are down the path to start seeing western adoption of medium of

exchange of bitcoin um you know i think that there's no shortcuts and that everything will emerge just as Bitcoin has emerged organically that once you once you understand why Bitcoin stores value once you understand that

it stores value because it has this fixed supply that doesn't matter how many cryptocurrencies in the world exist you really only need one form of money in that in order for money to solve a problem it needs to be widely adopted widely accepted and the most important property of money is that at the foundational level someone else can't make more of it arbitrarily and that bitcoin really perfects

that and making it finitely scarce people can't make more of it at all after a certain point and all the bitcoin that have ever been issued have not been issued arbitrarily but based on actual energy expenditure and ordered work that once you've figured that out and not just that somebody else says it to be true but you start to understand why it can't be undermined and that you're not taking someone else's opinion of it but you understand it um at a root level then it becomes hyper logical to just say well why don't you pay me in bitcoin right and because it's technically able to and there are some points of friction that are some just how the you know how the transaction actually occurs some of it being the tax consequences but you could either take fiat

incur the cost of the fiat system and then convert it to Bitcoin or if you have a customer that will pay you in Bitcoin it becomes the most logical efficient thing to do and so I view it as this logical order of well first you have to understand why Bitcoin will store value

then once you do and get far enough along that path you say well if you're willing you know still accept fiat currency but I'd prefer to be paid in Bitcoin and I'll create incentive for you to do it or create an incentive for you not to pay me in fiat. But that it is a function of adoption, that the more people that understand the first part,

which is why it's a store of value, that it's tied to its fixed supply and that it is credible, as adoption grows, there's just more opportunities for trade. And then I think a big part, I would say, probably 99% of people will probably come to understand Bitcoin because they've read some book or podcast or had some friend explain it to them.

At the end, more than 90% and probably 99% of people will come to understand it because it's being used as money. That those first set of people that went first turn around and then we're working on Bitcoin payments at ZapRite

but when someone like Square turns on Bitcoin payments And then our grocery store down the road that uses Square, every person that comes through there sees that they have the ability to pay in Bitcoin. That is actually education. Absolutely. And that what a lot of people get hung up about Bitcoin with is all this sounds good in theory, maybe too good to be true. But you're telling me it's the best form of money that's ever existed and I can't buy food at the grocery store, gas at the gas station. How is that money?

and I can tell people that, well, hey, everyone, for the same reason that I've adopted it, for the reason of its fixed supply, and that's the same exact reason why I would do it dictates why the next person and the next person and the next person, that's all intellectual, economic. It's not theoretical because people are actually doing it. People are actually saving in Bitcoin, so it's actually in practice,

But it hits different and it actually is different when, oh, I actually have this Bitcoin that I'm saving in and I go to my local grocer and buy food. Okay. Harder to deny that it's money. I can actually see that explanation of why that will logically happen occurring. And as it occurs more, then everybody gets that. Wants to join and get the info. It's not even joining. it's just, it, it makes it discernibly easier to understand because they're seeing it used in the

way that, um, that they expect out of money to, to, to go buy things. So, um, and you know, it's an interesting thing that people will say that, um, you know, people in the developing world have the most to gain from Bitcoin because five out of 8 billion people, five out of every 8 billion or sorry there's 8 billion people in the world 5 to 6 billion of those people do not even have a bad form of good money um you know the the the dollar euro yen yuan pound maybe put a few more there but they're all debasing and everyone is suffering that same problem but they're at least working um but the people in the developed world that have access to these working but depreciating currencies that are causing massive economic imbalance and

and ultimately will all fail because if you print money that is the end game and you can't prevent it that people who have the greatest amount of wealth have the have the most to lose so on one Besides the developing world has the most to gain, but the developed world, you have to have some value to store to store in Bitcoin. And that high agency people, who are the people that I would say are most attracted to Bitcoin, of saying, I've got a problem,

and rather than just accept it and go along, saying, no, I'm actually going to take a step to, even if it seems like a Herculean task of how do we actually get out of this if you see the problem and you didn't pair it with the solution it would be very easy to be pessimistic but if you see Bitcoin as a solution then you say okay yeah this sucks that

there's all this economic imbalance and instability that occurs because they print money and it's not great and Bitcoin doesn't solve all the problems in the world but I'm going to take this forward positive step to solve the problem that I see. That even if someone could look at the US and say, well, why would they take Bitcoin payments here? It's because people have that mentality of like,

they've picked up, like everyone that's here in America and then filtered into Texas has left some other place in the last couple hundred years. Left everything they've known and they didn't wait till the last shoe drop to do that. And I think it's the same mentality where it's like, okay, who would wait till you, if you wait to the point

that you absolutely have to have something, it won't be there when you need it. And that's the mentality of people. And again, it's very early to Bitcoin payments, but I also expect it to shift rapidly beyond a critical mass because it's downstream of people understanding Bitcoin and as Bitcoin goes on for more time,

credibly enforces its fixed supply longer, more people own it, more opportunities for trade exist, there's more high agency people that are, Bitcoin becomes tangibly easier to understand and the tools are there. And then as they see people using it as money day to day, it just all feeds on itself. And so I don't, you know, it might be illogical to think

that some place like America that has the dollar would be one of the last places to accept Bitcoin as payment. I don't see the incentives that way. And that it's more logically the people that are highest agency that will say, well, I'm not going to wait until I really need it because that's not the way I deal with any risk in my life. so especially with money that people with high agency that do do bitcoin understand that being an early adopter pays off so why wouldn't they continue that same trajectory of okay i've tried

this thing out it's working maybe i should try more things down that path because it has worked for me so far just the fact that i've decided to buy bitcoin the first time it probably was a smart move so maybe i should continue learning continue educating myself continue seeing what else i can do with this thing and for sure and i what i will tell people is if you don't yet understand why bitcoin will store value and i i don't mean like have a inkling in your eye of why it might it's continue to go down the rabbit hole continue to read books educate yourself form the primary knowledge but if somebody is is fully in and sees the field and gets it and knows two things with certainty they're going to print money and that bitcoin can't be controlled and

it has this fixed supply for them it just it's logical it's not like i'm going to do something that i'm taking a risk on it's i'm just doing something early but i know i know i know i'm going to have to have this the ability to accept it if i'm a business and it's the most logical thing to do absolutely i've just been to two farmers market here markets here in austin the past few days and i've paid in bitcoin and the merchants even those that didn't accept it before we onboarded them they were like yeah happy to why not let's try a few of them at least four of them i made videos and stuff but they're open to it people i mean everyone knows that everyone knows there's a problem and then helping connect bitcoin to that is you know not always the easiest

thing but once you do in a big way of uh of helping to create that bridge it's like oh and i can actually pay you in it right now for your goods and services and you can't do that with other things and when people actually see it in practice it is part of the education and the more that it happens the more it's going to bring the the rest of everybody else along absolutely i've been to el salvador for about five or six weeks and been to berlin for example in el salvador circular economy of like it's a small village small town 140 merchants accept bitcoin and they're poor very poor most of the population there and it's just so beautiful to see what kind of change it does in the local community the not just the people's spirits but they they certainly have

hope now i interviewed many of them the the merchants and some of them god bless them you know no no teeth like very poor just selling something small memorabilia or souvenirs and i ask all of them why do you accept bitcoin and they all say the same thing because it teached it it taught us and it continues to teach us how to save and we can save more money once we start accepting it and then we get it and then we store it and then it teaches us to say we didn't we never saved until today many of them told me the same thing it's just so beautiful yeah i mean people have been you know especially in the united states people have been conditioned that their money doesn't hold value so then they it creates a disincentive to save and then as people start

to save in bitcoin and even if they've heard that it can't be printed that there's an amount of Bitcoin that's out there circulating and the greatest evidence that it's working is the fact that, well, it does store its purchasing power. And then as you start to see that feedback loop of it storing purchasing power, it reinforces that, hey, actually in practice, nobody else is printing it.

And this is actually reinforcing a positive decision that I make. Now I want to keep doing this. And I want to keep delivering more value to, to save more. So it's a very, you know, it's, it's not saving for the purpose of, again, looking at your wealth on a screen. It's because it's actually empowering you to deliver more value. And if everyone's acting with that same incentive, I can deliver more value to you and then preserve that value and trade it with other people. Yep. Very, very positive feedback. very positive feedback loop okay the next question is a little bit more advanced for

those who don't have bitcoin but those in bitcoin will will get a lot of value out of your answer i'm sure so there's been a heated debate recently how bitcoin core handles the op return data a part of bitcoin used to store arbitrary information like inscriptions or metadata while it sounds technical the real issue goes deeper how changes to bitcoin are made and how and who influences them you recently said up return is a distraction and warned about the risks of centralized core and centralized mining pools can you walk us through what you meant especially for beginners like i want people to really understand what we are fighting quote unquote fighting about in the bitcoin community and yeah why do you think this is a bigger concern

than the inscription debate itself and what president are you worried that we're setting yeah so um i'll maybe explain it for bitcoin or uh for beginners and then yeah explain it a more technical level but the way that i conceptualize um the way that that bitcoin is secured which is a very intricate puzzle but if there's three main constituencies it's people that hold the private keys to bitcoin that ultimately if there's 21 million at the end of the day or 19.8 million today the people that actually control the economic value of the network and then there's people that there's nodes people running computers that run the bitcoin protocol that are at the foundational level how bitcoin is actually transmitted between people and bitcoin

wallets um and how bitcoin is validated and if i'm sending you a bitcoin transaction part of validation is was this bitcoin created in a manner consistent with the fixed supply of 21 million and then there's mining so they're kind of like you know there's more than just three but the three main constituents to notice that i didn't i didn't say developers yeah um people that run nodes the the people that hold private keys because someone like unchained could run a node but people can hold their own keys so there's circumstances where those functions are separate from each other and then um the bitcoin mining ecosystem which i think about as the function that is um clearing for final settlement currency transactions so on a decentralized basis of

effectively operating um not i want to say like but in the u.s the system the federal reserve or the banking system that's saying, okay, this is or isn't a dollar, that when I send a Bitcoin transaction, in order for it to be confirmed, a Bitcoin miner actually has to validate it and write it to history. And that requires a massive amount of energy expenditure

and that work makes it difficult to undo, that anchors it actually in the real world. So if there's miners, people that run nodes, and people that hold the private keys, there's this important constituency, which is developers, core developers, which write and change the software for the people that run nodes. and that the reason why Bitcoin is secure is because it's entirely decentralized. It doesn't matter if people that work on Bitcoin Core change Bitcoin or versions of software because there's no automatic updates.

People all have to opt in and they can verify what version of the code that they're running and if they don't like any changes, they don't have to. So even though there's a relatively few number of people that actually work on the underlying protocol, it's not a risk in the sense of they can't make you run other software and that people can ultimately choose. And that there's kind of these competing and balancing interests.

Well, mining is particularly centralized. and Bitcoin Core is particularly centralized and that this change being proposed and that has been merged but not yet released, in my view, is a marginal issue, relatively insignificant if only looked at in what it is and recognizing that it's not a consensus rule.

There are certain consensus rules like the 21 million fixed supply and how many Bitcoin are issued in each block that add up to that 21 million and how they're issued. And so the problem that I see for more technical people is that, in my view, this change wouldn't have occurred or wouldn't even been discussed if not for the fact that mining was centralized. and that consciously or subconsciously the core developers wanted it because they, I believe, genuinely think it's the best technical solution. But if there were 100 mining pools or 1,000 mining pools,

part of what their calculus was for this being the right technical solution is that they know that there's so few miners and the miners will upgrade because they can look around and say, well there are those three and will they run this new code and that what it creates is a precedent is that and and it's been very clear from the core developers perspective that if there's consensus amongst them then regardless of what users of core think

that if there's and again it's it may maybe it's difficult for them to all get consensus amongst the the active contributors but saying if if we all agree then we should push a change and that is realistically enabled from the fact that mining is centralized that if mining was centralized and there wasn't now this this precedent set then the centralization of mining wouldn't be a big deal and the centralization of core wouldn't be a big deal but it what it effectively does is if this isn't a highly in my view a highly consequential change but the precedent sense is well if we want to change a consensus piece of the code which does define what is and isn't a valid bitcoin transaction and in a more meaningful way can change the

foundational layer that um now that the precedent has been set and that if we all agree again if there were a thousand different mining pools it wouldn't be nearly as problematic because that would be a check and balance but in a world where mining is centralized in the core it's not practical as it exists today for people to have an alternative the the the The primary alternative is to just simply not upgrade. But the lack of a second core compatible, and what I'm talking about is core compatible, not forking nothing,

but core compatible that actually presents a second option would create a scenario where there's more of a check on people making future updates to Bitcoin and that the calculus isn't, and this is also, I think, part of the precedent, it's this view of we're going to do it anyways because you don't really have any other options. And that if you start to really understand risk, that it becomes untenable to anybody that looks at the scenario

and say, well, they're kind of right. Right now, there isn't, you know, people are running a second implementation, but of course, criticism of it is that they say there's really only one contributor, but there's not this not yeah there's not this wide um nearly as exhaustive group of contributors that contribute to the project but it's like that's a really bad mentality to have where it's like all these other people are running your software and your users and you're looking at them saying well if there's consensus among us that we're going to do it but then realizing that well the only reason why they are able to have that mentality is for a combination of the fact

that that mining is centralized and consciously or subconsciously they're exploiting that decentralization with the fact that there's not in their view or most people are using bitcoin today's view of to say well if you're going to make that change then i either have to opt into that change if i want to have any other future changes that i do want therefore the the most logical thing and it's not easy to do but is to have a second viable implementation that is compatible with core um because if you're looking at it it basically it's it's not again it's not there's nothing critical happening to bitcoin in terms of the feature itself yeah but the broader significance of it that a real the governance uh there's been there there's a precedent being set

and it's one of if users disagree right but we all agree the people that are active contributors and to go forward even if it's contentious. And, of course, it would be logical to do for the first time with a fairly insignificant thing. And anyone would say, well, it would be different if it was something like a consensus software, like OpCat. Um, but as a user, you're, you're in the same dilemma and that if you wait until it is more significant, then it's, it's like the same idea of, um, you know, you don't

wait to the point of no return to, to, um, operationalize, uh, something to de-risk it. And if there's a critical risk and, you know, who knows how it plays out, but my expectation as it will play out with even though it hasn't existed in the past that i think it would benefit everybody benefit core um benefit all bitcoiners if there was a second implementation that was compatible with core that um was it was a check and balance so that there there were competing ideas competing processes and other viable solutions such that um that that people have an alternative to to change to other than just um not upgrading a version and at the moment the core team is against creating another competitive i wouldn't well i wouldn't necessarily say they're

against it but they're not even thinking about it i would i would say that they're more like they're taking this posture of daring people they they're they're making a decision knowing that people don't really have a viable alternative. And they, again, I'm not ascribing to any individual, but that it's with this mentality of like, we don't, and we don't, all you people that disagree that, that we shouldn't do this, like, what are you going to do about it? You know, that is the mentality of many people, you know, without pinning it to anyone. And even if people aren't expressly saying it it's guiding this decision yeah and that there there's another side of it which is like that there there it doesn't feel like there's actually been an honest

debate um that that is like what is the what is the role of arbitrary data in bitcoin and what is it what is a someone who runs a node who's using bitcoin as money what is their incentive for um relaying if even they're going to validate a transaction because it's valid based on consensus rules a transaction is just arbitrary data and that that debate you know may have been happened 10 years ago before virtually anybody had been in bitcoin but this has been the standard no one was asking for this it doesn't really fix any problem kind of came out of nowhere and then when there was disagreement almost feels like a pilot for something i said it yeah you said it um and so i just think with how important bitcoin is that everyone would benefit of um you know and i don't

know how it it because the people who say that it would be really difficult to have a second in implementation they're right but then if there's a serious risk it's just like it's the same thing of saying well you know foundry represents 25 of hash rate antpool depending on how you look at it has more than 50 you throw in marathon you're like well how could we ever conceive of a world that mining is decentralized like well because bitcoin is too important and there are high agency people and even if most people wouldn't go out and solve a problem to help decentralize mining or figure out how to to um figure out how to de-risk bitcoin by having you know again i don't expect there would be tens of options because

capable people have to be able to devote their time and energy to something but the fact that there's only one and that the people making decisions on how to change that are making it knowing and and at least partially being guided with this idea that there's a captive audience but then not um maybe having i don't want to say temperament but uh but but not appreciating the the sensitivity of that and realizing that there are people that are saying well like we're not going to sell our bitcoin we're not gonna but but we do question the judgment on this and we see the risk and the risk isn't opportune the risk is the next change that either we're not high agency to create a solution but then that just kind of feeds on

itself it reinforces that either either you were right and that's a problem or you were wrong and hopefully we end up in a better place so that is deep for bitcoiners but what i would come back to it is saying like hey there's people that run nodes there's people that have private keys and there's mining right now there's two parts of that that are that are fairly centralized and it's okay because there's enough check and balance but another way to think about this is at the beginning there was satoshi and then how finney joined the network and there were two and now there are millions like bitcoin's constantly decentralizing there's periods of time where it goes from a more decentralized state

to a less decentralized state and I think that's what's happened in mining but that there's still every incentive in place to force decentralization at every level and that the more that that happens for all constituents on any side of the debate would be better. The only scenario where it wouldn't be

is if the network fractured but that doesn't seem like it's the mentality or interest of anybody that's even debating this is not saying, oh, we should go for Bitcoin even though that is kind of being suggested by the people who are putting forward this change, which is kind of gaslighting. I saw David Bailey tweeting, fork it.

Right, which is like, no one's been suggesting that. So why are you gaslighting everybody? But that people would benefit by having an alternative if on the quality and capability side, it was at the same level of review, maintenance, contributions. So we'll see how that plays out. But it feels like there's every incentive. There's 19.8 million Bitcoin that have an incentive

of ensuring the credibility of Bitcoin's fixed supply and having good competing interests that provide checks and balances on other key parts of the ecosystem. And I love the fact that you're with the hand on the pulse, you and many others, to really voice the problematic nature of what's happening right now. And it's very important that you make the distinction between the actual feature that is being suggested to the underlying, more the deeper problem that can come out of it. And it's forward looking, which is really important, because if we are in a system that is based on principles of freedom and decentralization, then we want to uphold enough checks and balances to make sure that it continues to be that way in the future. And even when we recognize, I mean, you and many other good people recognize a small risk or potential risk in the future that is now manifesting in this kind of insignificant way and you're calling out on it, I think that that is super important and super great. And that's what most people don't do around them in any system that they live in, in the matrix, right? In the government system, for example. They ignore every little change in rules or regulations that is happening around them. They let everything just pass by.

they don't try and forward look into the future how is this change or this rule or this emergency act is going to perhaps hurt me in the future if i allow this to now happen or or exist as if nothing happened and we've seen what kind of situations we can get ourselves into if emergency more emergency authorizations more changes to rules more like new terms and definitions are being put in place to change existing terms and definitions on on how they previously were yeah and i will find like pandemic yeah for people's context and then also people will watch this and then criticize me um they criticize me all the time so you're in good yeah but to be clear it's like what's actually what what what people would say is a counter

argument they say and what the actual change is there's a there's a limited amount of arbitrary data yeah that can be included in opera turn output which is a type of output in bitcoin and that they're talking about removing that cap and it's not a consensus rule and that they would say well people are doing this any way they can they can go directly to miners and if they do then it gets in and you validate it anyway and like either way it's not consequential and then they would they would say something like we're not doing this because of minor centralization of course they're not doing it because of minor centralization my point is that they're only able to do it because mining

is centralized because there are three because it because it aligns it's a change that aligns generally with them right and and that they if if you went from a constituent of three mining pools controlling so much hash rate if you said that that was a hundred or a thousand some people would say well there won't be like the point is that it's happening because there's centralization over here and they can and they can account on these others because the technical soundness of the change to achieve the things that they wanted to achieve are predicated on the miners upgrading quickly um and and that the fewer of them that there are that are making those key decisions the easier it is to know and so part of it is so they say like well it's not motivated

by that and i'm saying i'm not saying it's motivated by that it's that it's in the back of your head and that if it were different you would you wouldn't be doing this second thing is they say it's like if it was a consensus change this would be different it's like it's it doesn't matter like the the principle is the principle what they've clearly signaled is for the first time is like if there is disagreement outside of our contributors like that is not relevant to us We have to make the decision that is technically sound. So if you applied that to a contentious software, again, not a hard work, and it was something that they knew those same three mining pools would go along with

because it was in their interest. If people understand risk, like, have you ever, are you familiar with the concept of risk of ruin? Risk? Risk of ruin. Of ruin, no. So the way that I would simplify it is that the way that risk is skewed of possible outcomes, like thinking about the game of, not game, but thinking of Russian roulette.

Put a bullet in the gun, spin it, pop, there's a one in five chance. But imagine there's a hundred. it yeah and it's a one in a hundred chance that if you're unlucky you're done well the market doesn't price that risk like it's a one in a hundred chance because if you play that game long enough you eventually die it's not like you lose one percent it's that you keep doing that same probability then it's over that that if you look at this through that same lens of risk of ruin it's like hey even if someone says well we wouldn't do that if it was a consensus change even if the logic does apply someone that's looking at it and that disagrees about why this

change was made and what actually enabled it would say well if i'm if i'm thinking about the risk of ruin i can't i can't wait till the risk materializes and if there really isn't a credible second option right now that's the source of the risk so if i want to de-risk this then it's not what may or may not happen in the future what your motivation was or wasn't we can only operate with the information that's at hand and it did just set this precedent and the future is unknown and the the combination of things that enabled it was they're not really being this alternative and the centralization of mining and so the two things that help to de-risk that even if i granted someone that you don't think that you're doing it because of mining

centralization and you think that you would do something differently it still has to be evaluated on the risk spectrum of what may or may not happen and if it were to happen then the risk is critical And so I think that, you know, I just wanted to state that to be fair of saying like, hey, this is how other people disagree. And I'm not even saying that they're not, you know, founded in it, but if you're assessing risk, given the severity of, well, you know,

we only have one chance at Bitcoin, that that's what creates the immune system to drive decentralization. And so it's not really a bad thing. It's not like they're not bad people. they have a disagreement I think maybe they in my own personal opinion have made bad judgment but

reasonable people can disagree about it and I just want you know in fairness to say like I can see other people's perspective on it. Awesome thank you so much for shedding light on this very current debate I think

it's I think it's fascinating I mean for me I think it's the first real debate in the bitcoin community that i am present to because i wasn't in bitcoin when the block size war was happening yeah and i had just come in so i wasn't really active i was i was paying attention to everything but i was just kind of you know i was the outside observer so it's it's super interesting well just the mere fact that there is a debate that people are talking about it that there there are different opinions and they're all allowed to be heard we'll see how

things play out but um it's encouraging and i would just say it's like none of it kills bitcoin and again it's it's that the reason why it's uh important is because it's not any one decision it might it's how decisions are made and it might not even be the next decision but it's you add up enough of it and you know um that's the it's the great thing about bitcoin people that are high agency that see problems they can seek out solutions to them and not everything works out but um you can at least influence outcomes and control your own destiny absolutely so do you think we've passed the point of no return for bitcoin's inevitability or is there still a real risk of failure or co-option

i'll answer that two ways that if everybody assumed bitcoin's inevitability it's like i i believe that bitcoin is inevitable but i don't operate with the idea that it's inevitable in all scenarios and that the reason why it's inevitable is because there's this utility that everyone in the world will benefit from for money that can't be printed and there's enough high agency people to be Bitcoin's immune

system and that if you approach it from the perspective of Bitcoin's inevitable and it doesn't matter what happened that it's inevitable that's only true for the fact that there's high agency people that value it

that um not seek to protect it but seek to create solutions to prevent it from being corrupted or if there's a risk to to solving it um and so i view it through that lens of i personally view that it's inevitable the thing that would cause me to um to to really uh not question it but the the writing on the wall would be if it's possible to at the protocol level um and it's interesting comes relates this operaturn piece is like somebody could could mine a transaction that has today and they do it from time to time that has an operaturn limit above 80 bytes and it gets validated through the network even if it's not being relayed the thing that would um that would call bitcoin into question as if at the protocol level a single transaction that was

otherwise valid could be um not accepted by the network as well um that that would that would signal is that bitcoin is not sufficiently decentralized to um to prevent rules outside of the system from enforcing rules within the system and so like that would be like the the the the smallest chink on the armor because if you if you play it forward it's that well if a single transaction could be prevented um say based on who they are or for whatever reason um that that would signal that not sufficiently decentralized and if if one could then it you know it's like there's a rule outside the system that's dictating what isn't isn't a bitcoin what is that outside force is it a government and if it is then can they you know make it illegal in an enforceable

way obviously any government can say that bitcoin is illegal but they can't make it go away but if they could but if they could if they could enforce a rule that on the networks so that all the network participants get in line and invalidate an otherwise valid bitcoin transaction that would be a problem um but that's also why it's so important to to constantly um decentralize bitcoin at every layer and that that's that really isn't a top-down thing like it can it can seem like in certain instances when you have a big pool or you have a centralization of a of a core repository but everyone makes decisions about what what what versions of bitcoin they run and Um, and so, um, as risks come up, the inevitability comes from the fact that there's enough self-interested people that all look at risk differently to, to, to act as that immune system.

So short answer, it is, but not if everybody acts as if it is. Yeah. And you have faith in, uh, good humans in between? No, no, no. I don't have faith in good humans. I mean, I have faith in good humans. I don't have faith in all people. And I think that Bitcoin only works

because there are people that are at odds with each other, that disagree, and also a lot of bad people in the world that could all use the system and that there's still every incentive for people to secure money that can't be printed. So I don't have faith. I mean, yeah, I do ultimately have faith in humanity, but not, I don't like view Bitcoin as secure

because good people, you know, it only works in adversarial, in the most adversarial of circumstances. Super. And where, last, last, last, last question. Where do you draw hope from? What gives you hope? What gives me hope?

In certain ways, Bitcoin, that it would be very difficult. The way that I came to Bitcoin was understanding that they were always going to have to print money and that they that that would end in hyper inflation of the dollar not because i want the dollar to hyperinflate that's can't get oil out of the ground and pay people money that you just make up at a thin air doesn't that doesn't it's not the way that the world works um doesn't wait it's not the way that time works and energy works um and aligned

incentives work just doesn't but if you didn't see the solution in hand it'd be very easy to be pessimistic and you'd likely be a prepper and living off grid and trying to get as far away from people but now there's this thing bitcoin we have a way to trade our way out of the um the dilemma that's been created via the printing of money and the just the destruction of money so bitcoin's a big source of hope i have a seven month old son at home like that is a huge source of hope or like Being able to focus on the future. It's beautiful. Kaylee, my significant other and fiance and soon-to-be wife,

a big source of that, my family. That's the thing that Bitcoin is this tool, but it's just a tool. It does not exist there for us to also look at our computer screens and get mesmerized by our digital wealth, it enables things in our real life that actually matter to allow us to coordinate with people that you otherwise have no reason to coordinate with to be able to live in a peaceful society.

And that's not like a hopium. On a Bitcoin standard, life's still difficult. still we have challenges pain and you know the evil exists in the world and you gotta you gotta deal with it but um at least gives you a fighting chance yeah you know so um there's a lot of things but you know without without bitcoin it'd be difficult to be optimistic about a lot of other things but humans are also very resilient and adaptive so bitcoin didn't exist something else would but um so my um family bathe bitcoin texans let's go yeah beautiful parker thank you so much for everything you do in this community in the entrepreneurial

ecosystem of bitcoin and in education of people and in having this conversation with me i really We appreciate it. Absolutely. We'll have to have you come back through Austin. I will come back. We'll get you set up to accept Bitcoin payments. That's right. We'll go one at a time.

That's right. That's right. I will be back for sure. This is an awesome place. Yeah. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thanks for being with us.

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