Chat_136 – The Most Bullish Man in Bitcoin with Christian Keroles

[00:00:00] Speaker A: If bitcoin is a paradigm shift, it gets to that stage, like, it will be an even bigger product than AI, than ChatGPT. Like, okay, now imagine the world where not everyone's fighting bitcoin, but everyone's like, holy shit, I want to start a bitcoin business. I need to integrate bitcoin into my business. I'm going to create a business about integrating bitcoin into your business. That's coming. If bitcoin is a paradigm shift, I really don't think that anyone is bullish enough to where this thing goes. If it is what we say it is. [00:00:46] Speaker B: What is up, guys? Welcome back to Bitcoin. Audible. We have an awesome show today. We have my boy CK on the show with us today who I have not gotten to catch up with in a really long time, but he returns to the show and this may be the most bullish episode we have done in a really long time. And he might be right about. He might have earned the title of the most bullish man in bitcoin. Now, before we get into it, I want to say this show is brought to you by Chroma. Now, we silently do way more damage to our hormones and circadian rhythm than I think a lot of people take credit for, than I think a lot of people recognize. And I was one of those people for a long time. It messes with energy levels, it messes with sleep schedules, it messes with your ability to recover from overexertion or pains. And it is all about light exposure. Now, like I said, I was really whatever about this for a really long time. But maybe about a year ago, my wife and I got super serious about this and I have been shocked at the level of effect that it has had. This is what Chroma specializes in. They have a number of great products for light therapy, for blue light blocking. In fact, their. Their nightshade glasses are really cool because they're specialized to not just red wash everything, but actually keep as much color depth as necessary while fully protecting your circadian light exposure. And they are built by Bitcoiners and they even have a based bitcoin only page, which a link you might find somewhere nearby, I don't know, and a 10% discount with code Bitcoin. Audible. Check them out if you haven't. There's a lot of really great stuff and you'll actually see some of them in my studio. Hopefully pretty soon they're on the way. The show is also brought to you by the Pub Key app. Now, I want to imagine a Scenario real quick, imagine you have a host for all your social posts, for videos and content and people find it by going to a link. Now what if you don't like your host? Or what if they start to try to censor you at some point? Well, what if you can take all of your information and just choose to put it it was entirely under your control. And importantly, you can move it to a different host anywhere for any reason and everybody could use the exact same link and still find it all and they wouldn't even know anything had happened. That is part of the vision for what they built with PubKey. It's about owning your own data, owning your identity in a sovereign and censorship resistant way. It's the best of BitTorrent, bit and the traditional web smushed together and they just released the Pub Key app in beta and they have the Pub Key Ring app, which is my favorite little piece of all of this. But just so that you can experience what this might mean, if you haven't yet, go check it out. I'll have the link in the show notes. I highly recommend it. If you're interested in where the web may be going and how to solve the current problems, this is not something to sleep on. Now it's time to get into our chat with ck. We talk about all sorts of things. Building legends for future generations, historic moments that we've had in recent years, the explosion of sovereignty tools and the work that they've been doing over at HRF to bring these into reality, which they're way more than I thought they were directly involved in. I hadn't even realized where we think the this cycle is going, where we are in this cycle. Misunderstanding, the Lightning Network and just so much more. This was a fantastic chat and I'm so glad that CK got to join me with this one. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it. This is CK from the Human Rights Foundation. Chat 136. The most bullish man in Bitcoin. All right, we are in it. We are in it. Welcome back to the show ck. It's probably been like five years or something since you've been on the show, but welcome back, man. [00:05:07] Speaker A: Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, guy, long time listener. Thankful to call you a friend. And yeah, love your takes. And, and yeah, I mean excited to, to chat about everything happening in bitcoin. I mean there's some, a lot of, a lot of stuff. So you know, there's a lot of ways this conversation can go. [00:05:32] Speaker B: Dude, there's a Million things. There's a million things. What's your, what's your hat? Opt out. [00:05:38] Speaker A: The folks at area Bitcoin, have you heard of them? [00:05:41] Speaker B: No. [00:05:42] Speaker A: So area Bitcoin, great initiative out of Brazil. Uh, but it's Portuguese, English and Spanish bitcoin education. And they're really heavy on like Instagram because I think Instagram is the most dominant social media in Brazil. So yeah, great educators. Part of the, the hrf kind of like extended community and they make these, these cool opt out hats and I think this is their logo. [00:06:09] Speaker B: So Opt out. Opt out is a good, that's a good hat. Yeah. Note that opt out hat. I kind of want that one. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Made you jealous. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, dude. So how you been, man? How you been? We've got like, we got five years to catch up on. Let's, let's. I'll try to keep it really semi current, but last time I talked to you, I think you had just started working at Bitcoin magazine and you're with HRF now. Actually give me the, give me the rundown on like what's been going on with hrf because I'm a little bit out of the loop on a lot of things. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Well, so I guess like let's, let's just talk how I got to HRF and then we can talk about hrf. So I guess last time we did one of these talks, I was at Bitcoin magazine. Actually joined bitcoin magazine in 2018 and I was part of the team that like went took BTC Inc. From like multi coin company to a bitcoin only company and then helped launch the Legacy. Legacy, the first Bitcoin only, you know, kind of like major conference. So that was a lot of fun. And you know, we probably talked 2021, something like that. And I had just moved over to running Bitcoin Magazine, like the media entity. So I was ultimately there for like five years. And during that time helped Alex Gladstein publish a couple of books and a lot of essays on Bitcoin magazine and via Bitcoin magazine books. And I was ready for something new. And you know, I was putting out some feelers and I was talking to him and he was like, yo, come work for me. Like let's, let's make hrf, you know, as dominant as possible in bitcoin. So jumped over to HRF to come up on that. Was excited to work with Alex. And you know, I personally thought that what Alex was doing and what href was doing was like it was the most ironclad narratives for bitcoin it is. [00:08:17] Speaker B: You know, there's so many people who have this like, very like, I'm western suburban, like, middle class idea of what bitcoin is. And that's one of the reasons why I respected and enjoyed Gladstein's work so much, is because you could not deny like, you literally the people that like, I would explain those stories to and to get those like, personal accounts of, of Arroya and you know, like, like everybody from all over the. Literally different corners of the world and they're. Yeah, Frida. Um, that their stories were just so crazy that like when you told them to people they would, they would have to be like, okay, well yeah, if you were an authoritarian regime, sure, bitcoin's useful. And I'm just like, how do you dismiss that? How do you, how do you dismiss that? Some like, like, holy crap, dude. Like you, you have to, you have to pretend like one of the biggest problems in the world is, is like no big deal because it's not relevant to your like middle class suburb life. And it's like, Jesus, like the scope of potential for this thing if it can serve the people in the worst positions in the world. Like, you're just, you're just scratching the surface of what's possible because you're, you're finding the heart of why it matters. But anyway, yeah, the HRF has always been like. And Gladstein and his writing in particular has just always been like my resource for that. So I, I'm a hundred percent on like ironclad narratives is about the best way to put it. [00:09:58] Speaker A: Yeah, man. So when I was at Bitcoin magazine, I helped put out a lot of narratives. Right? You did a lot of reads of bitcoin magazine articles. Especially when I was in charge, we had a lot of op EDS running through stuff like that. Bitcoiners just putting out good thought pieces out. And that was a lot of fun. But the whole time, whatever Gladstein put out, like, that was always the best, right? And, and that was always what was the most useful for trying to like educate people and share it. And the reality is like, part of what Gladstein talks about is also like the failings of the fiat system to serve, you know, seven plus billion people on earth. So yeah, I mean, getting the opportunity to expand that, plus the grant making, so the narratives plus the grant making, you know, it's just a really exciting opportunity to be at HRF. So. And then like since joining HRF, that was October of 2023, so not even two years ago. I mean it just exploded in activity. Yeah, time flies for sure. And like look, I'm, I'm super proud of everything we did at Bitcoin magazine and what they're still doing. Like it's crazy to think like Bitcoin 2019. Do you remember that event guy? And now the vice president is on stage. It's like 30,000 plus people. So it's super proud of what they're able to achieve and do. Beyond me. I helped, but they're obviously continuing to crush it. But what we've been able to do the last almost two years at HRF has been super awesome too. Launched the Finnie Freedom Prize, so which I think is like that whole thing is awesome. [00:11:49] Speaker B: For anybody who doesn't know, can you give like a short rundown of the Finney Freedom Prize? [00:11:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm sitting there with Gladstein. We're trying to figure out what to do for the having and I was like, how about a prize? And then Gladstein just like isn't a trance and was like Finney Freedom Price like all this kind of stuff and we're just like writing it down. [00:12:15] Speaker B: I get it, I get it. [00:12:16] Speaker A: It's, it's, it. It was like from 0 to 85 of the idea on during that lunch meeting. Yeah, like some tacos and a beer and boom, just 85 of the idea down. And then you know, we spoke to the Finney family and, and Fran in particular and she agreed to like support it and like co. Co chair it or whatever with HRF as the main supporting organization. And Fran actually told us that like it helped give closure to their kids, which was really exciting to hear that like it actually was something that like was super positive for, for them as a family rather than just like for the bitcoin community. And the idea is for every having every bitcoin era, HRF wants to give the Finney Freedom Prize to the person that did the most to advance human freedom through their contributions to bitcoin. So obviously we established the era like this most recent era. So we have some catching up to do. So pretty much what we did was we announced the prize and we gave the first award for the 2009-2012 era to HAL and name the prize after him. And Fran accepted that prize donate. It's a prize and a bitcoin and all the bitcoin already pre allocated to the prize. So there's 33 bitcoin pre allocated. [00:13:49] Speaker B: Going to get crazy over the next. [00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, like the game. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be the biggest cash prize in the world at some point. But I guess what am I trying. So Fran actually took the bitcoin that she, that Hal got and donated to the ALS Foundation. So it's going towards als. And then over the last, you know, for last running bitcoin day and then for the next two running bitcoin days, we're effectively going to catch up to the most recent having. And then this upcoming having is when we'll, we'll be caught up and we'll announce like a fresh new winner for the having we, the era we just experienced. And then that will kick, kind of kick off the like the schedule of a winner every having. Exactly. And you know, the, there's idea, there's an award all the way to the last having. So we don't know exactly when that's going to be. But um, but you know, around 2140. And the reality is like this, the destiny of this prize is tied directly to the destiny of bitcoin. Uh, so if bitcoin is what bitcoiners say it is, this will be the most, this will be the next Nobel Peace Prize. It'll be the biggest prize in the world. [00:15:05] Speaker B: If, if bitcoin fails, it'll dwarf the Nobel Peace Prize. [00:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Like, I mean the block reward will be what, 21,000 sats in the last era or whatever, or 210,000 sats in the last era. And then this prize will be one whole bitcoin. So the economics of what is even more valuable, the prize or mining all the blocks, it just kind of gets crazy. So the game theory on this kind of stuff is wild. But I mean, dude, the fact that I could be on the ground floor of helping form that idea and executing it, it's just epic. So that's definitely number one on my list is like, you know, right off the bat, join hrf. Help them execute some stuff. Finney Freedom Prize. Just epic. [00:15:53] Speaker B: That's awesome. That's awesome. The Finney Freedom Prize is such a cool idea and to, to lay the groundwork now because you know, I always think about, it's like, oh, it's like, it's a, you know, we're, we're stacking now. We're, you know, you know, we're in the process of monetization. You know, let's, let's build a company. But also the idea of like pre allocating it's like, okay, like right now, let's put this up. And if bitcoin continues to be a force for freedom, we will have Compounding returns to devote to the, to the goal of freedom, you know, like, like reinforce the mission with the tool that's pushing the mission, you know, like, and like you said, tie their two fates to together, so to speak. Which is just so cool. I was curious about how grants have got like I, I'll see one every once in a while. Like you know, Cie got a grant or this, that or the other. But like what's. Tell me a little bit more about the development fund and the grants and the projects that you guys have been focused on and helping. Because that's one of the things that like really I don't really know anything about, you know, what goes on in like the major like you know, the new platform or tool built in Kenya if it weren't for you guys and the, you know, the freedom Report. But the development fund is something that I've been really interested in to like dig more into. And I've got the, the most recent publication y' all did on like Breaking It Down Saved, but literally haven't read it yet. So I'm curious what you have been seeing or what the most interesting project or the thing that like kind of pops out to you and also just kind of explain the project too, I guess. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, so great, great question. So just to kind of like give some, some context and then I'll like jump into the Bitcoin development fund. So pretty much HRF is a pro democracy nonprofit. We effectively attempt to resist authoritarians and support pro democracy movements. We do that in many ways. One of the key ways is that we, we help prisoners of conscience get out. So we support people who are imprisoned. There's tons of stories, people from Zimbabwe, Russia, across, you know, the authoritarian landscape. We've helped hundreds of people, been a part of lots of kind of like big deals to get people out or, or brought awareness to their cause. So that's like one of, that's HRF's kind of like core what we do. We also do that by being really technologically open minded and advanced and cutting edge. So we've done that with like dropping flash drives in a program called Flash Drives for Freedom into like Cuba and North Korea to get them like western media that's in their language to try to show them that there's something beyond what is like in their kind of closed world. We've done programs like a, a Google extension that tells you if the clothes that you're like online shopping for is connected to Uyghur, slave labor, stuff like that. So these are just Kind of like examples of like HRF tech adventurism. I would say the biggest thing is we got introduced to bitcoin in like 2013, 2014 at a high level. We sent funds to a Ukrainian protest effort in 20, I think it was what, 2013. And we received our first Bitcoin donation in 2014. And then there was kind of like a kind of like ruminating period of bitcoin and HRF with that kind of happening early on. Bitcoin's invented 2009. We did some activity in 2013 that's really cutting edge, I think, and I think still super, super cutting edge compared to most of the NGO and even just pro democracy space. And then in 2020 we have a. So I guess leading up to kind of in between there and launching the bitcoin development fund, Alex Gladstein is having his own kind of personal and professional journey with bitcoin and the space and figuring out what's happening here, Meeting activists that are using bitcoin and then in putting out content and thought leadership, which is like impacting the world. And then in 2020, a donor gives a small gift to HRF, pretty much saying like, I want you this money to launch an open source development fund at hrf. And so that's the bitcoin development fund that was launched in Q2 of 2020. 2020. And I think that's really when AHREF got on the radars of bitcoin is like when we started funding open source work. Right. So the document that you have that I sent to you is like the five year report. Because now it's, you know, the end of Q2, 2025. So have we done in five years? Right. And we've done a lot. We've distributed almost $9 million in open source grants. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Whoa. [00:21:08] Speaker A: So that's a lot of money. Especially kind of comparatively, you know, we have actually expanded into like freedom tech. So not just bitcoin, but the extended bitcoin space, but it's all centered around bitcoin. I think we did a bounty program. [00:21:27] Speaker B: I think the Pay Join new version of page one was in that, wasn't it? [00:21:30] Speaker A: Yeah. That led to the implementation of Pay Join that people have actually has been going live. All of like the original Cashew E cash wallets that got launched on iOS, Android and web were from bounties that we put out a bunch of bounties that help Zeus integrate features like ln URL and other kind of like sovereign usage features kind of happen because of those bounties. So just really kind of epic seeing create a bounty and then something goes live in production. You know, the bounties definitely could have been even better. And there's a lot of learnings from them, but you know, from, from like a high level perspective, it definitely moved the needle and that's exciting. So, yeah, and this year we're, we're on track to distribute 4 mil just this year. Wow. So at the end of this year we'll be closer to 12 million in, in grants delivered. So yeah, I think it's really exciting. And the fund is just getting bigger and better. When I joined, the fund was effectively Gladstein and Alex Lee. And then now we have Femi Longay who is our director. He's amazing. We have an amazing woman named Judy, she's out of Nigeria and she is running our ops. And then Alex Lee is still, you know, talking to experts, traveling around the globe, being like an advocate with developers. So the, the operation has expanded a lot. And yeah, I mean, we also have a lot of inbound interest. Like people know that, you know, sats are flowing here to good to good projects and you know, some, some days we get five applications, you know, so that we, we get hundreds of applications in a year. So it's really exciting to see on that front. But we also need to like, continue to educate people about what applications we want, what type of projects we're excited about. So we're trying to put out like a blog series about, about it to, to put more information out there. [00:23:50] Speaker B: Sweet. Send it my way. [00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah, so we'll definitely send it your way. But yeah, I mean, look, my management philosophy is like, you got to write things down and then you got to get people to agree on it and then spread it around. Right? Like, that's how you really build consensus. So, you know, we're trying our best to communicate to like quote, unquote, the open source community and all the stakeholders out there, you know, what we want as well as how to be successful, you know, with us in terms of that grant making operation. Because it's a huge grant making operation at this point. You know, we're, we're, we're moving seven figures in on an annual basis. So I take that super seriously. And so just glad to see an HRF and the rest of our team. [00:24:35] Speaker B: Dude, that is, that's pretty wild that all of the first cashew stuff were bounties. I don't, I don't think I even realized that because like the cashew, I feel like that thing's running a mile a Minute like there's constant new things. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Of like it's gone way beyond us. [00:24:51] Speaker B: Cashew that you know, like it's like. And. And I've. I've been like super eager. Like I'm so jazzed about seeing Ecash come back to life. You know, like this is like a second era of like Ecash can finally be what E Cash was meant to be at the beginning. And Cali made a really good point now in Farrington kind of like reinforced it in a piece actually. I just read by him on the. The one about stablecoins that you actually could not build E Cash on top of fiat because you don't have an independent way to settle between them. So it's not interoperable. You. You basically have either the entire thing is this giant centralized E Cash or. Which means that they're never going to offer privacy. You know, like the master of everything is going to be like here everybody have privacy and freedom and censorship, resistance. And that's not how those things work anyway. They're not granted, they're taken right. But then without an interoperable like an independent and neutral settlement system, you can't. It's all credit. So you have to have a trusted system between those entities and those entities can't trust credit with somebody that they can't Kyc like credit is necessarily a. I know who I'm working with and it just. The whole thing crumbles like immediately and we go right back to where we were. Which was a really interesting thing is it's like Ecash was a brilliant technology, but it just couldn't work on top of the foundation that we had. But now we can. Now we can actually revive it and make it what it was meant to be at the beginning. And I always also found it interesting and this is something I've always appreciated about the HRF in general and also just Bitcoiners is that to recognize that freedom is a technology problem, you know, how. How defensible is your right to say things? Is your right to share a thing? Is your right to protect your money? What's the. What's the economics of your protection of it versus someone else's taking it? And. And to recognize that as a technology problem and that like we have. It's kind of the sovereign individual thesis, right Is quit playing like play the politics game and play in the realm of politics to try to slow the machine down. But where you are really going to move the needle are those little pieces of technology that change the way the environment is. That change the, the kind of fundamental elements that all of us are working with and change the type of political conversation where you're allowed to have. And I, I just think like, like that's it. And if any, for anybody, at least in my opinion, anybody who got like super hopeful that Trump was going to be like this huge change and we were going to turn things around, we were going to balance the budget and all of that stuff, I hope that by this point they can realize that, yeah, most of that is just, it's still just the same game. And if you don't change the technology and the environment, there's not going to be any revolution and you're not going to elect a re. A revolution. You know, you're either going to build it or you're going to do it violently. And I promise you, the violent one is going to be way, way, way worse than you dream that it's going to be. You know, so build it. We build it. You know, like that's it. [00:28:18] Speaker A: I mean, so HRF is 100% focused on peaceful movements. So yeah, I think that's why we embrace technology. Right, right. It's, it is the sly, roundabout way. And this kind of now, let's call it, genre of freedom tech is super, super exciting. And the world is just waking up to it. Absolutely. Just waking up to it. So yeah, it's really exciting stuff that we get to be on the cutting edge of it. And I mean, I think it's still really underrated, but the reality is, is like when it comes down to the bare metal of it, it's the only thing that will serve a big chunk of people. [00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:11] Speaker A: So that's like a completely unrealistic. [00:29:13] Speaker B: It's the only thing you can distribute to a hundred million people. And you know, like, there is this kind of like dystopian view of it. Right. There's this possibility of going aggressively centralized and like stuck in platforms and all of these things, but in the exact same way, in the exact same way that those things like, connect all of us, it opens up the possibility of delivering one little piece of software, one little app or one little script that can move the needle so much greater in the opposite direction. Even under like just, just by, just by having those communication rails, the exponential capacity to do something just again compounds on itself, which is just, is so crazy that you kind of have these two dynamics kind of occurring at the same time and what psychotic things and wild like identity crises it kind of leads to for people in the world. It is wild times, man. It is freaking wild times. [00:30:17] Speaker A: Well, there's this great book called the Structure of Science. I don't know if you've heard of it. [00:30:24] Speaker B: I will write it down. I don't, I don't. That doesn't ring a bell. The Structure of Science. [00:30:30] Speaker A: It'S pretty much. It's. It's a book about paradigm shifts in science. [00:30:34] Speaker B: Okay. [00:30:35] Speaker A: So the basic idea is I would. [00:30:38] Speaker B: I'll totally like it. Yeah, I know you will. [00:30:41] Speaker A: It fits right into, like, this whole world that we're talking about. Because I think Bitcoin's a paradigm shift. So you have to understand paradigm shifts to understand what's going to happen. Right? But there's this idea of normal science. So normal science is like, think of science in a current paradigm, right? So you could say that us getting to the moon right now or us getting to space is like some sort of normal science within rocket technology. And maybe a paradigm shift in rocket technology is like us getting to another solar system. You know, like, that's like a, it's just a, a huge unlock which like, opens up a new dimension. It changes everything. So those things are different. Right. And to go from like, what is within normal science to a new paradigm requires, like, denial. And then, and then from like, everyone within normal science, and then from there some sort of like, identity crisis or crisis of confidence in the science and then eventual acceptance of the, like, the new paradigm. And like, that's exactly what we're seeing in Bitcoin, Right. So I've been calling it proof of paradigm shifts. Right. Like, unless we see like, the fight back, like, it's not actually a paradigm shift. [00:31:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:00] Speaker A: So I think that, that, that's an interesting framework to, like, think through. [00:32:04] Speaker B: That's a great way to put it. If, if it's not a fight, it's not a paradigm shift because, like, you have to come to terms with the shift in worldview because the other one just doesn't hold up. Like, it, it turns out to be inaccurate. [00:32:17] Speaker A: A paradigm shift, like, requires destruction of the existing worldview, so there has to be a fight. And then I think through, okay, well, AI is a paradigm shift, but why, why is there not really a fight right now? And then like, you think through the history of AI and it's actually longer than the history of cryptography, of public cryptography. It's. It's just wild. So, and there's been multiple AI winters. So maybe AI is just on a different part of the different stage of the, of the curve. So then I'm like, okay, well, chat GPT is the fastest growing app in history. And that this kind of gets to your point, which is like, we're building on these existing Rails. Why is it. Well, because the iPhone exists and everyone has a smart device on, you know, a smart computer per person. There's multiple smart computers per person at this point. So those are like the Rails for the AI. And then I'm like, okay, well, when Bitcoin gets to that. If Bitcoin is a paradigm shift, it gets to that stage, like, it will be an even bigger product than AI, than ChatGPT. Like, okay, now imagine the world where not everyone's fighting bitcoin, but everyone's like, holy shit, I want to start a bitcoin business. Like, I want. Like, I need to integrate bitcoin into my business. I'm going to create a business about integrating bitcoin into your business. You know, like, that's coming. If bitcoin is a paradigm shift. Yeah, we're just not there yet. And. [00:33:45] Speaker B: And. [00:33:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I am most known for these days is, you know, no one is bullish enough, but I really don't think that anyone is bullish enough to, like, what. Where this thing goes, if it is what we say it is. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah, dude, you think about how quick this has moved from, I mean, just go last cycle to this cycle, you could be talking about, like, you know, one. One deleveraging and recovery to basically that level. Like, the conversation has changed so drastically in just the last year or two for, like, kind of the legitimacy of Bitcoin and the. The recognition of its. It just is. And so we have to make a statement on it one way or the other. I mean, like, how many people were just sitting on the sidelines and how many entities were just like, don't stop asking me about this. I don't care about this silly bitcoin thing. And now don't have an option. They're. They're either quietly trying to not be like, super detractors because they don't know. They. They don't have the confidence of saying this thing's dead and stupid in a scam, or they have to be very, very loud about it. But so many people and so many institutions are just like, they've just gotten incredibly serious about it. And I mean, under 18 months, like the. The. The whole. The whole script is flipped on its head, you know? [00:35:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, 100%. And even the bitcoin policy summit that was last week, I was there, you know, I was. I was kind of on the ground level of BPI because they were incubated inside a bitcoin magazine and they, they have grown so much. Like they had like two senators and now they have like senators leaving session to come to the event and thousands of people at the event. So the legitimacy, the prestige, the seriousness is next level for sure. It's absolutely next level. But with that being said, we're still early days. When I look at the bitcoin treasury thing, all these bitcoin treasury companies, this feels to me and I wasn't there, I was born in the 90s, so I was not there. But this feels to me like early dot com bubble stuff. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Like kind of the web moment. [00:36:27] Speaker A: Yeah, like I think like we haven't gone to pets.com yet and it hasn't blown up in our faces yet. But like I could see in the 2020s the new version of the dot com bubble is the bitcoin treasury bubble. [00:36:44] Speaker B: And the 2027 deleveraging of the dude, I could see that everybody stacked bitcoin as hard as they could and then leveraged it and stacked harder. [00:36:56] Speaker A: I don't know why bitcoiners expect like people to wisen up. I think people are people and they're like not going to wisen up, you. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Know, So I mean there's, there's 100% something to that. Like it's just how things are. [00:37:11] Speaker A: We're at less than 1% adoption of Bitcoin. So I don't know why bitcoiners don't think what has already happened in terms of degeneracy is not going to just continue. But you could say it's a good thing that it's now extending more directly into bitcoin. I think it's a natural process of. Okay, Saylor did something amazing. Meta Planet is doing something amazing. They have lots of conviction and now there's going to be a bunch of copycats that don't have as much conviction or don't have as good of deals and they're definitely going to sell their bitcoin on the downturn, you know. So like I could see this thing running for a few years and then you know, there being a big bubble and that's just healthy. And like the people who stacked bitcoin and bought in, you know, maybe that extens to bought micro strategy only or something like that will, might, might get off. Okay. A lot of people are, are probably not. And it's not going to be like there's, it's because bitcoin's Broken. Just like there's nothing wrong with the Internet, but it's because, you know, people got over their skis and. Yeah, I think we're so early there. Like, I don't really know, like, how it maps directly. I like to map these paradigm, you know, these paradigms in my head and compare them to bitcoin. But I think that there, there might be something there with that analogy. [00:38:32] Speaker B: No, I. I completely agree, actually. And I do feel like people who are trying to say, you know, this bull market is over or whatever, I just don't, like, I don't feel any of that, you know, Like, I still feel like most people have no idea about the bitcoin treasury companies. Like, it's like bitcoiners who know or think about that. Like, we. Like, it's not even. It's not even in the general mind of people as to what's going on or like, the expectation of bitcoin. Bitcoin is just kind of like this thing that gets talked about on CNBC and, you know, like, it's. It's legitimate now. And I have a lot of people I know who've been thinking I should. I should probably go ahead. I should get a little bit of bitcoin. I should put it in my. Like, I should diversify my IRA and you know, all of this stuff. And now it's. It's a serious thing to consider it. And it's not this crazy how. Oh, my God, how would you even talk about that? Isn't that. Isn't that Internet drug money or something? I think that conversation has changed. But, like, I don't think we're in even the beginnings of the crazy that we're going to see this time. I am curious, though, what your thoughts on bitcoin. Treasury companies are just. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Everything is good for bitcoin, guy. [00:39:52] Speaker B: Everything's good for bitcoin. But what's your big picture on? Just like, because, you know, there's a. There's an element of like, strategy makes a little bit more sense to me because it is a company that has products that does think productive things and has a return and they hold their treasury in bitcoin. Like, that's just obvious. Like, you want to hold your treasury in something that is valuable and that, you know, somebody else can't print. And so of course, the stock would obtain a premium. Like, it's probably overbought, but it would obtain a premium for not having a. A draining Treasury. [00:40:29] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:31] Speaker B: But the, the companies that are being created for no other reason but to sell Equity to buy Bitcoin. That is the one that gets me a little bit like, yeah, okay, there's. [00:40:48] Speaker A: A lot of nuance here. [00:40:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:50] Speaker A: The reality is like strategy not only is a sailor extremely convicted, but he's innovating in really smart ways. So like they're killing it. And I think you're correct in separating strategy from the rest and then the, the next chunk. Like it's kind of hilarious. Like Saylor put out his playbook and then continued to develop his playbook and everyone just watched and watched and watched as he built up this huge tre treasure treasury as well as like portfolio of, of products. Like what are, what are strategies? Products. You can go into your brokerage account right now and look up strike, strife and, and stride. And like these things have their own prices and they have a different dividend and they have different structure. And you're giving micro strategy money when you buy that stuff. So like, not only can you buy their stock, but you can also buy these other instruments. They're not even doing these like, you know, convertible bond offering things anymore. They're just like going straight to the public with these products. They're effectively like, think of like their derivatives off of. If MicroStrategy is like leverage Bitcoin, then they're like derivatives off of that that give you less exposure to Bitcoin and more exposure to, to like cash flow. That. That would be the best way that I describe it. So it's like if you look at where MicroStrategy is positioned, it's really strong. I think like, it's really important to like use MicroStrategy as like the basis of how you like judge these companies and then you look at those companies that way. I would be really excited. I think the next microstrategy is actually a company that is extremely well, cash flowing that has a really aggressive bitcoin treasury standard. I would say HRF is kind of like that. In the nonprofit world. We like bitcoin, we use USD. We operate in a really, I think, innovative way. And there's a lot of room for opportunity there with other organizations that are just like very good at what they do. But for what MicroStrategy is doing, which is like creating financial leverage for Bitcoin. Like, I think you have to use micro strategy as like your measuring stick for other things. And the reason why people like the other things is because this is the same reason people like the shitcoins. It's easier to double. That's really it. So if you want to trade, there's definitely some value there. But if you want to set it and forget it invest, you need to have a lot of conviction. I'll tell you the only other point there is, there are other capital markets. So I think something like Meta Planet is similar to MicroStrategy first to market, doing really well. Are extremely convicted. They're focused on putting out these products and they are just focused on the Japanese pool for the most part. And they're, they're like the most viral stock in Japan. So there are other capital pools that are like geographically isolated that you know, you can run the same strategy and be the number, the alpha dog, the premier, the premier service provider, if you will. It doesn't have to just be MicroStrategy or bust. But I do know that MicroStrategy also is trying to offer their stuff in other markets outside the US So it's like they know that too. [00:44:31] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of people know that. A lot of people know that that's what's up. And they're racing to get there. [00:44:36] Speaker A: Look, capital is stuck in different buckets as well as capital stuck in different geographies with different laws. And really what the Bitcoin treasury strategy is, is like, okay, well how do we bend and twist Bitcoin into things to fit into those capital buckets so they can invest in Bitcoin? Like that's it, that's how I would boil it down. So I think it shows exactly how awesome bitcoin is as a product that it can just do that. But at the end it's just bitcoin. Right. Bitcoin is the reason why MicroStrategy is going to post a massive earnings per share and all of the yield is because of Bitcoin and all of the volatility is because of Bitcoin. So bitcoin is the product. It's just they're packaging it and it's kind of hilarious. People talk about bitcoin replacing the financial institution. People didn't think about bitcoin as a mind virus that is going to take the zombie financial institution and bring it back to life and just revitalize it from the inside out. [00:45:42] Speaker B: Well, obviously finance is a thing like there's a very explicit purpose for expanding and gaining access and sharing and dividing up ownership of capital. The thing is, is that like finance as we know it today has been divorced from anything in the real world. It's become finance for the sake of finance. And it's actually funny that that grounding can just so easily be retied just by placing it on the other side of a bitcoin weight, you know, like, okay, like, what is this. What is this worth in bitcoin? And I think that is the monetization of bitcoin. And it makes sense too, from the context of, like, there are capital buckets that are just stuck, you know, like, they can't get out of their bucket. And so you have to go into that bucket, which is, you know, retirement and pensions and people just have money that's locked up in equity markets. You have to go into that bucket and you have to create an instrument that's tied to bitcoin and say, okay, well, here's the instrument. And now that bucket now has access to flow into the. The bitcoin. And. And ultimately you end up with this base that just has these tethers to every capital bucket on the planet and in every demographic and in every culture and world and network because it's this ultimate settlement system that all you have to do is create whatever your instrument is and stick a key and, you know, get a key in it and. And there it is. You know, like, that's. [00:47:12] Speaker A: It's permissionless too. [00:47:13] Speaker B: Tie it to bitcoin. Yeah. [00:47:15] Speaker A: To add the bitcoin part is, you know, you just do it, right? [00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:20] Speaker A: But like, dude, this is why I think, like, no one is bullish enough because, like, we're so, so early in that process. [00:47:29] Speaker B: Like, nothing is happening. And it's like 110k today. [00:47:34] Speaker A: I know. Like, we're. We're prices crushing. [00:47:35] Speaker B: We're like all time high. We just had like all time high close on the monthly. It's not like big news, it's just whatever. Like, I still keep hearing people's like, ah, this is it. This is the runs. The runs over. Bitcoin's not even like a thing anymore. Bitcoin's dead. And it's like, are you. Wait, we're not even. Like, we're literally just like, we're just bumping against the highest it's ever been and it's falling less and less every time. It's less volatile. The bid is just easy. Like, as soon as something drops is like somebody's coming in and scooping those up. Like, this is not even. Like, this is easy. This is easy. This has been the chillest, most, least hyped, least stressful. I mean, just the. The blandest period of bitcoin just going up I have ever experienced in my entire time being here. [00:48:30] Speaker A: To be like, honestly, what was early 2017 like? Because I know things got really Heated up in the fall. Yeah, like, I. I joined bitcoin in the fall of 2017. So that's why I'm asking you. Okay. [00:48:44] Speaker B: Early 2017 was, like, it was a retail bubble. Like, everything about 2017 was, like, the peak of retail. So it was. It was actually funny, too, because we would usually have a bunch of bad news on the run up that just wouldn't do anything. It wouldn't stop the bull, basically. But we had already been kicking off ICOs like crazy, actually a little bit. Felt like it does right now, is that. That's a questionable comparison. It makes the bitcoin treasury companies, and it paints them in a pretty bad light if I compare them to ICOs. But it does kind of feel like that start is that you had a couple of, like, early ICOs, and people just made a killing. You know, people just made like, $10 million on this, like, nothing token because it was like the new thing. And then, like, 10 other people, like, sat up straight and they're like, wait, you did what? And made what? And then suddenly, like, the next guy did it and then the next guy, and then the. The quality and the care and the. The. The execution just degraded with every new announcement, you know, it was just like, crappier and crappier and crappier. And again, I actually think even the way they're structured, it doesn't even seem like they can. They're not leveraged, you know, like, it's not like they. They would have to sell all their bitcoin if their price went down. It's not. That's not how it's structured at all. They're. [00:50:16] Speaker A: The. [00:50:16] Speaker B: The equity is an exchange for bitcoin, you know? You know, like, it's. It's not. It's not like they're saying that, like, we're putting up our bitcoin against this so that if it's not like keeping a price, then you get the bitcoin. Like, there's no. There would be no liquidation. Like, if they just. If the stock just fell, then it would just be their. Their leverage equity, you know? So, again, why I kind of separate them out, but I think it kind of makes sense that if you have just like a hardcore strategy of just selling equity and buying bitcoin and you have access to capital that can't get access to bitcoin in any other way. It doesn't seem like a totally ridiculous concept, you know, like, it's just that, okay, well, I have a hundred thousand dollars that's stuck here, and I have to put it in something. Well, here's a company that isn't worried about, you know, building computers or whatever, but it's, it's buying the new money. You know, it's just going to stack the thing that's going to do the best in this, the best asset in this. I mean, if it was a gold company, I mean people do that, right? That's, it's kind of like an ETF. [00:51:22] Speaker A: It's just, well, there's ETFs and there, if there was a gold treasury company that's like we're just going to focus on acquiring the biggest treasury of gold. I don't know if that exists. [00:51:32] Speaker B: I don't think. I don't know of one. I don't know of one. [00:51:35] Speaker A: But yeah, I, I haven't done the research though. So please, that would be interesting to. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Do like a dive and like really think about the structure of the company and is this actually meaningful? And if people aren't stupid, you know, if they actually do it in a responsible fashion. Is there any reason to think that kind of the most successful wouldn't just blow through a bare market without any trouble and you know, their stock would just mirror the bitcoin price most likely or be a little, an exaggerated version of it likely go up faster and go down faster. Kind of like a futures contract almost. [00:52:13] Speaker A: Well, I think this is where you got to look at the company fundamentals. Right. So MicroStrategy, you would say the floor of MicroStrategy is the Bitcoin they hold, right? That's the floor value. Right now it's trading at multiples of that, not nearly the multiples of like if you say other organizations that are floored is like their earnings. So like it's not even close to this. The multiples of like earnings per share. [00:52:37] Speaker B: Multiples and other corporations ratios became meaningless. [00:52:41] Speaker A: A while ago until someone smashes them with bitcoin, which is what MicroStrategy is about to do. [00:52:46] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [00:52:50] Speaker A: But yeah, so you got to look at these other companies and like their offerings and like what are the terms on those offerings? Because like there's like leverage can really bite you if the terms are. You have to start selling Bitcoin to cover the leverage. Exactly right. So I don't think MicroStrategy is really in that position. So then you could be like, well just buy the, the, all the bitcoin at present value and there you go. Like you know someone, there's a floor for the company. So you just really got to know which equity you buy. Right. So I'm honestly, I would say, you know, least risk is buy bitcoin cold storage. If you have money trapped in some, like, you know, place that's trapped in, you know, you could buy an ETF or you can buy, you know, strategy. You. You probably want to, like, take extreme care going beyond that, you know, and even with strategy, like, you should, like, know the risks. It's. It's a love. It is leverage Bitcoin. Like, that's what they say it is. Like, if you want to buy, like, why buy strategy? He'll say it's, you know, it's a leverage, you know, instrument that is acquiring more bitcoin. So they're not hiding that. But, like, there's. It's tough to come up with, like, other reasons to get into the other things other than, you know, you want outsized gains. [00:54:02] Speaker B: I want to clarify something and maybe, maybe you know, this, or you can answer this question. If not, then ignore it. But it's leveraged equity backed by bitcoin. Right. They're leveraging the equity in the company, not the bitcoin. If I understand. [00:54:19] Speaker A: I don't know all the details. I think your distinction is correct. I guess what I would say is leverage bitcoin is, why would you buy the stock instead of bitcoin? They would say, will you buy this stock? Because this stock is using leverage to get more bitcoin. [00:54:35] Speaker B: Gotcha. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's why there's a metric of bitcoin per share. And all these companies, their North Star is increased bitcoin per share. Right. So as long as bitcoin per share go up, whatever they're doing is good. [00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And this feels like the moment in 2017 when everybody realized this was a good idea, that we can do this. And, like, we've got, like. And you think about it, we're still. We're still just opening the, like, we got like, five company. You know, like, it's a. It's a shockingly few number of companies that are kind of making headlines of, like, people like, we just made this company. We made 21, and we made this. And, like, we're going to be. We're a bitcoin treasury company. We're going to be selling equity, and we're going to be trying to stack as much bitcoin as possible. And everything we do is going to be about getting more bitcoin. And if bitcoin runs, if bitcoin continues to increase from here and it goes to 120, 130, 150, there's going to be enough. There's going to be every. For every one of these treasury companies that's successful for the next six months, there's going to be 10 people standing up going, why am I not doing this? And that is exactly what caused 2017, was that in the crypto tokens, the ICO boom. The. I'm just buying bitcoin. Bitcoin or whatever. I'm investing in this. This company that does blockchain stuff. Like, somebody was very loud and very vocal about it, and then they were successful. And then the bull run moved a little bit more, and the next round of people who listened to him the first time were successful. Like, I still feel like in that, you know, that gif or that. That video of the. The. The dude dancing like a weirdo, like, just dancing like a buffoon at that concert, and then the one guy joins him, and then like, four or five other people join them, and then it's like seven or 10. I feel like we're still in the seven or 10 zone, where it's like, oh, there's a little thing happening over here. And these people are interested. They're all crazy doofuses, but there's, like, tons of people who are all near them that are literally about to stand up and rush over there. And then the whole. The whole concert is going to end with everybody around that dude dancing like a buffoon. So it feels like we're still in that. Like, there's seven people dancing around them, and people are just catching on to the fact that this is something that everybody can do. Yeah. [00:57:16] Speaker A: Well, I would say, like, Meta Planet was probably just as important to this happening as strategy. [00:57:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. [00:57:27] Speaker A: Because, like, strategy was crushing it. But it was really Meta Planet who came out and then also just. [00:57:33] Speaker B: They did it, and it worked for them as well. Yeah. [00:57:36] Speaker A: And then everyone's like, I should just do this. But, like, we're already at more than one a day are announcing, so it's already really a while. Yeah, you got to go and check out bitcointreasury.net More treasury.net oh, wow. [00:57:53] Speaker B: One a day, man. We're gonna go to. We're gonna. [00:57:55] Speaker A: More than one a day. More than one a day. [00:57:57] Speaker B: We're gonna go to. We're gonna go to, like, 10 a day. In like, real short order, you have. [00:58:03] Speaker A: People launching new companies to do this. [00:58:07] Speaker B: Wait, what's the. What's the URL. I already. I already forgot. [00:58:09] Speaker A: Bitcoin, treasuries,.net treasuries. [00:58:12] Speaker B: Okay. [00:58:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh wow. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Okay. [00:58:20] Speaker A: You can see that they're selling cold cards. That's because NVK is behind this. [00:58:24] Speaker B: Nice. [00:58:24] Speaker A: So sharp. Sharp guy. But yeah, I mean so there's, there's two things happening. There's. There's companies that are net new that are going to buy bitcoin. So like that's kind of like XXI or something like that with Jack Mallers. And then there are existing companies that are either completely pivoting to being bitcoin treasure companies or they're using their treasuries to buy big chunks of bitcoin. Like that's kind of what's happening right now. And like just to like, as concisely as I can say, like why I think this is going to turn into a bubble is because I think what you just painted is completely accurate which is like how this is going to snowball. But the reality is like you need both the will to buy bitcoin. You also have to have the balls, the will to hold the bitcoin. You have to have the conviction. Right? [00:59:18] Speaker B: You have to get the conviction to stick around and. [00:59:21] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:59:21] Speaker B: A lot of people who do this, who don't, they chase the green. [00:59:25] Speaker A: That's exactly it. So the more. Let's say Apple buys bitcoin, Google buys bitcoin at the top of this thing and then bitcoin tanks and all these smaller treasury companies, they have a hybrid strategy where they're trying to sell the top as part of their strategy. And then all of a sudden there's all this pressure like why the fuck did you buy the bitcoin? Google like sell, sell, sell, you know, or, or we saw that happen with Tesla. That compounded can be net negative. Right? [00:59:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:56] Speaker A: On the, on bitcoin price. And, and then we're going to see what are the real bitcoin treasury companies, which are the ones that are like just focus on acquiring as much bitcoin as possible. SAS denominated bitcoin as possible. And which ones. You know, just wanted to like ride the hype. I, I eventually feel every company will have a bitcoin treasury strategy. But it won't be because of the hype. It'll be because bitcoin works. And, and, and it's known that it works. But I think we're, we're, we're still not there yet. [01:00:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that number will explode in the next bear market of just like just the general conversation. Companies that aren't doing pomp and circumstance and like announcing it and all this stuff really, it's just kind of like a memo of we're putting 2% of our treasury or 5% of our treasury into bitcoin. But this definitely feels like, it feels like it's starting to roll. And I just think that the mountain that the snowball is rolling down on this one is really, really, really big. Like we're entering into a market that's just a whole different beast from what we've seen in the history of bitcoin so far. Again, presidents speaking at bitcoin conferences. And like that just happened. And it was, and it was bonkers that that even happened when it happened very recently, you know, and most institutions move very, very slowly, but we're getting into the, in the gradually. Then suddenly we're at the. Then I think of this, of this zone gradually. [01:01:43] Speaker A: Then I, I agree with you. I think no one's bullish enough. But with that being said, like, I really, I really question when people are like we're about to cross the chasm because I just think like we're not there yet. And I think like by any metric, if you measure. [01:02:06] Speaker B: I just mean for this cycle. I'm not meaning that like we're, we're done with this. I mean for we've, we've gradually then suddenly five times. And I think we're going to do it again here, but we're 100% going to have a deleveraging and a.com blow up. Like I. [01:02:24] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay. We're talking about different things then. [01:02:27] Speaker B: I don't want you to think that. Sorry. That can very easily be taken into a. This is the last cycle and this one's different. And I don't believe that. I'm done believing that. I think, I think cycles are the only way that anything moves. It's just a series of cycles and they do compound on each other and then they, they turn into a curve, but it's still just cycles. Humans totally in cycles. The world works in cycles. The universe works in cycles. [01:02:54] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So thank you for the correction. Let's zoom back to what you're actually saying, which is like for this cycle, right? You think like there's going to be an step up. Yeah, well, I mean, like, I don't like to make price predictions. I mean, but we smashed 110 today. I think that's the all time high. So a wise man told me his name is David. [01:03:14] Speaker B: Still 111 if I'm not mistaken. [01:03:16] Speaker A: Oh, 111. Okay. [01:03:17] Speaker B: I think it's not Cool. Here. [01:03:18] Speaker A: David Bailey told me when bitcoin retakes an all time high, you always buy as much as possible. So I think that that's, that's probably accurate here. And I mean, dude, we could fake out. Summers have historically been sleepy, but there's been hot summers and not every cycle is the same. But man, I think things are going to get really crazy when everyone wakes up in the fall. So I don't really know where bitcoin price goes immediately, but it's exciting to see 110 right now as we speak. So, yeah, I mean, I hope if people are listening to this like even six months into the future, I hope it, you know, the price is like way beyond 110. Like, holy, I could have bought 110. [01:04:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, 100%. You know, the whole idea of like crypto and stuff is it makes sense too that the, the fluff or the, you know, the froth on the drink, so to speak, the, the crap of the market keeps migrating closer and closer to the thing that's real. Which is why we had the, the ICO and crypto bubble and the blockchain and then the, and now it's companies on bitcoin, like that's where, that's where the excitement will be. But I still think we end up in a place where it's like everybody who's not building something real because bitcoin will reveal what is real and what is not because it's going to put everything to the test. It's gonna, it's gonna make everybody sweat and it's gonna punch everybody in the gut who's not prepared. And then we're going to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then we're going to do this. We're going to step again, one step closer to something real. And the people who survive with more bitcoin who actually invested in something meaningful, who actually have a plan and a structure that's not just stupid, we'll make it. And then again we'll move one cycle and one step closer to new market and a new level in the financial system will start getting replaced. And then we'll do something stupid. There's a. As well. And then that will blow up and it'll be another. Another. We're just, we're taking out layers, right? We're just layer on top of layer on top of layer. And stable coins are such a weird, like left out of left field thing for this cycle too because, because of the whole bitcoin treasury thing, that feels more like the Investment bubble starting to really kick off. But I don't even know how to think about stablecoins in some regards when it comes to like how its relationship to bitcoin is. I've talked about it a lot on the show actually, but it's an interesting one because it's got positives and it's got negatives and there's definitely feedback loops kind of between them. But what's your take? How have you and, and or your conversations at HRF been about stablecoins and where their place rests in all of this? [01:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah, so I guess real quick I'll hit on stable coins from HRF and then I'll hit, hit it with my personal opinion which I think I can speak a lot more about my personal opinion than hrf. So hrf, I think we acknowledge the utility of stablecoins and the desire for people to operate in dollar instruments, but we do not formally operate or endorse or work with stablecoins. And the reason is because they're ultimately have an intermediary and we see that as an attack vector for sovereignty and safety and privacy. So we don't recommend it. Like when we educate activists about bitcoin we actually don't even recommend using, you know, if especially they're in a dangerous environment like Russia, we like do not recommend them using a, a exchange that requires their identity or connect, you know, in many cases connects to their bank account because it's just too dangerous for them to do that. So it's all about safety. But when it comes to stablecoins, like people want dollars and like there's a utility in sending dollars. So like I would say like we wouldn't deny that utility. Now pivoting from hrf and just to be clear, href does not do anything in stablecoins. It's just, that's just the reality. So pivoting from hrf, talking about like my opinion, like I've been saying this for a long time is that one I don't, I think stablecoins are the real cbdc. Like I don't actually and like people can like twist that and misconstrue what that means. I think the reality is like, I don't think any CBDCs are really going to launch in a way that gets mass adoption or it gets like substantial adoption. And the government controlled thing that does work is stable coins. So that, that's kind of like it will essentially. Yeah. Versus stable coins. So okay, now we're talking about dollar versus other fiat. I, I think all like all stable coins are dollars. They're not other things. So I like, I see stablecoins as dollar innovation. And right now we're in a world of dollar where there's a dollar liquidity crisis. Pretty much everyone wants dollars. There's not enough dollars out there. I think that that is creating like this idea called the dollar milkshake theory. So I think like CBDCs are just part of the dollar milkshake theory. Like if you think of dollar milkshake theory, add in CBDC or sorry, not CBDC stablecoins. You just add in stable coins. That's, that's what's happening. So what I've been saying is dollar milkshake theory then hyper bitcoinization. So that's how I've been thinking about like where this all plays together. So I, I see, you know, tether, usdc, all the, whatever comes in the future that banks do, this is all part of the dollar system. It's going to help decapitate the other fiat currencies faster. And as soon as governments add KYC to it, it's going to become useless and people will drop it like a tot. And, and then there's bitcoin. Right. So that's really, if I could just like summarize like what will happen to the fiat system in, in, in a paragraph. I think that's, that's what I think. [01:09:42] Speaker B: Is going to happen that's shockingly similar to my thinking on it is that I think we're having like Bitcoin isn't just a monetary shift, it's a technological one too for open infrastructure and you know, key based accounts where, where the user holds their keys and the user's the one who initiates and pays for transactions and all of that stuff. It's a, it's an inversion of where the operation of a lot of the infrastructure is and where the, the, the responsibility of the infrastructure is. And, and it's easier to update the technology than it is to change your money. So the ag. The incredible demand of the dollar is in combination with the change in the technological infrastructure can actually aggressively expand the dollar network with the stable coins. Somebody, somebody said in a thread actually the other day, so we should call them fiat coins. I like that. But you could aggressively. Fiat dollar coins. Yeah, fiat dollar coins. But the thing is, is that what it's going to do is that it's going to consolidate fiat in a technological shift at the exact same time that you have Bitcoin having the monetary shift because you know, as the dollar becomes accessible to 3 billion people who barely can even touch or have any access to it at all. Well, all of their local little currencies are going to be even less and less meaningful and have less and less liquidity and they're barely going to be something that you swap out of like right when it. It's just going to be the people with the least access and no control over anything who basically get the shortest end of the shortest stick in those markets. And everybody's going to run to the stablecoin, the fiat coin kind of paradigm as fast as they possibly can from a technological perspective. So the dollar is going to expand aggressively at the exact same time that bitcoin is basically going to expand aggressively to being until it's basically those two. And I think it just ends up the dollar versus Bitcoin. But the dollar is going to build in order to save itself and have like one last rally before the end game. It's going to build all of the infrastructure that's going to make bitcoin so easy to switch to. They're going to build the technological infrastructure that just makes it. We just swap out keys and, and I really, I, I kind of agree. I think that's how this evolution goes going forward. And I don't know what the timeline is, you know, 20 years, but it's going to be wild. Four cycles probably. [01:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the million, that's the 10 Bitcoin question. I think that's a million bucks these days. But no totally billion sack question. This is why it's important too though, to have clear thinking about the CBDC stuff. Because for you to think that what you just said is going to happen, you have to think like Euro CBDC is like a non factor. [01:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not, it's not going to work. They're going to. Somebody's going to make a euro stablecoin or I guess a dollar stablecoin that's successful in the European zone and then it's false subject to. Yeah, yeah, right, it is. So yeah, it, it's going to be interesting. One of the things actually that's relevant to this and this is one of the things that you actually pointed out in your email that I wanted to ask you about was monetary maximalism and if it is descriptive or prescriptive. And that's actually something that I talk about a lot and I try to explain to people that difference because so many people are like you're just religious and you're just. And I'm like no, no, I'm I'm not. I'm. I'm telling you how I think all of the feedback and all of the, the natural monetary pressures of a money will evolve and what the end result of that is going to be. And I think I have everything as far as that history and the way those technologies and networks work. Like the science of networks backing me up on that. But before I kind of get into it or go into a rant, I want to get your take on what you think about that and like your framing for the descriptive versus prescriptive idea. [01:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and I don't even know if we, we are going to 100% agree on this on this topic. [01:14:09] Speaker B: I'm very curious then. [01:14:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So I started my career in this space like arguing with shitcoiners a lot. I don't really do that anymore. I don't even argue with bitcoiners that much anymore to be honest. But I definitely don't argue with shitcoiners a lot. But in early in my career I did, I did a podcast called POV Crypto and I argued with David Hoffman before he did Bankless multiple times a week. And I remember in 2017, 2018, Bitcoiners generally would argue with ETH and altcoiners a lot more than they do now. Now there's just so much happening in bitcoin that bitcoin is just fight amongst themselves, I feel like. And they ignore altcoin people. But back then, you know, a big argument on like why doing a general purpose blockchain was because monetary maximalism, like sorry, why that was dumb was because of monetary maximalism. So that argument was like, look like if it's money and compute, eventually as it gets crowded, like all monetary transactions will be able to out compete like arbitrary data per byte. And that was like a big argument being like, look, ultimately if your blockchain succeeds, it will just be a monetary blockchain anyways because. And that's what bitcoin does because of like the, like let's call it like the economics of appending DA data to the blockchain structure or the blockchain database. So like that would be I'd say like a descriptive argument for like or an argument for like the idea of monetary maximalism is a description of blockchain economics or bitcoin economics more specifically. And like we live in a world today, like fast forward from 2018 to 2025 where people are like, you shouldn't do things within consensus because bitcoin's money. And like I'M just like, well that's a really weak argument. Like the whole point of Bitcoin is is it in consensus or not? So and, and like that said in like the name of monetary maximalism. So like that's kind of a bastardization of like at least what I remember. You know, the argument was in 2018. So and, and that's more of like monetary maximalism is prescriptive. It's like thou shall do this because that's good for Bitcoin and a monetary network. So yeah, I mean look, I, I, I personally like my take on like everything that's happened since ordinals is like it's good. Like people having more sovereignty, having more choice, being able to like attempt to you know, do something within or have a political view within the space within Bitcoin is good. But at the end of the day like what are the best and most accurate ideas? And you know, I do think like this idea of monetary maximalism as a descriptive like idea or way of attempting to describe Bitcoin is good because I think it's accurate. I do think that you know, economic transactions in a busy Bitcoin blockchain outcompete non economic transaction on a data like on a per data per byte level. Like on a like literal, how much data is being put in to the blockchain and how much is that going to cost? And I think like the economics probably are rational there. So I'm curious what you think about that. [01:18:07] Speaker B: So yes, I took the comment about monetary maximalism. I had it from a different framing. So I was thinking about it from the context of like I get it now you're saying that monetary maximalism within the blockchain is the kind of the spam question, right Is are we doing this for a general purpose with the blockchain? And you know, this is why like if Ethereum was successful then the monetary purpose, the monetary use is just going to outpace any of the other like arbitrary, this is a database usage. Whereas my, my thinking of like the monetary maximalism was I basically had a different definition of it when I was just kind of setting the stage. So my thinking was, and using Ethereum as the, the alternative is that Ethereum is trying to sell on the fact that you can do computing and you can make a VM and you can do all of this stuff and you have to have this token in order to do this really cool feature, this defi thing. And my thinking on the monetary problem was that the token is the worst thing about your network because if you're selling it on some. Nothing has a market greater than money. So if you're trying to sell your token because a denta coin or for bananas on the blockchain, bananas are going to be out competed for money. And I don't mean it even just within your blockchain, but your blockchain token isn't actually connected to anything in the real world. The only value it can really have is a monetary premium and it has to compete against Bitcoin. So Ethereum trying to sell a bunch of wing digits and NFTs and all of these things are, is going to be grossly out competed to Bitcoin just because Bitcoin is sound money and nothing that Ethereum can do with their token, somebody's just gonna build NFTs that use Bitcoin. You can't wall garden a technology with your token and then think that people are gonna use your token as money to get NFTs. Right? Yeah, that's essentially the idea. [01:20:12] Speaker A: The idea of a utility token definitely was a stupid idea. Yeah. [01:20:17] Speaker B: Now back to your argument though about generalism in the blockchain and the fact that it's a database is I, I almost would put myself kind of in the middle of the road because I think the design and structure of the system must be focused entirely on the monetary use case because all of the other use cases are derivative in, in the same way that all economic activity is derived from the ability of the money to coordinate it. Which means that getting, and I do kind of generally agree that it would all get priced out anyway, bite for bite. But therein lies. What I think is the problem is that the JPEG and the, the kind of like arbitrary data database side of it got unintentionally, unintentionally discounted so that it's cheaper byte for byte for them to put in a JPEG than it is byte for byte to, for people to make actual monetary transactions. And that I think is the problem is that they should either be on an even keel or something like, you know, and just in the idea of spam itself is it's absolutely consensus valid. Email spam being the example that we hear all the time, is hashcash was a mechanism to give a marginal cost to poor use of the protocol that is easy to bear for people who are making honest use of the protocol. And I really think the question is, can we. And of course there's a, there's a perfectly legitimate argument to be made that you can't, but we did discount it unintentionally is there a way to reverse or rebalance the scales such that you're just paying bite for bite and a person sticking a dick butt into the chain isn't getting a better deal than somebody who's sending money to Kenya because they have no alternative? And so I think that's a little bit prescriptive and descriptive in a sense. It's not, it's not clearly either to me, because. Because I think necessarily if you don't have the good money, you can't actually price and coordinate the activity. And this is, this is the problem to solve and everything else is derived from that. The analogy I've used in the past that I think works is, you know, if it's valid and like, you know, somebody's willing to pay the price. Do you rent your courtroom out for a party? Well, the purpose, you can't actually enforce the ticket for going to the party if you can't adjudicate disputes in the courtroom. So if your courtroom's crowded out with parties like the courtroom, it's perfectly acceptable to say the courtroom should be left for only legal disputes, for disputes of ownership, and that it is quote, unquote, spam for somebody to come in, have a party, throw a concert or something like that that's using it just because it's a great location. But it does absolutely nothing in the context of securing the rule, the. The framework for everyone having rights and for having a market that does produce great parties and concerts and, you know, great economic activity. [01:23:36] Speaker A: No, look, I hear what you're saying there. The tough part, right, is this is where the politics of bitcoin kind of come into play, is like, how do you put what you're saying into practice? And I just don't think that the example of courtroom is open for party. And that is going to crowd out the adjudication of disputes is accurate as well as that's not a super accurate example because, like, in this current example, like, there is a way to outbid. So, like, what I would be saying is, like, I'd be a dispute maximalist, right? I'd be saying, yeah, no, disputes have the ability to outbid the party. You know, when it really matters. You know that. So, but I guess, like, what I'm trying to say is, like, from a, like in Bitcoin, you can run different software within consensus. And like, if you, if you feel like development that is also in consensus is not to your liking, and if someone develops something outside of consensus, then they have a hard fork. So it's like it's a beautiful system, man. Like it's awesome. I would say I'm like not anti ordinal. Like I wouldn't really sell an ordinal, you know, but I'm not anti ordinal. But like, do I think that like ocean and not are a good thing? Hell yeah, I do. That's awesome. I think it is awesome that like there's other choice and now other people are developing other node infrastructures too, that they're trying to actually be innovative on the structure and give you plugins so you could like run this consensus and then run this wallet and like, you know, we're so, so early to like dealing with this thing. [01:25:11] Speaker B: I think nodes finally getting the attention of like their role and setting, setting the communication on the network. I completely agree. We've needed competition among clients for a really, really long time and I'm kind of jazzed to see it. And that's, that's kind of irrespective of the spam conversation to be perfectly honest. It's just like I'm excited to see movement on that front. [01:25:37] Speaker A: Well, the spam conversation or the non monetary use of bitcoin block space conversation is what was, what spurred that forward. And I, I think yeah, that is super good. You know, and yeah, I mean look, people say like, oh, I have like very just like wide like kind of like wide ranging thoughts on bitcoin that like I would say like it's either going to fail or it's going to succeed or you know, it's either like these are the kind of like ways I think about bitcoin and be like, oh, it's more nuanced than that. But I think some elements of bitcoin aren't that nuanced. It's like bitcoin is antifragile or it is not. And if it's just robust then like we have to behave differently or if it's antifragile then that affects how we need to behave for it to work. So I just think that bitcoin is anti fragile in terms of. Not that everything is directly good for bitcoin. No, some things aren't directly good for bitcoin right now. And there's a lot of things that aren't good for bitcoiners but on a long enough time frame. Bitcoin gets hit, it gets a bruise and then it heals. But build some armor, right? Like that's generally what anti fragile things do. It's not that they don't take hits, is that they get Stronger from the, the volatility. So like my, my mental model most of the time, you know, at least for the majority of my investment, is that like bitcoin is an anti fragile network and like if things happen to it that I don't like, like that's not the end of the world. Right. That's not the end of the story for bitcoin until bitcoin is dead. Like it's not the end of the story really. [01:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:21] Speaker A: So I mean, I don't know how much of my, my bitcoin bag is going to survive to Bitcoin is dead. You know, we'll see like how that plays out. But you know, I think that it's going to be interesting seeing this thing play out. Right. Like there's going to be times where there's doubt, there's going to be times where we have to do things. There's going to be times where like it shines beyond, you know, what anyone expected. We're going to see it all. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Like it's crazy to see a monetary shift and I really think people don't appreciate how, how big of a shift you're talking about when you say a monetary shift. Like money is at the base layer of society. You have to rebuild everything, like every layer of money and finance. But then it also affects so many other things. It's gonna, it's gonna force a rebuild of basic authentication. It's going to force a rebuild of how we interact with software. It's going to probably force a rebuild of our hardware and how we think about security. Because so much of like in a world where you can pwn every iPhone and Android, like we're going to find. [01:28:27] Speaker A: Out, you know, Ahref is really concerned about the poning of iPhones and androids too because we support activists that are targets of the people doing the poning right now. And in the future, I think bitcoiners are going to be the targets of the people doing the phone poning. [01:28:42] Speaker B: That's exactly right. [01:28:44] Speaker A: It's just going to get more important. For sure. I agree there and I think that's. [01:28:47] Speaker B: Why it, it literally will change the structure of everything because it is an inversion of how we have thought about trust and security from the analog world. It's not just, it literally is not just like a, oh, change it into a digital version. It's a flip the relationship in the digital, in a new network, you can almost just say that there's nothing that's really disconnected from that. It's just like the Internet is going to change all communication. We're not even done there. We're still just in the middle of that huge transition. Bitcoin's transition is going to be bigger because it's going to change money, finance, trust, organization, and then the Internet again. It's also going to be the next era of the Internet. So, yep, it's a thing, man. [01:29:37] Speaker A: This is why, if I could just try to make the no one is bullish enough pitch again. Like, this is why, I think if you believe what you say that then you can't believe that there's a person on the planet who's bullish enough. Because if bitcoin's a paradigm shift, that means it unlocks another thousand x in what humans can do. So how do you even price that? [01:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not just replacing all of the things that we think of. It's enabling the next order of magnitude that's not possible in the way we currently do things. [01:30:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So how do you price that? How do you price the value of electricity pre electrification? [01:30:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:30:16] Speaker A: How do you forecast that that equals us doing this Video call. [01:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:22] Speaker A: If bitcoin's a paradigm shift, then no one's bullish enough. [01:30:24] Speaker B: Like these. [01:30:25] Speaker A: This is. It's by is those ideas go together. You can't be like, oh, sailors bullish enough. Then you believe like, bitcoin's just an asset. [01:30:37] Speaker B: It's just going to be great for an equity in a company. [01:30:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So, I don't know, I think, like, there's some contradicting beliefs in bitcoin mythology, if you will, and I think we need to get that shit straight. [01:30:53] Speaker B: So I'm curious, actually, and I know we're. I'm a little bit on time and I want to take your whole afternoon here, but you said lightning was misunderstood. What do you mean by that? Because I. I could. I could answer that question probably five different ways. But I'm really curious what you meant when you said that. [01:31:16] Speaker A: I mean, I would say, like, lightning detractors, both altcoiners and bitcoin alike, like, they. They're like lightning failed to be, you know, what bitcoiners talked about in 2018. Therefore, it's a failure and we should replace it wholesale. [01:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:33] Speaker A: And I think that that's just a misunderstanding and in some ways shows a little bit of, like, mental inflexibility. So, like, yes, like, laps didn't happen. Lightning applications did not really happen, at least the way that they're pictured. And like, lightning isn't like a super Easy way to extend a bitcoin node that all retail will use and everyone will have a lightning node in their house. Like they have an Internet router. I think like some of these ideas maybe were like a little directionally incorrect or misleading. [01:32:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I loved the lightning node in the house, like a router. I loved that one. That one was a great analogy for me that I kind of like latched on there for a while until like after a couple of years of experience I was like, this is definitely going to play out very differently than, than I had in my head. [01:32:25] Speaker A: Yeah, look, liquidity is hard. Liquidity is a full time job. And like I think that that's, that is okay. Right? That's, that is not why lightning is going to fail. And you know, I think like liquidity is for enterprises. So. And again, that doesn't mean that lightning is going to fail or that lightning is useless or needs to be replaced wholesale. And for many like service providers, you actually see lightning is actually a really big competitive advantage, especially if you want to provide monetary transfer across channels, jurisdictions and you find ways to connect that to other fiat rails. Yeah, people have a very myopic view of all this stuff and there's really a bigger thing that's happening. So if you just look at the trend, lightning and other layer twos, they kind of work together rather than compete and rather than you need to replace them wholesale or you need to even change bitcoin for this other thing. So that way it can beat lightning. You know, I think we're going to hear it all. But I think if you look at what we have, you know, there's, there's a lot going on there. That's awesome. And I think we're just going to keep building on it. [01:33:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think it's pretty clear the direction because it's too obvious that this opens like bootstrapping the lightning network is incredibly difficult, but when you bootstrap it, you have instant final settlement. That doesn't, that doesn't burden the blockchain with extra data. And importantly you have cost realigned. There's a big difference that I think people don't realize why bitcoin is bad for payments as a structure or I guess the time chain like the blockchain itself is, is because it measures and it's actually related to the spam problem is that it measures the fee, the cost of putting data on the chain in bytes, not sats. So it costs just as much for me to send a million dollars in sats like A hundred. A hundred million sats or a billion sats or whatever it is. It costs the exact same amount as you to send 10,000 sats on the chain. [01:34:45] Speaker A: If the UTXO is the same size. [01:34:47] Speaker B: Yeah. If it's just from the UTXO to a utxo, Right, Yeah, Standard one to two. And so because of that, it's actually really bad for fast payment and settlement markets because it's great at scale. It's brilliant at scale when it comes to the trust problem and the consensus and guarantee and integrity of the network problem. But lightning is the one that's actually aligned where if you, if you're sending a million dollars, it costs more, if you're sending $2, it costs less. It's actually aligned with the liquidity of the value on the network, which is actually the balance that is needed for a global payment network to actually be sustainable and permissionless like this. And of course you're doing it all in bitcoin so that you're inheriting all of those characteristics. And the reason I think it's just obvious where things are going is because look at every app that you've ever used that wasn't Lightning. How do you use it? You pay a Lightning invoice, you cash, you, you pay Lightning invoices, you Pay to Lightning URLs Ark, you pay Lightning invoices liquid, you pay Lightning invoices. Like the way that all of those things became useful were by using the rails. Like lightning is the web that's going to connect the 10,000 networks that we necessarily have to make in order to scale this to the whole world. Bitcoin is the money, the money and rules layer. Lightning is the settlement and payment layer and everything else is the, the 1 billion layer threes that are all of the networks and all of the, the lands of the world that, that all interoperate. And the idea is that how do you extend the trust and the privacy as well as you can to each layer? And that technology will just keep getting better element by element. And even things networks, just new networks that have nothing to do with it, like Nostr, are going to fundamentally change the nature of those relationships and how easy it is to actually extend those features totally. People forget about that. [01:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah, this is more for lightning detractors than like let's say people who are still bullish on lightning. I think like the people who are bullish on lightning are seeing like the improvement day by day and they're using it, but the people who, who are bearish are like people are not non custodial all the time right now. Therefore lightning has failed. Let's replace it. I think like that is, that is the misunderstanding, right? [01:37:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:37:25] Speaker A: And like, honestly dude, I think like when it comes to like bitcoin economics, it's still really misunderstood. And I think the lightning capacity stuff is kind of like FUD. Because if you think that Bitcoin is going to 100x in value from here or exponentially increase in value from here, the reality is there's a good chance that the lightning network capacity is only going to go down from here forever. [01:37:48] Speaker B: Yeah. As far as in bitcoin. [01:37:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Look, if bitcoin is deflationary money, all balances in bitcoin are just going to go down forever. That should be the expectation, not the other way around. And when we first started bootstrapping the lightning network, you know, bitcoin was between 3 to 8k the entire time. So like that's when it got to its peak. Now it's 108k, 110k on this call. So it's like, yeah, look in BTC terms it makes complete sense that people are going to take some off the network and it's also not needed like you don't need all that bitcoin for the payment to go through. So there's a kind of like an equilibrium being found. So yeah, look, hey, I'm not saying lightning will be the thing you actually think are saying that more strongly, but what I'm saying is like just because lightning isn't this like perfect thing doesn't mean that it's failing or it needs to be replaced wholesale. [01:38:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I completely agree and I. That actually makes sense. That's actually a really interesting point on the fact that the, the amount of bitcoin enlightening may fall from here forever just because the liquidity concerns will be about like, like a. The slide or whatever that I actually used in my recent talk at Bitblock boom this year was about the, the amount of settlement that actually occurs at like the different layers of the financial structure. And the equities bubble, like domestic equities bubble was like this massive thing and it settles like one point. I think it was 1.6 quadrillion every year and then the Forex and international markets settle like 2.2 quadrillion and then and you can't even, you. It's like this tiny little thing is that it's like I think it was like 10 trillion estimated or near 20 trillion I think was retail. So it's like it's literally like 1% of like the whole thing. And I think it makes sense that these two big bubbles are bitcoin and retail settlement. Like business to business, app to app is likely to be, to be making those transitions to making those payments occur in something like lightning from an E cash wallet, from an arc wallet, from a fediment wallet. You know, like all of these various things that the people are actually plugging into in their local or their high trust circles and then communicating. The main communication web is over lightning communication. And that's how payments are routed, just like packets routed on TCP ip. But that's necessarily. Even if it took over all of retail, it could still literally just be like 1%. The Lightning Network could still be tiny, appear tiny in respect to everything else, because that's just not where most settlement is. And I think people misunderstand the where that value proposition is in defining a new money. Everybody's like, oh, you got to pay for stuff on the Internet and you got to buy gift cards and coffees and stuff with it. It's like, that's a tiny, that's a drop in the bucket of the real, like the thing, you know, it's about who owns the business. It's about who, who gets to create a loan out of thin air and who has to pay it back to who. Like, it's the real capital markets that, that guide where the coffee comes from rather than whether or not you get to buy it permissionlessly. And that has to be solved first. We're, we're going up the layers so. [01:41:27] Speaker A: Totally look, and like, I think this is a good place to like end the, the talk. But you know, people are like, well ck, how bullish are you if no one's bullish enough? Well, if I were to say, where are we going? Right? Hyper bitcoinization isn't about all transactions being on the bitcoin blockchain. It's about all economic thought being denominated in bitcoin. So it's not even about the bitcoin blockchain. It's like a mental operating system. Where are we going? Is thinking in bitcoin is the standard for thinking value. And then like, how does that unlock bitcoin, a human's ability to like run an economy to make economic allocation decisions. If we upgrade the whole world from like fiat sludge to thinking of bitcoin, like, that's where we're going. That's what gets me bullish, you know, that's what, you know, makes me want to like keep building this thing. So, you know, it's like, how busy is the blockchain going to be when everyone's thinking in bitcoin? Like, we can't even understand. Right. That's why I'm not worried about why. [01:42:33] Speaker B: Are you even trying. [01:42:35] Speaker A: Like, that's ultimately where I'm trying to go. [01:42:38] Speaker B: Gotcha. Yeah. That is a great place to wrap it up. I love that. That's a great nail in the coffin there for. For closing this one out, dude. Thanks for. It's. It's been too long, man. It's good to catch up. And thank you for coming on. Thank you for taking the time and go ahead and direct. You know, where should people. I mean, everybody probably knows you already, but, you know, where should people go, you know, talk about hrf, you know, whatever. [01:43:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, look, if you want to follow what's happening on hrf, I would actually recommend go on X and follow Alex Gladstein or go on Nostr and follow Gladstein. I think he's primal.netforward/gladstein. That's how you find his profile page. He's. He's definitely putting out all the content around HRF on Noster. HRF also publishes the Fundamental Financial Freedom Report, which you talk about on your show a lot. [01:43:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'll have that link in the show notes, too. [01:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So we. We published the report there, so we're. We're Noster native on. On that side of hrf. And then for me personally, I am also on Noster. Primal.netforward/ck is the easiest way to find me. I am not really on Twitter that much these days. I kind of just, like, check my DMs for work. [01:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:55] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's like. It's just not where the excitement is happening for me. So I guess, you know, if people want to follow there at ckore snarks. But yeah, I would say primal.net forward sl ck and if you're not on Noster, just check it out. Like E. Even if it's just like a bitcoiner hangout. Like, I think it's very valuable for bitcoiners right now, and I think there's a lot of potential there. [01:44:17] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I'll just do one more shout out for the hrf and for. It's kind of. It's kind of wild. I talked to you, like, really early, and I remember the little I remember from that conversation because I've had like 80 billion conversations since then, was you were talking about how quick you kind of like Got wrapped up in stuff and then we're just like, in it and like, how much, like your passion for it just. You went from zero to like, full in and, like doing all this stuff. And it's just awesome. It's just awesome to have talked to you back then and gotten to know you and then like, we're all still just doing stuff. Everything's bigger, everything's more awesome. HRF is like straight up legendary, you know, like the. The Finney Freedom Award and everything is just going to be. And I still feel like we're at the beginning of all of this, you know, and to. And also to just like have the nod from you guys that y' all like my work and feel like I'm a useful part of this whole mission to. Makes me feel like a million sats. A billion sats. And so I say thank you guys so much for that as well. [01:45:30] Speaker A: Totally. Look, I think I was a fan before we became friends, and I know that Gladstein is a fan too. And when I was helping him publish on Bitcoin magazine, when you would read those articles, he would be like, yeah, guy, read the article. It sounds amazing. So it's like, I think. I think the admiration goes deep and we're happy that, you know, we can support bitcoin audible in our own way. [01:45:54] Speaker B: Shit, yeah, man. Thank you, guys. Well, dude, it's been a blast. We'll close it out. Thanks, man. All right, guys, it is time to go buy some bitcoin and then withdraw it to your cold storage because that's kind of. I feel like I don't have enough bitcoin right now. And it's also really late, so I've now got my red screen in front of me and I need my nightshade glasses. So I'm gonna be wrapping this up. I need to get away from. Away from screens and lights here. And on that note, if you want to protect your light, health, energy levels, sleep schedule, your circadian rhythm, check out Chroma. They're a sponsor and they have some really fascinating projects. These guys know what's up. Being serious about this has made a huge difference for my wife and I. And 10% off their products with code. Bitcoin audible, all one word. Check it out. Link in the show notes. And of course, it's time to fix the web with PubKey. The Pub Key app is now in beta so you can begin to experience what is possible with a key based web. And importantly, if interacting with it was intuitive and that you just owned your data and your identity sovereignly. That's pub key without the E so P U B K Y dot app to check it out. And lastly, a final shout out to the Human Rights Foundation. They have solidly cemented their legacy into Bitcoin history and honestly it's just, it's epic to be able to work with them, to be able to sit down and chat with them about this and I just have all the respect in the world for what they do. So don't forget to check out. There'll be details for their development fund, a number of the links that CK mentioned in the show, and then of course their newsletter, the Financial Freedom Report, which I'm a huge fan of and we'll probably have. I actually have a bunch of stuff saved. We'll have an episode with a read pretty soon with some great details from that. But with that thank you guys for listening and I will catch you on the next episode of Bitcoin Audible. I am Guy Swan and until then everybody take it easy. Guys. [01:48:25] Speaker A: La.