#633: Stack Sats, Build Products, Ignore the Noise with NVK

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

(00:10):
You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
All the central banks going nuts.
So it's all acting like safe haven.
I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency,
Bitcoin wins.
In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

(00:31):
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
Sengi.
For me.
Which device would you want to be the placeholder for your video?
The Q?
Ooh.
The Q.
The Q.
The smiley face.
The moon guy.
It is an incredible product.
It's my favorite.

(00:52):
Favorite of your products that you've launched.
My daily driver.
Playing around with it.
And you guys just launched some awesome features too.
Yeah, I do enjoy the Q is my preferred.
It's nice to have the keyboard.

(01:13):
Well, now with like Cove Wallet, we're live by the way.
Now with like Cove Wallet, making it easy to have like a watch only version
where you can spend from it too if you have the Q.
Yeah, I mean, Cove is super cool.
I mean, why don't we?
Why don't we?
It's like a, it's a FOSS project.
It's based on BDK.

(01:35):
Works with any hardware wallet that supports PSPT.
Not just CodeCard and TopSigner.
It's like, you know, it's open standards.
And it's super ultra noob friendly on iPhone.
And I think Praveen is doing Android soon, too.

(01:59):
It was much needed.
We need a free open source, vendor agnostic, good, easy to use phone wallet.
Yeah, especially now.
I mean, what are your thoughts on this trend, this cycle of treasury companies, ETFs, people that are coming into Bitcoin for the first time?
and even some people that have been in it for a long time,

(02:22):
either getting direct exposure, proxy exposure to Bitcoin
via these paper products, these IOUs,
or in some cases even selling a part of their Bitcoin stack to buy the ETF.
Are we losing sovereign Bitcoin in front of our eyes?
So I think the uncomfortable truth is that base layer Bitcoin is not for everyone.

(02:44):
There is not enough sats.
The math just doesn't add up.
There's just 2.1 quadrillion sats.
But the reality is, like, you know, the world's wealth is owned by, you know, a basis point of the population.
And if we do 10x improvement in the world's wealth distribution, which I believe Bitcoin does, you know, it's still 1%.

(03:10):
So, you know, and then when you divide the 2.1 quadrillion sats, you know, and you make them be, you know, owned by just 1% of the world's population, then you're still like, there's just not enough sats for everybody to have on chain.

(03:31):
So I think the ephemeral grandma or you want to call it the proverbial grandmother bitcoiner, it's just like, you know, it's just bullshit.
The reality is like Bitcoin on chain, cypherpunk Bitcoin is for very few.

(03:54):
It's a niche.
You know, it's still a gigantic market, but it's still a niche.
and the Walmart sort of part of the market, the 80% of the market,
they're not going to use harder wallets.
They're going to just have some shared sats, lightning sats,

(04:14):
cashew sats on great apps that may be custodial or semi-custodial
or they're going to have different trade-offs.
So, you know, I think it's very misguided for us to sort of like only drive self-custody product development based on grandma, right?

(04:43):
um it's you know when i you know i've been doing this for over a decade and whenever i onboard
people it's like less and less people have enough bitcoin for me to advise buying my product like
you know it's just like hey you know amazing you bought a thousand bucks worth of btc like

(05:04):
here's a great phone wallet you know stamp your your seed on on metal but you don't even need the
hard wallet just just put that somewhere else and and move on in your life right uh if you're
planning to put another you know like a few more thousand dollars and maybe look into a harder
wallet but realistically speaking you know that's not happening and and retail uh like like first

(05:28):
first uh touch retail when they come to because they come to crypto right they don't come to
Bitcoin, like the real true new retail out there.
They buy, you know, they're going to buy some micro strategy.
They're going to buy some ETF, whatever crap, you know, like equity based Bitcoin based equity on their, you know, Carl Schwab account.

(05:58):
That is the majority of the big part of the funnel.
And unlike how it used to be where they came from Coinbase, they could just take self-custody.
You can't take self-custody of a Karl Schwab microstrategy shares for now because there are some products coming for that.
But, you know, it's a different path.

(06:21):
I think the people who are going to self-custody, they are much committed, much more committed cohort and great business, but it's not the Walmart 80% cohort of the market.
Well, that in mind, like focusing on the hardcore users who do want to self custody.

(06:49):
As it stands today with the proliferation of upgrades to your products, upgrades at the sort of wallet software level with things like Miniscript.
what is the optimal setup in your mind for somebody looking to secure material amount of

(07:09):
bitcoin for the long term i i think i think it's like uh you know it's kind of like how i put in
that bitcoin security.org it's it's a progressive thing i think people first should download
something like cove you know set up a seed on cove learn how to to store that you know play

(07:30):
around you know like spend a few thousand bucks in bitcoin trying to send and receive just get
comfortable right um and then from there you go like okay now i'm comfortable with this this concept
you know maybe maybe you set up a cold card with uh with a passphrase right or just you can single

(07:50):
sig if that's where you at and and then you know as you stack more coin and as you get more
comfortable with the technology you're playing with then then maybe you go to multi-sig you know
maybe maybe you find collaborative multi-sig like uh there's a lot of products for that like nunchuck
or unchain or casa or um uh keeper and then there is rob's uh anchor watch coming too with some

(08:17):
self-custody stuff right it's there is a lot of options in the market but i think nothing in this
in this space can replace the responsibility of learning what the fuck you're doing.
Because otherwise, you're going to get racked.
It doesn't matter, right?
Like, you know, you either outsource your agency to a trusted third party, right?

(08:44):
That'd be, you know, PubCo thing or you do it yourself and you understand what you're
doing.
I don't think it's prudent and honest to just tell people, yeah, Bitcoin is ultra easy and you don't have to learn anything.

(09:05):
Just go here, buy this thing and go.
No, you have to learn.
And if you're not willing to learn, you're going to lose it.
Yeah.
Yeah. And so do you think these proxy exposure products like the ETFs and these equities now are actually good for the 80%?
No. No. Like, I mean, you know, I run Bitcoin Treasuries.net and, you know, it is in my interest to pump the equities, but definitely no.

(09:35):
So the equities are amazing for all the entities that cannot buy Bitcoin, right?
So, you know, if you're a pension fund, right, like you can't just go and, you know, like market buy, you know, a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin and stick it in your cold card, right?

(09:57):
Like you have all kinds of like governance rules and treasury rules and, you know, all kinds of bullshit.
So that's what those products are for.
Or you have treasury strategies in some companies that they require that the asset produces some yield.

(10:20):
The yield is you, sure, but it doesn't matter.
So that's why Saylor goes and creates all those extra products that make absolutely no sense to a Bitcoiner.
You know, people always, like, make fun, give him shit for it.
But, you know, reality is, sorry, they decided to blow the Leafs around the house today.

(10:44):
We're not picking it up.
So you're good.
Okay.
So he's just running around closing some windows and doors.
So, yeah.
So, like, you know, Sailor is producing what the market is creating, what the market is sort of demanding, right?
and I can't fault
you being smart and creating those products.

(11:05):
But those products are for a very specific buyer.
They're not for the dude buying
$100 worth of Bitcoin.
And I think right now,
the biggest issue is
the folks that are coming in
in this last year or two,
they're looking at Bitcoiners

(11:27):
who made, you know, a thousand X on their investment
and they want their thousand X too.
So they're going to like,
because they don't understand Bitcoin, right?
So they're going to like either go shitcoin,
which is a lot last these days.
And what they do is they go equities, right?
So they go like, okay, hey, you know,
like the sailor thing, you might do a hundred X Bitcoin.

(11:50):
Right?
And that's what they're looking for.
I mean, like, look at MetaPlanet.
They did a thousand X or something.
Right. And that's what people people are trying to do the usual full on meaning of the word speculation, you know, versus, you know, trying to just find sovereignty.

(12:13):
Right. I mean, I talk a lot to like family offices and people who have serious money, but they're not like they're trying to not lose their money.
Right. They already made the family already made all their money.
it's just like i just don't want to lose it so in the last of the next 100 years so you know
entities like that they do understand the value of of like you know stuffing gold in a vault in

(12:40):
switzerland right and so so they are like buying serious amounts of bitcoin putting in code cards
in collaborative multi-sig or or multi-sig between multiple signers of the family or whatever and
then stuffing those in vaults.
And, you know, so there is that part of the market.

(13:02):
It's a very broad market.
Like, there's a lot of different people
trying to achieve different things.
And, you know, I think just shitting on people
trying to do different things on Twitter
is kind of counterproductive.
What do you mean?
Like, coming at the treasury strategies?
Because I'll admit, like, looking at the treasury strategies,
a lot of people that I respect and I like

(13:24):
and I'm friends with are getting into that game.
And just the pattern recognition of having been in this market for 12 years now
is beginning to – the alarm bells are beginning to go off.
You're like, this sounds too good to be true off the bat.
And I just worry –
Name names, Marty.
Name names.
I'm just kidding.
I'm just pulling it down.

(13:45):
It seems too good to be true for me.
And who knows?
Maybe there – I mean, I think Pierre has done a good job to help me sort of check my priors
And there is some speculative attack, fiat arbitrage perspective in nature to all this that I could see working in the long run with governments and such a thing.
This is absolutely valuable.

(14:06):
I mean, like, so, for example, I had, you know, like any person who started their life before Bitcoin existed, right?
Like I had a trading account with like equities in it and all kinds of crap in it.
And, you know, there is that for companies.
There's that for personal, there's that for tax savings, free account, whatever, right?

(14:27):
I already have like most frequent exposure in my portfolio anyways.
So like, you know, did I buy a bunch of MSTR and make a bunch of money on it?
Absolutely.
Like, you know, there was no tax advantage.
It was actually going to be very disadvantages.
To be disadvantageous.
Oh my God, I'm...

(14:49):
Disadvantageous.
Disadvantageous.
Disadvantageous to not do that, right?
So you should maximize your income while minimizing risk
and trying to have the most amount of exposure to Bitcoin as you can.
Like, you know, it's a balance.
Yeah.

(15:10):
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.
And I'm not trying to knock any of the treasury strategies.
I'm just worried.
The copycats are what I worry about.
I mean, it does feel bubbly, right?
Like it feels like it feels a little bubbly.
But, you know, that's that's the nature of this thing.

(15:30):
You know, it's.
Yeah it it especially interesting that this is going on right now because i think the last week has proven that the value prop for bitcoin like especially if you holding
a good amount of it has never been stronger and you should secure it properly like what

(15:51):
happened yesterday in iran with that bank getting cyber attacks and they literally just erased
all the account records of anybody using that bank.
So those people woke up and literally don't have their money.
The money gone, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, exactly.
Like, I think we, you know, it's the,

(16:13):
just got to be smart about it.
You got to, you know, it doesn't, so,
see, this is the thing, even people who are like,
you know, full ape equities,
they still like to have some gold bars, right, in the bank.
Like, you know, it's very rare that you have somebody

(16:34):
that doesn't have a bit of money,
that doesn't have some physical gold in a vault
and some physical cash, right?
So, like, you know, you could dematerialize those things
to use the fiat people words
and, you know, make those into Bitcoin.
And now you have access to liquid asset that is available to you in any part of the planet in case you need it, even if you'd rather be on equities.

(17:06):
Bitcoin is the best thing that you have in order to be operational in any world event.
Because realistically speaking, aside from the doomers, World War III is always about to happen, and it doesn't.
The thing is, you could have, even in developed countries, you could have a year or two of being very liquid on whatever you have.

(17:34):
So having that BTC might be the difference between you having a very comfortable existence during the year or two or not.
So buy Bitcoin, put in a code card, and move on with your life.
yeah despite everything going on with world war three fears which i agree with you i don't think
they're going to materialize nothing ever happens i'm extremely optimistic and i know you've

(17:58):
been playing around with this and we've talked about it on the side but i i could see like a
massive productivity jump i mean we're already seeing it with ai but i think the time to build
stuff has never been more exciting like i was been talking about it on the show i vibe coded a little
app got somebody to finish it we launched it it's working it's cool we've got over 2 000 users

(18:22):
already i was like oh i think i was able to do that in an afternoon and then pass it off a developer
who spent probably like less than 10 hours on it and boom app app created and when you think of
how fast the ai stuff is progressing specifically um i'm just incredibly optimistic about just people

(18:44):
building cool things over the next few years yeah it is it is remarkable what you can achieve now
right um with with very little sort of like knowledge or input um you know the bots do a
lot for you but again it's like the bots are amazing they they're you know say the next five

(19:06):
years they're going to replace you know maybe 30 40 percent of of the you know of the of the
the middle of the curve is a middle out of the bell curve here that gets
replaced. You know, like I, at least that's my framework for it.
It's like, you know, you have the, the,
the people who are just sort of like a, you know, Excel jockeys and,

(19:29):
you know, and the middle management, you know,
all the people who are in the middle of the curve, you know,
because the people who are on the, on the, on the right of the curve,
you know it's it's a wait is the right yeah the right to the curve is the high iq right so right
to the curve you know like you know like those things are very hard to replace it's very hard

(19:52):
to do the last 10 of the knowledge of of the specialty whatever you're doing right um that's
gonna take like forever you know and then the left of the curve they're cheap it's like super
cheap labor super cheap specialized super super labor based things mechanical things right like

(20:12):
things that that are still cheaper to do by people than to do by machine like the way i like to think
about it it's like when you have strikes like you know in large companies and then what the company
does is they they'll raise employee salaries to to meet the demands of the union temporarily and
And then they just, you know, because the market demands that they make it cheaper.

(20:35):
Don't pass the cost to the customer.
Like they will slowly automate whatever makes economical sense, right?
Like look at McDonald's.
You know, there is one person serving 100 people.
Yeah.
You know, it's just screens now.
So do you think it's going to be, obviously it's going to be massively disruptive,
but do you think it makes economies better off?

(20:58):
Absolutely.
You know, everything gets better.
Like this whole thing is like extremely amazing for humanity, right?
You think, why wouldn't it get better?
Like, just look at, you know, like, isn't it better to be able to like ask chat to PT

(21:20):
what's this weird sort of lesion on your kid's leg instead of having to wait for a doctor consultation, right?
Like if you're a parent, you know, right?
Like, I mean, it doesn't mean you still don't use the doctor.
But like, you know, you go, you ask the AI, like, you know, it's, it's a, you already maybe didn't make a mistake and rubbing the wrong cream and like giving your kid like, you know, like a worst outcome.

(21:44):
It's, and that sort of like, you know, like projects over like everything, you know, like lawyers, like, you know, I, I used to just like think of things, go to the lawyers and ask them stuff, right?
Like immediately, lots of emails with little questions that costed me a lot of money.
And now I just sort of like ask ChatTPT a bunch of shit.

(22:06):
And then like when I'm ready, I just go and ask the lawyers like, you know, like to sort of validate or like show me where it's wrong.
And I don't hide it.
It's like, look, this is what ChatTPT says.
Is it right?
No, I've done this with employment contracts and I have a lawyer who gets it.
So that's what I exactly what I did.

(22:28):
I hired somebody in the last six months to create an employment contract on
chat GBT and then hand it to the lawyer.
He made a couple of red lines and changed some, some words,
but it took like a half an hour to be like, yeah, this is good.
You can send it.
It is amazing.
Like, I mean, the amount of like, just, just contract review.
It is insane.
Right.

(22:49):
Yeah.
No, it's a, it's a brave new world.
It's like hard to not be excited about it.
Yeah.
How do you think AI progresses in terms of like the monoliths,
like OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic,
sort of controlling everything versus open source models
and self-hosted models winning?

(23:13):
It's a mix, right?
Like we're so early, it's impossible to know what's the winning strategy.
Like, you know, like, look, like Netscape still not, it's not around anymore.
Right.
So that was the first usable browser.
You know, Internet Explorer only exists in corporate.

(23:35):
You know, Chrome sort of took over.
You know, Google used to be the hottest thing on earth.
Like they can barely sell ads now because people are not on Google anymore.
They ask chat to PT.
So Bing now sells, is one of the biggest suppliers of search API, right?
So a lot of this AI chat companies are using Bing as the backend for search.

(24:01):
It's going to be very disruptive, impossible to tell what's winning, what's not winning, and what's going to look like even in a year from now.
Do you recommend vibe coding for Bitcoin?
Bitcoin apps?
Absolutely not.
It's amazing.

(24:22):
You want to make a cool little website that displays something interesting,
that sort of gives you more informational kind of functionality,
then yeah sure and have fun
with it but like really
like it's the same

(24:42):
it's very similar like to ask if
you trust chat to PT to
do open heart surgery on you already
using a
robot dog
we're not there yet
we'll get there we'll absolutely
get there we're just not there yet
yeah I mean that was a meme a few
weeks ago or probably like a

(25:03):
month ago at this point with the op return
battle there are many people out there saying
somebody has to vibe code a new Bitcoin implementation so that we can transition away from core.
Yeah, that's retarded.
Yeah, I completely agree.

(25:23):
Well, I mean, on that subject, obviously a lot of contention in the Bitcoin development world
over the last few months, whether it's OpReturn,
obviously James O'Byrne, and I believe you were a signatory
on the letter for OpCTV and CheckSig from Stack.
What are your views on the state of Bitcoin protocol development

(25:47):
and the conversation around it and the social aspects around it?
I'm going to avoid getting in trouble by minimizing my opinions on this.
No, we need to hear them all.
Get in trouble.
no like okay so we i i think we're gonna need some form of covenants uh i think we're gonna

(26:08):
be way better served by having vaults that are on chain spending policies uh just just very
grug brain thinking and sort of like just you know thinking of a thousand years from now family
still chipping away from the pile.
It's like, you know, like right now,

(26:31):
we have to depend on hardware, right?
So like the cold card has, say, for example,
spending policies, right?
With the cosine feature.
But, you know, you're still sort of like limited
to the limits of the hardware itself, right?
So, you know, is it extremely secure?
Yes.
but is it as secure as being enforced by Bitcoin itself?

(26:55):
No, right?
So say, for example, we get covenants in.
I would be able to create,
like I can create the keys on the code card, right?
Because that's what you want.
And then I can have the script policy of the vault,

(27:17):
something that is enforced by Bitcoin itself.
So, you know, that specific vault doesn't allow you to spend more than, you know, say like, you know, a million sets a day, right?
So if you find yourself in a conundrum, like there is nothing that can be done.
That's the policy, right?
Maybe you do have a nuclear code seed somewhere else that is buried under a mountain that allows you to withdraw from the vault, like the whole amount.

(27:46):
And you could also make it so that the withdrawal is to another halt.
So there's many ways to skin this cat.
It's just like it gives us a much bigger design space with on-chain enforcement of rules.
That's the key.
That also helps people share UTXOs better for Lightning, for all kinds of other weird shit out there that will help bank the world.

(28:16):
It's, you know, is it a need to have though?
Yeah, not quite.
So, you know, maybe that's the task to see if it gets, you know, like developed further and merged eventually.
But it is a very, very nice to have.
And if more people start getting robbed, maybe it becomes a need to have.

(28:38):
Yeah, that's what was going to be my question.
What is something that would make it a need to have?
and to your point, more people getting robbed.
I like the way James positioned OpVault,
which I think a lot of the functionality that OpVault designed
would be capable with CTV as well,
which is like we need to get to a point where exchanges cannot be hacked, essentially.

(29:05):
Exchanges become unhackable if you have the correct DevOps team
creating structured vaults that make it impossible to actually steal Bitcoin.
from an exchange.
Then the other argument is something like ARK,
if that gets product-market fit
and hits a certain scaling threshold
that could be increased with something like Covenants.

(29:27):
That could be interesting on the payment side
and the scriptability side, off-chain scripting.
But I think it's something that I would like to see
as a Bitcoiner,
if somebody runs a company with a Bitcoin treasury
and would like those spending conditions baked into the protocol level.

(29:48):
And I worry that I think the op return discussion
and just how people are viewing Bitcoin Core as it stands today
prevents any meaningful discussion around covenants
and check-sig from stack moving forward.
Matt's convinced we'll never have another soft fork again.

(30:10):
I'm like, I don't know about that.
I think we should have one.
And then you have the other misconceptions.
Well, we're going to need one.
There is one.
We have to fix the Unix timecode.
So that one is not optional.
Otherwise, we're going to have our...
That's a hard fork, though, isn't it?
Yeah, that's a hard fork.
Yeah, I mean, personally, hard fork everything.

(30:30):
I hate this whole soft fork business and this whole speedy trial business.
It's like, you know, Mr. Hoto is a proponent of that.
is like bring back hard forks as the correct way of handling the network.
People need to grow a pair and just accept that the hard forks are the way to grow.
But yeah, it's important.

(30:54):
Yeah.
And I think another, through misunderstanding,
people look at SegWit and Taproot
and see the unforeseen consequences or second effects of implementing both of those with the emergence of inscriptions and ordinals and think we can do another soft fork that changes Bitcoin

(31:20):
because who knows exactly what it will enable.
And if somebody is non-technical, I can see that point.
I've made that point in the past.
But how do you get the non-technical person over that hump of understanding
that something like op ctv or check sake they won't it's a much different sort of upgrade to

(31:42):
no it's just you won't you won't carry the average person along with any of this stuff it's
it's gonna be you know some marketing thing like no different than top root everybody just went
along with it it's like look everybody has some green dot on there or was orange dot whatever it
i can't remember anymore but you know like uh they they see the transforming and then they follow

(32:06):
right the majority will just are just followers which is very reasonable position people have
better shape to do their lives than be arguing about bitcoin uh uh up codes um but uh yeah you
know like what really matters is you know like you have to get the mine the miners along you have to
to get the big economic actors along,

(32:29):
especially the people who validate a lot of transactions, right?
Like exchanges and things like that.
And that's it.
That's enough.
Yeah.
That's another sort of uncomfortable part of the conversation.
Everybody's spinning up knots,
nodes moving away from core,

(32:50):
the whole concept of like economic nodes,
which I think towards the end of the segue,
WIT battles became clear to people.
But I think since 2017, people have forgotten about that.
Like unless you're actually validating transactions and moving transactions through nodes, like what is the impact of your influence on protocol?

(33:13):
I mean, the block increase in the SegWit discount was like a terrible thing.
But it was the thing that didn't split the network, right?
That was the compromise.
And I think a lot of people didn't realize that the block was being raised, the block size.
The weight.
No, the block size too.

(33:34):
We made it a lot bigger.
So, you know, again, as the network grows, the more watered down and the more sort of like compromise things you have to do, right?
Because you have more people to please.

(33:55):
so that's
maybe that's why it doesn't change anymore
except for the time code
the Unix issue
except for that
maybe it doesn't change anymore
and then you're going to see a lot more of this
the contentions going to
these marginal things
like the limit

(34:16):
on the up return, all the soft things that don't
require consensus
and
these things happen on GitHub
which has thermal moderation tools
and I think it was extremely mismanaged
how it was handled
and it just caused more grief
and you know
who knows maybe we get more
more core versions out there

(34:37):
that just have different sets
of defaults
I don't know man
I think it sucks
but I think people really
sort of wasting too much of their
analogous stuff
I agree there
Do you think there's any credence to the thought that decisions one way or the other, particularly around op return, are existential to the protocol in the long run?

(35:08):
So you can look at this in different ways.
And so people already can do all those things, right?
Like, I mean, that needs to be said.
Like, you know, good luck.
You know, Mara will take your money and mine whatever garbage you want to stick on chain.
they'll figure out a way to stick it in and they'll do it.
So it's already been true that people do non-standard transactions

(35:30):
and get them mine, right?
So there is that.
And then all the JPEGers and all that shit,
I mean, that stuff always gets economically priced out,
so I'm not too concerned about that.
The op return is a better place to put it
versus on, say, bear to PTSH or something like that

(35:53):
because you can't prune out.
However, I highly recommend people
just try to run a Bitcoin node with index on.
So that means truly a full node, right?
Not pruned on a laptop.
Like that's almost a terabyte worth of data, right?

(36:16):
Like that's a huge fucking problem.
You know, you cannot get a MacBook Air
from Apple with more than two terabytes.
Like, you just can't.
So, you know, but then you go into the conversation of like,
hey, you know, how many people really need to run a node
for their self-validation because they're not really fucking

(36:37):
like holding real Bitcoin anyways.
Like, this conversation is sort of broad.
There's a lot of different people out there.
But, you know, we should really be having this core
working on things that the market needs versus what the engineers want that's my personal and
what do you think the market needs right now you know we need we need to be able to index

(37:02):
transactions properly on core like we do with electrum server instead of you know wasting time
on up return discussions like i shouldn't need an electrum server to do like appropriately
performant block search for transactions
as a business, right?
You should be on Core.
Core should have better ways for you

(37:25):
to time broadcast of transactions.
There is a bunch of stuff.
I mean, the wallet on Core
is practically just experimental
for the engineers to keep on working on Core.
But nobody uses Core as the actual GUI wallet.

(37:47):
It's absolutely unusable.
And there's a lot of stuff like that.
But there is a lot of progress, too.
I mean, there's a lot of good people doing good work.
It's a massive piece of software.
Satoshi left practically a dump worth of code.

(38:08):
The code quality was atrocious.
you know so there's a lot to fix and clean um you know fuck there was like unfinished like poker
uh inside original satoshi client like you know like there was like a lot of weird shit in there

(38:30):
um and uh you know it's a lot of work to to make it work and it's voluntary work it's you know
think thinkless work there's a lot of money now for core development um which is good thing and
bad thing but um yeah it's just no no good answers right like no perfect answer it's just

(38:50):
just a massive project that holds a lot of money for a lot of different people have different needs
yeah have you read uh arbed out's book that he just released something more profound
i haven't haven't yet no it's really interesting highly recommend big fan of our back yeah go find
something more profound, ArbedOut, A-R-B-E-D-O-U-T, on Twitter. You'll find him. I'm sure

(39:15):
you can find a link to the book, but he basically goes through the history of the protocol development
of the internet and the different protocols that make up the internet. And it's really
interesting, some of the parallels that exist between the build out of the internet stack and
in the bitcoin stack i'm only about halfway through now um but i think if you're trying to

(39:38):
approach a better understanding of bitcoin protocol development layer development this is a great read
yeah it's it's hard man like doing decentralized and the internet's not even decentralized anymore
right you know and email you can't even run email anymore yourself
So the tendency towards centralization is just natural for any network, right?

(40:06):
Because it's a lot more efficient.
So Bitcoin working the way it does, it's already remarkable as it is.
It really is.
What's your focus at CoinKite right now?
What are you excited about in the coming months?
We are trying to create more features for the people who actually use Bitcoin.

(40:33):
It's like the key teleport stuff, the cost sign, the spending policies features.
We're doing a lot of work in that environment because that's what people really need.
Right. And it's people love to talk about, you know, some random shit that people need, like buy from an app and, you know, like put it straight into the wallet and things like that.

(41:03):
But then when people actually have Bitcoin in their hardware wallets, like how can we help them protect themselves and, you know, be digital nomads or, you know, like so much is not really fought through in a lot of the interactions with the hardware.
So we're sort of like putting a lot of effort into that.
Well, let's dissect key teleport,

(41:25):
because I think it's one of the coolest features
any hardware wallet has ever released.
So essentially, like, the goal was,
let's say you have a counterparty or somebody trying to help,
and they're not near you, right?
You need to help them set up a cold card with a seed,

(41:49):
or you have a work private key.
It doesn't have to be a C.
It could be a private key as well.
Or SSH key or something.
You need to send it to them across the ocean
where the other country where they are in.
And you can't trust the computer with secrets anymore.

(42:09):
Like at all.
You can barely have SSH keys on them.
You shouldn't.
You can't trust your phone with secrets either.
right those two devices are essentially assume owned um and uh how do you send them a secret
right like if if the stack is compromised the the clients are compromised like well how do you do

(42:31):
it right so starting with the premise that the code card is not compromised right then you have
your device and it's you know it's not compromised because your money's still there so uh you know
you want to send the secret to somebody else.
So we created a little protocol that works over either a video call or NFC tab.

(42:52):
And essentially, you scan a QR from the receiver,
and then we create a tunnel, and we can send the person any secrets from your code card.
And it could be a password from a password manager inside a code card.
It could be a secure note.
It could be a seed.
It could be a BP85 seed that you're trying to set up somebody else.
like anything really um and uh it's very very easy to to do yeah

(43:19):
no just the thought of being able to hop on a video call with somebody on an insecure device
and know that you can make this sort of this transport this teleport via the hardware wallet
is extremely cypherpunk and extremely cool the other the other cool feature
that I really like.

(43:41):
It's like the dummy pin to completely wipe the wallet
if you're ever in a pinch.
Yeah, it's so funny to me that it took so long
for this market to see it.
I mean, I think we're still the only company that does it.
But it's like in the vault, like physical,

(44:02):
like safe boxes, right?
safe industry and bank branch, sort of safe door business.
There's always been this idea of duress, right?
And so, like, how do you de-risk it, right?
Well, first, you know, you do, like, time of the day that you can open it, right?

(44:26):
Like, we can't do that because we don't have a clock on the cold card.
But this idea that's like, okay, you can't open the bank vault at night.
It doesn't matter if you have the pin, right?
So they do that.
So what we do is try to copy some of that stuff in the limitations that we have, right?
So you can create an amount of pins, and the pins can do different things.

(44:51):
So you can have a pin that wipes the device.
You can have a pin that breaks the device.
You can have a pin that sets a timer to the device.
So, you know, you can show that, like, the device needs, it won't let you log in for another four hours, right?
You can have a Delta pin that hides your passwords.

(45:12):
So maybe you have a multisig and you don't care if you take the seed, but you want to hide your passwords that you had hidden in there, right?
we tried to create like a very large design space for the trick pins so that is not obvious what's
going on with that specific target yeah i mean this is massive like a use case like going through

(45:37):
a security at an airport have your cold card on you you're trying to get out of a country
or you're just simply moving between cities here in the united states or anywhere else and
TSA pulls you aside, like, what is this?
You can just open it, put it in a dummy
pin, completely
wipe the device, and as long as you have your
backups, you're fine.

(45:58):
Exactly.
It's like, the device is not the
final rest place for the seed,
right? Like, the seed should be in metal somewhere,
you know, very difficult to get
to. You know, and if that
has an extra passphrase in metal somewhere
else, if it's geographically distributed
multi-sig, whatever.
But, like, you have to look at a hardware wallet.

(46:19):
It's sort of like the operational side of the seed, right?
It's like it's what you use to sign and to store it while you need access to it, right?
But it's not the backup.
And the backup needs to be physical because you just never know, right?
You shouldn't use servers as co-signers if you don't have access to signing the money out to the other server, right?

(46:45):
Because servers go away The internet goes away You know there a multitude of risk scenarios there where you know your ultimate place is really that metal because that metal doesn burn at the house right
That metal doesn't go away when a company goes out of business.

(47:05):
And you can just load that seed into a new vendor hardware wallet.
You know, if code card doesn't exist anymore, you can just do that, right?
You can just load that seed into some other hardware wallet.
uh it's a super important thing completely agree my camera just changed so
excuse me um no it is really important and not only that it's uh

(47:31):
i think optionality is just very important particularly for the hardcore
bitcoiner and that's what i'm curious too because you mentioned like servers and
that's been a big topic of discussion like proof of reserves at micro strategy everybody
custodying their treasury allocation,
either with a combination of Coinbase and Fidelity

(47:53):
or somebody else.
And I really would love to see companies
not rolling their own stack,
but using products like Cold Card to do multi-sig
or to actually custody their own Bitcoin.
Obviously, there's some regulatory hurdles

(48:13):
and compliance things that people
can bet you about, but I think in the long run
it's not good to be
sending millions of Bitcoin to Coinbase
to solve these problems.
Yeah, funny enough, I mean, there is already
quite a few qualified custodians
that do support and use CodeCard, right?

(48:35):
Like, you know, as part of the signing quorum.
I think another part of this is that
Like there is very little advantage in being public about your custody strategy, right?
Because you're just incurring more risk.
So I completely understand companies not wanting to do things like that.

(48:55):
There is an interesting standard, I forget the name now, to do some version of proof of reserves where it doesn't really dox the UTXOs, which is kind of nice.
I mean, is it as good as doxing the UTXOs?
Absolutely not.
But, you know, it has trade-offs.
But still, it is an inch forward, right?
But the thing is, you saw what happened to MicroStrategy, right?

(49:18):
The coins got all doxxed.
So, I mean, assuming that they're correct, it's there.
Remember, right?
Like, you know, even though Iran, Enron did happen, you know, the chances of a public traded company to be like, you know, selling the asset that they claim to have, like everybody goes to jail.

(49:49):
Right.
Like if they get caught, I mean, they may not get caught for a while.
They might be able to, you know, maybe it's a gap and like it's a small tranche of whatever they have.
but you know it is serious crime um you know like and if the accountants are in it which happens
with enron uh you know it's it's even more it's even more jail right uh i i don't think

(50:13):
you know like it's in everybody's interest to do shit like that but you know it does happen so
like you know there is risk again it's like you're holding inequity there is operational risk
management risk, you know, and a bunch of other risks.
So holding Bitcoin is better yourself, but, you know.

(50:36):
What are your thoughts on like products that like,
Aaron, let me phrase this another way.
Like Bitcoin is boring.
I think we already talked about like covenants
and check safe from stack and other potential hard forks
or soft forks that we will want.
Is there a possibility in your mind that we don't need that much more from a product standpoint outside of maybe better payments, wallets, and things like that?

(51:07):
The point I'm trying to make is like...
Are we there yet?
Yeah.
Like, do we just need to integrate Bitcoin into more sort of financial products?
And it's not really on the technical side.
It's just creating structures to stuff Bitcoin into.
You know, it's funny, right?
Like, aside from Twitter, where, you know, everybody has something new to sell, and they're claiming that that solves all the problems.

(51:34):
Like, we, you know, we're kind of, we're obsessed with our customers.
And like, the thing that we do is, you know, we often go in DMs and ask, so like, we're working on the firmware or working on Newhart or whatever.
Like, what else can we change on a cold card?
Right?
Like, how can we make your life better?
Right?
And people normally just answer like,
nah, that's pretty fine.

(51:55):
I mean, like, you know, I wish it was prettier.
I wish it was this.
Like, you know, like basic stuff.
But like, I think that we are in a pretty good place
when it comes to like a harder wallet self-custody.
Like, you know, people love to shit on seeds
so they can sell their new shiny new thing.
But like, it fucking works, right?
I mean, like you put that metal somewhere

(52:17):
where you normally put your gold.
And, you know, for most people, that's going to be incredibly life-changing good.
And then, you know, with like lightning was shit, like, and it's a lot better now.
And, you know, it's improving a lot and it's starting to become like actually fully usable.

(52:40):
I mean, like I've been to countries where everybody takes certain kinds of payments that you can just do via lightning and that you can just use it everywhere.
so it's working right um and now we have like payment terminals accepting lightning without
the merchant even caring uh so it's a time thing like bitcoin is just so good that like it's so

(53:04):
boring that they're like we don't need much more we just need to be patient and you know like let
fiat go out the door where i mean having been in this for quite a while now are you pleasantly
surprised with where bitcoin is are you disappointed is it just exactly where you thought it would be

(53:26):
at this point in time i've never been this optimistic in my life i mean like it's it's
insane like for people that maybe haven't been around like moon the meme going to the moon with
Bitcoin price was $1,000.
Okay?
Like, the idea that Bitcoin was even going to cross $1,000
without everybody going to jail was, like, absurd.

(53:48):
Like, it was completely absurd that we were going to even cross $1,000.
Okay?
Except for a few insane people, good on them,
for thinking that Bitcoin was going to get over $1,000 for sure.
It's, like, it's insane.
And we're $100,000 per coin.
Like, it is 100,000 times more than a dollar in 15 years.

(54:12):
Like, it is mind-boggling insane, right?
So, everything is working according to plan.
The network works.
The number is going up, you know, like, and the more people that are clever come in, they're going to create bubbles and they're going to crash the price.
And that's normal and that's how it happens, right?
I mean, when you look at Weimar versus gold, the Weimar mark versus gold,

(54:36):
it was extremely volatile.
It's not just like this beautiful straight line up, right?
Like it's going to be very choppy.
But things are going, man.
Like it's insane that you can transfer a billion dollars without permission
in any country on earth.

(54:58):
in just 15 years.
It's insane.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And there's all the people out there
complaining about price suppression.
It's like we literally just hit a new all-time high
two weeks ago, or last month, whenever that was.
It's like...

(55:19):
And people, to your point earlier,
people want the 1,000x,
and they expect it to go up to a million dollars
very quickly.
but that's another thing people really don't understand like at a two trillion dollar market
cap like it's way you need a ton of money to come into the market to yeah i mean the price comes from
the margins right like and and you know you're gonna need a lot of people playing on that margin

(55:42):
like on the buy side um you know to to shore up that that trillion dollars you know it's gonna be
$10 trillion when it's a million dollars, right?
So retail is practically irrelevant now on the Bitcoin price.
We're getting there, right?

(56:05):
Remember, retail doesn't move even equities that much.
What really moves equities is all the retail that has a pension,
and then the pension funds move that equity, right?
Or the people trying to do bullshit with the derivatives, right?
But realistically speaking, it's like just the amount of money you need doesn't come from Joe who owns a cafe and decided to dump his $100,000 in savings into Bitcoin, right?

(56:36):
That's not going to do it.
No, that's certainly not.
yeah and that's what i mean i brought it up because people
x people need to get out of the twitter bubble it's it's not uh twitter is not real life people
like seriously not healthy no just like go there shit post and leave don't even read the replies

(56:58):
no it's like i i do feel like there's a part of the market or part of the people paying attention
into Bitcoin that just want to be online all day, every day talking about it.
But I'm becoming more convinced.
It's like, it's just going to become boring.
Go build a business and stack Bitcoin quietly.
There is no dollar conferences except for Jackson Hall, where the print masters go to

(57:28):
sort of chat with each other there.
Like, you know, like nobody goes to like, you know, USD conferences or go to, you know, like there's no dollar community.
There's, it's just, it's just like a pipe.
It's, it's a, it's a system for you to then go do other things.
It's like, you know, like there is only so much market for Bitcoin products and it's going to be actually smaller amount of products with just bigger market share.

(57:58):
Like that's how it works in any industry.
And, you know, go build something actually useful.
I don't know, go make a robot dog that has lasers on it, right?
So that it can do home security, you know, and hold your money in Bitcoin.
Like that's a much more productive thing to do.
Go make money doing productive things and then like care about the price in terms of like you're not going to affect it.

(58:23):
You're not going to trade it.
You're not going to pump it, right?
So go be productive.
Yeah.
I mean, on the topic of robot dogs with lasers, it does seem like we're moving into the sovereign individual cypherpunk future.
I mean, you look at what happened in Russia a few weeks ago with that drone attack.

(58:43):
It does feel like the cypherpunk future is quickly approaching the sovereign individual.
think about it this way like have you ever lived in a place that's a bit more remote
with a little bit less sort of like niceties amenities and less sort of like availability
of product like you know you can be living in the middle of nowhere in a jungle right uh in a

(59:07):
country that has no amazon uh has like no like barely like any sort of like resources to what
you're a custom downtown Austin, right?
Like, which is like next, same day Amazon for some shit, you know?
But the thing is, though, like with Starlink and, you know,

(59:30):
like there's like decent like solar panels now for you to be off grid.
You can be in this place and exist already in the future, right?
So like, it's like if you're in Africa, like in some very poor places,
it's like living a thousand years ago.
Right. But you can now live, you can cross the time and space. You can go live in that place.

(59:52):
Okay. With Starlink, with your computer. So like you can have a 2050 life.
In 19, in like in 1950. Right. And, and like, we've already crossed space time in that sense. Right.
And so like, you know, if you're into some of those remote places, there is always a way to get stuff.

(01:00:15):
Like, you know, if you can just wait a week or two, like you can get like, you know, organic Italian flour delivered from Whole Foods Miami into the jungle in Central America.
Like in two weeks.
For like 20 bucks.
Like it is insane.
Right.
So you can get the niceties if you have a little bit of patience just because of the actual physical moving of that product.

(01:00:37):
Right.
But you do live on time.
Right.
If you're a trader, you're trading from that place, you're doing whatever you're doing.
You can still exist there.
Now, imagine when we have these things that seem like sci-fi for us,
where, I don't know, you're a humanoid personal security person.
You can just order that on Amazon the same way you order Starlink on Amazon,

(01:01:00):
and two weeks later, you have a humanoid in the middle of a place
that everybody around you lived like 1,000 years ago or 100 years ago.
Sorry.
not a thousand, 100 years ago, right?
It's like, but if you actually like pay attention,
being a little bit more outside of the daily grind

(01:01:21):
of a Western big city,
like we already have, like we already are in the future.
It's just that it doesn't feel to you like we are
because you're just sort of like,
it's kind of like the slow boiling frog thing.
You're just sitting there in the warm water.
you haven't noticed that everything around you is already like like developed an extra 20 years

(01:01:46):
in the last one year right uh but if you if you're in a place where there's a stark difference like
you do notice yeah i mean even in austin this is a bit counter to what you're just saying but like
the explosion of waymo over the last year i think i remember a couple of years ago they started like

(01:02:06):
testing and it was like cool to see a waymo and it was like oh my god who's in that and they had
like a very strict sort of boundary through which they could do rides and rather quickly like every
in austin today i imagine like every 15th car is a waymo that you see on the road and to think of how quick

(01:02:28):
that autonomous fleet of cars sort of went mainstream in Austin is pretty insane.
It is not like, I mean, even just Uber, right?
Like you don't even have to get to the, like, so Uber verticalized the whole taxi experience,
right?
Like eons ago, one of my side businesses was like some high-end taxi dispatch software,

(01:02:50):
right?
And like we were doing like one of the largest North American companies doing the dispatching
back end for them.
and
you know like
Uber came in and completely killed
them like because why
like because like you can't
compete with a tech company hiring
somebody else's tech
right like you have to become

(01:03:13):
a tech company yourself and have that
experience all sort of verticalized
and combined right
and
you know like in the last
10 years like you press a button
and a car fucking shows up
and it takes any kind of payment method.
You don't have to talk to the driver.
Literally one checkbox is don't talk to me, driver.

(01:03:36):
It's practically a robot placeholder.
This is what maybe people are missing
in this development of the last 10 years.
That's happening to everything.
We're just like so many parts of our economy
and products and services.
They still have a person there,
But that person is just a robot placeholder.

(01:03:59):
No, it's just a placeholder.
Because maybe that position, either we're not quite there in capability of the robot, or the robot is just too expensive, which is normally most of the case.
But another five years or one year, that person will be replaced by a robot.
That's why it's so idiotic what unions are doing with large-scale.

(01:04:23):
Like, for example, DHL in Canada, they stopped taking packages this week.
They're just like, okay, we want an increase in salary.
You know, and the company goes like, well, the market can't bear.
You know, then the union is like, not my problem, right?
Like, so, like, that means what?
Like, you know, DHL is going to cave, right?

(01:04:44):
Because they need to continue as a business.
So they're going to figure out a way to cave to a certain extent.
And they're going to probably defer the increase, right?
And then what they're going to do is just like, you know, replace 10% of the workforce in the next month.
And then replace another 20% of the workforce in the next year.

(01:05:04):
Right.
And then they'll find another balance again.
Right.
And that's just a trend on everything.
You know, AI speeding up that, you know, like just hardware development speeding up that, you know, consumers being comfortable with robots and speeding up that too.
you know, Japan was there in the 80s, man.

(01:05:26):
They were doing weird shit with robots.
It's just the consumers are not ready.
Yeah.
And this is something I think about a lot in the context of looking at my kids.
I think my oldest is five.
And I think it's like a great time to be five because I think we have,
we have a period of time to figure out how this disruption is going to play

(01:05:48):
out and position, at least me position my kids to succeed in this new world as things
transition.
But that's like thinking, like experiencing this fast, accelerating change and playing
with the tools and seeing how it's affecting my life, like looking at my children and being
like, all right, how do I position you to be okay when I think it's safe to say within

(01:06:13):
the next 10 years, there's going to be massive labor force disruption and the world's going
to look completely different in terms of how work is viewed and what humans are actually doing
yeah i mean like so my wife does way better reading than i do right i'm full dyslexic so like
she reads to the kids nice i read to the kids like poorly so you know i what i started to do

(01:06:40):
that's a lot more fun is like for for a couple years they would just ask me questions in bed and
I just sort of like answer. So they would ask me, how do you make a car? So I'd explain how you make
the car, right? Like, how do you make the rocket? I explain how you make the rock, right? So I was
essentially a father chat to PT for kids, right? And then like, you know, it hit me like six months
ago or whatever. I'm like, fuck, I should just like turn on chat to PT on voice. And like, and we can

(01:07:04):
ask together the most absurd questions, right? And man, it's so entertaining. Like, because kids are
going from first principles, right? They're completely
unbiased first principles type of questioning.
And they get
really annoyed when the bot doesn't want to
answer them. So, you know, because
Chattabiti is fully cupped, right? So, like,
they don't want to answer. So, for example,

(01:07:26):
how do you make mustard gas? Right? Because
they heard some book
about the mustard gas in World War I,
right? And Chattabiti is like,
oh, you know, that's not safe for you to do
and doesn't want to answer, right? So then
they start to try to hack the matrix here, right?
Like they're like, yeah, okay, but what if I was trying to teach some kids in my chemistry class or whatever, right?

(01:07:48):
So they try to get around the prompts.
And it is fascinating how the kids jailbreak a lot of the technology.
And that sort of like gives me a lot of hope because it really shows that like, you know, a six year old can already grasp that even though there is this like computer authority, subject matter authority with a certain decorum, like the kid is already interested in how to break through that.

(01:08:19):
Right. Like so they're already deslaving themselves from from the AI stuff like as kids.
And that's super cool to see. Now, like, now, like when you project that towards everything else, like these kids are going to grow up like, you know, being being super humans in terms of like understanding how to how to know things.

(01:08:41):
right they they they they know they're not like the previous generations like the the pre before
internet you'd have like people would have this sort of like this big ego where um they
they um they don't feel comfortable asking people because they look dumb right and then our

(01:09:04):
generation was like okay like i can go ask google i can like we developed this idea we're just asking
it's no longer shameful, right?
So like we're capable of doing that with a lot less ego.
Like we're not concerned about like saying,
I don't know this on a pod.
And there's new generations even crazier, right?
Like they expect to be dumb about a topic

(01:09:26):
and like just like further inquiry into that.
And like that's gonna be the new university, right?
Like they're not gonna go to school.
I can't see how, aside from social needs,
like what they're going to get out of school in 10 years from now.
No, especially when you consider the caliber of education

(01:09:50):
that's being put out there, particularly in Western universities.
It's like, why would you ever waste tens of thousands of dollars a year
to go to university outside of the social aspects?
And that's like something I'm trying to grapple with.
Do you think the social aspects...
Where are you going to validate your fifth gender?
you know like it's right um uh because you know kids know right like you ask a kid this this kind

(01:10:12):
of like kids like so there was this one kid in their school right that that like you know the
parents sort of for some weird reasons sort of pushed a kid to be a little bit more sort of
genderless or or like confusing right and this is very young kids right like four um and like the
kids go and ask you like why are you a girl today like it's like it's not like they're mean mean or

(01:10:35):
anything they're just very confused right so kids know this stuff it's just like you know we have
this weird society that like instead of like learning how to do math in school they're learning
how to like validate their insecurities right um and and like with ai education all this shit like
it's gonna be very hard to validate stupid right um

(01:10:55):
let out that was a bit of a tangent let alone the the like everything else that you can learn
because we already had access to all the knowledge, right?
Our generation.
You can go on Google and find everything.
But you couldn't have Google then test you
and ask you questions to know if you know, if you understood.

(01:11:17):
So you probably understood it wrong.
But now with these tools, the kids can go and self-validate
in terms of accuracy of the knowledge
or understanding of that knowledge.
And that's what school really is.
And then there is the further inquiry into,
but what if I mix this with that?
You know, that's how you get your PhD.

(01:11:39):
It's very interesting, man.
It's, you know, like how that affects the non-certified professional services is obvious.
Like everything gets replaced fast.
How that replaces certified professional services is very interesting because, you know, like you might still want a lawyer.

(01:12:00):
You might still want an engineer to sign off on the building.
but they're not going to be as smart and as good as the AI's,
but they are the person that goes to jail.
So it's an interesting,
you know,
like where does the buck stop?
Yeah.
I mean,
I've,
I been sort of partial towards the idea that we get back to focusing on the physical world building beautiful things Like I could I would be I wouldn be surprised if like sports culture actually explodes and like that what humans turn to is just like perfecting their physical bodies and competing like that what becomes

(01:12:37):
a lot of the focus um obviously like with spacex and everything they're going to explore space but
because when you understand like the pace of progression that's happening with ai and all
the jobs it's going to displace and everything it can do it's like why would why would a human
spend time doing this at the robot king because and that's the other sort of paradox or conundrum

(01:12:59):
is that people are screaming like it's going to take our jobs but they hate their jobs it's like
you don't want to be doing that job anyway like so how do you create like every time there's a
every time there's a new technology um the you get like this idea that's like oh we're gonna
The promise is you're going to be able to free your time to do what you want, right?

(01:13:22):
But this new technology just causes more work, right?
It's just it causes new work of different kinds.
And, like, the market just keeps on growing, so it needs more things to be produced, right?
Remember, like, when they said, you know, spreadsheets are going to free up your time.
So you can go, like, I don't know, play golf in your, you know, spreadsheet jockey job.

(01:13:46):
You don't longer have to work in the afternoon.
That's not true.
It's just that that company now acquired a lot more customers because it was doing a lot better job with the spreadsheets.
So now they need you to work there until 10 p.m.
So it's like we're just creating more value, and that means we're going to have more market.
There's going to be more stuff to do.

(01:14:08):
We're not bound by earth soon enough.
So we're going to have to be creating other things and doing other things.
But the thing is that the people who are smart and manage to figure out how to game the system now also have much better tools.
I mean, they could be at a beach walking, you know, like while other people are working in a factory, right?

(01:14:29):
Like, you know, some of that is a product of when they're born or, you know, their current reality.
But like people have way more mobility to break free of like social mobility today.
is like a million X more than it was a year ago.
Just look at all these people on Twitter

(01:14:50):
literally publicizing their book
of all the stupid vibe-coded websites
they do that make five grand a month.
And a lot of them are not devs.
A lot of them, they're very honest
about how they're not the smartest person in the world.
They're just hustling and being clever and testing shit.
So like the people who are creative, like now, like they can ship.

(01:15:18):
You know, let's go be creative.
You know, you no longer need to be an artisan.
The artisan thing was very limited by your capacity, right?
Imagination is kind of becoming your limit.
It really is.
And that's why I think it's imperative that Bitcoin continues to succeed.
because that's a lot of the doomerism on twitter which is understandable as as economic like a

(01:15:48):
bunch of people in the front seats of their car complaining about the inability to survive
prices are rising too high like i think we need to pair this productivity explosion with with hard
money in the form of bitcoin and so people can shake off the doomerism um i think people just
have no agency, Marty. It really is that simple. It's like, if you go to a bank job, right? Where

(01:16:11):
you don't control your time, you literally have a person that tells you what to do with your time
from like nine to five, right? You don't control your finances. The bank tells you how much you can
spend based on your mortgage amount, right? Your spouse also has the same fucking daily treatment,

(01:16:33):
right like people have like literally like zero agency it's like so you know like how are you
going to be optimistic or how are you going to like see the upside of all this if all all day
here all day is their job the job they already hate is going to get replaced it's tough um

(01:16:53):
you know like we we need to like i mean we know like i mean they themselves they have to like
figure out how they break free, right?
Nobody's going to hold your hand.
Yeah.
Is there just some natural distribution within the population of people who

(01:17:14):
have agency and don't, or like, could, like, I think about this a lot.
Again, go back to the children.
Like I want my kids to have agency and really go out there and do something
with their lives by themselves and not be beholden to.
the time trap of jobs that they don't control
and a life that they don't control ultimately.

(01:17:35):
How can I steal those values?
And then building on this AI topic
and particularly the example you used,
just using the AI's quasi-Roman tutor
that you can just question from first principles
and get answers to.
Will there be an increase in individual agency moving forward
Or is it just embedded into population distribution that you're going to have X amount of NPCs and very few amount of people?

(01:18:04):
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, Western education is just like, you know, mass production of slaves, right?
Like, it's like the kid goes to school, they have their time controlled.
They have the approved books.
You know, they have the approved topics, the approved answers.
They have to ask to go to the washroom.
Like, how dehumanizing is that?

(01:18:25):
Like, may I go pee?
Like, seriously, like, you're really instilling a slave mentality, right?
It doesn't mean you have to be impolite and just sort of say, like, you know, like, turn your, flip your table and go pee.
Like, you can just sort of, like, you know, walk.
Like, you find a period of silence in the class and just walk, right?
Like, so, like, just having kids not have, not be bound by this sort of, like, de-agent kind of environment, I think is huge, right?

(01:18:56):
You know, you produce more, like, you know, responsible, loving children by just, like, letting them be bored.
You know, like, they can go poke some dead animals instead of, like, you know, like, having to do a bunch of, like, homework that doesn't really advance them.
I don't know.
It's a tough thing as a parent.

(01:19:17):
Kids crave organization and crave discipline and those things.
How do you find a balance there?
It's a different world now than we grew up with.
How do we take advantage of this and try to do our best?
Yeah.
It's fun though.

(01:19:39):
Be involved.
But going back to your point about your son already jailbreaking prompts,
I think people really – I think, again, going back to it's the best time to be a five-year-old ever.
Because I've noticed this with our oldest.
The amount that he's able to actually take in, understand, and into it is fascinating to me.

(01:20:02):
Like Bitcoin specifically.
We let him watch Tuttle Twins.
his favorite episodes are the two bitcoin episodes obviously because daddy works in bitcoin but he
knows what bitcoin is by himself independently came to my wife and i and said hey i want to do
some chores i want to earn some bitcoin and we're like nice started like cleaning his room we set

(01:20:24):
him up with uh with an e-cash wallet and he actively comes to us like all right i'm gonna
go clean clean the playroom clean my room can you pay me in bitcoin yeah that that's remarkable i
I mean, like my kids, I always give them the pencil,
how to make a pencil or whatever was the pencil,
Tuttle Twin book.

(01:20:46):
That's like one of my favorite things.
I mean, I wish most people opining on finance
and economics on Twitter read that
so they can understand why a pencil is so complicated
and how does it get made for that price, right?
But like, it's, yeah, like you just got to feed them
what you can, right?

(01:21:07):
They are really a product
of their environment.
Like, you know,
the genetics like help
or not help
depending on what part
of your genetics
got to your kids.
But ultimately,
like they really are
a product of their environment.
Yeah, luckily for my kids,
they get their mother's side
of the hairline,

(01:21:27):
which is good for them.
That's starting to show there.
Yeah.
I'm feeling good.
There's too much Doomerism out there.
I'm happy that we're going down this path because I'm tired.
I've been a Doomer.
Hand up.
I've been on there spreading Doom before, but it's becoming harder and harder to be a Doomer.

(01:21:50):
Obviously, Bitcoin over 100K makes me personally feel good.
Looks like things are going in the right direction.
But once you're able to tune out the mainstream media, and I do think these technologies, whether it's Bitcoin or AI, and certainly these two technologies combined will disrupt sort of the old guard political structures that exist.

(01:22:15):
We're seeing it happen in real time.
Yeah it like you know it an outrage society sort of consumer society Like Doomerism is just like it like lazy it the laziest kind of thinking is the laziest kind of consumption it just like you know it where like the brains
go to die it's the same with protests it's like when the brains go to die you know like if if you

(01:22:39):
if you truly care about something like go go build go build like there is no limitation to what you
You can just make things.
It's that mean.
Just build it.
Maybe you can even monetize it and have a better life.
It's not that complicated.

(01:23:00):
Just sitting and crying about the state of the world is super gay.
It's super gay.
There's no excuse.
That's a G-H-E-Y before the outrage comes in.
No, G-A-Y.
Gay.
do you think uh

(01:23:21):
do you think bitcoin is going to be disrupted to silicon valley the thing about i've been
since we launched opportunity cost i'm just asking because uh
it seems like they still haven't caught on there's this whole fascination with stable coins
they're leaning into it coinbase says jp morgan's launching a stable coin

(01:23:42):
on base.
It seems like a lot of
that Silicon Valley
archetype and crew is missing out
on Bitcoin specifically.
Marty, people are poor.
People don't have money. People don't have savings.
Seriously.
So the proposition
of buying an asset that
takes a dive

(01:24:03):
every two years and then pumps a bit more.
People cannot wrap
their heads around savings because they don't
have money to save. And that's why the whole harder wallets for grandmas is kind of retarded.
It's like people just don't have money. So having to survive volatility is very difficult

(01:24:24):
when you're living at minus 20% of burn. That's most people. They're literally living at minus 10,
minus 20% of their burn.
So, you know, like, that's why every checkout that exists has, like,
buy with Unity in 12 months or whatever, right?
Like, and, like, I think Silicon Valley is just tuning in on how to make money

(01:24:50):
out of the people who don't have money.
You know, like, it's like, how can I sell you, you know, a newer version
of whatever you have now so that it can feel a little bit good about yourself
and your life by having 50 t-shirts in your closet
as opposed to two and having some savings, right?

(01:25:11):
Yeah, I see you don't have enough money to buy that burrito.
Don't worry.
We've got a short-term loan for you.
Right?
But it's also amazing, right, the mismatch
of how the market is not perfect.
Just the arbitrage on that,
the fact that there is the arbitrage on a burrito on uber eats that you can buy on credit

(01:25:37):
like it's insane it really is it really is it's insane times we're living in um yes
what else is on your mind anything else uh we should touch on as it pertains to coin kite or
things going on in bitcoin or i think we covered a lot of bases here yeah we did uh you know just

(01:25:57):
It's the usual, just like we have our heads down, just like building more shit.
That's the best advice I can give anybody right now.
Tune it out, whether it's World War III, Jerome Powell not lowering rates, Trump, Doge.
It's all noise.
Nothing ever happens unless you put your head down, put the blinders on and make something happen.

(01:26:21):
Yeah, like, you know, find the profit incentive.
You know, like artistic projects are cool, but very few people can wake up and like leave bed for an artistic project, right?
For a hobby project.
It's a very special kind of people who can do that.
Like most people need a need incentive, right?

(01:26:42):
Like it's like start a business on the side so you don't have to quit your job and go straight to noodles, especially if you have kids.
But like try to build something that is for profit.
You know, because like that really sort of helps you focus and that really helps you like, you know, like improve your life.
It really does. It really does. Well, thank you for doing what you do.

(01:27:09):
I was counting how many of your products I have within arm's length. Right now, four.
I've got a block clock micro right here to my left.
I've got
I've got some open dimes
Nice
In here
You know that also fits

(01:27:31):
A shotgun shell there
It is perfect for a shotgun
So now that you mention it
I've got a tap signer in here
In a queue
Right my bag down here
I appreciate you being a customer
Big fan
You make incredible products
Thank you
Thank you.
Yeah, if you freaks have not tried the Q, go try the Q.

(01:27:57):
It's an incredible hardware device, and it's just incredibly safe for punk.
Get on it.
Get on it, freaks.
My favorite device out there.
NVK.
I'm bummed I couldn't see your face, but we're going to create like an AI character of you

(01:28:18):
that will oh i'd love that you can be you can make it funny i don't care we'll make fun it's
great cartoon mvk we'll be talking in uh in the lakes of canada maybe that's the thing is canada
dead is it screwed yeah man it's like i think canada has has reached terminal velocity for uh

(01:28:41):
for like escape velocity for brains and capital.
Like they,
because they completely trample the Laffer curve,
right?
So it's like more taxes than you get in terms of perceived services or
perceived quality of life in general.
Like Canada was always very good at that.
Like it was high tax,
but it was still like competitive with America,

(01:29:02):
but the quality of life was 10 X America.
The quality of life went to shit.
Canada became essentially India.
And, you know, like the taxes are too high.
You know, you can't, it's very difficult to come back from this.
And, you know, Canadians, the Canadians that remain are less capitalized or they take advantage of the state subsidies or whatever shenanigans.

(01:29:32):
And, you know, like it's, you see it on everything.
it's uh the health care shit the quality of life is shit it's like you know it's now more dangerous
than you know a lot of places um it's a late stage sort of empire vibes there even though
is not an empire um you know i don't know how they come back from this is alberta gonna secede

(01:29:59):
successfully.
Oh, dude, that would be amazing.
I'd move every single
left cent that I have left
in that part of the world
into Alberta.
And hopefully Alberta
should have... Yeah, it would be the best.
I mean, Canada is just too big.
We need smaller countries with more autonomy,
right?

(01:30:19):
So, like, Canada was supposed
to be way more federalist than America
is, like,
in its construction.
uh but but you know it got captured right so um you you canada is like quebec should have gone
uh it would have been the best for for them and for canada the same with for berta it needs to

(01:30:42):
break up you would be a lot better for everybody um you know can you imagine being the third
largest reserve of oil on the planet yeah and being like the 20th producer or something like
It's just not utilizing it at all. It's disgusting.
Well, I mean, like, the problem is, like, it's very difficult to be a big producer of, like, energy resources because America doesn't like it, right?

(01:31:08):
So, like, you know, do you know who makes most of the money out of the railways that carry oil in Canada?
Soros.
you know the same guy who funds greenpeace canada you know like it's like the like everything in
canada is designed so that canada does not produce more energy because you know like

(01:31:31):
america did the math it is not good to have it right um it's a big part of the problem because
you know like what canada is going to end up selling oil to china right and nobody wants oil
to go to China.
So it's tricky.
What they should really do
is just take over,
you know,
51st state,
be great.

(01:31:52):
Canadians get a second amendment,
get some state rights,
you know,
like you can just move your corpse
to Texas and Wyoming,
you know,
like tax-free.
It would be great.
It would be great for everybody.
America is going to get
so much natural resources
and even know what to do with it.
You get a third sea,
the North Sea,

(01:32:13):
that's a shipping route now
it will be remarkable so it like either break up all this shit into a bunch of little countries or just become america i think would be the best two outcomes do you think there any chance of that you know like honestly like right now canada is just like a great place for u to pillage so

(01:32:38):
it's it's i doubt that would no change and and canadians are proud like people who just
at least the Canadians there are left there
they
they're very gullible
very
like they you know this is the
Covidians and
the elbows up

(01:33:00):
I don't know if you saw that political
campaign that got like it's just
pathetic it's actually pathetic
people are
people are still doing Covid shots
like there's
people still shooting their children with Covid
shots there
because that's the opposite of America.

(01:33:21):
It's criminal.
Yeah, it totally is.
It's child abuse.
If Trump had lost, Canada would have gone way more right.
It's just that Canada had to be the opposite of America.
That's why they went left.
That's often how it goes.
That was the whole elbows-up campaign, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm pretty sure that Carney and Trump went to the same parties

(01:33:42):
at Epstein Island.
They're all the same crew.
Yeah, the carny – the fact that people don't make a bigger fuss about him considering all the shit he's been involved in over the years, whether it's in the UK, Canada, HSBC.
Go watch all the plenaries, man.

(01:34:02):
It's insane.
It's insane.
The guy literally ruined England by being the central – the president of the central bank there.
like the guy was the guy behind all the trudeau retarded economic policy like and then they go and
they like elect the guy and the guy is like has like pictures and sofas with like epstein and crew

(01:34:24):
but the problem is in canada like the media you know how in america you get the perception of two
sides right because even though it's all the same uniparty shit but like at least you get a perception
on the soft issues.
In Canada, there is no two sides.
There's just one side.
That's it.
It's the state-owned media

(01:34:44):
and then all the other media
is partially funded by government too
with subsidies, right?
So you get one narrative only
and the people follow the narrative.
It's like there's no agency there.
Is Carney better or worse
than Trudeau in your mind?
I mean, if Trudeau was running,
Pierre would have won,
which was very unfortunate

(01:35:05):
Carney is way worse
on the plus side
he might open more tax loopholes
which would be great
like legal ways of doing tax
deferrals
one can only hope for that
because at least he's a bit more of a businessman
not just like a haircut
I mean Trudeau

(01:35:25):
it's like complete fucking retard
Jesus Christ
it's amazing
but you know the guy put on the same cabinet
few of them already quit
so who knows it's hard to tell
it's you know like the country is not going
towards a good place
so you know how fast it goes south

(01:35:47):
we don't know but it's going south
you know it's
it's going to be a little devastating there
it's a shame
yeah it is right
I mean like the amount of resources
just the sheer value of the country.
You have educated people with degrees and things that are useful.

(01:36:10):
You have power. You have everything.
It's the classic problem of countries that have everything.
Countries that have war all the time, they have to be a little scrappier.
But yeah, it is what it is.
It is. I love Canadians.
The Canadians I've met my life playing lacrosse, incredible salt-of-the-earth people.

(01:36:36):
Most of them, I believe, most of the Canadians I've met and become friends with probably align with the Albertan view of where Canada should go.
But salt-of-the-earth.
That's the minority, Marty.
That is the minority.
That's unfortunate.
And especially a minority that's still in the country.
Yeah.
All right.

(01:36:56):
Maybe it just needs a collapse.
We can come pick up the scraps.
Yeah, exactly. Just accelerate, right? That's what the boys say.
I mean, if Trump is listening to this episode, which he probably is, what I would suggest is a very easy plan to fully terminate Canada peacefully. Very easy.

(01:37:18):
So you offer Canadians a one-to-one wealth transfer to America. So they already make 30% of the dollar spread.
and
let them
not pay taxes
on their first
20 years of capital gains or something.

(01:37:38):
That's it.
Every single business in Canada
would move to America.
Like 100%.
Every doctor would move.
Every engineer would move.
It's over.
So you're saying trying to drain talent.
Yeah.
And then it just go and take over.
Peacefully.
Just say, okay, now you're America.

(01:38:00):
All right, Donald.
I like this.
Make sure we clip this
and we tag the president.
Let him know this is how we get Canada.
Yeah, it's very simple.
And it's cheap because it's only
like what? Canada has what?
20 million
adults that are working
adults?

(01:38:20):
They
imported like 2 million last year alone,
so that number keeps going up.
Yeah, but those people...
Yeah, I mean...
So, yeah.
That's a great...
Like, the immigration charts.
I got to double check,
make sure they were right.
It's insanity.
No, no, they had,
I think it was 800,000 people
just this year or something.
Like, in a country that's 30 million...

(01:38:42):
So, when I arrived in Canada
in the early 2000s,
Canada was 33 million people.
Canada is now like 40-something.
And, like, Canadians don't make babies.
Yeah.
it's like it's actually like all downtown big cities is essentially like protests of people

(01:39:03):
who are marginalized in other countries like that's it it's like it's like the the palisthenian
screaming the like the indians screaming the calisthenes screaming like that's it like that's
all that it is downtown now like there is like no canadians left it's just like
it's just people who have problems abroad yeah it's not great

(01:39:25):
not great hopefully i mean he'll come off too nationalistic but yeah you're seeing it happen
in america too like the front runner for mayor right now i believe in new york city he's the
guy like pushing rent control oh he's like jagmeet singh he's like the guy who runs for the the labor

(01:39:46):
party in canada same same concept and these things do take hold man because they tap into like you
know like a lot of like a lot of people who come like as an immigrant that was an immigrant like
poor right like no english no money right um like you know you want a better life right and and
that's what people are seeking right and most immigrants are harder workers than the people

(01:40:09):
who are native like that's very common the the problem is like when you when you have numbers
that don't economically function right because it just it's just too many people for the services
because, you know, these countries have full-on communism, right?
Like, I mean, it's like communist healthcare, all this shit.
So, like, you just can't make it work.
So then the people who are coming have shitty lives

(01:40:30):
and can't progress and they're hardworking,
which you want them to win, right?
And it just creates this very pervasive, perverse incentives.
And, you know, and then you lose rule of law
and you lose rule of order.
And I was just absolute shit.

(01:40:52):
But again, it's a big world out there.
Young people are moving with their wealth.
They take their Bitcoin and they go, right?
It's very optimistic.
It's pessimistic for people who are trapped,
but for everybody else,
it's a great new world to be in.
You just go where the capital is treated better.
It's happening everywhere.

(01:41:12):
Develop agency freaks
so you can travel to where you're being treated better.
mbk it's always a pleasure sir i think we've waited like i think the last one we did was like
a year ago maybe a little bit longer than that we can't wait another i have been to catch up
i mean if we're gonna talk about ai it's gonna have to be every two weeks
but yeah things are moving fast thanks for having me sir always a pleasure no we should do like a

(01:41:41):
deep dive on ai at some point because i that's something i'm fascinated in is like how we
implement it in our business, how people are implementing it in their businesses,
not necessarily user-facing
end product, but on the back end of a business, making your
processes more efficient and
becoming extremely productive on the back end. That's something I am

(01:42:05):
knee-deep in right now in terms of studying and trying to
wrap my head around.
well get the AI to teach you
I should I should start asking
all right I'm gonna go do that
take care
thanks for having me

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#633: Stack Sats, Build Products, Ignore the Noise with NVK

United States of Kennedy