Self-Custody, Nostr, & Building the Bitcoin Future | Alex McShane - THE Bitcoin Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The truth is we're a lot closer to like a Weimar Germany. Like the end is nigh. Everybody's trading

(00:05):
and gambling, you know, all day and night long to try to get ahead. Our government's very,
very corrupt. That's ultimately why we're here. You just don't own anything. You have a debasing
monopoly money from the government. Swap out if you have currency for Bitcoin, whatever possible.
If you're deterring people from even trying to self-custody, to me, you're not a Bitcoiner at
all. If Bitcoiners are doing what they say they're doing, which is holding and not selling,

(00:27):
is it really that painful like for it to go down it just only goes up and if you're denominating
a bitcoin terms you're up i think the way to have a clear goal in mind is to try to fix the money
like that is the root cause of most of the corruption and the problems that we face that's
an opportunity that like we don't even deserve as a culture but oh my god we're gonna get it again

(00:49):
you know?

(01:19):
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(01:44):
slash titcoin. Head to the show notes for links to find the show on centralized social media
platforms and on Noster or just go directly to BitcoinPodcast.net. You'll find it all there.
And kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain.
Or don't. Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it. Without further ado,
let's get into this Bitcoin talk. I'm back and forth on this. On the one

(02:08):
side of it, my thought process is, well, having a seed is, like, having that private key is really
important. Like, and pneumonic seeds were a really great innovation in that they allow us to
take that seed and very easily store it somewhere and go anywhere with it and reboot, you know,
in a hardware agnostic, vendor agnostic way. That's super powerful, right? That said,

(02:35):
like, it's like the majority of people, the vast majority of people aren't going to care or
necessarily want to, or perhaps like, cannot even necessarily be trusted. So like, I see the
argument on the other side like i want to i want to have a seed phrase right i want to i want to
have that ability like to take it to take it anywhere a lot of people just maybe don't care

(02:57):
and like like the majority of people i don't even think are going to self-custody bitcoin i think
that's like that's just not going to happen we know we don't have enough utxos for for everybody
so it's like i do feel that they're filling a gap but it's like you know it's it's like with
everything there's there's trade-offs right like there are trade-offs and you have to be honest
about those trade-offs and what like what they imply long-term for you or your personal sovereignty

(03:19):
and for some people that just you know may not be important it's a slick product people seem to like
it uh but like you know everybody's got to make an individual choice i just don't and i know this
is like a not the nicest thing to say but it's like not everyone is maybe built for taking complete
self-control and self-custody you know what i mean i do i understand that philosophy my my issue

(03:44):
is not like I have big keys. I've used them. I got this before they were released. Like I've,
I've been on, on them a long time. The issue, uh, started when they started lying about what they
are. They're, they're not self custody. It's collaborative custody. It's a totally different
thing. You, you, you depend on them to send transactions and you give up their privacy

(04:06):
trade-offs. So I'm with you, you, but if they're going to, if they're not going to be honest about
the trade-offs of using their product, that's no good for anyone.
In the beginning, I think what happened is the person in charge of marketing there just
doesn't understand Bitcoin at the level of people who have been using wallets for years.

(04:31):
You can't just call it self-custody.
And you definitely shouldn't encourage people to throw their seed phrases away.
I know it's kind of like a rage-baity marketing tactic.
Yeah.
It works for that reason, but it's very, very dangerous.
You're encouraging people to use Bitcoin with trusted third parties, which defeats the whole purpose.

(04:56):
Just go buy an ETF.
Why would you even fuck around with this?
Like, what's the point of it?
If you're not willing to put in – like, if you can understand that this is a two of three multi-sig,
if you know what that is you're smart enough to set up a two three multi-sig you know what i mean
like it's not it's not that hard it takes two or three hours i'm i kind of get it like i people in

(05:18):
general like in aggregate we're pretty like low iq species it's hard for everybody to to self-custody
but like i actually am more hopeful i think that i think if we take on that mindset it's pretty
defeat us and people won't, of course they won't do it. They'll take the easy way out. They'll take
the laziness trade off, the convenience trade off every time. And I just always want to push people

(05:41):
not to do that. I think if you learn to set up your own multi-sig and then you try to get a plug
and play piece of, you know, a nice, nice trusted third-party hardware like this, that's perfectly
reasonable. But if you're deterring people from even trying to self-custody, to me, you're not a

(06:05):
Bitcoiner at all. You're in this for fiat dollars. You're in this for short-term gains.
I mean, it's not the first time one of these projects has started out on a great premise,
which is like fulfilling a need in the market. We need more competition in the hardware market,
and we need more varied solutions.
And we need to abstract away parts of Bitcoin that are complicated.

(06:29):
This has done a good job of all of those.
But for me, the trade-offs are too high,
and the marketing is so disingenuous
that it does a disservice to everybody.
Anyway, that's my rant on Bitcoin.
No, no, I do feel you on the marketing side.
Because again, I think the initial premise of this is very good, right?

(06:49):
And as you said, abstracting away parts of this
that are maybe not necessary for people to get into the nuts and bolts of,
but still giving them a solution that's better than keeping their Bitcoin on an exchange.
But it's like if the main benefits are lost, if a trusted third party is still required.
And again, I don't know enough about the signing mechanism on the BitKey.
It is a two of three multi-sig though.

(07:10):
And presumably you do hold two of the keys, right?
I'm assuming one on your phone and then one is the BitKey itself has the other key
and then they have the third key.
right one is on the two of the keys are on hot devices which is a problem so one is on
it's not even block servers block doesn't even custody their own custody it's on amazon it's on

(07:32):
aws that's where one of your keys is the other is on your phone which is the most compromised piece
of equipment like in your life it's the most surveilled you know virused out bugged out it's
a huge security vulnerability. Anybody that's been in Bitcoin for any amount of time, you know,
you know, intuitively not to do extremely private things on this device. You have to consider

(07:56):
everything on their, you know, spent, compromised completely. Okay. So those are two of your three
keys. That means anyone who can get access to block servers, which there's no reason to believe
that's a particularly difficult thing to do for like an advanced attacker or or the hot key on

(08:17):
your app or just this device which you know there's no physical backup so you can't lose this
uh you know what i mean there's no key backup so if you lose this your shot and you're completely
relying on blocks infrastructure and the problem is you don't have a seed phrase so you cannot
unilaterally exit their system. They have a non-standard

(08:38):
emergency kind of exit protocol.
If something goes wrong, you're completely trapped on blocks.
If their GitHub disappears, you can't even reinstate
their emergency software on an iPhone. You have to have an Android.
It's a very convoluted... I promise you,
just go look into it. The more you read about it, the scarier

(09:02):
the promise that they're giving you is.
If you're cussing serious money,
you'd lose sleep if you lost it.
It's a really scary proposition.
Something like this.
You actually would be safer just leaving your money
on Coinbase or Strike or something.
Okay.

(09:22):
Yeah.
I need to look deeper into it
because I got to say it is a slick-looking product.
Yeah, it looks great.
Yeah, it looks excellent.
I dislike the marketing of like
ditch your seed
it's like that just feels like a
a bad intent
or maybe the
yeah like to me self-custody

(09:42):
it's a bad result or a bad suggestion
like we don't want people to do that
because this is an incredibly powerful thing that you can do
where you can unilaterally exit
anything as long as you have that seed
it's like that is true power
that's self-custody
unilateral exit and unilateral control of your Bitcoin
is self-custody. This lose your seed phrase, I promise you this was an idea that originated in

(10:05):
California. This is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I saw the first marketing for it in person
in Vegas. I have to hand it to them. It did trigger so many people. I watched people walk
by just like, what the fuck are they doing? It makes you talk about them. It makes you,

(10:26):
but i don't know we we we decided the marketing marketing team's real genius was that
block can actually block your transaction so it's like totally accurate
because they can uh anyway that's uh yeah the keys big keys fun
i think he's fun i mean clearly the marketing work is here we are talking about but i want to

(10:50):
talk about i want i want to talk about you a little bit too you mentioned uh you mentioned
Vegas and you have been a, I think maybe for people who don't know, you have been like behind
the scenes running conferences for a long time. Like when things are going really smoothly and
nice, it's because you and, you know, you and maybe X-Frog, usually you and X-Frog would be

(11:12):
always the people I'd seen backstage. But can you talk a little bit about how you got into
running shows, running conferences? And like, you know, you just became like this kind of like
staple and a lot of times the people behind the scenes you know like you don't see them because
they're the ones making sure everything's moving moving smoothly right but like how did you actually
get into that in the first place I started well I was working at at Bitcoin magazine

(11:39):
and we had a conference coming up and we had kind of um we were doing bad with revenue so we needed
to invent kind of new products to sell. And so we didn't really reinvent. We just kind of stole
the news desk. This is the first time you would have seen a news desk in the Bitcoin space.

(12:03):
And we brought it, we modeled it after like a sports center, like ESPN style news desk.
And I brought it to the exhibitor hall floor and we sold it for like two, three million bucks.
um yeah to marathon um as a two three year sponsor or something like that

(12:26):
um so we built this thing out and then uh I decided I wanted to run it because I was looking
for uh I was bored at the mag I was running the Twitter I was running you know I'd written
two three hundred articles been doing a lot of podcasts I was running their I started their
YouTube channel, their Rumble channel. So I was doing all this social media stuff and I was like,

(12:47):
kind of bored of it. Um, I just didn't find it very fulfilling. And I saw how big the conference
was getting. This was like, you know, 2022. Um, and in 2021 was already so big, but 2022 was coming
up and it was, it was going to be huge. So I just jumped in and, uh, programmed it. Like I just

(13:08):
called all the people called sailor, like got, got ahold of everybody I could get ahold of like,
hey, you have to jump on this desk. When you get off stage, come to this place and jump on the
SportsCenter desk. It's going to be the biggest thing that's happening. And it was. It carried
the live stream. We got 2 million viewers on that across the span of those days on that content.

(13:30):
And it wasn't the best iteration of that that's ever happened. It was messy. It was really messy.
People didn't show up. People showed up super angry that they had been bumped. I learned all
kinds of you know ways to work with people and not to work with you know people on stage because they like all stage presence is so tied up with people egos that like it a very delicate job It very like you have to be really good at

(13:59):
communication and like really patient with people because they show up and people show up wanting to
fight. I remember the Hive guys, Aiden, the CEO of Hive, like wanted to fight me one time because
he couldn't get on stage. He was so aggressive. It was crazy. So you pull up a chair for people,
You know, you got to solve the problems and make it work.
But I really liked it because it was like this high pace, high pressure thing.

(14:22):
And it was like me and Rizzo, Nolan, Bowerly, like we were all we're all just having a blast filling in, you know, interviewing Saylor up there.
I interviewed, you know, Portnoy before, you know, when he was so cool.
And Ben Askren and like all these interesting people, like get them up there talking about Bitcoin.

(14:45):
And then there was, you know, I wanted to do something bigger.
I was like, well, I want to do like the main stage.
So they gave me the Amsterdam conference, like as a trial.
And I did that.
And then I just took over all the conferences.
So we were doing four conferences a year.
I did a couple of conferences for Jack as well for Noster.

(15:10):
Did the first ever Noster conference in Costa Rica.
in Hong Kong, in Japan, in Latvia. Yeah, a lot of events, man.

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like Satoshi intended. Now back to the show. The Noster Unconference, Nostarica, that was a special

(16:50):
time. It feels like one of those things you're going to look back on. I mean, I already kind of
do and just be like, wow, can't believe that was a thing that happened and that I was at and aware
of at this time. And like, what a, what a vibe there. And now, you know, I think there's been
like looking at Noster specifically, a lot of people have maybe, or maybe like disappointed

(17:13):
about say user growth more broadly, you know, just thinking like, Oh, it's kind of like stalled
out. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing at like, right, right now, you still have
a really highly active number, like highly active cohort of people who are on Noster every single
day, like all day, all night, across the world, all time zones, using a patchwork of different

(17:39):
applications of end clients and who are, you know, then you've got all the builders who are like
making that possible. And so to me, it's like, when the masses eventually do really come to Noster
in size, at least the infrastructure is going to actually be built up more. Because like,
that's the thing about an open protocol and a lot of open source software devs hacking stuff
together it's like there's a lot of stuff that moves uh maybe is is less uh immediately reliable

(18:05):
than a sense some centralized platform build out but is long term far more resilient but you know
it takes a little bit longer to get there but i don't know i've been the vibes on noster continue
to be good for me i don't know about you i think it's good i i would definitely be among those that
are probably impatient and disappointed with the growth. I don't know if it'll succeed or not. I

(18:30):
think for what it offers, like it's succeeding today for like a couple people. I enjoy it. I
don't particularly enjoy scrolling it. I find it pretty boring to be a little bit bearish,
but I do. I enjoy posting there because people are so friendly and nice and genuine.

(18:51):
And I do think there's something to be said for like economic value of tipping over like virtue signaling with likes.
I think I got pretty bored with everything that was being developed on it.
Like there's a lot of this stuff is very niche and just doesn't have users.

(19:15):
So it's like, okay, we're early.
Now what?
and I think the answer is like we just keep doing our thing and hoping for like a breakout like I
think I got really interested in something more like a bit chat which is like okay this uses Noster
but nobody using bit chat knows what Noster is unless they discovered it through Noster or
something like very few you know what I mean they don't know that the back end touches Noster at all

(19:39):
that's like okay now you're getting into a really um interesting place where like Noster in my
opinion, has always had this identity crisis of being so self-absorbed and so upfront,
technical, and affiliated with Bitcoin that it actually turns people off.
I would say you and I had a really similar conversation about Roxham.

(20:06):
There was so much Bitcoin that was actually turning people off in the programming who
are not in that world.
It's like, well, if we want to reach more people, we need to talk about more things.
And so I think the one thing I will say I really enjoy about Noster is, um,
there's a couple of people on there, like close friends of mine, actually,
you're included in this because, you know, you'll post like fishing content.

(20:29):
Like I really like fishing. I really like outdoor stuff.
And I really like, um,
I shooting video about it and posting about it just as like an amateur,
just like fun kind of hobby or whatever. Um,
I don't get anywhere near as much, um,
as much of that content on like Instagram or Twitter,

(20:51):
like in terms of engagement and just people swapping stories and giving cool
tips, like the people who engage in it are really, really into it,
which is awesome. And I just feel you, I don't know,
you just feel the authenticity more than you do on,
on a Twitter where those things fall completely flat.
If you're not servicing the algorithm exactly how, you know,

(21:13):
on the soup of the day kind of algorithm,
It's not going to get anything at all.
I tend to get way more engagement on NOSER for whatever reason.
Not that that's the metric of success, but if you put in work into editing these things and putting them out there, if I don't get any return on it, I'm obviously going to just stop doing that.

(21:34):
But on Noster, I've seen that just posting a couple times a day, you get a lot of cool new people to talk to.
I find people who enjoy jiu-jitsu, people who enjoy Bitcoin, people who enjoy fishing, even spearfishing, like some pretty niche activities.
So I would say, yeah, hopefully those communities are growing out.
I just, I don't know if it's in the right form factor.

(21:57):
I don't know if like Twitter clone is the way, you know.
I really like stuff like zap.stream, like what we're on right now. And I hope that some of these
other applications can scale like bit chat really fun. But, you know, after the first week, kind of
like, Hmm, what would I use this for? It's kind of like a, probably a good tool for like emergency

(22:17):
services or something like that. Or, um, you know, people in like disaster zones, but I don't, I don't,
I don't really know day to day there's a use case for it.
We have a product market fit problem in open source tech.
We're inventing a lot of things that don't solve any tangible problems that the market needs.

(22:41):
Yeah, and with BitShot, I think you're exactly right.
It's not something that I need to use every day.
I could use it every day and there's various geo servers that I could hop on.
But I just like I don't necessarily need to.
There's not a reason for me to go in there every day.
However, like if I'm if you've seen this around the world, whether in a disaster scenario or when government is throttling, you know, communications during protests or something and like downloads explode.

(23:10):
Right. Like they go wild.
And so it's like, you know, it's one of those things where you're like, yeah, yeah, it's you don't need it until you need it.
And then it's like, oh, wow, this is this is really useful.
I'm glad that I have this this P2P tool.
but I hear you on the product market fit side more broadly. I think that that's a very, very
fair observation. And I think that a lot of times it's, it's not necessarily like a bad thing. It's

(23:33):
just a reality of like, look, just because you can build something really, really, really cool
doesn't mean anybody actually like gives a shit about using it. Just because you can create
something that's a really interesting technical solution doesn't mean like that anybody that
you're actually solving that many people's problems.
You might be solving like a problem and some people may really like that.

(23:54):
But like with, you know, so many of these things, it's like, that's really neat.
But like, I don't know how many people are going to use it.
Maybe some will, and maybe that's enough.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the other thing is like, maybe like not everything needs to have this mass
appeal.
Maybe these, you know, micro apps make a lot more sense.
And it's like, you can just, even if your, your application services, a small number

(24:14):
of people, like that's still a win.
that being said it's like you know but then it's also like you need to be sustainable from
a gay business perspective unless you are planning on living on grants forever
and that's the kicker that's the other side right well that's that's why many of the that's why
like a niche kind of in-group can get really excited about these things but you have to

(24:36):
understand these people are engineers like highly specialized therefore like three highly autistic
engineers that are not good businessmen. They live on charity of NGOs, most of which, you know,
there's like one or two funders of, there's like two of these things that exist in Bitcoin that
give people money. It's this, this circular thing of, you know, you get grants, we throw a luxurious

(24:57):
party. We invite people to make donations, to give grants. You make applications that never seem to
scale. Like, it's like, I don't know, the market would extract, like it come up with solutions to
these problems. But the problem I think that people are having is that they don't turn these
applications into businesses and they're not running businesses. So they wonder why they're

(25:23):
like they have unrealistic expectations for users because they're not under the same pressures that
you know, you would be in the free market because they're living on charity.
which is okay I mean I wouldn't really participate in it I'm not saying these aren't
ideas that are that are not worth funding it's just that I don't know like how much of this

(25:51):
stuff ends up just being you know throwing events for each other to have kind of developer parties
to throw more events to get more grant like it's just when does when does the funding stop like
When do you cut someone off?
When do you, I don't know how you evaluate those things in a sort of NGO funding loop
setting.

(26:11):
In the free market, there's a flywheel that makes a lot of sense.
If your product isn't meeting the demands of the market, you'll fail and you'll disappear
and you'll cease to exist and your company will die.
And that's a good thing.
That's what we need.
So I think, I don't know.
I want to be optimistic about Noster, but I think it,

(26:33):
it might be one of those things like no one's figured out how to make it into
a business and therefore it's very kind of like small,
closed in group of people that use it. I don't know how many,
do you have any idea how many people use it day to day now?
Is there any way to, uh, let's see.
There's a couple thousand places that have, I mean, it's,

(26:55):
it's gotta be more than a couple thousand,
but I don't know
I mean let me see
Primal had some decent stats on this
at one point do they still
let's see
I'm not always
so bearish I just I think it's fun
to push these guys

(27:15):
you know what I mean
I think it's important to actually like think about
this stuff deeply too right
to actually say like okay
what
what do we actually need to do
Like if we care about scaling this stuff, if we care about getting more people on board,
like what does that actually mean?
What does that actually look like?
And I think too, on the point of, on the point of like the, the funding side of things, I,

(27:38):
I I would push back on one area of that which is that I agree with you from the free market perspective of like that going to give you the best signal about what is working and
what is not right.
That being said, there is something to be said, I think, for having some developers,
it's like patronage by the Medici family of Leonardo da Vinci.

(28:04):
right? Like if Leonardo da Vinci had to could only invent things and create art and do like that,
if it was profitable at that time, we wouldn't have most of his inventions and art and things
he created, right? Because like a lot of them just had no product market fit, you know, like,
so I do think that patronage enabled by Bitcoin is a really valuable thing. And in this case,

(28:26):
no, we're not talking about the arts, we're talking about technology.
but patronage of technologists of builders i think does have a place because it allows them to just
be able to solely focus on building now you could again to play devil's advocate myself you could
argue that well by not being in tune with the actual market itself perhaps they don't build

(28:48):
what is actually going to be needed by the market or wanted by the market but yeah maybe you know i
I don't know. I see both sides of this here, but I do think that patronage and supporting open source developers definitely has a place.
I agree. I don't know how long it's sustainable.
I mean, if Bitcoin keeps going up forever, maybe it's always sustainable.
I'm not sure, but it's tough. It's tough.

(29:12):
For me, it's like I know that I could create an anonymous Noster account, start posting about developing,
and I could apply for a grant for a messaging app and receive that grant within a few months.
Like I know that that would not be a hard thing to do. Everyone who wants funding and
knows or gets it. Any like serious proposition. Okay. But like who in the world needs another

(29:36):
messaging app? Like how many fucking messaging apps do I have to have on my phone to be able
to talk to someone? You know what I mean? Like there's no market demand for this at all.
Nobody needs it.
I do need better privacy, but it turns out there's not a way to do that that's also convenient and not like a technical hurdle for most people.

(29:57):
So the problem is the most private, like I can't get anyone to use Simplex.
There's no discovery there.
I can't find people on it.
And I surely, I have to ask someone to download something, which is extremely suspicious.
It like kills itself when you try to ask someone to use this privacy tech.
You send them a link and they say that's suspicious.
I'm not down about it.
No way.

(30:18):
So I just, yeah, I'm just, I wish there were more entrepreneurs in the space working with NoSter from that lens.
And I wish there was less funding available so that they could get serious about the projects they're proposing.

(30:40):
I think the same about Bitcoin.
Like, I don't, there's no way that, you know, Bickey is a profitable company.
It's just not possible at this stage, you know what I mean?
Like, you have to look at something like the tradeoffs, the ledger has taken, or scraping by for, you know, a decade with a cold card or something like that to get to a place where you're like a profitable real company.

(31:10):
I think that's really what makes these products better.
When you take it outside of a free market environment,
you end up with weird altruism, kind of utopia tech,
like blue sky, sort of closed communities.

(31:30):
And it's not going to scale.
Okay, that's actually a fair point as it relates to blue sky.
like boy i have not opened that up in a while um i like every sometimes i will i opened it up like
right after uh right after charlie kirk was assassinated that was a mistake really that up

(31:51):
my god that was not the not not not a good time to to open that up um there's just sick people
sick people on that up there there are and like and like and that's that's true everywhere right
like no matter like it's not just you know unique to blue sky but i think your larger point of
and this is this is very fair and i don't know how this gets reconciled because on the one hand
you want certain like freedom open source you want open source freedom tech to be built right

(32:16):
like that that's that's generally a good thing if there are technologies that are being leveraged
new protocols being built new uh new applications being built on top of protocols that are already
out there and open and this is all open source that's like generally just a net positive yeah but
the difficulty is that like okay like and there's no money in it people don't pay for it and and i

(32:39):
guess one if you yeah that that is the problem but and if you take it to the next level though perhaps
it's like we are still so early in so much of this right now that maybe you know some of these
things that are being built out like don't necessarily need true product market fit or
widespread adoption right now, but because they are open source, the genie is now out of the

(33:02):
bottle. Now the people that are going to be coming along in the next five, 10, 20 years
have a foundational protocol stack of freedom technologies to be able to build on. And they're
the ones who are going to find product market fit. They're the ones that are going to, you know,
develop things that are, that are people are genuinely clamoring for. But right now it's just
It's like maybe, I mean, it's the same thing with Bitcoin.

(33:24):
Like Bitcoin exists.
Bitcoin exists and has existed and is talked about by not just, you know, random magic
internet money nerds anymore, but fucking Larry Fink of BlackRock and Donald Trump are
talking about Bitcoin, right?
And still, still barely anyone owns Bitcoin.
And even of those who quote own Bitcoin, a far, far smaller percentage have Bitcoin in

(33:47):
self-custody, like really own Bitcoin, not just an IOU.
you right so it's like and and this is we're talking about money we're talking about a thing
that makes you wealthy and most people still don't care you know what i mean so like how can we expect
them to care about like yeah encrypted messaging and relay-based uh communication models like of
course they're not going to give a shit they don't even give a shit about a thing that's going to
make them rich why would they care about something that just you know just does something so small

(34:10):
as to protect their privacy like a lot of people just don't give a fuck you know there's yeah and
And what I really like about what you said there is how long does it take to extract something useful out of this kind of pile of open source tech?
Obviously, the answer is not, you know, two to three years.
If you think about Bitcoin, it was not invented overnight, just like it was decades of small, like technological achievements that were put together, that were discovered.

(34:43):
They weren't even invented.
They were just put together.
it was like half created and half discovered and put together in a way after,
after decades of, of cryptographic sort of breakthroughs. You know,
there's like seven core features that just came together in the perfect way to
make this thing. You know, and some would argue, you know,

(35:04):
for some people it doesn't have what it needs to have. Some would say, you know,
it needs to be more private. It doesn't need to be scared. You know what I mean?
But there's the, the, the core invention, like, yeah, it was extracted,
but it took a long time. The question, I guess, for Nostra is like, okay,
how long is that going to take before someone comes along and makes a viable
business out of this, uh, this scales and what will it look like?

(35:26):
I'm kind of with, um, like I have a lot of,
I would bet that it has something to do with e-cash, um,
and actually like financial networking, um, and, and maybe,
encrypted communications
or mesh networks.

(35:46):
Maybe someone can beat out the cell
networks over
Nose to Relay somehow. I don't know.
I don't know what it looks like, but
I don't think it's going to be the first iteration.
It's not going to be a Twitter clone.
Yeah.
I'm super bullish on eCash to that
note.
Yeah, me too.

(36:07):
And stables.
I think this stuff is... I don't know.
It's interesting.
it's not stuff that I need in my day-to-day life, but there, you know,
that's where it's like, we're very financially privileged here.
Same thing with stable coins. Like we don't, don't need them, but other people,
I know a lot of people that use them every day, need them to get paid, you know,

(36:30):
cause their own currency is, is a useless,
their own financial infrastructure is way worse than what we have with the
dollar.
you know uh a slight sidebar but an example of like not needing something until i needed it and
like thinking something was probably just like an over-engineered technical solution that was like
you know cool for cool for super autistic nerds but not actually like something that was useful

(36:52):
but then i actually needed to use i was in uh i was in madeira and i was hanging out with some
some bitcoiners who were hacking around on on stuff and uh and i was i was trying to call a bolt
for carl and i like it was like i don't know like early in the morning at that point you know we'd
been hanging out uh doing some doing some eating of steak doing some drinking uh having a good time

(37:14):
talking about subverting the state and for whatever reason like my roaming plan on my phone had just
like uh just completely like died out like i could not get any sort of uh any sort of internet access
at all neither could carla i don't know what happened we just like he said didn't matter yeah
But we were just totally screwed.
So could not access the internet at all.

(37:35):
And we were like, okay, can we connect to the Wi-Fi here?
And now granted, this friend could have just given me the Wi-Fi password.
But he was like, I want to show you how something works.
I'm like, okay, here we go.
But it ended up being really cool.
It was basically, I think they called it a toll gate for the Wi-Fi.

(37:57):
So basically, you can pay for a limited amount of Wi-Fi access.
But how do you pay for the access to the Wi-Fi when you don't have Wi-Fi?
Like you don't have internet.
You're not connected, right?
So how do you do that?
Oh, interesting.
I did it literally by sending him physical or e-cash tokens offline.
Nice.
By scanning an offline QR code, sending e-cash tokens, and then that paid the toll gate.

(38:19):
And I was like, okay, like that's actually pretty darn cool.
And then I was able to, you know, I got the internet and was able to use it.
Granted, you could still argue like that's a bit of an over-engineered solution.
But it's like, but it's also kind of not like, you know, it makes it really, really convenient to be able to add in to public Wi Fi, this capability, that people actually can, you know, can pay for it if they need to, but also just like, it's, it's amazing to see what eCash can do. And I like, that's one of those things where I'm really glad that there's, you know, like, Cashew is getting, is getting funding, right. And that people building on Cashew are getting funding.

(38:54):
because like e-cash to me is like when I see all these z-cash people especially who are
totally organic and not at all just vcs trying to pump their bags totally organic but when I see all
them talk about like oh you know like can't believe bitcoiners don't care about privacy it's like well
what we do we're just building it in layers right and so I think that stuff like e-cash is is super

(39:16):
important and I'm super bullish on it just because like the shit that it can do is kind of like
mind-blowing like the fact that it is like a bear token like it's it's kind of nuts and yes again
trade-offs right trade-offs always acknowledge the trade-offs like you can get rugged by a mint
but like are you going to get rugged by every mint all at once probably not but yeah yeah

(39:37):
yeah i don't know i don't know where it fits into day-to-day life but those those experiments are
really uh they're really wonderful and fun and uh you know i think i think there's a place for that
But I think still kind of the core mission is probably getting people to use base layer money in a way that's not ruggable.

(40:01):
I mean, to me, that just seems like the most important kind of cypherpunk thing we can do.
I'm not totally with.
Who is the.
Unchained Capital guy, Parker Lewis, who thinks that there's a distraction.
necessarily. But I don't know if it's the most important thing, you know, now that it already

(40:26):
exists in a way that you can communicate. Like, I think really, when you look at the problems of
the world, like, for me, I would prioritize, you know, fixing the money, monetary system,
and like weeding out corruption and debasement by because we could we could force, you know,
conversion to Bitcoin. Like we have forced Bitcoin upon the world and made people

(40:48):
adopt it and change the laws around it and forced it into, you know, treasuries and retirement funds
and businesses. And, um, yeah, we should continue to, that's like the real silent revolution.
And like the, like on the, the, the flip side, like the things that, you know,
cash app and square have been doing are very very cool um you know getting forcing merchant

(41:13):
adoption i wish they were a little more forceful about it it'd be cool you know it should be
default on that would be really nice yeah just just just push it on for everyone just push it
on it's the extra qr code if you're gonna push fucking tips on me everywhere i go you know what
I mean like we had a self car wash like at least but yeah allow me to pay in Bitcoin everywhere Um no but that yeah that like leaps and bounds uh really leading by example i think it took a really long time i not sure why it took so long

(41:45):
but it's finally here i'm grateful for it um i think people need touch points like i've always
said this it takes two or three touch points to be able to understand like emergent technology and
to see the need for it.
And like you had one with the,
with the toll bridge,
right.
For e-cash probably plus a couple other ones where you're like,

(42:07):
okay,
this is an important,
like viable technology that I need.
For Bitcoin,
it's no different.
And when you dig into it,
it's endlessly complicated.
So how do you provide people with those simple touch points?
Yeah,
I think that's one of them.
I think probably seeing it in the news every day and thinking they could get
rich from it is probably the biggest, like kind of bright neon sign about it.

(42:32):
But like practical tactile experience with it through, through,
through devices on payment terminals will probably be the second,
like the first time someone receives it, you know,
that's kind of a life-changing moment. If they're smart, you know,
if they're, if they're open-minded, if they're not,
they won't recognize the opportunity.

(42:53):
It is like a, I mean, at least for me, like the first time I,
I got Bitcoin for doing something like not just me buying Bitcoin on a,
on an exchange, but like getting Bitcoin in return for doing something.
I was like, Oh shit, this is so much better. Like this is so much,
like this is way better than buying it. Like buying Bitcoin is great.

(43:13):
Earning Bitcoin is incredible. And like when you, when you do like,
and when you see that and it's like, Oh, I provided my, my,
my time and energy did work for this. And now I have Bitcoin like that.
you feel like you are, I mean, you are, you're living in the future because it's not evenly
distributed yet to everyone. And like anybody who is able right now to do any sort of work.

(43:34):
And there are, man, like the gig economy is not such a bad thing. If you're getting paid in Bitcoin
for the gigs you're doing, like if you're getting paid in fiat, maybe not ideal, but if you're
getting paid in Bitcoin, like you right now, like if you're a pleb stacking right now, I just saw,
you know, we're, we just, we just kissed, uh, into the 87s right now. And I don't love to talk
about price but we we just did yeah seven eight one six at the time of uh recording this which is

(43:59):
yeah let's do it do it thursday november 20th you know i'll smash i'll smash by a little bit too
right now but but if you're listening to this right now and it's like oh bitcoin's dipping
it's like you know what you have a chance right now to accumulate bitcoin that you like five years
from now it's going to be worth more in fiat dollars than it is today granted if you're

(44:21):
denominating it in fiat dollars and you're not thinking of it as your piece of the whole 21
million pie it's uh you know that there's a little mentality shift that's required there but for now
like we do measure it in fiat right whichever fiat you happen to use all right i just i just i just
bought some sats boom it's double checking that i had any fiat left i do that's my biggest problem

(44:44):
you know what you can buy. Yeah. That's my biggest problem. But you know, like one of the reasons
it's awesome to earn Bitcoin is because you don't think about it from a cost basis perspective.
You're not like, oh, I bought that Bitcoin for a hundred K or whatever. And now it's, you know,
now it's quote worth 90 K. It's like, no, no, I earned that Bitcoin. Here's how much Bitcoin I

(45:04):
earned for the amount of work that I provided. Like it's a completely different mentality shift
there. And I think that it's, it's very valuable for people to experience that it's, it's hard
pricing things in Bitcoin. I initially tried pricing a podcast sponsorships in Bitcoin and,
and the difficulty was most sponsors were like, well, like that's, that's cool and everything,

(45:25):
Walker, but like our accounting department can't really work with that. Can you like,
can you just price it in dollars for us? But you know, that, that's a, that's an interesting thing
as well. Cause then it's like, okay, if you're pricing a service you provide in Bitcoin,
that service should get cheaper over time unless the service you're providing becomes more valuable
over time as well so it's kind of an interesting incentive to create more value for whatever

(45:47):
service you're providing than the value of of bitcoin that is you know that is appreciated at
that same time it's like it's a real mind fuck honestly like it's a real mind fuck i don't know
if you're setting me up for softball here but this is this was the whole premise of why we created
rocks them. I actually wasn't even. But yeah, that's a perfect transition.
This is actually the whole premise of why we built the exchange in a media company is because

(46:12):
people who are already on a Bitcoin standard, whatever that means to you, even just generally,
like you have a decent amount of Bitcoin, maybe you're really invested in its success and future.
they don't think about risk management correctly.
Most of the people that I know, people, group chat, blow me up right now about all the opportunity on the Bitcoin treasuries market.

(46:37):
Like, there is no opportunity there that's correctly priced if it's not in Bitcoin terms.
Like, if it's in fiat terms, you're not accounting for the hurdle rate that is the opportunity cost of just holding Bitcoin,
which means you're making a tremendous error
in all of your trading
and your hurdle rate is actually much higher

(46:59):
than you could have ever conceived of
if you're trading over a long time
especially if you're trading in short time
because the short term volatility of Bitcoin is very high
so when we thought about this exchange
it's like, okay, we need a place
where people can buy and sell oil contracts, gold

(47:20):
first of all, do something with their Bitcoin.
Like if you acknowledge that, okay, there is a way to
to analyze risk on Bitcoin terms.
So there are ways to outperform Bitcoin.
We know people do this.
We know people try to do this.
It's not for everybody.
Not recommending people do this,

(47:41):
but there's an appetite to do it for sure.
There's people that want higher returns than that.
They want to put all their capital use,
especially like very wealthy people and also people who don't think they have enough Bitcoin.
Very, very small holders. They want to catch up. Okay, so how do they do it? Well, if they're
going to do it on the stock market, it's going to be a real pain in the ass to mark the price

(48:04):
to Bitcoin's price every day because everything's denominated in dollars or like the fiat currency
of your choice, which is de-basic. So if you denominate it in Bitcoin, you can at least
price the risk appropriately and you can make intelligent trades. And I think that's a good
and useful service for people because we're not, they're not all, you know, let's just hodl forever

(48:26):
and never spend. That's like far from the reality. Like the truth is we're a lot closer to like a
Weimar Germany. Like the end is nigh. Everybody's trading and gambling, you know, all day and night
long to try to get ahead. Okay. If they can't be, you know, convinced not to do stupid things like
that, like how do we at least give them, you know, tools to do it, um, in a way where they're

(48:50):
seeing clearly. Um, and that, that, that comes from, I think, pressing things in Bitcoin.
And also, uh, you know, at the end, I think, I think people will trade for that way for a little
a while and what it'll do is help them realize they're not good traders hopefully if they're
like self-aware you know what i mean like i think i was telling you before the show like i'm a big

(49:12):
allen markets user i always like to put like a hundred dollars on allen markets a thousand bucks
something like that trade it for a few months uh just to acknowledge how bad of a trader i am
you know what i mean like you very i do the exact i do the exact same thing like in in like my
Robinhood app, like with a, I'm not talking with like a lot of money, right? Because my money is,

(49:37):
you know, my money is, well, Bitcoin is my money. But I'll mess around for like a little while.
And like, but again, it's denominated in fiat. And I know that, right? And so I always come back
to like, was I able to actually convert this into more Bitcoin than what I started with? And
a couple of times, the answer has been yes. And it's like, great. But I also had to like

(49:58):
wasted a bunch of time doing that trading. I also had to, you know, pay capital gains in this
because I'm using a centralized, you know, exchange, even if I wasn't using a centralized
one, though, I would totally pay the capital gains on it. Just to be clear there, to be very clear
for anyone who's an IRS agent listening. But like, most of the time, I fucking don't outperform

(50:19):
Bitcoin, like in getting more dollars doesn't that doesn't fucking matter. I don't want more
I want more Bitcoin, but I'm not a great trader.
A couple of times I've made like the good trades I've made have been buying like Bitcoin
miners when they were really cheap and then waiting a long time and they go up a lot.
It's not me like trading back and forth all the time.

(50:40):
It's like literally just buying and holding.
But it's a good reminder that I'm not a very good trader.
And I might be even an okay trader in dollar terms, but I'm a bad trader in Bitcoin.
terms. And I think that's, that's like what it comes down to, right? It's like, if you're measuring
your ability in dollars, you're necessarily mispricing that ability. You know what I mean?

(51:03):
Yeah. Like the, the only trades that I've made that are good have been long-term like year plus.
And they've been just early opportunities. And yeah, like some of them have been treasury
companies, miners last cycle, but it's not, it's nothing I would bet the house on. You know, it's,

(51:25):
it's stuff that I'll kind of assess, like how much would I be comfortable completely losing on this?
And that's, that's the max that I'll put in. And it's always, you know, even if it grows at the
start, it's no more than five, 10% of the whole portfolio ever goes into something other than
Bitcoin. And normally, like if you just pick a random day, I don't have exposure to anything

(51:48):
except for it. Because, yeah, I found that of all the, you know, couple of years that I've been
using like whatever Robinhood or Ellen Markets making those trades.
There's very few of them where I wound up with more Bitcoin at the end for those small high

(52:10):
activity where I'm just like, no, I'm just going to let my emotions, my instincts
scare me and I'm going to try to make analysis. And then you give up on your thesis
of course and ruin the whole plan and do something else. No, the only things that have worked
out for me are buying and just not selling
for years for a long period of time. And then

(52:30):
just being very, very early with MetaPlanet
in particular. But I'm not even sure that the treasuries are a good play anymore.
It was just, I acknowledge that was very high risk thing to do.
But the other thing you learn from like using those services and trading,
and I think people will learn it from Roxxon from our exchange is that,
yeah, sure. You can outperform Bitcoin, but the risk is tremendous.

(52:54):
Like the leverage you're going to take on to try to do it is going to wipe you
out more times than not. Yeah.
So I appreciate you coming with that perspective because like, yeah,
like this is something you're, you know, you're a part of Roxham. I'm also for anyone who's been
paying attention. Like I've been streaming on Roxham as well on the media side. We can maybe

(53:15):
talk about that as well. Cause I think it is an interesting approach to getting Bitcoin out in
front of more people in sort of a not so in your face way in terms of like your long-term strategy
there. But on the exchange side, like, I mean, you're literally saying like, look, yeah, you can
do this and we make this available, but like odds are it's not going to go well. And like, you should
just stack spot Bitcoin. Like that's the thing like for, for pretty much like for pretty much

(53:40):
everyone, especially if you're just starting out, I think that that's like, that's why so many people
get sucked into shit coins is because an American hodl talks about this, you know, people wanted to
like teleport to be an OG, you know, and you think you just make that one, find that one shit coin
that's going to thousand X and like, and then you get to be an OG, right. And you'll totally convert
it all into Bitcoin once that hits

(54:01):
and not just be a DJ.
It's hard.
You're not going to teleport to the LG either.
Most of my friends that
we started pretty much
around the same time period buying
MetaPlanet and most
of them round tripped it completely.
They didn't sell.
They're

(54:21):
still up but it's like they
missed out on
30x
opportunities
because you're just, like the market plays psychological games with you
and you're not special.
You're not immune to them.
You're not immune to, you know,
you're not going to be able to be fearful when others are greedy.

(54:43):
You're going to be greedy.
This is hard.
That's the one, like, and that's exactly how I am with everything
except for Bitcoin, which is,
and maybe that's just getting to a point in my Bitcoin journey
where I've separated it so much from everything else
that I can actually be greedy when others are fearful.
Like right now I am super greedy.

(55:04):
Like I'm trying to figure out
how to be able to stack more sats.
And I know that we might go lower.
We might kiss 58K.
I have no fucking idea.
58K is an incredible meme.
I think that they've got some sort of 58K cabal
that they're running.
They're clearly manipulating the price,
the 58K memers.
But if Bitcoin does go lower,
like, okay, I'm going to do whatever I can

(55:24):
to still acquire more.
Like that, I am very greedy right now
because everyone is freaking out
so much. And you know what I mean? Like when I, when I see people coming out of the woodwork,
the gold bugs, the fiat economists, and they're just dunking so hard on Bitcoin right now,
they're gleeful. That's when I'm like, okay, this, this is the, this is the sign I was looking
for. I was buying a DCA every hour of every day with like a, you know, a small amount.

(55:48):
Cause I just spread it out as much as I can. Yeah. But then like when these times hit, I'm like,
I need to find out how to either earn more Bitcoin or acquire more fiat to buy more Bitcoin. But
I need to do hopefully both. I'm thinking, yeah, that's,
that's the correct way to think about it. You got to increase your,
decrease your expenditure and increase your cash inflows.

(56:11):
I think I thought we were going to either hit 140 or,
or don't to 70. So, you know, one of those two things,
hopefully will be true. I think we're going to go to 70, probably lower,
probably 58. That would be awesome.
That would be a second lease on lice. That's literally on,
on life that's really a second that's an opportunity that like we don't even deserve

(56:34):
as a culture but oh my god we're gonna get it again you know just multiplying your wealth
every year it's crazy like if that does happen like it's gonna be painful like undoubtedly it's
gonna be painful the vibes will be super terrible but that is gonna be if that does happen that is
an insane opportunity that we that we don't deserve you're right if if bitcoiners are doing

(56:58):
what they say they're doing, which is holding and not selling, is it really that painful
for it to go down?
It doesn't affect me because I don't sell.
I have a stack that I just never have sold.
I just don't sell it.
It just only goes up.
And if you're denominating in Bitcoin terms, you're up.
If you're denominating in fiat terms, if you can't stomach that number going down, yeah,

(57:22):
you're going to have a rough bear market.
The reality is most of the time we're in a bear market.
It's like very few and far between where we're going parabolically upward on fiat terms.
But people need to remember the principle here.
Like we're denominating in Bitcoin.
If that number is going up, you're good.
I promise you, you know, 20 years from now, that's the only number that matters.

(57:44):
It's the only number that matters now.
The rest of the world just hasn't caught up yet.
If you have none, zero exposure, that's just the wrong answer.
You just don't own anything.
You have a debasing monopoly money from the government.
you know what I mean?
You need real,
you need hard assets.

(58:05):
Yeah,
it's,
it is a funny thing.
I think that people were like,
and I'm speaking about myself here too.
Like I'm not immune to like,
obviously I have all the same human emotions when I watch Bitcoin's price
that everyone else does because we are like,
the psychology is pretty universal there.
And it's,
it is,
you always have like,

(58:26):
when you see Bitcoin dipping,
it's always like, oh, well, I could have bought, I could have bought more sats for my dollars if I
would have just waited and timed it perfectly at the bottom. But it's like, you just never are
going to time it perfectly. Like very few people ever time anything perfectly. And unless you're
willing to like, even the people that just spend all day staring at charts can't even get it right.
And you don't want to spend all day staring at charts, right? Like that's just not a,

(58:47):
not use a good use of most people's time. And so it's like, you just need to be in the market.
You just need to be in the market. Like that's all you need to do. And then go try to create value
do something with your life. In every case, like a better use of people's time than trying to become
a trader or an analyst, you know, unless you're, you're, you're a savant, you know, and you're
going to build a whole career out of it, like, like a Dylan LeClaire or something, you know,

(59:11):
unless that's your whole bread and butter and personality and job, a better use of everyone's
time would be like, how can I get better cash inflows to buy this stuff rather than trying to
time it? I can't tell you like, how many times has this happened to you where, you know, a friend
or a family member or something, say they understand Bitcoin,
then go on in the next few sentences to say something like,

(59:34):
I'm waiting for, it's going to get down to this price.
Or I'm actually, I'm long like Aave or something right now.
And when that pops, I'm going to sell it all.
I've had people, neighbors take me out to dinner to tell me about their agentic AI tokens,
only to literally lose millions.
And I'm just like, you still don't have Bitcoin?
Like, no.

(59:54):
Like, man, you just can't be helped.
I don't know. It's really, it's just like, have fun staying poor. I don't know what the,
what'd you say?
Realized I was actually muted. I would just say like, it's just like, you know, like one,
this one simple trick, but like really like the one simple trick is just buy and hold Bitcoin.

(01:00:14):
Yeah. Do the hard thing. It doesn't, it doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah. But, but people
want to make it complicated. They, they, they don't want it to be so easy because it turns
everything that we've learned or haven't learned about investing completely on its head. And it's
like, yep, you just have to do that. And that doesn't mean never invest in anything else ever
again. Like you should invest in building businesses and doing things like that. Like

(01:00:35):
that's a good thing to do. You know, like you need that, but you should be more shrewd about them.
Like there's not going to be as much misallocated capital and under a Bitcoin standard, right?
Because people are more careful with how they allocate their capital. And like, but like for
you it's like especially if you're just starting out it's like i beg of you just please ignore the
shit coins like please please for the love of god ignore the shit coins i can't say ignore everything

(01:00:59):
that's not your like what what value are you giving to the world you know why should someone
pay you for your time or you're gonna end up like these treasury companies man where you've got
you forgot to have an underlying business forgot to have a value proposition for people and the
speculative hype bubbles over,

(01:01:20):
you're just left with nothing.
You're left with the new... I saw the new
reframing today. The new reframing
is we didn't sell Bitcoin.
We invested it.
We didn't sell our Bitcoin.
We're investing it. They won't even say
trade. We invested it in greater
opportunities.
Like the dollar? What?
What did you invest it in?

(01:01:41):
You invested in other treasury?
So wait, you're buying other...
You're...
why wouldn't you invest that in your own company?
Why these CEOs are all invested in multiple treasury companies.
It's like,
what,
why not?
Isn't that a conflict of interest?
Focus on the thing that you do focus on that.

(01:02:03):
It's,
it's going to be interesting.
I think with these treasury companies,
there's going to be like micro strategies in its own league.
Obviously they've got almost 650,000 Bitcoin.
They're,
you know,
I've been dumping for a while,
but like they're going to be one of the last,
the last standing.
I think because I think Saylor ultimately like gets it at a more fundamental
level than,
than most people do.
And he's accumulated just such a head start that like nobody's catching that.

(01:02:27):
I don't think anyway,
it could be wrong.
Like,
I don't know,
maybe Tether and,
and Jack Mahler's together,
maybe,
but it doesn't,
doesn't like,
that's a,
that's a long way.
That one's very bizarre to me.
Yeah.
It was really bizarre to me.
I don't know that the Latinx don't understand anything about Bitcoin except
like lending Tether money.
I mean,
I don't,

(01:02:47):
Like, that's just such a weird team to me with no track record.
You know, like Jack has a track record in the space, but that company as a whole doesn't have a track record besides him going on the news and saying, like, we're not a treasury company, actually.
We're going to be a blue chip business doing what?

(01:03:09):
I mean, I think that the companies like that, though, to play devil's advocate, companies like that that are going to actually have an underlying business.
And it's not just, no, we're just a pure play treasury company and we're just going to, you know, we're just going to raise money and buy Bitcoin.
And like, that's it.
Like, I just don't know.
I don't think that that ends up living for too long.

(01:03:32):
I think that if you have an underlying business, you're trying to invest in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and maybe you're acquiring other Bitcoin startups, bringing them under your umbrella, you're trying to provide services, you know, for a Bitcoin standard.
I think that is a lot more legs than these pure play treasury companies like that don't have anything except for, look, we're raising more money to buy more Bitcoin.

(01:03:53):
And, and just like all these other ones, you know, because that's the thing, there's, there's no, there's no differentiating factor there besides how much size can you, can you raise.
And like micro strategy is going to beat you at that.
So like that you know like like what do you have then What the there the like you don have a moat if you not like the big micro strategy has a moat cause they can raise more money all the other peer plays don have a moat and micro strategy actually has an operating business too so that not even fair to say like they they

(01:04:20):
you know yeah it's small compared to their overall bitcoin holdings but it's still like i think
hundreds of millions of dollars a year which is not nothing that's small business it's like a
billion a year yeah it's a big business like so they actually still have an operating business
and they have more size and they have more products well and he's the longest standing
he's one of the longest standing public ceos he has a track record he has deep deep deep

(01:04:44):
relationships um i don't know man it's uh it's interesting i realize how hypocritical it may
sound but like i understand the risk of these things and i i was fully prepared to lose everything
on them it didn't turn out that way i don't know if i would invest in them again um but
it's really hard to recommend that people even look into

(01:05:07):
they're just such a clown show right now
and I feel bad for you know there's a lot of really good people in the space that put everything
into them you know all their whole
reputation their whole career they pivoted completely to
do this stuff
and I don't know I don't know we'll see what happens I've been I found

(01:05:31):
actually check checkmate uh checkmating um to be a pretty good skeptic um if you're looking for
kind of counter signal you know that's not just just kind of a big hype machine or media machine
about these these treasury codes he's a pretty clear thinker um i love checkmate is yeah he

(01:05:53):
breaks things down super well and i think he has a very nice like just a data-driven rationalist
approach to these things which i i always appreciate like he's he's not gonna overhype
you you know like he may be very bullish on on bitcoin but like he's also not gonna even overhype
bitcoin like he's gonna be like oh listen like this is my case he always says like check the
analyst versus check the the hodler you know like he separates the two i wish i could separate those

(01:06:16):
but i don't have the analyst side so it's just like walker yeah it's hard you know it's that's
that's all i got yeah yeah i'm kind of in the same boat you know my analysis is kind of just um
just feels I mean for Bitcoin it's you know what I know about Bitcoin there are people out there
it's interesting like as it grows there are people that come into the space probably you know within

(01:06:39):
the next year within a year short period of time and they're they're they will understand everything
that we do and more everything that we've learned in decades they'll come out of nowhere every cycle
there's new people that that that come up that they're not spooks there's nothing inherently
wrong with them. They're just new. And it'll surprise you. Like, oh, wow, this is really,
we're really kind of becoming a little bit older guard here. And these guys think about things

(01:07:05):
completely differently. That's what happened this year for me, like going to these conferences. I
was like, this has just become a different thing. It's not cypherpunk anymore. It's a big commercial
for the treasury companies and basically enterprise Bitcoin and the collapse of Bitcoin and the
capture of it into traditional finance.

(01:07:25):
It's kind of why I don't go to conferences anymore.
It's just like, I don't know if that's for me.
I'm not too bullish on the suit corners.
I don't find them very interesting.
Yeah, I just personally hate wearing ties.
So that's not for me.
Even if I got a suit jacket on, I'm just not a fan of ties.
I can't bring myself to do it.

(01:07:47):
So I guess I'm out of that crowd.
I mean, have you, uh, or do you still have an interest in throwing kind of, let's say smaller
scale on conferences, like more, more, let's say, uh, either developer focused or just like
niche, you know, niche within a niche type thing.
Yeah.
There's one, I don't really have time right now.

(01:08:07):
There was one I was like asked to help with that.
I ultimately didn't have time for like a Costa Rican retreat, which is really appealing to
me.
I love Costa Rica.
I would like to start putting on my own again, but more for lifestyle stuff.
I think all of us spend way too much time on the computer.

(01:08:28):
And I think people should be practicing, you know, should be exercising and eating well and learning how to source and like harvest their own food and just like a return to grassroots, basically.
yeah I would love to do more jujitsu and yoga
retreats and bring in Bitcoin especially like

(01:08:49):
vendors as a part of that local goods and services
you know like buy a goat and Bitcoin slaughter it together
everybody eats it asados I've had a lot of fun with small events like that
around the world and I think that's really the way forward because it's like real
community and you take away the important part about those small events is like take away all

(01:09:12):
enterprise value um of them um and everybody will be there for the right reasons and have a good
time you'll end up with good people and put some sort of hurdle on getting into it can't just be
the most successful thing you know pub key new york no it's got to be like in the boonies you
got to put it in patagonia you got to put you got to make people travel to get that would be sick

(01:09:35):
I would go to a Bitcoin adjacent retreat in Patagonia.
That would be, I've never been, and I would very much like to.
That sounds great.
This is why beefsteak events are so great too.
Because it's like, yeah, you're getting a bunch of Bitcoiners together,
but it's not about Bitcoin, right?
It's about the beef.
It's about hanging out.

(01:09:56):
It's about eating meat with your hands and having a good time.
and that's like i think we i think we start to see more and more of that kind of events like it's it's
a it's a decentralization of the conference circuit you know because like once you've been
to enough conferences like i still enjoy them because i love hanging out with bitcoiners right
i like that but that's what that's why you go is like to spend time with your fellow bitcoiners in

(01:10:18):
the meat space uh but if you can do that in in a way that's less uh i don't know less less
corporate, it just feels better.
Yeah, I think the
most fun that I ever have at those events,
you know, I've been to dozens of them, it's
like at the side events,
walking around looking for food,
you know, going to the fish market with

(01:10:38):
like NVK and whatever random
developers are around, like just
doing a nice early morning walk
or late night, you know, at a pub somewhere together.
Like, it's the side events
for me. So that just means small,
nimble,
Yeah, I'd love to just throw them myself, not for any sort of financial gain, but just out of, you know, fun, like invite, you know, building a place now where I can host, you know, bring out 100 people and plan a couple days or half day activities for everyone to do and try something new together.

(01:11:14):
and yeah you can have talks and all that or you could put bitcoin into practice and have
self-custody workshops that's something i really like to give self-custody workshops
i always end up giving some to the people around me like friends and neighbors and stuff that have
small businesses because they see that organic interest but i don't know it's like a practical

(01:11:37):
way to give back but it's also it's just the most fun man like we get you can only do so much
arguing online and participating like i'll have achieved my my goals in this space when i don't
have to be on on on um you know twitter anymore or any of these social media apps they're just
they're such a life a life dream well and you know i think maybe uh just being conscious of

(01:12:02):
time here one thing we didn't get a chance to talk about yet that that follows from what you
just said is it feels like we're entering rage quit season not voluntary quit season but rage
rage quit season uh and i don't know how much of that is just a function of bitcoin of like the
overall bearishness is just like seeping into people's subconsciouses and obviously that with

(01:12:25):
the whole core knots thing too that adds a different layer but like if bitcoin were ripping
everyone's faces off right now if number was ripping up that that debate would have a very
different tone to it you know what i mean but because it's also like because price action is
bearish i feel like that just like doubles up on people and i i don't know again it's like so many
people are bearish right now for various reasons whether it be price or because they think bitcoin

(01:12:47):
is captured or bitcoin is doomed i just continue to be super fucking bullish i don't know about you
i should be bullish i realize i been uh taking pessimistic stance this whole podcast Not good I a very optimistic person
Dude, Nats is so funny to me. It's just such a source of joy and entertainment.

(01:13:09):
Oh, God.
This is possibly the worst marketing team to ever exist in Bitcoin or elsewhere.
I'll tell you a story about the Nazis and about Ocean.
Ocean was looking for funding.
They're having all these meetings and they wanted to throw a conference.

(01:13:32):
Kind of like unveiling conference.
It was a really cool idea at the beginning.
This is before a lot of these guys got like a brain damaging virus or something.
Got obsessed with child porn.
But like they were running around like looking for funding.
and I was working at Lightning Ventures at the time,

(01:13:55):
giving funding to Bitcoin companies that were good.
And I got a call with them just like personally.
So I was like, well, you know, I know you want to do an event.
I can help you with that.
And I know you want funding.
I can help you with that.
You know, let's get you talking to Jack, get some funding.

(01:14:15):
So we all like get on this call.
and uh the first thing i wanted to know was like what where have you guys worked in the past
like i don't i don't really know where you came from i know luke that's fine everybody else like
what have you done none of them have any kind of background in running a business and i was like

(01:14:36):
okay for the time of the market i was like you're asking for like like 10x the valuation a company
in your position with no real plan to generate revenue would ask for like you're asking for a
tremendous valuation a tremendous amount of money up front you want you know you're trying to raise
five ten million dollars um okay so what have you guys done in the past no real answer for that

(01:15:02):
what are you going to do with the money that we will give you let's say we we give you a couple
hundred thousand a couple million dollars like what are you going to do with the money what are
plans for the money no answer from anyone on the ocean team had no plan for the millions of dollars
that they raised um you know i doubled down on that just like what you don't have any just tell

(01:15:26):
me some you're gonna hire anyone like what do you what's the plan here like how it is a startup like
what are you gonna do you know what who are how many engineers how many what are you gonna pay
0them? What are you paying yourselves? You know, oh, we need two, 300 K a person per year. We need 1042 01:15:42,1000 --> 01:15:47,500 to hire, you know, these engineers are going to be very, very expensive. Okay. How many do you need?

(01:15:47):
What do you need them for? What's the product there? It was just clear from the get go that it
was just a really poor business idea. And if you just go back to like how we started the conversation,
it's just like this thing would never survive on a free market. The only reason they exist
is because Jack gave them charity.

(01:16:08):
Because it was an interesting idea.
I could support the idea in theory,
but they've lost their way.
This is not about mining anymore.
It's not about decentralizing mining.
It's not about running ocean, you know?
And it's the most disastrous, like, marketing campaign
that I've ever seen for a company.

(01:16:31):
These are like totally irrational, like unhinged, like very deranged people.
Like you just read what they're writing for, you know, for a day or two between any given day.
It's not like a one off. Oh, mechanic had a temporary bout of insanity.
We can forgive him. It happens to the best of us.
Bitcoin is high pressure and it's hard to have a start like a failing startup in the space.

(01:16:52):
I feel for the guy. No problem. No, it's every day.
You show up with that same energy and accusations and calling people out and rambling about child porn every single day.
It's like, okay, this is the severe physical and mental illness on all fronts, the whole team.

(01:17:12):
I don't know how they're going to use up all that money if they haven't already.
So I'd be interested to see what happens.
0I've been asking, no one will answer me, but like, how's revenue?
I did invest in Ocean because I wanted to support the idea.

(01:17:32):
Even though they had no answers for what they're going to do with the money,
I was like, we'll give you some money.
See what happens. 1070 01:17:39,1000 --> 01:17:40,780 I don't know.
I don't know how much money they'd have.
I'd love to know if somebody could tell me if they're making any money.
But, man, it's a, yeah, it's a mess.
But it's very entertaining.

(01:17:52):
At the same time, it's like our own little like it's like our own little Epstein files.
Oh, yeah.
And quite literally now, too, with everybody being like, see, look, Epstein was funding all the core developers.
And it's like.
All right.
Like that it was through like the MIT Media Lab.

(01:18:12):
Right. And he was giving money to the Media Lab, who was then finding like funding some core developers.
It's like, I'm not saying that there's, there's nothing there, but it's like the, the, the
implications that are drawn from that.
It's like, you know, yeah.
I think about Jeremy's job at the time, it was just to go and ask people for money.

(01:18:33):
And of course you're going to, everybody would ask that guy for money.
All of them.
Like, I don't think he was engaged in anything nefarious.
I think he, his job was to go find money for this lab and he did.
Yeah, man.
It's like, boy, I would just love to see.
We've got Bill and Keone, the samurai walled devs,

(01:18:54):
who are now both been sentenced to spend multiple years in prison,
massive fines, all these things.
Meanwhile, the Jeffrey Epstein's bankers at JPMorgan Chase
just paid a slap on the wrist fine for admitting that they were aiding
and abetting, you know, sex trafficking and laundering money for this guy.

(01:19:17):
And, but nobody goes to jail there.
Like that's just a cost of doing business.
You know, that's just a, that's a cost of doing business.
It's like when they, when these big banks launder money for the cartels and they're
like, oh shit, you're right.
0Okay. 1105 01:19:26,1000 --> 01:19:27,760 We'll pay the fine.
And then like, we'll just keep doing it.
Like, it's just, it's so insane to me that you've got this incredible double standard
where you just like, you'll, you'll just forgive a big bank for laundering money for

(01:19:39):
a sex trafficking you know blackmailing yeah probably probably government asset you know
not going to say which government asset guy but then a couple of guys who write open source software
uh you slam them with money transmitter license uh uh you know failure to get a money transmitter
license even though the institution responsible for issuing those licenses said they don't need

(01:20:00):
a license but you're going to get them anyway and you're like fuck man it's fucking ridiculous
Free samurai, pardon samurai.
Those guys do not, they should not be going to jail.
And I truly hope that President Trump does something.
I know.
And I'd like to see the full force of the community come out in the same way they did for Ross, if not more so.
My God.

(01:20:20):
This is even more cut and dry.
There's no malintent here that I can see.
0This is a total, this is just, this is basically a judge and the legal people involved in the legal system not doing their job. 1123 01:20:33,1000 --> 01:20:40,680 Like they did not learn about the subject that they were ruling over at all.

(01:20:41):
You could tell by her, you know, her own her.
I don't know what you call it.
Her own thoughts on the subject, like at the sentencing, the things that she said that he said, the judge.
And it's. I don't know. It's just a shame.
We got to. Yeah, we got to get him out.
I don't know how to do that.
0I think it's always been apparent that there's this huge double standard, though. 1131 01:21:03,1000 --> 01:21:28,360 It's our government's very, very corrupt. That's ultimately why we're here. It's very broken. I don't really the hard part is it's really disheartening when you when you point out like all the different ways that it's broken and manipulated. And I think the way to have a clear goal in mind is to try to fix the money like that is the root cause of most of the corruption and the problems that we face.

(01:21:28):
And if we can get a grasp on that, we can at least swap out fiat currency for Bitcoin wherever possible and get people to ditch. 1133 01:21:36,1000 --> 01:21:49,108 The fiat system will be in a much better place or a place where people have at least retained property rights and freedom of speech and wealth and sovereignty I say amen to that

(01:21:49):
And it's like, that's, that's the beautiful thing is that any one of us can opt in at
any time and start moving.
Jeff Booth has always, I just talked to him earlier this week and whenever I talk to Jeff,
I like, I just leave like buzzing for a few days, you know, being like, okay, I need to
be better.
I need to be better about moving more of my time and attention into this parallel system.
and and doing whatever i can to spend as much time existing in that parallel system and contributing

(01:22:12):
value to it as possible because like that is ultimately i don't think the beast gets fixed
from inside the beast you know what i mean i think the beast has to be has to be drained of blood
by another you know uh another system basically just sucking it dry sucking the monetary energy
sucking the intellectual talent sucking all of the the good parts of this system that are currently

(01:22:33):
encased in this fucking, I don't know, wall of shit, whatever you want to call what the
fiat panopticon is becoming and moving that into this parallel system. And the more time
and energy and attention and economic power that moves into this parallel system, the stronger it
becomes and the less powerful this existing entrenched power structure becomes. And so it's

(01:22:57):
like that's why it's incumbent on each of us to just do what you can, figure out how you can move
a little bit more time and a little bit more attention and a little bit more energy over to
the parallel system every day. And if you can do that, like you are, you are actually, you know,
like it's like the meme, like I'm doing my part, but really like, that's how you do your part.
You do your part just by acting and choosing to act every day and making individual subjective

(01:23:17):
value judgments. And you make the world just like a little bit of a better place by putting more of
your energy into the, the better system, the fairer system. And that's like, it gives me hope.
This is why conferences are great because you get to hang out with a bunch of Bitcoiners and see what they're doing in that lane, right?
See what they're doing to make that parallel system better.

(01:23:39):
But I don't think the system can fix itself from within the system, right?
I think Bitcoin helps externally, not so much internally.
It only helps internally in that it will help accelerate the existing system's demise, I think.
I don't think Bitcoin can save the existing system.
Does that make sense?

(01:24:00):
Yeah, I think both things are true.
There's one, just opt out on all fronts.
Preserve yourself.
Put on your oxygen mask before helping others.
But once you're in a stable place, you have a good stack.
There's a really big question that everyone has to answer for themselves, which is, what do you do with your time?

(01:24:21):
You have all this wealth.
How are you going to live your life?
How are you going to get healthy?
Are you going to promote your own production of your own genes and longevity and inhibit kind of bad things from happening around you and the people around you?
And it's like you have to go out and exemplify that life.

(01:24:41):
And I think part of that means actually interacting with a lot of normal people and leading by example.
like in my immediate
friend group
the people I spend the most physical amount of time
with
they don't have any Bitcoin
they're not
they're increasingly interested

(01:25:02):
in it they have a lot of questions
just by virtue of like being around me
a little bit I don't promote it
in front of them they just like happen to know what's up
and
they see you know what I mean they see like
a level of
kind of like clarity of vision.
They see an inherent skepticism of
they've been repeating the company lines,

(01:25:23):
the government lines for a long time.
They'll see that I don't tolerate it at all.
I'll just be like, no, it's a lie.
Actually, you know what I mean?
Like you're the odd one out
when you're the big partner in your group of like
normal friends. But I think that's important.
I don't think it's a good idea to reject
them completely because they're good people.
They're just not there yet.
and you can only get them there by uh leading by example and succeeding and your success like they

(01:25:50):
will they will try on your ideas and beliefs uh to try to replicate that um so i so i think it's
important to like get out your local community yeah and spend time with those people i i i totally
agree with that like there's a lot of good people out there who just uh you know you need to hand
of an orange pill and eventually they'll take it on their own. But, uh, it's, uh, there's a lot of

(01:26:13):
people that are very much worth saving out there and, you know, can't save everyone, but like,
you're right. Once you, once you get to a certain point, it's like, what are you going to do?
Like, what are you going to do with yourself? You're going to retreat back and, you know,
never talk to anyone ever and just guard yourself away in your citadel. Like, you know, it sounds
kind of nice, but it's also like, we, we, like, we need people like you, you want, you want,

(01:26:33):
you want good people to be with you on this journey through this fucking fourth turning.
you want people to come out the other side with that aren't going to come you know to the gates
of your citadel with pitchforks and be like we got to burn this motherfucker down because there's
this fat cat bitcoiner in there like no no we need that's why you need to get as many people
on board with bitcoin as possible because when things get really dark you don't want them to be

(01:26:54):
like that's the fucking bitcoiner it's all his fault elizabeth warren told me so like you don't
want to get to that place you know what i mean no i think it's going to be the transition's a
little bit hard you're gonna lose some friends over it it happens i think just even the the whole
trump grift of like the last couple years uh definitely got a lot of people that are like oh

(01:27:16):
you're a republic like they just make the assumption you're a republican you're a big trump guy it's
like uh i actually never voted in my life it couldn't be further from the truth so don't know
what you're talking about but they're like everyone at any given time i i would like urge
people to not think in terms of like ultimatums and like non-redemptive paths like everyone is not

(01:27:38):
either good or bad like if you're a bitcoiner everyone's either their actions are net positive
or negative for bitcoin or neutral at any given time it's not forever you know like trump will
not always be good for bitcoin there's some days he does things that are really the antithesis of
what we're going for you know it's the same with uh you know howard ludnick it's the same with um

(01:28:02):
you know, pick your favorite CEO in the space. It's a double-edged sword. It's just like,
we're all humans, we're all fallible. So it's just at any given time. This is also like the
editorial thesis that Rossum as a media company is founded on. It's like everything that happens

(01:28:22):
is, you know, might not all be directly related to Bitcoin, but it's probably good or bad for it
in some way. So rather than red versus blue, that's the lens that we take on things.
Obviously, we want to point out those things that are good for it, but we understand
we're not going to endorse political candidates because they're not always going to be good for

(01:28:43):
it. They're going to do some things that are good and some things that are bad. And we should be
able to talk about and weigh those things, you know, as we go. Amen to that. And I think that's
a that's a perfect note to end on mcshane where do you want to uh where do you want to send people
uh you can send them to roxham.tv yeah watch the stream watch walker on stream it's really good

(01:29:07):
yeah every uh every every tuesday at 1 p.m estm on that roxham stream so yeah come hang out but
dude i'm glad we got a chance to do this it's been long overdue great catching up a bit uh and yeah
I would also just to echo your last message, you know, remember that like, you don't need to get sucked into this red blue political dichotomy wherever you happen to be in the world like there.

(01:29:30):
Everyone wants to force a binary on you.
Everyone.
There's a non binary joke here somewhere.
But yeah, I'll leave it at that.
And I'll just say like, remember that like there is a third path and Bitcoin represents that third path.
And you can meaningfully take steps down that path at any time.
try to do your best not to rage quit.

(01:29:52):
Because when you rage quit, you end up with less Bitcoin.
You don't want that to happen.
So try to stay, you know, stay cheerful, stay optimistic
and spend more time with Bitcoiners whenever you can.
Because generally that makes me more cheerful and optimistic.
And if you can't do that in the meat space,
you should probably just start a Bitcoin podcast
because then you get to do stuff like this.
So it's a win-win there.

(01:30:12):
But dude, great hanging with you.
Thanks to everyone who joined on the Noster live stream.
Appreciate you guys.
See you next time.
Cheers, machine.
catch you later

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Self-Custody, Nostr, & Building the Bitcoin Future | Alex McShane

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Self-Custody, Nostr, & Building the Bitcoin Future | Alex McShane