Can We Design Bitcoin For A Billion People? With Stiven Kerestegian

For over 20 years Stiven Kerestegian has been exploring questions of design, innovation, and disruption, working with some of the world’s biggest brands including Microsoft, LEGO, and recently as Head of Global Innovation at IKEA.

But since discovering Bitcoin in 2017 everything has changed, Stiven has turned his focus towards applying design thinking to this new form of money, and how we might use it to build a more open and resilient financial system for the world.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
How do you design A transition into a Bitcoin world that
doesn't trigger antibodies from the government and from the
central banks? Hello, I am Cody Allingham and
this is the Transformation of Value, a place for asking
questions about freedom, money and creativity.
Today I'm joined by Styvan Kirstjen.
For over 20 years, Styvan has been exploring the questions of

(00:23):
design, innovation and disruption, working with some of
the world's biggest brands including Microsoft, Lego, and
recently as head of Global Innovation at IKEA.
But since discovering Bitcoin in2017, everything has changed.
Styvan has turned his focus to applying design thinking to this
new form of money and how we might use it to build a more

(00:44):
open and resilient financial system for the world.
Stiven, welcome to the show. Thanks, Cody.
That sounds like an amazing mission there that you put
together. Yeah, well, I mean, you're,
you've been working on this world Stiven, you've, you've
been looking at design for, for some of these huge brands.
And I think this, this question that sends a lot of Bitcoin is

(01:07):
down the rabbit hole, so to speak, is what is money.
But there's, there's something that a lot of people don't talk
about, which is the other question of this magnitude,
which is what is design? Given your extensive given your
extensive experience, what does design mean to you, Steven?
Wow, So those are two of the biggest questions that I still

(01:30):
try to answer in my life. And then the what is money one,
I guess is 1 for all Bitcoiners and the one that I've
incredibly, I become passionate about late in my career, late in
my life actually, because of Bitcoin.
But going back to the what is design, I guess that's something
that I, I could at least try to answer from a place of
confidence being, you know, a designer and having worked in

(01:51):
the industry 25 years almost, I'm kind of dating myself.
But design, it could be many definitions, right?
Design is basically applied art.You could describe it that way
is using creativity to do something that has an
application in life or an industry.
You could say design is kind of like the Steve Jobs description

(02:16):
of design where he says design is not just about how things
look, but it's really about how things work.
And I agree with both of those. I would say that design is a
creative process that uses, you know, technology and business in
order to solve problems for people.

(02:36):
And I think the, the part that says for people, it's probably
the most important part of the designer, because as a designer,
I try to be the representer of the person or the user in, in
the, in the participation of designing a solution, right.
So you have the business people that are going to try to, you
know, align with the business results and achieve certain

(02:59):
profit. You have technology people that
are really pushing the envelopesand building things at work.
I love business, I love technology, but as a designer, I
usually try to position myself as the voice of the user.
So representing the person that's gonna be interacting with
whatever solution this is. And, and in doing that, you're,

(03:21):
you're basically have this, you always have this client that you
haven't met, which is the personthat's going to be using this
product, service or experience that you're designing.
And you want to do, do good by them, right?
You want to represent what's important to them.
You want to understand, be really empathetic and
understanding, like what their life is like, what, what are
what's important to them? Why are they even using this

(03:41):
product and then being using creativity in order to to
address that, right, to solve that.
And when it all comes together, when you're able to balance, you
know, the thing and creative usable technology, an
application of technology with some sort of business model that
that creates revenue and it's profitable for the people that

(04:02):
do it and the customers are delighted, then you could
probably say that there was a really well designed product or
service or experience now. Yeah, a good piece of.
Design and this. No, no, that's good.
And so we're talking about sort of people centered design here.
And I mean, going back a step, Imean, I mean, there's this kind

(04:22):
of field of design. I mean, I think it's really
something that emerged after World War 2 as sort of post war,
this idea of building international design languages.
I mean, the classic story of something like the Helvetica
typeface you'll be familiar with.
It's like used everywhere on street signs and things came out
of Switzerland and it was this kind of new way of

(04:43):
communicating. It's about clarity, it's about
communication, about breaking down barriers and bringing
people together. And this has kind of come
together in this global world wenow live in, where maybe people
speak different languages, but in a lot of ways, design as a
universal language, you know, everyone knows, you know, you,
you know, pinch to zoom and these kinds of things that were

(05:05):
found through something like theiPhone, right?
These kind of gestures, these approaches to things.
And you did write on your X Design is about #1 how things
work #2 how things are experienced and then #3 how
things look in that order. Because a lot of people do get
held up, sort of focused on the visual side of design, right?

(05:26):
Yeah, yeah, the visual side is fun, but it's superficial,
right. It's it's aesthetic, it's the
way something looks. Now that that could certainly be
part of the design strategy in communicating subconsciously to
the user how something should begrabbed.
Some, you know, the way, the delicacy or something or which
way to approach it, which ways forward, which ways back.

(05:49):
So people that are not formally trained in design, they, they
mostly experience design or they're point at, when they talk
about design, pointing at something aesthetic or some form
or shape or color or combinationthereof, Right.
And of course, as designers, we have the responsibility to make
a final call, final recommendation on those, on
those on those qualities. But if you study in industrial

(06:14):
design, which is basically a lotof when I, when I went to study
industrial design, a lot of my friends and my family didn't
know what that was. And the way I would describe it,
I would say, well, you know how architects design houses and
buildings and the fashion designers design clothing,
industrial designers kind of design everything else, right?
Like all the products, all the services, combination of all

(06:35):
these things. And then when you study
industrial design, you, you really you, you learn this very
methodical process of how to apply these tools and these
methodologies in order to solve a problem with creativity.
So, so it's a practice. Like it's not an idea thing.
It's not something about, you know, having this sort of skill
that you're born with. It's really like becoming really

(06:57):
good at the skill. And the skill is applying a
process that is a creative process that enables you to
solve problems with technology and business on these other
things. So yeah, design is a language.
And then if you're a big brand, if you want to create like some
sort of, you know, identity, then you can design your own
design language and all of theseattributes and all of these

(07:20):
aesthetic and visual things thatthat kind of compose and create
this universe for you as a brand.
But I was thinking back to the to the beginning.
For me, it's always, it's alwaysabout there's a problem, there's
a user and how do you use creativity and all these other
whatever tools, technology wouldbe in order to solve that
problem. So that's what this.
Yeah. Well, you said to me before that

(07:40):
you that you had the privilege to design mass consumer products
for hundreds of millions of people.
And and certainly your work withIKEA, which is a huge company
all over the world selling, you know, I'm imagining a lot of
people have IKEA furniture and their houses, et cetera.
What did you learn from working with a leading global innovator

(08:02):
like IKEA about what design means at scale?
Yeah, it's the same lessons, right?
Like, you know, whether you're designing something for IKEA,
mission of IKEA is to create a better everyday life for the
many people. And it's kind of like a awkward
translation from Swedish, the many people, but by that they
mean by as many people as to as many people as possible.

(08:22):
So if you think of the socio economic pyramid from the
middle, like pointing down. So tons of data about regular
folk, regular working folk, family, you know, middle class
people that just get up every day and work and they're trying
to build, you know, a little nest egg, a little family for
themselves. What are they worried about?
What are the biggest problems that they have?
And yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of the same no matter where you

(08:45):
go. All parts of the world, people
want the same things, right? People just want more time to do
the things that they love, like hang out with their kids, like,
you know, do their hobbies. They want to simplify their
lives. You know, they want to de
stress. They don't want to be stressed
about money or paying their bills.
You know, they just want simplicity and time.
It's very simple, right? So, so you know, when you're

(09:06):
designing part of IKEA, like youhave to really be designing with
that in mind. Same with, let's say you're
designing a product for Lego. It's really about play and this
expectation that the brand comeswith.
Every time you buy a Lego product, you have this
expectation of discovery and discovery and creativity and
learning through play and construction, building and all
this other stuff. So the bigger the brand, the

(09:30):
bigger the responsibility is on the product that you're
designing and the less margin for error there is, right?
So if you're doing a startup andyou're trying to design or
create something that doesn't exist, it's the first time ever
that this product service experience exists.
You're taking a little bit of risk and you're filling in a lot

(09:53):
of areas that you don't have answers for.
So you can make mistakes. But when you're designing a the
consumer models for Microsoft ina specific category where it's
consuming, where it's, you know,they sold 20 or 30 million last
year and this is the new version, there's no room for
mistake. Like you have to, you have to
get everything right. You have to get the ergonomics
right. You have to get the colors

(10:14):
right. You have to integrate the right
level of technology, whatever itmay be at that, at that stage of
what you're doing. So that's what you, when you're
designing products for large brands, you really rely on the
process. It's the large brands can rely
on individual creativity or skill sets.
They have to relying more on teams and processes and
validation and kind of going through that whole that, that,

(10:36):
that whole journey that that lowers risk and it and, and sort
of ensures that you have a successful product in the
market. I sort of specialize in creating
those teams and building those capabilities.
So it's all really from from creating a systematic irritative
process where you're really understanding the users, you're
up to date with the latest technology, you know what the

(10:58):
competition is doing. You're kind of like, you know,
where the technology's going and, and sort of like fats and
fashion and things are. You sort of combine all things
to launch the right product at the right time with all of these
things balanced. And to do that, it's just a lot
of really hard work. Really, it's just hard.
It's just a lot of hard work anditerations and a lot of people

(11:19):
it's just think it's more creative and fun.
But it's really, yeah, there's creativity involved, but it's a
lot of hard work. Yeah, it's a proof of work.
It's it's fascinating. I'm really keen to understand
your Bitcoin stories, Ivan, because you had this incredible
career working with these these big brands on design, but then
everything changed for you when you discovered Bitcoin.

(11:41):
Tell me about that. How did you find out about
Bitcoin? Yeah, I mean, I stumbled into it
as many people like when you work in the design innovation,
you're always looking at new technologies and you're doing it
so often that it's like, you know, every day you OK, have
some new companies, some new whatever, some new business
model, some, some new gimmicks, some cool new things.
So you're, you're constantly gobbling through these things

(12:02):
and sort of categorizing them inyour brain.
Or you have some tools and you run into technologies and then
you can, OK, this is kind of cool, just kind of interesting.
It has some potential, but you know, you it's hard to tell when
you first take a glance or something if it's just one more
thing, right. So the first time I saw Bitcoin,
like many other people, I said, oh, this is really cool.
You know, it's a pipe dream. It's I don't think it's gonna

(12:23):
work. I forgot about it.
And then in 2017 when all the hoopla on the on the yeah, all
of the, the, what did they call them?
The I see the Icos. Yeah, the ICO boom.
Then of course, in my regular work of, you know, just
innovation and, and being up to date with all the disruptive
technologies, like, OK, this thing is just kind of still
hanging out and, and sort of keeps coming back this whole

(12:45):
crypto space. And then I went back into it.
So this is like summer 17 and I really looked into it.
I read the white paper, I started reading some of the
books and I started, you know, Ijoined Bitcoin Twitter
basically, or Bitcoin X now. And then that really just opened
it up for me. Like, I guess if you're, if
you're a creative person and you're working in innovation,
you're more open minded to new things, but it also you're so

(13:07):
curious that there's so many things to distract you as well.
So that's why that's my excuse for missing Bitcoin on the first
time around. But the second time around, when
I real, I realized what it was, the potential that it had, the
momentum that it had, that it all, it grew out of this kind of
embryonic stage and it's alreadybig enough that it's becoming
more anti fragile. It just started cannibalizing my

(13:27):
brain, man. I, I would bring it up in every
meeting at IKEA in the boardroom, like, hey, what about
Bitcoin like payments? And it started to become after
maybe a couple of years, like a internal joke where OK, Stiven,
how does Bitcoin, how is Bitcoingoing to fix this other problem
that we have? So it was good.
I got, we got some traction, some nice projects where I was

(13:48):
able to kind of drive Bitcoin adoption, if you will, in this
giant global company. But after a couple of years, it
became evident that my appetite was much bigger than whatever
projects or whatever it would come up in the context of the of
the IKEA business. And I didn't need to dedicate
my, I needed to put myself in a position where one, I could

(14:08):
really Dr. innovation and designin the industry, right?
So, so work with the companies that are building the next
generation products, be able to advise and participate in that
somehow. And then two, I guess do like
the Jeff Booth thing. Stop being a hypocrite and like
participate in the system that you really believe in, like exit

(14:30):
the Fiat system. You know, you wake up every
morning, you contribute to this large global company, you're
contributing to that system, right?
If you really believe in this system and you've convinced
yourself and you've done the duediligence and you're several
years in, then you start to get this pressure.
It's like, all right, well, I guess you can just like be a
participant on the side of saving Bitcoin or do you really

(14:51):
want to, you know, impact the industry and be, have, have some
sort of, yeah, be an active participant in this, in this
transformation as revolution. So then when I when, when I woke
up too many days in a row havingthat age is when I, I, it became
pretty evident that I had to walk away from what another for

(15:11):
two more designers is a dream job, right?
To, to start up as a designer, end up being head of global
innovation at large organizations.
It's not a it's not a very common thing for, you know, for
a design profile. So it was a difficult decision
to walk away from, yeah, basically a situation
financially and work that you can see it all the way to you're

(15:34):
retired and it's pretty stable and it's guaranteed to walk away
from that to kind of work full time in Bitcoin.
But it's been a year and a half,I haven't looked back.
So pretty excited too. I can't even imagine going back
to the Fiat world anymore. So.
Yeah, yeah. And that's incredible.
And I hope you don't mind me mentioning, but I mean you also
sort of relocated your life, you.

(15:56):
Yeah, yeah. No, we're fully in, Fully in.
No. So we're yeah.
I was leaving in Scandinavia forthe last little bit over a
decade working at these large companies, Lego, IKEA, that's
where their headquarters are. But when they decided to go full
time, Bitcoin also, I'm originally from Latin America,
born in Chile. So the plan was always to come
back to Latin America, but we decided to do a little bit of a

(16:18):
detour and really kind of spend some time in El Salvador to
really understand instead of just reading about it or you
know, like just to really experience what type of
transformation and what are, where are the where are the
wedge points where this technology really begins to
transform society? And specifically from the Latin

(16:41):
American perspective, where in El Salvador you have a very
exaggerated situation where you have a country that a couple of
years ago was really underdeveloped and really had
some major structural issues andstill does.
And the just dramatic transformation that Bitcoin and
a few other aspects. It's not just Bitcoin, but just
to learn from that and to reallysee how it's like from the

(17:02):
grassroot perspective. People learn about it.
And then from the top down, the banks and the large
organizations. And this is really do like a
learning stuff for us before we,we relocate a little bit further
down South in, in the Patagonia and Chile.
And and that's for that's, that's what will be the
epicenter of all my of all our Bitcoin work.
So we'll be focusing on work in Latin America and South America.

(17:24):
That's incredible. So you're doing in a sense
people centered design here where you're doing research on
the ground. I mean, what have you learned
about Bitcoin while you've been in El Salvador?
Oh man, so much, so much. There's a lot of like there's a
huge gap still, right? Like, so you come to El

(17:46):
Salvador, you go to Osanto, you go to Bitcoin beach and you
know, there's a couple 100 vendors that are accepting
Bitcoin and there's all this interesting whatever expats and
people from overseas, from Europe and the US that are
hanging around and they're having all these very
sophisticated conversations. But if you just grab a regular
cab from the airport, not one ofthe Bitcoin caps and, and, and

(18:07):
you know, they've heard about Bitcoin, they've never used it,
but I still orange bill, my taxidriver every time I come home
from the airport. So there's this huge gap, right?
Like there's a country where people, the all the students
from 3rd grade up are being educated, are getting this
financial literacy education, They're learning about AI,
they're learning about Bitcoin. So you have this wave of really

(18:27):
well, which is that's going to be amazing to see when these
kids get old and the whole wave of kids that are being, you
know, taught these skills so early on.
So you have that, which is amazing, and then you have the
Bitcoin, the people that are involved in the Bitcoin space.
But then you have a lot of people sort of stuck in the
middle that are, you know, they haven't had a lot of experiences

(18:48):
where they trust the government and good things happen or
change, provide something positive.
So they're very tentative, right?
But slowly but surely, just in the years I've been here several
months, you see the change, man,You see the advancement.
It's just that you can't ignore it.
Like just infrastructure, like everything, like every bridge is

(19:09):
being fixed. Like the, it's just cleaner in
the street. The just the advancements in the
stuff that they're doing downtown.
There's just energy here, man. Like when you just talk to
people, they, they have this hope, they smile, they feel
enthusiastic about whatever it is that they do.

(19:30):
So that's pretty rare, you know,living in Scandinavia.
So society that's known as beingvery happy, but people very
close and, and, and, and, and it's a very kind of lonely kind
of society. A little bit of, you know,
people are not very social. Everything's structured and

(19:50):
organized here. There's very few things that are
structured and organized that work well, but the the attitude
is off the charts positive because people see the
trajectory of the change. So there's a lot there.
There's a lot. There's a lot to go.
When you think about like, OK, acountry makes Bitcoin legal
tender or they open their arms to Bitcoin, it's still, it'll

(20:13):
take decades for that to penetrate society, right?
So, so I think it's a great pilot to learn of what works.
And I think an important job to do is.
To identify what works here and then spread it, right?
Take it to some of the other countries in Latin America.
And we're involved in some of those activities with Bitcoin
Beach and some of the other circular economies that are that

(20:34):
are coming from here. So yeah, a lot, a lot to learn.
It's all new. It's exciting, man.
It feels exciting because it's something unique.
It's not something that is top down from a marketing campaign
or some, it's just kind of like this very real thing.
Yeah. Well, pulling on that thread,
something I wanted to ask you about.

(20:54):
As we mentioned before, you know, my background is design as
well and I respect and understand these processes, but
there's also this kind of interesting aspect of emergent
systems. And you know, we're looking at a
technology that some aspects of a kind of unchangeable, some
aspects are locked in other layers and other aspects can be

(21:17):
designed for and improved and changed.
And then there's also this market out there that's kind of
pushing and pulling and it's, it's a global market.
And we might think we have the answer, but actually, you know,
it's, it goes somewhere else andthere's this interesting
dynamic, which is quite different to designing products
for a company top down, as you say.
And so I wonder if you've reflected on this, this way like

(21:39):
open source projects and design can kind of come together in an
emergent way that also has maybeaspects of design thinking
involved. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a
super interesting topic because one of the things or the realms
for designer innovation that I became known for was, you know,
this, this, this aspect of open innovation.

(22:01):
So open innovation became kind of a hot topic, you know, maybe
5-8 years ago. And my job at Lego was had was
senior manager of open innovation, really establishing
that practice. What does it mean?
What it, what is the practice ofopen innovation?
How does it work? And what is the difference
between open innovation and, andtraditional innovation?
And it's interesting because it really aligns with the question
that you had around Bitcoin. So traditional innovation in a

(22:24):
corporate sense is you hire a team of engineers, designers or
creative people innovating innovation team in order to
create the future products and services, right?
Or to solve whatever business problems and then that team is
responsible for it and the innovation comes from that team.
Open innovation is when that team kind of creates methods,
tools, platforms, ways for otherpeople to also participate in

(22:45):
the innovation process. And the other people can be
other people in the company, right?
Like regular executives or otherpeople that are not tasked with
innovation or design. Or it could actually be the
customers or it could be industry, it could be
competitors, right? So when it comes to like.
So one of the the most successful projects at different
Lego was this platform called Lego Ideas, which is a
crowdsourcing platform where Lego basically flipped the model

(23:08):
of like, we design all the cool Lego sets and you buy them to
tell us what Lego sets we shoulddo.
You design them and we'll make them for you.
And so basically the fans becomethe designers of the Lego sets
and then there's a financial incentive and all this other
stuff, right? So when you so I learned a lot

(23:29):
about open innovation on open innovation.
The magic trick to open innovation is that it's not that
instead of having the experts design it, having the crowd
design, it's not instead of is yes, and is together with right.
So it's about having the expertsthat are really deep, for
example, in a technical space, for example, like the Bitcoin
core developers, they're the experts in the code, right?

(23:50):
But designing the, the, the design process and the almost
having like a transitional design process where in the
process you invite the differentstakeholders to participate,
therefore becoming part of the design process.
So doing an open innovation approach.
And I really think that that's the that's what Bitcoin is,

(24:11):
right? So Bitcoin is open source
software. Yeah, it required 1 lone genius
to kind of put it all together and say, like this is the thing,
right? But then after that, it really
requires this collective effort and very complex in order to
improve or nudge or tweak or build on top of or, you know,

(24:36):
evolve in time. So it's probably the most
important open innovation project in existence today
behind the other kind of open source projects that are that
are replaced. And not only is it the biggest,
it's fuck, it's the most important one, right?
Because it's about the foundational layer of value.

(24:57):
So yeah, man, I, I guess I wouldsay that there is a role for the
design process, the open innovation process, the
collective design process to play in the Bitcoin protocol.
And I hope that someday that becomes part of the conversation
a little bit, especially with the recent topics that are going
on with the opera turns and all this other stuff like who who,
who owns The Who owns The Who? Where is the center of

(25:20):
expertise, right? Is it Yeah.
Or is it the community? Or is it everybody right?
If I can pitch maybe a little bit more complexity to that
question. So obviously you have the
protocol and, and the kind of these these these base open
source layers. But of course, there's an
ideological component, which is that everything built upon that

(25:42):
should be open source and, and, you know, private and, and all
of these kind of attributes thatmaybe we, we think are
important. And that leads to this kind of
push and pull where businesses building at higher layers are
also expected to be open source.And, and they're sort of there's
like a social narrative. And that reality though, that we

(26:03):
see is that a lot of people are using exchanges, they're using
things that are, you know, basically traditional businesses
built on top of Bitcoin. And, and maybe we often we
think, oh, you know, it's not the right way.
You should self custody all of this stuff, right?
And there's this kind of push and pull between the convenience
for someone who maybe doesn't care about the ideological
aspects. And then this kind of I the

(26:23):
bigger idea that actually birthed the whole thing.
So sorry, a little bit of complexity there, but how would
you unpack unpack those ideas? It's just that's the way life
is, right? Like you, you, you, if I were to
design a product for me and I ama single super sophisticated
designer living in a New York lofty studio and I might, you

(26:45):
know, have some rendering, some visionary or idea of how I'm
using or interacting with this product, right?
But the reality of it is, is that it's probably, you know, a
couple with some kid that's crying and the food is there
from last night and it's all it's, it doesn't look the way
that you ideally visualize in your head, right?
So that happens all the time. It's like you're not designing

(27:06):
products for you or for this perfect persona that you're
visually, you're designing products for real people that
have real needs and have real priorities and considerations
and worry and things that they worry about and, and, and, and
just lives, right? They have their lives.
So I think that that just is amplified in the Bitcoin space
where you have the Bitcoin Maxisand a lot of the code
development people that have been here for a long time, they

(27:26):
have this super strong ideas about Bitcoin the movement,
right? Or Bitcoin the cultural movement
or Bitcoin the ideology, right? And I agree with a lot of those
things. I mean, I align myself with a
lot of those thoughts, just likeI align myself with having this

(27:47):
perfect studio kitchen or whatever that everything's clean
and neat and simple. But that's not the reality of my
life, right? That's not the reality of my
life. The reality, the reality of most
people's lives is that all if you, if you, if you take the
time to explain to them what sole sovereignty is, they'll
they'll agree with it and they want it.

(28:07):
And that's the last time they'llthink about it until they see
you again and you bring the subject, that subject back to
them again. Like, like these things that we
have become. Maxis are super passionate about
99.99 percent of people don't care about and they will never
care about they will. It's not like, let me just

(28:28):
explain it to them a little harder and then they'll develop
the sensitivity to these don't they're never going to care
about it. And it doesn't make them stupid
or dumb or anything. They're just people.
They're they're getting up in the morning, they're feeding
their kids, they're running off to school and to work.
They're trying to get some exercise done.
They're trying to learn something.
They're trying to all their lives, they don't have time or

(28:48):
energy in their lives to care about these things.
So we need to design products for those people cuz if now
we're just designing products for what 10,000 people, 10,000
bitcoiners, how many of us are there that really feel this way?
So I don't believe that we should, I mean, there should be
products that are super aligned with these values that are

(29:09):
completely open source, that are, you know, privacy oriented,
all these things. And there will be other products
that are solving other problems for other people that don't care
about that. And it just depends who you're,
what market you're designing forand what person you're designing
for. And we should just get away from
this two separate things. I really align with this thing.
It's like there's Bitcoin the tool and then there's Bitcoin
the ideology and there's you could do either one.

(29:32):
You don't have to do both. You could do just just the tool.
Yeah, I think that's that's an interesting question for me.
I have reflected on this because, you know, I mean,
obviously both of us are a little bit X in the corner
there. I got my note, you know, we got
all the the gear and the stuff and I would like.
It it's geeky. It's cool.
I mean, I love it, yeah. But I know.

(29:52):
Like it, most people don't care about it.
They they actually think it's geeky and dumb and what's the
point? Right?
Like, yeah. And I mean, not to, you know,
drag it out, but like on that note, I guess I'm really
interested in in this, this IKEAexperience that you've had,
right? You know, designing for what's

(30:13):
almost a billion people potentially in the market for
this furniture and these these items.
And, you know, you've got peoplefrom all corners of the world.
I have an IKEA here in Japan. You know, it's all over the
world, different languages, different people.
And one of the challenges is if you, as you say, if you, if you
have this kind of ideology aboutthe way it needs to be and it's

(30:33):
locked in, it actually becomes exclusionary.
And it actually goes against maybe some of the ideas of
design about, you know, bringingit to what bring meeting people
where they're at, you know, trying to understand what their
pain point is. What, what is the challenge that
we're trying to solve for? Because, yeah, in some places,
maybe it's an inflation question.
We don't like seeing our value decrease, but for other people,

(30:56):
maybe that they've got other priorities that are trying to
just put food on the table everyday.
Maybe they can't even use traditional payment systems.
They're in a country that doesn't have Visa credit card
systems or whatever. There's, there's all these
different use cases, right? And I guess zooming out, I mean,
how do, how do we approach this?I mean, do we need, is this
where, is this where companies come in and they sort of they

(31:18):
find the problems that they can solve and it is an incentive for
them to solve that problem? Or is this something that
happens at an open source level?I mean what are what are your
thoughts on that? It comes full circle to where we
began the conversation, right? Applying the design process.
That's what the design process was designed for.
And that's literally what it is.It literally is the process of
understanding what problem people have, an industry, a

(31:41):
society, whatever customers have, and then designing the
most appropriate solution so that they love it and they pay
you for it, right? So, so again, if we're saying
we're doing that, but only underthe, the, the vision of this
ideology, then you're not doing that right?
Because then then you're filtering everything.
You're assuming that they have the same whatever hierarchy of

(32:05):
whatever of thought or priorities that they have.
So again, like Bitcoin is a tremendously powerful tool.
It, it's tremendously powerful. We're, we're just beginning to
understand all the different things that we can do with it.
But just with the things that wejust that we already know we can
do with it are tremendous. I mean, all the stuff you can do
with energy, the stuff that you can do on, on sovereignty,

(32:26):
savings, banking, payments, I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing,
right? It's not enough.
You have to wrap it in a really beautiful, simple, usable, you
know, functional product and youhave to communicate that product
in a very simple way that reallyaligns with whatever problem or

(32:48):
whatever incentive some person has.
So design, that's what design does is OK.
Well, what are what are we trying to solve?
We're trying to, you know, save people time or save people money
or a combination of both or makepayments easier or whatever it
is. Communicate that in the language
and from the perspective of how those people are experiencing
that problem, right. So those people will never use

(33:09):
some of the words that many Bitcoiners are founders used to
kind of explain their value proposition to the world.
Oh, we're trying to build it. But also people like, I don't
even know what those words mean.So I think it's about that.
It's about sensitizing the founders and the the people
building in Bitcoin with these proven methodologies, with these
processes, which are just reallyunderstanding the customer, you

(33:30):
know, applying creativity and technology on the season in
order to design better products.So the products are not going to
compete. They're not going to out compete
the status quo just because Bitcoin is better technology.
They have to also have equally or better UX experience,
communication, you know, productmarket fit all of these things
right. So, you know, you have, you have

(33:53):
professionals that know how to do that and you've got to bring
those professionals to Bitcoin. Yeah.
Well, it's interesting. I mean, one observation I've
made certainly from a creative lens is that Bitcoin is heavily,
it's an engineering, it's a geeky kind of a thing.
There's a lot of tech and I mean, it's gotten a lot better
over over the last few years, but even, you know, some of the
stuff that we do, I would consider maybe more

(34:14):
infrastructure stuff, running nodes and running mining
equipment. You know, there's a there's a
little bit of geeky kind of technical, not quite a bit of
engineering knowledge needed to kind of get into that world.
But I just want to come back at the beginning, I mentioned like
the Helvetica, there's this font, this typeface that came
out of Switzerland. Everyone's maybe familiar with
it on it's what you see on Hwy. signs and it's a little bit

(34:37):
apocryphal, but sort of the story of that is that replaced a
lot of the Gothic script and thesort of big fat, you know,
writing they used to have in Germany and Switzerland back
before the war. And it became this very clear
universal kind of language. And I wonder whether just
zooming out a little bit, the, the real big piece here with
asking this question about moneyand money is in intrinsically

(35:00):
linked with the state and the government.
And it's kind of bigger questionof, of value.
And so we're in this interestingplace where there is necessarily
though to understand Bitcoin, there is a, an ideological
project there, which is, well, what is the role of the
government and the state and ourmoney?
And a kind of in, in the same way that Helvetica asked the

(35:20):
question of all, you know, what,what was the role of, of
Germany, you know, during the war?
And what was this role of like miscommunication basically in
Europe that led to this whole movement of what we see now
basically with Europe as this this project in the same sense,
I think Bitcoin prompts this question of like, well, what is
a world without state money, without the state controlling

(35:42):
money look like? And so necessarily it becomes a
political ideological question. And I just wonder, I mean, how
do you how do you work with these things?
Because I don't know if it is just a product like designing A
lampshade for IKEA, which doesn't really have a political
power, if you know what I mean, Like it's it's always going to
butt up against the government. And how did so how do you how do
you square that that? Yeah, it's kind of like more

(36:04):
layers of complexity to the design challenge or the design
problem, right. So I have this presentation that
I that I give, it's really aboutthe 2025 year trajectory of me
as a designer. Like what were the material that
I was designing with 25 years ago?
Well, 25 years ago I was designing with molten plastic,
like injection molded plastic and circuits, right?

(36:25):
I was doing consumer products with that.
But then the Internet came and all this digital.
Then you were designing with like bits and pixels and all
this kind of more interactive and service Y and interaction
stuff. And then lately, now you're kind
of designing and this is kind ofsophisticated conversation, but
you're designing with data, right?
And AI, that's really what you're designing with.
That's the most kind of like themost sophisticated material to
design with is with data and AI.And you can do really

(36:48):
sophisticated, you know, productservices.
And then I say like, then you have Bitcoin, then you can
design with Bitcoin. Like it's, it's almost, it's not
instead of all these things, it's yes.
And right. So injection molding and
circuits and networks and bits and pixels and data and AI and
Bitcoin, right? So then the level of complexity
is like, what does it mean to design with Bitcoin?

(37:08):
So yeah, you're kind of like everything, right?
So it's not just the material and the digital stuff.
It's kind of like the, it's a new asset class.
It's a new material class to design with, right?
Because imagine you're designingsome, you design a product that
has become compatible. It means things that in what

(37:30):
that product inherently does is something that no product ever
in history could have inherentlydone, which is it's compatible
with everybody in the world. Everybody in the world can buy
or sell this or transact this thing because you designed it
with this new amazing material, which is, which is Bitcoin,
right? So, so I would say that to your
question, there's many more layers of complexity of how
you're designing. So with Bitcoin, yeah, you could

(37:52):
design how it makes a payment faster or some compatibility or,
or yeah, it's it's it's universal, whatever.
Maybe. But also you have to maybe this,
how do you design A transition into a Bitcoin world that
doesn't trigger antibodies from the government and from the
central banks? Like how do you design this is

(38:14):
this is determined design calledtransition design.
So you're kind of designing the steps.
You can't design, you can't go to the to the final finished new
version because it's too much and the world's are ready and
the technology's not mature enough or whatever it may be.
But you're designing transitional steps for that.
And when it comes to Bitcoin, man, this is such a compelling
conversation because I worked at, I don't put it in my resume

(38:36):
because it was only a year, but I worked at Kodak for one year.
I wasn't in the innovation department at Kodak for one
year. Kodak invented the digital
camera, right? And this is no right.
And then they put it in a closetbecause they had this amazing
business selling the, the, the, the, the film cameras, right?
But there's, there's nothing that Kodak could have done to
prevent digital photography fromtaking over, which is kind of

(38:59):
like, OK, well, we'll milk it for a little bit and we'll make
some money and we'll delay as weas we make money here.
But you know, when, when, when, when you think about Bitcoin,
what is replacing? It's not replacing like, you
know, they OK, we'll replace Kodak, OK, with a combination of
Facebook and, you know, whateverin the film industry, it was
Netflix and all this stuff. When we think about like

(39:21):
Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin replacing?
Shit, man. Bitcoin is replacing or is
disrupting the most powerful institutions in exists in in the
history of the world, right? So central banks and central
governments, right? Yeah.
So then how does that play out, right?
And how do you design A transition or how do you design

(39:42):
the steps going from a world where Bitcoin doesn't exist to a
world where Bitcoin replaces a lot of these things?
I mean, the answer is we're living in it, right?
And, and it's impossible for a designer of me to like step back
and just see it happening. It's like I wanna.
I don't know the answer, but I feel that I need to participate
in figuring it out. Well, on that, on that note, so

(40:03):
I think this is, I think we're on the same wavelength with this
because the engineering mind I think wants more certainty.
It wants to see at a protocol level that this is happening and
the way it was expected and it'sdoing what it is expected to do.
But I think we're thinking maybemore in this visionary creative
space where it's playful. And I'll give you an example of

(40:24):
that. You know, I'm just the dude,
right, You know, doing this thing.
But I've had these conversationswith very high, high level
people, including former governor of the Reserve of the
Reserve Bank of New Zealand, former governor of the Bank of
Japan, these like central Bank of dudes.
I've been in the room with them and I'm like talking about
Bitcoin and I'm wearing like my funny clothes and on my orange
trousers and stuff. And I'm like this crazy dude.
But it's like the whole pathway to me getting to those

(40:47):
conversations, having this podcast, meeting up, meeting
other people, traveling around the world.
It's like that. That's just only been possible
through Bitcoin and like, I don't know, it's, it's kind of
strange. It's it's like a real
provocation. It's the strangest thing ever,
man. Like the people that I'm hanging
out with now who my friends are like it just all the people that

(41:07):
you've met and the only reason why you've met them is because
of Bitcoin. Or like when you go to a
conference and you meet some newpeople that you haven't met
before, you know that you kind of aligned eighty 7080% already
just because they're at a Bitcoin conference.
And you know, a lot of the head of focus says Bitcoin is a it's

(41:28):
an IQ test. So basically saying like there's
a group of people, for whatever reason, maybe they're quirky,
maybe they're like working innovation like I do and they're
always looking at new things or they really love technology and
they study computer science or they're into whatever.
So sovereignty, whatever. For whatever reason, this is a
group of people that came out toBitcoin before the rest of the
world. And it it's like there's like a

(41:51):
gap there. These people keep getting
richer, deeper understanding of Bitcoin and the potential and,
and everything that's happening.And then these other people are
just ignoring it or just, you know, just they've heard the
word, but they don't know anything about it.
And like, and, and there's this pressure building up, like
eventually, you know, there's going to be some sort of
balancing out of, of the, of, ofwhat happens here.

(42:12):
Yeah, But how do we make it as least painful as possible,
right? How do we design products and on
ramps for these people? And I think that most of these
people are going to be using Bitcoin without knowing they're
using Bitcoin, right? Nobody knows how a cell phone
works. Nobody knows how TCP, IP, the
Internet works. They just use it, right?
So to me, that's the role design.
It's like people don't need to understand Bitcoin or know how

(42:36):
it works in order to benefit from it.
Yeah, well, I mean, pulling on that thread.
So as I mentioned, you know, I've met these people, I've had
these conversations and it's been very interesting because
there's something, and it kind of maybe echoes your work with
Lego in a sense, but there's something very playful and
provocative about it, but not inan aggressive way.
It's more like, you know, I enjoy kind of floating between

(42:59):
these worlds and and meeting different people.
And obviously Bitcoin is a fun to hang out with, but it's also
fun to go, you know, I go to thePress Club.
I, I go to meet with different people and in the legacy
financial world, I have these conversations and it's kind of
like I can see that they are constrained and they've got this
sort of straitjacket on that, this sort of holding them in.
And in a lot of cases that meansI can't see what we see.

(43:21):
And the interesting piece, though, is that a lot of that
kind of the regulation or the, the actual, you know,
fundamentals that are stopping them from changing what they're
doing. So, you know, there's some legal
restrictions or whatever, those things can be changed.
They do, they just take time. And so there's this kind of
process, the social process. And so I'm a big believer in
communication and meeting peoplewith where they're at because in

(43:43):
a lot of cases, you know, the people maybe haven't made the
jump to Bitcoin. It's because they can't just
hear, you know, their company won't let them do it.
The, the laws of the country, their own won't let them do it
in the way that we, you know, they would want to do.
And so there's this kind of social process where the more
you socialize it, the more you disrupt it.
You become like an, a free agentwho's kind of just like, Hey,
what are you guys doing? And it's, it's kind of playful.

(44:06):
And, and I see, I think you see this with like the fashion and
the conferences. And I mean, it's, it's quite
eclectic, a little bit hippie. And I don't know if that plays
for or against it, right, because I work with quite
closely with Plan B network and you're familiar with these guys.
They do between education and they do events and they have
Jacamo, who's a fantastic ship poster, sort of the head of the
organization. And and they have this quirky

(44:28):
kind of branding and and identity, right?
That is kind of, you know, cyberpunkish, but kind of weird
and kind of teenage. You like it doesn't attract a
lot of serious people, right? Like if you're if you're a
serious entrepreneur or in finance, you see some of these
kind of bigger voices in Bitcoinand you're just maybe you're
trying to figure out like, what is it like these guys, are they

(44:52):
just quirky? Are they nerdy?
Or they're just cool? And I'm not cool.
I'm not in the crowd. So I don't know, I wonder, I
think that's that's something cool about Bitcoin if you know
it, you know the memes and everything.
But if you're outside and you know anything about it and
that's one of your first experiences with it, it could
set you back or maybe even, you know, not be a very attractive

(45:13):
first first. Well, maybe this impression,
maybe this is where, yeah, I understand.
Maybe this is where people like you and me can come in.
Or maybe maybe creative people, you know, because I, I do enjoy
floating between these worlds, man.
And as I said, I I, you know, got the, I got the thing going,
the Bitcoin angle, but I'm also very comfortable and I enjoy

(45:33):
talking to people. I think in a non judgmental way.
I really think it's just important to talk to to people
what we would call normies. But even then, I think that
label, it's sort of, I don't know, it's interesting when
other so-called subcultures refer to people outside the
group as normies. And you see this in a lot of
other worlds. And it's kind of like, hey, some

(45:53):
people always say, you know, they're just busy with life.
They haven't got time to think about this thing that they have
to put on their computer or this, you know, the software
that download, you know, they just they haven't got time to
think about it. And so I think coming out there
like in a non judgmental way. And it's like, well, hey, you
know that they're busy. Also, it's not relevant to that
man. Like, yeah, I enjoy.
I mean, you know, being a seniorexecutive with these giant

(46:15):
companies, I'm super used to walk into the boardroom and you
know, you got a, it's all, it's an art form of what you say and
how you say it. If you want support and all
these, you know, sort of things,you got to be empathetic to all
these people, their jobs and their reality and their family.
You know, they're just not awareof all the stuff that you're
doing. So all of this Bitcoin kind of
meme stuff and this vocabulary, I mean, we have a design, we

(46:35):
have a, we have a vocabulary in Bitcoin really.
I mean, there literally is like a vocabulary.
It's like a subculture, right? It's weird because if you've
been in it long enough, it seemspretty normal and like, you
know, all these words, but just Step 2 meters outside your house
and some you, some, you know, you people would overhear us
talking. They don't know what half these
words mean, right? So I don't know.

(46:56):
I think we make a mistake as Bitcoiners when we take that to
the regular world. Like if it's something that that
it's gonna, I don't think that'sgonna scale like that.
That cultural click thing. It's only for the people that
are already like this, like it'sus.
It's like the geeky, nerdy people that are into Bitcoin,
the early adopters, like that culture.
I don't think it's compatible ata large scale.

(47:16):
Like a lot of people won't be, won't, I don't think.
I don't know, maybe. Yeah, I think I agree.
I think there's there's different priorities that people
have. And I mean, of course money is
important, but I mean, there's, it's, it's not really just about
the money because I mean, there is risk, you know, obviously
the, the risks. Yeah.
What if we're wrong? Yeah, what if we're wrong?

(47:37):
I know. And the counterfactual, Well,
you know, this whole the power of the government and, and the
kind of the, the nature of economics, you know, like
there's, there's lots of things there that I mean, we, we should
be maybe a little bit humble about that.
Maybe we don't know. Because again, the question
earlier around design versus emergent creation, I come back
to someone like Friedrich Hayek,you know, the classic Austrian

(48:00):
economist that everyone maybe quotes that they look at
Austrian economics for Bitcoin insight.
But Hayek said the curious task of economics is to demonstrate
to men how little they really know about what they imagine
they can design. And he also says order generated
without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.

(48:21):
That is to say, sometimes thingsjust happen and there's maybe
just a confluence of events in the world.
You. Have to leave space for it I
mean, it's something like yeah, I talk a lot about process and
sort of this more linear methodical thing to arrive from
to arrive at an opportunity to, you know some sort of solution.
But inside that process there's a lot of iteration and there's a

(48:42):
lot of room and space for serendipitous discovery, if you
will. And when it comes to, like I
mentioned before, the open innovation, that's what it
really drives on. Because when you have a, an
internal, a very high performance team that's doing
something very specific, it's more predictable than when
you're inviting other, you know,customers, other people to

(49:02):
participate. You will you will inevitably
discover or things that you could not predict will happened,
Like somebody will have a problem that you didn't even
weren't even thinking that they can can solve or somebody would
have some sort of creative approach and seeing something
that nobody else could see before.
So I I guess what what I'm saying, what I what I want to

(49:24):
say relative to your question was for because it's such a new
thing and we'd have many things to reference or compare it to.
I think that anytime we make a design or we have an opinion
about it, we have to do it with kind of like the space for
wiggle this wiggle wiggle room for like learning.
So, yeah, I think it's maybe I'll quote Jeff Booth again, but

(49:46):
like strong opinions weekly held.
So you have a strong opinion. This is my vision, this want to
do, but I could easily be convinced or see something new
that will open my mind and change my mind.
So, so sort of that's the way I would approach design with
Bitcoin because we don't know what we don't know, man.
And and so far as it's just all this doesn't surprise us, right.
So I don't think it's going to stop doing that anytime soon.

(50:09):
Well, and I think the other aspect just on design is looking
at the environment and the senseof what is the lay of the land,
what is happening out there in the world.
And I, I don't know about you, I'm, I'm starting to get this,
this kind of feeling that maybe there is a bit of a bubble with
basically the whole stock marketand the whole AI thing in a
sense that maybe the things havebeen pumped.

(50:29):
And I could be wrong, but say there is a huge bubble and
basically a lot of people in thedeveloped world have their
wealth tied up in stocks in the stock market.
You know, if we were to, you know, have a hypothetical
situation where that thing blowsup the seven magnificent 7, you
know, major companies that run the whole thing, basically that

(50:50):
goes and then people like, hey, we need something hard, We need
hard money. And we see those people suddenly
sort of come back into gold, Bitcoin, you know, there's kind
of hard commodities that could be like, again, one of these
things that we it doesn't reallyrelate to what we're designing
with our lightning wallets, but that's like a the kind of
environmental backdrop that could happen.
I don't, you know, I don't know,but that could suddenly be like,

(51:12):
hey, everyone suddenly reassesses everything they're
doing because suddenly real estate, stocks, equities, all of
these things are just like tanking.
They need somewhere else to go. And that's like the hard money
moment. And it's hard to get your hands
on gold. So what's what are you going to
do? You're going to go and get some
Bitcoin that you heard about five years.
Ago you're kind of describing what's slowly sort of happening
right yeah and we had a little mini crash or too many crashes

(51:34):
in the stock market this week. I mean it's a good question like
how do you do you change your approach to designing in a world
where Bitcoin is this tiny little thing 1% trying to
breakthrough trying to like makea case for itself to a world
where like shit everybody has Bitcoin and we we're just kind
of on our heels trying to come up with the products and the
things to to to service these people that you know so a lot of

(51:57):
the the bigger companies today their whole value proposition is
convincing people why they should even consider Bitcoin
right yes it's not about like here's the best way to manage
your Bitcoin and all this other stuff.
So I don't know it's it's it's that's why it's the most
exciting space to be designing it man like not even AI
seriously like AI yeah sure AI super interesting.
You can do so many things. What I find I just came back

(52:20):
from from giving a talk to the Chamber of Commerce in in Chile
and they had all the talks and every talk had something about
AI right and I was the only one that was going to talk about
Bitcoin and I really drove in the point.
And I want to talk about Bitcoinand my position on that is that
like, look, I think AI and Bitcoin are by far the most, you
know, transformational, revolutionizing disruptive

(52:41):
technologies, especially today. But the difference is that
everybody knows AI is and everybody's talking about it and
everybody's getting consultants and everybody's doing something
about AI. Bitcoin is equally impactful.
And almost nobody is, is prepared or doing anything or,
or, or even, you know, getting ready, especially large
corporations. I mean, it's tiny.

(53:03):
That's a tiny percentage of the companies who are educated or
have any sort of plan for adopting Bitcoin or integrating
Bitcoin, whether it be in the, you know, in the treasury or,
you know, into the products or services.
So the gap between the opportunity and the kind of
people trying to people working on that opportunity, there's a

(53:24):
much bigger hole to fill in Bitcoin than in AII would say.
And the, and the potential impact of both technologies, I
could almost argue that bitcoinsis bigger.
So, so there's, there's like a disbalance of people focusing on
Bitcoin talent creatives, you know, designers, founders,
technical people. So that's why I think there's a

(53:45):
huge opportunity there. It's like there's, there's,
there's like an arbitrage, there's a, there's a mismatch
there from demand and supply that'll soon become very
evident, I think. Yeah, I think I agree with you.
There's sort of why why Bitcoin,you know, and especially in a
lot of places, you know, where the money is maybe not so great,
but it still works. And it's you know, it's it's
manageable. It's just kind of a the, the

(54:08):
yeah, it's, it's decaying at just slow enough of a rate that
you don't really hear about it and, and above noise of your
daily life. And I think what we may see is
that that, you know, continues along for some time, but in
other places, maybe it accelerates, you know, you get
this kind of global chaos happen, maybe, I don't know,
maybe some kind of bubble with, with the stock market.

(54:29):
And then that suddenly pushes people towards looking at
alternatives. But it's kind of like, what are
those pain thresholds? And this is, you know, quite
common, you know, what like whatis the threshold at which
someone will change their actions?
And often, you know, there is a stickiness, a, a, a, a bias
towards the status quo. You know, and this is like you
say this like people get like a bank account when they're a kid

(54:50):
or when they're a young person. And that's generally going to be
the one they stay with, at leastup until recently.
You know, it's because the friction to change is higher
than the value of changing between banks, right?
And so there's kind of these kind of models can be applied as
well. Like what at what point is it
10%? Is it 15%?
That is your threshold that you're going to say, hey, I'm
going to suddenly look and be compelled to look at an

(55:13):
alternative. And and again, I think that
because that's like fluffy and fuzzy, it's kind of hard maybe
for an engineer to be like, that's that's where it's going
to happen. But I mean, this is the nature
of society. It's kind of like fluid and
changing and dynamic, right? Yeah.
And how do you design for those things again like so, so that,
that example that you gave the first bank account, right?

(55:35):
Yeah, just that that's a that's a full blown product in the
regular normally world, right? Like a company that says, hey,
we have this product that any kid anywhere in the world can
create a bank account for free that lasts forever and anybody,
their relatives or anybody can deposit into it.
And when they turn 18, they could have this money that you
could literally do that with Bitcoin in a second, right.

(55:55):
That's just part of the bitcoinsbased functionality that could
be a business in the regular world.
There's probably VCs that are will still be funding some sort
of business idea like that, right.
Yeah. So the opportunity is so obvious
and great that it's kind of hardto kind of OK, well, what do I
from where do I, what, what opportunity do I kind of go
after? Right?

(56:15):
Yeah. With Bitcoin, So it just changes
things so dramatically. That is that's why it's a change
of paradigm, right? It kind of forces you to like,
you know, OK, well, how do I interact with this thing?
But the one thing that I, you know, I for me, from my
perspective, from my level of expertise is like, OK, whatever
whoever you're designing for, whoever these people are,
they're people. So they experience products and
services through convenience to simplicity, to delight.

(56:39):
That's never going to change. That's always going to be the
case. And they're going to prioritize
choosing a product or buying a service or whatever.
Be relative to the priorities and the things that are
important in their lives, right.And design is the is the formal
practice of understanding that and designing solutions for
that. So if you have the most powerful
tool to solve problems for society, man, what an awesome

(57:02):
opportunity to apply world classdesign to the most powerful tool
and design products that are notjust keeper faster, more like
like, you know, like orders of magnitude better.
But but but it's not so hard. Like again, that example that
you just shared, is that like just think about that for a
second. Like it sounds normal in the
Bitcoin world, but ten years ago, outside of the Bitcoin

(57:23):
world, what if I had a product that every child in the world
can be born and have a bank, a savings account that lasts
forever, that nobody can ever take away that it's is there
from the and that's a part of that you can do with Bitcoin.
And that's just one out of thousands of products that you
can do, man. So I don't know, man, that's a
creative. As a designer, you get to just
smile at that and be like, wow, man.
Yeah, there's a real opportunity.
And look, man, I think again, mykind of my antenna, the vibes

(57:47):
out there, I think the world is changing.
I think maybe there has been reluctance and there's, you
know, a lot of people, you know,they require convincing even
though number go up, you know, that is pretty convincing on its
own. But I just.
Think like now by the number go up level that is now more people
would just be, you know, just because of that.
Yeah, but I mean, as I said, youknow, I have compassion that I
understand still people are a little bit skeptical of it.

(58:09):
And there has been number go up in other aspects of of of the
economy, you know, especially stock, stock market.
And so there is something going on there.
But I do think these narratives can change on a dime.
And again, I'm reminded of the Helvetica story, the idea of
having a typeface fonts that arejust easily communicated and
make it clear. I'm reminded of the Internet
story having this global peer-to-peer money.

(58:33):
It kind of echoes the way the Internet sort of was, you know,
designed to connect people together and whether, you know,
even though that came from the military originally, which is
quite interesting. But the, the bigger piece here
is that there is the possibilitythat we're entering a new
narrative story time where the world's approach to money to
value is able to be shaped. And I think this is where, like,

(58:55):
the human stories can really help.
And maybe what you're seeing in El Salvador, what we're seeing
in Latin America is really interesting.
You know, there's kind of a humanizing aspect.
It's not just about, you know, getting rich, you know, number
go up, but it's actually like, hey, this is helping families,
it's helping people save. There's kind of like a like a
good story there. And I think telling those
stories is really important as well, and kind of sharing that

(59:16):
kind of human aspect of it beyond the technology.
Yeah, because the technology kind of disappears, right?
Like when if you live in a worldwhere anybody can exchange value
with anybody, right? And the, the entry barrier is
super low, it's basically a $50 phone.
And and then you just step backwards and say, like, what

(59:38):
will people do? It's a superpower, right?
This new thing, anybody I can exchange, I can create value in
exchange. I get paid or send money to
anybody in the world. Nobody can stop me.
So that's the thing. It's like, what will people do?
That's amazing, right? Like as a designer, somebody
who's building a product, OK, I will do this.
But but the real interesting thing is like the culmination of
all the creative people coming up with ideas and things like

(01:00:00):
this. What will people do?
And that will do some amazing things, right.
So, yeah, you know, what can we do to help people do these
things, right? How do we highlight these new
super powers that I enabled by by by Bitcoin?
Yeah. How do we make it easier for
people to realize the power thatthey already have because this
technology exists. You know, those are, those are.

(01:00:20):
Those are communication problems, right?
They're like perception problems.
They're like when, when, like every time I, I talk to a cab
driver from the airport at home and I, and I, I ask him about
Bitcoin. Of course he's heard about it
because he lives in El Salvador and he hasn't used it.
And why haven't you used it? And then he might have this
perception of like he doesn't want to be stuck or it's going
one time it went down or he can't change it.
And in the end it's like, oh, because you don't know about

(01:00:41):
this other app or whatever. Blank.
You can have your dollars, you can have your thing, you can
have it there and in in three seconds he downloaded a new app.
I paid him in that new currency and all of a sudden he's
onboarded. So it's just really like that
had to do exactly what you said,like meeting him where he was
at, like he heard some government campaign.
He went to something, but he never had like a one to one

(01:01:02):
conversation with somebody. That just simplifies it.
And here let me give me your phone.
Download this app. OK, here.
I just sent you some Bitcoin. It's that easy.
Like, oh, I was intimidated. I thought it would be way
harder. I thought I had to learn.
I had to know about all this techno technical stuff.
I was like, no, no, you could just use it.
So I love that I filling in thatgap like how you design
experiences that provide that experience at scale to people.

(01:01:26):
Yeah, we haven't cracked it yet.We haven't cracked it yet.
Yeah, now it's exciting times. And I think there's sort of a,
yeah, there's a mission statement and what you just
said, making it easy for people to transfer value between each
other globally without trusted third parties sounds a little
bit like the Bitcoin white paperactually, as you.

(01:01:49):
Realize you can never do that before.
You could do that right now. What will you do right?
What will you do? What will you sell?
What will you exchange? What we do, yeah.
So look, man, as you say, Bitcoin, it is a superior
technology, but it does not meanthat we can skip the design
thinking. There's a lot to discuss,
there's a lot to talk about and having our best people on it,

(01:02:11):
you know, having our our brightest engineers, our best
designers, our best leaders, youknow, putting the time and
effort like you've committed your time and effort to working
on this. I think it's an incredible time,
very exciting. But Stiven, if people want to
follow your work, they want to see what you're up to.
I mean, where do you want to send them?

(01:02:31):
Not much. I'm pretty private.
I'm not really a content producer, but I'm an ex Steven
Hay. Maybe you put it in the
footnotes in your show there andthen.
I have I do strategic consulting, so for design and
strategy and innovation, but I also have a design agency, which
is a collaboration with a with abuddy of mine who had a

(01:02:54):
fantastic design agency and I orange built them.
So we said, you know what? We were looking at all the
design companies and he's and he's a this my friend Alfredo.
He's a master brand builder, brand designer.
He was like, the one thing that all these companies have in
common is bad design, bad branding design.
So we said, all right, well, let's create an agency.
So we created chaos. It's caos dot global.

(01:03:16):
So we have an agency to help Bitcoin companies at least get
that part right, their branding,the lower the communication and
then I do most of more and more strategic work 111 to 1.
So, but feel free to reach out Design at stipend.
That's awesome. Thank you.
And I guess you mentioned you'regoing to move down to Patagonia.
What's next on your radar? What's on your horizon?

(01:03:37):
Yeah. So the the idea we're going to
set up a camp in the small little town of Puerto Vallas,
which is in the Patagonia where where we're from originally
after 12 years. And the idea is to create a
Bitcoin epicenter there, a little Bitcoin community, little
circular economy, engage in education.
We're doing partnership education with some of the local

(01:03:58):
universities. And then also, yeah, orange
peeling as many people as we can.
Yeah, both in different aspects of society.
So we're working with artisans, you know, it's really teaching
them about banking and and sole sovereignty and how to save,
working with small companies to see the benefits of of Bitcoin
adoption and things like payments and things like this.
And also working with large organizations like universities

(01:04:20):
and family offices. Again, all the same education
about Bitcoin, why Bitcoin is important to a little bit of how
it works. And three, what can they do?
How do how do they act? How do they start participating
in in with Bitcoin? Yeah, that's awesome.
More. Look, I really appreciate your
time, Stavan. It's been really interesting to
talk design thinking and how we can apply it to Bitcoin and

(01:04:42):
yeah, yeah, thank you. Thanks.
So much for your time, Cody. It's a pleasure to talk.
Thank you for listening. I am Cody Allingham and that was
the transformation of value. If you would like to support
this show, please consider making a donation either through
my website or by directly tipping to the show's Bitcoin
wallet, or just pass this episode on to a friend who you

(01:05:03):
think may enjoy it. And you can always e-mail me at
[e-mail].