July 24, 2025 • 36 mins
In this episode, I’m joined by Pete Rizzo—veteran Bitcoin journalist, Editor at Bitcoin Magazine, and host of the Supply Shock podcast. Known as the "Bitcoin Historian," Rizzo brings a rare depth of knowledge on Bitcoin’s origins, its ideological battles, and where it’s headed next. We dive into the hidden risks behind Bitcoin ETFs, how Wall Street might be quietly redefining the protocol, and why governance—not mining—may be the real battleground for Bitcoin’s future. If you think you understand Bitcoin, this conversation will challenge everything you thought you knew.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's happening in Russia right now is an equally vibrant
conversation about the role of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and they're
allowing high net worth individuals to buy bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
The Central Bank and the Ministry Finance are coming together
to launch in exchange.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Do you think that this reshaping of the monetary order
pushes bitcoin up into the mainstream.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Everybody comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to
adopt bitcloin for its benefits. There's a lot for the America.
It's a gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right. Bitcoin
is a neutral money, it's an a political money that's grassroots.
It's happening globally. Everyone's adopting it across the world. And
a tale of the bitcoin network, I think, is that
it's grown so robust. Thus, you know, it can be
considered a real neutral money within the context of our
(00:41):
nation states.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Just because you own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or
the US government doesn't give you control over the network.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
These ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot
of power to define what bitcoin is at the software level.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
All right, Pete, We're going to just jump right into
the heat right here. The hottest topic in the world
right now is is Trump the Trump administration trying to
pull off this massive reset using tariffs as a tool
to reset the global monetary order. Now, throughout history, we've
seen the monitary order switch many times, and even it
seems to happen every couple decades. Do you think that
(01:16):
this reshaping of the monetary order pushes bitcoin up into
the mainstream?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, Mark, thanks for having me here. Always happy to
be on this on the program. I think what you're
seeing from the Trump administration, you know, really is an
effort to use bitcoin for its own advantages. Right. Everybody
comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to adopt
bitcoin for its benefits. But yeah, there's a lot for
the America to gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right.
(01:42):
You've seen bo Hin's administration officials come out and they've said,
you know, hey, we have thousands of bitcoin, hundreds maybe
even hundreds of thousands of bitcoin that we sold for
you know, pennies on the dollar, you know, and that
started the gears of you know, what does it mean? Right?
And I think they did the investigation, you know, people
got involved in the campaign and did the education and
the education was you know, bitcoin is a neutral money,
(02:04):
it's an a political money, that's grassroots. It's happening globally.
Everyone's adopting it across the world. And I think from
that education process, you know, you've got administrative action very quickly,
strategic bitcoin reserve now, you know, an assessment of the
national stockpile to see how much is in store. But
you know, also on the stable coin front, right there's
there's an interest from the administration to figure out, you know,
(02:28):
if we are going to move to a global neutral
monetary system, if that is the end result of the
you know, sort of financial war that we have ongoing
right now, where you know, the different superpowers the world
have politicized their financial systems. If bitcoin is the end
result of that. Well, there's also the intermediate period, right
where maybe the US dollar can take advantage of some
(02:48):
of these rails to become more powerful in emerging markets.
I think they're really savvy to that. I think you're
going to see it. And with the Genius Act and
the Market Structure Bill, I think that's why that's at
the top of the administration's list.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That Genius Act is actually something really important. I want
to come back to that in a second. But basically
it's sort of like we all sort of have this
recency bias and we just kind of go along with
the flow. But then in times of disruption, you start
thinking about everything. Right, so somebody dies, You're like, oh, shoot, what.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
About my own life? What am I doing?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And so all of a sudden you have this massive
disruption in the global monetary system to the point that
you brought up maybe seeing some of the weaponization.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That's happened around this.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Then you have the tariffs, and then maybe you know,
Trump is sort of pushing a narrative where he doesn't
want all this foreign investment into our markets. And then
so where do we store our money and where do
we use as payments? And so then it seems to like, well,
let's take another look at bitcoin. It sort of starts
percolating up towards the top again, so weird.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well, you know this is happening globally, right, So something
that maybe slipped off the radar of most bitcoiners is
what's happening in Russia right now. As an equally vibrant
conversation about the role of bitcoinning cryptocurrencies, but from a
much different lens, right, Russia has really didn't cut off
from the global financial system, has had to route around that,
and from that you've seen a tremendous grassroots adoption, you
know among the populace, you know, in terms of you know,
(04:03):
using stable coins and bitcoin to do cross border trading.
Even denominating oil trades you know, in bitcoin is common
there according to reporting. So you know, they've recently come
out and they're allowing high net worth individuals to buy
bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The Central Bank and the Ministry of
Finance are coming together to launch in exchange, but they're
really trying to keep a lid on it, right. They
(04:23):
want to kind of maintain their own financial system. They
want to prevent the capital flight. They have the Bricks
Union with China to take you know, to take care
of Obviously, China still skeptical, It has a ban on
bitcoin and it really is not leaning into that. So
you know, this is happening globally, right the Trump administration reacting.
But even if you want to lose another algory with Russia,
(04:44):
this is another example of you know what you're talking about,
the historical weaponization of financial system. You know, this is
just the current state of the world that we have, right,
We've had these kind of payment networks that have been
based on databases that have been geolocalized by country. We're
moving to an international network for monetary transfer, and every
country is grappling with it. The US taking their approach,
(05:05):
Russia taking their approach, China taking their approach, and it'll
be fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely changing things. I'm curious,
you know, yours known for. One of your projects you're
known for is obviously your historical sort of account of bitcoin,
and it hasn't been around that long. I was invited
to Mexico City to speak out a Mastermind, which Peter
Schiff owns half of.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I don't know why they invited me.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
He wasn't happy to hear me talk about bitcoin, and
we got into these debates and we had to go
out in the hallway and talk about it, and it
all seemed to boil down to well, it's only been
around fifteen years, and I'm like, okay, okay, you got
me there, right, But in those fifteen years, a lot's happened,
and we seem to have like these epochs right where
like bitcoin has these big moves, and I'm just curious
when you look at like some of these big moves
(05:47):
and maybe the catalyst for those some of these big things. Obviously,
the first block was inscribed about the bailout of two
thousand and eight. Do you see like what's going on
now today being another one of these like defied global
moves into this next epoch.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, you know, I've appreciated you calling on my work there,
but people who can go on my Twitter account at
Pete Underscore Rizzo Underscore, you'll find some great accounting of
kind of the legendary people and figures in bitcoin. But
essentially kind of bringing it back to your question again,
which I think was about can you remind me of
your question again?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, I was just saying throughout the fifteen years, we
see these epochs where bitcoin has these big moves, and
a lot of it's around some of some global events
that may happen. Obviously, the first inscription was about the
two thousand and eight global event global and what if
what's going on right now globally might be like this
another historical moment where it hits this next epoch.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, I mean, I very much think that we're exiting
kind of the early stage of bitcoin, right, So you
think about these phases, these for year market cycles. I know,
this is something that you discuss a lot, and you know,
talk about the market structure. But essentially, you know, I
think the early wars and Bitcoin and the early drama
was mostly on the technology side. Right. Bitcoin's a network.
It's powered by people who are running computers running software
in the own homes, and this technology had to spread
(07:02):
around the globe, right, so essentially going from one person
to Toshi Nakamoto, to two people to more people running
this technology around the world. And of course these people,
you know, brought their own ideologies together and they had
to come together and create and foster this network and
make sure it grew. But really, I can think the
early drama of bitcoin is is the technical side, right?
(07:22):
How should this be changed? Is it perfected? Are there
other alternative designs of the Sotoshi Nakamoto bitcoin system that
should be tried and tested. I really see us as
kind of closing the book on that era now, especially
with what's happening with Trump and Washington and just the
embraced by nation states as well as the you know,
I think ideological kind of collapse that that's happening in Ethereum,
(07:45):
which has historically been kind of the number two cryptocurrency,
and this is how to shock wave of across the
crypto ecosystem, where you have developers who've kind of been
you know, building that, you know, and kind of investing
their whole life and work energy. In some cases, you know,
people a decade of their lives spent and kind of build,
holding on startups, working on problems, kind of thinking that
some of these alternative cryptocurrencies would potentially be viable. Now
(08:06):
kind of seeing e theoryum kind of going through you know,
it's been four or five years since an all time high,
it's down sixty percent, seventy percent in bitcoin terms, and
now they have to kind of redirect their personal life energy. Right,
So I very much see it as as the technology
story of bitcoin. Obviously there's going to be maybe a
need to kind of tweak and improve bitcoin, and they're
you know, we're never going to get away from the
(08:26):
fact that bitcoin is a software, right for the first
time in history money is software. But essentially, you know,
the the grappling with that of the technological war kind
of level I think is over, right, I think it's
it's pretty clear that bitcoin is the big winner. I
think the other cryptocurrencies are adjusting to that now. I
think we are moving into the geopolitical phase, right where
what does it mean for bitcoin to really go up,
(08:48):
you know, or be sort of you know, the counterpoint
some of these East West, China, US kind of larger
geopolitical events. Right Bitcoin is scaling up into that conversation.
We're seeing the other technologies sort of fade away. So
you know, you can follow my work through those threads,
you'll find a lot of the people and figures who
contributed to that movement. I think what you saw at
(09:08):
the end of that you know, ten to fifteen year
period is a really hardening a bitcoin as a technology
and in our understanding of bitcoin, right A bitcoin was
a very new phenomenon. Software had never been money. Money
was mostly you know, things we dug up on the ground,
a piece of paper, trust distributed trust arrangements. Bitcoin has
changed all that, so a while to grapple with that
and figure out what it was and really kind of
(09:28):
harden that. I think that period is mostly passing over,
and that's why you're seeing you know, corporate adoption, government adoption.
You know, there's only so much we can excavate, and
I think, you know, the good news is this bitcoin
is moving forward and the world is embracing it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So you talked you touched on two different evolutions in
bitcoin there that I want to dig into, sort of
the monetary evolution you talked about, you know, digging up
money up out of the ground. There's been this monetary evolution,
But you also talked about this technological evolution where really
we kind of are leaving this technical age and now
maybe going into more of this sovereign age. So I
want to talk about both of those evolutions, but just
(10:04):
just to kind of put a pin in the question
that i'd asked, So where you see bitcoin really have
maybe moving from you know, ten cents to now, you
know whatever, almost one hundred thousand dollars. Again, those were
more the benefit of it sort of going through these
technological phases, not really being run into as a store
of value on a global stage.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, yeah, I mean obviously the technology and the community
around the technology is very small. Right, Ultimately bitcoin is
a network based money, right, Like that that's the thing
that's new here, right, If you think about other financial
systems as networks. You know, the US financial system is
GEO limited to you know, the United States. That's why
we're able to kind of you know, control permission, you know,
access to that network. But yeah, the tale of the
(10:47):
Bitcoin network, I think is that that it's grown so robust. Thus,
you know, it can be considered a real neutral money
within the context of you know, nation states. You know,
early on in bitcoin's history, you know, when it was
really just in some cases, you know, maybe as little
as ten or a dozen people kind of running the
software in their computers. Yeah, there were scenarios where you know,
(11:08):
somebody could have come and rented a data center and
overwhelmed the network and undermined the monetary policy or the
credibility of it. Right. So, so bitcoin was fragile, right.
A lot of the early developers you'll talk to will
describe bitcoin as as an experimental work in progress, and
there was you know, periods in its history where you know,
it could have been undermined by a malicious state actor.
(11:29):
That was something that people would have been concerned about.
Now for a malicious state actor, you know, to you
know undermine bitcoin, I mean you're talking about you know,
the sheer amounts of computing power that you would need,
you know, for people who don't know, the Bitcoin minor
network is you know, orders of magnitude larger than the
data centers that back you know, Google search engines. You know,
(11:49):
so you're talking about the amount of like raw physical
infrastructure that you would need to launch some sort of
coordinated campaign against Bitcoin to actually sensor transactions or block
payments or things like that. Is you know, on the
order of like you would need to you know, command
the small country or or you know, somehow you know,
secretly acquire you know, millions or maybe hundreds of thousands
(12:11):
of expensive mining equipment that that's only kind of special
team made it in certain areas. Right, So you're you're
you know, Bitcoin is never going to be you know,
completely one hundred percent secure. It's just probabilistically, you know,
it's so unlikely that Bitcoin would would face an attack
of that scale to any but earlier in the past
and in Bitcoin's past, it you know, it was true, right,
there were days, you know, in two thousand and nine,
(12:33):
so Soshi na Komoto would have gotten up and you know,
you can look at the transaction history, you know, your
own note if you if you look at the blockchain,
you can look at the transaction history. I mean, there
were some days in August two thousand and nine where
you know, there was you know, twenty four bitcoin blocks
that were mined and there wasn't a single payment, right,
Like nobody was really using the network. Maybe there was
a few dozen people mining it. If that, and and
(12:54):
and you know, I think it's that maturation, right, right,
Bitcoin at that state in two thousand and nine, twenty ten,
and it is not geopolitically relevant, right, the US government
even if it had wanted to in twenty eleven or
twenty ten, when bitcoin was trading for pennies, you know,
to do what strategy is doing, or to do what
the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve you know has done, right, which
(13:15):
is stockpiled bitcoin for for America. Right, if you think
about it as in twenty ten or twenty eleven, that
would have been inconceivable, right, you would have essentially, you know,
if the US government had tried to buy you know,
even up you know, put a billion dollars in the network,
the network, the whole value of all the bitcoin and
the existence was less than a billion dollars, right, So
now the liquidity and the wealth within bitcoin and the
(13:37):
economic security that it's come from, its from its development
and appreciation. These are all kind of the secondary factors
that kind of emerge from bitcoin maturing as a technology
into something that can coexist potentially as something that counteracts
something like the global financial war that we're living in,
where you know, China has its financial system and then
(14:00):
it's trying to you know, extend its empire through financial
rails and the United States is trying to do that
as well, and bitcoin as an alternative, right that that
is an emergent phenomenon of bitcoin's technical developments and a
product of all those years. It isn't something that was
you know, innately, you know, a quality of it back then.
It's a product of really of all that time and development.
(14:21):
As as you were saying, there were the whole fifteen
and sixteen years that it's been around.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, So let's talk about the two evolutionary pieces like
that you brought up, and I want to get back
into which is one sort of the technical side of
it and then the monetary side of it, and the
two actually.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Overlay very well.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
As a matter of fact, when we were in Abu
Dhabi in December at Bitcoin Mina, I gave the closing
keynote there, and the closing keynote I gave basically showed
a bunch of charts and I overlaid these fifty year
technological revolution cycles that repeat, we're on the six to
one in the last three hundred years. And then I
overlaid the monetary evolution cycle on top of that and
showed how they how they lay out, and so I
(14:56):
think they're interlinked.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And so if we look at the four.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Phases of a fifty year cycle, the first phase is
the eruption, the big bang, and we don't know what
it is, and let's just play around with it. When
you go into phase two, it's more of the frenzy,
and the frenzy is now where we're hitting the early adopters,
and that's really the sovereign and the institutional phase that
we're in right now. And then if you overlay that
(15:21):
with a monetary evolution, monitary evolution starts as a collectible.
All look at this cool rock or feather or seashell
a baseball card. Some collectibles do eventually evolve to a
store of value, not all of them. And so bitcoin
was a collectible. We didn't know which ones it was
going to be, to your point, and now it's seeming
to in this place of the store value. But let's
go back to this technological boom. I started buying bitcoin
(15:45):
at twenty fifteen. It was three hundred bucks. After I
kind of figured out what it was, I was like,
oh my gosh, this is how we win.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
We beat the system.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I got to tell the whole world about it and
haven't stopped making content since. But I went down the
blockchain rabbit hole. I started writing cryptocurrency newsletter and I
was publishing, you know, twenty five pages of research every
month on a new crypto project. And it took me
until about twenty nineteen before I realized, wait a minute, no, no, no,
this is all smoke and mirrors. I mean, And so
(16:12):
I think to the points you were alluding to, and
I want to have you expand on it. It was
basically a bunch of experimentation and we were trying different things,
and by twenty eighteen it started to be pretty clear
who the winner was, but it still wasn't.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
But every year Bitcoin has just continued.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
To emerge stronger and stronger, right, I mean, that's kind
of have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Oh, of course, yeah, you know, I do think that
your intellectual progression is pretty much the mean, right. I
think in twenty seventeen, if people ask, you know, what's
my attitude towards the cryptosystem, and you know how well
meeting those people are. I think in twenty seventeen it
was plausible, you know, that bitcoin was something that was
going to be outloaded. Right. That was the whole narrative
of the day, kind of pushed by Silicon Valley, is
(16:52):
that you know, bitcoin was the model t you know,
here comes you know, your corvettes and your Mustangs and
then eventually you know you're kind of suburban car. Right.
It was this idea that Bickwin was a prototype, something
that would be a blueprint for what could be, but
that that kind of terrain had to be developed. And
I think, you know, you've you've really seen that design
(17:13):
space exhausted. Right. So I think I mentioned I'm doing
a new podcasts with BlockWorks folks called supply Shop. I
recently just had a podcast that isn't out yet, but
with Ryan Selkis from Massari, who's somebody who you know
would have been my boss at coined ESK when I
was an early journalist, you know, and and he went
on to build a product called Massari, where you know,
the intent was to kind of evaluate all these cryptocurrencies, right,
find by which metrics they were different, you know, to
(17:36):
give your listeners at home, like a conventional colloquial analogy.
It's it's, you know, we found this new world, and
we're digging up all this dirt, and you know, we
found all these new rocks and minerals and things, and
right there was a there was a real intellectual effort
to kind of separate them. Right, are is a piece
of software, monetary software run by a network of nodes
with different consensus. You know, does this give us many
(17:56):
types of assets? Are there many types of assets to
be discovered here with new qualities? And I think, you know,
talking to him, you know he sees the regulatory barriers
being the big friction point. But otherwise you know, he'll
readily admit and say, you know, over the last ten years,
you know, there hasn't really been much discovered. Right, there
was a great enthusiasm about what could be in terms
of you know, how all these networks could fit together,
(18:19):
all these assets. You know what we might discover and
that didn't happen, right, or you know, I think we're
getting closer to figuring out that that it just didn't happen.
And I think that's okay, right, In any technological movement,
you see that. You know, if you go to an
old airplane museum, you'll know you'll find the right Brothers airplane,
but you'll find one hundred other flying machines. You know
that you wouldn't want to actually get in, yeah, because
(18:40):
they don't fly, right, And I think that yeah, with
other cryptocurrencies, I think what we've found really is that,
you know, this idea that money competes on features isn't
isn't accurate, right, So we've seen all these other cryptocurrencies
come with with new feature sets, and then that hasn't
given them the competitive moat. I think the decline of
ethereum right where you really seen it go down against
(19:01):
in bitcoin terms significantly. You know, ethereum was really the
big hope, right. It was this idea that you could
build an asset that would be useful for applications as
a native money for a series of applications, and that
that would be enough to kind of power the economy
and the asset, and that's really breaking down, right, You're
you really are seeing people leave that ecosystem what have
(19:21):
been deeply involved with it simply because the price of
eth as an asset as as a significantly underperformed bitcoin, right,
And so this is the kind of new thing that's
happened in the last few years. So if you were
to asking me, Okay, why didn't this happen in twenty
twenty one, twenty twenty two, Well, during that era, there
was a tremendous you know again, they were seeing a
lot of success, right, and NFT's were kind of mainstreaming
(19:42):
as an application. There was a hope that the centralized
financial applications would take root. But again, the consumer market
for that stuff came and went, and the result is
an asset that's on the decline. And so you know
what you're seeing now as an effort to bring some
of the you know what they think can be salvaged
from those kind of designs you know, over to bitcoin.
Of course, some people have migrated over over to Solana,
which is an even more centralized version of a theoeum, Right,
(20:04):
So I think you'll see continued experimentation there but yeah,
you know, I think that you know, it's natural for
people to, you know, who have a new idea. You know,
create People are creative, They're naturally you know, when somebody,
if you came to move an idea, my natural inclination
mark would be to say, you know, I could probably
think of a better one. Right, I'll probably spend ten
twenty other hours trying to, you know, figure out how
(20:27):
to make a better bitcoin. I had someone as a
guest on the podcast, Scott Stornetta. He's cited in the
Bitlin white paper, so so she cited three of his
papers in the white paper. He's kind of credited as
the father of blockchains, right, this idea that you can
kind of hash data and kind of create a chain
of events in the way that the bitcoin blockchain works.
(20:48):
You know that that was his core invention. And he
still holds out for a better bitcoin, right. I think
he's come to appreciate a lot of the qualities for bitcoin.
But you know, he says, at the end of the day,
you know, I just I have this perfect vision of
something in my mind that you know, I would tweak
these two things. And so, as someone who you know,
as an innovator or tinkerer. You know, he's not going
(21:08):
to be happy with the the you know, very obviously
working and successful bitcoin. You know, he'll want to kind of,
you know, see if there's something out there. But I
think that that will diminish in the investment, and that
will diminish and uh, you know, I think it's becoming
more clear that just there's the bitcoin is the showing
point of what's been going on in the industry.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, I think it's a good transition into some of
the ideological differences or battlegrounds that we've seen in the
bitcoin space over time.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You mentioned it doesn't scale.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
First, I would just say from a technological standpoint, you
have creation problems and then you have engineering problems. So
bitcoin was a zero to one moment, right, it was
the creation of fire. Then how does it? No technology scales?
But that's an engineering problem and that's usually fixed. You've
created it, Now we have to scale it. And so
to the point that you're making just for the audience
(21:58):
to listen, So Tosimotive created two digital scar seas at
the same time. Number one, no more than twenty one
million tokens. Number two, though, was the block space and
so what Pete, what Pete's referring to is there's not
enough block space or throughput on the base layer for
the entire world to transact on it.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And so in order for that.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
To work, there needs to be an engineering solution, and
that is right now happening on layer twos and threes
and side chains and things like that, where the transactions
get batched and then move on.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
To the side Chaine.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And we don't know how that's going to work out,
but it seems to be working out at the scale
that the demand is there for at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, you know, I certainly am not a doom care
about it. You know, I don't even I think necessarily
prescribe to the you know, we know everything about how
sort of those dynamics will work. I just think that, yeah,
you know, I mean again, the whole goal with bitcoin,
and what makes it special is that you can run
a node and you can run the software, and you
can store the entire history of bitcoin on you know,
(22:56):
a peete computer that you know, you have to throw
in a backpack and escape some sort of regime. Right,
So that's computer science problem of you know, this whole
economy has to fit you know, in something that you know,
really ideally you want to palm in your hands. Yeah,
it's just a very difficult engineering problem. There's nothing wrong
with that. That's just an attribute to bitcoin. That's why
you know, you saw a lot of this experimentation. I'd
(23:18):
like to see a lot of those builders come back
and work on the actual problem, which is how do
you get the bitcoin system to be able to have
those attributes?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So as as Pete said, like fit in the palm
of your hand, because it can't really be decentralized if
everyone can't run a node.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
And that's the problem.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So how do we make it where a kit in
Africa with a five year old laptop can still run
a node?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Just keep it to stay.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah. Some of the other cryptocurrency systems just default on that, right.
So with Solana, I think it's you know, the default
costs to run a node is like twenty thousand dollars, right,
and you need a certain amount of bandwidth requirements. So
so they get around that by just saying like, you know,
we don't care.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
About that, right, They don't care about it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, well yeah, which is fine enough, right. They just
want a room to experiment, and you know, I think
even within the crypto space, you know, there's a recognition
a bitcoin is something that's unique. Right. We saw with
a strategic Bitcline reserve conversation, going back to the global
conversation that you were talking about, where you know, there
are major cryptocurrency leaders who you know, supported the creation
of the strategic bitclin reserve, who now sort of admit
(24:13):
that the cooin is special and differentiated. You know, how
begrudgingly do they admit that, you know, do they want
that to be different? You know, I I've had some
side conversations with folks now that I'm getting back into
the crypto world, and you know, look, I mean again,
I don't think you can have fault a smart engineer
for thinking or they can build something better and then
trying that out. I you know, I do think a
(24:34):
lot of them will eventually have the intellectual humility. And again,
you know, most people who want to build things, they
want to build something useful. Right.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
We see a lot of even og bitcoiners talking about how,
oh look at these bitcoiners simping for the government simply, oh,
central banks please buy our bags. Things like that, right,
And even yesterday with the announcement of Mahler's new company
with soft bank and Tether and.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Can twar Fitzgeril, which is massive.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I mean I've seen people going, look, this isn't the
bitcoin I signed up for kind of a thing like that, Right,
how do you look at that type of an issue?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Well, yeah, I think like the history of bitcoin is
a history of people trying to apply their own ideologies
to bitcoin, right that they go the you know, the cipherpunks.
Really that was the ideology that birth bitcoin, but then
the libertarians kind of came and then you have the technologists, Right,
So I think you're always uh, you know, seeing bitcoin
as a battleground for ideologies. The current flavor in terms
(25:29):
of you know how that's in the space today is
that there are people who see sort of bitcoin as
this you know, tool that could be leveraged by corporations
and the government. Right. So I think when you're seeing
kind of maybe you're talking about the old bitcoiners, we're
sort of against that, right. What really what they're sort
of rebelling against is that bitcoin used to be this
counter culture thing, right, It used to be very against
(25:49):
the mainstream. Like I'll just give you an example and
Mark you'll number this from Bitcoin twenty twenty one. Right,
you were hearing at Bitcoin twenty twenty one stories that
people were deplatformed by the government, were resisting governments, you know,
in foreign countries with tyrannical regimes. You had Ross Albrik's
voice from prison, somebody who was literally being you know,
buried alive by the state, you know, would have died
(26:11):
you know in prison. Yeah, you know, so some people
coming from that era, right, Bitcoin was a tool of resistance.
It was countercultural, and I think the discomfort is you know,
and I mentioned this word to you before we started,
but the suit coiner, Right, this idea that bitcoin is
integrating into mainstream finance. Uh, and you know you're going
to be sitting across from some financial planner, and this
financial planners is the bitcoin and that's how people are
(26:33):
interfacing with bitcoin is very antithetical to how those early
adopters would have found bitcoin. You know a lot of
these people would have been you know, buying drugs on
the Silk Road or you know, maybe even more extreme
type things than that. Right. This this this kind of
radical kind of freedom money that they really saw as
as you know, destabilizing states, Right, that was a very
(26:53):
attractive thing at the time. And yeah, you know, look
as that, as I said, I think I like to
keep a view where you know, I like that ideology
a lot. I've learned a lot from that ideology. Does
that ideology have to be right? I don't know. Right,
there's always going to be a group of people who
want more freedoms. They want to move towards technologies that
(27:13):
are you know, radical and freedom freedom, you know, providing
freedom to the world, and that's a great thing, right.
Does that mean Bitcoin needs to kind of stay true
to that or change? You know, I don't think bitcoin
is any less of any of those things that we
just discussed. Right, So if you go back to twenty
twenty one and twenty twenty two, today, bitcoin is no less,
you know, a tool for you to flee regime. It's
(27:34):
no less a tool for you to use, you know,
in an instance of domestic abuse or something like that.
It's no less you know, something that you know could
protect you from a deplatforming or demonetization in some way. Right.
It's just that we're also doing this thing of you know,
Wall Street is where the capital is, it is where
people go to you know, take the biggest risks and
(27:54):
build the biggest build the biggest companies. And that's why
I sort of divide it as I really do think
this last election in twenty twenty four was a huge
demarcation line in the history of the industry. I think
when people look back, they'll draw a pretty bright line
and they'll say the first era of bitcoin, the first
age was twentousand and nine to twenty twenty four. And
Trump's kind of coming to power and really, you know,
(28:15):
within the financial center of the world validating bitcoin, you know,
agreeing never to sell bitcoin again, sending that message to
the world that really, I think is going to demarket
the early age of bitcoin, you know, where kind of
these groups were culturally and charged from this new world
where you know, there's not gonna be an internet cafe anymore, right,
(28:37):
Like you're just every cafe is going to have the Internet.
If you go to a cafe and there's no Internet,
you're just going to go to another cafe. Right. That's
that's the world you're coming to with bitcoin, where it's
normalized and it's just part of the everyday experience.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
From I'm in southern California and I grew up in
the surfing, skating, snowboarding era, right, and you have these
like core brands and then next thing you know, they're
being sold at May season. Then they make it to
cost Go and then they've sold out, but even though.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
They're still supporting the skateboarding or surfing. But you know,
I kind of think of it like that.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But from a cipher punk person, most times you would think, eventually,
you know, we get to this hyper bitchronization, or maybe
eventually it gets to a global asset, and it's like, well,
it doesn't get to a global asset unless everybody adopts it.
So it's like if you think about if you chase
that thought that you have or that vision that you have,
like where does that end up? I think about it
that way. The other way I think about it is
(29:26):
that I think it's important for most people.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Maybe they don't realize this, but it's like just because.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
You own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or this government
doesn't give you control over the network, which is back
what I was saying earlier about some of these pos
networks where they have staking and so they can acquire
a large amount of the tokens and stake them, and
they do get more votes over the network, but Bitcoin
doesn't allow that, and so it sort of invalidates that
other than it not being cool, I suppose, you know, but.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
We'll see, right, I still think that from a network component, right,
these ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot
of power to define what bigo point is at the
software level. I mean, again, we'll see if this becomes
you know, a problem at at any rate. But you know,
again I do think that, Yeah, what you're talking about is,
you know, bitcoin is just not going to be counterculture forever. Right,
(30:14):
It's it's not going to be the kind of angsty
outside of the system thing. I think there. You know,
there was a hope in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,
I think from some large percentage of the community, or
maybe a minority percentage, that wanted the kind of global
power structure to change Bitcoin to change that. So, right,
maybe bitcoin they saw bitcoin as ushering in a world
(30:34):
where a country like El Salbad or or a country
like Bhutan who was like historically left behind, where people
in Africa might sort of use bitcoin to rise up, right,
become more wealthy and you know, become less disempowered by
the US led financial system. I think what's happened as
of twenty twenty four with Trump embracing bitcoin and coming
(30:55):
to power is that you're going to see that structure
be entrenched, and I understand why people are dissatisfied with it.
I would say, I'm well, you know, I would have
preferred the other outcome. Do I dislike this outcome? No?
I think you know, the world will be fine. But
I do think that you know, if if you had
that worldview, then what has happened I think is very understandable.
(31:16):
Right where the US, I think, you know, if you're
talking about the US becoming the world leader in bitcoin
and using that to further the dollar, that's a very
different world than a world where you know, rass roots
adoption and adoption in smaller countries, you know, really changes
the global power structure and the nature of global superpowers.
And I think what you're seeing with Trump, you know,
coming to power and embracing bitcoin is is I don't
(31:38):
think that future is viable anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, let's talk.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You referenced bitcoin twenty twenty one. I reference bitcoin in
Abu Dhabi. We have bitcoin Vegas coming up here. In
about a month. I'm pretty excited about that. Happy to
see you again. I put out something to other day
about like why I think going to events like this
are so important.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I think even more so today.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But what do you think about these types of events
and getting together and the importance of that.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I love bitcoin conferences. I've always enjoyed them. I think
it's it's great to see like a snapshot of where
the community is at, and they're very useful for kind
of demarketing. You know, how we've changed and thought about
bitcoin over time. I think, you know, one of the
things that sticks out is, you know, you're going to
see this year kind of a whole activation around politics.
Right there's so much demand from from US politicians to
(32:24):
be involved in what's happening in bitcoin and crypto to
a larger extent that there's going to be a whole
presence there and right I think this this gets that
what's really happening in America right now is the country
trying to use bitcoin to its all the own advantage.
You're hearing about bit bonds that you know, maybe bitcoin
can reignite the treasury market, Bitcoin can cancel the national debt.
(32:46):
You know, America seems to be kind of embracing, you know,
these radical ideas. The politicians seem to be embracing these
radical ideas. And you know that would have been night
and day from last year, where you know, a lot
of the dialogue was about you know, companies had moved overseas,
they had been debanked. You know. So I think it's
going to be a real contrast if you think about
(33:07):
last year with twenty twenty four where Trump really even then,
you know, people forget when Trump took the stage of
bitcoin twenty twenty four, Kamala Harris had only really just
been recently named the nominee a week prior. It really
wasn't clear, you know, at that point how the political
environment was was going to shake out. I think Trump's
platform for bitcoin was really unveiled there right, Things like
(33:29):
the Bitcoin Act, which are being debated, you know, really
came to prominence at that time. But you know, it
was a very very different scenario where now you know,
the bitcoin and crypto industry where you know, the number
one spender in the election probably determined the election in
favor of Donald Trump in my view, and you know,
ultimately changed the course of history through that, and now
(33:50):
you're going to see I think a real leaning in
from from the politicians of you know, how can bitcoin
and crypto solve problems for you know, the American govern
And some of these problems are the largest. Probably mean
that canceling the national debt. I mean, that's that's a
space race moon landing type initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
If if that is actually achieved within our lifetime, I mean,
then that that would be an amazing story. So I
think there'll be a lot of you know, seeds of
future history right where people are going to come together
and maybe this will be another memorable conference in the
same way last years was where you know, Donald Trump
really arrived, you know, as a pro bitcoin candidate and
(34:29):
really just you know, shook up the whole industry in
the world.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, and we had RFK there was also there speaking right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It was. It was monument monumental.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I was calling it maybe the largest most culturally relevant
event in the world. I mean whatever, twenty five thousand people,
like not a lot of events have that many people,
but the diverse nature of it from presidential candidates and
politicians to Wall Street bankers, coders.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I mean, we had musicians, we had comedians, Right.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, I mean the Bigcoin Conference really is the anti
Davos at this point, right, Yeah, that's the kind of
level of event that you know we're scaling to. Obviously,
Claus Schweb presigning and under investigation the World of Melconomic
Forum this week, so you know, maybe he'll be fitting.
Maybe he'll come back and he'll have a bitcoin startup
to launch. Who knows. Right, Well, we'll take anything all
the people you can get.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Right, sounds like you got a baby cry, and I
guess it's time to go. Let me ask you one
more question. We'll wrap it up here. What's one big
insight about bitcoin or freedom or maybe the world going
into that you could leave us with just to think
about something that you're thinking about, something big into the
future bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, that's a great question. I Mean something that I
say is, you know, I think there's a couple of
ways to understand bickcoin. Right. You can use it as
a tool something in your financial life, or you know,
use it as savings and kind of turn off your
brain and and and kind of go about your day.
But I do really think that you know, we're we're
still trying to understand bitcoin as a technology. There's a
lot to learn. Uh, there's a lot to kind of
explore in terms of, you know, figuring out kind of
(35:56):
you know, how we got here. And I think if
you're someone who's curious and until sellectual, you know, and
you're hearing this and you're saying, oh, bitcoin was ten
cents and you know, now it's one hundred k, maybe
I missed the boat. You know, I would just say
that I don't think that can be further from the truth.
But I think it's it's a great time to start
working on these problems. And we're very far away from
bitcoin being you know, the global neutral monetary system that
(36:19):
you know is used by global powers. We're getting closer,
but we're far away, and we could definitely use your help.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Awesome, Pete, We're gonna you got a podcast we're in
linked that down below. Obviously, your Twitter down below, and
you have a newsletter or your your website that you
published stuff on.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
We'll link to that down below. All right, Pete, thanks
so much,
What's happening in Russia right now is an equally vibrant
conversation about the role of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and they're
allowing high net worth individuals to buy bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
The Central Bank and the Ministry Finance are coming together
to launch in exchange.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Do you think that this reshaping of the monetary order
pushes bitcoin up into the mainstream.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Everybody comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to
adopt bitcloin for its benefits. There's a lot for the America.
It's a gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right. Bitcoin
is a neutral money, it's an a political money that's grassroots.
It's happening globally. Everyone's adopting it across the world. And
a tale of the bitcoin network, I think, is that
it's grown so robust. Thus, you know, it can be
considered a real neutral money within the context of our
(00:41):
nation states.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Just because you own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or
the US government doesn't give you control over the network.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
These ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot
of power to define what bitcoin is at the software level.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
All right, Pete, We're going to just jump right into
the heat right here. The hottest topic in the world
right now is is Trump the Trump administration trying to
pull off this massive reset using tariffs as a tool
to reset the global monetary order. Now, throughout history, we've
seen the monitary order switch many times, and even it
seems to happen every couple decades. Do you think that
(01:16):
this reshaping of the monetary order pushes bitcoin up into
the mainstream?
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Well, Mark, thanks for having me here. Always happy to
be on this on the program. I think what you're
seeing from the Trump administration, you know, really is an
effort to use bitcoin for its own advantages. Right. Everybody
comes to bitcoin on their own terms, tries to adopt
bitcoin for its benefits. But yeah, there's a lot for
the America to gain from taking advantage of bitcoin. Right.
(01:42):
You've seen bo Hin's administration officials come out and they've said,
you know, hey, we have thousands of bitcoin, hundreds maybe
even hundreds of thousands of bitcoin that we sold for
you know, pennies on the dollar, you know, and that
started the gears of you know, what does it mean? Right?
And I think they did the investigation, you know, people
got involved in the campaign and did the education and
the education was you know, bitcoin is a neutral money,
(02:04):
it's an a political money, that's grassroots. It's happening globally.
Everyone's adopting it across the world. And I think from
that education process, you know, you've got administrative action very quickly,
strategic bitcoin reserve now, you know, an assessment of the
national stockpile to see how much is in store. But
you know, also on the stable coin front, right there's
there's an interest from the administration to figure out, you know,
(02:28):
if we are going to move to a global neutral
monetary system, if that is the end result of the
you know, sort of financial war that we have ongoing
right now, where you know, the different superpowers the world
have politicized their financial systems. If bitcoin is the end
result of that. Well, there's also the intermediate period, right
where maybe the US dollar can take advantage of some
(02:48):
of these rails to become more powerful in emerging markets.
I think they're really savvy to that. I think you're
going to see it. And with the Genius Act and
the Market Structure Bill, I think that's why that's at
the top of the administration's list.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
That Genius Act is actually something really important. I want
to come back to that in a second. But basically
it's sort of like we all sort of have this
recency bias and we just kind of go along with
the flow. But then in times of disruption, you start
thinking about everything. Right, so somebody dies, You're like, oh, shoot, what.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
About my own life? What am I doing?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
And so all of a sudden you have this massive
disruption in the global monetary system to the point that
you brought up maybe seeing some of the weaponization.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
That's happened around this.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Then you have the tariffs, and then maybe you know,
Trump is sort of pushing a narrative where he doesn't
want all this foreign investment into our markets. And then
so where do we store our money and where do
we use as payments? And so then it seems to like, well,
let's take another look at bitcoin. It sort of starts
percolating up towards the top again, so weird.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well, you know this is happening globally, right, So something
that maybe slipped off the radar of most bitcoiners is
what's happening in Russia right now. As an equally vibrant
conversation about the role of bitcoinning cryptocurrencies, but from a
much different lens, right, Russia has really didn't cut off
from the global financial system, has had to route around that,
and from that you've seen a tremendous grassroots adoption, you
know among the populace, you know, in terms of you know,
(04:03):
using stable coins and bitcoin to do cross border trading.
Even denominating oil trades you know, in bitcoin is common
there according to reporting. So you know, they've recently come
out and they're allowing high net worth individuals to buy
bitcoin and cryptocurrency. The Central Bank and the Ministry of
Finance are coming together to launch in exchange, but they're
really trying to keep a lid on it, right. They
(04:23):
want to kind of maintain their own financial system. They
want to prevent the capital flight. They have the Bricks
Union with China to take you know, to take care
of Obviously, China still skeptical, It has a ban on
bitcoin and it really is not leaning into that. So
you know, this is happening globally, right the Trump administration reacting.
But even if you want to lose another algory with Russia,
(04:44):
this is another example of you know what you're talking about,
the historical weaponization of financial system. You know, this is
just the current state of the world that we have, right,
We've had these kind of payment networks that have been
based on databases that have been geolocalized by country. We're
moving to an international network for monetary transfer, and every
country is grappling with it. The US taking their approach,
(05:05):
Russia taking their approach, China taking their approach, and it'll
be fascinating to watch.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely. It's definitely changing things. I'm curious,
you know, yours known for. One of your projects you're
known for is obviously your historical sort of account of bitcoin,
and it hasn't been around that long. I was invited
to Mexico City to speak out a Mastermind, which Peter
Schiff owns half of.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I don't know why they invited me.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
He wasn't happy to hear me talk about bitcoin, and
we got into these debates and we had to go
out in the hallway and talk about it, and it
all seemed to boil down to well, it's only been
around fifteen years, and I'm like, okay, okay, you got
me there, right, But in those fifteen years, a lot's happened,
and we seem to have like these epochs right where
like bitcoin has these big moves, and I'm just curious
when you look at like some of these big moves
(05:47):
and maybe the catalyst for those some of these big things. Obviously,
the first block was inscribed about the bailout of two
thousand and eight. Do you see like what's going on
now today being another one of these like defied global
moves into this next epoch.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, you know, I've appreciated you calling on my work there,
but people who can go on my Twitter account at
Pete Underscore Rizzo Underscore, you'll find some great accounting of
kind of the legendary people and figures in bitcoin. But
essentially kind of bringing it back to your question again,
which I think was about can you remind me of
your question again?
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, I was just saying throughout the fifteen years, we
see these epochs where bitcoin has these big moves, and
a lot of it's around some of some global events
that may happen. Obviously, the first inscription was about the
two thousand and eight global event global and what if
what's going on right now globally might be like this
another historical moment where it hits this next epoch.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah, I mean, I very much think that we're exiting
kind of the early stage of bitcoin, right, So you
think about these phases, these for year market cycles. I know,
this is something that you discuss a lot, and you know,
talk about the market structure. But essentially, you know, I
think the early wars and Bitcoin and the early drama
was mostly on the technology side. Right. Bitcoin's a network.
It's powered by people who are running computers running software
in the own homes, and this technology had to spread
(07:02):
around the globe, right, so essentially going from one person
to Toshi Nakamoto, to two people to more people running
this technology around the world. And of course these people,
you know, brought their own ideologies together and they had
to come together and create and foster this network and
make sure it grew. But really, I can think the
early drama of bitcoin is is the technical side, right?
(07:22):
How should this be changed? Is it perfected? Are there
other alternative designs of the Sotoshi Nakamoto bitcoin system that
should be tried and tested. I really see us as
kind of closing the book on that era now, especially
with what's happening with Trump and Washington and just the
embraced by nation states as well as the you know,
I think ideological kind of collapse that that's happening in Ethereum,
(07:45):
which has historically been kind of the number two cryptocurrency,
and this is how to shock wave of across the
crypto ecosystem, where you have developers who've kind of been
you know, building that, you know, and kind of investing
their whole life and work energy. In some cases, you know,
people a decade of their lives spent and kind of build,
holding on startups, working on problems, kind of thinking that
some of these alternative cryptocurrencies would potentially be viable. Now
(08:06):
kind of seeing e theoryum kind of going through you know,
it's been four or five years since an all time high,
it's down sixty percent, seventy percent in bitcoin terms, and
now they have to kind of redirect their personal life energy. Right,
So I very much see it as as the technology
story of bitcoin. Obviously there's going to be maybe a
need to kind of tweak and improve bitcoin, and they're
you know, we're never going to get away from the
(08:26):
fact that bitcoin is a software, right for the first
time in history money is software. But essentially, you know,
the the grappling with that of the technological war kind
of level I think is over, right, I think it's
it's pretty clear that bitcoin is the big winner. I
think the other cryptocurrencies are adjusting to that now. I
think we are moving into the geopolitical phase, right where
what does it mean for bitcoin to really go up,
(08:48):
you know, or be sort of you know, the counterpoint
some of these East West, China, US kind of larger
geopolitical events. Right Bitcoin is scaling up into that conversation.
We're seeing the other technologies sort of fade away. So
you know, you can follow my work through those threads,
you'll find a lot of the people and figures who
contributed to that movement. I think what you saw at
(09:08):
the end of that you know, ten to fifteen year
period is a really hardening a bitcoin as a technology
and in our understanding of bitcoin, right A bitcoin was
a very new phenomenon. Software had never been money. Money
was mostly you know, things we dug up on the ground,
a piece of paper, trust distributed trust arrangements. Bitcoin has
changed all that, so a while to grapple with that
and figure out what it was and really kind of
(09:28):
harden that. I think that period is mostly passing over,
and that's why you're seeing you know, corporate adoption, government adoption.
You know, there's only so much we can excavate, and
I think, you know, the good news is this bitcoin
is moving forward and the world is embracing it.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
So you talked you touched on two different evolutions in
bitcoin there that I want to dig into, sort of
the monetary evolution you talked about, you know, digging up
money up out of the ground. There's been this monetary evolution,
But you also talked about this technological evolution where really
we kind of are leaving this technical age and now
maybe going into more of this sovereign age. So I
want to talk about both of those evolutions, but just
(10:04):
just to kind of put a pin in the question
that i'd asked, So where you see bitcoin really have
maybe moving from you know, ten cents to now, you
know whatever, almost one hundred thousand dollars. Again, those were
more the benefit of it sort of going through these
technological phases, not really being run into as a store
of value on a global stage.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yet.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, yeah, I mean obviously the technology and the community
around the technology is very small. Right, Ultimately bitcoin is
a network based money, right, Like that that's the thing
that's new here, right, If you think about other financial
systems as networks. You know, the US financial system is
GEO limited to you know, the United States. That's why
we're able to kind of you know, control permission, you know,
access to that network. But yeah, the tale of the
(10:47):
Bitcoin network, I think is that that it's grown so robust. Thus,
you know, it can be considered a real neutral money
within the context of you know, nation states. You know,
early on in bitcoin's history, you know, when it was
really just in some cases, you know, maybe as little
as ten or a dozen people kind of running the
software in their computers. Yeah, there were scenarios where you know,
(11:08):
somebody could have come and rented a data center and
overwhelmed the network and undermined the monetary policy or the
credibility of it. Right. So, so bitcoin was fragile, right.
A lot of the early developers you'll talk to will
describe bitcoin as as an experimental work in progress, and
there was you know, periods in its history where you know,
it could have been undermined by a malicious state actor.
(11:29):
That was something that people would have been concerned about.
Now for a malicious state actor, you know, to you
know undermine bitcoin, I mean you're talking about you know,
the sheer amounts of computing power that you would need,
you know, for people who don't know, the Bitcoin minor
network is you know, orders of magnitude larger than the
data centers that back you know, Google search engines. You know,
(11:49):
so you're talking about the amount of like raw physical
infrastructure that you would need to launch some sort of
coordinated campaign against Bitcoin to actually sensor transactions or block
payments or things like that. Is you know, on the
order of like you would need to you know, command
the small country or or you know, somehow you know,
secretly acquire you know, millions or maybe hundreds of thousands
(12:11):
of expensive mining equipment that that's only kind of special
team made it in certain areas. Right, So you're you're
you know, Bitcoin is never going to be you know,
completely one hundred percent secure. It's just probabilistically, you know,
it's so unlikely that Bitcoin would would face an attack
of that scale to any but earlier in the past
and in Bitcoin's past, it you know, it was true, right,
there were days, you know, in two thousand and nine,
(12:33):
so Soshi na Komoto would have gotten up and you know,
you can look at the transaction history, you know, your
own note if you if you look at the blockchain,
you can look at the transaction history. I mean, there
were some days in August two thousand and nine where
you know, there was you know, twenty four bitcoin blocks
that were mined and there wasn't a single payment, right,
Like nobody was really using the network. Maybe there was
a few dozen people mining it. If that, and and
(12:54):
and you know, I think it's that maturation, right, right,
Bitcoin at that state in two thousand and nine, twenty ten,
and it is not geopolitically relevant, right, the US government
even if it had wanted to in twenty eleven or
twenty ten, when bitcoin was trading for pennies, you know,
to do what strategy is doing, or to do what
the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve you know has done, right, which
(13:15):
is stockpiled bitcoin for for America. Right, if you think
about it as in twenty ten or twenty eleven, that
would have been inconceivable, right, you would have essentially, you know,
if the US government had tried to buy you know,
even up you know, put a billion dollars in the network,
the network, the whole value of all the bitcoin and
the existence was less than a billion dollars, right, So
now the liquidity and the wealth within bitcoin and the
(13:37):
economic security that it's come from, its from its development
and appreciation. These are all kind of the secondary factors
that kind of emerge from bitcoin maturing as a technology
into something that can coexist potentially as something that counteracts
something like the global financial war that we're living in,
where you know, China has its financial system and then
(14:00):
it's trying to you know, extend its empire through financial
rails and the United States is trying to do that
as well, and bitcoin as an alternative, right that that
is an emergent phenomenon of bitcoin's technical developments and a
product of all those years. It isn't something that was
you know, innately, you know, a quality of it back then.
It's a product of really of all that time and development.
(14:21):
As as you were saying, there were the whole fifteen
and sixteen years that it's been around.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, So let's talk about the two evolutionary pieces like
that you brought up, and I want to get back
into which is one sort of the technical side of
it and then the monetary side of it, and the
two actually.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Overlay very well.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
As a matter of fact, when we were in Abu
Dhabi in December at Bitcoin Mina, I gave the closing
keynote there, and the closing keynote I gave basically showed
a bunch of charts and I overlaid these fifty year
technological revolution cycles that repeat, we're on the six to
one in the last three hundred years. And then I
overlaid the monetary evolution cycle on top of that and
showed how they how they lay out, and so I
(14:56):
think they're interlinked.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
And so if we look at the four.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Phases of a fifty year cycle, the first phase is
the eruption, the big bang, and we don't know what
it is, and let's just play around with it. When
you go into phase two, it's more of the frenzy,
and the frenzy is now where we're hitting the early adopters,
and that's really the sovereign and the institutional phase that
we're in right now. And then if you overlay that
(15:21):
with a monetary evolution, monitary evolution starts as a collectible.
All look at this cool rock or feather or seashell
a baseball card. Some collectibles do eventually evolve to a
store of value, not all of them. And so bitcoin
was a collectible. We didn't know which ones it was
going to be, to your point, and now it's seeming
to in this place of the store value. But let's
go back to this technological boom. I started buying bitcoin
(15:45):
at twenty fifteen. It was three hundred bucks. After I
kind of figured out what it was, I was like,
oh my gosh, this is how we win.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
We beat the system.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
I got to tell the whole world about it and
haven't stopped making content since. But I went down the
blockchain rabbit hole. I started writing cryptocurrency newsletter and I
was publishing, you know, twenty five pages of research every
month on a new crypto project. And it took me
until about twenty nineteen before I realized, wait a minute, no, no, no,
this is all smoke and mirrors. I mean, And so
(16:12):
I think to the points you were alluding to, and
I want to have you expand on it. It was
basically a bunch of experimentation and we were trying different things,
and by twenty eighteen it started to be pretty clear
who the winner was, but it still wasn't.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
But every year Bitcoin has just continued.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
To emerge stronger and stronger, right, I mean, that's kind
of have you seen it?
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Oh, of course, yeah, you know, I do think that
your intellectual progression is pretty much the mean, right. I
think in twenty seventeen, if people ask, you know, what's
my attitude towards the cryptosystem, and you know how well
meeting those people are. I think in twenty seventeen it
was plausible, you know, that bitcoin was something that was
going to be outloaded. Right. That was the whole narrative
of the day, kind of pushed by Silicon Valley, is
(16:52):
that you know, bitcoin was the model t you know,
here comes you know, your corvettes and your Mustangs and
then eventually you know you're kind of suburban car. Right.
It was this idea that Bickwin was a prototype, something
that would be a blueprint for what could be, but
that that kind of terrain had to be developed. And
I think, you know, you've you've really seen that design
(17:13):
space exhausted. Right. So I think I mentioned I'm doing
a new podcasts with BlockWorks folks called supply Shop. I
recently just had a podcast that isn't out yet, but
with Ryan Selkis from Massari, who's somebody who you know
would have been my boss at coined ESK when I
was an early journalist, you know, and and he went
on to build a product called Massari, where you know,
the intent was to kind of evaluate all these cryptocurrencies, right,
find by which metrics they were different, you know, to
(17:36):
give your listeners at home, like a conventional colloquial analogy.
It's it's, you know, we found this new world, and
we're digging up all this dirt, and you know, we
found all these new rocks and minerals and things, and
right there was a there was a real intellectual effort
to kind of separate them. Right, are is a piece
of software, monetary software run by a network of nodes
with different consensus. You know, does this give us many
(17:56):
types of assets? Are there many types of assets to
be discovered here with new qualities? And I think, you know,
talking to him, you know he sees the regulatory barriers
being the big friction point. But otherwise you know, he'll
readily admit and say, you know, over the last ten years,
you know, there hasn't really been much discovered. Right, there
was a great enthusiasm about what could be in terms
of you know, how all these networks could fit together,
(18:19):
all these assets. You know what we might discover and
that didn't happen, right, or you know, I think we're
getting closer to figuring out that that it just didn't happen.
And I think that's okay, right, In any technological movement,
you see that. You know, if you go to an
old airplane museum, you'll know you'll find the right Brothers airplane,
but you'll find one hundred other flying machines. You know
that you wouldn't want to actually get in, yeah, because
(18:40):
they don't fly, right, And I think that yeah, with
other cryptocurrencies, I think what we've found really is that,
you know, this idea that money competes on features isn't
isn't accurate, right, So we've seen all these other cryptocurrencies
come with with new feature sets, and then that hasn't
given them the competitive moat. I think the decline of
ethereum right where you really seen it go down against
(19:01):
in bitcoin terms significantly. You know, ethereum was really the
big hope, right. It was this idea that you could
build an asset that would be useful for applications as
a native money for a series of applications, and that
that would be enough to kind of power the economy
and the asset, and that's really breaking down, right, You're
you really are seeing people leave that ecosystem what have
(19:21):
been deeply involved with it simply because the price of
eth as an asset as as a significantly underperformed bitcoin, right,
And so this is the kind of new thing that's
happened in the last few years. So if you were
to asking me, Okay, why didn't this happen in twenty
twenty one, twenty twenty two, Well, during that era, there
was a tremendous you know again, they were seeing a
lot of success, right, and NFT's were kind of mainstreaming
(19:42):
as an application. There was a hope that the centralized
financial applications would take root. But again, the consumer market
for that stuff came and went, and the result is
an asset that's on the decline. And so you know
what you're seeing now as an effort to bring some
of the you know what they think can be salvaged
from those kind of designs you know, over to bitcoin.
Of course, some people have migrated over over to Solana,
which is an even more centralized version of a theoeum, Right,
(20:04):
So I think you'll see continued experimentation there but yeah,
you know, I think that you know, it's natural for
people to, you know, who have a new idea. You know,
create People are creative, They're naturally you know, when somebody,
if you came to move an idea, my natural inclination
mark would be to say, you know, I could probably
think of a better one. Right, I'll probably spend ten
twenty other hours trying to, you know, figure out how
(20:27):
to make a better bitcoin. I had someone as a
guest on the podcast, Scott Stornetta. He's cited in the
Bitlin white paper, so so she cited three of his
papers in the white paper. He's kind of credited as
the father of blockchains, right, this idea that you can
kind of hash data and kind of create a chain
of events in the way that the bitcoin blockchain works.
(20:48):
You know that that was his core invention. And he
still holds out for a better bitcoin, right. I think
he's come to appreciate a lot of the qualities for bitcoin.
But you know, he says, at the end of the day,
you know, I just I have this perfect vision of
something in my mind that you know, I would tweak
these two things. And so, as someone who you know,
as an innovator or tinkerer. You know, he's not going
(21:08):
to be happy with the the you know, very obviously
working and successful bitcoin. You know, he'll want to kind of,
you know, see if there's something out there. But I
think that that will diminish in the investment, and that
will diminish and uh, you know, I think it's becoming
more clear that just there's the bitcoin is the showing
point of what's been going on in the industry.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, I think it's a good transition into some of
the ideological differences or battlegrounds that we've seen in the
bitcoin space over time.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
You mentioned it doesn't scale.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
First, I would just say from a technological standpoint, you
have creation problems and then you have engineering problems. So
bitcoin was a zero to one moment, right, it was
the creation of fire. Then how does it? No technology scales?
But that's an engineering problem and that's usually fixed. You've
created it, Now we have to scale it. And so
to the point that you're making just for the audience
(21:58):
to listen, So Tosimotive created two digital scar seas at
the same time. Number one, no more than twenty one
million tokens. Number two, though, was the block space and
so what Pete, what Pete's referring to is there's not
enough block space or throughput on the base layer for
the entire world to transact on it.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And so in order for that.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
To work, there needs to be an engineering solution, and
that is right now happening on layer twos and threes
and side chains and things like that, where the transactions
get batched and then move on.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
To the side Chaine.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And we don't know how that's going to work out,
but it seems to be working out at the scale
that the demand is there for at this point.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, you know, I certainly am not a doom care
about it. You know, I don't even I think necessarily
prescribe to the you know, we know everything about how
sort of those dynamics will work. I just think that, yeah,
you know, I mean again, the whole goal with bitcoin,
and what makes it special is that you can run
a node and you can run the software, and you
can store the entire history of bitcoin on you know,
(22:56):
a peete computer that you know, you have to throw
in a backpack and escape some sort of regime. Right,
So that's computer science problem of you know, this whole
economy has to fit you know, in something that you know,
really ideally you want to palm in your hands. Yeah,
it's just a very difficult engineering problem. There's nothing wrong
with that. That's just an attribute to bitcoin. That's why
you know, you saw a lot of this experimentation. I'd
(23:18):
like to see a lot of those builders come back
and work on the actual problem, which is how do
you get the bitcoin system to be able to have
those attributes?
Speaker 2 (23:24):
So as as Pete said, like fit in the palm
of your hand, because it can't really be decentralized if
everyone can't run a node.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
And that's the problem.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So how do we make it where a kit in
Africa with a five year old laptop can still run
a node?
Speaker 3 (23:37):
Just keep it to stay.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah. Some of the other cryptocurrency systems just default on that, right.
So with Solana, I think it's you know, the default
costs to run a node is like twenty thousand dollars, right,
and you need a certain amount of bandwidth requirements. So
so they get around that by just saying like, you know,
we don't care.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
About that, right, They don't care about it.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, well yeah, which is fine enough, right. They just
want a room to experiment, and you know, I think
even within the crypto space, you know, there's a recognition
a bitcoin is something that's unique. Right. We saw with
a strategic Bitcline reserve conversation, going back to the global
conversation that you were talking about, where you know, there
are major cryptocurrency leaders who you know, supported the creation
of the strategic bitclin reserve, who now sort of admit
(24:13):
that the cooin is special and differentiated. You know, how
begrudgingly do they admit that, you know, do they want
that to be different? You know, I I've had some
side conversations with folks now that I'm getting back into
the crypto world, and you know, look, I mean again,
I don't think you can have fault a smart engineer
for thinking or they can build something better and then
trying that out. I you know, I do think a
(24:34):
lot of them will eventually have the intellectual humility. And again,
you know, most people who want to build things, they
want to build something useful. Right.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
We see a lot of even og bitcoiners talking about how,
oh look at these bitcoiners simping for the government simply, oh,
central banks please buy our bags. Things like that, right,
And even yesterday with the announcement of Mahler's new company
with soft bank and Tether and.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Can twar Fitzgeril, which is massive.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I mean I've seen people going, look, this isn't the
bitcoin I signed up for kind of a thing like that, Right,
how do you look at that type of an issue?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Well, yeah, I think like the history of bitcoin is
a history of people trying to apply their own ideologies
to bitcoin, right that they go the you know, the cipherpunks.
Really that was the ideology that birth bitcoin, but then
the libertarians kind of came and then you have the technologists, Right,
So I think you're always uh, you know, seeing bitcoin
as a battleground for ideologies. The current flavor in terms
(25:29):
of you know how that's in the space today is
that there are people who see sort of bitcoin as
this you know, tool that could be leveraged by corporations
and the government. Right. So I think when you're seeing
kind of maybe you're talking about the old bitcoiners, we're
sort of against that, right. What really what they're sort
of rebelling against is that bitcoin used to be this
counter culture thing, right, It used to be very against
(25:49):
the mainstream. Like I'll just give you an example and
Mark you'll number this from Bitcoin twenty twenty one. Right,
you were hearing at Bitcoin twenty twenty one stories that
people were deplatformed by the government, were resisting governments, you know,
in foreign countries with tyrannical regimes. You had Ross Albrik's
voice from prison, somebody who was literally being you know,
buried alive by the state, you know, would have died
(26:11):
you know in prison. Yeah, you know, so some people
coming from that era, right, Bitcoin was a tool of resistance.
It was countercultural, and I think the discomfort is you know,
and I mentioned this word to you before we started,
but the suit coiner, Right, this idea that bitcoin is
integrating into mainstream finance. Uh, and you know you're going
to be sitting across from some financial planner, and this
financial planners is the bitcoin and that's how people are
(26:33):
interfacing with bitcoin is very antithetical to how those early
adopters would have found bitcoin. You know a lot of
these people would have been you know, buying drugs on
the Silk Road or you know, maybe even more extreme
type things than that. Right. This this this kind of
radical kind of freedom money that they really saw as
as you know, destabilizing states, Right, that was a very
(26:53):
attractive thing at the time. And yeah, you know, look
as that, as I said, I think I like to
keep a view where you know, I like that ideology
a lot. I've learned a lot from that ideology. Does
that ideology have to be right? I don't know. Right,
there's always going to be a group of people who
want more freedoms. They want to move towards technologies that
(27:13):
are you know, radical and freedom freedom, you know, providing
freedom to the world, and that's a great thing, right.
Does that mean Bitcoin needs to kind of stay true
to that or change? You know, I don't think bitcoin
is any less of any of those things that we
just discussed. Right, So if you go back to twenty
twenty one and twenty twenty two, today, bitcoin is no less,
you know, a tool for you to flee regime. It's
(27:34):
no less a tool for you to use, you know,
in an instance of domestic abuse or something like that.
It's no less you know, something that you know could
protect you from a deplatforming or demonetization in some way. Right.
It's just that we're also doing this thing of you know,
Wall Street is where the capital is, it is where
people go to you know, take the biggest risks and
(27:54):
build the biggest build the biggest companies. And that's why
I sort of divide it as I really do think
this last election in twenty twenty four was a huge
demarcation line in the history of the industry. I think
when people look back, they'll draw a pretty bright line
and they'll say the first era of bitcoin, the first
age was twentousand and nine to twenty twenty four. And
Trump's kind of coming to power and really, you know,
(28:15):
within the financial center of the world validating bitcoin, you know,
agreeing never to sell bitcoin again, sending that message to
the world that really, I think is going to demarket
the early age of bitcoin, you know, where kind of
these groups were culturally and charged from this new world
where you know, there's not gonna be an internet cafe anymore, right,
(28:37):
Like you're just every cafe is going to have the Internet.
If you go to a cafe and there's no Internet,
you're just going to go to another cafe. Right. That's
that's the world you're coming to with bitcoin, where it's
normalized and it's just part of the everyday experience.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
From I'm in southern California and I grew up in
the surfing, skating, snowboarding era, right, and you have these
like core brands and then next thing you know, they're
being sold at May season. Then they make it to
cost Go and then they've sold out, but even though.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
They're still supporting the skateboarding or surfing. But you know,
I kind of think of it like that.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But from a cipher punk person, most times you would think, eventually,
you know, we get to this hyper bitchronization, or maybe
eventually it gets to a global asset, and it's like, well,
it doesn't get to a global asset unless everybody adopts it.
So it's like if you think about if you chase
that thought that you have or that vision that you have,
like where does that end up? I think about it
that way. The other way I think about it is
(29:26):
that I think it's important for most people.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Maybe they don't realize this, but it's like just because.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
You own more bitcoin, like Michael Saylor or this government
doesn't give you control over the network, which is back
what I was saying earlier about some of these pos
networks where they have staking and so they can acquire
a large amount of the tokens and stake them, and
they do get more votes over the network, but Bitcoin
doesn't allow that, and so it sort of invalidates that
other than it not being cool, I suppose, you know, but.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
We'll see, right, I still think that from a network component, right,
these ETFs and large custodians, they do have a lot
of power to define what bigo point is at the
software level. I mean, again, we'll see if this becomes
you know, a problem at at any rate. But you know,
again I do think that, Yeah, what you're talking about is,
you know, bitcoin is just not going to be counterculture forever. Right,
(30:14):
It's it's not going to be the kind of angsty
outside of the system thing. I think there. You know,
there was a hope in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one,
I think from some large percentage of the community, or
maybe a minority percentage, that wanted the kind of global
power structure to change Bitcoin to change that. So, right,
maybe bitcoin they saw bitcoin as ushering in a world
(30:34):
where a country like El Salbad or or a country
like Bhutan who was like historically left behind, where people
in Africa might sort of use bitcoin to rise up, right,
become more wealthy and you know, become less disempowered by
the US led financial system. I think what's happened as
of twenty twenty four with Trump embracing bitcoin and coming
(30:55):
to power is that you're going to see that structure
be entrenched, and I understand why people are dissatisfied with it.
I would say, I'm well, you know, I would have
preferred the other outcome. Do I dislike this outcome? No?
I think you know, the world will be fine. But
I do think that you know, if if you had
that worldview, then what has happened I think is very understandable.
(31:16):
Right where the US, I think, you know, if you're
talking about the US becoming the world leader in bitcoin
and using that to further the dollar, that's a very
different world than a world where you know, rass roots
adoption and adoption in smaller countries, you know, really changes
the global power structure and the nature of global superpowers.
And I think what you're seeing with Trump, you know,
coming to power and embracing bitcoin is is I don't
(31:38):
think that future is viable anymore.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, let's talk.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
You referenced bitcoin twenty twenty one. I reference bitcoin in
Abu Dhabi. We have bitcoin Vegas coming up here. In
about a month. I'm pretty excited about that. Happy to
see you again. I put out something to other day
about like why I think going to events like this
are so important.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I think even more so today.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But what do you think about these types of events
and getting together and the importance of that.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I love bitcoin conferences. I've always enjoyed them. I think
it's it's great to see like a snapshot of where
the community is at, and they're very useful for kind
of demarketing. You know, how we've changed and thought about
bitcoin over time. I think, you know, one of the
things that sticks out is, you know, you're going to
see this year kind of a whole activation around politics.
Right there's so much demand from from US politicians to
(32:24):
be involved in what's happening in bitcoin and crypto to
a larger extent that there's going to be a whole
presence there and right I think this this gets that
what's really happening in America right now is the country
trying to use bitcoin to its all the own advantage.
You're hearing about bit bonds that you know, maybe bitcoin
can reignite the treasury market, Bitcoin can cancel the national debt.
(32:46):
You know, America seems to be kind of embracing, you know,
these radical ideas. The politicians seem to be embracing these
radical ideas. And you know that would have been night
and day from last year, where you know, a lot
of the dialogue was about you know, companies had moved overseas,
they had been debanked. You know. So I think it's
going to be a real contrast if you think about
(33:07):
last year with twenty twenty four where Trump really even then,
you know, people forget when Trump took the stage of
bitcoin twenty twenty four, Kamala Harris had only really just
been recently named the nominee a week prior. It really
wasn't clear, you know, at that point how the political
environment was was going to shake out. I think Trump's
platform for bitcoin was really unveiled there right, Things like
(33:29):
the Bitcoin Act, which are being debated, you know, really
came to prominence at that time. But you know, it
was a very very different scenario where now you know,
the bitcoin and crypto industry where you know, the number
one spender in the election probably determined the election in
favor of Donald Trump in my view, and you know,
ultimately changed the course of history through that, and now
(33:50):
you're going to see I think a real leaning in
from from the politicians of you know, how can bitcoin
and crypto solve problems for you know, the American govern
And some of these problems are the largest. Probably mean
that canceling the national debt. I mean, that's that's a
space race moon landing type initiative.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
If if that is actually achieved within our lifetime, I mean,
then that that would be an amazing story. So I
think there'll be a lot of you know, seeds of
future history right where people are going to come together
and maybe this will be another memorable conference in the
same way last years was where you know, Donald Trump
really arrived, you know, as a pro bitcoin candidate and
(34:29):
really just you know, shook up the whole industry in
the world.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, and we had RFK there was also there speaking right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
It was. It was monument monumental.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I was calling it maybe the largest most culturally relevant
event in the world. I mean whatever, twenty five thousand people,
like not a lot of events have that many people,
but the diverse nature of it from presidential candidates and
politicians to Wall Street bankers, coders.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I mean, we had musicians, we had comedians, Right.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Yeah, I mean the Bigcoin Conference really is the anti
Davos at this point, right, Yeah, that's the kind of
level of event that you know we're scaling to. Obviously,
Claus Schweb presigning and under investigation the World of Melconomic
Forum this week, so you know, maybe he'll be fitting.
Maybe he'll come back and he'll have a bitcoin startup
to launch. Who knows. Right, Well, we'll take anything all
the people you can get.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Right, sounds like you got a baby cry, and I
guess it's time to go. Let me ask you one
more question. We'll wrap it up here. What's one big
insight about bitcoin or freedom or maybe the world going
into that you could leave us with just to think
about something that you're thinking about, something big into the
future bitcoin.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, that's a great question. I Mean something that I
say is, you know, I think there's a couple of
ways to understand bickcoin. Right. You can use it as
a tool something in your financial life, or you know,
use it as savings and kind of turn off your
brain and and and kind of go about your day.
But I do really think that you know, we're we're
still trying to understand bitcoin as a technology. There's a
lot to learn. Uh, there's a lot to kind of
explore in terms of, you know, figuring out kind of
(35:56):
you know, how we got here. And I think if
you're someone who's curious and until sellectual, you know, and
you're hearing this and you're saying, oh, bitcoin was ten
cents and you know, now it's one hundred k, maybe
I missed the boat. You know, I would just say
that I don't think that can be further from the truth.
But I think it's it's a great time to start
working on these problems. And we're very far away from
bitcoin being you know, the global neutral monetary system that
(36:19):
you know is used by global powers. We're getting closer,
but we're far away, and we could definitely use your help.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Awesome, Pete, We're gonna you got a podcast we're in
linked that down below. Obviously, your Twitter down below, and
you have a newsletter or your your website that you
published stuff on.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
We'll link to that down below. All right, Pete, thanks
so much,
Host
Mark Moss
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