{ "episodeId": "SLP146", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "will_cole": { "name": "Will Cole", "role": "guest", "tag": "WILL" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.51, "text": "Hi, you're listening to the Stefan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today for episode one hundred and forty-six, my guest is Will Cole, CPO of Unchained Capital, and we're talking about Bitcoin native financial services. But first, a word for the sponsors of the show. So the Stefan Livera podcast is brought to you by Kraken, one of the The world's leading Bitcoin exchanges. They're known for their focus on security with Kraken Security Labs focusing not just on their own security, but also the security of their peers and other partners in the industry. Kraken offer a high quality platform with high trading volume and low fees. 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Unchained Capital make use of multisig as a foundation in their service, and their approach to collaborative custody gives users some control over their private keys while also giving you a financial partner and financial services. Unchained offer two of three multi-signature vaults you can use Trezor and Ledger, and you can secure your Bitcoin for the long term term using this option. And then if you want to get liquidity in USD but you don't wanna sell, you can use Unchained collateralized loans, where you can put up some Bitcoin and receive USD liquidity. All that Bitcoin is stored on chain in dedicated multisig addresses, and you can still hold one of three keys in that scenario. Make sure you check out Unchained's excellent series of content, such as Gradually Then Suddenly by Parker Lewis. They've also got a range of open source tools such as Caravan and Hermit, go and sign up at unchained dash capital dot com. Next is the Cipher Wheel by CipherSafe at ciphersafe dot io. If you've invested in a Bitcoin hardware wallet, are you also keeping that seed backed up? That comes in a bip thirty nine format, and so you need to back it up in a way that's fireproof, waterproof, rustproof, petproof, and tamper evident. Look into the Cipher Wheel. It comes in a wheel shape, it masks the words of your seed unless you open the padlock tamper evident seal. So that you know it's been opened. CipherSafe product is just going out now in early February, go and order yours at ciphersafe dot io. So for this episode, I'm, I recorded this one in person in Austin. I'm here at the Unchained Capital office, and I was chatting with Will. We spoke a little bit about learning about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. We spoke about Bitcoin meetups, getting ready for the bull run, Bitcoin and the LoDial title. We spoke about some of his work with Wyoming Blockchain, and also we spoke about Unchained Capital vaults and loans and this idea of Bitcoin as collateral. Here's the interview. Will, welcome to the show." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "03:29", "start": 208.99, "text": "Stefan, good to be here. Thanks for having me." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:31", "start": 211.43, "text": "Of course. so Will, look, I, I know a bit ab- I know a bit about you obviously, but, just for the listeners, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and, yeah, how you, how you got into all this?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "03:41", "start": 221.22, "text": "Yeah. So, a bit about myself here. yeah, I, I think that I've been-- my, my Bitcoin story, as it were, starts in twenty eleven, and it's really all due to my older brother, Napoleon, who I, I think the earliest evidence I have in our email conversations is around April of twenty eleven. Correct me if I'm-- you know, someone can correct me out there if I've, said otherwise, but I think that's about right. And, really it starts in New York City sitting on the thirty-sixth floor of an apartment that, overlooked the Federal Reserve Building. And so we are, you know, in the throes of, you know, hearing about QE and like the financial crisis and like, you know, kind of getting out of it a little bit, but like we're seeing all the repercussions of the policies that have been happening. And, we're sort of on the back end of, you know, a tough election in the United States, and we start hearing about Bitcoin. And, I had- I had an economics background in college, and then a technical background from being in a family of programmers. And so I felt like there were-- I had a lot of the sort of prerequisite ingredients to understand it early. Even with that, it took me a while" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:54", "start": 294.05, "text": "after-- Yeah. So on that, where-- Give us a little bit of background on your economics. Were you already an Austrian, or were you learning about that as well?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "05:02", "start": 302.26, "text": "in retrospect, I was a fake Austrian at that point. Go on, what's a fake Austrian? Yeah. Well, I, I, I, I in college and, figured that there was just economics. I didn't know that there were multiple brands and theories out there, and I got a very classic Cansean, education and figured that was it. And it wasn't until around two thousand eight that I started learning that there was a little bit of different stuff, and it mostly came through Ron Paul groups, things like that. And I read a little bit of Hayek, and I little-- read a little bit of Rothbard and those types of things, and I thought I was pretty damn cool. And then, it would have been, you know, fast forward a little bit, past two thousand eleven, past Bitcoin, I meet, Seif Adine, and I realized that's what a fake Austrian is That was a little bit of a phony. so, but that led me down another rabbit hole, made me appreciate even more and, sort of strengthened my convictions and my knowledge, test myself a little bit, and, has definitely been a fun journey, outside of just Bitcoin. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:09", "start": 369.2, "text": "Yeah, and I mean, it's a good point you make that many people come to learning Austrian economics even though they didn't learn economics at university, they just took it on, and they're, they're like a doctor or a lawyer, like Dr. Ron And then they just go and learn Austrian economics because they just find it makes so much more sense to them. So what was that experience like for you?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "06:29", "start": 389.45, "text": "it was actually kind of disappointing in the sense that I felt like I had been robbed in my education, that, I, I found it odd that out of all those classes I took after, after all those things I had learned, I'd never heard the name Mises. Right. Four year education, never heard the name, didn't even know he existed. Now you-- that could be saying something about myself and my own intellectual curiosity and going out and making something of it myself, but, it made me a little bit bitter. I was just like, \"Why did I waste all that time and money for?\" but, it didn't really start there. I mean, it starts with, you know, reading Hayek for the first time. It's very accessible, very, you know, for-- at least for me, it was like Biology and like sort of understanding human action, that was, you know, it was a, it was a long journey, it was a hell of a lot shorter than a four-year education, but, I guess at first I just felt let down, and, then mixing that with Bitcoin and my tech background, it, It, sort of changed me, changed my personality, changed my interest, made me kind of an obsessive person. And, but, was, was, was definitely a fun journey" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:45", "start": 464.99, "text": "to go down. Yeah. And then so between you and your brother, you, you know, Napoleon got it first, right? And then he got you" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "07:51", "start": 471.01, "text": "into it? Absolutely, yeah. Napoleon definitely, you know, there's a, there's a world out there where, there are very few people that have secrets. and, I've thought about that, that He talks about, you know, people that actually have secrets and building, you know, knowledge and companies and off, off the basics of, a basis of these secrets. I only know one person in my life that has real secrets, and that's my brother, and Bitcoin was one of those secrets that he brought to me, and it opened up a whole new world for me, a whole new obsession for, you know, going on ten years now or nine years now," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:26", "start": 505.87, "text": "yeah. Right. And, we've also got to talk about the story with Parker, right? Now, Parker is" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "08:34", "start": 514.18, "text": "A bit of that story, as I understand, you got Parker in." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "08:37", "start": 517.22, "text": "Oh yeah, I mean, Parker's trying to come lately here, you know, like he's getting all the glory right now, you know, because he's such a fabulous writer and such a, you know, original first principles thinker. But, you know, for a long time there, you know, he's working at hedge funds, investment banks, not thinking about, you know, the Austrian viewpoint at all. he was, you know, I wouldn't say dismissive, but at least" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "09:04", "start": 544.08, "text": "Bitcoin world, but, you know, Parker and I would do-- we have like sort of this yearly tradition where we go skiing together, and, our house is about an hour from the ski slopes, so I would, we'd drive and listen to podcasts, and, and then we talk about them afterwards, and a lot of the podcasts that I was interested in listening to in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen were all about Bitcoin, and so he started to sort of catch on a little bit there, and I would say that I started the fire, over And then, you know, Safe was the closer." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:38", "start": 578.16, "text": "That's right. And so how-- Now, Safdean was known in the gold world before, you know, all this Bitcoin stuff. how did you get to meet Safdean and get to know a little bit more about, you know, that perspective on Bitcoin?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "09:52", "start": 591.85, "text": "Yeah, it was-- I can't remember the exact year, I think it was around 2015, actually, but, it would have been through Pierre Rochard and Michael Goldstein that," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "10:04", "start": 604.14, "text": "We talked about Bitcoin for the most part, and I knew that he was, of all of, of the people that I knew, he was the gold guy. And when Parker actually was working at a hedge fund and needed to do, diligence on a gold company, we had connected him with Safedane. I had an opportunity to talk to him more. He started writing the Bitcoin standard, we did some, you know, notes back and forth, a lot of us did, in, in his circle of friends, and, but he was definitely someone who constantly Bitcoin, why it mattered, what the eventuality of Bitcoin looked like, by having a good basis and understanding of Austrian economics and the competition of monies and what makes good, sound, saleable, you know, money." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:49", "start": 648.59, "text": "Right. Yeah. And I, I think much of, you know, what is in the Bitcoin Standard, there was a lot of hammering out of these ideas in, say, the twenty twelve and twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen times when people like, say, Conrad Graf or people like, back then- Kuiedemieister, Peter Sutter, and then obviously the Nakamoto Institute, right? So many of the articles that Daniel Kreewis, Michael Goldstein, and Pierre were writing, that I think many of those sort of helped form that understanding, and I think the Bitcoin standard is almost like a summation of many of those ideas, right?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "11:21", "start": 681.29, "text": "Yeah, I think so. I, I would, I would say that I see a lot of original thinking in there as well from Safe. I also see a little bit of Nick Szabo's, you know, or, you know, the Story, I, I, I see a lot of that in it, and, I'd been reading a lot of Zabo stuff prior to meeting Safe, and, so it, it definitely expanded upon those, you know, short blog posts and things that Zabo was putting out, and, I found it extremely compelling, yeah, to say the least." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:51", "start": 711.23, "text": "Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and certainly, and not to, to take anything away from Safe, but absolutely, yeah, yeah, the way he would spin it, or the way he would, tell the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:04", "start": 724.18, "text": "Had been thinking along similar lines at the time, and I think his particular focus obviously on stock to flow as well, which is probably the big, not necessarily new contribution, but it was like a, he kind of took that idea from the gold world and applied it to Bitcoin in a way that just makes so much more sense, and now everyone's thinking about it, right? The stock to" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "12:24", "start": 744.03, "text": "flow part of the book to me is really funny, 'cause I remember reading it for the first time and thinking like, \"Huh, I never heard about that before. That's, that's interesting.\" You know, passing it off and just going on to the next, next bit. But I remember it was probably a couple years later, it's before Plan B, you know, all that stuff, thinking back on that and saying like, \"Have I ever heard of this before? Are, is there any prior writing?\" And I found a couple in the gold world, but it isn't, wasn't even a big deal in that world. I've, I kind of, think that that got, got everything started here, that, that we're going through over the Flow or thinking that we understand stock flow, we'll see if we do. but yeah, that was a really interesting part of the book that at first I dismissed, that is shown to be kind of prescient now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:14", "start": 794.15, "text": "Yeah, right. And I think the other thing with that is- I saw inklings of that in some of Saftey's prior work as well, because he was writing some blog posts and he would show things like, \"Oh, here's what the inflation rate is for US dollar versus gold versus Bitcoin,\" and then just like another way to frame that is just the stock to flow, right? It's just the inverse of the inflation rate. Yeah. And, you know, from, from the person who's into Austrian economics and you're into Bitcoin and you're just seeing, \"Well, look, the inflation rate for Bitcoin is just gonna go so low, That just, it just has an" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "13:49", "start": 829.04, "text": "appeal. Yeah. you know, along with many other appeals, it's one of the things that, you know, matters most about Bitcoin is that it is finite, that there will only ever be twenty-one million, and that, that inflation schedule eventually reaches zero, and then it's zero forever. in fact, I would, you know, I would argue that, you know, there, there are many things that have to combine to make Bitcoin great and interesting and, and probable to succeed, but, if I had to pick one thing, it's, it's that, right? It's that it is finite, it is, and that the inflation schedule gets to zero." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:27", "start": 866.62, "text": "Right. Yeah. so look, let's talk a bit about, some of the early, earlier days like Bitcoin meetups. Oh. Right? So they've moved and shifted over time, and you've, you've moved around a little bit as well. I think, as I understand, you were born and raised in Austin, but then you were So can you tell us a little bit about how the Meetup, Bitcoin Meetup scene has, been in that time?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "14:51", "start": 891.46, "text": "Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's great here in Austin today, when I first started learning about Bitcoin, it, it just looks so different, The, at least the groups that I was aware of at the time, Bitdevs hadn't really started in New York, or if it had, I wasn't aware of it, and it might have been much smaller. It was more politically based, right? it was very libertarian, it was, again, going back to the Ron Paul groups that were in, in New York, there was, you know, the, the thing that people would talk about the most wasn't, you know, a limited supply, it was censorship resistance, right?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "15:30", "start": 929.84, "text": "Not that that you shouldn't, you know, do that, but" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:32", "start": 932.13, "text": "that was the focus, you know." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "15:34", "start": 933.63, "text": "I was never buying drugs, I mean, I wouldn't never, you know, voluntarily trade my valuable Bitcoin for something like drugs. But, yeah, I mean, you could, you could tell that that was kind of the ethos around it in New York at the time, the, when I started coming to Austin, you could start to see the fracturing happening. so I came in, twenty fourteen, but I started visiting the meetups here," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "16:00", "start": 959.96, "text": "A little bit of the shitcoining happening, a little bit of the fracture of, you know, Bitcoin is special in, in these very, you know, obvious ways versus, we have the beginnings of this with blockchain and we're gonna build off of that, blockchain, not Bitcoin, and you could see that fracturing happening. And by the time I got here in later twenty fourteen and was involved in those lot, there was, you know, a split in the meetups, and it was kind of interesting to see how that happened, where you had, I guess, a Corporate focus of how do we capitalize on this, you know, blockchain thing that's going nuts, and you had more of the technical and economic focus of, you know, how do we make sure Bitcoin is, You know, battle tested and resilient and resilient and under-- and understood really, and not get distracted by shiny things over here that, don't really matter." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:53", "start": 1012.85, "text": "Right. Yeah. And so then, there, there was a bit of a fracturing in the groups, and I guess you, you would say some of the groups were more- They were just really more focused on the technical aspects of it, right? Like just the, like how does Bitcoin work at a technical level, and you can go and learn more. and this is, I, I've mentioned this before as well, I would love to have a Socratic seminar, in Sydney, but we just don't have, yeah, we don't have that level yet. We, I'd love to get us there though. Yeah. tell us about your experience going to some of those meetups." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "17:27", "start": 1046.63, "text": "Yeah, I mean, recently in Austin," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "17:32", "start": 1052.27, "text": "The, the BitDev's group here, really, I think, takes a lot from the BitDev's group in New York that's been wildly successful, doing the Socratic seminars, having the topics, laid out, having a lot of experts that can talk to each topic. Austin has a huge wealth of, technical talent, of, you know, business savvy around Bitcoin, and having those things meet here has been, it, it's just very different from the early days where every day you showed up to a meetup and it was, \" That you need to explain what a UTXO is to them. Now, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to see that some of these venues have advanced, to where we can get into deeper and deeper topics and, you know, a place where someone who's been around for nine years, you know, thinking about this stuff, can still learn more and humble themselves and figure out that, they're not as smart as they thought they were, like myself. Right, yeah," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:25", "start": 1105.05, "text": "and that's certainly, you know, if you're not a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:32", "start": 1112.29, "text": "Go there and just soak up the knowledge. Oh yeah. It's incredible." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "18:35", "start": 1114.91, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. it's really important in these types of groups to have, you know, at least a couple people that can really, talk intelligently to each one of these topics that, that's coming up and, sort of lead the discussion. But once you have those one or two people, you'll find out that there are a lot of technical people that might not be into Bitcoin today that will come and can soak that in pretty quickly and start contributing. And I've seen that" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "19:02", "start": 1142.35, "text": "You know, it was kind of bleak. It was, you know, three or four people, we were in the library, you know, we were kind of fumbling our way through it, and now it is, you know, it's a, it's a force. there's new people showing up every single month. it's well organized, the topics are great, we have a lot of expertise in the room, it's not just one person that has to drive it. And, yeah, you know, it's one of those things that I hope" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:32", "start": 1172.31, "text": "Right, yeah. And so let's talk a bit about then the different structure. So you might have maybe one meetup that's more of a technical focus, and then maybe one that's a little bit more softer, right? So what's your experience-- what's, what has your experience been like there?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "19:46", "start": 1185.9, "text": "What I like, about the way Austin set up right now is we have different venues for, you know, we keep our venues very, segregated in the sense that like there's a technical venue, there are, venues for more newcomers and, more basic things, there And, you know, building relationships and things like that, and I think that it's nice to be able to go to one venue and not have to have that discussion of what is a UTXO for the nine hundredth time, right? But then also go and give your expertise to those more, beginner places. having the more advanced venues, at least for me, has been helpful in making this my career. where I'd previously been working at Stack Overflow, I loved the place, it's great product, I felt, you know, about like I was There, but, as I got deeper and I was exposed to more of the advanced topics in Bitcoin, the advanced, engineering that was happening around the space, it gave me more and more interest of actually making this my career instead of just, a side thing or as an investor. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:50", "start": 1250.26, "text": "Yeah, let's go into that. So you were a VP at Stack Overflow, right? You were in a senior role there, and obviously you had this passion for Bitcoin. And you had to make that decision, right? And I think many people do, of, Try to work in Bitcoin or do I just basically mine as much fiat as I can and convert it into Bitcoin, right? What was your thought process there?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "21:10", "start": 1270.42, "text": "Yeah, I had that thought process all the way back, that I remember in twenty twelve when I first started at Stack Overflow, was that, you know, do I wanna take the entrepreneurial route with Bitcoin and start a company? You know, you know, exchanges were popping up all over the place, you know, I could start one, I know how to, you know, do this stuff. or I could just earn dollars and turn that into Where things like, do we invest in Bitcoin companies or do we invest in Bitcoin? And they kinda just, you know, split it and said, \"We'll do both. We'll take half our money, buy Bitcoin, take half our money, give it to Bitcoin companies and invest in them.\" I took a, the approach at the time where, I wasn't really sure what Bitcoin entrepreneurship looked like. I knew that the on-ramp was important, that getting people Bitcoin was important. I didn't think I was uniquely qualified to provide that service in any way." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "22:02", "start": 1321.95, "text": "and product. It's just Bitcoin, it's a protocol, unless I'm working on the protocol, and I did make some overtures to try to figure out how does, excuse me, someone with my skill set contribute to the Bitcoin core process. I had talked to Steve Lee and John Newberry and some people over the time. I was kind of kidding myself there wasn't much I could do there, and also I didn't have the time, I had a full time job, and, you know, it was very demanding. So for me, it was, you know, you know, earn fiat by Bitcoin, get involved in it as much as I can. I did find one outlet before I left Stack Overflow and, and joined Unchained, which was, going to Wyoming and being involved in the, blockchain task force, working on passing legislation that would, you know, essentially, create the most competitive jurisdiction for companies that were dealing with Bitcoin, and, having trouble maybe with the- The, you know, banking, the US banking system or something like that. so I, I'd found some avenues for it, but very quickly, you know, Parker got me back, which was, you know, I helped him out at the very beginning, but, he, fast forwarded and figured out what Bitcoin on- entrepreneurship looked like. He had, met Joe and Drew, here at Unchained, the two founders of Unchained Capital, and just like, you know, one day my explanations of Bitcoin Money, what is the product of money? And that's financial services. Is that, you know, I could draw, I could go up on a whiteboard and say, you know, here's, you know, here's A bank in the fiat world, and here's Bitcoin. What things, what services do the, the debt banks provide? Does Bitcoin negate? And it does a few. It certainly negates several business models, like the re-hypothecation, you know, everything's built off of that. But the services themselves, a lot of them are still gonna be needed. And I looked at that and it just clicked for me, it's like, yeah, financial services, this is where entrepreneurship and Bitcoin sort of collide and where I do have, some abilities there. Or where I can contribute back to, the ecosystem. so that was, that was kind of what clicked, for me there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:12", "start": 1452.3, "text": "When people first come into Bitcoin, sometimes they, they get it twisted a little bit. They think, \"Oh, Bitcoin is anti-banking,\" whereas I think it's more correct to say Bitcoin is anti-central banking. What's your view there?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "24:23", "start": 1463.17, "text": "I, I couldn't have said it better myself, right? Is that, you know, I think it's Pomp's, you know, tagline, you know, But really, you know, Bitcoin replaces a bank, the central bank, you know, or many central banks around the world, the issuance of currency, the monetary policy, you know, all-- Banking is still going to exist in some form, for institutions, even for individuals. I, I do think that that-- Now, that doesn't mean it'll look the same. There are a lot of things that banks do today that they can't do with Bitcoin, or that if you wanted to be successful as a bank in Bitcoin, that you would necessarily necessarily want to build more Bitcoin native solutions to things that look, the things that look like they do in the fiat world. and to that matter, you know, a good example of that would be One of the things that we do at Unchained is you, you give us Bitcoin as collateral and we give you dollars, right? And one of the cool things is that, when you take, take in, Bitcoin as collateral, there's a lot of different ways you could do it. If you wanted to mimic the fiat world, you could take that Bitcoin and it as collateral and you'd start lending it out to try to create interest on top of it. Or if you did it in a Bitcoin native way, one of the things that you could do is allow the person giving Giving you collateral to share in the quorum of keys. Now they can't have control, it is collateral, so, you know, it's not your keys anymore, but you can have a key so you can see, you know, proof of reserves. You can actually do that with, Bitcoin, where it's harder to do in a fiat world. Proof of reserves on chain, you can see that we're not doing any funny business with your money, and that's a really interesting- Relationship to have with your client, where you can do that with Bitcoin where you couldn't do it in the fiat world, and where I think that clients are gonna demand, the, your sort of posture, your, your financial services posture towards them, your relationship with them, is gonna have to be different. And so everything, you know, I think about now with the Bitcoin entrepreneurship and the, and the types of products that you build here is, how do you do it in a Bitcoin native way? Because if you could do it the same, if you could do the same thing I want to do it in the way that, that where Bitcoin's unique. Right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:45", "start": 1605.09, "text": "And it's not just, numbers on a screen, right? Because with gold, whereas many libertarian people, like, even maybe someone like Peter Schiff might say, \"Yeah, go buy gold and just trust the gold vault, right? That the, that they've allocated it for you, right?\" Yeah. And, and maybe there are some ways to, okay, you might have a third party auditor or whatever, but they might not, it might not be the same thing. It's just not the same when And just that it's respecting the ethos of Bitcoin that you are still participating, even if you're not the majority in that quorum, right? So in this, in this example, let's say I'm the customer, I'm putting some Bitcoin up with you, I still hold one of those keys, and then the other two keys are held by, you know, one by Unchained, one by the third party agent, and so that's kind of respecting the ethos of Bitcoin, and I think there will be some strong benefits for customers, in this Bitcoin collateral world." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "27:41", "start": 1660.77, "text": "Absolutely, yeah, and Bitcoin makes great collateral, right? it's a, it's, it's good for-- it's a good financial service for the holders of Bitcoin who, you know, it could be any reason, right? You could be Bitcoin rich and cash poor, you could have debt denominated in dollars that you wanna take care of, you could want to buy more Bitcoin, you know, there are lots of reasons to want to do this. But, Bitcoin makes really good collateral. We, we enter into a relationship with our client that is unlike most banking relationships where" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "28:12", "start": 1691.55, "text": "You know, where we are, we have greater accountability towards them, right? And they get more information about our relationship because we've built this in a very specific way where they get to look at the address, see if the Bitcoin's moving, see if it's being rehypothecated. Not that like all rehypothecation, you know, of all time will be, necessarily a terrible thing, but at least right now I don't know how to do it well. And, that this is the type of relationship that I really value with our customers. It puts them in Driver seat of understanding what is happening with their asset." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:46", "start": 1725.5, "text": "Yeah, right. and I think I like this theme of Bitcoin as collateral. Other people have spoken about it, guys like Tui Demisto has spoken about it, Trace Mayer has spoken about it. one thing that we could- Try to, this is a new thing that we're dealing with, right? And if we believe that Bitcoin is like an illiquid money, it's, it's, it's like a claim on which nobody else can override that. There, there's, there's a case that Bitcoin will be the best collateral, and in that world, maybe, from a credit perspective, the people will prefer to hold Bitcoin as collateral, and because of that, all other things considered, they might- charge a lower interest rate potentially. What's your view there, like longer" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "29:36", "start": 1776.14, "text": "term? I think eventually that's true. right now it might not be true, but, you know, we're still in the early days, is that eventually, yeah, I mean, I, I think of it in terms of liquidity, is that Bitcoin it is liquid. You know, you-- your house as collateral isn't necessarily a very, you know, liquid asset. You see this in foreclosures and the inability to sell or recoup your, investment, you know, by fore Commercial real estate or, or industrial real estate, which right now in the United States is very, very hot, but in an economic downturn, you know, you own a building in a desert in New Mexico, like, shoot, that's not very liquid in that, in that case, but Bitcoin is. And, I think that it has those properties that make it fantastic collateral, and, because of its liquidity, it's gonna be something that institutions are more and more comfortable with holding on their balance sheet or, or otherwise, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:33", "start": 1832.95, "text": "It is in, in some, on some part, speculative in that we, we believe in the future, you know, we believe it's gonna be, moving on that pathway to being global money and the best collateral, and then if you believe that, well then- Then that's the natural corollary, is it becomes, it, it, it becomes the more demanded thing. And as opposed to, let's say, we've been through a big speculative bubble in, let's say, dot com or housing, then at the time that, at the precise time that all the banks are trying to, you know, get, to sell the underlying, to sell that collateral to, you know, to, make themselves whole, is often the worst time for that asset because everyone's trying to sell at the same time. Yeah. Right You know, i-ideal world there where, where, where, if people are moving towards Bitcoin, then that's a different story because it's, it's just, it's just money." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "31:22", "start": 1882.31, "text": "Certainly, yeah. And, you know, right now, you know, you could say that like Bitcoin is, you know, volatile to the extent where it's not the best collateral like literally today, but, yeah, I mean, if we're right, then we're not that, we're not that far from, you know, Bitcoin's volatility smoothing out over time, it starts" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "31:44", "start": 1904.42, "text": "Hope for. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:46", "start": 1905.58, "text": "Right, yeah. And so let's talk a bit about the Unchained offering then. So, obviously I'm, you know, the sponsor of the pod, I advertise for you guys, but, y-let's talk about the, the vault model and, kind of what the interface of that looks like, so that people get a feel of, you know, what does that look like, compared to like a normal banking thing that they would use. Oh yeah, it's so different." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "32:10", "start": 1930.22, "text": "and, I guess" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "32:16", "start": 1935.79, "text": "The way Unchained is set up right now is, at the heart of it is multisig, native Bitcoin multisig, and, we employ something that we're calling collaborative custody in order to, define the sharing of keys in a multisig quorum. And, what makes it so special is that, you know, right now, today, you know, some people might have a couple hundred dollars worth of Bitcoin, they're fine, storing that in a, custodial sense on Coinbase or Gemini. Or Zappo or Anchorage or something like that, or they have, a Trezor, a single-sig, hardware device, but, as many people have gone through in the past, those low holdings turn into big holdings eventually. And, what is the next logical step for people to take when all of a sudden they're a couple hundred dol-dollars or thousands of dollars or whether thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars and so on? And, I firmly believe that multisig is that path forward. And the way that we're doing it right now is, when you become an unchained customer, a Vault customer with us, is we do two of three multisig. you have two different options. One option is a sort of self-sovereign option where you hold two keys and we hold one as a backup, a backup or as a co-signer. And in this scenario, you're completely sovereign. what you're giving up is that we know the balance of your- Of your vault. however, we can't move funds unilaterally, we only have one key in a two-of-three multisig. you have both other keys, so you can move, spend, do whatever you want there. however, you might wanna use that in different way, you might wanna sign yourself every time, keep both of your keys, you know- geographically near each other so that you can do transactions daily, weekly, monthly, or you could put one key in deep storage and use us as a co-signer, whenever you wanna do a transaction. if you lose one of your keys, you can get us to co-sign, sweep your funds, create a new vault, with a new two or three quorum. so there's, some redundancy there. There's, some services that come with that as well, with us as a co-signer. and it is a, A much safer way to store, especially large quantities of Bitcoin, than, say, in a fully custo-custodied manner or, in a single-sig, situation. I would elaborate on this to say, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it just depends on how much you, have and, and how many secure physical locations you have access to. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but, you know, the best case scenario I can think of is, If you're doing the self-sovereign option and you have two keys and we have one, then you would have four secure locations, one for each of your hardware devices, one for each of the backups. we would, you know, be another backup or co-signer for you, and, you would be in a much, much safer position, for a lot of the attack vectors, whether that's plunder, you know, if you-- if someone steals one key of yours or gets access to one key of yours, they can't move funds. We have time to" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "35:34", "start": 2133.5, "text": "For loss, we're always there to back up, for advice that you would like from experts at our, at our, at our, company, or for co-signing where you wanna keep something, you know, in deep, deep cold storage and just have one of your devices, ready to sign. I think that's a really attractive thing, it attracted me to this company. and, and the other way, the other thing I'd like to, you know, explain about our system is that, we also wanna make sure that, you You're successful and, and sovereign without us. So we've spent a lot of time investing in open source, we built a product called Caravan that allows you to do spends outside of our system. So for any reason, maybe you don't have access to our website, maybe we're down, you know, for whatever reason we're not available, you can always take your information, your keys, go to something like Caravan, you can also use Electrum or something like that, but we wanted to contribute to that space and, built Caravan specifically for this so you- You can spend outside of our ecosystem." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:34", "start": 2193.88, "text": "And so in practice, that will look like, I guess, just walking that through for, you know, just an individual, they'll have, they're two hardware wallets, and they might have like a crypto steel or a billfold or a cipher wheel or one of those kinds of metal backups, right? Yeah. And so they might say, they might do one Trezor, one Ledger, and like, you know, those steel backup type devices, right? Yeah. And they would-- they could keep maybe one device at home, but then keep the Or isn't like a, in a vault somewhere, and then, the, the metal backups can be kept in, in, again, different vaults and different safety deposit boxes wherever, wherever you, you know, would like, or maybe you'd keep one with a family member or something like that. And then that's kind of their model, and then their day-to-day operation is, you know, logging in on the Unchained site, and then they can, you know, choose to, you know, withdraw, draw, like to, you know, have a new address to Do more with your kind of long-term holding stacks, so you theoretically aren't doing too many transactions, but it's more of a-- this is how you can monitor and manage your kind of long-term holding, for the-- in a, in a more secure way. And I think the other point that you were touching on is, i- interesting as well is, look, right now, as we record this today, the price is what, nine thousand USD, something like that, roughly. If you, you know, let's say we hit another bull run, we don't know, it could five times, it could ten times. How should people think through their security as that" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "38:03", "start": 2282.92, "text": "occurs? Yeah, I mean, it hits you like a ton of bricks, right? You know, all of a sudden what you're, what you're holding onto is, is, you know, hey, plan B, you know, a hundred trillion, you know, a hundred thousand dollar Bitcoin lo- is a very, very different world that we're living in, and everyone's security posture that they have That they're on a fully custodied model, you know, with, with Coinbase or they have a single sig treasure or something like that, you have to start thinking, am I doing as much as I can to secure what is now an incredibly, you know, an incredible amount of money and value? And, yeah, I think that, that when that hits people, like what I want them to at least know is an option for them, is that multisig is something that is battle tested, it is something that, has good thought and- reasoning behind it, why you can, why, why you will be in a safer position, but also why, you don't have to give up some of the, the Bitcoin native sort of, things that make it great. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin, multisig, you can still hold the keys, it's still possible to do, it's not very hard, right? Instead of one treasurer, you have two, right? it's, it's, It's something that I think would make people sleep better at night knowing that their Bitcoin is safe, and, I wanna build products that make it easier for people to do that. and I firmly believe that, you know, whether we see a huge bull run now or later, that people should be considering what they'll, what they'll do when they reach certain thresholds where they are no longer comfortable having third parties custody their, their Bitcoin, or where they're no longer comfortable having it just, you know, you know, one hardware device in a safe in their house and we wanna help those individuals, those institutions that are going to, I think, inevitably run into this problem." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:58", "start": 2397.75, "text": "And I think another key benefit that I see from the Unchained, suite is the, like, the collateralized loan option and the tax benefit. I think there's a big benefit there because- Many countries have capital gains tax laws, meaning when you sell, you must incur that gain and pay tax on that. And so this, this model of using a collateralized loan, now, yes, you're paying interest, and there are certain conditions on that, but can you elaborate a little bit on what that process looks like and, you know, what are some of the benefits there?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "40:31", "start": 2430.91, "text": "Oh, yeah, we've got it down here. is, it's really simple actually, right? if you're looking to, Dollars for any reason, we, we lend out dollars, US dollars. we, basically do a two to one, collateral to dollars issued. So if you gave us, you know, if it's nine thousand dollars right now and you gave us ten Bitcoin, we could, loan you up to forty-five thousand dollars, give or take a little bit, and, you know, for, for that type of loan, what, what, what happened is you would send a transfer to us, we would store it in a multis Multi-institution, environment where you have a key, we have a key, and a third party, institution has a key that we talk to you about, and, then, yeah, there's an interest rate where you're paying, you're paying your interest in fiat, to us, that, we have, a contract between us where, at certain levels of, collateral to loan value, you know, there are margin calls and things like that, but, if it's staying steady, there If it's going up, you can, you can take out some of your over collateralized, deposits, and, it's a really good way for a lot of people to get, fiat liquidity without those tax repercussions. it's one of our biggest businesses right now, it's actually the foundation of Unchained, and one, one of the things that really attracted me to Unchained was when I found out how they built that, right? They didn't do loans where you just send it to us and, we took full custody over and it was just That, are just unchained that, had access to that. They did it in multisig, they did it with third parties involved, they did it where the person taking out the loan could continue to monitor that address and their funds. I looked at that and thought like, these guys get it. Drew and Joe, who started this business and where the loans were the first product, it was really impressive to me. And it was also because they did it the right way, in my mind, in the Bitcoin native way, th-we were able to Mountain to the Vaults project pretty naturally, right? You know, the, the, the loan, the loans are a vault with a different quorum of keyholders and then contracts between us because of, you know, the nature of, lending out the dollars. But when you go into the vault, it's the same thing, right? It's who has the keys, who has the majority control of the keys, or does anyone have the majority control of the keys? Because they did it the right way, we were able to expand into other services for people really naturally. to see that someone was doing this in a way that really connected to me as a long time Bitcoin holder that, really cared that someone was doing this in a way that didn't mimic the banking system that we have now, but really respected what the Bitcoin holder would want out of a financial services company." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:26", "start": 2605.68, "text": "Yeah, I'm a big believer in that approach as well. let's talk a little bit about- I, I, one thing I find interesting is like big Bitcoin holders might-- they might not actually have to sell their Bitcoin, right? They can literally just borrow against it and, if-- let's say they've got a profitable business idea, right? Yeah. And so you could borrow against your Bitcoin, use, you know, have generated return out of that business, use that to pay off the interest. And then basically in doing so, not actually sell your Bitcoin, but still get some of the benefit out of having that Bitcoin, right? And it's just a, it's a huge, it's just a big benefit to that holder, right?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "44:04", "start": 2644.17, "text": "Absolutely. And, you know, we have this little tagline that's on some of our t-shirts that \"Friends don't let friends sell Bitcoin,\" right? And while that's a little bit silly and everything, I, you know, look, I, I wanna, I wanna build services where you don't have to sell your Bitcoin. I mean I wanna be able to do that. And, you know, it could be investing into a new company, it could be paying down other, you know, debts that you have, it could be buying more, but, you know, you know, the reason, you know, there are going to be many, many reasons to do that, but if you're Bitcoin rich and cash poor for any reason at any point in time, that's a really good option to have, to not have to forfeit, you know, permanently your ownership of that Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:46", "start": 2686.5, "text": "Look, let's," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:52", "start": 2692.26, "text": "People come to Bitcoin for its ownership, right? It's a, a lordial title, as we were referring to before. Now, I wanna touch on what you were touch-- what you were talking about earlier with Wyoming and having certainty over our ownership and our property right. So give us a bit of a background, what were you doing at Wyoming and, and the blockchain, task force?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "45:11", "start": 2710.65, "text": "Yeah, that was a really interesting, time. I, I joined in twenty nineteen. It, it existed before" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "45:20", "start": 2719.56, "text": "twenty eighteen. So, as I talk about this, I to Caitlin Long and Tyler Lindholm and the other legislators there. Tyler kinda had the, the vision for what they wanted to do in Wyoming, and Caitlin really helped with the execution and a lot of the expertise in, in Bitcoin, to make it happen. I, I, I was kind of a late joiner to that, but, hopefully contributed. but what they did was phenomenal. I actually went in as a skeptic, thinking that I'd seen a bill that they had passed and gotten a little bit prickly about it, just thinking like, \"Oh no work, and I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State and said, \"There's no way you can comply with this bill.\" And then, you know, one thing led to another, and they actually named me to the task force. And I got there, and I realized, \"Oh shit,\" you know, \"Foot and mouth.\" These guys are doing phenomenal stuff, and they rewrote that bill that I got all prickly about, and it was fine. And what I learned there was that they had a certain mission, which was to-- It was, you know- To help the economic growth in Wyoming to make it a, attractive jurisdiction for companies to start their business in, and they were going to focus on this Bitcoin blockchain world, in order to attract a, you know, a growing, industry. And I think they're, they've been very successful to date. they've set the groundwork for this, and, my contributions were really bringing in some of my expertise and knowledge just over years of, of being involved in Bitcoin and also making sure that, that, you know, while we weren't looking for, you know, the, you know, regulatory capture in any way, making sure that we weren't doing anything that I thought could harm Bitcoin and, and the growth of the industry in any way, and it was kind of amazing. I, I- I, again, I give so much credit to the legislators in the state there. I mean, what they are doing is they are selling sovereignty. They are trying to create this environment that outcompetes, outcompetes every other jurisdiction that says, \"If you're uncertain in the state of New York, you know, if you're uncertain in Switzerland or in the UK, there's a place for you here.\" And some of the-- We did some really cool things. I, I think, you know, just to, pick on probably the most prominent one, Message of the SPDI bill, the Special Purpose Depository Institution, which we all know, watching this space for a long time, that a lot of Bitcoin companies have difficulty dealing with the Fiat world with the banking system, they get cut off from banks, their customers go through all sorts of hoops or lose access to their banking relationships. Not just the company loses access, but individuals that use some Bitcoin companies would lose their relationship with their bank. It was kind of nasty out there for a while. And the SPDI bill gives companies, Bitcoin companies kind of a seat at the table because what, what a special purpose depository institution is, and this is fucking huge, sorry, it's huge. Huge, is, that, essentially you are a bank. You can get, membership into the Federal Reserve group of banks, and there are a hell of a lot of, privileges that come with being a bank. now, they are non-lending institutions, right? So they aren't under the, jurisdiction of the FDIC, for instance. So it's not FDIC insured and stuff like that, but everything else Besides the lending part, you are a bank, and banks work with other banks, and they don't really question each other very much, and, that gives, whether you're a custodian or a payment processor or an exchange, there are a lot of reasons why that type of corporate formation would be hugely advantageous, next to, you know, being a different type of corporation in a jurisdiction where you didn't know or you didn't, you, you don't know if next year the They're gonna say, \"Hey, what you're doing is illegal, and, we're gonna cut you off.\" Wyoming's sort of taken the stance of saying, \"You know, we're going to write these laws with the input of the Bitcoin and, community.\" in which I was really impressed with, you know, I don't know how government works for the most part, and I watched this happen. You know, we sit up there and I thought we were just gonna debate amongst each other, you know, what type of bills we wanna write, but no, it's like, it's a table, you're looking out, and we have an agenda, and the public just comes up and testifies and says, \"This is what we would like. This would-- This would...\" This would make us move here. This would make us, certain that we can bu-build our business in the way that we want to. And, then we consider it and we draft legislation, and then they get to talk about, and then we, you know, show the public the, the legislation, and they say, \"Ah, you got this part wrong, right? this is gonna be a little bit onerous for us.\" Or, and then we change it, and then they say, \"Great,\" and we put it up for a vote. And, you know, with SPDIs, I know that the applications for that type of formation are rolling in now, and that's really impressive and, it was, it was fun to be a part of that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:28", "start": 3028.15, "text": "Right, yeah. And so, you, you, you have you winded down your involvement now or are you still involved? so," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "50:34", "start": 3034.01, "text": "it's, it's a little bit up in the air, but my understanding of this is that, you know, they've gotten a little bit too big for me and," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "50:47", "start": 3046.76, "text": "and Bills, they'd have to, you know, we'd, we'd, we'd write legislation, and then send it off to another committee that would then-- I don't know, it's all crazy government stuff, but, so wait, work, it's been so successful that they've gotten, I believe, their own committee now, which, which can sponsor their own legislation, which means that, they can't have citizens on it. I'll still be going up to testify and, be a part of the public," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "51:18", "start": 3078.44, "text": "people like Trace Mayer were up there, Kraken was up there a lot, there were just all sorts of people involved, you know, helping invol- inform the process. We even took to Twitter. I remember one time, when we were working on the, the custody aspects of- Of, one of the bills, you know, the Twitter world and Adam Back and people got involved saying like, you know, if you write the law this way, then there's an attack vector on custodians where, I, I, I believe the way it was written was that by law you were going to have to, give access to, all forks You know, within a certain amount of time, and then there was a bunch of Twitter uproar, and, you know, to the legislators' credit and Caitlin's credit, they took that feedback, they rewrote the bill, and within a few months, they had a new bill out there, and it was fixed. It was great. Alright, well, there you go. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "52:09", "start": 3128.71, "text": "So, look, I think the broader lesson and hope there is that we see that com- like, and as, as has been a theme on the podcast is that competitive jurisdiction aspect, where, you know That's, well, that's working out really well for them. We're, we're gonna try that as well." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "52:27", "start": 3146.82, "text": "Yeah. And I actually, I wanna, I wanna talk to one thing because you, you'd opened this up and I kinda missed this point of, you know, we're talking about ownership and, you know, the not your keys, not your Bitcoin that relates to Unchained and what we do, but in Wyoming, one of the bills that's actually up for a vote this month is around, whether or not a court can compel you to disclose a" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "52:53", "start": 3173.26, "text": "to compel you to disclose a private key, and that has a lot of implications that are really important. I remember Christopher Allen actually, helped us a lot in drafting this legislation, and, the reason that that's so important is that a private key could be holding a lot more than just Bitcoin, right? It could be holding more Bitcoin than someone needs access to, and the disclosure of that private key could be devastating, you know, for, especially if an institution was forced to, to disclose it. Now, you know- It's not an excuse to, you know, not let people have, you know, if you're going through a divorce and you're just not trying to pay up your fair share, it's not to say that there's not still a claim on assets that that private key is protecting and that the court would have, you know, reason to demand those assets, but, you know, even in that case, someone could just refuse to, to show their private key and then be held in contempt. The idea is that there is a process now, on the, you know, on the books or, A different, way to go through getting those assets than disclosure of a private key. that's a really interesting and I think unique proposal that, Wyoming's taking on that I haven't seen anywhere else, and really does speak to-- sorry, it speaks to, you know, I think a lot of people that hold Bitcoin and understand cryptography, but I also think that it speaks to Wyoming's, the extent that Wyoming's willing to understand, what will be attractive to- Institutions and individuals in the space." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:26", "start": 3266.22, "text": "I, I think it's one of those things where it ma- it may be like a story where we see some other country around the world want to also replicate that model and say, \"Okay, well look, it worked out for them, we should do that too,\" and, and then we, we can have real competition between the states of the world on a, at least on a way that is better for us as, you know, individuals as opposed to, you know, pro-pro- competing in the- Production of bads" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "54:55", "start": 3294.72, "text": "right now. And we see it happening already, right? And why-- you know, I'm glad that Wyoming is kicking everyone else's ass right now, because that's part of our goal as the task force was to give us a head start. But, you know, we're not stupid. We've done some really good work, and people are gonna copy us, and it's happening. We hear from other states, we hear from other countries, we had, you know, the task force was always receiving these letters from, you know, it" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "55:23", "start": 3323.04, "text": "A lot of the stuff already has been copied. I think that, it's gonna take a while. I think Wyoming was really aggressive here, and so for any jurisdiction to catch up, they're gonna have to do a lot of work, but we've seen bits and pieces of it already seeping into, other, other places. And yeah, there's gonna be a lot of competition, but I, I'll, I'll put my money on Wyoming to, outflank them, once again, once they've caught up to this point. Right" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:54", "start": 3353.92, "text": "and I think the other thing that comes to my mind is when we get more Bitcoin holders, we're gonna have a bigger voting base, if you will. Oh, yeah. And so there's gonna be more people out there Basically pushing their local representative, pushing their local politician, whatever country they're in, to have more Bitcoin favorable laws. What's your view?" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "56:16", "start": 3375.74, "text": "Yeah, I, I wanna take a roundabout way at this, which is, you know, I, I wanna fully recognize that, you know, Bitcoin at its core is censorship resistance. It doesn't need what Wyoming is doing. It doesn't need what any of these jurisdictions are doing. It doesn't make it, that doesn't mean, like I, I respect that fact, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it easier and, and more friendly, you know, it's better for all of us, right? And, yeah, I think that that's a, a big part of this is that, you know, as places like Wyoming, you know, God, it's such a big deal, it's a sovereign state, and it's taking this very seriously and it's taking a very, I, I would say, you know, not even, Opening up the doors to this industry in a way that, if they're successful and the companies and the individuals are, you know, moving there, of course people are gonna, are gonna try to compete, and that benefits all of us, and, it's fun to be a part of that, and I think that even though we know that Bitcoin doesn't need it, we-- it's good to know that there are people out there like Tyler, like Caitlin, and like the Wyoming legislature that are out there, fighting that fight because it makes our lives a" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "57:30", "start": 3449.61, "text": "Look, one other topic I think would be interesting and, and it's kind of related. So right now there's a big just like debate around, you know, Bitcoin privacy and so on, right? And like, should people use coin joining and so on, and obviously that's, that's a whole debate, we don't need to get into that today. Yeah. But I, I think there might be some benefit just to consider, and this is gonna sound silly, but just number go up, right? Like just the sheer number go up, even if we don't have privacy, just In the way the governments work and law works, and just, you know, there'll be so many more people who go and lobby their government and try and make sure that their government doesn't make Bitcoin illegal and so on, and self custody illegal." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "58:14", "start": 3493.68, "text": "Oh, absolutely. Yeah. as number goes up and as, you know, the, you know, it does, it does help that we have lots of prominent people that are connected to government that actually hold Bitcoin. You know, these things matter in human societies, that have influence on how these things go. But You know, not that we didn't want to get into coinjoins and stuff, I think that stuff's inevitable anyway. We're not gonna lose the privacy wars and stuff like that, Bitcoin will be fine there. And there's lots of great plans and, you know, the, the, after Taproot and Schnorr, there's the, the, the extension to SegWit and stuff, we're gonna get some cool stuff there, but, so I, I, I'm not willing to throw in the towel and say Bitcoin will never have any privacy," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "59:01", "start": 3541.33, "text": "but yeah, number go up. I, you know, that was one of the things that, I only half-jokingly was thinking about, when, as part of the Wyoming task force was, well, if, if the goal is to, you know, you know, diversify the economy of Wyoming and be attractive to all these new companies and make Wy- you know, why doesn't Wyoming, why doesn't the treasurer's office just buy Bitcoin? Right? And all, you know, can we write a law like that? You And I talked around with a few people and I was like, \"No, we, we can't really force them to do that, \"but, you know, it is something that I've been talking actually-- but now I'm serious, I've been talking to people that do have some influence in Wyoming about like, you know, who's the first sovereign to take a public position there and say, \"Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna hold Bitcoin on our balance sheet, number go up, this is important to our future. it's gonna happen, it's gonna Right, yeah. If it hasn't already, maybe, maybe it's happened in some country that I'm, you know, ignorant of, but, you know, I think, I think Wyoming could win that medal as well." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:01", "start": 3601.61, "text": "Right, yeah. So I think, I mean, the, the, you hear whispers about these things, and, I mean, you never really know, right? I saw some random article, but, I mean, who knows, right? but I think it just comes back to me that it's-- that we're just over this next few years" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:00:22", "start": 3622.4, "text": "Because it just, like, if you're listening to this now in, you know, we're recording this in, you know, January 2020, you might be listening in like February 2020. You're early, right? Oh, yeah. So it's, it's like- It's just so hard for us to explain that, and there'll be so many more people to, to get sucked into this industry and start working in it and owning Bitcoin. I mean, a-and for you as well, I mean, you had-- you had a good, you had a great job in Stack Overflow, but you, you, you chose to leave to come to a Bitcoin company. Yeah. do you- What's your take on seeing, you know, hu- brain drain in the direction of" }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "01:01:00", "start": 3660.99, "text": "Bitcoin companies? I've been amazed by it, like, the more and more I've, you know, either through Wyoming or being a part of Unchained now and seeing the level of talent that's, you know, here at this company, technical talent, business development, client services, there are some really great people moving into this space, and, you know, I knew that on the protocol le-level, you know, for a long time, I could see the level of Industry now, I think it's become so much more mature. You know, there aren't a lot of mount gox, you know, shops being built anymore. They can't compete. Bitcoin's more serious. And while, you know, everyone listening here, you are still early, there's a lot that's been de-risked for you, you know, over the last decade, right? the types of services you have access to, whether unchained or otherwise, are immensely better than what we had access to in twenty twelve, right? especially around security, And, I, I, I, I-- what, what I've noticed is that when you put out a job listing, you know, for a company like Unchained, is that, the, the flood of talent from sort of traditional tech or traditional finance that will do just about anything to come work with a Bitcoin company because it's so much more fun, more interesting, the promise is so, is so much greater than what they're doing right now, especially on the banking side. You know, gosh, how to- Impressive as that right now, is, you know, man, you know, right now we kind of get our pick of the litter, it's really impressive. I've never seen anything quite like it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:35", "start": 3755.29, "text": "Yeah, it really feels like, this is just a new frontier, and if you wanna, you wanna have a chance at, you know, big success and, you know, prosperity, then you wanna come to the frontier and be here and, be knowledgeable about it and be in this space. Yeah. so look, I think that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:55", "start": 3775.49, "text": "Listeners know where to find you online and where, where they can find Unchained Capital." }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "01:02:58", "start": 3778.79, "text": "Oh yeah, you can, find me at at willcole on Twitter. That's probably the best place. No use going anywhere else. Twitter's the greatest online product ever created. It is so great, and that's where I spend my time. and then Unchained Capital is unchained-dash-capital dot com. you can find us there. You, if you're wondering about multisig, we have a lot of good educational information there. If you're check out Parker Lewis' Gradually Then Suddenly series, it's fantastic. And, yeah. Well, thanks for joining me. Yeah, thank" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:32", "start": 3812.99, "text": "you," }, { "speaker": "will_cole", "time": "01:03:33", "start": 3813.09, "text": "Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:03:33", "start": 3813.7, "text": "Hope you enjoyed that one. I've also got another interview coming soon that I recorded with Pierre Rochard and Safteen. So make sure you subscribe to the Stefan Livera podcast. You can go to stefanlivera dot com and find the show notes and the transcript. Otherwise, that's it from me. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the Citadelles." } ] }