{ "episodeId": "SLP163", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "cory_klippsten": { "name": "Cory Klippsten", "role": "guest", "tag": "CORY" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:08", "start": 8.21, "text": "Hi, you're listening to the Stefan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics. Today, my guest is Cory Klippsten, CEO and co-founder of Intransigent, he's also a GP, general partner of Bitcoiner Ventures, and we're talking about Nassim Taleb's thought applying that to Bitcoin, the Intransigent minority, ten million Bitcoiners, Swan Bitcoin, and Bitcoin adventures. This show is brought to you by Kraken, one of the world's leading Bitcoin exchanges. If you're not signed up with them, go and check them out kraken dot com. A high quality platform, they've got some great liquidity with high trading volume and low fees. They also offer twenty four seven support and there's chat on the website. They're consistently rated the best from a security standpoint and also by users. And for clients outside the US, Kraken have launched nine new foreign currency pairs, making it even easier for active traders and institutions to avoid friction. When executing orders on Kraken. Kraken also have Kraken Pro mobile app delivering all the security and features you love about the Kraken exchange in a beautiful mobile-first design. Kraken offer margin trading up to five x leverage and futures up to fifty times leverage. Go and sign up at kraken dot com. This podcast also brought to you by Unchained Capital, a Bitcoin financial services company offering customers a vault with multisig and also collateralized loans. So with the vault, it's multi-signature It's two of three, you can use Trezor and Ledger. It's an easy setup on a web interface, and you go to Unchained Dash Capital dot com and you sign up there and you basically set up with your wallets on there. And if you're feeling a bit uncertain about it, you can even test that setup out in Caravan, which is an open source multisig coordinator. Unchained also offer collateralized loans, so you can put up Bitcoin and get USD. So all that Bitcoin is stored on chain in a dedicated multisig address, and it's never rehypothec It might also be beneficial from a tax perspective for you as well. Unchained have a range of excellent services and valuable content and open source tools. I think you'll enjoy partnering with them. Go and learn more, unchained dash capital dot com. Now the episode today is with the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, but just a few notes about Swan Bitcoin, they're a Bitcoin automated dollar cost averaging service, and they're available at swanbitcoin dot com. You can link any major US bank account via ACH and auto buy. Bitcoin weekly or monthly, and Swan Bitcoin is focusing specifically on education, and they want customers to hold their own Bitcoin private keys, and so that Bitcoin is delivered to your wallet, or if you're a bit newer, it can be stored with a licensed and regulated custodian. I'm also involved as an advisor with a small equity stake. So they've got givebitcoin. ao for Bitcoin gifting, and swanbitcoin. com for your automated Bitcoin stacking. Here's the interview with Cory. Cory, welcome to the show. Here is Stefan. Cory, I know, you've got an interesting history here that you, went through the shitcoins and then you came out and became Bitcoin only, and now your CEO and founder of Swan Bitcoin. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came on, onto the, to Bitcoin only?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "03:18", "start": 197.61, "text": "Yeah. So first of all, I'll, I'll say I did the horseshoe run, like a lot of people, but, we, we can get there. But yeah, I mean, starting way back in the beginning, grew up in," }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "03:30", "start": 210.12, "text": "Upbringing, so kind of, outside the system, got used to kind of looking at things from, a bit of an outsider's perspective, even though I, physically look as waspy as can be, so that's been a bit of a, bit of a superpower over the years, to sort of play the role of, of, the insider, but also the other, so that's been pretty cool. Grew up in Seattle, went out east for about fifteen years, New York, Chicago, really was in, in tech. Caught the, I just, I went through the dot com bust out in New York City with all the, you know, free, free happy hours from all the ad tech companies and the media, internet media companies, and it just didn't seem very solid. And this is kind of, interesting now that we're going through kind of the, the third round already in my, in my professional career of the system collapsing around us. But I think it's very instructive, and it's probably what attuned me to Bitcoin in the first place was, so the internet felt very unreal to me I decided, well, okay, so if that was on a shaky foundation and these valuations weren't real and these companies weren't real and these jobs weren't real, like let me go try out the real economy, quote unquote. So I went to business school at University of Chicago, I went to co-work for McKenzie, I started a private equity consulting shop, I was doing private equity from like '06 to '08, I started to get signals from, friends in New York, including, a roommate who was on the distressed bank loan desk, sales desk at And then we watched that kind of unfold over the next couple of years in, in '08 and '09. And so I was looking at that and I was saying, \"Well, if that wasn't real either, in many ways, you might as well at least do something that you have more control over, and, you know, that's kind of being an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur or at least being in a business where you have lots and lots of clients.\" so that, that kind of sparked my interest in getting back into early stage tech. I went to Google for a couple years, really just as like internet business school. I spent that whole time, you know, obviously doing my job, but also networking like crazy with, with tech founders and, and VCs and trying to understand. Got back out to California, moved to Los Angeles in, early twenty thirteen, and, left Google in the summer of thirteen to work in early stage tech. So that's what I've been doing for the last seven years is kind of, either operating or advising or consulting to call it like seed stage, A round, B round type, Call it Silicon Valley, but really like SF, New York, LA have been kind of the three markets that I've focused on. And then, you know, bringing that to Bitcoin, you know, I had a few different opportunities to, go down the rabbit hole and missed them. somebody gave me Bitcoin at a tech conference in January of twenty fourteen, and, you know, I, I proceeded to not read the white paper and, not go down the rabbit hole and lose the private keys, to my block-- probably blockchain wallet, I think. H but it was very formative as, as we get through to like my own story. and then about, so almost two years later, so Christmas of twenty fifteen, heading into sixteen, you know, a friend of mine had, startup advisory stakes and early shares in a few different Bitcoinish companies like Belagi's company and a couple others, and, asked me to help him put together like a deck so he could sell off half of a series LLC that had bundled up all these startup stakes. and so I did. but maybe because, you know, I was putting slides together on where, you know, Bitcoin mining in a toaster and Ripple, nothing was really exciting about it and it didn't take, I don't know, but yeah, just, I still didn't get it, didn't, didn't understand the opportunity. So, it wasn't until the price action, you know, hit my network, w-in spring of '17, and, you know, a bunch of people in my circles and, and startups and, and VCs, you know, jumping out and starting crypto funds and joining ICOs and, et c I got really, really lucky in that one of the first people that I reached out to was actually running a crypto fund and was huge in, you know, QEDAM and all these Asian ICOs and stuff, but he insisted that I start with Bitcoin and spend a few months on just Bitcoin, so I at least had that foundation of, you know, getting up to speed and kind of like always having it in the back of my mind. I was totally fooled by the Fred Wilson posts and all the Andreessen Horowitz activity and thinking that, you know, Facebook was right around the corner, and so that Wasting about nine months, so all of that fall of seventeen, I was looking at ICOs and I had this whole horrible forty page document I put together about how I was gonna go and pitch all these Silicon Valley companies on creating tokens and, it was just brutal. Anyway, so yeah, I, I basically it took me, it took me until, you know, March or April of eighteen, so after, after the, the bubble sort of burst and you were kinda like wondering what was going on here, and I didn't have the benefit of multiple cycles in the background and having lived Whatever. so I didn't have any idea of how deep it would go in that bear market, but I, I basically started shifting all of my activities and all of my learning and my research, to Bitcoin only s-since spring of eighteen, and, shifted all my professional activities by the end of that summer, so by the end of August, starting in September of twenty nineteen, I've been working as much as I can trying to figure out what I could personally do, in Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:01", "start": 540.76, "text": "Yeah, that's a really cool story because it's like you've just run the full gamut, right? And you've got like a range of experience across different industries, and you've sort of managed to-- You've basically come to the same conclusion that all the hardcore Bitcoin-only people, you've kind of ended up in this same place that, many of us and many of my listeners are in, which is basically only Bitcoin. And it's also been really interesting as all, obviously, listeners know, I'm, I've been, you know, involved as well with things like Give Swan Bitcoin now. can you tell us a little bit about how you were exploring the opportunities in terms of this Bitcoin space and what is actually a business that you can run in this space? Because notoriously, it has been difficult to make money in Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "09:47", "start": 586.89, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we, we kind of know the, the profitable industries, industry wide profitability has been manufacturing ASICs and exchanges, and that's pretty much it. So as an industry, mining has not been been profitable, even though individual mining companies that have advantages in strategy or, you know, sourcing or, or power generation or whatever obviously have many have done very well. As an industry, it hasn't been profitable. and then, you know, the payments companies, whatever, obviously that stuff is probably a little further off in the future for some of them to be wildly profitable, although I think there are some, some interesting things going on with the Paxfuls and the Bitrefills of the world, that are, that are doing some cool things. Stuff like that. So yeah, I mean, I, I, I started, like I always do, just asking people that I thought were well placed and who also kind of knew me, and I, I kept on coming back to people with the same question in the fall of, twenty eighteen, which is like, \"How can I professionally sell Bitcoin? Like, I just, I just wanna, like, I wanna talk about it, I wanna pitch it, I wanna educate myself about it, educate other people about it, and, and get them to buy it. And, you know, obviously" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "11:00", "start": 660.02, "text": "That and put it in pretty words, but, you know, it hasn't changed, which is that I believed very early on, from my own experience, that, you know, one's propensity to store value in the Bitcoin protocol is directly correlated to your understanding. so I always thought that Bitcoin marketing is actually just Bitcoin education. So, I, I rooted around in the fall of, fall of twenty nineteen, I was working with a guy who was trying to put, basically like eighty percent Bitcoin and twenty percent levered treasuries into a closed fund. structure that would be a lot easier to get passed through the SEC. after we sort of got it up and running and did the legal and everything, I realized that if I was going to have a role going forward, it would require me to like go to New York and, you know, go up and down the street and talk to people that didn't care about Bitcoin, and that sounded super boring and not like something I wanna do. I've got a family and live out in LA, and it's nice here. I like to stay home if I can. so I kinda ditched that 2018, still trying to figure out what to do. luckily I, you know, had some scratch left on the side, so mostly I just bought dips like a beast with Bitcoin. It's pretty much just, you know, watching YouTube and listening to podcasts and educating myself and kind of like, like that deep crypto winner is when you steal your resolve, like you're initially going to the podcasts and obviously was listening to everything and reading all the books that were available, and there were a lot, you know, thankfully by then, by the end of 2018, you had new books like, like, like Safe's book had come out six months before your podcast was out there and was devouring that and Marty's podcast and a bunch of other ones, and, you initially go to those as, essentially like a support group because you feel kind of lonely in your, you know, you're the only one among your friends that's, that's huddling and buying more as this thing, you know, may be going to zero. And then, you know, your brain actually starts to do some work in Total believer, and because you actually understand it and you know, it's not about belief anymore, it's actually knowledge. So, you know, Trace Buttryer did name his podcast right, it is Bitcoin Knowledge, it's not Bitcoin Belief. You know, that is, that is the right, that is the right name for a Bitcoin podcast. maybe we'll get it back from him one day." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:23", "start": 802.61, "text": "Yeah, like, I, man, that, and you're right, like that, it just takes, it takes a bi- it's a big journey to go down this, like, there's so many different things that you could learn, and there's so many pathways that you could, or point, points in the pathway where you might go the wrong way and then you're like totally screwed, and so it's a, it's a, it's a challenging thing, and with Swan Bitcoin, I definitely noticed that there's a strong focus on education there. You've got You've got these different pathways for people to get started and then also start learning on the pathway of, oh, this is, this is what Austrian economics is. Oh, okay, this is what the basics of Bitcoin's technology and how that works. So tell us a little bit about your approach around education with Swan." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "14:12", "start": 851.86, "text": "Yeah, sure. I mean, it probably behooves us to at least start with the first product we put out was GiveBitcoin, which we put out in November, just in time for the, the holiday season, and that one- Basically, it makes it really easy to give someone else Bitcoin, and, and basically this is for a new person, you give it to your cousin or your aunt or your, you know, your friend at work or your employees or something like that. We had a lot of bulk gifting to employees and colleagues, and, it comes bundled with, twelve chapters of a book called The Gift of Bitcoin, which is just a really nice introduction to somebody totally new to Bitcoin. so that's been rolling out, we're, we just put out chapter four a couple weeks Now, we're also already drafting Chapter Six, which is all about wallets and sort of like, \"What do you, where do you put your Bitcoin?\" So it's really fun to kind of think about that, you know, every month we have a new effort that continues to think about things from, through the eyes of a newcomer, and, and we deliberately have some, some more new coiner types involved in that to give us their perspective and make sure that it's actually understandable, and, you know, thanks to you and, and Jan and Brady and some of these folks that have been ch" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "15:22", "start": 921.91, "text": "That education with us and, and providing their content and, and, and making it really good. And so that was kind of the, the genesis of the approach, the education first approach of the company overall when we decided to do Swan as a, you know, basically a product to buy Bitcoin for yourself, so give, you buy for somebody else, Swan, you buy for yourself. we knew that the best way to sort of- Access new coiners, which is where most clients, most clients that we're going to have over the life of the company are gonna be people who aren't in Bitcoin today, 'cause there just aren't that many people in Bitcoin today, and a lot of them have their stack already or they have their preferred platforms or whatever it is. so it's, we know that our task is to go out and educate new people and get them hooked with some interesting headline and some good education and some good knowledge and, and draw them in and teach them about Bitcoin and, and we know that the more that they About Bitcoin, the more they're going to buy." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:20", "start": 979.95, "text": "Yeah, right. That's, that's absolutely right. And you had a really good post, that I wanted to talk a little bit about as well. So it's called ten million Bitcoiners and the Intransigent, Minority. So tell us a little bit about that. What, what is, what's the idea behind ten million Bitcoiners?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "16:38", "start": 997.95, "text": "Yeah, so, obviously the name of the company being Swan, it's pretty clear I'm a big Miss M to Leb fan. the address of Which isn't actually out there in public, but we say it's, the intersection of, Taleb Street and Nakamoto Avenue." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "16:57", "start": 1016.64, "text": "so this is kind of a, this is a concept that he's written about, and he's not the one who invented it, he actually observed it and saw other people writing about it and then just kind of took it broad in, in particular. He wrote about an intransigent minority or an intolerant minority in a couple of his books prior to Skin in the Game, but he went really deep on it there. Like a society, you only need a very small number of people to be totally dedicated to a cause or to not accept an alternative to flip an entire society to their way of thinking. so the classic example that I laid out there that, that he also used was, just, kosher or halal meat, the, the qualifications are pretty similar, in a place like London. So you might have three or four percent of the population that insists on only eating kosher Or only eating halal, but because everybody else, the other ninety-five percent or ninety-six percent, is willing to eat that, it's not such a bad trade-off for them, but the minority isn't willing to eat the other, the non-kosher, then basically the whole supply chain flips over to kosher. and then you can see this on so many food products, even, you know, in the states, there'll be a little kosher symbol on, you know, almost every product that you're eating. Most of it is, is actually kosher and is manufactured in a way that is acceptable to our, our Jewish and Muslim friends." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:17", "start": 1097.47, "text": "Right. And the interesting thing there is that it takes a little bit of, certification and certain work to make it that way, right? So there is some cost that is being incurred by the manufacturer, but in some way that's being, obvious, like By everybody, but it's because of those, small minority." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "18:38", "start": 1118.11, "text": "Yeah, yeah, that, that can cut either way. Some, there are examples also of where the minority wants something that's, that's like less expensive and still flips it over, so, or, or is better. Like a minority might want something that's better. That's how I see it with Bitcoin, like we're trying to work toward having an intolerant or an, an transigent minority of people in the United States that own enough Bitcoin for it to be meaningful and care about it, understand it. enough that they're gonna be vocal in defense of it. and so you know, that, that sort of just quick back of the envelope is if it's three or four percent and we have, you know, three hundred and twenty-five, three hundred and thirty million people in the US, you get ten million Bitcoiners that we need to have to, you know There is no existential threat that we've identified that hasn't been defunded at this point for Bitcoin, like it, there's nothing, there's nothing known that is a legit threat, and I obviously have observed this on Telegram and Twitter and, you know, million podcasts over the last few years, like there literally is an answer for everything. But if I were gonna pick one that could delay things or make things difficult, it would be, you know, concerted effort on the behalf of the US government. Like that would be the one thing. You know, just the, the full force and power of the, you know, US legislature and military and spy systems and all of that, the financial system and, you know, the whole dollar reserve system being anti-bitcoin would be, would make it harder for me to enjoy Bitcoin in my life and for my children at least. and, you know, might make people like me just shut down shop if you're not willing to move to another jurisdiction, things like that. So, yes, Bitcoin would survive regardless, but I think it's a much better future, if we can speed Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin resilience, on the social layer. So, you know, I, I see it as a, a moral imperative and a, a personal imperative and a company imperative to recruit as many Bitcoiners. Again, you can, people sell Define or define it however they want. In this case, I'm just using it as someone that owns a decent chunk of Bitcoin and cares about it enough to like write a letter to a congressman or show up at a town hall meeting." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:47", "start": 1247.27, "text": "Yeah, I like that. It's a good, because again, people can debate till the cows come home, okay, just because you hold Bitcoin, maybe you're not a Bitcoiner. Maybe there are some people who hold the proverbial Bitcoin-flavored risk, right? They're just holding an ETF somewhere or they're holding some financial product that gives them the Bitcoin They're not, they haven't grasped what it is to hold the underlying, right? Of actually holding your own private keys and so on. And I, I like that idea, and I think a good way of, explaining it or articulating it, I think Will Reeves from Vault has explained it as, \"We're building a political electorate here.\" What do you think about that?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "21:26", "start": 1286.29, "text": "No, I love it. I mean, I, I- We launched something called Bitcoin for America yesterday on Twitter, so, we had ten thousand views of that video in a couple of hours, so that was pretty fun. but that's kind of the campaign that we'll be running throughout the, election season here in the States. It's, Bitcoin for America." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:44", "start": 1304.4, "text": "Right. And that's also a, an interesting topic because the, there is a very strong libertarian streak running through many Bitcoin people, and, arguably as well, the way America was founded has a very, has a very- libertarian streak about it, and so it's sort of like a calling back to, you know, the initial values. And, how do you see that, playing out today, where, let's say, maybe a lot less Americans today are libertarians than, you know, in the past?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "22:15", "start": 1335.03, "text": "Yeah, I mean, I, I, I've gone to the trouble of going back and finding a lot of founding fathers' quotes, about six or seven months ago and put a bunch of them on Twitter in, in little memes, and they were quotes that Say Bitcoin, 'cause it was, you know, eighteen thirty or whatever. but at the end of the day, like the, they all basically agreed on, on one crucial thing, which is that if we let the banks print the money, we'd be screwed as a country. Well, since nineteen thirteen, we've kind of been doing that, and we accelerated it big time in '71. and so now we're in a position that is not We're, we're in a position that the founding fathers thought would make the country fail. So we might wanna do something about that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:58", "start": 1378.02, "text": "Yeah. Yeah. So you can be patriotic and make the argument for Bitcoin as well, that you want your country to be more- Oh, absolutely. Competitive." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "23:07", "start": 1387.23, "text": "Yeah, I mean, if you're, if you're down with the founding fathers and you're a constitutionalist and, you know, you want the ideals of the republic to carry forward, you know, you wanna find a way to be aligned with Bitcoin 'cause it's- The most American thing you could be a, in favor of." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:22", "start": 1402.08, "text": "Right, yeah. And, I, I think, for the international listeners as well, right? I, I'm in Australia, probably forty-five, fifty percent of my listeners are in the US, so this is very relevant for them. But even for international listeners, I understand Swan is also, potentially looking to expand internationally, do you have any thoughts to share around that?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "23:43", "start": 1423.37, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, we're, we're super focused right now in the US, which is obviously the biggest market, and we think if we absolutely nail the product and the experience and, you know, kind of, satisfy all the needs and wants and desires and, and delight our customers, we're gonna be in a really good spot, and thankfully we're in a big market where you have a lot of headroom." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "24:06", "start": 1445.85, "text": "Legal groundwork and on the back end, we can already be in a hundred and forty countries in every major currency today, the partnerships that we have and kind of like the stack that we've built, we can technically take funds in exchange for Bitcoin from a hundred and forty countries right now. But you talk about, you know, support, you talk about regulations, you talk about, you know, all the licenses and all these different things, you kinda do have to go country by country and language by language and all those things. So, you know, like, like most companies will probably look at And then we'll look at the UK and we'll look at Australia and, and just kind of go country by country in English first and then branch out from there, if, if, if it goes that far, we'll see." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:45", "start": 1485.05, "text": "Yeah, that's great. There's a lot of" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "24:47", "start": 1486.66, "text": "road to hoe in the US. And we're, we're happy right now. I mean, you follow me or follow Swan on Twitter, anybody asks about, you know, Europe or Australia or Canada, we just say, \"Talk to Ruben, talk to Francis, talk to Alex.\" Like it's, it's, it's out there somewhere in the future, but it's not immediate." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:06", "start": 1505.63, "text": "Yeah, sure, sure. and so in terms of this one Bitcoin setup, tell us a little bit about who else is involved. I know Jan Pritzker is involved, you've got Brady. Tell us a little better, who, who else is, who else is there?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "25:18", "start": 1517.86, "text": "Yeah, I mean, So Jan and I got to know each other initially because, you know, I loved his book, and we met at Bitcoin twenty nineteen in SF around that, just made plans to meet up, and I wanted to tell him about, GiveBitcoin, brought him on as an advisor, and, you know, the guy just can't stop himself from getting involved in, you know, product and engineering, like it's in his blood, and he was trying to, you know, stay semi-retired after selling his last company, but he just, he couldn't stop, and, you Feedback, not just like on a section of a chapter, but, you know, kind of scanning the whole thing and rewriting things. And, and before long, he asked if he could be in the team Slack, and, so then he was there, just kind of like chiming in on product and tech decisions and, you know, basically with the launch of Swan, you know, and, and just coming up with the, the idea for that and exactly how I wanted to do it. I think that's what got him over the hump, and so from like mid-December, he was so that was awesome, and that was about the same time, I think Brady came on at the beginning of December, and that was just, I started to have, I developed a hypothesis after working with a lot of different people that, you basically just need to hire Bitcoiners for the stuff, otherwise you waste too much time. and also you're just kinda, you know, you need people that are kinda down for the cause, so it's not only saving you a lot of time, it's also you're getting their brain working on non-work hours so that 'Cause we know that anyone who's a Bitcoiner is gonna be reading and talking and listening to podcasts, and, you know, we're all just like degenerate Bitcoiners that can't do anything else. so if you hire Bitcoiners, if you hire Bitcoiners, you get much more bang for your buck, you know, and we're all kinda working toward a bright orange future, and this goes for myself too. Obviously, a lot of other things I, I could be doing for more fiat, but I would never trade it. I love doing this. so that's kinda, there's the three of us, we've got a great long-term hodler out of Germany who's an incredible, designer and coder, so he's, lives in a small town outside of Frankfurt, so you can see him on the website, but he, he's been a great add to the team, he's been on since January. and then we have, kind of, I mentioned having kind of a new coiner who provides the outsiders pers-perspective, but, I have a longtime friend named," }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "27:41", "start": 1660.82, "text": "He was two thousand three, guy officiated my wedding in Istanbul, I've known the guy for a long time. He's got a really interesting and helpful background 'cause he was actually the author and the, the writer of the blog for Thirty Seven Signals. So this is the guy's, this is Basecamp. There's kind of a famous tech blog that started in the early aughts called Signal versus Noise, that he wrote for eight years. and those guys never spent a dime on marketing, all they did was just educate people, and they're the ones that You know, Dave Hennemeyer Hansen created Ruby on Rails, so kind of really well known people in tech. I think the only outside investor they ever took was just Jeff Bezos with a personal check, only 'cause Jeff begged them. you know, and they still own the whole company and they have super happy employees and they work like thirty, thirty two hour work weeks and they're totally remote. So it's, Having Matt on the team, he's got a special skill that he brings to the table where he can translate something for a normie audience and, and bring them up to speed. So that's been awesome to unleash him on Bitcoin. and he's, you know, definitely the primary author of the book with, with me and everybody else chipping in. And, and yeah, I just think it's, it's interesting to have him, you know, 'cause he's, he's actually a full-time stand-up comic now for the last eight or nine years. so he's just doing this on the side, he does like halftime with us and then does comedy at nights, when there's, you know, when, when you can actually go to a nightclub and it's not COVID season in New York, he, he's in the clubs performing and hosting and stuff like that. but yeah, I just find it really" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "29:22", "start": 1762.06, "text": "Honest. and then there's a bunch of other people, like we, we just added, one of my favorite humans in, in Bitcoin and, and just in the world is, Brecky von Bitcoin, Jason Don, so he's just come on as, creative director, official start date, I think, is actually tomorrow, but he's been working with us for a few weeks already. But he's basically" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:42", "start": 1781.91, "text": "already started. Yeah, I mean, he's," }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "29:43", "start": 1783.33, "text": "he's been, he's been kicking around and, and chipping in for months now" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "29:52", "start": 1792.14, "text": "On staff, and then, our newest hire is we have an actor on staff. So, you'll get the, you're the first person that's gonna get the, the background on Reggie Brown, who's the guy that we had, play Obama in our Bitcoin for America video yesterday. so he's an old friend of mine from Chicago. We were friends since 2006 or 2007 in, in Chicago, and, in 2008, this, this skinny guy from Chicago started to get really popular like him and was an actor and he just decided to, you know, get in makeup and, and practice the impersonation and, got himself an agent in Hollywood and moved out here and he's been doing like really good business as basically the best known Obama impersonator for the last twelve years. so he's done, you know, all kinds of news shows and comedy shows and tons and tons of Bill Maher appearances and Fox News and all these different things as, as Obama. so now he's doing that for us a little bit, but we're also gonna have him play other things too. So he's, he's kind of the staff actor and presenter. And the fun thing that we're thinking of doing is we're gonna-- He's not a Bitcoiner, but we're gonna use this basically to onboard him as a Bitcoiner and document his process as he And learns how to engage with Bitcoiners and play Bitcoiners, and, you know, it, it's gonna be fun. I, I, I really like this idea of, of having a staff actor." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:18", "start": 1878.44, "text": "Right, yeah. And speaking to the journey of learning about Bitcoin, and, I think it, it is psychologically important to have the dollar cost average approach as well. I think it's, a lot of people have come in and tried to take the lump sum, \"Oh, is it a good time?\" a-a-and then they just mistime it because 'Cause again, no, it's basically, basically nobody can time it well, or very few people can. And psychologically to me, I think that's where the dollar cost average, auto buy, whatever you wanna call it, I like that approach very much. So, so what was it about that approach that appealed to you?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "32:00", "start": 1920.05, "text": "I kind of approached it from a standpoint of, okay, what is actually going to solve the problem here? And the problem is, how do you- How do you actually accumulate a meaningful amount of Bitcoin, you know, because it's really difficult for humans that have been Tuned to spend cash as you receive it to accumulate enough money to purchase an asset without using credit. and so, you know, really the only things that have been effective at getting people big chunks of value into an asset class have been retirement, which comes automatically out of your paycheck, and mortgages, which is something that you have to pay every month, it's the first thing that goes out. And so I think that approach of, of saying, okay, you set it and forget it, you're just paying for this thing every month. you know, you're just gonna buy a bit of Bitcoin every month and think about it as like, you know, a Bitcoin savings account or whatever it is, you're just gonna accumulate this Bitcoin. and it'd just be-- it, it's a, it's a forced habit. You, you only have to make that decision once as opposed to, you know, there are certain people and they're hardcore Bitcoiners and they're listening to a lot of podcasts and they're the people that will religiously sit down and go on the exchange and, you know, set a limit order and their limit order, whatever it is, but there's so much mental friction and so much time associated with that ritual, we can only expect some single digit percentage of people to actually DCA, dollar cost average, without it being automatic. So when I looked at it, I thought the three things, it was super clear to me, I'm surprised that other people don't all do it the same way, but it was very clear to me that you had to automate three things to actually solve the problem. You have to automatically pull the funds from the bank account, you have to automatically purchase the Bitcoin, and then you have to automatically withdraw it to the user's designated storage, like the address that they want it to go to or xPub, we're gonna do xPubs too. so with all three of those, I think you have, you know, the, the best way to, for, you know, ninety plus percent of people to be able to accumulate a meaningful position in Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:11", "start": 2051.09, "text": "Yeah, that makes a big difference because it really is about smoothing the friction out, and I know that for my focus is very much about teaching people towards self-custody as wherever possible, self-custody, and I think many of my listeners will share that concern, and so that is something that is important to them because they have been through these, these, scenarios before where, let's say, Mt. Gox went down and these exchanges all go down and without having a strong self-custody culture, there's just so much risk there. And so definitely appreciate, that, Swan Bitcoin is very much advocating and advancing down that, line of You should self-custody and you should withdraw regularly." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "34:59", "start": 2099.45, "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. It, it, it is very interesting, and, you know, one of the other things that's pretty cool about it is most people choose round numbers for their withdrawals, so we're working on this, and, and Matt O'Dell is helping us like think through this, but basically if you can do, basically all your withdrawals at one time and they're all in the same, denomination. So like, let's say we're doing like a thousand, a thousand withdrawals or a thousand cents to user Of, you know, point o five or point one or point o one or whatever it is, it effectively looks like a coin join. right. If, if it's a batch spend, right? It's a batch spend and, and they're all going out in the same denomination. So there's a little bit of, you know, privacy there, but obviously a lot of people that, will receive it will go off and do, you know, coin joins, whirlpools, whatever they want, after the fact, too." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:49", "start": 2149.37, "text": "Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah Mostly the friction aspect, right? Even if you're super committed to Bitcoin, you might, and you're trying to manually buy, you might think, \"Oh, maybe I'll wait a little bit because I think, you know, it's coming down and I'm gonna be able to get more if I wait just a little bit.\" And then you end up trying to optimize or for, for something, it's like you're missing the forest for the trees. And that's, something that I've, it's a tendency I've noticed in myself when I was, you know, Occasionally I would slip it up a little bit, and then you'd kind of miss a buy, and then you're kind of like, \"Ah, I missed the opportunity.\" So, but, there's that strong FOMO aspect of it as well, because people sort of feel like, \"Oh, there's a big dip, I wanna buy some now,\" and, i- that, that can run you in, that can put you into trouble as well, because you're trying to, like, take lump sums or certain chunks of money as opposed to just" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "36:56", "start": 2216.03, "text": "Yeah, yeah, that's right. And again, you know, I think, conditional on being a Bitcoiner, like you probably have a little bit better relationship with money than the average person. And so, you know, saving up and having a chunk of fiat On the sideline to put into Bitcoin when you deem the price is low is something that's a, a real experience that many of us have had and have been through. It's not a realistic experience for most people. Most people aren't going to be able to put five thousand dollars in an account on the side, and I know this from sitting in the chat. We turned on chat, you know, two, three days ago with our early access people, and I've had a lot of conversations about people like, very concerned that our paycheck plan that's supposed to pull on the first and fifteenth Actually is going to pull, you know, on the first and fifteenth or later, because it's coming out of their paycheck." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:48", "start": 2267.67, "text": "yeah." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "37:48", "start": 2268.35, "text": "Yeah. Their living paycheck, their paycheck. But they wanted, and but our pricing, and this is another really important thing, I, I got really, got really tired of the inequity of the, the two providers that, that do DCA in the US, Gemini and Coinbase, just gouging people on fees for small buys. so it's just like egregiously high if you do ten dollars- Fee, a ten dollar buy on Coinbase is, nine point nine percent fee plus the spread. so we just decided to basically treat everybody the same with our tiers, so it doesn't get egregious like that. So for us, I think, you know, a ten dollar buy is two point four nine percent if you prepaid your fees annually, two point nine nine if you're just doing pay as you go, and we go all the way down to, point nine nine percent, for buys of two hundred bucks a month or more, so fifty bucks a week or more Tier and you're down under one percent fees, for set it and forget it recurring Bitcoin buys, and, you know, the lowest that Square, Gemini and Coinbase go, I think, is like one point four nine." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:51", "start": 2331.03, "text": "Right, right. And in terms of the spread as well, what sort of, price do they end up getting from that?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "38:58", "start": 2338.24, "text": "We don't take, we don't take a spread, so it's just the fees, the fees of the fees, and we get, you know, basically the best market price that is available through our, our providers, just a That are plugged into a, a desk basically." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:13", "start": 2352.89, "text": "Yeah. So essentially this is the, this would be the cheapest DCA option available for Americans." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "39:21", "start": 2360.94, "text": "Yeah. That's right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:23", "start": 2362.66, "text": "Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a good thing as well. But specifically," }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "39:25", "start": 2364.65, "text": "specifically, I mean, so you could, you could wire money into an exchange or some kind of service and convert it to Tether and set it up to buy every minute or whatever. That for me, again, the problem for me isn't solved. Unless you have the automatic withdrawal from the bank account, the automatic purchase of the Bitcoin, and the automatic withdrawal to your own storage, so unless you're solving all three of those, I don't consider that product a competitor to us. You're something else. Gotcha, gotcha. You know, and that's fine. There are people that make those product choices and they wanna do it that way, like, you know, that supposedly there are a few people on Kraken that do actually, DCA, but you have to wire the money to Kraken and it sits there in your fiat account and then it gets doled out into Bitcoin over time." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:06", "start": 2406.27, "text": "Right, I see you. Yeah, yeah. And it's more of a manual approach because that user has to actually- Kind of manually operated the- Well, they have, they have to push" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "40:14", "start": 2413.74, "text": "the money from their bank account to the exchange versus having it just automatically pulled from the bank account." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:20", "start": 2420.24, "text": "Yeah, I see. Yeah. So the buying," }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "40:22", "start": 2421.86, "text": "the purchasing of the Bitcoin is automated, and I hear it's great, and that's totally awesome, but I really do think you need the pull from the bank account too to automate this thing, right? Yeah. Also, ACH is free, which is nice. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:38", "start": 2437.77, "text": "Yeah, that, that, that's always a bit tricky as well around like how you set up the banking and all that, but, yeah, I guess it's, it's- It doesn't take, and that's the other thing as well, it doesn't take that many people doing DCA before you end up with this huge, hugely bullish pressure on, upwards on the price, because it's, it's, it's just not that many, there's just not that many bitcoins to go around in terms of the new mining supply." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "41:05", "start": 2464.89, "text": "Yeah, no, I, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we've obviously been able to see the impact that Square going so hard with, with Cash App and, and making it easy to smash to stack sats, as the boys over at T-TFTC say. you know, that, that's had a meaningful impact on, on sucking up the new supply that comes in every day, and, I absolutely think there will be lots more. We've got River, up in San Francisco with Alex and the boys, and I'm friends with Andrew, A different approach that's more like, you know, exchange focused, more of a brokerage, and they do sales and a lot of high net worth, sort of like family office focused, and we're kind of like trying to bring millions in. but I think they're like, it's silly to think that when millions of people sell gold around the world and millions of people sell stocks around the world, and Bitcoin's supposed to be this huge asset class, do we really think there aren't gonna be like at least thousands of businesses selling Bitcoin? Of course, there will be. You know, I've seen, I've seen, I, I became aware of, Reserve over, I think they're Swiss, and they're gonna be serving the EU, but, because Connor, Connor pub- published a piece in their new, blog, so that's clearly like a, a well-experienced and capitalized team that's gonna be doing something else over there. And, you know, I think there's gonna be new ones popping up all the time, and, you know, rising tide lifts all boats, and we all, we all You know, I, I think this thing is heading for like a hundred trillion market cap, which means at least a few trillion has to flow into it, and a percent or two of a few trillion is pretty meaningful. So there's plenty of money to go around if you do this right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:42", "start": 2561.74, "text": "Yeah, absolutely. And so let's, talk now about Bitcoin Ventures. So it's this new thing, I'm involved as well. can you tell us a little bit about it? What, what is it?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "42:55", "start": 2574.51, "text": "Yeah, so, I mean, this, this came from, you know Like summer of eighteen was when I first wanted to start it, and I was looking at all the money that, Consensus could throw around or, you know, some of these ecosystem funds like that Giant pile that, Block One gave to Galaxy like three hundred million to invest in EO startups or whatever it was, and I was like, \"Why isn't there this for Bitcoin?\" And it's like, \"Well, there is. It's just, you know, it's all venture investors globally look at Bitcoin startups.\" But I felt like it could be helped by having at least like another strong voice that was, you know, putting in the work and the time to be authoritative and exhibit like, \"Hey, I've got some taste.\" Like, we don't-- we can all have our But it's also nice if a professional reviewer watches everything and you get to know their taste, and then you can at least judge whether you like something by calibrating against their taste. So that's what I thought we could do by being a focal point where we do actually do the work, we do look at the, you know, the, the fundraising decks and meet the teams and know the teams and, and, you know, so I, I started thinking about this initially with, with Steve Lee and Dan Held in like summer of eighteen, never quite got around to it ' And, you know, basically with getting to know you and, and Jan Pritzker over the last year, you know, we obviously felt the three of us that we could provide a good, a good voice and, and really be-- we have good access to deals, and I think that people around the world will, I mean, they're, they're already proving that they, that they do trust our taste and they're signing up for our Angelus Syndicate. So there's a, a Bitcoin Ventures Angelus Syndicate, is how we're starting it. and we Deal, got our first allocation in a, a very well-known Bitcoin startup. I can't say the name, but you can, go and find us on AngelList, we can post the, we can post the AngelList syndicate, URL in the show notes, and you can go in there and, and if you're on AngelList already, subscribe to our syndicate, or it's pretty easy if you're an accredited level investor to sign up for AngelList and start contributing to these, these startups. the way AngelList works basically For, you know, in this case, just to get off the ground, a hundred thousand dollar allocation in a deal that's currently going down for a Bitcoin startup. and, and there are a bunch of other investors in the round, professional investors that are doing their due diligence, et cetera, and obviously we are too. and we fill that up with checks of anywhere between like, you know, one, one and twenty-five thousand, so you can invest in a Bitcoin startup for as little as, as one K US, from around the world, by the way. So It's not just a US thing, this could be a global investor base." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:41", "start": 2741.2, "text": "Yeah, so it's an opportunity for people to take part and be a part of the group who are investing into Bitcoin proper companies. And so, can you just tell us a little bit about how investments will be looked at, which, which companies will get invested in?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "46:01", "start": 2760.98, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really just- Bitcoin only, so that's, that's one of the key things. So, you know, I think if, if your exchange is also selling ICON or Toilet Paper Coin or whatever else, like, no, not interested. so these are Bitcoin infrastructure companies, like, we'll be looking, we already are talking to a few Bitcoin mining services and software type companies, definitely consumer services, you know, things like, like us and, you know, a Strike, for instance, or an Unchained And or, you know, things like that will definitely be on the short list, the folds, the lollies, just things that are getting Bitcoin infrastructure built and, and, and companies that are getting Bitcoin in more people's hands and educating about Bitcoin. And pushing it forward. And, you know, we've seen historically that, you know, there are obviously companies that have been in the space that have delivered outsized returns with a different risk reward profile from Bitcoin itself. So I think we're making a strong case that it absolutely does make sense, not just as sort of like a, be a good Bitcoin citizen, you know, charitable investment. It's like, no, there's actually companies now being built In and around Bitcoin that have very good prospects for outsized returns going forward." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:20", "start": 2840.37, "text": "Yeah. And so it's one way that people can, if they weren't normally going to go and participate in investing into Bitcoin companies, this is one way where they can participate as part of the syndicate, and contribute money in that way, and in doing so, fund Bitcoin companies that they like, that they want to see succeed." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "47:41", "start": 2860.82, "text": "That's right. That's absolutely right." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:43", "start": 2862.56, "text": "Yeah. so in terms of how it works then, like if somebody's listening now and they wanna be a part of it or they want to, you know, they want to invest, right? They've got some money and they would like to invest in the chosen, company as part of the syndicate. What's the, what's the way they contribute? How do they get involved?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "48:00", "start": 2880.12, "text": "Yeah, just go to bitcoinerventures dot com and you can just go and sign up and send us an email. Our email is, hello at bitcoinerventures dot com, so And we'll take a look, and we can point you toward the syndicate or if you're a, a founder of a Bitcoin company, we'll, we'll take a look at what you're doing. just so everybody knows, like the sweet spot is, you know, basically like seeds and A's. Maybe we'll do some later stage companies as some of the, the current crop of Bitcoin companies advance a little further. but, you know, you've gotta have, you know, be well on your way to having product and market, ideally a little bit of Have an idea or you're just kinda like getting off the ground, absolutely wanna know what you're doing, we'll talk about it, we'll promote it, but, there won't be a, a, a check forthcoming until you get a little bit further along." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:54", "start": 2934.41, "text": "yeah, so it's a, it's, it's an opportunity there for, you know, Bitcoin proper companies as well. Like if you're a founder, you can, put in an email and say, hey, maybe we could be part of, we, we could work together or we" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "49:13", "start": 2953.12, "text": "Structure as well. So, you know, obviously venture investors typically take, a percentage of assets under management and a carry, which is basically a percentage of the profits. we're taking zero percent on assets under management, so not, not taking any money there. And, instead of twenty, we're taking ten, and that's obviously like split between the partners and also, equally with, our in-investor associate, Louis Liu, who's helping with a lot of the blocking and tackling and has good deal sourcing and good deal evaluation. Skills, so basically the four of us just splitting that and, and we're also all, investing, a little bit in each of these companies as well, so we have skin in the game by putting up some money ourselves in each of the deals that we select, and that forces us to actually pay attention and all three of us and decide what we're gonna do, and then we have an incentive to, you know, help make it go great and, you know, be really choosy because we actually do have a little bit of upside along with our investors Selecting the deals, and, you know, I, I would absolutely love to see some financial returns from this endeavor, but, you know, but it is well under market and, it's not for us. I mean, I'll speak for myself, I think you feel the same way, but it's, it's not actually about the money, it's about the money, Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "50:33", "start": 3033.14, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's really about what we-- what can we do? What companies out there will really benefit and benefit back to Bitcoin, right? And help build the infrastructure around Bitcoin and help, kind of advance it on this journey of becoming, you know, the global money, and I think it's also a, an interesting point because over the years, many of us in the Bitcoin space have been frustrated that there would be some shitcoin fund manager who would be charging the typical two and twenty or even more. And telling people, hey, you've gotta, you can't just invest in Bitcoin, you gotta invest in all these other, you know, and think of it like it's quote-unquote crypto, right? Which obviously I disagree with. what if we had actually something that was more Bitcoin focused and people could invest their money and know that it was going towards proper Bitcoin only and Being done in a way with the, where the focus is, we're gonna try and push Bitcoin along this pathway of, you know, becoming global money." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "51:33", "start": 3092.93, "text": "Yep, absolutely." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:35", "start": 3095.08, "text": "So, look, I guess, let's just finish it up with a bit of a broader comment around the macro comments and the macro scene that we're in, right? We are just seeing just unprecedented actions by governments all around the world. I mean, we've got this crazy, crazy amount of money printing and stimulus, we've got all this crazy- See stuff happening in terms of government intervention into the market around, and just into our lives in terms of, you know, many of us are pract-practically sitting on house arrest at this point, many of us around the world. So it's, it's a crazy scenario. What is the Where does Bitcoin play into that?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "52:17", "start": 3136.58, "text": "Well, I, I put in my time thinking about this on, on Sunday morning and, and posted a tweet, so I'll just, I'll just read that. I couldn't imagine a more positive setup for Bitcoin. QE, quant-quantitative easing unlimited will succeed in kicking the can down the road one more time. But everyone now knows fiat comes from thin air and can be used for anything. So from here, it's a free-for-all. Unlimited dollars And fixed Bitcoin equals moon." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "52:52", "start": 3171.5, "text": "And, and that's, that's really what I, that's really what I think, you know, I, I think in the, the first- A few weeks of this thing really getting out of hand, and I got my cues from, you know, Bitcoin Twitter and, and then really macro voices got all over this the last week of January, so, you know, this is It's hard because Bitcoiners are right about so much that we can get very full of ourselves being right about things. But the fact is, this sort of Talebian fat tails, exponential thinking, like this way of looking at the world, like that mental model, you know, complex systems and, you know, beating a butterfly wings and all these different things, Are a much more accurate way of thinking about the world, and it basically let, you know, macro investors are very similar, which is why there's this big love affair between macro investors and bitcoiners, 'cause there's no more macro investment out there than Bitcoin, whether they know it or not. Are the ones that really were out in front of this and, and saw this, you know, really, really early. Like Taleb was publishing on this in, you know, the third week of January about how this was gonna be a global pandemic and that the WHO had it wrong and all these things. And, you know, we've seen that time and time again, whether it's, you know, Two Bit Idiot being all over this, or Bologhie, or, you know, any, your favorite hardcore Bitcoiners, for the most part, have been on, on top of this" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "54:14", "start": 3253.65, "text": "So I did definitely see that, here's what I was nervous about. I was nervous about, the whole thing kind of falling apart before Bitcoin was ready, 'cause I, I just, you know, there's just not enough capacity, the market cap's not high enough, and I could see, you know, draconian measures slapping down while there aren't enough Bitcoiners and not enough infrastructure, and, you know, especially when you look at the night of March 12th and what happened with the price and BitMEX and cascading liquidations and all of the margin calls all Like you look at that and it's like, I'm not, kind of scared to take all this on now. The best thing that could possibly happen is like, being able to see the wizard behind the curtain with Kashkari coming on and saying, \"We have unlimited money, we can just print it as much as you want, unlimited, right?\" And then, and then, you know, Bitcoin coming into the having, like, how you, I don't even care what happens to price this year, like it's just It's so obvious now the, the, the value prop and, and crystallizing that this thing isn't a hedge against like a financial crisis, it's a hedge against the existing system. And this is, this existing system has just shown its massive cracks yet again, and, you know, I think, and one of the macro voices guests totaled up If the dollar is actually gonna backstop all of the euro debt and all of the corporate debt and basically everything that it has to backstop, it's not gonna be six trillion, it's gonna be forty-five to forty-seven trillion. Like what, what's the release valve for that? I wish we had something." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "55:50", "start": 3350.37, "text": "Gee, I don't know, I don't know. now, it's an interesting point as well because I've often-- Well, I'm kind of coming around to that view that, look, the typical person isn't gonna really care about Bitcoin until they feel it in their hip pocket, right? They, they feel the inflation. And it, it may be that in the sh-- short term, we don't necessarily see a lot of CPI, consumer price inflation, and it may just be-- it may take some time for that to really filter out, and then that is what pushes them But at the same time, though, Bitcoin is still extremely small, and we're about to come into a halving, so the actual downwards sell pressure exerted by the miners is just gonna massively decrease, right? It's gonna halve, obviously, and then The, with all the people stacking just regularly, I see it like we are gonna sort of see a bull run in Bitcoin probably next year, right? And it just, it, it just sort of p- all hits this crazy perfect storm for Bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "56:49", "start": 3409.21, "text": "Listen, it seems to be setting up that way. So we'll see. I mean, we're, we're, you know, my, my company and my, my comrades in, in Swan with our wings out, flapping as hard as we can, just trying to get ready for the- This thing and, and be there to take the orders, that is kind of the goal. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I've never been more, more bullish for Bitcoin than I am now, and I, I think, you know, whatever your, whatever your price forecast was for a given year out in the future, so let's say like twenty twenty-four, twenty twenty-eight, twenty thirty-two, whatever, and you had a number in mind, like conditional upon the system actually collapsing again, which it is in the process of doing And you have another crisis, conditional upon that happening, that, now that condition has been satisfied, and it was priced in, you know, as a, as a maybe before, and now it's a definite. So you actually have to either change the year of your price forecast or like two to five x your forecast for the year that you had in your mind, like you have to, because now That actually happened, and now we actually have our government going on and saying we can print as much money as we want, and they are. so yeah, just, it, Bitcoin, Bitcoin as a thing happening by a certain date became a lot more certain." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:12", "start": 3491.56, "text": "Yeah, that's a great way to, frame it. So, look, Cory, where, where can the listeners, follow you and Swan and Bitcoin, Bitcoin Ventures?" }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "58:22", "start": 3502.31, "text": "Yeah, so swanbitcoin.com, in the US, come and, and set it up, and if you have any friends that are looking at Bitcoin that are in the US, please send them our way, we'll take care of 'em and teach 'em about Bitcoin and get 'em stacking. and then bitcoinerventures.com, please come and sign up for the angel Send a kit, and there's no obligation by the way. You can get noti-fied, noti-fied of all the deals and look at all the materials, just by signing up. you have no obligation to actually participate in a given deal. A lot of people may not have a lot of experience with AngelList. And then me, you know, I, me, Brecky, Brady, and Jan all have the handle keys to Swan Bitcoin, so if somebody says something stupid, it's me. no, I'm just kidding. And, you know, you can also email me anytime at, corey, c o r y, at swanbitcoin dot com." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:16", "start": 3555.7, "text": "Fantastic. I've enjoyed chatting with you, Corey. Thanks for joining me." }, { "speaker": "cory_klippsten", "time": "59:19", "start": 3558.52, "text": "Yeah. Thanks, Stefan." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "59:20", "start": 3559.76, "text": "You can subscribe to the show, get the show notes, and see the transcript for this episode at stefanlivera dot com slash one six three. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the citadels." } ] }