{ "episodeId": "SLP460", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he": { "name": "Mark Goodwin is the Editorial Director for Print at Bitcoin Magazine. He", "role": "guest", "tag": "MARK" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:09", "start": 8.59, "text": "Hi and welcome to Stephan Livera podcast, a show about Bitcoin and Austrian economics brought to you by Swan Bitcoin. Now, as many of you might know, fiat currency is like a melting ice cube, and so holding Bitcoin on our balance sheet, whether you are a business entity or a nonprofit or a trust, can help you deal with this. So if you are operating or managing an entity, get in touch with Swan Business. And you can have expert guidance at every step along the way. Dante and the team will help you out automating your Bitcoin investment, custody, and management strategy. Also, Bitcoin benefit plan is available, so if you have employees and you would like to help orange fill them and pay out a certain amount to them every month, whether it's fifty dollars, a hundred dollars a month, and Swan can handle all the heavy lifting, such as creating wallets, converting currency, and routing payments. And like magic, your employees receive Bitcoin and world-class financial education monthly as a benefit from you. So if this is something that sounds great to you, go to swan dot com slash business. Build on L2 is a community for Bitcoin builders by Blockstream. This initiative is a community led effort by contributors and companies building on core Lightning and the Liquid network. So I've been playing around on there, there is some discussion forums and there are online events coming up. This is an interactive community platform where builders, product managers, designers, engineers can all come together for events, a mentorship program, and exploring a community space to learn something alongside. And other builders, go and sign up, get access at build on L2 dot com. When it comes to securing your Bitcoin, you need some hardware tools to do it, and CoinKite dot com make an awesome range of products here. So they have products that are suitable for all ranges of price points. So for example, if you need a cheap device that works with NFC, the TapSigner is available, it's about forty dollars. You can look at the ColdCard, the Mark IV version is about one hundred and forty-eight dollars. Now, this offers a range of features that you can Can be used in various configurations, whether it's single signature, multi-signature, using trick pins, having seed access, all kinds of features are available there, and they've also got the new Q1 device, which is available for pre-order, which I spoke about in my recent episode with NVK, so that's also worth a look if you are looking for a QR-enabled device. So go and get those over at coinkite dot com. If you're getting a cold card, use code LIVERA for a discount there. My guest for today's episode is Mark Goodwin. He's the For print at Bitcoin Magazine, he joins me to chat about the dynamics between Bitcoin and the dollar. Are there warring factions in the government? What does it mean to help the US dollar retain monetary dominance? What are the protocol risks created by stablecoins, and what does it mean for Bitcoin to still survive and thrive through all of this?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "02:50", "start": 170.09, "text": "Mark, welcome to the show. Stefan, thanks for having me so much, man. Longtime listener, first time caller, so excited to be here." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "02:57", "start": 176.65, "text": "Fantastic. Yeah, that's great. And I've seen, you have some interesting perspectives both in your written contributions and work for Bitcoin Magazine. I know you are also the print editor there or print director, and, also some of your commentary online. I think I've seen a lot of interesting commentary, and I think, yeah, it'll be interesting just to chat, to hear the pros, the cons of stablecoins on Bitcoin. You've been writing and speaking about also, so, do you wanna just open with some of your high-level thoughts about this notion of stablecoins and Bitcoin and, you know, quote-unquote, crypto world, and whether it, it's, you know, on balance, is it an opportunity, is it a benefit, or is it a risk? Is it some kind of downside?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "03:41", "start": 220.72, "text": "I mean, it definitely depends on, you know, who you're looking at, you know, where the risk is and where the upside is. But yeah, the way I look at it," }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "03:50", "start": 229.79, "text": "The market is coming to realize it's really about Bitcoin and it's about the dollar, and, those are, the two, you know, things, you know, sort of competing out here in, in, in the mass market, and stablecoins are a huge part of, of the modern dollar market. You know, the US has to sell its debt somewhere, and, you know, one of the biggest buyers of, of, you know, these short-term, these T-bills has been stablecoin issuers, and I think it's a really important, lever To combat inflation, to have as many users on the dollar system as possible, right? And stablecoins, I think are totally within the, the benefit of the dollar coalition, and I don't really see them as, you know, being opposed to the Fed at all. the Fed always has sort of used private entities to, you know, deliver these bonds to and then have them create credit and, and give it out, you know, to their users, and, I don't think that's a lever that's really, you know, will just be given Given up very easily. So I think, you know, sort of at a, at a, at a high level, I think the Bitcoin and, and the dollar are, you know, kind of coming head to head, and, the way that will be fought, if you will, will be like in liquidity and, in, in pairs on, on a, on a USD level. And kind of, you know, one more thing to sort of round out the thesis, this kind of idea of, you know, the Bitcoin dollar Sort of akin to like the petrodollar. So this idea that, you know, we, we wanna tie our, our money system, our fiat system to an energy standard, you know, like gold, like oil. You know, so we went off kind of the gold standard, you know, Nixon shock, and then we, you know, spent the next, you know, three decades in the Middle East, kind of creating this dollar monopoly on petrol, which is where we get that phrase, the petrodollar. So A big part of my, you know, thinking of what's going on and kind of a, a very broad reductive stroke in, in the macro sense, you know, is this, you know, this, this idea of the Bitcoin dollar having, you know, really been created, in the last few years, and we're just seeing this huge lion's share of, you know, kind of in a similar way of creating this monopoly on this heavily demanded energy commodity. So we've kind of recreated it with Bitcoin. You wanna buy Bitcoin? You, you gotta buy dollars first You wanna, you know, cash out of Bitcoin, you know, the highest liquidity easily is gonna be in a US dollar pairing. So I think the, the dollar system and, and, and Bitcoin are, you know, they're strange bedfellows, and, you know, I think, I think we're gonna see a lot of developments with that, in this year. I think this will be the year of the Bitcoin dollar, I think." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:33", "start": 392.67, "text": "Yeah. So I think one comment I wanted to highlight, I think you made a really good point, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "06:41", "start": 401.28, "text": "Crypto, as much as I dislike that term, it's over the years we've seen all these different narratives, right? So in the earlier years, we saw things like, you know, Namecoin, oh, have a coin to have a domain, and then we saw things like all kinds of things. Like, we saw this idea, this narrative of Litecoin, the silver to Bitcoin, you know, to the gold of Bitcoin, and we saw all these different use-utility coins. We saw all of these different coins that existed to try to keep you inside a system, but for all of that, all You know, the usefulness of quote, unquote crypto has really boiled down to Bitcoin, obviously, decentralized money, call it whatever you wanna think of it, is it a digital gold, is it a, you know, whatever, obviously the best thing, and stablecoins. And it seems like that's really the use. I mean, that's really what it is out there. And of course, I think if you were to talk to most people or even myself, I thought, I probably thought four or five years ago, I probably thought all this stuff would just get regulated out, right? Like I just That Tether would just get shut down, not that I, you know, like the government, but in terms of what do I believe the government is likely to do? Are they likely to shut these things down? Yeah, probably. Now, it's only in recent years that we've seen this thesis of, \"Oh, do stablecoins potentially help governments in some way of asserting or maintaining that dominance of dollar dominance as an example?\" And I think maybe that's where they've at least been permitted to exist, and- And of course, it's also important to point out governments aren't a monolith. There are different departments inside the governments, and they can even be warring with each other and fighting for control, because on one side maybe the KYC/AML risk is, \"Ah, we don't want this,\" and then on the other side it's kind of like, \"Well, hang on.\" Maybe this is a good thing for our monetary dominance overall, so maybe we should tolerate that KYC AML sanctions risk because it's gonna help us retain dollar dominance. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that, aspect of internal wars inside government departments." }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "08:46", "start": 525.82, "text": "I, I mean, absolutely. You know, I look at it as sort of, you know, I say like the dollar coalition or, you know, you know, some, some folks use like Team Fed or whatever, but it's like, you know, it's, it's something we see time and time again in history, Factions whenever there's any sort of, you know, special privilege or power, to be, you know, taken. And, and what greater special privilege than, you know, the right to print money, of the reserve currency of the world, at such a hyper-globalized moment? It's a humongous lever. So yeah, I totally think that there are warring factors within, you know, there are sort of these private entity institutions that are, you know, the-- These are the people that I think will sort of step up to be, you know, the As debt, probably these private banks to issue coins. You know, who, who's gonna be king made? Basically, it's like, that's, that's what this week and, and the next couple months are, are, are sort of seeming to, you know, come to, where it's just, you know, the SEC has clearly made its move. We're gonna see which one. So actually," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:46", "start": 586.06, "text": "do you wanna just, just, just for listeners who aren't familiar, do you wanna just spell that out? What, what move did the SEC" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "09:51", "start": 590.78, "text": "make here? Yeah, for sure. I You know, right before a lot of the, the, the big FTX fallout happened, the SEC kind of made their first, you know, real definitive statement, against a security offering. And so they went at this, ICO that was called Librarycoin or LBRY, and they basically set the precedent that, you know, yes, this is a security, and these laws are very black and white, they're ninety years old, you know, I think the Securities Act was in '33, you know, and these are black and white laws. And so against this company and said that they had, they had, you know, not registered as, as being a security and they had profited off of this. And it really set a big, like, you know, across the whole industry because, and we saw huge fallouts right after with, you know, one of the big things I think in this FTX debacle, was the FTT token, was this, you know, exchange token that they issued, which, you know, based on sort of the actions that have, you know, come through in the last few days, you He considered a security for, for basically every reason, and it ended up being a self-issued security that was, you know, behind like forty percent of, you know, their holdings, like on the books and the liabilities. And once that all came out, everything, you know, very much so collapsed. So I guess when I say the SEC is making their moves, you know, they're, they're looking at stablecoin providers, they're looking at exchanges, they're looking at token issuers, and, you know, they're beginning to say, at least, you know It's gonna happen that it's here and it's, you know, loud and proud and, and starting to, to mess, to mess things up for people. we don't exactly know what that will, you know, resolve to, but I'm certain that, you know, the stablecoin regulation will be, you know, humongous, you know, moving forward. You know, which one of these private entities gets to sort of be, you know, the de facto, you know, CBDC sort of for the United States. whether that's gonna be a Circle Which is, which is very possible, right? I mean, they're held, their reserves are held by BNY Mellon, which is, you know, one of the digital dollar pilot partners, which they're running right now. they're one of the biggest institutions in the world, they have like, their hands in like almost twenty percent of, of the money in the, in the world, and, you know, they hold the paper for Circle, right? So there's a lot of, like, you know, who's gonna be kind of the, who's gonna get You know, what really, you know, comes of, of this, regulatory action." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:33", "start": 753.01, "text": "So if we were to look at the marketplace today of high, big stablecoins, so it's probably three main players, right? So obviously Tether, it's the elephant in the room, it's the biggest stablecoin by far, most liquidity by far, as we speak today, it's February sixteenth, twenty twenty-three, Tether, USDT's market cap, as I look, is about seventy billion. Wow. Next on the list is USDC, which is the Circle. As he said, which kind of arguably is more the, m-might even be the regulator or the government's favorite, or at least they're, they're, they're trying to position themselves that way. Absolutely. So USDC is about forty-one billion, right? And then Binance USD, which obviously has taken a big drop recently, it's about fourteen billion. Now, the interesting move with BUSD as well, and I think you called this out in one of your articles, is that Binance Tried to make a play a few months ago where they force converted people's stablecoin balance out of USDC into Binance USD. But then what we saw finally recently is there was an enforcement, there was some kind of action, I think it was SEC versus Paxos, who is the US issuer of Binance USD. So it's sort of like there are these big moves being made and played around who gets to be the stablecoin top dog." }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "13:52", "start": 832.49, "text": "A hundred percent, and I, I think in, in- you know, right before the FTX, you know, implosion, he was on a podcast and SBF said that they were looking to, to make their own stablecoin and they were looking for the right partner to do it, and, you know, within weeks they, you know, they filed Chapter 11. you know, that's not something you just bring up loosely, right? You know, that's something that, that sort of triggers the, self-preservation, incentive levers of the, you know, whoever is in the warring" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "14:25", "start": 864.61, "text": "Taken out because they did a fraud. I mean, they, obviously they've screwed up, they were committing crimes, commingling users' funds, but also they were very publicly, you know, they let loose the, you know, their liquidation position for, for FTT, and that peg was attacked. And then right before that, right, we saw another, stablecoin attempt with the Luna Terra, I'll just call it a fiasco. They tried to create their own stablecoin and, you know, buy-- or they did create their own stablecoin, buy Bitcoin, and then, you know, their algorithmic peg got attacked, thirty thousand Bitcoin get liquidated on Binance, and, it's all gone. So yeah, stablecoins are, you know, incredibly-- I mean, if you can, if you can wield and, and create a, a liquid one, you know, it's, it's a, it's a hell of a tool to have in your belt. and obviously, you know, of course, there's an incentive for these huge exchanges, you know, to like close positions in USDC and Our own stablecoin, you know, why not? You know, we'll have, we can easily get it up to ten plus billion dollars worth and it'd be totally fine 'cause we have so many users. So every exchange would, you would think would be incentivized to do that, and so FTX went to, to go do that and, you know, boom, and then they're out. So, and" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:43", "start": 942.98, "text": "remember, it's highly profitable, like so- Oh, yeah. At, in terms of, there was a comment recently that Binance is literally making more money, or was, I situation, but it was making more money out of BUSD than out of the spot trading on Binance, like literally one of the largest platforms on earth. So There is a lot of money in this game, so I think it's also important to remember that. But I think then it kind of comes to that risk aspect of it, because as Bitcoiners, I think obviously we have to recognize the world as it is today and understand, okay, yeah, we're in a, we're in a dollar-denominated world today. Of course, we would like it to be a Bitcoin-denominated world. We wanna try to get to that. The question is, what are some of the right ways to get there, right? If you are a Bitcoiner today, whether Some kind of business. How much interaction with stablecoins should we have? Like, is it-- and I think that's also coming into this question about should Bitcoin products and Bitcoin wallets and applications, should they have stablecoin support? And I think this kind of brings up, and when you bring this up online, there's, there are big debates online about, is that the purpose of this thing? Is that the right way to go, or is it driving a high risk of capture?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "17:04", "start": 1023.73, "text": "Yeah, I mean, it's strange that, you know, you know, you'd, you'd like to think a Bitcoiner would be pretty anti, you know, fiat, anti-dollar, you know, it's this, it's this, you know, the, the dollar complex, you know, the military-industrial complex behind it is, is, you know, one of the biggest, you know, frankly, one of the biggest terrorist organizations in the world, and, it's, it, it seems so strange to, you know, to see so much stablecoin On usually like, you know, Ponzi scam, you know, alt chain rails, where these fees are going to, these people that I think, you know, very arguably are not operating in good faith, you know, running some of these smart contract platforms. So, yeah, I mean, I don't wanna tell anyone what to do with their money, ever. and I obviously understand why people want access to the dollar when it's hard to have access to. it's, it's a great technological- tool, you know, over every other fiat currency ever, but it's still fiat currency, and it's still, you know, we're buying the debt of this, you know, corrupt and criminal organization. so, you know, I'd like to think, you know, bitcoiners would be averse to stablecoins, you know, when they really understand what they are. You know, they're not decentralized, you know, they're issued by a central issuer. they run on decentralized name only, you know, Ponzi rails. and they're still Policy of the greater dollar system is still sort of directing the, the value and sort of security, if you will, of, you know, these products, these petrodollar derivatives. So I, I don't like to see it personally, and, and, and, and it seems to be that there's sort of a push towards introducing these, you know, technologically into the base layer, and then using them, in sort of taro assets on Lightning, and that's, that's a big, you know, talking point point that a lot of people in the Bitcoin community are really excited about, you know, this is this killer app, you know, this, a single lightning wallet that has Bitcoin and, and dollar operability, and it just raises a lot of red flags for me. you know, I, we saw kind of what happened with Ethereum and the merge and, and, you know, now that there's this heavily OFAC compliant chain, that I think a lot of it was, was because of this perversion of the native asset of Ether, you know, to not really be the lion's value on the system, you know, we saw stablecoin swell to like a hundred billion, and we saw it be this, you know, very dominating presence for where Ethereum was gonna fork to next, you know, Ethereum is very fork, you know, by nature, luckily Bitcoin isn't, but I still have, you know, some, some ha-hesitations about introducing, US dollar, non-native assets into Bitcoin. Now of course, Bitcoin will never use dollars natively, you know, you'll always have to go to- Satoshi, it's the atomic unit of Bitcoin, but, you know, anytime you go up against such a, a, a huge system like the dollar and you introduce, you know, this, this non-native asset, interoperability, it be-- it brings up these questions of liquidity needs, and I believe stake will always flow from those with shorter time liquidity needs to those with, you know, longer time, you know, they don't have a lot of liquidity needs, right? It, it's gonna- Naturally flow that way no matter how distributed it is at the beginning. If all the hodlers have, you know, to sell their Bitcoin first, it's gonna flow to whoever who has, you know, less liquidity needs in the short term. And there's no one that has less liquidity needs in the short term than the US dollar system. I mean, they can create money, at will to sort of the de facto shareholders of, of the Fed. So I worry about introducing that into the Bitcoin system. I think that's definitely an attack vector, and I, and I would see Flowing to, you know, the entities that, that surround the, you know, whether it's the digital money printer or, or the regular one. So that definitely does worry me. But then again, I understand why people wanna use dollars, I do. but I, I, you know, I, I like to, I like to think that, you know, we know that there's a, a much bigger mission here, and Bitcoin, you know, has a huge role to play in the dollar's, you know, upcoming future, but I think in the rest And so I think to break some of the purity of it and introduce petrodollars to it, it just, to me, it, it seems very anti-bitcoin." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:41", "start": 1301.22, "text": "So I'm sort of agreeing and disagreeing in certain ways. I, I can, I think- I certainly see there's some risk there, but I think there are also a lot of people who it's gonna be hard to just tell them, \"Go Bitcoin only.\" so now I will, you know, I use Bitcoin only, I-- in terms of like how many stable-- I have like a test amount of USDT on this, on my Blockstream Jade, right? As an example, I have like ten dollars or fifteen dollars worth of USDT or whatever just to play around. But thinking of somebody who's in a country where you don't have- US dollar access, you don't have US bank account access, and your fiat is just continually devaluing. It's probably a difficult thing for us to just say, \"Hey, just go Bitcoin only.\" Like, if you're kind of, you know, and I think the other aspect of it is stable coins might help those people who are in Bitcoin because you might need to be able to sell, and those OTC traders, a lot if you talk to them, and you want physical cash, oftentimes what they want, they want, you know, today, at least here in the UAE, from Some of them want either the ERC20 version of Tether or the TRC, the Tron version of Tether. That's what they want. Now, some of them are willing to still deal with directly with Bitcoin, but some of them are just like, \"No, we only do, you know, Tether, and not even any Tether, ERC20 Tether or TRC20 Tether.\" So then the question is, how do you live in the world today without having that, you know, because unless you can afford to pay everything with Bitcoin directly or you have enough people What's the, what's the use if the person you're selling to, he needs to use a stablecoin because he's going on some exchange somewhere? You know, I, I can sort of- Yeah." }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "23:25", "start": 1405.11, "text": "Totally. Yeah. I mean, it, it's difficult 'cause I mean, I, I don't, I don't think it's an, it's appropriate financial advice to tell someone to, you know, one hundred percent use Bitcoin right now. we're not quite at that place where, I mean, we're pretty damn close. it's definitely the easiest it's Transactions, there's, there's tools there. A lot of them do skirt around and end up going into dollar, for sure. But, I mean, I think it really depends on your, you know, your situation. But I, but I would push back on this idea of, you know, people that don't have access to the US dollar. It's like, well, the US dollar is a, is a very mediocre thing, that is attempting to, you know, dollarize and globalize the world. so are we building freedom technology? Are we helping empower people? Ultimately, to get out from underneath, you know, these huge banking regimes and the, these, you know, these imperialistic, you know, coalitions, so You know, it's, it's, it's tough. I, I, I definitely understand the use case, and I use dollars, but I try to minimize it as much as possible, truly. And I, you know, I save in Bitcoin. But, yeah, I mean, I, I think it's, it's, it's a bit, it's a bit much to ask of the world to drop, a lot of these, these, these habits and, and tools. I mean, the dollar is a, is a, is a fine technological tool, And so we're gonna have to be dealing with a lot of, you know, a lot of monetary inflation eventually, you know, when we increase units because of the price inflation that we're going through. So I don't think the dollar is really a safe thing to try to build out new rails or establish either in regards to, from a freedom technology standpoint. but in terms of a day-to-day like microeconomic standpoint, like, yes, it totally makes sense to, you know, keep your daily spending in, in dollars if you're in an area that, that accepts it. You The liquidity pairs that have liquidity, in your day to day, and so, you know, you're pointing out a couple of those, the TRON token and the, the, you know, Ethereum, Tether. But again, it's like you're touching TRON, you're touching Ethereum. There's money going to these people, there's money going to the issuers, and there's a very special privilege being given to this stablecoin issuer. So it's tough to ask an individual to, you know, take the plunge and, and Long, and Bitcoin, you know, really starts to get a lot of adoption, you know, hopefully those, those granular points will, will diminish enough where we really can, move away from the dollar, but it's gonna, it's not gonna be that fast. I mean, we all want hyperbitcoinization now, in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways that would be really ugly. You know, a lot of people would get left behind if Bitcoin went, you know, seven figures tomorrow. You know, how many people wouldn't be prepared? Would" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "26:29", "start": 1588.67, "text": "And percentage of their wealth in Bitcoin, you know, we're already getting to that point, you know, who, what, you know, what average person has twenty-five thousand dollars or whatever we're up, we're up to today, you know, in, in extra capital to spend, you know, so people are gonna continue to get priced out. Yeah, it's, it, again, yeah, it's a lot to ask, but, yeah, yeah. If you set the stage." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:48", "start": 1607.62, "text": "Yeah, and I think one other aspect of it is the method of using it, right" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:59", "start": 1618.61, "text": "Right? I view it, I-- 'cause I view LBTC, it's more like, it, it's a, it's custodial, yes, because the federation controls it, but it's not an altcoin because LBTC is pegged directly with Bitcoin. So it's kind of like, it's, it's in a bit of a special category, whereas, yes, with Tron and Ethereum Tethers, you are using the altcoin as the gas or the fee asset when you transact with those. So I guess maybe you could, you could maybe make a distinction there. And For stablecoin. So for example, I, you know, I, I did an episode a little while recently with Yuraish Bednar. Yuraish Bednar, he's from, like the Czech Republic, and he's, you know, fully in the kind of libertarian cypherpunk angle, and his view was that he didn't want to use those stablecoins, similarly to you, because the underlying holder is holding government bag, debt bags. The un- you're funding the government, right? Right. By holding some of these tokens, you are in a sense funding the US Because you're helping them dump their ba-- their debt bags. And so, you know, for a libertarian or a person who's anti-the state or at least wants the state smaller, it kind of makes you a bit, okay, yeah, I need to think about that, right? But then there are alternatives. So as an example, there is this notion of synthetic, right? Like, like crypto euro dollars. So I think historically the idea was people would use BitMEX and they would go one X short, and this used to be a thing that traders would do when they wanted to be neutral. The collider with a K, and I know LN Markets has this product, and, of course, Bitcoin Beach Wallet or from Galloy has a feature called Stable Sats. And so these products are not holding government debt bags, they are instead using a synthetic position with a Bitcoin or a crypto exchange to replicate the US dollar value. And so maybe there's something there that if you can use one of these products, you, you put Lightning in, and yes, it's custodial, so of course there's a- Trade off, listeners beware, there is a custodial trade off here. There's always the trade off for, for anything, always, of course. Yeah, but so let's say people could deposit in with Lightning, flip it into the synthetic USD or synthetic euro, and then at the point they need to spend, okay, de-po- withdraw over Lightning and spend over Lightning, and so Lightning can maybe become a bit of the glue there for people to- Absolutely." }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "29:22", "start": 1762.37, "text": "Yeah. I mean, and also, you know, we're seeing some interesting developments with, more of the federated model with like Mint, and Cashu, which are sort of e-cash protocols, where they're, you know, they're interoperable with Lightning, but then within the federation themselves, you can create, you know, kind of synthetic assets like that. Yeah, I mean, you know, people, you know, there's, there's no shortage of good ideas, and there's a lot of cool people building a lot of really cool stuff. I'm, I'm not incredibly familiar with the, that specific, you know, stable Sats, but kosher, if you will, like, not touching government debt. But yeah, I mean, of course, you know, there's always gonna be, you know, some trade-offs there when you're trying to create a market like that, and liquidity is such a big part of it, and the dollar is one of the things that it is because it's so liquid, you know, huge amounts, huge amounts of, of dollar movement. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think people should experiment with that stuff, and I think that will be a big" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "30:29", "start": 1829.13, "text": "when we have these federated, you know, kind of chameleon mint styles that, you know, are, are sort of this bridge, this, this nice, blind, pretty anonymous bridge to, you know, maybe more legacy, you know, traditional style of, of a payment network, you know, which probably institutional lightning will be, we'll be able to see, you know, the cypherpunks be able to come in and, you know, use these protocols to sort of, you know, keep their balance hidden but still be able to interact with, you know, the Stuff like with, with Jack Maillard just announced, I believe yesterday, was like a dollar API for the Strike Network that has some sort of market maker where, you know, the dollars aren't using stable coins, he was very specifically said not using stable coins, but there's a market maker, within, you know, their API that, you know, allows them to, to interoperate, you know, use dollars and, and, and Lightning satoshis, interoperably, which is really, really interesting. So, but yeah, I mean, I'm not unit of account when thinking about my Bitcoin, is always in Bitcoin, but of course, price drives everything. You know, I mean, even just the excitement of the last few days and whatever, you know, you're seeing, you know, things definitely happen when numbers go up, and I think that's a big thing that we need to, you know, really consider when dealing with how we wanna, you know, really, you know, build Bitcoin here, understanding the dollar system is right there. You know, it's just a huge part of, of, of Moving" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "31:59", "start": 1919.05, "text": "forward. So, back to the show in a moment. Unchained Capital are making it easy for you to use multi-signature and remove single points of failure in your Bitcoin security setup. Unchained Capital multi-signature is secure, transparent, easy to use and sovereign. 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So let's talk a little bit about the risks then in if people were to build out into a stablecoin direction that leaves potentially, does Bitcoin face more risks there? If, let's say, as an example, let's say Taro becomes very popular, lots of people start using Tether on Taro as an example, just for the sake of example, yeah. What kind of risks do you foresee? Is it mainly a regulatory sort of attack or is it more like, okay, as an example? Let's say the Taro end points are the ones where the regulator or the government will try to go after them because they are the ones doing that, that final exchange between Tether and Taro. Bitcoin as an example. Right, yeah," }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "35:28", "start": 2127.91, "text": "it does bring up some, you know, potential for regulatory capture, although I've been thinking a lot about this and, you know, I don't think the government needs any more reason to go after Bitcoin than, than it does, you know, Bitcoin taking away this lef- You know, it's, we certainly don't need to bait them on to do anything else. But yeah, I mean, I, I do see there potentially being, you know, a money transmitter law, you know, some sort of regulation there where if nodes Asset, Merkle tree, it's native on chain. I think a lot of people look at it as sort of a lightning protocol because of what it will do with lightning and having US dollars in lightning channels, but it is, it is a BIP, and, and the actual storage of the, of the Merkle tree is on the, the main chain. So there is some potential there for, for, you know, advanced regulatory capture, or some sort of, you know, notice requirement. But I think, you know, I've been thinking a Data, right? So Taro is, is witness data just like ordinals, and it's, a lot of people have brought up this legal debate when talking about ordinals, and it's a big fear that, you know, oh, this will exacerbate someone trying to, you know, the government, you know, coming at you 'cause there's illegal activity on, on your node or whatever. And I think the greatest kind of reaction and answer to that is like, the government needs no more reason to go after this, than, than it already has. So I think, I think Of the regulatory capture, now that I've kind of seen a use case that has used the witness data, in a similar but very different way and, and thinking about how the government would react to it. So I don't think the, the, there's really regulatory capture, I think there's a little bit there, but again, I worry about bringing in, you know, this hugely, you know, this very liquid, you know, fiat system, this, this leviathan into the Bitcoin system, you know, I feel like it is something we should be, just be very However, it, it, it is developed, and I do think, you know, I understand why people are very bullish on it, and I understand why people see it being a, you know, a huge multi-trillion dollar industry, which in many ways I do agree. I think the payment channel model in Lightning is, is, is the shared UTXO, the shared UTXO model is, is just, you know, technologically more efficient than, you know, our card processing that we use now. it is a huge industry and it could bring great, like, liquidity An interest to Bitcoin, the network, but I, I do have a little bit of hesitation of what it will do to the asset and the holders of the asset and going up against, you know, this entity that needs, no short-term liquidity. 'cause I don't wanna see Bitcoin dollarized or captured in any way, and I think it's, has a much smaller attack surface than an Ethereum, but there are some attack surfaces there through mining and through some of these other things that can be subsidized, like, you know, hey, let's pervert away good custodial Giving you USDC yield, you know, easy. And so I, you know, anytime that we cozy up with the dollar system, I think Bitcoiners should just be very cautious, because it doesn't have our best interest in heart, and I don't think we should have its best interest in heart either. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:42", "start": 2321.62, "text": "in the Ethereum case, we saw Tether and Circle, the creators of, you know, USDT and USDC, both come out in favor of the merge. Yes. And so I guess in that case, it was uncontroversial. But let's say there was a fight about it, let's say there was some controversial thing, do you believe that shows an example of where, you know, capture is-- I think that's probably an example where capture is possible," }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "39:08", "start": 2347.94, "text": "right? Yeah, totally. And I think that everything was copacetic because all the players that were in-- involved in the merge, were all totally okay with, you know, how the power would shift away from miners, from ETH miners to, you know, ETH stakeholders. and I think there was no- Big, you know, hoopla there because everyone was, was in alignment about, you know, sort of what the future of ETH would look like in, in a post-merge world. You know, Bitcoin doesn't have that, the consensus isn't tied to stake in any way in Bitcoin, which is one of the things we love about it. That's not necessarily as true in a proof-of-stake system that uses a lottery-based validator, you know, a system that is, you know, the more votes you have, the more lottery tickets you have and who gets to validate the on how much share you have. so we're seeing, you know, you know, these centralizing economic forces, and then we're seeing that compounded, and that, that stake isn't never gonna be caught up to, by any of the other smaller entities. And so when you're giving validation, you know, unawarded manner, I think, you know, proof of stake opens itself up for its consensus to be perverted by, centralizing forces, and I think we're seeing that with this over seven 80% OFAC compliant, validation. But yeah, I mean, nothing happened, because I think everyone was happy with who owned the stake and, what was going into the, you know, the next part of the Ethereum life cycle, if you will. I think everyone was, was very happy with it. so that's why we didn't see anything. But the miners never would have been able to slash or fork away and create, you know, a minority right system because of how great the, the stablecoin, you know, the hundred billion plus, You know, assets on, on, on the chain. if they tried to do anything, they would say, \"Okay, well, we're gonna blacklist all of the USDC, addresses on your dumb fork, and USDC ETH is gonna be the, the king made coin, right? Or fork.\" And that can't really happen in Bitcoin, thankfully. But, you know, they can buy up a lot of Bitcoin, they can buy up a lot of miners, and we can see them, you know, attempt to sort of chip away at This, this honey badger. but luckily, you know, this is why we like Bitcoin. this is why we like the Nakamoto consensus. This is why we like proof of work. it's an open competition every time. And so you can't really just get ahead and stay ahead, you have to distribute your wealth if you wanna, you know, you have to spend Bitcoin to, to, you know, you literally have to spend it. You can't just hold your ETH, gain yield, and then sell the yield. you need to literally spend the, the, you know, distribute the wealth that you have to utilize the system, and that has a sort of a self-regulating, mechanism within its consensus that it never coagulates in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:03", "start": 2522.98, "text": "that same way. So what would you see as the main capture vectors then? Like, so I could imagine a skeptic listener might be thinking, \"Well, hang on, Mark, I think Bitcoin is just so much harder to capture. So is it really such a problem if people build out stable coins? Because what's the vector, right? They could come to you and say, \"Well, what do you think the miners are gonna be the vector, or do you think it's like the regulators are gonna come after the lightning node operators in the US or what, or is it some kind of protocol" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "42:30", "start": 2550.28, "text": "thing?\" I think it's A huge part of it, I think we've seen sort of these business models of these big miners, and we've kind of seen what they were worth, or maybe what, what they were intending, where, you know, hash price is plummeting, you know, we should be seeing, you know, shutdowns of these, these very large mining operations, and instead we're seeing, you know, breaking all-time highs in hash rate, you know, there's something going on there that's, you know, it's not as economically, incentivized to be throwing Of exa hashes of, of hash, and yet here we are at three hundred ten exa hash. So I think there is some centralizing forces in mining. I think obviously, you know, from a privacy standpoint, I mean, I look at Bitcoin, it really as a transparency technology, but, you know, the more, you know, we, we let, especially with the Lightning Network, it costs money to probe the network. so by introducing, you know, this, this very easy, you know, liquid exchange of dollars to satoshis, it could potentially for lightning surveillance, I think we could see some regulatory pressure, but again, you know, Stephan, I'm obviously very bullish on Bitcoin. It's like, you know, I, I-- This is one of the things that I love about it. I think I'm very skeptical about Bitcoin only in the, you know, sort of as an act of love, and I'm sort of, you know, thinking about how things could go wrong, but, I mean, there's a reason why I am as invested in Bitcoin, you know, literally and, you know Everything, you know, is because I think it really does offer a counter, as this sort of unique database commodity thing, network monster to the dollar system and to a lot of the things that we've used before, and, yeah, it is very special. I do think it's dangerous to, to, you know, maybe continually preach and say that Bitcoin's already won, 'cause it certainly hasn't, but at the same time, I do think there is some sort of escape velocity that has happened, in Bitcoin. Bitcoin, that of course we're gonna have boom busts, we're gonna have down cycles, bear cycles, but I do think enough people are sort of invested in the game of Bitcoin, that will keep this thing going for a really long time. There's, you know, the network effects and, and the game theory of the economics of Bitcoin, on an issuance level and a consensus level really does, you know, create this very, you know, socially strong, you know, network of trust communication. And so yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm incredibly- Polish on Bitcoin's ability to resist the state, and that is why it's a very special thing. So, yeah, I, I don't know if that is a cop out, but I address a lot of the, the concerns, but I also think in so many ways, you know, Bitcoin is, is ultimately, I think, going to have to be used by, you know, governments and states around the world because I think it will be an inevitability economically, they'll have to have some exposure or they'll get left behind. So, I think we're definitely I think probably round two even of the dollar system versus Bitcoin, and we're gonna see this play out through the stablecoin sort of pawns, in, in this, in this game, but again, I do think Bitcoin, will succeed with its robustness versus the political, social nature of fiat. I do think Bitcoin will win ultimately, but the dollar certainly won't go down without a fight, and I think most likely will end up being this sort of strange leech on Bitcoin for certainly for our lifetimes." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:07", "start": 2766.77, "text": "Right. And I, I think the important point is just to remember, of course, you know, I, I, I would like to have a Bitcoinized sooner than later, of course. But a lot of people today have their value in the fiat system, and so then the question is, how do they get out of the fiat system and into Bitcoin? And to be clear, what we're talking about here is the number of dollars is the same, but the people who hold those dollars, it, like what we're talking about is the relative valuations cha-shifting, right? Because, you know, the same number of Bitcoin exist, the same number of dollars exist, but it's just those relative valuations have to shift. And so I think that's why- There's this tension because the Bitcoin economy still today needs that connection with the US dollar economy because there's all these people with dollars who want Bitcoin, and, you know, or there are people who have US dollars and we're trying to teach them why Bitcoin is better, you know, or at least put our message out there, but they still need a way to connect, and not everybody will be a-ready and willing to do everything peer-to-peer or earn, so Fundamentally, there's gonna be all these dollars in these US bank accounts all around the world that still have to find their way to Bitcoin, right? So I think that's, that means where the tension is, right?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "47:18", "start": 2838.21, "text": "Yeah, totally. And I mean, we saw a bunch of people rush into the dollar, you know, the, the Dixie, the, the DXY, the sort of relative strength, not relative strength, but comparative strength, sort of index against these other, national currencies. We saw the dollar, you know, cro-crush thirty-year highs 80s cranking up interest rates to, to plus ten percent, we saw a huge, a huge jump into the dollar, you know, colloquially kind of known as like the, you know, or sorry, the, the dollar milkshake theory. And we saw that kind of play out because we saw, you know, mass, mass amounts of inflation in fiat currencies all across the world from, you know, lockdowns and, you know, pandemic responses, from governments. And so we saw massive inflationary effects, and then we saw people running into the Because it was a better technological tool. So we saw all these people move into the dollar around the world. There was huge demands for stablecoins. We saw stablecoin issuances explode in the last three years, huge demand for dollars. And that, but that came out of sort of a failure from their current system pushing them into a better money. You know, this Gresham's law kind of, kind of thing. And so people are less likely to move out of the dollar system when there isn't a forcing agent pushing them in, you know, out of the dollar system. Semit into Bitcoin, and a lot of us have seen that, have felt it, have, you know, know that, you know, you can't just print x amount of trillions of dollars and not have inflation. We all kinda saw this happening, and prepared ourselves in some form. But still, then the day to day, sure, inflation's not great in, you know, the US or in Australia or, or in Europe, but, you know, people are still able generally to eat and pay their electricity bills, and, you know, I hate to laugh there, ' Okay, but that very easily could turn not okay really quickly with escalation of war, with escalation of, of energy and currency crisis and war. So that forcing function to push towards a Bitcoin standard, I think, will come out of kind of a necessity, unfortunately. So, yeah, right now there's a lot of privileged-- and I, I kind of hate that word, but, you know, the dollar is, is a, is a good tool, at the moment. but it has-- the, you know, the dollar has to deal with its own, with its own Issues shortly. It can't keep kicking this can down the road. We're smashing into the debt limit again. you know, the interest that we pay in our debt service every year is now past, you know, the amount that we pay just to service the debt, past what we pay to, to protect it with the military. Like our, our debt spending is now above our military spending, which is like, you think of one of those volcrum, you know, fulcrums of like when a, a currency has, has kind of-- Where's the tipping point, right? Yeah And you're actually spending more to uphold the currency than the, the guns that uphold the currency, you know? You're actually, you know, it's, you know, we're a zombie company. The US is a, is a bankrupt zombie company. You wouldn't invest in it, you can look at the numbers and know how many trillions of dollars we need to pay, and how many billions like every day we need to pay just to service the debt. So I think there will be a forcing function at some point, whether it's a worldwide recession, you know, that's, I, I'm not sure the first thing people are gonna wanna do is go buy Bitcoin if, you know, there's a recession, but I think probably the second thing they're gonna wanna do is, how do I prevent this from happening again and protect myself? so I think there's a lot of forces, a lot of things going on in macro and, in, in, you know, the regulatory regime, there's a lot of things that we'll see" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "51:00", "start": 3059.98, "text": "Out this year that we'll, we'll, we'll know a lot more about the future of the dollar, about the world economy, and Bitcoin's role in both of the, you know, to both of those, you know, I think by the end of the year, I think we'll, we'll have a pretty good idea. And then it's like happening and, you know, the, the cycle starts all over again. So, this is gonna be a very interesting one. you know, Bitcoin is matured. It's, it's, it's Yeah, it's gonna be fun, I'm excited. Yeah. and I hope it's, it's not too bad." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:33", "start": 3093.4, "text": "I'm also curious if you see any, let's say, okay, as an example, let's say the US government starts to really regulate hard, it goes, they, they try to ha-put the hammer down on stablecoin, US dollar stablecoin issuers and people working with that kind of thing. Do you see a chance that people could try to switch away to other currencies like the, the Swiss franc or the, the pound or the euro? Like, do you think people might try to shift volume into other stablecoins or other- Theo currencies, or do you think it's just kind of like overall it's just US dollar dom-dominated?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "52:09", "start": 3129.33, "text": "I mean, where there's an opportunity and an arbitrage situation, I think people will always take advantage of that. you know, we'll see, I think, interesting things with, you know, you know, people that are, are involved in Japan's banking system. You know, they always do very creative, interesting things. They're, I think, our biggest creditor, and, you know, so I think, you know, we might see some interesting things" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "52:35", "start": 3155.08, "text": "and, and it, you know, they, you know, have negative inflation or, sorry, negative interest rates at the moment, I believe they're even below zero. So a lot of creative things going on there. We could see some people move things, you know, m-m-move some, some elements of their wealth around. but really, yeah, what we are seeing, I think, generally on the, on the global scale, is sort of a currency war. And so we are seeing these people kind of coming against the US dollar coalition. we're seeing," }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "53:04", "start": 3184.24, "text": "Between China and Russia, it's like, what does that even mean? I mean, thinking about that happening, you know, e-- you know, ten years ago, twenty years ago, that would never, never happen. Obviously, the euro's very young as well. But that's a really creative, strange, interesting thing to see from, you know, two of the issuers of two of the other most important currencies in the world, in Russia and China, using the euro as a petrol settlement. So I think we will see, you know, a lot of creative anti-dollar activity, Economy, and I think we are kind of generally seeing that, you know, it's, it's definitely a cold war, but it's a cold currency war. I don't really personally see a, a significant chunk being taken out of the dollar's chokehold outside of, of a, of a true alternative of a system, but I could be wrong. I mean, the dollar is generally historically kind of right at that point where world reserve currencies start to go, and arguably we probably should have lost economic hegemony, you know, in two thousand and eight, you know The Great Financial Crisis. And instead we just kind of pretended it didn't happen, printed a bunch of money, bailed everybody out, didn't put anyone in jail, and then we've only blown out the debt, you know, ever since. So, yeah, I, I, I, I definitely see people, you know, the dollar For the first time in a very long time, you know, is showing signs of weakness, is seeing high inflation. People are noticing this runaway debt. We're having political issue, you know, within our own country of, you know, which direction we wanna kinda go? Do we wanna print a lot of money? Do we not? It does look weak, so people will try to take advantage of it. But I think from like a user standpoint, there's just so much demand for dollars. Yeah. I don't really see that getting, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:48", "start": 3288.04, "text": "that going away lately. Right Stablecoins now that they're not going to let them go so easily, especially the US dollar stablecoins. So I guess, I guess the moral of the story, right? We've been speaking about the potential risks of stablecoins on Bitcoin, and so while there are some risks, I guess the moral of the story is Bitcoin is unlikely to get captured by them, though there is a risk, and so we're just going to carry on over the next, I mean, who knows how long this takes? It might be ten years, might be twenty years for hyperbitcoinization that That people will use these stablecoins or other means, things like stable sats and so on, and synthetic crypto dollars, let's say, to help transition over into a Bitcoin economy. So I guess is that the kind of the overall summary, is that how you're seeing it, or how would you sum it up?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "55:40", "start": 3339.58, "text": "Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, one level back, I think not even to the stablecoin level, but just dollars and Bitcoin, I think are, are gonna play, you know, the future of the dollar is really on whether or not we can service our debt or not, and the way that we do that is by, you know, sort of i-ideally targeting Bitcoin as sort of this, you know, inflation metric, you know, sort of replace CPI with Bitcoin and, you know, using the inelasticity of, of Bitcoin as a commodity to Be able to blow out the dollar while still having, you know, some unit that you have on your books. You print tons and tons of dollars, but you hold a lot of Bitcoin, which I think is what a lot of these big banks will do when BN-- when BNY Mellon comes out with a stablecoin or, or maybe that is what Circle with USDC is, or when Bank of America, JPMorgan, you know, they release, you know, these coins, they're, they're gonna be a big part in servicing the debt of the dollar and, and, and getting onboarding You know, deal with the inflationary effects of, of, of monetary inflation. So that, that's already absolutely happening. And then you actually look at the, the, you know, well, how will that actually work? And I think the biggest way that it will work will be exchanges and banks that offer Bitcoin, you know, purchasing custodial services and dollar services, you know, issuing large amounts of stable coins and using those stable coins to service Bitcoin users, so they'll be able to hold Bitcoin on the books, buy Bitcoin Coin with stable coins, and we'll see it, I think, very much so naturally sort of evolve. I think we'll see, you know, the majority of exchanges and, you know, banks, you know, heavily dealing with dollars and heavily dealing with Bitcoin. So yeah, I'm less worried about the capture, more interested in how the economics of the dollar play out and how quickly they, they move to printing and move away from this higher rate, rising rates environment, and I think the way that they do that, yeah, is by onboarding tons Tons of users printing a bunch of stable coins and having these private banks buy up all of these T-bills, from the Fed. That's really, I honestly don't really see any other way out for the dollar. they're not gonna peg it back to gold, I don't think the petro, dollar monopoly, is, is politically popular anymore. We can't just willy-nilly be, you know, invading people. There's at least, you know, public concern against that. So I really see it as, you know, stablecoins being the tool that helps preserve the dollar, by buying up T-bills and getting more dollar users. so that's kind of how I see it, yeah, playing out. And I think ultimately it'll be incredibly good for Bitcoin and less good for the dollar, as it goes on. That, that will definitely, trend that way. But for now, I think it's in the dollar's best interest, to create as many dollar derivatives as possible and try to get as many dollar derivative users as possible" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "58:35", "start": 3514.85, "text": "Expansion of the Eurodollar system, it's the crypto Eurodollar. I, I think that's, that's the system that they, in their interests, would probably prefer, right? Despite the AML KYC sanctions and all that, they would still probably prefer that, so let's see where it all shakes out. let's chat a little bit about the print edition of the Bitcoin Magazine. So tell us a little bit about, what you guys are doing there and, yeah, just tell us a little bit about that." }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "58:59", "start": 3539.35, "text": "Yeah, totally, man. I" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "59:05", "start": 3544.83, "text": "Writing for them before that, and in the Bitcoin space for years before that. But, yeah, it's been amazing to work on this print product. It's super fun. It's, we're definitely, you know, freedom technology, you know, we're looking at in Bitcoin adjacent stories. We have tons, you know, the online, is, is, has a legendary contributor network, yourself included, a lot of am- amazing folks dropping tons of amazing stuff on there. You know, we have three hundred plus contributors. And then so the print product is really Almost like a quarterly, like coffee-- it's a pretty thick mag with tons of writers, from all across the board, different view, you know, viewpoints. I think at this point, one of our main missions is just sort of understanding that what it means to be a bitcoiner, has changed radically and it will continue to change radically, and if we really, you know, are doing our jobs as a Bitcoin, you know, sort of freedom of speech platform, we need to be showcasing all of that. So we always do a theme cover, cover story, One was the broke issue, we had SBF on the cover, all kind of dolled up as a, as a Bahamas pig, with a fake Forbes cover, which was, which was a lot of fun. But yeah, it's a, it's a great team, Germono, Mike Germono is our publisher, the great Pete Rizzo is our editor in chief, and then it's me and Peter Chiuagas, the, the, the two editors in the print product, Joe Rogers is our GM, Super Savage, and then, Yeah, it's super fun. It's, it's an absolute pleasure to work on it. I get to read all my favorite writers, a couple months before everybody else, and, it's, it's, it's, it's an absolute honor. And, yeah, I hope, I hope we're doing the, we're doing the Bitcoin community, you know, treating them as well as they've treated us. so yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's at Barnes and Noble, you can find it online Got a got a great cover, it's gonna be a lot of fun, it's gonna be very heavy," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:01:08", "start": 3668.29, "text": "it's gonna be great. Fantastic. Well, I think that's pretty much all we've got time for, so, Mark, where can people find you online?" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "01:01:14", "start": 3674.44, "text": "Yeah, totally. obviously all my writing is at, bitcoinmagazine dot com. I got a book coming out in a few months called The Bitcoin Dollar, talks about a lot of the stuff we talked about today, you'll be able to find that at bitcoin magazine as well. You can find" }, { "speaker": "mark_goodwin_is_the_editorial_director_for_print_at_bitcoin_magazine_he", "time": "01:01:34", "start": 3694.93, "text": "The BTC Mag is the print magazine, Twitter handle. So, yeah, come follow, come read, come say, come say hi, submit a submission. Obviously, Stefan, you gotta write for us. you do amazing work on the dot com, so, we'd love to have you in the print. And, yeah, thanks so much for having me, an absolute pleasure. Again, I, I love your podcast, I think it does great job at doing culture macro and, you know, you really get into the weeds technologically, which is really nice. So" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:02:03", "start": 3723.3, "text": "Show notes are available at stephanlivera dot com. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the Citadel." } ] }