{ "episodeId": "SLP598", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "sahil": { "name": "Sahil", "role": "guest", "tag": "SAHIL" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:11", "start": 11.11, "text": "Hi everyone and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast. Today we're gonna be discussing Get on Zero with Sahil. Sahil, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Stefan. Great. So, listeners may know, you know, I did a couple episodes talking about this. I think I wrote an article for it on, Bitcoin Magazine a little while back. But, I know this is a topic near and dear to your heart also, so, tell us a little bit about how and why you went down this get on zero rabbit hole." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "00:41", "start": 40.56, "text": "Yeah, for sure. So, I guess first of all, I'm, I'm Sahil, I'm a designer at Foundry, mining company, but yeah, I've, I've been on zero, you could call it, so on zero fiat, on zero dollars for The last two tax years actually, so I have a lot of experience with pretty typical questions people might have, like why you may even want to do this. I'm forgetting how it started, but I think it was, a Twitter Spaces with a bunch of people and, there was a lot of chatter on Twitter about like, going on zero dollars and how do you do that, and this small community started growing and growing and, started chatting with each other, you know, why would you want to do this? How do you do it? Tactics, strategies. And the more I thought about it, I was just like, \"Yeah, why not minimize the amount of toilet paper money you hold to the smallest amount of time possible? \" And I'm sure there's a lot more, a lot more threads to pull on there, but, I'll pause" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "01:35", "start": 95.2, "text": "there. Great, okay, so- As I understand, the, you know, the part of this came almost like a, almost like a response to like a typical line some people were saying to the investment advisor kind of people, and to financial advice and planning people, where the kind of idea was get off zero in terms of getting at least some Bitcoin. And then I think this was started as almost like a flipping of that on its head, of saying, \"Hey, why would you even hold any fiat whatsoever?\" Now, of course, the obvious objections from- Most people will be, \"Hang on, I've still got fiat-denominated obligations, whether that's their rent, their mortgage, their electricity bill, their food, these kinds of things. So I guess we should start there. So what would your answer be there, or how would you answer somebody who says to you, \"Look, Sahil, I like the idea, obviously I'm bullish on Bitcoin, but I've still got these US dollar-denominated obligations.\"" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "02:33", "start": 153.29, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And I think that's, that is, you're so right, that's the first question that comes up. And maybe the way I would frame it is to like step back and think about what's the story we're trying to tell here, or like what is-- So, I, I, one of the articles I wrote maybe a couple years ago was like, I think I titled it something like \"Rethinking the Function of Fiat Currency.\" So thinking about it from that point of view first is like- when you understand the why, you can get through any how basically. So understanding the why, okay, if we wanna rethink the function of fiat currency, okay, today we think about it, okay, I need to have a, a checking account, as you said, I need to pay bills that are denominated in, in dollars. but what if I rethought the function as, what if fiat was instead a payment rail to move Bitcoin? Rather than an asset you need to hold. And the, there's, there's kind of a, a way to get to that logic, but basically that's kind of the rethinking, and that's like the summary of, of the article is just like What if we thought of dollars as a payment rail? So you do need to pay those bills, I agree. So eventually they may, they may end up as dollars. but they're not an asset you need to hold. You almost think of like strike, something like a strike where you go from fiat to Bitcoin. It's almost like a reverse strike. So the idea is you're just" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:46", "start": 226.02, "text": "doing that last-second conversion and then pay with that. That's the whole idea." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "03:49", "start": 229.23, "text": "Bingo. A-and there's an interesting kind of story there, or like thinking, thinking the story of like if you Somewhere in Europe, you're gonna convert some currency to, to euros, maybe, and maybe just enough for the month, let's say you're going for the month or something, you'll have just enough for the month. But if you're going to a, maybe a Venezuela or something with a, horribly devalued currency, you're gonna convert maybe only for the week or for the day or like maybe even less, right? So if you take that to its logical extreme, you're almost playing a hot potato with this weak currency. and if, if you take that There was a way you could convert it at the last millisecond rather than at the last week or day, and I think that's the mental model that once that clicks, then we can of course talk about the how, but the story is like, you gotta get that first, a-and then we can talk about the how for sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "04:43", "start": 283.06, "text": "Yeah. All right. Now the other, I think the other thing that probably one of my principal objections to the idea is that, Some of the online discussion, and I'm sure you see this as well, in terms of online social media discussion, sometimes it becomes a bit of a, \"Who can be the most hardcore?\" And like people are trying to signal about, \"Yeah, see, I'm more hardcore than you. You gotta be like a true Bitcoin carnivore who is all in Bitcoin and uses multisig and no KYC and da da da da da, and, and you know, every other purity test you can think of.\" And it sort of become-- Like that's at least how I saw some of that discussion. And Some of the discussion, it seems like online, you sort of see, you know, a guy who's a hundred percent in Bitcoin is attacking a guy who's on-only, quote unquote, only ninety-nine percent allocated to Bitcoin, and it's just kind of like the hundred percent allocated guy is arguing with the ninety-nine percent allocated guy, and it's like, wait a minute, there's this whole ocean of people who have zero Bitcoin or a very small allocation to Bitcoin. You know, is that really the, the doc-is that really, the place to move the needle on the ninety-nine percent" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "05:53", "start": 352.51, "text": "I, I strongly agree. I couldn't agree more. Like it's, I, I've always thought this since day one, like this shouldn't be a purity test. Like, if you're any, anything above, like, frankly, twenty percent, fifty percent, we're all gonna win together anyway. So, I do agree with the, and, and there's almost this idea of like getting on zero over time where you don't have to-- It's, it really, you're right, it's not a purity test where it's like, you're either on zero or you're Okay, as that grows, and there's almost this, I'm a designer, so I think about user journeys, right? You, you, you're starting with a, like when you download a Bitcoin wallet, what's your user journey through that? But you could almost think about Bitcoin's user journey in your portfolio, right? In some way. So it starts off with, as you were talking about, get off zero. It's like, okay, you have zero Bitcoin, let's get off zero. Cool. Now you're at one percent. You're like, \"Oh, it's just a hedge.\" Then you go two percent, five percent. It becomes an investment to balance out the rest of your portfolio. And if obviously the number goes up, it becomes ten percent, twenty percent, and then you're like You read like a Pierre Ossard article or something, you're like, \"Okay, Bitcoin is savings. Okay, cool, so now it's 30%, 40%.\" Then you're just like, \"Bitcoin is cash. If I'm already at 80%...\" Why not just, if Bitcoin is the best form of money, it is cash, why not just make it a hundred percent? And then of course, there's natural questions which I'm sure we'll get to, like volatility, attacks, blah, blah, blah, but at least from a mental model point of view If Bitcoin's better money, and let's say you've been through a cycle or something, or you get on zero over time, yeah, why not just go hundred percent? If you're already at eighty percent, just go hundred percent." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:36", "start": 456.27, "text": "Right. Okay. And so the other big question people will have is around the volatility, I'm sure you get this question a million times, but It, let me frame it this way, is get on zero only applicable for people with a large enough cash balance or savings balance in Bitcoin, right? Because if you are, let's say, so close to your subsistence level, you just, you know, you just don't have enough buffer there, right? So how, how are you thinking about this question of the volatility and how much of a cushion one needs before it realistically makes sense to do, to get on zero?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "08:12", "start": 492.11, "text": "Yeah, this is such an important question, and honestly my thoughts have kind of evolved over time on this. So, I think my-- I have two kind of responses. I think my first response would be Something along the lines of basically, yes, over time, right? So, you're totally correct. I think building up a balance of savings, you need to be able to do that to weather volatility, right? So, if you've been through a cycle and you've built up enough savings, at that point it's like, yeah, you should-- I don't see any reason, other than technical reasons of like the tooling, other than the tooling There's no reason to just get on zero. but I, I do agree with you, like, you know, if you, let's say you, you get on zero at the top, like I did, and let's say you didn't have enough savings, or top of last cycle rather. So I, when I got on zero was, I think, November 22nd. It was like literally top, top. So close to sixty-nine" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:02", "start": 541.53, "text": "thousand back then. Yeah. Something" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "09:03", "start": 542.75, "text": "like that, yeah. It was something like that. And I, I can imagine if you didn enough savings, and then let's say, your income was impacted in some way, that can be extremely scary. So I'm not encouraging people to just, immediately Although maybe you could, but, but I'm not necessarily recommending that, not financial advice obviously. But that's maybe one line of thinking, and actually I said there was two, but maybe a third thought. a second thought, is something I think Pierre said, is that If you have low savings and you're kind of paycheck to paycheck anyway, it's almost like you need something to push you out of that, and Bitcoin might be that thing to push you out of that. So if you're already paycheck to paycheck and you need to focus on your income and then focus on, you know, that punch up from Bitcoin. And maybe the last thing before I pause, this is a more newer emerging thought. I've been trying to separate the idea of getting on zero, so that means zero fiat, from the idea of a hundred percent Bitcoin. I think those are two very different things, and I think some people conflate the two and that maybe makes it less accessible for people. So the idea I've been playing with theoretically, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:09", "start": 609.06, "text": "means don't have US dot, in that example, it would be like don't have US dollars, but you theoretically could still own, let's say you own the family home, so it's physical property, or maybe you have, let's say you, you have equity in, Right? Because maybe you're working at a Bitcoin company and you get equity or something like that. So it's not saying that you must have zero other assets, but you're just saying don't have fiat cash, as in US dollar cash or whatever other country you're in." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "10:38", "start": 638.15, "text": "Bingo. It's, I think the, this new framing I'm, I'm really getting attached to is like, it, you're, you're dumping the one asset, like the, the one and only asset that is explicitly designed by nature to go down. It's like number go down technology. It's designed explicitly to do that. Nothing else is designed to do that. So you're, you're explicitly getting rid of that. And now we can talk about, okay, maybe you have a balance of other stuff. I've even played with this idea of, what if there was an app that automatically rebalanced, almost like a Wealthfront or Betterment, people may have heard of these robo advisors, it was a, a, a balanced basket of assets that became your money. It's almost like, I don't support shitcoins at all, but like, almost you have your own Stefan coin, which is a basket of Gold, Bitcoin, S&P 500, and that kind of thing, and automatically rebalances. And it's almost like, it's almost like if you remember Libra, DM, that they were focusing on making a currency that was a basket of assets. so that's another idea I'm just playing with is get, that's still getting on zero, you're not holding dollars or fiat, but you're holding a basket of goods." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:44", "start": 704.31, "text": "I see, yeah. I think the other component, like before we move off the volatility point, I think it's important to talk about this also, because it's not just in what you own, but as an example, let's say people like you and I who, let's say, professionally work in Bitcoin, right? That can also be another risk, right? So let's say you are all in Bitcoin or close to, and it's close to the cycle top, and you also lose your job, right? Because the industry moves through these, you know, bull and bear cycles. So that can also kind of, be, confronting for people who don't have a decent savings balance, at least a, a Bitcoin, buffer, let's say." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "12:27", "start": 747.34, "text": "100%. I, I think you're so right. It's like, yeah, if you're all in, like, like some of us, if you-- like you said, your That's a calcu- that's a calculation, that's a speculation we're making. when I'm, when I say I'm a hundred percent Bitcoin or in many cases over a hundred percent Bitcoin, including your career, including leverage or whatever, that's a speculation we're making. But I think that's different than getting on zero. I think someone like my dad who- Deeply understands get on zero. He understands the value of holding zero dollars or zero rupees. He can still have equity, he can still have gold, he can still have Bitcoin, it's just being explicit about not having the one thing designed to go down." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:07", "start": 787.1, "text": "I see. But, but I think, yeah, for a lot of people, there's gonna be a lot of practicality concerns, there's gonna be a lot of questions around what kind of tooling do you need. So we're gonna get into this now, obviously, but," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:21", "start": 800.75, "text": "As an example, would you say there are certain tools that are required to be able to get on zero in practice? Because if you, if you live, let's say you live-- now, my listeners, probably just under fifty percent of my listeners are in the US, so obviously there's a pretty strong accessibility of various tools in the US, but let's say you're in another country that doesn't have the same level of tooling and services, what's the answer there? Would you say you need- certain level of tools to be able to do this." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "13:52", "start": 831.67, "text": "I think so, to be honest, and that's kind of unfortunate, but I think it's also-- it's almost like a, I don't know if call to arms is the right phrase, but it's basically trying to get people-- the whole point of this, this article series I wrote, and I think this whole movement Is to basically get entrepreneurs to start building tools, to see the importance of this, and to start building the solution. Then actually, we're seeing this a lot. I mean, since, since a lot of us started doing this a few years ago, the tooling has like radically improved. It started with, kind of janky tools stitching things together, and now you have tools like Fold, who, you can basically do this, assuming you're in the, in the right state, in the US, and all, all these, all this kind of thing. you Is it the most seamless? Maybe, maybe not, but we're on the right track, and I'm sure we'll, we'll talk more about the specifics. But the idea is to get like, okay, this is the why, and then we can start pushing entrepreneurs, or maybe even you become the entrepreneur. You're, you're so inspired by this, and you go out and build this new fintech app that can interface with the legacy system. The back-- you're backwards compatible to the legacy, ACH slow, less private system, but you're also compatible with the new system." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:06", "start": 906.27, "text": "I see, yeah. And so, yeah, part of this comes to, you know, different, there's different Bitcoin startups, as you said, Fold is out there, Strike is out there, so the idea is that you can sort of- The more these tools and financial products allow you to keep most of your balance in Bitcoin and then only at the last second convert and pay, you know, the fiat or the credit card or the debit card or whatever, that kind of component of it, then, you know, that is, yeah, that, that's the tooling that you need basically. But the challenge right now is maybe not everything's available in every country, in every state, and so on, depending what country you're in, you know, et cetera. It's very- Case by case, let's say. But let's start talking about some of the tool, the key tools. What would you say are the key tools required to achieve this sort of thing for somebody who's interested in it?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "15:58", "start": 957.58, "text": "For sure. I think there's, there's a few like main components that basically you're alluding to is, you need, and I, I wrote this in, in a article on TFC, but basically, you need a way to interface with the legacy system, right? Well, that's a natural question, like what you're asking is, how do I pay bills? Okay, you need a way to interface with the ACH network. So for people who are outside the US, it's basically just the way to- Do a bank transfer, yeah. Yeah, it's a bank, ex-exactly, it's a bank transfer, pay your credit card bill, pay your mortgage, pay your rent. You obviously need a way to do that. So the way I like to analogize it, I think of it as like my ACH node. So it's, your, your app, your bank needs to have an ACH node. So you might just use Wells Fargo or something like that, that's an option. Wells Fargo or Chase or Ally Bank, any of these nodes, that they're ACH nodes. but now the obvious question is if you're using an exchange like a, a Swan or a River or Coinbase You also need a way to convert, right, between dollars and Bitcoin. So that's critical. The problem today is if you use something like a River or Coinbase. There's a latency between the conversion, right? So I can convert from Bitcoin to dollars and dollars to Bitcoin, but there's like a two-day-- you're still living in this legacy world, right? So there's these problems of with latency, like, \"Oh, it takes a couple days to transfer from my bank to Wells Fargo to River and all this kind of stuff.\" That adds so much friction. You can do it, and that's what we did for a couple years, but it adds so much friction. Now you have to, oh, my bill's coming up, I need to predict how much I need to pay, I need to plan it a couple days before, it adds more friction. So that second piece there is instant conversions between the two. That I think is really important. That's gotcha. I would say like, and that's on the bank" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:51", "start": 1071.1, "text": "transfer side. and I know around the world there's different tooling. So as an example, in Australia, there's this thing called the NPP or OSCO, which is like instant payments. I know the Europe, Europe has, SEPA, faster payments. so there's kind of different. And in America, you guys have like, you know, Zelle and people do Cash App and Venmo So I guess there's different tools for that available around the world." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "18:13", "start": 1093.42, "text": "Exactly, and I could be wrong, but I think the US is pretty far behind in terms of transfer speeds, as far as I know, things like Sepa are pretty fast, or if not instant, I think. but still cold on that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:24", "start": 1104.27, "text": "so so yeah, so then I guess we got the bank transfer part of it. Yeah. Maybe if you, if a tool is available, something that you, you know, if you got a card, like a fiat card that auto converts the Bitcoin balance, that's also very useful tool. Yeah, so you" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "18:36", "start": 1115.86, "text": "could do that. Really quick before we get there, I think o-on the conversion piece, I think one piece that is important and kind of overlooked Is, having zero fees. I say zero fees in quotes because, and this is just my personal opinion, I think a spread makes sense. You know, exchanges have to monetize somehow. Having a spread built in, I think, is reasonable. But I think the key piece of having zero fees is the psychological friction. You wanna get rid of the friction of saying, \"Oh, do I wanna convert between weak money and strong money? Oh, it's gonna cost me this many fees. Okay, forget it, let's not do that.\" So my, my recommended way of building a product around that is saying zero fee buy and sell, so reduce any friction, but then charge me a subscription fee, charge me a hundred bucks a month or something. So now our incentives are aligned, I'm not penalized for converting between weak and strong. So that's, I think, a third piece, or maybe it's part of the second piece of the conversion." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:32", "start": 1171.88, "text": "Yeah. And I guess you gotta-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:37", "start": 1176.64, "text": "Back to the show in a moment. This show brought to you by CoinKite dot com, the creators of the best Bitcoin hardware security devices, such as the Coldcard Mark IV and the new Coldcard Q. Now, we use Bitcoin hardware security devices to keep our keys offline, our private keys offline. Now, the way these work is you can do that setup Up, write down your twelve or twenty-four words on the, the seed word cards and keep that secure. Now you can use this device to interact with the Bitcoin network using software such as Sparrow Wallet, Electrum, or Specter Desktop or Nunchuk as a few examples. Now you have a range of security features that you can use with these devices such as passphrases, you can use seed XOR, or my favorite is multi-signature. Now if you're starting in a basic way, just start with the device and And the USB-C cable, plug it directly to the computer and use it that way, and then later improve your setup. But I believe these devices are great at helping secure your coins, especially as you start to migrate up into multi-signature security. But don't be disheartened or don't be, scared away, they are accessible, and I think you actually do learn about Bitcoin in the process. So to get yours, go to coinkite dot com, use code livera to get a discount on your cold card. I really bought in on, you know, let's say you're However you believe that means, and you believe Bitcoin is gonna go up and fiat is going down, generally speaking, you wanna maximize your exposure, right? Like you wanna see it like, as soon as I earn money, even if I earn in fiat, I wanna take it into Bitcoin and just huddle it in Bitcoin, and only at the last second do I flip it out. And you kind of maybe in your mind, you make a simplifying assumption of, look, on average Bitcoin is going up over time, therefore I just wanna, as soon as I can earn that fiat, flip it into Bitcoin. And okay, even if I end up paying some fees on the back end to pay, you know, to, to make, to pay my bills and so on, it was quote unquote worth it because of my simplifying assumption, even though, look, on some months you'll be down and other months you'll be up. But the, I guess the speculation here is that if you're a hardcore Bitcoiner and you believe in the future of Bitcoin, it's on, on" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "21:49", "start": 1308.88, "text": "One hundred percent, and it's the same reason why everyone loves DCA, right? We're, we, we're, part of the assumption is you're buying low, you're buying high, you're buying low, you're buying high. Same here. You're buying, sometimes you're buying low and selling high, sometimes you're buying high and selling low. It all evens out basically, or it doesn't even out, it evens out to the upside, you know, assuming you believe Bitcoin's gonna go up. Yeah, like you" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:09", "start": 1328.75, "text": "anticipate to benefit from that monetarily" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "22:18", "start": 1338.36, "text": "Two of the pillars, I think the third one is, as you said, some sort of interface like a, if you're in the US, a credit card, debit card kind of thing. So, I mean, for example, I just use a regular Capital One credit card, you can do that, and then pay off the bill at the end of the month using your ACH node. So that's like step three, which is like debit card, credit card, you can do that. And I think the fourth piece, which I'm sure there's a much deeper conversation we'll have, but it's just like the tax, tax tooling, what do you do there? So there's tooling that helps you automate that, and I'm sure we can get into that more, but, I would say those at a high level, I would say are like the four pieces, I think. That you would need, to, to get going, right? And then maybe a, one last thing, a fifth one is more future-facing. There's no tool that has this yet, but Full automations, right? So currently a lot of tools like Strike, FOL, they have automations on the dollar to Bitcoin conversion side, but there's no full automations on the reverse, right? So let's say you get your paycheck in You get it via ACH, the dollars, automatically converted to Bitcoin, stored in your FOLDE account. But there's not really the reverse yet where any time an ACH pull or a bank pull is, is pulled It automatically converts my Bitcoin into dollars. That's the true vision in my mind is like, that friction from going from dollars to Bitcoin and vice versa is literally milliseconds. We don't have that yet, milliseconds. This might" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "23:44", "start": 1424.08, "text": "be an example where actually the Americans have one worse tool than most of the rest of the world, because I believe Zappo has a card not available in the US. Yes. But I believe they have something like this where you can have like a card with a Bitcoin balance, and then every time you tap that card, or even if you set up an auto-pay On the card, at the, at the debit card level, it is doing this auto conversion on the way out. So that's probably one example where it's not a benefit to be an, to be an American, unfortunately." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "24:13", "start": 1452.7, "text": "I'm sure there's many, yeah. And, and I think even Coinbase had this maybe in like fifteen or something or they had a while ago where they had a similar product. And so some of these" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:20", "start": 1459.84, "text": "products, they come and go, yeah, they come and go, exactly." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "24:23", "start": 1462.61, "text": "But, but I would say, yeah, those are the, those are the tooling that we Do you believe in this? Or maybe just building it yourself? Yeah, I would" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:36", "start": 1476.06, "text": "say. I'm curious though, at that point, you could hit a stop there because the company could, could come back to you and say, \"Look, Sahil, I like the idea, but it might not be worth it because...\" You know, there might-- there just might not be that many, you know, hardcore hodlers who care about this right now." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "24:52", "start": 1492.36, "text": "I think, I think that's totally fair, and I think there's other angles to that, right? So for example, I think Fold-- not to-- I don't, I'm not affiliated with Fold in any way, but I-- Sure. We're both friends with the team there. I think they really understand the value. My sense is they really understand the value of Bitcoin Zero, not just because, oh, feel good kind of, Brought their entire paycheck, converted the entire paycheck to Bitcoin, and by the way, vice versa, every bill was converted back. I mean, that's an insane amount of volume. and by the way, subscription fees for the app. So I think there's, there's ways to pitch the product, from that point of view rather than just ideological." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:33", "start": 1532.59, "text": "Yeah," }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "25:33", "start": 1532.95, "text": "gotcha. That's what I would say, yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "25:34", "start": 1534.49, "text": "Yeah, totally fair. Fair enough. so I guess the way I'm- Thinking about it is, there, there may be a bunch of people and, you know, depending on the tooling available around the world, I guess com- it's common for people who might take a payment in Bitcoin or maybe they take it in some stablecoin or whatever and then insta-flip it into Bitcoin, and then in their region they have like an OTC or a peer-to-peer or a local exchange, like a KYC exchange, and they just sell some Bitcoin for fiat and pay their bills, pay their rent, pay their whatever, And I guess that's how people around the world might be doing it even now, even if they don't have access to the more advanced, let's say, tooling that makes it easier and slick and fast." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "26:19", "start": 1579.49, "text": "Exactly, and my hypothesis is they are, as you said, they're converting maybe enough for the week or the month or six months. I, my hypothesis is they're doing that not because they want to have that many dollars or, or that many fiat currency. My hypothesis, they're doing that Of a like technical reason, it's like the tooling isn't there. Like if they could instantly convert it and just not even think about Bitcoin. There's a great quote I think is, I, I have it pulled up here somewhere. So there's a, a great Twitter account, his name is, Programmable TX, and he has this awesome quote that I love, and it's, it's a little bit, paradoxical, but it's, the greatest gift Bitcoin could give you is to stop thinking about Bitcoin. And that to me is like, imagine" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "27:07", "start": 1626.91, "text": "Bitcoin happening is just like it's money, and I just receive money and I spend money, and I'm holding better money. That's all it is. I just think that's pretty amazing." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "27:16", "start": 1636.07, "text": "Yeah. Okay. one other question around volatility now. There may be some, like as an example, you might have seen on Twitter, Stack Hodler. So he's an example. I believe he's in Switzerland, but I think he's an American, but living in Switzerland. And, I mean, I don't, I, I think he's like super bullish on Bitcoin, just like the rest of us, but he actually does believe in holding some fiat cash because, like, maybe from a macro perspective, he thinks there may be, you know, strategic times where you need a small fiat cash balance from his perspective, because that's what you're gonna be using to deploy into various investments, or maybe as an example, if you're anticipating like a kind of a, more of a deflationary collapse, holding, having some dollars from From that perspective, would be like, \"Oh, I can snap up things on the bargain, you know, snap up a cheap, you know, property or a cheap stock or something like that. \" I'm curious your view there." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "28:14", "start": 1694.25, "text": "Yeah, I think that's reasonable. I think the only thing I would say that is Then you're, you're becoming an investor, like even the act of holding, or like, any Austrian or, and you would know a lot more of this, about this than I would, but even the act of holding dollars is a speculation. So as long as you're agreeing that, okay, I'm now playing the investment game. Cool, that's fine with me. And, and if you're, like I said, I'm, I'm not anti-equities, I'm not anti-property, I'm not anti-anything. My personal speculation is of course just that." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "28:49", "start": 1728.65, "text": "Being 100% Bitcoin, I'm gonna have the, the better outcome, but that doesn't mean that I'm right, it doesn't mean that somebody else is wrong. So I think it's fair to be like, okay, I'm gonna have some- some dollars to convert into some other asset. Although I will say, why not just hold cash? And to me, Bitcoin is cash. Now, It just becomes a complicated nuanced thing, and I guess if you're an investor, maybe that's fair, but I think for most people, you just have a job, you have a family, keep it simple, right? It's like, it's like the way things used to be. My grandpa would just- Earn money in, in gold or gold equivalent and do his job and save and then provide for his family. Like you don't have to be a doctor and then also an investor and then a plumber and an investor. You're just, you do your job, you save and you come out ahead. So that's the way I see it is, there's like a beauty in the simplicity and it kind of goes back to, that, that tweet from Programmable TX, it's just, for me, it's so simple. It's, it's just beautiful. It's like you're, you And then by the way, you free up your time to focus on your craft, whether you're a designer or a doctor or a plumber or whatever, it's just so amazing to me, I feel like, I guess that'll be my response. Sure." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:04", "start": 1804.17, "text": "Now let's talk about the tax question, because a lot of people, and this is kind of an often confused point, it's, it would be good for you to explain, the tax perspective. I think the first pass, a lot of people might think, \"Hang on, aren't you actually paying a lot of taxes because you're capital gains tax every time you spend?\" And there's all this record-keeping requirement. and then I know obviously there are counter arguments here, so do you wanna just explain, some of your views there?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "30:30", "start": 1829.81, "text": "Yeah, for sure. And I think obviously it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, not tax advice, not financial advice, talk to your accountant. and also maybe worth saying, I'm from the US, so it probably is different everywhere else. I think even Canada is, I believe, different, the way they handle it. But, in the US, the way I've been handling the last couple tax years," }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "30:52", "start": 1851.69, "text": "Basically, basically your gains, well, first of all, I should back up. You only pay capital gains tax when there's a gain, when there's a, when you're coming out ahead compared to holding. Yeah. Yeah. That's like step one, barrier one should be knocked down right away. It's like, you're paying- I understand if you, if you have an ideological view that you don't wanna pay Money to the government that's reasonable and fair. I would argue you would be paying the inflation anyway, so I don't really buy that argument, but I, I hear where you're coming from. So that's step one is you're only paying capital gains when you have a gain. Okay. Cool. Now, step two is the way it works, and again, not tax advice, but basically your gains offset your losses. so let's say you have, I don't know, ten thou- ten thousand dollars of, of gains, and then let's say you have even, you know, it's a, it's a down year or whatever, you have twenty thousand dollars of losses. Those ten thousand difference get carried on indefinitely. It's not just that, no, I, I think there's something like three K gets applied to your income and the cap of three. But beyond that, it still gets carried over indefinitely, so you can carry over losses, as far as I know, indefinitely. yeah. And so this gets into" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:07", "start": 1927.4, "text": "kind of tax consequences, and of course, this varies around the world, but generally people talk about it like carry forward tax losses that you can take from a prior year and write them against gains in a future year. So that's kind of the, the basic-- That's the basic concept, and sort of applies in many jurisdictions, but maybe not all." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "32:25", "start": 1945.38, "text": "Absolutely, absolutely. And, and I think if you think about it, we were talking before about just how, sometimes you're buying high, selling low, and imagine if you do this multiple times a month because you're maybe paying off a couple credit cards or you're paying off your rent or you're, frankly, even using Venmo, right? Because imagine you could, you could use a Venmo or a Zelle or a Cash App instantly convert from your Bitcoin to dollars. So maybe you're spending twenty dollars by selling twenty dollars worth of Bitcoin. That's a taxable event. And all of that, in my experience, balances out, and frankly, you're gonna probably gonna come out negative, because, negative in terms of your, capital gains, 'cause it all offsets, and you're just carrying over, carrying over losses. so yeah, let me pause there, see if you have any thoughts" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:12", "start": 1991.75, "text": "on that. Okay, so yeah, so the basic idea is you would need some kind of tax reporting and- I-ideally, the tools that you're using have some of that, and so then you, I guess you presumably will use some kind of accounting software, kind of download the tax report, put that into your accounting software, and then figure out, okay, these are the times I bought, these are the times I sold, what's the gain, what's the loss, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then figure that out on the year. And then there's a net amount. So," }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "33:44", "start": 2024.28, "text": "and probably the most important piece is people, people may be thinking, \"Oh, this sounds complicated. how do I do this? This is gonna take forever.\" This took me, I think, thirty minutes or an hour this year, and the reason why is, and again, I'm not affiliated with this tool, there's many tools out there. I used something, what's it called? CoinTracker, CoinTracker. So there's a lot of tools like this. All they do is they take a spreadsheet from your exchange. So again, all, you Plug in a coin tracker, it'll calculate all your buys and sells. you can pick, do you want, first in, first out, do you want highest in, first out, all these different tax treatments. But the TLDR is, you literally just get a number at the end, you plug it into your, tax software or give it to your accountant, and that's it. It literally takes me an hour" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:33", "start": 2072.8, "text": "in a" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "34:33", "start": 2072.94, "text": "year." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:33", "start": 2073.14, "text": "Yeah. So I guess the complication would be, the fly in the ointment would be if you're using different wallets, different Okay, here's exchange A, exchange B, exchange C, and then now my lightning wallet A, B, C, and think about all of those components, that make it maybe a bit harder. But I presume some of these software things they can ingest across multiple sources also, exactly, right?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "35:00", "start": 2099.64, "text": "So they ingest across, exactly as you said. I mean, first of all, I would recommend keep it simple, just pick one exchange if you can. I'm sure there's reasons why some people can't, but ideally you would just have one, it would keeps, makes it Correct. It can basically plug in from Cash App, River, like anything you want into one place. and then as for Lightning wallets, you absolutely can. I haven't checked if Lightning wallets, allow exports and stuff. That might be a little more complicated. I haven't done that myself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:29", "start": 2129.33, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "35:30", "start": 2130.24, "text": "maybe you've got to find one that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:31", "start": 2131.36, "text": "has export feature and use that one. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "35:35", "start": 2134.7, "text": "And honestly, I would just say like, if you're selling KYC, you absolutely should be reporting everything. I do for sure, if anyone's listening, I, I think anything KYC related, you're doing that. if you're just using a lightning wallet, that's up to your discretion. yeah, I would, I would say that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:52", "start": 2152.27, "text": "This show brought to you by mempool.space, the world's leading Bitcoin visualizer, and now they've got an accelerator program. So if you have a transaction that you sent at a fee that was too low to get confirmed, now you can fix this at, with the mempool accelerator. The way it works, you can go and search your transaction, scroll down, click accelerator, Then it'll show you it's now in the process of being accelerated, and then after a few minutes, it's confirmed. And so this is a great way to help you out if you are stuck, and this can happen where maybe your wallet doesn't have RBF or CPFP, or it might help you in situations where it's impractical to go and re-sign, so for example, multisig with keys in different locations. And thirdly, even in some lightning scenarios, perhaps a forced close, you might not be able to use RBF, and so in this case, the mempool accelerator can Find out more over at mempool dot space slash accelerator. And now back to the show. So yeah, so I mean, there's different, yeah, hopefully over time more of the wallets will allow export features and things like this where you can more easily manage these things for the people who, you know, who that's relevant for, and then I suppose overall, for an individual, for you, how have you found it? Like, did you find that it was worth the-- I presume yes, like because you're talking about it and you're, you're a fan of this. can you explain for us, you know, what your experience was like and why you found it worthwhile?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "37:26", "start": 2245.51, "text": "Yeah, I think that's, that's a great place to go because, for me it's, we talked about like, simplicity and there's like a beauty in the simplicity. I think for me that was the biggest thing was just I don't have to think about having a dollar balance, I don't have to think about, we see this on Twitter a lot, right, or Nost where the price dips a little bit and people are like, \"Oh, I just bought the dip, I just, bought the dip,\" and meanwhile the price was at 2 I think it, there's, it's just so simple, I don't have to think about it, I'm a hundred percent in, or even if you're not a hundred percent, you're on zero dollars. there's no opportunity to, you're just always in. To buy dips. You're just, you're just" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:09", "start": 2288.68, "text": "earning, let's say monthly or every fortnight, and you're just instantly stuck, and that's it." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "38:14", "start": 2294.3, "text": "You're not a trader, and, and even, even people, they say they're DCA'ing and they're, they're not a" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "38:23", "start": 2303.27, "text": "Trader, I would call it like Trader Light, like Trader Vibes when you're DCAing, because you're DCAing and then you're like, \"Oh, let me smash by, smash by the dip.\" Yeah. But I'll tell you what, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:33", "start": 2313.31, "text": "in fairness, I mean, I agree with you there, but I'll tell you what, it also applies the other way, right? I'll give you an example. Let's say, yeah, you're like, \"Look, I'm going...\" make an example. Let's say you're going to" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "38:51", "start": 2331.34, "text": "Bitcoin is pumped today, so let me buy my flight now because I'm comparatively paying less sats than previously. So, I mean, it can kind of apply both ways, right?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "39:02", "start": 2341.55, "text": "I think that's totally fair. I think the-- I, I, I strongly agree, and I've definitely been there. I'm laughing 'cause I've definitely been there. But I think, I would argue that at least you're in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. At that point, you're in Bitcoin. Yeah, like-- So it's kind of-- Exactly. I mean, Just like, you've completely missed the boat, and it's like a million dollars, and that's just because you weren't in. It's like, oh, that to me is way more terrifying than, okay, the price dips ten K afterwards, like, okay, fine. but that's just subjective. one more thing I did wanna mention, 'cause you were asking me like, how, how's it been? I think one big impact for me personally that I've noticed Is, is almost like a, I don't know what you call it, like a, like a freedom to, to be able to spend Bitcoin. It's a, sometimes there's a psychological friction to," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:54", "start": 2393.66, "text": "gotcha, people call it" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "39:55", "start": 2394.72, "text": "circular economy, spending Bitcoin, that kind of thing. that friction is completely gone because if you only have Bitcoin or, if you have no dollars to spend, it's like, \"Yeah, I have no fiat, okay, I have to spend Bitcoin, there's no alternative.\" So then it- I have this quote that I really liked, and just, when you upgrade your money, spending Bitcoin goes from being ideological to logical. So it's like, not this, you know, we gotta embrace a circular economy, things like that. It's like, no, I just have to. I only have Bitcoin to spend, and then we start supporting, local merchants, we use tools like Zapperight, and there's none of this friction of like, oh, I still have ten K in my bank account that I could have used instead. So I feel like that's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:40", "start": 2439.84, "text": "a I see, yeah. And so, I guess I'll summarize it then as, by doing Get On Zero, in terms of zero fee art, you've been more exposed to Bitcoin, and therefore theoretically you're more exposed to the upside when Bitcoin goes up. There's less of a chance that you're not allocated, let's say. and then I guess the other big one for you is the psychological aspect. So it's just kind of this- You feel more free to spend as opposed to sort of maybe you find yourself being more of a tight ass when you still have some fiat because you're like, \"Oh, I'd rather not, so then I can buy more Bitcoin later\" or something like that." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "41:20", "start": 2480.48, "text": "Yeah, it, it's just like this simplicity, and like I said, it's, it sounds kind of woo-woo and wishy-washy, but I, it really do, it really does feel that way, where it's, that psychological pressure is just gone. And yeah, Bitcoin is cash, Bitcoin's money, and I just wanna emphasize that the dollar, fiat currency, is a payment rail, it's a legacy, inferior, less private payment rail that you sometimes have to use, and it sucks when you have to use it. But now, anytime there's an you know, farmer or whatever is, accepting Bitcoin, I can instantly go to the more private payment rail because I only have Bitcoin to spend, I'm just choosing whether I wanna use the less private, slower, inferior payment rail or the upgraded, faster, more private payment rail, and I just have a choice, it's, it's a mutual choice basically." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:10", "start": 2530.17, "text": "Yeah. Now, we've been talking about this from the perspective of an individual. What about different? Okay, so I mean, there's two paths we can go down. So one would be, okay, it's one thing for like a single guy to do this, but what if you got a wife and kids? You know, that's one, that's one angle. And then there's also the angle of like, what about for businesses and other entity types? So let's just start with the, you know, can you just do this 'cause you're, if you're a single guy, and actually if you've got like a wife and kids, now you have to start" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:45", "start": 2564.76, "text": "You know, I, I have to, maintain a small fiat balance." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "42:49", "start": 2569.19, "text": "For sure. I, and I definitely can't, I, I am single, I have no, you know, family of my own, so I can't speculate in that realm, but I will say, a lot of, people who are on zero in, in that community or in that movement, they do have families, and they worked it out somehow. They've, they've talked to their family, they've, they've worked it out, or maybe they" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "43:14", "start": 2594.46, "text": "I think a lot of that comes down to pretty much just summarizing a lot of what we said in terms of, on one hand, it's like the tooling, so if your family doesn't really have to think about it on the back end, they're not just always thinking about, \"Oh, I'm buying and selling,\" no, it's just money, and we save money and we spend money, and it's auto converted in the background, that's one thing that I think could help that's like one category of things I could help. And maybe the other category is, is that newer thing, the newer topic that we were exploring around, getting on zero not equaling a hundred percent Bitcoin. You could still have your" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:51", "start": 2630.71, "text": "other assets, let's say, yeah," }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "43:52", "start": 2632.47, "text": "maybe your 401k is completely full of, SP500 as like your, Your, your backup or something. Now, I don't recommend that, I don't do that personally. I think I will continue to remain 100% Bitcoin until we're post ten million per Bitcoin, basically. but I, I think that's, that would be my response for someone with a family, again, someone who doesn't have that myself." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:15", "start": 2654.83, "text": "Yeah. Okay. And then, now the entity question, right? Like, it's one thing for individuals to do this, but what about, if you have any thoughts on whether a business should do this kind of thing or a fund should do this kind of thing? do you have any thoughts on entities doing, you know, getting on zero?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "44:33", "start": 2672.51, "text": "A hundred percent. And I think, I think it comes down to tooling again, weirdly enough, and this might even be a harder problem because if the tooling isn't there for, like, for us, for individuals, I don't know when the tooling's gonna be there for, for companies. But I would be willing to bet, and I would love to talk to Michael Saylor about this, but, Michael Saylor's, I mean, he's pretty much over a hundred percent Bitcoin as far as I can tell, the macro strategy, or maybe it I know they've taken out debt, they've taken a lot of debt to buy more Bitcoin, and that's the vast majority of their balance sheet is Bitcoin. So I think on paper they might be over a hundred percent, but they still have dollars and-- or they have fiat currency in whatever, locale they're in. And I would be willing to bet if there was a tool that would auto convert and just let them use their fiat as a payment rail, I can't see any reason why Michael Saylor would hold any dollars at all. From my understanding, it's just working capital to him, and it's just Technological friction, it's like the tooling that's the barrier. I can't speak for him, but that's my, that's my experience." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "45:41", "start": 2741.09, "text": "I presume maybe there's some like legal thing or some tax thing that maybe it's a different treatment for an entity. it could be that, or maybe like the accounting treatment aspect. I, I don't know for sure. That could be, I'm speculating. but it could be that. So maybe the considerations are different at an entity level, and then I mean, as an example, if you're a business and let's say you've got to make payroll, you know, like you've got to be able to pay your staff, you've got to pay your bills." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "46:09", "start": 2768.96, "text": "How? You know, how much volatility is that business comfortable with? A-and maybe it comes back to again that same question that applies to the individual, is in, you need a certain- Savings or cash balance, Bitcoin balance, let's say, before it's feasible for you to try this kind of thing. Because if you're just kinda too close to the edge, a big drop and you could be screwed, right? You might not be able to make payroll, you may not be able to pay your suppliers, and then for a business, that's a huge problem." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "46:36", "start": 2796.4, "text": "A hundred percent, and I think that also applies to, maybe startups who, 'cause one thing I was gonna say is, for an individual, it only really makes sense to do this, I think, or one of the main cases where it makes sense to do is, if your income is more than your expenses. If your income is not more than your expenses, you have other problems, like we need to solve step one, which is, income needs to be more than your expenses. Now, for a business, in many cases, especially Bitcoin startups, which you're very familiar with, their income I've seen an argument there where, okay, we have these fixed costs, salaries, office space, whatever, XYZ fixed costs for two years. Okay, I can see a case where I have these fixed costs, let's put this in dollars just so it's predictable, like we have enough unpredictability going on, do we really need like Bitcoin to layer on another level" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:25", "start": 2845.48, "text": "of that? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure, I mean, you're a foundry as well, so I'm sure this conversation is hap- would happen inside mining, pools and individual mining miners or hashers They must be thinking about that too." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "47:38", "start": 2858.13, "text": "100%. So I, I, I definitely sympathize with that. I, I think so, yeah. I think for those fixed costs, it could make sense to do that. but again, if, as you said, if you've built up savings enough over enough period of time, and, and you've been through a cycle or two or, or something like that, and your income is more than your expenses, even for businesses, as long as the tooling is there, which I don't know if they will be Dollars for more than a millisecond." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:08", "start": 2887.63, "text": "Interesting. And so the other component of it might be, and I believe I've heard Sahil comment on this also, which is that maybe it's a tooling question, and in this case, it might also be around ERP, so Enterprise Resource Planning, and this kind of tooling, you know, people use, like, people, I don't know, big ones are like SAP and Oracle and these other things, that maybe Bitcoin hasn't been built into those yet, and that, you know, building Bitcoin into your accounting system at, like Larger company level, maybe that's another big hurdle as well of doing things denominated in Bitcoin, that it just would be such a big lift from a systems, technology, programming perspective that it's just not feasible yet, let's say. Maybe that's- Yeah, and honestly- Another consideration." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "48:51", "start": 2931.44, "text": "I think that's completely fair, and honestly, just like putting my product hat on- If it's so expensive and so time intensive to build these tools, and the benefit is kind of marginal, I can totally see that, like maybe that's not worth a new business being formed around. And so maybe this is something that happens for businesses ten years from now, but, I think for individuals it's probably a lot easier in terms of the tools. I mean, we're, we're already pretty much there. like the tooling is, is very close to being pretty much like buttoned up, ready to go. but yeah, you're right from a business point Maybe there's just not enough money there, or like someone like Sailor is maybe not worrying about optimizing on the last one percent, maybe it's just not worth it then." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:34", "start": 2973.5, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, the juice may not be worth the squeeze for that, but we'll see. one other question, and it's maybe a little tangential, but do you have any thoughts on whether- People should use the, you know, intermediary company. So as an example, like a, a, like a Bitrefill or the Bitcoin Company or Coin Cards, this kind of thing where you're paying direct-- like, you're paying them directly in Bitcoin, but they give you, you know, a gift card and a voucher or this kind of thing that you then go use versus, you know, use your fiat credit card or fiat debit card, sell some Bitcoin to pay that balance off. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is that relevant for Get On Zero? What do you think?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "50:12", "start": 3011.86, "text": "Yeah, I think that's an excellent point, and I'm very good friends with the Bitcoin company, Ben Price. love him to death, and I'm, I'm, I've definitely used it a lot. definitely a big fan of that, and I think especially from a privacy point of view, it's really good. I mean, you could, you could get gift cards over Lightning, and, you could get a literally a Visa gift card, with Lightning, which is amazing. And so that I think comes down to, and I should like write another Of user experience, like you get benefits here on this end with, these gift cards, you get privacy benefits, things like that, but the user experience definitely takes a hit, right? It's not as seamless as my KYC Bitcoin bank, right, which is automatically happening in the background, I don't have to worry about it. As a designer, I kind of, biased towards that, end of the spectrum where it's just, I don't wanna think about it, I just want it to work. but I think tools like what you're Bitcoin company, I think they're extremely valid. Now, there may be a case where you're technically exposed to some more dollars, like maybe you buy a thousand dollar Visa gift card? Okay, but now we're kind of splitting hairs and again, there's just trade-offs for everything, and maybe you're willing to hold a thousand dollars of toilet paper money just to say like, \"I have better privacy, with the Bitcoin company.\" So, yeah. I think that's what I would say." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:36", "start": 3096.2, "text": "Yeah. One, one other one, in terms of physical cash, now, do you still use physical cash? And this is where maybe there can be, it's sort of debatable, you could see arguable both sides, because some people see it like, \"Look, there's a war on cash, you should try to use physical cash to keep it alive.\" But on your other hand, that conflicts with the goal of, you know, getting on zero. So where are you at with physical cash?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "52:00", "start": 3120.0, "text": "That's an awesome question, and this recently came up because, you know, we go to steak dinners and that kind of thing with Bitcoin friends, and so I think I paid a bill, and, most of the friends paid me in Sats, and one friend paid me in cash. I had to go spend the cash, it was really annoying. So from a, a user experience point of view, I, I know some of my friends are gonna hate me for this, but I'm not a big fan of like dollar bills because it's just too much friction for me. But I really like this framing of, fiat bills, like cash bills, almost being another payment rail to spend your Bitcoin, but maybe it's the most private payment rail to move your Bitcoin. If you think about this, let's say you have your Bitcoin bank, something like a FOL, it has your Bitcoin, in it, so it has a Sats balance. I can instantly convert that Bitcoin to cash in the bank app, go to the ATM, and pull out a twenty dollar bill. So what have I just done? I've spent Bitcoin over cash as a payment rail. That's crazy to me, and that's, it's like, it's very private, it's a very private payment rail. So I'm in support of that actually. if, if there are places locally that accept cash, I'm, I'm in, in favor of spending your Bitcoin over cash as a payment rail. So I'm just, I'm reframing the, that act over there, instead of, selling Bitcoin, it's no, I'm spending my Bitcoin. Over cash withdrawals." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:27", "start": 3206.55, "text": "Gotcha. Yeah, okay. So, look, I think those are the key questions I had. I guess, maybe for some, I guess one other thing I'm thinking of is there may be some who are sort of really anti-KYC. And I guess for that, that's another area where, y-, it's kind of a conflicting goal where, look, if you're like really dead set on never ever doing KYC or totally minimizing it as much as possible, then getting on zero just becomes a bit In, infeasible, as I see it." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "53:57", "start": 3236.93, "text": "Yeah, I, I, I do agree with that. I think there's still a benefit of, excuse me, thinking through the mental model and just" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:04", "start": 3243.73, "text": "like minimizing your cash balance, or your fiat balance, let's say. Yeah, minimizing your cash balance. Exactly, as in your fiat balance, let's say, yeah." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "54:10", "start": 3250.04, "text": "Exactly, exactly, minimizing that, that fiat balance, rethinking the function of dollars, thinking of it more as spending Bitcoin rather than selling Bitcoin, I think that reframing really helps. but I do agree with" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "54:24", "start": 3263.81, "text": "Anti-KYC, then it's just gonna be harder to do this and probably not worth it, I think." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:28", "start": 3268.01, "text": "I see, yeah. But for many people, may still be worthwhile, but yeah, I think people have to sort of think that through in terms of how comfortable Are you with volatility? How comfortable are you to sort of ride Bitcoin across the cycles? and generally it gets easier after you've been doing it for a while, but if you're new, then yeah, it can be hard, and people can get sort of shaken out if they're not-- if they end up holding or they purchase more Bitcoin than they are able to hold through a big drawdown, then, you know, you've gotta, you've gotta think that through carefully. But, I think that's, I think we've, we've covered pretty much all People have at least learned about a new perspective on, you know, getting on zero or whether they wanna do it or whether they're not, whether they don't wanna do it. yeah. And just finally, where can people find you online?" }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "55:18", "start": 3318.23, "text": "Yeah, you can find me, on Twitter at, I'm still gonna call it Twitter, sahilc0, that's, I'm sure it'll be in the show notes, but sahilc0. Yeah, right. Yeah. yeah. One, one thing I just wanna close with is just like, Go talk to your Bitcoin company, see if, if, if they're interested in doing this, see if they're interested in maybe a, a basket of assets, if 100% Bitcoin is, is too much for you, maybe Treasuries, gold, Bitcoin, whatever that is. also related, everything we talked about, I wrote a, a, a series on TFC, like a three-part series, so if any of this, kind of resonates and you wanna go more in the weeds, check that out. and I guess- Right. Yeah, well, we'll put that in" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:00", "start": 3359.69, "text": "the show notes and, Sahil, thanks for joining me today." }, { "speaker": "sahil", "time": "56:03", "start": 3362.65, "text": "Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Stefan." } ] }