{ "episodeId": "SLP694", "speakers": { "stephan": { "name": "Stephan Livera", "role": "host", "tag": "STEPHAN" }, "nvk": { "name": "NVK", "role": "guest", "tag": "NVK" } }, "segments": [ { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:10", "start": 9.79, "text": "Hi everyone and welcome back to Stephan Livera podcast. Rejoining me on the show today is my friend NVK, known as the CEO and founder of CoinKite, the creators of the Cold Card and various other products, as well as a long time Bitcoiner. NVK, welcome back to the show." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "00:26", "start": 26.42, "text": "Thanks for having me, man. It's, it's been a minute." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "00:29", "start": 29.18, "text": "Yeah, it's been a little while. Well, I know you've had some good updates recently on the cold cards, so we should chat a little bit about those. I saw that, probably the policy thing is an interesting thing to start. So this concept of having- Spending policies in a single signature device, can you talk to us a little bit about this? What does this mean? What can it be useful?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "00:51", "start": 50.71, "text": "Yeah, so I, I think like the background on this is that, like, we've, we've always sort of tried to do, operational security in a way that, like, people can, you know, the easiest possible way of operate their businesses or their personal sort of BTC, right? but without us producing a same vendor app or us needing a server to cosign, or essentially like no counterparty, right? Like that, that's like a big part of like how we like to operate, like our, our solutions, like how can we remove counterparties, right? Even if they're just cosigners. and we sort of like been playing with that, we created spending policies for multi-sig on the Gold Card so you can have two keys, one key is the device key that, that does wallet- And then we sort of like due to market demand, we sort of expanded that to single sig. So, so what does that mean? It means that you can have, you know, your main card or your second one or, you know, your travel one, with, you know, an important seed on it, right? But the device can, take now spending policy. So that means, you know, what's the max I can spend from this device? What is the velocity of it? So how much per period? Right? Like, say, like, you know, one BTC max per month, you know, in block time of course, but, you know, one BTC per month, or you need two FA from a phone? In order to spend. You know, a-and that's super powerful because one, first of all, is, is provable, right? So like you can show to, you know, the bad guy or whatever, they're like, \"You know, this device is set up this way, I, I cannot change it.\" Right? that, that's a big win. another thing is you can, for example, set up devices for coworkers, for controllers in the company, you know, or when you travel, y-you can travel with a device that- has this kind of policy, so, you know, you don't have to trust the operator, right, with, with, like, how much he can spend. Now, you know, of course, it has trade-offs, it has, you know, security limitations 'cause it's based on the hardware security, you know, the, the current architecture, you know, hasn't been demonstrated to us that somebody can, can extract a seed, for example. but again, it's like, you know, is this for your total life savings in single sig, no passphrase, absolutely not, right? Like, you know, but, you know, this is, this is, this is robust enough that you should be able to, to operate You know, your business needs, you know, on your monthly basis or quarterly basis without too much" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "03:38", "start": 217.73, "text": "worry. So this is like your business warm wallet, not your deep cold life savings or business, you know Large stack, but it's more if you want a warm wallet setup or kind of cold but with certain spending policies that allow you to, let's say, rate limit the amount of coins or whitelist addresses, this kind of thing." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "03:59", "start": 238.99, "text": "Exactly. The whitelist was big one for traders and, and company controllers. What's cool is that they set up, essentially like, you know, a handful of addresses. you know, unfortunately, exchanges, most of them reuse addresses to deposit, so you just lock those in, and then you can also lock in a few addresses for your vaults. So you're essentially capable of going back and forth between the exchange and your operational device, so you don't have to leave funds on the exchange, and you're also capable of going from the operational device Back to your, to your deep vault that you don't have access to, you can just deposit to, right? a-and that's a big win, big, big win, right? Because a lot of people often, especially like, you know, traders with like a bit more volume, they don't take the funds off the exchange because, you know, then they have to go unearth their deep vaults from some mountain somewhere, right? in order to, to go back to the exchange. So now they can essentially like go back and forth between the three, substantially easier and, and safer really." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "05:02", "start": 302.16, "text": "Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to making it feasible for more people to do self-custody, right? Because as many of us know in this space There's a lot of custodial use, right? And of course, we're trying to be honest about that, but at the same time, yeah, absolutely, want more people to self-custody. Obviously, you're building tools for that. Obviously, I'm encouraging people to self-custody where they can. I'm curious to get your perspective on this. Why is it that so many companies don't want to self-custody? Do you think it is a technical knowledge thing, is a legal and regulatory hurdle thing, is it just kind of- Confidence or comfort with self custody, why in your mind are there a lot of people going for these kinds, or is it just like the convenience factor? Like, is that just, is it as simple as that?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "05:43", "start": 343.45, "text": "I, you know, like, there's many different profiles here, right? So, like, I, I think for, you know, individuals, it's fairly reasonable and people do it. I, I, I think, you know, for individuals, we see way less use of custodians. Yeah. I, I think the challenge is when you have a, a multi-individual, multi-people company, right? So, you know, again, it's like, how, how do you, how do you practically deploy controlling rules among a small organization, right? Let's say you have Or you're ten to a hundred million dollars a year in revenue, you know, maybe like, you know, you're, you're making like, you know, ten to twenty percent of your revenue in BTC. Now, the, the problem for you is like, okay, great, so like, you know, I have my, my, my accountant, I have my controller, you know, the people that can do wire transfers and stuff, that, that, that part of the office, right? How can I let them send and receive BTC without being at risk of them stealing it or them just being conned and, and robbed, right? A-a-and I think that, that's the What are the biggest practical issues with businesses, doing self-custody? And I think we solve a lot of that with some of our features. I think the next part is also, like accounting and tax, right? So the, the tax burden on BTC is complicated in most countries, most Western countries. You have to, you know, you essentially have to run a weighted average cost for BTC on how you calculate your capital gains, because it's not like considered currency." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:18", "start": 437.59, "text": "Yeah. And there is no" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "07:19", "start": 438.65, "text": "diminish either, right? So, you know, essentially like every time you, you know, you, for example, you send money from your accounting, so from your checkout system, so BTC, BTC, from your accounting system, sorry, from your checking system, which is like your, your shopping cart to your vault, you know, you need to, for example, make sure that that is very defined as just an intra-account transaction, so you don't get taxed on that. But then every time you sell BTC, you have to calculate that versus All your, your shopping carding basis" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "07:50", "start": 469.81, "text": "and going, okay, when did I acquire this coin, what is the price I sold or spent it, what's the difference, what's the capital gains on that, and you know, all this kind of complication. And maybe, I guess the other factor there is maybe the accounting software. Now, yes, there is some accounting software in the space where people are kind of like downloading a CSV and importing it into the accounting software, but I guess what you're talking about there is there's still some operational difficulty with actually doing that, right?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "08:16", "start": 496.32, "text": "Yes, it's not, it's not simple. The accounting software is still like, you know, to be blunt, shit. you know, even QuickBooks Online supports, Bitcoin, but like, they're, they're-- once you turn on 4x support on QuickBooks Online, you can't really go back, so you can't turn it off. It's like, it, it, it becomes messy accounting, and now you have to have bookkeepers that are used to the Multi Forex version of QuickBooks, for example, which reduces the pool of people available to work, you know, like substantially. You know, you need your accountants to be used to it. It, it's not It's not that simple, so, you know, it does make it harder. and, and another part too is that, like, most mid-sized to slightly bigger businesses have very custom accounting software too. You know, they may use QuickBooks or, or zero or some accounting software like that for the, the final sort of, you know, fiscal year, y-you know, sorry, the word just escaped me. But anyways, they, they, you know, they, they, they might, the, the, the, their financials might be using some of that software, but they're normally the shopping carts and all the collection systems are very custom. So, anyways, there's a lot of glue in accounting, right? It's very common for- Or businesses to build their own software, or at least their own glue to support their own specific needs. and, yeah, it's just tricky, but like I think we're getting there. Like, you know, Block is supporting it, and they support a lot of small businesses, so that should be easier." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "09:53", "start": 593.13, "text": "Tools like, like Zapright as an example to make it easier. Zapright is great. That's quite popular for people now to take payments on Bitcoin. Do they" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:00", "start": 600.42, "text": "do, WAC? I don't know." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:03", "start": 602.88, "text": "W-- oh, weighted average cost. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know if, I don't know if they have that. It might just be more like a CSV download thing. Yeah, it's great." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "10:09", "start": 608.57, "text": "Their shopping cart is great. we do use it for bitcointroures.net, for example. And, you know, I, I think the tools are gonna get there. It takes time, right? But, I think we'll get there" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "10:22", "start": 622.25, "text": "and, you know, hopefully we live in a day where there's Companies is what we were talking about there was a lot of just kind of dealing with, let's say, the transactional side of things. But what about just for those hodling, you know, just like literally treasury companies who just have a treasury, right? They're not doing that many like in and out transactions, they're just You know, mostly, mostly just hodling. Why aren't those guys at least doing self custody? Is it just because of, again, comfort factor, non-technical, non-tech savvy? Regulatory, what do you see there?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "11:00", "start": 660.24, "text": "When it comes to securities, right? Like there is essentially it's all CYA, right? Like cover your ass. Like," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:07", "start": 666.96, "text": "right." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "11:07", "start": 667.3, "text": "You have, you have to essentially follow best practices accepted by the regulators, right? and when you have a new space, everybody's a little coy to try to do anything different because you can get in some serious trouble. Right? So it's understandable that they're sort of like they're taking their time. now there is a few rules, for example, you know, like it's very difficult for you as a securities company to, to not use, say, a qualified custodian, for example, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "11:34", "start": 694.35, "text": "Right." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "11:36", "start": 696.49, "text": "and so that reduces the pool of places and solutions you can use, right? Like, if you're gonna do it internally, it, it gets tricky, right? Like, you have to, you have to do a lot of things, and you also have to own the technology, the stack, right? And most companies don't wanna do that. So I, I think we're getting there. I think, for example, companies like Anchor Watch, you know, they're gonna be a very well-used solutions for, this sorts of companies." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:05", "start": 724.79, "text": "Right. Because then they can have insurance and some form of, you know, miniscript style custody. Exactly, like, you know, if they become" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "12:11", "start": 731.05, "text": "a qualified custodian and they have insurance, like, you know, like it's a double A there, right? Like, you're, you're very good. but even the insurance isn't necessary, you just need like a very The good technical solution which they have, right, with the decaying multisig thing and the miniscript stuff that they have, plus being a qualified custodian, that, that suffices, right? and then on top of that, you might find customers that wanna pay for that insurance, premiums and, and sort of like get an extra bit of comfort there, then in, instead of having to use, say, Coinbase, Fidelity, or I forgot the name of the other one, there is one more that's, like BitGo," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "12:50", "start": 770.22, "text": "Anchorage Copper, Backt, Backt, and Nidig, I don't know, these are some of the big custodians, I guess. and I guess there's, that's the thing, right? That I, I mean, to your point, there's not that many of these kind of, quote unquote Tier one or whatever, top tier, big pro level custodians, you can pretty much name them on one or two hands, right? In terms of the US ones, and then, yeah, okay, there's a few outside the US, but it's" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "13:14", "start": 794.4, "text": "all new, right? I mean, like, yeah, you know, just, just think about it this way, like gold had five thousand years, right? And, you know, fiat had at least a hundred, right? So, like, depending on how you wanna look at it, modern fiat versus slightly older fiat, right? It's sort of like, you know, everybody wants everything yesterday, and that's not like how, how like big, big money has a lot more inertia, right? Because nobody wants to lose the money. So it just takes time, but we're getting there, I mean, we're go-- we're going there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "13:50", "start": 830.18, "text": "Yeah, it's interesting. And, and I think, yeah, it's a fair point that maybe some of these, like the, the top end of town, like the big, big Bitcoin treasury companies who have, you know, massive stacks, they probably have legal and regulatory kind of just requirements that are just not gonna allow them to self-custody. but I-- and the maybe one challenge now is if you look at, this is kind of a concern people are mentioning now" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "14:15", "start": 855.37, "text": "A cover your ass thing, right? It's a CYA thing. They probably all went for Coinbase custody because I think one of them, you know, they were like cribbing the notes off like the BlackRock one and being like, \"Oh, okay, well BlackRock got theirs approved, we better go Coinbase custody.\" No, no." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "14:28", "start": 868.18, "text": "If you're gonna go public with, with a, with a Bitcoin treasury company, like, you know, there's like fifty, fifty check boxes, right? Yeah. I mean, like, do you want to make every check box a new, new" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "14:45", "start": 885.33, "text": "As straightforward as possible by, you know, just copying wh-wh-whoever's out there already, and then maybe you change those things, right? Like it makes complete sense as much as we don't like people to go in the same spot, yeah. That's, that's how things go at first." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:00", "start": 900.1, "text": "Do you see it decentralizing out over time that maybe, maybe not all the ETFs or whatever, nine of the eleven or whatever, like a high percent of the ETFs are using Coinbase custody, and probably a lot of the big Bitcoin tracker companies, you know, they might be using Coinbase custody You know, how, how does that decentralize out?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:17", "start": 917.44, "text": "I think that'll change because, you know, I don't think anybody wants systematic risk." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "15:22", "start": 922.09, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "15:23", "start": 922.51, "text": "Like, you don't wanna, you know, like one critical- path in this, you know, and, and, you know, it could be a disaster, right? So I, I think, I think, an effort to de-risk each, each, each like the pile, let's put it this way, right? And like maybe put them in different, in different locations, you know, it will be underway soon. I, I don't think anybody wants to be, in a single spot. You know, and I, and I think like, you know, we're gonna have, right now we have what, like, three hundred treasury companies, and plus another like fifty ETFs, right? I think, you know, we're gonna get to probably one thousand by the end of the year, would be my, my, my, my, yeah, yeah. That's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:10", "start": 969.63, "text": "fast." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "16:10", "start": 970.03, "text": "Yeah. I think it's very likely we get to a thousand, well, that's if the price goes up, if the price keeps going up. you know, I, I'd say we get to at least five hundred by the end of the year, depending on, on how the market goes. Yeah. Nobody wants to launch on a, on a, on a down. In a down market, right? So, I think, you're gonna start seeing companies having to find a differentiator, right? Like otherwise it's just the same and people are just gonna buy the top ones and the bottom ones. so, you know, as, as, you know, maybe one differentiator is like, hey, you know, we use Anchor Watch, it is insured." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "16:49", "start": 1009.09, "text": "Gotcha. So they're gonna try to set people at ease by saying, hey, we've got a better custody set up, we've got a better insurance set up, or we've got-- we're using better technology." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "16:57", "start": 1017.16, "text": "Exactly. It's like people have to have marketing points, right? Even if they're just, you know, small differences, they are differences, and, and people have different profiles on, on how they" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:08", "start": 1027.97, "text": "invest Founder of Bitcoin Treasuries dot net. I know you've got, Rizzo. I think Rizzo is president there. I know he's working on that project as well. Well," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:20", "start": 1039.73, "text": "he joins us to, to, to be the lead there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:22", "start": 1042.19, "text": "Gotcha. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about this. Now, I remember you started this years ago, and I remember we were talking, probably even on the podcast, we were saying, or at least you were telling me, the idea was, hey, if you got the leaderboard, a bunch of these people stacking coins will" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:42", "start": 1062.01, "text": "We're actually seeing" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:44", "start": 1063.87, "text": "this now. Do you remember the, do you know the meme? It's like the how it started and how it's going on Twitter, you know, like you have two photos. Yeah, yeah. You know, we started, I think, with two companies. I think with, like, Microsoft" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:54", "start": 1073.62, "text": "and Tesla back then." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:55", "start": 1075.04, "text": "Yeah, I think Block was even before them, with the pilot. Oh, true," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "17:58", "start": 1078.08, "text": "that is true. Yeah," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "17:59", "start": 1079.18, "text": "yeah. but I, I think we had Microsoft first of this. Anyway, I can't remember, but it was like two Right? and now we have, you know, like a thousand companies there, like differing on what their setup is. and, you know, it's always been, like, I mean, I, I-- maybe it's controversial to some of the new people in, in Bitcoin, but like, you know, I, I think even like since the, the Bitcoin Talk days, like, it's always been the understanding that- It's a matter of time before we find a backdoor into the financial system, right? The fiat system." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:35", "start": 1114.96, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "18:35", "start": 1115.2, "text": "And, you know, what is the best backdoor for BTC to go in? It's through the, the regulated financial markets, right? Like You, you know, if you create the best money that humanity has ever had, like it's obvious that people who are gonna like have to store value are gonna use it, right? And, and what, where are the biggest piles of money? Right," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "18:58", "start": 1138.33, "text": "like equity, debt, property, there are the" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "19:01", "start": 1140.51, "text": "financial markets, right? So, you know, as we start to permeate, you know, our little mycelium legs into everything, y-you know, being, being a huge part of the financial, the, the tradfi markets, right? i-it's, it's part of the story. It was just a matter of time really." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "19:19", "start": 1159.13, "text": "Yeah, and I think it's, it's interesting that it took- I mean, some of us could say, \"Look, it's kind of surprising that it took so long for more people to actually try and copy Michael Saylor.\" Sixteen" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "19:29", "start": 1169.42, "text": "years is, is nothing, like in, in money terms, like Yeah. Like it's, it's crazy, like tech companies took longer, you know, to exist in financial markets, right? Like, like the, the pure sort of like, SaaS company sort of thing, right? Like, y-y-y-you think about it, like, you know, w-we're gonna be very soon at a point where- You know, we're gonna have more, if maybe we really are, we're gonna have more pubcos holding BTC than hold gold. Like, like actual gold, not, not some gold stock, right? we might already be there. I, I don't know what those numbers are, 'cause I haven't researched that, but it wouldn't surprise me. That we wouldn't already be there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "20:17", "start": 1216.97, "text": "Yeah, that's an interesting point. I, I don't, I don't actually know. I'd have to look it up. But, it is also kind of fascinating just that You know, the, the way it is, like as I look at the dashboard now, look at the top, you know, obviously MSTR, the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room or whatever, they've got six hundred and forty thousand coins. The next is Mara with fifty-two thousand or fifty-two thousand eight fifty. You've got twenty-one at forty-three thousand, Metaplanet about thirty thousand, BSTR about thirty thousand, and, you know It's just like a huge drop off, right? Because, you know, it-- what, what's your take on this? Do you think it's gonna be just kind of a winner takes all, a winner takes most kind of scenario here, or do you see it as like, there's a market for smaller guys to come and rise up?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "20:57", "start": 1257.06, "text": "It's like capital likes, like aggregation, right? Like it tends towards monopolies and aggregation, it's just how capital works, right? Because liquidity begets liquidity. So I, I think what we're gonna have is we're gonna have a healthy sort of like top twenty companies, right? And, and these guys are gonna have the lion's share of it. and, and then you're gonna have the rest. A-and the rest is gonna be like, the middle is gonna get a bit squeezed, because, you know, people are gonna either want security by having the big ones Or like instability, right? Or they're gonna want the very little ones to penny stock and try to find the next- Right, 'cause they" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "21:38", "start": 1298.13, "text": "want the high risk, high reward sort of thing." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "21:40", "start": 1299.81, "text": "Exactly, and I think that's how people are gonna probably split their portfolios. It's gonna be the top and the bottom so, you know, I, I guess like the opportunity right now for, for the middle ones is to one, find financial markets that are different than the big ones have. So, you know, go find other countries like Orange in Brazil or, you know, like go, go find Financial markets that are untapped, and, and try to build a, like a something that is more compatible with that specific market. I have an advantage there." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:11", "start": 1331.37, "text": "So do you agree then with the idea that it's kind of like there'll be a few winners per jurisdiction then? Is that kind of how you're seeing it? Absolutely, yes, yes." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "22:20", "start": 1339.79, "text": "but, but I, I think people are gonna get clever, right? I think you're gonna have companies that are gonna be very good at one thing, even though they may not have the biggest market cap. They might be very good at some specific financialization that makes sense for the investor, you know," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:39", "start": 1359.02, "text": "whether it's alpha generation strategies or some technique, right? Like" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "22:43", "start": 1362.75, "text": "maybe, I don't know, maybe Strive comes up with some weird, you know, like thing that just works for the people looking for that specific thing, right? And maybe they're not as big as MicroStrategy, but maybe they solve that problem." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "22:55", "start": 1374.66, "text": "Right. This episode is brought to you by CoinKite, the makers of my favorite Bitcoin hardware wallet, the Coldcard Q. Now, some people think self-custody is too hard, but it's really about taking responsibility for your Bitcoin wealth and understanding that self-custody gives you a true feeling of liberty. The Coldcard Q has a full keyboard and big screen, it's got two secure elements and a true air gap, allowing you to go fully air-gapped using QR codes from seed generation to transaction signing. You can power the device using three triple-A batteries, so you don't even have Use it with Sparrow Wallet for PC or Nunchok on mobile, and you can dial it into the right level of security and complexity that you choose. If you want a simple setup, just use twelve words and single signature. If you want passphrase, it's easy. If you want to add multi-sig or co-signing features, you've got those too. So go to coinkite dot com, use code livera to get ten percent off on your cold card or other devices and level up your self-custody today. Gotcha, yeah. And I mean, as as we spoke about mergers and acquisitions, they just bought, Semler, right? So that's an example, like we've already seen M&A in this space. Like, that's kind of early to me. That feels like, \"Wow, I wasn't expecting that to happen until, you know, a bit later, maybe another year or two down the track.\" No, I know, I know. It" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "24:04", "start": 1443.68, "text": "makes complete sense, you know, why not buy another stack of BTC with stock?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:08", "start": 1448.12, "text": "Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:17", "start": 1457.04, "text": "It was equity, but yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "24:19", "start": 1458.71, "text": "Exactly, right? So like either, either direct equity or, you know, some form of stock compensation, so you don't have to go, you know, borrow money, you know, you print more shares and, you know, you acquire another pile of BTC. That's pretty sound strategy, right? Especially this early that you can get away with it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "24:37", "start": 1476.64, "text": "Yeah, and I guess it seems like the game now, as I understand it, and of course, the game is changing, so maybe the answer is different in a few months' time, but it seems like the game now is to sort of get to the preferred shares phase. So MSTR is obviously already there, Metaplanet has spoken about that, but maybe the others are like seeing it as, \"Look, that's the end game. We need-- and in order to be able to do preferred shares, we need to get to a certain size and scale.\" And so maybe the" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "25:04", "start": 1504.1, "text": "game is to A bunch of new things and see what sticks. I think everybody else gonna try to copy a bit, but like, I think very soon we're gonna start seeing things where it's like, you know what, like, no, we're gonna only do common, you know, that's gonna be our thing, you know, and then somebody else gonna do something else. And Because, you know, like you can't-- I mean, God knows, maybe like, you know, at a certain size you can do more things. But like generally speaking, you can only do so many things, right? And you wanna be the best at that one thing. And again, like to, to give returns to shareholders, you don't have to be the biggest one Right. so, I don't know, it's hard to know, like, this is all so new. I mean, like, you haven't been able to do any of this shit before because you never had a, a, a asset, an underlying asset that has no counterparty risk. Yeah." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:00", "start": 1560.04, "text": "I mean, that's the game, right? The game is to accumulate this thing. and I think there have been a lot of questions and challenges thrown, especially now that treasury companies are in a bit of a lull, there are some people saying, you know, it's-- there's a lot of, there's maybe a few good, like the view of other people in the space is they would say, \"Well, maybe there's a, a room for a few, \"and then there's just a lot of trash out there," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "26:26", "start": 1586.16, "text": "in terms of Where are you on that question? Like, do you see it like there is room for how many, how much room is there for, let's say, financial engineering, Bitcoin treasury companies or pure plays? Oh, it's endless." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "26:40", "start": 1600.21, "text": "Yeah. I mean, it's, it's like endless, y-y-you know, completely endless. Like, people will come up. I think we still haven't seen the things that are possible, y-you know, like at all. Yeah. We haven't even thought of them yet. we, we need to, we need to, like, we need a immediately see and play with it, right? Like, I, I don't think we have even gotten close to, to what's possible. again, it's like you have a, you have an asset that has no counterparty risk. Once the market understands the value of that, like, things really change, right? Because right now Everything that they do with the underlying asset has to sort of follow securities raw law based on assets that have counterparty risk." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "27:28", "start": 1647.56, "text": "Right? So like, i-i-it's, i-i-it's, it's a tricky thing. It's just we haven't crossed a, like, we haven't crossed a chasm yet, right? Like, you, you need another five, ten years in the market, right, for regulators to really wrap their heads around what's going on, for us to have more diversity in qualified custodians, for us to, like, you know, start coming up with interesting technical solutions for these companies to, to move funds between them as well. I, I think, I think I think we just, we're just so early." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "28:00", "start": 1680.08, "text": "Yeah, interesting. So you see it like there is actually a lot of potential for these things, but it's, obviously it's gonna be a, a, a wild ride, none of us can predict the pathway. but I guess in your view, are you fundamentally bullish on these things? and I guess maybe the question some Bitcoiners would wanna ask is, there's one camp of Bitcoiners who see it like, you know, it's anti-the cypherpunk ethos. Why are you talking about treasury companies when you Self-custody and peer-to-peer, do you see it as, l-l-let me put it this way, there's some people who are kind of against treasury companies, there's some people in the middle who are sort of like just, you know, Bitcoin" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "28:38", "start": 1717.99, "text": "demand is Bitcoin demand, right? Like, yeah, use it however you want. The whole point of Bitcoin is it's your own damn business, right? So, so, you know, like demand is demand. Like I don't care where the demand comes for, for Bitcoin. And the more demand we have, the bigger the asset gets, the more protected we are as individual holders, right? So, you know, just, just think of like this pub close as, as moat. Right? Like, you know, your government no longer can fuck with your asset because if they fuck with your asset, now they trash the market and now the teachers' pensions don't work, right? So, so like they, they literally can't break BTC anymore of regulation," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:20", "start": 1760.16, "text": "right? Because it's become so ingrained over time as it gets more ingrained into the system." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "29:25", "start": 1764.57, "text": "That's right. Like it's like, it's like electricity, right? Like if you- You, you, you want, you want more power lines, right? everywhere. Right? Like you want, you want a, a more connected grid, right? Because then you're safer, right? Like, if, if one spot breaks, you still get power delivery, right? yeah. You know, and nobody's gonna make electricity illegal now in your area anymore just because some people don't like it. Right, because it's" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "29:48", "start": 1787.95, "text": "simply too useful. Too many people's lives depend on this thing. Like it would just be foolish to kind of, you know, do that. Now Numbers gonna go up, but they're going to corrupt this thing, that it's gonna create this kind of KYC compliance nightmare. There's gonna be kind of everything has to be KYC regulated, and, you know, there's no-- maybe they make moves against self-custody or peer-to-peer. what do-- what would you say to that? Do you think that's a, a real thing or not really, or it's a risk but not that high?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "30:22", "start": 1821.68, "text": "I mean, I think the, the battle for, for freedom of transaction, freedom of expression will never end, right? Like, i- it's like, like nobody has this conversation about free speech, right? Like, oh, it's like, oh, no, we shouldn't have big newspapers versus small newspapers. Like, nobody's arguing about that. It's like the, the battle really is, is like, can you have freedom of expression and freedom of transaction or not, right? So, I, I, I think like the, the point is you want more monetized actors having So it's in their interest to make the asset fungible." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "30:54", "start": 1853.9, "text": "Yeah, that's, I think that's mostly true, but I could, I could imagine, like, imagine an Odell or someone who might say, \"Hey, look, some of these treasury companies, they might have obviously NGU aligned inc-incentive, but they may not care as much about the freedom side of things, you know? Like, they may want the number to go up, but they may not care about your freedom to transact.\"" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "31:10", "start": 1870.25, "text": "Yeah, that's, that's a fair point, but, but the thing is Fight regulation, you can't fight the state being poor. What, what are you gonna do? Go scream on the streets? Like, you can't, like, you know, protests don't work. Like, what are you gonna go protest? Like, it doesn't, you know, it's, it's idiotic. Like, you know, the way you change things is by, you know, buying the government, right? Like, and in order to buy the government, you have to have money." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "31:41", "start": 1901.33, "text": "We gotta get NGU, we gotta get the Bitcoin people wealthier. That's, we You have influence over governments, right? And they will make sure that, you know, their asset is protected in the way that they prefer. So, yeah, I mean, arguably" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "32:00", "start": 1919.74, "text": "with the Trump phenomenon, at least partially, the crypto industry, now, yeah, Bitcoin and maybe some shitcoin people, they put in some money, they supported Trump, and they kind of, arguably, you could say they tried to orange pill the Trump family, and now the Trump family is kind of on board. Now, maybe there's some downside to" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "32:16", "start": 1936.31, "text": "that too. You need, you need them to have the same bags. Because they don't mess with the bags. Like, if the politicians are earning BTC, they want freedom to transact their, you know, corrupt, bribes or whatever. Exactly, like, it's in everybody's interest to transact the stuff, right? you, you want that. I, I think like, there's a lot of Bitcoiners that like remind me a little bit of like Canadian, firearms regulation. It's like Canadian firearms owners for, for decades, they sort of like always had this approach of like, you know, if you just don't- Look the bully in the eye, right? Like they don't mess with your stuff, but it just keeps on getting eroded, right? Because, you know, they're just sort of like, you know, we're just gonna stay quiet, hopefully there's no shooting and nobody comes after the guns, right? But now we're like in a, in a point in Canada where it's like, you know, they're just taking everything. So The, the reality is like, you have to capitalize yourself, you have to build lobby, you have to build a lot of mass, you have to be an unfuckable, you know, system. Yeah. And then they can't do anything about it because you own them, right? Like that, that's, you know, that's how it works. Like People have this sort of like, you know, romantic view of democracy from like a hundred years ago, right? And, and that's not the reality. It's just that like every single system gets gained, and whoever has access to more capital and more power gets to set the rules, right? And, and I think that we have to get there. You know, we have to, to try to, to tame government from the pocket, not from the gun, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "33:49", "start": 2028.74, "text": "Interesting. Yeah. And so in a way, I've heard different ways of explaining this idea, but one idea is that A lot of early Bitcoiners, because they've become wealthy, they've become more powerful, and so it's kind of like the elites in society, a greater percentage of them are Bitcoiners, and then maybe some of the current existing fiat elites, they've also kind of come in because now they wanna hold Bitcoin too. So I guess what happens to society as more of the quote-unquote elites have some Bitcoin and what kind of shift in society will that create?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:21", "start": 2061.06, "text": "Yep. I, I mean, like, you know, societies, like, since literally ever have been run by a form or another of aristocracy, right? Like, a, a, a-and that's always the people who have access to the most amount of wealth. You know, it's never gonna change. Yeah, like everyone, that" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "34:36", "start": 2075.79, "text": "seems to be, you know-- No, that, that's" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:38", "start": 2077.66, "text": "it. Like, that's how it works, right? Like, you, you can give the, the plebs the vote, that's how, you know, people like to describe it, but" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "34:51", "start": 2090.54, "text": "Nobody wants chaos, nobody wants war. I mean, sure, there's a few people who win from that here and there, but nobody wants war in their own backyard, right? Like that's, that's universal. Like, you know, e-even like, you know, the people who, who, you know, spend, you know, make all their money from military industrial complex, they don't want war in their house. Right. They don't wanna send their" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:10", "start": 2109.59, "text": "sons and daughters away to war," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "35:11", "start": 2110.71, "text": "right? Exactly. Like it's like war, but not here, right? So, so, you It, it's no different really than, you know, how it plays out with, with Bitcoin. It's like I want freedom for my thing here, y-you know? And, and we're just sort of like, you know, extrapolating that to an asset that's international and, and it can't be De internationalized, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "35:35", "start": 2135.06, "text": "Like, like Goldwatts. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, I think there's been some shifting attitudes on debt also, right? Because part of this whole Bitcoin treasury play, it seems to me, now I guess there's different interpretations here, but I think one interpretation is it's the leverage Embedded into these treasury companies that allows them to outperform Bitcoin, right? Because now, to be clear, this isn't like going fifty x long, it's more like Twenty percent leverage, so let's say one point two x, maybe one point three x, or some of these companies are more like one point one x, and that debt is, you know, because they're getting cheap fin- cheap finance, right? Let's say- Well, it's fiat priced," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "36:14", "start": 2174.23, "text": "right? Like it's priced in dollars, right? So like, you know, the, the, the Bitcoin hurdle rate is like what, whatever, twenty, thirty percent a year, and fiat is, you know, like- Like the opposite of that." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:26", "start": 2185.85, "text": "Yeah, people can borrow at ten percent or less, and I guess some of that can be applied at the individual level. It's just that you and I as individuals, we can't get the same terms that a big public company can. I mean, people did," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "36:37", "start": 2197.07, "text": "you know, like ten years ago, a lot of people took mortgages on their houses and bought-- bought BTC, right? Like-- Well, that's on the" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "36:43", "start": 2203.14, "text": "fiat side, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, and, and the mortgages are fiat subsidized, right? Like fiat mortgages." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "36:49", "start": 2209.36, "text": "Exactly. Financial company, you can essentially mortgage your shares, right? Like you can, I, I'm overly like being very simplistic here, but like that's the idea, is that like you have assets, like you, you can either borrow against your BTC, which is the collateral there, but you can borrow against, you know, a, a, a form of shares, right? Like you can, you can borrow against different things that financial systems understand better, and that's why they can get better pricing. On, on that debt." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "37:18", "start": 2237.61, "text": "Yeah. So I think what we're seeing over time is the interest rates for this Bitcoin collateralized side of things come down a little bit over time as more of the market understands what this is. I think that's something we've noticed, and- Of course, like you said, people wanna get in and find the ways to get the cheap fiat and put it into Bitcoin, and that's obviously, that's this whole treasury company play, like that's, that's at least part of the story. It's not the whole story, but it's a big part of the story, isn't it?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "37:45", "start": 2264.8, "text": "yes, and, and I, I think things are gonna like switch up a, a little bit once, like you have tradfi banks, you know, like you got your, you know, like really like corner Bank, right? Like I'm not talking about, you know, JP Morgan that's hard for like an average person to open an account at, I'm talking about like really the corner, you know, Bank of America, the corner TD Bank, right? Like having a product where, you know, like they, they let you borrow against your BTC, for example, the same way that they let you borrow against your shares." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "38:19", "start": 2299.23, "text": "I, I, I think the, the market for Bitcoin collateralized loans is gonna greatly improve, right? Because it's gonna be a lot more competition. You, you know, and that's gonna be true also versus the Bitcoin strategy companies, right? So retail is gonna go and say, \"Hey, you know, I can go buy MicroStrategy or I can just post buy Bitcoin and borrow myself,\" you know, i-i-it's gonna change the dynamic a bit, and that's also gonna bring down The, the interest, the interest rate for, say, like lending, right? Like where, you know, right now if they wanna borrow money to, to re-lend, you know, like it's a certain cost, but if the banks are used to people borrowing against BTC, they might lend to lending at a cheaper price, you know, or they might just buy land, right? Like, it's like-" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:08", "start": 2348.45, "text": "Yeah, yeah. I think there's, there's gonna be a lot of interest in this lending stuff, and it has come up, and I understand, for some people in See that as like they have more of a moral or religious or philosophical objection to debt just in general, but ultimately there'll be a lot of people who see this, yeah" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "39:27", "start": 2367.36, "text": "It, it's like, it's none of your business what people do with their money." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "39:32", "start": 2372.08, "text": "Nobody cares." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "39:33", "start": 2373.08, "text": "Yeah, I, I, I'm not, I'm not personally opposed to using debt, but yeah, certainly it just, it'll be interesting to see that kind of, 'cause there'll be people who are kind of commenting on that, but then they'll say, \"Well, look, hey, you can't stop me, right? \" 'Cause there'll be someone else saying, like, on the other" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "39:51", "start": 2390.97, "text": "side of that, this, but there'll be someone At the end of the day, they're like, you know, totally normie life economically speaking, on, on, you know, in private. you know, I don't think you should take your, your financial advice from, from Twitter in general. Just don't take any advice from Twitter." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:12", "start": 2412.33, "text": "Unless it's buy Bitcoin, you know, that's the only, that's really the safest thing." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "40:16", "start": 2416.35, "text": "It is, and that's the cool thing too, is that like, you know, we, we can talk about all this financialization and all these angles and all this shit, but" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "40:27", "start": 2426.86, "text": "Cave man, you know, like, and buy, buy a bunch of BTC, put in your cold card, and, and like, go live your life and not give a fuck. Y-you know, at the end of the day, it's that, that's the promise, right? It's like people use it however they want, and, and, you know, honestly, that is the best way to use it." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:42", "start": 2442.35, "text": "Yeah. I think the other interesting thing- I'm curious if you have any take on, I guess, mindset shifts, right? Because Bitcoin has gone up quite a lot, right, as we speak. It's whatever, $118,000 per BTC," }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "40:58", "start": 2458.25, "text": "And yet, there's like a bunch of OGs who maybe aren't as public on Twitter or online, and they're just kind of, you know, some of them are maybe a bit disillusioned or maybe they're just kind of checked out a little bit, even though they're still hodling most of their, the coins, What are you seeing there in terms of mindset shifts there? Is it, are the, are people, like annoyed with what's going on or even like all this Nuts and Core stuff? What are you, what are you seeing and hearing?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "41:28", "start": 2488.42, "text": "No, no change. I don't know a single OG that's not just like bullish, living their own best lives." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:35", "start": 2494.72, "text": "Yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "41:35", "start": 2495.16, "text": "Like, you know, I, I, I think, I think most of the noise is coming from recent Sort of entrance into Bitcoin, so it's like their first sort of like, it's the first cycle, or second cycle, yeah, not the third or fourth. Yeah, but" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "41:46", "start": 2506.09, "text": "like I, I" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "41:47", "start": 2507.29, "text": "don't, I don't know anybody who's, who's like an old, an oldie who's not just like complete, just like, \"Yeah, this is great, things are working according to plan, let's just live our lives,\" and, you know, and things are gonna keep on progressing. Yeah, I, I think a lot of the, the sort of like this bearish sentiment is just coming from, from people feeling the, feeling the, the price not going up." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "42:14", "start": 2533.92, "text": "Yeah, and I think that's something where I think people maybe have a mismatched expectation, right? Because there are people who-- And okay, maybe some of these people, they came in in like very early years, so they're used to, let's say, the volatility of the twenty thirteen cycle or the twenty seventeen cycle. But here we are to twenty twenty five, you know, it's just not as volatile. And it's okay, yeah, it's growing, but it's not growing as fast as it was back in those days, and maybe for them, they're a bit, maybe they're just not excited by that, maybe that's not enough for them." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "42:43", "start": 2563.24, "text": "I think Livera, like the main thing is, I think a lot of people talk a big game about, you know, the freedom and all this shit on Bitcoin, but at the end of the day, they're all just looking for a way to get rich quick. And, and like, and Bitcoin isn't that. I mean, like, you know, there's probably a reason why you weren't there earlier, is because it was very messy and it was like, you know, like people saw their net worth go down 10x. Like go down 10x. You know, Bitcoin went down from like a hundred and thirty-three to like what, what was it? Ten dollars, twelve dollars?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:16", "start": 2596.35, "text": "Yeah, there were some early big drops. Like, I wasn't around before my time, but I think there was a drop from thirty-two to like two dollars. There was a drop from like two sixty to like fifty, from like twelve hundred down to like one fifty, twenty thousand down to like" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "43:31", "start": 2611.42, "text": "three" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "43:32", "start": 2611.94, "text": "thousand, sixty thousand down to fifty thousand, you know? And everybody was poor back then, right? Like, it's not It's like, you know, people putting their mortgages into that, right? Like, so, i-i-it's like, i-i-it's just, you know, like, that's, that's the ride, you know? Like, if you wanna be early in an asset, you know, it's gonna take a lot of pain. Like, instead of focusing on, on the price and the stuff, like, go, go, go generate value and go create things, and, you know, like Go, go work on what you're good at and, and buy more Bitcoin, you know, like that's it. Just like go, go do your thing. It's, I, I think again, it's like this bear sentiment really is just because of the price action. Like, you know, price goes up, everybody gets euphoric, everybody's happy again. It, it, it really is just a product of, of, you know?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "44:20", "start": 2660.11, "text": "a product of the price. Everybody cares about the price." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "44:23", "start": 2663.05, "text": "And I think people maybe are just a bit, upset that it hasn't gone up as much as they would have hoped, right? And, and like you said, that's like you were saying, I think that's really, that's what it is for some of these people. I want to get your take on the whole \"nots and coals\" thing because obviously that's the whole drama about this now. it's kind of like you can't avoid it. I know You kind of have issues both with the core people and with the not-so-core people, so maybe you're like in the third camp. What, w-where are you at on this?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "44:53", "start": 2692.61, "text": "I mean, first of all, like, I, Bitcoin doesn't have camps. I don't understand why people are playing team A versus team B. It's just too reductionist. it's even more idiotic than, than, than, yeah, it's just, just dumb. yeah, I mean, like there's a multitude of things. I guess I'll just be brief on this, like not that my opinion matters anyways. you know, like it's a necessary change to core. y-you know, the, the reasons for it are sort of like very mediocre. it's mediocrity everywhere. I think, I think the current sort of like- Like the folks in Core probably don't use Bitcoin, if they do, it's like some small Lightning stuff. It's very obvious, you know, the client isn't progressing in a way that really helps Base Layer, achieve things that it needs to. You know, we don't even have an indexer on Core, you know, Core doesn't support Bib thirty nine, Core doesn't even have authentication on RPC, i-i-while people are trying to make Goldberg, Rupergoldberg machine sort of things with Lightning and, and all their shit, like So, I, I think like core is sort of like misguided right now, but, you know, again, it's like, it's completely voluntary, it's fully, you know, people work on whatever they wanna work on. Like, I mean, like, who am I to say what it should be, what the priorities should be? But, you know, from my perspective, it's like, you know, it's just a lot of shit that, you know, it's completely low priority and nobody cares. and, and I think the market shows. I mean, like, i-it's very obvious that, you know, where the, the majority of the, the dev funding goes to, what people are doing, most people can run old clients, so it doesn't really matter. and then, I mean, like, you know, I always liked the idea of having knots like around, it was like a nice to have a little fork of Bitcoin that sort of like is, is like sort of follows. But, you know, again, the guys went like full retard, you know, like it's, you know, like there's a lot of good people there, there's good people on both sides, everybody's good. Like, it, it, like, I, I don't, like, I don't ascribe malice to like most sides, just people are And then it just keeps on like, you know, it's snowballing into like this shitshow that it is now. I think once you bring up C Sam, you kind of lose the argument. you know, it's just like, okay, when you say what about the children, that's it. Like, it's like, really, guys, you really have to go there? it just, it doesn't look good from an outside perspective." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "47:29", "start": 2849.12, "text": "Yeah. And some of the fear mongering has been, from my perspective, just crazy, right? They've been saying stuff like, \"Core thirty is the end of Bitcoin, Bitcoin is gonna die,\" and it's just- I mean, it's just crazy moral grandstanding and just like FUD that it, I, I mean, it's weird to me." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "47:44", "start": 2864.07, "text": "You, you know, you really marginalize your own self, like when you, when you go that far. but again, like, you know Again, filters, it's not that filters don't work a hundred percent, they work a bit, y-you know, but, but like there is a lot of nuance in that, right? That so, you know, any, and if you're not willing to say that filters practically, technically don't work, you know what I mean? Like, it's just like both sides just keep on being like completely, extremes and, and we really didn't get anywhere. And at the end of the day, none of the shit matters unless you have a fork. So I think people should put their money where the, their mouth where the money is, create a fork, and if people follow the fork, then great." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:29", "start": 2909.31, "text": "If not, yeah. I mean, what would the fork even be at this point, right? Like, how would they-" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "48:34", "start": 2913.88, "text": "You could make, you could make up return be a consensus rule that decides if the operation- I mean, you can do whatever you want. Actually, Portland made a, an interesting proposal, on the mailing list very, very early, like not, not like sort of worked through, but, you know" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "48:51", "start": 2930.71, "text": "I think it's something" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "48:51", "start": 2931.17, "text": "like restricting witness size or something like this." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "48:54", "start": 2934.09, "text": "Yeah, yeah, there was some conversation on that. So like, you know, you'd have to be thoughtful and you don't wanna break things, but it, it should be like, even if you're on the other side, I think it's in your interest to sort of like help the people who wanna make a proposal to restrict these things, be a solid proposal and see where the market wants to go. I think it's important. I, I, you know, I really don't think we should support so Monetary data on Bitcoin, I think is idiotic too. it's not good because first of all, like, you know, when, when Casey, you know, created his first ordinal stuff, like he had a lot of respect for the size of the data going in and figuring out like what to do. I mean, sure, he stuck the, the dick butts in there and whatever, but like he could have done worse. Right. And I mean, it" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "49:41", "start": 2980.84, "text": "was him that-- It was he that, you know, arguably, this is like the analogy of the whole smart cow thing, that he found a way to hack it, data into the witness onto the input side of the transaction, and then on the other side, people feel like, \"Oh, that broke the data carrier size thing, and is it a bug?\" They fixed it with documentation, other people saying, \"No, it, you" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "50:02", "start": 3001.77, "text": "know I, I do like, I ask hackers out there, like, like Casey, that like if you figure out how to do shit, you don't necessarily need to do it. You know what I mean? Because like bad guys don't have a lot of imagination and, and, you know, they're not gonna figure it out. Like nobody figured that out for this long, right? So, so like just, just don't do it. You know, like, like it's like when Todd created like Libra node, like you don't have to do it. You know, like just, just" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "50:38", "start": 3037.65, "text": "take a dump in the middle of the street just because you can, and you wanna prove to everybody that you can take a dump in the middle of the street, like, I, I don't know, like I feel like, seriously, like, you know, e-everything right now is so unnecessary, mostly because people have nothing else to do, I think. I don't know, like Go build something, you, you know, like go, I don't know, pick up surfing. Y-you know, like you don't have to like, like do all this stupidity just because you can. but anyways, that's, that's my, you know, irrelevant opinion." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "51:09", "start": 3068.81, "text": "Gotcha. So any thought on implementations? Like, should there be multiple imita-implementations, or is it a security risk to have that? Or, you know, I know there's that Libbitcoin kernel project where they're trying to help separate out some of the consensus Aspects of it, where are you at there? Like, do you see it as there should be multiple implementations? I, of course, I know there already are, but do you think, you know, that's a good thing? I think the" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "51:35", "start": 3094.55, "text": "main problem right now is this, like, right now the, the main sort of release implementation is, is, is managed on GitHub, right? GitHub has horrific moderation tools. I think the, the people who are maintaining and managing users, businesses and stuff like are very bad at that, like really bad at that, is madly bad at that. And, I, I think everybody needs to sort of take a step back and, and maybe reanalyze how they handle the, the non-community, let's call it the industry." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "52:15", "start": 3134.55, "text": "You know, I, I, yeah, i-it's just the mediocrity on, on how things have been handled and, and like, and I think like people get mad at the other side, so they like, instead of just, you know, having very stoic response, you know, they'll just go and kind of provoke back. There's a lot of that. I, you know, and, and I get it. I mean, like, listen, I am the last person that could do that job. Like, you know, I'd never be able to have that level of sto" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "52:45", "start": 3165.23, "text": "I, I think we need to, to sort of like have a deep breath and try to move back to how things used to be handled, I, I think was better. and, and you know what? Like, I, I think maybe we're moving to a point now where maybe like treating Bitcoin core consensus more like kernel And, and having different, not different forks per se, but different distributions might be helpful already kinda do. There's BTCd for, For Lightning, there is," }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "53:21", "start": 3200.72, "text": "there's, there's a few other things, I, I forget now." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "53:24", "start": 3203.58, "text": "Yeah, like Libbitcoin and Rust Bitcoin stuff and a few things, yeah." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "53:28", "start": 3208.11, "text": "So maybe that is a, a viable path? So that, y-you know, technically it's the same thing, but practically, at least there's a distribution of preferences, I think that might be more helpful. Y-you know, I, I mean Personally, I like my software to be a cathedral, but maybe Bitcoin, it's time for Bitcoin to move into a bazaar." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "53:53", "start": 3233.25, "text": "you know, like, I, for example, I, I really dislike Linux, right? Like I, I like FreeBSD because it's monolithic and, and, you know, there's just like a few guys that handle it, and, you know, and they're very authoritarian on how they do things, but that doesn't work for Bitcoin. You know, but the cool thing is if you have more distributions of Bitcoin, you can have distributions with more sort of authoritative ways of handling things, right? And then you let the market sort of sort out what, what makes the best sense." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "54:28", "start": 3267.62, "text": "and I, I like the idea of moving, you know, like, a standardness things into consensus, but again, it's like you don't wanna mess with a thing that's working either. So, I don't know, it's just- There's no good answer, it's things are gonna have to be experimented and it's so early." }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "54:44", "start": 3284.26, "text": "Yeah, unfortunately, not a, not any easy answers there, I think. so, I guess, closing things out, I guess anything else on the CoinKite side you wanna mention, before we, you know, close things down?" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "54:58", "start": 3297.95, "text": "No, I mean, like, you know, again, it's like on, on, on our CoinKite side, it's like sort of like heads down, sort of just trying to build the best" }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "55:08", "start": 3308.45, "text": "You know, it's like, how can we make things that don't break? You know, how can we give you more visibility, make it easier, make it s-more secure, add more features? You know, it's kind of like, you know, like the, the seed vault stuff. You know, it's like, how can we allow you to do everything you need or the, the key teleport stuff? you know, how can I help you transact things being multinational person? we're, we're trying to build the, the device for this, the, the, the sovereign individual, right? So, y-y-you know, in, in, you know, we do love the fact that people approach us with ideas and, and sort of like their personal sort of like, issues trying to live in multiple countries, trying to do things that way, and if we can come up with technical solutions for it, like, you know, power, power to the people that, that wanna sort of like live in the next Sort of paradigm of, of financial freedom. so that, that's it on that side. yeah, I mean, people know where to find me and, you know, you can come scream at me after about my comments on, on core and things. About your opinion. Exactly, right?" }, { "speaker": "stephan", "time": "56:15", "start": 3375.1, "text": "But, yeah, I guess that's, that's where it's at. so yeah, I guess coinkite dot com, people can check it out, and of course, bitcoin treasuries dot net for those, people interested in the Bitcoin treas and, yeah, well, I'll, I'll, we'll leave it there and, thanks for joining me. I'll see you soon." }, { "speaker": "nvk", "time": "56:36", "start": 3395.73, "text": "Thanks for having me, Livera. It was as nice as usual." } ] }