They're disingenuous arguers because they set up these arguments, but they don't actually believe what they're arguing.

I hope that they don't take extreme measures in the face of that and do something that would disrupt Bitcoin's narrative publicly or threaten the use of the software for everyone else because literally their claim is that what these people are doing is disrupting the software.

You're building a bunch of tools that I think could probably be used against people using transactions that you want to make.

The leader of the current free world and market economy is leading the transition to Bitcoin and crypto stuff, largely through stable coins.

And they're using that to entrench the global power structure.

It ultimately migrates to sort of Bitcoin as a global reserve asset.

Rizzo, the Rizzo, how you doing, man?

I'm enjoying it, man.

Hold it on with both hands.

We've got a tight grip.

It's the middle of a bull market you know the the the bulls bucking the middle of the bull market price does not but like spiritually you know there's a lot of bucking i think we should talk about the uh being in the middle of the bull market because we did a show for bitcoin's birthday back in january right at the start of the year um and we were kind of speculating what might happen this year and i think we were both overly optimistic on a few things um the first one like trump was kind of the story at the time um we were talking a lot about strategic reserve well he's still yeah he's still a big part of the story but i don't think it's dominating the narrative as much as it was then um and what do you think of what he's done because for me like when i look at it there's been a lot of words and basically no action and the only action we have seen has been pretty negative i would say in terms of like what's happened to the samurai devs um so like give us your sort of overview on what you think?

I mean, it's changed the whole tone in the environment, right?

So like he's a president, he has to work with Congress to pass laws and regulations.

So like, you know, you can sort of argue like, is the letter, how different is the letter of the law?

So maybe in that case, like the Genius Act is like the only new thing besides the executive orders, which made the strategic reserve in the stockpile, got rid of debanking and other things.

But like the tone is like 100% different.

And the tone is 100%, you know, what's pushing forward, like the institutional adoption that's happening right now with the bitcoin treasury companies uh and what's going on with the big banks like onboarding stable coins and you're hearing like you know uh sometimes you know the big you know as a bitcoin you have to step out in the broader crypto land it's like google's integrating crypto payments and ai lightning wall is going to be in there with you know you know there's big like big things happening um you know on a scale where it's like okay let's just take the google ai thing okay so like they're going to integrate like a lightning wallet into you know google's ai platform the idea that like there would be talking about it was like theoretically impossible like prior to trump and it's all about the tone of the administration and sure they have to follow through and sure there's some things that like the administration could be better on and again this is not like a huge validation of the current administration by any means it's just that you know it's a statement of like they have changed the tone and culture very obviously maybe you have to be in america to see it but um yeah it's it's night and day uh again like whether or not they're like good stewards for bitcoin or like the trump family's involvement in crypto is good whether like you know they have plans to make bitcoin nakedly partisan which i think it's pretty obvious that they they want that that outcome right um you know it's a mixed bag but like you know it undoubtedly like there would be you know there's just a whole tonal difference the way the things are talked about what companies are doing things yeah right I don't know it's like how could you've what else could you have wanted at this point right well I agree that the the tone's changed obviously like the regulatory environments change and it's allowing bitcoin businesses to go and build bitcoin tools in to a degree like obviously not if that's a privacy tool they seem to be very unhappy about that and there's now this kind of expansion the patriarch that they're talking about but like as the administration themselves like they they obviously sign into law or actually i don't know how it works they sign the executive order to do a strategic bitcoin reserve but they've not really done anything and the stuff they have done is like well that's like technically that's currently law and like there is the the the any bitcoin that's held by the government is considered part of the reserve like officially as of now so the way the executive order works is that it an executive order like creates not law but it's essentially like uh it's like a law in lieu of something else right so like you know as long as that's the decree then that like that's what it is and that legally like any you know organization or agency within the united states would have to report that to the federal government and that would be part of the strategic reserve so i mean it's it's as real as a law could get without them passing the bitcoin act all the bitcoin act really does is it present it prevents something from you know like card game an executive order can be as like a one as a is like a two pair you know and like a congressional act is like a full house you know it's like it beats most hands so it's like it's there you know if there's another hand like it's played and like wipes it out uh but it's you know for all intents and purposes like in the current legal climate it's there right it's achieved um so yeah i don't know i would dispute that the trump administration i guess if we had this conversation on january you know uh what is it what's the birthday third january 3rd i mean yeah you're the big What kind of story in Rizzo?

Well, I'm a January 9th guy.

You know, I'm not a January 3rd Bitcoin.

I'm in the very small minority of people who think since the day that the software was released should be considered Bitcoin's birthday.

So I'm a separatist on that issue.

In the spirit of forks and division.

But yeah, no, look, I mean, it's hard to imagine like a conference like I was at today, the NYC Bitcoin Treasuries Unconference, where there was so much institutional presence there.

like it's just really hard to imagine that have happened without the trumps and you can say what you will about there's a lot of pluses and minuses on their participation but like i don't know i'd take the over on that they've kind of pretty much changed like the idea that there's conferences in new york that like weren't conferences in new york for many years like prior to this that is the one thing that has clearly changed this time is that institutions are definitely here like when sailor came out in 2021 um there was a lot of talk about this and nothing really happened like there's a couple of companies that did a similar thing back then but this has obviously been the year where institutions have actually come to bitcoin corporates have been putting on the balance sheet um i'm still kind of skeptical about the treasury company thing and we will get into that but do you think um do you think this has changed the four-year cycle because this is something that you've been like a four-year cycle maxion for quite a long time now yeah i've been it's been my teddy bear for a long time i was i had a podcast with matt hogan where we debated it um uh yeah i i think like look if any time is different my my steel man for like why this time is different so i so i've developed a steel man for like here's why i think this time is different and i don't know if it's enough for me to walk off my position of like i think there's gonna be another four-year cycle because i think again the four-year cycles are psychological and like people get overextended especially if it runs in q4 uh i think the steel man for this time is different essentially for me goes um you know if you think about the way that bitcoin could have become mainstream like in the world like there was there was maybe like a thousand scenarios in which bitcoin like became global money there you know in 2009 you know let's just say uh there was you know there was all these domino outcomes like a world in which like the united states is like specifically spearheading that and like they are by doing by spearheading that global transition to this new system, both entrenching the current power structure and then ensuring the US dollars placed in that structure like indefinitely is like an incredibly specific outcome that like removes like 99% of the outcomes.

So, you know, there's a board game in the United States like called Guess Who and you sort of have to guess the facial attributes of a person.

And so one of the quirks of the game is you'll say, you know, oh, does this person have a beard and it'll wipe out like three people or, you know, this person like, you know, whatever this wipes out like 90 of the options like it's like it's almost like you said you know this person have hair and it's like no it like wipes out 90 just danny yeah 90 of the options um and it's uh you know because again it's like a very specific outcome like maybe there were outcomes where el salvador led a global coalition of nations that established some alternative of Bitcoin basket for like sovereign adoption and that the U.S.

was a laggard and they lagged behind or maybe no countries did.

And it like remained a grassroots thing, like a specific reality where like the leader of the current free world and market economy is leading the transition to Bitcoin and crypto stuff, largely through stable coins.

I mean, we can debate that, but that's what's happening.

And they're using that to entrench the global power structure is a very incredibly specific outcome.

And I think it gets you to a point where it's like, okay, well, if that happens and this is how the industry mainstreams, then, you know, there's not that much, there's not like a ton of like huge disruption left.

You're like, you're a lot of the way towards this being a, because again, it's like, you can kind of think about it.

It's like Bitcoin began.

And then it's sort of like the open question is like, okay, how does it become the money of the world?

How does it become like mainstream as money?

And so, like, you know, we live in the window of time where that's an unknowable answer.

Like, none of us know that.

But, like, this feels like a very specific answer.

It becomes global money by the United States, you know, adopting a policy of pushing stable coins abroad to, you know, entrench the dollar, displace all other foreign currencies, and then eventually, like, they have to save in Bitcoin to, you know, offset the deficit and other things in order to do that.

That's incredibly specific.

and I would have argued in like as far back you know maybe as recently as 2021 incredibly unlikely it's actually astounding that that happened um and how quickly it happened and how people that we know like were involved in like you know a three-month period in which you know you always think about Bretton Woods and you're like a bunch of guys got together for a weekend and like made the financial system and you're like yeah they like took luggage there and they ate and they went home and like you know they left with like the financial system being different like we saw that happen, but it was so fast that even we didn't notice it.

It's like that happened.

In the summer of 2024, the people we knew went to the Trump administration with this idea to use stablecoins to entrench US hegemony internationally and to use Bitcoin as, it ultimately migrates to Bitcoin as a global reserve asset.

How aligned that coalition is on that, it's pretty clear that that's what happened.

And it's pretty shocking how little public discussion there was on it and just how clearly it seems to have been enacted.

And so it's quite possible that we lived through one of these events that just was like, no, that happened already.

It's over.

Like, that's the way that this is going to happen.

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I mean, that's a pretty wild framing when you put it like that.

I've not heard it described like that and it's pretty fucking crazy.

Do you think, like, again, we were talking just before we started recording and you were saying that there's people trapped in like a 2021 mindset and i i may be one of them um i think you're in the car you're fighting the carbonite yeah but like my my worry with this stuff is like what risk are we introducing to bitcoin like i i get the trojan horse analogy i think it's probably going to be right but there is like an alternate reality where instead of them taking the horse into troy they just burnt it down and like what i am worried about is bitcoin still being freedom money but what are you talking about specifically like bitcoin still being able to use as freedom money like not just having this as like a kyc store of value yeah so you're introducing a 2021 meme and saying like is this bad for this 2021 meme um which you know is the thing i hope that bitcoin is freedom money for people right uh look all these things are um so there's bitcoin is this competition of ideas right and i think that the culture basically you know, as far as I can figure out over time, like what it does is it elevates sort of figures in the movement and then it sort of, it coagulates in different periods around like this, what I would call like, you know, a utopian vision.

So like the freedom money of like the 2020 at one era was the utopian vision of that time.

It was said like Bitcoin is going to mainstream through grassroots adoption, through self-custody, through the culture becoming mainstream and becoming, you know, Bitcoin, you know, so Bitcoin has a counterculture movement that would, you know, spread globally.

And then and that Bitcoin, like the people would sort of rise up outside of the governments and sort of remove power from government.

Like that's a very specific instantiation of like the idea of how Bitcoin would mainstream.

And so I think like the history of Bitcoin is like a history of Bitcoin gravitating to different people who have different answers for this.

Right.

And so like, you know, in the 2014 era, you know, Andreas had the idea of Bitcoin as like Internet money.

Right.

Like, you know, the Internet money, Internet of money.

Right.

And so that was kind of the utopia of the time.

And Bitcoin was going to be used for payments all over the place.

And Bitcoin was going to disrupt the banks and kind of do all these things.

The 2017 era had its own kind of figures that kind of had that.

And then I think the 2021 era had its own collection of figures that collectively sort of had this vision for Bitcoin.

And so one of my jokes with the old timers that I think most of them laugh at is that if you went to a Bitcoin conference in the past...

like so like let's just say i teleported you back to like the 2013 bitcoin conference like how long would it take for you to notice that you're at a bitcoin conference like so so that so the the analogy here is like would you know you're in like the same place because it's so different right and so like you know if i teleported somebody from like the new york bitcoin treasuries unconference to like the 2021 ross albrecht speaking from prison tony hawk on a skateboard uh f the government people screaming on stage like version of the culture like they would find themselves in a place that they thought was completely unrecognizable and i think if you went back to 2017 where it's like you know max geyser's on stage screaming like bitcoin is the only secure database like it's the it's the way that all sort of you know cryptograph like you know settlements global settlements is going to happen on top of you know layered layered bitcoin we're building like you know it's like every in 2013 it's like you would have had a similar thing with people like global commerce or maybe you'd see Amir Taki like with AK-47 being like, this is going to be like deep state, like, you know, internet money that like, you know, people will throw off the yoke of the state and uprise.

So like every, every version of Bitcoin has kind of like a different kind of like, I like the word phrase utopian vision, because it's essentially like, you know, it's a, it's a way that like, or a theory on like how Bitcoin will be mainstreamed.

Like, I think what we're living through right now is like, Michael Saylor has a very specific vision on that it's like pretty new it's like i'd say like maybe and he acknowledged this on stage today like maybe within the last year or something that he's kind of stumbled upon where it's like michael saylor was somebody who like was in the culture in the movement very important but like i don't think like was like leading the whole movement like in 2021 like he wasn't like somebody that people were like oh like that guy is like going in the direction of the mood there were other people that we would have looked to for that uh but this is very much like the culture being remade in sailor's image like i say like you know this is sailor mania this is the sailor cycle and sailor's specific vision for bitcoin mainstreaming as a financial asset that is highly securitized and pushed through financial institutions is like is a very specific utopian vision but like the thing that i think that's the most interesting about it stick with me is that it's the most compatible with like the current regulatory framework and the also this idea that the Trump administration has of pushing like stablecoin adoption globally and maintaining its role as sort of like the global superpower.

And I think if you look at every other version of like the utopian visions, they're not as highly compatible.

And so like the new thing here is like sailors particular utopian vision, Bitcoin mainstreaming through financialization as a credit instrument pushed through institutions where retail adoption and custody risk are solved through regulated financial products is an incredibly specific vision, but it's also highly compatible with something that the government would tolerate and traditional financial institutions would tolerate.

Contrast that with the 2021 era of, we're going to get rid of the banks, like, F the banks, like, they can't deplatform us, we're going to make self-custody a thing.

Like, that's very antithetical to institutions, very antithetical to the state.

so you know the thing where you know i get wrapped up in what sailor's doing is like maybe this is the maybe this version the utopian version of bitcoin has the most chance of happening because it's so synergistic with like the other power structures it's the least uh offensive to them like the idea of freedom money you know just that that kind of verbiage and like what we meant when we said freedom money you know again it speaks to sort of this like grassroots uprising kind of idea that Bitcoin would, you know, scale as a global counterculture and challenge like the status quo, that that's threatening to the institutions and the state.

And so now we have like a utopian vision for Bitcoin, but it's highly compatible with those things.

And that's what Saylor, that's why I think Saylor is getting a lot of momentum because it's actually something that's pretty new.

That makes sense.

It does make sense.

And I think for Bitcoin to have done what I would consider succeed, it needs to have done all of those things.

Like, I think just being a financialized asset is not interesting enough on its own.

Like, do you think the kind of freedom money elements come off the back of this financialization of Bitcoin?

Yeah, the trick is it's like looking at different parts of the same painting.

It's like, so is Bitcoin any less of a payment method than it was in 2013?

The answer is no.

It's like I can pay you for a hat or I can buy something at the Danny Knowles store with Bitcoin.

It's just that's not the focal point of the culture.

And so, you know, each of these, like the Bitcoin culture is like, you know, shadow puppets, like, you know, you make your hand and like, there's the big scary thing on the wall.

And so like, you're just shooting the same thing from different angles.

And it's like, the thing's the same.

Like, how many lines of code about, you know, for all the knots, like, horror drama, like, how many lines of code of Bitcoin are like different from the original version, like, very little.

And so like, what's happening is like, it's us imposing the light, shooting the light on the thing, and it's creating a different version of it.

it's like that's still true like bitcoin scaling and layers like through a fee market like we thought in 2015 that we can get in the non-stop but like still the true like developers are still building towards that uh the 2021 era it's like freedom money it's like okay if you want to hold bitcoin and like not you know avoid the state like you can still be a meritake he's still living in spain like you know trying to like start a serbian revolution like somewhere like he can still like there's nothing about Bitcoin that prohibits him from doing that.

Like Michael Saylor financializing Bitcoin doesn't prohibit him from doing that.

So like it doesn't lose the properties, but then the culture and the industry and the, you know, it's like every time Bitcoin like goes up, we have to sort of explain why it's happening.

And so we sort of just tell like the culture is the story that we tell ourselves, right?

And so Saylor is like, that's, that's the story that we're telling ourselves right now is like that.

this is the way it's going to happen.

I don't, like, my qualm is, like, I don't think it makes the 2121 stuff less true.

It's just that, like, it seems to be, like, the current culture, you know, because each of the cultures also, like, you know, they sort of are referendums on the other cultures, right?

So if you look at what were the parts of the 2021 culture that the new culture is throwing out, so like self is thrown out right So now the idea is like we can solve self with technology we going to solve self with financialization and financial products and securitization So they so they have a critique on the 21 culture And now that is their culture.

And then so I'd say, like, what's another like big critique?

Let's talk about that critique first, because to me, that's a huge like it's an it's an issue.

Like we do want to be pushing self-custody Bitcoin.

and like the the idea that self-custody is really hard i just don't think is true what's really gonna bend your mind i think a little bit is like when you know it becomes theoretically possible like self-custody mstr through like the layer two bitcoins because you're issued like a financial product that you can then self-custody on some sort of rail do you need to sell custody like a publicly traded equity though that's that seems very different to me well so one of the things that the exchanges have been doing that's again like sort of outside the normative bitcoin radar but it's pretty interesting.

It's like, so right now, it's like if you go to Kraken or Coinbase or like Robinhood, so they're doing tokenized equities, which again, nobody in Bitcoin is really paying attention to this, but it's a really interesting idea because again, essentially like, what's the best use case for tokenized equities?

It's like Bitcoin treasury companies.

So what does that mean?

It's like somebody in Nigeria can buy a share of MSTR on Kraken, like on Solana, like in a wrapped asset that they own with an exchange and like they have bitcoin exposure they are buying exposure to bitcoin price like through this really warped you know sort of system um and so you know um just because you are issuing equities or like credit doesn't mean eventually you won't have self-custody that is actually that's that could actually happen like and i think today you can do that like you can actually hold a tokenized equity self-custodied in most of the exchange wads like if you wanted to and so like the idea that that you know so then you argue well it's just a credit like you know it's like a stable coin right you have to redeem it at the at the bank and then they give you the dollar or whatever um and it is like stable think about the stable equities tokenized equities are stable coin stable equities you're basically you basically now have sort of like you can self-custody dollars you can self-custody uh equities and so like the treasury companies are equities and so we can't like people are self-custodying equities currently yeah but i struggle with that because like are you actually self-custodying dollars and equities in that in that situation because like you're still at the whim of tether or you're still at the whim of like strategy well tether economy has been around for 10 years right and seems pretty good right like we don't hear a large like we don't hear many stories of like people in russia or china like using tether to avoid sanctions that are losing access to their dollars do you like i don't i don't haven't heard any of those stories but it's the issue of the word like self-custody because if you are at the whim of another company are you actually self-custodying anything well where the company in this case is just issued like again it's like a stable coin um so the coinbase issues you a stable coin and you self-custody it you have the the coin and you're well you have the keys to the asset unless they decide you don't no like so a lot of the exchanges have self-custodied wallets now so like they have both an exchange account and you you can have like you have a essentially a software wallet like through them and so you can buy the asset within the exchange account and then you can withdraw the asset to the self-custody wallet that you have like the software wallet that you have but but my point on like the tether thing is i i agree we've not seen them we i mean we have seen them blacklist certain people um it's been a small this is a good thing i'm just telling you that this is possible today and it's like um that so i think like the idea here that like the equities are antithetical to self-custody just like might actually not be true like so there's a there's a there's a pathway where that criticism just like isn't super relevant like you actually might be able to self-custody mstr and s strc and strike and stride and all these credit products to like michael saylor is like issuing like within a a wallet yeah but but my point on that was really that the idea of us throwing out the idea that people should self custody bitcoin is a negative well no it's just it's just the current culture within this like kind of new 2025 sailor mania culture uh just sort of i think it admits that we hit some ceiling on like how many people it was like possible to like increase bitcoin adoption like through that I'm not arguing for their point.

I'm not saying I agree with it.

I'm just telling you, like, this is what this group of people think.

What they think happened in 2021 is that we issued all these hardware wallets and we issued all these products and we did all these things.

And then we hit some sort of a total ceiling addressable market on how many people were actually going to custody Bitcoin on that.

You might not agree with that.

And that's a reasonable thing to disagree with.

That's just what they think.

And what their plan is to address that is to increase the exposure that people have to Bitcoin by offering people a chance to buy these equities which offer them exposure to Bitcoin.

That's the whole kind of general idea there.

You can, again, like, I don't think that they're guaranteed to be right.

That's just the current, just like the 2021 era, I can't say that they were necessarily right.

you think very strongly that that was like the way to go and like that was the only you know possible outcome i don't know i'm like i hold my opinion much more loosely on that and again i can still self-custody my own bitcoin i can use collaborative custody and you know i have access to the same tools these institutions have uh so i'm not bothered by that i would like more people to self-custody bitcoin i thought it was cool the idea that i like the 2021 culture it was like my favorite if i had to pick any of the four cultures it's my favorite it's just not the thing that's happening right now yeah i mean i think we could go like around in circles on that and and my point to it is not that like the narrative is going to evolve and i'm okay with that and bitcoin doesn't care what i think about bitcoin i just think there's some values there that are being lost perhaps but again i think like as i said like potentially these things aren't as antithetical as you you might think because it might be possible to solve them with technology and other things you know it's also possible you know one of the reasons that i think bitcoin treasuries.net is interesting is because like, yeah, there is no place to actually litigate what these companies are doing and actually compare how they're doing.

And like, we do need a forum to like, have honest conversations about how these companies are performing.

Because this whole thing is an experiment.

Like, I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like, we know that strategy is working, but there's a lot of, you know, parts about their thesis that might prove to be untrue, or that some other future culture might rebel against, you know, we can we could look at like, okay, what does the current culture believe?

And then what are the potential issues with that?

But like, you know, so if you were to kind of say like, okay, what is the new culture?

What is the sailor?

What is this new children of sailor culture?

I don't know, what do we want to call it?

Like the post sailor, you know, institutional Bitcoin culture, that's the Bitcoin treasuries movement.

Like, what is that?

What do they believe?

And what do they want?

I think it's pretty clear that they think they're increasingly addressable market for people who own Bitcoin exposure by solving custody and regulatory challenges for people.

And I think they're scaling up that base.

I think it's pretty clear that they think that the cost of Bitcoin, like the Bitcoin's appreciation should be the, you know, this is the hurdle rate.

It should be like the rate of return should be what all companies like strive to outperform.

And so and they think that the new companies, like the companies of the Bitcoin era, should both outperform Bitcoin and then offer investors a return beyond what Bitcoin was able to provide.

So the real big question is like, will that happen?

You know, and then so the derivative metrics are from there are like, and this is a lot what Bitcoin Treasuries.net is working on, is like, okay, well, so like, if you have a company that stated goal is to outperform Bitcoin and you have investors that are investing in this company on the basis that doing so they will outperform Bitcoin, by what metrics do you actually judge that performance and what do these metrics mean and how correct are they?

So that's the conversation on BitcoinTreasures.net right now that I think is actually really good and needs to be had because a lot of this stuff is theoretical.

It's not guaranteed that Bitcoin is the hurdle rate.

And so this is the word of God.

It will always be the case that this is how it operates.

This is a very complex thesis that is rolling out in real time that a lot of people in capital are aligning behind.

That is what you're seeing.

You're seeing the emergence of a new movement in Bitcoin that has a very specific thesis that is gathering a lot of capital.

And so then it's important to say, like, OK, well, what is their thesis?

What do they actually think?

And so I think, like, you know, number one, scaling custody by solving regulatory challenges, increasing that.

The hurdle rate thing, you know, both on the investor side and the Bitcoin side, they believe and I you know, this is you can explain it pretty simply, right?

Like, if you have a company in, like, the United States, you want to invest in that company if they will outperform the dollar, right?

Like, so if, like, you invest in Apple because Apple will outperform the dollar.

That's how companies work.

Like, that's why we form – this is the nice thing about Bitcoin.

It, like, breaks down a lot of concepts.

Like, a company has a group of people who, together, you want them to outperform the cost of capital.

So if Bitcoin has the cost of capital, then there's a higher bar.

And so like this new Bitcoin company now wants to sort of outperform the rate of return of Bitcoin.

That's what it thinks.

Sailor's sort of vision here is that the new company, the new Bitcoin company will outperform Bitcoin and deliver higher returns because that is why you would invest in a Bitcoin company.

There is not a point to invest in a Bitcoin company if the Bitcoin company is going to lose you money in Bitcoin terms.

And so this whole sort of movement, and this is why I actually think this movement is like pretty aligned with like Bitcoin's incentives, you know, as much as they get sort of, you know, trashed for not doing that.

They're trying to create an environment where the companies measure their performance in Bitcoin, which if you think there's a Bitcoin standard, like that seems pretty obvious that that would occur and where investors can actually analyze the results of companies like in Bitcoin terms.

And so if you believe in a future where like everything is denominated Bitcoin, it would seem pretty obvious that like the financial markets would need to operate that way.

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I think the obvious question there then is how many of these companies do you think will actually outperform Bitcoin?

because when you look at like i'm on your website now there's like 192 public companies that have bitcoin on the balance sheet at the moment um strategy obviously miles ahead of everyone else there's a few in there that are gonna have either launched or are about to launch that have a significant amount of bitcoin i think there's a chance that those manage to do pretty well but there's a long tail that i assume is going to massively underperform bitcoin if you go out more than you know six months we've seen what's happened with naka recently they've their share price is absolutely tanked um how many do you think is sustainable to outperform bitcoin in this market yeah i mean that's the question right and that's the experiment that we're going towards it's like not a noble question all right um so i mean i think you will see thousands of them started i don't know how many you will see succeed um but again i think that goes through this idea that the Treasury company, even at the baseline opportunity of the people accruing Bitcoin for themselves within company vehicles, okay, you're asking what's the bear case for the Treasuries movement?

What's the worst possible outcome?

The worst possible outcome is you end up with hundreds of companies distributed around the world where investors have put dollars in, the companies have bought Bitcoin, the companies are all sort of stagnant, insolvent, they all go bust, whatever, they sell their coins, and then nothing really happens.

You're sort of back at square one, right?

So that's the bear case.

So let's actually run your scenario to the end, because that's how you would actually see whether scenarios are good.

So let's just pretend all of the Bitcoin treasury companies don't outperform Bitcoin.

They all suffer catastrophic losses.

They all sell their Bitcoin, and they all go to zero, with the exception of strategy.

uh like what happens like uh bitcoin movement will like move on and like figure out some different way to like scale and like try to become mainstream and like further bitcoin as a technology movement um i can say why i think that bear case is unlikely um i think it's unlikely for a number of reasons i think it's like one there's there's there's actually like regulatory and tax like issues like in each jurisdiction where these treasury company models it's likely for them to accumulate a lot of bitcoin and then if you can imagine the future it's like well you can build a financial services company by just owning a lot of bitcoin uh or just like have a company that just endures um you know so from the 2021 era like tahini's is a great example tahini's is a bitcoin treasury company i'm talking about like the shawarma place from canada they save in bitcoin they've expanded and they're growing are they a bitcoin treasury company not in the kind of modern sense where these companies are trying to kind of exploit the financial system to like inflate their uh you know overall balance sheets um but again like ask yourself like what do you think then about how business how the business world works in a bitcoin standard and how bullish are you on bitcoin because like okay so your bull case for bitcoin then is a world where no companies on bitcoin like what's your what becomes your case it's definitely not that um it's like i think tahini's is a great example of a like so i've been getting a load of shit on twitter today i was just telling you about it before the uh the show what's your case for corporate adoption in a hyper bitcoinized world then so but this is the point is that like i so i have been pretty skeptical about bitcoin treasury companies again like it's really hard to even bucket them together because The question is, okay, you believe in hyper-Bitcoinization, correct?

Let me get there.

Because my point is, I think there's strategy are doing interesting stuff.

I think the Prefers have launched really interesting.

I think there's a huge market demand for that.

I think they'll be absolutely fine.

When it gets to the smaller Bitcoin companies that are trying to do the treasury play, like issue debt by Bitcoin, I think that's rapidly becoming less interesting.

and the things that i am bullish on are like positive cash flow companies putting excess reserves into bitcoin and and this is why i did the investment into bhodl because they're not just going to issue a ton of debt and buy as much bitcoin as possible they're actually trying they've put bitcoin on the balance sheet they're going to try and put that bitcoin to work and yield on like running lightning nodes we'll see how well that plays out but it's a bitcoin business not just like a pure cash grab issue debt by bitcoin yeah so i think the thing here becomes It was like, okay, like in a world where Bitcoin is like fairly mainstream, it's like how much of the business is denominated in Bitcoin?

And so you get into like weird asymmetries right now where it's like from the Bitcoin treasury company's perspective, they would rather pay their employees in dollars so they can accrue more Bitcoin.

Because they think that it's better to pay employees in dollars and then use the Bitcoin they have to like accrue it and accrue more Bitcoin.

So the idea here is like if you have a public company, a company where there is an equity that people have purchased, if it's going to underperform Bitcoin and it's a Bitcoin company, why would you hold it?

That's essentially the question.

This is how they've derived this idea that they need to outperform Bitcoin.

Because in a world where you are put it, so you have bought, yes, you have bought Bitcoin shares in this company.

But for the company to keep going, it has to accrue more investors over time.

That's what a company is.

otherwise it dies.

So like there has to be some reason for other people along this curve to then buy the shares later.

If it was better for you to have bought Bitcoin when you invested in that company, then invested in that company, then you lost money and you made a bad trade.

Like your...

Which is very possible.

You could have traded those Australian dollars for, I'm assuming Australian dollars for Bitcoin at a certain rate, and you got less Bitcoin as a result.

And so the interesting thing with strategy is like strategy outperformed Bitcoin.

Like you put a dollar in and you got more Bitcoin than you could have bought.

This is like this is one of the things about the movement that I know a lot of the 2021 Bitcoiners blanch at, which is this idea that like you give the company capital and it creates more Bitcoin for you than you could have bought.

It's like a weird thing to think about.

But again, it gets to the kind of point where it's like, OK, like.

Let's just imagine that, like, let's just get rid of the specifics.

let's just say that this whole movement right now what it's trying to ask is how will businesses operate in a bitcoin world how will publicly traded bitcoin businesses operate in a world that moves towards a future where bitcoin is money for everyone and so if you agree that bitcoin is going to be money for everyone then businesses have to adapt to that then what this movement is doing is aligned with our mission because essentially what it's trying to do is answer this question that doesn't guarantee that all of its ideas are good and 100% going to be correct but it's directionally moving us in a positive forward direction because it is grappling with questions that there is no known answer to so we can't possibly know how this will happen all we can do is build and kind of iterate in a certain direction and that will reach some sort of conclusion at some point or it won't right I mean who knows right so like it'll have or and And then the culture will go in some other direction.

But I think it's pretty obvious that we would want to have a conversation about how businesses are structured, how they're capitalized, and how they perform on a Bitcoin standard.

And that these companies, even if they're doing things that are raising money in bad ways that don't make sense, or they're treating investors badly, or they're promising things.

These are all things that are actually happening.

There are companies that have raised money in probably ways that they regret.

There's companies that have underperformed Bitcoin.

and there's companies that are currently worth less than, you know, they've promised.

Like, this is, so, you know, I think more transparency and more discussion around that is good because that's the forward direction.

Like, that's what people are arguing about.

That's the serious current conversation that's happening.

And so, like, my instinct is just like, okay, let's dive into that.

So, like, you know, Bitcoin treasury is like the emails, the social media, like, whatever.

Like, that's what we're talking about.

Like, let's have a conversation about that.

It's very clear that like, you know, sometimes you just have to experiment in the right direction.

Right.

2021, we experimented in all sorts of new directions.

Right.

Podcasts, books, like all these things were like were new, like they didn't exist.

Right.

And so they were efforts by the culture to achieve a wider adoption.

and now there's you know we're past peak podcasts was podcasting a mistake like should we we like we think bitcoin podcasting was was a mistake well it looks like it moved the culture forward right and it adapted bitcoin to the culture of the times it moved bitcoin forward it's still useful for the people in the industry uh but we're probably past peak bitcoin podcast like where we agree i i think peak bitcoin podcasting could be ahead of us still um i think when these treasury companies blow up we're going to have a real uh a real boost in bitcoin podcasting um but a few questions on that um one is like which business models will survive because i wonder if the idea of just sort of diluting shareholders to buy more bitcoin issuing debt like it would be nice if i think one of the things would be nice to see though it would be more more models right so like you know uh you know whether it's like you know what bhodl is doing or like companies that are going to buy and acquire other operating companies.

Yeah, you're going to see a proliferation of other types of models and some of them will work.

You know, this treasury company that's invested in other treasury companies like as a model where, you know, a number of people are coming to market with similar things there.

And it like again it like the Bitcoin culture is very good at like taking an idea and then just like driving it to its conclusion through you know mass speculation And that what we done The whole thing is just somebody gets a good idea It's like Save a Dean writes a good book.

And so there's a thousand thousand fucking books.

It's like one person does one thing and you iterate on it and you push it to the extreme.

And so like Michael Saylor did this thing and it's like, oh, there's a thousand companies going to do that.

You got to run into the end.

And so, yeah, I don't, you know, I don't think you have to know where the Bitcoin treasuries movement is going.

I just think you have to analyze it as like a sociological phenomenon, which is like, okay, what are these people trying to achieve?

Like, what do they believe?

And are they aligned with the movement?

I don't, I think the argument that they would be not aligned with Bitcoin culture is pretty weak.

Because again, it's like, if you assume that the Bitcoin is going to be money, then businesses have to adapt to that.

And so this is just the culture that's, that's working on that problem.

At the widest view, like that's currently what's happening.

And I don't see that as antithetical to Bitcoin.

Yes, some of their cultural norms, you know, we've talked about this a lot when we talked about the ordinals and different stuff there.

It's like some of their cultural norms are different than the previous Bitcoin monoculture.

But I think what you're going to witness is that this treasury company culture, that's going to become the new Bitcoin monoculture.

And Bitcoin monocultures are pretty short-lived, right?

There's different versions of it at different times.

And I get it.

Yeah, it's like, you know, if you haven't seen many of them, it's hard to know, like, how different they were.

And like, I think each of them contributed to something, right?

Like, I would say, like, you know, with the knots and core thing, this is almost like a referendum on the 2017, like, development culture, where it's, you know, the normative view in 2017 was that fees were going to be high, blocks were going to be full, and Bitcoin was going to scale in layers.

and that, you know, the rules that we set post-Segwit of, you know, developing a pricing structure for data that was embedded in transactions that was consistent and fair and, you know, developing sort of policies that, like, you know, the developers thought would ensure Bitcoin, you know, continued in a centralized manner.

Like, that's kind of being chipped at.

So, like, you know, you always have different versions of the Bitcoin culture that are trying different things.

The culture right now is pretty fractured.

You have a lot of smaller factions than we had before.

There's the Knotts camp, which I think is trying to like take us towards some sort of.

I don't know what they're doing, but they're they're trying to like, you know, they imagine a very, very engaged user within technical development.

And they ultimately are, you know, putting a message to the Bitcoin community that like we are failing potentially by not.

But, you know, they're a culture, right?

Like they're trying to compete to be a monoculture.

They want to be a monoculture, right?

Because they're aspiring.

My culture is really growing as well.

The number of comments I get under every video now talking of like asking me to talk about knots and corn is insane.

What's your take on that?

Because loads of people have been asking me to cover it.

I did have Mechanic on the show and I had Shinobi on the show maybe, I don't know, four or five months ago.

I've actually tried to have them on the show again together to debate.

but like the the kind of discourse is broken down to the point where they won't talk to each other anymore they they won't do it yeah i think like within bitcoin culture the flat the the side that like waves the doomsday flag is usually the side that has the weaker intellectual position and i think like on the not side it's like they've been very quick to like you know sort of signal that like they think bitcoin will fail if like people don't you know go along with what they want and that's usually like a sign that they just don't have a very strong position um i don't look i've I've been, you know, I was pretty, one of the reasons I tried to put forth a positivistic argument for ordinals and runes and like sort of meta protocol development on Bitcoin is that I didn't want there to be a fork like within Bitcoin.

Like I thought that would have been the worst case scenario.

I think the knots, you know, group will eventually fork, whether it's the current people in it or a new set of people or some other group leading it.

That's sort of what happened in the fork boys, right?

It wasn't Mike Hearn and Gavin Andreessen that forked.

It was Jihan Wu and...

Roger.

did all mixed in the, no, not Roger.

But, you know, it was the later people, right?

And so, because ultimately what the Nots group is saying is like, what is happening on Bitcoin, like, can't have ever happened.

Like, or Bitcoin will fail.

Like, they're actually saying that things that are currently occurring on Bitcoin should not happen.

And they want us, they ultimately have the most intolerant view, right?

They're saying Bitcoin can only succeed if we do follow this direction.

And so they have the most narrow, intolerant view of how Bitcoin could grow and expand.

And because they ultimately object to things that are currently happening that can't be stopped by anyone, and their whole kind of emphasis is on stopping this thing, they will eventually take some means to stop it.

And I think that they will eventually have to do that through some sort of extreme technical means because, you know, the core developers, I think, have laid out a pretty convincing technical thesis.

Like it's, you know, we have to be tolerant of different uses of Bitcoin.

We have to be tolerant of people doing things that you don't want them to do with Bitcoin in order to have a system where the rules are better for everyone.

And I think the Knott's vision were like, I don't know.

I just, I find their whole worldview very problematic.

It's like they want to start this sort of coalition to discourage some users from transacting.

And they think that this is good.

And I don't understand why I've asked them hundreds of questions about it.

whatever their specific technical like proclivities are i understand that they don't like yes it's like okay like we don't want the bitcoin blockchain to become too large great we have a block size okay you want to relay like you don't want to relay some of these transactions great don't relay them they're gonna get into blocks uh so like you know um the most charitable view i think is that like it is great within bitcoin that you can have a dissenting piece of software so it is great that we can have two softwares and we can have one that most people run and we can have a software that some people run who don't like what's currently going on.

A problem with that on the technical side though is there's very few instances of that happening within Bitcoin.

So, you know, one of the reasons that if you go back to Satoshi, Satoshi was very against like multiple implementations of Bitcoin.

The core developers have largely inherited this.

And the reason that core is the dominant implementation of Bitcoin is largely because there's a fear of there being multiple implications okay so knots is like a more benign version of that it relies heavily on the core culture but eventually like knots if it goes down its road will have to have a separate implementation and a separate team like we'll have to do that there's just not a react because like again it's like the farther you you go in the fork it's like these people will keep updating their software and they'll have to keep up a day and so you're maintaining these two kind of you know forces in parallel uh which is incredibly costly and takes a lot of time And so like, you know, there aren't there's only one real instance of like a small dissenting economy, like where people didn't run out of the majority of forks.

And we don't know that much about it or how long it lasted or how much, you know, they transacted or anything like that.

That's something I actually like argued that the core developers should look into that they didn't.

They never really liked that idea.

But if the Nats people are interested in looking into it, it's called The Real Bitcoin.

It was released by Mercia Popescu.

It's supposedly still used by some of his former economy participants in Costa Rica.

but like you know we don't know how long these things can last and so um you know there's just a cost to continuing this that i think will build up so like yeah the steel man i think it's good to have dissenting softwares this is like an interesting technical experiment i guess but i don't ultimately find the knots group to be doing anything like terribly interesting because ultimately they feel like they're at war with this sort of um you know post fork war um world where you know why do we have arbitrary data in the bitcoin well those bitcoin's data and we want to have a script and data like in Bitcoin in some cases and you know, yes you can discourage these things and yes we can build a culture around discouraging things but you're building a bunch of tools that I think could probably be used against people using transactions that you want to make and again it's like it's so at odds with the data, like the stuff's been around for two years, it's like the blocks aren't full, it's like the sets are like Fortnulls has come and gone it came and had its time, like people who were there got into Bitcoin through it.

Hopefully they bought some Bitcoin.

But like, there's nothing, like it's, you know, they remind me of the big blockers because again, it's like they have a very intolerant view.

It's like Bitcoin must succeed one way.

I think there's only, we must do this.

And if we don't do this, it's a failure.

And that's just a huge red flag.

And then this other idea where it's like, you know, they say they just want to not relay these things, but that's not really what, They really just don't want them happening.

It's a class thing.

It's like the other thing.

These people are bad.

They're, you know, and we don't want them here.

They want to be able to kind of use their software to discourage people and, you know, make their transactions more difficult.

So, like, you know, it's hard for me to see, like, why that would inspire, like, the whole of the Bitcoin culture to rally behind that.

That's like a very sort of crass message.

It's like, okay, like we're going to build a positivistic version of the future of Bitcoin by encouraging people to like discourage other users from using Bitcoin in ways that we don't.

And look, the nots thing, it's like, sure, now it's fine.

Like you can run nots.

And look, as long as you're not saying crazy things about, you know, how Bitcoin, you know, it'll be illegal to run a node if you run, you know, like very like non-technical things that are just like not, you don't, why would you introduce, like you're introducing attack vectors, like against Bitcoin and claiming that the people doing these transactions are, but like, no, you are doing that.

Like you're the one talking about this.

And like you're introducing this to Acris.

So I don't know.

I think the knots probes, it's like great that they're running a node.

Descenting softwares are cool, but like this descending software just for me, it like doesn't offer like a particularly like compelling vision.

I don't know.

I've talked to Chris Guida and I like, I like mechanic and Luke and I hope they don't.

I hope they sincerely don't believe that Bitcoin is going to fail.

It doesn't feel like Bitcoin's failing to me.

um yeah this is where i have an issue it's like it's the extremes that the argument's being taken to where it's like core 30 is going to destroy bitcoin which like i just clearly don't think is true um i do see fault on both sides like i think core even if they're sort of technically correct had a real issue with how they communicated what they were doing and the way they don't have a responsibility to communicate anything to you they don't work for you no no i i i totally understand they don't have a responsibility like they don't they don't work for me but they like i i think there's some level of responsibility to like the bitcoin world even even if it's not an explicit responsibility um and and then on the other side like i don't care if people running arts like run whatever implementation you want i i think that's cool i also think people are understating the kind of threat of running an implementation that's maintained just by luke and luke's done amazing things and like if we can get more people working on knots i think that's interesting and then the other one is like i think it would be more interesting if the dissenting software was something like libitcoin which is like a ground up new implementation but that's that goes off to deep end a little bit yeah you have the consensus risk that like was kind of introduced originally so yeah i mean like you know the right conversations i think to have about are about okay is bitcoin going to a world with multiple implications and like is there a net new thing that reduces the risk to me i don't there's not a net new thing here that reduces the risk of that uh so then And is there a compelling reason to do that?

In which case, like, you would have to kind of, again, accept the sort of argument from the Nots group that like something overwhelmingly negative is happening with Bitcoin.

Like my ability to use Bitcoin has not been impacted over the last two years and has not degraded or deteriorated at all.

I would category reject almost any argument that would suggest that that is the case because I can't fathom, like, unless in like 2024 when blocks are full, it's like, okay, you paid an extra fee.

But again, that is by design, like how Bitcoin is supposed to function.

Like one of the great, you know, tricks of ordinals is that ordinals was a, you know, sort of the kind of genius of it was that it was a thing that was it wasn't what Bitcoin was designed for.

But it like it met the rule set, like it followed the rules of the thing of the protocol.

And they're going to kill me for that one.

But like, you know, it followed the it followed like the OK, this is how transactions are priced.

This is how like competing transactions would be, you know, compete for block space.

This is how a block space company would mature.

And the developers want to build that because they're biased towards getting us to a place where if in the future blocks need to be full, Bitcoin functions as a technology in a market and in a specific way.

and so you know the argument that i always found was most compelling for ordinals and runes was that it pushes bitcoin closer to that path and so i think the only question is like okay well why don't you see any benefit in modeling that because again it's like the block size is four megabytes no matter what people are putting in they can't extend the block size you by running the software agree to the consensus which is that you agree to store up to four megabytes worth of data per block.

That is what the consensus rules are.

And we are currently adding less than four megabytes worth of data per block, pretty inarguably.

So like, in which case are your bright, or your expectation as like a user of the, as a user, you're running a node, but you have to follow the rules.

The job of the node is to enforce the rules of the network.

So like, it's pretty obvious that like, we're not adding the maximum amount of theoretical data to Bitcoin that we could be doing nor with ordinals or any sort of exploit is that occurring and so like you know some of the people they'll say oh well the demand you know that they both they both think that like oh god this is like such a long road but it's like they think that like they simultaneously think that like crypto assets like ethereum and all these things are worthless but that the demand for them is so great that they'll destroy bitcoin and so it's like a it's like you can't argue the loop because it's just a it's just it doesn't make sense it's like they're like oh well ethereum's like worthless but if ethereum comes to bitcoin it'll destroy bitcoin well why would it destroy bitcoin well because there's so much demand for like all these like all these assets and all this arbitrary data i was like you just said there's no demand for arbitrary data so like ethereum's not going to work so what why where's the demand for ethereum and they're like oh well it'll come to bitcoin and it'll they'll be the demand there's always demand for coins and it's like okay well then if there's always demand for coins then wouldn't you want to build bitcoin in a way that it accommodates that such the those transactions like can take place in a you know non-disruptible and as minimally disruptive way as possible it's like no we like must repel them and they must go elsewhere and it's like okay so you want your coins to like continue like no we don't want your coins to continue your coins are going to go to zero they're a distraction like okay so like what do you want like you know it's like i i almost like the the knots people it's like they're disingenuous arguers because they they set up these arguments but they don't actually believe what they're arguing they actually want something else they They want these transactions to not be possible and to have never existed.

And since I can't give them that, and no human being can give them that, they will ultimately be very unsatisfied and they won't be able to achieve that.

And so it's hard to know how to interface with that group.

I hope that they don't take extreme measures in the face of that and do something that would disrupt Bitcoin's narrative publicly or threaten the use of the software for everyone else because literally their claim is that what these people are doing is disrupting the software and if they find themselves in a situation where like they have to potentially disrupt the use of bitcoin for everyone to make that point that just it's closed my mind i don't i don't understand it to defend the nost people like to a degree like i do ideologically understand where they're coming from and and somewhat agree with them and the problem that because i assume you would call them sort of the monetary maximalists um and and that is what i want to see bitcoin for but i also understand that it's not up to me what bitcoin is bitcoin just is and all of these transactions are following the consensus rules.

But the one area that I do think they may be overlooking is the idea that they don't want to see things like BitVM and Citria and all these roll-ups and layer twos.

I think they maybe discount the monetary transactions that may actually happen on these other layers.

And the fact that that could be a huge step up in terms of people's ability to get Bitcoin in close to self-custody, at least with a unilateral exit.

The much more interesting conversation we have, if the Knotts folks wanted to have it, would be that they don't believe that the fee market will function in the future where blocks will be full.

so I wrote a piece for Forbes in 2022 called Bitcoin After 2140 where I like was started to kind of see like that there were like these weird sort of divisions between things that I think are sort of manifesting where it's like the developers are operating on the premise that blocks will be full, the fee market will be competitive and thus we need to scale in layers like that post the fork wars that was the status quo it was the status quo because bigger blocks the road towards bigger blocks was a world where a fee market never developed and blocks were never full so the the fork in the road there was like okay big blocks no fee market blocks are never full block space always cheap user onboarding always cheap small blocks blocks are always full fees are always competitive this is best for bitcoin in the long term because it maximally ensures bitcoin success even in adversarial conditions the fork was over the the big blockers thought that they could remove adversarial conditions for Bitcoin by Bitcoin being popular.

Thus, they wanted Bitcoin to be free.

Thus, they wanted to be widely used.

Thus, they wanted to get regulatory acceptance through that.

The small blockers said the best thing for Bitcoin is for it to be maximally adversarial, for it to be able to succeed in conditions even when it's under threat by all sorts of authoritarian governments.

Therefore, blocks should be small.

Bitcoin should be maximally centralized.

Therefore, fees should be high.

This is how we solve potentially if there an issue post-subsidy of how Bitcoin continues in the future.

This is how we solve that issue.

I've been calling this the post-Fork War consensus.

If you think of the post-World War II consensus, what was the post-World War II consensus?

It was that the US dollar runs the monetary system of the world.

Everyone saves in the dollar.

The post-Fork War's consensus was that this was how Bitcoin was supposed to operate.

In which case, Segwit introduced the pricing mechanism for data like on the chain and which is why we have block weight and so if really what you're arguing really is that like you don't think that like there is a feed market that needs to develop and that you don't think that there needs to be like the system for how uh you know that bitcoin doesn't need to go down that technical path um then that's fine you're just sort of i think shipping out you're just sort of you're actually on a referendum on something else like it's like what you're talking about is just something completely different, where you're trying to change how Bitcoin should operate, or the normative view on how developers think Bitcoin should operate.

Core developers don't think that runes and ordinals are an overwhelming concern.

The data would prove that I think that they were correct, that there wasn't a reason to be overly concerned about them.

The burden of proof should be on the Knotts camp to prove by some means that that has become sufficiently disruptive for someone to, you know, again, they want some action about this.

They want this demand that they have to be satisfied.

But the closest articulation I can get to their demand is that they want the ability to be disruptive of other users and to discourage other users from, you know, certain types of transactions.

And seemingly the response of developers is, okay, well, these transactions look like other transactions that we might in the future want so we will not do that uh because that doesn't actually make bitcoin better in the long term and so like that's the that's the disagreement so you're you to your point it's like yes some of the l2s um if you have a you know close of a situated transaction it will look very similar to a ordinal's transaction and so therefore the software you know and the eyes of developers like should accommodate that type of transaction you know uh i almost feel like the not folks like i would be more sympathetic to them if they just presented like we have an alternative thesis for how bitcoin should work like here's actually how the economics of bitcoin should work and like just be honest about that you want um something else because i i just find it so unsatisfying it's like you really really don't want to relay people's transactions that are going to block anyway really like that's that's your concern you don't want to relay them i don't know like do i don't even notice relaying transactions i have a note at home like reading like who read like it's It's not an active thing.

It's not like you have to go to the door and like open it, like let people in.

It's like this major inconvenience.

You're just relaying transactions.

Like what are you talking about?

Like what?

Okay.

So you have to update your node like more quickly.

It's like nobody told, like nobody guaranteed you that you, your node was supposed to last a certain amount of time.

Like what do you, like you agreed to store up to four megabytes every, like that's the, that's the note.

That's the, that's the system.

Like what are you talking about?

Like what, so where is the, where are you being like so inconvenienced here?

You know, And it's like, okay, well, if you want to scrub that stuff off or you want to get it off your node, it seems like you can do that.

I haven't done it myself, but it seems like people are saying that that's possible.

So this would lead me to be suspicious of their claims because it's hard for me to fathom that that many people are upset about this.

Like, how are that many people upset about this?

So I don't think the Knott's group is, like, homogenous.

Like, I don't think they actually believe the same things.

because it would be extraordinary to me that they believe that it would be extraordinary to me to believe that there's so many people who care so minutely about the operation of like their node that's like sits on their desk like wherever uh such that they're like so concerned like about this particular thing which again i've i as a user of bitcoin sincerely like sincerely to the nazis have not noticed any change in like the past five years like it works the same i mean but It clearly has captured the imagination of a lot of Bitcoiners Like I think the latest number of like not knows was 28 or something I know that those numbers can be like cooked a little bit but it's a significant number of people doing this.

Do you think this is like the death of monoculture?

Pardon?

What do they want?

You know, that's my question.

The death of what?

Is this like the death of monoculture in Bitcoin?

Do you think we are now completely divided into these different subcultures?

Yeah, that's also possible, right?

like maybe mainstreaming Bitcoin is Bitcoin becoming like essentially like adopted by all these subcultures.

Again, I think of the Nots people, it's like, I'm just not 100% convinced that they're like a reasonable subculture just because I don't know what they want to achieve.

And if they can achieve it, you know, if they can't achieve it, like, I don't know how interested I am in like the minutia of it.

So I don't know.

I think that like, it would be nice for core version 30 to be released.

And then, you know, we can all just go and watch the Bitcoin continues to operate and um yeah i don't know again i i think that um the monocultures uh i don't know i think the treasury thing really feels like it's the new monoculture it just it feels like that is what people are excited about are companies buying large amounts of bitcoin what they're excited about is going like you know a website and seeing like which companies own the most bitcoin and like how fast they're like you know uh going up that seems to have captured the imagination of most people.

The Nots thing, I think, is, yeah, it's tempting.

I think the trap of Nots that I've always, like, really think, I think the mental trap is that it's tempting to think that, like, you matter for Bitcoin.

And what Nots really offers is a compelling story to the average user who isn't a Michael Saylor, that they really matter for Bitcoin, and that their action is necessary for Bitcoin's continued survival.

Like, that's the story that's being sold.

And in this particular instance, I just don't think that story is true.

Like, that's not a real thing that, like, you should be concerned about.

And because that's not a real thing, I just can't sympathize with it.

So, yeah, I don't know.

But I understand why you would want it to be true, right?

Because there's a lot of people from the 2021 era who like made being a Bitcoin or their identity and like their social identity, their cultural identity, like not being in the industry, like just being someone who owned Bitcoin.

And, you know, 2021 was a great era.

I love 2021.

We were all on Twitter.

Everyone was sharing ideas.

It was truly a time where it felt like most people in the movement were equal and that everyone was involved.

And it was the peak sort of grassroots Bitcoin.

It was us against like the crypto institutions.

I get it.

I understand.

I was there.

I was there for that part of it.

I left the crypto industry and I understand why you wanted to achieve that.

And I was there.

But is it still true that you individually, it's so tempting.

It's like, I get it.

You want to feel like you are important for Bitcoin because that's how the old culture sort of scaled.

So I think this is sort of how we know with jumped to the other culture is like this is the old culture break it down like why can't we scale to the bitcoin culture being everybody part of the bitcoin culture because everybody can't be part of the bitcoin culture if you go to a this is the analogy i've been using for the sibling um you go to an internet cafe in the 1990s you're danny you have the internet show everybody watches your internet show and you know we are all friends because we're on the internet well because of Trump's election every coffee house is going to have internet there isn't an internet cafe anymore you don't go to an internet cafe to use the internet there is internet at every cafe and so I don't go to a cafe there is no internet cafe and I think Knott's is sort of really what Knott's is it's the continuation of the internet cafe fable this idea that you are still part of the movement and that you can still be culturally part of it when really what's happening is the technology is scaling and it's going to become so ubiquitous that it is impossible for us to have that relationship with it anymore you know the analogy that i've used is like how many internet protocols are facilitating this conversation we're on riverside which is on the internet which is on you know it's going to be on your youtube with this show which is going to be on the website and what do you know of like the actual workings like if any of these technical protocols what do you know wi-fi what do i know of your wi-fi what do i know of your modem what do i know of this hotel's modem what do i know about whether this is on a lan i don't even i don't even know what a lan i barely know what a lan is uh so like so what what are you talking about like what are you well sincerely what are you talking about like like that this is the future of bitcoin is the progression of technology is that is it's getting people away from it sure are there some people who are probably like somewhere helping us have this conversation you know in the bowels of the internet i don't know i can't conceive of who they are but thank you i guess right i think um so yeah i don't know man i just find it really tough i just i i get it i really under i feel like i understand what they're actually what you're actually upset about but it just there's no way for the technology to you know because it's like oh if we everybody runs knots and not just bitcoin and then like we helped save bitcoin it's like okay yeah i think i get it i get it i get why you want that to happen um but like maybe that's a you thing and like not a everyone in bitcoin thing to bring it back to the start i mean we i think we could go around a circus on that i i it's a really hard conversation because i feel like whoever we're talking about like we're obviously talking about the knots people here more specifically than the core people like they're going to be pissed off that we're having this conversation and not representing them in some way um because they are so like fervent um in this mission and i think some of that comes off the back of like the fork walls as well where people are just like hey this is why we made the decision like here's like why we think it's a good idea no the core people definitely aren't and this is why i've not been super desperate to cover it much because it's just like i don't see this as like mempool policy is not something i'm going to get crazy irate about like i i think it's fine if you want to run different limitations but at the end of the day i'm not that bothered about this i don't think it's a threat to bitcoin right i So I think what I would like from Knott's is like, okay, can you provide us with some sort of positive vision for this?

Like, you know, what's the right, like, give me something here.

Because I can't get behind slightly inconveniencing, like, the crypto people who I like actually want to use Bitcoin.

Like, it's just not offering me anything, really.

And so, like, I have no, like, give me some sort of, you know, steel man.

Like, why should I support your cause?

Well, it's like, you know, well, you know, you'll kill Bitcoin if you don't.

I was like, okay, well, you know, it's like, give me something else.

You know, it's like, give me, okay, well, you know, maybe core shouldn't have that much power and users should have other options.

Cool.

Raise the money, build a developer team, sustain it for a couple of years.

You know, I sent this to like a reply on Newt Van Holmes tweet, but I was like, you know, it's like, if you're happy with not, it's like, why are you so unhappy?

like just be happy running nuts if it was that great of an experience running knots then everyone would run not because like it would be so overwhelming your joy of like being a knots would be like so overwhelming and like your benefits like would be so over that like people would you know like what does sailor's vision offer sailor's vision offers you the ability to be the banker and the ceo and for bitcoin to be the bankers and the ceos for bitcoin to revolutionize the financial system and to borrow into the annals of wall street and take it over from the inside Like it's a great, it's a great vision.

He's got it.

He's got, he's got a great pitch.

It's great.

You know, uh, it's big in scope.

It's like wide, it's participatory.

It offers like this idea that you can become, you know, you can further the Bitcoin movement, but gain financially.

So what did like, what's the utopian vision of knots?

Like, okay, well, we're all going to be obsessed with like, who's using Bitcoin and we're all going to like fight about like, who's using Bitcoin and we're going to like develop custom software to stop them if we don't like them.

and it's like, or again, not stop, sorry, slightly inconvenient, then we'll raise their costs slightly, such as that they can't use it.

So I don't know.

Yeah, it's unsatisfying.

And I think like as Bitcoin users, like how we create these cultures is like ultimately like a call to action like has to be strong, right?

So I think I've outlined like, okay, what is Sailor's Utopian vision?

Like, why is it catching on?

Like, why is it a big tent?

Like, and like, maybe less, we can run knots through that.

It's like, why is knots like somewhat limited?

Well, it's like it just feels like it can't be the forward direction of the movement.

It doesn't feel like Bitcoin scales down that path.

It doesn't feel like Bitcoin gets any safer down that path to me for the reasons that you said.

You know, we might find ourselves in a situation where like a single software with a single developer is sort of like calling most of the shots, which seems net worse than the current.

Even if you hate bureaucracies and like large meritocracies deciding things, like it just seems like kind of net worse.

You know, and so what's the vision?

and and um yeah it's like okay best place scenario like yeah i don't know it's like some jpegs like aren't on the chain i don't know i was fine with the jpegs like i made my arguments about the jpeg that's actually one of the like interesting things about it though is that if you take this to the absolute extreme and you say okay tomorrow 99 of people are either running knots or running core like which do you think is the better outcome and and i struggle to know how someone who is on the knots camp would think that's a better outcome like maybe they do maybe they have their reasons but like having 99 of the nodes run by knots which is maintained by one person i know it's a fork of call but there's like pretty there's like a lot of changes in there um like that seems like an obviously worse outcome to me yeah i think like an outcome where you lose the 10-year like meritocracy that has been craved around core like i think like one of the last lessons of the four wars is like how much effort it took into extending the bitcoin development team into being as large as it was um and how the checks and balances that were enacted around this where there's like funding there's like different people working on different parts of the database there's like a whole kind of like elaborate culture of review and like early in bitcoin history that's like not a thing right like in some cases like software was like you know you look at like old software that like were released on like a three-month timeline it's like you know and like now it's the level of review and the culture of the funding and like how much the improvements have been so ultimately what you know this is the other problematic part of the knots group is that you know ultimately really what they don't like is like democratic meritocracies this is why they like you know have the memes about like don't take the core vaccine like you know it's like it's like a cleverly paid plays into the 2021 era like anti-covid it's like like it's culture that was mainstreaming bitcoin so it's like to me it's like i get where this comes from it comes from users wanting to feel important.

It comes from the these are the people who are left over from the anti-vax kind of adopting Bitcoin culture movement who find that not speaks to them because it offers them a way to rebel against authority.

But then the correct question is like, is that authority worth rebelling against?

And if you rebel against it successfully, then what occurs?

And so like, if you analyze that question, is this authority like worth rebelling against?

I don't think so because in the 16 years of Bitcoin, there hasn't been anything better created than this, which is a large multi-stakeholder, like the meritocratic process where it's very hard to change Bitcoin.

That was the whole point.

And your antithesis of this, what you're offering in exchange, can only be at best a large meritocratic process in which it's very difficult to change Bitcoin run by different people.

like that's your bull case is that you is that oh this is a large meritocratic process like run by the wrong people so we're gonna make a large meritocratic process like run by the right people and like oh that will be better and it's like well no like the thing is the good probably like this is the best case scenario for the for is that this is the best model uh you know maybe if there's two like large meritocratic processes like competing for bitcoin okay maybe that you got me there.

Maybe that would be good.

But then, you know, prove to me how you can solve the technical issues, which we know at the root here, is that if these things actually do progress to being separate implementations, like, they'll, you know, there are known risks with that.

So, like, you know, solve the actual root problem.

But no, they just want to supplant the other, you know, they don't, they're just interested in becoming the new large meritocratic culture.

So, you know, I think that the challenge here is to sort of evaluate these things and run them to the end and sort of say like okay like well what what is the actual solution that you're offering here and it looks exactly identical to the same version so even if you disagreed with the core version you can just not upgrade and if i was on the not side i would just be desperately trying to get developers like getting eyeballs on the code um because you don't want this to be something where luke's just shipping code without like very good peer review and but let's move on from the not stuff um just to close out can we talk a bit about sailor's utopian vision so yeah because he has been very careful about what he said in terms of like bitcoin helping the us helping the us dollar being an ally in this sailor's obviously a very smart person do you think he believes that or do you think he's selling a narrative so bitcoin gets adopted as quickly as possible um it's impossible for me to know i don't know seller well enough to to know to answer that question uh the question i think that might be more interesting is is that the prudent path for the bitcoin movement or is there another option available um and so you know right now it's like uh let's just say we didn't want to be a participant in that uh well there's a lot of other cryptocurrencies like in and around washington dc that like you know uh now have their own digital asset treasury movements and you know from this perspective of the trump family don't seem all that different from bitcoin in terms of you know their utility to the administration so i don't know how to answer that right i don't know i don't i try to look at things uh i i do sometimes have strong reactions to things but i try to look at things and sort of say like okay like um just describe them let's start before you have a feeling on it just describe them right okay so like bitcoin is is mainstreaming now in the united states and it's happening along with the expansion of the dollar uh i probably personally would have liked to see a world where other countries that have been excluded from the financial system like were not continued didn't continue to live under sort of you know the repression under the dollar that Alex Ladstein and other people have written about pretty eloquently I don't think I will get I'm so I'm not entitled to that I don't think I will get that and I don't think that that will kill Bitcoin.

Like, that's just, I will have to accept the reality where that most people wanted this outcome.

And I don't think, you know, will Bitcoin be any net worse?

I think the reality is the dollar is going to be a lot stronger for a lot longer.

This is always my, you know, so I do think there's two things that I think that's interesting about that.

It's, you know, I don't know how much the people who are using the crypto ecosystem to advance the dollar really get Bitcoin.

I don't really know what their incentive alignment is long term.

I have a lot of questions about that.

And then the question is, is the stablecoin movement so successful that they actually increase the strength of the dollar so much that it like breaks the models of the Bitcoin treasury companies?

Because the Bitcoin treasury companies are sort of largely based on this idea that Bitcoin has a consistent compound annual growth rate.

And because that compound annual growth rate can be calculated, you can make derivative financial instruments off of it.

it's the whole thing so if you're really looking for like one little jenga piece at the bottom uh i was talking to jeff walton about this but like you know maybe the hypothetical is you know the stable coin industry is so broad because again like there's two ways to increase the price of the dollar it's like you either you know uh limit the supply or you increase demand right and so you could you it's theoretically possible that stable coins could increase demand for us dollars so much such that the us dollar stops declining against bitcoin that's theoretically possible.

And so the question is, like, do these dollar, do the dollar, pro dollar faction groups, you know, are they so successful that they break some of these models?

That's where you get that, that's where the, you know, if you really were looking for like a weak leg in the treasury movement, you know, maybe you see something like that, right?

Because Saylor's whole thesis is predicated on Bitcoin continuing to go up over time at a consistent rate.

You can't do financialization if that doesn't happen.

But if you're biased towards hyper-Bitcoinization, you would expect that to happen so i don't know man it's a it's a hard game i don't know i i would find that a hard one to believe just in this like the idea that i'm sure demand for us dollars will go up but i'm sure supply of us dollars will go up faster like is my left curve take on that yeah that's a reasonable stance right but i'm i posit it because i think it's uh it's an outcome that people seem to not consider that seems possible because if you think that like okay well you know if you look at what's going on in, um, you know, Korea and Japan and, uh, Russia and China, how successful do you think their stable currencies are going to be in the crypto market?

And so the crypto market is 99% dollarized, then that means that their economies are eventually going to wither and go to zero and that the U S dollar will be the beneficiary of that.

Um, you know, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think that, um, yeah, the, that'll set up the scenario where, you know, Bitcoin and the dollar sort of the remaining ones and and like that is implies that the u.s dollar demand would increase like tremendously like a world like a world where like you know bitcoin was the sorry the u.s dollar was the was the only like remaining fiat currency like you would imagine that like demand for dollars would be astronomical i think that's probably a likely scenario but i think if they got that they would also increase the supply to benefit themselves tremendously sure i'm just positive because i think it's a fun like thought experiment and i'm not 100 convinced that it's impossible and i'm not 100 convinced that the participants who are pushing it don't think that it's possible i think that they they might think that it's a plausible outcome and if they think it's a plausible outcome i would be interested in that but yeah i don't know man it's um what's going on you know we're always we always have so much to catch up on do you think the path to hyperbitconization then is first every country basically being a de facto on the US dollar?

Well, CK always said hyper-dollarization and then hyper-Bitcoinization.

That's an old meme that I think has been lost in Bitcoin culture.

So if I could put anything in anyone's ear, it's that I think CK was 100% right about hyper-dollarization before hyper-Bitcoinization.

And I think he's collecting, he was saying that in 2020.

And I think that's probably a likely scenario.

Just because, again, the administration is pushing this stuff so heavily.

But yeah, TLDR, I think, right, we're living in a cultural change in Bitcoin.

There's like a new movement and kind of a new monoculture.

I think it's important to kind of analyze what it wants to achieve.

I think that monoculture is like pretty aligned with like hybrid Bitcoinization.

I think I explained sort of like, you know, why even in a worst case scenario, I think what they're working on generally is like interesting and should be of interest to the Bitcoin movement.

the knots and core stuff you know i i i think again i i i think that will go where it goes because i i don't know i i it's hard for me to like see that i don't see the bull case for that playing out uh i could be wrong i don't know maybe i'll start running knots but i i don't know um hey yeah and then with the stable coin stuff right like that's uh yeah that's the big concern right the ghost of mark goodwin yeah i mean that's one of my favorite books in bitcoin um all right well rizzo this has been well i always love talking to you man um we should catch up again for bitcoin's birthday we can do some predictions for 2026 yeah it has to be sufficiently long enough for now though because uh you know it has to be long enough for things to be confusing but um yeah man i don't know i would i would encourage you to maybe off your uh 21 you know your 2021 cultural stodginess of uh you know it's sort of um there's nothing about bitcoin that's really changed just because there are other cultures that are doing new things with bitcoin like it doesn't doesn't really you know you know if they're successful that's great for you you own bitcoin like you know if they're unsuccessful then we're kind of back at square one no ring yeah i mean that's true and like buying bitcoin whoever's buying bitcoin is cool but i just i i think it is important that people continue to push like the values that are very important to me about bitcoin yeah that's that that's a big question right like it's like is does the two these companies become so large that they compete for bitcoin demands but they have to buy bitcoin anyway so it's like their demand is sort of pegs it's like suggesting that like three percent fruit juice like you know competes with like 100 orange juice and it's like okay like kind of you know i'm less likely to buy a coconut because i can go buy a coconut water in like a cave so i i decreased the demand for raw coconuts how dare you yeah i mean somebody has to buy the coconuts and then you know process them into some sort of drink that i can buy right um yeah i mean I mean, because there's so much stuff in that.

We don't need to get back into it.

Because the problem with that analogy when it comes to treasury companies is where are they holding the coconuts?

And they're just giving all the coconuts to Coinbase and Anchorage and all these other people.

But, Rizzo, we've covered it.

I might put that on top of Bitcoin that are yield-bearing.

Yeah, well, then there'll be another shit show.

Right, let's catch up for Bitcoin's birthday.

We'll do it on January 9th, just to honest.

But yeah, but I appreciate you, man.

This has been fun.

Okay, man.

Peace.

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