Matt Kibbe (2:25)

So we'll continue this conversation at the pub.

Thomas Pacquia (2:29)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (2:31)

And you. Well, let's get into this. So you're a bitcoiner that at some point decided that the community needed to gather and this was a reaction. You should tell the story. But it was a reaction. You're in New York City, the government has locked down everything and I could spend the next three hours bitching about lockdowns, but one of the things that was so destructive was the inability of people to get together because if you're just online rage clicking, you're bound to think that everybody except you and your tribe are a bunch of assholes. So, but they. But they wouldn't let people go to pubs.

Thomas Pacquia (3:17)

Yep, yep. Really destructive. Pub Key was very much a product of COVID in a number of different ways. Two things that I love outside of my family are bitcoin, bitcoin community and dive bars. So a really robust bitcoin community.

Matt Kibbe (3:31)

Pillars of civil society.

Thomas Pacquia (3:32)

Exactly.

Matt Kibbe (3:33)

Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (3:35)

You know, nerd culture and bar culture go well together, but a really robust bitcoin community in New York really fractured and they left for Austin, Nashville, Miami and some other places as well. But, yeah, the bitcoin community really was on its knees through Covid. And the other thing that we saw, a lot of the historic dive bars, mom and pop operations, they couldn't make it through. So private equity backed, you know, restaurants and, you know, certain ones could figure it out, but a lot of the dive bars that were still run by, you know, second generation, third generation just threw in the towel. So one of those dive bars used to be called the Stone Crow. My wife and I lived a couple blocks away that wasn't going to make it. And we had this idea because back in 2016 or 17, I hosted Bitcoin meetups just in the back of the Stone Crow and called it Crypto at the Crow. And that idea always sort of stuck with me because there wasn't a gateway for people that didn't understand bitcoin or the community and culture. There wasn't an accessible front door for folks. They read about it on Twitter, which is usually a nightmare for newcomers. They read it about it in mainstream media, which is usually just completely wrong and biased whenever they're covering bitcoin. So we wanted to have something that was culturally super familiar and accessible. So it's got to be a pub or a tavern.

Matt Kibbe (4:55)

Yeah, yeah. So my first. I've. I bought my first beer with bitcoin, I think about 2015 in Prague. Have you ever heard of this organization, the. The Institute for Crypto Anarchy?

Thomas Pacquia (5:09)

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Kibbe (5:10)

And they had, I think, one of the very first coffee shops where you had to use your bitcoin wallet to purchase that. And they've now, like, they've closed that finally. But your goal is quite similar, like an interesting place where people can learn about something that they've been told is really scary.

Thomas Pacquia (5:32)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (5:33)

And it's really not scary. It's okay.

Thomas Pacquia (5:36)

Yeah. So at least once a week we take the back room in New York and we have a big event space, much bigger here in D.C. with a stage, and we host free and open to the public, bitcoin and bitcoin adjacent programming. So we'll have speakers from all across the space. It could be on the financial side, the mining side, energy policy, you name it. We try to really spread out the topics, but it's always free and open to the public. We never force people in. They're always invited. But that's sort of like the. The engine behind Pubkey. We turned it into a comedy club for nerds, and we just want that to be accessible to folks if they're curious about it, because a lot of people just don't know where to start. So when you go into New York and when you walk into dc, I bristle a little bit when people call it a bitcoin theme bar, because it's not like a hard rock cafe. It's not plastered with the bees. There's more like Easter eggs and things like that. So the bitcoin community knows it's. It's their home, it's their. It's their hub. But for other folks, it's just a neighborhood tavern. It's supposed to be as familiar as possible. So we try to strike that balance. But we have these things. You can pay in bitcoin. You get a 21% discount if you pay in bitcoin. That makes people ask, why are you solvent as a business? And then we have these events where we try to really, you know, make it as welcoming as possible.

Matt Kibbe (6:57)

It's funny, I don't know if I told you this before, but almost all of my team used to work with me at FreedomWorks, and we would gather at that bar and.

Thomas Pacquia (7:08)

Hill country.

Matt Kibbe (7:09)

Yeah, Hill country. Okay. Yeah. And do karaoke and be slightly less productive the next day. So we were particularly excited that you found that space because it's a good event space.

Thomas Pacquia (7:20)

It's a very special space. And we want some of the through line. So we're in touch with the live band, karaoke, and the line dancing. We want to sort of honor the history of that space. And people liked it. Right. Those were popular nights for hill Country. So we want to bring those elements. We'll do comedy and trivia. It doesn't always have to just be, you know, bitcoin and beers.

Matt Kibbe (7:41)

So I've been watching the bitcoin community, well, forever. But it was particularly interesting that it did. It. It developed political clout in this last election.

Thomas Pacquia (7:52)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (7:53)

And. And I remember Trump actually came to your New York facility, Right?

Thomas Pacquia (7:58)

Yep. He bought 50 burgers and 50 Diet Cokes and paid in bitcoin.

Matt Kibbe (8:02)

Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (8:03)

So took years off my life, I would imagine. It was Stressful.

Matt Kibbe (8:07)

Yeah, but he was. He was in full solicitation mode. He. Someone on his team told him that you guys mattered politically.

Thomas Pacquia (8:18)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (8:19)

And not just. Not just financially. Like, it's a. It's a robust community. That. That was very much a potential swing vote for him. What's. Do you know how that happened? I mean, you obviously know why he showed up at your pub, but do you know some of the background on why. Why did Trump become interested in bitcoin and crypto?

Thomas Pacquia (8:41)

So there was definitely someone in the family. I don't know who it was. One of his. One of his sons, probably could have been Baron, Eric, Don Jr. All like, I think, pretty big supporters. But at the end of his first administration, he was pretty negative on bitcoin and vocal about it. And it's kind of refreshing to see an evolution in. In thought on a topic. You don't really see politicians go back on something that they say that often, but with new information, you should expect opinions to evolve. And we saw that with Trump. I believe Angela McArdle was one of the first ones to get directly to him, talking about the importance of pardoning Ross Ulbricht from the Libertarian Party's perspective and sort of the power and potential there. And then it really built there. David Bailey hosted a mining CEO roundtable in Mar a Lago, and that was pretty influential. And I think he started to understand just how badly maligned the bitcoin community was and how pissed off they are historically libertarian and anarchist values. They want to be left alone. They want nothing to do with politics. But under the Biden administration, it was so aggressive and so punitive that it really galvanized the community to get more involved. And, I mean, it was a cookie on the shelf. He took it like it was the smart move, and it really played out for him. And not just him, also Bernie Moreno winning against Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Sherrod Brown was one of the top lieutenants in Elizabeth Warren's anti crypto army and a couple of other races. This was the first cycle where we saw crypto and bitcoin really flex its muscles. And I think it's still building. Like, we'll see how it plays out in the midterms. We'll see how it plays out in 2028. But I don't think this community is going to go back to sort of like, you know, staying away from politics.

Matt Kibbe (10:25)

So Lynn Ulbricht has been a regular on this show, I think, going back.

Thomas Pacquia (10:30)

A lioness of a mother.

Matt Kibbe (10:32)

Yeah, yeah. Like what a. What A monster of a person. She is, and what she accomplished is just remarkable. So we've been talking about Ross for many years, and my point was always that this isn't really about Ross. This is a war on privacy and crypto and free exchange and all of these fundamental principles that are certainly libertarian, they certainly should be Republican. I think they should be American values. But. And, you know, all the. All the demonization of Ross and all the. The fake stories about him, it was just classic smear campaign to hide the fact that this was. This was a war against the entire crypto community.

Thomas Pacquia (11:17)

Yeah, I agree. If you look at the early case against Ross Ulbricht and the Silk Road, there were political forces at play. Chuck Schumer was talking about the importance of, you know, making an example. I believe there were ties to the judges, the judge involved with the case and the sentencing. The sentencing was so egregiously over the top. And just. I'm very, very grateful to have played a very tiny role in. In that. But the entire community really rallied for to. To right this wrong. And, you know, we have. It's not done yet. There's the privacy trials with Samurai, with Tornado Cash with BTC Fog, Roman Sterling, Roman Storm Kinoan and Bill. Hopefully those pardon petitions get over the line. But, you know, the bitcoiners are really focused on, you know, righting some of these wrongs. So the fight's not over.

Matt Kibbe (12:10)

Is there. Is there a resource where people could find those petitions if we want? Because some of these things you mentioned, I don't even know about. I mean, I knew Roger Ver's story and obviously Ross's, but for people outside of the tech bro community, where do we go to learn?

Thomas Pacquia (12:30)

Yeah, absolutely. I can send over the links. There are four different petitions, and some of them need resources to pay for legal. It's quite expensive to launch these campaigns for pardon applications. It gets political. You have to get lobbyists involved and things like that, obviously, unfortunately. But, yeah, I'll make sure to get all the links over.

Matt Kibbe (12:49)

You should hire Lynn Ulbricht.

Thomas Pacquia (12:51)

Exactly. Well, I mean, her new campaign is really phenomenal as well. It's Mothers Against Excessive Sentencing or something like that. That's close. Yeah. It's really incredible what she's continuing to do.

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Matt Kibbe (13:33)

Yeah, and, and we're going to continue working with her because you know, before the world got weird and Covid and lockdowns broke everything, we were pretty focused on not just criminal justice reform but, but specifically restorative justice, which to me is a very libertarian bottom up approach to solving community problems that doesn't continue the cycle of recidivism. And I've been talking to Lyn about that as well. One other funny thing that happened on this show relevant to the Trump administration is Paul Atkins is an old friend of ours. His wife served on a board where I worked years ago and so like a very, he's, he's been simmering in libertarian philosophy and, and I had him on my show In I think 2024 as talking about the Biden administration's war on crypto. And of course we had to talk about Hayek and the demonic nationalization of money and that kind of stuff. And this isn't like a newsy show, but that became a very newsy clip when he was nominated to run the SEC because he doesn't do things like this. He's a very careful lawyer and is not prone to overstating things. So that became the go to interview for the press because it was the only one they could find. So once in a while we stumble across thing but that leads to the question, I know a little bit about what Paul has been up to at the SEC and reversing some of the overtly hostile policies towards crypto entrepreneurs. What's your assessment? The good, the bad and the ugly. So you guys had political impact.

Thomas Pacquia (15:34)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (15:35)

You made the case to Trump. Trump gets elected. Certainly with someone like Paul Atkins you get a guy that's far more sympathetic to the pro market, pro liberty perspective on crypto. What have they done right and what have they done wrong?

Thomas Pacquia (15:52)

So pardoning Ross Ulbricht definitely was the highlight. That's the only ask that we had from Pubke when he visited pubkey. What's the most important thing to you guys was just like just get Ross out. Same message at the, at the bitcoin conference when he was there. The other ones are kind of nice to haves. We have the sbr, the strategic reserve and other elements of the government. You know, they have to stop selling the bitcoin first when they seize it via the US Marshals auctions. So they stop Selling. There are plans out there to accumulate. Some bitcoiners, you know, find that a little bit gross. Like, you know, using taxpayer dollars to go and buy an asset is, you know, you know, I think a little bit antithetical to the libertarian perspective. Other bitcoiners think it'll be a good thing, make, you know, the number go up. So that one is kind of neutral to me.

Matt Kibbe (16:42)

You know, when I hear bitcoin strategic reserve, it makes me quite nervous. Yeah, perhaps. And it seems more consequential than the bullshit petroleum reserve with cheese, which. Which is just. There's a cheese reserve, too. Yeah, well, that. That's national security at its finest. Right.

Thomas Pacquia (17:01)

Wisconsin.

Matt Kibbe (17:02)

We'll flood our enemies with government cheese.

Thomas Pacquia (17:04)

Yeah, exactly.

Matt Kibbe (17:06)

But, yeah, like, I'm not. I'm not sure what to think about a bitcoin strategic reserve.

Thomas Pacquia (17:11)

It's a superior monetary asset. So it does make sense on some level. But, yeah, I'm, you know, sympathetic to both of the views here. I think it's only a matter of time before they need it. All government currencies collapse at some point. The macro situation is looking a bit bleak at the moment for the dollar. It's one of the reasons why they've.

Matt Kibbe (17:35)

Placed it a bit.

Thomas Pacquia (17:35)

A bit, yeah. It's one of the reasons why they've plowed so aggressively into stable coins, because that's really a proliferation of the dollar dominance and getting it into places like China and Venezuela. They don't use bitcoin so much. They want the. They want the stable coins. So, you know, there was. There was an interesting investigation into tether. And I think when the DOJ was looking into tether at some point, they realized, hey, this is actually really good for the dollar. So there's much more support for that. And I think that that's what a lot of, you know, politicians are focusing on. If you talk to bitcoiners, I think that they're a little bit saddened to see so much focus on crypto and D5. Bitcoin is very separate and distinct from crypto and defi and stable coins. And there's really not that much to do with. With bitcoin. Right. We'd like to see a de minimis tax exemption for actually using it. You shouldn't have to do capital gains tax if you buy a burger at Pub Key with bitcoin. And there are bills in the works. Cynthia Lummis and Ted Cruz have really been champions. We don't really have that level of a champion on the democratic side yet. I'd like to see it, but I think we're going to go through a intensely partisan phase when it comes to bitcoin. But hopefully Pubkey can make a little bit of progress on, on the Democrat side to explain the power and impact for Americans. And then, you know, on the bad side, I don't really fault the family. Like a lot of folks will focus on the, the crypto tokens like Trump Coin and things like that. I look at it slightly differently. I'd like to see a holistic approach to deal with conflict of interest across all asset classes, whether it's, you know, Halliburton and the Iraq wars with Dick Cheney or Nancy Pelosi's incredible track record and other ones. So I think, I think a holistic approach to insider information and conflict of interest would be a nice to see, but you can't really do that with bitcoin. It's a commodity asset. You just buy it, use it, hold it.

Matt Kibbe (19:36)

So the, let's talk about the gathering and the political potential of this, because the way I looked at the Trump coalition as a libertarian, I looked at it and said this is very different than the MAGA coalition that got Trump elected in 2016. And Elon is kind of his own wing of this coalition, although he's fairly integrated with, with the Tech Bros. And.

Thomas Pacquia (20:07)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (20:07)

And even, even the crypto community. And then, and then the Maha movement to me was, was the most interesting grassroots movement I've seen since the Tea Party. And it's, it's really. I think it's. I think it's safe to say that a lot of Trump's more interesting and controversial nominees would not have been confirmed but for the power of Maha.

Thomas Pacquia (20:31)

Yep.

Matt Kibbe (20:32)

And unfortunately, a lot of these, a lot of, not all of them, but elements of this coalition have been kind of abandoned as Trump has gone from candidate to actually governing. Particularly, you know, the loss of the Doge wing of the movement was, I thought, quite tragic and politically consequential, I'd agree. But out of that and, and out of that might emerge, like you mentioned, this very partisan phase that we're in. I still think that a lot of these values are not partisan at all.

Thomas Pacquia (21:07)

I agree.

Matt Kibbe (21:07)

Cannot be, should not be. There is this libertarianish community that is emerging post Trump. I mean, Trump is almost already a lame duck, and I know that sets people to say that, but he had this year to do what he was going to do, and I'm not sure how much more he's going to accomplish next year in election year. And unless something Miraculous happens, his party's going to get clobbered in the midterms, which is historically typical. And they're not helping. So the question becomes, where do we go from here? And I think about it as a community organizer. I think about it as someone that cares about values and ideas more than political affiliation. Where do you guys go in this world? Do you become like an important. Way for people to reorganize?

Thomas Pacquia (22:09)

You know, that's a great question. I think with bitcoin and Maha, you see an incredible overlap in sort of the core values. I think there is an amazing overlap with core American values. You know, Maha used to be associated with like crunchy granola, hippies, right? Like natural food, real ingredients, anti pesticides and stuff like that. To see that sort of co opted and pushed into the partisan frame because of, you know, Bobby Kennedy or, or whatever is kind of surreal to watch happen. Similarly, bitcoin is a bit of a psychological mirror. Like you see what you want to see in bitcoin. You have people coming at it from a technical, economic or social political lens. And you know, we have, you know, progressive factions in bitcoin that really like it for its power to help people that are underserved by the banking system or debanked or underbanked. And then you have the self sovereign side, which is a little bit more libertarian. So that malleability, psychological, like malleability with something like bitcoin, with something like the Maha movement, I think is only growing in importance. Where it goes from here, from the bitcoin perspective is really hard to say. It's, it's a global community. Bitcoiners in Germany don't look anything like bitcoiners in Texas. So there's a lot of localism to how people view this thing and its power and impact. And in the United States we have that as well. The progressive bitcoiners are actually in Boston and like Rhode island and you know, Portland, Oregon. And you know, their perspective of the thing is very, very different than the folks in Texas, like I said. So herding those cats can be complicated. And you know, from pub keys perspective, we don't make endorsements. You know, we didn't endorse Trump like formally and we didn't donate to Trump. We don't donate to any politicians. We host the conversation. We're the stage, we're the, the tavern where people can have these conversations and hash it out in a, you know, traditional setting. In terms of organization, you know, we have the big exchanges. Right. Coinbase is starting to Look a lot more like JP Morgan than like a rogue crypto company. So they, they have the power and they do deploy tremendous sums to lobbying groups and they're going to look for regulations that are beneficial to them, not, not necessarily to bitcoiners, which is, you know, it's practical like it's how it evolves.

Matt Kibbe (24:32)

So it's the way the world is.

Thomas Pacquia (24:34)

It's the way the world is. But people do lose sight. You know, Bitcoin wasn't created for the ETFs or the Bitcoin treasury companies or corporations that have private treasuries and use it as a reserve asset. It was really built for people to run the node and be, be a voluntary participant in effectively a parallel system.

Matt Kibbe (24:54)

Right.

Thomas Pacquia (24:54)

It's a peaceful alternative to a system that doesn't work for everybody and doesn't really give them sort of those core American values and rights that have been eroded over, you know, however many years. So that's always going to be there and you're going to have the champions, lots of them and they're, we call ourselves plebs like lovingly. But you know, interacting with the protocol on your own terms is always available. Not everybody's going to run a node, not everybody's going to have the technical competence or want to take on the responsibility of being your own bank. But the ability to do that is really, really important. And I think where Pub Key comes in, you know, you have the big companies and lobbyists, they're looking out for market structure and the Clarity act and things like that. The developers are in a slightly better place because of philanthropy. We saw this attack on the privacy wallets and some other things. Getting language in that protects an individual's right to self custody and run a node and interact with the protocol is very important to get that language into clarity. But nobody's really looking out for the end user like the little guy. And I think that that's where pubkey really found like our voice ever since we hosted, we hosted Trump.

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Matt Kibbe (26:45)

Yeah, and that's kind of the controversy going back to my experience buying a beer with my first bitcoin wallet in 2015. The dream back then was that this was a means of exchange and this was a parallel currency. I don't, I don't know if you guys say it that way, but it was a parallel way to have control your money in a way that couldn't be degraded by government through inflation and the printing press and all that stuff. And it's become more of an asset over time because of the involvement of the big guys. And this, this kind of gets specifically to your project at PubKey. Like you want people to use this as, as currency for sure, yeah. I mean, it's not as easy as it should be.

Thomas Pacquia (27:36)

No, there are frictions and that's why we offer, you know, insane discounts if you pay in Bitcoin. We intend to hold all the bitcoin that we receive. So we have a little, you know, bitcoin treasury over the last three years, maybe 5 to 7% of the transactions are settled in, in bitcoin, which is great. We'd like to boost those numbers. And there's more infrastructure on the point of sale side coming specifically out of Square, which is owned by Block, you know, Jack Dorsey is really pushing some amazing tools and functionality for merchants. But it's about education, like if you have to. And it's about new regulation as well, like if you have to calculate capital gains tax anytime you want to buy a coffee. That's a real disincentive. Right? That's a, that's a very powerful one. So it's about purposeful, I would suspect 100%. Yeah. And I would say that the ETFs and the, some of the bitcoin treasury companies are purposeful as well. Right. Like they're going to want things that look a little bit more like, you know, more robust kyc AML regulatory moats. Right. Compliance is a fantastic regulatory moat for a company like Coinbase because it makes it more and more difficult to be an, an innovator and an upstart to challenge their market dominance. So it's just around the, around the racetrack again, unfortunately, in some, in some regards. But this time could be a little bit different because of the global south, because of the power and potential in other parts of the world and also here in America, if we get those protections for sovereign individuals to, to choose an alternative to the banking system and opt into Bitcoin, we've seen people for a long time, you know, pubkey included it's not easy to offer these things. Like it requires a lot of time, effort and resources. Think about just training up a new bartender on how to accept bitcoin. You know, the turnover in hospitality is quite high, so we spend a lot of time trying to get that baseline of familiarity and confidence to have that be part of the establishment. But I can't really fault other establishments that want to offer this thing for saying like, you know, it's just, it's too much of a headache.

Matt Kibbe (29:47)

Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (29:47)

So we can solve that with better user interface, better tools like from Square and Strike and other ones. And I think it's getting there. But, you know, there are more and more problems to solve as we go.

Matt Kibbe (29:59)

Yeah. Offline. My colleague actually runs a bar in New York City. She owns a bar in New York City and she wants your advice on. They, they want to accept bitcoin and she's trying. I'd be happy to help figure out the best thing that's available.

Thomas Pacquia (30:12)

Yeah, we've converted a couple of merchants locally. People are really interested.

Matt Kibbe (30:16)

That's part of your mission, right? Like you're actually running a campaign in D.C. to convince merchants to consider taking bitcoin.

Thomas Pacquia (30:23)

Yeah. And Compass Coffee as well. You know, that's a bitcoin company at its core. There are other ones. DC has a low key, really robust bitcoin community. There's the bitcoin districts. We're partnering with them on events. The Bitcoin Policy Institute, their headquarters, their office is actually in the back of Pub Key dc. Okay. Which is kind of funny. Most, most think tanks have to be on K Street, but these guys are in the bitcoin bar. I think it's on brands for, for, for the industry. But yeah, we do want to, we don't want to push it on anybody.

Matt Kibbe (30:55)

Right.

Thomas Pacquia (30:55)

We just want to explain to people why we think this is special and beneficial for, for the business. I had no background in hospitality when we started. My wife didn't, you know, the other two co founding partners didn't have background in hospitality. But our thesis was the bitcoin community. If we went out and did something authentically and we stuck the landing on the food, the beverage, the vibe, the atmosphere, all that stuff, and we ran this playbook, we would not suffer the same boot on the neck that other hospitality startups do where they, you know, they're worried about that nut covering the rent and everything. So from the jump, the bitcoin community just wanted Pub Key to exist. And it took that pressure off of us in Covid. No background in hospitality and we took our lumps for sure. Like it's a steep learning curve. But you know, having that level of support was really, you know, the, the change there that could be applied to any business, anybody that wants to go out and do something with authentic authenticity. Bitcoiners take note of that and they're tremendously supportive.

Matt Kibbe (31:57)

Yeah, you were mentioning earlier that this should not be a partisan issue and I would take it even a step further. It strikes me that true liberal progressive values, and you can see this in authoritarian countries like Venezuela, like bitcoin is a lifeline and for political dissidents and for the people.

Thomas Pacquia (32:20)

Not for the government.

Matt Kibbe (32:21)

For the people. Yeah, against the government. I mean it's not necessarily an anti government thing, but it's a freedom thing and it gives you the ability to act and live even if the government's trying to destroy you, your currency, whatever they're doing. But also the, you know, the entire, you know, you mentioned Jack Dorsey, he's been doing a lot of ex posts about Murray Rothbard and he's, he's sort of learning the Austrian. Well, he's, he's, I'm sure he's learned it by now. The Austrian critique of, of central banking and government controlled money and how they, they use the printing press to finance forever wars. Yeah, like you really wouldn't have. The military industrial complex that, that I would argue is, is, is potentially poised to destroy America if they couldn't just print the money out of thin air 100%. That seems like something that progressives used to care about. Maybe they don't anymore since they're doing so well in the stock market. But it strikes me that this is not some sort of niche libertarian thing or tech bro thing, that these are big fundamental values that, that, that we can frame this as.

Thomas Pacquia (33:38)

These are really big ideas and concepts. I mean the central bank, control of the central bank is probably the most powerful branch of the military. And it's almost like explaining to somebody the nitty gritty of how the Internet works. Like understanding how money works and how it's evolved throughout the course of human history. They're the same problems back to the denarii, you know, the uk, Spain. Devaluate. A devaluing currency is such an addictive lever. And in the short term politicians think that they're doing the right thing because they're alleviating pain and they have this political power, they're just going to use it. The thing that bitcoin does is it takes that temptation out of the equation entirely and it's the first time that we've seen that it's not effective with gold, it's effective with bitcoin. Bitcoin's still an experiment for sure, but I think a lot of problems would be resolved if we separated, you know, money from state. We got a long way to go with that. You know, that might be a utopian ideal that we'll never actually see fully realized. But it's fun to try.

Matt Kibbe (34:43)

It's good. It's good to have a North Star.

Thomas Pacquia (34:44)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (34:45)

Because if. If you don't know where you're going, you're not going to get there.

Thomas Pacquia (34:49)

But.

Matt Kibbe (34:50)

And this. This gets like, to the. The most interesting thing that you're doing from my perspective, is really about community organizing. And I'm so. I was a former Tea Party organizer, and my model for community organizing was based on my experience as a Deadhead. I would spend a lot of time in Grateful Dead parking lots and watch this spontaneously emergent community. There was a marketplace called the Parking Lot. And Deadheads were not the first, but. But the definition of superfans. Right. So they. They would. They would. The band, let them record and it would trade the tapes and. And they had a real sense of belonging to that community. That was not. It did not prohibit normies from coming into the community and getting turned on to the music and getting turned onto the culture. And it was a whole thing. And there's, you know, obviously the Tea Party movement was a version of that. I suppose Libertarian gatherings are when we're not fighting with each other. That's a version of that.

Thomas Pacquia (35:56)

Yeah. Pork Fest.

Matt Kibbe (35:57)

Yeah. So, yeah. And Pork Fest is probably the best manifestation of the positive vision because you. You have all of these very diverse people.

Thomas Pacquia (36:08)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (36:09)

And, you know, they argue about philosophy, but, you know, you have agrist, off the grid, farmers, and everything in between. Yeah, that's. That's how society is supposed to work. Like, there's a couple things that bring us together and, and allow us to gather and, and communicate and perhaps understand our differences and work them out. But, you know, historically, a lot of that happened at a pub.

Thomas Pacquia (36:37)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (36:37)

At a pub. Like Sam Adams organized the. The Sons of Liberty. What was it called? The Green Dragon? Something like that. Like this. This is an important institution that. That actually can solve problems outside of.

Thomas Pacquia (36:51)

Politics altogether, 100% for thousands of years. The importance of the local watering hole, I think, is greatly underestimated and appreciated. It's where Thomas Paine went to drop off the pamphlets. Common Sense. Somebody picks it up at the pub. You Know, thinks about it and starts a conversation, is it me or does suck out there? And somebody says, no sucks out there. We should overthrow the government. Yeah, and it's, it's really the, you know, it's, it was the social network, it was the dissemination of information. You know, you had wealthy individuals that ran the newspapers and you know, you had sort of a coordinated message from governments and churches and things like that. But in the pub, that's where you had, you know, the original, like Twitters almost, where you could connect with somebody and talk about real issues and formulate opinions separate and distinct from what was being told to lots of people through, you know, the traditional channels. So getting away from that in Covid was deeply disturbing and you can see that reflected in, you know, the kids. Right. High school, college years. It's extremely sad what, what was taken so much damage. And we, we can see that at the pub. If, if it's a covet era kid versus like, let's say a Gen Xer, Gen Xer sits down like, you know, it's, it's a normal experience. It takes a little bit for the Gen Z kids to, to like, calm down. Like they don't really know where to put their hands or how to speak to the bartender when they come in.

Matt Kibbe (38:21)

That's wild.

Thomas Pacquia (38:22)

It is wild. And I think that that's why we see the, the massive decline in like, you know, drinking in Gen Z, because formative social years were truly like robbed from them, which is a very, very sad thing. I hope it's not a super long tail psychological effect on that generation, but I'm certainly concerned that it will be.

Matt Kibbe (38:43)

Yeah. And you think about like even taking Covid out of the equation for all of the benefits of online communities. And I'm a big advocate of the power of decentralization and your ability to find your niche and gather online. There was pre 2020sort of a cultural backlash that said I want to gather again and then use those social networks to actually start gathering, usually in a bar, because nothing replaces human interaction.

Thomas Pacquia (39:25)

Yeah, that's true.

Matt Kibbe (39:26)

And what you're saying is so scary. Like if we've created a generation of young Americans who don't know how to interact with people that are different from them, that's a recipe for disaster.

Thomas Pacquia (39:37)

Yeah. And I saw some of these problems pre Covid in the bitcoin, particularly in the bitcoin space because it's decentralized. You have devs and engineers, you know, arguing on forums, on Twitter and bitcoin talk and Reddit and Things like that. And I came to Bitcoin. I took an interest in the social political layer before I got up the curve on the financial and technical layers. And when I was learning more about the technical layers. A couple years into Bitcoin, I started to realize a lot of developers were simply talking past each other because it was on these forums and if we were able to get people in the same room, a lot of these flame wars would, you know, be extinguished pretty quickly. Like, I think it would be accomplished in a couple of hours rather than months and months arguing over technical nuances and sort of talking past each other. Because there's different styles of writing, there's no tone. All the problems of, of communicating via, via text. So, you know, that was a real push to bring bitcoiners out and get them to communicate these issues in person. Some of them are very resistant to that for privacy reasons because, you know, they are keyboard warriors at heart. Like, that's, that's their level of comfort. But, you know, I think in certain circumstances we've been effective at that. And I think it's just human nature.

Matt Kibbe (40:58)

You can't get everybody out of their basement.

Thomas Pacquia (40:59)

No, definitely not.

Matt Kibbe (41:01)

There are certain libertarians who I won't name by name, but they're never going to come out of their basement.

Thomas Pacquia (41:06)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (41:07)

And the rage sort of defines their personalities.

Thomas Pacquia (41:10)

Yeah, for sure.

Matt Kibbe (41:11)

But that is like, it's sort of like driving. If your next door neighbor cuts you off in traffic, you're going to say some pretty spicy things to that person and you probably don't even know who it is. And then you get out of the car, maybe they clipped your car. You get out like, oh, Bob, let's figure out a way to work this out.

Thomas Pacquia (41:27)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (41:28)

Like, it's the, the anonymity of social media. I get the purpose of it, but it creates a lot of these, these problems, which means we have to gather.

Thomas Pacquia (41:38)

It also feeds so much distrust. Right. Like, you know, a lot of people just get called a fed right at the end of the day and you start to have just like a baseline level of, of distrust or mistrust in the individual you're talking to where that might not actually be the case. That's also a little bit of a feature in Bitcoin. Like, you know, bitcoin is for enemies is one of the, like, mottos. And you know, at some level the protocol does remove the trust variable because you're just dealing with the protocol. Everybody's, you know, forced to play by the same exact rules and have the same level of transparency and auditability of the blockchain. But when you talk about upgrades to the protocol, when you're talking about fixing bugs to the protocol, it can, it can really work against some of the developers there. There are some things that would be really nice to see implemented to the bitcoin blockchain that are going to take years and years. It moves at a glacial pace, which is very, very good. But also if there's a real attack or a real vulnerability. You know, we haven't really, really been tested too hard on this item yet, but speed matters sometimes.

Matt Kibbe (42:46)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I don't envy you adjudicating the disputes and the.

Thomas Pacquia (42:53)

I do my best. I'm not always successful, but I do try and you know, I do think that we have more in common as bitcoiners and as Americans than we have at. At conflict. So, you know, trying to be a of piece peacemaker, but it's not always so.

Matt Kibbe (43:09)

Like my, my whole strategy. So I'm part of the libertarian community and I get frustrated with the endless social media wars between various libertarian friendly influencers. They're always fighting with each other and yeah, especially now we love to fight about who's not a perfect libertarian.

Thomas Pacquia (43:31)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (43:31)

And I.

Thomas Pacquia (43:33)

The purity test.

Matt Kibbe (43:33)

Yeah, the purity test. And the problem with that argument is that there's only one perfect libertarian and it's me. So nobody else is going to get that prize. So we should just stop the argument and start thinking about like the 80, 90% of things that we actually share in common and we're excited about and it kind of gets. It's the same. This is why I'm thinking about community organizing. Any robust community starts with superfans. Deadheads and the Deadheads were the same thing. They would argue about whether or not that show was up to par and it would get very heated and people just passionately. Then Jerry dies and John Mayer shows up and there's just an endless argument about whether or not John Mayer is worthy to be playing with Dead and Company.

Thomas Pacquia (44:24)

I feel like he's been doing a good job.

Matt Kibbe (44:26)

I think he's been doing a good job and because I figured out a while ago that he wasn't Jerry. So it's gonna be different.

Thomas Pacquia (44:34)

Nor could he be.

Matt Kibbe (44:34)

Yeah, could he be or should he be? But super fans define. You know, I'm old enough to remember when the libertarian community was probably mostly people that I knew by name. We were that small and we were all book dorks and we're reading Human Action and we're arguing about the footnotes and all that. That's not true anymore. Not, not just because of Ron Paul, but because of, of social media. And you have guys like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey posting, you know, what has government done to our money?

Thomas Pacquia (45:07)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (45:07)

I'm like, okay, this is, this is a different world. Yeah. Which means that we have to be comfortable onboarding a lot of people that are turned on to these things but, but aren't going to be interested in arguing about the footnotes and human action.

Thomas Pacquia (45:21)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (45:22)

And that, that to me is like a, it's a cultural shift. It's not even, it's not an ideological thing but it's, it's an exciting moment where we're about to go mainstream.

Thomas Pacquia (45:31)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (45:32)

And you guys are exactly in that position. You're about to go mainstream.

Thomas Pacquia (45:35)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (45:36)

And you're going to have a lot of normies showing up and you got to welcome them instead of chasing them out.

Thomas Pacquia (45:42)

We have those factions, the normies are here, we call them the suit coiners, the folks that are interested in the ETFs and the Bitcoin treasury companies. And it's mostly about supply and demand, soaking up that, that inventory that's available so that the, you know, number goes up. You have bitcoin maximalists, the super fans. Like that's probably the highest level of the purity test and who is the most toxic, who's the most maxi. And then you have other people that are interested in other crypto projects and people that are a little bit more like malleable. Personally, I'm a bitcoin fatalist. If bitcoin fails, the entire sector fails and we're back to sort of the same issues that like, you know, if the project fails, it'll be very, very sad. But there's many different forms of failure. So there's a world where, where hardcore bitcoiners like myself and the Maxis might be super dependent, oppressed and super wealthy because the number keeps going up. But the project and the power and potential effectively have failed. Its ability to empower self sovereign individuals is sort of choked out by let's say the surveillance state or you know, legal risk and compliance elements that are sort of forced upon the bitcoin community. So those factions definitely exist in bitcoin and it's only going to get more complicated as we go. You know, if you, if you grow the tent and you know, I'm a big believer in culture and community, always win. It's the most powerful force for change. Doesn't matter how good the tech is. It doesn't matter how perfect the economic systems at play in bitcoin are. It's the culture and community and getting enough people that feel like they are participating in the value and the potential. Potential and the ethics of. Of the protocol, you know, really are the driving force for that. If it stays this niche thing that just continues to increase in value and people feel left out and left behind, I will. I consider that to be a failed project for sure, because that's where we get the partisan issues. Bitcoiners might get blamed for the collapse of the dollar or whatever. Like, we'll be the boogeyman. And I think that that's. That could be an attractive hook to a lot of people. And we see a little bit that forming with the Democrats. You know, just two days ago, Gavin Newsom on Twitter put out a tweet about Ross Ulbricht being pardoned like the felon. And it's just so wild to see him, like, go back to that as a rallying cry to stoke more divide as it pertains to partisanship as it pertains to bitcoin.

Matt Kibbe (48:21)

Yeah, so. So maybe he's the Fed.

Thomas Pacquia (48:23)

Yeah, could be. Certainly the statist.

Matt Kibbe (48:26)

Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (48:27)

But, you know, it's not a red thing. It's not a blue thing. It's not a Trump thing. It's an orange thing. It's a core American value thing. And, you know, we'll keep saying that, and we hope people are receptive to these, to the arguments that we have.

Matt Kibbe (48:42)

I. It was this year when I learned what orange pill did.

Thomas Pacquia (48:45)

Meant. Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (48:46)

I mean, I knew what it meant when the first time I heard the phrase, but I hadn't heard it before. I was at a conference in Mexico, and a lot of bitcoin guys were there and guys that you would know, and I learned that phrase. That's kind of cool. So that's a great way to end this. And your mantra is, if you're interested, if you're deep into it, we have to gather and we have to build community. Because. Because cultural change is the only way out of this mess.

Thomas Pacquia (49:14)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (49:14)

Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (49:15)

And the. It's not just bitcoin, like, you know, Pub Key really strives to address the loneliness epidemic. Just getting people out to, you know, the pub, the tavern, you know, share food, share, you know, a couple of drinks, share your opinions. It's just. It's the most human thing that I think that we could have built.

Matt Kibbe (49:34)

So. Yeah.

Thomas Pacquia (49:35)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (49:35)

And. And I. I may have been guilty of standing in line at Culty breweries over the years waiting to just get that one thing as a super fan. But now it's mainstream and normal people drink good beer.

Thomas Pacquia (49:49)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (49:49)

Kind of excited about that.

Thomas Pacquia (49:50)

What a world.

Matt Kibbe (49:51)

Yeah, anything's possible. So where. Tell us about Pub Key DC Pubke New York. And anything else you want people to check out.

Thomas Pacquia (49:59)

Pubkey nyc, classic dive bar. We're in Greenwich Village, Washington Place and 6th Avenue. 85 Washington Place. We host the free and open of the public bitcoin programming every Thursday. We're going to take a little bit of a break for the holidays, of course, but every Thursday you can find us mostly on Twitter as our primary channel. We record the events and post them to our YouTube and rumble as well so the virtual audience can pipe in. In D.C. we're 410 7th street, so two blocks south of Capital One arena in. In Chinatown. Every Wednesday we're going to be hosting the free and open the public bitcoin programming. We're open 11am to 2am in D.C. and you know, come and see us. We got a great Smashburger.

Matt Kibbe (50:42)

Nice. Terry. Terry was at your opening.

Thomas Pacquia (50:45)

Yeah.

Matt Kibbe (50:46)

Or whatever you call launch party. Launch party. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm eager to check it out and look forward to hanging out with all those awkward Gen Z bitcoiners.

Thomas Pacquia (50:56)

Hell yeah. The funny thing about that launch party, we had 30 people from the U.S. treasury. Like, what a world. The U.S. treasury is rolling deep to the bitcoin bar.

Matt Kibbe (51:05)

Right. Yeah. Well, that just creates anxiety for me.

Thomas Pacquia (51:09)

So now you got to have the conversations.

Matt Kibbe (51:12)

All right, I. I really appreciate it.

Thomas Pacquia (51:14)

Yeah, cheers. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

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