#593: Bitcoin is Money (&) Currency with Parker Lewis

Summary

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TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

Episode #593: “Bitcoin is Money (&) Currency” with Parker Lewis

Date: March 5, 2025
Host: Marty Bent
Guests: Parker A. Lewis, Jack Mallers

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Episode Overview

In this highly insightful episode, Marty Bent speaks with Parker Lewis and Jack Mallers about Parker’s recent article, “Bitcoin is Money and Currency.” The discussion explores the nuanced but crucial distinctions between money and currency, why these definitions matter for Bitcoin’s regulatory prospects, and how real-world business decisions are already proving Bitcoin’s viability as both money and a currency. The conversation weaves through regulatory debates in Washington, practical Bitcoin payments in business, and the ongoing evolution of Bitcoin payment tools.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bitcoin Takeover: Context & Community Events

(01:57 – 10:16)

• Parker and Jack outline the upcoming fourth annual Bitcoin Takeover week in Austin, designed to fill the “Bitcoin track” void at SXSW.

• Events include hackathons, educational talks on Bitcoin vs. CBDCs, startup showcases, mining panels, and a film screening of Dirty Coin.

• Noted the marginalization of Bitcoin at major tech events and the push for high-quality, high-signal industry gatherings.

  "South by Southwest...doesn't ever include Bitcoin as a track...Given the absence of bitcoin...it was appropriate for us to host the bitcoin takeover."
  — Parker A. Lewis (02:15)

2. Why the Language Matters: Money, Currency, and Policy

(12:02 – 19:35)

• Parker shares the impetus for his article: real-world policy debates, especially among high-profile Bitcoin backers like Michael Saylor, who calls Bitcoin “money and property, but not currency.”

• Highlights confusion sown by conflation of Bitcoin with all “crypto,” leading to poor policy and regulatory overreach.

• Emphasizes that the definitions used in DC have lasting consequences.

  "If you lump Bitcoin in with everything else, then the snake oil is always snake oil. And when it becomes clear...they're going to associate it with Bitcoin and then...over regulate Bitcoin..."
  — Parker A. Lewis (17:36)

3. Historical Distinction: Commodity Money vs. Currency

(22:53 – 29:54)

• Explains that historically, money (like gold) required an issuer for currency (like coins or notes).

• Bitcoin is unique — it's both commodity and currency, removing the need for a central issuer entirely.

• Regulatory attempts to fit Bitcoin into old definitions ignore its true nature and risk stifling innovation.

  "Bitcoin has a baked in native unit, it can do all of the things that any other currency...would otherwise need an issuer to do, without an issuer."
  — Parker A. Lewis (26:55)

4. Triple Entry Accounting and the Elimination of Issuers

(29:54 – 36:00)

• Bitcoin is essentially a self-sustained, “triple entry” system handling issuance, validation, transmission, and settlement — no trust in humans or institutions is required for transactions.

• This fundamental shift underpins Bitcoin’s ability to function as a true currency.

  "There's this closed loop, truly autonomous system that can validate all currency transactions and that you don't have to trust another third party."
  — Parker A. Lewis (34:28)

5. Currency in Practice: Real-World Business Examples

(50:54 – 60:58)

• Jack discusses business cash management, choosing daily between holding dollars or bitcoin, highlighting that Bitcoin and the dollar are indeed competing for store-of-value and payment usage.

• Shares a recent example: choosing to pay a $3,000 invoice via Bitcoin (over Lightning) because it was cheaper than paying a fiat invoice with a 4% fee.

• Parker elaborates: every such transaction made peer-to-peer in Bitcoin removes inefficiency (from three transaction steps to one) and proves Bitcoin’s currency utility.

  "You were able to affect one currency transaction rather than three. And that's the definition of efficiency."
  — Parker A. Lewis (58:38)

6. Bitcoin’s Path to Ubiquity and the Role of Tools

(73:50 – 78:03)

• Discusses how business tools like Zaprite facilitate Bitcoin invoices and payments, and how their quality improves with more use and feedback.

• Clarifies: even as Bitcoin eliminates central issuers, a robust tool ecosystem is essential for mass business adoption.

  "The more people that use those tools and understand this layered thinking...the better the tools will get. And that's how we actually get out of this conundrum."
  — Parker A. Lewis (96:13)

7. Stablecoins, Lobbying, and False Equivalences

(22:53–26:11, 78:18–85:49)

• Pushback against the idea that stablecoins or CBDCs are the inevitable “currency” of the digital future.

• Argues that stablecoins are, at best, a technologically inferior extension of a failing fiat system.

  "People call them stable coins, but they're just losing the same value that the dollar is losing and eventually they're going to be worthless."
  — Parker A. Lewis (82:00)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Policy Consequences:
  "The consequence of incorrectly defining Bitcoin...ultimately, be detrimental, at least to the people that are here in the United States."
  — Parker A. Lewis (18:28)

• On the ‘Store of Value Only’ Trap:
  "If your logic is...we're all just going to store value in this thing...[w]ell, it's going up in value because it's actually money. And money is used to coordinate trade."
  — Parker A. Lewis (70:25)

• On the Inevitability of Usage:
  "As more people have it...there will, by the density alone, be more natural occurrences of bitcoin holders being on either side of a transaction."
  — Parker A. Lewis (67:28)

• On Removing Friction:
  "If you have two people that want bitcoin on either side, there's an efficiency because it's just one transaction versus three."
  — Parker A. Lewis (86:27)

• On Stablecoins and Payment Networks:
  "[Stablecoins are] functionally a worse form of dollars today. The best you can do is make them as good as the dollar, basically the dollar equivalent, which they're not today."
  — Parker A. Lewis (83:32)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & Takeover Event: 01:57 – 10:16
• Policy & Language Framing: 12:02 – 19:35
• Commodity Money vs. Currency: 22:53 – 29:54
• Bitcoin’s Unique Accounting System: 29:54 – 36:00
• BTC as Currency – Real Business Use: 50:54 – 60:58
• Challenges in Mass Adoption & Tooling: 73:50 – 78:03
• Stablecoins & Industry Narratives: 78:18 – 85:49

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Summary of Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is direct, technically deep, and infused with both passion and real-world pragmatism. Parker and Jack have a friendly, humorous dynamic but are uncompromising in challenging the industry’s tendency to resort to regulatory comfort or misleading narratives. They stress that Bitcoin’s utility as a currency is not a theoretical future – it is already here for those willing to use it, and much of the “friction” often cited is rapidly being eroded.

Final Thought:

If listeners take away anything, it’s that Bitcoin isn’t merely a “store of value” or “digital gold,” nor is it just a flashy commodity. Its fundamental innovation is as a currency system that’s natively digital, peer-to-peer, unconfiscatable, and free of central issuers. As adoption grows and tools develop, this reality will only become clearer — both in policy and in the marketplace.

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Further Information

• Parker’s article: graduallythensuddenly.xyz / TFTC.io
• Bitcoin Takeover Event: bitcointakeover.org
• Zaprite: zaprite.com

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Transcript

[Parker A. Lewis]

You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts. All. All the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

[Jack Mallers]

I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

[Parker A. Lewis]

I mean, that's part of the bull case for bitcoin.

[Jack Mallers]

If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Probably should be.

[Jack Mallers]

Probably should be. Matt's El Rancho. Most impressive restaurant in all the world.

[Parker A. Lewis]

It's wonderful.

[Jack Mallers]

I can't believe my brother thought. What did he think? Were you part of this conversation?

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, it was Matt.

[Jack Mallers]

He called you, didn't he? Or he called.

[Parker A. Lewis]

He called me in or he texted me and my brother. I think he was asking about Matt's.

[Jack Mallers]

Buford's and one of. I think it was Buford's.

[Parker A. Lewis]

There was another one, but then Matz was second. Yeah, it rakes.

[Jack Mallers]

It rakes. Incredible service. You know exactly what you're gonna get.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Place was a zoo. We got there at 4:30.

[Jack Mallers]

We had to swim out.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, navigate.

[Jack Mallers]

That's why you go at 4:30. Especially if you have kids, you bring them. My boys were running wild.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. It was Jack's first mats. Yeah. Good place. He slept most of the time.

[Jack Mallers]

He did. It was a great night. Great night. Stoked you being on the show today. But we're going to talk about something different. We're going to do a longer series at some point, so look out for that freaks. But we're going to talk about the article that you just wrote. I think it's very prescient considering the narrative in the space right now, particularly around the reserve and all that. But first we have to get a proper shilling for next week. 4th annual Bitcoin takeover 4th annual Bitcoin.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Takeover Next week it's going to be here at the Commons. There's a few events or there's an event at University of Austin across the way. Just catty corner of the Commons. But looking forward to it. A lot going on. I think we have seven bitcoin events or actually eight bitcoin events and six days. Five or six days. So I think you were part of the. You were here already in Austin for the first Takeover. But Bitcoin Takeover is something that we really started when we launched the Commons. And historically, south by Southwest, despite being a big technology in addition to film and music festival, doesn't ever include Bitcoin as the track. And given the absence of bitcoin at south by Southwest here in Austin, it was appropriate for us to host the bitcoin takeover of south by Southwest to give bitcoin its due. And so the first one was in 2022 and we've hosted it every year since. Continues to get better and continue to expand it. So it'll be next week, March 11th to the 15th, 14th, 15th, 15th. Well, we added on a screening, a film screening. So in south by south, in honor of south by Southwest, which is a technology film and music festival, we've got a whole series of events. So the 11th, Nifty and Bitcoin are hosting a hackathon here at the Commons. And then the Evening of the 11th, we are hosting a bitcoin not blockchain event. Myself and Drew Bonsal will be giving a presentation to help educate all of the people that either believe that crypto is valuable or blockchain is valuable, to help understand what bitcoin is, why it's blockchain, it's the only blockchain of relevance, and why blockchain is not tech. And then so that's the 11th, Tuesday, Wednesday, we're hosting an event here with HRF called the great divide. Bitcoin versus CBDC is really highlighting that there are two paths forward. Either a panopticon with mass surveillance of CBDCs, that's the natural way that the fiat world is going. Or the open monetary system, closed versus open, centralized versus decentralized. So that'll be with HRF on Wednesday the 12th and then Thursday the 13th, Pleb Labs hosting their startup Day that has their Top Builder finale on the 13th. And then we'll have awesome bit devs that evening where the winner of Pleb Labs Top Builder will be announced. And then on Friday we'll have our main event, which is our full day of speakers. People can find out about [e-mail] if they're interested in coming. It's a high signal day. We have 10 founders, CEOs giving presentations on what they're building around bitcoin, covering education, custody, financial services, insurance payments, lightning infrastructure, mining, mining infrastructure, demand response and oil field mining. So we'll have representation from Upstream Data. Steve Barber is going to be there speaking. Michael Goldstein from Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. On the open source side we'll have Mike Schmidt, founder and executive director of Brink. I'll be giving a talk on Zap. Right. And payments. We have the co founder and CTO from Lightspark Kevin Hurley coming to talk about lightning and what they're building building at Lightspark. Dhruv Bonsal will be giving a talk. Becca Rubenfeld from Anchor Watch will be giving a talk. Mark Suman from Open Secret will be giving a talk. A few others. So that'll be Friday. That's the main event. It's a full day. Each speaker will give a presentation, which I think worked really well last year, which is why we're replicating the format this year of being able to hear from 10 different founders and CEOs talking about what they're actually building, followed by 10 minutes of Q and A. And then on Saturday, we're actually doing a film screening. It was a late addition to the program, but we're doing a film screening of Elena Medevilla's Dirty Coin talking about bitcoin mining and how it can help fix energy problems all over the world. So I've only seen an extended kind of 17 minute clip of it. So I'm excited for that. But yeah, it's going to be a great whole week and really showcase not just the bitcoin community, but what's actually being built on and around bitcoin. So anybody that's interested with all the crypto stuff that's going on in D.C. now and over the coming weeks, the bitcoin takeover week in Austin will be a full high signal series of events. What's your view? I mean, you've been to each of the takeovers. You're a big part of the takeover. I left out one big part, which is we're going to be doing a live TFTC after the speakers, which we did last year.

[Jack Mallers]

Let's get Danny the props. Live tftc. What bitcoin did. Crossover.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, that's going to be exciting.

[Jack Mallers]

It is. Talking to Danny behind the scenes. No, I mean, it's my favorite event of the year. It's high signal. It's a long day, but it's a high signal, jam packed day. And the caliber of people we get in the commons on that day has been high. And I think the bar has been set high and we're keeping it high. And I think juxtaposed to south by Southwest, it's really important that we do this here because bitcoin does not get the. Not even lip service doesn't get.

[Parker A. Lewis]

They don't include it.

[Jack Mallers]

No, I mean, and you were looking for the headliners. The headliner this year is like Chelsea Clinton. Like it's completely.

[Parker A. Lewis]

It's like David Duchovny. Chelsea Clinton and three people that you've never heard of.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah, I like David Duchovny.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Well, I mean, it's not that I don't like David Duchovny, but.

[Jack Mallers]

But it's gotten far away from its roots of support. Like Twitter was announced at south by southwest back in 2005, 2006, whenever that was. And today it's like Chelsea Clinton's the lead.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, I'm actually writing a piece, a short piece on Takeover that I'll get out tomorrow, but that talks about the roots of south by really being a creative, you know, an indie music festival. Originally, Austin's live music capital World kind of expanded out to film, and it was a music and film festival, very indie focus and creative focus. And then it shifted to technology. And I don't want to say shifted, but it expanded to technology and it used to do cool things. And then that technology piece started to dominate and overshadow all of the really soulful things about south by Southwest. And now we kind of live in a world where that technology piece still tends to dominate south by Southwest. But even that has lost its luster because it's one thing to launch Twitter at South by. It's another thing for just big tech companies that can pay large checks.

[Jack Mallers]

Did you walk down Congress yet today?

[Parker A. Lewis]

No.

[Jack Mallers]

The UAE city, state of Dubai has their own space that they're setting up. It's literally just Dubai on it, I think, like third in Congress.

[Parker A. Lewis]

I'm hopeful that south by will find its way back to its roots and in the interim. And it's also that it's purposeful that they don't include bitcoin. People submit bitcoin tracks. So the way it works, people submit, talk, ideas, and then south by Southwest selects it. And people always submit bitcoin talks, and they always pass it by. And so their losses are gain. And I have a vision that maybe for south by to make it, they'll have to turn it into a bitcoin conference.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah, well, we're going to do that. Yeah, we have been doing it. We're going to continue to do it.

[Parker A. Lewis]

But really it is. I consistently get that. It's the highest signal single day that people attend. And because we've each of the past three bars or each of the past three years continued to raise the bar, creates a little stress to continue to raise it higher and higher. But there is no ceiling.

[Jack Mallers]

There isn't a ceiling.

[Parker A. Lewis]

There's no top because there is no bottom to Fiat.

[Jack Mallers]

There's no top.

[Parker A. Lewis]

There's no top to Takeover. So check it out. Bitcointakeover.org for anybody interested. Or if you're following me on Twitter, you've probably seen. But get your tickets because we're going to sell out this week.

[Jack Mallers]

They're going fast. And I think a lot of what we try to do at the takeover is shift the Overton window towards the signal in bitcoin. Like, what's actually happening, what are people building? A lot of the topics that don't get tick in the mainstream and may not be the mainstream narratives that are being put forth by many who are viewed by the public as the supreme advocates of bitcoin. I think that's why we're here to talk mainly today is this recent piece that you wrote, Bitcoin is money and currency from first principles logic, like you like to do, just get down, identify a hang up somebody has with bitcoin. And then you spend the time really digging into your mind and getting back to the base layer of an argument and then building up from first principles explaining why bitcoin is or is not a certain thing. And I think I texted you and we talked about it on Saturday when we were at Matt's. This is one of the best pieces you've read in some time. Because it's a problem that I didn't even realize the distinction between commodity money and currency. Never really thought through who actually defines that or what defines that distinction and how has it been recognized in the market to date. And you were explaining that you've run into this question a couple of times and you had the same sort of, I've never thought about this before. And so that's what set you out to write this paper?

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, and I didn't intend it to. I guess when I started writing it, I didn't really think that it was going to be as fundamental as it was. But I had recorded a podcast, I think it was with Daniel Prince, and he had asked, and I can't remember how long ago it was, but he had asked me, what's the difference between currency and money? And I didn't really understand the question, but I'm on a podcast so I have to answer it. And at that time I didn't really understand the distinction. I kind of understood the broader distinction in the context of money and currency in history, but I hadn't thought really very deeply about the distinction in the context of bitcoin or why it was a subject of debate, really. And so however I answered the question is probably ridiculous in hindsight because it wasn't really getting at the true nature of the question. And then, since then, from a policy discussion standpoint, and while somebody that's always vocal and advocating for bitcoin and contributing where I can, in the background of providing advice, I have resisted being part of an advocacy, formal advocacy group just because there's so much noise, particularly in D.C. that it just feels like you're swimming upstream so much. And that there's this concerted effort from crypto and blockchain special interest to lump everything together and, you know, some of the context which got me thinking about it more was Michael Saylor, who's somebody that I have a, you know, a lot of respect and appreciation for. You know, he's. He's a great advocate of bitcoin. He would describe bitcoin as money and property, but then he would expressly say that it's not currency. And I was trying to understand what his view was around those definitions. And as I started thinking about it more, and then as the Trump administration came in and appointed David Sacks as crypto czar, I had written a piece about a month ago talking about how it feels like the crypto blockchain craze was dying at slow death and was on the brink of fading away. And this just reinvigorated, this ultimate negative consequence to Bitcoin. Everything's good for bitcoin in the long term, but there can be negative consequences in the short term of recharging this conflation of everything and the confusion around that conflation and the confusion, because 100%, if people get sold a narrative around blockchain tech or crypto or all the utility all these crypto scams are going to bring, it is definitionally harder for them to understand Bitcoin. And if I were to take somebody from zero and help them understand, build them up from zero to help them understand bitcoin, I can get them there fairly quickly. But if somebody's wrapped their head around and become convinced of some blockchain narrative or some crypto, there's going to be a thousand different currencies. It is definitionally, quantitatively, qualitatively harder to help that person understand Bitcoin.

[Jack Mallers]

It's 10x harder to refute bullshit than it is to put it out in the world.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. And especially once somebody has become convinced of something and then has taken a bunch of different actions with those incentives, they actually have an incentive not to understand. And it's not the same as whatever the quote is, where somebody's job is dependent on it. So therefore, they don't understand it. It's not the same way as the Cantillon effect. But if somebody's become convinced that all this crypto nonsense is tech and blockchain's tech and they've gone out and started speaking about that, then they don't want to be wrong. There's an inherent bias to, to not want to hear an opinion that runs counter or logic and reasoning that runs counter. And so as the conversation in D.C. is has, quote, heated up and as that has recharged this conflation of the two, there is a lot of people trying to influence policy in D.C. and I think that it in the long term, I think certainly Michael Saylor means well, but there are other people that don't mean well that want to define Bitcoin a certain way and create a market structure to allow for basically to codify and legitimize what I view as detrimental. And I don't come at this from a perspective that the free market shouldn't sort itself out, but it's also better for somebody to be able to be clear minded around Bitcoin and not set policy for bitcoin, conflating all these things together. Because what happens in that world, from my perspective, is that if you lump Bitcoin in with everything else, then the snake oil is always snake oil. And when it becomes clear to everyone that it's snake oil, they're going to associate it with Bitcoin and then they're going to over regulate Bitcoin or they're going to put Bitcoin in a regulatory box that it shouldn't be in and that, you know, again, while everything is good for bitcoin, in the end it can make people's lives harder than the United States. It can certainly make people's lives harder that are working on Bitcoin. And so I think it's important that people get it right. And that's, that's what prompted like, I think there's a, I guess I wrote it before Trump came out with his shitcoin stockpile. But there's an event in D.C. at the White House that David Sachs is organizing on crypto. Like a crypto. I don't know what they're calling it, Crypto Summit or Crypto Working Group on Friday and then there's another event on Monday. And so I do think that it's important not just to get ahead of it, but to frame Bitcoin correctly. We've had podcasts before where we talked about the importance of framing Bitcoin correctly and not Seeding the ground. Because if it turns out, if you're just kind of toeing the line, then eventually people are going to figure out what it is. And it's better to set good policy on the front end and not to run away from it. So in the piece, Bitcoin is current or money and currency. I specifically laid out the case for why it's both and why, just from a fundamental economic perspective, because of the way that bitcoin works, it can't not be currency, such that if it were to be put, if people tried to put it in a regulatory box or bucket that doesn't fit the substance of what it is, that will ultimately, um, be detrimental, at least to the people that are here in the United States.

[Jack Mallers]

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[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. So I, I think the. Because one, one of the big competing priorities in, in Washington D.C. are there's three big competing priorities. There's stablecoins, there's this concept of market structure that will try to create regulatory clarity of locking up tokens. Not just stablecoins, but all the crypto grift and Bitcoin. And then there's another priority, which is the strategic Bitcoin reserve that Cynthia Lummis, senator from Wyoming, has a proposed bill for and is trying to work that through the legislative process. And so there's constituents that really want stablecoins to be the priority. There's other constituents that really want market structure to basically legitimize crypto altcoin scam world. And then there's a constituency that's, that's trying to focus On Bitcoin and within the three buckets, it's generally saying, trying to label, okay, bitcoin's a commodity. There's this thing called digital assets, which is all the cryptogrift and then there's stablecoins which are currency or digital currencies. And the distinction just for people's context, and this was something that I didn't from a definitional standpoint, have as great of appreciation for say a year ago that I do now, because most people, and I talk about this in the piece that I wrote, most people, if you were to ask them what's the difference between money and currency, they would look at you kind of cross eyed. They think that you're being pedantic and saying, what do you mean? The dollar is money and it's currency. Money and currency are two interchangeable words. And from a practical perspective, that's true from a legal and regulatory perspective. And in the context of the history of money, there, there is a distinction. And the distinction matters from a regulatory perspective. And so just to kind of spell out that distinction for folks, it is that historically, say if you had a commodity money like gold, gold was money and gold needed some currency to sit on top of it. And that currency came in the form of coinage, typically tied to the state or the crown. And then in the fiat world, similarly, initially when the dollar emerged, gold was money and the dollar was a paper note that essentially served as a contract that was convertible to gold. And so prior to Bitcoin, every. And money historically wasn't always commodities, but commodities emerged as the best form of money. But then the currency sat on top and the currency always had an issuer. That was typically the state. Now history of the United States, there were private monies and banks could issue.

[Jack Mallers]

Private dollars, scrip companies would issue money.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, but that distinction between money and currency is distinguishing between the underlying, say, commodity money like gold and then the formal currency that needed to set a weight and measure and actually issue, convert. Or if you were thinking about it from a coinage perspective, the process of refining gold into a coin served an actual tangible, valuable process in converting the commodity into a currency to make it a utility in trade. Not only setting a weight and measure, putting it into a standardized unit, validating it, enforcing against counterfeit. And so, so historically there's a, there's a good reason to distinguish between the two. The thing about Bitcoin that makes it so unique in the history of money is that it is a commodity in the sense that a commodity would be traditionally defined, but it's also useful as money. And because Bitcoin, the network itself is able to collectively, as I would frame it, issue money. Like issue the 21 million, control the supply schedule, control how that 21 million is issued, enforce the fixed supply of 21 million, validate all currency transactions, transmit currency transactions. Like you do not need the US dollar system to transmit Bitcoin transactions. The Bitcoin network facilitates all of that in a closed loop. And because Bitcoin has a baked in native unit, it can do all of the things that any other currency that would otherwise need an issuer to do without an issuer. And so bringing back that to this bucket of, well, what's a commodity and what's a digital asset and what's a digital currency, it's like, yes, Bitcoin is a commodity, but it's also money and it's also viable as a currency. And trying to distinguish and say this is a commodity but not a currency is swimming upstream for fundamentally what it is from an economic standpoint. And the economic gravity will dictate that it will be used as such. And the only, and we can kind of go into some of those specifics of kind of what the roles that issuers have played and how Bitcoin helps eliminate it. But really the consequence, if you follow logic there is that the only reason to have another currency sitting on top of Bitcoin when Bitcoin can operate perfectly functionally as a currency system is to restrict its use. And I'm not saying like, absolutely, I don't believe that anyone who understands Bitcoin, most notably Michael Seller, that things that should be defined as commodity and not as a currency, I don't think he's, you know, he doesn't have that incentive at all. Nor do I think that is what his aim is. I'm saying that the consequence of creating these two distinctions, that that's the logical end game. And so that's not only the logical endgame, but it creates a consequence for anybody who's interacting with Bitcoin not just as money in a store of value, but as currency. Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

It'S funny, as I've read the piece and as I'm listening to you describe it now thinking back to one of the big memes, particularly in the early years, that people would run with to try to define Bitcoin as this incredibly innovative technology that represents a breakthrough in human history and it's triple entry accounting. It feels like particularly going back to the issuer and trying to account for the validation of transfers of the currency within A system like this explanation that you're describing should be an add on to that meme of triple entry accounting. It allows us to have this enclosed system that does everything from issue the money, control the issuance, validate what's being sent, where, when, and then act as a unit of account as well.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. So, you know, if I, if I just frame say the, the role of an issuer historically in money thinking about, well, you know, in the context of gold. And I always try to reinforce people that you don't have to understand why gold was money to understand Bitcoin, but the dollar's origin was gold. And even if people don't understand gold, they can at least appreciate that gold, the gold standard existed and that the entire world, where they understand why or not the entire world converged on gold as a monetary standard. But in order for gold to be functional as money, gold is an element. It's a rock in the ground. Gotta get it out of the ground. You gotta actually get the gold ore out of larger rock. Then in order to turn it into a coin, there's, or there's a metallurgical process to get gold out of the rock ore. But then there's another chemical process and a refining process to turn this raw material into a shiny gold coin that isn't a standard weight and measure that says that this is a 1 ounce gold coin. And 1 ounce might have emerged on the market, but it was set by an issuer, it was set by somebody who's doing the refining. And for money to be viable as currency, you need standard weights and measures. And it's of no small consequence that Bitcoin removes that need for setting standard weights and measures. Not only did gold need some issuer to set standard weights and measures, but the dollar also needed someone to set standard units. Measures. A penny, a nickel, a dollar, a five dollar bill, a twenty dollars bill, a ten dollar bill, one hundred dollars bill. Now in the digital world, the dollar less so needs a standard unit, but it, but it does need an issuer of currency and somebody to validate currencies. And that, that idea of, you know, triple entry accounting, however you might want to think about it, it's that there's this closed loop, truly autonomous system that can validate all currency transactions and that you don't have to trust another third party in the current iteration of fiat currencies. And the reason why an issuer is necessary in the context of all digital fiat currencies, whether it's a stablecoin or, you know, that sits on top of the US dollar or the Fed's system itself. The Fed is ultimately the one that validates all currency transactions. The treasury is one that prints dollars and ensures that someone's not running around with a counterfeit bill or printing counterfeit bills and getting them into the currency supply. That is 100% a system that's based on trust, dependent on trust to work. Dependent on trust and issuer to work. And the thing that allows Bitcoin to operate without the issuer is this record system that is immutable, that relies on no third party to be a source of truth, that anybody can validate the currency and anybody can send it. Because the process of actually sending, if you think about, if you think about a bank transfer from one bank to the next, banks can't do that one to one. Now a bank could take $100 bill and walk it over to the other bank without a central third party. But they're dependent on ultimately the Fed from, for clearing those transactions. System, yeah, that's another place where you know, it's like there is this autonomous accounting system that tracks all these records, enforces all these records. And when someone's ready to transmit, the Bitcoin network handles that directly. It doesn't need to transmit quote through a massive third party intermediary or any third party intermediary. So that is kind of on the unit level in terms of the unit of measure, the sats or the Bitcoin as well as this open record that again oftentimes for people that are new, I like to qualify that there's not just one Bitcoin blockchain. Everyone's maintaining the records themselves, everyone's validating records themselves. When transactions are transmitted, it's passing around to every node that exists and that all nodes need to maintain their own independent record and, and that they're able to get to the consistent state of ownership because of the way that the Bitcoin network works. But that through that process also is what allows for the elimination of an issuer entirely from the process. So I do agree and it's an extension of this idea and it's part of what allows it to operate perfectly from a technical perspective as a currency system without an issuer, that that kind of idea of a triple entry accounting sup freaks.

[Jack Mallers]

Bitcoin is the ultimate scarce asset. Join Bitcoin macro expert Nick Bhatia at a live online event on March 17 for death taxes and 21 million. Learn how to shield your wealth, leverage, tax advantaged accounts and secure your Bitcoin for future generations. Your financial advisor, accountant or attorney might not be up to speed on Bitcoin, so invite them. Join too. Register now@ Unchained.com TFTC that's Unchained.com TFTC March 17th be there again. It's a shame that your explanation of Bitcoin as currency again, going back to people really don't understand this. You didn't even understand it. I didn't understand it until you wrote the piece. And then it was like, oh, crap. There are these very minute details that matter for definitions, particularly when people are trying to put Bitcoin into a bucket at the government layer of society and erect regulatory frameworks around it. And I think it's crucial that we are as clear as possible when it comes to defining Bitcoin at the government level, particularly here in the United States. Obviously, we're Americans. This is what we care about. And I do worry that the noise that exists in D.C. could create a situation where it gets wrongly defined because people don't understand it or others are trying to muddy the waters about what Bitcoin actually is for their own incentives and their own gain in the long run. And I think that extension of triple entry accounting is a good way to frame it to people that are trying to understand this or trying to pitch it to others out there, as well.

[Parker A. Lewis]

As the significance of it. The significance of this entirely autonomous system that isn't dependent on a central third party to coordinate any of the functions that have historically been necessary to have a.

[Jack Mallers]

There's been a division of labor amongst.

[Parker A. Lewis]

All these to make a currency system work. And that doesn't exist in Bitcoin and there are consequences to that. And yeah, one other thing that I want to make clear is that Bitcoin doesn't need any advantages to succeed. People building Bitcoin companies don't need any advantages to have their. We don't need special treatment. Bitcoin is what it is fundamentally. And the regulation is going to need to fit it. Otherwise it's like governments can create bad policies and constituents can be harmed by those bad policies. Eventually the quote, regulation is going to fit the economic reality because it's a gravitational force. But in the intervening period, a lot of pain can be created. And that's what I think is important to avoid. And that the. What I believe is logical, not, I think it is an indirect consequence. If you, if you define the, the consequence of incorrectly defining Bitcoin, if you, if you define it as a commodity and say it's expressly not as A currency. And then it is not. You know, we don't need the government to have an SBR for bitcoin to succeed in all the individuals who are owning bitcoin to have their number go up. We also don't need all capital gains to be removed from Bitcoin. Good economic policy would be that all governments should hold Bitcoin and you should remove capital gains from Bitcoin. But Bitcoin doesn't need that, doesn't need that advantage to succeed. By having bad policy again, you can slow things down and make certain people's lives harder. That's fine. And well, the big risk is as soon as you define it as it is this thing and it's not that thing, it is commodity and it is not currency. And then the dollar continues to degrade as a currency system. Price of beef at the grocery store when I went last week was up another 10%. That is happening because of gravitational force. As people begin to realize that the economic reality is that. And I'll walk through the logic not because I want this to happen, just because it is again the economic reality. It either is or isn't. This isn't. My opinion is that Bitcoin is competing with the dollar. I don't believe that's a bad thing. I can understand people's perspective that it is. My, my view is that it's not. And we made that case on another podcast. But it is competing with the dollar. And people are sending currency transactions. I'm working on bitcoin payments. I'm helping everyday people every day. Ranchers, doctors, lawyers, shop owners. Not just people working on Bitcoin.

[Jack Mallers]

People run media empires.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, people that run media empires like tftc, except Bitcoin's payment. And so if you've defined this as a commodity and not a currency, and then there's increasingly this trend of people using as currency and at the same time that the dollar is losing its value, which is one of the basis for Bitcoin to be a store of value. And that as everyone's doing that, then it becomes natural for them just to move the money between each other because it's the best form of money. Somebody comes along and says, I don't want you doing that. I don't want you transacting in Bitcoin. That's a commodity, it's not a currency. We were told it's not a currency. You can't use it as such. And so just reinforcing for people. This isn't important to try to get a policy that Advantages, Bitcoin, it's important not to make a misstep that can come back to haunt you later on. Let's just call it what it is today. It's called spade a spade. And let's have a direct conversation about it and hopefully create good policy that does allow bitcoin to flourish and doesn't slow it down.

[Jack Mallers]

And I think we went over this when we recorded the episode about combating the Fed, that bitcoin does not compete with the US dollar. It does compete with the dollar. And, yeah, and let me, let me.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Let me, yeah, let me explain this because I also, I have this law. I lay out logic and the piece and you can find it@ graduallythensuddenly XYZ. It's also on Twitter, Twitter article ntftc. Ntftc. Thank you for helping syndicate as the media empire in the room, but I'll walk through all of logic, but I'll start at this point because it's where we were, which is you can't store the same value in two different currencies at once. You can store different value in different currencies and you can choose what percentage of your value you store in one versus the other, but you have to choose which you're storing value in. And that, that is the, there's no fundamental way around those. Like when you're, when, when you get paid either for your good or service directly, or if your employee gets your paycheck, you have to decide, say you get $5,000 a month, you have to decide, do I want to save 1,000 of that in Bitcoin, 2,500 in Bitcoin, 5,000 in Bitcoin, and then you have to decide what you want to do with the rest of it. But you can't store the $5,000 in Bitcoin and fiat currency at the same time. And this idea of having kind of a fiat currency sitting on top of of bitcoin, even in that world, you have to choose because there is something fundamentally different. Even if you're using a custodian, it would be fundamentally different if you were to deposit $5,000 into the Bitcoin exchange and have a liability of this exchange, like a deposit that's denominated in dollars versus having a contract and a liability that's denominated in bitcoin. If you deposited $5,000 into the crypto Bitcoin exchange and it was a $5,000 denominated liability, that is fundamentally different than you have exs from a contractual perspective. And so like if you think about the history of gold, gold was convertible to dollars. You would put your gold in the bank and the bank would give you $20. The gold, the gold in the bank was the banks. You now had the dollars. And there was a contract that said you could convert those dollars back to 1 ounce of gold. That contract was later broken in 1934 when the government devalued the dollar to 35 to 1. But it's this distinction of if you're trying to like, you know, have this idea that you're going to save in Bitcoin and spend your dollars. Well, the first thing is as an example, right now with the etf, you don't actually have Bitcoin. You have stock or some security in an exchange traded fund that has a claim on Bitcoin. But your asset is the claim on Bitcoin, not the Bitcoin itself. And even though ibit's working on being able to allow you to take Bitcoin in kind, it's drawing this distinction that if you had this fiat currency sitting on top of Bitcoin, you could either live in a world where you actually own the Bitcoin directly and it's titled to you, or you could have a fiat currency that's convertible, or you could just hold a fiat currency that's free floating. But in any of those cases, you, you have to decide what percentage of the value you're saving in Bitcoin and what percentage you're saving in dollars. And Bitcoin, kind of like working back from the beginning of the logic. It's the Bitcoin has a credibly enforced fixed supply. It represents money that can't be printed. It's only credibly enforced because it operates entirely decentralized and not decentralization theater. Decentralization is not trivial. Bitcoin as a function of that decentralization is as at the network level is resistant to all forms of censorship. That's what allows it to be global and permissionless. And it's what allows the Bitcoin network to credibly enforce its fixed supply without the need of trust. The basis of Bitcoin storing value is it's fixed supply. But again, it's fixed supply is only credible because it's resistant to censorship. That's what allows you to permissionly, if you want to, to be able to plug directly into Bitcoin and transmit the currency without going through some outside system. And everyone in the world is incentivized to hold a form of money that can't be printed versus one that can. So if you think that you're just going to store your value and spend your dollars, that reality itself is predicated on you making a decision of storing a certain percentage of your wealth in one versus a certain percentage in the other, even just for that moment where you want to convert into it, to send it, it was predicated on somebody else holding the dollars. And that's where it gets to well, everyone will be in the future is today. But just by the reality of it, very few people still understand Bitcoin. But in a world where everyone understands Bitcoin, who are all these dollar holders? Everyone, every time they're getting paid and taking dollars as currency, are having to decide what percentage stays in that versus not and what might be converted to Bitcoin. And in the end, everyone to a person is incentivized to hold Bitcoin and everyone is incentivized to hold a maximum amount of Bitcoin such that the only reason in that world where Bitcoin adoption grows and there's more people, if there's two, two Bitcoin holders on each side of a transaction that are willing to transact in Bitcoin directly for goods and services, the only reason why another currency system would need to sit on top of would be because Bitcoin wasn't capable of facilitating the exchange on a direct basis, which it is capable of technically facilitating. That which then comes back to, well, if everyone's maximally incentivized to hold Bitcoin and it's capable of sending and transmitting currency transactions and processing for final settlement without a third party, the only reason to add a third party, a fiat currency, into that equation would be unsolving the problem of why you originally opted into the form of money that can't be printed. And from a practical standpoint, the only reason for that to exist again would be to ban the transactional use, to police and exert control over who has access. And the other thing that I mentioned, I'll pause, that was a long rant, but nothing about Bitcoin from a regulatory perspective. From a fundamental economic perspective, being money and being currency prevents, say, the U.S. government from regulating its financial system. Those two statements are not incongruent. And that's one of the reasons why it's like, hey, just recognize that, treat it as currency. And it doesn't prevent you from regulating J.P. morgan the way you want to regulate J.P. morgan. It's a U.S. company that services U.S. individuals, and if they're interacting with Bitcoin, you want to regulate how an individual interacts with a financial institution or what obligations a financial institution has, that's fair game. But that sits at a different level than the regulatory treatment of Bitcoin itself. Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

And this is one of the questions I was asked at Bitcoin Investor Week In New York, POMPs conference on stage. And it was this whole debate about what is actually happening in Bitcoin. The question he put forth was, does Bitcoin compete with the dollar? And I said, yes. And leaning exactly into this example that you're describing will just give a tangible example with TFTC as a business. And before you even wrote the piece, this is how I described, like, does bitcoin compete with the dollar? Yes. Every day as a business owner, I make the conscious decision, do I want. I look at the dollars in my bank account that come in through ad revenue and other revenue streams that we have, and I look at it like, how much money do we have? How much fiat expenses do we have in the next 15 to 30 days? How much cash do I want to keep in my bank account? And then I've run that calculation and anything above that, that is excess cash in our bank account, I immediately sweep to Bitcoin. That example right there, is the dollar competing with Bitcoin. I am making a conscious decision of do I want to hold these dollars in my bank account or convert them to Bitcoin.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. And that's what people just have to accept at basically an atomic level that they're making. Every single person in the world, whether they're conscious of Bitcoin or not, is having to make a decision about what they store in dollars versus other assets. Just so happens that Bitcoin is actually money and viable as a currency system. So this dilemma becomes more of consequence. Right, because people in the traditional world will look at that same dilemma and say, well, I don't want to hold these dollars because I know that they're engineered to lose value. So I'm going to hold stocks or I'm going to hold real estate. It's just that stocks and real estate aren't also money. And so the consequence of, or the perceived consequence of bitcoin competing with the dollar is more significant because it's competing on a more direct level, it's competing as money. And that if people just accept at that atomic level each time they're just deciding whether to convert X percentage into bitcoin, that allocation, whether it's 5% or 10% or 20% or 50% or 100% into Bitcoin, they're being forced into that decision. They're making it. They're making the decision by their actions every day. And if they ascribe or understand this path to why incrementally they're storing more of the value in Bitcoin and making that progressive decision to store less than the dollar. And as. And if everyone around them is having to make that decision, as more people figure out Bitcoin and it does have this fixed supply and that's better than the dollars that are losing their money, then, well, what happens when everyone has figured that out?

[Jack Mallers]

And you're going to love this. To extend the example further, using TFTC as an example, I told you Saturday when we were at dinner that I paid three Zaprite invoices that week. I got my fourth yesterday. Yesterday morning I'm drinking my coffee, getting the news. Bing email comes Zaprite invoice. And for this particular expense, it was the first zap writing invoice that gave the option to pay in Fiat using card or ACH or Bitcoin. And so going back to that thought experiment of how I run the business earlier, of I look at my Fiat expenses, what I think I'm going to have to pay, how much cash I should keep in the bank account, how much Fiat and put the rest in the bitcoin. This was the first of this particular expense that gave me the option to pay in Bitcoin or Fiat and the Fiat had a 4% premium on it. If I want to pay fiat, it's 4% more. So I made the conscious decision there where I had the cash in my bank account, expecting it to be a fiat expense at some point in the month. But the bitcoin payment option was there and I was like, I'm not going to pay 4%. So I just paid in Bitcoin and immediately bought the same amount because I was going to use that cash anyway to pay this expense.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. So let's walk through that example because that gets to another part of the logic that I articulate. And sometimes it can be hard for somebody to grasp it that is thinking about capital gains and is thinking about their own decision to store value in bitcoin versus dollars. And one thing I would say to.

[Jack Mallers]

Certain people for anybody calls bullshit on this. I had the receipts, I will share them if people want to ask for them.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, but that for people that have say 5% of their money in Bitcoin and 95% in fiat. Yeah, just spend the Fiat. You've got more Fiat than you have Bitcoin. What that also means is you're storing more of your value in the form of money that's losing its purchasing power than the form of money that's gaining in purchasing power. And that you're probably just underexposed to, to Bitcoin. But in your example, and this is something that I explained in the piece, that if, if there's two current. I showed a diagram to this. If there's two people, there's holder of bitcoin A and holder of Bitcoin B, and they're actually trading partners, somebody issuing you an invoice. If you both have Bitcoin and you are both willing to transact in Bitcoin, the cost of that transaction, irrespective of the capital gains, is cheaper. The transaction itself is cheaper if you just send that person Bitcoin because it's just one transaction. You had Bitcoin, they wanted Bitcoin even if you didn't use the dollars. But you're running low on your working capital and occasionally you have to convert Bitcoin back to dollars to facilitate the dollar currency transaction. In that case, had you done that, you would have had to convert Bitcoin to fiat. You would have. That's transaction one. You would have had to then send the fiat. That's transaction two. And the person on the other side wanted the Bitcoin, so they would have to convert the fiat to Bitcoin. So it's three currency transactions when one could have sufficed. It's three set of transaction fees and fiat transaction fees or more. It's by definition inefficient. And so that is, I don't say fewer and far between, but given the fact that there are still few people, say 1 in 100 that understand Bitcoin, I would gather that it's less than 1 in 100 that really get it. But that's the prime example where that person on the other side wanted Bitcoin. They were able to communicate it to you by putting a 4% premium on Bitcoin, but on cash.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah, on dollars.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Dollars, sorry, 4% premium on fiat. That you were able to affect one currency transaction rather than three. And that's the definition of efficiency. You're affecting the same work for less work. You know, the. The same transaction for less work.

[Jack Mallers]

And a direct example that these two things compete. Yeah, not only that, I paid the invoice over Lightning Network on a Sunday morning. So that immediately settled in their account. There was no.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Because even if you had sent your dollars, you would have had to replenish it so you like. And they would have had to say, you sent the dollars to them. It was at minimum two, because they were going to convert it to bitcoin. They had expressed their, you know, they had expressed their preference that they wanted the bitcoin. And so helping people understand that that is a perfect example of two bitcoin holders, one that has Bitcoin, one that wants to be paid in bitcoin, and that it was used as currency. It is currency. That is the economic reality. You can't deny it. And that if you were to, by some regulatory or legal decree, try to prevent that behavior from happening, not only are you introducing an inherent economic inefficiency, but you're also trying to stop water from moving downhill. It's capable of being sent between peers. And in this dilemma where 1 out of 100 people understand Bitcoin, there's going to be naturally fewer instances relative to the fiat world where there's a bitcoin holder on either side of a real commerce transaction. But as that 1 out of 100 goes to 2 out of 100 goes to 3 out of 100, gets to 60 out of 100, and ultimately 100 out of 100, then it becomes very clear to everyone what the same economic reality is that you just described. And so, even though it's not common every day now, when I say that, it's like people are facilitating bitcoins more and more every day. So for them, it is functionally operating as currency transactions. But for people who can't understand that because they're not participating in it, it still doesn't change the economic reality. It's just harder for them to gather because of the adoption dynamics. But that will necessarily change as more people figure out that bitcoin has a fixed supply and as fiat currency gets to base more and more.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah, and I think that last point is really important. I tried to drive that home last week on the stage at the conference, is that it may not seem like you may not experience these types of economic transactions in your daily life, but they are happening and more will happen over time. And to your point, the fact that they are happening is a validation that bitcoin is currency. Yes. And I think narrative wise, it's something we need to brainstorm in the industry, because that's one of Nobody uses bitcoin for money, as money, it's speculative asset, blah, blah, blah. Roger Burr. It's too expensive on chain, which isn't even true today. But bad example. Yesterday morning, sitting at my Coffee table, paid a $3,000 transaction over the lightning network, instantly settled, immediately rebought the bitcoin plus a little bit because I was like, you know what, let's buy a little bit more. And I paid an invoice, I'm good to go.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, it's actually easier. And it's particularly easier if you can envision this future world where you're not constantly having to go in and out of currency transactions and exchange, but in a world where there's two Bitcoin holders on either side that are willing to trade in Bitcoin, going in and out of the fiat currency necessarily just makes a ton more friction. And so with that perspective, that that is how the Bitcoin network itself operates and is able to coordinate trade between two counterparties without, without a currency issuer sitting in between. There can be intermediaries like you might have used a non custodial wallet or you might have used a custodian. But the bitcoin went from address A to address B. And there was no third party that needed to say that currency transaction is good, it can now move on and be validated. The Bitcoin network itself did that on its own because that's the economic reality. The best policy would be to match what Bitcoin is with the appropriate regulatory framework. And that would incentivize innovation. It just doesn't need that to succeed. And for the people that get hung up on the tax treatment, it's like the real thing that's holding Bitcoin back from being used day to day as a currency is more so that people don't understand Bitcoin. It's that dilemma of one out of a hundred people understand it. If 20 out of 100 people understand it, there would be more than 20x the amount of bitcoin payments. Because there's a certain reality that you need density of bitcoin adoption to allow for overlaps of I'm individual A, paying individual B, I have Bitcoin and individual B wants to receive Bitcoin. It's just a law of small numbers. And the law of large numbers will dictate greater density and more natural trade. So the tax treatment, the capital gains, is a source of friction. But Jack Mallers made this great point on one of his Money Matters podcasts where he articulated that if you have a capital gain on a transaction, it just means that your money didn't get destroyed. So imagine if I got compensated in bitcoin when it was 16,000 and say I got one bitcoin and I decided for some irrational reason to convert those to dollars. At the time, I wouldn't have had any tax consequences. I would have just gotten $16,000. And then Bitcoin goes to $100,000, and I'm sitting on 16,000 and I have some good or service. Last year I needed to get my transmission fixed, which was $10,000. Okay, I just spent 10,000 out of my 16,000. So now I've got $6,000 left. Well, if I had saved it in bitcoin and bitcoin went to 100,000, and even if I needed to sell it back to Fiat. But say, let's say the example was the guy was willing to take Bitcoin, $10,000 worth of Bitcoin. I have to sell 0.1 of a Bitcoin. I have to pay capital gains tax 20% on the difference of $10,000. The percentage that's between 16,000 and 100,000. So I need to pay 20% on 80%. Something like $2,000. Rough math. Well, how much money do I have left? 88,087 5. 0.875 of a Bitcoin versus 6000 divided by 100.06 of a Bitcoin. That's functionally the dilemma. So if people are hung up on that capital gains, it, yes, it is a friction, but it's more of a. I'd say it's a velocity luxury friction. It's a luxury friction. Yeah. And so once somebody understands that. And also I'm not. This is not tax advice, but I did not know this. There's a, there's a $60,000 exemption of on cap gains.

[Jack Mallers]

That's good to know.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Double check that. But I've had multiple tax advisors and financial advisors tell me that. But that none of that changes the fact that that economic reality is the same, that you're still, you're still incentivized to store more of your wealth in bitcoin and spend the bitcoin than you would be and pay the capital gains than you would be just being the bags.

[Jack Mallers]

Just hold the dollars.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, but that's not really the thing that's holding back bitcoin payments. It's more just needing more people holding it. And as more people hold it, then there will, by the density alone, be more natural occurrences of bitcoin holders being on either side of a. Of a transaction. And so that, that's the reality. Now, if they were to remove capital gains as a policy, which in the piece I basically said, look, you don't need to define this is a commodity, this is a digital asset, which, by the way, digital asset itself is a grift and stable coins. It's like, call Bitcoin currency. If you want to make the best policy, call it currency and take away the capital gains. And yes, the government should buy it, but just don't try to define it or put it into a box that doesn't fit.

[Jack Mallers]

I think that's hard for people. And it's fascinating to me that it is hard for people because particularly in the industry, and particularly the people that are really hitting the pavement and beating the drum, that bitcoin isn't currency, doesn't compete with the dollar. It's like you're also saying it's this incredibly innovative new technology and you're trying to put it into these buckets of preexisting frameworks where those two ideas conflict directly, right?

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yes. And there's just this natural thing that's left on, and people just like, don't.

[Jack Mallers]

Poke the bear too well.

[Parker A. Lewis]

That's part of it. But people on CNBC will ask Michael. So there's an interview today, but it was asked in a little bit of a different way. It's like, but what do you do with it? You just sit. It just sits there. Like, you know, if you describe this as the best store of value, but it's just this digital thing. It's a very esoteric point to just end at like, oh, everyone's just going to store value in this thing and everyone's just going to store more value. And the logical connection of it is, well, no, because it's money and that's currency. And then you're going to use that thing called Bitcoin to buy food at the grocery store, gas at the gas station on a direct basis. That that's the end state. If you don't have that logical end state, none of it makes sense. So we're all just holding this Bitcoin, it's all going up in value. But to what end? The currency piece of it is actually what helps it become more logical. Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

And this was the piece you wrote right before this one. Right. Is the. It's like Schrodinger's money. Like, Bitcoin only has value. The exchange theory of value.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Oh, yeah, that was two. Yeah. Two ago.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah, yeah.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Different. That. That's a little bit of a different point. But my point I'm making here is.

[Jack Mallers]

More than it confuses people because people in the public, you're like, you're not going to do anything with It.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Right. It confuses people if they. If you. And it's not to, say, create a story for the sake of creating a story, but it's.

[Jack Mallers]

I just told you, a real life example of this happening.

[Parker A. Lewis]

If you don't connect the logic where, like, if your logic is. And we're all just going to hold Bitcoin and it's just going to exist and it's going to go up in value and there's going to be fiat currency, it's like, how. How does it just keep going up in value? It's like. Well, it's going up in value because it's actually money. And money is used to coordinate trade. And in the end, people are actually going to be using this money to pay each other directly. That is actually logically coherent. Whether or not someone accepts it as a reality. That is at least logically coherent to paint a vision. Otherwise, it's just kind of the logic of everyone's going to hold Bitcoin and no one's ever going to spend it, but it's just going to keep storing value for everybody. And it's particularly confusing because it's not like the logic. It's not that the logic breaks down. It doesn't end at the point that it actually ends at, which is it's used as money to leave people confused.

[Jack Mallers]

Because they can't draw that. Since you're not drawing that distinction for them, or not even drawing it for them, but highlighting it to them. They get lost at that, sort of. This sounds like a Ponzi scheme because everybody's gonna buy it, store their value in it, Right?

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. There's something missing. There's something very logically that is the true reality that's missing from the end of the.

[Jack Mallers]

And it fascinates me. People are so afraid to admit it.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. But I don't think it's so much afraid to admit it. I think that it's. It's actually believing it and that that world can exist where you're just. The world can exist where you're just storing value and spend, or you're just storing value in Bitcoin and spending your dollars.

[Jack Mallers]

Cynthia. Cynthia ran with this beam last week, too, right.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Next time I see her, I'll, you know, I'll explain this directly. But that world can only exist where very few people hold bitcoin and the majority of people hold dollars. But if for the same reason that you started hold Bitcoin, if everybody figures that out and everybody's holding Bitcoin, then that reality can't Exist.

[Jack Mallers]

Well, it's, it's fascinating observing it as a business owner that obviously we're a bitcoin company, are a lot of our counterparties in the space, whether it's advertisers, the commons are bitcoiners. But it's been like the last six months, like we just, we. We're doing a design collab with Skyler from Finite Supply. He sent me a zap, right Invoice, like the. The amount of counterparties in this business both sending invoices to and receiving invoices from that have the option to pay in Bitcoin is increasing every month. SATOSHI PACIOLI When I go to pay my monthly bookkeeping and accounting services, Zaprite Invoice Bitcoin, boom. And I could see it here personally. And obviously this is a bit of anomaly to the broader public because we are a bitcoin company, but you see it every day, what you're doing. It's not just bitcoin companies doing this.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Right, and that's a good point to help connect people just on seeing this future vision. And I think it's important to articulate that Bitcoin is currency today. From an economic, atomic level, it's currency today. It's not objectively, Objectively by every definition, historical or otherwise historical in terms of the context of how people have defined money practically just in terms of how people interact with money, Bitcoin eliminates the issuer entirely from all the functions that an issuer previously played in the function of money. What it, what it doesn't eliminate is you still need tools to interact with Bitcoin. You still need a computer, you need a hardware wallet, those tools. Just because you need other tools to make the money a greater utility and a more effective currency doesn't mean that any of those tools that you need are reinserting an issuer into the equation, which is the critical piece between money and currency on the payment side. The other thing that it needs is tools to help people facilitate Bitcoin payments. That zap, right? You know, like you said, an invoice. Well, we created an invoice to make it easy not just to accept Bitcoin, but to accept fiat and Bitcoin side by side. But then we have a lot of things in that piece of software that help provide for you and for the person who sent you the invoice, the business context, you have the record what you paid, not just the amount, but what you paid for, so that you can then do your accounting. We provide the Bitcoin to Fiat accounting, cost basis, all of those pieces just in the context of the invoice. And we have an API that does the same thing and a virtual point of sale and different payment templates. Those are building out Bitcoin as a currency system, putting tools in merchants and entrepreneurs and ultimately consumers hands that allow them to functionally, like anybody can send Bitcoin to anybody else. But the world of payments necessitates combination of business context and the fulfillment of goods and services. Each one of those type of payments needs infrastructure to be built around it to make it not technically possible, because it's technically possible today, but functionally easy for a consumer and individual, or, sorry, a consumer in a business. As more of those tools exist, the tools have to exist for people to use them. People adopt the tools and then more people use them. It's a iterative cycle and that's another reality. If people don't use Bitcoin as currency, then the tools won't get built to make it better. It is currency. So the economic gravity of the situation will, will dictate it that it will, regardless of the economic friction that might be created by some regulatory apparatus. But the point remains that those tools still, you know, even if you've removed the issuer from the core of the currency system, you still need tools to be built to make payments practically adoptable for individuals and businesses. And in the future, Bitcoin is going to have to be built into every payment system, every bank, every, you know, again, every type of transaction. A real estate transaction, an oil transaction, a gas transaction, a grocery store transaction, a gas station transaction. That is actual work that has to be done in order if you want to pay for gas at the gas station. Some people have to get together to build Bitcoin payments into the gas meter. Meter.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Right. So just understanding that it's a process, but none of that changes the fact that in the background, money is moving between counterparties without a central issuer. Not needing a central issuer. Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

Did you, did you listen to the all in podcast with the Collison brothers yet that we were talking about on Saturday?

[Parker A. Lewis]

I've heard multiple people have reached out to tell me about it, but it's.

[Jack Mallers]

Hilarious because you have. And the reason I bring it up is because right after I told you to listen to that, because I'd listened to it the week before and they still have a fundamental misunderstanding of Bitcoin. They use the old tired trope like we implemented Bitcoin a while ago. Back then it was on chains before lightning existed Nobody's really using it. It was slow and expensive and we believe that stablecoins are going to be the currency of choice in the digital economy. Bitcoin really isn't a currency. And it was hilarious because going back to that invoice I received yesterday morning and they had a 4% premium on fiat payments. And I paid in bitcoin and then just spent and replaced immediately. And I talked to the person who sent me the invoice and that's anybody who's sending Zapright invoices. I haven't really done it yet, but it really was the kick in the ass, just experiencing it yesterday in person put a premium on Fiat because I saw that it was only 4% and I was like, I'm paying in bitcoins, I don't want to pay that. And I talked to the person who issued the invoice and he was saying, yeah, because it goes to stripe and that's around the fee that they would charge us to process this transaction. And so you have the Collison brothers out there saying bitcoin isn't really good for payments. And then yesterday I consciously decided to use it because the friction they introduced with their, the fees that they charge was enough.

[Parker A. Lewis]

And particularly if you're sending large amounts.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah. Like I was. It was a three thousand dollar invoice, right? Yeah.

[Parker A. Lewis]

They, they add up. I get paid, you know, 500 wire. I get a 500 wire from a sponsor that used to meet up and it. I believe I get $465.

[Jack Mallers]

Holy.

[Parker A. Lewis]

My bank takes it $15 wire fee and their bank takes a $20. It's like 7, 7%, I think.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah.

[Parker A. Lewis]

But an interesting point about that, just connecting this idea is that when we built that invoice for Zap, Right. You can put a discount on it, you can put a discount on bitcoin or you can put a premium on Fiat. That itself is a tool that had to be built. A part of what allowed whoever sent you that invoice, without having to have a discussion with you, to say, you can pay me in either, but I want bitcoin. And they didn't have to have a conversation. They just could put a premium on it. That the premium, the 4% premium. Like if you want to pay me $3,000, you can either pay me $3,000 worth of Bitcoin or you can pay me 33.

[Jack Mallers]

$3,120.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Right?

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah. Is that right?

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, yeah. Without having to have a conversation. That is combination power software, but then also a tool Building built that allowed economic incentives to eliminate a conversation between two peers to affect a transaction. And I haven't seen the all in podcast with the Collison brothers, but I. There was this. I don't know if you guys put notes in the show notes, it might not be worth it, but there was this funny if this was.

[Jack Mallers]

Logan, take notes.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Take notes. There was a. One of those Steve Jobs like, you know, Steve Jobs used to product. Great for all the zoomers out there that don't remember Steve Jobs, great product pitches. He would deliver this beautiful new phone and it's in this auditorium and it worked because he was Steve Jobs. But all these tech founders try to replicate it and they try to integrate his showmanship, but for products that just aren't nearly as significant. And anyway, so one of the Collison brothers is up there talking about how they're integrating stablecoins and it's almost like a humiliation ritual. Obviously he doesn't understand it, but he's talking about, we're going to use Solana and I'm going to open up my Uniswap wallet and has to reference all these different weird things about the shitcoin world. And he's like, no, I send it and watch, it's done. It's like, bro, like these networks are like ephemeral things sitting on top of the dollar. The whole thing here is that Fiat's getting debased. People call them stable coins, but they're just losing the same value that the dollar is losing and eventually they're going to be worthless. And. But just the way he like went through the transaction and was like. And now it just instant done. Like done. I was like, man, when this guy figures out bitcoin, he's going to be so embarrassed by.

[Jack Mallers]

You're standing there like, I don't even know how to use Uniswap. Like I've. How would like. So you're. He's explaining that that use case and as an end user, I'm like, okay, I've got to download Uniswap.

[Parker A. Lewis]

And well, I mean, not even that. I just thought I was like, uniswap, you're fucking around with that. You know? Yeah, like, well, think about this. There were others that he mentioned, but it was just like thinking that that was the innovation. And in my mind, not only do I know that the real innovation is Bitcoin and again, the connect not people can think that the friction to bitcoin payments is capital gains taxes. It is to an extent. It ranks like a distant Third, the payment tools need to be created. The biggest thing limiting adoption of bitcoin payments is bitcoin adoption as a store of value and as more people have it. But that the way I also think about all the, like why the stablecoin stuff is noise and people use them. So I'm not not saying it's invalid. People in the bitcoin mining space use it. I don't think it's interesting. It, it's going to have the same fate as fiat currency. But it's like a worse Venmo where if you send Venmo, if you spent money on Venmo, money's not actually moving. If you send stable coins, like the only way that dollars actually move through the US banking system is through the Fed. And dollars aren't moving through the Fed. They're just. It's the equivalent of a Venmo transaction just within another closed network. You can think of it as open because different wallets can connect to it. But the actual dollars, if you want to get them into the banking system and then say go spend them at all the retailers, except because like literally they're functionally a worse form of dollars today. The best you can do is make them as good as the dollar, basically the dollar equivalent, which they're not today. But then what you do between here and now is spend all this time and investment and they bought one of my friend's company. So good for Zach, I'm happy for him. But you basically have to do all this work to make stablecoins equal to the dollar, which is the process of degrading and failing.

[Jack Mallers]

And I'm not being rude having my phone out. I want to check the transaction of the invoice. I paid $3,000 yesterday. When I paid, it was before the market pumped. So it was like three and a half, 3.524 million SATs and the fee was 4400 SATs. And I just was doing the math, like a 12 basis point.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Did you pay on chain?

[Jack Mallers]

No, lightning.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Okay.

[Jack Mallers]

Lightning 12 basis point fee going through the lightning network.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. And you got a $3,000 lightning transaction.

[Jack Mallers]

That went through like immediately and settled in their wallet immediately.

[Parker A. Lewis]

That's the definition of economic efficiency.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah. Instead of paying $120, I paid.

[Parker A. Lewis]

And part of this also to connect for people is because it is multi layered that the. If you have two people that want bitcoin on either side, there's an efficiency because it's just one transaction versus three. But also the reason why there's this gravitational Force that will force Bitcoin to be used as currency is that that transaction and transaction fees will fluctuate as more value is delivered by parties that are going to need to be paid for that. But the transaction itself is trustless. Well, lightning, let's call it trust minimized. But even in that context between you and your peer, functionally speaking, you couldn't get that Bitcoin back. It was gone. And there didn't need to be a central third party in between. So the, the transaction is not just more efficient because there was one transaction that was affected versus three. It was more efficient because Bitcoin's a trustless system that itself is able to move value between parties more efficiently than introducing trust. And then that trust is a more arcane process of validation that requires more infrastructure and work and more risk because the stripe fees are so high, because they're taking credit risk. There's risks of chargebacks, there's risks of fraud. And somebody's paying for that. The system's paying for that. In a currency system that's 100% built on trust, everything is credit. But when you can push a payment that is funded and that can't be taken back, that's also part of this efficiency gain. The other side of it that people might be thinking about or wondering is like, well, then the price of Bitcoin went up. It's not just such as life, it's that imagine a world where you had 100% of your savings of Bitcoin that you were maximally exposed to Bitcoin. Going back to that example, like if I had taken payment in dollars at 16,000 and just sat in dollars versus converted it all to Bitcoin and then had to deal with the currency consequences. Imagine you only in that same example, imagine I only had Bitcoin. I only had that one Bitcoin, the 100,000, and I had to spend the $10,000 because I needed to fix the transmission of my car, which was necessary of my life. If Bitcoin doubled, it doesn't matter. I needed the car fixed and I still have 90% of my savings. And in reality, when you're spending your Bitcoin, if you have virtually all of your savings in bitcoin, which is someone like myself does, and you not to out you, but I know you well enough, is that it doesn't matter if it goes up. Because when you're spending Bitcoin, you're spending like a very, very small fraction. And then you're working to get more Bitcoin, you Know, like, it's just that, that, that's trade reality of economics. You have certain needs and wants and it doesn't matter if the price goes up if you have virtually all your money in it because you're spending a small fraction of it. Yeah. Does it? It doesn't make sense if you only have 5% of your money in Bitcoin and 95% in fiat. Yeah, sure, spend some of your fiat, but you have too much fiat too.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah. In this example, it'd be better if the price didn't crash down to where it was before the pump yesterday.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Oh, I see.

[Jack Mallers]

At the time of recording. No, but I mean, for the same.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Example I just described would have been better, but like, for like a period.

[Jack Mallers]

Of 20 hours, like, I paid that invoice and then it was literally, I paid that invoice immediately rebought, plus some what I would have saved on what I did save by not paying a fiat and having to stomach those stripe fees I paid and rebought. So I was back to. I was back above where my bitcoin balance was before I did the payment. And the person received the payment for a period of time in the last 24 hours, they were up 10% on that. So they had $3,300 worth of value at one point.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. And what I would say is, none of that really matters.

[Jack Mallers]

No.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Right. Like if again, imagine illustriously, you have a hundred percent of your savings in bitcoin, it's like you had an invoice to pay and you're going to get paid in bitcoin in the future. And if you're endeavoring in your business, as you should be, it's like, I got to be spending fewer bitcoin than I'm making for this economic activity to make sense and the part that ties it together, because someone might be sitting there thinking like, well, if it goes up, certainly there was a consequence to that. And like, yeah, you have to make economic decisions. Do you want to consume or do you want to save? And maybe not all good consumption decisions are good and you should have saved rather than consumed. And in business, you can endeavor to make investments that don't pay off if you're minded to consume on only the things that you really need. And if in business you're endeavoring to produce things of value, then as you're spending bitcoin as it's going up, you should be doing that with the mind that you would only pursue that activity to make more bitcoin and this and the piece that you Mentioned that I had written before on the exchange theory of money. It's that value is actually created through exchange. So in that example, it's less so that the, you know, between you and your peer, someone has the bitcoin, you know, someone has the. How many SATs.

[Jack Mallers]

3.5 million.

[Parker A. Lewis]

So the value went up, the value went down for one of you, it's up for the other one. You went down. But you paid someone to do a service.

[Jack Mallers]

It's vital to my business.

[Parker A. Lewis]

That's vital to your business. He got paid as compensation. And your business is generating Bitcoin. That's how value is created. Value is created through trade. You needed somebody with some specialized skill to do a part of your value chain so that you could deliver services to all of your consumers, the podcast listeners, the readers of the TFTC media empire.

[Jack Mallers]

We shouldn't laugh at it. It is, it is, it is.

[Parker A. Lewis]

But that's how value is created through money. Money is coordinating trade. It's not zero sum. The guy who got the bitcoin that you paid, he got the money, you got the service. You sell that service to people, you get more bitcoin. That's not zero sum is the point. The more that that happens, the more that bitcoin is used as currency. That is how it derives value. Doesn't mean that every. Every value transfer the bitcoin helps affect is how values created. Even if you're using dollars and intermediaries, I'm just connecting for people that it's not zero sum. Like the same sats exist, one person has it, you don't. But you're destined to get more sats by delivering a great service. And through that operation, more value is created for. For more. More like. What's the term? More economic benefit. It actually expands. It doesn't remain static.

[Jack Mallers]

Positive ev.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

And we'll be able to talk about this more openly at the bitcoin takeover.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Wonderful. Cliffhanger.

[Jack Mallers]

Cliffhanger.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

So go get your tickets, freaks.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, get the tickets to Bitcoin takeover. Bitcointakeover.org yeah, it's going to be an amazing day, Capped off by the live tftc. What bitcoin did, but really spans across every facet of bitcoin. I don't think I missed any or we missed any in the program.

[Jack Mallers]

I hope this real world example helped us articulate this point about that on the go. I think it's important too.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, it is. To help some. Because on the currency and money question, I hope people kind of come away with A better understanding of the distinction. It might. And from a practical perspective, it can seem pedantic. But it's currently being debated in Washington D.C. and there will be consequences. So I hope people come away with just a better distinction of that. But then I can also appreciate how people can get hung up on not necessarily what's the point? But there seems to be so much friction, so why even elevate this as something that needs to be debated? And it's because of what bitcoin is at its nature and because people are really using this and that. The more that people use it, the more effective the tools will get, the greater the economic efficiency. And then in the end that bitcoin will be able to be a working economic system for more people and help end this fiat calamity. It doesn't end without tools to exist to affect commerce. And the more people that use those tools, the more people that get a zap right invoice and pay it or pay somebody with BTC pay or any service that the more people that use those tools and understand this layered thinking of don't get hung up by the capital gains, don't get hung up on the accounting. It's like use it. The more that you do, the better the tools will get. And that's how we actually get out of this conundrum.

[Jack Mallers]

Well, thank you for building the tools and honestly, Zap right for delivering the podcast.

[Parker A. Lewis]

I listened to two last week on my way out to Marble Falls. I listened to the Kevin McKernan one that was phenomenal. You're bringing in people from kind of outside the traditional bitcoin voices. And then Kevin Dolan. So those are two great podcasts. I'm a consumer of the pod, obviously.

[Jack Mallers]

Thank you. Thank you for helping us on both ends of the business. And honestly, the tools are getting better. Like I mentioned Satoshi Pacioli, since we run our business on I think it's patchouli. Patchouli.

[Parker A. Lewis]

I used to always get it wrong.

[Jack Mallers]

Patchouli, that's on me. Sorry, Joe.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Joe, I got your back.

[Jack Mallers]

But Zap right, Since we invoice via zap right and it has fiat and bitcoin, it makes accounting very easy. I don't stress as much as I was two years ago. Three years ago.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah.

[Jack Mallers]

Business exchange accounts. If you have there's whether it's Strike river, they have business accounts, they do good accounting. Like if you're using combination of self custody bitcoin like Zap right. For big invoices that we receive, load up an XPub associated with one of my cold storage wallets and that's where we receive it to if we need to get cash. With bitcoin, I have the ability to move that bitcoin from that wallet to an exchange to sell. I typically try not to do that. Keep a balance on the exchange, keep a balance in cold storage, keep a balance in cash. The ability to run a business on a bitcoin standard has never been better. It's only getting better by the day.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. And there's a lot left to do. But the more people that engage in that and use the tools, the better the tools get by. Reps and feedback and working out kinks and getting great ideas from customers as well as just more customers means more revenue, means more capital to build more things.

[Jack Mallers]

So positive Ev. It's not zero sum.

[Parker A. Lewis]

It's not zero sum.

[Jack Mallers]

We used a modern day example. We'll talk about it more on stage at the Bitcoin Takeover next week.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah. Bitcoin takeover.org if you're interested in Zaprite zaprite.com if you're interested in the piece, it's on TFTC IO on my blog gradualandsuddenly xyz. It's on my twitter Parker A. Lewis. Feel like I'm forgetting something.

[Jack Mallers]

Jftc if you want $40 off.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Yeah, there you go. It's a good deal. Best deal in the market. No, I think that it. There's other events during Bitcoin Takeover. So if you find us on Meetup Bitcoin Commons, Austin. All the events that I mentioned at the start are on the meetup page.

[Jack Mallers]

Hell yeah. Come see us next week. There's gonna be a lot more of this. We've got some ideas for some evergreen content we're gonna work on. So stay tuned for that.

[Parker A. Lewis]

Look forward to the series.

[Jack Mallers]

Yeah. Peace and Love, Freaks, TikTok.