← TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:07]
A
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. 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. I mean that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be.
- [00:35]
B
Probably should be fourth Turning Vibes. I think that's in that description of the times we find ourselves in right now.
- [00:45]
A
Yeah, it is. And I think the biggest, biggest difference between what's happening now compared to previous times that you can compare with is how information is being spread and consumed. Because back in the day, right, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot is a lot of the reasons why these old institutions actually had such a long run before the Internet is because they were leveraging information asymmetry. You can go all the way back to the church and they had the only source of truth, right? Like they were saying, I don't know, we know what God wants and if you want access to God, you got to go through us, right? And then governments had the same thing. They were just basically saying, no, no, no, we know how to control the currency and private banks don't know. You guys definitely don't know. We know. And all these institutions and our media, like we know the truth, we are the unbiased ones, you guys need to the truth and etc. Etc. So all these institutions have been able to exist for so long because they were leveraging information asymmetry. And that's before the Internet really happened. And right now when we go through the four turning vibes, it's like, whoa. All these institutions are like crumbling up in front of our faces because everybody has access to free flowing information and truths. And you see that all that for Turning Vibes comes from that, I think from that, like, whoa, I didn't know that you guys were so insane, you know, and when, when is transparent. So it's exciting times. I mean, yes, a time that repeats in history, but I think it's unique now because of the Internet and the way we consume information.
- [02:40]
B
That's what I was going to bring up. I think I've said it a couple times in the show, but I think the Internet age, whether it's the fourth turning, the sovereign individual, I think sovereign individual, probably the most Prescient description of what's going on now. But everybody talks about like, oh, it's like the America is like the Roman Empire of modernity and it's going to have a similar downfall. And I'm like, the Internet is always that, that variable in the back of my mind. It's like I think it, feel it changes things moving forward in a way that, where yes, there may be some parallels and similarities to civilizations of history, but I think the, the Internet variable changes things moving forward, particularly the speed with which things happen.
- [03:28]
A
Yeah. And it's not necessarily like a disruptive thing. I think all these established institutions, they find a way to kind of like metastasize and shapeshift. Because I come from, I started my career in the music industry, right. And I was working at Universal Music as a product product guy. And that was in the mid aughts, late aughts, like 2007ish. And I, you know, I grew up in Norway so I was working at Universal Music Norway and then in Sweden. The Pirate Bay guys were like doing their thing. And at that time they were being sued left and right by like Hollywood lawyers, music industry lawyers and stuff like that. And they were kind of like attacking the Pirate Bay guys in a way that showed how stupid and ignorant they were because they were like, you know, we got shut this site down, you know, like thinking like, okay, if we shut this website down, that's going to fix it. So they were like, totally didn't, they didn't know how to attack it. Right. And I was in Universal Music having these conversations with people inside. You know, I remember these like conference calls that we had with the London headquarters and stuff. And they were all just focused on destroying quote unquote, the Pirate Bay. Instead of like, okay, what about taking a look at this technology and see why is this so successful and how can we potentially leverage it? I tried to say those things like, hey, we should maybe leverage torrenting to release like low bit rate singles or snippets of albums before we release them for real to get people excited. And they were like, no, no, no, we gotta like shut it down completely. And then later on like I rage quitted the industry as a result of that. But later I saw that they essentially bend the knee to, to the torrenting technology and you know, they, they allowed Spotify to be built and then they, you know, Universal and Sony BMG and all the big, the big four record labels, they all had like a, A, a significant share in the, in the, and the listing of Spotify when they entered the US market. So they essentially metastasized into being the biggest shareholders of Spotify years later, just for survival. Right. So we're seeing a lot of these industries not necessarily being disrupted, but they're like in the moment right now trying to desperately find a way to stay relevant.
- [06:06]
B
Yeah, it's actually been following you for years on X been. Some of my favorite commentary of yours is drawing parallels from your experience in the music industry, particularly on how well the music industry, in the entertainment industry more broadly is at marketing and positioning particular products. But to your point, they may not get the freedom oriented technologies that make it easier to access their, their content. And you've had a lot of very stark criticism for bitcoin specifically and how we're positioning this new freedom technology. It's like we need to combine the good things that Pirate Bay brought to the market with the good marketing and positioning that things like Hollywood and the music industry have had for many decades.
- [07:02]
A
Yeah, I think there's two sides of the bitcoin industry that I have been the most critical about. And I feel like I will hopefully soon not have these criticisms anymore because I do feel like a lot of things are improving, but I think two sides of the industries. One is if you take the first 10 years of Bitcoin and you, and you take a look at the engineers, the people building products for using bitcoin, I think it was like not very user friendly.
- [07:43]
B
Nerds building for nerds.
- [07:45]
A
Autists building for autists, man. Heavy. And you got to be super advanced man, in order to understand what the hell you're doing with something as simple as, you know, a wallet, sending and receiving, you know, should be, should be easy. But we made it very complicated obviously because of, you know, we were thinking of trade offs. We want to, we want to build something that's secure and we have so many examples of, you know, all, you know, all types of protocols being hacked back in the day. Right. All type of smart contracts being hacked left and right. And we're seeing less of that now. I think the social engineering is maybe the biggest attack vector right now. And not so much like the hacking of stuff, but still, but then also apart from the like a horrible UX and the subpar products that, you know, companies in the space were releasing in the first 10 years of Bitcoin, we also had like this communications problem or this positioning problem where you know, a lot of people who, who grock bitcoin, they, they feel like, okay, there's like, you know, when you are when you are orange pilled. I, I do believe it's a very, it's a highly personal journey. I mean, yes, you have access to a community online. You can go to a conference or, or 10 and you have, you know, material. But, but you, you are essentially unlearning a lot that you thought was true. And that's a highly personal experience. At least it was for me. And I think a lot of people do. It resonates with them. So you gotta like change your worldview. You know, stuff that you thought were true for many, many years, you gotta flip upside down and then you gotta learn about, you know, cryptography, computer science. I mean, I mean, at least on the surface level, right, to fully grok bitcoin. And then when you do, when it clicks in your head, I think the natural instinct is, oh shit, the rest of the world needs to hear about this, right? So you just gotta go at the top of the roof and rooftop and yell it out. But you know, you are essentially going to use the same arguments that convinced you to convince somebody else and that somebody else is not you. So you know, we, we, you know, a good like marketer or promoter or whatever, they look into the psychology of like influence and stuff like that and they tap into stuff like, okay, what, what are you angry about? What are you concerned about? What are you fearful about? These deep emotional triggers. And then they try to like create the message around that, right? Because these are things that will resonate super, super quickly. And bitcoiners have been kind of like not doing that. And then at the same time, the way of doing it is also like, bro, you don't know you're wrong, bro, you need to understand, bro, this shit is fucked up, bro. And people were just not, not going to listen to that stuff. And then you have these other losers in the, in the shitcoin land that are like all lovey dovey, all welcoming and stuff. And they, they go there faster because hey, this is a community that is more open and welcome. And it's kind of like the same thing with politics too. You know, people aren't ready for the truth, but they want to belong to a community, so they go where they are, quote, unquote, welcomed instead of actually, you know, doing some critical thinking. So it's the same problem that you see elsewhere as well. And I think individual bitcoiners have done bitcoin extreme disservice, I would say, in terms of like, hey, are we going to really grow adoption here on a global scale in that scenario? It's been pretty, pretty bad. But now I think there's just like a lot of interesting companies that are just creating great products. They really think about brand, they think about design, they think about delightful experience and stuff like that. And I think through, through those companies, I think we have a really bright future. And I think all the stuff that I've been, you know, bitching about on X and here for the last two or three minutes is hopefully a thing of a previous generation or previous era of, of Bitcoin.
- [11:59]
B
So who are the companies that you think are doing it right, that you're excited about? What do they focus on in terms of presenting the user?
- [12:07]
A
Top of my mind, I think Square Cash app, they really have that. They think about brand design, they think about good UX when it comes to the apps, but they also try their best to tap into the culture. And I think that's something again that I, that I look back at, you know, torrenting and the Pirate Bay and stuff like that. It was not only the technology that was awesome, obviously, but the outcome of that technology was like somebody in Sri Lanka could now download, I don't know, above the RIM and see Tupac and maybe download the soundtrack and tap into the culture. So it's like technologies that come with like this underlying cultural movement underneath that's like, that's like a fucking, that's a explosion waiting to happen, right? Those are like super impactful stuff. Stuff. And I think that's what Square and Cash app and, and all those people are trying to do at that level. Right? Like Jack Dorsey wears a Toshi Nakamoto T shirt at the super bowl. You know, trying to converge though the mainstream world with our world in a, in a cool way. I think that's a good example of a company that is, that's doing it well.
- [13:25]
C
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- [15:17]
B
the exchanges who haven't moved it off,
- [15:19]
C
tell them to pick up a bit key, go to Bitkey World, use the key TFT FTC20 at checkout for 20% off your order. That's Bitkey World code TFTC20.
- [15:29]
B
It's hard too, right? Because like as you mentioned earlier, like we're dealing with this nation emergent protocol that has new ways. I mean the way the protocol works, it's just people are going to be interacting with technology in ways that they haven't before. I think if I were to try to articulate what you were describing earlier, like autism building for autism. The first 10 years, I think it was hyper focused on making sure that everybody understood like hey, this is what you're dealing with here. It's a distributed system that uses private Public key pairs. And you need to understand how all this stuff works. I think that's, I mean, just that self custody alone is one of the biggest turnoffs for a lot of people because you're like, all right, here's the best money ever. Oh, by the way, like, you need to secure yourself. And if you lose these 12 words, you lose your money forever. And it's just like people are like, well, that's a bit risky.
- [16:27]
A
Yeah.
- [16:29]
B
And it's. And so what, what do you would like. What on top of the protocol do you think has made this easier? Like you're, I think of something like ln address just being able to send somebody like, hey, Marty, at strike me. If you want to send me money, just find a compatible wallet, send it there. That's another thing. It's like, what is a compatible wallet? We're getting into like all these UX issues, standardization issues that, that emerge too. But to your point, I do think we're, we're definitely getting better at it as time goes on. But I think the time is of the essence here, right? Like, I think considering everything going on in the world, the fourth turning vibes that we started the conversation with, like, I truly believe in what I have been doing. What I've been doing for the last nine years is to educate people and try to get bitcoin into as many hands as possible. And through the nine years I've been doing it professionally and 13 years I've been in bitcoin, the environment has never been more ripe for bitcoin adoption in terms of people needing a solution like bitcoin.
- [17:37]
A
Oh, yeah, no, 100%. And also, let me thank you as well for being part of my own journey. I remember like when I was looking back at our. The DMS on X and it was like something from like 2019 or something was. Was there. And I, I mentioned something about listening to a pod with you and Alex Leishman and there was like a. There wasn't. There was a, I don't know, three minute segment where you were talking about Virginia and like the New England and how, how the economies became, you know, like circular economies, you know, Virginia and the new colonies emerged. And that inspired me to write a blog post about it. And I send it to you and you were like, yeah, great, cool. And I sent it to Park Lewis, I sent it to Leishman, and everybody was super, super friendly and they gave me feedback on the article that nobody read except for maybe you lie and Park Lewis and five other crazy ones that were following me back then. But you know, that has been instrumental to my personal journey. So thank you. But I think in 2019 that that same, I had that same fear, you know, and it's only been intensifying in the, in the, in the seven years that has passed. But one thing I do want to say, which now I don't want to be like super negative on this episode, but like, I, I don't think like, you know, the bitcoin is not for everyone, but is for anyone. I, I truly, truly believe in that because, you know, I'm from Argentina and you would think that in Argentina, you know, bitcoin would be a no brainer for, for the entire country. Everybody has been going through insane debasement. You know, my, my family emigrated from Argentina because of a hyperinflationary dumpster fire in 89. I told you about that. And then another crazy one happened in 2001. So it has like this, Argentina has gone through this like chronic, you know, disease of, of inflation. And no other country than Argentina perhaps, maybe, maybe other five Nigeria, Venezuela, Turkey, Lebanon, maybe Iran have seen how just inflation, how that tears the social fabric apart. Having families having to go outside of the country, leaving their families behind just to get a job and send money back. And you would think, hey, bitcoin, hey, you can remittances over lightning. All of that is a godsend, right, to people in countries like Argentina. And still Ethereum is the biggest community. It has the most traction in Argentina. So just because us bitcoiners think that, okay, these people would be open to bitcoin, still doesn't mean that they will get it. You can give them the bitcoin standard to read, you can give them 100 podcast episodes. People just still won't get it. So I think we should be okay with just, hey, there's a bunch of people that will never ever get it. And let's not even think about those people and then try to tap into the cohorts around the world that might need bitcoin for very different reasons. And this is also related to the information asymmetry that we're going through right now, because you would think the abundance of information would make more people understand bitcoin more. The reality is there's so much noise, there's so much low signal out there among the noise that somebody who has to work 2, 3 jobs because of inflation to keep food on the table don't have time to, to get into, deep into anything. So they, you know, you have heard and you probably met you know, hundreds of Uber drivers who are just like Shiba Inu Maxis. But they think bitcoin is, is whatever old tech is because they read, they barely read anything. So pockets of the Internet will now be in different cohorts online, consuming very different content. And we just need to try to tap into those cohorts, those pockets online, and try to speak the language in order for, for adoption to grow. Because it's not going to be mass adoption anymore in my opinion. We are, we're behind, we're beyond that. It's going to be a fragmented adoption that is going to look very insane and weird, but it's not going to be like one big, you know, movement that kind of like brings critical mass into our world. It's going to be choppy, I think.
- [22:26]
B
Is this something you're trying to solve a perception?
- [22:29]
A
Yeah, I am. I think for people who are in the industry who want to keep up with what is happening. Yeah, you can't rely on logging into X anymore or, or I don't know, reading one or two websites a day in your morning with your morning coffee. There's things happening 360° 247 non stop from all regions of the world at any given time and manually keeping up with that is impossible. So if you consume content, if you try to educate yourself the old school way, are you going to have a very rough time? Because you're going to be, you're going to be beaten by somebody who uses something like perception that just is able to gather 650 plus sources all at the same time and can create, can do pattern detection automatically in a second instead of you trying to do that on yourself, having 70 tabs open in your browser at the same time. So yeah, I'm solving that with perception for the people who want to accelerate, who want to get to, you know, what's really happening and what are like the trend clustering all around the world faster than, than their competitors. So still in beta we can talk about perception a little bit more. But we're still in beta and already have, I already have institutional clients already and I think the, the reception has been pretty good. I'm super bullish on, on that and I do think that is kind of like how we are, how we need in order to survive in the knowledge worker industry. The way we process data and the way we add context to that data is going to be incredibly important for job security, for your company to stay alive, for not becoming part of the permanent underclass.
- [24:30]
B
I'm sure if you've been listening and reading my tweets and newsletters. I am incredibly bullish on AI, just as a productivity booster for small teams like ours here at tftc. And that's how I viewed it over the last few years. Specifically we started really leaning in about two years ago and automating some backend processes with AI tools. And obviously they've gotten exponentially better as time's gone on and it's allowed us to do more. So like combination of storytelling via AI, generated videos, telling the story of Jekyll island, the story of getting ripped off, the gold standard, bunch of other stories. But then on top of that we can put out more content. Now we have this five day a week bitcoin brief newsletter that we've gotten back to and it's all been enabled by AI and to your point, like curating and surfacing signal, that's what we've been trying to do with the bitcoin brief and feedback's been good, but I think AI is a double edged sword. You can get consumed by slop and the tsunami of noise that's going to be produced using these tools, but if you leverage them the right way, you can serve as a ton of signal as well.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, that's why when I created Perception, it was more like the reason I created Perception was because when I was working at Blockstream, I used to be the VP of marketing and communication there for people who don't know me. And we were like using traditional tools that were like monitoring, you know, social media monitoring, media monitoring, whatever. And just to see, okay, how are we doing? How are like technologies being discussed online and you know, competitors and stuff like that. And you know, with these tools, resurfaced was just everything. So I was, I was like, oh, on Tuesday we got this 72 increase in mentions. Let me see what that is all about. And I log in and I see just pure, pure dribble, you know, like just casino links and scammers and all kinds of. So these tools that supposedly are tracking the Internet for you? Yeah, they track everything. And with, like I said, with the AI slob, with grifters, with spammers, with all that stuff happening not only on X but just, just everywhere, you can't rely on these metrics at all. You can't even rely on them directionally. It's all fake. So I was like, okay, we need to build our own system. And I started doing that and then I was like, oh, the data that comes back is pretty interesting. Let me create a newsletter showing some Interesting stuff that was mostly based on mainstream media and essentially that was well received because I was essentially just quantifying what people already knew. Yeah, mainstream media sucks and here's, here's why. But now, you know, as I added more sources, it's completely different. And I really see the value of a platform like perception. But during that process I was like, yeah, I can't fuck this up. I really need to be super careful about what I actually include what kind of data comes in, because that's the trap. You know, you want to like bring in everything, but then you bring in all the bullshit. And in order to provide a lot of data that is, you know, that has enough volume to really tell you, hey, these are the trends and this is the sentiment and this is actually the public perception of X, Y and Z, you need to curate that a lot. So I think, you know, me coming from the industry and knowing you know, who's, who's who and what's what, I think that's another strength for, you know, perception to actually be a valuable tool in the future. But you're totally right. And I think what you did with the AI video in particular was absolutely insane. I mean, you pioneered that shit. That Jekyll island video was absolutely insane. And that was towards my last period at Blockstream and we were discussing that internally. We were like, yeah, we fucked up here because this team is a small media team. We're like a big company and they beat us to it. And look at what they're doing. They're absolutely killing it. And I think that's a one example of many examples of just like people who are like hyper focused on something, they just edge out compared to a bigger New York case, bigger media outlets, right?
- [28:59]
C
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- [29:50]
B
put your hardware in that.
- [29:51]
C
I have a tap signer right here. I got the silent card holder replace my wallet. I was using Ridge wallet because it's secured against RFID signal jacking Silent. The cardholder does the same thing. It's much sleeker, fits in my pocket much easier. I also have the Faraday phone sleeve, which you can put a hardware wallet in. We're actually using it for our keys
- [30:08]
B
at the house too.
- [30:08]
C
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- [30:30]
B
So go check it out. Thank you. Number one. But number two, it goes to your point of what you're just describing. Building perception. You have a ton of context, personal context of where the signal is in the space. And similarly, that's like, I've been building my Bitcoin Twitter list since 2012, I think, or 2013. And I just from pure observation, over 13, 14 years, I've developed these pattern recognition techniques with my human brain to then be able to curate via these AI tools. And it seems like you're doing the same thing. To your point, that's going to be the edge moving forward is curation and taste. I strongly believe that. And I think in the realm of building AI products, particularly with a focus on data surfacing, like you need that sort of pattern recognition, that experience, that time in the market. You're not like some startup out of YC is going to be like, okay, we need better bitcoin sentiment tools, so we're going to build that. Like, if you haven't been in the space for a while and you don't know the different actors and the, the history of who's been right and who's been wrong over the course of many years, it's going to be hard to do that from scratch.
- [31:51]
A
Yeah, totally. It's, it's. And now we are really like in that, in that top of the wave, I think, where we either fall off the surfboard or we actually ride the wave to the end, where we are confronted with so much information and how do we make sense of it? And as, as a professional working industry, you're not, you're not going to do that manually. But then for us who build tools around that, yeah, we were kind of like, we're doing it now. But I'm very curious to see how like, information in general is going to look like in a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. It's going to be something we need to tweak and adjust really fast and be super nimble, I think. Because, listen, Perception has been in beta for six months. I quit Blogstream six months ago, so it's not even been a year, half a year. And when I exited and I announced me leaving and I was like, hey, this is now available for beta. That product doesn't exist anymore. That was like a tracking tool. You log in through a dashboard and then you kind of create charts and you can create spaces where you can drag stuff from a cluster into a sheet and then you can kind of run some analysis models on it. That stuff is completely commoditized right now. I think people just create whatever app they need for a very, very specific thing that for anybody else building a business around it, it's too niche to actually make viable as a business. But for one person who needs something quick that is very, very specific, they can build it themselves. So apps and front ends and UIS is just completely commoditized. So the data is the only competitive mode that we have, at least for the next maybe 12 to 18 months. And it's about how you know what you do with that data. You know, just in Perception's case, it's a curated feed, but this is a critical. It's mass volume, but it's very curated. I'm very careful about which Twitter account goes into the database, you know, what tweets go in. And then I do the trend analysis. Then I do, you know, analysis of earnings calls to see whether leadership is evasive or not. I grade them. I take the questions that they're being asked and are they evasive or not? And then I do like, I run the alpha of the stock price versus the evasiveness versus BTC price. So it's a lot of stuff like you need to know, you need to kind of be part of the industry to know, hey, this is something that is unique, that people really want. And then offer it to them. But that's like, in the five months that I've been doing this, I had to toss away an app and just put all of that data and all that analysis through LLMs. So now perception is the data, it's the narrative intelligence. But you can access it directly on ChatGPT, on Cloud or Google Gemini and people are like, whoa, that's interesting. So now I do way more demos. Prospects are actually, you know, super engaged and my users are upgrading or like they, they don't turn because all of these people, they are already using these AI tools and just plugging perception into that. They know it's really powerful and impactful. Because if you try to do the same with the native, native intelligence that Claude and ChatGPT or perplexity has, it's going to be surface level still. There's the depth of data, the niche, and then where I plug it into that is kind of like the competitive moat right now. But who knows in six months how this whole thing is going to change? So it's a crazy time to be alive, right?
- [35:41]
B
No, I think the quick pivot to just direct injection looks like via plugin or like APIs. Like I came to the conclusion like two months ago after downloading Openclaw, because it's your point. It's like we're projectionists now. It's like, hey, if I need a dashboard to look at something or a deck or a report, I just tell my, my agent, like, hey, pull all this data you have access to, like, look at it over the last week, last two weeks, last month and give me a report on how we're doing and boom, it's there. It's like, I don't have to go into a dashboard or anything, just does it. And so I think the world is moving towards just like these agents are going to do things for you and they just need access to good data and they don't need a front end for that. They just need to plug into the data source directly, whether it's API or plugin, whatever it may.
- [36:35]
A
How confident are you that Bitcoin is going to be the preferred? I mean, I know that the Bitcoin Policy Institute, they did research and they concluded that Bitcoin was the preferred currency to be used by these agents. But in terms of the people, the humans who are going to build agents and companies around agents, what do you think? Are they going to prefer Bitcoin or Ethereum or where do you stand on how Bitcoin plays into this whole future?
- [37:08]
B
It's funny I just recorded with Macarello last week, and we published that episode on Saturday. This is all we talked about is. I mean, he and Cali have been talking for weeks. Let me shut my door. But the. They were having a discussion on X like a month ago about, hey, if Bitcoin is going to be the native currency of the Internet, now's the time to begin building the infrastructure. Because everybody's starting from zero with agentic payments. This is a new technology. None of the infrastructure exists for them yet. So we got to go build it. And it seems pretty clear that credit and debit cards aren't going to be the solution due to all the risk associated with handing over that information to, to a robot. And so to answer your question, I think the. Jerry's still out. And I think the. I spoke with Cali too, last week as well. So the culmination of my conversations with Cali, Matt, is like, it's up to people to go build it. Right. Like, you need, like. And it's never been easier to do it with these, with these AI tools.
- [38:18]
A
Exactly.
- [38:18]
B
And so I think, I think the demand side is there in terms of bitcoiners who are sort of on the cutting edge of this agentic economy that's emerging. I would argue that the population of bitcoiners using these tools. What I said, the amount of bitcoiners using these tools is probably way higher than any other subject subgroup outside of AI. Native companies or individuals who are literally playing in the AI field. So I think bitcoiners are early adopters of this technology. On a per capita basis for our subgroup, I guess it would index way higher is my assumption. And so I think the onus is on us to go build it. And I think to my point, the demand side is there. There's plenty of bitcoiners using these tools who would gladly have their agents spend Bitcoin to buy stuff. But the supply side, the supply of merchants accepting it, I don't think it's there. And so we need tools to make it easier for them to do it with simple, simple code injections or library downloads on their website. And then I do think, Matt and I talked about, I do think you just need to make it as seamless as possible for merchants to, to go in and out of Bitcoin in dollars or dollar equivalents and stable coins.
- [39:52]
A
Yeah.
- [39:52]
B
Like it or not, like, I just think that's a table stakes. You need that because they don't like the volatility.
- [39:59]
A
Yeah, no, but also I think that the one thing that we have for us is that the purchasing power per sats spent is always going to, to increase over a longer period of time. Right. Or like millisets or millibits. So you can like to whatever type of micro payment units that you want. The purchasing power will always be greater and greater. So you want to have agents equipped with a currency that works that way and does not do the inverse programmatically over time and just lose repurchasing power. Which you know, in Argentina at least, you know, the worst money always is the first one to be used. So you know, in, in Argentina's case is $being, being Bitcoin here in this, in this example, like the, the dollar has always been the strongest currency and the peso has been the, the shittiest. So whenever you get your pesos, you just want to spend it right away. You, you don't want to hold that, right? And then whatever you don't spend from that, like monthly paycheck, for example, you put that into a, a dollar account and it can rest there for a little while. Yes, that also deprecates in value, but not as fast as the peso, but the peso is the one that is in heavy circulation. And then the dollars is for transactions of, I don't know if you have a property deed or something like that. That stuff is done in a stronger currency for property purchases. And you buy a car, sell a car, stuff like that. So I wonder if the agent economy is going to mimic that type of behavior which is inherently human. Right? You don't want to spend the, the, the asset that goes up in value over time. You want to spend. If you have something worse available that is being accepted by a critical mass of people. Yeah, get that out of there. I don't want to, I don't want to have that. But if I can buy something for that, yeah, I'm going to spend it first. So I wonder if agentics are going to mimic that behavior with stable coins versus midcon.
- [42:06]
B
Yeah, that's the other thing too. Like the, the agents will do whatever their, their humans tell them to do, at least for a certain period of time. Who knows, maybe they break containment and become conscience and conscious and, and begin making decisions on their own. But yeah, I guess you could give it like a broad prompt. Like hey, that's what I try to do is be as broad as possible, like just out of curiosity to see what they, what they choose. Like hey, I need you to go do this. Like I want to be able to send and receive bitcoin. Figure out which wallet works best for you. So I did this like a month ago or a month and a half ago now at this point, because I started by giving it direction, like, hey, here's what I want you to do. Go spin up a lightning node using this library and blah, blah, blah. And it just didn't work. And I reframed. It's like, all right, you go do research, figure out what works best for you. And it found Phoenix D server and download one of those. And it was like, hey, here's this bolt product. You can. You can send on chain bitcoin to an address that I'll provide you from Bolts and then it'll sort of submarine swap in. I'll have a lightning channel I can spend. I did that and within 10 minutes at a Phoenix D server and it funded Lightning channel. And so I was like, that's pretty cool. And like, so it did. Sort of knew I wanted to have it be able to send and receive bitcoin, but then I gave it. It was like, hey, just figure out what works best for you and your setup. And it did that pretty smoothly.
- [43:39]
A
Really cool. Yeah. I think Phoenix molds arc. There's just so many newish companies that are building these type of instruments. And I'm super bullish on. I think I'm super bullish on them. I think one thing is for certain is that we. We are living in a gap between like old world dying and the new world being born. And that gap is just getting so much wider and wider. It's definitely not going smaller. And you know, on one side, that environment is kind of like where the grifters flourish, but at the same time, that's. That's the opportunity for. For builders, definitely. I think that the timing of this is, to Matt Corallo's point is spot on. It is now or never, and it's time to build.
- [44:35]
B
Yeah, no, and I think the other thing playing in bitcoin's favor is you just have this interoperability between all the disparate sub protocols in bitcoin, whether it's lightning, liquid arc, spark statechain implementations, beyond Spark, it just all works together. Whereas in the competing world of stablecoins on different chains with different sort of issuers at the bottom of the chain there I could see it introducing friction. And I said this on the Matt Carlo on the episode I recorded with Matt Carollo. And then I talked with my good friend Matt Odell about it, and he's like, no, the clanker will just Figure it out. Like, yes, it may be a bit complex to have stable coins on one chain, then need to bridge it somewhere else to be able to send to somebody who's using a different stablecoin protocol. But you literally just tell your agent, figure it out and it will discover Uniswap and figure out how to get the right stablecoin to the right place. Then that comes with a bunch of fees. I do think the interoperable nature of the bitcoin protocols are being built on top of the main protocol does afford us an advantage from a UX perspective.
- [45:52]
A
I do still think one major trap that we cannot repeat as a bitcoin industry is the things we will figure it out or build it and they will come type of thing. That has been such a big part of bitcoin I think because that is the autistic engineering way of thinking, right? Yeah, bitcoin is superior. They will come as long as the tools are available. Not really, right? Because you have a fucking apparatus of so many people, deep pockets that are wanting to take market share from bitcoin and we are up against them. They're super organized, super well funded and we start off at ground zero together at the same time. But man, do these people have more organized structures and more financialization on their side compared to us to be able to really start off running. But that's kind of the beauty of bitcoin too. There's a beauty in the decentralized, disorganized nature of it, where we have to organize ourselves as a movement instead of a company. But that is also in this day and age, speed is so fucking important that I just wonder that will the grifters take the attention first and have the market share of attention first so that everybody who knows about agentic economy will think, okay, that's a stablecoin thing instead of oh, that's a bitcoin thing. Even though maybe a year after we will actually have built superior tools because we're just more careful and more slow when it comes to come cost of building though, right? In terms of like the philosophy of building. Like yeah, we can build super quick with AI as well, but bitcoiners who are builders, they, they think differently about these things. They, they have a different approach, which inherently is a slower moving train. I just hope that the narrative doesn't, doesn't become a year from now like the agentic economy is a shitcoin thing or a stable coin thing and not a bitcoin thing. And I think that's apart from building the tools. We also need to be on top of that about the narrative. We need to make people know that, yeah, bitcoin is the best. But why? Okay, here's why. And it has to be some kind of a cultural thing, that agent equals bitcoin for it to really succeed, I think.
- [48:20]
B
How do you think we do that? How do we win that narrative battle,
- [48:23]
A
that attention battle, as a fucking great question. Well, I wish that Open Claw guy was a bitcoiner, for example. You know, some bitcoiner need to create a tool that becomes, you know, that takes over Internet culture the way openclaw did, for example. And he's like super anti crypto, which is good, I mean for the, for the shit coins. But that also includes bitcoin, I think. I don't think he has a favorable view of bitcoin just because it's not a shitcoin. I think he just puts everything into the same bucket. So we just need, again, we need companies, we need cash app to create an agent. That is insane. I mean, you see USDC as the Circle team. I think the first week of when OpenCloud really became a thing, I saw them have workshops. They were throwing money at devs to build and build stupid shit just to get that incentive structure in place and to get some mind share from those devs who are like, hey, you know, I just want a grant. I just want something to build. Okay, Circle is giving me money bet. Let's, let's do that. I don't, I don't see tether doing that for them, you know, and they are supposedly the bitcoiner stablecoiners. So we just need to do that. I think, you know, somebody who has a really good ear to the streets to, to, to the, to Internet culture needs to, to, to bring something that is agentic and represents bitcoin. But I don't know, I don't know what it is. I'm not a product guy like that. But I think that's, that's the ingredients. At least that should perhaps be. Yeah, be part of it.
- [50:07]
B
Yeah. I think one of the, the benefits that we have is that Replit Amjad Mossad is a bitcoiner. I know Cody Lowe is in there. I saw he quote, tweeted the BPI piece, the research piece on agents choosing bitcoin. He said this is a good thing. Agents should be using Bitcoin. And so there is a prominent founder within the realm of top tier AI companies that gets it. Just to your point though, leaning into it and making it so people are building agentic commerce tools with bitcoin at the heart of them.
- [50:46]
A
Yeah, and still I think this is a, this feels very big now, but if you like step outside, you ask anyone in the street like, hey, you know about openclaw, the are you talking about? And it feels very big, feels like the future, but it's still a very small, like fraction of everything that's happening in the world. Right. So I think this is, this is something that speaks to what I believe is the future of bitcoin adoption in general, which is it's going to be fragmented because all these people who are building agents, who are using AI, who, you know, spend thousands on Mac Minis, it's important that they know about bitcoin and they use bitcoin in those tasks. And then, you know, when that segment becomes even bigger, Bitcoin has a strong foothold in it. But still there's a bunch of people who have absolutely no clue about even what chatgpt. Well, maybe not, Jeff. Today I have like a billion users. But if you ask them like, what's, what's Claude? What's Claude Cowork, they have absolutely no idea. So these things seem bigger than they think because they occupy our timeline so much. But we still have so many stories to tell when it comes to bitcoin about other, other shit, you know, boring stuff like, hey, purchasing power, you know, that's a huge value prop. Number go up is a huge value prop. So we, we still got a. And, and now with all the institutions, all the, the, like, the financialization of bitcoin, that's a, that's another segment as well that is completely separate from the agentic, you know, economy world, which is completely separate from the cypherpunk thesis, which is completely separated from, you know, payments and infrastructure around that. So I think we just got to be on top of our game and find our niche. And then, you know, together as, you know, as a fractured, fragmented community, we'll bring adoption forward. But I think a lot of bitcoiners need to understand that future adoption will look like a bunch of people that you don't agree with are going to find tremendous value in bitcoin. And you just gotta, you gotta be cool with it, you know, you gotta, you got to accept it. And I feel like we're breaking away from it now. And there's still some bitcoiners like screaming and, and kicking because, you know, they're, they're. Their conviction, which is based on very specific things. They're seeing a lot of people Being convicted about bitcoin too, but for completely different, maybe even opposite things that they believe in. And there's some, yeah, there's some kicking and screaming with that. But I think that's a sign of. I think now bitcoin has now exited this monoculture, has exited the monoculture and is now being adopted in different places. And that's the fragmented adoption that we're going to see in the future. And we need to forget about mass adoption as one movement.
- [53:55]
B
Yeah, again, bitcoin is for anyone, not for everyone.
- [53:59]
A
Is.
- [53:59]
B
It's hard for people to grapple with because everybody's like, ah, we're losing our roots. It's like people have said if bitcoin is what we think it is, like everybody's going to want some. And you may not like the people getting into bitcoin, but as long as they're not preventing you from using Bitcoin in the way that you want to, I think that's, that's the biggest, the biggest thing to protect. Right. And that's the, that's the, the other thing. I'm curious to see how it plays out with all this institutional adoption and the ETFs blowing up. What is the subset of people that ultimately self custody and use Bitcoin in a true peer to peer fashion? I think the agent economy is actually a massive benefit towards that direction because you can't use ETF shares to pay for things in the agentic economy. People are going to have to figure out how to get access to actual UTXOs and put Bitcoin in a lightning channel or in an E cash mint to actually spend if they want to participate in this agentic economy using Bitcoin payments.
- [55:07]
A
Yeah, I think that's true. And again, I draw parallels to my music business background because you know, the institutions that, the big, the big incumbents of Universal Music and Sony BMG and stuff like that. Yeah, they were fighting. Well, first they were ignoring, then they were fighting and then they just became it in a way they became the streaming industry. Right. They finally understood that our model of, you know, having one distribution channel, which is like putting CDs on the stores, is broken fundamentally. And what the fuck do we do? Okay, we can't fight them. We have spent millions and so many, so many years becoming irrelevant in the process of fighting them that what do we. Okay, we got to, we got to embrace it somehow. And I feel like we're seeing that this is the first wave, this like institutional wave of these institutions knowing what's up and adopting Bitcoin in this fashion because they want to stay relevant and they want to offer, you know, a wrapped product the same way, you know, Spotify is offering wrapped MP3s in A, in a, in a platform. For you, it's not the real deal, you're not buying the music, but it's, it's a contract. And many similarities between that as well. Yeah.
- [56:40]
B
What's the number one thing that we could, we could learn from the positioning of the music industry and how well they do that for bitcoin?
- [56:50]
A
Well, I think when you're dealing with a technology that is highly disruptive, you can either think that the way that you made money for so many years is still valid, or you can try to be a little bit more pragmatic about it and adapt quickly. And adapting quickly is not for everyone. Bitcoin is not for everyone. So you just got to find those minds. Maybe it's a generational thing too, right. You get wrapped in like habits, some costs, which is very, very hard to get out of. But I do think that the most important thing about torrenting or the pirate base, that it still exists today, you don't have to go to Spotify necessarily. If you want to go to Amazon prime or Netflix or anything like that to, to watch a movie, you can do it, but you do it out of convenience because it's a trade off that you accept. But if you really want to like download the movie or download an album and carry it with you and listen to it whenever you want and don't have to pay anything for it, there's still that alternative. And depending on how big this institutionalization of bitcoin is going to be, and by the looks of it, if you take a look at like people who self custody like for real versus people who are just buying into the IBITS or any other ETF derivatives, it looks like there's a big, you know, there's, there's a, there's a, it's a, it's a big crossroads that we're going into right now. And a lot of people with a lot of capital are going into the direction of giving away custody. But the real people who do know that are also part of that. They do understand what self custody means and what it really not only because of protection or account being free starting then like that is actually related to the price action. How many, how many people actually self custody bitcoin the real way? These people do understand, but they are a minority and to be honest with you, I think they're always going to be a minority. I think a lot of people are just going to be part of bitcoin in this way. And I'm not mad. I think the important thing is that at least they can understand bitcoin from a very simple perspective of a fiat. Inflation is accelerating. We are in a turning. I need to preserve my purchasing power and I understand at least the monetary principles of Bitcoin for me to invest in something like IBIT to protect my purchasing power. Hey, at least a little chunk of the bitcoin philosophy landed. And I don't expect everyone to get everything about bitcoin at the same time. This is how adoption looks like. So if there's any. To answer your question, sorry for the rant, but if it's my. My one lesson from the music industry is that streaming became the norm and the pirate based torrenting became the French. Probably the French will be self custodial solutions still and custodial solutions will be bigger. But the important thing is that both can exist. The problem is when, you know, the forces, the powers that be, try to like change anything inside the protocol or some laws or jurisdictions are, you know, completely hostile against self custody. That's, that's, that's an issue. And I don't, I don't see that happening. And I think the institute institutionalization of bitcoin is partially the reason why bitcoin self custody is not outlawed. But it's a deep topic, man, because any law can be passed any day to give up years of custodial bitcoin anyway. So let's see. It's a pull and push game.
- [60:52]
B
Yeah, Self custody is the red line that we have to defend. And going back to the generational thing, the boomers have all the money and the zoomers are completely nihilistic. So that's been a area of focus on, on the show throughout the last year. Is like getting. Because you look, if I look at the demographics of people that listen and watch this show, it's older than me. Like the biggest cohorts, 35 to 45 and it's 45 to 55 and then it's. Then it's 25 to 35, but then jumps back up to like 65. And then if you go to 18 to 25, it's like literally 1% of our audience is in Generation Z. And it's just a question that nags at me. It's like, what are these younger folks consuming? What is their view on this? And from my observation, it seems very nihilistic. And they don't have much hope for their future, which is incredibly disheartening. But if we do have this, all the institutions are talking about this massive wealth transfer from the boomers to millennials and Gen Z is on the precipice. And as that's happening, how many people within the younger generations, millennials, Gen Z's and Gen Alpha, to a certain extent, can we successfully convince, like, hey, you need to adopt the money of the future in Bitcoin. And I think with Gen Z, I don't even want to say we're failing because it doesn't even seem like they're tapping into the show. At least there's other people that are doing other forms of content. I think like what Julian Figaro is doing with his, with his, with his videos is very, very good to, to reach that generation. But this, this style is, is not, is not the, the type of style that Gen Z is consuming.
- [62:49]
A
No. And I think that, you know, I have a little experimental YouTube channel that I started almost, yeah 30 days ago. It's been almost a full month. And I just do shorts. So I go on TikTok and I go on YouTube shorts and it's purely shorts, one minute clips. And I'm trying to kind of like, I don't talk about politics, I don't talk about money, but I, I do it in a, in a very indirect way. So I bring a lot of like philosophy and, and history to talk about, you know, politics and money to kind of like bring, bring more people into bitcoin and more conservative right wing politics. Right. But I don't want to be obvious about it because, you know, I want to do it in a slight roundabout way. And I was looking at my analytics and it's actually, you know, it's not blowing up, but it's, you know, 200 subscribers already. I've gotten 45,000 views in, you know, less than 28 days. So it's good. I was like, okay, this is bullish. And I look into the, the, the demographics of that is like 45 plus and my biggest is 65 plus. So I'm reaching like not the people that really needs to hear it, but you know, these are the people who have gone through some life experiences and you know, certain things click in their, in their head and they have, they have more, more life lived to, to understand deeper, deeper concepts. You know, and young people today, I think, you know, when you look at, it's, it's about only fans and poly market. It's like, dude, we're going right back 100 years to the 1910s and 20s where it was all about prostitution and gambling. So it's like we're just like fucking, yeah. Status quo 100 years after. Great. It's just.
- [64:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's disheartening. But we're gonna win. You gotta, you gotta be positive. And I think that's of course the, the most bullish thing within bitcoin is that there's individuals like yourself, like myself, like, I'm never giving this, like I'll, I'll keep showing up recording podcasts, writing newsletters, educating about people about bitcoin on X and YouTube day in and day out. And that's, that's one thing I've realize is that it's not going to be an overnight success.
- [64:58]
A
No.
- [64:59]
B
And I think just consistency and showing up and telling a consistent message for many years, I think that's what converts people the most is they were like, oh, I did fall for the siren calls, shitcoins and go down this path. And you've been pretty steadfast about being consistent with your message and it turns out that that was right. And I think it's sort of like a yeoman's journey to, to just show up and make sure that the information's getting there and it is consistent and clear.
- [65:28]
A
100. And consistency, repetition, that. That's like basic pillars of propaganda, you know, so you gotta, you gotta go all Joseph Goebbels on this and just propagandize the out of this in order for us to win. Because we're dealing with. I know my wife and I, we were discussing this the early. Earlier today. Like the devil is in disguise. It's everywhere. So you got to deal with so much noise and pollution everywhere. And I mean, there's a clean break, of course, just not use the Internet, not, not go online to, to get, to get informed. But that's just. We're way past that point. Right. We're like where we are an online society because of the simple fact that we have niched so hard in our interests that is getting harder and harder to just step outside your house, knock on the neighbor's door and find like things to talk about. Because, you know, I don't know, can I talk to bitcoin with anyone else around here? No, I gotta log in to zoom to do a podcast with you and just to hook up, you know, just to meet my friends online because I'm traveling so much. So we, we have to use the Internet to, to get this information. It is out there. But you got to show up consistently with the same message to catch people over time because there's multiple touch points from when you first hear about a certain thing until you actually believe in might be years, especially when it comes to bitcoin. So we just gotta not give up. And I guess you and I, we will come to the point where it's like too late for us to pivot to anything else anyways. It was like this is it.
- [67:16]
B
If this doesn't work, I'm. I don't know what I'm going to get into. I'm going to become a farmer.
- [67:22]
A
Yeah, same like something offline. Definitely. It's the other side of this, I think and I think bitcoin is a big enough. It's a historical thing. It's something that has already shaken society, but it will definitely leave a dent in humanity. Being a part of it is a privilege. What else can we do?
- [67:46]
B
Yeah, it is an incredible privilege. It's a privilege and an honor to be on this journey with you, sir. And we have to do this more often. It's been took me too long to get you on the show.
- [67:58]
A
Door is always open. Thank you so much for, for the opportunity and to kick it with you. It's. I knew this was going to be good. So yeah, didn't disappoint.
- [68:07]
B
Yeah. And we've got a go check out perception too. If you're out there. I got to talk with you outline offline because I think we can implement this at tftc. Let's go in a way.
- [68:19]
C
But yeah, where, where can people find
- [68:21]
B
out more about Perception about you, what you're doing.
- [68:26]
A
Easiest thing is just to Google my name, Fernando Nikolic. And the easiest thing to do on search is to Google Bitcoin Perception. You'll find. You'll find the website at the top of the search results and then from there you can read, you can get a little bit more acquainted with what the data is about. And then you can obviously plug Perception directly into your favorite AI tool directly from the website through the MCP and then you can start querying and you can find out how the data is. And there's a really cool prompt library in the Perception website as well that you can just use. Just copy paste those prompts and put it into cloud and see what comes out and you're going to be amazed. It's nothing, nothing like it out there. So yeah, please give it a. Please give it a try. And then on, on Twitter, on X, I'm. I'm based layer. So Follow me there.
- [69:17]
B
Great, great handle there. Base layer, Mr. Base Layer. Hope you have a great afternoon and we'll do this again.
- [69:25]
A
Likewise, man. Thank you so much sir.
- [69:27]
C
Peace.
- [69:27]
B
Love Freaks.
- [69:29]
C
Thank you for listening to this episode of tftc. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can, leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to Fountain FM to find that $5 a month get you every episode a day early ad free helps. The show gives you incredible value, so please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time.
- [70:20]
A
Okay.