← THE Bitcoin Podcast
THE Bitcoin Podcast
BITCOIN ADOPTION, SELF-CUSTODY, ECASH & FIGHTING STATE CONTROL | Evan Kaloudis of Zeus
01:40:06
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- [00:00]
Evan
I think if we just, if bitcoin stays where it's at with the small community it has and it's just used as it is now, store value, ETFs, shiny rock under the bed, gold 2.0 like, I'll consider it a colossal failure. So we need to build out these circular economies and make sure bitcoin gets used for commerce everywhere really. Bitcoin needs everyone. Bitcoin needs you. And its success is not inevitable. And the more that individuals act, we act collectively and pushing this technology, then the higher chance it is to succeed and the harder it is for the state to snuff it out. We still have a long way to go. A lot of our friends are still being prosecuted. The Tornado cash guys are still in court. The Samurai wallet devs are still in court. Not all states or countries have the same assurances about self custody or mining or these L2 services that we're running. And now like I said, like these things could change at the drop of a hat. Maybe even this administration changes their tune. If you look at the geopolitical climate, a lot of that stuff could be used as an excuse to crack down on us. So you know, my message to all the builders out there, to the people pushing the software is like, when we're given an inch, let's take a mile, let's keep pressing forward. While we have the Runway, let's use it. I personally think that we're going to win a lot of battles over the next few 4 years Duration of this admin, right? We're gonna still lose some, but we certainly have more Runway and leeway than we previously did. So let's build, let's build, let's build, let's ship. Let's keep pushing stuff in the right direction.
- [01:43]
Walker
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin continues to create new blocks every 10 minutes and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. If you are listening to this right now, remember you are still early. Find me on noster@primal.net Walker and this podcast@primal.net Titcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at Tcoin Podcast, head to the show notes for sponsor links. Head to substack.comwalkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you and head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk.
- [02:40]
Unnamed Speaker
I don't think I've ever made it through an entire Lex Friedman podcast.
- [02:45]
Evan
I don't. I don't get the appeal either. Like, I'm. I'm really not a huge fan.
- [02:50]
Unnamed Speaker
You know, it's like, respect to him for what he's built, like, that's super cool. It's just like that style of, like.
- [02:57]
Walker
All right, let me ask you about.
- [03:00]
Unnamed Speaker
Your mother and how that relates to geopolitics. It's just like, I don't know, man. Like, and this is. This is coming from somebody who, like, occasionally is, like, told they have, like, a weird voice. It's like something about the voice, the vibe is like. It just. You can't listen to it for that long.
- [03:16]
Evan
Yeah, I don't know what it is. I mean, you know, it's not like that we don't have, like, equally boring podcast in bitcoin. We got. I got it on Bitcoin review with Roo. You know, he really goes into the weed. So technical. But, like, that's really the. The show you put on as you're trying to get, you know, your 40 hours per week, you know, you got to be listening at all times. You put that on just in time for bedtime, you know, dude, every.
- [03:40]
Unnamed Speaker
Everybody always says that that show is like, you know, whatever. Like, you know, very boring. Like, we'll put you to bed. I. I don't know. Maybe it's just because even though I'm not super technical, I am somewhat of a nerd. I always enjoy that show. I would have difficulty falling asleep to it. I like nvk, too. He brings a great energy to it.
- [04:02]
Evan
Yeah. Yeah. It's like tongue in cheek. Self aware enough he's got a good read on things, but also willing to say, oh, I don't know, xyz. Anyone know more about this?
- [04:14]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, exactly.
- [04:18]
Evan
Doing that again soon at some point. But yeah, man, I'm just excited. Wherever you want to take the conversation, basically willing to take it. We can talk about Cashew and Zeus. We can talk about some of the new stuff we're doing with Zeus pay. We're starting to do, you know, digital checkout for goods and expanding our point of sale. Talk about, you know, what we're doing to onboard a lot of merchants. We got a lot of. A lot of companies queued up right now that we're going to be onboarding very soon, so hoping to get, you know, just.
- [04:59]
Unnamed Speaker
Little bit of momentum.
- [05:01]
Evan
Series of announcements going, but nothing I could say yet, unfortunately.
- [05:05]
Unnamed Speaker
Oh, you're going to tease me like that. Well, I mean, Evan, you. You guys have had quite a. I feel like Zeus has been on quite an interesting journey. Cause I was, I was thinking about this. Cause like, I've had Zeus downloaded for a while and I, I was going back and am I remembering correctly, you guys were initially just a way to connect to your node remotely, Right? Like that was the original. Like, yeah, that was.
- [05:29]
Evan
That's still most of our lifetime. So, yeah, let's say we started back in like 2019, the fall, I think, and we're coming up like six and a half years now.
- [05:39]
Walker
Damn.
- [05:39]
Evan
And we started just like a remote controller. So it started okay. You know, L and D was the powerhouse implementation, right? Still. Still is. But you know, some of the other ones are catching up. It's getting interesting. So we start with L and D. We added Core Lightning. Then we added like lnd Hub. Then we added all these other like alternate connection types. So now you could do like Noster Wallet connect. And then of course, the last two years, we put the wallet in the phone, the note in the phone, we call it.
- [06:13]
Unnamed Speaker
Right, that's great for memes also.
- [06:17]
Evan
Yeah, we just really went crazy with that meme cycle. Just shooting the shit with Matt on Citadel Dispatch. Have a really long history with that show. And yeah, just people just clung onto it and had a lot of great memeability. But yeah, still, like, you know, we still have a long ways to go. The note in the phone was like a great way to lower the barrier to entry into this whole thing. But, you know, it doesn't really stop there. Like with Cashew, we've made it even easier. Really addresses, you know, that economic barrier you have. So, you know, self custody in itself has really high cost, you know, in terms of the transaction fees, in terms of responsibility for someone who wants to just start accepting payments. Especially in, you know, the little economies we're building up with stuff like Noster. And you can get one sat zaps, you know, that's not really conducive to being like, okay, I got to put, you know, 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 sats for a lightning channel. And I don't want to do that. Like, how are you going to convince someone to take this plunge into Bitcoin and set up a self custodial channel when it has this cost? Unless, you know, whoever's onboarding them is willing to bear it. So now with Cashew, of course you have trade offs, it's custodial, you don't have access to the, you know, the Underlying asset. But you get to, you know, skip this cost. You get a lightning address that you could take with you as you upgrade down the road. You can take that lightning address, put into Noster, start getting your first zapped, have your first aha moment with Lightning and be like, oh, this is permissionless. I could do these instant transfers. It's very cheap. I can get paid for my content. I think that's super powerful. And then we, as the wallet, we can sort of give the user guidance. You know, it's one thing to like, wrap your head around starting to use a new currency. You don't really necessarily need to be inundated with like, okay, receiving capacity, sending capacity. What the hell is a channel? It's sort of nice that you could push that back now and say, okay, get started, do it this way. Maybe you should copy your seed down, right? But other than that, it's pretty seamless, easy. You don't have to worry about that stuff. But then as you're carrying a larger balance as it makes sense for you to do so economically when economic self custody is feasible, which is a whole other can of worms, we'd get into that if you ever want, with the new L2s coming up. But yeah, when it's time, like, we'll give you that educational material. It's like, oh, this is what self custody is. This is what you have right now. You have now. Cashew has really great privacy properties, but it's still sort of like a bank account. You don't really have control of your funds, but if you press this button, you can hop over and for a fee, get a channel, go to self custody, become sovereign and really control your, you know, financial destiny. You have full control of your money in a way that most people really have never had before, in a way that's, you know, even greater than holding calf. So, yeah, it's interesting. It's, it's, it's been really well received the last couple weeks. Like, what is it, three weeks since we launched it onto the app stores and then we did like about, you know, two months before that of beta. And you know, people are just loving it and, you know, you sort of, it's not sort of just like one or the other. Like you can upgrade to self custody and still reap the benefits of Cashew and have like a super easy to use lightning address. You can then have the wallet automatically sweep your Cashew balance to self custody when it makes sense at whatever threshold you want to incur the fees at, which is huge.
- [10:33]
Unnamed Speaker
Like Having that auto sweep capability, I think.
- [10:36]
Evan
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's not that I can't spin up a node and just have that on all the time, but I just like the convenience of having it like that too. Like I'm using the catch you auto sweep functionality myself on my zaps right now. And yeah, it's, it's, it's just fantastic. I think it's like a very happy medium and you know, it's, it's like I think we're, this is also really uniquely positioned here. Like how many other wallets are really going to tell you, oh, time to get into self custody. You know, like it's only when you get into those jams on these other platforms where they restrict access to your region, your account gets flagged. You know, basically when you get rugged that you know, you've learned the importance of holding your own keys and having control of the asset of being self custodial in Bitcoin. And you know, Zeus is uniquely positioned because we have this, you know, incentive to move you on to self custody. Right. You know, we're not running any of the mints, we're just letting third parties run that. The user selects their own mints. But we have the lightning service provider and we connect people with those self custodial lightning channels. So we sort of have this incentive to educate the users, prod them. You know, maybe there are cases in which like there's regulatory concerns that some of these wallets might have be like, oh, we're going to, we want to wind down the custodial part, we'll push you out the door. But like financially most of these other services are collecting fees like for each transaction that goes through their node. They probably want to keep you in there as long as possible. Zeus has the complete opposite outlook. Our incentives are, you know, push yourself custody, have you pay for the channels on lsp or even if you don't go that route, you still have the freedom to, you know, open up your own channels and go self custodial however form you want. If you want to be hands on and get all that crazy granular control we give you. Or you know, you could even just swap out like you don't have to be using self custodial lightning necessarily. Even though it's my preferred way to go. You might just want to be someone who's like, okay, I'm going to build up this cashew balance. I'm willing to incur a little more risk. I'll go up to 100,000 sats. And then I'll just swap out and I'll go to on chain on my hardware wallet or whatever. And that's an option too. And really the thing with Zeus that we're rooted in self custody, that's how we started the app being that cypherpunk connect to your node remotely. But we also realize that people are going to use Bitcoin a whole lot of different ways. And if we're going to get angry or moralized or look down about people, that's not the right way to go. I think it's better to sort of meet people where they're at and then give them the resources, the education so they can make their informed decisions. And then you sort of have this crazy user experience where you're like, zoos can be the place where you start your bitcoin journey of not knowing anything. And then you level up as you go. You can go to the node in the phone, you could become a remote node runner. It's sort of like an all in one experience now. And we're sort of like your Bitcoin Sherpa guiding you as you go along. And I think that's super unique.
- [14:18]
Unnamed Speaker
I like the Sherpa analogy there. And I think it's really important. What you said about meeting people where they are, it's like you need to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be, not where you ideally believe they should be, not where you think that they must be. Or they're completely larps, because most people don't actually care about that and that doesn't actually help adoption. But if you can meet them where they are right now, addressing the needs that they have at the moment, then they're gonna actually use your product. And then they, like all of us did. Maybe there are some people who heard about Bitcoin and immediately went all the way down that rabbit hole wherever it ends. I was not one of them. I think for most people it's a journey, right? It's a journey down that rabbit hole. It's a journey of going deeper and deeper on, understanding more, being comfortable with more. Like I remember setting up my first, first time I set up a, a node and, and a lightning node. I did the whole raspy blitz thing. Had no idea what I was doing, you know, was going around on various forums figuring stuff out like, you know, but got like, got it to work and like that was really fun and it taught me a lot about it. Most people aren't going to, most people aren't going to do that though.
- [15:27]
Evan
Yeah.
- [15:27]
Unnamed Speaker
Of course, a lot of people still may have a desire to have something in the middle that still gives them some of the same benefits of, of having something that they're running themselves, but without a lot of those setup hurdles, let's say. And actually, I want to, I want to kind of dive in a little bit to the, the E. Cash part of this because correct me if I'm wrong, you were not always the biggest ecash fan.
- [15:49]
Evan
Correct. I'm still not. I. Well, okay, yes and no. Right.
- [15:53]
Unnamed Speaker
So talk to me about that. What, what changed your mind where you brought this into Zeus?
- [15:58]
Evan
Well, I think it's multiple things, right. Like, you know, I've had such a funny history with it and you know, I've always like, worn my heart on my sleeve. But, you know, I'll also be the first to admit that, you know, my opinions have changed over the years. I don't think it's so crazy to get new info and evolve and grow. Right. But yeah, I'll be the first to admit, like I'm. I'm the told collie to his face. I think he cashes bullshit, you know, and had like giant tirades against it. But at the same time, I can still see the immense value in it. I think it's in the online age. Like it's very easy to try to put things in a box and paint things as black or white, but you know, reality is not like that at all. There's so much nuance and layers to it. Obviously, if the whole world is just using Cashew mints, that wouldn't be the ideal world. Right. Ideally we'd get to a point where people can use Bitcoin self custodially and hold their own keys and they can't get rugged. Right. At the same time, if the whole world was using Bitcoin E. Cash, that would still be pretty sweet compared to where we are now. Be a much better alternative to the fiat bank system as it exists today and would be way, way, way, way better than the dystopian potential futures we have with these CBDs or CBDC.
- [17:39]
Unnamed Speaker
Sorry.
- [17:41]
Evan
Yeah, yeah. CBD is not too dystopian.
- [17:45]
Unnamed Speaker
No, I just to jump in there for anybody who is like perhaps still confused about, about Cashew and maybe we can go into some of the high level. But like, there's a bunch of other things I want to get into with you here today. I did do a full like 90 plus minute deep dive with Kali on Ecash. So if you guys, for anyone that is like still confused about that and like wants to go back and kind of dig into that really deeply and figure out exactly what's going on there. Check it out. Also, what you'll hear that Callie himself says is, look, this is like, you can get rugged. This is not rug free. This is not a risk free thing.
- [18:20]
Evan
Right, right.
- [18:20]
Unnamed Speaker
But again, it's like it's serving a purpose. It's not supposed to be layer one Bitcoin or to compete with layer one Bitcoin, but it's building a really great tool that leverages bitcoin as money, but doesn't have all of the benefits of layer 1 bitcoin because of course there's trade offs as you go down in layers, right?
- [18:40]
Evan
Absolutely everywhere. There's no perfect solutions in engineering at all. You know, just have trade offs and you sort of just got to figure out what tool best suits the job. And instead of moralizing about saying, oh, everyone should be using a hammer, you know, you should figure out what everyone's trying to do and where they're at. And we could say, hey, the hammer is really great. You might want to use this for, for hidden nails, putting some wood together. You got to understand that, you know, maybe people aren't ready for it right away not to just like give up and say, oh, this person's never going to use a hammer. It's like just not now. You know, just slow your time horizon and give people time to gestate and give them resources and give them encouragement and try to explain why these tools are important and why they should consider going down this path. And I think, you know, it just so much easier to go online and say, hey, you're an idiot. You're not using Bitcoin like me. You're not holding your own keys, you're not self custodying yet. Yeah, probably some of those labels are okay to throw at someone when they're putting, you know, serious amounts of their wealth relative to their net worth into these systems. But you know, people are going to do stupid things anyway. The best you can do is educate them, show them away. You know, it's like you attract more flies with honey sort of thing. And I think if we just, if bitcoin stays where it's at with the small community it has and it's just used as it is now, you know, store value ETFs, rock under the bed, shiny rock under the bed, Gold 2.0, like, I'll consider it a colossal failure. So we need to build out these circular economies and make sure bitcoin gets used for commerce everywhere. And if you expect people to just go in full throttle, you know, run your own lightning node, do it all privately, self hosted, self custodial, spit out, coin joins, go to cold storage on day one, then you're deluded. But at the same time, this technology and or at least the base knowledge of the cursory knowledge of it is becoming ubiquitous. It's everywhere. And the average person on the street sees that it's not going away. They're seeing that these articles that have been written about bitcoin dying or just being for drug money or scams, they're seeing that that's all fake and that there's something to this, it has staying power. More people are adopting it. As we see in just the last couple of months, Steak and Shake, it's big chains out of 400 branches. Plus when you hear stories that Square is finally gearing up to turn on by default on their what, their 4 million terminals. And I think that's going to include web checkouts too. And then just like anecdotally from what we're seeing in terms of usage from both the consumer level, like the app level, but also businesses calling us up and asking like, hey, how do I do this? Like, I saw Steak n Shake doing this and I see you guys are doing something similar, or I saw, you know, ASUS user panic tooth terminals, can you help us set up? Or I saw payments at PubKey and I saw you guys were running the payments for them. We're having a lot of really interesting conversations right now and I'm hoping, you know, we can make some, some more announcements in the coming weeks and months about some of the people we're onboarding right now. Obviously there's a lot of work to do and you know, things are still very nascent and we have a long way to go both as a company at Zeus, Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, the whole thing growing. But it feels like we're making some real strides right now and it's really exciting. It's a great time to be involved and feels nice to help push the needle a little bit.
- [23:03]
Walker
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- [23:17]
Unnamed Speaker
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- [23:21]
Walker
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- [24:40]
Unnamed Speaker
Your first time setting up a hardware.
- [24:41]
Walker
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- [25:02]
Unnamed Speaker
No doubt. And I'm curious too. I mean do you think because I've seen this debated and it's something that I debate about with myself occasionally. But I mean, do you think Bitcoin is at this point mainstream in terms of at least that people know about it? Because I've seen back and forth on this. If you see some of Joe Nakamoto who shout out to Joe, he does incredible work. If you see some of his videos where he does man in the street type stuff and goes up and just talks to random people, it's like there's still so many people who literally he says bitcoin to them and they're like what is that? I've literally never heard that word before in my life. And I'm like how have you never heard that word? But you realize from an adoption standpoint we're objectively still early in terms of we're at probably Less a fraction of a percent of the world that actually owns bitcoin in some way. Maybe with the ETFs, that's changed a little bit. But it's still a pretty small amount of people who at least know they have exposure to bitcoin. Maybe there's others that have exposure that don't know about it yet. I don't know.
- [26:07]
Evan
But like change too with like stuff.
- [26:11]
Unnamed Speaker
But where do you think we're at in that though? Like, because to me it still feels very early and I think it's great that these tools are being, that these tools are being built so that when people do decide to actually pay attention to bitcoin, they have more options available to them than just, okay, I'm going to go buy the bitcoin, a Bitcoin etf, which is. You want to do that? Fine.
- [26:31]
Evan
Like, but yeah, it's, it's like, it's such in such an interesting spot right now, right? Because I feel like at least anecdotally like my experience, like you'll say the word bitcoin to the average person, they'll at least have like heard of it. They're like, oh, it's some Internet money, digital money. What they think of it, you know, has probably range wildly. Most people have like talk about like risk aversion. Oh, I heard from, you know, financial person, I shouldn't invest in it or I shouldn't invest more than I'm willing to lose in it like that. That's probably the general sentiment. So it's like, where are we in this adoption curve? And you can't really draw too many parallels to other technologies. I think like looking back, like email would probably be an interesting one. Like we're in the phase where people have all maybe heard of it because of articles written in, you know, the news magazines and whatnot. It's like, oh, the mail is in the computer, but people haven't done it yet. They haven't gotten their, they haven't gotten Internet in their home yet. You know, like that's sort of where we're at. I think there might also be a lot of interesting parallels to like file sharing. You know, some people are there, they might be using Napster, but it's really just the more hardcore people that have been exposed to it. But you know, we still really haven't had our like Spotify moment or Apple itunes moment yet. Not really. I mean there are some big players in right now, but adoption like usage really isn't that widespread yet. And I think like the reason you can't really like draw parallels to either of these technologies, one to one is that when money is involved, stakes are higher and people are going to be more risk averse. Right. It's much less risky to send an email, for example. There's like no, almost no risk there. With file sharing it's a little risk. Maybe you're worried about getting caught by, you know, the cops, getting a letter from your ISP or whatever, getting sued like, like what Metallica did. But with money. I think most people jump in and they'll be like, oh no, I can't afford this. I can't take this risk. I don't have the budget for it. I'm just trying to make ends meet. And people don't realize that they can receive less than a cent of bitcoin on the Lightning network or with the cashew token and that you don't have to just dive in with your whole life savings like a lot of us have. So yeah, it's, it's interesting, but yeah, it's really going to take more time. And, and the other interesting parallels that it's like completely unique. It's not like when email was out that all these email like things and scams were like forcing people out. You know, it's actually such a good point. Like, oh, I got malware from Kaza or whatever. Like no, like there's so much damn noise with crypto and these scams and FTX and every cycle and it's going to just keep repeating and repeating and repeating. And you know that that distinction is really tough to make and takes time and education and all these other efforts and, and really it takes people like actually trying and getting a better grasp of the technology themselves and like, at least understanding like, you know, the properties of it. Like, obviously the average person doesn't know how email works and how it gets from one inbox to another. Similarly, they're not going to know how bitcoin works or how it goes from the blockchain all the way up to Makashiman or something like that. But at the same time people are still going to use it. People are using it today. And yeah, it's just going to be a long haul. We got to be in it for the long haul. Understand that things are changing in this industry incredibly rapidly, even though adoption takes a really long time. And it's sort of funny at how it's at odds with how things sort of work in the fiat economy with VC money and all these hype cycles and trying to take people's attention away. It's, it's really at odds with each other. And really the people who are gonna succeed are gonna be the ones who can, you know, stay alive and be in it for the long haul and also be adaptable. You know, sort of meet people where they're at and actually listen to what people need and expect and what their problems are and not just say, oh yeah, the problem is central banking. The problem is your wells being dug away. The problem is you're in a hamster wheel and you're barely making ends meet and you're living paycheck to paycheck. And yeah, of course that's really the problem for most people, but it's also like a bitter pill to swallow and it could be overwhelming and people might not be looking at their lives at that level and probably have a lot of distractions going on. You know, it's really just, it's really a big uphill battle in a lot of ways trying to orange pill someone. And I know many of the bitcoin, most of the bitcoiners I've talked to and hang out with, like, they've given up on that. Like, I feel like everyone goes through this period when they first learn about it. They're like, oh my God, this technology is amazing. It's empowering. It can break me out of my nine to five shackles, my debt shackles, societal expectations, my, the fruits of my labor not being stolen from me in this indirect taxation. And you know, as you extrapolate, you're like, oh, this could potentially have geopolitical impacts. This could change the whole fucking world. And you want to go tell everyone. You get so excited, you're like, have you heard about bitcoin yet? And you just become that annoying guy. And everyone's like, shut the up, dude. Every conversation you try to inject this and you know, most people don't care. They're like, did you watch the game last night?
- [33:42]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, catch that game last night, bro.
- [33:44]
Walker
Yeah.
- [33:45]
Evan
And, and you know, it's like nothing, nothing against sports, I love sports. But you know, people are, have all these distractions that they're more worried about. And then it's sort of like a double edged sword too. Like, okay, like let's say you get someone in at the top of cycle and they're like, evan, that son of a bitch recommended bitcoin to me and now it's down 30%. And what you're going to say like, oh, you got to lower your time preference. You just got to wait, just hold it for two years, you're going to be back up. Two years. Two years is a millennia for these people. The other side of the coin is, oh, shit, look. Evan invested in bitcoin so early. That's a lucky son of a bitch. And just, you know, they're jealous they might not say it directly. And, you know, in that regard, people become averse to, like, trying to orange pill people. They have all these bad experiences. And I think as a result, people just have sort of resigned and been like, okay, you know what? I'm not really gonna be too vocal about it, but instead we'll let people come to them. Which is probably a better way to go about it.
- [35:04]
Unnamed Speaker
Dude, you've literally just described my entire journey, like, exactly, though. Like, literally so gung ho at first hearing about it. And you're right, because it's like, you're so excited about it and things are clicking for you, and so you're like.
- [35:16]
Walker
I need to share this with the.
- [35:18]
Unnamed Speaker
People I care about. I need to share it with my family. I need to share it with my friends. I need to share it with the. The lady cutting my hair. And, like, you know, like, you know, I need to share it with everyone. And then, like, part of it is like, maybe you get. You get, like, rejected enough times or like you said, okay, you tell somebody to get in at the. At the current top, you know, which is not going to be the top. It's going to be somewhere in the middle, like, four years from there. But, like, right. You know, if somebody got in right at the top, you look like a, you know, a jackass to them. Like, and you're like, oh, shit, okay. And then eventually you're just kind of like, okay, you know, yeah, come my way. Like, you know, you want to do your best to get your family and your, like, closest friends on board. And like, what I've realized, it's like a good way of doing this is like, look, you know, I care about you. Hopefully you think that. You don't think that I'm like, a lunatic. I'm literally telling you this because I love you and I want you to be able to experience this. You can turn it down if you want, but, like, you can't say that to, like, a random person or, like a not such a close friend, because if you start telling everybody, like, you love them, it just gets a little weird. So, like, there's. There's a. There's a limit to how much that works, to how big that circle can spread. But.
- [36:26]
Walker
But.
- [36:27]
Unnamed Speaker
But it's tough and. Well, and this is why I love, like, what you're building, though, because it's like, yeah, not every like you. Everybody may try to orange pill their friends, and that spreads slowly. But, like, ultimately, people come when they're ready. Like, right? Like, we get bitcoin at the price we deserve, we start understanding it at the price we deserve. And once you do start understanding it, it's pretty amazing when there's great tools that already exist where you can go, oh, wow, this is easy. This doesn't feel as scary as I thought it was. When my friend Walker was ranting about magic Internet money. He made it sound way too complicated. That ass. But you need those tools in place because people are coming. It's not a question of if. It's just a question of when it's happening.
- [37:14]
Evan
It's crazy.
- [37:15]
Unnamed Speaker
It's happening. It's happening. I'm curious.
- [37:18]
Evan
Even the boomers, man. Even the boomers are coming.
- [37:19]
Unnamed Speaker
I'm telling you, I dunk on boomers a lot, but I hope the boomers that I know listen to the show. And my friends, dear friends who are boomers, know that. I'm not talking about them specifically. I'm talking broadly. Like, when boomers say. And again, broadly, boomers say, like, well, you millennials, if you just didn't eat your avocado toast and pick yourself up by your bootstraps, maybe you too could buy a house for four raspberries, like I did in 1971. And, you know, so shout out to shout out to the boomers. I love you. Even though you are the butt of some jokes, you know who you are, and I appreciate you.
- [37:51]
Evan
Yeah, they don't just. They just don't know how good they had it. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe we have our cheap avocado toast relative to you guys, but you guys had all the assets that anyone wants. So much cheaper housing, you know, just cost of living in general. That's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. But, you know, I. I think boomers are at least seeing that this thing has staying power. It's been around a long time. We can't ban it. You can't stop it. It's not a scam. People are improving their lives over it. They are integrating it into their businesses. And, you know, I feel like they've seen it time and time again in their lives. It's like, at some point, you need to get a website for your business, right? You need to get on social media and use that to grow your business and reach out to More customers. And eventually it's going to become, you gotta accept bitcoin at your business. You should really have a bitcoin treasury too. And that's sort of a funny distinction that we're having with some of the boomers that we're talking about and onboarding. They're like, oh yeah, you know, I see the volatility. You know, Evan, you sent me, he has sent me a thousand stats. You know, it was a little bit over a dollar. Now it's a little bit under a dollar. What's going on? I want to get rid of this as soon as possible. And it's like, okay, okay, okay. You know, they don't have to dive in all the way, but really, you know, you got to plant those seeds. Like, you should probably think about holding this. It's like this probably won't be a huge amount of your sales right out the gate. Maybe you should just hold that part if you can. Right? And you know, obviously it's your money. You're free to do whatever you want. We'll even help you convert it. But it might make sense to hold onto it maybe. So, you know, like I said, people are in different stages of their journeys. They make these realizations at different points. They're going to use it differently. Everyone's life situation is different. Every business has different requirements and needs and clientele and costs and xyz and you know, we're seeing them like just cult like behavior by so many people that it's like sub sections of our community where it's like, everyone's got to do this. Everyone's got to use it the same way. Everyone's got to be self custodial. Or everyone should just use, you know, this custody app. It's so easy. Or everyone should run core. Everyone should run Nods. It's like, no, dude, do what makes sense for you. And here's some reasons why X, Y or Z might make sense to you. I don't know, it's just a little, it's just so easy to just get into your corner and be like, okay, these are my people, right? This is how I do. This is who I'm going to defer to for my thinking. You know, if, if some, if this person likes this, then it can't be good. It's like, it's like, where's the critical thinking of some people? It's, it's pretty scary. And you know, you know, I feel like this is also like another side effect of the Internet age. It's like people think that they can't have disagreements with people that they're friends with or, or they love. It's like, I'm not gonna. I can hang out with them because they're. They're lib or they're a magatard or whatever. It's like sort of a sad way to live your life, you know? And, and, you know, same thing with bitcoin. It's like, okay, like, you're into bitcoin, you like bitcoin, you. That's great. That doesn't mean that, you know, we're best friends or that we're simpaticos. It's like, it's also just a tool, you know, it's like, oh, dude, you use email too. Oh, man, we're bros. You got a Twitter account. That's sweet, dude.
- [42:07]
Unnamed Speaker
So, hey, that said, being a bitcoiner, at least at this stage we're at now, I've found, can be a good filter for finding some good people. Now, there's still plenty of shitty. Plenty of shitty people who have bitcoin. There's shitty people everywhere. But like, at least at the earliness early or this stage of ear we're at now, it. It can be a cool filter for, for finding people that are at least roughly, ideologically aligned. Usually roughly.
- [42:37]
Evan
Right. Most. Most people that got here got here for a reason. Yeah, but, you know, there are outliers, so. But no, you're right, you're right. The. Where we are in the adoption curve, it is a really good filter. And most of the people that we have come out to the meetups that we do out here, you know, generally really great people. I'm sure there's like a spook or two in the middle.
- [43:02]
Unnamed Speaker
I think there's always a spook or two. Like, it would be crazy if there were. I mean, the CIA invented Bitcoin after all. So, you know, of course there's gotta be a sp. Spook or two there. They got to check on how their little, Their little project's doing, right?
- [43:14]
Evan
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, who knows, really? I don't try to know, but, you know, if you look at, you know, deception of the Internet, all these other, you know, pieces of encryption, even. Even apps like Signal, how they've been funded, you know, it's ubiquitous. It's just how society has really organized itself and state has really grown to such a crazy level, especially in the last hundred years, let's say. Yeah, it just makes sense that. And just thinking about the stakes, of course these people are going to be embedded everywhere. And yeah, it sort of makes operating as a bitcoiner a little tricky, a little dicey.
- [44:07]
Unnamed Speaker
I wanted to ask you about this because, okay, obviously the last administration in the US was exponentially less friendly and was trying to make life hell and has been prosecuting, or was prosecuting various open source developers. Where are you at right now with your level of comfortability, running a bitcoin business and building awesome freedom tech for people? Like are, I mean are. Are you always just one administration away from like, okay, I gotta like shut this down and go somewhere else or like how do you think about. Because like it can change. It can change every four years, drop.
- [44:50]
Evan
Of a dime, you know. Yeah, like if the state doesn't like what you're doing, they could basically stop you. Like the state by itself can always crush any single individual. But if the actions are taken on by a group and it's a distributed thing, it's multiple efforts, it becomes cultural and it's not just, you know, one small group or one individual, then, you know, then things become inevitable and they become unstoppable. And I think, you know, we just got to keep leaning into that and, and you know, not to be like an uber collectivist. I mean that's already been an interesting talk theme in our talk so far. But you know, really, bitcoin needs everyone. Bitcoin needs you. And it success is not inevitable. And the more that individuals act, we act collectively in pushing this technology, then the higher chance it is to succeed and the harder it is for the state to snuff it out. So where's my comfort level right now? Buildings, technology, it's not 100% right now. It's way better than it was the last couple years. That being said, we still have a long way to go. A lot of our friends are still being prosecuted, right? The tornado cash guys are still in court. The samurai wallet devs are still in court. Not all states or countries have the same assurances about self custody or mining or you know, these L2 services that we're running. And you know, like I said, like these things could change at the drop of a hat. Maybe even this administration changes their tune. And you know, if you look at the geopolitical climate, a lot of that stuff could be used as an excuse to crack down on us. So you know, my message to all the builders out there, to the people pushing the software is like, you know, when we're given an inch, let's take a mile, let's keep pressing forward while we have the Runway, let's use it I personally think that we're going to win a lot of battles over the next four years, duration of this admin. Right. We're going to still lose some, but we certainly have more Runway and leeway than we previously did. So let's build, let's build, let's build, let's ship, let's keep pushing stuff in the right direction. And we need to get this tech to a point where it's proliferated so much that it's not socially acceptable to put the clamps down on the technology, the users, the developers. So still a lot of fighting to do. We should expect things to get worse before they get better. But we can also tell ourselves and accept like things are definitely better than where they were like you know, two years ago and when samurai was just getting arrested and while the satoshi and Phoenix while leaving the United States. Like, I'm not gonna lie to you, that was scary, really scary. And to think that that's the worst of it. I mean, hopefully it is. And obviously, you know, geopolitically, like the whole world is different. Different countries are going to do crackdown more. Other some countries have more to lose than others. But yeah, we just gotta be resilient and know that that's likely not the worst of it. We have a lot of bigger battles ahead of us to fight. I mean, what happens if hyperinflation really hits some of these western countries? We're definitely prime scapegoats. But again, it's about education. It's like, no, you guys are the assholes who put us 30, 40, $50 trillion in debt. It wasn't us who wanted to recklessly spend. It wasn't us who wanted to give money to foreign countries when we have veterans starving at home. And you know, at some point the existing system is going to topple in on itself and there's going to be, there's going to have to be a new restructuring. I think again, it's like not going to happen this year, next year, probably not even during this administration. I think in the next 20 years though, there's going to be some radical things that happen. Currency is getting repegged. I'm not necessarily set that fiat is going to go anywhere. Obviously the incentives are too strong. But yeah, I mean we could already see today that this technology is really having profound impacts. You know, obviously bitcoin is not crypto, bitcoin is not CBDCs. Bitcoin is not stable coins. But we're seeing things like Tether might be the most successful company in the world right now, like the print money, the current administration sees tether as a way to offload treasuries, have them buy treasuries and help address some of our debt issues. So to only look at Bitcoin as a medium of exchange and say, oh, it's failing, it's not having an effect on the world is a little myopic, it's a little near sighted. And obviously medium exchange is super important and that's how the world is really going to change. But we're already having, we're already seeing the effects that Bitcoin is having on finance and geopolitics. It's super interesting right now.
- [51:55]
Unnamed Speaker
Did you guys ever pull out of US Availability during that?
- [52:02]
Evan
No.
- [52:03]
Unnamed Speaker
No.
- [52:03]
Evan
I mean, did the thought cross my mind or not really. I mean, when Phoenix pulled out, it was like an oh shit moment where I'm like, am I going to have to pull out? Like, it was, it was really scary day. But you know, like I, I alluded to earlier, Walker, it's like, okay, this thing, if it's going to be successful, it has to be done collectively. And people are like, oh, Evan, you should have just shut up. You should have just kept operating and not made us think about. It's like, yeah, probably that would have been the smart thing to do, but we would have been worse off if we didn't inspire some confidence in, you know, our other peers and more people, you know, decide to leave the market. We would have, would have sucked. So, you know, obviously everyone's situation is different. Not everyone is a US citizen, but where am I gonna go? You know, and the United States, they think they're the police of the world. Even if, or to go somewhere else, they'd probably still think they could go and prosecute me wherever I was in the world. So the choice was simple. It's like, no, we're staying, we're standing our ground, we're going to take this risk, we're going to keep building and it paid dividends and hopefully we inspired confidence in some users and users of Bitcoin and hopefully we inspire confidence in some people that were on the fence. And you know, like I said, like, that was a test. I think we passed it with flying colors. But we got to be ready for the next test and we got to make ourselves more resilient and we got to have contingencies and, you know, have plans for when these events happen, what we're going to do to, you know, make sure we can keep providing these services and this technology for Users. Yeah, it was. It was just a test. It was just a test.
- [54:22]
Unnamed Speaker
I've got to say, for on the record that you've got balls the size of watermelons. Because, like, I mean, you know, and this is nothing, like you said, everyone's situation is different.
- [54:31]
Evan
Yeah. Like, I don't really want to judge anyone on their actions, obviously, but you.
- [54:36]
Unnamed Speaker
Did what you did.
- [54:37]
Evan
You know, it's different legal situations, different legal guidance. But, yeah, I'm happy we made the decisions. We did. And, you know, it's not just. Just me, but, you know, tons of other companies do the same. Maybe they weren't as vocal about it and, you know, that's. That's what's going to take. It's going to take collective action like that. And to, like, sense yourself, take yourself out of markets preemptively without, like, the state forcing you to do so is like, it would have been the worst thing we could have done.
- [55:12]
Unnamed Speaker
And.
- [55:16]
Evan
I'm just. I'm just so glad we didn't.
- [55:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Did. Did you guys see, just from like a user standpoint, when Phoenix and Waldo Satoshi pulled out, did you guys see your user base expand, like, as a result of that? I. I assume so, yeah.
- [55:33]
Evan
Probably like 3x or so.
- [55:39]
Walker
Wow.
- [55:40]
Evan
So it was at the same time, you know, was also when we had just really hit our stride with our services and we're rolling it out.
- [55:48]
Unnamed Speaker
So. Good timing. I mean, you know.
- [55:50]
Evan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [55:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Shitty situation. Good. Good timing.
- [55:53]
Evan
Yeah, yeah. Now people tell me about it, it's like, like, dude, like, this sort of has added a lot to the ethos of it too. I'm like, so I didn't even, like, think about it that way. I mean, we were just trying to figure out what the best thing to do in that environment was, and we had to make a tough decision and it wasn't easy for me to make. Like, you know, we just had our first kid in the last year and, you know, round time that stuff was ruminating. And I'm like, okay, am I going to run the risk of not being there for my kid, or am I going to just like, bend the knee and be like, yep, we're not doing this anymore. You got to live in this world and set this awful example. It's like sort of like being in between a rock and a hard place. So, yeah, it wasn't easy. It's not something I took lightly. But at the same time, like, I knew my decision within, you know, just a couple of hours of Phoenix, like, making their decision, and it just didn't seem like there was any alternative. We had to do it. That's that.
- [57:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Well, massive respect to you, dude, and I'm glad you continued to build in the U.S. i mean, purportedly, we're the freest country in the world, so it is absurd that companies even felt that sort of pressure in the first place. The last administration was rough. This administration is by no means perfect. And as you correctly said, that can change on a dime. Right. And, you know, these guys are changing the dial.
- [57:43]
Evan
We don't know. Like, they're changing their views on all sorts of stuff, as you can see in the last week or two.
- [57:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah.
- [57:51]
Evan
So you never know what's gonna happen. But, yeah, you can just try to, you know, figure out where your hard lines are, try to plan in advance to the best of your ability, try to gather the resources that you can. And, you know, we're never going to forget the people who had our backs, who helped us out, who helped us navigate that, who reached out and even said, hey, we support you, or, thank you for doing this. There was a little action. They meant the world to us. And, you know, we know who's got her back when she hits the fan again, if it ever does, God forbid. But, yeah, just, like, it really just meant a lot. The support that we got and being. Being able to grow our user base and our company and our services was. Was a great reward for it, too. So, yeah, it was. It was tense. It was scary, but paid dividends.
- [59:03]
Unnamed Speaker
I want to kind of talk about, like, okay, you've grown your user base. You've just released VO 11.0. Right. Or what's the version number?
- [59:15]
Evan
It's 0.11.1 right now.
- [59:18]
Unnamed Speaker
Okay.
- [59:19]
Evan
We call it 11.1. Who knows? Maybe we'll drop the 0 at some point, just randomly, like Bitcoin Core did.
- [59:27]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, screw it. Why not? Right? Like, version numbers. Version numbers are just. Yeah.
- [59:31]
Evan
People are like, evan, you don't have to go to 1.0. Although we're sort of at a point where we're like, okay. We sort of want to get to a place where, like, okay, this is the culmination of everything we've done. And I think, you know, I think that's a lot of our focus. Like, we built up all these great building blocks over the years. The remote node, embedded node, the LSP services, the swap services, the Cashew. And now we have all this arsenal of tools. And now I think a lot of our focus for the rest of the year is, like, how do we round out the edges how do we improve the onboarding? How do we identify the biggest pain points? How do we just, like, really put on our UI UX hat? And obviously, like, it's not easy that there's a lot of people we're gonna bring in and rely on and help us with this thing. But, yeah, I think with our current set of tools right now, I think that, like, yeah, this is, this is the bones of the 1.0 product. It just needs that polish and it needs, you know, those user interviews in need, just a little love. And I think it's really going to shine. And I think we've really built, like, today what I personally believe is the most powerful mobile bitcoin wallet on the planet. And with just a little bit of love, we can make it the best bitcoin wallet, period. Something that you'll be comfortable onboarding anyone, even your grandma, even my Yaya. And that's, that's always been the goal and it feels really close now. We still have a ton of work, a lot of work, a lot of work that we don't typically do and it might be a little uncomfortable, it might be difficult, but that's where the best growth happens.
- [61:36]
Unnamed Speaker
What do you mean work that you don't typically do?
- [61:39]
Evan
Like, you know, UI ux.
- [61:41]
Unnamed Speaker
Okay. Okay.
- [61:42]
Evan
Thinking about how people on board interact with the app, you know, like, a lot of our stuff has been like, and I don't think this is necessarily a bad way to build apps, but, like, really just scratching my own itch. Like, like, I think it would be awesome if I could do this and then build it for myself, first and foremost. Right. And if anyone else likes it, that's just icing on the cake. Like, that's how I thought about it for, like a long time. And I understand that the app can still be that it could be the wallet of my dreams and do everything it wants, but there are, like, different UX flows that can definitely stand to be improved in these and there's a overwhelming amount of functionality in the app and there's definitely stuff that we can tuck away in other menus. There's differently things we could explain better and it's like this sort of introspection looking in the mirror that we're all going to really have to do more widely for bitcoin to reach peak adoption. And that's what we're going to be trying to do.
- [62:59]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, let me, let me ask you a question on that because, like, I mean, I, like, I, I love Zeus as a, as an app. It is like for me, you know, I, I like, I get it also, like, I get what you guys are, are trying to do. I, I know enough about how things work on the, the back end and channels and everything else. Like things make sense to me. Do you think, and this is not about Zeus specifically, but let's just say more, more broadly. Like are we ever going to be to a point where the majority of people, let's just classify majority. Over 50% of people are using Bitcoin in a, how do I say this in a way that is further along the self sovereignty spectrum than 50%. You know what I mean? Like they're using it like I think sovereignty is a spectrum like many things. Like you're never going to be perfectly sovereign. You can be pretty much a slave though perhaps that's the other end of the spectrum. How realistic is it? What actual penetration of the world in a hyper bitcoinized future? Maybe a better question is what does that mean to you? Does that mean it's a majority of people that are actually using Bitcoin in a relatively self sovereign way or does that just mean that bitcoin itself is ubiquitous? It's the water that the fish swim in. People are using it, but they don't even know it and they don't care about the method in which they're using it. Whether that be custodial, non custodial, whatever. It's just, it's so ubiquitous that that's just what hyperbitcoinization means. Where do you fall on that?
- [64:36]
Evan
That's a really loaded question. I know, but self custody, like let's, let's break down. Like, yeah, is, is it realistic to think that most people will hold their own keys to, you know, underlying Bitcoin? Probably not. But that doesn't mean that that's not a worthwhile ideal to strive for. And even if we never crossed that threshold, I think these are the things that are important. One that the average person can do that can decide to go and hold their own keys if they so choose. And then on the other side of it, thinking about the systemic risks of this world where people aren't holding most of their keys, where those destructions can happen, you know, stuff like running fractional reserves, manipulating the markets, we can still strive to have those bitcoins held by enough parties for users to have them across, enough different custodians to have the rails between them and the ability to switch custodians and leverage rails like people are using lighting today. I think that's what's important. We people are so passionate about using Bitcoin the right way, running itself, custodially, run your own node, doing it privately, I think mainly because they have this fear that is, I think very real, that in a lot of ways we run the risk of recreating the existing financial system. And from that perspective I entirely understand the toxicity, the name calling, the just trying to jump into these groups and say, ah, you're in the in group, you're in the out group, you're doing things right, you're doing things wrong. So I totally sympathize with those fears at least, and they play their roles. It's like people should really be vocal about the importance of these things. We don't want to just recreate the existing financial system and change the name of the units to Bitcoin. But at the same time it feels like even at this point there's a lot of freedom. So we've, we've taken that, that really just can't be taken away. Like you can't get the toothpaste out of the tube, back in the tube, excuse me, like from here on out it's going to be very, very difficult to stop people from being able to create their own keys, their own 12 words, memorize them and store their wealth. Like you can try to intervene in that in very unique ways, pushing people onto custodial platforms, compromising networks and hardware and all this sort of stuff. But the underlying ability, it's sort of out of the tube. It's like saying, oh, humans learned how to, to make fire and we're going to stop that from happening. It just seems ridiculous. So we should still be vigilant, we still should be concerned about this thing being co opted. Especially now, especially in this environment where heads of state are talking about Bitcoin, where we have ETFs, where we have paper, Bitcoin, Bitcoin, treasury companies, people taking buy pressure away from Bitcoin, the underlying asset and putting it into these easier to weigh, easier to get into avenues. There's a lot to have your guard up about, but sometimes you also need to kick your feet up and look back at all that's been accomplished already by the technology. And you know, a lot of these freedoms are now inalienable and can't be taken away. And you know, obviously like I said earlier, a state can go and crush any single individual, but as a widespread technology, it's not going anywhere. And we can be very grateful for that. And now it's just our job to make sure it reaches its Full potential.
- [69:51]
Unnamed Speaker
I say amen to that, brother. And I think that is such a. Such an important point that, like. Yeah, okay, yeah, it's very like, it's a. It's a, you know, cliche, but, you know, like, you know, united we scan, we stand. You know, like that. Separated we fall. It is much harder to stomp the boot of the state down on a massive group of people who are also armed with cryptographic weapons. No, those are weapons of defense. Right. Those are asymmetric defense based weapons, but weapons nonetheless.
- [70:28]
Evan
We're doing the Jason Lowry thing now.
- [70:30]
Unnamed Speaker
No, I meant more so like they've tried to classify strong encryption as arms. Like this. This happened like, wasn't it Adam. Adam Back who like printed out. I forget which. Which algorithm on his, like on a shirt and like was wearing it across borders, I thought. I think it was Adam Back who did that.
- [70:47]
Walker
Right?
- [70:47]
Evan
Yep. Indeed it was Dr. Back.
- [70:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Just a badass move. Like, honestly, to be like, nope, Yep. Okay, I'm gonna. I guess I'm gonna, you know, transporting arms across borders, like, that's amazing. And also just shows the absurdity of trying to classify code, open source code as somehow the like declassified as the same as the bombs that the US sells and drops around the world. Like just insane.
- [71:17]
Evan
They literally put the RSA algorithm encrypted in a Perl script it could scan with an advanced barcode scanner and wrote on it, warning, this shirt is classified as. As a munition. And you cannot export it from the United States or give it to a foreign national. But here it is on my shirt. They literally did that and they followed those same principles. They said it as clearly as they could with this action. Said the toothpaste is out of the tube, there's nothing you can do about is proliferating to all humanity. And that's just such an incredible statement. It's unbelievable. Yeah, that shirt is legendary. I think they have a new like, updated version of it on the Blockstream store. I have it upstairs somewhere nice. It's classic. Shout out to Dr. Beck.
- [72:21]
Unnamed Speaker
Do you just slightly kind of different route on this. Obviously all of the tools that are.
- [72:28]
Walker
Available to individuals are available to the state.
- [72:30]
Unnamed Speaker
Right? Strong Cryptography is available to individuals, it's available to the state. You know, bitcoin is available to individuals, it's available to the state. All of these things are. Now I'm curious where you sit like CBDCs and which are basically just like. The CBDCs are essentially the ultimate form of like AML KYC, right? It's like automated AML KYC using some of these same, same tools like it basically inspired by Bitcoin. But CBDC is the ultimate Fiat shitcoin.
- [73:04]
Walker
Right.
- [73:04]
Unnamed Speaker
It's taking Fiat to its worst possible conclusion. It's taking the only good thing that Fiat had, which was cash. Which cash is. Cash is great. Physical cash. I mean, that's actually great. That's anonymous. It's excellent. You should use cash more. It's taking that only good thing away from it. Where do you think we're at on this kind of. I mean, you've spoken pretty strongly about KYC aml and so I'd love to kind of get your, your thoughts on that because obviously I think that's a, a travesty. And we see there was just another huge data breach today. And it's just a classic example. Anytime I see a data breach, I'm just like all of our. Anytime you kyc like that's just an invitation for a data breach. It's an invitation for you to get docs. It's an invitation for bad things to happen. Yeah, a CBDC is the ultimate form of kycing yourself. It's kycing every single thing you do. It's zero privacy. Where are you at on this? Do you think that America has rejected this strongly enough? What are your thoughts?
- [74:07]
Evan
I think America is in a very interesting position in terms of its CBDCs. And it's like as a result of its values, it's not like the CBDCs that we're going to see are going to be the same like a Chinese CBDC, you know, tied into WeChat, just perfect view into these users. I think one of the funny things that America's done that, you know, we've seen sort of as a result of like the Snowden revelations, like they will outsource their spying, for example, to these third parties, to these corporations, right? And they're like, okay, we're not going to do this directly, but we'll easily cut a check to these telcos or these, you know, financial services companies in exchange for that data and that'll be okay. That'll be our way to skirt around the Constitution. I feel like similarly, we're going to see the role of private issuers, companies like tether players like JP Morgan, BlackRock, who might get into issuing CBDCs, play that role. It might be marginally better in terms of it being distributed widely, but it's effectively going to still have those same controls, that same surveillance because, you know, they're working so closely with The Treasury Department with FinCEN, they have this data, they have to answer the government requests. They can freeze their currencies like we've seen with tether time and time again. Yeah, I think it's like a really prescient time to talk about it now. That feel like the Genius act, the new stablecoin Act. I don't know all the ins and outs of it but I know it just passed the Senate I believe I had passed the House previously I think. And does Trump just have to sign up on it now? See like I, I'm not following it closely enough but I know that there's.
- [76:13]
Unnamed Speaker
I think so, yeah.
- [76:14]
Evan
I think there's going to be a deluge of newly privately issued stable coins and the government's position is going to be to just try to cut deals, to monitor them individually. That's my outlook on it. We're gonna see what this looks like. I feel like other big players in, in the fintech space like, like a stripe, PayPal, all these sort of players are going to get involved issuing their own coins. But yeah, like from a surveillance perspective, you know the government's gonna hook into these companies on the other side of things. I'm not optimistic but I think there are opportunities for us to try to, for lack of a better word or better way of putting it, like Bitcoin eyes the dollar where we try to build these systems on top of Bitcoin or on top of e cash and we could sort of reap the benefits of the privacy benefits of the self custodial properties of these assets. But at the same time we have to be realistic and be like okay, the underlying asset is this completely untied to these blockchain assets like the dollar, it could be printed at a whim and self custody really means nothing in this context but privacy does. And if we have the opportunity for the bit for the dollar to be operating on lightning where the payer's privacy is fantastic, at least in this receivers property privacy properties are getting much better, especially over the last couple of years. Or the properties of Cashew where you don't know how much any individual user has or who's what and you can't stop any individual or shut down their account. You have to rug the whole mint. Like I think there might be some interesting opportunities there and if we can take them we should. But at the same time what are the incentives for the government to do that? These are going to be, if they exist, they're not going to be sanctioned stable coins. They'll be Privately issued black market dollar pegs that are put together in a plethora of different models. As we see now, there's algorithmic stable coins. Stable coins where the issuers are just putting together short or long positions on these exchanges, depending on what their assets and liabilities are. Yeah, I mean there's opportunities there and perhaps that could be an interesting avenue to onboard people into bitcoin. Especially if the rails to dump your shitcoin, fiat dollar coins, whatever. And flip into bitcoin is as easy as making a payment or pressing a button. That would be phenomenal. That's definitely a lofty but worthwhile aspiration to have. At the same time, let's not rely on that. Let's try to onboard people onto bitcoin directly. Let's try to show them the way and go from there. One day at a time, one person at a time.
- [80:10]
Unnamed Speaker
A quick, just fact check for on both of us. It still has to go to the House, but it did pass the Senate 68 30.
- [80:17]
Evan
So it didn't go through the House.
- [80:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Okay, yeah, yeah. So it's going to the House next. And honestly I haven't followed it super closely just because it's like I know that a lot of people are super jazzed about stablecoins right now. I don't find it quite as interesting. I mean the whole point of it is literally like this is like Senator Gillibrand, like quoting her. It's like protect US dollar dominance or safeguard dollar dominance.
- [80:41]
Evan
Yeah, Increased demand for treasuries. It's like, what is the appeal for us, Walker? I mean, and I completely understand people in like these countries where they have like much weaker currencies just wanting it. Like it makes sense to want Tether in Turkey. You know, like their currency is dog. Like we complain about it.
- [81:03]
Unnamed Speaker
It is terrible.
- [81:04]
Evan
It's really bad in other places. And you know, we have easy access to these dollar rails, these dollar banking and financial services. So you know, at the same time, we're probably at the worst people to be talking to about stable coins and you know what usage looks like. I could only just provide my guidance on like privacy perspective and how I think it's going to be surveilled. But yeah, there's. It's obviously like I said earlier, tether's like the biggest company in the world. There's very real demand for it. It's not just an artificial thing propped up by the government. But the government is going to take advantage of this demand and use it to sell other treasuries. Then the lifespan of the dollar.
- [81:57]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, and to be fair, it's like the dollar is as far as fiats go. Like if the dollar has fallen, that likely means pretty much every other fiat currency in the world has already collapsed. If we're being honest, like people like to single out the dollar, it's like, okay, the dollar is going to be one of the last dominoes to fall. It's, it's not the first. You know what I mean? We like, it's, that's just a reality situation.
- [82:19]
Evan
Lowest melting ice cube. And you know, when the dollar eventually falls, you know, it's, it's going to be at the cusp of dystopia or utopia or, you know, probably just a buy multipolar world where it's a little bit of both. Probably bad in some places, probably amazing in some others. It's a bit scary to think about, but you know, nothing lasts forever and everything has its own lifespan. And you know, as much as I really love American values, a lot of late empire, late stage empire vibes right now and a lot of scary things going on in the world and obviously change is the only constant. So see what happens.
- [83:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I won't deny the scariness of things happening in the world right now and the late stage empire vibes as well. Again, it's difficult for me to see the United States collapsing before basically everywhere else has collapsed. Just realistically, you know, and maybe I'm, maybe I'm totally wrong. I also, you know, it's like if there's one thing we've realized in, you know, in this fiat world, it's man, the powers that be are really good at kicking the can down the road. Yeah, yeah, really good at kicking it down the road just, just until they all, you know, get to retire in.
- [83:53]
Evan
A lot of ways. Like, obviously, like, okay, we want a hyper, bitcoinized world tomorrow. We want a better world for our children tomorrow. Right. But at the same time, it would probably most definitely be better to have like an easy transition onto the bitcoin standard instead of like an oh shit, here's societal collapse and figure it out and just mass chaos. And so, yeah, I think, I think a little patience will go a long way. And you know, like I said, I'm not expecting fiat collapse tomorrow either. I think they're going to repeg it. They're going to do all sorts of new arrangements and you know, we should fully expect fiat currency to be around for a long, long time for generations and generations. That being said, humanity can still benefit from Bitcoin greatly while it's still around. That doesn't mean we should be working to extend the lifespan of it though. So be careful what you work on, be careful what you wish for and you know, just try to be mindful and have intention with your actions.
- [85:17]
Unnamed Speaker
Speaking of intention with actions, what are you most excited to kind of. You mentioned some of the things you need to tweak about Zeus and we've gone in, I think, a big wide arc here and we're coming back a little bit to where we started. But you've got a lot of stuff in this latest release. You guys have done a lot over even the past couple of years. Is there something beyond the UI UX stuff that you're really. You want to make sure you turn on if you can, something you can talk about? I know some stuff may be under the hood still, but like, is there something that you think like, oh, like we really need to get this in the app and I can't freaking wait for it to happen. Or are you getting close to like, okay, close.
- [86:05]
Evan
There's. Well, I definitely know where the freckles are, the spots, the things people struggle with. I think some optionality on how the embedded node works, how you sync it to change, stuff like that, like just a lot of technical stuff. I know that once we flesh out a little more, it's really going to shine, but no, honestly, welcome. The thing I'm most excited about right now is like talking with merchants, onboarding companies. Bitcoin adoption and tooling from the consumer side I think is actually really good right now. Tons of optionality. It's getting super easy to use. Lightning is the de facto rails for Bitcoin. Everything's interoperable. You get out of, you know, a KYC account, self custodial, Lightning wallet very easily with really good privacy. Like all that stuff is great. The business side tooling is not so great. Needs a lot of work, but has a lot of opportunity right now, a lot of demand. I think some awesome things are going to be built and I, more than anything, more than any technology in Zeus or any products we're building, I am just really excited in general for adoption to grow on the merchant side. And that's where we're also going to be spending a lot of focus on and are actually really focusing on right now. Like we're talking with three pretty interesting merchants this week that we're in various stages of onboarding and you know, we really see this demand ramping up and yeah, I don't. I Mean there, there are improvements that I'd like to see come to lightning and even to the base protocol. Like we recently signed a letter signaling our support for a CTV CSFS soft fork. Whether I think that's gonna actually come to fruition, I really don't know. I think some of the tribalism going on right now is gonna make that exceptionally difficult.
- [88:13]
Unnamed Speaker
But can you explain in ADIQ terms what that means?
- [88:19]
Evan
Yeah. Covenants. Covenants allow you to put spending restrictions on your Bitcoin. It's all optional, it's all opt in, but it's going to pave the way for a lot of L2 systems to work more efficiently. This includes lightning, this includes stuff like arc. This includes UX for coin joints. Yeah, just a lot of things you could do much more passively with coin joins and sort of take your setup offline. Super exciting. And then just in general, what you could do with vaults like spending restrictions that you can have for your personal stash to ensure that your family and your savings are safe without really having to rely on a third party. Like right now we have really good tooling that you can do with collaborative multisig like these companies like Unchained or Casa signing tools like stuff like Nunchuck Mobile wallet makes multi sig really easy. Phoenix hardware wallets that allow you to do all these crazy things. But a lot of them like really require third party help. If you have a vault you can say, hey, my money is in this vault. It has a 3 day, 14 day, 3 month, 6 month cooldown period and I can send something out into transit. I don't need to get this money until the end of that period. But if I see anything is messed up, claw it back. I have an exit path. Bring it back, put it back in the vault or kick it out somewhere else where I know it's safe. And the ability to create this, this time limited place for your bitcoin to live for these big transfers is like, is huge. There's really reduces the ability for someone to break into your house, to stick a gun to your head. It's like, no, it's in the vault like someone else or if it's not me, claw it back within that time period. And it gives you just like a whole lot of assurances. It puts time on your side when you're doing self custody. And I think that vault alone are worth activating OPCTV for. I truly do. I think for self custody to really flourish and for the individual to really take it into their own hands and reap These benefits get rid of these security concerns. Vaults and covenants go so so far and that's why I've been a real ardent supporter of them. On top of the benefits we get with L2s, Ark, lightning coin joint, new constructions we haven't even thought of. And yeah, I just don't want bitcoin to stagnate either. The discussions have been really interesting right now because a lot of people are opposed to change on bitcoin because the secondary effects of say something like Taproot and enabling or at least making stuff like ordinals or rather inscriptions easier has left like a lot of people like risk averse and not wanting to change bitcoin at all. And I understand that. But still like Bitcoin usage overall in the world is still super low. Bitcoin is a medium of exchange still not widely adopted. And I really think that these opcodes are simple, they're well reviewed. I don't think there, although you can never know for sure. I don't see any major impacts in the same way that a new scripting type has. I think Taproot was a much bigger can of worms. Yeah, of course I love this technology, want to protect it, but also want it to be as easy to use into use cases money as it can be. And I think that these the software does that. It's very much worth considering and been loving the discussions that we've been having the last week or two since this letter we signed has been out. Obviously a lot of pushback, but just the fact that these discussions have been happening have been fantastic and I think it's much more productive than arguing about relay policy or some of the other even more shallow topics the community has been talking about. So it's been really great to champion that and see where that goes. So we'll see, we'll see what happens. Hopefully we have an activation client, maybe end of the year, probably next year, we'll see. But even if we don't get it activated, still a ton of stuff that we have to work on in bitcoin and still a lot of things we can do to make adoption more widespread.
- [93:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Do you think the filters debate is important one right now or do you view that as a bit of a distraction?
- [94:02]
Evan
It's not entirely a distraction and I'm very sympathetic to the view that bitcoin shouldn't just be a general storage database. But at the same time there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of noise, a lot of tribalism really at the end of the Day. It's your node, it's your rules. You should run the policies that you want. I fully believe in the ability for people to run whatever node implementation they want. I probably, you know, the, the one single implementation for everyone is probably not the best way to go. I think it's better to have competing implementations. Centralizing power, of course, is dangerous. There have been some red flags for sure that, out of the core camp and how that's organized, but at the same time it's definitely been overstated. You know, there's, there's a lot of nuance to it, but it's definitely not the end of the world. The relay policies, you can just run an older version of Core or, you know, if you're technically inclined, you can run the latest version without the commits that you don't like on it. But generally speaking, like I've been saying this whole show, people are going to use Bitcoin differently. This isn't a consensus change. Bitcoin isn't really changing at its core. Your node, your rules. You should use Bitcoin in the way that makes most sense for you. So, yeah, I love to see a lot of people spinning up their own nodes though. It's fantastic. Spin up a node, run it, you use it for your transactions. If you're just spinning up a node and just having it talk on the Internet and you're not doing anything with it just to increase a number on a chart, on the pie chart, like I don't. Who cares about that? But if you're using it, that's amazing. Validate your own transactions, hold your own keys. It's all we've ever really wanted.
- [96:19]
Unnamed Speaker
Man, that's a, a heck of a note, I think to wrap up on. We've been running here for a little, little over 90. Is there anything we, we didn't cover that you wanted to make sure we touched on either about, you know, Zeus or where do you want to send people? Yeah, feel free to, to, to shill anything you want right now.
- [96:36]
Evan
Do it. Check out the wallet. We're@zeus ln.com we're on Noster, we're on X. We have a telegram group. Everything is linked on the website. Metzusln.com Check out the wallet. You can get started with a cashew wallet. You get a free lightning address. You could put that in your nostr bio. You can start accepting zaps when you get enough stats that it becomes economically viable to upgrade to self custody. We're going to bug you about it, but once you get your Own lightning channel. You got some funds in self custody, those messages are going to go away. You can reap the benefits. Keep that cashew wallet sweep to self custody whenever it makes sense for you and you could keep going on that journey. You can become that self sovereign full node runner. You can point your lightning address that. You've kept this whole journey to your full remote node using Noster Wallet Connect. And yeah, we've got a whole lot of other tools that we're working on. Our point of sale products are going to be improving. We were working with new merchants. We just started doing our proof of concept for selling digital goods on zeusepay.com go check out Bitcoin for institutions. Buy our friend fundamentals. That's all linked on our social profiles. Go check that out. And yeah, just you know, think critically. Use bitcoin in a way that makes sense for you and you know, make bitcoin payments your way. That's it.
- [98:11]
Unnamed Speaker
Amen to that. Evan, thanks so much for coming on here man. Great, great to finally get you on the show.
- [98:16]
Evan
I really appreciate it. I'm. The only thing I'm really confused about is like it's the T coin podcast. I don't think you mentioned breasts once on the full show. Maybe, maybe when you have me back we can hit on that.
- [98:27]
Unnamed Speaker
I guess you come for the tits, you stay for the bits. That's how you know it's. It's really just to hook people in who would otherwise find bitcoin itself too boring. I do have bip 6969 as well, which, yeah, it's a pretty serious bip that I've published. So if you ever want to check that out, it's pretty fascinating.
- [98:48]
Evan
Okay, I have some reading to do.
- [98:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Seriously man, appreciate you coming on here. Welcome back anytime.
- [98:54]
Evan
Thanks again, Walker. It's been great.
- [98:56]
Unnamed Speaker
Likewise. Men talk soon.
- [99:06]
Walker
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this place podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.com walker America to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but pocket podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.