← THE Bitcoin Podcast
THE Bitcoin Podcast
"CYPHER TANK" COMPETITION, BITCOIN STARTUPS, M&A, & WHAT HAPPENS NEXT | MIKE JARMUZ (MUZZ)
01:21:46
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- [00:00]
Muzz
So the one thing that we all know is we know that bitcoin is going to do what we know it's going to do. So these companies that are building around it are going to do very well. It's going to be similar to the personal computer revolution or the Internet revolution that we all lived through. I'm a hair older than you, but not too much. And you know, I mean, is Blockstream the Cisco Systems of bitcoin? You take things like what's going to happen when bank of America actually adds bitcoin one day? What's going to happen? What are they going to do? Are they going to hire three Lightning devs and figure it out? I don't think so. I think they're probably going to make some strategic acquisitions and buy some customers and buy some technology. And we've kind of seeded 40, some 40 to 50 companies in the space that are really kind of prime for when Uber does decide to add bitcoin. What are they going to do? I mean, that's, that's what I'm focused on. I haven't been been kind of distracted with the shiny bitcoin treasury companies. I think it's cool. I think it's interesting and fun, but, you know, we stay in our lane here. And by the way, I don't know why the bitcoin treasury companies aren't putting that in through an amboss deal and actually generating riskless yield, even if it's one to one and a half percent on the lightning network, just routing payments. I mean, imagine a sailor took that and was was actually generating riskless yield by putting some of it to work. Right. I think we're going to see a lot of those type of strategies coming too.
- [01:35]
Walker
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the Bitcoin podcast. Bitcoin continues to make 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're still early. This episode is brought to you by Blockware. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack bitcoin at the same time? Well, with blockware, you can. New US tax rules let miners write off 100% of their mining hardware in a single year. So earn bitcoin daily while saving big. Come tax season, get started at mining.blockware solutions.com/titcoin. Use the code Titcoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the Blockware marketplace. This is not Tax advice. So go speak to the team at Blockware to learn more. That's mining.blockware solutions.com Titcoin Head to the Show Notes for links to find the show on centralized social media platforms and on Noster. Or just go directly to bitcoin podcast.net. you'll find it all there and kind reminder that you can support this show by becoming a paid subscriber on Fountain or don't. Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it. Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk. Musman, what's going on? Welcome back. It's been the last time you were on here, it's been like well over a year. You were a pretty early guest actually on this, on this podcast.
- [02:59]
Muzz
I was, I was honored because you had me on early and you had no viewers, so that was good.
- [03:08]
Walker
You know, it's you, you got to start somewhere. People don't realize the grind of building out a bitcoin podcast. Like it's, it turns out it's. It's. Even though you're talking about what many of us would argue is the most important topic in the world, which is fixing the money, it turns out it's hard to get people to pay attention to that when there's so many cat videos and various, various bar fights and gas station brawls to distract them with like people just like pulling teeth to get them to care about sound money. I don't know, man.
- [03:38]
Muzz
So how long has it been now? Because you really have built it up.
- [03:42]
Walker
So I think I started it in August of 2023. So it's been over two years now. I guess. Time flies. This podcast is older than my son, which is, that's, it's a good marker. You know, it was. I started the podcast like, I don't know, four or five months before he was born, I think because my beautiful wife Carla was no longer feeling like editing short form videos, turns out while she was very pregnant. Who could have seen that coming? So then I was like, what do you do as a man of a certain age? You, you gotta start a podcast, right?
- [04:16]
Muzz
And your son is almost old enough to now be a guest, right?
- [04:22]
Walker
He is. I mean, I'm really just trying to bring him up to be my co host. Eventually. That would be the goal. That's every bitcoin podcaster's dream, is to have their offspring be their co host. Actually, Daniel Prince, the one Spitting podcast, he does this with his daughter. His daughter's been asking the first question on his podcast, I think he's got over 500 episodes. She's awesome. And she's been asking the first question that podcast for like, five years, which is just very cool. What a cool thing to be able to look back on. What an awesome father daughter activity to be able to do bitcoin podcasting is for anyone who's willing to pick up a microphone.
- [05:01]
Muzz
Yeah, he's an awesome guy. His whole family and the fact that they, you know, I think you'll get. You guys will be like that, you know, as your children develop and grow and everything. But just going to the conferences, knowing some of the other kids that are there, just, they have such a unique childhood with based parents dragging them to bitcoin conferences. And can I tell a quick story about his family in a rockamoto?
- [05:27]
Walker
Yeah.
- [05:27]
Muzz
So we did one in Prague and I needed somebody to run the door, and we thought, hey, why don't we pay Prince's kids to work the door at the event and we'll give them either Bitcoin or 50 or €100 or something. And it's kind of like you're an adult and you know, you're asking somebody for 20 bucks or €25 and you're like taking this thing, you don't want to deal with it, or maybe 20% of the show's over, you feel bad, you're like, oh, yeah, well, just go on in or whatever. But the kids are ruthless. I mean, the kids were like, every person who came in, both of them was like, €20. We accept bitcoin. We accept, you know, cash, and we have change, you know, and they were just like, so on it. It was like the most profitable rock of photo. I think we made like €500 and we gave them each like 100 because they were just ruthless. And they were asking people, they. We were joking. I was like, ask people if they're 21, you know, and they're like asking. They're like, are you 21? You have to be 21 to get in here. It was. It was so cute, man. They were.
- [06:32]
Walker
They were so young, dude, that's. That's amazing, though. Now, you know, just hire. Hire kids for it to work the doors. Because child labor works. Yeah, it works. And what a great life experience. Like, if you. If you can. I mean, you're. You're running front of house, running door security as a kid, like, you're. You're going to be set. Like, you will know how to handle people going into life. That's a good skill.
- [06:55]
Muzz
And. And Also, like on the other side of it, you're, you know, you're in your 30s or 40s, you're paying for two. You got to pull out €40 coming from a 12 year old kid.
- [07:04]
Walker
All right, Right, like, yeah, you don't, you don't want to look bad in front of the kid.
- [07:10]
Muzz
Right.
- [07:10]
Walker
You want to be like, oh yeah, I've got the Fiat. Don't worry, I'm good for it. That dude, that's awesome. Yeah, their whole family is fantastic. It's a great example of, I think, what the next generation can look like with great parenting, great life experiences early on, and truly living on a bitcoin standard, like, it's gives me a lot. Kids like that give me so much hope for the future to come. It's makes me very bullish on humanity.
- [07:38]
Muzz
Yeah, me too. And I love to see that. A lot of the conferences, I think the first time that I really noticed it was in Madeira. But I love that the conferences are really kind of starting the kids corner area, the like kids section, you know, and it's not like they're teaching them, you know, firearm safety, but, you know, it's not exactly like the Fiat, the Fiat Kids corner that you would expect on like the Disney cruise or something.
- [08:03]
Walker
Yeah, I mean, firearm safety could be a good one for different types of conferences. I think I took Hunter's Safety. How old was I? Like 10 or 11 maybe? That sounds about right. I mean, I'd been shooting guns for a while before that just because I'm from Bumblefuck nowhere, Wisconsin. But I still remember my Hunter's Safety class. It's useful stuff. Good to be able to know how to handle a firearm no matter what age you are.
- [08:30]
Muzz
Definitely.
- [08:31]
Walker
As we're recording this muzz, I just got a notification. Bitcoin has just pumped right above 122,000 infinitely printable fiat cuck bucks per coin. You love October being memed into reality. Isn't that just a beautiful thing? It's just like, yep, we're going up. It's October. That's. There's no. There's no question about it.
- [08:49]
Muzz
October hits hard.
- [08:52]
Walker
It's going to be a wild ride. It's going to be a wild ride. Well, hey, stoked to have you back. We got a few things to talk about today. One of the ones we wanted to start with is upcoming pitch competition because there is a timely component to this. Can you talk about this a little bit? It's going to be happening at Lugano Plan B forum. I'm going to be there with, with my lovely wife as well, who everyone really comes to see. But there you guys are. You guys are running a pitch competition with the Plan B network. Tell me about it. I know you're also still accepting entrance to this competition, which is why we're having you on today to be able to talk about this and see if we can drum up some more people who want to, who want to pitch this thing.
- [09:30]
Muzz
Yeah, sure. And I don't know if you have a couple of links there, if you were going to do a screen share over my rambling, but yes, we're super excited about it and we've helped organize a few pitch contests in the past. If the first BTC Prague had a, had a great pitch contest and you know, the bitcoin conferences used to do that whole industry day pitch contest thing. They haven't done that at the last event or so. But this is a lot of fun and I'm helping Giacomo, who I thought was going to be here today. But you know, Giacomo kind of spearheaded it and it's Cipher Tank. It's kind of a play on Shark Tank, which everyone loves Shark Tank, but it's bitcoin focused. So Plan B fund tether. Everyone over there is sponsoring this event and putting it on as the first. It's definitely a trial run and it's a lot of fun and submissions are open and some pretty good prizes, all things considered. It's not like you have to be incorporated. You don't have to have a certain level of funding. It's just all builders, all ideas. You know, this isn't a pre accelerator, this isn't a hackathon. But if you have something that you're working on, submit it. Why not? And it's really cool too because there's two tracks. There's a for profit track and then the nonprofit track. So different community organizations, people like you know, maybe meet premier bitcoin. You know, I'm just naming. Think of every nonprofit in the bitcoin space. The educational initiatives, you know, things like Wiser. I'm trying to come up with a few. You know, there's a million. There's like the Tampa Bay bitcoin people and then there's the bitcoin jungle people and all these other like all of that, you know, apply. It's, it's non dilutive grant money, you know, and they're, they're gonna award quite a bit. I mean it's over 850,000 in prizes. So. Yeah. And a bunch of the info's Here, I mean it's all we've been talking about on the Lightning Ventures Twitter and my Twitter and this is a trial run. Okay? So this is going to be filmed and it's going to be chopped up and aired afterwards. And hopefully it'll be a series of Cypher Tank style events that we can bring to the space. It'll be a lot of fun. We're going to have some killer voiceovers. I don't want to spill the beans on who may be those sexy recognizable voices that you know from the bitcoin world. But maybe, you know, maybe a Brit from across the pond and maybe somebody here with a sexy, deep, raspy voice. But it's going to be chopped up, it's going to look great, it's going to be really cool. Bunch of all star people are involved. I mean Adam Back, Paolo is going to be involved. His schedule is crazy, but he will be there. A lot of this is confirmed. Odell, Preston, Farrington, Yates. And the idea of this event, whether you're for profit or not for profit, is that you're getting to obviously pitch in front of these people. You're getting a bunch of exposure, you're getting expenses paid to go to Lugano and the chance to win. But you're also able to kind of negotiate your own deals and additional deals with the, you know, I don't want to call them sharks, right, the honey badgers or whatever they are with the VCs, with the VCs that are there. So you're not just playing for, you know, the sponsored prize funds that are going to be distributed, but you might walk away with another, you might find even a lead investor that's there or lead to other things. So there's just so much good that can come from it. I mean everyone I know that's got a little nonprofit thing that I'm just really encouraging everyone to apply because, you know, you never know what can happen.
- [13:15]
Walker
So I think this is awesome. And, and just, I was just going to maybe just read through this for anybody who's listening on the audio because I'm sharing this in the screen. But eight for profit projects will be selected to come to Lugano for recording. Two from each Plan B VC fund categories you've got on chain Bitcoin tech. So that's, that's cold storage, that's mining, financialization, etc. Lightning Liquid and RGB tech. So payment scalability, asset protocols, privacy, programmability, etc. Peer to peer tech, decentralized identity, data Transmission, storage, elaboration etc. And emerging markets. Everything connected with or contiguous to bitcoin that can impact emerging markets. And then three nonprofit categories that human rights protection, privacy, censorship, resistance, scientific breakthroughs, cryptography, distributed systems, lugano, bitcoin, Citadel, Everything connected with or contiguous to bitcoin that can impact the local scene. So there's like, there's a lot of different angles there, which is kind of cool. Like I don't see any podcasting categories, which is a little bit, I'm a little bit disappointed, but okay, I guess, you know, maybe in the future. We're just not there yet. In the adoption cycle. What if you could lower your tax bill and stack bitcoin at the same time? Well, by mining bitcoin with blockware, you can. New tax guidelines from the big beautiful bill allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of their mining hardware in a single tax year. That is right, a 100% write off. So if you have $100,000 in capital gains or income, you can purchase $100,000 worth of miners and offset it entirely. Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining right now without lift finger. Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low cost power to configuring the mining pool. They do it all. You get to stack bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season. Get started today by going to mining.blockware solutions.com titcoin again, that's mining.blockware solutions.com use the code titcoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the blockware marketplace. Of course, none of this is tax advice from me. Go speak with the team at blockware to learn more one more time. That is mining.blockwaresolutions.com tidcoin yeah, you know.
- [15:41]
Muzz
But those orange pilling nonprofits that are out there or things like. What's that game for the kids? Shamory? Is it Shamory? Yeah, you know, I've seen like those type of projects, you know, why wouldn't you want to apply to do that? You're doing good work. You're spreading bitcoin education to kids and people. These tracks and categories, these categories were actually listed on plan B's fund's website. This was their direction. I didn't, I didn't pick these. This wasn't like for, you know, the Giacomo and myself chose the categories. But personally I would rather not have the categories because when you have the categories, you have to fill them. Right. And it's cool to say. These are what we're looking for. But we. It will be two from each. They'll get flown out to Lugano. It basically lasts a week. There's the. The semifinals and then, of course, the Lugano week, which will be great, I think. You're going to. You're going to be there, right?
- [16:41]
Walker
Yeah, maybe we'll be there. We're emceeing. Yeah.
- [16:44]
Muzz
Nice. And then the finals, and then that'll be it. So it's a lot of fun and we're, you know, grassroots, doing all we can to promote it and get the word out there. It's, you know, we. We're just. We're doing all we can. We're trying our best. But submissions, I think are. Will be open till definitely October 7th, and I think we got word that we can extend it to maybe October 10, but, you know, it's a lot of plane flights and accommodations that we got to book for the winners and all that stuff. So we can't push it too far, but we want to get as many submissions as possible.
- [17:19]
Walker
Yeah, yeah. And for anybody who's listening there, plan bweek.com and then just go and look for Cipher tank on there. And I would hope that next year maybe there will be a bitcoin podcasting category, because we need more bitcoin podcasts. We need to be funding really creative implementations of bitcoin podcasts. I think I'll have to, you know, maybe I'm going to have to do like, a meta pitch to be able to get bitcoin podcasting accepted into future pitch competitions. Who knows? We got to be supporting our bitcoin podcasters, you know.
- [17:50]
Muzz
Well, can I ask you a question?
- [17:53]
Walker
Yeah.
- [17:54]
Muzz
You know, that's kind of, you know, a portfolio company and good friends and all. The name we know and love is Geyser, right? And from the VC land. And that's why this pitch contest. One of the reasons why I actually really like doing this and getting involved, besides all the money that this brings us, right? Because we all know that I'm motivated by money here, is that we get a lot of inbound of like, hey, I'm working on this really cool movie. Like, we're going to educate people on mining. Like, I'm working on this Broadway play, Elaborate Satoshi Story kind of thing. All of those type of projects are not really VC fundable. Right. You don't invest in movies, you don't invest in entertainment things. It's just not something that is really appropriate for VC funding. So usually I Like to send them to Geyser, you know, and those type of things like podcasts or the bitcoin racing car and these type of things. Right. Those type of initiatives is great to have on Geyser. I was going to ask you if you ever had a campaign up there or had any success there, but specifically for this type of event, I'm reaching back out to all those people that are creating awareness and the coach carbon with his like the football soccer kids that he kind of does. And all of these like really cool things that are bitcoin adjacent and nonprofits and good, good natured things can apply for this and maybe walk away with some cashola. So what are your thoughts on Geyser? Have you ever fired up a campaign?
- [19:28]
Walker
I have. I mean, honestly, I have one for the bitcoin podcast that I started. I started a while ago. I just went on there. It has raised 40,256 sats. Granted, I haven't really promoted it at all, but yeah, let's see. Geyser fund Project titcoin. It has. Yeah. So, you know, because that's the, that's the other thing. It's Geyser is. I honestly really like Geyser. I think it's a great solution for people to be able to fundraise. And especially if you're trying to incorporate some, let's say, value for value or, you know, there's. I know there's a lot of other creative ways you could use Geyser too. You could, I mean, you could honestly probably use it as a way to like sell, you know, pleb sponsorships. Let's say, you know, roll some credits with your Geyser fund pleb sponsors on there. Honestly, Geyser's fantastic. I think that we need more people using these sort of bitcoin native funding mechanisms for these sorts of projects. Because that's the thing you realize is that, I mean, I've donated to probably at least like a dozen, I'd say, different projects on Geyser just randomly over the years. Because it's great to be able to fund things you want to see in the world.
- [20:43]
Muzz
Right.
- [20:43]
Walker
And you can do it with bitcoin and that just, I don't know, it feels good. Even if it's just a few sats.
- [20:48]
Muzz
It makes a difference, especially when it's something that you know and love. Right. Like, I remember I donated to no BS Bitcoin. You remember that daily newsletter? I loved that newsletter that came out every day. You know, it was definitely one that I read. But Your Geyser campaign, you know, you've gotten over 40,000 sats and you know, one day that'll buy you a new Tesla. You just gotta wait a little bit. But, you know, the thing with Geyser is since it is kind of we're in a new novel, you know, area with bitcoin and that you don't have like the exposure of like the Indiegogo and the Kickstarter where you're just getting hundreds of thousands eyeballs, but they also take a much larger fee. So the thing with Geyser and those type of campaigns is you have to really promote them. And I was actually amazed by your signature page the other day because you had like 50 different links of like, here's this. And I'm like, man, I'm like, he's got everything in this. And I'm clicking around, and I'm clicking around, I end up on the link tree and I don't see support my work. It opens to Geyser. So that might be something you want to think about.
- [21:48]
Walker
You know, you are absolutely right. See, Muzz, this is, this is why, this is why I bring you on. It's for, for, for the advice on how to grow bitcoin podcasts. You know, it is really interesting that like, we, we did see, you know, you mentioned like, okay, podcasts are not like a VC investible thing, which, like, makes sense. I'm also not a vc, so I don't understand the intricacies of this. But what is interesting, I thought, I mean, we did see a podcast get acquired by a publicly traded company this cycle. The. The MSTR True north podcast got acquired by Strive, right? I think it was Strive that acquired them. Like, that's like a, that's a wild kind of shift. Like, that's not just sponsoring a podcast. That's saying we're actually going to buy out a podcast. I mean, like, I don't know, that was, to me, I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, my podcast is not for sale. But that was an interesting. That was a very interesting development, at least I thought. I just hadn't, hadn't like thought about it in that regard, I guess. But it makes sense. It's just ultimately, what is a podcast? It's like, it's a media business, right?
- [22:44]
Muzz
It's a media business. And, you know, that was a really interesting. I don't know if you want to call it an acquisition, right? I mean, I love that show. Everyone loves that show. But, you know, sold for a dollar. Who knows what the Real sort of aqua hire and what they're getting paid. But it's great if you're looking to start a media arm or brand something, you know, I mean, one of the people who always did it the best, whatever you think is Swan. You know, Swan really did marketing so well with their podcasts and their content and all the stuff that they. They created a lot of those other bitcoin only exchanges, kind of looked to them for a lot of advice, right? Like relay and 21 things about Bitcoin and all these PDFs and materials. I mean, Swan was the, like, the leader in all that, you know, and you. You swallow up a couple of these podcasts, and it's really a nice little media media department. And you said you're not for sale, but I happen to know that everything is for sale, Walker. Everything has a price. Okay, that's fair.
- [23:44]
Walker
But, boy, I don't know what my price would be. It would need to be a lot. Because the nice thing about this podcast is I do this without the expectation that I will make money on it. I do it because I have my fiat job. That's how I pay the bills and whatnot, and that's how I stack sats. If I end up making some sats in the podcast, that's great. But my ultimate goal is like, I want a bitcoin podcast because I think, you know, bitcoin podcasting is the most important job in the world, and we need more bitcoin podcasters. So really, the point of my podcast is to inspire other bitcoin podcasts. Let a thousand bitcoin podcasts bloom. We need to eviscerate the tradfi podcast market and completely supplant it with the bitcoin podcast ecosystem. This is my mission, you know, this is my mission in life.
- [24:31]
Muzz
Well, I'd love to talk about those type of things and even acquisitions in general, because, you know, thankfully, things are finally starting to heat up, both within our own portfolio at Lightning Ventures, my own psychotic angel investing portfolio, and things like this acquisition with Strive and mstr. And I would not be surprised in this bull market if you didn't get some very interesting inbound offers in. And, you know, really, it's like, what does it cost? I don't want to sell it. Right. I love, you know, Nico from Simply, you know, he's. He's built a monster over there with other things, you know, but you, you, you think about, like, what. What are you selling? Like, you're not selling out, right? I come from a music background. It's like you're a sellout, man. You went to the major label and you did this and that and you know what you're doing is, is like you're a one man show, right? Or maybe a one and a half man show. Instead of dealing with the clips and dealing with all of that stuff and dealing with landing sponsors. Right. And by the way, Walker needs some sponsors right now. Okay. If you want a good show to sponsor, reach out to him, darn it. Tell him promo code muzz.
- [25:38]
Walker
And yeah, give you some kickbacks in the back end. No, it is. Nico has built a heck of a, heck of an empire over there. Like, it's super impressive. I mean between Nico BDC sessions like those, those in my mind are like, those are very, just impressive in their scope. Also like Natalie Brunel, I mean her podcast actually makes it into mainstream financial news charts. That's a different, obviously very different styles of shows from Natalie's to a, simply to even a sessions. But it's impressive to be able to get the bitcoin message into more of those mainstreams that you're showing up on the Spotify or Apple podcast charts for, you know, finance and investing or whatever. Like you're, you're getting added to those lists. That's like, that's, that's super impressive. And honestly, it's like I, you know, we need more reaching outside of the echo chamber. It's talking within the echo chamber is cool too. But obviously we want as many people to be onboarded to bitcoin as possible because we believe that it's going to be beneficial for them to do so. And so it's like anytime you can reach outside there, it's a, it's a beautiful thing.
- [26:50]
Muzz
Yeah, I mean those are staples for getting into bitcoin. You know, my mom has known about bitcoin from a distance, but, you know, she finally got in. She came to Vegas for the conference there. I'm not sure if she came more for the conference that I invited her, if she, she just loves Vegas, but she's one of the few people that just loves that place. We all hate it, right? But you know, she, you know, getting her into it, right? What's very digestible, easy content. Like here's a couple of, you know, get to know you videos from Natalie Brunel. I sent it to her and it's just so cute watching her. She pulls out her little Samsung Notes app and she's like, I want to meet Natalie Brunel. How do I do that? And I'M like, well, there's a woman's brunch event. Let's get you a ticket, you know, And I actually took her picture with Natalie Brunel. I thought it was, like, so funny, you know.
- [27:39]
Walker
That's amazing. No, that is, like. Because that's. That's the thing. You realize that you never know what type of podcaster, creator, personality, whatever, is going to really speak to any particular person. But like, like me or. Or Nico, for example, we may not be as appealing to learn about bitcoin from. For your mom as Natalie Brunel is. And that's. That's great. That's why we need, like, you need true, like, actual diversity, not like di diversity, but just genuine diversity of bitcoin podcasts because you never know what's going to appeal to a particular person. But your mom, I imagine she was. She was over the moon to get her picture with Natalie.
- [28:20]
Muzz
Yeah, she was. She got a few, but it was so funny. She was taking notes on her phone and everything. But, like, you know, you find out what works for each person, right? And, you know, hey, first thing I sent her was a Michael Saylor clip. And in that clip, sailors like, sell your kidney, mortgage your house, sell everything you have, Go into debt. Go into debt, buy more bitcoin. She was like, I don't know about this, right? And then it's like, okay, let's dial it back. And then, you know, right before the conference, she's like, michael Saylor. She's like, is that the same Michael Saylor from my retirement account? I'm like, that's the one. That's the one, mom. Let's go. And she had this notepad, and she was just like. She was like, oh, Michael, I want to ask you, do you know Katie the Russian? I saw, like, a notes pad, and my mom had written like, katie the Russian, she was like. She was talking about. She saw the family's one. You were on that panel, weren't you?
- [29:09]
Walker
Oh, nice. Yeah.
- [29:10]
Muzz
Yeah. You were on that. Yeah, she. She picked it. I picked. I picked that out. I'm like, I think this will be cool, you know, and she. She really liked it.
- [29:17]
Walker
Dude. I. I love to hear it. You know, again, we need diversity of content to bring people in. And I like shifting because I could talk about bitcoin podcasts all day, but I do want to talk about bitcoin companies more specifically a little bit. So you also, personally, obviously, through Lightning Ventures as well, invest in a lot of different bitcoin startups. And right now, bitcoin treasury companies, you know, publicly traded companies have really been the hot topic. You know, paper bitcoin summer. That's what people have been focused on. But in the background and throughout all of the bear market and everything else, there's been a lot of actual building happening for not bitcoin treasury companies, but bitcoin companies that also happen to have bitcoin treasuries. Because of course they will. They're, you know, they're bitcoin companies. They're creating bitcoin products. Can we talk a little bit about maybe some of the companies in your portfolio? What you look at from Lightning Ventures in terms of like, what is your, you know, what is your investment thesis and how do you actually make these decisions? You know, like you guys versus ego death versus some of these others. Like, you've all got kind of slightly different. But maybe, you know, bitcoin is the through line in these investment theses. But talk about that a little bit. Where are you guys at? What are you guys looking for? What are you guys most excited about right now?
- [30:32]
Muzz
Yeah. So, you know, as far as what you're talking about, paper bitcoin and all of that stuff, markets are fascinating. I love markets just as a hobby, you know, you can tell I have, you know, my MBA from, you know, Cornell. But just learning what everything I've learned, I've learned on my own. And it's just so fun to watch the phases. Okay. And you have. There was a point in time where everyone wanted to invest in bitcoin startups and companies. These are real businesses. There's no tokens here. This isn't any sort of. But that was. The markets were hot. It was a very hot market. And a lot of people were investing, especially in our Lightning Venture Syndicate and others. They raised a lot of funds. And then things really hit the fan. And then there was this flavor of ordinals, right, where there was a lot of people that were getting into art. Art on bitcoin, art on chain, bitcoin culture. You know, I once had somebody told me I sold all my bitcoin, I bought all ardinals because I think it's all about bitcoin culture. I said, I want everyone to win and good luck to you. But that's. That is not for me. So then there was that. And then were these other things, right? There was runes and, you know, whatever other things that there. There were. Okay. And then it came to bitcoin treasuries, which is great. I would rather have that be the primary driver of this cycle than say the Altcoin ICO kind of boom bust thing, right? At least these are companies, many publicly traded, that are adding Bitcoin to their balance sheet, you know, as a reserve asset. Some of them with the sole purpose of acquiring more Bitcoin is, is the company, that's a whole nother thing, but that, then that's the flavor, right? And everyone wants that. And there's a million things that are very good about bitcoin treasury companies or even just you having some bitcoin treasury companies in your interactive brokers portfolio and what you can do with that, right, because you could margin against it and you could, you could, you could use other tools in the tool belt with options that are easy for a US person who can't use Deribit and other things like that. You know, there's, there's more tools in your tool belt to have even just a little part of it in some of these, even IBIT or one of these ETFs. And now what you're seeing, which is great because the bitcoin treasury companies are way out of favor, right? It's like almost everyone turned their back. Microstrategy was underperforming. You know, all of these, you know, every other day there's a bitcoin treasury company in Africa, in the UK and here and there and you know, and it doesn't seem like they're getting the real stretched valuations. M navs and all the things they were getting before they kind of fell out of, out of flavor. But now it's really fun and interesting to see that cold storage Bitcoin is in, right? Cold storage Bitcoin is what people want. Everyone that was out there before and how do I take a loan against this and invest in startups and it's okay, no, I'm going to buy a bunch of these JPEGs and I'm going to do whatever and I'm going to go into these bitcoin treasury companies, man, this is the future. And now they're just like everything, send it to the cold storage at home. And it's just really cool to see the psychology of people go through these waves. And trust me, all of those things are going to have their day again. It's always a cycle and I just, I'm fascinated by it. I think it's just so cool to see that flip around. We haven't diverted from that because what we do is we invest in bitcoin startups and companies and private markets and opportunities that are building on, around or with bitcoin and the future of infrastructure on ramps, off ramps, exchanges, you know, bitcoin's everywhere now. There's bitcoin in art, you know, scarcity. They do all the cool art galleries at the conferences, Portfolio company, love them. You know, they're a 100% Bitcoin business or you know, healthcare, things like crowd health. I think crowd health did get, get rid of that bitcoin element but you know, it was entering into healthcare energy, how people are paying their electric bill via Lightning network and pay per usage and things that are, you know, happening outside on ramps offerings, the debit cards, the tradfi stuff, advertising technology, you know, rewards and all of these things. It's just, there's just so much going on. So the one thing that we all know is we know that bitcoin is going to do what we know it's going to do. So these companies that are building around it are going to do very well. It's going to be similar to the personal computer revolution or the Internet revolution that we all lived through. I'm a hair older than you, but not too much. And you know, I mean, is Blockstream the Cisco Systems of bitcoin? You take things like what's going to happen when bank of America actually adds bitcoin one day? What's going to happen? What are they going to do? Are they going to hire three lightning devs and figure it out? I don't think so. I think they're probably going to make some strategic acquisitions and buy some customers and buy some technology. And we've kind of seeded 45 for 40, some 40 to 50 companies in the space that are really kind of prime for when Uber does decide to add bitcoin. What are they going to do? So I mean that's, that's what I'm focused on. I haven't been kind of distracted with the shiny bitcoin treasury companies. I think it's cool, I think it's interesting and fun. But you know, we stay in our lane here, which is, and by the way, I don't know why the bitcoin treasury companies are putting that in through an amboss deal and actually generating riskless yield, even if it's one to one and a half percent on the Lightning network just routing payments. I mean, imagine if Saylor took that and was, was actually generating riskless yield by putting some of it to work. Right. I think we're going to see a lot of those type of strategies coming too.
- [36:30]
Walker
I think there have been, I'm forgetting it Might have been the B B Hodl company, the one that just launched in the uk. I think that was part of their kind of general game plan was not just buy bitcoin and hold bitcoin, but also make a return by providing liquidity on the lightning network. And so like I think, I think that that's, that's, that's cool because there's been this whole kind of debate about well, do you want a, you know, some of these businesses have, they have their, their core business, right? Or what was their core business like strategy as the perfect example? Microstrategy. When and there's still microstrategy, they have that core, you know, business intelligence, business analytics business. Now that is obviously a super small relative piece of their pie, but it's still cash flow on their side, right? But then this, okay, is that better or is the pure play bitcoin treasury company better where all they do is just, they're just, they're just raising to buy more bitcoin, right? And to me it's like it seems like the ultimate best thing to have. And again, I'm no genius about this stuff, but just like gut feeling is like you'd want to have a business that is accumulating bitcoin for its bitcoin treasury through whatever fiat vehicles it can on public markets, but then also has some sort of a core business that is actually related to bitcoin as a technology that is related to these secondary layers that is somehow providing services to this. You know, like that's a, that's a mutually beneficial thing, right? You're stacking bitcoin because obviously, but also you want to be part of this ecosystem. If there's ways for you to make money within this ecosystem that ultimately then benefits the value of your bitcoin holdings, that just seems like a win win to me. So I mean do you think we start to see, I guess like is the current kind of pure play treasury bitcoin treasury companies, do you think just sort of an intermediary step between a lot of these maybe smaller bitcoin startups starting to get acquired by these public vehicles that are already public, that are already publicly traded, like starting to snap up some of these startups that say, okay, well we want to have a bitcoin business, as you said, it's like it's easier to acquire one than it is to one up from scratch. Is that kind of your thesis for where some of this is going? In addition to like maybe the banks of America's or the JP Morgan's trying to acquire some of these things. Where do you think we head there?
- [38:51]
Muzz
The Bitcoin treasury companies eventually acquiring operating businesses that actually make money in the Bitcoin space. This is something that we've been speculating about and we had a panel somewhere, I can't remember where, if it was in Helsinki or something talking about it. But we all kind of think that that's the way that it's going to go for a lot of these companies. I want to talk about the BE Hotel because now that that's public I actually, I actually can talk about it. So Coincorner was, is one of our portfolio companies. Love them to death. Amazing team. Legends of Lightning Bolt cards. Everything that they've done. They've been around for over 10 years by the way. And tiny part of Isle of Man where they're based out of Monster of a company. Really cool. So they were actually behind that BE Hodl etf. And while it's not them. Okay. It's not them so to speak. They're doing all the buys and sells for acquiring on that and then they are the ones actually responsible for putting the Bitcoin to work to generate some of that yield. They're like legends and they're doing it themselves in house. And I think that a lot of these companies, these ETFs will want to acquire cash flow positive Bitcoin businesses to their benefit. Right. Because you're, they're, they're mining sats all day long with what they're doing. And I just, I don't know how it's sustainable, you know, long term. That etf, you know, that's like a partnership for Coin Corner. Right. Which is, which is great.
- [40:21]
Walker
Behold. Is not an E, it's not an etf, is it?
- [40:25]
Muzz
I think so, isn't it? The, the UK launched one that just happened.
- [40:31]
Walker
I didn't, I thought it was still like, I didn't think it was technically an etf. I could be wrong on this. You're probably more dialed in than I am. I thought it was still like a typical Bitcoin treasury company.
- [40:42]
Muzz
Okay, all right. So you're right, you're right.
- [40:44]
Walker
The operating business.
- [40:46]
Muzz
You're right. So it's not an etf. You're totally. I'm sorry. It is a Treasury company that has aligned themselves with, you know, Coincorner and is out to get some yield on the Lightning Network and, and whatever. But yeah, I think that a lot of these companies are going to make some of those acquisitions. I think it's just a matter of Time. You know, we just had our first acquisition in our portfolio for Slice. You know, Slice was acquired as a part of the whole, the team that basically created Fold, that spun out Fold, they're called Thesis. You know, they were, they acquired Lolli, they acquired Slice and they're going after bitcoin rewards. They want to, they want to take a piece of the bitcoin rewards market. You know, so while that wasn't like a 3000x return, because it did happen rather quickly in the, in the life cycle of the company, it's a good sign and we're starting to see a lot of life come back to the public markets with IPOs, however they're performing. Right. Gemini, I know we're not talking bitcoin only here, but Gemini and Bullish going public and there's a bunch on deck and I think Kraken is going to go here pretty soon and I just think that we're going to start seeing some, some acquisitions and consolidation in the space.
- [42:04]
Walker
In terms of like, I guess generally the, from like on the, on the technical side, in terms of what sort of technical solutions you think are our technical products, technical services that you guys are looking at that you think are going to be kind of really hot? Because you mentioned sort of the cyclical nature of a lot of these things, Obviously you guys have a huge focus on lightning, on payments, on things that are built on and around these layer twos. Is that where you really see kind of this next wave of both growth in companies, but also from the user adoption standpoint, kind of this bridging between what people are used to, whether it be various rewards or things like that, but bridging some of these familiar topics, these familiar products and services, but doing it on a bitcoin standard basically, Is that where you guys are kind of seeing this evolving in terms of just like let's say actual retail user adoption of Bitcoin and how like that's actually going to like what does that actually look like for the people that are going to be using this? Does that make sense?
- [43:07]
Muzz
Yeah, I think that all of these things play an important part. The ETFs and those type of plays make it very easy for Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob to log into their Fidelity account account and buy IBIT or whatever they want and have some exposure to the price they're not using Bitcoin. Right. And then it leads to hopefully there isn't like a big blow up that makes everyone second guess everything that's going on with custody and realizing that, you know, there's another way to, to basically actually use their Bitcoin. But getting people like, as far as the tech, the tech frontier and things that you know, we're looking at or excited about, I mean everyone's talking about Ark. You know, we just missed a deal for Ark is a pretty big deal. Everyone's talking about Ark. I mean everyone in tradfi land, you know, Vlad from Robinhood. I mean if the guy. Every other word he says is tokenization, okay? Every other thing he says is tokenization. The world is going to be tokenized. And Yesterday actually the SEC just put forward forth framework for tokenizing stocks to trade 24 7. Okay. And that's the SEC putting it forward. So like this is definitely coming. The question is, will all this stuff come to bitcoin? Because what I've been saying for the last 10 years is anything that matters will eventually be done on Bitcoin. You know, it's, you know, ordinals, you know, NFTs were created by bitcoin. You know what I mean? The first NFTs we're done on Bitcoin, it's just, it's too busy like solving all the world's problems like you're saying. So will the tokenization race win? Will liquid win? Okay, when it comes time to, I hate to, I hate the real world asset thing that people do, rwa, whatever they say. But like what's, what's going to happen? Are they going to go to a bunch of crypto things? Is everyone going to go, Is that going to come to Bitcoin? I can't wait to see. Because the tokenization of even our investments, even investments, you know, if you invested in a, in a, if you invested a few thousand dollars into a startup through Lightning Ventures, that's done right now in a completely traditional way with DocuSign. And there's really no liquidity until an event happens. But what if we could tokenize your few thousand dollars investment? Not tokenize it. Right, but you know what I mean? Like give you a token and then be able to create some sort of like bulletin board, some sort of even private way for you to interact with another, you know, accredited cleared investor and get some liquidity by that. Because for these things to happen in the traditional VC land, like it's a lot of work to go to a secondary market and there's a right of first refusal and then the board has to approve and all of these other things. And that's really exciting because you might be willing to invest in more bitcoin startups. If you knew that you had options for liquidity, right. That were easier than the current model. So you've got like the Vlad from Robinhood, you know, he's tokenizing OpenAI, which is really pissing off Sam Altman. He doesn't want his shares tokenized, but traditionally that was never done. So it's kind of exciting. And I want to see all of that come to bitcoin. I want to see all of that just eat the world for. For that. Are meme coins going to come to bitcoin? I don't even know if they're there already, you know, but it seems like a lot of people use Solana. Like Solana is where your garbage, the mouth of where all meme coins spur from. Is that going to come to bitcoin? I don't know. I don't know if all of this is going to end up on bitcoin.
- [46:54]
Walker
Well, so let me ask you about that because I think like, I think there's already like shitcoins on Bitcoin with BRC 20s or whatever.
- [47:03]
Muzz
Are those still around?
- [47:04]
Walker
I have no idea. I don't know if people are still launched them or not. I know there was like that kind of initial spurt of them. I don't know if that's died out. Honestly, I don't pay attention to that side of things really at all. But about the tokenization, specifically, because this is something that gets thrown around as kind of a buzzword, we're going to put X on the blockchain. It's almost like this, this trope at this point, or it's this cliche, I should say. Is this something that you think. And even Larry Fink has talked about this stuff a lot. Everybody's talked about this. Like you said, tokenization of real world assets or of securities markets, whatever it might be. Is this something that you think that Bitcoin is actually needed for? Or can this sort of tokenization, like, do you just need a centralized database for it? Because that's where I come with so much of this stuff. It's like, do you really need to put it, quote on the blockchain? Like, does that actually deliver? Does that actually do anything beneficial? Or is that just the buzzword? And really you just need an efficient, centrally controlled database for what this is? You know what I mean?
- [48:07]
Muzz
Yeah. And it goes back to the basically the same argument or debate that's been happening since the 2013 when the first IC, the first altcoins started coming, is that, you know, most of what you need does not need a token, it doesn't need a blockchain. And a lot of this is actually just misuse of the word blockchain. I think that there are some very good use cases, right? And I can probably. I definitely want to name a few. But, like, what's not a good use case? They just misuse the word, okay? So when people say things like, your house, the deed to your house is going to be on a blockchain. If I lose the password, the backup phrase, the whatever, my house would be 100% irretrievable. Okay? That's a blockchain. That's how a blockchain works, right? So that's not a blockchain. That would be, hey, you know, we're going to eliminate red tape. There's going to be efficiencies. There's going to be a token that represents your house, but that's not a blockchain. That's just a way to ease 300 pages of paper and red tape and all sorts of things. It creates more efficiency in that your medical records, everyone, your medical records are going to be on a blockchain. Well, if I lose that and my medical records are gone forever, that's never going to happen because people can't save my life after I get hit by the car. So that's not a blockchain. Would it be easy for me to biometrically send some sort of token thing to a doctor and give my permission? And here's all my medical records in a way where we don't have people on the phone in the back and the fax is coming in and all the ways that, like, I used to. I had a history in the medical industry. Like, it's absolutely archaic. It's from another century, what they do. Sure, that would be really cool, right? That would be really cool. But that is not a blockchain, you know, or, hey, we're gonna do supply chain. And, you know, the, the, the, the bucket of Coca Cola is gonna go on here and there and block. That's like, that's like not a blockchain. That's just a better QR code, right? That's a centralized database, just like what you said. And most things need that. But there are things that would be really great, right? Like, what about certificate of authenticity? You know, I've got the Mickey Metal baseball. And instead of the little piece of paper, I can also have the piece of paper too, but I have something that represents that something that can't be copied, can't be, whatever. And if I lose that tough shit, okay? Because it's not my medical records and it's not the deed to my home. But fuck, you know what I mean? Like I need that. I'm not going to lose it, you know. So there are certain things that are kind of, kind of maybe interesting to think about. And I think that the tokenizing of the stocks, as long as it's a derivative and it's tracked properly and however they're auditing it and whatever they're doing, I think that's cool. I don't know why stocks don't trade 24 7. If you ask anybody who's over 55 or 60 years old on Wall street that's been around, they will tell you they hate this. They do not want a 247 market. They want things exactly the way that they are right now. It's 9:30 to 4 and holidays are off and Juneteenth is off and we're inventing new holidays. They want it that way and people just don't. I mean it's going to be dead. I mean, you know, and not just degen traders. It's just the world is a news driven market. Things are happening all the time and you should be able to hedge or get in and out of a position overnight at 6pm on a Sunday if something happens. So that type of tokenization I think is, is good and it's a token that represents something. But it's not like if I lose the tokenized Tesla shares, like I don't have an opportunity to lose it. There's no self custody of the tokenization of my Tesla shares. You know, it's just a way to actually create sort of a new market. And I think that that's cool with a lot of these private market investments, right? If I was going out and raising a fund and if I was finding an investor for $100,000 and that person was a bitcoiner, you know, when you invest in a venture fund you're looking at years, okay? With very, very limited liquidity options. And to be able to bring some of this tokenization efficiency to the LPGP venture markets to where hey, you invested 100k. Now 7 months later something happens in your life. There's a book value and you have a buyer who wants to give you 140, I don't know, with whatever you should be able to get in and out of that position and access some of that liquidity. And that's the type of tokenization that I'm excited about. And it has nothing to do with with mnemonic seed phrases and cold storage and whatever.
- [52:53]
Walker
That. That's what I was kind of getting at because, like, what you're describing there, it's like, yeah, it makes sense that these things you should be able to create liquid markets for like, any investable vehicle. Right? But you don't need to have. It doesn't need to be on the blockchain. Like, you just. You just need literally, like, you wouldn't necessarily want it to be either, as you said, because it's like you don't want to lose your private key and then that, what, that investment is just like, locked out forever. It's like, no, no, no. What you want is just a much more efficient, like, centralized market structure for these types of things that is actually operating like everything else does in the 21st century. Not like everything does, you know, did in the 20th century. Like, that's, that's the thing. But these, I mean, like, it's insane. And just as it relate, like even just like banks, like, it's just ridiculous that like, like, oh, you, sorry, you submitted your wire transfer, you know, after close of business today. So you have to wait till we wake up and get into, like, it's insane how archaic so much of this stuff is. Like, I'm so glad that bitcoin exists. Thank God for bitcoin, because every time I have to interact with the fiat system in any meaningful way, which is actually quite often still, it's like every time I'm just like, oh, my God, this is just like pulling teeth to get anything done. And like, I want to be able to make transactions at any given time without, you know, needing somebody to. To approve this or whatever. And so, yeah, I wanted to push on that a little bit because I think that idea of like, you know, put it on the block, like, you're not saying tokenize it on the blockchain, you're saying, no, like just create a 247 market for this and a liquidity pool that doesn't have anything to do with putting it, quote on the blockchain.
- [54:22]
Muzz
Fair. Yeah. And when you lose bitcoin and I've lost bitcoin, sadly not due to an exchange hack or something else, which I've lost plenty of bitcoin that way as well. However, you know, just losing access to a wallet. Okay, that is so unfortunate. Okay. And when you think about the social engineering things that happen with SIM swapping, okay, you should be able to have a private key for your telephone number that is only you. There's no other copy. Okay. That is yours. And when you move that from Verizon to T Mobile or to whatever you do and you prove ownership, okay, that would, could just end all of it. But you know what would be the, the downside is that if you lose that, you will lose access to your phone number or you will just never be able to move it. You will be a Verizon customer forever because you can't move it. Okay. And that's like kind of not that bad. You know, if you think about it like, is that really the end of the world? Like, it stops so much crime, it stops so many people, right, from, from doing terrible things. But it comes with risk, right? And that's bitcoin as well. You know, you hear a sovereign individual is everything that we preach forever. But hey, if you lose it, it's gone. And for some reason, I think I, I don't know why a lot more of that hasn't, hasn't happened. People need to just accept those risks. So I think those type of innovations are coming.
- [55:57]
Walker
I want to zoom out a little bit and just talk like more broadly about adoption and just market cycles because it feels like in my mind and I haven't been through a lot of bitcoin cycles, right? I got in 2020 after I've ignored bitcoin for longer than I've been in bitcoin in terms of the first time I heard about it to them when I finally started buying. That period is longer than the period that I've been stacking, which, which kills me. But like, it is what it is. You know, we all get at the price we deserve. But it feels like from my limited experience here that we're at this place right now where we've been like bitcoin's been kind of a stable coin, relatively speaking, for a little while. Like, it's, it had a, it had an incredible run up, right? And you know, it's a breaking over 100k. And then since then it's, you know, people have been somehow getting bored with the bitcoin price action. Even though it's above 100k or you hear Bitcoin crashes to 109,000 like insane, insane things to even say out loud. Where do you think we're at in terms of the cycles? Are you somebody who believes that four year cycles are really important in bitcoin? That the having cycles are really important in bitcoin? Are you more in the, like, liquidity cycles? Like this is actually not to do with the having as much. It's to do with Just like macro liquidity cycles. Is this time different from a cycle perspective? Where are you at right now? What's kind of your thesis? As we go into, as we go into this October where things are seem to be kicking off with a bang already in the first couple days, how are you looking at this? How are you digesting it?
- [57:26]
Muzz
Man, that's a ton of questions, Walker.
- [57:28]
Walker
I know, I like to look up on you.
- [57:31]
Muzz
So, you know, if you go to a traditional Wall street firm, anyone, bond trader, normal person, bitcoin going from 120 down to 109 in like, I mean a couple days, right. I mean sometimes you look at an hourly chart or a daily chart of bitcoin and you're like, what the, you know, I mean, I dropped four grand in, in an hour, you know, and those type of moves, when you measure it on a percentage basis, there's nothing stable about that. Like that would scare the crap out of any traditional, any traditional. It just, you don't get moves like that. Yeah, with some high flying, you know, low cap stocks and biotech, sometimes you get big moves to the upside and things like that. But, but those are really big moves. And I think that it's been less volatile than say in the past, right? Are we gonna have an 80% drop down to your point about, you know, previous cycles and what are we gonna see this cycle? I don't think that, but every asset in the world goes into a bear market except government spending, right? That's the only bull market. It's just gonna, just gonna go up forever. But every asset in the world, whatever it is, everything hits a bear market at some point in time. Whether it's tech stocks, real estate, anything. We were talking about markets earlier and the psychology of it and you know, after you've been around for a while and just kind of followed it, it's kind of fun to watch. It's fun to watch when the real estate market is hot and everything is coming in over the asking price, you know, or when there's flooded with inventory and it's a buyer's market, Bitcoin will have the same thing. The question is, this time around, will it be as deep as a correction? And I don't think so. Okay, remember NASDAQ dropped 70/ percent with the dot com and you had companies that were just adding.com to their name and just going up. Right. I don't think we're in that type of a world with the bitcoin treasury companies. But I don't know if we're Going to have quite as bad of a correction as we had before this time around. Because I just believe that there's too many buyers. I mean, I just think there's too many people on the sidelines. I mean, bitcoin is hitting an escape velocity. Whether it's Saudi princes and corporations or you know, Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob, however they're buying it through their ETFs or whatever they're doing, we're hitting that escape velocity. There's, there's just too many buyers. Okay, but however, is there going to be a catalyst? A catalyst for it? Now you remember the last cycle, you remember FTX, you remember BlockFi, you remember all these things that happened? I remembered Mount Gox. I still have a valid Mount Gox claim that I haven't been paid. Okay, so you have catalysts, you have catalysts for all these things. You have New York Attorney General going after tether. You have events that kind of, that cause it. So if you're kind of thinking in the future, not that you want to doom porn into it, right, because it's up and to the right forever, right? We're all good, we're going up. It's October, it's Moonvember, it's all that stuff. What could be a catalyst this time around, do you think that an issue maybe with, I don't know, coinbase custody? I think they have nine of at least almost all the Bitcoin ETFs. And so much of a honey pot with Coinbase custody. I don't know anything. I'm making shit up. We're sitting here talking BSing, right? Could that cause something? What about, God forbid it's not going to happen, but I'm coming up with things. It's fiction. What about North Korea for some reason hacking MicroStrategy's Bitcoin and the US government having to get involved and backstop MicroStrategy investors with dollars. And then the US government has to try and retrieve that bitcoin from North Korea. Okay, what does that signal? What does that do to the market? And by the way, when the US government gets that bitcoin back from North Korea, they're going to keep it because now it was part of that whole hack, right? That's a, that's a 6102 covertly, right? In, in, in this future, right? So you can go down all kinds of sci fi kind of weird things, but what's going to be the catalyst that busts it? These bitcoin treasury companies, like every, like they're going to sell, right? I mean eventually you have to, you have to manage your risk, you have to pay bills. There's, there's a time to scale into bitcoin. There's a DCA in and then there's the DCA out. Nobody talks to the DCA out. If we're at 180,000 bitcoin price, is there anything wrong with setting a DCA out to pay some bills every week and just kind of, I just, I don't see that crashing the market. But there just, there has to be a catalyst for this next wave down. Is it World War 3? Is it China and Russia versus the world? Is there something there, right? Because bitcoin does not like war. It should, it should love war, but it doesn't. Is it, is it that the cyber threats, they're all conditioning us. Everything you watch on tv, right, is all about the cyber threat. The cyber threat. The Internet's down, everything's down. Tesla's are crashing into each other. No ATMs, that's not going to be good for bitcoin. You're going to have bigger problems, right? We're going to have bigger problems than bitcoin at that point in time. But what could be the catalyst? I don't think that we're going to have quite as, quite as deep, but it all depends on the catalyst. To me, I mean the four year cycle, I think we have time and this four year cycle broke it. Remember, we made a new all time high before the having that never happened before. So I don't know.
- [63:05]
Walker
It'S like, yeah, nobody has a crystal ball, right? But it's fun to speculate on this. And we are entering this time of kind of. I mean, I suppose everyone probably thinks that the time that they're living through is full of unprecedented turmoil and change. Maybe that's just a part of being human. But boy, there seems to be a lot of stuff converging right now and it'll be interesting. I guess the big question is we know bitcoin will probably have a significant pullback at some point just because there's still so many whales out there with amounts of bitcoin that I can't even fathom. Thousands and thousands of bitcoin. We saw one of these whales unloading what was like 80,000 Bitcoin. I mean, like what? Like that. Just like that's insane. You know, a couple other whales with a few tens of thousands, like that's nuts. And actually the market pretty much soaked that up right, like that. That's an incredible thing too because we do have a ton of buy side, buy side demand, obviously, but there are, those whales are out there and they can, they can shift large, large amounts of capital very quickly. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. As for me, it's like I'm going to keep dollar cost averaging. I'm going to. When bitcoin takes a little bit of a dip, I do a couple smash buys there and yeah, then just keep trying to podcast and create value and that's the playbook.
- [64:28]
Muzz
And hang out with your amazing, fantastic wife and raise your beautiful son and love life.
- [64:32]
Walker
Touch grass.
- [64:34]
Muzz
Touch grass, man.
- [64:35]
Walker
Just, yeah, live life. Go hang out at some bitcoin conferences and just have a good time with it. One thing I wanted to talk to you about also, this is kind of going back to a more, let's say technical side as it relates to the Lightning Network specifically. We've seen a lot of stuff recently, and not just recently, but generally it just seems to be popping up more recently about people talking about, okay, like the lightning network. It really only works in a meaningful way from a custodial standpoint. I've seen this argument being made a lot. Obviously a lot of the companies that you are investing in, they're either providing some sort of custodial lightning service or utilizing custodial services. Is that where you're at too, like for you? And you know, you mentioned some of these other protocols like, like arc these other layers. How are you looking at this in terms of, is the Lightning network something that you think is really better geared towards these custodial type services? Like that's where you're, you know, it's obviously where you're going to get the best user experience. Because having a, using a custodial service that has massive fat channels open with other custodial services is going to like, you're going to have more liquidity, right, than if you're opening your own channels. Like I know this from having my own channels open. What's your read on that? Does that at all impact like the investment thesis has, quote, lightning failed if it doesn't, if it's primarily used custodially. Or is that irrelevant in your opinion?
- [65:59]
Muzz
Completely irrelevant. But you have all these like, it would be a great infographic. You have all these clusters of people, you have some that will say self custodial lightning. It's the only way. It's easy and it works perfectly. And I just tested, you know, actually every bitcoin lightning wallet that I could probably about a Month and a half ago I spent an entire weekend. I did so much testing and every non custodial wallet have failed payments. Every single one. Everyone. And it's nothing wrong, it's just. It's. It's not easy. And I can open channels and I can pay the fees and I can do whatever they want. And no matter what I seem to do, it just. There's failed payments. And with the custodial wallets, you know, something like Speed or Blink. I never have failed payment, maybe ever. I mean and I'm talking beefy payments man, you know, 5 million SATs, you know, 6 million SATs and not having a failed payment, that's wild. So you know there are people and I'm not saying that it's broken. And to each his own. And by the way, the non custodial Lightning wallets are crazy expensive to use. You know, the bitcoin wallets in general have upped their fees all the way around. And good for them if they can get it. But even someone like river to make a Lightning transaction, I mean they'll charge you 35 cents, 40 cents. That's kind of crazy. You know what I mean? It's kind of crazy to pay 40 cents for a thousand dollar Lightning network transaction. Like you know, and they have to make money and they're doing what they're doing. But like that's, that's a lot. And when you use the non custodial the fees are a lot man. They are way higher. I A B tested all of them. As opposed to something like Speed or Blink where what is it like 13sats, it was like nothing, you know. So there's definitely pros and cons. And there's pros and cons to everything, right? Like if I have money in a bank account that's not mine, I can like use Venmo. I can use some layer 2 fiat system, right? Because I'm there and I have a certain amount of risk and then I can have a thousand bucks in my pocket and someone can beat the shit out of me on the A train and I can lose that, right? And there's. There's other kinds of risks. So I don't think that it's, it's winner take all. I don't think that the average person will be able to with. With right now currently the way that is set up. I don't think the average person is going to be able to manage a non custodial wallet. And nor do I think that the average person even really cares. I mean do people really, do people really care? That's the question. I don't like, I don't like sending payments into Strike because at the end of the year you get a 10, you get a 1099 div or whatever, a 1099 B from strike that basically says, hey, you deposited money, you sent money and then you have to report a cost basis. So I would prefer to just avoid that. But can you sleep at night if you have a few dollars on some of these exchanges that have perfect Lightning UI UX experiences? I think so. Until it really gets to a point where it's. And then you look at Aqua, right? Aqua's going the opposite route. They're really doing everything with liquid. And I think Misty Breeze, the new Misty Breeze wallet is the same way. But I don't know, what do you think, man?
- [69:23]
Walker
I mean personally, it's like everything has trade offs, right? Like you, you know, you use Bitcoin if you want to have unconfiscatable, unfuckable money, you use Bitcoin layer 1. If you want to send really large amounts of money, you use Bitcoin layer 1. If you want to store that money for a long period of time and sleep soundly at night knowing that nobody is going to rug pull you, you use Bitcoin layer 1. When I use Bitcoin layer twos, I don't care as much like I have. The first Lightning node I set up was a. The Raspi Blitz node. Like right when I started getting into Bitcoin, like I was, you know, doing command line and stuff felt really cool. But it was tricky, right? And obviously there, it's gotten, there's a lot of easier implementations to do that now. You know, I have a, I have various things. I use a Albi Hub for one of them. It's still like, you know, I'm paying them like a monthly fee and somehow I still have to, still have to manage my liquidity on there, which is annoying. And channels are getting closed and whatnot. And I'm like, this is a tear. But like I just, I just want to use a custodial thing because I, I'm not using this for massive amounts. I'm literally using this for like zaps on noer for paying for stuff. If I'm ordering something online and I want to pay in bitcoin for using it at conferences. So I'm not putting any super meaningful amount of money on there. I'm putting a small amount. It's you know, like, you know, an amount that I would potentially carry in my, in my wallet that I'd be comfortable, you know, if somebody, I don't know where the A train is but if somebody, you know, beats the shit out of me on the A train, that, that's what I, what I have it for. I do. I mean I love the user experience of Aqua. Aqua is super nice. I use liquid a decent amount for, for various things because I think it, it works really well. It's weird to me that more people don't use it. Obviously that has its trade offs too, right? That's a federation, that's, it's a. And it's a different, it's everything's a different trust model. It's like you've also got E Cash, you know, on, on, on Cashew. Like that's another different trust model. That's another opportunity for you to potentially get rugged. But you're making a trade off because you also get near perfect privacy and you've got in like offline payments, you've got instant, you know, basically instant settlement. Like it's really, really cool. It works super, super well and it's so private but there's trade offs. So for me it's like it all comes down to what you need, right? And it's like different trade offs for different purposes. You always have the Bitcoin base layer to fall back on when you want to have something that is uncensorable, unconfiscatable, unfuckable. That's what Bitcoin layer 1 is for. For everything else I'm willing to accept those trade offs because I'm not talking like I don't need the same things out of layer two that I need out of layer one Bitcoin. Those are just, they're different needs for me. I am curious, I want to ask you, just to clarify. So you said the, the custodial wallets that you were using were cheaper transaction fee wise or more expensive than the self custodial, the non custodial wallets you were using.
- [72:19]
Muzz
Other way around, no. 100% cheaper and actually in a lot of times like nearly free, maybe free. If you use Speed wallet and you make a lightning transaction, there's a more than likely chance that when you look at the fee after you send it, the fee will be zero. Like many times it's zero. Right. If it's a small amount, it's a very small amount. But when you send from river or Zeus or Phoenix or these other wallets, you're, you're going to pay what I think what seemed to Me is a significant fee, you know, and Rivers varies for lightning, right? For Lightning is like nearly free, an instant, like 35 cents. You know, one time it was like a $10 and it was a lightning transaction. But you know, again, just what you're saying about like, like on chain, I mean, when the mempool is empty, you know, one sat per V by I'll die on this hill. The thing is, is like Speed Wallet, for example, I, I went to make a, I mean sizable, right? Like maybe a 0.2 deposit off of Speed Wallet and the fee was fucking $200. I had to like wipe my eyes. So it's like I can use Speed Wallet custodial for nearly free. Nearly free. And it's beautiful, wonderful experience. And then you go to make an on chain payment and they charge you 1%. So that's like, then it's like, you know, and that's, that's truth. That's, that's the way that it is. And you know, okay, I'll go back to using Blockstream Green. I don't think it's called Blockstream Green anymore. But that was the best mobile wallet for onchain. Was the Blockchain Green. I think they rebranded it. I haven't used it in a little while. But like when you send from your. Yeah, when you send from your trezor or when you send from the hardware wallet at home, you specify the fee, the dynamic fee estimation, one fee per bit. That's what I want to pay. I'm a cheap son of a bitch. I want to pay $200.
- [74:22]
Walker
Yeah, that's insane. That's, that's worse than Fiat. You mentioned the, you mentioned river, but Rivers is, is custodial, is it not? I mean you're talking about just using lightning to.
- [74:31]
Muzz
Rivers is custodial, but river, the river is a business and you know, every week we do our.
- [74:37]
Walker
So you lumped it in with the non custodial ones. That's why I was just, I was clarifying. So you're just saying those are. The river one was on the expensive side at the same level as some of the non custodial ones. Whereas these, some of these custodial options, if you're doing lightning, they have these massive fat channels that are open. The liquidity like you sending a couple hundred bucks through that, you know, through that one bitcoin channel doesn't even move the needle. And so it's, it's super cheap. That's what you're getting at, right?
- [75:01]
Muzz
I'm getting at that. But I'm also getting at river used to be nearly free, right? When they like, like Uber. How Uber used to be like really cheap and now it's like I pay more for the Uber than I did for the flight. You know what I mean? Like that type of deal. So, you know, and God bless River. And they're an amazing company and all. But like Lightning Ventures, we do our payroll every Friday. Some people get paid in Bitcoin. You know, we have our corporate account with river, which is great experience. Love River. But when I make those lightning payments every week, I can't help but look, you know, if somebody's getting payroll and it costs me a $30 to do a lightning transaction for his payroll that week. It used to be free. I mean it used to be zero. It would be free with something like Speed Wallet, right? And then you go to strike and strike gives you zero, no fee for an on chain withdrawal. You know, it's, it's free if you're willing to wait the 24 hour, like no rush, whatever, period. Send it. When you do the next batch, it's zero, it's free. So it's just all of these exchanges and things, they all have different flavors and they all have different features.
- [76:08]
Walker
It's different strokes for different folks, right? I mean it is amazing that we have so many options. We have so many options. I've got a Lightning wallet folder on my phone that's got like, I don't know, like 15 different ones in there that I've played around with. Like pretty much all of them, I think. And it's, it's cool to have options. Like I've got my, I've got my ones that are kind of my go tos. But it's, it's nice. There's, there's a ton of different ones popping up. I think we'll start like. Do you think we'll still see a lot more proliferation of different wallets and you know, services around this? Like, are you guys looking at the ark stuff at all too? Is that something you think is going to be blended into a lot of these Lightning wallets that it'll just be like. So they'll be kind of dual purpose. You'll have multiple options. How do you see that happening?
- [76:52]
Muzz
I think they have a solution and they're going to be in, they're going to be in Lugano. There should be a pretty cool demo and news or whatever. But I think they have a unified QR code that works. But you know, it's hard to just actually like it's hard to just keep up with everything going on in bitcoin. You know, things that are out there that everyone's using. Start thinking about these new things that are kind of on the cutting edge. But I mean, I love that team and I love them. But I'm also in the camp that like lightning works and it works great. Okay. I mean there's all these different things. There's a million ways to use it in optimal way and suboptimal depending on like what's important to you. But I like my payments to go through. Right. But I also have a start nine at home. I have a start nine at home and I just, it's. I, it's just. I would rather just keep. Just do the hardware wallet and not really do a complex multi sig, you know, and I just don't need that. Like, it's just not for me. But there's just so many options right now for people that it has to kind of just work magically. You know, if you had to go into a command line to send an email, it just, it wouldn't work. You know, I. So I think we're getting there. I just think that it's a lot for a new person to come in and you, you don't want to get scared off with bip.
- [78:19]
Walker
We're still pretty early on the UX side of things in terms of like what?
- [78:23]
Muzz
Oh, dude, big time, big time early. I mean it's, it's gotta, it's gotta be simple, it's gotta be simplified.
- [78:34]
Walker
And I think a lot of that just like, you know, you've seen like. I think that was a big thing that Aqua was pushing for, right? With we brought up theirs earlier. They were pushing for how do we make this? Like, I think. What was their tagline? Something like the bitcoin wallet for your grandma. Like, you know, bring it back to the old grandma. Like can, can your grandma figure this out? And I think that's like a, it's, it's a good goal, especially on the payment side, like grandma figuring out like self custody and that may be a little bit, you know, a little bit trickier, but it's like maybe grandma doesn't need to, you know, like, I don't know. I go back and forth on that. I want to be conscious of your time here, Muz, but was there anything we didn't get a chance to talk about with regard to either, like the investing you do, your portfolio companies, anything like that? Well, I'll just remind people again if you're you know, if you're still listening, go and check out Plan B week. It was plan bweek.com, right? Plan, yeah. Plan bweek.com if you want to get involved in this pitch competition in Lugano. And if you are in Lugano, come say hello. Carl and I will be there. Let's go have a beer, Muzz. We're going to need to have some beers. But yeah, anything else we. We should cover?
- [79:38]
Muzz
No, that's it. So if you're interested in learning about investing in bitcoin startups, you can get the skinny at LTNG Ventures. You can sign up the form there, we'll send you an invite to join our group and all that good stuff. If you're working on something cool, go ahead and fill out the form. As a builder or founder, whatever, that's really cool too. Maybe there's portfolio companies or something we can do to help you out in one way or another. And we also just launched Thunderfunder.com which is a Reg CF equity crowdfunding portal. So not like Geyser where people are donating, but sort of retail investors that don't have to meet any kind of accreditation for Thunder Funder. And we are going to be firing up some really cool deals on there. So that's it. That's all I'm interested in doing.
- [80:26]
Walker
All right, man. Love it. Well, appreciate you coming on here. Stoked to see you in Lugano and yeah, until then, let's keep playing with Lightning wallets, huh?
- [80:36]
Muzz
You got it, man.
- [80:37]
Walker
All right, Take it easy, Muzz.
- [80:39]
Muzz
Thanks.
- [80:46]
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 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. Grab sponsor links. Head to substack.comwalkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you. And head to bitcoin podcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the bitcoin podcast. Until next time, stay free.