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THE Bitcoin Podcast
NUMBER-GO-UP vs FREEDOM-GO-UP: JEFF BOOTH & ROCKSTAR (THE Bitcoin Podcast)
01:38:56
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- [00:00]
Jeff Booth
Right. If you look at bitcoiners, they. They keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. And as you, as you understand what that, what that means, then you apply all of your resources, all of your mind, all of, all of it. How do we keep this decentralized and secure? What is coming next? What's building on top of it? And you move your time away from the extracted system to the cooperative system, and it's just starting. So why I love both of you guys and so many of the other beautiful minds in this is there. They are unbiable. You are unviable. You are building. You are building this. And it doesn't matter. Rockstar chooses to stay private. I'm public. It actually doesn't matter. But all of us matter because we are bitcoin. We're defending it, we're building the path forward. So it's used as a medium of exchange. We are the network.
- [00:53]
Rockstar
It is really interesting how we cooperate without being forced to fall into certain structure. It's very organic. And what Jeff is saying about most people not realizing how profound this technology is, I would compare it to that whole shift with Copernicus where you had a models where Earth is the central center of the universe and then it's like not even center or solar system, but we as humans, humans really are truth seeking machine. And we get born into certain systems and then spend our lifetime trying to get out of those systems towards a better one like the one that we helped build. And you even now have people who look at money as a function of state. Right. While us that are part of this revolution that bitcoin is, have realized that truth that money should be separate from the state. And once that happens, we can really usher a new golden age. And it will be that size of a shift from Earth is the center of universe towards, hey, let's recognize first solar system, then galaxies, then everything else, and then we have a model that's much closer to the truth.
- [02:23]
Walker
Greetings and salutations, my fellow plebs. My name is Walker and this is the bitcoin podcast. The bitcoin time chain is 870121 and the value of one bitcoin is still one bitcoin. Today's episode is Bitcoin talk where I talk with my guests about bitcoin and whatever else comes up. Today we have two of my absolutely favorite people, Jeff Booth and my uncle Rockstar. This was an impromptu noster only live stream, and if you want to watch this show live in the future, you can only do that on nostr. It's also the first time Rockstar and Jeff have ever done a recorded conversation together and I'm honestly honored that I was able to host it because I respect the heck out of both of these guys. We get into a lot in this episode, including number go up versus freedom go up the Bitcoin strategic reserve and whether or not that'll actually save fiat because Bitcoin repricing the world, inflation versus Deflation, open source development, how to start living in a Bitcoin world right now, life philosophy and a whole lot more. Before we dive in, do me a favor and subscribe to the Bitcoin podcast wherever you're watching or listening. Check out bitcoin podcast.net for episodes and additional resources. Head to the show Notes to grab a discount link for my sponsor Bitbox or go directly to Bitbox Swiss Slash Walker and use the promo code Walker to get your 5% off the fully open source Bitcoin only Bitbox O2 hardware wallet. Send an email to hello@bitcoinpodcast.net if you have feedback or if you're interested in sponsoring the Bitcoin podcast. And if you find this show valuable, consider giving it a zap on Noster or a boost on Fountain to give value back.
- [04:08]
Unknown
I really appreciate it.
- [04:10]
Walker
Without further ado, let's get into this bitcoin talk with Jeff Booth and Uncle Rockstar. We are apparently live.
- [04:24]
Unknown
I'm going to check the old Zap dot stream. I'm still very much a newbie at this, you know, but I, I think, I think I'm slowly getting. Getting a little better, getting a little more comfortable on the. The live stream set up here. Luckily, Zap Stream honestly makes it so dang easy. It's another beautiful Nostr tool that I think is highly underutilized right now.
- [04:48]
Rockstar
Jeff, I was just telling Walker that we really need to pump him up a little bit since he is a hub communications hub for all of us on Nostr. And the way he does these streams that are Nostr only and brings community together is great. You agree?
- [05:10]
Jeff Booth
Completely agree. Yeah. The. Not only did he come up with an ostrich, but now he's. Now he's. Now he's leading the charge on Noster Omen. So really well done.
- [05:23]
Unknown
You guys are gonna be. Come on.
- [05:26]
Rockstar
No, by the end of this episode you will be all red. But I think it will be great when we have nature with Jeff. We have cyberspace with me, so we have all the bases covered.
- [05:41]
Unknown
It's perfect. Really. All right. I'm trying to blast this link out right now. Let's see. I may have just sent it a couple of times. We shall find out when I go here on the side. All right. I did in fact, blast it out a couple of times, but that's good. The more the merrier, right?
- [05:56]
Rockstar
Yep.
- [05:56]
Unknown
You know, I've been kind of amazed because if you listen to the naysayers talk, you would believe that perhaps there weren't too many active people on Noster.
- [06:06]
Walker
But it is incredible.
- [06:07]
Unknown
You can push out a link and we've got 14 people in here already. I have a feeling that number is going to swell significantly. But, you know, the nostrils just like to. They like to have fun and they like to engage in nice conversations. And Sarah of Zap Cooking, thank you for being such a regular listener to these streams. It's nice to have you here. And for anyone who hasn't checked out Zap Cooking, it is awesome. You can find great recipes and post.
- [06:33]
Walker
Recipes and get zapped bitcoin for.
- [06:35]
Unknown
For them. How wonderful is that?
- [06:41]
Rockstar
Wonderful.
- [06:42]
Unknown
And we just jumped up to 77 viewers like that, so that's super nice. Well, guys, we'll go into this with a slow burn so that we don't say too many incredibly insightful things before more folks have joined. But it's a treat to have you both here. You were just saying backstage that while you guys have obviously talked many times, been on calls many times, this is the first recorded session of you two together, which is kind of amazing.
- [07:13]
Jeff Booth
You're a fir. You're a first, Walker.
- [07:16]
Unknown
Well, hey, you know, I think I knew I could, you know, tempt you both with the. The Noster only live stream. I figured it was a good carrot there.
- [07:25]
Jeff Booth
So, yeah, it's funny because how. How close we are. Right. And for a long time now between Rockstar and I and to first time doing a podcast together. It's fantastic.
- [07:41]
Rockstar
Yeah. And from my side as well, because some of those conversations we had, Jeff, I do wish they were recorded because some of the lessons taken from, you know, hearing about your journey and paths you took, paths you didn't take, they have been very impactful for me. And there is also the fact that my. I don't know, Walker, if you saw my message on the latest reply of Jeff, he posted on the whole paid in Bitcoin documentary. Did you see that one, Walker?
- [08:19]
Unknown
I've not seen it. Could you regale us?
- [08:22]
Rockstar
So Jeff is also one of those people that all the long form documentaries that come out with me and the work I'm doing in Open source community and with BTC pay server. He is a big promoter and then watches those documentaries, gives me feedback. And I said in reply to his post about the latest one paid in bitcoin, how he really is a pillaring community. Because I am very happy to be one of many that Jeff silently supports. And again, those conversations mean a lot as you progress through this journey that bitcoin is. So I'm actually really looking forward to. As I say, Jeff, like we had many conversations, there were great conclusions. Now this one is public, so let's see how this one goes. And if we manage to make few aha moments for people watching this, awesome.
- [09:29]
Unknown
You know, I. And I wanted to. It felt like a good day to have this kind of a conversation because obviously bitcoin is pumping right now. You know, we have a lot of NGU at the moment. I don't think to anyone, like not to anyone's surprise, really, right. This is all kind of expected to happen, but whenever it does happen, I haven't been around that long. This is really just.
- [09:54]
Walker
So this will be the fourth year.
- [09:56]
Unknown
Like since 2020 I started. So I really haven't even gotten a full cycle. Like I don't know the feeling of these things, but I mean it feels pretty good. I think a lot of people who started stacking around 2021, 2020, like myself or 2022, anytime since 2020, you're starting to feel pretty great, right? You're a bit euphoric, like, ah, you know, see, yes, you know, I was right. Yes, this feels so good after a long bear market. But at the same time, I think it's an important time to also reflect on, let's say, the larger context of things and not just the, you know, the number go up, but the freedom go up. And the fact that, yes, this is great to see. You know, there's a lot of hype around bitcoin strategic reserve, around, you know, nation state competition for it, all these things. But there's also a lot of projects that are happening perhaps that don't get nearly this sort of attention as a tweet about, you know, breaking a new nation state is going to announce a bitcoin strategy in the next, you know, next 48 hours. It doesn't get quite the same hype. And so I wanted to bring you guys here to just kind of. To give a little perspective. And I mean maybe a, maybe a good place to start off is just kind of the question around number go up, you know, FGU freedom go up versus ngu. Number go up. Do you think that it's that the number go up leads to the freedom go up? As in, does the store of value increasing? You know, does that narrative strengthening lead ultimately to more freedom go up? Does it lead to a stronger network, which then allows bitcoin to stay decentralized and secure, which ultimately allows for more incredible things to be built on top of it? Or is there a risk of the number go up vibe, let's say, clouding the potential of some of the incredible freedom tech that's being built on top of this, or even moving us more towards potentially captured, captured instances of coins, let's say, if that makes sense.
- [12:03]
Jeff Booth
Do you want to take that first?
- [12:08]
Rockstar
Sure. I even recently was on Twitter Spaces for Bitcoin conference in Mena and really excited for that event. You're coming as well, Jeff, right?
- [12:23]
Jeff Booth
I am, yeah.
- [12:25]
Rockstar
So we will have some times together. But I said that for me it was always about freedom go up because if bitcoin ends up being another way for rich to get richer, then we have failed from my point of view. And it's all about reforming money and separating it from the state. And I think we're doing pretty good job when it comes to that. Because you look at the real value in Bitcoin is connections that you make and these small communities that we establish where you can discuss and work on topics that are extremely important for the future with way less noise. If there was no bitcoin, I wouldn't be connected with. If I wouldn't be connected with you, Walker, and then I wouldn't be on Oster. And what I always now see on Ostr is the posts that I make. They may not have as much, you know, likes and retweets or reposts now they're called on X. But conversation that happens there is way more engaging where more. Way more genuine. It's away from the mainstream narrative that you see on X and other like, oh, who will President Trump select in his cabinet? And that type of discussions. So for me, it's definitely always about freedom go up and I think we will be successful, but it also depends on us, all of us that bitcoin has empowered over last decade. Plus, what is it that we will do? And that's the main question for me.
- [14:24]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna try to tackle this in a. So bitcoin is the most important discovery that humans have ever discovered up to. Up to now. And that that could easily. If somebody doesn't understand it deep enough, it could sound like no way. So, but people do, who do do understand it, understand why. And, and the why is this, at least in my, at least in my fractal view of what's, of what's happening. We've always, for 5,000 years, we've always lived in an extractive economy. Always. We would invade other lands to be able to steal their gold or resources and enslave other people. And if we had the biggest army, we could, we could do that and get away with it. And so the world always looked like that. Some never sets on the British Empire was that we would go to war over and over, as that would break down throughout history, to be able to reset financial systems, to essentially be able to capture money, to be able to impose our rules on other people. So that has led to everything that we take for granted today. It's also led to some of the positive that we take for granted today. And the winners of those wars and the winners of those systems have created, at least in the early stage, in the early stages of that, before it breaks down, they've created everything we take for. Take for granted. The. But. So that system, now we do that extraction through a monetary system that if you're closer to the top of that extraction, you're winning. Or in the truth is, you're actually not really winning because your, your soul is being destroyed by it because it's based on extraction. But you think you're winning versus a whole bunch of other people who are losing. And so most people on the planet today don't know that they're living from within that system. And Bitcoin changes that to a system of cooperation, and it imposes cooperation. As you go deeper and deeper in Bitcoin, what people feel in Bitcoin, the closeness and them changing is, is a system based on cooperation that every single person wins by more people entering. Now, most people don't know what I just described there. The world's always been deflationary, and that means the free market has always been deflationary. And that means everything we do, trading with each other all over the world should flow to 8 billion people. But we've never had a vehicle to allow it to float 8 billion people. And why? Because money is superordinate to laws. And if you could control money, you control everything else. If you can control money and you had a million people on your system, then you steal from a million people slowly. If you can control money and you have 8 billion people on your system, you. You're stealing from 8 billion people at different rates. Around the world. And so bitcoin doesn't care that I'm here, that rockstar's here, that you're every 10 minutes, it's imposing. I'd actually, in fact one of the things that I think about is for people who are so far out of touch, they're living in the Matrix that's extracting from them. Instead of saying Bitcoin, just say what would a decentralized secure protocol that you couldn't change, that couldn't be co opted that was bounded by energy look like? And if you're measuring from, if you're in one system measuring from the system where all of the human development, all of the productivity gains are flowing through 8 billion people eventually moving to the system, it, it, it looks like something you can't even, it's very hard for me to even explain what that looks like because it means all the 7.5 billion people that are trapped in the extractive system and they're slaves to it, we unlock their minds and deflation is faster in service of all of us. It's so, it's so big a deal. But as you enter bitcoin, I kind of think of myself entering and for any. I sent a thank you note to all the cryptographers and all of the people who knew this way before me and who were fighting this way before me, knowing how important this was. Now I'm not just thinking Satoshi, I'm thinking all of the, the people who came up with shots on net that failed, that then inspired Satoshi to create, to create the thing that freed all of us. So I'm talking about all of the human progress. And that's actually why I'm so bullish on where we're going on this. Because as you go down those rabbit hole, if you start as a trader or in chitcoins or whatever fractal you're looking through your world from as you go deeper and deeper. And some people stay stuck in at a level for a long time, they get burned, they get rug pulled in something for a long time because they're still playing the rules of the other game. And, but this is a game based on cooperation. And as you go deeper and deeper and you understand the magnitude of what that, that is, you never will go back. And once you're, you never go up a step, right? If you look at bitcoiners, they keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. And as you understand what that means, then you apply all of your resources, all of your mind, all of it. How do we keep this decentralized and secure. What is coming next? What's building on top of it? And you move your time away from the extracted system to the cooperative system and it's just starting. So why I love both of you guys and so many of the other beautiful minds in this is they're, they are unbiable. You are unbiable. You are building, you are building this. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Rockstar chooses to stay a nim or private. I'm public. It actually doesn't matter. But all of us matter because we are bitcoin. We're, we're defending it, we're building the, we're building the path forward. So it's used as a medium of exchange. We are the network.
- [21:22]
Walker
If you like everything open source, then you need to go to bitbox swiss/walker and use the promo code walker for 5% off the fully open source, easy to use Bitcoin only, Bitbox O2 hardware wallet. Then get your bitcoin off the exchange and into your own self custody.
- [21:42]
Unknown
The fiat value of Bitcoin is absolutely.
- [21:45]
Walker
Ripping and soon your stack will be worth a heck of a lot more.
- [21:48]
Unknown
In that fiat value than it is today.
- [21:51]
Walker
So now is the perfect time to make sure you have your security locked down tight with a bitbox. And I really cannot emphasize this enough, but the bitbox 02 is easy as hell to use. Whether you're brand new to bitcoin, it's your first time setting up a hardware wallet and you're understandably a little bit nervous or you are a well seasoned psychopath. Again, the Bitbox 02 is Bitcoin only and it is fully open source. You can go to their GitHub and.
- [22:16]
Unknown
Verify that for yourself.
- [22:18]
Walker
There's no need to trust me or trust bitbox. When you go to bitbox Swiss Walker and use the promo code walker, not only do you get 5% off, but you also help support this podcast. So seriously, thank you.
- [22:33]
Rockstar
Yeah, if I can expand on that. It is really interesting how we cooperate without being forced to fall into certain structure. It's very organic. And what Jeff is saying about most people not realizing how profound this technology is, I would compare it to that whole shift with Copernicus where you had a models where Earth is the central center of the universe and then it's like not even center or solar system, but we as humans, humans really are truth seeking machine and we get born into certain systems and then spend our lifetime trying to get out of those systems towards a better One like the one that we helped build. And you even now have people who look at money as a function of state. Right. While us that are part of this revolution that bitcoin is, have realized that truth that money should be separate from the state. And once that happens, we can really usher a new golden age. And it will be that size of a shift from, oh, Earth is a center of universe towards, hey, let's recognize first solar system, then galaxies, then everything else. And then we have a model that's much closer to the truth.
- [24:13]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, rocks are just playing on that. The printing press was created out of somebody's brain, unlocked an ability to share information and error correct on that information. So somebody would say something and then everyone else would error correct it. And that truth got better and better. And we saw things, we found things. And that only unlocked a tiny fragment of humanity. And that tiny fragment that it unlocked, call it 500 million people, created everything that you've seen in the last. In the last, call it 300 years and the rate of progress and 400 years in the rate of progress, it created the age of enlightenment that created all of these things that then are being lost again because of broken money, because it consolidates to very few people making the decisions. And we are about to break that open to 8 billion people. And it doesn't take. But we're not waiting. My life looks like I just described. I'm living that life every day. And nobody has to wait. No, it's an open network. Open network. You just have to move your time away from the extractive system to the cooperative one. And you're a part of the new network.
- [25:36]
Unknown
You know, Jeff, something you mentioned earlier. And by the way, it's great talking with you too, because I love that you can riff back and forth and I can just sit back and drink from the fountain of both of your wisdom. But you mentioned something earlier about bitcoiners can't be bought.
- [25:54]
Walker
Right.
- [25:54]
Unknown
Once you're deep enough down that path, you can't really be bought. And I think there's multiple facets to that, which is the, okay, maybe ideologically, like from. In terms of your ethos, you've reached a point where you won't allow yourself to be bought. But economically also, you are less susceptible to, let's say, the whims of fiat being thrown in your face because you have a better way to store your economic energy. And I'm just kind of, you know, curious because you also mentioned, okay, moving your time towards this. This system, moving your energy toward it. I think it's really difficult for a lot of people who are still stuck in this fiat mentality of I'm on this hamster wheel and I've just got to keep running a little bit faster, and then. Then I can catch a breather, then I can start to think. I think it's really hard for them to take a step back, understandably so, and to say, okay, wow, I can. I can make a change. Like, I can actually just do this. American Hodl. Hodl. I'll call him Hodl because it's, you know, his preferred. Preferred name. But American Hodl was saying the other day, he's like, you can just go.
- [27:06]
Walker
Out and do things.
- [27:07]
Unknown
You can just do shit.
- [27:08]
Walker
You don't have to ask for permission.
- [27:09]
Unknown
Nobody. You don't have to wait. But how do you actually. I mean, is that just a choice everybody needs to make for themselves? Is it something that we as bitcoiners have any sort of say in helping people along? I think a lot of bitcoiners, when you get far enough down the rabbit hole, you sort of get tired of trying to orange pill people, quote, and, you know, being rejected time and time again when you're just trying to give them good information. So do people just need to realize that another system exists and then it's.
- [27:42]
Walker
Up to them, or is there something.
- [27:43]
Unknown
Bitcoiners can do to push them? Or does it. Does it have to be, let's say, do they have to push themselves? Do they have to run toward it? Is there just nothing we can do besides try to live our lives and be an example for how things can be different?
- [28:02]
Jeff Booth
I'll riff on that for a second. If you walked down the street and you saw love in every single person around you, you saw genuine love, you just said that was your perspective, and somebody else walked down the street and saw fear every. Around you, would you be living two or different experiences? Their. Their experience would be just as true for. Just. Just as true for them as yours would be for you. And you would see two different worlds manifest out of that, out of that thought. So if. If that's true, and there's. We know that's true, then then the. Then the world is actually not as we think it is. It's a mirror of our version of the world. And everybody's mirror is different. Everybody's m. And so if you. If you had that, your mirror of the world, even though it's true for.
- [28:58]
Unknown
You, and you go and.
- [28:59]
Jeff Booth
And impose your mirror on somebody else, it. It doesn't work. It never works. It pushes that. That person away the only way you can. But if you just stand in your own power, your own genius, right, and are listening and looking at the world and just feeding, that is, am I living my most integral life, right? Not worrying about what other people do. People, I think at least people are inspired by that. And they start to wonder why. Because when people say orange pillow for me, when somebody says I'm orange pilling somebody, that's an ego thing. I want to be the person who changed that. I want to be the person who matters to them. And if you just. If you just think about this path, I could never name all of the people who were responsible to orange pill me. Because I don't even know when I saw it, how I saw everything else. But I'm like, I have the most gratitude for a bunch of people who contributed to this network that I could never thank personally.
- [30:15]
Unknown
I think that's a very well said rockstar. Did you want to jump in there too?
- [30:19]
Rockstar
Yeah, I wanted to jump in and say that it's very interesting that we're following up the episode with American Hodl and Eric Kaysen where you have Eric Kaysen ranting and yelling at about dumbasses who, if only you listen to bitcoiners, you'll be twice as rich in a week. And I love Eric. He's one of my favorite people in bitcoin, my brother. But that was a tough love episode. And now you have this love episode with me and Jeff that will go with like, yeah, this is one of the things I would credit Jeff with is he made me realize that it's all about not even persuading people, but living the best version of your own life. And then if people come to you and ask, hey, how come you as a developer have accomplished this? Because looking back, what now, 15 years, I am, you know, I. Any immigrant developer to us can emulate my journey. It's just I can tell those little moments or paths that I have taken and speak from experience of what does it take to come to the point where you're like, okay, I have achieved my American dream and I get to be free. And then also what comes after that? Because when. When we again talk about people that are trapped in fiat system, I don't even. Lately I've been thinking a lot about it and I don't even see that that's that malicious. It's more that we do not have technology to really like, we didn't have technology to really support people because fiat banking was Something that was as Bitcoin invented and it served to a certain point. But now we have a better technology and we should move to better technology so that we can service and help more people. Because as population is growing also complexity increases and we need to have better technology, better connections, better ways of communicating with each other, serving each other. Like imagine, imagine this podcast in Old World where we all need to come to a studio and like my people talk with your people. It's just so much harder to organize and look at us like we are organized like this. We're streaming on nostr. People are zapping, we're zapping people talking all together. So it's just a matter of better technology. And then as Jeff says, remove as much ego as you can and focus on getting to the truth. Because to me, that's really what we are here for as conscious creatures.
- [33:26]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, Jeff, Yeah, I think, by the way, just picking up, picking up on that, what you just said, Rockstar. I think by imposing a system of honesty on the world, and I don't look at it as technology, I look at as protocol. Right? You could, you could. And the reason why, the reason why I say protocol is, is there isn't another technology that can, that is, that can beat this. It's a protocol. And protocols win everything. And protocols build in layers, but most, there's still tons of people stuck trying to trade around shitcoins that are going to zero because they think of it as technology. And this is a protocol that is imposing an energy based, decentralized, secure system on the world. And if you're pricing from that energy based, incentivized, secure system to the world, all prices are falling forever. If you're pricing from the other, if you're converting that to a piece of paper, you'll think Bitcoin's going up and all prices are going up. And it's just a matter of objective, it's just a matter of perspective which version that you're seeing. And that version will be true for you. But the problem with the version of the price going up is it centralizes bitcoin in layer two. It has to centralize bitcoin in layer two. Because we've always, for 5,000 years lived in an extractive system where we think prices are naturally going up and they're not. So in other words, if that has always happened and there's many people before us who also knew, but they couldn't stop it, then our incentives around a system that is stealing from us, to steal from us, must be really High, right. We will naturally fall into that trap. If we fall into that trap, and it's only, you know, I've said this many times, I just think it should become a mean. If Bitcoin is not a meaning of exchange, it fails as a store of value, period. It also fails as freedom Check. It also fails as everything else. Because the centralized system that we make stronger through our actions of trying to price Bitcoin in the centralized system, fiat is extracting wealth at an expense, exponential rate to stop the deflation. If we are part of that, then Bitcoin will fail. It's inevitable. It won't fail. Now I'm going to stop there. It won't fail because there's too many people who already know what I just described, and there's too many. If you are spending my time there all the time, Rockstar does too. And if you see what's coming to make it easier and interoperable across these things, to make it an experience, meaningful film, you understand how many people are doing that, how fast that's growing. You don't. You're not really worried about that risk. But for people that aren't as deep as this, that that is the risk. And every currency forever has always failed for the same reason. So we better be smarter this time.
- [36:57]
Unknown
You know, Jeff, there's. I want to get into with both of you guys kind of some of the things because you are both extremely tapped into this in terms of what stuff is like really cool freedom tech.
- [37:09]
Walker
That is being built.
- [37:10]
Unknown
And either with Rockstar literally writing the code, or you yourself funding all these incredible initiatives, you guys are as tapped in as anyone. Before we get into that, I do want to ask something just about we've heard all this Bitcoin strategic reserve talk, right? And you're mentioning every fiat currency always fails. And a question that I struggle with is because, yes, I agree, that is a objective fact, right? Every fiat currency always fails. Now, going forward, if the US or.
- [37:44]
Walker
Any other country that currently prints its.
- [37:46]
Unknown
Own fiat starts accumulating Bitcoin, starts accumulating a strategic reserve stockpile, whatever you want to call it, does that potentially prevent.
- [37:56]
Walker
That currency from failing?
- [37:58]
Unknown
Does it give it enough of a. Either a check on its unmitigated printing, does it give it enough of a backstop? Does it somehow, you know, does it.
- [38:08]
Walker
Ever stop a currency from failing?
- [38:09]
Unknown
Or will the currency fail no matter what, and it's just a question of slowing down its death a little bit? You know, do you, do you think that this whole idea of these strategic Reserves is actually going to end up prolonging the life of these fiats that would have died sooner of natural causes or is there a different outcome that you see even with the adoption of these strategic reserves? And I'm curious what both of you think on this because it's something I've been thinking about a lot and I don't have a good answer for that.
- [38:44]
Rockstar
Well, I can add my perspective there. Also adding to what Jeff was saying to me, it's all about that level of freedom that you have. If you're focused on number go up, that's. That's just another form of slavery and chains. Like if you're now glued to the screen and looking at the price of bitcoin going up or then looking at the price of micro strategy stock going up, you can't do anything productive with your day. It's more. That's why I always insist with people that like stacking sets and staying humble. Dca, that's what it's about. And then you allow that to be your segue into this community and doing the work within this community. And to answer your question on strategic. Yeah, stockpile. I do see it that way is that if you look at what happened with El Salvador where now they ended up with a balanced budget, I do think bitcoin has that way like you get invested in something that's closer to the truth and then you're incentivized to align yourself and the way you live with the. Or like the best possible version that you can find and align with. And I honestly like, I welcome those reserves and I think they're necessary also for the transition in the future. When you say like fiat currencies are going to, I don't know, die or disappear or like that would in my view lead to chaos. And luckily we have bitcoin to enable that transition. So I just see that it will be a gradual switch and the longer we have to switch to bitcoin standard and cooperative system rather than system that exploits people, the better we will all be.
- [41:05]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, the. This is a really tough and nuanced question because there is no, there is no direct answer right to countries that go first will. Will be richer than countries that go later. If those countries that go first then tried to consolidate bitcoin and then close the. Close this and everybody operated on top of the. Call it the shitcoin, the fiat instrument on top of bitcoin. If they were transacting on that and it then those countries would be incentive to reprice bitcoin and to keep operating their power because they had so much of the Bitcoin. And there would be a whole incentive model that would create. Okay, let's do this. That would still be inflationary. That would. And because of that, it would still eventually break and it would not be the free market. So the only way that you could keep that going would be to remove individual rights and freedoms to continue it. I actually think right now that's what's happening at a higher level of abstraction.
- [42:22]
Rockstar
Jeff was making too much sense, so they removed his Internet connection.
- [42:27]
Jeff Booth
Yeah. So can you hear me? Am I back? Okay, so I think what's happening at a higher level of abstraction is this. You have a whole bunch of technocrats that know what I'm talking about, that free market is deflation. Mary and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and all of these people that know this against the globalists and the technocrats just won with Trump. But it's still. It's now consolidating. So. Because if Elon Musk knows that the free market is deflationary, and he seems to. And if you a 16Z and a whole bunch of other people that talk about this all the time, they're using my work to be able to talk about this, and those people also are investing in chit coins and not all in on bitcoin, then what does it tell you? Like, it's pretty obvious. It's either one of two things they know and they're using a kind of fake freedom to centralize faster on their version of control, or they don't know, and I suspect Elon's smart enough to know. And so when I find a whole bunch of people creating new heroes that are just faster centralization and talking about those heroes of saving their lives through a different form of centralization, it feels like the same old trick that's been played before on humans over and over and over again, and there's too many people that are wise to it. Bitcoin doesn't care. So if they do that, bitcoin will reprice all of them too. Does that make sense?
- [44:39]
Unknown
I think no, it does make sense because again, it's interesting to look at. Okay, El Salvador Rockstar, you brought it up. They're an interesting example because they, of course, don't print their own fiat currency in the U.S. now, Jeff, as you mentioned, where we very much do print the world reserve currency, you do have a lot of technocrats who have gotten.
- [45:01]
Walker
Now into higher positions.
- [45:03]
Unknown
Now, on the one hand, you look at that and you Say, well, you know, I'd rather have these technocrats than the, you know, career bureaucrats. At least these guys, you know, know how to run a business. Granted, they're running a lot of those businesses off of massive government subsidies, et cetera. But okay, maybe that's at least, you know, a change in the right direction. But at the same time, you see.
- [45:23]
Walker
The behavior of them.
- [45:25]
Unknown
Jeff, I think this is what you're, what you're keying on here is that look, you know, not look at, not just what they, what they say, look at what they do and look at where their, their money is. And you know, the ACE16Zs of the world are a great example of that. But I, I, I'm curious to see what, what happens next if the US actually and other countries do start trying to print fiat for any nation that can print their own fiat to acquire Bitcoin. Cause that, that starts to get very interesting now. I, you know, I, I, I don't want to spend too much time on the, the again, the NGU nation state adoption side, because while I find it interesting and I think it's a natural consequence, it's something that was always going to happen with bitcoin. The question was just when and how quickly. What I want to talk to you guys a little bit about now, if you're game for it, is just kind of some of the things you are seeing, some of the things that you are building or helping to build, that you're working with some of these projects that are actually delivering those solutions that allow bitcoin to be used as a medium of exchange, whether that be making layer one easier, whether that be layer two and let's say layer three. I'm not sure, Jeff, where you would classify fetty in terms of layers. I think that's, it could go either way there, but maybe, Jeff, I think what you've said about bitcoin needs to be a medium of exchange, not just.
- [46:53]
Walker
A store of value.
- [46:54]
Unknown
For it to actually win, I think is very important and it's a part of the discussion that sometimes gets lost, especially when bitcoin is pumping. Everybody's feeling like, you know, they're, they're new rich and it's like, well, come on, let's just focus on the, you know, the store of value NGU for now. But the medium of exchange is the freedom go upside, that is the fgu. Like, that's what allows you to make sure that you can still use bitcoin in such a way that nobody can stop you from doing it. That it's not controlled in these massive honeypots. So can you guys talk a little bit about, you know, and maybe rock star? Because I know people were asking about the documentary. They were asking about some of the work you've been doing recently.
- [47:35]
Rockstar
Yeah.
- [47:36]
Unknown
Can you talk a little bit about how you. You look at that and kind of what. I guess maybe more so what your mentality is with this kind of medium.
- [47:44]
Walker
Of exchange versus store of value.
- [47:46]
Unknown
As somebody who has been actively developing and committing code in the space for a lot longer than I've even been aware of. Bitcoin.
- [47:56]
Rockstar
No, I mean for me, sats must flow. That's it. We. We must be able to send bitcoin between individuals across the world. Because what Jeff was saying, the way that I understand it is there are so many Jeff boots around the world. There are so many rock stars, but they. Those. The only difference between maybe those people and us is that proximity to money printer that we managed to establish over the course of our life. And then the work that we were able to do. Because Jeff, before investing, you were very active entrepreneur and it's. Where could you do that work? Like, what was the market that you were servicing? The main reason why I immigrated to US was that understanding that the closer I am to Silicon Valley, the better I will do and I can do the same work. It's just who are the people that I know and can I work with this group of people versus that group of people? And then the other big problem for me was it was easier to immigrate to US than actually receive money in the country. I was. Because of all the financial regulation, how you do remittances, how do you report them to local authorities? Then, you know, you receive $1,000 wired in your bank account. You need to explain what it is for. Are you, you know, foreign spy? What are you. Why are you receiving this money from outside? So that's, that's really where I bring up medium of exchanges like SATs must flow between us and we must be able to transmit value to other individuals and free them from whatever are the chains that they're in. Because you look at BTC pay server as a project, numerous crowd funds. There is one that's active right now that's happening for Palestine where people are sending bitcoin and that bitcoin is being turned into meals for people or medical help for people. We had another crowd fund that used BTC pay server for ansars in Nigeria where they were fighting back, Feminist coalition was fighting back against police brutality. And if you transmitted money over banks, that money was frozen. Then they brought up a BTC based server instance crowdfund campaign and raised over $2 million. That then allowed them resources to push back against the oppression they were experiencing. So medium of exchange? Yeah, definitely. I've been on a little mission during last year where if it's a bitcoin conference, it has to accept bitcoin payments. Working on, you know, bolt cards. Lightning. So excited about all of that. And yeah, there we go. Free Ross.
- [51:27]
Unknown
Thank, thank you for this awesome bulk card. And I don't know if, I don't know if people can see this on the, on the stream, but it's, it's got an amazing laser eyes, laserized thing there that when you tap the nfc that's pretty incredible. I have the Trump one too right next to it. You know, just for safekeeping.
- [51:50]
Rockstar
Just to keep him honest that he, you know, holds his promise to free Ross.
- [51:55]
Unknown
Day one. Right. I think we're all. That's going to be the easiest way to test whether or not he plans on keeping other campaign promises because this is a very low effort one for him to keep a presidential pardon is like that. So day one or gtfo, you know. But, but you know Jeff, I'm, I'm curious too from your perspective because you and you and I have talked a lot about, a lot about fedi. I've talked with OB as well and I think that this is another one of those things, you know, that's approaching it from a different layer. Right. And I think with a different type of solution than BDC Pay Server, which like Rockstar. That's incredible how much they, they raised also. And I think. Was it Gladstein who said, you know, bitcoin reaches people where Fiat cannot? And I think that's such an important thing that bitcoin allows you to get money to places where literally you can't.
- [52:53]
Walker
You have no other way of getting it there.
- [52:55]
Unknown
The Fiat Rails do not allow it. It is, you know, it is forbidden or it is banned, whatever it might be. But these people can't get money any other way. And Jeff, I think what you guys at Egodeath through the financing of fedi.
- [53:09]
Walker
Are doing is really incredible.
- [53:11]
Unknown
Could you talk about that a little bit and just why you think that that is such an important thing, especially at this time?
- [53:18]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, so I'm going to take it broader than just Fetty, but because how things evolve and how things naturally evolve and why people miss the movement and they're evolving. So if, if you take that to. To lightning or lightning and liquid as an example. Then lightning and liquid early on in the integration. Let's go, let's go back a step first. The only thing you could do in bitcoin is hold it. You go pre. Pre2017 you just held it. And what would that do in a market that you were getting rich by holding it or you. The truth of the world was showing by holding it. And it was the only thing that could do that. What would it naturally do in the market? A whole bunch of other people would have new ideas to have a better bitcoin. It would be just natural. And people would be so confused by that. And they would be so confused about technology versus protocol, what we're talking about. They would race to all these other things and they would be easily fooled through the next hype in the scene over and over and over. And there'd be willing participants willing to take their money to be able to do that. And I'm saying that that's all bad inside that there were some good trying to be good actors that misunderstood technology as well or protocol versus technology as well and tried to improve upon bitcoin in a different version. Let's use privacy as an example. Privacy coins. Knowing full well if you had an open, decentralized and secure that was open that if a state saw that, that eventually they would attack those people which would be very important to be able to solve. It's just the way where you solve it. If you sacrifice decentralized security for privacy, then it fails. So they didn't understand that it had to be built in layers. They also didn't. And enlightening is an example. You couldn't use it as a bitcoin as a medium of exchange. And you could actually even I don't so much. But you could forgive the people that said big blocks and the risk of centralization because they knew. They also knew that. That it needed to be in the exchange and it could needed to do more than five to seven transactions a second. So you could be on one side or the other. You could either say you're all terrible, you're all terrible people. We were right. Or there was a piece of the nuance in the question in the thing and it was just the way it was solved. It needed to be built in layers that make sense. So now and now lightning comes out, liquid comes out a whole bunch of different tries on the mark on the base layer to integrate that into a payment layer with a different trade off that was way more safe and secure. For everybody because it used the decentralization security into a different layer trade off. What would that look like? At first, what it would look like is a hobby network, a whole bunch of cryptographers who understood Bitcoin deeply and wanted to do it themselves. And then what would that look like to the market? That would look like lightning not always working because you'd have these channel locks. And then the market would say this doesn't work. Right, let's build a different L2 that we centralize. And it'll. So it would be just totally natural as all of the entrepreneurs were building better and better and deeper and deeper talk in layer two to be able to resolve that problem onto the second layer. And so where Bitcoin transactions right now on lightning and liquid, they're approaching 90 to 95%. I know on Breeze it's 90 to 95% and Caymans need to work 99%, 99.99% and then they flip everything, right? So you have a, you have an extractive system that charges between 2 and 4% in the US for every transaction. Anybody ever does it just like it's a sucking sound out of all, not just the inflation, but you know, you have another tax through all of the centralized organizations that are mandated to steal from you. That. And then you have a different system that is approaching now a rate that you can move, that moves. Instead of getting paying for transactions, you could get paid for transactions. So the incentives are about to flip. And the incentives, where do the incentives for first flip? They first flip in places that are furthest away from the monopoly. Like Rockstar was just saying, right? That need this technology, this freedom tech so desperately because they're paying a way higher rate and if they don't have it, they're going to be killed. So, so, so they're going to use this and you're not going to stop this. It's exploding. It's exploding at such a high rate that people don't know because they're measuring it in the US and how fast it's exploding. And then you carry that into FEDI and what they're doing and it's still very early bugs, harder to hard to set up your own federation. But it's, it's all. We've already resolved the challenge of essentially free banking for the world. Everybody can be their own bank on, on Feda you can. And then in that bank you have complete privacy. And then nobody who's even running the federation can see anything that you're doing. So these pieces of Technology are so powerful and they build and then other pieces. Watch what Simpleproof is doing. Watch what Simpleproof did in the Guatemalan elections. They had a county in the US that used Simpleproof to have election integrity just now. It was extraordinarily successful. And so that's going to move into. Rux already said this. The truth is being set free around the world. It were early in that cycle, but all of this technology builds back on top of it and all moves. And because these are pieces of protocols, they're not owned by a company that then is going to impose their tax on everybody. They're interoperable and the speed of development expands and what's possible expands by opening up nostr, feddy, btc, pacer, all of these interoperable pieces together create. Some entrepreneur is going to say, I can use all of this stuff. I don't have to build a development team to use all of this. It's all just native and I can create something that creates tons of value for a new market out of this without any cost. Just moving.
- [60:44]
Rockstar
Yeah. And as someone that's outside of fedi, if I can also approach it a little bit more technically, what's most impressive for me is that it's a multisig in which you participate with your key. So what Jeff was saying about communities, I just imagine, you know, these little nodes around the world where people group up together. Okay, I am a key in multisig and the Bitcoin that I'm holding and just, you know, I have HODL as a use case, but now if I join it with other people's Bitcoin and we create a hub, a node, a multisig in which we all participate. Suddenly, you know, we can do payments, we can do remittances, we can do, yeah, community chat hub from that hub. One of the best use cases for me of FEDI was during Bitcoin Atlantis there was a federation and if you joined that federation, you could receive sats in that federation. You can do sats from that federation to zap people on Oster. Suddenly it's a hub that provides services. And to me, yeah, that's the biggest promise of FEDI is like you give technology to empower individuals and allow them to do things that they individually couldn't do.
- [62:19]
Jeff Booth
And Rockstar, just Madeira, speaking of that, we were all there, right? We were all there in March. In March there were, I think, 26 companies in Madeira using Bitcoin to accepting Bitcoin. And that was up because you had a ground. A ground Spell kind of a ground game kind of anticipates into the, of the conflict. You know how many companies now when I was there last week, 134.
- [62:50]
Unknown
Wow.
- [62:51]
Jeff Booth
134. It's only, it's like it's only been six, seven months. It's exploding. People are. And, and it's. And, and so you have. And this is being used every day it's being used. More and more businesses, more and more people are using it. It's one remarkable to watch. And how did that happen? It happened from a person in Madeira, Andre reaching out to say hey, I want to bring bitcoin to Madeira. I think it's important for my country and through that conversation with President, conversation with me, conversation with all of many of us here to be able to start this and kick this off. And it, it. And, and now if you look at what Andre has done and, and, and how what he's doing and, and the number of bitcoiners who have moved there and they, and the different things. Sovereign Engineering. What's coming out of Sovereign engineering would blow your mind. They. I just, I, I just spent a day with. A day with the cohort on their demo there and some of this stuff is early. It's probably not the right time to be able to announce it right now. And some of this stuff. But it's all interoperable with these protocols as I described and it makes everything easier and easier and easier. And so it's just, it's just when you're in the system, you want to spend more time in the system. You see, you see when you see what's coming, you just really inspired by all of these people building.
- [64:34]
Rockstar
Yeah. And it comes so suddenly. I don't know. Walker, I'm curious about this. How much do you think BTC based server, like all the different instances we have around the world have processed in USD volume in the last seven years?
- [64:55]
Unknown
Man, you're put me on the spot with a prediction there. Yeah, well, I guess not a prediction, just a guess. I'm going to guess. I mean it's. You've already told me just one instance of a fundraise was 2 million. I'm going to guess it's another order of magnitude or probably three or I'm going to guess. Are you in the hundreds, billions? How much are we talking here? I don't want to make a jackass of myself Rockstar, so save me the embarrassment, please.
- [65:29]
Rockstar
No, well, those watching. Yeah. They can reference this conversation maybe in a couple of weeks when one of our case study comes out, but we have had numerous case studies that would show tens of millions of dollars in volume. So what Jeff is saying about it's. It's crazy for me, even as someone that has been part of the project for last seven years, to see all that volume, like all that economic energy that would otherwise need, need to, like, wouldn't happen or would happen in a lesser degree if there wasn't technology like BTC pay server. So yeah, the best part of it is also, like I say, we don't know, we don't collect the data. But my guess, to also add to your guess, and then we can both look like jackasses by, I would say over a billion, like in billions of dollars at this point. And yeah, watch the BTC pay server account. We will, we will do some announcements on that from.
- [66:41]
Jeff Booth
That's incredible.
- [66:43]
Unknown
That's mind blowing. But just from the, from the perspective of like, it also shows how early we are. Like, that's a huge number, but that's also like a small number in terms of what it's going to process in the next 10 years. Right? Or it's been around for seven years, but it's going to process in the next seven years. I think it's going to dwarf it. Because I mean, what I love about the time I spend with bitcoiners is you realize that there are so many things going on behind the scenes that.
- [67:17]
Walker
You can't possibly pay attention to all of them.
- [67:20]
Unknown
As the average bitcoiner, even as the average bitcoin podcast host, you just purely like, even just look at Noster alone, you could spend all day, every day just trying to keep up with all the projects that are being built on.
- [67:33]
Walker
There and still not even come close.
- [67:34]
Unknown
To scratching the surface. Right. But I think that's kind of this power of open source and of building on protocols is that it allows for a pace of development and a widespread.
- [67:49]
Walker
Not in any way centrally organized level.
- [67:52]
Unknown
Of development that ultimately is just so much more efficient in terms of figuring out what the market actually wants than any centralized entity can be. Like, the centralized entity is going to have a head start because they've got the marketing budget, they've got the manpower, they've got the cheap fiat that they got at a really nice interest rate. But they don't have the collective intelligence of anyone out there in the world.
- [68:21]
Walker
Who wants to work on their thing being able to work on it because it is closed source.
- [68:26]
Unknown
And so I'm curious if you guys kind of think like where we're it's very easy, I think if you look at just the NGU side of things for people who are maybe just coming into this space, just getting themselves acquainted to say, oh, maybe I've missed the boat. This thing's already worth almost $100,000 per coin. I think we all agree that it's going to go a lot higher from there, but that's just barely even scratching the surface of everything else that's happening behind the scenes. And Jeff, to your point about when you have this whole decentralized, I don't want to even call it an organization. You've got individuals around the world who are actively working in their own little areas to make things better, to make new products, to create new solutions for people based on actual problems in the real world that they want to solve, often for their own communities, whether digital or physical communities. You know, I mean, do you think that we're like in terms of just general adoption awareness, it seems that we're like, we have not even gotten close to crossing the chasm yet, as they say. Is that fair to say?
- [69:37]
Jeff Booth
We are not close. So I believe that most people, even they were hardcore bitcoiners, are pricing bitcoin from the Fiat instrument in number go up as a potential as an asset within the fiat system. What I'm saying is it is not an asset within the fiat system. It is a base level protocol that is repricing the entire Fiat system. Now if you wanted to trade it as an asset and you think it's going to, then you'll likely trade it for Fiat at some point. You'll buy houses with FIA at some point and everybody should do whatever they want. Right? Because that's what the free market is. And they will. And what that means is this will get distributed further and further and it'll be centralized further around more and more people could kicking up that and but in time, if I'm right, if this stays decentralized and secure, this is not an asset within the fiat system. It is a repricing of the entire fiat experiment globally, everything. And by the way, in that world, why this is, I might want to touch on something that you should touch on because of the question. But in that world, prices fall forever. And the free market is crazy competitive because you have to give value to somebody else to stay in business. And while there's money, well, there's margin in what you have. Everybody attacks you and the margin comes down. So you have to. It's not just I have to give value once I have to Give value forever, right? If I give value once, then I can attract some more capital. I get may gain more bitcoin on my balance sheet. But if I stay there, if I only stay there when I don't continue to innovate value for others, then my company is going to fail, right? And be replaced with somebody who does it is you're competing with 8 billion people on the planet, all of their ideas every day and all today. You're not competing with 8 billion people because most people don't know, but you will be competing with 8 billion people. And that means you're going to have an acceleration of deflation. You're going to have a staggering acceleration because as this merges with AI and everything else we're doing is staggering. And the only place you could measure that is from the energy based protocol. We've only ever in the history of humans, we've only found one thing that we will sacrifice our own best interest or not for our own best interest. We will trade with somebody we don't like and we'll both win from that trade. That's called the free market. And so bitcoin is the only thing we've ever seen that is the true free market. And most people are pricing that new free market from the old system. But what does that mean? So now how are you funding it? There's two different types of models. Open source, which is actually funding from the centralized system. Because the money has to come from somewhere. So you, you have to, you have to say somebody is, I need a benefactor to be able to constantly. And maybe Jack, because he's such a really great person in the space is always a benefactor, but he couldn't be a benefactor unless he had a company was extracting money. It wouldn't work. Right. So the free. So when you say open source. And, and because, because open source developers, they need to get paid too. They have families and, and such too. So where does the money come from? It has to, it has to aggregate. It has to come from somewhere. So, so, so you have but this model right now which is open source and there's some really great.
- [73:50]
Unknown
Really great.
- [73:51]
Jeff Booth
People funding that but you can't count on that forever because if you were an open source developer that then that went away. What do you do? Right? So it's hard to, it's a. So, so you have to create real value in the free market and you have to constantly create real value in the fee market to be able to, to, to, to drive this. That's what's happening right now and the people who are creating value are winning because they're adding that bitcoin to the balance sheet. And it doesn't even need to be a lot of bitcoin to the balance sheet because Bitcoin is repricing the the existing Fiat system at what, 45 to 50% IRR. So that's the real rate of return in the world. That is the bounded by energy rate of return in the world world. That means any investment that is under that is not it is losing value to the risk free rate of return. Now how do you beat that? You deliver value on top of it and you collect sats on top of it. It doesn't even need to be a lot. You could have one, you could have a one person company creating 10,000 sats a month. And in time that's going to be a massive number.
- [75:09]
Rockstar
Yeah, you can be curious if you're.
- [75:11]
Unknown
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
- [75:12]
Rockstar
You can be account on Nostrin. As long as you generate 10,000 sats a month you will be in good position. Yeah. I would offer a little different perspective of what Jeff is saying because it absolutely is true. We've made so many improvements in every possible way and then the value produced by those improvements in technology and organization in our work has just been captured by Cantillon effect and those that were closest to money printer and suddenly we have this new system that's repricing everything and is also what I love about Bitcoin. One side effect is that it's drawing the speculation out of assets like real estate. And I just hope that continues because it will help with housing prices and then stock market as well. It's. It's an ultimate shitcoin casino. So the people that want to speculate come on, come on over to 247 market that Bitcoin is and speculate on whatever is current rate of bitcoin repricing. You know the world do that. The rest of us we can focus on building and benefiting from all the activity that's happening when it comes to day trading. But for us, yeah the focus is on the mission. Because when you look at people in bitcoin and open source projects, what I love about BTC based server, again we talked about value that the project created billions processed but it's not something that we directly captured or priced put a price tag on. We have created software at the start, like first two years in our spare time because we believe in mission of bitcoin and that was our way of giving back. But even now like it's, it's only nine of us in the team. Such a small team with such a big impact. And that's what really I try to emphasize whenever I'm talking. Even like with young developers that are trapped in some kind of consulting job, closed source system building, newest CRM that's going to die in two years. Once you switch to working on Bitcoin. Working on Foss. Yeah, it's funny because it's true. Once you switch to working in open and contributing to a system like Bitcoin, then suddenly, you know, with BTC Pay Server first two years, there was absolutely no monetary gain. And people looking from outside, they were like, oh, you guys have it so easy. I tried to explain to them, I was like, no, we didn't have it easy. Our first big donor was Jack Dorsey and Square Crypto. Kudos to Mike Brock for suggesting that initiative and then Miles Suter for being a big champion, that we're doing good work. But it's exactly that. It's like what is your mission? And if you have a mission, if you have a calling, if you are creating and delivering value without even focusing too much on how you capture it, like that's what you should be doing. Thankful every day that I get to wake up and do that, that Bitcoin has freed me to do that. And I would encourage every developer that you know, has any kind of spare time, look into FOSS projects, into Bitcoin, find where you can contribute. As Jeff said, there is now sovereign engineering. There are different programs that HRF is doing. So see how you can plug into that system because it's cooperative system. And sure you can look at it from perspective, okay, there will be 8 billion people and you will be in a way competing with them. But once you really focus on yourself and what you're great at, you're not competing with anyone like you're competing with yourself. The value that you have produced yesterday, today, are you producing more value? And the best thing about it at the end is you were in a place where you should be. You know, we all need to get to that place where you're doing what's called work, but it's not really work. It's, it's, it's life's mission or however you want to call it.
- [80:19]
Jeff Booth
Yeah, Rock certain when, when you just said that, it just like you're just getting started and you've, you've touched, you've touched a billion people or a billion in payments. When you think about that with nine people just getting started, this is already free in the world and it's already, it's already out there and it's just starting and it's going to expand. Like how many people are you going to touch through your work? That's pretty powerful work.
- [80:49]
Unknown
It is incredible to see. And I think also I'd just like to throw out there that any sats that were zapped to me during this stream are going to go to open sats to support open source development, because I think that's a. As somebody who is not an open source developer, at least that's a small way that I can contribute and we did that last time with the stream.
- [81:11]
Walker
And so thank you to everyone who.
- [81:12]
Unknown
Has zapped the this because it's a small way that those of us who are less technical than the Rockstar dev can at least contribute in a small way. But you know, this is something that just that gives me so much hope is. And this is something that I feel very, very privileged and very fortunate to have gotten to know so many incredible bitcoiners because bitcoiners give me hope for the future. It gives me hope that you have people who have literally dedicated their lives and their significant intelligence to building on an open protocol and to building things that may not get like they could be making more fiat somewhere else surely, you know, with any number of cushy jobs or, you know, rockstar like you and I had discussed previously, you know, working three different contractor jobs at the same time and you know, collecting three paychecks and doing great. But. But they're choosing not to and they're focusing their time and their energy and.
- [82:14]
Walker
Their intelligence somewhere else.
- [82:17]
Unknown
And it just feels like an. For anybody that, and for anyone that's.
- [82:21]
Walker
On this stream right now listening, that.
- [82:23]
Unknown
Happens to be listening through a open, decentralized protocol called Noster Noster. Like we're still so early to all of this and it's important, I think, to take a step back and just appreciate that for a moment and realize that we have so far to go, but none of where we have come so far, none of it is possible without open source developers building. Zap a dev, say thanks to a dev and try to use. If you're not a technical person, use whatever voice you have to try and amplify the signal that these guys create with their code. Because I think it's really important.
- [83:03]
Rockstar
Thank you for that, Walker. On behalf of the bottom of my.
- [83:07]
Unknown
Heart, man, zap all the devs. Absolutely. Well, guys, I want to. Jeff, I want to be conscious too, because I noticed Things are getting a little bit dark around you. Do we. I think, you know, we've covered a lot here. This has been a high density conversation. I'm trying to think of the best note to sort of, to sort of wrap up on a little bit and maybe, maybe it's worthwhile just saying what gets you excited about the future and, or what makes you hopeful. I think that a lot of people right now have a sense of generalized despair or worry about the future, particularly.
- [83:54]
Walker
People that are trapped in the Fiat.
- [83:56]
Unknown
Hamster wheel and they feel that even again, like this is back to NGU a little bit. So I'll apologize. But they look at the price of bitcoin going up and they think, you know, that's, that's more than I make in a year for a bitcoin. I'm, I'm too late. I've missed the boat. I, you know, yeah, there's these other cool. Maybe, maybe they know about Noster, maybe they know about all the other cool things being built like fedi, like BDC Pay server. They know about all these things, but they think, you know what, I'm just too late. I'm too trapped in the Fiat game to have this actually make a meaningful.
- [84:27]
Walker
Difference in my life.
- [84:29]
Unknown
And you know, like what do you, what do you say to those people? What, what makes you hopeful? What should give other people hope that no, they're not too late, that we are still early, that there is still so much repricing as you would say, Jeff, to go.
- [84:46]
Jeff Booth
It's. And it's not just repricing. It's the higher level of consciousness in the world caused by this by working on an honest display. Fun. That's what's fun to happen in time. It's. And, and I think the thing that you're touching on here, why you respect so many people in this space, even people you disagree with on certain issues on. But they make you better, they make you sharper. They. But underneath it all, you know, they're all cooperating on an honest network. Might have different, different versions of our version to be able to do it and that that build builds essentially what, what you could say from that Walker is we're already living in the future and we'd love more people to join us, but we can't make them join us. It's, it's their, it's, it's their job to understand that. And I empathize. If you're seeing the world like from your own fractal and you believe it looks like that, but it doesn't look like that for me at all. It doesn't look like you just described it all. In fact, it doesn't. I have massive empathy for people that are going. Going through that, but for me, it doesn't look like that. It looks. I've already committed my time to this. It looks like abundance. It looks like it's in just. And it gets better and better all the time. It just feels amazing. So mostly I just want to stay here and I hope, help people join us, but it each in their own time. They don't have to join us. They don't have. Eventually they will because this is. The system is imposing this on the world. But even for the people that. Who don't join us because the free market is deflationary and all of what we're creating is that they might not have as many. They might, they might. Imposing this discipline across the world frees them too.
- [86:50]
Rockstar
Yeah, it's better for everyone. And I think the biggest. The biggest service we can do as people that have been in bitcoin for quite a while, for me, it's like over a decade. Just talk about our own journeys and the moments that we have experienced. Because I remember when I started contributing to BTC pay server of seven years ago, more than seven years ago, Bitcoin was just. Was getting like, what, $20,000? And everyone's like, oh, it's too late. And then when it dropped down to $3,000, everyone's like, okay, it's dead and it's eternal. You know, Sunshine of Spotless Mind, like, it's. It's the same cycle. And then I guess I'm lucky enough to remember times when bitcoin went all the way up to $210 and everyone was like, oh, it's too late now. You know, I've. I've missed the boat. And then it dropped to $70 and everyone's like, okay, it's dead. So that's what's coming now, when bitcoin will get to over $100,000 and then maybe it crashes below $100,000 and it just goes back to what I said. It becomes another form of slavery is if you're watching that price and constantly thinking about your net worth, you've missed the point. Is bitcoin, as protocol should be what interests you? And then through that protocol, how do you connect with the social network that bitcoin is, that social layer? And going back to what Jeff was saying, how do you create value? Is it posting on Oster that gets you 10,000 sats a month. Perfect. Do that. They're like Corndalorian with his memes. You, Walker, with your. Yeah. Streams that join and develop their own FOSS projects. But it's like you need to find that anchor that will speak to you and properly connect you. And yeah, I would encourage people to do that. And if us on this stream or previous stream can share our experiences and point you to the anchor, the better. Like, I, I would actually even go to answer some of the questions that we have received if we have time after this. Walker.
- [89:34]
Unknown
Do you. Jeff, do you have another couple of minutes? I want, I want to be conscious.
- [89:40]
Jeff Booth
If there were some questions. I'm happy to probably. Let's give it 10 more minutes for me.
- [89:45]
Unknown
That.
- [89:46]
Jeff Booth
That's.
- [89:46]
Unknown
That's perfect. That's perfect. So I know. Okay, there were, there were a lot of questions. Yeah. Lightning round. Okay, so let's. Yeah, we'll keep them. We'll keep them. Sure. I'm looking at, I'm looking at Rockstar's post right now because he's got a lot of questions on here.
- [90:03]
Rockstar
Well, we have Ben Price, my nephew, who is founder of Open sats, a bitcoin person. He's asking, how do you come to terms with mistakes you've made along the way in your bitcoin journey, if you made them and move forward and don't say sunk cost, fallacy. Do you want to take this one, Jeff, or I should.
- [90:29]
Jeff Booth
Why don't you go first?
- [90:34]
Rockstar
Well, the way I've started to look at this, especially after all of our talks, Jeff, is that try to not look at them as mistakes. It's more like, what went wrong and what can I learn from it? And the main point for me is someone hurt. As Jeff said in one of our conversations, and this is a sentence I can free here in public is he said, if I hurt you, I have hurt myself. And I have thought about that a lot. And that's what I do not want in my relationships. Like, I don't want to be a cause of hurt of anyone. So if I made mistake, the way that I first need to know about my mistake and like what happened and then what's the hurt that's been caused? And third step is simple. What do you want me to do? How do I fix this? And if you establish this framework very quickly, you will get to the truth much faster. And then you will also avoid a lot of situations because some of the. Sometimes people will blame you and they will be like, oh, you made this mistake, that mistake, and not all people are well intentioned. There are people that will blame you for stuff and accuse you of mistakes as a way to control you. So if they cannot describe the hurt that you caused and the action that you should take, that's usually a hint that they want you in their servitude. So yeah, that's my framework for approaching mistakes and most importantly, fixing them.
- [92:35]
Jeff Booth
Mine's. My, Mine's a little different than I wrote about. It was in the book I said intelligence is error correction. And since that book, a lot of people ask me then what's wisdom? And I said a lifetime of error correction. And we make mistakes. The only moment that matters right now is right now, the moment I'm spending with you guys, right? And all of my mistakes and successes brought me to this moment right now. But I can't change the next moment. I can only change this moment. So I try to be present in that moment. And then if I make a mistake or if I, if I've done something, something where I think, huh, that's interesting. I why I talk all the time about my, my own hypocrisy in bitcoin. Spending all my time in Fiat World while I'm telling everybody to buy bitcoin is that was a huge mistake. And admitting that mistake freed me to be able to free my time. And I could live in a hypocrisy, I could live there and pretend to hide that mistake, but the only person I'd be harming is me. And so, and if you take it even back further, that's why I said so much gratitude for all of the people who created, went before me and created all the things here. If I go back to 2015, all of the people who were screaming about bitcoin and I was one of these people in the Matrix who thought they were crazy, not so much. But I remember my development teams telling me do this and I was just too busy to look. So yes, I made the same mistakes and a whole bunch. And I've made you think those are some. You make them all the time. We all do, Right? The part is if you're looking to. This is a really simple. They're seemingly simple, but way harder to do then. And it'll make, I think it'll make sense when I say it. We take credit for all the good things in our lives and anything that's not working, we blame somebody else. And then when we look at somebody else blaming other people for the spot in their life, we wonder why they can't see it isn't that interesting. So if you know that that's true, then you, you are responsible for everything. Your frame of reference creates it all. And so you should, so you should take accountability for every single thing because you choose all your time.
- [95:12]
Unknown
And Jeff, I think you just dropped. I don't know if we can even bring up another question after that because you just dropped a lot of wisdom there that I think is going to have a lot of people thinking. That's really excellent advice and it is kind of funny. I think we're all guilty of this. Right? Exactly what you said. That we will think we are very self aware, but then not be self aware at all when it comes to evaluating ourselves and the mistakes we've made.
- [95:48]
Walker
In reference to other people whose perceived.
- [95:50]
Unknown
Mistakes from our side we see as so obvious to us not realizing that, ah, we are in fact doing the exact same thing. And unless we're conscious of it, unless we try to really admit it and say, you know what, yeah, that, that was wrong, I, I could have done better there. I could have done something different, we're not going to get better. But the point you made about, you know, all those mistakes have brought you right here to this moment. I think that that's such a beautiful point and I think that's something that everyone can agree on because, you know, I've made plenty of mistakes in my life, but somehow they've all brought me here to be talking with Jeff Booth and my uncle Rockstar on a live stream, on a decentralized protocol where people are zapping and those zaps are going to open source devs. I mean, like, if you'd told me that in 2019, I would have said, I don't. I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I literally cannot even comprehend that. But somehow all of those little, you know, mistakes and broken roads leading to some are really amazing if you're willing to accept them. But sometimes acceptance is the. That's the hardest part. But Rockstar, I'm not sure if there's. There's any other questions you want to cover, but I, I don't know how we. I don't know how we top that one. And we covered some of them about, yeah, strategic reserve and whatnot. But go ahead, go ahead.
- [97:14]
Rockstar
We. We're going to organize another one that's exclusively Q and A. And in the meantime, perfect, close it down, protect Jeff from the dark, and yes, build better protocols together.
- [97:26]
Jeff Booth
Thank you. It was so good doing this with you guys. Love you both.
- [97:31]
Walker
Sending much love to both of you as well.
- [97:34]
Unknown
This was. This was a treat. Thanks to everyone on the live stream. I'm going to shut this live stream down now.
- [97:45]
Walker
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. If you are a Bitcoin only company interested in sponsoring the Bitcoin podcast, head to bitcoinpodcast.net Sponsor or send an email to helloitcoinpodcast.net if you are enjoying the Bitcoin podcast and find it valuable, give it a boost on Fountain a five star review wherever you're listening. Or better yet, share this show with your network so more people can learn about bitcoin.
- [98:15]
Unknown
Or don't.
- [98:16]
Walker
Bitcoin doesn't care, but I sure do appreciate it. You can grab links in the show notes to watch or list this show wherever you get your podcasts. Or go to bitcoin podcast.net podcast and you'll also find the links to follow me and the show on Noster and on X. Bitcoin is scarce. There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to the Bitcoin podcast.
- [98:42]
Unknown
Until next time, stay free.