← THE Bitcoin Podcast
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- [00:00]
Kyle Only
Wait a second. This is really scary that the US government thinks it can reach all the way down to we need to Kycamlu in order to perform effectively. A Google search. Imagine if you could just have access to the Internet turned off arbitrarily anywhere you are in the world. If we muddle through the next decade, it is very unclear what will remain of what we currently think of as modern society around the world. You may not take an interest in politics, but politics will certainly take an interest in you. We need to really relight the cypherpunk fire and remind people what this is really about. Bitcoin does not exist because of permission from the United States government. Right. Bitcoin is an emergent phenomenon that comes from the people. This is a fight for human freedom, a fight for liberty and justice all around the world for equal access to money.
- [01:03]
Walker
Kyle, welcome to the show. I've had you on my streams on Roxam a couple of times now. Glad we are finally doing it here on the bitcoin podcast. Welcome.
- [01:12]
Kyle Only
Thank you. Great to be here on the bitcoin podcast.
- [01:16]
Walker
Got it. Gotta be the. You know, I had to really make it, make it tongue in cheek, right? No, but nobody had taken the name so I was like, well you know, this is shocking to me. I guess I'll just. Guess I'll just make it, make it my own as much as anything with bitcoin in the name can never be someone's own. But Kyle, stoked to have you here. Number of things I want to get into with you here today. I think we're going to start out on the clarity side of things and just for people to know, maybe you can just kind of brief background on yourself. Your work with bpi, you guys do incredible work. The Bitcoin Policy Institute. Anything else people should know, just relevant without doxing things too much relevant to the conversation as far as who you are.
- [01:59]
Kyle Only
Yeah, I mean I guess just as a quick background I'm a repeat entrepreneur startuper out here in Silicon Valley. Been building companies for the last 15 plus years. Prior to that was a management consultant and actually got my start in bitcoin as a bank regulator during the financial crisis which is very weird. Unique background that led me into or led me down the rabbit hole let's say. And then yeah of late the last couple years as I felt the sort of policy winds shifting in Washington D.C. and kind of the need for articulate, well informed sort of policy leadership in Washington D.C. around things like Bitcoin and kind of other frontier technologies and freedom Technologies moved over into the policy space. And yeah, I co founded Sabre Wallets, you know, a year and a half ago after the Trump administration came in and it became clear we were to get these market structure bills. And then as you mentioned, I'm a senior advisor at the Bitcoin Policy Institute and really just trying to, you know, be a good citizen in the arena, fighting on behalf of freedom and liberty for those of us who are technologists and understand the direction that the world is heading. So I guess that would probably be my nutshell background.
- [03:22]
Walker
It's a perfect nutshell background. You kept it more concise than I would have. So let's start out here on the Clarity Act. This has obviously been a huge topic of conversation, I mean, especially this year. But even going back further, most of this bill has nothing at all to do with bitcoin. Like, it's not, it's not a bitcoin bill. Like, there's literally, like there's literally nothing about bitcoin in this bill, save for the brca, the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty act portion that was added in there. The BRCA was going to be kind of a standalone thing. It was lumped in with Clarity act that specifically, for those who aren't aware, it offers open source developer protections. You know, think of the tornado cash. Think of the Samurai wallet developers. People have been federally prosecuted and persecuted. In this case, both words very apt. And that, that was added in there, that's really the, the only thing. Everything else is stablecoins. Hey, how do, how are, you know which, which jurisdiction do these various shitcoins fall under? Blah, blah, blah. But that part is the part that's concerning for bitcoiners, concerning for you and I. Can you give us sort of the current lay of the land as far as where this is at? We're getting close to summer recess. There's also midterms coming up this year. It's kind of like a, you know, do or die type of moment, it seems. Where are we at right now? How are you feeling about it?
- [04:50]
Kyle Only
Well, I'm glad you asked. This is a complex area of policy debate in Washington and it has been for basically the entire time that the Trump administration has been seated. So, you know, we are, I guess, maybe 15 months, 16 months into the Trump administration and, you know, the Clarity act, the, you know, global market structure rules for the crypto industry, sorry to use the crypto industry, but it is for the crypto industry, you know, have been being debated and as you mentioned, as Bitcoiners, about 95% of this bill is kind of meaningless to us. A lot of this is about how to normalize and harmonize the sec, the cftc, what qualifies as a decentralized project versus a centralized project, what qualifies as an unregistered securities offering versus something that you're allowed to do. There are a lot of, I'll say, consequential things that are in this larger bill, but they largely relate to the non bitcoin universe. As you mentioned, the BRCA, or what I'll refer to as the developer protections piece of the bill is really what we care about as Bitcoiners, because as we've seen over the last two years with the prosecutions of the Samurai developers and the Tornado Cash developers, you know, we really needed to create this safe harbor for open source software developers in the United States to understand that they could safely exercise their free speech rights by writing software code. As you know, has been held by the Supreme Court in US vs Bernstein, back to the original crypto wars and as was understood as recently as 2019 by FinCEN, which is, you know, one of the financial regulators here in the United States when they issued their guidance that said that if you never take possession of customer funds and you are not a controlling entity, that you do not need to be registered as a money transmitter or you know, kyc, aml, the users of your software. And so, you know, the BRCA was originally a standalone bill that was folded into this larger market structure package. And for the majority of the legislative process, with clarity, it was great. Nobody was really bothered by it. It passed, you know, overwhelmingly out of the House on a bipartisan basis. I think it, you know, three to one was the, you know, vote in total, you know, that it passed through the House, uh, and then it came to the Senate. But as we've seen over the last, you know, sort of nine months or so, as you know, the legislative process just GR ground into the mud and effectively stopped moving. The debates around developer protections has now become more politically charged for some reason. And you see kind of the law and order surveillance interests in Washington D.C. really going to the mat, pushing back and fighting against the idea that this full safe harbor for open source software developers would be able to exist in this bill and be something that they would tolerate. And so what we saw in the most recent fighting to get the bill from out of the Finance Committee onto the full floor of the Senate was the insertion of this clause, subsection D in Title 604 that basically says here I got the language for you, any person that acts with a specific intent to transfer on behalf of another person funds that are known by the initial person to be either derived from a criminal offense or intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity would fall outside of the safe harbor. And, you know, there's debate about, inside the bitcoin community about whether this is actually, you know, good or bad language in the sense that, you know, the legal standard for proving intent is, is typically quite high. But, you know, kind of the, the broadness of the phrasing here. Right. Specific intent or how do you ascertain specific intent necessarily, how do you know whether you intended to be used to promote unlawful activity? Right. Again, the sort of way that we came to have this clause inserted into the bill was that the state district attorneys, and again, the more law and order members of the Senate felt that we couldn't, quote, lose the ability to charge the Samurai developers and tornado cache developers that we just saw happen, because the powers that be feel that those were constructive and useful prosecutions and they don't want to lose that ability. And so I think where we are now with the language in the bill is that the whole industry or the trades in Washington, D.C. all the trade organizations, all of the kind of crypto lobbyists have communicated that the BRCA is a red line if they water down the BRCA or remove it to the point where us developers need to be fearful that they will be prosecuted and thrown in jail the way that the samurai developers have been, that this industry will move offshore. And it's kind of set us up in this, what would seem to be an existential battle now where at least bitcoiners have walked all the way to the edge of what is tolerable and permissible for us in a broader market structure bill. And now it would seem that we're going to get pulled across the line and that they're going to further dilute this language in order to be able to get seven or eight Democratic votes on the floor which are necessary to pass the overall market structure bill.
- [11:28]
Walker
Yeah, this, this language in there, that. Which feels just kind of like a, a loophole, right. It feels like something that is. It's like, well, why does it need to be in there if it's not going to be used? And, and I know like Zach, Zach Shapiro from BPI has, and I don't know if his thinking has changed in this a little bit, but from at least what I read initially, his reactions on this, he was saying, look, you know, from. And he's, he's a lawyer, like, so he knows what he's talking about.
- [11:54]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [11:55]
Walker
He's a very good one. He's also hardcore bitcoiner. Does great work with, with BPI as well. He was basically saying, look, I'm not, not too concerned about this, as you said, you know, burden of proof to be able to show that there was specific intent like that from a legal perspective, that's very high. That being said, the fact that these states attorneys general want this provision in there just makes like the, the red flag kind of go off and say, well, why have it in there if you're not going to use it? And we know specifically from. To take the Samurai case, we know that they were. One of the things in the DOJ's indictment was they were showing, you know, like, just like tweets that samurai had put out saying, like, you know, or not even oligarchs welcome. It was like, welcome to all the new Russian oligarchs after the, some of the sanctions and stuff, which is obviously like a, a joke. Like, they don't, they have no idea if Russian oligarchs are using their service. They don't. They don't kyc their customers. They have no clue. But that was used as an example. That was used as one of the, the key examples in there. And there were a couple others that I'm forgetting, all of which were incredibly loose. Like, either were very obvious jokes, or even if they weren't jokes, there. There was no way for them to know that anyone, like what anyone is using their service for. That's like the whole point of their service is preserving privacy.
- [13:17]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [13:18]
Walker
And not knowing your customer and not holding their funds. Not for instance, you know, like JP Morgan Chase actually custodying, you know, Jeffrey Epstein's funds to, you know, launder all that money. And now they paid fines in the Virgin Islands for that. That's. Yeah, but we don't need to talk about Jeffrey Epstein's banker right now. We'll save that for another day. But, but that, that's what's troubling to me is that, okay, if they're going to use. Under the existing statute, they're going to again, go against what FinCEN, because FinCEN, as you pointed out, said, look, you know, the Samurai Wallet developers, they're not, they're not custodying the funds at any points. They don't meet our, our, you know, our bar for what constitutes an. A money transmitter. Therefore, of course, they logically cannot be an unlicensed money transmitter because they're not a money transmitter. If you're going to use things like loose tweets to say look, they knew Russian oligarchs were using their platform. That to me just seems like under this new provision they would do the exact same thing. Oh look, you know, of course, you know, bad actor, bad actors are going to use your platform because it's, it allows people to know launder money. Therefore you know that people are laundering money. Therefore you know that people have the specific intent to launder money. It just seems like this is, just like this isn't going to protect developers at all. In, in my mind like and again the fact that Zach is less concerned about this makes me feel a little bit better because I, I respect him. I, you know, he is far more knowledgeable than I am on this. But as an outsider looking in without the legal expertise I see what already happened and then I see this provision and I think this almost feels like it makes it easier to go after developers unless I'm just really missing something, which is very probable. But that's just my gut reaction to this is like this, this does not,
- [15:05]
Podcast Host
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- [18:32]
Kyle Only
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely smelly in here at the moment. I don't know if that's because D.C. is a swamp but. But yeah, it is. It is definitely. It raises qu questions right? At the very least. And yeah, I mean again, I think this is a place where, you know, serious people can disagree in about the interpretation. To be charitable and to steel man, you know what I would say, you know, the lawyers, you know, broadly feel about this issue, it would be that anchoring this language into statutory law, which, you know, it doesn't currently exist in statutory law, this was just kind of an understanding that most of us had that, you know, disagree country code of speech. You know, I'm not actually taking anybody's funds. Like presumably I am not a money transmitter and literally FinCEN even told me that I'm not a money transmitter. So like how did I end up in jail? You know, this is, you know, I think a logical conclusion that most of us would reach. But you know, from the legal perspective, the law, I think the lawyers are thinking this covers about 95 to 98% of the cases where you know, you would remain protected and you would be fine, you know, to build most software that you would want to build touching a blockchain and you'd be okay, Right. But again, I think for those of us who are actual builders trying to push the frontier. Right. And create new products and, you know, provide valuable unless existing services to people in the economy and around the world, the point of the statute or the point of having this anchored in law and having the safe harbor wouldn't be for the 90% that is obviously not nefarious and not dangerous and, you know, all the other things that you would say about it. It is for precisely the edge cases that are going to be gray and would allow for prosecutorial discretion to overreach and infringe on civil liberties of the builders of those underlying technologies. Right. It's very similar to the idea of, you know, the free speech debate. Right. Well, what do you have to hide if you're not doing anything wrong or, you know, what do you need free speech for if you don't have anything to say? Right. It's. That's not what these protections are for. Right. These protections are for loathsome speech. Right. Like the, the reason that you have the right to free speech and that we must all defend free speech vociferously is not for, you know, the innocuous day to day conversation, you know, the banter at, you know, the water cooler in the office. It's so that, you know, when you want to speak truth to power or express a loathsome opinion to the majority of the world, you are protected from doing or for your ability to do that. And so, you know, again, here I would say that as a product builder myself, in my own personal estimation, right. I'm not speaking on behalf of any organization or anything when I say this. This does not convince me that I would be safe to build a piece of privacy technology or freedom technology in the United States, because we don't know what the interpretation would be by a subsequent administration or a subsequent, a prosecutor's office who might go rogue. Right. I mean, this is literally what happened in the last administration under the Biden administration. Right. Like nobody was expecting, you know, what we ended up getting in terms of adversarial hostility from, you know, the administration and, you know, kind of the charging authorities. And that's why we have open source software developers sitting in jail today. So whether we can take at face value what Todd Blanche and the current DOJ says that they will do by way of charging requirements, even with this safe harbor and kind of the addition of this carve out in the Clarity act that we're discussing, that doesn't give me confidence that the next administration isn't going to just completely change their mind, especially after seeing that, you know, you can literally go to the relevant regulator, ask them for a formal opinion, be told that you're okay, and then have them ren egg on it after the fact. So, you know, again, I don't want to paint this more fatalistically than, you know, I need to or than it needs to be for most people. But, you know, I think that if we're going to the trouble of spending 18 months fighting tooth and nail to anchor in, you know, a safe harbor in US Federal law that would keep the. The objective purpose is to keep the crypto industry in the United States. This would seem to totally miss the mark, in my opinion. And, and I think that it'll have if language any worse than what we currently have proposed were to make it through. I think, frankly, you're going to see an exodus of people who are building freedom technologies and privacy preserving technologies from the United States, which would be a real shame because this is the exact moment that we need these technologies more than ever. As AI becomes ubiquitous and surveillance in our society has become ubiquitous. You see the push to CDBCs and the tracking of every cent that gets spent in the economy. You know, we just saw, you know, the government, you know, completely revoke access to, you know, an AI model in the last couple weeks, which, you know, effectively is just banning free speech and statistics. You know, this is the exact moment that we really deserve as Americans the safe harbors around building freedom technology and privacy preserving technology. And it gives me great concern to see what's going on right now in Washington. And I hope that calmer heads prevail. But at the moment, I think we're on the ropes and it's either going to require that we come out of the corner with a haymaker and really reestablish to our representatives in Washington that it is not acceptable to tread on our rights and liberties so flagrantly or we're going to be in for a long hard slog, whether it's in keeping the industry in the United States or whether it's in the ability to freely build the technologies that we ought to be able to build and enjoy here as freedom loving Americans.
- [25:48]
Walker
And I mean, there's a. I want to get into the AI side of that with you because you, you mentioned that as well. But just before we kind of move on to that, I do, you know, you mentioned, okay, if anything worse than what's in there right now ends up passing like we're in for a, like that's That's a. That's a not good situation. Would you be happy with it if it passed as is like, as it stands right now, even with that loophole, or is that even a bridge too far for you?
- [26:18]
Kyle Only
It's very. It's a very hard call. Right? I mean, this is one of the, you know, truisms of politics, is that, you know, they always say that, you know, you did your job when nobody's happy, right? Because the compromise required that everybody give up something that they cared about, and you're just kind of grudgingly accepting that this, you know, ratchet has moved one click in the right direction. And I think from that perspective, I would say that it is a better universe for us to be in where 95 to 98% of the developer activity would be safe and not eligible to be, you know, charged, you know, compared to where we are today. Because, again, you know, where we are today is that the whims and fancies of whoever sits at the DOJ or, you know, the SDNY determines whether or not you have these rights. Not, you know, anything else, just, you know, kind of the whims and fancies of whoever happens to be sitting in the seat. So anchoring into US Federal law, the idea that there is a safe harbor that it exists that would cover 95 or more percent of permissible activity, that is inarguably a win. Right? Like that is a win. And I think, again, that, you know, kind of the conservative bias of most lawyers, you know, leans in the direction of saying this is an enormous win. Right. Like, this is a huge win for 95% of people. But again, as somebody who's lived my life mostly on the frontier and, you know, kind of in the gray zones of, you know, what is coming or, you know, what the future is going to look like, this concerns me greatly. And I think that it's going to have a pretty profound chilling effect. And, you know, it kind of borders on prior restraint. Right. Which is something that we try to avoid in, you know, US Federal law for. For good reason. And so, yeah, like, I think that, you know, the short answer to your question is if we could take the exact language as it exists today, I think we probably want to take that beachhead and then expand out from there. Right. Continue doing the hard work to convince very old members of Congress who may not understand the technology, why it is important that we expand the envelope of possibility rather than contract it, both in the United States generally, but in this moment in particular. But again, that is not without Cost. Because the other thing that this bill does is it pretty substantially expands the surveillance state and basically obliges anyone who formally does business in the United States touching a blockchain to implement BSA surveillance on all of their users and customers and all of the money flows. And so if you are a bitcoiner who believes that your personal financial transactions in the broad economy ought to remain private and not be in clear text visible to unofficial or an unnamed bureaucrat who might come in and use that against you, as we've seen in France with the wrench attacks on all of the kind of crypto founders and the increase in violence that's happened from creating that honeypot of centralized data, I think that, you know, we need to be concerned. And this is, this is a moment, I would say, to, to double down our conviction on the need for, for preserving our privacy rights and making sure that we are not, you know, just thrust into a surveillance panopticon
- [30:16]
Walker
on that. Two things they'll start out with. Okay, you'd be okay with it passing if it as is goes through. Okay, what do you think the realistic chances of that are, you know, versus either more things are chopped and, you know, diced out of the brca, more things are added in on the banks. You see, like, where are you kind of putting the probabilities there in terms of, hey, it ends as it is today, ends up making it through, gets passed, or like, no chance, you know, very slim chance that happens, there's going to be need to be serious other compromises or it probably won't make it through. Like, Clarity won't make it through at all.
- [30:59]
Kyle Only
Yeah, this is hard because it's not just this issue that's complicating the Clarity Act. Right. There are other issues like the Jamie Dimon, Brian Anderson spat over stable yields, which I would say in most normal circumstances, you would look at something like that and say, well, this bill's not going to pass. Right. If, like the most, you know, sort of lofty banker on Wall street and all of, you know, his resources are being allied against it. And then there's also the element of the ethics concerns around this bill that, you know, it's very unclear whether the Republican Party or Donald Trump will accept strong ethics provisions that would prevent, you know, his continued or the family's continued involvement in, you know, their various crypto dealings. So as far as, like, raw probabilities, you know, if I was a bookie in Vegas at this point, my odds on this passing, I would probably peg below 30% at this point, just because the legislative calendar has gotten so deep. I mean, we're like days away from, you know, being done with business until, you know, we come back on the far side of summer and you know, Labor Day and that'll be full on campaign season at that point. And it's not obvious why anybody would want to disrupt the apple cart and hand the alternative party a victory at the 11th hour that might change the trajectory of the election that we're on. So yeah, my sense is that this is going to be an uphill fight no matter what, to try to get even the current language through. And then if you take it face value, all of the trade associations in D.C. who have said that, you know, the BRCA is the red line and that, you know, if they cross that red line, the industry will flip against the bill. You know, I don't know how you square the circle of, you know, watering it down or creating more carve outs from here, keeping the industry, trade groups on page and you know, convincing everybody that, you know, the, the give get is worth it. In addition to those other issues around, you know, is Wall street going to come along and play ball, you know, or is Jimmy J. Diamond just going to, you know, go down with the ship fighting this one and go all in? And then the Donald Trump thing. So, you know, yeah, if, if, if I was a betting man, I would say that, you know, it's, it's not looking good at the moment. Which, you know, again, if you're a bitcoiner, like, we don't really, you know, bitcoin does not exist because of permission from the United States government. Right. You know, bitcoin is an emergent phenomenon that comes from the people and it utilizes again, open source software, free speech, you know, and math and physics, you know, in order to, to have come to the state that it is currently in. None of those things will change, regardless of the opinion of the US Government. What will change is the game theory of where the energy and the economic value gets created in bitcoin. And I would be very sad to see that move offshore and outside of the United States. It would seem to be a catastrophic policy error to end up in that universe. But if that's where we end up, I don't know that you can change that outcome because bitcoin's going to keep being bitcoin and it's going to keep doing what it's doing. TikTok next block for now until, you know, infinity.
- [34:43]
Walker
At least there's that, you know, at least at Least there's that. Bitcoin still does not care, but it's a, you know, ideally you would want to be in a jurisdiction that is more friendly to bitcoin. You know, said this to you, and I've said this to Zach before at, at bpi. You know, I'd rather have a, a government full of lummises than warrens.
- [35:00]
Podcast Host
Right?
- [35:00]
Walker
Like just, you'd rather have a government that's not actively trying to screw you, you know, seven ways till Sunday, like that, that would be ideal. But even in absence of that, bitcoin persists, you know, they still can't stop it still doesn't need permission. But it's, you know, you would, you would rather that your country, especially as a freedom loving country that's supposed to respect individual liberties and property rights and crazy things like free speech, you would want that to be reflected in the new laws that are written as well. Call it crazy. Like that's, it doesn't seem to be asking too much, but apparently for some, for some it is, I don't know, it's, it's, it's wild. To me, it's wild.
- [35:43]
Kyle Only
Yeah, it is. And frankly, they're on the wrong side of history, right? Everybody who believes that is, is both on the wrong side of history. And I would say they're on the wrong side of, I'm going to use the term physics broadly here, but you know, they're on the wrong side of Internet physics. Right. You, you can't fight against something when the universe tilts against you, you know, structurally, or at least not indefinitely. You can't, you can in the short term. Right. But if, if you know, you're fighting against gravity, it's a losing battle. Right. And I think that that's kind of what we're going to see happen here across all of the policy debates in Washington as it relates to technology over the next, I'm thinking two to five years, because you see the same sort of faulty logic that has led to wanting to try to clamp down on Bitcoin and over legislate, over regulate something that is kind of inherently unregulatable at a certain level. I mean, clearly you can create rules at the road and the businesses need to follow and basic things of this nature, but you can't change the actual existence of, of the product or its propagation through the universe. We're seeing this now with AI, right? This is happening acutely in this moment. After two weeks ago we saw anthropic release fable, which is their latest mythos class Model, which is the kind of scary one that they needed to restrict from everybody because it was so powerful and it is legitimately an immense powerful model. But the idea that you're going to be able to slap export controls on this technology and pull it back from the market, and that this is somehow indefinitely going to keep other people from accessing the power or the capability in this model, when open source labs all around the world, but primarily in China, are only 30 to 90 days behind the frontier labs and they're racing ahead, you're just, you can't stop the propagation of information, right? You can't stop speech from moving around the world without implementing something like the Great Firewall in China, right? And so, you know, in a very weird twist of, you know, fate, the US Government here is basically trying to implement the Great Firewall on AI in the United States and then somehow thinking that that is either beneficial to, you know, U.S. geostrategic interests vis a vis China and our other competitors, or that this is somehow a durable move on the board, right? As though it won't just be, you know, weeks to months before somebody outside of your reach, outside of your control has access to this same model. If anything, frankly, I think that it, this kind of had the reverse intent that they, they wanted, which is it created this massive Streisand effect, right? And now everybody is searching every other model in the market, trying to figure out if they can get the same jailbreak that, you know, they were able to get out of fable from an open source model. And so frankly, they've actually drawn more attention to the problem than, than taking it away. So again, I think that like, we are, we're really confronting some severe policy challenges I think in the United States right now, because the average age of Congress is like 78 years old, you know, and you know, the people who are building this technology and the world that we're moving into is not a world that is frankly built for people that are 80 years old. And you know, that's just kind of a reality of where we're at. I mean, I don't say that to be ageist, you know, but it is just a reality that the world continues to move and evolve and it's getting faster. And those of us who are, you know, digitally native or crypto native, like, we're even struggling to keep up with the pace and speed at which the world is moving and trying to figure out how we navigate those challenges. And yeah, I think we just need a complete change of perspective in Washington on how we deal with these things and dealing with them a little bit more rationally.
- [40:21]
Walker
Let's, okay, multiple things that go into there. Let's talk a little bit more about the anthropic thing because I think that that's, it's really interesting and what you pointed out as well about just kind of funny that it's like the US is cracking down and China's dropping all the open source models presumably to shrink the, the moat of these big US based players. Like that would be the, you know, seemingly the, the geopolitical angle there, right. It's like, hey, let's, let's push to just make it so that these guys have a vanishingly small moat. And yet, you know, so it's going to be harder for them to raise money. It's going to be hard for them to justify those valuations because so much of this is open source. Like they don't have the monopoly on this or, you know, a small monopoly on this.
- [41:02]
Kyle Only
So.
- [41:03]
Walker
But can we, can we, can you talk a little bit more in depth about what kind of happened there? Basically we're at this point where it seems the government was like, hey, shut off access to this to foreign nationals, right? But then it was just like, but it's like, well, you know, how do you determine who's a foreign national? Well, it's the same with the UK's under 16 law. It's like, how do you determine who's under 16? Well, you ID everyone. And so like what we're talking about now and obviously like Anthropic already had a certain amount. All these companies, if you pay for their services, they have a certain amount of information on you. Right, but we're talking about something different here. It's like a requirement of entry to be doxxed at a, you know, national identification level versus just hey, here's your, you know, your credit card or however you don't want it to pay and credit, all that stuff can be linked back. But still it feels like this is something different. Can you, can you explore that a little bit?
- [41:55]
Kyle Only
Yeah, so I think you got most of it right. Right. They, the sensible reason that the model was pulled back was that the administration said that they wanted to implement export controls and keep foreign nationals from having access to, you know, this powerful capability that might be used nefariously against the US government. And obviously the challenge, as you just alluded to, is that how does one, you know, prevent the access to information on a nationalism basis? Right, like based on your citizenship. Like again, that's kind of like saying like, here's the library. Everyone can have access to this unless it's, you know, this person and this, you know, kind of nationality or something. And then we need you to pull those books off the shelf, but they can still access the library, but they can't see those specific books. It's like this is unworkable. You can't have a library and operate it in this way if that's what you're going to try to do. And so yeah, I think that this is again from a civil liberties and like a freedom tech or you know, cyberpunk perspective. This is really scary. I mean this is like really concerning that the US government thinks it can reach all the way down to. We need to KYC AMLU in order to perform a, effectively a Google search, right. Like to ask a question, right? We need to know your identity to know why you're asking that question. Right. And that you can be tracked everywhere. And so yeah, I think that, you know, this was an enormous wake up call for everybody in Silicon Valley over the last couple weeks. I mean I, it's really interesting. I've been kind of an outspoken sort of open source and cypherpunk believer for a long time out here and maybe obviously because I'm a bitcoiner, but for a long time I got almost no purchase on that argument. In Silicon Valley there was a really old generation of kind of the original.com guys who grew up and they were the Linux generation and the original cryptography wars. Those guys were hardcore, they got it, they understood the value of open source. But kind of Even the last 10 or so, maybe 15 years, like a lot of the second or third wave of silicon Valley were too young to understand where we came from and the importance of this fight and what was going on. And it really was like this last week where tons of open claw operators and kind of otherwise unopinionated software people woke up and we're like, wait a second, like the government can just come in and take this away with you know, no recourse, no clear guidance and framework. Like, and I might have been running my business on this model, right? Like I like may literally rely upon access to this new tool in order to operate my business and get my income and pay my rent and feed my family and you know, have a life, you know. And so for the government to reach all the way down in and just turn that off, right, I think was an enormous wake up call to people to say, oh wow, like it finally touched them, right? The lack of open Source options finally became real to people in a way that it hadn't before. And so, man, there was just a flurry of people trying to figure out, okay, how do I move on to open source models? I can't. Continents, a world where I can just be, you know, I mean, imagine if you, you could just have the Internet access to the Internet turned off arbitrarily anywhere you are in the world, right? Like at a moment's notice, and you just couldn't access the Internet. Well, what if you're in the middle of a journey where you're relying on, you know, the map that requires Internet access? What if you. I mean, again, these are very like, you know, first world problems today, but people have learned to live in this way, right? Like, what if you're relying on a live translation, right thing that is required, and you're in a foreign country, you don't speak the language, and like, you know, now what? Right? It's kind of equivalent to the idea that, you know, a kill switch in the car, you know, it's like, well, what happens if you're, you know, trying to get out of your farm and get away from, you know, a tornado that's ripping across, you know, and the kill switch just activates in your car? I mean, these are very profound consequential changes in what it means to live in a free country, you know, that it really, I think, just came out of nowhere. It came out of left field and really like, slammed into a bunch of people in Silicon Valley in the last week. So, yeah, I think the reality that people are coming to is, like, there is a real imperative for open source and open source weights and models and, you know, kind of the sort of access to intelligence, universal access to intelligence. We are going to need to have an enormous debate about this in this country. And frankly, it's going to have to happen a lot faster than it's taken for the crypto or the bitcoin debate to percolate in Washington. And if past history of waiting 15 years to get to the tortured kind of suboptimal conclusion that we seem to have arrived at in bitcoin legislation or crypto legislation were to be mapped onto the AI debate, man, we are in for a lot of pain and trouble moving forward. And again, frankly, I would say the biggest concern there is that by doing so and doing so slowly and poorly negotiating our way through the policy implications and what needs to happen, we're really kind of handing the game to China because China is not slowing down, right? They're not stopping and they've taken an open source approach to the market and the distribution. So at the exact moment that the US government is pulling back, you know, access to the leading American frontier model from everyone, not just Americans, but literally everyone, China's charging full steam ahead and they're going to push even harder and they're going to, you know, distribute their models and try to make them the standard. So I just don't see this as being effective for the US geostrategic interests and it's certainly not in the interests of individual free Americans who just want to access knowledge and technology and to do so in the way that we would expect to be able to as Americans.
- [48:37]
Walker
It's interesting too, the analogy to Bitcoin because you know, bitcoin is really ultimately so much more anti fragile in this case, right? Like, because there is, it's not like there was. I mean, I guess you could make the argument there were some companies early on that did a lot of development around bitcoin, you know, like through the like blockstream as an example. Right. But it wasn't like they were running a frontier model of bitcoin. It was like it was. No, it's all bitcoin. Bitcoin's totally open source. Anyone can, you know, view that code can use that. However, you know, obviously the, the, you know, the core maintenance is a diff, like a different thing. But bitcoin is more anti fragile. I think in that sense. You take that then and you contrast that with the AI side of things. Like bitcoin could handle all the, you know, shitty regulation and all that kind of stuff. Like it can handle it better because there's not like a kill switch for it. There's no kill switch for bitcoin. There's a kill switch for these frontier models. Clearly we just saw it get used to, we know there's a kill switch. Like there are throats to choke when it comes to these frontier models. There's pressure that can be applied to specific CEOs like all of whom also are trying to go public in the very near term. So there's a lot like, you know, you don't want to get on the wrong side of the government and leading up to your ipo, right? Like I mean pretty, pretty obviously. And so I think it's interesting because it's like, I wonder too though that like the beauty of open source is that it like it will make every like open source in any, in any domain is going to make everything better, right? Because you don't Just have people working in a silo in Silicon Valley. Not there's anything wrong with that. Silicon Valley has done great things. But you're also exposing it to the developer, you know, who's, who's in the brilliant, you know, young Einstein in Kenya or in Eastern Europe somewhere or wherever it might be that would never have had access to this, but now has access to it and happens to have this really brilliant idea which makes it that much better. And people build on that. Like that's the beauty of open source, right? It's that, that, that wisdom of the, of the crowd being able to work on a problem completely unfettered. I'm curious how quickly these, the moats for these big companies, the open AIs, the anthropics, how quickly they actually disappear. Because this is the other thing, you know that they actually the Sam Altman's
- [51:03]
Podcast Host
of the world, they want the regulation.
- [51:05]
Walker
They go and they beg for it's, they're like the, you know the analogy in the bitcoin crypto space is the Brian Armstrong or you know like the look we want responsible, please like regulate us, please just tell us the rules of the road. Like we want the regulation. Fear not. We've got compliance teams with super overpriced lawyers that'll make sure and once the regulatory mode is large enough, we'll make sure that no upstart can ever possibly compete with us because you won't be able to afford the cost of compliance. But I, I feel like in this, this AI race again there's a, in the AI side as much as Bitcoin is more anti fragile on this area for AI it's like ah, it's going to be like the destruction of those moats. Seems like it could be achieved more quickly. Do, do you know what I'm getting at there? Like just because of the nature and because of the competitive, naturally competitive nature of this. Am I on the right track there?
- [51:58]
Kyle Only
Absolutely. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean again I think like the, the you know, kind of another way to frame the, the necessity of open source, right Is that it's actually pro consumer, right? Because it, it is maximally competitive, right? Like if something is open for anyone else to build on and create a new implementation, you're going to get that radical competition between everybody around the world competing to be the best implementation, right? And so at the moment, you know there are so many issues with AI actually right. Because one, I mean the thing that you alluded to around you know the Frontier model company is like they don't actually generate cash flow right now. Right. I mean they have cash flow, I should say. They don't generate profits, they're nowhere near generating profits. So as like a saleable business concern right now no one has an answer for how these are long term durable. Right. At best the idea is that the next model will pay off your last model. But that's kind of just a like doubling down game at the poker table. It's like, yeah, well I'm not losing this poker game yet as long as I can keep going back to the ATM and doubling up every, every time. Right. Like so that's one problem. Right. And I would say that again the approach of relying on these giant capital intensive frontier model companies and you know, all the private credit placements that are required in order to finance the construction of the data centers and just kind of a leverage that's built into the system predicated on the idea that eventually we will come to a point where we can monetize the technology fully and kind of recoup the inbound expenses. That's all a lot of question marks really. There's a lot of hand waviness on that. And that's without even getting into the circular financing and the true price of tokens rather than the highly subsidized price of tokens that most of us have experienced up until the last couple weeks. So there are got many conflicting challenges that are intersecting on just the execution of the plan in a vacuum. Right. Like if we were just going to like let the US companies go crazy and you know, this is the future, it still is kind of hard to squint and see how that all actually, you know, works out where the plane lands safely on the tarmac. But yeah, I think that you know, in particular the you know, sort of challenge of open source is like, or as it relates to the model companies here is like we want to have a world where, I mean ostensibly I would think we would want to have a world where American made models are the baseline or the platform that everybody wants to build on. Right. And that's just going to be not possible in a universe where you need to afford a 250 or a 2000 or a $10,000 monthly subscription to a frontier company. Right. Like, I just don't see how that works like to your point, you know, the, you know, people in the global South, South America, Africa, wherever, South Asia, you know, these people need access to intelligence as well and to pretend that they're going to, you know, just not access it in a universe where it's a requirement to, you know, kind of engage in civil society moving forward. Like the Internet is, I think, to just. Just pretend that you're living in a, in a different world than the one that really exists. So, yeah, I mean, at all levels of the AI debate, I would say that the policy is super challenging right now. And we're really, as I said, struggling, I think, even in Silicon Valley to navigate. Like, what does this actually mean? Right? Like, what is it? What does it actually mean for us to reinvent our entire company around the idea that this tool exists and then to have the US Government revoke access to that tool? Right. What does it mean for us to say that, like, okay, this technology is really powerful and meaningful, but maybe we shouldn't rely on just anthropic or OpenAI when one person can turn that off. Right. And we don't understand the weights and models that they're. Or the weights I should say that they're using, you know, behind the scenes, right. Like, it's equally as large a problem for there to be one man or woman or, you know, private person company that controls and gates everyone's else's access to the underlying technology. Right. And that was actually the case, you know, with Mythos and Fable for, you know, mythos for a couple months, but fable for, you know, you know, the first week or two, too, it was like, okay, well, you know, there's a special class of people who get the best, you know, the good intelligence. Right. Like, you know, if you're, if you're on the inside track, you know, like, I got it for you, bro. I got the real good tokens in here.
- [56:57]
Walker
Right?
- [56:57]
Kyle Only
But if you're just a normal pleb on the street, you know, well, you know, this is a little dangerous, kid. We don't want you to have access to the good intelligence because, you know, we don't know how. What you do with that, you know. So I think it's forcing us to ask some very challenging questions about, you know, the moment that we're in with both technology, civil society, you know, the state of our current politics in this country. I mean, again, I think that a lot of this I would connect back to the idea that, like, you know, our kind of social fabric is, has become very frayed at the edges and, you know, kind of the operating system, let's call it, that we've been operating on for the last 80 years or so in the post war era. I mean, the wheels are getting real shaky on the cart now.
- [57:48]
Walker
Yeah. And just kind of going off of that a little bit. You mentioned this idea earlier of this geriatric society, right. Specifically as it relates to policymakers. And I think that's kind of really important. Like the, you know, just to lump it in. Like, the boomers essentially have been in charge for a while, right? And like, even, you know, the older boomers, like, people are starting to age out, but still we have. The average age of, of Congress is very old, very old. And this idea that, like, we're talking about all of these really, like revolutionary technological moves, right? Whether, whether it be, whether it be Bitcoin, whether it be AI well, you know, what new frontiers of, of encryption and new protocol, like, whatever it is. Like, they have no idea. Like, they're relying on their AIDS for stuff, right? And their aides who are like, fresh out of college. Nothing wrong with that. Again, not being ageist, but like, fresh. They have no idea either. Doesn't like, sure, they're younger, but they have no. Like, nobody that's actually making policy really has any clue what they're talking about is what. Like, and from my very limited time that I spent at, on the, on the Hill in D.C. during the Bitcoin policy summit, that was like my biggest takeaway was. And not that like, I met some really well meaning people too, and some people that were really curious and actually asked great questions, things like that. But then you just realize, like, like, oh, there's like a, there's a huge disconnect. Like, there is a massive disconnect. And I'm just curious, like, is this something that just will naturally write itself as people, you know, continue aging? And we know what happens when you age long enough, right? Like, happens to all of us. But, or, or is this something that, that is. Will we see sort of a turning over sooner? We are, we are in like a fourth turning right now. Some, some would argue we're already in the, in the first. I don't know about that yet. I think the first turning is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. I think, like, I think El Salvador has already hit its, its first turning. They've already, they've already got, they've already gone through this. The cycles there, like, but the rest of the world, like, I don't know, like, the UK feels really deep in the crisis period. US Feels like it's, it's there too. Maybe it's starting to emerge on the other side. I don't know. But I, I guess my question is like, like, does this only resolve? Like, does this incongruity in terms of the people in charge being so disconnected from what's actually happening. Does that only resolve as they age out? Or do we start to see them being replaced more proactively by a younger generation that sort of had enough?
- [60:27]
Kyle Only
Well, let's hope it's the latter. Just as a starting point, right? I mean, I think this is. I mean, there's so many things to say about this. So I think, like, for one, you know, to just to be a bit pithy, you may be aware, or maybe new to your listeners at least, that there's a saying that in academics progress is measured in gravestones, right? The academy is notoriously conservative and slow to adapt and evolve. And there are natural reasons for this. People who have spent their entire career, their entire identity, creating an academic construct that then is proven to be false. You know, they're, you know, unwilling, let's say, to engage with the reality of the world. And it's only after they die that, you know, the next generation can come in and say, yeah, well, actually the world works this way instead, right? And, you know, it would have been great if we could have done that 25 years ago, but, you know, here we are now, and that's fine for most cases, but again, the kind of unique moment that we're in historically, not only from the technology perspective, which, like, clearly we are in an era of radical acceleration in capabilities, right? But from the perspective of just like literally raw demographics, right? This is an unparalleled moment in human history. We have never in human history had so many people over the age of 50, let alone people over the age of 70 living on this planet, right? And as we know, like, the just natural consequence of politics is that older people tend to be more engaged, they have more resources, they vote more. And so at the moment, my sort of assessment as a systems engineer of American politics is that we have become captured, like, you know, at this stage of the game. Like, you have a lot of senior and retired people who are living better than any generation of people their age in human history who are, you know, continuing to, you know, enjoy the benefits of the system that has been constructed for their interests for the last 30 or 40 years at the expense of the younger generations who are going to be tasked with living on this planet for the next 40 to 50 years, right? And you would think from first principles that we ought to be designing policy and the objectives that we're striving for as a society in the interest of those who are young and vigorous and will be, you know, the active participants in that society moving forward for, you know, the next few decades. But on issue after issue after issue, we see that, you know, the millennials and people, I'm just going to broadly say people under the age of about 40, you know, like this society does not work for us kind of at all. Right. Like, if you're under the age of 40 and you can afford a house and healthcare and you have a stable job and you have like a line of sight to any kind of retirement savings, you're kind of like in, I don't know if I would say that like the 1%, but like, you're certainly in like the top 5 to 10% of everyone, your age demographic and down. Right. And that's kind of similar. I mean, well, it is profoundly sad, but it's kind of scary to think that we've gotten that extreme in society where we're kind of eating the young. Right. It's like I often think of the Saturn eating his son piece of art. If you're familiar with that. That's kind of how it feels if you're under the age of 40 in the United States today. And so I think that. And the other thing I'll say there is that like the contrast or the, you know, sort of discrepancy between that enforced reality that most of us who are younger are experiencing today versus the sort of objective assessment that there are really no limits anymore to what we could accomplish as a human society. Right. I mean, we literally live in an era where, you know, and I'm going to paint with a broad brush here, clearly there are problems, clearly we haven't solved everything, but like, we can literally send rockets into space and land them on a floating barge in the middle of the ocean and radically collapse the cost of having a fully spaceborne economy. We're probably talking about at least going to the moon and having a colony, if not Mars, becoming, you know, multi planetary. We've surmounted almost all of the biological challenges that had existed. I mean, clearly we need to like extend lifespans, you know, if, if we're going to be capable of doing that. But like, you know, you don't die from like trivial diseases in childhood anymore for the most part. And, you know, if you have a catastrophic health care situation that happens to befall you, that would have certainly taken you out of the game in any other era of human history. You can miraculously survive and, and thrive on the far side of that today. So, like, you know, it's not that we can't build housing In America, like we know how to build houses, right? Like this. It literally is not rocket science. And by the way, we're doing the rocket science really well at this point. But like all of these compounding problems, right, they're all choices, they're willful choices that we have made about what we are willing to tolerate in our society. And I think that that is just, we're reaching the breaking point of where that system, like as you said, I believe that we are deep in the fourth turning right. Like, I think 10 years from now we're going to look back and it probably will be marked to the start of the Trump administration, the first Trump administration. And you know, I hope that we're able to navigate this crisis successfully. But you know, it is very clear that the system that we are operating in is no longer fit for purpose and it is no longer ach, achieving what it ought to or needs to achieve on behalf of the people for whom it is ostensibly operating. And so I think that, you know, again, whether it's on Bitcoin policy, you know, or whether it's on AI policy or, I mean, I can pull another one out of the hat. I used to work at Uber. I used to work on the self driving unit at Uber. And like we've had the capability to have self driving trucks on the road for 10 years. Like literally 10 years. We could have done this in 2017 if we had wanted to. But there's just complete gridlock around the idea that we would do that because of the impact that it might have on the labor economy. Right. Because truck driving is the biggest, it's the number one job around the United States. Most people don't know that it's like the number one job in like 32 of the 50 states or something. Last time I checked, there's literally millions of people who have these jobs. And this isn't to minimize the impact that it would have to those people if we did automate most of those jobs with, you know, self driving trucks. But, you know, again, you can't sort of like hold back the tide of history indefinitely, you know, for the sake of, you know, short term interests. You know, we need to like accept that new technologies come along, integrate them, incorporate them, make thoughtful and intelligent policy that allows us to multiply the output that we can achieve as society based on that and then harvest the deflationary gains that should come from that improvement in the quality of life and recycle it into finding newer and better and more wealth generating activities. Right. And there needs to be some social safety net and how you get from here to there. But like all the things that I just described, right. For the last 10 years, we've seen almost no progress on and it's because of the conservative bias of aged people who hold the levers of policy in our country. At least that would be my contention. And again, unlike any other time in human history, you have never seen a society that was operated by, of and for people above the age of 65. It just hasn't existed because we've never been faced with this scenario. And so this is literally in pretty much every way a historic moment for humanity and an unparalleled moment of both opportunity and risk for the human species. Because it in the past may have been the case that we could muddle our way through and like, you know, the course of history was moving slow enough that like muddling for 20 or 30 years had no meaningful consequence. If we muddle through the next decade, it is very unclear what will remain of what we currently think of as modern society around the world. Whether it's, you know, on climate change or becoming multi planetary resource depletion, AI, Bitcoin, like free money surveillance, like all of these sorts of things. Like we are just in the meta crisis now and I think we really need to both acknowledge that in order to start really addressing it and solving it. And then what we really need is a generation of young, vibrant, visionary leaders to step up and help chart the course from where we are to where we need to be. I think that's the moment that we're in. And I really think that, you know, the time is now. If not us, who, if not now,
- [70:00]
Walker
when do you, in terms of that generation of young visionary leaders, do you foresee that? Are you describing engagement at the political level or also that that extends to, you know, the technological level as well? Because we're, we're arguably seeing it, a good amount of it at the technological level. Right, like that, you know, it's oftentimes younger people who are driving the technology yet are not, as, you know, they're driving humanity forward, but then are handicapped because they're also not engaging politically in the same ways. Is that kind of what you're getting at? It's like we need more of the political engagement. And I'm not talking about like holding up signs and marching like we're talking about like actual things that, that move the needle. Right, right.
- [70:41]
Kyle Only
Yeah, I mean it's, I would say it's all of the above. Right. I mean certainly in politics, I Think the where we are most deficient is that there are no, you know, 40 year olds in Washington who are really fighting for these things that we're talking about. Right. Like there are, you know, as you mentioned, there kind of a weird barbell of like there's really old members of Congress and then there's really young staffers who are basically running the place and there's kind of this giant gap in the middle because both demographic reasons and then just kind of the way that the industry works. But yeah, in my mind I would say that it's a multifold problem. We both need people in the private sector innovating without permission to push the boundary forward, which is why things like open source, developer protections, things of this nature are so important. Right. Like you wouldn't be able to move the world forward if you didn't have people who were doing crazy things that are socially unacceptable air quotes right at the edges of society pushing us forward. Right. These people are always viewed as heretics. They are always viewed as threatening to established interests. Like, that's never going to change. Right. And for the last, you know, whatever, 40 years or so, the best way to influence the trajectory of the world, in my assessment, has been to build something in the private sector and then dare, you know, the political, you know, universe to come after you. Right. I mean, again, like, without getting too deeply into it, like if it were up to regulators, Uber would not exist. Right. Like we, we wouldn't have Uber. And you know, that was to me a very illustrative example of like the people wanted this product. Were there problems with how it came to market and the impact and dislocation? Yes, of course, you know, and we should have dealt with those issues in, in a more serious and deeper way than I think that we have. But like, nonetheless, very clearly and obviously people wanted Uber and so Uber was going to continue to exist and the sort of policy apparatus needed to adapt to that after the fact. So like that's one track, but the other track is in actual politics, like the actual on the ground doing the work politics. And I think there we need really an army of new generation, new blood to get in the game and help push this in the direction that we all know it needs to go. Right. I mean, again, the whole world can be different tomorrow if we all just got up and decided that it was going to be different tomorrow. Right. Like if we wanted to get up and change anything about our society, the physical constraints really no longer apply. Right. We can create anything that we can imagine in software you know, and there should be no barrier to what we can all accomplish. It's all a consensus problem. Right. Which we should understand quite well as bitcoiners. Right. If you can get everybody to agree on what the forward trajectory should look like, everything can be different tomorrow. So I think to me, yeah, there's like this element of like, if you're a builder and that's where you're better served and your time and energy could be maximally beneficial in building something new and powerful and world changing. You should do that. Right. But don't forget that you need to also support the people who on the policy side are going to help you accomplish lasting and durable change. Right. And then conversely, I think on the other side, we need people who are capable of clearly articulating the vision and the importance and the thoughtful articulation of how we lay out policy to unlock wealth and abundance in our society. But you can't just be myopic about the idea that it's all going to be coming from permissioned rails. Right. And that we're not fighting an uphill battle on that front. And you need to, if you're a policy person, engage with the industry and the technologies and the innovators who are at the bleeding edge. So, so yeah, I think to me this is an all of the above equation. We are kind of standing on the precipice of this truly unique moment in human history and we have two options ahead of us. It's radical self sovereignty and global emancipation of free peoples with untold capabilities that our ancestors would just, I mean, literally their eyes would fall out of their head if you, you know, showed any other generation of humans what we have access to now and what we could accomplish together if we wanted to do it. You know, again, Elon, and the space faring stuff is just one of many examples or the other alternative is, would seem to be techno feudalism, right? It's, we're all going to be serfs, you know, who, you know, get to access technology, intelligence, whatever, only at the permission of some centralized authority that grants us that authority. Right. And you know, I know which world I want to live in. So, you know, I'm, I'm trying to do my best to live in both worlds and, and try to, you know, push the envelope on both sides of the equation. But, you know, it is a little lonely out here and we could use you, we could use more good soldiers
- [76:19]
Walker
and it's a great call to action, honestly. And I want to be conscious of time here because we're running a little bit up on it. You kind of hinted at this already. Maybe it's worth just saying a couple words on it. But sort of this need for this cypherpunk revival as you and I had discussed, I think that's kind of what you're getting at at the end here is that yeah like there's the, there is the political path, right. And that political path is very much needed at the same time. Like yes, there should be engagement at that level. Yes, you should also just build things without permission. But also like, you know, changing our mindset I think is one of the hardest things. Like you mentioned that in Silicon Valley specifically that sort of interim generations of. Yeah, there were the hardcore cypherpunks who were around, you know, in these early days in the dot com era and then there's kind of this like larger gap and maybe we're seeing a resurgence of that cypherpunk ethos now as, because you know, government overreach is a forcing function on it. Right? Like you're seeing people I think and we talk mentioned this earlier but you know the UK, Australia, Canada soon implementing these under 16 social media bands which is just doxing everyone. So it's like huh, boy, we kind of need some like, you know, better anonymous, you know, or pseudonymous access to public communication networks, right? Like you need things like Noster and different things but boy, they're going to make encrypted chats, decrypt. They're going to give. The governments are going to beg for back doors and if you, the companies that produce them don't give back doors, you know, there's again, there's a throat to choke there they're going to become after. And so it's like oh well maybe we need actually some like this all comes back to open source too, right? It all comes back to you need to be able to have open source and also interoperability between things. Right? Building on protocols versus building on these proprietary stacks where they're, you know, building in the, in the open field instead of the walled garden I think is kind of where we're at right now. And people are starting to, I think more people, this is the optimist in me. I think more people are starting to wake up if they haven't already simply because some of the things governments around the world are doing are so egregious like are just so over the top where it's like well hang on a second. Like that's, that's just insane. Why, why on earth are you Doing that. And maybe they're, you know, they didn't wake up during, you know, Covid, and a lot of times they didn't wait, you know, they haven't woken up until now. But hey, at least they're waking up now. I don't know. A lot of people, I think, are going to stay asleep for a while, but maybe just some kind of final thought. We probably just need to do another whole rip specifically on this. But maybe just some final, some final thoughts on that in terms of, like, are you optimistic about people's mentality around all of this changing?
- [79:04]
Kyle Only
Yeah, I am, is the short story. Right. I mean, I am optimistic because I am in the dirt doing the work on the front lines. And the other people who are out here doing that work are exceptional human beings. And we're all fighting for something that's bigger than us. It's more important than any individual. Right. You know, I often say this about bitcoin, but like, bitcoin is not a project that I, at least I think most of us would expect to be accomplished in our lifetime. Right. I mean, it is a multi generational historic world, historic project. Right. It is bigger than any individual and it is going to outlive all of us, hopefully. Right. And so, you know, to that end, we need something to believe in if you're going to be engaged in a lifelong struggle, you know, for righteousness. Right. Or for, you know, principles that are bigger and larger than, you know, any one of us. And so, you know what I kind of always fall back to. Well, again, this is maybe aging me a little bit. It's hilarious. The kids don't know these sorts of references anymore, but Simon Sinek. Why? How what? Right. I'm sure you saw that video, right? People, you know, that's how you have to build the structure of motivation and the goal orientation for any group of people that you're working with in order to accomplish something together. Why? How? What? You have to start with the why. Right? And if people can't connect to the why, they are not going to have the stamina, the energy, the durability, the lasting conviction to fight through the how and the what. Right. And so, you know, we talk about this a lot in the bitcoin community, you know, being invaded by suit coiners and, you know, oh, it's, you know, just all, you know, Wall Streeters now and, you know, people who just care about number go up and like, you know, this is a real phenomenon, right? Like in the early days of bitcoin, everyone was a Cypherpunk, right? Like everyone was a radical heretic, money autist, right? Like everybody had this view that, like, the principles were why they were working on the project. And as we've added, and it's great that we've added all kinds of new people in that we've had new adherents. We've got, you know, millions of converts now who have come to see the. The wisdom of what it is that we were doing here in, you know, over the last 15 years. But I would say that, you know, what worries me and is both the current composition and then even more so the, the future composition, next generations of bitcoiners or people who are, you know, coming to this technology, not understanding the why. Like, why are we actually here, right? You need to give people something to believe in and only then can you tell them how and have them care. Right? And so I would say, you know, both in the, you know, case of bitcoin locally, where I think we need to really relight the cypherpunk fire and remind people what this is really about, right? Like it's chancellor on the brink. It's, you know, the Wall street criminality, it's Satoshi and the immaculate conception, it's the block size wars, it's the Cyprus bail in, like everything that I just mentioned happened pre2016. And overwhelmingly, all of the people that I meet these days in the industry, you know, they don't really know that history, right? They don't. They didn't live it. They weren't around for it. And so it's hard to connect with it. And I think that it's really incumbent upon us, you know, to communicate that oral history and center the why are we engaged in this fight? This is a fight for human freedom, right? This is a, a fight for liberty and justice, you know, all around the world, for equal access to. To money and the accumulation of capital, right. To free markets and all the other things that bitcoin represents. And we need people to really connect with that first if we want it to be durable and lasting. And then I would say that we should take that same lesson and apply it to our modern politics in America, right? Like, what is the social contract supposed to be in this country and what is it today, Right? Like, what are we all fighting for? Do we have a shared mission, vision and objective in the United States today? You know, like I would argue. No, Right. Like I would argue that we have, you know, kind of gotten so lost in the woods, you know, over however, you know, what period of time you want to market at. But, you know, certainly in recent decades, like, we're deeply lost, and there's no clear objective that we're driving toward as a people in this country that unites us as Americans at this point in kind of our history. And so, you know, I think on both counts, we really need to go back to the why and really start with what it is that's animating and motivating us, and that is how we're going to attract the next hundred million people to come in and participate and really be active in forcing society to move in the direction that hopefully we all collectively share a vision of. I think it probably would surprise people if you went out and sampled the general population how much we actually agree on. You know, the differences that we have among one another are very marginal in the grand scheme of things. And the idea that we would just drive our society into the ditch over trivial differences that we are incapable of working through when the amazing future that awaits us could be ours tomorrow. So that is the thing that again, gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me want to be engaged in this fight.
- [85:24]
Walker
It's a great note to end on. I think I kept you a little bit long, Kyle, so apologies there, but thank you so much for sharing your time. Love the chance to pick your brain and just get your insights on this. And I think there's a couple of really good call to actions there just to make people think about these things a little bit bit. A little bit deeper and, you know, pay attention there. Not everybody is. Is cut out for certain paths. Right. But there's. If there. Bitcoin's taught me one thing. It's that there's. There's always something you can do. Maybe it's just start a podcast. You know, you never know. We. Maybe it's just another bitcoin podcast. You never know. But, you know, if you feel compelled to do something, do it. Like you can just do things. That's the beauty of it. Where would you like to send people so they can find you? And then anything, you know, you're working on with BPI that you want to share or anything like that, feel free to lay it out there.
- [86:16]
Kyle Only
Yeah, well, I'm just Kyle only, and that's my name on Twitter. Kyle only on Twitter. If anybody wants to find me there. I think you retweeted my NPUB on Nostr earlier at the beginning of this.
- [86:29]
Walker
I'll drop it in the show description as well.
- [86:31]
Kyle Only
Great. Yeah, that's another good place to find me. It's very hard to get people to notice you on Nostr. But. But, yeah, those are probably two best places to follow me. And then, yeah, I would just encourage everybody to get actively involved in pushing public policy in the direction that you think that it needs to go and that we collectively in the bitcoin community really need. Right. Again, it's sometimes challenging to get bitcoiners to believe that engaging with the government and politics is a worthwhile endeavor. But as we've said many times in the past, you may not take an interest in politics, but politics will certainly take an interest in you. So, you know, to. To heed the, you know, the caution of, I think it was Socrates or Plato.
- [87:22]
Walker
Right.
- [87:22]
Kyle Only
It's like your refusal to participate in politics resigns you to being governed by your inferiors. Right. And I would hope that everybody listening to this would understand that we would rather not be governed by, you know, the people among us who know the least about the issues that we're confronting as a society. But, you know, that we ought to be governed by, you know, the people who are actively engaged and thoughtful and visionary about how much better the world could be. And you figure out how we get from here to there. So, yeah, get off the couch, get engaged, you know, meet your local bitcoiners. Find some real life thing that you can do to help push the ball forward. And I look forward to seeing you out on the field.
- [88:15]
Walker
Love it. Thanks so much, Kyle. Appreciate your time, everybody. Go give Kyle a follow. And thank you to everybody who tuned in on Nostr. Kyle. Cheers, man.
- [88:33]
Podcast Host
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin Talk 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.net Titcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast. Head to the Show Notes to 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.