← The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network
The Investor's Podcast (We Study Billionaires) - The Investor’s Podcast Network
BTC233: Bitcoin & Texas A Roadmap for the Global Financial Shift w/ Parker Lewis (Bitcoin Podcast)
01:03:17
Exploring Bitcoin’s convergence as global money, its role in energy markets, and innovations in payment systems like Zaprite.
Loading summary
Transcript99 lines
- [00:01]
Unknown Host
You are listening to tip.
- [00:03]
Preston Pysh
Hey everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On this week's episode, I have bitcoin OG entrepreneur and prolific writer Parker Lewis. During the show, we talk about all the fascinating things happening in the state of Texas and how bitcoin is being used to completely change the grid, potentially getting approved as a strategic reserve treasury asset and what Parker sees as the next step for adoption in the state. In addition to that, we talk about the progress he's making with his company, Zap right in bitcoin payments. As usual, Parker comes with some really thoughtful and interesting takes. So I have no doubt you guys are really going to enjoy this one. So with that, let's jump right into the interview. Celebrating 10 years.
- [00:46]
Unknown Host
You are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network.
- [00:51]
Preston Pysh
Now for your host, Preston Pysh.
- [00:58]
Parker Lewis
Foreign.
- [01:02]
Preston Pysh
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm here with the one and only Parker Lewis. Welcome, sir. Great to have you back here.
- [01:09]
Parker Lewis
Preston. Good to be back on. Good to see you. I look forward to catching up.
- [01:12]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, likewise, man. Talk to us about Texas. What's happening down there?
- [01:17]
Parker Lewis
Like to think of Texas as not just the, the bitcoin capital of the world, but the center of hash. I think if we're going to be more objective that there's a lot of bitcoin mining activity going on. There's bills in the state Senate that aren't specific to bitcoin mining but are specifically to address how to promote grid reliability with large flexible loads of which bitcoin miners are principal. One, if maybe not the only one that can be both large and flexible to help promote grid reliability. And then there's also a Texas strategic bitcoin reserve bill that has passed the Senate. And then there was a committee hearing last night that was taking what would I call a testimony born against. And everyone who testified testified for it. So it's passed. The Senate still needs to pass the House, but it's advancing along. And we're also hosting a Texas energy and mining summit in two weeks at Bitcoin Park Austin. So looking forward to that.
- [02:12]
Preston Pysh
So on the strategic reserve side, I have read that the House is pretty concentrated Republican wise and based on the numbers that we saw in the Senate there locally in Texas, it appears like they'll have the numbers for it to go through the House and that this shouldn't be an issue and it should all get passed and approved. Is that what you're hearing and seeing as well, you know, I have I.
- [02:34]
Parker Lewis
Watched some of the testimony last night and some of the questions that came up, I think would cause me to believe that it might have a little bit of a harder chance.
- [02:44]
Preston Pysh
Really.
- [02:45]
Parker Lewis
Some of the questions geared toward, you know, this is, this people of Texas is money. Why should we gamble that money? And so viewing it as if you accept that very few people understand Bitcoin, that it's hard for a consensus of people to get it, that the House is larger than the Senate, so it requires more people to form a consensus. So it's just. Those are just natural questions. I, I'm hopeful that it will ultimately pass, but I think that there's still very limited understanding of why. And I felt like the testimony in the Senate and the senator that brought the bill, which it is SB21, he was keying in on more of the functional reasons why this was important, of printing money, which I, you know, there were certain people who testified, like Phil Geiger from Unchained or formerly Bunched, now advisor to Unchained, where he talked about the fundamentals of Bitcoin. But I felt like the person who is advancing the bill in the House maybe is more like, hey, this is for innovation rather than this is for saving and protecting the holdings that are sitting with the state or the Texas citizens. What's going to maximize purchasing power in the future, I felt less of that. So I'm hopeful that it will pass. Nobody testified in opposition and no one seemed opposed to it. It's just, you know, it took a while to get even a committee hearing to get past the Senate probably two months ago or maybe six years ago. The legislature. You know, Texas is one of the places where the legislature only meets one once every two years. So the legislative session ends in like a month, and then the legislature won't meet again for two years.
- [04:18]
Preston Pysh
Wow. So do you think that they're going to get through a vote before that next two year period?
- [04:24]
Parker Lewis
I expect that it will, but there's a lot of priorities, too. So that's just one of the other questions. It took a while for it to come up in the House, but yeah, I mean, I'd probably be handicapping at 5050 right now. Wow.
- [04:35]
Preston Pysh
Okay. Those are. Those odds are way lower than I was kind of expecting. And I think I. When I was proposing the question to you, I think I had it in reverse. So it passed the Senate first and now it's at the House.
- [04:45]
Parker Lewis
Yeah.
- [04:46]
Preston Pysh
And there's like, what, 80 or 90 voting members, I want to say, in the House. If I remember right, Somewhere in that number.
- [04:54]
Parker Lewis
Yeah.
- [04:54]
Preston Pysh
Okay. Interesting. Okay, well, that's some good information.
- [04:57]
Parker Lewis
It passed the Senate without a lot of pushback, and that was interesting to me. So, yeah, I'm also. I come at it from the perspective of knowing that very few people understand it and hearing some of the questions from the committee members last night, which are very logical. Like, if you accept probably 1 out of 100 or fewer people in the United States understand it, why would more than 1 out of 90 legislatures understand it? So there doesn't seem to be a lot of opposition to it, but that's still a lot of wiggle room for someone to say, hey, I just don't know why I'm doing this.
- [05:26]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. Yeah.
- [05:27]
Parker Lewis
So until it happens, it's just like. It's also. I train my psychology, even though I know that bitcoin's going to increase in purchasing power over time, I hardened my psychology to Prepare for a 50% drawdown tomorrow and then plan my life to account for that volatility.
- [05:42]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. Has any of the grid stability talking points come up in the discussions in the House with respect to the strategic reserve as far as the power of bitcoin from an engineering standpoint and what it does beyond just being a store of value, or is it just all store value, currency debasement type stuff?
- [06:00]
Parker Lewis
Part of it, I'd say it shrouded the lines of. It didn't come into grid reliability, but it did kind of cross the fence of saying, hey, this is a store of value. But also this will be a sign that Texas is open for bitcoin. There's a ton of bitcoin miners that are coming here, investing in Texas energy, and that doing this will help create regulatory clarity and have benefits beyond just innovation, beyond just store of value. But instantiating bitcoin in Texas to promote more bitcoin miners to come. So that did come up. It just. It didn't get into the level of grid reliability. There's a specific bill that Gideon Pal is working on. Gideon Powell's not in the legislature, but he's somebody who's been active in the bitcoin mining space that's advancing a separate piece of legislation, which is HB 3970 in Texas, which is basically creating a methodology as to how to accelerate permitting for large power projects and to advantage power projects, not with dollars, but to say if there's generation sites that are above 75 megawatts, that bring with that generation a large flexible load like a bitcoin miner that sits behind meter, and that would be willing to participate in ERCOT's controllable load program, then those projects gets jumped to the front line of ERCOT permitting to align incentives to basically say, hey, if you're bringing new generation online and you're pairing it with large flexible load that also participates in ERCOT's controllable load programs, that power gets onto the grid first. And at least in the house side in the hearing, that was very well received. So those discussions on grid reliability and how things like bitcoin mining can promote that are happening in the state legislature, they're just happening on separate bills.
- [07:54]
Preston Pysh
Got it. So Parker, if you go back like seven to eight years ago, I just remember Texas was having all sorts of issues with the grid. There was power outages kind of popping up all over the place. And it seems like there hasn't been as much of that lately. And you know, as a bitcoiner, you want to point to this and say it seems like the grid's getting more reliable down there. Is that actually true, first of all? And then second of all, is there any way that you could point it to bitcoin mining being a core source to that reliability?
- [08:25]
Parker Lewis
So I would say that if you went back seven years, I think, you know, and again in my reference, my friend Gideon Powell, because back in 2017, he was the first person to build a Greenfield substation that was, I believe, 50 megawatts expressly for bitcoin mining. And since then, and there there was bitcoin mining happening in Texas, but not at that scale. And that was around a time where the bitcoin hash rate in total was about 5 extra hashes. If you go back to 2017 and now it's at 800 extra hashes. So the bitcoin hash rate has increased by 160 times. And that's not necessarily the machines have gotten more efficient. So that's not power increasing 160 times, but it's grown significantly. And one of the things that happened unrelated to bitcoin mining was in 2021 in Texas, there was Winter Storm Yuri, which would genuinely a hundred year storm. And a lot of the generation units in Texas had not been weatherized like they might be in the Northeast because we just do not have snow like this regularly. So that problem is separate and apart and something that the bitcoin mining can't fix that has been addressed. But then also in the last seven to eight years, there's been about, you know, I don't know what the baseline was, but it was probably less than 100 megawatts on the Texas grid of bitcoin mining, specifically, that we're now somewhere between 3 and 4 gigawatts based on estimates. And there's actual evidence to show that at times of scarcity, when energy is scarce on the grid, that greater than 90% of Bitcoin miners are shutting off, and there's just a pure economic incentive to do that, that when energy prices get expensive and you're only mining for the purpose of getting bitcoin, which is a monetary good, that you are making a pure monetary economic decision. Now, if for some reason you have some contract that says you have to have uptime, say you're hosting, and that might be a bad contract, so that might be a reason why certain miners might stay up, or they might just not be as sophisticated. But we do have hard evidence that bitcoin miners are responding to the incentives that everyone would expect them to respond to purely from a profit loss standpoint. And that promotes grid reliability. So it is clear, based on testimony from ercot, that what I would say is the current state of play is that ercot, which is the grid operator, Energy Reliability or Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, they're the one who's responsible for ensuring the reliability of the electric grid in Texas. And, you know, in the United States, there's East, west and Texas or East west and ercot, and there are interconnections between ERCOT and other parts of the United States energy grid. But ERCOT is really, it is outside of basically the federal government's regulation or almost entirely. And so a lot can happen in ERCOT from an innovation standpoint, because it can move faster, it's deregulated. And so ercot, which understands power, understands how if you have, say, a 500 megawatt load on the grid and that you can turn it down when there's a period of scarcity, that that helps promote grid reliability. I would say the legislators, the people in the Senate and House, understand those dynamics far less. And so part of it is a process of bitcoin miners engaging with legislators. Part of it's a process of ERCOT communicating to legislators. Also, it seems clear that ercot, if they had their way, would want to have more control. They'd almost want to force bitcoin miners into these programs because that gives them more control. I think there's HB 3970 that's being worked through the Texas legislature, creates a more voluntary system. There's an economic incentive to participate because you get your projects greenlit faster. But that at least makes it voluntary to opt into something like controllable load resource program, which basically puts your power actually in control of the grid operator so that they can turn it down if they want to. Wow. You know, move the direct mechanism. So I'd say that it's clear that bitcoin mining is promoting grid reliability. Yeah, it's clear that ERCOT understands why bitcoin mining and why having large flexible loads on the grid promote grid reliability. There's still a knowledge gap when it comes to thinking about a representative of the house understanding those power dynamics. Because you have to understand the power dynamics, you have to understand bitcoin mining, which is not as easy for someone that's just representing a certain district. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [12:50]
Preston Pysh
Have you ever been interested in mining bitcoin? As a miner myself, I've been using simple mining for the past few months and the experience has been nothing short of seamless. I mine with the pool of my choice and the bitcoin is sent directly to my wallet. Simple Mining, based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, offers a premium white glove service designed for everyone from individual enthusiasts to large scale miners. They've been in business for three and a half years and currently operate more than 10,000 bitcoin miners based in Iowa. Their electricity is over 65% renewable thanks to the abundance of wind energy. Not only do they simplify mining with their top notch hosting and on site repair services, but they also help you benefit financially by running your operations as a business. This approach offers significant tax advantages and enhances the profitability of your investment. Do you ever worry about the complexities of maintaining your mining equipment? They've got you covered for the first 12 months. All repairs are included at no extra cost. If you experience any downtime, they'll credit you for it. And if your miners aren't profitable at the moment, simply pause them with no penalties. When you're ready to upgrade or adjust your setup. Their exclusive marketplace provides a seamless way to resell your equipment. Join me and many satisfied miners who have simplified their Bitcoin mining journey. Visit SimpleMining IO Preston to get started today. That's SimpleMining IO Preston to get started today. With Simple Mining, they make it simple.
- [14:20]
Unknown Host
Deleteme makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, it is easier than ever to find personal information about people online. With Delete Me, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business. From doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. As someone who spends a lot of time online, I've seen how easy it is for personal info like your address or phone number to get out there and delete me. Gives me peace of mind by removing that data. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners today. Get 20% off your delete me plan by texting WSB to 64,000. The only way to get 20% off is to text WSB to 64,000. That's WSB to 64,000. Message and data rates may apply. Trust isn't just earned, it's demanded. Whether you're a startup founder navigating your first audit or or a seasoned security professional scaling your GRC program, proving your commitment to security has never been more critical or more complex. That's where Vanta comes in. Businesses use Vanta to establish trust by automating compliance for in demand frameworks like SoC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and more. And with automation in AI throughout the platform, you can proactively manage vendor risk and complete security questionnaires up to five times faster. Getting valuable time back. And Vanta not only saves you time, it can also save you Money. A new IDC white paper found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months. Join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Quora and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. For a limited time, listeners get $1,000 off vanta@vanta.com billion. That's V A N-T-A.com billionaires for $1,000 off.
- [16:36]
Parker Lewis
All right, back to the show.
- [16:39]
Preston Pysh
It seems though that you guys are kind of setting almost like a template in place. If you guys can get it all ironed out and smoothed out, it would be a template for other jurisdictions, state, local, whatever, to really kind of copy and paste the idea. I mean, it seems like you guys are out front way further than anybody else from a policy standpoint on how to like make all this work.
- [17:00]
Parker Lewis
Yeah, I think given the nature of the grid and being, you know, kind of what I would say is more autonomous, able to make decisions with fewer people involved, you know, a state versus many, and then also having a deregulated energy market where somebody could build a power plant and have a behind meter, deal with a bitcoin miner, or just being able to have a private contract, that it allows for faster innovation and then that innovation can be replicated elsewhere. And like proving seeing it work and then saying, okay, let's take the learnings from that and apply it elsewhere.
- [17:35]
Preston Pysh
Let's talk about your business. You have an awesome company here, Zap. Right. And first of all, just explain it to people if they're not familiar with it. And then I just kind of want to get into some of the trials, tribulations, wins that you've had and just try to understand it better.
- [17:51]
Parker Lewis
Yeah. And then also there's a natural overlap because a number of the companies that we help serve are bitcoin miners, some here in Texas, but particularly bitcoin miners that are providing hosting services and are wanting to take payments in Bitcoin and Fiat and wanting to gravitate to a platform where they can have one system that facilitates all of that. And so to think about Zap, right, we're a bitcoin payments company, like a bitcoin payment gateway. We enable both bitcoin payments and fiat payments through one interface. We're never actually in possession of anybody's funds, either on the bitcoin side or the fiat side, but we're building commerce tools that sit on top of wallets and custodial accounts, or non custodial lightning nodes and custodial lightning service providers, as well as giving people the ability to seamlessly integrate the ways that they're already accepting Fiat, like Square and stripe and paypal authorized.net so that for people that value Bitcoin, they can have a way to request payment in Bitcoin or accept payment in Bitcoin that has one operating flow, one payment workflow that presents both bitcoin payments option to pay as well as fiat options to pay. Such that if somebody understands Bitcoin and we're really targeting the audience of people that, that understands Bitcoin, that has a priority of Bitcoin and that has the understanding that they need to invest in dual rails to have redundancy and that their expectations are also aligned, that when they first turn on bitcoin payments, they're going to be expecting to receive a small percentage that will grow over time and they're going to invest in that as a channel, but that if they wanted to accept Bitcoin payments and they had to have a second workflow, that they would be much less likely to do it. So our goal ultimately, as Zap, Right, is to bring down the barriers to accepting Bitcoin by creating a unified checkout with Bitcoin and Fiat and Then targeting those markets and the commerce templates where we believe that the most likely adoption of bitcoin payments early will be. And then we build out the commerce tools that match those markets. We've got invoicing templates. So anybody that's selling their good or services and issuing an invoice to be paid, we have an API that's incredibly powerful that a lot of companies that are bitcoin centric are utilizing and building into their custom applications. We're working, we support a lot of people that do bitcoin events. So we're working on a native tickets feature that will be. People are already using zap, right. For essentially selling tickets to smaller events. But we're going to be releasing in the next few weeks a zap right. Native ticket solution. So just trying to meet the bitcoin economic system where there is demand for payments and growing that system by providing more seamless tools.
- [20:35]
Preston Pysh
So we're a business podcast with bitcoin focus. And so my question for you is, as an entrepreneur building something from nothing, what's your best advice going through the whole zap, right? Just as a business owner and somebody that's starting from literally scratch, what kind of advice can you give for people that are trying to do the same thing?
- [20:56]
Parker Lewis
So I would say vision is critical and testing your assumptions around that. So it's like, is there a market for this? Is there a need? If you build the tools, will they come? And then being incredibly focused and really knowing who your customers. And so what I would say is from day one, building zap, right? Our customer are people that understand Bitcoin. That might seem obvious, but a lot of early tools for bitcoin payments were really geared towards saying auto conversion to the fiat thinking that people are going to demand bitcoin payments for the cheaper cost. But if somebody doesn't understand Bitcoin and under doesn't understand its volatility or doesn't understand actually how to incentivize or communicate to their customer base, align values to actually drive payment in Bitcoin, they don't realize the benefit of it. So in our case. But what I would say extending to somebody else, like knowing who your customer is and making sure you're delivering the product in a focused way that actually provides the best solution or whatever that submarket is. Because if you try to be everyone for all people, you end up not having the ability to have focus with limited resources, but then you ultimately delivered a worse product that doesn't solve the problem. The bar that it needs to to actually drive the adoption of what you're intending to do?
- [22:15]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. How much have you guys been using AI to assist and how much of this is a game changer in the entrepreneurial space as far as startups go?
- [22:25]
Parker Lewis
So we are, I'd say it's, it's very early in trying to figure out how much efficiency is actually gained today versus how much we invest in it today to gain efficiencies in the future. And so one example of that is, you know, our engineering team relies on AI not to vibe code, but and it does require significant training to be able to get output that doesn't actually slow you down, but that actually accelerates. So thinking about using it, a senior engineer using it as a tool of the equivalent of having junior engineers sitting below, but relying on an AI tool to write code and then be able to review it, make edits to it in a way that actually accelerates rather than slows you down. And so I think we're very much still in the learning process of that, but fine tuning it so that it actually Canon is being operationalized today.
- [23:27]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [23:28]
Parker Lewis
So, you know, it is an investment because the first it requires an investment of time and the first output of it doesn't actually accelerate. But in Nate Kitsky, who's our CTO can speak more to it might be worth having him on the show at some point. But we are leveraging it and we're leveraging it to be able to write code and basically accelerate development with fewer resources, limited resources and getting more throughput and output.
- [23:56]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, that's a great point on the training. And just like it's an investment in time and effort to kind of get the model performing the way you need. It's also a consideration of like, do I host my data locally, do I just ingest it into these mammoth cloud based, call it ChatGPT or whatever and let them basically organize this and as their models get updated that they can continue to just ingest all of my data. It's a lot more challenging to do that locally, curating your own data set so that you're not giving up all that information to the big conglomerates. But man, what a time that we're experiencing with all this AI stuff. It's getting wild.
- [24:35]
Parker Lewis
Yeah. What I would say is like from I see what's clear is that doesn't replace engineers, but it can help accelerate engineers. You might need fewer of them, but especially when you're building something that hasn't existed yet and we're thinking about data architectures that what it is good at, or seems to be increasingly proficient at, is known surface areas, but that you still need good engineers looking at a problem to try to create an efficient solution, and then guiding whatever those tools are to then write code and being able to manipulate it to understand what is actually underlying so that you're not bringing things into your code base that aren't well understood and that could create problems that you don't know they're creating until it presents in a bug that then creates an out. So it definitely straddles a line, but it's certainly an accelerant, and I only expect it to be improved over time.
- [25:31]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. Recently you gave a presentation. It was called bitcoin, not crypto. I have a bit of a contra take on this, but it's not. I guess it's not much of a contra take. But I have a nuance to this that I want to discuss with you. But I first want you to explain what you were trying to accomplish with this presentation and why you think it's important. And I guess another name for it could be bitcoin, not blockchain. But go ahead and take it away. Give us the summary of it, and then we'll get into some of the nuance.
- [25:59]
Parker Lewis
Well, this was a presentation that I did in collaboration with Drew Bonsal from Unchained. We gave the presentation in person at University of Austin, which is a new university in Austin that is designed to promote a different model of education, more free thinking, more challenging of norms. So they've started a bitcoin endowment. So, just as an ethos, University of Austin aligns very well with bitcoin generally. And so that was logical place to give it. But most people that understand bitcoin, or people who are listening to this podcast that don't understand bitcoin, there is a massive sea of noise that makes bitcoin more difficult to understand. And the specific noise that makes bitcoin difficult to understand, and it's not exclusive to this, but what I would say is that it set back significantly is all of the noise that's created by the other 1,000, 2,000, 50,000 cryptos I referenced in the presentation, that there's probably 2,000. I think, if we're being more honest, it's probably 50,000.
- [27:03]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [27:04]
Parker Lewis
Different variants that. That people have copied bitcoin. And then there has historically been this Trend of Fortune 500 companies or Fortune 100 companies that have tried to develop blockchain tech to no avail. And that if there wasn't this narrative of blockchain tech and there Wasn't these other 49,999 cryptocurrencies and there was Bitcoin vis a vis stocks, bonds, fiat currencies, gold. Understanding bitcoin's role for the average population would be far easier to distill. But also it's a market test and people oftentimes learn through the market and the existence of that noise also provides an education and what we were intending to present and educate through this presentation. Bitcoin, not crypto or Bitcoin, not blockchain, is helping people understand why Bitcoin was the real signal, but relative to those other 20005000 50,000 copies or different variants of Bitcoin, as well as why blockchain tech is a false promise. And in order to do that we had to help people understand what is a blockchain in the context of bitcoin? How does it solve the problem and how could it or might maybe why it can't solve other problems and that through helping people distill down that noise that they would be able to understand Bitcoin and find the signal through them let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.
- [28:35]
Unknown Host
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. With Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. How fast is Indeed in the minute I've been speaking to you. 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed Data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring process now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com billionaires just go to Indeed.com billionaires right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com billionaires terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. When we were young, we used to dream of being anything an astronaut, the president, a prince. But as you get older, your dreams change, focusing less on running the world and more on how you can take your skills and ideas and turn them into something real. Instead of dreaming of going to space or owning your own castle, maybe you start dreaming of owning your own business. You'll need a website, a payment system, a logo and a way to advertise to new customers. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully that is where today's sponsor Shopify comes in. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses all around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands like mine that are still getting started. Working with Shopify is like having a commerce expert at your side with world class expertise. Turn your big business idea into reality with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com WSB that's shopify.com WSB.
- [30:58]
Preston Pysh
Holding Bitcoin is the best way to protect your family from the threat of fiat currency collapse. And few people understand this better than Tony Yasbeck, cybersecurity expert and founder of the Bitcoin Way. Tony was in Lebanon when the currency imploded. He's seen the chaos that erupts when the ATM stop working and the bank accounts get frozen. He knows what it's like to lose everything. But with his cybersecurity expertise and by fully adopting bitcoin, Tony was able to engineer his escape. And now Tony and the bitcoin way team work to make sure this never happens to you. With over 25 years of experience, their expert training empowers you to self custody your family's bitcoin the right way, secure your devices and protect your privacy. Develop robust inheritance plans and secure for plan B citizenship. The Bitcoin way can transform you into a sovereign individual. You just need to take the first step. Schedule a free consultation today@thebitcoinway.com tip.
- [31:56]
Parker Lewis
All right, back to the show.
- [31:58]
Preston Pysh
Do you think that maybe all of the noise has helped bitcoin kind of be more like a Trojan horse without governments stepping in and shutting it down? I mean, if it was the only thing that was out there, you might have this very large target and it would have never gotten to where it's at today, where you literally have governments embracing it as opposed to fighting it. Do you think that maybe it was a bit of an advantage to have all of this noise in the background?
- [32:24]
Parker Lewis
Yeah, I think that that is a fair take, kind of it allows bitcoin to continue to advance in a way where all of the focus isn't just necessarily square on that. And that also I'm somebody who believes not just everything happens for a reason. It's that inevitably and unavoidably when bitcoin was presented into the world, that people would try to copy it. That part of that is just a natural inclination for people that genuinely have curiosity to try to innovate when they see new innovation come along to say, I want to figure out how to make this better or perceive a limitation in it. But then the other side of it that makes it natural and unavoidable is that for the entire span of human history, people have been trying to recreate gold without the work alchemy. There's also snake oil salesman. So part of this is unavoidable when I talk about the education. Some of the way that people come in to understand bitcoin is that they got lost in the noise and they started buying crypto. And then they learned that bitcoin is different by the market test and that it might be harder to understand if that market test wasn't there, if they didn't have to touch the hot stove, that they touched the hot stove and they learned not to do it again. And that there's something different about bitcoin through that. At that same time, we still need people to understand Bitcoin and that it might be best, inevitably, that all that noise existed so that bitcoin could kind of advance and not just be the one thing that is more clearly competing with all these other currencies, that it could have attracted more attention earlier, that potentially could have stymied it. I think that's fair. However, if the world remains in the dark about bitcoin and the light bulb doesn't actually turn on for people that are producing real things of value, that their ability to continue to be productive and to produce those things and to produce the basic necessity that we need will not continue in the way that we've taken them for granted if people don't start to understand sound money. Yeah. So I think both of those things are true at the same time. And just like podcasts exist or books exist, that people benefit from being in person and being able to have a dialogue about it and then also to distill down otherwise very complicated concepts. Because one of the things that that I described in the presentation was if you try to understand bitcoin and you had to individually go to bitcoin, crypto one, crypto two, crypto three, crypto four, crypto to a thousand, and you had to evaluate each one of those individual projects rather than distill it down to a few guiding concepts that are foundational to the way that money works and the way the economic systems work, you'd never be able to arrive at a coherent answer. And so through that presentation, we were helping to distill down the core concepts to allow people to better evaluate Bitcoin vis a vis the field and to have those guiding principles to then say, okay, these things are true. Ideas like money does converge to one due to the nature of trade. The best form of money is one that has a fixed supply. And then on the technical side, that it was actually the fixed supply. And this is an idea that Drew puts forward that I believe to be true as well, that the fixed supply was actually the thing that allowed the technical architecture to work. And the absence of that fixed supply being what caused prior iterations of attempts at digital money to fail. And so getting those ideas out there so that we can create whatever the universe of people that understand Bitcoin is to double and triple and quadruple over time so that the economic system can actually be built as necessary.
- [36:01]
Preston Pysh
One other, like maybe contrarian take on a lot of this is the tokenization of fiat has been a pretty important role in the growth of Bitcoin itself. We're now seeing like Tether's trying to put stablecoins on lightning and some of that's being built on top of bitcoin. And I kind of suspect it's going to be built a lot more on top of bitcoin and moving forward. But from what, 2017? When did we start getting stable coins? 2016, 2017. They started popping up.
- [36:31]
Parker Lewis
Yes, around that time.
- [36:32]
Preston Pysh
In that time frame, they started popping up. And the only reason that they started popping up is because of these other less decentralized, less secure blockchain, quote unquote blockchains. And in a way, it's. I mean, I. I look at it like this. The state is very pro stablecoin at this point because they see it as the buyer for all their sovereign debt issuance the world needs. They need Bitcoin, but they don't realize that yet. And going to your comment earlier about know thy customer and know thy user, first and foremost, the world thinks that they need stablecoins and all of this blockchain stuff. Right. Was a core enabler for like bridging this gap to people eventually understanding what real sound, hard money is that will actually hold value without some government entity being able to step in and stop it. So I guess I get everything you're saying, Parker, but at the same time, I'm looking at how things have unfolded and I'm just looking back and I'm saying, wow, this was somewhat serendipitous the way that so much of this has like fallen into place because there's no other use case for any of this. Call it Ethereum Solana. So that we've seen so far is just the tokenization of sovereign debt. That's the pretty much the only utility that we've actually seen pop out of it to date.
- [37:50]
Parker Lewis
So I know I would disagree. You know, like, I mean, I accept the premise that the existence of all the noise has allowed the Trojan horse to advance without maybe a more clear distinction of where it's actually headed. And that allowing it to advance in that way might credibly have prevented somebody from trying to, to stamp it out sooner. On the other side, I'd say that in 2017 or 2018, I think the Indian central bank banned bitcoin. It was later reversed and overturned into being unconstitutional. And then bitcoin mining was banned in 2021 in China or 2020, can't remember which one.
- [38:30]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I think it was 2020. Well, it was banned multiple times. But yeah, the big mining ban was.
- [38:36]
Parker Lewis
But what I would say is it is a certifiable fact, uncontrovertible fact, at least in my own experience, that if I start somebody fresh that has not gotten their mind warped around a narrative of stablecoins or blockchain tech or it's going to be crypto that's the real innovation, then I can help that person understand Bitcoin about 10 times faster than if I have to unwire their brain from this false reality or false hope that the innovation is blockchain tech and that crypto and the thousand cryptos are going to be solving a problem. So that's just kind of individual to individual use case. That has proven to me in the eight years I've been explaining bitcoin to people to be the case, then the other thing I would say is when it comes to stablecoins and like the tokenization of fiat, I personally don't, and we can debate this back, I don't buy this idea that it creates demand for Treasuries that dollars, the Fed creates reserves. Those reserves move between banks and then other constituents that sit on top of banks create demand for dollars and then dollar reserves change between banks. But if there's 36 trillion US Treasuries, 36 trillion US Treasuries need to be demanded. So it's not creating demand, it's shifting demand, say shifting demand potentially. Say if JP Morgan is holding fewer reserv Reserves are flowing to the bank. You know, whether Cancer Fitzgerald has access to the Fed window. But second, if they're banking tether. So it's just transferring where that source of demand is coming from. And that ultimately the Fed is the backstop to the demand because it's still going to have to create more dollars. And stable coins can't solve an actual problem because they devalue as dollars are printed. And I'm somebody that also happens to believe that we have a lot less time than most people believe we have to have bitcoin working as a system that needs to work independent from fiat. That if you think about where bitcoins come.
- [40:40]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. What do you mean by that? Dig into that idea more.
- [40:43]
Parker Lewis
I mean that I don't think that the fiat System has another 10 years. And so it's like we can build out all these fiat stablecoins. And I don't even think it's necessarily bad that there's stable coins on Heather, even though to try to conceptualize what that actually means is kind of difficult. But if you think about.
- [41:00]
Preston Pysh
You mean on the Lightning Network, is that what you.
- [41:02]
Parker Lewis
Yeah.
- [41:02]
Preston Pysh
Okay.
- [41:03]
Parker Lewis
If you think about what stablecoins are, they're. They're really like a different method of payment for dollars. Right. And so if the problem is the printing of money, they don't solve that. And that if the end game of fiat currencies being printed ad infinitum is hyperinflation, that that ultimately means that the fiat system stops working and being able to effectuate trade. And I think most people look at this and say, ah, you know, 50 years down the road, we're going to transition from fiat to Bitcoin. I don't know. You know, if you just logically look at the equation and accept that knowledge distributes as a function of time, humans can't work for money that's created out of thin air. And that as money is created out of thin air, that's actually what causes the economic system to fracture and degrade and to break down the ability to coordinate trade. Assume Bitcoin, not assume Bitcoin has two more halvings in the next seven years. Knowledge continues to distribute Bitcoin as a system. If you look at it, you know, relative traditional assets, it's something like the fifth or sixth largest asset in the world. If you look at it relative to other currency systems, it's somewhere between 5 and 10. And then assume that Bitcoin increases in demand by 10x, it starts to become close to the largest currency system in the world, and then assume the bitcoin demand increases by 20 times over the next seven to 10 years. It's the largest currency system in the world, and they're going to be in central banks, are going to have to print a massive amount of money between now and then. So what's more rational that humans don't figure this out in the next 10 years and are going to actually need the rails to effectuate the real utility that we get out of money, which is trade, or that stablecoins. And advancing a different way to pay dollars is more important than figuring out how to get business owners to understand bitcoin. And I don't mean bitcoin owners to understand bitcoin for the purposes of accepting bitcoin payments. I'm talking about people that have the knowledge and capital to actually deliver productive resources to the economy, get sound money so that they can continue to deliver those goods and services that we all generally take for granted, like cheap power, clean water, reliable access to health care. You know, so I'm somebody that would say, hey, in 10 years, we're going to be on a bitcoin standard and everybody should be operating under the mindset. The fuse is very short in the fiat system, and there's a lot of evidence out there for that. But part of this, what's happening in the economic system today, the volatility of the treasuries. But another part of the evidence is three years ago when Silicon Valley Bank, a $200 billion bank, failed virtually overnight. You know, the fiat system is far more fragile than anybody wants to admit for themselves. And that people need to be operating with that mindset because in most cases, a new technology that comes along is a luxury. Like if you think about the advancement of a car when we were on horses, or the advancement of electricity when we were on kerosene, this innovation happens to be the most foundational, basic necessity of the economic system, because money is what coordinates trade. So I just look at it and say, hey, there's a five wheel on fire and we have a short fuse and we need to be making haste to make bitcoin work in a way that is independent of those fragile systems, because we're going to need it a lot faster. But I also don't worry about it because, like, when everyone hits the exit, there's going to be a rapid monetization in bitcoin. And humans are survivalists and they're going to build the tools and access the tools that they need. And good thing bitcoin's here. But so I just, I view all of those other things that happen on top of Bitcoin like the tokenization or the demand for treasury which again I think is just shifting demand as being so much smaller of a problem to solve and I just don't think enough people see it that way.
- [44:47]
Preston Pysh
I love this point because you're not saying that it's not important. You're just saying that like all those things that we talked about as far as like the tokenization of dollars and all that, you're just saying that it's going to be short lived. All these things are a dying breed and it's super important for people to understand that and not get caught up in all of that noise as there's this thing that could save them a whole lot of pain and a lot of grief if they can just figure it out. Is basically the premise of what you're saying. Yeah.
- [45:13]
Parker Lewis
Correct.
- [45:13]
Preston Pysh
Yeah. And I totally agree with you 100%. I'm curious your your thoughts on central bank digital currencies versus tokenized dollars or euros or whatever. Call it tether or circle or, or whatnot. Is this just a central bank digital currency anyway in disguise or is there some core differences? Is this something that people should be concerned with? If it is in fact just central bank digital currency wrapper, what are some of your thoughts there?
- [45:41]
Parker Lewis
My view, and I have to credit Will Cole for some of his thinking on this that's, that's helped me see this more clearly. You know one way to think about it is hey, I just don't really find this interesting because it's a different way to move dollars and they're not really stable. They're just devaluing relative to goods and services as fast as traditional.
- [45:59]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, the same rails are.
- [46:01]
Parker Lewis
But the other side of it is that the logical. I don't look at something like tether or what's the other one? Circle.
- [46:07]
Preston Pysh
Circle, yeah.
- [46:09]
Parker Lewis
USDC as being CBDCs. But if you play it out, that's the logical end game and it's not the logical end game because Tether wants it to be the logical endgame. And I don't even, I don't believe that that's what Tether is building out to. It might be more realistically what USDC is building out to. I think that between USDC and Tether USDC has definitely taken the approach more of trying to regulatory capture Congress by.
- [46:37]
Preston Pysh
The way, I agree to dictate this. Yeah.
- [46:40]
Parker Lewis
But it's interesting because this idea of money converging to one which I Talk about a lot. To help people understand Bitcoin and to allow the sea of noise of 49,999 other cryptos, you only need one form of money and consensus. And money is necessary to affect trade. And the most important property of money is that it can't be printed. That that is what explains Bitcoin. That it's also not a coincidence that tether is 150 billion. USDC is something like 60 billion. I don't know what the next largest is. But Gemini tried to create their own stablecoin and their stablecoin is something like 50 million or 60 million. That it has this long tail for the same reason that money does converge to one. And it's logical just foundationally to the way that money works that one of these stablecoins, and it might be that there's one stablecoin for the yen and one stablecoin for the euro and one stablecoin for the dollar, but that those currency systems gravitate towards one because what they're ultimately doing is coordinating economic activity between peers. And so that's already been displayed as happening. That's the explanation for why. And as it becomes more evident that there's a winner, they'd be tether the leader. The Fed and the treasury have every incentive to control the dollar system. Right. And so to give tether access to being able to even buy Treasuries or how those assets are held and that they're not freeze. I think there was something just that came out yesterday. That or yesterday, the day before that, 15 million in tether was seized. You know, tether centralized. So if you imagine tether growing as this quote, separate tokenized dollar, if it was to grow bigger and bigger, the powers that be would not want the powers to sit in this private entity that's not controlled by the people that are controlling the current dollar system.
- [48:37]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [48:37]
Parker Lewis
So that as one winner becomes more evident or just becomes larger, it's natural that it the end state or the end game is it's co option it's being whether fully nationalized, effectively nationalized. Everyone would say we don't want to see a cbdc. We don't, we don't want a cbdc. Well, that doesn't change the fact that the Fed and the treasury and the federal government, the United States don't want a dollar that's not controlled by them. They have the power to control it.
- [49:04]
Preston Pysh
It even gets more interesting than that when you think about, well, what are they doing with the retained earnings from all the coupons and what does that treasury look like? And it's Bitcoin for a majority of it. Right. And you talk about this idea of nationalization and how they have to be in sync with the government to continue to play this tokenized sovereign debt game that they've been playing. But if at the end of all this they're sitting on a ton of Bitcoin, it only further compounds all these forces that you're talking about, which is a nationalization effort to basically scoop up all that Bitcoin, especially if it's a privately owned company and doesn't have millions of shareholders on the public markets. Don't you think that's a bit of a. I don't know, it's. It's kind of.
- [49:45]
Parker Lewis
Yeah, I think that, yeah, it accelerates it down that trend. But then also it's like those Treasuries are Custody somewhere, right? Yeah, I think it's the dtc. So I don't know.
- [49:56]
Preston Pysh
Well, Cantor was one of the biggest custodians I know for Tether, but I don't know on Circle side.
- [50:02]
Parker Lewis
Well, yeah, but I'm saying, like my understanding and someone this might not be correct, but there's an underlying entity that actually custody is the Treasuries that even like a Cantor would use. I believe it's the ttc.
- [50:15]
Preston Pysh
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [50:16]
Parker Lewis
Depository Trust Corporation.
- [50:17]
Preston Pysh
Yes.
- [50:18]
Parker Lewis
You know, custody's like 50 trillion in assets. What my point is, hey, if Russia can be cut off of Swift and the Treasuries that they hold could be cut off, it's like, certainly if you don't play ball with us, Tether these Treasuries that you own or your ability to access the reserves that Cancer holds for you. There are Fed reserves sitting somewhere in the system underlying Tether.
- [50:41]
Preston Pysh
Absolutely.
- [50:42]
Parker Lewis
So it becomes a centralized endgame that likely is nationalized. I do also agree that, hey, strange bedfellows, and hey, you're buying a bunch of Treasuries. But also our interests are in the US Financial system. And if more of it is going over to you, we, the Fed, we Treasury, we, the federal government still wants control over that. So the larger it gets, the greater the incentive to regulate it.
- [51:08]
Preston Pysh
I wonder, with all this legislation that's about to go through, that's then going to allow the major Wall street banks to start playing in this space and issuing their own stable coins. If you're going to get this bifurcation in the global market where it's basically Circle and Wall Street, J.P. morgan, Goldman Sachs coin. Right. You have that particular market sector. And then you basically have tether, which is the outside euro dollar equivalent that I mean, for all intensive purposes, I think we both agree is under intense US scrutiny because of all the treasuries that they hold and the US government's ability to step into the custody market to basically take all the treasuries away from them if they're not playing nice. But it does seem like there's a bit of a bifurcation that might play out here in the coming year or two in this particular space. And then I guess, what does that mean moving forward?
- [52:02]
Parker Lewis
Right. But even there, I mean, I could see a world where there's one onshore stablecoin and one offshore, effectively like two different dollar currency systems that would probably be the one unique one versus say something like the yen or the euro. But it's more difficult to see a world where there's JP Morgan coin, Goldman Sachs coin, Wells Fargo coin, Fidelity Coin for the reason that money still converges to one. And so if these currencies are going to or these stable coins, tokens are going to be demanded, there's some forcing function as to why they're being used. And an example on our side we have bitcoin miners that use tether and request payment solutions for tether because people have tether and they want to pay for things like miners in tether. And then the bitcoin miner can then either use those tether to buy the asics that they're selling them or to convert them back to dollars to get them in their actual bank account. But the utility of the system is what will drive demand for it, not the existence of 50 of them.
- [53:06]
Preston Pysh
Yeah.
- [53:06]
Parker Lewis
So if they're being used to actually facilitate value transfer between two parties, that there's a network effect that drives there to naturally be dominance and one. But what I would expect to see as you people try to create all different versions, there's going to be one supremacy because of the way that money is used, that there won't be demand for it if there aren't people on the other side saying pay me in this.
- [53:32]
Preston Pysh
Very interesting point. All right, final thoughts. What's on your mind happening right now that you think is important, maybe missed by many market participants, maybe even a little bit of expectation into the end of the year if you have it. Give us your thoughts, Parker.
- [53:48]
Parker Lewis
I am very focused on one building out Zapra, of course, and getting more businesses onboarded to bitcoin payments and delivering the tools really in a focused way where the market is demanding Bitcoin payments kind of closest to the center of the economic system, the Bitcoin centric people. But beyond that, there's a highly leveraged financial system that is highly unstable. And I don't know the pace, but as of the last time I checked, the Fed was still withdrawing reserves from the system. And that what the Trump administration is doing, rightly or wrongly, and I don't have a strong opinion on that, I understand arguments on either side of the tariff equation. What it certainly does is increase uncertainty. And when you introduce increased uncertainty in a highly leveraged system, that it is likely to result in a dollar liquidity crisis. And so I think that that is something that everyone needs to be cognizant of, because when currently the state of play is there's about 102 trillion in dollar denominated debt, which is just fixed liability, fixed maturity, not derivatives, not unfunded pension liabilities. And there's only 7 trillion in reserves. So if there's a run on those reserves, everything gets sold relative to them because the system is functioning solvent. And then the Fed will have to come in to print more dollars. And you see the jockeying that's happening where Trump is asking how to reduce interest rates and functioning the only way to practically reduce interest rates, the interest rates that matters, is by increasing the supply of dollars. But before that happens, there's very likely to be, or at least I'd be on the lookout and be cognizant of a dollar liquidity crisis. And so looking at things like the bond market, but not just the treasury market, the corporate bond market, because those underlying markets are highly illiquid, that when liquidity disappears, it disappears fast. And so that from a broader macro as it relates to Bitcoin is something that I'm watching out for, because Bitcoin's a liquid good and liquid goods get sold first. But Bitcoin could run from here before that happens. And there's been a lot of selling pressure. So I think we could see a divergence, but it's to be aware of the broader setup. And then the other side of it is I think that as it relates to the debate of institutions, I think institutions are good for Bitcoin. I do think though, that fiat arbitrage is as close to zero sum as trade gets. It's not zero sum because it provides a pricing function and a capital allocation function to the market, but that not every trade is created equal and that people spending their time building infrastructure that's important to Bitcoin creates more value than arbing fiat and that Bitcoin needs more infrastructure to be able to function as a standalone system that exists today and that people need to be focused there and that number goes up. I wrote a piece that's on my blog that people can check out called Bitcoin's Exchange theory of Value. That the value of any currency is derived through its ability to coordinate trade. And if you were thinking about the spectrum of creating value, that actual commerce is more productive than fiat arbitrage. And to not get it's like we all want number to go up. The best thing for Bitcoin is number go up. But the path that actually gets there is dependent on valuable infrastructure to promote Bitcoin as an economic system. And that there's, in my view, there's better uses of time than harbing.
- [57:20]
Preston Pysh
Yeah, I love this point. I love that point. Parker. Give people a handoff to where they can learn more about you or anything else that you want to promote.
- [57:27]
Parker Lewis
Check out the book@the safehouse.com gradually. So it's the safe house S A I f the safehouse.com gradually. If you're interested in bitcoin paying. What I tell people is if you don't understand bitcoin, if you don't understand why it stores value over time, if you don't understand the importance of its fixed supply and that that's the basis of sound money for the world, get a book. Whether it's my book or the bitcoin standard or listen to more of Preston's podcast. That's the most important part. But if you already understand that, what I would tell people is make the investment in accepting Bitcoin as payment or at least evaluating it, because if you do, it's the most efficient way to actually acquire Bitcoin. And you can check us out at zap right zapright.com z a p r I t e dot com and people can follow me on Twitter Parker A. Lewis and then if you go to unchained YouTube channel, you can find the presentation that we were talking about earlier, Bitcoin, not crypto, which helps distill why Bitcoin's the real signal, why you don't need to worry about all the other cryptos. They're all losing value relative to Bitcoin for very foundational reasons. And that blockchain tech is kind of a false hope. And that presentation, bitcoin, not crypto, is a great way to distill it down for people.
- [58:39]
Preston Pysh
As a proud user of zap right for our business, I can just say it works amazing and it's super easy. And yeah, kudos to you and what you're building and thank you for making time and just your education and the material that you put out there is of the highest quality. I truly mean that, Parker. So it's a pleasure for me to call you a friend and comrade in this space. And thanks for making time and coming on the show.
- [59:03]
Parker Lewis
Yeah, appreciate it. Same sentiment for me to you, Preston. Really value everything that you do and you supporting me, having me on, but then also using the platform platform and being one of those companies that is awesome responsibility for people to pay in bitcoin.
- [59:16]
Preston Pysh
It's awesome. It really is.
- [59:17]
Parker Lewis
Yeah. Thank you.
- [59:18]
Preston Pysh
All right. Thank you for listening to tip.
- [59:22]
Unknown Host
Make sure to follow Bitcoin fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to the investors podcast.com this show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.