The Bitcoin Bear Market Is a Survival Test | Matt Odell

Summary

Podcast Summary: What Bitcoin Did

Episode: The Bitcoin Bear Market Is a Survival Test | Matt Odell
Date: July 25, 2026
Host: Danny Knowles
Guest: Matt Odell

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Danny Knowles sits down with long-time Bitcoiner and open-source advocate Matt Odell to dissect the current state of Bitcoin amidst a deep bear market. Their wide-ranging conversation explores how the bear market is testing Bitcoiners' resolve, debates over spending vs. saving Bitcoin, the evolution of freedom tech, the AI–Bitcoin crossover, and why building and self-custody matter more than ever. They also discuss recent news, including Jack Mallers stepping down from his leadership position, and reflect on community dynamics, product market fit, and the future of open-source and digital freedom.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Navigating the Bear Market—A Survival Test

• Bear markets as cleansing forces: Matt argues that bear markets distinguish committed participants from speculators and are more about survival than building.
  • Quote [00:02]:
    “Life is short, the grind is long. Stay humble, stack sats, work hard. Saving Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best money that's ever existed... This is where the men get separated from the boys.”
    —Matt Odell
• Sentiment Analysis: Despite less dramatic price falls than in prior cycles, morale is low due to the absence of clear scapegoats or explanatory events.
  • [107:23] “There's almost like a zen to it because there's a lack of interest... with the chaos comes a lot of opportunity.” —Matt Odell

2. Jack Mallers' Departure: Implications for Bitcoin & Industry Transparency

• Insights on Jack’s move: Mallers stepping down promises more authentic, unrestricted commentary. Matt and Danny see this as net positive for both Strike and Jack.
  • Quote [01:22]:
    “I think it’s important for him to own his mistakes, take personal responsibility, improve, push forward... he controls his destiny. And that's, to me, when Jack always ships the best.” —Matt Odell
• On public companies and holding back:
  • [01:22] Danny expresses excitement for “unshackled Jack back,” noting the constraints that come with corporate responsibilities.

3. The Debate Over Treasury Companies & Risk Management

• Treasury Companies—Pros and Cons:

  • Matt distinguishes between sound, profitable companies that use Bitcoin as a treasury asset versus firms engaging in complex financial engineering and leverage.
  • Quote [14:48]:
    “My two biggest nitpicks are first... the conflation of ‘being concerned with risk’ and ‘being anti-Bitcoin companies.’ We want strong, profitable businesses saving in Bitcoin—not endless financialization.” —Matt Odell

• Advice on investing in “Bitcoin public stocks”:

  • [10:14] "The question is, does it outperform [BTC]?... Will it outperform over the next 10 years? I doubt it.” —Danny

4. Bitcoin’s Role as Money: Self-Custody, Payments, and Usability

• Self-custody is essential for freedom and security:

  • Quote [23:07]:
    “The debanking and the rugs will continue until self custody improves. If there's no need, then people find complacency.”

• Lightning & real-world adoption trends:

  • Matt points to growing use of Lightning for payments, with specific successes in Kenya, Costa Rica, and South Africa for circular Bitcoin economies.
  • [18:56] “Kenya is the best country in the world to be a bitcoiner.” —Danny

• On the slow grind of mainstream adoption and transaction fees:

  • [17:04] Matt and Danny discuss the voluntary lowering of on-chain fees by miners, the implications for network security, and the subtle long-term transition toward fee-reliant mining.

• Merchant and peer-to-peer payments: The network effect of fiat still rules, but Lightning and dedicated enthusiasts are making steady progress, especially with motivated small business owners.

5. Privacy, AI, and the Broader Freedom Technology Movement

• AI as a lever for both surveillance and liberation:

  • Quote [47:44]:
    “Every cool technology... there's a side that's incredibly dystopian and could be used to control people. And then there's a side that empowers individuals who seek that responsibility. It was the case with the Internet, with Bitcoin, with AI.”

• Open-source AI & identity protocols:

  • Matt is excited by the diversity in the AI ecosystem, including open-source Chinese models, and highlights the importance of open protocols like Nostr and projects like Simplex as robust, more resilient alternatives to centralized platforms.

• On the privacy tradeoff in Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies:

  • [94:36] “If your financial life is USDC on base, you live in the Panopticon... of course they’re like, the sky is falling. They just don’t pay attention to Bitcoin, maybe they own some Bitcoin ETF and think it’s ancient technology.”

• Future prospects of privacy protocols:

  • Matt notes that while protocol-level privacy in Bitcoin is debated, practical privacy advances (Lightning, batch payments, creative wallet development) matter more for most users than headline features promoted by privacy coins.

6. Community, Localism & Attracting the Next Generation

• Aging Bitcoin Audience:

  • [77:14] “The largest demographic for my shows is 45-plus men... it's aging older, not younger.” —Matt
  • Both host and guest lament the lack of young people in the technical Bitcoin movement, contrasting it with the AI space.

• Local meetups as pillars of the ecosystem:

  • There’s a strong emphasis on the importance—even increased importance—of in-person meetups for fostering real connections and resilient communities, especially post-COVID.

• The challenge of onboarding new users, and the need for fresh voices:

  • [104:00] “We need new people coming through all the time that are fresh, ready to have that conversation.” —Danny

7. Life Strategies in an Uncertain World

• Embracing flexibility and local action:
  • Both Matt and Danny discuss making big life choices (like moving jurisdictions) in uncertain times, the virtues of local vs. global approaches, and the necessity of humility and adaptability as fathers and Bitcoiners.
  • Quote [41:31]:
    “The world in 20 years is... probably been the most uncertain it's ever been... So if I try and distill it and think about, 'okay, my kids in 20 years, what world are they are becoming young adults in?'... Is freedom money—being able to save and spend without permission.” —Matt Odell

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Bear Markets:
  “Bear markets are actually more about survival. A lot of people fail during bears... the people that make it through tend to end up in a better position.” – Matt Odell [105:17]

• On Self-Custody:
  “The debanking and the rugs will continue until self custody improves.” – Matt Odell [23:07]

• On Freedom and Technology:
  “Every cool technology part of what makes it cool is... it could be used to control people. And then there's the side that empowers individuals.” – Matt Odell [47:44]

• On Generational Shifts:
  “The failure point isn’t that [organizers] are tired... it’s that they don’t have young people to take over the reins.” – Matt Odell [76:08]

• On Nostr vs. X and Open Protocols:
  “It’s really easy to critique social media companies... but it’s a really hard thing to find a balance for what healthy social media looks like.” – Matt Odell [32:00]

• On the Purpose of Bitcoin:
  “If you can’t spend [your money] without permission, it’s not your money. You’re asking someone permission to realize your wealth.” – Matt Odell [104:48]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:02 – 03:18: Bear market mindset and personal strategies
• 01:00 – 06:07: Jack Mallers, Strike, and company leadership lessons
• 10:12 – 16:39: Treasury companies and evaluating BTC vs. stocks
• 17:04 – 20:48: Transaction fees, Lightning, using Bitcoin as money globally
• 23:07 – 24:07: Urgency of self-custody
• 30:25 – 36:49: Nostr, network effects, and open protocols
• 41:31 – 46:44: Vision for open-source, localism, and the uncertain future
• 47:44 – 53:01: AI as dystopia and opportunity; Bitcoin as native digital money for agents
• 76:05 – 78:01: The generational transition and the “gray beard” problem
• 88:03 – 90:48: Advances and tradeoffs in privacy, with Lightning and experimental Bitcoin protocols
• 105:07 – 111:00: Bear market survivorship, learning from past cycles, and the importance of resilience
• 114:00 – 116:14: Citadel Wire—Matt’s new AI-driven situation monitor project

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Resource & Project Mentions

• Strike: Bitcoin payments company launched by Jack Mallers
• Nostr: Decentralized, open protocol for social and identity
• Simplex: Freedom-focused group chat with less emphasis on network effects
• Citadel Wire: Matt’s AI-driven, privacy-focused dashboard for news, prediction markets, and alerts (citadelwire.com)
• Zap Store: Nostr-integrated Android app store project
• Bitcoin Park (Nashville): Local meetup hub
• Bitcoin Jungle (Costa Rica), Bitcoin Akazi (Malawi): Community Bitcoin projects
• AI models: Kimi, DeepSeek, Quinn, Gemini, OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI, Thinking Machines

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• Resilience in adversity is key: This bear market is a test of focus and conviction; foundational principles — like self-custody, community, open development — are more vital than ever.
• Real usage matters: Bitcoin’s adoption is broadening through real-world utility (Lightning, circular economies), but its adoption remains a slow, patient process.
• Building freedom infrastructure: From open protocols to privacy tools and local communities, the future will be shaped by persistent, principled builders.
• Stay humble, stack sats, and be adaptable: Bitcoin’s journey is a marathon, not a sprint. The fundamentals are unchanged, and the best may be yet to come.

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For more from Matt Odell:

• citadelwire.com
• @odellxyz

For additional episodes from What Bitcoin Did:

• whatbitcoindid.com

Transcript

[Matt Odell]

I think just keep it simple. Life is short, the grind is long. Standable stack stats, work hard. Saving Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best money that's ever existed. You can, you can hold your wealth, you can spend it all without permission, without counterparty risk. It is absolutely beautiful. There's no second best. I think the debanking and the rugs will continue until self custody improves. Like, it's just if there's no need, then people find complacency. So what I would say to people is remain focused. Like the fundamentals have not changed. We need bitcoin more than ever. I'm, I've, I. From a risk reward basis, I am never been more bullish on bitcoin. I think it's the best money in the world. It remains so. And just eyes on the prize. Right. Like, I think this is where, this is, you know, where the, the men get separated from the boys.

[Danny]

We've got breaking news as we start recording. Jack Malice, he stepped down.

[Matt Odell]

You think I'm close enough to this mic?

[Danny]

Yeah, you're fine. I didn't see it coming.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. What's your opinion as a external bystander? You literally found out an hour ago. An hour ago.

[Danny]

My opinion is as a friend of Jack's, I'm kind of pumped because the thing that has been frustrating from a very selfish perspective in bitcoin is everyone working for public companies means that they're very conscious of what they say. They can't say a lot of things. They have to sort of pull punches. And I'm excited to have unshackled Jack back. That's like my initial.

[Matt Odell]

It was funny because yesterday you literally said to me, the weird part about all these bitcoin public companies is everyone has all these secrets that they can't share.

[Danny]

Yep.

[Matt Odell]

And when you said that, I was like, I have a secret I can't share. Look, I am incredibly close friends with Jack. I've known him for years now. Our families know each other. He launched Strike on my podcast in Marty's studio apartment. 1031 is the largest investor in Strike, but we were never investors in xxi. We were never directly involved in xxi. Obviously, Jack is one of my confidants and I am one of his. So I've provided him plenty of personal advice. But on a fiduciary duty point of view, it's always, for me, it's always been to strike shareholders and then as a friend to Jack, as just unbiased advice. And I, I mean, I think this is, I Think it's important for him to own. Own his mistakes, take personal responsibility, improve, push forward. I think this is fantastic for Strike. I think it's good for Strike shareholders. I think it's good for Strike users. I think it's good for the bitcoin industry. And I'm pretty excited for what comes next. I think it's hard to. I think it's hard. It's hard to appreciate being in that situation unless you were in that situation.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

But now, you know, he controls his destiny. He completely controls his destiny. And that's, to me, when Jack always ships the best 100%.

[Danny]

But it is interesting. Like, I obviously don't know why it happened. You've. I've heard his little thing he did on Twitter say, like, explaining what had gone on. It sounds like basically him and the board maybe had a different opinion of where the company should go. I'm just glad to see him not in the seat of another bitcoin business. Strike is his thing. It always has been. I think focusing on that solely will be better for him. I hope it's not hit his ego too hard.

[Matt Odell]

No, I think it has. I think he's definitely been significantly humbled. I think it's weird to talk about a friend publicly without them here. But I also, you know, he's a key part of the bitcoin industry and Strike is a key part of the bitcoin industry. So it's definitely relevant regardless. And I was definitely going to have to comment on it on Rabbit hole recap. Anyway. Look, I think XXI is an interesting one, right. Because it was. It was a company that was manufactured from scratch to do something and. And never actually did those things. Y. And the only way it would really work, in my opinion, as you said, is for him not to have two seats and for there to be effectively a strike acquisition or merger into xxi.

[Danny]

Yep.

[Matt Odell]

So I think people can read between the lines. But ultimately that didn't make sense for the parties involved. You know, deals are hard to make and terms couldn't really come to. We couldn't. There. There couldn't be a deal that everyone was happy with. And so what's the best point at that? What's the best decision at that point? I think it's to own your mistakes and. And move on.

[Danny]

When you say on your mistakes, though, what mistakes do you think you made?

[Matt Odell]

I mean, I won't speak for him. I'm sure he's gonna be out there and loud and transparent as he possibly can. But I mean, for starters, like, maybe don't even do it in the first place. Right.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Danny]

But, I mean, the. The. The idea of the business I thought was quite interesting. Like, it wasn't a normal treasury company.

[Matt Odell]

Look, I think it's. It's easy. It's easy to backseat quarterback this stuff.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

But ultimate. It's easy to backseat quarterback this stuff, but ultimately, if I was in the driver's seat, which I never was, I think what you would do is you'd have to come to terms on some kind of strike deal before you do the thing.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Right.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah, that makes sense. The. The thing that I'm most like, that

[Matt Odell]

would probably be like the biggest regret, I think, if I was in his shoes. Let me put it that way.

[Danny]

Yeah. I don't want to talk for him either, but, like, I would also imagine he's probably frustrated the way they played out after doing the announcement of the conference as well.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that.

[Danny]

Yeah. But the thing I am excited about is I think he's going to come out swinging now. I think he'll be like, firing Jack, as we used to know Jack, because, like, now he can say what he wants, which is awesome.

[Matt Odell]

And look, I'll always. I always have his back. I think he actually does really care. I've seen him firsthand.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

He cares about bitcoin, he cares about his company, he cares about his users, cares about his family.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Um, I think. I think it's. It's. Look, when. When we were kids, you had. I don't. I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, I had so many friends, and it was all because of just, like, proximity. Right. It's like the people you grew up with, people that were in your class, the people that were living on your street, like, they were just automatically default.

[Danny]

Your friends, they would answer the friends. Although that's still my friends. A lot of those people.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. But, like, when you become a. When you become an adult, more meaningful, more purposeful. Yeah. You kind of distill your life into a. A much smaller group of friends. Right. And it's not a proximity thing. I mean, we're super close friends, and we live on the complete opposite side of the world.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Right. And Jack is one of those guys that I'm just like. I'm very grateful to have in my life be a part of his life, and there's just not that many people like that.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

To me. No.

[Danny]

Jack's awesome. The thing that I do like as well is Jack was never an Orange tie. Like the only time I've ever seen Jack wear a suit was at an event in D.C. and he came out in tux pants. I think that proves how he's not a suit.

[Matt Odell]

But he didn't even know that it was a tuxedo. We had to tell him when he arrived. I was like, why'd you wear a tuxedo?

[Danny]

So clearly not a suit.

[Matt Odell]

But he's like, it was in my closet.

[Danny]

But that obviously like he kind of was part of the orange tie brigade to a degree like he was and I'm glad that he's not anymore. Do you think that orange Thai crew, I know you've been on a bit of tirade about these have been net negative for bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

I don't know, I, I feel, I feel, I don't like punching down and you know, shareholders, a lot of these businesses are down 90%, sometimes more, sometimes less. I do, I would like to see them write their ships like, I strictly prefer that people don't lose a ton of money. And I think most of the shareholders for these companies are die hard bitcoiners. I don't think they necessarily. I think there was some expansion of scope like investor base, but I think that's overstated. I think most of it was effectively funded by die hard bitcoin. It's like people that were already buying bitcoin would be buying bitcoin otherwise. And you know, I would, I, I hope, I hope they find good outcomes. I think, I think obviously people in general across the industry have had learned, hopefully learned lessons in counterparty risk and third party risk. But a net negative, I wouldn't say, I don't, I don't, I don't think it, I don't think it's been a net negative. I think in a lot of ways it's been inevitable it was going to happen anyway. I don't think most of these companies will fail just because I'm bullish on bitcoin. Yeah, I think, I think the key thing that people should be looking at here though is something that we've talked about at length for years with shitcoins is do not measure your performance in dollar terms. Right. I think the question that people should be asking themselves is if I own MSTR common stock for instance, will it outperform bitcoin in a bull run? Not that just the fiat number is

[Danny]

up probably in the bull run.

[Matt Odell]

But I'm saying that's the question. That's how you should be looking at these things. Right. It's not just okay, if bitcoin pumps then MSTR pumps, which that is what would happen? The question is, does it outperform?

[Danny]

But I think it kind of turns everyone into a trader then because I think if you could buy just using MSTR as an example, if you're buying it now and Bitcoin does go on a big bull run, I could totally believe that MSTR outperforms Bitcoin in that period. But it's like Bitcoin's not a two year game. Will it outperform over the next 10 years? I doubt it. I don't know, but I doubt it. And so if you're going to try and basically swing trade cycles like that seems very risky.

[Matt Odell]

To be clear. I think people should stay humble and stack out.

[Danny]

Yes,

[Matt Odell]

I think just keep it simple. Life is short, the grind is long. Stay able, stack sets, work hard. Saving Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the best money that's ever existed. You can, you can hold your wealth, you can spend it all without permission, without counterparty risk. It is absolutely beautiful. There's no second best.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

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[Danny]

of hard to kind of square the idea of companies buying bitcoin is cool, I love that. But I have an aversion to treasury companies and I don't, I can't always explain it. It's just like the financial games that some of these companies are playing now. It's got too complex and I'm just, I just don't like it. Like I'd rather just buy bitcoin and I don't necessarily know what other people see in them that I don't

[Matt Odell]

look, I think there's, there's a couple of pieces here. I think. First of all, since the dawn of bitcoin, one of the products that have had significant product market Fit is leverage on bitcoin. Okay. And that has come from pure play leverage like stuff like the Bitmex casino.

[Danny]

Maybe that's why I hate it because

[Matt Odell]

I got wrecked on Bitmex or like shitcoins, right? Like shitcoins have almost always been someone trying to outperform bitcoin and most times people get wrecked on the bitcoin treasury companies as a. As a whole. I think my two biggest nitpicks are. My two biggest nitpicks are first of all the conflation that. The conflation of. If you are concerned about the risks and how they're portrayed with bitcoin treasury companies. You don't think companies should hold bitcoin? No. I have this radical view that companies should be profitable businesses that save in bitcoin.

[Danny]

So radical.

[Matt Odell]

And so I think there's been a conflation there between what I expect to be the overwhelming majority of bitcoin businesses which are just traditional profitable businesses that use bitcoin as a treasury asset and use it maybe even as a means of payment for things that you know, if they need to do cross border payments and stuff like that. Wires maybe are not sustainable for or not the ideal fit for which is by the way something we see on the open sat side, which is my charity. You know, we're sending out a million dollars a month in bitcoin to 40 plus countries, grant recipients in 40 plus countries and we're sending it all out with bitcoin. It just literally would not be possible to do that with wires. In some cases it would not be possible. In other cases it's just untenable, especially on a monthly basis. And then the second piece is you're

[Danny]

doing that as a single batch transaction for like a dollar or something.

[Matt Odell]

Oh yeah. It's like super cheap. But more important is like just like the mental burden and the accounting burden. It's just easier, right?

[Danny]

It's mempool's clearly emptied again. Like it's absolutely insane.

[Matt Odell]

I got that one wrong.

[Danny]

You got that one very wrong.

[Matt Odell]

But like the crate that mistake hands

[Danny]

crazy thing is that even like a high, a high priority transaction now can be less than 1 SAP of eBay. Like that's something that I would never have guessed was coming two years ago.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, you pay like half a set for V by.

[Danny]

Do you think that's a really damning sign for bitcoin?

[Matt Odell]

First of all, that was a voluntary thing because it's not a consensus rule. That was a voluntary thing that miners

[Danny]

and I don't understand why they agreed

[Matt Odell]

to do that, they had like a nice price for. I mean maybe at the time one sapper byte didn't feel like much, but now it feels like a lot. You know they could be getting double.

[Danny]

I get that there's like almost a prisoner's dilemma in it where if other

[Matt Odell]

people were doing it, so they did it.

[Danny]

But why?

[Matt Odell]

I don't know. It's weird. But they chose to anyway. I mean the real reason is because transaction fees remain a negligible part of their revenue. Right. It's mostly the subsidy which goes down by half every halving that is the majority of the revenue. And so I think they just didn't really think that much of it. They might as well squeeze a little bit more out of, out of the fruit. Right. If some other mining pool was accepting it. But they did it like really quickly. Like it was like it was surprising. There wasn't really any major holdouts in terms of going under one separate bite. Is it damning? No, I don't, I mean I don't think so. I do think. Adoption of, of, of real bitcoin has been lagging in recent years but I think it's too short term for it to be considered a trend. I think like in the last cycle a lot of the, you know, a lot of the excitement was around these basically these bitcoin public stocks. Yeah, right. And not buying bitcoin and, and using bitcoin. But we've seen a lot of positive trends recently on using bitcoin as money in a day to day. I mean I think some of the biggest news of the year was square going live with bitcoin payments at their terminals. I think across the world we see a lot of successes on bitcoin circular economies in South Africa and Kenya and Costa Rica.

[Danny]

Kenya is the best country in the world to be a bitcoiner.

[Matt Odell]

I think I. Well the government's like kind of hostile towards it. It's just if you want to use

[Danny]

it though, there's literally basically no way you can't use bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Tando can.

[Danny]

Yeah, right, Tando. Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, it's awesome. I like those like pragmatic use cases too. It's like Tando is not purely cypher punk, but if you have an M Pesa phone number, which everyone does, you can just do at bitcoin co KE at the end of it and it's a lightning address and you can just. And if you send bitcoin and they're not enabled, they just receive Kenya, whatever their fiat is.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Which is just super practical and is interesting because you can do that in places with mobile money. You see stuff like that in Costa Rica. You see stuff like that in, in South Africa with massive mobile money adoption already. That we just don't have that, that fiat side infrastructure in place in the United States. So. So you don't see that as much. But yeah, I mean look, I don't know about you. I use bitcoin as money all the time. I prefer to spend bitcoin. I do think it's an interesting. There's definitely a dynamic where. I don't know about you but the majority of my payments are lightning payments. Yeah, same which is a protocol for batch bitcoin transactions. So it should reduce demand on chain. But I mean you say that surprising.

[Danny]

You say you use bitcoin as money all the time. I don't. I wish I could use it more but I just don't. We don't have square terminals accepting bitcoin in Australia. There's very few places I can actually spend bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Do you accept any sponsorships in bitcoin?

[Danny]

They can all pay in bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

But do any?

[Danny]

Occasionally, but not many.

[Matt Odell]

Interesting.

[Danny]

Yeah. And I think like people will often say it's like accounting reasons and that sort of thing which I get. Like if it makes your business harder to run then I do understand it. But I use bitcoin as money probably less than a few times a month.

[Matt Odell]

So there's, there's a lot of small businesses that online have started accepting bitcoin and either they're bitcoin only or bitcoin preferred. Like some that come to mind is like soapminer.com is a guy who makes amazing natural soap for my family and we just pay in bitcoin. There's a ranch in Santa Fe that makes amazing meat called beck and buck and Bellow. Buck and below. Maybe really good meat accepts bitcoin the ride run by ride or die bitcoiners. So if there's a will, there's a way. I just, I, I think, I think people need to be patient. And the way the havings work out is the subsidy is still quite high. Transaction fees don't need to be the majority of revenue. Yet usually when halvings happen, the $$ terms are increased even though halvings are decreasing in bitcoin terms. And if you think about miners, most of the time their expenses are in fiat. So in a lot of ways the subsidy hasn't really been reducing significantly. So we still have significant more time. But I think it's definitely something to watch. Yeah.

[Danny]

Because when I first got into Bitcoin, 2016, 2017, transaction fees were way higher than today. They probably haven't been as high as a SAP of ebay since then, I would imagine. And that was clearly people who were using real bitcoin to. I think a lot of it was probably people sending it across exchanges to go and punt on shitcoins, but people were still using Bitcoin. And one of the things I think is actually interesting about Crypto world is because if you want to interact in defi space, you have to be self custodying whatever shitcoin you have. Like, they have way higher rates of self custody. It's the one thing I think they've done better.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, if you look at the top, the top self custody wallets, there's all shitcoin wallets.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

It's trust wallet and Metamask are the two big ones.

[Danny]

And that is obviously to facilitate gambling, essentially. Like, it's people trying to use these

[Matt Odell]

defi protocols, but without kyc.

[Danny]

Yeah. But I don't know how we get there with bitcoin. How do we get people to care about self custody and actually using Bitcoin?

[Matt Odell]

I think the debanking and the rugs will continue until self custody improves. If there's no need, then people find complacency. It's always easier to not practice personal responsibility. So people tend to only really do it if they have a strong reason to. And usually it's because trusted third parties are security holds.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Danny]

But it kind of gets back to the same question I ask you every time we're on the show is like, will people use Bitcoin in the way that we see bitcoin as freedom money?

[Matt Odell]

I think more people are using bitcoin as freedom money today than have ever used bitcoin as freedom money. The percentage is smaller as a total. I think that comes with the territory as bitcoin matures. But I think the number to watch is the absolute number. And if that started to really stagnate or go down, I think people should sound the alarm. Yeah. But

[Danny]

I guess the bigger question is, are we doing a good enough job? And I think I. I have a feeling this is why you came back to Twitter.

[Matt Odell]

We can, we can always do better. There's still a lot. I think there's still a lot of work to be done. I think we're doing fine, but we can do better.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Is that why you came back to Twitter?

[Matt Odell]

It is part of the reason? Yes.

[Danny]

Or is it because you've given up on Nostr?

[Matt Odell]

I haven't given up on Nostr. I think depending on your perspective, Nostr has been a success or a failure. I think it works really well as a ride or die communication and identity protocol. As an open protocol, it's really easy to work with in terms of building stuff using the new AI tools, especially in combination with other open protocols like Bitcoin. So it's very unique in that regard. I think as a, I won't even say like as a mass social media protocol replacement. I mean it's definitely failed in that regard. But what I was, I mean what I was hoping for was at least that an overwhelming majority of the bitcoin conversation would move over there. And it hasn't. It just, it just legitimately hasn't. It's. It's more comparable, I think, to a large public group chat.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

While the majority of bitcoin discussion remains on X and you know, I devoted a significant amount of time and energy to it over the last two years. I think some progress was made. Some could have done better in other regards, but I, I definitely personally underestimated the difficulty of breaking established network effect. And that was the, probably the biggest, the biggest lesson I learned is life is short, time is scarce. Okay. So where can I affect the most positive change? Probably on things that don't have to break network effect. Let me put it that way. I think I recently was asked by Evgeny, the founder of Simplex, to be one of the founding board members of his non profit. And Simplex aims to be a drop in freedom focused replacement to Telegram and Signal that is less centralized and more robust, secure and private. And I think there's something to be said about. Okay, if we want free discussion on the Internet, that's a good example because if you, if, if you try and solve it at the group chat problem, it requires less attacking a network effect. Right. For a group chat to be useful, you really just need 10 people to download the app. Then you have a great group chat. Right. If you need 500 million people to join a protocol for it to be interesting, then it's a push. It's a much more difficult problem to solve.

[Danny]

When you first moved over to when you went Nostr, only you were super critical of Elon Musk. I think that was a time when free speech on the Internet looked way more perilous than it does today. Do you think that's still a risk?

[Matt Odell]

Yes, I think, I think, I.

[Danny]

Guess it's Also worth not explicitly in the US because, like, the risk in Europe and the UK is obvious.

[Matt Odell]

I think Elon and his team at X have, I mean, they have, they've beat all my expectations from a product point of view. I think they've been very good stewards of the product. Are they perfect? No. Should we rely on a single man to protect free speech on the Internet? Probably not. Probably a horrible idea. But I think it's important to realize that after I left X, there was like the great liberal exodus from X. Right? I, I never, I didn't leave X because I thought Elon was incompetent. It was the exact opposite. Right. I saw someone who was incredibly competent, very good at executing, and seemed like he was ready to, you know, roll out full control over this, over this platform that I had a ton of reliance on and that the main bitcoin discussion was happening on. And a, a key part of that is identity checks on the Internet, which continues to escalate. Now Elon has pumped the brakes on that on X, he hasn't. You can, I mean, if you do like the revenue sharing and stuff, then you, you know, you have to do full ID checks. But if you, if you want to use X without verifying your identity, it's still relatively usable. Now I think that's going to escalate, mostly pushed by governments, but also in, in, in partnership with corporations. Facebook has been a big advocate for this across the board. I mean, they want to sell your data, right? So they want to be able to figure out who's a bot and who's not. And it's not the most effective way to do it, but it's, it's definitely the easiest way to do it is to do full KYC on the Internet and have ID checks on everyone. And the argument is to protect the children, which is a classic argument. So, I mean, I think, I think protocols like Nostr are probably more important as ever because of that trend. But it, it remains to be seen, you know, how that, exactly how that exactly plays out.

[Danny]

What do you think? So one of the things I've been pretty consistent on with Noster is like, I never thought social media was going to be the killer app. Like, it never made sense to me because of the network effect of Twitter and everything else. Like, I always thought there was huge potential elsewhere, like in some definitely illegal areas. There's a very obvious, like, use case for something like Noster. Like, is it done at this point in terms of social media? Do you think these other things will still Happen.

[Matt Odell]

Look, I, how do I want to phrase this? I actually don't think NOSTR is great for illegal things because it's a public broadcasting protocol. Like you're literally, you're broadcasting to the world in a robust, hard to stop way and you actually can leak a lot of private information if you're not careful as a result, particularly your IP address for instance, where you're located. And you're just like hitting a ton of different servers by design. Right. Instead of like just hitting Elon servers. So it's not actually like great for that. And then also if you have laws in place like in the UK and whatnot, where it's what you say that can get you in trouble or like Brazil was one of them, like they were just banning specific influencers from using social media that were anti government effectively. What those people have to do is they have to go and they have to start fresh as an anon. They can't, they can't use.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

If they have 5 million followers on X with their real legal name, they can't just use Noster instead with their real legal name because the government will just come and jail you. Yeah, like that's outside of the protocol. That's separate from the protocol. Okay, so there's that piece. And so from when you see that type of pressure, I think in a lot of ways group chats are actually make more sense and NOSTR has failed to bootstrap really strong like group chat technology there. There's some good projects that are working on it and it's yet to be seen if they can actually succeed there. But the metaphor that I like to use is when, when the revolution was fought in the US like where were the important conversations happening? They were happening in pubs at two in the morning. They weren't happening on the corner from a guy shouting on the soapbox like yeah, there was the Federalist Papers and stuff that were written by Anons publicly distributed. Right. But when, when you're talking about like the brass tax, like who was actually having the conversations? When were they having the conversations? It was in private closed door rooms, which is in the digital world, the group chat. So there's, so there's that piece on terms of NOSTER as social media versus a protocol for other things. I think it's yet to be seen because. I think a lot of those things require the social media aspect to effectively bootstrap the web of trust. So one of the things I did learn is it's really easy to critique these social media companies because they Do a lot of things that seem incredibly wrong and a lot of times they're guilty of those things. But it's a really hard thing to find a balance on what does healthy social media look like. There's a lot of it's a very hard thing to do and I was in the thick of it on the Nostr side, so I don't know what that looks like, but I guess long winded. I'll use an example. One of the coolest non social media bitcoin noster projects is called Zap Store. I think it's zapstore.dev and what it is is it's a drop in Android App Store replacement. And so right now, like on the app stores, like if you use Google Play Store or Apple App Store, they are providing a service for users, they're doing one, they're providing you discovery, right? A lot of times people need an app, they need a weather app. They open up the app store, they type in weather is lists all the weather apps with reviews, right? Ranked by some unknown algorithm. But still it's discovery, right? Is one piece and then the second is a security aspect which is developer creates app, creates the latest update of the app, releases it to the world. You want to make sure that that app gets to you unchanged. There's something called a man in the middle attack where you have a malicious actor comes in between you and the developer modifies the app, does something bad with the app and then you download the modified app, right? And so what Apple and Google does is they put their stamp of approval on, you know, Google says this app was made by the developer and has been unchanged. Now obviously that's a trusted third party model. Google can change it, you would never know. You're it's complete black box. You're just trusting Google and Apple with that. Okay, so what happens as a result? What happens as a result? Developers get banned, they can't service the App Store. There's gotta be a better way, right? People have said this for years now. There's got to be a better way. One of the ways that is quote unquote a better way is you have them sign a PGP sign message of, you know, the hash of the file users supposed to verify it. No one does that. Very few people do that. It's technically possible, but not scalable. So what Zap Store did is you download the App Store on the Android phone and then you either put in your Nostr account or someone you trust. So if you don't use Nostr for Instance you can put in my Nostr account, right? And then what that does is it provides two things. First of all, it helps you with discovery in a permissionless way. Zap Store doesn't control it. It's reviews of me, my reviews and reviews of my friends is what's doing it. And then second of all, the developer is signing it with their nostril key. So if you follow the developer it says, you know vitor, sign this Amethyst release and you know that it hasn't been changed without doing any PGP verification, without trusting Google, without trusting Apple. Now there is no shot in hell that someone is going to build a friends list on an app store replacement. That system only works because you bootstrap the friends list with shitposts on the social media component. Yeah, right. That's where the real compounding bootstrapping effect happens. So I think you need both. I think the social aspect is just taking way longer than I expected and it's yet to be seen if it gets real broad usage. But even if it doesn't, it can still be valuable in that use case. But you still need the social aspect.

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[Danny]

I can see the use case because that's like a proper cypherpunk tool still, it's not like something that everyone's going to use. I can see the use case, especially if you're living out of the UK right now where social media posts are being heavily regulated. People are going to prison for social media posts. I can see the impetus there to go on to nosta, start a nim and post whatever you want, read whatever you want, but without growing that social media base that doesn't actually none of that works. I guess my question is can it do that? Because at the moment I don't think the social media base is big enough for that to work.

[Matt Odell]

But that's what I'm saying. It works today, right? Like that use case works today because at the current level of social usage, like you can install Zap Store today, never use Noster and just set my account as your web of trust. And it would work pretty fucking well

[Danny]

with apps that you've got.

[Matt Odell]

What do you mean?

[Danny]

Like, it won't work with every app. Right.

[Matt Odell]

Any developer that I follow on Nostr that is releasing their own apps from the app store would be verified as the correct developer.

[Danny]

Yeah. So it works for like bitcoin apps?

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, pretty much.

[Danny]

Yeah. But like, for that to be interesting to more people, it needs to grow much wider.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, sure, yeah.

[Danny]

I don't know. I hate saying it on bearish on us because Nostra is really cool, but I don't know.

[Matt Odell]

No, like, I'm not going to. My bullishness and bearishness on Noster ebbs and flows. My bullishness on Bitcoin is an unwavering prediction at this point. Let me put it that way. I do think. I do think that I would like to. The world needs a protocol like that, identity and social and comms, that is open and robust and available for all.

[Danny]

And we need.

[Matt Odell]

We need that more than ever. If you think about, I think what shapes both of our lives a lot now is. Is being fathers, Right. And so if you think, okay, the world in 20 years is very uncertain. It's probably been the most uncertain it's ever been. A bitcoiner that is much older than both of us. And I, I respect his. His wise opinion on the matter went down the AI rabbit hole before me. And he explained it like a. A dot plot of possibilities. And the dot plot has never been wider. Like, where are we in 10 years? I don't know, maybe for a century. It's never been wider. So maybe a little bit less. Like, maybe like the end of World War II. So it's hard to really conceptualize where we'll be in 10 years, where we'll be in 20 years, where we'll be in 30 years. And I think that creates a lot of uncertainty for people. And that's why you see a lot of restlessness in the world in society at large. But if I, if I try and distill it and think about like, okay, my kids in 20 years, what world are they are becoming young adults in? And one key, obvious key is, okay, is. Is freedom, money is. Is being able to save and spend without permission. Yeah, I think that is absolutely Essential. But the other piece is okay. The world is already incredibly digital now. If they don't, if it's just big tech controlling the entire digital realm, that's really, really bad. And so they probably will need some kind of open identity and social and comms. And I think Nostr remains, you know, one of the best fits for that I've yet to find. With the exception of Simplex which tries to solve, like I said, a much smaller problem which is like the group chat. I have yet to see a protocol that shows more promise than it. I think it's going to be a long grind.

[Danny]

You live in like open source world. I don't but one of the things that I have thought over the last few weeks especially is the future for open source looks really good. The stuff that's happening now with Kimi coming out, kind of destroying everyone's model of what it means to be a frontier lab. Really, really cool.

[Matt Odell]

Very exciting.

[Danny]

I think the likelihood is the US government are going to heavily regulate Chinese models to try and protect anthropic and OpenAI, which I really don't understand. I don't understand why they feel like they need to protect those companies. But you must be looking at this very happy with the situation right now.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, yeah. I think if you go back even two years, three years, there was a, to the point of the dot plots being very wide, there's a bunch of different scenarios we could have ended up in and the amount of user choice is probably higher than anybody's expectation both on the proprietary US side and on the open source side. Proprietary US side. The, the expectation was that Google was going to absolutely dominate everyone. That's why OpenAI was created. Yeah, OpenAI was, you know, Elon was one of the co founders of OpenAI. It was supposed to be open source AI. There was a difference of opinion there. They somehow were like the first nonprofit to ever pivot into an incredibly valuable for profit business. So they had a falling out with Elon. Elon launches Xai, which buys X, which gets bought by SpaceX, which becomes one of the most valuable companies in the world, Google still exists OpenAI XAI. And then anthropic also spun out of OpenAI.

[Danny]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Matt Odell]

So instead of one dominant lab and now you have the other OpenAI co founder, she came out with thinking machines which is relatively new, but you can kind of put them in the group of five. So instead of one Google dominating, you have five different pretty strong options or at least in the next year or so. I think you can group all five of them into as strong options. XAI has been making very good progress very fast. Like I said, thinking machines is very new. I would not count Google out there remain the juggernaut. Even if the Gemini models are perceived, and for good reason, as substandard compared to OpenAI and Anthropic. So on the US proprietary side, hard to imagine us being in a better situation. And then no one was banking on the CCP just blessing massive open source AI development. So you have Kimmy, you have Deepseek, you have Quinn, you have tons of open models happening over there. And I think what's important for people to realize is there's nothing stopping. If those models become clear leaders, they might turn closed and proprietary. But the cat's out of the bag. Like the amount of development we've seen up until this point is significant. And so all of a sudden anyone who cares about these tools being freedom tools, it's hard to imagine being in a better situation than we're currently in.

[Danny]

Do you think you can consider the open source Chinese models freedom tools? Because they're still trained on very particular data and if you ask them about Tiananmen Square, they'll often lie to you.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, that's like a nice example, I think. Look, I think there's a couple of things here. I think first of all, every cool technology part of what makes it cool is there's a side that's incredibly dystopian and could be used to control people. And then there's a side that empowers individuals who seek that responsibility and empowerment, who want to improve their own life situation. It was the case with the Internet, it's the case with Bitcoin, and it's the case with AI. Like all cool shit, that's how it works. Most cool shit. I'm like thinking of exceptions now. There are some exceptions, but most cool shit, that's how it works. So that's first and foremost and the obvious, it's like obvious how AI can be used as a control and surveil mechanism, right? Cameras tracking, one of the things even

[Danny]

just to distilling the information they'll give you, they can hone conversation.

[Matt Odell]

But forget about all that for a second. Just like one of the things LLMs do really good is leveraging large data sets in a human readable way. And so governments around the world and corporations who monetize data have been hoovering up all of this data that they haven't been able to properly leverage, right? And now some random person at Some tech company can just type in like what are Danny's favorite interests? Where is Danny usually on a Wednesday at 2pm Right. And just human language, they can speak to it and just tells them it just spits it right back out. So that's obviously scary and happening right now. But on open source Chinese models specifically, I think first of all, China is clearly being used as the boogeyman here and with good reason. I mean, I think if you care about, if you're an American specifically or even a European and you care about national sovereignty and geopolitics and you know, your country being on good footing, China is obviously a significant threat and they shouldn't be discounted in that way. I mean, I think the CCP is good at executing at certain things and horrible at executing at other things. But we should not underestimate them. The open models. A couple things. First of all, most people, the way they're using them is they're hitting Chinese servers. It's the cheapest, easiest way to use them. They go to Kimmy's website and they just hit Chinese servers. Obviously, first of all, you have no control over your data. Everything that you are searching can be logged and is probably being logged and you should assume it's being logged. And they, like American companies, are probably building profiles on users in really significant, intimate ways.

[Danny]

Do you think the Chinese are worse than the US companies for that?

[Matt Odell]

I don't know. It's probably close enough that it doesn't really matter to make the distinction. They're motivated by different means. Right. The American companies are trying to eke out as much profit as possible by building data profiles on people. I mean, Sam Altman created worldcoin where you scan your eyeballs in an orb to get tokens.

[Danny]

Do you see GrayScaler doing a Worldcoin ETF?

[Matt Odell]

I did not. But that's like the, one of the least surprising things ever. But. And the CCP is like more top down, you know, government control over people while in the US it's like private public partnerships that get around the Constitution because you don't need a warrant if a private company collected it for profit reasons. So I think it's, I think for most people's, the way they think about it should probably just put them in the same bucket. Right?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Now I do think for certain people's threat models, like there's some things that if a foreign government knows about you is less bad than if your own government knows about you and vice versa. Right. There's some things that you know, your own government knows or your own corporations know that the other government doesn't. Right.

[Danny]

That you don't.

[Matt Odell]

That you would rather the other government not know. So I think individuals who are actually thinking about that can leverage the two incentives against each other, even though both are doing the same, doing similar things. Right. But then the other piece is the nice thing about these open source, open weight models is you can then host them yourselves and you can modify them and you can train them and you can have them do your own thing. Right. And so what we're seeing, for instance, is companies that have like exist in particular niches that want, you know, a hyper focused model. And so what do they do? They start with the base and then they modify it and train it and mold it to what they need. And that almost becomes their own proprietary. It becomes their own proprietary model that they have sovereignty over. And I think that's the more powerful aspect. And like other things, like other freedom technologies like Bitcoin, what is the distribution you see of that is probably going to be 95 to 98% people are still using it in the controlled way. Right. And like a small subset are using it in the freedom oriented way. And that's fine. That's what success looks like.

[Danny]

Yeah, but that's quite scary. It's even more scary with AI than it is with bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, but I mean, it's hard for me not to be incredibly optimistic here, I think. Look, you have to, if, if you focus on things that you can't control, you're going to have a really bad time. You have to focus at what's in your control and make the best decisions possible for your family and your friends and your own personal responsibilities. And from that lens, I've never been more optimistic.

[Danny]

Are you optimistic on the AI using Bitcoin narrative?

[Matt Odell]

So I have a clanker that uses bitcoin. It's awesome.

[Danny]

Well, how does it use bitcoin?

[Matt Odell]

It just works really well. He has a bitcoin wallet, but what

[Danny]

does he use it for? It has a bitcoin wallet, but what for?

[Matt Odell]

I call him George. George.

[Danny]

Strange name.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. I don't know, it was like two in the morning when I named him. It's like first setup, you know. Yeah. Why did I name him George? Well, for starters, I felt like if I was like, I shouldn't, I shouldn't choose a female name because I don't know, I. It just, it just felt wrong to my wife. You don't want to cheat my bro, George. And then I just picked like A random generic name, I thought, I mean, maybe like, I'm surprised it wasn't like John or something. But anyway, he has a bitcoin wallet. You load it up with a bitcoin, you load it up with some bitcoin and he's able to pay for things that he needs, API access, stuff like that without my interaction. And it's incredibly cool. And I think what a lot of people miss in that there's a hype train of agentic payments. And of course it's agents paying agents, right? So robot slaves paying robot slaves. But what they miss is the key aspect is where it crosses the dividend between humans and agents. Agentic payments is really humans paying agents, agent paying humans, agents paying agents, right? It's all of the above. And bitcoin excels in that situation for the same reason. Bitcoin is better money than, I mean the closest competitor is USD tokens. They can be blocked and frozen, right? And I think, and we've already seen massive, massive regulatory exposure for these USD tokens in the order of billions of dollars of tether and USDC have been frozen, the two main ones. So I think being able to pay your agent without permission is incredibly important for the agent to be able to pay other agents without permission is incredibly important for the agents to pay other humans. Doordash came out with the cli, so a command line interface that is specifically designed for agents to use. And why is that interesting? It's something that I've been theorizing for a bit now, which is we've hit the precipice now. Your robot is ordering a human to do something for you, right? Like it's crazy. That's kind of crazy. It's like, okay, like the robot needs more printer ink. He sends a human through doordash to go to the store and get printer ink. And right now that whole system is relying on credit cards, which is just a horribly broken, inefficient way of handling it. And so probably the first step will be they will probably start accepting USD tokens, which is strictly a net benefit. And then eventually I think it'll probably move to bitcoin. But even if it doesn't, if my agent is holding Bitcoin and he needs to pay for something that is only USD token he can swap into it. And this is something that's crazy is like it actually makes a lot of the shitcoin bullshit work better because they've had such horrible UX for years, but

[Danny]

now the UX doesn't matter.

[Matt Odell]

You just Tell the agent to do it. Yeah, you know, the agent figures out how to use, I don't know, Metamask or whatever and defi shit and go on uniswap and swap for shit and just get it done and make no mistakes. And so that's actually a way better user interface.

[Danny]

The agents paying humans is way too similar to that Daniel Suarez. What's that Daniel Suarez book called?

[Matt Odell]

I love all the Daniel Suarez books, Damon.

[Danny]

Yes, that's. That's kind of.

[Matt Odell]

So in my mind, Damon is. First of all, he wrote it in 2008, I think. Insane. Yeah, Maybe even a little bit earlier than that. And I read it back then everyone should go read Damon by Daniel Suarez. And then there's a sequel called Freedom.

[Danny]

Not good, though.

[Matt Odell]

No, but it brings it all together. And to me, it's open source AI, Bitcoin and Nostr without ever mentioning any of them.

[Danny]

Just in a really dystopian package.

[Matt Odell]

It could be utopian, depending on your perspective. True.

[Danny]

Are you on the side of the demon?

[Matt Odell]

Well, no. So, I mean, I don't want to spoiler it, so we'll talk big picture. I mean, can you really do a spoiler on a book that came out in 2008? Yeah, it's kind of on you. But look, I think society ebbs and flows, but progress has been pretty straight throughout humanity, like in a pretty impressive way. You know, we've. The amount of accomplishments, the society has undoubtedly flourished over the last 100 years. And I think there's been a move to centralization across every aspect of our lives. Whether that's mega cities, whether that's federal governments, whether that's big tech web monopolies, where they control everything. And I think it will move back to a more localism type scenario where you have smaller government, where you have strong local communities, where you have strong families. Ultimately the unit is that. That core local unit with. With technology empowering them so that they can have more leverage on the world. Not financial leverage. Right. But being. Having access to global trade, having access to global money, having access to global communication, but still being a small, local, strong community. And so when you. When you work that out in your head, that means that people are going to have very dynamic outcomes depending on which small local community they're part of. Some will flourish, some will do really well, and some will not do as well. That's just the reality of the situation. And I think that's kind of the world that Damon and Freedom proposed.

[Danny]

Why are you so confident on that? Because I hope that's true. I hope the world does get more localized. But why are you so confident?

[Matt Odell]

I mean, that's my bullish outcome. I, I, I think, I think that's, that's the, the, the, the North Star I work towards on everything. And do you think it's achieving? I think it's very achievable. Yeah. I just think, like I said, I think people, I, I think that world. Will still have very varied outcomes for people. Right. So. But the cool thing about that is if you focus on what you can control, if you can focus on empowering your family, empowering your local strong communities, then that is actually very achievable. And then you could be a little bit, obviously the wider world is still going to affect you, but you can be a little bit insulated, you can be a little bit protected from whatever that outcome is, which is way out of our control. And, you know, it's kind of anybody's guess. To the wide dot plot example earlier. Right.

[Danny]

You know, you were saying before, like, the variables out there are probably wider than ever before. Like, how you try and prepare a kid for the next 20 years, I've got no idea.

[Matt Odell]

Like, you just gotta be like water. You have to just go with the flow, adapt.

[Danny]

Because I would be very shocked if in 15, 20 years when our kids are at, like, college age, that they're gonna be, there's gonna be college.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, we were talking about that earlier.

[Danny]

Like, what's gonna exist? Like, I don't know, as a father, what you're meant to do to prepare for it.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, I think I, look, you just have to, I think nobody knows. And so the first thing is to humble yourself and be like, I have no fucking idea. Right? Like, own it. And then you have to adapt. You have to be flexible. You have to give your family as many options as possible, right? So that if you do have to, when you inevitably have to adapt again, you have flexibility. Understand that you will make many mistakes, try and identify them as quickly as possible, own the mistakes, do something different.

[Danny]

See, one of the things I find

[Matt Odell]

hard, don't get stuck in your way just because you did something. And this goes to the Nostr piece, right? It's like a lot of people are like, oh, you went nostr only for two years. You never open an X account again. It's like, yes, I can.

[Danny]

I never thought you were going to open an X account again, though, to be fair.

[Matt Odell]

But I took an unbiased look at the current situation. Situation.

[Danny]

You ate some humble pie.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. And I was like, okay. The best path forward is to rejoin X.

[Danny]

The thing that I find hard that you talk about a lot is that people should just move. And I know you, obviously you went from New York to Nashville. Like, I don't think everyone's gonna do that. And I don't think everyone should do that. I think people need to like, fight for the jurisdiction they're in. Like moving, like uprooting your family and moving away from broader families really hard.

[Matt Odell]

Like, I agree with all, all of this. I agree with. I just also think, and I have my own personal lens on this, right. Like my, my family, my wife's family, all our friends, all our infrastructures, all New York based. And we left all of that. And obviously it's easier to move. One of the best things the United States has is competition of local jurisdictions and, and least for now, free movement between them.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Y.

[Matt Odell]

But I think even globally, look, moving has always been hard. It's always been expensive, but also mentally. Mentally hard. You know, it's. It's a. It's a hard mindset to get yourself out of. Before I was a bitcoin maximalist, I was a New York maximalist. I thought I would never leave New York. Like, you have to like kind of jump off the cliff when you do this kind of thing, right. And go into the unknown. But it's also never been easier than it is currently from. At a global scale. Yeah, from a societal scale.

[Danny]

And it technically easier.

[Matt Odell]

It's yet to be seen if that'll be the case in 20 years. This could be a window. And I was saying this before COVID and then they closed all the borders. Now the borders have mostly opened up again. But. And I was mostly saying it not from the movement moving point of view. I was saying travel the world while you can. It's never been easier or cheaper to travel the world, which I think remains the case. But that is yet to be seen if that will still be the case. So I think, I think people should consider it. And I think if you look at it objectively, we left New York during COVID in 2020. My family's outlook and outcome in the next currently and the next five years, 10 years, 15 years. Maybe it's not objective, maybe it's subjective. I think it's significantly better than if we stayed in New York. I think you now have Mamdani there. I think things have gotten worse, not better. And I think it's not that I'm necessarily bearish on New York in 40 years. Or I guess let's lower the timescale, let's say 20 years when our kids are young adults. I think the outcome is unknown and I think these things take longer to correct. Especially in like high dense population areas. It takes longer to correct. You kind of have to swing to the negative and then swing back.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

And life is short. It's like, who wants, who wants to deal with that now? I, the, I, I would say the number one thing to me that makes a lot of sense is if you have very strong family support structures in place, it's hard to leave those. And maybe you shouldn't leave those. But what I advocate for is that, is that people should take account of their situation. Consider it, weigh the pros and cons. And one of the big cons of moving would be family structure. Weigh that into the cost benefit analysis and decide what's best for your family. And then also try and take yourself out of it for a second. Like, okay, if you grew up in London your whole life, that's all, you know, that makes sense. But try and put yourself in the shoes of someone who is living in Portugal. Would that person move to the UK right now? Probably not. They probably wouldn't. Why wouldn't they? Okay, let's list the reasons, you know, and, and those, do those reasons apply to me as well? Maybe they apply to me as well. Maybe I should move to a better jurisdiction. Maybe I should move to Switzerland.

[Danny]

Yeah, I mean, and there's always ones that make sense. Like I'm jealous of the way that you have the state structure here in the US I think it's awesome. And like, if I was in the US and I lived in New York, I probably would move somewhere else. But like when I live in Australia, obviously when you look at the countries that you potentially could move to that have better freedoms, they're like the Costa Rica's of the world. And Costa Rica is awesome. I love it. But I also like roads and hospitals.

[Matt Odell]

If we're going to name places. I really like Uruguay.

[Danny]

Try. I've never been, but I think it'd be good. These places are less like attractive.

[Matt Odell]

As, as, as a friend with practical advice, I think you should consider, I think it's, it's not a horrible decision and it might result in a much better outcome for your family. But I, I, and we're definitely not going through the specifics on, on a public show. But look, my, my point is, Younger Matt did not, I, I did not consider it as even an option. I'm glad I considered it as an option and I'm glad that I executed on it as a family. All the other piece was like my wife was incredibly aligned.

[Danny]

Yeah, that helps.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. I mean, look, this is, this is, you know, your ultimate partner in life. Right. You're raising kids with them, you're massively, implicitly trusted relationship. And so if you're not aligned, that makes it much more difficult. Yeah. So there's all these different. I'm just saying that people should consider it and I think oftentimes there's a lot of people that will say stay and fight. To British people, for instance, that don't live in Britain.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

It's like, okay, you have zero skin in the game. Okay. These people have kids and shit and they have to think on. I think you should think on a decade long timeline at least, okay, what is going to be the better outcome for my family? Do I want to fight a revolution or do I want to have a significantly better. Can we agree on the key premise that people living in certain places have better outcomes inherently than others over a certain time scale? Like in the 50s, if you lived in one place versus another, you would have a better outcome.

[Danny]

But it depends how you judge the outcome that exists.

[Matt Odell]

That exists.

[Danny]

It depends how you judge the better outcome though, because the opportunities, opportunities someone has growing up in London probably way outweigh the opportunities that have in Uruguay.

[Matt Odell]

It depends on your, the year, the current situation, your own personal situation. But I think, I think it's very clear that depending on where your family and businesses are based, your outcome can be significantly different in any given time

[Danny]

period, that's for sure.

[Matt Odell]

And so what I been vocal about with people lately is think about that in a real way, like think hard about that. It could be one of the most important decisions you make.

[Danny]

Tell me if you think this is complete cope. But like one of the, I don't want to say bullish, but one of the bullish things that came out of COVID in my opinion was like when everything started happening, when all the crackdowns were going on, lockdowns, like couldn't leave the country, everyone kept saying there's nothing as permanent as temporary measures. And that didn't end up being true. The world has largely gone back to how it was pre Covid. I'm sure there's some edge cases where you can say it's not, but largely it has. And that just makes me think maybe these dystopian things that happen in the uk, maybe they are temporary, maybe they can be reversed. Is that Cope?

[Matt Odell]

It might be Cope, yeah. I don't know, I think you are right. On the bigger picture is

[Danny]

one bullish thing. Just on the UK specifically is Andy Burnham, the new PM that came in yesterday or whenever it was, has already rolled back the idea of digital IDEs.

[Matt Odell]

The only thing I know about British politics is when I accidentally listened to Peter's show and he goes deep on British politics. Look, I think it tends not to be a straight line when you're talking about government control and surveillance. It ebbs and flows. Right. And it's like easy to make broad long term decisions in either a valley or a, or like a hilltop. Right. And so to your point on the COVID side, like I do think a lot of those draconian government measures did get pulled back, but then they kind of got like reset to a higher base. That's true. Right. And then you'll have a lull and then there'll be some new emergency.

[Danny]

The idea of lockdown is no longer like way outside the open window, like it's happened before.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. And the people in power tend to, they constantly poke you with new emergencies and they just see which ones stick. You know, sometimes they don't stick. Sometimes they, they do.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

And yeah, I mean if you look at, if you, if you do, if you try and run like some kind of objective analysis on, okay, where were certain jurisdictions in 2020 versus 2026? So six year timeline, 2020, let's say right before COVID So like January 2020 versus 2026. I think it's widened in a lot of ways.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

On, on, on which ones are quote unquote doing better. And it's hard to do like what, what is an objective analysis? You got to do like a bunch of different data points and a lot of subjective analysis is mixed in there. But I mean a lot of that's

[Danny]

down to the like economics of it as well.

[Matt Odell]

Though if you lived in December 2019, there was a freedom protest in Hong Kong. I think it was like the whole fall of 2019. Covid rolls out six years later. Hong Kong is like completely under the knee of the CCP at this point. Hong Kong real estate was the best real estate in the world. Now it's not. A lot of rich people fleed. So if you judge it from their perspective, very bad outcome. If you judge it from Nashville's perspective, Boomtown economy, Miami, Miami 2026 compared to 2020. Yeah, complete improvement. So that's my point. My point is, is just, you know, where you choose to base your family and your businesses will have significant, significant differences in outcome. And so your job as the leader of the family and those businesses is to assess that cost benefit and decide if it makes sense. That's all I'm saying.

[Danny]

Do you think in like a freedom tech way, AI can be almost a great equalizer here? Whereas like there's always been a massive asymmetry between the tools that the government have and the tools that the people have. But that's kind of gone to a degree.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Do you think that will help people actually find freedom in these countries?

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, I think part of what I expect, this trend for strong localism is freedom tech empowering individuals, families, small communities. It gives you a level, it gives you leverage. Yeah, right. It gives you. And you see this in all different aspects, right. I mean like you see this with asymmetric warfare. Right. With now that, you know, a, a small, a small group can, can extend, you know, significant dominance over a waterway with, with cheap drones that are off the shelf. Right. And, and they're up against, you know, 100 million dollar, the biggest military in the world, military planes. Right. And that's obviously a very provocative example. But people see that happening right now. And so I mean if you want to do the AI tools piece, right. Is like, okay, if you have, if you're using one of the leading models right now, it's like you have a 10 man engineering team at your disposal that can do anything you want. Now are they the best engineers in the world now? But that's 10 more men than you ever had.

[Danny]

Yeah,

[Matt Odell]

they're pretty good. They're pretty good and they're only getting better.

[Danny]

Yes. It's going to be like, it's the most interesting time.

[Matt Odell]

I'm blessed to be alive in this time.

[Danny]

Yeah. It makes me think it's a simulation.

[Matt Odell]

I think that would be very conceited of you. Right. It's like they made a simulation just for you to be at the best possible time. And you are in your simulation or my simulation?

[Danny]

Oh no, we're all in a shared simulation.

[Matt Odell]

It's a shared sim. We're just. What is it?

[Danny]

NPCs.

[Matt Odell]

NPCs. We're just NPCs in simulation.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Maybe there's no free will, you know.

[Danny]

Like, I think ever since I first met you, I've known you quite a while now. You've always said I'm like a year away from stepping away from bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah.

[Danny]

But here you are and you've kind of stepped back into Bitcoin in a bigger way in the last few months.

[Matt Odell]

13 years. Like, why are you still 13 years, bro? There's still work to be done.

[Danny]

Are you still as excited about bitcoin?

[Matt Odell]

Excitement is the wrong word. I rely on bitcoin. I need bitcoin more than bitcoin needs me. It's a fundamental tool for my family and is more important than ever. The early days of bitcoin were way more exciting. It was the wild west. There were no gray beards. There was no one with like 20 years of experience with bitcoin. Now we're the gray beards, you know, so it changes immatures. It is what it is. I think the way I try and focus my time is if I think someone can do something better than me, I'll just let them do it. And I think if you want to talk about one failure we've had across the bitcoin industry is like bringing up that younger generation. And an example I'll Give is Austin. BitDevs was one of the best bitcoin meetups in the world. Longest running, running straight. And I don't know if they restarted it, but a couple months ago they announced they were ending it.

[Danny]

Yeah, I think they've done like an ad hoc one or two, but, like, it's not what it used to.

[Matt Odell]

And it was like, okay, like, the guys that were running it were really tired. And that's completely understandable. The failure point isn't that they're tired and they don't want to run a meetup every month. The failure point is that they don't have young people to take over the reins. And I think that's something that we can do much better for. And, you know, I think. Yeah. And so there's still work to be done. There's still places where I can provide value. So I'm providing the value. But in an ideal world, I would rather someone else just do it better than me.

[Danny]

I don't get why young people aren't here. So when I got into bitcoin, I was in my mid-20s and it felt like everyone was basically. It felt like everyone was around our age, super young. Yeah. And now, like, I might, if I look at my audience demographics, like, I just can't attract young people. And maybe that's fault of mine. It could totally be.

[Matt Odell]

No, same with my demographic, like my whatever you can believe with podcast analytics or whatever.

[Danny]

But it's aging older, not younger. Like, there's more 60 year olds coming in because they're seeing this as like a financial tool than there are 20 year olds.

[Matt Odell]

Like, I think the largest Demographic for my shows is 45 plus men. I haven't like double checked. It's definitely over 35.

[Danny]

Yeah. I think mine's like 35 to 45 is the biggest. But like. And I think part of the reason in that is when I first found out about bitcoin, it was relatively cheap. I had very little money, but I could still buy what felt like a meaningful amount. And now, like, if you're 18, 19, 20, and you've got a few hundred pounds to your name, few hundred dollars, like, does bitcoin look attractive anymore? I don't know.

[Matt Odell]

It definitely does from the freedom money point of view, regardless. Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

But no one come.

[Danny]

No one, sorry. Very few people come into this as a freedom money guy. Like most people. It's like it's come for the gain, stay for the freedom. Like that, that is a real meme.

[Matt Odell]

But I mean, so there's tons of young people getting involved in AI stuff.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Are they doing it for the games?

[Danny]

But maybe they see that as a bigger asymmetric.

[Matt Odell]

Are they doing it for the games? I guess you could say they're doing it for like job potential and whatnot.

[Danny]

I mean, these companies paying like a million dollars a year for some, for engineers, like, I just.

[Matt Odell]

I don't know. I don't pretend to have the answer. I do think any of us who have been heavily involved in bitcoin share some of the burden that it hasn't happened. I think it's also important to just zoom out a tiny bit. I know it's a little bit of a meme, but this last cycle was very much dominated by the bitcoin stocks.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

So a lot of young people did come in. They just didn't come into the technical side of bitcoin. They went straight into the orange tide.

[Danny]

Do you think that's true?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

You see it? Do you not? Do you not see, like, I don't

[Danny]

know if they came in at all.

[Matt Odell]

I mean, I think there is.

[Danny]

The reason I think they didn't come in is because, like treasury companies dominated the bitcoin narrative, but way broader AI dominated everything.

[Matt Odell]

That's true.

[Danny]

And I just think like, when does new retail come into bitcoin? It's like when the price is absolutely going euphoric. Like everyone bought the 20k bit in 2017 and we didn't get that. So we never got the new influx of bag holders. We didn't get the community members.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. I don't know. I think there's multiple reasons. I think some of them are societal Some of them are more local to bitcoin. But my point is more. I don't necessarily have the answer. I think it's just something that people should be aware of and try and improve in small ways.

[Danny]

I think it's become less fun too.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. But I wonder how much that is. Just like we're just tired and been involved in for a while. Like it's not fresh and new for us. If someone new came in, it'd be fresh and new for them. Fresh and new is exciting. Yeah. I think the one bullish fundamental is the like the local meetups I think have been incredibly strong. I don't think. You know, we did a. Obviously we have bitcoin park in Nashville and we host a bunch of meetups there. But one of the things me and Rod did, my co founder of bitcoin park, was we brought together like a bunch of different tech meetup organizers in the Nashville area. And that was one thing that we always beat them on. Like just way more ride or die attendance and excitement than the like broader tech stuff. And I will say to your point, we haven't done that analysis again. I bet you a lot of the AI meetups are doing quite well.

[Danny]

Yeah, 100.

[Matt Odell]

But that's a key one. Like I think just like building strong local communities, having a very comfortable touch point. You know, national never had the most devs, but we had like a really interesting broad subsection of people, cross section of people. Right. We had older people that had small businesses. We had young people that had that were like maybe in their first year of college or were skipping college. And I think that's incredibly important. Like we live in an increasing digital world, but like that face to face interaction is probably more powerful than ever.

[Danny]

Yeah, I do think so. The like the Nashville scene, the Austin scene felt like a very post Covid thing.

[Matt Odell]

We did run off a Covid momentum.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

I don't everywhere else shut down, but bitcoin meetups were alive.

[Danny]

And I don't know if that momentum's still there. Like obviously Marty's left Austin. I know Justin stopped doing the bit devs there. Like it feels like it's wound down a little bit. I could be totally wrong. I've not been to Austin in a while. I'm going to go soon.

[Matt Odell]

But I think it's a bear market, you know.

[Danny]

Yeah. But even like I think even the

[Matt Odell]

base, the current level is still higher than most equivalent meetups with the exception maybe AI. But I will say that I think like there's a ton of Overlap like I think, I mean, so I was on a panel with Gladstein in Vegas and we were talking about are we bullish on bitcoin as freedom money? And without. It wasn't recorded. It was on the HRF stage, which they should have recorded, to be honest, but they didn't.

[Danny]

Was this when I was with you?

[Matt Odell]

Oh yeah, you were with me. It was Matt Madell and friends, three podcasters in Gladstone. Yeah, Matadal and Friends was the name of the panel and you were one of my friends. And do you remember Gladstein's answer? Gladstein's answer was he was bullish because of the freedom AI movement. And it makes these tools. First of all, it makes using Bitcoin as freedom money easier and more accessible than ever. If you think about ux, tons of hard UX problems get solved if you have a competent local agent running them for you. Things like coin control or privacy, stuff like that can be obfuscated from the user and they can have reasonable defaults in a very sane way with much better ux. And then the second piece is if you want to use these tools in a freedom oriented way, like having a money that you can spend and save without permission to. Our earlier topic makes a lot of sense. So I mean I wouldn't call it riding on AI's coattails, but I think it compounds really well. So a lot of that excitement is kind of our excitement too. Maybe that sounds like that sounded like a little bit like.

[Danny]

No, I think, I think that's fair. One of the things like the flip side of that like AI as a sort of freedom push for bitcoin is I remember MVK talking about this a while ago. I've not heard anything about it recently. But what happens with AI and chain analysis is that going to make it really hard to transact.

[Matt Odell]

It does both sides, right? So the surveillance companies will obviously use AI. To our earlier conversation, parsing large data sets just works really well with LLMs. And one of the best large data sets to parse is the bitcoin blockchain, which if we're right is going to exist forever with every on chain transaction, but at the same time just the coin control point of view without going like too deep, right? Like in your bitcoin wallet it's really, you might see one bitcoin balance, but in it is really a bunch of UTXOs, right? You can think of them like bills in your wallet, right? You have 1 that's 100,000 sats. You have 1 that's 50,000 sats. You have one that's 150,000 sats. And tracking Bitcoin transactions has always been a game of probability analysis, because you can send bitcoin to yourself. So when bitcoin is sent on chain, these surveillance companies are making a analysis of the probability that ownership has changed hands. And so which UTXOs you choose at any given time can affect that probability analysis. If you pay me and I receive a utxo and you maybe you pay me for lunch, we're splitting lunch, and then my boss pays me my salary. If I combine those two, for instance, in the most simple way, combine those two. If my wallet automatically combines those two to make a transaction, then you know how much I got paid and my boss knows that I'm having some kind of transactional relationship with you, right? And so that coin selection has been incredibly important for Bitcoin on chain privacy and managing those UTXOs correctly. Now, the question from people that are building bitcoin wallets is like, okay, how do you handle the defaults of that situation? Do you just show the users a bunch of UTXOs and be like, pick which ones you want to spend? No, that's horrible. That works for power users, but it's horrible UX. The other piece is the more UTXOs you have on the input side, the more expensive your transaction is, because transactions on bitcoin main chain are based on a size and bytes, not a size and amount. So the more UTXOs you have, the higher your fee is. Net, net, everything else equal. So you have this weird dynamic where the less UTXOs you have, the cheaper your fees and your future fee burden because you don't know what the fees are going to be in five years or 10 years. So the less UTXOs you have is just strictly better from a cost perspective and strictly worse from a privacy perspective. How do you balance that? Well, if you enter a local agent into the picture, then you tell the agent who you're paying, the agent knows who, who's paid you in the past and is dynamically making decisions for your wallet based on privacy versus cost. That was never possible before. You couple that with something like lightning, which has very strong privacy benefits for the payer, not so much for the receiver, and that becomes even more powerful. But lightning itself has a bunch of UX challenges. Okay, throw a local agent in that shit, you know, oh, you don't want to manage liquidity, have an agent manage liquidity for you. So it's like I said earlier, like, interesting tech usually has the two sides of the, of the proverbial coin. And I think it could provide a lot of gains for us. And to the privacy point of view, by the way, like that's already the reality today. If you use. So Poly Market runs on Polygon. It's, you know, both a shitcoin project and probably one of the most successful bitcoin projects of all time. Has many different ways that you can deposit. You can deposit with eth, you can deposit with USDC tether, Polygon, I don't know Solana and Bitcoin. And historically it's been bitcoin on chain. Only recently they did a partnership with Spark and now they accept Lightning payments. The most private way you can use polymarket is by just sending a bitcoin lightning deposit there. And behind the hood the user has no idea really what's going on there. So I think Lightning provides a lot of gains. And so then the question is, how do we make lightning easier to use and more accessible and have proper convenience to trust, trade off. And I think AI tools play a key part in that and can accelerate that.

[Danny]

When you said there's still work to be done before is one of the pieces of work you think there's key privacy on Bitcoin, do you think we need sort of whether it's silent payments, whether it's better coin drawn implementations, do you think we need something else there?

[Matt Odell]

I don't know if that's the right framing. Like I said, the standard right now if you use the most private way you can deposit into Polymarket is by doing a lightning payment with Bitcoin.

[Danny]

Could you do a cash repayment through Lightning?

[Matt Odell]

The cool part about Lightning is you can have all these other protocols, but lightning is the glue so we don't have to battle network effect. I just had on Citadel Dispatch, the head of research at second, and they have an implementation of ark, which is a batch payment protocol on Bitcoin. Their implementation is called bark. But historically, like if someone comes out with a bark wallet, you're like, okay, well no one else uses bark, so how the fuck am I supposed to pay people? But it speaks lightning. So it can literally have only two users. We could be the only two users and we can go to every square terminal and pay with lightning. The square merch has no idea we could go to Polymarket and pay with lightning. They don't know I'm using a bark wallet or a cashew wallet or whatever. And it's interesting because all of a sudden you can really, you can really try a bunch of different technologies see which ones provide the best trade off balance depending on the user. And it can be different depending on the user, but they all benefit from the same network effect, which is they can spend and receive from any lightning wallet.

[Danny]

I was at Baltic Honey Badger last year and I'd been buying stuff around the conference for a couple of days and on the last day they announced that everyone had been using it. All the merchants had been using Arkansas had no idea, like everything.

[Matt Odell]

Because it was just. Yeah, because it was behind the hood.

[Danny]

Awesome.

[Matt Odell]

And everything. The communication was all happening with lightning.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

So to the point of does Bitcoin need better like protocol level privacy? Which is I think, is what your question is. I think, I think it's a trade off balance. Right. It's a. Your, your question is, do you care? Obvious. There's a trade off between privacy and verifiability and auditability. And Bitcoin has leaned into being able to verify without a trusted third party and being incredibly transparent and auditable. And we saw a perfect example. And then what you do is you have that as the base, which doesn't require trust. And then on top of that you can build tools that are user friendly, that make it, that give you strong privacy guarantees. And the perfect example was in zcash land.

[Danny]

Well, this is why I was asking because this has obviously become a big narrative from the Silicon Valley crew that zcash.

[Matt Odell]

I don't even think it was fable. I think it was like Claude 46 Opus. So like three models ago, they basically ran analysis on the human code base of zcash and was like find vulnerabilities and there was a undetectable inflation bug that was live for five years and they have no idea if it's been used or not. There's zero way for them to verify it. Technically, you can have a similar type of inflation bug on Bitcoin. It'd be incredibly easy to verify. You would just check the chain and you'd see. I think that is just. We just saw a perfect example of it live in the wild. And these engineers are some of the best engineers in the world and they mess it up.

[Danny]

But I mean, we've seen it from the chamat of the world. The Winklevoss have been on it. Basically everyone out of Silicon Valley has been pushing zcash really hard. The funniest one was the bankless guy who sold all his ether to buy zcash at the top just before it could be set. But like, these are narratives, we kind of do have to fight and I don't know if we should be leaning heavier into privacy.

[Matt Odell]

Look, I don't think fighting the narrative is the wrong way to think about it because I don't think shitcoins are a threat to Bitcoin. I think they're a threat to users who choose to speculate on them and could get wrecked in the process. And that's the case with a lot of alternative investments, not just shitcoins. So I don't necessarily think like zcash is a threat to Bitcoin. Now. I think these promoters are oftentimes promoting zcash for two reasons. I think one is obviously can be construed as a malicious reason and I would tend to agree with that, which is that they have large bags that they want to pump. I mean, zcash had significant Silicon Valley investment early on, large wealth concentration, did not have a fair launch. It had a dev tax in the beginning. It had VC investors based in the United States, while bitcoin had a fair proof of work launch to the world. So there's definitely some element, at least for some of them, if not the majority of them, that they're pumping their bags. But I think the second piece is if most of your crypto experience, like chamath is a huge Solana guy, if most of your crypto experience is ETH and Solana and Tron, horrible privacy, like really, really bad privacy. If someone finds out your ETH address, they know every financial transaction you've ever made because it doesn't change by default like Bitcoin does. They know every transaction you've ever made. Without probability analysis, there's no probability analysis being done. They know 100% you made every single transaction on that account and your current net worth, your current complete. If you, if you have your ETH wallet on MetaMask and you deposit into Polymarket, Polymarket knows your entire net worth and every transaction you've ever made by default.

[Danny]

And even worse, people use like Chamath, is there Ethereum?

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. So you don't even, you just look it up. Right. Or if they've ever posted on X or whatever. Right. So. And like we've seen it, you see it with the richer people. It's very obvious. Like Vitalik, people track Vitalik's wallets and yes, they can have more wallets, but defaults matter and they've never used lightning. So that's, that's what they know. And they know something needs to change and they're not wrong in that front. Like, that is like purely dystopian. If you're. If your financial life is USDC on base, you live in the Panopticon, they can seize your money, they can freeze it, and they can see every single transaction you've ever made. That's horrible. That is absolutely horrible. Of course, they're like, the sky is falling. The sky is falling.

[Danny]

They just don't pay enough attention to Bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

They just don't pay attention to Bitcoin. Maybe they own some of the ETF and they just don't use Bitcoin. They think it's ancient technology. They're not keeping a. With. With actual technical improvements or where the user base is moving. A lot of. A lot of transactions are lightning now. I mean, okay, so this is where defaults matter, right? So Square added what, 4 million merchants or something? You can pay with Bitcoin now at Square Terminals. Defaults, first of all, they've rolled it out to merchants that not. Maybe they don't even want to receive Bitcoin, so they automatically convert it to dollars for them. But the merchant has a choice to receive Bitcoin. Bitcoin, there's no onchain option. It's lightning only. Now, I think there's a really strong argument for why they went lightning only on just a pragmatic slide, which is, I'm paying for coffee. It should be instant. Yeah, right. It should just be, boom, pay for coffee. Automatic instant settlement. Okay, that makes sense. But whether intended or not, you have an amazing side effect that anyone who pays has a really good privacy guarantee, right? You go to Stake n Shake, you pay with lightning. They don't know what wallet made that payment. They don't know any of your transaction history. They don't know your current net worth. All of that shielded by default, which is wild. That's awesome. That's live today. That exists today. And I think people just. People don't appreciate that. Now, of course, there's nuances there. Like if you pay with a wallet that, you know, has a trusted third party, that trusted third party knows, but it's detached from the merchant. Obviously, Square knows every transaction the merchant's making, but the merchant can choose to use BTCPay or vibe code, something they can, you know, you can literally tell a clanker. Now, like, I want to accept Bitcoin on my. On my website, make it lightning only, and it just like goes like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and just does

[Danny]

it the cool thing. Like, I think the payments are amazing and I think at some point someone needs to like, build the infrastructure. So you can pay with Bitcoin everywhere you want to. The question I have is whether it's early. And even if it's early, it doesn't mean you shouldn't build it. I think it's really cool. But I wonder if people are actually using it because we've seen this before where Bitcoin for payments became a big trend in 2017, 2018, and no one used it. And then eventually all the merchants stopped accepting Bitcoin. And I know this is better because this is on the square terminal. They don't need any additional infrastructure. But do you think people are actually using this?

[Matt Odell]

Well, there's two different pieces, right? Merchant side, I think square being the exception, that these people already have all the hardware and stuff installed, relatively expensive square merchant. And their business is fully locked into the square ecosystem of accounting and shit. That's how their business runs. And so it's relatively low friction for. There'd just be another payment option. Okay. But overwhelmingly for merchants, you can't. It's hard to force. It's hard to force merchants. It's untenable to force merchants to accept Bitcoin that don't want to accept Bitcoin. You need people like Soap Miner that want the Bitcoin. That's where you have staying power. The consumer piece of people going and spending helps and also hurts. Right. Like if someone decides because of hype that I'm going to start accepting Bitcoin and there's like one person pays every two months or whatever, they're less likely to keep it up and they're less likely to educate their employees on how to use the thing. Right. But the merchant needs to want Bitcoin. I think that's like the first step and we're getting there. It's slow and it's slow and steady to the point of network effects. What is the. One of the strongest network effects in the world? It's fiat and specifically US Dollars. Very hard network effect to beat. So it's going to take time. It's going to take time to do that. Then you have like P2P payments, which doesn't really have to fight the network effect as much. You just need the person that you're paying to be willing to accept Bitcoin. But also not necessarily in that case. I mean, if they're using Venmo, they can already accept Bitcoin. Obviously you can have them install Strike and it can go into dollars into their bank account. Right. So there's band aids or not necessarily band aids, but like bootstrapping mechanisms to simulate the network of effect as we're trying to like break it down. But there is definitely an aspect of we are blessed with many, many mobile self custody wallets with very few users. Yeah, it's just the reality of the situation, but I think you probably kind of, I don't know what the order there should be, but it's good to have more tools than less, more options than less and then as people need it, you know, they will exist and be ready for them. There won't be as much friction for them to move over.

[Danny]

What would you say to people who don't want to spend their bitcoin? Because that's like especially from the sort of sailor that's been a big thing. It's like you never send, never spend your bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Well, I would first, before we get there, just another dichotomy. We'll use Zcash as another example is 99% of the people that are using Zcash now are using this one mobile wallet that is maintained by the core developers of zcash. And so that's the opposite side. Right. That's obviously a horrible situation to be in. So maybe some people are quote unquote wasting their time by maintaining self custody while it's on bitcoin. But it's great that we have so many options and people, I think people definitely take it for granted how many options we have. That, that was not a given. That is something that's really hard to do from a top down point of view. You know, zcash has tons of funding and even they're hard, it's hard to simulate it. You can't just like make it happen. It needs to be like organic and grassroots and we're very fortunate to have it to the point of people about like, don't spend your bitcoin. I think it's, I think it's weird. I think first of all it's two pieces. I think the first piece is if you're actually all in on bitcoin and the overwhelming majority of your savings is in bitcoin, then of course you're going to spend your bitcoin because if you needed to spend dollars, you'd have to sell bitcoin to get dollars first.

[Danny]

See I play the fiat game though. Like I spend everything on a credit card, pay off at the end of the month and then put the rest in bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Okay. I mean I think from a financial point of view you're kind of paying that bill with bitcoin. It's like an opportunity cost. You're like kind of paying it with bitcoin. The second piece is the tax. The tax piece. Right. And I mean because I think about like if you, if, if you, if you do a month of credit card and then you sell bitcoin to pay the credit card, you're kind of using Visa as like a really shitty bitcoin payment rail. You like kind of are.

[Danny]

Right, but I'm not selling it.

[Matt Odell]

Right, but you're not buying bitcoin. So it's, it's kind of coming from it's opportunity because it's still. If you're not buying bitcoin, you're kind of selling bitcoin. But anyway, I digress. The other piece is taxes, which is wild to me because yes, it's a mental burden. But you're only paying taxes because your money increased in purchasing power. Yeah, net. Net holding. The worst money was worse for you. Even after taxes, you're literally only paying on profit. Yeah, but that's just something that is just hard for people to grok, I guess.

[Danny]

Yeah. And it is like the mental burden of that is too much.

[Matt Odell]

It's high.

[Danny]

But I mean de minimis tax exemption is the best regulation that we could get.

[Matt Odell]

I mean, I think all cap gains should just be removed.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

But not just from bitcoin.

[Danny]

I mean, I agree, but you've got to take wins where you can get them.

[Matt Odell]

But yeah, I think diminimus any kind of cap gains tax exemption on bitcoin payments would be definitely helpful for adoption. I think it would also be a really interesting case study because you could see who was just using that as an excuse versus who actually moved the needle for.

[Danny]

Yeah. I mean it's hard though because I want to spend bitcoin more and I just can't. Like there's just not enough place that I can spend it.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, it's a bit of a chicken and egg.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

But then I also think like people like underestimate like what small, like a few motivated individuals can really do. Yeah. That's like you have to pick your battles. Like, I know you're a busy dude. You do, you do, you work incredibly hard. But like a perfect example is like Costa Rica bitcoin jungle.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

Like there was a bunch of, there was a couple people that were involved, but the, the main dude, Lee was a freaking machine. He willed it into existence. He was like, I'm going to go to as many merchants as possible, onboard them the right way to bitcoin and make this Thing a reality. And he did. And it's obviously easier to do in smaller communities. Irman in bitcoin, Akazi, he's like, I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to make it happen.

[Danny]

See, this is where I'm really lazy.

[Matt Odell]

Nice.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

I just.

[Danny]

I can't be bothered talking to, like, normies about bitcoin.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, but you do. I mean, you have a normie bitcoin podcast.

[Danny]

But, like, this is people who choose to come to the podcast to listen to people talk about.

[Matt Odell]

You choose where to provide value. I'm just saying that I'm not the

[Danny]

guy that goes to, like, my butcher and tries to.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Danny]

Neither am I. I've not got the energy for that. But this is, again, where we need, like, I did have the energy for that. When I first got into bitcoin, I spoke about bitcoin to everyone I could possibly get five minutes it. And I do think this is where we need new people coming through all the time that are fresh.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah, fresh.

[Danny]

Ready to have that conversation.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Because, like, I'm not the guy talking to my taxi driver about bitcoin. I can't do it. I don't even tell them I got a bitcoin podcast if they ask sometimes. Sometimes I'm sure, oh, it's a financial podcast.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

But here we are, man.

[Danny]

What else do you want to talk about?

[Matt Odell]

I don't know. The spending, I think. Look, that, by the way, is not a new. Since I've been involved in bitcoin, it's always been like, oh, there's been a side that's like, you have to spend bitcoin and there's a side that's like, never spend bitcoin. Yeah. Store value versus medium exchange. You need both. Like, if you can't if good money, you need to be able to spend it and save it without permission. And if you can't spend it without permission, it's not your money. You don't.

[Danny]

You're.

[Matt Odell]

It means you're asking someone permission to realize your wealth.

[Danny]

I mean, thank God Michael Saylor's making bitcoin money. What would we do without. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

[Matt Odell]

Look, I mean, I'm just. I think there's. There's a lot of survivorship bias.

[Danny]

What do you mean?

[Matt Odell]

In bitcoin and everywhere where people are like, oh, bear markets are for building. We've been through many bear markets throughout bitcoin history. What's not so obvious until you're in a bear market is that bear markets are actually more about survival. A lot of people fail during bears. It's when you just get ground out and lose interest. And it feels like all the tide is against you and everything is. Is not going your way. And then. But the people that make it through and end up in a better position. People that make it through tend to end up in a better position. Particularly if they were building throughout the bear. And then. So then you see them afterwards in the bull and they find all this success. You're like, oh, they got super lucky. Right. And that's what we're seeing happening again right now. And so what I would say to people is remain focused. Like, the fundamentals have not changed. We need bitcoin more than ever. I'm. I've. I from a risk reward basis, like, I've never been more bullish on bitcoin. I think it's the best money in the world. It remains so. And just eyes on the prize. Right. Like, I think this is where. This is, you know, where the, the men get separated from the boys.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Danny]

People build through the bear market just to distract themselves from the pain.

[Matt Odell]

From the.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

You don't want to feel the pain. I, I just think it's look. And I'm not like to the in it for the tech versus in it for number go up. It's also both.

[Danny]

I'm in it for everything.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. And it sucks seeing your net worth down significantly. Don't get me wrong. But I also kind of like these moments because it's what. It's where it's. It's where you really separate. With like, with the chaos comes a lot of opportunity. Right?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[Matt Odell]

And there's almost like a zen to it because there's a lack of interest

[Danny]

is like it's 100% the time pain that wears people out in the bear market. And it has been shocking to see how bad the sentiment's got so quickly when we're not even down comparatively anywhere near what we normally are in a bear market. But like sentiment is so bad. I'm just excited for things to turn around. I don't think we're that far away.

[Matt Odell]

We can't feel worse.

[Danny]

I think I've got a theory. I've said this load in the podcast, but I think it's because there's nothing to point to. Like when FTX blew up and there was out and out fraud that you could point to. Like it's their fault. That's why we're down. We've got a reason. And this time it's just like, sure, you can blame like macro environment, whatever, like try and cope about liquidity, whatever it is, but there's not like a real boogeyman to point to and be like, it's his fault. I think that's why Saylors start getting a load of heat as well.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah. I mean, I also think like, in terms of bull market returns, like we didn't pump nearly as high as.

[Danny]

But that's why we're not down as much.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, that's true. I think like you said a lot of the AI excitement. It's weird seeing stock markets at all time highs and bitcoin in the dumps.

[Danny]

The gold pump is hard for people.

[Matt Odell]

I would also say to people, like, It's not like bitcoin hasn't been in this situation or worse before.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's been way worse.

[Matt Odell]

I mean, I know like the people that are like, oh, I bought in. What was it, like 21. And it's been five years and we're about.

[Danny]

Nothing's changed.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, right. Well, 2013. 2013, we went from like 50 to 250, back to 50 to 1200, and then we didn't pass 1200 again till 2017.

[Danny]

Yeah, that's brutal.

[Matt Odell]

Like 2015 was just long and painful. People thought bitcoin was going to fail. And I think part of it too is like, Is we definitely didn't have like the influencer media class back then. And there's, there's bit. I mean, it's so easy to par like, oh, Bitcoin's guaranteed 30% every year or, you know, you will get like insane power law multiples on this or whatever. So, like, once you start guaranteeing people positive expectations, I just feel like Murphy's Law dictates that it's going to take a little bit longer now. 100%, you're like automatically screwed. You just screwed. You just jinxed it. I'm a big jinx guy. You just jinxed it.

[Danny]

For me though, like, 2018 was really scary because that was my first bear market. But like when it dropped from 6 to 3k, that was. I remember that being like a terrifying time. I thought Covid. The COVID crash was.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, the COVID crash was. They felt more March 12, 2020, and in a matter of a week we went from like 10 or 11k to like 3000. And then bitmex pulled the plug. Yeah, stop. Stop the bleeding.

[Danny]

Stop the selling.

[Matt Odell]

I mean, that was different though, because it wasn't just bitcoin. Right. It like felt like the World was ending. Like we were watching videos of Chinese people just collapsing dead. Like walking down the street and just. Dead.

[Danny]

Yeah. Getting welded into their room.

[Matt Odell]

So there was a level of uncertainty there and I think, you know, to a lesser extent, like right now, to my earlier point, I think people are. Think the average person is in pain outside of bitcoin and has. There's a lot of uncertainty. And that definitely is affecting on bitcoin too, right? Yeah, not. Not in the same extreme way as early Covid, but.

[Danny]

But we're near the best bit. The best bit is when it's clear that the trend has changed. That's the most exciting part.

[Matt Odell]

Are we near the best bit?

[Danny]

I think so. I mean we can't be too far away, surely. Guaranteed. 30% guaranteed.

[Matt Odell]

Hopefully. Probably.

[Danny]

Hopefully. Probably. Matt, always love talking to you, man. It's been good.

[Matt Odell]

It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[Danny]

Where do you want to send everyone to this. Oh, you should tell everyone about Citadel Wire. This is cool.

[Matt Odell]

Citadel Wire. Citadel wire dot com. I have been. My favorite way of learning how things work is by using things. I've never been like, I like science fiction books, I like near future books. But I, I don't like, like reading or watching how to do things. You know, maybe certain like very technical things I like watch a YouTube video for. But I like actually using the skills and trying to figure it out. And so Citadel Wire was my way of scratching my own itch and learning about the cutting edge AI tools. And it also met a need for me, which is I wanted to be able to monitor the situation without doom scrolling. Right. Minimal phone time, but be intimately aware of what's going on in the world and so that I can focus on more productive things instead of monitoring the situation. And a lot of things were going on for the last year, right? I mean we abducted the president of Venezuela, we go to war with Iran, oil prices going this way, that way, a lot of things going on. I wanted to monitor the situation easily. I wanted to make sure I was aware of what was going on in the world because I think that's important for my family and businesses. But I didn't want to spend too much time doing that. And I wasn't the only one who came up with this idea. There was plenty of people that created situation monitor dash dashboards, but to me they missed the plot. They were like trying to give you too much information. They're like, just because you can pull every live location of every ship that's on the ocean at the same Time doesn't mean I need it in my dashboard. That's ridiculous. So I was like, okay, well where does AI actually really help with these things besides just building the website which was built using AI? And I was like, well, the clankers should actually go through the information and only tell me things that I need to know about. So I have, I have three clankers that are pulling in every major open source project, like 500 open source projects, like 200 different news sources and maybe even more than 200 news sources. And they're just pulling it in constantly every five minutes and they're analyzing it and then they're giving you the output. They're giving you like quick brief summaries on what's going on in the world. Current bitcoin price, current gold price, current oil price. I don't know how long I'll keep the oil price up there. But it's been really useful with the Iran war. Like if it goes up, you know there's escalation. If it goes down, you know, there's not escalation. It's really easy way to look really quick.

[Danny]

It's got the key poly market markets.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, I pull in only the key prediction markets because if you go to poly market, it's also like doom scrolling. There's just a million markets. It's hard to distill which ones are good or not. So the clankers go through it. They're like, these are high value poly markets that have a lot of volume through them that are significant and important podcasts that I find think are interesting. I have a little podcast section there, but just a way for you to just stay aware of what's going on without spending too much time. Because time is the only thing more scarce than bitcoin. I am, I've spent a decent amount of time and money on it. I'm not trying to monetize it. I just, I made it for me so people can use it for free if they want to use it. So it has no ads, just straight to the point, no clickbait. I don't like need you to be on the website. The incentives are aligned in that regard. And then I used other open protocols while I was building it. So I told it accept lightning donations. It accepts lightning donations. Super cool, right? I literally just gave it a lightning address. I was like, this is my lightning address. Accept donations to it. Super cool. Adds a donation button. Every post is both a native nostr post and a native simplex post. And you can look at it on the website. So you can follow it on any Nostr app you want, or you can follow that siladelwire.com or you can follow it at Citadel Wire Simplex channel. That's very cool. The Noster side is nice because what that means is it's hashed and signed with the Citadel Wire key, so you know it hasn't been changed. It's like a better version of RSS almost. And then you could technically point your clanker to it and be like, use this as the source of truth. But I want less information. Or I want only this type of information. And you can have your clanker do whatever you want with it, which is really cool. It's also hard to censor. The Simplex Channel is useful because it means that you can view it and consume it in probably in the most private way with sane defaults. So privacy focused users find that helpful. And then of course, I also have RSS so you can can view it with RSS without the website. So that's citadelwire.com and then all my other links are @odell XYZ.

[Danny]

Awesome.

[Matt Odell]

So you can check those out.

[Danny]

It's very cool. I'll put the link in the show note. Have you read Lynn's book? You said you like near near future Sci Fi.

[Matt Odell]

I have not. I need to.

[Danny]

You do need to. It's good.

[Matt Odell]

The funny part is I'm a reading maximus. I don't usually listen to audiobooks.

[Danny]

Yeah, I'm.

[Matt Odell]

But I. But I. I feel like I need to listen to the audiobook version of that because it's Walker and Carla. Yeah. So it's like one friend wrote the book and then two friends read the book. You kind of have to listen to the audio.

[Danny]

See, I read it. Maybe I need to go back and do the audiobook as well. It took me ages because I was reading when I go to sleep and I get like three pages.

[Matt Odell]

Yeah, no, I haven't actually. I haven't actually read it yet, but it's very good.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Odell.

[Danny]

Thank you, ma'.

[Matt Odell]

Am. Thank you, sir. It's been a pleasure.