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TILP #06: Future implications of Bitcoin becoming mainstream w/ Marty Bent
82 Plays1 year ago
In this epsiode Jim is joined with/by Marty Bent. They discuss what the future could look like in a practical sense and the implications of individuals and entities adopting Bitcoin as a part of every day life.
Marty's Twitter: @MartyBent
Marty's Bitcoin media company on Twitter: @TFTC21
Rabbithole recap podcast: @rabbitholerecap
Marty's newsletter: https://ten31.vc/
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Transcript
Introduction to Intentional Living Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jim Kreider and this is the Intentional Living podcast where we have conversations about how to use your resources, your time, your money, your talents for what's important to you in life in an efficient and effective manner. I'm glad you're joining with us today and I look forward to this journey with you.
Guest Introduction: Marty Bent
00:00:23
Speaker
In today's podcast, I'm joined with Marty Bent. Marty is deeply involved in Bitcoin in lots of areas. He hosts a couple of podcasts that are about Bitcoin and their current events. He is the director at a mining company and lastly is a partner at 1031, a venture capital company that invests in Bitcoin companies.
Is Bitcoin Ready for Mainstream Adoption?
00:00:44
Speaker
Now, Marty, he and I today, we're talking through Bitcoin and mainshoot adoption and what a future on a Bitcoin standard could look like. So thanks for joining us for this conversation. Let's get started. All right, Marty Bent, thanks for joining me today. I'm excited to have you here. Jim, I'm excited to be here.
00:01:03
Speaker
Well, let's see, I have, as we talked about before recording, there's a lot of things that I would love to talk with you about, but we don't have enough time. So where I would like to go with you today is just talking through where all Bitcoin can go and how you see that playing out from a, just the impacts it will have on different economies and the business sector and everything. But yeah, I guess before we go there, why don't you just tell me and us about you, what you do and business life, who are you?
Marty Bent's Personal and Professional Journey
00:01:32
Speaker
So first and foremost, I'm a father and a husband. I've got two young boys and a beautiful wife, really the anchor behind us, but beyond that.
00:01:43
Speaker
I own and run a media company, TFTC. I founded that in 2017. It essentially started as a newsletter to help educate my friends and family about Bitcoin, what it is, what they should be paying attention to. It was during the beginning of the bull run in 2017 or June 2017. I was getting texts, calls, emails, and I was like, all right, everybody stop doing this. I'll write this newsletter. I'll send it to you once a day. You don't need to reach out to me.
00:02:12
Speaker
That morphed into a podcast later that summer, in the beginning of September, I believe, which is TFTC, which is an interview series I host. That morphed into another podcast, Rabbit Hole Recap, that I do weekly with Matt Odell, covering the topics that pertain to Bitcoin, privacy, freedom tech,
00:02:35
Speaker
in the digital age. And then I'm also a managing partner at 1031, which is a Bitcoin investment platform focused on investing in companies building out the infrastructure that people leverage once we're under a Bitcoin standard.
What is a Bitcoin Standard?
00:02:49
Speaker
So we cover the whole gambit of the subsectors in the Bitcoin industries that could be mining, custody, security,
00:03:00
Speaker
lightning network companies, companies building on the lightning network, and then even credit products that are beginning to materialize as well. So started a media, I have a background in finance before I started the media company, and now parlaying that into 1031 and what we're doing to invest in the space.
00:03:19
Speaker
Sweet. So you've been in the space for a bit. I actually listened to one of y'all's, you know, Dell's most recent episode last night talking about are we in the next bull run? That was a lot of fun. I will abstain from going there. I think we both agree that Bitcoin's in a forever bull run until we see global adoption. And then then Bitcoin will become really boring. That's the goal. But yeah, so with 1031, obviously you have you have the
00:03:49
Speaker
I would imagine just amazingly fun job of getting insights and pondering all different places that Bitcoin will go once, as you mentioned, once we're in a Bitcoin standard. So I guess before we go into the details, what do you mean by Bitcoin standard? Again, we're talking to an audience that maybe just owns some Bitcoin and is just beginning. So in these past conversations prior to you joining us today, we've had conversations about
00:04:18
Speaker
macroeconomics, monetary policy, fiscal policy. How in the world did we get here? Oh, Bitcoin very well could be the solution that gets out of this absolute mess that we're in right now. What is Bitcoin from a generic or general A to Z conversation?
The Flaws in the Current Monetary System
00:04:34
Speaker
So when we talk through like, all right, a Bitcoin standard, what in the world does that mean?
00:04:38
Speaker
I think it's a very simple explanation. A world living under a Bitcoin standard is a world in which people acting throughout the economy save their money in Bitcoin and transact in Bitcoin. It is the store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account that people use to price the goods and services that they purchase within the economy. I think it's important just to keep it simple. A Bitcoin standard is a standard in which people use Bitcoin
00:05:07
Speaker
As their money whether it's to save or spend. It's interesting to think through the implications of just having a money that is.
00:05:18
Speaker
not centrally controlled and not debased by anything. One of my least favorite conversations, especially a few years ago when the money printers were on, yet we weren't seeing inflation day-to-day. It was just in aspects of life. I live just a little bit south of you in New Braunfels. So here, 2021, my house appreciated by 33%.
00:05:43
Speaker
And at that point, the money market funds and stuff hadn't caught up yet. So your bank was yielding like a quarter percent.
00:05:51
Speaker
but yet your house is appreciating by 33%. So I hated the question of, Jim, I wanna buy a house in one year, how do I save for that? And that's only a question in a system where the money is broken itself. Like if you have money that's not broken, it's like, hey, I wanna buy a house in a year, what do I do? It's like, save your money. Because the money itself is, it's meant to be saving mechanisms. But when you have money, it's hijacked, you lose, you have,
00:06:18
Speaker
It's a currency. It's a means of exchange, but it's not a means of savings. And what you just articulate is it's both of these things, which is so foreign. Like right now we use savings accounts. Basically a savings account is like the index, like my index funds. Like we're just hoping to retain value in that. So yeah. Interesting. So what do you, like, how do you see that happening? Like right now there's a global adoption of like 1%.
00:06:42
Speaker
So like, what, how do you see that play out? Do you have a thought on it?
Grassroots Adoption of Bitcoin
00:06:46
Speaker
I mean, obviously we're just guessing. Do you have a thought on like how that happens and what's the timeframe? Will it be fantastic in this great deep leveraging of Ray Dalio's words? Or will it be like, will it be ugly? I mean, I have a picture right here on my desk of kids stacking money in post-World War I Germany. Like, will it look like that is the US dollar and around the world? Like, give me your thoughts here.
00:07:08
Speaker
I don't know exactly how it will look, but since Parker Lewis is standing literally a dozen feet away from me outside the studio here, it's probably going to happen gradually, then suddenly, which means we're definitely in the gradually part. We may be approaching the suddenly part, but I think that's part of the beauty of Bitcoin, whether it be via the network topology. It's very grassroots individuals running nodes, plugging miners in.
00:07:38
Speaker
That part of the network is very grassroots. You have tens of thousands of individuals and companies dispersed throughout the globe just using economic incentives to drive them to do this thing, whether it's running a node to verify that they're actually receiving the Bitcoin they think they are or to plug in a miner to contribute to the production of blocks so that they can make Bitcoin
00:08:03
Speaker
They can produce bitcoin cheaper than the spot price at any given point in time, so run a profitable business that allows them to stack bitcoin. But then the other side of the grassroots movement is the individuals who decide to use bitcoin as money, whether it's via a savings vehicle or a transactional currency.
Challenges in Institutional Bitcoin Adoption
00:08:23
Speaker
will really dictate when the suddenly part comes is when more and more individuals come to the belief that Bitcoin is the best money that is on this planet and they decide to acquire it by selling goods and services, by exchanging their dollars for Bitcoin and holding it on their personal balance sheets. So that's, I think, the next big step to take is this educational effort
00:08:50
Speaker
maybe doesn't even need to be effort maybe people come to the conclusion themselves but more and more people recognizing that bitcoin is money and it's better money and that's money that they should demand and that. Is facilitated by companies and software projects that make it as easy as possible to receive and send bitcoin in ways that are at parity with the ways in which people send receive money in the incumbent financial system.
00:09:21
Speaker
There's one, if you're hearing that, it's like, what in the world is a node and mining and stuff? A few episodes ago, we talked with Guy named Michael Schmidge, go listen to that episode. We talked through like, what is a node? What is mining? What do these things mean?
00:09:37
Speaker
just to reiterate that like you don't have to know all these things like I don't know I have zero clue how Marty you and I are talking right now and I can see you in real time blows my mind I'm not gonna try to figure it out I just know it works and I you know I don't know and
00:09:52
Speaker
You can explore these things. I think Bitcoin is a lot easier to understand than our current fiat monetary environment. It's code that's written out and there's certain principles that exist versus things that are made up ad hoc based off of a small group of people in a room. I think it's easy to understand that our current financial situation
00:10:11
Speaker
But I also think it's OK to settle down and say, I don't fully understand how it works, but I'll use it. And now with that, there's right now, just because you have to remember, this is a young technology. And if you're going to go do things, if you're going to run a node or set up a lightning channel, it can be clunky. But as we see this thing progress, it will become more and more
00:10:35
Speaker
obtainable from a use standpoint. So let's go there. Marty, what are you seeing from an adoption standpoint, especially with everything going on with ETS right now and BlackRock and all that? What are your thoughts as far as adoption from corporations, governments, and individuals? Is one outpacing on adoption rate more than another, or is it general? Moving forward, how do you think that's going to take place as well?
00:11:05
Speaker
Yes, I do think individuals are certainly outpacing adoption or the businesses or countries for that matter. That's the beauty of Bitcoin to again, going back to this grassroots nature, particularly of acquiring Bitcoin, individuals are usually the first that come to realize like, oh, Bitcoin is a better money. I want to hold a better money.
00:11:27
Speaker
Um, and so that historically throughout the first 15 years of Bitcoin existence is, is probably the main driver of adoption up to this point from like an individual basis, number of people adopting Bitcoin. Uh, cause when you think of it too, like
00:11:44
Speaker
When you get to the company level, the company makes decisions based off the consensus of a bunch of individuals. And so for companies to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet, you need a bunch of individuals within that company to come to a consensus that, hey, we should probably acquire some Bitcoin for our treasury. So that adoption is obviously a bit slower than you would see at the individual level. And then when you go up to the financial system,
00:12:09
Speaker
the banking system, pensions, what it may be, those decisions are even harder because they're much more conservative and they're much more burdened with regulation and allocation mandates that they have to live within. And so the sell to get to the tipping point of Bitcoin adoption is a much higher bar. And so yes, I do think
00:12:32
Speaker
There are different tracks of adoption. Individuals have adopted it much quicker. Businesses are getting there. Obviously, MicroStrategy has been a big advocate of that. Then institutions like endowments, pensions, banks will probably be a bit slower. It's just the nature of how you come to the consensus for this decision to put Bitcoin on your balance sheet. With that being said, I do think something
00:12:56
Speaker
Like the FASB guidelines that were released earlier this year will be a catalyst to make it easier for the businesses to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet the way that they can mark to market their Bitcoin holdings year in and year out.
00:13:14
Speaker
The new FASB guidelines make that much more palatable for a business, whereas before, you just had to mark to the lowest price of your Bitcoin holdings at any given point in time and you had to keep it there, which was not conducive for good financial reporting. So it seems like, particularly in the accounting world, the regulations are getting to a point where it's going to make it easier.
00:13:38
Speaker
for businesses to adopt. But yeah, in totality, individuals are certainly adopting it at a much quicker pace, which I think is good at the end of the day. And then those individuals working in businesses and institutions have to convince the others that they're working with that it's worth putting on their balance sheet and that that takes more time.
00:13:59
Speaker
Yes, this is an opportunity to see, I mean, like front run BlackRock, but also like, sort of reverse the the Camelot effect of these people who've controlled the money, large institutions. And generally people just
00:14:14
Speaker
wield more control. Now's the time for the individual to come in and no one has more control than another over Bitcoin. But the early adopters certainly will benefit by price appreciation or purchasing power appreciation than a later adopter. So this is an opportunity that we haven't seen before with normal people to come in.
00:14:34
Speaker
and front run these institutions and corporations and governments, which is just amazing to think about the long-term implications. So no, Bitcoin can seem volatile on a day in, day out basis. There's a lot of memes in Bitcoin and one of those being like one Bitcoin is one Bitcoin, it's worth one Bitcoin.
00:14:54
Speaker
But at the same time, if you're checking your Bitcoin and you see that it's pegged to a dollar amount, what we're concerned here is not necessarily the trade amount of dollars to Bitcoin. It's the purchasing power itself. And eventually,
00:15:16
Speaker
As you mentioned, as we see Bitcoin become this unit of account and means of transferring value, that the Bitcoin itself will be denominated not in a dollar parity, but rather it will be a means of communicating purchasing power itself. So I guess let's start talking through things that I guess excite you once we see this full Bitcoinized world. What do you mean? What would that change?
00:15:46
Speaker
As I mentioned earlier, having a sound form of money, I think we'll just do wonders with making it, saving money so much more obtainable and way less complex. But what else? Like individuals, companies, like from a, from a project to just an opportunity for, I don't know, way businesses done. Like what are, what are things that excite you? There's many things that there's, so I think to jump into this part of the conversation, it's probably to,
00:16:15
Speaker
dealing like demarcate the different sectors and so we'll start with like the base layer and I should probably make the point that I believe for Bitcoin to succeed as wildly as I think it can there's an order of operations to its success and the lower rungs that order of operations or the front
00:16:35
Speaker
end of those order of operations revolve around custody and security. And there have been a lot of developments in the custody realm, particularly that have me extremely bullish and really paint
00:16:50
Speaker
a fascinating picture of how business can be done in the future.
Can Multi-Institution Custody Prevent Bitcoin Fraud?
00:16:54
Speaker
And so as I'm sure you're aware of throughout Bitcoin's 15-year history, there's been many exchange hacks. Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, Bitstamp, obviously FTX, and sometimes not even Hax, just pure frauds. FTX, Celsius, BlockFi have taken in people's money, told them that they're going to take their money and buy Bitcoin with that, hold it for them, and they've completely lost it.
00:17:18
Speaker
I think this is due to the nature of people trying to apply the incumbent FinTech infrastructure and user experience to Bitcoin and not really leveraging Bitcoin's native properties that give the end user and the end customer more assurances than exist in the incumbent system.
00:17:37
Speaker
What I'm excited about in the custody sector is this move towards multi-institution, multi-sig custody. So within Bitcoin, you can set up a wallet in a way where to move the Bitcoin out of the wallet, you need N of M signatures to move the Bitcoin. So you need two of three. Just use the example of two of three. If you want to move Bitcoin from the address, you need two signatures from three of the wallets in the quorum.
00:18:08
Speaker
And this allows us to create new standards for custody that rival the incumbent financial system. And so down the hall for me is Unchained. They're really, they have trailblazed this part of the Bitcoin industry, which is using multi-institution custody to secure people's Bitcoin. And so on that side of things, we've seen Unchained do it. We have companies like Onramp,
00:18:35
Speaker
anchor watch, there's more and more of these companies coming to market. And essentially when the adoption of the tools that they're building becomes widespread, you have this incredible ability as an end user to verify that the counterparty you're interacting with has the Bitcoin they say they do. And so with this, I think new standards are going to be built where when I go to Unchained and I take out a loan, for example, I put my Bitcoin in a two or three multisig wallet.
00:19:04
Speaker
I have a key in that quorum. Unchained holds a key and Kingdom Trust holds the third key. And so that's myself and two institutions involved. And since I have a key in that quorum, I have visibility knowing throughout the duration of my loan that my Bitcoin is where I think it is. Unchained and Kingdom Trust have not moved that and rehypothecate it and lent it out to some degenerate trader that can use it on a bet.
00:19:29
Speaker
And I think this ability is really going to change the landscape of the structural integrity of the financial system built on Bitcoin. It really reduces the ability for institutions to misallocate funds and commit fraud, which I think is going to be massive. It really disincentivizes those actions. And so it's really a forcing function for
00:19:56
Speaker
uh, good business at the end of the day. So that's one thing that I'm very excited about. I was, I was with where that's heading from a custodian and even the, the safety and security of being able to take a loan and use this as collateral. We're seeing growing pains. And I was thinking about this last night actually with, uh, this last bull run, the amount of people who were advocating for, uh, using X exchange where you would get a,
00:20:27
Speaker
whatever, 14% yield on your Bitcoin that's kept there. And then the amount of Bitcoin that was totally lost and the just the grand scale of rug pulling that took place. Yeah, there's obviously you use the word rehypothecation. Do you want to, you know, before we keep going, do you want to just like, what does rehypothecate mean? Just make sure we're using, like people understand as we go forward.
00:20:50
Speaker
So, rehypothecation is essentially when you're interacting with a custodian and you either buy Bitcoin from them that they're supposed to hold on their balance sheet or you send Bitcoin to them that they're supposed to hold on behalf of you. Rehypothecation is them essentially taking that Bitcoin and giving it to somebody else that isn't you. So, your Bitcoin is being rehypothecated and typically throughout
00:21:15
Speaker
the history of the industry built around Bitcoin when companies rehypothecate Bitcoin, they're usually giving it out to traders who are taking risks with that Bitcoin. And that is how you can get yield products like Gemini's earn product. And they were partnered with Genesis. Genesis was rehypothecating Gemini's users, Bitcoin, and sending it to trading
00:21:38
Speaker
House is like three hours capital who were taking that Bitcoin and making degenerate bets on other crypto currencies that essentially went to zero and when you rehypothecate that Bitcoin and your custodians counterparty on the other end loses that Bitcoin you don't get it back at the end of the day So during that process of rehypothecation all the while you've seen oh, I bought I have one Bitcoin I see it on this
00:22:05
Speaker
screen, when I go to xwhatever.com, it says one Bitcoin, so it's there. But you're not seeing that behind the scenes, your Bitcoin that you purchased was used as collateral in someone else's trade. So they then essentially created a second faux Bitcoin, the one that you're seeing on your login, and then the one that you're actually utilizing in someone else's trade. So they're creating fake paper Bitcoin as a means of trading behind the scenes, versus having it locked up in custody that that's not
00:22:34
Speaker
able to be done, that that process is unable because using a multi-sig setup, you retain the keys and these other institutions who should have your best interests in mind and can't move it on their own are not able to take this and use it as a means of collateral without your permission. It's pretty important from a security and safety perspective.
The Role of Lightning Network in Bitcoin Transactions
00:23:00
Speaker
Do you have any thoughts there?
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah. And I think it's, I think what you touched on there, right? You don't with Bitcoin, particularly these multi-sig primitives that are available to Bitcoiners.
00:23:12
Speaker
we now live in a world where if you interact with a counterparty, they don't have unilateral control of your funds and they can't do things with your funds that you wouldn't want them to do. And so with the multi-institution setup, you don't even have to have a key in the quorum, you just have to have
00:23:32
Speaker
an address that you can audit in any given point in time to know that the Bitcoin's there and isn't moving. It's totally possible with this setup too. But again, going back to the economic incentives and the social incentives that this new paradigm introduces to the market is you can interact with a counterparty like Unchained, but due to the multi-institution setup that they have, particularly with Kingdom Trust and now Coin Cover,
00:24:00
Speaker
to mismanage your funds, you need two institutions to collude to mismanage your funds. And again, going back to incentives, that is significantly reduced. The possibility of that is significantly reduced because you have two institutions that have many different business lines, and you have to assume that they're not willing to ruin their reputation by mismanaging funds. And the fact that one company, Unchained, doesn't have unilateral control
00:24:28
Speaker
even if they wanted to mismanage your funds because they got in a problem. And this is just an example. I don't think Unchained is doing any of that. They can't, which is a big shift of power back to the end user at the end of the day. It's hard to think through this.
00:24:48
Speaker
objectively considering just the environment that we've been in our whole lives. For instance, banking. It's hard to think through a bank, their job actually just being keeping your money safe. That's so foreign to us as a concept.
00:25:09
Speaker
I think most people recognize if you put money to a bank, it's not there. It then immediately becomes someone else's asset as well. You see it there and you expect it to be rehypothecated. You own it, but yet it's somewhere else. If you go and you ask for a million bucks, they're not going to have all million because it's somewhere else. We only expect that for banks. We know that they're not the business of actually protecting our money and holding it. They do other things with it. I would say the same thing with like,
00:25:32
Speaker
If you're going to take a loan and use your Bitcoin as collateral, I think the water we've swam in for so often has
00:25:40
Speaker
Uh, at least maybe, maybe I'm just speaking for me. I think I'm speaking for a lot of people though. We become so normalized to thinking like, well, how else are they going to make money? Like, why would someone else take that risk and set up a business of literally just owning an app, like allowing an asset to be on their balance sheet? That's a loan. If they're not taking, creating yield off of it and to create yield off of it, they have to go take that asset and do something with it and they can't. So like.
00:26:04
Speaker
How would that business even function? Why would someone else set up a business to do that if they're not able to take it and go and speculate on that asset that they're supposed to be just watching? How does that work?
00:26:17
Speaker
Like the business model is going to have to shift where people, particularly if they're engaging with a partner or multiple partners in the multi-institution model that are going to secure their Bitcoin, Bitcoin, I believe is going to be one of the most valuable assets
00:26:35
Speaker
on the planet, and so it's going to be worth paying to secure it. And so I think that'll be one way in which these companies create new revenue streams. And then too, while we're in the transitionary period, Unchain has their lending desk, and you can use Bitcoin as collateral to get a loan, and there's an interest rate associated with that loan, typically higher
00:26:57
Speaker
than your average interest rate right now, just because of the relative lack of information on behalf of credit funds, understanding Bitcoin. It's a bit riskier to them, even though the sort of collateral setup that Unchained has is 40% LTV. It's one of, in my opinion, Unchained's a 1031 portfolio company. It's one of my, in my opinion, nothing's risk-free, but it's like one of the least risky sort of credit products that exists on the market right now.
00:27:26
Speaker
revenue from that and then value-added services like actually providing value in terms of advisory services. I think we'll see a lot of these Bitcoin custody solutions like Unchained and the companies behind them evolve into the Goldman Sachses of the Bitcoin standard where they really understand what's going on in the market, whether it pertains to
00:27:51
Speaker
custody, financing, and opportunities that exist out there to invest and take equity positions in companies. That's where it's going to go, I believe, instead of expanding the economy via debt, it's going to be equity investments.
00:28:10
Speaker
brings opportunity costs back to the market. That's what a Bitcoin standard will do. And so the idea is that you'll be able to get equity positions in companies that are producing cash flows and they're able to return that capital plus some moving forward. And so I think in terms of the business models of these companies, that's how I think they'll evolve. We're at the very early stages, but people are actually going to have to provide value at the end of the day.
00:28:35
Speaker
With the growth pains we're experiencing and some of the rug pulls we've seen over the several years, obviously, there's a lot of unfortunate results of that. I mean, a lot of people have got really hurt. And it's created a lot of fear for people who are starting to have comfort in this. And now suddenly something bad comes out and I said, oh, maybe the fears that I had were, were rightful. And yeah, people lost a lot of money. And that's, that's really sad, especially like, I mean, I've,
00:29:04
Speaker
I've known people who, I didn't think I knew anyone, but I found out a few months ago that a friend of mine had all of his Bitcoin at FTX, lost a whole bunch of money, and that's really sad. This kid worked really hard. All of his 20s saved insanely aggressively, saving like 80% of his income, and it's all gone. That's really sad, but another sad outcome is for
00:29:29
Speaker
The lack of clarity at who's at fault here. And what I mean by that is I've heard people say like when we talk about these these exchanges being hacked or the rehypothecation and then the loss due to gambling on the third parties act. People who don't understand Bitcoin say, hey, I thought
00:29:55
Speaker
That thing that just happened, I thought Bitcoin was supposed to fix that. Suddenly you lost your Bitcoin because of X or Y. Bitcoin is supposed to fix that. And then suddenly Bitcoin's this scapegoat of blame. So could you help us understand that? I know this is sort of off topic, but these things that have taken place, these scams that have come out are like, literally, I lost my Bitcoin because of this. Bitcoin's at fault. Like, why is Bitcoin at fault or why is Bitcoin not at fault? And who is then when all these things happen?
00:30:23
Speaker
What you're leaning into is centralized third parties are security holes. That's what FTX was, that's what Mt. Gox was, that's what Celsius BlockFi were. I think a lot of the money that's been lost over the first 15 years, particularly via these third party security holes, is due to a lack of knowledge on the end consumer's part, not understanding that
00:30:48
Speaker
with Bitcoin, they add the ability to audit where their Bitcoin should be at any given point in time. And again, that's why I'm very excited about what Unchained's doing and others to push forward this multi...
00:30:59
Speaker
institution multisig model because I do think that will be a standard once the knowledge of this type of custody solution permeates the market and then consumers understand that it exists in the first place and that it's possible in the first place will get to a point where it's demanded where you will not engage
00:31:18
Speaker
with a third party that's handling your Bitcoin unless they have this multi-institution, multi-sig custody enabled because the benefits provided by this model are step function improvement that you would be dumb not to interact with a company doing that. Yeah, I agree. What
00:31:40
Speaker
Sorry, it took us you you you presented one very, you said it was like a base level for you or further, we need to understand this. And then I sidetracked conversation for 10 minutes. So yeah, what else? Like, what other things do you see is like, all right, this will be an impact from a Bitcoin standard. So
00:31:59
Speaker
Bitcoin, peer-to-peer digital cash system, running on a distributed system with limited counterparty risk, and very importantly, quick time to transaction finality, relatively quick time compared to the incumbent banking system. And that gets supercharged on second layers like the Lightning Network, which allow you to lock up Bitcoin
00:32:21
Speaker
in a two of two multi-sig and then send big small amounts of Bitcoin or larger amounts of Bitcoin instantly and settle instantly. And so I think the instant settlement aspect of second layers like the Lightning Network is going to unlock a lot of economic opportunity that simply is not possible in the incumbent banking and financial system and the payment system built on top of it via companies like MasterCard, Visa, Stripe,
00:32:50
Speaker
PayPal. The fact that we now have the Lightning Network that allows us to send small or large transactions, very small, we're talking microtransactions, instantly have a final settlement is a massive unlock. It prevents things like chargeback risk for companies.
00:33:07
Speaker
which end up in higher prices for end consumers, because those companies have to factor in chargebacks if somebody buys something with a credit card, and then they go to their credit card company and say, hey, I actually didn't buy this. That's a significant cost for a lot of businesses throughout the economy. Lightning Network solves that, and it's cross-border payments without permission, being able to remit money.
00:33:33
Speaker
Back to a family member who may be living in a country like Venezuela, Argentina, or Nigeria, or India, to do that instantly while evading companies like Western Union that typically take up to 30% of the transaction when you make it. That's going to be massive cost savings for the end consumer. And then what I'm really excited about for the Lightning Network and what really gets sci-fi, it is
00:33:58
Speaker
It has given us the ability to fully realize the original view of the internet. And so when they designed the internet and built the protocol,
00:34:12
Speaker
They envisioned that there would be a payments layer and they actually built a payments layer or sort of an HTTP 402 error into the layered stack of the internet, imagining that there would be a payments layer of the internet when they originally designed it. And it wasn't until Bitcoin and more specifically the Lightning Network launched.
00:34:33
Speaker
that we've had the ability to realize that original idea. And so now with the Lightning Network, with Bitcoin, we can essentially inject the internet with a native payments layer. And it's happening in real time. And so to give you actionable
00:34:56
Speaker
And the sort of examples of this, like one thing, AI is very popular right now. But right now, if you want to use AI Compute, you set up an account with OpenAI, you get your credit card information, you pay a monthly fee, and you may use it once or twice a month just for fun. Maybe you're not using it, you're using it as a hobbyist, but you're paying $20 a month, which is very inefficient. You're not getting $20 worth of value out of the three times that you use it per month.
00:35:24
Speaker
With something like the Lightning Network, you can completely granularize your usage of AI tools in a way that was never possible, would not be possible.
00:35:40
Speaker
using incumbent rails. And so there's extensions, extension wallets in your browser. One of them is Albi, get Albi.com is their website ALBY. And this essentially allows you to put a Bitcoin wallet in your browser.
00:35:55
Speaker
and load it up with Bitcoin. And then as you go surf the web and you interact with websites that accept Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, you can automatically pay it right there. And we're beginning to see this with AI models where
00:36:11
Speaker
Somebody doesn't want to pay a monthly fee to open AI, but they just want to use the model once or twice. They can go to particular websites that have set up essentially a Bitcoin payment gateway between the end user and the AI compute. And so you would go say, hey, I'd like you to make a picture of Jim Kreider looking handsome in New Braunfels by the river.
00:36:36
Speaker
You don't need AI for that, baby. And then essentially your browser says, hey, if you want this, give us 10 sats worth of Bitcoin. Give us half a penny in Bitcoin. And you hit send. Boom. You get your compute right back. And so that is a use case that, again, was not possible in the incumbent system. So it gives the end user the ability to spend
00:37:02
Speaker
Small amounts of money to get things done on the internet very quickly and From the AI companies perspective like they're okay doing that Because they know they don't have any chargeback risk as soon as the invoice is paid the Bitcoin is in their wallet and there's nothing I can do I can't call American Express and say hey, I didn't I didn't buy that AI compute. I need you to send me those stats back. It's not possible. I
00:37:27
Speaker
Someone else wanted that handsome picture of Jim by the river. Let me um Here we'll break this down. I'll play stupid play stupid Well, uh, what's the difference between have a internet native payment system versus being able to pay via Venmo or
00:37:47
Speaker
put my credit card information on the internet. Why is, how is that any different and what's the benefit of having a internet native payment versus like giving my MasterCard online?
00:37:59
Speaker
So when you give your MasterCard online, again, it's not internet native. You essentially duct taped a credit card form on top of a website. And then once you fill that out, the website sends that information up to MasterCard or Visa says, hey, is this information good? And they say, yes, it's good. And then manually,
00:38:20
Speaker
using their own systems, Visa MasterCard will take money out of your account and give it to the company that you're paying for their good or service. And that's not native at all. It's very clunky. You have a message going from the website to Visa MasterCard server. They're saying, yes, you're good. Give them the good. And then they're on their servers taking money out of your account and giving it to the business and you're getting
00:38:46
Speaker
the good in return. Whereas with Bitcoin being natively integrated into HTTP, there's no calling of that
Bitcoin as a Native Payment System
00:38:55
Speaker
service. It's either you have the Bitcoin in your wallet or you don't in the browser. And so it's essentially the company just calling you your end point and saying, Hey, do you have the money to pay? You say, yes, I do. It sends the payment. And it's a peer to peer transaction between you
00:39:15
Speaker
And that service or good provider at the end of the day, they're not pinging something externally. And depending on somebody else's servers, it's literally a, we'll know you had the Bitcoin. If we ping you and you're able to pay the invoice, we don't have to ask anybody else. Which I mean, this carries out.
00:39:37
Speaker
Practically benefits in a few huge ways one from a time perspective your it's instantaneous settlement versus a lot of people don't recognize like I guess we do sort of in a sense, but like when you go there's a bakery across the street from office dangerously close if I go over there and buy a
00:39:55
Speaker
buy a croissant in a bit, and I pay with my credit card, that doesn't actually settle instantaneously. I swipe the card. It sort of feels like it does. So a lot of people don't recognize that that's a difference between paying in their credit card versus paying in Bitcoin, the actual instantaneous settlement. So how quick this happens. But also, I think something that's really important here is the fees that we're seeing. So at least in my town, I'm starting to see a lot of smaller restaurants
00:40:22
Speaker
are increasing their cost and we'll have an itemized or a line item on the receipt for credit card fee. So things are getting really tight. I mean, obviously, everyone's experiencing inflation, including the businesses themselves. In one total sidetrack, there's a lot of people who don't understand how we've arrived at where we are from an economic perspective.
00:40:48
Speaker
and they blame corporations for inflation. As if every few years, corporations get together and they do this little thing with their fingers and a couple of Scrooge McDuck's and swim around in gold and then they say, hey, let's go ahead and we've been making good profits lately, but let's really stick it to them and let's all increase our prices at the same time.
00:41:11
Speaker
And to think that that's how economics work and like, oh, that's why I don't like, that's why I don't like this. And when you go to a Marxist society is because of this, you know, it's, it's capitalism. As if, yeah, it's as if that is what's causing inflation is this gathering of corporate leaders every few years to say, all right, now we're going to do it. It's clearly, it goes back to the money itself. Okay, total sidetrack.
00:41:37
Speaker
Anyways, so people are experiencing inflation and so are companies. And one thing I'm seeing right now is companies in my town are passing on one of those inflationary hits. The way they're hedging that is by passing on credit card fees because they're expensive, like three, 4% for a credit card transaction in a first world country.
00:41:59
Speaker
I'm not talking if I go to Africa and try to pay and they're trying to verify payments across borders, just in town. So I would I would love to see like, and this is a very simple one, like this could happen very quickly. And it's already happening, obviously, with companies that do accept Bitcoin lightning payments. But I can see this being a very entry level way of
00:42:16
Speaker
more hyper Bitcoinization in a real life day-to-day manner of restaurants taking Lightning payments. And hey, if you pay via Bitcoin, you won't have this 3.5% increase or we'll give you a 3.5% deduction on your bill. I would love to see that. Are you familiar with any companies that are working on this outside of
00:42:41
Speaker
Obviously, there's super niche places that you and I are familiar with. You go and buy a Bitcoin shirt or a Bitcoin...
00:42:48
Speaker
little fun gadget you can pay in Bitcoin. But are you familiar with is there anyone who's working on actual payments that you know like the Mexican restaurant down the street would be able to set up and like I go in and pay my Bitcoin. It's not this weird like oh you like Bitcoin to like normal people my parents go out and it's like hey if I do this I can download this wallet I can pay in Bitcoin and I just save money and we start seeing this in a real life place like are you seeing anything like that.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mentioned him earlier. I don't want to pump his wheels too hard here, but Parker Lewis works for a company, Zapper8, and that's exactly what they're doing. They're building invoicing software for businesses and individuals. We use it here at TFTC. She found out last month that my direct personal care doctor is using it now.
00:43:33
Speaker
And so essentially what zap right allows you to do is to connect your wallets their wallet agnostic so you can have an account at strike at river. Unchained you can plug your wallets into their their software you can self host your own wallets your own hardware wallets and plug that in.
00:43:51
Speaker
to their software and then essentially what they do is they allow you to hook up your fiat payments as well, so Stripe and bank accounts directly and create this invoicing software that allows you to set permissions or set up your invoice in a particular way where you can present to
00:44:08
Speaker
your end user or your client hey here's your invoice you can pay using stripe and pay me in dollars here's the price and if you pay in bitcoin you can get a 10% discount 20% discount they've actually fixed the free flip the framing where and i think this is actually
00:44:27
Speaker
very smart. Instead of getting a discount in Bitcoin, it's a premium for the fiat, where if you're going to pay in fiat, it's 10% more expensive. And I think that small psychological tweak is actually pretty important. But yeah, that software, and that gets back to what I said earlier in the conversation. It was like, how do we get to hyper Bitcoinization? It's creating
00:44:48
Speaker
tools like Zaprite that abstract something as simple like invoicing where you don't have to go into a wallet and pick an address to send to somebody. You just plug it in to Zaprite and the software knows how to go find an address and send it to somebody, a lightning invoice and sending it to somebody. So that it's tools like Zaprite being built and then getting adopted. And again, going back to my personal life, I was actually
00:45:14
Speaker
shouldn't be, but I was shocked that my wife, my kids and I, we use a direct personal care doctor that we essentially pay a monthly fee. It's called ultra personal health care based out of Dripping Springs right outside of Austin. And Veronica runs that decided she wants to hold Bitcoin in her balance sheet and uses app rate to give us the option, hey, here's your monthly bill and paid fiat or Bitcoin. And so yeah, more of that.
00:45:43
Speaker
being enabled by software like Zaporite is how we get closer to this Bitcoin standard. What else? So I think that is one of the most practical outside of like buying Bitcoin, holding Bitcoin. Those are fundamental. We have to have on-ramps for right now. And eventually the on-ramps, if we think through like a total Bitcoinized world, like theoretically, and there's, you know, does the US dollar always coexist or whatever fiat or
00:46:13
Speaker
countries currency coexist with Bitcoin or Bitcoin be the money itself. And I don't know. I think fiat currencies will exist for quite a while, longer than I'd like them to. And I think that will probably make for a healthier transition. But anyway, so we'll have to have off-ramps and on-ramps.
00:46:30
Speaker
And then obviously holding it is super important to make sure it's actually safe. So those are foundational. How do I get access to this, be it buying it or mining it or transferring it from peer to peer? Then how do I make sure that's kept safely? So we spoke to both of those earlier.
00:46:48
Speaker
And then how do I spend it? That's something you just spoke to right now. Like there's companies that are popping up. Like I can, I can set up and receive this and there's means of sending it. And that's primarily going to be through the lightning channel. Like we talked through this is, uh, in a previous conversation, the lightning network versus base layer payments and how, you know, that's one of the critiques of Bitcoin is it's too clunky and takes too long. But like there's trade-offs with that. You can have something that goes a lot faster, but there's, there's,
00:47:17
Speaker
Again, there's any fishes need to take place with trying to highlight that efficiency. If you think to like a, I'm not much of a video game person, but if you're playing an old school video game maybe and you're building your ideal basketball player and you have a hundred points you can divvy up, you can make that basketball player the biggest guy on the, like the tallest guy on the court, but he has a terrible shot.
00:47:37
Speaker
Or you can go for a guy who's amazing three-pointer, but he's super slow, whatever. There's so many points you can divvy up, and that's when we think through Bitcoin itself. There's trade-offs, there's opportunity cost, and Bitcoin itself, it is slow and clunky every 10 minutes for a block, and only so many things will go into a block, but that makes sure the security and the decentralized nature of Bitcoin itself is emphasized.
00:48:02
Speaker
And that's where personally, I think anyone who understands Bitcoin and understands the problem that Bitcoin set out to solve is we're not trying to get the most fast and efficient means of payment. We're trying to get the most secure and decentralized means of payment online and out there. So.
00:48:18
Speaker
That's where these other layers come in. It's like, all right, how do we then, once we have security nailed down, how do we then add efficiencies? Okay, so that brings us to Lightning Network and payment rails. Anything else you're seeing? There's neat things, I think, like streaming, where you can pay,
00:48:37
Speaker
a set per second or whatever something you stream like you could I don't know. I live in this really small bubble of Bitcoin and weird spot of Bitcoin and traditional finance. But you have this awesome opportunity to see other things like what are the things that out there excite you? It could be super boring or it could be like, wow, this is I haven't thought of that yet. Well,
00:48:56
Speaker
We'll combine a couple of things here. I'm very interested in mining as well.
Energy Efficiency in Bitcoin Mining
00:49:01
Speaker
I've been professionally involved in the industry for five years now. It's one of the early members of Great American Mining. We did off-grid Bitcoin mining on upstream oil and gas wells to do flare mitigation in North Dakota. I've learned a lot during that and have really fallen down the mining rabbit hole over the last five years.
00:49:22
Speaker
I'm wholly convinced that what we're witnessing is the beginning stages of an integration of the energy sector in the Bitcoin mining industry. I think that's extremely bullish. What we're seeing both on-grid and off-grid is just Bitcoin mining being this mechanism to
00:49:43
Speaker
be as energy efficient as possible to eke out as much economic value from the energy sources we're pulling out of the ground, the electricity we're creating on the grid as possible. So OnGrid, also involved with the company called Standard Bitcoin, now where essentially what we do is we go and we find rural areas in Tennessee and Kentucky right now
00:50:09
Speaker
that have falling populations and they have falling populations because they had large manufacturing facilities move out of the neighborhood either recently or decades ago because of globalization because the way the dollar works is we had the flood the rest of the world with dollars to drive demand for the dollars reserve currency and one of the ways we did that was by
00:50:30
Speaker
cheap goods from other countries and neglect our own manufacturing base. So what we're seeing at standard Bitcoin is this sort of fixing of that problem where we're able to go into these small rural areas that have substations that haven't been fully utilized for years because the manufacturing
00:50:49
Speaker
facility that was pulling electricity from it doesn't exist anymore. And so there's not as much demand for that electricity, but the substation is still there with a ton of capacity. And so what we do is we show up to town and we say, hey, you notice you got the substation here, like how much excess capacity do you have? And they say, all right, we got 10 megawatts of excess capacity. We go, all right, we'll buy that from you.
00:51:11
Speaker
What this does is allows the local utility to buy more power and bulk from the TVA where we are. And since they can buy more power and bulk, they get lower pricing.
00:51:21
Speaker
And since they're a utility co-op with a mandate to keep residential prices low, they're able to pass that low price onto residential consumers who are paying their electricity bill month in, month out. And again, this is a perfect example of Bitcoin just creating this economic incentive to create efficiencies. We're able to get lower pricing because the utility is able to buy in bulk. The residents are able to get lower pricing because they can buy in bulk. We're able to mine Bitcoin profitably.
00:51:51
Speaker
the town benefits and you begin reversing this problem that the globalization of the dollar created starting in 1971. And so that's not really a technical aspect of Bitcoin. It's the physical aspect of Bitcoin, which is the mining world, which is very energy intensive. And so that's another thing I'm extremely excited about. I mean, at Standard Bitcoin, again,
00:52:16
Speaker
The whole mining game is driving your cost down as low as possible so our thesis is what we're building next to the substations right now is essentially a proof of concept for utilities companies that are gonna see what we're doing to see the revenues able to pay them and then there's gonna be a switch that flips in their minds eventually which is like hey we can actually.
00:52:35
Speaker
mine cheaper than these guys because we have the power and we can just mine a cost and eventually utilities companies and power companies and energy companies that are extracting molecules upstream wherever they may be will integrate mining into their business stack so that's a big one and then we can tie it back to lightning network
00:52:56
Speaker
As well, there's companies like Satoshi Energy and Sonoda, where they're building Lightning software and accounting software that enables, they're starting with miners as their first users, that enables miners to pay their power bills to utilities using the Lightning network on a daily basis for the utility.
00:53:18
Speaker
That is a massive benefit because they don't have to wait N60, N90, whatever it may be to get paid. Then you can pay it every day as these miners are mining Bitcoin. You get paid in Bitcoin, your pool payout comes, and then you set up a lightning channel and you're able to pay your bill on the go. That actually gives a utility
00:53:40
Speaker
comfortability with the miner where the miner then doesn't have to put up a big deposit on the front end and lock up all that capital. They can go be more capital efficient outside of that setup as well. So yeah, the efficiencies that Bitcoin brings both in the digital and physical world, I think are extremely underappreciated right now. And we're at this point 15 years in where they're really beginning to coalesce and become obvious to those of us who are
00:54:06
Speaker
very close to the industry and live and breathe it day in and day out. But I think over the next decade, the benefits that it provides both on the software side and on the hardware side in the physical world are going to be completely obvious retrospect. I'm like, oh yeah, this was everybody's going to be like, yeah, this was no brainer. Bitcoin was always going to succeed. I think obviously mining, Bitcoin gets a lot of critique and one of those is
00:54:32
Speaker
more directly related to the mining aspect and the quote-unquote waste of energy it is. I think there's two places that people view a waste of energy. I was actually thinking about one of these this morning.
00:54:45
Speaker
The one that's usually alluded to is the waste of physical energy. So electric cost and oil and gas or whatever. It's like, OK, that could be better used by heating homes or cooling homes or, I don't know, whatever, funding the war machine or whatever we think is a better use of energy. Another critique that I don't hear as often is the better use of energy
00:55:11
Speaker
have energy that's going towards Bitcoin that can be better used elsewhere. And that's the people's energy, the amount of smart minds working in Bitcoin. What if Bitcoin want to think, why do we have this weird pet project that we're using energy and mind power on, when we could better focus that on building things like, I don't know, for medicine to save people's lives, or I don't know, any project you deem more valid. And those sound good,
00:55:37
Speaker
until you recognize the problem that Bitcoin's solving. So if you think that the physical energy expended to mine Bitcoin is a total waste,
00:55:46
Speaker
You have not got to a point of recognizing the alternative. The alternative is the current money system that we have. OK, if you don't have Bitcoin, a better form of money, in our opinion, then you have we stay with status quo and status quo right now. There's there's no money going towards it versus Bitcoin is it seems like Bitcoin costs a lot of physical energy. Status quo costs nothing.
00:56:07
Speaker
This is way off, but what are the costs of staying on a dollar standard? What does that cost us and why should we expend energy on Bitcoin from a physical energy perspective?
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah, and on this note, and I've got to run here in a bit, but I think it's important to end on this because what I just described is a very direct first order effect of the energy efficiency that liquid mining can provide the world. There's all these inefficiencies, whether it be flaring, natural gas upstream, or just having all this electrical infrastructure that's completely underutilized in the rust belt because all the manufacturing capacity moved out. That's a first order.
00:56:45
Speaker
efficiency gained by Bitcoin mining, miners showing up, reducing that flare, taking advantage of that excess capacity. That makes systems more efficient, more profitable, and creates a better economic outcome for everybody involved at the end of the day. The second order effect of a Bitcoin standard, which is I think what you were alluding to is it brings opportunity costs back to the market, which makes it hard to print money. It makes it impossible to print money.
00:57:12
Speaker
Out of thin air which brings the opportunity cost back so. In the incumbent fiat system affected the government central banks of the world can just go in and create money at no cost and then go allocate that money.
00:57:25
Speaker
to whatever they deem necessary at any given point in time, whether it be war, solar and wind infrastructure, healthcare, education, that many would argue has been misallocated money. The big man, whatever. Yeah, the big man, yeah. And so what Bitcoin does and the Bitcoin standard will reintroduce is since you can't do that,
00:57:48
Speaker
you bring opportunity cost back to the market. So you've reduced the misallocation of capital because instead of just hitting a button, printing money and throwing it at whatever you want, you have 21 million Bitcoin and you have to make an informed decision of how you allocate that capital. Ideally, you allocate that capital and invest in things that are going to be productive and create cash flows that return your money then some at the end of the day and add value, quality of life and productivity to the rest of the economy.
00:58:17
Speaker
And so that is when you talk about the energy debate and juxtaposing fiat to Bitcoin, what I think people really need to internalize is the ability to print money out of thin air at no cost and then throw it at whatever the government wants is a massive waste of energy.
How Does Bitcoin Influence Economic Decisions?
00:58:34
Speaker
There's no opportunity cost. There's no economic calculation that needs to go into that. You can just print money and throw it at what you want. Under a Bitcoin standard, it's simply impossible. You have to make educated decisions about how you're allocating capital. And when the opportunity cost of misallocating that capital is high, you're not going to waste energy on things that aren't going to return productivity and increase the quality of life to the rest of the economy.
00:58:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's a cheap, very expensive alternative. It would be like, I know you have a couple young kids, I have a few young kids as well. So the fiat versus Bitcoin for my kids, I just thought of right now would be like,
00:59:14
Speaker
I do dishes feel like nonstop. In the fiat way, my kids are fighting, I hear them fighting, the fiat response would be for me to yell, hey, shut up, whatever, just go off on them. That doesn't cost anything. I can keep doing the thing that was important to me in that moment, and it solves a problem right then. It costs me nothing. Or I can stop what I'm doing
00:59:33
Speaker
Use energy to go sit down with them, talk through, hey, what's going on? How do we fix your behavior right now? But also change the way you behave moving forward and learn something from that. In that moment, that costs a lot more. That would be the Bitcoin. It costs something. But the long-term perspective of like, well, the other, the yelling at them is free. So, you know, but what are you creating by that? You're creating a whole system.
00:59:55
Speaker
that is built on fragility and is not healthy. And that's where we're at right now is like, look, are we looking at just the cost in this moment? I have to stop doing dishes. Like, what are you actually building? And I think that's what Bitcoin forces you to take a step out and say, like, what is the what are the long term implications, multigenerational impact here? And what are we are we building on something that's healthy versus we building on something that's convenient in this moment. And unfortunately, we've been building based off convenience for a long time. And it's certainly catching up to us.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah, the back end pain created by that high time preference decision to take the easy route out is, I mean, as you mentioned, you've talked with Preston and James Lavish, and I'm sure if you've watched this episode, you understand the severity of the situation we've been put into as a global society due to all the debt that's been run up by these governments.
01:00:53
Speaker
could be a lot of pain in the future. And it's because the governments and central banks took the easy way out. They hit the button, printed money out of thin air and just threw it at problems instead of taking the time to sit down and say, Hey, maybe we shouldn't have been using our money this way. Maybe we should think about moving in another direction, especially considering that we're transitioning into the digital age. It's
01:01:19
Speaker
I do think it's important for people to really grok this, the fact that opportunity cost in a world in which money can be printed out of thin air does not exist. Or if it does exist, it's very small. It's very small cost. Under a Bitcoin standard, opportunity cost gets correctly priced and people make allocation decisions based on educated sort of frames of mind that force people to actually think through the implications
01:01:48
Speaker
of how they're allocating money. Where today, you can spin up trillions of dollars and throw it at airlines and pharmaceutical companies and banks. Again, that creates a disincentive for them to actually act nobly or morally or ethically within the economy. They know that the central bank or government is always going to hit the button and bail them out at the other day.
01:02:16
Speaker
And on that light note, I think what it comes down to is to fully understand this, you have to change your way of thinking and zoom out. And yeah, there's a place of being myopic and understanding the technicalities of this, which I love. Again, a lot of the companies you've mentioned and stuff, they've zoomed in on very specific areas of making Bitcoin better in the world. But you also have to zoom out and see, why are we doing this? And so I appreciate you taking time and letting us zoom in a little bit and also
01:02:45
Speaker
retain a healthy perspective of why, why is this important? So Marty, again, thanks for, thanks for joining me. I appreciate it. Jim, thanks for having me. It was a blast.
01:02:55
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening to the Intentional Living Podcast. Now today's show is simply entertainment and educational in nature. Do not take this as tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are looking for tax, legal, or investment advice, you should go talk with a tax, legal, and or investment advisor. Again, this content is simply educational and entertainment purposes.
01:03:22
Speaker
Thanks again for listening. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.