Yo, welcome to another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL.
Today's guest is Matt Hill. He's a CEO of start9 labs.
One of my favorite companies in the space.
So many interesting things they're doing, they just
released the embassy Pro, which my opinion is going to change
everything. We're going to get to all that
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I want to say hello to my guest. Matt, it's always a great time.
I don't think we've done a simply Bitcoin RL before I think
we've just done the Regular Show.
But welcome man, and I'm and I was and I was telegraphing you
because you know, for a fact because you so to kind of give
everyone the the short story, right?
We were on the floor of Bitcoin 2022 and I went to the start9
booth and Matt and I knew each They're from before, and I went
up to him and he's, like, Nico. I gotta tell you about the
embassy Pro and, you know, like I don't really buy things on the
floor, but when he was convincing me was like, here,
taking, you know, that Meme take my.
So, I, you know, I put money on the pre-sale of the embassy Pro
and I'm really excited for it. I'm really looking forward to it
because one of the things guys that I have issues with with,
for example, Raspberry Pi as my node is Unfortunately it takes a
long time to sink sometimes so especially if you've been using
that Bitcoin wallet for a long time, but the embassy Pro is a
Workhorse. I think it has a an I-9 in it.
Is that correct or an i7 7 and i7?
So what is the embassy Pro? What is your logic behind it?
And who's it for at? Give me one second.
I actually just had someone walk in real quick so we're trying to
join the Twitter. Basis so that we can be live
with the company account here and I'll good password manager
sharing issues. Yeah don't worry about it.
It stinks it stinks. Sorry question Embassy Pro who's
it for? Why do we do it?
Yes. Was it for why we do it?
Why did you do it? Better said okay, because the
Raspberry Pi as more and more people are beginning to
recognize has some sort of essential shortcomings.
When It comes to reliability and scalability of these self hosted
software systems. The Raspberry Pi is really
designed for originally children to kind of Tinker with many PCs
and learn how to do coding. And to you know host software
early on the Bitcoin ecosystem adopted Raspberry Pi's as the
go-to easiest cheapest yet adequately powerful way to run a
Bitcoin node and to be fair that's True.
Right. Raspberry Pi's are fine.
In fact, the embassy one we continue to sell with the
Raspberry Pi as our single-board computer base.
It just has its limitations and those come in a variety of
factors primarily from an inadequacy of power.
So for instance if you want to plug in like a big HDD or
multiple ssds into the Raspberry Pi it's going to fail.
It just doesn't provide an enormous amount of actual power
to device. Is that are plugged into it and
so can lead to things like data corruption.
If you attempt to do that, number two is the CPU is just
not super strong. So when it comes to like sinking
Bitcoin, that's going to be the primary bottleneck and you're
going to get synch times anywhere from like two days to
two weeks, depending on a variety of other factors like
bandwidth and whether or not you're running a four gig pie or
naked pie. But anyway, long story short,
the Raspberry Pi just is kind of a entry-level beginners device
and What we need for not only Bitcoin and lightning and all
these layer 3 applications that are coming online.
But also for just the whole host of other applications out there
that have nothing to do with Bitcoin but are really important
to the concept of self sovereignty.
Privacy censorship resistance. They just have, they have
compute and RAM and disk needs that the Raspberry Pi just
wasn't going to fulfill out of the box.
So we knew something more powerful was necessary and we
took the initiative to get ahead of that.
I mean, way before, The industry was even moving away from the
Raspberry Pi. We had the embassy Pro already
in the works already pre-selling it.
And so we just we knew where the where the trend was going and
decided to get ahead of it and put the best biggest baddest
thing out there. The embassy Pro is, you know,
like you said, it's an i7 32 gigs of RAM comes with a 2
terabyte, nvme and it is based on pure isms pure OS, which by
as part of, as part of the boot loader, disables the Management
engine, which is sort of the known back door of Intel chips.
Purism has managed to disable that in firmware and so it's
also the most secure device that you can get that, is based on an
Intel chip. So, yeah, and that's exactly
what you told me on the floor, the Bitcoin conference and I was
really excited. And what got me excited was when
you told me he's like, because I'm an electron junkie.
I've been using it for a while and people like Sparrow Sparrow
Sparrow but I do It's my taste and you got to leave me alone
and the Raspberry Pi. It just takes so long to sink,
right? Especially if you've been using
that Bitcoin wallet for a long time and you just have all these
addresses, it just takes at least a minute or two.
And then another thing that you were telling me that was really
fascinating, was this concept of being?
And I know that you told me over telegram, that it's not going to
be available to quarter one, but this being this, this ability to
be able to connect to your Our node remotely over clear net.
And you were telling me on how you were going to do that behind
a domain and all these very interesting stuff.
So, could you tell the audience about that?
Because I think ideally, that's what I, that's what I've been
looking for a long time, right? You know, if I'm overseas, if
I'm traveling, which I do a lot, right?
And, you know, I spin up my my electrum wallet, unfortunately,
you know, I'll connect either you could do through tour, but
just kind of Of. Yeah, you know it's kind of very
slow or what I mostly do is of course, you know I have
different Bitcoin wallets. I turn on a VPN and I just use
the block stream the block stream electrum server right and
that sucks, right? Because you're doxing some of
those Bitcoin addresses to block stream and oh, I love Adam.
I think it's a great company but still ideally, you know, this is
Bitcoin. You want to minimize that trust.
So could you talk a little bit about that functionality that
you guys are looking to? Implement into the embassy Pro.
Yeah. And and to be clear, it will not
just be the embassy Pro primarily and really almost
exclusively the value. Add that start9 produces is
Embassy OS, the embassy Pro is just a powerful Hardware device
that comes pre-installed with Embassy OS, but then you have
the MC 1. Both of these things will be
fully capable of serving over clear net as you described, but
I'll provide a little bit more background and context here.
So, Ali, we offered Embassy OS overt, or only.
So not even on the local area network of your home.
The only way to use your Embassy and any of its installed
Services was Viet or V3 hidden URLs hidden services.
So, for instance, when you spin up your Embassy, it would spit
out a brand-new never before seen tour, V3 hidden service URL
that you could then visit to administer your device from
anywhere including when you were sitting right next to it.
And we started Way, because it was a plug-and-play had
built-in, not punching was Anonymous and private by default
and it just worked, okay? It works slowly as most people
know about tour, but it did just kind of work what we did
immediately after that was we went to the total other end of
the spectrum and implemented Lan or dot local, support such that
if you happen to be next to your device or on the same, local
area network Wi-Fi network, as your device then you could talk
Talk to it, not over the internet, you would just talk to
it on the local area network, which is faster than clear that
because it's not leaving the network at all.
It's just the most direct connection you can have.
So the way it exists currently is that when you are home, you
use dot local for both your Embassy and all of its services.
Each service gets its own unique dot.
Local address, your Embassy gets its own unique local address and
then when you're on the go you access your Embassy and all of
Services from their unique. Dot onion URLs, and access it
over tour. So this is a nice dual strategy
for super fast and secure at home, super slow and secure on
the go. And what we need is things in
between, okay, because the trade-offs associated with using
say clear net, like a.com domain to access your Embassy and its
services on the go. Our minimum Amal for many people
and in many use cases right there.
Are some instances where it's like absolutely not I'm not
allowing this thing that I am self-hosting to go anywhere near
the DNS providers and certificate cabal that has come
to dominate what we call. Clarinet Clarinet, really being
defined as SSL plus DNS so when we say clear that that's what we
mean we mean SSL plus DNS and both of those things involve A
trusted third parties, not that they can see everything that
you're doing. Not that there's necessarily a
huge privacy concern, but there's definitely censorship
concerns. There may be back doors that
were unaware of. So, it's just kind of this, like
Realm of you can and probably will do it for certain things,
but it was super important for us to First build out, the
totally Sovereign, local area, network and tour points of
access. Us before building, something
that has any trade-offs at all with regard to privacy
censorship resistance and general sovereignty.
However, we are doing it and it is coming.
And one of the main reasons that we're doing clear, net properly,
defined like I just said, is for businesses and content creators
and organizations of any kind because very rarely, are you
going to be a content creator and tell people that they can
find your blog or podcast on gibberish dot onion, URL.
On it. And by the way you have to use a
Tor Browser that's just not you're not going to get a lot of
followers, right? Because it's very esoteric and
kind of scary sounding and not a lot of people are going to do
it. If you're an organization say
like a, you're not going to turn to your congregation and tell
them all to download a Tor Browser and use that to access
the church you know, Community Forum so that they can talk and
interact with other other members.
So clear, net is the way here which is that in the near
future. As you said, q1 Target.
And next year, you will be able to reserve a clear net domain.
Either your own choosing or bootstrap one through start9.
Like you know, Nico dot start 9. Me, or something like that in
order to host, both your Embassy and its main dashboard as well
as any and every service that you choose to also strapped on
to that domain or subdomain thereof.
So, for instance, you will be able to let's say you're running
an e-commerce. A store that sells stickers and
you don't want to tell people, to go to gibberish dot onion
domain to shop. You'd rather have them go to
store dot, simply Bitcoin.com and host.
Your self-hosted BT's Heap. A server store.
At that domain, you will be able to do that.
Meaning it's being served from your Embassy, in your home, to
the world, at a very accessible clear net domain.
This also So does wonders for things like lightning where Tor
nodes can become unreliable and therefore lose reputation in the
rankings. Clear.
Net is just more reliable, it's faster.
But again, it does come with this trade-off of you are.
Now involving we'll call it. The incumbents of the existing
internet, you are now involving the registrar's, and the DNS
providers, and the certificate authorities.
So it's not without Cost. Absolutely.
They mean and there's trade-offs with everything, right?
I'm not an engineer, but I always say that in engineering,
there's trade-offs, there's pros and cons, and I think that this
is no different. But again, I think that this
just adds more tools to the Arsenal for individuals to pick
and choose. Now, let's and is really
interesting, but we are talking about SSL and DNS, right?
And just because that's what it is, the centralization of the
current Internet and because of that centralization, right?
Right? It has inevitably been co-opted
by government, right? Is that something that concerns
you? Because the that's the vast
majority, you know, of Internet users that just how it works.
Right. We do know for example, the
hostility not only from Europe right saying that they want to
kyc certain software wallets. You had the digital assets
framework released by The Biden Administration.
Clearly there is hostility by governments.
Early. Because this is a threat to
their Monopoly, on the issuance of money and control of people
by having that Monopoly on money.
Does that concern you? And where do you see this going?
Is this, and I've heard this before, Matt.
And perhaps, you could elaborate on this, from what I heard is
it's really an arms race, right? It's we must innovate faster
than they can regulate. So what are your thoughts on all
that? What do you see your business is
based on all this. So I'm sure that these are a lot
of things that you've been that you think.
Out a lot. We do so clear, net and our
implementing. It is part of a much larger and
longer term strategy. We need adoption.
Okay we need people to adopt what is really radical
technology and oftentimes to Garner adoption of radical
technology. You have to make it somewhat
compatible with and familiar too.
Something that already exists. Otherwise it's just too scary.
Now for Hardline bitcoiners and, you know, sort of our initial
market and community. And people who have supported
us, that's not such a crazy thing.
Like they're willing to go out on a limb and try something new.
It's sort of what Bitcoin does to you.
It sends you down this rabbit hole and suddenly you're, you
know, there's the memes of somebody going from like a
corporate job with a tie on to just being like a hairy person
in the woods and that's what it does to you.
And so, but that's not the most most of the world right now and
you know we really to win this need eventually a lot of people
switching over to the new technology.
Otherwise the old technology will just persist through
inertia. And so while we're not
necessarily ready for Mass adoption right now, we have to
start taking measures to get ready for them.
And part of that is this clear. Net story of enabling people.
To self host on the existing internet as opposed to what we
currently have which is self-hosting on either the local
area network of your home, which is super lonely.
And allows you to interface with things but doesn't allow others
to or two overt or which is not only sort of inherently slow.
But is also under attack and has been for many, many months.
And so is very unstable and unreliable.
So what we need is something familiar.
Sure, that content creators businesses and other
organizations can get on board with what we need more than
anything is organizations and content creators who opted for
self-hosting, but their audiences and employees and
partners, or whoever they're interacting with, don't have to
know it, right? Like they shouldn't realize that
it's totally Sovereign under the hood.
These people, your followers And the congregation members, for
example, should just feel like they're using a normal website,
not realizing that this website is private and self-hosted under
the hood. And then gradually, they can
learn about this and then they themselves can adopt this
technology for their families. And then individual members of
these families can adopt it for themselves as an individual.
And so, we see it as that's the progression is.
As we go after the people who have reach and get them using
the technology, but in order to do that, it needs to be familiar
to their audiences and then we sort of spread to the edges from
there. So, that is why we're doing,
clear, net. We also recognize that there is
no future of this networking strategy.
We are out to destroy clear, net wholesale over the next decade
or so it's going to take a while.
But that destruction or you know replacement begins next year.
So internally I have been messaging to the team and and
will now begin messaging. Sort of externally that 2023 for
start9 is the year of design and it is the year of networking.
And when I say networking I don't mean like shaking hands
with people. I mean, networking strategies.
How can computers talk to each other?
Traffic in geographically, dispersed places around the
world without compromising on privacy and anonymity without
involving trust but gaining the benefits of clear, net speeds
and familiarity and it's a really tough problem to solve.
The good news is, is that there are multiple people working on
this problem. Okay, there's a whole category
of Technologies products and teams right now that are working
On what ultimately amount to the same concept, which is called
whole punching. This idea that you can perform
natural reversal that you can get a computer that is behind a
Nat basically behind a private Network.
And another computer that is either public like a public IP,
or is itself, also behind a Nat. How do you get these two things?
To not only discover each other in a decentralized trust list?
Way. But then actually communicate
with each other in an anonymous and private way and there's
there's a few different strategies off the top of my
head, forgive me, people, I've talked to, if I leave you out of
this, there's a few that come to mind.
So there is sink thing which is an existing application that
enables syncing across multiple devices.
There is ipfs uses, a similar hole punching.
Gee, you have things like in the Bitcoin space, you have like
synonym dot to you have, impervious AI, you have Keat,
which is a peer-to-peer video, conferencing app that is built
on hole. Punch hole punch is a closed
Source piece of software at the moment.
So it's not recommended at least until they open it up.
But is itself built on something called hyper core and Hyper
cores this way of basically arriving at agreed-upon state of
a system. Mmm without having to maintain
an entire history like a blockchain.
So hyper core in theory, kind of obsoletes are kind of nullifies,
many of the purported use cases of a lot of these altcoins or
networks that are like trying to do super fast blocks and stuff
like that. We all know it's not going to go
anywhere, but the idea of arriving at State without having
this sort of Byzantine, you know.
Fault-tolerant consensus system underneath it, meaning it won't
resist a wholesale large-scale nation-state attack, but for
most use cases on most days, it's going to be perfectly
adequate for you on a private Network.
So I know that that was probably a lot of gibberish.
Ultimately, what this amounts to is this throughout the year of
2023, the number of different ways that you will be able to
access And use both your Embassy and all of the services running
on your Embassy and the ability of other people to access and
use those Services if you so choose meaning, you want people
to shop at your store. The number of ways that that
will be possible are going to proliferate.
We are then going to take all of these different networking
strategies liked or local area network, clear net, any form of
Hole punching, you know, which always involves some third-party
server that stores. You know, ephemeral IP and Port
information. All of these things are going to
be buried. We're going to offer you skate
them. We are not going to burden the
user with understanding anything that I just said, Embassy OS
will dynamically assess the situation like who is trying to
access what and in what environment and ants and
essentially select the optimal way of connecting to that thing
maximizing for Speed, security, privacy and anonymity in order
to facilitate the connection without you necessarily even
understanding how that connection happened.
Obviously, if you want more granular control, you will be
able to have it as, and you can go in and disable or enable
different strategies based on your threat model.
And risk tolerance of course. And and I love this man and it's
really fascinating and didn't sound like a bunch of gibberish
to me. I think what you're doing is
really fighting for because we kind of have to take a step back
for people to understand how the internet works today, right?
The internet works today where is if I want to message?
Matt, let's just the most simple example really right?
You mean if I use signal, that is great even if I use
protonmail, which is great You know, they believe in encryption
they don't want. They don't want to access your
messages. Unfortunately, I can't just send
a message directly to Matt. It has to go from me to a signal
server to a proton server and then it goes to Matt, right?
And what I believe what you guys are fundamentally doing and I
think that the Bitcoin node and at love Bitcoin for this reason
is the Trojan Horse in all this, right?
It's the reason as to why someone would run a dedicated
Computing device server, whatever You want to call it?
That's what I believe is the end goal here.
Now, Matt, the thing that worries me and and something
that I've learned over the last five, six years as a Bitcoin
educator is unfortunately human nature, right?
And unfortunately, a lot of people, you know, Benjamin
Franklin has that famous quote, right?
That the people that would trade, you know, Liberty for
security, deserves neither, and what I've learned right?
Unfortunately, Really specifically and developed
countries in a developing country.
You don't have that luxury, right?
But in developed countries, a lot of people tend to Pick
convenience, right? And that's just a sad reality.
How do you propose making Sovereign Computing, as
convenient for individuals as the centralized co-opted systems
that we have today? Great point.
And then great question. I want to comment on the point
and then I'll answer the question.
So the first point being about signal protonmail, basically,
these privacy-preserving hosted centralized Services, it is far
worse than your characterization of it.
And here's why not only is a signal and that's not a pun,
right? Not the electrical signal to use
signal the messaging app going from your device.
To a signal server to your counterparties device.
So you're having a chat with me and it's going like, this
signals sitting right in the middle.
Presumably that is end-to-end encrypted such that signal
itself. Cannot read the messages but as
you stated they can definitely do like Network graph analytics.
They know who you're talking to, they know when you're talking to
them and oftentimes that alone is undesirable or can even be
incriminating in certain Circumstances.
And in certain jurisdictions it's worse than that because
signal and I was finding a trying to search for like a
nuanced way to say this the other day.
And at some point I'll put a tweet out a little thread that
kind of explains this but maybe explaining it here will actually
help me compose this when a piece of centralized hosted
software advertises itself as open source that can actually be
a negative thing. Okay, and here's why because it
You a very false sense of security.
A lot of people when they hear signal is open source they just
go from A to Z and sort of assumed that the app they're
using on their phone and the servers with which they're
communicating through or through which they're communicating are
actually running that code. Mmm who have no idea what code
is running on your phone or on their servers.
Single could absolutely right a bunch of Open Source Code
publish it. And then run some other fucking
coat on their server. And you have no way of
validating this. So in fact, if your signal and
if signal is captured and I'm not saying that they are, it's
actually just a giant net for everyone who wants to be
private. Okay.
And there's a, there's a maximum in will call it surveillance in
the surveillance industry that Pretty much guides the entire
strategy for Dragnet surveillance which is good guys.
Don't hide bad guys. Do hide that is the overarching
maximum so what you can do with this knowledge, right?
And it's wrong. Of course, right.
Good guys hide. Because they value their privacy
but that's not the maxim that they're that they're seeking
what they're saying is anyone who openly seeks
privacy-preserving anonymous, Encrypted technology is
presumably or potentially a bad guy.
So we're going to look much closer at them.
So, with that maximum mind, pretty much every centralized
hosted service that advertises itself as the private thing or
the anonymous thing is potentially a giant fucking net
in your walking right into it, you're better off just using
Facebook. Okay, you're better off just
like using open things that because there that's not where
they're looking, they assume that The ones who's using those
things is totally benign and a good guy because they're not
trying to hide. So it's this really nasty
situation where it's almost impossible to be private.
You either have to communicate on things that are not private
inherently or you have to communicate on things that you
think are private. But could be anything at all.
We are the Middle where the the way to get through that, which
is self-hosting, right? The only way that you can know
that the privacy C code and technology that you are using is
actually preserving. Your privacy, and anonymity is
to host it yourself. That's the only way.
And unfortunately, that is just really hard to do.
Or at least it has been traditionally, which is why we
exist. That's our reason for existence
is to make self-hosting easy. Okay.
So that's just an elaboration on your first comment.
It's not it's much worse than many people think, okay?
Number two, I don't remember. Yes, was just convenient its
convenience right there, which by the way, great explanation
and that absolutely blew my mind because at the end of the day,
yeah, I'm pulling up my protonmail app and it says end
end-to-end encrypted. But again, you're taking their
word for it. And that's a really good point.
I never thought about that. So Matt, the original question
was sorry about human nature and convenience, right, the sad
reality is the vast majority of people are always going to pick
convenience just because it's just human nature.
It is what it is. I've learned this being a
Bitcoin educator for years now. Yeah, let me just not take self
custody, I have to wait for FTX to blow up a rug pull needs to
happen for me to be like, okay, not your keys, not your Bitcoin.
So and it applies the same thing to Sovereign Computing.
Right? Unless and this is the, I
believe this is just the reality unless you make it as
convenient, right? For someone.
Or close to it as convenient for someone to have their own
dedicated, you know, Bitcoin node which you guys already
doing, which eventually becomes their own dedicated server of,
which they can have communications and all of that
other stuff. How do you make it?
How do you incentivize individuals to do that?
Because, you know, the if enough people don't do this, then isn't
going to be very easy for government's intelligence
agencies the Three letter agencies to kind of single out,
you know who is doing what right isn't.
It kind of, you know, the the the Bitcoin bought model BSE
numinous, power in numbers, is that required for this?
And what do you think your solution would be to the
convenience factor? I'm going to add to this a
little bit and then I want to get your thoughts.
Matt, everyone has a router at their home.
Everyone kind of already has a dedicated device that's
constantly Ogden to the internet and that seems like a great
excuse to get a to get a Bitcoin, note in there, or a
dedicated Sovereign server in there.
So, what are your thoughts on this problem?
I know you've thought about this.
So let me know onto the first one first, let's talk about
convenience as the Battleground, you're right?
That is exactly where this battle is taking place.
In any purchase that a consumer makes or an individual.
You know, in any value transaction.
There's a cost-benefit analysis that everyone is making whether
it is super subconscious and implicit or whether they're
explicitly, you know, researching all the pros and
cons of Any Given having any given purchase and traditionally
the cost-benefit analysis that people have done and are
continuing to do in many cases when it comes to SAS software as
a service cloud computing. If I want to think of it that
way apps on your phone that plug into third-party servers which
they all do cost-benefit analysis that people have done
on that has been pretty lopsided.
They have said, this thing is free frickin cheap if not
totally free and it's got loads of benefits.
It allows me to do such and such on my computer and the costs are
super low. Again, if not free, there's
something in the back of their mind that tickles them that
says, Where is the Real cost, right?
And more and more. They're starting to figure out
what that real cost is this phrase that if you're not paying
for the product, you are the product.
I'm very happy that that is becoming popularized.
I still don't think people fully understand what that means, but
at least it's starting to enter. The general public Consciousness
is that when you are the product, the cost is basically
everything about you. The goal of any Cloud computing
or SAS company is to profile you as best as they possibly can.
And I don't even mean this in like a your Bob type of profile
you're just number XYZ, right? It's not super personal.
It's just that their goal is to understand everything about you.
Not only so that they can improve the products that you
are using of theirs. But also so that they can sell
that data to advertisers or Interested parties, write maybe
government and so they're essentially monetizing your data
and your identity, everything about you and more and more
people are starting to recognize this hidden cost.
This sort of indirect cost of these products and they're
starting to reject them. And this is expressing itself.
Ironically, through regulation and laws, right?
You actually have policy Now, coming into play that requires
SAS providers, Cloud providers app, developers to minimize,
what they collect about you, and to make it and to be transparent
about what they're collecting about you, and, to afford, you
ways of opting out of that collection, which means that
more and more. These companies are not going to
be able to monetize you as an individual, not going to be able
to product. As you to the same extent that
they used to be able to, which means that they're actually
going to, interestingly be pivoting to more of a normal
business model, which is to charge you money.
You know, I've said this a few times before and you can
continue to mark my words that over the coming years, and
decades pretty much, every piece of software that you use will be
paid for on a subscription, recurring Revenue basis.
The free tears of these things are going to get smaller and
smaller and smaller, and the costs are going to get higher
and higher and higher until you are basically getting nickel and
dimed out of your ability to pay rent because of all the
streaming services and apps that you are using on your phone.
And as that happens, more and more people are going to the
cost-benefit analysis is going to begin shifting because the
cost is no longer hidden the To direct an apparent.
And so they're going to start looking at these apps willing.
Hmm, well, it does these things for me, but it also costs $20 a
month. And so I'm going to not use it
or I'm going to look for an alternative.
Secondly, and to the other side of your question, which is the
convenience portion, the perception of benefit, okay?
The perception of benefit of say, some, Centralized powerful
tech company that made an app is really, really high.
They assume that it's going to work.
Awesome. They assume that, you know,
since it's so big and everyone uses it, that it's good.
Like the perception of benefit is very, very high.
And when they think about like, Indie open source kind of Off
the Grid do-it-yourself software, there's a perception
that it is lacking. It is harder to use.
It is harder to set up and to be fair, these perceptions are
largely accurate or at least have been for the last couple of
Decades. Because these centralized
companies are very wealthy and have been able to Garner, these
massive valuations and sell stock for over, you know, 40x
Revenue type of stuff. They've been able to hire giant
teams of developers to create wonderful products from my
perspective. What they don't realize is that
they've been doing the R&D for us.
That's are indeed Department, Google and apple.
They're doing all the research, they're iterating.
All the services to teach us. Is the open source Community,
how to do it, right? And the tide is turning the open
source software services and applications are learning from
there. You know, again R&D Department,
predecessors and making better and better software.
And so the perceived benefit of these two things are going to
gradually, get closer and closer and closer.
So what you have is two complementary Trends as As we
perceive it and we have, you know, we do our outlook for the
coming decade, you have centralized,
software-as-a-service Cloud applications are going to have
this rising cost and more importantly perception of cost.
Like, not only are people going to be paying with their data and
you know, privacy but they're also going to be paying with
their wallets. So the cost is rising.
The perceived benefit is at best going to stay flat.
Maybe go up a little A little bit.
But on the other side of the equation when it comes to
self-hosted open source software, the perceived cost is
going to go down and down and down as we and others, make it
dramatically easier to use and build better and better user
interfaces, and user experiences around the software.
The perceived cost of getting up and running is going to go down.
It is inherently free for life, right?
It is inherently free and open source software so you don't pay
for It at most, you're paying an upfront Capital cost for the
computer itself, right? You need you need Hardware, you
got to run it on something but that's a one-time fee.
Maybe you get a new device every five to ten years but those, you
know, savings are immediately apparent like that.
Cop, that Capital expense will pay itself off in a matter of
months, according to our prayers, how we view Rising
costs. So our primary focus on a daily
basis is to make the convenience better and better and better,
right? We call it convenience parity,
if software has a circle up here, we're down here, and we're
going to go like this. We're just going to get closer
and closer, and closer to the convenience that people are used
to. I don't think we can ever reach
it. I think that it's an asymptotic
approach. We will never be as convenient
as the centralized third-party model because that third party
centralized model. Liz hair inherently built on the
concept of will do it for you. You don't do anything, we'll
just do it for you. Whereas, the core principle of
our model is, you'll do it yourself and you'll own it,
right? You'll be very, you'll have
total control. And while we can make the latter
feel increasingly, like the former, it's always going to be
easier to have somebody do something for you then for you
to do it yourself. But we think we can get close
enough that the Gap inconvenience will be negligible
to the massive discrepancy in cost.
As in womb, is free and easy and there's no privacy, invasions no
chance of censorship, it's totally Sovereign, you're free.
That's like a huge benefit whereas there's will be the
surveilled Censored High fees monthly subscription.
Like we're going to blow them out of the water on the cost
side even if we can't quite get there on the convenience side
and that's fascinating. And I really I really like how
you because it's true, right? And I honestly Matt I would
rather pay up front, then B, the B, the product weight, you know,
the oh, nothing and be happy. Hahaha is Nico want to own
nothing to be happy brother. I battled that stuff every
single day I want to be just as free as you but dude, first of
all, fascinating analysis and just breaking it down.
So another interesting point, Matt and I think that there's
two Utopias that people on different ideological basis.
They look at the world, right? You have the collectivist Utopia
and believe it or not. And I see this all the time and
bitcoiners you have the libertarian Utopia, right?
And that's something that we all have to understand that it's
very real and one of the things, right?
Let's say in the ideal World, everyone is running their
servers Amazon web servers, like man.
It becomes a museum where you walk in there and it's like this
is how the internet used to work, right?
But at the end of the day, Right in front of one, who doesn't
know, the vast majority of the internet is connected by cables.
Undersea cables, right? And those can be potential
vulnerable points of capture for governments.
How does that fix that? How does a peer-to-peer
internet? You know what?
We're all dreaming. What we what we hope to find
ourselves in the future and how does the actual, how do you guys
actually mitigate the actual physical cables?
That the Net is connected by are connected with.
Yeah, you're talking about the long, the long game here.
The end game, right? The final boss of everything, is
surprisingly, the physical world when we first started start9, I
told my co-founders at the time that if we succeeded wildly
that, if we really succeeded in bringing a new Computing,
Paradigm to this world and it grew that over time.
The only way that it would survive is if we vertically
integrated all the way to the mine, mining lithium, right,
like that, we will eventually get shut down there.
Point every single step of the way, right?
Like if we get so successful and we're really a threat, they'll
shut the Mind down. They'll withhold critical, you
know, rare earth metals from our or anybody else's ability to
build chips that aren't backdoored.
And so, we don't need to worry about that right now though,
right? They threat.
It's a tomorrow threat. Yes, we need to stay one step
ahead. We need to be aware that these
threats are coming. But you don't solve tomorrow's
problems today. That's how you die.
You have just all today's problems today.
And quite frankly to be very focused as a team, otherwise
you, you get ahead of yourself. So the the fiber optic cables
are a few steps away. We're not, we're not worried
about those right now because we can effectively hijack them.
Right? For antithetical purposes.
I shouldn't say antithetical. They are designed to process
information and we will continue to use Them for what they were
designed for, but we can make that information encrypted,
right? Encryption is the secret weapon
here. So long as the encryption is
real, which we have every reason to believe that it is and there
isn't some crazy project that's been going on, where sha-256 is
actually broken and the government's just not telling
us. I don't believe that I'm not
leave that either. They don't have the capability.
So as long as encryption is real, we can hijack.
Significant portions of the Assisting physical and digital
infrastructures of this planet for our own to build our own
parallel digital systems and so long as using encryption and
certain networking strategies such as tour is not itself
incriminating then we will succeed, right?
The danger here is if a government comes in and says
something like, Tor is illegal okay.
Or if we detect that you are utilizing networking protocol, a
say, Noster, for instance, which is very is of great interest to
us at the moment. And there is certain Network
traffic analytics that you can perform that the ISP could
perform. They don't know what you're
doing, they don't know what you're saying.
Because again, encryption works right, but they can conclude
that guy's using Tor, right? When you use an embassy in your
home today, your ISP knows that you are using Tor.
They don't know what you're using it for, they can't even
see what website. You're accessing.
Meaning it's your own website and your Embassy, they don't
know what that is. They can't interpret any of the
information that's being passed over.
But they can say You're using Tor.
So the problem comes in is if a government just says, using Tor
is illegal, then we have a problem on our hands, not a
problem, not an insurmountable problem, but it is a definite
attack vector. And so we don't think they're
going to do it. We don't think that governments
or big Tech corporations who have an interest in protecting
their monopolies Etc. We do not believe that they will
opt for the nuclear option and in this case, the nuclear option
is wholesale, Banning the movement of in Formation, that
is either encrypted or being processed on a given Network
because if they did that, it would require a such a blatant
violation of Human Rights, the United States Constitution.
And basically, every Western democracy there is that they
just won't get away with it. We hope, right?
As we've seen, the population has a tendency to kind of go
along with things and I've been largely disappointed over the
Latin to see some of this but there are Lines and I ultimately
do have confidence at least in the American ethos and history
and tradition of individual rights and freedom that there
are lions and people are willing to stand on them and protect
them. And so I don't think things like
encryption could ever be banned. I think that politicians could
posture. I think they could even try to
pass bills, that make certain kinds of things, illegal or
legal, but ultimately, they're not competent enough.
They don't have, they don't have the numbers.
They're going to, they're going to lose that battle.
So I think that we can hijack utilize.
Use Earp much, if not all of the existing physical and digital
infrastructure that they have spent building in order to
Monitor surveil and control everyone for exactly the
opposite. Beautiful.
And and you the part that was fascinating to me.
Matt. And this part of the encryption
Wars and I think that we are heading towards encryption War
2.0, right in the 90s was, you know, certain types of
encryption was illegal, then people who are t-shirts with
that exact thing and then, you know, they couldn't win that and
then it's a First Amendment issue, right?
And I think we're heading into the second where, you know, for
the first time in American history, the US Treasury
specifically, the office of foreign An asset control,
sanctioned open source software. And I, the reason that I believe
they did, that is to attempt to set a precedent because Bitcoin
whether you like it or not, is a threat to current u.s.
sanctioned policy which gives the tremendous amount of power
to the US government because they've been weaponizing the
dollar to get what they want or to believe, they're getting what
they want because you can't make it a.
You can't make a good faith argument that sanctions are
effective either. So yeah, I definitely We think
that we are heading into the so called crypto Wars 2.0.
And I think that can be a point of contention.
But what's fascinating to me, Matt is holy crap, did the
founding fathers of the United States 200, something years ago,
just because of how much they hated tight tyranny or tyranny.
Did they nail that? And they made it the first one,
and it might might become one of our most powerful tools in the
battle of the step of separation of money and state.
How do you believe we're going in this adoption race on simply
Bitcoin were in the media front. So we reflect.
We fundamentally believe here is a war for hearts and Minds.
We need to get as many people as possible, taking Bitcoin into
self custody taking that orange pill.
If enough people do that we win, right?
But it is an arms race. How do you believe you're doing
on your side? And I want to preface that
question with. I was also extremely
disappointed, how effective the, their propaganda machine was at
capturing the hearts and minds of so many individuals and
basically leading them like sheets sheeps to a Slaughter.
Unfortunately, it would it, I couldn't believe it.
So, what are your thoughts on that?
Well, you definitely nailed the sort of other side of the coin
about what I was saying earlier, which is that, you know what we
don't do, except for appearances.
Like this obviously is the awareness and education aspect
of what's going on, right? So perception of cost,
perception of benefit is all very largely affected, not just
buy the products and technologies that are being
used, but by people's understanding of them.
And so, that is why I go out of my way to support.
And try to, you know, do anything that we can to help you
and others in your battle to educate and raise awareness
towards not only the nature of the problem, but of the nature,
and existence of viable, albeit nascent, but viable growing
solutions to these problems. So, you know, I commend you, I
support you and, you know, it's just not what we do.
We're technologists and product people and that's our At all.
But yeah. But it's the same.
It's the same War my friend. Yo, you might be on one front
and we're in the trenches on the other front but we're still the
same fight. Exactly.
Right. But you specialization it
matters, right? We have to focus on our core
competency and what we're best at and you're going to focus on
your core competency, what you're best at and we joined the
show together right now to strategize and you know, divide
and conquer. So okay, so with that in mind,
the core of your Question there was, you know, are people going
to to do it? How do you see?
So I'm seeing it from again, the media perspective.
So for example, the FTX blow-up was amazing because I'm sorry
for anyone who got involved. You should have taken Bitcoin,
not your keys, not your Bitcoin, right?
We've been screaming that from the rooftop from literally three
years now but that's LED people to take Bitcoin off-exchange.
Do you see the same? In rate with individuals
realizing you know if I'm not using my if I'm not using my own
node I'm basically trusting someone else's.
No. Do you see that popularity
Rising? Yeah, so the very existence of
start9 and other node and personal server projects in the
greater Bitcoin and Sovereign Computing space is a degree of
evidence. Dense that there is demand for
this. These organizations companies
are not doing this because nobody cares and we're not doing
it in light of the fact that interest is waning, it's not
people do care interest is growing and our community.
The people who discover us and take the time to actually look
you know they it's like Bitcoin you have to Actually look, it
takes a little bit of effort, and we're trying to minimize the
amount of effort, but people who have discovered us and actually
looked become what's the right word, obsessive, they're they're
passionate. Okay, are we don't have
customers, we have Partners, we have members of the movement and
that isn't something that we like go out and try to GARP, you
know, Raul with marketing, it's just the nature of what we're
doing. What we're doing is Italy,
radical, powerful, Freedom, breathing Sovereign, technology.
And we mean it, and we're not cutting Corners.
We're doing it, right? Even if doing it, right,
ultimately results in our failure as a business.
As long as we are capable. As long as we survive long
enough and are successful enough to Shepard this technology, to
its mature state, where it can function as a viable, off-ramp,
and You know, means of opting out of the centralized
surveillance State, and of the extortionary practices of big
Tech, then we will have succeeded in my mind.
I don't want to die. I would like to succeed wildly.
I'd like to make a bunch of money for myself, and my family,
and our future. But that isn't the primary
objective. The primary objective is to
Usher the technology to maturity.
And so, how do how do we think it's going?
I think we're doing great. Great.
I think that we are doing a good job.
I think others are doing a good job.
I definitely think that we are leading the charge in this push
towards generalized, Sovereign, technology of which Bitcoin is
sort of the bleeding heart and centerpiece and you know spear
tip of the entire movement but it is broader than Bitcoin.
It is about all of Information Technology.
It's about decentralizing Earth information grids and bringing
power back to the edges of the network as opposed to the hubs
of the network and we are quite frankly, very It on a daily
basis as our community but we absolutely don't take it for
granted. I personally do not believe in
historical determinism, I believe that it is perfectly
possible that we and others and Bitcoin will fail and Usher in
perhaps, one of the darkest most prolonged ages of tyranny and
oppression that the world has ever seen.
I also think it's perfectly possible that we will trounce
them. And beat them down like the
little children that they are. And when this thing in a matter
of ten years, I think those are the two opposing extremes I
think, in reality, this is probably a two to three
generation battle. Simply for the fact that anybody
over the age of X I'm not going to offend anyone but the older
the generation is the more unlikely.
They are two totally learn something.
Brand-new and pivot their entire worldview and adopt brand new
Ecology, it's just not feasible. That ultimately to win a war of
any historic consequence. You need children and you need
their children and you need their children.
You need to new generations of children to completely change
the culture of a society. Lennon actually was one of the
more famous people to have said, I believe, don't quote me on the
exact wording here, but something like you give me two
generations of children and I will give you a None of
Communists. And we can say something
similar, which is you give us two generations of children and
will give you a world of sovereign individuals.
And so, it's a long game, a lot of bitcoiners are I think overly
optimistic about, you know, how, how quickly we might reach
Providence. I think it's going to take a few
generations, and I hope to be alive when we get there.
But educating children on both the nature of the problem and on
the growingly powerful Solutions is the key to winning.
Absolutely. And you know, it's crazy because
we're working in different, we're working obviously work in
the same industry but we're working in different sectors of
these industry and the militant nusenda.
The urgency is the same. Mmmmm, I say this every single
day or almost every say it's a good morning Bitcoin or slavery.
A lot of people like you're being hyperbolic.
No, I'm not, right? You they're telling you exactly
what they want to do. With Central Bank, digital
currencies and Jack Mahler. Said, it said it best and you
said it perfectly. We're willing to do that.
Like we're willing to die on this hill because we understand
what's at stake and I completely agree with you.
A last question, Matt we see this all the time, right?
Whether it's simply Bitcoin, whether it's start9, whether you
know, the other militant bitcoiners, you know, bull
Bitcoin Francis, right? We all have this.
There you go. We all have this.
We all have this, I guess. We all kind of reached the same
conclusion and we're all looking at it from a perspective of
look, if we don't win this. They're going to win and the
life that they want for us is just so atrocious.
Why is it that we all come to this?
Why does Bitcoin does do this to people on a psychological level?
Is it the freedom is it the freedom that they've never
tasted before and all of a sudden when they have the
ability to save and earn and money that a nation state, a
country, a dictator and Emperor can't censor or D.
A base. Is that what?
Just just snaps in people's minds and then, they appreciate
this newfound Freedom. What do you think that what do
you think that is? Because the reason I'm asking
this question is, because you said all of that, and it's
fascinating to me. I know opt he's listening to in
the background and we are, literally, I'm we think the same
exact way. We're just fighting on a
different front. Why do you think Bitcoin does
that to people Bitcoin? Proved it Possible.
I know that personally in my mid-20s, I guess I'll date
myself. It was about 12 years ago.
I was fairly depressed. Not for personal reasons.
I have always been keenly interested in history, and
politics and economics, and I didn't see a way.
I didn't understand how you could defeat.
Such a horrible Beast that has become the for lack of a better
term. Just our society, our world.
And I don't really see a way out.
The darkest point was Ron Paul 2012 where I saw hope in a
candidate who seem to understand the game was absolutely correct
about everything and had a passion.
In it base of young intellectual people and I was like that is
the makings of a revolution that is what we need and watching him
quite frankly. Get flicked off the table like
he was a fly pestering. This monster really hit me deep
I realized how powerful of a foe.
We were up against That somebody as correct.
And someone with that much momentum and support could just
be discarded. I didn't.
I I got depressed and shortly thereafter, read a couple of
different things and found Bitcoin.
Those things were for as big of a douchebag.
As the guy is anti Fragile the seemed to leap.
Sovereign individual. I read mastering Bitcoin and
ultimately just went down the Bitcoin Rabbit.
Hole also a heavy dose of Ian Rand and arrived at the
conclusion that there actually was a way that there was a weak
point in the armor of the enemy and further more and more
importantly that the enemy only derives its power from.
From us, that is itself, impotent and incapable of doing
anything without the support consent and productive energy of
its of the people it wants to dominate.
And so I was like, wow, we're actually fighting against an
impotent blob. That all you have to do is
recognize its nature and opt-out, essentially strike.
Opt-out, don't feed it. It and it'll just die like the
slug it is. And that Bitcoin was the
ultimate means of opting out because the central power of
this monster comes from its ability to create and control
money. And that when you create
Bitcoin, I didn't view Bitcoin as a weapon.
I viewed Bitcoin as an exit ramp a way to get out of the
financial and monetary system. And therefore, starve, the
Beast, right? It can't survive without our
economic contribution then with sovereign individual plus.
My own Acumen is a developer plus surrounding myself with
like-minded people discovered, a way that I could also get into
this fight and give people a way of opting out of the information
grid. So not only can you opt out of
money but you can opt out of data, you can take back your
data from the grid. And I realized that the monster
was Diving as much on its ability to create and control
money, as it was on its ability to surveil and control
information. Bingo, bingo.
Is Bitcoin John Galt. Satoshi.
Maybe yeah. I mean it's definitely dick
going. Yeah, I mean, what did John John
Galt convinced the most productive intelligent, you
know, leaders and people who move the world to opt out to
stop giving their productive energy to the vet to their
destroyers? And I think that's what Bitcoin
is doing. Is it is it is discovering or
allowing itself to be discovered by the best of us.
And so, Only but surely we are removing ourselves from that
system. Start9, for example, has a goal
of being on a complete Bitcoin standard by the end of 2020 3,
we will not participate in the Fiat Financial system.
If somebody wants to buy a device from us and they have
dollars, they will have to figure out a way to convert
those dollars to bitcoin just in time to pay us in Bitcoin.
If someone wants to be paid by us and they want dollars, they
will have to figure out a way to convert the Bitcoin that we're
going to pay. I'm with installers and we are
doing this appropriately and you know, strategically we're not
going to do it overnight because it would basically mean the
destruction of our business but gradually, we will move away
from the dollar and all of their Fiat standards and currencies
beautiful, man, I enjoyed that conversation.
The coin insulates capitalism and individuals from I don't
want to use opt, he's words, but what is it?
I like, I call them the monetary demons Opti calls them, the
high-level parasites. Yeah.
And it protects protects individuals.
The likes of, which has never been seen before, Matt Hill.
That was quite a ride. I really enjoyed that.
Why don't you tell everybody where they can find you?
And of course what you're working on?
I'm on Twitter at underscore Matt, Hill underscore start9 is
start. Nine.com Follow those two tracks
and you'll get a good picture of what we do and who we are and
why we're doing it. Now, what products we have
available and we have a telegram chat, which I don't know off the
top of my head, I think it's TDOT me to start 9 underscore
Labs, don't quote me on that. We're that's the sort of
community Hub unfortunately. Out of all three of those things
that I just said, two of them are hosted centralized Services.
We're working on it. We're working on it soon as the
chain. Change.
And I'm sure that you guys will figure it out.
Anyways guys, those another episode of Simply Bitcoin IRL
and I'm going to put you back stage for a second.
We will see you tomorrow back at the live show 12:15 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time. Love you all.
We'll catch you tomorrow. See you later.