Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of Simply
Bitcoin IRL. Today we have a very special
guest returning guest. We have Matt Hill, CEO and
Founder of Start Nine. They make incredible Bitcoin
nodes servers. Really big fan since first time
I brought Matt on the show talk about sovereign computing and
just blew my mind every single episode.
So we really enjoy bringing Matt on the show to talk about all
that the future of computing the the way that I see it.
Anyways, before we jump into it, I want to give a shout out to
the Bitcoin company that makes the show possible.
Swan Bitcoin, Best place to build your Bitcoin stack?
It's being built by Bitcoiners. It's for Bitcoiners.
Check out Swan Bitcoin today if you haven't already done so.
All right, no more delay. I want to bring up our guest.
Hey, Matt, How you doing? What's up, Nico?
Doing Good, man. Thanks for having me.
Happy to have you back on the show.
It's been a while and I've heard from the grapevines and rip off
the Band-Aid and just jump straight into it.
I heard you guys are getting into AI.
That's interesting. Yeah, yeah.
But not in the way that a lot of people like to say right now.
AI is like the new blockchain, you know.
It's the new the new cloud, the new the new hype in the VC and,
you know, investing world. We're getting into AI strictly
as a necessity because AI is part of computers.
So, you know, our whole idea is that humans and computers should
be able to interact directly without intermediaries or
custodians. And the idea that humans are
going to use computers without artificial intelligence is a
ridiculous proposition at this point.
So something that we have to consider right, we have to think
about. How humans can interact with
computers using AI models and the hardware that is necessary
for that to happen in a way that you know can be done cheaply,
affordably by by any person. So it's something that we've
been thinking about and we've actually launched a couple
products. We launched stable Diffusion.
Which is a image generator, and we weren't launched free GPT,
which is an AI chat bot similar to ChatGPT.
Both of these are run on your personal server, and the models
are hosted locally. Nothing leaves the device.
You can access it from anywhere in the world at your own private
website, and it is a truly private artificial intelligence
experience for both image generation and.
And chat. However, it's not nearly as
robust and fast and powerful as something like mid Journey or
ChatGPT, obviously, those are using GPUs, they're running on
server clusters. They are running the latest.
You know how many hundred of billion parameter models they're
probably running at this point? And that just can't be done on,
you know, cheap consumer hardware.
But luckily for us, the future of AI.
Is probably smaller models that are more highly specialized and
users accessing those models for specific needs, in which case it
can all be done locally on affordable hardware.
And so we're very excited that that is now the trend in the AI
world is that it's away from the one model to rule them all that
knows everything. And towards instead hundreds of
specialized models that you spin up on demand in order to get
very specific questions answered, because that can be
done at the edges. Got you.
So what is the like for for the layman?
For someone who has no idea what sovereign computing is or what
the benefits of running your own server, your own, your own
computer, essentially, rather than relying on someone else's,
what would be the benefits of using your AI right that you're
running at home versus, you know, using something like
ChatGPT? Sure.
So there's the broad question there, which is using your own
server as opposed to somebody else's.
And then there's more specifically using AI on your
own server as opposed to an AI on somebody else's.
So I'll answer the more specific one first and then extrapolate
from there. So basically you know when you
are using something like ChatGPT.
You're entering a query, and that query is being sent to a
server that is owned and operated by Open AI.
Open AI now has a record of you asking this question.
They are using the question and the answers and your
interactions to train their own models for their own proprietary
purposes. And lastly, what you are getting
in response is a. Completely black box.
You don't know where that response is coming from.
You don't know what degree of, you know, bias or censorship is
being applied. So a open AI as a company could
basically just lie to you and you would think that you're
talking to this brilliant AI when in fact you're just getting
a censored response from Open AI the company.
So if you want to interact with AI honestly and with integrity,
you need to. Run your own instance of the
model and that way you know it's not being tampered with.
So that is that is the main reason why you'd want to use
your own AI is not only because it's private and because you may
want to ask this thing questions that you're not comfortable open
AI, the company knowing. And two, you want to make sure
that the answers that you're getting are genuine in so far as
they, you know, can be from that from that model.
Extrapolating from there, why run a your own server at all?
Well, you can imagine the same basic pattern for all of your
computing needs, whether it's sending a message or sharing a
photo, or storing your files or your passwords.
When you do this on somebody else's computer, you know one
they have complete insight into everything that you're doing.
There's no privacy. Dragnet surveillance and
specific invasion of privacy is is pretty much commonplace at
this point. You can be censored, you don't
know if what you're getting from these servers is tampered with
and it costs money. So in many cases you are paying
either with your data because they are mining it and selling
it to advertisers, or you're paying with your money.
On a monthly subscription basis. And then lastly, whenever you
use somebody else's server, whether it's for AI purposes or
anything else, those servers are often storing the data of
millions of people and are there for prime targets for attack.
And it is only a matter of time before they get hacked and all
the data is leaked and then your private information is leaked to
hackers. Even though they weren't
targeting you specifically, they were targeting the server that
was acting as a honeypot of data.
And so you were just collateral damage in a cyber warfare that
you never opted into, or you did opt into but didn't realize you
were opting into it. So running your own server
eliminates all of that. It's private, it's censorship
resistant, it's free, and there's no counterparty risk of
being hacked. Gotcha.
So another exciting announcement that you guys made recently, and
the community has received it extremely well is you guys have
announced that you're moving to the MIT, the open source stuff,
which I think is really, really exciting.
Why did you guys decide to do that and what were you guys
doing before? So start OS is what you're
referring to, which is our main product is what we make.
Has recently been switched over to the MIT license, which is the
most permissive license possible.
In fact, it's more permissive than no license at all, because
in the IP world, no license at all defaults to proprietary
rights of the author. So MIT is basically your way of
announcing that there is no license, right?
It's your way of just being like this is in no way shape or form.
A property of the individual or company that produced it.
And so that's what we published start OS as now that's what
Bitcoin was published at. And in our opinion it is really
the only truly free license. Other licenses that are very
common in the Foss world are things like a GPLGPL.
Licenses are free in every way. Accept that they require the
consumer or the person accessing that code to likewise publish
their own derivations of that code in an open source manner,
meaning it restricts your freedom to close source the
software. And so we figured if we were
going to go, you know, the Foss route and really make this a
free piece of software, that we'd better not, you know?
Cut corners or be hypocrites about it and we might as well
just set it free. So we set it completely free.
Start OS no longer belongs to Start 9.
As a company we are its stewards, we are its engineering
team. We're going to pour our
lifeblood into it. But from our proprietary sense,
we have absolutely no rights to it whatsoever.
Or let me put stated more clearly, we have the same rights
to it as anybody else in the world.
What we were before was an open source license with a non
commercial clause. So not FOS, FOS standing for
free and open source software. This was more like OS open
source software minus the free part.
It was free in a lot of ways. As in, you could access it,
change it, fork it, download it, distribute it.
Use it. You could do whatever.
You wanted the only thing that you weren't allowed to do with
Start OS in the past was monetize it.
You could not. Sell it as your own.
You could not install it onto hardware and then sell that
hardware. That right was reserved for
Start 9. And so that is all we've changed
is that we have relinquished our exclusive right to sell the
software gotcha. And so and then from a from a
company perspective like does that worry you at all that
potentially you can be giving the your code away to a
potential competitor in the future?
No. Like could you elaborate what do
you mean? So we are sure that competitors,
more competitors will arise as a result of this then would
otherwise have arisen. So for instance, we've already
been contacted by multiple individuals who are like, hey,
does this mean that I can? Install Start OS onto many PCs
in my country and sell them. And I said absolutely, please do
right? Like we're also selling in that
country. So technically this is
competition for us. But ultimately Start OS is not
our business model. Start OS is the backbone of a
new computing paradigm. There's going to be a whole
bunch of business models that arise on top of Start OS and you
know. Because start OS had to be
source available, meaning it had to have the source code visible
even if it was on a in a proprietary license, right?
Even if it was with the non commercial clause, if start O s
s source code was not visible, it wouldn't be safe at all.
It would be extremely like nobody would use it.
You'd be stupid to use it right if you if you ran a.
Personal server with close source software.
I would consider that to be dumb.
And to be fair, it is like what we do with like our Macbooks,
right? Like it's all closed source
software. But there's no there's not a lot
of ways around that right now. Yes, you can run a Linux device.
But anyway, I I digress. Because it had to be open source
available, because the source code had to be visible.
It was inevitable, right? It was unavoidable that we were
going to face competition. In the form of people who, even
if they don't copy paste the code line for line, can
literally just see what we did and if they're well resourced,
right? Like if it's a well resourced,
talented team, they could write it in C Plus.
Plus, instead of Ross, right and and and we would have no
recourse. It's not like our license
wouldn't apply because they didn't copy paste our code.
So the very fact that we were sharing the code made it
practically the same as. Giving the code away because
somebody could always reverse engineer it and and do it
anyway. So it's kind of a an illusory
protection to have a non commercial clause in most cases.
But we didn't have it for no reason.
We had the non commercial clause there for about 2 1/2 years and
we had it there to protect against any very well funded.
Company that could basically out market us, right.
So the only thing that we were protecting against was our own
lack of brand awareness because nobody knew who Start Nine was
and knew that we made Start OS and that there was no no brand
recognition at all. During the early days anyone
would have been able to basically take that code and
just be like this is ours and we would never would have even come
to the surface. So the only reason that we had
the non commercial clause there was to stave off any
opportunistic VC funded kind of like you know thieves so to
speak who just come in and like see oh wow, they're really doing
something good except they're not very good at marketing.
So we're going to get really good at marketing and.
Drown them out with noise. We feel strong enough now as a
brand to not be squashed out like that.
It would be very difficult at this point for somebody to
disassociate start OS from start 9 for somebody to claim to be
the inventors of start OS, right?
And so the brand equity is really what we needed.
And we finally felt like we had reached a point where.
We had the critical mass of support.
Such that nobody would do it Now were they going to do that
anyway? Probably not, right?
It was probably an unnecessary protection.
However, it didn't hurt us either, right?
Having that protection was was a free protection.
Like, does a 4 foot picket fence help you against a home invader?
Not really. Maybe they'll trip over it.
So there's this like small maybe added protection.
But because it's totally easy to do and totally free, it didn't
really make a difference. So gotcha, That's the long
winded explanation. But no, we are where we are now
and I'm glad that you you clarified it.
Someone in the chat actually had a pretty good question.
I'm gonna pull it up so you can answer it.
So Andrew Saman said Matt, can you explain how start OS is
different from running Linux? Cool start.
OS is Linux. Start OS is start OS is Linux
just like Ubuntu or Fedora or pop OS.
Those are all Linux as well, right Linux?
Is a, is a. Kernel it's a.
It's an underlying operating system.
But there are many layers on top of Linux that define the
ultimate operating system experience.
So start. OS is a Linux distro.
But it is the first and only I believe I can make those claims.
Linux distro whose user experience because I'll go
beyond just the UI, but the whole experience is oriented
around the ability to run a server OK as opposed to a
computer. So most Linux distros like
Debian or Ubuntu, Fedora. They're all optimized to run
your laptop or your desktop, right?
They are client device operating systems.
That's what the graphical interface is for.
Like when you look at the graphical interface, you see a
desktop because it's designed for a laptop or desktop
computer. It's designed to be used by a
person using a laptop if you want your Linux distro, such as
Debian. To be used for a server, you
have to go beneath the graphical interface, pop the hood, open
the command line and get on the get on the terminal on the
terminal command line. So Linux is the server operating
system. It's like Linux is how people
use servers, but it's not through the graphical interface.
People use Linux from the command line.
So what we have done? What start OS is?
Is a Linux distro where the command line, everything that
you would ordinarily do on the command line has been codified
into and represented in a graphical interface.
So it is the first Linux distro whose graphical interface is
designed to administer a server. And that is unique.
Why? Nobody has done that before.
We think we know why. Probably because.
Very few people had needs to run a server, so there just wasn't a
large perceived user base of like, you know, everyone just
assumed that individuals can't run servers.
That's just always been the assumption, and more and more
it's assumed that businesses can't run servers either.
Unless you're some huge enterprise and you have two sys
admins, 2 IT people, and two DevOps engineers on staff, it's
basically assumed that you're just going to subscribe to some
cloud software because running a server is too hard.
So there's been this perception for a couple decades probably
that running a server is beyond the skill set and needs of an
average person. And So what has happened is 2
things have changed over the last couple of decades 1.
Is the need to run a server is rapidly rising as the world
clamps down on digital infrastructure, right?
As surveillance and invasion of privacy and censorship and costs
and hacks all rise, the need to run a server is greater and
greater. That's number one.
Number two is start OS has lowered the barrier to entry.
It's made it easier and easier. So what's happening is the need
to run a server is rising. And the ability to run a server
is getting lower and we think we're reaching an inflection
point where this may be a multi, multi million person market.
Yeah, And you know, I I love the way that you broke it down,
basically making it so that the, you know, everyday person could
run this. And in my particular case, you
know, I'm, I'm pretty computer savvy in the sense of like I
know how to, you know, manage my way around.
But do I have the technical know how to set up a server using
Linux? Absolutely not.
But I remember for a long time I, you know I first started with
the Bitcoin node. I think I started with my node
then I migrated to noddle and then we were at the conference
for at Bitcoin 2022 or Bitcoin 2023 and you were telling me
about the and it was the pre sale, right?
And then I was like, OK, but can I run Electrum on it?
And you're like, yeah, you can absolutely run Electrum on it.
And it has an I7 and it's the fastest thing you'll ever run.
I was like take my money, Matt and I got the special edition, I
got the the made Xbox and and everything.
Those are cool and I've been running it ever since and it's
amazing. And then when I figured out how
to which is the primary use and we just started using BTC pay
server for simply and we just started kind of exploring all
the other functionalities that it has.
But my my main like motivation behind running it was I wanted
to be able to connect to my Bitcoin wallet remotely anywhere
around the world without having to use someone else's node,
right? I wanted to connect directly to
my node and it was with the start 9 pure that I finally was
able to do that and I and I do it through Tor.
I remember I was told I was like Nikko through Tor, it's not that
fast. That's not true.
Like actually the start 9 pure is faster in what what's it
called indexing. I think that's the that's the
the terminology for it. Yeah, the IBD, the initial block
syncing, yeah the initial the, the the index then then running
and nothing against those. Guys elect Rs.
Yeah yeah nothing against those guys but it's faster than using
a my node to do that and the obvious reason is because of the
hardware right. The start 9 pure that's a it's
an actual computer right. Like you're you're running a an
actual computer with a legit CPU legit RAM and I had such a good
experience. I even Uncle Jim's opti too to
like you know I gave him my my my onion address and whatever
and now he's using it but it's such a like it it it made it
easy for me to benefit from that anywhere and then I travel a lot
anywhere around the world. I can connect to my start nine
node have my stuff synced and not docks my like not docks my
address not docks my balances not docks my IP address and that
was really really refreshing and and I and that's something that
I wanted to do for years but the start nine really made it easy
for me to do that So yeah it kinda goes to what you're saying
about making it easy for the layman.
So other than the fanatical bitcoiners that are worried
about not doxing their Bitcoin addresses, who do you see is the
next potential customer for start?
Nine. Cuz I'm sure that you guys are
you're you're you're. The way that you're looking at
it is beyond just bitcoiners. I think bitcoiners open the door
for sure, but who is your next enthusiast enthusiast that you
guys are thinking that could become potential customers?
Well, let me let me. Rewind a couple of years real
quick just to explain kind of our progression through
different markets and demographics.
So when we set out to build, start OS.
Which again is not a Bitcoin product, right?
It's it's a Linux distribution operating system that just makes
self hosting easier than any other Linux distro.
That's what we do here at the time though.
We're all bitcoiners. So the main thing that we wanted
to self host was our own Bitcoin node and lightning node and you
had just talked a lot about. Bitcoin, but to be honest.
Running a lightning node is even more important than running a
Bitcoin node, right? Like running a Bitcoin node is
is really nice for availability if you like want to perform a
transaction and your remote and you want to verify the the
inbound funds. But you know, no, not many block
explorers are faking transactions.
And you can always run a Bitcoin node on a device that's not on
24/7 and just sync it up every once in a while whenever you
need to use it There's like. It's good to run a Bitcoin node.
We promote it. I run one, you should run one.
But there's not like some critical security or or, you
know, loss of funds risk if if you're not running a Bitcoin
node because your keys are just cold, they're just offline and
the worst case scenario is that you're temporarily.
Having to use somebody else's node to verify a transaction.
That's like the worst case scenario.
If everyone did that, then the worst case scenario would be
that the network is not enforcing consensus rules in a
way that where everyone has a vote, but but running a
lightning note is actually like really, really important.
There's been some things in recent history that have made
people think that running a lightning note is not as
important. So you know LSP integrated
wallets like Phoenix. And Zeus and Zeus is different
because Zeus has optionality to like connect to your own node.
So Zeus is like the the everything wallet and it's our
favorite of all the lightning wallets.
But there's this trend in like Breeze and Zeus and.
Phoenix to be like, Oh no, no no no, you don't have to run a
node. You know, your phone runs a
light node, and the light node connects to our node, and then
our node opens a channel with your light node just in time.
And in case you need to receive funds when you're not online,
the funds will actually be held by our node until you do come
online. And it's like, oh boy, like all
the sudden we are rapidly in the Lightning world introducing
intermediaries, right, Not custodians.
They're not storing the money. But they are your access points
and not in the same way that a Bitcoin node is your access
point. Because I can generate A
transaction and broadcast it through one of any thousand
nodes laying around in the world, I can just broadcast my
transaction through any node and it'll get to the network.
So censorship is really difficult.
But with Lightning, it's not like that.
These are payment channels. So when you have a Phoenix
wallet and somebody sends you money.
And you're like, Oh my God, that was magic.
I didn't even need to have a node.
And the money just arrived and it showed up there.
It's like you're completely beholden to Phoenix at that
point, right? Maybe not forever, but there is
an enormous amount of trust and censorship capabilities there.
And not to mention KYC, even though they're not collecting
information, there is some pretty.
Very simple metadata analysis like IP tracking that can be
done to just see who you are, how much money you have, and
then say yes or no to your ability to send and receive it.
And I don't know if Bitcoiners fully realize how potentially
dangerous this path that we're going down for Lightning is.
We are rapidly making trade off decisions in favor of
convenience over decentralization.
And Start 9 intends to be the counterbalance to that, right?
Like, we want to reiterate like, yeah, for small amounts and
depending on who you are and where you are, this might be
fine for you to use something like Phoenix or the Zeus LSP or
something like that. But long term, we really need
people running Lightning notes, because otherwise the network is
going to be very it's going to have a lot of choke points and a
lot of people are going to end up on the wrong side of of
censorship there, so. Our goal is to make it as easy
as possible to self host and that includes a Bitcoin node,
but it even more so includes a lightning node.
You've got to run your own lightning nodes and connect to
them from your client wallets on your phones and your laptops.
That was a bit of a digression, but I wanted to set the stage
because it says sort of why we started where we started, which
is that Bitcoiners had a need to self host more so than many
demographics in this world, so like.
Yeah, people might say I would prefer to host my files on my
own server, but I'm currently using Google Drive.
But they're just talking, right? They're just saying that like
they don't. They're not actually going to
carve out time on their weekend and like de Google their file
systems, like very few people would.
Maybe some hobbyists, maybe some extremists, but your average
person is just not going to do that.
So while we had a product for them.
There wasn't the immediate fire and desire to to take action,
whereas with bitcoiners we we saw this twofold overlap in
ideology #1 is that the idea of self hosting and taking control
of your data is very much identical to the idea of, you
know, sound money and you know, digital cash.
And you know, this censorship resistant network of of trust
that Bitcoin is, there's this huge overlap and so it's like
it's hard to be a self hosted Linux distro company and not be
a bitcoiner. I believe that there are people
in this world who could pull that off through a degree of
cognitive dissonance, but they really go hand in hand, and so
we. Explicitly went after
bitcoiners, right? Because one, we were and our
bitcoiners. But we also saw that as like a
these people have a need for this and they're going to get it
quickly because they've already gone down a rabbit hole.
They already have the the brain training and mechanism to like,
understand what we're doing. Because I could go and say this
to a lot of people and their eyes would just cross and they'd
be like. I I don't.
Get it? Like I don't understand what
you're saying. Self hosting, decentralization,
but these words have deep meaning to Bitcoiner.
So that's where we started. That is our base.
That is our consumer customer base.
It is our political. Base It is our base of support
and enthusiasm, and we will always cater to our base, right?
Bitcoiners are our core ethos. However, Bitcoiners aren't the
whole world. We hope eventually they will be
and everyone will become one. But in the absence of that
happening overnight, we are trying to make efforts to reach
out to everyone else. You know, like the people who
are sharing photos through Dropbox and the people who are
hosting their passwords on LastPass.
We're just like, how do we convince these people that what
they're doing is super dangerous, unsustainable, and
that there's a better way, a cheaper, faster?
I don't know if it's faster, but it's definitely cheaper and it's
definitely safer and it's getting equally good.
So where we're going is really trying to push into markets like
anarchists, your more hardcore libertarians, your home
homesteaders, and like, you know, home labbers and
hobbyists. This is who we're going after,
People who have a tendency to be a little bit more independent, a
little bit more insulted by the thought of companies and
governments all up in their business.
So we're really trying to go after these people.
But to be honest, we haven't had a lot of success.
Bitcoiners remain the ones who get it.
Bitcoiners remain the front of the movement in the revolution,
and it's just going to take a. While for everyone else to catch
up, I think a hundred 100% and I, I, I and that's something you
know that Opti and I call it this the concept of the of the
Bitcoin echo chamber right. And it's like you know how do
you how do you like yes, the money's broken right?
Or in in the case of start nine like yes you know people are
using someone else's computer to put it simply.
But the the bigger question is how do you break that echo
chamber? How do you get people to care?
Right. And we've had this discussion in
the past when you've come on you believe it's a multi
generational thing. And I and I've Opti and I really
have put a tremendous amount of thought into this and I truly
believe it's about winning over the culture.
Like you have to win over the culture.
If the mainstream culture is not asking questions like should I,
should I be trusting someone else's computer, Should I be,
you know what is money like? Very basic questions.
If that is not in the mainstream consciousness this, this remains
niche in a way. And I think that's a very heavy
lift. I don't think, I don't think
it's something that it's unsurmountable, but it's you
know, it's the challenge at hand in front of us now.
I kind of wanted to double back to something in the beginning of
the conversation that I was curious about.
Right. So you open source your
software. How?
What's your business model as a company?
How do you plan to? How do you guys make money?
It's a good question because it actually plays into the previous
dovetails from the previous conversation which is about
target markets, right. So, so the way we've always made
money from the day we announced ourselves was the day we sold
our first product is that we sell hardware devices.
That are pre installed with start OS plug and play
experiences. You can download start OS from
the Internet from our GitHub. You could even compile it from
source if you want and then flash it to a mini PC, an old
laptop, an old desktop. You could even run it on AVM on
AVPS. Start OS is very flexible, but
most people in this world even bitcoiners.
Want to plug it in? They just want to open a box and
plug it in and know that it worked with assurances, right?
They don't want to just blindly trust everything, but they want
everyone wants convenience. We're all busy, right?
We're all stressed. It's a stressful time in history
and those of us who are fighting are busy and stressed and so we
need a degree of of. Care and convenience.
And So what start Nine has monetized really is convenience.
We say, look, of course you can get this for free, you can do
whatever you want. You don't even have to involve
us. But if you do choose to involve
us, it's not a big fee. It's not like we're gouging on
prices. We're selling plug and play
devices at very reasonable cost that you could get anywhere else
at the same cost. And then you get us as well,
right? Like we're here for you start
Nine has the best support. Whatever.
I don't know of a better company at support than Start 9.
And I'm not just talking about in the Bitcoin space.
I mean, period. We, our average response time to
any and all customer inquiries across all channels over the
last 3 1/2 years is under 10 minutes.
We respond to any and all inquiries on all channels in
under 10 minutes and we solve them.
We drive them to ground and we make people happy.
And that's why our reputation has gotten to where it is today.
We are known for this and we're proud of it and we're going to
scale it. And we can monetize that, right?
That's how most businesses in this world, prior to digital IP,
prior to the whole Facebook SAS boom bullshit, just had to earn
their keep, right? They had to provide a great
product and great service and charge for it.
Of course, people could always, you know, whittle their own
tables and chairs. But they didn't.
They went to a furniture. Store and bought.
One, because they didn't have to.
Do it themselves and spend all the time.
They didn't have to, you know, worry about what happens if a
leg breaks. They can call in the warranty,
right? We sell our devices with a
warranty that's worth something. And so we're really an old
school business. We build a product, we sell it
and then we provide support for it.
We're not rent seeking. We don't gouge you with
subscriptions. We don't lock you in.
It's just good old fashioned business and we will continue to
do that. And we believe that that can be
a very big business that that doesn't need to be something
niche. So more specifically, where
we're going from here is that now that we have Start OS as the
backbone of a new computing paradigm, forget don't even
think about it as just an OS, right Start OS enables a new way
of using computers, namely the elimination.
Of trusted third parties from the entire computing paradigm
where I can do anything. I can talk to anyone, share
files, conduct financial transactions, anything I want,
and there's no terms and conditions.
There's no subscriptions. Nothing is ever stored on
somebody else's server. Nothing is ever viewed by any
person on earth. It's purely a private digital
experience. That's what Start OS enables,
right? It's not Start OS makes that
fully, it's that Start OS was the necessary prerequisite, the
necessary backbone of that kind of a computing paradigm.
So what are people going to want to do with this private digital
existence? You know what, we think the
number one thing that they're going to be excited about and
want to do is hook other devices up to it.
Right. Do you have security cameras in
your home, Nico? Oh, maybe that's the wrong
question. Do you know people who who have
security cameras in their home like nest cameras and drop cams
and stuff? Like that, right?
Yeah, of course. The, the, the temperature thing,
the, you know, the camera the. And the doorbells and stuff,
right, 100%. These are awesome products, OK?
And these are the future of humanity, right?
Everything is gonna be smart. Everything should be smart.
Like, that's a good thing. I want a connected world.
It's a smarter, more convenient connected world.
It's a leverage on productivity. I can do more in that world than
I can do in the ancient analogue world.
Doesn't mean you have to. It just means that you can,
right? It's leverage on your own
productivity. However, I don't use a lot of
IoT devices, right? I had an Alexa for like a month
and then I put it in a box, right?
Never to be seen again. Because there was this ominous
presence about it. There's this really insidious
dark aura around these devices, and it's no different than using
software through somebody else's server.
In essence, it's no different, but it feels different.
Because it's brought into the physical world, OK?
It's like out of sight is out of mind.
When you text message your friends or you have a video chat
with your friends, you don't really feel the presence of
Zoom, of Telegram. You don't actually kind of,
like, feel like an employee is sitting between you and your
friend, right? The analog that I like to bring
up for this is like, let's pretend that you're sitting in
your home. And instead of talking to me, so
like you and I are sitting in your home, we're having a beer
and we're talking. But instead of talking to each
other, we're passing messages to a Telegram employee who's
sitting between us, like, literally on the couch between
US. And I say, hey, tell Nico I said
what's up, and then he tells you right?
And then you tell him to tell me hi back.
The the absurdity of that would be immediately apparent.
And not only is it absurd, it's incredibly undignified, right?
It is like, I want to, like, punch this person in the face,
like get out of my living room. I'm trying to talk to Nico, OK?
And that is what these smart devices do, is it makes us
realize for the first time most people, for the first time, that
this is how all of our computing interactions are, is that
there's this device between me and the thing I'm trying to do,
and this device comes at a monthly subscription.
It cost me money. If I don't pay it, I suddenly
can't view. I can't store video footage of
my home anymore. They can turn off my camera.
They can watch me anytime they want to.
Fucking live video feed. And if some employee at Google
can just watch me in my home, OK, it's like, it's incredibly
undignified and it's never going to happen.
Like, my view of this is that they're just barking up the
wrong tree. That this is the largest mistake
in the history of technological innovation in the last 50 years
at least, is that we had a big oopsie moment as a species over
the last 20 years by migrating all of computing infrastructure
to centralized cloud data farms. It is one of, in retrospect,
history is going to view this as a like facepalm.
What the fuck were those ancient humans thinking when they
thought that that was actually going to work?
It was invasion of privacy, mass surveillance, censorship, high
cost, third counterparty hacks, and on top of that, it's just
completely undignified. It's embarrassing to communicate
and operate like children in a room where parents have to give
you permission to say and do everything that you want.
It's ridiculous. And so with that in mind, that
is our essential thesis as a company is that this is dumb,
that SAS is dumb, that third party cloud IoT is dumb, and
that there's a completely better model.
And So what we are going to do is ultimately we're going to be
selling devices that are not servers, right?
Next year you'll be able to buy a Start 9 router, You'll be able
to buy a Start Nine security camera, and these devices will
be yours, completely and utterly yours.
You will plug them in, tap a couple of buttons, and then
you'll be able to go anywhere in the world and watch live video
footage of your home from your cell phone in such a way that
not only can nobody see the video footage or censor it, but
nobody even knows that it exists, right?
We're talking about a completely private, smart fleet of devices
that are connected over a private, anonymous network
globally. And even if somebody doesn't
understand how that you know pie is baked or why it's super
important, our basic normie consumer hypothesis is as
follows. In hand a You can get a camera
from Google that will cost you, I don't know, $100, and it'll
cost you 20 or $30.00 a month forever.
All the video footage will be stored on Google servers.
They can look at your home anytime they want.
They can cut you off anytime they want.
It's not protected by any sort of 4th Amendment rights.
The illegal searches and seizures means any government
official can walk into Google and just request access to that
video footage. And if Google servers ever get
hacked, that video footage is going to be all over the world.
So that's option A. Option B is instead of $100 for
the camera, you're going to pay more.
You're going to pay maybe $300.00 for the camera, but
it'll never cost you another cent again.
It's free for life. There's no subscriptions.
All the video footage is stored automatically on a server in
your home that you control. You access the video footage
privately, from anywhere in the world without asking permission
from anyone. And we just think that this is a
better option, especially especially if there are
financing options. Because again, the reason Amazon
is able to sell Alexa's for like $20 and the reason Google is
able to sell Nest cameras for $50, it's because they're losing
money on that sale and locking you in to a rent seeking
subscription model. So if you don't want that and
you don't want the invasion of privacy and the censorship and
all the rest that comes with it, people are going to have to get
used to this idea of owning things again, right?
The the Google thing is the you'll own nothing and be happy.
And the the start nine thing is, well, you'll own everything and
you'll. I don't actually.
I need to finish that analogy you'll.
Actually, be happy, yeah, you'll you'll be free and independent.
You'll actually be happy though. Happiness.
You'll be free and independent. Free and independent.
I love that. OK, so wow, so much to unpack
there. Love the analogy.
And then I think what you're referring to is IoT, right?
The Internet of Things, correct? Anything that's connectable.
That includes like a smart watch, for example, as well.
Wearables are going to be huge, man.
Can you imagine? So my dream device here, my like
dream thing, and I've said this for many years even before start
nine, was an idea is I want my body like wired up, like like
discreetly. Obviously I don't want to be
walking around with like things connected to my head because it
might look odd. But like I want to know
everything about myself. Like I want I want sensors, like
collecting like brain wave activity and heart rate and
blood sugar and and I want all that data to then be interpreted
by some super smart algorithm and AI and categorized.
And I want it to look for correlations.
I want to be told things that were unimaginable like hey Matt
Ding Ding Ding Correlation found Did you know that every single
time you eat a banana and miss two hour and and get less than 8
hours of sleep for three days in a row, your blood sugar rises
causing you to feel a certain way?
You are bearing the lead, my friend.
OK, and this is what you're bearing.
This is what you're bearing. So right now, the reason that
that sounds freaky to everyone, yes, is because you are sending
that data to someone else. Yes.
But what if you don't? What if you remove that element
all together and you are the sole owner of that data, then
All of? All of a sudden that seems
personally, that sounds alluring to me because it's like, oh,
it's telling me my vitals. It's telling me my health.
I'm the owner of that, let's say, for whatever reason, you
know, I'm paranoid and I'm on a trip and I wanna look to see,
oh, is someone in my living room, for example, Right.
Instead of, you know, asking Jeff Bezos is someone in my
living room. And I'm making a joke, of
course. You know you'd be going through
your own computer. Now when you mentioned that,
Matt, is that possible through Tor live streaming video or is
this something that would have to be done over clear Net?
Clear net, OK, yeah, it's Clear net or alternative networking
protocols, right. So Tor is Tor.
It's not just Tor and clear Net. There's ways to connect
computers in this world besides those two, and there will be a
third right in the future. With the, you know,
proliferation of home servers and home you know, routers that
are specifically designed for it, you can in time build out
grassroots and mesh networks that will connect to each other
over over distance via satellites and towers and
literally build the new Internet from the ground up without the
IS PS right. The IS PS are the final
gatekeepers. They're the final boss today.
They control all access to the Internet.
And it's OK right now because we have ways of leveraging the IS
PS and their infrastructure to conduct private and anonymous
communications. But if you assume that the
attacks will escalate, right, that this war will escalate in
nature, you could imagine a future where ISP S start to get
a little bit more aggressive about what kind of Internet
traffic they permit, what kind of home routers.
You're already seeing a trend with ISP S right now where they
don't require you to use their modem and router, but they
almost require you to, right? Like when when you set up a new
Internet connection at your home, they present their modem
Router Tandem product as like Oh yeah, here you go, Plug this in
like it's the default, you know, like just plug this in, Which is
incredibly dangerous, right? When you are using your IS PS
Modem Router Tandem product. They literally just have access
to your local area network. Like your your entire home is
exposed to them. So you really do need to use
aftermarket modems. And for fiber connections you
need to use an aftermarket router.
And we have very strong opinions on what kind of routers you
should be using, especially not only for security purposes, but
also for compatibility purposes with start OS.
Start OS is very much moving in the router direction.
Not that start OS will be a router operating system, but
that start OS will be aware of routers and be able to configure
them and change their settings in order to facilitate network
communications without the user having to be an advanced user,
right as we have always done like that's.
Our goal is to do advanced things in the non advanced way
and the router is a centerpiece of that when it comes to
networking. So anyway, I don't even know
what question you asked. I don't know, man, but I'm
enjoying the fuck out of this conversation.
Look, so, OK, so this is really, really exciting stuff.
The way that you broke down, we talked about IOTSI think that's
fascinating. It makes them actually alluring
to use, right? Because the way that you
described it, right, which is, you know, once we use Telegram.
You know, you don't really think about the fact that it's not
you, it's it's not really me to Matt, it's me, Telegram server
Matt, right. And anything that happens in
between, you have to take their word for it that it's end to end
encrypted. Really.
Even Even if it is though, let's say it is end to end encrypted,
OK, like let's give them all the benefits of the doubt.
It's still intermediated. The amount of metadata analysis
that can be done is would shock people.
OK, like, they might not be able to see the exact contents of the
message, but they know who you're talking to when you're
talking to them, how often you talk.
They can compose social graphs based on that information.
They can see the length of the message that you sent, even if
they can't see its contents. And a lot of inference can be
done there. Combined with other data
collection of the phone, like location data, they can detect
if, you know, I sent a message and then I left my home and then
we both went to the same place. So now that message can be
inferred to be like, hey, meet me here, like there's just it's
awful, just you gotta exclude intermediaries you have we have
to eliminate third parties from the computing paradigm.
That is the goal. Sorry I interrupted you.
Go ahead. No, no, no.
This is this is fascinating. My mind is is being blown right
now. OK, so this world sounds very
exciting. It actually makes me wanna have
a sovereign Alexa. Are we are we are we gonna call
it a a a mat? What are we gonna call it?
What's gonna be the the equivalent of of an Alexa?
He's gonna he's gonna kill me. So my partner at start nine you
know one of the Co founders his name is Aiden and that just so
happens to on a on a on a walk. I went on a walk, and by the
time that walk was over, without any intention, I had realized
that Aiden could be an acronym for Artificial Intelligence for
Distributed Electronic Networks, and he hates it.
He does not want it to be named Aiden, but I have the trump card
at this company and we'll probably name it Aiden.
AIDAIDEN Artificial Intelligence for Distributed Electronic
Networks will probably be the virtual assistant of the Start
OS. OK, so you know how they have
different, different accent models for, you know, the AI.
If you need a Miami accent version, consider the name Nico.
It's a great name. OK, yeah, I mean, you should be
able to rename it anything that you want, right?
Like this is just the default name and you should be able to
give it any voice that you want, right?
Again with the AI voice stuff, it's crazy like your your AI
could be Morgan Freeman if you want it to be.
Oh man, that's hilarious. That's hilarious.
OK, so we are getting at the top of the hour and I do want to get
to this question by one of our viewers, Andrew Saman, said.
Matt, can you explain your vision for what Start 9?
OS will look like in five years, how do you see people
interfacing with their personal server across devices?
I mean, we covered a lot of this just now, but what is the next
five years in your eyes in regards to start nine and the
sovereign computing movement in general?
OK, yeah, so we started with the server.
OK, We started with the the the elephant in the room was that in
order to have a sovereign computing paradigm, everyone
needs to be running a server. And maybe not everyone, but at
least every family, every organization, right?
Like every tiny group of trusted people need to have at least one
server. Ideally, every human on the
planet has a server, but that'll probably never happen.
There's going to be some degree of of shared resources and Uncle
Jim models, but we started with the idea that everyone needs a
server. And what was stopping everyone
from running a server was that there was no operating system to
administer a server. Nobody knew how to run a server.
There was no way to run a server unless you had sys admin skills
and command line skills. So that was the first problem
that we saw was, OK, we've got to get, we've got to make it
possible for people to run servers.
Step 2 is how do you access those servers, right.
So you're on the other side of the world.
How do you talk to your server? Well, we started with the
easiest and obvious one, which was Tor.
Tor is a way to communicate across any distance, privately,
anonymously, and happily without having to do any sort of router
configurations. Tor has Nat punching right, Nat
traversal, the ability to get through a local network firewall
built in, and it has that built in because the connections are
actually going out, not in. OK.
So Tor has two outbound TCP connections that are
rendezvousing. That's probably a little more
technical than we need right now, but this idea of
communicating with your server. So first we make it possible to
run a server. Then we make it possible and
easy to access that server from anywhere in the world.
Again, we did that with Tor in O4-O which is the huge update
that's coming soon is you will be able to have very very simple
VPN access from anywhere in the world.
You will also be able to access your server over clear net.
Now this is the the sort of home run for families and businesses
in many cases because it's the exact experience that they
currently have with computers. They just go to a browser and
they open a domain like their domain.
It would be like chat dot Matt hill dot dev and that would be
my self hosted chat server that my friends could join and we
could have conversations and there's no more Telegram,
there's no more signal, there's no more, you know, there's no
more WhatsApp, nothing And it's just like a normal website
chat.matthill.com. And you could even get native
apps for your iOS and Android device that connect to
chat.matthill.com and and we could all have private
conversations and that's what's coming very soon.
So we've largely solved the can you run a server?
The answer is yes. Can you use that server
effectively, seamlessly from anywhere in the world?
The answer is almost. It's pretty good right now, but
it's about to get a lot better. And along with that is the idea
of data redundancy, right. So one of the other lacking
aspects of Start OS right now is that in order to make a backup
of all your data, because when you self host, it's really
really really important to make backups because if you don't
then your shit is just gone forever.
Uh, in order to make a backup on start OS today, you actually
have to click a button. You have to go in there and you
have to click backup. And because of that people don't
do it. Like as crazy as that sounds,
it's just an extremely rare thing for people to backup their
server because they have to log in and click A and click a
button. So also coming with O4-O is the
ability to do automatic backups that will happen in the
background without you having to worry about it and they'll back
up to any remote location that you choose on any and any
frequency that you choose including.
And this is where it gets really interesting, is other start OS
servers. So you will be able to in the
near future have a start OS server in your home and a start
OS server at your friend's house.
And you could put servers in a couple strategic locations and
they can actually work together to make sure that all the data
is is copied, backed up. And they could even step in to
pick up the to pick up the slack.
If another server is like offline because the Internet in
that house went offline or something like that, the other
servers could pick up the slack so that you don't experience
downtime. Somebody in the chat right now,
just because it's very relevant, is asking about RAID.
So RAID is a way of of sort of automatically creating redundant
redundancy for data across multiple drives, but it's all in
the same server, so you still have this locality risk of like
if that house burns down, right? RAID is is designed for drive
failure, so if my SSD fails, then that data is also mirrored
onto this other SSD or even two or three more SSDs.
But it's all still there. What I'm talking about is actual
encrypted backups being sent over geographic distances, which
is different. Both are great, so you can
already do hardware RAID on start OS.
So if you have a hardware RAID set up, you can actually make
that your data drive for start OS that's already supported.
Software RAID is a little bit of a different concept and that
will be supported as well probably next year.
So RAID is coming, but also so is automatic encrypted backups
to different servers. That's badass.
So you like, just in case, you know, Opti's ex girlfriends.
Christine Lagarde sends a hit team to my house to get rid of
all of her and Opti's pictures. With this, you know she's not
gonna be able to get rid of them.
So, wow, this was like always, Matt.
This is why I keep fighting you on the show.
This absolutely blew my mind. Should we go through and use the
last couple of minutes to talk about the three products that
you guys offer? Which is the server Lite, the
server one, and the one that I personally use.
And I highly recommend the server peer, yeah.
So there's there's some very, very new things on on that front
that I'll share right now and make an announcement on your
show why not. So we are going to be dropping
the Server Lite as a as a product.
The Server Light is the Raspberry Pi.
The Raspberry Pi is just gradually being obsoleted.
At this point. It's being rapidly obsoleted.
Yes, you can still use a Raspberry Pi for certain things
like file storage or messaging, but we highly, highly recommend
against it for anything Bitcoin related at this point.
It just cannot keep up. You're going to have a bad time.
And because you know, people want to use it for Bitcoin, it's
like they're trying. Even though we're saying not to,
they're still buying it and trying.
And so we're like, all right, we're just going to stop selling
it because people are getting themselves in trouble and then
they're getting angry at us being like, why doesn't this
work for Bitcoin? We're like, we told you it
wouldn't work for Bitcoin, but you bought it anyway thinking it
would. You didn't read the description.
So we're just going to stop selling it.
So we're done with the light. We will liquidate our our
Raspberry Pi's on Amazon or eBay or whatever.
So we're we're done, We're not going to sell any more of those
probably starting immediately maybe tonight or tomorrow.
Secondly the the one is our sort of like mid tier device,
perfectly adequate for any individual or small family.
It's going to run Bitcoin, it's going to run Lightning, It's got
1-2 or four terabytes of storage, 16 gigs of RAM, it's a
perfectly fine computer, solid device for a lot of people.
The Pure is what you mentioned earlier, which is our top end
device has a very strong CPU. It's not as strong as it was two
years ago when we first specced the device out.
There's chips are, you know, changing constantly and
advancing constantly, but it's got a pretty good CPU.
It's got 32 gigs of RAM, which is pretty good.
It's, you know, AI stuff is going to need even more at some
point. But for Bitcoin and Lightning,
32 gigs of RAM is just going to crush for you.
I think current syncing times are anywhere like 16 hours to
sync the full archival node from Genesis, which is pretty badass
on a pier. And the biggest selling point of
the pier is that it has an open firmware stack, and this is
super rare and very difficult to achieve.
The Server pier runs Core Boot, which means that all proprietary
firmware, closed source firmware has been removed from the device
and that the hardware on the device is capable of running
open source firmware that has been vetted by communities and
is open and therefore provably safe.
And then secondly in the pure Intel's Management Engine, which
is Intel's like known backdoor into their chips is disabled in
firmware. So there is at least no known
back door in the server pier. Where is pretty much every other
computer on the planet, including our server one, has a
known back door in it. It doesn't mean that that back
door is being used to spy on you all the time.
It just means that, like, we don't know what's going on under
there. There's closed source code that
could be doing all sorts of shit that we don't like.
So the server pier is not only big and powerful, it's also
very, very safe for privacy and security.
Which is what a lot of our customers care about.
The last thing I'll say is we're about to launch a new product
line to replace the light. We're very excited about this.
We have cut deals with local E recycler companies, OK,
companies that take electronic scrap in.
And a lot of the times these companies get called into like a
bank. And the bank is like, all right,
we're upgrading all of our servers.
And they do this like every two years, right?
And like, we're upgrading all of our servers and we don't care
about the old ones because we throw money away like crazy and
we don't give a shit. So they just hand it to a
recycler. And then these recyclers are
like, well, OK, well, what do we do with these?
Sometimes they take them apart and they take the chips out and
they do whatever. Well, we've got some deals with
them where we're like if you come across across a batch of
servers that have basically been given to you, you tell us we'll
buy them from you at a very cheap price and then pass that
price and savings along to our own customers.
So these are not new devices. They are repurposed reused
devices. So we're probably going to call
it the server restart or something like that and sell
those and they're going to be extremely affordable, like
cheaper than significantly cheaper than the one, but
probably more powerful. Than the one the trade off is
that they are used, but we we're going to run a, you know a
battery of tests against them to make sure that they're working
and we'll warranty him just like we do everything else.
But it's a used device, but you get a ton of power for a very
cheap ticket. That's awesome.
That's very, very cool. Matt.
Can I tell him about the deal? Yeah, please.
OK guys, there's a deal on the on the server pure.
It went from just the pure. It went from 1429 and now it's
down to 1279. And now through Thanksgiving you
could use promo code Simply Bitcoin Plus and it'll give you
an additional 18% off. And now that puts the server
pier at 1049 dollars. I highly, highly recommend it.
It is. I've been using it.
I mean. Matt sold me at the conference
floor Bitcoin 2022 and I was like the the meme, the Futurama
meme. Or was it a South Park?
I was like, just take my money and I put a down payment on it
and I haven't looked back. I've had a great, great
experience using it. That's what I personally would
recommend. Matt, we appreciate you, Nico.
Always a pleasure having you on the show.
I literally have a box of Start Nine shirts at my house.
I think from the Thank God for Bitcoin conference, maybe with
your permission maybe we start sending those out to some.
I got a bunch back there. Oh, there we go.
I think I have more than you. Well, it's it's a very big box.
How do you manage that? It was just left there.
And they're like, Nico, do you
like, you know, Matt, why don't you take it?
I'm like, OK, I'll take it. And it's just been sitting in
the corner. Give now, man do giveaways.
OK. OK, so we're gonna we're gonna
be doing some Start 9 giveaway with with Matt's permission,
Matt. Always an honor.
And you always blow my mind when you come on the show.
Opti's been losing his mind as well in the chat.
Opti. Cyborg.
I think I I read there. Oh, man.
Sovereign Cyborg. Opti.
All right. It's different.
It's coming. It's coming anyways.
Matt, thank you so much for joining us.
I really really appreciate it. See you.
All right guys, I'm going to wrap up the show TuneIn
tomorrow, 12:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, for another
episode of Simply Bitcoin Live. I'm going to be travelling to
Los Angeles, so Opti is going to be holding it down until then.
I'll see you later guys.