1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:01,800
It's not just bigger than 
Ethereum, it's not just bigger 

2
00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:03,920
than Solana, it's bigger than 
all of them combined. 

3
00:00:03,920 --> 00:00:06,240
And if D Phi could ever be a 
lock there, this would be the 

4
00:00:06,240 --> 00:00:08,920
biggest opportunity ever to 
exist in crypto. 

5
00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:12,200
There's a really big proposal 
called OP Cat that's gotten a 

6
00:00:12,200 --> 00:00:15,360
lot of momentum, the Bitcoin 
community in the block size 

7
00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:17,520
wars. 
What we all agreed on was that 

8
00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:19,720
Bitcoin was going to scale in 
layers. 

9
00:00:20,080 --> 00:00:23,280
If that happens, we need to 
allow for trustless bridging in 

10
00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:26,600
a much more rigorous 
architecture of these L twos 

11
00:00:26,600 --> 00:00:29,840
connected to Bitcoins L1 and 
right now we don't have that. 

12
00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:32,880
You basically have to convince 
everyone to change their node 

13
00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:35,560
software to run your version of 
Bitcoin. 

14
00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:38,400
And so, you know, different 
proposals. 

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00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:40,640
Hard forks are extremely 
difficult and Bitcoin doesn't 

16
00:00:40,640 --> 00:00:42,640
upgrade through hard forks and 
upgrades through soft forks. 

17
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This cycle, that's what we'll 
see, which 10% is still enormous

18
00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:51,360
and by the next cycle then we 
eclipse Ethereum TBL in terms of

19
00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:52,840
as a percentage of our market 
cap. 

20
00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:10,520
If you're looking to stake your 
crypto with confidence, look no 

21
00:01:10,520 --> 00:01:14,400
further than Course one. 
More than 150,000 delegators, 

22
00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:17,520
including institutions like Bit 
Go, Pantera Capital and Ledger 

23
00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:19,040
Trust Course One with the 
assets. 

24
00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:21,840
They support over 50 block 
chains and are leaders in 

25
00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:25,040
governance or networks like 
Cosmos, ensuring your stake is 

26
00:01:25,040 --> 00:01:28,000
responsibly managed. 
Thanks to the advanced MEV 

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00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:30,840
research, you can also enjoy the
highest staking rewards. 

28
00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:34,320
You can stake directly from your
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label node, restake your assets 
on Eigenia or Symbiotic, or use 

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the SDK for multi chain staking 
in your app. 

31
00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:44,000
Learn more at Chorus .1 and 
start staking today. 

32
00:01:45,680 --> 00:01:48,880
This episode is proudly brought 
to you by Gnosis, a collective 

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dedicated to advancing a 
decentralized future. 

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Start your decentralization 
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49
00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:46,640
Welcome to Epsom of the show, 
which talks about the 

50
00:02:46,640 --> 00:02:49,280
technologies, projects and 
people driving decentralization 

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00:02:49,280 --> 00:02:53,000
and the blocs and revolution. 
I'm today with Dan Held, who's 

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the general partner at 
Asymmetric, which is a new 

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Bitcoin focus fund, and he's 
been in the space for a very 

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long time. 
I've also known Dan for a very 

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long time and I'm sure many of 
you will know him because I 

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think he's certainly one of the 
biggest, maybe the biggest sort 

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of, you know, influencer, 
communicator, educator around 

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Bitcoin. 
So really excited to have Dan 

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00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:20,840
on. 
Cool. 

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Well, thanks so much for coming 
on Dan. 

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It's actually, this is like way 
overdue. 

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I think we I think we've talked 
a bunch of times about having 

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your own epicenter. 
So yeah, I'm glad it finally 

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happens and that you're coming 
on. 

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I. 
Appreciate the invite. 

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Let's start at the beginning. 
How did you get into crypto? 

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Yeah, so back in 2011, my buddy 
paid. 

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I was in Dallas, TX and my my 
friend was an engineer and he 

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paid me back for a beer and a 
cassetius coin, you know, those 

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physical gold coins. 
And of course, the first thing I

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do is I figure out how to try to
sell it. 

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You know, everyone back then, I 
think you know, so it was so 

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new. 
There was almost no content out 

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00:04:06,120 --> 00:04:09,440
there to describe how Bitcoin 
worked or how it functioned. 

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It was basically just a bunch of
very developer focused folks. 

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So he paid me back for a beer 
through that started to look 

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into it a little bit and saw 
that Silk Road was AI think good

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testament to the resiliency of 
Bitcoin as a currency where I'm 

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like, I don't know how this 
thing works, but if the 

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government can't shut down this 
payment method, that's something

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powerful. 
That's something, you know, that

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has, I was for me, I, I was a 
libertarian. 

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So this sort of message 
resonated with me. 

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And so in seeing the resiliency 
of Silk Road that encouraged me 

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further to explore. 
I found out about the 21 million

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hard cap. 
And for me, that was the, I 

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think kind of the Holy Grail 
moment of this is a breakthrough

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00:04:54,120 --> 00:04:57,480
of monetary policy. 
For me, that's the most 

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00:04:57,480 --> 00:04:59,480
important thing here. 
It's the credibility of the 

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00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:02,640
monetary policy of being the 
best sound money in the world of

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being a goal 2 point O. 
And that really is what kind of 

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00:05:05,760 --> 00:05:07,520
kind of woke me up to the 
opportunity. 

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00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:11,440
And so 2012 and 2013 is when I 
started to really accumulate. 

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00:05:12,680 --> 00:05:15,680
And then in 2013, I built my 
first product in the crypto 

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00:05:15,680 --> 00:05:20,680
space. 
So are you interested in kind of

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00:05:21,200 --> 00:05:26,840
central bank money, gold, things
like that before Bitcoin or was 

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it sort of Bitcoin that got into
got into this? 

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00:05:30,880 --> 00:05:34,560
Yeah, good question. 
So I was studying finance during

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the 2008 financial crisis. 
That moment definitely 

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radicalized me as I realized the
central banks were wrong, the 

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government was wrong, and all 
the banks were, you know, every 

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00:05:44,440 --> 00:05:46,440
bank noticed at central banks, 
but all the banks were wrong. 

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So for me, that was kind of like
a radicalization moment, as I 

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put it. 
And I was looking for 

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00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:56,400
alternatives and that's where 
like gold was an alternative. 

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And hearing about Bitcoin a 
little bit later, that's what 

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really resonated for me as like 
this is the this is the solution

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00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:05,320
to our problem of trust with our
money. 

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And then you said you started 
the company. 

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What was the company you 
started? 

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Actually I I remember I remember
being a user of of your app so. 

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You're definitely OG if you 
remember 0 block, which is the 

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the company I built. 
So there's an app that was a 

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black and white color scheme, 
really slick. 

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00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:30,880
It was real time market data, 
news feeds and charts, which no 

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00:06:30,880 --> 00:06:33,640
mobile app tracking bitcoins 
price had that at the at the 

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00:06:33,640 --> 00:06:36,200
time doesn't sound that 
revolutionary because we've had 

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a lot more builders come in and 
build great mobile products. 

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But at that time it was is quite
rare. 

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We ranked number one for the 
keyword Bitcoin in the App 

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Store, which I figured out how 
to hack the App Store ranking 

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algorithm to get us there. 
Granted, it doesn't matter if 

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you ranked number one if you're 
not the most relevant and good 

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00:06:53,640 --> 00:06:56,720
product for people to download. 
But that was our kind of growth 

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hacking strategy. 
And that launched my career in 

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marketing in tech because 
through figuring that out, that 

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00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:05,880
was my specialization was SEO 
and conversion rate 

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optimization. 
So in finding users for the 

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first app I built, I learned 
that I'm a good marketer. 

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I'm a good user acquisition. 
That is very interesting because

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yeah, I think today, right, I 
guess you're especially known, I

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think as I mean among other 
things, but also as a marketer 

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right now as a really brilliant 
marketer in Big on End. 

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00:07:27,720 --> 00:07:30,120
And you also worked on that 
right later at Kraken and stuff.

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00:07:30,640 --> 00:07:35,600
But that was really you sort of 
developed the skills just in 

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00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:38,920
marketing your own product and. 
Yeah, we, we tried a lot of 

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00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:41,080
different things. 
So 1, you know, I, I went to the

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San Jose Bitcoin conference in 
2013 and I went around and, and 

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00:07:45,400 --> 00:07:48,240
met as many people as I could. 
And I said, what, what app do 

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00:07:48,240 --> 00:07:50,040
you use to check the price of 
Bitcoin on your phone? 

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00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:51,840
And they'd show me. 
And I'm like, well, I built this

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00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:52,600
one. 
It's free. 

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00:07:52,600 --> 00:07:55,000
It's better. 
So that doesn't scale though. 

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I think I got like 100 users 
through that method. 

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00:07:58,240 --> 00:08:01,600
I tried all sorts of other 
methods as well. 

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00:08:01,640 --> 00:08:03,880
And what we landed, you know, we
got press. 

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00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:06,120
I was in Wired, Wall Street 
Journal, Forbes, Fortune. 

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00:08:06,120 --> 00:08:07,480
That didn't move the needle 
either. 

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00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:12,240
We didn't have time to do SEO 
and and we didn't have really 

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00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:14,320
any resources at all as me and 
my Co founder. 

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00:08:14,760 --> 00:08:18,720
So App Store search was a really
lucrative channel and that's 

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00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:21,240
where a lot of people found apps
that they wanted to go download.

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00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:25,680
So, and being obsessed with that
Channel, with being obsessed 

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00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:28,440
with how the App Store worked, I
figured out flaws in the, in the

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00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:32,280
algorithm where I was able to 
game that and get our app ranked

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00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:34,880
very highly for the ranked 
number one for the keyword 

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00:08:34,880 --> 00:08:38,840
Bitcoin, which it wasn't rocket 
science, but you had to go 

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00:08:38,840 --> 00:08:41,120
experiment and you had to try 
your luck and you had to be 

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00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:45,160
really obsessed over it to go 
find that, that, you know, sort 

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00:08:45,160 --> 00:08:50,120
of hacker mentality, I think is 
really fun for me to find little

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00:08:50,120 --> 00:08:53,240
things that are, are, are ways I
can have an advantage versus 

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00:08:54,200 --> 00:08:56,520
versus other channels. 
I, I also applied that with my 

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00:08:56,520 --> 00:09:01,000
own personal brand as well. 
My, you know, I, I, I had 

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00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:05,600
written a series of, of long 
form pieces of content and if 

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00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:08,240
you write it and no one reads it
does, it doesn't really matter. 

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00:09:08,240 --> 00:09:09,920
And I had to go get that content
out there. 

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00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:13,000
This is in 2019. 
This is the development of my 

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00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:16,240
personal brand. 
In trying to find out how to 

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00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:18,600
distribute my content or get in 
front of more eyeballs, I had to

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00:09:18,600 --> 00:09:20,280
figure out how to build a social
media presence. 

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00:09:21,240 --> 00:09:26,200
It wasn't entirely by chance 
that I'd built on my audience. 

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00:09:26,360 --> 00:09:31,480
There are formulaic and 
calculate calculated ways to 

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00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:33,920
build an audience where I could 
definitely do it again in like 

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00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:38,160
another category. 
But it's it's it's a marketing 

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00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:41,840
skill in in conjunction with the
message you want to deliver. 

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00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:45,360
But how to leverage your content
on social media is a whole 

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00:09:45,360 --> 00:09:47,960
different skill. 
But anyways, yeah. 

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00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:52,120
I'm actually maybe just briefly,
yeah, I mean, we're not going to

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00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:55,480
go into like a lot of details 
there, but I'm curious, what are

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00:09:55,480 --> 00:09:58,520
the for people who are 
interested in this, right And 

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00:09:58,520 --> 00:10:03,280
they want to kind of amplify 
their own their own reach, what 

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00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:08,160
are some of the best simplest 
tapes or lessons? 

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00:10:08,560 --> 00:10:11,960
I'll tell you the secret, but no
one who listened to who listens 

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00:10:11,960 --> 00:10:17,680
to this is going to do it. 
You have to post every single 

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00:10:17,720 --> 00:10:20,880
day and never, ever miss your 
dog dies. 

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00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:22,920
You got to post. 
Have a bad day, You got a 

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00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:28,040
hangover, you got to post. 
That is the number one factor of

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00:10:28,040 --> 00:10:30,240
success. 
And it sounds easy, right? 

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00:10:30,240 --> 00:10:32,840
You're like, tweet a day. 
I can do that. 

190
00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:36,800
Try doing it for seven years. 
It's, it's not that easy. 

191
00:10:36,840 --> 00:10:40,720
And the reason why that's 
important is that the engagement

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00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:43,760
algorithm, what it does is, you 
know, 99% of people are 

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00:10:43,760 --> 00:10:46,880
consumers of content, 1% of 
folks produce content. 

194
00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:49,720
So the algorithm for the 
consumers of content, when they 

195
00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:53,400
session in the app, say it's 
Twitter, the, the algorithm has 

196
00:10:53,400 --> 00:10:56,600
to go fetch content that they 
think this person will like to 

197
00:10:56,600 --> 00:11:01,800
read or, or digest. 
And if they like it, they'll 

198
00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:03,280
stick around and keep doom 
scrolling. 

199
00:11:03,400 --> 00:11:04,840
That's what we all do on social,
right? 

200
00:11:04,960 --> 00:11:07,440
So how does it pick which 
content to show you first? 

201
00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:09,760
Well, the only way to pick 
content to show you first is 

202
00:11:09,760 --> 00:11:12,880
content that from content 
creators that you've previously 

203
00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:15,480
engaged with. 
So if you've liked a Dan 

204
00:11:15,480 --> 00:11:18,640
Helltweet the last 15 days in a 
row, if the algorithm's like, 

205
00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:21,080
let's give him a Dan Helltweet, 
he's probably like that. 

206
00:11:21,720 --> 00:11:24,920
And so that's how that sticky 
habit gets built with you and 

207
00:11:24,920 --> 00:11:26,920
your audience. 
And if you're not there, if your

208
00:11:26,920 --> 00:11:29,440
content isn't there that day, it
has to go find someone else. 

209
00:11:30,080 --> 00:11:31,760
And that's where you lose that 
engagement loop. 

210
00:11:32,960 --> 00:11:36,040
Posting in the morning, your 
audience is awake. 

211
00:11:36,480 --> 00:11:38,200
There's so many times where I 
see people tweet out at like 

212
00:11:38,200 --> 00:11:40,240
10:00 PM, you know, like US 
time. 

213
00:11:40,840 --> 00:11:43,200
And I'm like, cool. 
Well, maybe like a fraction of 

214
00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:45,720
your audience is awake. 
So the chance of this going and,

215
00:11:45,800 --> 00:11:48,440
and gaining traction and going 
viral's like almost zero. 

216
00:11:49,040 --> 00:11:51,480
Now, of course, if it's timely 
or topical, sometimes you have 

217
00:11:51,480 --> 00:11:53,280
to. 
But posting in the morning gives

218
00:11:53,280 --> 00:11:55,600
it the greatest shot to get the 
most engagement possible. 

219
00:11:57,320 --> 00:11:59,560
And then, you know, I think a 
lot of this isn't rocket 

220
00:11:59,560 --> 00:12:01,840
science. 
It's create content that people 

221
00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:04,640
want to consume. 
I think a lot of people get 

222
00:12:05,360 --> 00:12:10,840
really stuck on like producing 
incredibly high quality content 

223
00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:14,360
or content they think is good. 
And all that really matters is 

224
00:12:14,360 --> 00:12:17,480
what your audience wants. 
What content does your audience 

225
00:12:17,480 --> 00:12:19,080
want? 
And if you want to do it to such

226
00:12:19,080 --> 00:12:21,160
a degree that it dilutes your 
message or you're not posting 

227
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what you believe in, but at the 
same time you should be humble 

228
00:12:24,120 --> 00:12:27,080
enough to be like, OK, maybe my 
joke wasn't as funny as I 

229
00:12:27,080 --> 00:12:29,320
thought. 
You know what I mean? 

230
00:12:30,240 --> 00:12:37,400
So, yeah, that's where I feel 
like there's, yeah, a lot of 

231
00:12:37,400 --> 00:12:40,000
people approach it with their 
own subjective version of what 

232
00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,360
they think the market might want
versus versus like what their 

233
00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:47,160
audience will like. 
Great. 

234
00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:48,720
So basically I, I love it. 
Yeah. 

235
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:51,480
Like, well, it's supposed to 
every single day. 

236
00:12:51,480 --> 00:12:55,200
And then I guess it's just a lot
of you also looking at data sort

237
00:12:55,200 --> 00:12:57,720
of what, what's popular do more 
of that. 

238
00:12:57,720 --> 00:13:01,520
And I, I guess then it becomes 
kind of a bit similar to the way

239
00:13:01,520 --> 00:13:05,880
you approach to hacking the the 
App Store right where you just 

240
00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:08,960
running experiments. 
Yeah, I mean, some fun, fun 

241
00:13:08,960 --> 00:13:11,480
things to give people some 
tactical insights here you can 

242
00:13:11,480 --> 00:13:14,960
use, there's all sorts of 
different tools. 

243
00:13:15,120 --> 00:13:18,240
One of them is called Social 
social Blade. 

244
00:13:18,600 --> 00:13:22,680
On Social Blade, you can look at
other people's new follower 

245
00:13:22,680 --> 00:13:25,120
count metrics. 
And so I looked at some of the 

246
00:13:25,120 --> 00:13:27,720
top influencers in crypto and I 
looked at their spiky moments 

247
00:13:27,720 --> 00:13:28,960
when they got a lot of 
followers. 

248
00:13:29,400 --> 00:13:32,080
And then I went on and I used 
Twitter advanced search to go 

249
00:13:32,080 --> 00:13:34,120
look at which tweets they put 
out on the day where they got 

250
00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:36,760
the most followers. 
It's really not rocket science, 

251
00:13:36,760 --> 00:13:39,800
but I, I, I have gone down the 
rabbit hole pretty extensively. 

252
00:13:40,280 --> 00:13:44,920
So yeah, Twitter Advanced Search
and Socialblade 2 free tools 

253
00:13:44,920 --> 00:13:47,120
that are great. 
Twitter Advanced search as well.

254
00:13:47,120 --> 00:13:49,680
You can look for every single 
tweet that mentions Bitcoin 

255
00:13:50,560 --> 00:13:52,560
mining. 
And I'm just coming up with 

256
00:13:52,560 --> 00:13:56,680
random words here and Trump. 
And you could look for the top 

257
00:13:56,680 --> 00:14:00,040
performing tweets ever or 
between a certain date range or 

258
00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:02,640
from a certain influencer with 
those keywords. 

259
00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:05,280
So Twitter advanced search is 
built into Twitter. 

260
00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:08,840
I used to go to the toolbar, 
type in a a query into the in 

261
00:14:08,840 --> 00:14:11,680
the Twitter search bar and then 
tap the three little dots 

262
00:14:11,680 --> 00:14:13,520
that'll open up the the Twitter 
advanced search. 

263
00:14:13,520 --> 00:14:16,480
Almost no one uses that. 
It's, it's pretty funny too, 

264
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:19,280
because you know, my 
professional capacity, and we'll

265
00:14:19,280 --> 00:14:21,440
touch on this in a second is, is
in marketing where I used to 

266
00:14:21,440 --> 00:14:25,160
leave marketing when I Kraken 
and now I do fractional CMO work

267
00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:27,440
and marketing advisory work 
alongside my fund. 

268
00:14:29,320 --> 00:14:32,600
What's funny is I interview 
social media managers and I'm 

269
00:14:32,600 --> 00:14:35,880
the rare CMO that understands 
social to a degree that is 

270
00:14:35,880 --> 00:14:39,560
extremely proficient, right? 
Most CMOS don't have a huge 

271
00:14:39,560 --> 00:14:42,480
social media presence. 
So for me, I, you know, if they 

272
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:44,960
don't use Twitter advanced 
search, I'm, I'm definitely not,

273
00:14:45,360 --> 00:14:47,160
not going to hire them. 
I'm like, this is one of the 

274
00:14:47,160 --> 00:14:52,720
easiest ways to find alpha. 
So it's funny though, most most 

275
00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:56,080
people don't pull open Twitter 
advanced search or they won't 

276
00:14:56,080 --> 00:14:59,760
have much insights into like how
they think through optimizing 

277
00:14:59,760 --> 00:15:03,120
their content for conversion or 
for like maximum engagement. 

278
00:15:04,160 --> 00:15:06,760
Great No, I love this and I 
really appreciate it. 

279
00:15:06,760 --> 00:15:11,400
I think it's I'm going to I'm 
going to aim to be one of the 

280
00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:15,000
people defying your rule of 
nobody ever follows you single 

281
00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:15,920
lessons. 
So. 

282
00:15:17,040 --> 00:15:19,040
I hope to see some Brian tweets 
2 years from now. 

283
00:15:19,040 --> 00:15:21,920
Let's let's, let's do it. 
Yeah, yeah. 

284
00:15:22,480 --> 00:15:25,720
OK. 
So and then you mentioned, so 0 

285
00:15:25,720 --> 00:15:29,720
block was acquired right, that 
was required by Kraken or? 

286
00:15:30,120 --> 00:15:34,800
So block blockchain.com acquired
A0 Block back in December 2013 

287
00:15:34,800 --> 00:15:37,120
and I came on board 
blockchain.com as the first 

288
00:15:37,120 --> 00:15:39,760
product manager, which is quite 
some time ago. 

289
00:15:40,400 --> 00:15:43,320
And to be honest, I was a very 
mediocre product manager, but 

290
00:15:43,320 --> 00:15:45,360
none of us really knew what we 
were doing at the time. 

291
00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:47,600
So it's just what it was in 
crypto back then. 

292
00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:51,280
There weren't there were many a 
players in the space and I was, 

293
00:15:52,160 --> 00:15:54,600
I was doing, we were all doing 
our best. 

294
00:15:55,240 --> 00:15:57,960
So yeah, blockchain.com was one 
of the hottest companies back in

295
00:15:57,960 --> 00:16:00,240
2013. 
Nowadays, no one really talks 

296
00:16:00,240 --> 00:16:01,440
about them. 
They kind of they very much 

297
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:06,280
faded from relevancy. 
But back in 2013, blockchain.com

298
00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:08,240
was the most popular non 
custodial wallet. 

299
00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:11,200
There weren't hardware wallets 
back then, or at least not that 

300
00:16:11,200 --> 00:16:14,880
I can remember. 
And before BIP 39, we didn't 

301
00:16:14,880 --> 00:16:18,760
have, we didn't have mnemonics, 
12 to 24 word backups. 

302
00:16:18,760 --> 00:16:21,000
So you still have to print out 
your private key. 

303
00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:24,760
Watching a COM was the first non
custodial wallet that you know, 

304
00:16:24,760 --> 00:16:28,080
they, they had the wallet that 
basically they had the wallet 

305
00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:31,720
file and they would deliver, you
know, the wallet file down to 

306
00:16:31,720 --> 00:16:34,320
the browser and you would 
decrypt it in your browser, you 

307
00:16:34,320 --> 00:16:35,800
know, entering your your 
password. 

308
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:40,320
So it was a pretty huge user 
experience breakthrough and it 

309
00:16:40,320 --> 00:16:42,120
was the most popular wallet at 
that time. 

310
00:16:42,400 --> 00:16:43,920
So that was a really cool 
experience. 

311
00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:47,120
But yeah, if we want to kind of 
round out the court, the career 

312
00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:50,680
side did that did change tip? 
You probably remember change tip

313
00:16:50,680 --> 00:16:53,160
but we did micro payments. 
Yeah, yeah, on Twitter where you

314
00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:55,200
could. 
Yeah, you could send someone a 

315
00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:57,720
beer and the beer would 
represent $2.00 worth of Bitcoin

316
00:16:57,720 --> 00:17:02,120
or yeah, which is a pretty fun 
dynamic, you know, because 

317
00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:04,280
Twitter eventually came out with
like the ability to tip each 

318
00:17:04,280 --> 00:17:07,040
other in, like Satoshi's so 
explored that. 

319
00:17:07,040 --> 00:17:08,640
That company failed though, 
unfortunately. 

320
00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:10,680
So I was just an employee there,
but that company failed. 

321
00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:12,760
Then I worked at Uber 
headquarters on Ryder Gross and 

322
00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:15,040
growth marketing. 
Worked for some legendary folks 

323
00:17:15,040 --> 00:17:17,480
there. 
That was very formulative to 

324
00:17:17,480 --> 00:17:19,960
building out a kind of my my 
more formalized career in 

325
00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:22,680
marketing. 
Uber was a really fun company, a

326
00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:26,440
very libertarian company where 
Uber, people forget Uber was 

327
00:17:26,440 --> 00:17:28,400
illegal in every single city it 
launched. 

328
00:17:28,400 --> 00:17:31,160
And like, there's not many tech 
companies who are like, yeah, 

329
00:17:31,160 --> 00:17:33,240
fuck the laws, we're just going 
to go full illegal. 

330
00:17:33,800 --> 00:17:37,000
You know, Uber was a very fun 
culture of like high intensity, 

331
00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:41,040
but like, and, but very polite. 
But also the idea that there are

332
00:17:41,040 --> 00:17:43,800
no rules. 
Like there's consequences to 

333
00:17:43,800 --> 00:17:47,520
breaking a rule, but don't let 
these rules define you and, and 

334
00:17:47,520 --> 00:17:49,160
stop you from building something
amazing. 

335
00:17:50,440 --> 00:17:52,400
You know, same with like Elon 
Musk and other companies where 

336
00:17:52,400 --> 00:17:54,400
they kind of break all these 
barriers of what people thought 

337
00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:57,520
was never possible. 
You know, laws are laws. 

338
00:17:57,520 --> 00:18:00,600
But like, are, are taxi laws 
moral? 

339
00:18:00,760 --> 00:18:02,160
Not really. 
You know, I don't think there's 

340
00:18:02,160 --> 00:18:04,120
any morality there. 
That was just a cabal. 

341
00:18:04,600 --> 00:18:08,360
So we broke up that taxi cabal 
and then left there, did another

342
00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:13,080
startup called Interchange. 
We got bought by Kraken and I 

343
00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:14,880
came over. 
I came on board at Kraken and 

344
00:18:14,880 --> 00:18:16,960
eventually built out the 
marketing team from 2 to 30. 

345
00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:21,800
That was from 2019 through 2022.
What was the experience like 

346
00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:27,200
doing marketing at Kraken? 
Krakens intense, we had a lot of

347
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:29,680
catch up to do. 
I think to be I think this is 

348
00:18:29,680 --> 00:18:32,840
like both pretty obvious with 
our our website and other 

349
00:18:32,840 --> 00:18:34,680
marketing materials. 
We had done very little 

350
00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:38,320
marketing. 
The previous CMO had just been 

351
00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:41,480
let go and I had brought in 
Jeremy Welch, the Chief Product 

352
00:18:41,480 --> 00:18:45,120
Officer And so I pitched Jeremy 
and and Jesse, I said, hey, I 

353
00:18:45,120 --> 00:18:47,480
think I could take this team 
from 2 and scale it out to be in

354
00:18:47,480 --> 00:18:50,560
a real marketing org. 
The previous CMO didn't really 

355
00:18:50,560 --> 00:18:53,760
have that crypto sort of mindset
and they just weren't a good 

356
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:58,200
fit. 
And so it was a pretty strenuous

357
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:00,640
intense process of like 
marketing hadn't really been 

358
00:19:00,640 --> 00:19:03,720
represented well in the company.
We hadn't redesigned our 

359
00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:05,920
homepage in four years. 
I mean this, you can use the 

360
00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:08,280
Wayback Machine to look at this.
So this isn't sharing sensitive 

361
00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:11,400
information, but there were a 
lot of things that we hadn't 

362
00:19:11,400 --> 00:19:13,680
done before that were brass 
tacks for marketing org. 

363
00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:17,640
So we had a lot of catch up to 
do, a lot of work to take it 

364
00:19:17,640 --> 00:19:19,920
over what marketing did to some 
degree. 

365
00:19:20,160 --> 00:19:21,960
So I had to claw back that 
territory. 

366
00:19:22,480 --> 00:19:24,800
So clawing back that territory 
and building up the analytics 

367
00:19:24,800 --> 00:19:29,480
infrastructure, building up 
trust, which is, you know, takes

368
00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:31,480
a very long time to do, 
especially when you're looking 

369
00:19:31,480 --> 00:19:35,560
at budgets of Kraken and and 
coin basis size. 

370
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:38,560
When you go start to spend and 
you're allocating, you know, 

371
00:19:38,600 --> 00:19:40,800
millions of dollars per 
different marketing channels. 

372
00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:42,960
So there's two things in 
marketing that are kind of 

373
00:19:43,360 --> 00:19:45,160
define the success of marketing,
right? 

374
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:48,480
It's incrementality. 
Did US spending money on 

375
00:19:48,480 --> 00:19:51,640
marketing lead to incremental 
revenue, right, which is 

376
00:19:51,640 --> 00:19:54,880
actually quite difficult to to 
to determine. 

377
00:19:55,280 --> 00:19:57,880
And then oftentimes the way to 
calculate that is turning all 

378
00:19:57,880 --> 00:19:59,560
the ads off and then turning 
them back on again. 

379
00:20:00,320 --> 00:20:04,040
So there's which at Uber we did 
that called an incrementality 

380
00:20:04,040 --> 00:20:07,440
test incrementality. 
So did the additional, the 

381
00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:10,640
marketing dollars that we spent 
at it increase additional income

382
00:20:10,680 --> 00:20:14,280
or or revenue? 
And then calculating the 

383
00:20:14,280 --> 00:20:16,960
lifetime value of a customer, 
that's really difficult because 

384
00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:20,760
we know what it costs to acquire
a customer, but predicting how 

385
00:20:20,760 --> 00:20:25,320
much money they're going to make
us, that is, you know, that is a

386
00:20:25,440 --> 00:20:29,200
complex future cash flows 
calculation, which are what 

387
00:20:29,200 --> 00:20:33,640
requires a lot of assumptions. 
So Long story short, those 

388
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:37,240
conversations are really nuanced
and took a long time to develop,

389
00:20:37,680 --> 00:20:40,280
I would say a rigorous framework
that we all agreed, agreed upon.

390
00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:43,000
So yeah, building, I'm working 
at crack. 

391
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:45,480
It was a very strenuous, very 
intense role. 

392
00:20:45,760 --> 00:20:47,680
I worked at about 100 hours a 
week for three years. 

393
00:20:47,800 --> 00:20:51,360
So it was not sustainable long 
term. 

394
00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:53,440
That's where I left crack. 
And I wanted to go do something 

395
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:56,640
a little bit more, a little bit 
better work life balance. 

396
00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:59,720
And also three years at an 
exchange, three years in crypto 

397
00:20:59,720 --> 00:21:03,520
at any companies, a long time. 
And I wanted to go to like, go, 

398
00:21:03,760 --> 00:21:05,800
go get my arms around the next 
challenge. 

399
00:21:07,480 --> 00:21:11,440
So let's talk about your fund 
should also disclose here. 

400
00:21:11,440 --> 00:21:15,120
I actually talked about your 
fund with you at the Situation 

401
00:21:15,120 --> 00:21:18,240
Roundtable earlier this year and
then ended up investing in your 

402
00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:20,440
fund as well. 
So I want to disclose that here.

403
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:23,040
But yeah, so you, you launched a
Bitcoin focused one called 

404
00:21:23,040 --> 00:21:26,760
Asymmetric. 
Why did you decide to do that? 

405
00:21:27,560 --> 00:21:30,960
Yeah, great question. 
So when I was at Kraken, I was 

406
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:34,000
in, you know, I was putting out 
content around Bitcoin and I 

407
00:21:34,000 --> 00:21:35,400
started to look into Bitcoin 
Defy. 

408
00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:39,640
Now at this time, that was like 
lightning coin joins, stacks, 

409
00:21:40,840 --> 00:21:43,440
liquid really wasn't a lot going
on there. 

410
00:21:43,440 --> 00:21:45,840
But I saw a glimmer of something
that could happen. 

411
00:21:46,360 --> 00:21:49,720
And if Defy could happen on top 
of Bitcoin, which Bitcoin is the

412
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:54,960
biggest chain out there in terms
of like like market cap, it's 

413
00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:56,720
bigger than everything else 
combined. 

414
00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:58,560
It's not just bigger than 
Ethereum, It's not just bigger 

415
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:00,680
than Solana, it's bigger than 
all of them combined. 

416
00:22:00,680 --> 00:22:03,480
And if Defy could ever be a lock
there, this would be the biggest

417
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:05,680
opportunity ever to exist in 
crypto. 

418
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:10,160
So when I was leaving Kraken, 
this is where I identified where

419
00:22:10,160 --> 00:22:13,680
I wanted to spend the rest of my
career was in Bitcoin Defy. 

420
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,160
So this is 20/22. 
Remember, this is before 

421
00:22:16,160 --> 00:22:19,160
Ordinals came out. 
Ordinals very much popularized 

422
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:21,520
Defy on top of Bitcoin. 
But before that, this was a very

423
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:24,440
weird thing to do. 
Most people didn't believe this 

424
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:27,400
could happen. 
This belief was attacked by both

425
00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:30,440
the Bitcoin Maxis and the other 
other crypto folks. 

426
00:22:30,560 --> 00:22:31,680
Everyone's like, that's 
impossible. 

427
00:22:31,680 --> 00:22:35,320
That's never going to happen. 
And so TechCrunch actually wrote

428
00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:37,920
up my departure from Kraken 
where I lay out my thesis in 

429
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:42,160
July of 2022 for Bitcoin Defy, 
which is fun to read back on, 

430
00:22:42,240 --> 00:22:44,320
read back on because it's it's 
kind of prophetic. 

431
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:49,600
So in doing that, I left Kraken 
and started to do fractional CMO

432
00:22:49,600 --> 00:22:52,800
work where I helped out 
companies like Taproot Wizards 

433
00:22:52,800 --> 00:22:55,680
and Trust Machines. 
These are really popular, really

434
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:57,720
well known companies in the 
Bitcoin Defy world. 

435
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:00,560
I was boots on the ground at 
seeing what they were building 

436
00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:02,840
and seeing what they were 
capable of doing with whether it

437
00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:07,000
be ordinals or Bitcoin layer two
tech like stacks in seeing how 

438
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:09,640
those could be built. 
For me, this was kind of a 

439
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:11,560
breakthrough where I'm like, 
this is going to be a thing. 

440
00:23:11,640 --> 00:23:13,920
This is this. 
I'm an early product builder, 

441
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:17,840
early marketer and I I can see 
this category being huge. 

442
00:23:18,360 --> 00:23:20,440
So I started to cut Angel checks
into the space. 

443
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:23,880
And then in earlier part of this
year, I decided to formalize 

444
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:27,240
this into a fund called the 
Asymmetric Bitcoin D5 Venture 

445
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:29,760
Fund. 
It's a fund within the firm 

446
00:23:29,760 --> 00:23:32,240
called Asymmetric. 
Asymmetric has another fund, 

447
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:36,760
another two funds in the firm I 
run the Bitcoin D5 intra fund. 

448
00:23:37,880 --> 00:23:40,400
We invest in the early stage 
Bitcoin D5 projects that are 

449
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:44,120
focused on like protocols. 
So this could be a Bitcoin L2A 

450
00:23:44,120 --> 00:23:48,400
meta protocol or a DAP. 
And so we've already cut 6 

451
00:23:48,400 --> 00:23:51,720
checks into the category one of 
the mean fractal Bitcoin. 

452
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:55,200
I don't know if you've been 
paying attention to that fractal

453
00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:57,280
Bitcoin. 
They've already debuted. 

454
00:23:57,280 --> 00:23:59,960
So they've already had their 
initial token off their initial 

455
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:04,680
token generation event and they 
have like $20 million a day in 

456
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:06,760
trading volume at like a $3 
billion market cap. 

457
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,960
So I'm not sure if you even knew
that yet. 

458
00:24:10,960 --> 00:24:14,000
I'm I'm sort of delivered. 
Actually, no, I, I I fractal is 

459
00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:17,680
is one I'm not I mean, I follow 
a bit the this space. 

460
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,000
It's also something where you 
know, it primarily run course 1 

461
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,000
staking company. 
So we are also spending a fair 

462
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:27,880
bit of time, you know, starting 
to run infrastructure for some 

463
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:33,880
of these Bitcoin site, Bitcoin 
connected associated protocols. 

464
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:37,400
But this is not one I I actually
didn't follow this one. 

465
00:24:38,160 --> 00:24:41,560
I think a connected connected is
an easier way to phrase it. 

466
00:24:41,560 --> 00:24:44,600
It's hard to what what is the 
definition of an L2 these days? 

467
00:24:44,760 --> 00:24:47,640
It's a little bit subjective. 
So yeah, connected to Bitcoin in

468
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:49,560
some sort of way. 
I think that's a fair way to 

469
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:51,880
associate it. 
But yeah, we, we already made 

470
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:54,200
six investments. 
The fund started in February. 

471
00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,040
We came out of the gate storming
because this was the right time,

472
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:01,120
right opportunity. 
So for us, it's been, it's been 

473
00:25:01,120 --> 00:25:03,680
a very exciting six months. 
It's been a very exhausting 6 

474
00:25:03,680 --> 00:25:05,720
months. 
Raising and deploying at the 

475
00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:07,560
same time was, was quite 
intense. 

476
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:09,240
But we got into some really good
deals. 

477
00:25:10,640 --> 00:25:13,360
I've spent a ton of time as a 
founder, almost a decade as a 

478
00:25:13,360 --> 00:25:15,760
founder. 
So I know what founders look 

479
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:20,480
like, what founders are going 
to, you know, really hustle for 

480
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:22,160
seven to 10 years to make this 
happen. 

481
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:24,680
I look for people that are in it
for the log haul. 

482
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:27,360
So it's been it's been cool to 
see and been been really fun to 

483
00:25:27,360 --> 00:25:28,920
be on the other side of the 
table as an investor. 

484
00:25:29,840 --> 00:25:32,720
Cool, amazing. 
So let's maybe let's talk a 

485
00:25:32,720 --> 00:25:36,600
little bit about sort of Bitcoin
history because in a way this is

486
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:39,480
an interesting thing that has 
happened. 

487
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:44,600
And I think it's sort of 
surprised many people, including

488
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,280
me, you know, because I mean, I 
got into interesting big on 

489
00:25:47,280 --> 00:25:49,560
2013. 
You know, it was we excited 

490
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:52,120
about Bitcoin. 
I was always very excited about 

491
00:25:52,120 --> 00:25:55,720
interested in other things as 
well, like non Bitcoin. 

492
00:25:55,720 --> 00:26:00,400
I mean, of course, back then we 
already had some protocols that 

493
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,080
were, you know, there was a 
protocol called Counterparty. 

494
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:04,520
There was one called Master 
coin. 

495
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:08,840
Later we branded the Omni that 
were basically looking to build 

496
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:11,960
things on top of Bitcoin like, 
you know, issuing different 

497
00:26:11,960 --> 00:26:15,000
assets, stuff like that. 
And then of course, Ethereum 

498
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:19,520
came and I would say all of that
activity kind of, you know, 

499
00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:22,440
moved to Ethereum and then to 
other blockchains. 

500
00:26:22,440 --> 00:26:26,480
And, and now, of course, there's
a bit of, well, it's not fair to

501
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:28,720
say all of it, right? 
I think there's a good little 

502
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:30,560
bit that remained on, on 
Bitcoin. 

503
00:26:30,560 --> 00:26:34,200
I mean, lightning, right, was 
very early on and I think some 

504
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,720
work started there and I think 
kept going. 

505
00:26:37,120 --> 00:26:41,240
And then I remember there was 
also a big a big moment right in

506
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:45,200
the Bitcoin history was this 
block size debate, which 

507
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,600
probably most listeners do not 
remember, but some of you will, 

508
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:52,600
right where there was a huge 
controversy around sort of 

509
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,280
should the block size be 
increased. 

510
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,240
But I think it was also a more a
deeper controversy about, you 

511
00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,960
know, how should we think about 
protocol changes to Bitcoin. 

512
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,640
So how do you see that kind of 
like history of Bitcoin and how 

513
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:10,040
it LED now to this new emergence
of these new protocols and this 

514
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:12,560
innovation? 
Yeah, that's a really good 

515
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:13,960
question. 
I appreciate that you brought it

516
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:17,560
up. 
When we look at what what the, 

517
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:21,280
the short take on this is that a
lot of these things started on 

518
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,560
Bitcoin, Ethereum popularized 
them, and now they're coming 

519
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,520
back to Bitcoin. 
For example, NFTS started on 

520
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:31,320
Bitcoin with Counterparty, Rare 
Pepes. 

521
00:27:31,360 --> 00:27:33,480
Rare Pepes are the first NFTS 
ever created. 

522
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:38,000
And so it wasn't crypto kitties 
that were the first NFTS who was

523
00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:41,560
actually on a Bitcoin called 
Rare Pepes Ethereum. 

524
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:43,640
Though, of course, I think the 
architecture of the Ethereum 

525
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:46,920
protocol is much more 
advantageous for the blossoming 

526
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:50,600
of, of NFTS in the 17 through 
2023 era. 

527
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,920
NFTS have come back to Bitcoin 
in the form of ordinals and 

528
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:58,080
actually think it's a better way
to do NFTS on a blockchain cause

529
00:27:58,080 --> 00:27:59,880
the graphic assets exist on 
chain. 

530
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:02,200
There's a lot of elements of 
that that I think are a little 

531
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:07,080
bit more congruent with what we 
really want an NFT to be. 

532
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,200
We also don't want a contract 
for NFTS to be changed. 

533
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:13,400
Or you could, you could add or 
remove items from a collection, 

534
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,040
whereas like they can't happen 
with ordinals. 

535
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:18,760
So there. 
And there's a costliness factor 

536
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:20,200
as well. 
Like with other chains, you can 

537
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:23,160
spin up NFTS, 10s of thousands 
of them almost for free. 

538
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,760
Versus on Bitcoin, you have to 
inscribe them, which is very 

539
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:30,360
costly because you have to pay 
for that block space like anyone

540
00:28:30,360 --> 00:28:32,000
else does, like any other 
transactor. 

541
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:36,040
So there's some, I think kind of
really interesting game dynamics

542
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,200
that appear here where these are
very costly to inscribe, which 

543
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:41,120
reduces the number of 
collections and I think 

544
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:42,680
increases the quality of the 
output. 

545
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,440
That's one example. 
We also have things like, you 

546
00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,280
know, layer twos like Bitcoin 
experimented with lightning and 

547
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:55,520
liquid being in rootstock, being
in stacks, but liquid has no 

548
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:57,560
activity. 
Same with rootstock and 

549
00:28:57,560 --> 00:29:01,800
lightning has minimal activity. 
I mean, I'm still bullish on, on

550
00:29:01,800 --> 00:29:03,320
all these. 
I, I want to see all these L 

551
00:29:03,320 --> 00:29:05,920
twos succeed, but that's just 
kind of like I'm just laying 

552
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:07,440
down the facts of what's going 
on today. 

553
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,280
But on Ethereum, you saw this 
hugely emergent blossoming L2 

554
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:14,480
ecosystem. 
And I think we're going to see 

555
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:16,040
that come back to Bitcoin in 
this cycle. 

556
00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:17,680
And that's why we're investing 
in that category. 

557
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:22,240
There's a lot of Bitcoin L twos 
here that I think are have 

558
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:25,880
looked at how the Ethereum L 
twos launched the last bull run 

559
00:29:25,880 --> 00:29:28,320
taking those playbooks and 
bringing them back to Bitcoin. 

560
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,400
So I think we're going to see a 
Bitcoin L2 renaissance happen 

561
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,240
this cycle. 
We we've seen some early 

562
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:36,800
glimmers of this with like STAX,
for example, has a 3 billion 

563
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,600
market cap. 
And so STAX, I think the STAX is

564
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:42,920
almost 10 years old now. 
The protocol didn't launch until

565
00:29:43,200 --> 00:29:45,560
a few years ago, but they've 
been working on it for almost a 

566
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:48,280
decade. 
I think that they're sort of 

567
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:51,640
leading the way of of 
expectations of like what this 

568
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:56,280
cycle is going to look like. 
But yeah, we are just so again, 

569
00:29:56,640 --> 00:30:00,240
to mimic the NFT route, but 
started on Bitcoin, Ethereum 

570
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:02,520
popularized them or did them at 
scale. 

571
00:30:02,520 --> 00:30:04,640
Now it's coming back to Bitcoin 
in a certain fashion. 

572
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:07,120
So there's that. 
Now going back to your question 

573
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:11,120
around block size, Bitcoin 
protocol upgrades, kind of 

574
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,120
community and political split. 
So there definitely is a riff in

575
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:17,640
the community politics wise of 
folks who want this activity to 

576
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:19,400
happen on Bitcoin versus those 
who don't. 

577
00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:22,560
Most of the people who do not 
want this activity to happen on 

578
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:25,480
Bitcoin are very new Bitcoiners.
They weren't around for the 

579
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:28,320
block size, whereas they also 
weren't around for any of the 

580
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:32,280
early Bitcoin discussions where 
in the 2013 through 2016 cycle, 

581
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:36,280
we would often say, well, let's 
let the other alt experiment on 

582
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:37,920
stuff and we'll bring what works
back to Bitcoin. 

583
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,320
Well, we clearly saw this worked
on Ethereum and Solana and we're

584
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:45,560
bringing it back to Bitcoin. 
So, you know, those folks aren't

585
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:46,640
Ogs. 
They're not, they haven't been 

586
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,120
around a long time and they 
don't really rock why Bitcoin's 

587
00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:51,120
valuable. 
They're also really obsessed. 

588
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,840
These kind of newer Bitcoins 
are, which is very bizarre, kind

589
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:55,880
of like the B cashiers. 
They're obsessed with payments, 

590
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,760
like using Bitcoin to pay for 
coffee and stuff, which again, 

591
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:01,960
does not solve the problem. 
I mean, you're OG enough to 

592
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:04,000
remember this. 
We've gone through three waves 

593
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:05,600
of this. 
We made a serious attempt at 

594
00:31:05,600 --> 00:31:10,640
that, I mean, but that just did 
not work at all and it's not 

595
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:14,160
going to work. 
For a very simple product 

596
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,960
reason. 
What problem is it solving? 

597
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:20,720
It's not solving a problem. 
Bitcoin solves other problems. 

598
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,720
It solves the problem of storing
your money in a way that's hard 

599
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:26,400
to be hard to seized. 
So like Bitcoin is extremely 

600
00:31:26,400 --> 00:31:28,880
hard to seize if you if you 
store them on a private key that

601
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,160
you control like you, you, you 
control your private key. 

602
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,840
It has a monetary policy that is
the best monetary policy on the 

603
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:39,480
planet amongst crypto assets and
traditional Fiat and gold. 

604
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,480
And then you look at it the 
other factor which is it's 

605
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:44,200
immutability. 
You can't censor it. 

606
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:46,600
That's great, but I don't need 
it. 

607
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,000
Censorship resistant nuclear 
grade payments for my cup of 

608
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,760
coffee. 
And so in, you know, to 

609
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:57,880
sacrifice the user experience. 
It's also more costly to ask a 

610
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,240
consumer to do that. 
I think it's a grossly negligent

611
00:32:01,240 --> 00:32:02,800
way to approach product 
building. 

612
00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:07,720
And if we look at the last 12 
years have been in the space, 

613
00:32:07,720 --> 00:32:10,840
we've seen hundreds of payment 
startups fail hundreds. 

614
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:14,480
I mean, there's no, there's no 
reason why a consumer would want

615
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:15,960
this. 
And they consistently bring up 

616
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:19,680
talking points like, well, 
merchants like it. 

617
00:32:19,680 --> 00:32:22,240
I'm like, that's great. 
I'm sure merchants love it, but 

618
00:32:22,240 --> 00:32:24,280
that doesn't solve the other 
part of the equation of people 

619
00:32:24,280 --> 00:32:26,880
wanting to pay. 
And so I feel like I'm taking 

620
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,720
crazy pills after all this time.
ANYWAYS, I, I, I'm going off on 

621
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:32,560
a tangent. 
There's A2 categories of 

622
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:36,840
Bitcoiners is like the OG ones 
who understand all the nuances 

623
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:38,960
of how Bitcoin development has 
occurred so far, which by the 

624
00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,320
way, Bitcoin has changed a 
number of times. 

625
00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:44,000
Not materially though, but these
are like some more small 

626
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:47,280
upgrades and they understand 
that Bitcoin has to change a 

627
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:51,840
little bit in the future to sort
things like bugs and and some 

628
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:54,800
things that allow for more 
expressibility. 

629
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:58,120
So there's a really big proposal
called OP Cat that's gotten a 

630
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:02,040
lot of momentum, the Bitcoin 
community and the block size 

631
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:04,200
wars. 
What we all agreed on was that 

632
00:33:04,200 --> 00:33:06,360
Bitcoin was going to scale in 
layers. 

633
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:08,920
Then not all the activity was 
going to happen on the Bitcoin 

634
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:10,920
base layer because we couldn't 
just keep keep increasing the 

635
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:13,520
block size for forever. 
We had to scale Bitcoin in 

636
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,480
layers as part of that. 
That means we have to push user 

637
00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,120
activity to the Bitcoin layers 
as transaction fees. 

638
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:20,680
It could be more expensive on 
L1. 

639
00:33:20,680 --> 00:33:23,200
People can only transact on L 
twos and maybe occasionally 

640
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:26,640
transact on the L1. 
If that happens, we need to 

641
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,400
allow for trustless bridging in 
a much more the rigorous 

642
00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:33,360
architecture of these L twos 
connected to Bitcoins L1. 

643
00:33:33,600 --> 00:33:37,440
And right now we don't have that
things like OP cat or covenants 

644
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:41,240
allow us to, I would say, 
deliver on our original 

645
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:45,480
compromise and promise of 
Bitcoin scaling and layers to a 

646
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:48,080
level that I think really 
supports that user activity in a

647
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:50,640
way where people don't have to 
make all these trade-offs when 

648
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:53,480
they're on this L2. 
They can use this L2 with almost

649
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:55,440
the same security assumptions as
Bitcoin L1. 

650
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:58,480
I think that's that I think is 
extremely important for the 

651
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:02,480
future of the protocol. 
I know this is also something 

652
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,800
that I think there's been 
discussions for for many years, 

653
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:09,760
right, where people were like, 
hey, let us add a bit of 

654
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,199
functionality to Bitcoin that 
basic then allows, you know, 

655
00:34:13,199 --> 00:34:16,679
verification much more easily or
things happening elsewhere. 

656
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:20,600
So I remember I think there was 
also, you know, snarks or there 

657
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:22,560
was a bunch of stuff that was 
discussed here. 

658
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,400
Can you just explain what OP cat
like how it works and what 

659
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:29,080
exactly it is? 
Yeah. 

660
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,320
So OP cat was originally in 
Bitcoin. 

661
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:35,159
Satoshi put it in Bitcoin and 
then removed it because he 

662
00:34:35,159 --> 00:34:37,920
wasn't sure if there might be a 
bug introduced. 

663
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:40,159
He also, there was a lot of 
other OP codes. 

664
00:34:40,560 --> 00:34:42,320
That's where OP stands for OP 
code. 

665
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:44,760
There's a lot of other OP codes 
that he disabled as well. 

666
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:46,800
Some of those were RE enabled, 
some of those weren't. 

667
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:50,880
When we look at OP Cat, cat 
stands for concatenation, which 

668
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:55,000
means combining and so it allows
you to combine code and through 

669
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:57,720
that you are able to build 
things like trestles, bridges. 

670
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,920
I am not technical enough to 
dive into the details of exactly

671
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:05,800
code wise how that works, but 
this works with eight lines of 

672
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:07,040
code. 
That's it. 

673
00:35:07,720 --> 00:35:11,360
It's an extremely tiny upgrade. 
And what's nice too is it's not 

674
00:35:11,360 --> 00:35:13,120
a, it's not a hard fork, it's a 
soft fork. 

675
00:35:13,720 --> 00:35:16,360
So with that, what that means is
that we don't have to. 

676
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:20,280
For example, most of the bridged
Bitcoin today is protected 

677
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:22,800
through a Federated model, which
means multi sig. 

678
00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:27,520
There are multiple folks who 
control this Bitcoin in a in a 

679
00:35:27,520 --> 00:35:31,040
pot and we have to trust that 
they won't collude with each 

680
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:34,440
other to take that Bitcoin away 
from us, which that's an OK 

681
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:37,640
security assumption, but it's 
not great with OP cat. 

682
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:40,280
We can have trustless bridging 
where we don't trust this cabal,

683
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:44,360
we don't trust this group. 
We can use Bitcoin on these L 

684
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,400
twos in a way that we don't have
to trust the L2 or any other 

685
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:48,880
group. 
We can use that Bitcoin in a 

686
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:53,720
almost purely trustless manner. 
I had, I feel like I had a 

687
00:35:53,720 --> 00:35:57,400
podcast or I had the 
conversation just recently 

688
00:35:57,400 --> 00:36:02,040
where, you know, there's also 
discussion around the ZK and you

689
00:36:02,040 --> 00:36:04,760
know, whether you could like 
verify or bring in the future 

690
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:08,680
make them change for Bitcoin so 
you could verify ZK proofs Is OP

691
00:36:08,680 --> 00:36:11,520
cat, would it enable that? 
Or do you think this is going to

692
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:15,080
be sort of like the only and 
last change that's needed? 

693
00:36:15,080 --> 00:36:19,000
Or are there some other things 
that would also be powerful to 

694
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,200
have in the future? 
Yeah, I mean, there's been 

695
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,440
discussions of bringing back 
almost all these these OP codes 

696
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:26,560
or kind of like the it's called 
like the great script 

697
00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:30,000
restoration process where like 
we would it would be OP CAT and 

698
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,880
a bunch of other ones, 
Covenants, CTV, these other 

699
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,680
proposals have a lot of energy 
behind them, a lot of political 

700
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:38,960
momentum. 
Some of these allow for 

701
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:41,760
verification of like CK Starks, 
like what you mentioned. 

702
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:47,920
You know, I would say it's TBD 
on on if one or multiple get a 

703
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:53,800
get sort of through consensus. 
But I would say like CTV and 

704
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:55,880
OPCAD have the highest momentum 
behind them. 

705
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,160
And and so I mean, I also 
remember actually at this block 

706
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:03,520
size, when this block size 
debate happened years ago, of 

707
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:06,840
course, one of the big 
challenges was that or one of 

708
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,720
the big challenges, But you 
know, it's also a feature of 

709
00:37:09,720 --> 00:37:12,840
Bitcoin to some extent is that 
there's no governance process, 

710
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:15,800
right? 
So we basic or no official like 

711
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,120
governance process. 
So you basically had, you know, 

712
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:22,440
on the one hand, Bitcoin Co 
developer who controlled the bit

713
00:37:22,840 --> 00:37:25,840
GitHub repo, there was some sort
of governance on that. 

714
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:27,760
Who has access, who gets kicked 
off? 

715
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:31,360
And then of course, you have the
miner ultimately who decide what

716
00:37:31,360 --> 00:37:33,800
software they run, who are like 
really the ultimate arbiters. 

717
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:38,760
How do you see this kind of 
governance process playing out 

718
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:42,000
around around OP Cat? 
And when do you hope this is 

719
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:45,000
going to be part of the Bitcoin 
protocol? 

720
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:49,120
Yeah. 
So you know, when we look at 

721
00:37:52,480 --> 00:37:54,640
the, the biggest thing in the 
box has was there was two 

722
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:57,080
things. 
One, technically the protocol 

723
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,840
can't just scale in larger and 
larger block sizes for forever. 

724
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,760
Now is the Bitcoin current block
size perfect? 

725
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:05,600
No, but we don't know what the 
perfect block size should be. 

726
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:08,960
But what we do know is that you 
would eventually want to have 

727
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:10,600
some sort of cap on the block 
size. 

728
00:38:10,600 --> 00:38:13,680
And you want a cap because the 
bigger it is, the harder it is 

729
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:17,280
to run a node, the less number 
of nodes you have and the less 

730
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,680
amount of people who can connect
directly to the Bitcoin network.

731
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:24,240
Bitcoin network prizes itself 
prides itself in the ability for

732
00:38:24,240 --> 00:38:26,920
people to connect directly with 
it and make that semi easy to 

733
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:28,800
run. 
This is different than a lot of 

734
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:31,320
the other block chains which are
much more complex to run a node 

735
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:32,960
or much more costly to run a 
node. 

736
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:34,720
That were some of the 
considerations. 

737
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,040
The reason why you know, So what
is the right what's the right 

738
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:39,840
block size? 
No one knows what the right 

739
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:43,000
block size should be. 
But what we did know is that the

740
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:46,680
process to make changes in 
Bitcoin, there were a group of 

741
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:52,280
businesses that wanted to push a
a block size increase and the 

742
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:54,280
Bitcoin community revolted 
against that. 

743
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:57,640
And so that's where Bitcoin Cash
was, the hard fork that was 

744
00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:00,840
resulted from this kind of cabal
coming together and trying to 

745
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:04,280
push changes in Bitcoin. 
The outcome of this basically 

746
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:06,840
showed that the Bitcoin network 
isn't owned or controlled by 

747
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,280
companies. 
It's controlled by everyone in 

748
00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:10,760
the process of getting something
upgraded. 

749
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:12,520
And Bitcoin is extremely 
complicated. 

750
00:39:13,160 --> 00:39:15,720
You basically have to convince 
everyone to change their node 

751
00:39:15,720 --> 00:39:18,440
software to run your version of 
Bitcoin. 

752
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:21,200
And so, you know, different 
proposals. 

753
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,480
Hard forks are extremely 
difficult and Bitcoin doesn't 

754
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:25,480
upgrade through hard forks. 
It upgrades through soft forks, 

755
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:31,160
primarily through soft forks. 
So with soft forks, you know 

756
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:32,960
that that's a much easier 
upgrade process. 

757
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:37,120
But essentially you have to get,
you know, miners, node runners, 

758
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:39,840
economic actors and the 
community all on board. 

759
00:39:40,320 --> 00:39:42,520
And so that process is extremely
convoluted. 

760
00:39:43,000 --> 00:39:47,360
But if you go to Qantas, so 
Tappert Wizards, one of my 

761
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:49,960
clients, they built out 
something called BIP land, VIP 

762
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:53,360
land. 
BIP land is a comic strip that 

763
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:58,320
shows you how a BIP or Bitcoin, 
you know, improvement proposal 

764
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,160
gets implemented, which is any 
sort of upgrade to Bitcoin, what

765
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:03,120
process it goes through to be 
evaluated. 

766
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,680
Most of these of course have a 
multi year evaluation period 

767
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:10,960
where it's talked about, 
theorized, analyzed by some of 

768
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:12,680
the top brightest minded 
cryptography. 

769
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,120
And then people make it, it's 
given a BIP and the BIP is a 

770
00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:20,360
proposal and eventually there's 
enough political buy in from all

771
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:22,280
those parties I mentioned 
earlier to where that BIP gets 

772
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:23,960
implemented. 
But yeah, it's a it's a 

773
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:28,400
convoluted and very lengthy and 
laborious political process, 

774
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:30,160
which is good. 
You don't want changes to be 

775
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,240
easy to be added to the protocol
because if they could malicious 

776
00:40:34,240 --> 00:40:38,000
actors like states like 
governments or people who've 

777
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:40,800
paid off certain individuals, 
they could push proposals 

778
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:43,400
forward with little. 
If there's little resistance, 

779
00:40:43,840 --> 00:40:46,760
then all of a sudden you've got 
a lot of changes in the protocol

780
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:49,440
that could be hazardous. 
Yeah, for sure. 

781
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:54,240
I mean, I, I was in the time in 
favor of the block size increase

782
00:40:54,720 --> 00:40:57,080
as I think a lot, a lot of 
people were right in the 

783
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:59,840
community. 
Now, I do feel that in 

784
00:40:59,840 --> 00:41:04,360
retrospect, and I felt like the 
arguments against increasing it,

785
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:09,720
it didn't make like a ton of 
sense to me, except one that I 

786
00:41:09,720 --> 00:41:13,000
actually feel like wasn't really
made a lot during that debate. 

787
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:16,720
But I feel like later I was 
like, that's actually a really 

788
00:41:16,720 --> 00:41:20,520
big benefit that it sort of the 
heartful didn't happen, which is

789
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:23,200
exactly your point, right? 
It's basically just about, you 

790
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,280
know, the difficulty of changing
a Bitcoin protocol also gives 

791
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:30,400
you, you know, a huge amount of 
resilience against, yeah state 

792
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:34,680
actors or others that will end 
up wanting to disrupt the 

793
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:36,960
network. 
And when when we look at 

794
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:39,520
bitcoins purpose, right, like 
what problem does it solve? 

795
00:41:39,960 --> 00:41:42,440
A lot of the block size increase
folks were like, oh, it's meant 

796
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,680
for payments and we did never 
really saw the payments use case

797
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:48,000
take off. 
So not only was a technical, 

798
00:41:48,240 --> 00:41:51,600
the, the technical knowledge was
off because you can't just keep 

799
00:41:51,600 --> 00:41:53,320
scaling for forever. 
You have to eventually have a 

800
00:41:53,320 --> 00:41:56,080
limit. 2 is that they didn't 
even understand bitcoins value 

801
00:41:56,080 --> 00:41:57,600
prop like why Bitcoin is 
valuable? 

802
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:00,520
What problem was it solving? 
And it's not cheap payments. 

803
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:03,920
And then finally, you know, the 
process to upgrade Bitcoin. 

804
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:07,000
Yeah, that it had to be this 
really laborious process, 

805
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:09,800
because otherwise you would 
introduce easy political changes

806
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:11,640
that would be kind of done out 
of whim. 

807
00:42:11,720 --> 00:42:15,440
Do you hope, OP Cat's going to 
happen like this year, next 

808
00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:17,360
year? 
I mean, this year probably not, 

809
00:42:17,360 --> 00:42:19,640
no. 
Next year or like what's the 

810
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:22,360
sort of timeline that you hope? 
I think we're looking at 

811
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,040
probably one to two years. 
I think other folks are more 

812
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:27,360
optimistic. 
I'm also throwing out a 

813
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,920
prediction that had OP cat. 
If it does get implemented 

814
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:32,800
sooner, it'll mark the top of 
the cycle. 

815
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,960
So, so the top of the cycle 
being it gets implemented. 

816
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:40,320
We, we saw a little bit of this 
in previous cycles where 

817
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:45,400
protocol updates are highly 
anticipated and a lot is traded 

818
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:48,040
as people think, OK, upgrade to 
the protocol. 

819
00:42:48,040 --> 00:42:50,160
That's a good thing, which 
almost always is. 

820
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:52,920
So I think it would trade really
well and that would probably 

821
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:56,320
mark kind of the peak fervor and
peak FOMO of the market. 

822
00:42:58,040 --> 00:42:59,800
You're doing this Bitcoin D5 
fund. 

823
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:04,320
Why is Bitcoin D5 so important? 
What what do you hope are the 

824
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:08,280
kind of like use cases, 
utilities, user experiences that

825
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,000
Bitcoin D5 will enable? 
Yeah. 

826
00:43:11,000 --> 00:43:13,080
Well, we've seen all these use 
cases over in Ethereum and 

827
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:14,320
Solana. 
So I think it's pretty well 

828
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,560
established, but easy ones to 
pick out lending and borrowing 

829
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,000
other types of assets. 
You have NFTS and governance 

830
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,560
tokens, which are unique types 
of assets that do not compete 

831
00:43:23,560 --> 00:43:25,560
with Bitcoin as a money. 
They're very distinctly 

832
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:27,360
different. 
Like we wouldn't say that 

833
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:29,240
Bitcoin competes with Apple 
stock. 

834
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,720
It's not the same thing. 
I mean, some Bitcoiners might, 

835
00:43:32,720 --> 00:43:34,840
they could claim that like 
people park their wealth in S&P 

836
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,040
just to like make sure that 
their money doesn't get inflated

837
00:43:37,040 --> 00:43:38,440
away. 
But for all the intents and 

838
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:41,760
purposes, like a money doesn't 
compete with other asset types. 

839
00:43:41,760 --> 00:43:43,200
There's multiple types of 
assets. 

840
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:46,640
And so NFTS and governance 
tokens I think are really key. 

841
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:50,960
We've got L twos. 
L twos love Bitcoin to scale. 

842
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,800
And what's really interesting 
about Bitcoin L twos versus 

843
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:57,560
Ethereum L twos is that Bitcoin 
L twos are more expressive. 

844
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:00,040
Ethereum L twos are just cheaper
and faster. 

845
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,920
Bitcoin L twos are cheaper, 
faster and more expressive 

846
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:06,880
because these Bitcoin L twos can
be like EVM or SVM, which means 

847
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:09,920
that you can get all of these 
really cool D fi things that you

848
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:11,880
want to go build on this Bitcoin
L2. 

849
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:14,440
That's an amazing thing to 
happen. 

850
00:44:14,440 --> 00:44:17,520
And I think that that will pull 
a lot of TVL up from Bitcoin L1,

851
00:44:17,520 --> 00:44:20,160
bring it to L2. 
And I think that the we're going

852
00:44:20,160 --> 00:44:24,680
to see huge amounts of TVL, much
higher than Etherium L twos. 

853
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:27,360
Because again, the Ethereum L 
twos don't allow you to do more 

854
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:28,560
things. 
They just allow you to do it 

855
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:31,360
cheaper and faster. 
Whereas there's a very strong 

856
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,840
reason you should use a Bitcoin 
L2 because you can do all the 

857
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:38,040
cool defy stuff with it. 
So what's your prediction like 

858
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:44,440
what percentage of Bitcoin do 
you think ends up getting used 

859
00:44:44,440 --> 00:44:48,280
in, you know, whether it's 
staking or some sort of 

860
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:52,920
protocols or even just move to 
to some L2, but. 

861
00:44:54,240 --> 00:44:59,080
Good question. 
I mean if you look at the 

862
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:03,120
relative like TVL lock of of 
Bitcoin versus Ethereum L2's 

863
00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:07,040
currently it's like a tiny 
fraction like .01% or .1%. 

864
00:45:07,560 --> 00:45:10,760
I mean, I think we'll see 
Bitcoin let's let's just talk 

865
00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:15,120
about D5 locked up in Bitcoin, 
locked up in Bitcoin D5, whether

866
00:45:15,120 --> 00:45:19,320
that be L2's meta protocols, you
got things as well like Babylon,

867
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:23,480
which is restaking where Bitcoin
is being used as proof of stake 

868
00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:27,880
assets for other block chains. 
I think as a percentage of 

869
00:45:27,880 --> 00:45:32,960
Bitcoins market cap, probably 
10%, which is enormous. 

870
00:45:33,640 --> 00:45:35,440
You know, like that's still 
gigantic. 

871
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:39,160
I think Ethereum is closer to 20
to 30%. 

872
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:42,840
But I think this cycle that's 
what we'll see, which 10% is 

873
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:46,200
still enormous. 
And by the next cycle, then we 

874
00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:49,720
eclipse Ethereum TBL in terms of
as a percentage of our market 

875
00:45:49,720 --> 00:45:53,320
cap. 
Yeah, that's interesting. 

876
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,600
I mean, my my expectations 
definitely mean that it it will,

877
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:00,480
it will sort of remain lower 
because just because I think 

878
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:06,480
Ethereum people are more used to
like, you know, that kind of 

879
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:10,000
from the beginning, those kind 
of things are like a part of the

880
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:13,320
Ethereum vision or as I think 
for Bitcoin, it's a sort of new 

881
00:46:13,320 --> 00:46:15,200
thing. 
So I imagine there's like maybe 

882
00:46:15,200 --> 00:46:18,360
more people who are not or it's 
going to take more time, right, 

883
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:20,880
for people to really sort of 
wrap their head around, oh, I 

884
00:46:20,880 --> 00:46:25,960
can do something with my Bitcoin
and now I can earn, you know, 

885
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:32,040
some kind of yield. 
Well what's cool is that 87% of 

886
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,360
Bitcoin owners hold them to the 
crypto asset. 

887
00:46:34,720 --> 00:46:37,560
So it's not like these are just 
a giant group of Bitcoin Maxis. 

888
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:42,000
The Bitcoin holders all along 
have been multi coiners, so 

889
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:44,040
they're, I think they're very 
willing and ready to do that 

890
00:46:44,040 --> 00:46:46,640
with their Bitcoin. 
I think that they've been doing 

891
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:48,600
this with their Ethereum and 
Solana, and if they could do 

892
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:50,120
that with their Bitcoin, they 
definitely will. 

893
00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:56,160
And do you think the timeline 
this is kind of like starting to

894
00:46:56,160 --> 00:47:01,520
happen now and you know, sort of
you, you expect we're going to 

895
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:05,760
see a lot of protocols go live 
in 2025 or like what's, what's 

896
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:09,920
sort of the expectation on the 
pace of which this, this sort of

897
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,560
wave unfolds? 
Yeah, we've already had some go 

898
00:47:12,560 --> 00:47:14,320
live. 
I would say most of them are 

899
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:19,840
targeting late Q4 or early Q1 
for like going live with that. 

900
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:23,560
You know, there's so much there 
that you know we're we're we're 

901
00:47:23,560 --> 00:47:25,560
about to see kind of an 
explosion of activity. 

902
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:27,960
I think people, I think folks 
will definitely time their 

903
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:29,960
launches based on market 
conditions. 

904
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,040
So I think you're going to see a
lot of these be contingent based

905
00:47:33,040 --> 00:47:36,880
on the bull run happening. 
Yeah, yeah. 

906
00:47:37,640 --> 00:47:42,800
And what, what are you mentioned
for a fractal earlier or like 

907
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:47,280
what, what are the some of the 
projects that you think you're 

908
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:49,320
most excited about and that you 
think will have the biggest 

909
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:52,400
impact? 
Yeah, we invested in Bob Mezzo 

910
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:55,040
and Bitlayer. 
Those are all Bitcoin L twos, 

911
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,480
really great builders, love the 
go to market strategy. 

912
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:00,680
We think that the go to market 
strategy is the most important 

913
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,600
element of this. 
When you look at Bitcoin L twos,

914
00:48:04,680 --> 00:48:07,040
there's, it's really hard to 
differentiate the different L 

915
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:09,480
twos. 
And so brand positioning go to 

916
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:11,040
market strategy is going to be 
critical. 

917
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:14,600
We believe that these founders 
at those, those 3L twos have 

918
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:18,320
that specific capability. 
Outside of that, we've got 

919
00:48:18,320 --> 00:48:20,560
Fractal, which Fractal is a meta
protocol. 

920
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:24,280
So it's not a Bitcoin L2, it's 
it's more of interacting with a 

921
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,400
Bitcoin base layer. 
And it's sort of like meta 

922
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:29,440
protocols are really interesting
because essentially activities 

923
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,520
happening on Bitcoin L1 and 
there's a another network that 

924
00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:35,640
interprets the activity 
happening on the Bitcoin L1 and 

925
00:48:35,640 --> 00:48:37,880
that kind of lock smart 
contracts and other other sort 

926
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:42,840
of event based kind of financial
primitives. 

927
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:47,000
So then outside of Fractal, the 
two Daps we've invested in are 

928
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:50,320
Liquidium. 
Liquidium allows you to borrow 

929
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,720
Bitcoin using your ordinal as 
collateral and that uses 

930
00:48:53,720 --> 00:48:56,120
discrete law contracts in the 
Bitcoin base layer to do that. 

931
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:58,960
Really cool piece of tech. 
I've been looking at DLCS for a 

932
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:01,000
long time. 
I think it's super interesting. 

933
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:07,480
So we've got DLCS powering, 
powering Liquidium, and then SAP

934
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,200
Flow is a MEV visualization 
tool. 

935
00:49:10,840 --> 00:49:13,720
A lot of the Dexes that are the 
Dexes that work on Bitcoin 

936
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:17,160
currently use partially assigned
Bitcoin transactions, and with 

937
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:18,760
that, those transactions can be 
sniped. 

938
00:49:19,280 --> 00:49:24,320
So they built the first MEV 
visualization tool and with that

939
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:28,120
they allow for people to snipe 
those transactions. 

940
00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:31,840
They're using that to go build 
out something bigger. 

941
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,760
I can't talk about it now, but 
they've got a really cool 

942
00:49:34,760 --> 00:49:37,280
strategy to go become a much 
bigger player in the space. 

943
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,640
And they're utilizing their, I 
think, unique visualization of 

944
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:44,880
Bitcoin mem pool to leverage 
that to something for something 

945
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,080
that's I think a really, really 
cool bigger, bigger concept. 

946
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:50,600
Yeah. 
I mean, I think that's of course

947
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:55,960
something that is also going to 
be very interesting to see, 

948
00:49:55,960 --> 00:49:57,280
right? 
I mean, on Ethereum, we've had a

949
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:03,240
huge amount of interesting 
activity around MEV and I think 

950
00:50:03,240 --> 00:50:05,800
it's also on some other 
ecosystems like Solana. 

951
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:07,640
There's a lot happening right 
now. 

952
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:11,240
But of course that kind of thing
coming to Bitcoin and then 

953
00:50:11,240 --> 00:50:14,920
interacting with the mining is 
going to be interesting too. 

954
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:17,840
I'm curious. 
So one of the concerns that 

955
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:21,200
people both the had around 
Bitcoin is also concerned that I

956
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:24,560
think was always felt like a 
really legitimate one to me. 

957
00:50:24,840 --> 00:50:28,960
Is that OK with time, the block 
rewards go down, the security 

958
00:50:28,960 --> 00:50:32,160
budget goes down, you know, 
hopefully the Bitcoin market cap

959
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:37,040
goes up So like as a percentage 
of the value at stake attacking 

960
00:50:37,040 --> 00:50:39,760
it becomes cheaper. 
Now, of course, the one thing to

961
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,240
encounter act that is if if we 
do see significant transaction 

962
00:50:43,240 --> 00:50:47,520
fees. 
And so I guess it seems pretty 

963
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:54,880
obvious that all of this Bitcoin
L2D5 meta protocol can result in

964
00:50:54,880 --> 00:50:57,960
that. 
Is that also one of the things 

965
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,400
you see or? 
Yeah, it's a huge benefit. 

966
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:05,520
What I've written extensively on
the Bitcoin block subsidy, our 

967
00:51:05,520 --> 00:51:07,640
block Bitcoin's long term 
security model based on the 

968
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:11,040
declining subsidy over time. 
For those who don't know the 

969
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:13,160
Bitcoin, each block has a block 
reward. 

970
00:51:13,720 --> 00:51:16,880
The block reward is comprised of
newly minted Bitcoin, called the

971
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:21,200
subsidy and transaction fees. 
Given that at every single 

972
00:51:21,200 --> 00:51:25,040
halving we have the amount of 
Bitcoin subsidy per block, that 

973
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,120
means that the number of Bitcoin
being issued over time is 

974
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:30,400
decreasing exponentially. 
That means that transaction fees

975
00:51:30,400 --> 00:51:34,000
over time need to compensate for
the reduction in subsidy. 

976
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:35,440
That's why it's called a 
subsidy. 

977
00:51:35,440 --> 00:51:38,560
After all. 
There are a couple different 

978
00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:41,440
components here that a lot of 
people gloss over. 1 is that 

979
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:46,280
despite the halvings, the dollar
value of the Bitcoin block 

980
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:49,080
reward has gone up exponentially
over time because Bitcoin's 

981
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:52,320
value has gone up. 
So if Bitcoin's value goes up, 

982
00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:55,000
then the subsidy decrease 
doesn't matter that much because

983
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:56,480
the Bitcoin's value has got up 
so much. 

984
00:51:56,480 --> 00:51:59,080
The US dollar value, which is a 
much better way for us to 

985
00:51:59,080 --> 00:52:02,840
evaluate long term security 
model is using something more 

986
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:05,160
stable than Bitcoin's price to 
evaluate security. 

987
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,200
So the dollar is typically used 
for that of dollar value of the 

988
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:10,880
block size reward and that's 
going up over time due to 

989
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:14,040
Bitcoin's value increasing 
relative to the dollar, which 

990
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:17,400
makes sense. 
Transaction fees ultimately 

991
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,520
though need to replace the 
subsidy and with ordinals we saw

992
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:23,200
a glimmer of that where 
transaction fees are extended 

993
00:52:23,200 --> 00:52:27,240
periods of non bull run time 
periods where transaction fees 

994
00:52:27,240 --> 00:52:30,760
went higher and much higher and 
sustained for a good amount of 

995
00:52:30,760 --> 00:52:33,040
time. 
I think in this next bull run, 

996
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:36,480
due to meta protocols like 
ordinals becoming even more 

997
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:40,000
popular, we'll see very long 
term sustained high fee markets,

998
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:43,240
which is indicative that 
bitcoins long term security 

999
00:52:43,240 --> 00:52:44,760
budget problem is going to be 
solved. 

1000
00:52:45,440 --> 00:52:47,800
Now on the Ethereum side, 
there's been some incredibly 

1001
00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:51,080
intellectually dishonest folks 
not going to call out names, but

1002
00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:55,840
I think we know those types that
constantly whine about bitcoins 

1003
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:57,360
long term security budget 
problem. 

1004
00:52:58,080 --> 00:53:01,200
And the common question I asked 
them what they all refuse to 

1005
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:04,800
answer is I tell that I asked 
them what is an appropriate 

1006
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:09,040
level of security budget. 
No one knows no one knows how 

1007
00:53:09,040 --> 00:53:12,000
much is necessary. 
And so to say that it's flawed 

1008
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,840
and bitcoins going to have to 
change a 21 million hard cap to 

1009
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:17,760
keep the subsidy going because 
we, because the security will 

1010
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:20,080
fall so low. 
I find that incredibly dishonest

1011
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:23,000
and just like just a really 
weird way to debate because they

1012
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,520
won't even come up with a level 
that they find appropriate. 

1013
00:53:25,800 --> 00:53:26,920
I'll be the cool, what's the 
number? 

1014
00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:28,760
What's, what's an appropriate 
level of security spend? 

1015
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,600
And they're like, I don't know, 
but it's going down. 

1016
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:34,800
And it, I, I think that since 
the Bitcoin and the per block is

1017
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:37,720
going down and the transaction 
fees aren't going up, then then 

1018
00:53:37,720 --> 00:53:39,720
it for sure will fail. 
And I'm like, well, what if 

1019
00:53:39,720 --> 00:53:42,360
there's an inflection moment 
like Ordinals where all of a 

1020
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:44,400
sudden there's huge demand for 
Bitcoin block space, which is 

1021
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:45,840
what we're seeing with Bitcoin 
Defy. 

1022
00:53:46,160 --> 00:53:48,880
There's going to be huge demand 
for Bitcoin block space because 

1023
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:52,480
people want to use this 
immutable Ledger that is is 

1024
00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:55,400
incredibly secure. 
So through that demand for that 

1025
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:57,520
block space, we'll see 
transaction fees rise. 

1026
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:03,360
And here's another fun one. 
You know, we have had much lower

1027
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:06,200
security budgets in the past, 
but Bitcoin hasn't been 

1028
00:54:06,200 --> 00:54:08,200
destroyed. 
Yeah, absolutely. 

1029
00:54:08,720 --> 00:54:11,200
Right. 
Like, so, you know, you could 

1030
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:13,160
have destroyed it much easier 
previously. 

1031
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:16,880
And it's becoming much harder as
Bitcoin gets more and larger, 

1032
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,720
larger in value and it has more 
and more transaction fees. 

1033
00:54:19,720 --> 00:54:23,800
So, yeah, A, the the critics 
don't know what an appropriate 

1034
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:26,000
level of security spend because 
it's entirely subjective. 

1035
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:31,160
B, Bitcoin security spend has 
been increasing in dollar value,

1036
00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:32,560
not decreasing. 
Yeah. 

1037
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:35,760
That's true. 
I mean, although of course, it's

1038
00:54:35,760 --> 00:54:38,760
also the case that as Bitcoin 
becomes more valuable, sort of 

1039
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:43,200
the the potential gain or 
incentive someone has to attack 

1040
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:45,960
it and willing to suspend to 
attack, you know, you'd expect 

1041
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:49,440
that to also go up. 
I agree that's a, that's a good 

1042
00:54:49,440 --> 00:54:51,960
counter to that where you'd 
expect the security spend. 

1043
00:54:51,960 --> 00:54:54,760
So pushing that question back on
them, I'm like, cool, what 

1044
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,400
percentage of market cap do you 
find as an appropriate level of 

1045
00:54:57,400 --> 00:55:00,560
security spend, which again 
introduces the topic of like 

1046
00:55:01,080 --> 00:55:02,960
subjectively, what's an 
appropriate level as a 

1047
00:55:02,960 --> 00:55:05,600
percentage of market cap? 
Is it one percent, 2%? 

1048
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:09,400
You know, you could use comps, 
but comps are really hard. 

1049
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:11,360
There's no such thing as before 
Bitcoin. 

1050
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:13,080
There's never a thing like a 
blockchain. 

1051
00:55:13,080 --> 00:55:16,680
So you could look at defense 
spending as a percentage of GDP.

1052
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,760
Like it's really tough to come 
up with a number that makes 

1053
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,040
sense. 
You could also look at what's 

1054
00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:25,040
the maximum burnable amount that
a government could deploy to 

1055
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:26,960
attack the network, like the US 
government. 

1056
00:55:27,880 --> 00:55:30,600
I mean, you know, they would 
attack their own citizens in 

1057
00:55:30,600 --> 00:55:32,000
this in this sort of 
circumstance. 

1058
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,200
But you know, maybe they're 
willing to spend 200 billion 

1059
00:55:35,200 --> 00:55:37,760
just to burn it because, you 
know, in order to take the to 

1060
00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:40,760
attack the Bitcoin network, the 
game theory is that essentially 

1061
00:55:40,760 --> 00:55:43,920
you have to burn the money. 
If you want to attack Bitcoin, 

1062
00:55:44,600 --> 00:55:47,160
you would have to buy the miners
and those miners can only print 

1063
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:50,000
Bitcoin. 
And if you attack Bitcoin, you 

1064
00:55:50,000 --> 00:55:52,400
would make the output of the 
miners Bitcoin worthless. 

1065
00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:54,800
So you'd have to be willing to 
burn the money. 

1066
00:55:54,800 --> 00:55:57,440
So the only actors that can do 
that are state actors with a 

1067
00:55:57,480 --> 00:55:59,720
huge budget. 
And you're talking about like 

1068
00:55:59,920 --> 00:56:03,920
US, China, Russia, and it's 
mainly China, China, US that 

1069
00:56:03,920 --> 00:56:05,440
could go burn that amount of 
capital. 

1070
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:08,440
So that would be I think a 
fairway for them to argue like 

1071
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:10,360
what an appropriate level of 
security spend should be. 

1072
00:56:10,720 --> 00:56:12,520
But then if they use that 
argument too, then you look at 

1073
00:56:12,520 --> 00:56:14,840
Ethereum and it has minuscule 
amount compared to that, like 

1074
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:17,800
200 billion as well. 
So that would also be an issue. 

1075
00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:20,760
But I think that would be the 
intellectually honest way to 

1076
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:23,440
talk about this is a percentage 
of market cap. 

1077
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:26,200
And then we can look at comps or
we could come up with some sort 

1078
00:56:26,200 --> 00:56:28,200
of framework to evaluate what 
that spin should be. 

1079
00:56:29,240 --> 00:56:30,880
Yeah. 
I mean, I think one thing that 

1080
00:56:30,880 --> 00:56:34,720
is for sure is that, you know, 
if we do see, you know, a lot of

1081
00:56:34,720 --> 00:56:38,280
activity that you know, then is,
is is sort of accurate in, in 

1082
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:41,480
Bitcoin and leads to higher 
transaction fees that that is 

1083
00:56:41,560 --> 00:56:44,040
certainly going to be extremely 
positive for the long term 

1084
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:46,640
security of the network. 
For sure. 

1085
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:49,360
Cool. 
Well, thanks so much, Dan. 

1086
00:56:49,360 --> 00:56:53,080
It was really great to have you 
on and I really enjoyed talking 

1087
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,640
a bit about, you know, sort of 
state of Bitcoin and something's

1088
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:58,240
happening and yeah, hopefully we
can do it again sometime and 

1089
00:56:58,240 --> 00:57:01,280
excited to see how it's going to
develop in the next years and 

1090
00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:03,040
where you're going to take 
asymmetric, too. 

1091
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:05,000
Yeah, thanks for the support of 
the fund. 

1092
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:07,400
It's been too long since we 
caught up and I hope everyone 

1093
00:57:07,400 --> 00:57:09,640
found this entertaining. 
Absolutely. 

1094
00:57:09,680 --> 00:57:11,680
Thanks so much, Dan. 
Cheers all. 

1095
00:57:14,360 --> 00:57:16,040
Thank you for joining us on this
week's episode. 

1096
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:18,080
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1097
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,440
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1098
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:24,520
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1099
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,760
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1100
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:29,800
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1101
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1102
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:36,080
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1103
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1104
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1105
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:44,360
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00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:46,240
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1107
00:57:46,240 --> 00:57:47,880
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1108
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:49,200
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1109
00:57:50,040 --> 00:57:52,600
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