0:00

We love hearing people's viewpoints on

0:02

Bitcoin and what they believe are the most important

0:04

aspects of crypto. Jameson Lopp

0:06

is helping as many people as possible understand

0:09

the importance of self-custody and providing

0:11

a way for them to make their Bitcoin as

0:13

secure as it can be. He's an old-school

0:16

Bitcoiner and a technologist with an epic

0:19

beard. It's been a long time since he's rocked

0:21

the mic here in the Republic of Bad Cryptopia,

0:24

so we've got him back today. It's all Lopp,

0:26

and you can't stop listening to episode

0:28

number 699 of the Bad Crypto Podcast.

0:29

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, Ignition.

0:41

Who's there? All

1:02

Lopp, and you can't stop, so you don't

1:04

drop unless you gotta plop.

1:08

Sometimes if you gotta plop, you gotta drop. Sometimes

1:10

you gotta plop, and then we need to hurry up this

1:12

episode here real quick. Stop, drop, and plop.

1:17

Sounds good to me. Now, this is a great episode,

1:20

man, with Jameson Lopp. I

1:22

think you guys are really going to appreciate this one.

1:24

I don't know who has better resources

1:26

in crypto than this guy does. Like, his website

1:28

is a full-on… Oh, my gosh.

1:31

He has the best resources. You wouldn't

1:33

believe the resources this guy has. It's

1:35

a bit of media over there. Amazing.

1:37

You know what? Less of us, more

1:40

of Lopp. Here we go with Jameson.

1:46

We set the Wayback Machine to January 2018,

1:48

episode number 72. Mr. Jameson Lopp graced us with his presence and his epic

1:51

beard, which is still just as epic today. He's

1:56

got a lot of great stuff. He's

1:58

got a lot of great stuff. a lot

2:00

of entrepreneurial spirit in the

2:02

crypto space and helping to

2:04

bring people into the self custody

2:07

world for their Bitcoin wallets.

2:09

And he's got a lot to say. We're going to find

2:11

out what his latest thoughts are today. Jameson,

2:13

welcome back to the Republic of Bad Cryptopia.

2:16

Good, sir.

2:18

Long time no see.

2:19

Yeah, I feel like the beard

2:21

that you're getting those white strips now,

2:23

right? Yes, no, you can definitely go

2:25

back and check. I think back then I only had like one

2:28

street, but it's growing out further.

2:31

It's great. It's like bear market for you.

2:33

It's like you

2:35

have beard fangs.

2:37

That's that they're like, keep

2:40

your own Bitcoin. That's nice. That's

2:42

good. Hey, we appreciate you coming

2:44

back on the show. You know, it's been a long time

2:47

since January of 2018, dude. That's

2:50

almost six years ago. You've been on. You

2:53

know, you've kept

2:55

your finger on the pulse. You've been building a lot

2:58

of amazing things. And so we

3:00

want to talk, touch base on some of those things. But

3:02

you know, really, let's kind of give a refresher.

3:04

Some people might not know you. So maybe

3:06

what initially drew you to the

3:09

whole crypto world and maybe

3:11

what were some of your first projects

3:12

in the space so people can

3:14

get reacquainted with you? Yeah.

3:19

Well, it's been about 11 years now. I

3:24

think I came across Bitcoin

3:26

on a slash.post back

3:28

in 2012. I'm sure I had come

3:30

across it before, probably also on nerdy

3:32

sites like that. And I had dismissed

3:35

it as many do as, you know,

3:37

nerd money that everybody was

3:39

going to lose and,

3:42

you know, would end horribly. But

3:45

for some reason, when

3:47

I saw that particular post,

3:50

I ended up reading the white paper and kind

3:54

of tickled the computer science parts

3:56

of my brain, along with some of the libertarian.

4:00

of beliefs and thought

4:02

it was a really interesting project.

4:05

And unlike most white papers, I could

4:07

actually understand it. And

4:10

from there, I just really kicked off exploration

4:13

down the rabbit hole as you and many other

4:16

people have

4:18

also gotten sucked into over the years.

4:21

So- That's actually coincidentally where

4:24

I saw Bitcoin the first time. And

4:26

then I talked to a bunch of friends about it and they all

4:28

said that I was stupid and that was a dumb thing. But

4:30

I mined some

4:32

and then it crashed my computer. So instead

4:34

of going, oh my God, I need to get stronger

4:36

computers and build a warehouse these computers.

4:39

I said, what the hell dude, you screwed

4:41

on my computer. Oh man, this sucks. And

4:43

so I had to get a new computer and then I

4:45

lost those Bitcoins. So that was

4:48

awesome. You know, Hal Finney actually

4:50

said something similar of I think

4:52

he mined on his laptop

4:54

for a couple of days but then he got annoyed because

4:56

it was making the fans too much. So

4:59

he turned it off.

5:00

Destroyed my computer. I mean, it destroyed the fan,

5:02

which then the fan was dead and then the rest of the computer died.

5:04

But ob la di, ob la da.

5:07

Well, here we are, you know, five

5:09

and a half years further down the road from

5:11

whence we last spoke and the

5:14

world economy is just

5:16

a hot mess, right? Governments are printing

5:18

more worthless paper money than ever

5:20

before. We've got politicians allegedly

5:24

in control that don't necessarily

5:26

have the best interest of citizens

5:28

at heart. How important do you think

5:30

Bitcoin is now and how has your thinking

5:33

evolved onto its relevancy

5:35

to our day and age?

5:39

Oh boy. You know, when I started

5:41

off with all of this, it was an interesting

5:45

thought experiment and I sort

5:47

of saw it as a type of project that,

5:50

you know, maybe on a generational time

5:52

scale it could be interesting. You know, if

5:54

you basically have this deflationary

5:57

currency that nobody can screw with, then...

6:00

Inevitably, over decades,

6:03

other nation states are going to continue to devalue

6:05

their currencies. So I think very

6:07

few of us expected

6:09

Bitcoin to grow as quickly as

6:11

it did. Though once it started

6:14

doing that in various growth

6:16

spurts now, I think some people may have

6:18

overcorrected on those expectations and

6:20

expected to go mainstream any day. But

6:23

from many different metrics,

6:27

it has gone mainstream, at least

6:29

mainstream in terms of

6:32

a non-trivial portion

6:34

of the population knows what it is,

6:36

or they've heard of it. But of course, they probably

6:39

have very little fundamental understanding

6:41

of why it's interesting and why

6:43

they should probably be using it. But

6:47

it has been interesting,

6:50

I think, to see who

6:53

has got it, per

6:55

se, who amongst

6:59

the global population has

7:01

seen value in Bitcoin. Obviously,

7:03

a lot of people don't see value in it, and

7:06

that's because of their own perspectives

7:09

and things that they think are good

7:11

and bad. But Bitcoin doesn't care. What

7:15

really matters is those of us that do find

7:17

it valuable, and especially those of us

7:20

who find it valuable enough that we spend

7:22

our time, energy resources, working

7:25

on the system, maintaining it, trying to better

7:27

understand it. And in

7:29

your case, like trying to convey that understanding

7:31

to a wider audience. Yep,

7:34

people got to figure it out. And

7:36

I think that we've gone through

7:38

a couple of bull runs now, right, since 2017.

7:41

We started doing the show in 2017, and then we personally

7:44

experienced a couple of bull runs and bear runs

7:46

now, bear markets. And

7:50

people who, you know, it's so wild. It's like,

7:52

oh, crypto goes up. Everybody's interested in crypto.

7:54

Crypto goes down. People stop being

7:56

interested in it. Oh, it goes back up again, the

7:59

big hype cycle. And it seems to us

8:01

that the halving's happening right around the corner,

8:04

not too long from now. I mean, we're about six

8:06

months away from it, maybe a little bit longer.

8:08

But it seems like we're at about that time

8:11

where that bull market starts getting

8:13

a little itchy, starts rolling a little

8:15

bit, and now the interest is going to go back

8:18

into crypto. So maybe what would

8:20

you suggest to the new people who are just going

8:23

to start figuring out about crypto? They're

8:25

going to come in again because they always do. And this

8:27

is this next big hype cycle. What

8:29

advice would you have for them?

8:32

It's very simple. I tell people

8:34

I don't give financial

8:36

advice, but I do give investment advice.

8:39

And that basically is you

8:41

should invest in education. So

8:44

go to my website, bitcoin.page.

8:47

There's like 2000 links on there in dozens of

8:51

different categories. And it's never

8:54

too late to start learning

8:56

about this space. The main

8:59

thing that you need to avoid is getting

9:01

too much FOMO,

9:04

too hyped up and over eager

9:06

and basically jumping in and getting over your head,

9:09

because you need to understand that this

9:11

is a very unforgiving

9:13

space. On one

9:15

hand, there's some great properties

9:19

and utility that you can get from this technology.

9:21

And that basically is a result

9:24

of the fact that you can take

9:26

custody of your keys and you can

9:28

interact with these protocols and networks

9:31

without having to ask permission,

9:33

without having gatekeepers that can

9:35

screw with you and

9:37

decide how you can use your own money. But

9:39

the flip side of that is you take on

9:42

a lot of responsibility. And if

9:44

you make a mistake and you don't know what you're doing,

9:46

it can be catastrophic.

9:48

Your hard drive with 50 Bitcoin could

9:50

end up in the garbage dump somewhere in Kansas

9:52

City. Yeah, there's no crypto Karen

9:54

out there. There's nobody that Karen can complain

9:56

to. My debt coins. I

10:00

need to know. And I gotta tell you, dude, your resources

10:02

have grown tremendously. I know it's LOPP.net,

10:06

and I think you got it mirrored

10:08

out at the other, what'd you say, bitcoin.page? Yeah,

10:10

bitcoin.page goes to the same place. It's just

10:13

easier for people to remember, I think. Dude, those

10:15

resources are spectacular, folks. If you

10:17

wanna learn more about this, you definitely wanna go

10:19

to there. All those resources are tapped

10:21

out. And actually, if you go and look under podcast,

10:24

you might see a few podcasts that you

10:26

know. Yeah, there we are, that's good. So,

10:28

as

10:29

we're looking forward, of course, nobody

10:32

can actually predict squat. What

10:34

we can do is we can look at trends,

10:36

we can look at past history, and we do

10:38

know that a halving is coming. And

10:41

those of us who have slogged our way through this

10:43

bear market are quite optimistic that

10:46

next year, 2024 and 2025, are

10:49

going to see all-time highs again.

10:51

Are you of that same mindset?

10:54

Well, I certainly hope

10:56

so. It

10:59

would be not only good for me personally,

11:02

but it would be good for all of the businesses in the space.

11:05

You've surely seen over the

11:07

past year or so, the bear market is

11:09

rough. A lot of people have

11:11

had to kind of downsize, lay

11:14

people off, really

11:16

trim the fat so that we can hibernate

11:19

through the winter and hopefully emerge

11:22

in the spring and be ready

11:24

for the bull. This

11:26

is, I've

11:29

done this three or four times and

11:31

the bear markets are good for

11:34

the builders and the technologists like myself because

11:36

there tends to be fewer distractions. Though

11:39

this time around, there's still a lot of drama and

11:41

distractions of all the mess that is still being cleaned

11:43

up from a year ago, all the court cases and

11:45

stuff. But we

11:48

can get our heads down and build

11:50

more and basically prepare

11:52

for the next onslaught because once

11:55

the bull market does come, those of us

11:57

who are running companies in this space, we

11:59

tend.

11:59

to have the opposite problem where we are basically

12:02

struggling to keep our heads above water. Let

12:05

me do a quick follow-up on that. Bitcoin

12:08

in general, we always say is

12:10

unstoppable money. Under

12:12

what circumstances do you

12:15

think it would take? How big of a

12:17

black swan, how swan-y

12:20

must it be in order for

12:22

Bitcoin to fail? What is like

12:24

if you were going to write a piece of fiction and go,

12:26

this is how it ends, what would

12:28

it look like? Well,

12:31

I can certainly think of plenty of apocalyptic

12:34

events. Other

12:37

than hey, we're all screwed and the zombies are here.

12:40

Those are less interesting because the TLDR

12:44

of most of those is you've got bigger

12:46

problems to deal with. We've already seen that even huge nation

12:48

states can ban it and it

12:51

only makes a small

13:00

dent in it. So I'm not concerned

13:03

so much about governments,

13:06

at least as a cataclysmic

13:08

event, because for

13:11

better or for worse, I would say probably for

13:13

better, there is no one world government.

13:16

So governments around the world are

13:18

not going to all coordinate with each other and agree

13:20

on the same thing. So we have some

13:23

jurisdictional arbitrage that

13:25

can keep Bitcoin going even

13:27

if major nation states decide

13:30

to push against it. But

13:33

really the thing that has stuck with me

13:36

through multiple cycles

13:38

is that Bitcoin's

13:41

biggest enemy is apathy. And so it's tough

13:43

for me to

13:46

come up with specific scenarios.

13:50

But for example,

13:55

if I think the price stayed

13:58

flat or went down for many, many

14:00

years, that would push a lot of people

14:02

out, that would cause a lot of the businesses

14:05

to have to close. And

14:07

that could be a kind of

14:09

downward spiral that results in a lot

14:11

of apathy. We already get,

14:13

a lot of the tourists get pushed out, shaken

14:16

out through the bear markets already, but a

14:18

bear market where those normal cycles

14:21

got broken, I think, would

14:23

potentially cause even more people to become

14:25

apathetic. It's

14:27

hard to imagine a situation

14:30

where we actually get to the point that

14:32

the Bitcoin stops working,

14:34

because that basically means

14:37

that almost

14:39

everybody in the world has decided

14:42

that it is no longer worth trying

14:44

to keep it on life support. And so

14:47

one thing that we've seen with

14:49

a lot of these like blockchain decentralized

14:52

networks is they are extremely hard to

14:54

kill. I mean, you look at the what, 50,000

14:57

plus networks

15:00

that are out there and there's a ton of them

15:02

out there that I mean, for all intents and purposes,

15:04

they're dead. But technically, you

15:06

can still use them, you can still interact

15:08

with them. There's still a handful of people running

15:11

machines around the world that

15:14

are speaking those protocols. And

15:16

while they're not nearly as robust

15:19

or well maintained, they are technically

15:21

still usable. So I

15:24

think that Bitcoin

15:27

is not going to die unless literally everything else

15:29

dies. And the fact that these networks

15:31

can be sustained by just a handful

15:34

of people makes them very, very difficult

15:36

to completely

15:38

kill. You know, they are the cockroaches of the

15:40

sort of Internet.

15:43

Yeah, I watched a couple of interviews of you recently.

15:46

And one of the things that you were talking about was, you

15:48

know, you're not completely

15:50

opposed to a theory. And because people

15:52

are going on a theory and they're trying new

15:54

things, they're it's innovative, and

15:57

sometimes they're doing some silly things. But what

15:59

you. said was I would rather than be able

16:01

to do those silly things on Bitcoin to

16:04

explore on Bitcoin. So now

16:06

we have things like noster and Bitcoin ordinals

16:09

and some other stuff that's being built on top of that.

16:11

Where do you see that ecosystem

16:14

going? And can you you foresee

16:16

a time where maybe there's so many

16:18

ordinals that it's clogged up the network

16:20

or it's spiking the rest of the Satoshi's

16:22

that are not connected to to

16:25

those ordinals and maybe explain a little bit about

16:27

what all that means because I'm sure some

16:29

people just heard that and go this is bad crypto. I don't know

16:31

what the hell any of that is. Yeah

16:34

I mean I think the short version is that

16:36

I'm a technologist and I am

16:39

always in favor of permissionless

16:41

innovation.

16:41

Now of course there's

16:44

always going to be bad aspects that come along with that

16:47

when someone can can basically

16:49

build an entire new ecosystem

16:52

and economy with whatever economic rules

16:54

they want there are going to be a lot of questionable

16:57

or scammy ones out there. But

17:00

I think that that is kind of the price that you pay

17:02

for innovation is that there will be some

17:04

bad actors that do stupid things and

17:07

play stupid games when stupid prizes. We can

17:10

we don't have to participate but we can certainly

17:12

watch from the sidelines and we can learn

17:14

and we can learn from the failures

17:17

we can learn from the successes. There

17:20

in the early days of Bitcoin there was a fairly

17:23

strongly held thesis that any altcoin

17:26

that found product market fit and was

17:28

highly successful with some bit

17:30

of new functionality would

17:32

find that functionality eventually gets subsumed

17:35

by the Bitcoin network. Now that

17:37

thesis has not really played out. It's

17:40

hard to think of many things where that has happened

17:43

other than you know one good case what's

17:46

not quite the same thing though is that you know SegWit

17:48

got activated on Litecoin before

17:50

Bitcoin.

17:50

I mean

17:52

the plan was to have it on Bitcoin but

17:54

it ended up being an interesting sort of

17:56

test case and proof of economic

17:58

security I think. that made it easier

18:01

for it to get activated on

18:03

Bitcoin. Other than that, you know,

18:05

it's sort of novel functionality. We

18:07

haven't really seen that getting subsumed.

18:11

And so

18:13

I'm still somewhat

18:15

hopeful that we'll see more

18:17

and better

18:20

layer twos. And this actually

18:23

kind of segues into some of the side

18:25

chains and drive chains and now

18:27

spider chains discussions

18:30

that have been having over the past month

18:32

or two. And if that

18:34

was another thesis back from like 2014-2015 that

18:40

the Bitcoin ecosystem

18:43

would grow and would add more

18:45

functionality via having

18:48

a sort of blossoming ecosystem

18:51

of many side chains that are pegged

18:53

to each other. And what that basically means is

18:55

you have many different blockchains, but

18:58

under the hood they're all still effectively

19:00

using Bitcoin tokens.

19:03

You just be able to move your Bitcoin tokens

19:05

from one blockchain to another, preferably

19:08

without having to ask permission. And that sort

19:11

of that permissionless two-way pecking mechanism

19:13

unfortunately has yet to be

19:16

developed. Yeah, that's not what happened

19:18

at all. Instead we have all of these other chains

19:21

and L2s. And by the way, you get five

19:23

points for use of the word subsumed.

19:26

I think that may be the first time that has been used

19:28

on the show. So you get points. You can spend those

19:31

on nothing, but they're yours. Congratulations.

19:34

You are a technologist and as one

19:36

you are building technology. And you know, we've

19:39

all spoken for quite some time and

19:41

written about the fact that if you don't have your keys,

19:43

it's not really your crypto. You can easily

19:47

get hacked, lose it, so forth.

19:49

And you are a huge evangelist for

19:52

holding your own keys, so much so that you

19:54

have developed the software product at Keys.Casa.

19:58

Tell us what this is all about.

20:01

Yeah, so I guess I

20:03

switched over to Kaathe

20:06

just a few months after we last spoke. The

20:09

short version is that for

20:11

the first three years that

20:13

I was working full time in the space, I was working

20:15

for a company called BitGo, and

20:18

they were one of the first multi-signature wallets

20:20

out there, but they were specifically targeting

20:22

enterprises. So BitGo basically

20:25

was kind of the security product that

20:27

was used by a lot of exchange and payment processors.

20:30

And we learned a lot over the few years

20:32

when I was there, and I felt

20:34

like there was still a hole

20:37

in the market, and that was basically

20:40

a highly secure but user-friendly

20:43

for individuals type of product. So

20:45

Kaathe is

20:48

really what I believe is

20:50

the best self-custody

20:53

product that we can architect with the

20:55

current technology. Now

20:58

there are some nice improvements

21:00

on the technology that are coming down

21:02

the pipeline, and we're definitely doing research

21:04

and development on. But the short version

21:06

is that I saw many

21:10

catastrophes over the years, and I

21:12

started building this sort

21:15

of mental checklist of

21:17

best practices of how to do self-custody.

21:21

And as you know, if you look at my

21:23

website, there is a huge amount of resources,

21:26

really an overwhelming amount of resources,

21:29

even if you just go to the security section

21:31

and you try to learn how to do self-custody,

21:33

right? So the goal of Kaathe

21:36

is to put forward

21:39

a user-friendly wallet

21:42

that as long as you just follow

21:44

the instructions that are presented to you

21:47

in the mobile app, you get yourself

21:50

into this architecture that

21:52

is highly robust and

21:55

it eliminates single points of failure.

21:57

So that's the number one thing that we keep

21:59

in mind. whenever we're doing anything

22:02

at CASA is that we're developing

22:05

products that don't have single points

22:07

of failure and the reason for that is

22:09

that we could we understand that people are

22:11

human people make mistakes people

22:14

aren't security experts and

22:16

we want to remove a lot of the rough

22:18

edges a lot of the foot guns from

22:21

self-custody that result in people

22:24

you know losing their money in many

22:27

cases just locking themselves out

22:29

of their money and so having

22:32

multiple keys on multiple

22:34

different hardware devices in multiple

22:36

different geographic locations we

22:39

found gives you a level of resilience

22:42

so that you can have failures and

22:44

you can gracefully recover from those failures.

22:47

So my question would be around this then

22:49

so is is it because it looks like it's just

22:51

a mobile app or it's a desktop app does it have

22:53

a hardware component to it? I'm not

22:56

seeing one of those.

22:57

Yeah absolutely and yeah

22:59

it's a it's not possible

23:02

with CASA like we don't

23:04

let you have a multi-sig setup

23:06

where all of the keys are on internet connected

23:08

devices that would be a huge potential

23:10

point of failure so we offer both

23:13

two of three multi-sig and three of

23:15

five multi-sig and you

23:18

know different levels of support plans

23:20

I think that's one of our big differentiators is

23:22

really that at our premium tiers what you're

23:25

really paying for sure you're getting

23:27

a nice you know software user experience

23:29

but what you're really paying for is white

23:32

glove your consultation so you can

23:34

literally get on the phone with us basically

23:38

think of it as a bunch of many

23:40

Jamesons who have been trained you know gotten

23:42

all the the knowledge dumped from me on

23:44

the best practices and we help

23:47

people navigate the

23:49

decisions that need to be made you know

23:51

everyone has a different

23:55

set of variables in their life

23:57

different threats to

23:59

incorporate into their security model

24:02

different levels of convenience versus

24:05

security that they're going to be interested

24:07

in making those tradeoffs. And

24:09

we help you make those decisions while

24:12

not actually taking control of your money. Though

24:15

we do hold one key as an

24:18

emergency recovery mechanism that

24:21

you can set different authentication

24:24

protocols with us of how that

24:26

key can be requested to be used. And

24:29

that can help you get out of certain sticky situations.

24:32

I think of a bunch of many Jamesons running

24:34

around. Do they all have the beard?

24:36

That's what I want to know.

24:38

Very few. Let

24:41

me ask this then. So

24:44

say as more people get involved with crypto

24:46

and then populations get older, people

24:48

die. Is there something built

24:51

in for retirement or

24:54

even to inheritance

24:56

kind of thing if somebody passes along?

24:59

Yeah, you know, inheritance is kind of

25:01

like the

25:04

final solution, right?

25:06

So like a lot of people get into self custody

25:09

and there's a million different ways that you can do self

25:11

custody.

25:13

But

25:15

getting an inheritance setup is this really

25:17

interesting balancing act. Because

25:20

on one hand, you want to put

25:23

yourself into an architecture where

25:25

only you are able to

25:27

spend your money. But then you magically

25:30

want this switch to flip if

25:32

you cease to live. And

25:34

then you want some predetermined

25:37

person or set of people to

25:39

be able to spend your money after

25:41

that. So yeah, we do have an inheritance

25:44

product. And that is at our highest

25:47

level tier because that requires even more

25:49

consultation, more planning,

25:51

more

25:52

thinking about all

25:54

of the different situations. It's

25:57

a perplexing problem because some people would

25:59

mean... what's going to happen is you have this expert

26:02

who knows in their own world, all right,

26:04

I set up Kasa, I got it up, I'm pretty proficient

26:06

with how it all works. And then now they're

26:08

dead. And then, oh, no. And

26:11

then the people who are probably going to come in are way

26:13

less sophisticated to try to figure out how to grab

26:16

whatever crypto is in that account. So it can

26:18

definitely create an issue.

26:20

Yeah, yeah. And that's, I think, another

26:22

reason you might want a service like Kasa

26:24

to be able to facilitate recovery

26:27

and inheritance situations. So you still

26:29

have the experts available and we can

26:31

help the heirs, the beneficiaries

26:34

to get through that process. And

26:37

there's a lot of decisions to be made. For example,

26:40

it may not just be a question

26:43

of, OK, what happens if I get hit by a

26:45

truck? Some people,

26:47

of course, they start thinking about

26:49

inheritance more when they have kids. And

26:54

if you want to take it to the extreme, you may also

26:56

want to be assured that if both you and

27:01

your spouse get hit by a truck at

27:03

the same time, but your kids survive, you want

27:06

to be able to get out of that situation

27:08

as well. So it's a very complicated

27:11

problem with a number of different moving parts,

27:13

but we do have experience.

27:16

It's part of the situation,

27:18

right? We're all going there. So I didn't even

27:20

know that .kasa was a domain,

27:23

a top level domain extension, of course, Kasa Espanol

27:26

for house and keys.kasa.

27:28

It's like you own

27:31

all the Kasa now because you named your brand

27:33

after the TLD, which I think is super

27:35

smart. So you guys can

27:37

check out Kasa. This episode, not

27:40

brought to you by Kasa. This is not a paid

27:43

advertisement here. We do want you to check out what

27:45

Jameson is doing, though. So

27:47

I'm curious

27:50

to know when you are explaining

27:52

Bitcoin to a lay person

27:54

for the first time, let's assume that they

27:57

really don't know, what is the

27:59

simplest route that you take

28:02

to explain it to somebody so they immediately

28:04

get it and it doesn't take well it's

28:06

kind of like well let me explain decentralization

28:09

to you and and self custody

28:11

and how do you do it?

28:15

Well you know there's no one size fits all

28:17

thing for it what I found over the years

28:19

is that if you if you just sort

28:21

of start blabbering you know based

28:24

on your own perspectives there is a very high

28:26

likelihood that your audience will

28:28

not be interested or not get it so

28:31

you know to do it right you need to know

28:33

your audience you need to understand what what

28:36

things will be interesting to

28:38

them so I made a lot of...

28:40

Explain it to mom explain it to mom

28:42

okay let like you know somebody who's

28:45

like

28:45

I've heard of this thing you crazy

28:47

kids with your magical internet

28:49

money why should I care?

28:51

Yeah There

28:56

are plenty of metaphors out

28:58

there you know I think the the digital

29:00

gold metaphor is one of the simplest

29:03

for people to understand

29:06

because it encapsulates a

29:08

number of aspects of the system

29:11

mainly that you know it's really

29:13

it's more like a natural phenomenon than

29:15

it is a system that is run by any specific

29:19

entity a lot of the properties

29:21

of the system while theoretically

29:24

they could be changed the you know the game

29:26

theory the dynamics of the system

29:28

make them basically inviolable

29:32

so you know the idea that

29:35

we're essentially creating an alternative

29:38

financial system that

29:41

it has no knowledge of the existing

29:43

financial system and you can

29:46

use it without having to ask

29:48

anyone for permission all you have to do is

29:50

you follow the rules of the system the system

29:53

will allow you to manipulate it

29:56

beyond that of course the

29:59

exactly mechanics of this

30:02

basically magical system

30:05

can get really tricky to understand. It

30:08

is, I

30:10

think, it's pretty fascinating that

30:12

the whole thing worked. And if you

30:14

look at the people early on who were

30:16

trying to understand it, probably like

30:20

98% of even the early cypherpunks scoffed

30:23

and said, no, this will never work because of X, Y,

30:25

or Z. But just so happens

30:27

that Satoshi managed to figure out the game

30:29

theory and it's been working for 14

30:31

years now. Yeah,

30:34

that's great. I want to ask about

30:37

this. One thing I've always thought about is that, you know,

30:39

with Ethereum, they have those stable coins,

30:41

right? USDC, USDT,

30:44

there's a lot of debate on how those are good or not,

30:47

or if they're backed by real money or

30:49

how it goes. Do we think

30:51

we might ever see a Bitcoin stable

30:53

coin? Because it's weird, right? Because Bitcoin's

30:56

always pegged to the US dollar. The

30:58

US dollars could potentially be doing

31:00

some weird stuff here as we reach

31:03

the end of life cycle for the old financial

31:05

system. Right. And it's

31:07

like one of those things, it's like, OK, we know crypto

31:09

is going to go up, crypto doesn't go down. Sometimes it's good.

31:12

If you're a trader, you want to get out and

31:14

maybe put it in a stable coin because you

31:16

know the volatility of it. But there's

31:19

not a Bitcoin stable coin yet. Is that something

31:21

that we could foresee in the future?

31:26

Well, you know, there is something

31:28

called stable SATs, which

31:31

is a way of representing

31:33

dollars over lightning networks.

31:37

And I think that it's basically

31:40

like a type of derivative. So

31:43

depending on how you classify it, that might count

31:45

as a Bitcoin stable coin. I'm

31:48

sure that over the next year

31:50

or two, we are going to see some

31:53

of the existing stable coins start

31:56

to issue their tokens on

31:59

lightning networks. as Taproot Assets

32:01

becomes a thing and works its

32:04

way into production. I

32:06

think RGB is another project

32:08

that can also let you do similar tokenization.

32:12

And going back

32:14

to some of your early questions about ordinals

32:16

and stuff, I'm not bullish. While

32:20

I'm interested in seeing people do

32:22

the permissionless innovation, I'm not particularly

32:25

bullish about any of it that

32:27

is working on the main

32:29

chain, especially if you're using a lot of data

32:31

in block space, because we already know that's

32:34

not going to scale long term. So

32:37

even if those on chain or on

32:39

the base chain products

32:43

and pieces of functionality do

32:45

become

32:48

a sort of long term used thing,

32:50

I think they're going to be very niche markets, simply

32:52

because it's going to crowd out anything

32:54

except the very highest value use

32:57

cases.

32:58

So when do you think that we

33:01

make that move on the technology

33:03

adoption curve from early adopter

33:05

to the beginning of mainstream

33:07

adoption? Is it these ETFs

33:10

for BlackRock and Vanguard and whoever

33:12

else? Or does that not

33:14

even put us there yet?

33:17

Yeah, I mean, I feel like

33:19

we're already somewhat

33:21

there. I

33:23

believe Coinbase has

33:26

said that there's something like 20 or 30

33:28

million crypto

33:31

owners in America. I'm assuming that's

33:33

based off their own internal metrics. Yeah,

33:37

they put that on that can that they distributed

33:39

recently. Yeah, that's not

33:41

nothing. That is definitely

33:44

very solidly in the early adoption. 15%, yeah,

33:46

that's pretty good. Maybe

33:48

we are.

33:50

It is fascinating watching

33:52

this stuff go. And in this new life cycle,

33:55

it looks like, wow. Wow,

34:01

you know as the having happens again, what

34:03

it's going to go down to what 3.125 or

34:06

something much smaller and

34:09

then so each subsequent having

34:11

are going to seem to have less of an impact

34:13

on the overall volume because you know

34:15

really 90 plus percent of Bitcoin

34:17

has been mined almost right. So it's

34:19

like most of it's already out there. A lot

34:21

of people are holding it. They're not selling it. They're

34:24

keeping it in there. They're keeping it in their own place. This

34:27

is maybe kind of a dual question. Do

34:30

you think we'll get to a time where Bitcoin

34:32

no longer has 8 decimal

34:34

points but maybe they say hey there's only 21

34:36

million of them so let's move this

34:39

to 10 decimal points or 12 decimal points. That

34:41

way that Satoshi can get broke down in the smaller

34:44

amount because it seems like if there's

34:46

only a finite amount and the only way to go

34:48

is to divide that way. That's super-eflationary

34:51

potentially.

34:52

Yeah,

34:54

well so

34:56

I don't think that'll happen anytime

34:59

soon at the base layer

35:01

and that's primarily a function

35:04

of the way that the fees work. I

35:08

think we would need like much larger block sizes

35:10

and lower fees in order to justify

35:12

further subdivision because you know the fees

35:14

you're I think in best case scenario

35:17

you're paying at least a few hundred Satoshis

35:19

for an on-chain transaction fee at the very

35:22

lowest fee rate that is currently

35:24

allowed and relayed. However,

35:26

it is already possible

35:28

to send millis Satoshi

35:31

increments on Lightning Network. This

35:35

gets into some interesting philosophical

35:38

quandaries because technically if

35:40

you send less than one Satoshi on

35:42

the Lightning Network, you're not necessarily guaranteed

35:45

that you would be able to close that out on the main

35:47

chain once again because of the

35:50

fee situation. But I

35:52

think it is interesting. That

35:56

facilitates things like machine

35:58

payments.

35:59

you know,

36:00

really paying for resources on

36:03

demand, you can start to

36:05

have these meaningful economic

36:08

interactions that are simply not

36:10

possible at any scale

36:13

with the traditional financial system because

36:15

they have so much more overhead.

36:17

Hmm. Now, maybe if Bitcoin gets up to a million dollars,

36:20

then Satoshi's worth like a penny for something,

36:22

right? And then it's like, okay,

36:24

maybe we need to do it. But man, for Bitcoin to

36:26

get up to a million dollars, we got a way, we

36:29

got a ways to go. What do you think, Joel? What

36:31

do you think? Was that James Jameson? What do you think about

36:33

this next cycle not being a financial

36:35

advisor, being just guessing? Do we

36:37

hit 250,000 this cycle or 150,000? What do you think? Any ballpark?

36:40

Any guess?

36:44

And you don't have to eat your dick if you

36:46

don't get it right. Yeah,

36:48

you know, another

36:50

reason why I think that price predictions

36:53

aren't necessarily interesting is

36:56

because it's actually a two variable

36:58

equation. Bitcoin going

37:01

to $250,000 doesn't necessarily

37:03

mean that you're going to be able to buy

37:05

a house with one Bitcoin. It could

37:08

be that if fiat has collapsed

37:10

so much, it goes to $250,000. That's

37:13

why I've always thought when Bitcoin hits

37:14

a million, it's because the dollar has tanked,

37:16

right? Something crazy has happened.

37:19

Yeah.

37:20

Bitcoin millionaire, but it doesn't

37:22

matter because it costs me half a million

37:24

for a roll of toilet paper. So well,

37:27

let's close out with this, then. You know, hindsight

37:30

is the best vision of all. And

37:33

if you're going to look back, let's

37:35

say, to when you first discovered Bitcoin,

37:37

what does Jameson today want,

37:40

you know, younger Jameson who just discovered

37:42

Bitcoin to know?

37:47

Hmm. Mainly

37:49

that

37:50

I should care about privacy more. Unfortunately,

37:52

I had to learn my privacy lesson the hard

37:54

way of getting swatted and

37:57

having to spend a lot of time and money.

38:00

basically burning down my old life

38:02

and starting over again. Those

38:05

are really the two things, especially

38:08

in this space, but really in general, working

38:10

in cybersecurity is,

38:15

this is why I'm somewhat bearish on

38:18

humanity in terms of privacy

38:20

and security, because humans

38:24

are so, you could say lazy,

38:28

but the human- That's a nice

38:31

way of putting it. The human condition

38:33

is to take the path of least resistance

38:35

to achieve whatever you think your goal is,

38:38

and that combined with the fact

38:40

that we have now thousands

38:43

and thousands of years of human civilization

38:45

where we have created more economically

38:48

productive and

38:51

viable systems by

38:53

ceding our power

38:54

and

38:58

our skills to other people,

39:01

to basically be specialists in one or

39:03

two things, it's

39:05

this really weird trade-off

39:07

where now it is considered

39:11

normal to have other

39:13

trusted third parties facilitate

39:16

things that literally keep you alive.

39:19

I mean, most of us would die

39:21

within a few weeks if

39:23

the supply chains broke down, if

39:26

critical parts of our civilization

39:28

infrastructure stopped working. And

39:31

the kind of the scary

39:33

thing is how fragile a lot of these systems

39:35

are, but on the flip side, they're also antifragile

39:38

because we have all of these people

39:40

around the world who are constantly fixing

39:43

various aspects of civilization.

39:46

So in general, I would

39:49

want to be more privacy and security

39:52

conscious upfront, because if

39:54

you don't do that, you might

39:56

be able to go your whole life without a problem happening,

39:58

but there's always... the possibility.

40:01

And if you have a major security or

40:04

privacy event, it can be

40:06

catastrophic if you're not prepared for it. So

40:09

suffice to say, I'm a fan of prepping,

40:12

prepping in every possible way. We

40:15

talk a lot about financial sovereignty,

40:19

being a sort of sovereign individual,

40:21

at least in the context of Bitcoin. But

40:23

I think that people should take that perspective

40:26

and try to apply it to as many different aspects

40:28

of their lives as possible.

40:30

I would tell my younger Joel,

40:33

buy, you know, mine, a thousand Bitcoin

40:35

or so and sock it away and don't touch it. Then

40:38

mine was a lot simpler than yours. Anyway,

40:41

Jameson. I love that. Barris on humanity.

40:44

Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. The

40:47

website for all things Jameson, lopp.net,

40:50

L-O-P-P dot net. And as

40:52

Travis mentioned, the resources that

40:55

he has here, this is definitely worthy

40:57

of a bookmark. So much

40:59

content right here on Bitcoin resources,

41:02

everything that you could ever want.

41:04

This might be the most definitive resource

41:06

site that I have seen

41:09

yet. So Jameson, thanks again, dude, for

41:11

coming on. I guess we'll see in five and a half years.

41:14

Hopefully less than that. Okay.

41:20

See how we just we got right into that interview,

41:22

Trav. We were like, boom, you just got to hear what

41:24

Jameson's got to say. Hope you guys check

41:26

out the show notes with the links to all his

41:28

resources at badco.in

41:31

forward slash 699.

41:34

Get secure with your Bitcoins. That's

41:37

right

41:37

in the Casa. So yeah, not

41:39

a sponsored, you know, podcast

41:42

at all, but just wanted to chat with him because he's been a true

41:44

thought leader, man. He got a Bitcoin at

41:47

the same time as me, but he looked at it in a little

41:49

different way. Like I was like, damn, it ruined my computer.

41:51

He's like, oh my God, screw

41:55

you Bitcoin, you piece of shit

41:57

scam. He's like, oh damn, this is

42:00

going to be great. You know, I look

42:02

at that and I go, I always laugh because I

42:04

don't laugh. I silently cry. But

42:06

I look at it and I go, man, I was buying so

42:08

much gold and silver in 2011. And

42:12

then my gold and silver now is worth about half

42:15

of what I paid for it. If I had only taken

42:17

a quarter of that and put it in Bitcoin,

42:21

I would be somewhere in

42:23

the most ridiculous house you've ever seen and

42:26

live in large. But it's like I didn't do

42:28

that. And it's like, wow, man.

42:31

It's like seeing gold and silver, what

42:33

it was doing then, it was almost like

42:35

the 1980s whenever the Hunt Brothers were

42:37

manipulating the silver market. Because

42:40

like silver hit almost 45 or something then

42:43

I remember. But

42:44

I do have some cool, amazing, epic coins

42:47

still, Joel. So I got that going for me.

42:49

So there's something, it's not a complete wash.

42:52

Yeah. Yeah. So you guys are going to

42:54

want to tune into our next episode because

42:56

it's number 700-700 and we're going to be talking a lot

43:02

about our thoughts of what's happened so

43:04

far. The story so far,

43:07

especially thoughts from being in

43:09

the midst of this bear market and perhaps

43:12

getting ready to come out the other side. The

43:15

bear market birth canal, if you

43:17

will. Is

43:19

that a really good? Yeah. Well, that's what it

43:21

is. It's like during the bear market, everybody gets

43:23

nice and fat. And then during the bear

43:26

market, we're all in the bull market, everybody's getting

43:28

nice and fat in the bear market. We're all getting

43:30

skinny because we're burning that fat. And

43:32

we're like, come on bull market, let's go again.

43:34

We're ready to go. I'm about 20 pounds

43:37

lighter. Speaking of burning

43:39

right now,

43:40

I've been burning. Well, that's all calories that

43:42

you gained when you went on that cruise. You're

43:46

not too far from the truth, dude. You're

43:48

back to normal now. You're

43:51

telling me I'm just here on this cruise eating every

43:53

buffet possible. And when I come back, I'm

43:55

going to lose some weight. So basically you lost some weight,

43:57

but it was all the weight you gained on the cruise. Shut up.

44:00

Shut up. Why you gotta be mean to

44:02

me? I'm

44:03

not gonna want to do episode 700 if you mean to me. Okay,

44:06

it's great, guys. Let's just say it's $6.99. That's a good number.

44:09

Nikola Tesla will approve of this number.

44:13

No, the $6.99. $3.69, where

44:16

Nikola Tesla's energy

44:18

frequency vibrations of the universe, it's

44:20

all tied together. And so he loved it. Every

44:22

time he would stay in a hotel, it always had to add

44:25

up to the number three in some way. He

44:27

was very, very focused around

44:29

the numbers three, six and nine. So this is episode

44:31

six, nine, nine. So this is one

44:33

of the most powerful episodes in all

44:35

of bad crypto so far. Oh my gosh, you

44:37

guys need to make sure... Maybe

44:39

number 693 or number 369.

44:42

Guys, make sure you're subscribed. Tell

44:45

a friend. We'll see you on episode number 700. Until

44:48

then, please of bad

44:50

staying, shall you be. If

44:52

I'm gonna do that, I should feel like Yoda. Bad

44:54

you must stay. Mmm. That

44:58

sounded more like Fuzzy Bear. Fuzzy

45:02

Bear needs to go pop now. Who's

45:05

bad?

45:25

The Bad Crypto Podcast is a production of

45:27

Bad Crypto LLC. The content

45:29

of the show, the videos and the website

45:31

is provided for educational, informational

45:34

and entertainment purposes only. It's not

45:36

intended to be and does not constitute

45:38

financial, investment or trading

45:40

advice of any kind. You shouldn't make

45:42

any decisions as to finances, investing,

45:45

trading or anything else based on this information

45:47

without undertaking independent due diligence

45:50

and consultation with a professional financial

45:52

advisor. Please understand that the trading

45:54

of Bitcoins and alternative cryptocurrencies

45:57

have potential risks involved. Anyone

45:59

wishing to...

45:59

invest in any of the currencies or tokens

46:02

mentioned on this podcast should first

46:04

seek their own independent professional financial

46:06

advisor.