Hi, This is Jan Pritzker and this is Gary Leland, and you're listening
to the episode one forty of the Crypto Cousins podcast. Beat your interest in
bitcoin and cryptocurrencies by joining Hall of Fame podcaster Gary Leland on the Crypto Cousins
Podcast. And remember we are all cousins in the world of crypto. This
week's price of bitcoin nine thousand, four hundred and seventy seven dollars. That's
up six hundred and eighty two dollars, are seven point seven percent over the
past seven days. Howdy, Howdy, howdy, Yan, Welcome to the
show. Thanks, thanks for having me here. Gary real excited. Yeah.
I just finished your book recently, and I know you sent me copies
like a year ago. It took me a long time to get to it,
but I got to it and I went right through it. That's a
great book. And casehall aren't familiar. Jan wrote the book inventing bit Coin,
and we got a lot to talk about that. Before we get into
that, though, tell us a little bit about your background, a short
bio if you would. Yeah, my bio is kind of complicated. I
don't know if we can keep it short, but I'll try. I've been
a technology person and a startup person for the last twenty years. I've been
doing a lot of startups. But I'm also a former immigrant from the former
Soviet Union, So I came over to the United States in nineteen eighty nine.
I was just seven years old. Came with my parents and my sister,
and I grew up doing you know, computer stuff, and eventually ended
up doing startups and went through about six different startups over the last twenty years.
The last one was called Reverb. Reverb was co founded in twenty twelve
along with David Colt, who was the founder, and him and I built
out Reverb to be the best place for musicians to buy and sell gear,
and pretty much over the next you know, six years, we went from
just the two of us to about one hundred and fifty employees doing about five
hundred million dollars in sales, and it just became this huge thing. And
meantime, as I was, you know, doing the Reverb thing is kind
of my full time gig, I was getting really interested in bitcoin. Got
kind of fell down the bitcoin rabbit hole in twenty sixteen and spent a couple
of years just you know podcasts, books, youtubees, and by the twenty
eighteen I just felt like that was the most important thing I could work on.
So I ended up leaving Reverb in twenty eighteen in order to be a
part of the bitcoin space, not really knowing what I was going to do,
but that's kind of how I started my journey. So you got in
in sixteen, so you got into the well at a really good price.
I guess it. Well, technically I got in in twenty eleven, except
for in twenty eleven I bought bitcoin at the top, which was thirty bucks,
and my god, you got ripped off, I know. And you
know what else happened afterwards? I sold the bottom two dollars, so I
did the classic I did the classic move of buying the top and selling the
bottom. I didn't know the first thing about trading. I wasn't even trading
stocks at that point. I think I had just do I had some Apple
shares or something, but pretty much bought the top, sold the bottom.
Didn't know what what I got into. And twenty thirteen, same thing happened
to me. Because it was in the media again and again, I remembered
bitcoin was interesting. I didn't know what it was. So I'm very embarrassed
about this because, you know, being a technology person, I should have
at least researched it and understood it and read the white paper. I did
none of those things. I didn't even know there was a white paper.
I literally just heard there are some people building a payment system. I thought
it was a payment system, which it turned out not to be, and
then I bought some just in case. But it turned out that I didn't
invest my time until really twenty sixteen came around. Hopefully in twenty sixteen,
you held on to it. This time I did. Was the first time
I actually actually stuck because I had more conviction around what it was after having
understood it. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Now, you said
you immigrated from Russia, but you were very young when your family to move
here from Russia. Do you remember anything about the mother land there? Yeah?
It was seven and uh, you know, I I remember a little
bit. I remember, you know, I was a kid, So I
remember my childhood as most kids do, pretty fondly. I didn't have any
real issues other than maybe than some some bullying anti Semitism, which is you
know, common in Russia. Um, but you know, my childhood was
normal, and it wasn't really until we got to America and experienced what it
looks like in a capitalist country with like actual abundance and grocery stores and stuff
like that, that we finally understood like what we had been like basically that
we had been lied to around you know, what life is supposed to be
like, because in Russia, you know, in Soviet Union, you hear
about it. There was there's food shortages, there's readlines, um, there
was shortages of basic goods and obviously like nobody made any money. And uh,
the only you know that it was interesting about that experience after I got
into bitcoin is I finally understood what the purpose of dick. And it was
after I talked to my parents about our experience, because it turns out that
when we left the Soviet Union, we weren't able to keep our money because
there were capital controls, so you couldn't own us dollars, and the government
allowed us to take one hundred dollars per person, and that's what they exchanged
for us, you know, from Soviet rubles to dollars. So we left
the country with four hundred dollars in our pocket. So on the leaving with
the four hundred dollars? Is that because well, I know it's because it
was the law, But is that because you had to You can't exchange rubles
anywhere else and you couldn't sneak them out right, so you could exchange them
on the street. But the street exchange rate was different from the government exchange
rate, similar to what you might hear about in Venezuela or Argentina or other
countries that have capital controls. Usually the government has this official exchange rate,
right, so it might be like ten to one, but on the street
it might be one hundred to one. So that means our rubles are basically
worthless, like nobody actually wanted them. Why would you exchange rubles which were
basically currency for the US dollar, which is something that everybody wanted, right
The US dollars wasn't high demand in Russia even though it was actually illegal to
own, so people use it for bribes, people use it to store value
because that was the only currency they could get their hands on that held any
value. So nobody wanted the Soviet currency because it was completely government control,
so there was obviously the price of it is not real if no one wants
their currency, which you know, I realized no one wants. I'm not
doubting that. I'm not arguing that point. Why do they care if you
take it? No, No, they don't care. I mean, I'm
just saying they wouldn't. It's not that they were trying to take it.
Is that we wanted dollars the government. Yeah, no, the government.
We wanted dollars to leave the country, right, we wanted to go to
America. With dollars. You could take all the rubles what you wanted.
Yeah, but they would well, you just weren't really good. We had
to cash him in. It's like in Russia for nothing. Yeah, basically
they were usefully you know, worthless. So and I don't know if it's
true if we could take the rubles with us or not. I'm not sure
what the actual policy on that was, but I do know that US dollar
ownership was illegal other than you know, through official channels right when you first
got here or your parents. I guess you've talked to them about this now
that you're kind of into money. You know, when once you get into
bigcoin, you start exploring money and what money is and the history of money
there's a lot of information about money that we just don't know, yep,
because we just spend it and don't know what it is or what it's backed
by or anything like that. So I assume once you started getting into bigcoin
of money, you started asking them a lot of questions about what it was
like under a socialist economy, and they've told you stories about their lives here.
You know, I see now a big move in the United States towards
my young people towards socialism. Being an old guy sixty five years old,
you know, I was always taught that socialism, communism was the worst thing
that could happen to the world, you know, as a kid. I
mean, we were just told that over and over and over, and so
I still probably have a lot of that in my thought patterns when I think
about things. But I'm curious, how did your parents someone who fled socialism,
who knew exactly what it was and then came and if who lived here
for a long time, probably lived here for a long time before you talk
to him about money. Oh yeah, what were their thoughts on socialism versus
or communism or whatever versus a free market? Yeah, I mean, obviously
you know, when you leave an environment like the Soviet Union where there's basically
shortages and scarcity of goods, and it's not like there were scarcity of resources.
It was all because they were badly allocated. You know, people were
doing things because the prices were fixed that they didn't know if they were to
produce more of something or less of something. So it was not a good
situation. And when we got to America, it was very abundant. You
know a lot of Russian immigrants will tell you that their first memory of America
is like walking into a grocery store and seeing, you know, twenty varieties
of bread, Like that's an unimaginable idea in a socialist economy. So you
see that kind of variety and abundance, and you know, you're pretty much
instantly sold. So you know, obviously my parents have a pretty strong aversion
to the idea of socialism communism. Are they still alive, Yeah, Yeah,
they're alive and wall and h they're very they're very active for their age.
My my dad actually client mom on Everest just ten years ago. It
was fifty three at the time, so I'm sixty five. Your dad,
yeah, he's your age. Yeah, exactly, and my mom is just
a few years younger. But um, you know, they they obviously,
I think a lot of Russian immigrants will tell you, like they don't like
where this country is headed. They're very concerned about the socialist tendencies that are
arising. You know, I kind of my circle of friends is pretty liberal.
I would say so in my circle of friends, you know, there's
certain there's always certain like well meaning things that people want, you know,
like we should take care of our our fellow man and all that kind of
stuff. Um, there's a line that gets crossed when you go from let's
take care of our fellow man to like, let's have the government use guns
to force us to take care of our fellow man, which is a difficult
it's a difficult thing to understand that that's where this goes eventually, and you
know it doesn't always have to go there, right, there are countries out
there that have some socialist policies. I mean America has tons of social policies,
social security, I mean lots of medicare, right, I like Medicare,
don't get me wrong. That's like a hell of a deal. And
of course it's there's a certain element to you know, public education, all
these kinds of things. You know, my wife works in public education.
We live in a great neighborhood with a very good public school. Some public
schools aren't very good, but ours is great. So the question is,
like, you know, there's always socialist policies. There's also socialism on the
corporate level, as we know, with the allowing corporations to get very cheap
loans that we probably call that corporate socialism and causing a lot of wealth inequality
here. There's no perfect system, but there's definitely a place where. You
know, I think if my parents, if you ask them about this,
they would much prefer a system of free market and freedom in general, because
when markets aren't free, then then really nothing is free. That the flow
of information has to also not be free, The flow of currency is stopped,
everything is locked down. Because once if you live in socialist Russia,
you either live in that socialist bubble and you think everything's okay, or you
see the outside world and all of a sudden you're like, oh wait,
this is not right. Like, you know, there's no breadlines in America.
Why are there breadlines here? Yeah, they can't expose you to the
real information out there or you'll get pissed off exactly. So Russia was heavily
censored. You know, all information was heavily censored. There was only State
TV, there was like three channels, and letters you know, were presumed
to be read going out to America, you know, we had to like,
it's just it's a bad situation, and I don't think anybody wants to
live in that kind of world. Who's who's seen the other side. I
don't think anybody would want to live in that world at all, whether they've
seen on the other side or not. So that's that's that's interesting. I
was curious what your parents thoughts would be on, you know, especially since
they're my age on. Seeing how many people are wanting socialism nowadays just surprises
me. The amount of people I see that are in favor of that.
I say, because I've just always been I don't know, to me,
it always just made sense that if you work hard, you can be rich.
If you don't want to work, you're not going to be rich.
I don't think it's as black and white as that. There's also elements of
like, you know, luck of the draw, where are you born,
what's your community, like and there's a lot of other stuff that goes into
it. But I think you can work past that if you work now.
You know, like I may not I may not be the President of the
United States rich, but yeah, I grew up on an island, for
an example, as a white dude, So I was I did get a
break there. I would admit that's a break. There are systemic things that
happen. I mean, if you will grow up in a neighborhood where there's
just like you, you're fighting for your life to survive. I mean,
that's a systemic thing. Your bar to get out of that area is way
higher than you know, somebody was born even in poverty as a white dude
or whatever. I don't want to get into that necessarily. No, I
admit I got a hell of it right being a white dude compared to a
lot of people. There's no doubt about that. I used to when I
heard that statement white privilege, I was like, what the hell has happening?
Right now, I've come to understand that is a true thing. And
you're right. If I grew up in a neighborhood where someone was being shot
every week, and I was just trying to stay alive. And my whole
goal was just to get to stay alive, rather than going, hey,
no one's no one's trying to kill man. If your only way of making
money, like enough money, is to sell drugs and that was the only
and then on top of that, you were threatened with violence if you didn't,
I mean, right, you know, that's a big difference. You're
correct. It's so much different bart to get over than where I'm going down
to the golf course, which we weren't rich enough to be a member,
but I could go to the eighteenth hole and tell cokes to those golfers for
fifty cents each or something. I mean, we came to this country with
nothing, and a lot of times people are like, oh, look,
I came to this country with nothing, and I bought this life. But
my dad was an engineer, my mom was a teacher. They had education,
like world class education. I mean, say what you will about the
Soviet Union, but the education system was very good and they produce some of
the best engineers. And we came to this country with all that and all
this culture and the background, and of course we were able to build a
back up. You know, it took a long time, but we were
able to do it. It's not equal for everybody in that sense. No,
I agree with you completely. You made a good point there, But
again it's like, what do you do, right? I mean you you
you want to try to help other people, you can do that voluntarily or
you can say, okay, well we're gonna like ask the government to you
know, take everybody half of everybody's to paycheck and pay for these other people.
And for me, like I would happily do that for my local community,
I'm not so sure I should be paying for somebody that lives halfway across
the world or to fight wars or other things, which is you know where
federal taxes end up going, right, and then you have to go you
know, they're able to print as much money as they want, won't we
just set at here everything sprint money and take care everybody here. Yeah,
I agree with you on all of that. So what where did y'all move
when you moved here? We ended up in a suburb of Chicago, because
in order to move to the United States at the time, you basically had
to have somebody here that would essentially vouch for you and say they'd take care
of you like they would they would request your immigration and say they would be
your caretaker and all that. So we had like my grandpa's you know,
cousin that was living here, so we were able to use him to fish
us out of there, right, And yeah, So I grew up in
suburbs of Chicago and went to school downstate in Illinois at the urbanis Champagne and
then came back to the city. And I guess, and you benefited from
having educated parents that new education was important, so they probably made that a
high priority. I mean, my dad bought me a computer like a year
after we moved here. And again keep in mind, he was doing odd
jobs earning like five ten dollars an hour at the time, so he knew
that was so important that you know, that was one of the first purchases
that they made Commodore sixty four used. Obviously it was a junker, but
at the time it must have cost a couple hundred dollars, so it wasn't
a small amount of money compared to their salary, but it was something that
you know, my dad saw the future and computers and made sure that I
got into that real early. Well, that's really it was really smart of
him. I wish I wish there were computers around when I was in high
school, even that would have been nice for sure. Let's get off that
for a second and go into your book, Inventing Bitcoin, which you can
find at inventing bitcoin dot com. You know, I think this is a
good book as a star her book, you know, for somebody. I
think I used to tell people who were interested in bitcoin to get safety Dean's
book, you know, the Bitcoin Standard, which I think is a great
book, great book, without a doubt, But I think this is a
better starting book, your book. And then you know, when you get
him to read that, then they go, wow, that bitcoin sounds interesting.
What should I read next? Then set him into something a little heavier.
I don't like the Bitcoin Standard. That's just my thoughts. I heard
it in reversal order, but that was my thoughts. Tell us about your
book. What made you write the book? Yeah, I agree with your
assessment. The reason I wrote the book, and it's very short, it's
about one hundred pages long, and they wrote it because they wanted to have
something that was friendly for beginners. And when I started writing it, which
was probably in the early twenty eighteen, there wasn't a lot in the market.
I don't remember if Safe Book was out yet or not, but pretty
much everything that was out there was substantial. Like there was Mastering Bitcoin by
Andrea Sanntonopolis, which was like, you know, three or four hundred pages
and it was yeah, code, and it's like, it's not it's meant
for developers, it's not meant for the everyday person. And I felt like
the resources out there weren't good enough to give people a short understanding of bitcoin,
but that was enough for them to be able to go and explain to
somebody else. That's that was really My goal was to have something that somebody
could read, understand and feel like they know bitcoin well enough to defend the
ideas of bitcoin, like why why is it limited in supply? Why is
mining? How does minning work? These are the ideas that we cover in
the book so that people have a strong understanding. And I started writing the
book because I was giving talks at high schools. Actually, I was giving
a bunch of lectures to high school students and math classes and for career days
because a lot of my friends and my wife as a teacher, so I
would just go around to their high schools and basically showed bitcoin to high schoolers.
But as part of that I started I was taking notes and writing outlines
and kind of turned into essays, and that was the beginning of the book.
So the book was really meant to be at a high school level.
I didn't want anybody to have, you know, a computer science degree or
advanced math or nothing like that. It was going to be at a high
school level where I could actually give this book to high schooler and have them
understand it and ask questions. And that's that's what I came up with,
is you know, the process of inventing bitcoin? How how would you go
about inventing bitcoin? Because I think when you walk through the process of inventing
something, then you have a really good understanding of all the pieces that comprise
it and you can actually explain to somebody else from your experience of going out
talking about bitcoin and taking your notes and basically your outline, I guess of
what you were talking about. You just decided to put that into a book.
Yeah, And it was almost like a reaction to people's questions because I
think the biggest two biggest questions are you know, how does bitcoin work and
why does it need to exist? And the why. I cover it by
looking at some of the Satoshi's quotes and looking at what his motivations were,
what was he really trying to achieve, And then once we understand what he
is trying to achieve, like he wanted to have you know, scarcity,
he wanted to have an animity, he wanted to have you know, these
are different ideas around uh, you know, trustlessness, like anybody could join
the system it was permissionless. And then looking at those motivations and then saying,
okay, well, how do we actually get that done? How do
we implement that in code? And solving those problems one one after another?
Uh and um, you know in the book, I talk about it from
very high level. I don't actually get into the computer code, but I
do give people enough of an understanding of computer science at a very like,
you know, not even one on one level, just how do computers work
in a bitcoin system and how do they keep each other in check? Yeah,
it's you don't have to be able to write code to understand what you're
talking about in code in this book. Like I said, this book's very
well done and I was very impressed. Now you had Guy Swan Yes to
narrate this on the audio book version available, and he does a great job.
I mean, you know, I think he did a great rebranding job
on a site going to the big one audible. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,
guy does a great job. And I think the way that he reads
is the way that I imagine writing, like kind of I'm a fast talker,
so I would never want to narrate my own book, but the way
that he speaks is very clear, and I think it helps sell the ideas
in the book, you know, more clearly and un like people digest what's
going on. Yeah, I think that's the problem with the for minute crypto
shows. I talk really fast, the formaute bitcoin show, every brand it
is, I talk really fast. I had a friends say, yeah,
I listen to all my podcasts at one and a half speed. But that's
the slowers down because you're already one and a half speed. Yeah, that's
what people say about me too, So I try to make a conscious effort
to talk slower, but it's hard. Now people can find that at your
site. But that's also at inventing Bitcoin dot com. But that's also on
like it Audible, Audible Amazon, you can get in pretty much all the
standard channels. And last year you gave us like well ten of those that
you signed and numbered to give away a bit block boom when we had drawings
in between speakers, and it's amazing how excited people were. My wife said,
they were really excited when they came down and got to their prize,
so that was really pretty. And then we had some at the table you'd
provided that we sold for you, So that was a really productive prize that
people seem to have liked. Then, if anyone's out there, if you're
not for me with bit block Boom, that's a bitcoin conference I put on
every year here in Dallas, Texas, and this is our third year.
Coming up for the conference is twenty ninth of August. Like I said,
in Dallas, Texas and at bit block Boom, we just talk about bitcoin,
not all coins, not blockchain, just bitcoin. So if you're interested
in bitcoin, go to bitblock boom dot com and check it out. It
is starting to turn into a week long event. I think our first events
now are on Thursday night. I would be a surprised is someone that add
a satellite event for Wednesday at the way things are going. But check out
our lineup see what you think. And if you decide to go, use
the code cousins CUSI NS at checkout and you will receive thirty percent off the
price of your ticket. So check that out. I hope I get to
see you this year in Dallas. Everybody that vent really seems to be growing
this year. That's awesome. Yeah, I think because people haven't had anywhere
to go. Oh for sure. Yeah, this this lockdown is not fun.
Yeah, we had Stephan laver Is coming from Australia, but he sent
me a message this morning that he's not sure that they're going to unlock I
guess is he in New Zealand or Australia. I'm not sure actually probably.
He said that it looks like they're going to be at the travel there locally
by August, but it might be September the tint before they can leave the
country, and that's kind of weird. So he's like keeping us updated so
we can figure out if he's still going to be at the com or not.
So if not, we may have to get a sub for him and
have him in next year. So you also, though, are with Swan
Bitcoin and give Bitcoin. I mean that's both by the same There are two
different things, but they're by the same entity. I guess, yes,
Yes, we're one united entity. Yeah, tell us about Swan. How's
that going. Swan is doing great. You know, we launched Swan.
For those of you who don't know, Swanna is a bitcoin auto stacking service,
so we withdraw automatically from your bank account. We buy bitcoin automatically on
a weekly basis, and then we withdraw it back to your bitcoin wallet,
also automatically if you choose to set up automatic withdrawals, which is pretty cool
and I'm at sure that anybody else is doing that part. So, you
know, lowest fees for for that particular service. And you know, Swanna
was launched on the eve of the COVID disaster. We I think we released
it on the week of March twenty third, which is probably the week around
the time when the markets were crashing, or right after that happened. It
was really just a time of despair and doom and gloom. And yet a
lot of people are very excited about Swan, and there was so much noise
on Twitter, and a lot of people joined up and you know, now
it's been what is it two months or so two and a half months,
and we're growing very quickly. We're on boarding you people all the time,
and we're getting, um, you know, we're getting people who aren't your
typical I don't know your Bitcoin Twitter people. They're not those people. We're
getting boomers. We're getting people of all ages, all sex, gender.
Surprise. No, I'm not surprised. I love it, and you know,
I think that's really important because I wanted this service that I could send
you know, my parents too. That was really what we wanted to Swan
to be was a It was a mainstream service for bitcoin. And it's interesting
because the people who you know on bitcoin Twitter, who I have a certain
set of requirements, are very different from your typical person buying bitcoin for the
first time because they, for example, they don't understand while it's they haven't
heard of a wallet, what does that mean? How do they do that?
So Swan is not just a place to buy a bitcoin. We also
couple that with bitcoin education through our series of blog articles at swan bitcoin dot
com, slash Signal swan Signal, and then we also have the live show
which we do on Twitter and other channels every week as well as swan Signal
podcast dot com, where we basically capture that knowledge and turn it into pods
and we have awesome guests on all the time. We just had Adam back
and Preston pish On. It was a lot of a lot of fun.
So these are the kinds of things that we do because we want to educate
people on bitcoin, not just you know, they bought a number, which
is most people they want to coin based, they bought a number. We
don't want that for our next million ten million bitcoiners. We want to have
people understand what they bought, why is it important, how does money work?
And all of that is stuff that we do through our ongoing education efforts.
Well, when you're saying stacking a platform in case someone has been under
a rock and they don't know what stacking SATs are, you're basically saying this
site is set up for someone to say, I want to get into bitcoin,
and I'm going to buy just gonna make a number one hundred dollars worth
a bitcoin every payday, every Friday or every other Friday, and this service
will go ahead and automatically buy and whatever the rate is that day. One
hundred dollars worth a bitcoin form so slowly they're able to say, say bitcoin,
and they can sit back and they're not like, you know, looking
at it all the time, trying to remember missing it out because I think
everybody agrees that if you just stack on us dollar cost averaging over the long
run, you're going to do better than trying to buy on the lows or
buy all ones. I think, yeah, a lot of people who get
into bitcoin and then all of a sudden are kind of called into trading.
And you know, if you've never traded stocks or stock options, you know
you probably shouldn't be day trading bitcoin either. It's not really it's a very
volatile market. It's not really friendly to new traders. And most people aren't
traders. They shouldn't be traders, you know. I think as a society
we push people into trading. We have apps like robin Hood and all that
that offer free trading and try to get people hooked on the idea of gambling.
But we've really lost the art of saving as a society. We don't
remember how to save our money. Obviously is not good for saving, because
if you save it, it loses value at least two percent, they're happy
if it only loses two. That's the goal is two, So it does
it meet goal? Yeah, we believe that bitcoin is the best money ever
invented. It's it's definitely better than than if you have money that loses money
value all the time, and so you should be saving some of it all
the time. And that's what swan is about. It's about regular saving of
bitcoin so that you don't have to think about it and just accumulates for you.
So does that sync up? I know I'm involved, but the things
I don't know about. Does that sync up to your bank account or to
a credit card or are ty either? It sinks No, no credit cards,
bank accounts only. And you probably shouldn't be buying bitcoin and a credit
card. Well, you might buy it to get to miles. You might
have the money. You might Yeah, if you're going to pay it off.
Sure, but you know there's a lot of most credit cards and sort
of you know in the industry they have enough charge for bitcoin related purchases and
we're just not going to support credit cards for the foreseeable future. But banking,
yes, and then we have wires coming in pretty soon. We're gonna
have a wire support, so you can just wire in money and it'll clear
right away instead of having to wait for the sche clearance period. So is
that going as expected, better than expected, a little behind because of the
COVID didn't expect. I think it's going better in the sense that the amounts
that people are saving are way more than we ever thought. When we model
this business, we were conservatively looking at one hundred, one hundred and fifty
dollars per customers as their monthly amount. It turns out that the most people
like the most common amounts or fifty one hundred dollars a week, and it
could be even higher than that. So you know, people are stacking more
than we thought, which is awesome, especially in a time like this where
you know finances might be sure or people might might be losing their paychecks.
And we've had a couple of folks put their plans on pause because they lost
their job. But the nice thing is that they can always resume when they're
ready to go again, and we always try to lower that limit, so
you know, if it's five dollars a month is all you can afford,
then that's what you can do. It's fine. So when you buy that
does stay in the swan wallet or when you buy it as an automatically transfer
using your key to your wallet, so we have both options. What we
find is a lot of people who are new to bitcoin are not comfortable setting
up wallets yet. So we obviously when you buy it, it's it's bought
on our side, it's bought through our custodial partner, and we partner with
a licensed and regulated Nevada chartered trust company called Prime Trust, and so all
of that happens on their side and is held in offline cold storage, so
that if people are new to bitcoin, then essentially their coins are safe.
But we're trying to of course, you know, with as bitcoiners, we
want to promote not your keys, not your coins. We want to promote
for people to take custody of their own assets. So what we do to
encourage that is we create an auto withdrawal plan for people so once they are
ready to set up a wallet, and we just put together a great article
about all the wallets that are out there and recommend different kinds of wallets for
different different amounts that you might be storing. And once you have set up
a wallet, you can just create an auto withdrawal plan, and so every
time you buy bitcoin, it will withdraw. You can even set it up
so that it has thresholds so that you don't withdraw every five dollars, you
will draw every one hundred dollars or every five hundred dollars or every certain amount
of bitcoin, because yeah, we want to encourage batching because this is something
again a lot of newbies don't know. But if your coins are all split
up into small pieces, then later when you want to use them, it
will cost you more to spend them because of the way that transaction fees work
based on the amount of data. A lot of people new to bitcoin don't
understand transaction fees. Now swan actually has free withdrawals. We don't charge you
for withdrawals at all. So it's to your benefit to use that for batching.
So go ahead, and you know, batch up a bunch of them
and withdraw once and then you have this nice chunk and then you can spend
the night. I know that it had free withdrawals, free withdrawals. We're
doing it. We haven't been super vocal about it. We're trying to get
it more and more places. We're just not you know, we're not at
a point where the site design is where we want it in terms of advertising
all the different bits and pieces, and that's because it's challenging to balance all
the exciting features that are good for people who understand what they're looking for versus
you know, making a really simple experience for newbs. And so we've aired
on the side of having it just kind of minimal, and then over time
we'll be adding more more stuff in. Well, it's going to give bitcoin
real quick quick, because that gotten kind of put on the back burner for
Swan. Give bitcoin was the first product before Swan came out, and give
Bitcoin was a you know, essentially envisioned as an on ramp to bitcoiners,
and it also had a purchasing feature to it, but we never did a
good job marketing it. And I think that when we realized what the landscape
was that people were so much more excited about, you know, automatic purchases
of bitcoin, we just decided to pursue that fully and give bitcoins if it
got kind of like said on the sideburn Yeah, it works, exists,
it's uh, you know, it's attracting users every day kind of by itself.
But we definitely don't spend a lot of time marketing it. And the
reason for that is we eventually envisioned Swan becoming the umbrella brand for all of
this. So you'll have a Swan app. It'll do the Swan auto stacking,
but it will also allow you to give gifts to people, so it
kind of would be incorporated into the Swan. Yeah, we'll fold it back
in. Yeah, but since you know, we're a small company, it
kind of benefits us to put all of our efforts on one thing and really
grow that thing, and then we can fold more features. But get Bitcoin
is a good way to give bitcoin. It is. I mean, if
you want to give someone a Christmas press, to give bitcoin, it's a
pretty good way to do it. Yeah, And give Bitcoin is also designed
for you know, your average kind of you be a bitcoin where you know,
a kid asks their uncle for a bitcoin present, Well then uncle doesn't
have to understand bitcoin in order to give them the present. You can just
go on to give bitcoin, plug in their bank account and we do all
the conversion automatically. Yeah, it's good. Fin Now what is bitcoiner VC
bitcoiner Ventures? Yeah, so bitcointer Ventures is a partnership between myself and Corey
and Stefan Lavera and Louis lou And it's a it's a way for us to
raise money for bitcoin friendly companies. Company companies that you know are good for
bitcoin. That's our that's our litmus test, is it good for bitcoin.
It's an angelist syndicate and we don't take any fees. There are angelists fees,
but we as as the partners, we don't actually take any carry or
what you might find a regular hedge fund where people take fees on the investments.
So it's kind of like a pro bono good faith thing that we're doing
in order to UM invest in bitcoin companies. And we commit our own money
just alongside everybody else. It's not we're never going to ask somebody for money
where we don't commit. UM. And we just did our first deal which
was for Unchained Capital and UM, that's that's live. So UM what was
that? That's that's closed. Well, we we raised we raised about one
hundred thousand dollars for runtchain Capital. Yeah. Yeah, now there are platinum
sponsor a bitlock moon this year. Kind of excited to have them involved.
Awesome. Yeah, Unchained is great fantastic team UM and we were very excited
to help them because, you know, we really believe in their mission and
also just the way that they execute you know, they're very very smart and
how they treat funds on chain and obviously their vaulting products are very excellent.
So we believe that these products have to exist for bitcoin to succeed. And
so that's the kind of companies you want to fund. So that was your
first Your first adventure or venture was friend chain Capital, Let's go out.
I found that by accident. I didn't even know that bitcoin or VC existed.
I kind of by accident. Yeah, And if anybody wants to join
up, it's you can just join the angelist syndicate. It's called Bitcoin or
Ventures. You can find that an angelist and there's no commitment or any obligation
to invest. You'll just be able to essentially see all the deals that are
coming across and then if you're interested in any particular deal, you can sign
up to do that. But any deals that you guys do promote, you're
basically putting your own money in. Yes, yeah, we won't. We
won't promote anything that we're not funding ourselves. So I made deals. Do
you have in the works right now or do you have any in the works.
We have a few, but we are not allowed to talk about any
deals. Can't promote anything if you're not a you know, a partner in
the syndicates. So I can't talk about it publicly. That's fine, that's
fine. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know the scoop. So okay,
so you're interesting. If you want to find out, go join Bitcoin
of BC. Yeah, and again that's there's an obligation. Just go ahead.
And is there any kind of tests you got to pass or anything.
I mean, if anyone can, well, you have to pass an accreditation
test on Angelists. They take care of all that for us. So we're
just you know, we're basically just helping find deals. Yeah. I was
looking at that last week. What is that angel investor, angel list?
Angel list, So it's at angel dot co if if you guys don't know,
Yeah, I was surprised I found I was a member of that or
something. I didn't even know. I guess. I don't know when I
signed that or when that happened. They have like a network of stuff they
have. You can create your own profile if you're even just like a developer
or entrepreneur. So they did a lot of stuff to act essentially the whole
venture capital and startup community. So a lot of people have angelists accounts that
they don't remember because they signed up as a as a developer or something a
long time ago. Stephen Cole told me about it. I had him on
last week, and so I was looking at the site last week because he
was telling me about it. Okay, so now I got to scoop on
the VC. Hey, what do you think of the happening? Was that?
Were you kind of let down or were you is that what you were
expecting or I mean I expected bitcoin not to change this monetary policy, and
it held up phenomenally well as far as price. You know, I don't
really look at day to day price movements. I don't think it's that important.
I'm into bitcoin for a very long time, and I think of it
as money for my children and grandchildren. So this having having happening whatever,
it's the third out of many, probably many more to come. There will
be two more of this decade. I was looking for a little bit more
excitement, a little more oh maybe some online parties or something, you know,
there was some yeah, I mean there was some zoom chats. I
think because of the COVID everybody's like, you know, you get a party
in the zoom chat or something, but I was looking I think maybe a
drunken chat wherebody had a mottle line or bottles. I think it's awesome that
the whole mining deut spiral narrative is getting destroyed right now because there's all these
you know, people saying that mining was going to be over, it's not
gonna be profitable, and I think people don't understand how mining works and keep
writing articles about it, which is sad. They need to research. Do
you think Pace said that the same thing about miners during the second Havening.
I think they did. I mean, as far as I know, there
are form posts going back to like twenty eleven where they were talking about the
mining dot spiral, you know, going into the first having So this has
been going on. This narrative has been going out for a long time,
and I think it fundamentally misunderstands how mining works. I mean, it's an
insensive, aligned system and if people are unprofitable, yeah they're going to unplug,
but that makes other people more profitable, right, and so all it
does is shifts the energy usage to places where there's more efficient, cheaper energy.
So yeah, some some guys you know in their garages are no longer
profitable. Mining adjusts itself. It's the beauty of the whole thing is that
it's a self regulating system. The difficulty adjustment happens every two weeks according to
what's going before it, so exactly, Hey, um, you listen to
podcasts. I used to listen to a lot, now less because I don't
drive anymore, which is unfortunately, you know, I think that's affected the
podcast industry as a whole. I bet it that no one's in their cars
or buses their trains, and that's when people listen to most podcasts. What
are a couple of your favorite podcasts. I like stuff on Lavera's pod,
m Marty Bent Tales from the Crypt. I like I listened to the What's
hev Any podcasts with Cassie. I listened to a few episodes of that.
I was pretty impressed. Ben I stopped because I stopped triving, right right.
Yeah, that's killed a lot of podcasts. Yeah, so sad.
You know, I'm trying to figure out a routine where I will actually find
time to listen to pods. Yeah, but also the other one I've been
actually listening to more. I almost stopped listening to bitcoin podcasts in favor of
listening to macro Voices, which I love so much. Now. It's it's
a podcast just about macro economics and you know, various trends, and they've
been really interesting because they talked about the virus and how that was going to
impact things and deflation inflation, like the stuff has become more interesting to me
almost a bitcoin. I mean, obviously bitcoin is the number one thing in
my life and I talk about it all the time, but you have to
have interests outside of bitcoin, and I think macrow is kind of a very
nice adjacent thing to expand your mind on when you're looking at bitcoin. I
think, what's hurt me with podcasts? All of a sudden I started listening
to audio books? Oh yeah, you know, and like you know,
I was listening to one book recently which was like twenty hours and I drive
five minutes to work, so it took me a long time. You know,
a lot of episodes of podcast came out, but I think listen to
the audiobooks is hurt my podcast listening habits, you know. So, hey,
before we get out of here, is there anything you want to tell
people that we might not have gone over that you wanted to make sure and
let people know, or that you were trying to promote or want to make
sure you know, come on here, we miss something. Sure, we
have a new um new concept on swan, which is you can have your
own vanity landing page with a welcome bar. It's got your face on it
and a quote. And this is for people who want to drive more traffic
to the site. So you can go to swan bitcoin dot com slash enlist
to enlist in the Swan force and become a promoter of bitcoin. Really,
it's all about promoting bitcoin and help and using Swans onboard new bitcoiners. And
we're gonna be providing a library of memes you can use on Twitter and other
places um to promote bitcoin and get more people on board. So if you're
interested in that kind of thing and you have an audience, go to swan
bitcoin dot com slash enlist and become one of our you know, one of
our promoters, and you know, just get more bitcoiners on board. Yeah,
I mean to do that. I guess I send people. I just
send people. I don't know where. I don't even know what I'm sending.
We gave you one. Let's see here. H don't we have slash
gary for you? I don't know? Do we? We do have slash
gary for you? Oh? I didn't even know. There you go.
Yes, I didn't go to swan bitcoin dot com slash Gary. Okay,
yeah, so you're listening to this bitcoin I didn't even know. Okay,
we're gonna sell Yours doesn't have a face on it, but we're gonna fix
that up right after this interview. I think we can. We can do
that if you're interested in well, I'll start using that. I usually use
a short link because I can't ever remember, you know what. Affiliate links
aren't stuff, But I can remember that one. I can remember. So
you're when you whenever you send somebody there and you have a profile, they're
gonna get a bonus. They're gonna get a sign a bonus, and then
you get you know, as a promoter, if you're part of the Swan
force, you're gonna get a percentage of their future purchases as well as an
initial referral fee, So definitely check that out. Swanforce dot com or swander
cooin dot com, slash and list. We need to get swanforce dot com.
But yeah, and I'm gonna and I'm gonna like, look at Gary
because I didn't even know I was there. You go to slash Gary.
We're gonna talk about getting you a bar after the show. Sounds good,
Well, I appreciate you. Coming of time. Where can people follow you
at? Where's the best place for him to follow? You? Find me
on Twitter? Skwp pronounced scoop skwp? What does that mean? What is
that? Why do you have skwp? It's something that it's a name I
chosen. I was fourteen years old and it's stuck since then. And it's
actually a care are from an Isaac Asimov book, who was an alien scribe
spoke, you know, hundreds of languages, which you know, I'm an
linguistics nerd. So how's that pronounced? Then, linguistic nerd, let's pronounce
scoop. Oh, that's pronounce scoop. Okay, that's kWp. Yeah,
and that's the pronunciation they gave them the book. So I don't know,
Okay, well, I didn't know I figured I figured there was a way
to read it if it was in the book. I mean, you know,
so there was something if someone's name in the book. Yeah, Scoop.
Okay, Scoop. So is that your nickname? Is that what everybody
called you when you were a kid? No, just online, just my
online handle, you know, from back from I R C Days and BBSs
and whatnot. Okay, it's funny. Mine was p Dilley after the PI
backed in the dayson I hated pickles. You must really love pickles. Pickles.
I don't know why, everybuddy, So well, I'm gonna let you
go. I appreciate you coming on the show and just let you know you're
officially now a Crypto cousin. So welcome, Welcome to the Badge. I
hope you've enjoyed today's show, and I want to give a big thank you
know all my cousins out there from listening and subscribe. If you haven't subscribed
yet, just go to cryptocusins dot com and you'll see the links for all
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