Hi, this is Dan Held, this is Gary Leland, and you're listening
to the episode one thirty eight of the Crypto Cousins podcast. Fat 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, seven hundred and twenty eight dollars.
That's up eight hundred and fifty two dollars or nine point five percent over the
past seven days. How do how do howdy? Dan? Welcome to Wait
a second, how are you another? Howdy? Howdy? How do you
we get Texans? Four? Howdies? That's right? And actually went to
Texas A and M. So that's the how do? He resonates very loudly.
You know, my daughter graduated from an M and my son in law
graduated from ME and M. So whoo whoo. They're good people. Yeah,
yeah, we weren't sure about that day. My daughter was going to
good at ten and then out of the blue she got accepted at A and
M. So I think she came to her senses. You know, she
met her husband there. He was in the core and now he's a major
in the Air Force, and they really had a good time, you know,
A and M. For people who aren't for me with A and M,
they really are a type bunch, those aggies. Yeah, it's kind
of funny. A lot of people don't know this sort of backstory on me
because I live in San Francisco and I go flight in New York all the
time for work, and most people in New York and San Francisco don't really
know about Texas A and M. But Texas A and M is a kind
of, I guess, an old fashioned Texas sort of university, just very
one hundred percent Texans style. Trying to figure out how I'm trying to think
through how to award this for those West Coast, these closed folks. But
yeah, it's very Texas. It's very Texas. And their hatred for the
University of Texas is amazing, you know. But getting back to how tight
a knit group A and M is. When my daughter was a senior in
high school, you know, she got accepted to an M and we decided
to go to Panama for a couple of weeks. And so we went to
Panama where in the airport in Panama and my daughter has her A and M
sweatshirt on, and this old guy at the time, he seemed old where
I was my age, I don't know what comes over and it's like,
hey, gig him, I'm an A and M graduate from nineteen whatever and
starts talking to my daughter and said, hey, you know, here's my
gibber and car and said, you know, if you're an A and M,
you're never hit in trouble. Give me a call, be glad to
help another aggie. And it was just we were like, Wow, these
aggies really take care of each other. Oh yeah, I mean Texas A
and M. Like when the the amounts of like cohesion between the different students
and like the football team is enormous. So for example, like the entire
crowd the entire university, so all the legacy folks and the new one and
all the new students, they all memorize the chance. So you've got one
hundred thousand aggies all at the same thing during football games, which makes Kyle
Field one of the most intimidating stadiums to play at because you've got one hundred
thousand people coordinated. But yeah, more so than that, I think it's
you know, I like the idea of having traditions. It makes the college
experience a little bit more fun. Texans aren't like the coasts. You know,
we don't have a four hundred year old university, right We Texans kind
of have to make their own culture, and I think A and M is
one of the richest cultures for university life in Texas. I always have to
laugh at Aggie's when I'm at an Aggie football game and the game's over and
if they're not playing Texas, they're singing a song about Texas University of Texas
about how they hate them. And I wonder if someone from another city plays
or goes to the game for the first time because they're visiting team, do
they go, what in the hell's going on? They didn't play Texas today?
Well it's one. I mean, yeah, it's one of the oldest
rivalries in college football. But you know, I think with Aggie's there's just
a huge passion when it comes to the game, So I definitely agree.
We come across pretty quirky, and it's you know, it's been a while
since I flung out with a lot of Aggies. I still have a bunch
of friends who were aggies. I've got a couple buddies who moved out to
San Francisco. You know, but out here on the West Coast it's not
as intense or or kind of you know, popular as it is of course
in Texas. Well, you're from McKinney, so that's in North Texas.
So we hear, what made you move to San Francisco. Yeah, close
up by Planos so North Dauts. Yeah, okay, yeah, it's so.
I grew up in Plano. I moved out to San Francisco and January
twenty thirteen, and that was because a small investment from my work worked for
relocated me out here because they wanted me to open up a West Coast portfolio.
So it kind of coincidence of a lucky, random roll of the dice
with a combination of me really feeling strongly about tech and bitcoin. That's when
you know. In March twenty thirteen, I decided to build my first product,
called zero Block. I didn't know what the hell I was doing,
but it became obsessed with how great people build mobile products, how do they
grow those? Learned everything I needed to on the Internet and from like really
sharp people in the space. You know, Twitter is a phenomenal resource,
and used that and made zero block the most popular crypto app in twenty thirteen,
which was a pretty cool experience, and we got acquire a bit blockchain
dot com. So I kind of stumbled and bumbled my way into tech.
So that was your first business that you built and sold? That's right,
first business I ever built and sold, and first crypto business. So how
do you find out about crypto? What got you into bitcoin? Because it
mean if you sold a company in two thirteen, then you had to know
enough by that time to know bitcoin or crypto or whatever was the real deal
or you felt it was, so you had to be in in a little
while at that time. So tell us here I guess discovery story or also
I've been doing some digging with my emails as well to help me color in
this past because it is a very very long time ago. I registered my
first account at Malcox in December twenty eleven, and then in twenty twelve.
So twenty eleven, my buddy paid me back for a beer with a Casacious
coin. It's one of those physical coins, and that kind of like kickstarted
my thought process into like okay, well, I was already libertarian, and
I felt like non state money was you know, like gold. You know,
it was a pretty important thing for me. I believed that, you
know, we needed a sound of money to bring this. I was in
college during a two thousand financial crisis, studying finance and realize that this whole
system was fundamentally broken, and I felt like a return to sound money it
was the way that we go forward. And so for me, it pretty
early, ear like pretty clearly represented gold two point zero. You know.
So I got that casatious coin, I started to dig into it and I'm
like, oh, a disinflationary monetary policy. This is incredible. This is
the holy grail. Yeah. The problem, the problem that we have is
there's no proper inflation rate. It's impossible to choose what an appropriate rate of
inflation would be, and it would always be subject to political whims. So
to have a hardcap, he removed that human element from the decision making process
with a monetary policy, which I thought was brilliant and I considered like the
largest breakthrough a bitcoin. Those canstatious coins kind of a collectible now, aren't
they? I mean, are they still around? Yeah? They are collectible.
I mean they're somewhat risky because you trust that the private key generation ceremony.
They didn't copy those keys. But to the best of my knowledge,
I don't think anyone's had a Casatious key where they found like the original creator
of Casatious, you copy that private key and stole those funds from them.
You still require some trust. But yeah, there are the quintessential gold coins
that you see on all those those articles where there if it's about bitcoin,
you're going to see that gold chiny coin. And I guess on the back
from the I think someone gave me one that didn't have any money on it.
It was like maybe it was a mad later, but it looks like
on the back it had a hologram that you peel it off. That's right
under there was the QR code or whatever. I assumed that didn't peel it
off to get your bitcoin line off of it. Yeah, that's right,
you'd have your private key under that would be underneath the peeled off holographic.
The holographic element represented like you know, still sealed in a way. Right,
I may need to look there may be some big Oh no one I
am I've never taken it off of the check. I may want to want
to check the maybe set Monday there you could check. I mean, I
wonder, I forget if there's an external number on the coin where you can
go check the balance. Oh, I forget. You might want to check
that, but they'll have to pull it up and see what I can figure
out from looking at that. Now, you said you started. That was
your first business. Did you'd have another business? You said you started and
sold. Yeah, so that was the first business I started and sold.
So that was a blockchain dot com in December twenty thirteen, which, by
the way, that was the second ever bitcoin company acquisition, which one was
Eric forhes Is Satoshian Dice. And after that work to blockchain you know where,
could have start up cop chain Chip, which a micropayments over social media
using bitcoin, went to Uber, left Uber, went back to crypto.
Sorry, I should clear if I went back to bitcoin. To be clear,
I went back to bitcoin. Co founded a company called Interchange which did
post trade reconciliation for institutional traders, and then we were bought by Cracking in
July twenty nineteen. So that that's kind of the round trip journey of Dan's
experience in bitcoin. Is that how you got to cracking where you're at now,
that's right. Yeah. So after we were acquired, I was put
on the business development team, which we felt like it was really strong fit
for my background and my connections. Okay, yeah, so now I got
to scoop on Dan. Yep, it's Dan's heel dr. We met at
I think we met for the first time at Tones event this February. Yeah.
I was confiscatable. Yeah, I was glad that we could both make
that. I mean, that was my last conference I've been to this year,
and it's always fun hanging out with a good bitcoiners, and that was
that was a great time. You know. I think Tone really leckd up
there because he got that in like at the last minute. I mean,
if it had been two weeks later, he might not have got that in.
So I mean, but that was like perfect timing. But that may
have been the last conference of any besides a meetup of any size at all
for this whole year. Yeah, yeah, that very well could be.
I mean, I just don't see a scenario where people are going to large
in person you meetings like conferences or concerts. I think those are basically off
the table for twenty twenty and maybe maybe twenty twenty one. We see people
coming in, but you know, I think you'd have to see like a
really huge decline in like the number of infected cases. I mean, certainly,
if like only one person in my city is infected, Okay, maybe
I'll risk it to go to like a conference, right. I think that's
a pretty low risk. But you know, it's kind of a subjective.
Even if these limits of our movement are removed by the government, individuals still
make their own decisions, and I don't find it likely that a lot of
people are itching to go to a large, large social event. Well,
you know, speaking of that, since we're on the subject, bit block
Boom is the conference I put on, and I guess I'm gonna use this
second from my segue and then we'll discuss it. If you're not for me
with bit block Boom out there, it's a conference I hold. This will
be our third year in Dallas, Texas, scheduled for the end of August.
You can check it out. It's still we've got it back on because
we're feeling good about it here in Texas. You can go to bitblock Boom
dot com they'll look at information and see who's speaking. And we do have
a checkout discount. You can use it checkout for thirty percent off. Use
the code word Cousins at checkout and you'll receive thirty percent off. But that's
the conference now. I want to get that out of the way. But
we were really kicking ass on selling tickets from bit block Boom and it died
and maybe middle of March, you know, tickets just died. But now
all of a sudden they picked back up when we're selling tickets like every other
day now. So we're gonna go for it and work on doing it properly.
But it's not a huge conference. It would be three hundred people max,
which is a nice size conference, but it's not like I guess once
you get over one hundred people, don't matter what it is, whether it's
three hundred thousand, sure, you know when you really get to it,
it's going to be the same odds. But we're having a lot of people
buy tickets now and a lot of interest. Again, I think maybe it's
because of the fact that the age. Maybe it's a combination of the fact
that the age of our average in Tindee and the type of people in bitcoin
or people who don't want to be told what to do and want to do
whatever the hell they want. So I think maybe it's a combination. Is
why our ticket sales are doing so well, and we could like a good
bitcoiner, yeah, people tell them what to do. Tomorrow, we should
be signing our platinum sponsor for the deal, who was had agreed to do
it before the event, but I didn't hold them to it because we had
not made one hundred percent commitment and I talked to him another day and they
said they're still behind ithn't want to go with it. So I think the
fact that Texas, I'm just guessing, but the fact that Texas has been
undone for a while, so many cities now are unlocking, and it's like
one hundred and ten here when this is happening, and it's the end of
August. I think most of the country is going to be unlocked by the
end of August. I'm kind of concerned with the people coming from Europe as
to whether they're going to get here. Like Stephen Lava, he's one of
the speakers in Australia and he's still planning all coming he's just saying he's hoping
he can get here. I don't know. I guess I think bit block
Boom seems to have a lot of people wanting to come, and I think
as Matt O'Dell made it tweet some time ago, and I'm not like taking
any credit for this, so don't get me wrong, but he tweeted having
a conference in the end of August in Dallas, Texas maybe the most genius
I did anyone had, because no one's going to have had a bitcoin conference.
It would be the second one, maybe of the year town. Yeah.
So I'm also starting to wonder, and I'm not speaking about cracking,
I'm just talking in general. I'm wondering if I'm going to see a growth
here and people wanting to sponsor bit block Boom because they've had all these funds
they had dedicated for Bitcoin two thousand in San Francisco or consensus or all these
things they were going to do, and they go, we haven't done anything,
you know, and now we got all this capital sitting there, we
had dedicated to marketing, and you know, let's do it. So I'm
kind of confused. Are wondering not confused? Wondering if I'm going to get
hit with that, which would be great. Yeah. I think, you
know, when we look at how humans respond to incentives, how humans interact
with the market, like it seems natural that if you're the supply of one
and demand increases unexpectedly, which I think a lot of people aren't expecting demand
to increase, but if demand increases, then there should be an over you
know, essentially an oversubscription for the limited amount of supply, which is your
conference in August. I think that, you know, this might be an
interesting segue until like Texas and bitcoiners, Well, I think you know,
like your conference is, you know, your Texan and I think Texans are
this kind of fierce independent culture is very much across every city in Texas,
and I think a lot of people don't really understand Texans. And you know,
when I first heard about bitcoin, people forget that the University of Texas
requested physical delivery of their gold from the FED. Like what university does that
outside of Texas? Right right? And they're making I believe the state of
Texas and making a vault, yeah, like their own version of Fort Knox
to put the gold in. Yeah, Texas doesn't trust the federal government for
that extent, which is incredible. I love Texans because we don't trust,
we verify, like that's kind of born into Texas culture because we were our
own independent country. I think it's like for fifty or sixty years, you
know. So that kind of fierce independent resiliency is what I loved about Texas
and I think very much shaped my libertarian ideology and ultimately why I found bitcoin.
And it's been interesting though, because I haven't seen Texans in mass really
you know, kind of pick up bitcoin. I know there's a good contingent
in Dallas in Austin, but you know, it's not like a giant,
giant hub. And yeah, you're correct. If you were if you were
to have asked me in twenty thirteen, where's bitcoin going to start? I
would have been like, Oh, Texas, these people get it. It's
about sovereignty over your body with weapons, like with guns, sovereignty over your
money with gold. It's the perfect fit to be a bitcoin right. I
think the only thing missing was the technological component. It's still a little techy,
a little kind of funky, and I think Texans aren't and not like
the San Francisco folks who we hear about something new when you're like, oh,
let's go go check that out. Yeah. Now, Austin is a
good hub for bitcoin when you're talking about in Texas, and I would I
would have to thank Austin is the best. But I'm often surprised at how
weak Dallas for worth is as far as being a hub. I mean,
you know, if you try to get a bitcoin thing going, well,
I have more people from New York come to bit block Boom than I do
from Dallas, you know, and that's just crazy because they just got to
drive down the street and they don't have to stay in a hotel. Right.
I may have more people from Europe this year than I have from Dallas.
And you know, he thinks the issue with Texans and people from Dallas
about bitcoin. No, I really don't anything. There's no good groups.
I'm not saying there's no good groups, there's no strong groups. Let me
rephrase that. You know, you if you use meet up trying to find
stuff, you'll see events and there'll be five people at a central market.
You know, you don't see any look at the names and just no one.
You know, And I know people in the area that are bitcoiners,
but they don't seem to and I see them more when I go. Like
if if I would have gone to San Francisco for a bitcoin twenty twenty,
I would have seen people there from Dallas who I go. The only time
I see you is when I come out here, you know, or something.
I don't see you at any events in Dallas. So I'm really confused.
I know that people when they come here from out of town. For
instance, I can't remember who it was that was talking to me some time
ago. They said, all right, loved it. I got off a
plane and I caught it uber and I went straight to bitcoin and bullets.
I was shooting a gun within an hour, you know, because they can't
do that where they're at, you know, and so um. You know.
One of the events that goes on start last year, it's gonna happen
this year is out of the gun Range, you know, on Thursday.
And people who are from out of town, especially are from out of the
country. They love it getting to go see all kinds of guns, shoot
all kinds of guns. And I don't put that on. That's a an
event put on by someone else. There's a lot of events floating around block
Boom that aren't mine. I'm actually trying to hopefully Sunday. You know,
bit block Boom will start on Monday and end on Sunday, and like maybe
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are other people's events, oh night,
you know, mega events, and then you have like yeah, when then
Friday comes in mind, or maybe at the end of every day we'll have
like a dinner somewhere that will be put on by bit boom that people can
go to something to keep it condemned. But I love having satellite events that
people are putting on. Well, the gun one that you brought up was
interesting because a lot of people, like Texans kind of understand this intimately,
which is sovereignty over your body. I find it really bizarre that some bitcoiners
don't believe in, you know, solid gun rights. I think that a
lot of bitcoiners are like the West Coast, East Coast, you know,
the coastal folks who don't really you know, embrace a sovereignty over their body,
which I find prettyunnycause they embrace sovereignty over their money, which money is
just a representation of time and energy that their body is spent to earn it.
So like the only way to enforce your property rights over that bitcoin is
to have some adequate defense to defend yourself. Yeah, in Texans are the
only ones who seemed to embrace this. You know. I joke about,
you know, Oncology day girls and they'd have like pink little pink guns in
their purses or a pink shotgun under their bed. And people on the coasts
think they think that's nuts, And I'm like, well, why wouldn't you
want to defend yourself? Like what's wrong with defending yourself? It was like
my wife or her sixty fifth birthday, I got her semi automatic weapon,
you know, and we're not crazy people running around. I mean, but
you know, she couldn't handle I have a three fifty seven and I have
a twelve gage and she can't handle either one of those. They're way too
power for her. So I got to semi automatic twenty two holds thirty shots
and the cartridge thing, so she can handle a twenty two, and now
I'll do plenty of damage. I mean, you know, maybe we could
make a weak analogy to you know, if you if you buy bitcoin,
but you hold it on a centralized exchange, it's like a twenty two,
but maybe you're not ready to handle the shotgun, the self the self sovereignty
to protect your own private key. But maybe once you get used to the
twenty two, you can upgrade to the shotgun a little bit later down the
road. Yeah, yeah, well she can shoot the shotgun, just hurts
her shoulder real bad. So do the shotguns in the area of last resort.
You know that she can retreat to, you know, so if she
needs a retreat to there. I've been taken out spoken like a true bitcoin
you're building out his citadel plane. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's
funny we had these guns. It's funny. It's really odd we have Yeah,
because I've had the shotgun and the pistol forever and they've been in the
closet and my wife is the one it's like, why do you have those
guns in the closet. We need to get those out here, and like
really, and yeah, we need to get those out here. You shouldn't
have those in the closet, I'm like. And that started though, and
with the coronavirus, she started getting more concerned about security with people being out
of work. I think her concept was that things might get bad with society,
you know, and people are out of work, they need money.
You're gonna feed your kids, You're not going to at you get starved.
I mean, you know so yeah right, I mean if they're supply chain
is shoes with food, then naturally humans are going to act in their own
self interest, which I can't blame them to do, but they just wouldn't
do it with me. Yeah, that's how we look at it. We're
going we're gonna have ourselves protected. So that's the thing is. My wife
also asked, you know, you always hear people talking about the Citadels,
which you just mentioned, and how the end of the world's gonna come and
there's gonna be bitcoiners and no bitcoiners. And my wife asked me the other
night where we walk every night about two miles as she goes, I don't
understand this. You're saying, all these people are going to be wanting our
bitcoin someday. And you meet these people who are rich and been in bitcoin
since two thousand and ten and eleven. How come they're out without security guards?
How come they're just walking around not worried about people like taking them down.
You know, they've got they should have a lot of bitcoin if they've
been in it since then. And I said, well, I think people
still have money Kemp. Yeah. I think that's a difference from you know,
people saying that bitcoin becomes world currency, there'll be bitcoiners and non bitcoiners.
Right now, they're bitcoiners and non bitcoiners, but the non bitcoiners still
have currency, right. I think the Citadel because that the Citadel story comes
from the Citadel reference comes from a story on Reddit, the Time Traveler.
The time Traveler. Yeah, this guy wrote this fiction, this fan fiction
story about coming back from the future and Bitcoin succeeds, but it's so scarce
that it essentially like changes the whole economy. And there's these they have and
have knots. I think that's kind of like a you know, it plays
into like this these sort of like common movie themes if they have and have
knots, for the one with Matt Damon and the sci fi movie where all
the wealthy people live in this spaceship and all the port on Earth but he's
trying to get up there. Elicium I think is the name of the movie,
right, you know, I think it kind of plays into that there's
this sort of like the wealthy verses that have nuts and also Lolito whatever the
one about the robot and girl. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There's
cities up there floating above them, and all the peons live on the ground
where they dump their trash. Yeah, oh yeah, they literally dump their
trash. I forget about that. Yeah, you know, I think it's
it's sort of a I think it's this fear, you know, of like
the mass populations. But right now we see I mean I walk around San
Francisco and I've hung out with people that are worth a hundred million to a
billion, and we walk on the streets openly. You know. So in
San Francisco is not a safe city, let's put it that way, Like
it's not a safe city. But even they feel safe enough to walk around
like that without like two bodyguards. There's only a few people I know in
the space that have in the crypto space that have bodyguards. I'm not going
to name them, but I understand where they're coming from. But you know,
it does give me hope that if really wealthy people in San Francisco that
are in tech can walk around and bitcoiners in the future could walk around freely
as well. You know, I think the dystopian scenario that that that sort
of represents would be an extreme breakdown of property rights and social norms. Yeah,
well it gets to that point we are going to need the guns.
Yeah. I was watching you on Max Kaiser and actually I was watching it
said wow, why haven't I called him yet and to set up an interview
with him? And I think I emailed you right there while I was on
the couch watching. So I saw you, but you went into something I
found very interesting that I want to cover. You talked about you were comparing
bitcoin to a living organism and would you mind going over that because I found
that pretty interesting. Yeah. So I wrote a series called Planting Bitcoin that
Satoshi's brilliance wasn't just in the species of money that he chose to plant,
but the season, the soil, and the gardening techniques. And when we
look at a money, money has certain genetic characteristics or genetic code all puns
intended for Bitcoin, a certain genetic code that manifests itself VIAT traits, and
these traits are what an organism has that enables it to survive. And so
when we look at different moneies, you have different traits of portable fungibility,
divisibility, all these sort of traits that make it a good species of money.
And so when we look at historical species of money, like primitive forms
before gold, like shells and beads, and then we had gold, and
now we have fiat, and then we have bitcoin. Through each evolution of
money, so as money evolved and as certain traits of money became more favorable
or more advantageous as a species. Essentially, shells and beads when extinct as
a money when gold came around because gold had superior traits, and then same
with with bitcoin replacing gold. Because bitcoin is digital, it's much more verifiable
and divisible and portable, and also has a controlled supply that everyone knows versus
one where we don't know how much gold there is, and we do know
that there's enough gold on asteroids to basically make gold worthless. So bitcoin is
a species of money has superior, superior genetics which give it better superior traits
and basically makes at the next evolution of money. Bitcoin is the final evolution
of money. And so when people go, oh, I think I should
hold both gold and bitcoin, I go why bitcoin is the far superior species.
It's kind of like, you know, looking at this new apex predator,
like looking at a you know, a dinosaur and being like that versus
some new apex predator who's been honed over the huge amount of time to be
that new species, that new apex predator. You wouldn't place your bet on
the old one. You place your bet on the new one. And so
you know, that's where I think a lot of people feel that I'm being
over the harsh when I kind of I'm critical of gold. Now, Gold
I think is still a good investment for in a short and medium term duration.
But as younger age cohorse like millennials increasingly become older, what are they
going to buy into? They're going to buy into the bitcoin bitcoin to Then
makes sense that we were the first age group. I'm in my thirties,
we were the first age group to bridge the analog to digital. I grew
up with cassette tapes and now I stream my songs with Spotify, and so
we were the first ones to like really crock poin in mass You know,
I think there's certainly other age groups who get it. And for Gold,
I mean, I don't know any of my friends who are in gold,
like a lot of them on bitcoin, right, I kind of see bitcoin
is the apex predator of money, if you will. But you know,
speaking on that same scenario or not scenario, but what you just said,
cassette tapes, you know, cassette tapes. I'm going to use this,
this as a weird example I'm making. But people don't accept new technology quickly
all the time. When I was in high school, I had a cassette
tape player. All my friends had eight tracks, and they sucked, and
I couldn't find that. They didn't even have your car a cassette player at
the time. So I had an old, old car. I paid three
hundred and fifty dollars for it, and I took my portable cassette deck and
took the earphone plug and wired it into my speakers of the car so I
could listen to my tapes. And all my friends would go, this is
stupid. Why don't you get an eight track? I said, this is
way better. I can record my own tapes off the radio. If they
pop, I can open up to a box, tape it back together and
still listen to it, and I can forward fast it, I can rewind
it, and no one would go, I don't know anyone in high school
that had a cassette deck except me. But then over time, you know,
they started getting more popular. They came out in a car. I
remember when my dad got a car with a cassette deck in it, and
I was like, oh my gosh, and he was taking my cassette deck.
So I remember he had led Zeppelin and he was putting it in there
because all I had was hard rock and my dad was an old country Western
guy, but he wanted to use his cassette deck, so he was sitting
in the car listening to it. I remember him going, oh, my
gosh, that's crazy when it goes because then a whole lot of love.
It goes from one side to the other, one side to the other.
It's real strong stereo. And he's like, well, that's amazing. You
know where we never had that with the eight track didn't seem to have that
same effect on him. So, but it took a long time for that
technology to get accepted. Just so like now going back to when we were
talking about just like it's taking a long time for bitcoin to get accepted,
and those were young people, so it's not necessarily just old people which I
hear all the time. To have a time moving into new technology. It's
all people totally. I think that's a great example. I mean, just
because it's new technology doesn't mean everyone's going to adopt it overnight. Takes a
long time, and that's where you know, I also agree with you.
It's not necessarily just young or old, but the young typically embraced new tech
and greater size, you know, like everyone got on Facebook at the same
age, and so that's where you know it's going to take. I think
a lot of bitcoiners don't get this, but this takes decades. I've been
in now for I would say eight years is the more appropriate number of years
I've been in it, And so like eight years is a long time.
I've just been at three years. I got in it mid twenty seventeen,
before the big bull run happened. I thinkfully there's like different era. It's
I think. I think when we look back on bitcoin, we're looking back
and we'll count the number of notches based on a number of havings we've been
through. Oh, you've been through this was your third having Yeah, I
didn't really remember the twenty twelve one though. I wasn't. I was just
playing around with it. I wasn't very serious about it. Thirteen I became
much more serious once I got plugged into the community, up really really,
really deeply on things, built my first product. So sixteen I was paying
attention. Was this twenty sixteen having wasn't that big though, compared to twenty
twenty. I mean, man, there was twenty sixteen. I went down
to a party at big Ghost offices in the South Bay, and I think
that maybe there was like fifteen people there. So he put it in that
perspective. This was a much bigger event. But I was kind of let
down with the happening, you know. I was really expecting there to be
even more I think, you know, than there was. Yeah, I
mean that cracking. We were excited to participate, and we really wanted to
put on no cracking as an old bitcoin company. In fact, let's see,
Yeah, I think this is an old cracking T shirt. It says
big coin Exchange, right, this is an old one. This is it.
I think this is like a retro shirt, you know, and cracking
very much. I think appeals to a wide variety of audiences, not just
bigcoiners. So I'm speaking kind of on my own behalf here, but you
know, with Cracking, we put our heads together and we were like,
well, we want to make sure that we, you know, show bitcoiners
that we care. Like it's kind of funny how these big exchanges don't show
their biggest customer segment that they care. And so we put our heads together
and we're like, I think a VR that would be pretty cool. Like
we're trying to come up with something different, Yeah, that would be cool.
You know. We we weren't sure, like you know, a lot
of people don't have VR headsets, but we were streaming it, so we
we were We loved the response that we got so on having we had the
Crack and VR event, which was super fun and I got to think Pete
Rizzo who really kind of architected that, and Pierre Rochard did a lot of
hard work there too, and so that was funny. I think it was
you know, it was funny to see like companies like coin based though not
really do anything for the having you know, it's it's kind of funny.
We felt like we had to do something for the having to show show bitcoiners
that we cared. Yeah, I think this was my first having so I
think next time that met black Moon will do something itself. But being the
first time, I just wanted to participate. Yeah, I'm one of those
people. I feel like I'm not very good at inventing the wheel, but
I can put good caps on the wheel once I see it, you know,
I can put better hubcaps on it. Does that make any sense?
But I can invent a wheel for hell. But once I see it wheel
and oh hell, that would look great with these different hubcaps and change it
up. I don't think any idea just like pops into someone's head without any
inspiration from the outside. While we might look at relativity, you know,
with Einstein coming up with that, or Isaac Newton, they certainly were inspired
by other events and other people in their life. You know, there's no
one exists in a vacuum. And so I think a lot of people feel
like they're not contributing that much when they just change something and then make it
shinier or change their color of the hubcaps. But actually, one of the
most successful companies in the world, Apple, literally does that. Apple doesn't
typically build the newest iteration of something, They build the most usable newest iteration.
You know, where they're not going to go pioneer a new camera type,
or they might, but typically what they do is that the most stable
camera type that people can use, and that's really easy to use, and
then they polish that and make it easy and simple. Well, always say
Apple, then invent it. Yeah, the phone was emitted a long time
ago, but they sure made a lot of money off phones. Yeah,
the BlackBerry invented the smartphone. Apples made it, made it usable and made
it a trio. I think smartphone just like a Palm pilot Aero one.
Yeah, yeah, it was like a Palm pilot. It was. It
was a little bit better than a Palm pilot, you know, but yeah,
it had a physical keyboard on it, and when people would see it,
they go, oh my gosh, it was huge. I mean I
remember when Blackberries were super hot. I mean, if people forget, I
mean, if I feel old saying this, I forget when the iPhone came
out. But the iPhone three G was my first iPhone, and the three
G, you know, finally got the form factor down and that was super
popular and I got that in college. But I think my first phone college
is a flip phone, you know, like you know, just had like
text messaging capabilities. You could kind of browse the web, but it was
really clunky. Right. I went from a Trio to the first iPhone that
came out. Actually, I had every iPhone until they quit doing the the
credit deal where you could, uh, oh yeah, use your time.
You know, you've got so many because I would sell my old one and
would it would be cheaper add four phones on my plan. So every year
I could sell one made ten dollars more than it costs them buy a new
one, you know, because it was included in your phone bill type thing.
Right. It was like semi subsidized by AT and T or something right,
right, right, So I said, And my wife usually bitches when
I spend money, but she was like, well that's cool. We made
ten bucks and you got the new phone you wanted, you know, So
with four phones, I could do it every year. And none of the
kids were worried about a phone. They just like having a phone that was
paid for. I think people forget about, you know, when you spend
money. Is like and this we can tie this into hoddling, which is
that you know, I'm obviously huge into hottling. I think Hottling teaches you
more things than just holding bitcoin and believing in bitcoin. It teaches you how
to be a good investor, how to be convicted in a trade, how
to be convicted with something in life, how to go about formulating an investment
thesis and then sticking with it. But also, people forget like you don't
hauddle for forever. I mean, technically you can, and you could.
For example, if you huddle bitcoin long enough, you could just lend your
bitcoin out and earn interest on it. So technically you never have to sell
to live a lifestyle. But we are humans, after all. We require
food and shelter, and you know, people forget that we don't live forever.
So you know, we'll see. I was. I was a matter
of fact, I was on a conference party whatever you want to call it
bitcoin thing. They were about twenty five people on it, and someone was
talking about when they're going to sell, and I said, wait, a
say, you got to realize that no one should sell until it hits a
million or something. And I was like, you got to realize. I
mean, I'm sixty five. I'm not gonna wait for a million. I
got twenty years left, you know what. I mean, it's a difference
reality for me versus someone else, unless I just want to live like I
live now forever and then my kids are like well off. I don't have
a problem with it being well off, but I don't live for my kids
to be well off. Sure you're you know you want to have a nice
life. Yeah, yeah, so I'd like my last twenty years to be
able to just I enjoy myself now. But blie me bitcoins starts hitting one
hundred thousand dollars, I'll start selling some, I promise you. I got
twenty years left, which is totally fine. I feel like a lot of
bigcoinners kind of guilt other ones into doing that. Look, my name's Dan
Held, right, I've been hobbling for eight years. But certainly, like
if you have a partner, a wife or a husband, and they're like,
you know, it's time for us to get a home. I really
want to start a family. That's what's really important in life. You know,
I'm a single guy. I've got a girlfriend who's luckily into bitcoin as
much as I am, which is prettil and that was before I met her.
Well that's really cool. Yeah, yeah, so that's that's I'm pretty
fortunate to a founder, you know, so she understands the trade. But
I understand that a lot of people's partners really don't understand it, and they
have certain life events like a car, house that they need. You know,
you have to be realistic. Like I can hoddle really really hard,
but I'm also a single you know, technically a single male, and if
I have kids or a mortgage, so it's a little bit easier for me.
So I totally understand people people's plates when they can, but you should
hold on to some for as long as you can, you know, like
you got to hold on too. I would never sell more than more than
half my coins. I could just never. I could personally could never do
that. I would just do like the lending or maybe sell super out of
the money covered calls or something. Of course, these strategies come with risk,
but you know, if you want to hoddle forever, you have to
eventually generate a cash You could do joint markets. You could you could actually
be a liquidity provider for coin joins. That's a safer way to do it.
But yeah, I think about that a lot though, which is like,
what if you could hoddle for forever. How do you generate an income
off or your bitcoin? And that's where I started to experiment with different lending
products and I won't talk about specific ones on the show. And I think
a lot of people will feel very strongly against, you know, lending and
borrowing products or covered calls or something. But nothing risks, nothing gained.
You're free to hoddle your coins in the safest and very responsible manner, which
is to self custom to year coins and you don't have to trust anyone else.
And I think that's what most people should do. But if you want
to feel a little bit more risky, or maybe you've hoddled for fifteen years,
right, it's so important to what you got into it. I mean,
everybody's perspective is different. It's all according to your age, where you're
at in life, what your bills are, how much you've got into it.
If you bought bitcoin at a dollar and you're sitting on a lot of
it, you're perfectly content getting ten twenty thousand dollars because you probably have enough
of it that it's not going to wreck you and you're still going to do
fine if it reaches one hundred thousand or million dollars totally. Yeah, it's
totally case dependence. And I feel like sometimes the Bitcoin is we're a little
bit harsh when it comes to the advice of like Hodel forever. I think
what we're trying to do is we're trying to rewind or undo all of the
programming that central banks and Kyzie and ideology is done, which is wiring people
for consumption. And I think that's why the rightcoin hoddling is bigger than just
bitcoin. Bitcoin hoddeling is about like reducing your time preference, like extending your
horizon for a very long period of time and being committed and choosing an investment
thesis that takes a long time to see. You know, you can't just
bet on something in a play out over a year and you feel like you
won to beat the market. You inherently have to bet against the market because
the mark it is under, as you hypothesize them under the market is undervaluing
the asset that you just purchased. And so that's where I think bitcoin is
really great. When it forces you to reevaluate your expenses, it forces you
to reevaluate other investment options, and I think it's a great entry into basic
finance and basic personal personal financing and basic investing. Yeah, I have to
agree with you completely. Hey, I've got it. I asked on Twitter
people that they adding questions for you, So we're this is getting kind of
long. I usually do it like an hour and we're gonna go over that.
So I'm going to go to some of these questions and some of them
may not make sense to me, so maybe they'd do you Like at Charleston
Jazz Club said when are you coming to Charleston, South Carolina? Will you
go there a lot? Yeah, I don't make it. If I'm one
of the East Coast. I'm typically going up to New York or Boston.
I don't make it down there very often. But if I do, I'll
give you guys a shout out. Okay, because yeah, it was time
to rally the troops, he says, and then at low Straw but we
know they answered this a M or ut. He's an A and M guy.
Yeah and M guy. We actually have a couple, you know.
I've actually I've met him in person. He's a nice guy. Yeah,
he was a he was a bit bought boom last years. He bought Jimmy
Song's hat at the option. Oh nice, Yeah, Jimmy. That was
the first time Jimmy auctioned his hat off. Was at the dinner on Friday
night and he had bought it. He's a really nice guy. Yeah.
You know, I really care a lot about A and M, and I
think that they don't really get a good perspective at A and M of the
outside world, like the West Coast in tech, and I kind of stumbled
my way out here, stumbled and bumbled my way out here. So I
work with a startup aggie Land, which is a sort of a way for
aggies to get exposure to startups and West Coast tech entrepreneurship whenever they come out
here, and I grab drinks and dinner with them. When I worked at
Uber, I gave them a tour of Uber, you know, trying to
trying to bring big coiners out here. It's something that's important to me.
I think Texans are good people and hard working people and smart people, and
I think we need more of them on the coasts. I think you need
more member where exactly this is from crypto Cloaks. What is Project Apollo?
And he puts rolling on the Foe laughing. Cryptocloaks and I have been working
on a stealth project. It's I'm fully employed to crack in and this is
not going to change that. But Cryptocloaks what he does is he builds different
three D printed devices for bitcoinner Oh, he makes the hand grenades. Yeah,
that's right, he makes those for people listening. That's a plastic plastic
but it's made to store open dimes inside of it. Yeah. He has
a couple of different products. Some are ways to stealth hide you like your
treasurers or ledgers or your backups. And then he also has like plastic full
note shells right right for open nose or whatever. Yeah. So him and
I have been working on something very very special that you know, again,
this is this is more fun. This is not a full time thing.
This is something I've been doing for fun, working with him on designing this
item. And so Project Apollo is what we code named it. And I
think when bitcoiners it, it's going to I think people are really gonna like
it. I've got a tweetstorm coming out about this notice with my personal brand,
how it's kind of turned black and white and a little bit more sci
fi like on my Twitter and some of the tweets have been putting out the
black and white tweets kind of more crisp and clean and sci fi aesthetic.
So I feel that bitcoin, Bitcoin's cool, but I wanted to make it
feel What I feel about Bitcoin is that it's like a futuristic sci fi novel.
Like Bitcoin's amazing, It's incredible, And so I'm designing, you know,
I'm kind of re architecting my personal brand and trying to make in designing
graphics to make Bitcoin understandable and also feel really cool. At least I subjectively
feel that way, and it seems like people are liking it. So this
is what we're building pro with Project Apolo fits right into that. Well,
I'm ready to see Project Apolo. Any estimated date of arrival ETA time of
arrival. I'm filming the promo video this week, so okay soon soon,
Okay. This is firm their g I think this is kind of a cute
one. How does it field have held your whole life? I got a
very fortunate role the dice. When it comes to my last name, I
kind of like with a blacksmith or like the last name is smith. How
they used to be Blacksmith. Well maybe maybe held I was always meant to
Hoddle. It's actually it's a German last name, by the way, I
mean it's a hero in German. Oh that's cool. Okay. This is
from s z Kabasa B. Can you get him a remote part time job
at kracking customer Service? I think I told him to check out the careers
page. We got quite a few different roles open if you're interested in working
at cracking. We are remote first, so you can work anywhere you'd like
and you can work at Cracking, which is awesome because we've got a lot
of great roles open, and I think the salaries are pretty competitively priced for
you know, if you live somewhere cheap, you can you can kind of
arbitrage that difference. Yeah. I've had to use customer service one time for
my accountant. I have no idea who I talked too, but they were
very helpful. I mean they took care of my issues. So I got
to say the customer service was was super help I mean it was super elbow.
Next one is from Matthew. Why are in case? Do you like
beef jerkey, riverboat gambling or samurai swords? You know, that's a really
tough decision. I like, I like kind of like the Cormet beef turkey
where it's like, you know, like elk, cariboo or something where it's
like a little bit more exotic. M Have you seen this beef turkey steak
strips? No, they're like little pieces of steak. Yeah, premium cut
and cure dried beef from Kirkland. I bought it one day and it's really
good. It's actually like steak. Oh, that sounds pretty awesome. I
like different flavors, though. There's a there's a beef jerky stand up in
Colorado where I go every summer in winter. We've got a family cabin out
there, and it's like they've got these those they've got like cariboo, elk,
They've got crazy sort of flavors that I think that's kind of fun.
So I'd have to go with beef turkey there. Okay, this is from
KG twenty nine thirty one. Why is Dan the only bitcoin guy from the
early San Francisco meet up? Seems like the rest of those people became pretty
inten shit coiners. You know, that's a pretty good question there actually is,
you know, I remember seeing that comment. I forgot to reply.
Brian vo was there as well. So Brian Vo is on the Lightning team,
so he's kind of one of the founding people on Lightning, the Lightning
Labs with Elizabeth Dark So Brian vo is there. Charlie Lee, even though
he created a lightcoin, if you talked to him and publicly, he's basically
said he's a bitcoiner, and he posts pretty positive things about I mean,
if you look at his posts and really he'll even you even see him say
Bitcoin's going to be it. Yeah. Yeah, he basically just made lightcoin
for fun, but he most of his holdings are bitcoin, and he's really
just a bitcoiner, right. I mean that's he's publicly said that. And
if you ask him private too, I think he'll he'll be like, yeah,
I'm really super bullish on bitcoin. So i'd say Charlie's in that camp
as well. So what is lightcoin at a good time? But he kind
of damned if he did Damned if he didn't write like, yeah, you
sell it and it goes up, people are gonna make funny. If you
sell it and then it drops, then people are going to be like,
oh, you you sold the top, but like, no one knows what
the top's going to be, right, So I feel bad for the guy
because it's really he did it the most honorable way I thought you could,
which is publicly disclosing it. No, he did disclow like I said it
just as a fact. He definitely sold it its right time. He timed
it perfectly. Charlie's a traitor. You know. He's a big poker guy.
I've I've played. I've gambled with him in Vegas too. He's a
lot of fun. But yeah, he's a he's a pretty sharp investor.
Okay. The next one is from Robert Robot visions if something goes wrong with
bitcoin and all the hoddlers throwing the towel, what will happen next? Bitcoin
dies? Yeah? I have hard time believing something could happen to make milk.
That brings up a good point, which is that I thought, I
often say that bitcoin only dies if we all stopped believing in it. Every
hoddler would have to not believe in it and not be the bid for the
price, and the price would go to zero. So yeah, and that
scenario, bitcoin dies, but it dies because it died in everyone's mind.
Like we all stopped believing in it, which makes it with the dollar or
gold. If everyone tomorrow was like, I don't think gold, it's just
a shiny rock. I don't really want to buy it. I don't think
it has any sort of monetary you know, premium, then certainly gold would
go to zero as well. It's kind of like that to wear that YouTube
video that came out a couple of years ago of the like caveman or something
going to buy a chicken and he pulls out a piece of gold and he
goes, I got this rock and it's going to be really big, and
a guy goes, can I eat it? Nope? Can I do this?
Nope? I don't want that rock. You know it doesn't help utility,
right, Yeah? I love that argument about bitcoin O. It doesn't
have any utility. I'm like, it's store value properties, or we'll giving
utility. Okay. The last one is from Victor E. Rim Assuming a
future bit This is a long one. Assuming a future bitcoin market cap of
less than one hundred trillion and scaling issues resolved in lightning or simulartech. Does
Dan eventually envision a world in which bitcoin is the only money in existence?
We sometimes hear analysts say bitcoin pegg fiat might to continue and might continue in
such a world. Okay, so that's the whole question. So essentially,
I guess what he's asking is that Bitcoin achieves its Gold two point o status,
fully legitimized, fully recognize as that probably not just go two point of
but essentially killed gold. If it's one hundred trillion market cap, that means
that bitcoin is was a resounding success, an absolute maximal success, you know.
And so I guess the question is, like how does bitcoin scale?
I don't think you can't really say that like without lightning or other implementations,
because we've already seen the We've already seen those work on production. Like these
aren't theoretical scaling improvements. They're currently running. This isn't like will it work
or not. And in fact, like you know, if two exchanges wanted
to open up a lightning channel between them for their traders to send money back
and forth, you know they can do that already, So like that would
reduce on chain volume by x percentage, right, like just between two exchanges,
Like a lot of a lot of the volume is like our arbitrage traders
moving funds between exchanges, traders, moving funds, and so you know,
even if Lightning is basically a B to B tool, it would still be
massively successful in terms of making Bitcoin more efficient or compressing the economic activity into
one transaction. Similarly, we have Liquid, which is fully up and running
with blockstream, so that's been on main neet for a long time now,
and we've got other school solutions as well. If people forget that, you
know, on layer one we've got the Bitcoin blockchain, there are two,
you've got Lightning, Liquid, and then layer three you've got you know,
companies like coin base and cracking, where coin Base and cracking consend transactions to
the users internally and they're just changing an internal database or things like that.
So I think with that sort of scaling pyramid in mind, where you have
a few transactions on layer one, many more in layer two, and sort
of infinite capacity on layer three, I don't really have any doubt that Bitcoin,
given one hundred trillion market cap, will be able to scale to meet
the requirements the world. Okay, well, where can people follow you at?
Well, if you're on Twitter, I'm at Dan Held If you'd like
to read more long form content and danheld dot com slash blog. You're going
to find a lot of my thoughts on proof of work, planting bitcoin,
which is Bitcoin's origin story, Satoshi's fairness of his distribution, what role hoddlers
play, and if you're worried about bitcoin's long term security. I wrote a
comprehensive take on that. And before we go, is there anything that you
might have wanted to promote or bring up that I didn't cover. I want
to make sure I don't catch you off. And there's something you wanted to
cover during a conversation, I think we covered it. We brought up Project
to Paulo, which I think everyone's going to find really interesting. It's kind
of fun. It's been been a little you know, it's my entertainment under
quarantine essentially, So yeah, Project Apollo is gonna be really cool. You
know, if you like my content or if you have anything that any suggestions,
please feel free to reach out or tweet at me. I largely kind
of build what I believe is cool and and produce content what I believe is
cool, but that comes with a lot of feedback from the community, So
don't feel afraid to tweet at me and tell me what you think cool you
are. I just let you know you're officially a crypto cousin. Now let
it be part of the family. Hey, thanks for coming on the show.
I really do appreciate it. Dan. It's going a little longer than
you and I had told you would, but I appreciate you not being in
a hurry and taking the time. And I look forward to seeing it again
wherever it happens. You know. I'm sure within the next year there's gonna
be somewhere we're going to run into each other, I hope. So I'm
excited to you know. I do. Then I do quite a bit of
the conferences in the space, and I'm kind of itch you to get back
to having a drink with a couple of bit coiners at the bar. Well,
we need to maybe get you out here and see your parents and Kevin
to bug Boom. Yeah, I mean Dallas is my home city, so
I think it's time to come back to my hometown. Well, thanks for
taking the time with me on the show. I do appreciate it. Thanks
for having me, deary Sures. I hope you've enjoyed today's show, and
I want to give a big thank you to all my cousins out there for
listening and subscribe. If you haven't subscribed yet, just go to crypto cousins
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