Transcript 0:00 [funky music] Welcome back to Bitcoin Season 2. 0:35 The following conversations were recorded live at Inscribing Nashville behind the stage at the Blockspace Studio. 0:43 We were super happy to partner with Inscribing Atlantis on this conference series, and feature extended, unscripted, off-the-cuff conversations with some of the headlining guests of that conference. 0:56 Make sure to subscribe to the new Bitcoin Season 2 YouTube channel, Bitcoin Season 2 is the handle, and check out other Blockspace media content, in particular the Gwart Show and the Mining Pod. 1:10 If you aren't already, head to blockspace.media to subscribe to our newsletter featuring ordinals, runes, Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin tech content and insights. 1:21 We are doing a lot of, uh, cool stuff in that newsletter over the coming couple months. And make sure to check out the Blockspace social media. We will be announcing some things, including a conference here very soon. 1:35 But without further ado, let's get to this interview. Uh, welcome back to Bitcoin Season 2. I've got Udi Wertheimer here. Hello. Uh- Pleasure to be here. Yeah. Magician, uh, provocateur, 1:53 uh, main character of Bitcoin Season 2. [laughs] I think I actually have you to thank for the idea of Bitcoin Season 2. For the name? Yeah. Did you come up with this? I think so. You never know. 2:06 It, it, it was definitely someone on the team. I think it was me. Yeah. I'll give it to you. I was talking to Erin yesterday, and she said that she did Hell Money Pod Season 2. So- [laughs]... 2:15 it's a bull market for seasons right now. It is. Up and to the right. Yeah. From one to two. 2:21 Um, yeah, but I feel like you and I have had somewhat similar, uh, histories in Bitcoin, although you're much more prominent, salient. 2:30 We both got in a while ago, but, um, what was your experience going from, like, the online shitposter, nerdy guy, Bitcointalk and r/Bitcoin, to out there in the person, Udi, as a real public figure? 2:47 How- what did that, what was that like? When did that happen? I mean, it, it, it didn't change. I'm still the shitposter that I was before. I'm just, uh, I guess more people are reading it now. Uh, probably, 2:58 man, I don't know, probably around, um, 2017. 3:02 I s- so that's the thing, I got known as, like, this Bitcoin maximalist, and now all of them hate me, but that's, that's how I got, you know, that's how people got introduced to me, I guess, right? 3:13 Um, in 2017, there was this entire, like, ICO scam bubble, and, um, 3:21 I would just be, you know, I would be reading those white papers semi because I was considering investing in those things, and I was like, "Man, this is incredibly ridiculous," and would just angrily tweet about my findings. 3:33 So for a short while, I was known as the, oh, he's the researcher researching ICO. And I'm like, I'm just- Udi the researcher... a shitposter, guys. [laughs] And, um, exactly, yeah. 3:45 It, it, and I think, by the way, that, and I actually think I personally fell into the trap of, like, believing the, uh, anti-scam hype too much. It was, look, it was, in, in 2017 it was actually easy. 4:00 Like, literally every, every project you would point at it ended up being a scam, so it was very good to, very easy to hunt scams. 4:06 [laughs] But I think that that's kind of caused me to miss out on a bunch of, like, interesting developments that happened in crypto. 4:14 It's still, you know, only 1% of what's happening in crypto, maybe, if I'm being, like, generous- Yeah... is valuable. [laughs] But it's a big dec- it's a big kind of realization to say it's not zero. It's not zero. 4:24 Yeah. Yeah. And then it's funny, 'cause you say 2017, 'cause I would say, like, modern Bitcoin maximalism was not really codified. It hadn't kind of- Right... reared its head by then. 4:35 'Cause I would say, like, I even describe myself as a maximalist through 2018, maybe even '19. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it began to feel different. 4:42 I think, I think, yeah, I think 19, '20 is when it started being, like, a very wrong position to have. 4:48 [laughs] And, um, in, in '17, I think s- I think '16, '17, look, uh, I, I was gonna say that I think it's the beginning of Bitcoin maximalism, but of course, 4:59 there have been Bitcoin maximalists on the Bitcointalk forums in, since forever. Classical maximalists. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. But, uh, I think that '17 was, it, it, it just got kind of popularized. 5:12 And it, it did come from good intentions at the time. So people were literally trying to kind of protect their friends from making terrible investments. 5:19 Um, and I think, you know, because it was right, and at the same time you had the block size wars, right? And that had, like, a kind of a winning side too. 5:29 So you add both of those things together, and you ended up with this group of people who felt incredibly vindicated, you know? And that they can do no wrong. [laughs] And then COVID. And, oh yeah. [laughs] Yep. 5:42 And that, you know, so it started from a path that was, I think, it started very, um, positive and I think very intelligent even, from some people. But, uh, it, it, 5:54 it, it stopped interacting with the real world at some point, and then went crazy, yeah. And then, uh-And you, did you like have a thing, like a professional endeavor in Bitcoin at the time? 6:08 I- Or was Taproot Wizards really your first, like, venture? It's definitely my first company, you know. It's definitely, yeah, for sure. In 20, um, in 2016 though, I did, I did get a research gig at 6:25 this startup Kolu, which probably no one heard of in, or in these parts. No. But it was, it was a colored coins startup on Bitcoin. Uh, we were literally making [laughs] tokens and NFTs on Bitcoin. 6:39 Um- Time is a flat circle. Yeah. [laughs] We're back. Yeah. It failed miserably. I don't think there was a single person who used it in a serious fashion, but it was a thing that I worked on for a while, yeah. So, 6:53 I, you shit on NFTs for a little while, reversed this, came to the, saw the light. 6:59 And um, I, I've heard you a couple times mention that you and Eric had been workshopping, you, Eric, and Far had been workshopping- Yep... the Taproot Wizard idea. Yep. But on Eth. Right. 7:10 Was this, do you have, like, did you... Like, prior to Ordinals, which showed up out of nowhere, did you, like, have a plan, or was this kind of a, a back burner thing? Was this just a collection? 7:21 Was it part of this greater, this bigger vision? What, how, you know- Yeah... prior to Ordinals, what ha- what was this? Yeah, so you know, at some poi- I was fading NFTs since 2014. [laughs] Right? 7:33 And I was like, I, I remember being like v- v- very mad at, at the concept, like way before they were cool. And then as they were getting cool, I got even more mad obviously. Um, and, 7:47 uh, but I only think I realized that there's interesting value when I saw how passionate people were about l- you know, like doing whatever it takes in order to get... 7:59 Like, you would go on YouTube and watch like this boring tutorial about installing and s- MetaMask and setting it up, and those are things that I, as a longtime Bitcoiner, have struggled with 8:11 walking people through the onboarding journey to self-custody with Bitcoin. You know, my success rate has been like maybe like 2%. I don't know. 8:18 I've talked to every single person I know and don't know [laughs] about how to do it, and everyone's like, "I'm not doing this." [laughs] Yeah. 8:24 And then the NFT stuff comes up, and people are so passionate about it so they like, they just swallow it up, all of that self-custody content, and they go out and do it. And I was like, wait. 8:34 You know, maybe that's a way to get to another generation of people and get them to integrate at least some of the values we care about, if not all of them. And it just made sense from that point of view. 8:46 And w- we also saw some really strong communities, right, that, that end up like, you know, manifesting whatever goals they have into the world. And we were thinking like, hey, maybe, you know, 8:59 it's, it's kind of uncool what happened to the Bitcoin brand in our view, and maybe we can, maybe we can make it cool again for this group of people. 9:07 Obviously, for most people, they're not gonna care about JPEGs, but some group of people will, and that's, you know, that's a big kind of new venue for getting new people into it or care about it. 9:18 Or even people who already care about Bitcoin but are not proud of it. You know, I think it's so different now, but back then, like, there were people who were, yeah, they had B- like, they're crypto people. 9:28 They had a bunch of Bitcoin in their portfolio, but they would never talk about it. 9:31 It's like, it was almost like people were ashamed of it because it's not a cool investment, and I think that completely changed, right, in the last year. And, and you didn't, did you have this idea that you were gonna, 9:44 from this NFT or now Ordinals collection, hire a bunch of engineers at the time? Was that actually ever part of the roadmap, or did you see this opportunity and decide to expand? I think, um, I... 9:57 Look, we didn't have a clear roadmap, right? We didn't know exactly what, what was gonna happen, but we did genuinely believe that there's a roadblock, a cultural roadblock to doing anything meaningful with Bitcoin. 10:09 And we genuinely believe that after that roadblock is removed, there would be a lot of other options. What exactly we would do, uh, no, we didn't know. 10:18 But, like, it was, I thought it was pretty clear that, like, that changes everything in that sense. And what we wanted to focus on is, you know, not crazily different than what we're focusing on today, which is, 10:29 um, we wanted to get Bitcoin as an asset. So we, you talked about we wanted to do it on Eth because there was no other... We didn't wanna do it on Ethereum, but there was no other option that we were aware of. 10:39 And um, so we were like, "Okay, we'll do it on Ethereum, but we will kind of, we will make it so popular that we will get OpenSea to, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll implement WETC payments. 10:53 And maybe we'll get some of them, some of them to let you pay with Lightning, you know, and, and a bunch of that kind of stuff." Um, that was kind of the goal, 11:02 and I think, you know, it's, it's kind of adjacent to, to what we're ending up doing. Yeah. And so now you're hiring, I would say, all the smart people. [laughs] It's wild. We're very fortunate, yeah. 11:11 Like, you managed to snipe [laughs] uh, you managed to snipe, like, all the people I think who should be hired, which is crazy. I don't know if, like, people are as aware... 11:20 Well, a lot of people see the, the JPEGs and the- Yeah... maybe hop in the Discord community, or maybe see the occasional op cat, like Twitter thread or video. 11:29 But what I see, 'cause I get a little bit of, I get to peek behind the- Yeah. [laughs]... curtain a bit. What I see is that you're, you're sniping, like, the best engineers- Yeah... in the ecosystem right now. Yeah. 11:41 Like, what's, this is an open-ended question. W- what's going on? Do you, what are you gonna, what are you guys gonna... Why? I mean, why are you hiring all the engineers? This is a much bigger goal than- Yeah... 11:52 just selling JPEGs. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, the JPEGs are never the goal. They never have been the goal. They are a tool to, one, to, like, yeah, kind of-Update the culture, but also to, um, 12:11 to create an army that has, you know, has goals and, and wants to support them. You know, we're talking about Opcat. We're, we're obviously gonna talk about it a bunch. Yeah. 12:20 And it is something that surely, you know, like I can say I want it and Eric can say he wants it, you know? And like, we can, sure, we can do that. 12:28 But I, I don't think it, it has any s- you know, anywhere close to the impact it had if it doesn't have, you know, thousands of people who are like, "No, we want Opcat and we know everything about it. 12:38 We, we know what we're talking about." This isn't like, you know... So that is really important. That is why we even do JPEGs. It's not even, you know... 12:47 We sell them because that's the way to do it, but that's not the goal at all. Now, for, um, for the hiring, yeah, we, I mean, we really do believe in Opcat. 12:55 We really do think it's gonna happen, and we really do want to be, like, the biggest cat builders on Bitcoin. Uh, we have a lot of competition now, by the way. It's like- Yeah [laughs] But, but yeah. Which is good. 13:05 That's indicative that you're- Yeah... directionally right. I think so, yeah. Which, I mean, which gets into, um, let's just get to it. Like, 13:13 I feel like, having been in the space for a long time, being able to read the tea leaves, and now be weirdly on the inside of- Mm... this, this new culture brewing, it seems pretty obvious to me that we're gonna get cat. 13:26 Like- I think so. Um- Yeah... now you have somewhat serious, somewhat joking, like, we're gonna get in 2024, but it's wild to me. Like, six months ago, this was just an inkling of an idea. Yeah. 13:42 And now it's like, wow, there's [laughs] the miners are now being asked if they're going to support Opcat. I don't know what they think, but, like, you have big people- Yeah... 13:53 venture companies, research companies building with it. Yeah. What is the case for Opcat sooner rather than later? What's the give me Udi's case for, like, Opcat in 2024? How do, how does this happen? Yeah. Yeah. 14:08 Um, so we, you know, the reason I'm being kind of what people consider to be aggressive with the timeline is because we've been surprised about how fast things have been moving, right? Like, we... 14:20 You know, when we started, yeah, we had a plan, but we thought it would take longer. We thought in where we are now, we would be in, you know, 6, 12 months [laughs] from today maybe. And, um, 14:31 and it's just been moving really fast, and I think the reason for it is because, um, it is so positive for so many different groups of people. So, okay, obviously the Taproot Wizards want Opcat. 14:45 That has been made very clear. There's a community of Quantum Cats, they want us... Okay, that's very obvious. But it turns out it's not just us at all. So there's, you know, there's 14:56 massive L2 companies from Ethereum, like Stark- StarkWare that, that are literally shifting the entire strategy of the entire- Yeah... project to move their roll up to Bitcoin using Opcat. 15:06 There's, you know, if you talk to lightning teams, a bunch of them will tell you about how this improves lightning, and they want it and they need it. The channel factory argument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 15:15 Um, you talk to privacy advocates, and they're like, "Hey, we can make new constructs with that." 15:21 Um, you would talk to a bunch of protocol developers are now, you know, they maybe wouldn't have said that six months ago, but today they're like, "Yeah, you know, actually 15:33 this doesn't look scary anymore, and it looks like it can help us build on some cool experiments. Like, yeah, let's do it." So there's just these very different groups that never, almost never agree on anything. 15:44 [laughs] But they all seem to be in agreement that this is positive for them, and that's when magic happens, right? 15:51 Like, the incentives are aligned, you know, people want this and yeah, sure, there's, there's definitely some more challenges in the way, but it's, it has moved so fast that, yeah, I think... It, it's like, it's... 16:04 You know, we've been asked so many times about this, like, "What's next? What's the roadmap? How does it, how do we get from here to activation?" And I, I, I'm sorry, I don't know. Like- [laughs] It's a dog chasing cats. 16:15 Yeah. I mean, we, the, the strategy is we just keep pushing, you know? We keep pushing at every junction, and I think that if we keep doing that, it happens. [laughs] That's, that's all it is. Like, there's, um... 16:28 And that's what we have done from the beginning, and I think, I think it's gonna work. Yeah. I, one of the things I remember when it was just, like, the Ordinals people talking about Opcat, and I think, 16:42 I think you and I were on a Twitter spaces and someone said, "Uh, what's the process for a soft fork?" Mm. And they threw it to me, and I, and I remember you being on there. 16:51 I was like, "I don't think there is a process." Yeah. And someone started to say, "Well, you know, the miners do this," and I'm like, "I don't think, I don't think soft forks look the same." Yeah. 17:02 And I remember you coming in and, and somehow eloquently and in classic Udi fashion- [laughs]... saying a much better version of that. [laughs] But, like, the, whatever soft fork lies ahead is gonna look very different. 17:15 I think that's true, yeah. It's very unlikely it'll be like the previous ones. 17:18 And, and, and we tend to forget, I guess, because maybe because there's so much time that goes between the soft forks, but, you know, Taproot wasn't like SegWit either, and SegWit wasn't like CSV before it, and CSV wasn't like CLTV, I think it was. 17:32 I, I, anyways- I, I called them the lightning forks. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Um, so yeah, they, they literally change all the time. 17:40 I don't th- I don't know that there is a clear process, and even if it wasn't Opcat, if it was something else, it would also have to look differently. It's, it's just the way it is. 17:49 And honestly, almost every time you kind of have to reinvent how to make it happen. What, you know, let's maybe try to help me think through the ways it might look different this time. Mm-hmm. 18:01 I had a tweet, which I do think is very true, which is, um, already way more people understand what Opcat is-And it's how- Mm-hmm... this will soft- into a soft fork. What it does for Bitcoin than Taproot did. 18:17 I think so. Like, I remember being put on the spot as, like, your token Bitcoin guy to say what Taproot- Yeah... is. And, like, I had to freaking just read from a- Yeah... like, a page. 18:26 It was like, "I don't know what this is." Yeah. But Cat's very different. 18:30 That is something which is very, very different, is that I feel that the average Bitcoiner and the, just the d- public discussion on it is way more, uh- Robust... yeah, robust. I think so. 18:41 What are other ways that it might... Like, what are, what are some personalities to this coming soft fork that might look different? Yeah. 18:49 Well, you know, really what changed is Bitcoin as an ecosystem, as a community, or whatever we wanna call it, it changed dramatically since early soft forks. It even changed dramatically since Taproot. 19:00 Today, it's, it's, it's a multi-trillion dollar asset, or almost. [laughs] One point something. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, it is, you know, adopted by institutions. There are ETFs trading, each, you know, 19:13 m- m- many billions in inflows and, and so on. It's, it's a completely different asset class. It's a completely different... 19:19 And so, you know, in the past, the way that upgrades used to work was there was this mailing list of developers and this forum of developers, and they would talk about it, and that made sense back then because most of the adopters of Bitcoin were developers or at least technical people. 19:37 Uh, they understood deeply how it functioned, which is not the case today. 19:42 The vast majority of Bitcoin holders would not be able to explain to you technically how it works, and definitely not the small, like, you know, explanations about soft forks and so on. 19:51 So the conversation has to be different too. It cannot be a conversation between 10 developers because they don't represent the Bitcoin ecosystem anymore. 20:00 So- That's something, 'cause we did a Helmani pod yesterday, Casey was talking about how in some way he kind of wishes that, like, Peter Willa or Andrew Poelstra would come down and- Mm... 20:11 and say, "This is how it's going to be," but that's not how it's happening. Yeah. It's almost incumbent upon us, incumbent upon the wizards even to say, "Poelstra, please give your blessing." Right. 20:23 As opposed to them show us the way, the village elder. Right. Right. 20:28 But by the way, to be fair, Poelstra, uh, has been incredibly bullish on Op_Cat probably before us, and he has been more and more public about it recently, um, to the point that I think the last thing he said about it was that he thinks it should be activated imminently, like in a week. 20:42 Yeah You know? Uh- It was on the Bitcoin Review podcast too. Yeah. [laughs] Crazy. Yeah. So, so he is very much in favor, but also it doesn't feel... You know, I didn't talk to him about this or about anything, but I, I, 20:55 I- it doesn't seem to me that he, he's very interested in l- literally championing it, like being like, "Hey, okay, I wrote the code. Here it is. Here's my roadmap and timeline." 21:04 I don't think he wants to do that, but I would love it if he did, of course. Champions tend, as we've seen, champions tend to be also the sacrificial lamb- Right... of sorts. Yeah. The Jeremy Rubin story. Yep. 21:15 He's only just now getting back- Yeah... into more of the public eye. Yeah. It's terrible what they did to him. Yeah. Truly. 21:23 Um, I think in many ways that is kind of the role that we're trying to assume to ourselves, to be the, the ones that are taking all the heat because we're kind of, our DNA can take it. 21:32 Well, it's a bit of the jester angle. Yeah. I mean- Yeah... you are the s- you're serious. You're the jester who has a, an army of the best Bitcoin engineers I know. Yeah. 21:40 But you're like [laughs] yeah, you can, you, you could be, you're a bit of the, you've been the people's punching bag for a little while. Definitely, yeah. And you're like, "I'm used to this." Yeah. 21:49 I'm like, "I can, I, I, it's more than I can take it. I can leverage it," you know? So I'm like, "Okay. Sure, I'll, we'll do that," you know? And in, in a lot of ways, like, um, 22:01 I do, I do feel like it has given an opening for other, you know, leading companies in this space to say, "Yeah, you know, we actually love Op_Cat because we're gonna take the shit." [laughs] "And they're not," you know? 22:13 And, and so it, it has, I think it worked pretty well in that sense, and I'm, I'm happy to continue to do that. Um, it's kind of funny that it needs to be done in the first place, but, you know, whatever. Um, but yeah. 22:27 Yeah. Uh, the, the, the kind of, you know, the, the Poelstras and the Willas and so on, yeah, it would've been so great if they, if they would just come over and... But also, I think, you know, they really, I... 22:39 And it seems like they get it too. I think they, they just don't represent the community anymore. It's to no fault of their own. 22:46 It's because they succeeded, and the community grew to epic proportions and has so many other different interest groups now that it just doesn't make sense that a developer, um, would, would represent that. 22:58 But it's, it's really, I cannot stress this enough, this isn't criticism. It, it, it means that they did an incredible job, which, you know, I, I'm, I'm sure you feel the same sometimes. 23:08 I'm thinking back to, like, how things were 10 years ago or whatever. I was very bullish on Bitcoin, but I couldn't, I could not imagine this. You know, I couldn't imagine- Me neither... 23:15 Trump coming to a Bitcoin conference. It, it, it's not, you know- Yeah, the guy from the Home Alone 2 movie? [laughs] Yeah. 23:23 [laughs] No, but, you know, the president talking at the, at, at a Bitcoin conference, this is becoming, like, a national issue. Um, the, just the vastness, the ETFs, the, the, i- i- it is... 23:36 Yeah, I was bullish, but y- it, I, I think it was unimaginable, and to a, to a very large extent, it's, it's obviously thanks to the work of those people who did this so many years ago, and they were obviously, [laughs] they had a lot more conviction than I did. 23:50 But, um, we're just at this point now that it's a bigger, you know, it's a much bigger tent, so it's gonna be a different conversation, I think. 23:58 It is a much bigger tent, and, um, you guys, uh, throw some pretty fun parties in this big tent. [laughs] We try. [laughs] I think this is one of my favorite angles- Right... of the Tavern Wizards- Yeah... 24:11 is you're not afraid to, um, uh, breathe some life into the Bitcoin social scene. Yeah.It's-- look, it, it, it has to be fun. I think it comes from a place of, like, I've always been like that. 24:26 That's always been my personality. Like, whatever, we can do serious things, but we need to have fun doing it because other- I don't know how other people manage to do this w- a, a one thing for a decade [laughs] 24:36 if you're not gonna, like, spice it up a little bit. So that's just my personality, I guess. But, um, but also I think I, I th- I think it was missing for people, you know? 24:48 Um, if you look, I- look, it's, it's, it's-- I have a lot of criticism for Ethereum and other stuff, you know, and, and it's okay, and I, I enjoy that. But, you know- They throw some banger parties. 24:58 [laughs] They, they do, you know? They have good parties. The events are s- fun. You know, Vitalik goes on stage with- in a unicorn outfit and dances or whatever, and people make fun of that, but it matters, you know? 25:12 It ma- it, it-- sure, it's dorky and it's stupid, but it, it, it-- the vibes are important. And honestly, this-- you know, 25:20 the, the, the-- there's a, um, there's a really interesting discussion in crypto right now about meme coins versus, um, the fundamental coins- Yeah... and, um, the tech, you know? 25:33 And I think it's a, it's a f- it's-- to me, it's fascinating. Uh, e- eventually everything will go to zero, but it's, it's a fascinating kind of battle of, of worldviews. Um, there is, um-- 25:49 when everything goes up, it's [laughs] it's very easy to be like, "Oh, yeah, the, the- It's going up because it's valuable. [laughs] Yeah. 25:56 Because it's va- or, or like, you know, the coin with the whatever, with the hats is gonna be, like, the biggest, like, it's, it's, it's a, it's a paradigm shift. It's very easy to believe that. 26:05 But then, uh, when the price goes down, and when- and it inevitably goes down, it has to [laughs] when the price goes down, um, what happens then? Are people still gonna be excited about the hat if the price is red? 26:22 I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Um, I think that the really, um, the absolute best projects in crypto, and Ethereum is an amazing example of an ongoing chain that's still being developed 26:39 and has been actively led, right, for its entire existence. Vitalik is a leader not only of the technical aspect, but of the community for Ethereum, and he managed to -- 26:52 like, one of the hardest things is to keep people excited in the bear markets and to keep people building and to keep people, people's convictions, and I think he did that by combining the technical with the memes. 27:08 He was really good at doing both. What we see a lot today is, is a lot of teams that do one side. And, um, and the meme side is kind of winning for now, but I think that is because we're in a bull. 27:21 We're- when in a bear, they're gonna have, they're gonna have a real problem because how do you get people to continue to care about the hat [laughs] when there's nothing else and the price is down? So what do you do? 27:31 Um, so I think he did an amazing job, really, I, I don't think it's appreciated enough, to create and sustain this community over such a long time and in terrible, like, bear markets. 27:41 Man- Eth went from some- like, was it, like, was it several thousand to 90? Yeah. Yeah. That- 2017 was- I thought Bitcoin was down bad, but Ethereum- Ethereum was- Yeah. 27:53 Look, and I, I went to a f- couple of Ethereum conferences at the time to kind of sample [laughs] how-- people were down, but they still ca- like, they were visibly unhappy [laughs] but also, you know, they all came together and they figured it out. 28:10 Um, the community did not dissipate, which is amazing. Um, and y- y- you know, I, I think there was a similar thing with Solana in, in the recent, after the FTX stuff. 28:21 Um, a lot of people would just look at the charts, and the cha- charts looked horrendous. But, um, if you were paying attention, you would know that there was a community that is not giving up, which is rare. 28:33 Um, usually it goes down and they disappear. So I think if you combine both of those things, the memes and the, and the tech, maybe. Maybe there's a chance. 28:42 [laughs] But you need to really- You need to have hired the best engineers. Um, I wanna give you a chance to shout out, you know, your team, which is pretty remarkable. 28:52 When Cypher and I-- I remember when, when Cypher and I were seeing that it was, like, just you and Udi, uh, or you and, uh, Eric and I think, uh, Tyler- Yep... at the time. 29:02 We were like, "Who's gonna be-" And Far, of course. Far, yeah, Far. He, he, he's actually, he exceeds temporary- He exceeds it, yeah. Yeah. So whenever we were like, "Who's gonna be the CTO?" 29:11 We put, like, a list of people together. We're like, "Well, you could get this person, you could get this person. Neither of them would ever work for this type of company." 29:17 [laughs] "The only person who'd do that, who has the technical chops, would be Rindal, but he would, he would never." [laughs] How in the world have you attracted the Rindals of the world and the... Yeah. 29:30 So yeah, we, you know, we, we do have an amazing engineering team. I'm, I'm-- as I'm talking to you, I'm, I'm trying to think. There, there's probably some you don't know about yet, so I- Yeah, I don't know who's public. 29:41 Yeah. So, like, but I think what's public is, is, is Rindal and Cypher. They're both amazing. Um, and, um, we've been really fortunate with both. They, um, um... 29:55 The-- Rindal, you know, what's really amazing about him is that he, he's not only a very bright and capable engineer and an engineering leader, he's also, um, very, very good at communicating. Yeah. 30:13 Incredibly good at communicating. Probably better than anyone else at the company. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Because me and Eric are high and drunk half of the time. We can't-- no, that's not true. 30:22 But [laughs] A quarter of the time. [laughs] But we sound like we are. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. And, um, um-I think Ryan Hill is, is extremely good at that, and that is, you know, very important for what we're doing 30:37 e-externally, as, as I'm sure you guys can see, but internally it's incredibly valuable too. Um, so that has been absolutely amazing. You know, um, he's been obviously very early to Ordinals. 30:50 Cypher has been very earl-early to Ordinals. Like, their e-experience is like, you know, [laughs] we come up with those crazy stupid ideas [laughs] and we're like, "Can we do this?" 30:59 And they have, like, a complete plan for how to, like- Yeah. So yeah. Um- True artificers. I don't... Do, do you have job titles in the company? 31:09 Um, so far we've, we've allowed people to come up with those, you know, artificers and sorcerers and so on. We might, as, as we grow, [laughs] we might have to get more formal about that. But yeah. 31:19 Um, I mean, I don't even know what my title is. Who knows? But, um, [laughs] I, I, I used to, I used to... 31:26 When people asked me, I used to say I'm Taproot Wizard number one, but then on the badges it, it's like, it says Taproot Wizard number one from Taproot Wizards. It's a bit, a l- Yeah... a lot of- It's confusing... 31:36 repeating wizardry. And you're gonna run out of, like, D&D names- Yeah... eventually. Yeah. [laughs] My D- So- Uh, uh, it's off-camera, my DM is actually our, [laughs] uh, our PA today. Yeah. Um, but, uh, yeah. 31:52 Um, I, I'll probably wrap this up, but, you know, we're here in Nashville. Vibes are very high. I don't know if you, like, just got in and you're just coming in and seeing the giant LED wall for the first time. Yeah. 32:05 But, um- Massive... does it feel, does this Nashville feel different? Does this Bitcoin Miami or this Bitcoin conference feel different? 32:14 Or has there been an inflection point or is this just a natural iterative evolution? No, I mean, I, I, I did not see any of this coming. [laughs] You know, it's like, um, there's those... I think there's those 32:29 three, like, big pushes now. There's the political thing that is incredible. 32:37 I mean, honestly, look, the, the work David Bailey has done and his team in making all of this happen, you can- He's a, he's a m- he's truly a magician at this. It's insane. Yeah. 32:46 It's insane, and I've, I've, I've, I've gotten a glimpse at, at the process and, and I don't know if people realize, like, how much work and how much time and how much planning and, and what goes into making something like that happen. 32:59 This is not, you know, oh, I, I text someone and he happens to know Trump, so we make it happen. This is a complete operation. I haven't seen stuff like that in Bitcoin, um, so that's amazing. 33:10 Um, there's the ETF narrative, which I think is continuing to be pretty strong. You know, I, um, I, I... When, when the ETF happened, my, like, big prediction was that it's gonna really change the public-facing stuff. 33:27 So, you know, like the podcast, the conferences, all of that is gonna really change because the, the onboarding, the onboarding ramps are gonna change dramatically. So what worked before is probably not gonna work again. 33:40 Yeah. So that kind of changes a ton. And then the third thing is obviously Ordinals and, and Runes and season two, which just didn- it, it did not exist 18 months ago. It did not exist. 33:52 It's from zero to way more than one at this point, you know, and it's, it's, it keeps growing. We're hearing about new, you know, um, um, new fundraises and new, like, what? It, it's- So much money. Yeah. 34:06 I don't think people wrap their heads around that. Finally, the money from web3 that went into crypto- Yep... is actually being deployed into Bitcoin. Yep. That's huge. Yep. Yep, and it, it was... 34:16 It's one of those, it was so silly not to do it. You know, it was, it was not... And honestly, you know, I, I love shitting on maxis, so I'll do it again. I, uh, I, um, there was, 34:29 there was this literal, like, it was taboo for a founder- To want to make money... to go to... Want to, yes. 34:36 Want to wanna make money or the f- to have a profitable company was taboo, but it was particularly taboo to go to one of the crypto funds and raise. 34:44 The, the Bitcoin-only funds, there are very few of them, and they're very small, by the way, but, like, whatever. They, they made it p- practically illegal [laughs] for you to... 34:54 If you raise for someone else, they're gonna actually, like, hang you. 34:58 Um, and the people leading those funds would, would, would go after founders from raising from other people simply so that they can get better deals, so that the, so that they don't have competition and they can, you know, devalue these companies. 35:11 It's, honestly it's disgusting. Uh, the, um, and it worked for a while, and now it's done. [laughs] So because now there's this, it's, it's obvious every- like, everyone wants Bitcoin exposure in their fund. 35:22 There's no fund that doesn't want to, to have exposure to something Bitcoin related, so that's a fantastic time to build, you know? And, uh, so it's the death knell of the monoculture. It's- Yeah. Yeah. 35:34 And we're seeing that. Look, it's, [laughs] it's... I don't need to name names. It's, it's- Yeah... gonna play out very quickly. It, it is playing out very quickly. 'Cause I want, I want every... 35:45 Part of the whole Bitcoin season too is a bit of a, um, inviting some of the people who played some of these major roles in codifying maximalism in the culture, to invite them to come back and say, "Soften your views. 35:59 We want you to enjoy Bitcoin with a, with a- There's so many, there's so much opportunity for these guys. Yeah. I was like, you can make money, like, you know- And in fact- Take, take a shower. It's a- Yeah. 36:10 [laughs] It's a public... [laughs] Take a shower, you're absolved- [laughs]... and, um, buy a JPEG and come and enjoy. Bitcoin's fun again. Like, you actually deeply want this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 36:23 I think, you know, it's funny, a lot of it is, is I think literally personal. 36:28 I think that, uh, if, if, if it wasn't me and Eric with the Taproot Wizards, if it was some other duo-Then I think a lot of maxis would actually like Ordinals on day one. [laughs] This is my whole point. 36:38 Like, one of the, one of the first things I, I thought, talking to Casey early on, before JPEGs became the main narrative, I was like, "Oh, shit, like, numbering Satoshis? I can collect, like, Satoshi Satoshis?" Right. 36:50 "That's so cool." I thought that was the most hardcore Bitcoin thing ever. Yeah. I thought this was obvious and intuitive. Yeah. Um, path dependent said, uh, no. 37:01 [laughs] You guys threw your wizard on-chain, and, uh, we never looked back. But- I think it's both. Yeah. You know, I think it's both. I do, um, I do see some... 37:14 I have seen a bunch of, like, really, really OG Bitcoiners that have been buying some of these rare sats just so- The, the ancient whales... the ancient Bitcoin whales, because they, for the same reason of you. 37:24 Like, they're like, "Oh, this is an actually cool event. Maybe I remember it because I was there even, and I wanna..." I- I've seen that. 37:31 Um, I th- I do think it's, it's, it's a thing that at least some people are like... 37:35 You know, the way we tried to explain it too, but with, it's, it's obviously very similar with Taproot Wizards, it is a love letter to Bitcoin. At the end of the day, we've all, like, this is one of those amazing things. 37:45 We've managed to build this team where almost everyone has been in Bitcoin for a long time, and we just, you know, want to express that, you know? 37:55 So that is a way to do it for us, and I think a lot of other teams have found a similar way to express it, and collecting those things is a, is a similar way to express it. So yeah, I, I actually think so. 38:07 I think if, if, if it wasn't us, at least some of the, some of the maxis would be more open to it in the beginning. But that's part of the fun. [laughs] So it's okay. Uh, yeah. I really enjoyed this conversation. Same. 38:21 We can wrap it up. Any calls to action? Anything you wanna get out there? This probably goes out in about a week maybe. Look, g- you know, go learn about BIP-420, about Opcat. Add BIP-420 to your Twitter name. 38:32 That's really important. It, it makes a difference. Uh, people can, by the way, if you, we, we haven't talked a ton about Opcat and what it does. 38:40 Hopefully, hopefully people already know, but, um, you know, I really do think that it's gonna be, like, this step change in what you can do on Bitcoin. I think that similarly to how, uh, 38:55 Ordinals and then BRC-20s and then Runes were those, like, three big protocol experiments that happened on Bitcoin, and each of them had their respective, like, big hypertension cycle, 39:06 I think what happens with Opcat is that you have those new protocols on a weekly basis instead of a quarterly basis because the opportunities are so much- I'm getting tired thinking about this. Yeah. 39:17 [laughs] This is, this means no sleep for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm also excited- [laughs]... because I'll have no endless, no short supply of guests and things to research for this podcast. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. 39:29 Um, yeah. Well, we'll, I'll probably do several deeper dives on Opcat- Fantastic... on this podcast- Amazing... with the smarter people at Taproot Wizards. You should. The Cyphers and Rhindells and future hires. Yep. 39:42 Um, yeah, so thanks so much for coming. Thanks for not, um, uh, suing me for taking Bitcoin Season Two. [laughs] And- Please use it as much as possible. Yes. Cool. And, uh, yeah, see you guys on the internet. 39:54 [outro music]
