This is the lightning junkies podcast with your host Chaz crypto set on this episode of the podcast. We have motherfucking Matt Odell co-host of the Tales from the Crypt podcast. We talk about why exchanges suck we talked about BTC pay quite a bit and we talk about privacy quite a bit.We might throw lightning in there a little bit too if we can help it for the sake of brevity. I'm going to skip all the introductory shit that I typically put here at the introduction. I'm going to put it on the our trip. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. I would like to go ahead and welcome mat Odell the lightning junkies podcast. How you doing, Matt? Be happy to be here. I'm very happy to have you on here man. It's a you know, everyone knows you from Tales from the Crypt. I you know, I've definitely listened to the you know that podcast quite a bit. I don't really remember exactly how you got into Bitcoin and the podcast movie probably have said it a million times. I probably just missed it. Do you want to just let my listeners know, you know how you got into Bitcoin and that whole thing? Yes our main, but I actually the only time I really ever talked about in the Pod was the first episode I was on and that was like as a guest Like in the interview series and then I our HR came later our weekly recap K. Maybe like five months later six months later. I had I had two friends tell me about it. The first friend told me about it in 2012. He was you know, it was College. He did way too many painkillers and told me about the Silk Road and I discovered it off, you know, I thought it couldn't really work the government would shut it down. Someone would shut it down. Or the money would be stolen. It just didn't really, you know that the usual scoff and then in early 2013. I had another college friend tell me about it. He was like a straight edge. Here's a straight edge nerd and it was like a completely different type of person to tell me about it. So I was like, maybe something's here. And then there was that first 2013 run where the price went to 250 like really really quickly for maybe like $30 or something and obviously that caught my attention. Soon as well. And then the rest is just been history. I basically just since then I've just been trying to figure out how it couldn't work. And that just made me love it even more. All right, you know, it sounds pretty similar to I think you know how I started, you know Silk Road 2013 when you first jumped into it. Did you kind of take the normal path that I think a lot of people take where you start trading where certain mining or start doing, you know all the different things that the little space we have here kind of has to offer, you know, I didn't really Lee, you know, I've we didn't call it stacking SATs back then but that's kind of how I jumped into it, you know dollar cost averaging sure. It was really it was like hard to get Bitcoin. So I was just trying to get some basically I did try Cloud mining which no one should ever do that was a really bad idea lost whatever I put into that. I realized pretty quickly that I sucked at Trading. Was that I would just I sucked at buying you know, I just I was like I felt like almost like every time I bought like the price dropped in my 2014 and 2015. So I just assumed I couldn't really ever trade. I just ignored that whole aspect. It was always to me it was always this seems like the best money we've ever had I should probably try and get as much of it as possible while still like being responsible and I think read it back then was actually pretty good about instilling that notion into people that like don't put in more than you can afford to lose be responsible about it. It was almost more the like twenty fifteen to twenty late 2017 area where everything just got like a little bit ridiculous when people were saying, you know trade this shit coin trade that shit coin use leverage. So I mean, I think that's a very interesting contrast comparing the late 2013. Out to the late 2017 run up, you know your present for both. You know, what other ways would you you know really contrast those two different run-ups. I can't really remember too many people from 2013 caring about Litecoin for example, but I guess we did have something like Dogecoin at the end of 2013. Yeah. I mean the only the only alt back then there really anyone was paying attention to is like coined I would because I remember because people were speculating that I was going to get added to mount Cox and two weeks and that That was like a big source of Pomp and clearly never got out of the mount cocks Mount Galaxy went down shortly after but I remember people saying that and then Dogecoin did have its moment in the sun there. I remember it. It had more hash rate than light Litecoin at one point. Then they switched it to merge my own there was some craziness there, but the big difference really was etherium like once that once etherium pumped there was just so much money sloshing around these people who had bought a theory. I had and I just feel like they just went into everything. There's just thousands of coins. I don't know if we'll ever see anything like that again, but that was I remember I mean during periods of 2017. I was just sitting there. I was like am I crazy? Like it Am I Wrong Dua is there's this whole new asset class that's blowing up and it's just going to be you know, billion-dollar chains left and right. Is that really what's going to happen or these is the world going to get tokenized and I just thought I was crazy, but fortunately I Don't get fooled by the greed there and I was able to you know, protect myself. Do you think we would have had the run up at the end of 2017 at ethereum never, you know existed? Yes, but maybe it wouldn't have been so extreme. You know, I think I tend to I don't know about the stock to flow model or whatever, but I tend to believe that like Bitcoin is designed to pump forever just and and it's but it's volatile in the short term and it just Nets up. Whether that has to do with the having's and whether there are priced in or not is kind of irrelevant to me. I think the whole system has designed some more people buy it should go up as the supply the new Supply decreases and equivalent amount of demand side should push the price up. So I think we would have went up regardless probably not that extreme. The other thing that I think was a big deal was the Futures products like the CME and the CBOE adding because I mean we had like what there was like, Ten days or 16 days above 10K and it all coincided with the I mean if you disregard the most recent run-up, but it all coincided with those Futures launches and I didn't expect them to launch. So I mean and then I would go against people who say like, oh the Futures product when they release they crash the price of Bitcoin. I think we probably wouldn't have had 20 or like near 20 if they hadn't launched in the first place like just the hype of them launching. But yeah, definitely aetherium brought a lot of Tension to the space and a lot of that went into Bitcoin but a lot of it didn't write so it was definitely it was definitely an extremely interesting phenomenon. The whole like Ico corruption thing that happened was just really horrible to see and that was one of the reasons I my offset got destroyed because I was speaking up about it and stuff. There were so many newcomers that came in and just they just got like slaughtered on those things and they were just getting Shield left and right by people who had bags and it was just really painful to say do you think that We're ever gonna see a kind of similar Mania to the end of 2017 again. I don't know but probably maybe maybe not I am definitely I don't definitely don't think like this idea of like alt season is the thing I but I also am not the type of person that will say they'll be they'll never be shit coins. I think they'll always be thousands and thousands of shit coins and I think people like trading them because people like to gamble and I think it's like one of the Number one use cases, you know, one of the top use cases a Bitcoin is is to then, you know use it. It's like the reserve asset of this whole shit coin casino and you know at the end of the day, this is all well a lot of it is free open source software. So people can Fork it and they could do the all these different things and a lot of them are illiquid. So they end up pumping a lot more like we see like all these Shenanigans out of going on with Bitcoin SV right now. So yeah, I mean, I think we will see lots of pumps and lots of shenanigans, but I think at the end of the day for like 99% of people All dollar cost averaging Bitcoin will work out better for them. And I think that all these assets like I'm a long-term will try to 0 when priced in Bitcoin and I actually take like even more extreme view like I think like real estate and gold and everything else is also trying to zero in terms of Bitcoin. Well in terms of Bitcoin, I think I would agree with you there. Yeah, just to kind of double-check something here. Are there any other chains or tokens or coins or whatever, you know bullshit term you want to use that piques our interest at all in you know, it doesn't have to be Be you know as an asset or anything that you would recommend to anyone but just you know, this has cool technology, whatever there's a couple chains that I actively watch that I think they have some interesting things that could be I think of altcoins kind of as like this test bed. It's a basis like a like a massive bug Bounty program that's being run by all these people who are valuing short-term over long-term, but Bitcoin can take a lot from those real-world experiences as we see them and there's an incentive to break them. Because there's money on the line. So it creates this pretty interesting phenomenon stuff like that. We like argued theoretically about why a large block size might be an issue and then we see it unfolding in aetherium right now right where you see people are having trouble writing notes. You see the nodes getting centralized like among in furor and stuff like that. You see what happens when we have like if there's like a culture where you can just have hard Forks all the time, and I think we'll have even bigger lessons there, you know. We saw like stuff like the theorem classic attack where the nodes got two clips attacked was like really interesting I think and I think big Corners can learn a lot from stuff like that. So I definitely like keep an eye on some projects. But as far as like my portfolio is concerned just a Bitcoin guy. And as far as I would never I never liked I only talk about the ones that are doing really bad things because I don't want to this they're just very illiquid and I don't want to you know, move markets or anything like that. I think we should go ahead and move on there. I think that's too much. Think about non Bitcoin things and on the lightning things. We should have more lightning talk here. So the great something that I'm kind of looking at on my desk here and I think something that you just recently received as well is the new Samurai knodel. Is that right? Yes. Yes the novel Dojo. Yeah, correct. Have you had a chance to set Yours up yet? Yes. I have it's very it's very easy to set up. You said you have one too. Yeah. I just received it yesterday. I have not had a chance to actually do anything with it. Great. You gotta plug that baby in well, yeah, that's you know got it late last night and you know doing something else. So I was like, I'll just do it something had some time today, you know, it's still like the first gen of the the UI software whatnot because he, you know, just trying to get them shipped out and he will update them. I mean, do you have the original model? No, I never got around to getting the noddle when I heard that they were building a samurai version. Yeah. I was like, I'll just wait for that and then you know, it took a minute for that to happen. So in the original novel Great. I've always had great experiences with it and it's proved improved tremendously since when I got it the software the UI on the new noddle is a little bit more Rough Around the Edges because his priority was getting Dojo up so you can run lightning and Dojo but he has a lot more updates coming soon. I mean the crazy thing to me is you know from a privacy standpoint. The number one most important thing you can do is use your own note and like most people are storing on Hardware while it's up until like relatively recently. It wasn't user-friendly at all for people to access their Hardware wallets using their own node. I mean, I'm sure your listeners know but the reason why you'd want to do this is because if you're if you're using someone else's node that node seize all your transactions in your balances and your address is they see everything so like you have a key trusted third party there and what a lot of people were doing was they were many of you use Ledger or or treasure with their corresponding software. Those companies are getting all of your information and then a lot of people that were Or hardcore we're using electrum, but they weren't using with their own election server and election observers are expensive to run. So the most people that are running them are probably chain analysis companies. So you're giving it straight to a chain Analysis company. So what's really cool about the the dojo whether that's in noddle or whether that's using like the ronon to lure the my node now is added it is that you're literally just scanning a QR code. That's very user friendly, especially from where we were before. I mean, even you can Have like I could have like friends and family scan my QR code and then they're instantly paired with my note. And yeah, they're trusting me but that's a way different trust model than using like Ledger's overs. I purchased the call. So when it first came out, how would you contrast those two? Because I feel like they have very different philosophies and my experience with the cost has been pretty pretty rough allows couple of months. I've probably not going to get too much into it on the podcast. But yeah, it's not the greatest experience, you know. What would you say on on your and yeah, I mean, I was always disappointed with the costume note. The main issue was that they shipped underpowered hardware and it really it really like it hurt the ux because the hardware so so underpowered, you know didn't have an SSD. It had an old Raspberry Pi and that's why I've loved my not allow I have both the original Casa and the novel I think the Nautilus is fantastic. I mean the cool part about it noddle is that it runs like all these different things, right? It runs like BTC pay runs L&D and It's all open, you know, like with the with the casa the cost of node you have to you have to use like their app. You have to use their extension. Like everything is siloed. They live they more like want to be like what the like apple of Bitcoin why like the novel is is, you know more open platforms more like Linux or maybe Android or something. And then the other thing I mean with the novel Dojo like they did the exact opposite. They made it like a premier like a premium device like the novel Dojo has to ssds. It that back each other up that are encrypted and they have a kill switch in it that if you open the case, it cuts the power so that you need the encryption password to access it. And the reason that's important is to fold is because our lightning nodes are holding funds in them. So if someone gets physical access to your device, they can take those funds and then also could do Whirlpool two different ways. You can either on demand mix on your phone or you can mix mix all the time and basically provide liquidity right where you're just keeping funds constantly Whirlpool Andre mixing them. So you're giving liquidity other people in your getting more privacy out of it in that case. The actual note is holding funds for that too. So it's got two big hot Wallets on it's got your lightning hot wallet and it's got your you're mixing hot wallet and those funds like you got to take that security seriously to fold which is the double ssds for backup and if something goes wrong and Then you have the encryption for someone like actually just grabs the device. I want to kind of just dig into lightning a little bit here. I hope I'm not moving too quickly through these subjects. Now. I'm having great time. Let's happy to talk about everything. All right, you know talking about the cost a little bit here. You know, I definitely did when I heard the first bought it, you know, I definitely did a like it overall, you know, it helped me to kind of get into lightning and understand that everything eventually started to move on to using AP TCP server as like my main lightning know just because the A cost of just felt too restrictive and being able to actually use my lightning node on the command line, but actually very helpful and just being able to understand how how it is set fees and stuff like that. How much time have you spent? Can I just playing around with your own like L&D node, you know whether it be on the nodal or some other setup. I mean, that's how I learned everything. Like I'm not I'm not like a talented programmer or anything. I was actually like bear some lightning until Maybe like January of last year and I just jumped in and just started playing around with it. And like I feel like that's like the best way to learn that's the best way to get comfortable with with anything and specifically with lightning like it's it's worked really well for a you know, what is an effect of beta product like it's works extremely well for my experiences and that's what gives me confidence and lightning as a technology as a Jazz the network, like I was raised from using it firsthand and actually seeing it work. Yeah, I would agree definitely, you know going to the lightning conference was an amazing experience because you know, we had a handful of things you could actually use lightning in the real world and hey, it just worked and there was you know, there were some hiccups that the Wi-Fi was wish it so it was a heart kind of hard to kind of get bandwidth anywhere but you know, you know when it worked it worked pretty well have you actually you know kind of talking about, you know, lightning conference? And you being able to use in the real world? Have you been able to use it in the real world at any kind of merchants or anything like that like a physical and physical sense? No, I don't. I mean maybe like like I've done payments to people like direct individuals. But I mean, I think it's really powerful in terms of in-person transactions. But I mean I still think cash is King like I'm an old-timer in that regard, but in terms of like online payments especially coupled with BTC pay it's pretty crazy. Like the the ux is fantastic and it's so rudimentary still it's still so early compared to to paying with Bitcoin or even like credit card like we're already there and they're just getting started and and that Merchants can just run they can just run this this software stack and PTC pay and they can just process all their own payments globally and not pay BGC pay a fee or not rely on any trusted third parties. Is like pretty fucking crazy. We never really had that like people would like post addresses and stuff. But we never really had that side of the software stack and then when you look on him from lightning, you know, I've used Jewel Willow Burns extension. It was like extremely seamless or even just using the phone apps with, you know, the QR code pops up on the screen and just scan it with your phone app. That is pretty satisfying to just like you get a green check right away. You don't have to, you know, even the invoice I like I kind of like the invoice System like now they're talking about getting rid of the invoice system. Maybe we'll have both but I kind of like that. It just pre-populates all my information for me even though like I hated bib 70 and policing but I don't know maybe I'm a hypocrite. They're part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast I think is you know, I definitely like when you talk about the kind of cypherpunk future, you know coins everywhere lightning everywhere. Where do you see things kind of going in the next few years if things going to take a fairly ideal? A thin your eyes. Well, I mean the ideal path is I think a key thing here is is the US government continue to take a hands-off approach. And if you ask me like 2015 at the US government was going to ban Bitcoin just you know, forget what else they do. They just ban it I would have said it was like pretty pretty good likelihood and I think that's one of the reasons why the 2017 run was as crazy as it was was because people a lot of people came to the same realization as me that like all of a sudden like, oh, wow. We're getting Futures products. We're getting stuff like that. Maybe this one. And and the reason I bring that up is because I really do think our biggest ux hurdle is regulatory. Right like you can build a very pretty product that's easy to use if you're not worried about State resistance, but the second you're worried about like States different governments coming in and cracking down on this stuff. Then that's where the ux needs to be. You basically have to make creative decisions to try and keep a good ux and you know, like stuff like breeze has done like a really good job. That and they have their own trade-offs, right and they're obviously a centralized company. So like a really comfortable but it so it comes down to if there's a regulatory Crackdown and if there is like things could get dicey there for a while. I just think that's less likely than before. What I want to see is I think think it will happen is is stage will continue to restrict cash usage. It's not my specialty but like the economy just it seems like it's it's a little bit out of control. It looks like we're going to go to like negative interest rates and stuff like that. So they even more likely to restrict Cashmore. We've seen them restricted left and right both were privacy reasons, but I think the ulterior motive that they don't really talk about is is because they don't want you hoarding cash or gold in a negative interest rate environment where you're going to be losing money if it's in a bank, so in that situation, I think you see it. You'll end up seeing a lot of physical merchants and online Merchants spin up their own BTC pay instances to accept Bitcoin because they Want to get kyc free Bitcoin. I think the incentive is was always in Reverse like people thought like oh you can just get companies like bitpay to add merchants and then like that will help Bitcoin because like people will spend there but like those Merchants they didn't care about Bitcoin. It was just a gimmick for them. They were selling it for USD right afterwards. There's going to be and there's already already starting to see it happen, but there's going to be more and more Merchants who want Bitcoin that they have goods and services that they want to offer and they have And and they're going to offer discounts discounts if you pay in Bitcoin because they want that Bitcoin so badly and because it doesn't have kyc attached to it and big Corners will spend there because all the exchanges will be KY seed and they get a nice discount. There's like all these different thresholds that Bitcoin needs to pass that like when it grows up as it grows up, you know, and I think like the one of the big ones was like getting passed bit made in terms of Asics and like getting bad segue to X. I think one of these thresholds is really like we need to Get Bitcoin to the point where it's like a circular economy. I don't know if you saw like I had a poll recently on Twitter and like one of these things is like so I one of my main focuses is privacy because I think that's like if not big Bitcoins biggest vulnerability. It's one of its biggest vulnerabilities and one of the things I get as push back all the time is like, oh Matt Matt, like if you care about privacy like you shouldn't buy through a kyc exchange, but the thing is like it's way easier to say that than actually Do that and I think a lot of people say that but if you want to buy like any kind of if you want to buy large amounts of Bitcoin, like you're gonna you'd like pretty much a gonna get KY seed and the overwhelming majority of people that are buying Bitcoin right now are buying through kyc and all those people they're known actors now, right? Like they know their address is and they know how much Bitcoin that bought and they can then use all that data like chain analysis companies are basically building these massive data. That's where they combine all of that different data and they're able to track transactions that they might not otherwise be able to track through process of elimination, especially like if you start talking about like major governments, they have all these external surveillance they can do as well, you know, like location stuff like that all these different metadata that they're getting from people's phones facial scans and everything, right? So you mix that all together and they have these massive massive data sets and in like so I see Bitcoin being very vulnerable in that regard and one of the Biggest things that could improve that situation besides specific privacy tools like or enjoying it is a circular economy. And I think lightning is going to play a major role there because one of the issues is is you could have like great privacy, but then when you spend that's where you leak a lot of information is when you spend because you spend and it might be linked to an IP address. It might be linked to an email address a home address or office address. Where you getting mail. To so then you're trusting that Merchants with some of that information and then you usually get toxic change back and that change is linked. So if so, if you then combine that change with other funds you can develop some kind of idea of the rest of the person's wallet and we like obviously we can't be in that situation. We can't be in a situation where you pay someone and they know your salary like know your net worth like that's crazy. And I think lightning is going to play a big role there and that's that was another aha moment. I had like a year ago where I was like, you know, it's still early and no one should expect that you know, lightning is basically you should operate under the assumption is no privacy Improvement whatsoever right now, but I'm very bullish on it being a big privacy Improvement going forward, especially as we have like these multipath payments, but one thing to keep in mind here is like for instance right now, we have what 50% of the network is still being run through Ellen big which is like one actor who we don't know who it is. Like that's obviously not great. And then the other thing is like we need to make sure that we need individuals running nodes through Tor that are independent and the Run by unknown people and I think that's one of the great things that I really like about the Nautilus. I think it's awesome to build your own node. And I I tell everyone they showed, you know be great. My node makes it really easy now and you learn a lot more that way but what's really nice about Nautilus. The novel is a device that you can buy and you can connect it to a tour and you could be like a decent-sized routing node on the network. You can support the network and make it so like we can't have the situation where like the only lightning nodes running on the network are like bit refill bitfenix, you know Ellen big we can't we can't have like just because we got to make sure we don't hit this like hub-and-spoke type of situation and I think everyone can do their part by by running a Tor node. That's always on. If you're in a country that you know isn't going to crack down on any kind of tour usage which most of the western world doesn't care about as long as you're not running an exit node, like you should do that and that that really helps the network and doesn't have to be a lot of money like you can just put in whatever you're comfortable with. It just provides another path. I think you gave me a lot to kind of unpack there. So I'm going to kind of go back to the very beginning to do that. If you don't mind you kind of gave me the more idealistic situation there. You know, what if we get the less optimal thing here what if you know the US? As Government we would get someone else in the presidency who is just like, you know, fuck Bitcoin. I want this thing to die right now is on TV saying, you know, fuck Bitcoin. It's band, you know, we're going to go to all our other, you know friends in the world and make sure they banned Bitcoin to and we're going to go, you know and try to put the brakes on it at every single, you know on and off ramp possible could Bitcoin survive in that very adversarial environment. I mean, I think Bitcoin can survive But I think big Corners will get fucked hard. And I mean obviously meant matters where you live matters how you acquired the Bitcoin but and it'll definitely slowed down. It would slow down Bitcoin tremendously. I mean, this is one of these things is Bitcoin needs time. Right? So like if Trump gets re-elected, that's four more years. That's a lot of time in Bitcoin. You know, I don't like talking politics, but I think he's going to win again and this is his Focus isn't on bitcoin at all. I the game plan is it's a simple game plan. Most people are KY seed already governments will just this is if I was going to attack at this is what I would do. I would issue a law that said you had to disclose or ruling that said you had to disclose all your Holdings do they could even go as far as saying like give us specific addresses and how much you hold and then they'll catch some people lying about that right? Because they had this kyc info because people aren't using coin join because people aren't running their own nodes people aren't you know Cohen joined usage is still very low lightning usage is still pretty low. People are buying on kyc. Most people aren't running their own nodes and like so so like Ledger and treasure like I don't think they're logging. I'm not accusing them of logging but they could be or they could be forced to or their service could get compromised like to think about something like a treasure like they have people's home addresses and they potentially have all your addresses and all your balances, right? So all this information is out there. So people will undoubtedly try and lie about it. They'll catch a couple people. Lying about it and then they'll do something like show trials, you know, they did this with BitTorrent. They just they make an example out of a few people and then they scare the majority into compliance. And then from that point they know the majority of transactions going through the network and all of a sudden we get into like really dark areas where like they start trying to Blacklist transactions and do stuff like that and that they don't even have to ban Bitcoin in that situation. They could they could just ban essentially just banned selfie. City like you know, most exchanges wouldn't let you withdraw and then if you've already have the Bitcoin like you have to be giving disclosures every year that could be I think that's like the lowest hanging fruit. They could do that relatively easily most governments could do that relatively easily. You don't have to be a major government to do it. Could you see that environment or kind of world actually accelerating Bitcoin development in a certain way hardening it even more just because it is in such an adversarial environment. Well what I was kind of hoping for was and it didn't really come to pass. I was kind of hoping for some of these altcoins to get hit so that you know, you could have like a learning experience without the actual King Bitcoin get hit but it's weird does it hasn't seemed to happen. I mean they even give like they gave like EOS a slap on the wrist and like EOS was like like the old it's the ultimate shit coin like that was you know, I don't I don't know how that got a pass. So it it makes me think that at least the US government doesn't make a move in the US. It doesn't make a move like it gives us enough cover. But like if you like if you had a bunch of major governments make moves around the same time and like the Western world was all going after it and the Chinese continue to go after it like it would seriously hamper Bitcoin adoption at least in the short term. Yeah. I mean it would definitely get priorities straight again about what's important and why we why these things are built the way they're built but I think bitcoiners have a pretty good Focus about that already. D which is good to see stuff like they like the excitement around BTC pay like BTC pay is a product that's designed to work in that kind of environment. I mean, it would just completely destroy like the so called crypto industry like they'd be fucking done. There's like nothing there that's built for State resistance. Not even like etherium like etherium like as a network would probably just grind to a halt they were just like hit the major players and just or add kyc just like across-the-board like they couldn't they couldn't handle that so I definitely don't Think I'm not going to fall into the meme here where I would say, this is good for Bitcoin. It's better if there's no moves made but I think as like responsible bitcoiners. We should be considering this as a risk and you know Bitcoin is a voluntary system here. Like everyone has to take it into their own hands like it's going to come down to four individuals if that's the type of situation happens. Like it's going to come down to individuals protecting themselves and learning about different privacy pitfalls with Bitcoin and how they can improve their own privacy. Just be humble about it and just constantly learned otherwise like you're super vulnerable to your own government my coming after you and at the end of the day like what are we trying to do? At least I know what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to accumulate Bitcoin for my future family. And you know I said, I don't want to lose that Bitcoin. Do you think BTC pay server is one of the most important projects in the entire space.. Most important Project without a doubt. Let's go into a little bit more because we've touched on some pretty good reasons. Why That is I think for example with with my own podcast here, you know, I wanted a way to cleanse it because at the very beginning I was very anti sponsor and now I'm starting to begrudgingly accept the idea of taking on a sponsor the very beginning. I was like, Hey, I want to be able to accept Bitcoin and Bitcoin over lightning very easily. You know, I really had to pay a routing node on a nappy TCP server. So it was pretty easy to just you know, turn on there there there. Crowdfunding thing and just accept Bitcoin and Bitcoin over lightning through that. What are your kind of world? It kind of use cases. I mean obviously probably with the other podcast there. Yeah means we run BTC pay at the podcast. We also have ads basically like I completely agree with you that I ideally I would want my own podcasts to be no ads, but I think that and just contributor funded but I think like specifically with Bitcoin right now. It's like sats are Jeep you know let people accumulate now and we can move to a fully contributor model the future and it's nice that we have btz pads that option, you know, it's completely self Sovereign we can't get cancelled. Like we saw all this stuff getting cancelled on patreon, like people just livelihoods were getting removed for whatever reason do this centralized company and then patreon takes a takes a fee to and like they hold all of your engagement hostage. So be tcpa obviously provides a massive Improvement there, but I think yeah anyway, Online business obviously like it's just awesome that you and it's so cool that just go straight to your Hardware wallet. That's just that's exactly what we want. It gives a new address every time it supports lightning. It's like pretty easy to use. It's only going to get easier. We'll probably see like a bunch of people offering like hosted BTC pays which isn't like fantastic, but it's a trade-off and it will make it easier to use them and at least they'll be a lot more competition than just like a single bit pay or a single patreon. So I think that's a big deal that it'll fall. During competition there. And then I also think like I think BTC pay will be like the leading on ramp and off ramp for non KY seed Bitcoin users. I think from from an on-ramp point of view. It will be Merchants offering goods and services and getting paid in Bitcoin. And that's how they will accumulate Bitcoin just like we accumulate Fiat now we work and we get paid and then I think from an offer and point of view. It'll be people buying goods and services and you won't have to go into Fiat because you can just buy goods and services with your Bitcoin. And then just to add on top there. I think Merchants that have like their Overexposed to bitcoin. They have too much Bitcoin in there btz pay and unlike beat on like something like bitpay or even open node where they have Fiat connection Merchants don't have any Fiat connection there. So I think they actually become ideal they become ideal like almost like ATMs they're like foatx Yes, I think I've talked to the BTC pay guys a lot. They're working on ton of things right now, but I think it'd be cool. If they had a padded built into it where you were they're able to sell some of that Bitcoin for cash like on the spot and be able to reduce their exposure there and then the last last but not least is you know, we have this this thing pay join where you do a coin join with the person who's receiving the transaction from you and the biggest limiter to that is that it's interactive. So the Weaver needs to be online. So BTC pay servers always online. It's like an ideal situation where every payment these Merchants can be a coin and the nice thing there is the amounts are unequal. So it's got a way better heuristic profile than these like coin joints like that. We see with like whirlpool and wasabi that are just all equal amounts. What other projects do you see being on a similar level as BTC pay server? Is there anything even remotely close? That going to the heights of you know, lightning and things like that. Yeah, I mean Lightnings cool. Obviously, I'm bullish on Lightning. I don't I don't really think so. You know, I'm obviously I'm a big big supporter but Wasabi and Whirlpool, I think they're both in very important projects cautiously optimistic that joined markets going to get more friendly to use soon as you can see. I have a very very privacy focused. Oh, I really like I'm excited about Justin moons. Junction project and similar projects they're just basically and just hwi and partially signed Bitcoin transactions because the idea here is that if we can just have like a person run Bitcoin core on their computer and then they run one other piece of software and they're able to use like multisig Hardware wallets with their own node. That's pretty crazy. That would be a huge Improvement the current setup. We're like you're using a lecture room and you have to run an electric server and stuff is just way too difficult. Not happy with that. So I think that I think projects like that stuff. We see in like they age wi world the PSP T world where we're seeing like easier multisig with your own node that I want to see more of that but but nothing's on the level the like the singular level of BTC pay like BTC pay is an absolute Game Changer in so many different ways and just watching this developer Community grow up around it is just pretty amazing to watch. Yeah. Absolutely. There's so many good people over there that you know, I didn't hear hear about A couple years ago now they're in there, you know doing a million commits a day. I don't know how many commits a day they do but they do quite a bit, you know really pushing forward this the software project on many different levels. Like I think yesterday. I just saw that they added support for for liquid and doing stuff over there. Like I don't know how much I really care about liquid to be entirely honest, but it's something to play with I guess and something to a to look at. What's your opinion on liquid? It's not that You're sticking to me to be honest and I think before BTC pay server kind of adding support for them. They didn't really have a lot going for them. I don't even know who what you could even use that for other than if you were doing some kind of exchange movement, which I don't really do trades anymore. I don't I basically do what you do and just buy Bitcoin, you know, sometimes I sell it to play a play with different technology things move it on to the lightning. I might sell a tiny bit of Bitcoin to go by Litecoin to put like wine onto a Litecoin lightning thing and then see that there's nothing on there and then immediately close it out. So it back to bitcoin. I don't even know where I was going with that the main use for liquid. It makes a lot of sense to me. I agree with you that if exchange takes change. Yeah, and if you're doing that anyway, like the trust model where you have to trust like a like a threshold of exchanges basically like a majority of these regulated entities that are holding the multisig keys is not a bad trust model because you're already just trusting one of them there but like this hole II hundred percent C liquid people would be happy about BTC pay. It's obviously an improvement on their part. It's just good to be a part of that software library. But like as a BTC pay server guy that I like really like bczp. I thought it was a complete non story that they added liquid. Okay could care less right? And you know, maybe I'll change my mind if you can easily go in and out of liquid without kyc and with like without it like a Because I guess like right now like if you want to do that, you could go through I guess they're saying like side shift AI or I guess you could even go through bitfenix because they don't do kyc. But like that's just I'm past that point like I My Philosophy I seen so many exchanges fall down there My Philosophy is you know, any money you put in an exchange like if you deposit money into an exchange like you just assume it's gone at that point and then you just happy when if it comes out the other side like you should just be just be grateful that you got it back. I just assume it's lost. I mean on the subject of exchanges they're there to make money. They're not not there for some ideological reason. They're not there for Bitcoin. They're not there for you know, any of those other things, you know, just fine there for whatever business they want to do. I definitely don't like certain companies that would say that they're they're, you know, they're a Bitcoin company and then they're adding a lot of very specific ship Moines that don't really make sense. Then that context so at what point do you kind of Judge the all of that to people shit? Yeah. I mean II just I view from the same point as you I just assume they're greedy actors, which you basically just assume everyone's a greedy actor. That's one of the beauties of Bitcoin is that it operates under that assumption and I actually, you know, in terms of specifically, I mean, I think what you're talking about is all bunch of these exchanges are about to go like Whole Hog into the previous state bullshit. They have a direct incentive to pump it because they want people to steak with them. It gives them more influence over the network and they have more money on the platform. Like people be more likely to trade in the casino and use like additional Revenue generating products for them. So like we've actually seen like with Finance Finance offers Forte Zoe's then this is a perfect example of how I watch other chains to like learn things. They offer tasers more return of you stayed with them than if you steak with your own node through like the delegation process, so they're basically taking a loss on that just to Let you in the door, then they become one of the main validators of the chain then they get to sell you all these other Revenue generating products. You know, I'm not going to support it. I won't support those exchanges, but I'm not going to necessarily hold it against them because it's clear Revenue generation and then same on the Privacy front like these exchanges, they're regulated entities and if they're not regulated entities, they have huge Targets on their back and they're going to try and cover their ass and they're going to use these chain analysis companies and and and and whatnot and law. With all your information and take all this information to cover their ass and they're going to share it with these parties. So we need to bit Corners need to put themselves in a situation where they can't do that to us, you know where they can't we already are in the situation where they can't take our coins if you just don't keep it on exchanges and we need to be in a situation where they can't take our privacy as well at the same time exchanges shouldn't be able to track all of our past and future transactions they can and do I hold it against them. Little bit Yeah, but like they can so they are and they're a lot of them are being forced to so we need to make it so they can't I mean I would agree with that. I think a bigger criticism and I think it's hard to fault them per se for it I guess but is just the fact that a centralized exchange is limited in their ability to help all customers at all times. They sent something to a wrong address or you know, what have you because it's a centralized exchange. It's not a straightforward process. Process just to give it back to the customer. It takes real work, you know for them to go in and you know do something about it. Yeah or look at like quadriga or Mount Cox or whatever you like try and sell it top and then you end up with nothing, you know, so I just I like the nice conservative approach just you know, try and eliminate trusted third parties as much as possible. And that means I just avoid exchanges like the plague. I just whatever I have my one trusted on-ramp I use it. I would draw to my own my own wallet Echo enjoying I moved to cold storage and that's that are there any improvements coming down the line that you would see as better than the exchange model? I don't know if these are actual improvements, but I just want to throw out a couple names. I like spark swap. I know that they're not necessarily private per se but I really like how easy it is just you know move money on to lightning and you know, maybe something like disc, you know or anything like that. Do you have more optimal ways to purchase Bitcoin than you know may be using The coin base or any of the larger so spark swap is interesting as we talked about earlier. I think lightning does provide some interesting privacy benefits, or at least it will in the future. Not sure if we're there yet and you are giving a bunch of information to spark swap. They do know your note information. So they know your public capacity. I think obviously I need transactions you send through their channels. They see and could be logging if they wanted to they do have kyc information. I actually I was super excited. Every Spark swap but I never I haven't tried it because I didn't want to do the kyc because it was with some like random third party. I guess not random there like a known third party, but I didn't know them. So I just didn't feel comfortable with it personally. Like I think if you do use kyc exchange like you should just pick, you know, pick one that you like maybe trust a little bit more than the others because they're all sharing the information but they're not all going to get their information stolen or leaked and stuff like that. Right? So you try and limit your kyc. Measures much as possible. So I unfortunately have not been able to play with spark swap but it seems very interesting. The whole idea of on ramping directly onto lightning makes a lot of sense to me bisque is great. It's hard to use with large amounts. The issue here is always the Fiat side, right? It's the choke points are always on the Fiat side, you know, you're sending Bank transfers you're connecting to bank accounts and Fiat sucks. Like that's why we're here so they're able to crack down governments are able Crack down on that side and then when they're not able to in certain situations like with bisque and stuff then they do like undercover stuff to try and make examples of people. We saw that on localbitcoins where they will do like cash cash deals with people and will be undercover and then they'll hit them with some with some related offense for that and just try and scare other people not into doing it. I mean I come full circle. We're back like I'd be tcpa. Like I think BTC pay is going to be the main way obviously people can mine. That's always a good way to get 9 Kyc Bitcoin, but it's it depend on your electricity costs are going to pay like a 30 40 percent premium over if you bought it. So that's not really that good of an option. So like you accept Bitcoin for goods and services. You give them a 15% discount if they pay with Bitcoin and basically to the merchants, they're paying a 15% premium to not kyc when they get their Bitcoin. I mean, I think that's, you know, definitely a way to get Bitcoin. I think the other way to get Bitcoin is to tell your sponsors to pay you in Bitcoin, right? Yep. That's the same thing right? It's yours. Chin, its goods or services. In this case. It's the podcast still talking about lightning something that I was thinking about before let's say cuz this is something that's kind of fresh on. My mind is the idea of if someone were to take the kind of philosophy of samurais that coin wallet and kind of bring that to lightning but I feel like there are a lot of little things that people could do right now to make a much more privacy focused lightning experience. Do you have any opinions on that? Yes a hundred percent. Don't I love that idea. That's right. I think I think right now like look most bitcoiners understand that we have a trade-off between being able to verify the supply and privacy and I think one of the best bounces we can have here in the short term. It's people run their own notes they coin join and then they fund lightning Channels with coin joined outputs and run and obviously that that on their own node that the running through tor. And ideally there's like a mix of private channels in there. But I also think there should be some public channels because you should help with routing because just from the most basic principle of the there's no toxic changed their that you can you know coin selection is such a pain in the ass. So if you have all this toxic change, you're going to inevitably especially as freezer eyes, you're going to inevitably rig link that with the rest of your wallet. So if we can if we can make it so it's easy enough that you can just coin with your own node, and then you move it into lightning. That'd be pretty great. I don't know if it necessarily has to be integrated. I mean if we're talking about like a private way to kyc a private way a more private way of kyc if you have something like get bitter in Europe where you give them an X Pub, right and they when you send them a bank transfer their non-custodial they just automatically send it to your ex Pub to a new address. You can give them a samurai you get a fresh fresh Android phone. If you have an old one, then it's really cheap, but even if you have to get a new On you like Drop two hundred dollars on a new one. You install Samurai while it fresh you link it to your dojo. You put the X Pub in to get bitter every time you send a bank transfer. It goes to your Samurai while it premix and then you just click the mix button on the app because they're about to roll out mobile mixing you click mix and then when it's gone through a couple rounds, then you just like opens app or whatever you're using to manage your lightning node and you just deposit it into there and open a channel. That's that's pretty clean. I mean, especially since like most people are using a like a desktop computer for actually interacting with their node. But I mean you could even presumably I mean it then you're going into like Android trust models and like maybe you should be using graphene and stuff. But it all comes down to your threat model, but you could have like Zeus there's app on your phone and then you don't even need a computer. You can just right after you mix on Samurai. You just plop it right in there and open a channel, but if it got integrated that would Organize them just like mix open good. Yeah, exactly like having that to be a one one experience. You didn't have to think about it coins happen the background before you open channels or you know, what would have you and I don't know what other improvements could happen, but I have the intuition that there's things available out there and lightning land that are being utilized right now that could be utilized privacy things. I can pull them out of my ass right now, but I it's kind of my intuition that there's those things being left on the table at the moment and there's tons of things left on the table and I'm actually kind of like an idiot when it comes to that stuff too. I mean the big the big one though, I would say is like in the short term is multipath payments because you know, then that then your payments being split up through multiple different notes on the way to its final and and destination. So that seems like a significant privacy Improvement to me. So I think that I think that will be a big deal but I think like I said, like we really need to watch the things individuals can do is Should be running tour notes. They should be running lightning tour notes and and help the network and then other things like routing improvements like the way that chooses routing like it shouldn't be on like lowest fee. It's there should be a privacy component there where you want more hops little things like that. Well, it should significantly improve it and just go back all the way to earlier in the conversation when we were talking about will a Crackdown help Bitcoin. There is a bright line to this to that. You know that negative. of possibility that I pointed out is that if there is a Crackdown like all of a sudden making sure that it's easier to use Bitcoin privately becomes a massive priority if people are being made examples of and if governments are cracking down just ideally the ideal situation in that kind of situation would be that it wasn't, you know, a major world power who's doing it so that we have a little room to move there because otherwise it's you know, it's the us or are like Western Europe, I could get really dicey like really quickly and I think I want to move on a little bit here to may be touching on the closed loop or the circular economy here, but I think for a lot of people Bitcoins A Hard Sell Bitcoin and dealing with all the complexity kind of involved is a hard sell. How do we you know get more of the the closed-loop economy or circular economy started one way that I like to bring up with with guests on here. Is the the marijuana industry that if you know you go down to a dispensary in a state that has it legalized and I've had a lot of conversation with these people for reasons. They all seem to know what Bitcoin is and they all seem to have a good reason why they don't accept Bitcoin or at least in my experience. They do the ones that I've talked to have said that, you know, I can't pay my vendors and Bitcoin. So if I can't pay them in Bitcoin, you know, what's the point? And I need to convert it to cash anyway, so whatever, you know, just give me cash and the made sense to me if you know, we could convert their vendors and if we could convert the vendors of the vendors, you know and Turtles all the way down. We could you know build something and then the marijuana shops could actually accept it directly then, you know, the employees could get paid in Bitcoin, you know, people could come in and pay in Bitcoin and then you know round it goes. You know, how do we actually make that more of a reality? I mean, it's very much like a chicken and egg. Situation for the vendors to accept Bitcoin. They need to have people that are willing to pay them Bitcoin. So There's no easy solution there. But I think what happens is I think over time our traditional system like we currently live in like a financial panopticon and they're pushing it harder and harder and the easiest people to convince right now are at the fringes, you know, you get your patreon closed you get your PayPal Frozen, you know, you get bank accounts closed or like your currency devaluation and you had there there's there's rules about how much money you're allowed to move out of the country. Had these situations that arise because the traditional system is broken and it's centralized and it's prone to corruption and those things will naturally increase Bitcoin adoption. It's the same reason Bitcoin has been successful. Like if we didn't need a censorship resistor money Bitcoin never would have been successful. Like why would you deal with the trade-offs of that Bitcoin has if you could just instantly send money through venmo and have no issue that would you know, it would never happen so we I think people just need to not expect the world to happen so quickly, I think it'll be like more of a slow and steady kind of grind and then one day it just will be and on but on a more short-term note, like that's one of the reasons why I like this idea that like BTC pay Merchants can then sell Bitcoin for cash, you know, because then they like it kind of jump-starts that chicken and egg because they can get they can both get And the it's like an extra Revenue generation for them like people coming in to buy some, you know, small amounts like by $20 of the Bitcoin by $30 for the Bitcoin and maybe they'll buy some milk while they're there or something else while you were saying. Oh that I what I was going to picturing in my head was, you know the state of the internet and maybe in the state of the world was 10 years ago roughly around when Bitcoin was created and was released how different are things going to look in 10 years, you know, not even thinking Think about Bitcoin specifically at the moment how different will content creation of people monetizing themselves all that. I feel like all of the like all of those different things have been transformed in the last decade like tremendously and I think you know with BTC pay and other things kind of, you know, they're like you were saying they're very new still, you know, even as good as they are they're still very new and you know in their infancy in 10 years. Are we going to look back and laugh at? How absurdly infantile we all were with what we had like right now. Yes. Absolutely. I think it's it's impossible to really fathom but the next 10 years will bring if you just look back the last 10 years, you can see that and you like mix we just we add censorship resistant money to the mix you just you just make Bitcoins the best money we've ever had. It's just part of that mix and everything that Goes around that it happens around it at the end of the day like money rules the world, right and Bitcoins are better money. And it's it's inherently digital. It's like actual digital Bearer token, like that's insane people will gravitate towards this better money, especially as more things go digital. So I don't I don't I think like to speculate, you know, people talk about like machine-to-machine payments and stuff. You know, like I my dude Bitcoin Sign Guy Like he talks about like onion routed drones self-driving cars and like they it's so much easier for them to get paid in Bitcoin. They can verify it. You know, they can run their own notes and they can verify it and actually confirm that you know, they actually got money transferred to them. So it's like just really it's I don't even I don't try I don't make predictions that far out. I think people overwhelmingly people aren't idiots and especially when it comes to their own their own. SS and their own livelihood and they'll gravitate towards this they'll just realize that it's a better option and and they'll be removed from other options. Like it'll start with the people that have no other option and then it will go inward how or should we bring people into the mix? I have a certain buddy who at the very beginning of me getting into Bitcoin, you know, he bought some to you know, sold it at the wrong time bada that the wrong time got really salty Etc and has always kind of resisted. You know me talking about it. For that so I would bring up some cool wallet or some cool thing that I'm super into but he's like cool things Chaz. I really appreciate it. It's really awesome about your whatever bullshit you're talking about today. Have you kind of experience that has that been common in your life? And is that something that we should overcome or something that we should just just accept and not focus on and just do what we do and hope that eventually people come to what we've built in Bitcoin land. That's like pretty much been my my whole experience in Bitcoin has been what you just described until recently when I actually started like going out and meeting actual bitcoiners all the time and now just like a ton of people that also had share that same exact experience because inevitably these people is don't listen to you and then they buy the top of the next speculative Mania and then it goes immediately down and they either sell at that point and get rekt or then they stay around and I had a couple people say I'd like there's this one From middle school and high school who I convinced her in the 2013 run. I had been talking about Bitcoin from like a hundred and fifty dollars all the way up all the way up to like 1,100, right and she bought like on like the day before the top. She bought it like without she she finally she was like Nomads Fellowship match those shipments will ship but she was checking the price, you know, like everyone like they're always checking the price in the background and she told me after the fact she's like, yeah, I bought I bought and then it just went down for like two years. Years, it just went down and I think like most people will come in at tops and some will get dissuaded and some will stick around and then the next specular Mania happens and the same thing will happen over again because at the end of the day the price at least in the developed world where we don't have as much Financial censorship happening that's going to be the main driver of adoption and people coming in is is these pumps is where they come in and I my my goal nowadays is I just everyone that's close to me knows I love Bitcoin. They know I'm dedicated to this. Like I've you know dedicated like a decent chunk of my life to this when the time comes that they're ready. Like they'll know to reach out to me they know to come to me so I don't have to come to them anymore. I think that's that's the best way to do it. You give them like a light introduction and if they're not interested then you know, you just wait and they'll you know, they'll either be interested or they won't be like you can't like we're not going to convince everyone at least in the beginning. It'll take time. Everything will take time and you just you just do it lightly. I think I want to move on from From the topic of lightning here and briefly talk about your podcast. If you don't mind sure absolutely. Do you want to go ahead and let the listeners know as if they don't already know, but let's let's put on the pretense that they don't know what podcasts that you co-host there. But you want to let them know what it is and all that. So we have this podcast Tales from the Crypt 2 ft. C-- dot iOS or website. You can search Tales from the Crypt and your favorite podcast app. It was started by Mike. Host Marty bent two years ago three years ago two and a half. I don't know a while ago and it's you know, the normal Format Interview series that we see a lot in the Bitcoin world where you just interviews very interesting people and Bitcoin and I've been very lucky to join him in those interviews and then at the same time we have this Rabbit Hole recap, which I started with him and that was like a year and a half ago. I started that with him and it lives in the same channel and that is a weekly news Roundup. But without all the bullshit there's no like shit coins and stuff. Unless like it's a learning experience for Bitcoin. There's just no noise. None of the blockchain not Bitcoin bullshit. No ico's, you know, we do have sponsors, but we pick them very very carefully. We just talk from the hip like I just call it as I see it. I don't have you know, one of the nice things is I still have like a full-time Fiat job, so I don't really have a horse in this race besides my Bitcoin bags. So I'm not trying to you know show bad product I use things and then I talk about them. Yeah, absolutely. I that's kind of been one of my operating rules is if even if I ever do take on a sponsor, it's pretty much going to be me approaching the sponsor saying hey, I like your shit, you know, let me show it for money, please. Have you considered having your own kind of podcast where you Riff on various topics or you know, do your own kind of thing? Yeah, I mean Look, I love marty-mart. He's like a brother to me and I would love to just grow Tales from the Crypt with him. So that's the path. I'm leaving right now. But you know, I'm always open to other opportunities, but like yeah, I want to have ideally want to have a show on Tales from the Crypt that's like my show so then we'll have the traditional Tales from the Crypt interview series. I don't know maybe video content. I've been exploring a bunch of different things. We recently launched, you know, Marty has this daily newsletter that he's been writing for three years. Which is insane just this idea that he writes about Bitcoin every morning on every weekday for three years. I could never do that. But I just added to that we have this we called the sad standard which is a Weekly Newsletter that goes out on Saturdays. Like that's my baby like I put that together so that's been fantastic to do and but yeah, like maybe I'm not even sure though if I'm who knows like I you don't really know to try it, but I'm not sure if I'm not good of an interviewer just like talking about Bitcoin. So like rabbit hole recap is like my absolute baby. I love doing that every week. It's just fun to be fair. I think there's various interviews that you do that end up being really really good because you're there because you add this kind of your certain flavor. I think Marty is very different and has his own kind of Labor like for example, the the American Hospital Interview, I mean that one was fucking ridiculous, but I think it's because you all had this ridiculous flavor going on in it and it melted very well. So I my personal opinion. I think if you had that going on your own, you know, it would work pretty well. But hey, you know, I'm not here to push you into your own podcast here and I'll tell you I love joining for the interviews. It's fantastic. The American holiday episode is ridiculous. We had the armed out episode is ridiculous. We just recorded one with Andrew. Ciao. Ciao. I'm super happy to be there for there was a little bit less of my flavor there, but I was very big on making sure we talked about coin selection. Just something that I hold near and dear to my heart and we had a really good conversation about that. But yeah, I would be lying if I said I haven't been considering it. It's just we have honestly I feel like Since I've jumped into Bitcoin head first. I mean, I guess I've always but I ramped it up in 2017 like late 2017 2018. I just there's not enough time in the day. I'm like playing with all these toys. I'm already I'm already recording our HR for just like three hours. It's a one-hour recording but like between going to the studio and talking beforehand talking after afterwards that's like three hours there and I want to do more guide videos and stuff like that. So there's just really not that much time in the day since it's just but that's good. That's a good issue to have but I definitely I definitely see a future where I do some of my own shit more just because also I just like, you know doing my own shit like that's just one of the reasons I love Bitcoin we get to you know be our own bank. That's fantastic. I mean agreed I guess I just I'm my perspective is a little bit different, you know, I even had a full time income for quite a while. So, you know part of the reason why I started my podcast was like, you know, I have all this free time. I I need to be doing something to be kind of useful. I have I have no idea if this podcast is is useful in that sense. I think it is and I've been doing it long enough that quite a few people have said that it's helpful that other people have said that they've gained information from it and but after a while, you know, you're doing something like, you know doing a podcast and then you're like, well, you know, what else? And I do and I think you know very naturally. I've been kind of going to the same place that you've been going of, you know, all do video content. I'm not clear on, you know, where I want to do video content. I've just kind of reorganize as my entire apartment it to make it easier for me to shoot video content, even though I have no idea what I'm going to do. That's kind of how I do things. But do you do you see you this kind of something similar that you're like, I'm sitting here I have this time. I want to do something for Bitcoin, you know, but more value out there. Is that something you actively think about? Yeah, I mean look this week so I still have my Fiat job right this week. I flew to San Francisco. I help them with the human rights Foundation Workshop. Then I flew back that was late last night. Then I had two calls talking with Bitcoin about Bitcoin with different different companies in the space that that wanted some advice with things that I pushed him off to today because I was in San Francisco. I jumped on this podcast with you because I really like going on the other podcasts in the space. I like I think that's like a really good way of just building quality content everywhere. I'd love to see that and the workshops in general have just been super rewarding. We've didn't me. I've include us you just had a great episode with you. Everyone should listen that episode if they haven't and Josh in New York beefsteak Josh, he's away Slice on Twitter. We've been running these Bitcoin Citadel workshops, you know be your own Citadel. We started with cold card and coins and using it with your own node. I think we're going to do like a build-your-own node workshop. And that's just like super rewarding like I think like, you know, just Hands-On meeting with bitcoiners. It's just fantastic and I just really really love that element. I just love going to dinner and drinking with big Corners to that's really fun. Yeah. So I basically every day I'm just thinking about how I can get back to bitcoin because this community has given me so much and it's just really rewarding and that's just like no matter what That's basically my that's my plan until number goes up to the point where I can just disappear in the woods somewhere. That's like that's like the goal of life right now. Have you given much thought to you know, taking whatever action you can to getting some kind of Bitcoin income and dropping the the Fiat job entire thing. Yeah. I mean, that's where it's going to get interesting right? Because like that's what I want Tales from the Crypt to be like I want Tails, I think like me and Marty you're building something really special there and like ideally we could get to the point where that could just be my full-time and then I could do all this other stuff on the side and just in general like I'm constantly looking for opportunities to work in the Bitcoin space the in the past like the past bear Cycles. I just saw so many people who went full-time Bitcoin just get wrecked. You know, they just they got absolutely wrecked and in a bear Market, it's like really nice it just really Nice having a completely independent. Salary bear Market that is a underrated benefit to be in that situation. I mean we saw someone like Andreas who when I got involved in Bitcoin, I would just like main line is videos. I just like watches videos and then Market buy Bitcoin and then he had like no bit coin in 2017 because he was living off of it and it was like no it was like a dropped $150, you know, and he was just selling it for pennies because he had a live off of it and he didn't have any Fiat on the side. So I was always very conservative about that and I will admit that there was a couple opportunities. I had like late 2017 early 2018. I got the top to move into Bitcoin full-time and I'm very very grateful that I didn't do that. You know, I'm in a much more stable situation now so II do I do see I said earlier. I don't want to make tiny and predictions but like the next like two years like I'm going to be full-time Bitcoin next 3 years. I'll be full-time Bitcoin. I'm just completely done with my Fiat job. There's like no passion there whatsoever. It's just pays the rent and makes it so I can accumulate more Bitcoin. Let's think about the listeners for the moment because I think at one point all of us were you know, thinking about what we could do in Bitcoin or for lightning, you know, really inspires us Etc. What would you say to the listener out there that does like, you know, I want to help but but I can't do x y z because I'm not good enough at whatever, you know the case might be if I'm not good at programming or I'm not good at, you know content creation or whatever it is. Would you encourage them to do it anyway or to try to make something happen? Either way would I would say is I mean you should focus on yourself first. It's like the when you fly an airplane and they give you the instructions if the masks fall out of the plane, you're supposed to like put yours on first and then you put on other people's masks. I You should be greedy and you should just keep learning for yourself and just and Bitcoins and interesting Beast where the more educated big Corners we have the more big Corners that are doing best practices and are aware of everything. The stronger Bitcoin is so your are inadvertently helping everyone else by helping yourself and to go even further there. Like if you have a business, right and you want to accumulate Bitcoin like you start accepting Bitcoin, you're helping boost that our economy for yourself. You're just helping yourself. So I think that's really important. The the meetups are really important tread carefully in terms of privacy and stuff, but it's just been a huge net benefit for me. We have a great community in New York. Just talking to people in real life like in person Ed but just in general like telegram groups Twitter to an extent, like don't let it get to your head. Don't be an asshole. But yeah, you know do what you can and just don't lie and then it doesn't matter. If you like don't get overwhelmed and don't think it would be perfect. No one's perfect. Everyone's just trying their best. We're all just trying our best and people see that like if you're actually acting ethically and whatnot. There's no harm in like creating content if you want to create content, but I wouldn't like just jump right into it. I would focus on myself first like, you know, ask what Bitcoin can do for you and then take that to the next level. So I don't know how much longer you want to be on your identically don't do the three hour long interviews on. I'm getting junkies. Was that a is that a dig at me? Because I'm kind of known for my my epic epic podcasts. I wouldn't call it a dick, but it I believe it is true that yes, when the key for those is you gotta enter bourbon into the mix and then that our to it gets really interesting kind of like the the business and my business but the kind of podcast talk a little bit self inspiration there in self-sufficiency is I think a huge Part of Bitcoin land and something that I think I really latched onto when I started really getting into Bitcoin is you know, being self-sufficient taking care of yourself. Like I'm like, I'm in my 30s and I really didn't do a good job of getting those skills in my 20s and I've been doing a lot better in my 30s like something that I pointed out recently was cooking like I'm dating someone that is a professional cook. So, you know it's hard for their skills not to rub off and it's like I think you know, obviously a lot of Bitcoin users are into their carnivore ways or whatever but I think just being able to cook in general is hugely important. Do you think that there are any other skills besides cooking that you know lend themselves to being self-sufficient and things like that? Yeah. I mean, I think you should just like like life's important, you know that guy. It's easy to get like wrapped up in being obsessed with Bitcoin and I'm 100% guilty of it. You also to take care of yourself in general and you have to appreciate what you have and family friends is like super important you notate like exercise like people should exercise. I personally like my favorite form of exercise like competitive Sports nice. I play soccer. I played tennis. I just enjoy that's part of the reason why I like Bitcoin, I guess it's just because it's like a global competition. And yeah, I just I think I think that it's easy to get way too wrapped up in this stuff and forget about what's really important and I'm not trying to Discount Bitcoin because I fucking love Bitcoin. I think it's the best money we've ever had but at the end of the day like your life is way more important and it's really fucking short. So you got to enjoy it and I think people should just both take life a little bit more seriously and a little bit less seriously because we got a lot of zombies out there. Just walking around not really thinking about shit. Well said, I think I think that's a good Place as any to close out the episode man. Awesome. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoy your podcast and I just know that when I first got into it one of the reasons I did it was because I felt like there just wasn't good enough content out there for big corners and I felt like it was something I can improve on but right now it is absolutely fucking bullish. There's amazing amount of content out there and your main part of it. So thank you for that. Well, I really appreciate you saying so I mean, that's pretty much why I started this this podcast I was getting obsessed with all the stuff happening in lightning and I you know, obviously different people were focusing on parts of it sometimes but since Bitcoin is such a big world, it was a lot of it was more on bitcoin itself and not necessarily on on Lightning. So hey, why not have a podcast that is only lightning and talks about how obsessed we all are with, you know this technology fucking love it. I wonder how many Other people would describe themselves as being obsessed with this technology. It's a mature if it's unhealthy or not over here. Number go up. The amount of people obsessed is going up man. Gee do you want to give the Spiel on you know how people can find you on the internet and all that? Uh, Matt Matt under - Odell on Twitter and our podcast and newsletters. You can find a deity C dot IO or just search Tales from the Crypt on your favorite podcast app. Well, once again man, I appreciate you. Yeah joining me and we'll catch you later. Awesome. Take care, dude. Thank you. Boom. That was the 20th episode of lightning junkies podcast 2120 on 20/20 or something. I think I think that's correct. I think that's correct. Hopefully you learned something on this particular episode. We had a very fun conversation and I feel like it flowed very well. I'll definitely have mad on again in the future for his insight. It's and just general knowledge about things related to bitcoin privacy ending similar. If you would like to support the podcast you can do. So with Bitcoin or Bitcoin over the lightning Network directly at crowdfunded lightning junkies dotnet. There are also other ways Port the podcast monetarily including fold Ellen cast and tipping dot me you can also support the podcast without having to use any of Your monetary sovereignty you can leave a review on whatever podcast aggregator program that you might use. You can also share the podcast on social media, especially the twitter.com. Don't forget to subscribe and give me feedback so I can continue to improve the podcast. I think you lovely folks are probably sick of hearing my voice now, so we will leave it there. I invite you all lovely folks all of you lovely folks. To join me, please. Join me. I'll see you on the lightning. The lightning network is the best video game ever.
This is the 20th episode of the Lighting Junkies podcast. (Debuting on 01/20/2020! :O) On this episode, we have Matt Odell, Matt is best known for being a co-host of the Tales from the Crypt podcast. His co-host is Marty Bent. On this special 20th episode of the podcast, Matt talks about a range of topics that intersect Bitcoin and some that don't. In the episode, Matt talks about securing your own oxygen mask first in order to better help others in their Bitcoin adventures. Topics in this episode:   Getting into Bitcoin  Path getting into Bitcoin  2013 Bull Market vs 2017 Bull Market  Bull Market without Ethereum? Bull Market in 2020+? Samourai Nodl   Casa vs Nodl   Spending on Lightning IRL? Regulatory UX   Importance of Privacy   Bitcoin Surviving Ban? Altcoins Left Unscathed   BTCPay Server   Liquid on BTCPay   Exchanges Suck   Lightning Wallet with Samourai Privacy Design Philosophy   Privacy Improvements   Closed Loop/Circular Economy   Onboarding Users   Tales From The Crypt   Giving Back  in BitcoinLand   Going Fulltime Bitcoin   Secure Your Mask First   Self Sufficiency  Matt Odell's Twitter: https://twitter.com/matt_odell Marty Bent's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MartyBent TFTC's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tftc21 TFTC's Website: https://tftc.io/  If you want to stack 100k sats, sign up for Sparkswap! 