Samson Mow - CEO of Pixelmatic and JAN3 | Why Bitcoin Will Hit $1M

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Check out HubSpot sales hub at HubSpot.com slash sales Today my guest is Samson Moe. He's currently the CEO of Pixelmatic the development studio behind Infinite Fleet as well as a CEO of Jan 3 a new Bitcoin Technology company with a mission to accelerate hyper Bitcoinization Samson is known for his work on El Salvador's Bitcoin strategy and nation-state Bitcoin adoption in general He has previously CSO at Blockstream a leading provider of Bitcoin infrastructure and before joining Blockstream He was the COO at BTC China one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges and mining pools in the world at BTC Samson oversaw day-to-day operations of the company and directly managed the exchange and mining pool business units Now we spoke about the block size war Bitcoin maximalism adoption of crypto by nation states Why Ethereum is a security and a shit coin scaling Bitcoin and why Bitcoin will be the best way we save ourselves from tyrannical governments and or wellian 1984 societies pick a point in your life a pivotal point in your life It sets you on the path to who you are today could be something that got you involved in Bitcoin It could be something that got you involved in tech it could have been Something your parents did that made you gravitate towards one industry category or the other so pick that point we'll go from there So everything first started when I first read about Bitcoin mining So this is the inflection point at which I understood that Bitcoin was decentralized and it was unique Many people have heard about Bitcoin and they gloss over it and they read about it in the media And it's often portrayed in a very bad light But most people understand Bitcoin is just a digital currency or a virtual currency But when I first read about Bitcoin mining that was when I really dug into the details And I understood that it's an open system that is permissionless that has nobody controlling it Because when you understand Bitcoin mining you understand Anybody can join in and secure the network audit the network and actually run the back end systems of Bitcoin themselves And so you're you already from day one you went into the weeds like you you obviously are very technical Individual you jumped into the weeds, but you decided to build a company in Bitcoin mining What why as opposed just or go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry. So that was my initial foray So you totally put the moment right so after that It took me a while before I I guess I officially Got into Bitcoin and I say that is when I joined btc China That was a Bitcoin exchange based in China So this is like the inflection point, but then there's another long journey into it Okay, so then what was your so so you know about Bitcoin you just learned casually about Bitcoin mining Did you like spin up some s's not I don't even know what year it was like what what did you did you like Figure out how to order an s9 and like try and like cook it up in your house your condo and realize it was like super loud and super hot Or like what's the first foray in the Bitcoin mining Well, this was a 2013 I believe so I tried to set up on my laptop, but people were already using GPUs and Maybe FPGA's at that time s9s were not out yet, but I couldn't mine anything with my laptop unfortunately But at least that was the point at which I understood Bitcoin But I didn't really get into it until I joined btc China in 20 late 2014 early 2015 And I was the COO there and it was a Bitcoin exchange and mining pool But that's really the start of the journey down the rabbit hole into All the things that I'm doing today with nation-state Bitcoin adoption and gen 3 Do you think that somebody has to understand Bitcoin mining to understand Bitcoin is that important or is that more in the weeds? Not at all. I would say because I'm a game developer by trade So I build virtual worlds with economies and it's all centrally controlled right you have a game currency You have to manage the game currency and for me it was understanding Bitcoin in that context that there was nobody controlling the currency That really sparked that light bulb aha moment for myself But anybody can understand Bitcoin you can read the white paper I actually read the white paper after I set up all my Bitcoin mining systems But like people can go into Bitcoin in different ways and they don't need to mine Bitcoin to understand Bitcoin I was always curious about that because we always still are even today I feel like we're we're solving for the problem of of understanding and adoption right like how many well I mean 2013 now or now we're almost 10 years later So I've always wondered if if people went more into the weeds or if there's other adoption problems that you've seen because you've been in this for such a long time Now okay, so you you joined btcc as COO So walk me through that career decision. Why why did so were you in Bitcoin professionally before or was this something that was just more of a hobby And then this is like your first four because COO of a large company is that significant Well, you have to remember everything was a bit smaller back then like BTC China had about 18% of hash rate which was not a lot of Computing power back then but these days 18% is very substantial right because everything is grown But um, I was running my game company pixelmatic and then my friend was running btcc China and our offices were just a kitty corner from each other So he asked me to come on as an advisor originally So I went in and helped them set up the mobile Mobile app development team and started working on some other things and eventually he just said why don't you step in this COO So I had to learn a lot very rapidly about the entire business and about Bitcoin But prior to that I was just reading about Bitcoin and observing from the sidelines But I would say once I was in a Bitcoin company that was when you know You started getting really deep into it And also at that point of the Bitcoin block size war was kicking off too the sort of Bitcoin civil war where All the Bitcoin companies were trying to lobby for a block size increase and changing the rules of the protocol And I kind of got sucked into that that battle and and even described to me like there's a lot of entrepreneurs Listen to this show you you were an entrepreneur building out your own company when you Translate some of those lessons to a disruptive tech like Bitcoin blockchain As stepping into the COO role of of btcc China How did you find some of those skills translated like how do you build A company in an emerging industry. There's no playbook. There's no rulebook what's the What's to take away how you still you know you saw some hair left so you're good But I mean it probably was pretty stressful Well, the the biggest stressful the most stressful part I would say was just understanding how exchanges operate and how um all the different mechanics work because there are new products being built all the time on top of Bitcoin and things like margin lending Um derivatives and things like that. So that was probably new for me But running a big company was not really anything new so before I started pixelmatic I was actually an executive at Ubisoft and I helped them build a game studio in western China from the ground up to about 200 Some odd people So I had the experience running a large team for a public company and I think that is valuable experience in a disruptive new tech because a lot of tech companies and as you're aware They may have an idea and they may have You know some traction But they're typically inexperience on the company management side. So I brought a lot of that You know even handed management and you know scaling of the organization itself And running it so at the end to um when I left bd's China I was in charge of the mining pool and the exchange business units and a lot of the core services around operations and the business itself And I'm assuming like now You know several years later like the the whole industry has evolved and I think this is something that We start to see in emerging industries even like cannabis like day one A lot of passionate Product focused operators and entrepreneurs and then you start to have some experience and you start to have people that have You know built scaled sold and then bills people are rolled back in so the whole industry evolves But so after you left btc China um This is probably where and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you spent the majority of your of your of your Bitcoin career up blockstream correct That was them okay, and walk me through that career decision why blockstream What were you trying to solve for so you were CSO there? I'm pretty sure that was out of that was out of Canada at a Toronto for non-missake Um actually out of Victoria Victoria was still in Victoria too you've been in Vancouver for a while Okay, got you still Canada west coast budget Well blockstream is a Canadian company technically it's incorporated in Montreal But we just marked Victoria as the HQ because I was here, but um, I got none of the spots right Close enough close enough But uh, yeah like the Montreal office is really like a back office of finance people and you know Emailing address, but people would contact us all the time and say can we meet you in Montreal? So we would just say okay HQ is in Victoria at least I can meet them and you know do the bd and discussions there But yeah, the entry into blockstream was really just meeting Dr. Adam back He is the CEO of blockstream and our paths crossed during the Bitcoin scaling wars Because uh, it was the big blockers on one side and then the small blockers The people trying to preserve the consensus rule set on the other side So we were kind of fighting side by side against the The big onslaught of the every single Bitcoin company and mining company, right? So we built up a relationship and uh, working repertoire And I decided to join blockstream because I understood from that battle that things had to happen And Bitcoin infrastructure had to be improved So that we can weather the next storm can you go deeper on that that Uh, like that that issue that that um that fight that you're trying to fight because a lot of people don't who aren't in the weeds would not understand How the what's going on here like how are how are people fighting over Bitcoin? Right, so it was an innocuous change. It's just saying we want more scale uh, higher throughput So more transactions in blocks and the method that the big block camp wanted to use to accomplish that was increasing the block size Like four megabyte 10 megabyte 32 megabyte blocks and so forth And a number of them have branched off and made their own chains and They're basically unused But the small block camp wanted to scale in layers much like the internet So you have you know physical cables then you have a TCP IP HDDP and then you have apps on top and then CDNs and everything like that So it's not trying to increase the the pipes at the bottom But build in a structured layer to scale the technology and we do this through things like the lightning network and the liquid network But layers that sit on top of the base But the slippery slope here is if you start changing a fundamental rule of Bitcoin So the block size is one such fundamental rule and then you have other rules which people are more familiar with like the 21 million cap But if you can change this rule that you can change any of the rules and then Bitcoin just becomes like a fiat currency Some people will just dictate what happens monetary policy etc etc And Bitcoin just becomes meaningless So if Bitcoin actually increased the block sizes And scaled in that method then it would have been impossible for an average user to run a Bitcoin node on say their laptop Or you know old computer But that's really the key to Bitcoin's success resilience and longevity The fact that individuals can run a Bitcoin node and verify the entire Network themselves rather than outsourcing that to say Amazon someone running a big powerful server on Amazon Or by extension a bank because then you're just right back in the original territory where we left right you're back into Centralized control by a small number of people which you have no access to you yet best have read access to what they allow you to read But the whole point of Bitcoin is that you yourself run a node you are an active enforcer of the rules of the network So this was in nutshell what we were fighting for just Bitcoin's soul and because I think that if somebody starts to understand How Bitcoin operates and and somebody could literally amass and maybe walk me through why someone Could not amass a data center or just a ton of servers and and be an actor that could manipulate Yeah, so I think what you're getting into is the 51% attack the mining attack right I'm asking I'm at large amount of machinery A6 and then going to attack the network to rewrite the chain Now that it's been theorized a lot of times and you actually don't need 51% attack You could probably sustain an attack with 30 or 40% of hash rate But the challenge is how does one accumulate that much hashing power and Accumulating that much hashing power in stealth mode because if it's like let's say a nation state attack You'd have to basically By you know gigawatts of a power build out a large farm and then buy A6 from the suppliers or from the market and you could not do that without the market realizing what's happening So it's it's very difficult to pull off this as a stealth move And if it's known then other actors in the space can counter that move because they can they themselves can ramp up and You know acquire more a6 themselves right but the key here is that brick bitcoin runs on a proof of work model Not proof of stake, which is what ethereum and other very valuable protocols use So the problem with proof of stake is you have this this pie right you have the stake And their theory of security is that if you want to attack it you'd have to buy a stake and therefore You know it wouldn't work But the problem is you can co-opt a stake too, which is what happened to ethereum So people delegated responsibility out to the exchanges So most of the exchanges now are staking on behalf of the user So you kind of have this self-inflicted centralization where You know the big entities now have control of it But the problem is you cannot expand the stake you have that pie And like let's say you know there's a it's under attack and you have another actor like you yourself want to Expand the pie you can't do that because it's the stake Whereas with bitcoin mining you have this much hash right now, but let's say the us was going to attack Let's say i'll solve or ones to defend i'll solve or can you manufacture their own silicon make the a6 make the miners Get energy and add to the pie because there's no upper limit to proof of work You can keep adding more and more work to the pie all it's invincible Yeah, you just need to work right you have to build it deploy it, but you can secure it because there's no upper bound I understand okay, so this is this is really what you were fighting for in this is this actually Block streams like what was block streams mission? I know this is something you were very passionate about But what was block streams mission as a company? Well, I would say block streams mission is to Augment bitcoin right building technologies to scale bitcoin like lightning and like liquid So these second layer or even third layers in the future of ways to scale bitcoin because one of the attack vectors On during the block size wars was bitcoin is too slow seven transactions a second. It's not enough for the world But it's not meant to be The the main chain level is not meant to scale to transaction throughputs for billions of people you have to use higher layer technologies where you're You know abstracting away some of that confirmation time and your batching transactions right bitcoin at the base is a settlement layer And that is why the block time is 10 minutes because you need 10 minutes to synchronize the entire world Right, you have to take an account the slowest possible node and Have to propagate transactions and blocks to that slowest node and about 10 minutes is right bitcoin is very much built around real world physics right so you have to factor in the speed of light How long does it take for light to circumnavigate the globe? So there is no way that you can have everything settling on chain for a planetary population You have to use things like lightning where not everything is written to a central repository But individual nodes have their own map of the network themselves and then they they sync up on their own way And you mentioned something earlier that I thought was interesting you mentioned that One of the outcomes of this of this particular battle could render bitcoin quote-unquote meaningless, but I would like to understand because I don't know if there is a Across the board. I'm sure you have I'm sure you have a very defined meaning for bitcoin But across the board it is it doesn't seem like there is a Universal understanding of what it should or should not be So what is the what is bitcoin's meaning? Is it is it something supposed to be transactional? Is something supposed to be a store of value more more symbolic of gold or something like that And then I'm also curious about if you are very bullish on bitcoin And I only know enough to be dangerous. So if I'm misspeaking you tell me But I'm not I'm not as into it as some people are But if you are very bullish on on bitcoin I also want to understand the place that a theorem and Blockchains that in from my understanding operate like an OS or an operating system and you build things on them So that that's just sort of where I'm curious about because I want to unpack that but first let's describe What what bitcoin is how to just how it has meaning versus what is a meaningless version of bitcoin in your in your interpretation? So I guess I'll go with the easy answer first and is that that question is in my bullish on bitcoin And I'm very bullish on bitcoin I see bitcoin as the ultimate end state and that is what you're asking about earlier. What is hyperbiquanization? Hyperbiquanization is the point at which we don't convert back to fiat money Similar to how you don't convert Dollars to seashells anymore you might buy a seashell for a decorative thing or a necklace But you're not going to buy seashells and hoard them to store value right But the other part is what is bitcoin and the answer is very simple bitcoin is simply money So it is all of those things that you mentioned it is a store of value It's a medium of exchange and eventually it will be a unit of account and on some levels. It's ready a unit of account But what is a a useless version of bitcoin? I would say that is ethereum ethereum is centralized is basically a central bank digital currency at this point because There it's just big institutions running the chain So it's kind of defeated the purpose already. You don't have Is it similar to ripple excuse me just to understand is that like similar to ripple in terms of like It's it's similar to ripple it's similar to ftt. It's similar to everything So you have bitcoin on one side of the spectrum which is decentralized permissionless immutable And then you have everything else on varying levels of uselessness, right? So You know I think there are some cryptocurrencies that you could say are relatively decentralized But for the most part 99% of them. They're all Masquerading is decentralized. They still up a Swiss foundation somewhere and they say we're decentralized But it's really vitalic and his body is deciding monetary policy So you effectively have replaced the federal reserve with a bunch of guys You know on a zoom call that know nothing about money deciding what money is and Right now, I mean, they're on a kick to make a theory of sound money. So they're trying to implement monetary policy and make it more valuable right like reducing the supply Burning fees locking things up so that people can't withdraw from stick pools or whatever But that can change like if you can change in one direction you can change in the other direction, right? So when when Ethereum prices high they can say well, we need some inflation We're going to print some more and this is totally within their power to do And this is why a lot of Bitcoin is call Ethereum a shitcoin because it's so malleable They can change anything they want it was hacked. There was a Dow hack They rolled it back on the chain and I believe that was the inflection point for them to just fail They could have been I think that was the first like SEC investigation into anything crypto From not mistaken, wasn't it? Perhaps but I mean if there was really an unregistered security and a lot of these things are unregistered securities FTT included but pretty much every crypto is an unregistered security And this is why Bitcoin is trying to distance ourselves from all those things because they are trying to Affinity scam and say we're like Bitcoin. We're the same thing And they want Bitcoin to be a subset of crypto, but it's actually very different Very interesting and I'm super curious because actually prepping for this interview I saw you actually did a podcast with Vitalik and I didn't realize Now I understand whoever the host was. I can't remember his name But now I understand why he got you both on that call. Yeah, so if if I didn't listen to the whole thing And now I probably will after this I should have I didn't realize there's such like a contentious podcast, but um If if you were going to say this to Vitalik, what would what's Vitalik's argument? Because that's a pretty it's a pretty bold claim I've never heard this claim before that if theorems is shitcoin I've heard a lot of shit coins are shit coins, but not Ethereum Well, things every shit coin likes to call other things shit coins and they think they're not but they are so I remember don't don't don't coin was like laughing at other things and saying all of their all shit coins and uh, you know They're gonna fail we know how that yeah, yeah, you know how that ended up right but Ethereum it's just Malable if you look at some of their early recordings of their meetups and things they're talking about their ICO I mean that in itself is an indicator that it's a security right it's a effort by a group of people to make money and Attract investment into their project. It's just that they don't have a company, right But if you look at everything that Ethereum does it's basically a company Um a Dow is basically a board of directors, right? You're just saying it's a tokenized thing and therefore It's not under the existing framework, but I think regulators and And um, you know the CFTC and SEC they're starting to understand like a lot of that's just bullshit like it's really A securities offering that you're trying to pretend is decentralized and I think the time is running out for these guys Um now then that sort of uh, this is a great way to sort of dovetail into the the thing that I alluded to earlier Which is smart like smart contracts built on Ethereum I've never in my life heard of a smart contract which is again if Ethereum ZOS and you're saying it to centralize ZOS and the points you're making are very valid Um Then you have all these programs built on all these smart contracts and all these other things that we've now You know, it's it's blown up into everything from defied NFTs to whatever every I'm not sure if they're all built on Ethereum I don't think they are but a lot of shit has been built on Ethereum. So I haven't seen much built on Bitcoin. So what's why has there not been more of an explosion in smart contracts and the Understanding that Bitcoin can be an underlying OS for all these applications Well You don't really need an underlying OS the world doesn't need some sort of OS and if it did have an OS It should be decentralized But you there are things built on Bitcoin, but they're not the same scale as Ethereum simply because the Silicon Valley money machine is not investing in Companies building on top of sound money Silicon Valley itself does not understand sound money. They don't even understand gold barely What they're interested in is a quick turnaround and a quick gain on their investment Like if you watch the all-in podcast where you have Chimath and David Saxon those guys They're all talking about Solana and pumping their bags, right? But what the VCs want is super fast liquidity and turnaround on their investment And they can achieve that through investing in these token projects that have no Real purpose or utility It's just an easy way to dump on retail investors. So they don't need to wait Seven to ten years for a company to go public. They buy Solana in the presale and discount and sell it to retail investors and then They're good, right? So this is why there's such a big Big push for all of these projects and smart contracts, right? At the end of the day the you're building smart contracts which are not necessarily immutable or Or Unchangeable because they build back doors into them if you google smart contract back door You'll see a lot of these smart contracts they say you know code is law and they've written their rules set in here But then there's like a access point where they can shut it off and just like a five minute google will show you There's so many of these cases and all of them are very unsecure if you google defy hacks You'll find pages and pages of hacks every week. There's a defy hack because they're just building javascript Constructs that are unsecure and have back doors and centralized. So This is why none of this is really meaningful even a smart contract itself needs some sort of input It's not like a smart contract will just run on it run on its own If you go back to the simple example of buying real estate There has to be some proof that the transaction happens and then the The the funds are transferred, right? So there's always some input into these things but the bigger problem is your building smart contracts and And defy stuff that is just relying on trading governance tokens or worthless tokens like fruit dog tokens For other dog tokens and other governance tokens. So it's really a house of cards where you're Staking some governance token to get another governance token to trade some other governance token at the end of the day None of the government governance tokens even are meaningful because They're centralized and it's a small group of people that's going to decide Regardless of the governance tokens direction or what they think should happen I just want to take a quick second and tell you about one more podcast You have to check out if you're a fan of success story It's sales evangelist hosted by Donald Kelly brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network Each week Donald interviews the world best sales experts successful sellers sales leaders and entrepreneurs Who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now? He brings on Jeffrey Gettimer Jill Conrath Bob Burr Guy Kawasaki They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage Challenge and motivate you to hustle your way to more revenue for your business If you're somebody who's looking to take off in your sales career If you are an entrepreneur who's looking to sell more I think all of us are go listen to sales evangelist wherever you get your podcasts Do you think that there's any Applicate because I I complain about this a lot. I feel like a lot of projects And now, you know, it's just tying into what you just said a lot of projects seem to be creating Trying to solve problems that the founders are creating that aren't real problems I mean if you look at the average person They don't give a shit if they're transacting It whether or not the transaction they did is stored on the blockchain or not like they could have Man like the the most popular CRM in the world is still excel like there's so many problems that are being created to be Solve for that really have no Reason being created and that's you know if we talk about like fundamentals of entrepreneurship I mean you have to actually solve true pain points in the world not just just not makes shit up I feel like a lot of this stuff is making shit up Yeah, and they justify that by saying we have to innovate right and I Going back to your earlier point like how would metallic defend ethereum he would say you know It's pushing the boundaries and innovating on things, but it's really not nothing they've done is really innovative at all And nothing they do like you're saying is really useful in any real world situation right ethereum there's a video of A few ethereum founders saying we knew that ethereum 1.0 would never scale But when they were sourcing investment for their iCO that was not the messaging They were saying this is done and it's a finished product and it's the world computer But then they keep changing their narrative and they just haven't been nailed down to the cross yet about what they're actually doing Which is raising capital if you want to innovate Simply innovate right code. There's a saying cypherpunks right code But they're not writing code. They're soliciting investment For you know their little science experiment and not disclosing the risks and they have no liabilities because it's not a legal structure So it's kind of the worst of every single possible world combined Um with block chain is there innovation that you've seen doesn't and it can be on it can be with Bitcoin It could be like I'm thinking stable coins. Is there any need for any of this? What's something that you're actually excited about Um, I'm really excited about a lot of peer-to-peer tech that um the bifnix and tether guys are working on is called keat and hole punch But they've built this product you can check it out at keat.io But it's a peer-to-peer messaging app and they're getting ready to release the mobile version soon But this is going to actually change a lot of things So if Bitcoin is sound money you still need a medium to Engage with people that is not centralized right if you're still messaging people through I don't know what's that or something. They're still a centralized server and this can be shut off And it can be monitored. There's tons of metadata leaking everywhere But if we can get to more of a peer-to-peer world that in my view supports the peer-to-peer money which is Bitcoin So it's starting to fix the underlying problem with the world now I love people throughout the term blockchain, but I think the innovation is really Bitcoin the blockchain is really just the toxic waste that is Generated to allow us to have Bitcoin which is peer-to-peer cash that we can transact directly with one another If there if it was possible to do that without a blockchain that would be great Because the blockchain is just something that takes up space on your Bitcoin node and it's growing every year But that's the best solution we have right now I think a lot of these second layer technologies things like what blockchain is working on and other companies This will help alleviate that and allow Bitcoin to continue to grow and scale And then so so let's talk about that so Emeliorating Bitcoin That's what block streams mission is and I think that's what you've worked on for you know now you're still working on that I'm curious what Jan 3 is doing because I actually have no idea and I went to the website I couldn't find anything so you're gonna tell me what to do it but And I think it's like probably still because you're building it out. It's like still sort of a little bit new but um so The things that block streams working on so we're talking about lightning network. We're talking about Making Bitcoin better and making Bitcoin more efficient. So what what is the current state of Bitcoin? So what are the upper limits of what it can do that block streams? It's contributed and other people have contributed Well, there's no real upper limit because you're scaling Bitcoin with layers. So the lightning network You can have a theoretical throughput of about 40 million transactions a second right There's no upper bound because you just keep adding more nodes and all of the traffic and interactions are between the different nodes So if you if I'm not transacting with you You don't need to know the transactions I've made and this is how it becomes scalable You can have multiple side chains. So a side chain is a Bitcoin A block chain that's anchored to Bitcoin. So right now there's liquid and You could potentially have other different side chains But the key is that they all settle back to Bitcoin and that they're using Bitcoin and they didn't print a token To make themselves rich So it's just all Bitcoin through and through From Bitcoin base layer to layer two and beyond and so Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I lost my train of thoughts. Okay. Oh, no, no Well, I was also gonna say so I'm trying to address all like the the critiques, right? So the other one would be volatility So your goal is to make it so that we don't keep bringing Bitcoin back to to US dollars and and you're 100% right because everyone Even if you say right now like, you know how much how much Bitcoin do you have or what's your value like Psychologically, you're you're pinning it back to a US dollar amount or maybe your local currency, right? So the goal is to eventually not do that, but I mean the critique is volatility I can't what is it? I think it's by cup of coffee or some Some there's some there's some there's some de facto like transaction That we should be able to do the tar to do if prices Increased decrease goal over the map Yeah, so Bitcoin is volatile because it's still growing But it's important to put everything into perspective. So Bitcoin's like 13 years old It's still a baby really and it's actually quite impressive that it's grown this much in you know a decade plus Um, it's same with iPhone like the iPhone is only been around for a very short amount of time I think it was first out in 20 2009 or something like that I remember switching my blackberry for an iPhone, but it's hasn't been around that long But now it's very ubiquitous and that whole smartphone form factor kind of emerge from that, right? So things can change very quickly Especially with the currencies because they are inherently defective because the central banks can print it as much as they want There is no check and balance here And Bitcoin is just a superior money because you know that there is a set amount of Bitcoin It's 21 million and that can be subdivided into 100 million per coin So you know the rule set you know what you're getting into and one example I like to give is that Bitcoin is a ruler With a finite amount of you know units on that ruler Um, there's no such ruler for financial In financial circles like what people I guess measure in dollars But you can't measure in dollars because the supply is constantly fluctuating up and down right You have you know kilometers or miles for distance you have Answers and milliliters and leaders for volume But what do you use to measure monetary value? It's going to be Bitcoin because that's the only thing that's really set in stone Everything else is just Someone's printing paper and or not even paper now just database entry and it's changing every single day And you know the interest rates and everything change too on a weekly or monthly basis So then okay, so We understand that maybe the printing money is not it's not a great thing and I think we've seen a lot of issues with countries printing money over COVID More than more than ever before So your goal is your goal, I guess is this with Jan 3 now you're trying to Get countries to adopt or help I'll me understand because I know there's like these uh, there's El Salvador um, and there's help me understand like countries adopting Bitcoin versus stablecoins versus CBDC which seems to be the route that everyone's worried a country will take if they'd like the idea of digital currency Walk me through that and sort of what you're doing Right, so What we're doing is um, we have a wallet that we're developing called the aqua wallet It would be for Bitcoin and stablecoin So the the US dollar denominated value instrument is not going away anytime soon and stablecoins are a useful thing That can help give access to the financial system to people in the global south If you can't open a bank account you can still get tether and that is a useful tool So back to your earlier point is there anything useful with the blockchain? well having A stablecoin on the chain or without a chain like for example other protocols that Are more like the lightning network do add value, but it's not necessarily about the chain now I think uh when I joined blockstream it was about augmenting Bitcoin and doing some things to help scale Bitcoin and Basically cut off that sort of a attack vector where people say Bitcoin cannot scale because now it is clear that Bitcoin can scale So that is done But we have new Attacks that are going to come in the next few years or decades on Bitcoin too Such as CBDCs. I would say that's a form of attack I don't believe it will be a successful attack, but it's a type of attack and then you have misinformation A lot at the government levels. We saw some examples in the US where um, you had some people saying you know Bitcoin is controlled by a few developers and a few mining pools and therefore it can be regulated and we want We want software developers to register themselves and whatnot, right? But these are these are bad things and it's a bad direction for human civilization in general because That's just leading to authoritarian authoritarian 1984 type of life for everybody in the world where you're constantly under surveillance and there's zero freedom So I think Bitcoin is the bulwark against that and what we hope to do is to get more countries like El Salvador Adopting a Bitcoin standard and a part of that is really just re-teaching people What money is money is meant to be a mechanism by which we exchange our value our our time in value It's not supposed to be Something that a central bank is managing and it's not supposed to be a tool by which you can surveil people And it's definitely not something you should be using to try to You know manipulate the prosperity of a nation, right? But all of these things are happening and I think the work we're doing to engage in a nation state level Can help to defend against that because we can educate legislators and Members of parliament or congress like what is Bitcoin and what is money and why is money Critical to success of a nation state And why having sound monetary policy will prevent things like inflation and hyperinflation down the road And and how do you plan on convincing a nation state That they should adopt Bitcoin like like El Salvador is is trying to do versus a CBDC because it seems like a CBDC Is is totally in line with what a like a country would want to accomplish as much as ever You know, I hate it, but people like it makes sense that if I was trying to you if I was trying to you know Have better control over or track my citizens and outside of them pushing back Um, it serves the interests of the government Well, the key here is to change the interests of the government so that they're more pro-freedom So going back home to Canada It's like it's supporting people like peer polyev that are talking about freedom Sound fiscal policy and just common sense things like we shouldn't be buying oil from overseas when we have oil domestically right these things are Are just a nonsensical if you think about it and you step back there are countries that are Energy independent that just put themselves in a place to be dependent And seed sovereignty and I think Bitcoin is a step to restore a lot of that But not just Bitcoin itself, but the the first principles thinking around Bitcoin like why Why what is money? How do we become independent? How do we not be rely on others? And how do we do things that make basic sense, right? A lot of the world has forgotten about what money is people think It's just a number of my bank account. That's a thousand percent a thousand percent. Yeah, I mean, but It's the same for energy people forget you need energy human civilization is dependent on energy But because you know, you're comfortable you have lights on and heat in your house You forget what that comes from and people also don't understand how energy is produced and they think You know, we have to go green. It's got to be all solar and wind But you don't start tracking environmental impact from the point of which you buy that solar panel That has a life before it is available for purchase. It has to be mined The solar panels themselves the the photovoltaic leaves have to be made and they're made with coal And then at the end of life it has to be disposed But it's almost like they look at this narrow slice of the thing and say From the point I buy it to hear it's green therefore it's good But you ignore the beginning and the end of the thing. It's like go in the grocery store and saying Yeah, meat is good like it just appears in the grocery store magically, right? But this is what we're living with I know we're living with it But I mean you're you're taking on um You're taking on a it's a very good thing you're taking on but it's a monumental task Because people are so stressed about their immediate vicinity and the things that can touch and feel and smell and taste that It's hard to get people out of their own bubble, right? And that's what you're saying you're doing you're taking you're getting governments out of their own bubble You're getting people out of their own bubble and their immediate surrounding saying listen We're trying to do this for the betterment of humanity and this is why that's a monumental time Well, but it's all that we can do right and a lot of what we're doing is just simply being a resource and engaging and trying to educate and point people in the right direction but ultimately you know people have to change governments have to change if uh if it's Canada and Trudeau has to go and we need new leadership that understands basic fundamental economics and monetary policy and why you need fiscal responsibility to step in but maybe we can be a resource and Effect change that way, but that's what we're trying at least All we can do is try and walk me okay, so like let's use El Salvador as a as a case study Maybe there's other countries That are probably further along than Canada and the US so um what what is a good adoption of Bitcoin and what's the proper terminology to bring Bitcoin into a country? What's the what's the word it verbiage for that? Uh, I just say Bitcoin adoption. It's just keeping it simple. That's fine. Let's do that So what's a country that's doing it properly? How are they doing it walk me through like a case study? Well, I would say El Salvador is the best example we have right now They've made Bitcoin to go tender which means big basically Bitcoin is money And you don't have to deal with capital gains tax on on Bitcoin on money because you know you can't have a Bitcoin acting as money if you have to track every transaction and report cap gains on it, right? And this is part of that part of that greater initiative that we have at JAN3 which is educating people about what money is Why do you have inflation? Why do you have problems? Why is the economy contracting? It's because you're not treating money as money. You're treating it as a tool for various purposes, but definitely not money Um, I mean Canada itself has a new law coming into effect early January which is denying foreign buyers The ability to buy property in Canada, but how do you expect to grow the economy? How do you expect to have more immigration if you're restricting capital inflow into the country? Right, they can't really squeeze blood from a stone And this is why people want tourism why people want investments And I think El Salvador is on the right track because they're saying Bitcoin is money All the diaspora of El Salvador around the world remit money back home money is money Um, people should invest in El Salvador come to visit El Salvador for tourism purposes, right? I mean if you Uh, go back to Canada you get the third degree like why are you coming back? And that's if you're a Canadian, but they do that to tourists too like why are you coming to Canada? And this is just a uh, uh, a symptom of uh, uh, uh, misunderstanding of how the world works and how money works, right? And I think this is a relatively recent like I mean like even in Canada's relatively recent like From my understanding previous to COVID like Canada had one of the best immigration and refugee programs in the world um, so I don't think that it was always uh Like closing its borders. I know that for they probably close borders There's a significant period of time more longer than most countries But do you think this is like a you're saying this is like a symptom of like government like Trudeau And this is not going away. I haven't been there any year and a half so Well, I would say it's a symptom of uh, just governments in general like you you're either Using money as money or you're entering into some protection as a mode where you're thinking that you're Protecting what you've got, but you're basically committing yourself to a slow decline, right? If you look at history and the growth of the four Asian tigers, they grew very rapidly In the past few decades and that was because they're welcoming investment capital in right you want to invest because you can You know move your money in easily but with things like capital controls and restriction of funds and even You know cutting people's bank accounts off and making it very difficult to move and transact money That just results in economic still a stalemate and death eventually So the hope is that El Salvador can Re-invigorate this and make people understand But even in Switzerland you have a good example, right? The Swiss love money They want you to bring money to Switzerland by Swiss property put your money into Swiss banks and then they can grow and invest But you know most countries don't see that but I think that we're reaching a Infection point where they are starting to understand this because they're seeing Swiss inflation is pretty flat And then every other country around that's trying to use money as a tool for surveillance and control is suffering Um, and I'm curious about one of the aspects that you mentioned The negative aspects of CBDC which is surveillance, but It's funny, you know, you know This is well as I do like bitcoin Everyone kept saying originally that way way way back it was used for a list It means and it was only used to buy drugs on silk road and now everybody knows that it's probably easier to trace a drug transaction through bitcoin That is through actual cash But to that point then right now you I'm curious about privacy So if you do have a country that adopts bitcoin as legal tender Do you not run into some of the same problems as a CBDC because you can trace everything that anyone's ever bought anywhere Um, yes and no, I mean if you're using bitcoin through lightning it is private right It's a restoration of the cash property to money and I think the The other good thing about some of the our initiatives is that we can educate people that cash is a good thing Right It's a way to ensure democracies can be open and free because you can have the right to protest and assemble and have free speech But if you can cut off the monetary spigot you can stop all of that stuff right if you look at protests around the world There's a few things they try to do in authoritarian regimes which is cut off the internet and trace money like See if people spent money on the subway to get to the protest and then go and find them And make sure that they suffer after the fact and we have that in Canada too if you donate it to the truckers Yeah, we're shutting your account down, right? So This is the problem like you Yeah, cash is very important and It's the key to any semi-functioning democracy that people can have their own money So the separation of money in state is of critical importance if you want freedom Because the tendency is towards less freedom because if as the government becomes more fearful of the populist They want to enforce more and more measures to Prevent any threat to them But that's not in the best interest of a country, right? Like if you look at China they had zero COVID policies and then when people actually started protesting They they gave up those policies right and you can say the same in Canada if if there was no trucker con No freedom convoy or trucker protest would we be opening up right now and it's questionable No, I appreciate that. Okay I want to I want to give you like we went through a ton of great stuff and I appreciate that because like I mentioned before I get a lot of different perspectives on on various but I've never had somebody who is So well versed in Bitcoin to be quite honest. So I really appreciate it No, it's actually been like really educational for me, which I mean it's always a good show any any final thoughts on Last things that are hyper important that I didn't ask that you should teach over to the audience sort of like the floors yours And then I'll make sure that people like know where to reach out to you and connect with you and whatnot Yeah, I think we've covered a wide range of topics. I would just leave it to your audience to Maybe think about what money is and how you can protect yourself There are a lot of Bitcoiners that reach these conclusions on their own Michael sailors won such person he's thinking of The macroeconomic scale at a company level right how do I as a company protect the money I have the cash I have And that's rapidly devaluing He's likening it to an ice cube that's melting So that that was why he implemented the corporate policy and micro strategy to buy Bitcoin and that's been a good mood for them Now people might say you're down because Bitcoin is down But that's if you're thinking of things on a very short time horizon and one of the things that Bitcoin does is it puts your thinking on longer Time scales right most people are not buying Bitcoin for themselves But for their children or future generations like if you can earn if you can mine Fiat currency mine Canadian dollars and mine US dollars. You're okay But what you want is to have a generational wealth that can be passed on right and you want a better future for your children and their children Because nobody wants their children to live in a 1984 type Hellscape where they're monitored constantly Right that's not not a world you want to bring new life into So Bitcoin makes you think on the longer time horizon And it makes you understand a lot more of the world in the context of how money works because we've lost the largely forgotten What money is and we've taken it for granted amazing if people want to You should you have a book have you written a book or no? No, it's on my two-three list Okay, it sounds like you've written a book, but okay, so if people want to reach out to you learn more about what you're working on What's the best place for them to connect with you? I'm pretty active on Twitter. So my handle is excelion EXCE L I O N and that's basically it and one day I will write a book Okay, very good. I asked this question to everyone to close it out So after your entire career Multiple successes of built various companies and you're not familiar yourself Um, what does success look like for you at the end of the day? Well, I think success should just be happiness. You should be happy with where you are in life and what you have I think understanding Bitcoin simplifies a lot of that because you understand you know very material things Status symbols and not really meaningful in the end and you should just be happy with the people around you and what you're doing in life That to me is a success