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A data-led Bitcoin read, plus miners on why Stratum V2 still stalls
17 hours ago
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3 min read
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70 docs
A compact set of organic recommendations from the Presidio Bitcoin Jam conversation: BlackRock’s latest Bitcoin report, recent Stacker News miner AMAs, and a lighter Tyler Cowen podcast lead.
The recommendations below came from a Presidio Bitcoin Jam discussion; watch the source conversation. The strongest pair is a report with a concrete chart trail and a set of miner interviews that expose an adoption bottleneck; the third item is a lighter, prospective queue recommendation.
Standout: recent Stacker News miner AMAs
- Resource / type: Recent AMAs with Bitcoin miners on Stacker News.
- Creator / participants: Stacker News hosts the discussions; the participants are miners. The episode directs readers to Google the recent AMAs rather than naming one canonical post.
- Recommended by: A Presidio host, who says, “I highly recommend” them.
- Key takeaway: As relayed by the hosts, the miners like Stratum V2 in theory but see “zero economic demand” for it.
- Why it matters: This is the most actionable recommendation because it puts operator incentives ahead of protocol enthusiasm. The same exchange says adoption takes years because thousands of actors in a decentralized network must adopt a change, and points to economic incentives as the unresolved question.
Analytical read: BlackRock’s latest Bitcoin report
- Resource / type: BlackRock’s latest Bitcoin report or paper.
- Creator: BlackRock.
- Link: The episode identifies it only as the latest BlackRock Bitcoin report; the host says he cannot recall the report’s name.
- Recommended by: A Presidio host calls BlackRock’s new paper “good” and then explains the charts he found useful.
- Key takeaway: The host’s reading path is unusually specific. Figure 10 reports a 10-year average six-month Bitcoin/S&P 500 correlation of 0.18, versus 0.04 for U.S. government bonds and 0.06 for gold. Figure 15 shows a downward trend in trailing 12-month realized volatility from 2011 onward. Figure 13 compares 10- and 60-day returns after six post-2020 geopolitical disruptions; for the initial U.S.–Iran conflict, the cited 60-day figures are S&P 500 +4%, gold −11%, and Bitcoin +13%.
- Why it matters: This is a useful starting point for testing broad Bitcoin claims against a defined set of correlation, volatility, and event-return data—not a reason to accept the conclusion uncritically. The hosts themselves flag that the six-event sample may be cherry-picked.
Lighter queue item: Tyler Cowen on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton
- Resource / type: Podcast episode featuring Tyler Cowen on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton.
- Creator / participants: Rick Rubin, host; Tyler Cowen, guest.
- Link: No episode URL was supplied in the discussion.
- Recommended by: One Presidio host says he queued it up; the other hosts call it interesting and say they think it will be a good one.
- Key takeaway: None is available yet. The exchange records a prospective recommendation, not a substantive summary of the episode.
- Why it matters: Keep this as a discovery lead rather than a verified argument or takeaway; its value is that the hosts found the conversation worth making time for, not that the episode’s thesis was tested in the discussion.
A data-led Bitcoin read, plus miners on why Stratum V2 still stalls
Research extraction
Presidio Bitcoin
David Sacks
Profile
Recommendations found
The episode contains a few genuine external-resource recommendations, mostly with implicit endorsements; no URLs for these resources appear in the transcript.
BlackRock's latest Bitcoin report/paper — In the price discussion, one host calls BlackRock's new paper 'good' , then says he read through the latest BlackRock Bitcoin report and pulled out three charts (figures 10, 15, and 13) covering correlation, volatility, and post-geopolitical-event returns , while cautioning that the data could be cherry-picked .
Stacker News miner AMAs — Explicit recommendation: 'I highly recommend going and Googling the AMAs on Stacker News recently,' in the context of miners explaining why there is 'zero economic demand' for Stratum V2 .
Tetragrammaton (Rick Rubin) podcast episode with Tyler Cowen — Implicit endorsement: a host says he queued up Tyler Cowen's appearance on the Rick Rubin Tetragrammaton podcast , and another host answers 'Sure. That'll be interesting' and 'I think that'll be a good one' .
Borderline / not counted as recommendations
- Tyler Cowen's 'capitalizing untethered agents' post (seen on Stacker News) — mentioned with positive interest ('I just skimmed it... I want to give it a deeper read') but not explicitly recommended .
- Founders You Should Know — explicitly recommended ('I definitely would recommend people pay attention to Founders You Should Know...') , but the same exchange credits co-host DK and his wife Jen with building it , so it reads as event/self-promotion rather than an external learning-resource recommendation.
David Sacks
Profile
Resource recommendations from Presidio Bitcoin Jam hosts:
BlackRock's latest Bitcoin report (title not specified) — one host read it and highlighted three charts as new and interesting: Figure 10 (trailing 6-month Bitcoin–S&P 500 correlation, 10-year average) shows correlation of 0.18 vs 0.04 for US bonds and 0.06 for gold; Figure 15 shows trailing 12-month realized volatility declining since 2011; Figure 13 shows Bitcoin substantially outperforming S&P 500 and gold on 10- and 60-day returns after six major geopolitical disruptions since 2020 (e.g., US-Iran conflict 60-day: S&P 500 +4%, gold -11%, Bitcoin +13%).
Tyler Cowen's new Stacker News post on "capitalizing untethered agents" — a host skimmed it and wants to do a deeper read; the post argues agents still need human revoke/legal-system ties, which the host is skeptical of at trillion-agent scale.
Tyler Cowen on Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast — a host queued it up and expects it to be a good/interesting conversation.
Miner AMAs on Stacker News from the past month or two — a host "highly recommends" them; a takeaway is that miners like Stratum V2 in theory but see zero economic demand for it.
BlackRock's New Case for Bitcoin, Stripe Buys OpenRouter, David Sacks at PB
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highlights
0:00All right, we're doing it live. Back Friday, August 21st, and another edition of the Presidio Bitcoin Jam. How are you guys doing?
0:08Back in in in session. After a week off, we're back.
0:12Yep.
0:13Yeah, we had a rough week.
0:14Sorry about that.
0:14Steve's back 100%.
0:16Yeah.
0:17DK is looking like he's better too.
0:20Looking like what?
0:21You're better too. You're looking good.
0:22I got over that stuff. I got over that stuff. It was it was long. It was a couple weeks, but it was a a brutal one, but I don't know if it was COVID or whatever.
0:30[laughter] He's making a comeback.
0:32Excellent.
0:34[clears throat] [laughter] So so Max, right before we were going live, you were calling for $250,000 Bitcoin.
0:44For $420,000 Bitcoin. Um Well, look.
0:47Is that just to pump the ratings, or do you actually have a reason behind this?
0:51No, I know. I I That's definitely just to pump the ratings. I It was funny. I mean, Steve was saying, you know, you know, I would say we're not a prize show, but I mean, it's kind of hard to ignore. The last couple days have been 23% pump?
1:05I mean, it's it's a big pump, and um yeah, I mean, I you know, who knows what's actually going on, how much of that's, you know, if it's something insider knowledge with the Clarity Act. Whatever, I was trying to do a bit more reading and understand how much of the Clarity Act really moves the needle.
1:19Shorts are closing their positions.
1:21Shorts closing their Obviously, I mean, once the cascade starts, you know, how much of it is the sort of long-term treasury buybacks. I mean, market is going to market. Who knows is the ultimate answer.
1:31BlackRock's new paper.
1:33[laughter] BlackRock's new paper. I think it's good. It's good, but Their their audience, maybe they're like, oh, time to buy.
1:40It could be. I mean, it's very sharp. I mean, I I will say it's just a good reminder that, you know, when Bitcoin moves, it moves violently.
1:47I mean, the most likely can a trigger is the treasury yield.
1:50Yeah.
1:51Like buying buying US buying their own debt back.
1:54Well, the fact that Trump had all the uh, I guess crypto entrepreneurs up in the White House yesterday. I'm sure I mean who knows what came out of that as well, right? So, um, I don't know. I mean it's interesting. I will say I am a little surprised. I still thought and still kind of think in order for Bitcoin to kind of take its next big big move, you know, the the two big barriers that I saw are one just so much capital being sucked into AI. So, I think that's very interesting is cuz like that's not slowing down. The data center build out is only accelerating. You know, the
2:23amount of capital being raised, you know, Anthropic's not talking two to three trillion dollar IPO. So, you still have like a finite amount of capital and so to me that's like the biggest competition.
2:31Modern monetary theory.
2:33[laughter] There's no limit.
2:36I introduce this Steve Aoki right here.
2:39[laughter] Um Back in like 2020 that everyone was saying that was the new the new thing.
2:47Yeah. Yeah, do you do you remember you guys remember modern math?
2:50That was a whole thing, too. It's like what that That was like 30 years ago. It's like instead of like teaching kids kids like fractions and like very basic like arithmetic, it was like, I don't know, some newfangled like, I don't know.
3:01It's like no child left behind. Like you don't have to No, but that was amusing as well. No, this was like a a different approach to, you know, basic math, um, which you know I don't know. I thought it was pretty silly when I was a kid. But, um, but I liked fractions, so. Anyways, um, so so that's interesting to me that it's like that this is happening while sort of the AI wave is still, you know, building.
3:24Yeah.
3:24Um, and the second thing is like I do think there's still major questions around, right? Like, you know, storage, like how do you store safely with the AI getting a lot better really quickly, the quantum question, you know, I know you've done a lot of work on that, but like it still looms. It's not like a great answer in my mind. So, the fact that it's ripping while those two, you know, potential albatross albatross is albatross Yeah. While the albatross is still there Let's roll with it.
3:47Yeah, there it is.
3:49[laughter] Um, I don't know. I'm a little surprised, but, you know.
3:53Here we are.
3:53Yeah, I'll take it, great.
3:55We'll see if it sustains.
3:57It It's always hard because like people like some friends are calling me and they're like, "Hey, what's what's up with Bitcoin?" And I think it's always hard to really explain it or to tie it to a particular event cuz like there's things like, "Oh, everybody's the halvening is happening." And people have these parties and expect something to happen, then nothing happens. Or the ETFs are going to launch and then kind of nothing happens. [snorts] And then so I don't know, like can you pin this to like a specific Is it Is it this stuff that happened in the White House or Or cold card happens and nothing happens to the price.
4:26Yeah, cold card.
4:27[laughter] Well, but but again, it's And I think that actually does speak to something pretty important, which is that as big of a deal as that was for the core people, you know, the the the the die hard sort of lymphatic system of Bitcoin, which is incredibly important, right? The sort of like the people at the edges, the hackers.
4:45I do think it's just also a like reflection of the reality of the situation is that Bitcoin has already gone mainstream. And sort of like the hacker contingent uh in terms of relative value is quite small. Like the the real things that are pushing the deal right now are more macroeconomic, you know, what is BlockRocket doing?
4:59What is MicroStrategy? It's not to say it's good or bad, it's just too big to fail.
5:03Yeah, I mean [laughter] Uh well, I also think a lot of a lot of things we talk about here and like maybe we have like long long-term concern like with cold card, it's like it concern would be like, "Oh, does that mean um people aren't going to self-custody in the future?"
5:16Yeah.
5:17And if that were true and like 10 20 years from now no one's self-custodying, then then that would be very bad for the price of Bitcoin.
5:24Very bad, yeah.
5:24But not It's not a near-term concern for investors, so that's why that doesn't And also it Yeah, I think they're building up some stuff here.
5:33We may have to try the hot option in a minute.
5:35see. We'll see if that's right.
5:37Um but but I mean but but to be fair, there is like there is like real term concern for me, which is to say um you know, e- even if you're not worried about the sort of like self-custody issue in the five-year terms or even whatever.
5:51You know, I do think there's like real concerns this highlights like how safe really is a Coinbase even like when AI is going off, you know, quickly. So, I am surprised that it didn't seem to have moved market sentiment at all.
6:04Even you know, for the larger students but And Steve, you made some claim about shorts closing. Was that just kind of a Yes, that kind of stuff would happen or was there something more?
6:16[clears throat] Well, the combination of I think you you know I have a list, right? Because I I also Shorts on Bitcoin?
6:24No, I have a list like people will message me who don't follow the space and they're always like why did Oh, yeah.
6:31the price go down?
6:32I'm sure you have like dozens of them.
6:34I have like two dozen reason rational reasons why the price goes down. And it doesn't mean that there's like a loss of faith in Bitcoin. And so, I always just send that that list to people when they ask that question. So, one of them is that. But also someone messaged me this morning saying that happened but I didn't go verify it.
6:53I mean, I think that Jim chat running, we could ask AI to investigate but we don't have that right now.
6:58Yeah, I mean, I feel like you always get some kind of like You know, it's funny, right?
7:03I feel like markets seem to have the result of kind of like shocking the most people the most of the time. Kind of like the Elon thing of like what what what what outcome is likely? Well, it's the one that's the most interesting, most surprising, whatever. And the the most news the most ironic. You know, what's interesting actually is like I I'm actually curious to get your thoughts on four-year cycle as well but the day before the big move started, I spoke with you in the office on Tuesday and Steve was like, you know, Bitcoin is
7:31now the ultimate stablecoin. Cuz it had been [laughter] just so flat for so long. And it's funny. It's like like that that was the last thing we needed. We just needed Steve to call it stablecoin and then all of a sudden it explodes.
7:41Or or Jim Cramer saying to sell it. That literally happened right before I thought I saw a headline. What What exactly happened? Did he literally said I'm out?
7:50Like he said sell Bitcoin right before it popped. So.
7:53[laughter] By the way, I see we got some folks that we know in the chat including Rob in Austin.
7:58one of the greatest CEOs in the world. Oh yeah, Hamilton. The elite CEO. And he should be happy cuz we're talking about the [laughter] price. We're not talking about details like code, code, security scanning.
8:10living in it Rob's level.
8:11Yeah, less [clears throat and laughter] less the price.
8:13Less nerd talk.
8:15We're we're here to talk about Have you seen Rob's memes where he's got like Big Bird showing up and he's like, "I'm a security researcher now."
8:21I [laughter] know.
8:22Oh, you got to see. It's worth it. Worth it.
8:25Since I'm off Twitter, you guys watch too much We could. We could. Good to have you listening live, Rob. And also we're going to have um well, you know, the open source AI summit is September 10th and 11th Coming up.
8:37here at PB.
8:37It's almost September off.
8:39Coming up.
8:39Yeah.
8:40Um we're gather we're we're going to have we just announced a panel yesterday that includes [clears throat] Rob Hamilton, myself, um swag Jordan from the Block Security team and uh Elias from my team on Spiral who is the the primary person behind Project Loop. So, we're going to gather or so we're going to have a panel on on the 10th. Um I think it'll be a great panel.
9:03I mean, it's very timely, right?
9:04Yeah.
9:05Uh to talk about the the you know, all of our lessons learned about security scanning cuz there's a bunch of different projects and people doing it.
9:14Um share those lessons and then also uh speak to like best practices for how others can do it in cuz I I think you mentioned either last show or the show before like um you know, this is kind of a canary in the coal mine. So, I think lessons we're learning in the Bitcoin world um apply to all all software projects.
9:33So, hopefully um Um, yeah, hopefully stuff we've been learning in the past well, for some of us the past three, four months and and then it's really peaked in the past month, uh, can help other people. So, um, we're actually going to gather the day before to really sit down and try to create a, uh, set of best practices to solve this show.
9:53Yeah.
9:53I'm looking forward to that. Looking forward to seeing Rob.
9:55Yeah.
9:56Um, and then the the summit is just like It's getting sick.
10:00It continues to get better. I mean, I I hear you're going to be interviewing, uh, someone very boring. I don't know if that's that's live yet.
10:05The United States AI czar.
10:09David Sacks. So, we were fortunate to, uh, to get him involved.
10:13Will Jake Albie joining the stage?
10:15[laughter] Um, We kid. We kid.
10:18[snorts] Well, um, yeah, so we'll be doing I'll be doing a fireside chat with with David Sacks. Um, so one thing we should talk about is just what what questions should, uh, should I ask David Sacks?
10:29That's a great idea.
10:30So, we can talk about that now. Anyone listening in the audience, fire away. I also tweeted that out, too, so would love would love ideas.
10:37Um, Have you done any background research yet on, you know, I I know that he kind of had that title within, uh, government?
10:45Are there specific kind of positions he's taken or kind of public public kind of directives or directions that he's indicated yet?
10:55I mean, he's definitely pro open weights, open source AI, uh, which probably why he's interested in speaking at this at this event. Um, and he's been quite vocal about it. Um, yeah.
11:08I I'd be really Is he kind of a pure accelerationist type vibe or does he sort of support some of the I kind of For I think for all the reasons like Jensen's letter addresses, Mark Zuckerberg's letter addresses, and, the BPI letter that that, uh, Spiral and Block and others signed on to. I think all all those all those reasons. I mean, all the reasons we would naturally think.
11:32Yeah. I mean the the big area I'm curious to hear on is obviously sports open source great.
11:39How does he think about for example like US versus Chinese open source? Like how concerned are they about like do the Chinese for example open source have poison pills that we don't know about?
11:47Like how important is it that we have US models that are more auditable and also thinking about this future that we've talked about on the show for some time which is beyond open weights also open data sets. Like actually be able to verify what's in the model.
11:58Yeah.
11:58Those are questions out there.
11:59Okay. Those are good.
12:02And I'm I'm curious personally about kind of like the chips story and like you know where I think are we going to be able to re-industrialize around chips at some point and where are we on that journey?
12:12Is it Are we two years away or 10 years away?
12:16Um what are sort of the moving moving pieces there and does he sort of have any any views or kind of takes on what he's seeing there?
12:27Rob says AI policy in the US among the frontier labs, I no longer trust them or feel safe using them.
12:34Yeah, so can speak to that. The other comment In math we trust says will they ever eliminate cap gains of de minimus transactions so we can spend Bitcoin?
12:43That's a good question we've talked about on the show. We care about it. Um I don't know. There's been attempts so far they failed. But um that's not I'm not going to ask David Sacks that at the open source AI summit cuz I think it's off topic.
12:57Oh, we'll see. Feel it out. Feel it out. See see how it goes but yeah.
13:01Um Trust and safety is the AI policy of the frontier labs.
13:06Okay.
13:06I'm not sure of all that. Yeah, I I think I think all that's awesome and maybe listeners if you have other questions you think of through, you know, send them in. I'll also say I don't even know if I've talked to you about this yet. Well, you you know, but I've been working on a couple of panels this alpha drop not released yet on the importance of open protocols and sort of open source versus closed source economics as well. So if there are folks have questions on those stuff, I'm not ready to announce who will be yet, but those will be pretty pretty sweet panels. And um yeah, I one big thing
13:35that I'm thinking a lot about is like if you think the split of um you know, tokens is going to go open source, open source with a fine tune, um we should shout out to uh Christian Catalini who kind of made that distinction for me a little bit. And um the close source models, you could say well, the majority of tokens goes open, but the majority of economic value goes close.
13:55Um and you know, even within the open, how's it going to flow between for example, just raw Chinese open source versus something like Thinking Labs which comes in and does a fine tune. Recently they did that for um what's his name? The the gold dude who's not a Bitcoin dude, Ray Dalio and Bridgewater. Um so, that's kind of interesting.
14:11Peter Schiff.
14:12[laughter] Exactly.
14:13I know. I thought that's what I thought you meant.
14:15Well, Is Dalio anti-Bitcoin? I didn't know that.
14:17know if he's anti-Bitcoin, but he's definitely he's definitely He just kind of just does it stick, right?
14:21Yeah, I think at this point he's like a standard he I think he actually likes he likes Bitcoin, but just can't can't publicly take that position.
14:28He probably also makes somehow makes money off of, you know, Oh yeah, I think he runs like a gold ETF or something, doesn't he?
14:33Yeah, but gold and fund, I don't I still think he holds Bitcoin.
14:36I think he holds Bitcoin.
14:37I'm sure.
14:39I think he holds Bitcoin. I think he loves it. He's fully aligned vision-wise with what it is. There's no way he doesn't It's It's just a stick. It's And his kid [clears throat] is openly a Bitcoiner, too, right? So, like yeah, I don't [laughter] I think at some point he's having fun, but anyways, all that to say though um I yeah, I'm really curious to hear how people are thinking the economic split's going to go. And also like looking at the capabilities, like you know, having this bit of a debate that we've had before, which is, you know, will open source catch the frontier? Um you know,
15:08there's that that bifurcation that you mentioned kind of reminds me of the mobile ecosystem, right? Where you had Android is higher in unit volume by far, but there's almost no profit in it, but it's strategically valuable to have that. And then, you know, Apple captures all the closed-source high-end premium, and that's where all the profit is. So, it's smaller scale, but still massive scale.
15:30Um that that that same pattern kind of seems like what you're pointing to in in the kind of closed-source frontier versus open-source.
15:37I think that's already what's starting to play out.
15:40Yeah.
15:42So, moving on to a new topic.
15:45Yeah.
15:46DK should have some FOMO. I don't know if you have FOMO yet.
15:50About what?
15:51The Mess Hall opened.
15:52Oh.
15:53[laughter] Yeah.
15:54Do you know what I'm talking about?
15:55watch- I've been watching that for, well, I mean, a year and a half, I think, when they announced it.
15:59we we signed the lease for the spot in October 2024.
16:04Wow, that's cool.
16:04And part of the draw, Yeah.
16:06beyond the Golden Gate Bridge view, uh was that the Mess Hall that was going to open up, [laughter] which is just a very short walk away. Um It was supposed to be completed at the same time the high-speed rail in California.
16:18Yeah.
16:19[laughter] Is it $1 trillion to build the Mess Hall?
16:23It was originally going to open spring of 2025. Uh and here we are in August 2026, but it finally opened this past week. So, and it is awesome.
16:35Yeah, it's an it's a great space.
16:37Very nice That That's important, actually.
16:40But sadly, they chose to take What?
16:43Yeah.
16:43Bro! We got to We got to fix that. Are you serious?
16:47Yeah.
16:47Okay, well, this is this is a project for us because Dude, you got to use your guy's influence.
16:52Well, no, but but seriously, my lunches, like whenever I have people at the office, I exclusively take them now, you know, to the place where we can spend Bitcoin cuz I got to show them, and everyone's blown away. So, yeah, I I won't be I won't be supporting the Mess Hall. We can't do that. So, we got we got to find a way.
17:06Yeah, well, I Good luck.
17:08Yeah.
17:08Um but it's it's a very nice uh space. It has incredible views of the bay and the and the bridge.
17:15There's three restaurants.
17:18Uh one of which is open right now, the other two will roll out in the coming weeks. There's a coffee bar open at 7:00 a.m. And And there's a alcohol bar. So Open at 10:00 a.m. I believe, [laughter] which is kind of interesting.
17:33They're trying to bring Silicon Valley into New Orleans, that's Yeah, well well when the price dips, then you can go have a drink. Or when the price goes up, you know. So you can drink no matter what the occasion. Anyway, it's a nice nice space cuz the food options in the vicinity are uh good, but sparse. So now there's more more options.
17:49Exactly.
17:50That's great. So The city just You got to get back. You're missing out.
17:55Try it out, yeah.
17:56There you go.
17:56Can't wait.
17:58Um we know what uh Bird launched. Do you know what Bird is?
18:02A scooter?
18:04B E R D, right?
18:05B E R D.
18:06Gerd, isn't that some kind of like a disease?
18:08a new AI product.
18:10Oh, I didn't see this. Okay. Tell me what it is.
18:13Every week Block Block is launching a new AI product.
18:16Block is like shipping at a very high gains right now.
18:18So Bird, B E R D Yeah.
18:21Um it's it's uh let's frame it as like enterprise-ready single-player uh it agentic interface or harness. And so it's what uh it's the 2.0 UI of Goose. It's been used internally or it's been developed internally at Block and has been used at Block now for several several months. So it's what Block employees use. Um Buzz right now has a lot of buzz and it's amazing. Um it's not really enterprise-ready yet.
18:58It can get there, but it's not ready yet. Bird is enterprise-ready. So it's been open-sourced.
19:03Does that mean Goose is still around, too, or what's the difference?
19:06Or is Goose now a Bird?
19:07Well Well, so Well, Bird is not Bird uses Goose.
19:11Got it. So, Goose is now the development kit only.
19:14Yeah.
19:14Bird is the like reference implementation.
19:16still the 1.0 UI of Goose still exists. We've positioned it uh to be the reference client. Not intending to be like used in enterprises. Or at least it can be used in enterprises more like a like a debugging power tool. But Bird is really probably where an enterprise would want to go to to use. It but it uses ETP just like Buzz, so it can use Goose or Cloud Code Codec.
19:45I'm surprised that it of any ACB It's just like Buzz in that way.
19:48And if you're kind of in the indie dev uh kind of position, is this you should think about this as a replacement for what you would have used maybe the Goose IDE for? Or is it It's really not designed but it's really enterprise focused and you should like Is it going to be kind of bifurcation in the product line where Goose is for indies or continues to be for whoever wants it and then Bird is more like the enterprise ready one, but an indie wouldn't probably want to touch it?
20:15Well, when you say an indie using Goose, what use cases do you have in mind?
20:19Just thinking about non-enterprise ready, you know, somebody who's just like you know, wants to hack on a project. You know, like I have friends who say, "Oh, should I get Cloud Code?" Sure. Some people might want to use historically have used Goose. Should they still use Goose or should they be using Bird now?
20:35Um well, I think you know, if you are exclusively going to use Anthropic models, use Cloud Code. If you're going to exclusively use OpenAI models, use Codec. If you want to use a mix of models or you or you definitely want to use local or open weight models, then Goose should absolutely be considered.
20:56Bird should be considered, Buzz should be considered. So, so then let's segment like why would you choose any of those three that have come out of Block? Um again, I think the direction Goose is going, we're building the GDK. So, that's definitely a different value proposition. It's a development kit. If you want to go pretty low-level, if you if you want to build your own agent harness, use GDK. It should be the best option for you.
21:21Um if you want if you're working in an enterprise or you are an enterprise and you want to adopt a great agentic harness that can, you know, use multiple models, then Bird is probably where you want to start. And then if you're an open-source project or an indie developer or if you're working in a group in collaboration is super important, then Buzz is probably what you want to choose.
21:50I think it's pretty I think it's pretty clear. Um and then eventually Bird could just go I mean if if Buzz's trajectory makes it enterprise-ready, the security you need for enterprise and is also a great single-player tool, it's got a long one, then just use Buzz and maybe Bird and Bird goes away or Bird sort of merges into Buzz, maybe that's the future.
22:18Um but for right now, if you're an enterprise, I don't think Buzz is not ready yet for you. It's more of a future option.
22:26Mhm.
22:28Cool.
22:29Cool. Um we we were talking a little bit in chat this morning about the What What was the one that you mentioned Max from Alby?
22:39Well, I mentioned a couple of things.
22:39And first I mentioned Grok Bot, uh which is getting a lot of publicity or buzz right now, I guess, too. Um then from Alby, yeah, Alby launched a new service and the name is is leaving me. I don't I don't know if you remember the name already. I Do you guys Something I forget. I'll I'll look it up while you Yeah, anyways, but the gist of it is Uh I'm actually pretty excited about this.
23:02They make it super easy for your agents to use any of the 402 protocols um and sort of just like connect behind the scenes. So, you know, L402 from the Bitcoin community, which is relatively small compared to like X402, um which I think Coinbase is supporting, and then the MPP and um Tempo stuff from from Stripe. Um but yeah, but basically, you know, with them you can Task Fuel. Task Fuel.ai. Yeah.
23:26Um so, I think this is like very new, very experimental, but it's definitely worth playing with. And you can basically, you know, um I I still don't know how the permissioning works yet for your agent, but you can basically give it, you know, a budget and say, "Hey, I need you to complete a task within some budget. Just go and find the best paid tools available." And, you know, if it needs to, for example, you know, call search API or, you know, call a video generation API or whatever it is, or like purchase an email from some directory, or whatever, purchase
23:55inference, um then all of that is just, you know, happening behind the scenes.
23:59Um So, yeah. I think it's I think it's really cool direction, and I'm glad to see these guys, you know, they've been building a lot of really cool stuff with Bitcoin for agents. And I still think in the long run, all of, you know, our sort of collective thesis about Bitcoin and Lightning being the only sort of truly neutral, censorship-resistant, scalable rails for agents, all that still stands.
24:17But the reality is that, um you know, in the short run at least, these other more centralized protocols, um you know, using stablecoins, definitely have more traction. And so, I think the ability to connect all of those in the background is super cool.
24:31Right. I mean, I I I think there's something interesting there because of how it can improve the developer experience, which, you know, in AI, it feels like the developer experience is getting kind of redefined every week or two. There's some new way to, you know, some new set of tools you want to use, or some new way to use the tools that you're you're currently using. And so, I've I've been wondering like like do you know the service file.ai?
24:59No. File like a bird?
25:02f a l Oh.
25:04Yeah, actually I have heard of that but I don't know what it is.
25:06It's a bit like you know they can run a bunch of inference with like a single API key. So you know you get an almost think of it as like open router for media generation maybe. It's kind of a a sort of a way to think about it. Um but it really makes it simpler instead of having to sign up with all the various um you know uh you know oh a new model came out from you know min max or a new model came out from seed seedance. Um if you want to try it you can play in the playground but then you can also just use a single API relationship you have with file. And
25:35then they dispatch and do all of the inference and generation for you with whichever model you want. So in that way it's it's It sounds like an open router.
25:44Kind of analogous to open router. Open router is much more pure like tokens in tokens out language coding type stuff.
25:50Got it.
25:50You know I guess they each touch each other to some extent probably. Um but exactly like who's run which hardware is it running on and who's running the hardware I think file may run some of the hardware themselves when using open models. I don't know how much of that open router is doing but but anyway the the point being those are each very very successful products and services um but they're really focused on like building a relationship with the customer the developer and then giving the developer access to tons of different options and
26:20opportunities and tools that they might want to use without having to establish new relationships with each of those tools.
26:26And so I think what this service is it what do we say it's called task?
26:30Task fuel.
26:31Task fuel yeah. So like task fuel feels like it kind of is starting to fit that pattern a bit.
26:36Yeah.
26:36Um but um but I I feel like there's there's still a bunch of stuff kind of missing in the simplification of developer experience so I wanted to mention Yeah.
26:46things like um you know things that might be worth considering is you know when when you um when you are going to deploy something, you need like a Versel token if you want to deploy a front end of Versel, or you need a Superbase token if you want to deploy a database to Superbase. And so, those tokens, you kind of have to manage and launch projects separately. So, you store that on your local.
27:08But, it feels like that's another thing that kind of gets in the way. So, I almost imagine I don't know if you remember Matt Blaze used to he used to call himself a Replit maximalist. And he just loved how easy it was to like show up and prompt an idea into existence, and then it fully deploys it, and everything's ready, and it's a URL, and you don't have to like sign up for anything.
27:29And that, by the way, is still the killer feature that I've yet to find anywhere else is the ability to finish with a website. Just the ability to have the domain registered for you is I mean, that was the magic of Replit for me.
27:41Yeah. And I think Lovable may do something like that. So, any given piece, you can recreate, but I feel like the the thing that um that uh you know, Replit did really well. I feel like I'd like to have some sort of an open router like or task Is it Task Fuel? I keep reading it. Yeah, Task Fuel um like thing that's sort of an aggregator that helps me kind of just get deploy stuff if I want, and use this service, or like if you
28:09want to generate and and store an Apple Right.
28:12uh an App Store Connect API key token so that it can, you know, drive App Store stuff from your agent. That's the It's still super messy. It's crazy how like I think we sort of zoom out and we're like, "Oh, look, like Open Router, it's done.
28:25Everything's good now." But, it's like, "No, like the developer experience is still super cludgy, and you're sort of tying everything together from all these different places." So, I I hope that Task Fuel can find space in the market there, but I think there's maybe even simpler or more basic fundamental things around the development process that are still underserved. Um so, it's not to say they should be the ones doing it, but it feels like there's just a lot there's a lot messy in there still.
28:53Yeah, and I I think to your point, like having all of these be like super one you need some way to manage all the the keys, right? Like key management in this more of sort of open world is also an unsolved problem. Key management in general is an unsolved problem, but you know, particularly for the agents. Um, and then I think, you know, all of these services being open and like whether that's embracing X42 or L42 or whatever, you know, I'm just thinking out loud, right? Like to your point, the magic of Replit was, okay, you know, I built that mean pay.app, and I miss mean pay.app, but I shut down Replit because they were charging me like 20 or 25 dollars a
29:23month and I'm like, you know, I don't really even use this anymore and like, you know, whatever.
29:26And of course, the way they hook you in is now like, well, I lost my website and I I miss mean pay.app, right? It's quite sad. So, I never really owned that. Um, but to do this in a truly sort of self-sovereign way, it would be amazing if I, you know, I know Nick and MDK or Worbots, they shipped um, what is it?
29:43Name the name one? Um, agent names or something?
29:46Basically names you can buy on there.
29:47Un- Unhuman?
29:48Yeah, unhuman.domains. And, you know, how cool would it be if, you know, they obviously have a lightning endpoint exposed, and now with, you know, Task Group or whatever, I have the set of um, environment variables and tokens that and and Bitcoin or money that I need that my agent could just do what Replit was doing for me, but in a way that I'm not locked in any service. I actually own the thing.
30:13Right. So, and so so what is the future of something like like I think one password is a good analogy in a pre-agent world, we could use a one password to sort of be our private, secure, you know, cloud recoverable, um, encrypted password store, but like it feels like that's not really going to fit with the agent version of the world.
30:36So, I think we need something like a a new take on one password that sort of, you know, manages your environment and all of your API keys and sort of helps you do that stuff better and that would be kind of a really nice new aggregation layer.
30:52Um, I don't know exactly what it looks like, but it doesn't doesn't feel like one password is solving this well, but that it's something like one password that kind of would would help me with what I'm trying to do.
31:01Well, there there's two cloud version.
31:03Well, there's two places I go immediately and two companies working out of here at Presidio Bitcoin. You know, one is the Maple AI AI guys. They started with actually another project which they built on called Open Secret.
31:15And so the whole idea is can you basically store secrets, tokens, credentials in a secure enclave in AWS or one of these clouds. So I can see something like Open Secret, you know, being something like that being really easy to to manage these things.
31:29But then honestly, the more I learn about AI and like the speed of things developing the more bounce and all. The more I I want something like Vor as which is the ability Vor as And if I had to guess, in addition to Vor I'm obviously very bullish and excited about those guys, but you know, I I think honestly the the company that's like set up to do this is Apple.
31:54Well, they're going to do it for a important niche of the market, but they don't seem like they're going to have a very general solution, right?
32:01Yeah, but but you know my point of like actually how to manage those keys. I think we're going to have to close the window. We're going to close the window, but Let's be engaged. All right, until the meeting is often enough to reopen.
32:13For a moment. Um, yeah, what were you thinking of? Like were you thinking of like a hardware solution or something different?
32:20I I feel like it's it would be fine to be on my phone for like approvals, but I feel like something a little maybe Open Secret is a close analogy, but something that that lives in a a private cloud spot that I control and then when my agent asks me like, "Hey, can you sign up for this service and put in your credit card and and you know, generate an API key and then save it in your amp local so that I can use it from there?" That feels like that's just get
32:49done for me instead of me having to like click click copy paste all that stuff.
32:53I think you want like sandbox like environments within your password manager.
32:58Mhm.
32:59So you're using it for the things you already do. Um but you don't want AI agents even remotely having access to that.
33:08Right.
33:09segment that off into its own vault or whatever. But then you can assign other other vaults to like per agent or per service or you know, different ways to slice it. And then you can be more much more permissive within that segment um for a given agent. And I mean just give it like full full access.
33:29And then the agent should be able to even sub-segment segment the vaults themselves like you know, humans will start with this but eventually they imagine the agents like, well, I'm just going to spin up a trillion daughter agents and each of those has their own sub-segment with them.
33:41Right. And and I want I want to be able to have like the agent silo of it be able to kind of do more of its own you know, here's the credit card. I approve it. Get the token, you know, get the API key and store it and then make it available in whatever environments I approve.
34:00But that that part of it feels I'm not sure exactly what it looks like but that feels like it's very messy right now. All this is so much navigate the web, put in your credit card, copy paste this, put it in your amp, put it in your your local and then your environment variables on for sale or something.
34:16It's just a mess, right? And it's the kind of mess it's the same kind of mess that open router is or foul, you know, help solve. But it's almost like a more extreme pain, I'd say.
34:26You've been talking about this mess for a year now and no one solved it. That's I think that's kind of been interesting.
34:31Big opportunity.
34:32I mean is it is it too messy? Like is it just too many edge cases? Cuz I cuz I I feel like may- maybe it actually just requires somebody to go out and do the BD deal where you like you make this fault in the you know you kind of this encrypted cloud thing and then maybe you go to Overstock and be like hey, let us programmatically spin things up on behalf of people and you guys you know have some sort of protocol for handshake, exchange the you know API keys securely. I don't know.
35:00I mean I'm shocked Apple hasn't already attacked this at least for their ecosystem.
35:05I mean it's just I just it's so obvious to me that They're not usually like startup like, right?
35:10Yeah, that's true.
35:10Right.
35:11I think this is a start-up a start-up that I think doesn't go initially go after the historical use cases. Like they don't take on one password or last password really. They go after the agentic use case, win that, and then over time maybe they You just back into it or something.
35:28Back in or or you don't even have to. Like [laughter] there's just so much value in what they're delivering for the new use cases they don't even have to.
35:37Right.
35:38I mean is this Do you think this is just like some net new startup opportunity that nobody's cracked yet or is there as is there somebody else like I mean I don't ask you to disclose private block stuff but it feels like it could be kind of thing that Buzz could be a good part of you know could be a good steward of such a thing. I don't know.
35:56I'll have to feed that idea into the team. But now I I mean I think startups there should there should be many startups trying to do this.
36:03Yeah. I also think it's interesting you shared that tweet. I don't know who it was from but their kind of argument and perhaps this is a good segue into talking about a little bit more about open router and the opportunities that like Stripe or whatever is in a good position to do this. I mean it's interesting that like you know payment companies I mean like and and actually Matt Boles made an interesting comment here he said our credentials not needed payments are the credential. And like at some point you know that's an interesting take but whether or not you want a payment or credential, it's just a private key at some point.
36:30So, I think the the sort of I mean, it makes sense to me that a payment company is in a good position to figure out how do we store this like private [clears throat] key. Um how they do that, where it actually lives, again though, I mean like I come back to if it's going to be hardware, then um but hey, but maybe Block is in a good position that with the big key.
36:46So, let's we we mentioned Open Router a few times in that conversation, but we haven't like the the buried the lead, right? So, in case you haven't heard, well, so [laughter] well, I've been to a few Make It Rain Founders You Should Knows. Maybe 10% of them? Like not that that I've been to three or four. Yeah. But I might have the magic touch by attending because [laughter] I attended the one where Cursor presented.
37:14that one, too. That was wild.
37:15And yeah, you were there, as well. And they exited for what, six 60 billion?
37:19They had just closed their seed round.
37:21That's crazy.
37:22And they exited for six 60, right? 60 billion. And then, um earlier this year attended, I think it was in May, attended the Founders You Should Know that had Open Router present. And now they were just acquired for seven and a half billion. So, Founders You Should Know is like the magic touch. And well, is it Steve's attendance or is it Founders You Should Know or when you know, Well, I think you've had other successful outcomes, too, that I I didn't attend. So, I think I think it's more I think it's more Founders You Should Know. I was not there for Anthropic.
37:52[snorts] Anyway, um so, well, that's pretty I Yeah, I think I definitely would would recommend people um pay attention to Founders You Should Know if you want to follow the the latest and greatest I mean, yeah, up and up and up-and-comers and risers in the especially the AI, but tech world in general.
38:10Yeah, I know. I mean, big shout out to to DK and uh and his wife, Jen. I mean, that's it's it's crazy. It's definitely been a who's who. If you look at everyone that's presented there, it's like it in any big hit in tech, and they've been there. So, it's you guys have built something really special.
38:24Well, it's all Jen's hard work. I just I'm just a podcaster.
38:28[laughter] Um yeah, big shout out to Jen. Um cuz she's been at this for like for years.
38:34Eight or eight or 10 years, right?
38:35Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a long time.
38:36Jen's on Collective or whatever started with that. Good man.
38:40Yeah.
38:41Um so, but yeah. So, Stripe bought Open Router for $7.5 billion. Not sure how many people have that on their bingo card for 2026. It wasn't part of our predictions back at the beginning of the year.
38:53Right. We missed that one.
38:54Missed that one.
38:56No other misses.
38:57We should we should check in on how we're doing on our predictions.
39:00even remember cuz we were like nearly over in 2025 and I I fear we're I fear we're similar this year. Yeah. But um yeah, so I'm curious you guys' take on justifying that price and justifying the fit of Open Router within Stripe.
39:17Yeah, cuz cuz I had also heard at one point uh I don't know if this was just got a lot of other than Amazon was in talks for doing that one or even even higher. So, it's interesting that it ended up with Stripe.
39:28Yeah, I mean [clears throat] it it I think it's it makes a ton of sense for Stripe from a business perspective. You know, is the price right? I think if it turns out that this is as big as it could be then the price is easily, you know, it's cheap. Same way that YouTube looked cheap and Instagram looked cheap at the time.
39:44Um you know, so really question is like do they continue to dominate and will the growth still still be there which I I would generally be bullish that that that will continue.
39:55Um but I think like the the you know, the thing that they I think, you know, figured out it's not it's not really a technology so much as it's like a service that helps you live a better life as a developer, right?
40:13And so, in a sense, it's just an aggregator.
40:17But the power of being an aggregator is you sort of take the position that I don't really care who wins. I think there's going to be lots of winners. I just want to help simplify somebody's life, this developer's life, to be able to try all of the, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom, and I can swap in and try this one or that one or anyone that gets popular. And so it's a, you know, it doesn't it's a position where you have a lot of a lot of, um, leverage and power over what happens in the ecosystem when
40:46you're responsible for the routing.
40:48Um, and if you believe that all of these models are going to be close to each other, they're going to be like, you know, you know, breakneck who's in the lead this week and next week, and there's not going to be one dominant that breaks out and rules them all, but it's going to be, you know, maybe a thousand different great models, and some are open source, and some are frontier, and some are closed. It's nicer to just have one customer relationship with OpenRouter, and then they can do all the messy integrations and routing, and, you know, all, the lots of lots of opportunities
41:18there.
41:18And automated model selection as a as a subset of model routing is is an important one where you can create a lot of economic value. So I think I think that as a as a concept, I'm bullish on the concept of model routing as an important layer.
41:34Um, why specifically Stripe? I think if you look, like Stripe's business is basically developer tools, right? It's like developer payments, and probably the combination of like the developer tooling that is required to make, um, you know, payments work, and in a sense like tokens is in a sense the new payments is one way to look at it, I think. And tokens are growing much faster probably than payments in terms of usage and economic value.
42:04Um, and I I believe Stripe was the payment processor and is this payment processor for OpenRouter. So, when you look at OpenRouter, you actually have um you know, a little bit of like, you know, 1 + 1 = 3 because Stripe is capturing their take on each of those token transactions. And Open Router's capturing their take, but that also means if you can collapse those into one org Yeah.
42:29and you can lower the take rate overall, you can actually subsidize and grow the market and actually further solidify your position in the market where everybody says, "Hey, look, I get the best deals here. It's easiest to use. I'm just going to keep using it." So, I think there's a a strong argument for why Stripe themselves would be a a really strong acquirer of of Open Router.
42:53So, one one comment on that. I mean, if you think about, you know, to your point, they can compress margins and basically make it uh prohibitively expensive for other normal companies to compete because they can, you know, obviously eat into their own uh payment processing margin. So, that that is like a huge advantage um especially once they get scale, you know, if you don't have your own payment processor, you it's going to be hard to to compete uh with Stripe. Having said that, it seems to me thinking in the future where we're going that one possible way to compete with
43:22them is, you know, obviously what what's the cheapest payment processing in the world? Still the Lightning Network. And so, we have a ways to go and like that was kind of my point. Yeah, we haven't gotten there with, you know, L402. It's still a a minimal subset compared to the other more expensive centralized chains, but if I think about where the puck is going, if it really comes down to this is a commodity play and uh it's just going to come down to the cheapest payment processing, then ultimately I still want to bet on um a more open lightning-powered version of this. Is that a year out, 10 years out? I don't know, but um yeah.
43:51And I think drive demand though from developers. Like, cuz developers get to decide, do I use Open Router? Do I use a direct relationship with Anthropic or OpenAI or somebody else? Open code is a a big growthy one these days.
44:06Um which which lets you do open-source model routing across their IDE. Um, so I think you know, it's not just the cheapest token that you should not like discount the developer experience. People love to just like have one swipe a card one place, you know, get a single API key and be able to do everything. And so, I think if you want to paint the case for why the margin of the payments go away, you have to have a relevant related kind of case
44:33existing why the developer or demand for that solution will exist. Does it simplify something? Does it enable something they couldn't do before?
44:41Well, well, and I think another area that could go in the future, right, is um, you know, the [clears throat] the permissionless piece, right? So, I think um, there there's that Nostr-based one, Router, which is kind of interesting. I haven't followed them super closely lately, but you know, I could totally see a world where something like that that's using Lightning in the back end could take off in a few different circumstances. One, let's say Chinese models got banned or something like that in like a sort of geo-political situation. And that's the only place you can still use it.
45:09I don't [laughter] know what the hell that was.
45:11Two, um, if you like I always come back to this like where do I think Bitcoin and the permissionless protocols are really going to win? Once the agents are truly autonomous. Like once they're out there doing their own thing, my guess is in this sort of world where it's still just like a tool for the developer um, and it's all sort of permission and sanction, Stripe is going to win. But once it starts being like there's this digital life form it needs to access its own model calling capabilities and do manage its own payments and like it's not fully regulated because we don't
45:40even know what it is yet. Like that that new kind of gray area when that emerges, that's where I think sort of the permissionless protocol stack and projects built on top of them like a Router have a chance to really Yeah, totally. And so, I think I think that's the kind of thing where the developer experience for that style of developer or payer, that's not solvable in the traditional way and I I that's where that's where I think the optimism for a lightning solution could come from, but we need to in a sense we need to develop those solutions that create
46:10that kind of demand, that digital life form that has demand for its own kind of payment.
46:13Well, and I keep coming back to this. I was actually talking to the LV guys about this with their new product. Um, I didn't mention this to them, but you know, for those listening who are more in these permissionless protocol worlds, you know, maybe the real place to start is some way of like, um, you know, a platform or a site for or spinning up and capitalizing your AIs.
46:32In fact, I saw I didn't I didn't read the whole post, but on Stacker News I saw Tyler Cowen had a new post out about like what he called capitalizing untethered agents, which is like his uh, slightly more normie way of saying, you know, creating digital life. Um, and it's interesting cuz it's like he kept I mean, I I just skimmed it. So, I I want to give it a bit uh, of a deeper read.
46:51Actually, he'd be someone cool to get to come to the summit, but um, I feel like he's he's kind of directionally going there, but is not willing to or has not yet considered the like fully just like let her rip scenario cuz he keeps saying he's like, well, in order for any of this to work, it still needs to be somehow um, humans have the sort of like ability to revoke things or somehow it needs to be able to tie into the legal system. It's like, maybe, but in a world where you really have trillions of autonomous life forces, I am super
47:21skeptical that like the legal system is going to apply for a trillion digital life forms. Like, I just don't Like, I think we will need ways to adjudicate.
47:27There probably still will be some ways to tie into like the really big cases, human legibility, but my guess is um, you know, work around exploring Bitcoin collateral and slashing more native ways to adjudicate is going to be much more promising. And I don't I don't really think anyone in that mainstream world is thinking that far yet.
47:45So, let me put Okay.
47:48I was going to say I didn't catch the blog post, but I did queue up um, Tyler Cowen just showed up on the uh, Rick Rubin Tetragrammaton podcast.
47:57Sure. That'll be interesting.
47:58Yeah. It's an interesting conversation.
47:59I think that'll be a good one.
48:00Vibers vibing the vibers.
48:02So, I want to poke a bit more at the $7.5 billion valuation. I'm just evaluating.
48:07I'm curious what you guys' thoughts are on like the commercial business versus open source. So, for example, there's already like Goose has open source software for provider model selection. It has very expansive support for different providers and models. Um Nvidia has a uh open source project called SwitchYard, which does far more advanced, as far as I know, far more advanced um model routing than what OpenRouter has.
48:36But, like why if we assume that open source already has or will have the same uh feature set and and um capabilities as OpenRouter, then why wouldn't like what's the moat for a commercial business?
48:56I think the the moat for a commercial business uh today is just like the more volume you drive, the better pricing you get on the non-open-source stuff, maybe even on the open-source inference stuff, cuz like you know, open-source people is people assume open source means free. Open source means you don't pay for research that amortized over the cost of your tokens, but you still pay for the infrastructure. And sometimes it's it's not as efficient at inference in many cases. So, it's more expensive
49:25inference than might you might have in kind of the the closed-source stuff. So, I think it's more like look, if you're an aggregation point, you get to um you get to do a special deal with OpenAI and get better pricing, and you get to do a special deal with Anthropic and get better pricing.
49:43And you get to um you know, you get to run open source, maybe you run it on your own infrastructure, maybe you work with another provider, and you just drive volume and get better pricing. So, I think the you know, just like any aggregation point, like it looks kind of thin, but the strength actually comes from the volume and how you get to sort of wedge yourself deeper the more that each of those sides plays along with your your sort of aggregation role. It not to say that OpenRouter is has this unassailable
50:12advantage. I think they're very, very strong. I think we could see a second or third. I think like for example, I shared um Do you know the company Ramp?
50:22They're a spend management platform. They just launched router.com the same day that the OpenRouter transaction closed.
50:29And it's I think a very credible solution for routing, but it's more instead of it's developer first bottoms-up adoption, they have a ton of huge enterprises and they've been doing spend management for enterprises forever. And now they can go to them and say, "Look, router.com, run all of your inference through us through router.com, and we will you know, we'll do all the deals and get better, you know, pricing for you than anybody else and it'll plug into our spend management stuff natively. So, I think the I think those are different very
50:59different customer bases, different approaches to routing. Um I think OpenCode um is a very good open-source router that you know, simplifies that problem again. So, I I don't think it's like guaranteed that it's winner take all. There's probably lots of opportunities, but I think getting breakout when there's when the market's already noisy and busy here or if it's coupled to other tools or something, I think it's probably going to be a tougher a tougher road.
51:27Matt Billows comments Vercel AI Gateway is another one. So, add that to the mix.
51:32What are What are your thoughts on um I mean, you're you're speaking of like volume and aggregation point. What are your thoughts on open-source projects being able to become that aggregation point?
51:43Whether it be Goose or Buzz or something like that.
51:47Well, I I guess like why would it feels like like with when I use goose I was using it with open router. Maybe there's a separate routing native to goose now, but I I was not aware of it, but I I've used it with open router as the router.
52:02So goose in my mind sort of plays a different role. Maybe goose as a But you can but you can imagine a router being in buzz or goose or Yeah.
52:11I mean you already mentioned open code you said has right?
52:15Yeah.
52:15so you don't have to imagine it. It has one. So but that but that's a But who So open code is open source, right?
52:24Yeah.
52:24a company behind this well, so that company is is a a way they're monetizing it is that they have a router and they're making money off of that.
52:31Yeah.
52:31So you can imagine buzz is open source, but whether it be block or some other company like we create a routing company ourselves and then plug it into buzz as long as as long as as long as it's open.
52:43To me that that screams like this is the business model for buzz is be a router.
52:47Yeah.
52:48I mean to me though it comes back to who owns the most of the users at the very top point, right? Cuz so so I mean I think there are advantages you can get from scale. I think there's advantages you can get from like, you know, bundling costs like you're like like stripe obviously can can do cheaper margins. But I I also think at the end of the day it is who owns the top of the funnel with intent.
53:11And because at the end of the day like so so the thing I keep coming back to is at least in the current paradigm. I think this could easily shift, but like I'm very bullish on Apple.
53:18Um because ultimately or or Android even, right? Like if the the smartphone form factor stays or whoever owns the form factor that like receives the user intent, I think is in the best position to ultimately route. Like if at the end of the day I think we're still in this phase where it's like like nerds are being nerds. They're talking like well, I've got this model and that model and I can build with this thing and that thing. It's like yeah, okay, but that but that's It's in time. Like ultimately as you zoom out, you know, someone's going to have a their phone or their glasses or whatever the form factor is and say,
53:48uh I want to know what I should do tomorrow. Book me a fun day in the city. Done. And like whoever owns that intent point, you know, you can always go to like change it, but they own the router.
53:59Could be could I I totally agree with everything you're saying strategically.
54:02I think though that that could be the form factor, could be the device, could be the OS, could be an application on the OS. Like I wouldn't be quite confident that Apple just is going to dominate this because the the thing that you do with the tokens is likely to be a software service type thing and Apple does not historically have much strength at doing those kinds of things.
54:25Um so I'm not saying rule them out. Like they have a lot of strong advantages, but they don't have any historical precedent for making good moves that are kind of software service network based stuff.
54:37I mean, to me, it goes one of two ways. If things commodify, then I think whoever owns the intent and like I agree with you. I mean, Apple, you know, it's 25 years later or whatever it is and Siri still I'm saying. Like Apple doesn't own the intent on search.
54:51They don't own the intent They monetize it. They They pass it off to Google. But they don't own the intent, you know, the intent on I upload my photo and I want to share it, even though they have way more photos on They They have way more photos on iCloud photos than Instagram has, right?
55:06But But But here's where I think Here's where I think things are changing. I think that is an artifact of the last paradigm because Okay.
55:13you know, in the last paradigm, you you opened different apps or went to different websites to do different things. Like I My guess is where we're going is much more um In fact, you know, on on the call I had with the Alby guys this week, one of the things that I took away was just, you know, hearing Boomy, he's an incredible developer. He's like, "Dude, coding is done. It's awesome." Uh and this coming from someone that like likes developing. Um he's like, "You know, um in the future, we're going to spend a lot more time at computer, a lot less time at computers. Great. It's something we've talked about, like just being out in the world and like, you know,
55:42computing is just talk I think it's just going to be talking your your friend. Um, and uh, you know, and are there different ways apps could get I mean, you've had some brilliant ideas about ways you could kind of own that, you know, who's the assistant of the friend.
55:55But at the end of the day, to me it still comes back to whatever the device is and this is why I think you see open open AI and others like trying to build these devices is like, if you're if if the behavior changes from I go to a thing I go to a place to do a thing to I have one [clears throat] person I talk to for everything, then I think the device probably ends up winning.
56:13However, one caveat I'll say to that is, um, if one if there is one model to rule them all, like if Anthropic is the last company if some intelligence is so radically better, then they'll end up winning, but I think they would also end up creating their own device. And and if I had to guess in who that's going to be, you know, you well, I guess we're we're we're already uh, we're already talking about this a little bit this morning, but SpaceX. Like people have talked about the SpaceX phone forever, they're already on the satellite, they're already on the communication. If I had to guess where I think all of this is
56:42going, I think a SpaceX device is is where all of this is going.
56:44Open AI.
56:46They're developing hardware.
56:47Yeah, they are too, but you know, I'm betting on Elon for hardware.
56:51I I I think I think it's going to be a company we haven't yet heard of. I think it's going to be something net new.
56:56SpaceX AI.
56:57That's something we barely heard of.
57:00/Cursor. [clears throat] [laughter] Well, I so I agree with your like instinct that it, you know, kind of you're going to speak to it, you just want stuff to happen and then it's going to like that's going to be the defining feature, but I think, you know, Open AI, Anthropic, SpaceX, whatever, like they're kind of all similar enough, like the experience of what you get out of it is not highly differentiated. And so I don't think Yeah, yeah, so yeah, so like you can either say, look, I believe that the
57:28future is just going to be like one of these breaks out and just gets so far ahead that nobody else can catch up. That's That's a view of the future. I don't think I'm particularly sympathetic to seeing the world that way. Like I It's possible, but I but I I don't I don't think that one's super likely. What I think is more likely is that there's a new type of application network, let's say.
57:55And when you want to do something, you want to I don't know, measure your heart rate or something. Instead of going to an app store to download it, [laughter] Yeah, well, I'm sorry. I'm not I didn't mean to bring up um you know, the the health stuff, but you know, you want to do that action, you just tell the computer to do that action, and then the computer hosts that app for you somewhere. Maybe other people can make use of that same thing.
58:20Like in the long run, that is a new network. We don't have it yet. I don't think any of the existing model providers have a specific advantage at delivering that network before everybody else. It's more of a behavioral thing.
58:34But but why do you think who like even in that world, help me understand what you're thinking. Like why wouldn't whoever like why wouldn't the hardware still win? Like whoever owns the hardware.
58:46Well, it's like what Why does Why does the iPhone not win Instagram?
58:51[snorts] Because it's still using, I guess, an applica- First of all, they do, right?
58:56Like they take 30% of all that. But even in that world, um Uh I guess on the ads. They don't take it on the ads, but Yeah, yeah, yeah.
59:04Whatever. They take 30% of any any commerce in apps, but Like like Apple has a great business, but they do not really Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.
59:11much from Instagram.
59:12Because we still are using different applications for different things, right? Like we just we still don't have one orchestration layer for them all yet. That was the kind of like what Siri, I guess, tried to be, but but it hasn't worked yet.
59:25And and I I think my my bet is that we will see something like that. But we don't know what it looks like yet.
59:32Interesting.
59:32Yeah, like like a a network, you know, think about like the evolution of like like Twitter is a small piece of text, Instagram is a small piece of image initially and now, you know, it's evolved to video, kind of Tik Tok is a small piece of video.
59:49I think we're going to see an app as a primitive for a new type of network where there's yeah following or using or friends whatever, but like an app as a primitive and then other apps aggregate around it and effectively it kind of it does it it feels something like an Instagram-like experience or a Tik Tok-like experience, but the core unit is not an image or a video, the core unit is a little mini app, like a little heart rate thing that you you agree it's more like services might be a better way to frame it than apps,
1:00:19too?
1:00:20Sure.
1:00:20Yeah.
1:00:21Just cuz it imply it doesn't necessarily have to have the GUI Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:26for the end user.
1:00:27Yeah.
1:00:27data, the algorithms, the whatever the service is providing it to your personal agent.
1:00:37Yeah, and and and maybe the agent actually lives as part of the service cuz agents are kind of like buried from the consumer, but it just does the things you want. Like if if if Max says he wants a heart rate thing and then I decide I want to take it my own direction, I can maybe see that and then take it my own direction, but my agent doing taking it my own direction may not be something I would even call an agent.
1:00:57It's just kind of in the background.
1:00:58So so help us help us visualize a little bit more of that might look like cuz I know that you're saying this is your your sort of big thesis is that we're not yet um treating apps as as media.
1:01:08Like is this kind of getting like so for like the Alby case, the task building we're talking about, that's still sort of like an index of paid APIs. And you could imagine to your point on the open source thing, like where might an open source router do well here? Well, let's say just for a minute the um the network is all sort of like Nostr identity based Mhm.
1:01:25APIs or like DVMs. We just call it the data vending machine break.
1:01:28Yeah, yeah.
1:01:29Paid APIs. And so is that kind of what you're thinking? And therefore, it doesn't matter what device I have because I can bring my my Npub and wallet with me to any device, but it's this new network of paid APIs.
1:01:42Yeah, I mean, I I think whether you bring an Npub around or not, like it's kind of like an off issue. Like I would guess something like that eventually becomes the standard and the default.
1:01:53But it's more just that like who created what and who shared what and who remixed what and took it in their own directions and how all the relationships between what I should be interested in next or what I might want to accomplish next. That that's kind of what That's all the stuff that the network is doing.
1:02:11Well, so so so so it's an imaginary network that doesn't exist yet, right?
1:02:13Yeah, help me paint a concrete example.
1:02:15Like Like in your daily life, how much you use this network?
1:02:20I mean, I think I would I think it it kind of becomes that portal to everything I do with technology. It's like the replacement for my computer.
1:02:30So So like anything I What like what in the future do I want to do?
1:02:33Do I have like a shopping use case, a messaging use case, uh building me a little app to track my running heart rate or HRV or something?
1:02:41Check the price of Bitcoin.
1:02:43Check the price of Bitcoin, yeah.
1:02:45And then check your heart rate afterwards.
1:02:47Right. Like give me a heart rate correlation with price of Bitcoin.
1:02:50[laughter] But But that kind of stuff I'm saying we don't have that yet. That kind of stuff will be like the last interface, and then I can probably access that same network whether I'm on an Apple device or an Android device or if there's some glasses or some form factor living in my home. Those are all just things There's just like different interfaces to access that network, but that network is effectively like the new the new like computing substrate. Like that's sort of I go on a walk and I just interact with that substrate then?
1:03:17That That is super interesting. I need to like kind of wrap my head around more. I mean, this is kind of the new sphere, um but I guess that I mean that's kind of like the internet already is. I mean like this gets a lot back to I think some of the early stuff we talked about like in Nostr News, right? Like the idea is it's just like it's just like a a giant data lake that's open.
1:03:36And you need some like form to that.
1:03:39But like it's at its at its core, it's being able to access a data lake. Is that fair?
1:03:46Yeah, I mean data lakes sometimes I think has a Well, and the form enterprise overtone to it, but yeah.
1:03:52But like you're basically you need to as much of the world's data as you can access, you need to be able to perform computation to on that as well. So it's being able to access existing data and create new data through competi- competition. But like how does that differ? How would you characterize that as different than the internet we have today? Just because there's like more, I guess, the ability to take existing data and generate new experiences from the inference?
1:04:17Well, like like the internet we have today is very static, right? Like like let's say that mess hall has a menu and they put it up online. They probably, you know, generate a PDF or something and they have that menu. And I, as a consumer of that, all you can do is look at it, right? And if they built a more sophisticated app, maybe I could place an order or interact with it. But there's not like a a natural way that I can say, "Actually, I like the design of this, but actually I run a restaurant down the street and I actually take all of the good parts of
1:04:45this and like fork it and and make my own version I keep all of the features and like the checkout seems fine and whatever there you go. That's like fine. I'll put in my own payment receive address.
1:04:56But then I would take all the design and features and I would just use it for my own use case instead." The internet doesn't work that way today, right? Like if you go you go to messhall.com or whatever their their thing is and then you can look at it, but then you can go somewhere else. You can't You can't like fork their app as a consumer. There's no sense of how that would work, right? And I think that idea of like kind of GitHub primitives not not surface to consumers as primitives with GitHub-like names,
1:05:24but more like the concepts showing up in more consumer behaviors. Like, "Oh, I like that thing. I'm going to take it in my own direction."
1:05:30Remix it or something.
1:05:31I mean, again, this comes back to a lot of those early Nostr ideas to me. Like, it's just basically as long as the data itself is open and you I mean, have some like yes, attribution with the the you know, the the key signing. It's like yeah, it's just making the internet infinitely programmable.
1:05:46Yeah. Yeah, I think the internet infinitely programmable is a nice way to say it. Like, we haven't seen any real interactivity on the internet yet. Like, it's all about to happen now.
1:05:57That's cool.
1:05:58You heard it here first.
1:06:00[snorts] [laughter] Are we Are we closing out on that? I I want I wanted to Well, because He's like, "Let's moving on."
1:06:06[laughter] Well, it's time for Block Rock, DK. that. But, before we get to Block Rock, we love audience engagement. So, I wanted to um even if it's not something we were planning to talk about, John Knox 6605 has been patiently waiting with his question. Would love to hear you guys discuss how SpiderPool and F2Pool are strengthening minor revenue by collecting and distributing NAT token literally generated by Bitcoin itself. Nothing else like it.
1:06:39I don't even know what NAT is. What is NAT?
1:06:41Oh.
1:06:42So, it's either merge mining, I'm guessing, or this is some like shitcoin pre-mined token. [clears throat] Maybe John Knox is in on it. I have no idea. But, anyway, I don't know much about this topic. Um merge mining has existed in Bitcoin forever.
1:07:02Yeah.
1:07:03Um don't know how it's strengthening revenue for those companies, but probably no differently than in the past.
1:07:11Yeah, I mean I I do I did hear from someone recently, not merge mining, it's a token based off of Bitcoin's own raw data.
1:07:19[clears throat] Yeah, I don't don't really know enough to say. Um I mean, I assume the companies that merge mine dump and some additional revenue, but yeah.
1:07:31My yeah, without more details, my guess would be it's not sustainable and probably leases a lot of retail investors. That would be my guess. But I don't know.
1:07:41Left time. Teddy bear, yeah. We have to if you want to, you know, point us to where we can learn more, I'm I'm happy to check it out.
1:07:47Um but yeah, BlackRock. I mean, we started off the show talking about price a little bit. Uh and I semi-seriously, semi-jokingly said the BlackRock's new report might have pumped the price. No idea, but It was like two four days before or something. It was like right before the pump, so.
1:08:03Yeah.
1:08:04So, I read through it. Um I pulled out three charts that I thought were kind of new information to me. I thought were interesting, so I thought I could go through it here. Um figure 10 um of this report. I I forget the name of the report, but it's whatever the, you know, the latest BlackRock Bitcoin report would be.
1:08:22Uh figure 10.
1:08:24Trailing 6-month correlation of Bitcoin versus S&P 500 10-year average. So, cuz I often hear from people "Hey, I thought Bitcoin was not supposed to be correlated with like, you know, the with stocks or whatever." And then they observe small moments in time where it moves with stocks and they're like, "Aha, it is correlated with it, right?"
1:08:47But I mean, with correlation, you have you you can't just look at moments in time and then zoom out.
1:08:51You got to zoom out. And even then, you can definitely um play games with it. So, but this is a 10-year average 6-month correlation. And the correlation of Bitcoin does and P 500 is 0.18, which is quite low. As comparison, I'm actually surprised it's US government bonds are 0.04.
1:09:14Gold is 0.06.
1:09:17So, Bitcoin is a bit more correlated than those, but uh commodities 0.29. And emerging market equities 0.57. US high-yield bonds 0.69. Right? So, Bitcoin is um you know, zero is no correlation.
1:09:38Um but 0.18 is pretty low correlation to stocks. So, I think it's I think it's kind of a fallacy to say that it's I mean, definitely conceptually it makes sense that it's not correlated to stocks. Um it's nice to see this 10-year average data that indicates that as well.
1:09:56Well, one thing I would say, and I actually had this conversation um with uh a mutual friend of of of ours uh who basically kept telling me he's talked to you about this as well, D.C. Gent, and like, you know, listen, if Bitcoin, you know, uh doesn't behave like digital gold, and I know you're talking more about some of that stuff, then it's not digital gold. And the one thing that I would say with all of these, I think these are all very interesting stats, but to me these like sort of like static averages are I mean, they're interesting, but I'm much more interested in the trend lines. Um and I'd be curious to see, you know, maybe in future reports or whatever, I guess
1:10:25you can have the AI do it as well. But like, you know, it's like when people say Bitcoin's not correlated, it's like, well, to be clear, you know, volatility correlations, whatever, those have all changed over time. Like, Bitcoin was extremely volatile in 2010 or 2011. Like, one person can move everything.
1:10:38And then over time that changes quite a lot. So, I'm curious. My guess would be without having looked at the data that like it becomes less correlated over time.
1:10:46That would be my guess, too. And you brought up volatility, so the third chart, which I'll go to next, [snorts] uh figure 15, is about volatility. And um well, Max gets to see it, but you can see a clear downward trend in volatility over time. This is As you might expect.
1:11:02This is from 2011 till now, and um, however they're measuring volatility, it's the trailing 12-month realized volatility annualized is what they title it. But, there's a clear downward trend, as you'd expect, but it's nice to see what you'd expect in happening in reality.
1:11:24Um, and I thought I I heard related to that, I thought I heard somebody was kind of doing an analysis of the the peak-to-trough drawdowns on all the big bear markets in Bitcoin, and I think I think it was like, you know, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50% peak-to-trough drawdown. So, it kind of further, you know, it's a kind of a different slice of data, but it further supports that idea that like, you know, it's it's violent at the beginning, and then the volatility decreases, and like, 50% volatility is still, if you're
1:11:53holding it, you're looking at it, you're like, "Wow, that that changed a lot." But, it's much lower volatility than it used to be, and probably in the future, it will continue to volatility will decrease, and the the store of value, you know, nature of it will will emerge.
1:12:06So, it kind of has the right the right properties to be a good store of value, but it's, you know, monetizing and growing into the actual scale that's needed for that to work.
1:12:16Yep. I mean, it's always been obvious to me, but like, I think we've talked before, I think most human beings uh, the way their brain works, they aren't thinking 20 years in the future, or it's hard for them to abstractly think about 20 years in the future.
1:12:30They're just looking at right now, and right now, the price goes up and down a lot. It's volatile. How could I use this as for daily payments? How can I use this for store of value? Um, but one layer of the last part is store of value for what period of time?
1:12:46Mhm.
1:12:47Store of value for like, I got to buy groceries on Friday. That's very different than store of value for um you know my heirs when I die.
1:12:55Yeah, I'm going to make sure this doesn't go the road that it's going Two very different time frames. Um But then also it's just to me it's simple math that the volatility will go down if Bitcoin's successful at monetizing and grows in value.
1:13:11Um it'll go like historically Bitcoin has a lot of speculation cuz it's like hey, it could like million X. And then after a period of time it like oh it could 10,000 X. And now you know, you can make credible arguments that it can 10 X, 100 X. I mean some people make arguments that it can be like way more than that. Starts to lose a little bit of credibility.
1:13:34But over [clears throat] what time frame?
1:13:36[laughter] Yeah, you talking about the the loss of the the like people make claims about you know, 100 X whatever. I wouldn't argue with that but what's the time frame?
1:13:51No, but I'm I'm talking about I'm talking about No, I'm talking not even it's not even some it's not even a time frame thing. It's like if if if your price target for Bitcoin puts it at a quadrillion dollars, that's like the total economy. So [laughter] like it's it starts to strain credibility.
1:14:06Although to be fair, I do think that's the ultimate end state is like if if you believe that Bitcoin becomes the metric system of value and it literally measures the whole economy. And the whole economy ends up you know, the actual moon math is like well once we have you know, whatever mass drivers the moon launching us to Mars and all kinds of other stuff like I mean in theory there there actually is no top. Like that's I actually do agree with that. But again, your time frame question That doesn't that doesn't make sense to me. And there's still going to be like capital allocated to businesses.
1:14:34And they're not going to have all zero value.
1:14:36Yeah, but if you think that one time at one point Bitcoin becomes like one half of every transaction. If it becomes money for everything, you know, then I mean in theory it's market cap is limited.
1:14:45transaction that 50% fees cuz of Bitcoin, that's kind of a failed monetary system.
1:14:50Hopefully at point you know that those transactions are happening either off chain or you know it's scalable. But but I I think the broader point is, you know, there is no limit to human ingenuity. Like we can always grow the size of the pie. So I do think that like the time frame matters a lot. But if someone's claiming that in the next like 10 years, that's probably pretty crazy.
1:15:08Um and then the last chart was figure 13. Asset returns following major geopolitical disruptions post-2020. So they list out six different events like COVID outbreak, 2020 US election challenges, um US-Iran uh initial conflict, etc. And then there's a hundred Oh, sorry. A 10-day return and a 60-day return comparison between S&P 500, gold, and Bitcoin. And in almost every And the return after that event kind of was investigated.
1:15:48Yep.
1:15:4910-day return and 60-day return after these six events comparing these three asset classes and Bitcoin like substantially wins almost all of them.
1:16:02Mhm.
1:16:03I mean, I that's one I would not have really said oh of course. I you know, I didn't really have that data in my head. I'm I found that I found that pretty interesting and compelling.
1:16:14I'm I'm [snorts] curious to learn more cuz like it it wouldn't surprise me if because Bitcoin I think is the riskiest of those things that whenever people get risk off, they get concerned, there's you know, COVID outbreak, what's going to happen with this? They get very risk off.
1:16:28Does Bitcoin drop the most? And so then it has, you know, even if it were just to recover to where it would normally, you know, kind of where it was hanging out before that, does it just win because it it was the most volatile?
1:16:41But if But if these event if these events trigger risk off, then everything starts at the starting point and and and yet we do observe usually when there's event a lot of times Bitcoin does go down right away cuz again I have a bunch of friends contact me, Steve you told me that this is like the you know Steve, I put my life savings in this.
1:16:59the hedge the hedge against this event and I'm like, well even if you look at the 2008 financial crisis gold went down right away. I mean like everything like the dollar is what everyone dumps everything into and I don't think that's changing anytime soon. You can definitely imagine a world where Bitcoin is what people dump into and not the dollar, but we're not there yet.
1:17:18So whether it's gold, Bitcoin or anything else, usually an event like that things go down right away, but then when there's a reassessment, then then it changes. I mean this data shows that um that Bitcoin beats these other asset classes at least in this data set.
1:17:38So So I so I don't really understand the well because Bitcoin was down or whatever. It's like, okay, well if it went down more than others after these events, well then it made up that ground and more so. Sort of who cares what happens between the event and the 10 days or the event and 60 days? At the end of that at the end of that period Bitcoin has completely outperformed the other asset.
1:18:00Was it 60 days? That's the what they're using?
1:18:0210 days and 60 days. You can see here's 10 days, here's 60 days. Here's the here's the each row is the event. And you can see how much better like just to give the audience an example. Um the 2020 US elections 10-day S&P 500 7% gold minus 1% Bitcoin 19%. Um maybe that one's less surprising because everyone kind of knew Bitcoin pumped a lot then. So, let's pick the US-Iran initial conflict.
1:18:4310 days, S&P 500 uh minus 2%, gold minus 1%, Bitcoin 2%.
1:18:50Marginal.
1:18:51Uh the 60-day though for the same event S&P 500 4% gold minus 11%, Bitcoin 13%. So, quite materially different uh for that I mean each of these events it's a very similar story.
1:19:085, 6, 23%.
1:19:104, 11, 25%.
1:19:13Um yeah. So, I I found I I got pretty surprised by those.
1:19:17I'm curious for you guys zooming out two questions in that. One, do you view this as like, you know, obviously Bitcoin's going through a monetization process. Do you view that as, you know, during periods where people are, you know, risk on, you know, Bitcoin still performs like a tech thing, but in um in actual moments of crisis that's when you start seeing the gold-like behavior and that's going to continue to building. Uh also, do you all have opinions? I've heard more and more people talking about is this all still just 4-year cycle? And like Well, I mean for me personally I'm still like
1:19:46a zoom out or like have a thesis for why you're even invested in Bitcoin. Buy, hold, zoom out. All this like 10 days, 60 days noise, who cares? Like that's my general philosophy and attitude.
1:20:00And it would be my advice on how people should think about it. Don't get tripped up over all these things, but at least it this is more I find this interesting because when people come to me and say, "I thought it was supposed to respond this way." Usually my answer is, "Well, not yet. It's speculating to the future it'll be like that." And here here's the theoretical underpinning for why. Well, now I can say say that, but also say, "But also look at the data. It did perform that way. It did outperform these other asset classes." So, to your point I think, you know, so it's
1:20:29demonstrating that at least in the past 6 years. I don't know if these you know, maybe these were cherry picked.
1:20:35Yeah, exactly. [laughter] We could find six other events the past six years maybe that that demonstrate the opposite behavior. I don't know. Um And then uh but it but I suspect it's just it'll it's again it's like a just like the volatility, just like the correlation, like it'll keep trending in the way that we think the theoretical underpinnings of Bitcoin will operate.
1:20:57Yeah.
1:20:58Um and then was four-year cycle stuff.
1:21:00Yeah, four-year cycle. Um I've generally not been a strong four-year cycle guy. I I think uh or like you know, believer in that. I think there's some There's a couple credible reasons why it's been a thing. One is is is the halving.
1:21:19Yeah, exactly. And the And especially early on, it was very substantial uh when you cut the amount of Bitcoin that miners receive in roughly half.
1:21:31Uh and when it was like 50 to 25 Bitcoin, you know, and 25 to 12, 12 and a half, um pretty substantial. And And the thing is miners um they're not always forced sellers. I mean, some of them have held, but like in general they're forced sellers. So, like an investor can buy and not be forced to sell. They they're they're buying and holding. So, Right.
1:21:51But if you're a forced seller, like you can contribute to a downward uh trend. Or like maybe like you maybe even think I don't want to sell at this price point.
1:22:00I believe in Bitcoin.
1:22:02Right.
1:22:02I think it's going to go up a lot, but I have to sell to pay for electricity.
1:22:05Right.
1:22:05Or pay my debt or whatever.
1:22:07Um so, I think forced sellers have more power to pricing than passive investors who can just like wait things out.
1:22:17So, uh I I do think that's uh been a contributing factor. It diminishes over time by definition cuz the halving because of the halving it has less consequence. Um the other reason I think is just marketing hype. I mean it becomes a psychological thing. Like everyone talks about it as if it's a thing, and then it's self-fulfilling prophecy. Um and so you have I I think at each cycle you have investors who absolutely want to allocate more capital
1:22:46Bitcoin after it's come down from a big top. And they'd be happy to if they if they were told you have to do it now or never, they would do it now. But they don't have to do it now. And they know based on history typically the bear market lasts like a year or 2 years, whatever. So it's like they're going to wait.
1:23:05So they're not deploying their capital and just have it as a stable as a stable coin.
1:23:10[laughter] The stable coin period.
1:23:12Um and they'll they'll wait for it to start moving. Um and then maybe they're not buying at the absolute trough, but no one can ever predict that anyway. And then once it moves 10 Like right now, it moved 20% it's like, okay, now now's the time to buy, and then that that of course creates this, you know, big run-up.
1:23:30So I think those two things are true, but otherwise I don't really especially going into the future I don't really buy into a 4-year cycle anymore. And like stock-to-flow, that never made any sense to me. Never made any sense. Because it it doesn't it's purely supply side. It never it doesn't model demand side. It doesn't model any kind of like global events that are unpredictable, too. Like it just made it made no sense to me.
1:23:54I mean I I think one thing I've changed my mind on a little bit. I I do think I agree with both of those points you made, and I do think that, you know, the minor for-selling thing is real. Like I think that's just, you know, the majority of miners um are, you know, and I think just in general in like most industries if you have debt of any kind you're leveraged, you know, it's like when you're in a rough spot you have to do what you have to do to survive. And I think a lot of miners, you know, have um have been struggling to keep mining.
1:24:19Even in the in this one I've I know many that it's like it's been, you know, very very uh this pump is very welcome for them if they have an army of DAI. Um but I think one thing that I've maybe been a little bit wrong on the past is just extrapolating like, okay, um to your point, it's still like over time if your cycle is real, it still dampens. I think in general I would have expected the adoption of Bitcoin to happen much faster. I think the thing that I did not model early on as I was first understanding this stuff is just how
1:24:48much like the scale of capital locked away in like just very like old-school institutions. And so I do think that the biggest thing that will take Bitcoin to the next level is like maybe it is if Clarity Act passes and all of a sudden, you know, all of the banks and wire houses and, you know, old-school institutions like State Street or whatever. Like once, you know, old capital or like very stodgy like traditional capital can easily allocate towards Bitcoin, I do think things can
1:25:17can move pretty quickly, but I think that's been the biggest the biggest gating function I didn't understand when I first got into all this.
1:25:26Yeah.
1:25:27I I was just talking to a friend yesterday who's involved in a business that is trying to help, you know, when when sort of boomers and elderly people pass away, they have to, you know, get their assets to their heirs.
1:25:41And that's kind of a complicated thorny process, but it's happening at the scale of I think now or soon it's like a hundred billion dollars a year of you know, life insurance claims that are being paid out, for example. And so you can imagine that the people who are passing on may not be super interested in Bitcoin, but the people that it's passing to are probably often going to be a little more curious about that.
1:26:06So there's just like changes in the world like that I think are bigger impact on, you know, it's a demand side in that case.
1:26:15Push it push it all in.
1:26:17[laughter] Yeah. yeah. Take your inheritance, push it all in. Not financial advice. [clears throat] Yeah, never give financial advice.
1:26:25[laughter] We haven't heard your latest take on on stretch or microstrategy. What's what's happening in there? Are they cooking?
1:26:32Me?
1:26:33Anybody. Yeah, we've been silent.
1:26:37I I remain bullish.
1:26:39In June, in the depths of MSTR and stretch and a lot of the Bitcoin developers and podcasters and community turned turned on it so yeah, was super negative. Um I reevaluated what I know about it. And um I Like I still don't Nothing changed. And [snorts] frankly, I think it's like been incredibly resilient in this given the price of Bitcoin. So, you know, if you're a believer in the price of Bitcoin long-term Yeah.
1:27:14I I think I still feel like the the company has built in enough safeguards to weather serious storms far more far more severe than we've had so far.
1:27:25And we still don't know if we're seeing the start of another bull market or not, but I feel like they they built a lot of strength to weather storms. And assuming we enter a bull market in the coming years, they're going to benefit greatly in the financial engineering they're doing. I think it's like legitimate and novel and can outperform Bitcoin. But And I think you guys feel the exact same way.
1:27:56I mean, having that position, I mean, can can they can they fail? Can they could they be could they become fraudulent or something? Of course, any anyone can. I mean, Elon could become fraud. Like anyone can become fraudulent. So, of course, that's possible.
1:28:09Um could Coinbase lose all their coins?
1:28:11Like of course, that could happen. Like, AI like steals 2 million Bitcoin from Coinbase. And would that be catastrophic for it? Yes. But, okay.
1:28:19[laughter] I mean, the cold card hacking happen. I mean, no matter what you do, there's risks. So, there's always risks. Um And then like, should everyone just own MSTR not hold Bitcoin? No, no one's saying that. So. Um anyway, I I nothing nothing in my mind has changed on it.
1:28:33What I think is pretty interesting to see is um you know, uh if you like go to strc.live, you can watch, you know, this sort of accumulation time. Uh Sayda, the other, you know, I guess sort of credible-ish um strategy-like company in the US, they're accumulating again. So, their uh preferred perpetual equity is now trading at par, $100 roughly. And they've been stocking, at least yesterday I saw them stocking again. So, that's interesting. Microsoft, or not
1:29:03Microsoft, um the other MSTR that MSTR is now trading their uh their stretch now trading at 90 95 cents or 96 cents on the dollar. Um so, it's almost up to par. And what I think is very interesting is like, you know, if you um if you like did it uh you know, 2 days ago, then you should like it a lot more now because obviously the price of Bitcoin means that they have more um more ability to weather storms. So, my guess is you're going to see more of these positive feedback loops to where, you know, now they built this big cash
1:29:31position. Um obviously the Bitcoin is worth, you know, more um as the price goes up. And so, I think that I would expect to see them hit par pretty soon.
1:29:40Um and if they do hit par, then I expect to see them start buying again, which is another sort of positive feedback loop for for Bitcoin. So, I I think the fact that uh this run has happened while they're sitting on the sidelines is, you know, pretty pretty bullish for Bitcoin, I'd say.
1:29:52So, like another concern that people have over strategy is they accumulate so much Bitcoin. I I think that's a legitimate concern. It doesn't matter which actor it is, um any any one entity owning a ton of Bitcoin is a is a risk to Bitcoin. Yes. So I I grant that risk.
1:30:12Although part of my response to that though is like, okay, then Then what?
1:30:17Well, I mean then other people need to buy more Bitcoin. I mean there there willing to buy Bitcoin that much Bitcoin is like all you what it's kind of like the putting spam on the blockchain. Everyone who wants to use Bitcoin as money then use Bitcoin as money and pay up. Pay more. Use it as money. Use the blockchain using it as money.
1:30:35Yeah.
1:30:35Same here. If you don't like one entity buying all the Bitcoin then other everyone else like create new products or services or add value to the world so that other people are buying Bitcoin.
1:30:45Agreed.
1:30:45So that's my high level on that. But also this uh I got into this discus conversation on Twitter with Mr. Sayne. Never heard of him before, but he [laughter] replied he replied He replied to one of my tweets.
1:31:00Sounds like a mighty fine Is this your decentralized network? And it basically said he said Bitcoin is cooked at the moment.
1:31:07At the moment.
1:31:09Okay.
1:31:09And and the and the this diagram shows like mining hash rate economic custody power and Bitcoin core development. And I mean his claim is that it's very centralized. So I responded I said that Bitcoin's never been it's the most decentralized it's ever been.
1:31:26Interesting.
1:31:27I didn't say it's perfect.
1:31:29Right.
1:31:30We we can improve on all those metrics, but I think it's the most decentralized it's ever been. He asked me how long I've been in Bitcoin. Um Always a good sign.
1:31:40By the way, this account is 1-year-old.
1:31:42[laughter] Anyway, but I I replied so I would say actually the reason I'm even entertaining this conversation is I was actually curious about the numbers he was citing cuz his numbers say that 35% of economic custody power goes to exchanges.
1:32:0020% strategy the company and a bunch of other numbers and I'm like that even said economic custody power?
1:32:08Yeah, what does that mean?
1:32:09So Well, it's just Is that receiving payments?
1:32:13entirely too high, right?
1:32:15Or he's just saying high, yeah. So I did some AI research which matched my intuition and it at least in terms of who holds the coins which if you hold the coins you have economic power 69% retail 7% ETFs, 4% strategy not 20 3% governments, 6% exchanges. So if you hear those numbers that sounds super healthy to me.
1:32:41Super decentralized, yeah.
1:32:42Super decentralized, super healthy cuz also if you consider while there's trust involved the strategy ETS and exchanges is represents millions of individuals, too.
1:32:53Um Mhm.
1:32:54I mean there's a there's a layer Well, an ETF is often custodied by an exchange like numbers don't these numbers don't reflect that though.
1:33:05Yeah, so I think that that's a big concern.
1:33:07the 7 plus 6 you can add together. I mean depending on which risk you're trying to identify.
1:33:13Mhm.
1:33:13But if it's like who holds the keys then you'd add the 7 and 6 together.
1:33:17Yeah. Um I also I also think it's important to look at to your point on the individuals like you know in the early days of Bitcoin and even now I of that 69% I would guess the majority the lion's share is still whales. But the whales is also going down over time. You know the more they dump and like oh no the price is but that in the long run it's great cuz now it's like you know more individuals even more institutions whatever like um I think people would probably be shocked to see how much were held by whales early on and so the fact that they're selling things is great over time.
1:33:46I agree. And there's I haven't looked at this one metric and I forget what it's called but one of the data companies came out with the metric that measures that distribution and it's always trended down. I'd love to see the last few years to make sure it's still trending down. I would expect the answer is yes, but um totally agree that a glass node type thing or It it was a glass node metric, yeah, exactly. Um Is that the Gini coefficient?
1:34:10It That's They didn't call it that, but that's what it is, basically. Um and then uh yeah, I mean the mining mining pool hash rate, it's kind of been the same for 10 straight years. So, it's not gotten better, but it's not gotten worse.
1:34:24It's why I push Stratum V2 and other projects that are in the space to decentralize that even more so. Um It takes a long time to to have that impact, but I guess there's a road map to improve that. But it certainly not regressed. It's just sort of been steady state.
1:34:39Yeah, and my guess on the miner stuff, I haven't thought a lot about this recently, but at one point I was thinking about like, you know, why aren't we seeing stuff like Stratum V2 and like um obviously it's a very cool solution and you are seeing some people do it, but I guess demand pool and a couple others, but um you know, I Now I remember why uh Stacker News has had a bunch of miners doing AMAs in the last month or two. It's really cool. I highly recommend going and like Googling the AMAs on Stacker News recently. And I think basically all the miners are saying like, "Yeah, it's like it's cool.
1:35:06We like it in theory. It's just like no one is demanding. There's no There's zero economic demand." So, the the big thing kind of like what you were saying is if we want to decentralize the the hash rate, to me it's like how do you figure out um economic incentives? Basically, how do people make money off of adopting things like uh Stratum V2?
1:35:23Or how do you push it as much to the edges as possible and stuff like in your heaters and your solar panels or whatever.
1:35:27or requires dark moments. So, like when as soon as a pool has a bunch of the hash rate stolen and they realize they lost 10% of their revenue, then they'll be like, "Oh, I like the authentication and encryption features of Stratum V2.
1:35:40Why am I using this 12-year-old protocol that's completely brittle and ridiculous?"
1:35:44Yeah.
1:35:45So.
1:35:45But but critically, it's like it's not like these people are against it.
1:35:48No. And it it is It's showing good momentum. It's just new protocols take Yeah.
1:35:54If there's one thing I've learned in Bitcoin, it takes years and years and years because Bitcoin's so decentralized.
1:36:01Do you think Like there's no there's no boss that who can just say like, "Okay, we're going to do it now."
1:36:05Do you think that changes in the age of AI at all? Like do you think protocol adoption goes faster now?
1:36:10Or slower?
1:36:11No, cuz you still need all these the thousands of actors in the network to adopt.
1:36:17Yeah, but like but like imagine for example of an AI agent or group, I don't know, like build some some product or service which is so successful and they just like make a ton of Bitcoin. All of a sudden there's like, I don't know, a new um new push and you know, they're whatever the the new wealth holders and people want to be able to interact with them.
1:36:34They're like, "Well, you have to use my protocol for this." Like, you know, "If it's Nostr identity, then you have to use Nostr if you want my money."
1:36:40Well, that kind of concentration of power sounds like the end of Bitcoin to me. So, I hope that's not the case. But it it's frustrating as someone who works with developers who are trying to push these protocols that it takes so long, but like frankly, I think that's a healthy metric for for Bitcoin. If it moves fast, that suggests centralization.
1:36:59Right.
1:36:59Because it's so damned hard [laughter] to convince such a disparate number of people around the globe to adopt something that's actually healthy.
1:37:08Yeah.
1:37:08Yeah, I wouldn't want a world where Steve can just pen off a blog post and then everybody falls in line.
1:37:13Or [laughter] fire up my agent and I don't even know what I'm doing. The agent said this is the way we should roll.
1:37:21DK telling us deploy more capital steady lads.
1:37:23[laughter] Yeah, Matt Block says I'm debating AI bots on Twitter. I I could very well be. But I That's what I still Mr. Sayne might be a AI bot. If I if I have content If I have content I want to publish, I'm going to publish.
1:37:40[laughter] Um And by the way, I'm a metric we should have in this show is how How vulnerabilities did Rob Hamilton find during during our show? So Rob, if you're still listening, we want to know a count of how many vulnerabilities you found while listening to our show. And you can follow up later with a tweet if you want.
1:37:57How many scary texts you've sent to Bitcoin developers during the show?
1:38:01[laughter] Jim.
1:38:03Anyhow, we're over. So should we call it?
1:38:06Sounds good, yeah.
1:38:07Yeah. Cool.
1:38:09Good to hang, guys.
1:38:10Have a good weekend, everyone.
1:38:11Yeah.
1:38:12Bye.
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Presidio Bitcoin
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpoWCikpTk6Ysw4GSI___hw
David Sacks
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Recommendations found
The episode contains a few genuine external-resource recommendations, mostly with implicit endorsements; no URLs for these resources appear in the transcript.
BlackRock's latest Bitcoin report/paper — In the price discussion, one host calls BlackRock's new paper 'good' , then says he read through the latest BlackRock Bitcoin report and pulled out three charts (figures 10, 15, and 13) covering correlation, volatility, and post-geopolitical-event returns , while cautioning that the data could be cherry-picked .
Stacker News miner AMAs — Explicit recommendation: 'I highly recommend going and Googling the AMAs on Stacker News recently,' in the context of miners explaining why there is 'zero economic demand' for Stratum V2 .
Tetragrammaton (Rick Rubin) podcast episode with Tyler Cowen — Implicit endorsement: a host says he queued up Tyler Cowen's appearance on the Rick Rubin Tetragrammaton podcast , and another host answers 'Sure. That'll be interesting' and 'I think that'll be a good one' .
Borderline / not counted as recommendations
- Tyler Cowen's 'capitalizing untethered agents' post (seen on Stacker News) — mentioned with positive interest ('I just skimmed it... I want to give it a deeper read') but not explicitly recommended .
- Founders You Should Know — explicitly recommended ('I definitely would recommend people pay attention to Founders You Should Know...') , but the same exchange credits co-host DK and his wife Jen with building it , so it reads as event/self-promotion rather than an external learning-resource recommendation.
David Sacks
Profile
Resource recommendations from Presidio Bitcoin Jam hosts:
BlackRock's latest Bitcoin report (title not specified) — one host read it and highlighted three charts as new and interesting: Figure 10 (trailing 6-month Bitcoin–S&P 500 correlation, 10-year average) shows correlation of 0.18 vs 0.04 for US bonds and 0.06 for gold; Figure 15 shows trailing 12-month realized volatility declining since 2011; Figure 13 shows Bitcoin substantially outperforming S&P 500 and gold on 10- and 60-day returns after six major geopolitical disruptions since 2020 (e.g., US-Iran conflict 60-day: S&P 500 +4%, gold -11%, Bitcoin +13%).
Tyler Cowen's new Stacker News post on "capitalizing untethered agents" — a host skimmed it and wants to do a deeper read; the post argues agents still need human revoke/legal-system ties, which the host is skeptical of at trillion-agent scale.
Tyler Cowen on Rick Rubin's Tetragrammaton podcast — a host queued it up and expects it to be a good/interesting conversation.
Miner AMAs on Stacker News from the past month or two — a host "highly recommends" them; a takeaway is that miners like Stratum V2 in theory but see zero economic demand for it.