Rejecting Bitcoin Fundamentalism | Dan Held

Dan Held is a widely known educator in the Bitcoin Universe. Formerly the director of growth marking at Kraken, he’s now an independent content creator at the Held Report and an advisor to Trust Machines. In today’s State of the Nation, we explore a new extremist sub-division of the Bitcoin movement: Bitcoin Fundamentalism. Is there a divide growing in the Bitcoin Community? Why are Dan Held and other Bitcoiners frustrated with this cohort? What is Bitcoin Fundamentalism, and what does it mean for the future direction of the Bitcoin Community? ------ 📣 Galxe | Explore Crypto’s #1 Credential Network https://bankless.cc/Galxe ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 💠 NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo 🔐 LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod ----- Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 8:00 Say No To Bitcoin Fundamentalism 13:10 What is Fundamentalism? 21:00 Nic Carter 27:12 Brain Drain 31:00 The Rationalists 39:00 Wealthy then Healthy 44:00 Cyber Hornets 53:40 What’s at Stake Here? 1:01:00 Trust Machine 1:03:32 The Bitcoin Ecosystem ------ Resources: Dan Held https://twitter.com/danheld Trust Machines https://twitter.com/trustmachinesco The Held Report https://www.theheldreport.com/ Nic Carter Episode https://youtu.be/BjTeLtuKs1A ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, welcome to another State of the Nation episode where we talk about something in depth that is going on in crypto. This is saying no to Bitcoin fundamentalism. David, this has been a theme in crypto lately. Former Bitcoin maximalists turning against Bitcoin fundamentalism? Who'd you have on the podcast? What are we gonna cover today?

• 0:27David Hoffman?

  We had Dan Held on the show, and Dan Held has been a Bitcoin proponent, Bitcoin believer for a very long time. And I actually don't think, Ryan, that the Bitcoin maximalists are turning away from Bitcoin maximalists. They're turning away specifically from Bitcoin fundamentalists, which is a new term. And it's actually how Dan Held ended up on the show today, when he tweeted out a tweet that said, "Say no to Bitcoin fundamentalism." And I, like you, caught that tweet a little bit by surprise, like, oh, Bitcoin fundamentalism, Dan Held, saying no to Bitcoin fundamentalism. Don't know what Bitcoin fundamentalism is, but it's interesting that we're seeing a schism in the Bitcoin community. So this is what this episode is about. What is exactly Bitcoin fundamentalism, and why are so many

• 1:10David Hoffman?

  Bitcoin leaders rejecting it? And so, we spend the first half of this episode defining terms, and just like getting things, making things really, really clear, so we can actually talk about what we need to talk about, which is this growing cultural divide in the Bitcoin community.

• 1:26Ryan Sean Adams?

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• 2:10Ryan Sean Adams?

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• 2:38David Hoffman?

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• 3:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Pretty awesome. Building up your on-chain resume as well. All right, David, I know why we're talking about this, but what should folks pay attention to in this episode? And we are pre-recording this because I know you're at DevCon this week, actually. And so we're pre-recording this. I was not able to make it to this episode. So it's just you and Dan today. And what should listeners pay attention to?

• 3:26David Hoffman?

  One of my favorite lines out of Hazu, actually, is that Ethereum culture is downstream of Bitcoin culture, as in Bitcoin culture is like the source of all other parts of Ethereum culture. But also, I think that can extend to really the crypto world at large, just Bitcoins first. It is the most on the frontier and we can use some of the goings on in the Bitcoin community as like a microcosm. And so I think this is a lesson, not just for the Bitcoin community and a hurdle that the Bitcoin community has to get over, but this also relates to your community as well, whether it's as large as the Bitcoin community or maybe perhaps as small as a very, very small, like, you know, token community. This is about group think. This is a story about group think. So while listeners are listening

• 4:08David Hoffman?

  to this, I think they should pay attention to, in what ways does this story, do I identify with this story with my part of crypto that I'm in? And Dan does a good job as he parts apart the good and bad parts of group think. Group think isn't inherently bad, but it can be if it gets out of control. But also, if you are just interested in building on Bitcoin, part of the non-fundamentalist camp, what Dan is calling the Bitcoin rationalists, they're all interested in restoking and kindling fires of Bitcoin building. That Bitcoin fundamentalists have kind of driven out of the Bitcoin culture. And so the Bitcoin rationalists want Bitcoin building back. And so Dan, and what he's doing at Trust Machines and various other Bitcoin layers,

• 4:51David Hoffman?

  are working on how do we reincarnate a Bitcoin builder culture in the Bitcoin world? And so if this interests you and more, stay tuned for the episode.

• 5:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is kind of cool. For my part, I'll be looking at how this compares to our episode that we did a couple of months ago with Nic Carter, who was so frustrated.

• 5:08David Hoffman?

  We talked about that specifically, yeah.

• 5:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, really? He was so frustrated with the Bitcoin maximalist community, he just kind of rage quit. And this looks like a group that is not so much leaving the Bitcoin community, but trying to reform it in a healthier, more pragmatic, more builder-centric way. So we are seeing a culture, a cultural reform maybe taking place with leaders like Dan Held. And I'm anxious to see how that plays out. And I'll be looking for what that reform might look like in this episode. The first time, I think, I've seen this in the crypto space. And hopefully, it means healthier times for Bitcoin. Guys, we're going to get right to the episode with Dan, all about Bitcoin pragmatics and about saying no to Bitcoin fundamentalism.

• 5:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 5:55David Hoffman?

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• 6:37David Hoffman?

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• 7:21David Hoffman?

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• 8:06David Hoffman?

  With Fuel, you can have the benefits of smart contract languages like Solidity while adopting the improvements made by the Rust tooling ecosystem, letting the Fuel development environment go beyond the limitations of the EVM. If you want to learn more, there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a Fuel network. Dan Held is an educator in the Bitcoin universe, formerly Director of Growth Marketing at the Kraken Exchange, and now an advisor to Trust Machines, a software studio, kind of like the consensus for Bitcoin. And overall, Dan has largely been fully committed to working on and promoting Bitcoin to the world. And also has some thoughts about the current state of the Bitcoin community, which is going to be the topic of conversation today. Dan, welcome to Bankless.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, David.

• 8:48David Hoffman?

  Dan, this whole conversation got inspired from a tweet that you wrote that you said, "Say no to Bitcoin fundamentalism." Can you talk a little bit about that tweet? Like, what is Bitcoin fundamentalism? Because this is a new term that I haven't heard before. And overall, what's going on in the Bitcoin space that inspired this tweet to come out?

• 9:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think what's going on right now in the Bitcoin community is you've got, if we use a religious example, which, you know, with all crypto L1s, I think religion is a really good way to think through it. If we think about it like a religion, you've got like Christianity. Let's use that as an example. But then there are sub, you know, groups within Christianity where you might have, you might have Catholic, you know, not Catholic, but you might have like Methodist or Presbyterian or some of those kind of Lutheran, where it's basically they all believe in the same thing, but just different flavors of it or different styles of it. And so what's happening in the Bitcoin community now is there isn't really a good terminology to label these subgroups.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  And that's where I've been trying to do that of kind of like labeling, what do these groups look like? And that's where I think the rationalist versus fundamentalist term, I think, is a good way of kind of breaking, you know, taking these groups and identifying them with kind of like a key, like a key labeling of what they are. To pretend that everyone's going to agree with any sort of movement, whether it be religion, an L1 or something like that, I think is pretty silly. I'm certainly not trying to be divisive. I'm mainly labeling these subgroups and trying to help people think through, hey, what group do I belong in or what group is advocating for XYZ activity? So I put out a tweet the other day that said, "Reject Bitcoin fundamentalism." And the way that I define Bitcoin fundamentalism, because I don't think it's been well-defined

• 10:33Speaker 02

  nor is it like a common terminology, Bitcoin fundamentalism would be... I would say cultural elements that are being brought into the Bitcoin community that don't represent what I think are the core values of the Bitcoin ethos. For example, some of these values are, you know, taking, I would say, very subjective, very cultural things and inserting that and making that part of what Bitcoin is, and I just totally disagree. Examples of that would include, you know, people claiming that earning a yield or earning interest is usury, or some sort of 1500s-esque medieval sort of religious response to interest, which earning an interest or earning yield is simply a free market activity.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Old Bitcoiners or OG Bitcoiners that have no qualms with that. They might have qualms with the way that the risk is represented, and I certainly do agree that we should call out the risks of these things. But to say that yield or lending or interest won't exist in the Bitcoin world and that it's evil is fundamentally anti-free markets, and Bitcoin is absolutely for free markets. And we've got some other things as well, like, for example, people will call out certain influencers for making money. I'm not speaking about myself, I'm speaking about another individual in the space, making money building a course on how to teach women to get into Bitcoin. And they said that making money from educational activities is, you know, sort of a perversion

• 11:57Speaker 02

  of this pure ethos of, you know, giving out all of your time and effort to help Bitcoin. And I think that's really silly, because, one, it's, again, a free market activity. If people want to buy the course, they want to buy the course. If you want to give away a course, you can give away a course. You're free to price your services or products at zero. But to call out someone that is doing, I think, a fantastic job of educating people about Bitcoin and calling them out because they're making money, I think is just, you know, kind of pure and simple, very like, what's the, it's sort of like a piety sort of thing of like, hey, the most Bitcoiner of us, don't take any money, and it's this like, you know, the celibacy or piety sort of thing going on, which I don't think is what Bitcoin is about at all.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  So, these are a couple of examples, I know we're going to dive in further, but just for the audience, that's kind of like where I'm coming from here.

• 12:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and putting a name on these things, I think, is super important. And I think why I want to spend even more time actually defining out what's going on here, what's going on in the Bitcoin community, because once we can name something and then we can talk about it just a little bit more clearly. And so peering over the fence, and also, by the way, I totally appreciate, like, the some people don't really get it, but like, the religion metaphors are just so apt sometimes in the crypto space, especially when we're so tribal. And so peering over the fence at the Bitcoin land and hearing what your answer was for what Bitcoin fundamentalism is, to me, it's a little bit like there's this cohort of Bitcoiners that have perhaps started to take things just a little too seriously, have taken things

• 13:29David Hoffman?

  a little too far, and now are like, perhaps, a snake biting its own tail, like, they've taken some of the memes and really just twisted them beyond what they were really intended for. And so there's, when we say Bitcoin fundamentalists, perhaps you also might mean Bitcoin extremists? Would that be also a fair characterization, or would you push back on that?

• 13:49Speaker 02

  It depends on everyone's definition of what an extremist versus fundamentalist might be. You know, I would say, like, it certainly isn't maximalist. I think the term maximalism represents a pretty large group of Bitcoiners who don't really have any sort of sub-identity to connect with, right? Like, if you're a Bitcoiner, what other name do you take on? Like, moderate, or rationalist, or fundamentalist? None of these have really taken off. And I think that's somewhat troublesome, because like, a lot of people in Bitcoin, they're not homogeneous. There's not a homogeneous sort of perspective of what Bitcoin should be, or what is ethical or not. And so I think that, you know, maximalism, I think, is an overly broad term to identify a group of people. And I wouldn't say that many, I think many maximalists wouldn't even agree that they

• 14:34Speaker 02

  are maximalists, they're more, they would consider more moderate or rational. There just isn't a term for that. But I guess fundamentalists, to me, would represent not extreme ideology, but more of like, ideology that actually runs counter to what Bitcoin represents. Because in this scenario, it's not subjective of like, hey, I do or don't like what you're thinking, it's more of like, if we look at the principles of Bitcoin and why Bitcoin is important and what it's setting out to do, are people adhering to those base principles of what Bitcoin represents? So by using their own sort of measurement stick of ethics, are they themselves using the correct measuring stick, is what I'm thinking about?

• 15:12David Hoffman?

  Sure, sure. And how, why would you, to what would you accredit the reason why Bitcoin fundamentalism has come about? Like, what was the main reason as to why it exists?

• 15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question, and it's super hard to pick apart. I don't think that there is one single sort of variable here. I think it's a culmination of the activities that occurred in 2016 and 17, where you had Bitcoin toxicity, or Bitcoin's defense mechanism, Bitcoin's white blood cells attack companies and powerful individuals who wanted to change Bitcoin's protocol. These are the block size wars, the block size wars, what I'm talking about here. And I think this was a good thing. Bitcoin stood up, and the community stood up and said, "We will not let powerful individuals take Bitcoin and change it to their whim." I think there's a very powerful movement, and a really, really cool movement, to represent Bitcoin's decentralization and the ethics and the eco, and the ethics and sort of the

• 16:08Speaker 02

  community. After that event, you know, with the successful, I'd say, absolute destruction of Bitcoin cash, I don't think anyone would even consider Bitcoin cash. I haven't heard that word even mentioned in almost a year now, two years.

• 16:22David Hoffman?

  The only, the only reason why I've heard of it is because Roger Vare got liquidated on, going along on Bitcoin cash in some, like, obscure exchange a couple months ago. That's the last time I've heard of it.

• 16:32Speaker 02

  He got margin called, and then didn't pay up, right? He didn't post margin, and there's a whole, there's a whole lawsuit with that. But anyways, yeah, I think, you know, with Bitcoin cash, you know, the market fundamentally rejecting Bitcoin cash, it looked like the, you know, the regular people, the plebs, were on the right side of history here. And I think that they, for sure, were. You know, just arbitrarily changing block size versus more scaling solutions, which everyone nowadays talks about L2, L3s, other layers on top of a base layer as the way to go about scaling. Of course, some scaling occurred on L1, but Bitcoin community wanting to keep that as limited as possible. After that successful event of Bitcoin's community rising up and rejecting this corporate and powerful individual influence over Bitcoin, over the Bitcoin network, there was sort

• 17:17Speaker 02

  of this lull where you've got this intense, I would call it like an army, that has no purpose, right? There's no real purpose for the army right now, because there's no one trying to make changes to the Bitcoin protocol that would be what might be perceived as detrimental. So with all these white blood cells going, you know, in the, in the body going on and you got tons of white blood cells looking for something to attack, there's nothing external to attack. So they're focusing on something internal. And so right now you've got somewhat of an autoimmune issue where you've got the Bitcoin community attacking itself and looking for impurities or, or bacteria or some sort of, you know, virus coming in there and trying to attack it. And really there's not much to attack. No one's advocating to make drastic

• 18:00Speaker 02

  changes to the Bitcoin protocol. I think a lot of people nowadays much better understand scaling, what Bitcoin's all about. I think in the 2016 through 2017 era, you had a lot of misconceptions around why Bitcoin was useful or, or why, or how blockchains worked. So I think what we're seeing now is you've got like individuals in this space like Nick Carter and others and myself who don't fit exactly these set of core fundamentalist parameters. And so people lash out and then claim, hey, they're not pure Bitcoiners. Or hey, they're, they've got financial incentives. So they're, they're impure or there's all sorts of X, Y, Z checkmark they're looking for to, to either keep us in that in-group

• 18:42Speaker 02

  or out-group. But what's funny is, is what I'm seeing now too, is that most people actually identify as more of a moderate and most of them are pretty tired of these purity tests.

• 18:51David Hoffman?

  Interesting. That's really, really interesting. I love the analogy of an autoimmune disorder. And just to recap, what, what you said is that there, there was this era in Bitcoin where we had the block size debates and block size wars. And some people were on one side, other people were on others. But also if you keep on like going down that history, it was actually very clear that there were like large scale corporate influences on one side and maybe some, also some individuals that perhaps believe that the block, the big blocks were good. But largely the Bitcoin community was mostly on the side of, don't change Bitcoin, like keep, keep small blocks. And this was a big war and this was like a scar in Bitcoin, the Bitcoin community's like history, like memory, like the shared

• 19:35David Hoffman?

  collective memory of all Bitcoiners remembers like the block size civil war. Cause it was like a, it was a painful time in Bitcoin's history and, and markets, like even like the price of something on, on like, or the chart of something is something that like, it's the aggregate of all the brains of all people participating in this thing. And so we can extrapolate like the market back into like the social community. And so what you're saying is that there was this like, Traumatic event that's in the Bitcoin community memory that the Bitcoin community has overcome that, right? Like, we grow stronger through traumatic events and now we're on the other side. But a part of the Bitcoin community hasn't totally moved on from the vibe of people are coming to attack Bitcoin and we must defend it. And so what

• 20:17David Hoffman?

  you're saying is that there's this part of this Bitcoin community that is in like this fight or flight mentality all the time, perhaps too much. And they are just hyper-aware, hyper-villagin, and like, ready to attack anything coming after Bitcoin, and perhaps have gotten a little bit too sensitive in that realm, and now have gone after just like, normal Bitcoiners, who aren't perhaps so militant or aggressive about preserving some amount of Bitcoin's values, but now we've diverged. And so this schism has created what we are now calling Bitcoin fundamentalism versus Bitcoin rationalism. Is that a fair summary of the events?

• 20:53Speaker 02

  I think that's an excellent summary. That's a really good synopsis over what I'm trying to say.

• 20:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And listeners might remember, we had Nic Carter on when he got like, quote-unquote, "canceled" by the cyber hornets. Would you say that this is, that event was like a one-to-one correlate of what we are talking about right now? Was that like, an adjacent kind of thing? Like, how relevant was that event to this whole story?

• 21:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's, it's exactly on point for this story. There's a whole series of these. Matt Corallo recently had that happen to him. I've experienced this over the last two years, you know, last two years in this space. And, you know, with Nick, I'd like to kind of pick apart what happened to Nick a little bit. So, Nick, and then also interject if you think I haven't said it accurately, because I'm pretty sure this is exactly what happened. Nick invested in a, either like, some sort of identity, or some sort of like, digital identity company, where through private keys and through blockchain tech, you can own your identity and use it to validate or log into different services.

• 21:53David Hoffman?

  Right. The business model was like, sign in with your private keys. Instead of sign in with Facebook or sign in with Google, it was sign in with your private keys. It was also an Ethereum wallet at the same time. And it wasn't Nick, it was Castline Island Ventures, his VC firm.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  He's a GP at Castle Island, one of the founders of People Extrapolate, you know, Castle Island being synonymous with Nic Carter. Yeah, it's Nic Carter, Nick Walsh, and those are the GPs and there's a few. Yeah, I forget if there's any other GPs. I know there's a couple of other partners there. And so, you know, Nick has been doing investments like this for a while. Like, people forget that his first analytics company was focused on blockchain analytics, but it wasn't just Bitcoin analytics, it was across all blockchains. So parsing through blockchains, pulling out identifiable information in terms of like smart contracts or other information that corporates or companies might be interested in. And so helping, you know, folks navigate blockchains, not just Bitcoin, but every blockchain. And people forget that

• 22:48Speaker 02

  CoinMetrix was his first company that he started. And also, like, you know, I've known Nick for years now, so I've known Nick for almost three, four years now. And so like, I knew him from a CoinMetrix Nick, where he was like this, I kind of view him as like this neutral, impartial individual who just really likes Bitcoin and Bitcoin's proof of work. But he by no means, I think, said like, "Oh, I reject everything else because I'm just absolutist and I think that this is the only way to do it." He more of, I think, was very eloquent, was saying, "I believe in Bitcoin and I like it because of these reasons," and then defended Bitcoin because of those first, like, kind of first principle stance of like, whether it be credibility

• 23:31Speaker 02

  of the monetary policy or credibility, you know, or proof of work, using that as like a real world way to take physical energy and build that around the digital world. So, you know, I think what happened there is a lot of Bitcoiners had thought he was, you know, more of like a fundamentalist, where it was just reject everything. And so there was this fervor that developed around his investment in this company, where people said, "Oh, he's a shitcoiner now," or "He's not pure because he invested in this company." And what's funny is, all of his investments are transparent. I haven't been to Castle Island Ventures webpage, but I'm sure there's probably a portfolio section there. There is. Where you could probably go see every investment he's made. And even his first

• 24:13Speaker 02

  company, CoinMetrix, is not a Bitcoin-only company. And so this fervor developed, and I think this is where I think Nick went a little wrong. And I've got a ton of respect for Nick. I still very much think he's one of the greatest champions for Bitcoin out there. He's one of the most eloquent, well-spoken individuals in this space. I would say even amongst the entire crypto industry. Nick is a great champion for what we do. I think what I admire about him the most is how eloquent and how measured and calm he is. And I think what happened is he allowed the crowd to see him get aggravated, or him get a little bit annoyed with the criticism. And then that opened it up to where they use that as a lever to kind of, to push his buttons a little bit. And I think he showed them that it was affecting him. And that's where I think he lost the battle with the mob.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Where the mob sort of, kind of, you know, spiraled out of control as he reacted to the mob. And the mob used that to attack him. And so that spiraled into this, I would say, something that didn't, I don't think represented Nick the best he could have been represented. He's this calm, really sincere, mild mannered sort of guy. And I think in this moment, people saw him lose his cool a little bit. And people use that to attack him and kind of attack his motives and attack, you know, how pure he was as a Bitcoiner. So I think some of this was a little bit on, you know, obviously, I think it was unfair, the criticism to begin with. And then I do think it was kind of Nick's own, his own reaction to it that led to a little bit of like a, like an accelerated response of mob Nick, mob Nick. And to, until it kind of spiraled out of control.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Overall, though, the mob or the fundamentalists shouldn't have been too, shouldn't have been too surprised. I mean, Nick did all of this above board. None of this was like under the table. None of this was, should have been surprising. And so I found it pretty disturbing and I stood up and defended Nick, you know, at the time, saying like, hey, Nick's a great proponent for Bitcoin. He's been transparent about all of this the entire time. And it would be a shame to lose someone so eloquent and so on point as Nic Carter, where he has defended Bitcoin and in both the public spaces, on TV, through research papers. And to lose him over what I perceive as just like a normal business activity, which is VC investing, is really, really silly.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  And so I think what happened now is Nick basically turned on his replies to people who only follow him and hasn't engaged on Twitter as much because I think that experience sort of scarred him a little bit. I've been through a few of these cancellation moments myself, so I know exactly what he was feeling at the time. Not exactly, but I know directionally what he was feeling, so I can understand why he reacted the way he did. But you can't let them sense that weakness in you, or that, you know, that sort of like, you're showing them some emotion, you're showing that their criticism is working. And when that happens, I think it really opens it up for a much larger attack vector. Versus going, hey, I recognize your criticism, I disagree. Or just don't reply on Twitter for a day or two and come back once you're, once, once things have cooled down a little bit.

• 27:11David Hoffman?

  Certainly, and I've definitely noticed that this has, this has been a reoccurring theme in the last like 12 months in Bitcoin land. There seems to be this like brain drain from one side to the other. Like, you know, Nic Carter is like now not really, and like, it's like the brain drain versus the cyber hornets. Maybe, maybe you can say like if the cyber hornets are on one side or not. But it seems to be like, there's people like you, Nic Carter, like almost basically everyone that I respect has gone to the side of like saying, hey, there's this like extreme side of Bitcoin that really like grinds my gears. Like, can you talk, is that a real thing or is that just something I'm observing? Is there like this brain drain from one side to the other?

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Definitely. I mean, you've got like Matt Corallo, one of the oldest core devs. You've got Greg Maxwell, like the OG OG core dev who said, you know, if we expect Bitcoin to survive on its own without us helping it, like that's the surest way to have Bitcoin fail. I'd say like a lot of these individuals very much represent that sort of middle ground. I don't want to name other names too, because they've either reached out to me in private or have come out in their own sort of way to talk about it. But I think there's a very, what I'm seeing as a pretty sizable movement of a lot of people just not having another name to identify with. Cause it's maximalist is like the only title to identify with. And I mean, I thought about going back to the old term called Bitcoiner. And Chris Bruniski and I were talking about this at mainnet,

• 28:34Speaker 02

  where him and I were talking about how this sort of schism or schism is created, is being kind of like happening at the moment. And, you know, we both talked about, well, like, what if we reclaimed the word Bitcoiner? You know, like the OG term for Bitcoiner before the term maxi became about. But that's a very old term and I'm not sure if a lot of people really understand it. So I'd say like the new term is like rationalist or moderate. I think moderate is kind of boring and watered down a little bit. Rationalist is a little bit arrogant, I would say, too, because it's like claiming that everyone else is irrational. So it's tough. These things are difficult. As a marketer, I find it pretty interesting to see how these narratives will sort of create a shelling

• 29:16Speaker 02

  point around certain identities. So whether that be like fundamentalist or moderate or fundamentalist and something else. So I think, you know, there's a lot of people who don't agree with the fundamentalist, but they just don't know what to call themselves. And so I think that part of this movement is figuring out, you know, what is that new identity? And also, what does it stand for? What definitively, what is a fundamentalist identity versus a moderate? I'm not, you know, there's not like a website where you can go to and compare one to the other.

• 29:45David Hoffman?

  So is I versus I P.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, you know, I think it's just a cultural thing. It's a cultural and social thing where slowly people start to identify to one to the other. And then there's signaling, whether you put it in your bio or not. And none of this, by the way, I don't think this is nearly the same sort of scenario like we had back in 2017 with the Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork.

• 30:06David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  No one's advocating to make a change to Bitcoin.

• 30:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  You know, this is, this is more of a cultural difference rather than a, hey, we want to fundamentally change what Bitcoin is, or we want to use influence to change really fundamental characteristics of either scaling or Bitcoin's monetary policy. I don't think there's any sort of changes like that on the moderate or rationalist camp that is really advocating for anything like that. So this is purely cultural, where people are going, hey, I just don't want to be identified with these other people, but our mission, I believe, is the same thing.

• 30:38David Hoffman?

  Right. And so just to put this on a scale for listeners to understand, this is not a civil war where some, some side is trying to tinker with Bitcoin in one way that the other side doesn't. Like Bitcoin's being left out of this. Bitcoin, the blockchain, Bitcoin, the system is like not totally relevant here. It's more about like, what does the community believe and stand for? And like, because the Bitcoin community checks itself very, very well. And one thing I'm concerned about, Dan, is that the Bitcoin rationalists, or whatever this like non-fundamentalist side of this debate or like schism is.

• 31:12David Hoffman?

  Seems to be created in opposition to the fundamentalists, as in the rationalists are are a group of people that exist because it's an agreement of that all these people that are in the Bitcoin rationalist camp don't like what they're seeing in the Bitcoin fundamentalist camp. But then, but if that's true, then like that Bitcoin rationalist camp simply exists because of an antithesis to the Bitcoin Fundamentalism, which like groups don't really stay composed very well when they are, their existence merely is in opposition to something else. Is that, so is that even correct? Does the Bitcoin rationalist camp merely exist in opposition to the Bitcoin fundamentalists? Or like, is there a different like cultural shelling point for the rationalists to like latch on to that's independent and unique?

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a ton of overlap of values that we both agree upon. And also, like, I think a lot of people who are fundamentalists may not even identify themselves as fundamentalists, even though they are, just because it's like a new term and they may not really understand what it means. And also, it's been newly defined. Most of them would probably refer themselves as like maxis or hardcore maxis or some sort of, some sort of representation like that. And I'm certainly not going after the maximalists. I think maximalism represents a lot of Bitcoiners and that's not who I'm talking about here. I do think like, you know, for the, for the rationalist, I think what they really care about the most is like free markets. There's no moral, you know, weighing in on how people spend money or how people earn

• 32:41Speaker 02

  yield or borrow against something or invest in other assets outside of Bitcoin. For example, and so I think this is a core tenet of, from what I've heard on the more moderate side. For example, there's a lot of individuals who claim like alts are immoral or something like that. First of all, it's a very loaded term. I'm not sure if a moral is the right word or not as a free markets libertarian. Could care less what people want to buy or sell. If they want to buy Doge or Tron versus, you know, a share of Apple. I'm not here to morally weigh on what is good or bad. I personally like Bitcoin the most, and that's what I'll speak about positively. But I'm not going to sit here and waste my time going, hey, I, I think you're a bad person because you've,

• 33:23Speaker 02

  you've yelled at, or you're a bad person because you bought this or that asset. And, you know, what, what's funny is with some of the fundamentals, I do agree, like, look, if you frame it for newbies as like, the only, one of the only assets you can hold where you have custody over the asset is Bitcoin or like a, like a, you know, any sort of asset that is a, a bearer asset, right? Like gold, cash, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever. You know, I do agree that, you know, for newbies are like, yeah, you know, equities are a shitcoin or real estate is a shitcoin. Fundamentally, I'm like, yeah, totally get it what you're talking about as a bearer asset. But we're going to look a little bit nuts when we say that to people where like people have real world assets outside of Bitcoin.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And I do think Bitcoin is a phenomenal asset, but that doesn't mean that I, I mean, I, majority of my net worth is in Bitcoin, but I still have, still have equities, I still have, you know, private equity, et cetera. So I think that kind of framing everything as Bitcoin only to an extreme isn't really useful for anyone. I get that the, the seed of the idea starts with like, hey, it's a bearer asset. It's a really pristine asset and I do agree with that. But we have to take a, I think, a little bit more of a moderate stance. And so for me, I think the way that we're perceived now, or at least this fundamentalist group is perceived, is you've got, you've got a casino, right? Which is like the crypto market. And there's another casino next door, which, which is the equities market.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  And these are all speculative activities. You know, in the crypto casino. You've got, you've got like craps, which is big. And don't, don't take these analogies too seriously. I'm just coming up with names to pair them with games like Bitcoins, craps. Ethereum is, is slots. You've got yield farming on any chain might be roulette. And so, you know, people are wanting to enter the crypto ecosystem and through these speculative sort of waves. They want to go experience, whether it be Bitcoin or something else, because they, they get some FOMO and they want, the, the human nature is inherently speculative. And so what Bitcoiners look like, we look like the, or like the, the more fundamentalist Bitcoiners.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  They look like a preacher outside of the casino and they're going, hey, son, you're going into the casino and you're going to lose money. And a lot of people are like, yeah. And it's also sinful. Yeah, it's also sinful. And, you know, that message is just not going to resonate with people because they're going to be like, first of all, I know, dude.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  I'm going in like it says casino, you know, I've heard about it before. I'm going in now. Of course, you know, Bitcoiners like to pull out their regretful posts when people lose their money and they're like, oh, man, that sucks. Well, so do people that lose the, at the casino too, but people are still going to go in, right? So instead of the kind of like the, I would say like fire and brimstone preacher. Instead, you could stand out the door, outside the door and be like, hey, son, go in, have fun. But taken from me, an old timer, you're probably going to want to roll some of those gains into Bitcoin. Yeah. Good job. You made 20x your money on Doge. Doge ain't, ain't an investment, man. You don't want to hold something else for a long time. I think that is what I've shifted my narrative to over the last year and a half.

• 36:40Speaker 02

  And I've seen a lot more reception to that of kind of like, you're not a bad person for buying these other assets. But, you know, I would highly recommend that you think through this long term and think about what you want to hold, what you want to huddle. What do you want to huddle for a very long time? And, and that's where I think the, the Bitcoin community. I personally believe that the moderates are rationalists with that softer sort of approach is much more that that sort of narrative resonates with a lot more people. And I just don't think that the really fire and brimstone sort of approach, I don't think that really converts people. And I've been I've been in the space 10 years, you know, I've seen I've seen a lot of narratives and I've seen a lot of ways to talk about Bitcoin. And I just don't think that that

• 37:21Speaker 02

  way is is very constructive. And if we look at, you know, there's all sorts of metrics you can look at, I think the dominance metric is somewhat silly because there's no dominance based on cohort. Like the Bitcoin dominance metric isn't based on yearly cohort. It's based on like infinity new altcoins being created versus Bitcoin market cap. So it's not a great metric. But, you know, if the fire and brimstone approach worked, then why are we seeing more alts than ever exist? So I just don't think that that that is working at all.

• 37:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and I can definitely resonate with that because during about the second half of 2021 was really like this alt layer one part of the of the bull market, the like Solana wanted to come kill Ethereum, Avalanche wanted to come kill Ethereum, Phantom wanted to come kill Ethereum. And me and Ryan just never really like resonated with these chains. And we never really gave these chains like too much exposure. And it was to our mistake, I would say, where we were like, these these chains have compromised on decentralization, they have a large amount of insiders. And I mean, we wouldn't use the word like morality, but like the undertones were there and people like picked up on it. And like, we got a lot of flack and we got a lot of pushback and a lot of resistance and people like, lost faith, I think, during that phase of 2021 is to like,

• 38:36David Hoffman?

  how Bankless is like on the frontier of things because we were like, these, these things are like, they're morally inferior, if you will, like, it's all it's all multi coin capital and Kyle Samani and like, these things are destined to fail because they're fundamentally centralized. But people at the time did not care. They were like, you ETH Maxies, just like, do you just want us to pump your bags? I'm trying to like, I'm trying to get mine. You got yours. I'm trying to get mine. Stop like, subjugating me to like, your superior, whatever. And like, we had to learn that lesson is like, yo, like, for and so we've we've adapted our messaging to first get wealthy, then get healthy, as in first, figure out how to make your money. Because then you can have the time and the patience and the capacity to learn about

• 39:21David Hoffman?

  the values of decentralization. But you can't go in the middle of the bull market and be like, you know what everyone needs to stop and learn about today? Decentralization. That doesn't work very well. And so I can definitely resonate with these stories through and through.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I appreciate that that story that you just shared. It was, it took me a little bit while to kind of rock that like, hey, most of the people here are just here for speculation, even the Bitcoiners. You know, there's a lot of people who bought Bitcoin jet and they're like, and they'll start kind of like spouting out some of the Bitcoin narratives, but they'd never really truly understood it. They bought it because their buddy bought it. And Bitcoin isn't in this pure, you know, pure Bitcoin is not, hasn't been Bitcoin has been tainted by speculation. Of course, every asset has. There's nothing wrong with that taint, though. Some Bitcoiners like to believe that, oh, it's singular and it's, and it's, and it's tainted to where it's like the least amount of taint. But look, people are trying to speculate across all of these assets.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  And so our job, your job and my job in our respective communities is to take the, come for the speculation folks and keep them to stick around for either the sound money or smart contract platform. And I think that's ultimately the job that we all play is that we, we take those speculators and we help educate them and tell them how this all works. And so, yeah, I think it's, it's a message people don't want to get, you know, it's, I think there was a, I don't know if it was a meme or a joke in some of the Bitcoin circles, which is like, you know, you're not going to convince someone about Bitcoin if you go to like an NFT meetup and you start talking about like Austrian economics. They're like, this is your conversion rate is going to be at a zero. It's going to be at a basically a zero. And while that might be personally the narrative that I like, for my audience, it's not a narrative

• 41:03Speaker 02

  I'm going to go out there and really hammer on because I just don't think it's going to resonate with the mainstream audience.

• 41:09Speaker 02

  You know, there's a really funny analogy that Pete Rizzo came up with. If we don't want to use the religious analogy for the Bitcoin, the different Bitcoin factions, we could use one that is music related. So he goes, Dan, look, your pop music, your pop music for Bitcoin. He's like, look, your message resonates with a lot of people. But the metal rock guys, the fundamentalists, they're like, dude, your music sucks. It's like watered down. It's too bland.

• 41:36David Hoffman?

  You didn't even write it, blah, blah, yeah, right.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know what I'm talking about versus like the metal rock guys are like, yeah, I want just that. I want that pure metal. Just give it, you know, give it to me straight. Give me some, give me some of the tough love. Give me some, some hard rock. And I think that's a really good analogy, too, of just like, there's this divide in the community as well between like the moderates and rationalists, where I think those, you know, the, what we talked about, like the kind of the more moderate stance are a little bit, a little bit more of like the less fire and brimstone take is what people, that converts the most people. And we probably, you know, I think when we look at over time, how this develops, we can look at different KPIs around this, right? Like follower counts, engagement, et cetera. And you're seeing a lot of these, I would say more moderates or rationalists,

• 42:23Speaker 02

  really, you know, really kind of step out in terms of their performance on social, which isn't a, you know, a hundred percent correlation with quality or actual message market fit. But it does, I think, show to me, show me that there is a, I would say like a pretty big, pretty big group that is more moderate, rationalist rather than fundamentalist, because the moderate or rationalists are getting more and more followers and more and more engagement, which to me represents narrative market fit.

• 42:53David Hoffman?

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• 44:20David Hoffman?

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• 45:05David Hoffman?

  like built-in token swaps, buying and holding NFTs with a gallery view, and support for hardware wallets. But also much more than that, because Brave is shipping new features every single month with a mission to make Web3 easier to navigate for its over 55 million users. Wallet extensions are a thing of the past. So get started with Brave's Web3-ready browser today and experience a decentralized web seamlessly without all the clutter. You can download the browser at brave.com/banklist and click the wallet icon to get started. One thing I want to unpack with you is a little bit of the cyber hornets, right? And I've seen, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, but the cyber hornets tend to be in this like this Bitcoin fundamentalist camp. They're like this unified hive mind body. They're all

• 45:46David Hoffman?

  kind of faceless. You know, when you see them on Twitter. And they also kind of look like the same like frog armies that are in different communities. Or like when Daniel Sesta was at the peak of his like career, like he had his own like army and all kind of looked the same. And then like the moderates are quieter and they kind of lurk. They have their opinions, but they're confident in their opinions. So they don't feel the need to go out on Twitter and shout. And that's, that's who I kind of see inhabiting this like Bitcoin rationalist space is like the, the middle, like the moderate middle who's like just more rational, right? And less extreme and doesn't really have to engage in like these crazy Twitter antics. So would you say like the cyber hornets do lean into this, into the Bitcoin Fundamentalism camp?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, it's hard to say. You've got like, for example, like the plebs and the cyber hornets, which I don't know if those are like exactly the same comparison, but it's basically the idea that you've got a group of individuals who identify as not important people and they do that on purpose because they're like, hey, look, it doesn't matter if you're important or not with the Bitcoin network. All that matters is that you're an individual and that you have, you know, when you run your own full node, that you represent yourself. You don't need it to appeal to any authority. And I actually like a lot of those principles of like reject, reject influencers, reject people of influence, reject companies. And all you need is just your full node where you direct, connect, connect directly with Bitcoin and you don't need to appeal to anyone else. That's like pretty cool. I agree with that to a certain extent, right?

• 47:16Speaker 02

  What I don't agree with with some of it is just like, you know, blindly attacking people for perceived impurities. And I'm not sure if that's, you know, the cyber hornets or plebs who do that more often. But I would say, and I don't want to lump everyone together because I don't think a lot of cyber hornets or plebs really agree with a lot of the Bitcoin Fundamentalism stuff. So that's what's really tricky is like you've got like Maxi's cyber hornets, plebs. And I'm not sure if labeling all of them as the problem or all of them as a problem. I don't think that's super useful because I think a lot of them have different ideologies. But I think the core root of it is that these plebs or cyber hornets represent kind of the common person.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  So I agree with the kind of like core root ethos of what they have. I don't agree with dog piling in, just to dog pile in. So whoever's doing that, whether it be cyber hornets or plebs, or they just dog pile on people. I've seen some really, really horrible things that they've done with certain influencers or certain researchers or core devs even, where they just pile on and attack them. And I think that whether that be Bitcoin or anything else, I don't really like that sort of behavior personally. So I find that pretty distasteful, but I've seen that behavior in other spaces too. So I'm not sure if it's just a Bitcoin thing or something else. But I certainly would not agree with that sort of pylon sort of activity.

• 48:40David Hoffman?

  Who are, are there leaders in this Bitcoin Fundamentalism camp? Like, are there generals of this whole side of thing? I don't know. I'm getting the hint that you don't really want to name names. But are there self, are there self people that are waving the flag, say, hey, we're the fundamentalists, come join?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look, as soon as I name names, then they're going to come out and they're going to create content around it. And that's where it gets a little bit tricky.

• 49:02David Hoffman?

  Can I name names?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  If I do, you can name all the names you want, but.

• 49:05David Hoffman?

  Is Corey Klipson a Bitcoin Fundamentalism?

• 49:08Speaker 02

  I mean, look, Corey and I go back a long time to where, when he first started out with Swan, like I helped him think through a few things. And also, I'm a huge fan of any sort of startup. So I like the idea that people get in the trenches and go fight and make something happen. I don't appreciate how he's attacked me and others. I think it's very unproductive. So I'm not sure if he'd even agree that he's a fundamentalist because the term is still being defined. But if someone were to fit that, I think, you know, I think he's got a pretty high overlap with that. But again, it's not me saying that he's a bad person or something. I just think he identifies more with like, very culturally identifies with some of that vibe and feeling.

• 49:46David Hoffman?

  Okay. I remember I interviewed Corey on my old podcast POV Crypto with CK from Bitcoin Media. And it was all about Swan and what Swan was and education. And he was very nice and cordial. And then, and then we stopped the podcast. He was like, yeah, I had to put on like my professional face because we like just started this company. And then I've, over the next like course of two years, I proceeded to get attacked by him on crypto Twitter. I'm like, dude, you were so nice at in that one podcast. And now I've been pestering him on Twitter to come on Bankless. He hasn't responded to, responded to my requests.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Well, he should come on. I think it'd be a good debate.

• 50:19David Hoffman?

  He should come on. He should come on. Yeah. I'd love to talk to Corey.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, there's, there's sort of a group too, that like, part of this fundamentalist group is like inserting God into Bitcoin, which is, is really bizarre. Like, like God, like God family stake in Bitcoin, which is like such a bizarre.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  It's such a bizarre sort of like framing for Bitcoin. I mean, look, I was around there from the, almost from the beginning. It was guns, drugs and Bitcoin. That was what Bitcoin was about. I mean, very, very libertarian, you know, don't tread on me. I've got my AR-15. I've got my Bitcoin in cold storage. And I believe that, you know, full legalization of drugs. I mean, the first, one of the first use cases for Bitcoin is Silk Road, right?

• 51:01David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  So that, that is OG Bitcoin to me, like super libertarian ideology. And people are certainly.

• 51:07David Hoffman?

  Very rock star Bitcoin, rock and roll Bitcoin.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess that's pop Bitcoin now. It's not, not extreme enough.

• 51:13David Hoffman?

  Right. Right. Yeah. That's why I said rock star, but then I corrected to rock and roll Bitcoins. Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe it's like old rock. I mean, it's like class, it's classic rock. Maybe, yeah, maybe it's more classic rock versus like death metal or something. So, yeah, I think that, you know, this modern day, kind of like God, family Bitcoin. Look, I am, I'm a huge proponent of, of, of strong families. Like, I'm not saying that I'm an anti-family person. Also, if you want to believe in God as a libertarian, I'm like, go ahead. You're, you're free to do that. And, and I will defend, you know, your ability to, you worship freely. Even though I don't agree with it, you know, as a libertarian, these are naturally things that I, I agree with on a, on like a, a personal level. Like people should be able to do these things. And of course dietary, whatever, whatever you're into, I'm totally cool with that.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  I think making that. A part of like a check bark or like taking that ethos and and putting that on top of Bitcoin as like a cultural check mark that you need to have is kind of silly. And if you look at, you know, you know, I would say like follower accounts and engagement with these types of individuals, they haven't grown nearly as fast as the more moderate rationalist camp, because I don't think most of people, most people want to be like, yeah, I've got four kids, I eat steak and I go to church. Like, if that's your life, that's great. I'm not saying that's a bad thing to do. I'm just saying like that shouldn't be the check marks that you have to have to be a good Bitcoiner. So I do think that they're taking their personal lives and extrapolating that to the Bitcoin ethos. And they're free to

• 52:46Speaker 02

  do that because Bitcoin has no marketing machine. Like, it's just, we're all part of Bitcoin's marketing machine. There is no centralized one. So there isn't a central narrative. And that's why I keep going back to like follower accounts and engagement is if you look at more moderate rationalist, I think that their follower counts over time, their engagement over time has been increasing as less and less people resonate with that message. And I don't think, you know, these things are like inherently at odds. You know, if one group wants to, you know, this is like Methodist versus Presbyterian. Like, I don't think there's like this great Methodist or Presbyterian battle going on. It's just more of people want to associate and and hang out with and and work with some individuals that have more of this stance or that stance. So yeah, I don't think it's like this like,

• 53:29Speaker 02

  you know, civil war sort of ask that moment. It's more of just like cultural identity.

• 53:35David Hoffman?

  Right. And I think, of course, Nick Zaba definitely got it right when we talked about social scalability, right? And I actually am ready to move on in this conversation to kind of just talk about the future of Bitcoin and leave maybe the fundamentalist behind, because I do think that time will eventually leave the fundamentalist behinds, simply because they are not socially scalable. Like, if you have to believe in God, steak, family and Bitcoin, you're gonna, you're gonna like, people can like all of those things, but don't want to necessarily have to be confined into that box in order to be accepted by the Bitcoin community. So in for, in order for Bitcoin to scale out to the whole world, it needs to be more socially scalable. So in order to wrap this conversation up, Dan,

• 54:16David Hoffman?

  like, what's at stake here between the fundamentalists and the rationalists? Like, why do we need to fight this fight? Or do we at all?

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. Like, why even bring this up, right? Like, who cares how people identify themselves?

• 54:30Speaker 02

  What I care about the most, my number one objective, is the adoption of Bitcoin and Bitcoin to ensure Bitcoin's success. The code itself, no matter what that code is, but whether it be Bitcoin or Ethereum, is useless without people. People believing in it both bring value into the chain. They bring in adoption, they bring in development, and all of these are critically important for the network effect to continue to propagate and for the blockchain to ultimately succeed. Humans require marketing messages in order to be convinced to try this new thing. Whether that be word of mouth, your friend telling you about it, whether that be an ad from an exchange trying to get you to buy it, or whether that be a webinar, this podcast, any one of these mediums or

• 55:15Speaker 02

  or pieces of content that help you understand it. These are all step forwards in getting and increasing the adoption of XYZ protocol. For Bitcoin, that's the one I care about the most, and that's what I spent my, you know, last 10 years, basically my entire working life focused on. So for me, the success of Bitcoin is predicated upon us developing messages around why Bitcoin is valuable and useful for people and propagating that in a way that reaches the maximal audience possible. So how do we reach the most people with the right messaging is what I care about. Of course, I can't control what anyone else says, nor would I. So people are free to use whatever narratives, whatever narratives they would like, but I think for Bitcoin to succeed,

• 55:59Speaker 02

  this is at least the narrative I'm trying and what I see a lot of others trying. I think that's the maximal conversion sort of narrative we're looking at, like the maximum conversion narrative.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  And I think that's important that it doesn't get diluted or watered down with some of these other as more cultural things where individuals are trying to say that, you know, lending is evil or VCs are evil or

• 56:22Speaker 02

  you know, you're not a Bitcoiner unless, you know, God, fam, the Bitcoin sort of thing. I think that these are fine, you know, it's fine for people to go preach that, but they should, if that is a net detriment to the adoption for everyone else, I think that's a really scary place to be in. And I think the worst part of this too, and so we're all free to choose our own marketing messages, so there's nothing we can do about that. I think the scariest part is more around development. So, you know, chasing like chasing Matt Corallo or like criticizing Matt Corallo because he was slightly critical about these cultural issues. Or, you know, going after XYZ Bitcoin developer because they don't adhere completely to this.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  I think that that's probably the longest term, you know, risk here is that we start attacking companies, people building companies and core developers for not being pure enough. I think that's probably the biggest thing that we're fighting back against on the moderate rationalist side is the fact that, you know, to build, to make Bitcoin succeed, it will have to change slightly over time, whatever those changes may be are in the future. And I'm not trying to say XYZ change needs to happen. It's just more that, you know, for example, like we had Taproot as an upgrade, right? Little things like this will exist over time, or it might be a Bitcoin layer, like layer two, like that was, you know, like Lightning, for example, or side chains like RSK liquid stacks.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  These sort of things represent, I would say like, that's what I talk about when I talk about changes is like incremental changes of like either layer tech or very small changes in layer one. So with these changes and with apps being developed on top of Bitcoin, whether it be a centralized app or a decentralized app, you know, DeFi related, this needs developer talent, funding and a culture that welcomes building. And I think that right now, some of the fundamentalist vibes are very, very kind of anti-building and they're anti-free markets. And so they try to subjectively choose what they think is the right project, like Lightning's okay, but RSK, Lightning and Liquid are okay, but RSK and stacks aren't, you know, like very, very subjective sort of, sort of framing there.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  And I think that that's not detrimental to the space. If there's this subjectivity being pushed on what's acceptable or not, I actually think Tarot is probably one of the most interesting developments on top of Lightning because it's going to force these individuals to reconcile their beliefs where Lightning was okay, but now we're talking about every asset you could possibly want on Lightning. So that also means shitcoins to them, right? So, you know, they have to reconcile. The fact that their pure L2 solution is now being polluted or being used for other types of assets being transferred, whether that be a stablecoin or a company equity or a governance token or something. So I think that that'll be an interesting kind

• 59:14Speaker 02

  of showdown of their beliefs and how they reconcile that. Yeah, so for me, I think it's the anti-building sort of culture that is the biggest net detriment and also the fire and brimstone sort of narrative building. I just don't think that those are net positive. And I think that the rationalists want to go back to sort of the fundamentals of what Bitcoin, not fundamentals, fundamentals is the wrong word, go back to the original kind of Bitcoin ethos of Bitcoin ethos was very open to building. And I think this is a great place to end up in this conversation where like Satoshi was a fan of name coin. You know, so like Satoshi, Satoshi is a fan of name coin. You had Hal Finney talk about,

• 59:55Speaker 02

  you know, NFTs. The early Bitcoin ethos and NFTs actually started on Bitcoin with counterparty, with rare pepe's. People forget that, you know, DeFi and a lot of this stuff actually started in a very early fits and starts on top of Bitcoin. For example, also like join market, which is a market to mix your coins together, AKA coin joins. It's one of the earliest ways to earn yield in a decentralized manner. And that's been around for almost eight years now. So Bitcoin has a lot of this, had a lot of this builder ethos. And I think that through, you know, the fork wars, the block size wars, you know, that was a lot of like intensity around how changes are made. There was, I would say, a slowdown

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  of the Bitcoin building ethos. And that's, for example, why I'm at Trust Machines. I'm part-time over there helping out the marketing org in terms of helping take the products that we're developing on these Bitcoin layers and helping people understand that you can build some of this function, some of this DeFi function on top of Bitcoin. So we certainly can't do all the cool things that you can do on Ethereum or Solana or these other chains, but we're trying to bring back that builder ethos, I think, is the core narrative here.

• 1:01:08David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and I think that's very aligned with a lot of what I'm seeing out of the Bitcoin rationalist camp is that perhaps they feel just a little bit muted in their ability to express their builder drive on Bitcoin. And is that what Trust Machines is really trying to do? Is it's trying to offer surface area for builders to actually latch on to for Bitcoin? Go into Trust Machines a little bit more and what it is and what it does.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, so Trust Machines was started by Munib. Munib is the former founder of Stacks. To be clear, we are not a Stacks accelerator. We're not just building on top of Stacks. What I find most interesting about Trust Machines is that we're building on top of any Bitcoin layer that has the functionality that we need. So that could be Lightning, RSK, Liquid, Stacks, whatever it may be. And we're looking to be the consensus, spelled with a S Y S, of Bitcoin. So building a new suite of Bitcoin applications that are in a, you know, decentralization is always a spectrum, but what you might call DeFi. So building Bitcoin DeFi applications on top of Bitcoin, which to me is really, really cool because I believe that Bitcoin has an asset. I personally really, really love it.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  And I think that Bitcoin lacks a lot of that smart contract functionality that we've definitely seen evidence of usage with on Ethereum and Solana and other chains. And by bringing that back to Bitcoin, I think there's long-term value accrual with that. So at Trust Machines, we're going to be building a suite of products. These products being mostly decentralized products that are built on top of Bitcoin that enable you to lend, borrow.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Right now, there's only a few products. The first one coming out is Zest. Zest is like Maple Finance, which allows undercollateralized lending to occur. Really interesting sort of structure there. Too much to cover in the next two minutes, but really cool product. There we also have Console, which is a decentralized messaging platform or decentralized Discord, if you will. And so those are a taste of the first couple of products that are coming out of Trust Machines. But I'm really excited. For me, I've always worked on C5 products, Kraken, blockchain.com, etc. So for me, this is a kind of a whole new world of looking at DeFi and exploring it. And so, yeah, that's where on the rationalist side, you know, I look at things like

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  yield farming and other things that the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems have and find it both fascinating and something I'd like to try to bring back to Bitcoin if possible.

• 1:03:32David Hoffman?

  So extrapolate out for us into the future, say, Trust Machines is maximally successful. It achieves all of the goals that it wants to achieve. What does that mean for Bitcoin? What does that mean for just the whole ecosystem as a whole?

• 1:03:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like I've said before, we've seen that there is demand for using Bitcoin. Or point A, there is demand to use DeFi applications. We've seen that very, very clearly, whether that be NFTs, yield farming, staking, lending, borrowing. I would include all of these as like DeFi-esque applications. Then we have the usage of Bitcoin on other chains. Wrapped Bitcoin, WBTC with BitGo, that and other wrapped Bitcoin solutions, I think, are very evident of the demand to use Bitcoin in decentralized applications, even with the critical flaw of that Bitcoin being totally centralized and wrapped.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Which some of these are, some of these bridge solutions are, these are more bridges rather than wrapped coins, but I don't want to get into the differences here in the next couple of minutes. So to me, as an individual who's both been in a product and a marketing function for the last 10 years, that's pretty indicative of demand for a solution like that. So by bringing some of that back to Bitcoin, I think we bring back a lot of that speculative interest. If we go back to the casino analogy, Bitcoin only has really one game. It's like spot Bitcoin. It's like spot Bitcoin, yeah, there's futures and options and stuff too, but you know, on the Bitcoin native chain, we don't have like yield farming and NFTs, these sort of things. And I think these speculative games lead to long-term value accrual for the underlying blockchain.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  As the speculative waves for Bitcoin have led to Bitcoin's adoption, these speculative waves occur for other chains and have led to their adoption as well. And so the more games we have to play, the more speculative DeFi-esque games that we have on Bitcoin, the more financial games, if you will, that we can bring back to Bitcoin, I believe that leads to long-term value accrual for Bitcoin. So for me, this is something I want to work on that I believe has a really great impact on Bitcoin's long-term adoption rate.

• 1:05:41David Hoffman?

  And this certainly fits in my model of like how a successful blockchain works because when you have demand for financial games, that ultimately collapses down into demand for block space, which is what keeps a blockchain alive. So Dan, I wish you and Trust Machines the best of luck and thank you for coming on Bankless.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Well, David, thanks for having me. This was a fun journey down the cultural side of the Bitcoin community. And then, yeah, the on the casino games front, I think we have a lot to admire from the Ethereum side in terms of what you guys have done in terms of like NFTs, yield farming. It does accrue demand for block space and that's long term what Bitcoin needs. So totally agree. Thanks for having me and appreciate the conversation.

• 1:06:20David Hoffman?

  Dan, if people, community members, listeners, or other builders are feeling inspired by this conversation and they are interested in learning more about Trust Machines or any other part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, where should they go?

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Trustmachines.co. If you want to come work with us, we've got a lot of roles open on the engineering, design, and marketing front. So we'd love to have you apply. Outside of that, if you're just kind of curious about Bitcoin or Bitcoin DeFi, follow me on Twitter at Dan Held or subscribe to my newsletter, The Held Report. And so with these, if you want to explore Bitcoin DeFi, or just kind of learn more about Bitcoin itself, because you might be listening to this and you're more of an Ethereum guy or a Solana individual, feel free to follow me there. And if you want to learn more about Bitcoin.

• 1:07:02David Hoffman?

  Awesome. Dan, thank you so much for coming. Risks and disclaimers, Bankless Nation. ETH is risky, Bitcoin is risky, crypto is risky, DeFi is risky. No matter what chain it's on, you can lose what you put in, but we are headed west. We're on the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we are glad you are with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcasts, and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and

• 1:07:45David Hoffman?

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