Nic Carter | Layer Zero

Nic Carter is one of our favorite writers in crypto. He's shaped our thoughts on many subjects over the years. He's definitely a Bitcoiner, but is he also an Etherean? What makes Nic tick? Get to know the person behind the persona in this week's episode of Layer Zero. ------- 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🍵 MATCHA | DECENTRALIZED EXCHANGE AGGREGATOR https://bankless.cc/Matcha 🔐 LEDGER | SECURE YOUR ASSETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants ------ 📣 TracerDAO | Perpetual Pools are now Live on Aribtrum! https://bankless.cc/Tracer ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 Nic Carter & Geography 8:51 What’s Your Deal? Ethereum?? 12:39 Shared Ancestry 20:09 Cypherpunk Values 23:28 Working for Bitcoin 25:54 Countering FUD 28:24 Individualism & Value Supremacy 35:00 Conservative & Faith-Based 42:53 Money God 46:35 Affiliation & Identity 52:48 Mountaineering & Fun 56:55 Memory & External Storage 58:40 What’s Nic Doing? What Now? 1:05:22 Kanye & Closing ------ Resources: Nic on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nic__carter?s=20 Castle Island: https://www.castleisland.vc/ Nic's Podcast, On the Brink: https://onthebrink-podcast.com/ ----- 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.

• 0:07David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Ethereum is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the Ethereum community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today, I'm talking with Nick Carter, who I don't necessarily think identifies as part of the Ethereum community, but I think he has impacted it all the same. Nick Carter is a prolific writer, and also content producer,

• 0:47David Hoffman?

  and just a general Bitcoiner in the Bitcoin space. He works at his fund Castle Island Ventures, and also has a podcast, which I listen to the weekly roll-up every single week, which is actually the inspiration for the Bankless Weekly Roll-Up. They call it the Weekly Roundup. And some of Nick's writing and just overall content and conversations has deeply impacted the way I've thought about this industry. It's thanks to Nick that I began to understand crypto and blockchains as political revolutions, rather than just technological ones. And in this show, we actually go and go back even further into the organizational structures of history, and talk actually a lot about religion, and

• 1:31David Hoffman?

  the comparisons, and comparing and contrasting Bitcoin as a religion, and a blockchain as an omnipotent, omnipresent God. And also talk about the differences between the Bitcoin culture and Ethereum culture. And I ask if Nick thought that the Bitcoin community generally is a more faith-based one, as in like they tend to go to church more than other crypto communities out there, and Nick agreed with that point. And so we collectively, him and I, parsed that apart and made some jokes. And then I also asked Nick about, you know, what else does he do? He mountaineers, apparently, and also spends a lot of time in deep thought mode while writing. And overall, it was just a lovely conversation with my

• 2:16David Hoffman?

  friend Nic Carter. So let's go ahead and get right into that conversation. But first, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible.

• 2:26David Hoffman?

  Is taking control of your own private keys, not your keys, not your crypto. That's why so many in the bankless nation already have their Ledger hardware wallets, which makes proper private key management a breeze. But the Ledger ecosystem is more than just a secure hardware wallet. Ledger is the combination of the Ledger hardware wallet and the Ledger Live app. And if you're used to seeing all of your crypto services and favorite D apps all in one place, Ledger is where you want to be. Not only does Ledger let you buy crypto assets straight from the app, but it also hooks into decentralized exchange aggregators like Paraswap, which makes sure that you are getting the best prices on your trades without your assets ever leaving your control. DeFi never stops growing and the Ledger Live app grows alongside with it. So click the link in the show notes to see all the DeFi apps that Ledger Live has

• 3:11David Hoffman?

  and stay tuned as more and more apps come online. And if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, what are you even waiting for? Go to ledger.com, grab your Ledger, download Ledger Live and get all of your D apps all in one place.

• 3:26David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is an Ethereum scaling solution that is going to completely change how we use DeFi. If you've been using Ethereum for the past 12 months, you've probably noticed the high gas fees and the slow confirmation times that have been plaguing DeFi. Too many people want to use Ethereum and it doesn't have enough capacity for all of us. That's where Arbitrum comes in. Arbitrum is a layer two to Ethereum, which means Arbitrum can increase Ethereum's throughput by orders of magnitude at a fraction of the cost of what we are used to paying. When interacting with Arbitrum, you can get the performance of a centralized exchange while tapping into Ethereum's level of security and decentralization. This is why people are calling this Ethereum's broadband moment, where we get to add performance onto decentralization and security.

• 4:07David Hoffman?

  If you're a developer and you want to save on gas costs and make an overall better experience for your users, go to developer off chain labs.com to get started building on Arbitrum. If you're a user, keep an eye out for your favorite DeFi apps building on Arbitrum. Arbitrum has been working with over 300 teams, including Ethereum's top infrastructure projects, and will be opening up to all users shortly. There are so many apps coming online to Arbitrum, so you may want to pack your bags in preparation for the great migration to the Arbitrum Layer 2. To keep up to speed with Arbitrum, follow them on Twitter at Arbitrum and join their Discord.

• 4:44David Hoffman?

  Hey Nick, what's up?

• 4:46Speaker 01

  How's it going, man?

• 4:47David Hoffman?

  Pretty good. How about yourself?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  I'm doing good, man. I just moved. It's been, it's been a lot, but I fished out the cables and we've, we're at the audio, the video, all set up.

• 5:00David Hoffman?

  Am I the first person to get a peek into your new abode?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  The act, yes, I believe so. Yeah. So this is the first piece of video content I'm doing from my new place. So there we go.

• 5:11David Hoffman?

  What, uh, what inspired the move? Why'd you move?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Well, a number of factors, um, but Miami is kind of a good center for.

• 5:21David Hoffman?

  Oh, you moved to Miami?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in Miami. Yeah. So it's a good, just, it's a good zone for crypto people. There's a burgeoning community here. Uh, the Northeast seemed kind of stale, frankly. Um, and you know, heavily sort of locked down and things like that. Um, and Miami is just, you know, it's like a more happening place. Um, although it's very hot here right now. So there's, you know, there's downsides as well.

• 5:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I lived in, um, Boca Raton for like almost three months, right before COVID hit. And like Boca Raton, anywhere outside of Miami is not at all like Miami. Miami is its own thing, but like Florida felt like there were, there were costs to living in Florida. Like the, the Seattle rain that I'm used to is not the Florida rain that you experienced down there.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is absolutely torrential rain. Actually about an hour ago, I kind of just got stuck on the highway. No one could really drive. Um, I mean, I guess, you know, New York just had like incredible amounts of rain. So that's not just, you know, a Florida thing, but yeah, to answer your question, I mean, we operate remotely now as a consequence of COVID. Uh, and so I could operate out of anywhere and I spent four years in Boston. I figured, okay, you know, um, try a new city. Uh, not to mention, you know, crypto has a very heavy Latin American sort of influence. Um, you know, some of the highest penetration rates in the world, uh, for crypto are in LatAm.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  And if you run a LatAm business, you most likely have a Miami HQ or a Miami office. Uh, and so this is another way of getting, uh, sort of in touch, uh, with that sort of genre of entrepreneur.

• 7:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I I kinda had the same exact path, except on the West Coast where like COVID happened. As soon as COVID happened, I wanted to get out of Seattle because I lived in Seattle all my life. So as soon as I was ready, I was like, well, I'm gonna go do exactly everything I'm doing. And I moved down to San Diego. So we were both like had our upper corners moving down to the lower corners, the opposite sides of America. That's kinda funny.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Exactly. I have some catching up to do on the plant front, though.

• 7:37David Hoffman?

  You do, for sure. Florida is a fantastic place to to have plants.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I know, I know. I brought some of them down. They were very much neglected and kinda starved of sunlight. So I'm hoping, you know, they're thing we restored.

• 7:51David Hoffman?

  How are you? How are you gonna deal with the heat? Are you? Are you ready to to handle that head on?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Uh, it's been fine, honestly. I mean, people here just scurry from AC to AC. So they don't spend too much time outside. Uh, the humidity is what, as they say, is what gets you. Um, but I don't know. I I'm like completely fine with it. I mean, yeah, you get sweaty, but, uh, you know, whatever. That's the cost of doing business down here.

• 8:14David Hoffman?

  What about the the East Coast resonates with you? You you seem like an East Coaster.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I

• 8:21David Hoffman?

  I don't know what that means, but but you seem like one.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  So Miami is exactly 1500 miles south by road from Boston's precisely 1500 miles. Uh, so yes, I did want to stay on the East Coast. You know, my family's here on the East Coast. Um, so I was I was gonna Miami's like not that far from, you know, DC where like, you know, my a lot of my family and friends are. So, you know, I I figured I would stay on the coast, but just go to the most tropical part.

• 8:49David Hoffman?

  That's funny. Um, so the the first question I ever gave to you in a podcast was, what's your deal? And then, uh, the first question that Ryan ever gave to you in a podcast was, are you an Ethereum? Uh, and so I kinda wanna get an update on both of those things. Uh, so I think when I asked you what your deal was, was roughly like two years ago. So like, how would you update your answer to your question, what your deal is? What's your deal as of now?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I don't remember what I said back then. What did I say? Do you remember?

• 9:24David Hoffman?

  Uh, yeah, it's whatever you said, it actually like triggered uh for me a complete like reconceptual reconceptualization as to what like crypto is and started to get my mind thinking of crypto as like a political movement more than a technology one. And so you said that like Bitcoin, um, it just instantiates a lot of values that you have, uh, like the unprintability of money, strong property rights, um, and a few things of this nature.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  That's deeply insightful. Uh, two years ago, me was a genius. I don't know about about present day me. I think I've lost some brain cells in that time, but uh, that's still my deal. Actually, that's, that's, that's, uh, that's, that sounds quite insightful. I mean, um, just recently I was thinking about how we keep mistaking technical decisions, uh, or what are actually political decisions for technical decisions. Um, I, I'm sure we'll get into this, but EIP1559, I think it's a great example of that, actually. Um, but yes, I think that's still my deal. Um, you know, trying to peek through the sort of opacity and the veils of decentralization and,

• 10:38Speaker 01

  and get to the fundamental, you know, nature of these systems. Um, and, you know, kind of like resident enthusiast to all skeptic, all bundled into one. Um, so I think that's still my deal. Maybe I'm more open minded than I was two years ago.

• 10:54David Hoffman?

  So, um, when the, the intro to the show is talking to, uh, all the people that compose the Ethereum community. And when I pitched to you coming on to the show, you were like, I'm not sure I count myself to be a part of the Ethereum community. Could you elaborate on that point?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Well, I guess it's like, you know, the same way, like a theater production, like, do you count the guy in the audience who's like heckling the performers as like part of the production? Like, I guess.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  So like you can hear them from the stage. So that's me like, you know, I'm like sort of adjacent. Uh, like occasionally, you know, like making like annoying noises. But you know, I'm, I'm not like an Ethereum per se, but some Ethereum's, uh, you know, tolerate me. So that's good of them. Uh, and some, some just write me off as like a hopeless maxi, which I'm not to be clear. But, uh, you know, uh, so that's, you know, I'm on the sidelines.

• 11:59David Hoffman?

  Do, would you, do you have resistance to being considered part of the Ethereum community? Would you decline that label if you were given it by someone?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Well, an outsider, I mean, that's certainly like in terms of the Venn diagram of the things that I am, like no one would say I'm primarily an Ethereum. But sure, um, I've certainly used Ethereum much more than sort of the average global citizen. And we also have invested in many companies that, you know, build on Ethereum and things like that. So maybe I'm just being too pedantic about the distinctions here. Uh, you know, maybe, maybe you could allege me to be an Ethereum. Who knows?

• 12:39David Hoffman?

  Well, I think that when we talk about like the layer zero, if we really want to zoom out, the layer zero goes all the way back to the cypherpunks. Really like they are the layer zero of the layer zero. I kind of think everything, um, Hazu said that like, uh, crypto culture is downstream of like, uh, of Bitcoin culture. Cause Bitcoin started this thing in the first place, but I actually think Bitcoin culture and Bitcoin itself is actually downstream of the cypherpunks naturally. Right? Like it came out of the cypherpunks. Uh, so everything is kind of downstream of the cypherpunks. Uh, and so, and I, I think one of the cool things that crypto did for the world is it kind of shattered the identity of a cypherpunk into a million different pieces.

• 13:22David Hoffman?

  And allows all of us to become like some sort of cypherpunk. And as we all know, also know, cypherpunks are like zealots, right? Like they really believe in, in what they believe. Uh, and so. When I I see you like endlessly like writing articles, fighting FUD, talking about all the different aspects of the relevant aspects of Bitcoin to the rest of the world. So I kind of consider you to like a Bitcoin zealot, but it's all related. It's all the same community, right? We're all downstream of the cypherpunks. So that's kind of why I'll include you in the Ethereum community, no matter what.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, it's the same way like, you know, sloths and, you know, armadillos are part of this, you know, same animal kingdom. You know, we do, we share a common ancestor. But, you know, like, I think it might actually be a mistake just to say Bitcoins have the sole heritage of the cypherpunks. Like, there's a lot of cypherpunky stuff, which doesn't have to do, you know, nothing to do with blockchains. Like Julian Assange was a classic cypherpunk. And I mean, you know, he was a Bitcoiner, I suppose, still is a Bitcoiner, but he was more about encryption and, you know, revealing

• 14:39Speaker 01

  data and, you know, passing data in a sort of a covert way. Like, that's cypherpunky, for sure, but it's not like crypto. And then, you know, actually, I was reflecting on this recently. You have to think, it's very important to remember the cypherpunks, many of them, so it was a heterogeneous group for start. They were interested in sort of digital caches and cash-like instruments that were natively digital with David Chom, you know, Digicash type things. And of course, they had different opinions about it. But

• 15:20Speaker 01

  a lot of, a lot of it was sort of dollar-denominated, and the challenge was to build the, you know, anonymous cash protocol. And anonymity was an incredibly important part of the cypherpunk doctrine. And then Bitcoin, I would say, is actually really, really different from sort of establishment cypherpunk thought, right? Because Bitcoin has sort of reasonable pseudonymity, you know, not perfect. And

• 15:50Speaker 01

  It is a bearer instrument, you know, it kind of settles digitally. But it's not really that cash like in that it certainly doesn't attempt to have a stable, you know, stable native account or anything. So it's really, really different from the Chomian ideal, right? It's not just an upgraded version of DigiCash or anything like that. It's very much, you know, has these ideas impregnated into it about monetary systems. And that attracted a whole different breed of people, right? So that attracted, you know, like monetarists and like gold bugs, right?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  So those are completely different concepts, but you know, it was so attractive to them that it sort of took flight. And then, you know, somewhere along the way, we forgot, okay, what about fulfilling, you know, the vision of Chom and people that wanted, you know, dollar stable digital bearer assets? And some people have attempted to do this, obviously with public blockchains, but there's just not that much emphasis on that, which I find interesting because if you look at the history of cypherpunk thought, that was probably, I would say, the primary version of digital cash would be something more resembling a stable coin. I know, you know, that might be a controversial idea, but you know, just go back and read,

• 17:20Speaker 01

  read the discourse.

• 17:21David Hoffman?

  Right. I would argue that the emphasis on like a cash instrument, an anonymous cash instrument, was simply confined by the vehicles that these cypherpunks had at the time, right? Like they couldn't even like imagine a non-state money because no one could imagine a non-state money at the time. Really, really the thing that Satoshi really invented was inventing the idea of non-state money and then that, as you said, like the idea is impregnated into Bitcoin. And then, but I would say that like cypherpunk values would be like, aha, we no longer like, we...

• 18:00David Hoffman?

  I would say that the desire for like digital cash, that value is above the desire for self sovereignty and self independence. And I would say that monetary, a monetary policy that's non-state, that's non-sovereign. It more subscribes to the whole values of being independent than they, than they would care about like the digital anonymous cash.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an interesting question, you know, because Bitcoin gives you independence in this whole other domain.

• 18:28David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Which is monetary independence, you know, which is a very important thing, of course. Having a non-discretionary monetary system. But it's almost like that idea was so strong that it blotted out this other idea. Which was, let's, you know, build dollar stable instruments to transact privately online. Which was kind of one of those prior ideas. And, um, you know, that's an idea which is important though, because it's now a matter of public policy.

• 19:01David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, and, and let's say there had been a huge emphasis solely on completely anonymous stable coins instead of. You know, whatever synthetic monetary commodities like Bitcoin.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  We might actually be in a better place with regards to the CBDC discourse, right? You know, like, I don't know what that kind of factual world looks like, but. If we had hundreds of billions of super private, uh, whatever, ZK snarkified, uh, stable coins floating around. That would still be a net win for freedom and, and sovereignty, for sure. Uh, it's just that the main battle has actually been around the monetary discretion front. So I don't know, I'm some, I'm sort of a little bit wistful for, for that other, uh, that other outcome, which we didn't get.

• 19:55David Hoffman?

  You mean the, the private dollars?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. That seems like completely incrementalist and it's like, well, Nick, like actually we have a bigger like battle to fight, which is, you know. Destroying central banks or whatever, but private dollars are pretty important too.

• 20:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah. I would like, I want to get your take on this, is that like, so maybe, maybe I'm falling into a fallacy, but I kind of like the fallacy that I'm falling into, is that like, whatever crypto values we discover as like a community of crypto people, retroactively, we get to say that these are cypherpunk values? Like, everything is downstream, like, whatever values we discover to be valuable is like, oh yeah, these are now cypherpunk values.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yes, and you know, there aren't actually really that many true cypherpunks floating around. I don't, I wouldn't say I'm one, right? I like, don't use PGP, for instance, so, or whatever the new version of PGP is, so, you know, I don't, I don't use Signal enough even, you know, like, I'm not even using the best cryptographic tools we have. So, yeah, I think a lot of people, you know, profess themselves to be cypherpunks and cryptolent, but it's mostly a branding exercise, and a lot of the original cypherpunks just would completely denounce cryptocurrency at this point. A lot of them have, so, you know.

• 21:19David Hoffman?

  Maybe, maybe I shouldn't keep this like, cypherpunk branding like, and held in such high regards, but that's kind of like, why I want to redefine it, right? Like, you know, that we can use it more expansively, because it's such a, generally such a positive term in this industry.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  And, I mean, the cypherpunks was just such a small group of people, and so, you know, the culture just changed, and this is a more mainstream movement, so, you know, the question is like, is that label still, does it have semantic content? Is it a useful label? Or should we rebrand the movement and, and, and call it something else?

• 21:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Well, one thing that crypto has done is, is put a public-private key into the hands of, of everyone that uses crypto, and that is absolutely like, a cypherpunk thing. Like, now we all have private keys, and we can build on top of that and go from there. So like, cypherpunk, I don't think cypherpunks would at all argue that that's a, that's not a cypherpunk thing.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  That's true. It was the consumerification of public key cryptography in a way that vastly outstripped any of the, I mean, I think the biggest public key infrastructure before cryptocurrency would have been PGP. I can't think of anything else. And that was at most, what, 100,000 individuals? And in terms of people that have used a, as they say, non-custodial wallet.

• 22:48David Hoffman?

  Unhosted wallet.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Unhosted wallet, yeah. According to the FATF or whatever, that's how many, how many people do you think that is? Probably well over 50 million, I would say. Like, probably, probably 250 million people have sort of had exposure to the financial assets in some capacity, but most of that, much of that would have been in a hosted manner. Unhosted, I'm sure it's over 50 million. I mean, you know, how many hardware wallets has led to sold, things like that?

• 23:18David Hoffman?

  Right. Well, I have at least four of them, so there's that.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  And MetaMask, they have 10 million monthly actives now, I think.

• 23:25David Hoffman?

  Yep, yep.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  So.

• 23:29David Hoffman?

  One of, one of your, changing gears here a little bit, one of your articles was Bitcoin at 12, where you illustrated Bitcoin as this like cathedral that many different individuals are helping build. And they all know that they're not actually going to be able to see the ultimate like manifestation of this cathedral, because it takes hundreds of years to build a cathedral. And so it's still, it's like dedication out of the values of the builders that actually creates these things, regardless of whether they get to enjoy the fruits of their final projects. So my question to you is, how many hours a week do you work for Bitcoin?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  That's a good question. Probably zero. You know, nothing I do is sort of directly accretive to Bitcoin, I think.

• 24:16David Hoffman?

  Oh, God, I fundamentally disagree with that. But maybe that's just a different perspectives as to what it means to work for Bitcoin.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Does uh, does making content count?

• 24:24David Hoffman?

  Yes, yes. Peter McCormick works for Bitcoin.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Well, I don't know. I probably spend, um, you know, five to 10 hours a week writing something. And then, I mean, you know, does funding Bitcoin startups count? I guess, I suppose.

• 24:41David Hoffman?

  Yes, everything counts.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  That's very lumpy. Some, some months I don't, and then, you know, some other months I'll do three. So, um, I don't know. You know, like, I can't say I'm a full timer on Bitcoin, uh, but I'll, I'll give it at least 10 to 15 hours a week, probably.

• 25:00David Hoffman?

  I, I kind of more or less think that everything you do in your professional life is like working for Bitcoin. Unless I'm missing, I have no idea what it's like to be Nic Carter in the professional life, but like, I think like every single podcast that I make and every single article I write is like me working for Ethereum.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I think I'm maybe more broad in my focus. I mean, uh, you know, a lot of my time is on stuff like CoinMetrics, which does like, I don't know, 50 blockchains or something. So, um, some of it is more broad and, you know, like when, like Civ, Castle Island will fund startups that are just like financial infrastructure for the space at large, whether it's stable coins or, or, you know, cryptocurrency. So, um, I wouldn't say it's confined to Bitcoin, but yeah, it's in theory, it's all sort of generally useful for Bitcoin in some, some capacity.

• 25:54David Hoffman?

  When you were, when the, the whole Bitcoin energy, like FUD, part of the recent history of crypto was going around, I think you were putting out something like, how many articles like a week? Like, what, like, take us through like that whole phase of your life.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Well, that was weird because the FUD somehow reached a crescendo for some reason. I guess it was probably Elon, the Elon effect. But it was like, I, like somehow serendipitously or, or unluckily, uh, ended up being situated in the middle of it. Because I, I guess I sort of like appointed myself like one of the, one of the main like, uh, debaters.

• 26:35David Hoffman?

  Sentinels of Bitcoin Sentinels?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I mean, I'm sort of glad it's over because it was a lot. Um, like, you know, I was like talking to the press like every other day. And it just, it wasn't really sustainable. I couldn't like do my job at the time. And so for the last like two months, I've just been saying no to all press inquiries and all podcasts, with the exception of yours. And actually, I did pomps as well because, you know, he's my neighbor now.

• 27:05David Hoffman?

  Oh, really? I didn't know he's in Miami.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, his studio is here. It's great. So, you know, people I'm friends with all like still, you know, do the content. But basically, I'm sort of like a little burned out from all that stuff. Although I will say, there is one final thing that I've done on the energy question, which is actually more of a paper. And that, I think, will be really useful for a lot of people. Should be out this month. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, I don't know how, how many, like videos and pieces of content, things I did is like an uncountable amount.

• 27:44David Hoffman?

  Do you, do you like enjoy the limelight of being like a Bitcoin spokesperson? Is that like something that's fun for you?

• 27:53Speaker 01

  It felt more like an obligation than anything, I think. Of course, it's fun like when your star is rising. And, you know, I'm sure, you know, you felt the same, but it just becomes a grind eventually. And, you know, at the end of the day, like, there's only so many hours in the week. And the more time you spend being some sort of like unofficial Bitcoin spokesperson, the less time you can spend on real work, whether it's writing or, you know, like funding startups or anything like that.

• 28:25David Hoffman?

  Do you think like, sometimes I kind of think these like, these protocols will lead themselves into their own future. And obviously, these are all, this podcast is called Layer Zero. So it's all about like the people that help these things like direct themselves. But there's also, these are decentralized networks. So many different people are building the cathedral in their own specific way, like to some degree, like what can one person do? Do you kind of think that like if Nic Carter didn't exist, that Bitcoin would more or less be in the same spot? Or do you, do you actually see what you do actually moving the needle for Bitcoin?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  I think Bitcoin would be absolutely fine without me.

• 29:07David Hoffman?

  So why do it all then?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  It was fine before me because I find it interesting.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I think occasionally I have sort of maybe good points to make. But yeah, I think it would be completely fine without me. In fact, you know, I haven't done that much publicly in the last month or two. And everything, you know, the blocks kept arriving.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  You know, like I've noticed that, you know,

• 29:34Speaker 01

  yeah, certain talking points that might have originated with me, like other people just glom onto them and they get a life of their own. They don't need me, you know? And Bitcoin content, like there's an incredibly vibrant ecosystem out there.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Which, you know, like people will, they'll respond to the FOD or they'll, you know, like write interesting things, original ideas, like there's no need for me whatsoever.

• 30:00David Hoffman?

  It's a very Bitcoiner answer. It's like Bitcoin absolutely does not need me. And I, and I think maybe it's, it's kind of interesting in the Ethereum world, we definitely fundamentally accept like the layer zero of Ethereum, as in like Ethereum is, is it's code until it's people. And then like, like you said, before we hit recording, like Hozzy says, like it's, it's always the social layer that is the final, the buck stops at the social layer. But Bitcoiners, I don't think want to have that same sort of illustration for Bitcoin. They want it to stop at the code and, and the code be the thing that propels Bitcoin into the future. And no, Bitcoin doesn't need anyone. Do you, do you agree with that, that perception?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  That certainly is the view, probably the establishment view on Bitcoin. But I would say Bitcoin also has what I call value primacy. So effectively values that supersede the code, especially in a time of crisis. And so even Bitcoin, the code is merely an encoding of the values, but the values are supreme. Especially when there's a conflict between the values and the code, right? So, you know, with the overflow bug, you know, there aren't 184 billion Bitcoins or 192 billion, whatever it was, there's 21 million. So we're going to revert the code and we're going to sort of engineer a fix to that. So I don't know what the next instance is going to be where there's a conflict between the.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  The implied specification, we don't have one exactly, but between the sort of constitution and then the actual, you know, enforcement of that, but Bitcoin also has the social layer, just it's convenient for people to pretend that it doesn't.

• 31:47David Hoffman?

  The, the way I've described Bitcoin's social layer is that the social contract of Bitcoin is to not have one, which implies that there's still a social contract, but like it's still also at the same time diminishes its own role by like, it's like, it's almost like a snake consuming its own tail. It can get almost all the way there, but it doesn't fully be able to like consume itself. That's kind of what I take on the, the social contract.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not just a Bitcoin question. It's any monetary system. Like this is a question that like monetary theorists have puzzled over for decades and decades, really just forever. I would say it's like, how do you, as long as you have money, how do you build a monetary system in which the people in control can't tinker with it excessively or, you know, like can't, you know, can't change the parameters, especially to benefit themselves. And that's why you, you know, throughout history had these movements to get on the gold standard because the gold standard is sort of this, you know, at that point you're beholden to sort of natural law as

• 32:52Speaker 01

  opposed to the law of man, right? So that's the whole point is that you, you, you know, you, you bind yourself to the mast, you sort of voluntarily tie your hands and you say, okay, I'm going to actually give up power here. And but, but that takes like active management, that takes like an ongoing commitment to the surrendering of power. And of course, like the history of the gold standard is a history of governments saying, well, you know, actually it would be really convenient if we could get off the gold standard for a little bit. The most interesting thing to me is that historically, the norm was after departure

• 33:34Speaker 01

  from the gold standard, people would advocate to go back on it. And so you'd have this recognition like, okay, well, you know, we had this like temporary aberration, we went off it, but let's, you know, surrender control once again. And you just had these cycles, you know, on, off, on, off. And so that's just the same thing that's happening with Bitcoin. But you have to have this ongoing vigilance and this commitment to not changing anything. So you do need that sort of continual pressure. And I sort of worry about what happens if we get extremely complacent and say, well, the code is supreme, whatever. What happens if a decade passes and people like,

• 34:16Speaker 01

  huh, like, why did we submit to this like particular parameter in the code again? We should just kind of forget about that. So I do think, you know, it does need a measure of sort of like active vigilance and sort of participation.

• 34:31David Hoffman?

  Hey, guys. I hope you're enjoying the conversation thus far. We are about to get into the comparing and contrasting of religion and Bitcoin and that that whole religious conversation as it relates to our crypto industry. That's what's coming up next. But before we get there, we have to talk for a moment about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. When you shop for plane tickets, you probably use Kayak, Expedia, or Google to compare ticket prices. So why would you limit yourself to just one exchange when you trade crypto? When you make your trades, you want to make sure that you're getting the best possible price on your trade and that you aren't paying high gas costs that you could have otherwise avoided. That's why you should be using Matcha. Matcha routes your orders across all the various DeFi exchanges on Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and gives you the best possible

• 35:16David Hoffman?

  prices without taking any commissions. Matcha has smart order routing that splits your order across multiple liquidity sources if Matcha sees that it gets you better pricing. Trading on Matcha is super easy because it pulls the liquidity for me into a single, easy-to-use platform. Matcha also allows for you to make limit orders on chain. So you can set and forget your DeFi trades, and they will go through automatically while you're away. New to Matcha is an integrated fiat on-ramp. You can purchase crypto directly with your credit or debit card and have that fiat be instantly traded for any token that has liquidity. When you're making a trade, head over to matcha.xyz/banklist and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets.

• 35:59David Hoffman?

  Banklist is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, apply for a grant to Uniswap.

• 36:43David Hoffman?

  Just look at the size of the Uniswap Treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap DAO? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a UniGrant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Banklist and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Banklist. So that's, that's super interesting, this active vigilance thing. And like, I've, I don't know if this is true and you'll probably be more familiar with this or not, but like, the Bitcoin community generally, I think, is a little bit more faith-based than the rest of the crypto world.

• 37:28David Hoffman?

  And actually, he's talking about like, straight up religion here. And like, when you say like, active vigilance, it kind of reminds me of just like, the part of like, religion, organized religion, where like, it was your duty to wake up in the morning and like, remember your faith to God, right? Like, you wake up and, before the Renaissance, right? Like, before it was all about the individual. It's like, you're supposed to wake up and remember that you are subject to God and you need to remember to keep your faith, right? And so like, Bitcoiners and their very, very strong, like, social dynamics are always like, you know, we all need to wake up and remember that the 21 million hard cap is, is most holy and we all need to remember that.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there's a reason that I think Islam means submission in Arabic, if I'm not mistaken. So, you know, religion is all about submission, of course, right? Like, you you accept that you are, you know, infinitesimally small and, you know, unimportant relative to the the highest power. And, you know, in Christianity, you're submitting to like a, you know, very specific set of beliefs. It's the same thing, you know, in I don't want to, you know, push you the religion analogy too far, because I find it sacrilegious sometimes. But, yeah, like Bitcoin is all about submitting to a specific monetary

• 38:51Speaker 01

  schedule. Like, you have to submit. You can't push it. You can't change it. And even if you know you're the most important developer, you probably can't really even tweak it even a little bit. And and there's like, you know, there's a sublimity in submission, I think. If if, you know, if you actually can accommodate it. But if if you can't, then Bitcoin's not for you, you know.

• 39:16David Hoffman?

  Was I right in my would you would you agree with me when I said that, like, the Bitcoin community generally is a little bit more faith-based than the rest of the crypto industry?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  As in, like, actually?

• 39:28David Hoffman?

  Like, do they believe in God?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  More religious.

• 39:30David Hoffman?

  Right, like, yeah, maybe they they tend to go to church on Sundays more than the rest of the of the industry.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that I think so. I think so.

• 39:39David Hoffman?

  Why do you think that is?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Because Bitcoin is more conservative in its sort of core value. You have these clustered values, you know. It's like, I don't know what the right term is, but there's this there's this sort of thing about society where if you know one Belief of a person, you can predict the next 15 beliefs, right?

• 40:05David Hoffman?

  Even if those beliefs are completely unrelated to each other.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely.

• 40:08David Hoffman?

  On the surface.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Genus. Yeah, like, for instance, like one's opinion of like sunscreen or like seed oils or, you know, eating meat or those are like very like, you know, kind of like meme, meme things. But so like, and the reason they all map is because those values are all expression of some sort of like deep, underlying, you know, set of beliefs like, am I fundamentally, you know, like a conservative, like not in like the political sense, but you know, like, do I fundamentally believe in like hierarchy and stability and like keeping things the same? Or do I believe in progress and shaking things up and, you know, et cetera?

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And so Bitcoin is not big C conservative, but I'd say it's little C conservative in that,

• 40:56Speaker 01

  you know, I view it as an attempt to restore the, you know, the, not the, not the, you know, the form of a gold standard, not the features of a gold standard, but the environment that the gold standard, you know, facilitated. And so that's why I call it, you know, it's a paradox because it's like technologically progressive, but in some senses, you could say it's maybe not regressive, but like an attempt to reclaim something that has been lost.

• 41:28David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  So some people call it revanchist, like you're reclaiming lost territory.

• 41:32David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And so that, you know, that's the paradox of Bitcoin.

• 41:36David Hoffman?

  Right. It's technologically forward, but it restores more ancient values.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  That's the idea. Yeah, that's the idea. So we'll see.

• 41:45David Hoffman?

  That's crazy.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  I know. It's one of my favorites.

• 41:51David Hoffman?

  Uh, yeah. If you don't mind me asking, do you go to church?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Um, not currently, but I am religious for sure. I also just moved here, so I need to locate a good one.

• 42:02David Hoffman?

  Ah, as someone who's literally never been to church, other than like touring, like, how do you, how do you choose a church? Like, how do you, it feels like if we want to map this onto the crypto world, like you, it's like you picking a tribe, right? The crypto world is easy to pick a tribe. You generally fall right into one. Um, how does it work in, in like religion?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Well, you're born into it, you know, so you don't, you don't typically like, you know,

• 42:28David Hoffman?

  I guess, yeah, right.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  You don't like lay out a map of all the schisms in Christianity. You're like, okay, well, you know, I believe in predestination, but like, you know, like these are the gospels, you know, you don't pick and choose that way.

• 42:43David Hoffman?

  Do you, do you have a, what's your specific denomination?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Well, I was baptized into the Anglican Church in England. And so in the US, that would map onto the Episcopalian Church.

• 42:56David Hoffman?

  So Amin Soleimani, who's one of like my own like personal heroes in this space, coined this term money god. And it's simply, uh, you know, something that uses control theory or has automated away all of the governance functionalities. And so like, uh, on Ethereum, we, these would be in the application layer. But Bitcoin is itself one instantiation of this, right? Where like, we've created Bitcoin, we've cast it away into existence. And now it controls us, right? Like it's autonomous and we can't control it, but it determines our lives, right? Like it has a monetary policy, it's a supply schedule and it imposes those values upon its, its users, right?

• 43:41David Hoffman?

  Its subservants. Uh, and, and so like, do you serve two gods?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  You know, this actually came up in a debate I had with Francis Coppola, the infamous no-coiner, because she said, as a Christian, she rejects Bitcoin because it's, you know, this doctrine of absolutism, but only, only God Himself, only Providence is absolute. And I was just kind of baffled by this, but, but maybe, maybe there's something to that. I mean, you know, like I see Bitcoin as a human institution. It's just we're trying to do something inhuman. We're trying to create an institution that supersedes our sort of

• 44:31Speaker 01

  base human desires. So in that sense, you know, there's, there's a similarity, but it's, it's not divine. I mean, it may, you know, in my view, sort of it inspires feelings of sublimity and, you know, something truly awesome in sort of the Baroque meaning of the, of the word awesome, you know, inspiring.

• 44:50David Hoffman?

  Grand, yeah.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  And, and, you know, you might, you might go as far as to say it's sort of, wow, it's incredible that, you know, such a creation exists, like this is evidence, you know, of, you know, of, of something greater than humans. Like, it certainly inspires those kinds of feelings, I'd say, to a lot of people. But, you know, it's fundamentally a human creation. I, I believe, you know, I believe that Satoshi was a human. Who knows?

• 45:19David Hoffman?

  The, I think you can take this even further, right? Because like, some of the properties that are, are discovered in, in good blockchains that are actually like alive ecosystems, like Bitcoin and I basically only other included Ethereum, is that like, well, they're, they're omniscient, they know everything, because all of the state that is held in Bitcoin. And so Bitcoin remembers all. They're omnipotent in the fact that like, you must comply with the rules of Bitcoin. There's a few more Omni words that if I had, like, if I could think of them, I would, I would, but like, it, these, the properties of these things do approach some of like the words that we use to describe like actual God.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  I think the same part of your brain probably lights up when you think about it.

• 46:05David Hoffman?

  Probably, yeah.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, we might be torturing the analogy a little bit at this point.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  You know, Bitcoin doesn't make any metaphysical claims.

• 46:15David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  As far as I know, as far as I know, but you know, like, there's a great degree of mystery and and like intrigue in the origins of Bitcoin, which I've always held up as a strength, you know, I think it'd be, it would be tedious and boring if we knew, you know, what the origin was. I hope we never find out.

• 46:39David Hoffman?

  Well, if you want to hop onto different subjects, let me know, but I'm going to keep going on this for one last little bit. And so like, there's the claim that like, the story of like, the Christian God or the Catholic God, or even all religion, more or less, it's like, and the same thing as this Layer Zero podcast, it's people all the way down. And so like, the Bible was written by humans and was composed by humans to tell a story of like, a holy figure. And, and as somebody who didn't grow up with religion, but then discovered it, discovered how to appreciate it much later in my life, like, to me, the Bible is just a story of, it's a collection of fables, of stories as to how to live like, a good life and have good values.

• 47:24David Hoffman?

  But the, all these stories were composed by people, right? In the same way that like, you know, Bitcoin is a, is a system of human, that instantiate human values, and same thing with Ethereum. Like, it can be argued that like, you know, the way that we discovered religion is that like, we discovered all these things that are fundamentally capital, capital G, good, and then we created like, a network around them. And so like, these conclusions, while we are definitely like mutilating this metaphor, like, it also keeps on going.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's like two, I guess, there's like the secular description, the charitable secular description of the Bible, which is it's sort of a set of heuristics that we've learned over thousands of years and incorporated into stories. And then, you know, it's guidance of how to live. And then there's, you know, I would say the religious version, which is it's genuinely the received word of God. So I guess if you use that first definition, the metaphor, the analogy probably makes a bit more sense. Although the rules encoded in blockchain is very simple. It's like you have to craft transactions this way for them to be valid. And blockchain doesn't care about anything else. So it's really

• 48:36Speaker 01

  just, well, I suppose there's other rules relating to monetary policy and things like that.

• 48:40David Hoffman?

  Right. And that does feel like how the 21st century version of religions is like, now we've actually removed the subjectivity from a religion. And now we actually have objective properties about these things. If we want to consider Bitcoin and Ethereum a religion, which I kind of do.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  I don't know. I haven't decided. I'm mixed. I'm mixed on the on the merits of that. I mean, religion is not very popular these days in the US. Like Zoomers are mostly agnostic or atheists.

• 49:10David Hoffman?

  But also Bitcoin or Ethereum or crypto doesn't fit into the old categorization of categorizations of religion. It's like very much like a neo religion. In the same way like Bitcoin and Ethereum are like neo nation states.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think my preferred analogy would be a political one. So the nation state one, which you've done a number of times. People feel a religious zeal perhaps towards their nation state or their tribe or their ethnos, you know, that we see for sure. I mean, people, that's probably the primary cause of people living and dying and fighting, you know, becoming soldiers and going to war and things like that. So again, though, you know, blockchains are not complete in the sense that a nation is, you know, they don't. But, you know, I think that's probably my preferred analogy. Like, I can certainly see that, you know, there's, you know, 100 million or so people worldwide

• 50:04Speaker 01

  that kind of subscribe to Bitcoin Nation. I like Balaji's conception, I think, you know, the crypto capital versus the whatever, the woke capital versus communist capital. I think that's really, really apt.

• 50:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's funny. I actually just read that like for the first time like last night. So, good timing, good timing for that. I would say that the reason why I frequently use like the nation state to like analyze Ethereum is like what it is. Whenever I do that, like, I also go backwards and say, well, the nation state is just like the next iteration of religion.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Well, the nation state now is sort of becoming obsolete too, I would argue. I mean, like, if you just look at the crypto community, like, you have people that have much, much more in common with each other, even though they, you know, are, it's a global audience fundamentally, than they have with their sort of fellow countrymen. And that doesn't just happen, you know, along the line. And I think that's like the truest definition of the metaverse, which is, you know, a congregation of people that are gathering in a certain venue, where that new digital typically identity supersedes the old identities that

• 51:22Speaker 01

  they sort of had, or subscribed to. And that could be crypto, could be like trading JPEGs back and forth in discords, or it could be whatever, like Roblox. I'm not even sure what Roblox is, but I'm just gonna say it because I think kids like it. Or, you know, Fortnite or whatever, so. Like if you were to poll 100 Zoomers and say, what's your primary affiliation? I think they wouldn't say like American necessarily, or like a good chunk of them would say something else.

• 51:56David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah. I mean, that's always the, that's been the early promises of the internet, right? Is like poll all like-minded people regardless of their physical locations in the world, and regardless of where they are in relationship to borders, and allow them to meet on the internet and group together according to like, alike values and like interests. And it also just so happens, we have this new crypto, crypto thing that is instantiating specific values upon like internet digital objects that we can all like rally behind.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Well, the crypto affiliation is the strongest because it's deeply tribal. The stakes are enormously real. It's financial in nature. So it's a very grown up game, but it's also, you know, very fun and, and, you know, youthful and, you know, and like, you know, gamified, but, uh, you know, the stakes are incredibly real.

• 52:51David Hoffman?

  So when you manage to not do work and, and including the work that you do for Bitcoin and the work that you don't do for Bitcoin, whatever you call work, what happens? What happens after you do work? What happens when it's playtime? What do you do?

• 53:06Speaker 01

  So I try and carve out, I would say, one week in a month to like go climb a large pile of rocks.

• 53:15David Hoffman?

  Is this hiking or rock climbing?

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Um, like mountaineering, I would say, which, which includes some technical climbing, but typically you're just hiking uphill. And I like that because it's an excuse to turn off my phone for two to three days. Not that I don't have service. Typically, unfortunately, you know, it's like hard to get lost anymore. It's like all, all these mountains, like you think they wouldn't have service, but they do. And it kind of like takes the joy out of it a little bit. But, um, yeah, I like it because it's an excuse to just turn off my phone. Uh, and, you know, suffer basically. I mean, that's what mountaineering is. It's suffering at altitude. Um, and so I I attempt to do that once a month, but I can't always.

• 54:02David Hoffman?

  Yeah. How are you going to do that in Miami? There's not many mountains around you.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  No, I have to fly. Typically, I would fly out west and do it.

• 54:09David Hoffman?

  Oh, sure. You come out west to go to go hiking?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, uh, where are you now? You said you're in Southern California.

• 54:16David Hoffman?

  San Diego, yeah.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I was like in your neck of the woods a few weeks ago.

• 54:20David Hoffman?

  Oh, no shit.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So next time I'll let you up. But you know, back when I lived in the Northeast, the mountains were there, but they were all small. Uh, the best ones are obviously out west.

• 54:30David Hoffman?

  Uh, like where would you go? Cascades? Rockies?

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Uh, I was most recently in the High Sierra. Um, and before that, I did Shasta up in Northern California. So we're gonna. Yep. We're gonna try some harder ones soon. Glaciers.

• 54:44David Hoffman?

  If you ever, if you ever, yeah, anywhere, anywhere on the, on the West Coast, if you ever go mountaineering, like in this within, I want to come.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:50David Hoffman?

  What do I need to know that that's not just, because I'm, I'm, I've done an insane amount of like actual backpacking trips where I put a. Tent in my backpack, but like, what do I, what am I not prepared for if it's mountaineering?

• 55:02Speaker 01

  So that's the essential skill is just being able to, you know, walk with a forty, fifty pound pack. Um, but. You know, if it's, there's snow involved, you have to know how to use crampons and fix them to your, uh, boots. You like learning to self arrest with an ice axe is pretty essential. That's easy enough to learn. And then glacier travel, um, on a short rope, um, and, uh, you know, crevasse rescue. That would be like the next skill to learn.

• 55:32David Hoffman?

  But if somebody, if somebody in my troop knows how to do it, do I know how to, need to know how to do it?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should know. Yeah, because you might have to save them, right?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  And then like anything to do with cold weather, just like gear management, cold weather, camping. Um, if you've done that, you'd be good.

• 55:51David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I mean, there aren't that many mountains in the lower forty eight that are really going to imperil you.

• 55:55David Hoffman?

  Yeah, this is, this is, this is right up my alley. I'm a big fan of the concept of suffering. I think pain is how you, how you improve yourself. So it's funny that you brought that up.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  I have a good friend that he divides fun into like three typologies. Have you heard of this? Like type one fun, type two fun. It's like. Type one fun is just like straight pure hedonic fun, you know, like, I don't know, like doing coke or partying or something.

• 56:19David Hoffman?

  Drugs for dopamine.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  Type two fun is like. You know, it's like actually kind of challenging in the moment. It might not seem that fun, but afterwards you're sort of glad you did it.

• 56:29David Hoffman?

  Endorphins?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, maybe like, you know, running a 10K or something. And then type three fun is just miserable in the moment. Feels terrible. And then I suppose upon reflection, you might be like, oh, maybe I want to do that again. That's where I'd put most mountain air experiences.

• 56:47David Hoffman?

  Nice. Yeah. Maybe meditation as well, because whenever I try and meditate, like, I fucking hate it. And then I'm

• 56:53Speaker 01

  I can't do it.

• 56:54David Hoffman?

  At the end, I'm like, oh, I guess that was okay.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I'm like the worst tech bro ever. I can't meditate.

• 56:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  I don't know. Can't do it.

• 57:01David Hoffman?

  Have you? Okay. So here's something I've noticed ever since, especially it started happening before crypto, but as soon as it's, as soon as I got into crypto, it got even worse. It's just like, my memory is absolutely shot. And I think it's just because I have so many devices around me that I just use to outsource all my memory functions. And so like, as a muscle, the atrophy is just endless. Have you noticed anything like this?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  That's an interesting concept. So as you have more external storage available to you, you just externalize more and more.

• 57:31David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  And then eventually your brain just becomes an index of how to find things.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  So we're, we're, we've effectively become sort of like cyborgs a little bit.

• 57:44David Hoffman?

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  We've uploaded part of our, I mean, I guess that's true. Like you've uploaded part of, you outsource some of your consciousness. I mean, like, that's kind of like, you know, we don't remember maps of cities anymore because we have GPS.

• 57:58David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  And we don't remember like trivia or like facts about the presidents because you have Google.

• 58:03David Hoffman?

  Right. Exactly.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Uh, so I do worry about that, actually. Yeah, certainly. Like, honestly, I think mentally speaking, I'm at my worst. Like I've been on a steady decline since high school. Like I think high school me would have just like blown me out of the water when it comes to like any

• 58:18David Hoffman?

  Mental sharpness.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Actual test.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  I think everybody feels like that. I don't know. I don't think it can be reversed.

• 58:26David Hoffman?

  I yeah, I definitely remember being more mentally sharp, but I'm definitely also much more wise than I ever was. So like

• 58:32Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 58:33David Hoffman?

  There, there, there is the trade off there, like mental acuity. Maybe it's not there, but like wisdom is wisdom levels are off the charts. Hopefully.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  That's the trade. That's the trade we all make.

• 58:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Okay. But you so it's the weekend, but you're not, you can't go mountaineering. So what are you doing in Miami this weekend?

• 58:49Speaker 01

  I'm still trying to figure like, trying to get settled here. There's like a lot of

• 58:55David Hoffman?

  More generally.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Stuff to do. Um, I would, I'm actually not a big beach person, um, but I would try and do something outdoorsy probably if I had a spare weekend. I mean, like, the truth is that I reserve my weekends often for writing, um, because I can't get it done.

• 59:12David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Uh, I can't get into like a deep work, uh, like, uh, you know, non actual work, work, uh, phase during the week. So that's when I do probably 70% of all my writing would be on like a Saturday or Sunday morning. Um, but yeah, relax, go to the gym. Uh, like go to the sauna, um, write, you know, like go out to eat, like, you know, really boring stuff, but, um, stuff I can't do during the week as much.

• 59:42David Hoffman?

  Sure. Do you? Okay. Do you actually like Coors Light or is it just a meme?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  I actually quit drinking. So, um,

• 59:48David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  If I, if I were to drink, I would drink Coors Light, but I'm much more focused on, on, uh, sort of being healthy these days.

• 59:58David Hoffman?

  Well, I have, when I, the way that I get through writing is I just brute force, brute force the writing by ingesting beer. So we are on opposite end of the spectrum there.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I used to do that. I mean, when I was an undergrad, uh, that's how I wrote most of my philosophy papers, uh, you know, like, uh, right trunk out it sober.

• 1:00:15David Hoffman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Um, but, uh, yeah, the, I don't know. These days, like you have to try and get yourself into the flow state somehow. Um, and so these days I don't try and rush it. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not on a contract. I don't have to write

• 1:00:30David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  every weekend or whatever. So I just, now I just kind of wait, uh, for inspiration, I suppose.

• 1:00:37David Hoffman?

  So as, as, uh, 2021 is coming to a close with the last quarter remaining here, like, what do you, what do you, what do you see on the horizon for our industry and for Bitcoin?

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Well, Bitcoin is just becoming much more sort of predictable and like widely understood. You know, things like Cuba passing a Bitcoin law like that's probably honestly not net good for regular Cubans or Cuban Bitcoiners, but it just cements the notion of Bitcoin as sort of this, you know, like not that interesting monetary alternative. And that's, I would say, good for Bitcoin overall. Like Bitcoin, like gold, gold is extremely boring, but it's worth 11 trillion dollars. Bitcoin is just going to grow up and we're going to look back at these days with nostalgia and be like, wow, that was like such an exciting

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  time. So we should be grateful to be living through it, frankly. But, you know, the future of Bitcoin is just going to be this onward march towards respectability. And there's nothing wrong with that. It just won't be as exciting in 10 years' time. In the near term, you know, I've always kind of been more on the conservative side in terms of, you know, being wary of financial regulators. At this point, I think they've signaled to us that they're gonna try something, whether it's Treasury, whether it's SEC, whether it's some other agency. There's no doubt in my mind now that there's some reprisal

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  coming from the state. I think we can survive it. I think it's likely to be healthy, but I think it's also going to be extremely painful. And so I don't know what form it's going to take, whether they're going to target exchanges, smart contract developers, you know, entrepreneurs, funds. It's not clear to me yet, but it is clear that there's sort of a lot of political capital behind this anti-crypto movement. And now, of course, you know, we're looking at a time of, you know, like relatively rare unity at the state level. You have the president, both houses of Congress are blue.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  That may not be the case in sort of a year's time after the midterms. So this might actually be sort of like their shot to, you know, do something extremely harsh. Maybe in a year or two, like we'll be in better stead in Washington. But yeah, the, you know, the crypto industry is like, what, 60% America based? It's like very exposed to what happens in the US. And so I think it could be like a really, really, really tough 18 months. And, you know, I would steel yourself for that, but that doesn't mean that, you know, what we're building is invalid or isn't going to work.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  It's just, we might have to, you know, reimagine what it's like to build these, you know, uncensorable protocols. And, you know, critically examine some of the, you know, the, the choke points, which is, you know, what they're going to go after. They'll go after things that give them strategic leverage, whether it's stable coins, exchanges, whatever. And so, you know, it'll be a process of also, I think, learning about what, what those exposures are. And, and maybe we'll, we'll sort of think twice about having a stable coin based liquidity for everything. You know, something like that.

• 1:04:21David Hoffman?

  What do you think is at more risk Bitcoin or DeFi?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  I think like Bitcoin will like suffer collateral damage just by association. I think like lightning operators would be probably, you know, lumped in with DeFi. So like if something adverse happens to like DeFi, it would suffer in that respect. It seems to me that DeFi like Dex's would be like a primary target, at least just looking, reading through the lines, like looking at what Gensler's had to say.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  You know, some of the tone I'm seeing from people that are actually talking to, you know, these officials, it seems to be pretty, pretty down in the dumps. As far as I can tell from my position, I don't really have, you know, any privileged information whatsoever. But yeah, it seems like a lot of it would be targeted either at the like brokerage industry or DeFi directly.

• 1:05:26David Hoffman?

  Who's your favorite music artist?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  All time, I'm a huge Beatles fan.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I love Pink Floyd as well. The Eagles.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Led Zeppelin. More contemporary, I like Tim and Paula. And I'm a big Kanye fan as well. He had a good new album.

• 1:05:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Oh, that's I the other more frequent take I've heard is that the album's not that good. I haven't listened.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  I liked it. I've been listening to it. You know, it's very like, very, you know, Christian in nature. Which I like, you know, it's like Kanye's work has been sort of like, it's always like had some like gospel elements, but it's like unabashedly religious now, which, you know, like I like.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  But yeah, I actually think there's like some good tracks on there, too.

• 1:06:19David Hoffman?

  I'll have to give you a listen. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for coming on Layer Zero and let me pick your brain.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Thanks, David. Maybe you can come on on the brink. We'll get you on there.

• 1:06:28David Hoffman?

  I've always wanted to, to be honest, so.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  It's been great, man.

• 1:06:35David Hoffman?

  All right. Cheers. Thanks, Nick.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Take care.

• 1:06:38David Hoffman?

  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, podcast 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 even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me

• 1:07:19David Hoffman?

  Anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks, everyone, for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.