#667 Bitcoin Maximalism In Crypto w/ Udi Wertheimer

Udi Wertheimer is a bitcoiner. He spends most of his time as an independent developer and consultant. In this conversation, we discuss bitcoin, ethereum, smart contract platforms, maximalism, investing in assets vs believing in them, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of bitcoin today. ======================= Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments, commerce and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin (USDC), the fastest growing, fully reserved and regulated dollar stablecoin in the world. The free Circle Account and suite of platform API services bridge the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading, DeFi, and NFT marketplaces. Create seamless, user-friendly, mainstream customer experiences with crypto-native infrastructure under the hood with Circle. Learn more at circle.com ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Udi Wartheimer is a Bitcoiner. He spends most of his time as an independent developer and consultant. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, smart contract platforms, maximalism, investing in assets versus believing in them, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of Bitcoin today. I really enjoyed this conversation with Udi, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Circle. Circle is a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public

• 0:45Anthony Pompliano?

  blockchains for payments, commerce, and financial applications worldwide. Circle is also a principal developer of USD Coin, or USDC, which is the fastest-growing, regulated, fully-reserved dollar stablecoin in the world, now standing at more than $15 billion market cap, and is adding nearly $300 million of net new digital dollars in circulation every single week. The free Circle account and suite of platform API services bridges the gap between traditional payments and crypto for trading DeFi and NFT marketplaces. You can learn more at circle.com. Again, circle.com. Go check it out. They've got a massive business with that USD coin. It continues to grow very, very rapidly. I'm impressed by the way that they're approaching it, and I think that you'll be impressed as well. So go check them out.

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Next up is LMAX Digital. They're the number one institutional crypto exchange, offering clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet. It's underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. Leveraging the LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology, LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. If you've never heard of LMAX Digital, it's because you're probably not an institution. They're the number one crypto exchange for institutions. They don't serve retail. They feature a central limit order book, streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, all paired with US Dollar, Euro, and Yen. LMAX Digital, they're secure, they're liquid, and they're trusted. If you're an institution

• 2:13Anthony Pompliano?

  and you're not using LMAX Digital, you should definitely go talk to them. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Alright, let's get into this episode with Udi. I hope you guys enjoyed this one.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

  We should clear the air to start with. You're a Bitcoiner. Tell us your Bitcoin journey, how you discovered Bitcoin, and what got you so interested in the beginning?

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, you know, I'm not sure, and I hope people don't try to catch me on the dates to get some gotchas, but it's probably like around 2013 or 2014, I kind of first really looked into Bitcoin. My background was software engineering, so I was mostly excited about the technology that made it work. And like so many other people, I just couldn't, you know, I couldn't stop reading about it for many, many nights in a row. And at some point, I just, you know, I felt like there was something about it. I couldn't explain it. There was something about it I had to get in. And I've been learning about it ever since. Like, it turns out, I'm feeling like today that I had no idea what I was

• 3:43Speaker 02

  talking about when I was trying to explain to people why I was excited about Bitcoin back then. Like, my opinions changed drastically, but I still think it's one of the most important human inventions ever.

• 3:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So, when you think about how to evaluate where Bitcoin is today, so 2013, 2014, whenever you first started looking at it, it was much smaller, much less people interested, etc. How do you look at from that point to today? Are we winning yet? Is global adoption here? Do we still have work to do? Like, just walk me through the current framework you look at as to where is Bitcoin today?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we, you know, while we definitely have a lot of work left to do, and I think Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow, it's very hard. If you've been around since 2013, and definitely people who have been around much earlier than that, like, you know, like 2011, 2010, it's very hard to look at Bitcoin now and not feel like we already won, you know? Like, just this last year, the amazing things that happened, like, you know, like El Salvador, like, we actually have an actual government, an actual country that's embracing Bitcoin fully. That was unimaginable, you know, like, that was, that was one of those things that we were dreaming about, and everyone was telling us we were crazy. So you see that happening, you cannot not feel like we've won already, you know?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  That said, there's definitely a lot of room to grow. I think that, I think that Bitcoin is the best money there is. At the very least, it should be as big as gold, at least. And I think it can get much bigger. So there's definitely, there's definitely a room to grow, for sure.

• 5:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And then, when you look at the things that still need to be worked on, when you say, hey, here's like, the big bodies of work that Bitcoin still has ahead of it, what are the things that immediately pop to mind?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  You know, like, on the technical side of things, it feels like, and I'm like a technical guy, so it feels like, one of the things I'm concerned about is like, privacy, you know, like, if, on the surface level, the privacy with Bitcoin seems like it's strictly worse than what it is with, like, say, cash. And I think if Bitcoin becomes, you know, a way that everyone uses to transact, that can become a problem. We definitely need to fix that. And, you know, things like Lightning could improve that. That's one thing. I think we, I think we also maybe have, we might have to, like, rethink how...

• 6:11Speaker 02

  How we position Bitcoin and how we how we talk to you how we evangelize it really, which is, you know, something I've done, a lot of people have done for many years now, something you've done very successfully. I think, you know, institutions are obviously very interested, but there's also the non-institutional crowd. And I think a lot of them are asking themselves like, well, why should I buy Bitcoin if I can buy Doge? And questions like that, which are, I mean, I think we need to do a better job answering those questions. And and and that's something I've been focusing a lot lately on because I think Bitcoin can be something that, you know, every every human on earth has a certain amount of their portfolio in Bitcoin.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  I think this is where Bitcoin should be going, and I think we can get there. But we need to we need to do a better job of explaining why.

• 7:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's just dive right in, rip the Band-Aid off. I know you've got a ton of thoughts on maximalism, some good, some bad. When you think about Bitcoin maximalism, how do you evaluate what parts of it are good and what parts of it are maybe not so good or need to be changed or improved?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  So let's let's start with the good. I mean, I think that the, you know, a lot of people and myself included have this idea that that it's it's a good idea to have most of your portfolio in Bitcoin. Maybe all of it. Some people are like, you know, I'm just gonna have, I'm only gonna own Bitcoin. And I think that can be reasonable. I'm not trying to to change people's minds about that. If if that's what someone wants to do, I mean, good for them. They'll probably do well. I don't think they'll regret it, in my opinion.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  However, and and and also, you know, like, we need, we need to have like a very strong foundation of people who.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  You know, who refuse to do things like change the Bitcoin monetary supply, right? In the end, the reason that Bitcoin is as stable and predictable as it is is because everyone who's a part of the Bitcoin network knows that there will only ever be twenty one million coins created and they will never agree to any change to that policy. And that's why Bitcoin is so stable and predictable, unlike all the other cryptocurrencies. Um, so we need that kind of fierce and stable base of supporters, and that's great. Um, however, there's also like this subculture of of maximalism that that seems to believe that, you know, you just need to, if if anyone else is interested in anything else that's not Bitcoin,

• 8:50Speaker 02

  then they're a scammer and they need to be told they're a scammer, they're scamming people. And maybe they're stupid too, and they're just evil and immoral. And that that that subculture, I believe, is is pretty small, but it's also very loud. It gets a lot of attention. And lately I've been seeing, you know, I'm talking to a lot of the people who only got risk interested in Bitcoin the last year, right? Um, there there are so many, so many of those. And when they hear the word Bitcoiner, it seems like a lot of them kind of identify Bitcoiners with the small subculture of very toxic people who just call everything a scam. And that kind of, you know, it kind of repels them, it kind of makes them think that maybe they shouldn't look at Bitcoin right now because it's just

• 9:35Speaker 02

  the thing is, you know, people, people uh who look at making any investment like crypto or any other form of investment, uh, you need to understand their motivation, you need to understand why they want to do this. And it seems like the toxic maximalists just don't understand them. They don't understand the motivation of this new crowd. And because they don't understand them, it's going to be very hard for them to uh evangelize Bitcoin to this new crowd, um, just because they're not understood. I think a lot of, a lot of, a lot of people in this small subculture of Bitcoin maximalists, of toxic Bitcoin maximalists, they're like saying, "Well, I don't need to look into what's going on in NFTs. I don't need to look into what's going on in DeFi.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  I don't need to look into what's going on in all of those things, because they're scams." But because they're, because they're not looking at them, they have no idea how to approach this new crowd, this huge, huge new crowd of people who might be interested in Bitcoin.

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think about-

• 10:34Speaker 02

  So I think that's a mistake.

• 10:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's take NFTs or DeFi as, as an example, right? Because I agree with you that there's an overuse of the word scam, right? Or scam, everyone uses that word and somehow it's been, you know, kind of morphed into the use in, in the terms of, "I don't agree with that," or "I don't think that's gonna work." And they yell and scream scam. And that's probably a little bit of like the boy who cries wolf. It loses the veracity of the word when you just use it for everything, even the things that aren't necessarily a scam. Like, it's important to call out scams and so let's wait till there's actually scams and then call those out. But when you look at the NFTs or DeFi, to me, is it that people are against those ideas?

• 11:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Or are they against them being built on other blockchains? And some of these questions I actually don't have answers to, right? Because you can't label an entire group of people with a broad brush. But NFTs is probably a good example where NFTs built on top of another platform. There's definitely a subset of the Bitcoin community that will yell and scream scam all day long. But if NFTs were built on top of Bitcoin, would they also think they're scams? Or is it just that they're not built on Bitcoin? Do you have a sense for how people would look at like NFTs built on top of Bitcoin or DeFi on top of Bitcoin?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Right, so that's, that's a great question and it's, I think, you know, I think there's a very large variety of opinions. People are not sure. Some people will say NFTs are for sure scams because it's a type of asset that isn't Bitcoin. And any asset that isn't Bitcoin is a scam. I find that laughable, but, but that's what some people believe. Other people, yeah, they just say, "Yeah, NFTs could be interesting, but you know, Ethereum is a scam." So if Ethereum is a scam, we can't use NFTs on Ethereum, we should use NFTs on Bitcoin. My personal view is, you know, as an, as an engineer, I learned fairly early in my career that, that- The opinions you have on the technical side of things as an engineer don't matter as

• 12:37Speaker 02

  much for the end consumer. If, you know, if someone, the end consumers don't care about the platform that they use, if they want to buy an NFT for whatever reason, they probably don't care as much about which platform they're on and what the technical stability of that platform is. They just, they just want to buy NFTs. So I would assume, especially as NFTs, assuming that this market grows, then as it grows, I would assume that people will care less and less about what platform the NFTs actually use. And it'll probably be a mix because, just because people won't care. You know, I can, I can imagine like NFT marketplaces that support multiple platforms at once and, and people will not even know which one they're using for which particular NFT.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  I can, I can definitely see that. So I, I think that that wouldn't matter as much in the end. Right now, yeah, people are like, yeah, Ethereum is a scam, so we need to do NFTs on Bitcoin. And that's, that's okay. And maybe, you know, maybe that works better. I, I, I really don't know. I'm, I'm more interested in the asset class itself. Like you look at NFTs, is this going to be a big thing? Are people going to want to own them long-term? I think that's an interesting question. I don't know the answer, but I'm interested in it, in that, you know, landscape and not so much about what it's built on. I think that's not as interesting. I don't really care.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I- i- is it fair to say that if you went back to, you know, the nineties and maybe even into the early two thousands, there was a bunch of debate around various protocols or, or where things were going to get built on the internet, internet, intranet, all that type of stuff. But today, people just know they go to Google, they type in something and the answer comes up. They literally couldn't even tell you what the technical stack is, they couldn't tell you what most of the supporting technologies are. And your vision of the future, it sounds like, is more in that realm where it's the end applications are what end up actually being important and what people care about more so than was it built on top of any single blockchain, other than, it sounds like Bitcoin, which you believe has to be decentralized on, on the Bitcoin blockchain.

• 14:40Anthony Pompliano?

  But other than that, everything else, it's kind of, it almost doesn't matter where it's built, you know, 10 years from now?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it. You know, people used to argue about what will be the language of server applications. Will it be PHP or Python? And which database will people use? Will it be SQL or MongoDB? There were all those silly debates. But in the end, when, you know, when you download TikTok to your phone, you don't even know and you don't even care. No one cares. You just want it to work. So, so I assume that the same will happen with, with all of these assets. Now, for Bitcoin specifically, Bitcoins, you know, Bitcoin's main feature is that it's immutable. And to reach that level of immutability and stability and survivability,

• 15:28Speaker 02

  like, we know about Bitcoin that it's gonna be around, you know, probably for centuries to come, if not much more than that. So, to, to reach that level of, of stability and, and security, you do need a very specific set of, of technology that is very stable behind it. Like, I don't think you could build Bitcoin on top of Ethereum or Solana or whatever. So Bitcoin needs that. But NFTs don't, you know? It's, it's pictures of, of apes and dogs. Like, it doesn't matter. Really, it's not that important. The reason that people collect them is not for their superior technology or their superior reliability. That's not, that's not an issue. So I don't think people will care.

• 16:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I tend to agree with you that there's very few use cases where decentralization is essential or important. Money is definitely one of them, especially money that is not created or, or kind of governed by a, a nation state. And so it makes a lot of sense why Bitcoin would have that decentralized blockchain. For most of the other use cases, it's actually not that important, right? Based on the end user. And we've seen this where blockchains have popped up and said, "Hey, we're faster and cheaper and we completely removed all decentralization. We just built a centralized system and, you know, come use it." And some developers, not all, but, but some developers ended up moving to the new system.

• 16:52Anthony Pompliano?

  So obviously that group didn't care whether it was centralized or decentralized. They just cared about cheap fees and, and fast throughput. When you think about, let's take Ethereum. You, you mentioned earlier that some people would say, you know, Ethereum is a scam. Can you articulate why some people think that? And then how do you think about Ethereum? Do you think it is a scam? Do you think that it's not a scam? Like, just walk me through kind of your evaluation of the folks who say that? And then like, how you think about it?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, you know, Ethereum, I've been a very loud critic of Ethereum for many years. I've also, you know, put money into Ethereum fairly, like, very early in Ethereum's lifetime. I think you can do both. And it's funny to me that some people can seem to be able to do that, you know, like, critique something, but also see the positive side of it. But anyways, I definitely don't view Ethereum as a scam. I think Ethereum will have issues going forward because I think it's gonna have a lot of competition. I think Ethereum is kind of trying to both like be a very decentralized thing,

• 18:00Speaker 02

  but also it's not extremely decentralized. So it's kind of in a, you know, between a hard, between a rock and a hard place. Meanwhile, a lot of other platforms are just optimizing for user experience. Because again, you know, I think something like NFTs doesn't, doesn't even matter if it's decentralized or not. So a lot of these platforms are like saying, okay, we're just gonna optimize for speed and for low fees and for easy ease of use. And we'll be more flexible. So, you know, when, when the market shows that interest in new things, we'll be able to adjust for that very quickly. And Ethereum will have, in my opinion, a hard time competing because it's trying to be decentralized while the market, in my opinion, doesn't care a lot about decentralization. So I think that will be a challenge for Ethereum.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  That being said, I don't think it's a scam. I think a lot of people have multiple reasons why they call it a scam. One of the popular ones is the pre-mine thing. So what people used to call pre-mine back in, you know, when Ethereum launched in 2015 or whenever it was, people used to...

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Used to use the word premine to describe, uh, basically, you know, and uh, basically a cap table. That's what it is. Like you, like when you start a company, you're gonna have a cap table. The early investors and the founders are gonna get, you know, some equity in the company because otherwise, why would you do it? And, and that's completely normal when it comes to companies, but for some reason, when it comes to Ethereum, people view it as a scam. And I think, I think that's, that's a problematic view, like one, I think, I, you know, I'm, I'm a capitalist. I believe that, you know, founders and early investors should be rewarded for the risk they take. So I, I don't, I don't view the idea of premine as a problem. It can be a problem if you, if, if you think that Ethereum is gonna be the global money.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Then you might say, well, you shouldn't have two people that have seventy percent of the supply or whatever. But, uh, I don't view Ethereum as money. I view it as a platform for applications. And, and it's totally reasonable for early founders and early investors to capture some of that value. I think that's totally fine. So I don't view that as a scam. I think it's, it's also a very bad argument because this, the type of people who are coming back, coming into, you know, crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, whatever it is. And they're looking at those arguments. They're looking at people saying, well, you should invest in ETH because it had a premine. Those people are just thinking, well, I, I invest in Amazon and Amazon had premine. So that's just a bad argument. I don't care.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  I, as an investor, I know, I'm not the first one into Ethereum. I understand that, but I see the growth potential, so I, I still wanna invest. So it's just a bad argument. It doesn't talk, you know, it doesn't talk the lang, doesn't speak the language of the people who are considering investing into Ethereum. So it's a bad argument that might lead people to take the, the, the, you know, the, the path you don't want them to take. I see that a lot, by the way, with the so-called toxic Bitcoin Maximalism camp. Like they, they say a lot of things that are technically true, but they end up arguing for, for the opposite, uh, you know, for the opposite position because the, the arguments they make just don't speak the language of the people who are asking the questions.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  So that's one. The premine is one big reason. Uh, a lot, another big reason is, you know, people say, well, Ethereum changed what it is. Like it promised to be one thing and over time it's changed what it's doing. And that's like, you know, that's what a lot of successful companies do. It's totally reasonable. You try something, it doesn't work, or maybe you realize there's no market demand, so you're trying something else. I don't view that as a problem at all. Definitely, it's not a scam. So, yeah, I wouldn't use the word scam to describe Ethereum. I'm not particularly bullish on Ethereum at all. Like, you know, people confuse that very often. They say, oh, Woody said it's not a scam, so he's trying to shell us Ethereum. I'm really not. I just, I'm just thinking, I'm not particularly bullish on Ethereum at all.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I just think that, you know, people, if you're gonna call everything a scam, you're just gonna have a very hard time to get, to get people to see your side. Because, you know, someone shows up and they ask you a question and you call them a scammer, then they're not gonna talk to you again. It's over. How do you, how do you talk to someone if they're just calling you a scammer and idiot?

• 22:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about-

• 22:09Speaker 02

  So I just think we need to stop this behavior.

• 22:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Talk to me about the, um, ability for you to be critical of Ethereum, but you said that you also bought Ether very early on. So basically, you financially held it, but you were also critiquing it. And, you know, on the internet, that's not allowed, right? Obviously, you can't, uh, you can't do both things. So talk a little bit about, like, why do both? And, and why do you buy it even though you're critiquing it? Or why do you critique something that you're holding?

• 22:38Speaker 02

  So my, uh, so, okay, first of all, probably most of my critique of Ethereum was in points in time that I didn't hold it. Um, but, but I did also definitely have, uh, criticism about it, um, when I did hold some. And for me, you know, for me, kind of my style has been that this is how I learn, you know? I, I, I, at first, I researched those things myself. I look into them. I, I see things that I like, I see things that I don't like. Um, you know, I recognize where I might see some growth. But then I talk a lot about the things that I don't like because I want, you know, I kind of want people to change my mind. You know, and and that seems to.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  You you you you kind of get to attract a lot of smart people who will, you know, correct you where you're wrong. And or support what you think. So I find it's for me, it's just a, you know, it's a style thing, right? It helps me uh learn about those things. Um, and I think I think. You know, I think it's very reasonable if you want to. Invest in something, you want to know what what the benefits are, but also you want to know what the issues are. I think it's very reasonable. Um, it's okay to talk about those things. Uh, probably everything in the crypto space has a lot of drawbacks, even Bitcoin. I hope I don't get cancelled for this, but even Bitcoin has some issues, so.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you think are the drawbacks of Bitcoin?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  So we talked about the privacy thing. Um, I think that's a big one. I think that, you know, Bitcoin, very early on, even like people like, you know, like Hal Finney and probably Satoshi talked, uh, you know, in the Bitcoin Talk forums about how. It's very likely that, you know, custody of Bitcoin will centralize over time. Uh, they they saw that back in in twenty ten and we're, I think we're seeing that happening today. Uh, for real, where a lot of, you know, Bitcoins are kind of centralizing in in in those Bitcoin banks. And that might be fine. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, uh, but it definitely, you know, it changes the dynamics and it's. It's not definitely, it's not necessarily what a lot of people expected that would happen.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  And and it changes the kind of the power dynamics. So, yes, Bitcoin is very decentralized, um, but it's not perfect, you know, I I I it's very hard for me to imagine that people, uh. If if if, you know, if the future we believe in, where everyone will own Bitcoin in the future. Um, is true, it's very hard for me to imagine that people will all, you know, manage their own keys. And have, you know, Bitcoin self custody. I I I doubt that would be the case because. It's not really built for that, in my opinion. Um, we'll see, who knows? But you know, I think a lot of it is not what people expect it to be, which could be fine. I mean, I still, I'm still extremely bullish on Bitcoin. I think it's, it has

• 25:34Speaker 02

  a lot of room to grow. But, you know, it's, we keep learning how those things are not what we expect all the time.

• 25:42Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think of something like Ethereum, the framework that I've always used and recently wrote about was this idea of monetary maximalism. So everyone is a monetary maximalist. If you live in the United States and you see our currency, you get paid in dollars, you save in dollars, you invest in dollar-denominated assets, you pay your taxes in dollars. You're a monetary maximalist or a US dollar maximalist in that case. And so monetary assets, their kind of natural end state is that you have to have some level of maximalism, because it's ultimately what you denominate your wealth in, the assets that you invest in are denominated there, and then it's usually what you get paid in and what you pay taxes in. But everything else ends up being highly competitive from a technology standpoint. So all these smart contract platforms and kind of other implementations of a blockchain.

• 26:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that a fair way to think about it, or do you have some other framework that you separate kind of the monetary asset away from what ends up being more of like technology platforms and technology competition?

• 26:38Speaker 02

  Right. So, you know, with something like Ethereum, you definitely see that a lot, that if Ethereum is very, you know, very active in the NFT scene and the DeFi scene, then you're going to see a lot of NFTs priced in ETH, and people use ETH to buy them. And even though the price of ETH is very volatile, they're fine with that. And I actually think, you know, and then you look at something else, you look at Solana, or you look at, you know, so many other Leowhan competitors to ETH, and they're trying to do the same thing. They're trying to have their own currency used as the currency of that, of that ecosystem.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  And I tend to think there is a chance, I think, for Bitcoin to kind of regain this position of just the currency of the internet. You know, that was, definitely when I started looking around, you know, when I started looking at other coins, let's say around 2015 or whatever that was.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  They were all denominated in Bitcoin. Like, when you would go to trade the old coins of 2015, the pairs, the market pairs were always, uh, the old coin versus Bitcoin. Very rarely would people use USD as their, you know, as their unit of account for those, and definitely not ETH. These days, because of Ethereum's growing popularity, you see a lot of people trading, uh, coins or NFTs versus ETH. You definitely see a lot of people trading them versus stable coins. Not as much versus Bitcoin. Those markets still exist and they're still big, but they're not as big. So I think there is an opportunity for Bitcoin to kind of reclaim this position

• 28:24Speaker 02

  of being the de facto currency of the internet, where people, uh, you know, store their wealth in this currency and they value their investments in Bitcoin, especially their digital investments. And I think the way it could happen is, again, I assume that Ethereum will see a lot of competition in the, you know, smart contract space, and there're gonna be a lot of activity in those other, uh, smart contract networks. And you'll get to a point where it's gonna be very difficult to have a separate currency for every, each and every one of the networks you're using. And again, because I assume that over time, people will not even know which platform they're using, then they would need some standard unit of account.

• 29:09Speaker 02

  And I think Bitcoin can beat that. It's kind of an uphill battle, though, because we used to be, Bitcoin used to be better positioned for that, and it's kind of lost ground over the last three years or so. And I think that, you know, repositioning what Bitcoiners maybe believe as, you know, maybe NFTs are not a scam. Maybe NFTs are something that, you know, that's something that young people care about, and that's something that investors care about. So maybe we shouldn't call it a scam. Instead, we should have, you know, liquid markets where people trade those versus Bitcoin. I think that's, regardless of which technology they use, I don't care if it's Ethereum or Solana, or, you know, RSK, or Liquid, or whatever it is, doesn't really matter.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  But I think it makes a lot of sense to use Bitcoin as the asset that you trade those things with.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  And I think that could happen.

• 30:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about the metaverse. I know you've got a bunch of thoughts around the metaverse and kind of what's going on there. Positive, negative, a dream of the future, it's actually happening. Where are you on this?

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hilarious, right? Because everyone says metaverse now and no one really knows what it means. That's really funny. You know, you have Mark Zuckerberg saying that Facebook is turning into a metaverse company and everyone's like scratching their heads like, what does it even mean?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  And then, you know, a lot of crypto people are talking about metaverse too, and it's never entirely clear what that means. I think it, I think there are like two facets to it that might have something like, it's a huge buzzword and I don't know if the buzzword will actually catch on, but I think that the idea might. And like, so, you know, crypto people talk a lot about how you can just build economies around the internet. And around maybe games and economies around, um, definitely like NFT collections and whatever. And that those things will start to look almost like digital countries and digital governments that, you know, that that build their own currencies and they build their own incentive system.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  To get people to do this shared activity together in in a way that isn't as top down. And there are, you know, there are a few like play to earn games that try to experiment with that. It's very early. I think it's interesting. Um, you know, again, this is one of those things that Bitcoiners will say, but we don't, that means they create their own currency. They're printing it out of thin air and it's like fiat. And I'm like, yeah, it is. That's what it is. It's fiat. But fiat can have uses. Like, I think Bitcoin is is better than fiat, but fiat has uses. You sometimes do want to incentivize those things. And as long as it's opt in, you know, you don't have to be part of that new economy.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  But if you want to, and if you want to experiment with that, it's it's opt in. You can get in and get out whenever you want. I think it's an interesting experiment to have. So that's like one thing, like the, the, the, the economical side of it, which I think is very interesting. Trying to build those bottom up systems of, of economies. Uh, the other one is like very, you know, visual, three D, gay big stuff oriented, like people just say, oh, you, you you have those virtual environments and that's how people are gonna work and that's how people are gonna hang out. And that's, that's gonna replace the internet. It's hard for me, you know, I may be too old for this, but that's what people, that's what some people are excited about, like, you know, like

• 32:40Speaker 02

  like teenagers are playing Fortnite, spending a lot of their free time over there instead of watching Netflix and YouTube and whatever. They just hang out with each other on, on Fortnite. I mean, you know, I, I actually, last year when COVID just hit, I spent, um, I spent some time doing, uh, events in virtual reality because we didn't have any events, uh, you know, any physical events. So I spent some time like doing events in virtual reality. We had a very big event with, with Kraken for the halving. It was like a, a big conference with like, you know, 20 speakers. Almost a thousand people showed up in virtual reality for this day. It was very, uh,

• 33:19Speaker 02

  bleeding edge and cool and, you know, people really appreciate that because it was, it was very different from video calls. You kind of feel like you were interacting with those people almost like you would in physical space. But it's very, very early, like there, there's gonna be a ton of work needed before you, you know, before you could look at that and say, yes, this is the future. Uh, it's very, it's, it's, it's interesting though, like I think it's cool. I just don't know what, what exactly it means. But I don't know. What do you think?

• 33:49Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that-

• 33:49Speaker 02

  We're hearing this from everywhere.

• 33:51Anthony Pompliano?

  It, it, it's absolutely gonna happen. Um, I've got my brother here with me and, uh, we went to a VR like a demo. And historically, when I've done these, I've left and been like 20 years, you know, like, like no ways this close. I don't know. We, when we left, we were like, dude, it's close, right? And, and that still may be, you know, three, four, five years, whatever, uh, away. But it felt like we had gotten a lot closer than, uh, than we have been. The other thing is, um, I jokingly tweeted, but I was serious at the same time. We already live in virtual reality. Like you, me, John, everybody else, we all go into this virtual square of Twitter. I kind of walk around the square and I look to see what conversations I want to inject

• 34:34Anthony Pompliano?

  myself into and I hit reply. Or maybe I want to listen to one group and then run and tell another group's what to do. I hit retweet. Like it's kind of the lo-fi version, but it's definitely, you know, some virtual reality. Instagram, same thing. You start thinking about a lot of these virtual jobs. So, you know, there's everyone from writers who don't work at a company anymore, to podcasting, to Instagram influencers, to, you know, Fiverr. Like all this stuff is a lo-fi versions, but it's headed in that direction. So you want to call it a metaverse? Great. If you want to call it something else, that's fine too. But like, you know, the virtual economy is going to be bigger than the, than the legacy economy for sure. John, what questions you have?

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Hi, Udi. Nice to meet you and thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it. I'm curious, what are you working on nowadays? How's it changed in the last few years and where are you going with all your projects?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I used to, I used to do like a lot of consulting, mostly like software, you know, software architecture related in the crypto space. But since, you know, I don't know, since early this year, I kind of started spending more time into investment and, you know, managing my own capital, but also just looking into the very exciting things that are happening in the space now. That I used to, I mean, honestly, I myself used to ignore them for like, for quite a long period of time. And now I find, I actually find it pretty exciting. So I think, you know, there's so much going on that, that

• 36:09Speaker 02

  like I can't, you know, I used to feel like, you know, I would have looked at Bitcoin, I would have said, this is going to get huge. I can't say that about anything right now, but it's still very interesting to imagine how, how things.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Might grow, you know, like the NFTs, I read, you know, I read, you know, Anthony's article about how how he was wrong about NFTs because he expected them to be big, but actually they could be much bigger. And I thought it was a great article. I don't know if they're gonna turn that big, but I think they're just exploring the space right now and seeing what, you know, what the future might hold is extremely interesting. But we'll see where it goes.

• 36:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Appreciate that. Don't be too nice to Anthony, though.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Hey, we had, we had a lot of like spars on Twitter in many years ago, I think. But, but I think, I think, you know, obviously, like Anthony's been doing an amazing job, like evangelizing for Bitcoin over the years, like really amazing. I wish I could have gotten as many people into Bitcoin as Anthony has.

• 37:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, we still got a lot of work to do. We're still, we're still cranking along. Let me ask you this before, before we let you go. Do you have a, any thoughts around Bitcoin or Ether price by the end of the year?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I don't know. Well, Ethereum obviously going to zero. No, I'm kidding. I have no idea. I really have no idea. I think that, that I think we're not done. You know, like, I see some people kind of scared, thinking, oh, this is the top. I really don't think so. I think there's a long way to go this year, too.

• 37:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you a super cycle believer or just higher? Like, like, how bullish? On a scale of one to 10, how bullish are you?

• 37:56Speaker 02

  I, you know, I fell for the super cycle meme a few times in the past already. I, I kind of have, I kind of have, you know, PTSD from that. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to not believe, but it's hard because I, you know, you feel it. It's burning. We'll see.

• 38:17Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, man. Listen, thank you so much for doing this. Where, where can we send people to find you on the internet? Or where do you want to direct everyone?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  I mean, my first tip is don't, just don't. But if you have to follow me, then I'm on Twitter. It's Woody Ver Timer. It's gonna be pretty hard to type, but, but good luck.

• 38:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm putting the link in the, I'm putting the link in the comments right now. I appreciate you started this with, don't follow me, but if you have to, here you go.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, buddy.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  I'm worried about people's mental health.

• 38:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I hear you. Well, when you start out with your banner image here saying have fun staying poor, that's a old timer right there.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 38:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this and I hope everyone is really mad at you and they all think that you're so dumb and you just keep doing what you're doing. I think that you're doing a great job and we'll talk soon.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thank you, guys.

• 39:10Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Later, buddy.