CD97: Running Bitcoin Businesses with Dave Bradley

Happy Bitcoin Monday, freaks.

It's your host, Odell, here for another Citadel Dispatch.

The show focused on actual Bitcoin and Freedom Tech discussion.

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Thank you all for going through that with me on this Monday afternoon.

So with all that said, I have a great guest here today,

someone I've been friends with online for a long time, briefly met in 2019,

which feels like almost a decade ago.

We have Dave Bradley here,

who goes by Bitcoin Brains on Twitter. How's it going, Dave?

I'm great. Thanks for having me.

The pleasure is all mine. I'm,

glad to finally have you on the show.

So, Dave, I mean, I don't know where to start. I mean, how I knew you the the best was as cofounder of Bull Bitcoin,

the the infamous Canadian

exchange or Bitcoin business or brokerage. I don't know what you would classify it as.

We have ran more in the comments asking for the matrix link. It's just still dispatch.com/chat.

So, Dave,

so what what why don't you tell us your Bold Bitcoin story? Let's start with that.

Yeah. Well,

you know what? Why don't I why don't I give you the the lead up to that too? Because that's kinda

fundamental to where we got there.

Go for it.

So I got into Bitcoin in,

2010, kinda like at the end of,

the CPU mining era, like, right when GPU mining became a real thing, and I was, like, mining in my basement.

I had no idea what hard money was. You know, I was looking at Bitcoin as, like, a get rich quick scheme, like a lot of people do when they first get in.

And I was, like, mining Bitcoin in my basement and selling it on local Bitcoins and buying more video cards and mining more Bitcoin.

And,

got to a point where I was like, I need to make this a real business because I was, like, meeting people at coffee shops with cash, and they probably thought I was a drug dealer at the coffee shop.

So in 2013,

me and a friend opened a store, like a physical brick and mortar store called Bitcoin Brains, which is now my my handle and and personal brand.

And we were like yeah. We were selling Bitcoin over the counter. We were selling mining equipment and, like, whatever else we get our hands on that was related to Bitcoin and doing consultations and whatnot.

Later sold the store there,

but kept the brokerage alive doing OTC stuff, and that brought me, to a place where I was doing a lot of business with Francis,

in Montreal.

And I was kinda flying around the country doing different OTC deals.

And, you know, we were very ideologically aligned.

I I would say that the roots of what started Bull Bitcoin came from

a,

an article, I guess, that Francis and I wrote.

This would have been, like, I think 2016.

Maybe yeah. Probably 2016 when the when the block size wars were just kinda getting started. Right. There was a proposal called Bitcoin Unlimited,

and, it was basically a hard fork that involved a block size increase.

And,

you know, I'm not sure what else they threw in there, but,

it was getting a little bit of support. Roger Ver and

some others were backing it. And,

we were

we were talking, and we didn't know each other nearly as well then, Francis and I. And we were like, you know what? This is kinda bullshit that these guys think they're in charge.

And so we kinda gathered the Canadian Bitcoin community. We got, I think, 16 different companies

that were all fairly small,

to sign this letter. It was basically saying, like, Canada says fuck you to Bitcoin Unlimited. Like, we're not in.

And,

that kinda led to, Francis and I becoming better friends, and, you know, I like,

we when we agreed to write that thing, I was like, I'm I'm I'm pretty good at writing. And I was like, I'll probably carry this, but then I, like, see Francis, and he's just, like, on a different level

and delivers nothing but pure signal. And I was like, man, this guy's for real. So

Bitcoin Unlimited was,

the Gavin one. Right? Gavin was it was early days. It was before the block size war, like, full was in full swing. Right? Yeah. It was it was before. I don't really know or care who it was. Like, it was one of those people.

It was the idea was wasn't that idea was, like, you go to 2 megs block size, then 4, then 6, then 8. Like, you keep oh, it's unlimited. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a there was a series of bad proposals

and alternative clients and stuff like that throughout that period that all kind of were just, like, knee jerk reactions to

an attempt to solve this

one problem, which was the, you know, the the blocks filling up. Right.

It was like

we're we're very lucky we avoided falling for any of those things because they Right. They all had, like, the COBRA effect written all over them where, you know, there's no way to know what the consequences of changing things

mid flight would have been. Right? So,

anyway, we wrote that,

like, very much saying, you know, for what it matters, we're 16 pretty small companies, but we're we're economic nodes that

have a meaningful impact on the consensus.

Right.

And and so we said, yeah. We're not doing that. And I think some of that energy is what led ultimately to the UASF,

which,

Right. Was basically, like, the ultimate like, all all the small players in the community telling the big ones to fuck off.

And Yeah.

I recently had a bit mixed research on,

and he wrote, the block size war. So anyone any anyone who's listening right now, if you weren't here for this, like, this was a pivotal point in Bitcoin history, and it's really easy for me and Dave

to not really appreciate

that the newcomers have dude, have no idea what happened. And that you guys should really read it if you weren't here at the time because it's it's important

for Bitcoin's

security model in general.

Yeah. It it's it's very important, and I think one thing that gets, like,

gets forgotten a little bit

is that

with the UASF, Bitcoin conclusively proved that it is the only network. It didn't prove it was the only one, but it proved that it was,

a network that was fully decentralized.

You know, you had

all the big players, all the big miners agreeing to a change,

and the community getting together and saying, absolutely not. You're not in charge.

And that's what separates when we're seeing all this stuff, we'll probably get into later all this Binance and all the all the bullshit going on with US regulators. And,

that's what sets Bitcoin apart is the fact that it's been proven that no one is in charge.

And

that one detail

may become very relevant,

hopefully, in the near future if they're starting to go after some of these other coins.

100%.

I mean, that's what and and a lot

it's crazy. It's crazy because, I mean,

we've been talking about this stuff publicly. I mean, I personally

maybe logged

5000 hours of podcasts

talking about this subject,

and,

most people still do not realize. Like, the whole Greenpeace thing that we've been dealing with the last 6 months funded by Ripple, which, by the way, Greenpeace is a terrorist organization before they even found out the word Bitcoin existed,

revolves around this idea that someone controls it. It's it's such a simple concept, but it's so

crazy for individuals to comprehend. Most

Bitcoin deniers still to this day most average people have no

concept that no one controls it, which is insane.

Yeah. And it it's pretty hard, for some people to see the nuances there where, you know, to all intents and purposes,

like, everybody's got their, like, cousin who's super into crypto and wants to tell you everything.

That guy

has no idea that Ethereum is not decentralized.

Right.

Yeah. So Well, that's our edge still to this day. Okay. So you wrote this piece.

You guys you guys connected. You had a bromance a bit. Right? And that's where we are in the story.

Yeah. So, yeah. Francis and I became good friends, and we had this idea that we wanted to roll a bunch of different Bitcoin companies in Canada altogether and make, like, this super company.

And we had a bunch of talks with some different

players in the space and didn't really find anyone else that was really fully aligned.

But in in 2018, Francis and I ended up, combining our efforts and forming Bull Bitcoin,

which was, basically the merger of Bills and Satoshi Portal, which Francis had created and,

my company, Bitcoin Brains,

and really with the goal of being, like,

you know, the voice for Bitcoin maximalism in Canada and the most advanced Bitcoin

platform in the world.

And,

I think Bull has accomplished that pretty well.

So I was with Bull from 2018 to 2,000 20.

I left Bull Bitcoin

at the start of 2020 to form a company called GhostLab,

with the intention we were making software for Bitcoin ATMs. That was something that I had had a lot of people sort of asking me about.

And,

ultimately, what that led to was,

I was reaching out to somebody that I'd known in the industry for a long time, Adam O'Brien, who's the CEO of Bitcoin Well, where I'm at now.

And, we were talking about this software, and he's like, yeah. I wanna do that too. And so we ended up partnering up on this software. And then at some point, he's like, hey. Can you help me take,

my company, which at the time was called Bitcoin Solutions,

which is a Bitcoin ATM company at the time.

Can you help me take this public?

And I was like, well, you know what? I've never done that, but, like,

I could probably figure it out.

And, so that's what I did. I joined up with

this company. We ended up rolling the ATM software company in,

and, it's all part of one company that we rebranded to Bitcoin well when we went public, which was the the first,

the first

publicly traded Bitcoin ATM company in the world.

And, so, yeah, we've got about 300 of those around Canada.

We have offices in Calgary and Edmonton where we buy and sell Bitcoin, and then we've got an online platform that we've launched,

sort of near the start of the year in Canada that,

is, you know, the simplest possible way.

So the way that we the way that I describe Bull Bitcoin is, like, the most

advanced Bitcoin platform in the world.

Francis was on a a a show called the Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast, I think, last week, the week before talking about that.

And Bull Bitcoin's very unique in that, like, it's built from scratch. You know, all of the structures, the nodes,

everything is built in house,

and that gives

a lot more leeway to do advanced features and to really target the, like, 1%,

the remnant the, like, most hardcore Bitcoiners in the world, and that's who that's built for.

And then we've taken a little bit of different,

approach with Bitcoin. Well, we're we're, like, we're building the ops. We're building, like, the simplest possible thing. So

bank to Bitcoin,

in Canada is about 30 seconds once you're signed up right now, and there's no other features.

You can buy and sell Bitcoin, and that's pretty much it at the at the current stage.

Well, first, let's just take a deep breath here.

Can you turn off your notifications

on your computer? Because I heard a Slack notification, and it gives me PTSD.

Yes. That's what I'm actually sorry.

You're good. You're good.

I've seen people try and push through it, and it's definitely a worse situation.

I,

so I didn't realize you guys went public with this company. That's pretty crazy going I guess before we go there, were you involved in the Montreal Bitcoin Embassy?

I was not. I'm in I'm in Calgary.

Okay.

We

like, our source had that before Bull Bitcoin. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. So that was,

that was Francis didn't start the Bitcoin Embassy. That was some other Bitcoiners in

Montreal. And they basically hired Francis to be, like, the government relations

piece,

And

he ended up then starting satoshi portal, which is, like, the OTC desk that they ran out of the store or the front. Got it. And that was actually, like, the only part that was really successful. Like, the embassy was awesome,

but

when it comes right down to it, like, our entire industry

is about selling Bitcoin, and that's really been what's fueled this entire,

industry. And everything else that people have built around that mostly just supports that one thing. Well, it's definitely the most proven business model. Yeah. It's At least up to to date right now. Yeah. Exactly. So it,

what we were running in Calgary was in a lot of ways pretty similar. It was, like, the hub for Bitcoin here.

And, having a physical space, something like we have a physical space now,

in Calgary, and we have one in Edmonton. But it's a little different in that, you know, there's a bunch of these things around the country now, and so it doesn't become quite as much of a hub. It used to be, like, the only place to go if you wanted to talk about Bitcoin, which is really cool. Yeah. No. The reason I bring it up is because,

when I was a young Bitcoiner,

I don't know if it was, like, 2015

or somewhere around there.

You know, Bitcoin was down from all time highs, like, 90%,

and I was at a family wedding in Montreal. And,

me and my my family, my parents walked by the Montreal Bitcoin Embassy, and, like, that was the moment they decided I wasn't a crazy person was because there's just this random physical location in Canada.

And to this day, I still think I mean, I don't know if you're aware, but I,

I cofounded a physical,

Bitcoin campus in Nashville, Tennessee.

And that is the number one biggest,

reason to have a physical community location is because it makes it real for people as they walk by. They walk by. They see it. They're like, holy shit. This is a real thing. And then it starts turning the wheels and starts getting them going. You know? Yeah. That's interesting. We got a, we got this ad

that, I don't know if it's still there anymore.

We we got virtually no,

like, commercial response from it, and it was basically just like a shipping container

with our, like,

banner, etcetera, on the side of the highway between Calgary and Edmonton.

And as far as I know, we got no business out of that at all.

But I hear from a lot of people,

when they when they're like, oh, Bitcoin. I've seen that shipping container. They don't even know that it's necessarily us. There you go. They've got a link to the tangible reality of the world now that they see all the time, and that's like

it it's like it's the way that realtors use bus benches. You know what I mean? You see them a 1,000,000,000 times, and then eventually it creeps into your head.

Yep.

No. Yeah. I can definitely relate to that.

So okay. So

where do we want so so BitcoinWell, you guys are a public company. I've never heard of you,

until you

mentioned it

in our in our messages before the the show.

Are you guys you guys doing a lot of business in I mean, you're Canadian only. Right? Which is I'm I'm not Canadian. So

So, yeah, that that's the main reason probably why you'd never heard of us.

And, like, we were talking right before the show here, and that's that's part of the reason why I haven't gone on, like, a whole bunch of, like, American podcasts is because we, you know, we weren't doing business in the US, and,

you know, almost every podcast, most of the market is in the US, and so I was a little bit quieter. And now we're, you know, we've been

operating in the Canadian market for 10 years.

So we kinda know what we're doing, I think, when it comes to selling Bitcoin. We've got this online platform that we think is really solid in terms of, like,

speed, simplicity, and price,

and we're just taking that experience and expanding that to the US here soon. So we've got a an expansion plan for the spring.

We should be launching just like a very, very basic,

noncustodial

way to buy Bitcoin,

straight from your bank to your wallet in as few steps as possible.

Got it. So how does that look?

You know, it it it's funny because your payments

in some ways, like your traditional fiat payment rails

in the US, are actually a bit worse than what we have in Canada. Yeah. We're the worst in the world, I think. I mean, the worst world.

So we've got, like, we've got something called Interac e transfer that's fairly ubiquitous here, and it's not very good,

but it is,

like, a more or less instant. Sometimes it takes a few hours for no apparent reason,

but same day,

way to pay small amounts of money within Canada.

And that's been the dominant payment rail for most of the Bitcoin industry in Canada. In the the US,

it looks like ACH payments, but it's basically,

we're gonna be taking ACH payments from our clients,

allowing those to,

basically create a a balance in fiat that,

the moment

they wanna make a purchase, the Bitcoins are sent directly to their wallet. So we're never. We do technically hold our customers' fiat, which is kind of unavoidable,

in a world with very slow and, Right. Unpredictable payments.

But for as little time as possible. And we don't hold the Bitcoins at all. We deliver them immediately, which I think is you know, with all this

shit that we've seen in the last year with

custody and,

blow ups of exchanges, that's something that we learned several times the hard way in Canada.

And,

the rest of the world is now seeing in

Right.

In spectacular

fashion. I mean, that's,

I mean, that's been something that Bull Bitcoin has always held fast on. Right? There's no custodial wallet on Bull Bitcoin. It's just,

they just they they exchange your fiat directly to your noncustodial

your self custody wallet, your proper Bitcoin wallet. I hate

so just like it it's it's either a wallet or it's like an a custodial account. Like, there's there should be no such thing as a custodial wallet. We need we've already lost that narrative. Yeah. That's a weird that's a weird

vernacular, actually, when you think about it. It's like your bank wallet.

No. Yeah.

So okay. So

so you guys are a public company. You're currently operating in Canada.

What is the is the Canadian product

so

help me out here. I I assume I mean, you're a cofounder of Bull Bitcoin.

I assume you still have some kind of equity stake in Bull Bitcoin.

People are people are in Canada. They're Bitcoiners. They love using Bull Bitcoin.

Like, what is the trade off balance? Like, why would someone choose

Bitcoin?

And I don't I'm sorry if this is an unfair question, but this is, I think, the question everyone is curious about, including myself. Why would someone use Bitcoin well versus Bull Bitcoin? What are the trade offs between the 2? Yeah. Absolutely. And I I think the trade offs are pretty clear.

Like I said, Bull Bitcoin is the most advanced Bitcoin platform in the world.

There's all these features that nobody even really notices. Like, every single order gets a cryptographically signed receipt

to verify the long open time stamps.

Any coins that come into the company, and there are there are a lot because the the legacy of bills, which was a bill payment service.

So a lot of people a lot of the clients of Bull Bitcoin, probably more than any other exchange in the world,

are people selling Bitcoin.

Right. Most most are dominated by people buying Bitcoin. So They're paying their bills, like their electric bills or something. They send Bitcoin in and then Bull Bitcoin pays the bills. Yeah. Exactly. And that's technically a sell. Right? So Right. That's basically what's going on at Bull Bitcoin.

Bull Bitcoin has,

as clients,

the

CEOs

of every major Bitcoin company in Canada pretty much.

So Bull Bitcoin has a lock on the hardcore users, I would say.

Okay. And if you want things like,

CoinJoin on the way in when you sell your coins, if you want those cryptographically signed receipts, Bull Bitcoin is the best one to use. Absolutely. It's it is the strongest platform, and it's it's the

the the strongest base, and it's probably,

you know, knowing Francis, like, Francis is probably the most hardcore Bitcoiner in the world.

So it's,

you know, probably the the last company,

where your

personal information could end up in the hands of the government, for example. So that's how I would define bull Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, well, we're taking a broader approach,

So we're not building as many things that are targeting the hardcore users. It's more like where do you send your aunt to get Bitcoin.

Okay. So more user friendly.

Yeah. And you know what? They're both user friendly. I like, there's a lot more going on with Bull Bitcoin.

Right.

Where we're really trying to optimize with Bitcoin well,

which is different than Bull Bitcoin. Bull Bitcoin is, like I said, trying to build the best stuff possible, the best platform possible.

Bitcoin well is trying to build the easiest platform possible, the most user friendly, and the most streamlined. So that

that step that I mentioned,

you know, you have to go through when you sign up, like a KYC

process, which, you know, there there are legal reasons that we have to do that, but the main one is an anti fraud piece.

Right. Because

fee payments are not reliable, so they can be reversed in cases of fraud. And so we have to know who we're dealing with.

Once you get through that KYC process, though,

the process of buying Bitcoin

and, you know, from your bank to your Bitcoin is literally about 30 seconds.

Once you send one of those etransfers, unless you run into the random,

detail where the fiat system sometimes takes longer than expected. But,

when that transfer is sent, the Bitcoins are sent immediately,

and there's no faster,

or cheaper way. And as a result, because it's so fast, that's the safest way. You know? We've got custody of the user's funds for seconds rather than,

minutes or days.

Yeah. I mean, so

so do you have a custodial wallet for the Canadian users for on the Bitcoin side?

We don't have a custodial wallet. We don't have a we don't have a wallet at all. So we're we're just the platform that offers exchange.

We are looking at some

solutions for the future

that would involve kinda like a collaborative custody.

Okay. I like that. So

part of the big problem

and,

like, we've got a bunch of companies in Canada, for example,

that sell Bitcoin. They use Coinbase for custody.

And

as we've seen,

you know, all of these companies

are sort of, like, intermingled.

Right? They've got fingers in each other's pots. You got funds moving from SPF to Alameda to FTX and whatever.

And it's very,

unlikely

that in the event of a sudden insolvency at Coinbase,

that the funds of users in Coinbase custody

would not get pulled into that mess.

Right. And that's the biggest issue. And and for us in Canada, like, that's something happening in a different country, in a different legal jurisdiction. Right. You're really fucked. You're actually fucked. Yeah. It it makes no sense to keep your coins in an exchange that's then gonna keep them with a third party taking some unknown risks

in a different country. Like, that sounds completely insane.

And so the way that I look at it, we're leading with the self custody because that has to be the default. Right?

That's what anybody who can,

should do. And

at the same time, like, I've seen points from, like, Corey at Swan where he's talking about the fact that allowing users to leave their funds with Swan, with Prime Trust effectively through Swan,

really opens up the market to users who don't wanna go through that extra friction.

Well, I mean,

it it would

the the better example is,

the better example I think is Strike,

which is

when Strike first launched,

they launched

as there was no custodial wallet, period.

And it was just you it was a pay button. Right? It was kind of what you're describing right now in in your idea for the US rollout. I don't know if your Canadian side is similar, but it was you had a Fiat balance, and then you either paid a Bitcoin address or a lightning invoice, and then Bitcoin were sent there, but there was no custodial Bitcoin wallet.

And what they found was, through support claims,

there was a a ton of friction in that concept. Like, as a

as myself, I believe, you know, if you're not a Bitcoiner unless you're holding your own keys. Otherwise, you're just you're an IOUer or something. Like, you're just holding IOUs. You think you're holding Bitcoin. You have some Bitcoin price exposure, but, like, you don't actually hold any Bitcoin.

So I'm very, you know,

hardcore, I guess. I don't know if that's the right word, but I'm, you know, very strict in terms of self custody. I tell everyone you got a self custody, spend

hours of my time, like, way too much of my life. Maybe not way too much. Maybe it's a worthy mission. A lot of my life trying to educate on self custody,

but I still kind of understand the practical matters there in terms of,

you know, your average person comes into strike while you continue to strike as an example, and they just can't wrap their head around the fact

that they have to go and then download a separate Bitcoin wallet,

to actually receive the Bitcoin. And he basically bent like,

he, like, he ended up having to just add the custodial Bitcoin wallet.

And even still, though he has a custodial Bitcoin wallet,

in the fallout of FTX

and when there was concerns over all these different banks and stuff with all the bank runs, he basically did a

they did an audit of all their user balances, and and 90% of funds that go through Striker or go to self custody,

which is, like, I think that's, you know, a pretty big win,

all things considered even if you still have some funds left over there.

Yeah. That's amazing. It's,

that's a really good example. So I think part of

what everyone misses is, like, it's very easy for us who are, like, up to our bank every day in the space to say,

like, functionally, it's not actually more difficult to set up a Bitcoin wallet than it is to set up a bank account. It's way easier. Yeah. You do it one time. If you're ever if you're ever in a bear market and you're, like,

questioning your conviction on Bitcoin,

be a true masochist. Walk into a bank and try and start create a checking account, and you will become a massive bull on Bitcoin again. Like, it's it's fucking pain in the ass to to create a bank account. It's very easy to create a Bitcoin wallet.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I I think,

that vision of, like, Bitcoin only, self custody,

like, it's pretty simple once you understand. Right?

You don't really need to know that much. But when somebody gets into the space and they're new, it's a deep topic. Right? And their their

brainpower is split between, like, learning how all the technology works and, like, who do we listen to? Are we gonna listen to Breedlove, or are we gonna listen to Vitalik?

And

there's a massive amount of information coming at them, and it can take a while to sort of sort through that stuff. And so I can understand why some people want,

the the feeling of custody, which is what everyone used to. Like, that's basically why banks exist in the first place is it's, like, supposed to be a safer place to keep your money, not a less safe place to keep your money. Right? Right.

People are used to that experience.

And so I think when presented properly and we haven't done this yet, so I'm still speculating.

But I think when presented properly with, like, you know what? You have these two options,

but we wanna talk to you about why

you should spend the extra

6 minutes and make your own Bitcoin wallet and and figure out your backups or get a hardware wallet or whatever else may be. I think presented

with education,

there's an opportunity to bring more users into the space, and then also guide them down the path

away from all the bullshit in the space, away from the custodial exchanges storing Bitcoin in another country, away from all the shit coins,

casino coins. I'm trying to get away from the term shit coins. I wanna call them casino coins.

So

I think something there. I think that's what we're trying to do. And, we've got this idea, and it's still a little bit untested.

There's some legal structures that work in both Canada and the US called bailment,

which essentially allows

the theory is, the way we wanna set this up is is with a third party custodian

that would keep 1 or more keys to a user's coins.

But very relevantly, we would never have access to the coins,

and the,

the user would retain full legal title.

So the way that it works right now is that if you're a user of a Canadian Bitcoin exchange using Coinbase custody,

you have an IOU from that Bitcoin exchange,

and then that I that Bitcoin exchange has an IOU from Coinbase custody.

Right. And then those of Coinbase custody has IOUs from someone else. So You're a creditor. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that model doesn't work. That's the part that gets everything sucked into the bankruptcy.

Mt. Gox users, which is now,

what, we're we're 9 years in since Mt. Gox collapsed,

and those users have not gotten their coins yet because they're still stuck in that bankruptcy proceeding. Or a more relevant,

recent example would be, like, a BlockFi or an FTX or something

or Celsius. They're all just basic creditors.

Yeah. They're they're all creditors.

And Yeah. The the reason that I point out Mt. Cox is because, like, those people in those companies, like, the creditors of BlockFi, the creditors of Celsius,

based on what we've seen before, like, they might be waiting 9 more years to get those those funds.

And there's also a very good chance that those funds are now denominated in dollars, those debts, whether they were held held in coins or not.

So it's basically, like, selling your coins and not be able to get the funds for 9 years.

If that. If you're lucky. If that. Yeah. And then you may take a haircut at the end. When SVB went down, I had a bunch of,

I had a bunch of buddies who had we were were caught up in the mess or whatever. And I was like, you're never getting your money back. And then, of course, uncle Sam bailed them out, and I was like, oh, I forgot. Like, I've just been living in Bitcoin land for so long that I just assume, like, as soon as one of these companies go down, you just might as well write it off to 0 because there's no way you're gonna fucking get it back. Yeah. If if the Bank of Japan could've printed more Bitcoin to bail out Mt. Gox, they probably would have. Yeah.

Yep. Yep. That is true.

So so, I mean, let's just hone in on this point. So multisig,

collaborative custody,

I think there's I is this what you're describing? Because this is something that I've been talking to with people. This idea of, like, multi institution collaborative custody where the user doesn't actually hold a key,

but but, like, 3 institutions hold a key and a 2 of 3 or something. So it's, like, you need 2 of the institutions to come together to rug you instead of 1 or something like that?

We we're looking at that. I I'm leaning away from that

partly because

we don't wanna be holding any keys. Okay.

Any position like that. And

I I very firmly believe that,

companies taking

on the business of selling Bitcoins

should not be the same companies taking on the business of storing Bitcoins.

Okay.

Part of the big problem with the

the custody model that we've seen with collapses like FDX is that it wasn't just that they were holding the coins, it's that they had all these other business activities

that then exposed those coins to the risk

of those other business activities.

And so, like, I don't think we're doing anything risky. We're pretty conservative with our business model, but I don't wanna be responsible for users' funds in that way. And I don't wanna put our company

out there as, like, a bull's eye for hackers. I don't wanna have to Right. It's a liability.

Exactly. And it's literally a liability on your balance sheet. Yeah. Exactly. And it it should be

custody, if it's gonna be performed at all, should be performed by a company who specializes in that.

And

if possible, what I'm talking about with the bailment model is that the user should maintain

full legal ownership over the coins rather than holds the keys?

The the custodian will hold the keys,

but legally

So a single custodian's holding

all the just a single key, all the keys, whatever.

They they do, like, depending on which kind of levels of wallets, and we're we're still sort of working on different models and different custodians. So there's a chance that some may work its way in there or multiple custodians may work its way in there.

But, fundamentally, what it comes down to is that they're they are trusting a custodian,

if they choose to,

and the custodian just needs, in my mind, to make the security model and the business model completely clear.

So this is also gonna be a scenario where, like,

the user will probably have to pay a small fee to hold these coins in this account.

Right.

And that I think is a much more direct,

like,

capitalist solution to this the the question of custody.

Because you gotta think, like, if you're giving somebody your Bitcoins

to hold and they're not charging you for that,

why are they doing that, and where are they making the money? Right. Yeah. I mean, this reminds me of,

Caitlin Long's,

Custodia Bank. Right? It's like a a full reserve bank, So then everyone goes, how do you make money? It was like, oh, you charge you charge transparent fees

because Yeah. You're you're trusting me to secure your money for you, and I'm not gonna go play games trying to, like, get yield somewhere

and gamble on bonds and then get wrecked as a result.

Yeah. Exactly. But so this isn't collaborative custody at all. This is

this reminds me of the Prime Trust model. Is is this are we describing the Prime like, Prime Trust, that's what Prime Trust does. Right? Like, they hold it legally in your name,

and you have full control over it. I I'm not I'm not a 100% familiar with the, like, legal structure of prime trust, but,

I think, fundamentally, there's a lot of similarities to that. But the big difference is that Prime Trust is also

the liquidity provider in those scenarios.

So they're also the company that's buying and selling the Bitcoins.

Right. They full stack. That's where

that complexity

creeps in.

And I really believe that, like, a Bitcoin custodian

in so much as they should be, I believe, a small niche of the market and not the norm of the market, But when they do exist, that's all they should do.

Yeah.

I mean, so I go back and forth. So Prime Trust is

a

regulated trust institution.

Yeah.

They are,

legally speaking, not a bank.

They use

5 different banks on the back end.

They do like you said, they do order matching and processing or whatever.

The the custodian that Prime Trust uses is Fireblocks,

which also does shit coins,

and they use,

they don't use multisig.

They use,

what is it, multi key not multi key,

multipart computation, MPC,

because they need to support all the different shit coins. But then, supposedly,

everyone's in a segregated account that's legally in your name.

But then so I've heard this argument many times,

both privately and publicly, which is the argument that's like, oh, like, we should use a professional custodian that's separate from us.

But I'm kind of

from my point of view,

that

ultimately creates a central point of failure among multiple companies.

We already see multiple companies in the US that are completely dependent on Prime Trust for their

MTLs or money transfer licenses. Like, MTLs in the United States is no joke. You gotta get it in, like, almost every state.

They're doing custody. They're doing order matching. It's like this one company goes down,

and all these different companies go with it. And, you know, and then you have someone like, a River

that controls their whole stack

in in in completion.

And then so, like, at least, like, if their users get rugged, like, they do the rugging to their users

rather than, like it's it it kinda feels like trusted third party Russian dolls, you know Yeah. Where it's it's, like, the user's trusting a third party, and then that company is trusting a third party, and that company is trusting a third party, and it's all kind of obscured.

Yeah. So I I definitely agree. Like, the Russian Dolls is a good example,

and and that is what's happening. Like, they're all of these companies

relying on one for all their order fulfillment and everything like that. I think there's a good example in this one where

the

the risks

that are

a part of a seemingly

simple business like buying and selling Bitcoin

can sometimes

lead to

unforeseen

risks that could in turn affect the custody, and I think that's the worry. And right when FDX collapsed

Yeah. I don't know if you were in, in LA for Pacific Bitcoin this year.

And it was fun because it was, like, right when that was collapsing, and we're, like, in the city with, like, FTX arena.

And

and it's kinda crazy, but I was not there, but go on. So or maybe maybe it was

crypto.com arena. Yeah. It's crypto.comarena

there. Yeah. FX arenas in Miami. Right. And we're, we're,

Or was. Yeah. We're at this conference,

and,

everything's melting down, and it's kinda like everybody's happy because it's, like, very nice. I told you so is around the board.

But,

there was a moment where some weird stuff was going on with Prime Trust. And,

essentially, the spread just went from, like, being, like, a 2% or 1% spread like normal to, like, a 6, 7, 8% spread,

like, just out of the blue, and nobody knew why that was.

And then you started getting slow withdrawals from all the platforms on Prime Trust,

and

it turns out that nothing was actually wrong. There was, like, some kind of a bug in it. You know?

Right. Seemingly, Prime Trust was solvent and everything was fine.

But as soon as that started to happen, people started to worry. Like, hey. My shit my coins are in there. Like, what's going on? And this is a totally different part of the business that has nothing to do with custody. Is this this or fulfillment

spread that's going on there?

And people very rightly started to worry. Like, is this something that I need to worry about? And so

I always wanna be of the position that users can and should

learn to

use self custody. And you're right. That's like, you're not really a Bitcoin until you get there. But especially for new people coming into the space, having, like, a handholding experience

and having a custodian,

and very similar model to what we're talking about is what we're looking at, you know, regulated trust companies that that use an established legal structure to allow the

Bitcoin holder to maintain ownership of the coins.

Legal ownership.

Yeah. That that's

that's the part where, like,

hopefully, in the event of a meltdown,

the difference between waiting 9 years to get Mt. Gox

coins out and the SPV getting a bail on getting the funds on Monday.

So it probably would be longer in the event of a insolvency event to the custodian, but the users would have a claim

over their own coins. They They would have ownership over their own coins

in a way that no other creditors could claim any portion of.

Right.

Okay. Well, I mean, we went really deep on that, but your rollout

your rollout in America at first is gonna be just completely,

self custody only.

Yeah. Absolutely. So how does that look? Does a user, like, put in a Bitcoin address?

Is it it gonna be lightning enabled? Like, how does that look? Out of the gate, it's on chain only. So it's a Bitcoin address, and, you know, you

would the the workflow will be basically, like, you create a funding order to send us an ACH payment, your funds land,

once your funds have landed, then you're able to make a purchase. And when you make that purchase, you are immediately sent the Bitcoins to your wallet you provided.

So, like, open the app and I say, I wanna buy a $100 worth, and then it says, give me a Bitcoin address, and then it just debits my account and sends me a Bitcoin. Yep. Absolutely.

So I, I have to bring up another thing that I was gonna get to right at the start, but I somehow missed. Okay. And I see Rommel Almagaro

in the chat about half an hour ago saying, oh my god. Is that d Dave Bradley? He's so handsome.

I saw him. In my bio.

One thing that I am very well known for,

across Canada is being the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada. Allegedly.

Well, I mean, it it's official.

Yeah. But so there there is a there there is a story behind that

that I can tell you. I have to

I meant to shill I have 3 things to shill. I've only shilled one of them so far. Go for it.

Right behind me here,

this amazing art from my very good friend, the artist, Madex. Oh, he's amazing. We have his art at Bitcoin Park as well. Amazing.

This kind of stuff is really cool because, normally,

when something as good as this one hits Twitter, it's gone in, like, an hour.

But since Twitter has been fucked,

I have gotten to have it in my living room for a little while. So

Love it. That one's up for sale. Everyone should go buy that art.

Yeah. The this I I am,

I would say officially the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada.

Humble too.

Very very humble.

There's

there's more of that more info about that on my website at bitcoinbrands.com.

So who who designated you that? Let's hear this let's hear this story. You can't just bring that up.

So, when we had this store,

2013,

we had the tagline,

the fastest and safest way to buy Bitcoins in Canada.

And,

that was, like, a marketing tagline,

seemed fine, worked for a few years. And then,

when we started to form Bull Bull Bitcoin, we were going through the process. We started looking into it, and we realized there were, like, 7 other companies in Canada now claiming to be the fastest and safest.

Right. We're like, we gotta come up with something else,

and we came up with,

Canada's most trusted Bitcoin company.

And

then, like, a year later, we called ourselves Canada's most trusted Bitcoin company. There were, like, 2 or 3 companies

also claiming to be Canada's most trusted Bitcoin company, and we're like, well, we gotta do something about this. And I was like, fuck it. Why don't we just call ourselves something they won't copy

and call ourselves the strongest and best looking?

And that was kind of a joke at the time, and we didn't do it.

But then

a couple years later,

the

Canadian Securities Administrators, which is, like, our equivalent of the SEC,

comes out. We had a big

exchange,

in Canada called Coinsquare

that got fined, and the CEO was banned from ever doing anything with securities and all the stuff because they were, like, majorly wash trading

on their exchange. And part of the reason they were wash trading was to support the claim that they were the biggest Bitcoin exchange in Canada.

Right. And so the securities regulators come out and they say, hey. If you're an executive at a Bitcoin exchange or brokerage, like a virtual asset service provider, they call it,

you are not allowed to make superlative marketing claims

unless they're demonstrably true.

And so I was like, okay. Hey. I'm gonna pull back up this claim. And so I, like, literally, I've had this out there. I started claiming this about 3 years ago. I got the website up,

and, like, they haven't sued me yet. Right?

So

that's kind of an endorsement.

That's fucking hilarious. Right? So that that's what I mean when I say official. Like, according to the government, I guess, as much as you can trust that,

I am Not at all. Best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in Canada, but much more importantly,

according to me.

There you go.

Well, thank you for giving us some insight on that,

and congratulations on the title.

Thank you.

I, are Americans allowed to file lawsuits in Canada? Like, can I challenge that? Or is it

So that would be like, I technically, anybody could sue me over that, I guess, but it's mostly,

it's mostly the securities commissions that are are worried about that. But,

I I told a little bit of this story when I was,

speaking in the in the Swan tenant at this at Pacific Bitcoin.

And somebody said, hey. Like, why aren't you claiming to be the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur in North America?

And I was like, well, like,

Canada is a small place. Like, I'm pretty sure.

And I can be reasonably certain certain that there's nobody who's both better looking and stronger than me who also counts as a Bitcoin entrepreneur.

Very pragmatic.

Yeah. But I don't know. Like, there could be some just absolutely monstrous, really good looking Bitcoin entrepreneurs that I've never heard of in the US. So I don't wanna be here. Forget Mexico either. You have to get the entire Mexican population as well. The biggest person I've ever seen in my life was in Mexico.

So yeah.

There you go.

That's hilarious. I had no I assume, like, just some

random

newspaper or something titled you that, but

knowing itself titled makes it better for some reason.

So, I mean, should we get to the I mean, you you have a third thing to show. I know exactly what you need to show you wanna show. Yeah. Should we talk about this conference you're running with sessions?

Yeah. Absolutely. So,

yeah. Ben Ben Parent and I, BDC Sessions,

who I've known a really long time,

from the early days of my store here.

We're putting on a conference in Calgary in July called the Bitcoin Rodeo.

It's gonna be fairly small, probably about 400 people.

It's gonna be very

focused on Bitcoin only content.

We've had a lot of very good, well put together conferences

that have way too much shitcoin stuff

going on in Canada because you know, coins.

And the whole time I've heard people

ask me about this. We put one on in 2018,

which is one of the first, if not the first conference that Safedine spoke at,

on Bitcoin,

and that was a big hit. We had a pony

and and and and a really great time. And I think Think I remember the pony from the end. Yeah. It was,

it was awesome. They we we rented this miniature pony, and they threw in a free miniature donkey. It was amazing.

Great deal. Yeah. I don't know if we're gonna be able to get those because the venue is not as permissive this time,

and not in as as flexible of a spot to to get a pony up there. But where we're sort of focusing,

one thing that I noticed, like, I go to a lot of conferences, and I'm sure you do as well, and I, like, never watch the content.

Yep.

I watch some of it later.

Because it's recorded, so you can watch the content later, but it's all about meeting the people and and have all the time. And the other thing is, like, when I when I go to the watch that content, like, most of the people that are speaking in the main stage at BTC Miami

are

people that I follow pretty regularly on Twitter, and I've probably heard the same people

having the same

conversations already on Twitter. So for somebody who's, like, really deep in the space,

it can be a little bit repetitive. And at the same time, it's, like, it's not content that's accessible at all to a brand new person. So it's, like, really designed for the, like, enthusiast,

but not the professional, I guess,

is where where you could say it lands. And so we're aiming to make the content for our conference a lot more broadly accessible,

and

talking more about

how Bitcoin affects the world and vice versa than how,

the technical details or the economic realities of Bitcoin

will will work. So we're hoping,

somebody who has never really learned about Bitcoin, who's seen a a billboard on the side of the road can show up and be interested

and and get something out of that content. We're also hoping to be able to get, like, you know, I wanna see the speakers in the crowd.

Right.

I dig that.

No. I mean, obviously I mean, the freaks are aware. I'm sure you're aware.

I speak at a lot of events.

I've had my hands in,

you know, I've been consulting for,

Bitcoin Magazine on their conferences

and their content strategy in general

since it was 8 people in

the depths of 2020, grew that helped grow that company to a 100 people.

Bid block boom every year. And now Bitcoin Park doing a lot of things at Bitcoin Park. And then, obviously, still dispatch, Robert will recap. And a big priority for me has always been

conversations that you won't hear anywhere else. Right? Like, keep it fresh. We don't wanna hear the same thing over and over again.

So I I mean,

knowing sessions as well, like, I I have no doubt that you guys will execute on that. Yeah.

We're we're we're building in a whole bunch of fun details that,

we're hoping will be engaging for the audience in a way that's not just Bitcoin content. So we've got little cool things like,

we're getting a.

If you remember those, like, the Yeah. They're extremely annoying. What are you gonna do with them? Well,

Glenn's gonna have one. He's he's gonna be the MC for the event. That's what they had at the South Africa World Cup, and they were everywhere. They I remember they had baseball games and shit.

And, if any of our,

panelists are so unlucky as to favorably mention a casino coin Oh, I love that. We're gonna blow the vuvuzela,

and we're gonna break the discussion and pivot. Yeah. I got vetoed. I wanted to,

for Bitcoin 2022, I wanted to do, like, a slime button that I can control. It's just, like, hit them on the main stage as soon as they talked about the shit coin, but I got vetoed on that one. Yeah. I like that. Vuvuzela is good. It's clean too. Yeah. We don't know we can ignore a Vuvuzela.

Absolutely.

So,

we've got that. We're planning a, we're planning a fashion show

with all the Bitcoin merch

that all the different companies bring.

And,

one that I'm really excited for is the Bitcoin elevator pitch competition.

So we'll have a bunch of speakers and,

some random plebs who have applied

giving their best, like, 45 seconds

on how to sell stranger Bitcoin.

That's what's important.

You gotta perfect that one.

So let's get into the brass tacks.

Like, how how many attendees do you expect to have? Like, what size event are we talking? Yeah. It's it's gonna be around 400, so it's gonna be fairly I like that size.

Yeah.

There's gonna be a big focus on networking. So the way we've set up the space,

there's gonna be a really

nice area for networking and then bar and an art gallery and a great place to to go and meet people as well as, like, some private areas that people can have meetings and whatnot. So we're hoping that it becomes an event that is useful to the people in the Bitcoin industry because of the networking and the

the deal making and whatnot that we all go there for

and building those relationships and whatnot. And then we're also hoping that it can be at the same time useful to the people who walk in off the street.

So we're,

we're one of the biggest oil cities in the world. We have 600, 700 oil companies headquartered in Calgary,

and, this conference is right in downtown Calgary. We're in the hub of,

all of the oil companies. So you're gonna have a lot of mining content?

Yeah. So content.

You know, there there's gonna be some for sure. We're not overwhelmingly

going with that, but it is,

it it is it is a focus. I feel like every energy company in Calgary has heard

extensively recently about mining.

So our goal is not to, like, drill it into them. It's, like, to present a

a good forum for discussion.

And I think we're at the point where a lot of these energy companies, they've probably all been pitched, like, 15 times by different Bitcoin mining companies,

and they're either doing it already or they've decided not to for some reason.

So

I wanna sell those people Bitcoin

rather than, like, in the concept of Bitcoin.

And if they're not already mining,

I wanna convince them that

they wanna be mining because Bitcoin is

the the future of where they need to be going. Right.

I mean, I, first of all, we have Rand Moore in the comments asking about the rails from Oregon to Bitcoin Park.

I wonder if you mean trains,

there's definitely a way to get here via trains because I've we have at least one freak who showed up to Bitcoin Park,

from from that area, from the northwest

to here.

Back to back to Dave,

I really like the size of the 400 person events.

I,

you know, there's a place first of all, I can hear your tapping because I know you don't have your headphones, so you can't hear it.

There's there's a place as as hyper Bitcoinization happens, as Bitcoin adoption happens, I really do strongly believe that it makes sense to have 20,000 person plus festivals,

for Bitcoin,

or Bitcoin culture maybe, like expand the tent, Bitcoin culture.

It makes sense to me. But

as someone who's been in the space as long as you, I really enjoy the smaller high high signal events, and that's where we've been focused on at Bitcoin Park. Our events are 200 people or less.

Right? So high signal, You just have great conversations. It's very intimate.

And and to me, personally,

that is what I really enjoy.

But to the energy side,

the the the

when when we first got into Bitcoin, Dave,

like, we couldn't really fathom where mining would go.

The the

the combination of energy and Bitcoin

and what is happening in the energy world right now, we had a mining summit at Bitcoin Park in January,

is

is is is fucking amazing

to be to just just to put it out there. Like, it is and and to talk to someone who's on the energy side like, you talked to one of these ONG guys that got into Bitcoin

as they were energy build first. Right? Like, they're, like,

oil maximalist or gas maximalist or coal maximalist. Right? And then they they realize that they basically can just turn that into money.

There's no such thing as stranded energy anymore. Right? And you just, like, have a conversation with them, and it just fucking clicks.

They they come at it from a whole different perspective.

So, I mean, you you guys seem like you would be in a particularly unique

situation

Yeah.

To to focus on the energy side. So, I mean, don't

yeah. It doesn't sound like you're dismissing it. I'm not I like talking business on air. So but my advice would be lean into the energy

Yeah. Because it's really, really

massive. It's it's just crazy.

We're definitely not dismissing it. I I think that you guys are actually, like, a year or 2 behind. Like, the United States is

a while behind

on the stranded stranded

energy mining side because for us You guys have Steve Barber, man. Yeah. Exactly.

Steve Barber and I first met at the first Bitcoin Rodeo, which is in 2018.

And at the time, I was, like

so back then, like, I had done some consulting with a reasonably sized,

natural gas company and midstream company

that got a pretty good sized mining operation going in, like, 2017

here.

And I had been a little bit involved in the process of, like, figuring out the containers and all the physical logistics and all the stuff that that goes into,

you know, mining Bitcoin at a remote weird site like that.

And I met Steve Barber at the Bitcoin Rodeo in 2018,

and he was brand new into making these containers that he makes now. And they were just they were shit. Like, they were not very good. And I I looked at his designs and stuff like this, and he was, like we had just bought one for, like, $80,000 somewhere, and he was selling this one for, like, $12,000. It was not very good, and I was kinda like, well, this is not, like,

this is not bound for big things, but I was completely wrong. And, like, the detail that Steve got there

that made him such a pioneer in the industry

was keeping those capex costs down. And his first design was not very good, but, like, he improved upon it rapidly without making a lot of,

extra costs added to the design. And so it became this thing where, like, oil companies could try it for a lot less money,

and that became really meaningful, I think. And like I mentioned, I I'm definitely not gonna dismiss the energy side, the oil and gas for this conference. We're hoping to bring in as attendees a ton of oil and gas people. Right. But all of those people have already been pitched on the business model of Bitcoin mining and what it can do for energy.

And, you know, we're in a position here in Alberta where, like, our energy is already stranded. Like, we can't get pipelines built.

We are very, very heavy on gas.

We have tons of gas here, and,

you know, we've got, like, European leaders coming to Ottawa to beg our our prime minister

to

sell them gas,

And he's like, no.

So, yeah, we're we're very familiar with the stranded energy,

but where I think it's at is all of these people have heard the business case and the pitch for Bitcoin mining.

Now they need to hear the pitch for Bitcoin.

They need to hear not just why it makes dollars and cents in the fiat world, they need to hear why not only should they be mining Bitcoin, but they should be holding Bitcoin.

Right. So I have I have a question for you, and

feel free to I mean, you're running a publicly traded Canadian company.

So, I mean, I know it's a sensitive topic.

I kinda wanna talk a little bit about the Canadian truckers

situation.

And, like, that did that change

I mean,

obviously, I'm I'm American.

I'm a Bitcoiner that's focused on the freedom oriented aspects of Bitcoin,

the ability to spend or save without permission.

Like, Bitcoin is literally a fuck you money. That's what's cool about it to me.

And to me, the Canadian trucker situation was a massive wake up call. I thought it was, like, a massive

for the for the western world, for the developed world. Like, this is your use case. Here you go. Like like, bank accounts are getting shut down.

People are losing their livelihoods

for protesting the government.

We we see it happen all the time in in the developing world, but it's, you know, this was a a real world,

very clear cut example,

in Canada, you know, which is supposed to be one of the most developed nations in in the world, most one of the most, quote, unquote, free nations in the world.

Did you see, like, a major change there in Canada, or did most people just brush it away? Because, like, when I look on Twitter now, I feel like most people have just forgotten that lesson. They just don't even

really remember it. It's been forgotten very quickly.

Yeah. So I I think it's made a change here.

It hasn't changed anything among Bitcoiners. It probably doesn't matter that

anyway or, like, at least convinced

of the the topic.

Where I've seen the change is in the

sort of libertarian

leaning, freedom minded,

people like truckers,

the farmers, rural people Right.

Aren't Bitcoiners,

but have suddenly been confronted with the reality

that their

IOUs in the bank account, their ability to spend the funds they have in their bank account are contingent upon good behavior.

And that good behavior

is not something that's defined. It might mean you can't tweet something bad about Trudeau. It might mean that you can't go to a trucker protest. And,

ultimately, what it comes down to is that the government can and will turn off your money

if you do something they don't like. Right.

We've all sort of seen the discussions of,

you know, the move towards central bank digital currencies and all this stuff, and the desire for the globalists and the government to take

the reigns over your social life and be able to decide,

how you should spend your money based on your your social life or your choices or or whatever else,

your political views.

And we've seen that we have offices,

in Calgary and Edmonton where we do in person sales,

and the majority of the people who come into our in person offices tend to be older.

There are people who can't just figure it out immediately by themselves online, and they need a bit more help. And,

coming from those generations, they're a little bit more emotionally attached to the idea of, like, going physically into a store and having a relationship with the person across the desk.

And

we're seeing a massive influx

both of older people, but of rural people. Like, very, very,

way more per capita rural people than from cities.

And I think those are people who already have, like, the seed of distrust for the government. Right. They're more likely to have gold or Bitcoin under their mattress

or sorry. Gold or cash under their mattress, and now they're just seeing Bitcoin as, like, this digital alternative to cash under the mattress.

And

even before some of the times they understand anything about the monetary policy and the idea that they're they're being inflated away,

that that ability to self custody and the ability to hold your funds and spend your funds in a way that can't be touched is definitely starting to resonate

in those particular communities, I think.

Yeah. I mean, that makes sense to me. There's there's already a they don't they don't have to be explained the need for it,

Just that it exists.

Yeah.

Does that change how you look when you're, like, building out,

Bitcoin well? Does that change

how you look at that? Because, I mean, obviously, the Bitcoin companies are probably the most vulnerable,

in that kind of situation.

Yeah. So there there's a few ways that we,

we look at that.

One is the fact that we have those offices. So we're set up to help those people and to give them the help that they want.

We are a target potentially. You know, if the government decides to crack down on on Bitcoin Right. They could shut down every business that sells Bitcoin in Canada.

There have been some cases, like there was

a court case, with the same company, Coinsquare,

that was wash trading where they ended up giving,

something like the top 20%

of their customer data to the Canada Revenue Agency.

Right. So there's some legal battles ahead there. We're not going to give away any customer data,

without being forced to.

And,

but that has to be acknowledged as a threat. Like, we exist in the physical world. Threat. Has guns, they can show up. So Yep.

We we are also susceptible to a $5 wrench attack.

Yeah. I mean, with inflation, 6 it's it's a little bit more expensive than $5 now, but the government has all the big wrenches.

Yeah.

I have another question for you. So I'm not,

you know, I'm not, like, a polished

Bitcoin podcaster like Stefan.

So I'm just gonna hit you with questions. The

after post post shells,

the

when you're rolling out in America, like, how do you think about the I mean, America's, like, the one of the worst regulatory environments.

I mean, besides Europe, Europe's fucking horrible.

How are you gonna are you gonna go state by state? Is that the play? Like, you just one state at a time? Just to slow roll out.

We're we're going down 2 paths. We're exploring all the regulatory

state by state stuff, but we're likely working with a payment processor that will handle our regulatory stuff. Got it. So that is the simple way to do it because it is a mess. Like, I've stayed away from the US for years because of that mess.

And,

like, it is such a big market that it's worth tackling,

but it it's just,

like It's a cluster. It'd be great if everyone was on the same page.

Okay.

And I have another I mean, I know you go way back, but you said it many times.

Are you are you a die hard

bitcoins as a plural? Like, I'm I'm pretty sure that we're not we that doesn't make any sense

to me, that that the plural of bitcoin

is bitcoins.

How do like, are are are you willing to change your ways on that, or you're just gonna keep calling them Bitcoins because that's what used to happen back in the day? Yeah. I don't know.

See, I I fought the other battle

of semantics, which is, like,

the capital b and the the small b. Oh, what are you on this? Well, the right answer is that the capital b refers to the network

and the small one to the

All lowercase.

Everything should be lowercase.

I like, you Is the Internet? The Internet's not upper no one does the Internet uppercase.

That's true.

I mean, some do. There's, like, some

die hards from back in the day that still

refused to lowercase Internet, but most people just lowercase Internet.

Yeah. And I I I think it it, like, it comes down to the difference between, like, Kleenex and Kleenex.

You know, you've got, like, the brand and then the the idea of facial tissue that everyone now calls Kleenex,

and there's only one Internet,

and that

really has just become like a noun at this point. Right?

Whereas Bitcoin at this point is still like a proper name, the network.

And

from

a from a grammatical perspective,

it makes sense that

it'd be

an upper case b,

but, realistically,

I kind of agree.

Brings to mind this interesting little detail from that first Bitcoin roadie that we put on with Safedine.

It was the first time I'd ever seen him speak, and it's I've seen him speak a bunch of times, and it was definitely the best one.

Somebody asked something about Bitcoin culture, and, you know, we're all immersed in the culture and, like,

this like, there there's all these amazing pieces of the culture,

going on. But he said that someday, Bitcoin culture is gonna seem really stupid

because,

you know, we're all very in favor of indoor plumbing right now, and it's a virtual necessity of life.

Right.

No one goes to email conferences.

Yeah. Exactly. And That sounds boring as fuck. Eventually, that's what Bitcoin will be.

Like because it'll it'll just be the only form of money,

and

we might even get rid of the word money. We might just call it Bitcoin. Right.

Eventually, that transition from, like, a proper name

of the Bitcoin network, which is something,

that could be in most people's eyes, for example, compared to something like Ethereum,

has to transition to being, like, just a part of society,

like the Internet,

in which case it becomes a noun. I don't know where

that distinction is. So then lowercase.

Yeah. You're on low you're on team lowercase now, everything.

Yeah. And and you important issues of our time. I was I was fighting the opposite fight before trying to say that they should be 2 different things, the network and the and the asset or the the unit of account.

And, like, nobody cared,

and nobody was listening. So I kinda just, like, don't

I I've I've tapped out on that battle. I am not,

I'm not a hardcore

lowercase or upper case b proponent at this point. This is a very,

sensitive topic at Bitcoin Park. There's a little bit of a civil war going on here because my cofounder, Rod, when he when we start every meetup, he says that we're focused on the Bitcoin network with a capital b and the Bitcoin Bitcoin the money

with the lowercase b, and it just triggers me every single time, and I think he's just wrong on this.

I just think it's lowercase only, and I'm just gonna do that till the day I die. And I I people don't have to agree with me. They can opt in to whatever they they wanna choose. But

I'm not gonna let you distract me here.

Bitcoins Bitcoins makes no sense.

Like, if someone buys if someone buys

0.25

Bitcoin

or someone buys 1.27

Bitcoin,

like, where does Bitcoins come into play? Like, it doesn't make any sense that the plural has an s at the end.

You're right. It doesn't.

I'm fully on board with you're gonna fight me on it because you used it multiple times. No. It's yeah. It's I was looking for a fight, Dave. I was looking for a fight. It's a it's a slip. I agree with you. The the s makes no sense,

but I don't think you're right fully on the opposite on the other topic because I think we're still at the point where from a from a logical perspective, they should be 2 different things.

In reality,

everyone's just calling them whatever they want.

And I'm like,

there there's a real a real phenomenon.

There's a real phenomenon in the space,

of kinda like burnout where it especially afflicts Bitcoin maximalists who,

you know, just get absolutely tired of explaining what is wrong

with Ethereum.

And

so I've taken the the path for the last several years of, like,

really, really picking my battles.

And so if you're gonna get a hardcore Bitcoin pitch from me,

like, somebody that I don't know very well, it's probably because I have a high opinion of that person, and I feel like they're worth Yep. That pitch and worth my time to give that pitch.

And

I don't know that either the large lowercase, uppercase

thing, or the app

worth my time at this point

to die on any of those hills.

It's just Dave. This is what gets us through all the all the years. You know? It's just like Yeah. You need to you need to have your fun arguments because everything else is so tiresome.

Yeah. And and there there's an interesting point there where, you know, we've got this,

we've got this, like, community of toxic maximalists.

Right? And we're all, like, the front lines. We're, like, the defenders of the narrative.

And we're,

I think pretty much everyone in that group are are capitalists

and would very much agree with the idea that, like, the free market should decide, and we don't, you know, we don't want the government to protect us or anyone else from anything.

Right.

The market needs information.

And

so we need to be getting into these arguments,

and we need to publicly refute the bad points that are made,

against Bitcoin and in favor of casino coins. And these kinds of things, like, it it's it's just like sharpening the swords. You know what I mean? Like, let's our let's get together and argue amongst ourselves about the s

so that we can

so that we can be ready when we gotta refute some actual bullshit.

Yeah. I mean,

I don't even know if I believe in that anymore. Like, I mean, for something like the block size war is absolutely imperative.

Right?

You know, it it it really came down to users, you know, running their own notes and using their own notes. It it it required individual action.

And there was a little bit of

I fucking hate politics. There was a little bit of politicking about it. Right? It was it was it was gathering user support.

But with with shitcoins or casino coins, I there's something there with casino coins, by the way, because I always say gambling. I like I like using gambling as a word because I'm also believe a big free market guy.

If you wanna gamble, everyone has the right to get wrecked. Go gamble.

You know, you'll come find your way. But with with Bitcoin versus shitcoins,

I strongly believe

that the shitcoins are trending to 0 in terms of Bitcoin. Like, it really does not matter how many podcasts, how many books, how many

YouTube videos come out on it.

Like, there it's just less hard money.

It they're all competing monies. Everyone all the promoters of Shitcoins will pretend it's not a competing money

unless it's prudent for them to do it expedient for them to do it at some given time.

But they're all competing monies, and they're less hard money. So as a result, they should trend to 0 long term against Bitcoin. We've seen that throughout history, throughout the short history of of Bitcoin and shitcoins.

And and you like,

I think there'll always be shitcoins, but there's always different shitcoins. It's like you and you see them. They, like, come and go. Like, no one remembers, like, the 1st generation of shitcoins or the 2nd generation. And then, like, Solana came out, and then, like, they went through their pump cycle. Like, Tron comes out. It goes through its pump cycle. Right? And, like, in 4 years, there's gonna be, like, a whole different set that we just don't even know. And, like, they're gonna go through their pump cycle. It's gonna be infuriating.

Like,

the the x shit coin or whatever whatever they name it is, like, the the trolls on Twitter are gonna be annoying.

But, like, none of that fucking matters because it'll just trend to fucking 0.

But when I look at the education side, it's

it's not to, like, protect Bitcoin, the network.

It's it's it's

users are gonna lose lose money. Like, individuals will lose money. And, like, if you can, you know, help a few people

avoid that fate, and we see that a lot. Like, I've talked to freaks who are like,

I just never went through that phase because I just came straight in through a rabbit hole recap. And I just I just knew. So I just never

I never had to touch the stove because you just explained stories of people getting there touching the stove for me ahead of time. But I

I don't even know if it yeah. I don't even know if it's

I don't think it's necessary.

Yeah. It that's a 100% the way I look at it. Like,

Bitcoin is inevitable

as is the,

eventual collapse of all these casino coins.

And

when I'm giving someone my Bitcoin pitch, I'm not doing that to help Bitcoin. I'm not doing that to help adoption.

I'm doing that to help help them. The individual.

Yeah. Because you respect the person, and you just wanna help them. Yeah. Exactly. Because the you know, the saying of, like, everyone gets into Bitcoin as early as they deserve or everyone The price they deserve, I think, is the core. Exactly.

I guess if I if I meet someone and I find that they're, like,

ideologically aligned, like a rational person,

especially people that are business owners, capitalists,

the builders of the world,

those are the people that I wanna convince

that Bitcoin is in their best interest because

the best thing for Bitcoin is a whole bunch of Bitcoiners

operating in their own rational best interests Right. Building towards whatever they wanna build.

That's the cool part about Bitcoin is you don't have to be, like, a benevolent

priest like character. You just have to be greedy, and the system

gets more robust as more people are greedy. That's what makes it work. Because all the other fucking incentives in our societies are based around this idea that, like, people are just gonna be these these magical, benevolent people, and they just never are. They're always corrupt assholes,

and and those are the guys who lead up to power, and then they they ruin everything. So, like, you need systems that are are designed in the opposite way. They're designed under the assumption of greed. Those systems are robust. That's why Bitcoin's robust.

And and you you can speak to it probably more than anyone else that, like, people when given the freedom to be are naturally good and they are naturally benevolent. You know, you've got

a stream of donations coming in,

and

it's the people that want to force others to benevolence

that are the ones that are always,

the opposite of that. They're the ones that are looking to get by without creating value. They're the moochers and the leechers

that want to siphon away all the value from all the people who actually build things for the world. Well, it's like the Stanford prisoner experiment or whatever. It's like you give if you give people a a path where they can be more powerful than other individuals,

it's the worst people that are the ones that

climb that climb those rungs to become more powerful. Right? Like, it's just

natural human tendency.

I can't imagine wanting to be, like, in charge

of an entire country or something like that. Like, it seems like just this it's a terrible idea. Like, why would why would a person like, a rational sane person

want to for other people?

Yeah. Exactly. So it's self selection, right, in that

way.

Dave, I mean, this has been great. I look forward to

seeing what y'all build with Bitcoin well.

I look forward to I I mean, I already told you I'm not giving you a definitive yes

on on the conference.

Yeah.

But I will let you know. But I look forward to

to to seeing the results regardless whether or not I'm gonna get it. Get a pony?

If you get a pony, I'm more likely. If you can get a if you get a unicorn, definitely, I'm definitely in. If you can somehow figure out a unicorn. I don't think unicorns are really on brand, though. Yeah. Well, that's true. They're more Ethereum, but I I also know they don't exist. So I'm able to definitively say that to you. Well, you have to get a have you are you not trying to line up a bull? You know what? If we were gonna get a bull, it would probably be a bison.

Oh, that'd be pretty awesome.

I like the idea of a real,

like, a bison bull there. Do they do bison have yeah. Bison have horns. Right? They do. Yeah. They have huge horns.

The problem with bison is you can't really control what they do. They just do whatever they want.

They just let it loose in the crowd and just see what happened to personal responsibility.

Have everyone sign a waiver.

But, yeah, I look for I look forward to,

the event. I look forward to Bitcoin well.

I appreciate you coming on. You don't do many podcasts, so it's it's great to have you on dispatch.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Great discussion.

I mean, actually, I was about to wrap it up, but I have one more question for you while I have you. Okay.

Once again, not Stefan. So I just it just whatever comes to mind.

So this podcast is called CIL dispatch.

Why did I call it CIL dispatch? I called it CIL dispatch because

of that Reddit post,

back in the day. Do you remember the Reddit post where it's it's actually anti Bitcoin Reddit post, but it was about about Bitcoiners living in citadels,

and I it it hit me as a young person. I just always I treat it like hyperlocalism.

This idea that

these large centralized systems,

that have never been larger than they are today,

are corrupted.

They will crumble,

and we will have

a a reversion to the mean. We'll have a a a bring back of these, like, hyperlocal societies,

which is what has always been the case up until, you know, relatively recently in human history with a mix of

technology coming into it play. So it'd be like, because we have Bitcoin,

and because we potentially have drones and drones,

autonomous drone swarms, and all this other shit, and mesh networking, like, that you could have global trade

in a situation where you have hyperlocalism.

What are your thoughts on that? Is that, like, batshit crazy,

or is that does that make sense to you? Yeah. It it for sure does. So I read,

I read Atlas Shrugged Yes. When I was, like, 18, and I kinda got it.

And then I read it again at the start of 2020,

and it was super

depressing to me. It was like, this is what's happening in the world

is the State Science Institute and the Anti Dog Eat Dog League and all these

bizarre, like,

supposedly,

like, benevolent government organizations

stealing all the money from the world.

And,

very shortly after that, I read The Sovereign Individual. I heard you talking about that with CK last week. Yep. And one of the things that gave me the most hope for the world from a sovereign individual

is this idea that the

the time of the large scale nation state is done.

And this

concentration of violence that was,

that was necessary to defend capital for the last 2000 years

is now shifting, and we've seen pretty much since the Vietnam war that it doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna win a war if you have the largest army, the most tanks, the biggest guns,

etcetera.

We've just been moving in that direction where it is feasible

for small scale nation states, and I think what will eventually move towards, like, city states,

to exist in the world,

because the efficiency of violence has increased

significantly.

And so I think that's where we're gonna go. We don't need to live in a world where

there is sort of, like, a hall monitor of the world

underpinning all global trade with a threat of violence. And that's kind of the situation that we live in right now where,

you know, we saw things like the the the,

the revolution in Libya with Muammar Gaddafi who is trying to go against that global financial system.

Right. They they took him out, basically.

Right. He had a gold backed shit coin that he wanted to launch.

Exactly. And so I do think that we're moving towards

with all of those technologies that you're talking about.

I think the 3 pillars that we really, really need

to be able to create

self sustainable

sort of

extreme localized micro communities like that that may result in, like, city states or or regions. Citadels.

Citadels or whatever it is. Yeah.

That that, like, hyper localism is we need,

of course, money and we've got that solved now. We have,

money that does not rely on the state, which is another one of the predictions from the sovereign individual. Doesn't require trust.

Yeah. We need,

the ability to communicate

in a way that cannot be censored

through,

those same sort of government

crackdowns,

and that's starting to get there. There's still a lot of central points of failure, you know, like I think that might be Noster.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So Noster is,

the most

promising one of those solutions right now, I think.

There's some really cool stuff that,

Start 9 Labs is doing, for example.

We do need a decentralized communication layer. Right.

And there are a bunch of pieces that live on top of that. And we need, like, the physical mesh networking components still. Like, it's not really flushed out yet. Yeah. Exactly. So,

like, in there there's actually weaknesses on the communication in both directions in the sense that our Internet service providers

downstream are kind of, like, one potential bottleneck.

And then on the other direction, we've got, like, things like all the websites, all the domain providers,

all the ways that we find and and and Right. Figure out how to communicate with each other. So both of those things need to get more decentralized.

And then the last pillar I think of

of, a free society is the ability to arm ourselves

and and

and the ability to,

protect yourself from small scale violence without relying on

someone else having a monopoly on violence. Yep. And

the 3 d printing,

Game changer.

Game changer. So I think Guides out of the bag on that one. Yeah. Absolutely. You cannot put,

cannot put that one back in the box, and I think we're well on the way to all of those things. And I think,

like, if if the governments of the world went fully hostile against the citizens

and in, like, a v for vendetta type

scenario,

we would be in a pretty good spot right now, but not as good as we need to be, and not as good as we will be a few years from now.

Yeah.

No. I agree. And I but I almost think, like, part of it is,

like, iron sharpens iron. Like, it doesn't really happen without the pressure. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean It's very unlikely, I think,

given how far those systems have come that we actually even ever get to a v for Vendetta type

totalitarian

situation because

I think we're ahead. Those of us who want freedom from a technological perspective are ahead, and it does not seem at all

like the

people,

like, the people that are trying to subjugate us

really know what's going on.

And that's kind of our fundamental exam like, advantage, I think, is that these people are either,

evil or incompetent.

Right.

Or a mix of both, probably. Yeah. Probably in most cases.

Yeah. No. I agree.

Yeah. Well, I think we're very aligned on that. I would say one thing, though, is v for Vendetta is based in the UK,

and,

there's no right to bear arms over in the UK. Maybe the 3 d printing changes that, but, it's probably a little it's a it's a lot more likely over there than over here. It it is. And that the, the protests that we saw in Hong Kong,

were a prime example of how bad shit gets when there is no record deal.

And I think some of that stuff,

you know, even the fact that we had our

trucker protests, like, violently shut down by the police

is a symptom of the fact that we don't, like you know, we we have a lot of guns in Canada, but nothing like the United States. We don't have a Yeah. An enshrined right to bear arms.

And

so,

you know, the the police that were trampling an old woman with a horse in downtown Ottawa,

we're not worried about the possibility of this crowd pulling out guns.

Partly a cultural thing, but also there's just not as many guns here. Whereas you look at some of the protests, like what happened in Hong Kong, it was people making bow and arrows, like, pointing their guns to the police. And then even some of the COVID protests in Australia where they have basically no guns, they've taken away the guns a long time ago, they're getting really extreme.

And you're seeing people getting their face slammed into the pavement for not wearing a mask on a public street.

And that's something that I don't think would happen in most of the United States because there is

a natural

need to respect the population because everyone has guns. Yeah. I mean, this is the viewpoint that I come out with Bitcoin in a different way than,

our most famous spook does,

is that it comes down to

defensive tools that empower individuals. Like, if you have defensive tools that empower individuals, you will live in a more free world. And Bitcoin is one of those defensive tools,

because it makes it much more difficult to seize people's wealth and to block them from making any kind of payments or purchases.

And as we have more of those tools,

and I would you know, I put 3 d gun printing in there. I put guns in general in there, firearms in general in there.

We will live in a more free world that will be a more localized world. That will be more of

individual, like, hyperlocalized

kind of central

not decentralized world,

and as a result, will be more free.

And that's kind of the trend I've been watching, and I I that's what attracted me to Bitcoin. That's attracts me to encryption on messaging side. Right? That's what attracts me to Nasr in terms of just robust communication protocol.

It's interoperable and

mesh networking, all this stuff. Like, it it all feels like it's coming together. That's what gives me hope. I I call myself a doomer optimist. I think

I think it's impossible for this house of cards to kind of transition without some kind of chaos, but I think if if we have the right

freedom tech, like, we can

reduce the darkness

before we get to the light on the other side. You know? Yeah. Absolutely. I I like that, that way of putting it as defensive tools. That's kind of a a good short way to describe

all the things that I was just talking about there. Yep. And I think

the way the world is right now,

I would be very, very worried for the world if we didn't have Bitcoin. I'd be very worried for myself and my family if I didn't have Bitcoin,

and I can extend a lesser version of that sentiment to those other things like the 3 d printing and the communication.

I think Bitcoin is is the base layer for all of those things.

You know, we need

money

that doesn't work

in favor of the people trying to subjugate us. And

as long as we keep paying their salaries, they're gonna keep doing that, and Bitcoin is the opt out.

Really well said, Dave. Dave, it's been a pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on dispatch.

I look forward to seeing you again soon in person.

Do you have any final thoughts for the audience before we wrap?

Yeah. I mean, you can find me,

on Twitter as Bitcoin Brains.

Feel like Twitter is, maybe on its last legs.

Kinda terrible these days, but, I'm still there, and I'm also on Nostr.

I don't know what the best way to share a.

I can see that. Masters very early. Gonna read your pub key. Yeah. But, do you have it listed on Twitter? Is it in your bio on Twitter?

I I've posted it on Twitter. So I'll post it again right now on Twitter as well. And you can probably search me as well on there. And then,

yep. You can check out Bitcoin Well at bitcoinwell.com.

Bitcoinwell.comusa

has the info about our upcoming US expansion,

which hopefully,

some of your listeners will be interested in.

And, check out my website at bitcoinbrains.com.

It's got info about me being the strongest and best looking Bitcoin entrepreneur, and a very important section,

highlighting some of the stakes that I've had.

So check it out.

And,

what about if people wanna go to the event?

Oh, yeah. The event, bitcoin rodeo.com. You can also,

message the Bitcoin Rodeo,

on Twitter, or message me on any of those platforms. If you have any interest in coming or participating, tickets are available on the website

for Fiat, and message me if you wanna buy them in Bitcoin.

Awesome. Do you have a NIP 5 on, Noster?

Do you know what a NIP 5 is? Yeah. Cool. It looks like an email address. Like, I'm

I'model@werunbtc.com?

Yeah. Let me look here. It's, it's a That's what you should share.

Yeah. Bitcoinbrains@btcw.app.

Oh, that's not bad. Yeah.

Bitcoinbrands@btcw.app.

Yep. There you go. That's his, and I'm on I'm Odell at we run btc.com.

Perfect. If for some reason you're not

hitting me up on Noster. Noster's the future freaks. Anyway, Dave, thanks for joining. This was a great conversation. I look forward to our next one. Huge shout out to the freaks who joined us in the live chat.

I appreciate you. And once again,

I truly appreciate all the donations you guys send to support the show. It means a lot.

It keeps me going day in and day out even though it gets so tiresome sometimes.

All those links are at sill dispatch.com.

You know, sill dispatch.com/

donate to go straight to the donation page. Dispatch.com/chat

will bring you to our matrix chat, which is always a fun time.

247365.

I love you all. Thank you, Dave.

Thanks for having me. Stay humble, Stack Sats.

Peace.