Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #649: The Golden Age of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship with Rod Roudi

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#649: The Golden Age of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship with Rod Roudi · TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast

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these are recorded this will this will go out saturday morning august uh
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9th okay it's 9th this will hit recording on august 5th freaks
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the man the myth legend himself rod rudy
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here to talk uh i mean we're just talking about entrepreneurship it's fun it's fun being an
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entrepreneur. You're getting DMS. Dude, it is the best time to be alive, to start, especially the
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U S just to start a side hustle or a business. I know we like touched on it and re riffed on it
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for like the last two or three episodes we've done, but dude, just the tooling. I know this
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is the podcast where you asked me questions. I want to ask you a couple of questions like that
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opportunity costs app that you created. Like how did you even, I mean, we alluded to it,
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I think on the last pod,
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but the fact that again,
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I'll put myself on the left side of the bell curve.
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A guy like me can just spin up a quick hustle or a quick,
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uh,
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side business.
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Like no problem is unbelievable.
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Like this opportunity costs.
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I'm curious,
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like how that even came to fruition.
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It all,
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it all happened at the magic of Bitcoin park,
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Austin,
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you know,
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you had,
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uh,
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Justin and Anthony running their,
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their ai meetup uh in the spring they were they were doing that at a weekly clip so i went to a
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couple of those and i've always had this idea tftc obviously a media company we've been around for
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eight years and the monetization model is ad driven which is great i love our ad partners and
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it's a good business but it's a bit cyclical particularly in the bitcoin industry where
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ad dollars dry up when the Bitcoin price goes down.
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And so I've always in the back of my mind over the last five years,
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specifically, I think during COVID,
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trying to think of how to diversify revenue streams here.
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And I like to view TFTC as this holding co.
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We actually do like our corporate entity name is tftc.io holdings, Inc.
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And so we have the media and I've always wanted to sort of,
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branch out into product development oriented around Bitcoin. And I'm a big believer in the
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best products are ones that you create because you're scratching your own itch. And one of my
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itches is like how much Bitcoin am I leaving on the table by sort of spending, I'm going to say
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egregiously, but not being conscious of the spending on a day-to-day basis. And to be able
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to do that, I think you need to be able to price things in Bitcoin. So that was what I settled on
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The initial MVP was a mobile app where I would take a picture of something like my laptop and then it would spit back the price of Bitcoin.
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It was hard coded, but it worked as like a prototype and MVP.
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And then I showed it to people at the I demoed it at Bitcoin Park Austin.
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One of the meetups there where we had a vibe code sort of demo.
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And I demoed that.
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And I showed it to a couple other people and talked to a good buddy I trust actually in the Nashville area.
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who has built a bunch of products and was telling him about the ideas like dude an extension like
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this this would like scale on the internet and i was like that's a great idea so i spent
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three hours on a saturday just uh having a conversation with chat gbt to spec out
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the app told it what i wanted to do which is basically hey i'm looking great to create a
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browser extension for chrome and firefox that converts any fiat price to bitcoin i want it to
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be open source so when it's be as private as possible i'm not trying to collect anybody's data
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and after a couple hours with chat gbt i was like all right here's what the product's gonna look like
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and then i was like all right put on your product manager hat and create like a roadmap and spec for
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me and it did that and i said okay i'm gonna use replet to build this hell you uh give me the
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prompts that I should feed Replist agents to actually build this. And that's essentially what
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I did. And then about an hour of iteration on Replit using their agentic framework,
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uh, had a working extension where I could sideload it into Chrome and Firefox and it wasn't perfect,
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but it worked. And that was really cool. And then at that point for me, as somebody who's not
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a developer uh i had a piece of software in my hands that was running in my browsers that i could
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hand off to a seasoned developer who actually understood how to get it to the to the across
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the finish line and basically was able to hand him the zip files of the side loaded extensions
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and was like do you see what we're doing here he's like yes i know exactly how to clean this up and
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well make it what you want it to do and that's that's where it led and it's been cool we're
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actually working on a mobile app now getting back to the original vision um but it's been fun
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you know you touched on a couple things just the ad spend drying up i think traditional models in
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general are um there it's the future is going to just be different right and uh i think there's
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going to be a lot of these type of apps and i don't know what the monetization model is but
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there's going to be other ways for other brands to get their message or product in front of the
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right people. Uh, one area that's really interesting. And I mean, I hope we can help
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create this category, but it's more on the community driven, uh, spend and marketing spend.
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So it's like a lot of brands, you know, kudos to block, you know, supporting, uh, creating spiral
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and supporting open or inject supporting open sats. And then you got other brands and companies
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supporting um opens uh like things like open sats uh brink and others and i feel like this is the
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next area just to to piggyback on that one thread of where dollars and focus may deplete in this one
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area but they're going to increase in other areas and uh we're seeing that a little bit here at the
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park which is really exciting yeah no that was the crazy thing about this whole experience and still
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like how cheap it was like i was able to get the mvp handed off to a developer and i've been paying
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him on a contract basis over the last couple months as he's iterated on the extension started
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working on the mobile app but it's been we've been able to fund it i don't have to go raise money
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for this product and the other beauty of it too is i got to your point about new ways of doing
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things i've always had this idea because we've built up a brand uh and a viewership base over
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the last eight years is pretty material and i've been following a lot of people i'm sure you've
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heard this too but like the the idea that you're gonna like every new company is gonna need a
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quote-unquote content creator to get distribution um they're gonna have to partner with a content
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creator to to make sure they can get their product into people's hands and um another way to do that
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is like if you already have a media business with good distributions to begin launching products i
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think most famously we've seen that with mr beast with his chocolate and other things that he's that
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he's launched but obviously we're different we're in a different uh sort of lane than mr beast and
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so we're focused on bitcoin oriented products um but yeah and i think that's the beauty of it too
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another benefit of it being so cheap to experiment and to get these things out is that i think you're
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going to be able to find ways to monetize faster so it's like the the browser extension that's
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completely mit open source anybody can fork it do what they want with it access it but i think
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and people have done that already i've seen in the github but i think because of our distribution
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or brand um we've we've had the ability to get like a material user base like thousands we have
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thousands of users already it's going up consistently wow every day and then on top of
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that so that's like on the business product side we've used ai to build it and get it
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iterate quickly but then on the marketing side too i'm not sure if you've noticed we've been
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using google veo 3 create these very emotional educational videos about money being debased
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throughout history and themes around Bitcoin.
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And it's the fastest.
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I've started many X accounts in the past.
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I think we launched the opportunity.
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I just, in May, I think I secured the opportunity cost app,
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op cost, at op cost app on X.
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I secured the name, but then we didn't start posting
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until like late June.
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I think we already have 3,000 followers,
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which is like the fastest at 3,000,
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but it's leveraging ai tools particularly google vo3 and their video capabilities to create like
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marketing material for very cheap too dude yeah i mean probably just nerd out on all this stuff
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and i'm cool with that but i couldn't agree more on the workflows i gotta give a shout out to jack
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uh jack lesser who runs operations lead at bitcoin park austin i kind of gave him a little bit of
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direction. And then he just crushed this Imagine If website, right? And then Rob Warren, who's
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leading research education and programming at the park, I was like, hey man, can you experiment
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on this, the VAO three or two, whatever it's called on creating these videos. We actually
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had a partner of ours create the original Imagine If trailer, but the one, the custody and treasury
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summit that we just announced today, that was all done through VAO three. And I'm like, holy smokes,
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And by the way, the one thing I keep thinking about is this is not the end product, right?
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This is just the initial platform.
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It's going to only get exponentially better from here.
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I saw Elon tweeted out something about Imagine, which is their video rendering thing.
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And I can't wait to experiment with that.
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But again, I go back to just that one person sitting Saturday for a few hours, right?
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And they're like, I want to create this.
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and then they create a video.
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Or they create the product first and foremost.
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And they're like, okay, cool.
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This is the product.
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This is the message that I want to get out there.
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And they're able to create 90% of the way there,
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a almost world-class trailer video.
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I look back on the website that we have for Imagine F
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and I'm like, you know, this would have probably,
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it would have cost me,
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I would have spent like six months of development time.
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I don't know how many FTEs I would have spent
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just to get this level level v1 out and i we did that in less than one day it's just crazy to me
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sorry trucks in the background i put it on mute but yeah no it's and i think it's important too
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for anybody who's thinking about this i mean you mentioned it with jack but like workflows
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important and for the opportunity cost stuff we'll have literally two calls two 30 minute calls a
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week typically late at night the developers on the west coast i'll stay up to like 9 30
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and we'll just have like a catch-up call twice a week and particularly for the videos like we
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have this really cool workflow we'll we'll get together as a group we'll decide on the next
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sort of video we want to do the next story the next plot line uh and then we'll storyboard
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in person on a call and then we'll take those notes and put them in either claude or chat gbt
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to basically like all right here's the story we're trying to tell here's all the
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primary resources with the data that we'd like to so we get to the audience and we need you to help
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us like come up with a a plot and a storyline and then it gives us like 20 bullet points like okay
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here's the storyline and it's like all right let's make a more robust storyboard with an actual
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script and then we'll go through that and then beyond that it's like okay going back to what i
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did with opportunity cost going from chat gpt to replit it's like okay google vayla 3 really likes
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um it works best if you describe what you want in a json file um so we need you to
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render this script down to json and make it portable to google vayos three and it does that
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and the pace at which we're iterating on the is like we're going to be able to get one out every
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we think every week or every other week but we want to make we want to play because it's i'm sure
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you've seen it like there's been an explosion of these bitcoin oriented day i generated videos this
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summer whether it's paper bitcoin summer or what um fomo 21 what neil and those guys are doing
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um but we want to find like this emotional like in-depth storytelling niche and lean into that
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and the pace at which we're able to ship it and the cost to do so is insanely low yeah it's it's
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the create what did you coin it's like uh at the and i think it was at the park austin uh and jack
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had sent it to me and i was laughing um i forgot what you you had coined something around like
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it's time for the podcast. The idea guy. Yeah. That's right. To run now. The idea guy can
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actually do stuff. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. No, I mean, shipping with amazing
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people, like the two areas I go back to and why I think knock on wood Bitcoin Park over time will
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be durable and successful is our focus on the member experience and then having a great core team to deliver upon that experience Just those are take whatever business you have whether you a tire company a freaking custodial services company
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whatever,
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focus in the people
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and you can make magic.
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And yeah,
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there's no better time to be alive
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than right now.
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Yeah.
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I gotta give a big shout out
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to Ed, Moses, and Elijah
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at TFTC.
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I mean, it's crazy too.
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Moses and Elijah,
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I think they're like 19 and 17.
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Oh, heck yeah.
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How did you find them out of curiosity?
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Noster.
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I saw Moses posting on Noster about being available to do React.js work.
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And I think due to my research on how to make opportunity costs as performant as possible, React.js was the recommendation.
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I was like, oh, I'm actually looking for somebody and sort of opened up a line of communication there and then was off running.
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and then elijah's his brother who happens to be a video producer and so like when we started doing
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these videos it's like oh you got a brother that does this like let's uh let's go let's pull him
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into the mix you see that yeah but that's like the note we haven't cracked yet is monetizing
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yet obviously the extension's open source working on the mobile app but that's
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a lot of the discussions we've been having this summer is like all right let's like keep
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iterating keep building new stuff and then try to figure out what the audience with the users sort
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like lead us to a product that can be monetized. Um, so it's been a fun experience. Yeah. I, I will
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say, um, I think, you know, your core, you have a lot of revenue streams, uh, with all the work
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that you're doing and what allows you the freedom, uh, is to not think you have to like think
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monetization first. You can think cool product first and then downstream it's like, Oh, we can
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do this or do that. Um, and that adds to the, to the experience that's at least,
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you know, like thinking about the park, it's all about the member experience.
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And we've just been continuing to add to the member experience. Whereas we could take these
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shortcuts and like do you know, upsell cross sell and all this other stuff. It's like, no,
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no. How do we add to the existing member experience, new benefits that increases the
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retention and most importantly them to like shout from the top of the roots like roofs like you
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should join our meetup or come experience something at the park and i think that's where
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guys like you are going to continue to accelerate versus other folks that are just doing quick twitch
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things and just trying to get some quick twitch uh money yeah yeah no it feels uh it feels like
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Like TFTC, it's funny because I wear the 1031 cap.
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And obviously we're investing in companies that need immense amounts of capital to go achieve their goals as they build out critical Bitcoin infrastructure.
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But here I have the luxury to bootstrap all this, like the media is bootstrapped.
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And I can use the proceeds, the revenue from the media to fund these one-off experiments.
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But again, going back to the point, I've had these ideas for many years, but have never felt comfortable to go actually try to execute on them because of the, funnily enough, the opportunity costs and the risk that is involved is like only three or four years ago, if I were to go build something like this, it would probably cost me tens of thousands of dollars where I think collectively over the last four months, like we've, we've invested right around $10,000.
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but we have a product out there we've got we're putting out marketing material we're growing our
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user base and we sort of have confirmation and i think before we even got confirmation that there's
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something here i think we spent like five grand so it's like a five grand investment to get the
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product out there and like confirm like there's a there there we should yeah we should lead into
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this yeah you know i i think you touched on a couple things like the you know by the way this
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maybe a little bit of a tangent, but, um, the crossover I've experienced with 1031 businesses,
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uh, has been really interesting. When I say crossover is like, you guys have a portfolio
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of, I don't know how many companies you've invested in, maybe 30 or 36, 36 companies.
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And, uh, like one example is, uh, we just signed up for, uh, primal studio and, uh, so, and you
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also touched on workflows like i cannot stress enough you know as a founder the importance of
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really looking into your workflows you know at first i'd been pushing off uh uh implementing
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the primal studio because i couldn't see the workflow on the this the small team that we have
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now it makes a complete sense and it's like perfectly integrated into our workflow don't
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judge me but like the the three audiences that like the park is going to be focused on cultivating
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and curating and building, um, X Noster, of course, and believe it or not, LinkedIn, LinkedIn is this
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like terrible beast, but people like will engage with you on LinkedIn and actually read your post
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because everyone's always looking for a job. And so LinkedIn is that place, uh, for that, I guess.
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um but uh and i was i'm losing my train of thought but then we also just signed up for uh
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strike business and do you have a strike business account i do or no okay uh that's like at its
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infancy right now so going back to the workflow side it's like getting those integrated on the
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workflow we had this one issue with zap right which i believe is also a 1031 uh portfolio company
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Shout out to Parker, John and Will that we now use their payment link for our event ticketing, which I was also reluctant to actually implement because we had a like a really nice workflow with Typeform.
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But now it's just so much easier with using the payment link to actually get paid.
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And we integrate it with Strike because like they actually support natively Lightning inside of ZapRite.
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And I think they're the only partner on the Bitcoin brokerage side or Bitcoin bank side
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that does that.
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And so anyways, I don't know why I'm talking about that, but it just makes our life easier
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in terms of building these workflows as a very, very small team.
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And I'll go back to one other point, which is around focus.
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We can only probably ship like three or four major things per year.
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And I sleep pretty well at night in general, or I try to.
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the one thing I like sometimes keeps me up at night is like is this the most impactful thing
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me and the team can be working on like these three or four initiatives right like this imagine if
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experience the custody and treasury summit the research uh products that we're launching like
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uh this year are these the most impactful uh experiences for the the community I believe them
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that to be true, but we'll see. Yeah. What, um, what makes you think these things are now switching
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back to my interview seat? What makes you think that these are the most impactful things you can
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be working on the share? Yeah. So going back to listening to the members and what they're
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kind of like the questions that they're asking and kind of what their focus is on,
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and then doing the crossover of like what I'm personally interested in so that it gives me
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energy. Dude, this convergence of Bitcoin, AI, energy, and freedom tech is unbelievable. Unbelievable.
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We just spent the first, I don't even know, like 15 minutes just talking about AI tooling and how
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it's reshaping our entire lives, you know, whether it's on the personal side or on the business side.
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Okay. Now we integrate freedom money into this whole equation. We are off and running. That's
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why these these guys even building these fiat businesses leveraging ai that don't know bitcoin
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and they're focused on like web3 crypto stuff nope no shade more power to you i think it's just such
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a differentiator for us because we're already integrating bitcoin into those workflows and
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those businesses that will be well ahead of those folks uh in terms of uh business opportunities and
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such and so and then coming back to the energy side i mean you were i really appreciate your
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participating in the Texas Energy and Mining Summit, you know, also always participating in
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the National Energy and Mining Summit. Dude, it all comes back to energy. Like at the end of the
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day, it is a race to abundant energy. And we need as much energy as humanly possible to flourish.
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And so then the last point is like around really cool freedom tech, right? Across all sorts of
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different areas, whether it's on the defense side, the health side, you name it. It's really
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interesting. So I think your guys' thesis where you guys are investing in, in the freedom tech
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world is massive. I think this is where the puck is going. Some of these folks, and that's where
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I've been very fortunate and I don't know how, but I've been doing the podcast with Kathy Wood
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every month, the Bitcoin brainstorm. And then she actually came up with kind of like was explaining
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where the puck is going on the convergence between all these areas.
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And I was like, Kathy, I really want to do a Summit of Summits.
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And I've been thinking about this more based TED Talk type of version.
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And she's like, let's go.
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I'd love to be involved.
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And so that's what we're doing this September.
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And I couldn't be more excited about it.
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Yeah, and that's what, Friday and Saturday?
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Was that the 18th and 19th?
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or yeah. So September 19th and 20th in Nashville. And we actually were renting out the Fisher
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center for performing arts. So we have this beautiful theater. Yeah. Thank you, man. Um,
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and you know, so we got Kathy, we have Dr. Laffer, we have, uh, uh, Adam back. And there's a number
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of other folks that we're going to be, you know, uh, announcing as speakers. Uh, we're gonna have
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a whole 1031 stage, uh, as well. Like I imagine you have this beautiful theater with like 10
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minute Ted style, uh, presentations that all start kind of with imagine if, and you have these
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really deep fireside chats and some really amazing folks. And it, you know, it's not,
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it's one of those things where not only the speakers are amazing, but the people in the
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audience are just as amazing, if not even more amazing than the folks on stage. And then really
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like what the park I think does a really good job of is curating a really dope experience.
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Not to go on a tangent, but I've actually been inspired by you a bit and I've been writing more,
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especially with AI, but not like the sense of I've always wanted to write a bunch of things.
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And I always have like this Apple notes of topics I want to write about. And finally,
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with the help of like some different prompting and so on, I can get like a good 60% of what I want
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out in terms of the framework I want. And then I go in and edit it as I see fit. And then I post it
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like this morning, we announced the custody and treasury summit, which is September 17th and 18th,
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right before, uh, imagine if I wrote this post and they're all called like, this is dumb, but hear me
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out. And this one, this is dumb, but hear me out conferences suck. Like literally every conference
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I go to is just like kind of soul crushing in a way. I'm like in a past life when I was doing it
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for work, it was truly soul crushing because I'm like, man, I have to just be here, do the same
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rigor more and so on. And I just feel like every experience is this like
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rubbery chicken plated, you know, lunch or whatever. And it's just the same vanilla stuff.
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And so, you know, with the park, you know, we take a lot of pride and responsibility in making
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at the best Bitcoin and FreedomTech experience you'll have.
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And so we're trying to do that now, not only with this Custody and Treasury Summit, September
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17th and 18th, but also Imagine If.
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And yeah, I'll get off my shelf soapbox there for a second.
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No, I think the timing is going to be more perfect because I think it's becoming very
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clear, particularly here in the US, that we are in some regards way ahead of where things
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are going in terms of a lot of the dominant AI companies are here in the United States,
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though there are a lot of open source models beginning to eat into that dominance.
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But I think it's inarguable.
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We're ahead.
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Like what I was describing with ChatGPT, Claude, Replit, Google Veo3, all American products
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that are truly unleashing productivity that has never existed.
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Excuse me.
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But we're also behind in some ways, like particularly on the energy side.
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Like you said, we need to expand our energy generation and capacity egregiously, exponentially over the next decade.
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And I think that's the biggest question.
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What I'm excited for, imagine if I'm confident I'll be able to make it, but there may be some life events that get in the way.
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Good life events.
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but like yeah i'm fascinated to see what everybody's saying around energy and it's funny because
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we've been focused on energy in the bitcoin space for i think the better part of seven years now when
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bitcoin mining began to get hit industrial scale and we were on an island getting yelled at and
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laughed at um for wanting to use more energy but now that ai's here uh it's a foregone conclusion
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yes we need more energy energy is good we need to plug in all these computers and create this this robotic brain was globally distributed brain
28:20
And. I'm not going to be the the sourpusses like, hey, like we were doing this, we were here first, we've been preaching this abundant energy thesis for for many years now.
28:31
You guys are here. And it's funny that the the sort of the sort of connotation with increased energy production is now positive because Silicon Valley and big tech is behind it.
28:46
But whatever, you're here now. Like, let's actually talk about how we're going to do this because it is a massive problem.
28:51
I think it's unsolved and getting people across these three industries, energy, AI and Bitcoin together.
29:00
Could is going to be extremely powerful because I think, number one, the demand is there, the need is there.
29:07
And when you think of industries with incredible amounts of brainpower, I can think of like three more where if you get them all together, they can probably think of creative solutions to these massive problems.
29:20
totally and this is the thing i i hope it's so much the park we're trying to create durable
29:27
experiences year over year and what i mean by that is you know if you're not able to make it and
29:33
i'm really happy for you guys for what's to come um we're planning is to do it the following year
29:40
but like every unique every year is going to be its own unique experience that you're going to i
29:45
want to do everything i can to be like man i need to get wherever i am in the world i need to get
29:49
to Nashville during that time so I can experience it. Like there's really two areas that I zero in
29:55
on for the experience. One is specific knowledge generation and, and, and that entertains and
30:04
forms and inspires. And so how do we get that into the room and then get folks to learn from each,
30:09
learn. The second is like deep connections that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten.
30:17
And that's where I think that in real life, like going back to the Austin, you know, we're
30:21
during COVID and you guys were always open for meetups and people were flying in.
30:26
Same here in Nashville, a little afterwards, deep personal connections in real life still
30:32
go a massively long way.
30:34
Like we're creating so many unique experiences at the park here in Nashville.
30:39
I got to give a shout out to Andrew Davis.
30:41
He's absolutely crushing it.
30:43
We have a park 101.
30:44
We have a park 102.
30:45
We have a lit devs now.
30:46
We have all these things because he's just like pushing it.
30:50
And you're just seeing all these people just show up.
30:53
So I think at this convergence of Bitcoin, AI, energy, and now Freedom Tech, I think the
31:00
future is extremely bright and bringing these folks together to help platform them.
31:05
And there's a lot of amazing other events that are going on.
31:10
Like, for example, the All In Summit, I'm actually a fan of the pod for the most part.
31:15
and uh they do it like a really great one and i kind of want this to be the the freedom tech
31:21
version of the all-in summit right it's like super focused on those areas and we don't deviate
31:26
outside of that yeah what uh what topic are you most looking forward to specifically yeah
31:35
so there's a couple things that uh we'll have some that are specific to bitcoin we'll have some
31:43
that are specific to AI and want some that are specific to energy. There's a few things that
31:47
we're working on right now that crossover and converge on all three. That'll be really,
31:54
really interesting. Um, uh, one on the defense side, one on the energy production side, um,
32:02
and, and, and honestly entrepreneurship side. Um, so, uh, across those, I'm honestly really
32:09
excited about Kathy and Dr. Laffer also participating together because, you know,
32:16
Dr. Laffer was Kathy's mentor, still is her mentor today. We actually recorded a pod last Thursday,
32:23
I want to say. It was me, Dr. Laffer, Lorenzo on Kathy's team, and Kathy and Paolo from Tether.
32:32
and it was fascinating to see how curious Dr. Laffer was just going in and digging in deep
32:40
into Apollo's business background, monetary history, all that. And so Rob Warren on the team,
32:49
on the Bitcoin Park team has been working with each of the kind of the speakers and kind of
32:54
guiding them and helping them prepare for this. So I tracking to be really, really special there.
33:00
do you think uh what are your what are your thoughts about the people
33:06
out there who are looking at paper bitcoin summer and saying that bitcoin is losing
33:13
its cypherpunk roots and the ethos that got it here find any credence in that you know um
33:21
i do have a lot of thoughts actually on that and honestly i was a somewhat reluctant to launch
33:27
the custody and treasury summit we had planned this at the beginning of the year
33:31
to to launch it and we were planning to do it right before imagine if which we did we just
33:36
announced this today uh because it seems like the narrative is just around this
33:44
let's use all leverage possible to buy bitcoin and it's like what are we back in 2017 2018 around
33:55
the crypto stuff and it's like do whatever it takes to buy as much crypto as possible only there's
34:00
only one way this thing goes and it's up i'm like how many times have you and i experienced and you
34:04
more than me because you've been in bitcoin way longer than me an 80 percent uh drawdown it's
34:11
probably gonna happen again in our lifetime like probably and so for folks in general and this is a
34:20
bit of like a tangent riff, like just be disciplined and happy. Creativity loves constraints and be
34:27
happy. There's, there's beauty in enough, meaning figure out what you love to do with family,
34:34
your personal life, and you know, your health and just stay within those areas. And you can build a
34:39
really wealthy and beyond imaginable life and business. But when you're talking about like,
34:45
hey, I'm a treasury company, I'm going to go issue this and then I'm going to raise it at this level.
34:51
Honestly, I'll be honest with you, Marty, it's so over my head. So I'm not as well-versed to
34:56
talk through it all. But anytime again, I'm on the left side of the bell curve. When you're like,
35:00
okay, I'm going to go raise debt at an interest rate because I'm going to buy Bitcoin and that
35:06
number is going to go up above this threshold. There is this domino effect that can happen
35:12
on the way up to whatever price you want to like make up in the world to all the way down to 80,
35:18
90% drawdown from whatever the price that we have. I don't want that to happen, but that's why I
35:26
think on the treasury side, as it relates to the custody and treasury summit, we got folks that are
35:32
small business owners. We got family offices. We got other folks, institutional folks as well,
35:39
that are going to be attending as well as participating.
35:42
But the focus is on like,
35:43
what are the treasury strategies
35:45
that we should be implementing?
35:46
Like TFTC, for example.
35:48
I'd be curious to know like your guys' treasury strategy.
35:50
Everyone has like a Bitcoin treasury strategy
35:52
if they're accumulating Bitcoin.
35:54
It's like, hey, we accumulate 100% of Bitcoin,
35:58
20% goes into cold storage,
36:00
20% goes into collaborative custody.
36:02
And then 60% is in our full custody with Strike Business
36:06
because we use that for, you know, paying employees, paying vendors, whatever else.
36:11
I'd be curious to know.
36:13
That's what I'm curious about at the Custody and Treasury Summit.
36:15
It's like, what are those strategies and why and how do you implement those?
36:20
But I'll say this.
36:22
I think there's an opportunity to help shape that narrative, especially on Paper Bitcoin
36:26
Summer with a lot of eyeballs on us to say, how do you custody your Bitcoin?
36:32
And then just leave the pregnant pause and be like, what do you mean?
36:35
I leave it with Coinbase.
36:36
what what i don't i don't know what you're talking about and it's like or i have it with a strategy
36:41
or this stock or whatever and i'm like okay you know that's not your bitcoin and you don't have
36:48
it until you're actually physically custodying it yourself and so if i can spend maybe a minute
36:54
that's another area at the park that's why i was so bullish on on bringing rob on the team
37:00
it's rather than being this boomer and that you know yells about all the problems that are wrong
37:06
i really want to focus on figuring out solutions where i think is the right solution and we'll
37:12
figure out if the market believes uh what my solution is is the right one one of which is
37:17
at the custody and treasury summit we're going to provide produce a custody report
37:23
where it breaks down what's the state of Bitcoin custody in 2025.
37:29
And honestly, we're in the review process right now,
37:33
but I look at it personally in four pillars.
37:36
There's single SIG custody.
37:40
That's either hot wallet or cold wallet.
37:42
And we can go through that whole jam.
37:45
Then there's multi-SIG.
37:47
There's full-on custodial multi-SIG.
37:49
I think OnRamp is more full-on custodial multi-sig.
37:54
Then there's collaborative custody like Unchain and Casa.
37:58
And then there's just like full-on multi-sig that's self-custodial like Caravan and some
38:04
of these other open source models.
38:06
Then you got full custody, which is like River and Strike.
38:12
There's another tier, but I'm not even going to bring it up, the custody report, which is
38:16
like this marketing wrapper on top of a third party custodian. Like I wouldn't even recommend
38:21
that those brokerages to custody your Bitcoin, because it's like two layers away from you
38:26
actually holding your own Bitcoin. And then there's the fourth one, which is insured custody,
38:31
which is really in general, I'm, you know, I'm not a whale to be in that world, but like what
38:37
Rob Hamilton and Anchor Watch are creating, they're creating that category right now in
38:42
insured custody. And I'd be, I'd be watching what they're building right now because I don't want
38:50
this to happen. And I hopefully doesn't happen, but if one of these ETFs or one of these large
38:56
exchanges gets like hacked and then they lose a bunch of Bitcoin, I don't know what the
39:02
repercussions are, but if you have, you know, an insured custody product, like with anchor watch or,
39:08
you know, I think maybe Fidelity is also in the game there as well. There's another insurance level
39:15
that, no pun intended, that you want to implement. So I really want to go deep into those areas.
39:22
And I think on September 10th, we're going to send it out to all the attendees so that they
39:26
have it. And then we're actually going to print it out physically for them so that they can take
39:30
it. And then a lot of the people and companies cited in that report, maybe if not all of them,
39:35
are going to be invited to participate in the Custody and Treasury Summit.
39:39
So we want to do that year over year so that going back to the experience side,
39:44
how conferences just suck and it's just soul crushing.
39:48
I'd rather an organizer be like,
39:50
hey, we created this specific industry report tailored to payments,
39:56
tailored to open source, tailored to custody,
40:00
tailored to global Bitcoin adoption, tailored to energy and mining
40:03
that we thought you would enjoy since you're attending, uh, our summit. And here are the
40:09
folks that are going to be, you know, attending so that you can best prepare on how to leverage this,
40:15
the two days you're going to have in Nashville. I'd be blown away if someone did that for me.
40:20
And I, you know, it would be the price of admission would be negligible, uh, uh, for that.
40:26
Yeah. No, it's something I think about a lot. And I think it actually,
40:30
it's important to bring up funnily enough the banking crisis of 2023 like you want to figure
40:37
out all this today so you don't have to worry when something does go awry and your your example
40:45
exchange it's hacked or something like that but like we saw because of the operation choke point
40:50
2.0 like silvergate went down and signature went down the silicon valley bank went down and those
40:55
were three of the very few banks that would actually work with companies in the space.
41:00
And so you're playing bank hot potato, and then you get to the last bank that ultimately
41:04
fails in Silicon Valley Bank.
41:05
You're like, I don't know where to send my money.
41:08
These other banks won't let me set up an account.
41:10
So we saw a lot of companies just wire the money to Bitcoin trading desk, whether it's
41:16
Unchained, Strike, whatever, put it in Bitcoin, and then either put it in multisig or just
41:20
hold it on an exchange.
41:22
and i think that event highlighted like if you had done that before you wouldn't have to worry
41:29
like that's like when it comes to our strategy with our bitcoin treasury here at tftc very similar
41:36
to what you described we have a number of exchange accounts we have multi-sig cold deep cold storage
41:43
we have um other wallets we put in we split it up but um basically i think we're pretty well set up
41:51
where I can sleep easy at night knowing that the Bitcoin is secure because we're doing it the right way.
41:58
And I think that's one of the interesting friction points that exists right now.
42:04
And I think it's just a product of trying to teach old dogs new tricks where historically people are very familiar and comfortable with like,
42:16
oh I have a brokerage account I have a bank account I keep it here And I think we still in that sort of messy learning period where people unless you seeped in the industry like we are don understand that there better ways to do these things and to eliminate centralized third party risk in an extreme way if you do it the right way
42:37
And I'm very happy you're throwing the Treasury in Custody Summit because I think that's one area that we still need to get over the hump for, particularly for new entrants, getting into Bitcoin.
42:52
Totally.
42:52
Let's do it the right way.
42:54
Make sure that you're taking advantage of the sovereign properties of Bitcoin.
42:57
Exactly.
42:57
And like, I think Jack Dorsey said it best.
43:00
He was on a podcast.
43:01
I think Presidio Bitcoin was doing, which is if we just look at it as a store of value,
43:06
it will be captured and will be basically neutered.
43:10
And I couldn't agree more with that.
43:12
We need to show like there's there's so many great things that are being built in the Bitcoin
43:17
space.
43:18
I mean, the UX just on Nostra alone is unbelievable.
43:23
The advancements that they're making and then the UX in just custody.
43:27
i mean dude in 2017 or whatever 2018 we're just like looking at a small screen trying to like
43:35
verify a freaking bitcoin address it's like what are we at first i was like why am i doing this
43:41
like what the heck is going on and there's now even companies like phil geiger i think is advising
43:46
uh one company i wish i knew the name so i can give him a shout out but uh maybe branta or
43:52
something, um, where they do a verification on the address before sending it because everyone's
43:58
like Bronto. Okay. Uh, like I always get nervous even sending like 10,000 sats. I'm like, man,
44:06
okay. If I'm getting nervous and I've been doing this for a long time, like do other people like
44:10
fat fingering an extra letter here or whatever, but just the, a, we got the amazing people that
44:16
are coming to Bitcoin every single day. B the product just gets better and better and better
44:21
because we're built on open source, like straight up.
44:24
And C, it's the coolest thing we could be working on
44:27
is all this Freedom Tech stuff.
44:30
So I'm cautiously optimistic.
44:32
That's why I was a little nervous
44:35
about this whole paper Bitcoin summit
44:36
and then also including treasury in the name of the summit.
44:39
But honestly, the emphasis on custody
44:41
and also tying it into treasury strategies,
44:45
I couldn't think of a better time
44:46
to help shape that narrative
44:47
and provide a resource again for folks
44:50
to continue their continued education in the space.
44:54
Yeah, and that's one thing that I think private market companies,
45:00
like companies that aren't public yet that are private,
45:03
if you're cash flowing, you're profitable,
45:06
and you're thinking about this strategically,
45:09
like there are obviously custody products that exist,
45:13
but I think in terms of like leveraging the,
45:17
like if you have a you're producing a ton of ebitda it's a sustainable business that's been
45:24
around you want to keep it private like that's one thing i've seen behind the scenes just through
45:28
the nature of what i've been doing at 1031 is there are like private lenders and private
45:35
financers that understand the bitcoin play and will begin to offer products and services to let
45:42
let you pull forward some of that cash flow and put it into bitcoin before it rips um so that's
45:49
the other thing as it pertains to treasury strategy specifically for for companies run by bitcoiners
45:57
that are very successful um and producing a lot of cash flow like the options are going to be there
46:03
where alternatively i've talked to a lot of people who are like i'm trying to get to public markets
46:09
as quickly as possible to access that pool of capital because they have FOMO about their Bitcoin
46:15
treasury not growing as quickly as they'd like to as well. But I think the market, both private and
46:20
public markets are recognizing the opportunity and it would be cool to get some private market
46:27
financers there to talk about some, some different sort of structures that they could offer.
46:32
Totally. For example, uh, Max over at Debbie five, he's flying over for both, uh, custody and
46:40
treasury and imagine if, so I'm really interested on the, uh, you know, even though I've kind of
46:46
poopoo a little bit on the, uh, of lending side, I'm actually interested on some of the, um,
46:52
DLCs and like what lava is doing with Chazon and a lot of these other, uh, products, because I feel
46:59
like the price to lend the money should competitively go down because you're providing
47:05
the most pristine bearer asset that there is, which is Bitcoin. So, okay, like, shouldn't my
47:12
interest rate be lower? Cause I'm providing you the actual, uh, collateral here. So, um, and you
47:20
know, there's just a number of ideas there. And that's where I think what's selfishly for me
47:25
is I got to scratch my own itch
47:28
and also talk with all the members here at the park
47:31
and say, would it be cool if we did it this way?
47:34
And then get feedback.
47:35
And then we continue to iterate
47:38
and build the experience that we all want to participate in.
47:41
Yeah.
47:42
No, I completely agree on the Bitcoin collateralized lending.
47:45
It makes no sense.
47:47
I mean, Unchained is a perfect example.
47:49
They've issued over a billion dollars worth of loans
47:51
over seven, almost eight years.
47:53
have had zero principal loan loss.
47:56
Yeah.
47:56
It's amazing.
47:57
We're looking at it from a risk-adjusted perspective
48:00
on the potential to lose the principal
48:04
or the money that you lend to somebody.
48:06
It's effectively zero
48:07
because Bitcoin's extremely liquid
48:09
and trades 24-7, 365.
48:11
You simply sell the Bitcoin,
48:13
recover your dollars
48:14
if the loan gets in danger,
48:17
whereas you apply that to real estate.
48:19
It simply does not exist.
48:21
You could have the borrower go into default and then it's like, all right, I got to sell this house.
48:26
Yeah.
48:26
Housing prices are crashing.
48:28
So you're forced to sell to lost and eat and that eats into your principal.
48:32
It simply doesn't exist in Bitcoin.
48:35
Totally.
48:35
Totally.
48:37
There's just so many, so many things.
48:39
And yeah, I'm very, very bullish.
48:43
But I will say just.
48:46
What's Matt say?
48:47
Stay humble and stack stats.
48:48
I mean, just great advice.
48:50
Great advice.
48:51
as always yeah i'm excited what um where should we point people to sign up for the summit and
48:59
the imagine if yeah totally um bitcoinpark.com forward slash imagine if um there's like we're
49:08
gonna have always at our summits there's just a little there is limited space so we want to make
49:13
sure the experience is great for everybody um for the custody and treasury summit uh that's
49:19
Bitcoin Park. If you go to join our Nashville meetup page, you can go see the waitlist there.
49:24
But if you go to Bitcoin Park dot com forward slash custody hyphen treasury, you can learn more there.
49:32
Yeah, man. And I I totally understand if you're not coming.
49:35
But, you know, Parker's coming for both the custody and treasury summit.
49:39
And imagine if I got to give him a massive shout out, you know, as there's paper Bitcoin summer, you know,
49:47
all of these different, um, what do you call them?
49:51
Seasons of Bitcoin.
49:52
And now we got the season of Bitcoin where Parker's now a podcaster,
49:56
which is amazing.
49:57
I got to give him a massive shout out.
49:59
And also TFDC that he's under like the, the TFDC umbrella.
50:03
Uh, I saw on Twitter, uh, him and Rob just posted there.
50:07
What his, the Parker's podcast is called center of hash center of hash and
50:12
homage to, uh, to drew up on Saul's, uh, concept of the center of hash.
50:17
of hash in his uh in his uh bitcoin multi uh multi-planetary series that's amazing well and
50:27
this is the the good what was sad for me was you know in 2017 and 2018 when i was really learning
50:35
about bitcoin i was learning from about bitcoin from you odell and there was a number of other
50:41
great bitcoiners i mean you're still on twitter but like matt's not he's like on uh nostr only
50:46
and there's a number of people that just dropped off whether they got wrecked or whatever but to
50:52
your point around the cypherpunk ethos i mean these guys were just like hammering the status
50:58
and you know people to be like oh you're really going to full custody yeah yeah gfy you know
51:04
have fun staying poor and like all the the the funny uh in a in a good spirit uh funny uh memes
51:12
now it's like all right i just joined this uh publicly traded company to be the director of
51:19
bitcoin strategy it's like more power do you i'm not again i'm not trying to throw shade but it's
51:25
just a different season of bitcoin where i hope especially going back to these summits marty it's
51:31
like we focus with tight groups of people on a specific topic that we can build out like what
51:37
Presidio Bitcoin is doing in like, they got like a design week. They did a quantum computing. Like
51:42
I love that in the sense that we're, we're tackling different Bitcoin and freedom tech
51:49
topics with intentionality and like some specific purpose around a specific, with a specific group
51:55
of people. So, um, it's, I come all the way back to, it's great to, for Parker to be a,
52:03
a podcaster now. Yeah. We need more podcasters. That's right. That's right. Now to your point,
52:09
like paper Bitcoin summer, public market treasury strategies, definitely interesting,
52:15
definitely exciting to a certain degree, but not my cup of tea. What really excites me is the,
52:20
the freedom tech and beyond that, like just building businesses that, that produce products
52:28
and services that people like, and you can sell at a profit and then funnel those profits.
52:33
into bitcoin and develop your bitcoin strategy your treasury that way and a lot of people are
52:41
fading or opining that the cypherpunk ethos has been lost but it's there yeah it's you know where
52:47
to look if you look what like cali and the cashew team are doing and what's happening on nostr and
52:53
cali's my replacement for odell on twitter i just go back to him and i'm like dude this guy
52:58
is just straight fire every time he posts knock on wood he'll you know he'll uh yeah we'll see um
53:07
there's folks like that that uh want to continue to support and not not me continue to support like
53:12
just whatever we can do to freaking boost up guys like him and there's a lot of guys like
53:18
callie that are behind the scenes building really cool shit that is just unbelievable
53:25
yeah like evan and zeus haven't stopped shipping you've got i mean i think the jury's still out on
53:35
whether or not roll up some bitcoin will scale but they're giving it a very good try over there
53:41
like starkware and alpin labs and they're launching stuff and simplicity just got
53:46
yep with adam i was just talking with the blockchain team yesterday yeah it's unbelievable
53:51
yeah and that's where if you're looking in the right this is where i know we're about like an
53:55
hour in um and i don't want to tease something but this is something we're going to be working on
54:01
in earnest in 2026 um everybody and their mom is like uh you know we have a lot and we're very
54:10
thankful like there's a lot of folks that support the park that are well outside of austin nashville
54:15
and they're they're members of the park almost undoubtedly they're like hey i would love to have
54:19
a Bitcoin park in my city. And I'm like, man, you know, how much CapEx and all the things.
54:26
But now I'm like, you know what? I think there's a chance, Marty, that we're going to accelerate
54:32
and start these pop-ups across the US. And because what I want and I think we need to do at the park
54:43
is help get the messages out of like the importance of custody, the importance of like how institutions
54:49
could be or should be thinking about Bitcoin
54:52
as it relates to the amazing properties
54:55
that make Bitcoin so special.
54:58
Explaining Cashew out there,
54:59
explaining FEDI and the usage of those federations.
55:04
There's just so much more that we can be doing.
55:07
And I think the ground game of getting out there,
55:09
supporting other Bitcoin meetup organizers,
55:12
we have a soft plan and a Q4 internal team goal
55:18
to map this out.
55:20
So if you're listening now,
55:22
more to come on that front.
55:23
We need a pop-up in Philly.
55:26
So there's 12 cities
55:28
and Philly is on the list.
55:31
All right, it's good to know.
55:33
Well, I can't wait to help you brainstorm
55:34
the Philly pop-up.
55:37
Yeah, man.
55:38
I would love that.
55:39
All right.
55:40
I hate that we only have an hour,
55:42
but I have to go pick up a car.
55:45
I don't know if you listen to the rapid-hole recap,
55:47
but I had some car issues last week and I just got a text earlier this morning
55:51
that it's ready.
55:52
So I'm going to go.
55:52
Are you buying a new car or are you getting your car back?
55:55
I bought a new car and then it broke within a week.
55:58
So it's been great.
56:00
What's the op cost on that?
56:04
I think they're comping the fix because it had less than 200 miles.
56:08
I brought it back, but it's, it's manageable.
56:12
It's manageable.
56:13
I'll say that.
56:14
Good deal.
56:15
Good deal.
56:15
Dude, Marty, I can't thank you enough, man, and keep killing across all the fronts, man.
56:20
I'm super impressed and inspired by you.
56:23
Yeah, the feeling is mutual, Ron.
56:24
We're going to win.
56:25
We're going to win.
56:27
All right.
56:27
Peace and love, freaks.
56:28
Okay.