Latest / TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast / #745: The AI Approval Layer Is Fake with Zach Herbert
Transcript
- 0:00You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
- 0:10We talk about a Fed just gone nuts.
- 0:13All the central banks going nuts.
- 0:16So it's all acting like safe haven.
- 0:18I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins.
- 0:25In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- 0:28I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
- 0:31If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.
- 0:36Back Herbert, can't believe it's been six years, sir.
- 0:39Yeah, the world is very different from when I last came on.
- 0:44Yeah, I mean, we were just talking about it, too.
- 0:46I think maybe we start there.
- 0:49Because it's something I'm fascinated about and something we were just talking about.
- 0:52You've noticed that we're leaning into it.
- 0:54You said that you're leaning to it personally.
- 0:56And on the business side, that foundation, I think the AI wave that has hit over the last two years is really, I mean, just from observation and experience, it has founders thinking differently about building businesses, particularly within Bitcoin.
- 1:16And I'm just curious for somebody working on a hardware and security product, what is the best approach for you guys or how have you approached it?
- 1:27Because there's many considerations I feel like that your team would have to take in compared to ours, which is just media where we're not really securing data.
- 1:38And so we can be a bit more liberal.
- 1:40But I feel like for you guys, it can certainly help.
- 1:43But you have to correct me if I'm wrong.
- 1:45have some guardrails to make sure that everything's copacetic at the end of the day.
- 1:50Yeah, I mean, the AI stuff has been incredible.
- 1:52And I wish we had had it when we started the business
- 1:56because it's allowing us to move so much faster than we would have otherwise.
- 2:01It's still getting better at the low-level embedded firmware
- 2:04and drivers and operating system stuff.
- 2:08So it's still not that great there.
- 2:10Improving every day, obviously, with every model.
- 2:12but like the pace at which we're able to start adding new features to our new devices and
- 2:20software and everything is insane. But I mean, of course, it has us very worried about the security
- 2:24side of things. And we have, I think, I don't know if it's a unique point of view, but I think
- 2:31when I hear the crossover between Bitcoin and AI, I know that's becoming very topical.
- 2:37a lot of Bitcoin podcasts.
- 2:41And, you know, I've heard I've heard this this intersection of Bitcoin and AI.
- 2:46And like, what does that mean?
- 2:47And typically what I hear from that is something like Bitcoin or lightning powered payments,
- 2:53right, being like the ideal source of, you know, money transfer between the AIs, which
- 3:00was a concept that is probably is over 10 years old from like the original 21 Balaji
- 3:07machine payable web, baby machine to machine payments, which was so long ago. I mean,
- 3:11that was maybe like 20, 15, I think. Yeah, it was, it was in the depths of the bear market when
- 3:17they were working on, on that. And then it ended up pivoting to earn and selling to Coinbase.
- 3:24But what we think about now is like bringing our Bitcoiner principles and point of view
- 3:32to securing AI. And I think that's like what we're most excited about at Foundation right now.
- 3:39Because if you think about it, I mean, we started with just the Bitcoin hardware wallet back in 2020.
- 3:44And when I came on, I think you were the first podcast I ever did,
- 3:49which I remember being so nervous for, because this was like, we were just a few months into
- 3:54the company and I never done like a podcast before. And I think about what I was talking
- 3:58about then it was, you know, open source hardware. We were doing the air gap QR codes. We were just
- 4:02doing a Bitcoin only hardware wallet. And those same like security principles that we have done
- 4:09for Bitcoin and other great companies right in the Bitcoin space too, where you want to,
- 4:13you want to have a human, like a person know what they're about to approve, right? And then
- 4:20explicitly authorize that transaction in a computer environment that they trust.
- 4:29that's effectively what a Bitcoin hardware wallet is.
- 4:32And that's effectively like the kind of tech that we've been building right
- 4:35since 2020.
- 4:36And I think you could bring those exact same principles to the AI side of
- 4:40things. And so when I think, and when foundation thinks about like, you know,
- 4:44the AI stuff and the crossover, yeah, there's,
- 4:46there's enormous challenges with the security side and we all feel it right
- 4:51now as users you know,
- 4:54you're mashing the approve button or you're just turning off the permissions
- 4:58and Claude or GPT and just letting it do its thing.
- 5:02We think about like,
- 5:04how can we bring our Bitcoin or principles
- 5:05after years of building hardware wallets
- 5:09and expand that beyond specifically Bitcoin approvals
- 5:14and maybe take that like to the entire AI world as well.
- 5:17So it's like Bitcoin principled security,
- 5:21but trying to bring it to like the broader tech space.
- 5:25So, I mean, just off the top of my head
- 5:27you're explaining that so when i'm thinking of bitcoin hardware you mentioned like air gaps so
- 5:31when we're when we're trying to secure bitcoin and create a private public key pair i mean the
- 5:37the way the the safest way to do it is to have an air gap device you create it offline and
- 5:44you you make sure that it's not connected to the the main goal is isolating the hardware from the
- 5:50the broader internet and I guess when it comes to bringing those Bitcoin principles to AI,
- 6:00how do you see that being accomplished? I mean, before we hit record, we were talking about Maple.
- 6:04Obviously, they have trusted execution environments in the enclaves. And this is something that
- 6:10I'm focusing more and more on because I think people are beginning to realize like, hey,
- 6:17OpenClaw and
- 6:18CloudCowork and GPT are
- 6:21incredible, but as you use
- 6:23it, the more and more you use it, the more and more
- 6:25it becomes ingrained in your business. You're like, how much
- 6:27information am I leaking to
- 6:29these frontier models and
- 6:31the companies that run them? Am I comfortable
- 6:33with that? I think it's a massive
- 6:35problem set that needs
- 6:37to be solved, and I think ultimately
- 6:39will be solved if we're going to do that.
- 6:41I think we could see ourselves hitting a
- 6:43point where people just get too uncomfortable doing
- 6:45this and essentially giving their personal and business lives over to the AI overlords at
- 6:53Anthropic and OpenAI. Yeah. I mean, it's tough because if you don't use it, you're not going to
- 6:59be able to compete. And so like if we at Foundation didn't use it, we would over the coming years need
- 7:05to hire huge numbers of people and everything. And I want to keep the team small, right? I want to
- 7:10I want to use this technology as leverage so that we can do a huge amount with a with a small team.
- 7:18And I think the privacy stuff is very important.
- 7:21And I think there's great companies working on the privacy side of things like Maple, you know, like you mentioned.
- 7:26And so I think our perspective is less about the privacy and more about like.
- 7:31you have a technology that is probably going to be, I don't know how you equate like the
- 7:39intelligence to human intelligence. It's, it's hard to equate it. Then you get into like the
- 7:44philosophical view. You have a technology that's like a more powerful than humans when it comes to
- 7:51computer use, computer security, right? You have that mythos model from last month from,
- 7:57from Claude and it's not even available to anyone yet. And if people are trying to figure out,
- 8:02is that hype? Is that, is that overhyped? Is it real? I don't know, but I think we can see that
- 8:09the trajectory that, that the space is following. And so I think like the really interesting
- 8:15question that we were not thinking about until really like January. And so I haven't talked
- 8:20about this anywhere, really just going to share my thoughts with you in real time and like kind of
- 8:25of give you a little preview as to what we're working on right now, you know, within the
- 8:30company, but it's like, how do we constrain or contain these AI models so that you can
- 8:40use them to their full capabilities, uh, but that they ultimately answer to a human authority,
- 8:48right? Like it comes to you for any crucial type of approval. So maybe, you know, if you wanted to,
- 8:58let's say you were like investing in a portfolio company, right? Or, or you're paying, if you're
- 9:02paying or, you know, if you're doing a new investment, you're sending a million dollar
- 9:06wire transfer or even better example, Bitcoin transfer, right? You want to approve that.
- 9:12You want to know exactly what you're reviewing and approving.
- 9:16But if you're just paying an invoice, you know, for the podcast to a vendor and it's a vendor that you've paid before and it's an invoice amount, that's roughly the same amount.
- 9:26And it's 30 days from your last invoice.
- 9:29You probably want the AI to be able to just pay that for you.
- 9:31And so I think right now what where we see the opportunity and we also see like the biggest challenge is that like with how everyone's using AI today is that the place where it's asking you to approve things is the computer or device that the AI is running on itself.
- 9:51So you're like doing all the approvals inside the blast radius of the device or devices that the AI is either running on or has access to.
- 10:02And that's crazy.
- 10:04Like, I don't think that that's going to work at all long term.
- 10:07And we're already seeing, you know, you could point to all the crazy stuff happening.
- 10:10You could point to like Amazon calling emergency meetings because their employees kept taking down their AWS environments or, you know, all the stories on X people deleting all their emails.
- 10:20It may have happened in the last 12 hours with Coinbase.
- 10:22That's what they're blaming it on.
- 10:23Yeah.
- 10:24I mean, they said it was an AWS outage, right?
- 10:26But they also said that, what was it?
- 10:29Product managers pushed the prod.
- 10:32Yeah, exactly.
- 10:34And so I feel like we as humans, like we're building this extremely powerful technology that in some instances is more powerful than ourselves.
- 10:47and I don't see anyone working on ways to contain it.
- 10:54Like I don't see anyone working on,
- 10:56like the containment is about politely asking the model
- 11:00to please follow the instructions.
- 11:02You know, please listen to me
- 11:04and we're going to do all this training.
- 11:06We're going to put all these kind of guardrails in,
- 11:09but it ultimately comes down to please listen to me.
- 11:11And what we want to do is like force it
- 11:13to listen to the humans and force it to deliver approvals, right? Or, or, or requests to approve
- 11:24certain actions to the human where we can like review and approve them. And it starts to look a
- 11:30lot like the same process that you would do to review. I mean, different technology under the
- 11:35hood, but the same kind of user experience process of like, let me review and approve
- 11:40this Bitcoin transaction on trusted hardware. Yeah. And that's the, uh, again, I've, I've said
- 11:47this many times and the listeners may be tired, but I will continue to beat the drum. It's equally
- 11:52unnerving and exhilarating, unnerving because of everything you just described, but exhilarating
- 11:58because it's, it's somewhat of a, a still a blank canvas. And there's so much to be done
- 12:03in terms of creating these user flows that, that give you the confidence that you're not
- 12:09borking your system or doing something that is going to be detrimental, not only to your business,
- 12:14but to your customers as well. And that is, we're just like in that weird amorphous period where the
- 12:20models are still progressing. Cause that's a, that's a hard thing, right? Cause this thing,
- 12:24these things are still progressing at a pace that is extremely hard to keep up with. And so you're
- 12:30just trying to keep up with that pace, but at the same time, you're trying to build the guardrails
- 12:35in parallel and I feel like every three weeks or three months I'll build a system and become
- 12:41not depend not become comfortable with it and then something is released it's like okay I gotta
- 12:46rip this out and put this in how does it affect everything else I've built in the context and
- 12:50conditional approvals that that I thought I had before it's just it's uh discombobulating to to
- 12:59a certain degree. Yeah. And I, I think that we, I don't think the message should be like
- 13:08handicap yourself in the search for privacy and security. I don't think, I don't think that's
- 13:14the message. And I think right now, um, if we're using AI, we're faced with like a choice.
- 13:22And when it comes to privacy, I think there's good options. You know, like you can, you can use
- 13:28AI services or providers, or you can even do local models. I mean, it's hard to get,
- 13:34it's expensive at least to get the, you know, whether it's a Mac studio with a ton of RAM or
- 13:39the NVIDIA hardware, the framework desktop, right? There's, there's local models are pretty good.
- 13:44Or you can use one of these in TEE style, right? Type things, or you can use, I think there's like
- 13:50Venice, right? Where it can, gives you some privacy as well. But you still have that huge
- 13:56trade-off with security. You have the big trade-off of, like, I want to go and if I'm going to use
- 14:02these tools, you want to give it as much context as possible. You want to connect it to everything.
- 14:07I've been kind of building a company knowledge base internally where we ingest all the data
- 14:16from all the different company tools that we use so that we can reference decisions on the fly,
- 14:22We can look anything up. We can give the AI models that kind of context.
- 14:28But the challenge is, is that once as it stands right now, like when you give Claude or Codex or whatever tool you're using, you give it the credentials for those tools, whether it's MCP or CLIs or whatever it might be.
- 14:42It now has full access.
- 14:43and any permissions it's asking you is just politely asking you permission for something
- 14:52that it already has the capability of doing, right? So when you actually connect it, like if
- 14:57you connect Claude to Gmail, right, it has full capabilities to read and send all your emails,
- 15:05everything. And then you could go into the Claude app and you can choose the settings of,
- 15:11you know, let me mark this as needs permission. Mark, this says, you know, you don't need
- 15:17permission. You're allowed to just go take action, but that's all cloud side. So the entire AI space
- 15:22right now, like every kind of permission approval, like the entire approval layer is all fake.
- 15:30Like it's, it's, it's all fake. It's, it's just trying to make us as the users feel comfortable
- 15:35that it's coming to us to ask for permissions.
- 15:39But if it's asking for permissions for something
- 15:41that it already has the capability to do,
- 15:44like that's a huge problem.
- 15:46And this is going to be a problem that has to be solved
- 15:49over the next couple of years.
- 15:51Otherwise, I think it is going to significantly hinder adoption
- 15:55because it's going to be a total shit show
- 15:56as more and more things break.
- 15:59And so how do you think we solve that?
- 16:02Does the key cryptography come into it?
- 16:04Because you can imagine a world where it's like, hey, I need permission to do this, and I actually can't do it unless you sign a message that allows me to broadcast the, for using Bitcoin analogies here, not only broadcast the transaction, but broadcast the command to go do a certain thing on Gmail or something like that.
- 16:22Yeah, so I think it's a longer journey, and I actually think it's something about trying to distill it as much as possible.
- 16:30So we almost need to reinvent the whole idea of what a personal computer is.
- 16:36Because if you think about it, like right now, you have Mac, Windows, Linux.
- 16:43You have iOS and Android.
- 16:45And that's basically it.
- 16:47You have these five different computing platforms.
- 16:51And at least on the Mac side, it's like the same code roughly for Mac OS versus iOS.
- 16:57So, I mean, there's a lot of nuances, but it kind of comes back down, right, to the same code base.
- 17:03And then that all comes back down to like Unix type operating systems from, we'll be talking like 30 years ago, 30 plus years ago.
- 17:13And then you look at like Linux, for example, within the Linux kernel, there's like over 30 million lines of code.
- 17:22And so when we're dropping these AIs into these monolithic operating systems that are kind of built on on top of the previous code over decades, we're dropping them into one, an environment that just has huge attack surfaces.
- 17:39So I think that's like one thing to know.
- 17:41And attack surface is like a thing that a term that Bitcoiners know, right?
- 17:44Because that's how Bitcoiners evaluate oftentimes hardware wallets.
- 17:48They'll say, like, I want to use a Bitcoin only hardware wallet.
- 17:50I want to use something with a lower attack surface with the smallest amount of code possible on the hardware wallet or on the device.
- 17:59And so we're running these AIs, like the models, the applications, the harnesses, the agents.
- 18:05It's running on these very old school operating systems that everything else runs on.
- 18:10And the attack surfaces are enormous.
- 18:12So I think that's one problem.
- 18:14But the other big problem is that the OS has no way to distinguish between a human user and an AI agent.
- 18:22So like you have your screen, right?
- 18:24You have your mouse, you have your keyboard.
- 18:28And I mean, that model of like the desktop and the files like that goes all the way back to what is it like?
- 18:34Like Xerox Park with Apple.
- 18:38And I don't know who took what first, right?
- 18:40But where they saw the mouse and they have like the desktop.
- 18:43and then obviously Windows.
- 18:45So like the operating systems that we're using
- 18:48to run all these AI agents and tools,
- 18:51they don't know if it's a human user or an AI user.
- 18:55So like the way that Claude and now Codex
- 18:57are doing computer use
- 18:59is that they're just taking control
- 19:02of the mouse and the keyboard.
- 19:03And now Codex can take control of the mouse
- 19:05and the keyboard on like a Mac,
- 19:07even when the window is not on the foreground.
- 19:09So it can just go do all that stuff
- 19:11Or like you're giving it full control over a Chrome browser or something, and it's just taking control.
- 19:18And so I think that the right answer is to rebuild all this stuff from scratch.
- 19:25Yeah.
- 19:25Well, I mean, yeah.
- 19:27Multiple comments are like, so I, in January, I think that's when they released co-work, Claude did.
- 19:34And I used it and I saw it like using my computer.
- 19:36and i was like after an hour i was like all right remove permissions to do anything that scared me
- 19:41and then luckily yeah i saw claude bot blowing up i was like okay i'll put i'll put uh i'll put my uh
- 19:49clawed in the cloud and give it its own server i'm not gonna give it access to my machine i'll give
- 19:53it its own machine and feel much more comfortable that way to that point like once you understand
- 19:59you can see that these things are using your computer and your computer is none the wiser
- 20:03is them using it and it has access to all the stuff it's incredibly scary and then to your point
- 20:08that we have to redesign this i think i completely agree and i think i'm actually a layer above you
- 20:15and i've been talking about a layer above you um for months now and i'm really interested to dive
- 20:20down to the protocol level stuff because it's something i'm more ignorant about but one thing
- 20:24that's become clear to me is like the form factor of how we interact with the internet is changing
- 20:29right before our eyes like i'm pure voice to text now voice to voice with my ai systems and it's like
- 20:36if i i get frustrated if i have to type now or if i have to point and click i like to hit the only
- 20:42typing i like to do is like option spacebar begin talking to super whisper uh and it become clear to me that like UIs as we know them particularly within browsers are going to be rendered unnecessary
- 20:55You can project any UI that you want or that you need,
- 21:00something that's specific to you using these tools in the future.
- 21:04And so like on that layer, on like the UI app layer,
- 21:07like I think we're just going to go to a world that's like purely API,
- 21:12agent to agent talking, pulling information, distilling information,
- 21:16presenting information to you. But when it comes to the protocol layer stuff, I'm completely
- 21:20ignorant. Like how do you even rebuild that?
- 21:23Yeah. So I think, well, firstly, we started to do it
- 21:28without realizing, which is
- 21:30pretty interesting. So with our new
- 21:35device, Passport Prime, which is like our third generation,
- 21:39You know, we don't even call it a hardware wallet.
- 21:41We're actually not sure still what to call it.
- 21:43Like we've used different terms like personal security platform, personal security device.
- 21:51So we're still, I think, working on like how to properly define it.
- 21:55But we kicked this off in 2022.
- 21:59We kicked this project off at the end of 2022.
- 22:01So we raised like a seed round for foundation in the summer of 2022.
- 22:06and we're fully closed up with everything by winter, early winter.
- 22:13And then we just started working on this new operating system
- 22:16and we call it KOS.
- 22:20And before we started working on the new operating system,
- 22:24my co-founder and I, Ken, who's our CTO,
- 22:28have been dreaming about like a next-gen operating system
- 22:33since we started the company in 2020.
- 22:35Like we were having conversations about, oh, what if we could do a phone?
- 22:39You know, what if we could do like all these computer devices?
- 22:41And it was my first time as a first time startup founder.
- 22:45Right.
- 22:46And so I think you can get a little carried away months into starting the company.
- 22:51And we're like, oh, yeah, we could do a phone.
- 22:52We could do all this stuff.
- 22:53I don't think we really knew how hard it is to like build hardware.
- 22:57Right.
- 22:58And ship hardware and and scale that up.
- 23:00Uh, and so we were very like wide eyed and bushy tailed and, and just doing a lot of brainstorming and, you know, talking about like, well, what could we make? And what we basically settled on as our dream operating system was not a monolithic kernel, like, like Linux that I mentioned, which is like 30 million lines of code.
- 23:21and like everything is part of the kernel, like every driver that's supported is in there.
- 23:25Like literally everything is in there.
- 23:27It's crazy.
- 23:28Is the idea of this, something called a microkernel.
- 23:31And so I would argue that not only is the microkernel architecture, I mean, the right
- 23:37approach for what we did.
- 23:38And I can talk about like Passport Prime and KOS and like why we did a microkernel.
- 23:43Um, but about a, about a month ago, I sat down and I asked all the different AI models, you know, if you could build your dream operating system that would allow you to like work unobstructed, but kind of keep you contained, right.
- 24:01Where you don't have direct access to all the keys or the creds.
- 24:06You have to go ask for approval for important actions.
- 24:09Like, what would you build?
- 24:10And they all gave us the same answer, which was a microkernel operating system and described something very similar to what we had built over the last three plus years for Passport Prime.
- 24:24And that was like an oh shit moment for us because we built it like specifically for Bitcoin and for securing things that are important to Bitcoiners.
- 24:35We say secure your entire digital life.
- 24:38So like Bitcoin, of course, two FA codes, like six digit codes, security keys, you know, kind of like YubiKey style security keys, files.
- 24:48We have, you know, like almost like a hardware encrypted flash drive.
- 24:53other seeds that you use for other apps.
- 24:56So like all this important stuff being stored on the device.
- 25:00But the reason why we want to do a microkernel,
- 25:02which is basically like this tiny core of the operating system
- 25:10that has a very small attack surface.
- 25:14And then where everything else is an app in the operating system.
- 25:20So like everything.
- 25:21It's like a driver, which, which, you know, allows us to, you know, connect to a certain peripheral, like a screen, right?
- 25:30Or, you know, any kind of anything you have on the circuit board or something you might plug into the device.
- 25:36Like those drivers are in user space.
- 25:38Those are apps.
- 25:39They're not even in the kernel.
- 25:41So the kernel for KOS is less than 9,000 lines of code right now.
- 25:45so it's like yeah it's like order of magnet like orders of magnitude i don't even know how many
- 25:51that is like you know four or five something like that yeah and and we're not the first ones
- 25:58there are other micro kernels that are out there there's like one called scl4 which is a little bit
- 26:02more academic it's like a formally verified micro kernel but no one is shipping these in consumer
- 26:08hardware right now because it's really hard to do a new operating system and so we started to do this
- 26:13new operating system in 2022 because we wanted to build something that would allow you to secure
- 26:20your entire digital life and importantly install apps on it to customize what you want to do with
- 26:27it and enable developers to build apps for it but each app like needs to be in its own sandbox
- 26:34and can't talk to other apps otherwise that would compromise the security model of the entire device
- 26:40And so we want to build like the open app ecosystem to be able to keep things on like offline secure hardware, whether it's Bitcoin or all this other stuff.
- 26:50And so we started building this LS in end of 2022.
- 26:53And so I.
- 26:55I this was like before we even knew what AI was.
- 26:58And I think that this microkernel primitive is really powerful.
- 27:02and we can start to use that over time to like to contain the AI as well.
- 27:12But I'm happy to, you know, dive more into all like the actual like tech and stuff behind it,
- 27:17because like you said, most people, I think, are focused on the upper layers, right?
- 27:21Like the user experience or like you said, like the UIs, like that's going to dramatically change,
- 27:26like kind of beaming UIs or the AI kind of making you a UI in real time.
- 27:34Everything's going to be like, like you said, API based.
- 27:36I completely agree with all that as well.
- 27:38But it's kind of interesting because like this was also kind of similar to how when I came on in 2020,
- 27:45it was all about, you know, open source hardware being the foundation of this Bitcoin powered.
- 27:52I think we use the term like decentralized internet back then.
- 27:55and I think our heads have always been very much on like that that base layer right like like where
- 28:04the software meets the hardware stack and for us it's expanded beyond like the hardware stack itself
- 28:10it's also expanded into like the os layer so freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by
- 28:15our good friends at bitkey bitkey makes bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose it is a hardware
- 28:21wallet that natively embeds into a two or three multi-sig. You have one key on the hardware
- 28:25wallet, one key on your mobile device and block stores a key in the cloud for you. This is an
- 28:32incredible hardware device for your friends and family, or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on
- 28:37exchanges and have for a long time, but haven't taken a step to self-custody because they're
- 28:41worried about the complications of setting up a private public key pair, securing that seed phrase,
- 28:46setting up a pin, setting up a passphrase. Again, BitKey makes it easy to use, hard to lose,
- 28:51It's the easiest zero to one step, your first step to self-custody.
- 28:55If you have friends and family on the exchanges who haven't moved it off, tell them to pick
- 28:58up a big key.
- 28:58Go to big key dot world.
- 29:00Use the key TFTC 20 at checkout for 20% off your order.
- 29:04That's big key dot world code TFTC 20.
- 29:07All right, freaks, you know me, you know, I don't take sponsor money from products.
- 29:11I wouldn't use myself.
- 29:12So listen up.
- 29:13The AVEN Bitcoin Visa card is one of the most interesting things I've seen in the Bitcoin
- 29:17lending space in a long time.
- 29:18Here's the deal.
- 29:19You can get a line of credit up to a million dollars backed by your Bitcoin without selling
- 29:23a single sat.
- 29:24No gains, no annual fees, no minimum draws, and your Bitcoin is custodied by BitGo, which
- 29:30is one of the most trusted names in digital asset security.
- 29:33Ava never lends it out.
- 29:34There's no rehypothecation.
- 29:36You stay in control.
- 29:37And guess what?
- 29:37You can lock in a fixed rate for up to 10 years.
- 29:40That's 10 times longer than most lenders out there or go interest only for up to five years.
- 29:45rates start at 7.99% APR for a product that lets you keep your stack and still access liquidity.
- 29:52It's hard to beat. I mean, the duration in the rates is the best I've seen in the market to date.
- 29:57You also get 2% unlimited cash back every time you use the card, spend fiat, keep your Bitcoin,
- 30:03the whole game. If you've been stacking for years and you need liquidity without triggering
- 30:07the taxable event, this is worth a serious look. Go to aven.com slash Bitcoin. That's A-V-E-N.com
- 30:14slash Bitcoin, check it out.
- 30:17And I guess let's dive into it, because again, trying to...
- 30:20Because that's going to be the hardest problem, right?
- 30:22Because you mentioned Mac OS, iOS, Windows, Linux.
- 30:30This stuff's been around for decades.
- 30:33The whole, for lack of a better term,
- 30:37I think the whole digital economy has been built on these systems
- 30:40in one way or another.
- 30:41and the thought of transitioning away from that,
- 30:47like the switching cost and the user experience
- 30:50and how do you actually approach it from a technical level?
- 30:54Because the way you're describing it seems like,
- 30:57okay, we built these systems.
- 30:59Obviously, inarguably, they've been incredible for humanity,
- 31:02but in a world in which robots are emerging, becoming smart,
- 31:07and we are co-mingling with them in the digital world,
- 31:10they are insufficiently secure hopefully just in the digital world right on the robots the physical
- 31:17robots are coming too yeah um so yeah kind of how do you begin to take bites of this apple and like
- 31:23you said microkernel seems like a good thing but um the modularity and making sure that everything
- 31:29is siphoned off from each other can't communicate and how how hard is that and how
- 31:36what is the possibility of actually successfully doing that and maybe it's ultimately 100 because
- 31:45it's 100 necessary and whether people realize it now or later um is is the big question
- 31:53is we can learn it now and rebuild now or we can learn the hard lessons of letting these things run
- 32:01wild on the operating systems that exist today and learning the hard lessons down the line
- 32:05Well, I think the most important thing is to build something opinionated with a specific product that already works.
- 32:16And this has been the thing that's plagued the operating system world over the last, I mean, you could probably say decades.
- 32:25Because if you go and you start looking on Wikipedia or searching, ask your AI, how many operating systems are there?
- 32:31I mean, there's dozens of stuff that's been made.
- 32:34And there's also microkernel stuff that's been made.
- 32:37And there's some really cool projects that we took inspiration from back when we started building KOS in the end of 2022.
- 32:44Like one of them is, did you ever have Bunny on the pod, I think, at one point to talk about his precursor Be Trusted project?
- 32:54Seb?
- 32:56No.
- 32:57Seb Bunny?
- 32:58No, no.
- 32:59He's like a hardware hacker guy.
- 33:00He did a few Bitcoin pods like years ago.
- 33:04Um, but anyway, he, he's like famous in the hardware hacking world and he has a, uh, a project that he was, he was kind of showing off to Bitcoiners probably in like the, I don't know if it was 2021 or something like that.
- 33:18Uh, but he was working on this microkernel operating system called Zeus as part of this, like, it looks like an old school, like BlackBerry type thing, his device that he was working on.
- 33:28And that was like a hardware, like crowdfunded open source hardware project.
- 33:36And then there's also, I think Jeremy Soller, who was also doing some of the Bitcoin podcasts back in the day, talking about his operating system called Redox.
- 33:47He's the lead engineer at System76, which is also a Rust microkernel operating system.
- 33:53So those are two. And there's a bunch of others that have happened over the years that never get shipped on anything. And I think the reason is because they're more like academic or like passionate open source projects. But they're putting that like they're putting out that code and it's going into a GitHub repo somewhere. And it has a lot of potential, but it's like never getting shipped on real devices.
- 34:18And so we listened to those podcasts and as they were kind of approaching the Bitcoin community back in the day, and we got really excited about it.
- 34:32And we actually started building on originally on this Zeus microkernel core, which was like an open source GitHub project.
- 34:43And we've, over the last three years, diverged significantly from like that open source project to the point where it's like a basically like a completely different, you know, project.
- 34:56It's specifically designed to run on like the Passport Prime hardware as well.
- 35:01We ported it from like RISC-V to ARM so that it can run on actual like security chips that we could buy and everything.
- 35:07But I think like the first my first like long winded answer to that is that if you're trying to do this, you can't just like make a cool OS concept and like post it on GitHub and say, I have this awesome operating system concept.
- 35:22It has a lot of potential.
- 35:24It could be used for it because that's just like step zero.
- 35:27Right.
- 35:27Like the hard part is actually getting it onto like a device that you can ship to customers like that, that people actually buy and that, that is, can be used.
- 35:38And then when you're doing an operating system from scratch or mostly from scratch, you have to build support for like every single chip and every single peripheral in the hardware.
- 35:51And that takes a long time to do, especially if you're a small team, or at least it did.
- 35:54And I don't know now with AI, maybe it could be a lot faster.
- 35:57But so that's that's like how I would first answer your question, right, where it's like it can't be an academic project.
- 36:04It can't be like an open source hacker, like interesting project.
- 36:10It has to be something that you actually get out to the world and that you ship.
- 36:15Right. Because unless you ship it, no one's building anything for it.
- 36:19Like it's it's it's a it's a hardcore hobbyist type thing.
- 36:24And I think that's been the big problem, in my opinion, with all these interesting operating system concepts over the last few years, then also like over the past decades, which is a lot of really cool concepts, like a lot of amazing stuff that we can draw from.
- 36:38But like if it's not shipping in a real device that people can buy and use and developers can like build apps or stuff for, then it's just not going to get anywhere.
- 36:49so trojan horsing it into the world via a bitcoin security device is is a way to do this
- 36:56is it still trojan horsing if we didn't really plan it at the time because like we weren't
- 37:01thinking about this at all you know we were so i'll tell you exactly what we were thinking about
- 37:05so you know um we were but we did two generations of passport that you know air gapped uh looked
- 37:13like the cell phone, you know, little cell phone, dumb phone form factor.
- 37:20And, I mean, we had, you know, really great customer feedback in the space.
- 37:27We were, I mean, you know, like we had a reputation for not only just the open source
- 37:32and like assembled in the USA, but doing something that had like the hardcore security,
- 37:37but then also was more approachable.
- 37:39was like kind of, uh, and it was like kind of an alien where it meets virtue, you know,
- 37:43design language and everything. And I'm, I'm really proud of everything we did. Um, but
- 37:49like store securing your Bitcoin for us was only like the first part of a very long journey
- 37:57to secure your entire digital life. So we have Bitcoin Q and a on the team. It was,
- 38:03who's been for years.
- 38:06He's been with us since like 2021
- 38:08when we were just a few people.
- 38:11He was known for putting out
- 38:12all these amazing guides
- 38:13and tutorials over the years.
- 38:14He's our head of customer experience.
- 38:17And so like you set up your passport,
- 38:19hardware wallet or hardware wallet
- 38:20from another company.
- 38:21But then as you go down
- 38:23this Bitcoin rabbit hole,
- 38:24you start to care about
- 38:25securing everything, right?
- 38:27You need to keep your online accounts secure.
- 38:30You have your multi-factor authentication.
- 38:32you want to start self-hosting stuff.
- 38:35You kind of go down this entire rabbit hole as you get orange-pilled.
- 38:40And it's kind of stealing your name a little bit with rabbit hole.
- 38:46And we want to make something that we can use,
- 38:51that someone can buy and use as a one-stop shop
- 38:56to level up their entire security, right?
- 38:59Not just the Bitcoin.
- 39:00And what was really important to us as well was enabling developers to build apps.
- 39:07And like, this is, this is key because what we realized was that we cannot build everything at foundation.
- 39:15So examples, let's say Bitcoin examples.
- 39:19There's those guys doing frost snap.
- 39:21That's a cool project.
- 39:23You know, it's like this like hardware device and like they all do frost and they they USB into each other like a giant like an opinion.
- 39:31Yes, I was going to ask how you describe it.
- 39:33I was going to say it's like like like towing a bunch of, you know, cars or something.
- 39:37We were attached. It's like a train car, but centipede I like as well.
- 39:43Those guys.
- 39:46Probably I don't want to speak for them, but there's a lot of interesting stuff like that.
- 39:51And, you know, many script frost, there's arc stuff right now with these L2s.
- 39:56There's light and obviously lightning stuff.
- 39:59Most of this new stuff does not have good hardware wallet support.
- 40:05And that's because hardware wallet teams are relatively small and you have to decide what you're going to add, right?
- 40:14You're going to have you have to decide what you're going to devote your team's resources to adding first party support for.
- 40:20Another great example is I don't think there's still a great like Noster key management type device or something that would keep those keys offline, but be convenient enough where you're not where it can like, you know, sign any of your any of your posts or messages or whatever, but but keeping the keys out front.
- 40:41So our thesis back in the end of 2022 was if we build more of a platform type device and then we open it up to developers, that we can get a huge number of interesting applications that are very useful built for the device.
- 40:59so that we get to focus on maintaining the operating system and the SDK,
- 41:06the software development kit and the app platform and building the best hardware,
- 41:11but that we give users the ability to customize their exact device experience.
- 41:17I mean, I'm not saying anything new.
- 41:20Apple did this, of course.
- 41:21It's like the iPhone playbook.
- 41:23But one of our main theories was that the space is being held back
- 41:28by the fact that developers can't build apps really for hardware wallets.
- 41:33And then the only hardware wallet company that has some like quasi version of this right where developers can build apps is 90 of the market you know ledger And I have so much criticism about how they do it
- 41:49And we can get into that as well and how like we're kind of the polar opposite from like an openness and architecture perspective.
- 41:56But I mean, it's very telling, I think, that you have a company where most of the users, I think, are dissatisfied.
- 42:02Most ledger users are not really happy users if you check X and Reddit and you just anecdotally.
- 42:11But they're 90% of the market because I think because they were the only ones to offer some kind of developer platform.
- 42:18What's up, Freaks?
- 42:19When you take Bitcoin seriously, you start with custody.
- 42:21You want to control your keys, avoid single points of failure, and make sure your savings cannot disappear because you or someone else screwed up.
- 42:27That is what Unchained has been focused on since 2016.
- 42:29Unchained is the leader in collaborative multi-sig custody and Bitcoin financial services that keep you in control.
- 42:34They secure over $12 billion in Bitcoin for more than 12,000 clients.
- 42:38That means about one out of every 200 Bitcoin sits inside an Unchained vault.
- 42:42Their model is simple.
- 42:42You hold two keys, they hold one key.
- 42:44It always takes two keys to move Bitcoin, meaning their single key can't access your Bitcoin on its own.
- 42:49Just resilient, shared custody that gives you institutional-grade security while keeping you sovereign.
- 42:53Unchained also lets you trade straight from your vault.
- 42:55Access Bitcoin-backed commercial loans, open a Bitcoin IRA where you hold your own keys,
- 42:58and set up personal, business, trust, or retirement vaults.
- 43:01They even offer inheritance solutions built for long-term hodlers.
- 43:04Or opt for the highest-level private client service with Unchained Signature
- 43:08and get a dedicated account manager, discounted trading fees,
- 43:11exclusive access to events and features, and much, much more.
- 43:13If you want a partner that helps you secure and grow your Bitcoin without giving up control,
- 43:17go to unchained.com and use the code TFTC10 at checkout
- 43:20to get 10% off your new Bitcoin multisig vault.
- 43:23That's TFTC10 at unchained.com.
- 43:26What's up, Freaks?
- 43:26This trip is brought to you by good friends at CrowdHealth.
- 43:29I've been a happy CrowdHealth member for almost five years now.
- 43:31My wife and I have had two children while we've been on CrowdHealth,
- 43:34and I actually just got the last bill for third child funded.
- 43:38It was $6,157.
- 43:40CrowdHealth negotiated down to $2,309, and we only paid $500.
- 43:44The rest was crowdfunded by the CrowdHealth network.
- 43:48If you're sick of health insurance premiums and having to pay deductibles
- 43:52and getting ripped off at the hospital, join CrowdHealth.
- 43:55It's an alternative way to pay for your health care.
- 43:57It's not health insurance.
- 43:58It's crowdfunded health care.
- 44:00As you can tell, they negotiate prices for you.
- 44:02You pay in cash.
- 44:03It's much cheaper.
- 44:04Overall, we're much happier.
- 44:06They have incredible perks.
- 44:07Go to joincrowdhealth.com slash TFTC to sign up.
- 44:10Five years on CrowdHealth, not looking back.
- 44:12Joincrowdhealth.com slash TFTC.
- 44:14Use the promo code TFTC.
- 44:15Once you set up your account, you're going to get $99 a month for your subscription for the first three months.
- 44:20Yeah, let's lean into that because I think completely cosign it is.
- 44:27I think we all know the sort of relative security tradeoffs that Ledger has made.
- 44:35But to their credit and to your point, like 90% of the market,
- 44:39like their most popular hardware wallet by a long margin.
- 44:44And I think it's because of.
- 44:47And it's funny because like the device, at least the original device,
- 44:50the UX was terrible
- 44:51physically like having like you have that small
- 44:54screen and like three buttons and it's like
- 44:56okay what am I doing here
- 44:57and
- 44:59I guess
- 45:02it's because they have this open
- 45:04app architecture obviously like MetaMask
- 45:06and many of Phantom
- 45:08and many others have tapped into that
- 45:10and it has been lacking
- 45:12in the Bitcoin space and I think
- 45:13to your point I mean the hardcore security
- 45:16conscious Bitcoiners
- 45:18and builders in the space, they deem it a trade-off that they cannot stomach.
- 45:25I think that's the point that you're trying to get at with KOS.
- 45:30We probably need this from a UX perspective if we really want to scale this
- 45:36beyond just this cottage industry of hardcore security freaks,
- 45:43which is not a bad thing.
- 45:46I love the cottage industry.
- 45:47I love the hardware wallet options that that cater to people who really care about security.
- 45:56But if we're thinking making an impactful change and getting people to hold, getting more people to hold their keys is a very virtuous and I would argue imperative goal to have as an industry.
- 46:12I think your point, we're going to need to make a system that gives that device more extendability like Ledger has into the digital world.
- 46:24Yes, so absolutely, fully agree with you.
- 46:27And I don't think at the time, especially when we started the company, I fully understood why Ledger was so successful.
- 46:33Um, I know I came on in 2020 and one of the things we talked about was a lot of like the,
- 46:41the pros and cons between all the different hardware wallets.
- 46:45And before we even started the company, I was, I was thrilled to have, I think you
- 46:50included like a long Twitter thread for me in your newsletter once about like an honest
- 46:56trade-off list between all the different hardware wallets, right?
- 47:00about this one's open source, you know, this one's closed source.
- 47:04This one has this kind of user experience.
- 47:06This one is manufactured in this place, right?
- 47:08Like kind of like a breaking down the industry.
- 47:10Cause I thought like I really understood it back then.
- 47:13And I think I understood it from a like tech specs point of view and UX point of view,
- 47:19but I don't think I really understood it from like a, like a, a platform point of view.
- 47:26And that I think whoever builds the best platform is who wins.
- 47:31And I think Ledger has done a pretty masterful job so far about building the only platform in the space.
- 47:39Now, I have tons of criticisms about the platform.
- 47:42It's walled garden.
- 47:44They review all apps that are submitted.
- 47:46Apps are predominantly new coins.
- 47:50You don't see like a like a Casa app for Ledger, right?
- 47:54You see a Bitcoin app.
- 47:56Uh, you don't see like the arc guys building an arc app for ledger. You see an eighth app
- 48:03or a salon app. You don't even see the phantom guys or the Meta mask guys
- 48:07building an app for ledger. Instead, what happens is when you're switching between coins,
- 48:13you have to close the Bitcoin app and open the salon app. You have to close the salon app
- 48:19and open the eighth app. And so, yeah, there's a ton of user experience,
- 48:24you know, complaints I have about that. But it's interesting that they've leaned so hard into the
- 48:29coins that they've obviously completely lost the plot because the app feels like a casino when you
- 48:35open up. I mean, it's probably you open up and you're like flooded with all the different coins
- 48:40and you're encouraged to swap between them. And they've said publicly that their software revenue
- 48:46from the services equals the hardware revenue, which means that, you know, the whole the whole
- 48:52product becomes designed to push you to trade.
- 48:56You know, they've been doing marketing recently for the traders, right?
- 48:59It's all about trading and swapping because they're making a killing on all those fees
- 49:04through the Ledger app.
- 49:06But what's really interesting to go deep into the technical reasons why the apps have to
- 49:13be reviewed by Ledger, why the operating system cannot be open source, why they've released
- 49:19things like open source roadmaps during the Ledger Recover scandal a year or two ago,
- 49:26right, where it was like, oh, well, you know, pay us 10 bucks a month and we take your key and we
- 49:30split it between three custodians, but we promise we can't see anything. There was a lot of, you
- 49:36know, outrage from the space and they released an open source roadmap. But the irony of the open
- 49:42source roadmap is that the actual operating system can never be open source. So why is that? Well,
- 49:48this comes exactly back to our conversation about legacy operating systems that are built on 30
- 49:56plus years of code. What most people don't realize is that Ledger is basically running on a smart
- 50:01card operating system. Another term for that is Java card, because a lot of the times in the smart
- 50:08card world, and those are like the chips inside your credit cards. Every single credit card has a
- 50:12smart card ship uh high-end like company like um door access badges smart card ship they're made
- 50:22by a small number of companies nxp uh st microelectronics each one has a proprietary
- 50:29smart card operating system and a way for developers to build applets to run on the
- 50:37smart card typically in java hence the java card operating system what most people don't know is
- 50:42that ledger's first product was a usb drive with no screen back in like 2013 and they had and they
- 50:52ended up releasing a companion mobile app for it like to kind of extend like kind of give it like a
- 50:57fake screen on the mobile app before they launched the anos that had the screen and then kind of the
- 51:02rest was history it's made by stm st microelectronics their main ship it's a smart card
- 51:08chip. And what they've done is they've built this operating system to run on the smart card.
- 51:14This is like 30 year old legacy tech. It's very slow. It doesn't have the power to do things like
- 51:22drive a modern screen. Like it can't, like the smart card chip can't drive like a three inch
- 51:28nice LCD screen or something, which is why they always had those tiny screens on the device.
- 51:33and when you're working with smart cards you have to load an app and then unload an app and so when
- 51:42if you understand like the smart card technology which is 100 closed source super proprietary
- 51:47maintained by these different chip companies each has their own you know kind of smart card os
- 51:53version that's a little separate from the other ones and you know that ledger works very closely
- 51:57with st microelectronics ledger is like that perfect example of building on like a 30 year
- 52:02old technology. And that's why it's so limited. That's why developers can't build robust apps.
- 52:08That's why you have to open and close apps. And that's actually my theory as to why they had to
- 52:13use e-ink screens. And to their credit, they leaned into it, right? Tony Fidel, creator of the iPod
- 52:19and Nest coming in, beautiful, my beautiful industrial design, e-ink, long battery life.
- 52:26But I think the real reason behind the curtain that no one said why they have to use e-ink is because it's the only thing that the smart card ship can power because it's so low res.
- 52:39It's just text on a, you know, on a it's literally just text on like a screen that doesn't need to be constantly powered.
- 52:46So they had a breakthrough where they realized, I think, and this is not documented anywhere.
- 52:50This is my opinion.
- 52:51But I think they realized that they can do a bigger screen, but it has to be ink.
- 52:55And then they leaned into it. So in the end of 2022, we were sitting around saying, like, if we could build a new operating system that allowed developers to write apps without foundation having to review the code where they can be sandboxed in a modern kind of next gen operating system, then maybe we can like LeapFrog Ledger.
- 53:21We can build that open architecture to finally give them competition from the platform side of things.
- 53:31How do you sandbox successfully?
- 53:34How do you approach that design?
- 53:37Again, protocol development, no enough to be dangerous, but not nearly enough to actually be competent, fully competent.
- 53:46And that's, that's my question.
- 53:49Like how do you isolate and sandbox everything?
- 53:52Sure.
- 53:52Um, and, and one interesting thing is that like ledger does not.
- 53:57So the way that ledger does it is they, they only have one app running at a time and that's
- 54:02how the smart cards do it.
- 54:04And so each app actually accesses the master key on your ledger, like the seed words.
- 54:12no no but that that's why they have to review apps and and and because if you had a malicious
- 54:20app it would theoretically be able to you know kind of pull off the the seed words and maybe
- 54:26somehow you know you've had people on the pod before talking about how you can like
- 54:31you know kind of uh exfiltrate the seed words you know there's ways to do it so that's why ledger
- 54:37has to review each app and we've also heard um anecdotally that you have to pay ledger to do an
- 54:41app so that they can review it. So how we do it on KOS, which is this microkernel operating system,
- 54:50there's a couple of different characteristics. One is, is that the, it's called a message passing
- 54:55microkernel and it's all written in Rust. It's, it's pretty cool, which is like a very safe,
- 55:00you know, programming language. A lot of like the hardcore Bitcoiners have, especially on the
- 55:03research side. Yeah. Switched over to Rust. That's a lot in Bitcoin. Yeah. So this is pure Rust,
- 55:08which is very, that's a lot of the Bitcoin devs are like very excited.
- 55:12We were giving them out at the conference developer units and everyone's like really,
- 55:16really excited about it.
- 55:18So firstly, it's all message passing, which means that let's say you have the Bitcoin app
- 55:24on the device.
- 55:26And let's say the Bitcoin app wants to access the camera so it can scan a QR code.
- 55:32The Bitcoin app doesn't just get access to the camera.
- 55:35It has to send like a message to the QoS kernel, which then has to relay a message like to the camera app.
- 55:44The camera, even though there's drivers and stuff, it's a camera app.
- 55:47Like it's its own app as opposed to just being something that the OS just like gives as like a core functionality.
- 55:54And so each message is being passed from app to app and it's going through the kernel.
- 55:59And the kernel is deciding, does this app have permission to do this?
- 56:05And so for our first party apps, they have permission.
- 56:08But as third party apps go live in the coming weeks, you'll have to ask permission, you know, to use the camera.
- 56:18So from like a UX perspective, it's very similar to what you're already used to on iOS or Android.
- 56:23But from like an OS perspective, it's very different because all these apps are like all these functionalities or individual apps behind the scenes, or we even call them like servers on the back end.
- 56:35But we don't typically use that term when we're talking to like consumers.
- 56:39And it's a message is being passed through the kernel, which is evaluating and deciding if it's allowed to if the app is allowed to do that.
- 56:48So that's one thing.
- 56:49Two is we're using a security processor that has what's called an MMU, which is like memory management, which is what's used on major processors that you'd find in like Windows, Apple, iPhone, that kind of thing, where memory can be isolated based on the application.
- 57:12So we are leveraging that feature of the processor so that like the app is isolated, like the actual memory, like the RAM, right?
- 57:21It's like it's only in that space given to that app and not to the other apps.
- 57:27The other apps can't see it.
- 57:28That's like not novel to us.
- 57:30That's something that is common in modern operating systems.
- 57:34But where it is novel is I don't think there's any hardware wallet type devices that do that.
- 57:39They don't you know, there's no there's no such thing as like processes and isolation or anything like that on any of these hardware wallets, including Ledger, because they're designed to just run like one set of firmware.
- 57:52and the code is the code. The code is all there, right? The code, you can't load or unload parts
- 57:58of it. It's like, and that's why you see Trezor and Bitbox and others doing like Bitcoin only,
- 58:02you know, hardware wallet versions. Cause they'll say, okay, well that's the only the code
- 58:07for the hardware wallet and Bitcoin is there and all that other crypto stuff is not there.
- 58:13And so on KOS, it looks much more like a modern computer in the sense that we're leveraging the
- 58:18memory management that the processor offers us. But of course, it's not in like a monolithic 30
- 58:24million line, you know, operating system kernel. It's our own, you know, 9000 line microkernel.
- 58:29And so we feel very comfortable about how that the safety aspects of that. And then three,
- 58:34what's really cool is each app gets its own hardened, derived child seed or key. So unlike
- 58:43Ledger where the apps can all just grab the master seed from the OS and then use it with a specific derivation path for that cryptocurrency.
- 58:52On KeyOS, if you were building a third party app, your app can never see like the master key, we call it.
- 59:00You get a hardened derived key.
- 59:02So it's still using a key derived from like the master key, but it can't go backwards to actually see that master key.
- 59:09So what you get is you get an app in a sandbox with its own isolated memory.
- 59:15It only has its own derived hardened child seed.
- 59:22So that can be used for anything that can be used for like Bitcoin or crypto stuff that can be used for to FAA that can be used to derive keys for like signing code.
- 59:31Like you could build an app or Noster, right?
- 59:34Like once you get a key, you can use that key for any kind of purpose.
- 59:39So you have your isolated memory, you have your hardened, derived child seed, and then you have the message passing characteristics of the microkernel where any action you take has to go to the kernel for evaluation and approval.
- 59:55So that's how we do it.
- 59:56It's very different.
- 59:57Like I said, there's some aspects of it that are not unique to us, like just, you know, isolated memory.
- 1:00:04But when it comes to like the microkernel, the message passing, the hardened child keys, it's like a unique model for enabling third party apps where they live in their own sandbox.
- 1:00:16Well, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
- 1:00:19Is your point about like leapfrogging ledger or the intent and the goal being that you can see, you can begin to see how that's made possible with this, with the modularity of the sandboxing.
- 1:00:30And I mean, on that point, obviously, you guys have a robust set of apps that come out of the box with the 2FA, the seed vault file browser, things like that.
- 1:00:42But in your mind, like what do you want people to build?
- 1:00:46Like what are some apps that you guys are not going to build that you think others should build and maybe entice to build now that they understand that this operating system enables it?
- 1:00:56Yeah. So an SDK is already out in like an alpha beta type state. So our CTO did a talk at Opnext a few weeks ago in New York and walked through like how to build apps. And we have like a CLI tool, Foundation CLI. We have a simulator on the computer.
- 1:01:14And what's really cool, I don't know if we've talked about it publicly, is that we're going to have with a new firmware release for Passport Prime, a developer mode that you can turn on that gives you an MCP server so that your AI can test the app itself.
- 1:01:28It can see everything on the screen on Passport.
- 1:01:31It can interact with like the, you know, the entire UI.
- 1:01:34So you can go to bed, wake up and be like chugging away, you know, testing your app on the real hardware.
- 1:01:38So first, like we spent a lot of time working on the tooling for this, and that'll be, you know, out of beta in a few weeks.
- 1:01:45But it is in beta for anyone that wants to like use it, use the simulator.
- 1:01:49We can we can send, you know, there's a contact us on our online and we can send you like a developer unit for free as well.
- 1:01:56What kind of apps that we want folks to build?
- 1:02:00Well, first, I'll talk about a couple of things we vibe coded Q&A and I in the last few weeks.
- 1:02:05I think you mentioned one actually on RHR.
- 1:02:08that that Q&A vibe coded like a Noster key storage and signing app yep which is awesome
- 1:02:16we talked about last week or two weeks ago yeah yeah so that that was I think yeah the week before
- 1:02:20the conference so it works it great I can I can attest to the code being reviewed like that not a that not going to come from an official foundation repo yet but that one great example which is you know you can have your Nostra keys on there You can do your signing from there and you can keep those keys off your phone permanently so that you don have to worry about losing those keys
- 1:02:41Another one he built was a full featured password manager with a Chrome extension so that it can just inject the passwords directly into your browser.
- 1:02:49A lot of the things I'm interested in that category are being able to like fully lock down your computer from the device, maybe even like Mac OS or like login from the device where you have to like tap on passport to like log into your computer.
- 1:03:05That's very interesting to me.
- 1:03:07Some of the stuff I've coded, but I've not announced is MCP related stuff, storing creds and keys for all your different AI tools like on the hardware.
- 1:03:18Oh, this is cool.
- 1:03:19This is the Noster one, right?
- 1:03:24Sorry, I was muted.
- 1:03:25Yeah.
- 1:03:25Yeah.
- 1:03:27Yeah.
- 1:03:32Yeah.
- 1:03:32So basically what's happening here, I know not everyone's watching.
- 1:03:35Some folks are listening as Marty's showing off Q&A's Noster signer app.
- 1:03:42But you can basically create like a Noster key or you can, I think, I don't know if he lets you import it.
- 1:03:48You can have more than one, you know, for all everyone who has 10 different NIMS on on Noster.
- 1:03:54And I think he has it talking over USB now, but Passport Prime has Bluetooth.
- 1:04:03And so basically you'll be able to on the go, right, just be connected directly to your phone and go ahead.
- 1:04:11And any kind of Nostra message can be signed from Passport so that you don't have to keep those Nostra keys on your phone.
- 1:04:20It's really cool.
- 1:04:24And then so I'm really interested in a lot of the AI applications.
- 1:04:27Like I did it some for fun a couple of weeks ago where you keep the creds for all your MCP tools and everything on Passport.
- 1:04:36And I'm also really interested in all the next-gen Bitcoin stuff.
- 1:04:39both things like frost um but then i i want like my big ask for a lot of these bitcoin companies is
- 1:04:46is releasing native versions of their app on passport prime so like i used uh casa as an
- 1:04:56example right just saying like there's no casa app for ledger but if you were to build a casa app
- 1:05:01for Passport Prime, you know, to run on KOS, you could put your logo, you can put your same UI
- 1:05:09from the mobile app. You could use your own terminology like health checks. So effectively,
- 1:05:16what happens is that instead of having a hardware wallet where you have to like
- 1:05:21tell your users how to use the hardware wallet, support all the different functionality,
- 1:05:27deal with bugs introduced by the hardware wallet and like all that kind of stuff.
- 1:05:33You can just bring your experience onto the device where it feels like a native first party experience.
- 1:05:38And so we have a new UI coming out along with our SDK where it's like iPhone style, like a grid of apps.
- 1:05:46Right. And so it's very easy for developers to understand that, like, you can make an app.
- 1:05:51You can have your app icon on it, the same one that you have on your mobile app.
- 1:05:55You can put it right here and then any kind of offline capabilities for secure key storage or signing that you want to give to your users.
- 1:06:03You can finally do it and you don't even have to talk to us.
- 1:06:06So like you'll be able to release it to our app store if you want to.
- 1:06:10And all apps on our app store have to be open source and reproducible because we're building them from your repo.
- 1:06:16We're not going to like just trust like the build that you give us.
- 1:06:19Like we're going to we're going to build and and release it ourselves onto our app store.
- 1:06:24But we're also going to have like robust sideloading capabilities so you can release an app directly to your user base so you don't have to talk to us or interact with us at all.
- 1:06:33And I'm really excited about all the security related apps.
- 1:06:37We're going to have our own internal app so that we can sign KOS releases from KOS.
- 1:06:43We do like two of four signature scheme for our signing.
- 1:06:47GitHub, code signing, commits, all that kind of stuff.
- 1:06:52just any anything like that passwords right we have our security keys but we haven't done pass
- 1:07:00keys yet there's probably an opportunity for like password manager pass key stuff any next gen
- 1:07:06bitcoin stuff basically anything where you want to get your important stuff off of your computer
- 1:07:11or phone you'll be able to do that you know and get it onto key os with a native app and whether
- 1:07:17it's something you vibe code for yourself whether it's something that you you have an existing app
- 1:07:21or service or something like that, either on desktop or mobile.
- 1:07:25We're basically giving everyone the tools to build these kinds of apps
- 1:07:28to run on the Passport Prime hardware.
- 1:07:32That's awesome.
- 1:07:34Again, going back to the beginning of the conversation,
- 1:07:36like building for the AI world, now I'm like running wild.
- 1:07:39Like how many API keys have I given my agent access to?
- 1:07:42How many credentials is it now?
- 1:07:46I mean, limited, like read-only API keys now,
- 1:07:50but I would love to give right capabilities as well.
- 1:07:55And if there is a way to add the keys stored
- 1:07:58on a Passport Prime running KOS
- 1:08:02and you can somehow like basically sign access to the key
- 1:08:06while it's doing it without having the agent stored
- 1:08:11on its own server, it would be massive.
- 1:08:13Yeah, and we're working on a couple of ways to do it right now.
- 1:08:16Yeah, we're still, it's still in progress.
- 1:08:19I don't think I have anything like perfect.
- 1:08:20I don't have a perfect solution, but I think directionally based on what we've built internally, I think that's exactly the kind of stuff that you'll be able to do.
- 1:08:28Yeah, that's awesome.
- 1:08:30It's a brave new world out there.
- 1:08:32And how imperative do you think it like?
- 1:08:34That's one thing I worry about.
- 1:08:35I mean, we talk about it in Bitcoin a lot, like the biggest.
- 1:08:39Biggest detriment or the biggest risk to Bitcoin long term is complacency.
- 1:08:43I feel like this is equally, if not even more so true in the world of incumbent operating systems and software colliding with this wave of AI that's hitting.
- 1:08:57Going back to what I said in the middle of the conversation, do you think this is a problem that's inevitably going to force a solution like you're building with KeyOS?
- 1:09:07Or is there a potential that people don't adopt this and we live in this willfully insecure world in perpetuity?
- 1:09:15Well, it's funny when you were saying that the first thing, like what I was thinking about was not just us as like individual users where, you know, we have, you know, we want to self-custody Bitcoin.
- 1:09:31You want to keep all of our keys and credentials, you know, secure as part of our entire digital lives.
- 1:09:37I was actually thinking about like the enterprise custody, too, because like where my mind went to just immediately was how like the history of all these exchange hacks over time.
- 1:09:48And.
- 1:09:50Like I got into Bitcoin, I think, a few months before the Mt.
- 1:09:54Gox hack.
- 1:09:55And so everything after that has just been defined by, you know, one after the other year after year exchange hacks.
- 1:10:03And probably one of the reasons why, you know, building self-custody tools is because of that.
- 1:10:10But right now it's like it's not I actually think as individuals were like less.
- 1:10:16We have less to worry about than the enterprises and like the enterprise custody stuff.
- 1:10:22That's my big worry, too.
- 1:10:24And so I used to think of foundation as just, you know, we're making tools for, for sovereign individuals.
- 1:10:31And now I'm thinking about it as well, we've made this tool.
- 1:10:35It's been designed to allow like an individual to secure his entire digital life, including Bitcoin.
- 1:10:43But there's a huge need and therefore business opportunity for us, but like huge need on the enterprise side, because.
- 1:10:51most of the Bitcoin,
- 1:10:54is that a true
- 1:10:55statistic?
- 1:10:57Most of the Bitcoin, I think, is stored with
- 1:10:59custodians right now.
- 1:11:03At least millions.
- 1:11:06I think it's around 50-50 now
- 1:11:07at this point. That's good, yeah. So I would just say
- 1:11:09there's individual
- 1:11:11custodians that are holding millions of Bitcoin.
- 1:11:14Yeah.
- 1:11:14I think has over 2 million
- 1:11:16at this point. Yeah. And MicroStrategy has
- 1:11:18diversified to
- 1:11:19to encourage infidelity is my understanding.
- 1:11:22Maybe others that are, which is, which is good and kind of spreading it out.
- 1:11:26But what worries me is, as we just talked about earlier in the conversation,
- 1:11:29what are these custodians using to keep everything secure?
- 1:11:34And some of them will say like, well, it's offline.
- 1:11:38It's on paper.
- 1:11:39We have an HSM.
- 1:11:40We have this coordination policy.
- 1:11:42Don't get me started on HSM though.
- 1:11:43Cause like this, that's an HSM is another great example of like built on 30 year old legacy tech.
- 1:11:49Like HSM's are closed source, proprietary, old, hard to develop for, have like enterprise sales cycles where they'll maybe send you a sample and then you have to pay them like monthly or annual fees for what?
- 1:12:07Like they're not doing anything.
- 1:12:09It's just it's just it's exactly in the same category, I would say, as like smart cards, but the opposite, like smart cards being small and cheap and prevalent in all the credit cards.
- 1:12:19And HSM is being these like old monolithic proprietary black box things that once again, they're not designed for you to know what you're approving.
- 1:12:29Like they're designed for the pre AI era.
- 1:12:31Like things just get automatically signed.
- 1:12:34There's no human in the loop that's like reviewing what the HSM is signing on some secure device.
- 1:12:41And what I've heard anecdotally from some custodians is that they're doing things like building internal iPhone apps.
- 1:12:47to approve things.
- 1:12:50And this is like exactly kind of our thesis
- 1:12:53for why doing an operating system
- 1:12:55and hardware like this is interesting
- 1:12:56where you can enable apps to be built
- 1:12:58because I want them building internal apps
- 1:13:01on an open source device
- 1:13:04running a next-gen open source operating system,
- 1:13:07not on an iPhone.
- 1:13:09And then like maybe there's a Linux computer
- 1:13:12sitting in like a locked room somewhere
- 1:13:14with some armed guards
- 1:13:15or maybe there's this HSM
- 1:13:17that's completely closed source black box
- 1:13:19in like their server rack that has a lock on it
- 1:13:23with like a guard outside the room.
- 1:13:24And they're saying, don't worry, our million Bitcoin,
- 1:13:27they're totally safe.
- 1:13:29We have the next gen, you know,
- 1:13:30best in class security practices.
- 1:13:32And then you start to unpack, like, what are they using?
- 1:13:35Do these guys have tools that are not available
- 1:13:38to a normal person?
- 1:13:39And the answer is no,
- 1:13:40because I could go rent a cloud HSM right now on Amazon.
- 1:13:43Like I can go get a smart card and make an app for it.
- 1:13:47Like I can go get a Linux laptop and put it in a room with a lock on it.
- 1:13:51It's all the same thing.
- 1:13:52Yet because they're custodians, like we're just trusting that they have their shit together.
- 1:13:57But we also know as Bitcoin, long-term Bitcoiners, no one has ever had their shit together over the long term.
- 1:14:06Yeah.
- 1:14:06And obviously I won't disclose who and at what company, but I heard the iPhone app example earlier this week too.
- 1:14:13so this is a problem and it's going to become more of a problem when you look at like ai uh
- 1:14:23from a security perspective so you look at like let's not even talk let's not talk about something
- 1:14:27hypothetical because like the mythos model is still kind of hypothetical you know there's been
- 1:14:31a lot of i just saw like firefox patch the most bugs they ever have this month in this last month
- 1:14:36and the assumption is because they had access to cloud mythos but let's look at from uh like march
- 1:14:42that dark sword iOS exploit, which most people have forgotten about already, but about a quarter
- 1:14:49of all iOS devices were vulnerable to this zero day. And all you had to do was load a website.
- 1:14:56You load a website from the browser on your iPhone. And what it did was it broke out of
- 1:15:01its like browser container. And it immediately started looking for important stuff on the device.
- 1:15:07It looked for crypto wallets. And if so, it would just grab those seeds or keys off of the secure enclave.
- 1:15:15It looked it pulled tiny little thumbnails of all the users photos so that I could try to figure out, are there any photos that are worth pulling like the like the full contents of the photo?
- 1:15:30And then it went through the whole OS and just tried to pull anything else important from it.
- 1:15:34So like if you're using an iPhone for your custody, and even if you're using like a Bitcoin hot wallet, lightning on chain, whatever it might be.
- 1:15:44I mean, that's a quarter of all iPhones that were vulnerable because they hadn't updated to like the latest, you know, iOS version.
- 1:15:51And Apple pushed out some emergency stuff.
- 1:15:54I kind of think that they may have pushed some emergency stuff out to everyone because I woke up with an iPhone update that was installed and I don't have auto install enabled on my iPhone.
- 1:16:04So I think they may have pushed something and just like, you know, they announced it, but I wonder if they pushed something else and didn't say anything.
- 1:16:11As models like Mythos become prevalent, we may see one of those every couple of weeks.
- 1:16:17Because I think the iOS and the macOS kernel, I think, is around 10 million plus lines of code.
- 1:16:24And then you also have like the web browser engine, right, sitting on top of that.
- 1:16:28And these browsers are just these enormous web, these web engines.
- 1:16:33There's only a couple of them and they're, you know, Chromium with Chrome WebKit, which is like power with Safari.
- 1:16:42I feel like Firefox announced they were like switching to Chromium or something.
- 1:16:47So I think there's like only two maybe that are being actively developed and they're just enormous, just huge.
- 1:16:54I mean, they're not black boxes because they're open source.
- 1:16:56But the problem is, is that you point a model like this towards the Linux kernel or towards Chromium or something, and you try to have it find these zero days and these vulnerabilities.
- 1:17:06And then you can also have it break out of its containers within like iOS and you're in huge trouble.
- 1:17:12And so I think that's going to be a constant fact of life over the next couple of years.
- 1:17:19And I do think there's going to be a lot of these zero days.
- 1:17:23and you know um i think the vp uh you know vance that just came out that he had like an emergency
- 1:17:29call with all the different um the ai leaders like a day or two ago talking about how the banking
- 1:17:35industry is at risk uh mythos is not publicly available you know they're only allowing it for
- 1:17:41certain um certain companies yeah i've got operation glasswing that was yeah the idea
- 1:17:48that they're going to somehow find all of the vulnerabilities and and patch them and then
- 1:17:52they'll magically be able to roll it out to everyone. So I don't, I'm not like pessimistic,
- 1:17:58but I do think that the, the need to find a way to, uh, better secure everything is more important
- 1:18:08than ever. And everyone's going to have to figure it out, like not just individuals, but especially,
- 1:18:13you know, these enterprises that are storing things like Bitcoin, where if you lose it,
- 1:18:18It's gone forever.
- 1:18:21Yeah.
- 1:18:22Like, yeah, it's a brave new world.
- 1:18:24Yeah.
- 1:18:25Equally exhilarating and unnerving, but I'm an eternal optimist.
- 1:18:30And it's like, okay, yes, recognize that these problems exist and will likely persist for a time.
- 1:18:35But the opportunity to fix them, create new operating systems, new experiences, new ways of interacting with our digital lives.
- 1:18:44incredible opportunity, both from a user experience perspective and then selfishly
- 1:18:50on your part, on my part, like from a profit perspective, it's like, Hey,
- 1:18:56we got to re-architect and build new ways of interacting with computers and the internet.
- 1:19:02And there's a lot of opportunity and potential in that. Yeah. I'm a, I'm really excited about it
- 1:19:08because we were like dreaming about these kinds of stuff in the early days of foundation.
- 1:19:15We even have some documents from end of 2020 about like what a next gen operating system could look like, where it can beam UIs from like one device to another device.
- 1:19:27But we didn't know what that meant.
- 1:19:29We were just having fun, you know, brainstorming and coming up with these cool ideas.
- 1:19:32And now you see examples of these generative AIs or the idea that you could have like a server maybe up in your office at home and it's running all your AI stuff locally.
- 1:19:44And it's like whether you call it beaming or like whatever you want to call it, it's some combo of streaming UI and generative UI like on your phone or on your computer side.
- 1:19:54Like, I love that stuff.
- 1:19:56Like that stuff.
- 1:19:57I just I'm so excited about all of it.
- 1:19:59Will Foundation like build some of that stuff?
- 1:20:01I don't know.
- 1:20:02Right.
- 1:20:02Cause like right now we're very focused on the security aspects and everything
- 1:20:05like that. But we made like the hard decision to spend what we thought would
- 1:20:11be two years, but that ended up being three years building this operating
- 1:20:15system. We almost, it's, it's like we,
- 1:20:19we had a very nonlinear approach for the company because we did these two
- 1:20:23generations of passport devices, the passport founders edition,
- 1:20:26then like the passport, we called a couple of different things, you know,
- 1:20:29the gen two, and we ended up calling it passport core.
- 1:20:32And you'd think we would have had like a linear progression of just kind of taking that same form factor and like, you know, making it thinner, making it more powerful, more affordable, scaling it up, getting into more hands.
- 1:20:43But what we actually ended up doing was it's like, well, we had our alpha product.
- 1:20:46We had our beta product.
- 1:20:48And then we raised the seed round and we're like, you know, we need to do a whole opera.
- 1:20:51We need to do a new operating system.
- 1:20:54And then we were still selling that second gen passport.
- 1:20:57But we kind of went dark for a couple of years, like R&D.
- 1:21:01And now we're coming out with a product that was envisioned before AI was popular, but that I think has the desirable.
- 1:21:14It's not perfect.
- 1:21:15There's a lot we still have to do to it, but it has the most desirable operating system characteristics for this AI security world as well.
- 1:21:24In addition to the Bitcoin security, in addition to the identity related stuff.
- 1:21:30And I'm really excited about that, obviously from like a, you know, selfish profit motive.
- 1:21:36But then also because there is this is a time where we're going to be able to rip up a lot of stuff and rebuild it because there's going to be this imperative.
- 1:21:47Hopefully it's not because bad things are happening and we're like and there's all this chaos on like the cyber side.
- 1:21:54Hopefully it's because we think about this stuff in advance and we see the value in them and we start to transition to these new tools and everything.
- 1:22:03But I feel like we have something that is shipping that developers are going to be able to build apps for in the coming weeks.
- 1:22:15And I'm just really excited to see what everyone builds.
- 1:22:18Well, on that note, if there's any, there's millions of developers listening to the show right now, what is your call to action to them to begin getting their hands on the operating system and thinking about building apps on top of it?
- 1:22:33Yeah. So one is we just retweeted from the Opnext guys yesterday, a talk that Ken, our CTO, did at Opnext a couple of weeks ago in New York.
- 1:22:45If you want to actually like watch a little talk and see how he in real time, like vibe coded an app using the CLI tool and everything like that, you can check that out.
- 1:22:56And then there's instructions there to, you can basically start using the SDK in our simulator today if you want on your computer.
- 1:23:05You can also shoot us a message on any of these channels, you know, contact form on our site, email, DM us on X.
- 1:23:13And if you're a developer, we'll send you a free developer unit so you can get started and check it out and everything like that.
- 1:23:19And then I would say by end of the month, our goal is to have like a release of Kios out that supports that developer mode that I mentioned so that you can like flip on MCP and like have it, you know, test, help you the AI test your app for you.
- 1:23:34And you'll see like start to see the ability for users to sideload apps or be coming out with our app store, all that kind of stuff.
- 1:23:41And so definitely check it out and ask us if you have any questions.
- 1:23:46But over the next few weeks, there's going to be a lot of SDK and app related stuff that we're going to be putting out.
- 1:23:53Awesome.
- 1:23:53Logan, I just sent you the link to the UpNext presentation by Ken.
- 1:23:57So make sure you put that in the show notes.
- 1:23:59So if you're listening, want to get involved, we'll link to that link to the GitHub, obviously the website.
- 1:24:05But I can't believe it took us six years to catch up.
- 1:24:08And it was great.
- 1:24:10I love the line of thought that you're in right now because I think it's, again, a layer below mine, but a very important layer as it pertains to the intersection of not only Bitcoin, but everything we're doing in AI.
- 1:24:24I think these conversations and thinking about these problems, particularly at the layer that you are, is an imperative right now because it's becoming obvious.
- 1:24:35Again, going back to my co-work example,
- 1:24:38like I saw this thing using my computer.
- 1:24:40I was like this is not safe at all Like we need to figure out a new way to interact with these things So I pumped that you guys are working on it Well thank you And I really glad that that you been uh doing a lot of AI related uh podcasts and content and everything because we often forget
- 1:24:58that like we as Bitcoiners, we have a unique perspective when it comes to like both our values,
- 1:25:05our philosophy, and then everything we've seen in the field over the last decade, plus,
- 1:25:10when it comes to not trusting institutions.
- 1:25:14And we bring that same mindset to everything, right?
- 1:25:16It might be related to custodians, right?
- 1:25:20Like I mentioned, exchange hacks, that kind of stuff
- 1:25:22might be related to COVID, right?
- 1:25:25Or other type of institutional stuff.
- 1:25:26And then when it comes to AI, I think that whole industry,
- 1:25:29I don't consider us in the AI industry, right?
- 1:25:33I consider us still like a,
- 1:25:35I don't know what I would actually consider us,
- 1:25:37maybe like a Bitcoin or lead company.
- 1:25:40Something like that. But like we have a unique perspective and different values than most of the AI industry. And like it's important for us, I think, to talk about that and make that heard, because I think they're barreling right now towards this.
- 1:25:56the growth of the industry and the growth of these tools at the expense of the privacy and security.
- 1:26:04And that is going to catch up to them. Like that's not a good position to be in for the long term.
- 1:26:09It may be a short term high time preference maybe profitable maybe not you know position maybe like user growth position but I don know about profitable but like in the long
- 1:26:21it can, it could, I don't want to be like doomerism because I'm as optimistic as you, but like
- 1:26:26need some sane voices in the room saying, okay, how can we do this, but do it with privacy? How
- 1:26:31can we do this, but do this with security? How can we bring these, these, the way that we approach
- 1:26:36security on the Bitcoin side and like bring those same principles to the AI side of things.
- 1:26:42And I'm really excited to be able to start working on that.
- 1:26:46Well, again, thank you for doing it. And I completely agree. And thank you for
- 1:26:50the compliments. It's again, just tickling my own fancy and fascinated by this stuff.
- 1:26:55And to your point, like, I do think we have a unique perspective. And it's funny,
- 1:26:58the parallels, whether it's from security or even on the energy side, watching all these
- 1:27:03data centers get built and having been in Bitcoin mining for almost a decade now, it's like, ah,
- 1:27:07I see what you guys are doing. I know where the, uh, where the landmines are for you. And, um,
- 1:27:12it's just funny how Bitcoiners seem to be ahead of the curve. And I think it'll take some time,
- 1:27:18maybe three to five years, but I think the approach to security in the AI world that many
- 1:27:25Bitcoiners are taking will be recognized as like, oh, this is the right way to do things. And so
- 1:27:30So I think to that point, you guys are ahead of the curve and keep pushing.
- 1:27:34And if you're listening, you're a developer,
- 1:27:37and you interested in what we just discussed go check it out Again we link to everything in the show notes and begin building because I think to that point
- 1:27:48we have this legacy architecture and infrastructure
- 1:27:52that many people are dependent on
- 1:27:54and need to begin to transition away from it
- 1:27:57slowly but surely.
- 1:27:58And if not you, then who to build the apps
- 1:28:02that people can actually trust in this world
- 1:28:05that we're barreling towards?
- 1:28:07Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way.
- 1:28:33Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad-free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app.
- 1:28:41You can go to fountain.fm to find that.
- 1:28:44$5 a month gets you every episode a day early, ad-free.
- 1:28:49Helps the show.
- 1:28:50Gives you incredible value.
- 1:28:52So please consider subscribing via Fountain as well.
- 1:28:56Thank you for your time.
- 1:28:57And until next time.
- 1:28:59Okay.
- 1:29:03Thank you.