The Mark Moss Show Apr 01, 2022

good friend, Corey Clipston. He is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, a place that I like to use, uh, Swan Bitcoin. You can find him on Twitter at Corey Clipston. Corey, thanks for joining me today. It's great to be here. Mark, thanks for having me on again. Yeah. Man, always fun to sit down and talk with you. You haven't been traveling much in the last year, so I haven't really seen you but in person. Yeah, that's been going on unfortunately for a little over a year and a half.

And it's uh, it's not COVID related in in my case, it's some family health stuff on the West Coast that keeps me keeps me out here. But hopefully I'll get back out on the road a bit second half of the year. Nice, So I hope, I hope. So, but you know, Corey. I love what I love what you've done with Swan Bitcoin. Um. One of the things that

I liked the best. I just I love what you've done is like really turned it into kind of like this media kind of education company first, um, which is such an amazing way, such a great way to bring people in, but it's also just this public good as well. Um. Was that was that done intentionally or was that just kind of like organically? Uh No, it was very intentional. That's kind of you know, you got to play to your strengths. And that's something that I actually know how

to do. I don't code, but I do media. Yeah. Uh yeah, building building media businesses. And you know, I was a broadcast journalist over twenty years ago. When I started my career, I was a local NBC TV reporter. So yeah, so long before I got into you know, B school and then Silicon Valley and Bitcoin. Uh that was the beginning. So it's been very natural. Uh. And I love brands that put out of content, and I

love brands that think of themselves as media companies. Um. There's a little bit more to it, because I think the media is just like one of the products we do. We kind of have a um a philosophy of product lead acquisition. So customer acquisition for Swan is by building products that people use, and some of those people end

up using Swan and buying bitcoin from us. So bitcoin or Jobs is a great example of that too, right, Like, that's a site that I built that we ended up rolling into Swan and we have you know, a hundred bitcoin companies around the world that lists jobs there. But each one of those is now a connection. They can be part of, you know, the Bitcoin Benefit Plan and

pay their employees and bitcoin through us. They can be integration partners and we can turn it on and light it up so that there there people can buy bitcoin through their app or through their site using Swan. So it's just kind of kind of being being everywhere, always throwing the party. That's kind of the vibe and media as they gotta throw the party. Mark I like that. Um let's talk about that for a second. So the bitcoin er jobs, so that's like a big job board.

You said a hundred and forty five companies are listing jobs on there. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah is that? And and and nash app just joined uh this week. So cash app is listening their jobs on Bitcoiner jobs as well. Wow, And and is that like only for like couders and programmers. Is that for like anybody who wants to work just in the bitcoin space at all. Yeah, it's it's for anybody who wants to work in bitcoin. And you can also post profile on bitcoiner jobs and let people browse it.

So there's over a thousand candidate profiles on there as well, and you can post an anonymized profile. So if you have a job and you're at like Goldman Sacks or something and you don't want to tip your hand that you're looking to leave, you can post an anonymized profile and let the bitcoiners check you out. So, um, if I was an accountant or a graphic designer, but I would just like to be in the bitcoin space, I mean,

there's potentially jobs in there for me in there. Yeah, So this is a full time jobs marketplace essentially, where also going to be launching a services marketplace for people that want to, you know, essentially be an accountant or a personal trainer or you know, whatever it is, financial advisor, and you'll be able to post your services. So essentially,

you know, whatever whatever it is. But I might I might want to be a full time accountant though, right for exactly for sure, so that those jobs are up all the time. We just hired we just hired a senior accountant to the site. Uh last week actually, okay, yeah, I just trying to clarify that for people that are listening. I think, um, one thing that I've learned it was, actually it's probably about a decade ago. I had this a Fortune one consultant that I had hired to help

me scale this business. And we're scaling it pretty fast, and I turned it turned into a nightmare. I hated the business. And uh. He sat me down with a piece of paper and he drew drew circles. He's like, uh, here's your customers on a scale one to ten. Hire customers. And here's the media on a scale one to ten. And here's the regulations and all these things. And it was like it was like a one or two or three a one. And then he's like put me in

the middle, like you're in the middle. And he said, in order to be great in business, you must be first in a great business. And he's like, you're in a horrible business. And I was like, shoot, you're right, and I had I left that business. But um, the bitcoin industry is an area that's growing rapidly. And um, I mean if somebody's looking for something exciting to do, some long term job security, uh, it seems like a

pretty good place to be. So it's nice to know that whether you're in accounting or graphic design or a coder, maybe that's a good place to go. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think you just got to look at the number of people that we expect to be in the bitcoin over time, right, and if you could get in early on something and spot a trend and be one of those first people. You know, I think of people that got into health food in the eighties

or nineties, like they're all doing well. You know, if you got into like Paleo, cross fit, quantified self stuff,

you know, twelve fifteen years ago. Everyone who got into that back then and just made the network connections early and started adding value and figuring out you know, they just ended up with equity stakes and different things, or they took three swings and their third one took off, and you know, your third try was in fourteen, So now you're eight years into the one that's working and you're doing fine, right, So bitcoin is like that, it's

just this massive tidal wave of adoption that's happening. It's still super early, and you have a better chance of succeeding at that than you would going into some totally saturated market. What about um? What about what about like coding, like people that can actually write UM code for bitcoin or design applications that can work on bitcoin because bitcoin is open source, so anybody could technically go kind of

start building on top of it or with lightning? Do you think, um, do you think that that's something that maybe the market is maybe sleeping on a little bit and that maybe very quickly the industry might find themselves short on actual people that can build on that. Yeah, that's reasonable to assume that, uh, there are not enough lightning developers today that more people should be fascile with

that technology. And you know, you can use I mean, gosh, we probably use twelve different languages at SWAN for different aspects of the business in the system, right, so you know, whatever you know is going to be useful, and good engineers can always pick up a new language anyway in a week or two. So, UM, I don't know if it's necessarily like deep experience with one kind of language. It's more just like an engineering mindset and and some

real experience with with building products. That's good to know. Yeah, I mean, just it's just curious just to add you know, you you're obviously in that, and so you kind of have some insights and I know, you know something I'm talking about with this decentralized revolution. I mean, the world's

changing really fast. Um, we know that, you know. Unfortunately, it looks like gas prices and food prices are are going up and not coming back down, and people need to be prepared for that, and so you want to you know, certain jobs will be phased out and and some others will grow. So anyway, for those people that are listening, I think, uh, you need to take those

things into consideration prepare for that. And one of those might be developing some skills or getting a job in an area or an industry that you think would continue to grow. And so as I was just kind of getting near insights into that. Yeah, absolutely, And I'm and I think um reading Mastering Bitcoin, uh dated book now six seven years old, but the code base is basically the same. But that's by Andreas and Sinopolis. So that's

a good place to start. And then um, maybe check out resources around Jimmie Song's work programming blockchain, which is

all about the bitcoin blockchain. But I think those are good good places to get rolling if you're interested in the space as a coder, yeah, or just if you want to be even an accountant or a personal trainer or something like that in the space, just because you want to position yourself in a good business and you want to position yourself into an industry that's growing and so um, even if it's not coded and related, you know, at least you'll still be in the industry. Um U,

that's that's growing anyway. So I think that I think that sounds good. I want to get into a lot more stuff with you. There was a tweet that you recently put up about E S G and energy. Um. I also want to talk about investing the bitcoin. Also know that you run an investment fund as well. UM, So there's a there's a there's a lot that I want to dig into with you. When we come back and you're listening to the Mark Mo Show, we're talking

about bitcoin. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution, we're talking about the intersection of politics, finance, and technology. I'm in the studio with Corey Clipston. He's the CEO of Swan Bitcoin. I want to dig into some energy stuff with him and some investing stuff with him. We've got a lot to cover, so do not go away. I'll be right back. All right, Welcome back. You are listening to the Mark

Mass Show. We're talking about the decentralized Revolution. We're talking about bitcoin, and I am in the studio with a good friend, Corey Clipston. He's the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, and they make it easy to get bitcoin um, especially if the dollar cost average into it. Um. Anyway, Corey, before the break, we were kind of talking about getting jobs in bitcoin. I like that, UM, but I want

to kind of transition into something else, you would. Uh. One thing that I've been talking a lot about lately, I think everybody's in paying attention to it is you know, oil prices have gone crazy, um, Gas prices have gone crazy. UM. We have this whole Russia Ukraine thing that's going on that's disrupting all of that. And m it seems like I've been having these big epiphanies. I talked about in

the first hour. But the world's kind of transitioning off of this fiat system and kind of been thrust back into this commodity based system. And um, we're finding that energy it's at the base of you and I aren't finding but the world is starting to find that energy sits at the base of all that. And it's interesting because the United States are really the West United States, Canada and Western Europe have been trying to do their

best to destroy their own energy. And you put out a tweet and you said, over the next decade, E s G proponents like Larry Fink of Black Rock and the World I coming for him, will walk back almost everything they've pushed for. They love natural gas because it's natural and coal uh and fun studies showing wind solar can never be enough. Talk about that tweet that was That was February. That's when out it was. It was

right after the that was the day. That was the day I think, yeah, it was it was the day. That was the day I talked about that date earlier. That's the day at the US basically froze us UM sorry Russia's FX reserves. That was March second. That's the night that Zoltar sent out his note that was March second. But yeah, the week before, I think was when the tanks rolled in and it became really obvious, like you know,

and so the so the follow on. The funny thing is, um Fink went on CNBC this morning or I think CNN. Actually actually it looks like it was Fox Business, but CNN ran the clip and said energy security has joined the energy transition, meaning green energy stuff as top global priority. And it's like, well, no, it was always energy security

has always been the top priority. You know. I'm I'm on record as saying the only thing that's more important than bitcoin and will be more important than bitcoin in the future, is energy itself. Right, Bitcoin is like the nearest proxy for that. It's it's a sort of energy

based commodity, um and time based commodity. But um yeah, we're all gonna we're all gonna have to get real over the next decade or two, and we're gonna understand, uh, you know, the Fiat system allowed us to play these games that were based on ideology and not reality, and now we're getting back to a reality based monetary system. Even if Bitcoin wasn't around, it's already moving toward a

reality based monetary system. It's moving to commodity money or outside money, as our friends from Credit Squeeze talks about it, inside money versus outside money. That's where we're headed. Yeah, I think, Um, you know, I've used an analogy just to kind of role play things on videos and stuff before, where if I was on a deserted island with a billion dollars of cash, a billion dollars of gold, or

a billion dollars worth of bitcoin, it's all worthless. Bitcoin is just as worthless as the gold in cash unless I have goods and services to acquire with that. So, bitcoin, golden, and cash are all just mediums of exchange, right, and so really it's goods and services that are wealth. And it starts with energy. So the wealth of a nation

has always been off of the energy. And so you know, the really it was one of the technological revolution, one of the five technological revolutions in last two or fifty years, which was oil in like eight, which was here in the United States. The United States led that Saudi Arabia didn't get oil until like the forties and really not

until like the sixties and seventies. Um, but it's always been that oil and back to you know, bitcoin is is important, but to your point, it's all about the energy and um, you know, it seems like the United States is doing their best to get rid of the energy through these E s G narratives. Do you think that was just um, because they've been living in this false sense of reality because of FIAT for so long they haven't realized it. Or do you think there's something

else going on? Um, it's a big part of it. Um. But then a lot of it just comes back to sort of like the maenthusisan bent that remains in a wide swath of the political spectrum in the U. S which is just sort of anti progress and sort of anti humanist. Really, it's it's just this whole idea of you know, nature is pristine and not realizing that humans have shaped nature since humans existed, Right, So I think it's just it's just wrong headed. Unfortunately, Yeah, yeah, it,

I mean it is wrong. I guess, uh, it just when you look at like what's going on today. So now you know, we have they're trying to sanction Russia. Russia's supplying you know, a good amount of oil and energy for the world, um and then you have you know, Biden going on and basically begging you know, other nations to get energy from them, like Iran, and like maybe in exchange for giving them oil, we have to and

giving them billions of dollars for their oil. Then we have to also let them get their nuclear program back on board, when we could just create more jobs in the US and just turn it back on here. And it's like, why would they do that? Yeah, I mean we don't in the US. We don't need any of the Venezuelan oil or the Iranian oil or any of that um or even more Saudi oil. We're fine. We're energy sufficient. Essentially. All you'd have to do is just turn on a few things that we've turned off and

we're just fine. It's much more a sort of a game of politics and trying to make sure that Western Europe can be supplied, uh, knowing that a lot of the Russian supply is going offline. It's not going to be enough though, that's the end of the day. Like it doesn't matter. It's just honestly, it's just political wallpaper talking to Iran about stuff like this. They can't bring enough supply online. Nothing close to it to offset what with what the western European nations are gonna lose from

Germany or from from Russia. Yeah, yeah, I saw. I was doing some research, um early this morning too, because I mean, I'm I've been investing in the energy for a long time. I'm I'm I'm a g P and an oil field here in the in the US. UM, So I know a little bit about it, but I don't know. I'm not an expert by any means. UM. And I was listening to somebody and they're talking about

how the US has peaked out in its energy. But the you kind of talked about this enthusiasan fear spell and the whole world operated on the theory called peak energy, meaning that they thought by the year they thought the world would run out of oil. But in two thousand and eight, the private market came up with a new technology called fracking, and then we found out we had all this energy. And now some people are saying that maybe the US is maxed out and that we we've

kind of hit the point of no more energy again. UM. But I just think again, like, well no, because technology is always going to improve. Um. But when you have the United States basically telling oil company is gonna go bankrupt. Uh, they're probably not gonna want to invest into that new technology too much. So, Uh, what do you think it happens. I think the market sorts it out. Market sorts at

getting a big smack in the face right now. And you know, the biggest proponent of E s G narratives for the last six seven years was Larry Fink, the head of the world's largest asset manager, and he took him what less than a month to turn around when when reality smacks you in the face, they're not going to try to turn off fossil fuels anymore. Yeah, well,

you're absolutely right. And also another thing he pivoted on this week was, Uh, they came out and announced that they were going to move into bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and just in July of last year he said they weren't considering it because there was no appetite for it, and then, um, just this week he said that due to investor demand, they're going to get into it. So that's a pretty big pivot in less than a year, um, from the

world's largest asset manager. As you said, they've just so by the way they've they've had a large blockchain group that's cross functional, including full time employees for over two years. And most of the people who run that are actually essentially bitcoin maximalists that have to say blockchain internally just to kind of be nice. But I've spoken to their group on like internal internal black rock meetings and stuff like that, and yeah, they definitely they will be there. Yeah,

you're listening to the Mark Moas Show. I'm sitting down in the studio with Corey Clipston from Swan Bitcoin. We're talking about bitcoin. Of course, I got a lot more to dig in too with him when we come back, So do not go away, all right, Welcome back. You are listening to the Mark mo Show. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that the world is going through right now. We're talking about the collision of politics, finance and technology.

Of course we're talking about bitcoin. I'm in the studio with Corey Clipston. He is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, and um, we're talking about jobs in bitcoin. That was pretty big. We were just talking about this energy component of it of of what the world is going through

and and bitcoin. There another thing Corey I was I was talking to so I had a conversation with Luke Grahman, who has been doing a lot of good research, and then I had another conversation with U with Jeff Booth, and I was kind of thinking these things through, and I kind of had this epiphany this morning, which I hate to say it epiphany because you and I think about the things all the time. But like the whole world.

You referenced a letter from Zoltan sultan Um about the world kind of being thrust into this new financial system, which is a commodity based system. And so we've seen over the last several years the world has been um net buyers of gold and net sellers of treasury, so they've been transitioning off of this fiat treasury system and into a gold system. But then we have this situation where the U S c's to Russia's treasuries. Um, there's U S. Senators calling for a seas of their gold

and sanctioning their gold. We saw the UK stole Venezuela's gold dirty one tons, about two billion dollars worth, and so like we've really seen a breakdown of trust altogether.

And if everyone's gonna go back to this gold back system, how could that work in a world with no trust, like even if China had a seven live stream on YouTube of their gold supply, how do we know it's like gold tungsten um bars, right, And now the countries can't let someone else hold their gold like Venezuela will steal it, Russia, that will steal it, so they have to hold it themselves. And if that's the only system we have, like, how could that work in a world

with no trust? It's almost like you would want to have like a blick Ledger where everyone had a copy of the Ledger and you could actually see what people claim to own and they could like prove their reserves. Yeah, it's almost like we're talking, of course about bitcoin, which I think is where we'll be in you know, fifteen years, thirty years, something like that. I do think that's how everything will sort of run, and that will be the

reserve asset of all of these countries. Yeah, it's just like you know, uh, the Americans trusted the United States to hold their gold, the banks to hold their gold, and not print too many papers certificates, but in nineteen thirty three they did and they seize their gold, and then in the world agreed to let the US hold the gold. In ninety one, they found out they couldn't get it back, so they couldn't trust that. Today we found out, you know, no one can. You can't trust

anyone to hold your gold. You can't trust anyone to hold your treasuries. We can't trust anybody, Like I mean, gold already has this problem because it's slow and clunky and it's heavy. But now we have trust broken down, Like I just I don't see any other option. Yeah, I mean, it's um it's still just such a tiny market. So when you're talking about you know, net inflows, net outflows, the treasuries or whatever, it's still just nibbling around at

the edges. UM treasuries just dwarf it, and you know a lot of other asset classes just dwarf gold completely as gold. Tradable gold is probably about half of the total supply. Total supplies about eleven trillion dollars worth, so tradable is like five or six trillion. It's just miniscule compared to what the world economy needs in you know, to run and for these governments need for their for

their reserve assets. UM. As far as the US, I mean, I think that broadly this disruption and this sort of like new new maybe not cold war, but you know, cold freeze or whatever. This is this disruption and sort of deglobalization. It'll be very um. Everybody will be hurt, but the US will be much less hurt, and the US, you know, relatively will gain in strength and power and wealth versus other nations around the world because of the

disruption that's going on right now. I explained that why why would most nations be hurt but the U. S Would do better because of the disruption. Well, the I mean, Germany is going to be hurt, so that's a that's a top economy. Russia is obviously being hurt. That's a top top military power. It's the number two military power

behind US. Well, being hurt, being hurt by what being hurt by this disruption, this de globalization right, This was this was US sort of creating a world order where everybody played nice since World War Two, and US policing the oceans right, keeping it open for trade. Even when we were fighting in Vietnam, the U. S. Navy was making sure that boats could sail straight into Hanoi without being messed with. Even as we were fighting the Vietnam War. That's going to be out the window here in the

next decade or so. Um. A lot of people think that this disruption with Russia might lead to something like increased power for China, but this is this is massively negative for China. They rely a ton on Russian oil. They the whole sort of Siberian fields come south into China, and those are serviced almost exclusively by Western firms that have actually pulled out already, right, Slumberja and and Haliburton have pulled out, and so they don't have the ability

to service those fields anymore. So it won't become obvious immediately, but over the next couple of years, with that lack of expertise and the lack of parts and the lack of repairs in a place like that that freezes six months a year, like they're just d l a those that oil is gonna stop flowing. That gas is gonna stop flowing to China, and they can't go get it anywhere else, right, they can't go, you know, the the naval capacity, there's no insurance for those boats to go.

There's no deep water ports for Russia to put these on. Supertankers and ship it to China, like there's nowhere else for them to get the oil that they're losing. M yeah, and the world desperately needs that oil overall. I mean they're they're a small percentage, I think, less than ten percent of the world's energy, but the world needs that. If you reduce the energy by denver cent, it's a

big problem. Well, you got the biggest economy in Europe, Germany, that gets like their gas from Russia, right right, So that's gonna be a big problem. Yeah, that's a big problem. So um yeah, the world is just so connected now that you know, you pull on one string and it

just kind of pulls everywhere else. But like I was kind of saying, so, um, now, when this trust is broken down, I mean there's just I just don't see how going back to a commodity based system or a or a gold back system could work because without trust, it's always going to require that. But at the same time, so then it's kind of like, well, if not Bitcoin, then what, because, like like you said, it's almost like we need this like trust less ledger. Um, so if

not Bitcoin, then what. But I guess to the point that I'm seeing and you actually just made like bitcoin is not really ready for that. Like, no, it's gonna be treasuries for a long while. Yet flawed as they are, that's still what it's going to be for a few more decades in my view. And everyone's just gonna have to just bow down and kiss kiss the feet of

the US so they don't get locked out like Russia did. Yeah, the Western the Western world and those who choose to remain part of whatever global system remains and be plugged into, you know, the equity markets and the bond markets and the credit markets, they're just going to have to continue to play ball. It'll just be a slightly smaller playing field for for the West. Yeah, I mean, so smaller

plane filled for the West. But what about like Russia, I mean, if they're kicked out, obviously, what they have plenty of natural resources. I guess to your point that you're making some of the resources might be drying up, drying up a little bit, but they still have you know, between Russia and Ukraine and control thirty of the wheat and corn it's pretty massive, huge percentage of the fertilizer industry. Um, so they still have real wealth, real goods and services

that they could sell for gold. So maybe they create maybe a bifurcate the financial system and we kind of have the West system and then we kind of have these other people on their own system. Yeah, it's just it's just such a tiny sliver compared to the rest of the system, and it needs you kind of need access to global markets to be able to produce all

of the inputs for those industries. Right, those aren't just sitting there waiting to be picked up, Like there's there's not going to be a planting season this year in Ukraine, right, And we'll see, you know, and it's probably going to be a bit of a failed contested slash buffer state for the next decade or so. Um. You know, we'll see, we'll see where the territorial lines get drawn. But it doesn't appear that it's going to be free of Russian influence.

And it doesn't appear that it's going to be a Russian vassal state either, um, although we shall see. But either way, it's probably not good for wheat production. And this is definitely not good for Russian wheat production because while they have fertilizer and they have fuel, like, there are lots of other inputs that go into farming, like

equipment and tractors and all those kinds of things. So you're talking about probably like a five to ten year retooling as they moved towards autarchy, right, and being sort of insular within their own boards. Uh, and essentially coming back to sort of Soviet style iron curtain vibes. And that was not an efficient economy, right. It didn't benefit from comparative advantage of being able to draw all the things that different countries around the world were best at

making and getting them for the cheapest price. They're gonna have to make everything. Yeah, you're you're you're listening to the Mark Moss Show. I'm sitting down in the studio with Corey Clipston, the CEO of Swan Bitcoin. We're just talking about as this financial system is changing, what comes next. I want to talk next when we come back from the break, about investing into this trend. I know you run some venture funds. We'll talk about that. I got a lot more to go. Don't go away, We'll be

right back everyone. Welcome back. You are listening to the Mark mo Show where we talk about the decentralized revolution. We're talking about how bitcoin is changing the world as we know it. I'm sitting down in the studio with Corey Clipston. He is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin and we've covered a lot. So if you've missed it, don't miss it again. Put this date time on your calendar.

Make sure you're joined me each and every week on this channel at this time I'm or you can find it on the podcast iHeart podcast Network and you can catch up on it then. Um. But we talked about a lot of things, including energy, including what's going on

with the world and uh, trust being broken down. Um. But Corey, one another thing that I want to dig into with is that we've kind of set this stage and I talk about it all the time, but I want to talk about specifically I I do talk about all the time that you know, these transitions that we're going through with the financial system change and you know,

technology changes the world. It's it's uh, it's a problem for a lot of people not paying attention, but for some people that are pay attention, it could be a big opportunity. So let's talk about that and like really investing into this. And I you're the perfect person to talk to. You've been running a big bitcoin of ventures for a long time, and I know you've invested into a lot of projects there um, and now you've moved into actually starting a fund to invest into some projects.

So let's talk about investing and using this as an opportunity. Yeah, absolutely, So, you know, I think you need to know what you're buying. That's just always true in investing generals. Yeah, the more you know, the more you buy. Is kind of like our internal motto at SWAN, which is why I always try to educate people about bitcoin, because if they know more about it, they're more likely to buy more of it hold onto it, right. Um. So it's kind of

the same thing with venture. So I would say, you know, this trend in this sort of like wind at your sales with bitcoin, is you know, going to be a two decade trend at minimum where there's going to be sort of outsized returns and I think better returns than

venture broadly in the bitcoin space. If you are heavy into it and getting to know these companies and can add some value that would make you not face adverse selection, which is where somebody only takes your money once they try getting money from all the people they really want

in the deal. Um. But if you actually add value and you're kind of well known in the space, then you can get into the good deals and you have you know, you get selected for good deals, then it makes sense to go sort of deal by deal and be an angel. If you don't have that, then it's better to be a limited partner in a fund. Right. So if there's some space that you don't know a lot about um, but you just like believe in the trend, that's when it's better to just hire a professional manager.

So you know, I kind of play both strategies. The Bitcoin of Ventures syndicate lets a lot of bitcoiners around the world who are really into bitcoins select the deals that they want to be in and they can contribute like, you know, one thousand and fifty thou dollars per deal. That's the Bitcoin Ventures Bitcoin of Ventures dot com. And

that one's really just kind of a community service. It's myself, Jon Pritzker, Louis lou and Stefan Lavera, all pretty well known people in the bitcoin space where the four partners. But we actually take no fees and no carry to run the syndicate and we just put you know, like half a million into each deal, and we've done seven deals so far. UM. But it's you know, seven of the best known bitcoin companies over the last two years.

And then separately recently launched and announced a fund called Alzonte Capital with Max Kaiser and Stacy Herbert, um the well known bitcoin advocate for the last eleven twelve years

and UH and well known media figures. And if that one is focused on Layer two and Layer three solutions, so Lightning DLCs and just whatever else people build on top of bitcoin and really just building up for this next phase where a lot more people have a lot of their net worth and bitcoin and are actually looking to use it and spend it and do novel things like value for value podcasting and things like that with bitcoin.

Mm hmm, that's great. UM. It's funny you say that because a lot of times people think about bitcoin being you know, deflationary or disinflationary UM, and they say, well, if if bitcoin's always going up, why would people, um want, why would they invest anymore? But to your point, if people have a lot of bitcoin, they still are looking for ways to invest into the space. UM. But I want to talk about UM specifically, so like let's talk we'll talk a little bit broadly about you know, the

difference with crypto versus bitcoin. And so the thing with crypto is like it's easy for anybody. Uh I spend years in the crypto space, and my ex business partner um went for in four months, launched a crypto project and went and got a big I'm not going to name them, but a big market maker behind them, and

cashed out twelve million dollars within four months. And he's got all these tokens he sits on, right, And so you have these people that just go launched these crypto tokens, and now he launched it as a decentralized protocol, and then he just walks away. Do you have all these people that can go launch that? But with bitcoin companies, they have to go like sit down with real investors that are having to give up real money. So it's a different path that has to go down, right, Yeah,

I mean it's it's kind of long term greedy. You know. I had a mentor a long time ago tell me that, uh, money is only as good as the story you can tell about it. And the way I think about crypto people is like you're either gonna have to like lie to your friends or have crappy friends in the future. You know, Like, it's just it's not very attractive. I'd much rather be you know, honest about what I've done and and proud of it and be able to tell the truth about it. So I think that's one thing.

It's just like I think a lot of high integrity people are drawn towards bitcoin. It's it's this this thing that seems to be true and to spread truth wherever it goes. So I think that's really attractive. Um. But I also just think like bitcoin is gonna be there

and these other things, in my view, are not. And so if you're thinking about building a career over a decade or two or even just you know, leaving your name there for the history books, right, Like you can have a legacy working in bitcoin, You're not gonna have a legacy working in these you know, crypto schemes. Yeah. Now, Um, you talked about the you didn't name it, but it's al Zonte Capital that you you started with Max and Stacy, Um,

who are great friends as well. I love those guys, So good team for you guys to partner up together with. I'm excited about it. But alzonte capital um and investing into layer two in layer three, So bitcoin being a

base layer and then you have secondary layers. So if you think about the way that I kind of think about it is like you have the Internet, so you have like a t P I P protocol that transfers packets of data on that TCP a protocol, and then you have trillions of applications built on top of that. UM this is one application of the Internet, and then you have Bitcoin as a as a value transfer protocol, and then you could have potentially trillions of applications built

on that UM. Do you think that eventually all the trillions of applications get built on one single protocol, just like the Internet? Did? I mean? Bitcoin is Bitcoin will just be money, so all the ways that you can use money. But then you think about the other the fact that it's programmable money and the fact that it can be streaming money, and that it can be you know, we're already using millissats on the lightning networks, and not just setosis which is one millions of a bitcoin, but

you can actually go another three decimal points enlightening. And so think of all the different machines that could be talking to each other and transacting to it with each other, you know, based on if then statements, and you know,

just kind of computer language or computer code. So I don't know, I think it's, um, what did we do with the Internet In the first decade, We basically put you know, magazines and newspapers online, and we had these static pages, and then all of a sudden there was a comments section, and we're like, oh my gosh, like

I can kind of interact. And then you know, seven years later it was full blown Facebook and you know, social media, and now it's zoom every day all day, and you know, it's really hard to imagine the things that we will build by, let alone leveraging what bitcoin is money on the Internet. Value on the Internet. It's it's the Internet of value, and we've never had it before. Yeah,

um yeah. And and I think even just just kind of like the Internet redefined maybe even what we would consider information or like I thought of information before Internet was like the newspaper or the evening news, and now today it's a kid around the world post a picture of the beach, and I know what the surf like, I know what the beach is like, the weather all these things and so probably redefining what we consider value

as well, which I think is it's pretty big. You just got real deep, because yeah, money is information right, Yeah, money is information right. So also, um, you know it's uh, it's censorship resistant payments, which I've been making the case that without the freedom to transact, there is no freedom. So if I don't have freedom of speech, but if I can't buy a computer to get on the internet, I don't really have any speech. It's I have freedom to assemble, but if I can't put gas in my car,

I can't go assemble with people. I have freedom of religion, but if my church can't pay for a building, then we have no assemble, you know. So we have that. Um, good stuff. Um, you're listening to the Markma Show. We're talking about the decentralized revolution that the world is going through. Of course we're talking about bitcoin. I'm in the studio with Corey Clipston from Swan Bitcoin. You can find them on Twitter at Corey Clipston and check out swan bitcoin

dot com. Um and also if you're interested in getting job, you can check out bitcoin or Jobs. You can also check out bitcoin or Ventures or alazonte capital. If you're looking about getting some money into the bitcoin space. UM, that's what I got for you today. Thanks so much for listening.