Pablo Fernandez (00:03:12):

They wake up in the morning thinking, “Oh, yes, I want sell that last booking.” No one, not a single person, but every single person that shows up at the Bitcoin company, at a real Bitcoin company is there because they believe in Bitcoin and they want to make Bitcoin succeed. Yeah, man. It’s such a different experience. It’s a whole different level. You see people that will take a pay cut to work at a Bitcoin company. You don’t see that-

Preston Pysh (00:03:39):

Anywhere.

Pablo Fernandez (00:03:40):

… pretty much anywhere else. Bottom line, what’s the wage? What’s the stock? What’s the comp? At Bitcoin companies, “Okay. What am I going to be doing for Bitcoin?” Yeah. That’s absolutely impressive.

Preston Pysh (00:03:55):

What got you down the Bitcoin rabbit hole from the start?

Pablo Fernandez (00:04:00):

My rabbit hole story is pretty sad and lame. So like you said, I’ve been in software engineering for many, many decades, well, not many, many decades, but a couple of decades. I was into Austrian economics before Bitcoin. I read Human Action in 2006. When I first got into Bitcoin, I saw this thing, this chart on the screen that had a lot of difference between the different spot exchanges.

Pablo Fernandez (00:04:34):

So my first couple of years in Bitcoin, I started trading, well, not trading. I made an arbitrage platform that would compare the prices across, I don’t know, probably around 40 different exchanges and just started to create trades. Yeah. It took me a couple of years to realize that Bitcoin was a bit more than that.

Preston Pysh (00:04:56):

Well, I mean, there’s so much to chew on. I mean, everybody comes at it from a different angle, and then the more you learn and the more you get into it you’re like, “What is this that I’m even dealing with?” but that’s fascinating. So you came with a lens of looking at all these different exchanges and how they fit together, the liquidity, and the volume.

Pablo Fernandez (00:05:14):

Absolutely. On its own, that aspect of it’s Bitcoin but it could be any market, it’s super interesting because my first trade, I did a manual trade where I think I bought one Bitcoin at Kraken and I sold it at Coinbase. Well, not the same Bitcoin, but roughly, I had one Bitcoin in Kraken, one Bitcoin in Coinbase, and I sold and bought at the same time, right? I got 20% profit from that trade, and I couldn’t believe that that was real, that that such huge inefficiency would exist in the market, but as the market starts becoming bigger, getting that kind of margin’s really hard, and the arbitrage market is really, really, really competitive. It’s like mining where every single edge will be exploited.

Pablo Fernandez (00:06:08):

So I started talking with exchanges, which would sell you collocation on the same data centers that they were using. So you would get a little bit faster access to the order book, a little bit faster execution, and yet playing around how to create basically a synthetically atomic trade where you sell and buy at the same time because if you’re doing arbitrage, you don’t want to be exposed to the price. You just want to be exposed to the delta of the price across the exchanges, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:06:40):

So dealing with the algorithms to make sure that you are not getting risk that you don’t want to take, it’s super interesting, and then finding a way to move liquidity around because, yeah, moving Bitcoin or moving whatever coin you want to trade, it’s super easy, but moving fiat around exchanges, especially before stable coins, is really, really, really hard, and solving that problem was the most interesting aspect of this whole part of my Bitcoin story.

Preston Pysh (00:07:15):

Well, no, that’s fascinating. So recently in the news, Jack Dorsey made an announcement about what he’s calling web5, which really made me snicker when I heard that that was the … Tell us about the name or at least your opinion on the name, and then let’s do a deep dive into some of the tech on this.

Pablo Fernandez (00:07:35):

Good. The name, epic, epic pro. I love Jack Dorsey. Yeah. I think the name is hilarious. I think it attracts all the right kind of reactions. I think the web3 VCs who got direct now dumping on retail with the latest crush are going to get really triggered because it’s clearly a call out. The people, the unaware retail is going to be, “Oh, that’s even better than web3.” Yeah. I think it’s a genius name. Yeah. When I first heard it, I thought it was just a troll. I didn’t think they were actually building something. I mean, I knew they were working with DIDs and the work blocks has been doing, but yeah, naming it web5 is absolutely genius. I mean, with regards to … Yeah. Go ahead.

Preston Pysh (00:08:32):

So you mentioned DIDs, which is decentralized identifiers. Tell people what that is, and maybe we should even pull out more to describe what this whole effort is because even though he’s trolling and doing those types of things, there’s something here. I think there’s something here really important that he’s going after, but let’s have you describe overall what he’s trying to do, and then we can drill into DIDs, DWNs, the SSIS, all this stuff that popped out of this.

Pablo Fernandez (00:09:02):

The basic idea of DIDs, which is a super old, it predates Bitcoin by decades, the basic idea is that you have issues of an identity where you … Say you create an account with your bank, right? Your bank has a relationship with you and they might say, “Preston has X amount of fiat on his bank account.” Up till now without DIDs, that’s a one-to-one relationship. It’s you and your bank. With DIDs, you would be the one owning this relationship, this identity that you present to your bank, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:09:48):

So you would be able to get this. Even though your bank has your assets, you would be the one owning the credentials that allow you to go to your bank. So you could basically reuse those credentials and say, “This entity, this bank knows that I am Preston, that I have X amount of money, my date of birth is X,” and you can take that data because you own that data and you keep that data yourself. So you can take that data.

Preston Pysh (00:10:20):

They can prove this with a hash. They’re basically pinging your, whatever, your IP address or whatever they have on record, and they know that in order for you to cryptographically send them this identifying data that’s your information, you basically provide them some type of hash that says, “All right. I’m the only person that could possibly know this. Here’s the proof and here’s all the encrypted data,” and then they ingest that and then they do what they do with it. Is that a correct-

Pablo Fernandez (00:10:49):

Yeah. Yeah, that’s correct. So a really good example of using a DID that might resonate with people that have signed up for an exchange or for multiple exchanges is you KYC with one exchange and then you take that KYC data and you take it somewhere else. So there’s all kinds of interesting stuff that you can do with a serial knowledge proof, where you can take that data. Without revealing your actual KYC, your passport picture, your proof of address, all that stuff, without revealing it, you can say, “Oh, I’ve been KYCed by Bitstamp and here’s certificate that I’ve been KYCed by Bitstamp,” and you can take that and use it for Coinbase, and then Coinbase would be basically trusting that you’ve been KYCed by Bitstamp but without actually getting the documentation.

Preston Pysh (00:11:42):

Now, there’s more in this. They said that they’re also going to have decentralized web nodes. Is this just the data that I’m storing more from a server standpoint bit on my just maybe a Raspberry Pi or whatever I’m using as my own node?

Pablo Fernandez (00:12:01):

Yeah. So one important caveat that I think we need to keep in mind is that all of this is just an announcement and a website explaining on the paper, explaining what it is. There is no code available. So the form that this is going to take is a bit of a speculation at the time. If I had to speculate, I think that the shape that it will take … Are you familiar with Start9 and Embassy?

Preston Pysh (00:12:29):

Not really, no.

Pablo Fernandez (00:12:31):

So there’s a company called Start9 Labs, and they’re making what they’re calling, I forgot what they’re calling it, but the name of the device is Embassy. So it’s basically just a Raspberry Pi or a RoPro, a small piece of hardware. You can think about it as your router basically, right? You have your router at home. You use it to access the internet. You probably don’t know what else you can do with it. So the idea of the Embassy is that it’s going to be like a router, but with added functionality. So it will just be this piece of hardware without a screen, without anything. It’s just in your home, but it has a bunch of other things, and there’s a marketplace around it.

Pablo Fernandez (00:13:14):

So one of the things that you can do with it is you can have your cloud storage. You can have your Bitcoin node. You can have your lightning node. What I think might happen is decentralized web node is going to be something like your Embassy. It’s just this hardware sitting in your apartment, in your home that is doing something for you because the key is that the data that you’re keeping for the web5 thing is not hosted on Amazon web services, on your bank’s database.

Pablo Fernandez (00:13:54):

You have to process the data. You have to actually keep the data yourself somewhere. So that needs to be solved. They are calling that decentralized web nodes. I think that’s the shape it’s going to take.

Preston Pysh (00:14:06):

So it’s almost like the Umbrel.

Pablo Fernandez (00:14:06):

Yeah. It’s exactly like the Umbrel. Yes. That’s another example of the Embassy. Yeah.

Preston Pysh (00:14:12):

Okay. That helps me out a lot. So yeah, and you know what’s crazy about the Umbrel is how much it is like Apple like just using your iPhone. They got their own app store. You go in there, you’re downloading whatever application. You can then use that specific application, and it’s just crazy that I’m running it right off of my little Raspberry Pi node. So that’s perfect. So anybody who sees DWN or decentralized web node, think of your Umbrel. That’s a good example. Okay.

Pablo Fernandez (00:14:43):

Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah.

Preston Pysh (00:14:45):

So here’s another one. This one’s confusing me, SSIS, self-sovereign identity service. Now, when I think service, I think I’ve got to go to somebody else to provide a service to me. So what are they talking about here? Then it also says that they’re going to wrap it in an SDK self-sovereign identity.

Pablo Fernandez (00:15:07):

That one I would need to look into because I don’t think I read that one.

Preston Pysh (00:15:14):

I’m just trying to wrap my head around some of this, but yeah. So then they’re saying that what’s going to pop out of all of this is a decentralized web node messaging, verifiable credentials, decentralized identifiers, credential manifests, so many different things that is bringing decentralization.

Preston Pysh (00:15:35):

There was a quote here that somebody wrote. I don’t know who wrote this, but they said, “Web5 uses just one blockchain, Bitcoin, for one specific use case, identity,” and then it’s made up of all those components that we just talked about.

Pablo Fernandez (00:15:49):

Right. Yeah, I think that’s just ION. The DID part is ION, which is a project that it predates all this. It’s been running for quite a while.

Preston Pysh (00:16:00):

That’s a protocol. This ION that you’re talking about is a protocol.

Pablo Fernandez (00:16:04):

Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. It just hashes into the Bitcoin blockchain. Yeah.

Preston Pysh (00:16:08):

Wow. Do you see this as being in competition with all this, I’ll be kind, stuff that’s happening on web3?

Pablo Fernandez (00:16:20):

No, I don’t think so. I mean, clearly, I mean, it’s super obvious that the only purpose of web3 is just to create tokens, to sell them, to retail with different type of narratives, but there is absolutely nothing there. When you look at what web3 means, it can mean nothing, it can mean whatever you want. It’s like a mirror. You stand in front of web3, you issue tokens, you dump it on-

Preston Pysh (00:16:49):

I like that example. It’s like a mirror.

Pablo Fernandez (00:16:55):

I think what they’ve announced, the closest it competes with, it’s Synonym. Are you familiar with what John Carvalho-

Preston Pysh (00:17:04):

No, tell us about that.

Pablo Fernandez (00:17:05):

So John announced Synonym in the conference back in November 2021. They had been working in stealth mode for I think close to two years. It’s pretty much from a value prop perspective. It’s pretty much what Jack announced, the idea of having DIDs, the idea of owning your data, the idea of hashing and presenting basically certificates to, for example, reuse KYC or showing that you go to a bar and you want to show that you’re older than 21 without revealing your picture, your address, your actual birthday.

Pablo Fernandez (00:17:51):

So yeah, John presented a bunch of different projects they’ve been working on. It’s basically, again, from a value prop perspective, they take different approaches, but from a value prop perspective, it’s the same idea. They’ve been working on this for a couple of years so they do have a lot of code ready that you can use, that you can run. They already run into a bunch of different issues and solved them. So yeah, I mean-

Preston Pysh (00:18:24):

It sounds like the whole identity piece is getting mature and probably going to be a big deal in the coming, what, three years?

Pablo Fernandez (00:18:32):

The identity piece is crucial, and the identity piece will be solved because I think even the web3 gang agrees that the identity should work. Your Twitter handle is not owned by you. It’s owned by Twitter. Your Instagram, your Facebook page, whatever identity you use is not owned by you. So the identity piece will absolutely be solved.

Pablo Fernandez (00:19:00):

If you think about it, when you own Bitcoin, if you actually own Bitcoin, in some way, you must keep private keys, right? So it doesn’t make sense to have to keep all these different logins, all these different identities to your bank when you already have a private key that you can derive other keys from and use that as authentication and as identity proof. So the DID piece is absolutely essential and it will be solved, for sure.

Preston Pysh (00:19:34):

So let’s walk through a use case with something like this, and if I have my own node, and maybe I have a pretty substantial amount of memory that’s associated with my node, basically, Twitter could become, I could own all those tweets, whereas nobody could come in and delete me, right? Twitter is basically just housing this interface where these IDs are being plugged into their platform, and that platform isn’t able to delete or prevent me because it’s a decentralized system at that point where IDs are able to plug in and then all their previous tweets and everything that they’ve ever commented on and liked and whatever and they have absolute control over that, I guess. Is that it?

Pablo Fernandez (00:20:22):

That’s absolutely it. That’s definitely one of the use cases. Yeah. If you think about it, it’s super important because you will … So for example, with the way Synonym works, Synonym uses something that is like a blockchain without a blockchain. It’s what’s called a pen-only log where you can only add information like a blockchain, right? You can only add information to a database, but without being able to rewrite what has been written before, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:20:53):

The way it works is you can … So for example, my website, I hosted on what Synonym uses underlying Synonym. It’s called hyperdrive. The basic idea is that … You know how BitTorrent works?

Preston Pysh (00:21:08):

Well, I would like to think I know, but I-

Pablo Fernandez (00:21:14):

Yeah, but you get the basic idea that there’s-

Preston Pysh (00:21:15):

Yeah, yeah.

Pablo Fernandez (00:21:16):

So hyperdrive works in the exact same way, where I have my website, I write information on my website, and then I save my website, right? Then you could, if you wanted to, you could connect basically to my node and download that same data and start seeding that data as well.

Pablo Fernandez (00:21:38):

So if I went in and deleted my website, you could still keep a copy of my website all the time, right? You could do that with Twitter. So for example, if I decide to delete my Twitter account or Trump’s Twitter account, you could still get all that data, all those tweets because you have a local copy of every single tweet that you want to keep.

Preston Pysh (00:22:05):

So basically, you can still scrape the web and take whatever data that used to be presented.

Pablo Fernandez (00:22:12):

Yeah, absolutely.

Preston Pysh (00:22:13):

As far as whatever digital ID that’s plugged into one of these platforms, as long as I am the owner of basically signing into that platform as the owner, I’m controlling what’s being presented under that identification, even if I want to go back and try to rewrite history, which I can do, anybody still has the opportunity to scrape the data realtime and run background copies of all of that.

Pablo Fernandez (00:22:42):

Yeah, absolutely. It’s not even scraping, it’s fetching the actual source of data, right? So it’s have a copy of the database instead of just going in and saving the HTML or whatever representation of the data. You have the actual database yourself.

Preston Pysh (00:22:59):

All right. Well, that’s fascinating stuff. I’m just curious to see what in the heck evolves out of this. It seems like Jack sees this as being a very big deal. It seems like you would agree with that.

Pablo Fernandez (00:23:11):

I totally agree with that. Yes.

Preston Pysh (00:23:13):

Crazy.

Pablo Fernandez (00:23:14):

Yeah. It’s a bit of a change of power thing, basically. I mean, it’s-

Preston Pysh (00:23:18):

Yeah, because nobody has control of anything right now. It’s crazy.

Pablo Fernandez (00:23:21):

It is. I mean, you have a large Twitter follower, and if you were to get your Twitter account knocked tomorrow, it has an impact. I mean, this is work that you’ve been doing for a really long time and it can be taken at a whim out of you, right?

Preston Pysh (00:23:40):

Yeah. The time and energy that people pour into some of these accounts and to think that-

Pablo Fernandez (00:23:43):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s time and effort that you’re investing and that it can be just deleted away from you. So that’s an interesting thing that I see with coins where they often get part of the narrative right. It’s just that they never actually build anything because the incentives aren’t there. When the incentive is to create an asset and just dump it on someone else, why actually make the effort of building a real business, building real value? It’s just not compatible, but the narrative that they’ve been complaining about you are you don’t own your Twitter, you don’t own your Facebook, all that stuff, it’s valid. The complaint is valid. The solution is not, but yeah, with web5, yeah, there is a path toward solving some of those problems.

Preston Pysh (00:24:36):

What are your thoughts on lightning in general?

Pablo Fernandez (00:24:40):

I’m super bullish on lightning. I think it’s a beautiful full solution. Yeah. I think lightning is going to become the defacto way of onboarding most people where it’s coming into Bitcoin, lightning first, and maybe never touching on-chain. I think there is a lot to be done on lightning. There is a lot of value to be gotten from lightning. I think there is a lot of hype as with everything. Smart contracts on lightning, what is that?

Preston Pysh (00:25:18):

You’re not seeing it. You’re not seeing that part of it, huh?

Pablo Fernandez (00:25:21):

No, no. I mean, there is stuff that can be done. Leveraging the idea of lightning or the capabilities of lightning, but there is no real value out of say, for example, getting phone calls over lightning. Okay. It’s interesting to be able to have a phone call where one of the parties is sending stats, say like a consulting or something like that. That’s valuable. The actual data doesn’t need to go over lightning. It can just go out of band.

Preston Pysh (00:25:55):

Because you can encrypt the line and it doesn’t have to happen over that. Yeah, I’m with you.

Pablo Fernandez (00:25:58):

Yeah, and doing it over lightning, it has such a large overhead for no value other than being able to say that it’s phone call over lightning. It doesn’t make much sense. I think in the same way, there are many narratives that sound nice because Bitcoin adjacent is saying, “Oh, this is on lightning,” it sounds very nice, but it doesn’t actually do anything or it doesn’t add any value.

Preston Pysh (00:26:25):

It’s marketing.

Pablo Fernandez (00:26:27):

It is marketing, yes.

Preston Pysh (00:26:28):

It’s marketing.

Pablo Fernandez (00:26:32):

It’s Ethereum MB leaking into Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (00:26:34):

I think when I’m thinking about lightning, you don’t have an incentive structure yet for people to go out and spend in large quantities relative to maybe a few spots in the world that are out there using it in the day today, and the use case there is amazing. You’re just not going to get on a net global basis. I think we’re still very, very early for the use cases to pop out of it.

Preston Pysh (00:27:02):

You look here in the US. We’ve got capital gains laws. So to use it in any kind of way, it’s restrictive a little bit where, “Am I going to go out there?” If I get a 10% discount, I think Chipotle here in the US is doing this, where if you pay in Bitcoin, you get a 10% discount at Chipotle or at least that’s what I had heard, but for me, I’m looking at that and I’m saying, “All right. So I love the fact that Chipotle’s trying to do this,” but at the same time I’m saying to myself, “Why would they offer a 10% discount when they could just not do that and take whatever free cashflows they’re getting in cash and immediately convert whatever free cashflows they got in the Bitcoin? If that’s a 10% margin on average for the company, they collect a $10 purchase and they can immediately convert $1 in the Bitcoin and they put it on their treasury.” So I’m trying-

Pablo Fernandez (00:27:52):

Then they wouldn’t be talked about in your podcast.

Preston Pysh (00:27:55):

Well, hey, you’re right. From a marketing standpoint, it’s great, and I don’t suspect there’s a whole lot of people exercising it. So from a marketing standpoint, it’s great, but I think from an incentive, on a real large scale, you’re just not there yet with people seeing the fiat melting down.

Preston Pysh (00:28:13):

Now, give it another three to five years and who knows what’ll pop out of this? I love the fact that the plumbing is there. It’s in place from developers like yourself that are working hard to make all of this accessible, and the UX is something I want to talk to you about maybe a little bit later, but it’s getting there, right? It’s getting exciting. It’s just I think we got to wait for the macro backdrop to play out for everybody to really see the use case.

Pablo Fernandez (00:28:45):

Yeah, absolutely. I don’t think this kind of activity where people choose to pay with lightning or choose to pay with Bitcoin will happen because of voluntarism or because it’s a marketing campaign. I think that will happen because it’s the path that makes the most sense for each individual person. So it’s all marginal decisions, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:29:06):

So for example, I do use lightning very regularly only when it makes more sense for me to pay with lightning than with fiat. Whenever I pay with Bitcoin, and when I pay with Bitcoin, I’ll say that 95% of my transactions are with lightning. Always every single time it is because it’s so much easier to use lightning than to use fiat, but I don’t pay with Bitcoin because I’m an activist.

Pablo Fernandez (00:29:37):

If that’s what the movement or if that’s what hyper Bitcoinization requires, it will never happen, but the closer each individual person gets to hyper Bitcoinization, so for example, for myself, I live a life of hyper Bitcoinization, if you will. My accounting is in Bitcoin. That’s the only number that I keep track of with regards to my net worth. For me, getting closer and closer and closer, actually paying with Bitcoin makes a lot of sense because that means that I have to keep less and less fiat, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:30:07):

If I want to make sure that I end the month with zero fiat, it means that sometimes I will miscalculate and I will have to pay with Bitcoin because that’s the only way I can pay, but yeah, it’s not something that will happen because I’m doing a marketing campaign for Bitcoin, this idea of going-

Preston Pysh (00:30:27):

The central bank is doing all the marketing here.

Pablo Fernandez (00:30:30):

There’s no need. We have such good allies.

Preston Pysh (00:30:35):

Yeah. We don’t anyway marketing.

Pablo Fernandez (00:30:38):

I’m Argentinian, and I grew up in Argentina. For myself, when I first understood Bitcoin, I mentioned it to my family from Argentina who we’ve experienced the Corralito back in 2001, and we’ve experienced so many different super high or hyperinflationary events in our lives that pitching Bitcoin is like, “Yeah, there’s this thing.”

Preston Pysh (00:31:05):

“Where do I sign up?”

Pablo Fernandez (00:31:06):

They will not be able to bring more. Okay. All right. It takes seven seconds to orange peel people in Argentina. I orange peeled my 103-year-old grandfather in 10 minutes. They will find a way to do lightning. They will find a way to KYC. They will find a way to do whatever they need to do. You don’t have to convince them.

Preston Pysh (00:31:32):

Wow. That’s some powerful stuff, and it makes sense, right? Once you live that, and you’ve experienced that environment that pops out of that situation, it’s something that will never be something that you can unsee. Do you see a world where most people are running their own node at their house and doing this decentralized web nodes and things like that? Do you think that that’s become standard almost like you were saying earlier like a router?

Pablo Fernandez (00:31:59):

I do. Yeah. I think that is the path. I don’t think there is a different path than that one, but if I were to travel in time 50 years and tell you, “Yes, every single person in their home is going to be running this little device that will connect them to a global network where they’ll be able to use that device to exchange messages,” you’ll be like, “Okay. Yes. That’s not happening,” right? Every single home has a router. In that same way, yes, I do think that people, they will not directly interface with the device in the same way that … How many people actually log into their router and make sure that they have the right set? No one, not a single person. I mean, maybe 0.1%, not many, not many, not many. I think it will be the same case for these devices. It’s just going to be another part of your router.

Preston Pysh (00:32:57):

Yeah. Hey, what misunderstandings do you think a lot of people have in this space that maybe have just arrived in the past year and are just getting familiar with it? What are some of the talking, the big points that you think people misunderstand?

Pablo Fernandez (00:33:14):

Everything.

Preston Pysh (00:33:16):

There’s a lot to cover there.

Pablo Fernandez (00:33:17):

There is a lot to cover, yeah. I think one of the main points that people tend to misunderstand is that I think people see Bitcoin as something that needs to be … So for example, hyper Bitcoinization is a good one because I think people are saying, “Oh, when hyper Bitcoinization comes or when state X has a legal tender with Bitcoin,” I think what’s missing is that all of these are decisions made at the margins, and Bitcoin is something that you choose to use yourself, and it doesn’t require anyone else to act on your behalf.

Pablo Fernandez (00:34:00):

It’s not a system where you need to wait for permission to be hyper Bitcoinized. It’s not a system where you need to ask for permission, right? It’s a system that’s permissionless.

Preston Pysh (00:34:12):

Opt in.

Pablo Fernandez (00:34:16):

It’s 100% opt in all the way, all the way. So I got a tattoo, a Bitcoin tattoo on my shoulder. When I showed that to many people, they were like, “Oh, what if Bitcoin changes and you stop liking Bitcoin and now you like …” Say for example, back in the 2017 fork and I was a BitLocker, “Oh, what if now you have the Bitcoin instead of the Bitcoin cash tattoo?” The definition of Bitcoin itself is my own understanding, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:34:52):

So by definition, the Bitcoin that I have tattooed is the Bitcoin that I agree with. I define what Bitcoin means for me, as long as I respect the consensus rules, of course, but I think this idea of not understanding Bitcoin as complete control of your decisions, this idea of having to wait for some bill to pass or some regulatory standpoint to change, I think that’s the source of a lot of confusion.

Preston Pysh (00:35:27):

What else do you think on the misunderstandings? How about a pet peeve or something that you hear and just immediately it just sets you off?

Pablo Fernandez (00:35:37):

Well, one thing that I dislike quite a bit is this idea that whenever someone is new to Bitcoin, they are pushed down the “Oh, now you need to run your own Bitcoin node and you need to run your lightning node,” and this whole idea that there is this large effort that needs to be made in order to be a Bitcoin and pass the purity test, I think it’s very off putting. I think the Umbrel and RaspiBlitz and all these different projects are absolutely amazing and really, really good, but it’s become a defacto that if someone wants to get into Bitcoin and actually run the software, they need to buy a Raspberry Pi and they need to assemble it and they need to flash this micro SD and put it here and do this and do that. It’s very daunting.

Pablo Fernandez (00:36:28):

It used to be that running Bitcoin was you download Bitcoin core and you run it on your computer and that’s it. It could take five seconds and people can still do that, but now when they look into how can they run a node, the first thing they see is, “Oh, you need to go by a Raspberry Pi.” I think that’s absolutely the wrong path because it’s too big of an ask. If it’s someone that is new, maybe they don’t want to buy something, a new device. Maybe they can just run it on their computer. Most people don’t know that they can just run Bitcoin core on their computer and it takes nothing.

Pablo Fernandez (00:37:06):

I mean, if you can run it on a Raspberry Pi it’s because it’s pretty mild with regards to requirements.

Preston Pysh (00:37:13):

It’s lean.

Pablo Fernandez (00:37:13):

It’s very lean, yeah. My first nodes, all were just on my computer, the same computer I was using to write code on.

Preston Pysh (00:37:22):

Hey, so you and I had talked before we started recording about this idea of some of the people out there like to suggest that lightning is not decentralized or that maybe it’s not decentralized enough. You had a take on this. Go ahead and tell us what your opinion is.

Pablo Fernandez (00:37:41):

Yeah, I actually agree with that. I think where things will converge is that lightning will not be decentralized. I think that’s an okay thing to happen. I think what’s important about lightning and decentralization is to have the optionality of decentralization.

Preston Pysh (00:37:56):

To do it, yes.

Pablo Fernandez (00:38:01):

Yeah, the ability of being decentralized because the idea is why do you want lightning to be decentralized? You want for fees to remain relatively low and you want it for censorship resistance because you don’t have consensus rules on lightning. The consensus rules are inherited from Bitcoin. So you don’t need to guard against decentralization. You don’t need to guard yourself from just consensus rules being dictated by five nodes. You only need it for censorship resistance and fees.

Pablo Fernandez (00:38:37):

So in that way, the idea that you are able to create a channel and go around sensors, if there were sensors in the network, is all you really need. So the benefits of a centralized lightning network are pretty large. I mean, the user experience will be better. Fees will be kept on check, but if you don’t have to route through 10 different nodes whenever you’re doing a payment, the experience is going to be so much better. The experience is going to be cheaper, and it’s okay for multiple companies to offer really good …

Pablo Fernandez (00:39:15):

One important thing is that keeping a lighting node, it’s not easy. It’s not the same as running a Bitcoin node. Running a real lighting router node, it’s a lot of work. It requires deep understanding of how to manage liquidity. It requires CSOPs, system operations experience. It requires all these different skillset that most people are not going to be able to do it.

Pablo Fernandez (00:39:49):

So I do think that lighting has deep centralizing tendencies. I used to think for a really long time, I used to think that that was an issue to be solved. I actually spent a lot of time working on solving that issue. When I first realized that lightning had this tendencies, I was living in Costa Rica, and my power, I had daily power outages daily. Every single day for five, 10 minutes, power would just go down. For lightning, no, that’s absolutely terrible.

Pablo Fernandez (00:40:22):

So I started working with this idea of having a trusted copy of the keys so that a different node that I assign is able to take my identity from a lightning node and is able to sign for me, and then when I go back online, I take those keys away and I’m able to keep operating.

Pablo Fernandez (00:40:44):

So for someone that is routing through me, they wouldn’t see me go offline, unless there was a pending HTLC, but normally, they wouldn’t see me going offline. That was one of the problems that I thought, “Okay. This must be solved because, otherwise, there is no way that anyone in the developing world is going to be able to operate a routing lightning node.”

Pablo Fernandez (00:41:05):

Then I actually talked about this with John Carvalho in El Salvador. He told me, “Yes, and what’s wrong with centralization?” Then I realized that I was just inheriting the conceptions of the risks of centralization from Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (00:41:25):

From layer one, yeah.

Pablo Fernandez (00:41:27):

From layer one, yes, but those same ideas don’t apply in layer two. They just don’t apply.

Preston Pysh (00:41:34):

Do you think this would be … For framing here, I love your point about you just have to have the option to do these things as far as run your own node and route your own lightning payments, but it doesn’t require it. So would this be the way that you would phrase it is you just expect as things evolve and as the world starts using more of this, that in application, a lot of people are going to be paying for centralized services on layer two, but they don’t have to if they don’t want to, and because of that optionality to run it themselves, that’s what keeps everything still in check.

Preston Pysh (00:42:15):

Let’s just say you do have a bad actor that’s a centralized service that takes care of 100,000 people or that services 100,000 people. If that’s a bad actor or they do anything, it’s not going to crash the network, it’s not going to destroy Bitcoin, and all of those people probably would then take their layer two transactions a whole lot more serious, and you’ll probably see a bunch of them go run their own full node.

Pablo Fernandez (00:42:39):

Absolutely. There is an effort being done by Blockstream that I am over the mood bullish on, which is called Greenlight. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. So the basic idea of Greenlight is that, again, running a lighting node is very hard. It requires a lot of knowledge and infrastructure and this net. The idea of Greenlight is that they, Blockstream, runs the lining infrastructure for you, but the keys are on your devices.

Pablo Fernandez (00:43:15):

So you could think about it as custodial because it’s someone else’s node. They are not able to sign any transaction for you. So they are not able to use your channels. They are not able to take your money. They are able to censor you, and they are able to say, “I will not allow this transaction to be paid,” but they are not able to steal your money. Because the keys and the state of your landing node is in your device, you are always able to take that state, take those keys, and just run your own real light copy and just continue operating as if nothing had happened.

Pablo Fernandez (00:43:56):

So in the case that they were going to censor you, you could just run it yourself without anyone knowing. No one would know that instead of running on Greenlight, now you’re running on your own computer. I’m absolutely bullish on this because this idea is that you can have your channels on this one node, and then you could put your keys on your phone app, on your wallet of Satoshi, on your Moon, on whatever, and each single lightning app would be using the same channels, the same keys, the same state.

Pablo Fernandez (00:44:36):

So you wouldn’t have to have, I don’t know if you use Value for Value podcasts, but I use a lot of different Value for Value applications, and in each single one of them, I need to keep a balance. That balance is specific for each app. With the Greenlight model, each app is using the exact same channels, is using the exact same balance.

Preston Pysh (00:44:58):

Oh, wow.

Pablo Fernandez (00:44:58):

It’s absolutely mind blowing because you could issue keys for each app that are using the same balance. Yeah.

Preston Pysh (00:45:10):

So when I hear things like that, I’m thinking, “Okay. So user experience is huge for people to not even know they’re doing these things and for them, that be happening in the background.” So what grade would you give the community at large, A, B, C, D, E, F, for the existing user experience on layer two right now? Are you a tough grader? We’re about to find out.

Pablo Fernandez (00:45:37):

A for effort. No, I think it’s super, super early. I’ll say probably maybe an E, yeah, something around there. I mean-

Preston Pysh (00:45:50):

That shows you where we have the potential to go, right?

Pablo Fernandez (00:45:54):

Absolutely. I know how many different companies are integrating with Greenlight and the experience is going to be at least 10x better than the previous model. Greenlight, in one year, this model is going to be common and, again, 10x better. So I think it’s still too early.

Pablo Fernandez (00:46:18):

For me, the idea that I’m not able to onboard someone into lightning that is not technical and onboard them in a sovereign way. It’s we’re failing until we’re able to do that, onboard someone into a sovereign lightning wallet without them having to do pretty much anything. I think Breez has been the closest to that model where it is actual lightning node running on your phone, and it’s not custodial, whatsoever.

Pablo Fernandez (00:46:51):

I think that’s the closest we’ve gotten to the right UX. I know Breez, they are using Greenlight, and we’re going to be working with Roy to make that happen and to make that better. So yeah, give us one year and we’ll review that grade.

Preston Pysh (00:47:09):

That’s exciting. I suspected that’s what you were going to say, and I guess what I’m really trying to get at is just really the opportunity for growth here, where people are just going to be able to download an app and they’re going to be dealing with these Satoshi units and it’s going to be seamless. It’s going to start to get integrated. When do you think that it’ll start getting integrated into Apple Pay and stuff like that? Is that closer than people realize or what do you think?

Pablo Fernandez (00:47:41):

I think for something like that, the blockers that we have on the way are not related to tech, they are related to economic incentives. Yeah. wouldn’t hold my breath on that one.

Preston Pysh (00:47:54):

Yeah, no. So what you’re getting at is they want the data. So in all of this, it’s not really the best source of data relative to the existing model that they’re dealing with. So they’re going to be late to jump on board with a lot of this because it cuts into margins for them.

Pablo Fernandez (00:48:13):

I think so. I think it’s a bit of the innovator’s dilemma where it’s going to be hard for them to cannibalize their own business in this way, and it’s such a large source of revenue. The fiat game itself, it’s such an important part of the game they’re playing. So I think it’s going to be really, really hard, but see, we go back to the hyper Bitcoinization thing. We don’t have to wait for them. We don’t have to ask for their permission to do all these things. We can build around them, and they’re welcome to run their own Bitcoin node and start plugging into the Bitcoin economy, but what we’re building here is just a parallel economy.

Pablo Fernandez (00:48:57):

I think very soon these two economies, the fiat economy and the Bitcoin economy, are not going to be compatible anymore. I see money as a language, and up till now, we’ve had a translation layer between fiat and Bitcoin. I think that translation layer is going to be broken apart with introduction of CVCs. That’s why I’m super bullish on CVCs. I can’t wait for them to happen.

Preston Pysh (00:49:23):

Really? So this is a contrarian take. Aren’t you worried about the privacy? Because I mean, that’s the thing that everybody really-

Pablo Fernandez (00:49:30):

I think it’s great. I think it’s great. I think the privacy issues are beautiful. I think they play right into our hand.

Preston Pysh (00:49:37):

Because it causes hyper Bitcoinization.

Pablo Fernandez (00:49:40):

Yes, yes, yes.

Preston Pysh (00:49:42):

Okay. I got you.

Pablo Fernandez (00:49:42):

It will perfectly fragment. So I think one of the main confusions people have with Bitcoin is thinking of Bitcoin as a chart. Remember walking into Bitcoin in 2022? You walk into the main entrance and the first thing you see at a Bitcoin conference is the Bitcoin fiat price and you see a chart. That was the main thing right after the crypto bull. The first thing you’ll see is the Bitcoin chart. People get hung up. I did. Every single person I meet other than maybe Bitstein or people like the Illuminati like that, they all see Bitcoin as a chart for a really, really long time. The moment we are able to break that link and the central banks are going to do it for us, the moment we’re able to break that link, Bitcoin will stand on its own as a different system.

Preston Pysh (00:50:40):

So they’re going to overreach by so much. This is me summarizing what I think you’re saying here. They’re going to overreach by so much and so aggressively that it’s going to be so obvious for the rest of the world to know that that’s not what they want and to turn to Bitcoin as the answer. Is that what you’re saying?

Pablo Fernandez (00:51:01):

Not quite. So here’s my experience as an Argentinian. Throughout all the different issues we’ve had in Argentina, the government in Argentina has always, always, always tried to prevent people from seeking refuge in the dollar. Argentinians are just dollar crazy. They love the USD. So every single time there are issues in Argentina, which is always, the government puts in regulations preventing people from being able to access dollars as escape path.

Pablo Fernandez (00:51:35):

So back in 2005 I think, they started with this regulation where you couldn’t buy more than I think it was 10,000K a month per person. So in order to buy dollars, you would need to KYC and then they will register how much you were buying at each different exchange and physical exchanges so you wouldn’t go over the limit. Then they started lowering that limit to 1,000 and then to 200, which is the current limit if I’m not mistaken. 200 is the current limit. Then they added a 30% tax over the 200. So even when you buy 200, you are not actually getting 200, and then it’s theoretically possible to buy the 200, but there is no bank that will serve you the 200 bucks.

Pablo Fernandez (00:52:21):

So then of course, a dark market emerges because of these regulations, and then the government cracks down on the dark markets and they are arrests all the time. So the government is working as hard as it can to prevent people from doing this. What if there was this magical button that they can tap and they say, “No one is physically able to trade fiat tokens for fiat dollars”? CVCs allow you to do that. CVCs allow you to say, “No one is able to spend pesos for dollars.” They can perfectly do that and it takes no effort. It just takes one button. If the Argentinian government had that power, they would do it in a split second.

Preston Pysh (00:53:11):

This isn’t good, but you’re saying because they are being tempted by such a button and you think they’ll probably hit the button that it’s just going to cause mass hyper Bitcoinization, everybody’s going to run the Bitcoin because of it.

Pablo Fernandez (00:53:25):

I think it’s going to create a natural split on the society between people that produce and people that only consume. If you look at Argentina, the producers, the business people, the people that are the entrepreneurs, the people that are running companies, they’ve done everything in their power to escape being siloed into the Argentinian peso economy.

Pablo Fernandez (00:53:54):

So for example, Mercado Libre, one of the biggest companies in Latin America, they move their offices across the pond to Uruguay and they are operating from Uruguay because they don’t have this type of regulation. The only businesses that weren’t able to do this are the people that worked on the fields, the companies that work on the fields, but every single producer has found a way within the realms of possibility to escape these type of regulations.

Pablo Fernandez (00:54:22):

I think if producers see themselves being tied to remaining on fiat rails like Lagarde said that we need to plug every escape path because … She said something. I don’t know if you remember. Maybe a year ago she said something around we need to prevent people from escaping, something like that. If they don’t plug every single hole, the producers will escape.

Pablo Fernandez (00:54:50):

As people see this type of action and these type of powers, I think the people that are producing and are using their energy and their effort to create wealth, and they see themselves being cornered in a way that they are not able to protect their wealth, they will increasingly seek to escape into something, and that something, I think it’s Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (00:55:14):

This is a really profound thought right here. This idea that the money itself is going to separate the consumers, which when you look around the world right now, there are professional consumers that are just waiting for the next government check

Pablo Fernandez (00:55:37):

The next QE, next QBI.

Preston Pysh (00:55:38):

The next QE, and I like how you throw that in there because some of these consumers are, effectively Wall Street itself, they’re just waiting for the next QE dump so that they can then splurge it into the market as a consumer, right? That’s crazy.

Pablo Fernandez (00:55:54):

If you think about it, one of the issues of the existence of this link between fiat and Bitcoin is that all that liquidity being just created out of thin air and pumped into Wall Street or through Wall Street, some of that liquidity is going into Bitcoin, and that means that value that was not created because of economic creation of, sorry, wealth-

Preston Pysh (00:56:28):

Work.

Pablo Fernandez (00:56:29):

… from work is going into the Bitcoin network. So there is misallocation. There’s a distortion that is coming from fiat and it’s leaking into Bitcoin. There are non-economical non-producers who are playing really well the fiat game, who are doing really well on the Bitcoin game. So we have this leaking of misallocation. So the moment we break that the only way to get Bitcoin is from creating actual value that someone is willing to do away with their Bitcoin for that value.

Preston Pysh (00:57:10):

My Lord. That is a profound thought, and that is something that I have to chew on. I’ll tell you what, your experience from what you’re talking about in Argentina and how that plays out is something that I’ve really never thought about how this is going to just drive a wedge between producers and consumers, net producers, net consumers in a society. I mean, we’re not just talking on society. We’re talking on a global level here.

Preston Pysh (00:57:35):

Boy, I just can’t imagine the social unrest and the things that this is going to create because you’re going to have basically people who have performed work for the goods and services that they’re selling, and they’re just not going to accept the CBDC. They’re going to refuse to accept it, right? That’s where this is going is what you’re saying.

Pablo Fernandez (00:57:55):

Yes. 100%.

Preston Pysh (00:57:59):

Dude, I’m going to have to chew on that one myself and I’m sure many people listening to this are going to be like, “My God, what a profound thought.” Who is someone that has really inspired you or shaped you in your life, and what is it about them that had this impact on you?

Pablo Fernandez (00:58:14):

Ooh, out of left field. I don’t want to go all philosophical on you, but you asked the question. I guess way before Bitcoin, I’ve been into stoicism for a really long time. I think it’s one of the tools that has helped me the most in my life. So I would probably have to go with Seneca.

Preston Pysh (00:58:43):

Okay. That’s awesome.

Pablo Fernandez (00:58:46):

Yeah, either Seneca or Epictetus. Epictetus is a very interesting character because he was a slave, and out of being a slave, he created a school of thought, and while being a slave, he had students whom he would teach what came to be stoicism. This idea of you are not a victim, a prisoner of your circumstances, I think it’s such a powerful idea that what harms you is not what someone else is saying or what someone else is doing is your interpretation of what they’re saying or they’re doing and it gives you full sovereignty over your behavior. So yeah, I’ll have to go with Epictetus.

Preston Pysh (00:59:35):

It also helps you try to define what it is you actually control because when you approach an environment with this positive mindset that you are on the controls, you just got to figure out what those controls are, it forces you to find them in your environment. I think a person, when they look at maybe, “I’m a victim,” they don’t even believe that there’s controls at their disposal and they’re just saying, “Here I am out here on a boat just blowing in the wind,” and they don’t even try to find the rudder or try to figure out how the sails work.

Pablo Fernandez (01:00:11):

One time, I went for a weekend to visit Francis Pouliot. I don’t know if you know the guy from Bull Bitcoin. He’s a friend of mine. On the way back, we spent a weekend with him and with my wife, and on the way back we were talking what makes someone more likely to understand Bitcoin and to understand acting in a way that doesn’t depend on what others are thinking and what makes the difference between someone that will remain a victim and someone that will see the circumstances and act regardless of those circumstances.

Pablo Fernandez (01:00:53):

One of the things we thought was this idea of learned helplessness, which is the concept of you learn as a child maybe that regardless of what you do, your circumstances don’t change. This is something that can be triggered by something super small, but if you see that you are acting on your environment and your environment is not changing in any way, you learn that your behavior is irrelevant.

Pablo Fernandez (01:01:27):

That’s one of the things that I think it’s so important realizing, which is the idea of why someone would become an entrepreneur, right? Why would you do all this effort just without being directed in any way? Why would you think you can change the world even if it’s just a dent? I think this idea of “I’m going to remain a …” it’s not that people are choosing to remain victim, it’s they think there is no other option. The only option is, “Well, this is my circumstance. I’m just going to absorb them and I’m just going to suffer through them.” I think that’s such a powerful tool being able to realize that you can affect change.

Preston Pysh (01:02:09):

So you’re working on a book, and there’s a lot of people in this space that have either written a book, working on writing a book, and almost all of them are Bitcoin 101 or Bitcoin for Dummies. You’ve taken a different approach to this, and I really like your title and your idea for this. So tell people about your book.

Pablo Fernandez (01:02:32):

Okay. So the book title is Bitcoin 201, and the idea came to me during Bitcoin 2022 because I orange peeled a good friend of mine from Canada. He’s living in Costa Rica, and he came from Costa Rica to Miami for the conference. He’s super new to Bitcoin. He bought his first stash maybe a few months ago or maybe a year ago or so. He’s gone down the rabbit hole hard, real, real hard. He’s done a lot of changes personally. He gets it. The guy gets it, and he’s actually writing fiction on Bitcoin for teenagers.

Pablo Fernandez (01:03:22):

He came to me and he said, “Pablo, should I conjoin?” and that was such a funny question because this guy, he’s never thought about conjoining his bank account, his fiat. He started looking into, “Should I run a node?” He started having all these different questions. He understood that he needed to buy Bitcoin. He understood the benefits. He understands all the Austrian perspective, the monetary, all the reason why it might be a good investment. All that stuff he gets.

Preston Pysh (01:03:55):

The 101, he’s got it.

Pablo Fernandez (01:03:56):

The 101, he’s got it. He understands it perfectly, but the part where he needs to use Bitcoin, he bought a ticket for … I threw a dinner with Alex Betsky at The Remnant dinner, and the only way to buy a ticket to the dinner was to pay with Bitcoin. There was no other way. He did his first Bitcoin transaction to pay for that dinner, and he didn’t know how to do it. He understood the concept of hardware wallet and how to keep the call story, all that part, yes, but how to actually pay with Bitcoin, all those next level questions, blank. He had no idea.

Pablo Fernandez (01:04:40):

So I started writing. I explained to him about conjoining, but then I started thinking that he very often comes with this type of question and I said, “Okay. We need to have something for this kind of people,” because one other thing that I think is that the more you use Bitcoin, the more your confidence with having all your assets or most of your assets in Bitcoin, where you see that it’s not just this one number on the screen.

Pablo Fernandez (01:05:10):

So yeah, I started on the way back from that trip. I wrote a table of contents on, yeah, misconceptions on Bitcoin, lightning network layer two, layer three, why you run a node, what is Bitcoin, where are my Bitcoins. When I say UTXO, for example, I wrote a glossary for all these different terms but in a way that is more entertaining than just a dictionary, a Wikipedia entry. Yeah. Actually, the first part of the book I wrote why I’m writing this book and I described this scene with my friend and he’s saying, “Should I conjoin my coins? Should I use Wasabi? Should I use Samurai?”

Preston Pysh (01:05:51):

I think that’s great. I mean, you’re going to have a lot of people that are in a very similar space. They’re using it as savings, and if they do want to go down that path or they do want to learn more about the second layer and how to do immediate transactions, and you can go on and on, this sounds like an awesome resource. I know you’re not finished with the book yet, but a lot of our listeners will listen to this in six months from now or whatever. Give them a webpage where they can either go sign up or they can learn more about the project, and then also give them a hand off to your Twitter profile or anything else you want to highlight.

Pablo Fernandez (01:06:26):

Yeah. My Twitter profile is PabloF7Z. It’s a very different, it’s a very hard to say name.

Preston Pysh (01:06:34):

We’ll have a link. We’ll have a link.

Pablo Fernandez (01:06:35):

Yes, we’ll have a link. It’s an engineering thing where for some words like long words you leave the first character and the last character and all the letters that you take out you replaced by the number of letters that you took out. So F7Z is Fernandez, which is my last name.

Preston Pysh (01:06:54):

Got it.

Pablo Fernandez (01:06:54):

It’s mainly used for inter internationalization. For example, on programming, you write internationalization, you write I18N. So it’s that idea. So yeah, that’s my Twitter handle. For the book, I’m going to have it on bitcoin201book.com. Like you said, it’s not done yet, but I’m moving at a really rapid pace because I’ve been explaining this kind of thing to people for many years. I helped people run their first node and validate their transactions and all this kind of thing for the very first time. Man, it’s such a beautiful experience helping people with that kind of thing because you realize …

Pablo Fernandez (01:07:35):

I bought some stock maybe two or three years ago, and I realized that I couldn’t actually withdraw the stock, the equity that I bought, and it was like, “Oh, my God. It’s custodial,” custodial all the way down. The idea that you can validate for transactions and you can validate from the Genesis blog and you can validate that everything is as it’s supposed to be and you don’t have to ask for anyone to, “Oh, is this transaction valid?” Man, it’s so, so powerful. Helping people unlock that mindset, it’s absolutely beautiful.

Preston Pysh (01:08:15):

It truly shows you how antiquated traditional finance is after you start digging into some of the stuff and you’re running your own node and peering into every single transaction. I mean, it’s just crazy to think that the rest of the world’s not even close to where this is at right now. So Pablo, this was a blast. We will have links in the show notes to everything that he highlighted there. Thank you so much for making time to come on this show and explain some of this stuff to us.

Pablo Fernandez (01:08:42):

Thank you, Preston. I had a lot of fun. This was awesome. You’ve been a super important part of my actual Bitcoin journey as well. I actually went back and I listened to your first episode when you first talked about Bitcoin for the first time.

Preston Pysh (01:09:01):

The 2015 one?

Pablo Fernandez (01:09:01):

It’s a hilarious episode. People should totally listen to that.

Preston Pysh (01:09:05):

I mean, everybody, like you said, when we started, everybody arrives at this from a different angle and you’re just you arrive and you’re like, “Well, what the heck is this? Come on, give me a break. There’s no way.”

Pablo Fernandez (01:09:16):

Also, most people, we use the lenses that we currently have to try to understand Bitcoin, which I think that’s also why metaphors are so widely used to understand Bitcoin like Bitcoin is digital gold, Bitcoin is this, Bitcoin is that, but in the same way, the other side of the coin is that those metaphors represent your lack of understanding of Bitcoin.

Preston Pysh (01:09:42):

Exactly.

Pablo Fernandez (01:09:42):

So for example, when you start with Bitcoin is digital gold, man, you’ve missed 98% of what Bitcoin is, right?

Preston Pysh (01:09:51):

It’s demonstrating you. That’s what he’s stepping into the space and you start pontificating on what you think you know. Amen to that, man. Pablo, thank you so much for making time. This was a blast.

Pablo Fernandez (01:10:05):

Thank you, Preston.

Preston Pysh (01:10:07):

If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study billionaires. The Bitcoin-specific shows come out every Wednesday and I’d love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learned something new or you found it valuable, if you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that, and it’s something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. With that, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you again next week.

Outro (01:10:40):

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