Chinese Wholesale Website Wholesale Electronics From China

all right so like i said in the

introduction i'm here with dr adam back

and samson mao gentlemen welcome back to

the show

thanks preston

thanks for having us on

hey so you guys i you know i'm checking

twitter and i'm seeing these feeds

coming out of the block stream website

and uh you guys got some big news to

announce the first thing was this uh

announcement of this modular mining unit

uh you guys are just going by uh the

acronym mnu

talk to us about what this is and what

kind of problem you're trying to solve

so

it's to uh

take mining closer to the power

producers

and

provide them with a way to

increase the um so to have a steady base

load

and increase the profitability of being

a power generator

and particularly for some intermittent

power sources

they uh

you know they when they build a new

sort of zero emission

um installation sometimes it takes an

extended period of time until they get

connected to the grid so this is

something that can provide them with

immediate power and then also the

um

the grid demands are variable

and maybe the power generation is

variable too so

you know they're they're in a business

they're trying to make an economic case

to get

uh project financing to build a zero

emission like um

you know a solar farm wind farm hydro

farm that kind of thing

and they have to make an economic case

for it and so having

a kind of buyer of last resort that's

standing by

to buy any excess power

helps them economically

to achieve the project financing and so

you know

what's uh the one of the differences

with the

block stream energy or modular mining

unit is that

the

um

the power producer buys the unit or

leases it in some form so it's their

equipment and in exchange for that they

have the right to sell power to it

and

so they are not exposed

by default to the bitcoin price they're

just able to sell power at what is

for bulk power produces an attractive

price and the reason we're willing to

pay this attractive price is because we

want the bitcoins

and

they've

you know they've bought the miner

effectively right so

we could if you if you buy the miner and

paid electricity you want a low

electricity bill if you're only paying

electricity bill

you can afford to pay a higher power

rate

and so we can pay an attractive power

rate

and

if they end up selling all of their

power to mining that's great if they

have

high grid demands

that's fine too

that just means they made their profit

in a in a different way

so in a way it's kind of a black box

that you're providing to energy

producers and they are effectively

mining but they don't necessarily need

to know or or deal with that aspect of

it they just have this uh machine that

buys power from them and it can make

their operations far more profitable

how much more energy and i know this

varies from energy producer to energy

producer but

uh what are you guys going after is it a

20

additional energy capacity for a for

your standard energy company that

they're kicking off that they're just

not using and they need that that uh

additional 20

to

handle peak demand or is it even larger

than that

depends on the type of power but

certainly

you know most grids are built

for the peak power and so they have

significant

unused power and of course many power

sources can be

variable levels so they can just turn it

down when the uh

power demands are lower but given an

example in

in a montreal quebec province of um

canada

about 50 of the power is unused so it's

uh it's mostly hydro so it's you know

just

bypassing the generators and pouring out

the sluice gates

and so

you know that's in sort of missed

economic opportunity they could sell

that

to mining

and

of course if there was a surge in power

demands they could turn the mining off

right so

now other kinds of power are are

variable for different reasons one is

you know solar obviously only works

in the in the daylights unless you have

batteries as well

and wind depends on the wind speed so

and similarly the power demands are

variable you know people turning on

uh yeah you know eating or having a hot

drink at the same time after watching a

football match or something it there are

sort of spikes for

residential

power habit reasons

and for industrial working hour you know

reasons when people are operating

industrial plants so

the power demands are all over the place

and some of these power

generation methods

are

um relatively efficient but take a while

to start up and a while to stop to to

wind down and so when they're producing

the power it has to go somewhere you

can't just you know keep generating it

and not not draw it or break something

like in the grid and so they actually

at times have to pay people

negative power rates to get rid of

temporary excess power as well so mining

can also fulfill that purpose

but meanwhile we have somebody from

forbes who's probably writing an article

right now about how

the energy use is going to uh take over

the the entire planet here in about six

months uh with bitcoin mining

the power is coming out right so like

here you got these waterfalls or however

they're harvesting the energy from the

from the hydro dams

and um

i mean it's going to produce this energy

one way or the other it's coming out

it's just it's just there for the taking

so

actually energy is quite abundant just

our ability to harness and transport or

transmit it is quite limited and i think

mining will be driving a lot of

advancement in in this sector to you

know improve upon that and

better harness energy overall so i think

there's a net positive here like you

need some new technology that moves

things forward

and the demand from for bitcoin mining

and the economic bonus that gives you is

that potential factor that can push us

ahead techno technologically

so adam you initially described like hey

we'll lease this we'll come we'll set it

up we'll service it and uh you pay us we

like come up with an agreement with what

energy rate will pay for uh that you'll

be providing to the the mining rig

um and we want to keep the bitcoin do

you find yourself in a situation where

you think uh energy producers are gonna

say nah just just give us the uh mnu

itself and uh we'll we'll keep the

bitcoin are you guys at that point or do

you think that they kind of like the the

structure of this right now

well

i mean for

sort of conventional

infrastructure

they uh

they may not be that familiar with

bitcoin so you know the prospect of

just getting paid conventionally

for the power with a power purchase

agreement

sounds good to them

and of course you know large-scale bulk

power

at the generation point is relatively

low cost

so that could be win-win but

you know there are other people we work

with like akka for example

ct

who are you know they funded their new

division for

bitcoin activities with bitcoin

and so

you know they're obviously much more

interested in

in getting a bitcoin so you know we can

construct a different way to

make that work economically

it's kind of a trojan horse because they

they will like this model now if they're

not familiar with bitcoin bitcoin mining

and the economic benefits but down the

road if they do learn more about it then

know we can shift the model of it and

orange build them

why are we letting these guys keep the

bitcoin and they're paying us the

yeah i love it um

talk to us about where you're at on the

development of the mnu itself because it

looks like it's it's coming as a package

deal had the sleek block stream logo on

the side of it and you guys obviously

have all the the hardware and

infrastructure inside set up you're

providing the service labor to make sure

this thing is is running around the

clock in case it runs into any hiccups

which i wouldn't suspect anybody wants

to try to take that on themselves that

you would be leasing this to anyway

but how far along are you guys in that

process have you shipped any are you

still in the developmental phase talk to

us about where you're at

so we have

mmus running

but obviously we're interested to scale

that up a lot more and

you know place them

around the world in

sites that have

i mean sometimes remote sites also so we

have the technology to

uh operate these using the block stream

satellite so we do have a bi-directional

version of the satellite

um which we've used for

you know as a as a backup to networking

for mining or as a you know potential as

a primary obviously

you know at this point

miners are in relatively

short supply

and so that's one of the the bottlenecks

for

bitcoin mining generally actually

not only do you guys have this

announcement you have another massive

announcement that just came out today

and we're recording this in the future

but it's it's gonna when this airs it's

coming out today you guys are getting

into the asics business so

i'm sure everybody everybody out there

is hearing this announcement just saying

oh my god

so talk to us about this what in the

world is going on at blockstream with

respect to asics

well i mean it's obviously a big part of

the

um

mining space and if you're

you know providing hosting

to

individuals and companies

access to supply chain for miners is a

is a factor and

so you know we work with a number of

manufacturers today but

we're interested to add some more

decentralization so an additional

manufacturer

um

built you know sort of more in the west

and internationally there's a lot of

manufacturing that's china dropshipping suppliers (https://suppliers.oem7.com) centric today

so it's good to have some kind of

geographic diversity

of where things are made and uh

yeah so we you know um obviously when

there's a shortage

for miners

as is the case today

the

supply and demand situation so the

prices tend to go up as well reflecting

that so it's also a good time

economically to

enter this space now um you know people

looking at the announcement but actually

we've been you know working on this for

probably a couple of years in the

background and under wraps and with

both spondulis uh who you know if you

look around on the internet you'll see

that they've been

uh making miners for a while and and the

spondylies team is joining blockstream

to form the blockchain mining division

so we've been working with them and the

foundry partner

for for a while now and so we're

projecting to have them in market uh q3

next year which is

i think faster than people would assume

if you just think that you know

somebody's

starting an activity and usually the r d

phase on a on a new minor would take you

know in excess of a year

and i think another factor with mining

is

it's very specialized area you need to

have deep expertise many people who've

tried it

you know from scratch have run into

issues or you know failed runs even some

of the big companies have

had technical failures

so

we have a lot of confidence in the

spondylies team they've made some very

nice equipment in the past which

we owned and operated in the past um

and so we're you know very interested to

bring a quality

enterprise grade miner to to market and

so you guys are going to have a lot of

ip in this or are you piecing together a

lot of different components that

doesn't necessarily have

ip for for block stream i'm just trying

to understand how much of the

manufacturer you guys are are doing and

how much of the intellectual property

for the initial launch of it

yeah so the way the acquisition of

spontaneous is structured is

uh actually is ip purchase

um

now of course you know bloodstream is um

you know has has participated in the

defensive

license

activities so we're generally a fan of

open intellectual property

and to you know create a level playing

field but obviously some of the

chip level libraries and

foundry level technologies are

covered by patents outside of air

control

so you know we're generally operating in

the

defensive pattern uh mode

as usual

but that's that's the way deal

structured and

you know we're

we're planning a road map for these

miners so we'll we'll seek to um

you know improve the space over time

samson did you have anything else you

want to add about the the announcement

yeah so

i think touching upon what adam was

mentioning i this is a a major thing for

the bitcoin mining industry

there have been very few manufacturers

outside of china and that does pose some

sort of a risk to the bitcoin network if

all the

production and manufacturing and

everything is based in one geographical

region

so you know having spondylies

under blockstream now helps us to

decentralize the production of

bitcoin miners and i think if we can

grow this business to the extent we want

to then we could become a potentially

major competitor in this space

and grab a large chunk of that market

share from the other manufacturers as

well

um

i think traditionally spondylitis has

been known for aiming for more

professional grade miners like they were

one of the first to try the um the 1u

form factor whereas everyone else was

doing the you know the shoebox style

bitcoin miners i think we want to keep

on going in that direction and aim for

more enterprise grade hardware

it's just easier to manage and i think

we'll be able to gain an advantage in

that area because

you can if you standardize the form

factor you can

you guys a lot more things and you know

swap out chips easier when they burn out

or

when they're uh no longer uh

you know cutting edge and just replace

the parts that you need to replace

i think a lot of miners are designed

with the obsolescence in mind but i

think what we want to go for is you know

minimizing waste on that side and

optimizing for efficiency

that's really interesting to hear you

talk about the swap ability of various

components inside the rig itself and i

think that that's going to be a welcome

change for many people in the space to

be able to upgrade without you know the

cost of replacing every single component

inside the rig let's go ahead and

transition to block stream finance adam

the last time we talked you were getting

ready to do your minor note for people

that maybe didn't hear that conversation

explain to them what the note is and

then i'm just i'm just kind of curious

how it turned out for the first tranche

that you guys did with the issuance

uh yes so the blockchain mining though

it was sort of reactive we had

you know people were aware that we were

doing

providing minor hosting for enterprises

and interest individuals were interested

to invest and so we've got a lot of

inbound requests instead of blockchain

mining it was partly a

you know a way to satisfy that demand

and

so it is actually a security token so

it's a proper

um security it's a via luxembourg

securitization vehicle provided by

stocker which is a

equivalent of a share registration agent

for for the note

and

uh financial aid structure a little bit

different so sort of um

we use the model that we arrived at

ourselves by mining for a number of

years which is to

uh fund it and not sell the coins as you

go so keep the coins to the end

um

and so it's pre-funded it's a three-year

note and

you know it's approximately the useful

lifetime of a minor these days

plus or minus and so

yeah it basically accrues the bitcoin

inside the note and at the end of the

period

the current holder

would receive the bitcoin

and

because it's um

a liquid security you know an actual

security token users can transact it so

today they can transact otc and there

seems to be

a decent amount of otc

transactions occurring

and there's a block stream finance

channel where people seem to be meeting

other buyers and we're also expecting

uh one or more exchange listings

in

you know in some months and so

that will provide another you know

hopefully price formation

and

we can find out what the market pricing

is for this kind of product honestly

it's sort of loosely

comfortable with other

mining activities that you can do and so

you know there should be some kind of

correlation between the prices of

different things in money space

now the demanding notes is you know if

you if you sell it before

maturity you would expect the current

value to reflect both the bitcoin

component and the remaining mining

component so let's say you sold it

one year into three year period and it

accumulated a certain number of bitcoin

that'll be part of it

plus

you know the remaining 24 months

value on the contract and actually today

you know so far it's been

people

got more interested and wish they'd

bought earlier basically we've done two

sales tranches and we'll probably do

another one and then obviously the

exchange listings later so i think

people like to see something operating

otherwise they feel like they're buying

it on spec and it's coming in three

months which was the original tranche

rent back in march

and so

you know there seems to be more interest

in uh buying it on a secondary market

now um

and it's been going pretty well you know

as i said the minor profitability is

quite high at present it's been making a

return of about

uh 0.3 a day so

if it were to keep going at that

trajectory it would recoup the capital

investment

uh

within a year and it's a three year

product now of course you know many uh

inputs to mining are variable the

bitcoin price

the hash rate of course the hash rate

depends on supply of asics and other

people you know building up power

infrastructure and

securing asics and putting them online

so we'll see how that

how that plays out but it's uh you know

people have been pleased with it so far

yeah it's quite interesting like uh when

we were socializing the concept of the

bmn one of the biggest questions we get

is you know why not just buy bitcoin why

why buy this and you know we we have uh

back tested models where in certain

situations it does uh become more

profitable to mine bitcoin than to buy

bitcoin

uh but you know typically those are

doing bear markets and and such but you

can also have that when there is a big

drop in hash rate so the timeliness of

the bmn is just great you know it

launched and then there was that massive

crackdown in china and you had that mass

exodus of miners

leaving or just shutting down a period

and the profitability as i mentioned

just spiked on the bmn if you're looking

at that just as investing in a

traditional financial instrument you

just ignore the bitcoin mining part you

know you're doing excellent

you're getting excellent yields on this

instrument here so i think a lot of

people were very happy and that's why

people are are trading at otc now

because they they want more of it and uh

the people that bought early were just

very prescient and you know they look

like they're geniuses

i would suspect that your your variance

would be way lower by owning this versus

owning bitcoin itself just as far as the

variability in in the price of the

security

yeah it's kind of a locked in

dollar cost average you know you've

committed to it and you're going to

average over time no matter what so in

in some ways it's better than dollar

cost averaging because you kind of

you're locked in and you're locked in at

a specific rate of acquisition yeah i

mean certainly in the back testing it

appears to

be the case

um

that

you get a lower volatility return

and that's partly because there's some

downside protection

historically so

you know if the hash rate if the price

falls

the hash rate falls

you mind more coins than you expected to

because of the mining strategy baked

into it you keep the coins to the end

and usually across the three-year period

you know there'll be

a price full and a price rise of some

significance and so we we actually did

something like that

a few years ago

at company level and

so basically

we started uh mining when the price of

this particular batch of miners

at a time when the price of bitcoin was

fifteen thousand dollars

and

at the end of the duration the price was

seven and a half thousand dollars but we

still made a 25 profit

so if you're looking at buying bitcoin

you lost 50 we made a 25 return instead

and if you you know at the time we were

we found this

surprising and so we you know we

embarked on all this analysis and

back testing to see you know often that

kind of thing would occur what the

average is basically to break apart why

that happened

it's because

at the bottom of the market the price

fell to you know 3 500 or something and

so

basically at mine two and a half times

as many coins as we projected and so

even the price was half it ended up

making a 25 return at the end and of

course

you know in effect we ended up keeping

those coins to the state at which point

you know that looks very good overall

competitor

into it but i think it's a very good

people don't have the intuition so they

will often

put money into mining

where they'll pay the power bills

uh by selling some of the bitcoin and

that's that's not a good idea in our

view because what you end up doing

is selling most of the coins at the

bottom of the market

because you know the percentage of the

coins you have themselves relate to the

price and at the bottom it's getting

near to break even and you'll be selling

like a big portion of the coins

and that's when you're accumulating and

that's what you know ultimately provides

the

downside protection in return

so we reflected that in a bmn note

structure basically so it's pretty the

power is pre-funded it keeps 100 of the

coins

and it has a relatively

uh cost-efficient administration fee

i think you can kind of say uh there's

two kinds of miners there are the miners

that are just in it for the profit and

it may make sense at a certain point in

time to do what adam was saying which is

you know they just sell off some coins

every month to pay for the power and

they're still incredibly profitable

right the cost to my mine one bitcoin

right now is you know six seven thousand

dollars and the price is pretty high

right now it's uh you know 449 4849 but

there's another type of miner which is

the the hodler miner so that miner is

really mining

to huddle and like for us we mine and we

keep everything like

we're not selling off every month to pay

the bills or pay operational costs and

in effect the bmn is turning people into

the hodler type miners because they're

locked in for that three year period so

they will accrue those benefits

uh because of that structure

i would think that so for a lot of

institutions right now they can't get

access to bitcoin just through sheer

charter limitations

does this vehicle provide them an

opportunity to invest in a debt

instrument that kind of bypasses some of

those charter limitations that they

might have by uh forcing them to own

some type of debt instrument

yeah we've we've actually seen that play

out so we had a couple people express

interest and financial institutions that

had those kind of internal

policy question marks where they don't

yet know how to institutionally own

bitcoin but they can own at luxembourg

security

and so

i think they felt that it was a

good way to start basically because at

the end of it they'll have bitcoin

and they'll have the option to

you know receive the dollar equivalent

or the euro equivalent but

you know by then they may be in a

position to

take physical positions

yeah so there they might have to sell on

the open market they might have to sell

it a day before the maturity which i'm

i'm guessing the the price of this is

just basically going to peg itself

straight to whatever underlying bitcoins

associated with the account right before

it matures so they're able to sell it on

the secondary market or in the public

market right before it matures and then

they bypass all of this

but yeah like you said maybe

maybe by then they'll be able to take

physical custody of the of the coupon

yeah

i think there's three ways to do it

either you're buying an a bitcoin

tracker an etf or something like the bmn

uh but all are viable ways for those

those types of entities to hold bitcoin

indirectly i think

i think there is an added benefit of

holding the bmn because it is a

luxembourg security uh it will have an

icin number it can be held by any

securities broker or any type of

financial

entity like that so it it plays very

well into that kind of uh market segment

so when when are you going to do it in

the u.s

we're working on that

we're working with inx so we'll see what

we could do oh okay all right

so and i mean i think another advantage

of it being a security is the brokerages

will

give margin credit basically

so a credit line

for trading or other purposes held

against the stocks and bonds in a

portfolio saying so you potentially need

a way to get leverage against a bitcoin

relay product

i think with the grayscale you cannot

borrow against it but you could borrow

against a bmn

oh that's interesting so let's go down

that path because that was the next path

i wanted to talk to you guys about so

you got a lot of people out there they

have substantial bitcoin positions they

don't want to sell them right they

they'll do anything to avoid selling

their bitcoin to pay for whatever

expense they might have so if they want

to go buy a house let's say they want to

buy a 500 000 house and let's say they

got 500 000 worth of bitcoin

they're not going to sell their bitcoin

realize the capital gains and buy the

house they want to borrow

you know they want to they want to put

down a down payment of 50 or 100 000

and they want to

use their bitcoin in order to

basically take out a loan to put down

the down payment or whatever that is

whatever gymnastics we want to play with

this but anyone who understands bitcoin

isn't going to sell it so

how are you guys thinking about

providing a solution to that

quandary

for anybody that understands bitcoin and

wanting to use it to buy real estate or

any type of large expense in their life

right so as you know we acquired um

adamant capital and we've branded that

and or rolled it into blockchain finance

so the bmn is issued under the

blockchain finance umbrella but we do

have plans to uh launch a number of uh

innovative bitcoin instruments um we're

thinking about doing a an alpha fund so

similar to the one that adamant was

doing originally so

you invest bitcoin and you get returns

on bitcoin uh we've kicked around the

idea of doing a us dollar

alpha fund

i'm calling it the plunge protection

fund so this would be a us dollar fund

where we would take some of the capital

to invest in uh you know stable yield

uh areas and then take some of it just

to place limit orders and buy bitcoin

whenever there's a big dip so in effect

it's plunge protection

but admin adam and i also talked about

doing some more mortgages under the

blockchain finance brand too because i

think that is something that bitcoiners

do want you know so much like you said

people don't want to sell but they want

to say buy a house or an apartment or

something

yeah i mean i think the key is to get

the lending rates down because

mortgage lending rates are quite low

with you know zero interest rate

policies and so on

um and bitcoin related finance rates

tend to be quite high because there's a

shortage of dollars

uh to use for leverage in the system you

know i think that's because

ultimately

anybody who's interested in bitcoin

tends to get heavily invested into

bitcoin and run low on dollars

and so you know they picks they've

largely exhausted their

dollar liquidity

and that puts the price up of bitcoin

related liquidity and of course

you know there are large amounts of

fiats in in the system in general you

know in

fixed income

in bonds

in pension funds that are

getting very very low rates and so

you know you would wonder that those two

things should normalize eventually but i

think for the moment

they're hesitant to

place funds into bitcoin uh exchange

margin lending and things like that

so it means that at least so far the

lending rates against bitcoin have been

a bit high to use as

you know collateral for

a house let's say

so i mean as as you were hinting one

thing that people could do and i expect

some people are doing this is take a

you know smaller loan against bitcoin

like a 10 percent loan against bitcoin

put at the down payment and then get a

conventional mortgage

on the rest right try to get as large

higher leverage mortgage as i can

because the mortgage rates will be low

and that'll bring down their average

cost of lending and reduce the

liquidation risk as well because the

bitcoin secured part is

then percentage very small so i think

that's the kind of interim thing the bmn

you know because it's

normal collateral you might be able to

get directly lower rates on it if you

give it to a broker

you just got to find some type of

mortgage house that

understands

all of this and understands the risk

associated with that type of collateral

being used

and it seems like that's the biggest

hurdle right now is finding a company

like your company that can bridge that

gap and provide that offering to the

clientele that i think is exploding

right now

um all around the world that's demanding

a product like this but it just doesn't

exist because we're just so early

um

but yeah man i hope you guys pull it off

soon you might be going to adam back to

get a mortgage loan i i i hope so

i mean to be quite honest with you i

mean anybody who's who's selling their

bitcoin right now to make a substantial

purchase like that i think they're crazy

i think they're nuts

but yeah obviously obviously we see the

world through a different lens than most

people

so the lightning network seems to be uh

just taken off right now it seems like

there's

numerous incentives that are driving

this adoption and this use

we're seeing it with the rewards cards

we're just seeing really innovative

wallets that are enabling lightning

transactions

i'm kind of curious to hear what you

guys think is like one of the driving

forces of why lightning is taking off at

this point

and then any other thoughts that you

guys have on kind of where you see it

going as far as like a projection into

the next year or two uh yeah so we've um

you know blockstream is one of the

sort of three main developers of

our lightning core protocol so the c

lightning team of blockstream has been

working on core protocol work but we've

also

released recently something called

green light

which is an interesting

uh server assisted

way to

to do lightning and the trade-off is it

provides the same kind of

um improved reliability and lower

latency that you get from a hosted

lightning wallet

while actually having the keys yourself

so how it works is

we uh

we modularized c lightning

so there's a module called hsm which

contains the keys

and does the key operations and normally

that's just a software module inside c

lining but what we did is they

separated those so you have that

key management on a client

it can verify enough to be secure

and then the server is

sort of doing the routing staying up to

date with the

network state

tracking the status and up time of nodes

and so when you come to make a payment

it's much faster and there's less

kind of traffic going backwards and

forwards

[Music]

to between a client and some of the

clients are you know intimately

connected or low bandwidth devices so

that will generally make for a more

reliable

experience

so we announced a couple of uh

launch partners who are using it we're

hoping that we'll see

you know more

lightning

software companies use that as a way to

improve lightning

certainly lightnings

you know assets in network

and

uh growth rate of that have been

increasing greatly

i think

it's it's proven to be pretty good for

kind of lower value

retail faster faster payments and you

certainly saw a lot of interest in that

in

el salvador now that's primarily driven

off of lightning

so adam help me understand the tech so

you said server assisted so i have my

own full node here at the house um if i

didn't want to go out and set up my own

full node i can basically outsource this

to a server that you're running but yet

i'm still holding the private keys and

so you're basically running the node for

me but yet i still have control of the

part that's important is that am i

understanding that correctly that's

right yeah that's exactly it so

like most people are using spv wallets

now so they're just uh they're not

running their own full node but you know

their keys are still on their phone or

on their device

and you know you're really using you

know some electrum server somewhere else

so in in some ways this is a parallel of

that so you have your own

your keys stored locally uh perhaps on

your phone and then block stream is

running this uh lightning infrastructure

in the cloud and the great thing here is

it solves one of the biggest problems

which is channel management so

like we don't have this right now but

down the road we will be doing a lot of

that balancing and channel management

for end users so you don't have to deal

with that complexity

you don't have to worry about being able

to route payment successfully and

all that stuff that you want to abstract

away from the end users for them

the most important thing is lightning

just works i can just pay someone if i

have enough money in my wallet and it'll

just work perfectly so i think this is a

really good step because with greenlight

you can also take that node in the cloud

and run it locally when you are

more established and more familiar with

all this stuff so

it's kind of the best of both worlds you

can onboard the beginners into this

system and they can off-board and all

the while they have their own keys and

full control over their funds

so you had mentioned uh the channel

management and for people maybe not

familiar with how complex this can get

just kind of give a generic

example of what you mean by the channel

management and then also i know there's

a lot of work right now taking place

where people are trying to come up with

like statistical models in order to find

the the fastest path for larger scale

transactions like if i want to send five

thousand dollars over lightning it's

extremely difficult today just because

of the channel management issues

but based on some of these new

algorithms that people are coming out

with you're going to be able to conduct

the transaction of that size fairly

easily and fairly quickly through like

these dynamic models that are then able

to sniff out where there's

uh channel capacity in order to route

this through multiple different nodes

i think one of the problems is that

as a new user when you connect

a channel

uh you fund it and

that means you can send

lightning bitcoin but you can't receive

because you can only receive if there's

funding coming towards you

so we've been working on a few things i

think c lightning was the first to have

uh dual funded channels

so you can create a channel where

there's funds coming from both sides so

sort of like a coin join going into a

channel in a way uh spend from both

parties uh to set it up and so the

the channel capacities come somewhere in

the middle um

the other problem that sometimes occurs

is that the

you know the spending habits are pushing

all the funds towards one end and so

your channel is getting balanced

and

in theory you should be able to

[Music]

rebalance them

by sort of

you know if i have two channels and one

is getting low

i can kind of send money to myself

from out one channel and in the other

channel via some other people

and that that's the theory but in

practice

um it tends to deplete channels in

between so you're kind of you know

trying to do a complicated rebalancing

job there

so that's that's where it gets

more interesting and then the capacity

issue you mentioned

where

people would find that as you increase

the amount you're trying to spend

it will get less reliable and that's

because you know there'll be some

channels

that you might route through but don't

have enough for that payment and so

there's been some work in the last year

or so on these multi-path

payments

where you can pay somebody with parts of

the liquidity coming via different

channels

so if there are enough enough channels

then that will work also

so right now when i look at uh wallets

that you could have on your phone it

looks like mun and uh blue or some of

the best like user interface type

uh wallets for lightning type

transactions i'm curious because i know

you guys have a green product you also

have aqua

i'm curious if you're going to be

bringing some of those types of

capabilities from a user experience kind

of vantage point where it's just i don't

have to think about it i can just do it

um is that in the works or kind of where

are you guys at with with your thinking

on that

definitely we want to get it into green

and aqua we want to

you know give access to block stream

green green light in those two wallets

yeah i mean in some ways it's uh it's a

simpler program model so i think it

should simplify

uh integrating lightning

into a smartphone wallet

and

i don't i don't want to so as far as i

know at least

uh until

you know last year maybe it's improved

now but blue wallet was kind of

custodial right so it's the server-side

model

um

and so

i think people do that

because of the usability

uh you know lower latency high

reliability

and i think also they can kind of share

channel capacity so they can have fewer

channels so less less things to

rebalance

i mean one one factor with rebalancing

as well as the cost because

you can you can rebalance channels but

if you have to create a new channel

that incurs maintained fees and when the

traders get busy in a bull market the

bitcoin main chain fees get pretty high

so

with uh

with blockstream we also have a liquid

network

and

sea lightning or lightning can in

principle work on top of the change so

we have lightning on top of

liquid as well

um and that's a way to

you know get get lower fees and

potentially

channels with other assets in them like

a channel with tether for example so

for people that are using tether

often that is for trading or even

business to business transactions

internationally because it's a cheaper

faster

wire transfer basically

um

but you know for for the smaller

payments if it gets used for that okay

that kind of use case or for more scale

then uh

lightning

tether or liquid is another

distinct possibility or other stable

coins you know there's also the canadian

dollar

the euro as a euro stable coin by side

swap and there are a number of staple

coins

there was a person on twitter asking

about mesh nets

um

i'm i think we're still talking about

kind of the same technological space

here but make me smart on on meshnets

so

there is um

some

sort of uh

emerging market

concept that people try to build which

is to use the block stream satellite to

get

um

the bulk data

so so they'll have a situation where

uh high-capacity

bi-directional internet is expensive

and so

with blockstream satellite we're sending

the history to sync a bitcoin node and

more recently we also added

lightning gossip data so you can keep a

lightning node up to date

on on the satellite

and

then you still have some

like

direct connectivity because the

satellite service on offer to

you know buyers of the base station

today

is receive only

so they're going to be using bandwidth

but it will reduce their send bandwidth

which will be going over you know 2g or

3g which is

locally expensive in some markets

and so

one concept was to use mesh networks or

wi-fi hubs to repeat

and broadcast that through a local area

through a village or a marketplace or

something like that so that you could

share the

bulk satellite data for

running a full node or participating in

the lightning network

and so the mesh is it's very interesting

technology obviously it's a way to

kind of have a

onwards broadcast repeating

kind of peer operated network rather

than a conventional network operated by

you know

a cell phone provider or something like

that

it's kind of a peer-to-peer internet and

we also have a

we have a integration with gotenna so

they are

a producer of the meshnet dongles so you

can actually use that already in the

wild today and you use gotenna with

blockchain satellite to send the

transaction through a mesh net up

through the satellite and you know

there's no need for internet at that

point really

so that's fascinating so are you guys

using the wi-fi signal then to do that i

i know samson you just said this gotenna

so i don't know what frequency that's

operating on but so

your your your satellite is broadcasting

the signal of the blockchain right then

it's hitting some type of hub

you're using gotenna or even a wi-fi

router to then distribute it uh

throughout whatever community is are you

using the wi-fi signal or are you on

different bandwidths what do you guys

use so the gotenna is a different

spectrum

wireless network wireless yeah wireless

okay so it's hot by hop and so the

concept is that

you know you'll find your way through

the network

and if it's a message that needs to go

to the internet proper somewhere in the

mesh network will be people running 3g

data or something like that so

now part of the concept that

goten are also interested in is micro

payments using lightning itself so that

the you know the use of this picture

bandwidth can

be managed you know not saturated by one

user or something like that

so it's a way to do quality of service

metering

that's fascinating and i would think

that there'd be a huge demand for this

in smaller towns remote locations

whatnot i mean wow

interesting i didn't know you guys were

uh working on that

um we're working on a lot of stuff

yeah i'd say you guys are working on a

lot of stuff um

speaking of working on a lot of stuff i

know the the el salvador announcement

was just kind of making the airwaves

whenever adam and i talked last

i'm curious if they've reached out to

block stream or you guys have reached

out to them in reference to doing the

mining there with the volcano or any

other type of activities down there

because i mean if it's now a legal

tender in the country i would imagine

that they are trying to set up as much

infrastructure as possible so i'm

curious what you guys have or

if anything

yeah right now our discussions are

mostly around

the bond so we had a call with them a

couple weeks ago

to talk about potentially doing

bonds

on the liquid network using our asset

management platform

so

that could be an interesting way for

them to tap into some more of that

geothermal energy that's powering

a lot of their grid right now but it is

costly so i think what you would need to

do is

uh sell a bond take some of the proceeds

from the bond and build up more of that

energy generation infrastructure

and then

get into mining and i think proprietary

mining would be the best bet because

geothermal power is typically more

expensive than say hydro but if you're

just prop mining and let's say it is a

component of that bond offering

like the bond is backed by some portion

of hash rate then i think it'd be fine

if the cost is higher than say hydro

yeah i think you're uh

i think your new model here by selling

hash rate via bond vehicle is just going

to flip fixed income on its head here it

just it just needs more time like

anybody in the fixed income space that's

ignoring this is

holy moly

it's always that way like uh you know

when you're pushing at the

boundary of all this technology and

innovation

you can do a lot of interesting things

that most people

in traditional markets will not really

think about because

you know that's not available to them

right they can't really securitize

hashrate

yeah

yeah give it a couple years

hey i wanted to ask you about um just

the gaming industry in general um

when am i going to be able to like watch

a nintendo game and and like instead of

running around collecting mario coins

we're running around collecting uh

satoshi's

like what's what's this progression take

because you guys are obviously at the

forefront of this idea um there's some

other companies out there that are

starting to incorporate sats via

lightning network

uh into their games uh i saw will reeves

had a really cool announcement where

he's basically doing pokemon go with but

with his fold app you can walk out in

front of a store

say it's starbucks they can go out in

front of their store and like literally

sprinkle

some ar

augmented reality satoshi's in front of

their store and then anybody who has the

app can see that there's

there's free satoshi's in front of the

starbucks and i can go over there and i

can walk into the store and order a

coffee and collect some satoshi's off

the ground so and like that's already

happening so yeah how does this evolve

into like the major gaming companies and

do you see this kind of

what's this trend look like just kind of

give us some of your thoughts sampson

well the

the playing field is wide open i think

we're still in the very early days of uh

applying a lot of this technology into

the gaming and entertainment space even

um there's zebedee i think they're the

ones pushing forward on a lot of the

play for sats uh integrating it into a

lot of mini games and things like that

there's also the nft contingent i saw

some people commenting on your tutorial

thread saying talk about nfts uh well i

think light knight has a lot of their

game items as nfts and then my game

infinite fleet we're also pursuing the

nft route uh we're also adding a

cryptocurrency for the game currencies

so replacing world of warcraft gold but

with a crypto asset that is fully

portable and can plug into you know all

this ecosystem built up around bitcoin

because as a liquid asset you have

access to all that with uh you know

block stream jade you can set up a

multi-sig and store your game currency

in a multi-sig wallet

which is very interesting um you can

conduct uh atomic swaps for the the game

nfps so the ships for the game currency

so you don't need a trusted third party

to intermediate that transaction players

can fully transact peer-to-peer

and i think that opens up a new model

where

trade can be

greatly expanded

and you don't have to worry about

getting ripped off in the trade so your

aqua wallet versus your green wallet do

you see and maybe i'm characterizing

this the way i'm thinking that it is but

i'm more asking this that the aqua

wallet do you see this more of an nft

type

um i'm playing this game and it's giving

me these tokens and i can basically

bring those tokens into my aqua wallet

and swap it into bitcoin if that's what

i ultimately want to hold versus that

that token

is that how you guys see aqua playing

into it versus green which is just

purely uh a bitcoin wallet like what's

the difference between those two well

both aqua and green support uh bitcoin

and liquid i think aqua aims to be more

seamless so it's all in one view so you

see bitcoin uh liquid bitcoin and all

the liquid assets as if it was one thing

even though it's two chains whereas in

green you're toggling between the two

different chains

and i think green is aiming more towards

power users like people concerned more

about privacy

you know we have

uh tour functionality in there but aqua

i would say is more leaning towards

surfacing these liquid assets

uh having on-ramps so we have

integration with wire in aqua and i'd

like to get more and more things plugged

in there i think there's a number of uh

different exchanges that now have uh you

know buy bitcoin easily easy on-ramps

and there's things like fast bitcoins we

want to integrate side shift side swap

just ways to convert assets easily in

aqua for you know people that are

more interested in assets than just you

know super secure bitcoin storage

now i interrupted you you were finish

your thought if you can remember where i

interrupted you on the gaming side yeah

so

it's just really like where we can see

it going with uh this technology like

crypto assets lightning stats and nfts

in the games industry so

i think there's just a great potential

here to integrate a lot of technology to

facilitate trade uh facilitate more open

markets around these ecosystems

um

i think it's difficult to like the holy

grail is people think you can take one

buy one item in game a and take it into

game b

i think that will be challenging just

because of the business model around

that you know yeah if i'm electronic

arts i don't want you know a ubisoft

player to take their gun into my game

because that's a lost sale

but what we could see is you know within

the umbrella of ea games they can have

free-flowing assets because that's all

their own ecosystem and business and you

see the same like for ubisoft or

activision

or for exordium which is what we're

trying to do too with the inf currency

and those nfts do you really think that

they need a blockchain to do that i mean

you're seeing a lot of this in the

gaming space right now where they're

managing whatever ledger they've got for

uh whatever scarce digital items they

have in their game

does it really have to come to a

blockchain or is there a big incentive

for them to uh

enforce through encryption that the

scarcity of this is is maintained it

just doesn't seem to me like like that

would necessarily be the case

well yeah i think i think it's like a

interoperability

level

so

you know

you could uh use a central

website from the game producer

potentially but then that's not going to

integrate very well

with uh you know a crypto exchange or a

wallet

so it's it's a kind of online account

right so

i think cryptocurrency and bitcoin

introduce people to a different model of

thinking about things

so then being our treat other assets in

that way is um

it's convenient i guess and it also

makes it

verifiable so you know we've been

talking about them as nfts but

essentially they are

game artifacts

that you can you know bring out into a

wallet you can gift to somebody give

somebody an artifact

you can sell it you can swap it

or you can put it into the wallet then

you put it back into the game

so i think it's kind of open network

um

you know trying open network theory on

games because

traditionally they've been quite

controlling you know they try to

deter or prevent people from

buying things or farming you know mining

things

by uh employing people to play the game

and then sell the sell the items on a

grey market so rather than fight it it's

kind of embrace the open networking

and see where that goes and

i think that's a more user-friendly

thing to do actually and generally

in other segments open networks have

tended to win because it enables

more third-party innovation so it's

easier for somebody to make

you know

an auction site or a swap site or a swap

wallet and it will all work together

right so the same technology can be used

for

swapping

you know tethers for bitcoin as swapping

you know swords for bitcoin and

it technology wise so you know for

example the side swap

wallet has an integrated

uh marketplace where basically users can

enter orders so they can they can build

their own market for for uh for an asset

that siteswap didn't you know

directly support but just the user setup

market

yeah i think they have uh bj's on

sideswap now i saw something like that

cool

yeah but uh

to answer your question i think it's

really about that permissionless element

um you could do something and you know

use some

signing or whatever but ultimately if

you're not using something like liquid

it would still be in a central

repository or a centralized system which

is prone to you know abuse and control

by whoever's

managing that system and the problem is

when you get into things at scale

um you you you have the apple app store

thing where you know they control all

the apps now and it wasn't like that in

the beginning but you know when that

system grew and they achieved that level

of dominance and ubiquity then you know

they're effectively now the gatekeeper

but if you are using something like

liquid you kind of guarantee that that's

external to that say game company right

they'll never be able to you know grab

your assets or lock your account and

take your funds from you right you'll

have that in your non-custody wallet

and ultimately it just gives people back

control over their their their things

right whether it be bitcoin um usdt or

you know a game sword or a spaceship or

a game currency and

the the goal is really just to make

things more bearer to go back to that uh

that system that existed before

everything is centralized in a database

you know things are yours you have it in

your in your control

so i really respect both of your

technical expertise and so i'm curious

what you guys think about something like

stacks

um

trying to do decentralized finance on

top of bitcoin

um stacks is just one of many different

things out there that are trying to do

this you have root stock

um but it seems like any solution that

that pops up has another token that's

associated with it that then is trying

to peg itself either to bitcoin or it's

just its own standalone protocol at its

own base layer so

i'm i'm curious how you guys view this

and how this is going to mature and i

keep hearing rumors that you know defy

can find its way through somehow on

lightning

how do you guys see this kind of playing

out long term

yeah i mean i think that

um

john pfeffer has an interesting

uh

i started started as a

kind of uh

collection of thoughts for himself and

he shared it with some friends and it

went viral so it's called an

institutional

investors take on uh cryptocurrency

something like that

so it basically describes

his analysis and thesis that

bitcoin is an asset class and that

utility tokens

that

are used to

you know create smart contracts or store

names or whatever the features of old

chains that are

um

won't ultimately

hold on to value so his his argument

amongst other amongst other arguments is

that the uh

it doesn't make sense on a business

level to pre-buy

um a utility token it would be like you

know

you decided to buy a million bus tickets

well you're not going to do that you're

going to buy the bus ticket when you

need the bus ticket

you might buy a week pass but that's

about it right

so

and generally the thing that you're

buying

you know networks get cheaper discs get

cheaper so if you were to

you know pre-buy

bandwidth in 1990 for the next 20 years

you have a very bad time because you've

paid a fixed price and the price has

fallen by you know multiple orders of

magnitude

so

i think that you know his argument is

that businesses that want to use the

smart contracting features of a

particular chain

it would make sense for them to to buy

the utility tokens to to use it just in

time right otherwise they have the

inventory cost which is which is not

helping them so of course that's

you know kind of

there's a lot of marketing around it and

that has

supported higher prices but if we accept

that that's the economic fundamentals of

it then the market can't remain

kind of irrational indefinitely

and it will come back to

you know the incremental

network cost rather than a specular

speculative value

and so i think that you know bitcoin is

different in that regard in

being a digital commodity

so adam you're basically saying and i

want to get over to you adam but

basically what you're saying is this

whole 1559

update to ethereum where it's it's

claiming to be ultrasound money

can't last

you're saying that it has to debase

itself in a way where it can't be

deflationary are you is that what you're

saying

well i mean the the collection of uh

alternative chains they're uh

something like ten thousand of them now

it's it's growing rapidly right so

clearly there is not

in that

that much scarcity

and

i think it's been a while since i looked

but somebody was producing graphs of

you know

a huge collection of coins versus

bitcoin and you know across a two to

three year period

they would go up and they'd go down and

then new ones would cycle in so that's

you know it's generally

sort of coins go out of favor basically

the people that

started them or promote with them move

on to the next thing and the price is

full so

i think that it's uh you know nobody's

debating the smart contracts are

interesting

but what they're saying is that

the

the value is a kind of network

uh

utility value

so you know what does it cost in the

network and if it gets too expensive

they switch chains and you see quite a

bit of that going on today

you know when people are moving

uh tether

they'll switch to other chains um

readily you know so it's kind of like

you know you've got a search engine

another one's better they'll switch the

one provides more accurate results

they'll switch

so

it shows that the switching cost is not

very high

um if the fees go up

because things get congested they move

to another chain

generally

there's this new acronym which is

uh the dyno the decentralized name only

so i think that actually

in terms of utility

the dinos uh are

the more centralized the better in a

sense you know they can market it as

being decentralized but if it's very

centralized it's easier to scale well

easier to put a high throughput because

you know they can put high-speed

computers in a data center basically um

so yeah i mean i'm not i'm not very

i'm sort of bearish on

the long-term value potential even

though i'm

bullish on the use case of smart

contracting and innovation about that

and so people need to i think

separate the

you know the fundamentals of the

economics

from assuming

just kind of

i would argue groundless inference that

because there's utility in a network the

price should go up you know there are

multiple networks these are open source

networks people can copy them ad

infinitum and they are

and so i think that you know the cost

will

fall to the network operating cost um

and there's lots of competition so

it should we should ultimately get an

efficient market

sampson yeah so

you know

i don't think you need to add a token

onto any protocol and the liquid network

success

is a testament to that fact

that you don't need to bolt on some

token to make something successful in

fact i think bolting on a token

generally will pervert incentives it

it's good short term you know you know

people you quickly align people to be

interested in the price of this thing

and you can gain adoption quickly but i

think for us at blockstream we're in it

for the long term we want to build

something right the the first way around

so you know we didn't add a token to

liquid there is no token we've grown to

1.1 billion in assets in the network and

we see a lot of growth in that ecosystem

too people building on this protocol

because it is open and permissionless

anybody can become a member of the

network and build on top of it so you

have things like tdax side swap you know

they're all heavily leveraging this

huddle huddle too i think they want to

build a

version of their platform that's based

on liquid and same for bisque

because it makes sense and i think

ultimately a lot of these other projects

missed the mark if you're building

something now for whatever reason if

it's for smart contracts or whatever

great but if you're not including

some privacy enhancements to it

it's really just more of the same thing

it's more of the legacy system and in a

new technology format which is not very

interesting to me

i think

without that added

dimension of privacy then it's really

just meaningless it's not going to

survive any

any attacks or any threats uh

it just will crumble when when the

when they're put to the fire right like

adam said it's decentralized in name

only uh i think

to gain that uh

order of magnitude in functionality you

do need that privacy component right

you need something better so if you have

a smart contract you still want

to have that privacy like the way that

we're trying to build some things is

that you know you can have that smart

contract but you don't need to reveal it

to the world right away

you just can reveal it as needed

you know and adam can speak more to that

because that's more his ballpark but i

think for everything that we're doing

privacy is a key part of that so the

lightning network improves privacy for

all those transactions the liquid

network has confidential assets and

transactions and i think what we're

going to be doing with smart contracts

will also have a degree of privacy to

that as well

and to the point adam you were bringing

up i see it uh very similarly as you

with respect to the deflationary

uh token part of it and how that does

not benefit somebody who's using that

protocol

in a commodity or

having utility that you're paying for

the processing associated with that

protocol so i see it similar to

just how you see fiat currencies

interacting with each other today like

the euro versus the dollar

if the dollar's debased and it's

inflationary and um it has all those

attributes it's sucking euros into the

us because europeans can now get cost of

of products and services way cheaper

than what they could before so that

utility through the debasement of the

dollar has forced

other currencies to come into it and and

to uh be used and i think you might run

into a similar dynamic and i think this

is what you were describing when you

were talking about your concerns with

something that would be a deflationary

token on these protocols is you're not

incentivizing the use in the utility of

the smart contracts that are then

happening on that protocol and you're

actually incentivizing the other

protocols that are trying to do all this

stuff at the base layer to be used is

that am i describing that accurately

well i'm i'm just saying that um this

this is john faffel's argument but you

know you can arrive there

through different

and you think about from different

directions or from a technology

direction as well but

basically that

um

the

transaction

uh

cost in the network so i think there's

two two aspects to the value one is the

utility value like

how valuable is this transaction you

know what economic benefit did you get

from it

could you run it cheaper somewhere else

and there are many compatible and

competing platforms right so

that means the fundamental

value if you shop around look for the

cheapest way to run it

is pretty low like

cents or something and yet

there are people marketing these tokens

as

you know

something called lasting

value but

it does it doesn't make fundamental

economic sense so i think markets can

you know sustain a price

that doesn't make sense uh for a while

but eventually

you know the fundamentals kick in and

you see that with something like

you know i think some of these markets

are a bit inverted so

you know why why did gamestop you know

shoot up in price well it's because a

bunch of guys on reddit

thought it'd be funny to

you know show their combined strength

and

try to do a short squeeze

because they thought it was uh you know

because they knew it was heavily shorted

now maybe it deserves to be heavily

shorted but they knew it was so heavily

sure that they could cause a short

squeeze anyway

and so they did that for a while but

obviously you know that failed

ultimately and things things so it's

like gravity you know something will

tend to fall to its

fundamental value

and so i think you know the fundamental

value is just really what is it what

does it cost

and it should get cheaper in future so

you know if if the utility token

is covering

you know the cost because there's a lot

of competition the utility value should

just encompass the cost of providing the

operation the cost of providing the

operation goes down over time so the

fundamental value should fall over time

so it doesn't make sense to pre-buy

tickets into it

and so that's it really you know i think

the rest is

kind of marketing or people

maybe misapplying

um

company valuation metrics right so they

will

you know look at the assets

that the foundation behind a coin has

and think that

you know the coins

represent ownership of those assets i'm

pretty sure they don't you know on a

legal basis right they're not you know

if if you buy shares in a company and it

has assets

of course there's a liquidation value

and ultimately you could have a hostile

takeover so you could buy enough shares

and you know get the assets and that

happens in the physical world from time

to time but there's definitely i'm

pretty sure that's not the case with

you know any kind of icos or

coin tokens so people have applied those

metrics to it and so i think it's just

you know temporary

evaluation

mistakes and of course there's a kind of

shared incentive to do that because it's

uh people enjoy trading so i think they

will you know play along because uh

you know being able to buy something

uh you know there are sort of early

stage investors and so they can make

money on it based on naivete of

later investors i think

or it's just pure speculation

yeah

okay this is my last question for you

guys uh

this this this infrastructure bill

what are your comments on just the

regulatory policy uh takes that you're

getting out of the sec with ginsler

um you're just hearing a whole lot of

takes and opinions as to the direction

that this is going is it all noise

is it something to pay attention to does

it not matter in the long term kind of

what are some of your thoughts on on

this idea

so i think um

it was a bit disappointing obviously

the way that that went in the sense that

it looked like

they were going to

improve it so that would be less

problematic

but then it got vetoed at the end for

some kind of tactical reason like a

blanket veto of all changes or something

so

it just shows you yet again the politics

is kind of disorganized and you know

random last minute haggling so it's not

a good formula to arrive at

you know uh

considered and sensible regulation that

doesn't get in the way of innovation um

so that that's a bit messy um

i think a lot of what gensler is talking

about is actually consumer protection so

uh reading between the lines it looks

like he's talking about

uh rug pulls hacks

people losing money i think

you know while people are making money

they're less likely to get upset

complain to a regular air during a class

action but if there's a sudden you know

90 drop in something or something gets

hacked

in a large scale people get upset and

regulators get concerned about

consumer safety so i think you can

you know chalk that up to the

ongoing

kind of insecurity of a number of chains

really and it's not clear you know i

mean some of them are

hacks and some of them are hacks in air

quotes like maybe the

anonymous people that created it

pretended to hack it and actually took

the money

um

or some of them

are just

you know centralized so essentially the

people who set it up

could take the funds at any time and

they chose to do so

and so that happens too so there's

there's a range of

you know or another one is people

involved in it just selling heavily

shortly after you know exchange listing

or something like that that will bring

you know that will upset you

upset investors so in the conventional

world there are

you know

um i mean maybe they're imperfect but

they're intended to be consumer

protection rules you know about share

lock-ups after ipos and

audited accounts for companies

honestly in advertisement

disclosures and things like that and

those are

you know say they're imperfect but they

arose from

previous century

uh rampant stock scams at the beginning

of the last century basically so they

they are intended to be about

consumer protection

samson

well i think uh in the long run it

doesn't really matter if they get it

wrong they can still fix it and the

whole point of having bitcoin is that

you don't have to care about this stuff

so yeah i mean if you had to worry about

what politicians are going to do to your

money then

you know then bitcoin kind of failed

like and i guess that could happen if

you rely on custodial services and

whatnot but the whole point is to have

your keys right to

have them in your possession

and you know they can't really mess

around with that if they choose to mess

around with that

um that's the that's the real point of

bitcoin that you have control over your

funds they're a bearer asset and

yeah i i i think those things just kill

industries they're industry killing

legislation that

it just gets rammed through sometimes

you still have ramifications from the

nydfs right like with the bid license

people are not going to operate in new

york under that kind of regime

and that's bad for people in new york

and if you take the infrastructure bill

if that went through as they had it

and you know

americans would suffer and it's up to

them to fix it you know either you

you

go through the proper channels and

replace the politicians and fix it or

you live with it that's the only two

choices you have really

at the end of the day i think ginsler's

a bitcoiner

it's very possible

what do you think adam

um well he certainly has a good

technical understanding

you know he was teaching courses on uh

bitcoin

mit

prior to taking his post

and there are videos online so it's good

that

uh you know regulation is informed

so we'll see i mean

i guess the

one of the questions on people's minds

is if a

bitcoin etf will finally

make it through the regulatory process

and

it's it's uh it's kind of past due in a

lot of ways in a sense that i i assume

some americans are buying the canadian

etfs of which there are now multiple and

you know certainly

some multiple in

on six the swiss stock exchange and

other places internationally so

the us has kind of been uh held back on

that and it's a big market so

you know i think

there are you know always some uh

bitcoin etfs in the application process

people who track these things but i

think there are more than usual at the

moment and some new entrants from

established financial players of

different flavors you know some big

players

big players yeah so some based on the um

futures because it's a way to get uh

i mean basically people are looking at

formulaically the reason why

previous

etfs have been nominally

turned down and

so i think going through the future

gives them access to the cme market

which is harder for the regulator to

criticize

all right guys that's all i have for you

um

give a hand off to uh if people want to

you know learn more about block stream

or whatever feel free to provide a

handoff i'm also going to have this john

pfeffer article in the show notes

for people to check that out and that

was the one that adam referenced earlier

but go ahead and take it away

yeah so if you want to look at

blockstream.com and everything is under

there

samson did you have anything else

because i know you're in the gaming

space do you have any game

uh stuff to hand off

well you can find blockstream on twitter

at

blockstream we're on facebook linkedin

basically everywhere

and if you're interested in games and

security tokens you can check out

infinite fleet infinite fleet.com

yeah all right we'll have that in the

show notes guys thank you so much for

making time i'm always just amazed every

time i get a chance to talk to you and

learn about all the things that are

happening out there with blockstream is

just mind-blowing but thank you for

making time

thanks kristen

thank you

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