FFS089 - Cory Klippsten

[00:00:00]

Intro

Cory: I've been saying for a long time, a long time,  that I thought by 2035, uh, most goods and services around the world would be priced in sats, not only sats.

It'll be like sats in euros, sats in dollars, sats in yen, sats like, you know, you know, just like the dual price tag at the. You know, duty free at the airport or something or in a tourist town. I don't know. We'll see. Things have to move faster than they are now to hit 2035 for most things being priced in sats. They're not moving. , but, uh, but, uh, you know, I like, what's the rush to like, this whole, this whole thing is going to be, it's going to be 80 years from start to full saturation anyway, because it's a technological revolution, not a damn tech product.

one God candle ain't cool. You know, what's cool? 10 God candles. When we see 10 God candles over the course of a few weeks, you know, then we'll see, we'll see what people do.

[00:01:00] [00:02:00]

Welcoming Cory

Luke: Welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show. Our guest today is Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan. Otherwise needs no introduction. So, Cory, thanks for joining us. Welcome to the Freedom Footprint Show.

Cory: Yeah, it's great to be here. Nice to meet you, Luke. Knut, great to see you again. It's been way too long since we hung out.

Knut: Yeah, we used to do it quite a lot back in the day, like more than two years ago, I think we used to do this a lot more often and about all sorts of topics.

Cory: You were, you were one of the few guests on my short lived podcast, uh, that I did with my brother, which was really special.

Knut: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's special for me to have been, um, uh, been on that. So, yeah, my condolences about him, his passing and everything, of

Cory: But how amazing that, you know, I've got, I've got that 10 hours or whatever from those 10 podcasts [00:03:00] on YouTube forever, which is just, uh, quite a gift. And, uh, he, you were one of his favorite people to talk to. So I appreciate that.

Knut: I love hearing that. I mean, uh, I love that. I remember that, that session specifically. I, uh, he was such a, such a nice guy. So, yeah, I'm happy to have known him. So, but, uh, yeah. Um.

Defending Bitcoin

Knut: We, we used to talk a lot back in the day and after that and up until this point, you've been, you've been a great shitcoin narrative debunker.

I love that. There was like a couple of months where you was just, you were just machine gun firing out these shitcoin narrative debunking tweets and little videos and everything, explaining to people how they were being rug pulled. I just love that. So, in your mind, what's the latest shitcoin and what's the latest thing we need to debunk?

Cory: I think I'm trying to think of like why I [00:04:00] get heated about certain topics and not others. Right? Because I'm not sitting here, you know, looking for altcoin scams to uncover and debunk. That would just be like your entire life, right? Uh, it's because I care a lot about Bitcoin and I spend my day on Bitcoin.

And so, you know, to, to whatever degree I have experience and a little bit of knowledge expertise on this particular subject and the narratives around it, I really don't like false narratives around Bitcoin. that includes false narratives promoted by Bitcoiners. I don't like those either. I like people to like Bitcoin for the right reasons, and to promote narratives that are true, to maintain the credibility of the people that are, you know, speaking on behalf of Bitcoin and Bitcoiners to the wider world.

I don't like it when people who are promoting Bitcoin Also promote bullshit. I don't think that's helpful because it confuses people. so that's really, I think, where it came from, you know, and[00:05:00] it's funny. We had already set the, the internal theme for Svan for 2022 was Bitcoin, not crypto, so that we started rolling out on January 1st of 2022.

Um, this was after I think 2020 was, Bitcoin for America, cause it was like we were launching in the US only and it was an election year. And then if I recall, I think 21 was Bitcoin is for everyone. And we've had the Bitcoin is for everyone website and we were lighting up the countries on the map and all that and just doing like world stories during the bull market.

And 2022 was. Bitcoin, not crypto, which ended up being the year for that, obviously. And in the only thing that got me really interested was, uh, when it started, when, when narrative started to be in Bitcoin. So it was when a bunch of the podcasters and big Twitter handles started promoting Doquan because he was going to do a Bitcoin treasury.

And I was like, Like, [00:06:00] literally, uh, crypto people already were referring to it as the Luna Ponzi, and I had been seeing that since December of 21. So to me, I was like, you're watching this thing grow, grow, grow. People are calling it the Luna Ponzi. I don't even, I didn't, I hadn't even done the research to understand why they called it the Luna Ponzi.

But now all those Bitcoiners, Bitcoiners, are promoting it. And I was like, there must be something horribly wrong here. And it took literally like 45 minutes at the end of a long week in March. I remember it was like, I think March 24th or something like that. And I just dug in for like 45 minutes, found some clear signal people that described in detail exactly what the Ponzi was.

And just started telling people that it was a Ponzi and they were going to have egg on their face and that it was all going to go to zero. And, you know, he obviously wasn't going to be buying 10 billion of Bitcoin and you're an idiot if you're putting this guy on your platform and promoting it. And that was it.

That's how it started. So that then rolled [00:07:00] into Celsius because I was just, I wasn't paying attention to Celsius either, but the news when Luna collapsed, because I think they collapsed, uh, basically, I think it was Friday, May 9th. And they basically collapsed over the weekend and went to zero, you know.

Monday, March 12th, or May 12th, I believe, of 22, and there was news on like the 13th or the 14th that early that week that Celsius had pulled half a billion dollars of users money. Out of anchor, which was part of the Luna Ponzi scheme. And it's like, this is, this was a company that was promoting like a better savings account, better than the banks.

Don't trust the bank, unbank yourself, you know, trust Moshensky, like whatever. They had this whole cult of personality around Moshensky and like. I had met that guy once back in 2017 on a zoom call because somebody was like, Oh, he likes Bitcoin. And I was just like, my skin crawled the whole time. I have detailed notes from that conversation, by the [00:08:00] way, laying out their entire business plan.

And so that just caught my attention. And I was like, I just started firing off about that. Like how horrifying it was that a platform that promotes itself the way that they did as like a better bank or whatever had user funds in a known Ponzi scheme. Right. And, and it doesn't matter whether you were stupid or you were in on it, either way, you have, you're not a steward of capital that anybody should be trusting.

Right. So that's just kind of, and that then naturally led the collapse of the C5 platforms, like Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager, then led immediately into Sam Bankman Freed, because in June, Jim Kramer and all the dummies were. Uh, promoting Sam Bankman Fried as the JP Morgan of crypto. He's going to backstop this thing.

He's doing it for the good of all or whatever. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, this guy is talking about purchasing companies that have dramatically [00:09:00] negative value. Right? Like, you couldn't pay me to take on BlockFi, Celsius Voyager with all their liabilities, their negative brand value and brand equity.

Like, it's just stupid. And so it's like, oh, well, he must be lying. And if he's lying about this, what else is he lying about? And so I just spent the summer going on TV and going on podcasts, just poking and just saying, like, this guy is not smart. I don't know what he's hiding. I don't know what it is.

We'll find out, but there's something wrong here. He's clearly, like, this guy is clearly lying, uh, about lots of things. And then it just, um, you know, I wasn't expecting it to be that big or that bad. It kind of just blew my mind, but it was It was because I'd been so vocal and had, you know, collaborated with journalists trying to poke around and figure things out about FTX over the summer that on October 1st of 22, when some unknown source passed the Alameda balance [00:10:00] sheet to Ian Allison at Coindesk, Coindesk editors, the first thing he did was send it to me and say, what is this?

What do you see here? We hopped on a call for an hour. That became the article that brought down FTX. It was basically, you know, just our conversation. And I'm the only quote in the article, but again, I'm not out. I didn't, I didn't think of Voyager. I didn't care. I didn't really think of like all these other platforms that were collapsing.

I wasn't targeting Three Arrows Capital. I'm not a shit coin PI. It was because there were false narratives around Bitcoin. And, and I also have a special, uh, When someone really says stupid things very publicly about Bitcoin that are false, then I really, uh, get my guns out for them. And you have to remember, Mashinsky, in May of 22, was saying that, uh, Bitcoin maximalists were responsible for 30 percent of Bitcoins being lost, and that everyone should send him their Bitcoin so he could keep it safe for them.

And that's when I said, oh my god, he's a Ponzi too! I was just like very clear to me, like, [00:11:00] this guy is trying to collect assets. It must be because he's trying to meet withdrawals because there was no other reason for him to say obviously false things like that, uh, on YouTube and Twitter. And then, you know, Sam Bankman Fried, you know, guy was always marketing altcoins and always saying like Bitcoin is a dumb rock and like, no, you know, it can't be used as a currency and like, like clearly didn't understand Bitcoin, but dude's on the cover of every damn magazine.

So I just, you know, had it, had it in for that guy.

Knut: I remember one tweet in particular from that era that I'm extra proud of. And that was, uh, just two words. Don't quant. That's what I wrote.

Cory: Don't Kwan.

Knut: Yeah.

Cory: Yeah. Well, we had to, we had to have nicknames. It was, it was Don't Kwan, uh, Mascamski, Alex Mascamski. And then my favorite, which ended up being used as a headline for, uh, I think New York Magazine was, uh, uh, in the summer, I started calling him Scambankster Fraud.

Knut: Scam banks to fraud. [00:12:00] I remember that one. That's a good one.

Cory: The best thing to come out of, uh, Trump's first presidency was, uh, a willingness to tag people with nicknames.

Knut: What, what is, yeah. Crooked Hillary. That was the best thing he could come up with, right?

Cory: So many. I mean, he just, he had one for everybody. I think it was, wasn't it low energy jab?

Knut: Yeah. But that tho those weren't necessarily clever. I mean, scam banks to, uh, banks to fraud is clever cleverer than, than just crooked Hillary.

Cory: But we're not here to fight the last battle. Like that's, that's, that's over for now. And, you know, I just, I feel like we, we left, we left. Ship coins dramatically reduced in power and standing versus Bitcoin.

Shitcoins on Bitcoin

Cory: And regardless of what comes with the next scam wave, which looks like it's going to be these, these.

1. O. B. V. C. s pushing S. O. B. s on Bitcoin. That's shitcoins on Bitcoin. [00:13:00] I call them S. O. B. V. C. s.

Knut: SOB VCs. Yeah.

Cory: that's obviously going to be the big, the big theme of shitcoinery scams coming up, uh, but I just think it's not gonna It's not going to be anything close to the, uh, Scambrian explosion of 2017 to 2023, which was, you know, 90 billion of shitcoin VC money marketing these things. And they had a leg to stand on in the market claiming that they were better than Bitcoin and that they could be money or were going to be better money.

And like, that's off the table. That's just not ever going to happen. There's no one even at Ethereum claiming like, ultrasound money or anything. Like, the money thing is done, and that's the biggest market by far. And so I just think they're going to be nipping at the edges, and it's going to be annoying that they're scamming and doing all this stuff.

But like You know, Larry and Abby, our frenemies at the, at the, uh, ETFs are kind of taking care of, uh, the vast majority of the [00:14:00] messaging being about Bitcoin.

Attention Creating Reality

Knut: Yeah. And it's going to be harder. Like we've had a lot of conversations about this on the show that to some extent your focus and attention creates. Reality for you. And your reality becomes what you choose to pay attention to. And when it comes to shitcoiners like, you know, shitboycrafto and all of this, now we've ended up talking about shitcoiners on a lot of episodes here, but that's, it's only to make this point that calling out scammers Sometimes has the opposite effect because the only thing the pig wants is to mud wrestle, right?

So, so they, they want the attention they get from being called out. I think some of these crypto influencers, they, they love that the quote unquote maxis were on them all the time and retweeted them saying how stupid they were because they got the retweets. So, so I think there's something there, but now we have to defend our turf because as you say, now [00:15:00] they're in Bitcoin and, you know, minting cats and, uh, and stupid, uh, shitcoin tokens on top of Bitcoin thinking that somehow blocks are scarcer than sats, which is simply not true because there's always a next block out there somewhere, And they're not even attached to a Satoshi in the first place, they're attached to a transaction, these things, if attached to anything.

Swan Mining vs Ordinals

Knut: Uh, so, yeah, this, I guess this is a good segue into, uh, Swan Mining, and, uh, what is Swan Mining doing to prevent shitcoining on Bitcoin? Can you tell us the story there?

Cory: well, I guess all I can say is, like, I'm eager to see The whole thing play out and I think we're in the first inning to, to, to let the arguments come out. And, I am very humble when I get into a new area that I don't have a lot of expertise in yet, which is why, you know, you won't find tweets about Bitcoin from [00:16:00] me, like pre 2019.

Cause I just was learning and didn't know shit. Um, so I don't want to be like, Hey, I just got to Bitcoin mining and I'm here to fix it. You know, so like, this is even, you know, so even, even if you think about like, you know, I, so I just, and I also don't have a ton of time anymore to go super deep the way that I used to.

And so it wasn't until the holidays that I actually read enough to, to let people know for the first time, like where I was on this stuff. And so I think January 1st, I put out kind of like what I thought was going on with the whole ordinals thing. And I had reserved judgment for how long, like. A year? Or more?

I don't even know. When did, when did Casey publish the first thing on Ordinals? Was it? I don't even know. I think it was, I think it, I think it was like a year before. It's been almost two years, right? Wasn't it?

Knut: Yeah, we probably wouldn't have heard about it if it hadn't received all the attention it got from people who [00:17:00] Somehow it feels like the whole narrative, the whole fight about them, is false to begin with. Like, that they didn't need to be called out even, because if no one had paid the attention initially, they probably never could have pulled the thing off, because nobody would have heard about these things.

That's, at least there's a grain of truth to that, I think.

Cory: So I'll just read it. It'll take 60 seconds. But, uh, this was where I landed after spending probably 15 hours on it over the holidays. Uh, so I put this out on Twitter on Jan 1. Uh, my preliminary conclusions from catching up on ordinals over the holiday, JPEGs actually aren't a problem at all since they get priced out by normal Bitcoin spending with even lowish fees.

Pretending they're a problem for Bitcoin is actually the marketing strategy of the JPEG marketers. Have fun if you want, ignore if you want, either way they don't matter long term. All the fungible token mints, BRC20 stamps, ARC20 atomicals, etc. create trillions of meme coins that have no function and they are a problem because they [00:18:00] price out normal bitcoin spins and JPEGs.

But history and basic economics tells us that this new pump and dump category will die out on its own from oversupply like yield farming, dog coins, and any other shitcoin degen pump theme that's ever so briefly relevant. Conclusion, I don't need to spend any more time on this unless something drastic changes, in which case I'm sure someone will tell me to dive back in.

Caveat. I've spent maybe 10 hours on this stuff and I do not code.

Knut: I agree with all of that, especially like the, the, the stamps and this stuff though, it, it is a problem because it clogs the, the chain forever. It will take longer for people to sync and node in the future. Unnecessarily, because people did this back in 2023 and 24.

Cory: uh, you know, and so also, like if you think about like on the mining side, and, you know, I was a fan of Ocean Pro, uh, ocean Pool before, you know, mechanic and Luke started talking a lot about. Spam filters, so [00:19:00] I had already invested in Ocean before they really took up the mantle and started battling the wizards or whatever.

and, and I've also done more business with them and helped them out, uh, after they started doing that. I'm eager to see these forces play out against each other and I want to see the arguments. And, you know, the, the one thing. The one thing I don't think I've seen a lot of is people without a vested interest in promoting ordinals, make a strong argument that nothing can be done.

So I, that seems to be the thing that I see promoted a lot, which is Hey, just accept it, cope, nothing can be done, but the only people that say that are people making money off of it or, you know, kind of really close to it. So it's, you know, it's Bitcoin Magazine reporters and editors, you know, who basically that, that organization is essentially monetizing through altcoin funds [00:20:00] now.

with a mouthpiece and a megaphone, uh, it doesn't detract whatsoever from all the great things they've done for Bitcoin outside of that, but that's just kind of the current trend. It's like, you know, their best reporter from the last few years is no longer reporting and is running an altcoin trading desk.

Right. It's kind of, it's, it's a shame more than anything, but you know, you do, you do have to stay alive. Right. And, yeah, so I don't know. We'll see. I, I, I am much more into like the, the longer term vision of ocean and being able to create your own block templates and decentralized mining and full transparency all the way through.

You wouldn't believe the kind of fucking chicanery afoot with the pools. Uh, and the differences in how their payouts work and the lack of transparency and, you know, both pools and, uh, you know, some of these optimization softwares having hidden code that's using your hash for merge mining over here or siphoning off some, some of your shit over there.[00:21:00]

Uh, it's, it's wild. Like, you, you really can't, until you run the numbers yourself and you do kind of like a pool bake off and you watch everything, you know, by the minute, by the block. you can't really trust anybody in, in that space. So having at least one pool that gets to a decent level, you know, I think oceans over one, like that's valuable in and of itself and is actually worth, you know, and I don't know, like the, it's, it's still TBD.

I see, I see lots of analyses both ways on which one, which ways make more money. But regardless, as someone that has a wide interest in Bitcoin beyond just Our mining management unit, which is 10 out of 160 people, for the good of Bitcoin and, you know, all the other things that Svan does, I want to see this play out and having somebody that provides that check on the rest of the mining pool industry, because they're completely [00:22:00] transparent. is worth a ton because then we can go and we can use that as leverage against the other mining pools and say, why don't you do it like this? And like, it just creates all this pressure. So for us, even if we did make a little bit less money per block or something, because you weren't mining You know, cat pictures or something, uh, it would still be worth supporting overall, even greedily for Svan, let alone as the obvious thing to do to see how it plays out for Bitcoin.

Knut: yeah, it's sort of the equivalent of El Salvador on a nation state scale. You know, this little, small little player, not being even 1 percent of the world, but still, it's there as a beacon for every other nation state to have a look at, and for people in those nation states especially. That being equivalent to the hashers out there that sell their hashing powers to mining pools.

That they could just move to this place and use proper Bitcoin instead of [00:23:00] trying to avoid taxes in, I don't know, France, . So, uh, yeah, there, there's something there. Uh, transparency because like, that's, that's a, a beautiful distinction that mechanic made when he was here on the, on the Freedom Footprint show.

Um, talking about the difference between a minor and AER, because the miners are really the pools and the, the, uh. The individual miners, quote unquote, they're just basically just hashers selling hash power and they're not really, unless you know what you're selling your hash power to, you're not a miner, you're just a hashing algorithm facilitator.

Cory: that's true.

Knut: So, so what's, so what's the plan with Swan Mining? Like, are you directing all your hashing power to To Ocean, or what are you doing?

Cory: Well, we, we know that's not true. We know that's not true because I tweeted out yesterday or the day before, uh, that [00:24:00] we, I think our latest time I checked, we were at 5. 24 exahash across our

Knut: and the numbers don't add up.

Cory: Yeah, Ocean's at like one and a quarter or 1. 2 or something like that. So we can't, we can't possibly be directing all our hash to Ocean.

Um, you know, and, and again, we're in the early days where we're testing out all the pools and seeing like who's honest and who, who does things the way that we want to and things like that. So we're kind of still in a pool bake off and. And, uh, running the numbers. It's early.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, I suspect you did something though, because just when swan mining was announced, the Ocean's hashing power went up quite significantly. Even though it's still way

Cory: I like to see lots of Bitcoin numbers go up. It makes me happy. I like

Knut: yeah, yeah, I won't poke around too much. Um,

Swan's Latest Endeavours

Knut: anyway, so, so what else is up with Svan these days? Like, what, what are you, what are the other things you're, you're working on? Cool,

Cory: [00:25:00] Yeah. So let's see. Oh, so much. It's crazy. where to start? Let's see. We are about to launch our asset backed loan products. Unfortunately, it's kind of like big ticket only. I think it'll probably be like a million plus. So it's much more of like an institutional product. but I think that'll be really cool.

we are about to relaunch Swan Advisor, which is our, you know, for, for wealth managers, US only, unfortunately. So this is the registered investment advisors and FAs. And we used to have like three dozen of them before the, the prime trust collapse, and now we've. Finally kind of rebuilt it on top of BitGo and can be back in market and light up the partners that we had before.

So excited to bring that back. we relaunched, we brought, brought Texas back a few weeks ago. We had not been in Texas for the last year and a half or so since, regulatory BS with trust companies. Later this [00:26:00] year, we'll be launching our own Bitcoin only trust company, which I think is dramatically, underappreciated by people so far.

it remains the model that is the best for custody of Bitcoin in the USA, which is having the legal segregation. And again, this is not for people that are taking self custody, which is the vast majority of Bitcoin, but for the people that are stuck. In third party custody, because they're not willing to or able to, or for some regulatory reason, like with the advisor product, they have to leave the coins in third party custody.

Having an individually owned, legally segregated, bankruptcy or remote trust account is the best place to put that. And then if you can layer that on top of multi institutional custody, which is the direction that we're going, where like, you know, client has a key, we have a key, BitGo has a key, or, you know, us and Unchained and, and [00:27:00] the client, stuff like that, that's going to be a big leg up, I think, for, for the market, but more importantly, The, the companies that have done this historically have been constrained, and you'll even hear like, you know, Mike Belshi at BitGo talk about this a lot, and Jameson has talked about it, Reardon Code talks about it.

When you're developing, like, a product roadmap at a trust company that has a bunch of altcoins, You really can only develop products or processes or whatever that are scalable across Bitcoin and like hundreds of altcoins, because that's what you need to serve your customers. And so you can't really take advantage of things in the Bitcoin code or that are happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem, or even justify.

a team or expense helping that to develop, you know, for instance, like we've had lightning withdrawals internally for ourselves, you know, for years, but we can't light it up because we didn't control the product [00:28:00] roadmap at the trust companies that we use, right? Historically Prime Trust, Fortress, Fortress now backed, and they don't really have the incentive to do much on lightning, let alone liquid, for instance, because it's not scalable across all their altcoins.

So when we own that, we can turn on lightning overnight and we can go and, you know, do cool liquid things and, and we can offer that to everybody else as well. So like, you know, Fold is on Fortress as well, just like us. And we're kind of stuck until there's a better option. And there's another dozen Bitcoin companies, you know, kind of stuck, stuck at Fortress because Prime Trust doesn't exist anymore.

And when we light up the Bitcoin only trust company, which will be again this year, there's just going to be a great opportunity. for all of us to just do things way faster in what I think still is by far the best model for custody if you have to use third party custody.

[00:29:00] [00:30:00]

Expansion to New Markets

Cory: we're coming to Brazil, so that'll be our second country, that's the plan. So, before the end of the year, we should be, should be live in Brazil. Plan right now is, uh, Brazil first, then Australia, and then Western Europe. So, we're gonna kinda cut our teeth and get used to, like, how to enter markets, and kinda learn the playbook, um, first with something that's close to the US time zone, uh, in Brazil, which is a pretty big market, and we happen to have a lot of Brazilians on the team, so, good connections and stuff.

and then we have a new head of APAC that's based in Australia and we have really good relationships there. And, and we obviously have, uh, Della Vadova is our VP of BizDev and he's currently playing for Melbourne United. And, you know, he's kind of the most famous basketball player in Australia. So all the billionaires love him and he can kind of meet anybody.

So it's just like, I think we'll, we'll be able to get in market in a, in a pretty big way in Australia. I'm trying to do that this year. That seems hard to make before the end of the [00:31:00] year, but I'm pretty damn sure we'll be out there in 25.

Upcoming Conferences

Knut: Any one of you guys coming down to Bitcoin Alive in Sydney next month?

Cory: I'm sure Arturo will. That's, uh, it's a good, good point. Um, that's our, our head of APAC that's based in Brisbane. So, uh, I didn't know about it, so I'll mention it to him and let him know.

Knut: great conference. I went last year and, uh, yeah, had a great time there. And there's a, yeah, there's a bunch of people going there this year. So, yeah. If you're around Australia, make sure you check it out. Speaking of conferences, we're going to Madeira here in, I'm going on Monday. But I don't think you, you're not coming there, right?

Cory: No, I'll be there. Uh, I'll be there in spirit. There you go. Got my Atlantis

Knut: Ah, there we go.

Cory: Yeah, there will be quite a few,

Knut: Nice,

Cory: there'll be a few swans there, but I am not able to make the [00:32:00] trip.

Knut: For those of you listening, Cory just put on a Bitcoin Atlantis cap. Baseball cap.

Cory: Yes.

Knut: Yeah.

Cory: almost as nice as my Here Come Cory hat.

Knut: oh yeah, there it is. Fantastic. But there are a lot of other Swan people coming to Madeira though.

Cory: Yes. Lots.

Knut: Is Tomer still with you?

Cory: Of course. Yeah. Tomer's, Tomer's our editor in chief for, uh, Swan Private Insight. Does a lot of other stuff on the content side. and then of course we have, you know, the ones who got away, uh, some Swan alumni that we, uh, Love and miss, like Pablo and Gigi, uh, of course we'll be there.

Knut: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of people, um, coming to Madeira and, uh, yeah, it's going to be great to see, especially the Americans, because I, I, uh, rare that I get a chance to see them since we're, we have a pond to cross. in order to make that [00:33:00] happen, but it's always great.

Cory: Are you in, where, what city are you in? I

Knut: Uh, I, I'm in Southeastern Spain somewhere,

Cory: Okay. Malaga or something like that.

Knut: a bit further up the coast than that. So, closer to Alicante.

Cory: my dad lived in Alicante for six months back in like. 1970 or something like that.

He was, he was brief. He was a Spanish major and I went and, uh, I studied abroad in Barcelona in grad school and I've been there a bunch of times.

Knut: yeah, we've been here for two and a half years now, I think. Uh, so I don't know when we last did a pod, I think it was over two and a half years ago, maybe, maybe I was still back in Sweden when we did the last one. Yeah.

Cory: so. Yeah. Like you were, you were more pale. You seemed like you were probably, you know, listening to more death metal and less, you know, hip hop or something, you know,

Knut: yeah. I, it's probably this, you know, [00:34:00] before and after Bitcoin meme, you know, with the beard and everything, you know, more, increasingly more crazy with the years.

Cory: That's great.

Knut: So, so you have your own conference, right? Uh, Pacific.

Cory: Yeah, we got Pacific Bitcoin coming up in October in Los Angeles. It's, uh, the 17th through the 19th out here. Included a Saturday this year, which will be really fun. Gets bigger and better every year, and, uh, yeah, I like that a lot. I don't do a lot of traveling for conferences just because I have young kids, and so the bar is like really, really high to get away, uh, which is probably why we started the conference in LA in the first place, because I can sleep at home.

Knut: Not a bad idea. So yeah, um, yeah, yeah, I'd love to come, and check out

Cory: on, you, uh, well, you're, you're invited officially to come speak if you want to be on stage.

Knut: Yeah. Awesome.

Cory: Well, you know, the other thing is we have, we have a lot of performances at [00:35:00] Pacific Bitcoin because the, the third stage is actually a, it's a full size basketball half court. So it's like NBA dimensions and we do a lot of musical performances there. So there's like DJs and singers and.

Yeah, it's pretty fun. There's also a three on three tournament and, like, MMA demo I was going to say demonstrations, but I accidentally was going to say demolitions because Ben Aspin was there and wrestled plebs over and over again, just, like, pinning them. That was pretty fun. Oh,

Knut: You gotta book this Nirvana cover act, Nevermined. You heard of them?

Cory: I haven't. That sounds amazing. I mean, you know, I'm a Seattleite. So

Knut: Yeah, yeah. It's, it's me and Samson and Luke and, Mark from the Princess Hotel, the Bitcoin Hotel in Stuttgart. We,

Cory: tell me you've played a show. Have you played a show?

Knut: We've played one show, without Loca, unfortunately, but this was in Prague, [00:36:00] a side event, a Satoshi Rokomoto event, where we played some Nirvana covers.

And we plan to do more of it, so we'll see, we'll see what happens.

Cory: Okay. Wait, what instrument does Samson play?

Knut: Guitar.

Cory: Okay. All right.

Knut: Yeah?

Cory: I mean, there, there are some three chord songs. That's for sure.

Knut: Those aren't very high expectations.

Cory: I mean, I'm going to have to see the tape. Listen, we, I like proof of work. Like show me the tape. I want to see it.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, it's coming. You'll never have to wait a little while. Yeah.

Cory: Well, now I have high expectations.

Knut: Yeah. Setting the bar. Luke, do you have any questions for Cory?

Current Bitcoin Sentiment

Luke: Yeah, Cory, uh, yeah, awesome to, uh, talk about all these fun conferences and everything coming up with the year. What about the immediate term? I mean, we've got all this stuff coming up, the halving [00:37:00] and the ETFs going on here. What's your feeling of the vibe for Bitcoin right now? Everyone's pretty optimistic.

How are you feeling?

Cory: Yeah, well, I think what's interesting and we kind of touched on it a little bit, but I think what's going on is, you know, the top of funnel for Bitcoin used to be Bitcoin, right? That's kind of how it was back in 2010, 11 to 16. I, I put out a, a tweet a couple weeks ago that I've been kind of talking about, and it's actually made it into our new investor presentation as well, just like a screenshot of the tweet.

And it was basically kind of laying out that the top of funnel for Bitcoin was Bitcoin from, you know. 2010 to 2016, and then because of the ICO boom and all the shitcoin VC money, the top of funnel for Bitcoin was shitcoins from 2017 to 2023, basically. And with the launch of the ETFs, the predominant top of funnel for Bitcoin now is Bitcoin.

It's a slightly inferior sort of Bitcoin, but it's not bad. [00:38:00] And they are, you know, broadly marketing things that are true about Bitcoin. If anything, they're just marketing kind of a subset of what's true about Bitcoin, but there are, there aren't any broad lies. Or false narratives being promulgated by the Van X and the Bitwise and the Fidelities and Blackrocks and Invesco.

Like they're saying true things about Bitcoin, um, with a slightly inferior product. That's a dream for Bitcoiners because it's like, thanks for the hundreds of millions of dollars of ad spend. And all we have to do is like, as people get more into it, they start learning about it and we have the data that shows the more you buy, the more you prefer self custody.

Luke: I thought one of the most genuinely bullish things that I've seen in the last few days was that BTC Sessions YouTube channel is just blowing up, over 100, 000 subscribers, something like this. And he's like the guy guiding people into self [00:39:00] custody and it's just fantastic to see that because it's like a real signal, right?

It really does seem like people are going that direction, right?

Cory: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's all the, all the Bitcoin channels are kind of exploding since January, as you can imagine. And it's worth putting out better content and paying more attention to like your VSEO. So, you know, it's probably not happening just by accident to Ben, even though he's saying that, but my guess is he's doing a few smarter things and maybe paying a contractor to do a little bit better job with the, you know, the VSEO or the thumbnails or whatever, you know, like you kind of improve things when the returns to improving it.

All of these things are bigger, which they are in a bull market. So we're putting more into ad spend, we're putting more into VSEO, we're hiring more people on the marketing and content side. And you do that because the returns are greater. And so everything's exploding at the same time. I mean, we went from, I mean, we probably averaged 30 to 40k a month on ad spend in 2023.

And we're doing [00:40:00] like over 600k a month now, right? So we 20x our ad spend.

Knut: Holy.

Cory: and that's the type of thing you do because the returns are much, much better when other people are kind of helping you market things and the price is doing its thing. Like it's, that's when you spend. That makes sense.

Knut: this is where everything is good for Bitcoin comes in, right? So like we, we all help all the Bitcoin ads, help all the Bitcoin companies like, uh, and the, and Bitcoiners and everything we do. If we're awesome to one another, we help Bitcoin. Like, uh, everything's connected here. It's such a, that's the real magic where the real magic is.

I, I think,

Cory: Yeah, totally agree. So, yeah, so back on like, what do the stats show, in the history of Svan, about half of the people have left their coins in custody and half have taken self custody, but the people taking, the half that are taking self custody is 83 percent of the coins.[00:41:00]

Knut: whoa.

Cory: the more you buy, the more you take self custody because it's worth it.

It's worth it to figure out how to do it and what you want your setup to be. And, you know, for, for some nutball psycho Bitcoin lady to teach her husband about self custody and figure out the inheritance thing with their lawyer or whatever it is, you know, uh, you do that once you get over an amount that's meaningful to you.

Um, and it's the same thing with the ETFs. Like, of course, once you get orange pilled enough, the vast majority of people will be like, Oh, you know what? Maybe I actually want the real thing. And maybe I only want to pay once instead of every year.

Knut: Yeah.

Cory: So it's, it's just a great, a great top of funnel for, for Bitcoin. I've been talking about what I've been calling the ETF multiplier, and I don't know if it's the right term for it, but basically the concept is however much capital flows into the ETFs because they exist. Because the ETFs exist with all their advertising and the stamp of approval and everything, another 5 to 10x more capital is flowing [00:42:00] into Bitcoin, even outside of the ETF flows,

Knut: Yeah.

Cory: and will over the rest of the decade, because the ETFs exist.

So it's incremental on top of what's going into the ETFs, because they exist, and because Larry and Abby have said Bitcoin's okay.

Knut: Yeah. And on top of that, you have the halving. So you have like limited supply meet unlimited demand at some point, which is just

Cory: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, price is set at the margin. So that has, that has a big effect. Absolutely. You know, kind of like new supply that's coming on. Obviously I've been like a bit of a seller of the coins on exchanges thing because it's gotten so much dramatically easier to get coins in and out of cold storage.

And so I just, I think that that metric is probably, uh, overused and, you know, shouldn't be relied on for really anything. you know, cause all these, all these custodians, even they, they can easily shuttle coins in a few seconds, you know, back and [00:43:00] forth between cold and hot. So it's just, it doesn't mean what it used to.

but nevertheless, I think if you look at like huddle waves and things like that, it's clear that a preponderance of these damn coins ain't moving. You know, and we'll see if there's ever, you know, I think, uh, you know,

God Candles

Cory: one God candle ain't cool. You know, what's cool? 10 God candles. When we see 10 God candles over the course of a few weeks, you know, then we'll see, we'll see what people do.

Knut: How would you define a God candle?

Cory: Uh, I mean, broadly, we're just talking about a 10, 000 move in a day and, you know, that's, we've never seen it before. So that'll be the first God candle when it happens. but once it happens once and the price is going up, like, you know, that's, that's going to be a lot easier to achieve going from 120 to 130 is a lot easier than going from like 40 to 50.

So I expect lots of them once they start.

Knut: What is the biggest candle we've seen? Because we've definitely seen thousands, [00:44:00] multiple thousands. We haven't seen 10, 000, but yeah, three, four or five?

Cory: what's the biggest upward move in percentage terms or in dollar terms in a 24 hour period, I guess, is the question. I don't know.

Knut: I guess we'll see. We'll have to figure it out. But the funniest thing I think is people who think that Bitcoin will go to 100, 000 and then And then drop again. Why? It's like, is everyone in silent agreement that, okay, we hit a hundred K, we have to sell. Like that's not how markets work. Right.

As far as I know.

Cory: Do you remember? Yeah, there was like a, I totally remember this. Actually, it was October 25th, 2019. And it was, uh, Jinping, open support for blockchain technology. Remember that? Ripped up like 40 percent in a day. It went from, it went from 7 7 3 6 1 to 10,370 in a [00:45:00] short span of some hours, registering a gain of 42% from its daily low.

Knut: Whoa.

Cory: It was October, 2019.

Knut: Yeah. Percentage. Right. But it's also quite a few thousand. So, the definition of a gold candle is in dollar terms and not in percent.

Cory: Listen, I'm rolling with 10 K for now. I reserve the right to change it later. I'm, I'm not calling God can until, until I see a 10 K move in 1 1 24 hour period. I'm not calling God Gand.

Knut: has anyone ever coined the term Satan Candle? And like, is that a drop? Is like that a 10, 000 drop?

Cory: It would have to be more than 10, 000. We've seen way worse.

Knut: It's 666. [00:46:00] [00:47:00]

Optimism for the Future

Luke: So what are you most optimistic about with the idea that everything is going to, that Bitcoin is going to ramp up? What do you think is going to change in the world for the better when that happens?

Cory: I mean, we've, this is, this is the stuff we've been talking about for years. Right. so we get to wax philosophical a little bit. I mean, I, always sort of summarized my views, which are obviously like cliff notes of cliff notes of everybody else's views from the hive mind. But, you know, I just see this being this. It's this incredible coordinating force and mechanism for, for commerce that leads to peace to a greater degree than we've had before. Right? So I think I'm really bullish on what happens. You protect the [00:48:00] downside for humanity by having Bitcoin as a store of value and being an exit opportunity and a check on the tyranny of those who would abuse the money printer. So like, that's kind of like, I always think about life in general and business and Bitcoin and everything about, preventing dramatic moves to the downside.

And then. Maximizing the number and quality of your call options for good, good upside. Right. And so I feel like the store of value thing kind of protects the downside. And then a lot of the upside, is store value related, but it's also medium of exchange related. So it's like once Bitcoin hits a million dollars a coin, and there are a lot more people with.

You know, substantially all of their net worth in Bitcoin. That's essentially what they have to spend. And if it's easier to just spend it than it is to sell it and then spend the fiat, then they'll just spend the Bitcoin. And that's, it's demand from the market that causes investment in products and [00:49:00] services to serve that market.

And so this is why the B cashers were all just wrong. Basic economics and, you know, sorry, a little bit of b school doesn't hurt sometimes, like, or however you want to learn it, but learn that, that, that markets generally develop when there are venture scale returns available for investment in those products and services, and that means that there has to be demand in the market for that thing, and so it's always going to be kind of a hobbyist thing, Or a, you know, a, a zealot, bitcoin psychos, you know, trying to create circular economies or whatever until number goes up dramatically.

and this is because Bitcoin as a store, as a technology for store of value, objectively, if you understand it, it's the best tool for the job in the world today. If you understand all of the different ways that you can do medium of exchange or remittance or whatever, there are some [00:50:00] areas where today Bitcoin is the best tool for the job, but most of the time it's not. But it will be when the market demands to spend Bitcoin, and a ton of innovation happens, and costs come down, and we And we'll keep working along the way because of the hobbyists and because of the people, like, wanting to be early and wanting to be first when the market comes. Someone will get that perfectly and time it perfectly.

And maybe it's some of the lightning companies that exist today, but it might be somebody that starts in 2026 that starts with a bunch of money. And a clean cap table and benefits from standing on the shoulders of giants that have been swinging at this thing for eight years or nine years. And that's, that's the set of companies that make it, but we have to be honest with ourselves.

It's like, it's not like. Sergey at BitRefill is a bad Bitcoiner. It's that he has a medium of exchange business, like he loves Bitcoin. He'd much prefer to use [00:51:00] only Bitcoin and only offer Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is not the best tool for the job in all cases for remittance and payments.

Knut: So how is Bitcoin doing as a unit of account in your

Cory: It's, it's terrible. Like nothing is really priced in Bitcoin except Bitcoin. Even shitcoins aren't priced in Bitcoin anymore. Um, and that will follow after people want to use it for medium of exchange, so. You know, I, I think I had a pretty aggressive timeline that I, I'm not moving off of it yet. I've been saying for a long time, four years now that I thought by 2035, uh, most goods and services around the world would be priced in sats, not only sats.

It'll be like sats in euros, sats in dollars, sats in yen, sats like, you know, just like the dual price tag at the. You know, duty free at the airport or something or in a tourist town. I don't know. We'll see. Things have to move faster than they are now to hit 2035 for most things being priced in sats. [00:52:00] They're not moving. They're not moving fast enough for that to happen by 2035, in my view, but, uh, you know, I like, what's the rush to like, this whole, this whole thing is going to be, it's going to be 80 years from start to full saturation anyway, because it's a technological revolution, not a damn tech product.

Gradually Then Suddenly

Knut: Yeah, so on a linear timeline, everything you say is true, but then you have the gradually then suddenly effect, which is not priced in here, right? It's priced into your argument, I mean.

Cory: It's always been suddenly. That's the thing. I think it's, it's gradually then suddenly, because it's like, what this really is, is like a series of technological revolutions, harnessing power, printing press, telecommunications, and like, none of, like, Bitcoin couldn't exist without all of these things happening before.

Maybe Bitcoin is the suddenly. And the suddenly is like the, the, the, the, we've been [00:53:00] growing like this as a species and advancing, and we just started up the S curve a little bit with the harnessing of power and fossil fuels and the invention of microchips and the internet. And like, maybe we're just actually all this advancement that we thought was going like this the last 200 years was actually still the, the flat part of the S curve and Bitcoin is the suddenly.

Knut: I love that, I love that picture because that's how I feel about this thing and I think like, now with, you know, us three sitting here on a video call and you're on the other side of the Atlantic, uh, this wouldn't have been possible 10 years ago, let alone 5 years ago, like pre Covid, video conferencing wasn't a thing, not at all in the, like people use it now, like always, it just wasn't very common pre Covid And this is just a couple of years back.

And social media is getting better and better, and you have Nostr as an alternative and all this stuff. Uh, [00:54:00] with, uh, ways of reaching and doing things across borders that just weren't possible before. And on top of that, you have zaps and, and, uh, you know, LNURLs and all of these beautiful inventions that really make every single border on Earth completely obsolete and just a thing of the past already.

Uh, and so, so it's just a matter of time before people figure out that, you know, doing things consensually and voluntarily is not only better for you and the person you're dealing with, but better for everyone else and more profitable. And when you can't take someone's bitcoins because they're in their heads, and if you kill them, they're lost.

Then you move the shelling point of violence and violence becomes less profitable. And this is, this is the prophecy here. Like, this is how this plays out. I truly believe that, that we're, we're actually at the starting point of the [00:55:00] gradually then suddenly for humanity and to, to reach next level. That's, yeah, a beautiful picture.

Cory: Yep. Yeah, absolutely agree.

so I want to just say like, you know,

Future Outlook

Cory: we are just, we're just figuring things out. And so many, every time that you fix something, you create a new set of opportunity.

We create a new set of problems. And opportunities, and ideally if you're broadly as a species moving in kind of the right direction, uh, the problems should be smaller and the opportunities should be better. And I just kind of think that what we're going to do with Bitcoin, the whole point of this, is that we are going to reduce the set of problems that we currently have, create a new set of problems that are smaller.

And create opportunities that are bigger and better because we promote Bitcoin adoption and we as a species adopt Bitcoin. [00:56:00] And that's, that's the best that you can hope for is this, this continual reduction in the, uh, The intractability and the severity of the problems, like cutting climate related deaths by 99 percent in 100 years, which is insane, right?

Like, what an achievement as a species, unbelievable. We all used to fucking die from floods and heat stroke and freezing in the snow and shit. And it doesn't happen anymore because we have harnessed energy. Like, what, what an achievement as a species, uh, and almost nobody, you know, in most of the world, almost nobody starves.

Right? And we used to starve a lot, right? What a, what a great achievement. Does that mean we've solved everything? No, but the problems are smaller. They're the biggest problems that we have today, but they pale in comparison to the problems that we had a hundred years ago. And I think that's what it's going to be like, like all the, all the kids under 30 in the year 2020 or 21, 24, a hundred years from now, all the kids [00:57:00] under 30.

Are going to think the horrible problems that exist in the world at the time are like the worst thing. And they're going to be all like staying up late, smoking weed, talking about how to like, you know, fix the system and shit, but they just won't have the context of history to realize like how dramatically better their world is than our world was a hundred years before.

That's what I hope happens. But to do that, we need a Bitcoin.

Knut: Yeah, that's a beautiful way of summarizing it. Uh, and it, yeah, aligns very well with, like, this Bitcoin is not the The signal, but it's the greatest noise remover ever created, so you can find your own signal. And, uh, you know, everything with, all we are searching for are better problems to have. That's, that's all you can get, really, because you still have the problem of death, which is going to be unpleasant, uh, and you try to avoid it for as long as you can.

And, uh, so, so all we can [00:58:00] ever really hope for is better problems to have. And, uh, that's what Bitcoin provides us with.

Cory: Yep. Yeah. I always just like to think about, you know, how recent events were. I think it, it made the rounds on, on Twitter or Facebook or something a few weeks ago that, uh, President John Tyler's grandson is alive. That's the 10th president of the United States. Like, how fucking crazy is that? I like doing weird shit like that.

Like, I had a grandfather born in 1911, right? So that's, you know, 113 years? so if you say like 1911, I can't type 1911, minus 113, that's 1798, right? So if you go like from my grandfather's birth. Backwards in time by that much, you're in the 1700s.

Knut: Yeah,

Cory: It puts things in perspective.[00:59:00]

You know, I always do this with, uh, you know, Dazed and Confused. It's one of my favorite movies from the 90s, you know, because I was in high school when it came out. And it's like, Dazed and Confused was like a historical artifact, right? For us Gen Xers, like you and me, Knut, not the Zoomers or Millennials or whatever Luke is.

You know, that was something about a time way before us. But it was actually about the last day of school in 1976. It was only 17 years later.

Knut: yeah, yeah.

Cory: And now it's been 31 years since Dazed and Confused came out.

Knut: Yeah. And that's, I think about that all the time. Like when I grew up and you know, the, you know, the grunge era, which we both grew up in and were teenagers and, and loved the music and everything. We've been talking about this before. Uh, and we thought of, uh, in, in those times we thought of like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and whatnot as ancient history.

But they were just [01:00:00] 20 years before that, and, like, the double amount of time has passed since our teenage years to now, so, like, it's just weird.

Cory: this is what happens. Yeah. Only people that come way after us can really have perspective about us. Right. And that's, that's why when we, when we think that all these issues are like big to us today and seem intractable, it's only because we're trying to solve a smaller set of problems than the people had a hundred years ago.

And so it's the people in the 21 hundreds are going to look back and they're going to judge us. For not being happy about where we are because, you know, 1924 was so much worse than 2024, but in 2124, they're going to look back and they're going to be like things and things when you complaining jerks were alive, thinking that everything was horrible, you know, it's like, you were just really trying to, you know, take advantage of the opportunities, the larger set of opportunities that you had, and you [01:01:00] were trying to solve this tiny subset of problems.

That are left over from the shit you already solved. They're not going to, they're not going to have any perspective about where they are at the time.

Knut: No.

Cory: It's all going to seem just like momentous and insurmountable.

Wrapping Up

Cory: All right. So let's wrap there. I'm, I'm Cory, I'm Cory. I'm a Bitcoiner, uh, you know, buy Bitcoin from Swan or something like that. I don't know, whatever. Follow Knut. Everything divided by 21 million. That's really what matters.

Luke: Thanks so Cory.

Knut: Thank you, Cory. Great talking to you. Yeah, take

Cory: go to Madera, go to Madera. There

Knut: Screw you guys. Cory's going home. Yeah.

Cory: you go.

Luke: Thanks a lot, Cory. Take care. This has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.

Cory: Thank you all. [01:02:00]