FFS086 - Metamick

[00:00:00]

Intro

Mick: you know, we realized actually only a few months after we started building Geyser that. Kickstarter and GoFundMe were only accessible in 30 countries. So like if you're in Brazil or Nigeria, you couldn't create a project and raise money on GoFundMe.

And, and we realized like, that's bizarre. . So, Bitcoin really, really, like, saves, saves mainly that because at the end of the day in the West, we still do have a lot of these tools and pretty, pretty powerful and useful, but in other parts of the world, where the banking system isn't as sophisticated.

And then also, it's not even just that, but one of the financial infrastructure that exists today, PayPal, Stripe, they're sort of, there's massive regulatory capture and they're not really allowed to I'm not going to extend their services beyond because they're deemed to be high risk, right? So, It's just, uh, it's just an insane way of just perpetuating financial apartheid, right? It's really dividing the world into different caps.

You know, you cannot use digital money and now we have Bitcoin. It's [00:01:00] like, well, now everyone gets digital money. Thankfully.

This is the Freedom Footprint Show, a Bitcoin philosophy show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke DeWolf. And we love to expand our freedom footprint. We hope you do too. The best way to do that is of course to try to emit as much freedom dioxide as possible. The best tool we have for doing that is of course Bitcoin.

Before we dive into today's show, we'd just like to tell you a little bit about how you can support us. First, to support us directly with Bitcoin, visit our Geyser page at Geyser. fund slash project slash freedom. Or you can send us sats directly to freedom at Geyser. fund. And for the month of February, Geyser is matching all contributions, up to a total of 500, 000 sats.

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And if you don't care too much [00:02:00] about Luke, you can always visit knutsvanholm. com where you can buy my fabulous wine, my books, and a t shirt or two. And if you don't feel like supporting your fellow Bitcoiners at all, at least like, subscribe, and brush your teeth. But seriously, that stuff actually helps.

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Welcoming Metamick from Geyser

Luke: welcome back to the Freedom Footprint Show, the Bitcoin Philosophy Show with Knut Svanholm and me, Luke the pseudo-fin. And today our guest is Metamick co-founder and CEO of Geyser, the Bitcoin crowdfunding platform that we're happy to be using as the best way to support our show, and we're thrilled to have Mik on here to tell us all about the platform and his Bitcoin [00:03:00] story and all this. So, mik, welcome to the Freedom Footprint

Mick: Uh, so good to be here. Thank you guys. Thanks, Luke. Thanks, Knut, for inviting me. It's really an honor.

Knut: Yeah, good to see you, Mick. We haven't seen you since Lugano, I believe.

Mick: I think it was, yeah, I think you're right. Lugano was the, was the last time. I still remember the first time we went. We were, uh, somewhere in some, uh, street in Riga, uh, discovering weird plants on the side corner of the street. I remember

Knut: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's when Izzy. Izzy

Mick: Yeah,

Knut: taking a piss in a dark corner somewhere and he comes out with this cannabis plant

Mick: right.

Knut: thingies and he found the in the in the wild. He'll see who finds a two meter tall cannabis plant just growing in the wild. Yeah, it was weird.

Mick: Yeah, that was a really good introduction to, to you guys.

Knut: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was. That was a fun night. I remember that that was a long night. [00:04:00] My memories from that night are blurry, to say the least.

Mick: Yeah,

Knut: all good fun.

Overview of Geyser

Knut: Yeah, and how? How is Geyser doing this these days? Like, what's going on

Mick: yeah, so Geyser is, we're always building, always just listening to users, always solving bugs, always, you know, making the platform better, but, uh, and lately we've been, uh, just, uh, doing just a bit of research in terms of how can we move Geyser forward and what's our sort of broader vision and where are we going?

And, um, we definitely see a need for, uh, More, um, kind of a community based approach, you know. Gaz is a place where people, you know, send, the creators send their fans to support them, obviously, as you guys know. but there's the potential to, to make it also more interactive with the, you know, making it a place where You know, special, uh, contributors get to have special rights to get access to certain, certain information, [00:05:00] certain, uh, uh, certain contents, um, and kind of creating more of a feeling of community for, for the creators.

So, yeah, sort of exploring, uh, where, where we want to go next, and we're really excited to be Yeah, supporting, I think, the hundreds of creators that are earning in Bitcoin and, um, yeah, it's really, it's really an honor to be supporting this, this, this, this community and this, uh, this, uh, um, this niche community that is the Bitcoin community.

But our aim is to also bring this, the tools that Bitcoin enables to the broader market as well.

Knut: So for those of you that don't know that, Geyser is a crowdfunding platform similar to Patreon, but with lightning pavements enabled. So you connect your lightning wallet to Geyser and you can get funded by the community.

Mick: Right, right. Yeah, more like, probably more or less between GoFundMe and Kickstarter because you can also sell rewards on Geyser. Um, but Patreon is a good, uh, is a good point because that's sort of trying to move [00:06:00] also in, in, in, in that direction in providing subscriptions and, um, and, uh, hidden content, uh, for, uh, payroll content for, for subscribers and so forth as well.

Knut: yeah, and we started talking a bit about this before we hit record here, but during the Canadian trucker protest a bit more than a year back now. Right, look, when the hell was that Like two years? The time goes too fast.

Mick: 22, yeah,

Knut: Yeah, so that's when you guys thought you had just started. And this is when they shut down all the funding for the truckers via GoFundMe, so that the Canadian population got a reminder that the money in their bank accounts are not really theirs because they can't use it as they please. But it's not permissionless by any definition of the word. So they hopped onto something called Tallycoin, which is another sort of [00:07:00] crowdfunding platform for Bitcoiners, I guess, but more on-chain variants of

Mick: that's right. Yeah, so, so when, when that whole thing happened, Geyser was just in its infancy. We had been born, uh, just a week before in a pilot. It was just a pilot project. There was only one project. On Geyser, but was a little input field where you could say, Hey, you have an idea, you know, drop your name, drop your idea and we'll, you know, get you on boarded because we just wanted to see, is this something that people even would want?

Like, do people care about this stuff? Um, and so we've released something super quickly, uh, in just a matter of a few months, and we got in a week more than like. A hundred, not a week, maybe the first month we got 150 to 100 requests for creators wanting to use Geyser as a platform. and, and that was for us like a signal that, okay, there's, there's something here.

Uh, but on the first week of being live, the whole Trucker. Stuff happened with GoFundMe. Actually, what happens is like, [00:08:00] the whole trucker company happened. You had GoFundMe raising funds, right? And we're like, oh my god, this is incredible. And then a few weeks later, they shut down. They froze the funds, right?

Because people have to understand, when you create a project on GoFundMe, You receive the funds in GoFundMe, GoFundMe, uh, uses a third party bank, uh, to custody the funds in GoFundMe. GoFundMe is essentially like a bank account, and, and that's why they could just freeze those funds and they said, okay, we're gonna freeze these funds and reuse them for other projects.

And people were like, you know, don't do that. They get sued. Um, and then eventually I think they give the funds back to the, the funders. But not only did they freeze the GoFundMe funds, they also froze bank accounts of those who sent the money. And I have friends who sent 10, and their bank accounts were frozen for a week.

So imagine that, how bizarre is that? And so that's why we had built Geyser in a non custodial [00:09:00] way, built on top of Voltage. built on top of, um, uh, of your own node, essentially, you could connect to your own node and receive Bitcoin on-chain and on Lightning to be fully censorship resistant. And that went really well for, a while.

Um, but yeah, at that point, Tallycoin, you could essentially send donations on-chain and you can still can, it's still a functional app, um, platform that allows you to do donations on-chain. I think also Lightning, if you connect. Like a separate, uh, service called, um, goodness, I cannot remember the service they use.

But yeah, so we'll have to kind of do a few more hops, uh, and yeah, and so, and I think it worked really well. I think there's, um, BDC Sessions, right, who was one of the key guys behind the whole initiative. Has some, has done some podcasts and talked about his experience and basically says like, I think as soon as the government started shutting down, he said, like, you know, I was scared for my life.

I just still, I shot on the project [00:10:00] itself, um, uh, in order to just Be sure that this one, you know, create troubles for him as well. So, the best way to do in these types of ultra sensitive scenarios is to use a fully, you know, user owned node, um, uh, like you can do at Geyser, or You can also, you know, use, um, you know, BTC, uh, Payserver, right?

A really good, uh, censorship resistant, censorship resistant option. And, Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's, it can, it can get tough, right? In terms of government, government seizing funds. So, but But Geyser, after Having a node approach, which is fully non custodial and censorship resistant, we decided, look, there's actually still massive limitations here.

running a node is not simple. Most people were like, no thank you, I have to kind of manage channels to get a 1 million sat donation, I need to have 1 million sats in Lightning channels. And I don't have anything. How do I get started if I don't have anything? [00:11:00] Voltage is great, but I still have to pay 10 a month to get that going.

So now we've figured out a solution to allow creators to link their Lightning address from their Lightning wallet. And just start receiving the funds directly in there. And there's a lot of technical complexity with Lightning, but there's, one thing that really works is custodial Lightning.

So it really, really, it really does work with all its limitations. I'm not saying that's good. In fact, I definitely recommend to move your funds. Uh, out of custodial wallets as much as possible, but it really works in terms of usability in terms of mass adoption. So, yeah, that's worked really well and that really has helped us scale.

Now we have over a hundred new creators every month joining Geyser. We have, you know, over, uh, you know, sometimes we reach three bitcoins in transactions per month. So there's a lot of activity. Yeah, so you can fund on-chain, and then what we do is we swap it over to Lightning. So [00:12:00] you receive everything in one place. Because we don't like the idea of having, you receive your on-chain Bitcoin in one wallet, and you receive your Lightning payments in another wallet. Instead, we kind of reconcile it all over into your Lightning wallet.

Knut: okay, yeah, a couple of things come to mind here.

It's so, it's so funny how, how history is playing out right before our eyes and we're in the middle of it just seeing these things happen. Like one thing that comes to mind the, the, the steep learning curve, right when, when people Realize what's actually going on. So you had, when the Ukraine Russia war started, there was a guy I don't remember if it was a Russian or a Ukrainian, but someone trying to get out with a briefcase full of a gold bar, a stack of dollars, a stack of euros and a stack of rubles, and, of course, he gets stuck in customs and the customs officer takes it all, or the lion's share of it anyway. the comments [00:13:00] under the tweet and under the picture is just look at this idiot who can't remember 12 birds. And People are gonna learn that lesson right. And the second thing is the, the, of course, the trucker thing, when, when people realize that their bank accounts weren't theirs, and Then they, they learn how to Bitcoin pretty fast after a thing like that happens. So, so it's just so, and I, I think, where we, as I know, I am, as a as a hardcore Bitcoiner, a bit biased and I think that, like things are already developed and we've got this already, but we're so early like these things are just being built and you're one of the the the apps that are Literally changing the world at the moment, even though it's baby steps at first. Still, three bit coin is it's three

Mick: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man, look, it's, it's, it's, you're right. It's going to, it's going to take a lot of learning. It's going to take a lot of painful lessons. [00:14:00] and the challenges ahead are not, and there's technical challenges too, right? Like non custodial lightning is challenging, but, uh, uh, my, my personal perspective and I'm super, you know, super also hardcore Bitcoin maxi.

Like I, I love, you know, I'm for, for self, self, um, self sovereignty, not censorship resistance. But if we want to onboard the world, there will have to be some compromises potentially, and it might take us Decades to figure out a non custodial solution that works at scale, right? Because even a non custodial solution, uh, light means solution, um, wouldn't actually scale to more than a hundred million people.

So custodial, I think we're going to have to reconcile with the idea that there may be things like Bitcoin banks that custody funds, uh, for, for a lot of people. but if people have to still, and then as we develop the tools that are non custodial, that are, that are more, that are more [00:15:00] censorship resistant, but these are being developed, like there's ARK.

I'm really interested in seeing how that goes. There's, um, all sorts of super smart people that can find the ways forward, but in any case, Bitcoin is still better. So like the way that I see it is. Custodial Bitcoin is still better than non custodial shitcoins, or, or custodial fiat, you know what I mean?

Knut: exactly that. That's the way I see it too. Like it's unfortunate that we have to use custodial, but still your, your stack is the important thing, and that you run your on-chain node and then you can run custodial and you can have it in flows and outflows there, never if it becomes too much at some point, just put them in cold storage, do a one-time payment and then just keep it as a. I mean, that's the way I do it when I go to conferences and stuff. Like I I Sell some t-shirts, a book, so whatever, and then I get a little pocket money for you know, stakes and bears and whatnot. So it and it works and you [00:16:00] know it's all. There's always a trade-off between convenience and security. Right,

Mick: Yeah, and I'm not, I'm not suggesting we should be complacent, right, or, or that we should stack our stats in wallets or doshi, not at all. Um, people should, but, but we also need some easy first steps for, for a lot of these newbies that, that need to get started.

Knut: it's tricky, though.

One thing I noticed is, like I used to, sometimes I recommend products, apps and stuff and in hindsight, I wish I hadn't, like blockchaininfo, for instance. In back in 2017 I recommended it to everyone and it fucking sucks. They went to total shit-con casino in KYC and crap. Then I recommended Moon. I still like Moon, but Moon shut down their lightning channels. So if they got like 10 euros in the lightning payment just to check it out, that money is gone now because they don't have their lightning channels anymore. They [00:17:00] come to me and ask me okay, what happened? And I'm like, yeah, they shut down their lightning channels.

Didn't you get the memo? Aren't you like following every single Bitcoin person on Twitter?

Luke: that was blue wallet connected just

Knut: Yeah, blue Wall.

Luke: you said no,

Knut: I said Moon. Okay, that was Blue Wallet. Sorry, moon, I love Moon. I love Blue Wallet as well. Still, I mean, anub wouldn't understand that they need to keep updated about their custodial app. They expect it to be as safe as a bank account and well, there's a bias there too. They think their bank account is safer than it is. But yeah, still, I prefer custodial lightning to fiat. Custodial fiat. That's what I'm saying. we're going with this.

Geyser's Roadmap

Knut: So, Geyser what's coming up [00:18:00] ahead Like? What's on the roadmap? What's your ambition for the future?

Mick: Yeah, so, yeah, so. So we, for this year, we really focused on making the funding experience seamless, right? So we integrated on-chain payments, uh, we integrated, yeah, this lightning address payment solution, um, that works super, super, super easy for creators, um, and what we then spent the last three months on, three, four months on, is, migrating Geyser over to Nostr.

So every Geyser project right now has its own npub And so, what that does is that it does many, many things. First of all, it makes the project more censorship resistant. Because now you can take the private key. of your project, and if, you know, if the project gets shut down on Geyser, you can always take it somewhere else if you wanted to.

Like, and it creates the potential, creates the potential for, say, other crowdfunding platforms to sprout up and start pulling projects from [00:19:00] Geyser. Like, if there's someone else who's like, I want to create another project, another crowdfunding platform. Geyser, Geyser has been compromised, right?

We've become too successful, too complacent, we've been captured. Well, now another platform can just start taking projects, start viewing activity, all the project data, and displaying it in their own platform. And even if we were to censor them, that data exists across Nostr relays So that is great for censorship resistance, but also great for creators because it allows them to reach more people because every time they write an entry or an update.

That can spread across Nostr, and that means more viewership, more funding, more, uh, more attention, and so forth. So, we spent quite a bit of time on that, but we have to still iron out some things. But we're planning to integrate more Nostr features like notes, posts, on Geysers, we can write quick updates.

And as I mentioned, trying to [00:20:00] learn more about how we can create subscriptions in some smart ways, uh, and enable You know, say if you're a subscription to Knut's podcast, you know, you get to see some, some, some, some, uh, paywalled content. Um,

Knut: dancing like you get access to my only

Mick: exactly. Yes. Who wouldn't want to see Knut dancing, right? Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly.

So there's stuff that you can do there. And the point is to kind of learn from what's been happening in the creator economy, whether it's Kickstarter, Patreon. And what we see overall as, uh, you know, on the, in the world of the internet is just the, the power of creators, right? Like, I, I find it just, I find this so fascinating just to think about how much the world has changed in the last, say, 30 yeathe thanks to the internet, right?

You, you have first, you have, first you have the birth of social media. Right? With Twitter, with Facebook, around 20 or so years ago. [00:21:00] Then, five years after that, you had crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe. It's like, oh, now you can receive money, you know, send a link to Twitter or to Facebook.

People follow you through the social media platform, they click on your project and then they fund you on these other platforms. Then you have content platforms like YouTube, Verizon, YouTube, Spotify, and all these creators that are creating great content. They don't just want to send them to like a Kickstarter GoFundMe, they want to send them to a place where they can actually subscribe and pay recurring payments.

That's where Patreon Onlyfans, Substack, Gumroad, all these are subscription based, well, Gumroad maybe not so much. The others are all subscription based models that allow the creator to monetize in a way that they can't through just a YouTube channel, right? With YouTube, you can make, you know, thousands of dollars if your video gets millions of views.

But if you don't [00:22:00] get millions of views, if you don't have millions of subscribers, It's really hard to make a living as a creator, as a content creator, as a creator in general. Um, and so, and so, you know, there's all sorts of models, like there's subscription, there's advertisements, there's donations, uh, and so, um, and so it's an ecosystem that is in development.

And, you know, there's all sorts of experiments happening. but now with Bitcoin, you have an even more powerful tool because With Bitcoin, money flows a lot quicker. You don't have to put in your credit card details. you, you, you have, you know, some, even a wallet on your own browser. Um, like Albi you have, you can send funds not to Kickstarter, like you guys have a Geyser Lightning address, right?

Which is freedom@geyser.Fund and someone types it in their Wallet of Satoshi, they, they, they don't have to go to Geyser.Fund to fund you. It's an incredibly powerful property of interoperability, like you can send money ubiquitously from wherever, [00:23:00] and this Lightning address is the key funding identifier, and it's just, it's like 100x better than using your credit card.

Knut: as creators ourselves, we, I mean, we know that we're playing this game like we're trying to do it seriously. So we're trying to run it somewhat as a business and, you know, having sponsors and all that, and we, of course, everyone who has sponsors says I only is, but I use all of my sponsors products and there's some ball shaving kit and some stuff like that that there's no way in hell that they're actually using it, but but we actually like, have so many synergies with all the, all the people that that have sponsored us like that we really really like and use their products, because that this is the bitcoin ecosystem. Everything's connected right and we're we all benefit from helping one another and it's such a like we're really trying to tap into that and live the [00:24:00] live that meme as well, because it's so powerful. We don't have to compete, we can just collaborate, all of us. It's. It's just fantastic.

Mick: Yeah, we went together, right?

Knut: yeah, so, yeah,

Bitcoin Lifetime Subscriptions

Knut: yeah, we talked to Stefan Livera yesterday and we, we went down a funny part of the rabbit hole.

If you, if you envision hyperbitcoinization and you know, number go up forever and all of this. I can see a subscription model that is possible with bitcoin but not possible with fiat, and that is a one-time payment. If for a lifetime subscription, I mean, that exists in fiat also, but it's very rare because you have to put up a hell of a lot of money for that to make any type of sense at all. But in bitcoin, given that the receiver believes bitcoin to go up forever, the bar is much lower to where you [00:25:00] just send a bitcoin donation once and there you go. That's, that's all the bitcoiner needs, and I think that's just so fascinating to think about. Like, what happens then? do we just fund one another once and then we'd just be awesome to one another after that? Like, is that it? Like? How does that

Mick: Yeah, it's a good question, man. It's something I've been thinking about a lot. Like, what is the cadence? How is that important? In fiat, it's different than in bitcoin. But in bitcoin, I feel like as much as I like to believe that that bitcoin will go up forever the human brain the experience of the human brain is such that Actually, that, that will take time, right?

And, and because Bitcoin goes through these bear cycles and the bear cycles feels like, feel like infinity as well, to some extent. And so four years, you have to think four years ahead of time of what that might be [00:26:00] worth and maybe multiply that by, by some, by some amounts. but yeah, but we don't, but we don't know, how much that, that, that, that multiplier actually is.

And in any case, in four years, depending also on what age you are, four years can be a hell of a lot of time, and so you might not be thinking that far ahead, but for those who have a low time preference, uh, then yeah, definitely, I can see that happening,

Knut: the real power there, as I see it, is that you can have both. You can have both a cash flow in flow and a cash outflow, and then you can also have your, like your stack growing from one time payments every now and then, the one does not,

Mick: exclude the others.

Knut: exclude the others don't know. Because you can have all of it. All it requires is like okay, I need this to exist during these cycles, but to survive after the cycle and to thrive after the cycle, I need to have this mindset of as well. [00:27:00] I need to yeah, so all of these basic, basic theories of economics that I was taught as a child.

When you can still make money from interest by by just saving money in a bank account, no one can do that anymore. But we were told, like pay 10% to yourself, save 10% for yourself or whatever you make, which is very good advice if you're on a Bitcoin standard, if you're on a fiat standard, it's not because you're just gonna lose that money over time. But, but it poses some fascinating questions. Like makes you think about what. Yeah, it's a weird future to go into, but but like I would say, like, when you're talking about, like the internet, changing things over the last 30 years, but I mean post lockdowns it has been more powerful than ever with these. This thing, for instance, riverside, we asked just talking to one another by the click of a button and recording high quality content, of course, [00:28:00] the highest quality content, since it does.

But it's absolutely amazing that we can do this and that we can do Bitcoin back and forth. It's truly erases borders in a way. That just wasn't there

Mick: Totally, man, totally, and there's, and there's, just like, people were mind blown about, Say Airbnb, like, you know, you kind of think of Airbnb as a, as an idea, as a business model before the internet. And even when the internet was born, it would have been inconceivable. And even when the guys started that Airbnb, it's called Airbnb because they, you could rent air mattresses.

But they couldn't even conceive of how big it could be, right? And this is true for so much in technology, like, it's like, it's a lot of just trial and error, people trying shit and stuff working, stuff not working, and then realizing actually there's something much, much greater. And, um, and I think the same is true with Bitcoin and, you know, Bitcoin businesses as well.

There's, there's, there's so much [00:29:00] potential growth and new things that can be done with Bitcoin. Uh, as a, as a monetary technology, but as also as technology technology, that's like programmable money that we are able to, you know, uh, self custody, stand at our will. And yeah, it's going to be super interesting.

I mean, it is already super interesting, but who knows what even we can ideate, uh, you know, magic going forward, 10, 20 years.

Knut: just as a communication snap work, it enables so much like ways of interacting with one another simply weren't possible before. Like it used to be a hassle to send a small payment from one country to another, or or a large payment for that, for that matter, but now it isn't like not at all. It's super duper simple. Yeah, changing the world one planet at a

Mick: Absolutely. And maybe just to talk a bit about Geyser here as well, because, you [00:30:00] know, we realized actually only a few months after we started building Geyser that. that Kickstarter and GoFundMe were only accessible in 30 countries. So like if you're in Brazil or Nigeria, you couldn't create a project on, and raise money on GoFundMe.

And, and we realized like, that's bizarre. Like, that's absolutely bizarre. Um, and then Patreon was able to figure something out, but it's super, super challenging. To do it, you have to be KYC'd if you're, you know, in third world countries and so forth, but it's still a horrible experience. So, Bitcoin really, really, like, saves, saves mainly that because at the end of the day in the West, we still do have a lot of these tools and pretty, pretty powerful and useful, but in other parts of the world, um, where the banking system isn't as sophisticated.

And then also, it's not even just that, but one of the financial infrastructure that exists today, PayPal, Stripe, they, they're sort of, [00:31:00] there's massive regulatory capture and they're not really allowed to I'm not going to extend their services beyond because they're deemed to be high risk, right? So, I actually used to work in a bank and remember once hearing this thing, Oh, but we cannot allow our payment channels to open to, you know, this country in Africa because, you know, there could be terrorism.

So, this excuse is just It's just, uh, it's just an insane way of just perpetuating financial apartheid, right? That's what Ray Youssef calls it. I think it's absolutely spot on. Financial apartheid is Uh, a really good way of putting it because it's, it's, it's really dividing the world into different caps.

You know, you cannot use digital money and now we have Bitcoin. It's like, well, now everyone gets digital money. Thankfully.

Knut: fascinating stuff.

[00:32:00] [00:33:00]

Introduction to Metamick

Luke: yeah. Why don't we take this in the direction we're usually supposed to start with, but we always skip because Canute has ADD? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, mick, your introduction how you got

Knut: about that.

Make [00:34:00] you,

Mick: and it has this democratizing effect and wealth generating effect for all of humanity. And I just, for my first time in my life, even though I had studied economics, even though, you know, I was told, you know, about the power of technology, I didn't really, I really only understood it then, like how, how, how powerful it can be in terms of bringing up everyone.

Um, and then [00:35:00] a few months after that I learned about Bitcoin. I learned, I learned about it and I had been introduced to Bitcoin in 2010 in my university dorm room. My friend told me, hey Mike, let's buy some Bitcoins. And I immediately thought, I don't know how, but I just, my association was this is sort of virtual money that anyone can fuck with.

And then when I learned about it again in 2016, 2017, I was like, oh, wow, this is, this is money that nobody can fuck with. Um, and I, I love that. I love the idea of, of, of, of something that, that cannot be tampered with, whether it's governments, whether it's corporations. And what really lured me in as well were the memes, like, seeing all these crazy memes of these crazy people on Twitter, uh, saying this, you know, like, just all these Pepe, uh, uh, memes, all these memes about, you know, not being able to And the Neo meme really, really got to me, the Neo meme, you know, are we going to be able to sell Bitcoin for a million dollars?

No, when you're ready, you're not going to have to. At that point, I was like, okay, these guys are either crazy, or they've understood something so, [00:36:00] so powerful, and Luckily enough, I was in a time of my life that I was sort of humble and open to, to being wrong because everything I've been taught, you know, not everything, but a lot, you know, economics, you know, as a lot of it had to go down the trash and be challenged.

Um, but luckily anthropology, although it has a lot of flaws, helped me to kind of basically say, okay. What if these guys are right? Well, let's consider the possibility that they're right and, um, and that Bitcoin really is, is, is money. And, um, and so, yeah, so with that, I went down the rabbit hole, and then I ended up, and at that point, I was working on UX design, user research, um, kind of the design side of technology, because I really thought at that point that You know, uh, uh, there's something quite, quite good, uh, like morally good about building, building tools for people.

and I think building is, I think what you guys do, for example, education, that's building, like, that's absolutely building, [00:37:00] so, so powerful. And then there's tools, and there's information, and then all of this can help. Rise Humanity, uh, I think. And so, after that I worked in so many different companies, I worked in fintech, uh, I worked in, uh, and ended up also working in crypto for a year, which was really an ethereal startup, God forbid.

Um, but, uh, it was, it was, I know, I know, uh, I lash myself every morning. But no, it's funny. Actually, I was very much a Bitcoiner. I was like, let's see here what we can learn. And there's definitely a lot, a lot of products, a lot of great tools that have been built on Ethereum. There's all sorts of things that I thought inspired me.

There were some cool crowdfunding platforms out there. I was like, why is this not in Bitcoin? Why these tools don't exist in Bitcoin? And so, and so I was like, that's it. You know, I'm done here. I'm going to start building them. I'm going to start building them, a lot of these tools, uh, a cross funding platform on Bitcoin because it's needed.

And we need that creator economy on Bitcoin. [00:38:00] so yeah, I decided to kind of, uh, quit my other job and just start focusing on, on Geyser at the point. super, super thankful for, for this and, uh, super excited every day to be, to be helping build on Bitcoin.

It's an absolute privilege.

Knut: super cool, cool story. And yeah, as you say, like, an open mind is important, but it's useless if you're not intellectually honest. Like, as Terry Pratchett said, the problem with an open mind is that people would come along and try to put stuff in it like Ethereum,

Mick: mention lightning to a guy named Ethereum, he will sort of literally just put his head in the sand.

He'll, like, act as if that didn't exist. They never talk about it, right? And their solutions, [00:39:00] their layer 2s are built on blockchains, they have their own shift coins as well. Um, it's, it's, it's an absolute aberration of, of, of everything, it's like they're proprietary, closed, they have several layer 2s that don't speak to each other.

Like, and I started realizing what this was, just like a casino of sorts. Um, a lot of gambling, just a lot of gambling, a lot of, you know, JPEGs, and at first sometimes You know, it can be fun, but then it's like, what the fuck are we doing here, guys? Like, what's the point? Like, what are we trying to do? Are we trying to really, like, make this a better world where we create money for the entirety of humanity?

Are we trying here to change the world and make the world a better place through sound money? And that, that idealism, those, those, that ethics is completely lacking, right? Or it's, it's very superficial because they use the word decentralization as a, [00:40:00] as a, as a surrogate for, for, for freedom. And it's not because it's not true decentralization. So, yeah, so I was completely out of place and that's why I wasn't, yeah, I wasn't very welcome.

Knut: the. This pisses me off so much because, like, first of all, the theorem isn't decentralized at all, so they're pretending that the users are decentralized somehow or in, like this world computer narrative, they add on everything but, like, the decentralization in Bitcoin is an unfortunate means to a much greater end, which is some money for the world. Sensorship, resistant, peer-to-peer all that's good stuff. You can have them in your head. But if we, it's Unfortunate that we need the decentralization, because the decentralization makes it slow and clunky. But we need it because we can't trust people with money, because Absolute crap corrupt and makes everything crap and all this crap,

Mick: That's the whole point. That's the whole [00:41:00] point of the Bitcoin, uh, both blockchain and the proof of work, right, is that it's, it's reliable. That's the only feature that it needs because reliability is fucking hard to get. And the only way to get it is through a lot of work and, uh, shit everything else, right, because that's the key trade off.

Knut: yeah, and you can only get it once, because all it is is a number on the internet that doesn't change and Any, any copy of that is redundant by definition. So, yeah, well, there's that. Here's the thought I had before that I lost about the when the ADD kicked in, like, I think a lot of the problems with these, like I think a lot of the problems with these older things like PayPal and GoFundMe and whatnot and Also Robinhood, for that matter like when, when they when the whole GameStop stock thing people were hodling and using the hodl meme and all this and then they all got. [00:42:00] Then they were all surprised when they were rug pulled, like you could have done this with something that they couldn't take away from you. You can do the exact same on Bitcoin over and over again, and you guys just don't realize that that's a fact, and but.

But the thing I thought about was with the other things is that a lot of people, in a lot of cases, you need to be a company in order to make money. So for an individual, an individual needs to start a company in the country they're in, and that's usually a tedious and quite pricey thing to do from For most people, if, if you're 18 years old and you just finished school and like, that's not something you just go and do for most people, and so then if you start making some serious money, you can get into a lot of tax trouble. If you don't, if you don't have a company In Bitcoin, there's no difference between a company and a person. It's just a fucking telegram group and that's it, and you [00:43:00] don't need a board, you don't need accounting, you don't need anything. You just need you know your brain, and maybe some other people maybe not like that's all.

That's true Everywhere now, and the regulators will have to to realize that that's the world we're living in already.

Mick: start Geyser, because he just sort of helped me understand how powerful this was. He said, literally, anyone can start a company with Bitcoin.

You don't need a banking license to be a crowdfunding platform. He didn't say this, but you don't need a banking license to operate. You don't need to apply to a bank. You don't need, you need, you, it's permissionless, you can just start building a product and, and, and transmitting payments, receiving payments, et cetera, [00:44:00] without, without a banking approval and to think that GoFundMe, Kickstarter, when they started, like, I have immense respect for them as well, because when they started, they must have, they must have gotten some sort of massive success.

Partnership. Like, they must have paid so much money to get these, these banking partners to, to do what they were looking for. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's insane. Just the amount of effort, probably months, years to get this bank, banking partnership in place. To us, nothing. We just, just connected to Bitcoin.

We just connected to Bitcoin, right? And, uh, it's very, very low, low, low, low, low, low cost and infrastructure. Luckily, we also were able to build on top of an already existing Bitcoin infrastructure like Voltage, which is awesome for routing payments and running a node, that really helps as well. But yeah, regulators have no idea, like, what's coming.

[00:45:00] There's going to be an explosion of just products, services, tools that you can plug and play on the internet.

Knut: when they hop in and try to regulate it, it will already be in place, like it's already there and it's already so obvious that it's a better solution. It's like when they tried to stop IP telephony, like all the phone companies had to surrender at some point because it's just obvious that the internet is better than using dinosaur shit. Like the same is true for money, of course. Yeah, yeah, it's great.

[00:46:00]

View of Bitcoin Going Forwarda

Knut: [00:47:00] you,

Mick: and it's been, as I say, yeah, bear markets are for builders and it's amazing that we've done so much, everything we've done so far has been in a bear market. So, in some way, I have no idea what to expect, um, uh, as to what the next bull market will, will look like.

Uh, we know Bitcoin works through science cycles and, That's, you know, it's going to probably do its thing, right? Um, I don't know, [00:48:00] yeah, I think, I think it could, it's interesting, right? I think with this whole ETF stuff, it's a chance, it's possible that I, I think the way that it's been approved, I'm quite cynical with this stuff, right?

So, the reason it's been approved is because at the end of the day, Bitcoin as an ETF is really just a speculative asset, right? So, it's basically been approved by the Wall Street bros, right? Just like, just let us gamble with Bitcoin regulators, right? And the regulators are like, ah, we don't like Bitcoin, but fine, we'll let you do that.

Because in any case, they make the capital gains, right? Every time the data gets traded and they make money from that too. Um, but, but I think it's just, again, Bitcoin doing it's thing and sort of Being this mirror where everyone gets to see what they want and, and then just expanding its, its breadth, expanding its, its, um, its adoption in all forms.

but ultimately what I am interested in, [00:49:00] and I definitely follow Ray Youssef here quite a lot, is I see Bitcoin as, as money, as like, as, as peer to peer electronic cash. That people should use to trade, to exchange, that nobody can dictate, right, what people are trading. And I, uh, I, that's what I'm for, and that's why, that's what we call Geyser.

And I think it's, you know, that's what we have to really keep pushing and try to get Bitcoin as a legal standard in as many countries as possible. Because that's what Bitcoin is meant to be. So, although I don't, I don't really give a shit about the ETF per se, I see it as again, a further infiltration tool by Bitcoin to increase its own adoption.

and, um, and yeah, it's possible that it'll, it'll even lead to even greater highs with the bull market, and that people will get wrecked and, and try to realize, okay, what the fuck is this, and start paying attention and start doing the research and listening to Knut and Luke's podcast. Um, so that's sort of, I don't know, I see that as the same.

Same, that, [00:50:00] the same, same thing happening, right? The same, uh, cycle of, greater attention, greater awareness, you know, wrecked. Education building and so forth. And this is just like a further escalation of that, which is incredible. so, yeah, I mean, in terms of, I don't know if that's sort of what answers the question to where we're going, but, uh, I think, I think that's, I think that's that.

I'm not sure in terms of numbers what we should target. I don't know.

Knut: no, but that's great. Like there are so many different angles to view bitcoin from. Like some view as love it, as a savings technology, and you, as you say, you're in on team cash and the international friction, less payments, and there's like just so many different ways to look at this thing and and learn from it.

Mick: Totally. It's great saving technology. Absolutely. But if we don't use it as [00:51:00] a means of payment, um,

Knut: Uh,

Mick: it's, it's going to die. I think I'm afraid it's going to die.

Knut: I don't know that, I don't know if it's gonna die, but but uh, but we're, we're sort of missing out on a, on a great feature, a great functionality of the thing, like that. That's what it was built for to be teleportable. That's one of the reasons why we value it and can save in it,

Mick: belief that, yeah, who knows if it'll die or not, probably not, of course not, but, uh, but yeah, this idea that, like, sats need to flow for Bitcoin to gain more adoption, like, Bitcoin in more people's hands, and, Spreads the likelihood of, of, of Bitcoin and actually being used as, as music exchange.

Um, and in a world where, where, [00:52:00] you know, say Bitcoin is legal tender everywhere. Well, wouldn't you want to, you know, you probably still wanna remain very conservative in terms of your spanning habit. It doesn't mean go dj, right? So going DGen is like on the other extreme, and then huddling is complete other extreme.

Uh, where you're just completely just holding, and I think landing the sats flow is somewhere, you know, somewhere in the middle where you're not just throwing money at JPEGs, you're, you're spreading Bitcoin through donations or through purchases, which helps to spread Bitcoin further, uh, into more hands.

Knut: spend and replace.

Mick: it's better replaced.

Knut: That's a good, a good way to look at it. And yeah, as far as legal tender goes, like, we here on the freedom footprint show are against legal tender laws we think I Think I speak for Luke as well that we think that anyone should be able to Transact in whatever currency they want [00:53:00] like. So I prefer the melee approach to the To the book a la approach there,

Mick: yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree. I mean, Fiat was born, um, right, as a threat. Like, you have to use this, right? You have to use it by decree. It only works because it's forced upon us. So you don't need to force me to use Bitcoin, like, I'll use it.

Knut: yeah and yeah.

Wrapping Up

Knut: So I urge everyone listening to this to go and try to use Geyser, and the best way to do that is, of course, to Support the freedom footprint show, and we have the best like address in the world, don't we, luke? Free Freedom at Geyserfund. How awesome is that so? So don't forget to like, subscribe, brush your teeth. And here's me begging for money, I guess.

Knut: [00:54:00] Yeah,

Luke: you like what you've been hearing, if you like what we've been doing, please go to our Geyser page Geyserfundcom. Slash project, slash freedom, or our address is freedom at Geyserfund. And, yeah, send us some sats, or we're going to do more with the page, especially as new features come out with Geyser. We're in this for the long haul and we're going to take advantage of absolutely everything that's coming out. So, yeah, follow along and check out Geyser for everything that you're looking at like, see what other creators are on there. And [00:55:00] if you have something that you want to do, yeah, make a Geyser page and start spreading the word on Noster on Twitter, all the places, right. So yeah, that's it. That's the pitch,

Knut: Mick, you'll have to tell us whenever the new features come out so I can start dancing in my underwear.

Mick: I will, I will, yeah, we'll make sure to do a partnership for that. And, uh, let you know beforehand. Yeah, that's interesting. But yeah, look, and also if there's any feedback, we're also super open to feedback and questions or suggestions. Also, feel free to reach out to me. And, uh, um, yeah, the basic belief is really that everyone's a creator, right?

Everyone has. I can contribute to Bitcoin in some way, whether it's doing a podcast, uh, whether it's writing a book or, uh, or dancing in the street, waving a Bitcoin banner, people are going to be willing to send you some stats [00:56:00] for your awesome, awesome work. So, uh, that's really, that's really the idea here that anyone can contribute, contribute to Bitcoin.

Knut: Speaking of dancing naked in the street with the Bitcoin banner, did you see when Jonah Camoto showed his QR code bar tab to Twitter and people started ordering stuff for him at the restaurant

Mick: No way. I

Knut: That was fantastic. So he just got more and more food, him and his girlfriend. They couldn't eat it all because, like, yeah, it was great,

Mick: Speaking of what can be done, right? Bitcoin and save.

Knut: yeah, it's insane. Like I remember in the early days of social media, when people realized that they could like meme big gatherings into existence and, all of a sudden, like the authorities didn't know what to do because, all of a sudden, 200,000 people are gathering for a large party in some park somewhere, and that was in the news every [00:57:00] now and then. Then, I guess, facebook and the likes of it figured out ways to make that not happen. But now, with Nostrand and

Mick: Yeah,

Knut: Bitcoin, we can literally change the world.

Mick: yeah, super powerful, super powerful tools.

Knut: yeah.

Any final thoughts before we move on? Mick, mick, is there anything we have left out here that

Mick: Nah, it's been, it's been awesome to chat, guys. Uh, I have not much else to say. I mean, yeah, thanks again for the invite. Thanks for the, really love what you guys are doing. Keep doing the hard work, the good work. Keep inviting awesome guests. And, uh, um, yeah, looking forward to keep growing with you guys and spreading the word of Bitcoin.

Knut: right, by Katya Mick, we love what you're doing too. So check out Geyserfund that's the address right,

Mick: Yeah, that's it.

Knut: Geysercom as well. Maybe

Mick: Guys with, no, guys without fun [00:58:00] only at the moment.

Knut: give you Geyserfund, so yeah,

Mick: soon, soon.

Knut: and where can people find you?

Mick: I'm metamick14 on Twitter, on Telegram. You can reach out to me, Mick, at guyswithoutfun, if you have any thoughts, questions, feedback, or suggestions. And yeah, super open to hearing back.

Knut: Fantastic, looking forward to a long and prosperous relationship.

Mick: Let's do it.

Luke: All right, fantastic. Thanks a lot for joining us, mick, and this has been the Freedom Footprint Show. Thanks for listening.