0:00 And I'm always just like, "Dude, sell your ETH, buy Bitcoin. Sell your ETH, buy Bitcoin." And he like kind of gets 0:06 it, kind of listens. But this week with hitting all-time highs, he like reached 0:12 out and was like, "I'm going to put I'm going to do this with Bitcoin and I'm I finally get it. Da da da. I'm going to 0:18 sell my ETH." And I'm like, "Let's [ __ ] go." Then of course, like a day later, now ETH is short-term pumping and 0:24 I'm like, "This [ __ ] is going to reach out to me and be like, dude, like I should have." And I'm like I I I'd 0:30 have been like, "Bro, I have been telling you to sell and buy Bitcoin for 0:35 years now. I am not letting this slight 6% spread impact how how your decision-m 0:43 plays into this." But anyways, maybe this is the pump though. Maybe this is the one time ETH takes back. You 0:50 know, that's what they're always thinking in their head. Dude, they're think they're thinking F-word, but I'm not going to I'm not going to give that credit. And this is 0:56 not an Ethereum or a crypto podcast, so I'm not even going to give it the time of day. 1:03 [Music] 1:10 But the reason why I wanted to share that story is because we have Ted there on the podcast today. Welcome to the 1:17 Medium of Exchange podcast. Great to be here. Ted, you complete the trifecta of our guests because we have 1:23 had two of your friends already on the podcast. Both of them you connected us with with Daniel and Jordan. So, it was 1:30 only a matter of time until you yourself came onto the show and we just, you 1:35 know, dive into everything that you're working on. And I'm really excited to hear about your project Feed Filter as 1:41 well as your journey in Bitcoin and just how you ended up here building at Pleb 1:46 Lab in Austin, Texas, the epicenter of Bitcoin in the world in my opinion. And 1:51 overall, just talk about how you view things because I feel like we always have pretty interesting and uh fun 1:56 conversations. So with that, Ted, thanks for joining and welcome to the show. 2:02 Yeah, great to be here. It's a long time coming. 100%. Um, you know, before we get into 2:08 Feed Filter, I do want to just like go take a step back and talk a little bit 2:13 about your uh upbringing and like where you came from because we had a crazy connection this morning where we found 2:20 out that our dads actually worked together uh back in Boston like for I don't even know how many years. They're 2:26 both at the same company for over 25 years, so there was probably a very good amount of overlap. So, yeah, just give 2:33 give a little bit background about yourself. Um, and how you ended up here in Austin. Yeah, that's quite the connection that 2:39 we found there. But, uh, yeah, I guess you could say that um, well, my dad's side of the family at 2:45 least, he goes all the way back in theory to pilgrims. So they came they're kind of an early wave and uh you know 2:51 how it goes like you sort of start with the pioneers and the pioneers become the institutionalists they build up their 2:56 institutions and I you know like obviously all of our institutions are very corrupted right now but I do think 3:01 that you know we're building institutions here at Bitcoin Commons at Pleb Lab so there is great value in the 3:08 institutions and so I would say that my family that I grew up in is extremely rooted in that kind of world so big 3:15 banking institutions my parents met at Harvard So they're kind of immersed with nonprofits and that kind of world. My 3:21 mom's side of the family is a little bit different. So she came, she was born in Seattle, Washington. My grandfather, he 3:27 was big into exploring and glaciers. He was one of the leading scientists on climate change actually. So he just 3:33 loved mountains and he noticed the glaciers were melting and then kind of did some more investigation on that. coming from that or growing up in that 3:40 world, you kind of see you see a lot of systems around you and I guess I became fascinated with sort of hacking systems 3:47 in different ways and uh I was also a troublemaker. So I was always causing problems and uh you know doing things 3:54 that shouldn't be doing. uh in middle school, fifth grade I believe, I was trying to create this crazy worst 4:00 business idea I've ever had was I was trying to uh sell pencil lead to other 4:06 kids for like mechanical pencils. For the uh for regular pencils. Oh, all right. Cuz for mechanical pencils, that actually could be a good 4:12 business, right? Yeah. But I wasn't that smart. I mean, you're in fifth grade. Let's cut yourself some slack. But Well, then what I did is I graduated to 4:18 fireworks, which actually was a very good business. Um, and the way that worked is basically I lived in Massachusetts where fireworks were 4:25 illegal. But I would, uh, go up to Maine, um, which goes through New Hampshire where fireworks are are legal. 4:31 Oh, yeah. You know, I very quickly put two and two together. And I said, "Oh, I just smuggle fireworks across jurisdictions, 4:38 and sell them out of my locker, and I'll make 50 cents on this firework or $2 on that firework." And I just thought it 4:44 was kind of fun, right? And so I think that started me um down a path of where 4:50 I'm constantly looking at systems trying to understand them. And I guess my natural instinct is I it's basically 4:57 hacking the system. I mean I don't think of it that way. I just think of it as kind of like fun or it's like a game. 5:02 You just understand the rules of the game and then it's almost like a puzzle you solve where you try to weave your way through things. And I've made a lot 5:09 of bad calls and you know we all have but I would say that's where I I got my start and then you know that kind of 5:15 became an entrepreneurial drive as well that led me to other ventures. Well that's I mean that's really cool. 5:22 That's hilarious. I don't How old were you smuggling? Oh man seventh grade. Seventh grade. So you're like 13 14 5:28 years old just smuggling across state lines. That's very funny. But that's also I feel like every entrepreneur has 5:34 these stories of like you know starting that whether it's a lemonade stand or selling pencil lead or ultimately 5:40 selling dynamite in the form of the form of fireworks. There's always like that those crumbs that lead to where you are 5:48 now. And I mean I think that family history is super interesting like from 5:53 the you know Boston pilgrim like growing up in Massachusetts everybody knows 5:58 Plymouth Rock and like did you ever go to Plymouth Plantation? I've never been to Plymouth Plantation, but I went to a 6:03 really cool monument uh right on the arm of Cape Cod. Okay. At the hand, and I forget the name of that town, Province 6:10 Town. Yep. Yeah. Province Town. And so, they have a great monument there, which is the it's like an etching of all of the pilgrim 6:17 settlements starting in 1634, you know, uh Plymouth first, then Plimpmpton, which is the farm of Plymouth. And then 6:23 it kind there's like a pause where everyone's waiting to see if these guys made it, you know, because 50% of them 6:29 died right off the bat. And then it's like I think around 1639 that's when people really started coming over which 6:35 is when my father's ancestors came over. So they kind of waited. They weren't the bleeding edge pioneers. They kind of waited until these guys made it and then 6:41 they followed in. Sometimes it's it's not even necessarily like the first leader. It's the second 6:47 person that comes in that really starts the movement. So I mean it takes just as much courage to be that that second 6:53 mover as it is to be the first. But and by the way, Plymouth Plantation, like I was privileged to grow up going there as 7:00 like my school uh field trips. So like I probably I say privileged, it's hilarious because like Plymouth 7:06 Plantation is just a LAR. Like it is Renaissance fair but for pilgrims. It's awesome. I want to go back there. 7:12 It's fun. It's fun. Just like you see people like churning butter wearing, you know, like the buckle hats and whatever. I don't even remember where I was going 7:18 with Well, there's that made me think of something because one of the interesting things I think from growing up in this 7:23 kind of area is you get exposed only, you know, in a kind of a haphazard way 7:29 to the things that turned America into what it is% that kind of 1700 time 7:34 period. You really understand that history of the of the American Revolution and like you know most people don't know about 7:41 the battle of Lexington and conquered like the shot herd around the world and like it's literally called the shot herd around the world. I think you brought it 7:46 up last week cuz you were there. You were there for the anniversary, right? Yeah. My parents, they moved to 7:52 conquered in retirement and uh so they're doing this big march for the 250th anniversary of this event. And one 7:58 of the things that was really interesting is that all the different groups that participated on the side of the United States. I don't even know if 8:04 it was the United States at the colonies. The colonies. Yeah. So the colonies, I guess in my head I thought each colony 8:10 would be like one unified group, but back then it was so rural and so decentralized. It was actually each 8:16 village had its own group and they were coming up with their own colors sometimes on the spot just to 8:22 participate in this battle. That's crazy. And like Yeah, cuz the Revolutionary War is insane. Like I 8:28 recommend studying it if you haven't gone deep into like I mean they it's it's become kind of a meme, but like 8:34 Massachusetts invented America, right? So, you have this idea and then you fast forward 250 years and you see where 8:40 Massachusetts is now and you're like, what is going on? What changed? And I think that goes back to what you were 8:48 talking about around institutions. And I'm going to try to pull this all together here in like when you say 8:55 institutions and the pilgrims were the pioneers, I view Bitcoiners as like the 9:01 same way. I know we call ourselves plebs in a lot of lot of instances as almost like a term of endearment of like yeah 9:07 you know like we're just honest plebs just hacking away all that type of stuff but at the same point we're working on 9:13 something that is at its core super like pro- freedom and something that has not 9:20 necessarily been accomplished at scale in humanity's history right so I think 9:27 that's what's super interesting but all that to say is you're currently working at Pleblab And I I love Pleblab. I love 9:33 the guys at Pleb Lab. I got really introduced to what was the Commons and now Bitcoin Park Austin through Pleb. Is 9:40 your business accepting a form of payment that stores value over time? A recent survey showed the number one 9:46 challenge that small business owners are facing today is inflation. You raise prices, renegotiate with vendors, try to 9:53 stay ahead, but your dollars keep losing purchasing power. At the Bitcoin Payments Adviser, we help business 9:59 owners like you accept Bitcoin, a form of money that's built to resist inflation. Unlike dollars, Bitcoin has a 10:05 fixed supply. And that means the value that you receive today has the potential to hold or grow over time, not quietly 10:12 erode. Our service makes it simple. No servers and tech headaches, just easy setup, white glove support, integration 10:19 with your existing systems. If you're ready to explore a smarter way to get paid, one that helps you fight inflation 10:25 instead of fall behind, visit bitcoin paymentsadvisor.com. Again, that's bitcoin payments advisor 10:31 lab and helping out with car and some of the projects that he was working on and that's where we met. So can you just 10:37 like kind of give a overview of one pleb lab and two like your thoughts on that 10:44 pleb versus pioneer kind of framing of how of how I look at bitcoiners and and 10:50 just like what we're ultimately working towards today. Sure. Yeah. And I can try to tie it back to kind of the tail end of my story like 10:57 that led me to love lab too. Um, you know, like a lot of people, like during COVID, I was sort of uh, you know, I 11:04 didn't know what to do with myself really. I mean, I just thought the whole world was going to hell and, um, I 11:10 needed to get out. So, you know, I was very excited about Bitcoin. So, I decided, okay, I'm going to just go to every city that has Bitcoin events, uh, 11:18 and just kind of meet the people and see what it's all about, right? Sold all my belongings. I had one backpack. And so, 11:23 I just started hopping cities and each city I go to, I think I started with San Francisco. I asked, "What's the next 11:28 city um that I should go to next?" And in Seattle, they told me to come down to 11:34 Austin. And then I went to Vancouver. And Vancouver said, "You should go to Austin." So I was like, "All right, I need to come to Austin." 11:39 Vancouver has a great Bitcoin scene. They do really good. It's amazing. Like it's kind of surprising some of the places you'd think would have an amazing 11:45 scene, like Silicon Valley, doesn't really the degree that we have here. So anyways, I come through Austin and the 11:52 first event I came to in Austin. It was actually the Tuesday wine meetup in 11:57 South Austin. But then I came to a Bitcoin Commons. I remember I was right here and I was talking to someone. I 12:02 said, "Hey, cool. Cool Bitcoin themed shirt." And he's like, "Oh, I made this shirt." I was like, "Oh, that's very 12:07 cool." It's like a very pleb thing to say is, "I made this from scratch." Right. And then I I was just talking to 12:13 him. I had a feeling. I was like, you wouldn't, you know, this is during co so there was wasn't very many computer 12:18 parts that you could get. And I was trying to build a node. I had no node. And so I said, you wouldn't happen to know where I can get like an Arduino or 12:24 Raspberry Pi. And he said, oh, turns out I'm actually running a shop out of this place called Pleblab. Oh, yeah. 12:30 And why don't you come on by and I can hook you up with some of these parts? You know, he was charging above market rates, but that's because you couldn't 12:36 get them on Amazon or any place online. So that was my first introduction to Pleblab. And so I got the parts and then 12:42 I'm sitting here with the, you know, this Raspberry Pi and I'm like, you know, I kind of conceptualized this. I was going to make a node but with a cool 12:48 uh display that would show me.space on it. You know, I hadn't really set up like a Linux operating system before. So 12:55 I was kind of in over my head. And Austin over there, he helped me really. I mean, he donated a lot of time to help 13:01 me set up this node, get it running. I think it took me three attempts where I just kind of wiped it and start over. 13:07 The third attempt, I finally got this node uh pulled together. Um, you know, since then the uh memp pool's become so 13:13 clogged that it doesn't run. I had to upgrade the hardware. Yeah. But that was my first introduction to Pleblab and it was just really a kind of 13:19 a builder environment and I think that really um is a commonality amongst a lot 13:25 of plebs, a lot of Bitcoiners, you know, once you stack as hard as you can, you get, you know, you get rid of all your 13:31 dollars and you get all in Bitcoin, then you're kind of like, well, now what? I mean, you keep working for your day job, 13:37 but at some point, you got to reconcile this new world we're building with the old world. And I know you're creating 13:43 this podcast from scratch. You're very entrepreneurial. I think a lot of Bitcoiners are. Well, and I think what's cool about 13:49 Bitcoin is to your point, you're in such a new white space that you see all these 13:54 opportunities to build new things. And it's like, if not me, then who? So like you can sit around, but especially when 14:02 it comes to, you know, like this podcast for example or what you're building with feed filter, it's like if you don't just 14:09 do it and put it out and try to get feedback and try to iterate and see what works and see what sticks, then chances 14:15 are either no one's going to do it or you're going to miss out on a huge opportunity. Like it's one of those it's 14:21 one of those things of like you've really got nothing to lose because you have nothing to lose. And that's what I 14:26 love about Bitcoiners of, you know, being more actionoriented people in like 14:32 a world that continues to just be full of inaction. I mean, I think Dana White has like a quote about how, you know, I 14:39 forget if he's talking about his actual son or a hypothetical son, but he's basically like he'd be a savage. He 14:46 would do he would just work and work and he would be so successful because he he wouldn't give anybody else a choice. And 14:52 you know, that's kind of like the hustle culture stuff that I think a lot of people in the entrepreneurial world fall into, myself included. But it's also 14:59 true if you could find the balance because you start to see that you can move fast, maybe break things, but you 15:04 can move fast and other people are like, "Wa, how'd you get this much done in two days or a week or a month and then you 15:11 look back at like a few months stacked over over, you know, a few hundred thousand blocks and you're like, "Wow, I 15:18 did a lot." And Bitcoin did a lot, too. And that helped. And that helps as well cuz you're saving in something that um 15:23 that appreciates in in purchasing power. But like with that, I I do want to get So you talked about systems and and how 15:30 you're interested in like kind of hacking systems and and all that type of stuff. And before we fully dive into 15:35 feed filter, I do want to just like weave in your Bitcoin story. Like where where were you when you found out about 15:41 Bitcoin? How did that help you decide to travel around the country to all these different nodes of meetups and figure it 15:46 out? cuz like I mean that's that's a really cool way to travel of just going from Bitcoin meet up to Bitcoin meetup 15:52 because Bitcoin meetups are so unique in their own way and being able to like go 15:57 to a city and just find a local meetup is probably my favorite thing about Bitcoin in a in like a very just 16:05 transparent way because it's how you get connected with all of the most like-minded people. Yeah, it's weird. It's like in the 16:11 pilgrim times they were just leaving one place and going to another. But in Bitcoin times, that's why it's so 16:16 different and unique. You can go to any city and you can find Bitcoiners. I mean, not all places, but there's communities all over the place, 16:22 everywhere. And I I mostly did, you know, the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. So, I didn't go I didn't really extend. I 16:29 mean, more recently, I've gone to Asia. Uh, but one of the things I noticed is that it seems like they concentrate in some areas. Yeah. I guess going back to 16:35 my story. Um yeah very interested in systems and uh I was doing these ventures of you know uh different 16:42 degrees of complexity or viability. Went into school for um physics. I wanted to go into engineering. I liked uh 16:50 technology ended up in space science which was you know very intellectually cool but I felt like I ended up working 16:56 on these things that didn't matter. So I kind of had that call back to entrepreneurship uh as I was leaving college. And I did two ventures two kind 17:04 of real ventures. The first one uh totally failed. This was a children's book that I poured all my money into and 17:12 um gave it two years and it just didn't didn't work out. And we made every mistake in the book you can pretty much 17:18 make. And then the second venture uh you know uh raised quite a bit of money and 17:24 on paper looks quite nice, but it never really cracked product market fit. And so I really gained an appreciation of 17:31 doing customer discovery work early on. and being very humble and taking feedback to make your product good 17:38 enough that it deserves a customer to spend I mean let alone like whatever 17:44 you're charging but one penny even to use your product for free a customer is incurring a cost so I became very 17:51 fixated on this idea of market research the reason being is because when I you 17:56 know experienced startup failures in the past I would kind of look back and say okay what are all the things that went 18:02 wrong and I probably overthought it But I would try to reverse engineer it like any other system. And I kept finding 18:07 that, you know, product market fit, it's not the only thing that matters, but it's very core to the rest of the 18:13 business because that's right when you hand your customer solution to a goal they're trying to accomplish and 18:19 they hand you money or time. Uh so you really want to optimize that. And to the 18:24 degree you can optimize that, that makes the rest of the business easier to execute. So in that uh time frame after 18:29 I'd done these startups, I was kind of kind of like walking around like a wise man with scars on my back and you know I 18:35 was sharing my experience with others, you know, in vain, but at least I was 18:41 going to hacker spaces. I was talking to people and they would tell me about their product. I'd ask, well, what uh 18:47 problem is this product solving? What's your customer research? Here's how I'd recommend you go about customer 18:52 research. I'm sure most people didn't listen to me, but at least you know it was kind of um you know, I'm sure, you 18:58 know, there was some insights that were shared there. I mean, just for for my personal pers uh example, like when we first met and I 19:04 was telling you about what I was starting to build, which like you know, I I still think there's a place for that in the market, but you were asking me 19:10 all these questions of what you were basically describing around like customer research and doing different like data set analyses. And I was I 19:17 remember like nodding along being like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then in the back of my head, I'm like, "I've done none of that." Like I would go back and be like, 19:24 "All right, like how can I start to think overwhelming a little bit?" Right? I mean, no, it's not overwhelming it, 19:29 but it's it's the experience, right? So when when you enter something and you think that it's going to be quote 19:35 unquote easy or you think that just because it's your idea that it's going to be successful and then you start to 19:41 actually like go under the hood and build it, you realize, oh, like I'm I'm not everybody thinks the way that I do, 19:47 but there probably is a kernel of of gold in there that you can that you can kind of hack away at. But just to just 19:53 to give some real life example of like you being like, "Oh, have you thought about this this and this type of 19:58 customer?" And I was just like, "Oh, no. I actually haven't. I have no evidence to back any of what I just set up. 20:04 And you know, it's like this balance of being like very critical of, you know, yourself, your own idea, but also in a 20:10 constructive way in that kind of balance. And every entrepreneurs struggles with that cuz when you're trying to sell, you're being you're kind 20:16 of selling your vision. But then when you're improving your product, you need to be super critical. And going back and 20:22 forth is is difficult. But it was in one of these hacker spaces that's when I uh encountered Bitcoin really. I mean, I 20:28 had heard about it a couple times before, never really took much interest in it. I kind of associated it with the dark web and, you know, buying drugs. 20:35 And so, I didn't want to get involved in that. That was going to be a problem. So, when I met someone in one of these hacker spaces who was an early 20:42 Bitcoiner, uh, I said, "Hey, can you explain Bitcoin to me?" And like really explain it because I, you know, I'm 20:48 reading the news articles. I'm reading the same news that everyone else has read and it's not very helpful. It just 20:54 says, you know, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Oh, that's not very helpful. What the hell is a cryptocurrency? And what what year was this? 21:00 This was 2017. So during the kind of bull run at the end of 2017. That was a that was around when I got 21:05 into Bitcoin too. And like I remember being seeing an article on like CNBC and being hyped finding news about Bitcoin 21:12 at that time. Like you were scraping Reddit. There were a few podcasts. Um but yeah, it was it was hard to separate 21:19 the noise from the signal back then. It really was. And you were better than me because you actually took the initiative to get on Reddit. But I was 21:25 just looking at the news articles and I was like, "This is not helpful." But my friend, you know, I don't know if you 21:30 really call him an OG, but he's definitely pretty early. And he was extremely helpful because he said, he 21:36 said, "Look, I can tell you about Bitcoin, but I'm going to need one hour of your time and a whiteboard." And so 21:42 I, you know, that was like a challenge to me. I was like, you know, uh, I'm open-minded. I'm willing to, because he 21:47 thought, he had so many people ask him about Bitcoin before. He was like, you don't actually want to know about Bitcoin. you just want the little, you 21:53 know, tidbit, the oneliner that you can take on. So I pulled up a chair, he pulled over a whiteboard. We're in a 21:59 space just like this and he explained Shaw 256 hashing. I walked away. It was 22:05 basically one hour. I walked away and I said, "Okay, Bitcoin is unhackable." I mean, I didn't fully understand, you 22:11 know, elliptic uh curves and cryptography, you know, exactly like why that is unhackable, but you know, at 22:18 least from a hashing standpoint, I understood that after that conversation. Then I was like, "Okay, so I have there's this thing. It's kind of like a 22:24 money and it's unhackable. So that's the solution. That's a technology. That's a pretty cool technology, but that doesn't 22:30 necessarily mean it's the best thing since sliced bread." So why exactly do people want unhackable money? And that 22:37 was a question that I asked after that meeting and that launched me down the rabbit hole you're talking about which is for me it was several months of 22:44 reading Austrian economics and monetary history which yeah just really increased my conviction or helped me build a 22:51 conviction over that kind of four to six month period. This was 2018 as the price is going down and my conviction was just 22:58 going up. That's bare market time to build, time to learn. And like I mean that's what I find so interesting about 23:04 Bitcoiners. And I've said this before, but just like all the, you know, diverse backgrounds that Bitcoiners come from 23:10 like you from more of the like technical looking at it of okay, this is unhackable and then figuring out the what is money part versus like myself, I 23:18 looked at it from the what is money? Like somebody asked me once what is money and I equated that to the same 23:23 idea of like what is time where I was like oh it's a social construct, right? And you can, it's kind of a joke, but it 23:29 like everybody accepts it for what it is, but it's also a real thing, but it's also kind of not. And asking that 23:34 question, you know, when I was what, like 17 or 18 years old, I was like, "Oh, like maybe there is something here. 23:40 Might as well get some in case it catches on like for lack of a better for lack of a better reference." But like, 23:45 but then once you enter that rabbit hole and you start like being like, "Oh, wait." So I was like, "Wait, what makes 23:51 this thing secure?" And this for me was more around 2020. Like from 2017 to 20 uh20, I was kind of just a casual like I 23:58 believe I believe inflation is bad and I believe Bitcoin is inflation resistant, thus Bitcoin is good. Jack and I are so 24:06 happy you're here. But here's the deal. We need your feedback. What do you like? What do you not like? Who do you want us 24:12 to have on the show? In my businesses, anytime I suggest copy edits, I always say edits welcome, guys. Edits welcome. 24:20 Please comment. And while you're at it, do us a favor and like and subscribe. It really helps out the show. 24:25 Then 2020 happened, locked us down, and I was like, "Okay, I'm actually going to understand why this thing works and why 24:31 it's like unhackable, right?" So, I learned about how mining actually worked. I learned about what the difficulty adjustment was. And then I 24:38 was like, "Oh my god, like I'm obsessed with this thing to the point where, you know, I'm now in it full-time and like 24:44 I'm like a I preach about it in basically every conversation that I have, for better or worse. But it's it's 24:50 just so it's crazy because going back to like the um shared values or like-minded individuals of finding out what brings 24:57 you to Bitcoin is always like a fun story and it's, you know, a bit of a 25:02 cliche of a question, but when you're at a meetup and you meet somebody for the first time, it's like, "Hey, what's up? 25:08 How are you?" It's not just like, "Oh, what do you do for work?" It's, "So, how'd you get into Bitcoin?" And then then people will go into their stories. 25:13 And I think it something that you said that was interesting was like your friend who uh who explained it to you 25:20 and whether or not he was a quote unquote OG. I don't know if that necessarily matters, but one of the one 25:25 of the really good delineations that I I heard somebody start to use for like Bitcoiners cuz I'm not a fan of like, 25:31 you know, class of 20 whatever cycle whatever. He was basically saying it's 25:36 preetf and post ETF. And there's like a clear delineation of of like you can tell Yeah. If you could tell who's a 25:42 Bitcoiner pre-ETTF, they're probably a little bit more on the like not your 25:48 keys, not your coins, like hardline. SATs is the standard type of person versus some potential paper Bitcoiners. 25:54 But but yeah, my buddy's all in IBIT right now. I've been working hard to try to get him. But it's a good way to get in the door. 26:00 And like I mean it's also it's just so interesting. It's it's all about the environment that you put yourself in. So whether you're on Bitcoin Twitter, 26:06 whether you're on Noster, whether you're in Austin, Nashville, Vancouver, like that is going to play such a unique and 26:12 distinguished role in how you see Bitcoin cuz it's a global thing, but 26:18 then people are learning about it locally. And that's like from a grassroots adoption perspective, that's 26:23 what I'm so bullish about is like there's so many unique perspectives. I mean, I was sharing this story earlier 26:29 today of the CTV activation. Did I tell you about this? we talked about briefly in Nashville. 26:34 Okay. So, yeah. So, see, there was a letter that came out about starting the 26:40 the conversation of how to activate CTV. Now, for our listeners, and most of our 26:45 listeners are probably not technical. I'm not technical either. So, I don't even really know what CTV is. What does it stand for? Like check something. 26:51 Yeah, I can tell you something. I I don't know. Not going to pretend to know. But there was basically a letter that came out that said we 26:57 should talk about how to integrate this or soft fork this into the Bitcoin code. I was at Nashbit Devs now two months ago 27:05 and this came up and it was basically like, "Yeah, this letter came out. I signed on to it. Any questions?" Nope. 27:12 Okay, next topic. A week later, I'm back here in Austin for our bit devs and it comes up and it's like, "Yeah, this 27:19 letter came out. We put our name on it and it was fireworks. People were like throwing arrows and like it was like, 27:27 you don't even know what you signed on to and why do we need this?" And then other people were like, "Well, this is 27:32 just bike shedding because everybody thinks they understand it, but they don't actually understand it." And like all of these just back and forth where I 27:38 was sitting there as just a bystander being like, "We talked about this last week and there was no contention 27:44 whatsoever. This week here, I'm like, damn, I need to think about this in an entirely different way." And on the reverse of that from just like comparing 27:51 apples and oranges to Austin and Nashville is like the Knots verse debate. Those conversations at Austin 27:57 bit devs were actually very civil. like it was like, "Yeah, you can kind of do what you want. It's a decentralized protocol, like you know, power to the 28:03 nodes, whatever." And in Nashville, the conversation was very different. 28:09 Yeah. Or I don't even fully remember. There was just a lot more concern about what it would do to the protocol and and 28:15 how it would impact like Bitcoin going forward. Now, I'm not going to pretend to have an opinion on either of those 28:20 because it's way too technical in the weeds. Like, at the end of the day, I just think if I think you should have the right to run your own node, like 28:27 that's kind of it. And whatever that means, whatever that wherever that falls, the network will decide. The market, the free market will decide. But 28:33 the reason why I'm sharing that is because like those are two cities that are seen as the Bitcoin capital of like 28:40 the world and just two vastly different takes on two pretty big topics that have 28:46 been in Bitcoin in the in the last few months. And then when you, like I said, when you go on Twitter, it's super hostile. When you go on Noster, it feels 28:52 like an echo chamber. When you're on LinkedIn, it's like nobody even on LinkedIn talks about Twitter. That's why 28:57 I'm so bullish on LinkedIn. Yeah, I'm so bullish on LinkedIn and it's just like people don't get it. But I think that 29:04 actually I think that whether I meant to do that or not, that actually seg segus really nicely into what you're working 29:10 on now and social media and real life versus our algorithms and what you're 29:15 working on with feed filter um and your latest release. And I'm just going to 29:21 like shut up for a second because that was a bit of a you know saliloquy. Well, yeah. I mean it does I mean like 29:28 what you're talking about here is you know uh so let's say you're a bystander you know the first I don't know dozen 29:34 bit devs I went to I was just sitting in the way back super quiet just listening just kind of soaking it all in you know 29:40 googling a whole bunch of terms and learning and you know so people are very 29:45 susceptible or it's just the nature of you're going to learn what you're exposed to now I believe that people 29:51 think for themselves and that you know we all have our own intentions and our goals but you can't help the fact that 29:57 you know if you see something more often than something else it's going to be a part of your mind and you might form 30:03 certain opinions around that and so of course social media is the big example of this so if you are on you know 30:09 Twitter and Bitcoin is banned you can't talk about Bitcoin you can't talk about certain political opinions or there's 30:16 certain facts like around COVID was a big example of this where it's just totally hidden or it's it's changed in a 30:22 certain way then um you know that's going to shape your opinions or it's just going to make you really pissed 30:28 off, right? Because you're going to ask like why am I never seeing this stuff? It actually is very isolating, I think, 30:34 for people. So, when CO was happening, in addition to becoming a total laser maxi, I was also uh very unhappy with my 30:42 sort of corporate day-to-day job. And I felt like I was just burning a lot of time on social media and I clocked 30:48 myself. I think it was 5 hours a day. It was really bad. And a lot of that was YouTube and learning about Bitcoin. So, 30:53 you could say that's kind of productive, but it's mostly just wasting time getting sucked down doom scrolling and 30:59 getting like increasingly politically radicalized because because I was just 31:04 doom scrolling all day long. We all do it, right? I still doom scroll even today. But, uh, you know, at the time I 31:10 really viewed Bitcoin as an escape hatch out of kind of corporate life and into 31:15 entrepreneurship. But later, since I've kind of gained a little bit of a safety net from being kind of, it's weird to 31:21 say you're early to Bitcoin when it's only a few years, but early to Bitcoin, that's allowed me to say, okay, now I can take an entrepreneurial risk. What's 31:28 a big problem I want to solve? And what I'm really passionate about is helping people like myself, you know, back 31:34 during COVID unlock themselves, kind of unchain themselves from the tether that they might be attached to. And I think 31:41 our phones are one of the biggest tethers that we're currently attached to. The algorithms that these social medias create, we all know this is the 31:47 case. They are optimized for engagement metrics. Meaning, they are pushing the content that's going to get you hooked, 31:54 not the content that's true, not the content that is most aligned with your conscious goals. It's like the content 31:59 that's most aligned with your subconscious, you know, instincts. Yeah. I mean, I remember it was Naval 32:05 talking on a Joe Rogan podcast where he was basically like when you look at the like the he was like the most powerful 32:11 people in the world today are not in governments, they're in white lab coats working for the social media sites and he was saying that back in like 2016 32:17 2017 cuz he was talking about you know there was the Arab Spring and then there was all the Facebook stuff that happened 32:23 during the 2016 election and just how people started to leverage social media in a way that um we've never seen as a 32:31 society because it is like dopamine hit after dopamine hit. You just have super 32:37 bright lights in your two inches from your face while you're trying to sleep just radicalizing you, giving you giving 32:44 you everything that's true, false, and in between. I find myself sometimes like luckily I'm not as bad about it nowadays, but I used 32:50 to find myself like just so angry at 2 a.m. or just laughing out loud like 32:56 fully awake at 2 a.m. because of some crap I'm looking at on Twitter. I mean, I remember now I'm I'm much better at 33:03 actually sleeping with the phone outside of my bedroom, but I remember there was a time period where I thought I couldn't 33:10 fall asleep if I didn't like basically make my eyeballs bleed from looking at 33:15 my screen because like now I realize that I just was using that as a distraction from all sorts of other 33:22 things. But yeah, it's phone addiction is real bad. And like you even saying 5 33:27 hours a day like for me I went through a phase where I was trying to really cut down screen time. So like I was trying 33:32 to get like max 2 hours a day which is still kind of a lot low key. And like it's hard it's also hard when you think 33:38 of it from like okay I'm awake for let's say 16 hours in a day. I'm awake for 16 33:43 hours and I'm spending 7 hours of that time just on my phone or my computer. 33:48 Yeah. It doesn't make sense. Like I'm spending almost 50% of my time on on the phone. That's insane. Yeah, it 33:54 really is. And that's the whole goal is that not only are you exposed to your phone that's bad enough from a dopamine, 34:01 your eyeballs, your brain, but it's the algorithm is giving you information that 34:06 is curated in a certain way. And that is for me at least, this was holding me 34:11 back from the bigger goals I had. And like I I tell this when I'm describing what I'm building currently, I I tell 34:17 people my feed, this is specifically Twitter, but it's kind of true in general. My feed was comprised of 80% 34:24 90% is three things. Politics, violence, and cute puppies. Yeah. Just like a little like pallet 34:31 cleanser between maybe I don't know between making you as angry or sad as 34:36 possible. Just a little pallet cleanser where you're like, "Okay, like I can any of those things during the election. I blocked Trump. I blocked Harris. I 34:43 blocked every political. I even blocked Bitcoin. I blocked everything I could think of using the mute words. Tried all 34:50 these different tools. I blocked the whole feed. I deleted my Twitter. Uh, you know, and I keep using all these 34:56 different tools to try to block this out because what are my real interests? Technology and business. I don't care about puppies. They are cute. I'll see a 35:02 puppy every now and then, but I want to see it all the time. Obviously, I don't want to be seeing violence in my feed and politics. Unless it's like a major 35:09 thing that happens once a quarter. I kind of want to find out if, you know, World War II is about to start, but I 35:14 then don't want to spend the next, you know, two weeks doom scrolling on World War II. So that's where the idea of feed 35:21 filter really came from because I said look this tool social media is valuable. 35:26 It's, you know, I've tried to just block it out, delete it, but when you do that, you are cutting yourself off from 35:32 something that is valuable and does keep you informed. I remember I was on a plane and I was just scrolling through 35:38 Twitter and I stumbled upon a post that said uh the uh Fininsen financial um 35:44 whatever SEN stands for financial probably some financial 35:50 group in in the I mean what they were basically going to do Fininsen uh was uh 35:56 force every person who ever started an LLC to file their social security number in some database with the government 36:02 that I guarantee you would be hacked within 30 days and do it once per LLC you filed. And if you didn't do that, 36:08 you could get up to a $10,000 fine per business or up to 6 months in jail. And 36:14 I had filed at least five LLC's, probably more that I've forgotten about. And so I basically couldn't even adhere 36:19 to this law if I wanted to. And if you're about to get a bill of, you know, 50 grand or god knows how many years in 36:26 prison, then you probably want to know about that information. I found out about that in Twitter. I didn't get an email. I didn't get a letter in the 36:32 mail. Nobody told me this in real life. This was Twitter information. So that's 36:37 why people use social media because they stay usually it's it's more like you know staying up to date with your 36:42 friends or checking on the news. It's more trivial things but every now and then there is something extremely 36:48 important and it's useful to have that there but the cost is this massive addiction and exposed to the curated 36:55 algorithm. So, what feed filter tries to do is it says, "Look, okay, if you're going to go into this war zone that is 37:01 social media to try to get your information, let's make sure a it's the information that you're actually after 37:07 consciously, not subconsciously, and b that you're able to get in there and get 37:12 out and you're not going to get stuck in kind of a black hole." So, tell me how it works. Feed filter is 37:18 a Chrome extension that you add to your Chrome browser and it will basically 37:25 filter, for lack of a better term, it'll filter my feed. show me what I quote 37:30 unquote should or need to see and it won't show me any of the garbage that is 37:35 I mean if you had to estimate it doesn't have to be a scientific like answer 80% of the internet is garbage 37:41 at least that I mean dead internet theory might say it's 99 but I cap it at uh 80% right now so tell me so tell me how it works how 37:48 do you how do you filter out that 80% garbage the most important thing is feed filter 37:53 is an algorithm that you control it's not me imposing um my view of what is or isn't good for 38:01 you to see. Now, I do have default settings in feed filter um so that when you show up on your feed, the default settings are it's uh 38:07 filtering out, you know, like clickbait and tribal hostility, stuff like that. Um but the user can go in and change all 38:14 those settings. And what it's doing behind the scenes is that each post that appears in your feed, before your 38:20 eyeball even sees that post, it's running through some AIS I have running here in Austin, also in Boston on some 38:26 servers. and then also chatgbt to basically say does this post the user is 38:32 about to see meet their threshold criteria for the information that they want to get out of social media. And the 38:38 key thing there is that you consciously wrote down this description uh these uh 38:44 filter instructions. And because you consciously wrote that down, that's like the front of your brain thinking, not 38:50 the back of your brain. So that when it's, you know, late at night, you're back home from work, you're tired, and 38:55 you're scrolling, you're really just scrolling to pass the time entertainment, but your conscious instructions that you put there ahead of 39:02 time, those are in place. You can turn feed filter off and go back to the feed that you had before, but at least it 39:08 allows you to go on social media, have that experience, but without the addiction, without the garbage that you 39:14 normally be seeing. That I mean, that's great. And I one of the reasons why I like that cuz it's a 39:20 very different approach, right? Like you have all of these tools that pop up of how to limit your screen time. It's 39:25 there's a tool that's built into the iPhone that you can easily just kind of, you know, click and 15 more minutes. And 39:31 like I find myself doing that a lot. There's a app that I call that I use called 1 sec where every time I open 39:37 Instagram, it triggers a shortcut to open this one sec app and it like prompts you to like take a breath and 39:43 it's like are you sure you want to open this? like just I've even found like that slight barrier 39:49 has made cut down a lot of my time on Instagram, but I still use it. It's still like, yeah, I do want to use it. I 39:55 do want to doom scroll or whatever. I want to check notifications. But where your approach is very different is I get 40:02 to choose what I find productive. So screen time doesn't really matter. Cuz to your point, when you were, you know, 40:09 learning about Bitcoin and COVID, you might have had 10 hours of screen time a day. Think about Andreas, like him talking about his Bitcoin story where he 40:15 was just like losing weight because he was reading and learning so much about Bitcoin, but like would that quote 40:20 unquote high screen time be unproductive or bad for Andreas? I would say probably 40:26 not considering how many Bitcoiners he onboarded and just like the lore of Andreas Antonopoulos. And I've I've can 40:32 convert that to my my own productivity as well where like if I'm working on some type of graphic or some type of 40:40 research report or writing some type of article/newsletter, whatever it may be, I don't step away from that session 40:47 online saying, "Wo, that was way too much screen time." I step away saying, "That was really productive. I wasn't 40:53 distracted. I was focused." And I really like how um it's probably Alex Hermoszi 40:58 talking about hustle culture, but Hermoszi, he does a really good job of he equates focus. He views it as like a 41:06 type of whatever. I guess it's almost like the opposite of addiction, but it doesn't mean that it's it doesn't mean 41:12 that it's easy to ignore. He basically says that like addiction, focus is something that you have to choose every 41:18 day. Discipline is something that you have to choose every day. Like I can very easily just not not focus and doom 41:25 scroll and all that type of stuff or I can choose to focus and my screen time might be the exact same. It might be 7 41:31 hours a day on both but the difference in output is wildly like different. So 41:36 that's where I really like that approach. And I guess the where I think that that would be really valuable is 41:42 for people who which is kind of everybody, but people who need to be online and they need to be like some 41:47 people are like, "Oh, I want to get off Twitter, but I can't." And like that's my job. That's my job. That's how you market. 41:53 Like like that's where Bitcoiners are in in a lot of instances. So the I guess kind of riffing off that a little bit is 41:59 like how have you started to think about feed filter of going back to like the product market fit and who your customer 42:05 is? like how do you communicate that out to people who will be you know yearning for this product in my opinion uh and 42:12 reach them and then also convince them that your product is better than any of the like you know just screen time limit 42:20 limiters that are on the market. Yeah. I mean, I think like one thing that stands out to me is that one of one 42:25 of the lessons that I've learned when trying to be ambitious and achieve great things is that I need to be realistic 42:32 about my own ability to be decisive and focused and motivated in the future. So, 42:40 I spend a lot of effort in environment optimization. I mean, I you probably do too because here we are sitting in 42:46 Bitcoin Common. So, you know, we've both made the decision to come here, come to Austin or Nashville or other places and 42:51 immerse yourself in Bitcoin culture. Like my environment at home is very optimized. My gym is basically in my 42:57 bedroom. So, that first thing I do when I get up is lift some weights, pick up something heavy. So, I just try to make 43:04 it as easy as possible to do the productive things that will get me closer to my goals. Right now, a lot of 43:11 people are or some people are motivated enough that they or intrinsically motivated toward to achieve a goal that 43:17 they don't need crutches like a feed filter type tool. They can keep themselves off doom scrolling. They can, 43:25 you know, take action. They can consume content, move on. But, I mean, look at Tik Tok. Tik Tok is like the most 43:32 addictive thing you could possibly imagine. And so we're surrounded by these tools that they've got whole teams 43:38 of, you know, psychologists who are trying to carefully tune this so that it keeps you hooked for as long as 43:45 possible. So that's your competition. Those are the lab coats you were talking about earlier. So the way I think about this is who's the user? The user is 43:52 someone whose ambitions are higher than their their subconscious desires, which 43:59 is kind of everyone to some degree, but some people have a different gap, right? So if you are busy, you've got goals. 44:06 I'm trying to do a startup is big for me. Trying to learn about Bitcoin, do things like that. But at the same time, 44:11 I like watching cute puppies. Like they're, you know, we all do to various degrees. But my subconscious was always 44:17 winning. And you know, you can read all these different people, all these different techniques you can do. You can meditate. You can take the break off the 44:23 app. I've done that, too. For me, it wasn't working. It wasn't enough. I was not overcoming. I was not exerting the 44:29 discipline required to come over that. That's why I ultimately deleted Twitter and I have feed blocking tools, but you 44:36 know, I came back around. So, I think that users who are maybe it's not all people, maybe it's one in 10 people, 44:42 maybe it's half of people, something like that are on social media and they want to continue to be on social media, 44:48 but they just don't want to be spending 5, seven hours a day, maybe two, three hours a day, or they're still on there, 44:54 but the type of information they're getting is more tailored towards their long-term, you know, goals. So that's 45:01 the that's the high level archetype of the type of person. I think it probably is more people who are you know uh like 45:09 kind of busy professionals you know who have uh I don't know if it's high income or not but it's you know high again like 45:17 aspirations. I feel like that is probably uh more the type of people who would benefit from a tool like this. I 45:23 have a friend of mine who's a really good friend of mine and it was funny because his feed I was testing out feed 45:28 filter with him and his feed was the worst feed I've ever seen. It was pure 45:33 like brain rot. It was just like and they were it was funny too. Like he's all kinds of AI generated. 45:39 My Instagram gives me a decent amount of brain rot and like I hate myself for 45:44 watching it but it's you sometimes you got to tip your cap where you're like that is so bad that it's good. 45:49 Yeah. Exactly. But at the same time, it's like, come on, you can do something better with your time, you know? Like, every now and then, you can have that. 45:54 But I got the the brain rot that my Instagram has been feeding me recently is um Spongebob AI like cover band 46:03 songs. So, it'll be a Spongebob character singing like a grunge music like Pearl Jam on stage just for no 46:10 reason. And sounds about right. Yeah. And then I I'll like I I watch it. I'm like, "God damn it, it got me 46:15 again." Yeah. That's And that's the crazy thing. It's like you you you catch yourself. I get this on YouTube all the time and 46:21 like sort a lot of times it's like learning rabbit holes but I'll be like learning about the history of of the 46:26 Ottoman Empire and I'm like okay that's kind of interesting but also how the hell did I end up here? I was trying to 46:32 learn about React Native and somehow I'm here on the Ottoman Empire like where was the where's the paper right? But 46:38 when you get on the YouTube feed, like you have all these different, you know, boxes that show up. But imagine if all 46:44 the boxes that were deemed clickbait, like one of the things that Feed Filter, it doesn't do now, but it will do in the future is it'll pre-watch all the videos 46:51 for you by basically downloading the transcript and kind of quickly going through the the video to understand 46:56 roughly what the content is and then check that content against again your filter criteria, your interest to see if 47:02 it deserves your attention. And I think as the internet kind of devolves into more and more brain rot, I mean, you 47:09 you're going to have like just algorithmic users on an algorithmic feed who are like spawning themselves. 47:16 There's like an infinite number of AI generated car videos now on YouTube. Animals doing the free dives into the 47:22 pools. I've not seen that one. Oh, it's like so bad. There's also the the Yeti vlog. The Yeti vlogger. Have 47:29 you seen that? I also have not seen that. It's a It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a yeti or like an abominable 47:35 snowman who's a vlogger. It's it's so 47:40 here's where I will say it's it's credible and good to see and this is a lot of cope here and a lot of like 47:46 reverse like me just trying to speak through how bad my my feed is right there is like see how far AI is 47:54 progressing where I'm like okay how can I actually like incorporate that into my work where I can make something valuable like you know how can I create an AI 48:00 commercial or an AI video that like can be used for promotion in the future and 48:05 like there are people that are doing that I know people that are working on that in a really like high impact, high 48:11 value way. But then you have people who are doing it for just fun and making 48:16 some you gotta give them credit where it's due. I I had a tweet the other day where I 48:21 was like I was like I don't associate with bears talking specifically about vibes. Like I I don't I mean if you're 48:27 bearish on Bitcoin like that probably just means that you're bad vibes anyways. But like I was talking specifically about vibes and then 48:34 somebody replied, "Well, what about the animal bears?" And that's where I I I was like, there's got to be some AI like 48:40 vlog of that yeti that I was talking about just hanging out with a bear. And it was a like 10-minute video of him 48:46 basically walking in the woods and ended up wrestling a bear. And it was like it was so bad that it was good, but it was 48:52 also like, wow, this is insane because it follows the story of how all these 48:58 vloggers like operate today. And like I know that's a huge tangent, but I think 49:04 where it is a struggle and something that you just said of like the algorithm is working to capture your attention, 49:10 but then there's the other side of that of that supply curve of users who are 49:15 creating this quote unquote entertainment, but at the end of the day, like probably brain rod or just not 49:22 really valuable content where they're hacking the algorithm and it's having a real negative impact on people. So like 49:29 how do how do you balance or fight through through that piece when when looking at feed filter of of yes you 49:34 have the algorithm but then you also have people who are gamifying the algorithm and then it's a constant push 49:40 and pull of what's working and what's changing and what's being provided. Yeah. Well I mean that's why you have 49:46 one blanket filter. So you show up to this fight and you're totally today outmatched because you've got 49:51 algorithmic producers of brain rot using algorithmic feed and they're on one side and then you got you on the other side 49:58 as the consumer. Like for example, you could be both a producer and a consumer of content like this. As a consumer, you 50:04 need to show up with that shield. And I think over time you're going to need that's going to be more and more important. You're not going to be able to get anything from the internet if you 50:11 don't have that shield to begin with. So yeah, basically I'm just uh kind of like looking at the system of exactly how the 50:18 social media uh technology works not just in a browser also on mobile but how 50:24 it serves up content that ends up on your screen like what are all the technical things that are happening behind the scenes where's the leverage 50:31 and how do I maximize leverage to the user and minimize leverage to the other person and because you are the owner of 50:38 your own eyeballs and the browser is running on your hardware where you have all the leverage in that system. Now, 50:44 they have the content, they have, you know, they still have the information you're looking for, but the vast 50:49 majority of the leverage from a theoretical standpoint is on your side, but from a practical standpoint terms of 50:55 what solutions are out there, most of the solutions are on their side, meaning they have the algorithms, the teams of 51:00 people, they have really now people have lowcost ways to generate AI content. Oh, yeah. 51:05 But basically, my my view on this is, you know, screw the producers. you want to go and I might produce an AI generate 51:12 content and say look how bad this brain rot is. If you never want to see brain rot like this again then try feed 51:17 filter. So I might produce it too but uh but I want all the leverage to be on the consumer side. This is a consumer 51:24 oriented um application and I kind of view it as like a battle. You just want to give this person the best tool uh uh 51:34 to help them navigate uh this increasingly like hostile world. Yeah. Yeah. No, that I mean that that's great and it's like you said it's a 51:40 tool. Some people look at a hammer and they build a house. Some people look at a hammer and you have the Homer Simpson 51:47 meme where you hit your thumb. So like at the end of the day like people have the agency to do with it what they will. 51:53 But what I really like about your your project is like I can say I am optimizing for let's just say Bitcoin 52:00 Treasury companies right now. I want to know what's going on with the, you know, quote unquote analytics of MNAV and all 52:07 the yield that these businesses are producing per share. And that's what I want to focus on. And I can, yeah, I can 52:14 go on Bitcoin Twitter and find some of those things, but there's also a lot of noise. And, you know, then maybe in a 52:21 month from now, I'm like, you know what, I'm done with that. I think it's kind of a hype train that maybe I just got tired 52:28 of. Now I'm really interested in mining. I want to learn about mining and I can tailor my feed to tell me what's going 52:34 on in mining. And there's probably ways, I'm sure, to do two things at once and and just have it be Bitcoin focused or 52:40 whatever. But it's like when we go through these seasons of either building or marketing or, you know, studying or 52:47 whatever it may be, then this could be a really valuable like uh a really valuable tool to help help progress 52:53 that. I mean, I think a lot of times the term like creativity loves constraints gets thrown around. And I used to think 52:59 of that as like a kind of the opposite way of how I think about it now where 53:04 now when I think about it, I'm like, okay, like I'm in this sandbox and there's so much that can be done versus 53:10 before what I thought about how I thought about it was like I have a problem so I need to solve it. That's my 53:15 constraint. But now it's how do I set up a system where I can remain focused to solve that problem. 53:22 Yeah. And it it is it's interesting because like when you're always focused, you're always on, you know, we're human 53:28 beings. We like to sing and dance. Like we like to have fun. So I think that is the flip side of all this, which is, you 53:34 know, sometimes I I try to overoptimize. I try to try to like squeeze every last minute out of the day. And you know, 53:41 from a from a a piece of paper perspective, that makes a lot of sense. But you still have to have enjoyment. But like, is consuming brain rot like 53:48 really that much enjoyment? I mean, yeah, it makes you chuckle in the moment. You can tell someone about the funny orangutang driving around, but 53:53 like it's it's wouldn't it be more amazing to run your own podcast and talk to someone on a couch in Austin, Texas 54:01 in the Nexus of Bitcoin? I mean, there's there's so many bigger things that we can be achieving and accomplishing that 54:08 can be entertaining and colorful and allow us to live our fullest lives. We 54:13 just shouldn't be held back by this like really easy easy stuff. And you know, one of the things I did on feed filter 54:19 was I made a real easy toggle. So you just toggle it off. A lot of people have asked for uh, you know, an evening mode. 54:25 So you can go back to the entertainment. You can still get the brain rot. And look, other people have said, "Hey, what if I take your filter instructions and I 54:32 say, don't give me anything educational, quantitative, you know, analytical, and just give me pure jokes and memes." And 54:39 you know what? If you want to do that, that's fine. But I don't think you're going to be starting much of a business or doing anything important if you live 54:46 like that for too long. Maybe you become a good comedian. That's possible. So like there's probably pathways for that. 54:52 But a lot of people, they get stuck in this world, this loop, you know, they go to this is me, go to work, come back, 54:59 watch funny videos, then I'm tired, go to work the next day, and my goals are just sitting there and all of a sudden 55:05 time goes by. It's like, oh my god, that was a year right there. And where did all that time go? That's that's really 55:10 what Feed Filter is trying to help with. Make it easier, lower the barrier for 55:16 you to have the energy and the information you need to go after those bigger dreams you might have. 55:22 No, that's great. Yeah. And like you said, to each their own. at the end of the day like you have 55:28 the ability to use your your feed or your tools whichever way you want which 55:34 is which is also a cool aspect of it cuz I'm sure there will be some use cases that somebody's using it where you're like wait they're doing what and then 55:40 they and then they found this through that like that's going to be an insane uh case study someday I'm sure but I 55:48 mean and to your point like sometimes getting turning the brain off like is important like rest is not 55:54 weakness Even though in the productivity world and in the optimization world sometimes it can be it can come across 56:00 that way. I mean one of ironically I don't know if it's ironic but one of the ways that I actually found a good sense 56:07 to turn my brain off cuz I found that I was like watching TV like you know name 56:13 any show. And when it was live action I would always be looking for like plot holes and be like oh that's not 56:19 realistic or that doesn't make sense or like that that was you know not good writing. So over the last like year, 6 56:26 months more so, I've gotten really into like just watching anime because that 56:31 has been so disconnected from reality where I 56:37 don't have like what am I going to say that you know Hunter Sung and Solo Leveling like that was unrealistic. Like 56:42 obviously it was an anime like he's it's a fake show but when it's live action I just found myself like it harder to to 56:49 like disconnect that reality. Whereas anime, you have the colors and and crazy 56:54 animations and fights and story lines. So that was a good way to like turn it off. And I think that's so opposite from 57:00 Bitcoin because Bitcoin is always like, yeah, it's tethered to, you know, proof of work is tethered to real exerted energy in the physical world. And like 57:08 you have to constantly go back and forth of like what is real and what is fake and that becomes exhausting in itself. 57:15 So, if you can just put up some guard rails or some type of filter to like at 57:20 least have you stay on somewhat of the path, then you should be able to you 57:26 should be able to like hold that steering wheel a little bit firmer and a little bit more confident in what your 57:31 goals are. But to your point, it's not like it's it's not like a silver bullet that's going to that's going to like 57:37 solve everything. But I don't even think that's your intent. No, of course. Yeah. I mean, it's just making it easier to stay on mission just 57:42 like Bitcoin. I mean you think about there's a lot of aspects of Bitcoin that have come out of science fiction. I mean 57:47 think about iron rand gulch you know what we've created is a gul gulch in cyerspace and that is there's actually 57:55 like some could argue there's kind of logical holes in objectivism and there's 58:00 you know objectivism and Austrian economics are not perfectly coherent they don't perfectly fit together 58:05 they're pretty close they're definitely complimentary but through the story of an Rand and other inspiration I think 58:12 there was some inspiration that came before it kind of the fall of complex societies turns out that throughout 58:17 history, groups that are feeling persecuted by their governments will always kind of flee to the higher ground 58:24 or to some sort of kind of sheltered area. And there's lots of examples of this in history. I mean, the pilgrims 58:29 being one. And so like that dream, that sort of fiction ended up creating something real. So there's a lot of 58:35 value in pursuing those stories. And I love that you brought up objectivism. Can you explain what objectivism means to you and like what I 58:43 guess the philosophy that a rand which is pretty prevalent in the Bitcoin space 58:48 but not that prevalent in other areas of our culture means to means to you? I don't know if I can do it do it justice, 58:54 but my understanding of objectivism is that it imposes some sort of moral 59:01 constraint on what is right and wrong and it's it's about always acting in 59:06 your own self-interest and I believe it ties morality to that and the yeah so I 59:12 don't think I can give a a great definition of objectivism but I know that it differs from Austrian economics. 59:18 There's a great lineage chart that I found. I I don't know if I could tell you the YouTuber who created it, but I 59:23 saw this great uh breakdown of the lineage of different philosophies. And one of the interesting things about 59:29 Bitcoin, I find is that I do think it's breaking fresh ground in terms of I guess you could call it political 59:34 philosophies or or philosophies of how to live. And it's drawing from both Austrian economics and objectivism, 59:40 which are distinct branches of thought. Now, one of the things that that might be, you know, this needs to be figured 59:46 out in the future is that a lot of Austrian economics, you know, kind of dovetales into libertarianism, which has 59:52 this sort of idea of you are not going to harm another individual. You're not going to take from them against their 59:58 will. And and that is a bit of morality in there, but today we see a lot of 1:00:05 corporations, I mean, you could say shitcoins do this, maybe the ETFs to some degree, they are just saying, "Look, there's dollars there. we're 1:00:11 going to take the dollars. And there's a little bit of a Darwinian aspect of that where it's like, well, if you take 1:00:16 morality out of the equation, then you get this kind of crazy corportocracy that just takes over everything. I think 1:00:22 um I think there's I think Bitcoin is I find Bitcoin's philosophy very interesting because it's kind of 1:00:28 breaking down fresh ground and it's maybe represents a distinct like a new 1:00:33 branch of thought that is an evolution. It's not just based in Austrian economics and based in objectivism. I 1:00:40 actually think it might be a evolution and maybe in there somewhere people smarter than I can figure out how to 1:00:45 kind of unify objectivism, Austrian economics and the maybe moral tenants that neither really have you know fully 1:00:53 flushed out. Yeah. No, it's super that's really interesting. I mean definitely read and 1:00:58 rant. Like that's seeing what's going on in the world today and having Atlas 1:01:03 shrugged as like a backdrop of just like being like oh yeah like that makes sense 1:01:09 from why this is happening or you know you have the lutters and you have those who are productive in society. And I 1:01:15 think in a like I said in a world of inaction a lot of Bitcoiners are willing to take action and willing to take 1:01:21 risks. And it's funny because a lot of Bitcoiners that I talk to, yeah, they'll take risks on like a business venture or 1:01:27 something that they're looking to do, but none of them ever view saving in Bitcoin and being in Bitcoin as the 1:01:32 risk, which is it's not hilarious, but it's risk. It's riskoff. It's like it's like the 1:01:37 when I have to talk to normies about why I think they should start saving in Bitcoin and start studying Bitcoin, I 1:01:44 always have to say to them, I understand I'm farther on the risk curve than you, but I hope you understand that I don't 1:01:50 view myself like that on the risk curve. You say you are objectively wrong. 1:01:56 No, I don't want to say it like that cuz I I my way of orange pilling is I try to be as approachable. No, me too. At first, but I feel like 1:02:02 over time it becomes harder to play nice% 100%. I mean, back to back to the story that I was talking about at the at the 1:02:08 top of this, like I've been telling people I've been telling every year at the when, you know, 1:02:14 football season starts to ramp back up and some of those old group chats get dusted off for fantasy football, the 1:02:20 commissioner will always be like, "If you have any rule proposals, like say them now and I'll make a poll." And like, it's the most disorganized thing 1:02:26 ever. I'm pretty sure every guy's group chat can sympathize with this. And every year in my fantasy football group chats, 1:02:33 I say annual proposal to hold our league pot in Bitcoin. And this was the first 1:02:39 year that there actually seems like there's some interest in it. Wow. And like that kind of sucks for me 1:02:45 because it means I'm signing up to hold on to everybody else's probably Bitcoin and like I'm going to be the guy that 1:02:50 which that Yeah. Like I need to be the league treasurer in a league that like you know. Cool. That's cool. 1:02:55 Yeah. It's a cool title, I guess. Add it to the resume. But like I was like, yeah, if there could be like some, you know, just like multi-IG service that 1:03:02 you can put it in like a public vault and it kind of just offiscates the responsibility from somebody having to 1:03:08 be technically savvy to do it specifically for like fantasy sports or like group like, you know, things like that. I think that'd be killer. 1:03:14 Froster probably. I couldn't explain how, but we'll have to get Austin here to to explain it cuz yeah, Froster goes over 1:03:20 my head. But all that to say is like people are going to be working on their own timelines. People are going to get attracted to the price. people are going 1:03:26 to have to study it themselves and ultimately Bitcoin will win out because 1:03:31 Bitcoin is simple. It just it just works. It's 21 million every 10 minutes new block. It just works. 1:03:38 But like and I I think we can start to like wrap up a little bit. But what I love about this conversation and the 1:03:46 foundation of Bitcoin plus this reality of having to quote unquote live online 1:03:52 is the low time preference that Bitcoin provides. Yeah. And that low time preference both 1:04:00 in terms of like runway for how to actually sustain a business but also how to think about complex problems because 1:04:07 when you are thinking about what you actually want to have as your impact in a business perspective and in 1:04:16 the broader like universe perspective. I think that that's really cool of tackling a challenge that 1:04:22 I'm I would love to hear your conversations of like people who you've who who have dealt with like phone 1:04:28 addiction and doom scrolling and all that type of stuff because I'm sure you've heard endless case studies or 1:04:35 user stories of like somebody being like, "Yeah, I was trying to do this and I just was scrolling for five hours." I 1:04:41 mean, me too, right? or or deleting the apps and just being completely like a friend of mine 1:04:48 told me he didn't find out about the election until several days later. Legend. Yeah, that is kind of a legend. Like I'm 1:04:54 very impressed by that. But you know, at the same time it's like what happens if you know somebody nukes your home city. 1:05:01 I mean like hopefully you know you get a text message about and that's an extreme case but people go to extremes and there 1:05:09 and uh like like one of my friends uh was telling me the story about all the different ways and I've been through 1:05:15 there too. All the different tools and hacks that he's tried to make to constrain him. And this guy is like one 1:05:22 of the most creative innovative people I know. He's always creating music and creating different startups and he's 1:05:28 into software. He's a game developer right now. really cool guy dope. And he his phone is on black and white. 1:05:34 He he's like has five different types of extensions that are blocking different aspects of his feed. Um I use two 1:05:41 different extensions just to block my YouTube. One for shorts and one for the feed. struggle and I think underlying it 1:05:48 is a bit of um kind of confidence erosion because you say and I knew this 1:05:53 was for me definitely the case where I would have these big dreams and I would say I cannot get myself to make 1:06:02 meaningful progress towards this goal. I'll spend one hour working on the startup and 5 hours doom scrolling. And 1:06:08 I look at that day in day out and I say don't do I even deserve to have these dreams you know you know what's wrong 1:06:14 with me what's the issue and that's like a deeply that's a terrible feeling and I think honestly a lot of people have that 1:06:20 just with our monetary system in general where they're like look I'm doing everything right I'm working hard maybe 1:06:26 I took on two jobs I'm not eating out yada yada you know and yet still I'm not 1:06:32 getting ahead and I'm trying to buy this house and the house is getting more expensive faster than I'm saving giving up to catch up to the house. What is 1:06:39 wrong with me? And you kind of look around, you're like, wait a second, everyone else has this problem too or a lot of people do. So maybe something 1:06:45 isn't wrong with me. That's where it kind of turns into either despair or anger. 1:06:50 Back to A Rand. Like I think one of the biggest issues that we have going on right now is apathy. And the story of 1:06:55 Atlas Shrugged is a story of apathy and how society crumbles when that kind of 1:07:00 virus takes over the general population. And like, oh, 100 100% to what you were saying, like when you have a goal or 1:07:08 even just like a simple to-do for a day and you want to procrastinate, like, you 1:07:13 know, sometimes people procrastinate by like cleaning their apartment because like they say that's quote unquote productive, but it's not actually what's 1:07:20 productive. The most common way to procrastinate is to just open Instagram or open Twitter. And like I I've started 1:07:27 to find myself doing that in so many different instances where I'll like get like I I'll reward myself for a slight, 1:07:35 you know, like 5% move towards that goal, right? Like if you think of it like a progress bar, like even something 1:07:41 as simple as trying to read a book, it's gotten to the point where like, okay, I finished this section of the chapter, 1:07:46 now I'm going to catch up on Twitter, finish this chapter, 30 minute break, going to scroll on my phone. And it's 1:07:52 like wait like but I want to finish this book and I have the time to finish the book but I'm 1:07:57 just unable to do it for really no reason at all other than that subconscious that you were referring to 1:08:04 of like I need this book isn't fulfilling that that dopamine that I'm looking for right now. And that's where the high time prefer high time 1:08:11 preference really conflicts with the low time preference of Bitcoin. that people make it a moral failing like but if if 1:08:17 you say look this person's working hard they're doing everything right and they're still not saving up well a lot of people say work harder you know 1:08:23 you're just not sacrificing enough and that is true like there is it's not necessarily moral failing but it's like 1:08:28 you could do better everyone knows that we all could do better that's always true but at the same time when you're in 1:08:34 a system that's not engineered for success then well that's going to hold you back too and to different degrees I 1:08:39 think social media is a case where it's definitely engineered explicitly to keep you right there scrolling for as long as 1:08:45 you possibly can. And same with our financial system, too. Like, it's, you know, it's engineered to keep you 1:08:51 working and the government will keep sucking the money out and spending that on god knows what. And it just kind of 1:08:56 makes the whole world crumble. And, you know, you can work hard, you can break out, but that person who does that is 1:09:02 like less than 1% person. So, you need to have everything go right. And even then, they're not making it to the 1:09:08 degree that that person deserves. That person deserves everything. I mean, they if you can break out of our current 1:09:15 system, Bitcoin is just a cheat code. It's just a easy hack that makes it a little bit easier. It's like the 1:09:20 escalator that you're on to get to, you know, the world that, frankly, you deserve, you know, the most conducive 1:09:27 environment to help you save for the future and achieve your goals. I mean, yeah, that fires me up. Fix the 1:09:34 money, fix the world. That's right. Filter the feed. Be more productive. Like, that's great. 1:09:39 I mean, so Ted, I I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story, and this was a great back and forth. 1:09:45 Where can where can people find you? Where can we send them? And what are what are some things that you're looking forward to and want people to check out 1:09:52 going forward? Like I said, I'm always learning. So, what I'm most looking forward to right now is just getting people to test out 1:09:57 feed filter. It's kind of in a beta mode right now. It works for Twitter and Instagram on Chrome through via an 1:10:03 extension. You go to feedfilter dot. There's one big button. You click add to chrome. It logs right in. Has a feedback 1:10:09 survey. You can also reach me personally either on x at ted theer t h a y r or 1:10:16 just email me tedfeedfilter.com or come to Austin. I'm usually working at a plebl. So happy to chat anytime. I just 1:10:23 like the opportunity to talk to other Bitcoiners, talk to people who are struggling with these types of problems and see how we can solve it. 1:10:29 Absolutely. No, I I love that. And yeah, find a Bitcoin meetup. Meet interesting 1:10:34 people like Ted. There's going to be people that are building really cool [ __ ] and it fires me up every time. I 1:10:40 mean, I've been saying all week we're at alltime high in prices, but I'm also an all-time high in vibes cuz 1:10:46 Oh, yeah. Bitcoiners just continue to raise the bar. Ted, thank you so much. Great to really appreciate it. And yeah, thank 1:10:52 you for watching. Uh, and we'll be back next week.