What's up with Bitcoin rn? | Alex Adelman, Lolli

[00:00] Do you have any Bitcoin? [00:01] I have, yeah, I do. I have some Bitcoin. Nice. Bought at $69,000 of Bitcoin. So I'm down with that. But Bitcoin is up. [00:12] It's a training strategy here at Boys Club. [00:33] Hi. Hey. [00:35] Dina, what is this podcast about? [00:39] This is a podcast... [00:41] About the new internet. Mm-hmm. [00:43] And [00:45] On this podcast, we bring in people who are working in and around the new internet doing interesting things. Uh-huh. Great. [00:51] Great. And you can expect to learn, learn, learn, [00:56] take takes and hear... [01:00] Our questions. [01:02] That's what you can expect. Subscribe. Like. [01:06] Share [01:07] Review. Review. Rate and review. Rate and review. [01:10] And send this to one friend. [01:12] today. Strong call to action. Subscribe to the newsletter. Okay. We had on today's show, Alex Adelman. Yes. [01:26] We had a different kind of conversation today. We had it and it was really refreshing and interesting and exciting. We got out of our little corner of ETH Twitter. We got out of the tiniest bubble of the internet that we reside in and heard from...

[01:40] an expert [01:41] In... [01:42] This world. Bitcoin. Bitcoin. So... [01:46] Alex is the founder of Lolly. Yeah. Very much ahead of his time. Founded this company many years ago and it is a rewards platform for you when you earn, I guess, Bitcoin rewards. Yeah. We didn't really talk about Lolly that much. We talked about Bitcoin and what's happening in the larger markets. [02:06] macro economic environment of the world today. We went macro. And super interesting to hear from someone who is in that camp, but also... [02:17] Reaches across the aisle. [02:19] He's definitely... He does reach across the aisle, yeah. It was so interesting listening to the interview because I, at moments, I was like... [02:25] this man has a religious fervor. Yes. I found it interesting having that sort of perspective and then just being like, oh, I'm sure that's what people think about us. Yeah, totally. [02:36] But also it's kind of what's needed [02:39] in order to [02:41] buy the whole worldview. It's a whole worldview that you need to [02:46] Opt into. Opt into in order to- Build. Build. [02:48] Be in, yeah, and see that vision. Yeah. Yeah. [02:51] It's very hard to just take a piece of it. And also create that world. As a founder and builder in this space, you're deciding what. [03:00] And [03:01] making the world you want to see. Yeah. So you have to be, yeah, have a religious fervor. [03:07] about [03:08] Your approach. Yeah. [03:09] So it's interesting. Very interesting. Learned a lot, honestly. I did too. So give it a listen.

[03:21] Alex Adelman is the CEO and co-founder of Lolli, which is the leading Bitcoin rewards app. Alex, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Great to be here. We're really excited to have you. We're really excited to chat about Lolli, chat about Bitcoin. It's relatively new for this podcast. Very, very new. New for me. That Bitcoin thing, it's really catching on. 13 years old. [03:51] We're going to do explain the tweet with you, which is for new listeners. We have our guest explain one of their tweets. That we don't understand. That we don't understand. So the tweet that we chose for you... [04:04] Alex Adelman on Twitter. Okay, I'm going to explain it the best I can. [04:09] Natasha, please. There's some visual elements. Heavily visual. Link in show notes. So, okay, the tweet says, you posted it last month. [04:18] rolling into hyper Bitcoinization, like that's the copy. And then the visual is, I suppose, [04:27] I... [04:28] It kind of looks like a hearse to me, but I don't think that that's actually what it – like up until now, I was thinking it was a hearse. It's a stretch black car Mercedes. It's a stretch limo. [04:39] Okay. That actually makes a lot more sense. Okay. It's a stretch limo and along – driving and alongside the stretch limo is about 15 – [04:47] Guys in suits running, sort of like hugging it and running alongside it. Natasha, is there anything I'm missing from this description? Yeah, I...

[04:54] I know you're not missing anything. I thought it was like a funeral procession at first, which I think is what you were saying. No funeral. No death of Bitcoin. Death of fiat, maybe? There are many layers to this tweet, maybe two or three layers. Yeah. [05:08] But the super, the first layer of the onion is, for those of you who don't know what hyper-Bitcoinization is, it's this concept of, [05:18] that Bitcoin will continue to essentially replace fiat currencies. And it is an incredible monetary policy that was set in 2009 by Stoshi Nakamoto and believed in by millions of people across the world as being this one thing that we can all agree on that's not going to change, that there's only 21 million of these Bitcoin. And every 10 minutes, a block will be discovered. And it's [05:48] And so monetary policies of most countries change every day or every month, every quarter, every year. And so for people who believe that their fiat currency is going to be the exact same in 10 years, most countries, most individuals across the entire world, 8 billion people, do not have that faith in their currency. [06:09] What I love about Bitcoin is there's truth in currency. I can own it. I can hold my keys. It's truly my money. And so the people that believe in a future, maybe it's 20 years, maybe it's 50 years, maybe it's one year of hyper Bitcoinization. There's this concept that like as more and more people start to believe in Bitcoin and adopt Bitcoin as their dominant currency.

[06:32] that it'll accelerate into [06:35] Basically just a very, very quick adoption of Bitcoin slowly and then all at once. It's kind of this like concept that a lot of people talk about. So that's hyper Bitcoinization. So that's the that's the one layer of it. Two, you know, there's the. [06:47] meme around, you know, rolling into X-like, if you're familiar with that. So that's the other, you know, just mimetic piece of it. Three, there was a, that is actually... [06:58] a North Korea video. So a little controversial. They were like going into negotiations, I believe, with South Korea or somebody, but it was Kim Jong Il, I think is in the in the car. And so one of the layers there that I think is probably missed by most people, but I like I like having fun and joking a little bit to myself. So one of the layers there is the fact that like, [07:19] North Korea is a country that no one will touch, no one will do business with. And while I don't agree with North Korea's practices, I do believe that one of the powers of Bitcoin is that it literally is for everybody. You cannot take it away from anybody, no matter what you believe, no matter what you do. And there is power in that and there's beauty in that where we have to basically make a decision as a society. [07:42] Is money for everybody? Should everyone have access to resources and be able to truly own resources on the Internet? And is the Internet open or do we [07:50] What is the party that decides who can have money, who can talk, who can say whatever they want? And I think it's a, there's like a line there that we have to decide as a species. How do we communicate with money and information? So that's like probably the deeper layer there. So I would love to talk to you a little bit about what's happening with Bitcoin right now. I think what's happening now is what everyone predicted is that inflation...

[08:18] It was going to occur across all currencies across the world, which if you look at the global inflation rates, it's through the roofs right now with every major currency. [08:27] Bitcoin is, you know, [08:29] clearly fixes that. And so it's sort of this like digital gold in a sense where people can retreat to something. And if it also is going up over a short period of time, while US dollars are inflating and we don't really know where the rate increases are occurring, yeah, people are feeling pretty bullish right now on Bitcoin. [08:50] I really hate to be like a fear monger. I'm more on like the positive side of Bitcoin fixing a lot of problems. We're in just absolute chaos right now. There's a war. It's happening with Bitcoin. [09:00] two superpowers, even if it's indirect. You know, you could say it's Ukraine and Russia, but it's U.S. Russia and China. And now China's involving all these other countries because they see this as a moment of weakness. [09:13] to get all the other nations together that are all the major nations that we need, we trade with, and that rely on U.S. dollar. And the BRICS nations is what I believe they call them. So China, Brazil, India, Russia are all getting together and saying, hey, let's de-dollarize the world. And they're starting with energy, which is the most, for the physicists out there that believe, you know, everything is actually, the whole world is actually denominated in energy.

[09:43] and that is the most important layer. They're literally coming at the most important layer. And between all of those countries, they control a massive amount of food supply and a massive amount of energy supply. And... [09:56] We're going to have to figure out what's a way around that, we being Americans. And so [10:02] With chaos, I think people look at Bitcoin as being a safe haven. I imagine a lot of Boys Club members are in the US. And but you know, for anyone who is a global citizen or born elsewhere understands that I think one of my learnings of last [10:16] you know, nine years of being in the space is that [10:20] Americans have a very difficult time of understanding what currency is like outside of the country. Because we've been so blessed with being born here or raised here, we just think in U.S. dollars. And when you go anywhere else and when you've lived anywhere else, when you transact anywhere else, you realize that's just not the case. If you're anywhere else, your fiat currency is reliant on the U.S. dollars. So you're like one abstraction away. [10:50] everything the US dollar does. A lot of countries, a lot of people don't know this, so I'll just share this, a lot of countries will hold [10:56] US dollars in their literal treasury. So their Fort Knox, instead of having gold, 'cause they have no access to gold, has literal US dollars in their treasury. [11:03] And so if their treasury is backed by our dollar and that dollar is being, you know, is being attacked by all these other nations, you're going to diversify your treasury as an economic strategy. And so you're going to you might hold I mean, I wouldn't do this, but you might hold Chinese.

[11:23] Juan, you might hold Bitcoin, you might hold gold as much as you can. [11:28] And [11:29] And while gold is the sort of like set finance asset, the issue historically is that most countries can't get access to gold. There isn't gold to have. Like the U.S. has the vast majority of it. Russia has some. China has some. France has some. But no one's giving it up. And the ones that have the notes for gold... [11:45] The ones that have cashed in those notes historically, you know, France, us have been like, no, you're not touching our gold. You can't, you can't have it. [11:52] So you basically can hold the gold, you can like buy gold, you know, almost like [11:56] like a promissory note or whatever, but you're never actually going to get that. So Bitcoin is really the only asset right now or the best asset that gives you that access to this set monetary policy. And my only, you know, one of my biggest criticisms of Ethereum is that, [12:11] The monetary policy changes, even though they've gone deflationary since its inception. I have no clue where it's going to end up. So in many ways, when you're looking on a macro scale, why Bitcoin, I think, is so bullish right now in particular is the monetary policy aspect. Ethereum has all these amazing things and really cool things that you can do with it. Great community and amazing applications that are being built on it. [12:34] But when you zoom out, if you're a country, if you're somebody in a non-U.S. country, like you're looking at Bitcoin as being the only safe haven of of monetary policy. [12:48] If every country in the world [12:50] is has you know their own currency or many countries have their own currency and and just assuming like you know if i have a country that is the hundredth least volatile currency in the world so i don't know what country that is i'm just going to throw out an example this is not accurate let's say it's bangladesh

[13:05] So let's just say Bangladesh. Sorry, Bangladesh, if I'm devaluing your currency. But say Bangladesh is out there and it has the 100th most volatile currency because they have their own monetary policy. It's not very great. And the government may be a little bit corrupt or whatever. I'm not saying it is. Just saying, for example... [13:20] And if I'm in that country, and so let's say Bitcoin is the 101st [13:25] most volatile currency in like 2013, because I believe it was, that's like, when I got into it, I believe, [13:30] when I ran the numbers, it was the hundredth plus most volatile currency because it was up all the time. So everyone looks at Bitcoin and it's like in the United States, it's like, oh, my God, it's too volatile. I'm not too risky. I'm never going to get into it. [13:43] If you're in Bangladesh or if you're in all these other countries that are in extremely volatile, what has literally happened over the last decade? [13:51] nine years is Bitcoin is now a top 25 least volatile currency. [13:56] So even though there's a power law of currencies, [14:00] And kind of going back to memes, if you know like the Grim Reaper meme of like every single door, if you think of like Bitcoin being the Grim Reaper and every door is a currency, for the last nine years it has become less volatile and more of a safe haven across every other currency. [14:16] So, [14:17] If you put yourselves in the shoes of a Bangladeshi individual or a Sri Lankan individual or a Thai individual or whatever, a Venezuelan individual, [14:27] and you say, I'm looking at all the currencies, and you're looking at the ones that you have access to, [14:32] and you're looking at the ones that you trust, [14:34] And you see Bitcoin coming up the ranks as being like already passes your currency, passes your neighboring country's currencies, and is now trending to be a top 10, you know, currency, global currency, not just cryptocurrency, global currency. You start to think, oh, wow, this Bitcoin thing is really catching on. Natasha wants to double click on that one. Yeah, yeah. Double click on something.

[14:56] This whole time when you were talking about volatility, I was thinking about the price action, basically, of these different currencies. [15:04] How are you defining that? No. No, okay. I'm looking at volatility. What does that mean? So, okay. So if you're... [15:11] Okay, here's another cool thing that a little bit of a contrarian take. So [15:16] What we care about in the U.S., [15:18] almost the number one thing and where our vision is sort of blurred here is we look at price because we have the store of value. The best store of value is the US dollar. If you're looking at store of value, which is a lot of people has been like, oh, Bitcoin's the best store of value. And it is if you're outside the US in many cases for a lot of those countries I was describing. [15:37] For price, historically, Bitcoin has been incredible. Best performing asset the last 10 years at almost any point in the cycle, other than your cycle, Natasha, I'm sorry. No problem. But for most people, if you got into Bitcoin at almost any point of the last 10 years, you did incredibly well, which is price action. [15:54] Volatility is a different indicator. Volatility is how much is Bitcoin going up and down. And that's the store of value argument. [16:01] So, so let's go back to this Bangladesh example, or let's go to Venezuela example. If I'm in, if I'm Venezuelan and I'm, I'm sitting in Venezuela and my currency has been hyperinflated over the last, you know, 20 years and has gone up and down, you know, and my government's rugged me and I, you know, retreated to other currencies and maybe got rugged by them. Like, I don't really care about price as much as I care about store of value. I just want a safe haven. I'm just like, just please don't rug me in a list of.

[16:30] what I care about above price action is actually volatility. [16:35] I'm just looking to hold my assets. I want to know when I get paid by my employer that my money is there next week. [16:43] If you ever study like hyperinflation, it is the is one of the saddest things that happens in our society. [16:49] People earn money and in hyperinflation, that money's gone. They have to literally go spend it within that hour, within that day. - This case for hyperbic-coronization, [17:00] similar to what Bellagio has been saying over the past couple of weeks or whatever. Part of what has been coming up for me when I've been seeing the Bellagio tweets. And when I hear you talk is that there's a lot of collateral damage in a world where the, the, [17:13] US currency is no longer the globally accepted store of value. And it would actually be quite painful. The stuff on Twitter where it was like the rah-rah hyperbic organization stuff, man, that would actually be pretty grim if that were to happen, especially in the amount of time that he was originally predicting it. My question is, [17:30] Is there a world where hyper-recognization could happen without it being this... [17:36] terrible transition or do you think that that actually does have to happen in order for [17:40] Bitcoin to be this dominant currency that... Some people would perceive Bology or the things I'm saying as being like... [17:47] We want Bitcoin to do this thing and everyone who didn't get involved is kind of [17:58] Like it's their fault kind of thing. It's not really the case. I think in a perfect world, we wouldn't have an overnight thing. We would have a beautiful slow roll up. It would be 31 one week, 32 the next week, 33 the following week. That's just not going to have how it's going to happen because it is a free market. And if the market stays free.

[18:17] across the entire world, which I believe it will on a global scale, like, [18:21] It's a snowball effect. It'll just keep building and building and building the more people that grow, and then you will just have to get involved or you'll get left behind. [18:29] And so the way that I like to think about it is it's net good for [18:35] people. [18:36] So, [18:37] The US might have the most to lose. [18:41] But everyone else, humanity has the most to gain. And so I think we're going to have this great equalizer. Bitcoin, like a pro-Bitcoin world, a hyper-Bitcoinization world is a more equal world. It's a more egalitarian world. Everyone has access to the same money. No one can get turned off by their bank. That is a more positive future. So I have a question for you. I want to dig a little bit into Bitcoin versus Ethereum. I totally see your argument around why Bitcoin is a better store of value is because the [19:11] rules are written. They're not going to change. It's, [19:13] It's... [19:15] what it is and that can't be manipulated and so it keeps it stable in that way. [19:21] With Ethereum... [19:23] It can change. It does change. The rules are more flexible. [19:27] the world that I've been in is Ethereum and sort of that understanding and, and what convinced me about, uh, [19:32] Getting into it was really this seeing all of this applications of what you can do, seeing it as an enabling technology. And that's what got me into crypto and got me excited about Web3 is like, oh, there's all of these. [19:43] things that you can do with it. It's not just a financialized asset and,

[19:48] There has to be value. If there's these tools that are being created that unlock all of this amazing possibility in the world, it's impossible for that to be valuable. [19:57] not increase in value. So, [20:01] And that's sort of from this conversation how I'm seeing it is Bitcoin is this store of value, just like a financial asset. And Ethereum is a tool. And because of that, we'll increase in value. But would love to hear from you if anything that I'm saying doesn't check out or how you sort of think about these two different worlds. [20:17] Yeah, great question. And I totally understand the perspective. [20:23] Bitcoin and Ethereum could not be worlds different. They happen to be both crypto, but if you look at them on their fundamentals, they are very, very different in their ethos and their technology and everything. And I think what a lot of people like to do is this Bitcoin versus Ethereum sort of debate, when in actuality, I think both can win. I think we can live in this like multi-currency world, and Ethereum is doing worlds better to attract culture. And kind of going back in the full circle, I almost accidental full circle is memes. [20:53] "What is the meme of the world?" And the best memes are forever going to perpetuate into society, and the best information, the best story wins. And so, for a long time, Bitcoin had the best story. [21:06] It was a macro story of Bitcoin fixes this, Bitcoin fixes that. It fixes monetary policy. It gives everybody this access to move money. It has the most decentralized path. It had the fair launch with Ethereum, arguably did not. It had all these things that were winning in the meme of money.

[21:25] Ethereum comes along and messes up here and there and everything, but time cures a lot of things. And Ethereum is really executed. It has done so many things that it set out to do and has proved a lot of doubters wrong. [21:40] The two big tipping points for Ethereum that won a lot of market share, if you're looking at it as a technology, was DeFi. So DeFi Summer, a lot of people know in the space. So it started to build a lot of smart contract layers. So DeFi. [21:53] Smart contracts were like the big thing that it did. It basically created a more intelligent, more dynamic money. [22:00] that Bitcoin does not have smart contracts. And so it gave a layer for people to actually build on top of money. [22:07] And so that's how it was pitched to me in the early days. A friend who was deep in the Ethereum community at the time was like, "Alex, you love Bitcoin. This is like Bitcoin, but you can build on it." [22:15] I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. That's why I got into it. [22:18] So that's how a lot of people got into it that are like developers. So tons of developers came in on to it and said, oh, it's programmable money. I can do more with it. So they started building all these applications and some of them were rugs. Some of them were, you know, like were awful for the for the world. But many of them were actually good and created cool things you could do with money. Stable coins. Incredible. You know, it gave every all these people in Bangladesh access to the US dollar. Right.

[22:48] in the world access to the US dollar. So the exact thing that I said before, where if you wanted the most stable currency in the world, you could argue that Ethereum actually gave you access to that, not Bitcoin. [23:00] The second wave [23:02] Culture. [23:03] JPEGs. [23:04] NFTs. [23:07] tokenizing [23:09] actual memes, [23:11] Memes being culture, like whatever your favorite meme is, you can actually own that meme, trade it, build a community around it. And... [23:19] All these celebrities, all the individuals [23:22] They want to be a part of these communities. They want to own these assets. They want to make their own. And there's tons of rugs, but there's tons of culture that shifted from Bitcoin [23:32] to owning these assets. [23:35] Yeah, I would say that was me. When I first got into the space in 2017, I was Bitcoin. And then everything started happening with Ethereum. And I was like, man, Bitcoin all of a sudden felt really boomer. And the culture around it also... [23:49] in certain corners, kind of not that fun to hang out around. I didn't feel that in the Ethereum community. That was a big draw for me to be like, okay, maybe this is where I fit in more and where more of the things that I'm interested as it pertains to culture and the intersection with fashion and art and all of this. There's actually some more interesting things happening over here. I think one thing that you missed was the conversation around energy. I do think that that as a headline, if we're talking big picture, how the narrative around cryptocurrencies is

[24:19] Especially over the last year, I think Bitcoin is taking some hits for whether it's true or not. And I see you shaking your head and like I think if you were to ask the average person on the street, I think that [24:29] Ethereum was starting to crawl its way out of that hole, and I don't know that Bitcoin has in the general population's mind. [24:36] I think yes and no. And the yes piece is that it definitely did take a hit with that. And there is a lot of FUD around that narrative. But I call myself as like, I'm not a Bitcoin maxi, I'm a Bitcoin rationalist. And so I... [24:51] Saw that. I see it. You are right. There are some things that I disagree with what you what you said or what the world said about Bitcoin and energy that I would like to come back to. But it did get a lot of FUD because of the you know, it is easy to say, oh, Bitcoin, you can track the energy consumption. What a lot of people fail to realize is that's actually happening. [25:15] That is the thing with Bitcoin. That is what makes it so powerful. That's what makes it so decentralized. And if you think about fiat, no one ever does a calculation. I need to hire a bunch of mathematicians. If there's any mathematicians in the audience, [25:30] that are listening, DM me. One project I would love to commission is... [25:36] Understanding [25:38] the price of fiat. [25:39] The energy consumption of fiat, if you calculated [25:43] how much it costs to actually have a freaking dollar, you know, literally print dollars and coins and have banks and have, you know, all this digital.

[25:56] Ledgers and everything I guarantee that is more [26:00] Costly. [26:02] the inefficiencies of fiat are way more costly than bitcoin. [26:06] The most incredible thing about Bitcoin, and I want this to be like a huge takeaway because it is so important, so fundamental about Bitcoin and where there's a lot of FUD. [26:14] is that for the first time ever, we can move energy into money. [26:19] We'll look back 20 years from now and say that is one of the biggest shifts [26:24] in the entire world to happen as a society. Kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, the number one layer, if you look at it from like the physics of money, [26:34] and the physics of value in the entire world, the top layer [26:38] The apex predator is energy. [26:41] More than anything. [26:43] That's how the entire world works. It literally is all energy. [26:47] It controls water, it controls money, it controls countries, it controls individuals, it controls everything. It revolves like everything around energy. [26:58] And so Bitcoin removes everything here and it goes straight to energy. [27:03] Money can then... [27:05] be used for all these other things at a base layer. So if you ever study like code or [27:11] Technology. [27:12] It's all like, what's the highest level of coding, right? It's like, well, that's the base layer. That's the most impenetrable. That's the most important layer. And everything else is built on top of it, but bugs occur [27:24] on these other layers that are sort of abstractions of the base layer.

[27:28] And so the same is true with how the whole entire world works. If we can attach... [27:33] energy into money [27:35] It solves a ton of problems around here. [27:39] And very few like why I was such a big I don't think proof of stake has proven itself yet. [27:46] is because of that. It basically said we lost the race of that thesis [27:51] We lost the decentralized aspect of claiming, turning energy into money. One bear case for Ethereum is that proof of stake didn't work. Like people think proof of stake worked. It did not work yet. It is in its infancy. We're a year into seeing if it worked right. [28:05] Proof of Work has worked for 13 years and has not failed us. [28:10] So proof of work is, has a massive headstart. Ethereum, no one likes to say this, but like Ethereum lost. [28:17] Like... [28:17] maybe it won in other ways, it very much lost proof of work. It could not compete with proof of work. [28:23] And it took the FUD and it said, oh, we need to move to it. Whereas Bitcoiners are like, sorry, sorry. [28:29] This is what innovation looks like. You may not like it, but this is important. This is how we decentralize money. [28:36] What are some things you're looking at that... [28:39] make you feel bullish about the space you're [28:42] related to culture? Yeah, good question. [28:44] Bitcoin felt like I don't want to use your words, but it was like, didn't feel as fun. It felt like the community wasn't as fun or engaging or inviting maybe as Ethereum. And I totally agree. I think it's my biggest... [28:57] criticism of my friends who probably label themselves Bitcoin maximalists

[29:02] They take a very aggressive approach. I don't think I take that approach. I think like I'm friends with [29:08] people who are aetherian maxis and i'm friends with a solana maxis it's so funny it crosses the aisle yeah it's so democrat republican the way that we talk about it it's so similar to political parties anyway keep going yeah it feels like that it's like no we're all in this together we're all trying to make a better future and like it's it is it's naive and arrogant to say that i am [29:31] Like I've been wrong before. I have not been wrong about Bitcoin and I haven't been wrong about a lot of things, but I have been wrong before and I will be wrong in the future. And I think I'm right. And I think I've been in the space for a while and seen a lot of things. And I would say like one of my. [29:47] skill sets is pattern recognition. And I think that there's enough patterns that have existed with Ethereum and Bitcoin that I think [29:56] both are going to keep winning and keep succeeding and keep bringing people into this world that we're all building. Natasha, to answer your question, the thing I'm excited about, has always been the mass adoption of this. I look at this as both [30:11] a lifeboat, life raft and a party. I think that [30:16] The life raft is very important. If the party is the incentive to give someone the life raft that is the party favor, let's do it. But like the life raft is so important because I think that's what Bitcoin actually solves because the systems that we're on today are not working. [30:30] They're not working for 8 billion people. They're not working for people who are unbanked or having their rights removed from them or can't move money freely. I think that the world is not equitable world in the way that it exists today. And I think we, as a...

[30:44] as an evolved species and a constantly evolving species, [30:48] is we can do better. And Bitcoin, Ethereum are steps to a better future. I am so excited about that macro. Still, even nine years in and five years into building Lolly, I am so excited about anything adoptions. I love what you all are doing. I think it is so, so, so important to educate [31:05] Everybody. [31:06] I'm so excited about what you all are doing. I'm really excited about what we're doing. I'm really excited about rewards. And why I'm excited about rewards in particular, both non-fungible rewards and fungible rewards, is that it is in the forefront of adoption. [31:21] The... [31:22] Waves that I look at historically are, the first wave was miners came in and technologists. [31:30] I can get involved into Bitcoin in like 2011 if I mine it. If I'm extremely technical, I can get into it. [31:36] The 2013-2017 waves were about... [31:40] Investors. [31:42] I can get involved in it if I buy it. [31:44] Right? That is less than 1% of the population that can buy a risky, volatile asset [31:50] And again, they didn't get into it because of the principles. They got involved in it because of the price. [31:57] Then you get into the next wave, which I think is going to be the rewards wave, the mass adoption wave, the gaming wave. [32:03] So [32:04] This wave is the earning wave. And so this is what we, I think we're very, almost too early for, in 2017, 2018, my last company was, it was acquired by Rakuten, biggest cashback company, one of the biggest rewards companies in the world. And I'd been powering all these rewards companies and I'd like been like, Oh my God, the rewards are such an easy way to distribute money to people.

[32:27] I took all these things that I knew. I took economics, technology, my work at Rakuten, my work building my last company, my work in payments. And I kind of merged all these ideas. I was like, the easiest way to distribute technology. [32:39] Crypto to people, any money to people is through giving it to somebody. Everybody shops. [32:44] less than 1% of the world invest. [32:48] So how do you get people into [32:51] Crypto. [32:52] You give them Bitcoin, you give them free NFTs, you give them art, you give them collectibles. They don't even have to know now that it's that's an NFT. [33:02] They just get this cool picture that gives them, you know, extra 5% back at Duncan. [33:08] And now they're an NFT holder. Now they're a wallet holder. [33:13] So this is the next wave we're seeing. [33:16] We're going to see people playing games. We're going to see people buying things that they would have bought already. They're going to go buy their coffee from Dunkin' and they're going to go get an NFT reward. [33:25] for free. [33:26] We have a thousand merchants on the platform. They're giving us more money because fungible rewards work. [33:31] No matter what. [33:33] Non-fungible rewards will work in the next bull cycle. [33:37] because it'll give people additional incentives and there'll be a secondary market and so it just needs time but i am super bullish i'm super excited about nft rewards fungible rewards art ordinals with on bitcoin gaming which we didn't really talk about but i think gaming is going to bring hundreds of millions of people over the next two years three years into this space single-handedly

[34:00] Awesome. Well, on that note, Alex, thank you so much for coming on and schooling us all about the world of Bitcoin. We're excited about Lolly. Link in show notes to check it out. [34:10] And yeah, thanks so much for coming to hang. [34:14] Thank you for having me. Great questions and fun, fun, fun conversation. Thanks so much. [34:23] Draft tweets. [34:24] Sure. We're doing some draft tweets. I've been drafting a lot and not sending. Oh, my gosh. Really? Because I feel like you've been very... [34:31] My Twitter heart chakra is open. I don't know what to tell you. A lot is coming to me right now. Oh my gosh. Okay, let's hear it. [34:43] Okay. [34:45] This one's truly a draft. I haven't finished it. Okay. Great. Okay. It's a quote tweet. Mm-hmm. [34:51] From... [34:52] This woman... [34:54] And her tweet is... [34:56] Spent $66.00. [34:58] "On them clothes from Cheyenne, [34:59] I took them to Plato's closet and they gave me $72. Oh my God. I think that's how you pronounce it. Shine, right? Sheen? I don't know. I actually don't know. Okay. I know exactly what you're talking about. Okay. So it's a quote sheet of her. [35:13] Of the suite. Yes. And I was trying to figure out a way to say – [35:17] this is arbitrage, baby. Or like have like a teachable moment around the concept of arbitrage. Yeah. And I couldn't land it. What about this is, I love this is arbitrage, baby. Okay. I kind of wanted to be like,

[35:30] I kind of wanted to be like, this is... [35:33] the definition of arbitrage. [35:36] Because I honestly just learned what arbitrage is. Yeah, I'm learning it right now. Okay, great. So here we are. My understanding of it is when you're – [35:45] Basically making money on a difference in the price of two things on two, like, okay. Arbitrage is usually in like, [35:53] Imports, exports. Okay. [35:56] Or a lot in like [35:58] trading in the financial markets. I see. [36:00] So I'm buying USD when it's 0.0001, blah, blah, blah. And I'm selling it over here when it's like whatever. So that's that difference is arbitrage. Okay. So she is, this is arbitrage. Yes. Because she's buying it. Incredible. Great. So anyway, that's where we're at. I think you should send it. I think you should finish. Yeah, I think it's very good. Okay. How much engagement did she get on that? Because that's a great tweet. Yeah, she did great. [36:25] Okay, I have one here that I've been saving for a while that... [36:31] I was looking for the right image and I think I have the right image. I actually feel like I should post it right now. [36:37] and it's just emotionally here. [36:39] And I'm like, [36:41] Have been looking for the right image. And now it's emotionally here. [36:44] What? What do you mean it's emotionally here? No, no, no. I am emotionally here. Okay. Emotionally, I'm here. [36:50] Oh, that's the tweet? The tweet is emotionally here and then there's an image, a corresponding image. But I haven't had the right image. [36:57] But now I do have the right image. Okay. And it is Kendall Roy smiling at the end of this most recent Succession episode. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. And what are we emotionally here for? Okay. That type of moment. Okay. Great. That to me, the tweet reads...

[37:12] Thank you. [37:13] A little evil. A little evil. And also that you've recently had an unlock. Okay. Well, I'm answering it. [37:22] Okay. Bye. Bye. [37:24] Dina, where are we going to be in September? We are going to be at Permissionless in Austin, Texas. Permissionless too. It's happening. And we're curating the culture track for the conference. So if you're into the stuff we talk about here, you should come and have a good time with us. So email your boss, tell them that you need to go and buy your ticket. [37:43] Now they will never be as cheap as they are today. And we also have a promo code in our discord for boys club members. Come hang in Austin. [37:54] Friends. [37:55] This is where we make an ask. We're in our call to action era. It's CTA times. Rate and review this podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter. And if you're feeling extra generous... [38:07] Send it to one friend. [38:10] Thank you for listening. We love you. Bye.