WBD218 Audio Transcription

Bitcoin Purity with Rodolfo Novak

Interview date: Wednesday 22nd April 2020

Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Rodolfo Novak from Coinkite. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.

In this interview, I talk to Rodolfo Novak, the CEO & Co-Founder of Coinkite and Bitcoin OG. We get into Bitcoin purity and discuss self custody & personal responsibility, hardware wallets and Bitcoin narratives.

“I think it is a very hard balance to strike between, pushing people towards the right direction, and not being too preachy or too much of a dick.”

— Rodolfo Novak

Interview Transcription

Peter McCormack: They've changed their mind on that herd immunity pretty quickly and now we're... I don't know where we are, like in Europe, we're behind Spain and Italy, but they're actually saying that they think we're 50% under-reporting. So actually, we're behind France as well.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, but you know, the tests are like 30% unreliable. So it's pretty hopeless anyways.

Peter McCormack: How're things for you, man? How're things up in Canada?

Rodolfo Novak: Things are fine. It's a low-density country, aside from... My city is massive, It's like third largest city in North America, it's like Chicago-size. But no, the rest of the country is pretty low-density. We have a communist healthcare here too. It's actually illegal to have private healthcare here.

Peter McCormack: Really? So I have private healthcare in the UK.

Rodolfo Novak: It's illegal. You can't pay to make it faster and you can't pay to have it better. That's it.

Peter McCormack: So that is communist, whereas ours is socialist.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, exactly. You have your socialized version and then you have your option to pay there, if you want to do some stuff right?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Rodolfo Novak: Here, you can't. It's actually illegal.

Peter McCormack: Why the fuck would they stop that though? Because the private healthcare system here takes pressure off the public health system.

Rodolfo Novak: I know! Listen, our hospitals are already running over capacity on a good day, it's ridiculous! If you live in a big city, like I do and you're dying, you have first-world healthcare, it's fantastic! But if you're not dying, dude, like literally dying, if you only lost an arm, for example to a chainsaw, you're going to wait probably 10 hours in the hospital. It's a classic thing and it's a classic communism thing. They love making you wait.

Peter McCormack: See that itself is dumb, I can understand the argument between entirely private and socialized health care. There are a lot of people who want socialized healthcare here in the UK...

Rodolfo Novak: Sure, have it.

Peter McCormack: People love the NHS. Everyone loves it.

Rodolfo Novak: It's propaganda man, that's why. It's like, people love all this shit because they've been told since they were kids that you should identify yourself as a country who has healthcare for all.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'll be fair to people, I think some people are happy with a social safety net and happy to put the NHS in some of that. I still have to pay for the NHS as much as the next person, but I have the option now. It's not even expensive, dude. For me, my son and my daughter...

Rodolfo Novak: It's because it's not expensive. If you have a healthcare system with modern healthcare, that is private, it's actually not expensive.

Peter McCormack: Well yeah. But I think in the UK, it's slightly different, in that they still use part of the NHS. So if I phone up my private healthcare provider, I have to go and get a referral from a doctor. But look dude, for me, my son and my daughter, it's like £150 a year. What's that?

Rodolfo Novak: But see, what people don't get is healthcare is not free here, it fucking costs like $10 to $30,000 a year per person in your taxes to sustain this shit. It's unsustainable! Anyways, I'm not even going to waste too much time on this. No wonder people that have real means, they just fly to US to get shit done. There is a few, sort of 3 key private clinics here that sort of... They find some loopholes so that you can pay say $200 a month and then you have access to like a family doctor pretty fast. But that's it. It's not like they can actually do tests on you. They can't really do anything, it's all communism.

Peter McCormack: I'll tell you why I got it, I don't want to fuck around with cancer. My mum had cancer and if I get it, I don't want to go on a waiting list. I'm happy to pay and it's not like out of privilege, everybody... Not everybody. A lot of people can afford private healthcare and choose not to do it. I don't buy into that argument, like, "Oh, you're privileged!" Like £150 a month...

Rodolfo Novak: It's bullshit. This whole privilege-shit is bullshit. I was fucking poor when I came to this country man. You just fucking work and then you pay for shit, it's not that complicated.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I want to pay for it. But even the US system isn't great. You've got people in the US who fly to Canada to get their medicines because they're like a 10th of the price.

Rodolfo Novak: Well the thing is that the US has a very complicated, skewed system. They have this weird.... Because the insurance companies there are forced to take in pre-condition people, all that shit, they can't price in the stuff, the problems are in actuaries, so you end up with a completely skewed system that ends up costing way more. So you have to pick. You either have a public-private system where you let the two sorts of run their own things, you can still use each other, you can still have somebody pay the public system to use the hospitals, which is great, more money, but you can't force somebody to foot the bill if they're not being paid to foot the bill. Then you screw everything and you make everybody else pay more.

Peter McCormack: Who's got a good system, do you think?

Rodolfo Novak: I've got to say Switzerland really seems to have its shit together with healthcare. They have amazing hospitals, amazing healthcare stuff, the pharmaceuticals are there too and it's fairly affordable and you can pay to how fancy you want your sofa in your hospital room, you can go to super-fancy hospital or you can go to an average one and... But they have it together there.

Peter McCormack: What do they do there for people who've got no healthcare?

Rodolfo Novak: I can't remember. But I think they have a public insurance system where... Listen, I'm of the libertarian leaning. I love free market stuff, I don't have answers for everything.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I'm still in that place where I like a social safety net, I do.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, you're still a pussy.

Peter McCormack: I'm still a pussy, but I don't have a gun.

Rodolfo Novak: I'm joking! You're entitled to be a pussy.

Peter McCormack: Fuck off man, I'm not a pussy. I still like the social safety net, as I still like helping out people in difficult situations.

Rodolfo Novak: I think it's okay to have a more milinarist system, where you have a few sort of very basic things. You can have some very basic stuff, but the problem is everybody wants more. Everybody wants more free shit that they are not paying for and then you just end up in a place where it just grows, because people are always going to vote for free shit.

Peter McCormack: Of course they are and this is why we're... Everyone's heading into full communism now anyway.

Rodolfo Novak: Exactly, vote harder!

Peter McCormack: That's the funny side of it. It's like the Conservatives in the UK, the Republicans in the US, they happen to implement the most socialist programs that anyone has ever seen since God knows when.

Rodolfo Novak: It's pretty annoying that there is no home for freedom-loving people anymore. So the right is fully populist, essentially socialist and the left is communist-socialist. So what happened to just the freedom-loving people? It is like, " Leave me alone."

Peter McCormack: Well this is the argument I had with someone recently, it was to do with the UK election and it was one of my friends saying, "I can't vote for Corbyn because the Labour party is socialist." I was like, "Both parties are socialist. It's just a different spectrum." We've still got the NHS under both.

Rodolfo Novak: To be fair though, the only good thing about the right... Though I have not a single ounce of social conservatism in me, like zero, I have no interest in people's business, the only reason why a lot of libertarian people or more freedom-leaning people vote to the right is because the right tends to... Even if they still do a lot of socialist bullshit, they still tend to have less socialist bullshit and they tend to do less bullshit-against-freedom stuff.

So they seem to be, even though they have in their party, people who are trying to say fight abortion or whatever the fuck it is, at least they still don't come after people unless it's a fascist state kind of deal. They tend to sort of stay off of controlling people's freedom of speech, for example and I think that at least, is one of the reasons why so many sort of libertarians still go to the right to vote.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I agree and it's why we've got these quite interesting debates around lockdowns right now because you've got right-leaning people saying these lockdowns are bullshit and anti-freedom, "I should be able to do what I want. I should be able to go out and go shopping and you shouldn't be able to tell me what to do."

But at the same time you have got that question. It's like, "Well, yeah, but you don't know if you're going to be making people sick or you're going to be contributing to more people in hospitals." I find the debate itself quite fascinating. It's almost like a real cross section between the left and the right.

Rodolfo Novak: I think the problem is... I was fairly concerned about this stuff way back, like early January kind of thing. I heard about the stuff starting to happen in China, bought a pile of books about the Spanish Flu and viruses and things, and sort of read the stuff and sort of got a better understanding of how these things play out. China lies more than everybody else, so the numbers were complete bullshit and so we couldn't get a picture of like, is this stuff deadly or not? That's the problem. So you can't really create any sort of policy or plan, even on a personal level, what the fuck do you do if you don't know? It's a known-unknown.

So I started prepping a bit, got my shit together and I think the issue now is, it seems clear at least to me, that this stuff is not close to as deadly as all of us thought. So there's definitely issues, treatments are still fairly poor, but reality is, most people are not going to die from this shit and it's not that bad. It's bad for the people that develop it badly. Listen, I have a pregnant wife at home, so I have to quarantine, regardless of what I think, like immune-compromised, but I think that with the data that we have now, it's like, "Put people in masks and send them back to work." Let's move on from this shit, there's no point.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I don't know man. I think it's a tough one. I do think we could ease the restrictions with certain kind of rules, but I think there's a... Are you drinking LaCroix?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, of course I'm drinking LaCroix.

Peter McCormack: You called me a pussy?!

Rodolfo Novak: I don't eat sugar dude!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, LaCroix. You should be living in Venice Beach.

Rodolfo Novak: That's right!

Peter McCormack: But listen, I think some of it's in hindsight, we don't know. It's quite interesting, at the end of each weekend... Well, I'll tell you something that's quite interesting is, if you're one of those people who's pro- lockdown, it feels like people are trying to find the evidence that supports pro-lockdown, like what's like the worst evidence we can find? Then people who are like anti-lockdown are trying to find the evidence that best supports their argument and people just keep presenting for their side.

Rodolfo Novak: Oh no, it's all crap. The numbers are crap for either side. But to me, the proof is in the pudding, we don't have piles of bodies in North America or in the West really. Aside from Italy, because listen, Italy has a different problem. Italy's problem is Italy. If you remove Italy from the picture, we don't have piles of bodies.

Peter McCormack: Yes, but Spain?

Rodolfo Novak: Listen, stuff is not... It's bad, but it's not terrible and it's less than other problems. Listen, just don't do this forcefully, I don't believe in anything forcefully. So if you're immune-compromised, remove yourself from the picture. You should, because this stuff is not a walk in the park either if you catch it bad, but for everybody else, let people assess their own risk!

Reality is that most people are not going to end up in an ICU, they won't. I think we're reaching a point now where the economical consequence of this is going to kill more people than the virus itself. People kill themselves man when they lose their jobs.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you're potentially right. I think even more so in parts of Africa, I think we're heading for... I think I saw on the BBC this morning, where it's kind of the worst famine that the world has ever seen because of the potential breakdown in the supply chains. I see that too, I do see all of that.

Rodolfo Novak: Brazil is a disaster.

Peter McCormack: Yeah. But I also think... One of the things that I think is most important is that actually we won't really know or I don't think we will really know what this thing is for about a year. We won't have the true data because we don't really know... For example, they say not lots of people have died.

Well, we don't know if it would have been worse because if everyone had carried on, then the viral load would've increased and we don't know what density has to do with something, what public systems have to do... We don't know if, for example, I think I've read about 33 different strains now. We really don't know how bad this will be until...

Rodolfo Novak: Again, we're never going to know, in honesty, because you're also never going to know how many people carried the virus and were completely asymptomatic. Well, one is PMR tests, so the blood test for viral load is useless because it has, I guess like a 30% error rate and worst, after you had it or before you had it, it doesn't show. So it's completely pointless from a statistical perspective here. Then the immune system markers test, the serology one, I think depending on how bad you had it, you're only going to show it for I think a few months after and if you didn't get it badly enough, I think it doesn't even show at all.

So the reality is that we're never going to know how many people have it to be able to do, to do a CFR, so the death analysis on how many people die if they get it. So again, the only way I see this playing out is you have to count the bodies, there really is no... It's like only people that got it bad enough, you can truly know that they got it and then you look at what kind of lockdown you had and you try to extrapolate from that how many people got it. But still it's...

Peter McCormack: It's still hard. I tell you what, in hindsight, you can come up with strategies and my hindsight is like, okay, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to say, "Look, we've got this shit going on, we don't really understand it, we're going to have a pause for the next month and we're going to recommend that if you're immune-compromised that you stay at home, you stay away from people, you wear masks, non-essential business. This is a recommendation. You can still go to the park and exercise. During that period of time, we're going to find out what we can find out. We're going to build temporary hospitals." Some kind of pause, which allowed you to prepare.

Rodolfo Novak: But, here's the problem. This was all possible in January.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, of course.

Rodolfo Novak: China let like 4 million people leave the country from Wuhan area.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I know it did. Iran did the same.

Rodolfo Novak: The problem is, people were talking about one, is like Chinese racism and two, they were sort of saying, "This is just the Flu." This is the same people telling us to do lockdown now! So if all those morons had sort of locked down all airports and things like that in early January, fine, all these strategies could have worked.

So sort of like, "It's January 1st, we know shit's going down there, let's close everything down for two, three weeks everywhere" and then you can actually contain it. But no, and I think the problem is government is essentially running on four week's late response on everything. First, they were six weeks late to recognize this stuff is bad and now they're doing lockdown six weeks too late too. So it's almost like there's no point in any action that they do because they're so late.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, some of them are kind of bold moves. I'll criticize Trump if I think he's acting like a moron, but I also think at the time where he closed down flights to Europe, that was quite a bold move, when other people...

Rodolfo Novak: And it was the correct move.

Peter McCormack: It was the correct move, and people were like, "You didn't do it soon enough."

Rodolfo Novak: They were calling him racist at the time.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, what's her name? Nancy Pelosi or whatever her name is. But at the same time, some of them were tough, bold moves and it's not like, "Oh, you should have learned the lesson from the pandemic three years ago." This is unprecedented. I know we've had...

Rodolfo Novak: No, but see it's not, because here in Canada, we had SARS here in Toronto. Toronto was like ground zero for SARS and SARS was really deadly, that's why it didn't spread as much. I remember the hospitals here, everybody wearing hazmat suits, we had the Rolling Stones play here for free, asking people to come back, all that stuff. We have these amazing reports, amazing studies done on all the lessons learned and these morons didn't take any of the lessons and apply. It's like, "We didn't have a stockpile of masks or anything after SARS." How?!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, well we've had that problem in the UK as well. We don't have a stockpile of fucking anything.

Rodolfo Novak: Well it's because hospitals don't want to rent supplies, they don't want to keep all this expensive stuff that expires. I'm tired of the virus!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, fuck the virus! When did we first meet? Was it at Consensus last year? We did, in New York.

Rodolfo Novak: In person... No, I never go to Consensus, it's too shitcoin for me.

Peter McCormack: I thought we met at dinner at New York?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, it was MCC I think. That's right, I gave you shit for having, I think Ver on or something!

Peter McCormack: You came up and you started fucking yelling at me, you we're like, "Why are you fucking..." I was like, "I don't have shitcoiners on my show anymore." You gave me a load of shit man.

Rodolfo Novak: It was great! It was fun drinking with you.

Peter McCormack: Yeah man, all right, but anyway, listen, look, we're going to do some hardcore Bitcoin show. I've said for a while, I wanted to cover Bitcoin purity with you, because you're a purist and you provide the purity products in the market.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, but it's funny, I have not announced a purity in myself, I do not believe in purity tests for Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: But you can't store ETH on a Coldcard.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, it's a market problem. For me, all these moral questions around shitcoins are market problems, not moral questions.

Peter McCormack: Where do you stand on Stablecoins?

Rodolfo Novak: I like Stablecoins a lot.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, me too.

Rodolfo Novak: I just don't like them on Ethereum, but I like Stablecoins.

Peter McCormack: Where else could they go, is there another way of doing them?

Rodolfo Novak: There's Stablecoins now on Liquid, there's Stablecoins on mix of stuff. Technically they're all a little on the weird side, but they serve a purpose, they really do. They are a great place for you to store... So let's say you're a more rational actor, so you're not a hodler of last resort. You could make the case that that's the rational or not rational, but let's just go with the more sort of middle ground, more mainstream way of looking at investments, let's say Bitcoin price pumps, really high and you want to take some profit even to rebuy the bottom and not even to hold fee it after.

It may not be in your interest to get USD, actual USD in your bank account. Let's say you have competence in different countries, you have whatever you do or your country doesn't let you say, sort yourself out once you do that Bitcoin liquidation, so if you liquidate into Stablecoin, you can hold it to yourself at least, even if there is counter party risk, a shit ton of it, you can at least hold it to yourself while Bitcoin does its thing and then you rebuy at the bottom. So that's just one example of how good it is.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, someone said to me the other day, also right now because banks hold, was it 3%? Something like 3% of the reserves are actually in cash. Is that about right? Physical cash, and if there's a run on the bank, you can't get to your cash. Just hold it in a Stablecoin, hold some...

Rodolfo Novak: What's the reserve? There is no such thing anymore.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I know.

Rodolfo Novak: I think it's like 0.2 or something. It doesn't matter, these guys would just print whatever it is and...

Peter McCormack: But it would be helpful maybe, say you had $10,000 in the bank and maybe have put $2,000 of that in cash in your house and maybe have $2,000 in a Stablecoin.

Rodolfo Novak: Sure, but to be fair though, if you're set up to have cash fiat, go with cash fiat over Stablecoin. Stablecoin is only interesting if you're trying to trade, evade taxes, skip censorship, other things while remaining in a stable value.

Peter McCormack: Well, yeah. Maybe also send them... I think sometimes it can be useful for remittance as well. If you want to get some funds to someone...

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, to escape censorship,

Peter McCormack: Well no, but also, it's not even escape censorship, just the ease.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, I put that in the category of escaping censorship because what causes the friction in traditional remittance systems is censorship.

Peter McCormack: Yes, the bank.

Rodolfo Novak: It's not really the banks, it's the government that doesn't want to let the banks because the banks want to fucking do it.

Peter McCormack: But sometimes the banks are slow. You can't do things on a weekend or something as well. So no, I get it. So anyway, listen man, can you take me back? I don't do these normally for a while, but it's going to be helpful for today. Can you do me your Bitcoin backstory? When it all started?

Rodolfo Novak: So it was the SlashDot article in 2010, I think. It's been a while!

Peter McCormack: Damn! Way back.

Rodolfo Novak: It looked interesting and it also looked completely insane, unlikely to happen. Of course I didn't buy it right away and I kept on following it and sort of playing around and then I sent it around, it was interesting. Then I built Blockchain Explorer to learn about it with Peter, my business partner and then we built Bitcoin debit cards. Way back then, I think was 2012 or 2013, so a little too early.

We built the debit machines, we had them in many different countries, they were actually designed for people to do in person exchanges and remittances, like Western Union by leveraging the cash float of the grocery store, but then using Bitcoin as the rail. That we closed down years later and then we sort of focused more on the... We were a back end for some exchanges, multisig wallets for users, all kinds of stuff. We were very featureful wallet.

Peter McCormack: But what was it to you? What appealed to you about it?

Rodolfo Novak: What really truly hooked me up to it was my first transaction. It was between me and my business partner and I sent a little bit of coin and it was like, "Holy shit!" It was truly a holy shit moment. It was like, there is value in the computer, the value is mine. It's not like I'm deducting my PayPal and sending it to you. The realization that it was possible to just send a little bit of money between me and another person without any third party, it was mind blowing. It was like, "Okay, I need to build something on top of this!" It was immediate.

Peter McCormack: Were you always Bitcoin only? Or did you look at shitcoin at all?

Rodolfo Novak: No, of course I had a few shitcoins. I think I might still have some dead BBQCoin on a hard drive. I was a fan of Litecoin for a while, not because of any technical reasons on it. It's because I believed in those days you could kill Bitcoin still by making it illegal. So the idea of having a secondary secure cryptocurrency as well, so you could change rails in case Bitcoin was illegalized, it was very interesting.

I liked the idea of just having alternatives too and at least in those days, you could see some coins trying to just take the torch by offering some different technology. Then it was just a slew of scams and then I just sort of slowly, completely lost interest in anything. Ethereum, when it came to me way back before it launched, I was like, this is very stupid.

So I never bought it, never owned it, really regret not buying founder's shares just to dump it after. But aside from that, just from a very rational sort of monetary or financial planning, I find the shitcoins, unless you're a scammer or the bottom of the scam or leveraging them to do trading, it's uninteresting to me.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I think a lot of people go through that shitcoin phase, you almost have to and I'm actually always surprised if somebody hasn't done it, if they just arrive and go, "Bitcoin's king. Everything else doesn't matter." I completely get it, I went through it for six months to a year of figuring it out. I'm always surprised when people don't, but...

Rodolfo Novak: It's a good thing. Experimenting is important and you need to arrive at the conclusion by yourself otherwise you're going to wreck yourself.

Peter McCormack: Exactly! All right and then what I'm getting at, the thing I want to talk to you most about, is just a couple of things I've been wrestling with recently, is that kind of, what actually is Bitcoin for? Because there seems to be lots of different kind of narratives and things that people want to do and their objectives on... Very much, this kind of freedom, take down the banks, hyperbitcoinization, Austrian economics, libertarian, blah, blah, blah. But also at the same time, I'm like, "Is this just a group of people who are trying to use Bitcoin as a tool? Or is this what Bitcoin should be?" And that's what I'm running into right now.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, so Bitcoin is whatever the fuck you want Bitcoin to be. It's money and money is none of anybody else's business but yours. I truly get triggered when people force their preferences on me in regards to money. There is one crowd that forked actually and lost the battle, lost the market and who believes Bitcoin is just cash and there is the crowd who sort of very intense about store of value.

The difference between the two is that the store of value people are right, it's just that it's store of value plus cash, but Bitcoin cannot be cash without store of value. So it's very important to make that distinction in the reason why the store of value people get taken seriously and the cash-only people don't get taken seriously. The cash people need to understand that without store of value, there is no cash.

Peter McCormack: Well I actually think they feel the same. I actually think they kind of feel the same because otherwise, why would they invest and hold it if they didn't think it would go up?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, but I find that a lot of the cash people are the people who don't comprehend Bitcoin technically or really technically well enough, the less technical people.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's not always true. I'm less technical, you know that, everyone knows that, I don't know shit about the tech, but I know...

Rodolfo Novak: I'm talking about the cash people.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I think also sometimes people just follow a narrative. They've bought into a narrative and once they're there, struggle to change their opinion. But I still think it's almost like both believe it's a store of value and cash, that just the weightings are different. The Bcashers, they believe it's peer to peer cash, but they must believe it's part store of value if they think it's going to go up.

Rodolfo Novak: But see, the reason why I don't even bother the Bcash people is because they were sold the scam essentially and now it's in their interest to perpetuate that, so they don't lose their bags.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Rodolfo Novak: So it's kind of hopeless to even bother with them. I guess what I'm referring to is the people who use Bitcoin and keep on telling everybody to buy stuff with Bitcoin. I don't even consider the Bcash people part of the conversation anymore. It's like, they're a religious sect that just sort of lost. It's like a few Irish dudes still trying to run some Gaelic religion all the way up there and that's it. It's like, sorry buddy, your thing is cool and all, but nobody followed it. What's interesting to me is the amount of people that still try to force their preferences on Bitcoiners and partake in the Bitcoin ecosystem and I think a lot of that partly because of their poor business decisions.

I think a lot of business... This is why so many people went to the 2X agreement or a lot of the big businesses wanted to do the block increase is because higher transaction fees are a problem if your business is commerce and rightfully or wrongly, they couldn't wait for us to have SegWit or wait for Lightning network to sort of solve that problem. But money doesn't give a shit if you can't sell your hats for Bitcoin to the 10 people that want a hat for Bitcoin because the fees are high.

You can scream as much as you want on Twitter and it's not going to change because the economical actors in Bitcoin, they will enforce the sound monetary policy here and that's not going to change. I think that's the problem. So these people made a bad business decision to their fault or not, but they are perpetuating it.

Peter McCormack: But did they? Sorry, did they make a bad business decision or did they make a business decision and then down the road things changed and then they realized it wasn't going to work?

Rodolfo Novak: See if you're technically understanding of Bitcoin, you would know the fees goes up as number go up, those things go together. This is not exactly complicated science here. You have a limited resource, which is a block size, so if the price goes up, whatever fits in there, it goes up in price on fees, that's it!

So if you built a whole business around selling hats for Bitcoin and the price goes up, one, is the customers are not interested as much in letting go of their store of value, the price go up for their hats and two, is going to cost more for the very few that somehow, for whatever irrational reason they want to exchange their gold for a hat.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you can also see how people read the white paper and thought, "Oh, this is better money for me to sell my hats online because we can get rid of reversing transactions and the cost of mediation is so high."

Rodolfo Novak: But there is no market.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I'm just saying, but you can see how people wanted to get involved and experiment and try things.

Rodolfo Novak: Sure! You can experiment all you want, you should experiment, just don't expect other people to change the whole monetary system of a system to fit your head.

Peter McCormack: No, I know, I agree with you. I'm just saying that I'm not sure it was a bad business decision. I just think people created a business and then they discovered the reality of it later on. I think it was probably more of that and just as Bitcoin grew, these are the people that supported early growth of Bitcoin, whether it's someone creating a Silk Road or selling a house.

Rodolfo Novak: Listen, I've been selling shit for Bitcoin for like almost a decade now, I had to go through the fees problem. We were running, like no fees, we were actually eating the transaction fee cost for many years on CoinKite because it was part of the customer experience, you don't want to have to explain to people even what the fee is, as it's so cheap.

They're like, "Fuck it, we just pay for it" and it's just going to be embedded in whatever monthly costs we have for them anyways. But then the price goes higher and higher and higher, so it started costing us money and so we had to sort of pass to the customer. It sucks that you have to adapt your business to the system, but that's just the reality. I can't change the monetary system I'm in, which is that's the feature, not the bug.

Peter McCormack: But I get what you're saying, Bitcoin is whatever you want it to be, whatever you use case is. Even if you're Kim Jong-un wanting to buy parts for your nuclear weapons, it's there for you to use if you want and if you're a weed head and you want to buy weed, or if you're a libertarian and you want to take down the central banks, you can kind of use it for what you want.

Rodolfo Novak: Exactly, and what's beautiful about Bitcoin is that the game theory is everybody has opposing needs and opposing sort of view and they keep each other honest in making sure that the system doesn't break. Then we have the number go up technology that keeps everybody interested in it. It's really a beautiful system.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think I was talking with Dan Held and we were talking about the monetary policies and how beautifully elegant and simple it really is.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, it really is. You use greed as a way of maintaining interest in security, because that's all there is for miners here, is future price of Bitcoin, because they're going to try to keep as much as they can and sell later. Then you have everybody else in the system, either using for the non-censorship or for number go up and everybody keeps each other honest. It's amazing!

Peter McCormack: I still wrestle though when people ask me, what is it for? Because it's a really tough sell to go to people and say, "Well, it's a way to take down the government."

Rodolfo Novak: The best way, the most peaceful and best way of getting rid of government is by defunding government and that's what Bitcoin does, it removes their power over money. They can't print away my value that is held in Bitcoin and that's super powerful!

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's a tough sell.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, most people don't want personal responsibility and that's the reality.

Peter McCormack: That's the thing, they don't and actually in some ways we may force it on people. They're like, I don't want this Bitcoin shit. Well look, the governments' collapsing now, the government's going to need money and you're going to have to use this Bitcoin... "But I want a fucking bank account." No, there's no bank accounts anymore, there's only Bitcoin.

Rodolfo Novak: That's right. Well see, way back in the day, hundreds of years ago, you had forced personal responsibility. If you don't wake up to take the crops to feed your pigs you don't eat. If you don't wash your clothes in the little river, you don't have clean clothes. There was no subsidy for stuff because... There was no like, ticket for you to get some food delivered to your house. It was very hard to have social services in a world where things were a lot more decentralized.

There was a massive benefit in centralization of government and you could make the case that modern monetary policy did help a large chunk of the world get off poverty. You could also make the case that you ruined the life of the middle class in places that were not poor. It's complicated, I don't have answers for that. I'm not an economics professor and I also don't have a lot of interest in economics masturbation. But I think that Bitcoin will force personal responsibility on people if it is successful because you're going to...

Peter McCormack: What do you mean? It already is successful. I'm beyond the if now, it's here. 11 years, people are using it, dude, it's worth like nearly $7,000, it was at $20,000. I'm already like, "It's successful."

Rodolfo Novak: It is quite amazing.

Peter McCormack: Not every technology lives forever. If it lasts another five years, okay, its lifespan was 16 years. It didn't fail, as it certainly succeeded for over a decade and then its time has come. But if it's 100...

Rodolfo Novak: Which year were you buying party favours on the Internet?

Peter McCormack: 2013.

Rodolfo Novak: 2013, so that was about, what, $200 bucks?

Peter McCormack: I think my first Bitcoin might have been about £100, so yeah, you're right.

Rodolfo Novak: So imagine sitting those days, I remember thinking, "Can you imagine if this thing crosses $1000?" And people were thinking, "Shit, imagine that Bitcoin is going to moon at $5,000!" And we're sitting way past that now, sort of waiting for the next bull run. I think one of the reasons why there is certainty in some form of bull run after that halvening is because it's going to cost more to protect it and it's going to cost more to mine it, period, like by half!

So it's like we have this amazing thing that goes up 10x every two, three years that could change the world and it's worth a lot now. There's a lot of good people in the world now with millions of dollars to spend on good things. It's fascinating.

Peter McCormack: But if the goal is to take down the banks and take down the government... I keep thinking about it. I've been kind of toying with this idea of Bitcoin generals and soldiers, trying to separate those who are the Tor running, node operating, hardcore, technical Bitcoiners who understand how the protocol works from those who are like, my friends are like, "Yeah, I want some Bitcoin." It's like, "Okay, well go in Kraken and get yourself a Ledger or a Trezor."

Rodolfo Novak: Fuck that! Those things are shit, use a Coldcard.

Peter McCormack: A KeepKey?

Rodolfo Novak: That one is really bad!

Peter McCormack: What I'm saying is you get a hardware wallet, you do that and you're fine, you're safe. Not every single person has to be anarcho-capitalist, government hating, Tor operating, like this purity level. It's such a high bar!

Rodolfo Novak: Most people want to be sheep forever. See this is the main difference, okay?

Peter McCormack: But can we do this with sheep?

Rodolfo Novak: This is so important, okay? The difference between the Bitcoin monetary system and the fiat monetary system is that if you want to be a general, you don't need permission, you can just go and be a general on Bitcoin. If you want to be a general in fiat system, you can't, you're not allowed. So it's important that we always remember that when we're talking about Bitcoin, sort of... I hate this whole influencer thing, this whole idea of inferring that some people are specialists or whatever.

The difference is Bitcoin allows you to do your own research and be your own bank if you want to. Nobody's forcing you either way, it's just that on other systems, you're literally not allowed. You're not allowed to even take a large amount of money out of the bank, they won't let you. You have to do paperwork, you have to do it in installments, whatever you want. Try walking into your branch and try to get $50,000 out of your bank account. Fuck, even $5,000 and they won't to let you.

Peter McCormack: Dude, when I wanted to get $3,000, it was like, "What do you want it for?" I was like, "I'm not telling you."

Rodolfo Novak: Excuse me?

Peter McCormack: Yeah, they're like, "What do you want?" I was like, "Do I have to tell you?" He was like, "No." So said, "Well, I'm not telling you!"

Rodolfo Novak: It's so amazing, isn't it? When you're in Bitcoin for long enough, and you interact with traditional fiat systems, you get offended and it's weird, "Why do you want the money for it?" Wait, excuse me? It's my money, get the fuck out!

Peter McCormack: But can we do this with sheep, can we do it with sheep as well?

Rodolfo Novak: No, you can't. It's not going to change.

Peter McCormack: So everybody has to be a general?

Rodolfo Novak: No. So this is the thing, I used to have more hope when I was younger for more optimism, in terms of a larger part of society being more interested in personal responsibility, but I think the ratio is going to remain the same, relevant to the system we have.

Peter McCormack: What do you think the ratio is?

Rodolfo Novak: Well I don't have a number, but, say like 5% of the whole world population is interested in financial things. Let's put it this way, and then it's smaller percentages from there to our level. So let's say we just successfully, peacefully move on to a Bitcoin standard in the world. Probably not going to happen this way, but let's say that's what happens. So I think 80% of the population will still have their coins on Coinbase or whatever custodial system.

Peter McCormack: That will be the new bank.

Rodolfo Novak: Exactly! If they're going to run fractional, they're going to do all kinds of shenanigans, KYC and all that stuff. But at least it will be by choice. So what's cool about that is that we're going to have market solutions for this, which is Coinbase will go bankrupt for whatever reason and then those people are going to get rekt. So next time around, those people are going to hold their own, so at least you have the choice. So this is the first time in human history that we have access to a hard money that's digital.

So before, if you wanted something that was not sitting as a pile of gold in your house as a store of value, you'd buy stocks, you'd buy ETFs, you buy whatever, like some financialized thing and that's how you held your value, but those are at the peril of censorship or whatever, as they're all completely managed by a central entity. Now Bitcoin allows you now to hold value by yourself in a much more safe way. It's much safer to hold, say you have your Coldcard with your million dollars worth of Bitcoin, it's very hard for you to hold a million dollars of gold at home, you're going to probably get rekt.

Peter McCormack: You need a big home.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah it's heavy and not just that, you're going to have to have guns, you're going to have to have a secure room for it etc. Also gold has an insane cost for logistics.

Peter McCormack: No, I get all this, but the point I'm making is if we want this Bitcoin to take over, do we need to rely on everybody running a node and operating Tor?

Rodolfo Novak: No we don't. We don't at all.

Peter McCormack: No, that's the point. That's what I mean, do we have the generals? The Rodolfos? The Matt Odells?

Rodolfo Novak: No, so I think that's the wrong way of looking at this. Bitcoin, think more about Ronins, because general implies that you have a hierarchy of importance. There is no hierarchy, there's nothing, there's no centralized control and you can have people who are essentially Samurais, running out there maintaining the order of things. By running the node, and it's in their economical interest and this is the main difference here, this is why it's so important. They're not being told to take a party line, like a general.

If you have Bitcoin, and if you have a meaningful amount of Bitcoin, it is in your economical interest to keep the network honest by running a node and if you have a meaningful amount of Bitcoin, it is in your interest to remain private, to use Tor. So the money go up technology keeps everybody in this. It incentivizes you to do the right thing and it's completely selfish. It's none of this kumbaya bullshit, that never works because when you build the system on pure kumbaya on pure benevolence, then eventually people for whatever circumstances will cheat. So I'll put it this way.

So let's say like Bill Gates, everybody loves to love him in the mainstream about his benevolence with his cash, which the guy has a lot of. But let's say now that this guy is being coerced or you're a rich person and you're trying to help the world or whatever, and you have the keys to the monetary system somehow and you're a very good guy. Then say, you run out of money for your stupid coke problem and then say, like a family friend or whatever has cancer, and now you have to change the monetary system to steal a little bit to save somebody's life.

It doesn't have to be nefarious. It's just that you don't want people with control over anything, because people's life circumstances and moral compasses change. So Bitcoin keeps everybody honest with pure selfishness, with pure economical interest, self interest, and self interest is very important in this sense. It's much more efficient.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but what I'm saying is I'm quite happy, especially, too, in this process now where we're seeing a lot of money printing and I actually, funny enough, I have had a few people in the last two weeks come to me and say, "What's going on with this Bitcoin thing? Can you tell me a bit about it?" I'm just seeing the interest pick up. But I don't even tell them about nodes, I don't even care. I don't care if they run a node, and other people, this really pisses people off. But I don't.

Rodolfo Novak: I don't give a shit either.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, just get on Kraken and go and buy some Bitcoin. Get yourself a hardware wallet, definitely a Ledger or a Trezor without a doubt, those two are the best two, definitely get one of those two!

Rodolfo Novak: For the people that don't know, I'm a manufacturer of a hardware wallet!

Peter McCormack: Just by a fucking Coldcard, it's the best looking one on the lot as well. But what I'm saying is get a hardware wallet... Well actually, even not. Like if someone was buying their first Bitcoin...

Rodolfo Novak: Don't get a hardware wallet in the beginning, there is no point.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, even if you're buying $100, is it even bad at $100 to say, "Just keep it on the exchange?"

Rodolfo Novak: There is a couple different things here. So you should follow what are your economic interests require, so as your money grows, you improve your security, you go and you get a Coldcard and you do it all and you're all safe and stuff. But until then, say you have no plans of buying more, you just bought $50 and if you're curious, and you should be curious, you will explore how Bitcoin works, and you're going to explore how to keep it safe and all that stuff. If not, then take the risk that you find appropriate to the size of your HODL.

If it's $50 and in your mind, you don't care and you want to just see on an exchange, well then leave it there. It's not my business how you keep it! I think there's a difference, though. It's just, we have a bunch of people in this space who have been rekt themselves or have seen their friends be rekt by non self custody of the coins. So out of benevolence or out of just morals, we have an incentive, or we just don't want to see people rekt,

Peter McCormack: Of course yeah, completely agree!

Rodolfo Novak: So we keep on pushing people to run their own nodes, to do the hardware wallet thing, to sort of be safe, but we can't tell you what to do with your money and how to calculate your risks, I think it's just prudent for you to at least make a risk assessment of the time and money to secure it, versus how much you have to lose, because the reality is this is extremely fungible, digital money. So somebody can very easily take it from you or from an exchange. Listen, this is what made me do what I do for a living. It's like I was running a web wallet that had multisig for customers.

We closed our system down, I had to keep my stuff somewhere, I had friends that had to keep their stuff somewhere, I had other people approach me that had to keep it somewhere and. I didn't like the hardware wallet that's in the market. I built a better hardware wallet, in my opinion and then we use it to keep our stuff safe. But it was all out of necessity, it was not out of a hobby and I think that's a very interesting, sort of important approach in my opinion, to life in general, it's like, you have to assess risk in life and you have to mitigate that in a sort of more thoughtful way.

I think that comes from personal responsibility in regards to your finances and I think people have just been, unfortunately schools have... All teachers are socialists. You find one that's not! But essentially all the teachers are unionized socialists and they teach kids not to have any personal responsibility. "Oh, it's not your fault." It's like collective bargaining. The teachers are always striking, every freaking country of the world. So they strike to get more money and the government shouldn't fire them and blah, blah, blah. So we start teaching kids very early that there is no consequences, or that there is no reality of resources in the world and people grow up with that.

So they grow up with their pensions being managed by the government, they grow up with their salary coming from an employer from the sky somewhere that just shows up in their bank account and so it's very hard to take people from that place where it seems like everything is just done for them, and it's done well into a place where essentially you have shotguns in a carriage crossing the US with the Indians shooting at you. That's what Bitcoin is. It's like Wells Fargo crossing America, the freaking the 1600s. It feels that way. So I think unless there is necessity, it's going to be very hard to take the average person into this process.

Peter McCormack: It's like, you can sell some very easy, simple messages, like, "Well, if the government keeps printing money, then we can look historically and your buying power has dropped, so perhaps you want to put a little bit into Bitcoin as a hedge or an insurance. Perhaps if you're buying like $100, $200, $300, you can leave it on the exchange.

But look, if you're not going to leave it on exchange, perhaps you should think about a hardware wallet and go to that next step." But there seems to be this like route, or, "I'm more Bitcoin than you" thing, where it's like, "You've got to run Tor, you've got to have an operator node" and I just think it's a tough sell to get people there.

Rodolfo Novak: So again, this is the beautiful thing about Bitcoin, it's voluntary. It's like, you don't have to listen! You don't have to listen to the people pushing purity on you. You don't have to! You can tell them, "Go fuck yourself!" It's like, seriously, it doesn't matter what they say, it's your money, you control it however you want. Now it's also, they're also free to laugh at you when you get rekt.

Peter McCormack: Of course!

Rodolfo Novak: Because you lost your money in an exchange or worse, like for example, through the fork wars, the last fork wars around the Bcash split and stuff, if you didn't have a full node up to date, you could have taken the wrong fork and then you screw yourself.

Then people don't want to be in a place where they're laughing at you either and I think you see enough people getting rekt the same way you see enough people getting sick, like you feel some responsibility towards all. There is a very human thing and I think it's a very hard balance to strike between pushing people towards the right direction and not being too preachy or too much of a dick.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, that's the balance!

Rodolfo Novak: It's very hard. But fuck man, Twitter is like the worst medium for nuance. There is no nuance on Twitter. It's like the literal opposite.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, I know that dude. I've experienced that a lot!

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, I used to be of the mindset of don't block people and stuff, but you know what? Nowadays, just fuck it. In all honesty, there is people that are just not worth my time. I think it's also important for people to realize and I think you got screwed of that just a couple of days ago...

Peter McCormack: Fucking hell, did you follow that? That was mad.

Rodolfo Novak: So yeah, that's why I made that tweet, "Don't release your business numbers." So what people don't realize is that people have different circumstances in their lives. So there's people out there where say, $20 is a massive amount of money. So when you talk about your business numbers, it's a business. They don't have context to understand that a business needs cashflow, and it has costs, and you have to prepare for months after or before.

Then if you show that like the margin on a product is X, they're going to think that it's all profit, on your profit, that's not like future investment in R&D or whatever. But then if you show you're losing money, people are going to lose respect for the product too. So, there is no winning in being transparent like that. I don't think it's a prudent business decision. Plus, it's another thing too that's nice, your competitor shouldn't know how much you're selling, how much profit you make, because they are going to adapt their strategies based on that too.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but you know what it was? The reason I did it is because back when, it was like December 18, I just kept getting called a scammer all the fucking time. I was like, "How am I a scammer?" I don't even make any money. "Oh, you're promoting scammers," blah, blah, blah. So when I got my first couple of checks, I was like, "I'm just going to be completely transparent. Not tell what the value of each check is, but here's who I work with, here's how I'm getting paid, this is where I'm spending my money on.”

But also it's kind of cool to show the journey and say, "Look, this is where I'm trying to take it. I want to do videos" or "This is where I'm investing the money." But all it does is, there's like this 1% of fucking people who just get triggered by it and they're like, "He's making too much money!" I was like, "Aren't we free market people here?"

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, it's none of your fucking business! That's one of the reasons why releasing business numbers shouldn't be done, but if you do release it, expect to have some feedback, both positive and negative.

Peter McCormack: And I'm fine with that. It is what it is. I might leave it. I don't know, I'm unsure.

Rodolfo Novak: I think the main thing is there is a certain level of jealousy, like people are in different circumstances in their lives, especially if they're young and fucked. That's just part of being young and beginning your professional career. So, some of that frustration will probably be put on somebody that's successful.

That's a very common thing that happens. The other thing again is just there's just no concept, no context of actual money and accounting for business, like just none. It's just, in their mind, it's like check goes to bank, from bank goes to party. Do you know what I mean? They don't understand there's that whole middle there between check in the bank and then out of the bank!

Peter McCormack: Yeah and the two and a half years of working 80 hours a week.

Rodolfo Novak: And you should make money dude. You should make a fucking ton of profit! Profit's a great fucking thing, it's like, that's what we're here for.

Peter McCormack: That's what we're here for! Bitcoin's a capitalist tool man.

Rodolfo Novak: Exactly! It's not fucking socialism.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but that's where some of this hypocrisy comes in in Bitcoin that kind of pisses me off. It's this like, "We are fucking free market libertarians. Look someone's making some money, let's destroy them, let's tear them down. You can't fucking make money!" It's like, what are we doing here?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, that's why I'm proud to be a monomiac!

Peter McCormack: All right man, listen, tell me what's going on with your company at the moment. What's going on with Coldcard and everything else?

Rodolfo Novak: So we launched Mark 3 I think almost a year ago now. It still remains unbound which is pretty cool. There's people out there with million dollar labs trying to break it to embarrass us, but they so far have not been successful, which is a lot of fun. We're working on our next version and that'll come out in some time from now, quite some time.

Peter McCormack: How many work on it? How many people? Is it literally just you and your partner? Or is it like a whole team?

Rodolfo Novak: No, we have consultant and we have other people that do stuff with us. We also have a factory north of here. We make all the stuff here in Canada, which is a lot of fun. This is a weird project, because after we closed down our last services, we ended up keeping the business open, but we closed down all the services we had. We had about $4 billion worth of Bitcoin deposits.

Peter McCormack: What?!

Rodolfo Novak: It was fun closing it down, making sure everybody got it all back and stuff. A huge chunk of it was multisigs, so we designed it in a way we couldn't run away with it, but that was a lot of fun. I really don't want to run a business where I'm 24 hours a day maintaining a server somewhere. I want to just focus on making stuff, like physical things, hardware, building stuff, that's what I do in my pastime, aside from barbecuing and camping. I just want to spend my day building stuff.

When we closed down Coinkite, we needed a place to keep the stuff, so we built Coldcard. Coldcard was just an open source, it wasn't even going to be for sale necessarily, it was just ... We had enough interest, so we made extras and sold it all. Then we're like, "Okay, well, let's focus on that as a business then." It's fun! We made OPENDIME, the bearer asset and we have this thing where we like to invent stuff. We don't want to make things that exist, we really just want to sit and explore. I have a basement full of prototypes kind of thing.

Peter McCormack: What's coming then?

Rodolfo Novak: We just launched Coldpower, that little ... It converts a nine volt battery to five volts, so essentially you have a USB power supply from a nine volt battery that you can find in your local fire alarm. That one is nice because it really gives you a nice buffer between a computer and a Coldcard, for you to be really safe there, truly air-gapping your HODL. But next we're working on a product that is going to be, not replacing Coldcard, but it's going to be probably alongside it.

Peter McCormack: Oh, is it a node?

Rodolfo Novak: No, I'm not launching a node. I've been wanting to make a node, a proper node with actual security on it so you could do a nice little HSM there. We ended up launching the HSM software for you to use a Coldcard as a server HSM, but we're making another little device. It's going to be a bit bigger, and it's going to do a lot more interesting things that should go alongside nicely with Coldcard. We're working now on doing this for design, and working on pricing it, figuring out exactly ... We're building the boards and working out the economics of it.

Peter McCormack: What does it do? Just fucking tell me what's it do?

Rodolfo Novak: No, I can't! I'm not talking about that yet.

Peter McCormack: All right, man.

Rodolfo Novak: But what's fun is, making stuff that is easy. It's easier, especially one offs or art, or things like that, but the most fun challenge is making stuff that's economically viable as a product. It's a hammer on you, it's like, "Oh look, I made this very cool thing!" Well okay, now try to manufacture that into large scale and make it profitable. It's like take everything... That's a lot of fun.

That to me, is where the fun is. Nowadays, I essentially just spend most of my time on the business and product concepts, industrial design, running the business, manufacturing and all the logistics of it. I let my better half do most of the coding in this.

Peter McCormack: It's cool man, it's a cool business you've built up!

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, we wanted to see if we could scale a cottage business. This is what I want to do with my days. I want to be able to not wear pants to work, and still sell to 120 countries. It's a very interesting concept we're trying to build here. Everybody works from home.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you've got the potential of trying to ride out your first bull market at some point with a Coldcard. I remember watching the logistical issues that the likes of the other wallet provides had to go through when everyone wanted to buy them. They had to ramp up, and then the market simmered down, and then they had all this over production. They've had to redesign their whole logistics process now to be able to support flash bull markets and I guess that's something you're going to have to think about?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, we had to go through that with OPENDIME in the last market, that was fun. We ran out of stock a few times, but I think we've nailed ... We've designed the products in such a way that it's a lot easier to scale. There's a few parts that are a little bit slower to get, but aside from that ... Those we just stock. We like building new versions, so Coldcard is already the third version. It's a nascent market, it's a nascent technology, so everything is changing.

That's why Trezor gets bound all the time, it's because those guys are still running a design that was made almost a decade ago, so you have to come up with bullshit marketing to explain why you keep on getting bound! Props to them for seeing this market way back then, but it's interesting. It's probably due to overproduction too that they're still selling the same sort of thing. They probably have piles and piles of it in stock, but it's like, come on man, it's a new market. Just build something new, improve it.

Peter McCormack: I've got a $700 Trezor here.

Rodolfo Novak: Oh, you bought one of those goldie things?

Peter McCormack: No, they sent me one. That's the benefit of being an influencer!

Rodolfo Novak: Oh, you're an influencer, huh?

Peter McCormack: Apparently so! I like to think of myself as an amateur journalist.

Rodolfo Novak: Did you ever buy a BlockClock? You need to buy a BlockClock

Peter McCormack: No, what's a BlockClock?

Rodolfo Novak: You don't know a BlockClock?

Peter McCormack: I don't know much.

Rodolfo Novak: Look at my Twitter, there is a video of this clock.

Peter McCormack: Oh, the BlockClock? No, I wanted to, but that was $5,000, wasn't it?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, we're almost running out. We didn't sell that many of course, fucking $5,000, and it was in a bear market. It cost a fuck ton to make it. We made this as a personal anniversary of 10 years of Bitcoin last year, so we're like, fuck it! We're just going to make the thing we want to make. That's what happens when you don't do things economically viable.

Peter McCormack: Yeah I wanted to buy it. I saw it, and I was like, "That's cool." I was like, "$5,000? Nope."

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, well maybe in the next bull market. Yeah, we didn't sell them many of those, but we sold enough that we're capping it at whatever this batch is that we have. That's it, and then we're going to release the number of how many were made ever. We're never going to make one again, probably.

Peter McCormack: I reckon you made less than 50.

Rodolfo Novak: Again, I don't really use business numbers man. It's a lot more ongoing.

Peter McCormack: Fuck, now I want one.

Rodolfo Novak: I love it, I have one in every room of my house actually.

Peter McCormack: You should send me one. I'm an influencer, I'll tweet about it!

Rodolfo Novak: Right, well listen, if you're going to advertise our products at the beginning of every episode for a year, sure!

Peter McCormack: Well we can talk about that. I don't have a hardware wallet as a sponsor, maybe we should?!

Rodolfo Novak: That's right. Anyways, making stuff is fun!

Peter McCormack: It sounds cool.

Rodolfo Novak: It's a good... Instead of whining about... That's, I guess, the biggest, annoying thing about Bitcoin is the whining. "Bitcoin doesn't have good UX." "Well then fucking build it!"

Peter McCormack: Hold on, I whine about that and I can't build it!

Rodolfo Novak: Well then, stop whining about it. I can't force you to stop whining about it, but... But see, this is the cool thing, let's say you're a UX guy, but you can't code and you're a traditional UX guy. Well you know what? Instead of fucking whining, get a few other people that can code together and fucking fix it. Either do it as a hobby or even better, do it as a business.

Create a new web wallet out there, or a softer wallet out there, and charge people money for it, or charge people for support, or whatever. It's just that whining is just annoying, it doesn't change anything and nobody's going to change it because you're whining. Seriously, nobody gives a fuck, really! We want Bitcoin to be better, easier, but it's ...

Peter McCormack: But it's happening anyway. Look dude, it's happening anyway.

Rodolfo Novak: Exactly!

Peter McCormack: You've lived through it all, you've seen the stages. I'm sure if you compare now to 2015, and then 2015 to 2013, and 2013 to 2011, there's been a lot of progress.

Rodolfo Novak: Just look at how easy it is to use Bitcoin now, than it was way back then. With OPENDIME, you just stick it in a computer, you deposit money into it, you give it to somebody. It's mind boggling simple! Do I wish I could make it more simple? Yes. I have plans, but it's not economically viable yet because the Bitcoin market is still small. I have other technologies I can use to make it even better.

Then look at phone wallets. Phone wallets used to be essentially one exit scam away from Sunday, but now, all phone wallets offer a non-custodial option. They make it very easy for you to do that. Exchanges haven't been disappearing with money for some time now.

Peter McCormack: Certainly the big ones.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, exactly. The market is maturing, it's slowly but surely maturing. Me trying to make a Bitcoin debit card in 2013, it was a little bit too early. There was just no market, so I couldn't do it the way I wanted to do it. Maybe now there's going to be other people doing this stuff with scale. I think the next 10X of Bitcoin, as that happens we're going to have another 10X of people in Bitcoin too.

That would enable really... You're going to be able to have small consumer electronics level of sales, so you can actually use different technologies, you can use different marketing budgets, you can do other things. Look at the exchanges already. Most exchanges that print money right now, they actually put a lot of money into bringing new people to Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Of course.

Rodolfo Novak: Now imagine when most Bitcoin businesses can afford to also sell to non-Bitcoiners, to do the more expensive marketing, it just accelerates. Bitcoin is a dark hole, and it's just going to absorb everything. But again, just impatience, this whining is just so unproductive, because it also turns people away, the people who actually can make stuff. Let's say you're a dev and you want to work on some stuff, or you work in core, or whatever, you have this semi-politicized whine battle between two factions that want things in a certain way or another.

You don't want to get involved in that. You just want to wake up, code some hard stuff, you don't want to touch anything that's going to be contentious, and UX, everybody has an opinion. Everybody has a fucking opinion about the colour of the button, and it doesn't actually fucking matter that much. But on the hard stuff, most people can't see and can't have an opinion about it, so that stuff moves along much faster.

Peter McCormack: But like you say, a lot of progress has been made dude. There's options!

Rodolfo Novak: Totally, and there is more coming, Schnorr and Taproot and all that stuff. It's going to improve UX too, because you're just going to be able to do things a lot more ... Here's a good one. For example, SegWit, with its last update, you could for example, have better QR codes. I know it sounds simple, but with SegWit addresses, you have better QR codes. It allows more optimizing and better error correction. It's a big improvement! I can fit a QR code in the tiny little screen of a Coldcard, and it still gets read by a phone, it's amazing!

Peter McCormack: That is pretty cool. So why should people buy Coldcard then? Now is your sales speech. Why should they buy Coldcard over a Ledger or Trezor?

Rodolfo Novak: It's better, it's more secure, it's very easy to use, it's privacy by default and there is no shitcoin on it. It's not a purity task on shitcoins, the more code you have, the more code you have to review, the more room you have for bugs and attacks.

For example, Trezor just got pounded last week and you could steal Monero through whatever, and they found out their bugs and it's probably the same guy that was doing the Monero attack. It just opens you up for more grief and more wasted time dealing with stuff that doesn't have financial consequence. Coldcard is becoming the only... It's not fake firmware that says this one is Bitcoin only, but they're also maintaining 1,000 shitcoins in separate firmware.

Peter McCormack: Do you have Liquid on them?

Rodolfo Novak: Probably, yeah. Once we figure out how to fit a confidential transaction signing, we probably would. It is Bitcoin based, so it makes sense. It makes economical sense to have it, so that you can have your stable value and your Bitcoin value on the same device, probably. But again, Bitcoin is a priority, so we just keep on focusing on that. Listen, it's just a better device.

It was made so that people who know what they're doing can do all the things they want to do, and then we simplify it from there, instead of just starting from the lowest common denominator, which is the person that doesn't know anything. The person who doesn't know anything doesn't use a hardware wallet, I don't care about them.

Peter McCormack: All right, listen, where do they find out more, dude?

Rodolfo Novak: You go to a coldcardwallet.com, or coinkite.com, or me @NVK on Twitter, and you'll find more information about the stuff we make.

Peter McCormack: All right man, well, listen, look, it was great to get you on finally!

Rodolfo Novak: That's right, it's been a while. I've drank more times with you than I have been here.

Peter McCormack: Dude, we've drunk a few times. I'm trying to remember the last time. Where was it?

Rodolfo Novak: Mexico.

Peter McCormack: Did I not see you in Vegas?

Rodolfo Novak: No, I didn't go.

Peter McCormack: Oh yeah, I remember now, Mexico was the last time. I don't know when I'll see you again, don't know when this shit will all get back to normal, probably here will be the next time now.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, well I have to wait until October anyways.

Peter McCormack: Oh yeah, of course!

Rodolfo Novak: But I'm sure we're going to see each other soon in some conference. This whole VR, Zoom shit is getting old. I want to drink with people in person.

Peter McCormack: Dude, I've been playing the ... You've got the Oculus quest, right? Have you got the boxing?

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah, VR is such a mediocre experience man. It's really cool, don't get me wrong. It's easy now, you put the stuff in your head and press a button, and it goes, But man, it's so low res and the audio sucks.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's PlayStation 1. That's to me like PlayStation 1. When we get to PlayStation 4 version of VR, it's going to be insane, but I found some good shit. Udi put me onto this boxing thing called Thrill of the Fight.

Rodolfo Novak: Oh yeah, the boxing stuff is fun.

Peter McCormack: That's awesome! Also, have you done the Walk the Plank thing?

Rodolfo Novak: Which one?

Peter McCormack: Richie's Plank, or something? There's a plank. You're on top of this skyscraper.

Rodolfo Novak: No, I like the shooting ones. The shooting games are fun, I play some of them. I did do a talk, the Udi thing, I don't know if you were there, two, three weeks ago, I presented in VR. It's weird to try to concentrate on the presentation and stand there. At least I don't have to wear pants!

Peter McCormack: Go and get the Richie's Plank thing. You go in this elevator up to the top of this skyscraper, and then there's a plank coming out of the elevator. It's windy, and you can see down to the ground. I'm telling you now, even though you're stood in your room, you cannot step sideways off. I couldn't, I was too scared! I barely could stand on the plank, even though I know I literally was stood in my front room.

Rodolfo Novak: Yeah totally! There is this game, I think it's called Pistol Whip, or something like that. The graphics are shitty and it's too forgiving with the shooting and stuff, but dude, it's moving. You get in it, your brain completely gets in it and it's kind of like, remember the CRT TVs, the smaller TVs when we were kids?

Peter McCormack: Yeah.

Rodolfo Novak: Man, the image was just thrash, the sound was crap, but you're watching a movie. You are there, your brain fills in all the gaps and it's so cool. It just takes a toll, you get cognitively tired!

Peter McCormack: Dude, get Richie's Plank, and then text me. I'm telling you now, it will screw with your head, that thing.

Rodolfo Novak: I don't want to try it now.

Peter McCormack: Yeah, you do, man. All right, listen, look, I appreciate you coming on, dude. Great to finally catch up with you. Obviously, wish you the best. Wish you the best with Coldcard. Yeah man, let's chat soon, dude!

Rodolfo Novak: Thanks, man. You keep up the good show. I think it's important to have shows that are for people who are not hardcore. Just don't bring the shitcoiners on, and it's all good!

Peter McCormack: Hey man, it's been such a long time, I think we can cast that one for me. I can't remember the last one, but we're probably talking 18 months now. We can forget that shit!

Rodolfo Novak: That's part of your journey and everybody has theirs in Bitcoin.

Peter McCormack: Exactly man. Well, listen, look, take care, stay safe man, stay healthy and I will speak to you soon!

Rodolfo Novak: You too!