WBD586 Audio Transcription
The Fight for Bitcoin with Cory Klippsten
Release date: Monday 28th November
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Cory Klippsten. 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.
Cory Klippsten is the founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin. In this interview, we discuss the exploitation of retail markets by crypto VCs. Cory called out many of the crypto ventures that have recently collapsed, but he saves his biggest criticism for the firm that is still active within the industry: a16z.
“This is something that I heard from all the crypto funds back in 2017/2018…you can promise any blockchain crypto magic that you want, it can solve whatever problem you say it’s going to solve; and there’s no truth in advertising, no securities laws, no nothing governing the space, so it’s just literally the best magic scam machine in financial markets’ history.”
— Cory Klippsten
Interview Transcription
Peter McCormack: Hi, Cory.
Cory Klippsten: Hey, Peter.
Peter McCormack: I'm worried I've got a target on my back! I'm making sure I'm keeping my whistle clean around you.
Cory Klippsten: Oh, man, I'm way more cuddly in person!
Peter McCormack: Dude, Pacific Bitcoin was incredible, congratulations.
Cory Klippsten: Wasn't that fun?
Peter McCormack: Dude, it was amazing.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. You just had Mark Moss in here and he just left, and yeah, just getting the boys back together.
Peter McCormack: It was great.
Cory Klippsten: I haven't seen an adult since the party on Saturday!
Peter McCormack: It was great, great event, great speakers, great vibe, good food. I didn't even get to see it all, because we were obviously busy promoting Bedford. But congratulations, great event. Thank you for having me as part of it. When's the next one?
Cory Klippsten: We're shooting for the last week of September in 2023. We'll lock the dates as soon as we lock down the venue. Obviously, we want to do it at the same place.
Peter McCormack: It's a great venue.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, it really was pretty magical and amazing, aeroplane hangar, jets outside, basketball court; it was awesome!
Peter McCormack: I think you crushed it and I look forward to next year. Now, I know we've got a limited amount of time, so let's talk about how you have destroyed the Bitcoin price this year by taking down all these companies!
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, short-term pain for long-term gain, that's how I look at it. I think we should all be willing to sacrifice a few weeks of Bitcoin price to shine a light on all the scams going on in crypto.
Peter McCormack: Mate, we get some cheap sats.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, that's part of it. I do need number to go up in the long run though, otherwise it can't be global money.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, and not to be broke, because I get paid in Bitcoin and that hasn't been the best decision over the last year! But yeah, we need number to go up. But you've kind of been cutting the bullshit out of everything, just holding everyone and everything to account, which has been impressive to see because your hit rate's pretty high.
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I save my bullets for when there's influential ignorance around something that I care about a lot. So, I'm not shitcoin PI, I don't care about some token number 60 that claims to be doing a bunch of stuff that's fake, somebody else can work on that. But if it gets close to Bitcoin, starts to show up in my Twitter feed, if there's influential Bitcoin people, or people who talk about Bitcoin a lot, talking about something that's bullshit, that usually catches my attention. And if I find it to not be true, I'm usually happy to tell people that I don't think it's true.
Peter McCormack: So, let's talk about FTX. It's been quite the week. I mean, I missed some of it because I was at your conference.
Cory Klippsten: It's two weeks now, amazingly.
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah.
Cory Klippsten: Crazy! That CoinDesk story hit 13 days ago, was what started it.
Peter McCormack: The speed of the collapse I think is what amazed so many people, how something can go from a notional value of $32 billion --
Cory Klippsten: It's like half a LUNA.
Peter McCormack: Jesus! But in seconds, it felt like seconds.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so fast.
Peter McCormack: It was there and it was gone.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, because it wasn't real.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. What was your take on it all; what do you think has gone on here? There is the idea that you have basically some kids who don't know what they're fucking doing controlling billions in value and trying to create a huge company and just don't have the experience to do something like that. I've run small companies and it's hard. I had an advertising agency that turned over less than £3 million and that was hard, and trying to get that to £4 million is hard. Now you've got kids who are controlling hundreds of millions of dollars, something that's worth billions and they're completely out of their depth and they just don't know what they're doing. And then there's all this conspiracy shit.
Cory Klippsten: Well, nobody was calling him a kid until last week, right?
Peter McCormack: No, true.
Cory Klippsten: He was a genius and he was the next Warren Buffet, etc, and very few people were unwilling to go along with the manufactured PR narrative about this wunderkind MIT, son of the Stanford law professors, genius. But he always just seemed like a weirdo to me!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I mean he is a bit of an odd character. But what's your take on it, because there is all this conspiracy stuff like, "Is this a deep state PSYOP --"
Cory Klippsten: It's bad enough without that. You can just use Occam's razor and just go straight to the simplest explanation, and it actually all fits and you don't even need to assume other nefarious actors coordinating anything. The actors would all do exactly what they have done, whether or not it was planned or coordinated.
Peter McCormack: Of course.
Cory Klippsten: His parents would leverage his money into fundraising efforts, because that's what they do professionally; he would leverage connections from MIT because he went to MIT. You don't need to assume some sort of omniscient actor behind things like this.
Peter McCormack: Because the outcome's the same.
Cory Klippsten: The outcome's the same, so it doesn't really matter whether any of it was coordinated or not.
Peter McCormack: Well, it's more of an interest I guess because if it's coordinated, it's very different to somebody just fucking up, because it felt they were at a time that they had the opportunity to build a big -- I know crypto exchange -- they had something that could certainly compete with Coinbase and Kraken and Gemini here, and potentially at some point compete with Binance. It felt like every trader who comes up in my feed was using FTX.
Cory Klippsten: It will be fewer now!
Peter McCormack: Well, they can't use it anymore.
Cory Klippsten: A lot of those traders are gone too.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, a lot of traders are gone, a few funds have been hit. We saw the announcement from Travis Kling. Whatever you think about him, Travis is a friend of mine, I've known him for a long time.
Cory Klippsten: He's a friend of mine too. I don't agree with his decisions in the last four years, but he's still a nice guy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he is, and I'm sure he's been to hell and back over this last week. We've seen a lot of that. But where do you think it went wrong?
Cory Klippsten: From the beginning, that's where it went wrong, from the very beginning.
Peter McCormack: Oh, from the very beginning?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, from the very beginning. So, there was a thread put out by, was it Jason Troy, this morning --
Peter McCormack: Jason Troy, yeah.
Cory Klippsten: -- which was just really illuminating and had a lot of screenshots from the early days. I actually think that I was in that Crypto Fundamentals Telegram group at the time and didn't pay any attention, so there were some screenshots from that one. I think I was still in it. I'd been in it from 2018 or something and I think I was still in it when those conversations were happening, but it was one of those ones that I didn't open anymore. I'd have to check. I actually don't know how I could check, but anyway, a lot of the names were familiar. But this was when people like Su Zhu and others were seeing the initial Alameda terms of their raise --
Peter McCormack: 15%?
Cory Klippsten: -- and were like, "This is ridiculous. No equity for that first tranche, just a 15% clip", and claiming that it was risk-free. I mean, they actually weren't the only one out there with the pitch at the same time. I think I remember in the first half of 2018, Amber, which is still around but took a huge hit this year from a couple of things, I think they might be going under now, had the same pitch. It was like, 0.5% every month risk-free, "We just use bots and market-make whatever", and it never is true; there is no such thing as 6% annual yield risk-free, there is always hiding some risk.
Peter McCormack: There's always a red flag when you say "risk-free".
Cory Klippsten: Yes, from the jump.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. What do you think the impact's going to be on us? You can spin a positive story that maybe they'll be less of this crypto shit; you could spin a negative story that we will see massive regulation; is any regulation good or bad?
Cory Klippsten: The best thing is honestly, Bitcoin is anti-fragile and the community itself being so decentralised is anti-fragile; that's the best thing about Bitcoin. So, the more events you can pack into a shorter amount of time, the better it is for Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: So, these three kind of Mt. Goxes we've had in six months is a good thing?
Cory Klippsten: For Bitcoin? Absolutely, yeah.
Peter McCormack: And are you surprised what's happened to the price? Because, if you'd have explained these stories to me beforehand, I would have said the price would have gone to $5,000, I think we would have been screwed. It's held up quite well.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, it's held up quite well. I mean, I think everybody has that price memory of $13,800 and I'll start getting worried if it goes below there maybe, a little bit.
Peter McCormack: $13,800; why?
Cory Klippsten: That was the weekly close in December of 2017, and it was the high in June of 2019, so it got right up to that weekly close and then they were like, "That's enough hype". So yeah, it's been always kind of hanging out there. As long as we're in the $15,000s, $16,000s, when people are freaking out on the weekend and you're back in the $16,000, $17,000, $18,000s during the week, I think we're fine. This feels like a bottom, but you know…
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah, but I thought before was a bottom.
Cory Klippsten: One more big shoe to drop.
Peter McCormack: You think, or you know?
Cory Klippsten: No, that was a preface. It was the initial clause of a sentence. One more big shoe to drop could be ugly.
Peter McCormack: If there is.
Cory Klippsten: If there is.
Peter McCormack: Do you think there is?
Cory Klippsten: We'll see. I mean, there are a bunch of huge, fragile businesses out there that will collapse at some point, it's just a matter of when.
Peter McCormack: Can they collapse without damage to Bitcoin?
Cory Klippsten: No, sadly. It will always impact the price of Bitcoin when these crypto businesses collapse.
Peter McCormack: Can you point to who you think?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I think we've all been speculating about Crypto.com, because they have a huge balance sheet that's mostly their own printed-out-of-thin-air token. It kind of sounds familiar. And nobody trusts them because their backgrounds are shady, scammy internet marketers, so nobody really wants them to win and nobody will probably come to their aid if they get in trouble.
Peter McCormack: Were they the ones who did the Monaco Card; do you remember that?
Cory Klippsten: I think so. I think they might be MCO, unless they're Metal. I don't think they are, I think you're right, I think they're MCO, I think that was the Monaco ICO.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because they seemed to explode at a certain point and then they launched their token, and they seem to mirror a lot of what FTX has done, in that a lot of sports sponsorship.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, they're like a blend of FTX and Celsius.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because you could see they were all over the F1; they sponsored, which stadium did they sponsor?
Cory Klippsten: It's here, sadly. It's the Lakers Stadium downtown LA.
Peter McCormack: A lot of the MMA stuff.
Danny Knowles: Yeah, they sponsored the UFC.
Peter McCormack: I was told with the Lakers Stadium, the boost in the price of their token, once they announced it, paid for it; that's one of the rumours I heard.
Cory Klippsten: Well, it's dropped since then.
Peter McCormack: Well, it has now, it's been crashing hard. But they're still honouring withdrawals right now.
Cory Klippsten: So far. I mean, they've paused things here and there, but so far they've been able to keep it together. But I'll tell you --
Peter McCormack: Do you want it to go?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I absolutely want Crypto.com to fail, yeah, for sure. I hope they go and blow themselves up and never to be heard from again!
Peter McCormack: Go on, you heard…?
Cory Klippsten: I was just going to say, the chances of them finishing out that ten-year deal in the stadium downtown is literally zero, no chance.
Peter McCormack: Okay, all right. Have you seen any change in trading volumes for Swan this week with regards to this, or has it not affected it?
Cory Klippsten: They go way up.
Peter McCormack: They go way up when it happens?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, when people can buy Bitcoin on sale, they buy a lot. So, Swan historically, we do way more users joining the platform and way more volume when the number's going up. We don't gain many users but we do a lot more volume when the price is going down. And then when it's just flat --
Peter McCormack: That's what you don't want.
Cory Klippsten: -- you just trickly users in and volume is just kind of low.
Peter McCormack: Do you know what, it's exactly the same with the podcast. When the price is going up, we get loads more listeners and we get loads more downloads. When the price is dropping heavy, we will get more listens, but we don't get new users. And when we go sideways, it's just a slow decline. I think everything is a derivative of Bitcoin.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, basically, yeah.
Peter McCormack: Do you want to talk about a16z?
Cory Klippsten: Sure, if you want to.
Peter McCormack: So your crosshairs were on them this week.
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I've been calling them out for a couple of years now, at least. I think I just decided to do a thread on them because I have a little bit more sway right now, and I think it was important that some journalists dig in and pay attention. So now there are a couple of reputable shops digging in, and I think we'll end up with some long-form magazine-style reports on their activities of the last four or five years.
Peter McCormack: Maybe, because I think some people might fear going after a16z. Somebody told me once when I was in San Francisco, it's career suicide to criticise a16z.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, for a start-up founder in Silicon Valley or a wannabe VC, it's probably not the wisest choice. But it's good to be in an anti-fragile business that doesn't need them or their friends.
Peter McCormack: But historically, good reputation?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Good investor.
Cory Klippsten: So listen, this is part of my origin story. When I came into the space, the crypto cannon on a16z, their newsletters, all this. I mean, I used to always read their shit, listen to their podcasts.
Peter McCormack: I like their podcast, yeah.
Cory Klippsten: So, that was signal for me, coming out of Silicon Valley, start-up land, and then getting interested in Bitcoin and crypto with the last bull run in May of 2017. I used to religiously read Fred Wilson's newsletter every time it hit my inbox, and he ended up doing Coinbase and I think the Kik Kin was his big ICO back in 2017, if you remember that one. It was a messenger that saved itself with a Hail Mary ICO!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I do remember that.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so that was Union Square Ventures. So, these were the guys -- I used to work on start-ups with marketplaces and SaaS companies and AdTech and video and VR and stuff like this. So, it was hard because the signal that you were used to trusting was so wrong and so deceitful and I actually, I mean obviously this is an important point to make, I don't actually care what somebody's intentions are, I just completely disregard what they're saying, and that goes for Sam Bankman-Fried, Alex Mashinsky, Do Kwon, whatever. Maybe that makes me cold or whatever, but I really don't care at all what they're saying, I'm just watching for they're doing, and I'm looking for the most rational explanation of why they're doing what they're doing.
So if Luna Foundation and Jump are topping up the Anchor reserve for UST so that people can keep on buying UST and they can clip this 20% coupon, that's an irrational thing to do unless they're making money on it. So, how are they making money? Oh, wow, it seems like LUNA is high beta to the UST market cap, so the price of LUNA goes up by more than the balance in UST". So obviously, they must be selling LUNA into this pump, so it's worth it for them to top this thing up by $0.5 billion, because they're selling $2 billion of LUNA out the back door.
So, that's really the formula over and over again. It's like, if I see Mashinsky a few days after the collapse of LUNA going on an AMA on YouTube and saying, "Bitcoin maximalists are responsible for people losing 30% of Bitcoin's supply. You should instead send your Bitcoin to me because I'll keep it safe for you", I'm not listening to his words, I'm just saying, "This dude is trying to gather deposits. He must have a hole. He must be paying out old investors with new investors' deposits. Oh my God, that's a Ponzi scheme, it's going to collapse".
Peter McCormack: Are you surprised by how many people are running Ponzi schemes knowing that there are pretty harsh penalties at the end of it? Someone like Mashinsky, my assumption is he ends up in jail?
Cory Klippsten: I don't know. I mean, Kyle Davies and Su Zhu, or whatever, they're raising a new fund; Three Arrows Capital guys.
Peter McCormack: Shut the fuck -- really?
Cory Klippsten: I found out this morning, yeah. They're planning to raise a new fund.
Danny Knowles: I saw rumours on Twitter this morning.
Peter McCormack: Really?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. I mean, they're in Dubai, nobody's touching them, they're all offshore.
Peter McCormack: But there's no extradition treaty, right?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so they just go and get to live next to all the disgraced people from 2017, 2018 and there's probably one penthouse they all live in and they're probably in a polycule. That's a new word I learned this week!
Peter McCormack: But Mashinsky's in New York, right, that's public knowledge?
Cory Klippsten: I know he had a house there, I know he had a house in Austin at some point too, but I'm not sure.
Peter McCormack: But why are these people not getting arrested?
Cory Klippsten: It's a good question. I don't know. I think what they're doing is illegal.
Peter McCormack: Well, back to a16z, talk to me about that. And also, there's quite a tight connection between them and Multicoin.
Cory Klippsten: They do a lot of the same trades basically, and they both were long a lot of the different things that Sam Bankman-Fried was into the last few years, yeah. They're really high-quality pump and dumps, a very good chance to make some money.
Peter McCormack: Well, Kyle Samani was interview 008 or something, wasn't he, on the podcast?
Danny Knowles: Yeah, very, very early.
Cory Klippsten: I'm sorry!
Peter McCormack: Well, I was a crypto guy back then and we had our time, but I'm pretty sure I interviewed him within the a16z office. I think a16z were one of their LPs.
Cory Klippsten: Could be, probably.
Peter McCormack: I think there's a deep connection between the two.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. I know for sure that Craft is a big LP for them, so David Sacks from All-In podcast, they're a big LP for Multicoin.
Peter McCormack: Hence the Solana thing.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so Craft's Solana position last fall was over $1 billion.
Peter McCormack: We heard a rumour at the time that there was a moment in time where Multicoin Capital was the best performing hedge fund in history; that correct?
Danny Knowles: Well, that's the rumour we heard, I don't know if it was true.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, because basically their Solana position was like a $20 million investment that went to $2 billion, or it was the most profitable trade in venture history or something. I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying that's what these people can do.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I mean that wouldn't be as good as Google returns for an early-on investor in Google or something like that.
Peter McCormack: I think it was over the time period though.
Cory Klippsten: Maybe, yeah. Well, that's the whole point of crypto VC, is short time to liquidity, right, that's the whole point because you don't need to have product market fit, you don't need to have revenue validation of anything; you're literally just selling a pipe dream and dumping it on people's heads.
Peter McCormack: So, back to a16z, what is it that stands out for you, and what do you want to happen here? I agree that they have been funding a lot of crypto nonsense. I used to love Chris Dixon, I used to listen to him on podcasts and read his Twitter.
Cory Klippsten: Me too, before he joined Andreessen, by the way.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's all fucking crypto metaverse nonsense now. So, what are you going for here?
Cory Klippsten: Well, it's probably the way that crypto has been allowed to exist in the United States over the last five years has been probably the best fit ever, as in industry vertical, for venture capitalists to make money, because you can stack funds very, very quickly. If you can flatten out that J-curve where you make your investments, it usually takes four or five years for you to get back in the black. You show that performance then you raise fund two, fund three, whatever.
So, they've been able to stack these crypto funds very, very quickly, and they're already on fund four. I think it's $7.6 billion total across the four funds, not to mention and don't forget they got, I forget, it was like 140 people registered as reps so they could shill the hell out of these things back in 2018.
Danny Knowles: Why is it that they can do that so quick? Is it because of time to liquidity?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, right, it's the short time to liquidity. So, you only need two slides in a raised deck talking to LPs, for a crypto fund. First is short time to liquidity, which is like, "We literally deem no revenue, no product market fit, literally nothing. We can just create this thing, market the hell out of it, dump it on retail or dumb money that we market to that believes us", or whatever. So, that's the first one.
The second one is, "We can make our own weather". I didn't make this up, this is something that I heard from all the crypto funds back in 2017, 2018; that's what they all talked about was, "We can make our own weather". Because they're not regulated as securities, you can say anything that you want, you can promise any blockchain crypto magic that you want, it can solve whatever problem you say it's going to solve and there's no truth in advertising, no securities laws, no nothing governing the space. And so, it's just literally the best magic scam machine in financial markets history.
Peter McCormack: The funds they have now, is the value mainly in illiquid tokens though?
Cory Klippsten: No, a lot of it's in equities too, so they've done both. So, they'll buy a bunch of tokens, they'll buy a bunch of stock and some of the crypto infrastructure platforms. But a lot of it is like $300 million into Solana, which they did in March/April of 2021, before pumping Solana through their entire network on all their shows, for all their speakers, using their connections because they were sort of created in the model of CAA with Michael Ovitz. So, they have deep connections in Hollywood and they got everyone in Hollywood to pump Solana all last summer and fall until they dumped.
Peter McCormack: So they did dump?
Cory Klippsten: Oh, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Do we know how much they dumped?
Cory Klippsten: I don't, I don't know how much, but it would be ludicrous of them not to get out at their cost basis plus some and maybe let some ride. But obviously they stopped pumping it basically after November.
Peter McCormack: So, talk me through the things that they have also done, invested in the things that stand out to you as a total scam.
Cory Klippsten: I mean Worldcoin might be the worst project I've ever seen.
Peter McCormack: Was that the thing with the weird sphere?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Danny Knowles: Oh, that scanned your iris, or whatever?
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, exactly.
Peter McCormack: But it's "Bitcoin for the whole world"!
Cory Klippsten: That was like six levels of evil wrapped up into one project, maybe the worst thing I've seen since Balaji's companies of the last decade.
Peter McCormack: Did they release Worldcoin?
Danny Knowles: I don't know.
Cory Klippsten: Probably, probably dumped it on somebody, I don't know; probably through FTX and Binance. I've no idea.
Peter McCormack: See if it's been traded, see if the actual token exists, because I remember it came out and everyone was like, "Gross! What the fuck is this!"
Cory Klippsten: It's so gross.
Peter McCormack: Try to say you're better than Bitcoin, but doing everything that Bitcoin isn't.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, basically. So, there was that one; there was the wide-area network Helium scam, which was just a full-on Ponzi scheme.
Peter McCormack: That was Multicoin as well, right?
Cory Klippsten: Definitely, I think so actually.
Peter McCormack: Was that the thing where people bought the nodes for $20,000 or something?
Cory Klippsten: It wasn't that much, it was probably $400 or $1,000 or something like that.
Peter McCormack: But they'd make about $7 back.
Cory Klippsten: I think it was in the cents by the end, yeah, cents per month.
Peter McCormack: What was Helium; what is Helium?
Cory Klippsten: It was an attempt to build like a Wi-Fi network separate from -- it was like a distributor, decentralised Wi-Fi network basically.
Peter McCormack: But nobody used it?
Cory Klippsten: It just didn't generate any revenue. So, all of the pay-outs to the early people were just coming from the device purchases and whatever the subscription plans of the new people; that's the only way it was growing.
Peter McCormack: And there was a token?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: Can we get up the Helium token?
Cory Klippsten: HNT baby!
Peter McCormack: HNT.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, Helium Network Token.
Peter McCormack: I remember. I mean, the idea of the company is something that would be interesting. All right, so like every other chart!
Cory Klippsten: This is every Andreessen chart, they all look exactly the same.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, what did that peak out at?
Danny Knowles: $52.
Peter McCormack: It started out at 27 cents, $52, and now it's like --
Danny Knowles: $2.
Peter McCormack: Jesus! It's still a 10X on when it launched though. The idea of having a decentralised Wi-Fi network, get rid of the token, it sounds like something that could be useful.
Cory Klippsten: Sure, yeah. They fucked it up with the token.
Peter McCormack: Do you think sometimes the token fucks it up because you destroy the incentive to actually build the company?
Cory Klippsten: Definitely, absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Like, "I've already paid my money".
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, if you want to ruin a token, add a token!
Peter McCormack: All right, what else have they done?
Cory Klippsten: You'd have to check my tweet thread.
Peter McCormack: Oh, here we go.
Cory Klippsten: Have you got the one about the decentralised staffing agency?
Peter McCormack: No!
Danny Knowles: Is that Braintrust.
Cory Klippsten: Thank you, yeah. So, that's a much more run-of-the-mill -- that's the mode for Andreessen Horowitz, it's the thing that doesn't need to be decentralised. It's that scam is what usually --
Peter McCormack: Is there a website for it?
Danny Knowles: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: What are they actually decentralising?
Cory Klippsten: I don't know. Who's making the website? Some DAO? No. It's some company in Silicon Valley, or something.
Peter McCormack: Hold on, "At Braintrust, we're changing the way work works".
Cory Klippsten: So, the Braintrust token, you guys all get this Braintrust token.
Peter McCormack: "We're changing the way work works for good. Braintrust is controlled by you, the talent".
Cory Klippsten: By the way, it's always "for good", always, always helping the world, saving the babies, every time!
Peter McCormack: There's no talent fees, "Future-proof your career". I don't get it. Hold on, I literally don't understand what they're saying.
Cory Klippsten: It doesn't matter, just check the token price.
Peter McCormack: But I also want to know what they're actually trying to -- what is the message here? Are they saying this is a recruitment agency but nobody works for it?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, that's what a decentralised, token-driven… Anyway, it's all just dumb.
Peter McCormack: I know, but in some ways, I just want to understand it. Can you go to the "About us" section, Danny?
Cory Klippsten: It's just a way to pump and dump a token, that's it.
Peter McCormack: "The way we work is broken. In fact, it's been broken for a long time now. We'd hoped the advent of online hiring marketplaces would usher in a new era of worker autonomy and abundance, but the economics didn't pan out".
Cory Klippsten: They're going to fix the economics with their token, that's usually what happens. I've never been on this website; this is atrocious.
Peter McCormack: "A few wealthy people became even wealthier and the average worker is still scrambling to make a living. But we believe there's a better way to think about work, a model that benefits talent and enterprise alike. At Braintrust, our decentralised talent network is built on the belief that everyone should be treated fairly. Fees should be transparent, Incentives should be aligned, and the huge --" this just sounds like bollocks!
Cory Klippsten: I like this better when it was the SpringRole ICO back in 2017, 2018; that was way better. Do you remember that guy?
Peter McCormack: Didn't Science back them?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, Science backed them.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I put 2 Bitcoin into that.
Cory Klippsten: Ouch! Did it turn into a lot of SpringRoles?
Peter McCormack: I got a load of SpringRoles and I've still got them probably on a fucking ledger somewhere. I think, what was Bitcoin back then? It was, I don't know…
Cory Klippsten: Oh, God, probably $10,000 a Bitcoin?
Peter McCormack: No, because it would have been --
Cory Klippsten: In the spring of 2018 or something?
Peter McCormack: I think it was before I did the podcast.
Cory Klippsten: You started the podcast late 2018?
Danny Knowles: Late 2017.
Cory Klippsten: November 2017?
Peter McCormack: Yeah, we're two days away from the fifth anniversary.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I'm sorry to mess with your memory, but you bought those SpringRole tokens in 2018.
Peter McCormack: Did I? I thought it was before.
Cory Klippsten: There was no Science blockchain yet; it came in 2018.
Peter McCormack: No, but the thing is, I don't think I had the podcast, or maybe I did. Anyway, I know I put 2 Bitcoin into it, I remember.
Cory Klippsten: I'm so sorry.
Peter McCormack: What's the price of the token?
Cory Klippsten: It doesn't matter.
Danny Knowles: It doesn't matter.
Cory Klippsten: Let's move on. Honestly, I kind of want to move on from Andreessen anyway. Honestly, I'll just sum it up by just saying there are a bunch of crypto funds that operate similarly and worse. I think it's important to highlight Andreessen because they will have the most social pressure on them from their Silicon Valley compadres up there, and they will affect the most change very quickly and back away from it. And I think it's like, you can chop the head off and basically make all the cockroaches scurry off into the dark if you can put enough pressure on the biggest, best-known of all of them. That's why I'm targeting them.
Peter McCormack: What is the best outcome for all of this; what do you want to see happen?
Cory Klippsten: I just want everybody to understand what Bitcoin is and what crypto is or is not, and then make their own decisions.
Peter McCormack: Do you think this crypto stuff should be regulated? I know it's a tricky one.
Cory Klippsten: No, it's okay. I mean, I'm not pro-regulation, I am anti-hypocrisy. So, if you've been in DC for the last 10, 15 years, banging the table for the deregulation of Ponzi schemes and shady MLM practices and saying, "I want Stratton Oakmont to be able to send direct mail to the nursing home to make sure my grandma sends my inheritance into a scheme", some penny stocks or something; if you've been really all about no regulations, you're a hardcore libertarian, there are bitcoiners like this, by the way, that just say, "Get rid of all regulations. Let the market figure it out --"
Peter McCormack: I understand.
Cory Klippsten: Totally fine if you're against all regulation; that's a principled stance. If you want regulation some places but not other places, you're a fucking hypocrite, like Brian Armstrong at Coinbase. So, Brian wants to benefit from the best regulated, most trusted, most liquid stock markets in the world here in the United States, where everyone around the world buys his stock, lines his pockets, lets him get a $135 million house a few miles over here. But meanwhile, with his left hand, wants you to just ignore the securities, by definition, according to the laws on the books since way before any of this shit came along, that are trading on his platform, and doesn't want his exchange to be regulated as a securities exchange.
So, you can have a principled stance and bang the table for all deregulation everywhere, or don't be a hypocrite.
Peter McCormack: I mean, we know what the SEC thinks of these things, we know the SEC thinks Bitcoin isn't a security; we know it kind of thinks Ethereum isn't, but some people argue it should be; we know something like LBRY, which by the way I'm surprised still existed, is considered a security. So, that's coming. All these tokens will be considered securities. What is the implication for someone like Coinbase; will they have to register as a securities exchange; is that all it means?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. Well, they'd register as a securities exchange, but everything trading on the exchange from then on would have to be regulated as a security.
Peter McCormack: Okay, and anything that isn't, they couldn't sell?
Cory Klippsten: Right.
Peter McCormack: Okay. I mean, that would be a very quick, fast change if it happened.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, it would be lights out for crypto.
Peter McCormack: That would mean they only would be able to sell Bitcoin, maybe Litecoin, a couple of things.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah,.
Peter McCormack: I'm just working through it.
Cory Klippsten: It would be like pre-Balaji Coinbase, before Balaji got there and rekt it.
Peter McCormack: I mean, Balaji's a friend of mine.
Cory Klippsten: I'm sorry, I mean it is what it is. I mean, he did go in and create a fake framework with some corporate lawyers to say, "Hey, if you pass these criteria, you're decentralised enough", and then they're listing Universal Pet token.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but at the time it was Bitcoin, then it was Ethereum.
Cory Klippsten: Litecoin.
Peter McCormack: Then there was Litecoin and then it was BSV.
Cory Klippsten: Bcash.
Peter McCormack: Bcash, sorry. And it was just those four.
Cory Klippsten: Just those four for a long time.
Peter McCormack: And then it just suddenly became everything, yeah.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. And I understand there were competitive pressures, because Binance launched in 2017 and was eating their lunch and they were like, "Oh my God, we need to do something, let's add all these shitcoins".
Peter McCormack: Well, that's exactly what -- you can't be halfway there. You either have them all, or you have none and you be Bitcoin only. I'm guessing you running a Bitcoin-only exchange, that comes with different pressures?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I mean we're not an exchange, so we're a financial services company that one of the things we do is sell Bitcoin, so we're kind of a broker in that sense with that part of the business. But yeah.
Peter McCormack: But you compete with exchanges?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I guess, although very few people who want to gamble in crypto would be attracted to Swan in the first place.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Cory Klippsten: That's been the magic of the whole business model, is if you're interested in crypto, usually you're just gambling with 1% or less of your net worth. If you're actually into Bitcoin, the average person will go way deeper into their wallet and their net worth and buy a lot more Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, don't tell me about it! I'm deep.
Cory Klippsten: Aren't we all? Most of your guests probably are.
Peter McCormack: Okay, so back to the mission, trying to help educate and communicate to people, with the right regulation coming in, we could end up just seeing Bitcoin actually dominate things again?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. Oh, I think we should put the nail in the coffin there on that last thread though, which is basically the last couple of years, what these big crypto exchanges and the big token projects have been trying to do is to wrest control oversight of their crypto securities from the SEC and put it into the CFTC. So, that's been the whisper campaign; anything but the SEC. And of course, what's been dangled in front of the CFTC is, "We will gladly allow you to charge us ridiculous fees if only you'll regulate us, because we know you'll have a light touch and you'll let us all be called commodities instead of securities".
So, that's what they tried to do, that's why Bankman-Fried, or Scam Bankster-Fraud, as bitcoiners like to call him --
Peter McCormack: Or Scam Bankrupt?
Cory Klippsten: Scam Bankster-Fraud. Bankrupt is good, yeah.
Peter McCormack: There's a lot of them.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, it's pretty new.
Peter McCormack: It's almost to the point where his name is almost like, maybe this is a PSYOP and we got trolled, "What name shall we give him? Let's give him Scam Bankrupt-Freud".
Cory Klippsten: Freud!
Peter McCormack: Fraud, sorry.
Cory Klippsten: That's a Freudian slip right there!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, Fraud.
Cory Klippsten: They trotted him out there to DC a bunch of times trying to get this done, and all the donations to the campaigns, etc. And obviously the Ethereum folks are down there all the time and Coinbase sends their people all their time, and Andreessen hires these people constantly as GPs in their funds, so they can get around the lobbyist rules. You can only be there for 20% of your time. Over that, you have to register as a lobbyist. So, Coinbase just hires regulators and DC people as GPs so they can spend all their time in DC lobbying for this shit! That's where Katie Haun came from.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I remember that.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, but there was another --
Peter McCormack: Hasn't she launched her own --
Cory Klippsten: She launched her own $1.5 billion fund. I actually have an insider there that tipped me off; I'm talking to them tomorrow to see what's going on over there!
Peter McCormack: Oh, God! What have they invested in; do we even know what she's invested in?
Cory Klippsten: I haven't been paying attention, I'm going to catch up tomorrow. There might be a tweet thread at some point.
Peter McCormack: Danny, have you returned all your library books? Cory's going to come for you!
Cory Klippsten: So, it turns out even though I graduated with a journalism degree and never practised since graduating, I ended up doing a little bit of journalism.
Peter McCormack: Really? I didn't know you were a --
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I went to the University of Missouri, the first ever global journalism school.
Peter McCormack: Right. Why did you do journalism?
Cory Klippsten: I was a local NVC TV reporter when I was 19.
Peter McCormack: Is there any footage of that?
Cory Klippsten: Have you ever seen that kid that says, "Boom, goes the dynamite"?
Peter McCormack: No.
Cory Klippsten: It's basically that. Some of your listeners will know it. Anyway, no, I'm just kidding.
Peter McCormack: Is there footage of you?
Cory Klippsten: There are some Beta tapes.
Peter McCormack: Have you got any of it? That's a yes!
Cory Klippsten: Maybe!
Peter McCormack: Oh, come on, send us some.
Cory Klippsten: I don't have a Beta tape player though.
Peter McCormack: So, hold on, what did you go when you came out of uni; why didn't you become a journalist?
Cory Klippsten: I didn't enjoy it, I didn't enjoy TV. I figured that maybe later in life, I'd do long-form magazine, or something like that. I might still do that someday, sit down with more time on my hands and write more. I actually have my second article ever since starting Swan that I've actually written, that I've cared about. I've done some research stuff and stuff with Sam Callahan.
Peter McCormack: Sam's great, by the way.
Cory Klippsten: He's amazing, yeah, he's a superstar. But yeah, basically an updated mission statement for Swan that is going out tomorrow, The Race To Avoid The War.
Peter McCormack: Well, this show's not going to come out tomorrow, so you can talk about this.
Cory Klippsten: We can talk about it? Okay. Anyway, so to put the nail in the coffin, so yeah, the CFTC thing, it will be really interesting what they do to scramble the jets now that they've essentially lost their point man on that effort. Yeah, if you want to talk about The Race To Avoid The War?
Peter McCormack: Yes.
Cory Klippsten: So, I launched the company with a mission statement I wrote in February 2020, which was Ten Million Bitcoiners. That was specifically about the effort, which is a global effort, but what really needed to happen, or needs to happen, is to get to that intransigent minority, that Taleb writes about, of 3% to 4% of the population in a society that will not bend on an issue, and that's all you need to flip a society. So, this is why almost all the meat in the UK is Halal, almost all the CPG --
Peter McCormack: Sorry, what?
Cory Klippsten: Almost all the meat, when you go to restaurants and shit in the UK, is Halal-prepared.
Peter McCormack: Is that true?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, they flipped it, man. At some point, there was more than 4% Muslim, so they bleed out the meat before they cook it. It's a very mildly noticeable difference. I think it's a London thing.
Peter McCormack: Really?
Cory Klippsten: Anyway, it might be apocryphal.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, fact-check that one, Danny.
Cory Klippsten: The other example here is with kosher foods, almost every can and almost every packaged good has a little kosher symbol on it, because that's an intransigent minority demands that it be kosher, and everybody else doesn't care enough.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. I mean, the meat's still good so I don't care, but I'm just interested.
Cory Klippsten: It's delicious. I actually like it a little drier, a little crispier; it's good. So, the idea that you would need, in the one place that really matters because it's the seat of power for the existing dollar and treasury-based system, that here where those decisions are made, you would need to get to 3% or 4% of the population truly being down for the cause, meaning -- I'll just call it a bitcoiner. The definition for this purpose is, "Have a decent chunk of your net worth in Bitcoin", so some skin in the game, and understand it deeply enough that you would fight for it in your way, you would evangelise with your family and friends, you might go to a town hall and make life a little difficult for Brad Sherman, whatever it is that you would do to help the cause because it's very important to you. So, it's like that single-issue voter would need to get to 10 million bitcoiners in the US.
Peter McCormack: Where do you think we're at?
Cory Klippsten: Between 100,000 and 200,000 is my guess.
Peter McCormack: Wow.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so I think we need another 50X to 100X to get there. So, that framework then is what's developed in my mind into this idea of The Race To Avoid The War. So, if we win the adoption race, then we never have to fight the war. So, there could be a dark period in the development of Bitcoin. I think the eventual domination by Bitcoin of global money is inevitable. But if we win this race, it could happen as early as 2035, 2040. If we lose, it could get really dark, and it would have to go underground and build back up, and it could be the 2100s before we get to enjoy this new era of growth and human prosperity and freedom that I think Bitcoin will usher in.
Peter McCormack: I've got a feeling we won't be around for that, mate.
Cory Klippsten: We wouldn't be. But we can if we win the race basically in the next 12 to 15 years, then we'll never have to fight that war. So, this opposition can be converted to our side, so this is why it's a multi-front race, and everything that you do for Bitcoin, whether that's pushing adoption like we do, whether it's building great privacy tech, whether it's building better custody solutions, like Specter Labs, whether it's pushing nation state adoption, like JAN3 or anybody working down in El Salvador, whatever it is that you can help Bitcoin run faster, or make Bitcoin and bitcoiners look less assailable and less attractive to attack where it looks unwinnable to fuck with Bitcoin and bitcoiners, whatever you can do you're helping us run faster and/or helping the other guys run slower.
So, that group contra-Bitcoin or contra-bitcoiners hasn't coalesced, but could, and we're trying to make sure that they never coalesce. I think the natural triumvirate of shitcoinery basically is probably government, banks and crypto, non-Bitcoin crypto. So, those are the three groups that we have to either infiltrate and convince to come over, or just crush.
Peter McCormack: Do you think there's an argument to bend principles on regulation for the benefit of Bitcoin, in that traditionally bitcoiners aren't pro-regulation, they want the markets to figure it out; but at the same time, if you could regulate away all these shitcoins and then only have Bitcoin to focus on, that you win the race to avoid the war? Do you think there is an argument for that; do you think it's hypocrisy and you shouldn't do that?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I think I answered it already. I think you should either be banging the table all the time for no regulation and get rid of all regulations, penny stocks, all the rules and regulations around banking and securities, you should get rid of everything; or you should at least be fair and regulate everything the same. So, you just can't have it both ways.
Peter McCormack: By the way, is Specter Labs the thing I read that you bought?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, so Specter Solutions, that's Moritz Wietersheim's company. So, yeah, the whole team came over a few months ago. They're part of Swan, and we're building awesome, multi-custody solutions with them. All the free open-source software stuff stays the same and they're still working with lots of other companies and things like that, but we're leveraging their expertise in some of their solutions to build cool shit for our customers.
Peter McCormack: Was that your first acquisition?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, first one.
Peter McCormack: That's nice, man.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, very exciting.
Peter McCormack: I didn't know about that until yesterday, someone was in a thread giving you some shit about something, and somebody replied, "No, dude, they bought Specter Labs".
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, well that person deleted all their tweets as usual. Whenever they come spa with me, they just delete their tweets.
Peter McCormack: Oh, was that Pomp?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I didn't even realise that was Pomp.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah!
Peter McCormack: All right.
Cory Klippsten: He always comes out firing, pops off some blanks and then deletes his tweets.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, again it's really hard for me, because I've built friendships with these people and I can't just not be someone's friend because I disagree -- like Nic Carter is my friend. I disagree with some of his crypto stuff, but he's still my friend and I can't just discard these people from my life; it's a weird thing.
Cory Klippsten: I hear you. I mean, I used to be friends with Pomp. I discarded him! I haven't been friends with Nic before.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, well I think the other thing is, the job I do, I just build a lot of friends. But I think based on what you're saying, The Race To Avoid The War --
Cory Klippsten: This is interesting to tease out though, because I'm not in the media technically, but I also run a media company.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Cory Klippsten: You have some things that you can do that I can't.
Peter McCormack: Like what?
Cory Klippsten: And I have some things that I can do that you can't, which is interesting.
Peter McCormack: Well, I guess what you can do that I can't, I need to be careful of some of my public statements because if you get a reputation of just being an ass, no one's going to come on your show, which is true. What can I do that you can't?
Cory Klippsten: I think you can -- well, first of all, it's obviously easier to get sponsors if you're a neutral party, so you can pay for more things than we can. We have to come out of pocket for more of it. So you can get bigger and produce better media, I guess, than we could, unless we're subsidising it, which we do!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I think there's another thing to that though. There's just the time I've been doing it as well.
Cory Klippsten: Totally, yeah.
Peter McCormack: I always think an independent media has always got an advantage over one which is corporate led. I actually think you've done really well as a corporate podcast, but when anyone comes to me, when I see one of my sponsors and they say they're launching a podcast, I'm like, "Why the fuck are you launching a podcast? What have you got that's new and interesting that's coming with a corporate message?" We're just independent guys figuring this shit out, me and Danny and Jeremy and Emma now, just travelling, figuring that out. I think you did a really good job with Swan Signal.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, Swan Signal's a great show, I love that show.
Peter McCormack: But you did a thing where you just paired up good people and it just became a thing. It's like, "Oh, you've got Lyn and Preston", or whoever it would be together, and it kind of makes sense. But it will always be a corporate podcast.
Cory Klippsten: Maybe. It's interesting. I mean, a lot of times I think we're just a media company that happens to have a lot of Bitcoin services.
Peter McCormack: I don't think you're there yet, but you could be.
Cory Klippsten: That's interesting.
Peter McCormack: I considered you an exchange because you compete with exchanges. I know you're not an exchange, I know you can't sell with Swan. I still consider you a Bitcoin services company who does media.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, if you were saying, "Manufactures farm equipment or a crypto exchange", then we're a crypto exchange!
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but it's more like what are the buckets of competition I put you in with.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, like an on-ramp. I would say, if you're new to the space and you're an analyst, you would put us there with Celsius and Coinbase and everybody else.
Peter McCormack: Well I think what you do is, "Where do I get my Bitcoin?" You're in the bucket of where I get my Bitcoin from, and that could be Coinbase, that could be Swan, that could be Kraken. So, I put you in that bucket, but I know a bit more about the business now. But I still think you're that and you do media.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: I think that's a better place to be.
Cory Klippsten: It is. I mean, I think this goes back to, how do you control your pipeline of new customers; and how do you have full control over your cost of acquisition, I guess, because if you have to pay Facebook and Google and try to win auctions on display networks and you're going up against crypto casinos that are just printing money out of thin air or completely faking it the whole time, I mean FTX was just offering 5% to 8% yields just to get deposits in that they could send over to Alameda to gamble with. I can't compete with that, because they can offer $200 when you sign up for an account. Those economics don't work if you're actually honest.
Peter McCormack: But low time preference means you're still in business and they're not.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: And you keep going, you build trust and reputation.
Cory Klippsten: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: We can't advertise growth of a podcast. We could take out some ads, a couple of people might try and listen. We tried it with Defiance, it just doesn't really work. It's just consistency, turn up, consistent, turn up, consistent, and I think you're kind of in that space as well, where it's turn up and be consistent.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah. I think there's a lot to be said for it. It does have that kind of trajectory of a show or a podcast or a media brand to some degree. You don't get a lot of turnover and you mostly are just growing, growing, growing. It's very sort of 37signals Basecamp-like, if you come from the tech world.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I remember that.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, I've known those guys since 20 years ago when I first got to Chicago, is probably when I met Jason. Then Dave and I were social friends for a number of years, and one of my best friends, who actually officiated my wedding, Matt Ruby, is a writer and comedian out in New York and he was actually their author, their first employee, going way, way back, and he wrote Signal v Noise for the first eight years, he wrote REWORK for them and one of their other New York Times bestsellers. He was our first writer at Swan and I would say I've been talking to him about their DNA and their operating system for 20 years, so it's been kind of interesting to see that apply a little bit.
Peter McCormack: Well, when I had my advertising agency, we used Basecamp, so we used all their software and I've always liked them. Is Dave the one who did the --
Cory Klippsten: Le Mans, the race car driver, yeah.
Peter McCormack: No, that's not who I was thinking of. Who was the guy there who was anti-Bitcoin who is now a bitcoiner?
Cory Klippsten: That's Dave.
Peter McCormack: That is Dave?
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, he finally got it. We argued a lot.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, he's in Europe.
Cory Klippsten: He's Danish, yeah. He did live in Malibu for a number of years, but he went back.
Peter McCormack: So, he was fully against Bitcoin, right, and I've seen him come full circle. But I think he came full circle because of the app store, he realised the problems with centralisation. He was getting his butt kicked by Apple.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, it was the launch of HEY, the email application, that brought him around.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, that was nice to see. But going back to your Race To Avoid The War, do you see that as a "rally the troops for Swan", or rally --
Cory Klippsten: Everyone. That's what the Pacific Bitcoin Conference is about, which is obviously like, we own it and do all the damn work, but it's not even really supposed to make money. Every year, we're going to basically spend as much on it as we've taken in. So, however many sponsors come and however many tickets we've sold, that's how much money we're spending on the conference, or at least that's the plan. I mean, maybe someday there'll be smarter people that say, "Hey, that's a revenue-generating product, we should do better", but that was the plan this year and it's the plan for next year.
Peter McCormack: So, this is a rallying cry. So, what do we do, what do me and Danny do?
Cory Klippsten: You guys are pushing adoption.
Peter McCormack: How do we do it better?
Cory Klippsten: No, I think it's fine.
Peter McCormack: Should be spend all our income on making more shows?!
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I don't know. I think that all the major Bitcoin podcasts kind of have their place. You would have heard from me already if I had a gripe.
Peter McCormack: Well, I do hear from you when you have a gripe, let's be honest!
Cory Klippsten: You do sometimes hear from me occasionally.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, but I'm okay with that.
Cory Klippsten: We've talked it out and we've actually ended up agreeing about half the time. And of what's left, I'd say a quarter of the time you're like, "I just can't do anything about that one for now". And then a quarter of the time you've been like, "Thanks for the input, Cory"!
Peter McCormack: No, but I think that quarter of the time you're also like, "Okay, I get it, I get where you're at with this", but for people who don't know, me and Cory speak a lot on Telegram, and I care deeply about what I'm doing and the importance of it, and I will come to you and say, "Cory, I've got this issue, what do you think I should do; and I've got that issue?" Also, part of it is just protecting myself from the Cory target coming on my back!
Cory Klippsten: You have two Xs on your chest though! No, I think what happened is six months ago, I realised I should put you in my media folder on Telegram, which is where I feed all the journalists story angles and things that I'm trying to get out.
Peter McCormack: Information, yeah. It's useful.
Cory Klippsten: So, I just started including you on a lot of those, and that ended up sparking a lot of conversations for us.
Peter McCormack: It's useful, man. So, this race to win the war, what is the rallying cry then; what are you saying?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, I still think the most important thing, the most important single number that matters is still that 10 million bitcoiners in the United States. But if you are pushing Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador or the Congo, or building privacy tech in Czechoslovakia or Canada, you're still giving us more time to get to 10 million. So, if you're pushing adoption somewhere else, you're making adoption look more likely here in the US and more attractive; then if you're pushing something that makes Bitcoin harder to attack, then you're giving us a little bit more time to win the race.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Cory Klippsten: So basically it's a global fight but really the only thing that matters is flipping the United States, because the only entity that could coordinate a meaningful effort contra-Bitcoin is the US Government. Literally, nothing else matters and I don't ever want them to be an adversary, I want to just infiltrate them and convert them.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, so what do you think about the idea that, say, Dennis Porter is, love him or hate him, I think he's a lovely guy, he's going around and actively trying to recruit politicians. Other people would say, "Stop kissing politicians' ass, forget about them". What do you think should be done?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, a politician is just a person, right. I want to convert 8 billion people into Bitcoin, so…
Peter McCormack: But it's a person who has influence over this. So for example, I'm going to Austin this week and I'm interviewing Ted Cruz. What would you want to ask him; what would you say to him?
Cory Klippsten: Boy, that's a whole different question than one you just started asking about, so I was prepping my answer to the first one!
Peter McCormack: That's true. Do the first one.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, we'll do a tweet thread on the Cruz thing. I think all efforts that are well-executed in favour of Bitcoin adoption are good. Well-executed is doing a lot of lifting there. So, I think it's probably net negative for Bitcoin messaging to get included in a Coin Center platform for the most part.
I think a lot of us realised that the crypto blockchain lobby groups were very willing to throw Bitcoin under the bus and fuck us over when the Infrastructure Bill was going down in 2021; and that very quickly sparked the need, the obvious need to create a bunch of Bitcoin-only policy groups. So, you've got BPI and Sats Center and OpenSats, and I think there's two more, because those are absolutely necessary, because crypto blockchain, DeFi crypto scambo, that was not ever going to promote true things about Bitcoin; it was always going to muddy the water with crypto innovation.
Peter McCormack: In terms of the mission and in terms of trying to recruit people, what do you think works? People say, "Come for the Number Go Up, stay for the revolution"; I talked to Brandon the other day, we had Brandon Quittem in, and I said to him, "I've stopped explaining Bitcoin like an investment to people now".
Even on our football club website it says, "Why you should not buy Bitcoin" and it's meant to lead people in. It says, "You should learn about Bitcoin", and I'm trying to get people to the idea, just trying to buy Bitcoin to make money now and quickly is dangerous. If you want to buy some for the long term, great. But either way, if you agree with Bitcoin, if you understand the mission and you agree with it, you should get behind the revolution. So either way, just go and buy £100 worth; just get in, get involved and understand it. That's what I'm trying.
Brandon, by the way, completely disagreed with me. He said, "No, Number Go Up is powerful", and I get it, it is; but number go down isn't great either! What do you think; what do you think works?
Cory Klippsten: I mean, there's three variables here. There's the messenger, there's the message and there's the recipient, so that can mean a lot of different things. So, Brandon's pitch might be very effective the way that he does it, and you have What Bitcoin Did, which is kind of a mindfuck; it's like, "Well, did it do it already; is it going to do it? I'm so confused, where am I in time and space?" And so of course, you would have, "Don't buy Bitcoin" on your website.
Peter McCormack: No, that's on the football club website.
Cory Klippsten: Yeah, exactly. So, that's what I'm saying. So, you've got a good ad man's tagline way of pitching things. I feel like at least a plurality of the people that have been trying to educate about Bitcoin for the longest generally settle into, chapter one is what is money? Help people understand that and that's the best entry point if you have someone who trusts you and is willing to sit down and talk to you about it for a little bit. So that's where the variables start there. Yan will usually start there, people like that who have been doing it for a long time. I feel like they usually start to attack your conception of what is money, and then that gets into Bitcoin eventually.
I obviously try to reach hundreds of thousands of people, and I also come from noticing that 95% of people don't get it the first time around. Everybody has one swing, two swings, seven swings, ten swings, whatever your embarrassing story is, like mine, of not getting it the first few times and then finally getting it. So, I think it's important to hit people with multiple different messages and to hit them with the same message multiple times, and really treat it like a sophisticated marketing effort really.
Peter McCormack: Well, listen, I know we had a time limit. Where do you want to send people, what do you want to tell them?
Cory Klippsten: Well, if you've heard any of the buzz about the Pacific Bitcoin Conference, we just put a block of tickets on sale for next year.
Peter McCormack: Buy them.
Cory Klippsten: You should definitely come out, it's amazing.
Peter McCormack: Definitely coming.
Cory Klippsten: So, pacificbitcoin2023.com has those heavily-discounted tickets for next year. Full refund until 1 July, so you can just grab the tickets now on discount. You can sell them for more later if you want to, if you don't come, or you can just get a refund from us. So, it's kind of like a free call option there. And then, I mean I guess it's important for us to let anyone in your audience know that we successfully launched Swan Advisor Services a couple of months ago. It's what I've been working on with Andy Edstrom for the last year and a half, Ryan Flynn kind of made his debut on the big stage at Pacific Bitcoin, so he's the day-to-day point man there.
It's going incredibly well; it's like a rocket ship out of the gate, a bunch of big, registered investment advisors and financial advisors on the platform getting Bitcoin into the accounts of their clients. So, if you're a money manager and you have clients that you want to get exposure to Bitcoin and you still want it to be part of the portfolio that you manage, instead of sending it off-platform to Coinbase or something like that, Swan is the only Bitcoin-only option in the world for that for US money managers.
Peter McCormack: Nice. Well, listen, keep crushing it. We're looking forward to coming back next September for Pacific Bitcoin 2023.
Cory Klippsten: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: We'll be joining you. I think it was amazing, I keep saying it over and over again. All the team loved it, I know you'll crush it. Any idea what kind of numbers you're going for; what do you want to hit?
Cory Klippsten: I think probably 2,000 to 2,500 for next year seems about right. I don't want to go too much bigger than that. Let's just see how that feels.
Peter McCormack: Well, we will be there, Cory. Keep doing your thing, keep crushing and thank you for coming on the show.
Cory Klippsten: My pleasure. Thanks, Pete.
