032 - Jim Carucci, CASCDR for Bitcoin-payable AI Services

Jim from CASCDR discusses the intersection of Bitcoin and AI, emphasizing the importance of privacy, micropayments, and the potential for a more open and decentralized internet. He shares his background in engineering and entrepreneurship, the vision behind CASCDR, and how their tools aim to enhance productivity while respecting user privacy.

Jim discusses the critical importance of privacy in the digital age, the exponential impact of AI and Bitcoin, and his personal journey into the Bitcoin community.

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Get more personalized onboarding with our partner River for Bitcoin-only financial services:
💰  https://partner.river.com/buildwithbitcoin

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
04:14 Jim's Background and Journey to Bitcoin
07:02 CASCDR: Merging AI with Bitcoin
09:56 The Importance of Privacy and Anonymity
12:50 Micro Payments and Their Future
15:03 CASCDR's Current Offerings and Future Plans
22:07 Monetization Strategies for CASCDR
28:09 Privacy in the Age of AI
33:20 Understanding the Impact of AI and Bitcoin
37:32 Jim's Journey into Bitcoin
44:22 Building CASCDR
49:41 Bitcoin Treasury Management
53:30 Advice for Entrepreneurs

References:
https://cascdr.xyz/
https://x.com/cascdr_

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin
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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Transcript

 
00:00

[IM] Welcome to Build with Bitcoin. In today's conversation, we speak with CASCDR founder Jim Carucci. CASCDR is a startup focused on incorporating some of Bitcoin’s attributes such as privacy, real-time and micropayments, into its platform of AI services. Jim is a technologist and engineer who gives a great perspective on how these two markets intersect and actually stand to benefit and go hand in hand. We hope you enjoy and as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes.  

Build with Bitcoin is a proud affiliate partner of River. River is a Bitcoin-only financial services company, which I have personally been using for years, and I'm a big fan of the product and company. 

[LB] I'm also a big fan too, and I'm a big fan, especially when it comes to referring my friend group to start their Bitcoin journey or acquire some Bitcoin, because in addition to being a Bitcoin only, financial services company, River also has personalized customer service, so a person can actually talk to human being if they need to when they're getting their account set up or in the process of it. I also love the fact that they have no fees on recurring purchases. And they also recently instituted a proof of reserve, so if you choose to hold your Bitcoin at River, instead of self-custody, which many people do choose, that you can verify on their site that they have 100% reserve Bitcoin for every Bitcoin that you hold. River also just launched a very interesting feature, which is a 3.8% yield paid out in Bitcoin on your US dollar cash that you deposit at River so you can hold that US dollar cash earn that 3.8% yield in Bitcoin in your account in River. And important to note, this is all through a regulated banking partner of theirs at a FDIC insured institution. I think it the River is a great partner for Bitcoin and cash deposited. Because as much as we'd love to live on a Bitcoin standard, at least you and I, you, we need cash to operate in the world, and so this allows you to be able to earn a very competitive yield on your excess cash and have it paid in Bitcoin, if you choose, and just continue to build your Bitcoin stash. For anyone looking to start their journey, we invite you to join us at River by visiting partner.River.com/buildwithBitcoin. 

02:23

[IM] Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm cohost Israel. Munoz joined with cohost Lynne Bairstow. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming Jim from CASCDR Jim, welcome.

02:32

[JC] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

02:35

[IM] Absolutely.

02:36

[IM] We're excited to get into a very, quite a different topic and twist on how you're integrating Bitcoin into your business model. You're combining AI tools with Bitcoin, and we'll get into what all of that means, but maybe we can just get right into a little bit about you as a starting point, Jim. I mean, I've heard you describe yourself as a general technologist. If you can maybe get a little bit into your background and how you eventually got into Bitcoin, and why you're building a company that's connecting Bitcoin and AI. 

03:09

[JC] Sure, my name is Jim Carucci. I'm founder and CEO of CASCDR. And you know, my background is generally in engineering. I was raised by an engineer. I was raised by, you know, brilliant, well accomplished engineer. And I got a degree in electrical engineering. I actually also studied languages, which will come into play later, but I focused, you know, on engineering. I worked at a couple. I worked at one really, really successful, like, still, family owned business called Lutron, which is a great company, very low time preference. So I learned a lot there. I had a great group of mentors and culture there that taught me a lot of fundamentals of engineering and manufacturing. And I actually used to like work, go do things like go to work in a plant in Mexico, which was amazing from numerous perspectives. And I also worked at Black and Decker, so I moved on to, like, more of a fortune 500 company, and that was very fast paced. That was very, very different experience for me. I got to work on, you know, DeWalt tools, which are, you know, you know, amazing. And I got to see the the entire life cycle of product development. So that's kind of like my original background, and then I've always had, you know, this, this pension for entrepreneurship. The school that I went to, it was really known for that. It was founded by a steel magnate, name out in Pennsylvania. It's called Lehigh University. And so I had a lot of teacher I had a lot of professors and mentors, you know, that were, you know, independently wealthy coming back just to give back and maybe even posting talent. So I had some really great professors there, guys that worked at Bell Labs, that invented, you know, a bunch of things and really taught me a lot. Not just about engineering, but engineering and business. So I've always had that. Plus, you know, my whole my father's line, almost every generation has had an entrepreneur. So I kind of think I have that bug. I think it's in my blood. And so I've always been tinkering. I've always been building. And then, you know, you know, I moved to the Austin area. I came in with the PlebLab crowd, became really good friends with them and built some really cool stuff. And CASCDR is actually an outgrowth from a project we won an award for at TABConf 2023.

05:34

[LB] Maybe Jim you can kind of dive into to exactly what CASCDR is. So maybe define that, so we get a good starting point and how CASCDR, kind of inner intersects Bitcoin and an AI, which is a topic that if you listen to the podcast, I talk about a lot, and I'm really intrigued by, I think it's one of the biggest promises of Bitcoin in terms of use cases.

05:57

[JC] Yeah, so CASCDR is a suite of tools that you can use. You can go to our site, CASCDR, dot XYZ, and you can click, you know, a couple buttons, thanks to the great work of the Alby team, we use the Bitcoin connect plugin. And so if you just click a couple buttons, you can hook up your Alby wallet or your like, nostr wallet, connect wallet, and now you can pay these both 11 invoices, you know, from your budget, straight from the browser. So that allows you to do things like use ChatGPT anonymously. It allows you to transcribe podcasts, summarize them, analyze them, create social media content for them, analyze images, appraise the price of things in terms of Bitcoin, so you can sell all your belongings for this crazy Bull Run we're about to go through. So there's a lot of different things we can do. And really, you know, our goal has been to make the internet more machine scannable and more machine payable. So that's, that's why we won the award at TABConf, is we basically demonstrated that's possible. And the beauty of AI, the AI revolution, is really a revolution in large language models and kind of cracking this big problem that's been in AI since the 70s, since people really started thinking about this stuff, the problem that machines have a hard time understanding language, because human language is incredibly complex. There's a million different ways to say things, and humans are exceptionally good at being able to parse those meanings, just as it's baked into us. So we kind of take that for granted, even though that's actually a very, very sophisticated, like computer science problem. So what's happened is we've been, you know, jet, you know, jabbering on the internet for long enough for us to get enough data to train these huge models that are essentially like black boxes, and they're able to, you know, analyze the internet, analyze speech and interpret it in a meaningful way. And so one of the side effects of being able to to understand language isn't just that you can chat with it, but also that it can write code. It can understand code. It can sort of make bottom up inferences of how parts ought to go together. So if you make the internet more machine scannable, and you also make it machine payable, now you have an autonomous AI agent that can act on your behalf, and that's that's going to unlock a lot of value. 

08:23

[LB] It’s really about increasing productivity. So using some of these new tool, and it's just been, you know, really remarkably fast how all of the AI tools seem to be developing. But people, you know, for the most part, I think, I think that you have a couple levels. You have kind of the free versions, then you have, increasingly, the paid versions, which are paid by subscription, and they may not be as accessible to people throughout the world. I mean, if you have to have a credit card to sign up for them, or whatever. Can you explain a little bit about how your how you've set up the tools on CASCDR for payments and broader accessibility through lightning?

09:08

[JC] Yeah, so, so from day one, every service that we ship, or at least almost every service, maybe there's a couple exceptions. We have dozens of services, and they all allow you to use. There's a certain number of free runs you get, you know, per day. We wanted to make that a thing, because want people to be able to try out what they are going to use before they part with money. But, but you have the opportunity to pay with the lightning, or we have a square checkout. So if you, you know, if you use credit cards, unfortunately, just the nature of credit cards, you are doxing yourself a little bit when you use credit cards. What if you use lightning payments? We have no, you know, we have no way to trace who you are. It's just, you're using a cryptographic proof from lightning both 11 invoices. You're using the pre image, which is your proof of payment. So, so you get a lot of benefits as. You, as you alluded to, on privacy from that, because it's just a cryptographic proof payment. But you also get, you know, the inclusion factor that you're talking about. There's tons of people that just simply can't get credit cards. So if you're one of those people, you can go to CASCDR, or you can, you know, punch in your Alby hub or your Alby extension, or your noster wallet connect extension, and now we're including people all over the world. And that's, I think that's critical, because there's talent all over the world that could be untapped. And, you know, these AI tools are, are a huge productivity boost. I think it's unfair that, you know, some people just don't have access to that. So that is a big part of, you know, what we're excited about with this.

10:41

[IM] To that point of, kind of opening up the access to these productivity tools, Jim and just to make sure, I kind of tied the knot on, maybe from a high level, let's say, on how you're integrating and why you're integrating Bitcoin with these AI tools. I mean, you mentioned a couple of things that that kind of drew my attention. Was one being machine payable, and then the anonymity aspect, being able to plug into ChatGBT, so would you say, I mean, why? Why Bitcoin for you as a technologist working in AI, I mean, would you say those are two of the main pillars? Are there others or what lens do you view the reasons why Bitcoin is providing so much value to the future of AI?

11:28

[JC] yeah. I mean, I think fundamentally, speaking of you were just, if you were just thinking about this from like a sci fi perspective, right, you would say, okay, you know, in the best possible world, where we have, you know, systems that respect individuals, respect their freedom, their intentions, their sovereignty. You would want a money like Bitcoin that it's backed by energy, can't print it and you also, you know, can use it anonymously or at least pseudonymously, and protect your privacy. So every time you swipe a credit card, you are doxing yourself. You are giving up that information to at least the credit card company, if not more people, because who knows who they'll sell it to, including maybe even the government. So I see that as sort of an egregious violation of, you know, our human rights. And so to me, you know, I while we're still in a transitionary period, we still accept credit card payments. My goal would be to move towards a paradigm where we use Bitcoin, we respect people's privacy's privacy, we don't have this artificial barrier from some bureaucrat saying, Hey, you can't have a credit card. You can just use Bitcoin. Most people can get access to it. And so that's kind of the that's kind of like the basis of why we go there. And I think, you know, to me, it's privacy, it's transaction cost, it's transaction speed, and then it's also like the hidden gem is like the interoperability. And so, if we have this internet, we're already kind of there. We're collaborating with other teams that build other tools. But we have this Bitcoin layer. We don't need API keys like that. The AI can figure out how to how to pay and how to use these tools, which is kind of amazing. And so that that creates a whole other layer of value where the systems can, you know, discover value in a more bottom-up way, and not just be, you know, using the tools that are you're forced to use by through API keys, right? Like you're not, you're not having to go through this whole hassle. Like, I think that's an underrated aspect that will play out. And if we truly do maintain the if we were, if we really like respect the openness of the internet like we should, then we should be designing the systems this way so that they are Bitcoin table, they are open to anyone.

13:56

[IM] And can we maybe dig into that point? Jim? Because I have a feeling it's pretty important there. You're mentioning that you're kind of diminishing the reliance on API keys in what aspect I mean you're talking about, like the payment the traditional payment gateways, or am I missing what you're speaking to there?

14:16

[JC] Well, so, so I mean, if we want to get into it I'll try to stay as high level technical as possible. When you submit a request, when you say, hey, website, load this thing you're making, what is called a request. And in that request, you can include something called an API key, which gives you the rights it associates with your account. It gives you the rights to use that service a lot of times tied to your credit card. So as you use it, the billing updates. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is I can send you back a bolt 11 invoice, or I can sell send you back a credential. It's called an I forgot they changed it from L set. It's l 402, they can send you back a credential. That's essentially. Cryptographic and you know, based on your ability to pay a lightning invoice essentially or complete a micro payment, let's abstract it. Maybe it doesn't have to be lightning. Maybe this isn't the final stage of how we do this. But the fundamentals are, it's anonymous, it's micro payments and it's something that an AI agent can have access to you're not going to give an AI agent access to your credit card, but you could give them access to a fixed budget of Bitcoin. And I think that's a more realistic scenario, that's a more desirable scenario for a bunch of different reasons.

15:38

[LB] You know, the whole concept of micropayments, I think, is under appreciated in what Bitcoin can mean in the future economy. Can you dig into that a little bit? I mean, I look at the funding that's required by these companies that are developing the LLMs, like, like, OpenAI and all, and it's just, and a lot of it is compute power, and so they have to pay for it. But right now, it's through monthly subscriptions or things like this, but that's really an inefficient way of billing. I mean, it's like having a Netflix subscription and you watch one show a month. You know, you don't really need to pay for the whole thing. Talk to us a little bit about micropayments and how you envision them being used for AI agents and the greater efficiency that gives in paying for services. 

16:27

[JC] I mean, they're instant, right? So, I mean, as you, as you point out, you know, not only is there an inefficiency from, like, a standpoint of consumers potentially getting ripped off, where they're just paying for something they never use, but there's also the perspective of the seller. You know, it takes 30 days for them to actually get paid, right? And so that's a credit risk, because who knows? You know, if that credit card payments going to fail? I've seen that happen. I mean, that's personally happened to me on other projects I've worked on. So that's a credit risk. You're extending credit to these people. You know, there's some great people doing stuff like that in the energy markets, like, I know Sonoda, that's a really big deal to them. I know that, like the resolver team, they're doing some really great work in supply chain of just settling faster. If you, if you extend credit for 30 days, that's effectively a loan you're giving out. And that's a risk you're taking on that you don't necessarily have to. It's, it'd be a lot better if, say you're day 10 into the 30 days and they run out of money, or they're just not able to do it, they'll address the problem a lot faster, versus letting you, you know, leave you high and dry. So I think it's kind of a win for everybody. 

17:40

[IM] Yeah, I mean, you're eliminating lots of points of friction there, right? And I mean, Lynne, you talk to this a lot, and we have actually had conversations with some with some founders, different business models that that have touched a little bit on, on what you're mentioning, as far as the power of micro payments in certain industries, as far as the actual applications that that you provide, or services that CASCDR provides. Jim, can, can we get into a little more specific use cases of right now, what you've developed, and, you know, if you want to speak at all, into what you what you're looking into for future releases, but what? What does CASCDR currently offer?

18:17

[JC] Yeah, so I would, I would break it down into really two things. We have sort of the consumer facing stuff, which is most of what we've discussed so far. We also have B to B, AI implementation services. We've had people come to us for consulting services. Where we are right now. We're talking about the machine, payable, web. I think that's a little bit of a ways out. I think the market has to catch up to where CASCDRs At for some of those things to really play out the way we envision them. And there's a huge arbitrage and knowledge of AI. So, you know, we've had, like, legal teams come to us and they're like, hey, this costs us, you know, 22 grand to do. Can you do it? It's like, yeah, we can do it for $2500 bucks, you know. So we're reducing their costs by 90% so I think there's a lot of opportunities like that. So we're actively taking calls for that. I can send, I can we can put my calendar link in this, you know, so open opportunities like that, and also just learning all the different use cases, but, but in parallel, we're also doing the more B to C, business, consumer, and then that's the CASCDR website. So we have things like the business to consumer aspect we've emphasized has mostly been podcasters. We have a tool called Jamie. For those who don't know, that's Joe Rogan's assistance. We're trying to make like an AI version of Jamie. So what does that look like? It allows you to take files, transcribe them, create content with them, quickly push those out. So we have that. And then also just looking up other podcasts, maybe doing research, summarizing what they're doing. You know pulling content for those. And then also we're going to release soon a tool that's really good for, like, real time research, where it's like, you're in the middle of a conversation, and you want to be able to look up something and actually have like, meaningful sources. So we have like, a lot of that in, like, a closed alpha, and hopefully maybe not by the time it's out, but maybe within a week or two, it'll be out. So keep your eye open for that. 

20:20

[LB] Jim, you've developed all of the tools that are on the CASCDR website, right? I mean, when you go to the CASCDR website, it's like a dashboard that has the different tools that you can select. Do you develop all those internally, or do you ever have other developers contribute? I mean, I guess I was thinking, Could CASCDR become like an app store for these sort of AI tools powered by Bitcoin. Or do you want to keep everything under your control? 

20:49

[JC] ideally will make it open. And that's kind of what I'm talking about when I'm saying, you know, the market may not be exactly where we're at. We are collaborating with some other teams where, you know, they're, they're gonna put CASCDR apps in their application, which is great. They're not, I don't think they're ready to announce that yet, but so things like that are happening. But we, yeah, we, we rolled our own for pretty much everything. And, you know, we're, we're pretty at this point. We're AI veterans, so we know a lot about this stuff, and we've, we've had some requests that haven't come through yet, but I think over time, the goal is that, is that it will be totally open. I mean, when we initially launched this thing at TABConf, or at least we showed the prototype, we were actually publishing the API schemas and like structures and costs on Noster, and just continually updating, like, as the Bitcoin price fluctuates, you update the pricing, and you know that makes that makes it like, instantly, machine scannable and machine payable. At the same time, we found that there was the there wasn't enough other people developing on that, for us to want to, like, really codify that and focus on that. We're more interested at this moment, in creating, like, really great tools for consumers and for businesses that they want to use, and kind of bring that demand to the supply. And then when that happens, I think you know the opportunity to earn the hardest money, best money ever created, is going to do some of the job of helping us pull in other developers over time.

22:30

[LB] And I've heard you talk about open source -- how much of CASCDR is kind of built around open source. Or what? Can you share some of your thoughts about it?

22:43

[JC] Yeah, so I would say, probably about 50% of it. There are certain things we haven't released, just because it's, it is a challenge to, like, maintain an open source repo, and we're, we're somewhat resource constrained, so we just haven't gone super hard and doing all that. Probably eventually it'll all end up being open source. But, you know, as of now, there's a bunch of services that we made open source, like we created this standard we made, we made NiP. It's called NiP105 which is what I was just describing. We made a bunch of services that let you use, you know, basic whisper transcription, basic, you know, ChatGBT proxying and other stuff like that that are open source. And, you know, the tool that I'm discussing, the research tool that we're going to release, is going to also be open source. So we're moving more in that direction. It's just been, you know, it's just been more of, like a search for, you know, bringing in demand. That's been more of the focus. We just haven't emphasized that stuff as much, but we will in the future, as we gain traction.

23:46

[IM] I’ve gotta say, Jim, it's, it's super interesting. I mean, for the entrepreneur, creator, small business, I mean, it sounds like you're adding a lot of useful productivity tools into one marketplace. Let's just call it how it's as far as from the consumer. And how do I actually use CASCDR? I mean, let's say I have a budget denominated in Bitcoin. Let's start with that option. I know you also accept the, you know, traditional Fiat route as well, but I just, I deposit certain amount of sats with CASCDR, and it's kind of pay as you go.

24:30

[JC] so it was actually quite simple. Shout out to the Alby team. They've done an excellent job with the Bitcoin connect project. And literally, all you do is, you know, once you hit your free limit, will either prompt you, or you can just click the Bitcoin connect button in the top right corner of the application, and it will bring up a pop up that will let you connect your Alby wallet. Or, you know, at one time it was Mutiny. I know Mutiny is spinning down, but it had, like, a bunch of different options, so you can actually connect those, and those you can associate. You get a budget with those. And then, as you said, it will be pay as you go. So you can assign a budget of 100k stats. It's not going to cost you that off rip as you use things, it will, it will charge you, and you'll be able to see the change in the budget over time.

25:13

[LB] And then you also have, like, a monthly plan too?

25:16

[JC] That’s right, we do have a $9.99, plan, which pretty much gives you unlimited access, that to me, is kind of a steal. I haven't been pushing it as much. I don't know how much longer it will be available, but if you're interested in CASCDR and you want to get a killer deal, I would go sign up for that.

25:33

[LB] And I guess it's a good time to shift to monetization. So how is CASCDR monetizing these services, and how are you growing as a business from a financial standpoint?

25:44

[JC] Yeah, I would say, you know, we just touched on, you know, how we accept payments. So those are the two method methods for accepting payment. There's, you know, there's other more experimental things we did. Like, one interesting thing we did was we released a stacker newsbot called Chad bot, and it can actually do things like impersonate Trump and do other silly things that you asked it to do. Can take into context the conversational history and look things up for you and do other things. So that was, that was more experimental. So, like, that's, that's one of the methods we're thinking of is as social media AI and micro payments proliferate. You know how to what does that look like? So there's, there's that channel. So I'd say there's the B to C channel, lightning in credit cards. There's those types of channels which are still B to C, but they're a little unique. And then there's just the the implementation services, which are pretty lucrative, as I pointed out earlier, we produce somebody's cost by like, 90% so that's kind of a no brainer for them. So there's, there's all kinds of opportunities here that we're acting on. And the way we philosophize about this is basically it's stack users, stack SATs, stack modules. Because if you stack the modules, you stack these tools now you make them open and available now, now, now, that's kind of doing work for you. It's stacking stats for you. So I truly think that's the future of the internet. Is it? If you thought about it from a logical perspective, you know, the fact that we stare into rectangles for so much of our day is kind of crazy. We've kind of force fit this UX just because of the path dependence of how technology developed, and it's great. I'm not knocking it. There's a lot of great things in it. I don't think it's going to go away tomorrow, but I just think that if you were actually looking at it from an honest perspective, you would say this UX isn't great and that we can do a lot better. So I think things like voice agent, you know, AI that can act on your behalf, can bring information to you. Maybe it's visual, maybe it's audio, whatever it is, but it's, it's, it's a more intuitive user interface. I know a lot of people like Musk and like Zuckerberg, you know, point this out as they move towards the neurolink and meta stuff. I, you know, I kind of disagree with some of that stuff that can get pretty dystopian pretty quick, but I think they're on to something that staring into rectangles is kind of crazy, and that there's probably a lot of tedium and other BS you can eliminate from your life as we get better AI agents. And then the question becomes, well, do you want to have it run by like two or three companies, or do you want to have it be free and open like the internet? I think that the answer is obvious. And the irony is that a lot of this stuff's been tried. You know, Microsoft tried to make a internet, they tried to control the internet, they tried to make it like a Private Internet, and they end up losing out over the long run. And some people like Marc Andreessen talk about this all the time. When you're when you're a small company trying to compete against all the smart people in the world, it's a losing battle. And I think the fact that we have Bitcoin, the fact that we have a great open Internet, just accelerates that process. So I don't, I don't see those types of strategies really bearing fruit in the long run. I think there might be some short term gains, but I think not only is there like an economic imperative to do this, but there's also, like a moral imperative, in my eyes, of creating a system that's fair and decentralized. 

29:06

[LB] you touched on this really early in our conversation, and I'd love to get you your thoughts on a little broader perspective about privacy. And I think especially in AI, as we've seen these LLMs develop, they've really pulled data, often without permission, on different transactions. And then media companies are suing, you know, LLM companies for scraping their data and things like this. And so, how do you think about privacy in the age of AI, and why should we all be thinking about it? And how can we protect our own privacy and sovereignty, so that the information that we create or that we put out in the world is actually continues to be owned by us, instead of given to these models for training. Can you

29:55

[JC] So for me, you know, privacy is a special case of sovereignty. So sovereignty is, you know, you do it yourself to the maximum degree possible. If you can't do it yourself, ideally, you have like a community. You can trust and you can outsource certain things to them, but that's still you kind of helping yourself. So I see privacy much the same way, right? And there's levels to it, right? But I think what you have to remember is that once it touches the internet, it's forever, even if it's a text message like, you think, Oh, that's not really the internet. Well, SMS is heavily surveilled. So if you're if it's a green text that's being surveilled, you know, great developments like Signal help limit that. But I think, I think things like end to end, encryption, things like anonymity, like I truly believe that being anonymous is a right. I value the Constitution deeply. That's a big part of you know, what I view my job as, which is to codify the Constitution into computer code. And so part of that, you know, people talk about the First Amendment with nostr and things like that. People talk about the ability to, you know, protect your property with Bitcoin. You know, I view a lot of this encryption stuff, a lot of this, this right to mean and remain anonymous as is protecting your 4a and 5a rights, your right against self-incrimination. You're right not to be searched. And I think, you know, I think if we're being real with ourselves, the founding fathers are doing backflips in their grave because, you know, the amount of analysis that people are doing, like even companies like Apple, I think they LARP about caring about privacy, but the truth is, they are being tapped directly into by the NSA with push notifications. Think about how much information is given away from that. You know, I was just reading, what is it, the electronic front, Freedom frontier? Is it EFF? They were, they're pointing out, you know, and I think about this stuff a lot. I'm around people that think about this stuff a lot, at level, at but you just think about something as simple as you receive an email from, you know, a congressman or something, and then you immediately call them, and it's like they don't even have to see the content of either of those. They can just see the subject line and the fact that you called them 10 minutes later and after receiving it to know what your political opinion is like. That's kind of crazy. And now, now that can be profiled. And so how does AI play into this? Not only is it on the internet is forever, but it's easily searchable and analyzed by somebody that may be predatory towards you. So that's incredibly important. So I think that the big tools that are important are things like Noster, any tool that allows you to be anonymous, like nostr, CASCDR, or other stuff, and end to end encryption and just being very mindful about, you know, the communication you use, how you use it, and what you're actually saying, what you're what you're giving away. And I think, I think nerds tend to get really crazy about the privacy stuff. They tend to talk about this because we've seen how the sausage is made, you know, I've worked with people where we're, you know, we literally saw the CTO make like, a huge mistake that doxs people's home addresses, and we were horrified by that. And, you know, probably that happens every day. Probably you've used the service that's made a mistake like that. So you gotta realize that it's not just, you know, fantasy. It's not like hypothetical. It's like this is actually happening, and there's real consequences that can happen, then you need to be mindful of that. 

33:26

[IM] If you're paying attention, it's easy to see some of this stuff, some of these, I guess, red flags in some of these closed systems. I mean, personally, for example, I have never touched OpenAI, because I've dug into that organization enough to just be skeptical and not want to be near it, but using something like CASCDR, for example, where I'm able to maintain some anonymity, you know that? I mean, that opens up a totally new way of you accessing some of these tools, right? So it's an evolving landscape, definitely, and it's amazing that as time passes, there's more, tools and levers to pull as far as how, how I'm able to be more productive, use some of these amazing technology tools, but stay true to some of my concerns or principles, whatever that may be at. And you know, Jim, you've touched a little bit on this, but I want to ask you, I mean, Bitcoin, AI, they're big buzz words, both right now, lots of potential. Of course, there's, I think there's a I forget what the exact saying is in technology, but we tend to overestimate its impact in the short term, underestimate its impact in the long term, as far as just kind of you know, high level, how you view, as a technologist, view both Bitcoin and AI, what do you think are some of the main points that people are perhaps overestimating? Or underestimating? Where are we at in this cycle? 

35:03

[JC] I mean, I think it's I think both technologies are exponential. They're going to be massively impactful. And as you point out, people overestimate in the short term. So let's start there. I mean, I think on the AI side, I think people forget, you know, and usually when we're talking about AI, we're talking about these language models. That's the big innovation. And with these language models, they have an incredible ability to take they basically reduce language down into mathematical representations, which gives you a lot of leeway in the way you ask questions. The input can be incredibly flexible, and the output could be generally kind of the same. And so that's exceptionally good. Now you don't have to be a keyword engineer. It can interpret your intent and actually give you a meaningful output. That helps you a lot of the time. The downside of that is, when it's flexible for the input, it's flexible for the output. So the reliability isn't always great, and especially, you know, it's kind of like if you're right 95% of the time, but you talk speak 100 times, you're going to be wrong a lot right. You're going to and so being completely reliant on that, I think, is a is a danger, and that's something that has to be controlled for and figured out. And I think as we go, you know, these LLMs are a great raw material, but there's going to have to be other tools built around them that ensure that they're, they're actually, you know, when they're in charge of critical systems, they're doing the job properly. So I would say that's kind of like the near term bear case, you know, bear argument for AI, and then likewise, on Bitcoin. I think there's a lot of UX challenges that come in and there's a lot of people doing a lot of great work, like we already mentioned, the Alby team, the Breeze team, the Phoenix team, doing great work, but it is still a huge challenge. It's almost like we're trying to get to my I was talking about this this morning, it's like we're trying to get two magnetic poles to that are repelling each other, to touch each other between sovereignty and convenience. It's like they're almost like diametrically opposed, almost by definition. So that's a real challenge. I think people have done a good job of managing that trade off, but there's still a lot of work to do before you can just hand something to your grandma and have it work. And I think there's a lot of innovative approaches, but we're still in the three to five year range, like we still have a lot of work to do on the Bitcoin side. So I'd say those, those are like the big, the big things on my mind when I think about these things. But in the long run, you know, we're talking about with AI. We're talking about a flexible system that automates things. You know, pretty much all human innovation, all is about getting more energy or more output for the same unit energy or same unit cost, right? So industrial revolution to now, that's pretty much the story, even what we were talking about earlier with us staring into rectangles. Well, the reason we put up with it is because there's all these automation gains that would never been possible, right? So, so I think that's kind of the bull side of the longer term that you're talking about. And then with Bitcoin, I mean, it's a beautiful asset that protects you from, you know, predators, predators, essentially, you know, inflating away your wealth and taking away your wealth, and then, as we mentioned already, it's the privacy. And then I, you know, the medium of exchange. And maybe it's not just a medium exchange for humans, but it is a medium exchange for machines. That's kind of the thesis at CASCDR that we're trying to build out.

38:37

[LB] You know, Jim, usually we start with this question, but we haven't really gotten into your Bitcoin origin story, like how you became introduced to Bitcoin and why it became so much a part of what you do. I mean, clearly it fits into your values of privacy and sovereignty. But love to hear how you got introduced to Bitcoin.

38:58

[JC] All right, so, I mean, this is actually a pretty funny story the, I think I first heard about it in the 2012 2013 range. I was about 20 years old. I was in college, and one of my friends told me about it. And if you knew this kid, you'd understand, he's brilliant. You know, probably 180 IQ can read a book. Remember, everything. Can read a set of docs. Remember everything. He was making websites in eighth grade -- but he was also pretty crazy, and he was probably doing some stuff on the Silk Road, which is why he was stoked about Bitcoin. So I said, all right, whatever this guy's doing, I'm just gonna do the opposite of that. So this sounds like a scam. I'm not gonna touch it. Let's forget about this and so that, while that was happening in the parallel, you know, I was going down a libertarian rabbit hole, you know, I read Ayn Rand around that time that really resonated with me and put me on this libertarian path. I got really interested in people like Dave Smith, who I think is a great libertarian voice, and somebody that I respect a lot and kind of understanding the intellectual underpinnings of the problems with government, the problems with state, you know, the egregious violations that are happening. And I didn't really see Bitcoin as a tool to do that until 2020. Right? It seems like always, whenever the price is going up, people are more open to these types of conversations. And then I looked at it carefully and understood that not only is Bitcoin not a scam, but it's like an anti-scam that prevents people from scamming you, and possibly even makes you rich in the process. So I became really interested in that and as a technologist, I started thinking about, you know, how can I actually help with this? What can I actually do? And so I've built a good number of Bitcoin projects. I moved to Austin. I wasn't really planning on falling with the Bitcoin crowd. That happened naturally. I'm not really much of a joiner. The first time I went to PlebLab, I was like, this place is great. I like these guys, but I don't know if this is for me. And then over time, it just became, you know, we did some hackathon projects together. We figured out how to send Bitcoin transactions over touch tone, and that was the moment I said, alright, we did some pretty cool stuff together. We're gonna have to keep, you know, churning out projects like this. 

41:14

[LB] For people who aren't as familiar, can you tell us a little bit about the Bitcoin scene in Austin, between PlebLab and Bitcoin Commons and are you now joined into that community? I mean, clearly, pub lab,

41:27

[JC] I went to my first Austin Bitcoin club in, I believe, November 2022, and it was crazy to me, because, you know, I had listened to these guys’ podcasts. I knew who they were. I got the opportunity to actually meet them in real life and see what they're about, and see that, you know, Bitcoin, in a lot of ways, it is a trust machine, and fundamentally, it is about, you know, bringing integrity back to the world. And it's wonderful to be around other people that not only understand that, but try to live that. And so that's been amazing. And just meeting people like Parker Lewis, Marty Bent, Carr Gonzalez, you know others and other entrepreneurs that are, they're pushing the envelope of what's possible. And so now, now PlebLab is actually next door to the Bitcoin Commons. So that's really cool, if you're, if you're there, come stop by. But you know, I've just been, I've just been in the weeds with the PlebLab crew since probably around April 2023 and, you know, just been doing, like, all kinds of cool projects together, and all this collaboration that just happens. I think we kind of get lulled into this promise of remote work forever, where you're just gonna, like, never have to commute, which is fine, that's great. But I think we also miss out on the serendipity of you run into this person that's working on this thing, this person that's working on this other thing, and talking about the same problems. Oh, I already have code that does that. Here you go. You know, those types of interactions, the other types of interactions, where we were like, you know, how can we help each other? How? You know, like the Stacker News bot that I mentioned, you know, Keyon, the founder of Stacker News, is in PlebLab every day, hardest working man and showbiz. You know, he was able to, in real time, give me an API key, tell me the things I need to look out for so that I don't overburden his system. And then I made him a bot. I think it might have been one of the first bots that were there. And it's a win-win. So lots of collaborations like that just happen spontaneously. When you're in a target rich environment like PlebLab and you're all drinking from the fire hose and pushing the envelope.

43:38

[LB] Austin and Nashville are the two kind of communities that I see that are really evolving in terms of Bitcoin entrepreneurship and innovation – it reminds me of when I was spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley as I was raising my fund in like, the 2014 age. And, I mean, you just stand in line for coffee in Soma, and, you know, ideas would be flowing, and people would be, you know, just kind of chatting. But I, I see the Bitcoin kind of community as Austin as a is a big hub for that, and now Mexico City, hopefully will evolve a little bit like that. You were down in Mexico City a couple of months ago when you with the PlebLab event startup day too, and just curious what your thoughts were. 

44:22

[JC] I love Mexico City. It's a beautiful city. As you point out, there's a there's a great scene coming up over there. I don't know as much about the businesses over there. I know a little more about the Guadalajara scene. I noticed there were a lot of people from there, some really accomplished open source devs over there, and Chris Guida and SuperTestNet that I respect a lot. So I just think, just in general, Mexico's definitely on the come up, you know, there's, there's a bunch of other advantages. The people there seem to be very entrepreneurial, down to, you know, down to the, you know, rank and file people, like great people. I love Mexico, you know. I would go back in a heartbeat for events and stuff and, yeah, I think it's definitely something to keep an eye on geographically.

45:08

[LB] You know, we haven't really talked about who the CASCDR user is. Do you have pockets of I know that right now, content creators are kind of a core audience for the services that you're offering. Do you have geographical data or demographic data that kind of points you to who's gravitating to CASCDR today?

45:32

[JC] Yeah, I mean, we're, we're, we're a little bit chill on that, just because we are, like, enabling anonymous systems and we can infer certain things. I think a large majority of our people are in the United States. I think there's some people in Central and South America. There's actually a good amount of people from Europe. I know from a fact because they tell me that they're using it, and for them, that's been a big productivity boost. You know, I'm getting requests to make cascade more available and useful in other languages, but it is, at least for the most part, United States centric and English speaker centric. You know, luckily, English happens to be the de facto international language, it seems. But I think we'll, we'll definitely expand and take in feedback over time, as people start finding new use cases where, you know, maybe they're Spanish speakers or the Russian speakers, or they're, they're what, you know, Mandarin speakers. 

46:26

[IM] Jim, you've mentioned the market catching up to this technology. How you know, as a company, how can you get into CASCDR, how you've built the company? I mean, how big is the team, and how you're from a funding perspective, positioning the company currently, and what's your kind of roadmap?

46:44

[JC] Yeah, as you point out, the markets kind of got to catch up. And what I mean by that is, you know, as you pointed out it would be like a marketplace, right? It would be kind of at the center of a marketplace, with buyers looking to buy services, sellers looking to sell services where it would be open. And just what we've found is that a lot of the sellers just aren't ready yet. And so we've kind of just fulfilled that role, just being the one seller that's, you know, going hard and making all these different services people need and want, and and kind of bringing the demand to them. And as we do that, you know, number go up from Bitcoin can help, you know, bridge some of that gap where people are looking to earn Bitcoin and, you know, create innovative AI services. And that, fundamentally is our goal is to create a lot of a lot more small businesses in cyberspace that are able to take advantage of AI, provide some, some really great service, some niche service that people need and make it available. So that's kind of like the long term vision and where we where we hope to push things with AI from a from a funding perspective, we raised a few Angel checks and did pretty well there. We're probably going to close out an angel round towards the end of this year, and we're actually going to be one of the first companies on Timestamp. So this is going to be a new crowdfunding platform. It's actually made by Dr Bitcoin, MD, great, great person, really knowledgeable person, really hard working guy who, you know, convinced us to come out of the platform where we couldn't be more excited about that. And so that allows people to write checks. You know, if you're a pleb and you want to write a check, and you're, you're excited about this, you can write a check for as low as $1,000, so there's that opportunity that will be here for the next probably four or five, six months and then probably next year, we're going to, you know, once we continue to get traction, we kind of build out, kind of the core, you know, beachhead, that we're trying to take on. Once we build that out, we're going to, we're going to raise a proper seed that's going to be much bigger, and probably there will be some VCs participating in that round that'll be, you know, probably, you know, few, two, 3x bigger than what we're at now.

49:02

[LB] Timeline wise, CASCDR really launched at TABConf 2022?

49:08

[JC] I mean, it was, like, it was kind of a twinkling in the eye, yeah. And I, you know, I was like, built. I was like, Guys, we can build workflows and, like, chain them together, and they're like, all right, well, I don't you mean by that. So I, I built in, got them excited. And I would say, you know, it was a basement project for October, you know, starting in, like, October of last year. And I, you know, I worked on it part time. That whole time, we made the finals of bolt out fun 2023, legends of lightning. And then we made the finals of top builder, but we were still working on it part time up until, like, a couple months ago. So now I'm more full time, I'm more I'm more fully focused on this. We've been able to raise enough funds to where I feel comfortable doing that, and now, now we're just pushing the envelope of just making better tools for specifically podcasters, businesses and. Also just general purpose consumers that want to do better research, want to protect their privacy, want to analyze content, want to learn more. You know, we're just, we're just making tools that make it easier for them to accomplish their goals and a human centric approach. 

50:13

[LB] But you've been, you've been self-funded, bootstrapped up until now, and done most of the development?

50:20

[JC] Yeah, we have a nice treasury, yeah, luckily, luckily, I had the sense to put a lot of our treasury into Bitcoin. So that's been nice, yeah, for the most part, been self- funded, and just been burning the midnight oil. You know, I might as well live at PlebLab. I'm working alongside other people doing the same thing. And so that's just kind of my life now, and I couldn’t be happier.

50:43

[LB] So we're recording this and mid November, well, November 12, and we've had a really good run this week on Bitcoin price appreciation. Israel and I both are very long term thinkers about Bitcoin, and we think of it not as an asset/ number go up, but more as a foundational technology. But still, number go up is good because it validates the technology Treasury is so fascinating. I mean, what we're really pulling from is that those companies that are building with Bitcoin tend to have Bitcoin on their treasury, and it really changes the trajectory of how they need to raise funds going forward. Can you talk a little bit about your philosophy as a founder, about how you allocate to Bitcoin Treasury in your company, and what you see that meaning as time goes by?

51:38

[JC] Yeah. So, I mean, I think I, I ascribe to this idea that, you know, it's the hardest money ever made. You know, sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes way down, but fundamentally, speaking, your mission is to stack as much Bitcoin as possible and build a profitable business that has a differential that you can plow into Bitcoin. So our treasury strategy has been consistent with that. Obviously we have Fiat liabilities that we have to keep an eye on, make sure that we're able to service adequately. But truthfully, you know, we're trying to stack as much Bitcoin as possible, just like everybody else.

52:11

[IM] Yeah, I mean, the dynamics are, are fascinating. We're, we're just clearly seeing basically what you just said in it, you know, plugged into so many different business models of early stage, big, you know, Bitcoin companies, or companies integrating Bitcoin one way or another. And it just, I mean, it'll be interesting to see, you know, 5-10, years from now. How you know how that, how that changed the fundraising cycles of early-stage businesses, because previously, I mean, you didn't have, you know, such a hard, reliable money. So you, you were, you were completely dependent on, you know, raising more funds, right? You're raising multiple rounds dilution and lots of times along the way. You know, founders ended up realizing they've, they've given up a lot more of their company than they would have, you know, wished for. And Bitcoin is just completely changing that dynamic. Of course, it's still an important component. You know, raise, raising outside capital, depending on your business, can still be super strategic, but, but it definitely changes, changes the playing field for the VC scene. So, no, it's super interesting to hear. 

53:29

[JC] I mean, I totally agree with you. I mean to me, Bitcoin, as we discussed earlier, does really two things. You know, it restores integrity to the world, so it makes the handshakes more meaningful, and it also forces you to think more long term. And I think those two things are kind of related in an unintuitive way. But you know, fundamentally, what that means for me as a founder is, you know, I'm going to be careful about who I do business with and make sure that there's somebody I can trust they share my values, and then I'm not going to be, you know, let off. You know, I think you brought up, they end up giving up a lot of their company, and then they end up also building things they don't necessarily agree with. You can even look at people like, I don't know if this is exactly what happened, but like Jack Dorsey is kind of on a on a, you know, revenge tour with Twitter to kind of create an Oscar and create a new system that maybe is more open, more fair than what he saw Twitter turn into. So as a founder, that's probably like the worst nightmares. Even if you succeed, it turns into something that you didn't intend it to be, and you feel guilt over that. So there's that component, and then there's also just the component of just being able to build slow, staying humble, and just being able to build out, you know, the vision that you that you wanted to without getting overextended or getting frantic about raising funds or, you know, spinning a new narrative that's going to entice somebody to help it, help you, keep it going instead, you know, ideally, you're stacking Bitcoin, you can keep it more humble and just, and just build in the right way.

55:02

[LB] Another narrative that we're seeing is that, you know, in the in the traditional tech world, what it came to be with VC funding is you needed an exit. So you needed either be bought out or go public or something. And so the founder, you know, I mean, if they really love what they do and believe in their company. Where does that? I mean, they can continue working. But it feels like with Bitcoin founders, one of the paths to success is becoming profitable enough to pay out investors, even over time like give returns in Bitcoin that you're earning on a Bitcoin standard, and so you don't have that necessity to either sell or become a public company, that you can retain your privacy as a company and just be profitable. 

55:54

[JC] So, yeah, as you point out, that's like an amazing third way, yeah.

55:57

[LB] And kind of is really what business should be about. You know, somewhere along the line, like money became broken, the funding model for startups and tech became a little broken. So it gives me a lot of hope to see people that are building with Bitcoin and another way of having successful companies and retaining the integrity to yourself and to your to your vision for the how you build it, and I just really applaud you, Jim, to have access to AI productivity tools with privacy, with the ability to only pay for what you need or you're using to really free up your time and be able to take advantage of some of the benefits of AI tools without compromising your privacy or your financial sovereignty. 

56:49

[JC] Thank you.

56:51

[IM] I think that's a great note to end on end by the way, to Lynne's point, I think, you know, Lynne and I, with Build with Bitcoin, we'll be using and experimenting with some of these tools. So, you know, we will give you some feedback along the way as well, but excited to explore some of some of these services that that you're building. You know, big congrats there, Jim. And I guess any, you know, any, any final comments or, you know, maybe advice for other entrepreneurs. I know you're still early in your company's journey, but you know, if, if you can provide any general comments or advice for others who are maybe thinking of going down this path, anything you'd add there? 

57:35

[JC] Iguess, you know, it's funny, one of my mentors and heroes was a world champion Olympic wrestler, and he would always say, it's not lonely at the top, it's lonely getting there and I and so what that means is, you know, everyone wants to be your friend after you win, but it's not glamorous. So I would just say, Don't go into this expecting that you're going to just be a thought leader from day one, or that you're going to get this huge dopamine payout of everyone listening what you have to say, and, you know, applauding you and you being the big shot. I think there's a lot of work that goes into this and that you should really find a project that you're passionate about, because that's going to be the fuel that's going to get you through the hard times, through the challenges. And if you can, you know, I said, it's not only the tops when we get there, if you can find a community that's behind you. So PlebLab has been tremendously helpful for me, just being around other people like Topher Scott, BitEscrow, Austin at pleb devs, Eon at Stacker News, Carr Gonzalez, founder of PlebLab, you know, people like Nifty Nei, like all these people, have been tremendously helpful, supportive, giving me meaningful feedback, giving me new ideas, and just  being troopers. And so I think if you can find a community like that, try to try to do that, you know, I think PlebLab is rare gem, but I think more people are going to try to do what PlebLab is doing, if you can, if you can find a community of people, even if they're not Bitcoiners, that is as an entrepreneurial mindset, has an open mindset where you know they're not crabs in the bucket, maybe like trying to pull you down, you have people that are open and receptive and helping you, try to get in with those people and just grind it out. You know, this is not for the weak like, you know, we spend a lot of time at the lab. You gotta put the time in, and you gotta be coachable. You gotta have an open mind. 

59:33

[IM] Well, great, great pieces of advice there, I guess, you know, Lynne, any other final comments or questions other than that, you know, thanks for taking the time as well. 

59:43

[JC] thanks for having me. You know, if what we're building is something you're interested in, keep an eye out for that. Timestamp link to drop. If you want to invest in CASCDR, you'll be able to do so for as low as $1,000 so that'll come out soon, and also just check out our services at CASCDR dot XYZ, and then also, just if you're a business, and anything I said entice you. You know, we're kind of like the special forces of AI for a lot of different businesses. So book a call with us@cal.com cl.com/CASCDR And we can probably help you, you know, massively reduce your costs and increase your profitability.

1:00:26

[LB] We'll include all those links in the show notes, and we'll also include a transcript thanks to CASCDR.

1:00:33

[JC] Yes, there we go. Perfect. I love it.

1:00:35

[LB] Thank you so much. And I'm sure that we're going to talk again, because your journey seems like it's beginning, but on a great path, and so, you know, we'll, we'll plan on having you back on again as things continue to develop, and you're looking for additional sources of funding to help CASCDR grow.

1:00:52

[JC]  That's wonderful. I look forward to it. And if you're ever in Austin, look me up. 

1:01:05

[LB]  Thanks for listening to the Build with Bitcoin podcast. If you found benefit in what you heard in this episode, we'd truly appreciate it if you would like, share, or leave a comment on whichever platform you're listening as this helps others find us, which is especially important for a new podcast. As a reminder, our content is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only, and is not to be considered investment advice or a recommendation to invest in any company or asset mentioned in the podcast. Build with Bitcoin is a proud affiliate partner River, a full service, 100% reserve custody Bitcoin only financial services company. For your next Bitcoin purchase, use our exclusive link https://partner.River.com/BuildwithBitcoin. Thank you sincerely for being a part of the Build with Bitcoin community.

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