061 - Bitcoin: More Than Money, It’s a Movement – A Conversation with Marty Bent

In this conversation, Marty Bent shares his journey into the Bitcoin ecosystem, discussing his early experiences during the 2008 financial crisis and how they shaped his views on finance and technology. He emphasizes the importance of community building within the Bitcoin space and the evolution of media towards independent creators. Marty also introduces his new app, designed to educate users on opportunity cost in relation to Bitcoin, and discusses the significance of Bitcoin treasuries for startups and venture capital strategies.

The speakers discuss the evolving landscape of Bitcoin companies, focusing on the importance of smart capital deployment, innovative exit strategies for founders, and the role of public markets in facilitating growth. They explore the financialization of Bitcoin and its integration into credit markets, highlighting global opportunities for innovation, particularly in emerging economies. The discussion emphasizes the collaborative nature of the Bitcoin ecosystem and the synergies that arise from building on an open-source network, ultimately showcasing the potential for significant advancements in the industry.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:23 Marty's Journey into Bitcoin
11:03 Building Community in the Bitcoin Space
19:32 The Evolution of Media and Bitcoin
28:10 The Future of Independent Media
32:47 Launching the Opportunity Cost App
36:22 Bitcoin Treasury Strategies in Venture Capital
41:37 The Evolving Landscape of Bitcoin Companies
45:08 Innovative Exit Strategies for Founders
47:34 The Role of Public Markets in Bitcoin Growth
50:02 Financialization of Bitcoin and Credit Markets
59:14 Global Opportunities in Bitcoin Innovation
01:05:34 Building on Bitcoin: The Future of Business
01:11:55 Collaboration and Synergies in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

References
https://www.tftc.io/
https://ten31.vc/
https://x.com/OppCostApp
https://x.com/MartyBent

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

Marty: 0:00

Like there's a massive opportunity to go in and recapitalize and refinance some of the hundreds of trillions of debt that exists by incorporating Bitcoin. And core to our thesis at 1031 is that there's an order of operations to bitcoins ultimate success. So on the front end, simple things like making sure that enough people are running nodes, making sure that hash rates sufficiently distributed, making sure that people have relatively easy ways to secure their Bitcoin.

Israel: 0:32

Why is this one of bitcoins most opportune and de risked moments to date? How do you think about investing in venture at this stage of the technology cycle. We discuss with Marty bent, one of the industry's most respected leaders, as he shares some of his Bitcoin origins, as well as how he got started in the media landscape, we cover a lot of ground, including venture technology Treasury strategies for a startup and much more. We hope you enjoy and as a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you enjoy the content, please do remember to like, subscribe or share as This all helps us greatly. Lynne and Israel are partners at baselair advisors, where they employ their strong network of Venture Capital Partners and startups to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, they support founders with their strategic growth and fundraising goals. Visit our website's advisory section to learn more. Welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Israel. Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow today we have the great pleasure of of welcoming Marty bent. Marty, welcome. We're excited to have you. It's real.

Marty: 1:37

Lynne, thank you for having me. I'm excited to

Lynne Bairstow: 1:39

be here. We've been we've been working to get Marty on for a little while. No fault of Marty's just missing each other, but we're, we ran into each other in Vegas, and just so happy that we could make this happen. Because Marty, I mean, you're, you're really one of the first of all, I consider you, you and Matt as having, like, the voices of integrity. I really appreciate so much about what you bring to the ecosystem and how you eliminate innovation. I think in addition to talking about macro, I love that you're always championing the open source projects that you're really tracking, who's doing innovation, and you're sharing that, along with the broader cultural topics that go along with Bitcoin. So we're thrilled to have you on and just hear a little bit more about what your perception is about the Bitcoin innovation ecosystem today, what you're looking at and dive into some of the many things that you're involved with in terms of your rabbit hole recap, the media platform that you have that tracks Bitcoin on multiple levels, your mining involvement, and then also your involvement as a partner in 1031 venture capital.

Marty: 2:48

Happy to have you on Well, happy to been here, to be here. It's been a long and winding road over the last 12 years, and it's I have to pinch myself every day. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to do

Israel: 3:02

what I do. Well, you certainly cover a broad spectrum, like Lynne was mentioning Marty, but And of course, that that we want to keep that as the main focus on some of your perspectives on your current work. But let's start with, if you don't mind, you know, and as much as you're comfortable sharing about your background before your involvement with Bitcoin, and particularly, what was it that how you got introduced to Bitcoin, and what was it that drew your attention to Bitcoin? I mean, was it the ideology behind it, the asset, you know, the financial side, the technology side, people kind of get drawn in through, through different angles, right? So, can you share a little bit about your your story before you got involved in in your current work? Marty,

Marty: 3:46

yeah, funnily enough, my my story starts in 2008 two, right around when the white paper launched. I was a senior in high school here in Philadelphia taking an economics elective course. That just so happened that the world financial system was melting down when I was taking my first ever economics class and had a professor in high school who was very on top of things and essentially just threw the curriculum out the door and said, We're gonna spend the semester following this financial crisis as it unfolds and as the governments and central banks react, and so I had a, I want to say, radicalizing, but very early on in my life, as I was transitioning from late high school towards college, I had a pit my stomach about the financial system. My dad was in finance. He was affected by the great financial crisis, and my professor in high school was on top of things. He said, Gentlemen, I went to an old guy school. This is not right. What's happening. We went through the tarp bill, we dissected the bailouts. And he said, If you, if you, you. Want to understand how all this works. You should continue studying economics as you go to college. And I took that to heart. So I studied economics at DePaul University in Chicago with a, know, your enemy mentality. I really wanted to understand how things got to the point that they did in the lead up to 2008 unfortunately for me, I was thrown into an economics department that was pushing neoliberal Keynesianism on to the students, but there were a couple professors who had more of an Austrian tilt. And so I think I knew in colleges I was studying economics that the status quo Keynesian view of the world was was a bit skewed and probably towards the negative. So it was always receptive towards Austrian economics. Junior year, the summer, going into my senior year, I started an internship at a Managed futures fund that indexed commodity trading advisors. So these are large trend following hedge funds that typically trade commodities markets, currency markets, fixed income and so we indexed these CTAs into a family of funds, and I worked on the portfolio management team of three. So it was the Chief Investment Officer, our portfolio manager, and myself as an analyst. And so my job during that internship, and then I wound up staying on and working my senior year and taking night classes, was sort of follow markets in an interface with the chief investment officers of the funds that we were investing in to get a better understanding of their strategies and why they believed markets were moving the way they were. And this was right around the time of Operation Twist in the beginning of QE two, when Bernanke was still at the helm and getting ready to hand it off to Yellen. And so that was in like 2013 I wound up staying with the Fund for another year after college in 2014 when Yellen took over. And so in parallel to that experience, just working at the fund, writing commentaries, following FX markets pretty closely, because a lot of the funds traded them. And getting an understanding of how things operate at the central bank level, I had a feeling that something was wrong. And in parallel, my senior year, I think my junior, senior year of college, I forget exactly when I found Bitcoin, I think I saw the famous Wired article about Silk Road, and that really drew my attention, because alongside the great financial crisis, you had things like WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and all that, and so I was, I guess, very amenable to the Occupy Wall Street. Zeitgeist of the incumbent. System's broken. It's corrupt, and we need to fix it. And so I was really drawn to movements like WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden leaks, because I thought they did a very good job of unearthing corruption in our government. And so when I found Bitcoin, I was immediately receptive to it, because it positioned itself as a monetary system that that could not be controlled. And I was, I was knee deep in the incumbent monetary system, following the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Europe, European Central Bank. And so when I found Bitcoin, I was like, this makes a lot of sense to me. And there was one particular Fed meeting when Janet Yellen was a Chairwoman that really, I think, pushed me over the edge. And I believe it was in the summer and 2014 or early 2014 and she had her FOMC press conference after FOMC meeting, and markets traded very aggressively up into the right after the meeting, and I, and I took some time to do Some research like, Why? Why are markets very bullish on, on the statements that Janet Yellen just gave them, among many sort of, like hand wavy like, data points, economic data points. A lot of the analyst were bullish because she was wearing a purple pant suit and purples of regal color. So she was, she was presenting a strong front. And I just thought it was crazy. I was like, the markets are trading because of the purple pant suit of the Fed chairwoman. And I don't think this is how the most important markets in the world should trade. And so long, long winded way of saying I would. Is in this position as an analyst at the fund, tightly following FX markets and global macro, and it didn't make any sense to me. And then I found Bitcoin, and it made a lot of sense to me as somebody who was interested in tech, and I view myself as somebody who's like, pretty technical for somebody who's not a developer. I'd always been tinkering with computers and software and trying to be an early adopter of things as they hit the market. And so Bitcoin, with its distributed network and, most importantly, sort of consensus rules that are laid out, that are auditable, that are verifiable, that are open source. I was like, Oh, this. This makes a lot of sense. And so that's around like, 2013 2014 found Bitcoin, and that's when I became maniacally obsessed with it. And just from there, then on, started studying it, playing around with it, saving in it. And that's, that's what tipped me in this direction.

Lynne Bairstow: 11:05

Marty, you know, I am Israel, and I both found it around the same time. One of the things I that I struggled with really, I mean, I, I looked at it from a technology standpoint. I mean, that was what really it to me. It was like the missing piece of the internet that allowed the transfer of value on a peer to peer basis, but, but I had a hard time finding my people until, really 2020 when I was locked in at home and I discovered clubhouse, and I thought, oh my gosh, there were actually other people that like Bitcoin the same way I do. If I talked about it to my friend group, they thought I was, I don't know, involved in narco trafficking or something like that. But I How did, how did you build community? Because you really have been kind of at the apex of community building with your our HR media platform. But how did you find other people that you could talk to about it? And where'd you go? And how'd you think about building a platform for people exchanging ideas.

Marty: 12:02

Well, I was a lurker for many years, probably from like 2013 to mid 2016 I was just a lurker and so like, but I I felt like attic. I mean, it's funny, somebody come up to me in Vegas and say, This is a very parasocial experience for you, because I've listened to your podcast, and I feel like you're my best friend, but you've never met me, and I had a similar experience for in my early Bitcoin years, where most of the Bitcoin content I consumed was on Twitter. So part of my job at the fun was to follow markets and fintwit back in the day, in 2013 2014 was incredibly high. Signal still is today, and so I actually used Twitter as a tool for my day job. And so I I've been building Twitter list for 13 years now. And so I had my finance Twitter list, and then when people started talking about Bitcoin, some fintwit accounts would start talking about Bitcoin, I decided to create a Bitcoin Twitter list in 2013 so I started building a list of people talking about Bitcoin on Twitter, and sort of using that as my community that I wasn't really participating in, but observing from my from my laptop. And so over the course of 2013 2014 2015 that was sort of my top of funnel entry to Bitcoin education. See people talking about it, linking out to Bitcoin talk.org, Reddit, white papers, whatever it may be and that that was like my community that didn't know I was a part of it. I was just lurking and and following along for for many years on that list. And then in 2014 I left the fund, and then moved to New York City to be with my girlfriend at the time, my now wife. And that was September of 2014 and then by early 2015 following the Twitter list. Heard people talking about meetups, and in January of 2015 developed the courage to go to the My first bitdevs meetup at Union Square Ventures in New York, and had one of those parasocial experiences where it was, I was, I guess I was 22 or 23 at the time, I was 22 and I went to bit devs, and I saw Peter Todd was there in the room, and he was somebody who was on my bitcoin Twitter list I've been following for years. And I had like, Oh my God, that's Peter Todd. I've been following his tweets. And so I was like, I gotta go say something to him. And so we were at Union Square Ventures office, which is right in Union Square in New York, and it overlooks the atomical clock across the way, and it was about 730 at night, and I had just moved to New York and never seen this thing. I thought it was a debt clock, and it was like 730 so it was really 1930 and the national debt was. Around $19 trillion at the time. So I walk up to Peter Todd. I'm like, this is incredibly poetic. We're here talking about Bitcoin, this monetary revolution, and we're looking at a National Debt Clock across the way. It's very poetic. And he looked at me dead in the eyes. He's like, That's a time clock. And I went and sat down and just listened to the bit devs. But that was my first, I guess my conversation with Peter Todd was the first, my first attempt to build community outside of my little Twitter bubble.

Lynne Bairstow: 15:32

But then going from there, how'd you, I mean, obviously you expanded from that conversation with Peter, but

Marty: 15:39

yeah, so I kept going to bit devs, 2015 2016 Those were great times go to bitdevs, because they were bear markets, and it was really just hardcore developers. And so over that period of time, I really leveled up my understanding of Bitcoin from a technical perspective at the protocol level, and really developed a better well rounded understanding of how the protocol worked and the different parts, the P to P layer, the monetary policy, the node topography, the wallet software, all that stuff. When 2017 came around, I was that guy over the years, who, between my family and friends, would tell them about Bitcoin whenever I could. I was, I was much more aggressive in the early years than I am today. Now I have the platform. It's like, if you want to learn about Bitcoin, I've all this content you can go watch, going to bit devs and developing, the knowledge, and, more importantly, the confidence to talk about Bitcoin from a technical perspective. And then 2017 when the price started running up, all those people in my immediate network of friends and family that I've been telling Bitcoin for years, they started texting and calling and emailing me, asking me to teach them about Bitcoin. And it got to the point in June of 2017 was a little overwhelming. So I said, All right, stop texting me one to one. Instead, I'll do one to many. I'll start this newsletter and begin teaching you a little bit about Bitcoin every day. So actually, yesterday was the or two days ago, Sunday was the eighth anniversary. I launched the newsletter on June 8, 2017, so it was officially eight years old now. And initially started with a list of like 20 people, my friends and family group, and I sent it to them, but then also developed the confidence to begin sharing the link on Twitter and DMing people I've been following, like, Hey, I'm writing this newsletter. Let me know what you think it began. The list began to grow. Grow. It was a very good timing. The price had just crossed $1,200 I believe for the first time when I launched it, or for the second time, was going back up. So the list grew, and then people started picking it up on Twitter and DMing me and telling me that they liked it, or some things that I should work on, or some things I should focus on. And so that's when I sort of broke out from my sort of introverted individual looking at this community, to contributing to it, and then over that summer, became pretty popular. I think we got to our first 1000 sign ups within a month, and then caught the eye of somebody at Barstow sports, funnily enough. And I was in Brooklyn at the time. I said, Hey, if you're interested in Bitcoin, I'd love to meet up and talk about it. And we met up, and I was sort of vying for the potential to write about Bitcoin for Barstow sports. So I met him. I said, Hey, you like the newsletter? Like, do you think barstool would be interested in me writing about Bitcoin for you guys. And he was like, no, nobody. Nobody here cares for a comedy brand and a sports brand, but I think you should start a podcast, because newsletters are cool, but podcasts are where things are going. I said, that sounds cool, but I have no idea how to do that. Can you help me? And he said, Yeah. And so over that summer of 2017 we literally planned out the first episode for like a month and a half, and then launched a podcast in late September, early October, 2017 and that's when the network and the community really began to grow. Because podcast, as you guys know, is a very powerful medium and incredible distribution. And so I built on, I guess, the proof of work I'd done by going to bit devs over the course of two years to invite some of the people that were going to bitdeb. So the first guests were Pierre Rochard, Matt Carollo, developers like James O'Byrne. And so I took it from the written word being. Newsletter and said, Okay, let's bring in these experts that I've been hanging out with at bit devs and in New York City talking about Bitcoin whiffs, and have conversations with them to broadcast it to more people. And again, timing for the podcast was perfect, too. The bull market was really getting into full gear, and people were very, very excited to learn about Bitcoin. So the podcast sort of blew up almost immediately, and then it's been going for eight years and turned into an incredible platform, and, more importantly, community of people from all over the world, which still blows my mind to listen and and are eager to learn about Bitcoin and still as hungry as they were eight years ago.

Israel: 20:47

So on this theme of the changing media landscape, Marty, Bitcoin is playing an interesting role. I believe I've heard you mention that you, through your media company, also have and correct me if I'm wrong, some sort of Bitcoin Treasury that's allowed you to be more selective on who you partner with. You know, maybe on the sponsorship side, etc, you have tested some value to value content. Can you? Can you give us a little perspective on some, some of your learnings as you know, as a media founder, and how Bitcoin is, is kind of also being part of this, this shift we're seeing from away from traditional media. Yeah,

Marty: 21:32

it's, it's been a incredible learning experience. Because when I set out with the newsletter in the podcast, initially, I didn't really think it was gonna be a business. I thought it was I thought it was gonna be more of a hobby project. But in 2020 I believe, like right in the beginning of COVID, is when it became, like a true business. Like, up to that point, we had an incredible sponsor, like unchained. Unchained has been with us since, I believe, late 2018 early 2019 and they were buying ads on the podcast and in the newsletter. And it was, it was good money, but it's like side hustle money. And then in 2020, we brought on cash app as a sponsor, and that that really helped turn it into a business. And so since then, over the last five years, four and a half years, have really sort of leaned into like, Okay, we've got a business now, we've got distribution, we've got audience. Like, let's lean into it. And I had the luxury of having worked at Barstow sports, even though they didn't want me to write for them, they did let me work on the business side for about six months. And so learned a lot about the business side of media and how to monetize it, and learned a lot of lessons about advertising partnerships and how they're perceived by audiences and so yeah, when it when I guess the business approach at tftc Over the last five years has really been let's partner with people companies that that we know and love and would use. And that's one thing I think Matt and I are very adamant about, and we've learned the lesson the hard way throughout the years by partnering with some advertisers who may have led our audience astray in some regards. We've only had two, really, one instance where that happened, another one that we that we got ahead of, which was block five. Block five sponsored the podcast in 2019, and 2020, but once they launched the yield product, and it wasn't clear to us how they were accumulating the yield. We said we don't feel comfortable pushing our audience towards towards this product, so we we broke off the relationship with them, and that proved to be a pretty wise decision in the long run. But yeah, it's, it's It's tough. It's a harder route trying to be principled in terms of who we partner with on the advertiser side, and it certainly restricts the amount of money and revenue we could bring into the company. But I think it's a long term sort of decision that we've made as a company, both at tftc and Rhr, to sort of forego that that short term revenue to and to sort of ensure that we have the integrity of the shows and integrity with our audience. But with that being said, I think going the long, hard route has paid off, because the companies that are doing really good things in the space, know that we have this integrity, and I believe they may view ad space on tftc As a premium, because it's this implicit sort of recognition that we believe it's and we know it's a legit company, and that that we're actually using the product. And feel comfortable sharing them with their audience, and as the revenue grows again, like being in Bitcoin and understanding the power of Bitcoin as a savings technology and as a treasury asset, that's what we've had, a Bitcoin treasury, a tftc, an Rhr since 2019 and so we've been building it, and I think as a bootstrap business too, like we've never taken outside capital for tftc or Rhr outside of ad revenue. There's no other investors on I own 100% at tftc, and then Matt and I split Rhr. It's a separate business, and we we sort of control our own destiny in that regards. And over the years, developing a Bitcoin Treasury at tftc specifically has been massive for us. It's allowed me to reinvest in the company and buy equipment and hire staff members. So we've got four full time employees at tftc, or including myself at tftc. And so the Bitcoin treasury, accumulating that and then letting it grow. And purchasing power over the years has afforded us the ability to do that. We've had cotton the other beauty of having a Bitcoin Treasury is we've had a lot of contractors that are outside the United States that have helped us with post production or building some things that we want to build, and being able to pay them in Bitcoin is extremely valuable. International wires. Some of the contractors that we've worked with like when they need to get paid, they need to get paid that day. And it feels really good being able to have them send me a bitcoin address and be able to pay them within an hour. But yeah, as as we run the business, that's sort of my mentality as CEO tftc is, let's bring in as much ad revenue as possible while also running as lean as possible, and then shuffle the excess cash flows into Bitcoin, let that grow, and then opportunistically wait for opportunities that we really want to go after and use the Bitcoin treasury to to invest in that We are not. Our business Treasury strategy is different from MicroStrategy or strategy now. We're not out there exploiting exploiting capital markets to accumulate Bitcoin, to hold forever, to become a Bitcoin merchant bank. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's obviously incredible what Michael Saylor and crew have done, but for us as a small business, running a media operation. We we use our Bitcoin treasuries, working capital opportunistically, when, when we deem it necessary, and that's allowed us to grow and sustain ourselves. Media is a tough business, and it's easy to it's easy to go after any type of ad dollars, whether that's gambling apps or mail enhancement products, whatever it may be, crappy VPNs, crappy therapy apps, whatever it may be. And so we've we've decided that we're going to sort of really hone in on a few good companies in the Bitcoin space to partner with, get revenue for the company, and then make sure that we're putting a good portion of that revenue into Bitcoin, so that Bitcoin can do a lot of the heavy lifting over the years, as it continues to increase in price build

Israel: 28:37

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Lynne Bairstow: 28:57

with Bitcoin. And I think the integrity of the ad, the ads that are on any media platform just really speak to the quality of the information too. And, and I know you, you led a panel at Bitcoin 2025 around this topic, but it's like, how are you kind of viewing? I mean, obviously your your platform, tftc, has really taken off. And I think you're known for the integrity and the openness of the information, where you look at traditional media, where anytime I turn on a traditional news station, which is very rarely, it's like 90% pharmaceutical ads and with a million disclaimers that I don't know why anybody would take anything, but it's like, how are you thinking about media in the larger perspective and and do you see a shift toward increasingly more independent media sources like yours just growing in stature and take replacing the mainstream media?

Marty: 29:55

Think so. Yeah. I think. I think the process is well underway, and I think independent. Media is going to win out in the long, long run. And just, it just makes sense, because you have so many independent content creators that are domain experts putting out very focused content on their particular domain. And when you think about the mainstream media, they just don't have the ability to do that, and the market for this information is vast and growing, and people want very specific information when they're curious about curious about anything, and they want to go directly to the source that can provide them with that information. I don't think the mainstream media is going to be able to compete, because there's too many of us out there that know way more than any CNN Fox News MSNBC reporter about Bitcoin. So why would an individual, if they were cognizant of the optionality that exists in terms of the information they could consume about a particular topic? Why would they go listen to some random pundit on a mainstream media platform talk about it when they can find somebody who's actually immersed in the subject and working in the particular industry or particular domain of expertise? So I think it's just a natural progression of of the digital age and the information age is that we have this ability to in the east coast, the United States, we're three different parts of the country, I believe, potentially the world, and we're able to sit here and have a conversation that people will ultimately sit in on themselves and and learn something very specific to Bitcoin media, I guess that they're not going to get from the mainstream media. So I think it's inevitable, in its inevitable inevitability, enabled by the technology, the communications technology, RSS, social media, podcasting platforms, all that it's it's just the mediums are are so vast, the distribution so cheap, and the ability to create this content is cheap, and so I think we can out compete the incumbents pretty easily. And I think I think it's happening. I think it will only continue to happen. And in terms of how the business is monetized, it's something I've been thinking a lot about. And obviously we've been heavily dependent on ad revenue for the first eight years of the business. But I do love this trend of sort of build up an audience, build up distribution, and then create a product to distribute to, to your audience at some point, once you have sufficient audience and distribution, and that's something we're thinking about at tftc, and we're actually going to launch our first product to top of funnel product. It actually just got accepted in the app stores. I was teasing it a few weeks ago, but Google Play Store took a couple rounds of back and forth with their review team to get it included in in the Play Store. But yeah, we're gonna launch an app, and I think with the audience and distribution we have eight years in, I think we're gonna, we're gonna throw our hat in the ring of trying to get into the game of all right, we have an audience. I think we've built up a reputation, and hopefully we can build products that that audience will want to interact with.

Israel: 33:35

If you can take us through that a little bit. Marty, I mean, what? What exactly is, you know, is the app offering, and why are you launching it? You know, Can you expand a little on the

Marty: 33:45

product? So we're launching an app. So that's one thing. Going back to what we're talking about earlier, about convincing, or trying to teach people about Bitcoin, one of the problems that I believe exists is that people just don't have this conception of opportunity cost or pricing things in Bitcoin to really understand the extent to which their their currencies are being debased. And so we built a simple Chrome and Firefox extension we're calling opportunity cost. You can find an opportunity cost dot app, and what it does is it's simple. It's a simple app that basically takes any price on any page on the internet that is in Fiat and converts it to Bitcoin. You have the ability to show the price side by side with Bitcoin with SATs. You can put it in Bitcoin alone or SATs alone. And this, this idea, is just a top of funnel thing to get out to people like, hey, maybe you're you're not buying Bitcoin, maybe you're not into Bitcoin. But download this extension and just turn it on in the background and begin observing what the the cost of goods in your life is Bitcoin in any particular. Point in time, and then as time goes on, sort of track how that price and Fiat in Bitcoin is changing. Typically, you'll find that it's going up in Fiat and going down in Bitcoin. And so this is our first foray into sort of creating a top of funnel product. That's what we believe it will be, who knows, ultimately, if we'll get any adoption, or how people will use it, but that's really the idea. And this is sort of a low hanging fruit, small step in this direction that I feel comfortable with. I think it is a value add. It's open source. We don't collect any data. All the data sits locally in your browser. We're not sending anything back to our servers. We're not trying to take your your browsing data and sell to marketers or anything like that. We'll fully we have it fully open source on GitHub so you can go audit the code. But the idea is to leverage our brand, get this tool out there, see how people are interacting with it, and then figure out how to monetize it. From there, do we go build a mobile app or or do something within the extension? It helps us monetize that, but all in an effort to educate people about Bitcoin, give them a useful tool, and then, by doing so, hopefully be able to monetize it at some point in the

Lynne Bairstow: 36:21

future. It's a really great tool for kind of educating on time preference too. I think at one point I was looking at something similar, but it was like the price of a Starbucks coffee, you know, in 2018 and what that would have turned into in terms of Bitcoin today. And it just shows how small decisions on daily basis can really make a difference in your in your financial health over time and and really got me off of any kind of daily Starbucks habit when I saw the cost of that. Yeah, that's it. The congratulations. That's a that's a great tool. And I, you know, I guess, just kind of taking that whole concept and moving it into the work that you do at 1031 which is the Bitcoin focused venture capital fund. And your experience of having a Bitcoin Treasury at your media company? How do you work with with your startups, on talking the whole concept of Bitcoin treasury, how much should be allocated versus investing in your business or in business growth. So how do you kind of get your head around that, or help your help, help the startups that you're working with think through that? Think it's

Marty: 37:31

it's dependent on the individual company, the founders, and the type of product and company they're building, and how quickly they need to get the scale, but I think we're pretty aggressive with it, and I think that as a fund, our hurdle rate is Bitcoin, and as founders of the companies that we're building in like they, I think that's one of the beauties of investing in The space, because there's a lot of alignment between 1031, and the companies we invest in, because we're all making a big opportunity. We're weighing a massive opportunity cost of should we just go Fiat mine and accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible, or are we going to go do the hard work to build out infrastructure in the space with the hope that we will outperform Bitcoin, because we'll be able to build companies, will be able to build products and services that get revenue profitability and enable the company to acquire more Bitcoin, and ultimately, the founders will end up in more Bitcoin because they went and decided to build a Business instead of Fiat mining. And so when it comes to the Bitcoin treasury, we're pretty aggressive. If you talk to Matt, he'll he'll tell you have three months of cash, three months of runway in cash, but the rest of the Bitcoin Treasury, and sort of manage that as you go. But it's again, dependent on the individual company. I think one thing that is standard across the board is you need to have, you need to have a Bitcoin Treasury at the very least, and it should be a sizable portion of your raises. I think 20 to 40% depending on where we are in any particular cycle, makes a lot of sense. We were actually talking about this yesterday on a team meetup. We're about to write our mid year letter, and it is actually funny how it changes the dynamics of a venture in the sense that these companies don't need to go out and raise at the typical cadence that that they would in a typical VC model where you raise then you're back in market 18 to 24, months later. Like there's a number of companies in our portfolio that have a Bitcoin Treasury that is worth more than all the cash they've raised to date, because they were, they were pretty aggressive with their Bitcoin Treasury strategy. When they raised, and that's paid massive dividends for them. So we have companies that haven't gone back to market to raise in many years because they don't have to, because of the strength of their Bitcoin treasuries. But the other aspect of this is really putting the opportunity cost and low time preference. Lens on on business building which is, hey, our goal is to build as large of a Bitcoin Treasury as possible, as quickly as possible, continue building it over time. So how do we do that? It's like we got to run a good business that actually makes money, which is, which is not, which is anathema to Silicon Valley VC. Think, I think and and so I think Jack Mahler's has been the most articulate, articulate about this, publicly, like whenever he's weighing good decision at strike about investing in a new business line, or doing research and development on a particular part of the business, or hiring new people. He's He's always asking his team, like, all right, if we go do this and we allocate this money, do you think the at the end of the day, once this project's done, we've implemented the product, will it provide revenue to a degree that outperforms Bitcoin. That 65% hurdle rate is, is what he often references. And I think strike is an incredible example of a company that is executed on this mindset of running a business. I mean, they have more licenses than Coinbase, they're they're available in more countries. And Coinbase is they're extremely profitable. They just released their some of their financials a few weeks ago, or profitable business. They're growing. They're expanding the market share, and they're doing this with 75 employees, which is extremely impressive when you compare it to something like Coinbase, which has 1000s of employees, company like square, which has more than 10,000 Jack and the team at striker are doing all this with 75 people. A big part of their ability to do this and their willingness to do this is that that idea of the Bitcoin opportunity cost in their mind, and the maniacal focus on building the Treasury as quickly as possible,

Israel: 42:25

it's a recurring theme in in mostly all of the somewhat mature, successful companies in the Bitcoin space now, right? I mean, you have companies that are quite profitable with a lean team, and it all goes back to this, ultimately, I think, just mindset, right? Just being conscious of the fact that now your opportunity cost is me, you know, maybe 40% not, you know the previous 10% that that's maybe little easier to to mismanage capital around. And again, going back to the venture capital model itself that you mentioned Marty. I mean, Lynne and I cover this quite a bit. I mean, it is really being flipped on its head and in a very positive way. Of course, I think VC is not particularly General. Vc is not going through its best moment right now. But, you know, Bitcoin, you have, you have this Bitcoin ecosystem that I truly do think is going to be the the one that kind of shines a light in the industry. Because, and it sounds pretty simplistic, but, but it is the truth. I mean, it's just going back to the basics, really, when you think about it, it's not, not just, you know, raise at all costs and and grow without caring about whether I'm profitable or not. But it's it's just actually okay. Deploy capital in a smart way. Grow my business in a smart way. Invest in things that only in things that make sense be lean. Reach, you know, reach revenue as soon as possible. Make sure I'm here for the long haul these things. I mean, you know, it's, it's made, it's maybe a bit silly that we're, we're saying, you know, oh, it's, it's amazing that we're getting back to this, you know, maybe decades down the line, they'll look back at this point in history and they'll be like, yeah. I mean, you know, of course, you know what was going on before. But, yeah, it all goes back to these principles of just kind of having the right mindset and opportunity cost in in mind. I

Lynne Bairstow: 44:30

really want to ask Israel, and I spent a lot of time just thinking about this and how it's changed VC. I mean, I had a VC fund for 10 years and and, and wound that down at the end of 2024 and just saw so many, just the rampant raising of VC funds, and the size of the funds, and it was almost, I mean, when you put your mind to it, it's like, how could they possibly deploy and expect venture returns at that level? But the other thing that we think about in. Terms of VC and Marty. I don't know how you're thinking about this, but you know, when you look at some of the founders like Jack, I mean, I can't even, I mean, Bob Burnett had this conversation that he'll never, he'll never, even though he has investors, he'll never exit perfect mining. I can't imagine Jack doing an IPO on strike. Maybe, I don't know. But do you think there are other paths towards exit and toward repaying venture investors for a founder, other than the sale of a company, acquisition of a company or IPO? Do you think there could be a model where the return is is somehow like a Bitcoin dividend or a repayment in some way? I mean, how do you think about long term VC and and you as an LP, as a, as a, as the GP of the venture fund repaying your LPs? And how can that model change? I mean, I'm looking at it like, you know, there's a, there could be a new paradigm. Yeah,

Marty: 45:56

I think there's many ways. I mean, the one that you mentioned Bitcoin dividends, we have some companies, that's how, that's how they are paying us back now they're profitable, they'll spit back dividends annually based off of their profitability. I think that's a model that will certainly grow over time. And another one, I think there will still be a mix of companies that decide to go public, there will be another mix of companies that decide, hey, we're going to build this up. And I only want to, I'm in this because I think this, this particular product and service, is needed in the market. And I think some large incumbent is ultimately going to need this, and recognize that they need it, and they'll, look to acquire companies. So I definitely think there is an archetype of founder within the space with that in mind. But I think another route that will become popular is permanent capital, some of the larger funds that'll come in and buy a big chunk of the business and just own a big chunk of the business in the perpetuity for the cash flows. And I think that'll be a model that becomes more popular within our space over the over the next decade, where permanent capital comes in, buys out early investors at a at a good multiple, and just cruises with with the founder. Obviously, that permanent capital will have to be aligned in the founder, who have to want to engage in a long term partnership with them, but that, I think that's another model that that will come into play as well,

Lynne Bairstow: 47:28

and in knowing to diminish the you know, the benefits of an IPO like fold with is a portfolio company of yours that is, to my mind, the very first Bitcoin company that had an IPO. And can you talk to us about the kind of the process or the thinking there and and the benefits of that, of fold being a public company now. I mean, obviously they've got some really interesting expansion plans, and they're a cool company, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Marty: 47:55

Yeah, I think fold specifically the timing was right for them, considering where they were, they have an extremely viral and sticky product with their rewards cards and the debit card, and they've added bill pay, and you can, can essentially use fold as your as your bank account. And again, it's contingent on the individual founders and the individual teams, and I think for will and fold, they felt that they were at a point where they were ready, they're ready, to really throw gas on the fire and expand rapidly. They believe that access to capital in public markets is the best way to do that. And so I think when you consider their roadmap getting into things like financial products, I want to say exotic but more mature financial products for their customer base, the credit card obviously, for them specifically, they made the decision, hey, we want to go public, because we think being in public markets will give us access to capital, really throw fuel on the fire. And then on top of that, they're going after the Bitcoin Treasury strategy in parallel as well, which we're very excited about, because I think the prospect of having an operating company built on Bitcoin products and the Bitcoin Treasury strategy is something that's differentiated right now, to the to the pure play Treasury strategies, yeah.

Israel: 49:28

And, I mean, there's no getting around it ultimately, right now, plugging into the capital markets, still to the public equity markets, still provides you with just that, that massive opportunity of getting access to cheaper capital, which some companies are clearly being smart at. You know, knowing how to pull those those levers, of course, strategy being the most prominent one there. And you know, as as we kind of look ahead, Marty, i. There's, of course, many areas of innovation and many use cases to be seen, many of which, you know, Lynne and I talk about on this podcast, and, you know, we're excited about many of the payment aspects, you know, the AI integration. There's, there's so many different areas that are being explored right now, one of the lowest hanging fruit, I believe, is this kind of financialization of Bitcoin, right? This precise blending of traditional finance and Bitcoin, which is a little bit of what we were alluding to just a couple of minutes ago. But that being said, waters at 1031 maybe, if you can give us both perspectives from 1031 as a fund and maybe more so personally you What are any areas or trends that you think are the most opportune right now and that maybe get get you most excited? Yeah,

Marty: 50:58

I think it is that intersection of Bitcoin in credit markets. If you look out at the world, and you just look at how much debt exists and what the capital structure of those debt products is, and the underlying collateral, how fickle it is in many parts of the financial system, there's a massive opportunity to go in and recapitalize and refinance some of the hundreds of trillions of debt that exists by incorporating Bitcoin. And core to our thesis at 1031 is that there's an order of operations to bitcoins ultimate success. So on the front end, simple things like making sure that enough people are running nodes, making sure that hash rates sufficiently distributed, making sure that people have relatively easy ways to secure their Bitcoin. So hardware wallets, collaborative multisig, like on chain, is providing you need buy, sell, you need send, receive, like those are very primitive front end order of operations, products and services that are necessary to take us to the next level. And I think where it stands today is it's a combination of having those tools and then bitcoins market cap and liquidity profile. So I think we're transitioning into later stage, order of operations. And I think, personally and at the fund, we're pretty convinced that, like the timing for Bitcoin being introduced into the incumbent financial system as a pristine collateral asset is the timing is now, and so that's expressed in the portfolio via companies like fold, like battery finance, like Unchained, like strike, which both have lending desks already. But I think the pure Bitcoin cloud rise loans, they're, I think they're going to take off, hopefully, actually, very confident this time around, we've learned the lessons from blockfi and Celsius and companies like unchain that does their collaborative custody lending, where it's impossible rehypothecate Obviously, Jack and strike, they just launched their lending desk, and they're writing it into the contracts with their partners that Bitcoin cannot Be rehypothecated. So I think access to Bitcoin collateralized loans is going to increase. Hopefully. I'm pretty confident the cost of capital for those will come down as well. And that is already an established part of the market. I would say I think it's going to grow significantly from here. But I think the next step is again, introducing Bitcoin into structured credit products. So I think low hanging fruit in that arena is just going commercial real estate. It's obviously been a big topic of discussion in the United States Post COVID, with the work from home movement and the disruptions to the economy, and now we have a bunch of buildings that across the country that are that are underwater and probably need to be refinanced. And why would a bank go and refinance something with as much uncertainty as commercial real estate? Why would they want the property as the only underlying collateral? And so I think the timing is right for products like battery, that battery is providing to come and say, hey, we'll de risk this. It may sound counterintuitive to you, but we're going to de risk this product by introducing Bitcoin to the collateral package. And I actually think it's an incredibly smart product right now, considering the duration of your typical commercial real estate loan, which is 10 years. And so if you are able to sell the story, as well as Andrew hoons as you can go to a property developer or property owner and say, Hey, here's how we're going to refinance your property and set it up for success over the next. 10 years by introducing Bitcoin as part of the collateral package, and you'll be able to participate in the upside of that collateral package. I think structured products like that are very exciting, and there's a ton of opportunity, not only here in the United States, but all over the world, to go do this. And that's when things I think, get really interesting, when, when a strategy like that hits a certain scale in a tipping point, it creates, I have a thesis that it will create this virtuous feedback loop, because what you're essentially doing is creating a forward looking duration curve of Bitcoin, that's going to be that you have a high degree of certainty will be kept off the market for a particular period of time. So if these strategies get to scale, let's say you have 500,000 a million Bitcoin locked in structured credit products with a 10 year duration. The rest of the market can look out at that duration curve and say, Hey, I have, I have good certainty that at least 5% of around 5% of the supply of Bitcoin is locked up for 10 years. And so I know a million Bitcoin are not going to be sold over 10 years. So I'll basically assume the volatility is going to go down. It gives me more certainty that there's stronger hands in the market, so therefore I feel more comfortable getting into Bitcoin, because it should curb downside volatility. And then as more and more people do that, you sort of have this feedback loop where confidence begets confidence, and I think it could bring a lot of capital to the market, and the timing is right beyond that sort of, that sort of immobile Bitcoin product, where you're just putting it in structured, structured products, and holding it off market for 10 years. I think the timing is right for payments at the same time. I think the maturation of the Lightning Network, and I think it's it's certainly mature at this point, it's becoming extremely reliable. The UX is getting better. And on top of that, you have other second layer solutions that are beginning to emerge that can use the Lightning Network as this connective tissue between them all. And that is unlocking incredible use cases in terms of different types of wallets that can be made. Zeus working on the graduated wallet model, where they're able to start their users out with a custodial e cash wallet using the cashew chummy mint protocol, and the trade off there is, you're starting with a custodial product, but you get a lot of privacy because it's E cash. As you accumulate more Bitcoin in your E cash wallet, ultimately you'll graduate to a self custodial lightning wallet on your phone, in the payments experience on an app like Zeus is is has only increased significantly over the years. It's getting better, and I think combining e cash with lightning for this graduated model is going to unlock a ton of a ton of new users that feel comfortable using these wallets and spinning them up. Beyond that, going back to Bitcoin on chain, held in wallets like things like mini script, what anchor watch is working on with their insurance products and leveraging bitcoins native mini script properties to create a spending create spending conditions and signing conditions that that give somebody like Lloyd's London confidence to underwrite loans up to $100 million like that. That is incredible, and that is a product of of mini script, which was worked on for many years by Andrew poulst, many of the people at block stream and other cryptographers and sort of sat there waiting for adoption from hardware wallets, and a couple of years ago, Ledger added it. Now cold cards added it, and now we can actually build viable commercial products on native Bitcoin script. And so yeah, wherever you look at the opportunities to build new products that serve many different parts of the market, whether that's a commercial real estate developer looking to refinance a loan, or somebody in a third world country looking to open up a bank account on the Bitcoin network, or somebody looking to ensure Their Bitcoin like the ability to do all these things has never been more accessible. So I think we're we're at a tipping point in in Bitcoin, where the ability to build these products and services has never been easier, has never been more diverse and. And I think it's only going to accelerate and get more exciting from here. I want to circle

Lynne Bairstow: 1:00:07

back to something you said just a little bit ago when you're talking about battery, that you said their model could be could be used worldwide. A lot of the examples you just gave were kind of US centric, and and river just released a report that really spoke to the concentration of Bitcoin holding, Bitcoin mining, a lot of the financialization products are US centric and and I kind of felt that at the Vegas conference, that there were, especially with a lot of the US politicians there, that Bitcoin right now is having kind of a US centric moment. But you know, Israel and I talk with founders throughout the globe, almost we speak to a lot of innovators in Europe and recently Africa, and certainly LATAM, where we have a strong community. But how do you view it as a fund? Or what do you think that maybe some of these products will start out finding product market fit in the US and then expanding to other markets where they have similar opportunities. Or how do you as a fund look at or do you get opportunities from other geographies? Or where are you seeing innovation hotbeds?

Marty: 1:01:13

I think Eastern Europe and Africa are, are parts of the world that I see a lot of exciting things happening. Like you look at what Hoddle, Hoddle is doing out of Latvia. And if you've ever been in the Baltic hives at Baltic Honey Badger conference last year, and huddle, huddle didn't give a presentation, but one of their power users did, and it was really interesting to see how hodl, hodls platform provided him the opportunity to run a business with their their lending protocol and their their exchange. He was just as simply Arbor arbing some like FX inefficiencies that existed. I forget where this gentleman is from, somewhere in Eastern Europe, but that non custodial sort of lending platform, exchange platform, is something that appealed to him, specifically as an Eastern European. You look down in Africa, with companies like bitnob, the mancha cura wallet, what they're doing to enable Bitcoin to be sent over SMS and to be able to basically download wallets on SIM cards to give African citizens the ability to or citizens within Africa, the African continent too, to have Bitcoin wallets on their on their phones, is really interesting? Yeah, I think in those areas, like Eastern Europe, with the huddle huddle example, it's like access to financial products outside of the incumbent financial system. In Africa, it's literally access to sort of building block. Banking services just receive, send money. And I think those are going to continue to gain steam. Sort of themes will gain steam in those parts of the world. Will they be doing the amount of business, or the amount of volume as companies are doing here in the United States, maybe not immediately, but I think in the long run, particularly as these scripting, these scripting primitives, get more mature, and you can do more unique setups, whether it's with multi SIG, mini script, DLCs, I think what's happening with fedimint in the federated, chummy and mint world in emerging economies, has a lot of potential as well. When those products reach scale, is another question. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens quicker, instead of taking a long time. I think, I think in those parts of the world, the need for more stable banking infrastructure is is certainly higher than it is here in the United States, and Bitcoin is just simply better in all those regards. You just download software and you have access to banking services. And obviously tether has made it a point to get into these parts of the world, and so the the development of wallets that have Bitcoin and tether side by side easily able to enter to exchange between the two, depending on your particular need or desire At the time, that's going to continue to to become more popular, but in terms of profitability and like the ability, the access to capital that exists for American companies, I think that's a part of the market that needs to mature. And something at 1031 we're certainly, we don't overlook, or we don't stay. Away from that. So I think we're just very opportunistic when it comes to investing in different parts of the world, and obviously our whole team's American, and we're very in tune with what's happening here in the US market, and I think that's expressed with the over concentration of American companies in our portfolio, but it does not preclude us from investing in companies across the world, which we've done, yeah,

Israel: 1:05:26

I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I think I mean us just has the highest concentration of technology entrepreneurs and and access to capital. So of course, you know it, it'll be disproportionately larger here, but it is extremely exciting, as you know, as we, of course, know, Bitcoin is global money and software, and it's gonna provide opportunities for, you know, the entire 8 billion people. But it is an extremely exciting moment right now. I mean, ultimately, we're just kind of getting back to sound math, I would even say, right? I mean, it is, it is, to no surprise that, you know, maybe when two plus two equals five, business and society starts to get a little off track and things get confusing, which I think is where, where, you know, things have been up until recent and now bitcoin is kind of reaching that point where, where people are getting enough access and education to it that we're seeing the very initial breaks, but the the start of an entirely New, you know, way of building business. Or Jeff boot mentions it's, you know, the only free market around right now. So you know many of the points you just went through. Go ahead, Marty, yeah, well,

Marty: 1:06:51

that's the beauty. That's another thing that we really harp on at 1031, too. It's typically in the context of our own portfolio, but it it expands beyond our portfolio to anybody building on Bitcoin. But I think as an investor in Bitcoin, you have this unique these unique conditions, and for lack of a better term, synergies that exist between portfolio companies, because they're all building on this interoperable, open source, permissionless network, and now layers of the network. And if one company makes a a makes progress in a certain area of the market that can easily be incorporated or adopted by another company. And so I think the ability for these companies to collaborate is far greater than any other type of venture portfolio or investment portfolio that you would see. And so we we see it like at unchained. You get Unchained, you check your your transaction, and you want to do that outside of unchained platform, you click the link, you go to mempool dot space. And so mempool dot space is open source projects, something like unchained. Somebody like unchained can implement that or just leverage their their hosted service. Unchained also cold card is a is an integral part of their business, offering you similarly with anchor watch. Anchor watch can use cold card to build their products. You see strike they, they really did a lot to push Bolt 12 invoices forward. And I believe Tom Fitzpatrick, their, their CTO, did a lot of work to make some progression of that spec on the Lightning Network. And that's going to be widely adopted by anybody using the Lightning Network. So any other business that wants to leverage the privacy and invoicing efficiencies that emerge with bolt 12 can incorporate that because strike built it and contributed it back to the open source community. In mining, you see a prop miner able to work with a company like upstream data or Giga to get infrastructure that they need to to build out their operations. So these synergies exist, and bringing it back to the US versus the rest of the world conversation, I think that's a massive benefit that the merging economies and other parts of the world have is like we can build since a lot of the the talent and the capital exists here in America, it doesn't mean that the benefits of what's happening with what that talent's doing with that capital are sort of enclosed. In the United States, people can go build these products and then they can be implemented everywhere else. So you're sort of have the the r, d and the investment here in the United States, you have the build out here, but then anybody can adopt it. It's not like it's closed source walled garden technology. In some cases it is. But for a vast majority of the things that are being built, they can. Quickly be adopted and implemented anywhere in the world, which is incredibly fascinating.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:10:05

It reminds me it was something we had when we had the conversation with grant your partner at 1031 and talking about, you know, I think he kind of resists being called a venture capital fund, but

Marty: 1:10:16

more a venture platform.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:10:20

And you you guys, are really active in helping, helping elevate those synergies. And you bring your teams together once a year. Is that correct? And a off site where you get to talk to one another. So you really do add a lot more value than just capital in terms of introductions and identifying the potential partnerships or or center, for lack of a better word, synergies that can be, that can, that can take place between your portfolio companies. Is that accurate?

Marty: 1:10:48

Yeah, yeah. So we do a three day trip with the founders in the portfolio every October or late September, early October, and yeah, I'm thinking back to last year. Is it's been incredible to see we so we'll get together. We'll we'll have a presentation day where each company gives a five minute presentation of what they've built, what they're looking forward to, and how anybody in the room can help them achieve that. But we also, one of my favorite parts of these get togethers is we have sort of side tracks where we'll pick a few themes every year and have somebody from or a group of people from different portfolio companies, sort of lead that track. So two years ago, when Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic were going down, they went down the spring, we had our event in the fall, and so one of the tracks that we had was banking like, how, like, just like, open conversation with founders, like, hey, it's hard to get a bank account right now. How are you guys doing? And so that was very productive at that particular point in time. I think that that was actually a really important track to have two years ago or three years ago now, at this point, and that provided massive benefits. But last year, we had a track focused on AI, and I think so this was 678, months ago now at this point, and it's crazy to see how, how people have implemented AI after, after we had that track, not saying it was only because of that that track, but I think something like that getting some we had a founder who was really experimenting with the tools and using it internally as a sort of way to help build his product more efficiently without having to hire more people. And so he sort of walked us through the the AI landscape in terms of tools that could be leveraged to help actually, literally build your company. And that's been a really cool thing to see over the last eight months, is having conversations with founders and learning how they're beginning to incorporate AI into their their back end workflows to accelerate what they're trying to do, and accelerate their their go to market and the expansion of their their product suite, and so, yeah, those annual events are always very special. Always feel extremely rejuvenated after, after spending a week with the founders and the 1031 team, I think they've been extremely impactful in terms of not only creating partnerships between the companies for younger founders who may not have the confidence to go and ask somebody and when they're when they're not, together with a bunch of founders. We make it very clear, like, hey, leverage the talent that's in this room. There's we have everywhere from pre seed companies to Series B companies. So if you're needing advice on how you should approach your next raise or what you should do in terms of operations, preparing yourself to scale those types of conversations are happening as well, and I think it's incredibly valuable to me as well as as the GP looking in on and all of that happening. It's just really fun to see and everybody again, going back to what is saying earlier, I think the founders in our portfolio are more receptive to do something like this, because they all recognize like, Hey, if you succeed, I can succeed, and we can work together, and Bitcoin gets stronger, and the probability of our ultimate success increases. So there's a lot of incredible things that happen at these events,

Israel: 1:14:36

yeah, well, I mean that that collaborative success to to an open network is is just so powerful, and you guys have been leaders on the investment side at 1031 so a lot of admiration for what you guys have have built and continue to do. Marty and I know we're close to time here, we want to be respectful of your time as well. But. Maybe before we close off Marty, can you give any interested entrepreneurs or listeners a sense of the stages that 1031 invests in, maybe just high strokes? What you look for how to get in touch, any kind of relevant point of contact there?

Marty: 1:15:18

Yeah, we like to view ourselves as snipers, as Lynne alluded to, we really don't like to refer to ourselves as a venture, a venture fund, even though a lot of our investments may look that way. But we've invested across the spectrum from pre seed to Series B, but a, a large concentration of the capital has been towards the later stage. So we view ourselves as snipers. Find the blue chips that the the founders and the companies that have really that are killers, number one and number two have really honed in on product market fit and shown that they they've got some some traction, and then lean into them and help them really accelerate their growth as they scale, and more importantly, help them do that without engaging in the Bern and Sharon model of of incumbent VC and really focusing on building a Bitcoin treasury. But yeah, the we are open to to anything. I think it's really founder dependent, idea dependent. And if you guys want to reach out, hit us up at 1031 dot XYZ is our website, so you can find us there. And typically, if you have somebody that is in your network that knows us, warm intros are always the best way to get our attention. DMS on Twitter, I try to respond to as many as possible. Yeah, that's, that's the best way to get a hold

Lynne Bairstow: 1:16:51

of us. Well, this has been, I mean, we didn't even talk about your mining involvement, which was kind of on our list of things that we wanted to chat about so many others. But again, echoing Israel's statement that we want to be respectful of your time, we'll just have to have you back again. But as we close out this episode, Marty, any any final words of wisdom, advice, something to close us off?

Marty: 1:17:15

Yeah, just go and do the thing. I think you'd be surprised that somebody was a lurker for many years and had to develop the confidence to speak publicly about Bitcoin, even on Twitter, I was very grateful and happy that I did eight years ago, because it has brought incredible value to my life. I know just do things, a bit of a played out trope over the last year, but it is true, you can just go do things. And I think that that idea is is very pronounced in Bitcoin, specifically going back to the fact that we're building on this interoperable, permissionless network that seems to be catching on pretty quickly. So the opportunity within Bitcoin has never been greater. That's the beauty of it. As time goes on, as the price goes up, Bitcoin has never been cheaper than it is now, even though it's near all time highs because it's so de risked both from a social perspective and a professional perspective, like, if you want to get in and and build, it's never been easier to do that, whereas 10 years ago, eight years ago, it was, it was way, way riskier than it is today. If you're out there, whether it's building a product or just simply thinking about, talking about Bitcoin, joining the conversation, you don't have to be a fly on the wall. Don't, don't be afraid to get out there and get in the mix. Another thing we didn't get to dive into it, but really, we talked about it a bit, but like, leverage the AI tools too. That's, that's one thing I'm really excited to see, is how people leverage AI to get some of these markets to or some of these products to market much quicker. I mean, I saw, I saw, I was reading the Human Rights Foundation newsletter last week, and they were talking about somebody who by coded a working, non custodial lightning mobile app in hours using breezes, SDK, which is insane. So I think don't sleep on the ability to build using these AI tools. And I actually would not be surprised if it leads to, like, an explosion of really cool, creative, niche apps that that do find some product market fit, for example, like going back to, like a lot of most of my time is spent focusing on 1031, and obviously the tftc writing, doing the podcast. But when it comes to opportunity cost, the extent of my involvement in the build out of that app, I spent like two hours vibe coding it using chatgpt 03 model to help me spec it out. And then replit, yeah. So I used chat, GBT and replit to basically get a working prototype of what I want to opportunity costs to be. Then I found a developer who's a bitcoiner, very hungry, more importantly, confident and capable of actually turning it into a working browser extension. And I was able to build a prototype, hand it to him and say, Hey, do you sort of get what I'm trying to build here? And he was able to take that like, Yes, I know exactly what you're trying to build. And within a week, had had the extension ready to go. And so, like, the ability to go from idea to prototype, and for somebody who understands the technicals, but not to the extent where I can actually write the code myself, the the I've long viewed myself as an idea guy. So the idea guys, you have tools that you can use to get a working prototype, the hand to a developer can actually get it over the finishing line. And so don't sleep on that either. Play around with the tools. They're extremely powerful right now. Little

Lynne Bairstow: 1:20:59

follow up question, just based on what you're saying. And bringing it back to your early comments about getting involved at your first bit devs meeting. So a couple of weeks ago, you were hosting kind of the commentary at bit Bitcoin plus plus workshop in Austin, and Peter Todd was there. So how's your relationship with your

Marty: 1:21:20

conversations these days, they're great. Peter and I, I've had the pleasure of getting to know Peter predominantly at conferences over the years. We we do a panel at Baltic Honey Badger every time I there. I think we've done it three or four times now at this point, titled unpopular opinions. Bitcoin usually ends that conference. We did that last August. Actually saw him in Abu Dhabi in December too, and then in in Austin a couple months ago. So it's funny, whenever I see Peter, I'm no longer, no longer shy and not afraid to walk up to him and have a normal conversation, not try to force a debt Hawk situation conversation on them.

Israel: 1:22:05

Well, I guess maybe this is a good place to end it, Marty, thanks for your time. First of all, and really appreciate it.

Marty: 1:22:14

Israel. Lynne, thank you. It's been great. Thanks, Marty.

Lynne Bairstow: 1:22:22

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