082 - Timestamping Truth: Bitcoin's Blockchain as Unbreakable Digital Proof

In this episode, Carlos Toriello from Simple Proof discusses the evolution of his company, which focuses on verifying information integrity using Bitcoin technology. He shares insights on the challenges of public sector adoption, the role of open time-stamps, and the potential threats posed by AI-generated fakes.

The conversation also covers the journey of Simple Proof in securing funding and its future prospects, including innovative use cases for time-stamping public records and surveillance footage.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Simple Proof and Its Origins
06:46 Expanding Use Cases Beyond Elections
12:41 Efficient Use of Bitcoin for Information Integrity
17:31 The Importance of Bitcoin's Security and Neutrality
22:28 Real-World Applications and Public Perception
28:26 Addressing AI Threats to Public Records
34:44 The Role of Bitcoin in Digital Evidence
37:34 Funding and Growth Journey of SimpleProof
42:16 Consumer-Facing Innovations and Use Cases
48:06 Challenges in Educating Public Officials
49:55 Integrating Surveillance with Time-Stamping Technology

References
https://www.simpleproof.com/
https://x.com/carlostoriello

https://www.buildwithbitcoin.xyz/
https://x.com/BuildwBitcoin

Prior Episode:
https://youtu.be/OC3yo8oJaBE?si=VzxiZEbdn4bWuhvF

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❗ DISCLAIMER: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions consult a professional.

Transcript

Israel: 0:00

Carlos, if you could timestamp one immutable history moment right now to demonstrate bitcoins power beyond finance, what would you say that

Carlos: 0:07

is for sure, the Declaration of Independence. So next year, on July 4, 2026 we're going to have 250 years anniversary since it was signed. And there's going to be a big event broadcast all over the world, and it's the perfect opportunity to make the Declaration of Independence immutable, forever. And the beautiful thing is, does it just needs to be protected on Bitcoin, similar to how the Department of Commerce already did it, as long as Bitcoin and the power of the network is protecting that moment when all of the world's eyes are going to be placed on top of it, we know that that document will now live forever, and it would provide an incredibly powerful example saying we can protect the most important documents to the founding of America. That same power can protect all of the documents in America and make American History The first immutable history

Israel: 1:11

in a world where AI deepfakes blur the line between truth and fiction. How do we fight back today? Carlos Toriello, co founder of simple proof, joins us to reveal how bitcoins blockchain is revolutionizing information verification from public sector hurdles to time stamping surveillance footage, discover the future of trust in our digital age. As a reminder, this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you enjoy the content we're producing, please remember to share and leave us a comment below, welcome to build with Bitcoin. I'm co host Iran. Munoz joined with co host Lynne Bairstow today we have the pleasure of welcoming back onto the podcast. Carlos. Torrielo from simple proof Carlos, we're excited to get into some updates on what you guys have been up to, but welcome and happy to have you on. It's great to be back. So Carlos, you're one of two co founders at simple proof, a company who's focused on verifying information integrity using unique technology, which we'll get into and the initial use case being election results. And today, we'd like to focus on all of the progress that your company has made to date. But for those listeners who aren't as familiar, could you give us a little bit of the backstory? You know what originally got you to co founding? Simple proof from auditing elections in Guatemala? Sure.

Carlos: 2:35

So I was born and raised in Guatemala and in 2019 well, some family members ran for Congress, and they asked for help in, you know, helping them their their campaign. And so I got involved in auditing the election system in Guatemala. And for the first time since the 80s, when we had our voting system rebooted in 2019 there were very credible accusations of election fraud, and they looked to me as one of the people that were auditing it. And I knew something about technology to explain what had happened, and it was very hard to explain, and it was a tragedy, and I tried to build open source tools using Bitcoin at the time to try to get at what happened, but it was responding to something instead of being prepared for an event. And so in 2023 I built a team to learn from those mistakes, realizing that it's for something as big as an election, you have to be ready. A lot of things can go wrong, and Bitcoin is incredibly powerful, but the moment when something happens in the digital world is really the key, right? And that's when we discovered the open timestamps protocol. Back in 2019 had played around with it, but for those that don't know, the open timestamps protocol was developed by Peter Todd, a well known bitcoin core developer who created a very simple tool, a simple way. It's open source been around since 2016 so anyone can use it, and it's been the underlying open source code has been reviewed many times, so it's a way to use Bitcoin as a proxy for time. So as things occur in the digital world, you can use Bitcoin to register the fact that they happen. And so for elections, this was incredibly powerful. And in 2023 he co founded simple proof to build the tools that eventually were used in Guatemala, and became the first time that a country used blockchain to protect a voting system, and in our case, it was the Bitcoin Blockchain, so that everything that the country of Guatemala produced on election night that eventually made it to the internet was also registered on Bitcoin. That means that it's very simple, and became the first time at a country level that anyone can use Bitcoin to verify that what they are looking at digitally is actually something that was created on election night in the past. So it's using Bitcoin as a type of notary to provide witness proof of what happened in the digital world in a specific moment in

Israel: 5:27

time and since 2023 you guys have worked on quite, quite a few new use cases as well. You've entered new markets. Can you give us a snapshot of some of the achievements from founding to date to October 2025 Sure.

Carlos: 5:44

And so one of the suggestions for folks thinking about how to approach entrepreneurship, at least for me, where what's happened, is we built this tool to solve a problem that we saw in society, right? So in 2019 we saw in Guatemala, a lot of consternation and fear around election fraud, and we knew that Bitcoin could be used to solve for this, right? So at first, we didn't think that this was going to be a big thing or whatever. We just knew that it was useful and it could be used to solve a problem. And after doing it and executing it in 2023 we realized that we discovered something much deeper. Right right now, the need to be able to prove that something happened, particularly in the public record, is huge. And so since then, we've realized this isn't an election technology. This isn't just for democracy. This isn't just for voting. It's actually for all public records. And so you can think of voting and the voting record as one of, if not perhaps, the most important public record right the transition of power between one government and the next, but all day long, all over the government, there's a lot of public records that are being produced that may become relevant in a lot of interactions that human beings have with the states, right? And so since then, and I can share my screen one of the most recent examples that folks can take a look at and if you give me one second,

Israel: 7:24

Lynne and I are partners at Bass layer advisors, where we use our network of Venture Capital Partners and startup founders to connect investors with unique opportunities within the Bitcoin innovation space. Alongside this, we help startup founders with their growth and fundraising. Visit our website's advisory section. To learn

Carlos: 7:41

more, we have partnered with the Bitcoin office in El Salvador, and so folks can visit if they haven't done so already, bitcoin.gov.sv, in this website, you can see that El Salvador has 6357 Bitcoin, amongst a bunch of other awesome information. And further down, if you scroll, you can see that there's also this section called Kuwa plus certificates, and in their case, it's that the Bitcoin Office runs this education program where all of these students have gone through an education program and received their corresponding degree, right? So this is a specific education program that issues these degrees that will be used by people to get jobs, et cetera. And they can use simple proof. Here you can see the verification link to verify on Bitcoin that they were a part of this program. But what this allows is also for those students that want to remain anonymous, for example, here Satoshi Nakamoto, that person can keep their certification from being public, but they can use our services to verify to potential employer or anyone else. For that matter that the document that produces the Sha 256, in this case, their certificate, is a part of this program as well. So we've already been used in El Salvador, and that we are working on some other projects soon to verify other records, not just in elections and then, specifically, since in elections or in 2024 we worked in Screven County, Georgia, and I'm showing you there a documentary that we produced to tell the story called immutable history, chapter one. And folks can see that at films that simple proof.com but there you can find that we've protected the certification of returns for the general election of Screven County, Georgia. So what you see on your screen is the first US government document. In this case, it's the local county doc, government document of their elections and. You know, it's actually physically signed and sealed, and this document is one of the first to be protected using Bitcoin, and here's our verification page where you can see that. And so we've discovered that it's not just in elections, but rather other public records more broadly, that can benefit from having this type of proof? Yeah, and we

Lynne Bairstow: 10:24

talked our last episode with you was October 1 of 2024, last year, and I remember our conversation really centered a lot. There was a lot of uncertainty about the upcoming US presidential election at that time, and so you were hoping to make some groundwork in verifying election results or election ballot ballots or or polling. So I'm happy to see that you made that and I just was so taken with the technology that you're utilizing. My mind was blown during our episode last time, because I really think of simple proof as kind of the test case of information integrity with with the Bitcoin Blockchain, and especially the very efficient way that you use the technology so it doesn't clog the Bitcoin Blockchain with a lot of non financial information and and would love for you to get into that. I think just because we've had, you know, now we have a whole new kind of current debate going on in Bitcoin with Bitcoin Core and the upgrade to core 30 and having non financial information on the Bitcoin Blockchain. And we'd love to just, I think it's important for you to talk about how simple proof uses Bitcoin blockchain to confirm information at a minimal footprint. Because I want people to understand that,

Carlos: 11:41

yes, for sure. So there's a lot of debate. And for those in the weeds, it's involving the OP return function, and that is the function that we use. So the important thing to understand high level is open timestamps as a protocol uses that function, but only requires a 32 byte amount of data, and so within 32 bytes, we can stamp the entirety of the information on the internet. One of the first uses of this, developed by Peter Todd, was the entire Wayback Machine and the Internet Archive so and all of that gets rolled up into a single transaction. What this means is there is a lot of consternation at the moment with blowing up that function, and people talking about upwards of 100 kilobytes, if I'm not mistaken, but we're in the 32 byte range. So everyone that I've spoken to from both camps is fully in favor of open timestamps because of the fact that it's under within 32 bytes. So no one that I know of is against open timestamps. No one is against using 32 bytes of a single transaction per block to timestamp all digital information. So the short of it is, you can use Bitcoin as a proxy for time in an extremely efficient way. This does not crowd out other non monetary transactions, but rather uses just a single transaction per block. So you could have the entire digital universe that is created by humankind into one transaction occupying around. Believe it's 234 bytes. So it's for less than 0.01% of a Bitcoin block, we can ensure and guarantee that nothing has changed since then. What this allows us to do is give all public records the characteristic, characteristic of being immutable, doing that for less than 0.1% of the block space seems like a very wise use of block space, yeah. And we got a little bit into the

Israel: 14:06

technicalities of that in the last episode. I remember you, you shared with us the explanation of the, you know, the miracle tree, and how this all works. But, I mean, just the fact that this is feasible is pretty mind blowing. You know, it's, I mean, if we take a step back where we're in the beginning stages of public municipalities, governments, being able to, and, you know, other use cases, of course, be able to permanently timestamp some information in in Bitcoins, what will be, you know, hundreds or 1000s year history. So that that kind of gets me to something else. I want to ask you about Carlos, because this concept of using Blockchain for whatever it may be, you know, there's, there's been. It's been a buzzword for a few years. And. We've recently even had, I believe, some comments from the US Department of Commerce about using blockchains for public records of GDP data, for example. And I'm sure there's many other such comments going on around the globe, right? Why? I mean, why Bitcoin help people understand, because, you know, if you look at any of the other blockchains, there might be, you know, some reasons why people might think that that that's efficient, it works, or maybe it has some advantages, quote, unquote. But really, when we go back to this concept of Bitcoin being this neutral, neutral base layer that's immutable, then kind of steers the conversation in a different direction, right? So what are some of your

Carlos: 15:49

thoughts for sure? And for those that didn't see the story around the United States Department of Commerce publishing GDP data, I encourage you to research it. But what I showed you earlier was the first US government document that is provable on Bitcoin. But since then, the US Department of Commerce has published GDP data on Bitcoin. Now, unfortunately, they did not use the open timestamps protocol, and that's a big reason why we exist. Is to draw attention to the fact that this has been around since 2016 and there are Bitcoiners that use it, but that knowledge hasn't really permeated into the public where the US Department of Commerce didn't use the efficient way of recording information on Bitcoin, they published it directly on a transaction. So we're concerned. Well, first, we're excited to see other government entities, in this case, a federal agency, publishing data directly to Bitcoin, but we're concerned because if they continue to do this, the United States Government at a federal level, has resources that greatly exceed that of normal people, and we don't want to see a future where you and I are competing to get our transactions onto the Bitcoin block, competing against the federal government, right? So if, however, the open timestamps protocol is used, then you're not competing, right? So it's important to draw attention to the fact that you can use Bitcoin in this extremely data efficient way to the point where it doesn't matter that the there's a limited amount of block space for as a reference for time, we can use Bitcoin for all of the information that exists on the internet. You could potentially use other blockchains. And I know the Department of Commerce used eight other blockchains. The way I see that is kind of like going on the highway and on top of the seatbelt that you wear, which, let's call that seatbelt Bitcoin, for you to put nine other seatbelts on when it's like it doesn't really when you achieve security and when you are using a provably decentralized network, why do you need extra security? Once you are secure, fully secure, and there is no network that is more secure than Bitcoin, then it seems like an unnecessary use of resources to be using other blockchains. Now, there are other things that you could potentially be using with other chains, but as a historical reference to confirm whether something happened using Bitcoin is by far the most powerful network, particularly because in the case of public records, Bitcoin is is a blockchain for enemies, right? In the case where you're using Bitcoin to decide whether or not an election outcome was correct or or incorrect, you want to use something that is provably decentralized and not under the control of any single entity. The only one that offers that is Bitcoin,

Lynne Bairstow: 19:00

yeah, kind of like wrapping seatbelts around yourself and connecting them without them being attached to anything, the visual that came to my mind, but yeah, and maybe just have a point. I think it's important for some of our audience that's less familiar with the differences in the in the blockchains, about why you work only on Bitcoin.

Carlos: 19:21

For sure, number one is never say it enough. Yeah, the sheer volume of compute, we recently reached a zeta hash. I've actually been reaching out to people, and I'm curious, if you know there are visual comparisons to help the Normie mind and mind. I mean, I can't wrap my mind around what a zeta hash even is, because it's it's just absurd. It's such a large number of computers that are currently connected to Bitcoin that it dwarfs absolutely every other blockchain on the planet. You have to start comparing it to other computer networks that are the largest computer networks. On the planet for you to even get close, right? So it's you actually, but you can't, because the raw compute hashing functions aren't possible. But from an energy consumption perspective, that's when you do have a proxy, right? And my understanding is that currently, Bitcoin consumes still something like over three times as much as all of the AI data centers all over the planet, right? So Bitcoin is more powerful than Google, than than Amazon, than all of the AI companies in the world combined. No other blockchain. Even though you use the word blockchain to describe these other networks, the differences are so vast that it's literally talking about different things, right? When, when people say bitcoin is not crypto, for me, it's bitcoin is not crypto, because the amount of security, protection, energy, compute that is dedicated toward bitcoin is so much larger that you're not comparing apples to apples, right? And when you're talking about something as sensitive as election records or just public records more broadly, why do you want a less secure asset? There is no second best, so using the best for security is the right answer.

Israel: 21:18

Yeah. I mean the security and neutrality is, I think, top of mind for for the public entity that's looking to preserve integrity in that information's records, right? Can you share and maybe, uh, before and after anecdote of your work with Georgia, with this county in Georgia? I mean, because I I'm genuinely curious how what it like to work with, you know, these public office representatives, and what that what their reactions are once they actually see with their own eyes the results.

Lynne Bairstow: 21:54

I just want to jump in and add to your question too, even, how do you approach I would, I mean, maybe I'm, you know, I'm supposing something that's not true. But you know, when you I mean, it feels like a rural county in Georgia may not have a level of public officials that are technically, you know, advanced in their knowledge of technology and work. So I'm just curious about how you even got to to ground one with them, you know, to move that forward. But yeah, curious too. Thank you for posing that question

Carlos: 22:26

so and we are very fortunate to work with Stacy Scott, the elections administrator in screvin County, Georgia. She is a bitcoiner, so she already understood the difference between Bitcoin and all other computer networks right then, that's a huge advantage, but it does mean we do need to do a better job of communicating to folks everywhere the difference between Bitcoin and crypto, and specifically not not just because of, you know, differences we may or may not have with other communities, but just from the raw power perspective, right? It's, it's, it's not a dis even, right? It's just purely a matter of taking the time to understand when someone says Bitcoin and someone says something else, it right now requires a fair amount of study, right? And we were fortunate to find someone that had already gone down that rabbit hole, and in her case, Stacy Scott was participating in cybersecurity trainings by the Georgia secretary of state that focused on the dangers of AI. And right now, I mean, it's very easy to find public officials that are concerned about AI. What's harder to find is public officials that have any idea and any clue as to what to do defend themselves, we have this sense of, oh, you know, it's all over. This, the doomsday is inevitable, and that's wrong, right? It's when you're a bitcoiner, you understand that Bitcoin will and is capable of withstanding attacks from AI and other computer networks, your your bitcoin is more secure than any other monetary asset on Earth, right? So you're not, if you're a Bitcoin, or you're not concerned about AI coming for your Bitcoin, right, like and if you are, you just need to study a little bit more, and you'll realize that the math is in, is in your favor. Now, in the case of the elections, it was a similar situation where allowing some Stacy Scott to make that leap right, understanding all right, that same level of security that I feel as a Bitcoin or for my savings, I can also feel as a public servant for the work that I'm doing, and that's really the before and after. That really surprised me is understanding that we are asking people to leave private life and go into public service and take risks, right? Be the ones to literally, like I showed you earlier on the screen, sign the documents and be on the hook legally for any issues that happen. And yet we're telling them, oh, an AI is going to just, you know, destroy be able to change everything. You know who, who, in their right minds, wants to participate in public service, knowing that their own liberty and security could be jeopardized. And so when, when we found Stacy Scott, and it happened through a meetup in Savannah, and that's the story that we tell in films. Dot simple proof.com is that the power of Bitcoin network as a grassroots network allowed us to find this group of people in Savannah who knew an elections administrator, and when she heard that Bitcoin could be used in elections, she was very interested, and it coincided with this training that she had from Secretary of State, saying, Be careful with AI. But it's like the training just left it there. Just be careful. What do I do? Right? I mean, in the case of Screven County, it's on the border with South Carolina, it's 15,000 people. Like the elections office is one person it does. She doesn't have an IT department to defend herself against AI, but now she has Bitcoin, right? And so we are very excited that that is helping become a pilot for the state to show people that our tool doesn't require, you know, fancy it, cyber security trainings or or teams and resources, and it doesn't require a lot of time. It can be very simply executed without it taxing them on election night, but it allows them to rest easy that the work that they did in that very important moment is protected forever.

Lynne Bairstow: 26:31

Yeah, and maybe, I mean, I think we've touched on AI a little bit, but maybe you can go a little bit deeper into what the specific problem is with AI generated fakes, or how that might be a threat to public records, and how simple proof can mitigate that threat or eliminate that threat of AI deep fakes,

Carlos: 26:52

sure. Well, let me share my screen again. Going to use one example, and in the interest of time, it's going to be a little tricky to go into all of them, but this same example that I showed you earlier these documents, in this case, it's the certification of returns this and I don't have the one with the actual numbers of votes up, but these documents are made public by this same local government to the internet, so anyone Could just literally right click and save or download to their desktop, and then create a fake copy and put it online to generate a fake version. But now Stacey Scott can publish that document along with the proof, which would be a link to this, to this website with simple proof, or she could download the OTS file that contains the proof herself, and in the proof, there's all this cryptography that eventually leads to a Bitcoin transaction. So in this case, it's I'm showing you now the transaction on your screen, and she can copy that hash and verify it on Bitcoin directly, right? So if someone were taking these documents and creating fake ones, or, say, an educational certificate, like the one I showed you earlier, from El Salvador, and creating a fake one, it would change the Sha 256, hash of the document. Now the tricky thing is, how do you prove that that document is from that moment in time? And so that's where you can use Bitcoin as a proxy,

Lynne Bairstow: 28:32

kind of an address on the Bitcoin Blockchain that that refers to these particular documents

Israel: 28:39

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Carlos: 28:59

with Bitcoin. Yes, basically it's that through a series of hashes. This case, Stacy Scott can prove that on November 12 of 2024, this document was created so anyone who would attempt to attack the election would have to prove that in the documents were created around that time. And so if someone on the internet is creating fake documents to claim that something else happened, she can actually point to her version and say, I can prove that this is the original version. And you have to stop change. If a candidate were to claim that the documents that are being produced on social media affected the election, they would have they would be openly supporting a fake narrative, right? And so even if someone were. Able to hack into Stacy's databases, or worse, into the Secretary of State and change the documents, they would not be able to go back in time to generate the information on the Bitcoin Blockchain. So it's it doesn't protect against all AI attacks, but it does give someone like Stacey the confidence that if there's ever a court case, and this is on social media, it's going to be complicated, but when it gets to court, she can prove that the things that she did were generated on election night, and no no one could, even if they hacked the Secretary of State's offices, no one could make it look like she did something different. So now another example that in this experience, we found was one of the greatest things that concerns folks like Stacey in the elections administration's office are the voting roles. And voting roles aren't ever published to the internet, but there are legal requirements for elections officials to close voting roles. In her case, it's three weeks prior to an election, and so that's actually where most of the legal cases occur related to the voting rules. That is, there are rare occasions where it happens with election results, but more often than not, what people are concerned about are the voting rules, and so they are required to close the voting rolls, but it's very unclear how they prove that they've complied and are compliant with their legal requirements. So the problem there is voting rules contain personally identifiable information, and we cannot have access to the voting rules. No one should. The only people that should are the elections officials. So we were able to build tools that allowed Stacey, even without having a large IT infrastructure department, just using her state issued laptop, hash the voting rolls and then register that hash on Bitcoin using our service. So all that simple proof knows is that we received the hash from Stacey. She keeps that proof and only reveals it if she's ever required to do so by a judge. So in the case of sensitive information, confidential or even top secret information, you can use Bitcoin to prove that the things that needed to happen by certain moments actually occurred. This is fundamental for digital evidence in a world where now we require basically all of our court cases are going to rely on digital evidence. How do we prove that the evidence that we're looking at hasn't changed since we initially filed it.

Israel: 32:46

Yeah, and I imagine courts and lawyers already have this issue that you raise in their minds with how fast you know these deep fakes are happening, and with AI and all these new digital tools. So I mean, I look forward, and I truly mean it, because I'm sure it'll be actually not in the distant future to read about the first court case that reached its verdict with the help of simple proof, because it's just a matter of time, I think, right? Fortunately,

Carlos: 33:13

we're exploring deploying it into more counties, specifically, also for voting roles, right? So it's how they do this. At the moment, I'm it's basically a trust me bro situation where, you know, that's not just not enough for people to want to participate in something as sensitive as elections, right? So giving people the option of not having to, you know, learn something completely new, but rather just clicking and pointing and dragging something on their cell phone or even on their laptop without sacrificing the confidentiality, but with the power of Bitcoin to protect them, is the kind of evidence that can help folks in the digital age.

Lynne Bairstow: 33:59

Carlos, you've been with us before, so you know that we love talking to you about the technology and the problems it solves, but we also really like talking to you about your founder journey and how you approach building your company with the Bitcoin protocol and what what that's like. So one of the milestones that you've had since we talked last was getting a funding round in January of this year that you announced with ego death capital, which is one of our favorite Bitcoin VC firms, and we love them, and they're just a fantastic firm to be aligned with. We'd love to just have you talk a little bit about your journey with getting the funding, raising that fund, and what your path is for growth with the use of funds and as part of that, one of the big questions that Israel and I had when we first started this podcast, coming from kind of the more traditional tech side and venture side, is, how do you how do you look at creating a profitable business using open source technologies and and what your vision is? I know there's a lot of questions in the. But just, would love to just talk about how you how you approached investors with your story, what was that journey like? And, you know, and comment on the Eco death relationship. So

Carlos: 35:11

like, as I was saying earlier in our case, we focused on a problem that we saw, right? So it's, if you're building on Bitcoin, it's, I encourage you to explore ways of and find problems that exist, and there's plenty of them in the real world, right? What can Bitcoin do to actually solve a pain point that common folk have? Right? Instead of wanting to say, you know, build a large company just for for the sake of wanting to start something, it's listening to where a problem existed and building the tools to actually solve it, right? So in that for us, it's we didn't dream of being where we are at the moment, and we're still in a journey of discovery, right? But it's understanding if, if you can, if you find a problem that affects a billion people and can actually solve it, then you may have a billion dollar company, right? So turns out, in our case, people's ability to trust what they see, particularly in public records, is a problem that all of us face, and so getting creative with a new technology that we're still wrapping our minds around, is the process that we're in now, throughout that you know, we could have never have imagined where it would take us. You know, finally, it was in mid last year that we decided this is something that is beyond just Guatemala. It's beyond the market where we've, we've grown up in, and it's a global problem, and we need help, right? And so we decided to invest in going to the Bitcoin Conference and having a space there to reach out to other folks, and just made ourselves vulnerable, right like realized we need help, and we need to reach out to these folks and say we are looking for the right partners to grow from a small thing and can take this globally. Fortunately, in our case, we found both ego death and also Wolf and in the case of Wolfen, there are other programs like this, where they focus on founders at the start. And so if you want, if you believe you have a solution to a global problem, there are opportunities like I know, for right now, we're also competing in another competition called cipher tank, and that's happening in Lugano. So I definitely encourage folks to, you know, listen to podcasts like this one, to learn about these opportunities where you can test your ideas. Get exposed to people that have resources and can help you scale. And you know, they'll they'll help you push and find those limits to think, think bigger, right? In our case, we were coming from elections, but particularly through Wolf and ego death capital. Realized this is a problem that is affecting all archives, in all public records. So if we stay in our small market and in our small niche industry, sure, maybe we'll have success, but if we actually figure out a way to crack this globally, this is a much more profitable enterprise than we would have previously thought. And fortunately, in our case, we've been able to continue collaborating and communicating with ego death on a very regular basis, so that you know it's, it's finding also the right partners, right? It's there are going to be different groups that have a different culture, right? So it's researching folks who who share your values and pitching them on your crazy ideas. But the more focused you are, on, on, on reality and the problems that normal people face, then I think the more valuable your work can end up being,

Israel: 39:06

yeah, well, I mean, congrats on all the progress Carlos, because it is a global problem, and you guys have built a great suite of solutions to address that. You've gotten some great backers behind you. And you know, the the biggest part of your journey is still ahead, I know. And to that point, what's next when you look ahead, for simple proof, what are the next important, you know, strategic steps for for the

Carlos: 39:31

company, for sure. And so the other thing I'd recommend folks is, just a month ago or so, we launched our consumer facing product. So everything that I've showed you, you can try it for yourself. So go to simple proof.com our next big step is just making more people aware of the fact that you know, even though this protocol has been around since 2016 you needed a lot of technical expertise to use it. It's kind of like running a Bitcoin node back into. 1010, and 11, right? It was very hard to use open timestamps in 16 and 17. Now it's literally, you know, all you need to do is go to simple proof.com Give us an email address, and you'll be set up with a free version of our software. And it's literally, just click on things on your device, on and all the magic and heavy lifting happens in the background. So the idea there was making sure that someone like Stacy Scott and all of the 1000s of people involved in the election system know that they can use this and they don't need a computer science background to do it right. They literally could use it for free if it's like super sensitive documents that they just need a few. But then we have a subscription model where people can sign up and pay on a monthly basis, or pay via SATs coming soon as pay as as you go. Kind of service anyone, and I truly mean anyone, can use the open timestamps protocol in a very simple way and also use it in such a way where their information is private.

Lynne Bairstow: 41:02

So a possible use case could be like verifying your certification or college degree, or things like this. You might want to choose to upload that into and use your tool for personal uses on

Carlos: 41:16

that yes, anyone can use. One of the examples that comes to mind on an individual basis, is your last will and testament. So if, if you're, if you've written your last will and testament, and you're going to, you know, take it to your notary, your lawyer for store, storage and safekeeping for you know a few decades well, how are your descendants going to read it and know that it was actually written by you on a certain date. Now, if you just use the open timeset protocol as is right now, you're having to trust that it's you know, unless you have significant technical expertise, you're going to have to trust that the information isn't going to be made public. And you certainly want to protect your last one and testament. So if you go to simple proof.com create a user base, and maybe I just show you on my screen real quick how this works. Once you are in the simple proof system, say, welcome. You can access your proofs, and here you can just browse files, add anything from your desktop or your your phone, but in this case, you are uploading to our servers. Now this button that says file hash, you click that. In this case, all of the code is open source. You can go and check it yourself. But in this case, we are not keeping any of the information. Rather, we are using the calculator on your computer. Say, in this case, I just selected a random JPEG, and now I'm downloading a CSV, and all that happened was that the processing occurred on your device. So when you all that happens there is you've generating a shot 256 hash from a file, and that shot 256 is what is being sent through our software to Bitcoin as quickly as possible, right? So in this case, you could do that for your last will and testament, and so eventually you could download that proof and include that in the information you give to your lawyer, so that when they pass on your last will and testament, they include the Sha 256, and the proof of the transaction. So that's one case that comes to mind. Or maybe your surveillance camera that you may have outside your door looking at your street. You know, if at some point you get robbed, and you need to prove that the video footage that you've created wasn't tampered will soon have ways to integrate with video footage, both for say, a camera that you could have in your home, but also for cameras everywhere, right to prove that the information, the videos that we're looking at, aren't tampered, haven't been tampered since they were created. Yeah, it's hopefully more people are going to use this. But in particular, it's if you know people in the public sector that have decided to become public servants, they should know that they can use Bitcoin to protect the work that they're doing while they're in public office, so that when they retire, there is no concern that they're you know, someone else in office is going to be able to use AI to make It seem like they did things that they didn't do. So in the case of private individuals, your last will and testament is one of a very glaring example. But when you're in public service, everything that you touch could be used against you eventually. So it'd be good to have Bitcoin protecting your public service.

Israel: 44:39

Yeah. I mean, when, when you put it that way, it's, it's, you know, you would think it's a no brainer for public officials, but I'm sure it's not been easy to have the conversations and approach them out of curiosity. Carlos, I mean, what's the what's the biggest hurdle that you've encountered in these early conversations?

Carlos: 44:57

The main thing is just the misunderstanding of Bitcoin. But people still think Bitcoin is crypto. And you know, my NFT on, you know, the newest chain that just came out this past weekend, or my meme coin is the same as Bitcoin, and it's just not. And so that's where it's we have a lot of education still ahead of us, of explaining to people why Bitcoin is so different. So where we're finding and making the most progress is with public service, public servants that are already Bitcoiners, and so hopefully, very soon, we'll provide even more examples that can, you know, make it easier for folks to understand the impact that this has on their lives and for other people in public service that aren't Bitcoiners, right? So that's that's really where we're at at the moment, is, how do we we rely on Bitcoiners who already understand the power and that Bitcoin is not crypto, but with more and more use cases, eventually everyone realizes that there is no second best, and if you can use Bitcoin cheaply, simply. Then why would you use anything else?

Lynne Bairstow: 46:04

I wanted to dive into something you were just talking about the surveillance aspect of it, time stamping that we were chatting a little bit before we got on to record, but you gave an exciting example of that. Can you share with our audience a little bit more about what you're looking at in terms of integrating simple proof with with monitoring,

Carlos: 46:26

yes, of course. And so we have been selected as finalists in the Lugano Plan B pitch competition called cipher tank. So we shall know soon whether or not we're going to implement this project. But our proposal is specifically for Lugano, and they're turning Lugano into a Bitcoin Citadel for us. It seemed one of the things that caught our eye a few months ago was when the Satoshi Nakamoto statue that is in Lugano was vandalized and thrown, I believe, into the lake right where it's placed. And so there's increased security measures taken around the statue, because it seems like some folks are not big fans of Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto. And so our proposal is to make the surveillance camera that is surveilling Satoshi Nakamoto be the first surveillance camera that is being timestamped in real time to Bitcoin, so that all of the video footage that we have of that statue can be provable on Bitcoin, making it the first camera footage on earth that can be traced to the moment where, when it was created, right? So, or at least at the moment between blocks, right? So every 10 minutes, and so we shall know very soon, and this does entail improving the underlying protocol. So currently this isn't something that you can do with the open timestamps protocol. It will require underlying protocol improvements, which is what we are going to be working on with the open timestamps team to expand the capability of the protocol as it exists, so that we believe that there, in the future, every single surveillance camera that exists in the world should have all of this footage timestamp to Bitcoin, so that whenever there is a dispute as to what happened. At least, there is no concern of when that camera footage was created. It seems frivolous now how easy it is to generate AI content that looks so real that it's scary to think that someone could make a video and make it look like you did something, and that could end up in court, right? It should at least be harder for folks to do that, and we can at the very least make it so that as the footage is being generated, that's the only moment where it could be hacked. So you would need to have access to the surveillance software itself in order to be able to create fake videos, which would mean that the suspect list would be smaller than what it currently is, which is anyone on social media can create videos of anything. So we shall know soon whether or not this this will happen, and hopefully you can dream with us in envisioning a world where all of the information that we generate online and that it lives in the digital world can be proved on Bitcoin. Because if, if it isn't, then it's just not as trustworthy as if it were.

Israel: 49:37

It really is exciting to be able to check back in with with you, Carlos. And I mean, needless to say, you're making some amazing progress, and I'm sure the next conversation that we have will be equally as interesting. Can what any final thoughts at Carlos? And where can people get in touch? Of course,

Carlos: 49:57

sure. So go to simple proof.com definitely open it. Account. It's free. All you need is an email address, and you can find us on LinkedIn, Master and Twitter. So there's something for everyone, and links to all our socials are on our website. And I guess one one final thought is we are raising our next investment round, our official seed round. And so if you're interested in what we are building and want to help out. Please reach out. We also are looking at expanding our marketing and particularly if you have experience working in the public sector and selling software services to the public sector and marketing it to the public sector, definitely get in touch. We want to meet folks in that space and just it is possible to create a better world with Bitcoin. So keep building on Bitcoin.

Lynne Bairstow: 50:49

Thank you so much, Carlos, that's a great way to end it, and I really appreciate you giving kind of a nod to what you're looking for in terms of growing your team too. Because, you know, we I mean development talent. Developer talent is always needed, but it's great to hear that there are also roles for people who want to get involved with Bitcoin. That may not be a developer, but you know, have experience in public sector or marketing or design or things like this, also can join us in creating this better world. So we appreciate that too. And then, of course, we'll link to all the show notes and including the prior episode, because I think there's also a great deep dive and timeless and what you're doing. But we just can't thank you enough. And I have to say that you are one of the the case studies. Often people say, you know, and I explain what, what Israel and I are doing with build with Bitcoin. They're like, Well, what, what is there? You know? It's like they think of the wallets and the exchanges and civil proof is, is like the first thing that comes to mind when I talk about information integrity and the the prospects of all that can be done around that I think are just enormous. So we really love you sharing your vision with us and the progress that you've done. And thank you so much for you know for all that you do with Bitcoin,

Carlos: 52:02

it's a pleasure to be with you, and I hope that come back soon with more news you.