Well, I hope you're enjoying the Alden Report as much as I am.
I'm having so much fun bringing you cutting edge information and from entrepreneurs, from
thought leaders, from authors all over the world.
And I'm really excited to announce something.
I'm speaking this September, September of 2018 at the Future Tech Expo in Dallas, Texas.
It's actually September 14th, 15th and 16th.
And I'm speaking there.
It's an amazing event.
It's one of the biggest blockchain, bitcoin and tech expos in the world.
People like Tim Draper and Randy Zuckerberg are going to be there.
And you can rub elbows with some of the smartest people in this world, September 14th, 15th
and 16th.
If you text Blue Vase, again, text Blue Vase to 555-888.
You can be my VIP.
I'm going to give you some discounted tickets, but you can also be my VIP.
There's an opportunity as well to have dinner with me and my team.
And we're going to sit down and we're going to talk about this world of cryptocurrency,
of bitcoin, of blockchain and the future of technology.
Again, text Blue Vase to 555-888.
If you want to be involved in this world, if you want to grow in this world, if you
want to take advantage of the biggest opportunity of your life, then you need to be at events
like the Future Tech Expo.
Again, text Blue Vase to 555-888.
I'll see you there.
All right.
Well, my name is Michael Alden.
We are here in Blue Vase Studios and I start out every podcast like this and I say I am
super, super excited for my next guest.
Again, if you're following me on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, you know that
I've been spending a lot of time talking about the world of cryptocurrency.
And I'm really, really excited about not only this world of cryptocurrency, but this blockchain
world, a world that a lot of people would call me a noob and I'm sure my next guest
will maybe kind of also agree with what some of the people who have accused me of being
since I'm kind of new to this world.
But it's an exciting world as an entrepreneur, as a business person, as someone who processes
millions a year in credit card transactions and seeing the fees and things like this and
see also seeing the benefits of the blockchain world.
I'm excited and it's a great time to be alive.
So my next guest, he's an early adopter of Bitcoin, he's an engineer, he's been with
a few different innovative companies, he's got his own company right now that's in the
world of kind of security and protection of your Bitcoin and also other cryptocurrencies.
I just recently saw him present at an event down in North Carolina and I was really, really
impressed with him.
He's got a huge following on Twitter, he's a self-proclaimed cyberpunk and I would call
him as what we would say here in Massachusetts, wicked, smart, Jameson Lopp, thanks so much
for being my guest.
Pleasure to be here.
Thanks for having me.
All right, cool.
So, you know, for those of my, now again, I opened up and I said, look, I'm definitely
a noob and I know kind of what that means, but at the same time, I do see it.
Tell us about your background, you know, kind of pre-cryptocurrency, how did you get involved
in crypto?
Have you always been, you know, on the behind the scenes kind of development side?
Tell us a little bit about your history.
Yeah, I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a computer science degree and spent the first
eight years of my career working for an email marketing company, basically doing backend
data analysis.
When you have a hundred million emails a day going out of a system, you're getting a lot
of interesting data coming back in that needs to be ingested.
And so I was just doing large scale, you know, multi petabyte, highly parallelized cloud
computing was actually one of the first people in the quote unquote cloud computing scene.
So it was very interesting.
I see a lot of parallels being early to that, to what I'm seeing today with cryptocurrency
and crypto assets and blockchain technology and all of that.
And I was, I was never particularly passionate about marketing or email marketing.
It just happened to provide some interesting computer science problems to keep me busy.
And then when I heard about Bitcoin and started looking into it, I got sucked into it pretty
quickly.
And after a couple of years and doing some side projects in it, I realized that I had
the opportunity to just do it full time.
And so I've been full time for about three and a half years now.
So what year was, what year was that when you, when you discovered Bitcoin and started
to really just dive into it?
I stopped dismissing Bitcoin in 2012.
I'm sure I had heard about it before then, but you know, that's when I started actually
like reading the white paper, looking at the source code and learning more about like why
the system was actually more robust than I had originally anticipated.
Yeah, it's interesting too.
So, you know, I, I've read, you know, Satoshi's white paper is what it's only eight pages
long, right?
So is that right?
Yeah.
Cause I read it.
So, you know, you look at some of these other white papers and they're like 60 pages long.
Is the genius in blockchain also the simplicity at the same time?
I mean, you know, it, it, it seems so esoteric to guys like me that aren't tech guys and
somewhat confusing, but is, is the genius really in the simplicity of it?
I would say it's pretty complicated and it's the, the genius is just that all of the, the
various complications tend to balance out and that the game theory behind the system
that Satoshi cobbled together ended up working.
And like one thing that I tend to say a lot is that Satoshi didn't actually create any
fundamental new technologies.
Like what they did is they combined a bunch of technologies in a way that had never been
done before.
And it just happened to create a system that was self-sustaining and quite robust against
attack.
And is it, is it fair to say that, you know, I know that there was, there were some attempts
obviously prior to late 2008, 2009, you know, to, you know, to get into this world of digital
currency and things like this.
I think it was even in the late eighties, early nineties where it started to really
develop.
But is it safe to say that it really kind of took hold as a result of the world economy
crashing?
Is that, is that your take on it or, or, or?
It just happened to be extremely fortuitous timing.
According to a few things that Satoshi said, they said that they started working on it
earnestly in 2007.
So I'm, I'm assuming they just got to a point where they happened to have the idea fully
fleshed out and it was, you know, ready to go shortly after the financial crash of 2008.
Like that's when they, they put the white paper out there.
And then within I think six months or so, the system was actually ready to go.
Like the code existed and the first blocks were created.
So you're referring to Satoshi as the they, right?
So this mysterious character or group, do you know something that we don't know?
Is Satoshi an actual group?
I try to use non-gender specific pronouns because it could be a man, it could be a woman
or it could be a group or, I mean, it could be an artificial intelligence from the future
for all we know.
Isn't that kind of crazy?
So this whole, I mean, this whole world is created in, it's, it's, it's, you know, I'm
an attorney by trade and I'm, you know, taught to kind of think worst case scenario.
And so I think about, you know, what if, what if this whole thing is like a big ruse to
somehow just bring the world to its knees?
Has anyone thought, I mean, I'm sure they have, but isn't that scary in a way or is
it, or is it so far beyond what Bitcoin was now that, that, what it was then to something
that is just really, you know, obviously of use now?
I mean, does, do people think about that?
Certainly, I mean, at this point, the, I think worst case scenario is that it could be a
ruse to bring, you know, banks and nation states to their knees, but I don't think
that it's a ruse to try to move the entire world economy onto a system that has a fundamental
flaw or exploit behind it.
You know, there are some theories that, you know, maybe this group of people was actually
a bunch of NSA contractors and they somehow know something about all the underlying cryptography
that nobody else knows, but it's just highly unlikely that that's the case.
And even if it were, I think the ramifications would be a lot greater than, than just Bitcoin
failing.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I guess that makes sense.
And so I love that your background started out in marketing.
I'm a marketer, obviously, actually I don't do much in the, in the kind of the digital
space.
We still are still kind of dinosaurs the way we, the way we market.
So you know, the marketing aspect of this world of, of cryptocurrency, you know, kind
of how I got involved was because of my background in credit card processing and how we, in the
things we sell and we started to notice just, you know, really how we were being taken advantage
of and I, and I've had millions of dollars literally grabbed from us.
And, and so I started looking at this world of crypto and saying, wow, it's, it's, it
provides solutions.
But you know, I feel like there is a huge need for legitimate outreach into the world
of crypto because, because, because you get it and understand, I mean, you get it more
so than anybody, because all the way down to the, to the, to the source code itself
where it's guys like me, like I, I see the big picture.
But do you feel like, I mean, I kind of feel like there's a, there's a, there's a big
disconnect right between the average person, you know, Mary Smith and, and, you know, rally
North Carolina, right.
And and me and you, and you, do you feel like it's, the gap is being bridged or is it still
difficult for people to grasp?
Oh, it's still quite difficult and you know, I, I would say that I, I mean, I get a lot
of aspects of it, but I had an article that I wrote a year or two ago about why nobody
understands Bitcoin.
And that was more philosophical and also looking at the sociological aspects of the system
and the governance or lack of governance.
And that's one of the things that we're still trying to figure out, you know, we're kind
of wandering around blind testing the system from, from those aspects.
But I mean, I think this is going to be like any other type of technology, you know, that
you can make a lot of parallels to the internet itself and almost nobody who uses the internet
today actually knows how it works.
It's just we've built so many layers of abstraction on top of the fundamental internet technology
that it's easy to use.
And so that's, I expect, you know, Bitcoin really gets to mainstream global adoption.
That's the only path.
If we have to explain the system to people, it's just not going to get adopted.
Yeah, you know, I guess, I guess that makes sense.
You know, I think of it to same thing, like, you know, the the beginnings of, you know,
using this piece of plastic, you know, to transact, you know, I remember the early days
of a debit card, my mom, you know, using that or credit card, and it was just far into people
and there was resistance, right.
But now here we are, essentially, you know, call it, you know, 30 years later.
And now it's, you know, pretty much common practice.
In fact, when I was in North Carolina, we, you know, I went across the street to be good,
right.
And I tried to pay in cash and she looked at me like I was crazy.
Like it threw off.
She didn't know what to do.
It was really kind of wild.
I was like, here I am at a at a cryptocurrency blockchain conference.
And I tried to pay in cash and she was she was confused.
Folks, we are on with Jameson Lopp.
He's an early adopter of Bitcoin.
He's been with a lot of different companies.
He's really at the forefront of this stuff and, you know, is a great, great following,
a lot of great information.
He's also the co-founder of a company called CASA, which we're going to get into that really
focuses on the security, which is a big deal, obviously, in this world.
I mean, recently, even as of this morning, I think it was BitThumb admitted that they
just had 30 million stolen.
And so we hear a lot about hacking, which I think creates a lot of fear.
So we're going to talk about what his company does in a minute.
But if you'd like some more information about Jameson, you could just go right to his website.
It's Lopp.net.
And you can also find him on Twitter.
He's got a lot of great information there.
It's at LOPP on Twitter.
So you know, you know, Bitcoin, it was the first we all know that, right?
Well, at least, you know, for all intents and purposes, it was the first big one that
people know about.
And you know, you talk about and you post stuff about, you know, you know, some of the
things you can, you know, you have the source code, you can, you're looking at it, you're
seeing the transactions, things like this.
What's going on with Bitcoin in particular, that's going to hopefully continue to keep
it as, you know, the top in it?
Or is it really going to be what people just say it's just going to be a store of wealth?
I mean, is it going to be able to rival some of these other cryptos out there that are
trying to be used for everyday transactions?
I believe so, and we've got groups of engineers that have spent the past three years working
on these second layer technologies.
And I think the second layer is only the beginning, eventually we're going to see third, maybe
even fourth layers.
This actually goes back to the internet itself, where if you look at the way the internet
was designed, it actually has seven distinct layers to it from a technological standpoint.
And those layers are actually what allows this decentralized permissionless network
to scale and be able to accommodate everything that we're doing, including right now streaming
audio around.
So if you actually look at the way that Bitcoin itself works, it's actually very similar to
the lowest layer of the internet, the ethernet layer, which is this global broadcast data
mechanism.
And if you tried to scale out the internet by just using that layer, it just wouldn't
work because you would have to be streaming everybody else's audio and video simultaneously
with your own, and the hardware just wouldn't be able to handle it.
So we're building these layers on top, which do things like route the data specifically
through the fewest number of nodes on the network so that you're then able to utilize
the hardware and bandwidth of the network in a more efficient way.
And there are a lot of people that push back on this because they say that it adds complexity
or centralization or whatnot, and it certainly does add complexity.
So then the next thing that is required is to add user-friendly layers of abstraction
on top of the apps so that people can interface with all of these complex things under the
hood and not actually know what they're doing.
So kind of like what I was saying before, people that are generally using Facebook,
they don't know anything about all of the complex routing protocols and stuff that's
going on under the hood.
They're just tapping buttons on a screen, and the rest is just digital magic.
And so that's really what we're trying to do with Bitcoin.
Boy, that was a great explanation, man.
I was like, wow, I'm so glad you said that.
So all right, so where are we then right now with Bitcoin?
Are we at the ethernet stage with Bitcoin?
Yeah.
We're building the TCPIP layers right now.
I actually kind of know that.
I was a hardware software recruiter back in the day, so I used to hear that a lot.
But like we've said, I've been working with space for a while.
But despite all of the really cool cutting-edge stuff that's going on, I'm not actually working
on any of that.
I am still focused on very low-level, simple private key management.
And that's because I think this is a problem that has yet to be fully solved and made
user-friendly.
And that's just another one of the aspects of the system that needs to have extra layers
of abstraction built on top of it if we want the average person to be able to deal with
it.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a great segue into what you're doing with CASA.
In the world in general, human nature, fear is not a bad thing.
It's a natural instinct.
And so the challenge with fear is it paralyzes us a lot of times.
And so because of people's fear, they're unable to move forward or even see something that
is revolutionary.
Just like me and a lot of other people, I was introduced to it in 2014.
I didn't understand it there, and I was kind of fearful of it.
So therefore, I didn't get involved in it and probably lost out on some great opportunities.
But here I am now.
And yeah, so I think the security part is a big deal.
And so we hear, and also negativity in this world, right?
It's great to talk about, people love talking about the negativity.
I never watched the news for that reason, right?
But you're always hearing about, I think it was CoinRail we heard of, and then BitThumb
just came out and said, yeah, we were hacked for 30 million.
And you hear that stuff all the time.
So security is a big deal, right?
What you are working on right now at CASA is awesome.
It is kind of still difficult to understand, right?
The security side of it.
Because if I have a Coinbase wallet and I'm depositing stuff, I feel kind of protected.
But in all reality, I'm really not, right?
Yeah, I mean, security is a lot like any of these other things.
It's a very, very complex topic, and you can dedicate your entire life to understanding
it.
You've been focused on security for over three years.
And there are just so many different pitfalls and mistakes you can make just out of ignorance
that can be catastrophic in a system like this, because there's no one who can hold
your hand and fix problems for you.
That as a result, I think a lot of people end up just moving their money into a trusted
third party, because they figure, well, this is a custodian.
They're basically like a bank, and they have people who are thinking about security 24
7.
Therefore, it's less likely that they will screw up than I would screw up if I was handling
my own security.
And so I'm seeing this trend towards custodianship.
And the downside to that from a high level view is that that's just introducing systemic
risk.
And I mean, that's why Bitcoin was created was because of the systemic risk that occurs
when you have a small number of authorities that control the system.
The incentives are out of whack, and eventually they're going to screw up and do things that
harm all of the users of the system.
So I'm trying to push the needle back in the other direction.
And my main goal is to improve the user experience and basically allow users to be their own
bank without having to think about all of the ramifications of being your own bank.
So tell us a little bit about what you're doing with CASA and how it works and also
how people can get some information about it.
Sure.
So within this crypto asset space, the keys to the kingdom are your private cryptographic
keys.
And so you have to safeguard them from theft, from loss, from any type of event, whether
malicious or non malicious, it could just be, you know, acts of nature that cause destruction.
You have to think about every possible thing that could cause you to lose those keys.
Because once you do, you can't get your money back.
And we are trying to leverage the security properties that you get from hardware key
signing devices like Trezors and Ledgers and merge that with the usability of a mobile
app.
And so if you're using CASA as your vaulting solution, this is really meant to be a long
term storage vault, at least the initial service we're providing, not an everyday wallet.
If you're using it, then you're going to have an app on your phone that you are logged into.
And it basically allows you to manage this three out of five multi signature wallet.
And unlike most other wallets out there, all of these keys are going to be on hardware
devices.
Though you will have one key on your phone in the secure element for some special reasons.
That's not as catastrophic as most single key solutions, because you have to sign a
transaction with three of these different sets of keys in order to do a withdrawal.
The idea is that we are protecting you from hackers and digital theft by keeping all but
one of these sets of keys offline on special hardware devices.
But then we're also protecting you from other types of theft, like physical attackers or
just loss due to natural disaster, because you're going to be geographically separating
these hardware devices.
You might put one in a bank safety deposit box.
You might put one at a trusted friend or family's house.
You might put one in a hole in the ground somewhere.
But the idea being that it becomes extremely difficult to acquire enough private key material
to actually create a transaction and spend out of that wallet.
But then we're also building in a lot of best practices into the software itself.
So that you don't have to be thinking about stuff like, oh, am I checking up on the health
of my keys every now and then to make sure that I'm not subject to things like bit rot
or just making sure that the devices are still there and haven't been compromised?
And so we're going to be having notifications come to you to say, you know, you need to
periodically sign some sort of message to prove that you still have access to this key.
And if you can't do that, we're going to have a very easy to use wizard where all you have
to do is go buy another hardware device and you can just pop it in and we'll basically
do a key rotation for you so that you can bring the security of your wallet back up
to that three out of five setup.
So it's just it's trying to make as user friendly of an experience for non-technical people
as possible.
And we've gotten a lot of interest over the past few months.
I think there's a big gap in the market here, especially because, you know, we've been through
a few bubbles and now there's a lot of people who have more wealth than they probably ever
anticipated having.
And they're very scared of having to actually manage that wealth themselves.
And we're trying to show them that they can manage it themselves with the right tools.
Yeah, I think it's I think it's a great service that you're providing.
And I think it makes a lot of sense, you know, because you do have, you know, like you said,
you just described it perfectly.
People who probably had no idea that they were going to come into this wealth.
They're not technical.
They are scared.
They don't know what to do.
Because when you when I think of, you know, cold storage over a treasure or something
like that, you know, it seems like a great idea, but so many things can go wrong.
What CASA seems to do is like you just said, is even if something goes wrong along the
way, you're there as this service provider to be able to help prevent any sort of catastrophic
failure.
Right.
Because I was watching one podcast with you and, you know, a lot of people said this to
you were like, look, there's probably a few million Bitcoin that will never be accessed
for a whole host of reasons.
One of them is just because they just either lost their password or they lost their hard
drive and they're screwed.
Right.
Yeah.
And there's plenty of stories, including, you know, the guy who tried to convince the
city to allow him to dig up the landfill because he's got like one hundred million dollars
in Bitcoin on a hard drive somewhere.
And what I tell most people is if you want the easiest, most user friendly, high security
solution right now, you go buy a Trezor or a Ledger and that's, that's the best that
you can do.
It's pretty easy to set those up.
But once you start digging into the security model around those, if you're using them as
the default single key solution, then you are probably having to worry about securing
that like 12 or 24 word recovery seed.
And that in and of itself becomes this security nightmare where I believe the vast majority
of people are not going to be able to secure that seed and keep it, you know, redundantly
stored in multiple backup locations.
And it really just becomes this IT problem.
And this is a problem of human nature because I've met a lot of people who have been working
in this crypto asset ecosystem as long, if not longer than I have.
And they are prone to the exact same issues of laziness, of just, you know, not wanting
to do your regular maintenance of checking your backups and making sure that everything
is kosher.
And I definitely feel the pain because I have an annual recurring calendar event to refresh
all of my cold storage stuff and I have to spend an entire day doing that.
And if it takes me an entire day, then I'm sure most people would just find it completely
insane to have to go through that process and they're just not going to bother.
Yeah, that makes sense.
In a second, actually, I'd like for you to, I always say this to people, talk to me like
I'm in second grade and just tell me the differences between a public and a private key in just
a second.
Folks, we are on with Jameson Lopp.
He is the co-founder of a company called CASA.
He's been in this world for a long time.
He's a software engineer, self-proclaimed cyberpunk, very, very knowledgeable, understands
this stuff.
He's ingrained in this world of not only, you know, crypto but blockchain.
He's got a huge following on Twitter.
If you'd like some more information about Jameson, you can just go to lopp.net.
You can also find him on Twitter at lopp and also there from there, you can find his company
CASA and see what they're doing.
It's pretty awesome what they're doing.
I haven't seen a lot of companies out there that are doing as good of a job and especially,
you know, with guys like Jameson, you know, behind it.
So all right, public, private key.
So you know, if you have, if you're using a Coinbase, you know, application, you only
have a public key.
You don't even have a private key.
Explain to me like the differences between a public and a private and why and how they
interact if you could.
Yeah, for a second grader, I would say a public key is like your mailbox address and a private
key is the key that actually unlocks and opens that mailbox and allows you to collect whatever
has been put inside it.
That's easy.
Great.
I understand it now.
Okay.
So but so all right.
But but again, even like with like a Binance or you know, what what?
So where am I?
So I don't use a Trezor.
So so where what what am I going to need?
What am I using a private key?
I mean, I have had some cryptos sent to me before that, you know, that I don't even really
support it by a wallet yet.
But what am I using my private key?
So if you're operating wallet software that you have actually installed on some device
yourself or is a hardware device that you purchased, then that wallet software is managing
the private keys.
The most obvious way to know that this is the case is if like when you're setting up
this hardware or software, it gives you a 12 or 24 word recovery phrase.
That is like the root of all of your private keys that they are then derived from algorithmically.
So if you if you are not using software that is is like that, you're probably using some
sort of third party web based custodian where they actually have the private keys on the
back end and what you actually have is a complex set of IOUs and ways to interact with this
third party to ask them to please sign transactions with the private keys that they're holding
on your behalf.
Okay.
You know what?
That was a great explanation that makes that makes a lot of sense to me.
So you know, we'd mentioned it earlier, you know, hacks and, you know, CASA is obviously
providing a great solution for that, but what about, you know, what I mean, what's going
on with with the hacks, you know, you again, you would kind of like you said, guys like
me would just assume that people smarter than me are paying attention to it and doing a
better job.
But, you know, how come we are continuing to see these hacks in?
I've always talked about this a little bit in my basic understanding is that hacks happen
all the time in banks.
We just don't hear about it as much.
Absolutely.
Is that, you know, yeah, can you explain that like maybe the dichotomy between, you know,
the actual banking system and also even the crypto world, is it different as far as hacking?
Is the crypto world actually better as far as the, you know, the per instance of hacking?
I don't know about that, but the incentives are very different because when you're talking
about crypto assets, you're talking about digital bearer assets where if you can get
to those private keys and move them, then there's no one in the world who has the power
to claw them back.
Whereas, you know, in traditional financial networks, we have heard of things like people
doing wire transfers that weren't able to get clawed back and ACH in some cases.
But but also in many cases, especially the credit networks, it's very easy for them to
reverse those fraudulent charges.
But I think at a higher level, we're just talking about internet security.
And the problem is, as soon as you put any device on the internet, you've now got a huge
problem to deal with, because you basically have put a door up that you are hoping cannot
be breached by anyone you don't want to.
But you've you've also put the door in a place where it's now accessible by billions of people.
And you only have to have one person who's smart enough to figure out how to pick that
lock and get inside and steal all the goodies.
So that's why when we talk about crypto security, we talk about hot wallets and cold wallets.
And really, the best security that you can get when it comes to internet security, whether
we're talking Bitcoin or crypto, or just data security in general, is take it off the internet.
And I mean, that's why if you look at like the way that militaries set up their systems,
they have completely separate networks that are generally not connected to the internet.
They have their own military intranet.
And that's just, you know, this air gap to basically create a moat around all of their
sensitive material that stops any of these internet hackers from even being able to get
to it.
And so that's what we prefer to do for the ultimate secure storage in crypto.
But the the kind of paradox is that if you want to spend this stuff, then at some point,
you're going to have to connect to some device that's connected to the internet.
And so that's why we see most of the high profile hacks are happening at exchanges.
And that's because exchanges need to have automated hot wallets.
And these wallets, you know, have their private keys on computers that are, you know, they're
servers that are constantly connected to the internet.
And I got a lot of insight into this from working at BitGo for three years, because
that is BitGo's bread and butter is providing hot wallet services to companies like exchanges.
And there's you know, BitGo has a lot of really great policies and and things that you can
set to clamp down the security on these wallets.
But at the end of the day, there were still customers that got hacked on occasion.
And it was always due to a problem that the customer did in configuring their own internal
setup.
And so while BitGo is able to offer an awesome service that is protecting I don't even know
how many billion dollars worth of assets.
At the end of the day, they can't forcibly like stop someone from shooting themselves
in the foot.
Yeah.
And then, you know, it's like the last thing you said, I had someone I had a blockchain
developer on her named Samantha Radacchia earlier, a couple months ago, and she gave
the example of well, you know, hacking or getting hacked is a lot of it is, is a direct
reflection of how you are are handling your crypto and how you're maintaining, you know,
your security.
In other words, you go it's like she gave the analogy, go to an ATM and you know, in
the middle of the night in South Side of Chicago or something, and you wave the money around,
well, you're probably going to get robbed, you know, you're posting posting images on
Instagram of your wallet and and and how much money you have there is is is really going
to be a challenge.
So other than, you know, what's going on with CASA, which, again, we're on with Jameson
Lopp.
He's one of the co-founders of a company called CASA.
You can just find out what they're doing.
It's pretty awesome.
You just go first.
Just go to Jameson's site.
It's LLP.net.
You find him on Twitter as well as at LLP and click through there.
What's right now as we talk today, you know, I remember a few months ago or it's been probably
going on longer than that, but I got excited about like the Lightning Network and then
people just recently got excited about, you know, the Bitcoin Cash upgrade as far as their
block sizes and transactions.
What's right now kind of the big thing that that people should be looking forward to or
paying attention to within the Bitcoin and I guess I'll say slash Bitcoin Cash ecosystem?
Yeah, I think the the most development that seems to be happening now is lightning related.
I expect to see an acceleration of development on these second layer networks and proliferation
of different lightning enabled apps.
Of course, there will be merchant adoption and whatnot, but what's more interesting to
me when we're talking about using Bitcoin as a payment rail or transfer mechanism is
actually enabling new types of interactions that are not possible with the existing system.
So while you do hear a lot of people, especially Bitcoin Cash supporters, who get upset because
they can't buy, you know, some small retail thing with Bitcoin because the fees can potentially
be a few dollars.
I think it's more groundbreaking to actually enable types of economic interaction that
are like microtransactions.
So that's like what we're seeing with Satoshi's Place, for example, that came out recently
or these like basically pay per use metered type of services where you don't have to prepay
for a monthly service or whatever.
You can actually pay per pixel or pay per megabyte of bandwidth or, you know, pay for
what you're actually using.
And that becomes even more interesting when you start to combine it with stuff like Internet
of Things or other Internet connected devices.
And I think that, you know, creating an entirely new economy between Internet connected devices
gets pretty exciting.
And we actually see a lot of enterprise blockchain companies that are trying to do that, especially
IBM.
Yeah, I saw their ad for, it was on the Masters and I was just having a watch and it was for
coffee that I think was shipped from Zimbabwe and it was just, you know, and then the end
of it was IBM blockchain.
I'm like, that's awesome, you know.
And then for me on my side, what I'm trying to do as a non-tech person is I'm trying to,
I am trying to reach the masses of those people, the average everyday person that should, you
know, at least look into it.
I mean, making money is exciting for the average everyday person and I'm trying to get people
excited about that.
But I get excited also about how it's changing the world and changing people's lives in third
world countries that, you know, that, or even developed countries where their currency is
just shit and now that they have, you know, they can thrive.
Before I let you go, I wanted to have your, or ask you a little bit about, you know, government
involvement, regulations, you know, where are we at with that?
You know, it seems like, at least the United States seems to be fairly open.
I mean, especially, you know, I watched, you know, Cristian Carlo, you know, his speech,
you know, in early February in front of the Senate Finance Committee talking about, you
know, hey, look, you know what, we need to, we actually need to embrace this, you know,
is in essence what he said.
Where do you see government regulations?
You know, you hear McAfee saying things like, well, you know, there's a reckoning coming
because even those who launched ICOs outside of, you know, proper regulatory frameworks
are going to get hammered and, you know, maybe they should, but what's going on in the government?
What do you see and how do you feel about it?
I've actually been surprised that there hasn't been more of a crackdown by the SEC.
But I also, on the other hand, think that it's going to get out of their control and
that, you know, people are going to start raising money and not really be touchable
by various government agencies.
You know, if it actually becomes a problem, I would expect that a lot of people would
just, you know, go offshore and, you know, find the jurisdiction that's most amenable
to them.
And this actually kind of gets to, like, the sovereign individual thesis.
I don't know if you're familiar with that book.
I got to read that book.
I think it was you who talked about it, right?
You and your partner?
Probably.
Yeah, yeah.
I definitely want to read that.
Yeah, keep going.
I'm sorry.
So the other thing is, you know, ever in the early days when I was in Bitcoin, there were
a lot of trolls who were saying, oh, the government will never allow this to survive.
They're going to shut you down, blah, blah, blah.
And they had a potential point at the time.
But we've gone so far now that I actually believe that at least within the United States
and possibly within many other major governments that there's actually a lot of holders who
are in positions of power.
And one example of that, which I believe came out recently, is like Steve Bannon actually
was recently outed as being like big into Bitcoin and crypto.
There's an interesting story behind that.
It actually goes all the way back to World of Warcraft digital gold mining with him and
Brock Pierce and some other folks.
But I think that there are more people in positions of power that have already realized
the value of this system and they're now incentivized not to try to destroy it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess that's also to where you start to see, you know, the large
institutional money.
And then we could probably talk for hours again about, you know, then now it's going
to potentially erode the very essence of, you know, cryptocurrency as far as centralization
versus decentralization.
But maybe I'll have you back on for that, but before I let you go, any last thoughts
for people listening, watching, you know, should they go and check out CASA?
Where were you at with that?
What would you leave, I guess, let me ask you this one.
What would you say to somebody who is listening now, who has maybe listened to my podcast,
you know, maybe they've learned a little bit about crypto, they're not in, you know, what
should they do right now?
Invest in education because this is the Wild West, because this is a set of new systems
that incentivize scammers of all types.
It's very easy to get hoodwinked by marketing because you don't have the ability or time
to look at all the technical aspects of these systems that are promising the world or promising
to be the next Bitcoin or even better than Bitcoin or what have you.
It's not really possible to invest too much time in education and just need to have an
extra abundance of caution in comparison to how you act in normal systems because there
is no, there's no take backs, like if you make a mistake.
So caution and education is really my two main things is, you know, dip your toes in,
don't just jump into the deep end because it could end in catastrophe for you.
You know, I think that's great advice, you know, be cautious, you know, be a skeptic,
but also be open minded and, you know, take a look at it and if it's not for you, then
it's not for you.
But what I've been trying to do obviously with this podcast and some of the other things
I'm doing is doing exactly what you said.
Let's invest in education, learn about it, study it and then, you know, decide whether
or not, you know, you want to get it.
Why I'm super excited about it, you know, a lot of you have heard my story, but, you
know, I think right now and Jameson, you know, kind of said it earlier, I think we really
are at the beginning of the beginning and the fact that we're alive and the fact that
you're listening to this and the fact that you potentially could, you know, benefit from
this, whether it be monetarily or even through, you know, the systems that are in place, it's
just an awesome time to be alive and I'm super excited.
I didn't understand this tech world.
I didn't understand Bitcoin either.
But don't let that fear and skepticism hold you back from actually, you know, getting
involved in at least getting that education because that's the first step in anything.
I always tell people, I've learned this before, there's two ways to really learn something.
It's doing and it's also teaching and I'm doing a little bit of both and I'm excited
to be able to talk to guys like Jameson.
Jameson, thanks so much for being my guest.
Again, if you'd like some more information about Jameson Lopp, you can just go to lopp.net.
He's on, he's all over Twitter as well as at L.O.P.P.
He's got a lot of other videos, a lot of other information out there.
And check out his company, CASA.
It's really awesome.
I saw their, I saw what they're doing.
I saw the interface.
Are you live now?
Can people, can people use it?
Yeah, so the thing about CASA is that we're starting at the top of the market and working
our way down.
So right now it's primarily going to be for high net worth individuals because we're
charging $10,000 a year.
This is for people who have so much to lose that they're willing to pay for this level
of security.
But over time we have plans to move down market and make these software applications more
configurable and more accessible and hopefully have some sort of freemium product or something
like that.
So, but it is available.
So if someone has a bunch of crypto that they want to protect and have a higher level of
education and be able to sleep at night, they can go to you and work through the CASA app.
Yeah, so we're starting to onboard people, actually just started this week in production.
And it's, like I said, it's a very boutique solution.
So it's not just go to a webpage and sign up.
We're actually going to be working with you.
And this level of service that you get is going to be 24-7, you know, white glove service
basically with dedicated support.
I love it.
I think it's a great service.
I think it's a great option.
And, you know, eventually if it comes down to, you know, to the masses, obviously that
will make sense for you.
But maybe you just stay there because there are a lot of people, right, that do have a
lot of crypto and don't know what to do with it.
Again, so it's been an amazing show.
I'm super excited to have Jameson on.
Again, if you want some more information about Jameson, you just go to lopp.net, find him
on Twitter, at lop, you know, and listen, if you've enjoyed this broadcast, if you're
watching right now on YouTube or if you're watching right now also on Instagram TV, if
you're listening, if you've enjoyed this, if you feel as though that it's added value,
I'd ask you to like it, rate it, share it with your friends because this is valuable
information especially when we have, you know, top-notch guys like Jameson Lopp on.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Again, my name is Michael Alden, and we'll see you...