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Craig Ross Sparrowalk today.
I'm very grateful to him. Craig, do you have a Ronin Dojo?
I don't, Chris. I actually tend to need to tinker around myself. So I need to compile things and try different versions.
So for me, it actually makes more sense to have a kind of a bare bones device that I can adjust as I need.
Do you think that it's like a sacrifice of...
In what ways do you think we're making a trade off by getting a Ronin Dojo as opposed to building my own node?
I don't think you're making much of a trade off at all, to be honest. I think I'm just...
There's trade off. No, man. No, no, no, no, no, no.
I want to know the hardcore view because I know I have to trust the software they put on it.
When I receive it, it has software. I could check it myself, which I should, but I haven't yet. I just plugged it in and it's gone.
I mean, I just received the device and I plugged it in. I didn't check it. I trust the guy that sent it to me.
But I should have checked it because it could be anything. It could be doing anything.
Somebody wanted to attack that thing and replace the software.
And then once I connect my Sparrow wallet to it, by then I should know that it's okay. I didn't build it myself.
I should be on top of things and I'm falling behind on a few things when I trust the developer.
This goes for like closed source stuff too, especially, but with open source stuff, at least we can check it ourselves.
Yeah, sure. I mean, I guess in an ideal sense, you want to have compiled everything yourself all the way down to your kernel.
There's obviously levels to which people can practically address these things.
Practically, we do the best we can and there is a certain amount of trust. We just try to minimize that trust.
So when it comes to the likes of one of these kind of pre-built note packages, you do kind of look at, well, who's building it?
What is the team behind it? What is their sort of ethics? And you do place a certain amount of trust in that, for sure.
If you build it yourself, you obviously place less trust, but it's certainly not a binary thing.
There's always some degree of trust involved because you just are never going to be able to read every line of code going all the way down.
So you just have to choose where you want to jump off the boat, if you will.
And I think it's always good to aspire to get further down the stack and to do more of the things yourself and to minimize your trust further.
But the most important thing is obviously to get you a node in the first place.
So it should not be a case of, well, I want to wait until I can compile everything myself before I'm going to get a node at all.
You need to kind of start on that journey, as this kind of would be my message.
Yeah, like they say, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, right?
That's it. Yeah.
So it's like if you're getting a node, it's a step in the right direction.
But people use the same argument with regard to self-custody, and I have a problem with that.
You know, as far as like people saying it's OK to use custody as a first step, as long as you're buying Bitcoin, it's OK to use custody and then go to self-custody later when you when you feel better about it, when you're more confident about it.
But actually, before we even get into that, I should reference who you are and what you do.
We just jumped in. But you created Sparrow Wallet and Sparrow Wallet for anybody who doesn't know is probably my pick.
In my opinion, the best Bitcoin wallet for you to use on your on your computer.
It's available. It's available PC, Mac, Linux.
That's right. Yes. Yeah.
So, I mean, it's it's the most versatile tool that I've used.
And it's it's, you know, probably the strongest competitor to Electrum, right? And Electrum has been around for years and it's the one we've used to, you know, sync up with our hardware wallets and our our mobile wallets and stuff like that and use it as a node as a
Electrum. I don't even know all the right terminology all the time. All I know is that I can use Sparrow Wallet with my hardware wallets, with my Samurai wallet, you know, my Android phone, and I can use it standalone on my computer to do some amazing stuff.
But what inspired you to jump into this? And when did you jump into this project?
I was really, you know, coming to a point in my life where I'd been doing a lot of managing of people and businesses for a long period of time.
And I just, you know, I'm at heart a creator, somebody who likes to build things. And I really just had this very deep seated need to get back into that.
So I was at a point in my life where that became possible that I could take some time out from purely commercial activities and kind of really focus on just building again.
And then sort of alongside of that, I had this this kind of long period of researching and understanding and diving down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, which had been going on since around 2013.
And just eventually got to the point where I just really had to build something in it. And Sparrow was really what came out of all of that.
It didn't actually begin as a kind of a goal. Well, I'm going to go and create a wallet. It actually began as a more sort of modest intent.
I began it initially as a transaction editor, which is a rather strange thing to build.
But I just kind of wanted to start off with something which was, in my view, at that time, relatively achievable.
And it was only really later on that I realized, well, you have to have some way to create a transaction.
And of course, then the wallet kind of came out to that. So, you know, it was really just wanting to build something which was better than what was out there.
You know, I was trying to create a multi-vendor multi-signature wallet in Electrum at the time.
And I was getting down to actually editing the JSON wallet file to try and create the setup that I wanted.
And it was just really didn't feel good. It didn't feel like a good self-custody, long term sort of cold storage solution.
So I really felt that there was a need for it. And I built it really for myself as the kind of primary user.
And it's kind of I think that that still is largely true.
There are obviously features in Sparrow that, you know, I don't myself need today, but who knows? Perhaps someday I might.
So it's really just been a journey of understanding what it is that I'm building, understanding who I'm building it for.
And as my own needs have sort of evolved, so I have been able to use that input into what I've tried to create.
And was the idea initially wasn't to build an open source project that would be used by many, it was just to build for yourself and then sort of at some point evolved into something that became useful other people?
Yes, I think that's true, to be fair, for many open source projects.
You know, I think it's difficult when you are just sitting there and, you know, dreaming up some idea that it will become as large as it is today.
And I think there's probably many open source developers who have a similar story to relate.
But no, it certainly didn't begin there.
I'm very grateful that today I get to work on something which has the impact that Sparrow wallet has.
And, you know, that really wakes me, you know, gets me out of bed every day and makes my life certainly more meaningful than it would otherwise be.
So I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing, but I didn't foresee it at the start, for sure.
That's what I was wondering, like, what inspires you?
Because you're like kind of a low-key dude, right?
And there's a lot of people using the product now.
It's grown into something bigger.
Is the project like, are you the only developer?
There's contributors too, right?
No, I'm the only dev.
There are certainly contributors in terms of ideas.
So, you know, a lot of the features in Sparrow, a lot of the tweaking and the tuning that you see is just the community coming forward and saying, what about this?
It would be great if it could do that.
There's a huge amount of that in there.
So I'm very grateful to all of those ideas that I've had over the years, which have just come out of other users, other Bitcoiners really just coming forward and asking for certain things.
But there are no other, you know, devs.
There is, I've got a Telegram group which handles the support needs.
And there's a few great admins on there who, you know, I really am very grateful for who put in a huge amount of time to answer questions at all times of the day and night, all days.
So, you know, it's really just, you know, I would like to think, you know, what an open source project can be.
Just people coming to get together.
But from a purely development point of view, it is just me.
And that's kind of how I want it to be.
And there's many different ways of, many different pros and cons, should I say, of going at it.
You can build a team, you can do various things.
But this is the way that I wanted to do it.
And so far it seems to be working out.
What kind of licenses on the software?
So it is the Apache software license, which is very similar in sort of intent to the MIT license that Bitcoin Core uses.
So it's kind of the same license.
The Apache is a little bit more verbose, which I like, I guess, kind of spells it out a little bit more that what the sort of warranty limits are.
But other than that, it's pretty similar to the MIT.
So it can be utilized, it can be forked for nonprofit uses.
Is that how that works?
But if it's for profit, it's against the license?
No, that would be the GPL.
So it's not that kind of far left licensing that some open source projects have.
No, this is a very permissive license.
You can kind of take the code and do most things with it.
It's not specifically trying to limit you to stay in an open source world.
OK.
Yeah, I'm always curious how people come to those decisions, you know, as far as like should, you know, if somebody comes along and decides to take your code.
And you've been so generous with the license, you know, you're putting it out there for the world to see, for the world to use.
You're not trying to make money off of it.
Although I have questions about how Whirlpool works in a sec. But, you know, you're not trying to create this glossy package software that you're going to sell.
You put it out there, your hard work.
I'm sure you're, you know, you're putting more work into it than you're getting paid for.
But then somebody else come along and sort of borrow it, take it and then sell it or find a way to monetize it.
How do you decide? Because for me, like right off the bat, I would be like, I want to I want to prevent that from happening.
But you made a decision to let that happen.
So how do you reconcile that in your head?
And would you feel OK if somebody did that?
Well, it has actually happened.
There is a some other coin who has taken it and has used the code.
You know, obviously, sort of a Bitcoin clone.
Yeah, you know, for for me, it's it's about let's create a true open source project and see where it goes.
You know, that is that's the mission that I'm here to to achieve.
You know, it's it who knows where it ends up.
You know, to be honest, Chris, I'm just on a journey like we all are.
But I'm on a journey with this and I don't know where it's going to end up.
I'm not sure. All that I know is that, you know, I think it's providing value in the world today.
I think that that it it's it's acts in small some small part to move Bitcoin forward.
And that's enough for me today.
If somebody takes the code, folks it and tries to do something else with it, it depends who it is.
But I suspect there would be a community reaction to it because, you know,
you know, today, at least I think the principles of open source are well defended within the Bitcoin community.
Now, of course, somebody might try and take it to do something other than Bitcoin.
But, you know, how much I really care about that, not a huge amount.
So it's for me, you know, if somebody else tries to take it and kind of rebrand it,
I suspect the Bitcoin community would react to that.
How much we'd have to have to see that. That's that's what I I would guess would happen.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a tricky world.
There's so many disputes in the space.
Some of them are petty and some of them are real, you know, over open source and like what is open source ledger just claim to open source their their hardware.
And then it turned out it wasn't really open source.
You know, it's it's just visible, I guess, or whatever they call it.
You could see it, but you can't really do anything with it.
So it's interesting to get different people's takes on it.
I think that's but it sounds like you've been very generous and it sounds like I mean, that's the vibe I get from you is that.
You're very genuine in the space and that you want to do the work you want to contribute.
And you you haven't shown any signs of being somebody who's out to find a way to just grift or try to make money off other people's backs or rent seek or anything like that, which is admirable, I think.
But one of the things that makes that makes Sparrow stand out against Electrum are the privacy features.
So what inspired you to go in that direction? Like, what's your history with privacy?
Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's really I think, you know, I was lucky enough to kind of be, I guess, listening to the right people at the right time.
You know, so many years ago, almost before Sparrow began, you know, I sort of tuned into the right kind of people who were talking about these these things.
And that just kind of gave me an appreciation for what privacy was, you know, because as I'm sure you're aware, Chris, most people don't even think of it.
And I think that that's kind of to go back to the early days. That's where it starts. Right.
You have to actually be listening to somebody and kind of hearing what they're saying about it. Why should we care?
And then, you know, as you sort of get further down, you realize that to to actually have privacy on Bitcoin is really just seeking the default that we're all used to today by and by and large.
You know, we're sort of used to having bank accounts where people can't just see what's going on.
They can't just see what you spend your money on, how much you receive every month.
You know, that's not normal. That's not a normal societal thing. And yet with Bitcoin and an open, transparent block chain, it obviously is.
So it just comes back to saying, well, we just want to get to at least the default of what we have and what we're used to.
So I don't see it at all as something unusual or something, you know, that we are reaching beyond to be, you know, secret or somehow nefarious.
We're just seeking what we're used to, what we've grown up with, what, you know, what is the default in our lives.
And these privacy tools are helping you achieve that on an open block chain.
So that's that's the kind of backstory of kind of why I got into it and what I think about it today.
Who were those people that were inspiring you back then when you started?
So certainly Madadal, you know, has been a strong campaigner in the space for a long, long time.
There's also Max Tannahill, who's been a longtime supporter of the project and one of the admins that I mentioned earlier.
You know, the list goes on. I mean, there's there's many others.
But certainly, you know, those those two names are definitely ones that come come to mind as sort of reasoned arguers for why we need to be concerned about these things.
Yeah, I mean, you were saying it's about it's I mean, I say the same thing and I believe it's about dignity, right?
Like privacy is just we just want to be able to transact in private, not have everybody know what we're doing all the time.
That's not like it's not like we're breaking any law.
Like if I'm buying a can of soup or if I'm buying a magazine, there's no reason that 20,000 people need to be able to know that I did that or see that transaction.
But I guess the problems begin and I think most of the time that's fine.
And with bank accounts, you get that level of privacy at least.
But the problems start when the government or a government has trouble seeing what you're doing.
And for the past 20 plus years, that's become a bigger issue, right?
So a lot of the tech we're talking about does give you privacy on that level.
You know, so what do you think about the sort of the differences between the two levels of privacy and how do you think about that when you're doing your work?
Chris, do you mean privacy from the government when you talk about the two two levels?
Well, I guess what I'm talking about, the two levels are privacy, like period, right?
And then privacy from everyone except the government, which is sort of becoming the acceptable legal standard.
You know, I think more and more as time goes on, we're seeing it with a lot of the stuff that's going on on Ethereum and in some other places where it gets to that point where, okay, and tornado cash, that whole thing.
I'm not sure how much of that you followed.
But the whole idea is privacy is okay until you're private from the government, at which point it becomes not okay because then the government can't see whether or not you're a criminal and they presume you're guilty until they can prove that you're innocent.
So those are the two levels that I'm talking about. Does that enter your mind at any point with the work you're doing?
Yes. So, you know, I think that, you know, whether you are how concerned or how worried you are about this is often a function of where in the world you live.
You know, I live in a country which doesn't have a government with the greatest track record, at least not the government, in place today.
And certainly the default view of the citizens around where I live is that they would be very against having the government having a view of their funds, you know, by just by default, if you will, without a certainly without a court warrant or what have you.
So, you know, I think it's it's, you know, one shouldn't expect. I know that the US view is a bit different. I know the US view is is, you know, by default, you know, kind of more trusting of the government.
And obviously, I'm not referring to Bitcoiners here, but rather kind of the sort of broad, broad view. But, you know, I don't think one should assume that the entire world is is kind of OK with the government having view of everything that you receive and spend.
That's not, I think, something which is which is true. So, you know, I kind of I'm building for a global world and one where there are plenty of governments around the world who even the most left US citizen would consider, you know, privacy from that particular government to be a good thing.
That's that's what I think. Ultimately, you know, the ideal is you're trying to create a tool which allows individuals, no matter where they live, to be able to save in a currency which has the potential of holding value over time and which allows them to effectively hide their funds, not only from people around them who might try to steal, steal it, but from the government itself who might.
Do the same. So it's it's it's an empowering technology for the individual. And that's kind of how I think about it in terms of my my work. I think that it's it's absolutely reasonable for such a technology to exist in this world.
In fact, you know, I would argue that in the struggle between, you know, totalitarian control versus anarchy, it's definitely pulling towards the anarchy side. But it's not it's not trying to be an anarchist.
It's just trying to give individuals the tools to be able to save, to be able to transact in a world where those things are getting harder and harder to do. And for many people, you know, they've had very little ability to do it at all.
Yeah, it's it's interesting because it's.
I hear what you're saying. You're saying because you're living and developing in a country that's not the US. Do you say what country it is or do you rather rather not? Yeah, yeah, I live in South Africa.
OK, I was going to guess based on the accent. I'm pretty good with accents.
But the idea is that you live and work and build in South Africa. You distribute a product globally, but you know, you're basically under the jurisdiction of South Africa.
So the US or the EU or Australia or whoever else wouldn't have any jurisdiction over the work you're doing.
And it's interesting.
That because you're developing.
The way you're developing open source and organically and.
Not sure if you're generating a profit or if you have a company or anything like that, but there's other there's other developers in this space.
Mostly outside the Bitcoin ecosystem, I guess, like Ethereum, especially and others.
That are doing the same thing, but they are super conscious of the way that they're going to be viewed by the US and the EU, you know, with regard to banking and with with regard to.
Regulators and stuff like that to the point where they're blocking like US citizens from accessing their website and they're there. Even some of them are even blocking VPN's now to block US citizens from using VPN's to access their tools, because they're afraid of.
You know what kind of crackdown could come or what effect it could have on their business if they're attacked by, you know, the Department of Treasury or opac or whatever it might be, but it sounds like this kind of stuff.
Like, are you even aware of this kind of stuff and you've chosen to not really think about it or it doesn't even enter your radar as as a open source developer in South Africa?
So the first thing is Sparrow is, as I said before, very much an open source project. It's not a business. I did not set it up that way.
And I do not intend it for it to become a business. So I'm not motivated by commercial concerns. And I understand very much the effect of commercial concerns having run businesses before, you know, I am still involved in certain businesses and that I have founded in the past.
And, you know, I can, I can, you know, attest with a great deal of experience, you know, how it can just have a chilling effect, if you will, on what you do, because you are concerned about how it might be perceived in future, let alone how it is perceived today.
So I very much do understand that, but I'm just here creating a some some code which I put out there and is used by others. I don't run any servers that people use to transact with.
In fact, the only server that I run is the documentation website for sparrowwallet.com and a BTC pay server instance to accept donations.
So those that is the only service that I run. So if somebody downloads sparrow, which is a static piece of code or even compiles it them themselves.
I have no further contact with them in terms of the transactions that they create. And that's a very important distinction, I believe, because, you know, from a legal perspective, I'm not involved in any kind of doings beyond that point.
It is simply a tool which is put out there into the world. And, you know, if somebody uses it for whatever use, certainly I could have had no ability to detect that use, to block it, to do anything with it, because I'm simply not involved.
So that's kind of how I think about it. It's not that these concerns don't occur to me, but I've spent time understanding the legal frameworks around how these things are determined.
And, you know, I'm sort of backing our banking, if you will, on the ability for developers to still create code. And I think, you know, if we take that away, well, then we really have very little indeed.
Then we have effectively lost in the US the First Amendment, you could argue, and the ability to develop on Bitcoin in any reasonable way.
So it's a very kind of broad and I think basic legal principle on which I work. I'm not, as I say, kind of involved on a transactional level, on any of the activities that Sparrow might be used for.
And that's deliberate. Like, it sounds like it's deliberate. It sounds like you have thought it through. And like, have the laws and the attitudes towards privacy throughout the world legally, has that stuff affected the way you develop and the decisions you made, or it just sort of worked out this way?
No, look, to be honest, I began thinking that way simply because I spent my entire career maintaining servers, and I simply had enough. I'm done. I'm not going to maintain any servers anymore. So that's certainly where it began.
But then as things progressed, I realized the benefit of doing so. Now, I want to say that, you know, I'm very grateful for those who do run servers, you know, the public servers that Sparrow connects to and the Whirlpool coordinator run by the Summer, Summer, Wallet are invaluable tools.
So it's not that I don't see the value in it. I'm simply not taking on that burden myself. I kind of see the contribution that I make is in building this tool and putting it out there.
And there are very valuable contributions made by others who simply run service servers who pay for those hosting costs. And they get perhaps a lot less of the limelight. But, you know, it's all part of this ecosystem, and we're all adding to it.
So there is, I think, so long as there are people out there who are prepared to take these steps, steps, and there's always some degree of risk. But I think so long as we spread that risk out as broadly as we can, then it effectively becomes a lot harder to take any one part of it down.
Yeah, that's a concern that I have with Whirlpool and with Samurai Wallet. And I did a chat like this a couple weeks ago with Samurai Wallet. And we talked about that. You know, I think that he's not especially concerned about it, you know, as far as at least that's what he voiced to me as far as the stuff that happened with Tornado Cash and the developers there and the way they were treated.
And obviously, it's a different situation. Like, you know, there was a token involved with Tornado Cash and a DAO and a bunch of other stupid things that Samurai doesn't have to worry about. But at the same time, it is a point of centralization for their product and for your product.
Not centralization in that, you know, you could really lose money, but in that, if it goes down, it's down, you know, and then it's gone. And same goes for other CoinJoin implementations too, for the most part, I think, the ones that use sequencers like that, right?
So, but it sounds like you feel comfy, right? And that you're not necessarily in that position like you. But the reason for I may have been asking these questions is because I'm always curious about what kind of sort of side effects the government doing stuff like that has, you know, and it's like even if you've never had a direct interaction legally or whatever, you know, over this, it's still in your head.
And it's still like limiting what you might do, like on a grander scale, right? It's still, there's that chilling effect that sort of hampers a little bit, maybe some of the innovation in some places or something like that. And that's something I get concerned about because it's a real issue.
Like it could set us back decades as far as where we could really be. Do you think that's a fair take?
Yeah, I mean, sure. I think that, you know, it is there definitely is a chilling effect as a result of the various actions that governments around the world take.
The way I see it is, as I was saying before, there's kind of always a struggle between the kind of far poles of are we heading towards anarchy or are we heading towards a totalitarian state?
And, you know, you can, for the most part, you know, people are kind of just kind of live their lives in the middle and they don't really think about it too much.
But then there are those who will pull things towards either side. And I think on the long arc of history, we are always aware that there is this struggle going on.
So, you know, being part of it, I think, is, you know, is for whatever reason, giving a lot of people in this world meaning and they see value in what they are they are doing.
And I don't think we ever see an end to it. I don't think one side wins. I just think that, you know, you choose where you want to be and where you want to place yourself and your kind of efforts and how much risk you want to take.
And then you act according to that. You know, I'm sort of doing what I believe in what I think is worthwhile. And so are others.
And, yeah, sure. I mean, there's, you know, governments take actions based on what they believe to be the right thing.
And we don't necessarily agree with it. And we all use the tools that we have to counter them. And that's kind of the way that it goes.
And we'll probably go on like that for for sort of ever. You know, that's that's in broad strokes how I think think about it.
I try to understand the risks that I'm getting myself into. But also, you know, be aware that it's better to to have lived with some degree of integrity, of fighting for what you believe in the world that you would like to see and then let others do the same.
Yeah, I think that you're a little more optimistic than me because you said before you feel like we're heading more towards anarchy than totalitarianism. Right. But it's no, no, I believe we'll kind of end up some somewhere in the middle.
I'm not I'm not saying we're going to hit out. We're not going to end up in one or the other.
I believe we will probably keep on some somewhere in the middle because that's what history shows us. Right.
We have we've had certainly had more totalitarianism in the world than we do today.
So maybe you could argue that the long term trend is towards freedom.
You know, I think that there is an argument there, but I don't ever think that the battle is one.
You know, you you have to fight for what you believe in in the world you want to be in every day.
That's important to you. And some some some some people will fight and some will just be happy to live their lives until it affects them.
And then they might choose to to take some action as well. Yeah.
It's so interesting to think about because it's debatable, I think, whether we've seen more totalitarianism in the past than we do today that we're better off today.
When it really depends on what your definition is, if your definition of totalitarianism.
Is the government through the tyranny of the majority, because that's how governments are formed, basically.
Excuse me. If the government can decide whether or not on any given day you can get health care or the government can decide on any given day
whether or not you can buy food. We're kind of almost there, right?
We're kind of heading into that world where the government controls the money, the government controls the supply, the government controls your access to your own money,
which is where we're going with the CBDC concept.
And that's where they want to get to. And that's kind of what we're building the rails for inadvertently with a lot of crypto.
So it's like, how much more totalitarian can you get than having a government that decides whether or not today you're allowed to go and buy a loaf of bread?
I think that even if that's not exercised right away, just them having that ability seems like far more totalitarian to me, like total control over your life
than anything they were able to do in the past. Right?
So it's like, it depends on, I feel like we have to shift a little bit what our idea is of what it really means to live under totalitarian rule.
Do you think I'm off the rails on this?
Well, if you go back far enough in history, you will find a different form of totalitarianism. So if you are one of the poorer classes living in ancient Egypt or the Middle Ages or so forth,
yes, the government might not have direct visibility on your actions, but your ability to change your life is extremely limited.
I mean, there was very, very, basically no chance. We usually had an extremely strict class system, which has existed in almost all societies until quite recently.
And your ability in your life, no matter how hard you try of raising yourself above or into a different class, was almost non-existent.
So you could argue that you were living, in a sense, in a totalitarian system because you had no ability to change your living conditions from day to day to day.
And if you weren't happy with where you were at, which I presume that most people weren't, given the fact that they were probably living in conditions which were unhygienic, difficult to find food, all of those things,
then you could argue that we are in a different place today and we are in a better place.
But I think that, as you said, it really depends on how you define these things.
That's the thing. I feel like we're getting lulled into this new form of totalitarianism, which with the eradication of privacy from the government is sort of facilitating, I guess.
I'm just looking up the definition of totalitarian, and I'm not even sure if it's changed over time, but what I'm looking at says it's a system of government where the people have virtually no authority and the state wields absolute control over every aspect of the country socially, financially, and politically.
So when you think about where we're at today, and sort of just going by the definition and maybe not so much even historically what we've seen, but socially, we already know, at least more in the US, I'm not sure how it is in South Africa these days with the woke nonsense.
But as far as you have to think certain things, or you could be punished socially, you could be canceled, you could eventually have your money restricted. So socially, financially, duh, we all know that.
And politically, obviously, the president of the United States is saying that people on the right are terrorists.
So it's like, I hear what you're saying. It's like, yeah, I'd rather live my life today than be a slave in ancient Egypt. Yeah, I get it.
But at the same time, total control over one's life can still exist, even if you don't, even if you feel happy, even if your belly's full, even if you can do your day to day and not really feel like it's that frog in boiling water effect, right?
It's like, slowly, you lose control. And I'm a firm believer, too, that you can have privacy without having control over your life.
You know, I think that the government could give you say, we're giving you more privacy by doing this or, you know, by giving you decentralized identification or something like that.
But at the same time, you don't have control over your own decisions over the things you do every day.
So it's an interesting conversation, you know, as far as where we are, where we're heading and what it's ultimately going to mean.
It's like a new form of slavery almost, you know? I think maybe I go a little more tinfoil hat with some of this stuff.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the frog in boiling water is an interesting idea because what eventually happens to the frog, he dies, right?
So that kind of analogy breaks down a little bit there because, presumably, the government's not looking to kill everyone.
There's conflicting theories on that, actually, but yeah, go on.
But, you know, so we would assume then at some point, if we carry this thought experiment out to its logical conclusion, that people will eventually get to a point where they'll say, wait a minute, what has happened here?
Presumably, assuming that they still have the power of independent thought, right, that hasn't been taken away.
But at some point, it gets to that stage where they say, whoa, you know, we need to rethink this.
And then hopefully we have the tools in place that people can start to use them, even if they are not as easy as the tools that they are used to.
It will then become more important. And I guess that that's really the kind of balance between the two sides that I've mentioned, kind of, you know, you have this convenient world that everyone's happy in until it doesn't work for you.
And I guess the question is, are we going to reach that point or is there some other end goal where, as I say, you don't even have the power of independent thought anymore to kind of say, well, my life is not what I thought it should be or wanted it to be.
I need to make a change. So that's that's kind of, you know, I guess an open question as to where we're heading with this.
But, you know, I tend to think as Bitcoiners, we're kind of operating on the fringes of society looking into the future.
We tend to be people who think about the future more than others.
And, you know, that gives us a certain it's a bit of a curse in a way because you're less in the present.
But it's also gives us this ability to to guess what might be and then to try and prepare for it.
So I think that that's what we're doing here is trying to create a tool which, you know, is at least available in the future should the mass require it.
Yeah. Did you follow the tornado cash situation as it was happening?
It's still happening. Yes, I did.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And like what implications do you think that that could have or has had or will have for the work that you're doing and that Samurai is doing and that wasabi is doing and stuff on Bitcoin?
Yeah, I mean, it's it obviously does have impact.
And there's there's no no doubt that that case does have impact.
I think that, you know, really what we are seeing here is, you know, the testing of how the in particular the U.S.
government perceives the kind of, you know, non custodial, on my own tools, you know, we have on the one hand, the FinCEN gardens, which is very clear.
And FinCEN is a body with a lot of swing, you know, so it's quite reasonable to argue that we should read their guidance and act according to it.
I tend to think that the OFAC decision was was made in a rushed way.
I don't think it was necessarily thought through on all of the legal and kind of, you know, the sort of regulatory frameworks were thought through before that was put in.
So we'll have to see whether the courts, you know, which version they go to.
And, you know, it obviously is a bit more complex than that.
There's detail, which you've mentioned.
But I think by and large, you know, people, many people have looked at the indictment and said, you know, there's a lot in here that simply doesn't make a lot of sense.
And hopefully, you know, that's kind of the broad theme of what we're seeing.
We're seeing a lot of, you know, legal action being brought.
And then that legal action kind of once the courts eventually get around to it, you know, some some degree of sanity returning to the world.
And I think that that's, I believe, a trend we're going to keep on seeing, which might to many U.S. citizens seem overly optimistic.
But that is never, nevertheless, the trend that I see.
So, you know, that's what, you know, I do believe that there is still largely a rule of law in the places that matter.
And the U.S. is certainly one of the places that matter.
I believe that rule of law will be applied and what, you know, we should not fall into the trap of thinking the government is the law.
They are not the law. They do set some laws. That's true.
They do create that, or at least the current government does create certain laws.
But laws have been created over a long period of time.
There's a very long legal history that can be drawn upon.
I think it's I think we kind of need to have the patience to see where that journey goes and what outcomes there are.
Yeah. If we learned anything over the past three years, I think what we learned a lot of things, you know, throughout the past three years.
But one of the most important is that the tyranny of the majority of the people is actually stronger than the government.
You know, and the government can want to do things, but they can't get a lot of things done without the majority of the people creating that social pressure.
You know, and a lot. So a lot of the impacts of the of the pandemic throughout the world were the result of, you know, I guess the weak minded majority that was sort of led in a certain direction.
And then exercise social pressure, you know, to make things happen, you know, and then they were assisted by the government and the media and things like that.
And I guess that's part of my sort of pessimism.
I don't want to say total pessimism, but a little bit pessimistic about the future of privacy is that it seems like already the the weak minded majority.
Sort of like the, you know, just.
I say this a lot and I'm not really apologetic for it because I really do believe that most people just don't think these issues through and are led by the nose by whoever they think is in power.
You know, so if it's they think the government's in power, they think the media is in power, then fine.
And they're being led towards a conclusion that says that if you try to hide what you're doing, then you're criminal.
You know, if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about.
How often do we hear that? Right. You hear that like a million times a day. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.
You know, and it's like it seems like the weak minded majority that caused the lockdowns that caused the mandates, caused all the social pressure over masking.
They're in the same place on this issue, too, as far as restricting freedoms and and stuff like that.
So that's why I sort of get like, yeah, governments we could, you know, our point of view could maybe take over a government.
And start to push things in a right direction. But when you look long term, you look over the past like 100, 150 years, we're clearly trending long term.
It's like we take, you know, two steps towards that sort of totalitarian way of thinking with regard to privacy.
And then we take one step back in our direction, but then two steps closer to that.
So it's like we just keep on sort of inching closer to a world where there is no more whirlpool because everybody's too afraid to do it.
And there is no more tornado cash attempts because everybody's too afraid.
Nobody wants to go to jail or they're already in jail, you know, and there is no more privacy from the government because everybody's forced to use the CBDC.
And if you don't use it and you have to you have to go to jail, you know, if you don't use it because you have to use it.
And then you've got maybe you've got this little island in the South Pacific where Bitcoiners like have gone to like, you know, create their own little economy.
But they're looked at as criminals. They're looked at as the enemy.
And eventually they're just going to get nuked. Right. Because at the end of the day, if somebody kills you, none of this matters anymore.
Right. So that's where my head goes.
And by the way, people that listen to this podcast always say, well, you shouldn't go on so many rants.
You should let people talk more. But I can't just can't help us.
Yeah.IS what do you think? I kind of if you look back at the advertising that was around in the 1950s, let's say.
at how, I don't know what, there's a good English word for it, but it's sort of how
obvious it is, how effectively how gullible the audience must have been in order for them
to simply read those messages and take them in. And you look at the kind of advertising
that we have had today, and you see that gives us for me a sort of an ability to see things
over a slightly longer period of time. I think that we are all suffering from recency bias,
and I think that it colours our thoughts a huge amount. It's like we are really not rational
creatures at all. So you have to try and think outside of your own lifetime. For me, the
trend of advertising has been one where it is getting increasingly hard to convince and
increasingly sceptical public of whatever message you are trying to get across. And
you've had to be cleverer and cleverer about it, and that trend seems likely to go on.
So I see there a clear sign that, I would argue an optimistic sign that people in general
have gone from a position of, I trust what is being said to me, to I'm going to filter
this and I'm going to consider it before I just simply take it in and believe it. Now,
obviously there's a huge number of people who are still taking things in. I'm not trying
to argue that isn't the case. I'm just trying to say it's got harder. And I think that that
is important when we consider privacy, because yes, sure, today the majority of people are
simply used to being private. It is, yes, perhaps not private from your government if
you are doing nefarious things. And that's kind of the default of why people have got
to the conclusion that so many have. But really, it's likely that if we are living in a world
where we are being surveilled constantly, which is probably the world that we could
be headed towards, then it is likely that privacy will be more center of mind. And I
think you're seeing that. Apple has built their marketing on this idea of I can help
you be more private. And I'm sure they didn't take that decision without a lot of careful
thought to what do people value and what will they value in future. So there is reason to
believe that privacy is going to become a more important thing. I completely agree.
I'm not trying to make the argument that it's an important thing today on a sort of a global
level. But I do think that there is a reason to be hopeful that over time, over enough
period of time, people will see the benefits of it as they realize that the capabilities
of surveillance against them are increasing dramatically.
Yeah, it's an interesting point about Apple, in that they found a way to add more privacy
features for people like us while not affecting the usability of the device, which is really
a problem with a lot of the other solutions out there. Like, God forbid you want to use
graphene or something like that, and you just totally sacrifice usability. But on iOS, it's
optional for the most part. Except, you know, the encryption on the iMessages and stuff,
I don't think is optional. But the end to end encryption, I would I would guess that,
like the amount of iPhone users that are using the advanced security, the encryption on their
backups and stuff like that, I bet you it's really low, though. I bet you it's like 5%.
Right. I think it's like, you because of the steps you have to take, you have to create
that private key or C phrase or something like that. And you have to go through all
these steps. And you have to basically take responsibility and give up the conveniences
of iCloud. I'm the only person I know outside of crypto that's that's using it. How about
you?
I mean, it's it's I think that you mentioned the one point that, you know, taking personal
responsibility is this very foreign thing for most people in the world. And certainly,
I come up against that, as you can imagine, all the time, you know, people, if I was to
onboard somebody to sparrow for the first time, who's only ever held on an exchange,
you know, there is obviously this point where, you know, you'd say to them, listen, you can't
lose these 12 words if you lose these 12 words and your cold card, for example, sample, you
know, your funds are gone, you know, that to most people is quite foreign. And I think
we've got a long way to go to kind of return people to an idea that they are actually responsible
for their own lives, whether we'll get get there or not, again, who knows. But I do think
it's it's it's worthwhile to try, because the alternative is a world where we place
all of our trust in a very small set of people who may or may not. I mean, it's it's it's
really not really even relevant whether they have our best interests at heart. The point
is they will never be able to cater towards the specific needs of every person on this
planet. It's just it doesn't scale. So, you know, I do think it's it's a worthwhile fight
to try and convince people to take some responsibility in their lives. And there will be various
tools that will allow you to take, you know, everything from complete responsibility to
shared responsibility. And that's great. You know, we need people to go on a journey. It's
kind of a little like the different kinds of servers you can connect to in the Sparrow
wallet. You can connect to your own private Electrum server, which is about as private
as you can get. You can connect directly to your Bitcoin core node, which is pretty similar.
And then you can connect to a public server, which is obviously then you're sharing your
transaction information with that server. And, you know, when I first began the Sparrow
journey, I was convinced that this was going to be a tool that you could only connect to
your own node. There was going to be no other way to do it. And then I realized that what
you actually need to do is to take people on a journey. So people, you know, if you
were to try and introduce, for example, your neighbor and you said, well, before you can
even hold this currency, you need to have this whole you need to go and order yourself
a Ronin Dojo. You need to set it up. All of these different things. You just wouldn't
have any success in trying to convince the majority of people. And if you can instead
provide them with a gradual path with certain, you know, wins along the way, then you have
a much better hope of success of getting them to that end goal. And that really is the point,
right? We're trying to onboard people. We're trying to get them to take personal responsibility
over their money and in a more general sense over the privacy in their lives. So, you know,
that for me is I think, you know, there is room for different levels of solutions in
it. You know, we can we can argue whether some solutions should be there at all. But
the reality is that they are and people will use them. And, you know, we can advise them
not to we can say, well, take your funds off an exchange, as I will always say. But the
reality is the the exchanges there, it is the first port of call for many people as
they enter this space. And frankly, without them, they might not have entered it at all.
So at least now I have the opportunity to come in and say, well, maybe you need to take
your funds off. Maybe you should be using them in a more self custodial way. And these
are the benefits that you will get. And they are already primed to understanding at least
the basics of what Bitcoin is, you know, having bought some. So, you know, I think that it's
not a black and white thing. It's it's a it's a journey. And you need to be open to people
taking that journey in different ways and over different periods of time, but ultimately
having empathy for it and for their own kind of personal experiences and how they impact
on the decisions that they take.
Yeah, I get that. I agree with you. I think, though, that the journey, I guess my big thing
is the journey has to start with some level of respect for self custody. Like it has to
start with some appreciation for what Bitcoin actually is and what makes it unique and what
makes it more than just a speculative investment. Right. So it's like you have to if you're
not there. And with that being said, even me, you know, in 2015, I was messing around
with Bitcoin. Just I didn't understand it. Right. I was using it on Coinbase. I was basically
buying it to spend it on a trip to Asia, you know, spending on guest houses and stuff like
that and food. So I didn't hold it, by the way. I was buying it at two hundred dollars
and selling it probably at one ninety nine. So no, I didn't get rich. But that was my
first step. It wasn't until 2017 that I really appreciated Bitcoin for what it was, you know,
as an unconfiscated form of money. You know, that's, you know, basically the only way in
the world that you could pay somebody anywhere in the world without needing permission of
a government. And my concern, I'll tell you my concern. My concern right now is that most
people I think that hold Bitcoin. Well, we know this. Most people that hold Bitcoin are
holding it on an exchange and they don't seem to have any desire or reason to take it off
the exchange. Now, a certain percentage of them will over time. Maybe, you know, they'll
fall down the rabbit hole slowly. But I think that the percentage of people who are just
holding Bitcoin as an investment is growing. And that's in no small part thanks to the
way Bitcoin has been promoted, like, you know, in the sort of community sentiment around
store value. But here's the bigger issue. The bigger issue is that now we're entering a
time where we're going to have ETFs. We've already got GBTC holding tons of Bitcoin out.
So it's not just the exchanges, but it's these other investment vehicles. BlackRock is trying
to launch this ETF right where it's going to hold potentially billions of dollars worth
of Bitcoin. And ultimately, at some point, Bitcoin is going to just become what people,
what the majority wants it to be, right? What they think it should be. And, you know, I've
tweeted about this. It's got some attention, but I do see a future where BlackRock becomes
this massive holder of Bitcoin in this ETF. And maybe it's other companies too. It could
be not just BlackRock, it could be 10 different ETF companies that decide, you know what, none
of the people holding this ETF care about decentralization because if they did, they
wouldn't be holding the ETF in the first place, right? They'd be holding, they'd be self-custodying.
So let's centralize Bitcoin. Let's move it to a proof of stake system that we control.
You know, let's call that Bitcoin. Most people that hold the ETF will be fine with that because
they can make the case that it's better for them and it's more regulatory friendly. They
can get the media behind them. They can get the government behind them. They can get the
majority behind them. And when you have all those things combined, all of a sudden you
have the name. You can take the name with you to your new system. And yeah, me and you
will still be out there like Roger Ver basically like, no, this is Bitcoin over here. You know,
this thing that was supposed to be 21 million, this thing was supposed to be proof of work,
this thing is supposed to be, we're still doing that over here. But the world will sort
of shift off in a different direction because ultimately this whole thing is just about
social consensus, right? It is a social contract to a certain extent. So that's a real concern
of mine. I think that the majority not respecting self-custody and not understanding it, if
we don't make that the first thing that they digest about Bitcoin, it's like we've already
lost in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, I think that there is certainly
an argument that that might happen. We could argue that the block size wars were similar
to that and provide some example of the way it could go. My view is that if it happens,
there will just be one more fork. And I was listening to your interview with Lynn Eldon
and I think her reply on this was very to the point. The pros and cons of that fork
versus the sort of original kind of proof of work will then stand in the free market
and we'll see what people actually want. And that will be what it will be. The reality
is that the majority of the time you have these centralized systems who think they know
better from the majority of people doesn't often end up turning out to be the better
system because it is so very hard to plan and to determine what is the better system.
One of the things that I really like about Bitcoin and I think is perhaps its strongest
attribute of all is the confidence that we have that the monetary system is not going
to change. Now, if you're talking about a fork which would change to proof of stake,
which would inflate the supply, which would do all kinds of other things, then you have
removed what I believe to be one of its major selling points that I think a lot of people,
even if they don't appreciate it when they first get in, certainly come to appreciate
over time, is just that simple ability to plan and predict what is going to happen into
the future, regardless of whether you custody the funds yourself. And of course, those kind
of selling points will apply to the likes of BlackRock as well. They will see the benefit
of simply holding on to the current system because they can plan into the future, which
all businesses want. They very much want as much certainty into the future as they can.
And it is ultimately the death of all business is because of change, all successful kind
of business anyway. So the less change they have, the better. And they want the stability,
particularly when it comes to the kind of money that they are using. Any instability,
any kind of instability that we have in the field world today creates a great deal of
cost for every business in the world and certainly one where they can't maybe conceive of a world
being different. But I'm sure that many of them would prefer not to be spending lots
of money in Forex and have difficulty sending their funds overseas. I know I certainly would
running a business. So I think that there are arguments to say that they might change
it, but there are also arguments to say that it's in their best interest not to change
it. Yeah, but we have to look at what's possible. We have to think adversarially, right? We
have to look at here's how it might go. How could we possibly defend against BlackRock,
the government, the media, the majority hijacking the Bitcoin name and even potentially saying
if you hold the old Bitcoin, you're now breaking the law. It's like there's all these different
outcomes. I think that too many people stop thinking about Bitcoin at the edges of the
actual Bitcoin ecosystem. They think about, okay, we have the blockchain, we have the
code, we have the miners, we have the nodes, we have, this is our little world. But they
don't think about the fact that it's basically Bitcoin is like a planet and you could have
a comet coming straight at it that could just completely blow it up. It's like there's a
lot of things that could potentially blow up Bitcoin that wouldn't come from within,
that would come from the outside. The most obvious being it just gets outlawed one day
and you go to jail if you hold it. That's the most obvious thing that could potentially
impact it. Now, yeah, people would argue against that too. But my point of view comes from
not the side that's optimistic like, yeah, even if that happens, we'll find a way. That's
not how I think. How I think is this could happen, how can we make sure that we can be
bulletproof enough? How can we strengthen what we have today enough to the point where
we can defend against these kinds of attacks so it doesn't shatter us into a million different
pieces? When I think about this kind of stuff, I see the way the world is going, I see the
way people think, I see how stupid most people are when it comes to privacy, when it comes
to self sovereignty. Most people, 90% of the world doesn't have any concept of what it
means to be a free human being as far as thinking for yourself, not relying on third parties,
not relying on governments, not relying on banks. Most people don't even know central
banks exist. They just go out, buy the McDonald's, go to the park, sit there, go watch some TV,
go home. It's like they use their cell phone, they forget how they pay for it. They turn
on Netflix, they get mad when their show's not there, go to bed, wake up, do it again.
Or they work for the government and they go to work and they expect something, they expect
this, they expect that. I mean, people freaking, we're in a world where people download an
app on their phone, they have no job, right? They're sitting there, they got no job. They
download an app on their phone that lets them drive their car and connects them with people
to get in the backseat of their car, drive them from their house to Burger King. And
then those people who just downloaded an app go on strike and demand higher wages. It's
like we live in this crazy world where people have no concept of reality. So I do not expect
most people to value the stuff we value. So it's like what I want to think more about
is how do we put up this force field around this planet Bitcoin that'll deflect all this
stuff that's definitely going to come our way, all these asteroids and comets and meteorites.
Because Bitcoin is the best chance we have, I think right now for a free financial future.
And it's like if one of those things hits, even if we shield against 100 of them, one
of them gets through, whether it's BlackRock or something else, it could just impact that
level of freedom that we want to offer for a very long time. So just long story short,
that's why I'm so against people that are out there saying, oh, it's fine to start with
custody. It's fine to just let people buy Bitcoin on exchange. We'll eventually get
them off. Yeah, you'll get 5% of them off, but the other 95% are going to turn into your
worst nightmare in 5, 10, 20 years when they're trying to fork away or nobody cares about
decentralization and they're just trying to number go up. Let's go proof of stake. So
yeah, I get a little tinfoil hatty and conspiracy theorists, but that's just who, that's how
I do it. I think one of the mistakes we can make when
trying to predict into the future is taking our current world and saying, well, only one
aspect of it is going to change, but it's likely that actually much more than that will
change. So what people believe is important in the future isn't likely not to be the case
of what they think is important now. And the other thing is, I think that we can all see
as Bitcoin is that this grand fiat experiment that the world has embarked upon is not doing
so well and is likely to come to some kind of conclusion probably sooner rather than
later. So what does the world look like and what do people value on the back of that?
Because if that is truly as dire as some would, you know, as if we are in such a debt laden
world and that debt can never be paid back and the only way to deal with that fact is
to inflate the money away. And what effect does that have on the world? What kind of
chaos does that bring? How does that change people's views on what is money? And will
they care about what a central bank is if the inflation is 20, 30, 40 percent? I can
assure you that Argentinians know what a central bank is. You know, that's why this presidential
candidate has received the votes that he has. So it's just a matter of what is important.
And currently in the US right now, it's simply not that important. That is just the truth
of it. And that's why, Chris, you are seeing what you're seeing and feeling the way that
you are is because, you know, it's simply the honest truth is it's just not that important.
You have a fairly good financial system and it will likely be the last to fail. So, you
know, but there are plenty of other places in the world who, you know, I'm not saying
that they know what Bitcoin is. It's still very small, but certainly they feel the need
for something better. They're looking for something better than what they have access
to today. And I think that we're in very early Bitcoin days here. That's in fact a general
thing. Most of the takes I see on Bitcoin are, in my view, just far too early to know.
But I think that, you know, when we try and predict into the future, A, it's very hard
to know really where we're going on sort of a medium to long term basis. It's extremely
hard to be able to predict that far out. And secondly, you know, we just we're really beginning
this journey now and there's a lot of education that is required. So, you know, you were saying,
well, what can we do to protect against this asteroid? Well, I think the best thing we
can do is to educate. I really do. And, you know, there are Bitcoin educators around this
world who are doing great work, who are not necessarily all that well known even within
the Bitcoin community. But they are educating thousands of people around what is Bitcoin?
Why is it important? What makes it different? Those that's, in my view, the work that really
needs to happen in order for us to have a chance of this being the freedom money that
we hope it will be.
Yeah. And I think having these conversations too, I think is really important. You know,
I think my philosophy on that is, yeah, I mean, obviously, the educators in the space
are critical. And it's the way I learned. And I think it's all very, very important.
And what I try to do with this and with other stuff is have the uncomfortable conversations
about the grander sort of world that we live in, you know, how it could affect us and to
look at Bitcoin as a planet with asteroids and comets coming at it and think about it
from that more philosophical point of view, because I feel like in the long term, that's
the way like Bitcoin is always going to exist in a real world with real guns and real jails
and real tyrants, right? It's like it's always going to exist in that world. So in the longer
term, as Bitcoin gets more important and gets more powerful, it's going to have to fend
off more of those attacks, the real world attacks from the outside. So I'm hoping that
by having conversations like this with people like you, who really understand this stuff
and who really have thought it through, that it'll give people, people need to think about
it just more holistically, you know, more in a grander context, I think, for us to really
have the survival that we want. You know, I think, yeah, it's one thing to really understand
Bitcoin within that ecosystem. But then it's almost like the it's like the graduate program,
right? It's like first you understand Bitcoin, that's, that's undergrad. And then, you know,
the graduate, the master's degree is like understanding how Bitcoin can survive in the
real world. Yeah, it's like that's, that's sort of where we have to go with it, I think,
because if we don't, we're just gonna get caught off guard one day and just kind of
that comments gonna come, we're just not going to be ready. But well, listen, man, I've kept
you over time. But I really appreciate you being here. How do you by the way, how do
you make money? Do you do you get donations? Or what is it? Money wise?
Yeah, yeah, there's certainly you can donate sparrow wallet.com. There are some fees from
Whirlpool that help. But as I say, it really is an open source project. It's not a business.
I'm not trying to make it into one. I'm grateful for every donation that I get. For me, it's
a sign that people value the tool and value what it brings to their lives and are prepared
to part with their hard earned sets to show their appreciation for what I do. So I certainly
value it more than perhaps most. Yeah, okay. So every Bitcoin is listening to this. If
you've never used sparrow, go download it and use it. And it replaces ledger live, it
replaces tools that you're using with your hardware wallets. For the most part, you still
need ledger live to like do firmware updates and stuff like that. But as far as your transactions,
it's a way better way to use those kind of tools. You can obviously have software hot
wallets as well. So I recommend just downloading it playing with it, trying it out. If you've
never Whirlpooled, get into that world. Run your own node. Obviously Ronin dojo is one
way to go. There's others out there or you could build your own. And if you go to sparrow
wallets website, you can also jump into their telegram and just keep that open in your app
and ask questions there. I know Craig's there a lot. There's others in there too, who answer
questions and it's just a really good community, good ecosystem, which is rare in this space
these days, but it just, it just feels good. You know, it's, it's one of those, uh, everybody's
there for the right reasons. So that's why I appreciate it. But Craig, thanks for joining
me today. And maybe we should do this again sometime.
Awesome Chris. It's been great to chat.