Ivan Makedonski reveals how fiat breeds digit addiction, and why Bitcoin is the way back to truth and freedom.
In this introspective episode, Ivan Makedonski frames our modern financial system as a “digit addiction pandemic,” equating society’s dependency on fiat currency and digital abstractions to substance abuse. He argues that centralized authorities—“digit lords”—have manipulated humanity into craving ever-increasing numbers that no longer reflect real-world value, fostering irrational behavior and systemic fragility. Unlike fiat, Bitcoin offers a fixed, incorruptible standard of value—“absolute scarcity”—that reconnects us with reality. Ivan’s personal trauma, including the loss of his mother and battles with inheritance under fiat law, deepened his conviction that Bitcoin is not merely a superior technology, but a moral and psychological remedy. True liberation, he insists, comes not from holding Bitcoin, but from using it—transacting, building, and integrating it into daily life. For Ivan, Bitcoin represents a profound societal detox, and its widespread adoption will come not through theory, but through lived experience.
Ivan Makedonski’s conversation with TFTC serves as a spiritual call to arms, urging listeners to recognize fiat currency as a form of digit addiction that disconnects us from truth and value. Rooted in personal pain and philosophical conviction, his message is clear: Bitcoin is not just better money—it’s a path to liberation. By embracing Bitcoin through real-world use and community building, we can break free from the synthetic systems that dominate our lives and reconnect with authenticity, integrity, and economic reality. The transformation is inevitable—the only question is whether we’ll be ready to meet it.
0:00 - Intro
0:33 - Digit addiction
7:25 - Digit lords
10:48 - Fold & Bitkey
12:24 - Shaking the addicted mind
15:39 - Tragedy caused by fiat
21:27 - Life as unit of account
26:10 - Unchained
36:39 - Getting clean from fiat
31:28 - Building the bitcoin standard
40:57 - Misty Breez
55:20 - Speed of adoption
57:47 - Go and experience bitcoin
1:01:36 - Movie shill
(00:00) they are manipulating all of our lives Anybody that can create digits out of nothing and put it in one computer and buy stuff with it that's for me is the digit lords And they turned us into addicts Imagine the temperature that we measure stuff Uh it's always changing It will be chaos For the first time ever somebody figured out that exact same connection to reality can be applied to value in the form of Bitcoin Ivan welcome to the show I love the uh the fishbowl camera lens that you've got going on here Uh yeah like uh uh like we
(00:43) call ourselves that we are in an echo chamber Now it appears that I am Yeah Thank you very much for the invite It was I would say a long road to get here at least for me but very very appreciate I am a fan of the show for years now Well I'm glad to have you on particularly to talk about the piece that you wrote the digit addiction pandemic see drawing parallels to substance abuse and our our addiction to digits in the digital world And I think maybe that's a good jumping off point is what what inspired you to draw these
(01:24) parallels between substance addiction in our relationship with digital digits and in the modern digital world Um yeah I would say that the first main idea uh was I was struggling how to finally separate the outcoins and tokens and all sorts of stuff from Bitcoin uh but uh when you write a piece you are thinking h how do I structure it in a whole cohesive timeline sentence narrative stuff like that and I would say out of all of my articles that I wrote that thing uh came to me to unite all my thoughts into this addictions to some uh
(02:17) abstractional disconnected from reality thing uh and that's how it became the addiction and pandemic is just trendy so that's why I used it uh but uh yeah that was the initial thought how do I separate bitcoin from everything else as a thought uh but through this narrative of addiction I make comparisons between all sorts of stocks bonds uh tokens in games views in social media with uh the addictions of chemicals or anything else that we could get ourselves addicted to Yeah So I guess let's really dive into it like
(03:01) defining digit addiction how it manifests and the negative externalities that emanate from our addiction to these digits in our in our modern age Yeah Uh okay So the the main idea about digits I do believe that digits were fundamental for uh our society because to invent uh zero was a big deal to invent from one to nine The Arabic numbers were awesome stuff But when you use those abstractional digits to connect them to reality that is extremely useful And that is uh numbers for uh temperature numbers for length numbers for time odd
(03:52) sorts of stuff But when you connect all those obstructional stuff to things that are disconnected to reality uh like uh fiat currency or all sorts of derivatives out of that that is where the problems occur and but now our society that is used to numbers going up in houses in bonds in all sorts of stuff even though in nominal value it increases but in purchasing power decreases we get addicted to that thing we need it to go up uh because if it goes down we crash and the whole system crashes and we don't want that But if
(04:35) you play that over uh more than a century this is where we end up And now we are just so addicted to those numbers that we need them to go up that uh that that is for me the parallel that that is now the addiction and uh we are so fearful of that uh those numbers going down that we are not willing to sacrifice anything else Yeah it's almost a how am I trying it's it's subversive because while it's very clear that this addiction does exist and it is pervasive it's not well understood by the people that are addicted to it They
(05:21) don't they don't understand why their monkey brains are saying "I need this number to go up uh if it doesn't my life is worse off and this really gets to the core of the problem which is the fiat currency and I really like how Matthew Mazinius from porkopoulos economics defines fiat currency it's this Wik Wickenstein's ruler where the sort of measurement is always changing and so you you need larger sort of base uh base units to to attain the same purchasing power in the real world And I think that's something
(06:03) that Bitcoiners have been trying to do for for some time But I really like the way in which you draw the parallels and define it as this digit addiction Um and this structure of the fiat monetary system really fosters this addiction Uh yeah And you even you um you are using that imagine the ruler is changing all the time But if you apply the same thinking imagine the temperature that we measure stuff uh it's always changing It's the exact same manipulation and uh uh or weight Imagine that you get up on the scale the the
(06:46) weight is completely different than the day before the year before and stuff like that it will be chaos All those things are extremely valuable But now for the first time ever somebody figured out that that exact same connection to reality can be applied to value in the form of Bitcoin And now this is the base uh of measuring value Uh the only thing that why we are not completely there is that we're not all using it So the network effect is not uh 8 billion people It's still in a few million I would say Yeah And again it goes back to
(07:27) this misunderstanding of what what money is and why you go out and try to accumulate it and hopefully accumulate more so that you can maintain your quality of life in a in a world of perpetual fiat debasement And that debasement is controlled by what you define as like digit lords So let's get into digit lords who or what they are and how they force us into this life of addiction Yeah Uh well when you design that system uh why it's I I love that narrative is that now I can separate um from this uh thing that Jeff Booth big fan uh that he
(08:08) says it's not they it's we But I disagree with him that in the field system there is a day and that they are the people that are manipulating and distributing the um those numbers the anybody that can create digits out of nothing and put it in one computer and buy stuff with it That's uh for me is the digit lord And uh I I talk about in the different industries uh that uh in uh fiat currencies that's the obvious thing But then if you go to stocks to bonds what is a bond bond is something that should represent money But it makes
(08:51) it more appealing that we're going to give you yield Like if you go to money itself you don't need a yield Money should be money It shouldn't be something that multiplies itself because somebody said so Uh so uh yeah those are for me the digit lords and how it fit with the narrative of the addictions that they are manipulating all of our lives through the digits and they give some authority to digit distributors the brokers the bond uh dealers or I don't know uh every industry has its own uh digit dealers and they turned us into
(09:35) addicts because uh one last thing that I'm adding to this equation is that every single one of those things has some benefit because it if it had no benefit they were not going to addict us to it but if you get addicted to that particular benefit and let's say for fiat currency the uh the easiness of use of the dollar globally now if you try to drop It's so incredibly hard So that means yeah you got addicted to that benefit And it's uh also uh fits why orange pilling is so hard because people that are used to the fiat systems and getting
(10:20) addicted to convenience or any type of benefit they are used to It's so hard to let it go and get on a completely different standard And uh we all cooperate The most beautiful thing that uh I see in Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is not asking So either you understand and choose it or you suffer the consequences of not understanding and not use it Listen freaks I know you're tired of me talking about fold but I'm going to beat the drum I'm going to beat the dead horse If you're a Bitcoiner living in the United States and you're not using
(10:58) Fold I'm just going to ask one question What are you doing you're leaving sats on the table They've got gift cards They've got their debit card You can use your credit card Just connect your credit card to the Fold app Use the Fold out to pay off your credit card and you're going to stack your credit card points and Bitcoin as well They even teamed up with Crowdalth to give their members Fold Plus membership at no cost Don't leave SATs on the table Go sign up for Fold today Go to tftc.
(11:27) io/fold There's nothing to lose except sats that you could have stacked Sup freaks this rip of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey Bit Key makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose It is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two or three multisig You have one key on the hardware wallet one key on your mobile device and block stores a key in the cloud for you This is an incredible hardware device for your friends and family or maybe yourself who have Bitcoin on exchanges and have for a long time but haven't
(11:57) taken a step to self- custody because they're worried about the complications of setting up a private public key pair securing that seed phrase setting up a pin setting up a passphrase Again Bit Key makes it easy to use hard to lose It's the easiest zero to one step Your first step to self-custody If you have friends and family on the exchanges who haven't moved it off tell them to pick up a bit key Go to bit.
(12:18) world Use the key TFTC 20 at checkout for 20% off your order That's bit key.orld code TFTC20 Yeah I guess that gets to the question like how like addicts have a problem right they never want to admit they're addicted to something I'm not sure if you're aware of a show that was famous here in the United States many years ago called Intervention but it was essentially uh a family or group of friends would get together and try to intervene with uh an individual in their lives who was addicted to something And that was one of the running themes of
(12:55) the show is the the um the common occurrence of the addict basically having this aggressive reaction to the intervention itself saying "I'm not an addict I don't need help I'm fine I'm going to get through this by myself and I don't need to change It's not that bad." And and I I guess how how do you go through this detox and this intervention process with individuals who are stuck in fiat land how do you how do you shake them and say "Hey you you have a pretty massive detrimental addiction that is that is not good for
(13:32) your quality of life Like you need to get off the sauce." How do we incite that detox process uh I would say for every person is different but uh that detoxification happens outside of the comfort zone and that's why they all of us resist I'm not immune to it like I'm used to the things that are convenient to me Uh so just because I understood some part of Bitcoin doesn't mean that I'm not addicted to other stuff But uh it always happens outside of the comfort zone and if you're forced out of um your comfort zone there is big resistance but
(14:17) uh I'm also fan of Wimhof the Iceman if you're familiar that he recognized that if you go into the cold but if you're willing you know that there will be pain that there will be resistance something completely changes in our minds of how you perceive that exact same experience Uh and that is where our brains our bodies everything grows But if we are forced uh there's a lot of resistance and you want to go back You you want to get away from the pain But if you're willingly going outside of the comfort zone that's where the most expansion
(14:59) happens mentally and physically And uh Bitcoin has both I would say my experience was definitely a mix of two I had an enormous pain in the fiat system and when I connected Bitcoin to uh the potential saver for my pain uh that's why I became a believer very fast But going back to your question I I can say like those are the two choices and uh we're going that there in my view anyway but it depends how people will get there Majority will be out of pain Yeah Well let's pull on that thread of your experience feeling pain in the fiat
(15:45) world and recognizing Bitcoin as a potential solution How how did that manifest okay Uh a little bit of context Uh so the first time that I heard about Bitcoin was 2013 But I was busy in my life And uh what I was busy with is that in 2008 when the financial crisis happened my mother was a pretty successful lady in Bulgaria And in 2013 she said "I want a divorce uh with my father It was too big of uh problems happened Uh just the financial stuff were things that putting uh fuel to the fire I would say And in 2000 early 2014
(16:34) my father decided to kidnap and kill her And that was my pain that for 7 years I was dealing in the fiat system with uh the inheritance problems with all sorts of stuff Uh yeah with lawyers with relatives with my smaller sister I had to deal with the problems Uh nobody asked me life is like that deal with it And when I finally decided to study Bitcoin in 20 December 2021 and I connected that if all the assets of my mother were in Bitcoin then they were going to die with her maybe my father was going to think about if he
(17:22) really wants to kill her or not And uh I would say then I have regrets that I didn't study in 2013 I don't know what would have happened then but uh that was my biggest biggest pain and that's why I say it's a mix of the two Holy crap I am terribly sorry to hear that That's insane And it does uh I mean in my own life I don't have anything that pales in comparison to what you through what you went through but I I do recognize sort of similar themes with my dad's career growing up like we we felt the the impacts of all
(18:10) the financial bubbles that that happened throughout my life and his career pretty acutely in my family uh he was in the asset management space Um he he raised money for funds Um and 2001 the family moved down or in 2000 we moved down to South Carolina so they could take over the south southeast territory here in the United States But the.
(18:38) com bubble burst essentially well right when we moved down here and when we moved down to South Carolina within a year of moving to South Carolina he got laid off because of that he built back um he built back his career over the course of the next seven years Then 2008 happened um that knocked him off his trajectory as well And then uh all throughout both those financial crises like that that created an immense amount of stress for our family And that's something that I've sort of honed on honed in on and I think made me very
(19:17) receptive to Bitcoin when I found it was recognizing that this way in which the fiat world operates was sort of uh fundamental to the stress that that our family felt financially directly And again I'm so sorry to hear what happened to your mother and the stress that was brought on your family um because of this stuff too which pales in comparison to what what we had to deal with But that's insane And uh thank you for the condolences But uh why I put my face out there and why I became such a strong beer diver because
(19:58) again I was an idiot that I was ignoring in uh Bitcoin uh in 2017 in 2018 like yeah like uh I have other problems this and that and I finally capitulated because my soulmate was chasing me for more than a year to study about Ethereum and uh my final straw was a close friend returned the money that he owed me and uh I asked me from where do you have the money and he said oh in crypto everything is great in 20121 and I intentionally started to study uh this and to prove that uh this is [ __ ] and uh in the process of that I found
(20:43) out about Bitcoin like I couldn't find a hole in Bitcoin I'm not a developer I'm not an I am a physical engineer here uh I was studying civil engineering so I have that type of logical thinking but my my main point is going back to the beginning of the conversation I was still an idiot like I had to connect it to a big pain of mine that this was the solution and now I am thinking how can I fully transition into a bitcoin standard because I am never going back like nobody can convince me out of the thinking that oh fiat is better at this
(21:24) point Like no [ __ ] way Yeah And I think I've reached a similar point in my life as well I think it's pretty safe to say that if anybody's been listening to the show long enough and bringing this back to like the Wimhof mindset it is a pretty hard thing to do to make the switch to like a full Bitcoin standard on your personal balance sheet especially if you have a family I've got two kids another on the way been married for for many years and making that jump not only as an individual but once you get other individuals that you're
(22:01) responsible for um sort of dependent on this as well uh the the stakes increase significantly So I I think that Wimhof framing of you know there's going to be some pain but you got to do it anyway and just change your mindset is very important And on that thought like what are some things mentally that you think people thinking about Bitcoin should visualize in terms of the pain they're probably going to endure that they should expect and just have the intestinal fortitude to stomach it while while they're going through it
(22:43) uh uh well okay Uh there are two questions for me here Uh not just one One is what to focus on and what's to ignore Uh like to avoid the pain is really uh what what are your visions for your personal life Uh I always say to everybody that make a list of everything that you want to achieve in your life everything that you want to buy in your life and that becomes your priority If you don't start with the life you can't detach from the number going up in fiat The perception of number going up in fiat because even if you measure Bitcoin
(23:26) with fiat you still are not measuring the right stuff Uh you're using the old system But for me if you make that list what you want to accomplish and you start measuring that with Bitcoin that is the ultimate goal for me because you can say "Oh my life now costs uh let's say 50 bitcoin for the next 50 years or for my family or whatever In 4 years it will be let's say 10 bitcoin Then it will be uh half a bitcoin and it will decrease That is the proper measurement for me But if you're measuring anything with fear that means
(24:06) that you're not detached and that is what to focus on But how to deal with the uh to stomach the pains out of okay let's uh uh not take too much uh pain in the bare market First of all why do you feel pain uh like again you're measuring not in the proper ruler but uh also you're not structuring your life uh the way that you want it to be uh we are always going to have troubles pains whether we are on a bitcoin standard or not uh but uh if you want to get into the bitcoin e economy my lives becomes richer in the
(24:51) bare market uh like I connect to such a high quality people My network increases with the people that I communicate We build together We experience that promise of freedom from Bitcoin When I communicate with those people and when Bitcoin goes down it really doesn't affect me as much because I don't see it as an investment I see it that this is money and the money is not uh meant to be store of value only Uh it is about those three things finally coming back to one thing because when fiat money happened they
(25:32) separated the two functions of gold and that's where the problems of gold began uh but now it's uniting and uh those functions are even better than anything before it really uh for me you you should use your life measured in bitcoin if you use any type of digit that means you're not detached at least mentally uh and if you make that uh shift all the rest of the things are so much easier to deal with at least in my experience I can't promise for everybody Our good friends Parker Lewis and Drew Bonsol are two of the deepest thinkers in Bitcoin
(26:15) While they come from very different backgrounds they've landed on the exact same conclusion It's Bitcoin that matters not crypto This master class lays out why 21 million is the key breakthrough how Bitcoin not blockchain creates decentralization and why everything else will be built on Bitcoin Understand why Bitcoin works and why nothing else does Watch the premiere at unchained.
(26:37) com/tc That's unchained.comTTFTC Now it is really important because right you don't want to bring the digit addiction to your life under a Bitcoin center you have to reframe and use SATs as your unit of account and think about all right pricing everything in SATs mentally to basically look at what I have what I'm spending and am I happy with what I'm spending or is my the number of sats that I that I possess and that I own going up ultimately over time um and if it is it means that I'm spending wisely and producing more than than I than I
(27:16) spend on a month-to-month day to day basis Um and it's funny you mentioned the bare markets and the strength of the network of individuals that hang around in the bare markets because if you're there when the price is down 80% and you are working on making sure that Bitcoin succeeds you probably are ideologically and philosophically aligned And it while we're talking on this particular topic of uh digit addiction it's like analogous to alcoholics anonymous networks When when the bare market comes you have that that network of people who
(27:51) are detoxing their life from the digit addiction and getting on a Bitcoin standard that are there as a support group to let you know you're not crazy there there is a there there signal here and this is worth um sticking out a bare market and building through it Uh I I would add a little bit of nuance I agree with everything but you said to use Bitcoin as the unit of account I'm saying even a step further Use your life as the unit and of account and then measure the Bitcoin in that because we all have one life Yeah But everybody
(28:25) uses and wants to achieve different things because I had Bitcoiners that say "Oh get one Bitcoin or whatever." Like no Start with what I'm sorry What do you want in your life because if everything that you want you in your life let's say is 50 bitcoin you you don't need to get to one You need to get to 50 uh if you want to have it now But somebody in Africa maybe he needs 01 to have the life that he wants So that's why like use the unit of account of the life that you want Uh that is the little nuance that I wanted to add And uh to go back
(29:06) to the the uh how do they call when uh alcohol slip up uh there was a terms yes the relapse and if you let's say relapse and start measuring uh bitcoin in fiat terms you're going to go to the ETFs you're going to go to oh this one is giving yield you're going to go to everything else and now you are transferring uh where you put your energy your power uh is taken away and you're supporting the field standard further So be careful So those are the two comments there Yeah And so do you think I I need to ask you I think
(29:55) you're very well in the camp of you got to actually use Bitcoin not only as a savings vehicle um particularly in the form of an ETF or some wrapped derivative Bitcoin exposure you need to actually be stacking SATs possessing them and taking control of your wealth to truly detox from this digit addiction Uh yeah like if you want to completely detox yes I do recognize that there will be a transitional period Like uh right now all of the debt is insolvable and if it collapses it collapses to nothing But if you back it with Bitcoin that one at
(30:38) least it gives a hard stop at some point So so I do see that Bitcoin will be used and financialized So it has some bottom because right now the debt has no bottom uh so but I do view it as a transitional period and for me again personally with my story and where I want to go is that if you're touching anything fiat that means we're not on a bitcoin standard so that is my end goal but even today I can't completely live on the bitcoin standard and the bitcoin infrastructure uh so I'm a little bit of a hypocritical
(31:18) uh in that sense but that doesn't mean that I'm not recognizing uh those two things and where I want to go particularly Yeah So this gets into the whole conversation about building the infrastructure that makes the Bitcoin standard possible I mean that's a lot of what we do at 1031 is investing in companies in the space building out the infrastructure and we think it's very important And I think there's a very strong case to be made that as this infrastructure gets built out it actually makes Bitcoin more valuable because it's more accessible
(31:56) more intuitive better user experience around interacting with UTXOs and second layer solutions which is a lot of what your focus at Breeze is And you guys have have launched a product recently to really um make it as easy as possible for people to to start using Bitcoin in an intuitive way um in a very user-friendly way out of the box But I I think broadly speaking in your view what is meaningful participation in the Bitco Bitcoin ecosystem look like uh I would say anything like the life that we currently have uh
(32:36) is built on field So all of that needs to get on Bitcoin Uh and it doesn't have to be developing an art It doesn't have to be writing a script Uh I always say that uh the barbers have are they built their business on fiat infrastructure and now they need to develop the barber infrastructure to be on top of the bitcoin infrastructure with payments with uh the community with I don't know how the hairstyles will affect uh this particular thing but uh uh I'm saying the infrastructure is important and anything if you're pushing education
(33:16) yeah that's a little bit more theoretical but very important I wouldn't be here because of people like you and all the podcast uh Bitcoin podcasts out there but uh do even more like uh do some action like go pay uh some STS is very easy thing uh accept Bitcoin for payments that's again uh even easier u based on the writings of Parker Lewis um but anything in that sense is Good And if you help out to build the network the social network and the usability that is making all of this work better faster stronger like if you just hollow yeah we
(34:01) are decentralizing the ownership but uh we're not promoting the again the Bitcoin standards like we are using the fi standard but backed it up uh on uh Bitcoin uh uh storage or something like uh yeah we we need to use everything and my latest article was really comparing those two things Yeah I know it's a critique to Michael Seller Um but uh yeah I take the chart of Jesse Myers where people store their value and I think that needs thing needs to collapse People shouldn't store their value in usable things People
(34:47) should store their value in money That's it And all the other things should be utility And uh but when do we get there i have no idea Uh with Breeze I am incredibly lucky that uh uh they chose me probably because of uh the passion that I exert in the interview Uh and I I would say that I'm the biggest cheerleader for Breeze because it really aligns with my mission and they're pushing this uh I would say hard and we still learn in the company that user experience in so many cases is the most important thing tech Yeah it's important
(35:32) to work but for people they care about user experience And on that note do you think this is something that broader crypto has gotten better than Bitcoin to date i have no idea because that's a big uh that's been a big trope for some time and I've been skeptical of it is this idea that there's a ton of attention in crypto and it's because they've created environments that are conducive for developers to build really impressive UIs and user experiences using JavaScript libraries that that make it intuitive Like Bitcoin is too clunky and
(36:08) I I just find that hard to believe Um I don't have any idea either cuz uh despite the fact that I critique it a lot I've not uh I have not played around with a lot of those tools because I think they're built on unound foundations Yeah Uh I agree with that and uh good that you picked up on the having no idea Yeah they're building tech but for me one of the best things that I really care about is things like a BTC map Like that that for me is an indicator of the economy but all the other stuff they don't have a BTC map and merchants and
(36:51) stuff like that Uh making it into the daily lives of uh people they are trying to pump some people out the bags they are seeing oh this is uh cool tech or whatever and eventually they will lose like uh either slowly or suddenly it it doesn't matter but uh for me bitcoin becomes part of people's lives and crypto for uh is becoming part of speculators and stuff like that yeah you can speculate uh I tried to when I was doing the research I intentionally went into some [ __ ] coins to just to confirm for myself and it was horrible like
(37:36) uh uh people don't know what they're building actually at least what I've researched uh so I doubt that uh they'll do anything really really meaningful they might do some cool game or anything that let's say a million people uses it but Bitcoin will be everywhere Agreed And I think that's one thing that has annoyed me as people have been trotting out that narrative like there's a lot to learn from crypto We should be applying some of it It's like I really don't think we should be um porting over degenerate bag dumping technology uh
(38:16) onto the Bitcoin landscape Particularly when you consider the sort of philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin which is low time preference save money do not go and seek yield just simply store your money your wealth and better money you'll be rewarded in the long run Which brings me to the point that there's still a ton of lowhanging fruit in my mind as it pertains to positioning Bitcoin and highlighting the better user experience that already exists in terms of just like pure peer-to-peer transaction broadcasting
(38:54) and um receiving of of Bitcoin outside of any uh centralized mechanism whether that be Swift wiring system Fed wire whatever it may be Um and then on top of that like lightning it that definitely has its pain points but still even with those pain points it's significantly better technology compared to the fiat rails I know I'm thinking of podcasting 2.
(39:21) 0 know uh in Noster specifically just being able to people are going to listen to this podcast and stream us sats many of them from Breeze wallets um that that they've set up and it's coming straight to my lightning node that I run here at TFTC uh and then Noster obviously with the explosion of that peer-to-peer communications protocol and embedding the lightning network and now eCash into that protocol like people are basically uh helping helping others monetize content that they deem as valuable using Bitcoin And the user experience is
(39:56) literally click a button and you send stats from your wallet to somebody else's immediately It's pretty good and I think we should highlight and foster that that superior user experience Again there's certainly pain points that can be designed around and and made better but I think we should do more of celebrating the incredible nature of Bitcoin as it stands today Yeah Yeah Like we have so much work to do like just because we are early uh doesn't mean that uh it's going to happen by itself Um a thing that I
(40:35) started saying recently provoked by a a close friend is that things don't happen by themselves People make things happen So be part of the people that make things happen Like uh we're not going to get there by just hodling like that That will bring nothing like that will uh get us to digital capture 2.
(40:59) 0 so fast uh like uh yeah but if we actually use it I can talk until my face is blue to tell you oh how easy it is to use lightning or bitcoin and stuff like that And anybody can construct an argument against it like that happens We know with some uh gold trolls that they are doing this Uh but if right now if uh you uh give me a QR code I can directly send you s from Bulgaria to US like in seconds and I don't have to explain anything people experience it but uh they'll see this on the screen but if you give this uh thing in their personal
(41:46) lives as a experience they personally experience it their chemicals in the body uh change because of it and it solves a problem that they're facing Now you get them and it's not going to happen just oh theoretically uh let me explain you this and this and uh people like you are doing this now for decades We're not the majority bitcoiners uh is just hard but and uh things like um uh Sri Lanka 3 years ago and Lebanon when their fiat economy collapsed people maybe heard of Bitcoin but they didn't experience the thing
(42:30) that was going to save them people that were before and after and they experienced I believe those are the real true uh hardcore Bitcoiners like me coming out of enormous pain They will never go back and that's the thing that I'm uh very grateful for everybody that did this and that's why I loved and I quoted you in the article that we will win Uh I know that we will win because there are people that are never going back not only that uh are never going back but the fiat babies are declining and bitcoin babies are increasing so we
(43:08) will win the adoption game in the second and third generations so I'm very very hopeful I am as well and comments on experience really piqu my interest do do you think when it comes again going back to this whole concept of detoxing yourself um from the digit addiction and coming to a Bitcoin standard Do you think experience will lead to some of that that recognition of the need to detox or do you think people will have to come to that recognition first and then have the experience it's like are there products that can be built that
(43:49) create an experience that has a light bulb go off and is that does that create a a better top offunnel sort of um mechanism to get people into Bitcoin or is it a personal recognition that needs to happen first and then you experience it and that experience confirms like okay there's something here Uh it it's kind of tricky I don't know what is the solution really Uh but uh because well especially in breeze we know the pain of lightning a lot and that whole concept of opening and closing channels is bad thing for the
(44:31) lightning experience and if a person experiences lightning through some type of lightning pain oh somebody closed my channel all this or that like you give them a negative experience and they'll confirm what they already believe So the experience doesn't need that we build it but it needs to be good that it needs to solve people's pains not create new ones Uh so that is the comment The thing that I love about the experience is that it's undeniable uh like I said if we taugh theory anybody can construct an argument
(45:08) against theory like to be a denier or anything but if you show and people especially can touch even though uh abstraction or digits are coming uh to them if they truly experience they cannot deny it like okay let's say I cannot but some people will find a way to deny it but uh that is This is what I love that if you solve their problem now they have to justify why they are not using this better way That's what I love because it reverses the argument Now we don't have to defend Bitcoin if you give them that solution of the problem and uh
(45:50) experience they have to justify why they are not using Bitcoin So that's what I love Yeah Well let's dive into Misti and what you guys have been working on at Breeze to make this experience particularly with the lightning network more seamless so that people don't run into those pain points And I think uh this is something this design architecture of these Bitcoin wallets has become more popular in recent years by combining multiple second layer solutions to make the experience around lightning specifically better
(46:29) Yeah Uh I would start by saying Roy uh is the my mentor here and I'll build on the article that he wrote uh I would say 6 months ago that lightning is the common language uh that lightning is not just this thing that will solve magically everything but light lightning we do view it that it plays a very strategical part of the whole ecosystem that that will be the connective tissue the glue tool that uh connects all the other uh networks and Misti particularly is uh built with the liquid network the end we provide a lightning interface for
(47:14) people using it and uh for for us lightning will be this that whether it's uh third layer uh some custodial thing uh whether it's arc whether it's uh some other protocols coming into play they at this point they need to use lightning uh so they operate more freely and that is what lightning will do and we are trying to push uh lightning itself So we're building uh those type of solution to connect uh to those uh sub networks uh themselves Uh but uh uh like even when I hear Roy when uh uh when they started before my time before me joining the
(48:02) company that they were building some cool tech they were innovators they were the first people that uh uh said uh said the term lightning service provider and stuff like that and said even when we built it and it was working great nobody cared but when in the breeze wallet when they put uh podcasting player the usage increased 10x uh an order of magnitude more when they put in a POS system again and it's this uh thing that he also says we don't need more lightning apps We need labs uh apps with lightning So it
(48:41) needs to integrate that experience into our day-to-day lives Uh so those are kind of the focus and uh how we build in breeze But uh I am as I've said the biggest cheerleader So if you want to talk tech and strategy I can connect you to Roy and he's the real big voice about those kinds of things Yeah I definitely need to have Roy on I can't believe it's been eight years of the show almost and I haven't had Roy on But the I think that's exactly the right framing in two parts there Lightning as this common language this connective
(49:19) tissue between these interoperable protocols whether it's ARC uh liquid these chamoms they're becoming more popular cashew and fedment protocols That's the way forward particularly for scaling and sort of extendability of of how you use Bitcoin whether that be more privately cheaper quicker um is you can use Lightning directly or use Lightning as this common language as connected tissue to interop with all these other protocols that are being built on top of Bitcoin And I think that product market fit of Bitcoin or excuse
(49:58) me Lightning as this connected tissue is is being validated in real time via products like Misti Um the lightning gateways that Chia and Mints are using to make it interoperable as people are paying lightning invoices You just make this experience such that you point pay an invoice and the end user has no idea that that bitcoin's coming from liquid through a gateway to lightning from a chamomia mint through a gateway to lightning It just works And we're beginning to see ARC uh take hold as well and and both the teams building on
(50:33) those protocols with ARC uh labs and um and second coming to market Like it seems like things are really beginning to accelerate there in terms of people recognizing of how to design and build on these interoperable protocols which is incredibly exciting to see But to the second point of Roy like we don't need more lightning uh apps we need lightning in more applications And I think that is just abundantly clear and like a simple application like here for TFTC both sending and receiving invoicing invoices using Zaprite Like we
(51:14) send invoices out to advertisers and they have the ability to pay Bitcoin onchain lightning and they can pay via fiat That's an example of like an invoicing application that makes it easier for us to run on Bitcoin standard Similarly like we receive invoices and um we have the option to pay in fiat uh Bitcoin over lightning or onchain and I find myself paying over lightning more and more because it's simply cheaper We actually save money particularly when you factor in the fees that Stripe and credit card processors take which a lot
(51:49) of our um a lot of the people that are invoicing us are beginning to put a premium on because they don't want to stomach those fees Um so I completely agree with that We just need Bitcoin integrated into more applications And I mean this is very much in line with what we were discussing earlier which is this uh sort of red herring of Bitcoin should be integrating things from broader crypto because they have good ideas over there It's like no not really like and I think of web 3.0 and I think podcasting 2.
(52:22) 0 you know RSS and Bitcoin over Lightning And what we're seeing with Noster and Zaps is you have this open source communications protocol um and the ability to monetize on that protocol using Bitcoin whe that's via lightning or or chium mints now and that maybe you can give credit to the 3.0 meme like that was a good idea but it was just implemented terribly uh in broader crypto and uh what web 3.
(52:50) 0 I know really is is just integrating Bitcoin into other open source protocols and applications built on those protocols which we're beginning to see Yeah And how I hope uh that it happens is that in the article the again going back to it the digital addiction pandemic I do see not only those uh bitcoin related networks to connect to it to lightning uh but lightning can connect even the fiat digit networks that we will experience the ultimate network effect imagine let's say right now uh all the franchise type of uh stores restaurants
(53:34) anything uses probably a loyalty digit That loyalty digit for me is the CBDC in our current days Like you can't use it in a competitor The inflation is higher than the real inflation because those stores also experience inflation the fiat inflation So they need to put uh double inflation on that So they can play the exact same game but in their own terms Uh they uh say uh all sorts of controls on those loyalty digits right now What if they do exactly like uh one of your sponsors fault they replace that loyalty digit with SAT or
(54:18) millise and now you completely plug into this network that you're not the best and you give this to your users You can give even smaller things but that is a real valuable economical thing What now if another fiat network won any type of game that has currency in it what if you replace that with milliseads and now a six-year-old kid can earn sads and be part of the real economy go create a career whatever they want from 6 years old Go buy bread and go buy toys or whatever they want uh getting out of that game and they become again part of
(55:01) that uh network Uh I I think that we're going there anyway But uh I I want to happen faster But uh that's what I I'm saying that lightning can connect so much more than just Bitcoin directly related stuff Yeah I mean and on that note of the transition to this Bitcoin standard in your mind how do you see it playing out in different scenarios like uh a suddenly scenario or longer drawn out scenario like what do you think are the conditions um that exist that could lead to either of those those end states quick steady
(55:46) adoption or or a quick sort of rapid adoption or a slower steady controlled transition adoption phase That is the question that it's for in my mind it's unpredictable like uh I can make arguments for both Uh I do think that if the fiat uh type of infrastructure breaks and now Bitcoin becomes more and more dominant it we may get to a suddenly stage But uh uh going back to Lebanon uh they had the suddenly thing uh collapse and they're not majority Bitcoiners Uh so you need to be in their face they need to experience
(56:34) the solution Uh going back to it because if you just have pain it's not enough because you get to something else that mitigates that pain but it's not the solution Uh so uh it will be a mix of both Uh maybe some countries will be suddenly maybe some dictator will buy all the bitcoin and it will collapse their own currency even though it's hard Maybe some printer will start buying bit I have no idea Like that's the impossible question I know that fiat uh degrading is inevitable Bitcoin getting stronger is also inevitable So I don't worry about
(57:18) the other stuff Uh I if you focus on the building you rise with Bitcoin and you can build on top of it if you don't get into it like you just watch on the sides and you'll be forced uh to make a decision later on Yeah Don't forsake your descendants Um make make the transition quicker rather than delaying it is my advice Uh I think it's worked out well for me and uh my progeny up to this point Um but on this like to wrap up with like if you had to give or pull out one key message from from your piece and give one call
(57:59) to action for anybody listening to this What would those be uh I would say experience Bitcoin like with all its limitations with all its benefits but experience it and judge for yourself Like uh the thing that we have the biggest beef with crypto is that uh uh we say Bitcoin only and shitcoins and stuff like that Yeah uh but we should just out compete them not waste time of argumenting against one or the other We should simply out compete them and we have been for 16 years Uh but uh trying to say that other things do not have
(58:42) benefit is kind of uh pushing people away Uh they say oh we are toxic where stuff like that because everything has its own benefits Everything has its own negatives But if you never experience Bitcoin you cannot judge And I do agree completely uh that if you want to go to a Bitcoin standard every single individual can do it suddenly But as a humanity I I don't think it will be suddenly Uh but I do think it's not I will be able to see it So we'll see Uh again it's an impossible question but going back to it just
(59:28) experience Bitcoin with everything and use it where it's valuable for your personal life Like that's it You heard it here freaks Go experience Bitcoin if you haven't already It's pretty fun I can I can tell you from experience it's it is magical using Bitcoin Sometimes you take it for granted but uh I like to believe myself like every I I do have periods where I take it for granted but there's at least once or twice a week when I'm using Bitcoin I'm like "Holy crap I can't believe I just did this I could pay Logan here on a
(1:00:03) Sunday night laying in bed I get an invoice from him Just pay You just got paid immediately after sending me an invoice on a Sunday night You didn't have to wait for anything to happen." Is that cool to you Logan do you do you feel a magical experience when that happens i I think so I think so Well Ivan um really appreciate you taking some time to do this Thank you for writing your um your piece on digits and our addiction to them I think it's really important to to recognize that there if you're out there and you're newer to Bitcoin you're
(1:00:40) new to the show and you're hearing Bitcoin framed as this scarce asset this monetary panacea to the ills of of fiat Um that's one way That's probably how most people are hearing Bitcoin But I really like this framing Frame it the other way Don't don't focus on the benefits of Bitcoin first recognize that you are addicted to digits that are controlled by digit lords that you have no ability to to manage or um sort of dictate what they do with these digits that control your life And then once you recognize that Bitcoin's there as a solution and
(1:01:24) you should go really try to understand it experience it and recognize that there is a better way It's already here Yeah Just not evenly distributed Uh absolutely and uh one of the things uh I'll share with the freaks a little bit of a sh that that's what we are focusing here in Bulgaria that we want to make a movie that completely ignores the preaching of Bitcoin and we're going to record something that to show experiences of it uh with merchants with how people are building here and uh yeah I'm excited about that project because
(1:02:05) it's my home country but we are trying to do something different with this particular u bitcoin documentary because uh I think we are ready to get outside of theory theory if anybody wants to learn about bitcoin it's more than enough out there already yeah in 2013 there was almost nothing uh but uh now uh I do want to focus more on outside of theory what is that whether it's culture whether it's uh payments whether it's anything else uh but I choose to focus on as I said uh that experience to show uh what we're building here in Bulgaria
(1:02:52) well it's an example of Bitcoiners walking the walk uh we talk a lot about um the corruption of fiat is based on this um fundamentally corrupt and what many would deem to be wrong academic theory of neoliberal Keynesian economics Debt is money We owe ourselves It's not a problem We can just print baby print Um it's a theory that is being played out We're seeing how the application of that theory has negative consequences on our life But as you said there's been a lot of talk on the theory side of Bitcoin like let's walk the walk and
(1:03:30) just show how people are experiencing it and actually use it making sure that and validating that that theory is being applied appropriately and it actually it actually computes from theory to to actual application Yeah and anybody uh that would like to contribute because I I would say every time that I ask the Bitcoin community or Bitcoin friends uh they they want to contribute in some form uh I try to some somebody that doubles in altcoins like I don't know like they don't want to share anything like even the humans that are
(1:04:13) attracted to the incentives are completely different uh but yeah anybody uh any Bitcoiner wants Bitcoin to happen uh for me and that's what I love and uh I see in Austin people for no reason uh other than oh I can do it but uh even in guys where we set up our movie to uh get some funds there uh I see all the projects people are raising funds and I love that you don't need to ask your uh currency to be converted or anything You can send the ads from anywhere in the world for any reason and you don't have to ask anybody for it Yeah I did
(1:05:01) this last week with no bscoin.com They had their geyser fund up and recognized we've been using them as um fodder for rabbit hole recap topic top topics and I hadn't donated to their their efforts in a while and I was like you know what it's time to to give back to the no BS Bitcoin team They've been helping us out a lot whether they recognize it or not with Rabbit Hole Recap and I should support them It was a boom point send I'm pretty sure they're they're not in the United States and so uh international sats transfer immediately
(1:05:36) very cheap Yeah Uh it's awesome like uh so very few are still experiencing this type of thing because right now I would say I'm so much uh less richer than some Bitcoin whales or anything because uh I mean really in Bitcoin what I told you is uh in 2022 but my life is so much richer because of the people that I'm surrounded now by the things that we are excited to build Uh so for me uh again Bitcoin is not the uh highest priority Uh and when I became a father uh it dropped down even further So yeah ain't that the truth Ain't that
(1:06:27) the truth let's do it for the kids Ivan we're going to win because people like you Thank you for doing what you do Um we will link to everything in the show notes from your articles to um Misti from Breeze And you said do you have a guiser for the documentary yeah Yeah it's called Build on Bitcoin the Bulgarian Journey Yeah Uh so yeah we're I uh as I said we set up that and we use it as a website because money works there We don't have another website because money doesn't Hell yeah All right Ivan you go enjoy
(1:07:09) the rest of your night and uh hopefully we do this again at some point in the future Yeah maybe after the movie Thank you very much for having me Peace and love freaks Freaks Thank you for listening to the show I hope you liked it If you did like it please make sure you subscribe rate review the show It helps us out a lot And also if you like these conversations I've come to realize that many people listen to the podcast They don't know we have another sort of layer of this media company We have the newsletter the Bitcoin Brief go to
(1:07:42) tftc.io Make sure you subscribe there A lot of the topics that are discussed on this podcast I write about five days a week in the newsletter We also have the TFTC elite tier If you sign up for that become a member We have a private Discord server for the elite freaks out there where we're dropping adree versions of this show and having discussions about everything we talk about a day early Logan wanted me to make sure if you want to get the show a day early become a TFTC Elite member You will get that We have our Discord server right now
(1:08:23) conversation between myself and TFTC elite tier members but we're going to expand that We'll probably do close Q&As's with people in the industry Uh I may be doing macro Mondays So join us Go to tftc.io subscribe find the button in the top right corner of the website become a TFTC Elite member Thank you for joining us
