What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin

One of my favorite examples, people are like, so why Bitcoin? Like, why is Bitcoin powerful? How do we know it's going to be adopted? And, you know, I kind of I like analogies. I like to bring people a little closer to past technology adoption. And I describe to them like, look, Bitcoin is great at sending value anywhere across the world. There's no problems there. The problem is, is no one has Bitcoin address. Right. and and if you were a lot of times when i talk to anyone who's not a zoomer you know they have seen the the arc of email adoption it's like look in the 90s you could send email anywhere but it was so hard to send an email because no one had email address and that's where bitcoin is right now so the bitcoin network work works but that that last mile of everyone having bitcoin address everyone being able to accept bitcoin everyone having a bitcoin wallet we're not there yet but the arc of technology and the art of technological adoption says that we are going there. And that's incredibly optimistic for Bitcoin's utility to, you know, not just enthusiasts, but everyone and especially

people who don't have the privilege of access to the existing digital payment rails. Hey, one quick thing before we get into it. Trust Revolution runs on value for value. No ads, no sponsors. Fountain is how it works for me and for the show. Pay per episode or subscribe, lightning or card. You get something from the show, you can send something back. No guilt, no gimmicks. Go to trustrevolution.co. That's trustrevolution.co. Okay, let's get into it. C.K., how are you, sir? Doing great. Excited to be here. Yeah, appreciate you doing it. And catching you in a moment where you're not on a plane, I think, is fairly rare. Very thankful. Hey, thanks for doing this, man. I feel like I'm overdue in asking you for the privilege and us getting together because this brings so much of what I've been covering over the last eight months together.

And so let's dive in. You went from building Bitcoin conferences and media to working at an organization founded to fight dictators. That's not even within Bitcoin. Maybe that's not an obvious career move. What made sort of HRF the right fit? And, you know, what does it say about Bitcoin that they wanted you to take on this role? Yeah, so I think anyone who is in the Bitcoin space has a pretty good name recognition of HRF. And I think that is a testament to how effective Alex Gladstein and HRF have been in terms of not just being present and effective in the Bitcoin space, but really leading and setting the narratives. And I actually started building a working relationship with Alex when I was at Bitcoin Magazine. We were both in the Bay Area during the pandemic and before then.

And, you know, he was throwing a bunch of kind of like Bitcoin gatherings and parties prior to 2020. And that's how we kind of got on each other's radars. And then during 2020, he was telling me about an idea of kind of like starting to tell stories of activists and people living in difficult situations and how they're using Bitcoin or how Bitcoin helps them. And that later became the foundation of his book, Check Your Financial Privilege. So, I convinced him to publish those ideas on Bitcoin Magazine. And then, when he wanted to turn them into a book, started Bitcoin Magazine Publishing. So, that way, you know, his book and Alan Varrington's book, Bitcoin is Venice, could be the first books that we published. And from there, it turned into another book. and getting him on stage with Jack Dorsey at Bitcoin 21.

And several keynotes later, you know, we had just built a very strong relationship. And I was ready for me to leave Bitcoin Magazine and do something else. I started putting out feelers and Gladstein put me on the phone with their COO and CEO and got me an offer pretty quickly. It was just kind of just all the right pieces falling together. But I was very interested in HRF. There's a reason why I pinged Gladstein when I was ready to move on. I just saw what they're doing on the Bitcoin Development Fund. I saw the narratives that Gladstein was putting forward. And I thought, this is the most ironclad work, the most ironclad narratives around Bitcoin. And I think I can help spread these narratives faster. Ultimately, I'm like an ops guy. I like to build businesses. I like to build organizations. I like to onboard great people, make them successful. so uh i've been able to do that bitcoin magazine the bitcoin conference and you know that i left that organization two years ago and i still see a lot of people that i enabled you know being uh

the front runners driving that organization forward so i'm very proud of that and yeah now just trying to do the same thing at hrf you know i can see it working uh you know since i've joined We've published 100 and soon to be 101 financial freedom reports. We've given millions in Bitcoin development grants. We have helped developers and activists come together to build products that are actually in the wild and being used and supporting people who are fighting for freedom. and you know we continue to be on the front lines of pushing for the appropriate narrative around Bitcoin which is that Bitcoin is freedom enabling technology. Bitcoin is bad for dictators and Bitcoin aligns with western liberal values and you know I think that we're on the forefront and if we weren't doing it I don't know who else would be at this stage so I'm very thankful that HRF is

here and feel blessed to get the privilege to push forward on this mission. Yeah, fantastic, as I think we all are very grateful. Understanding that HRF is sizable and has sort of many initiatives and programs, I believe now chaired by Yulia Navalny, which I probably won't do justice to. Yulia Navalny. Navalny, excuse me. Or Navalny. Yeah, I think like they have different ways of pronouncing words in Russian. So my six months of Russian that I took in that I took in university is showing. So my point there is, you know, she's got a lot to cover. The organization HRF has a lot to cover. Correct me, but I assume there are still conversations in which you are continuing to sort of expand her knowledge as to why Bitcoin matters. What do you lead with? What are those conversations like when, you know, perhaps you're advocating for, you know, Bitcoin becoming more of what HRF leads with?

Yeah, I mean, Yulia, she chairs our board and she definitely is an incredible person to have the privilege or us have the privilege of, you know, being involved with our organization. She carries on her husband, Alexei Navalny's work in terms of opposing Russian dictatorship, as well as now she supports the Human Rights Foundation as our chairwoman. In terms of like the day to day and the operational practices of continuing to integrate Bitcoin and now freedom technology more into what Ahrefs is doing. You know, I think that we started by leading by example with the financial freedom program in terms of building this kind of cornerstone program that, you know, is pushing and pushing financial freedom, pushing Bitcoin, pushing freedom, enabling technologies forward and, you know, bringing in a lot of success to the organization. and you know that that kind of production and that kind of success is undeniable and now we're

seeing other parts of the organization being like how can we enable this too how can we bring some of this energy into what we're doing and you know we're seeing that across the board whether that is our Africa program whether that is our program in North Korea supporting South Korea and people living in South Korea in the opposition of North Korea, whether that is giving activist tools across the world. You know, it's kind of a combination of orange pilling internally, as well as actually orange pilling our community. The beautiful thing about the Human Rights Foundation is outside of our Bitcoin community, the people in the Bitcoin space that are freedom fighters and activists that are kind of attracted to us. We have a strong contingent of just freedom fighters from different backgrounds from across the world. And a big part of that and of our success has been actually showing them how Bitcoin can change their lives. And then in turn, you know, as my colleagues who are working on freedom in Nicaragua and working on this project or that project are seeing, you know, fill in your blank favorite activists getting into Bitcoin.

That also helps that this kind of virtuous cycle of bringing Bitcoin deeper into what HRF does across the board. Has working at HRF changed how you think about Bitcoin? I don't know if it's changed how I think about Bitcoin. I definitely think it has changed how I think about narratives in Bitcoin. And, you know, for a long time, there's this idea of like a single issue voter around only Bitcoin. And I think that that has, while that is extremely important, fix the money, fix the world, I fully believe in that. I do feel like Ahrefs has showed me that the world is a lot more nuanced than that. And if we are going to fix the money, if we are going to bring about ubiquitous Bitcoin adoption, it's going to take a very nuanced and pragmatic approach. And I think that's where Ahrefs really shines. And that's where I've become a little bit annoyed by my fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts who I think actually, you know, delay people being attracted to Bitcoin because of, I guess, certain worldviews.

But overall, I'm pretty convinced that everything is good for Bitcoin. So it's better for me to start from that conclusion and rationalize the other way than, you know, be upset about the progress of adoption. You are by far, my friend, one of the most bullish people I know, and I appreciate it. So HRF's big project under your leadership, I think certainly one of the biggest, is the CBDC tracker, monitoring governments building their own digital currencies. One thing I wanted to tackle, it seems like the data may be showing something counterintuitive. Nigeria launched, I believe, their CBDC in 2021. China's been piloting for years. Both have struggled with adoption despite government pressure. And so the question is, if CBDCs are such attractive tools of control, why are regimes struggling to get people to use them even when mandated? What does that tell us? yeah i mean countries are not good at tech adoption actually i would say like the closest

example of cbdc-esque adoption is like the brazilian pick system and it's while that is not a true cbdc it's more like mobile money um it is a government program that has mass adoption But beyond that, governments suck at, especially authoritarian governments, suck at tech adoption. They suck at pushing forward consumer tech in particular. And my point of view on the CBDC thing, trend, is that it's probably very similar to when there was kind of like a internet forming, a very nascent internet forming. And yet every company in every government wanted to create an intranet. Right. Right. And I think that crypto enterprise blockchain CBDCs is part of this. We don't want the Internet of money.

We want our intranet of money. And another trend that we are highlighting or we have found in our work doing and compiling all the information into the CBDC tracker is that by far dictatorships are the most interested in CBDCs. We see CBDC excitement across central banks, but the ones that are the most interested, the ones who want to push it forward and have the incentive to push it forward the most are actually dictatorships. And their incentives are because of capital flight because of trying to control their population and also as a scheme to collect more data from unbanked and unregistered people So there are a lot of incentives why dictatorships and kind of like shabby governments are really excited about this technology And those are the very reasons why I think people who love freedom should be skeptical about central bank digital currencies. And then

from a product and a technology perspective, I'm just bearish on intranet in a world where there is an internet of money. Well, that is an interesting seg, given how you frame that to the fact that the EU and UK, I believe, or well, certainly the EU has clearly stated their goals. I think the UK is fairly down, far down the road, you know, researching and piloting CBDCs with, of course, the stated goals of efficiency and inclusion and all these things. And so the question here is... Privacy, but not enough privacy. Yeah. Not too much. Right, right. You know, you can say anything you want as long as we agree with you. And so are democratic governments naive about what they're building or do they just want the same capabilities as dictators and aren't prepared to say so? Like what should we make of the EU digital euro? Yeah, this is tough. I think that the liberal world, the progressive world, has some sort of cognitive dissonance around the role of government, the role of government-based technologies, and then their place in the world.

And I think that this is not controversial. It's generally accepted that the world in general is sliding into more and more totalitarian tendencies. And I don't think that democracies are free of those tendencies. And I think bureaucracies in general tend to go in that direction. And that is because of political expedience. And that is because of a world where people want to protect using the long reach, the arm of the government. And it's a little bit misdirected because the reality is that if you truly believe in liberty, if you believe in the utility of freedom, like I don't think like freedom is a virtue in of itself. It actually is a virtue because freedom is how you create prosperity. Freedom is how you create wealth. Freedom is how you increase people's lifestyles and people's quality of life.

And control is how you reduce that. Control is how you break that flywheel of human innovation. So there's cognitive dissonance around that big time today. And while the Human Rights Foundation supports democracies, we see democracies as at least you are able to have a voice, right? Whereas in an authoritarianship, you cannot have a voice. You're actually your voice is liable to be crushed by violence. And so while democracies aren't perfect, they are far better for liberty in 2025 and authoritarian ships. So HRF focuses on opposing authoritarian ships, not because democracy is perfect, but it's like the Churchill saying is it's the the best worst system or the the worst of the systems I work. I forget I'm butchering the quote, but no, I follow a bigger fish to fry.

Yeah, truly, there is bigger fish to fry. And look, hey, you want to criticize fill in your blank democracy. There is a civil liberties group and a civil rights organization and a civil society in that country, in that diaspora that can do that. Right. But if you want to criticize in the wrong countries, you cannot do that. And that's where H.R.F. is. Yeah, excellent. Excellent clarification. Well, and you touched on this. I think the point, it's rattling around in my head, your point about Brazil's PICS system and your remarks, CK, about the attraction to CBDCs by dictators, by authoritarians is really about what it enables them to reach into, that they didn't perhaps have line of sight to. So, you know, is the threat the CBDCs themselves or is it the infrastructure that they normalize, the database that exists, whether or not anyone's looking at it yet? Yeah, I mean, again, I think any real fear around CBDC needs to be kind of tempered by probability of them actually shipping successfully.

So when you say there's a threat, like I'm bearish on any of the intranets shipping with enough critical mass to be quote unquote dangerous. But a lot of harm can be done in the pursuit of shipping. And you brought up Nigeria. Well, they had a currency rebrand that was botched and hurt a lot of people in an attempt to increase CBDC adoption. And I believe the minister of finance and the person in charge of the e-Naira rollout said this initiative of rebranding our currency and redesigning our currency was successful because it increased CBDC adoption from 0.1% to 5%. percent so you know you and i have both been in the startup world but a lift from 0.1 to 5 while huge if it requires you know burning down the whole uh the entire system to do it it probably was not worth it uh and i think that that is is just a glimpse into the amount of pain the amount

of human suffering, the amount of capital destruction that will probably be subjected upon people who are living in the wrong jurisdiction in this pursuit of shipping their intranet of money, their CBDC. Right. Well, and I think, you know, and that's certainly spot on. I mean, we've been talking, as you note, about this in the abstract, capabilities, infrastructure, what governments might do. You have actually met people on the other end of this, Oslo Freedom Forum, HRF's workshops. You've, I think, you know, been engaged with people from Russia, Venezuela, Belarus, Nigeria. When they describe their financial situation before Bitcoin, what's the common thread? What does debanked actually mean in their lives? the common thread is that uh you either have zero access to the to the digital payments networks of the world or you're playing this like crazy uh go you know kind of like uh

game you know trying to move your accounts and having administrators take you down and using this person or using that person as an alias you know when you are operating within a completely surveilled financial system with trusted third parties, if you are opposing the guys in charge, you're not going to have access for very long. So it's very clear that in a world where all digital payments to enter the digital realm of value, you need permission from a trusted third party that, you know, that has to answer to whatever government you're in. Again, when you're in Canada, there's certain threats that you have to pay attention to. In the US, you have certain threats. And then if you are in dictatorships, you have even more threats that you have to pay attention to in terms of your actual ability just to get access to electronic payments.

So once folks understand Bitcoin as a means of receiving value, and then they become comfortable with their P2P Bitcoin to fiat markets, it really is an absolute game changer because one, they can hold their own money and they gain trust in that. And then two, they realize that they can now reconnect to digital payments. So many activists have relied on cash, whether that is a money gram to an envelope to a courier to their secure location, you know, or whether that is traveling across borders to get cash and then bringing it back. You know, having access to digital payments is necessary in modernity to have proper resistance. You know, it's like without it, it's like bringing a knife to a gunfight, you know. So it really is an absolute game changer. And it's only going to become more powerful. One of my favorite examples, people are like, so why Bitcoin?

Like, why is Bitcoin powerful? How do we know it's going to be adopted? And, you know, I kind of I like analogies. I like to bring people a little closer to past technology adoption. and I described to them like, look, Bitcoin is great at sending value anywhere across the world. There's no problems there. The problem is, is no one has Bitcoin address, right? And, and if you were a lot of times when I talk to anyone who's not a Zoomer, you know, they have seen the, the arc of email adoption. It's like, look, in the nineties, you could send email anywhere, but it was still hard to send an email because no one had email address. And that's where Bitcoin is right now. So the Bitcoin network works, but that last mile of everyone having Bitcoin address, everyone being able to accept Bitcoin, everyone having a Bitcoin wallet, we're not there yet. But the arc of technology and the art of technological adoption says that we are going there. And that's incredibly optimistic for Bitcoin's utility to, you know, not just enthusiasts,

but everyone and especially people who don't have the privilege of access to the existing digital payment rails. Absolutely. Further on that note, so HRF runs Bitcoin 101 workshops for activists. I think I saw 300 students, 50 countries. Numbers are probably out of date. But what has surprised you? What surprises you, CK, most about what the students already know or what they're worried about or afraid of, given that fear could be a very justified concern in their particular situation? The hardest questions to answer is how to navigate your particular country's legal situation, especially as an organization. That seems to be like the biggest worry. We've gotten to the stage now where the people who are participating in the workshop already have money problems. they already have access to financial system problems. They've already been debanked. They've seen colleagues be debanked.

They already know the difference between a debit card payment and a cash payment. So they're like looking for answers. It's just the implementation part. Is this legal? How do I solve the last mile problem, right? How do I turn this into goods and services or fiat money? How do I send it to someone, you know, who may not be educated on it? It's those kind of questions. And they're very predictable. The issue, right, is just getting organized, getting the information, and then communicating it in a way that they understand. And I think that that's where HRF is fantastic. We have some amazing educators. Anna Chekovich, who is the financial director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation under Yulia Navalny. she has she's probably so she's the financial manager of the ACF she's probably been running an organization that depends on bitcoin longer than anyone else on a bitcoin standard so they

have needed to be on bitcoin because if you think about their situation their main audience is in Russia they are outside of Russia to Russians if you send them fiat you can go to prison And then to them, it is forbidden for them to use Western payment rails to send value to their audience in Russia. So, like, they need Bitcoin. They need Bitcoin to receive donations from their audience. And they also need Bitcoin to send value to the folks who are pushing for democracy and opposing Vladimir Putin in Russia. If there wasn't Bitcoin, there would be nothing else for them. They could not do their work. So she is the most experienced person in the world, you know, the most qualified person in the world to be teaching other activists how to use this. And she has teamed up with Nguyen from our team, who he escaped Myanmar. He was a social media influencer who opposed the junta, had his life threatened, and then used Bitcoin to take all of his value and escape to Thailand.

And now he works for the Human Rights Foundation. And then Ben Sessions, BTC Sessions, who is the person who taught me how to use a hardware wallet back in 2017. So he's probably been one of the most prolific Bitcoin educators on the planet. So we combined these three people to teach a webinar to activists four times a year about how to leverage Bitcoin from a one perspective from an activist individual perspective And then on our third day of the webinar is teaching nonprofits as an organization how to leverage Bitcoin and answer their organization specific questions So, yeah, I mean, in terms of that product, I think it has an incredible product market fit. And it is also really spearheading this world where civil rights organizations are starting to really take Bitcoin seriously. And they're starting to actually leverage Bitcoin internally. And it's very exciting to see the narratives shift from Bitcoin bad and is dangerous to Bitcoin is going to help me with my work and Bitcoin is safe and will protect me.

And that narrative shift is happening in the nonprofit space, in the civil liberty space. So I think that, you know, that is going to also silence critics because they can say Bitcoin is for drug dealers and we can say Bitcoin is for democracy activists. And we can give them a lot of great examples of that. Love it. And I mean, I have to imagine that is one of the highest stressed scenarios in which to test the technology. And so to your point, you know, that's that's great for everybody. And in terms of what Bitcoiners and builders on Bitcoin can learn, CK, what's the failure mode? When has Bitcoin not worked for someone in a scenario that you've described? And what do we learn from that? Okay, so let's dive into the failure modes. I would say right now, from a product perspective, Bitcoin as a consumer product, as an enterprise product, is very, very rudimentary.

And the products have a long way to go, and the builders have a long way to go in terms of understanding how to take products to the market. So a lot of the work that we do is we actually support the Bitcoin Design Foundation. And the Bitcoin Design Foundation does user research. And they try to gather that user research and inform Bitcoin builders. And there's still a lot of friction there in terms of taking the user research and applying it to your product. And I kind of just blame this as a lot of these product teams are very rudimentary early product teams, right? You know, we're not talking about folks that are building viral products, you know, for meta or for open AI or some of these tech companies that have massive user bases leveraging Bitcoin and building on Bitcoin. We're still talking about early enthusiast builders. And a lot of those early enthusiast builders are just scratching their own itch, which is great for early enthusiasts.

It's not great for people who need money, Bitcoin to be full stack money today. And we see those failures up and down the Bitcoin stack. Not to say that it's not improving. You know, when Ahrefs got into Bitcoin, there was really no wallet that you can recommend. Now there's several wallets that you can recommend that are relatively easy, that have access to on-chain and Lightning, that, you know, you can give someone a demo over a webinar quickly with. That didn't used to exist. I'm very optimistic with the trajectory. but I do think that Bitcoin builders need to think about the users a lot more and I think that that is just a failure across the board and the products that are probably going viral are the ones where the product teams think about the users very very deeply and unfortunately that's very few and far between right now in the Bitcoin space but look we're still early so I'm not disillusioned at all

but there's definitely a lot to build as well. Absolutely. And I mean, I've spent a lot of time talking about that recently. I had Stephen DeLorme on a couple of weeks ago. So grateful for that guy, his talents and the whole group of volunteers working on Bitcoin design. I know you mentioned, and you were very deft at this, CK, when you spoke earlier about the focus of HRF on dictatorships, not on democracy. So I'll ask you to take off your HRF hat because I think there's still a lot that you can help us understand. You know, there's a version of this conversation, as we have had, where it's about Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, bad actors doing bad things. But where I'd like to go at least for a minute is, you know, you touched on this. Canada froze bank accounts. The U.K. debanked Nigel Farage. Think what you will of him. The U.S. is Operation Chokepoint. In my professional capacity, I've encountered that directly. I think by all intents and purposes, it is ongoing. So when you talk to human rights groups, you know, I assume you're positioning Bitcoin as protection against dictators. But in your own sort of private conversations, perhaps is the way to frame it. You know, what's your take on Bitcoin's importance in Western democracies? And again, I'll ask that in an unofficial capacity.

Well, I think I can actually quote my boss on this. Alex Gladstein is that Bitcoin resembles or embodies American values. He wrote an article for Bitcoin magazine about that, that he released on the 4th of July, I believe it was in 2021, or it was 2022. I truly believe that Bitcoin does embody Western values as a technology. And that's actually why the West will most likely embrace Bitcoin while dictators continue to oppose Bitcoin. And, you know, I think that there is no bigger testament to that, to seeing the attitude of dictators, especially CCP and Russia, towards Bitcoin. And maybe it's the begrudging attitude of Western policymakers towards Bitcoin, but the trend towards allowance and kind of letting the genie out of the bottle, if you will. So not to have faith in lots of governments because I don't.

And I think that Bitcoiners want to trust less and verify more and want to take more self-responsibility towards their money and their custody and have less faith in institutions and third parties as a trend. I do think that in a world where it's democracy versus dictators and who's going to open up the box for Bitcoin more, it's going to be the democracies. democracies. Right. And I think that the facts already bear that that is the case. And I think that trend is going to continue, even though it's not going to be a straight line up. It's going to be yes, no fighting against it, accepting it, this party saying yes, this party saying no, then they flip flop. And, you know, the political football is going to be kicked all the way up to Bitcoin adoption. Well, and I mean, let me let me pull on this thread just for a little bit longer and then we'll move on. But, you know, what's the difference between what Canada did to keep picking on my friends to the north and what Belarus does? Is it just a matter of degree or is there a principle distinction outside of one being a democracy and

one not? Yeah, no, I think that there's very little distinction. And I think that this is why it is going to more and more come down to a world that requires trustless money to continue to scale up and continue to globalize. And not every democracy is going to win. And yeah, there's going to be a lot that slide backwards. There's going to be a lot that embrace China. There's going to be a lot that reject Bitcoin. But I think just like in history, the countries that embraced gunpowder and the countries that embraced gold were superior to the ones that did not. And the ones that stuck to silver, stuck to some other monetary technology, those that embrace the better monetary technology that enables trustless transactions, that does not have inflation as an issue to kind of disrupt it, they're just going to win over time.

And honestly, like, that's my bet personally. But I think that that's also a bet that HRF is organizationally aligned with as well. Well, and speaking of sort of where it's going and what the capabilities are, you touched on this. HRF has given, I think, just shy of $8 million to 280-some-odd projects. Does that sound about right? I got to check our paperwork to get the numbers right. I can't get them straight, but it's a lot. It's a lot. This year alone, we're going to distribute $4 million to open source Bitcoin projects that support freedom and education in some of the worst places on earth. Yes. Yeah. And so and tremendous. When you when you look at what you're funding, privacy tools, e-cash, lightning infrastructure, what sort of the theory of change? What has to get built for Bitcoin to work sufficiently for a dissident in 2027?

And what are the gaps if, you know, there are particular gaps? You talked about UX. I think that's a big one. But what has to work or work better over the coming years? Yeah, I mean, I think Bitcoin as a full stack money, its development around that is the most important thing. I think money is the killer feature, but it's kind of a chicken or the egg issue, right? So the ability for people to earn Bitcoin and then use Bitcoin to plug into a global market is the killer feature. And that solves the KYC, the surveillance, and all the tools that democracies use to protect us and dictators use to oppress their subjects. So it really is about solving this kind of last mile problem around Bitcoin. And, you know, I think that that's just going to take time, but it's going to look a lot like other technology adoption.

And again, it was hard to send email when no one had email address. It wasn't that email wasn't a great protocol for sending that data across borders, time and space. It's just that no one had email. So this is like a this is a Metcalfe's law issue more than anything else. And that just takes time. And I think that it will be catalyzed with smarter product building, more relatable education, as well as more and more failure by the incumbent system. So it's kind of people are getting squeezed towards Bitcoin in both directions, both innovation and incumbent failure. Future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed and betting on incumbent failure. I think that's that's too interesting and uncertain, undoubtedly certain bookends. So in in evaluating these grants. what's being built right now that most people don't know about?

What should we be watching? What has excited you in the past 6 to 12 months, let's say? I mean, I think that when it comes to what is being built right now, we are very excited about eCache. We are very excited about Noster. And we are very excited about open source AI. And, you know, we see these three technologies as being extremely complementary to base layer Bitcoin in allowing Bitcoin to become more relatable and adoptable, as well as bootstrapping this kind of Bitcoin circular economy. And so just to give you an example, I use Zeus Wallet myself, and I use it to accept my zaps on Noster, and it gets put into an e-cash wallet within Zeus. and that href has had a place in that entire kind of circle emerging and what that looks like to me is

a permissionless way to tap into a circular bitcoin economy i was actually looking you know every time you reopen zeus wallet it has to kind of re-sync and and re uh and and update the balance based on counting new eCash tokens that have been sent to you. And it's amazing to kind of see like, wow, here I am in 2025 and I can participate in a social network that helps me earn Bitcoin. And that wasn't possible before. And while Nostra right now seems like a social network for Bitcoiners, There are activists that feel the pain of being deplatformed in their country on fill in the blank social centralized social media that see the utility and they are trying to build solutions with other bitcoiners on how do we

create a social network for argentinians or how do we create a social network for venezuelans or how do we create a social network for belarusans that leverages nostr and leverages the open source infrastructure that was already built and forks the clients, but helps them just be in their community. Right. And, and that is happening. Uh, and that is, it's so, so bullish because all of it is bringing new people in and removing friction. Right. Uh, and you know, kind of on that, I really like e-cash, not like e-cash isn't perfect. It solves a lot of problems and makes smart trade-offs that align with users, but it is enabling so many new products to emerge because it enables jurisdictional arbitrage. You know, what was once, hey, you could not offer this because you have to register as a bank. Now you can just integrate eCash or now you can just integrate ARK and it allows the product

to find a jurisdictional way or a way to kind of like sidestep that legal blocker that's preventing them from building the product. You know, a lot of the blockers of this technology is legal uncertainty, right? And as these new ways of building products, new ways of shifting trust from one place to another, new ways of creating different trade-off balances emerge, it just doesn't It just opens up the door for more and more products to be brought to the market and to help people become more sovereign, become more connected to the global economy, become more able to resist if they are in a negative or an authoritarian situation. So, yeah, I mean, again, I think it's just cool being a Bitcoin enthusiast, being able to be a part of an organization that is giving grants to support the technology and then seeing the feedback loop of, and I'm using this technology and it is benefiting me and doing what I wanted to do and giving me access to things that I did not have access to prior to that technology getting developed and getting funded and getting more harnessed.

Yeah, and that's, you know, it's a really interesting point that despite low time preference and despite, you know, do it once, do it right, and the slow progression, some would say, of certain protocols, certainly BaseLayer Bitcoin, that, as you say, you're able to, through HRF, fund a team, fund a product, fund an open source initiative, and shortly thereafter sort of see it, hold it in your hands. And absolutely shout out to Evan and Zeus. I think this graduated approach from e-cash to, you know, lightning to custodial to non-custodial is fantastic. And I think what I take out of this is that, as you say, that maps to a graduated legal risk or threat and being able to arbitrage that. Um, so as we, as we sort of wrap this up, CK, and maybe bring it, bring it to the U.S. for a bit,

um, and we've touched on this, but I'm going to ask us that we go back. So someone's listening to this, you know, in the U.S., they're nodding along and thinking this doesn't really affect me. Um, you know, we think CBDCs and financial censorship are someone else's problems. You know, we could disavow them of that knowledge in many ways, but what's the vector by which this becomes our problem here in the U.S.? Like, you know, why should they be paying attention and certainly supporting, I think, HRF? In terms of, you know, why Americans should support HRF, I think just look at our body of work. And if you want to get a tax-deductible donation to supporting this brand of the Bitcoin development ecosystem and, you know, our mission around bringing financial freedom to the world, I think that there's a lot of benefits and a lot of kind of clear reasons why to support the Human Rights Foundation from that perspective. But, you know, when it comes to Americans, I think that Americans understand that what happens outside of our country affects us.

And that Americans have always understood that if we don't, you know, like, for example, I think the war against communism did not work. But the intention behind that was the right intention, which is that we need to have global markets, we need to have global freedom. Otherwise, America itself cannot be free. Otherwise, America itself cannot have the benefits of free markets. And I think that we're still in that fight. Right. And that's why I think that in the long run, America and the West will embrace Bitcoin and export Bitcoin to the world. And I think Bitcoin will help people living in much less privileged situations come online and contribute to that global market and be a part of the solution rather than being victims of the problem that they're born into. So, you know, I think Americans should support Bitcoin as well as this fight for liberty globally from a self-interested perspective as well as a philanthropic perspective.

so and again that's why I'm in this fight myself I it's not enough for you know me to be taken care of if everyone else on the planet is living in a digital gulag right that then you're just running away you're not living in a world that is benefiting from the most of these values this technology and you know what can be brought to humanity you know I want to push the forward March of Humanity Forward. I think that Americans want to do that in general. And yeah, even today with the political energy behind closing borders and isolationism, you know, I don't think that that is out of the insight of we can just escape these problems, but people want to find ways to do it in a more fair way, right? And I think that rather than exporting troops, rather than exporting inflation, the way that we do that is we export freedom technology. And, you know,

that might be a nascent perspective right now, but I think that freedom fighters, principled Americans, principled people who believe in liberal values, they're going to find that this is actually the best vector in which to push liberty forward. Love that. Love that. Understanding that your focus is on financial freedom and Bitcoin, to zoom out just a bit, but to stay with, you know, why this matters. So Bitcoin fixes the money, but money isn't the only sort of system of trust that's breaking. Talk to me for a few minutes about the parallels you see in the work HRF is doing in identity, AI, sort of that sphere. So in AI, we just launched the AI for Individual Rights Initiative, which I think is the only kind of nonprofit AI initiative that isn't focused about on, you know, saving humanity from our AI overlords, from this kind of general intelligence, super intelligence, getting out of control and actually focused on much more practical, much less theoretical issues, which is how do these big data surveillance systems, how can they be abused by dictators?

How can they be abused by government as well as how can freedom fighters leverage them in the power that they enable in a safe, secure way to push forward their work? So it's probably the most practical, the most grounded AI program out there in terms of pushing forward or having an agenda within the AI space. And yeah, I think that that ties into Bitcoin very well because you see that the builders of that AI space are often Bitcoiners. The builders who are building privacy, respecting individual, respecting data, respecting solutions. They are people who are in the general freedom tech spaces or people who have already embraced Bitcoin. And then the other side of the coin, you know, the people who aren't already orange pilled, they're having a very difficult time from like focusing on what the real issues at hand are.

You know, they're focusing on how is AI going to take over our lives rather than how are the people who are controlling our lives already? How are they how could they potentially abuse AI? and yeah I think that that just shows HRF's ability to really hone in on what the real problems are here and cut through the noise and I look forward to assisting HRF to continue to find even more avenues to do that in terms of identity, identity is tricky we don't have, I don't think we have an official program or opinion on identity you know there's a flip side of like hey, you can't access banking services because you don't have identity. Well, Bitcoin fixes that. And then on the flip side, there's a lot of danger in terms of tracking people's identity, putting people's IDs in databases, et cetera, especially when it comes to abuse from authoritarians. So it's still an area that I think we are trying to navigate if we can

make a difference there. Stay tuned. Well, let's wrap it up here, CK. Let's come back to financial freedom. What does success look like for your work? What's the scenario or the world in which HRF's financial freedom program declares victory? Man, that's a tough one. There's so many issues that we have to continue to push forward. I think we're in a very early stage. Yeah, I don't think victory is even closer on the horizon. So I can't give you a scenario for that. But we want to see the civil liberties and the liberty space in general embrace Bitcoin. I think we want to see our counterparts embrace Bitcoin. And we want to see the freedom fighters leveraging Bitcoin and then having that enable their work and having that make them a better activist.

this and make them more successful. And I think that and we think that that is that is the path to continuing to change the narrative around Bitcoin, continue to educate around Bitcoin, show utility around Bitcoin, and ultimately usher in a world that runs on Bitcoin. And that is a world that, you know, I think as a baseline offers a lot more liberty and freedom and accessibility to everyone online. You know, my mental model for why is Bitcoin important? Well, today's world, 1 billion people live in democracy with stable currency and property rights. And 7 billion people are subjected to less than that in order for that 1 billion to get it. And I think that Bitcoin is going to flip that. And Bitcoin is actually going to give the best property rights, the most stable currency to everyone and is going to build a system where the 7 billion people who are kind of downtrodden and part and outside of those who have, it's going to bring them online.

And I see that as not just a philosophical win, but actually I think from a utility perspective, it's actually a win for everyone on earth. Because what kind of human capital is being wasted today? What kind of human capital is being squandered? squandered. How many geniuses have no chance to express their genius and to benefit humanity because their government, because their financial system, because their access to electricity and the internet? And I think Bitcoin is the catalyst for bringing those people online and ultimately helping humanity benefit from that human capital that's currently being wasted. LFG. Cheers to that. Really, really appreciate it, CK. Thanks so much, buddy.