Jack Mallers to US Gov: Adopt Bitcoin or I'll Leave

the title of my keynote is Bitcoin in the lightning Network of public good for the American people and a strategic opportunity for us as a country I'm a born American I love my country and I actually am not coming with a ton of advice today actually I more so want to propose a framework to where in which we can as American citizens and collectively as a country think about Bitcoin in a way that will help us evaluate what it means to America so this is less advice although I'm happy to give that later this is more a framework that I think will be extremely helpful and it's an honor to be in our nation's capital to be speaking with you all so with that just to quickly introduce myself because that's polite my name is Jack many people know me as the founder and the CEO of a company called strike that you just heard a little bit about we are a leader in the Bitcoin and lightning Network space so I actively work on these Technologies every single day and more so than the company I've spent the last 10 years of my life working on these Technologies and really building a grounding fundamental understanding of how they work and why they're important for reference I'm 29. so it's a third of my life and a third of my life was learning to walk and a third of my life was learning to shave so I generally think of Bitcoin as my entire life so far um so first I think it would be a good place to start and acknowledge what this room has heard about Bitcoin again I'm not here to advise or talk down on anybody I really think that there's just a better way to think about Bitcoin as a technology so in the effort of not gaslighting let's talk about some of these things that you may have heard that Bitcoin is poor technology that actually despite efforts from those heard you've heard from earlier today that it's really slow and it's really expensive and you heard that it sucks compared to other technologies that you may have used or seen you may have heard that it's only valued by criminals and that without a criminal there's no one on this planet that could seemingly value this technology you may have heard that it's a pyramid scheme and that its only value is to those that are passing the Baton you may have heard that it can't fit within proper regulation and proper compliance which we use to construct a civilization we can function within you may have heard that it's too volatile to be used in payments so why would we work on this technology if I cannot use it to buy things at a Starbucks for for example you may have heard heard that it's harmful to your neighbors and to your family members and to the general public retail investor that this is a threat to them and that we need to make an effort to protect them from something that's threatening and you may have heard that it boils oceans and that it is all jokes aside potentially dangerous to the environment which we need to live and prosper as a species I really wanted to put all of this on a screen at once and again just kind of peacefully Converse about whether you believe some of these things none of these things all these things my point is that collectively this is not a great way to evaluate a new technology these are one-off almost ad hominem attacks on a thing now whether they end up being true or end up being false we'll talk about it but as a framework of reference for us as a country and for us as Americans to think about a new thing which we as a nation have been incredible at from the printing press to the automobile to the internet I think that we as a nation need a proper framework to evaluate and have good conversation so I'm going to cross it out um here's what I think is really important on the back of Senator Cruz which was awesome by the way um I think Bitcoin is a technology and we can start there there's no one I know of to dispute that I think that Bitcoin is a superior technology and achieved technical Feats that were previously impossible I think like the internet before it Bitcoin is built for a world that's in an active transition from Central and local to decentral and global and I think it's a really important framework that we all start to think of Bitcoin as a public utility it's digital public infrastructure for money very much like the internet is digital public infrastructure for information Superior Tech that is collectively in a broad stroke transition for our species and it is owned by no one and accessible by everyone so it is a public good that acts as infrastructure for civilization to utilize if they so please and my reference is the internet I think is this of much healthier way to think about this Tech because as a monetary asset Bitcoin has established itself as the Undisputed digital Reserve leader there's no doubt about that and with the lightning Network which is technology that simply put makes Bitcoin a lot faster and a lot cheaper enables internet native payments at a global scale so I'm going to redo the slide previously with all of the claims and borderline attacks on this new technology I'm going to add the lightning Network which is critical to bitcoin success and I'm going to propose that it's actually better technology that Bitcoin can do everything in the financial space far faster and far cheaper those are just qualities of better Tech the internet can do things the newspapers can't far faster far cheaper it's globally interoperable there are no walled Gardens in this system it's accessible Successful by everyone there's nobody left behind it's resilient there's no central point of failure there's no big bank on Wall Street or there's no big Tech in San Francisco or there's no Communist Regime somewhere outside of this country that can deem this public utility this public infrastructure for the world to fail it eliminates intermediaries which many people see as a threat to existing corporations it's not the way to think about it removing intermediaries is very empowering to the individual it transfers value not personal information monetary movement requires a sense of credit which requires a sense of personal information being passed to conduct a transaction Bitcoin solves this by actually making the value digital and Bearer so if we exchange value and not information we do things like eliminate fraud and greatly secure data integrity and security these are awesome things and lastly very importantly when we think of things like the Dodd-Frank Act and the Durbin Amendment it eliminates oligopolistic distortions it opens competition innovation you know the true Durbin amendment is a free market and it removes concentration of corporate interest all of these qualities by the way guys are one of the internet so I really urge you to not take my words as advice more as a framework and reference on how to think about the technology it's technology and it's a public good that's owned by nobody and it's infrastructure for money similar to how the internet is infrastructure for information so I have a few sections that I'm going to build on top of which will lead us to what I believe is a conclusion that Bitcoin can be very helpful and necessary for American values and ideals so let's walk through the reality of modern payments uh technological constraints close payment standards rules defined within boardrooms which is not a bad thing it's a free market thing and it happened but it's been happening for over 50 years now I really like this Slide the visuals it looks a little dorky this is like welcome to my art fair project I kind of just toppled a bunch of uh visuals here but you see things like the Department of Justice being upset with a corporation like Visa you see things like Swift which was invented long before my I think my father was even born you see an amendment from our government trying to help the individual and help the small business you see a diagram of how payments work which no none of us will ever actually grow to understand how they work today and it's really quite insane the level of financial abstraction that we live in today this is a slide from Business Insider and like trying to encapsulate payments uh the font is so small none of you are going to be able to even read the corporations around that screen there's just far too many and even if we take an abstracted layer above that and we say well let's do away with the free market and corporate interest for now what about governments what about nation states that issue currency how do they settle payments this is a hilarious diagram that's color coded because it's so complicated the red is real-time payments that are launched and live today and used by our species the gray are people that have been working on it for quite some time and the black are people that are still having whiskey and talking deeply about whether it's a good idea and it just goes to show the level of fragmentation the lack of interoperability and how as money as a public good we're very much not on the same page whereas with the internet this entire Globe would be all the same color that's not to say in Gaslight Americans as if we haven't been a very material part of technological advancement so this slide is an immense complement to this country and who we breed and who we support and Who We Are I mean we invented the iPhone and Google and the cloud and ways to connect on the internet that was previously impossible so this is an important idea that this is not because of a lack of technological advancement but if you try and understand where technological advancement has been represented within Finance I like to describe it as improvements to the front end my mobile banking app on my phone I'm a Big Jack Dorsey fan big cash App Guy cash app knows my birthday like hey happy birthday thanks for direct depositing to us and gosh you seem to love lattes with whole milk it is such good software on the front end all of these things are Apple pay is very useful Shopify is amazing I can be scrolling a social network like Instagram and then tap on something I see it in a friend's photo of mine and purchase it on the Spot while watching television it's amazing but technological advancement and payments may look like they're getting Slicker but under the hood nothing has changed because you know something that Jack Dorsey and cash app can't offer me is an instant payment across the world it's a hugely important concept is at the settlement layer nothing's changed at the base infrastructure layer we've been relatively stuck and the surface good infrastructure bad oh sorry I'm clicking this is the slide to illustrate infrastructure bad surface good cash app is an amazing experience that sits on an amazing phone that runs on an amazing chip all produced within the United States of America but the infrastructure is laughably frustrating so modern payments they're not interoperable they're always intermediated they require because of their Reliance on credit and the financial abstraction from the actual asset that require intermediation they are delayed in their settlement because the asset isn't actually digital and Bearer there is no such thing as instant settlement they're plagued by risk and fraud and data security issues and they're generally owned and operated by oligopolies so our financial infrastructure that we use as a country is not within a free market which is a dangerous concept so technology changes everything this is a super important idea it's something that this country and the American people are very familiar with and it's how I think we should be thinking about Bitcoin as a government and as the people um Bitcoin is a global decentralized payment Network um it's a very important concept these are buzzwords and stuff and I really try to avoid this type of language especially in this audience um the idea is it's accessible to the entire world it's decentralized and then it's owned by no one accessible to everyone I mean and really if you get lost in any of this stuff fall back to the internet you could replace Bitcoin and the internet and pretty much every one of my slides and they will be spot on correct the lightning Network which is a technology maybe not everyone has defined yet it's simply technology that allows Bitcoin to scale and so combined you get a global robust settlement infrastructure for the world that's a public good a public utility and you get scalable infrastructure that can conduct Superior payment experiences superior meaning when we measure things like speed and cost for money Bitcoin as a technology it's digital and Bearer which means it eliminates abstraction this is a super important important point if you think open your phone on whatever Financial app you use and think of the level of abstraction how many hops would you have to get to to arrive at the actual US dollar sitting at the Federal Reserve I'd have to go if I opened my cash app I'd have to go from cash app and square and Jack to then Visa to then the issuing Bank to then the bank that has access to the FED window but even before that there's a difference between a card issuer and a bank issuer I'd probably have to go about 10 steps to get to the actual Financial instrument that is the United States dollar Bitcoin abstracts that entirely because it is Bearer in a digital form so the digital representation of Bitcoin everyone in this room if they've used Bitcoin they've physically touched it I'm 29 years old I was born in Chicago Illinois I've never physically touched a dollar because no one's ever let me inside of the Federal Reserve this is a super important point and then for payments lightning eliminates closed ecosystems into intermediaries so I actually took a screenshot of Jack's app the cash app and this is his implementation of Bitcoin so inside of Jack's app I'm actually touching Bitcoin and it doesn't require Visa or an issuing Bank there are no intermediaries for me to use Bitcoin through jack dorsey's application um if we go back all of these things are generally required for me though to use American payments I just had a iced latte so for money for money Bitcoin is a digital bear instrument eliminates abstraction and for payments lightning eliminates closed ecosystems and intermediaries so if we go through payments these new payments this is superior technology it is not trying to hurt the environment it is not trying to elicit criminal activity it's interoperable it's permissionless so it doesn't require trust it could be done by everyone it's very inclusive financially it settles instantly and in a cash final manner where the message is the money and the money is inside of the message if the money is now bytes of data I could text you that and it physically settles without having to be cleared through 17 financial institutions it transfers value not personal information super important for fraud and data privacy and security risks and it's owned by nobody and operated by everybody so the Department of Justice should not have long nights trying to put a case against any Corporation money is technology Bitcoin is superior technology this is the correct framework I believe as an American to think about this stuff um so I've talked about Jack and cash out because I really try to make this presentation a framework of reference not about myself not about my company I unfortunately don't have internal access to Jack's data um I know the guy he's an amazing dude but not that well this is data of my own from my own business so we offer a service that allows Americans to send US dollars to the Philippines received as local currency so again I'm not requiring my customers to touch Bitcoin use Bitcoin I'm using Bitcoin as public digital infrastructure for monetary movement where we take dollars from a customer we send Bitcoin to the Philippines the Bitcoin is then exchanged into local currency and deposited into a customer's Bank uh take a look at this slide from the user opening the application to the Filipino Peso Landing in the recipient's bank account on average it's about one minute to physically settle um I just put together a few other references um it's not even close Superior Tech again Superior Tech on a cost basis so this is our internal data this is not what we charge or how we monetize as a business this is just the internal data of our lightning infrastructure settling this money it's all less than 10 basis points every time not even close um so as a business my Revenue opportunity and my margins are phenomenal and as a business I have an opportunity to pass a lot of this value back to the consumer the this entry mediation is realizing the cost and the American citizen benefits from this my customers more money makes it home and I thought this part was particularly interesting is if we look at our internal data as a business over 95 percent of customers are actually using this technology to settle payments in foreign bank accounts and in foreign mobile money accounts less than five percent is using it to pay other Bitcoin and lightning apps so again this is not front-end technology this I did not build the cooler Slicker cash app this is public settlement infrastructure that the world is using under the hood to improve what hasn't been improved since probably 1970. super big difference between the cooler Slicker venmo and a public utility that acts as infrastructure for money similar to how public utility in the internet is for information and the advantages are clear as day they're very obvious I think Bitcoin is a public good for Americans so Superior Tech that's a public good that's owned by no Corporation is good for the American citizen secure decentralized scalable infrastructure provides a number of benefits this these Technologies traditionally give everyone access that's traditionally excluded otherwise it's very resilient it can't go down quote unquote in competition it opens up competition which then results in Innovation which then results in price suppression which then results in more value to businesses and to individuals now I keep going internet and Bitcoin internet and Bitcoin I actually put this slide together and I'm going to impend messages there because I tricked you this is a slide about the internet take a second and read it secure decentralized scalable public infrastructure a good thing for our country and a good thing for the American individual everyone can now have access to send and receive messages and conduct information transfer right there's no Central points of failure and it's open competition anyone can build a website and solicit me as a customer now I'm going to change the message to payments and convey a very similar idea that this is a public utility and it's just within the financial sphere as opposed to the information sphere Bitcoin is digital public infrastructure for money much like the internet is digital public infrastructure for information see it's got taken a picture let you take that you got it another boy Bitcoin along with the internet embodies American values individual freedom there's a freedom in coming going expressing and opining on this network equal opportunity on the Bitcoin network and on the internet you treat others without discrimination it's a free market system it's driven strictly by supply and demand with no outside interference and it's driven by Innovation and progress open competition natural Innovation fast progress without Innovation there's no progress without progress there's no innovation these open public infrastructures that are digital which we're living through this age now are very necessary for us as a country now lastly I I'm looking at the clock I know I'm running up on time I uplift students I promise don't kick me off uh strategic opportunity for us as a nation so I think modern day payments struggle a lot unfortunately we've seen how Superior technology changes everything we've seen how this Superior technology actually benefits the American individual and now I think we need to very very seriously talk about the Strategic opportunities for us as a nation and the security risks quite frankly if you're going to sit here and tell me that the internet is not core to our nation's security risks I'm gonna move um so you may have heard that Bitcoin is not crypto hopefully my presentation made this a little bit more clear again I think a really good framework for reference is that Bitcoin acts as public infrastructure not to Corporation so there's no development team that you're waiting on a feature you know there's no fundraising marketing team that would make the coin go higher it acts as a public utility it's digital infrastructure so it is not crypto it can help stabilize our energy grid it can offset excess energy it can incentivize energy use that is very difficult to otherwise it can help facilitate Industrial Development sorry I'm losing track between the laptop and the screen oh okay sorry are we good so give me a thumbs up yep it can provide I think no one talks about this enough a new source of national wealth for America National wealth is categorized as produced capital human capital reserve assets think about the source of wealth that the internet provided this country the iPhone was created here Facebook was created here Twitter was created here I think it's very important that people that own Bitcoin a lot of it and people that build on top of Bitcoin very well pay taxes and where's Cruise Texas and not Dubai I'm being very serious and it strengthens geopolitical influence um these are important points so you may have heard a lot of this hopefully my presentation helps give you a reference on how to think about this more deeply what I want to leave this room with is the payments aspect what I think the US government needs to very very seriously consider is both how bitcoin's power can be harnessed and leveraged as a digital public utility similar to the internet for National Security interests um this technology can't be uncreated China and Russia will be using this and one to five to ten to a hundred years whether we like it or not and that's okay but we need to think about it and we need to think about it correctly and responsibly and then I think we need to think about how the Payments Technology can fix material distortions in our country um and again I could be wrong I'm not giving advice I'm clearly very biased and passionate but just as an exercise as Americans um this is our duty to not only our country but to the Free World you know for payments Bitcoin is already catalyzing optimization I talked a little bit about my business we all know Jack and square are very big proponents we all know former big Tech Executives like David Marcus are now in the industry this technology is being validated and changing lives already and I think with time we'll change everyone's life and by the way including the way fiat currency moves so again I can explain this later it wasn't worth this presentation but my company for example amongst many others moves US Dollars on top of this so this is not anti-dollar this is not opposing the Federal Reserve this is superior technology it's a public utility that can be used for whatever someone wants to use it for just like the internet the United States has to harness this Tech or at the very least given an honest look can't reject it because the Genie's out of the bottle and it's not coming back in so my last slide as the leader of the Free World the United States is in the best position to demonstrate commitment to exploring this new new idea um it's who we are as a country and again we don't owe it to our neighbors but we owe it to the Free World At Large um we are the world leader in democracy and for human freedom and this is a new public utility for money just like the internet is for information and as a country we need to be leaders and I feel as if we've struggled with that at times and it's okay this stuff is new but with this framework of thought I think we can make a lot of progress because we're the best country in the world so if you need to reach me this is my email and I appreciate you guys giving me the time [Applause] [Music] foreign

Channel: Swan Bitcoin

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Keywords: Bitcoin, economics, macroeconomics, investing, cryptocurrency, swan bitcoin, swanbitcoin, bitcoin price, bitcoin news, bitcoin today, bitcoin price prediction, Swan Bitcoin, bitcoin swan, crypto, bitcoin macro analysis, macro bitcoin, bitcoin analysis, btc, inflation, finance, hard money, bitcoin standard, saving, bitcoin journalism, bitcoin investing, jack mallers, bitcoin policy summit, bitcoin policy summit live stream by swan bitcoin, jack mallers strike, jack mallers bitcoin

Id: SH_aCW-sXUg

Length: 28min 35sec (1715 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023