Twitter Integrates Bitcoin with Jack Mallers

Yo, Pistol Pete.

Um, I don't know what to say. I'm pumped. I'm fired up. It's unbelievable. But at the same time, it's what's supposed to happen. I mean, this is the singular best monetary network in human history. And so I'd expect nothing less than a country that needs it most to hop on board and an internet company who has a global audience that can communicate instantly for free globally, but can't send money instantly for free globally. So this is all according to plan as far as Bitcoin goes. But it's a good day. It's a good day.

Yeah. Well, so to highlight the announcement, we launched the Strike API. So up until now, Strike was known as predominantly a mobile application. It was a mobile application that allowed you to interoperate with the Bitcoin and Lightning Network with fiat. Now, that is a ton of fancy word salad. What that actually means is that we believe that the Bitcoin and Lightning Network is the best monetary network in the world to achieve instant free global cash finality, instant settlement of money. And instead of making you use Bitcoin to spend, no one wants to spend their Bitcoin, right? You want to hold your Bitcoin. It's the best savings technology of all time, the digital version of gold. So we let you link a debit card, link a checking account, and make normal payments, and under the hood, we use the Bitcoin network to escrow those payments around the world to make it instant and free. And so predominantly we've been known as a mobile app, and you can download Strike, you can get this really novel experience, this disruptive experience. But today we're announcing our API. So we're taking that infrastructure that enables that experience, and we're letting anyone in the world make use of it. And the first partner of that API is Twitter. And so that's the big announcement, and there are broad, long-reaching implications of Twitter integrating this, and with our API being accessible and public to more and more companies, more and more entrepreneurs, more and more developers, businesses, merchants. But that is the announcement, and it's a huge deal, and over the coming weeks and months we'll integrate with more businesses, both small and some of the largest companies in the world. And we will make it public eventually, after a few more tests.

Yeah, so I'm actually talking about physical bearer instrument finality. So not finality according to Visa, who's managing a whole load of credit when they give you finality in assessing counterparty risk and balance sheet float. I'm talking about when I send $10 from here to El Salvador, does the 10 US paper dollars actually land in another country instantly and at no cost? No, of course not. Someone like Western Union is fronting the money to me that's sitting in Western Union so someone can pick it up, and they're going to do it in the legacy financial system. Peter, there's never been a physical bearer instrument that can achieve physical cash finality, physical settlement, physical bearer instrument clearance. We're talking about paper. We're talking about a rock. We're talking about what are other forms of money in human history? Shark teeth? We're talking about coins. How can a coin go from the USA to Japan? It can't. Now, what I'm saying for Bitcoin is the most innovative monetary network in human history. Why? Because a precursor to having instant global cash finality is the physical bearer instrument has to be digital. There's nothing that can travel across the world instantly and at no cost, right? So now you have a digital bearer instrument and the physical Bitcoin can actually go from the USA to Japan instantly and at no cost. And that's what I'm saying. It also requires no intermediaries. It also requires no trust. And so you're starting to see where a Visa escrowing value from the USA to Japan, there's limits because of my credit score. There's counterparty risk for settlement. There's a fee because of the fixed associated costs and all the intermediaries required for them that they get charged, right? And so now all of a sudden all that's removed, you can achieve that physical settlement globally instantly at no cost and for free with Bitcoin. First time in human history.

It's super simple. So to enable it on your Twitter account, you go to your settings, you turn on tips, and you just enter your Strike username. And then anyone in the world can go to your Twitter account, click tip, enter the amount, and they're presented a global interoperable Lightning Network QR code. And you can pay that from any Lightning wallet, any service that interoperates from anywhere in the world. And the user on the receiving end just gets dollars. So let's envision, for example, a user who has a Lightning interoperable wallet in Japan with Japanese yen. And they want to tip me. What's going to happen is they're going to generate a tip on my Twitter account and say, 'I want to tip Jack five bucks because he's the man.' So what's going to happen is they're going to click five, type in 'You're the man,' and then hit open wallet. It's going to open their Japanese interoperable Lightning wallet that's going to be presented in the equivalent amount of yen. And they're going to hit send. That yen is going to be debited, converted into Bitcoin, zipped from Japan across oceans, across borders, across countries, and land in Chicago, Illinois, USA in my Twitter account, and be converted right back into dollars. So I just get instantly spendable dollars, non-reversible dollars. That instant global payment was free. I didn't have to wait eight days. I didn't have to walk to a Western Union. And we're only interfacing with fiat currencies, but what we're actually doing is we're using the Bitcoin and Lightning monetary rail under the hood to make for more efficient global settlement. And that is so, so powerful. And that's why it's such a massive deal too, is Twitter has 200 million active daily users.

Today. Today. And I'm not going to speak on any of Twitter's future plans both with us and outside of Strike. But the very first version, you have to have a Strike account to receive, but you don't have to have a Strike account to send, right? Because you can make a Lightning payment with any Lightning wallet that exists in the world, any interoperable service on the network.

Super close. So as part of the announcement, I know we're working with many companies on rolling out into more and more regions. So we'll be in Europe and hopefully the UK before this year is over, and then many other countries that I will not yet hint at. But we're getting really aggressive with our global rollout.

Not today. You can in the future, but you can always just receive the dollars then flip over to the Bitcoin tab and smash buy with them. So right now it's an actual extra manual step, but we plan on enabling the future. Right now at Strike, everyone knows we operate with wait lists, we operate with slow rollouts. I care tremendously about the quality of the products we release and so we're taking our time. We're working in conjunction with Twitter. That's why 100% of the world on iOS right now can send and soon to be Android, but only 1% right now can receive and we're going to gradually roll that out. We're in no rush. I mean, we're talking about dematerializing all existing money functions onto a singular monetary standard and that's a big deal and we're not in too much of a rush to do that. I'd rather get it right than get it fast.

Yeah, I mean they've been a pleasure to work with and no, I think that speaks to the quality of their product and I have similar product visions and ambitions as well. I think building a high-quality product takes time, it takes iterating and it takes patience. It takes being a good listener. And so there's no such thing as rolling something perfect out all at once. Perfect is actually no feasible destination. Iterating constantly is the only viable way to build a product and service that's constantly improving and so I'm glad we're in line on that principle and so that's the way we're going to do it.

Yeah, so I mean, so we can start to get into the broad-ranging impact that this has because on its face, it may seem like Twitter just added another tipping method. You could also use Cash App to tip. There's a lot that is far-fetched that does not meet the eye initially. So, one, the Bitcoin and Lightning Network is the only inherently global monetary network in the world and it also achieves like we've described settlement instantly and at no cost.

It's the only natively global one. So to have a natively global monetary network requires first as a precursor a native global currency. A currency and an asset that works everywhere in the world that's not issued by a nation-state that doesn't have oversight regulation. So that would require an asset that is resistant to central parties, resistant to government, resistant to governance. And that its consensus rules and monetary policy is enforced by code and by a distributed network, right? I'm very hinting at Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is the only naturally global asset. Bitcoin and the monetary network and monetary policy, it works the same in Japan as it does in Chicago as it does in Colombia as it does in El Salvador, right? So it's naturally global in that sense. It knows no nation-state. It knows no governance. And so you have a bare physical digital asset in that sense. And then the monetary network that underpins it, all you need to do to interact with it is have an internet connection and be compliant with the monetary standard. Be able to speak the Lightning Network invoice. That's it, right? And so the Western Union network is actually not naturally global. It's patched together in a global way. And they need to work with these banks and these regulators and these processors. And that's where you get all these fixed costs and expensive fees. If Western Union could charge you 1%, they would. They can't. They'd lose money if they charged you 1% because the amount of intermediaries, fixed cost, credit risk, balance sheet float, forex currency exposure, cost of capital that they incur to pull off a global experience is tremendously expensive and outdated. And now you have an open global native monetary network to the world that does all of that instant for free and at no cost.

I like drawing this akin to the internet. Let's talk about the internet for a second. There once was a world, Pete, where in order for me to send you a message, I would write it on a thinly carved slice of wood and have a pigeon fly it to wherever you are right now, and hope that you read it for me to ask, 'How are you? I miss you.' Now, I do that over the internet. Pigeons flying with notes became email. My TV became YouTube. My social network became Facebook. The global conversation became Twitter. Now, I'm describing the transformation and dematerialization of the internet. The internet dematerialized all existing, bifurcated, segregated, independent, localized communications networks. The newspaper in South Africa was published on Wednesday. The newspaper here in Chicago is published on Monday. The newspaper in San Francisco is published on Sunday. Maybe pigeons fly in San Francisco year-round because it rarely snows. But in the winter in Chicago, messages were delayed because you were riding horse carriages through the snow, and pigeons weren't flying because they migrated south. All of a sudden, you took all these independent, segregated networks that were optimized to communicate, they were expensive, they were inefficient, they had fixed cost, they had legacy—right? All of these things that you hear me describe on existing monetary networks today, and they all got crushed. And they all got dematerialized. And they all migrated onto one singular open communications protocol for the world. And that is the internet. And the internet as an open communications protocol worked naturally everywhere. Didn't matter if you're in El Salvador, El Salvador people have internet and use Facebook. Japan has internet, uses Facebook. Australia has the internet, uses Facebook. And so you saw an open network dematerialize closed networks. And everyone migrate onto one singular global open standard. And the thesis of Strike and why I invented Strike in the first place is the vision that Bitcoin and the Lightning Network will do the same for money that the internet did for communication. And that the pigeons and the horse carriages delivering messages, depending if San Francisco is sunny and Chicago is cold, is the same thing that I have Venmo and Cash App, you have Revolut and Monzo. You have different bifurcated segregated monetary networks. They can't talk to each other. They're optimized around different regulation, around different governance, around different standards. They have fixed costs. They have balance sheet float. Western Union sending a remittance to El Salvador could take up to 50%. Now, all of a sudden, we have a natively digital bearer instrument. It physically settles anywhere in the world. It's the same monetary policy and monetary standard, any continent, any place, any jurisdiction, any time. And we have a monetary network in Lightning and a monetary standard that can allow that digital physical instrument to achieve cash finality instantly. And so what I'm saying is the Bitcoin and Lightning Network as a monetary network is the same what internet was for communication. So we're going to start to see the dematerialization of all of these independent segregated monetary networks are going to get crushed and we're all going to migrate. And so sending communication to someone like a Facebook post or a tweet, sending money to someone will be just as easy. It'll be free, instant, and borderless, just like Twitter is today. Sending money will be also.

Yeah, well, I have a lot of thoughts on that. So firstly, seeing El Salvador expand Lightning Network interoperability on this singular global monetary standard, what's so powerful about that, Peter, is there's no specific standard to McDonald's or if you're paying with a Visa card, you enter the chip. If you're paying with Apple Pay, you scan your phone. If you're paying with cash, then you've got to have exact change. There's none of that. It's a singular QR code standard. And the Lightning Network doesn't know if the payment's crossing borders. The Lightning Network doesn't know if you're getting a cheeseburger. The Lightning Network doesn't know of your credit score. In the same way that a TCP/IP request on the internet doesn't know if I'm fetching a picture with you, if I'm sending a tweet to you, if I'm texting you. Internet communication is a singular standard. There is a protocol to implement global communication to anyone in the world. And now there is a protocol to integrate monetary settlement to anyone in the world. And so that is so cool. Sending a remittance payment to a contractor for you, Peter, is the same as buying a cheeseburger, is the same as buying coffee in Zonte, is the same as sending a tip to someone on Twitter. It's all the same singular global monetary settlement standard for the world. And so that is so powerful. So as cool as it is for you to experience, it's what's expected. We have a singular standard, a singular experience to achieve monetary settlement between us human beings. And the fact that it isn't in the US, I mean, it cracks me up. It'd be the equivalent of El Salvador enabling the internet and you being, 'Wow, this is so cool. I can go to google.com and index the entire World Wide Web from my phone.' And then you go home and in order to send a message, you call your pigeon over and send it to fly over to your mate down the block. I mean, you're living in a disruptive time and some people are way behind others. Unfortunately, the US is not as advanced as El Salvador, which is something I never thought I'd say, but here we are.

Of course, right? Okay, so let's break this apart. The legacy banks like Wells Fargo for example. Their technology is 40 years old. They can't build a neobank. They don't know what my exact balance is at any given second. They're dealing with technology that was written by people that are now dead. Their technology is older than my dad. So they're already being disrupted, right? You're seeing this giant neobank market emerge. Cash App's worth over a hundred billion dollars, Chime's worth over thirty billion dollars, Venmo and PayPal are worth three hundred billion dollars. There's a tremendous amount of value transfer going from legacy financial experience to a more modernized mobile-first financial experience that's been built on new technology. And so that is exclusive of Bitcoin, right? Like banks just suck. So okay, fair point. Now, yes, Revolut's cool. But let's say exclusive of Bitcoin. Everyone has an opinion on Bitcoin. It threatens people. But the monetary network of Bitcoin and Lightning, Peter, it just offers such clear efficiencies. It's an option that you have: do you want to achieve physical bearer instrument settlement instantly and at no cost anywhere in the world or not? And you don't have to touch Bitcoin the asset. So for example, Peter, a remittance payment between you and I in a not-so-distant future could be my Strike account sending a hundred dollars. Strike's going to take a hundred dollars out of my Strike account, live converted under the hood to Bitcoin, zip it over the Lightning Network to the UK where it physically lands in the UK. That's not credit. That's not balance sheet float. There were no pounds sitting waiting for me. This is a physical Bitcoin that crossed an ocean and went into a new country, a new border, a new jurisdiction in less than a second and at no cost. And then you take that physical bearer instrument, that physical commodity, and you change it right back into pounds, and it gets into your Revolut wallet. And so Strike and Revolut become interoperable. How? The Revolut network and the Strike network? No, we're all on the same open standard to achieve finality between each other. And that does not mean that we need to be holding Bitcoin. That does not mean that we all need to think Bitcoin's going to the moon. Although everyone knows I do, that's not a requirement to operating on top of a singular standard for instant free finality of money anywhere in the world. And so it'd be the equivalent, Peter, of nowadays any NBA team, any newscasting service—I was just on CNBC. You all upload your videos to YouTube. You upload your videos to the communications protocol where you have instant free global connectivity to communicate. Can you imagine if a TV sector didn't upload all their content to the internet? All of a sudden, it would be bifurcated. It would be independent. It would be segregated. It wouldn't be global. It would be expensive. And people wouldn't have access to it. And so not operating on the singular open network, whether it's communication and now whether it's money, is doing a disservice to your customers and to your ambitions. And so for me it's a no-brainer and Twitter realizing that, El Salvador realizing that, you're starting to see the inherent network effects that come with open systems and the clear disruption and again what the internet did for communications, the Bitcoin and Lightning Network will do for money. I firmly believe that.

Let's talk about wealth. I mean, so listen, markets are binary. I mean, I don't know, but what I mean is like the recent work done by I think it's David Bailey and CJ Wilson looking at creating SPACs, super PACs so they can actually finance people to run against those who are anti-Bitcoin, which I think's interesting and you know, money talks in politics. Sure. But I really do—I firmly believe that this should live exclusive of politics. I mean, I'm not surprised people are upset. Markets are binary, right? In the sense that for every winner there's a loser. There's no tying in markets. There's no draw in markets. And so when you see disruption and you see innovation happening and people creating wealth and there's a net benefit to someone, that means someone lost wealth and there's a net loss to someone. And so I do expect independent, bifurcated, legacy financial, closed monetary networks to be disrupted and dematerialized onto a singular monetary network. So I do expect that, but I also think it should be thought of as the world moving forward in the right direction. I mean, think of the absolute disruption and innovation that the internet did, but not only that, but also how it improved the quality of lives all over the world, how it improved the quality of lives in the emerging markets in the third world and for people that needed it most. I mean, the world is not only a different place, Peter, but a better place because communication went from closed, independent networks that were localized to an open, singular, global standard for everyone to prosper. And to draw that akin to money, money is a more viral product than communication. Money is one of the most viral products of all time. If we can move money onto a singular, global open standard like we did for the internet, not only will the world change, but it will be a tremendously better place and we'll be able to help reinstall basic human freedoms and increase the quality of life for all 8 billion people on the planet. And so I can understand as a businessman why someone would be upset, but as a morally principled human being, we're doing right by our species and we're making the world a better place. And I think that's what this should be about. And the last thing that I'll say, Pete, is that in an open network and in a truly free market, competition is inherent and needed and required. Open networks don't care who is first. If open networks cared who is first, then the first social network to hop onto the communications protocol, the internet, dubbed MySpace, would still be here. They're not. Open networks care about the experience and the brand. Those are the winners over the long test of time. And so what we'll start to see is true free market open network competition for money, which we've never seen. We saw it for communication, and TV networks that were legacy and old and slow lost to YouTube entrepreneurs.

The old legacy newspaper publishers that would trash people that they didn't like and media is a rigged game, they lost to Twitter. Right? And so what I'm saying, and you can see where I'm going with this, the old nasty Visa oligarchs that when I walk into a coffee shop right now, Pete, how am I paying for this coffee is a dumb question. I'm either using the Visa network, the MasterCard network. That's it. It is a monopoly. It is a closed-loop system where they're dominant. All of a sudden, if that coffee shop is on the singular global interoperable value transfer protocol for money, I can use Twitter to check out at Dunkin' Donuts. I could use Facebook to buy my Costco groceries. I could use Instagram to check out at Walmart, right? So all of a sudden, competition for the monetary experience of the world is going to be open. It's going to be competitive, and people are going to migrate towards the best experience and the best brand. And so I think that's a tremendously powerful concept and what a more liberated world. Now, the consumer can interoperate with monetary settlement on their own standard in the same way that I can enter the web, Peter. I can enter the communications protocol dubbed the internet through Google Chrome that's going to track everything about me, but deliver a great experience, or I can enter it through Tor, which is a lesser experience, not as sweet and clean, but enhances my privacy. Soon, in a world or if you live in El Salvador already or if you want to tip me on Twitter, you could use Strike. We have to comply with regulators. We KYC you, or you could use Moon Wallet, or you could use Lightning over Tor, right? A free market. It's going to drive innovation. It's going to disrupt. It's going to allow people to have to adapt and optimize around the best experience and the best brand. It's going to ultimately put the power in the consumer when the protocol lives external of a localized regulation, localized limitations, geographic limitations. And so I think internet to Bitcoin and Lightning, it's a really, really powerful thing. And that's what's so cool about the Twitter integration is because you're taking a native internet network that optimizes around the experience for communication, and now they're bleeding into optimizing around the experience for money because for the first time the communications protocol has a counterpart for money.

Yeah, okay. Ton of comments on that. You're absolutely correct. No, I'm sorry. It's a great—I mean, I have so many thoughts. So firstly, with Twitter's integration with the Bitcoin Lightning Network, all of a sudden Twitter becomes one of the best remitting experiences in the world. Right? I can send $10 from my house in the United States to my friend David in El Salvador instantly and at no cost over Twitter. Why would anyone ever use Western Union again? All of a sudden, Twitter becomes one of the better payment methods in the world. My friend David receives the $10 over Twitter instantly for free and at no cost, a cross-border payment that traditionally Western Union would have took days and upwards of 50% to settle. And he can then turn around and buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks in El Salvador with his Twitter account, let's say. By integrating the Bitcoin and Lightning Network, Twitter also becomes one of the best acquiring solutions for content creators in the world. All of a sudden, Peter, I can post content. I could post a picture of my sexy six-pack abs on Twitter and anyone in the world—make no mistake, I shouldn't joke about this—make no mistake, anyone in the world, for the first time in human history, could tip me any amount. It's going to get there instantly. It's going to cost me nothing. And I'm going to just get dollars in my bank account. I don't care if the person tipping me is in Japan with Japanese yen. If they're in Frankfurt and they're using euro. They're in London and they're using pounds. They're in Nigeria and they're using the naira. It doesn't matter. There's now an open network standard that can escrow that value to me sitting here instantly and at no cost. It's magical. And so Twitter becomes a remitting experience. Twitter becomes a payment experience. Twitter becomes an acquiring experience. All of a sudden, Twitter becomes one of the most powerful financial global experiences in the world. They've achieved what all of the Visas, the Western Unions, the Shopifys have been working towards for decades, they achieved with one integration. And what does that tell you? That tells you that on this open global monetary network standard, there's no difference between a Western Union remitting payment and a payment for Starbucks and a payment for an online service or a good or for content. There's no difference. They're all just Bolt 11 Lightning Network payments. It knows no borders. It knows no race. It knows no gender. It knows no governance. It doesn't know that Joe Biden is my president. It doesn't know any of that. And so just by being interoperable with the standard, you achieve all monetary functions out of the box. Out of the box. So it's an insanely cool concept. And then four, saving on fees to process payments. You know, I actually think this is very akin to the Linux story. You know what happened—for those unfamiliar with Linux, Microsoft had a similar monopoly on OS that card processors have today on processing payments, right? They were the singular dominant Godzilla in the room, arguably charged way too much, wasn't improving their product, customer service was terrible. And so what companies would do is integrate, air quote, Linux, flirt with it, entertain it a little bit. Hey, this thing is open. This thing doesn't have any one ruler or one master. Everyone in the world is contributing to this Linux thing. And it's free. And we're going to integrate it, and they used it as leverage to negotiate with Microsoft as a potential threat. And say, 'Hey, you know how you guys are charging us X, bring that pricing down to Y because look at this free thing we're flirting and playing with. You may want to be nicer. Your customer support is taking two weeks to reply, you may want to make sure they reply in two days. You guys haven't released a new feature in two years, you may want to start releasing product enhancements every two months.' And you started to see—it was initially just a leverage play. People thought it was cute. Linux wasn't widely distributed, but then all of a sudden it was open and it had network effects. It took on a mind of its own and Linux became the dominant OS. And I think the same is happening for Lightning. Oh, Lightning's cute. Not many people are on it. Look how many locked Bitcoin. What's the capacity on the Lightning Network, which is an inaccurate metric and shouldn't ever be referenced ever. But yeah, let's use it. It's free. If I'm an acquirer, if I'm McDonald's in El Salvador, all of a sudden the Visa network's charging me 2.9% to receive a payment from Peter, but if Peter scans an open interoperable QR code with any of the existing services including maybe his Twitter account to escrow me value, I don't pay anything. That payment's not reversible. That payment settles instantly. The money I get I can spend right away. I don't have to wait for Visa to clear it from my account. Let's integrate that. Hey Visa, you sure that's how much it cost, 2.9%? You sure it's not 1.9%? You sure you don't want to be a little nicer? And then all of a sudden McDonald's in El Salvador—the entire country of El Salvador turns to one of the largest social networks in Twitter. And before you know it, is the Lightning Network—the singular monetary standard for instant physical and free clearance going to become the predominant monetary standard for the entire world and usurp these Godzilla-like aliens and old heads that have a monopoly today. I think history doesn't repeat itself, but it may just rhyme, Peter. I'm not a rapper, but it may rhyme just a little bit.

No, it's in my room. Yeah, I mean, so I was working on Zap, this open-source Lightning Network wallet and it was then when I realized, 'Oh my gosh, the Lightning Network isn't a way to make my withdrawals from Kraken cheaper and faster. The Lightning Network is a unified standard for the world to achieve instant, global, free monetary settlement in the way that the internet was a way for the world to achieve instant, global, free communication.' And I drew it on a piece of paper and my girlfriend at the time was like, 'Why aren't we going to dinner?' And I was like, 'I think I just figured out a vision for an open standard for money like the internet is for communication.' And she was like, 'That's it. You're single.' And that's how it went.

Yeah, I have a few thoughts. I mean, the first—is it crazy that I drew in a notebook in a hotel in Paris and I founded Strike officially 18 months ago and to see Twitter integrate our software and make it accessible to 200 million people? Yeah, of course it is. I mean, I'd be a liar if I said otherwise. But you know, I have an amazing team around me and amazing people around me, amazing friends, amazing family. And to be honest, man, my life hasn't really changed much and I think a lot of the credit goes to everyone that's been a part of this. And as it may seem crazy from the outside to watch me go from a YouTube show with Vortex I used to do—the first time I ever talked about Lightning Network on the internet—to CNBC. But I don't care. I've been working on Bitcoin for close to a decade at this point. I think it's the best way I can deliver the most outside impact to the world while I'm on this planet. I really truly firmly believe that. And so nothing has changed for me. I just keep working on Bitcoin and I'm just really proud of my team and proud of everyone that has been a part of this. I mean this is credit to the community, it's credit to the devs, to the plebs, to the people that fought off the block size war, the angry, malicious, hostile maxis that defended this monetary network and this monetary policy to enable it to us—rise humanity and reinstill human freedoms and give a third world country hope and give an open internet business a new form of life and way to communicate and relate and integrate with their users. This is because all those people that didn't let Roger Ver come in and walk all over us. This is all the Bitcoin core developers, right? So I share in all of that and I feel like I'm playing a small part and just doing the best I can.

Right. Now for Zonte turns to El Salvador turns to Twitter. What I don't think people appreciate about this, Peter, is yes, there is a very material difference in physical settlement between the Visa network and the Lightning Network. Lightning Network is instant, free and global. Visa network it takes time, is expensive and is not global. Okay? So that's material difference. One of the more important differences is also the Lightning Network is open, the Visa network is closed. This is hugely important. Open networks come with network effects and economies of scale, Peter, that are unprecedented that you've never seen before. Let's again draw akin to the internet. Google. Google's value prop as a company was to be the indexing system for the internet. Anything you wanted to find on the internet that you wanted to search, that you wanted to connect to, you go through Google. And so in a weird way, Google for example today could not build another feature this year. Fire all the employees. Tell everyone to go home until the year 2022. Go to the beach. Google will be a better company January 1st, 2022 than it is today. How? Because everyone else in the world is still making the internet better. There are new websites coming onto the internet. Every new website that joins the internet protocol makes Google a more valuable company. It allows Google to index one more potential search. That is a network effect and economy of scale that is unprecedented. So when Twitter came onto the internet protocol and the internet network, Google wasn't mad. Google was happy. And this is the same for the open monetary network and the open standard for monetary settlement that is Bitcoin and Lightning. All of a sudden, Peter, Nayib, the president of El Salvador, looks like a genius. All of a sudden, he has merchants that are accepting physical payment at his McDonald's. And people can check out with their Twitter. All of a sudden, Peter, his population cannot use Western Union that is slow, dangerous, and expensive. And they can use their Twitter account to remit any size of payment from anyone in the world. Peter, does El Salvador have the resources to engineer the most advanced monetary infrastructure of any country in the world? Peter, the population of El Salvador is smaller than Manhattan. Peter, El Salvador doesn't have a Stanford University. Peter, El Salvador doesn't have Jack Dorsey in San Francisco HQ of Square. Peter, I work out of Chicago, but we're all making the Bitcoin and Lightning Network better. And so El Salvador doesn't have to do anything. They could not focus on Bitcoin ever again, and their monetary infrastructure is going to improve and remain on the forefront of innovation, no matter what, because of open network network effects. All of a sudden, Nayib went from his citizens getting bullied by legacy financial systems upwards to the price tag of 400 million dollars using Western Union to free, instant, any size, anywhere in the world over Twitter. And he didn't do anything. He just interoperated with the network. Reversely, Twitter cares about engagement. Peter, Twitter's not taking a fee on any of these tips. Twitter cares that more people come to the service, that more people engage, that more people converse, that more people use the application. All of a sudden, people are opening their Twitter app not to tweet, not to read the news, to remit money. Are you kidding me? Talk about engagement. Twitter went from a communications platform on the internet to a financial service that just disrupted Western Union. They took over an entire industry. Why would anyone send money to El Salvador with any other service besides Twitter ever again? And so Twitter didn't converse with Nayib. Twitter didn't ensure the El Salvador bill got passed first. All they did was interoperate. That's it, and they benefited from the network effects of El Salvador. And so these peers that come onto an open system, they're all additive. They all benefit from each other, and as the network gets bigger and bigger, everybody wins. And so people don't appreciate the network effects. And the last thing I'll say is that early participants to an open network gain the most. And so I think you made this point as well, the ones that joined first win. And so it ends up becoming a race. So once you see Twitter join, if I am another social media company, or once you see Starbucks in El Salvador, if I'm another retailer, it becomes more of a risk not to join than it does to sit and wait, right? To join. So anyway, rant over. But I think all that's tremendously important. Yeah, that's all I am. I'm a walking ad.

No, I can say for the comment on you know, I'm exclusive of Nayib and I'm not a politician. I don't want to speak on politics, but what he's doing for Bitcoin—I think it's tremendously brave and inspiring and the people that want it to fail, I think are absolutely disgusting. I think access to sound money and an ability to save and grow your wealth is a fundamental human right and having access to a monetary network that acts in your best interest and that doesn't gatekeep access to high quality and charge you large fees and put you in danger—I think having access to a free fair monetary payment standard is also a fundamental human right. And so I think Nayib is not only acting in the best interest of his country, but he's acting in the best interest of humanity in his efforts with Bitcoin. And people like Steve Hanke honestly remind me of like a sour ex-girlfriend. It's like having your ex find a happy life somewhere else and being pissed off about it. Get over yourself. It's insecurity. It's disgusting and Bitcoin is an opt-in system. It's not required or mandated on anything. It's an open network and the fact that it's improving people's lives and that makes you upset in a way in which you have to maliciously act against it is absolutely disgusting and as a principled man, people like that should be ashamed. They should be ashamed. As a businessman, fine. But as a principled man, don't get in the way of people improving the quality of their life in such a way that hasn't been done in over 200 years. It's absolutely disgusting and shameful. So I wanted to make sure I said that. But yeah, man. I mean I love you. We've been through a hell of a journey. And I appreciate everything you've done for me. And I think this is only the beginning, by the way. I don't look at things like El Salvador and Twitter as a finish line. I think of it as a starting point.

Yeah, I appreciate it, man.