Episodes

  • S02E15 Christian Keroles – What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin

    S02E15 Christian Keroles – What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin
    Dec 12 2025

    “It's not enough for me to be taken care of if everyone else on the planet is living in a digital gulag.” CK explains why HRF treats Bitcoin as essential infrastructure for human rights—and why dictators keep failing to build alternatives that work.

    Episode Summary

    One billion people live in democracies with stable currency and property rights. Seven billion don't. Christian Keroles, Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, argues that Bitcoin flips this equation—giving everyone access to the best property rights and most stable money regardless of where they're born. In this conversation, CK breaks down why authoritarian regimes are the most enthusiastic about CBDCs yet consistently fail to achieve adoption. Why activists from Russia to Myanmar to Venezuela are choosing Bitcoin as their financial infrastructure, and what HRF has learned funding nearly 300 open-source Bitcoin projects. The pattern is clear: governments build intranets while Bitcoin builds the internet of money. And just like email in the 90s, the protocol works—we're just waiting for everyone to get an address.

    About the Guest

    Christian Keroles (CK) is Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, where he leads the CBDC Tracker, Bitcoin Development Fund, and activist education programs. Before HRF, he spent years as Managing Director and COO at Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference, building the infrastructure that shaped Bitcoin's public narrative. His team has distributed millions in grants to open-source developers and trained over 300 activists from 50+ countries on Bitcoin self-custody. CK discovered Bitcoin in 2017 through Laura Shin's Unchained podcast and hasn't stopped building since.

    Social Links:

    • X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ck_SNARKs
    • LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ckeroles
    • Nostr: https://primal.net/ck

    Key Quotes

    • “If you are opposing the guys in charge, you're not going to have access for very long.” — Christian Keroles
    • “Bitcoin is freedom enabling technology. Bitcoin is bad for dictators, and Bitcoin aligns with Western liberal values.” — Christian Keroles
    • “Rather than exporting troops, rather than exporting inflation, the way that we do that is we export freedom technology.” — Christian Keroles

    Key Takeaways

    • CBDCs are the intranet of money: Dictatorships are most excited about CBDCs because they enable capital controls, population surveillance, and data collection on unbanked citizens—but they consistently fail at consumer adoption because governments are terrible at shipping tech products.
    • Debanked means playing whack-a-mole: Activists under authoritarian regimes describe constant account closures, using aliases, and moving between platforms. Bitcoin gives them permissionless access to digital payments for the first time—reconnecting them to the global economy.
    • Bitcoin adoption follows the email playbook: The protocol works perfectly for sending value anywhere. The bottleneck is that nobody has a Bitcoin address yet. As more people come online, network effects compound—and HRF is funding the tools to accelerate that adoption.
    • eCash, Nostr, and open-source AI are the frontier: HRF sees these technologies as complementary layers that make Bitcoin more adoptable. eCash enables jurisdictional arbitrage for product builders; Nostr creates censorship-resistant social infrastructure; open-source AI focuses on practical threats from surveillance systems rather than theoretical superintelligence.

    Mentioned in Episode:

    • HRF CBDC Tracker - Monitoring government digital currency programs worldwide
    • Zeus Wallet - Lightning and eCash wallet CK uses personally
    • Bitcoin Design Foundation - User research for Bitcoin builders
    • Check Your Financial Privilege - Alex Gladstein's book on Bitcoin and human rights

    Podcast:

    • Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
    • Music: More Ghost Than Man
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    55 mins
  • S02E14 Why Ads Keep Winning

    S02E14 Why Ads Keep Winning
    Dec 5 2025

    Big Tech captures $670 a year from the average American through attention and data. Voluntary payment has never broken past 5% adoption in 50 years of trying. So why does it still matter? Because it's not about replacing ads. It's about having somewhere to go when the platforms decide you shouldn't exist.

    Episode Summary

    Voluntary payment sounds like the answer to surveillance capitalism. Pay creators directly, cut out the middlemen, become the customer instead of the product. The philosophy is compelling. The data is brutal. NPR, Wikipedia, Patreon, Nostr — participation rates cluster between 1-5% and haven't budged in decades. Technology isn't the problem. Human behavior is. When given a choice, most people choose free with ads over paying directly. But this episode reframes the entire question. Voluntary payment doesn't need to replace extraction economics. It needs to exist as an exit. When Patreon banned Sargon of Akkad in 2018, thousands of creators watched their income evaporate. When they fled to SubscribeStar, Stripe and PayPal cut that platform off too. OnlyFans nearly killed its own business model because banks demanded it. Operation Choke Point proved the government can strangle legal businesses through financial pressure alone. The 5% who voluntarily pay aren't your main revenue stream. They're your lifeboat — an uncancellable base that doesn't depend on any platform's good graces.

    Key Quotes

    "Your ad revenue pays the bills. Your voluntary supporters are your insurance policy."

    "Stop thinking about voluntary payment as charity. Think about it as investing in creators you can't afford to lose."

    "Voluntary payment can't dominate. Defaults always beat choice. Human nature doesn't really change. But it can exist at a scale that makes it viable."

    Key Takeaways

    • The 1-5% ceiling is structural, not technological: Patreon's conversion rate hasn't grown in a decade despite easier payments and lower friction. Better UX won't solve a values gap between early adopters and typical users.
    • Defaults beat decisions: Apple's tracking transparency saw a 55-point swing from a single design change. People don't choose surveillance — they just don't reject it. Same with payment. The path forward may be changing defaults, not convincing more people to pay.
    • Voluntary payment is deplatforming insurance: When Patreon, PayPal, or your bank decides you're too risky, most creators have no backup. Those who built direct relationships with even 5% of their audience have an escape route.
    • The hybrid model works: Chapo Trap House ($140K/month Patreon plus sponsors), Tim Dillon ($200K/month Patreon plus ads) — successful creators aren't choosing between models, they're using both.

    Timestamps

    • [00:43] The promise of value for value — paying creators instead of being monetized
    • [02:15] The $670 Big Tech extracts annually from the average American
    • [04:30] Evidence voluntary payment can work: Patreon success stories and Apple's tracking data
    • [07:45] The counterevidence: YouTube Premium at 9%, Netflix ads at 55% of signups
    • [10:20] Nostr's payment participation — 0.5% despite frictionless Bitcoin integration
    • [14:30] Historical data: NPR, Wikipedia, pay-what-you-want restaurants all hit the same ceiling
    • [17:00] Why defaults determine behavior more than decisions
    • [18:45] The exit option reframe — why voluntary payment still matters
    • [20:30] The Patreon/Sargon cascade and SubscribeStar deplatforming
    • [23:00] Operation Choke Point and financial censorship
    • [25:30] How successful creators actually operate: the hybrid model
    • [28:00] What this means for creators, listeners, and builders

    Mentioned in Episode

    • Fountain - Podcasting 2.0 app with Bitcoin Lightning payments
    • Nostr - Censorship-resistant social protocol with built-in payments
    • Patreon - Creator subscription platform
    • OpenSats - Open source Bitcoin and freedom tech funding

    Podcast

    • Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
    • Music: More Ghost Than Man
    Show More Show Less
    24 mins
  • S02E13 Cory Doctorow – Why Every Platform Betrays You

    S02E13 Cory Doctorow – Why Every Platform Betrays You
    Nov 26 2025
    “The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate.” Cory Doctorow didn't just coin “enshittification”—he mapped the precise mechanics of how every platform you depend on will eventually turn against you, and why voting with your wallet won't save you. Episode Summary Cory Doctorow breaks down the three-stage process by which platforms lure users in, lock them down, and extract maximum value until the whole thing collapses. Using Facebook as the prototype, he traces how lock-in happens automatically through what economists call the collective action problem—your friends hold you hostage, you hold them hostage, and no one can agree when to leave. The solution isn't to shatter these platforms but to evacuate them through interoperability mandates and adversarial jailbreaking that lets users maintain connections while migrating to alternatives. Doctorow argues that the coming “post-American internet” will emerge as other nations realize they no longer need to tolerate US tech dominance now that tariff threats have materialized anyway—creating an unlikely coalition of digital rights advocates, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, and national security hawks who all want the right to modify and replace American firmware. For individuals, he's blunt: join the EFF or a similar collective and stop agonizing over consumption choices. Boycotts only work when they're organized, and the energy you spend debating whether to stay on X is energy you should spend building systemic change. About the Guest Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist who works as a special advisor for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and edits the daily blog Pluralistic. He coined “enshittification,” named the American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year, and has authored over 30 books, including the recent Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. A former European Affairs Coordinator for EFF who helped establish the UK Open Rights Group, he holds honorary doctorates from York University and the Open University and serves as a Cornell AD White Professor-at-Large and MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. He lives in Burbank, uses Linux on a Framework laptop, and remains doggedly enthusiastic about RSS. Mastodon: https://mamot.fr/@pluralisticX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/doctorowBlog: https://pluralistic.netWebsite: https://craphound.com Key Quotes “The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate. And if you want a smaller government, have that government first and foremost enforce antitrust law.” — Cory Doctorow “People who tell you to vote with your wallet typically have thicker wallets than you and anticipate winning that vote.” — Cory Doctorow “We don't want to shatter the platforms. We want to evacuate them.” — Cory Doctorow Key Takeaways Lock-in happens through your relationships, not technology: The collective action problem means your friends hold you hostage on platforms—you can't leave until they do, and they won't until you do. This automatic lock-in is why platforms can degrade service without losing users.Interoperability is the escape hatch: The same tactics Facebook used to poach MySpace users (bots that scraped your feed and pushed replies back) could evacuate today's platforms. Mandating protocols like ActivityPub, combined with legal protection for adversarial jailbreaking, creates “supple but strong” pressure that companies can't easily evade.The post-American internet is coming: Other nations accepted US tech dominance to avoid tariffs. Now that tariffs exist anyway, a coalition of entrepreneurs (who want to cream off monopoly profits), digital rights advocates, and national security hawks (who fear Trump bricking their tractors) are converging on the same solution: jailbreak American technology.Individual action matters less than collective organizing: Stop agonizing over whether to stay on Twitter. If the platform still serves you, use it—then spend that freed-up energy joining EFF, organizing a union, or supporting mutual aid. Boycotts work only when they're coordinated; consumption choices are not politics. Timestamps [00:00] Cold open: Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse pivot as peak enshittification[03:53] The three stages of enshittification using Facebook as case study[09:48] Why this isn't collusion—it's unshackled business seeking its ideal form[14:16] How tech consolidation enables regulatory capture[26:12] Protocols vs platforms: Why Bitcoin isn't the answer[33:06] Interoperability: How Facebook killed MySpace with the same tactics we need now[37:05] AT&T's 69-year breakup and why anti-monopoly law matters[44:53] The post-American internet: Why other nations will jailbreak US tech[52:37] Technology as alchemy vs science—why secrecy makes everything worse[58:42] Hollowing out platforms vs shattering ...
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    1 hr and 14 mins
  • S02E12 Average Gary – From classified ops to open source

    S02E12 Average Gary – From classified ops to open source
    Nov 19 2025
    Operating under a pseudonym fits the ethos—sovereignty starts with controlling your identity. Average Gary brought the “thinking shooter” principle from Naval Special Warfare into Bitcoin: you don't need to know every answer, but you need to know where to find it. His path from military intelligence through Microsoft to large-scale Bitcoin mining reveals how decentralized systems reward proof of work over credentials and why open source tears down the walls between citizens and the institutions meant to serve them. Episode Summary Average Gary spent 11 years in Navy intelligence as a Chinese linguist and Naval Special Warfare tech operator, learning discipline, cross-functional thinking, and how to act decisively in dynamic environments. He transitioned to Microsoft as a software engineer, where mentors guided him into Rust programming, then moved into FinTech before landing at a large-scale Bitcoin miner. His journey reveals how military training in networked analysis and independent action translates directly to decentralized technology work—where reputation systems replace bureaucratic credentials and proof of work matters more than permission. The conversation explores how open source development creates pathways from government service into sovereignty-focused tech, why Bitcoin aligns with veteran values of independence and service, and how showing up consistently in local communities builds resilience against centralized system failures. Average Gary's work with Bitcoin Veterans and the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club demonstrates that the transition from centralized institutions to freedom tech isn't about abandoning service—it's about finding better tools to serve with. About the Guest Average Gary is a software engineer at a large-scale Bitcoin miner and founder of the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club in Northern Virginia. He served 11 years in Navy intelligence, including roles as a Chinese linguist at the Defense Language Institute and tactical intelligence specialist with Naval Special Warfare. After his military service, he worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and in FinTech before moving into Bitcoin. He's active in Bitcoin Veterans, an organization helping military veterans understand and adopt Bitcoin, and regularly contributes to open source projects focused on sovereignty and decentralization. Connect with Average Gary: Nostr: https://primal.net/garyGitHub: https://github.com/average-gary Key Quotes “You can just do things, but when you do it, you better have an answer as to why you did it.” – Average Gary“If you show up and you're a good human being, if you put this excess time and energy that you've unlocked by saving in Bitcoin to good use in your direct immediate area, I think you're going to be rewarded.” – Average Gary“The best centralized system is when you control it, and I think anybody has the opportunity to do that in their local area.” – Average Gary Key Takeaways Open source creates sovereign career paths: Contributing to open source projects builds a public proof of work resume that matters more in Bitcoin than corporate credentials—Average Gary emphasizes finding projects that improve government transparency or serve your community, then building your reputation through visible contributions.Military discipline translates to decentralized work: The Navy's “thinking shooter” concept—knowing enough to act independently while understanding where to find answers—applies directly to Bitcoin development, where you need cross-functional awareness but don't need permission to contribute if you can justify your work.Reputation systems replace bureaucracy: In Bitcoin's reputation-based industry, your GitHub contributions and project work speak louder than degrees or corporate experience—this levels the playing field for anyone willing to put in visible, verifiable work regardless of their background.Local action builds systemic resilience: As centralized systems fail and Bitcoin creates new wealth, showing up consistently in local communities—coaching teams, joining churches, attending council meetings, or running ham radio clubs—creates the social capital and infrastructure needed when grid-dependent systems break down. Timestamps [00:00] Career arc from Naval intelligence to Bitcoin mining [05:30] Transitioning from military to Microsoft, learning Rust [09:45] Why family and bureaucracy drove the shift from Navy to tech [15:20] FinTech experience and recognizing surveillance in financial systems [22:10] How Naval Special Warfare training shapes decentralized thinking [28:35] Defense Language Institute, Chinese linguistics, and data analysis [33:50] The “thinking shooter” concept and cross-functional awareness [38:15] Moving to a large-scale Bitcoin miner as a software engineer [42:40] Bitcoin Veterans: helping military community understand Bitcoin [47:25] Why open source matters for government transparency [52:30] Building proof ...
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    1 hr
  • S02E11 Stephen DeLorme – Bitcoin and Freedom by Design

    S02E11 Stephen DeLorme – Bitcoin and Freedom by Design
    Nov 13 2025
    “It's really difficult to engineer freedom tech—solutions that require you to kind of take ownership of your money, take ownership of your data. These things typically have engineering solutions that are harder to build; they might take a longer time to build, or it might actually require the user to kind of learn something new.” Two days after Square unleashed Bitcoin payments on four million merchants, we're asking the uncomfortable question: what if buttery-smooth UX beats self-custody every time? Episode Summary Stephen DeLorme designs Bitcoin products at Voltage and helps run Atlanta's ATL BitLab. He's spent years working on the UX problems that make freedom tech hard to use. This conversation explores the tension between purity and adoption, recorded just 48 hours after Square's custodial Bitcoin launch reached millions of merchants. DeLorme argues that freedom tech's disadvantage isn't just technical—it's that most people in stable democracies don't feel the urgency to own their data or money until it's too late. He breaks down why good UX isn't just a design problem but an engineering challenge, how privacy tools gain users when partisan panic swings every four years, and whether beautiful surveillance will always beat ugly freedom. The stakes: if self-custody tools remain hard to use, centralized alternatives win by default. But DeLorme sees a path forward—freedom tech that works its way into daily life without users even knowing it's there, turning ideology into infrastructure one better product at a time. About the Guest Stephen DeLorme is UX/UI Leader at Voltage, where he works on Bitcoin infrastructure and Lightning Network products. He co-founded ATL BitLab, Atlanta's Bitcoin hackerspace that hosts weekly meetups and developer events. Previously, he received a Spiral grant to contribute Lightning Network UX best practices to the Bitcoin Design Guide. He's also working on the Bitcoin Builder Kit, an open-source component library at Voltage designed to make Bitcoin UX easier for developers and consumable by AI systems. Before focusing on Bitcoin, DeLorme worked as a graphic designer and web developer, bringing a rare combination of design thinking and technical implementation to freedom tech products. Key Quotes “I don't think it has to involve friction. There's this kind of idea that as something becomes more accessible, when you find something early on, you like it more because you had to work hard to find it. I don't like that kind of hipster mentality of just because something is more accessible it's no longer good.” — Stephen DeLorme “Good user experience is not just a design problem. Some UX problems have design solutions and some have engineering solutions. Sometimes it's just about working until we have the optimal engineering solution to make this stuff easier to use.” — Stephen DeLorme “Privacy doesn't need to be a partisan idea. You're always at risk of having your privacy breached. But every four years as the pendulum swings, we get a new crop of people interested in privacy tech.” — Stephen DeLorme Key Takeaways UX is both a design and engineering problem: Most Bitcoin products fail not because the interface is ugly but because the underlying engineering makes simple tasks complicated. Better UX often requires better protocols, not just prettier buttons.Freedom tech carries structural disadvantages: Self-custody solutions are harder to build, take longer to develop, and require users to learn new mental models. This creates a persistent advantage for centralized alternatives that abstract away complexity at the cost of control.Privacy adoption follows partisan cycles: Privacy tools see adoption spikes every four years when political power shifts and each side fears surveillance by the other. This creates opportunities to onboard users who stay for the technology even when their partisan panic subsides.Beautiful surveillance may win by default: If freedom tech remains clunky while centralized alternatives stay frictionless, most users will choose convenience over sovereignty—not because they don't value freedom, but because the cost of claiming it feels too high. Timestamps [00:31] Square's Bitcoin launch and the custody versus UX tradeoff [02:40] Stephen's background: from graphic design to Bitcoin product design [05:36] Does self-sovereignty require friction, or is that hipster gatekeeping? [08:03] Learning software deeply versus making everything easy to use [11:47] Why most people don't need freedom tech until it's too late [16:22] Freedom tech's inherent engineering disadvantages [21:15] The manual problem: when learning curves actually helped users [27:08] Merchant adoption versus user sovereignty in Bitcoin payments [35:42] Why governments resisted Bitcoin but not the Lightning Network [41:28] Intention theft: when free products extract value you don't see [48:19] Privacy as a cyclical adoption driver tied to partisan politics [54:37] ...
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • S02E10 Dan Gould – Turning privacy into Bitcoin's economic edge

    S02E10 Dan Gould – Turning privacy into Bitcoin's economic edge
    Nov 5 2025
    “Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don't like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.” — Dan Gould Dan Gould builds PayJoin, the privacy protocol that breaks Bitcoin surveillance while cutting transaction fees up to 25%. Satoshi flagged Bitcoin's privacy problem in the white paper—PayJoin solves it without mixing, turning surveillance assumptions into dead ends. When privacy becomes an economic benefit rather than a cost, adoption follows. Episode Summary Dan Gould reveals how PayJoin breaks the core assumption that chain surveillance companies use to track Bitcoin users across the network. By allowing both sender and receiver to contribute inputs to a transaction, PayJoin shatters the multi-input heuristic—the dragnet surveillance tool that assumes all inputs come from the same person. This isn't just privacy theater: PayJoin delivers up to 25% fee savings while protecting financial activity from arbitrary discrimination. Gould explains why Bitcoin's Fourth Amendment moment hasn't arrived yet, how interactive batching supercharges both privacy and efficiency, and why merchant adoption creates network-wide privacy improvements even for users who aren't running PayJoin. The protocol requires no trust in third parties, no heavy dependencies like Tor, and works asynchronously so participants don't need to be online simultaneously. With integrations rolling out across wallets and exchanges, PayJoin shifts privacy from an expensive add-on to a default cost reduction. Privacy, cost savings, censorship resistance—or you can keep broadcasting your transaction history to chain surveillance firms. About the Guest Dan Gould is maintainer of PayJoin Dev Kit, a privacy-focused Bitcoin development toolkit supported by OpenSats and Spiral. He launched PayJoin Foundation with eight independent contributors and a volunteer board to eliminate the server requirement that blocked widespread adoption of privacy-preserving Bitcoin transactions. Gould's work on serverless PayJoin (BIP 77) enables asynchronous transaction coordination through encrypted messages, removing the barrier that prevented mobile wallets and merchants from implementing the protocol. His approach treats privacy as infrastructure rather than luxury—breaking surveillance heuristics while reducing fees makes adoption inevitable rather than aspirational. Social Links: X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitgouldGitHub: https://github.com/DanGouldWebsite: https://bitgould.comSubstack: Privacy sans MixingEmail: dan@payjoin.org Key Quotes “Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don't like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.” — Dan Gould“Satoshi said all the inputs necessarily come from the same person. That assumption—the multi-input heuristic—is used to dragnet surveil everyone on Bitcoin. PayJoin is the simplest way to break that privacy problem.” — Dan Gould“Where else do you get to increase or improve privacy and pay less for it? Anytime you're using a custodian, assuming you trust that custodian completely with your privacy, you are getting fee scaling benefits. But the problem is you have to trust that custodian.” — Dan Gould Key Takeaways Surveillance companies exploit the multi-input heuristic: Chain analysis firms assume all inputs in a Bitcoin transaction come from the same person—PayJoin breaks this assumption by letting sender and receiver both contribute inputs, rendering surveillance attempts unreliable across the entire network.Privacy delivers economic benefit, not cost: PayJoin reduces transaction fees up to 25% through interactive batching and cross-input signature aggregation while simultaneously protecting financial activity—making privacy adoption a cost-saving measure rather than an expensive trade-off.Asynchronous coordination eliminates server requirements: Serverless PayJoin uses encrypted mailbox messages allowing participants to transact without being online simultaneously, removing the infrastructure barrier that prevented merchant and mobile wallet adoption.Network-wide privacy improves even for non-users: When PayJoin transactions look identical to standard transactions, surveillance firms can't safely apply their heuristics—meaning increased adoption creates privacy improvements for all Bitcoin users regardless of individual PayJoin use. Timestamps [00:00] Why PayJoin works like HTTPS—making surveillance unreliable across the network [02:11] PayJoin Foundation launch: Eight contributors building privacy infrastructure [04:30] How exchanges batch withdrawals to reduce fees without sacrificing privacy [08:32] Bitcoin's Fourth Amendment gap—why digital cash has less protection than physical [14:42] Breaking the multi-input heuristic that enables dragnet Bitcoin...
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    1 hr
  • S02E09 Tim Bouma — Digital ID architect builds the escape route

    S02E09 Tim Bouma — Digital ID architect builds the escape route
    Oct 22 2025
    “You cannot have trust without some form of governance. And governance is basically rules.” Tim Bouma has spent two decades inside government building Canada's digital identity framework. He's also building on Bitcoin. This is the conversation about what he's learned straddling both worlds, why centralized architecture creates problems that better policy can't fix, and why the future isn't about choosing between government systems and freedom tech—it's about understanding what each reveals about trust itself. Episode Summary Tim Bouma dissects the architecture of institutional trust from a unique vantage point: architecting Canada's Pan-Canadian Trust Framework while building Safebox, a Nostr-based wallet designed so no single entity can shut it down. Currently on interchange assignment from Treasury Board Secretariat to Canada's Digital Governance Council, Bouma inhabits both worlds simultaneously—developing government standards for digital identity while experimenting with permissionless protocols. The conversation reveals why this isn't contradiction but synthesis: every trust framework embeds assumptions about who verifies, who controls rules, and who bears costs. Traditional frameworks optimize for institutional coordination across jurisdictions; Bitcoin optimizes for permissionless participation. Bouma argues the choice isn't technical but political, and that understanding centralized systems deeply is prerequisite to building alternatives that actually work. His work demonstrates that simplicity isn't rejection of complexity—it's what emerges after you've wrestled with every edge case bureaucracy creates. About the Guest Tim Bouma is Special Advisor to Canada's Digital Governance Council, currently on interchange assignment from his role at Treasury Board Secretariat where he spent over a decade developing federal identity management policy. He was a key architect of the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework, working across federal, provincial, and territorial governments to create interoperable digital identity standards. For years, Bouma has maintained parallel work in both realms: developing government trust frameworks while simultaneously building on Bitcoin, Nostr, and peer-to-peer protocols. He's currently building Safebox, a wallet architecture designed so no single entity can shut it down, applying first-principles engineering to explore how cryptographic systems can provide trust without institutional intermediaries. Key Quotes “You cannot have trust without some form of governance. And governance is basically rules. And if you look at the etymology of the word governance, it means to steer.” — Tim Bouma “Bitcoin is the simplest trust framework. It's just proof of work, signatures, and clear incentives. Everything else is somebody's opinion about how trust should work.” — Tim Bouma “When you build identity systems for governments, you're building surveillance infrastructure whether you intend to or not. The question is who controls it and what constraints exist on its use.” — Tim Bouma Key Takeaways Trust frameworks are governance mechanisms: Every trust system embeds rules about who can participate, who verifies claims, and who resolves disputes. The Pan-Canadian Trust Framework demonstrates how collaborative governance across jurisdictions creates complexity that ultimately serves institutional coordination needs over individual sovereignty—the more parties involved in framework design, the more compromise and overhead required to maintain consensus.Complexity preserves power: Legacy identity systems remain complex because simplification would expose how much control intermediaries extract. Government digital identity programs optimize for institutional efficiency (reducing fraud, streamlining service delivery) rather than individual autonomy—the business case always prioritizes the institution's needs, not the citizen's sovereignty.Bitcoin replaces trust frameworks with proof systems: Rather than building elaborate governance to determine trustworthiness, Bitcoin uses cryptographic proof and economic incentives. This reduces the need for human judgment and institutional oversight, but doesn't eliminate governance—it shifts it to protocol rules and miner incentives that are transparent and auditable by anyone.Self-sovereign identity still requires trust registries: Decentralized identity solutions promise individual control but require someone to maintain lists of valid issuers, establish credential schemas, and resolve disputes. Moving from centralized databases to distributed ledgers doesn't solve the fundamental question: who decides what's true? Timestamps [02:15] Why Tim spent a decade building government identity frameworks and what he learned about institutional trust [08:42] The Pan-Canadian Trust Framework: collaborative governance as trust infrastructure across federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions [14:20] How digital identity programs ...
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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • S02E08 Trey Sellers – Power Without Permission

    S02E08 Trey Sellers – Power Without Permission
    Oct 15 2025
    "If you go into a local community bank and ask for $50,000 in cash, you're going to get a lot of questions—and very likely they're going to say, 'Come back in a week, we need to order that.' The cash doesn't exist." Former Goldman Sachs risk manager Trey Sellers spent 15 years inside the machine before realizing the wealth you think you control is just a ledger entry someone else manages. Episode Summary Trust is breaking where it matters most: at your bank. Trey Sellers ran risk models at Truist and Goldman Sachs, managing billions in a system built on permission structures most people never question. Then Bitcoin showed him the alternative—wealth you actually own, not just exposure to. This conversation cuts through the why: institutions hold leverage through licensure and ledger control, creating money when they issue loans while your "savings" evaporates at 7% annually through inflation. Bitcoin inverts this—cryptographic ownership that requires no permission, no institution, no government blessing. Sellers walks through the Silicon Valley Bank collapse as a case study in why sovereignty matters, explaining how business owners couldn't make payroll because their cash was trapped in an insolvent bank. The path forward isn't abandoning the system overnight—it's understanding the power shift when money becomes a bearer asset you control. For executives and founders, this is strategic: Bitcoin on your balance sheet isn't speculation, it's a hedge against the trust failures already playing out in traditional finance. About the Guest Trey Sellers is Vice President of Sales at Unchained and author of FireBTC, a newsletter on financial independence through Bitcoin. He spent 15 years in traditional finance at Goldman Sachs and Truist (formerly BB&T), running risk models and managing institutional portfolios. After achieving financial independence in five years, he left Wall Street to focus exclusively on Bitcoin. Sellers writes weekly on how Bitcoin enables true financial sovereignty beyond traditional FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) frameworks. He lives with his wife and two daughters, applying low time preference principles to family wealth building. Key Quotes "When you take out a mortgage, there is new money that is created. It will be extinguished over time, but for a 30-year mortgage, that's 30 years of new money in the economy. You can't do that as an individual—but as a bank, you have special licensure from the state that allows you to just conjure up new money." — Trey Sellers "What does it mean to achieve financial independence if you don't have sovereignty over the money you've saved going forward into retirement? The political environment is really weird right now, and it would make a lot of sense to at least have a little bit of a hedge there." — Trey Sellers "Bitcoin is so much more real than the dollars you see in your bank account. Sure, you can pull out a $20 bill, but it actually just represents a spot on some amorphous ledger. When you're holding Bitcoin with private keys, it's digital but physical in the way you actually interact with it." — Trey Sellers "If you are holding your own keys and using a financial advisor, they've got to actively ask you for their fee. It's a push, not a pull—and that keeps them in check because they have to be very nice to you and treat you well." — Trey Sellers "Number go up technology is the number one recruiter for Bitcoin. That has always been the case. And I think that's perfectly fine—people are focused on Bitcoin for the narrow purpose of making more money. But when you take control of your personal finances and adopt Bitcoin, you take that power back." — Trey Sellers Key Takeaways Fractional reserve is a myth in modern banking: With unlimited Fed backstops, banks operate with infinite reserves created through printing. Bitcoin can't be conjured—scarcity creates real accountability and forces institutions to prove solvency, not promise it.Your "cash balance" is trapped during crises: Silicon Valley Bank proved business owners couldn't access deposits to make payroll when regulators shut down the bank over a weekend. Holding Bitcoin with private keys means treasury you control 24/7, eliminating single-point-of-failure risk in banking relationships.Information asymmetry disappears with self-custody: Traditional finance obscures fees through expense ratios and advisor arrangements that pull from your accounts. Bitcoin forces push transactions—you must actively send fees, making costs explicit and shifting negotiating leverage back to you.Corporate treasuries are melting ice cubes: A $500 million cash balance loses 7% purchasing power annually through M2 expansion—meaning it halves in value over 10 years. Allocating even a portion to Bitcoin offsets erosion while maintaining liquidity, turning retained earnings into competitive advantage rather than shareholder value destruction. Timestamps [04:38] Why traditional ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins