Nic Carter | Layer Zero

welcome to layer zero layer zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the ethereum community ethereum is built by code but it's composed by people and each individual member of the ethereum community has their own story to tell cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it and layer zero focuses on the people behind the code because ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been today i'm talking with nick carter who i don't necessarily think identifies as

part of the ethereum community but i think he has impacted it all the same nick carter is a prolific writer and also content producer and just general bitcoiner in the bitcoin space he works at his fund castle island ventures and also has a podcast which i listen to the weekly roll up every single week was it was actually the inspiration for the bank this weekly roll up uh they call it the weekly roundup and some of uh nick's writing and just overall content conversations has deeply

impacted uh the way i think uh thought about this this uh industry uh it's it's thanks to nick that i began to understand uh crypto and blockchains as political revolutions rather than just technological ones uh and in this show we we actually go and go back even further into the organizational structures of history and talk actually a lot about religion and the comparisons and and comparing and contrasting uh bitcoin as a religion and you know a blockchain as an omnipotent

omnipresent god and also talk about the the differences between uh the bitcoin culture and and ethereum culture and i asked uh if nick thought that the bitcoin community generally is a more faith based one as in like they tend to go to church more than other uh crypto communities out there and nick agreed with that point and so we collectively him and i uh parsed that apart and made some jokes and then i also asked nick about um you know what else what else does he do he he mountaineers apparently uh you know and also spends a lot of time in in deep

thought mode while writing and overall it was just a lovely conversation with my friend nick carter so let's go ahead and get right into that conversation but first a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible living a bankless life requires taking control of your own private keys not your keys not your crypto that's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger hardware wallets which makes proper private key management a breeze but the ledger ecosystem is more than just a secure hardware wallet ledger is the combination of the ledger hardware

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how's it going man pretty good this is so i'm doing good man i i just moved i it's been it's been a lot but i fished out the cables and we were at the audio with the video we're all set up am i the first person to get a peek into your new abode the actu yes i believe so yeah so this is the first piece of video content i'm doing for my new place so there we go what uh what inspired the move why'd you move well a number of factors

um but miami is kind of a good center for oh you moved to miami yeah i'm in miami so it's a good just it's a good zone for crypto people there's a burgeoning community here uh the northeast uh seemed kind of stale frankly um and you know heavily sort of locked down and things like that um and miami's just you know it's like a more happening place um although it's very hot here right now so you know there's downsides as well

yeah i lived in um boca raton for like almost three months right before covid hit and like boca raton anywhere outside of miami's not at all like miami miami is his own thing but like florida felt like there were there were costs to living in florida like the the seattle rain that i'm used to is not the florida rain that you experience down there yeah there is absolutely torrential rain actually about an hour ago i kind of

just got stuck on the highway no one could really drive um i mean i guess you know new york just had like incredible amounts of rain so that's not just you know a florida thing but yeah i to answer your question i mean we operate remotely now uh as a consequence of covet uh and so i could operate out of anywhere and i spent four years in boston i figured okay you know um try new city uh not to mention you know crypto has a very heavy latin american sort of

influence um you know some of the highest penetration rates in the world uh for crypto are in latiam and if you run a latin business you most likely have a miami hq or miami office and so this is another way of getting sort of in touch uh with that sort of genre of entrepreneur yeah i kind of had the same exact path except on the west coast where like covet happened after soon as covert happened i wanted to get out of seattle

because i lived in seattle all my life so as as soon as i was ready i was like well i'm gonna go do exactly everything i'm doing and move down to san diego so we both like had our upper corners moving down to the lower corners the opposite sides of america that's kind of funny exactly i have some catching up to do on the plant front though yeah you do i'm sure florida is a fantastic place to have plants i know i know i brought some of them down they were very much neglected and kind of starved of sunlight so i'm hoping you know they're

they'll be restored are you how are you how are you going to deal with the heat are you are you ready to handle that head-on uh it's been fine honestly i mean people here just scurry from ac to ac so they don't spend too much time outside uh the humidity is what as they say is what gets you um but i don't know i i'm like completely fine with it i mean yeah you get sweaty but uh you know whatever that's the cost of doing business down here what what about the the east coast resonates with you you seem like an east coaster

yeah i i don't know what that means but but you seem like one so miami is exactly 1500 miles south uh by road from boston precisely 1500 miles uh so yes i did want to stay on the east coast you know my family's here on the east coast um so i was i was gonna miami's like not that far from you know dc where like you know my a lot of my family and friends are so you know i i figured i would stay on the coast but just go to the most tropical part that's funny um

so the the first question i ever gave to you in a podcast was what's your deal and then uh the first question that ryan ever gave to you in a podcast was are you an etherean uh and so i kind of want to get an update on both of those things uh so i think when i asked you what your deal was it was like roughly like two years ago so like how would you update your answer to your question what your deal is what's your deal as of now i don't remember what i said back then

what did i say do you remember uh yeah it's whatever you said it actually like triggered uh for me a complete like reconceptual reconceptualization as to what like crypto is and started to get my mind thinking of crypto as like a political movement more than a technology one and so you said that like bitcoin um it just instantiates a lot of values that you have uh like the unprintability of money strong property rights um and a few things of this nature that's deeply insightful uh

two years ago me was a genius i don't know about i don't know about present-day me i think i've lost some brain cells in that time but uh that's still my deal actually that's that's that's uh that's that sounds quite insightful i mean um just recently i was thinking about how we keep mistaking technical decisions uh or what are actually political decisions for technical decisions um i i'm sure we'll get into this but eip1559 i think is a great example of that

actually um but yes i think that's still my deal um you know trying to peek through the sort of opacity and the veils of decentralization and and get to the fundamental you know nature of these systems um and you know kind of like resident enthusiast to all a skeptic all bundled into one um so i think that's still my deal maybe i'm more open-minded than i was two years ago so um when the the intro to the show is

talking to uh all the people that compose the ethereum community and when i uh pitched you coming onto the show you were like i'm not sure i count myself to be a part of the ethereum community could you elaborate on that point well i guess it's like you know the same way like a theater production like do you count the guy in the audience who's like heckling the performers as like part of the production like i guess [Laughter] so like you can hear them from the stage

so that's me like you know i'm like sort of adjacent uh like occasionally you know like making like annoying noises um but you know i'm not like an etherean uh per se but some ethereans uh you know tolerate me so that's good of them and some some just write me off as like a hopeless maxi which i'm not to be clear but uh you know so that's you i'm on the sidelines do would you do you have resistance to

being considered part of the ethereum community would you decline that label if you were given it by someone well an outsider i mean that's certainly like in terms of the venom diagram of the things that i am like no one would say i'm primarily an etherean but sure um i've certainly used ethereum much more than sort of the average global citizen and we also have invested in many companies that you know build on a theorem and things like that so maybe i'm just being too uh pedantic

about the distinctions here uh you know maybe maybe you could allege me to be an ethereum who knows well i think that when we talk about like the layer zero if we really want to zoom out the layer zero goes all the way back to the cypherpunks really like they are the layer zero of the layer zero i kind of think everything um hazu said that like uh crypto culture's downstream of it like a uh of bitcoin culture because bitcoin started this thing in the first place but i actually think bitcoin culture and bitcoin itself is actually downstream of

the cypherpunks naturally right like it came out of the cypherpunks so everything is kind of downstream of the cypherpunks and so and i think one of the cool things that crypto did for the world is it kind of shattered the identity of a cypherpunk into a million different pieces and allows all of us to become like some sort of cypherpunk um and as we all know also know cypherpunks are like zealots right like they really believe in in what they believe uh and so when i i see you like endlessly

like writing articles fighting fud um talking about all the different aspects of the relevant aspects of bitcoin to the rest of the world so i kind of consider you to like a bitcoin zealot but it's all related it's all the same community right we're all downstream of the cypherpunks so that's kind of why i'll include you in the community ethereum community no matter what yeah i mean you know it's the same way like you know sloths and you know armadillos are part of this you know same animal kingdom um you know

we do we share a common ancestor um but you know like i think it might actually be a mistake just to say bitcoins of the sole heritage of the cypherpunks like there's a lot of cypherpunky stuff which doesn't understand you know nothing to do with blockchains um like julian assange was a classic cypherpunk and i mean you know he was a bitcoiner i suppose still is a bitcoiner but um him he was more about encryption and you know revealing data and um you know

passing data in a sort of a covert way like that's cipher punky for sure but it's not like crypto um and then you know actually i was reflecting on this recently you do think it's very important to remember the cyberpunks many of them well so it was a heterogeneous group for start um they were interested in in sort of digital cache as in uh cache like instruments that were natively digital with david chom you know digicash

type things and of course they had different opinions about it but um a lot a lot of it was sort of dollar denominated and the challenge was to to build uh the you know anonymous cache protocol and non anonymity was an incredibly important part of the cypherpunk doctrine and then bitcoin i would say is actually really really different from sort of establishment cyberpunk thought right because

bitcoin has sort of reasonable pseudonymity you know not perfect um and uh it is a bearer instrument you know kind of settles uh did you know digitally uh but it's not really that cash like in that it certainly doesn't attempt to have a stable you know stable unit of account or anything so it's really really different from the charmium ideal right it's not just an upgraded version of digicash or anything like that

uh it's very much you know has these these ideas impregnated into it about monetary systems and that attracted a whole different breed of people right so uh that that attracted you know like monetarists and um like gold bugs right so those are completely different concepts but i you know it it was so attractive to them that it sort of took flight and then you know somewhere along the

way we forgot okay what about fulfilling you know the vision of charm and people that wanted you know dollar stable uh digital bearer assets and some people uh have attempted to do this obviously with public blockchains but there's just not that much emphasis on that which i find interesting because if you look at the history of cypherpunk thought that was probably i would say the primary version of digital cash would be something more resembling a stablecoin right i know

you know that might be a controversial idea but you know just go back and and read read the discourse right i i would argue that um the emphasis on like a cash instrument an anonymous cash instrument was simply confined by the the um vehicles that these cypherpunks had at the time right like they couldn't even like imagine a non-state money because no one could imagine a non-state money at the time really really the thing that satoshi really invented was inventing the idea

of non-state money and then that as you said like that idea is impregnated into bitcoin and then i but i would say that like cypherpunk values would be like aha we no longer like we i would say that the desire for like digital cash that value is uh above the desire for self-sovereignty and self-independence and i would say that monetary a monetary policy that's non-state that's non-sovereign it more subscribes to the whole values

of being independent than they than they would care about like a digital anonymous cash yeah it's an interesting question you know because bitcoin gives you independence in this whole other domain right which is monetary independence you know which is a very important thing of course um having a non-discretionary monetary system um but it's almost like that idea was so strong that it blotted out this other idea which was let's you know build dollar

stable instruments to transact private privately online which was kind of one of those prior ideas and you know that's an idea which is important though because it's now a matter of public policy right right uh and and let's say there had been a huge emphasis solely on completely anonymous stable coins instead of uh uh you know whatever synthetic monetary commodities like bitcoin um we might actually be in a better place

with regards to the cbdc discourse right you know like i don't know what that kind of factual world looks like but um if we had hundreds of billions of uh super private uh whatever zika snarkified uh stable coins floating around that would still be enough win for freedom and and sovereignty for sure uh it's just that the main battle has actually been around the monetary discretion front

um so i don't know i'm some i'm sort of a little bit wistful for for that other uh that other outcome which we didn't get i mean the private dollars yeah yeah i know that seems like completely incrementalist and it's like well nick like actually we have a bigger like battle of a fight which is you know destroying central banks or whatever but private dollars are pretty important too yeah i i would like uh i'll want to get your take on this is that like so maybe maybe i'm falling into a fallacy but i kind of like the fallacy that i'm falling into

is that like whatever crypto values we discover as like a community of crypto people retroactively we get to say that these are cypherpunk values like everything is downstream like whatever values we discover to be valuable is like oh yeah these are now cypherpunk values yes and um you know there aren't actually really that many true cyberpunks uh floating around uh i don't i wouldn't say i'm one right i like don't use pgp for instance so or whatever the new version of pgp is

so you know i don't i don't use signal enough even you know like i'm not even using uh the best cryptographic tools we have um so yeah i think a lot of people you know profess themselves to be cyberpunks in crypto land but it's mostly branding exercise and uh a lot of the original cypherpunks just would completely denounce cryptocurrency at this point a lot of them have so you know maybe maybe i shouldn't keep this like

cypherpunk branding like and held in such high regards but that's kind of like why i want to redefine it right like you know that we can use it more expansively because it's such a generally such a positive term in this industry and i mean the cyberbunks was just such a small group of people and so you know the culture just changed uh and this is a more mainstream movement so um you know the question is like is that label still um does it have semantic content is it a useful label um or

should we rebrand the movement and and and call it something else yeah well one thing that crypto has done is put a public private key into the hands of of everyone that uses crypto and that is absolutely like a cypherpunk thing like now we all have private keys um and we can build on top of that and go from there so like cipher i don't think cypherpunks would at all argue that that's a that's not a cypherpunk thing that's true it uh it was the consumerification of public key cryptography in a way that

vastly outstripped any of the i mean what i think the biggest public key infrastructure before cryptocurrency would have been pgp i can't think of anything else and that was at most uh what a hundred thousand individuals and in terms of people that have used a uh as they say non-custodial wallet an unhosted wallet on hosted wallet yeah uh according to the if or whatever that's

how many how many people do you think that is probably well over 50 million i would say like probably probably 250 million people have sort of had exposure to the financial assets in some capacity but most of that much of that would have been in a hosted manner uh on hosted i'm sure it's over 50 million i mean you know how many hardware wallets is ledger sold things like that right well i have at least four of them so there's that yeah and and metamask they have 10 million

monthly actives now i think yep yep so one of uh one of your changing gears here a little bit one of your articles was uh bitcoin at 12 where you um illustrated uh bitcoin as this like cathedral that many different individuals are helping build and they all know that they're not actually going to be able to see the ultimate like manifestation of this cathedral because it takes hundreds of years to build a cathedral um and so it's still it's like dedication out of

the values of the builders that actually creates these things regardless of whether they get to enjoy the fruits of their final projects so my question to you is how many hours a week do you work for a bitcoin that's a good question um probably zero i don't you know i nothing i do is sort of directly uh accretive to bitcoin i think um oh god i fundamentally disagree with that but maybe that's just a different perspective as to what it means to work for bitcoin does uh does making content

yes peter mccormick works for bitcoin okay okay well i don't know i i probably spend um you know five to ten hours a week writing something um and then i mean you know does funding bitcoin startups account i guess yeah i suppose yeah everything counts every very lumpy some some months i don't and then you know some other months i'll do three so um i don't know you know like i i can't say i'm a full-timer on bitcoin uh but i'll give it at least 10

to 15 hours a week probably i i kind of more or less think that everything you do in your professional life is like working for bitcoin unless i'm missing i have no idea what it's like to be nick carter in the professional life but like i i think like every single podcast that i make and every single article i write is like me working for ethereum yeah that's fair i mean i think i'm maybe more broad in my focus i mean uh you know a lot of my time is on stuff like coinmetrix which does like i don't know 50 blockchains or

something so um some of it is more broad and you know like when like sieve castle island will fund startups that are just like financial infrastructure for the space at large whether it's stable coins or or you know cryptocurrency so um i wouldn't say it's confined to bitcoin but yeah in theory it's all sort of generally useful for bitcoin in some some capacity when you were when the the whole bitcoin energy like fud part of the recent

history of crypto was going around i think you were putting out something like how many articles like a week like what like take us through like that whole phase of your life well that was weird because the fudd somehow reached a crescendo for some reason i guess it was probably elon the elon effect but it was like i'd like some somehow serendipitously or or unluckily uh ended up being situated in in the middle of it because people i i guess i sort of like appointed myself

like one of the one of the main like uh debaters sentinels of bitcoin sentinels yeah and i mean i'm sort of glad it's over because it was a lot um like you know i was like talking to the press like every other day um and it just it wasn't really sustainable i couldn't like do my job um at the time and so for the last like two months i've just been saying no to all press inquiries and all podcasts uh with the exception of yours and

i did pomp's as well because you know he's my neighbor now oh really i didn't know he's yeah yeah yeah yeah his studio is here uh it's great so you know people i'm friends with i'll like still you know do the content but basically i'm sort of like a little burned out from all that stuff although i will say there's one final thing that i've done on the energy question which is actually more of a paper and uh that i think will be really useful for a lot of people

should be out this month so stay tuned for that but yeah i i don't know how how many like videos and pieces of content things like i did is like an uncountable amount do you do you like it enjoy the limelight of being like a bitcoin spokesperson is that like something that's fun for you um it felt more like an obligation than anything i think uh of course it's fun like when your star is rising you know i'm sure you know you felt the same but uh

it just becomes a grind eventually and you know at the end of the day like there's only so many hours in the week and the more time you spend being some sort of like unofficial bitcoin spokesperson the last time you can spend on real work um whether it's writing or you know like funding startups or anything like that do you think like sometimes i kind of think these like um these protocols will lead themselves into the their own

future and obviously these are all these this podcast is called layer zero so it's all about like the people that help these things like direct themselves but there's also these are decentralized networks so many different people are building the cathedral in their own specific way like to some degree like what can one person do do you kind of think that like if nick carter didn't exist that bitcoin would more or less be in this same spot or do you do you actually see what you do actually moving the needle for bitcoin i think bitcoin would be absolutely fine

without me so why do it all then it was fine before me i because i find it interesting you know i think you know occasionally i have sort of maybe good points to make uh but yeah i think would be completely fine without me in fact you know haven't done that much publicly in the last uh month or two um and uh everything you know the blocks kept arriving um you know like i've noticed that you know um certain talking points that might have

originated with me like other people just glom onto them and they get a life of their own they don't need me you know and you know bitcoin content like it's there's an incredibly vibrant ecosystem out there um which you know like people will they'll respond to the fud or they'll you know like write interesting things original ideas like there's no need for me whatsoever it's a very bitcoiner answer like bitcoin absolutely does not need me um

and i and i think maybe it's it's kind of interesting in in the ethereum world we definitely fundamentally accept like the layer zero of ethereum as in like ethereum is is it's code until it's people and then like like you said uh before we hit recording like hazu says like it's it's always the social layer that is the final the buck stops at the social layer but bitcoiners i don't think want to have uh that same sort of illustration for bitcoin they want it to stop at the code and and the code be the thing that

propels bitcoin into the future and no bitcoin doesn't need anyone um do you agree with that that perception that certainly is the view probably the establishment view in bitcoin but i would say bitcoin also has what i call value primacy so effectively values that supersede the code especially in a time of crisis and so even bitcoin the code is merely an encoding of the values but the values are supreme