Written by Alexandra Moxin
This episode features Max Sills IP Counsel at Square and General Manager of the Crypto Open Patent Alliance and Jed Grant Co-Founder and Advisory Board Member of the Open Crypto Alliance (OCA) and CEO of KYC3. We cover each guest’s background, how they’re involved in the space and what COPA and OCA are doing to protect developers and help advance innovation in the space.
You can reach this episode’s guests on Twitter @opencryptoorg and @OpenCryptoX and click to find out more about the Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) and the
Open Crypto Alliance (OCA).
This episode was recorded using Jitsi.org - a privacy focused, open source video conferencing platform. Please consider using and supporting FOSS/OSS.
Show Links
- Square
- Square Crypto
- Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA)
- Open Crypto Alliance (OCA)
- LOT Network
- Open Invention Network (OIN)
- KYC3
Show Transcript
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Alexandra933 00:00
Alright, let’s get started. Welcome to the Advance Tech Podcast. Joining me today are two very special guests Max Sills who is IP Counsel at Square and also General Manager at Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA). We also have Jed Grant, CEO and founder of KYC3 and Co-Founder of the Open Crypto Alliance (OCA), where I’m also a board member. Welcome.
Max Sills 00:54
Hi.
Jed Grant 00:54
Thanks for having us.
Alexandra933 00:56
So, Max, how did you get into this space? Could you tell our listeners and viewers a little bit about your background?
Max Sills 01:01
Sure. So I’ve always been interested in crypto. My interest started in law school. I was interning at the Securities Exchange Commission in the risk finance division then, and I was just getting so excited about new financial products. I really believed in the SEC mission, we worked on the crowdfunding regulations there, we really wanted to democratize finance while also protecting people from crazy investments. So before my current role, I was working at Google, when I started at Google, I had a very legalistic, very transactional mindset about business about everything. I started working in the open source group on open source licensing and open source legal policy and over the six or seven years, I was there, my entire world changed. My whole worldview changed. My philosophy changed. I think I went from being very, there’s a legal mindset you know for a baby lawyer, very adversarial to realizing how important sharing was. And it was just amazing to me learning more about the open source community and open source developers. First how much people pour their heart and souls into public projects with little or no expectation of payment, but also how much money and how much progress can be made through open sharing. So it just changed my whole philosophy. I was running our open source licensing and policy for a while and the square opportunity was really interesting, because it helped me get back to my roots in finance but where open source was really interesting because it was about collaborative development on software. Crypto is even a step further, it’s collaborative participation in networks and the legal issues there are so weird, and the technology I deeply believe is so important for society. So when the opportunity to join Square and also help COPA get off the ground came along, I had to take it.
Alexandra933 02:56
Awesome. So Jed, how about you? How did you get in the space?
Jed Grant 03:00
I’ve been a cypherpunk for as long as I can remember. That Open Crypto X, Apple II is where I spent my childhood. I’ve always been interested in cryptography and privacy and how computer networks work together. In the 90s, I ended up as a civilian Lieutenant Colonel running an IT section of NATO. So kind of, you know, suit and tie crypto guy in the daytime, cryptography I mean, and then the cypherpunk by night. When Bitcoin came around, I was obviously totally interested in it, I didn’t really think it would succeed the way it has, so I did pass up on a lot of Bitcoin when they were very cheap, but I’ve still been in the space long enough to enjoy it. I think looking back, the profound impact of the whitepaper at the time was not clear to me but, I really believe that this is an invention that it’s going to go down in history like the Wright brothers, and this is a technology that’s going to change humanity. That’s why we’re here today. That’s what’s so important about it.
Alexandra933 04:03
100%. Alright, so let’s get into companies. Max, I’d like to start with you. Could you talk a little bit about Square and also COPA, how it was essentially founded and what it’s meant to do?
Max Sills 04:13
Sure. So Square’s fundamental mission is open access to financial products for everyone and COPA really was founded as an extension to that. It was started by square, but it’s an independent entity, and we now have diverse board members and diverse members. COPA is pretty simple, like Jed was saying, we believe cryptocurrency, Bitcoin in particular, are world changing, history changing technologies and we want everyone to have access to them. It’s just the start of development and this is where things like patents or fear of litigation, that’s really spooking some people, is chilling development. So COPA is really simple and really obvious. Fight that stuff, fight anything, defend against anything that will chill development, specifically related to IP litigation.
Alexandra933 05:02
Very good, a very good noble cause. Makes perfect sense. So Jed, could you explain Open Crypto Alliance, OCA?
Jed Grant 05:09
Sure, sure. Before OCA I’ve been in the space, developing technology. I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve been independent since early 2000s and always building products building code to achieve something, and building on the giants of on the shoulders of giants who came before me. That’s what open source allows us to do. So before OCA, I could tell that this was going to heat up I mean, I saw the browser wars, I saw the mobile patent wars. So I’ve seen all these tech patent wars, and it’s a cycle. You get a new technology and about six to ten years in from that new technology, you have patent wars, where all the Giants fight it out. I knew that was coming for blockchain and crypto. So I started ringing the bell, you know, in 2017 and 18 and published a couple articles then about the potential problem. Started to get some network of people who that resonated with and then and I actually also I filed a patent in 2017. I mean, I don’t necessarily condone and encourage people to do that. But I filed a patent as a defensive measure and joined LOT Network, which is another organization not represented here today. LOT network is Licensed On Transfer and doing a different mission aligned with what we’re doing. The idea there was simply to prevent patent trolls and abusive patent holders from attacking my entrepreneurial activity. So I’ve been looking at patents in blockchain and crypto now for a couple of years. The process of this patent going through and then looking at how it could be opposed to gave me this idea that there are a lot of people filing abusive patents today that are based on existing technology that they’re not necessarily the inventor of. They’re trawling through GitHub and finding ideas and then patenting them. We can actually oppose this before the patent is granted, which is much more cost effective, because during that process, the patent office is more likely to side with you and it’s cheaper to make that argument. Once the patent is granted, the patent office has to admit they made a mistake if you get overruled and it’s much harder to get someone to admit they made a mistake. So this strategy dawned on me and then I looked at how many patents were being filed. We have, you know, a couple hundred in 2017, a couple thousand in 2018, and then in 2019, boom, 10,000 patents. In 2020 13,000 patents were filed in the space. To me, this patent war is coming really quickly and the time that we’re going to be able to oppose it is now. We need to get on the ball. Now. This is not a battle we can wait to fight. So so that’s when I said, look, we’re gonna do something about this and I pulled together a couple of people I knew. We decided to create Open Crypto Alliance with the goal of actively preventing patents from being granted in the space on technologies that shouldn’t be patented in the first place.
Alexandra933 08:08
Awesome. Also a great, great noble cause. I think that when patents are introduced, of course you want to protect your ideas but, they can also be used in very harmful ways.
Max Sills 08:18
So it’s funny, the system is supposed to be good. I mean, it had a noble origin. If you secure for inventors a limited monopoly on their idea this will encourage innovation and for really expensive stuff like drugs or chips this is a built in way for people to recoup their costs. So the patent system has its heart in the right place, or at least it did. But as Jed was saying, things have gotten really tilted. Because now people are securing or attempting to secure monopolies, and they did no innovation, they’re actually chasing down the people that are doing innovation, right? It’s people that are really working, developing, they don’t have a lot of money and also they don’t understand the legal nuances of the patent system. So any any kind of threat, even if it doesn’t have merit is enough to scare them. This was never anticipated but it’s kind of the consequences of the current patent system.
Alexandra933 09:08
That makes sense.
Jed Grant 09:09
Yeah, and the cost implication is huge. I mean, as an entrepreneur, and I fully expected this to happen sooner than it is happening. When we saw the ICO boom, I saw a lot of companies with no product and a white paper that explained their entire strategy out there, sitting on 10 to 20 million bucks. I expected those guys to get shaken down. I’m really surprised. Just because the patents hadn’t been granted yet is why it didn’t happen because that was the perfect target for a patent troll, you know, a company with no product and a white paper that says what they’re going to do and lots of money. It’s a patent lawsuit dream. And that’s when I really thought it was going to happen. I think it’s going to happen soon, though, in the second bull market. What we’re seeing now and the cost of this people don’t really think about it. They think first of all, it’s not gonna happen to me but you never know. If you’re innovating it can happen to you. And the cost of it. I mean, if you get trolled, you’re going to end up spending a quarter million bucks. Whether you win or not, you spend at least a quarter million bucks. That’s a best case scenario and you could end up actually closing your business. They’ll shut you down if it’s a competitor. If it’s a troll, they could end up taking a part of your business, and a permanent license fee on your business in the future. So this is a very expensive process and it would cost an order of magnitude less is what we’re proposing to prevent these patents from being granted in the first place.
Max Sills 10:33
It’s a vicious cycle too Jed. I mean, because even if you don’t litigate and you just settle, then you’re funding the trolls so they have more capital to go after more people and they get worse and worse.
Max Sills 10:43
Yeah, that’s a tough conversation because, you know, patents aren’t supposed to protect abstract ideas. At least in the US the case law is really messy and there’s been this opening to allow people to try to protect.
Jed Grant 10:44
You give them a case of precedents they can then use to boost the strength of that patent that they’re going to use against others. It is totally a vicious cycle. One of the things that you were saying Max patents, they have their utility particularly on what you cited, which is physical products. We’re talking about intellectual property here and I actually don’t believe that patents on software are a good mix. I mean, that’s like putting gasoline in a martini. It just doesn’t make sense.
Alexandra933 11:10
So wh at can member companies and members of either alliance hope to achieve? Why would somebody join COPA and why would somebody join OCA?
Max Sills 11:32
So I’ll speak for COPA. So we have a couple things going that should be enticing to new members. The first is we’re a classic patent license and patent pool. So if you join COPA, you get a license from all the current members, including Square, MicroStrategy, Kraken and Coinbase. None of the current members will bring suit against you ever for cryptocurrency related patents. There’s also a patent pool element. So if you get hit by a practicing entity, we have this ability that you can borrow a patent from one of the other members to help defend yourself. So that’s important. Like LOT, like Jed was mentioning, or OIN we’re trying to build a community around people going: we think we can make more money and the world can be a better place if we focus on making really good products instead of focusing on beating each other up so early. The second thing that we’re doing, and we also encourage members, is we want to participate in defending small, defending Core developers for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies against meritless lawsuits. And so if you join in, if you donate, we’re putting that money directly to take the fight to people who are, like I said earlier, scaring and chilling development.
Jed Grant 12:40
And we’re doing the same. We are totally complimentary. So actually, I would encourage any entrepreneur to join COPA, to join OCA and to join LOT Network because the three organizations are totally complimentary; each one with a different mission and an important mission in the space. So what we’re doing is we’re looking at those patents that are in the process of being granted that we consider to be abusive and unmerited patents. We’re going to go after those and try to get them invalidated before they’re granted or after they’re granted if we have to. So, and obviously we know who our donors are, we’ll take their business into account. We can prioritize how we go about spending our resources based on what interests we want to protect but our fundamental goal is to keep the technology behind Bitcoin and blockchain open and free for all to build on.
Alexandra933 13:34
So I understand there’s some defensive work underway right now. Can you talk about that? If you can’t talk about that how would you describe how a defensive patent prevention suit might happen?
Max Sills 13:46
Yeah, I would start with a message to any developers that are listening or anyone that has been the recipient of the threat. Don’t settle, contact me, contact COPA. You can find our website at opencrypto.org. We have strength in numbers. So basically, what we’re doing right now is we’re collecting examples of Core developers and companies that are undercapitalized or only kind of middle capitalized. They’re receiving, we’re trying to classify the kinds of threats that the industry is receiving: patents, other IP claims, and others. We’re prioritizing it and trying to find where can we get the best return on investment in terms of defending. So we’ll have more information on that publicly available shortly.
Jed Grant 14:29
Right. That’s interesting. We should talk about that. I actually have a case that patent I filed I received an opposition from a Finnish law firm that doesn’t disclose who their clients are, but they cite a patent that’s from a company called nChain that was filed about two weeks before I filed the patent that I filed in 2017. The patents not relevant to what I filed but anyways, that’s a different.. that’s interesting. Yeah.
Alexandra933 14:54
If members you know, say they’ve they’ve been hit with a lawsuit, what can they expect? What’s the process like? What kind of protection is available?
Jed Grant 15:00
I’m not a lawyer. So I can’t tell you what that process is going to be like from a lawyer’s standpoint. From an entrepreneur’s standpoint they’re going to have their life turned upside down. They’re going to not be able to focus on building their business. They, you’re going to be focused on dealing with lawyers all day long. You’re going to be expanding resources that you had planned to put into R&D, into legal defense, and it’s just going to wreck your business. It’s a complete waste of time. It is hindering innovation on a massive scale. So this is the kind of thing you want to avoid at all costs. As an entrepreneur, you do not want to put yourself in that position. Which is why, unfortunately, we have this system of patents and it is somewhat broken and doesn’t really do what we want it to do. Software patents are very controversial. So you do have to understand you’re in that environment and it may make sense for you to actually proactively patent and then of course, join COPA, LOT Network, OCA, these are your defense. You can’t buy fire insurance when your house is burning down. You need to do it beforehand, you need to get involved now. Then when you do get that patent suit, when you do encounter that problem, you have those defenses at your disposal.
Max Sills 16:09
I, you know, you’re so right, Jed. I’m just thinking how tragic it is for small companies that should be focusing on their business, they get hit with a lawsuit, they’re panicked. Their money that was supposed to go towards R&D or hiring is now… it’s a terrible situation. One piece of advice I’d give to people is there’s a progress in a lawsuit. So before someone actually sues you, you’re going to get either what’s called a Demand Letter, where they’re going to probably ask you to stop doing certain things or start talking to them. I guess my advice is, first, that’s not an actual lawsuit. People send and receive demand letters all the time, it can be really scary, especially as Jed was saying, for small business. Don’t act impulsively. If you receive a demand letter, it’s incredibly important to take a breath, take a step back, see if other people have received similar letters. The unfortunate thing is sometimes people receive demand letters, and they don’t have a lot of experience, and they’re really scary. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve ever received one but it’s really scary to think that your whole life could get turned upside down through litigation. It’s unfortunate for the whole industry when people just do what they’re being requested without taking a moment to realize what their defenses are.
Alexandra933 17:16
That’s really good insight, because I think you do see, you know, you’ve got the letterhead, and it sounds really official. It’s kind of like a classic scam where somebody is using that position of authority to say: you must do this; and people are like, well, I guess I probably should because it seems official. But, it’s really interesting that you’re saying stop and question that and don’t act irrationally. It’s good.
Jed Grant 17:36
We’re in the Bitcoin space man. Question authority.
Alexandra933 17:40
Exactly. Yes.
Jed Grant 17:41
A very, very smart lawyer told me: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse” in French, he’s a Luxembourgish lawyer. If you say you’re sorry, you’re admitting you’re guilty. You stand up when someone comes towards you like that. The demand letter might be quite polite and seemingly friendly, but it’s very a veiled threat. Don’t say you’re sorry, don’t admit anything, don’t give them an inch. Just push back, go get legal counsel and push back. Hard.
Alexandra933 18:08
So I guess that’s a good question. Once that demand letter is served, first of all, don’t react irrationally or impulsively. What’s the next step that people should be doing and what can members in either organization expect if they’re in that situation?
Max Sills 18:21
Yeah. So I can’t be giving everyone legal advice. Here’s what I could say. It depends on the nature of the demand letter. If you’re working in the cryptocurrency space, and you receive a demand letter related to an allegation of patent infringement, COPA definitely wants to know about it. I’m sure OCA wants to know about it. Generally, there’s a lot of different claims flying around. The best piece of advice I can give to people is make friends and connect to the network of people who are situated similarly to you. Because chances are you’re not the only one to receive it, obviously, but the best thing is if you have the funds go get your own lawyer. But I’ve been watching and if 20 people got sued one or two of them got a lawyer, and if you’re all talking with each other, then you can start coordinating a common defense. I guess the best piece of advice is, obviously go get your own attorney but, make friends now with other people in your space. Keep that line of communication open and share with each other if you’re receiving threats, because there really is strength in numbers.
Jed Grant 19:19
And we want to prevent that from happening. I mean, if no trolls have patents, those letters don’t go out. That is what OCA is about and we do have a good reach. We’ve had an amazing response so far of both technical and legal experts coming forward saying hey, I want to volunteer my time. We’ve got a number of lawyers in Mexico, in South America, in the UK, and other European countries have come forward and said I’m here and ready to support you. Obviously we’re happy to connect someone who would be in that position with these lawyers who have a predisposition to be friendly and helping if such an entrepreneur in distress is trying to innovate in the crypto space. Similarly, the tech experts have come forward and said, I am not a lawyer but I can help you find the prior art and I have a dozen people who’ve come forward in this capacity as well. That’s part of our strategy at OCA we want to crowdsource the patents, so we need to review, I mean, there’s 25,000 patents. We need to canvass out there applications that are pending and we need to identify the ones that are abused and this is a huge gargantuan task. When we boil those down into normal guy you know, geek speak, then we need to get the techies, the people like me who understand the tech, to go and find the prior art. I’m convinced the patent offices are not making full use of GitHub and SourceForge and these kinds of repos are where a lot of this priority exists. It’s through the community, and reaching out to people who’ve worked on projects, you know, lightning and other payment projects on crypto, where we’re going to find the guys who go: yeah, you know, actually, in 2013, I wrote some code that did this, you know, and then you’ve got your prior art. So that’s a lot of how we want to do that in a crowdsource and very organized way so that we end up with a database that is a community resource that can be used by anybody. I mean, not just OCA members and donors, but we want to make that available. So if someone’s getting attacked by a patent troll they can use this database to defend themselves, but we need funds to do that. We need resources.
Alexandra933 21:35
OCA is actively looking for members, member companies, essentially.
Jed Grant 21:40
Indeed we are.
Max Sills 21:41
What you all are doing is super important. I also encourage, like you were saying Jed, join COPA, join OCA. It shouldn’t be too hard for you guys to get support because you’re doing something really important that’s really needed.
Jed Grant 21:52
Thanks, Max.
Alexandra933 21:54
So one thing I’m curious about is how these cooperative organizations can work together. So in this instance, how would COPA and OCA be working together?
Jed Grant 22:03
That’s a really good question. You know, OCA is really new, we just grouped together and started coalescing in November of last year. We started to put the flag out and Max reached out to us and said: hey, you guys might be doing something interesting. I was immediately very responsive and realized that we’re on the same mission, totally complimentary, and that we could do a lot together. We had a couple conversations and so far things are looking looking really like we do see completely eye to eye; it is pretty amazing. What do you think Max?
Max Sills 22:34
Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. COPA is pretty new, as well. We have such a grand vision of just stopping nonsense lawsuits, stopping nonsense legal threats, so that developers develop, companies try to make money making cool products. That’s the economy we all want to see. We have such big plans there’s no possible way COPA can do it by itself. We’re also trying to model for everyone get together, make friends develop a community, this is how you stay safe. So when I met Jed and learned about what OCA was doing, I thought thank God because this is something totally off our plate now. OCA has really a developing expertise, particularly in Europe, South America, invalidating patents and finding prior art and that just goes so well with what COPA wants to do. So yes, we’re affiliated. Very happy to drive, as much as I can, membership to OCA but I guess it’s an open call for anyone else or any other organizations trying to create safety and predictability in the cryptocurrency industry. We all have big ideas, but none of us can do them all by ourselves.
Alexandra933 23:37
A hunded percent. Like you mentioned, Strength In Numbers, that’s a really old cypherpunk maxim and it’s a very applicable one because there is strength in numbers. People tend to forget that, you know, they’re they’re so used to not questioning authority. I think in our space, people are, so they’re a little bit more immune to that.
Jed Grant 23:37
Cyberhornets.
Max Sills 23:57
It’s really interesting the litigation thing, Jed as you were saying earlier, being mistrustful of authority, being for massive distributediveness. It’s fascinating to watch that tension when people are interacting with the classic centralized legal systems and power structures. Watching those two things, there’s a little bit of cognitive dissonance, at least for me.
Jed Grant 24:18
Totally, and we’re in a very strange space. This pandemic has made it all the stranger but it’s also given us a lot of time to reflect. I think a lot of people, we had to all slow down, and I think 2020 was a year where a lot of people who wouldn’t have taken a vacation at all ended up having like four weeks of nothing but contemplating their existence. We’re going to see the fruit of that. I think that ultimately is going to be beneficial. People are beginning to understand that, about questioning authority it’s, really whose interests are you looking after? You pose that question to any third party, and the answers you get back, as a thinking individual, are often quite eye opening. This is where we’re headed. When you look at a trustless, permissionless, decentralized system, where the rules are the same for everybody and everything is clear and open, it just is such a different future than the dystopia that we were looking at.
Max Sills 25:17
What we like to do is, maybe it’s a little starry eyed but, the end point is a more open, more transparent financial system. Where regular people have more power to transact and more privacy and freedom. Then how do we work backwards from there? So that happened, that’s a society that’s already present. What did we do today to get there?
Jed Grant 25:36
We won’t achieve perfection, but in trying to get there, we’re going to improve the condition of where we are. I read Enlightenment Now, not very long ago, and it’s a worthwhile read because it puts things in perspective. A lot of people say: oh, man, I wish we lived in the past, I’d be such a genius and with everything I know it would be great; but actually, if I chose a moment to be born, it would be like right now. There’s no better time to be born than today because we are advancing in our human society every day and have been for the past several hundred years. I recently put a quote out on my Twitter about Rothschild, where he said: give me the power to control a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws. That quote coincides with the end of the Renaissance. I don’t know if there’s any correlation but it’s a coincidence perhaps. Then, Hal Finney: ‘Running Bitcoin’ is the start of the next Renaissance, in my opinion.
Max Sills 26:32
Yeah.
Alexandra933 26:32
That’s a really good way to put it and it’s a very nice tribute. So I guess call to action, if people are looking to connect with either group; Max, let’s start with you. Where can they find more about Square and COPA and where can they connect with you online?
Max Sills 26:47
We have two channels. Our Twitter is @opencryptoorg, so just DM us we want to talk to you, and you can find COPA at opencrypto.org. You can find our current member list, a list of our recent posts, and also an email link to contact us. We’re really open, obviously we want new members, we think we offer a valuable service that is going to help everyone. We also want to hear from people who are receiving threats, or are scared, because it’s our job to try and help you. So let us know what’s going on with you. Sorry, I have to be specific, not everyone receiving threats all over the internet. Cryptocurrency developers and cryptocurrency using companies that are receiving legal threats related to cryptocurrency; let us know.
Jed Grant 27:31
Yes, not trolling. We are opencryptoalliance.org, and @OpenCryptoX on Twitter. Get to know us, pay attention, then reach out anytime. We’re very open as well. The board members and shareholders of the structure will be announced shortly. Most of the founders are pretty well known to the three people in this call, I think.
Alexandra933 27:54
So one of the ways I like to end the show is to ask if you have questions for our listeners or viewers. So Max, let’s start with you. Do you have any particular questions for the Bitcoin community or people working on open source projects?
Max Sills 28:06
Yeah. So obviously, the first question is, what can COPA do to help? Let me know. Everyone’s been watching the stock market go crazy and Bitcoin’s price rapidly accelerate. What I’m really interested to know from your viewers and listeners is, let’s say Bitcoin just crashed and stayed crashed to like a penny tomorrow; would you still be interested in it, and why? Going back, it’s not just something that is fun to collect that can be converted to fiat but, let’s go back to the fundamental ideas of personal freedom and transparency. I would love to know like, how do you all feel, now?
Jed Grant 28:40
That’s a good question. That makes me think of that I’m in it for the tech meme of the guy with all the gold on. Yeah, indeed, I have a couple questions for the community. When did you first read the Cypherpunk Manifesto, and if you haven’t read it, are you going to read it? I think that’s an important document from 1993 that really outlines a lot of what you need to understand what crypto is about. So that’s an important thing to think about, and sort of what Max was saying; why are you here, what do you want crypto to do in this world, in your vision to make a better world? It’s not about lambos. Some altcoins might be about lambos but, you know, what can we do? If you look at Lightning Network: have you tried Lightning Network, have you looked at how that works, have you spun up a node? I mean, for less than $200, you can get all the hardware you can even run it on your laptop. You can spin up a node and be your own bank. Have you thought about what that can do for remittance? I think the remittance industry is going to be disrupted on a massive scale in the next 24 month and what’s that gonna do to Africa, and to South America, and Central America, and Asia. This is going to be amazing. What are you doing to make this happen faster so that our world can move forward?
Alexandra933 30:00
Awesome. I think there’s some pretty amazing companies in the space, Strike comes to mind they’re doing some pretty cool things. I encourage people to look at Lightning, it’s quite amazing what it can do, the Lightning Network. It’s still, you know, it’s been around I think six or seven years and it’s still a little experimental but there’s some pretty cool things happening. BTCPay Server as well.
Jed Grant 30:19
From whitepaper till now. I think it really got usable in, I mean, you could do the first lightning payments in, 2018. So it’s really now where it’s beginning. It’s still, we’re in early days, and that’s the other thing that blows my mind. Do you think you missed out on crypto? Do you think you missed Bitcoin? It’s like, we’re in 1590 and you’re saying I missed the printing business. No, you didn’t. This is d ial up days. This is Winsock. We’re at, you know, you used to have to dial up and connect with Winsock to get online so you could use Cello and Opera and these older browsers that no one even uses, or even heard of, to look at some simple web pages with a picture of a cat. That was the Internet in the 90s, you know, that was what it was. US Robotics, that was like the stock, it’s gone.
Alexandra933 31:08
Well until an industry reaches maturity, you don’t necessarily know what applications are going to be available, possible and popular. So you really need to have that new medium reach maturity and then you can start seeing some of these things. Like, who knew social media would have such a revolution? Whether that’s positive or negative, just the fact that these companies didn’t even exist in the late 90s, when they first started emerging, and really, they weren’t disruptive until the early 2000s.
Max Sills 31:35
And where would society be if they got sued out of existence?
Jed Grant 31:38
That’s a spicy question. Where would we be without surveillance capitalism?
Max Sills 31:44
Yeah, exactly, I realized that as I said it. Crypto is like growing a garden; we just have tiny, tiny little plants. We need to do whatever we can to let them grow.
Jed Grant 31:55
And it is the answer to surveillance capitalism.
Alexandra933 31:57
It is, and anything with social, as well. I know that there are a number of new platforms that are being developed that are quite interesting, that are user focused, user privacy focused.
Jed Grant 32:07
Some of those projects are very low-key and don’t get a lot of publicity. One that I’ve come across, that I like, is LBRY a decentralized YouTube publishing platform. So it’s pretty interesting.
Alexandra933 32:20
All right. Well, thank you gentlemen, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for joining me and keep fighting. Strength in numbers.
Max Sills 32:26
Yeah, this was really fun. Thanks very much for inviting us.
