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Richard Carthon interviews Chandra Duggirala and George Burke at Bitcoin Nashville, discussing the launch of the Bitscaler White Paper and its potential to revolutionize cross-chain transactions. They explore the importance of non-custodial exchanges, liquidity routing, and the future of Bitcoin as a settlement layer for diverse markets.
For this episode, Edge of NFT has partnered with Portal to bring exclusive insights and coverage from the Amplify Web3 AI event in Manila. This collaboration with Portal highlights the intersection of Web3, AI, and emerging markets, delivering valuable conversations from industry leaders and innovators.
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Key Topics Covered:
- Bitscaler White Paper Launch: The episode discusses the launch of the Bitscaler White Paper, which outlines a new infrastructure for custody-less cross-chain transactions, aiming to enhance the efficiency and accessibility of blockchain technologies.
- Interoperability and Liquidity: The conversation highlights the importance of interoperability in the crypto space, emphasizing how Bitscaler can facilitate seamless and secure swaps between various assets without relying on centralized exchanges or wrapped tokens.
- Testnet and Future Developments: The guests share insights about the upcoming public testnet, detailing its significance for developers and users, and outlining their roadmap for adoption, including plans for integrating with various Layer 2 and sidechain projects.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- "The Bitscaler white paper describes the foundational infrastructure piece that we've developed to make cross-chain EMM and non-custodial cross-chain exchange possible." - Chandra Duggirala
- "This is what a bridgeless future could look like, is the ability to swap an EVM token for Bitcoin or even the Bitcoin-based token." - George Burke
- "The thesis that we have is that Bitcoin block space will transform from being the settlement layer for just BTC to the settlement layer for millions of markets." - Chandra Duggirala
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Chandra Duggirala LinkedIn
- Portal LinkedIn
- Portal Website
- George Burke LinkedIn
- Christian Decker @Snyke
- Bitscaler Website
- Swap SDK Website
- Sovryn Website
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About Our Guest:
- Bio: Chandra Duggirala is an entrepreneur operating at the intersection of technology and progress. He is a product builder, a Bitcoin fanatic, and an observer of human behavior.
- Website: Portal
- Twitter: @csentropy
- LinkedIn: Chandra Duggirala
- Bio: George Burke is a fintech executive with a strong focus on capitalizing on tomorrow's trends. He is known for running the world's first Bitcoin meetup and being one of the first angel investors in Ethereum.
- Website: Portal
- Twitter: @geoburke
- LinkedIn: George Burke
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Full Episode Transcript:
Richard Carthon: All right, I'm Richard Carthon, and this is the Edge of NFT. And I have some amazing guests with us here today. We are at Bitcoin Nashville. We are at a side event with our friends over at Portal DeFi. This is a sponsored episode, and we're excited to learn more about all the amazing things that they have going on. So first up, we have Chandra Duggirala, who is an entrepreneur operating at the intersection of technology and progress. He's a product builder, Bitcoin fanatic, and observer of human behavior. And next, we're going to talk with George Burke, who is a fintech executive capitalizing on tomorrow's trends. He has three exits. He is a go-to-market strategy growth specialist, masterful musician of eight years of cryptocurrency and blockchain experience. He runs the world's first Bitcoin meetup and among many first angel investors in Ethereum. So Portal is the safest and easiest path to Bitcoin from chains to Bell 2s. And we're going to be talking about Bitscaler, which is based infrastructure and ushering in an era of custody, less cross-chain transactions that are fast, seamless and secure. So let's jump into it. Gentlemen, pleasure to be here with you both today. Thank you for having us here. So I want to kick off with something really interesting. And we're excited about this because today's conversation is announcing the launch of Bitscaler White Paper. And It's outlining the vision of scaling blockchain solutions, and it serves as a foundational piece for understanding how Bitscaler aims to enhance the efficiency and accessibility of blockchain technologies. Chandra, with your extensive background, have been doing a ton of tech innovation and you've been instrumental with this white paper. I want to kick it to you first around this like technical and the position that you put into this other insight, like tell us about the white paper and what it's going to be bringing towards Portal.
Chandra Duggirala: Okay. Great question, Richard. The Bitscaler white paper describes the foundational infrastructure piece that we've developed to make cross-chain EMM and non-custodial cross-chain exchange possible. So, I'll go into a little bit of detail about Bitscaler white paper. So the problem for the longest time we've had in crypto is that when you wanted to do cross-chain transactions or operations, you had to have a trusted intermediary or a third party in the middle. And so from 2010 to 2019, we described that as the era of centralized exchanges acting as explorations or custodians for assets, right? The protocol is this, send me your quotes. exchange the coins with whatever you wanted to do. And then I will send you back points. Send me the coins, works. I sent you back the coins, but it didn't work so well. So we've had a lot of exchange collapses, hacks, a lot of people lost their funds from all the way from Mt. Gox to FTX. 2019 to 24 was the era of on-chain custodians. So all these bridges, walls, multi-sigs, prep derivatives, and other chains held by a bunch of validators, that is on-chain custody. So instead of trusting a single entity, you're actually trusting a bunch of entities with multi-sig or some sort of a custody mechanism. And that also empirically turned out to be a terrible thing. Bridge collapses are numerous. We don't have to go through all the names, multi-chain, like wormhole, you name it. 2024 forwards is going to be a custody-less cross-chain. And how is it different from all the technology that preceded it is it doesn't require any new opcodes. It works as a layer above Lightning. So it's a layer 3 system for creating these AMMs on Bitcoin and corresponding sidechains, L2s, and other L1s. And if you want me to go into a little bit of detail of how this structure architecture of these contracts is, how the atomic swaps work, all that stuff,
Richard Carthon: I was actually going to be a follow up question, either for you or George around like the crushing compatibility of it too, because like that's another huge component of what I think makes a portal. So remarkable is that interoperability.
George Burke: I can get into that actually so. You know, we've set up this camera equipment. I've been doing interviews with other layer one and layer two blockchain token issuers. And one of the questions I ask them, if you want to trade your token for Bitcoin, or you want to trade your token for Solana, can you tell me the steps it takes in order to trade that? And mind you, you're not using a centralized exchange. What do you do? So they start recounting. Okay, but first I need to think about using something like wormhole or layer zero. So I'm going to have to bridge my token over to this other compatible software, this blockchain. Then once I have my token on that blockchain, I then have to find the DEX that we'll be able to trade for Ethereum. And if it's Bitcoin? Good luck, because I think there's really only one Bitcoin AMM that actually exists today, and that's actually still custodial. So we'll be the first ones to do it non-custodially. Point is, they are recounting the steps and realizing, wow, how inefficient it really is to trade BTC for their own token. So they're really excited to be able to have a one-click swap.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, that's powerful. I remember when I was first speaking with you both about doing this and creating Portal, truly having one step. It's unheard of. It was revolutionary back when we were discussing this back in 2021, but even more so now in 2024. Fast forward three years later, we're still not there, right? Well, in a couple of weeks, we will be. So actually, as a follow-up to that, Testnet is coming up soon. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Chandra Duggirala: Yeah, so public testnet will be at the end of next week. Private testnet, we're already testing it internally, testing the client side of things, the rolling technology, all the edge cases, scaling, all of that stuff. But the exciting thing about this is you can abstract all of the steps, right? that involves taking this asset and then converting into that asset. The key is not having any chain of custody in the middle. So we're very excited and I think people are going to be super excited when they see the product out and how easy it is and how by default it sets up all of these Lightning channels for you. It's compatible with Lightning. you know when you're doing a swap the first thing you will realize is how fast it is and then how cheap it is because these are not L1 swaps these are L3 swaps and Bitscaler enables us to actually create Two things. One, a variety of transactions, not just pay-to-public-key-hash, pay-to-script-hash, but a variety of transactions. So you're horizontally scaling the types of transactions you can do with Bitcoin exchange. And then it increases the throughput as well because when there is this, one of the constraints of Lightning is when you and I have to form a channel with each other, we have to have an ACK transaction that has to be on-chain. And then when we close that channel, we have another on-chain transaction that has to be on-chain. And you pay on-chain fees once, twice. You wait for confirmation cycles twice. And if it's a non-cooperative clause, then you do two transactions. So it's very inefficient. The concept of a channel factory, which Christian Decker came up with around 2015 or 2016, is that you can abstract away all of these end-of-end channel formations. Basically, what you do is there's a bunch of people who sign one end-of-end multisig to do the hook transaction launching. Allocation transactions are all the UTXO that's from the transaction. They're all off-chain. So all of the channels that are formed between end-to-end parties from that end-of-end multisig are going to be off-chain. So you don't need an on-chain footprint. You're not actually bombarding the Bitcoin block space with anything. And then you actually have these hub-and-spoke one-to-one channels between LPs and traders that are trading against the same. And the corresponding thing works on the other side, right? All of these are atomic swaps between these parties that are involved. So there's traders, there's LPs, and then there's this part that actually people are trading against. Every one of them is an atomic swap. Electria don't. That's why they're super fast, super cheap. Well, I shouldn't say super cheap. The market will set the prices for them because that's the way it should be. But it's not going to be as expensive as doing this on-chain. Nowhere close.
Richard Carthon: Right. And Al, I want to stay there for a second. So for, and George, I'm going to apply this to you, because you brought up a couple of things that I want to unpack a little bit more. When people think about these DEXs, usually they can think about just trading anything on Bitcoin. It can be slow. It can be expensive. And the other part of it is security, right? Like how we make sure that they're safe and everything works and flows well. So how do we address those challenges?
George Burke: One thing that you need to know is that when it comes to DEXs, Bitcoin is not even in the equation. No one's even thinking about trading Bitcoin inside of the DEX. So you have people who are essentially siloed to their PPM communities. Maybe they want access to Bitcoin. How are they doing that? Right now through WBTC. So they're able to trade WBTC, which is a wrapped Bitcoin. It is, uh, and the worst, the worst kind of read because it is held by a singular custodian. Uh, should they use the underlying BTC? I don't know what the hell. Thankfully they haven't, or if, or if they did, we don't yet know. And so the system will continue to work as long as we are blind to its inefficiencies and its security. We want to do this without RAC. This is what a bridgeless future could look like, is the ability to swap an EVM token for Bitcoin or even the Bitcoin-based token. Taproot assets that are coming out, we have BRC20s, we have Drones, we have Ordinals, all of these do not need to be racked onto another chain in order to make them compatible by default.
Richard Carthon: I just want to say that real quick. That is incredible. That's the first time I've ever been able to do that. And that's why I just want to really shout this out and why I feel as strongly as I do about portals because this hasn't been done in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Chandra Duggirala: Now, this is a foundational piece of infrastructure for Bitcoin because eventually, the thesis that we have is that Bitcoin block space will transform from being the settlement layer for just BTC to the settlement layer for millions of markets. And what are these markets? Every single L2 or sidechain is a market that actually wants to have. frictionless, custody riskless, easy peg-in and permissionless peg-out back to Bitcoin. And so if they implement Bitscaler, basically a liquidity router, it's a couple of contracts. There's a multi-party channel HTLC on the Bitcoin side of things, which creates the MM, the liquidity pool. And then there's a corresponding contract on the Turing Complete smart contract platforms, whether it be L1, L2, whatever, EVM, etc. And then the outputs between these two contracts are linked. And when the trades are happening, it's just like you have like, right, you verify these states yourself. You just run a full node, you verify the states on a chain or like a client, and you know the state of the contract at all times. So you don't need to trust what is being actually broadcast between all of these people through the validator set on the portal chain, who act as a distributed network of watchtowers, right? They never hold custody. That's the other key thing that I'll come into, which is the non-custodial delegation and how we do better there. Then at no point in the transaction is there a situation where either someone is in control of your coins, either be that the counterparty or validators who are broadcasting these off-chain things to each other and to all of the clients off-chain. And then when the epoch lasts roughly 30 days, and when the epoch closes, there's a closing transaction that happens on-chain, and then everybody gets them. So all of these different off-chain protocols like Lightning, L2, etc., they all differ on how this distribution and closing and security models work. Lightning has watchtowers, there's a penalty mechanism, it's quite different from the way we have it. This was specifically designed for this exact use case, which is Any asset, any chain, you want to have permissionless peg out into and out of Bitcoin and it's legitimately a swap. Because otherwise you could have done this with layer 1 autonomous swaps. Layer 1 autonomous swaps could have worked in 2013. It's nothing new. Problem is they're slow, they're expensive. You have to wait many confirmation cycles. And you're talking about something that doesn't have predictable block types. I mean, Bitcoin blocks come on average every 10 minutes, right? But what is the actual arrival time of the next block? Nobody knows. That's the nature of the random way in which your runs, discovery, and hashing works. And so with the use case that you have, which is an AMM, It's locked for 30 days. That's long enough, right? And all of these off-chain transactions are happening. And then you broadcast the final state. So let's take a situation where the portal network of validators were DDoSed or they're actually falling out of consensus in your front system. Because you get the pre-commitment to your assets that you own every time there's a swap, it happens. All you have to do is wait for the timeout period and you broadcast it on-chain in a non-cooperative case. So you're not actually depending on this validator consensus to exist perpetually or libelous, this validator said. You just have to wait. and broadcast it at the end of the epoch and you're done you get your whatever is yours uh it may cost you more not changes it is a very different security model from bridges if a bridge collapses your money's gone like like what george described pegging happened underlying assets have gone, and peg out, what do you do? Nothing. This goes back way beyond what we're talking about. This is a problem that first was encountered in stable. People said, oh, we're going to algorithmically peg it to the USB. There's no way you can algorithmically peg anything to anything. We've learned that with Tariq. Basis. We should have learned that with basis. Yeah. Right? And I actually wrote an article way back when, after talking to the basis, I said, this is never going to work. OK? There's only one way to maintain a peg. constantly, consistently, which is frictionless, 24-7, 365 redeemability of the underlying asset, and that's it.
Richard Carthon: Right. I want to say on the word frictionless, because for a lot of people who hear about TestNet and they want to come and build on something, they want to make sure that there's good documentation, they want to make sure they get the support from the team, and they want to come build cool stuff, right? So with the TestNet going live, what can people who want to come and build and be part of this ecosystem, what can they expect out of the TestNet right now?
Chandra Duggirala: So, two things. We have two products for one, as you have seen the announcements from a lot of L2s and side chains and L1s, that they're integrating on a liquidity router to provide this exact permissionless back out mechanism into Bitcoin. There's a second protocol swap SDK, which was specifically built to give this capability to wallets and desks that are on signature. So Swap SDK is very simple to integrate. Our wallet actually acts as a reference implementation in the test link, but any wallet can do it. So we're talking to all of the leading three wallets in this space, and they're all very excited because this is a foundational piece of technology. And the way the future looks to us, at least, is you have a sidechain or L2. Do you have a permissionless pegout mechanism or not? there will be ones that do, and there'll be ones that don't, and fake it. Like I've heard side chains talking about, oh, we have permissionless pegout mechanisms because our validators can sign. That's not permissionless if your validator has to sign for it. Big, big, big red flag right there. And so eventually, people will care about security because some of these pegs will go. I mean, I've seen some of these L2s having two of three multi syncs. Hundreds of pegs going in from other people. It's crazy and wild. And so security is such a thing where it's very asymmetric. Nothing matters until the only thing that matters is security. It's very, very, in that way, different from all of the ways we understand human progress and exponential progress. So it's crazy that in 2024, there are still people that won't want to integrate this, but we've had great luck. Any project we talked with Algonel too, they all want this because see, Bitcoin, is a singular asset. We've never had anything like this. It's the system of global seamlessness, the most secure, the most trusted, decentralized system in existence, and the distributed system in existence. So capital automatically flows into there. The usability is there. The usage patterns are there. The fervent big coiner community is there. So naturally, capital will flow into that. And all of these other markets will want to have a permissionless, frictionless path from there to here. So instead of taking a risky bridge, paying the toll or maybe risking the bridge collapsing, you can teleport yourself from one side to the other.
Richard Carthon: That's right. And you want to find good partners to work with as well. You know, we're at this event and you have a couple of partners that argue between BidLayer and Sovereign. George, can you tell us a little bit more about those partnerships and how does Portal seamlessly work those two?
George Burke: Let's come back to that question in a bit. Okay. All right. One of the things I wanted to talk about is essentially capital. The last thing that Chandra mentioned was about capital flow and Bitcoin and crypto is meant to be frictious. There's an issue that we're experiencing today in capital inefficiency, and it has to do with fractionated liquidity. What I mean by that is going back to bridges. they're not just dangerous what they're doing is they're taking tokens and wrapping them outside into outside uh silos of liquidity pools perhaps that can only be used within one ecosystem what that means is the original token the most base layer token is unavailable to be traded removed so if you have a small fraction of each of these tokens that are moved to potentially hundreds of different ecosystems. You're then taking possibly half of the entire liquidity and branching it out into places that are nearly inaccessible. So this is one of the issues that bridged tokens do. So instead, what if the base layer token was simply available inside of each of these ecosystems itself? You would then be able to reunite this fractionated liquidity into one giant pool. That's something that Portal BitScale can make possible.
Richard Carthon: Yep. And it's an element of the safety and the security around these, it's not even really a bridge, right? You're directing in a way, you're pulling from here to there, and then frictionless, safe, and you're not having to deal with all of this security risk of your money falling into a silo and disappearing. Bitcoin is already scarce, we don't need to lose it. in any kind of transaction period. So like, how do we make sure that it's going from one place to another as securely as possible? And at a price that people aren't breaking their necks or like, we do not need another ETH gas summer of like, just outrageous fees of doing anything. So hopefully, we're, you know, we're getting to a place where people want to be moving their money. How can we help be that bridge to do this?
Chandra Duggirala: So George made an excellent point about liquidity being siloed into others. So if you look at the landscape right now, there's about 115 or so L2s. They all want to have your Bitcoin being tinseled, right? Multi-sig usually, or suppose won't, like Alex Chain. And then what happens is, then you do whatever the functionality is that the L2 does. But when you lose people's Bitcoin, every time you do that, you're going to lose trust in this process and every other set market gets affected, sidechain gets affected. And so the total volume locked. I tell people that when they brag about the TVL on our sidechain is this high, that actually means you're not securing, that is not securing your chain. You are having to secure a thousand people which is a horrible place to be in. High risk. High risk. And so the easiest alternative is just don't do that. Deploy our contracts. It takes one day of lift from your engineering, one engineering, full-time engineer's worth of work and a half day worth of work for us. We verify the contracts, look at your consensus mechanism, look at the architecture of your EVM or whatever side chain. And then it's done. So why wouldn't you do this? Like I said, the market's going to bifurcate into those that have it. And those that don't have cars that have seatbelts cars that don't have them and there are no cars that don't have seatbelts anymore. That's right. That's exactly right. Because if you don't have seatbelts, it's a must have. And people realize, you know, yes, there are some crazy people who would drive without putting their seatbelts on and seatbelts are in Jerusalem. But it doesn't look like that. So there's no cars that don't have seatbelts. So those people are sitting on Yeah. So I think this is the way the market shakes out because people are going to start demanding, what is the security model? How secure are my funds before I play in your system? And so the answer is, yes, we have it, or we're going to obfuscate it with some zero knowledge, blah, blah, blah, or a bridge, or this and that. It's the most secure bridge ever built. It's like, yeah, that's nothing.
Richard Carthon: So, so full circle back to yes, we have it. Honestly, you guys have it. And now you have two companies that want to be dealing with it, which are Sovereign and BitLab. So tell us a little bit more about that.
George Burke: So Iran Yago from Sovereign has been a friend for a long time. He and I have been in the Bitcoin space forever. It's great to see what he's put together on Sovereign. He's tried lots of different models that have each taken effect and now a Bitcoin layer 2. So what's really excellent about this along with BitLayer and many other Bitcoin L2s that are cropping up into the marketplace is that their specialty is to build smart contracts on top of Bitcoin to be able to bring EVM compatibility to Bitcoin. The only issue is that they are locked within their own ecosystem. It's not a problem because what we have been able to do with Bitscaler is to come in with our SDK and allow for liquidity into and out of their ecosystem. So within the Bitcoin layer 2 that each of these are building, you are essentially connecting your assets that are not just their own native assets but also the assets of projects that would like to build within their L2 to be tradable and one click natively without bridging to Ethereum or to Solana or to Arbitra and all of these ecosystems and for those dApps that carry our SDK All of these Bitcoin Layer 2 tokens, the sovereign-based tokens, the BitLayer-based tokens, will be available for trade in all of the partners that have our swap SDK installed. So essentially making extra liquidity to be able to flow to and from other chains for the partners that we're looking at.
Chandra Duggirala: There's one other point that I want to make on what George just said. So let's say you're a sidechain, you have your XBTC asset, right? Once you deploy the liquidity router contracts on Bitcoin and on your chain, your swaps are all to a USDT and then to whatever asset that is there. So let's say 60 of these chains are M&Ls, Mastery, and BitSplit. What happens is every one of them can have just means to provide liquidity for their asset against USDT. And because what looks like one swap to you is actually two swaps to the USDT pool and to the other asset, you get 10 to the N pairs from every other compatible chain that's using this. So you get that advantage. You don't have to fight for scarce liquidity. The game is not fighting for scarce liquidity to build your thing. The game is actually to have utility on your side chain that produces a lot of value, which you can deliver as yield to people who've, you know, invested in the project or people who've participated in your community. And so you get two things. You don't have to fight over liquidity. You get end-to-the-end prepared tradability. It's fast, cheap, and frictionless. It's secure. And so that's the, I think that's why our sales cycles have been so short. And that's how the sales pipeline has been so blocked. in the sense that we can't necessarily scale up integrations, even though it's easy. It still takes a lot of time and work and money and effort and engineering to do this, right? So, but we're not, you know, obviously we're in it to win it because
Richard Carthon: Which means you're very careful with the partners that you pick, especially at this early stage of doing this. But it's also strategically probably why you just decided to come out here to Bitcoin Nashville. So as we wrap up here, like, why Bitcoin Nashville? And of course, you're here with some of your partners, and I'm sure you've met several other new companies that you potentially want to work with. How's the experience been here at this conference? And you know, are you expecting to do any other conferences later this year? What's the roadmap like for the rest of the year that you can share?
Chandra Duggirala: Absolutely. So, after the testnet, we are entirely focused on adoption, right? Adoption metrics, we have internal KPIs on how people are using it, how many projects are integrating it, what is the transaction. And the mainnet will happen when our validators press the button. After that, the development company, we, continue to support technically whatever it is that the protocol needs. We have our own ways of deploying things and asking for a consensus. Some of them will fail, some of them will succeed. It doesn't matter. The community makes that decision. But we are so excited for native perpetuals on Bitcoin, not having sidechain native perpetuals on Bitcoin. stablecoin. And then we're super excited about real world assets and a specific class of real world assets. So when I look at real world assets, I don't think about, oh, we're going to have to tokenize stocks. The stock market is hyper-efficient. It's been built over 100 years of legacy infrastructure that's perfected in a competitive environment. Real estate, efficient markets exist. um digitally native goods like tokenized US dollars and fiat obviously has empirically been proven to be a huge market and vast demand in game goods i'm super excited about that for two reasons one is uh The number of kids that actually grow up with games as their primary form of socializing and entertaining themselves is through the roof. It's the biggest entertainment industry in the world, bar none. It's not sports, it is not Hollywood, it is not media, none of these things, right? It is esports, which is crazy. And these digitally native assets, the games that work really well at scale, the publishers don't actually want to be able to trade them. if there are permissionless make-up, but they still have- the kids are trading them all day, they're trading their cows in back alleys for credit cards, I mean gift cards. They have value because of the social consensus around the skill and the effort it takes to earn certain things in a game. So the first wave of web 3 is VCs mindlessly spouting bullshit like, uh, oh yeah, now you're going to take this bike from this, you know, whatever race game and then you're gonna transport it into this first-person shooter game and now we're gonna have combat. That's stupid. I don't think any of these people understand how hard it is to build a great game, right? The narrative, the game mechanics, the story, the characters, all of that stuff, the onboarding process, it takes, it's art. so if you don't have a great game all of this other stuff about tradability x infinity that's all just utterly irrelevant then you have a great game the way Bitcoin or blockchain actually makes it better is that you have, let's say, all these earned goods can be displayed on, those are collected. It's just like you collect baseball cards. You collect these digital artifacts from different games and that showcase your skill and level and you can trade them, right? Permissionless, natively, into and out of Bitcoin. And so what is your adoption pool right now? David Bailey said it's 50 to 70 million people in the US. And in 10 years, when these kids grow up, there you go. That's your hyper-Bitcoinization. Okay. So they're natively used to these digital artifacts having value and being exchangeable freely into Bitcoin. That's something I'm super excited about. There's a little bit more detail there in terms of you don't need the game to be LGN or game logic. You just need the official signature. Verify that it's actually the same thing. There's some constraints that these artifacts are not created arbitrarily, and they have some level of scarcity to them. But that's kind of like the details. What I learned from the Bitcoin conference here in Nashville is that people here are much more thoughtful than in general conferences that I've been to because they all come from the Bitcoin mindset. The Bitcoin mindset is security first. We think deeply through everything. Changes are going to be infrequent and rare because every change has a trade. And that mindset pervades the Bitcoin community. Needing like-minded people, it has been wonderful. The energy and the optimism were great. Obviously some of that comes from the pre-section, but irrespective of that, you know, this has been a great experience. We'll probably be there. The token went in Singapore, and we'll see how it goes and make it likely for a blockchain make as well. Awesome. And that'll be hopefully a great end to an already eventful year.
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. So we got a really good timeline of what's going on and enjoyed all this past year real quick. But how's the experience been for you? And what are you just looking forward to for the rest of the back half of the year?
George Burke: Well, as Chandra said, you know, we're at a Bitcoin conference. And so there's a different caliber of folks who come to this rather than to TokenShiller conferences, which I've seen. I've been connected to the Bitcoin space since 2013. I first built a coin and Bitcoin exchange, which is funny even saying that out loud, because that's what it was called the Bitcoin to altcoin exchange. That was what it was built for. And after that, I was working on the first Bitcoin debit card in the United States. The type of people who I met back have become lifelong friends. I'm so excited when I get to see them because they're just so different from new entrants into the space or number-go-up people who are the trading DJs. These people don't trade. Many of them know the charts, but they're not trading. They're folding their web. And actually, had I had that mindset when wanting to build a Bitcoin debit card in the US, maybe we wouldn't have built a debit card because people would just be holding their tokens rather than spending them. The point is that because of the mindset that my team has, we have Chandler, who is a self-proclaimed libertarian, maybe a theologist. Bitcoin maximalist. Bitcoin maximalist. We have Austrian economics principles and game theory based on projects that we've worked in space. We've been designing what I hope to be the perfect way for Bitcoin and Ethereum and Sklana and all of these other tokens. I can't think of another way for this to occur. I mean, many times we were scratching our heads. Maybe this is possible. and we've been able to build on that. So I'm excited about it and my old Bitcoin friends really applaud me for having stuck it out to make sure that Bitcoin is included in DeFi. Once that happens, how much capital is likely to flow from the pipes of Ethereum and Solanum into the BTC equipment system and vice versa? When nobody has to use wrapped Bitcoin, and they can use native Bitcoin too, I want to say dangerously, play with these yields, right? Because it's not guaranteed, right? But at least there's no custodians. So if they would like to find yield in their Bitcoin through a portal, they can. It's awesome.
Richard Carthon: And I definitely appreciate Bobel's perspectives on just everything that's happening with the portal, but also just like really what's happening at this conference and the sentiment around like, why are people in this space? And why are they so close? Just on at the core, what is cryptocurrency? Where did it come from? Bitcoin? That's why we're all here. And why are we building towards the future of that? Crypto has promised us and you guys are hyper focused on making that reality. And I actually want to take this next moment in our session to ask you some special questions. We have a session called Quick Hitters. This is where we ask our favorite 1.3 heroes some of their rapid fire questions and you can answer as quickly or as short form as you like. Are you up for the challenge? Yes. All right. So we'll start with you, Chandra. What is the first thing you remember purchasing in your life?
Chandra Duggirala: First thing I remember purchasing myself, candy. Candy, okay. Do you remember what kind of candy it was? I think it was, what is that thing that, you know, not cotton candy, but it's kind of similar. Okay. Yeah. So taffy. Yes. Yes, taffy.
George Burke: I can't remember the first thing I bought. It probably was candy. But let me say that the first thing that comes to mind that I bought meaningfully was a car. And I was 17. I had saved up a lot of money to buy a car. I didn't even tell my parents. I just bought it. And I came home with this car. And they're like, you're not allowed to have a car. They took it away from me.
Chandra Duggirala: That's it. Good parents.
Richard Carthon: I know his parents. Awesome. Do you know Sherrod's and all this other stuff? That's awesome. So what kind of car was it?
George Burke: No, I knew all of it. This is going to be hilarious. It was a Geode. And I loved it. For some reason, I loved the look. I didn't understand how crappy of a car it really was. But it was red, and it was beautiful, and it was within my price range. Yeah.
Chandra Duggirala: That's awesome. Surprisingly, my first car also happens to be a Geo. Really? Yes. Okay.
Richard Carthon: Geo Prizm. So, bonding on that as well. Okay, let's reverse it. So, what is the first thing you remember selling in your life?
George Burke: I don't know. Uh, okay. Selling. Yeah. Uh, probably lemonade. Yeah. Lemonade stand. I'm sure that's the answer. A lot of people have, uh, but instead how about this? Uh, in high school, I, uh, I created a company to sell, uh, uh, website sales. So I was actively going to businesses to try to get them to, um, let me build their websites.
Richard Carthon: That's cool. HTML coding websites like that. That's because the CSS wasn't moving around.
George Burke: Yeah.
Richard Carthon: That's awesome.
Chandra Duggirala: What'd you, um, first thing I saw was a textbook telling you how nerdy I am.
Richard Carthon: Uh, people need them. Um, so, uh, if you could buy anything in the world right now, price money didn't matter. What would you purchase?
Chandra Duggirala: Things that can be bought, right? Things that can be bought. We're not talking about relationships. Yes.
George Burke: People can be bought.
Chandra Duggirala: Yes, but I don't want to. If I could buy anything in the world, what would I buy right now? I would probably buy an island and start my own governance system. But having learned all of the lessons from hundreds and thousands of years of failure, you can do better. I think governance is software. Our governance software is horribly broken and I'd like to do something.
George Burke: Slices& Dices. All right. What about you, George? I would buy therapy for the world.
Richard Carthon: I think the world could use that. Okay, if you could pass on one of your personality traits to the next generation, what would it be?
Chandra Duggirala: Mine would have to be grind it out, persistence, toughen tough it up. And yeah.
George Burke: Go with the flow. Know that things may not seem like they're working out at the moment, but that you can know deep down somehow we'll get through it. And if you know that you will get through a dark, tough time in your life, that means that you don't have to stress so much about it. And if you can live life without that type of stress, the world seems like a beautiful place.
Richard Carthon: I like it. Now we're going to reverse it. If you could eliminate one of your personality traits, the next generation. Wait and see. Worrying. Worrying. Yeah. And two more questions. Just when you think about the growth and how far Bitcoin has come, what is a lesson that if you could tell yourself other than probably. If you go back in time when you're first starting this journey, what would you tell yourself? What is the wisdom you'd give yourself?
Chandra Duggirala: Man, this is the most obvious question of all time for me. Because if I could go back in time to 2009 or 2010, I would never sell anything until And if I have to give myself some advice, other than on trading, I'd say, you know, your instincts are right. Do not get distracted by whatever's happening in other people's heads. Always go with your instincts. Always trust yourself more than what you hear.
George Burke: There are two things. Because I've seen so many bull and bear cycles, there were times that I've had my doubts. And it doesn't mean that I sold because I was like, ah, Bitcoin's going to zero, it's not it. I sold out of necessity. Had I had better conviction, I would have figured out ways to maybe afford my lifestyle, maybe cut back that style in order to know that Bitcoin is for real, it's here to stay. Simultaneously, what none of us realized in the beginning is just how quickly it would become $20,000 and how quickly it would become $70,000. We thought this would be a 25-year cycle just to get to the price that we're at today. So the fact that it got there in only 15 years from inception is mind-boggling. So I would tell myself...
Richard Carthon: Yeah, both good ones. We always like to wrap with a bonus question and what is more fitting being at a Bitcoin conference. This was a question that was posed to me while at the conference that I think can be very powerful. One word answer. What does the word "Bitcoin" mean to you?
Chandra Duggirala: Liberty.
George Burke: Can't do it in one word.
Richard Carthon: opportunity. I thought for me it was freedom, but awesome. Well, um, it's been a great being able to catch up, learn more about y'all. Um, we always like to wrap up with giving a moment for shout outs. You know, you do a ton of work, you work with a lot of people, but it doesn't mean that everyone necessarily gets brought up to the light. So this is a moment if y'all like to shout out anybody, uh, you can do it.
George Burke: We, we have, we have, uh, an amazing, uh, head of biz dev, uh, named Robbie. who is actually doing our work right now for us while we're here joking around on camera. He's been fantastic at getting us so many of his partnerships, working partnerships with Binlayer and Sovereign that we're proud to rinse today. So I'm also happy to give a shout out to those partners too.
Chandra Duggirala: I'd love to give a shout out to the engineering team, both crypto side of things and Rafa. Incredible, incredible talent. And we are so lucky to have. And then we are so lucky to have partners like Tari, who are super creative, super innovative, and you, BitLayer, Sovereign. List of partners is long, but obviously I can't name them all. But, but yeah, it's been, it's been a wonderful ride. Tough times, but
Richard Carthon: Excellent. Well, what are ways that people can follow and keep up with everything Portal's got going?
Chandra Duggirala: On Twitter, at portal underscore finance is our handle. Not anymore. Oh, a portal to Bitcoin. Yep, yep, yep. He's right. There you go. There you go.
George Burke: All right.
Chandra Duggirala: That's yeah, we're that. And a portal to Bitcoin on Twitter. Personally, my Twitter handle is at CSENTROPY. You can see it on our website.
Richard Carthon: Oh, yeah. Perfect. And you as well?
Chandra Duggirala: Yeah.
George Burke: Don't let our testnet go to waste. Use it. Tell us what you think. Yes. We're really excited about it. And there are rewards for people who are able to use it. Great points. Exactly. So we'd love to hear your feedback. Go to portaltobitcoin.com and get started there.
Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well, George, Todd, we appreciate your time. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Richard.
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