E97: Bitcoin Tools for Sovereign Individuals - Zach Herbert - CEO of Foundation Devices

[00:00:00] spk_0: one of the most important, you know, things that he said was that it's a system where trust is not required. Like that's a fundamental basis to Bitcoin, right? You don't need trust. It was created in response to a failing system that's still failing. Same system we have today, you know where government is constantly bailing out banks, printing more money and so on and each downturn seems to get more aggressive until something maybe will completely and permanently break in the in the car.

[00:00:29] spk_1: That clip you just heard Zach Herbert ceo of foundation devices, that's who we're talking to today. So you know what time it is, What is up you beautiful people welcome back to the built on Bitcoin podcast where we cover all the innovation happening across the Bitcoin ecosystem mostly talking to directly to the builders that are trying to expand the use cases of Bitcoin. And so that's who I have today talking with me. Zach Herbert is the ceo of foundation devices where they build tools to help you be a sovereign individual. That's their entire thesis. Their Bitcoin focused company and they're trying to build hardware and software that makes it as easy as possible to custody your keys, keep yourself safe and be sovereign. So it's a very overarching theme. But if you check out their hardware it looks fantastic and super easy to use. So I really, really like what they're building had to get zack on the pod to discuss what they're currently building. What fascinates him about Bitcoin, why he got into it, where they're going bunch of other topics. So this one was super, super interesting. I also love talking to people who are in the hardware space. It's just a different kind of constraints to work around, which I find interesting. I was trying to learn. So yeah, without further ado, let's jump into this podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor, We all know Bitcoin is for the innovators, the revolutionaries and the builders looking to build a better world for themselves and for the next generation. We also know the saying the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is right now, the same thing applies to building on Bitcoin if you want to come build with the most active developer community, building new use cases for Bitcoin and it's time you make the leap to learning clarity, clarity. Is this tax smart contract programming layer, which enables us to work on defi smart contracts and so much more all built with the safety and security that comes with Bitcoin. Start today by going to start dot stacks dot org Start dot stacks dot org has a five step journey that will take you from complete stacks, novice to teaching new clarity all the way to finding a job with the web three stacks startup. Don't wait another month, year or decade, waiting to get involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Start building on Bitcoin today. Go to start dot stacks dot org to start learning and building today. Thank you to our sponsor. And now without further ado, let's jump into this podcast episode with Zach Herbert ceo of foundation devices. Welcome to build on Bitcoin Zack. How you doing,

[00:03:37] spk_0: man?

[00:03:39] spk_1: Good, good to have you here. Um, how you doing in the bear market, man? How, how's it, how's it feeling right now?

[00:03:46] spk_0: I don't know, this is like my third bear market. So the honest answer is, I don't really care too much about it.

[00:03:56] spk_1: Seems that seems common amongst what you've been through one cycle. You're just numb to the volatility of

[00:04:02] spk_0: exactly just the volatility is part of the game, right? That's just what Bitcoin is. It just, you know, like this up and down and so on. Yeah,

[00:04:10] spk_1: we're talking about bear market blues. So you just kind of, you know, the whole thing is irrelevant. It doesn't change your conviction of building one iota.

[00:04:18] spk_0: Not at all. If anything, I think it's kind of fun to see, you know, kind of the infighting and the, and the drama and whatnot, anytime there's a bear market happens every single time. And I think it's great because it's a little bit more quiet of a time to build. It just means that we have, you know, more time to spend, getting, you know, things ready for the next big bull market in the next big influx of users,

[00:04:47] spk_1: right? Yeah. Getting the tourists out in some sense and being able to have like a really high signal to noise ratio at first, especially as a content creator, I was like, man, so everything is down like no one wants to hear me. It sucks but now it's just like no man, the people I'm talking to are super high caliber still and the people who still listen like those are the true true fans. So it's interesting. Yeah,

[00:05:10] spk_0: I mean all I have time to do now is listen to podcasts. Right?

[00:05:13] spk_1: So heck yeah, well man, I'm excited to talk to you about what you guys are building um building some hardware, which is interesting. Space um comes with its own unique problems but before we get anything you guys are building uh everyone gets to Bitcoin different ways and I keep asking this question like what Fascinates you about Bitcoin to every person and I'm so intrigued by the, the difference of answers across Bitcoin. So for you, what is the thing that fascinates so much about Bitcoin?

[00:05:46] spk_0: Yeah, I mean I think it's changed over time. So you asked me when I first got into it um about nine years ago, it was more about just the number go up, you know, like the investment potential and having just a better form of money with that, you know, fixed supply that cannot change and just kinda intuitively understanding that that makes sense. Where okay as more users come on board than the value of of, that should go up right the value of each coin so that was that was a while ago but then what ends up happening and I think it's like a typical journey that most people go through once you get into Bitcoin is that you start to inundate yourself with all the content, you know podcasts and blog posts and twitter and reddit and so on and all of a sudden in the last few years I started to care a lot more about like the sovereignty angle. You know the idea of just having control over my own money which is probably the most important thing uh about not needing to depend on any any third party and about how that kind of permeates like your entire life where once you start to take sovereignty over your own money you start to say okay well what about like my data my identity and then even things outside of like digital sovereignty like food and you know other stuff right? Like that. And so it's definitely become much more of like a like a digital sovereignty uh angle for me and and that's I think what I care about the most and it's it's so interesting when I look back you know how how that's changed for me over time going more from like the N. G. U. Two to the sovereignty

[00:07:35] spk_1: right? Did you? So so I want to assume then that Bitcoin maybe had you grow your own garden like you know food sovereign got tomatoes in the backyard.

[00:07:45] spk_0: Not yet. We just bought a house. So so we will do all that, but more like, you know like we did a we did a collaboration, we sponsored like the beef initiative where they've done some cool conferences like educating ranchers about Bitcoin and ordering from, you know, ordering meat directly from the, you know, the ranchers in texas that accept Bitcoin, you know, through the beef initiative or um, you know, getting my food deliveries from the Amish now, getting the raw milk and whatnot. So maybe maybe I've gone a little too, you know too far. But I think it's one of those things where like I could, I couldn't have imagined that like maybe 55 years ago. Like it's it's kind of hilarious to think about how starting with the money, it kind of permeated every other

[00:08:35] spk_1: aspect of

[00:08:37] spk_0: my life.

[00:08:38] spk_1: Yeah. It's it's when using this word clown world and it's kind of like a, you know, it's like a gut punch thing, like how crazy is the outside world, but it's said tongue in cheek, but what they mean is like once you see the world through Bitcoin lens, everything else changes and it's hard to unsee it and and so you're just like, I don't understand why you guys are doing that. Your actions don't make sense. Like you should know better and it's it's weird disconnect between like there's these silos of knowledge in some sense and then through that knowledge, you view the world um and it changes all your downstream actions from

[00:09:14] spk_0: that. Yeah, there's that meme, you know fix the money to fix the world

[00:09:17] spk_1: and

[00:09:19] spk_0: everyone that doesn't like Bitcoin anytime Bitcoin drops or anytime something you know, bad happens in the world, they like tag, they're like hey Bitcoin ear's like explain how Bitcoin fixes this. And I do think though that you know once you really start to understand how important money is as a foundation for everything in society, you start to realize that you have broken money um everything in society starts to break, you know, you don't, you don't have an accurate um you know interest rate, right cost of capital, all that basic stuff that acts as an input to like everything in civilization. You look at everything going on in the world and you think wow like all these actions from these central banks and sent very centralized governments are typically making things worse and and to that that culture and Bitcoin of saying, you know, get the humans out of these decisions, you know, set the rules and then get out of the way so that you know people can just work within the rules of the monetary system and there's no way to change those rules right, you know, all of a sudden want that for like everything and yeah, I mean that was not something that I thought about, you know 10 years ago like that was something that you start to read all the different books like the Bitcoin standard you listen to podcasts like Tales from the Crypt I think was a really influential one for me. Um and you really start to just consume all this information.

[00:10:55] spk_1: Yeah, I couldn't be more like I've been here a year now, maybe a year, a year and four months. I'm still this is my first cycle.

[00:11:03] spk_0: Congratulations.

[00:11:04] spk_1: Yeah, I'm getting the scars. I'm feeling stronger day by day. Um But I was just talking to someone and we were talking about like the homeless crisis which is kind of across America in so many big cities and we're kind of talking about and I typically come from more of like a capitalist point of view in the positive so like its value for value exchange. It's not like the stealing and the capital accumulation per se and other people come from more like socialist or government point of view and we're talking about like what starts first, is it mental health kind of thing with with homelessness or is it something else? And my point of view is kind of like when the money is broken, everything starts to go crazy. So housing prices go crazy, you can't you don't have good price signals maybe regulation creeps in. So you can't get enough new houses built which makes things cascade down cause higher tier buyers will buy these lower two houses and so that cascades until the person who would work at Wendy's and afford a two bedroom apartment literally can't and they just go to other things for like exhaust valves to like escape how hard life is. And so even from that land it's like you think it's just mental health or something like that or like a lack of safety nets but it could just be the base level thing that helps us navigate and transact in the world is broken and everything else kind of breaks from that. But it's like this very divergent views

[00:12:31] spk_0: totally. I mean I just saw an article this week about how it costs $1.7 million to build a public bathroom now and san Francisco or somewhere in California

[00:12:42] spk_1: like

[00:12:42] spk_0: like I think like a one stall public bathroom just like this is this is insane. Everything and of course there's obviously all the government I think regulation and and all that, but I think what you said is accurate like if you don't have good money um

[00:13:00] spk_1: just

[00:13:01] spk_0: every everything everything breaks and then you know the more you print, the more it benefits, things like stocks and real estate and so on and if you own that then you're happy almost right. I mean look at what's happening every time the Fed announces another interest rate hike. You know if it's higher than expected right, the stock market goes down uh if they think that you know if the inflation report comes out and inflation is higher than expected stock market goes down because now they know that the Fed is going to have to keep hiking even more. It's just so obvious it's like insane and then it gets to the point where you know your house is an investment vehicle, not a house and then you can't afford it and then you just all these cascading, you know effects and it's just kind of crazy to think how much of that does stem from the money. So I am, I am a believer in that silly meme, you know fix the money to fix the world

[00:13:57] spk_1: right, right? As much as much as it feels. It's kind of like a crazy utopian view almost. But yeah, I think it's right and it's, it continues to strike me how beautiful Bitcoin it is and it's designed because I think spiral push something yesterday about like banks need your money. Um, something something Bitcoin doesn't it just is, it's worded better. But the idea is like when you hold a proper hardware wallet, you are the bank in this like ethereal global substrate. If you will like I need to put better words behind it, but like you don't have to store it anywhere else, You just have the keys and you can plug it into the cloud in some sense and you can pull it out whenever you need and that idea is so counter to anything else that we

[00:14:41] spk_0: have and

[00:14:43] spk_1: you have this when you go to your website, the first thing it says in big bold letters become a sovereign individual. And that's and that's I love to explore that in that context though. Like for people just to drive that home of like Bitcoin, is this crazy global thing that whenever you want to, you can just pluck out your money when needed and it helps you be sovereign in a global sense, what is becoming a sovereign individual look like for you? Maybe the lens of foundation, how you guys feel

[00:15:11] spk_0: it. Yeah. And firstly, I mean the term sovereign individual came from a very, very uh good book called The Sovereign Individual. So we didn't invent that term or anything. So I highly recommend that everyone read it or at least skim It's pretty dense. Um and it was written a couple of decades ago or a few decades ago, I think in the beginning of the rise of the internet and it predicted the rise of digital currencies and and uh the declining power of centralized governments and things like Digital Nomad ism and all that stuff. So firstly it's a very cool book in terms of like, you know, as you said with Bitcoin, it's like your your your money is actually yours and it's available to you whenever you want it and you don't need to trust anyone. And I think it's really important to remember if you're if you're into Bitcoin, if you consider a Bitcoin or if you're working in the space, if you run a company in the space, it's important to remember like why Bitcoin was created and what, you know why it exists and what Satoshi said about it, you know, in the early days, I mean one of the most important, you know, things that he said was that it's a system where trust is not required, like that's a fundamental basis to Bitcoin, right? You don't need trust. It was created in response to a failing system that's still failing same system we have today, um, you know where government is constantly bailing out banks, printing more money and so on and each downturn seems to get more aggressive until something maybe will completely and permanently break in the, in the coming years. So, you know, one of the reasons why we started foundation back in uh March april of 2020 was because like I was a personally frustrated how difficult it was to use like existing hardware, wallets or other, you know, wallets or tools to take self custody, you know, sovereignty of my Bitcoin, but also that so much of the investment, I feel like in the whole Cryptocurrency space was flowing into like a More custodial type projects and and providers and I think this has changed a little bit in the last couple of years, but if you think about like, or if you go look back at all the different kind of funding announcements in 2019, uh maybe maybe most of the 2019 into 2020, a lot of like because exchanges, you know, it was a huge source of like venture capital dollars, um custodial type nodes and other offerings like cloud nodes, hosted nodes, all that kind of stuff. It's very rare to see any kind of company pursuing self custody or sovereignty or I think it's changed a bit now with like all the different defi stuff going on and all the kind of quote unquote web three and all that. So I think the where the money selling has changed, but I think it's just like we we had this strong desire to build products that enable people to actually achieve digital sovereignty. And the best analogy is to compare it to, you know, being able to have like a an ounce of gold, a gold bar that you keep at home, right? Like under your bed or something or in a safe. That's the closest I think analogy towards storing your own Bitcoin, right? But you you can you can use the software wallet or hardware wallet or even just an old laptop, you know, and and store your own keys uh and and therefore be your own bank without needing to trust anyone. And you can store $10 worth of Bitcoin on there, you can store $10 million worth of Bitcoin on there and it's in the same size device no matter how much you store right there, a little different from gold which is pretty cool and you can actually have real sovereignty and so like our challenge and what I'm excited about is being able to you know build products that give you a fantastic user experience while still allowing you to have that digital sovereignty And more specifically that means like not only storing your own keys which is important but also having control over all aspects of your digital life and having privacy because I would also argue like if you store your money like if you store your keys yourself but there's another company that knows exactly like your name, your address, what your balance is in terms of like you're what you're storing in the wallet, You sure you start your own keys but someone can come knock on your door you know 10 years down the line. You know government can come knock on your door and say you know we're taking your Bitcoin which did happen with gold you know many decades ago. So it's really important like to think about your entire like digital sovereignty stack and and and not just storing your own keys but like how you store that to make sure you do it in like a privacy preserving way and and that's been inaccessible really for most people to date. And so we're trying to make that more accessible.

[00:20:29] spk_1: Perfect. And that's a good way to kind of continue on that. As you said, it is making more accessible words I'm hearing I'm hearing different things and I'm like okay, you know you're making hardware and so you have a ledger and treasure and I just got a ledger. It's pretty good. It's fairly straightforward. Um and I've I've heard of coin join services and this kind of stuff, but I don't really never use them. Don't really know what they do behind the scenes. Maybe I guess I don't have to. That's kind of the beauty of it. Um but is that is that what you saw as the big missing piece in the market is that they're the the underlying pieces are starting to come online. They're relatively there, but no one's put them into that guy. I don't mean like a coin based package in the sense that it's just easy to use. They can go to one place and it's just like we give you all the tools without having that be centralized but vertically integrated. Uh and you can do all the things that help you reach that sovereign life. That is that kind of where you guys are like the white space or

[00:21:36] spk_0: Yeah, I mean I think the way the way I look at it is kind of what you said were I think most of the tools exist today in some form. Um you go buy a hardware wallet, you could buy hardware out before we as a company, you know, got started. Um you can use different kinds of privacy tools whether that's like Bitcoin specific, like like coin join, like samurai whirlpool is a good example

[00:22:01] spk_1: or

[00:22:01] spk_0: it could be outside Bitcoin, it could be like a VPN or tour right? Like a VPN was something that was not very common 10 years ago and now all of a sudden it's like everywhere to the point where apple integrated like some type of VPN into IOS into their iCloud service. And so I think the way we look at what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring all of these tools, these digital sovereignty tools to the next wave of adopters, right? It's, it's kind of is I think that's that's the way I really look at it where something like setting up a leisure device, if you're totally new to the space, it's still really hard. I think like the hardware form factors un intuitive for a lot of people, the screen size, the tiny buttons, but then also just the on boarding experience of, you know needing to deal with seed words and so on. So like even with our our passport harbor, well today you can still do seed words if you want, but by default we do like an encrypted micro SD backup because we think for a lot of people when they're just getting started for the first time, they don't really know what the seed words represent and they don't really fully understand how to safeguard them. And what ends up happening is they get like fish or something within, you know, online attack. They get tricked to entering their seed words like into a computer. They don't really, you know, uh and then you lose all your money. And so I think there's a few things, I think there's like the hardware form factors are difficult. I still think a lot of like the software wallets are really difficult to use. Um a lot of, especially when you do anything privacy related, there's a lot of terminology that's like completely new that you have to learn and understand. Um and then also I just have a gripe around how so many of the tools like larger are closed source and like we're really big believers in open source software. We think like an open source uh all these open, you know, protocols and, and stuff like that, like an open internet should run on a foundation of open hardware. And so it kind of bothers me when you have this fundamental foundational hardware that's like storing your keys and it's and it's closed source. So I think we're just trying to make it much more usable and and trying to bring it together, like you said in more of an integrated experience where ideally instead of having to use several different tools, you know, hardware software and so on, ideally we can get that all integrated into like a single product suite and it's all making like the best decisions by default for you when it comes to your digital sovereignty. And so for example, you know, our Envoy mobile app which is like our passport companion app, you know guides you through setting up the hardware and gives you a basic Bitcoin software wallet, you know, to go with your hardware wallet that connects to the internet over tour by default so you can turn that off. You know, you could you could decide to not use that, but we're trying to encourage really great defaults for user privacy, right? And so we don't know the users I. P address, we don't know the balance of Bitcoin that you have on the device or anything like that. Um and that's so important. You know, usually you have to make a trade off, like usually you're you're making a trade off between like easy to use or like custodial or not private or something like that. So we're trying to say, okay, like let's get rid of these trade offs or or at least provide a different set of trade offs, right? Where it's it's easy to use, but we make these default really great decisions where you don't have to think too much if you use a product from foundation, you don't have to be like, well like am I compromising on like my privacy, you know, am I am I trusting them with anything Like we're trying to make it where the answer is no like you just have this great experience and and we're making sure that you know you're able to achieve that digital sovereignty.

[00:25:56] spk_1: Perfect. You got me hyped right now. I'm ready. I'm signing up uh for people that are hearing that then and they're intrigued what is the things that you offer? You you have a hardware wallet and doesn't look like most hardware wallets. It almost looks like a like a sexy Nokia phone from thousands and then you have some software but what's the real tools that you guys currently have on?

[00:26:20] spk_0: Yeah,

[00:26:21] spk_1: so it's pretty

[00:26:22] spk_0: simple right now. So we have a hardware wallet, passport, it's a Bitcoin only device I would call it, you know best in class. Bitcoin hardware wallet um on every dimension from the physical design, the usability of a nice larger bright you know, color I PS display, you know, laminated glass. Really beautiful user interface. We actually use a camera and QR codes for the primary communication. So it's air gapped in the sense that it doesn't have any wifi, Bluetooth, no USB data or anything like that. So the way you do transactions is you just scan some QR codes back and forth whether it's your phone or computer. We have our own mobile app called Envoy that goes with that you could do the whole on boarding for passport, the setup for more updates and so on from the mobile app. So you don't even need to go to your computer for the initial setup and then you can choose to use our Envoy app as like your Bitcoin software wallet companion. But we're also compatible with virtually every popular Bitcoin software wall today on desktop or mobile. So that could be blue wallet. You know if you're using blue wallet you can just link your passport to that and have a hardware wallet right on, you know, right in blue wallet and the interface that you can move money to and from casa. You know you can you can use something like casa and link passport to it. Popular desktop walter. There's Bitcoin core Sparrow Specter a bunch of other things even like Btc pay. So we maintain I think really strong compatibility with you know every popular Bitcoin softball in the space but that that's what we have today. We have we have passport and we have Envoy that requires that you use passport with it um in the future over the next several months I think you'll see us building out the mobile app side more where the mobile app Envoy is actually also a stand alone hot wallet and will continuously add more interesting features to that to help make you you know more more sovereign. Um so so you know the roadmap we started off with just hardware and now the roadmap is very much like the hardware and software kind of side by side.

[00:28:32] spk_1: Very cool, very cool. Yeah. I'm intrigued. I've explored the idea of like the hardware wallet too and how you see it because um I like the scanning portion of it as a form function is becoming more and more common and usable. Like people just get used to it. Um but even like this common things, like I had a friend who was locked out of his account recently because he didn't save his authenticator whatever and then change phones and he's like, what do you mean I got typing this random code is chained down what this is and I was like, I thought that was common knowledge. Like it's authentic, we're not talking about like secret keys and stuff right now. Um So it's, it's still I dance between like there's a future as the tech matures look more like I'll carry my phone and a passport in my pocket as I go about my day or or does my spending money on my phone and I, Apple pay Btc most of the time. Like how do you see that kind of dance of like really putting the sovereign tech at the forefront and I carry the device versus like ease of use is always kind of that battle.

[00:29:42] spk_0: Yeah, it's interesting like outside of like if you put aside what, what we're doing right? And you kind of look at where things are going. I think like we're headed in this direction where Apple and google keep bringing like more and more of that control into their respective ecosystems. So like Apple, it's just rolling out this new standard called pass keys that google is also going to be supporting. It's an open standard actually which is cool which means we can we can tap into it in the future but you know as something to replace the password and and then most people are doing to F. A. Right like whether it's your keys as separate devices or whether it's like google authenticator style like the six digit, you know one time one time codes uh that are so common. Most people are having those like on their on their phones. Like google authenticator app on your phone. So it's kind of weird because it's like your phone is like your primary computing device and then your two F. A. Is also an app on your phone. Like it feels like maybe it should be a separate device or something like that. And then in Bitcoin or crypto world you have these hardware wallets that do get this the important keys off the phone off the computer so that you can you know uh sign these transactions and you know confirm these transactions on a separate dedicated device as of right now. I don't think the idea of like portability is something that anyone in the in the space is really pursuing, I feel like most of these hardware wallets today or something that you um you keep in your drawer or safety deposit box or something like that. And then any day to day transacting you would do with like a smaller, you know, like, like a wallet on your phone that has like a smaller amount, you know, of Bitcoin or crypto or whatever. So I think that's where we're headed now, like based on everything going on today, we at foundation are looking closely at kind of the idea of, you know, can you bring more into the hardware wallet? Right? And that's why we called it passport even though it started as just the Bitcoin hardware wallet. I think we're really interested in in being able to secure your entire digital life with the hardware wallet. And there's a lot of competing standards that we're going to see over the coming years for like signing into things with your private keys, right? Like private keys as identity. And there's, there's standards on Bitcoin, like uh using like pain in which is like a user name that like the samurai ecosystem uses, where you can use that to sign in like as one click sign on. There's some lightning standards where you can actually sign in with like your your lightning wallet or your lightning node acts as like your authentication where you seem like a one sat payment, you know, and that logs you into whatever app or service, there's like competing stuff like I might just mention Apple and google with these past keys? So I think we're gonna see a lot of competition over the next few years for like authentication. And what we really want to do is allow you to like ideally authenticate with like your like your Bitcoin keys in some way to actually do log in and then also allow users to do like multi factor authentication, you know, with their uh with their hardware wallet or some other kind of device that's not part of the Apple google, you know, ecosystem, right? Get your most important stuff off your phone. And and you know essentially don't depend on like you know Apple or google's more proprietary type standards where you're having to trust them with everything.

[00:33:24] spk_1: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. I like the passport name now where it's like yeah I got my phone, it's everything I need. But then like I also got my left pocket, my passport that lets me into all of my most important things in life.

[00:33:35] spk_0: It's funny though, portability is a tough one and it's something we're looking closely at like passport today is is not really designed as that portable device. Um It can be. I mean I'm I always have one in my bag anyway right? And it's kind of funny when you go through a T. S. A. Or whatever, they think it's like an old phone, they don't know, it's like a like a hardware wallet right? But I think that you know there's things we can do to make to make a device that's deliberately more portable in the future. And so we're looking closely at that. Um But uh it's probably all I'll say for

[00:34:13] spk_1: now T. V. D. Two we'll do it for round two

[00:34:17] spk_0: next. Yeah.

[00:34:18] spk_1: Yeah. Yeah that's that's fascinating then um a couple more questions. We breathe through a half hours has been fantastic so far. But uh most people build software and software is infinitely scalable and it's easier to build in some sense what's been the biggest difficulties of getting this off the ground and building hardware especially like super private secure. Like I'm sure you have supply chain issue things not just from like getting pieces but like security stuff. Like I'm just talking about the whole space

[00:34:53] spk_0: not as much on the security side because we do manufacture in the US and we are like on the ground at the manufacturer when we're building. And so I don't think we face the same security related challenges as we what if we like had it made in china or something like that would be a problem. I would never buy hardware wallets like made in china you know by some random manufacturer. So not as much on the security side but we've definitely struggled with a like the just the supply chain crisis going on like things taking longer to come in. We actually had a lot of issues um with like the Covid shutdowns in china because even though we don't manufacture in china, a lot of the parts come from china. It's really hard to even get like really high quality like consumer grade plastic or metal from the U. S. Like most of the companies in the U. S. That are that are doing like plastic injection molding are doing it more for like medical or government type use or military type use. And so the aesthetics like the perfect aesthetics, the perfect like surface finish and something that you'd expect. Like if you buy a product from Apple, like you don't really have those core capability stateside as much, it's much harder to find as much more expensive. So you know, we went with the path of like okay we have the plastic molded in china, we got the metal casting in china and just ship it here right? And we'll we'll we'll do all the final assembly here and that I think was I don't think we can do that again because we got hit with a lot of delays earlier this year when we're bringing passport batch to the market because supplier was like okay like you know, we're shutting down, we're doing a Covid shutdown, we're gonna be down for like three or four weeks. Which is crazy. You know, as we're trying to plan out the supply chain and try to manufacture. So we faced a lot of delays this year from that. And then also actually just more struggling from like normal hardware startup type stuff, which is, you know, establishing that great, that supply chain of great of great suppliers that are very detail oriented and quality control or granted and so on. Where like we want to try to get that key pad field to be like absolutely perfect. We want the plastic to look absolutely perfect and come a long way, especially since our Founders Edition, passport Founder's Edition last year where we did like about 1000 of those devices, like if you look at that one compared to what we're shipping now, huge improvement. I don't think we're there yet, I think by next year will, will hopefully be much closer to like apple quality. Um but yeah, I mean hardware is hard and it's usually the stuff that you don't expect, like I didn't expect these types of delays from suppliers or QC challenges. Um but you know, we just kind of build the muscle internally

[00:37:40] spk_1: cool. And when you say Batch two, because that, that word to me seems like this is like a production batch, but you're also doing this is like the best of what we're currently building with updates and that as well, it's not just like a production run, I

[00:37:56] spk_0: think we're probably gonna call it end up calling it like when we keep selling on our website like passport like gentoo right? Because we have jen one from last year which was our founders edition, we call the passport founders edition where it was, we numbered each unit, you know like out of 1000. So you get like number 400 out of 1000 or whatever and we laser that onto the back, meant to be more of like a collector's type edition and like the first device that we made and now we're doing passport batch too. But I think it's really just, we're gonna call it like passport, right? So you see passport, like parentheses gentoo and when you go to our website to buy, you know later this year, early next year once we sell out of our batch to, it'll just be like by a passport and we'll just have it in stock. That was the other thing like we have to do Prueher's when we were getting started for the first time now we're you know better capitalized. We've come a long way, so we're gonna be move moving away from this preorder model too, just like, you know, go on our website and buy it right? Which for most things you buy is that's how it works. But for like an early stage startup, I think it's a nice milestone to be able to move away from like the preorder model to actually like we have units in stock, you can buy one, it'll ship the same week to you and so on.

[00:39:08] spk_1: Very cool. Very cool. Yeah I'm gonna have to pick one up ASAP. Are you guys are you guys gonna stay you Bitcoin focused solely? Um I think we've seen let her go like even to N. F. T. S. And stuff which you know some peers have been like that's a little too extreme but they see like all digital assets, digital assets. How do you guys do that

[00:39:28] spk_0: the way we describe ourselves as we're a Bitcoin centric company where I've been even using the term like Bitcoin centric sovereignty company or even just digital sovereignty company. So in terms of like our company values, Bitcoin is absolutely at the core what I've seen from like some of the other companies in the space like ledger is that they kind of run around chasing the latest trend. And so this year it's in the last year it's N. F. T. S. Before that it was other stuff and they're always running around kind of looking at the latest trend and doing aggressive like social media marketing towards that and setting up things like they announced I think several months ago like an N. F. T. Marketplace or that kind of thing. I look at that as distraction personally I like that it's like you have to have your core focus as a company especially us because we're so small you know we're about 2.5 years old and have only been shipping shipping hardware for um maybe like 15 or 16 months total. Right? So I don't even think you've been shipping hardware for a year and a half yet. So that focus is really important. Um I think you'll see that we maintain this this Bitcoin centric approach, but we are very interested in pursuing products that provide a full stack like sovereignty experience for the end user. And so that's probably all I'll say on that. But I think we will be moving beyond even Bitcoin and crypto to thinking about all the different tools that you need to become, you know, a sovereign individual and trying to bring that all into the same um experience.

[00:41:15] spk_1: Very cool. Okay Foundation is a place to watch for Damn sure.

[00:41:19] spk_0: Yeah, I mean we have this awesome team, you know, we just we've been hiring so we went from 12 of us, you know, three or four months ago to now, we're about to be 17, which is crazy. We were like fully like every single discipline internally. Everything from mechanical engineering to industrial design to digital design, low level firmware where we could do like operating system type, work all the way up the stack to like mobile apps and doing all the supply chain and sourcing internally. Electrical engineering and circuit board design internally. So we have like a really multidisciplinary, really strong team and yeah, I mean I think we're hopefully gonna be doing a lot of cool stuff over the next couple of years and beyond. I

[00:42:05] spk_1: love it. I love it. Well, I think the last question, I like to end on like a philosophical note in some sense. And so, you know, you guys are building hardware, you're building that foundation, trying to help decide an individual. So I'm kind of thinking like five years from now, let's imagine. That's like insane in Bitcoin, crypto times, but let's say Bitcoin is like, I don't even know what's what's reasonable anymore, like half a million a million coins.

[00:42:33] spk_0: 5, 5 years, like at least like two million.

[00:42:36] spk_1: Ok, so we'll use that. So we had two million people are the market cap is some crazy number higher than because of that people are buying them like crazy. What does how do you see that future of Bitcoin? And what is what is an ideal like foundation future fit into the two million Bitcoin land in five years? What

[00:42:58] spk_0: I really hope is that the majority of users will be storing their own keys at that

[00:43:04] spk_1: point, because

[00:43:05] spk_0: I don't think that's not the world we live in today. Right? So I really do think that the space is at like an inflection point right now because we're in bear market and we just had a big influx of users when you know, we went to like 70 70 K. Right? Like we had a had a big influx of users and we're obviously still have users coming in, right, You look at some of the data and you're like this is great like the space is growing but next bull market whether that's next year or 2 to 4 years from now, um there's going to be a huge influx of users and if the self custody and sovereignty experience is not like as easy to use this coin base is just kinda, I mean you brought up coin based earlier, I think it is a good analogy, right? Like if the self custody experience is not as easy as coin base, you're gonna have, I think most of those new users go to coin base sur equivalent and that's just to me that's that's really bad because because I think the more valuable Bitcoin gets the more pressures on governments and other parties, you know, the entrenched kind of uh the current power people in power right? Whether that's the banking system, you know governments and so on, the whole fiat monetary system is going to be fighting against Bitcoin. I don't think we're going to have an easy time over the next decade. Um and so I hope that we can have a serious impact and getting people to you know take custody over their own coins and and do so in a in a privacy preserving way so that we don't run into the same, you know, stuff that happened decades ago with gold and you know with the U. S. Government, you know telling everyone you have to you have to turn in your gold right? We don't we don't want any situation where anyone can go door to door with a list of all the Bitcoin holders and how much money they have or or just go to coin base and say hey seizing all your all your money, we're seizing all your Bitcoin like we want to create a situation where it's so decentralized where everyone has that based on level of digital sovereignty where you know, we help Bitcoin ultimately win because Bitcoin demand being very at a very high price per coin. But in my opinion it still loses if it's become part of like the traditional financial system, if it's primarily on exchanges if it's really apothecary id right? Meaning that you know for every one Bitcoin that uh that you have maybe it's maybe that Bitcoin is on and in exchange but it's being you know uh it's fractional reserve essentially Bitcoin, right? So we we we don't want that kind of situation right? We don't want it to be kind of co opted by the existing financial system, the banking system. We want it to be fully decentralized money so it can achieve its its actual original mission and I hope that foundation can play an enormous role in that you know in the coming years.

[00:46:01] spk_1: Perfect. That's a beautiful way to end it. I couldn't be more. I think that the I asked my friends like Bitcoin via cash app just because it's like oh yeah 10 bucks for dinner. And they're like where's my cash? Like it's in your other thing gonna move it over. But even that's too cumbersome for them so that I think the fight for the UI is abuse. It's a big fight but I'm glad companies like yours are doing what they can to make it as easy as possible. Uh Yeah, so appreciate you coming on. Where can people find out more about foundation or copper passport if they want to?

[00:46:34] spk_0: Yeah, just check us out on foundation devices dot com and have a lot of have a lot of good content there and you can find us on twitter obviously and uh we have a telegram group and so on so feel free to come give us a follow, ask us any questions.

[00:46:49] spk_1: Perfect Zach, thank you so much. Yeah.

[00:46:54] spk_0: All

[00:46:54] spk_1: right. Welcome to build on Bitcoin other things going on. But I'll be I've been trying to figure out a way to make it out, make it out