The House Doge Built with Timothy Stebbing

These military drills. What does it mean that a tool of resistance at your disposal is a coin with a, you know, dog's face on it. What does that mean for you? If you go and look at the Dogecoin Manifesto, which I helped write in 2021, one of the first things it says is dogecoin, the accidental cryptocurrency that makes people smile. You know, I've been. I've been hired by the Dogecoin foundation to promote Dogecoin. I just go and I try and encourage what I see people doing that aligns with the vision of Dogecoin and say, hey, you're doing an amazing thing. How can I help you? How can I cheer you on? How can I boost your message? A meme actually is the embodiment of the whole Internet putting meaning behind something. You know, what is currency? Why do we put value in the US dollar or in gold or in anything really? If we all agree that it holds value, then it does hold value. When we talk about the objective of a decentralized cryptocurrency, become the global reserve currency, if you will, we think that that will provide a level playing field for all. We need to provide value to institutions without losing our soul, without losing what it is that makes us different. I look at that as, you know, a tool for putting power back in the hands of the people. And so, you know, that's what really drew me to this industry and that's what I hope to achieve through Dogecoin. Welcome to the first episode of the year. We are on January 20th. Today I have with me Timothy Stephanie. He is CPO of House of Torch and director at Dosecoin Foundation. Hey, Timothy, how are you? I'm really well, thanks. Thanks for having us on the show. Well, welcome, welcome. I've gone through your Twitter, your blogs and stuff that you've written. You talk a lot about memetics, you talk a lot about technology, you talk about resisting the government and whatever is happening in the world. Just want to understand how you assimilate all of this and how all of this comes together in your work. Yeah, it's a great. It's a great question. I mean, I guess I, you know, I wasn't right there at the beginning of crypto. Right. Like, you know, I've been a software Engineer for about 25 years now with a strong focus in open source development. And I guess as a young developer back at the end of the 90s, I really got indoctrinated into sort of the open source free software movement, you know, we're going to down with Bill Gates and we're going to build, you know, Linux is going to take over the world and all that kind of stuff, right? Like, and so as a movement of the people, like, you know, I think, you know, the soft, the free software industry and open source development really has changed the whole world. And then I guess, you know, coming, coming into crypto and coming into Dogecoin in 2021, it really felt like the early days of Linux for me all over again. It was, you know, an opportunity to look at, you know, perhaps some of the power imbalance in the world. You know, I, I, I tend to think fairly strongly that, you know, we should have a fair and level playing field for all humanity. Everyone should be treated equally. And when you see, you see powerful, you know, banking oligarchies and you know, collusion between governments and things like that being used to suppress the will of the people, you know, that, that gets me a little bit annoyed. And so like, you know, when I look at Dogecoin and you know, cryptocurrency, decentralized finance more generally, I look at that as, you know, a tool for putting the, putting power back in the hands of the people. And so, you know, that's what really drew me to this industry and that's what I hope to achieve. Like, that's what I'm always striving to achieve through Dogecoin. Social consensus kind of trumps technical, you know, code or whatever that you write. End of the day it's people that have to agree first. And that is often the last slide of defects as well. Right. Against attackers and whatnot. Yeah, look, you know, I think, I think one of the things that if you go and look at the Dogecoin manifesto, which I helped light in 2021, one of the first things it says is Dogecoin, the accidental cryptocurrency that makes people smile. And when we say the accidental cryptocurrency, it wasn't ever meant to, it wasn't meant to be a serious cryptocurrency. And it started off as this joke really to make fun of Bitcoin, Maxis and all this kind of stuff that was sort of the origin of it. But one of the things that it really hit a chord with was I think it was the first time. And you know, dogecoin, being the original meme currency was like this discovery that no one was expecting, right? Like, you know, it was stumbled upon this, this thing that a meme actually is the embodiment of the whole Internet putting meaning behind something, right? Like it's, it represents collective consciousness in a way. And when you think about, you know, what is currency, why do we put value in the US dollar or in gold, or in anything really, or in Bitcoin, it's because people believe in that thing. People believe that a token, essentially a token for value. If we all agree that it holds value, then it does hold value. And so if you take a meme which is at its essence collective belief in something, and you combine that with a currency, you sort of, you accidentally stumble on this thing where you bootstrap belief in a currency, which is most of what a currency needs to be a currency and to hold value. So I think it was, that's why we say it's accidental. When you talk about fluff, I think it's interesting, right, because dogecoin is fun, but when you look at what it's achieved through fun and silliness, it's changed a lot of people's lives. Like one of the things that drew me to dogecoin, when I really started looking at it during the 2021, I guess cycle, was I started looking on Reddit and listening to people, just common people, talking about how dogecoin had changed their lives and had really impacted them. And suddenly it was like the light bulb came on. I was like, this isn't just a silly thing. That may be what brings people into it, but it's a lot more than that. It's something that really can make the world a better place. So sometimes the things which are unexpected turn out to be the most important things. I recently went to Argentina, trekked in Argentina and stuff like that. What surprised me was everything is expensive, but the currency doesn't do well. It keeps depreciating. And one of the things that I learned while I was there was people are taught to convert their, whenever they get monthly salary into dollars as soon as they get it. So yeah, I mean, when you don't have belief that a currency can hold its value, it will not hold value whatever the government does or whatever external mechanisms that you apply, unless and until it is internalized by people. Yeah. And just thinking about something from India's history, right? You've got Gandhi, right? You know, and he is facing a well armed military force. And what do you need when you're facing a well armed military force? Well, it's like bigger firepower, right? That's what the world expects that you're going to come up with like more guns, more people. And he came with nothing but Pacifism, Right. And a belief that through passive resistance, he could overcome a great military force. And he actually achieved that by changing the belief of the people of India. And you look at the power of. Maybe that is the meme before the Internet. It's belief in something. And when enough people start believing in, changes the whole world. I think it's the same kind of power. You've talked to institutions for integrating dogecoin in the form of payments or whether to establish corporate treasuries and stuff like that. How do they two work together? Yeah, look, it's a really interesting thing. I mean, I think when we talk about the objective of trying to see a decentralized cryptocurrency become the global reserve currency, if you will, or, or the default mechanism for people as a means of exchange, because we think that that will provide a fairer playing field, a level playing field for all humanity. One of the things that you have to realize is when you say all people, it really means all people. And all people means the big end of town. It means institutions. It means potentially it's your political enemies, potentially nations who hate you if. Because you can't be exclusive, because the moment you become exclusive, you just, you, you. You're back to being the same as the problem that you're trying to overcome. And so, yeah, there's this point where you have to say, we, we need to provide value to institutions without losing our soul, without losing what it is that makes us different. And I think one of the cool things about cryptocurrency is if you go back to the original vision of Satoshi, he really nailed it with decentralized currency and the way that the mechanism works, with cryptographic issuance of currency taken out of the hands of government and put in the hands of essentially the math, that is the liberating factor. And so when you take that as a given and you make that the basis, then people should build structure on top of that, which eventually becomes institutionalized, because that's, that's, that's representative of adoption. You know, you need mainstream adoption, you need government adoption, you need all of these things. It's a sign of actually achieving success. But how do you remain true to yourself is to make sure that we're not. We're not removing what underpins the freedom element of this, and that's pseudo anonymity. No one gets to control the issuance of coins. No one can take my coins off me. Those fundamentals are still in place. And as long as we're doing those things, then Institutional adoption. Even though for potentially the kinds of people who got behind crypto in the beginning, crypto purists, anarchists, these kind of things. It's like this feels wrong. Like, you know, why are we engaging with institutions? And it's like, well, because they're part of this world that we live in and if we're trying to, it's actually part of our success metrics. If you're trying to take over the whole world with Defi, that it includes the people that we don't like. Does it come across often in your conversations with developers and whatnot? And like, is there resistance among developers? I mean, so called institutional adoption? Absolutely. I see that very frequently. I get accused, I get accused online regularly of betraying, you know, DEFI and the movement because I, you know, I talk to people in government, I talk to, I talk to people at exchanges, you know, like, and, and I obviously I don't necessarily trust everyone, right? But I understand that if you're being, if you're really being true to the mission, everyone has to, you know, everyone has to be able to use cryptocurrency for whatever purposes they need on the basis that they comply with the rules of the blockchain so that we are ensured a level playing field. Because, you know, to, and I think that that rubs some people in the developer community the wrong way because they, But I guess I, you know, and what I try to say to them is, well, you don't want a level playing field. You just want the playing field in your favor now, you know, and so a real level playing field is that everyone gets to play on it, you know, so I guess, you know, I'm, I'm pretty thick skinned. I'm happy to, happy to get attacked over that. My position's pretty clear, you know, dogecoin is for everyone, you know, including the bad guys. You can't exclude the people that you don't like, right? And technology by default is agnostic to how it's being used. Whoever wants to use it should be able to use it unless and until you are hell bent on using it for, you know, something that is net negative for the society at large. And I think, look, you know, I think that people do raise that. It's like, well, what if bad guys are using cryptocurrency to do bad things? Like, and my answer to that is, well, that's, that's why we have police force, right? Like, you know, like, that's why we have investigators. You know, I, I have no problem if, if someone is Using the blockchain to, I don't know, do something evil, then the. The authorities should go over after those people. They should investigate it, they should arrest them, and they should put them in prison. Right. Like, you know, I. I think, you know, but because, you know, that's their job. I don't think, however, that the authorities should be able to put back doors into cryptocurrency to allow them to do that more easily, because, you know, that's then defeating the whole purpose of what we're trying to achieve. So I guess, yeah, that's sort of where I see it. You know, when. When evil people do evil things, good people should stop them. So what does it mean that, given that is happening, that, you know, a tool of resistance at your disposal is a coin with a, you know, dog's face on it. What does that mean for you? Look, I think. I think there's two levels to it. You know, I was very encouraged. I remember when the Ukraine war began and there was a story that came out about a woman who had converted all of her assets to Bitcoin and was able to smuggle. Was able to get over the border without being. Without having all of her property stolen. Because, you know, when you cross a border, you know, the guards, they shake you down, they take all this stuff. And she was able to, you know, remember her key phrase, get to the other side. And you look at that and you go, wow, that's amazing. Like, that's. That's what this is meant for, right? So there's, you know, as a tool of resistance, is an ability for freedom fighters and things to be able to continue to operate without being sanctioned. You know, those are all good things. On. On a. Probably a more macro level, I look forward to a day where, you know, and maybe this doesn't happen. You know, but when you look at these forever wars, you have governments which are able to print infinite amounts of money and then use that to fund infinite war that continues to just go on and on. By pushing that essentially through inflation, they push attacks back on their people. To be able to perpetuate these conflicts, if you had a. I mean, imagine a world where everything was decentralized finance, right? There was nothing else. There was no money printer for a government. They would have to be far more conservative in their conflicts because there would be a finite supply of money and they would have to go and raise more if they wanted to invade someone, for instance. And so what would that require? They'd require the will of the people of their nation to donate to a war effort potentially like it used to be, you know, a thousand years ago or whatever. So I look at, you know, I look at the tool right now as a mechanism for people who are escaping conflict, for people who are fighting for survival. But also I look forward to a future where removing the money printer is going to hopefully reduce the forever wars and defund them. A lot of good gets funded through that currency. But I would love to know what the proportion of usage is. I don't think there's any way to know. How do you explain dogecoin to someone who's not in crypto? I'm a pretty conservative guy. People come up to me and say, why? You know, they think I'm crazy for being involved in cryptocurrency. You know, they've only heard bad things about it and. Or they ask me, should I be getting involved, should I be investing? You know, they feel like they're missing out on something. Most of the people who I meet who aren't already in crypto, like, it's different story if they're, if they're already. They've drunk Kool Aid, you know, whatever, they're on that path. But if I'm just meeting a regular person or what I tend to say to them is, unless you're willing to spend a significant portion of your time tracking the markets and this kind of stuff, you should not invest in cryptocurrency. I think it's because the thing is, right now we're in speculation mode, right? We're bootstrapping, you know, a new form of money. Yeah, there's money to be made here if, but there's also money to be lost here. Like, you know, and then so in general, I tell friends and family, stay clear. But what will happen is eventually some form of digital currency will come along and it will change how you do everything in life. And so keep an eye on it from that point of view. And then I go on to explain, I think that Bitcoin opened Pandora's box in a way. Like digital currency is coming in one form or another. It's not going to go away. And so right now you're either going to get this sort of dystopian future where it's controlled by the government. They can take away your money whenever they like and you have no power over it, or you can have this sort of utopian vision of a decentralized currency that gives the power back to the people. And so there's actually, there's a bit of a war going on. Right now to determine which one of those outcomes it's going to be. And I tell people I'm fighting on the side of the decentralized currency, and that's what we're trying to do with dogecoin. So that tends to be how I explain things. And then they just look at me a bit weird, like I'm crazy. I think there were like 10,000 memes being launched on Solana probably on a daily basis, Most of them 99.9% of them being cash grabs from, you know, users or investors who don't know any better. Do you think that that weighs heavily or that weighs very negatively for someone who genuinely wants to do good? Absolutely. I think it's. I think it's inevitable. I mean, like, whenever, whenever there's money to be made, there'll be people looking to scam, you know, scam people. And it's an unfortunate feature of where we are, I guess, in, in the rise of digital currency. You know, I don't. I feel like. I guess that's why I tell people right now to avoid it, you know, because unless, unless they're going to go and look for utility. And I guess that's what I look for. Personally, if I'm going to invest in something. Hype means nothing to me, right? It's. Do I think that this is solving a problem for the world? Because for any particular product, if it's solving a real world problem, then it has a possibility of succeeding. People will use something that solves real problems. It doesn't matter how much you hype something up. At the end of the day, you know, if it, if it doesn't solve a real problem for someone, then it's just Beanie Bears, right? Like, it's just, you know, it's, it's a pump and dump scheme. So. And I think the thing is there's a. There's a large number of people who lean into that and say, oh, there's a lot of unsophisticated investors out there. And they use that to, you know, they use fomo. They use all these techniques to extract liquidity out of unsophisticated investors. I think there's a reason that we have things like the SEC in America and Australia has similar sort of exchange commission, that we have this concept of sophisticated investor checks for people who are buying into securities. It was because hundreds of years ago we had all these scams back then when suddenly the stock market sprung up. You know, people were doing all the same things as they're doing now. It's you know, the same old story. And, and we decided that we, we wanted to protect people who were, I, I'll be honest, too stupid to protect themselves. Right. And, and you know, I, I think, you know, from an investment point of view, like, I, I personally don't think money should be invested in. I know it sounds strange being in the crypto industry. I think money serves the purpose of, as a means of exchange better than a store of value. I think if you want to store value, buy land, buy, invest in businesses that make profit, that kind of stuff. Right. Money in my mind is primarily there to exchange as a medium of exchange. Sorry. And, and so the idea of investing in a means of a medium of exchange, I mean, I grew up in sort of, I guess a low socioeconomic sort of public school environment. No one ever thought that we would amount to much. They never told us how to save money, how to use money wisely. It was just expected that we would go to work and we would spend it all and get a mortgage and you know, be on the, on the, on that wheel. Right. And, and so when you look at, when you look at the, the, the sort of person who's bought up like that, they think having a big bank account with a million dollars in it sounds like, well, that's, you've made it. Right. But if you actually talk to people who manage wealth well, the idea of keeping assets liquid in, in cash form is ridiculous. It's like, no, I have assets in businesses, I have assets in shares in companies which grow over time because they're building utility and they're going to sell products and services and all this kind of stuff. For some reason, Crypto Bros. Were kind of like flipped that back on its head and gone, no, no, like, you know, money, you want to hoard money Again, it's like, well, what changed? Nothing. We're just like, you know, we've got a new shiny object and we can fool people all over again. Right. Like so, you know, but then the thing is, we are in the speculative bootstrapping phase of a new financial system. And so because of that, people can make money. And so I guess that's how I look at it. It's not a long term solution, but again, to your point of whether it's a good medium of exchange, I think the answer is no. Even at this point. Will that change at some point? I don't know. Right. I mean, people seem to be preferring borrowing, borrowing dollars against their Bitcoin and spending dollars instead of spending their btc. So I Don't know whether that changes at any point in time. Well, I think that the bitcoin community pivoted towards being a store of value, you know, many years ago. And so at the dogecoin community, we see ourselves very differently. Like, we're not trying to achieve being a store of value, which sounds, you know, people. People get very confused about that. It's like, well, then why am I investing in it? I go, that's a good question. Why are you investing in it? You know, we want you to spend it, you know, and that sort of, you know, there we do dogecoin. There's 5 billion new coins minted every year, which is. Is a mechanism that was create. Again, created as a joke to make fun of Bitcoin. But ultimately it turns out that sort of around about a 2% inflation rate is actually really good for a currency that you want to be a means of exchange. So we do have, from my point of view, a very different mission to maybe bitcoin. We don't want to see Dogecoin go to $100 because suddenly people don't want to spend it anymore. Our objective is to be, you know, currency. But is a price important at all for those one. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It is. A stable. A stable price obviously is important. And I still don't think that anyone in the industry knows how that should be defined. I mean, if you start to, like, you know, I am. I'm not. Sorry, I'm not an economist. I'm a software engineer. Right. So excuse my, you know, my, my poor terminology or, or whatever. Right. But, you know, I, I think ultimately you want something that's stable, that is. But what, what, what does, what does stable mean? Right? Like, you know, people. People call a stable coin something that's pegged to the US Dollar. Well, the US Dollar, it almost has runaway inflation. It's not stable. So, so it's. It's a lie, right? Like, you know, the whole thing is a house of cards, you know, and so I think that the things that are stable are, I don't know, the, the price of groceries or, you know, what can I actually do with it? Like, the utility of currency is that I can go in, I can buy my groceries, I can pay my rent, I can, you know, and so what should currency ultimately be pegged to? I can't answer that question. I've thought about it in the past and thought maybe it should be like the average price of land or something, but it certainly shouldn't be another fiat currency. I think that's absurd. So the whole idea of dogecoin to $1, it's like, well, that's a shifting target, right? Um, can I think of something better right now? No, but I think that as, as what we consider currencies changes over time. And I, and I really think that real world assets are going to play a big part of this. Because right now we're in a. Where we're. I know it's early days, but the. You see a lot of people starting to talk about tokenizing everything like land, property, hard assets, things which are real. Well, real world assets, I guess. And those are things which actually have value. Right? Like suddenly if you go back to like, think back, it's medieval times and I've got a basket of eggs and you've got some milk and like, how do we work out how much milk equals one egg? You know, like, you know, that's why currency was invented. Well, it's invented because I cannot equate these two things, you know, on a basis that makes sense every day. But now that we're starting to tokenize real world assets, potentially, I see a future where that starts to become the thing that people are pegging stuff to. So maybe it's like the average price of an acre of land, for instance, as a real world asset. Well, maybe that becomes something that some sort of oracle that you go dogecoin is worth something against that or I don't know, like something that's, that's more tangible. I think we need to get back to actuals, not, you know, imaginary made up currencies, if that makes sense. Okay, so synthesizing all of this. What is Dogecoin's utility for you and how do you try to convince that that is the utility, you know, to new people? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I, I think that when I, when I talk to people who are interested from, certainly from an institutional point of view. Why would you be interested in dogecoin? I, I talk about the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto. Like I go back to the original Bitcoin white paper and I point to the global financial crisis of 2008. And I say these are the symptoms of runaway inflation, money printing, you know, all, all of these things which come with having centralized financial systems. And this was a great idea. Satoshi, whoever he was, had a really good idea, which I personally believe if what was embraced globally would solve a lot of problems. We go back to that level playing field, defunding forever, wars, all these kind of great outcomes that you would have. And then I say, but bitcoin. I know people get angry at me for saying this. Bitcoin lost its way, right? The financial system came and dangled the carrot of profitability in front of the bitcoin community. And they took that bait and they pivoted from the original let's be a means of exchange to being a store of value. And so I then turn around and I say, dogecoin hasn't done that. Dogecoin has continued with that original vision of simply being a means of exchange that is fair, that can't be cheated, that can't be manipulated by global governments. And I guess as a optimist and a purist, to me right now, when I look around, it's still on a trajectory to hopefully achieve that one day. So it was pretty difficult for bitcoin to be medium of exchange. So then what is the other property of money too? Right? It is liquidity and it is store of value. It was by elimination that I think everyone landed on store of value rather than saying that, no, look, you should focus on store of value because it was difficult for it to be a medium of exchange given the constraints. And we understand that those constraints is what makes bitcoin so good at, you know, but again, you can't operate at that speed and that, that, that price, that cost for people to keep exchanging it all the time. So, you know, I, I don't, I don't resent the bitcoin community for making that decision. I think that Dogecoin has had the benefit of, of following up, you know, and plowing ground that's already been, you know, plowed by the bitcoin community. Right. You know, we, and it's the same with any open source technology. We all say, you know, we build on the, on the shoulder, we stand on the shoulders of giants who've gone before us. And so, you know, maybe it's just fortuitous that we, you know, have that opportunity to step in and fill that gap. And you know, maybe it's like that sort of relay race, you know, we take the baton and get through on with it and you know, people in the Doshwind community will absolutely shoot me for saying this, but, you know, if, if Dogecoin pushes the narrative of decentralized finance for the next few years, but ultimately something else manages to take over the world but remain true to the original intent, I won't be sad that Dogecoin played its part in that because ultimately I'm looking for that level playing field for my grandchildren. Um, not just, you Know, the, the one that I like, you know, I mean, you might get into trouble for this, but, but I, I, yeah, I agree. Right. I mean, and hopefully everyone serious who's building in crypto follows same ideals in terms of influences of characters. How has Elon Musk influenced dosecoin? Look, you know, Elon's, obviously, he's a really big personality out there on the Internet, but at the end of the day, he's a Dogecoin fan like every other dogecoin fan. Everyone gets to influence Dogecoin by helping out the projects, building infrastructure, and he's done those things, right? He's added Dogecoin payment to some of his products and things like that. So in that way, he's influencing the adoption, you know, but, but, you know, he has as much or as little power as everyone else in the community. That's the beauty of a decentralized, you know, project. Anyone gets to come and do whatever they like, and if everyone else likes it, then that thing sticks. Right? You know, and so, you know, we've. Elon has supported the Dogecoin community through advocacy and, you know, very thankful for, for that, you know, but he's not, he's not involved in the dfd. You know, he's got his own business to run, you know. Yeah, multiple things. Not just worth. That's it. That's it. You know, I don't think he's trying to. I don't think he's trying to win the cryptocurrency war, you know, like. Oh, not yet, but, yeah, no, but I think, like, you know, he said it. He likes. He likes memes and he likes dogs. So in terms of the Doge ecosystem right now, where are we? What is happening? How has that changed in the last, let's say, four years? Yeah, well, look, you know, four years ago, Dogecoin was primarily used for tipping on, you know, Reddit and, you know, forums and Internet, you know, IRC hangouts and things like that. It was, it was, was a tipping currency. It was primarily a meme. And then really, with the, with the influence of people like Elon and back in that, like, 2021, like the whole, you know, Wall street bets, all that kind of stuff that was going on back then, you know, Dogecoin sort of got caught up in all of that, and I think that that was the point where people started to sit up and take notice and they said, hey, you know, there's something real here. We just need to dig around and work out what that is. And so when we reinvigorated the Dogecoin foundation in 2021. It was with this idea of I came on as the first employee back then and as a software engineer. I was looking at this thing and saying, well, if I was asked to integrate this into a platform, how would I do that? And I looked at it, I was like, this would take six months and a team of people to understand. So one of the first things we need to do is make that easier. How do we lower the bar for entry to people who want to just accept Oshkoin? And so we set about building open source libraries, having hackathons, doing all these kinds of things to make it easier. And now four years later we go from having what was really a developer ecosystem of maybe 5 to 10 people. Like I would, if I had to guess, I would say there's probably over a hundred people working in the dogecoin ecosystem full time, being like full time employed developers across numerous companies working on numerous different projects. You have the, my Doge team who are building out a layer two. They're building Doge os, which is like a spot contract EVM compatible layer two for dogecoin. They've got a huge group of developers working, building dapps and all sorts of things for that environment. House of Doge is building integration for institutional payment providers. We've got an app which will be coming out very soon. I think there'll be an announcement about that probably in about five hours. So keep an eye on the socials. But there's a lot of stuff that's being built right now. And what really warms my heart is that it's all focused on utility, it's focused on payment integration, it's focused on how do you let the average person who you know, without, without much hassle go and sell goods and services on the Internet. So for instance, there's an. The app that I've been working on, House of Doge, which will be announced very soon, that has facility for people to come and start what we call a hustle. You know, so you've got a product, you want to sell it online, you just get the app, you can list your, you can list your products, you can sell them, you can get paid in dogecoin, you can do all this great stuff and that, you know, it's free of charge. So that's the kind of thing that we're building that we, that we hope will really kick off a real economy, you know, a real, a real crypto based economy. Why has this taken over a decade for Dogecoin to, you know, get into all of this, Is it because people change, the leadership change, and then you realized, okay, this is the direction that we want to take. You know, I'm always very reluctant to talk about leadership in the Dogecoin community because we're a decentralized, you know, decentralized project. Fair point. But what changed? That's the major question. Not that I think it was a realization within the community that we were no longer a joke. Right? Like, you know, it was, it was, hey, there's actually a shot here to make it, you know, as a real currency. You know, we've been joking around and having fun, and suddenly Something happened in 2021 that pushed people from, hey, this is just lighthearted fun, to, hey, we could actually we have a shot at achieving that original vision and that original mission. One of the things that I've spent the last five years doing is repeating that over and over again to everyone who listen. And it's exactly what I've just been saying to you for the last 45 minutes. Stop thinking of crypto as a way to get rich quick. Stop thinking of it as a way to. I mean, yes, it's fun. All these things, all these things are true, but, like, look deep inside yourself and say, do you want to make an impact on the world? Do you want to change history? Dogecoin actually gives you just the everyday person a chance to be part of a movement which could do that. And I think that people are starting to believe that, and I think that maybe that's what's ultimately changing the trajectory and people are taking it more seriously. How is it to manage, you know, community that is, that has very diverse interest of sorts? Do these interests feed into each other? How does that work? They do. I, I, I, I like to tell a story. I mean, you're familiar with Metallica, the band, right? Yeah, yeah. They, they had an album called Symphony and Metallica, where they went and they got a symphony orchestra to play with them. And if you watch that video, there's an inch. There's the event, and it's held at this symphony orchestra. Like, it's this, you know, the building where the orchestra usually plays, but they're playing with Metallica. And there are two lines of people going into that building. One are Metallica fans with, like, ripped jeans and ride the lightning T shirts and mohawks, and then the other queue are people dressed up in, like, suit and tie. And they're the opera, you know, they're the orchestra, the people who normally go and Listen to, you know, Beethoven or whatever. And there are these two lines and they're just looking at each other going like, who are you people and why are you here? But like, they were all going to see the same show, right? And I think that that's a perfect analogy because you've got these institutional investors and they're like the guys in the suits and they're looking over at these crazy dogecoin users with spiky hair and memes and all this kind of stuff and it's like, but you guys are all going to see the same show, right? You all see something, you know, you all see something of value in this. And, and, and that's the superpower of dogecoin, right? And that's the superpower of the meme is that it unifies people from all these different diverse backgrounds. And as they get to. I think this is part of what I see my job as is breaking down these barriers and saying, okay, they look different to you, they smell different to you, they say different things, but they're also Dogecoin fans. And I think that the more people, the more we break down those, those cultural walls and cultural barriers, the more we start to move more, you know, move towards the kind of world that we like to live in, even, you know, so is your job of function of price, how difficult is it? Because for these diverse groups, there's probably only one thing that matters at the end of the day. Well, I mean, I guess in terms of my job, like at the Dogecoin foundation, we don't have huge bags of dogecoin lying around because dogecoin happened before the word ICO even existed. There was never a dev lockup or anything like that. So there's not a lot of dogecoin sitting there for development. And so the Dogecoin foundation has existed entirely on the charitable donations of people who believe in the mission. And so we've had funding from, are probably some of the people you can imagine we've had funding from. You know, there, there are wealthy individuals out there who believe in the mission of Dogecoin and they, they donate sometimes on a regular basis to development. And so our, our ability to operate the development team at the Dogecoin foundation is not tied to Price. And, and so we don't. Which is, it's a real blessing, right? Like, you know, but it certainly is for, for profit entities, right, like, you know, who are starting to build in this space. And, and that's a real concern for some people. It's like, you know, you Know, they say, oh, you want to, you want me to come and start a startup and build Dogecoin solutions? It's like, well, but the price fluctuates so rapidly. And I guess my answer to that is, well, yeah, but remember, we're not a store of value. That's. We're trying to be a store of value, so maybe store your value somewhere else. And, and there are moves towards that. You know, obviously stablecoins in recent years have provided a big mechanism for, for being able to be that, you know, you know, like we said, within the limitations of the US dollar. But, you know, and I don't want to give too much away, but there are other asset classes coming online which I think are going to provide more interesting source of value, which I think makes Dogecoin more and more compelling for that use. Case of just being a medium of exchange community management to you, does it have to be organic? Does it have to be managed in the first place? Or it just emerges and stays? Yeah, look, you know, I think that it's funny because I talk to a lot of people in the Dogecoin community and there are different Dogecoin communities. There's like the Reddit community, there's the X community, there's this giant discord server with tens of thousands of people in it. They think, and each one thinks that they're the whole Dogecoin community and they're the only people who matter. And it's like, hey, guys, you got to realize that the community is so much bigger than one group of people, and no one person can manage that. What do I see my role as? You know, I've been, I've been hired by the Dogecoin foundation to promote Dogecoin. And so what I try to do is to go to every one of these communities, not in some sort of authoritarian manner, because I have no authority there. I just go and I try and encourage what I see people doing that aligns with, you know, the vision of dogecoin. So it's like, go into any one of these communities and say, hey, you're doing an amazing thing. How can I help you? How can I cheer you on? How can I boost your message? Because I think, you know, I think there's an interesting thing where you go, well, is that organic or is that, you know, a contrived and managed thing? It's like, you know, I think encouraging people is a intentional, you know, it's an intentional thing you have to set out to do. But if the encouragement turns into organic growth for their Community, they're part of the community, then it's a win for everyone. And so I'll give you an example. I was talking with a guy, redrider on X, who's a big dogecoin fan in Miami about a year ago now. And we were just spitballing ideas. And I said, back at the early days of Linux, we used to have these things called Linux user groups where people would meet up and they'd install Linux on each other's computer and it was great. We'd have a pizza and talk. Like, wouldn't it be cool if we had Doge user groups, right? Like, you know, where people actually met up for real and, you know, got together and, you know, helped, I don't know, all the things that you could do with dogecoin, right? And so he's actually gone off and with some other people in the community, they've built Doug's app. It's a website. You can go there and you can sign up. And there are now hundreds of different communities around the world that are sprung out of that, right? And. And, you know, each one of these things, some of them will grow and flourish, some of them will die off. No one person or one organization can control all of that. And that's the beauty of the whole decentralized nature of dogecoin is, you know, all we can do is, you know, encourage one another to. And like, this is why, you know, I'm always talking about, like, doing a good every day, right? Like, you know, I try and find people who are doing good things with dogecoin and then promote them and say, hey, look at this guy. He's doing this really cool thing. You know, there's a guy who's just recently been, you know, popularized on X. His name is Doge Van. You know, his account is Doge Van. He goes around and rescues, you know, dogs from lost dogs homes and things like that. You know, that's something to be celebrated. It's like, you know, here's a guy is doing cool thing. You know, he's representing dogecoin. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep pushing his material, right? Like, you know, I'm gonna find someone who's, you know, looking after homeless kids. I'm gonna promote that. Like, you know, because at the end of the day, finance touches every aspect of our lives, right? And so there's so many different verticals that people can be exploring why dogecoin is a benefit. You know, they're using it as a tool to educate or to help people. I think the more we highlight those things, the more, you know, it's my. It's just how I see it. That's how I like to see the community grow. Right. Like, you know, because then we end up with something which is a positive force in the world and not just, oh, you know, let's all be here to make a lot of money. So it's a function of helping intentionally and then it taking, you know, some. Yeah, Both. Is there anything you want to leave us with? Yeah. Do any good? Every day. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks a lot for the time. Really, really appreciate it. And.