#723: The Battle for the Agentic Economy with Matt Corallo

**SPEAKER_1** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.

**Matt Corallo** (0:10)
When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:16)
So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

**Matt Corallo** (0:34)
You probably should be, you probably should be.

**Marty Bent** (0:36)
Mr. Corallo, it's going to be nine years in October since you first came on the show. Crazy. I think almost a decade of recording with Matt Corallo.

**Matt Corallo** (0:49)
Yeah, that's crazy.

**Marty Bent** (0:51)
A lot of things have changed.

**Matt Corallo** (0:53)
A little bit. I mean, you know, a lot of changes. And people always predict the future to be drastically different. And a lot of things change, but most things just end up staying the same. You don't really think about that.

**Marty Bent** (1:07)
So you're a big fan of nothing ever happens?

**Matt Corallo** (1:11)
Some things happen, but it's a lot rarer than people think.

**Marty Bent** (1:15)
Yeah. You're talking about how to set up this conversation, because I think things are changing in the world of software engineering programming. Been a running theme over the last couple of months. I've had Justin Moon talking about vibe coding, what it means for freedom tech. Mark Suman from Maple AI talking about running these models in a freedom-oriented, sovereign, and private way. And then Calais talking about what he's been doing with BitChat. Cash you in clawi.ai to really accelerate his programming efforts. And I think that's a good jumping off point because I think Calais, I forget it was you who sent the first tweet or Calais who responded to it or vice versa, but there was a little back and forth between the two of you highlighting the fact that the progression of these AI tools has gotten to a point where there's no excuses for Bitcoiners to go out there and win the digital currency game. It won't be a lack. It won't be because Bitcoin lacks anything. If Bitcoin doesn't succeed the way we believe it can, it will be because people don't have the willpower in the agency to make it so. I thought that was a very interesting back and forth. I actually wrote about it, talked about it, and have been thinking about that for the last few weeks since you and Calais had that exchange.

**Matt Corallo** (2:43)
Yeah, I think that's really true. I think there's two big changes that are coming with this technology or that are here and coming soon with this technology that I think make a big difference and give us a really unique opportunity that's unique in Bitcoin's history. So first of all, you mentioned just these tools are good now at development, at building software applications. That wasn't true six months ago. That was not really true three months ago. Literally, when the latest generation of models, Cloud 3.5, now Cloud 3.6, the latest Codex came out, did they go from, you still have to know how to code, or you can do a good demo with these things to, you can build something really awesome with these things without ever looking at the code, or really materially thinking about the code. You're not going to build a full lightning node, you're not going to build the next full node implementation. They're not at a point where they can do things that are particularly complicated in that way, and very easy to subtly screw up. But building things that are kind of easier to build, or at least harder to subtly screw up, you know, front ends, good web applications, you know, good apps on your phone, whatever, these kinds of things, they can just build it, and you don't really have to think too much about it. So that's one thing, and I think that enables the entire Bitcoin community, the Bitcoin community has always been excited to try things, it's a lot of early adopters and excited to, you know, it's kind of a, there are tons of Bitcoiners building tons of different things, trying tons of different things and hoping that one works. And I think that's a really great model to get the kind of adoption we want. Just having one company building the Bitcoin payments platform is less likely to succeed than everyone going out and building. But Bitcoiners have to step up and actually do it now. Like the tools are there. You don't have to know how to code. You just have to know how to type, actually. You don't even have to know that. You need to know how to formulate a thought and have a concept of what you want built. But then from there, it's just a matter of doing it and executing. So, you know, on a Saturday and some free time, Bitcoiners have to step up and do it. And I think that's that's really huge. I think the other thing that gives us unique opportunity is that everyone is starting from zero on agentic payments. So I think, you know, going forward a number of months to multiple years, but a number of months, really, people are going to start using these tools to buy things. And this isn't whether you think AI is like, you know, ASI and like super intelligence is coming soon, or whether you think it's, you know, just a sycophant that repeats what you tell it and doesn't really add all that much. No matter what you think, the reality is that these tools are very capable of just saying like, hey, I need to up my beef, I'm running low on beef tallow, can you ship me some more? And it can go off and do it, you don't have to think about it, right?