#785: You Are Your Own Single Point Of Failure with Alex Bergeron

**Marty Bent** (0:07)
You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.
When you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. 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.

**Marty Bent** (0:36)
Alex, welcome back to the show.

**Alex Bergeron** (0:39)
Thank you, man. It's been a minute, but there's been a whole lot of things happening. So we've got a whole lot of things to catch up on.

**Marty Bent** (0:48)
I've been hassling you for like six months. I feel like.

**Alex Bergeron** (0:51)
Yeah, I saw you in PubKey, I think was the last time, right? During the.

**Marty Bent** (0:58)
Up next.

**Alex Bergeron** (0:59)
Up next conference.
It seems like forever ago, but I don't know that it was that far. This was just like earlier this summer, I guess, right?

**Marty Bent** (1:09)
It was like March.

**Alex Bergeron** (1:11)
Yeah.

**Marty Bent** (1:13)
The suits are here to fix quantum. They're staying. Yeah, right.

**Alex Bergeron** (1:15)
Oh, my God. I mean, no, but I mean, exactly speaking of how that story is kind of like completely faded into nothing, really, completely faded into the background. I wonder if it's going to wear its ugly head back. But with the way the market is going at the moment, I don't feel like anyone's trying to hear some. We've had plenty of bad news, so I don't think the quantum floodsters are going to get people's attention with this price action.

**Marty Bent** (1:49)
No, because I remember I'm looking at the chart right now. I think it was like mid-February, early March, but I think it was mid-February. I remember saying to you specifically, because they were saying the price won't go up until we have a clear path to fix this. I was like, all right, well, if the price goes up, we're going to change your tune. We are higher than we were in that period. But yeah, I think we were just discussing before we hit record. It's been a pretty insane three weeks in Bitcoin. Today, the last two days, we're up over 10 percent, but this is on the heels of a pretty traumatic experience with the Coldcard. Vulnerability being exploited, and then on top of that, a number of other projects being prodded and probed by AI tools, and more vulnerabilities being discovered.
You were saying this, you think this is like an acceleration point for Bitcoin in every way.

**Alex Bergeron** (2:54)
Yeah, well, I mean, it, you know, it certainly triggered a lot of, as you mentioned, reflections. And it feels like one of the bigger and most important one is a heavy dose of humility, really for everyone involved. I think kind of all realizing that we were, everyone was swimming naked, basically. And I was reflecting on this with someone just the other day and thinking about how we have been, you know, on every crypto projects' asses laughing about all of their vulnerabilities and how, you know, shitty their code bases or the DeFi platforms, wherefore getting hacked throughout the last couple of... Well, little did we know that we had in some way, shape or form, the same type of exposure in a lot of our fundamental architecture, fundamental infrastructure.
I think the bounties were not as readily available as they would have been, you know, in the sort of 2021 era DeFi smart contract. But it was certainly there. So yeah, this certainly takes us off of our high horse for...
Or hopefully, what is the next step, which is going to be, well, you know, we have to kind of get a little bit more serious. And I think, you know, it was time for the adults in the room to kind of... Not that...
It's hard to say, you know, it was kind of like... It feels... What I wanted to think that I tweeted really as this was unfolding was just that this was the most cathartic kind of moment for Bitcoin in the sense that, you know, I think one of the core totem, if you will, of the OG MaxC community was being torn down, and, you know, certainly forced a lot of reflection on the tribe.
But I'm, you know, I've said I'm lucky enough that I've, I'm fortunate that I was unaffected. None of my close friends or families were affected, I feel for the people who were. But at the same time, this really has made me hugely bullish in terms of like seeing the ability for some certain groups, certain individuals to rally together and kind of lead. I think, you know, you needed the emergence of leaders, new leaders in Bitcoin for a significant amount of time. And I think for the last couple of years, it wasn't really clear who was going to pick up the slack, who was going to be this adult in the room that's say like, okay, like, you know, we got to kind of like mature and take this to a level where it's not a little project, a little experiment anymore. And, you know, I think this process hasn't quite played out fully, but it feels to me like we're kind of like on the right path and surely a number of, again, organization, individual projects as kind of seemingly stepped up to the plate there.