#801: Proving What's Real In The Age Of AI with Bryan Jacoutot

SPEAKER_1 (0:07)

You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

When you talk about a Fed just going nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven.

SPEAKER_2 (0:18)

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.

SPEAKER_1 (0:29)

I mean, that's part of the bold case for Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

Marty Bent (0:37)

Bryan Jacoutot, welcome to the show, sir.

Bryan Jacoutot (0:40)

Thank you very much for having me, Marty. I've been a long time listener, first time joiner of the show. So I really appreciate you having me on.

Marty Bent (0:46)

Well, I appreciate you coming on and appreciate the work that you're doing behind the scenes. As I was describing or explaining before we hit record here, you're working at the intersection of one of my favorite niche topics within Bitcoin, which is using the blockchain, the time chain, Bitcoin's timekeeping aspects to prove that certain digital artifacts existed at a certain point in time in a certain state.

And so I think that's what we're going to cover today. So if you're interested to learn about how Bitcoin can help prove that things existed at a certain point in time, particularly as we barrel into the future of AI, SI, whatever we're calling it these days, I think you definitely want to stick around for this conversation. But before we get into the comment that yourself and Rafael Cordon put into the United States court system, just a little background, how did you become passionate about this? And what was the aha moment for you?

Bryan Jacoutot (1:53)

Well, I've been in Bitcoin for a while. It's probably been, we're getting close to 10 years now. I think I jumped in right around the very top of that bull market in 2017 and learned some hard lessons along the way. I also started much more distributed in terms of what my interests were in the space. It was more crypto. And I think I got in on the basis of Ethereum actually, because as a lawyer, the smart contract, I remember the smart contracts were like a huge thing back then. And so that was just my natural entry point.

But I started trying to incorporate into my practice as well, because I do general commercial litigation, but I wanted to focus more in that blockchain space. And so when I started going down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and really trying to learn how the technology works from a first principles basis, so I could explain it to my colleagues and get them to join me in this great revolution and everything, I realized that Bitcoin was different, that it wasn't just the my space to everyone else's Facebook and now Instagram and all that, TikTok, that there were foundational things that set it apart, including the fair launch, trying to do that very careful balancing of incentives and disincentives for updating Bitcoin's blockchain truthfully with a group of people who have no real connection to one another.

And I realized that that didn't necessarily scale into everything, the way a lot of the other crypto space was trying to push it. So I then just went straight into Bitcoin and essentially tried to fold that into my practice. And so for a few years, it was just that. It was just looking for Bitcoin clients, stacking sats, all that fun stuff. And then I came across the video put out by Carlos' team about the Guatemalan elections and how they used Bitcoin to help certify and verify the authenticity of those elections. And being a skeptic, as someone, again, who went into the blockchain space to revolutionize everything and then realizing there wasn't necessarily a whole lot of air there with a lot of those projects, I was very skeptical of what SimpleProof was saying. So I looked into it, though, and Carlos was gracious enough to disabuse me of my original skepticism. And he was one of those things that's great is, I think Bitcoiners get a, especially Bitcoin maximalists get a reputation for being very toxic and not approachable. And Carlos was very much the opposite. And so I learned a little bit more about what he was doing. And then I asked him, hey, can I help? How can we work together? And so we started working about ways to essentially introduce his tech and what he's working on into the American election system, into American companies and things like that. And so that's what we've been doing. And of late, we've focused to on the litigation side of things and the courtroom side of things, because we realized that there's great potential for this technology there.