Internet protocol suite

... transaction, but everything is protocols on top, right? And think about the internet the same way.

We have TCP/IP.

It's just this raw pipe of data, and then we build these layers of protocols on top.

So you...

And I will say, just as a note to my viewers and listeners, a couple of years ago, what you just said would have been foreign language to me.

And it was only because of Bitcoin that I learned about protocols, that I learned what TCPIP is.

If you want to know, if some of this sounded like, I don't know what he just said, please get my book.

Yes, I talk about TCPIP.

I talk about how Bitcoin is very similar to the internet.

But it transfers value.

It's incredible.

It's a TCPIP activation moment.

It's ARPANET, Internet, Mosaic, whatever you want to call it.

We're in that moment and coming out of this inflection already into what is a new age of operational control and systems.

I think that is success.

Yeah, I've seen it compared to the value accrual that didn't happen to TCPIP or HTTP.

Do you think that there's a higher probability that perhaps most people appreciate that that ends up being the end state?

I do.

So an AI can query your company's local database just as easily as it searches the open web.

I mean, to me, this feels like the USDC moment for AI or like the TCPIP moment for the Internet.

It really is.

But wait, does this mean the era of walled garden AI agents is over? Like, why would fierce competitors like Google, Microsoft and Anthropic willingly surrender their core technology to neutral governance?

Yeah.

Like the TCP/IP protocols that run the entire Internet.

Right.

You and I rely on TCP/IP every single day to send emails and stream videos, but we don't hold global conventions for it.

No.

We don't identify ourselves as TCP/IP maximalists.

Nobody is wearing a TCP/IP hat.

Exactly.

So it feels to me like we've got one of these classic sort of gravity problems.

And we've solved for these before in computer science, right? Like TCP IP works because everyone just said, you know what, like, let's not do this anymore.

Let's all just agree.

Right.

And from that you get Internet.

So we know how to solve for these.

But I can remember, you know, my Novell IPX SPX network, which was not TCP IP, and it seemed to work fine within the company I was in right there.

And then we had to do this big transition, right? So, like, this is part of the nature of change and standardization in our industry.

Steve Jobs courted him for thirty days, by the way, before he actually sold the company to Steve.

Um, Adam has a very interesting perspective that I share, and having lived through it myself, yeah, I'm that old, uh, the internet went through, like, decades, right? W- early, in '90s, we were talking about TCP/IP and DNS and DHCP-

Yeah.

And, and, um, web browsers and search engines and ISPs.