What If DOGE Actually Becomes Real Money?

military drills. What does it mean that a tool of resistance at your disposal is a coin with a 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 that says is Dogecoin, the accidental cryptocurrency that makes people smile.

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. 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 humanity.

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 a tool for putting power back in the hands of the people. And so 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 Stevie. He is CTO of House of Torch and director at those coin foundation. Hey Timothy, how are you?

I'm really well. 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 matics. You talk a lot about technology. you talk about resisting the government at 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 question. I mean, I guess I wasn't right there at the beginning of crypto, right? I've been a software engineer for about 25 years now with a strong focus in open source development.

As a young developer back at the end of the 90s, I really got indoctrinated into sort of the open-source free software movement. We're going 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.

As a movement of the people, I think the free software industry and open source development really has changed the whole world.

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 an opportunity to look at perhaps some of the power imbalance in the world.

I tend to think fairly strongly that we should have a fair and level playing field for all humanity. Everyone should be treated equally.

When you see powerful banking oligarchies and collusion between governments and things like that being used to suppress the will of the people that gets me a little bit annoyed.

When I look at Dogecoin and cryptocurrency decentralized finance more generally I look at that as a tool for putting power back in the hands of the people. And so that's what really drew me to this industry.

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 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 attacks and whatnot.

Yeah. Look, you know, I think one of the things that 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.

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.

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 it 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.

It represents collective consciousness in a way and when you think about 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.

If you take a meme which is is at its essence collective belief in something and you combine that with a currency, you sort of accidentally stumble on this thing where you bootstrap belief in a currency, which is most of what a currency needs to be a currency or and to hold value.

I think it was like you that's why we say it's accidental.

When you talk about fluff I think it's interesting, right? Because you know 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.

One of the things that drew me to Dogecoin when I really started looking at it during the 2021 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.

Suddenly it was like the light bulb came on. It's like this isn't just a silly thing. That may be what brings people into it, but it's it's a lot more than that. It's something that really can make the world a better place.

Sometimes the things which are unexpected turn out to be the most important things.

I recently went to Argentina you know treed 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 it was people are taught to convert their whenever they get monthly salary into dollars as soon as they get it.

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.

And just thinking about something from India's history, right? You've got Gandhi, right? You know, and he he's facing a well-armed military force and 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 and he came with nothing but pacifism, right? and and a belief that through passive resistance he could overcome you know a great military force and he actually achieved that by changing the belief of the people right of India.

You look at the power of you know what like maybe that is the meme before the internet right like you know it's belief in something and when enough people start believing in it it changes the whole world so I think it's the same same kind of power.

You've talked to institutions for you know integrating those coin in the form of payments or whether to establish corporate treasuries and stuff like that. How do they two work together?

Yeah, it's look it's a really interesting thing. I mean, I think when we talk about the objective of of trying to see a decentralized cryptocurrency become the the global reserve currency, if you will, or or the default mechanism for people as a as a means of exchange because we think that that will provide a 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 and you know, all people means the big end of town. It means institutions. It means potentially it's your political enemies. Potentially it's nations who hate you.

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.

I think one of the cool things about cryptocurrency is if you go back to the original vision of Satoshi he really nailed it w with decentralized currency and 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 and you make that the basis then people should build structure on top of that which eventually becomes institutionalized because that's that's representative of adoption.

You need mainstream adoption, you need government adoption, you need all of these things. It's a sign of actually achieving success.

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. It's no one gets to control the issuance of coins, no one can take my coins off me that those fundamentals are still in place.

As long as we're doing those things then institutional adoption even though for potentially you know the the kinds of people who got behind crypto in the beginning crypto purists anarchists those 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 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 def.

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 DeFi and the movement because I you know I talk to people in government. I talk to people at exchanges, you know, like and and I obviously I I don't necessarily trust everyone, right?

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 insured a level playing field.

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.

I'm pretty thick skinned. I'm happy to happy to get attacked over that. My position is pretty clear. Dogecoin is for everyone. You know including the bad guys. You can't exclude the people that you don't like, right?

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 hellbent on using it for you know something that is net negative for the society at large.

Well, and and I think look, you know, I I think that people do raise that. It's like, well, what if what if bad guys are using cryptocurrency to do bad things? Like, and 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.

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?

I 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.

I guess yeah that's sort of where I see it. When evil people do evil things good people should stop them.

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 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 these 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.

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 a 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 you know perpetuate this you know these conflicts.

If you had a I mean imagine a imagine a world where everything was decentralized finance, right? There was nothing else. There was no 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 of money.

They would have to go and raise more if they wanted to, you know, invade someone, for instance. And so what would that require? That would require the will of the people of of their nation to donate to a war effort potentially like it used to be, you know, a thousand years ago or whatever.

I look at the tool right now as as a mechanism for people who are escaping conflict, for people who are you know 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 h 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. 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 too Kool-Aid, you know, whatever they're on that path. But if I'm just meeting a regular person, what I tend to say to them is unless you're willing to spend a significant portion of your time tracking the markets, 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 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.

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.

I go on to explain, I think that Bitcoin opened Pandora's box in a way like you know digital currency is coming in one form or another. It's not going to go away.

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.

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.

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 Sara probably on a daily basis. Most of them 99.9% of them be 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 inevitable. I mean like whenever whenever there's money to be made, there'll be people looking to scam people and and it's an unfortunate future of where we are, I guess, in in the rise of digital currency.

I feel like 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?

Do I think that this is solving a problem for the world because if you know 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 if it doesn't solve a real problem for someone then it's just beanie bears right like it's just it's a pump and dump scheme.

There's a large number of people who 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 you know liquidity out of unsophisticated investors.

I think there's a reason that we have things like the SEC in America and and like 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 you know in in you know hundreds of years ago we had all these scams back then right like you know when 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. we decided that we we wanted to protect people who were I I'll be honest too stupid to protect themselves, right? And and I think you know from an investment point of view like I I personally don't think money should be invested in. I 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, you know, if you if you want to store value, buy land, buy, you know, like, invest in businesses that make, you know, profit, that kind of stuff, right?

Money in my mind is primarily there to exchange as a medium, a medium of exchange, sorry. The idea of investing in a means of a medium of exchange I grew up in sort of I guess a low soioeconomic 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 be on the on the on that wheel, right?

When you look at 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 would have kind of like flipped that back on its head and gone no like you know money you want to hoard money again it's like well what changed nothing we've just like you know we've got a new shiny object and we can fool people all over again right.

We are in a in the speculative bootstrapping phase of a of a new financial system and so because of that people can make money and so you I guess that's how I look at it. It's not a it's not a long-term solution.

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.

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.

I think that the Bitcoin community pivoted towards being a store of value, you know, many years ago. And so, we at the Dogecoin community, we see ourselves very differently, like, you know, 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 it? You know, we want you to spend it, you know.

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 you know 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.

We do have from my point of view a very different mission to to maybe Bitcoin. We don't want to see Dogecoin go to $100, you know, or what because, you know, suddenly people don't want to spend it anymore. You know, our objective is to be, you know, currency.

Is a price important at all for those one? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely it is. a stable a stable price obviously is important.

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'm I'm not a sorry, I'm not an economist. I'm a software engineer, right? So, excuse my you know my poor terminology or or or whatever, right?

I think ultimately you want something that's stable that is But what what what does what does stable mean, right? people pe people call a stable coin something that's pegged to the US dollar. Well, the US dollar is almost has runaway inflation. It's not stable. So, so it's a lie, right? The whole thing is a house of cards.

I think that the things that are stable are, I don't know, the 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 and I can buy my groceries. I can pay my rent. I can, you know, and so what should what should currency ultimately be pegged to?

I can't answer that question. I've I've thought about it in the past and thought maybe it should be like the average price of land or something, you know, something or but it certainly shouldn't be another fiat currency. Like I think that's absurd.

The whole idea of Dogecoin to $1, it's like well that's a shifting target, right? 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 we're 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.

Those are things which actually have value, right? Like suddenly like 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 I cannot equate these two things. I you know on a basis that makes sense every day.

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's 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 madeup currencies if that makes sense.

Synthesizing all of this what is those coins utility for you and how do you try to convince that that is the utility you know to new people?

Well, I think that when I when I talk to people who are interested 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.

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. This was a great idea where you know Satoshi whoever he was had a really good idea which I which I personally believe if was embraced globally would would solve a lot of problems you know we go back to that level playing field you know defunding forever wars all these kind of great outcomes that you would have.

I say but Bitcoin and I know people get angry at me for saying this Bitcoin lost its way right like you know the the global finan like the financial system came and dangled the carrot of profitability in front of the Bitcoin community and they they took that bait and they pivoted from the original let's let's be a means of exchange to being a store of value.

I then turn around and I say Dogecoin hasn't done that you know 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 ated by you know global governments.

As a optimist and a purist to me right now when I look around it's it's still on a trajectory to hopefully achieve that one day.

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.

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 plowed by the Bitcoin community, right? 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.

Maybe it's just fortuitous that we have that opportunity to step in and fill that gap and maybe it's like that sort of relay race. You know we take the bat and and get to run with it.

People in the Dogecoin 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 not just you know the the the one that I like you know I mean you might get into trouble for this but but I I yeah uh uh 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 coin.

Elon's obviously he's a really big personality out there on the internet But at the end of the day he's he's a Dogecoin fan like every other Dogecoin fan. Everyone gets to influence Dogecoin by you know helping helping out the projects, you know, building infrastructure, you know, and he's done those things, right? He's added Dogecoin payment to, you know, some of his products and and things like that.

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 of a decentralized 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 and you know very thankful for for that you know but he's not he's not involved in the tech day you know he's got his own business to run you know yeah multiple rights not is just worth it.

Not yet. That's it. That's it. 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. Yeah. No, but I I think like you know, he said it, he he likes memes and he likes dogs.

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?

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 it was a tipping currency. It was primarily a meme.

With the influence of people like Elon and back in that like 2021 like the whole 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. 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 and like work out what that is.

When we reinvigorated the Dogecoin Foundation back in 2021, it was with this idea of you know 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 I was like this would take six months and a team of people to understand.

One of the first things we need to do is make that easier. How do we lower the bar the bar for entry to people who want to just accept Oshrine? We set about building open source libraries, having hackathons, doing all these kinds of things to make it easier.

Now four years later, we go from having what was really a developer ecosystem of maybe five to 10 people. 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 the my doge team who are building out a layer 2. They're building Doge OS which is like a smart contract EVM compatible layer 2 for Dogecoin. They've got a huge group of developers working building DAPs and all sorts of things you know for that environment.

House of Doge is building integration for you know institutional you know payment providers. We've got an app which should be coming out very soon I think. There'll be an announcement about that probably in about five hours. So keep an eye on keep an eye on the socials, but you know, 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 without much hassle go and sell goods and services on the internet. 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.

That's the kind of thing that we're building that we that we hope will really kick off a a real economy, you know, a real a real crypto-based economy.

Why has this taken over a decade for Doscoin to, you know, get into all of this? Is it because people change, the leadership changed, and then you realized, okay, this is the direction that we want to take?

I I I 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? It was hey, there's actually a shot here to make it, you know, as a real currency.

We've been joking around and and and having fun and suddenly something happened in 2021 that pushed people from, hey, this is just light-hearted fun to, hey