DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE BITCOIN-FOR-BUSINESS QUICK START GUIDE

This free, 27-page resource includes:

• Six ways ANY business can benefit from Bitcoin
• Some of the best Bitcoin-only businesses to partner with
• Key Bitcoin concepts for people getting started

Mike Carson, founder of Spaces Protocol, is revolutionizing digital identity with a decentralized system on Bitcoin that empowers user control. As the owner of Friendster.com, he’s planning a reboot to give users ownership of their data. Previously, Carson founded and exited Park.io, co-founded WizeHive, which hit $10 million in revenue and managed three ICANN-accredited registrars. An early Bitcoin advocate, he’s been active in the community since 2013, running one of the first Lightning nodes and pioneering real-world Bitcoin transactions.

🌐 CONNECT WITH MIKE

• 𝕏  X: @ca98am79 on X
• 🌍 Website: Mike 's Website

🌐 CONNECT WITH JOSH

• 𝕏  X:@joshuafriedeman
• 🔗 LinkedIn:@joshuafriedeman
• 📺 YouTube:@joshuafriedeman

TAKEAWAYS

• Mike Carson emphasizes the importance of decentralized identity, allowing users to own their names without third-party control.
• The Spaces Protocol offers a new approach to digital identity using Bitcoin, enabling user empowerment and data ownership.
• Early Bitcoin adopters, like Carson, see the potential for newcomers to still benefit from buying bitcoin today.
• Carson's experience with the Lightning Network illustrates the importance of being involved in emerging technologies early on.
• The auction system for names in the Spaces Protocol ensures fairness and prevents domain squatting by individuals.
• Understanding bitcoin's simplicity can help demystify it for those who are new.

SHOW PARTNERS

Mentioned in this episode:

Strong Wealth: Wealth Management for Bitcoiners, by Bitcoiners

Velas Commerce: Biz Tech Meets Bitcoin

DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF THE BITCOIN-FOR-BUSINESS QUICK START GUIDE

It's like GoFundMe, you know, like when the Canadian truck drivers or whatever had that boycott and a lot of people sent them money, GoFundMe was like, you know what?

We're not all that money you sent.

We're just going to give it to other charities and stuff.

So it would be much.

Wouldn't it be much more cool if you could, like, send it to truckers at bitcoin and then nobody's going to.

They got, you know, whoever controls that name gets the money and nobody can stop.

Welcome to the Business Bitcoinization show, the show dedicated to helping you enrich your life and grow your business with bitcoin, the hardest money on planet Earth.

I'm your host, Josh Friedemann, and our guest today is Mike Carson, who is an early user of the Bitcoin Lightning Network.

He was also one of the first three people, along with Jack Mallers, to purchase a physical item on the Lightning Network.

And now he's created the Spaces protocol, which helps users create permissionless and secure digital spaces.

We're going to get to our interview with Mike right after this.

Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

So I like to start off every single interview with a few questions that help us to get to know you a little bit better and give us some insight for our own lives.

Are you ready for these?

Yeah.

Question number one is this.

When and how did you first learn about bitcoin?

I read Hacker News.

I've been on Hacker News for a long time and I remember seeing some posts about bitcoin, but I didn't pay attention.

Attention.

I wish I would have paid attention, you know, because I think it like, they posted on Hacker News when it first came out, but.

So I ignored like the first two or three posts.

But then there was a post about it again and I was like, maybe I should look.

This sounds interesting.

So I looked into it.

I looked in my email, like, I searched my email for the earliest mention of bitcoin and I was chatting with a friend and I was like, I really want to get bitcoin.

I think it could be big.

It's currently.

It was at $8 on Wednesday and now it's up to $16.

So I missed the chance.

But I remember looking into it back then and wanting to buy it, but there were no exchanges like Coinbase or Gemini and stuff.

So I remember I created an account and you had to go to Western.

You had to Western Union some money somewhere.

And it just seemed like such a hassle and I just didn't do it, but I wish I would have.

But then I got.

I remember I had a little bit of bitcoin.

I'm a domain investor, so I sold a domain for some.

Like, I remember, I think I sold a domain for 5 bitcoins.

And this is when Bitcoin was like under $100.

So it's a domain for like less than $500.

But then I sold it because it ran up to like a thousand.

It went from under 100 to.

And like, I sold it at like 200.

I was like, yeah, I doubled my money, you know.

But then after it went so fast, up so fast and like, I was like, this is okay.

Something is going.

Something's here.

So I waited and like, I don't know, I think I got, you know, I really got it.

I had waited for.

And like, I.

I was like.

Because it was in the news and stuff, but I was like, I'm going to wait until it's like, kind of quiet and it like, levels off and there's not a lot of stuff going on.

And then I got some more then.

But yeah, so it's.

I've been in, you know, I've been watching it a while.

Over 10 years, probably since.

Seriously.

Yeah.

Well, I think the anecdote of you noticing it at 16 when it had just been 8, I think that's good for a lot of who might just now be getting interested in bitcoin to hear, because it just went from about 60 to 90 in the last couple of weeks.

Some people are going to think that they're late to the game, but I think a lot of people who have been around bitcoin for any number of years would probably say that anyone coming in the next five or 10 years is still early in the grand scheme of things.

So it's just a different time.

But it's certainly not too late to buy bitcoin.

The thing is, it's a constant learning experience.

I keep learning more and more and more about it, but right now it's like talking about, are you early or late?

It's like, what are the alternatives here?

You know, like, do you want fiat money, which is, you know, backed by the government where they can print as much as they want?

Is that what you want to, you know, you work your whole life to save up and do you want your money?

Do you want to hold your wealth in something where they can print a lot more and they have printed a lot more in the last few years?

It's like, no, I don't, I don't want that.

And then, but then it's like, where, you know, what are the options?

And you know, you just learn more and more that like, you know, bitcoin is, I mean, what I love about what.

I mean, there's a lot of things I love about it, but it's like it's backed by math.

You know, it's.

It's not backed by the power of the, you know, government of or, you know, the military or, you know, whatever else.

It's like it's backed just purely by math, which is really cool.

So that may.

You may have pre answered this question, but question number two is what's an insight or fact about bitcoin that you wish everyone understood?

Yeah, that's hard to narrow down to one.

But I mean, it's the cool.

Yeah, I mean, the.

Well, I guess.

Okay, here's one thing that I think.

I think would be.

Is really interesting thing about bitcoin that I wish more people knew is that it's not that complicated like it seems.

I mean, it can be, you know, it can if you like, dive into the code and stuff like that.

But like, if you just read the white paper, that.

That's what struck me really is like, you know, it's not this like huge, complex research paper where you have to have a PhD to know.

It's like, it's actually like pretty simple in like, you could probably watch a YouTube video on it or something.

But the way that blocks are mined, it's like you just have to find the, you know, you just have to do a math problem so that the first number of the first numbers are zeros.

You know, it's like really simple like that.

That's how you mine a block and you.

And you get the block reward in bitcoin, it's just like, you know, it's pretty much a simple math problem, but the concept is pretty simple.

But it solves this problem that has never been solved before, which is really cool.

So it's backed by this simple and Elegant, like, solution to this problem that's never been solved before.

So I guess my main.

I guess if I was going to convey one thing, it'd be like, it's not as complicated as people try to make it sound, or it may sound.

The basic principles are pretty simple to understand.

Question number three.

What's the bitcoin resource you most recommend to other people?

Yeah, that's a tricky one.

I'm a fan of Andreas Antonopoulos.

He's been around for a long time and he has a lot of good videos on.

He does a good job of explaining Bitcoin.

His book Mastering Bitcoin is really good.

If you read that, you'll have a really good understanding of Bitcoin.

And he's on Patreon now.

You can, like, sign up and he does monthly, like, question and answer stuff.

And so I guess that that would be my resource I'd recommend.

Yeah.

Question number four.

Beyond Bitcoin, what's a resource tool or idea that's been helpful to you or your work recently?

Yeah, that one.

It would definitely have to be AI.

I mean, AI has changed.

I mean, for me, I was a little skeptical at first.

You know, I don't.

I don't know what's a good.

What's it really changing?

What's it.

You know, is it.

Is it really.

Is there just a lot of hype about it?

But then I started using it for programming and it's a world of difference from, like, I remember programming six years ago before my daughter was born.

And, you know, is.

It is completely different.

It was so much slower.

Like now with AI, it's so much faster.

I can do so much more, so much more quickly.

It's really changed the.

It's really changed it completely.

Like, if I had to go back just six years ago and program stuff, it would be so horrible.

I was talking to my friend.

He.

He's older and he, like, used to work at an accounting firm where they had to do, like.

He had to type in numbers into this, like, punch, you know, it wasn't a computer, it was just like a calculator thing or whatever, like an.

And he was like, if I had to go back and do that, I would kill myself.

And it's like almost.

It's.

In some ways it's kind of similar.

Like, if I had to go back and program, then it's so much harder.

It's so much slower that it would be almost unbearable in some ways.

And I think just going forward, it's.

It might get more and More like that, you know, like, faster.

Because I was a little skeptical at first, but now I'm not skeptical because I've used it, and it's really helped me for multiple things, not just programming.

Like, I was putting together these robotic eyes.

I have a 3D printer, and me and my kids were, like, putting together, like, wiring these circuits for these robot eyes.

And I'm not an electrician or anything, so I don't.

I didn't really know.

I mean, there was a wiring diagram, but there was.

I had some questions because there was one wire that split into three.

And so I just put the wiring diagram on AI And I was like, you can see that it splits into three here.

What do I.

Should I splice the wire?

What should I do?

And it was like, no, it's not recommended you splice the wire.

You should probably get, like, a breadboard.

And I didn't know what a breadboard was, but I got one on Amazon for, like, a couple dollars, and it works perfectly.

So it's like having an expert right there to help with a lot of different things.

So, yeah, I mean, I can imagine it.

Like, imagine when robot.

Like the Tesla robot or whatever comes in and it has those capabilities.

It's gonna be.

Things are gon.

Yeah, it'll be an interesting decade or two ahead of us, for sure.

And I'm sure things will only accelerate instead of slow down.

But it is interesting to see all that's even transpired in the last couple of years from AI first, at least the things I was using it for is very rudimentary.

But now it's a great sounding board, and a lot of helpful ideas, or at least sparks for additional ideas have come from AI So I can definitely, you know, resonate with what you're saying there.

Now we have our final.

What we call our arbitrary but insightful question.

And it's this.

As a general life principle, is it better to ask why or why not?

Yeah, that's.

That's a good question.

Interesting question.

Because they're.

In some ways, they're similar.

But I.

I like the why not question because I think it's good to question, like, you know, why things are the way they are and do they have to be.

I try to.

I really try to teach that to my kids, too.

Like, actually, my.

My son, I purposely didn't give him a middle name for that reason.

Like, I want it because I wanted.

That's the whole reason and I explained this to him, is like, I want you to question, like, do you have to do the things that people say, you don't have to do it just because people say you can think for yourself, basically think for yourself about things.

So yeah, I like that.

Why?

Why not?

But why is good too.

Yeah, they both have their place, for sure.

Well, Mike, we're here today to talk about a number of things you're involved with, but primarily the Spaces protocol, which I think when this is released, Spaces will have just been made.

If my intel is correct, I'm wondering if you could share with us a little bit about the Spaces protocol and sort of the problem that you're looking to solve with it.

So 10 years ago that was into the traditional domain name industry.

And I ended up managing like three ICANN accredited registrars and did a lot of domain stuff during that time and traditional domain stuff like DNS and stuff.

And so I got to know a lot how it works.

And also at the same time I was really into Bitcoin and I realized that domain names should definitely be on a blockchain because they're a digital asset.

And why do you need a third party to, you know, give you permission to use your name or why do you need a third party in between and, and the problems even get worse.

It's not just like ownership.

There's like, you know, everybody who encrypts traffic on the Internet has to rely on a third party certificate authority.

So you have to like, basically you sign it with somebody else's keys.

You know, it's, it's kind of ridiculous.

And it's not just domain names though.

It's like usernames, like usernames are taken.

Like they even, you know, not to get too political, but like, you know, even the President of the United States had his Twitter name taken away.

A person should be able to own their name.

Like it's super important.

If there's one thing as important as money, it's being decentralized, it's naming.

You know, I looked at all the existing solutions like Namecoin and ENS and handshake and stuff, and, and through trial and error and stuff and working with them, realized that something should be built on Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's by far the strongest proof of work blockchain out there.

And it's in my opinion the most decentralized.

I know there's problems with mining and stuff, like who the percentages of miners and stuff, but it's, you know, if you compare it to like Ethereum, which is really hard for one person to download and verify the whole blockchain.

Like a lot of people are relying on like, you know, third party, like Infura and stuff like that.

So I wanted something, I thought something should be anchored in the security of Bitcoin.

And so we spent a year and a half or two years working on this protocol that's built on Bitcoin that requires no changes to Bitcoin and leaves a really lightweight footprint, like a really small footprint on the blockchain.

But it's a decentralized naming system so people can actually own their name and use it for however they want and they don't have to ask permission.

So yeah, we're launching that a week from yesterday, so in six days.

And yeah, I'm really excited about it.

So let's say you purchase and would this be a, I'm just thinking what would you, would it be like my first name that I could potentially buy or what are people buying whenever they purchase a name and where can they use it?

Any name can go up for.

There's an auction system, so it's a fair process of rolling it out.

Like some other protocols had some trouble, like name coin, they just allowed anybody to register a name at any time.

So basically they all got squatted on.

Like you couldn't get a good name because one or two few people had registered them all.

But we, so we have an auction system where if you want a name, like if you want Josh or if you, you know, Friedman or like anything like you know, Bitcoin or like podcast or anything, you, you open it up for auction and there's a rollout process where it basically rolls out the 10 auctions with the highest bids.

They, every day they go into a 10 day auction and so anybody has a chance to bid during those 10 days, anybody can bid and you bid with Bitcoin to get that name and then at the end of 10 days, whoever has the highest bid can register that name and then they own it and yeah, to use it.

I mean we've, we've, if you check out our GitHub, you can go to spaces protocol.org and our link to our GitHub's there and we have a way to configure it with DNS, but there's, there's a lot of different ways you could use it.

I mean, you know, you could use it for DNS, which we have a system for that, or you could use it for usernames.

Like I think a really great Use case would be a Noster username.

Because right now everybody's like, here's my, you know, here's my in pub or like my key or whatever, and it's like this long string, you know, Wouldn't it be better if you could be like, yeah, just.

You could just find me at like Josh at Noster, like.

And so I think that's really a good use case.

I mean, there's other things like sending Bitcoin to, like you could send Bitcoin to at Josh or, you know, Josh at Bitcoin or whatever and you know, sending crypto payments like that.

But yeah, there's a lot of.

Anything that ties a name to arbitrary, like data that's hard to memorize.

You know, naming is like something that's been going on for a long time.

Like cities, instead of having like coordinates, like, you know, geolocation coordinates, you have a city name, you know, or country name.

And like, instead of like saying you're the fourth son of, you know, whatever, you're like, you have a name, you have a name, a surname and like, so it's something that's like super valuable and used all the time.

Just like money and you shouldn't.

Yeah, there shouldn't be a need.

It's one way that's like control has been.

People have controlled people with this, you know, and, and really affected things.

Like.

So, yeah, like people should be free to own their own name.

So that's.

Anyway, that's.

I have really strong conviction of that and that it's.

I think it's so valuable that it's inevitable.

And if it's not our protocol, space's protocol, there's going to be something else that does it eventually.

So what would it look like?

Let's just, you know, have here, for example, my first name, let's say Josh.

So I would, if it's not already opened, which I guess, you know, it's not technically live yet, but I would open up an auction, it would be live for 10 days and anyone can bid on the name Josh.

And then at the end, let's say that I win the bid, then I can sort of have that direct to whatever I want online or.

Yeah.

How exactly would that work?

And then could it be kind of like the hub for a number of different locations I want to send people to.

What would that look like?

Yeah, I mean, right away, like people, if they downloaded our space Spaces client, our Space D client, which is what you use to bid in auctions and open auctions and stuff like that.

Like right away I could send Bitcoin to you at Josh.

Like I could just send it.

And so that's the first like right away thing.

We also released some open source software so you could like set it up with DNS and that's the data like you would set your DNS to that wouldn't be stored on chain.

It's stored in like a peer to peer network.

The library that we have is called fabric.

It's in our GitHub repository.

But yeah, so, and also an interesting thing about this is we build it in a scalable way so that top level spaces are auctioned on Bitcoin.

But you can do subspaces.

It's kind of like traditional domains, like there's.com, iO.org and stuff.

Well, you can get top level spaces on.

There's a limited number of top level spaces that you can get like at Bitcoin and the syntax we use instead of dot we use at.

So it's like you could get at business or at, you know, podcast or at nostr or at Bitcoin and then you could sell subspaces under those.

And each subspace we've designed in a way that it's completely decentralized.

So not even you as the owner of at Bitcoin can take away or change or do anything to the subspace itself.

So if I had Mike at Bitcoin, you couldn't you.

It's completely mine and.

But I.

But so you can turn it into a business.

You could sell like that and it can scale to like millions.

You could have millions under.

At Bitcoin, millions of subspaces.

And it doesn't the we did it with zero knowledge proofs so that it's all verifiable with a hash.

Like so there's very minimal data that's stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, but it's anchored in that security.

So yeah.

And who do you primarily see using this?

Would this mostly be individuals or do you see this being something that larger businesses would try to take advantage of?

And maybe in each case, how would you see that playing out?

Well, I think I could see anywhere you're using names right now online, it's all centralized and controlled by somebody.

So I see.

You know, even just if it was only used for domain names, I see that as very valuable because you can host content whatever you want.

Nobody can, nobody can control, take down your name or.

But also like usernames, I think that's a really good use case like for social media.

Like you could own a name and nobody could take it from you.

Like Noster, you know, if you have like Josh at Noster, you can publish content under that name.

People can find you there and nobody can take it away.

It's yours.

So that's another use case.

I mean the other one is like sending payments.

So that right now a lot of people, there are some.

And there's even like a Bitcoin Bit353 which is using, is for human readable wallet addresses.

But right now it's using DNS, which.

So like a registrar.

I mean, I know I worked in the traditional domain domain space and it's like a registrar, a registry.

Like I can.

People can.

A lot of people have access to your domain name.

So if you're accepting payments using, relying on DNS, you are taking a risk because if you get a lot of payments to that, you know, an employee at a registrar could change it to their address or something, so.

Or they could just take the name if they don't like what you're taking.

Money.

It's like GoFundMe, you know, like when the Canadian truck drivers or whatever had that boycott and a lot of people sent them money, GoFundMe was like, you know what?

We're not all that money you sent, we're just going to give it to other charities and stuff is.

So it would be much, wouldn't it be much more cool if you could like send it to truckers at Bitcoin and then nobody's gonna, they got, you know, whoever controls that name gets the money and nobody can enter, nobody can stop it.

If someone wants to take advantage of this in the early days, what would you recommend them to do for an individual?

I guess in particular, if you think there's something that a business could take advantage of as well, that might be interesting.

But what would be a strategic way for individuals to think about using the Spaces protocol in an optimized way?

Well, I think first you want to try to get a space, you know, top level space.

So I would go to spacesprotocol.org and download the software.

We have a command line wallet you can use so you can download it and install the wallet.

We're also going to have a GUI wallet very soon.

Maybe at release we'll have that too.

So it'll be much easier for people who aren't comfortable with command line.

But yeah, get a wallet and then bid in some auctions.

Get a name.

I think early on there's going to be less people involved.

So you probably be able to get a name for relatively less cost than later on if it becomes more popular.

So I think getting a name because it's limited to 10 names per day, so there's only going to be 3,600 a year.

So they're kind of rare.

So anyway, getting a name I think is a way, I think also eventually we're gonna, we're gonna have a service, my company where you could, we'll do all the work so that you could sell subspaces.

So if you get a good top level space like, I don't know, business bitcoin, crypto or something like that, then you could set it up so people could get like Mike at crypto or whatever and sell it so you could earn money that way.

And so I think that's another way, I mean for.

I would also love it if like developers started helping us, you know, integrating it into things like Nostr and stuff like that.

And we have people on our Telegram channel who are interested to help and who have been helping.

So that's another good place to join.

You know, if you have any questions or anything you can, if you go to spaces, protocol.org, you can, we have a telegram link in the top corner.

You can click there and join the Telegram group.

This is going to be a slight pivot.

But one of the interesting things I found out about you when I was looking at your bio for the first time is that you were really early on in the Lightning Network.

And so I think it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on being in so early on something that, you know, I probably, I don't think I was in Bitcoin at the time or really like knew anything about Bitcoin at the time.

So I don't know how quickly people kind of jumped on the Lightning Network bandwagon.

What was it like being in, on the Lightning Network in the early days and are there any parallels that you potentially see to spaces or is it too difficult to kind of use those two as analogies?

No, I think it's good.

I mean, yeah, Lightning, Lightning, when it first came out, well, it had a lot of buzz and it was really exciting.

It was like another layer that you could do a lot more transactions and stuff.

So it was really exciting, exciting thing and it was just happening.

So you know, being a programmer and hacker and stuff, I, I wanted to try it out.

So I, I mean I downloaded like, you know, the software and I, you know, was like on their IRC channel asking questions and they were really helpful and so I got, you know, a node set up and stuff.

So I mean it's, it's cool.

I mean that's, you know, that's a really cool thing about Bitcoin.

It's like this hacker spirit that, you know, it's like we're all building this, you know, we're all doing this.

So I think it's.

Yeah, I think it's great.

Just like jumping in, just jumping in and then, you know, just figuring, you know, figuring it out and seeing what it's all about.

And I think it's the same with Spaces.

Like, you know, there's people who are on the Telegram channel, like installing it and checking it out just because it's something new.

So then I also saw that you were one of the first three people to purchase a physical item on the Lightning network.

Can you go into detail as to what that looked like and what you purchased?

I had, yeah, I had a node set up in like my attic and I.

And like you couldn't use Lightning for much back then.

I think the only thing you could.

One server hosting company allowed you to pay by lightning.

But then Blockstream set up a store so you could buy like stickers and stuff.

And right when the store launched, I made a purchase right away and then I emailed them because it was the first time physical goods were being sold for light with a Lightning payment.

So I just emailed them and asked was like, was I first?

And they said no, I was third.

But so, and I, and I'm pretty sure Jack Mellers was first and I don't know who was second.

But yeah, I still have the stickers here somewhere.

That's cool.

And one thing we didn't, I don't think we've mentioned about spaces is that the only way you can purchase, at least it seems like from what I've checked out is using bitcoin.

Can you use dollars as well or can you only purchase spaces name with.

Bitcoin if you're doing the auction process, it's only with bitcoin if, and that's for top level spaces.

Eventually we're going to set up a marketplace so maybe we'll allow, you know, people to sell their name for dollars.

I don't know.

I think at first it'll just be bitcoin like because you can do it without a third party.

But also subspaces like if you sell like if you have at crypto or whatever and you decide to sell names under that, then yeah, you could buy that for.

So you could buy like Josh at Bitcoin for, you know, just put a credit card or something like that.

Well, any final thoughts before we finish up today?

It's been, it's been interesting.

It's one of those things where it's a little bit, it's a new project.

People are going to be getting on the ground floor.

There's always opportunities there and I'm looking forward to looking into it a little bit more myself.

But any final thoughts before we finish up the interview today and where you'd like for people to go after listening to this conversation?

Yeah, just check out spacesprotocol.org you can find me on Twitter if you go to cypherpunk.com I redirect that domain name to my Twitter.

But yeah, but yeah, thanks for having me on the show.

It's great to talk to you and thanks.

Great.

Well, Mike, thank you so much for your time today.

It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, me too.

Well, friends, it's a wrap.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Business Bitcoinization Show.

If you want to reach out to either me or Mike, you can find those links down in the show notes.

And be sure to check out spacesprotocol.org as always, keep building, keep growing, and until next time, keep living and leading.

Well, thanks to no Waste, BTC Signs and username 404 for supporting the show on Fountain this week.

If you would like to support the show as well, be sure to listen on the Fountain app and either stream sats as you listen or send a boost.

And if you include a note with that boost, I'll be sure to read it on the show.