0:00 Complacency and overconfidence has started to ruin the project. If they make it clear that, like, 0:06 there's no way forward with BTC, it's possible that, you know, a lot of other stuff is just, 0:12 like, hanging by a thread and it's not, it's just held together with scotch tape or something. 0:17 The inability to scale Bitcoin or just neglect of the users and the user experience and saying 0:23 this is just a ticker symbol that you just buy, I don't know if we will survive that. 0:29 You know, I don't see where we would go from here other than to introduce a new coin. 0:34 Are you still a Bitcoiner? 0:37 Paul Sztorc, you're one of the most tenured contributors to Bitcoin. You've been working 0:42 on the Drivechain's proposal to upgrade the network for over a decade. Today, 0:49 you're announcing you're hard-forking Bitcoin, creating your own chain, creating your own coin. 0:55 Why? 0:56 Well, I just think, like, there's nowhere else to go at this point, like, inside of 1:01 BTC. I think, you know, we may not need the new hard-fork coin, but I think it's a good hedge 1:09 against, you know, what I call the derangements of Bitcoin. 1:13 Unpack that for us. What do you feel like led to this moment, 1:17 both for you personally and for the project? 1:19 Well, OK, unpacking that, like, I have an article that I call The Derangements of Bitcoin, 1:23 and that is about, it's a long list of mistaken beliefs that people have, 1:29 or just weird mistakes that the Bitcoin community is making, kind of like for no reason. These 1:36 include, like, putting so much time and attention to the Lightning Network and, you know, our 1:41 inability to do soft fork upgrades. You know, it includes, there's a whole long list, but it's 1:49 like, why is there still no BIP39 word list in Bitcoin Core wallet? None of that makes any 1:57 sense. So we have to have a separate BDK project. Why don't people care more about Eric Voskil's 2:02 version of Bitcoin, which is, like, 20 times faster? It's a long list of things. 2:09 So that's what I mean by the derangements. You know, what led to this point, honestly, 2:14 I've considered this for a very long time, even back in 2015. I was thinking, like, 2:19 during the scaling war, it was like, it didn't really seem as though either side 2:24 had, like, a permanent solution to what to do in the case of these disputes. 2:30 So I've kind of always wondered about, you know, what, do we need, like, a plan B for Bitcoin 2:36 plan B? And what would that look like? I think that, really, we've had a few, 2:46 there have been a few events over the last couple of years that, if they make it clear that, like, 2:53 there's no way forward with BTC, one is OP_CAT, which is just 13 lines of code. And it's very, 3:00 very simple. And it was in the original version of Bitcoin. And it would be very useful. And as 3:07 an opcode soft fork, it's opt-in, ignorable and reversible. So it seemed to present essentially 3:16 zero risk. And yet, you know, there's no way of getting that into Bitcoin. 3:23 From a development point of view, I do think we're at a point where people are starting to realize 3:29 that, you know, Lightning doesn't work, for example, which is one of the biggest sacred 3:33 cows of them all. We, you know, we're at a point where people have noticed that the 3:40 blocks are, you know, nearly empty, or the, you know, the fee rates are very low. So even if the 3:45 blocks are filled up, we don't know if these are diehard users or just people taking advantage of 3:51 the free space. Mining revenues are down, the miners are abandoning Bitcoin for AI, 3:59 data centers type things. Development is also not great. And even on the investing side, 4:06 BTC is not up that much. You have people like Michael Saylor, their lifetime ROI is basically 4:13 zero. So I think people are slowly realizing that there is a kind of irrationality to the 4:24 community, unfortunately. So I think a new competitor can not only have a shot at succeeding 4:32 now, but also it can maybe inspire BTC to like, get its act together. 4:39 Are you forking because you think Bitcoin has failed? 4:42 Well, it certainly hasn't failed yet. But you got to keep in mind like where the puck is going, 4:47 so to speak. And I think that if you lose a culture of truth, like where the people in your 4:53 community really care about what's true and they don't allow a bunch of false statements to be made 5:01 and they have to care about the truth and look for the truth. I think if you lose that in your 5:07 community, then it's probably only a matter of time before you get replaced by a different 5:12 community that has a better culture of truth. And then, yeah, when you see people talk about 5:16 the Lightning Network or even the treasury companies or a hundred other things, it really 5:23 it's very different than the way it was back in 2014. 5:27 There are going to be folks who hear this. They are going in a different direction with 5:31 LayerTwo Labs. They are pursuing the fork. They're not going to be happy. They're going to hear that 5:36 you're going to be out there competing with Bitcoin and potentially profiting from that 5:41 by creating the coin. Your response to them? 5:45 Well, I think competition is a very healthy thing for everyone. It brings out the best. 5:49 I'm a huge believer in competition. I think that's why 5:52 capitalism, you know, all the good things about capitalism, I think, come from competition. 5:57 Probably all the good things about democracy, if to whatever extent there are some things, 6:02 those come from the competition between the two parties and the candidates for 6:06 persuading people and getting their vote. Competition is how you have, you know, 6:12 is why even open sources run like a kind of weird communist thing where, you know, 6:16 people aren't paid for commits and they just contribute. But I think it's the idea that 6:20 the different versions of the software, you have V1, V2, V3, they compete with each other. 6:26 So I think competition is actually a very good thing. And of course, competition has a few 6:34 conflicts of interest where when we go to CVS, we want everyone to be competing for our 6:41 for our dollar or for our, you know, to sell us goods and services. But we personally don't like 6:48 it as much when people compete with us. So, yeah, I think that it's fair to, you know, 6:54 not like this to some extent. But I think also we have to keep in mind to what extent the 7:02 complacency and overconfidence has started to ruin the project. 7:08 There are certain things like the inability to scale Bitcoin or just neglected the users 7:16 and the user experience and saying this is just a ticker symbol that you just buy. 7:21 I don't know if we will survive that attitude. So I think, you know, we had better get on it 7:28 earlier. If I'm right, we should get on it earlier rather than later and have a serious 7:33 conversation about all these issues. We mentioned there's a history to this project 7:39 dating back to 2014, 2015. Why now? Well, you know, at first I've always had this Drivechain 7:46 idea and, you know, it's always been a pretty good idea. And in fact, the community back in 7:50 2013 through 2015, that type of era, back then the Bitcoin community was very interested in 7:56 sidechains. And someone used, I don't remember who, but someone used like the phrase Holy Grail 8:01 at one point. And there was that famous tweet from Brian Armstrong where he said like Litecoin 8:07 and Ripple and whatever, these are just a distraction. The real thing we need to focus 8:12 on is Bitcoin and sidechain. So that's how different the era was. And then remember Blockstream raised 8:18 all this money to do sidechains. And then Gavin Andreessen had a tweet and he was like, if this 8:22 amazing company offers you a job, you know, you take it or something. So that was a very different 8:27 era back then. And I was always interested in the sidechain idea. I kind of thought that, you know, 8:32 let's see these other ideas and see how they work out. So I was like, well, maybe everyone's very 8:37 gung ho about the Lightning Network. I was also optimistic about it in 2015. I was sort of hacking 8:42 on it myself. And so I was thinking like, well, maybe this will work out. And of course, the BTC 8:51 price has gone up and up and up and Bitcoin has had enormous success and it has changed the world 8:57 a lot already. You know, we managed to get a presidential candidate to speak at the 9:04 national conference. We managed to free Ross Ulbricht. So we made a lot of stuff happen. 9:13 We really changed the world and the price went up enormously. Yeah. And I came even like other 9:20 ideas like I thought, you know, Roger Ver really wanted to try Bitcoin Cash and whatever. So I was 9:26 like, oh, well, let's just see how this all plays out. And a lot of it has played out very well. But 9:31 I just think from here, where do we go? Do we just keep waiting around? And, you know, so do we just 9:35 have more custodial lightning and more treasury companies and like and then what? Like we just 9:43 keep talking about people keep proposing new BIPs, but we never activate any soft forks. And, 9:48 you know, I don't I don't see where where we would go from here other than to introduce a new 9:52 coin. What's your ask for Bitcoin hodlers? Right. To the extent that there is resistance to change. 9:58 A lot of that is Bitcoiners don't like change, right? They like holding their keys. They like 10:02 knowing that their Bitcoin is going to be there for the long run. What does the ETH Cash project 10:09 offer them in your view? You know, that's a very good question, because actually I think it offers 10:14 them a lot, because if you think about it, this is the alternative that doesn't change 10:21 BTC at all, actually. So I'm giving them exactly what they want instead of pushing for BIP300 on 10:27 BTC. This is an alternative where I'm not doing that and now you just have a second thing. You 10:35 can sell it for more BTC if you want. I think it would be smart for everyone to wait and hold 10:42 both coins. But I think, yeah, if anyone who feels strongly that this is a waste of time, 10:50 then you can sell, you can get more BTC. I'm giving everyone free money with the hard fork. I 10:56 think, you know, that's a pretty good deal. So you're welcome. And I think, though, that some 11:05 people out there should take it upon themselves, like they should ask, you know, could I spend 11:12 five or 10 minutes looking into this? And maybe it's worth, you know, your time. If you after 11:18 looking into it, you might think, oh, I have a better idea of what this is really about. 11:24 Paul, what's the bull case for eCash? 11:27 Look, Bitcoin hardware wallets can be hard to use. I've given a version of almost 11:31 every single major hardware wallet to friends and family over the years. 11:35 My go to, the Trezor Safe 7 Bitcoin only. We're talking great UX, simple onboarding, 11:42 minimal buttons in an easy to read screen. And on top of all that, it's free from all the 11:47 distractions that we know crypto hardware wallets can bring. So if you want your friends and family 11:52 to truly start stacking, try the Trezor Safe 7. Take a 5% discount with the promo code RIZO on me. 12:00 There are definitely two ways in which this could be a huge success. 12:14 Sorry, can I just do that again? 12:20 For some reason the water made it worse. Okay. There are definitely two ways in which 12:26 this project could have a big positive impact on Bitcoiners. One is, oh my God, sorry. 12:35 I'm not going to make a habit of this, I promise. 12:37 Well, it's possible that, oh my God. Okay. All right. Okay. Redo. This is it. I promise. 13:01 I think it's definitely possible that the stuff that I've discovered is only the tip of the 13:08 iceberg. And actually there's a lot more laziness and corruption and overconfidence in the BTC world 13:18 overall, other than just what I have been able to identify. So it's possible that BTC is being 13:26 held back by a bunch of irrational nonsense. Who knows what the politics are really like 13:31 in Bitcoin Core? Who knows what other stuff has been invented or proposed, but that we would just 13:37 never hear about it? Because how would we even hear about it? Someone out there is going to say, 13:40 oh, my idea, whatever, chains, is great. And we would never really hear about that in today's 13:50 world, because everyone would just be so dismissive. So it's possible that a lot of 14:01 other stuff is just like hanging by a thread and it's just held together with scotch tape or 14:06 something. So if that's the case, then just the arrival of any new competitor that just doesn't 14:10 have all these sort of parasites, I think then that would do really, really well. 14:21 It would benefit all of us to learn the true extent of how strong is Bitcoin as a competitor, 14:29 really. Because if you think about it, Ethereum is like this weird pre-mined thing from 2015. 14:33 It's so different from Bitcoin that they're actually hard to compare. And what actually 14:42 really competes with BTC in its niche? I don't know. You could say Bitcoin Cash or something, 14:50 but those are old. I don't know. I think that that's a different thing. When you go for the 14:58 same name, then I think people have a negative reaction to that and then they make up their 15:07 mind and then they don't want to change it back because you fight over the brand. So even the 15:13 case of BCH, Bitcoin Cash, I don't know to what extent it competes with BTC. So I think we need a 15:24 competitor or two just to figure out even where does BTC actually stand, like how healthy is BTC 15:30 really? To an extent, every altcoin or 80-90% of altcoins are forks of the Bitcoin code base. 15:38 In that lens, what distinguishes eCash? Well, yeah, I actually want to keep the L1 as close 15:44 to Bitcoin Core as possible. I don't even really want there to be any points of comparison. 15:49 So the L1 will be the same, but the L2, Bith 300 can be activated without changing any lines of 15:57 code in Bitcoin Core. So that's how I plan on activating it on eCash. And then I plan to have 16:05 most of the transaction activity and developer activity and in merge mining, the mining activity, 16:11 all that should take place on the L2s. The L2s allow multiple different developers or developer 16:19 teams to compete. It's my favorite word. And they could all hate each other and they could release 16:24 different software. All of these projects would all share the same 21 million coins. 16:32 And, you know, so if you really like Bitcoin Core, you just kind of still have that experience on L1. 16:38 But if you like other things, if you like privacy, if you like ring signatures or zk-SNARKs, 16:44 or if you like the EVM or if you like large block sizes, then you go on to an L2 that has those. 16:52 All the L2s are merge mined, so they all contribute to miner revenue. The miner doesn't 16:59 even need to do anything. Just automatically collect more money from the chain. So I think 17:07 that would be the difference is that, you know, there'd be a lot of working L2s in this world, 17:13 whereas in the BTC world, we only have the Lightning Network and it mostly does not. 17:19 It does not work, in my opinion. And then I did that debate at TabConf against the entire room 17:24 of Lightning developers who mostly agreed with me that it doesn't work. How do you hope the Bitcoin 17:29 developers react to the announcement of this project? You have relationships with a lot of 17:35 them and you've contributed to the project. I don't know how they will react. I think my 17:41 sense is that there's actually a lot of frustration in the BTC developer community. 17:49 So I have no idea what they will, they may be relieved. Some of them, I think some of them, 17:55 this idea may even like, you know, it has the potential to embarrass them. So they may, 17:59 like if this turns out to be a big success, they would be threatened by that. So I don't know how 18:04 they will react. I'm not really sure, you know, I think there is in general, there's been an 18:10 overemphasis on developers, I think, because in my conception, you have these, you know, 18:19 anyone can launch a new L2. So the developers compete. But in most projects, but basically all 18:29 of them, the developers of the L1 have an enormous amount of power and influence. And so they kind of 18:37 have a little monopoly. So as a result, everyone cares a lot about what they think. And I don't 18:45 think we really should care that much about it. What we should care about is getting users who 18:49 actually pay transaction fee, and we should have happy users. So I don't know. But you know, the 18:56 other thing is, I don't really have that much, I don't have as much respect for Bitcoin developers 19:01 today as I did in the past. Because, you know, what have we actually done? We have, you know, 19:07 SegWit and Taproot, I think, SegWit is only used because it became like a default. 19:14 Taproot, like, people don't, people don't really use like the features that they put out. They 19:20 spend all this time to develop something, and then they spend all this time writing tests. 19:27 And so I don't really know, like, what, what, it's not like the Bitcoin developers are like 19:31 shipping cool new multi-sig features or something. So I don't know, you know, what, what does it even 19:37 mean to be a Bitcoin developer these days? It just means that you slowly review code on, 19:44 on GitHub. So yeah, I don't know if we should really emulate those people or care a lot about 19:51 their opinion anymore. What do you think Satoshi Nakamoto's view of eCash would be if he, 19:58 she, they were around today? Well, I think it's interesting that Satoshi was originally very 20:06 blasé about new coins, and he helped invent Namecoin, which is the first altcoin. And he 20:12 also basically helped invent merge mining in the first place, which is the process by which 20:18 miners can mine multiple blockchains at once without doing any extra hashing. 20:24 So yeah, and he, he seemed, he, he commented many times about like, 20:29 you know, having different chains that have different block sizes and different, and that 20:33 the chains that have separate fates. He has, this is his famous quote about piling everything into 20:39 one network won't, won't scale. So he interestingly seems to be, he seems to have been 20:47 in favor of the concept. Well, he helped invent merge mining. So he was clearly in 20:53 pro-merge mining. So he had in mind that there would be these different blockchains. So far, 20:57 merge mining has only been used for weird altcoins like Namecoin. And it has not been used for 21:05 L2s of Bitcoin, where you have actual Bitcoin, or in my case, eCash. So I think that that, 21:13 he would certainly be in favor of that. I don't think Satoshi was a big, you know, 21:17 maximalist, actually. It seems kind of strange to say, but he was very, he was unconcerned when 21:22 Namecoin was invented. He was mostly interested in how it would be used. 21:29 I would hope that he would support the project. I should mention that even though it is a hard 21:33 fork, we have a controversial element of, he, Satoshi himself has like a list of 1.1 million, 21:41 a bunch of UTXOs that can, that add up to 1.1 million BTC. And we only give him half of his 21:51 stash. But that is because it's going to be difficult to make the hard fork a success. 21:58 And if it succeeds, it will just have highlighted how we were right about BTC being in danger 22:05 of being replaced. So I can get into a little more of that, but I think, you know, if you want 22:13 the, we're already giving away for free, you know, the BIP300 on BTC. So that's always there 22:20 as the option. But you have to go this other route. It will be very difficult to make a hard 22:26 fork with its own brand and its own, its own fate, a success. But I think if it succeeds, 22:33 it will only have proven that BTC was actually vulnerable to being replaced this whole time. 22:40 Announcement here today, timeline, what does it look like? What's coming? And 22:47 when will eCash be live? Yeah, it'll be late August. So basically four months from now. 22:56 And then, you know, I'm sure that'll be a very chaotic day and a very chaotic week. 23:02 And then, you know, it'll probably we'll have to see how it takes shape over the next 23:07 year or so and then reassess, like if it's actually achieving its goals. The optimistic 23:15 case is that it, you know, that a lot of the L2s attract users. So, for example, 23:24 we want to have like a scalability L2 and a privacy L2 if people are actually using it for 23:28 those things and to have my prediction markets project. So like if those are actually acquiring 23:34 users and there's a little network effect is building up, then we have the potential to have 23:40 unlimited growth in transaction fee and fee revenue for miners on those L2s. So if that 23:47 has started to happen, then the optimistic case is that the network of new network effects of this 23:54 project would just accumulate and it would eventually be, you know, an enormous amount of 24:00 mining revenue enough to make the project a big success, you know, in the future and 24:08 potentially even replace BTC because BTC will have diminishing mining revenue and have low 24:13 proof of work and become insecure, among other reasons, just being less popular. 24:19 So that would be like we have to see is it doing that or is it is it forcing a conversation with 24:23 BTC about its future? If it's so, if it's succeeding, then we'll know. And then if it's not, 24:31 then we'll figure out who should do something else. Could just be a demo. This could just be 24:37 a demonstration of what BTC should do. Maybe it would work as that. So we'll have to see. 24:42 If eCash is successful, Bitcoin could move in the direction and adopt BIP300, right? 24:50 Right. The thing is, I'm not sure if like it was already BIP300 was already like one of these 24:59 opt-in, reversible, ignorable soft forks, it was already like endorsed by lots of people and it was already just like strictly additive to mining revenues. 25:12 So I don't know, like it was already like a really good idea served up on a silver platter and already you could do it without modifying Bitcoin Core with the CUSF that I invented, 25:25 Core Untouched Soft Fork. So I think it would be more than just activating BIP300. It has to be like this huge cultural revolution where it's like people say, well, we were wrong to put so much attention on Lightning Network. 25:41 It would have to be a lot of different things. So I don't know if it would be that simple or that possible. I think that's part of my essay about the derangements of Bitcoin or my list is like the culture, I think, is very confused. 26:00 And I don't think I'm not sure if it would be that simple, but I hope that it's still possible. 26:08 Most forks of Bitcoin have been hostile. They've put user coins in danger at the point of the fork. Do users need to be informed? What do they need to do? 26:19 Smart contracts on Bitcoin, no longer just an Ethereum thing. OpNet, it's different. It's not a sidechain. It's not a bridge. It's not a wrapped asset. It's a meta protocol. 26:28 Your Bitcoin stays on Bitcoin the entire time. And every OpNet transaction is just a Bitcoin transaction. Connect your Bitcoin wallet, make trustless swaps with no new tokens to buy, no new chain to learn. 26:41 Bitcoin is the gas. If you've been waiting for DeFi that doesn't ask you to migrate to another crypto asset, OpNet just went live on mainnet. You can check it out at opnet.org. 26:52 Yeah, there is something called transaction replay, which is important to keep in mind, which is if you make a transaction on one of the networks, it's possible that it will just be valid on both networks. 27:03 In one sense, this is kind of like keeping a Dropbox folder synchronized. But it's like if you send two BTC to your friend, if Paul sends two Bitcoin to Pete, then it's possible that you would have had two eCash. 27:25 They also end up going to Pete. If you download our software, you can split the coins permanently, but maybe some people won't want to do that because in order to do that, you have to put your private keys into a new piece of software. 27:41 So you wouldn't want to do that on day one. It's just typing a private key into someone's software. So yeah, I think the smart thing would be to just kind of wait and get information from people you trust about what they are doing. 27:58 And that's probably the most reliable advice. Just keep in mind that you're getting a bunch of free money. I mean, you could also just make peace with it. You could just say, well, I'm getting a bunch of free money, but maybe I don't understand how to claim it. So just forget about it. 28:13 But I think probably it would be nearer to the time of the fork. You'll be able to figure out what your friends and advisors are doing. But yeah, that's something to keep in mind. 28:25 I think the reason that most forks were hostile was because they all put Bitcoin in the name. And I think that people don't like that. They know that the brand should only refer to one thing at a time. So even if they don't agree with everything in BTC world, they think it's annoying to have one word describe two different things. So I think that was annoying for people. 28:52 There are going to be a lot of other differences about eCash as opposed to Bitcoin, the structure, how it's running, how it's operating. Can you talk a little bit about LayerTwo Labs, how you plan to manage this ecosystem and bootstrap it? And what are the conflicts that you see with that company? Or how do you see reducing the involvement of that company over time? 29:14 Well, I don't think there will be any need for an L1 because, again, I want to keep the L1 the same as Bitcoin Core. So it really shouldn't be any development effort put in there. 29:28 Even Bitcoin Core's terrible mistakes and bad ideas, I plan to just merge across and just keep it very, very, very simple so that it's just a tiny little patch set. And that is a completely different type of project than if you were running a full node of whatever, Ethereum or Solana or something. 29:49 So right off the bat, that is just like a few minutes every six months out of a really talented person's time. 29:59 So the L1, that should be OK. And even the L2s, we built a lot of them already. So I think we, in a strange way, I think this is actually the most decentralized project as far as development goes. 30:14 Because the L1 is free riding off of Bitcoin Core. And the L2s, many of them already exist. So like enough of them exist. And then anyone can propose new ones through the system already. 30:29 And the existing graphical user interface and everything will just add them. Also, the front end is, so in Bitcoin Core, there's this Qt interface that's like tightly connected to the source code in the C++ source code. 30:46 But we have ours as a disconnected user interface. So actually, even that people can fork and just change the color without touching the L1 code. 30:59 So I think it will be very, very, very easy to maintain and keep competitive because the L1 is just Bitcoin Core. So that takes basically zero effort. L2s already exist. There will be new people competing with them. 31:13 I think competition will keep things in line and will keep the contributions coming in because they'll be from people who really want an actual change. 31:25 So I think that it will be very, very easy to, from an overhead point of view, to run the project. I'm not really worried about that. 31:35 As part of this, you'll be airdropping new Bitcoins, eCash tokens to everyone who owns Bitcoin. This includes the large institutions and asset managers who now own Bitcoin on behalf of other people. 31:48 How do you expect them to react to the projects? Are you doing outreach to those institutions? And what has their response been, if so? 31:57 It's a very interesting idea. I don't know what they will make of this. I haven't spoken to them yet because this project has mostly been secret until now. 32:09 Although it's a secret that I guess a lot of people knew about, but I was mostly not telling people. 32:14 There's still four months to plan. It's an interesting idea. In Bitcoin, we have the not your keys, not your coins mantra. 32:24 And so according to some Bitcoiners, if you own Bitcoin in an ETF or if you keep your Bitcoin on an exchange, according to some, they would say, well, you don't really own any Bitcoin, actually. 32:39 You have a relationship with the ETF and maybe they'll give you – but they're the real owner. 32:46 And so, yeah, to anyone who owns the coins on the network at the time of the fork, that will get credited. So really, they will get your eCash. 32:57 Will they just give it to you? I don't know. 33:01 I think probably people should try to find out. And if they won't, then you would tend to want to withdraw. 33:14 You'd want to withdraw for like the one day. Withdraw, keep it on your own computer, the coin split, and then deposit again. 33:24 You would think that they wouldn't want you to withdraw, so they would proactively take some kind of step to make sure that you get whatever you think you deserve. 33:35 I think there's definitely an argument to say that this has all gotten too institutionalized and that it would be good to some extent if there was a little bit of chaos thrown in. 33:48 Because we want to encourage people to self-custody Bitcoin on their own node. 33:55 If they do, then they will get the fork. Particularly if this idea, the eCash hard fork, if this triggers like a wave of copycats and there's just lots of people doing forks like this, 34:07 then it will be all the people who have Bitcoin on their own full node, they will just be getting all this free money all day. 34:14 But if you have your coins on an exchange, the exchange will be getting all that. 34:18 So I don't know. I think it's a very interesting – a lot of different things are possible, including things that are very frustrating for people and also including things that people think are great. 34:28 I would hope that the large institutions would either just credit everyone or I would kind of prefer that they just keep – selfishly keep the coins because I think it's also good. 34:42 I think it's also good for me if anyone just thinks, oh, these are valuable coins and I want them. I did though. 34:49 To some extent, you've already outsourced – you've already said to a large ETF or whatever, you've said, oh, you can have custody of my BTC. 34:58 So that's what you've said. So now they'll have custody of your eCash as well. I'm not exactly sure what will happen. 35:05 Is price going to be the denominator of success for eCash? And if it's not, I guess how will you tell whether eCash is making progress against Bitcoin? 35:16 Well, there is a second thing other than the price. The price obviously is a pretty useful indicator. 35:24 But also the total transaction fee revenues expressed in US dollar purchasing power, that would be a second thing. 35:33 If either of those are really, really healthy, that would indicate success. 35:38 If both of them are very low, then that would indicate that the market doesn't really care that much. 35:43 When Bitcoin Cash launched, when it debuted in November 2017, because it had launched before, it was one of many problems with Bitcoin Cash. 35:53 They had like a convoluted rollout that was like not announced. 35:57 And that it had already existed for several months before people realized what it was or whatever. It's a long story. 36:03 But when it really debuted in November 2017, it briefly became the number two coin by price. 36:13 And this led to a famous tweet from Vitalik who said, congrats on this seriously to Roger Ver. 36:20 And so the big debut, a Bitcoin fork made it to number two and it was trading at something like 15% of BTC's price. 36:29 This was back then. If a coin today debuted at 15% of Bitcoin's price, it would be the number three coin. 36:37 So I have no idea to what extent these are comparable situations. 36:43 But I do think it's the case that a hard fork is playing ball with people. 36:51 A hard fork is more cooperative to the Bitcoin owner because we give all the Bitcoin owner their fair share. 36:58 Except for Satoshi in this case, as I mentioned previously. 37:02 But we give everyone, we cut everyone in. 37:06 And I think that if you compare that to an altcoin, it's in a completely different league. 37:12 And so I actually do wonder about another thing that happened was, of course, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV. 37:18 They didn't have that much success, even though Bitcoin Cash is still today like in the top 15 of coins, which is very good. 37:25 Especially because it's very long, you know, it's geometric fall off in market cap. 37:30 But so, yeah, to be like in the top 15 is like a completely different league than like the top 30 or something. 37:38 But I think Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV kind of like it was so miserable and it was so confusing and people hated it all so much that it discredited the hard fork unfairly. 37:51 People actually have forgotten about it. 37:55 And so I think it'll be very interesting to see people's reaction to this. 38:00 They may some people may really, really like it and they may think, well, actually, this is what we should do. 38:05 Every time there's a dispute, you know, every time with Luke Dashjr. or whatever, we should just have this thing split off. 38:13 And I've written a lot in the past. 38:16 There's a lot of nuances to the hard fork and hard fork is very dangerous and it should not be used. 38:21 Yeah. And in particular, the hard fork, you basically have to have some. 38:26 There's going to be a pre-existing chain and then there's going to be something brand new. 38:32 And the pre-existing one has a lot of benefits that it just passively has. 38:38 And this is bad for the principle of competition, because ideally there would be two equal competitors for each decision. 38:45 And then we would be easy for the better one to win. 38:48 So the new hard fork has a lot of disadvantages. 38:52 But even despite all of this stuff and despite all the mistakes made by Bitcoin Cash, it did it did briefly go to number two. 38:59 For one day when it debuted. 39:02 And it's still at somewhere in the top 15. 39:06 So it's still worth huge amounts. 39:09 It created an enormous amount of value in a sustainable sense over what is now basically nine years. 39:15 So over the last nine years, it's still stayed in the top 15. 39:20 So it's much better than many other altcoins. 39:24 So I think that price, it's a stiff competition, actually. 39:30 But I think price would be a very, you know, that's a very strong indicator of validation for people. 39:37 But I would also say if the price is kind of like not doing that well, but there is the sustainable growth in real users, I would say that that would only mean that it's only a matter of time before investors, you know, or even just the users decide, I'm just going to keep a little of this because I use it every day. 39:55 The users are the most scarce resource. 39:58 Are exchanges and miners supporting this at launch? 40:01 Well, I think we have some exchanges that will. 40:04 We also have one of our L2s. 40:06 It's called CoinShift. 40:08 It kind of is a an exchange all by itself. 40:13 Now, I can't guarantee I have talked to some exchanges who've said that they will, but I can't guarantee I have no idea if they're just being polite or whatever, you know. 40:22 But I think because of the way the transaction replay works and because the L1 is a clone of Bitcoin Core, so it's not like new. 40:32 It's not like anything new that they'll have to figure out. 40:34 They just have to kind of copy and paste their setup. 40:38 And I would think that they would with respect to exchanges. 40:44 The same thing with the miners, which is they could say this or that. 40:49 But that I don't think an agreement is as good as to have a real incentive. 40:54 So in order to create the hard fork, the mechanism by which that is splitting off is that will lower the block difficulty to its lowest value. 41:05 And that makes it very easy to mine. 41:07 So even if the blocks are worth one millionth of what a BTC block is worth, since you have to subtract, you know, you have to subtract the revenue minus cost. 41:19 For a brief time, it would be very, very, very easy to mine the eCash blocks until the difficulty moves back up. 41:27 And as a result, that should attract miners. 41:32 So, yeah, that's the plan is to make it in their incentive to do so. 41:38 In addition to talking to some people and saying among the like there's some a few group chats and stuff. 41:45 People are they're excited to try to mine themselves, especially because with the low difficulty, it will be possible to dig out old hardware and have it mine for just a little bit, maybe like two or three days. 41:56 You shoot through two thousand blocks in a day or so. 42:00 Difficulty would go up and up and up. 42:02 From then it will depend completely on the price. 42:05 The price goes up. 42:07 To be more mining, if the price goes down, then there'll be less mining, but the difficulty will go back down. 42:12 So it'll be like a normal proof of work blockchain at that point. 42:16 Paul, you're one of my favorite writers on the subject. 42:19 You have an immense body of work at Truthcoin. 42:23 You've contributed a lot to Bitcoin and the thinking and others like myself. 42:27 What are you risking by doing this project? 42:29 I don't think I'm risking that much because what is the reputation in Bitcoin really even worth at this point? 42:37 Which is I never thought that it was like a very valuable thing to have. 42:40 But I think that like what is the point of like what would we even do with the community now? 42:50 So I think, again, like it's kind of like topped out. 42:55 Like if we allow. 42:58 Like we've come very, very far, which has been great. 43:01 But I don't see how we can. 43:06 You know, I just don't see where we go from here. 43:08 So I think, you know, it would be what it was different before when it was like everyone was starting like people starting BitPay or even BTC. 43:19 BTC pay server. Now, what would people just work on? 43:22 What like custodial lightning or their work? 43:24 So I don't know. So I think I'd really we have very little to lose and a lot to gain. 43:29 You're announcing the hard fork today. 43:31 The eCash project born out of LayerTwo Labs, trading your own coin, creating your own chain. 43:36 Final question. Are you still a Bitcoiner? 43:39 Well, I would think so. 43:41 Yeah, I don't plan on selling BTC. 43:43 I see this as kind of a hedge against the failure of BTC, which is something that I always thought BTC couldn't possibly fail. 43:54 But over the last few years, I have become worried about the overconfidence and complacency. 44:01 So I think, yeah, I don't think I'll be selling my BTC. 44:03 But I will be trying to improve this competitor as both a backup plan if BTC doesn't work out and also as maybe an example of what BTC should be more like. 44:18 Thanks, everyone, for watching. 44:20 While you're still here, head over to Trezor.io and check out the latest and greatest in Bitcoin hardware wallet security. 44:27 I'm talking about the Trezor Safe 7. 44:30 Use the promo code RIZO for a 5% discount today.