0:00 This weekend Scaling Bitcoin will take place in Hong Kong. 0:07 You are leaving tonight, as I understood. 0:12 But the reason I invited you to have a talk was because of Truthcoin, which is now being called Bitcoin Hivemind. 0:26 It interests me and also a lot of people whom I know. 0:34 And I was actually also very surprised to see that a lot of subjects you mentioned on the Truthcoin site really answered some questions for me. 0:47 For example, there is a lot of talk about Ethereum for the past two years. 0:53 All the time I'm wondering, I have a lot of questions about it and I read some. 1:00 I won't necessarily say answers, but at least your opinion to it. 1:05 That was very interesting. 1:07 And also your view on Augur and such. 1:10 So, welcome Paul. 1:15 Thanks for having me. 1:17 I'm glad that you enjoy the site, that's why it's there. 1:22 I see it as two sides of the same coin, or it's one big project of understanding, 1:33 which is creating a new Bitcoin project, but also explaining and comparing the other Bitcoin projects. 1:42 It's really kind of the same thing. 1:44 It's all about what is possible with blockchains and what isn't possible. 1:50 What's sort of a dead end and what is kind of an important problem to solve. 1:55 I think it's all part of the same thing. 1:58 That was kind of why it was all in the same name. 2:01 But now that it's gotten a little bit more serious, as you mentioned, we've renamed to Bitcoin Hivemind. 2:09 We haven't really exactly kind of promoted it yet, but that will start very soon, I think, 2:15 because we have some newer stuff that's kind of finished. 2:19 Especially because now it's like people I don't even know are going to the GitHub and submitting issues and closing issues. 2:26 So now it's sort of like leaking out, and so it's kind of partly a function of futility, 2:35 but it's also like it's kind of gotten to the point where people would be able to contribute 2:40 without causing more problems than they would solve. 2:43 So it's a very exciting time for the project. 2:46 Because when I heard about Truthcoin about a year ago or something, 2:51 I remember that I thought, when I heard the name, I just thought it's just another altcoin or whatever. 2:59 And when I read a little bit more, I thought, oh, it's some kind of academic project or whatever. 3:07 And with the last time, I see you pop up more often in different corners of the web space, to say it like that. 3:22 To be honest, I did not read the whole website. 3:27 It's pretty hard stuff. 3:31 I tried to read, but it's very, I mean, for example, the stuff about proof of stake and proof of work is, for me at least, 3:46 very difficult to digest food, to say it like that. 3:52 But very interesting. 3:56 So, Yannis, as far as I know, you had a question. 4:03 Yeah, that's probably for later. 4:05 But if we start talking about Truthcoin, how it works, a bit more of an advanced question, I guess. 4:11 But yeah, maybe that's the best. 4:14 Could you try to explain prediction markets and Truthcoin? 4:21 So, yeah. 4:23 So prediction markets are really, they're just the same as any other market, really. 4:27 That's the kind of interesting thing about them, is that we use markets every day to determine the price of very boring things. 4:36 And the price determines who can buy what in the marketplace, and the market determines who gets what. 4:44 So it determines allocation. 4:47 And it determines production as well, because if the price goes up, people think, wow, I should really get into the oil business, 4:55 because the price of oil is going through the roof, and I should research new oil technology, 5:00 and I should quit my job and work on an oil refinery or whatever. 5:05 So markets do all these things very, very well. 5:08 They transform subjective preferences and values into objective data that people can use to make plans and to make allocations of resources. 5:21 So it's a really simple first point, which is just that markets work. 5:26 They work very well. 5:28 Even when they don't work very well, they work the best, usually. 5:32 And so markets work great. 5:35 And so why not use the market structure to accomplish something that's a little different, but it's really mostly the same. 5:45 So the difference is that here there's no clear use for the actual predictions themselves. 5:52 So you'd just be buying and selling predictions the same way you'd buy and sell oil or gold or anything, Dow Jones Industrial Average. 6:01 And so you're buying and selling these predictions, and they're worth an amount of money if they're true, and they're worth nothing if they're false. 6:10 And so you can infer from the price how likely these events are. 6:15 And so you can see into the future with great reliability and have a huge track record of being extraordinarily accurate predictors of events like elections 6:26 and who will win certain academy awards and when certain people will be apprehended and all this other stuff that you'd kind of think would be very mystifying. 6:39 These things can predict months in advance with extreme accuracy. 6:44 In fact, if you compare them to normal people in any kind of apples to apples way, 6:49 if you compare them to a statistical model or expert panel or individual pundits or something, they always win by a lot. 6:57 So they do a very good job of settling issues where people have like a big conversation with a lot of people and there's no kind of clear consensus. 7:07 The market just gives you a consensus. 7:09 It says this is what the price is, and so this is the consensus. 7:12 And so they do that. 7:14 So this is just reusing the same marketing that works for everything else for specifically to get the price and not with the price just appearing as a byproduct. 7:29 So for example, if you would have a prediction that Hillary wins the elections and people can put their money on it and the price is high, 7:48 what does that actually mean? 7:51 Is the price high when everybody expects that Hillary will win or the opposite? 7:58 Not everybody. 8:00 So say you've got a piece of paper and it will magically become worth one dollar or one euro or whatever you like. 8:10 But let's say one dollar. 8:12 The piece of paper will magically become a dollar if Hillary Clinton is elected. 8:17 And then there's a different piece of paper that will magically become a dollar if and only if she's not elected US president in 2016 next year. 8:27 So what would it say to you if people are using the Hillary Clinton paper, Hillary Clinton does win. 8:37 They're using those as if they were dollars. 8:40 If you went to the store you could buy a three dollar item for three of these pieces of paper. 8:45 But no one cared what happened. 8:47 Everyone was just throwing out the pieces of paper that were for Hillary Clinton not winning. 8:52 They're just throwing those in the trash. 8:55 I mean a reasonable person would infer, not without needing to know really anything else. 9:02 They could infer that wow, whatever someone might say that they think. 9:09 It's pretty clear that almost no one cares about what happens to these not Hillary Clinton pieces of paper. 9:17 But people do care. 9:18 They're treating this one, this other kind as if they're worth a whole dollar. 9:22 So you can infer the likelihood of the event, in this case the likelihood of Hillary Clinton being elected president. 9:28 Just by inferring, just looking at the market price of these specific goods. 9:36 So if people expect Hillary to win, then the piece of paper which corresponds to her winning will be more difficult to get. 9:50 Because people care about it. 9:55 They put value in it or they append value to it. 10:00 And the piece of paper which corresponds to Hillary losing, people don't mind because they don't expect it. 10:09 So it's easy to get them. 10:11 So in other words, they're cheap. 10:13 So then it's ill. 10:16 If this is a prediction market and the price of Hillary losing is very low and Hillary winning is high, 10:25 then it actually means that if the price is high, a lot of people expect her to win. 10:33 But can you also say that because a lot of people expect her to win, that she will win? 10:39 Or is that something that the market has to prove? 10:44 Okay, so that's an interesting question. 10:47 So one thing about the market price is that whether people kind of accept this or not, 10:53 the market price is mostly unanimous. 10:56 So when you say people believe that Hillary Clinton will win, the market price is mostly unanimous. 11:01 So it's mostly unanimously agreed to be correct. 11:04 Because anyone who disagrees can supposedly, according to them, make money. 11:10 It's sort of like this free money sitting on a table that they can just pick up. 11:15 By picking up – whichever one is cheaper, they can just pick up. 11:18 And then when everyone else figures out, as we get closer to reality where these events will converge, 11:25 this person will be able to either sell or just redeem this thing for $1. 11:30 So there's this concept of complete agreement with the price. 11:37 There are these exceptions where people are too risk averse, 11:40 and the market isn't liquid enough for it to be worth their time to learn about what's going on. 11:45 Or if they're very, very poor, and they don't have any access to lending or borrowing, 11:52 and they can't team up with anyone or something like that. 11:55 So there are these kind of things. 11:57 But in general, the price is right, and it's always right according to everyone. 12:03 Because anyone who disagrees has the opportunity to change the forecast to something else. 12:09 And the only thing that's demanded is that they pay up if they're wrong, 12:15 and they get paid if they're right. 12:17 So they have every reason to keep this thing accurate. 12:21 So a kind of related question that you were asking, though, I think, 12:26 is that since this is about an election, 12:30 won't there be some kind of circularity to this? 12:34 People believe with their voting, 12:38 so maybe it's kind of a tautology or it's sort of self-fulfilling perhaps. 12:47 So the interesting thing there is that it's not necessarily the people who vote who would be betting. 12:52 So a lot of people, I would imagine, would bet and then not even bother to vote, 12:56 because particularly in the U.S., we have kind of a strange voting system, 13:00 which basically makes voting irrelevant, 13:03 because if you live in like a red state, your whole state will be red, 13:08 and so nothing you do matters. 13:10 If you yourself are red, if you are blue, it doesn't matter, 13:14 because your state will just be red, and that's the end of that. 13:16 In the U.K., they have also something like this, 13:19 because the guy from UKIP, he was very popular across the whole country, 13:25 but because he only got in one district the majority, 13:31 in the end, at the national level, he had just, let's say, 3% of the votes, 13:38 or at least 3% of the districts, 13:44 but while he, on a national scale, he had like 30% or 5% or whatever, 13:51 and it's kind of like the same in the U.S., as far as I understand. 13:56 Yeah, it absolutely is. 13:58 If you're a third party, you basically can't win. 14:02 You're sort of throwing your vote away. 14:05 Furthermore, it's, well, yeah, there's lots to talk about that. 14:12 We could talk about that for a really long time, 14:14 but yeah, there are all kinds of complications 14:18 that make it kind of pointless to even vote. 14:21 So a lot of people who are really informed probably don't vote, 14:25 but they might bet to try and make money 14:27 to use their understanding of what's going on to their advantage. 14:30 The other thing is you have a lot of people who actually can't vote, 14:33 because maybe, I don't know, they're too young, 14:35 or they're like a felon or something, 14:37 or they don't live in the United States. 14:39 You can imagine that someone who's very good at political science 14:42 or very good at sociology or something, 14:45 and they're not a U.S. citizen. 14:47 They live in, you know, I don't know, they live in Japan or something, 14:50 and they might be... 14:52 So that's an interesting thing is that it's not necessarily the same groups, 14:55 and so since it's not the same groups, which group should win? 14:59 And markets should always win, 15:02 because although certain people prefer a certain outcome, 15:06 and they'll cast a vote for that outcome, 15:08 or they will try to change reality to make that outcome happen, 15:13 some people prefer a certain outcome, 15:15 but everyone prefers to make more money. 15:18 So it's necessarily a subset, 15:21 these people who might affect the outcome. 15:24 Everyone who might affect the outcome is free to bet on the outcome, 15:29 but it's not the case that everyone who might bet 15:32 is free to, or would want to, or would care about affecting the outcome. 15:36 So that's kind of an interesting asymmetry 15:39 where it's... 15:42 There's a lot of power in the fact that anyone can just show up to a market 15:46 and participate in it, anyone. 15:49 And people can, of course... 15:51 Another huge difference is that you only get one vote 15:54 when you actually vote, 15:56 but in a market, you're free to double down. 15:59 You can just keep going. 16:02 I'm certain. 16:03 I know exactly why all those other people have made the price $37, 16:07 and I know it should be more than $37. 16:09 So they can just keep putting more and more of their own money down. 16:12 It doesn't have to be $1. 16:14 It could be $2 or $4, 16:16 or they can take a second mortgage on the house 16:18 and put the hundreds of thousands of dollars into this thing. 16:21 If they're sure that $37 or whatever the price is is a steal, 16:27 they should be maybe not willing to do something that risky, 16:31 but they should be, obviously, 16:33 they would be putting more money than someone who's not as certain. 16:38 And a final thing is that markets reward people who have meta-knowledge. 16:46 So when you cast a vote, 16:48 you may cast a vote simply on principle 16:50 because you agree with the candidate. 16:52 Maybe you cast a strategic vote. 16:55 Maybe you don't. 16:56 It doesn't really matter. 16:57 But the point is you cast a vote. 16:59 Your motivation, most people's motivation is purely altruistic. 17:06 They believe that this is the way the country should be governed and approved, 17:11 and they cast a vote for that reason. 17:14 But with a market, you want to look at, okay, 17:18 what do I really think will actually happen in this voting outcome? 17:23 And then you look at the market price and you say, 17:26 why is the market price that? 17:28 What does everyone else, everyone who's not me, 17:30 because anyone can participate, 17:32 anyone can participate in the market, 17:34 anyone in the whole world. 17:36 And you say, what's so different about me that I think the price should be this 17:40 versus some other thing? 17:42 And if you think, well, I don't really know. 17:44 I don't really know. 17:45 I don't think there's anything special about me. 17:47 You'll just shut up, and you won't put your money into the market. 17:51 And that's the magic that makes it work. 17:53 The magic that makes it work is that it just filters out all these people who 17:56 can't really, who don't have this kind of moment of certainty that says, 18:00 I know why my contribution to this market is the most important out of 18:07 everyone in the world, because people would look at the market price, 18:10 and they'd say, oh, you know, 18:12 the market just hasn't learned about that the news broke that, you know, 18:17 candidate X murdered that person or something, and they're going to lose. 18:21 You know, I'm the first one to know about that, or something like that. 18:24 Or they know, like, I am an expert on this, 18:28 and there's going to be an oil shortage right before the election that will 18:32 make everyone miserable or something. 18:35 So that's a big difference. 18:38 But to make it more practical to understand, 18:42 am I right that Truthcoin is kind of like the bookies in England, in the UK? 18:49 In the sense that, you know, in the UK, you can bet on an outcome of games. 18:54 For example, if, you know... 18:58 Horse races. 18:59 Sorry? 19:00 Horse races is one of them, isn't it? 19:01 Yeah, yeah. 19:03 And, you know, horse A wins from... 19:07 Of course. 19:08 Or the United... 19:10 Sorry? 19:11 Yeah, so obviously the English are great at betting, 19:17 and they should be respected for that kind of... 19:21 It's sort of seen as a noble thing. 19:23 So, yeah, there are a lot of bookies in, you know, the UK in particular. 19:28 But one difference is that these are markets, and they're not... 19:31 So the bookies set the odds, 19:33 and they collect a little commission for their services. 19:36 But with this, the odds will change in a market environment. 19:40 So the market... 19:41 So although they are kind of similar, 19:43 I would say a bookie is sort of like a prediction market that's kind of frozen in time. 19:47 Yeah, but, I mean, to make it more practical, how does it work? 19:51 I put up a statement. 19:55 I say, I believe Hillary wins. 19:58 And then, I mean... 20:02 The technical details are that someone would create some event that they want reported, 20:07 and this would cost some money, 20:09 and this would go into the blockchain algorithm. 20:13 And then, secondly, someone would create a market using this event, 20:18 which I call a decision. 20:20 So Hillary Clinton being elected would be like a yes or no decision. 20:24 You use a market with this decision. 20:26 The reason this is in two steps is because, actually, 20:28 you can create lots of fancier markets that use multiple decisions at once, 20:33 or use a different decision in a different way, 20:36 or something like that. 20:38 But you can kind of ignore that for this simple example. 20:42 And so you've got... 20:44 Yeah, but to say it like this, I put out a statement, 20:48 and once it's out, people can start betting on yes or no. 20:53 Right, so that would be like where we are. 20:55 Right, so the market would be created, 20:57 and there's this concept of a scoring rule, 21:00 which is a type of... 21:04 I guess you could call it an interface. 21:06 So it's really the type of market, 21:08 but explaining about market types is usually kind of a complicated thing. 21:14 But instead of... 21:15 There's usually something called a double auction, 21:18 where people bid in both ways. 21:21 So they bid on buying a stock. 21:24 They'll say, I'll pay $5 for the stock. 21:26 I'll pay $7 for the stock. 21:27 I'll pay $9 for the stock. 21:29 I'll pay $20 for the stock. 21:32 And then other people bid in the other way, 21:34 which is why it's called a double auction. 21:36 So they'll say, okay, I'll sell the stock for $40. 21:40 I'll sell the stock for $30. 21:44 I'll sell the stock for $20 or whatever. 21:47 I'll sell it for $19 because I'm really desperate, 21:50 and I really want money. 21:52 So there's this double auction, and then when they overlap, 21:55 people match those up and the trade gets executed. 22:00 But a scoring rule is a little different. 22:02 It's just a little bit more appropriate to a blockchain 22:05 because you don't have to store anything intermediate. 22:08 Either the transaction just goes through or it doesn't. 22:10 So that's a little easier. 22:12 Yeah, but the whole point... 22:13 I mean, you know, let's say I believe it's true. 22:20 I believe Hillary will win, so I believe the statement is true. 22:24 I mean, and if in the end I'm right, I mean, 22:30 is there a reward or something? 22:36 Of course, you bid actual money, yes. 22:38 So you would get... 22:40 Let's say it's created where, you know, 22:45 upon its creation, the prices are, you know, half, 50%, 50%. 22:50 And someone believes that she won't be elected, 22:55 and they put a little bit of money on the no side. 23:00 You could put a little bit of money on the yes side, 23:03 and I don't know. 23:04 You know, it depends on... 23:05 The price is going to change based on how much money has been placed down. 23:08 But let's just say that money has been placed down 23:11 and the price is still 50-50 for some, you know, 23:15 because the amounts have been sort of equal. 23:17 And you could put whatever the equivalent of, you know, 23:22 2 euros worth of Bitcoin down. 23:24 And then upon the conclusion, if Hillary Clinton is actually elected, 23:30 the prices will be fixed. 23:34 The market prices will be fixed at the very end of the process at 1 and 0. 23:39 And so even though you spent 2 euro-ish on something that was 50%, 23:45 so you got 4 shares, 23:48 you'd be able to sell each of the 4 shares at a price of 1, you know, euro. 23:54 We're glossing over the details of the exchange rate, 23:57 which you can... there's stuff on that. 24:01 But, yeah, so you put 2 euros in, you have 4 euros out. 24:05 And so now you're a happy guy. 24:07 Someone else put 2 euros in, they get 0 out. 24:09 Their 2 euros went to you. 24:12 Yeah, okay. 24:13 So the reward I get is the loss someone else has because someone... 24:19 Yes. 24:20 You know, for example, just to make it very practical, 24:23 we have, let's say, 100 voters or 100 people who participate. 24:29 60 say Hillary wins, 40 say Hillary loses. 24:34 And just to keep it simple, 24:37 everybody has put in the same amount of money. 24:40 So that means that 60% of the winners get, let's say, 24:46 the 1 euro or dollar from the 40. 24:50 So to say it like this, 24:52 the reward of the winners is 4 divided 60. 25:02 Yeah. 25:03 Not quite, but yeah, I mean, that's in a general sense, yes. But again, there's a time dimension 25:09 that's important. So lots of people bet earlier... The earlier you move, the right, the better. 25:15 So that's a normal thing. But yeah, and basically you are correct in saying that all the money 25:21 won is coming from someone else who lost it. So that... But that's the same as in every 25:26 market, right? Yeah. Some people will go... You go long, the oil futures or whatever with 25:32 dollars and if the dollar per oil price goes up, then you win. But if the dollar per oil 25:39 price goes down, you lose. So that's just a totally normal feature of markets. But I 25:50 mean, because it sounds still something like that somehow should be managed by people. 25:59 But I understood from some parts of your website that one of your opinions is that about oracles, 26:08 that you actually think that... Please correct me if I say it wrong, that 26:24 for a lot of things that you could use prediction markets as oracles, if I'm right. 26:31 Of course, yes. You could... Well, it's sort of like an oracle. It's a little bit... Basically, 26:39 my definition of an oracle is something that where the human provides some information. 26:46 So you can use... I would say oracles are required for prediction markets. However, 26:52 prediction markets themselves, they could... It's a very general term. So you could use 26:58 prediction markets to create other smart contracts like the prediction... Instead of 27:03 the decision being Hillary Clinton being elected or some other price feed in finance or something 27:11 like that, the decision, this question here, this event, that could just be some computer 27:17 code or something. And this could be a lot simpler. So the concept of a prediction market 27:24 is very general. It's just another financial derivative based on something. So that's the 27:31 cool thing about this project is that it expands the blockchain's world to include oracles so that 27:37 it can learn about the outside world and you can use that information however you like. So... 27:44 Very, very well with the participants are already in the blockchain and they're in the 27:48 signature system, right? So you can have your third party sign off on any kind of 27:56 payment channel or multi-signature transaction or something like that, right? So if you trust 28:00 the third party, the third party can do everything. Everything for you. It can run the prediction 28:05 market website. It can run any type of thing, right? Basically, almost anything. As long as 28:11 you want to trust the third party. But as soon as you want to do something else where you want 28:16 the data to be trustworthy and you don't want an individual to have the authority to 28:22 manipulate that data and steal the derivative funds, then that's kind of where this thing 28:30 comes in. But yeah, Bitcoin you can almost do almost everything with. This is kind of a very 28:35 ambitious plug-in. Yeah, because I understood that, I mean, one of the problems I often have 28:43 with understanding smart contracts, for example, is that, I mean, you know, in a conceptual way, 28:50 it all sounds very nice. But then you think, you know, there are, of course, a lot of contracts 29:02 which are very difficult to fully automize. Oh yeah. And I understood that your idea would be 29:09 that, for example, if we have a prediction market which says that Hillary will win or lose, 29:16 that, you know, the market somehow has to get to know if she really won or lose. 29:23 Absolutely. And then the idea is that people can cast a vote if she really won. 29:36 I mean, if they have the conclusion that she really won and then you take the 29:49 general outcome of that vote, if I'm right. And the general outcome of that vote means 29:55 if she has really won and that outcome can be used by the prediction market to know 30:05 what was the outcome of the election. Yeah, so the question of how does the 30:10 blockchain actually learn what happened, that is what the project is really about and what 30:17 the white paper is really about because that is very difficult to do for a lot of obvious reasons 30:23 that if there's millions of dollars hanging on this marketplace, anyone who could change what 30:29 the blockchain concludes can take all that money. So I do a variety of things to try and make that 30:36 data available in the correct way and one way is that I exploit time. We don't know today who will 30:46 win but it will be very obvious this time next year in December of 2016, it will be very obvious 30:53 who won and so there's no kind of like cost of ambiguity or kind of like uncertainty. 31:01 Anyone who doesn't say the right winner, the right answer is deliberately intending to lie. 31:07 So that's a nice thing. We can make the search cost very low by just putting them after 31:13 the event actually takes place and since this is all like a finance marketplace thing, 31:20 as long as the ultimate resolution is correct, it shouldn't really impact 31:24 in a significant way people who are using the marketplace. So that's kind of a cool thing but 31:30 the main thing I do is I have people, I've kind of blocked the votes into big groups, 31:35 to big matrices. So I force multiple people to vote on multiple things. So one person doesn't 31:43 just vote on Hillary Clinton, you have to vote on everything and they're all blocked based on time. 31:47 So they probably don't have very much to do with each other other than time, although they may and 31:51 that's fine. So it's kind of like at the Dutch television, there they often, I guess it's the 32:01 same in America, they often have panels from viewers of that show. So then they have some 32:11 news about the Dutch politician saying something and then they ask their panel what did you think 32:18 of it and I mean as far as I understand those things is that the votes, they often have let's 32:28 say 20,000 viewers who take part in such panels and the longer someone has voted, 32:36 the more meaningful his vote becomes in the next vote because you can kind of normalize his votes. 32:47 You know, it's kind of... Yeah, so I do a lot of things. It's much better for people to, I think, 32:53 if they're very interested, they can read the white paper and hopefully it makes sense and 32:58 if it's not clear, then you can email me and I'll try to clarify it so that everyone can enjoy 33:05 more clarity, but I do a lot of things so basically people have to buy in in order to vote. 33:10 You have to buy into this kind of corporation, so it's like a corporation type model where you get 33:16 votes based on how many shares you have and then I do this cool statistical trick since everyone's 33:23 voting on multiple things where the votes cross-reference each other and I know if you're 33:28 planning on lying, you'll eventually create something like a totally different reality 33:32 where it's going to be very obvious because you have to lie about a lot of things, 33:37 otherwise this thing will kind of catch you as being a multivariate kind of outlier in this 33:42 giant space. But so to say it like this, you are creating an, let's say, automated environment 33:54 where people can earn in a certain way or have an incentive to tell the truth 34:03 as they know it at least and you could compare it or to a certain degree you are automating 34:13 the Amazon Mechanical Turk away. Yeah, it's sort of, yeah right, so Mechanical Turk is a great 34:20 example because the scope of this project is just things that are easily locatable and then 34:26 simple choices. So the only thing that someone can do is like tell the truth or lie and so if 34:32 they're going to lie, it's deliberate and if it's going to be deliberate, they're going to have to 34:36 lie about lots of things because they're either going to, either it's just going to fail outright 34:41 because they don't own enough shares of the corporation or the corporation's market cap 34:47 will explode because the corporation will have kind of deceived everyone and betrayed its 34:52 customers and lost everything. So they have to make up for what they paid to buy in or the third 34:59 threat is that they change this reality so much that there's like a waiting period and sort of 35:08 like a minor veto concept. They just change it so much that miners just kind of refuse to 35:14 go with it and they just build on something that demands a redo and there's plenty of time for 35:21 people to learn that and it's very easy for miners to check because again, you voted on everything. 35:27 So if this thing is saying all kinds of nonsense stuff about who won the Super Bowl, who got 35:33 elected, what prices are backwards from what they are in financial markets, this whole stuff is 35:39 backwards and it's going to be pretty easy for miners to tell and it will only take like 35:47 one phone conversation for 15 minutes for them to decide sometime during like a week. 35:54 You have these tremendous threats that on the high end and then I build in more threats at the 36:01 medium end and then I build in lots of threats at the shallow end, which encourages all the 36:07 actual work to be done there by these people who vote and the voting corporation collects 36:13 trading fees as a result and they get money and this thing has a market capitalization 36:23 and the market capitalization is what you have to pay in order to get voting ability or voting 36:35 weight and so that prevents civil attacks, et cetera, exit scams because you don't want to 36:44 exit scam now, you can just sell your shares. If you've been doing great, now you can just sell. 36:50 If you added a lot of value and built up a lot of reputation, you can just sell it. 36:55 But it's much better to read, it's not really the kind of thing that can be explained 37:00 in a few minutes. Could you compare it for example with, 37:07 I read the comparison with when there is a crime, the police just starts questioning 37:18 bystanders and of course they can all lie but because it's way more difficult to lie 37:27 organized, to say it like this. Absolutely, coordination, yes. 37:34 Yeah, you're completely correct. So the whole point is that… 37:40 Everyone already knows what the truth is for free. 37:43 Yeah, it's easier to tell the truth, it's easier to tell, 37:48 coordinate, yeah. That's the principle. 37:54 It takes less coordination to tell the truth than to lie. 37:58 Because you can already coordinate with reality because you just saw it. 38:08 And could you also compare it to that, I mean the idea behind Bitcoin mining and behind… 38:17 Absolutely, yes. 38:19 Double spending is that Bitcoin in itself strictly speaking is not, 38:26 you know, the transactions that end up in the blockchain don't necessarily, 38:34 they are not necessarily a complete true resemblance of all the transactions but it's just 38:42 a real, it's just easier to, sorry, in the end Bitcoin is based on the idea that 39:00 he who shouts louder than others is more right. I mean that sounds a little bit not nice. 39:06 It's, you know, I think what you're getting at is that the heaviest chain rule, 39:12 that's reality, it's known to everyone. Everyone can add up all the different possible chains 39:17 and they can see which one has the highest number of points, the highest amount of total work. 39:23 And so that's exactly how Bitcoin works. And so everyone knows, so someone might say 39:30 you have this incentive, okay, let's move on to this other chain because we'll double spend 39:35 and we'll make a lot of money. But in both Hivemind and in Bitcoin, you can't double work, 39:46 right, you only own a certain percentage. The corporation has these shares and they add up to 39:51 100% of the voting power and so if you allocate your voting power to one thing, you can't allocate 39:56 it to another thing and you will suffer financially if you aren't with the consensus and that's 40:02 exactly how mining works because if you mine on top of the wrong chain, no one will accept 40:09 your coins and you spend a lot of mining power on nothing. So it is very similar in that way. 40:16 Okay, and I was also wondering, are you known with the Liquid Democracy Project? 40:24 I'm actually not but I have some ideas. So I have a strong feeling that my fate in the future 40:30 is going to be related to something like, I have kind of like a second kind of idea past this 40:42 because part of this is that you'd want to vote, what you'd like to do is… 40:48 Delegate a vote. 40:50 Yeah, what you would like to do is you'd want to have individual citizens vote for a candidate 40:55 based on how likely that candidate is to achieve some goal. But usually the goal would be something 41:01 like low unemployment or high GDP or something else, you know, economic growth or something. 41:08 And those things, it doesn't matter, you know, if those things are measured by the government 41:14 and provided centrally, it's kind of not going to work. So I have a strong feeling that I'll be 41:24 involved in another kind of project later, which is about more like a grassroots kind of 41:31 making sure that voting is transparent, making sure that data is transparent and other kind of 41:38 things like that. So, but I'm kind of putting that off a little bit. 41:43 I'm missing, to be honest, I'm missing your point about the GDP stuff. But the 41:54 what I meant is, what is interesting about it is that 42:03 they, with liquid democracy, in the beginning it was about, 42:12 let's say, automizing the whole election process. 42:16 But then I heard about that you could also say, for example, I could say 42:25 that Janusz can vote for me if I, for whatever reason, don't want to vote. I can say Janusz 42:33 knows a lot about whatever. And so I can delegate my voting power to some other people. And I 42:41 understood that liquid democracy also tries to, they try to. 42:50 And so does this in a way, because it delegates your thinking in a way. It helps you out, 42:55 it helps you. You don't have to do a lot of this stuff. You don't have to do a lot of this 43:00 thinking yourself. You can trust the thinking done by the market because you know that anyone 43:05 who's trying to manipulate it might have other experts right at their throat undoing that. 43:12 And so it's much, much scarier to try. And it's very easy to just go on television news and just 43:19 say, you think this or you think that. That's easy. It doesn't cost you anything when you end 43:24 up being wrong. But with something like a prediction market, it costs you big if you are 43:30 wrong and other people want your money. That money goes to them if they can prove that you 43:36 were wrong much earlier before you cast your vote, before any of this happens. So that is, 43:42 so that's sort of a similarity. Yeah, it's a complicated issue. But yeah, so I think right 43:49 now one thing as we discussed, voting doesn't really make a difference. So it doesn't really 43:54 matter. But once, if a project like this makes it so that voting does make a difference, 44:01 then you know, then we'll see like really like then I think the actual, you know, 44:07 people will lose votes and they'll forge votes, right. Then it will actually matter 44:12 a little bit more. And so we have to kind of, we have to keep a close eye on all the different 44:17 parts of the process is what I was saying to make sure that the weakest link is always 44:23 a pretty strong one. The reason I'm asking is because I read something like, 44:31 that I don't remember exactly, but that I mean, if you're really wins or loses, 44:40 that's a digital choice. It's yes or no. But you, I also read something on your site about 44:47 that you could, let's say, you could vote on different, let's say, sub-choices. 44:58 Yes. Which can make up a bigger choice. And that's, and what I found interesting about 45:04 liquid democracy is that they also have something like that, that you, that they, 45:09 I mean, the government, that me as a citizen, I don't vote how much trees will end up in my 45:17 streets, but that I can say, I like a green street. And that's, you know, that the decision 45:24 tends to understand what a green street means or something, you know, but that's why, 45:30 why, that's the resemblance I saw, I read with truth. 45:41 I agree, yes. I think there is, I think there is some. I mean, it's going to be really hard, 45:46 liquid democracy, right? If you're going to be changing the way people vote, that you're going 45:54 to have to go through the actual political process in order to make that change, which is going to 45:59 be almost impossible, I think. But it's, it's certainly a good idea to have lots of people 46:07 thinking about these different ideas, and like I was saying, I think there'll probably be some 46:10 changes once it's easier for the public to actually cast an informed vote, and so then it might be 46:17 nice to have. But I don't think, I mean, it's going to be very difficult to get someone to, 46:22 like, amend the constitution to allow people to delegate their votes to other people that 46:28 I don't expect that to happen. 46:32 I was wondering a bit differently, I'm not sure if it's, 46:36 because all the decisions are basically recorded, so you could say that if you record them for 46:42 eternity, you have a sort of like a history book of facts, or sort of like a Wikipedia of facts, 46:48 or like, yeah, I don't know why you want to call it. 46:51 Yeah, all the prices, assuming that those don't, that those that, which don't take place in like 46:57 some kind of payment channel or something off-chain. But yeah, even though the prices 47:01 are recorded, so you have an interesting kind of book, not a record of what happened, but also 47:07 what, when people thought that something happened. One very interesting thing is that Barack Obama, 47:12 or the Democratic candidate's victory in the year, the 2008 election in the United States, 47:20 the Democratic party, the left's blue party, that was trading on intrade above 50% for, 47:28 I think, like a year and a half before the election. So it was suspected or known that 47:35 the Democrat would win, and it was over 60% for much of that time as well, so it was really 47:41 suspect. People, somehow people really knew that, you know. And so that goes to an interesting 47:47 question of what drives the voters, what drives the voters to cast a vote for whatever. I mean, 47:54 is it just, do they decide early on, and then, you know, maybe they decide, if there are four-year 48:03 terms, four years in between each election, maybe they really decide like halfway through, 48:08 and by the time all the campaign ads come out, or whatever, you know, that most people have 48:13 kind of just made up their mind that they're not happy, or that they are happy, and that they're 48:17 going to stick with whatever party, or whatever they're going to do. But one thing, though, 48:22 is that the negative ads are to manipulate voter turnout primarily, they're not about, 48:28 but they don't seem, but that still wouldn't matter, right, because if something is over 60%, 48:33 I mean, that's pointing to a likelihood that this thing will happen. And if it happens, 48:39 and if that likelihood happens way earlier, like way before all this ad spending, it's kind of 48:43 unknown, like what effect, if any. What we'd really like to get away from, right, is people 48:49 attempting to manipulate who you vote for at all, through a debate, through an ad, through anything. 48:56 Like, what we just want is we just want whoever the best guy is for the job. We just want to be 49:02 able to find that guy. We don't really care about our guy or our girl. Although I'm afraid 49:10 it does give smart people more insight into what a good or a bad strategy is, and next time they 49:17 will find a better strategy. Yeah, maybe, right, so right, of course, this would make it more easy 49:21 for them to manipulate. Yeah, that's an interesting concern. Yeah, one would hope, that's completely 49:28 right, but I would hope that the arms race would terminate, ultimately, and people, they would sit 49:33 down on day one of the planning, right, and they'd say, we need to get this guy elected. And they 49:38 need to say, what economic strategy would actually work, you know, like, what would actually work 49:46 so that when the traders ultimately start attacking this guy, you know, they start betting on him and 49:52 good economy overlap, that they bet that our candidate, candidate X, you know, that we want 50:01 to win, they'll bet that he will be great or he or she will be great for unemployment or something. 50:06 So they'll put together a plan that actually will. 50:10 Decrease unemployment, which is exactly what we want. 50:13 The right policy is worse. 50:15 Exactly, if both candidates are doing that, we don't really care which one wins. 50:19 Yeah, exactly. The right policy is sort of the side effect of… 50:22 Exactly, right. That's part of the arms race, where one candidate says, well, screw you, I'm going to go back to the drawing board and think of a really great idea for the country that really improves everyone's, you know, 50:37 will really improve everyone's welfare, no matter how weird it sounds or whatever, you know, because I want these numbers to move. So that's kind of a hope, obviously. 50:49 Yeah. 50:51 That would be much better. 50:52 Definitely nice, yeah. 50:55 And, yeah, another one. 51:02 Assuming that there's at least a bit of, like, self-fulfilling prophecy going on with voting for politicians and stuff, then you would think that, like, the Hillary campaign would buy, like, a lot of the Hillary wins bets. 51:19 So they put in, like, a million dollars or whatever. It will obviously influence the price, but will the price go back to, like, the real price? 51:30 Yeah, not only am I not concerned about that, I'm almost counting on it in a way. 51:35 Subsidizing, yeah. 51:37 The money, yeah, they've subsidized the market in a sense. So if they put a million dollars in, now people think, if someone knows that, so this goes back to the meta-knowledge point I tried to raise earlier, where people think, hey, wait a minute, this price just moved kind of basically for no reason. 51:55 I mean, it's not like anything relevant happened. I don't think anything relevant happened. So I wonder why is the price up? 52:01 And then they think, well, maybe Hillary Clinton just dumped a bunch of money. Hillary Clinton's campaign just dumped a bunch of money in there. 52:07 And so this would encourage people to kind of investigate and research what it is. 52:14 Basically, they would research at the conclusion of this arms race, they would be researching the factors that lead to how likely it is that Hillary Clinton is elected. 52:27 So they'd be looking at the actual real likelihood, and that's exactly what you want them to look at. 52:33 But there are lots of reasons why I'm not really worried about that. 52:37 One is that if the Hillary Clinton campaign is doing this, there will be people, unpaid interns or whatever, people who don't really care, janitor or whatever. 52:45 There will be people who kind of find out about it, and they'll know that, hey, wait a minute, this is all fake. 52:51 I should be picking up a couple of these cheap shares on the off chance that this plan fails. 52:57 And now these really cheap shares that will be worth a dollar, I can get a huge return this way. 53:03 And there will be lots of people like that. 53:06 The sheep attract the wolves, sort of saying, in finance. 53:11 And so there are these people around and they can trade for fun or trade to do whatever. 53:17 But they will be killed by the wolves. 53:22 The only question there is, is the market going to be liquid enough? 53:26 Because there's a fixed amount of shares, isn't there? 53:29 No, that's not the case. 53:31 But the shares are issued by the rule, and so that's a very interesting process. 53:36 Of course, there are a fixed amount, but it's some giant issue. 53:43 But you're all right that there's a liquidity. 53:46 There's always a question of liquidity everywhere. 53:50 And so people may spend money and move the price in an annoying way. 53:57 And people just think there's not enough money sitting in this market for me to bother wanting to correct it. 54:02 That's why it would be phenomenal if the Hillary Clinton campaign would dump a million dollars in the market. 54:08 That would be very cool because lots of people would be betting on no just to buy these shares that are worth near zero. 54:17 And it's certainly not a foregone conclusion that zero is certainly too low. 54:25 So anyone with a finance mind, it's just your basics of finance, right? 54:31 Maybe if there are 100 prediction markets and they're all manipulated so that the price is pushed to 100%, 0%. 54:39 Then all you have to do is you take $1 and you just split it in all the markets. 54:44 And you just buy a little bit of the 0% and all of them. 54:47 And you end up with tons of shares because the price is basically zero or near zero. 54:52 And you end up with tons of shares, and there's no way that all of them were really zero because they're all manipulated. 54:58 And so there would be lots of people with a lot of money. 55:01 But there needs to be enough shares. 55:04 Liquidity is unfortunate, yes. 55:08 You do need people to disagree and for them to fight it out in the market with their money to build a more liquid marketplace. 55:18 So one thing that I allow, one thing that I built in is that the people who create, they list the decisions and they list these markets. 55:28 They create them. They're sort of like entrepreneurs and they want a lot of trading in the market. 55:33 So they'll only create an event if they think that there will be trading in it. 55:37 And they will get rewarded if they are right and punished if they are wrong. 55:43 So they pay like a fixed amount and they get a percentage of – they get a cut of the trading as a result. 55:49 And one thing that they can do to encourage to kind of kickstart this thing is not only can they just buy and sell as a trader themselves. 55:58 But they can do this kind of operation within the market scoring rule that makes it more liquid, the market more liquid on all sides. 56:07 So I would hope that they would do that. 56:09 But of course that costs money and that's money that they won't get back. 56:12 That's part of their investment in the market. 56:15 So I don't know exactly how that will play out. 56:17 But I've tried to give people the tools so that if there is any overlap, preference overlap, then everyone can take advantage of it. 56:25 But Paul, you mean that it simply is not interesting. 56:33 The Truthcoin needs disagreements because things where everybody agrees about, it just doesn't make sense to make a statement out of it. 56:46 Right. 56:48 Okay. 56:50 Yeah, because there wouldn't really be a lot of trading. 56:54 So you'd want something where – you'd want to have a case where two people disagreed publicly and you could create the market. 57:01 And you could challenge both of them to put up some money. 57:04 And then maybe you would succeed in getting one of them to back down and you'd resolve the disagreement. 57:11 But you wouldn't really get a lot of money that way. 57:14 So that's kind of an annoying little thing. 57:18 See, what you really want is two people who are really, really committed to their position. 57:25 So you want the big disagreements in the world. 57:28 So you want to solve the biggest problems that people really, really disagree. 57:34 So for example, Yanis thinks that Jeff Bezos will be the first one at Mars. 57:42 And I think Elon Musk will be the one. 57:45 That could be. 57:47 That could very easily be. 57:49 That's kind of personal. 57:51 But yeah, you could see people getting excited about that, you know, because it's Mars and it's Elon Musk. 57:56 And they're both, I mean… 57:58 They're both really serious about it, yeah. 57:59 Yeah, but could it also be that, just for example, that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos agree on a prediction? 58:12 Or agree that they kind of have a duel, in the sense that they put out a prediction. 58:21 And that, for example, I mean, could they themselves somehow profit from a prediction? 58:30 In the sense that, let's say that Jeff and Elon on Twitter agree that the one who wins the prediction gets some reward or something. 58:40 Which makes it even more easier to get to Mars or whatever. 58:43 I mean, because they get more money or whatever. 58:46 Is that… 58:48 Sure, you could say, someone could say a complicated thing like, conditional on them winning this grant money, will they make it to Mars? 58:59 And they can bet in the prediction market that if they get the grant money, they'll make it to Mars. 59:05 And then they can show people, hey, you should give us this grant money because look at how much more likely we are to make it to Mars. 59:10 Or you should back us, our ideas better. 59:12 Or the individual engineers working for Elon Musk or whatever. 59:17 Musk could set up a prediction market and say, okay, here's strategy number one, here's strategy number two and here's strategy number three. 59:25 Each of them might take us to Mars or might end in failure. 59:29 And which of the three is most likely to actually succeed and then people could bet there within the company. 59:35 You wouldn't necessarily need a blockchain for that because a private company could just do it with their own database or something. 59:44 But that's a cool prediction market thing is that a lot of times, to quote Robin Hanson, when you ask people a question, 59:53 most of the time they tell you what they think you want to hear or what they want – they tell you some kind of thing that – they tell you what they want to be heard as having said. 1:00:09 It's for some political reason. 1:00:11 So when you ask people a question, they usually tell you what you want to know and not what they really know. 1:00:17 So we have this total loss of great information immediately for everyone, which is not helpful. 1:00:26 Yeah, because I was also wondering, I mean, so for example, as being the subject of the statement is not a problem for putting out a statement in this case. 1:00:38 But I mean, now, as we've been talking about it now, it would be about clear general statements. 1:00:52 But could you also, to a certain degree, outsource – yeah, your brain is a big word – but I mean, could you, let's say, could you be running a company based on predictions? 1:01:11 Yeah, people make decisions of all kinds, including business decisions, based on stock market data and price of commodities. 1:01:24 If you're going to be – if you're like a – maybe you remodel homes, you know, you build homes, you build houses. 1:01:33 You would need to know like the price of things, like the price of copper, you know, copper futures or spot prices or whatever. 1:01:41 You know, if you're going to put in copper pipes or plastic pipes or whatever. 1:01:45 So people use market data. 1:01:48 They kind of free ride, really. 1:01:50 They free ride on the market data. 1:01:52 They use it, even if they're not directly participating. 1:01:55 And yeah, people who are going to start a business use all kinds of important data to indicate whether or not they have enough sales to justify expanding or starting a new business. 1:02:06 So yeah, you could easily use this information for any reason. 1:02:11 I also mean that – because now it is – like we've been talking about it now, it's about very general statements, very general. 1:02:23 But can you all – I mean, it would be nice if you could really, you know, make – if you could somehow outsource your brain capacity. 1:02:38 That's basically what you're doing by betting, I guess. 1:02:42 Sorry? 1:02:44 Yeah, that's kind of what we're doing. 1:02:46 That's what you're already doing by betting. 1:02:48 Yeah, but I just want to say like this. 1:02:51 Could you write a program, a decentralized autonomous organization or whatever, and say that, you know, for certain degrees the program wants to know outside real world decisions. 1:03:04 Or somehow, you know, sometimes there have to be made decisions. 1:03:09 And that you could say, I use the prediction markets as the oracle for those decisions. 1:03:17 I don't know about that because – maybe, I don't know. 1:03:22 It's not really clear because the oracles only be listed if people think that there will be trading fees. 1:03:28 So I don't know. 1:03:31 But yeah, you could use this process that I built in just a direct way. 1:03:36 And you could just say – this is called – sometimes it's called like eigen trust or something with the vote cross-referencing thing. 1:03:44 And you could just have that happen like a discrete time and not have this ongoing kind of corporation thing. 1:03:50 I don't really have the most time. 1:03:52 I've got stuff to pack a little bit and then go. 1:03:54 Okay. 1:03:56 The plane. 1:03:58 Do you guys have any other great questions? 1:04:01 Yeah. 1:04:04 Another thing is about your – why proof of stake isn't cheaper and isn't better than proof of work. 1:04:14 I was wondering. 1:04:16 Sorry? 1:04:18 I just said it's not. 1:04:20 So please. 1:04:22 Yeah. 1:04:24 Why proof of stake isn't cheaper and isn't better than proof of work. 1:04:29 And could you – because we were talking about the elections in America. 1:04:36 I mean could you to a certain degree compare it to – in theory elections are very sound in the sense that if everybody chooses and make up their own mind it should work. 1:04:57 But in reality of course the candidates with the most money is in the end the most likely to win the elections. 1:05:11 I mean not necessarily but it's always good to have some billions behind you. 1:05:18 Yeah. 1:05:19 So that's interesting. 1:05:20 So proof of work. 1:05:22 Yeah. 1:05:23 So what actually happens and what a lot of people apparently don't understand which I think is pretty simple. 1:05:29 But the block – each Bitcoin block releases a quantity of Bitcoins which is currently 25 plus fees which are very low. 1:05:38 Which are like 01 or something. 1:05:40 So 25.01. 1:05:42 That's released. 1:05:43 That has a value of purchasing power, you know. 1:05:47 You could say it's worth whatever $8,000 or whatever it is. 1:05:52 And you could say with $8,000 I could buy you know one hamburger a day for like I don't know 500 days or whatever it is. 1:05:59 However expensive hamburgers are. 1:06:03 So the point is there's this benefit for each block. 1:06:06 It's worth you know a year of hamburgers to you or something you know. 1:06:10 And so that is where the work – that is the source of the work. 1:06:17 That is the genesis of people working and fighting over this benefit that's created. 1:06:23 So it's the same thing in the election world. 1:06:25 Because the federal government has lots of stuff to give out, people will fight and they'll spend money and they'll do whatever it takes to achieve that resource. 1:06:36 In addition to any benefit they get, any warm fuzzy feelings they get by running the country or trying to make the world a better place or just their lust for power or whatever it is. 1:06:48 But in addition to that, if there are these kickbacks, you know these rewards that you can give out to people as the king. 1:06:59 Everyone's going to want to be the king and they're going to fight over it. 1:07:01 The more powerful the king is, the more brutal the competition will be over who is the next leader. 1:07:12 So that's kind of a similarity there I think. 1:07:15 Kind of a nice analogy actually. 1:07:18 Yeah, because the problem is that I really like the stuff but that's the stuff which is not the core for your project. 1:07:38 But I read about your proof of stake and the other things about Augur. 1:07:43 I mean it was really for me enlightening to say it like this. 1:07:49 Thank you, glad you enjoyed it. 1:07:52 But I don't want to mess too much with your time. 1:07:59 Yeah, maybe we can continue this conversation because I'll be at the airport for a while and then I'll be in my Hong Kong hotel. 1:08:12 So there's plenty of opportunity to talk in the future. 1:08:17 Yeah, of course. 1:08:19 I mean if you like to, we would also like to because at least to me this is a very unexplored area. 1:08:29 And to be honest I think also to a lot of other people and listeners. 1:08:38 Just one last question. 1:08:40 What do you expect of scaling Bitcoin? 1:08:43 Yeah, great question. 1:08:44 So I have kind of a problem. 1:08:48 There's a little bit of a contradiction, isn't there? 1:08:51 On one hand it's claimed that, you know, quote, no decisions will be made at the conference, close quote. 1:09:01 And that's supposed to be this important thing to stop people's feelings from getting hurt. 1:09:06 Stopping people from feeling that they've been left out or something. 1:09:10 I don't know, I'm not totally sure. 1:09:11 You know, anonymous people can't show up as their digital identity or something. 1:09:17 So on the one hand there's that, but then I think there's a contradictory. 1:09:22 The point of a conference is to get something done. 1:09:27 And how can nothing get done with this concept of no decisions being made? 1:09:34 Yeah, the whole point is that. 1:09:36 Right, what else would we be doing there? 1:09:39 It's an implicit process. 1:09:41 Yeah, right, of course. 1:09:44 And so there's lots of grounds for criticism. 1:09:48 And also just grounds for just kind of foolishness because you're trapped, right. 1:09:52 You don't want to make a decision. 1:09:56 At the same time it would be pointless to achieve nothing at the conference. 1:10:02 So, you know, I don't know. 1:10:04 That's something that always bothered me about the mission. 1:10:08 I mean, clearly, so I think clearly the mission is sort of like an almost, 1:10:13 kind of, I don't think it's like a wink-wink, like don't decide anything, you know, 1:10:20 but secretly do. 1:10:22 I don't think that's the case, but I do think that there is this kind of vague hope 1:10:26 that it's just sort of like bring everyone in the room and hope, 1:10:29 and just kind of hope that something will happen. 1:10:33 And so the last, the Montreal conference, everyone took it very seriously 1:10:36 and I think it went great. 1:10:38 And I think there was a lot of happiness produced, but a lot of understanding. 1:10:44 And everyone got to benefit, I think, and now it's all like on YouTube 1:10:48 and people can benefit if they wish by watching those things. 1:10:53 And I hope that that will, that's what I expect to happen. 1:10:56 To answer your question, that's what I expect to happen again, 1:10:58 that there will be more happiness and there will be more benefit. 1:11:01 But there is this looming contradiction of what exactly is the point of all this. 1:11:08 And I don't, I really, I would, you know, I have a lot of ideas on Bitcoin's governance 1:11:17 and I don't know exactly what, I mean, I'm not sure what the future holds for that. 1:11:24 But this contradiction bothers me and I don't, I hope it bothers other people 1:11:28 because it doesn't really make sense, does it? 1:11:31 Yeah, but maybe you should see it like, you know, because as far as you understood, 1:11:39 people were, in the past, were shouting at each other on forums. 1:11:44 And this is a way of getting people together in one room, one big room, 1:11:50 and to listen to each other. 1:11:53 And of course there is an implicit process at the least. 1:11:57 And so, I mean, yeah. 1:12:00 Yeah, I think it will be very helpful. 1:12:03 I just, I kind of think we should just drop the, you know, 1:12:07 why is it saying that no decisions will be made? 1:12:09 I think it should just say, decide whatever you like. 1:12:13 And don't feel like you have to wait, you don't have to wait for the conference. 1:12:17 You can decide earlier or you can decide afterward. 1:12:20 I mean, what difference does it make, right? 1:12:22 I mean, it's all arbitrary anyway, there's no leader. 1:12:24 So, it's kind of like, you can make a decision, any decisions you like, 1:12:30 before the conference, and then you can make any decisions you like after, 1:12:34 but during the conference is the one time that you can't. 1:12:36 Like, what does that even mean? 1:12:38 Like, who are they even speaking for when they say no decisions will be made? 1:12:42 Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. 1:12:44 So, I mean, it was a nice attempt to make people feel good, 1:12:47 but obviously I want people to feel good. 1:12:50 I don't know what that's supposed to be. 1:12:53 That's not really anything. 1:12:55 So, I think the contradiction, only one, we can only have one, 1:12:59 and I think we should drop that. 1:13:01 That weird, that looming kind of threat, 1:13:04 that you shouldn't be able to decide anything. 1:13:07 I don't get that. 1:13:09 So, that's what I, but I think, I expect the conference will do the same. 1:13:13 It will be, there will be progress made on people, 1:13:16 there will be progress made on people understanding, 1:13:20 people making their concerns known, 1:13:23 and so that's going to be a really great thing, I think. 1:13:26 So, I look forward to it a lot, 1:13:28 and a lot of cool people will be there, and it will be an opportunity. 1:13:31 I mean, when you talk to someone online, 1:13:33 you don't really get to know them, 1:13:35 but if you just spend 10 minutes with them in a bar, 1:13:39 they will, like, kind of be your friend, 1:13:42 and there's not really a lot of friendship in the Bitcoin world, right? 1:13:46 There's not really a lot of, like, teamwork or anything. 1:13:49 It's just kind of, people just, it's part of the decentralization. 1:13:53 People just kind of show up. 1:13:55 They hear about Bitcoin, they just kind of show up from everywhere, 1:13:59 and it's nice to, because human beings don't really work that way, 1:14:05 so it's nice to return this to something where the human brain 1:14:11 will actually be able to do something productive. 1:14:13 So, I look forward to it a lot. 1:14:15 I think it will be great. 1:14:17 Do you think whatever ideas come up, 1:14:21 it should trickle down to some sort of decision sooner or later, right? 1:14:26 One would hope. 1:14:28 I mean, what if that didn't happen, right? 1:14:30 That would be the best time. 1:14:32 Yeah, that would be the best time. 1:14:34 Sort of like, you know, yeah. 1:14:36 But anyway, nice talking to you guys. 1:14:38 Thanks a lot. 1:14:40 We should definitely do this again. 1:14:42 Yeah. 1:14:44 Thanks. 1:14:46 Paul, thank you for answering our questions. 1:14:49 My pleasure. 1:14:51 And we'll hope you have a good journey. 1:14:53 Thank you. 1:14:55 And please give Corné, if you meet him, a clap on the shoulder, 1:15:00 if I say it right. 1:15:02 Yeah. 1:15:04 So, Yanis, you have anything? 1:15:06 Head on the back sometimes. 1:15:08 Yeah, yeah. 1:15:10 No, yeah. 1:15:12 Thank you very much. 1:15:14 Have a good trip there. 1:15:16 And hopefully you get to share some good ideas with all the people there. 1:15:19 Hopefully. 1:15:21 Some sort of decision later on. 1:15:23 All right. 1:15:25 Thanks, guys. 1:15:27 See you later. 1:15:29 Okay. 1:15:31 Have a good time.