0:00 You're listening to the Bitcoin Takeover podcast, the Bitcoin podcast for OGs and intermediaries. 0:07 Make sure you subscribe, leave a comment, and like this episode. 0:11 Also, read the new BTC-TKVR magazine. This episode is sponsored by WasabiWallet, 0:17 CryptoSteel, Shopinabit, and SadoDime. Thank you for listening. 1:00 I did the intro and I was muted, so let me try again. 1:18 Hello there and welcome to the Bitcoin Takeover podcast. I am Vlad, your Bitcoin Influencer's 1:23 Influencer, and I took this catchphrase from Paul Sztorc, who used to call himself your Bitcoin 1:28 Expert's Expert. And this is Paul's third appearance on the podcast. Originally, the plan 1:34 was for him to debate someone who is a critic of Drivechains and for me to moderate that debate, 1:39 but it turned out that nobody wanted to take that side. I mean, there were people who expressed 1:44 criticism, but they did not want to get on camera and have this debate. So basically, what we did 1:50 for this episode was to take some different points of view and lots of tweets, lots of posts, and a 1:56 lot of commentary that we have seen this past week. And we put that together and I'm going to 2:01 read it. Paul is going to react to it. I think overall, the purpose of this is to be a bit funny, 2:08 so we're going to have some jokes, but also to be informative because it seems like too many people 2:13 comment without even at least reading what the BIP is about. And there are lots of misconceptions 2:19 about it. So hi, Paul. Hello. Hey, thanks for having me. It was Nick Carter who said that I 2:24 was the Bitcoin expert's expert. I never said that about myself, but people then started to 2:28 repeat it, you know, and so then what could I do except let it catch on? Fair, I guess, but you 2:36 didn't push it too much because you kind of suck at marketing. Could have pushed it back against it 2:40 and insisted that I was nothing. I was no one's expert in anything. So yeah, I guess so. 2:47 All right, let's do it. Yeah, let's look at your background right now, Paul, because some people 2:52 call you a spook. Others call you... I think it's the haircut. This guy who's trying to attack 2:59 Bitcoin. And of course, you have a background in institutions that, of course, are enemies of 3:04 Bitcoin, right? It's interesting if you put it that way. Oh, NBC Universal. Yeah, yeah. So let 3:11 me share my screen right now. You worked in biostatistics. Ah, that's a certification thing 3:20 at once. Weatherhead School of Management. You have an MBA and an MSM in strategic management, 3:27 operations research, supply chain management. And you have a bachelor's in economics, 3:32 psychology, mathematics and music. That's right. How does that work? 3:38 Well, I came in with a lot of AP credit, and so I was able to get a good head start in econ. I 3:44 added a second major, and then I added two minors. And then I graduated. I graduated in 3:51 three years and stayed on to do a five-year master's degree, but that was too easy. So I 3:55 added a second master's degree, the master's of science and scientific management. That's 4:01 like a branch of applied math, operations research. It's like optimization and things like that. 4:08 Okay. So you worked to calculate the economic cost of CO2 emissions. 4:13 Yeah, I know. That's funny. Yes, I sure did. Yeah. That was used by the White House, 4:17 that model to whatever, as far as I know. Maybe not, but that's what I heard. 4:22 So of course, if you take into account the popular opinion among Bitcoiners on Twitter, 4:28 global warming is a scam, and therefore you worked on a scam, and you're pushing the 4:32 grift to Bitcoin right now, right? Yeah, I guess so. I got to hand it to Dr. Nordhaus, 4:39 though. He was always in favor of a carbon tax or a market-based... He would get it from both sides. 4:46 He would go to a big event, and they'd say, we have Dr. Bill Nordhaus here. And then he would 4:53 just be like, we need a market-based solution to climate change. And everyone would just be like, 4:57 furious, furious with him. That's my reading of the situation. 5:02 And I think I have even more stuff that's compromising. You worked as a statistician, 5:08 not as an economist for Block, which as far as I know, is Jeff Garzik's company. 5:13 That's true. 5:14 And Jeff Garzik coded SegWit2x, so I see a pattern here. 5:18 He did, yes. 5:20 It was kind of a shitty code implementation, if you ask me. But maybe it was on purpose, 5:26 maybe it was not, I don't know. 5:28 Maybe it was, I don't know either. 5:31 Director of research, and now you're self-employed. You're also CEO of LayerTwo Labs. 5:39 And I took a look at LayerTwo Labs, right? This is LayerTwo Labs. 5:43 You have a summary, you're based in the Cayman Islands. You know who else comes from an island? 5:49 It's news to me. Now, who? 5:52 You know, the island, Epstein Island, Cayman Islands, of course. 5:57 I'm not aware of ever having been to any Cayman Islands or Georgia. 6:00 This Pook stuff always comes from islands. 6:03 And when you look at people, you see that there's nobody here. 6:07 But let me click on this to see what happens, to see what comes up. 6:16 Okay. 6:17 Yeah. 6:18 So, this is a question that I got a lot and fled it. 6:24 Is Paul willing to disclose who participated in LayerTwo Labs $3 million venture funding round? 6:31 I know, but, you know, because that is, of course, not anyone's business. 6:36 But maybe I'll ask them if they want to disclose themselves. 6:40 But they're all Bitcoin, none of them, there is no venture funding. 6:44 So, I don't know, maybe normal people don't know the difference. 6:48 Venture funds like a specific way of raising money. 6:52 But this was just OG Bitcoiners that have a lot of... 6:56 They just have a lot of money. 6:57 So, they're not VCs. 7:00 Is Roger part of the funding? 7:03 Well, you know, since you bring up that video, I feel compelled to tell the truth, which is no. 7:07 But now I also feel like if I say no, then I'm just by process of elimination, 7:12 eventually giving away the list. 7:15 So, I feel like that's not... 7:16 But Roger was not an investor in LayerTwo Labs. 7:20 You said was not, as in he could be right now. 7:24 He was not and he still is not. 7:26 I honestly don't really know why he isn't. 7:28 But of course, as I think we all know, he did start to diversify substantially into altcoins. 7:36 And in particular, he went big into Bitcoin Cash. 7:39 So, I don't know, I have no idea if this is the case or not. 7:42 But I would guess that he would not necessarily want BTC to defeat Bitcoin Cash at this point. 7:51 So, the idea of Bitcoin gaining the ability to copy any altcoin, including Bitcoin Cash, 7:56 that probably would... 7:58 He might think of that as eating his lunch or what have you. 8:02 So, my guess is that may even be his worst nightmare. 8:05 I don't know. 8:06 Or maybe he just wants Bitcoin to do well. 8:08 So, he would actually like it. 8:10 But he did not. 8:12 He did not. 8:15 But yes, of course, that's mostly no one's business, obviously. 8:20 You know, this is a very personal note right now, and it's live. 8:23 But when I first interviewed you two years ago, you were much more pessimistic. 8:27 And you were like, yeah, so this is the best solution. 8:30 But hopefully, someone will figure this out in my lifetime. 8:33 And you're so, I guess... 8:35 Pessimistic. 8:37 About what? 8:38 The odds of BIP300 and prediction markets and stuff. 8:42 Oh, well... 8:47 You know, what's actually happened is I think I didn't realize that... 8:51 I thought that everything else in Bitcoin was going well. 8:54 But then I looked more into what everyone else was doing, and it really sucks. 8:58 So, I have kind of like the best thing by far is my... 9:02 Like, I didn't think like, you know... 9:03 So, for example, you know, just like this is all public knowledge. 9:07 But people started to this trend. 9:10 I did this post about lightning limitations like more than a year ago. 9:15 And then people started doing like lightning limitations videos 9:18 with like all the elite people. 9:20 And then at TabConf last year, 9:24 Matt Corral gave a talk that was just called like lightning is broken or whatever. 9:29 And it's just like... 9:30 So, I don't know, like that's just giving you a flavor of... 9:34 So, I was like, oh, actually, I should have probably... 9:39 I should probably do a little more. 9:43 Yeah, I know you did lots of Twitter spaces and you tried to have debates. 9:47 But it seemed like every time you were doing it... 9:49 And I think at one point I joined to listen. 9:52 And I think it was too much of an echo chamber in the sense that you had your advocates. 9:57 You had people who already know what this is about. 9:59 But you didn't have many critics. 10:01 And it seemed like everyone who wanted to debate 10:05 was finding excuses not to, for some reason. 10:08 Well, we always... 10:09 It was also hard for me to find someone. 10:11 So, I took a week. 10:12 This was supposed to happen sooner. 10:14 But it took a week for me to try to find another... 10:18 Well, that's because there actually are no counter arguments to BIP300. 10:21 Well, there are. 10:22 There's a guy who actually told me that miners can steal for the simple reason 10:28 that the amount of Bitcoin that's put into the sidechain 10:31 is higher than the amount of fees that the miners are going to be collecting. 10:35 And there's also a very good tweet by Zentoshi. 10:39 And he said something along the lines of 10:41 what happens if governments pressure mining pools to act in a certain way. 10:47 And that has to do more with mining centralization 10:49 than it has to do with Drivechains per se. 10:52 Yeah, it has to do with users of the feature. 10:56 So, I think the idea when we evaluate a feature is 11:00 does the feature harm anyone who's not using it? 11:03 So, does multi-sig harm you if you don't use it? 11:07 And if the answer to that question is no, then the feature should be allowed. 11:13 So, I think that's the criterion. 11:17 And the question of whether or not the fees 11:23 will offset the market cap of the sidechain, 11:25 that is basically just the long-run version of Bitcoin's security model. 11:33 That's Zentoshi's idea that eventually the fees will be so juicy 11:37 that they will move block progression forward 11:42 no matter what the value of the Bitcoin is or the transaction throughput is. 11:48 So, if that doesn't work, then we might as well learn about that now. 11:53 That may not work. 11:54 If that doesn't work, then the Drivechain idea should be discarded. 11:58 But you see that... 11:59 Well, another thing you can see is that is a rough math to have to do. 12:04 Like, will miners have an incentive to steal or protect the chain? 12:08 But what is... 12:11 Let's say you're... 12:12 What's the other option? 12:13 Like, someone like Roger Ver, their other option was to go all in on Bitcoin Cash, 12:18 lose a huge amount of money and achieve nothing and not get... 12:22 I mean, maybe they get... 12:23 They have large blocks on their own network, 12:25 but the altcoining is also a great way to get all of your money destroyed. 12:33 So, what is the alternative? 12:35 It may be something bad, 12:37 but really it's a huge improvement over the status quo. 12:42 And again, it is the long-run Bitcoin security model. 12:45 So, if you think that this is bad, then just wait. 12:47 You know, just wait until the subsidy continues to half. 12:50 That is what we're looking at in Bitcoin. 12:53 Yeah, I think that's a useful debate to be had. 12:58 And also something that you said on Twitter. 13:01 I mean, you are surprisingly joyful and in a good mood 13:05 as compared to how you seem when you tweet, 13:08 when you seem grumpy and frustrated and you're trying to get back at trolls. 13:12 This is your degree of psychology at play right now. 13:15 The medium of text, I think, does make it confusing sometimes for people 13:20 if... to read the mood. 13:23 I think, well, certainly it is annoying to be misunderstood. 13:30 But when you get something like, 13:32 Drivechain is for adding shit coins to Bitcoin. 13:35 Like, I know that eventually all these other people 13:39 will eventually come out and say, 13:40 this is not, you know, this is not accurate. 13:43 This is not a smart thing to say, as they are doing now. 13:48 You know what I mean? 13:49 Like, you have people coming out and saying that this is, 13:51 you know, these aren't real criticisms. 13:53 So it may take a little while. 13:55 The, what is it? 13:56 I think Mark Twain or someone said, 13:58 like, a lie can travel halfway around the world 14:00 before the truth is finished putting on its shoes. 14:04 But you understand what I'm saying. 14:06 Like, that critique is horrendous. 14:09 You notice that none of the people who, you know, 14:12 take the idea seriously ever said anything like that. 14:15 Because they know it would disqualify just about everything. 14:18 You know, you can do, you can issue new tokens on liquid. 14:22 You can issue new tokens on lightning. 14:23 That's what tarot is. 14:24 You know, you have RGB, you have ordinals. 14:27 So, so everyone knows that that's not, it's not true. 14:31 So all those people are doing is digging themselves 14:33 into a huge hole. 14:34 I mean, I have to hope that people are not gonna screenshot 14:37 these tweets and it'll be like humiliating forever 14:40 to have a critique that is so wrong. 14:44 So it's not really that, 14:46 that type of thing doesn't really bother me so much. 14:50 I did, for the record, make a collection of tweets 14:53 and I put them in a bookmark folder. 14:56 I'm not sure if they're called tweets or posts 14:58 or X's or whatever. 15:01 The point right now is that I'm going to read these to you 15:05 and I'm going to put them on the screen. 15:07 But before I do that, I think it's useful 15:09 for the handful of newbies who might be listening to this 15:13 to explain what Drivechains are 15:15 and how sidechains are different 15:18 or why they are necessary as compared to Lightning 15:21 because Lightning has been presented 15:23 as this ultimate scaling layer 15:25 that's going to do everything. 15:28 And obviously there are some trade-offs 15:30 and limitations there. 15:31 So I'll let you talk. 15:33 And as you talk, I'm gonna look for these tweets 15:35 and put them on the screen. 15:38 Okay. 15:40 What Drivechain is, is a technique 15:43 for enabling sidechains. 15:44 So it's a two-way peg between, 15:47 you have Bitcoin Core, 15:48 which is the layer one that we all like, 15:51 and you could send your coins 15:53 to a different piece of software. 15:55 So you can take something 15:56 that's like Zcash, the software, 15:59 cut the altcoin out, 16:02 remove the altcoin, 16:04 and then make it so it starts with no coins. 16:05 You send Bitcoin over there and you use the feature 16:07 and then you can send the coin back. 16:09 So it is an L2, such as the Lightning Network, 16:12 but instead of a bilateral channel 16:14 or instead of a channel plus HTLC's network, 16:17 the network is its own blockchain. 16:21 So it's like the Zcash software blockchain. 16:25 It would be the layer two. 16:27 And this is important. 16:28 This is sometimes called the Holy Grail of Bitcoin 16:30 because it not only gives us access 16:33 to every single feature 16:35 that we could possibly want, 16:37 but also the features are all kind of opt-in. 16:39 You only get the features that you want. 16:41 So Roger, if you wanted large blocks, 16:43 but other people did not. 16:44 So the trick, the Holy Grail part 16:48 is that some people get a feature and others don't. 16:52 And one thing I never anticipated 16:55 was how confusing that would be for people. 16:57 People really just don't wrap their heads around that. 17:00 It's a relatively simple idea, 17:02 but they really are convinced 17:04 that if Drivechain allows a large block sidechain, 17:07 then it is a block size increase 17:10 or I get it from the other side 17:14 where large blockers will say, 17:16 why do I have to settle for being on the L2? 17:20 Why can't I have large blocks on L1? 17:21 Like people don't seem to get this basic point, 17:23 but the more people disagree, 17:25 the more it will prove that BIP300 is actually a good idea. 17:28 So ironically, the more people fight BIP300, 17:30 the more they demonstrate the problem that it solves. 17:34 Okay, I found the tweets. 17:36 We can start talking about them, 17:38 but let me play an ad first and foremost, 17:40 because I also need to eat. 17:43 So one minute and we'll be back. 17:47 Wasabi wallet is unfairly private. 17:50 It's the most advanced and most used Bitcoin privacy wallet 17:54 with half a million downloads 17:55 across Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, 17:58 as well as thousands of fresh new Bitcoins 18:00 getting mixed every month. 18:02 Wasabi makes use of the new generation Wabi-Sabi engine 18:05 to create mega coin joins, 18:08 thus mixing your Bitcoins 18:09 with those of hundreds of other users. 18:12 For amounts lower than 0.01 BTC and remixes, 18:16 you pay no coordination fee. 18:18 Even if you don't use coin joins, 18:20 Wasabi wallet has a native Tor integration 18:23 and downloads block filters 18:25 to help you keep your network level 18:27 and public key privacy. 18:29 Download Wasabi wallet, 18:31 Download Wasabi wallet for free today 18:33 at wasabiwallet.io 18:35 and experience the future of Bitcoin privacy. 18:42 Do you like the pump at Lumdart girls? 18:47 You're muted. 18:48 I was going to say that the, 18:51 you know, your ad game and intro game 18:55 has been improving, you know. 18:58 Yeah, yeah. 18:59 So I actually paid these actresses 19:01 to read out my text, 19:03 but I have been accused of promoting prostitution. 19:06 I was like, what? 19:08 And then I said, you know, 19:09 I apologize for not getting real prostitutes, you know. 19:12 Next time I should just like Bitcoin uncensored. 19:17 But let's talk about, 19:19 you know, this is like the main event. 19:21 This is why we got here. 19:22 This is the purpose of this. 19:24 All right, let's do it. 19:26 And I'm going to share my screen 19:28 on this specific window 19:30 where I saved some of the most glorious tweets in existence. 19:34 So let's start with this one by John Carvalho. 19:37 Just for the record, he is a friend of mine. 19:39 I look up to him. 19:40 When he was here in Romania, 19:42 we used to hang out and... 19:55 Well, so I mean, I don't know. 19:58 Again, like I get these weird comments 20:00 and I don't know like, you know, 20:02 are they, is it like rhetorical question or what? 20:06 It's like the two-way peg, 20:08 it's kind of like Mystique, the X-Men, you know. 20:11 She could turn into any person, you know. 20:13 So Bitcoin could turn into any person. 20:15 So now there's no need. 20:16 Or these like, I use that image 20:20 where they say 20 years later 20:22 and all these things fit in your pocket 20:24 and the guy holds up a cell phone. 20:27 Behind him, there's like a boom box, 20:28 there's a video camera, et cetera, you know, typewriter. 20:33 So it's kind of like, you know, 20:36 why doesn't anyone sell digital cameras anymore? 20:40 Because they have a phone instead 20:42 and the phone has a camera. 20:44 The camera that the phone has is honestly, 20:45 it's just much nicer than most digital cameras, 20:48 standalone digital cameras anyone's ever bought. 20:50 No, I disagree with that. 20:52 And then the question is like, 20:53 what would happen to digital cameras 20:55 if they added support for touchscreens 20:58 and Wi-Fi and, you know, 5G? 21:01 Oh, they have that. 21:03 Yeah. 21:05 It's part of the evolution. 21:07 But you know that like many more people own, 21:10 cell phones have become mainstream part 21:12 of human culture and experience, 21:14 but merely a digital camera 21:17 or a digital camera that also has Wi-Fi has not. 21:20 So there's like one thing wins 21:24 and the others lose. 21:27 And that's why there's no contradiction. 21:29 I mean, there's no like... 21:31 I disagree with this analogy, 21:33 maybe MP3 players, 21:35 because nobody buys an MP3 player anymore. 21:37 They get their phone 21:38 and they put MP3s on their phone 21:40 and it's like a multitasking device 21:42 or a portable radio, 21:43 because you have that in your phone 21:45 and nobody buys a tiny radio anymore. 21:47 I mean, people do. 21:49 But I think it's a better analogy 21:50 because I have... 21:52 So I have to defend myself 21:53 because I have some very fancy cameras 21:55 that I use and I'm trying to not... 21:58 You do, but most people don't. 21:59 They're niche though, of course. 22:02 Most people don't really tell 22:04 the difference between a camera and a phone. 22:06 Who doesn't have a smartphone 22:08 versus who doesn't have a digital camera? 22:13 It's night and day, is it not? 22:16 I agree with this, 22:17 but at the same time, 22:18 you can't really compare the quality. 22:20 Right now, I'm doing this from an actual camera, 22:23 not a webcam. 22:25 I agree with you about that, 22:27 but that's sort of the point though, 22:28 is it has to be really, really superior 22:32 in its specialized way 22:33 to even make a sale at all. 22:35 Otherwise, it just doesn't exist. 22:38 So I don't know. 22:41 I guess what John must think, 22:42 he must think that proponents of BIP300 22:46 that when BIP300 activates, 22:49 like this magic sphere will expand 22:53 and destroy all the shit coins instantly. 22:54 That's what he must think that we think, right? 22:57 I mean, how else can you interpret this? 23:00 Well, I think it's a bit offensive 23:02 in the context that these altcoins 23:05 don't have Bitcoin's network effect. 23:08 They don't have the same adoption rate. 23:11 They don't have the same value proposition. 23:13 Smaller community, smaller, not as recognizable. 23:16 They don't even have the same security, right? 23:18 Because that's the selling point for Drivechains. 23:20 You're saying, okay, 23:22 why would you want proof of stake 23:24 to secure your contracts 23:25 when it could be this huge hash rate 23:28 that's being put together by miners? 23:31 Right. 23:33 So I don't know. 23:35 I don't know. 23:36 I mean, are people persuaded by what John says? 23:38 Is that what they think happens? 23:40 Is that if a shit coin adds 23:43 support for Drivechains, 23:45 it will immediately destroy Bitcoin? 23:47 Like that's what he thinks we think? 23:48 I don't know. 23:50 Yeah, I got to tell you 23:52 that you are the second guest 23:53 that I get on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast season 14 23:57 who gets called an attacker of Bitcoin. 24:00 And along these lines, 24:02 I have to read another tweet. 24:04 I said twet, almost twetch, 24:07 but I'm going to get canceled. 24:09 So Brian Caps Lockhart says, 24:12 okay, okay, I'll admit I was wrong. 24:13 It's an attack. 24:14 But more like, 24:15 okay, okay, I'll admit I was wrong. 24:18 It's an attack. 24:20 And this is a screenshot from a tweet of yours. 24:22 Yes. 24:23 Where you're saying miners have the fiduciary duty 24:26 to maximize transaction fee revenue 24:28 and that will lead them to MASF. 24:32 This means miner activated soft fork. 24:36 Activate a certain two bips. 24:39 So you're talking about 300 and 301, obviously. 24:42 That's right. 24:43 Yes. 24:43 And then you said you're welcome. 24:44 I'm reading out loud for the people 24:46 who will be listening to this on Spotify, 24:48 just for the record. 24:50 So basically, you said that the miners can activate BIP300 24:55 without permission from sovereign nodes. 24:58 And Brian Lockhart said that you're an attacker. 25:00 It's a 51% attack if miners do something that they want. 25:05 Well, I think there's a lot of confusion about the soft fork. 25:08 One thing is though, is there's a lot of confusion about BIP300. 25:11 It doesn't actually harm anyone if the miners activate it. 25:13 So as far as anyone knows, in fact, the miners have already activated it. 25:17 You can't even tell. 25:21 You can't even tell. 25:23 So there is no victim. 25:25 So anyone who doesn't like it just doesn't understand it. 25:28 That's the bigger picture, I think. 25:31 It is true that merely if all that happens is 51% of miners activate a soft fork, 25:39 then that is not really enough. 25:42 But that's not realistic either. 25:44 There will always be some people enforcing it, plus probably much more than 51% hash rate. 25:51 So just in practice, it will activate. 25:54 I think I have a dispute, and I was tweeting about this earlier today. 25:58 I have a disagreement with Luke Dashjr. and Adam Back, 26:02 and I think they are some of the absolute smartest people in Bitcoin. 26:06 But I have no idea what they're talking about with this 26:10 because the soft fork was invented because it was too difficult to get everyone to upgrade. 26:16 That was the whole reason Arise and Detra. 26:19 That was the whole reason it was created. 26:21 And so now there's a modern idea that says every single person must upgrade or whatever. 26:29 It's not a soft fork. It's a 51% attack. 26:32 But, I mean, that's just not true of any other soft fork that has ever activated on Bitcoin. 26:37 So it's just not true, and people learned all this stuff from other people on Twitter. 26:41 I mean, I lived through it personally. 26:43 But I think Adam and Luke are, of course, very smart, and they believe this view. 26:48 But I posted a huge thing with bullet point after bullet point about why. 26:52 I just don't think it's an accurate description of what happens. 26:58 So the sovereign nodes, the nodes don't lose any sovereignty when they are 51% attacked in this way. 27:06 They still enforce all the rules they were enforcing before. 27:09 It's as if nothing had happened. 27:11 So they don't lose any sovereignty. 27:14 It's all just a misunderstanding of what the soft fork does. 27:17 Now you've become a blackout. 27:19 Now you're back. 27:20 You disappeared and then reappeared. 27:22 Yeah, I experimented with plugging the charging cable in the camera, 27:26 and it seems like it cannot run while it's charging. 27:29 Interesting. 27:30 I don't want to get into a debate why a phone would have been any better. 27:34 I was going to say. 27:37 But is there anything you can do about your video? 27:39 Because it seems like I can see you on Jitsi, but I cannot see you on the live stream. 27:44 There's just a P. 27:46 Oh, what did I do? 27:47 Did I do something wrong? 27:48 What am I supposed to be doing? 27:50 Fix our connection, I guess. 27:52 My internet is not – I think I'm plugged into my Ethernet. 27:56 It should be. 27:57 Maybe I'm not connected to you. 27:59 I don't know. 28:00 Why am I only a dot? 28:02 I was a thing before. 28:03 Maybe it'll fix itself. 28:05 Hopefully. 28:07 So let's get to another tweet. 28:09 I think this was the most hilarious of all of them. 28:12 I'm still trying to make – to understand what to make of it, 28:17 because Vortex said there is absolutely no reason to ever issue altcoins on Bitcoin's L1 chain. 28:25 Those kind of security tradeoffs belong on layers above L1, but never on L1 itself. 28:32 There is no way BIP300 is happening. 28:34 And this one got 419 likes, 71 retweets, 53 comments. 28:39 And a lot of people – so I used to look up to Vortex. 28:43 He used to post some really interesting technical content. 28:46 But he came up with this, and I basically – so let me show you what my comment is under his thread. 28:51 Sir, just how much time did you spend researching the topic? 28:55 30 seconds? 28:56 45? 28:57 Holy shit, a whole minute? 28:59 So blockchain activity does not affect the base layer. 29:01 And you already have L1 shitcoins as stamps, inscriptions, counterparty tokens, colored coins and stuff. 29:08 Until next time. 29:10 And I actually got an approval from Michael Tidwell, who is the co-organizer of TabConf, 29:15 who said I'm happy someone said it. 29:17 But what should I make of this? 29:19 He says there is absolutely no reason to ever issue altcoins on Bitcoin's L1 chain. 29:25 These kind of security tradeoffs belong on layers above L1. 29:28 And, you know, Drivechains are – 29:30 Every single sentence, every single clause in every sentence is like 180 degrees backwards of the truth. 29:37 You know, it's almost like a troll. 29:39 It's almost like he mistyped the last sentence when he meant to say BIP300 is happening. 29:44 You know what I mean? 29:46 That is almost like the only way that it would make any sense. 29:51 It was a pro BIP300 tweet because there's no – 29:55 I don't understand why there would be – 29:57 Like BIP300 puts stuff on L2. 30:00 If there is any new token issuance, it's on L2. 30:04 And if there is – 30:07 Like every single part of the tweet is incorrect. 30:11 Yeah, I don't know. 30:13 But I think this is one of the most popular tweets on the topic. 30:16 And I'm super puzzled. 30:17 I'm trying to figure out why. 30:19 Why? 30:20 Well, maybe you should ask him. 30:23 Yeah, I went on his show many times, like in 2016. 30:27 It was fun. 30:29 Yeah, I don't know. 30:31 I honestly have no idea. 30:34 I think it's just people that get the information from Twitter. 30:40 Yeah, but it's super ironic, right? 30:42 We take pride as Bitcoiners as being this crowd of people who don't trust and verify. 30:46 We make our own opinions. 30:48 We review if we're not technically competent. 30:50 We run a full node. 30:51 We care about decentralization. 30:53 We uphold principles. 30:55 But it's like really people have no idea about anything. 30:58 Yeah, it's not a good – 31:00 I actually had quite a few people message me over the last few days who were like, 31:06 Oh, I had no idea the rank and file Bitcoin were so clueless. 31:10 And people said like, Oh, I just want to sell all my Bitcoin now. 31:15 So hopefully people don't do that. 31:17 But yeah. 31:19 I think I experienced – 31:21 So if you told me last year that in the next 10 months – 31:27 Actually, no, we are almost in September. 31:30 In the next nine months, we're going to see how people advocate for censoring transactions in the mempool 31:37 and filtering certain types of transactions. 31:40 And then try to say that shit coins are fine. 31:44 And we should not bring some use cases to Bitcoin sidechains. 31:47 Like I would tell you that you're crazy last year. 31:50 But this year, it seems like, I don't know. 31:53 Did I step into a portal with an alternate dimension where people are fine with shit coins, 31:59 but they are fine with them but don't like to admit that they are? 32:03 Or maybe that these same people are under paychecks by the people who benefit from shit coins? 32:08 Because a lot of the Bitcoin scene – 32:10 And I don't want to talk shit about anyone. 32:12 But it's suspicious how many of these people are financed by Bitfinex and Kraken. 32:17 And Bitfinex and Kraken are doing a lot of stuff on Ethereum. 32:20 So why don't we get part of that share? 32:24 Maybe not everything that they're doing. 32:27 Maybe not the Leo token or whatever is happening there at Bitfinex. 32:32 But still, some Tether stuff that can easily be put on some sidechain of Bitcoin. 32:37 It is already on Liquid, but what's the volume on that one? 32:41 I guess it must be the trust model or something that did not let that one get too much traction. 32:49 You're sort of almost – 32:50 Well, with something like that, you kind of want to be with the herd. 32:55 You want to be where everyone else is, I guess. 32:57 I mean, I don't really use Tether. 32:58 But I think my guess is you would want to be wherever most people are. 33:02 So that you have a strength in numbers type of a thing. 33:06 But, yeah, I know. 33:07 I think it's all baffling. 33:09 I think partially it's just normal group psychology of just deforming the cult that becomes more and more insular. 33:14 And that will eventually just cancel everyone in it. 33:17 And I think that – yeah, I think it doesn't really make any sense. 33:22 I mean, BIP300, I think it is too good of an idea. 33:26 It does all these great things and has no downside. 33:29 And, therefore, it actually makes a lot of other people look bad. 33:32 Or it makes other projects look bad. 33:34 Or it makes – if someone is funded, if they have equity in some other startup, it actually looks bad if I give this idea away for free. 33:44 So that's just like the reality, I think. 33:47 And I don't know exactly the – like the misconceptions are all not valid. 33:54 Because I'm happy to discuss them all until the cows come home. 33:57 But if you go back to the November 2015 post, you can read that I anticipated all the valid objections, which I just referred to as basically misunderstandings. 34:08 I said this is what people will misunderstand. 34:11 I was completely right. 34:14 So, yeah. 34:15 And then people say, like, whatever, this is an attack on Bitcoin. 34:18 But it's like, no, I predict – every single thought that has passed through the Drivechain critic's head, I predicted before November 2015 when I wrote the article about what it is. 34:31 And oftentimes people just confuse, like, they don't even bother to keep straight, like, Blockstream's vision of sidechains versus mine versus whatever. 34:41 So maybe, I don't know if we have more tweets about that. 34:44 But, yeah, I think the Bitcoin vortex, quote, maybe it just shows, I think, how these people are all just virtue signaling to each other. 34:53 And they don't actually – it's kind of like when you see people at, you know, like a Republican rally or a Democrat rally. 35:03 And it's all just performative. 35:05 That's my guess as part of it. 35:08 I think it is just the cult is very strong. 35:12 People want to be popular. 35:13 They don't want – no one wants to have a bunch of people on Twitter, like, yelling at them or whatever. 35:18 And as a result, you know, it's just – this will happen from time to time. 35:24 The irony is, of course, once we activate BIP300, this will never happen again because there will be no more – there will not be a need for any soft fork on Bitcoin L1. 35:34 And there also won't be any need for any toxicity because people will get whatever they want. 35:38 So this is like – this is the final boss, really, to some extent. 35:43 So first of all, I got to tell the people from the chat, there's BitGwin who asked a couple of good questions. 35:51 There's Florin Stelian who said something interesting. 35:55 And also Matthew Haywood who basically told me that I'm citing too much with you and I should read some valid criticism that has been tweeted, which I will. 36:02 It's on the list. 36:04 Yeah, put them – anyone in the comments – put your irate messages in the comments and we'll do them all. 36:11 I mean, I've been doing this, like, you know, for months and months. 36:14 So I'll do it, you know. 36:16 It's hard for people to come up with something that I haven't heard dozens and dozens of times already. 36:21 Before that, I want to ask you this. 36:24 What happens if a Drivechain becomes dominant, meaning that it has more transactions and generates more fees than the base layer? 36:31 I think that is – I don't think there's anything wrong about that and I think that actually is likely to happen. 36:37 Because the base layer – my view is all the fees will be – every transaction will not – like, from far away, Bitcoiners have this view. 36:48 In the future, Bitcoin will be the only thing that there is. 36:51 And you'll need Bitcoin to eat and you'll be happy to pay $50 or $100 or $1,000 per transaction, you know, thousands of times per day, 24-7, 365. 37:06 So a lot of people believe that. 37:08 And if you believe that, then my advice is, you know, good luck. 37:10 Yeah, but you're not supposed to spend your Bitcoin, right? 37:13 You just buy it and huddle. 37:15 You never spend it. 37:18 The higher the fees go, of course, the more people will try to do, like, batching and they'll do, like, bar tab type things to minimize that. 37:24 So my view is – and, you know, people can disagree, but my view is the fees will always be, like – on the sidechain, they'll always be, like, $0.02 to $0.25 or maybe $0.50. 37:38 And on the main chain, they'll always be, like, $0.50 to maybe, like, $2 or $3 per transaction. 37:45 That's, like, the limit. 37:47 And so the only way to actually get the total transaction fees up is to increase the quantity of transactions. 37:55 You bank a small amount each transaction and you need many transactions to move the fee revenue up. 38:02 A lot of people think – it's wishful thinking. 38:05 A lot of people just think – oh, and they point to things. 38:08 They point to these silly things. 38:10 They say, look, there's a wire transfer. 38:11 Someone spent $75 for a wire transfer. 38:14 That's because they had no other option. 38:16 But in the future, there will be WeChat Pay everywhere. 38:19 There will be Venmo everywhere. 38:20 And there will be not only Bitcoin but Bitcoin sidechains and altcoins and altcoin sites. 38:25 They'll all be everywhere. 38:26 And we'll be looking at a price of $0 for those things. 38:30 So no one will send a $75 wire. 38:34 Eventually. 38:35 People only do because the legacy banking system hasn't been replaced by crypto. 38:39 But once we replace the legacy banking system with crypto, then it will be $75 to send a wire transfer. 38:47 It will be the same as everything else, just like when I send a Bitcoin transaction. 38:50 It doesn't know if it's going to particular – it doesn't know if it's domestic or international. 38:56 I'm laughing right now because this might be your Vitalik moment when he said, 39:01 the Internet of money should not cost more than $0.05 a transaction. 39:05 That's kind of ridiculous. 39:06 And this is your moment when you're saying, yeah, it's not going to cost more than $2 a transaction. 39:11 Yeah. 39:12 Well, I mean, I'm open to – certainly during some times it will be congested and then there will be the auction effect. 39:19 But what has always happened is that it's temporary. 39:22 It's also a free market, Paul, so there is no way to foresee. 39:25 Maybe that's the miners who will be happy to have the minimum base layer fee for a big block. 39:32 It's true that the future is difficult to foresee. 39:35 And it's also true that markets have prices that adjust and the prices reflect information and they're hard to forecast. 39:42 But just because something is happening in the future doesn't mean that we know nothing about it. 39:47 You know what I mean? 39:48 Just about every single thing ever that we have ever bought, everything, has actually plummeted in cost in terms of wage hour, time, price. 40:02 Like how many days an average person has to work. 40:05 So if you strip away the veil of money, the inflation, and you only look at the real price, everything, whatever, copper, automobiles, computers, furniture, DNA sequencing, everything has plummeted in cost. 40:24 And transacting is certainly not going to be an exception to that rule. 40:30 It will plummet faster than average. 40:35 Okay, let me play another ad and then I'm going to read the most interesting tweet. 40:41 If you ask me, that's the most interesting one. 40:43 And then I'm going to the chat because I see that the comments are… 40:47 Yes, but did we fully address the idea that what if a sidechain becomes too big? 40:53 My view is that that's fine. 40:55 And my view is that's a good thing. 40:57 And my view is also that you should not compare that to what we never had the sidechain at all. 41:01 You should say, what if there's something that's big and then there's an altcoin that's much bigger and becomes dominant? 41:08 Well, in that situation, you know, Bitcoin would be in peril and it would be in danger of going to zero. 41:15 I guess something else we should talk about, which is the modern myth that Bitcoin is irreplaceable, which I hope that Bitcoin is irreplaceable and unkillable. 41:23 I hope that that's the case. 41:25 But I think it's extremely naive and foolish to bet the farm on that, which many people are now doing. 41:32 And they're doing it in the worst possible way. 41:34 They are, in fact, the ones holding a gun to Bitcoin's head. 41:39 It's night and day from what it used to be only a few years ago when everyone would say Bitcoin is an experiment. 41:44 It can always go to zero. 41:45 Now we have these new people. 41:47 A lot of it is, you know, I think we could tell an interesting story about dishonest reasons why people might be pushing this irresponsible and reckless idea that Bitcoin has already won. 42:01 It's an idea that I don't think is shared by any of the technical elite or even most people who have been around for a long time. 42:07 But we can get into that. 42:09 But I think the contrast is if something is more popular than we want it to be, what you really want it to be is a BIP300 sidechain of Bitcoin. 42:18 Because then it can never kill the Bitcoin layer one since it requires that in order to exist. 42:25 Just like a lightning requires a Bitcoin layer one to exist. 42:28 And you don't want it to be an altcoin either. 42:32 Kill the entire Bitcoin network, the whole coin, the whole project. 42:35 If that thing is big, big enough to become dominant. 42:37 So. 42:39 So there you go. 42:42 Yeah, let me play the ad and then we can get back to this. 42:46 OK. 42:48 Crypto Steel is the original Bitcoin cold storage backup, and it's been innovating self-custody since 2013. 42:55 Designed and manufactured in Europe from the finest and most resistant stainless steel. 43:01 The Crypto Steel cassette and the Crypto Steel capsule are industry standards. 43:05 These cold storage devices are made to resist house fires, extreme floods and physical shocks. 43:11 You can also use Crypto Steel to store your important passwords, BIP39 passphrase or Nostr private keys. 43:18 Buy your Crypto Steel today from CryptoSteel.com and use promo code BTCTKVR to get a 10 percent discount. 43:26 Crypto Steel, secure your Bitcoin like an OG. 43:34 Do you have a Crypto Steel, Paul? 43:36 I'm mute. 43:37 OK. 43:38 You meet me every time. 43:39 I don't complain. 43:40 But I do have a Crypto Steel. 43:41 I think someone gave me. 43:42 I get all the names. 43:43 I got all the names confused of the different steel because many people have done this. 43:46 But someone gave me one as a gift. 43:48 Oh, probably Bill Foddle, because you're on there. 43:50 Oh, yeah. 43:51 I have a group. 43:52 Yes. 43:53 I have that one. 43:54 And I think I also have a Crypto Steel. 43:55 I think. 43:56 OK. 43:57 OK. 43:58 I get all the names confused of the different steel because many people have done this. 43:59 But someone gave me. 44:00 I get all the names confused of the different steel because many people have done this. 44:01 Oh, probably Bill Foddle, because you're on there. 44:02 Oh, yeah. 44:03 I have a group. 44:04 Yes. 44:05 I have that one. 44:06 And I think I also have a Crypto Steel, I think. 44:07 These are great. 44:08 I think these are fine. 44:09 You know, I'm not like, you know, I think I think it's I think it's interesting that 44:14 the Bitcoin community has evolved in a way that it emphasizes wallets so much because 44:19 it's like the one of the few things you can do, which I think is unfortunate at the same 44:24 time. 44:25 One of the reasons why I think I'm supportive of any idea or implementation for sidechains 44:31 is that you can onboard people into storing their coins in cold storage. 44:36 That's not something you can do with Lightning. 44:38 That's not something you can really do with ARK. 44:41 It's more like a workaround. 44:43 And I think that it's a bit selfish the way some people think that we're going to onboard 44:49 the entire world into the Lightning network, but that limits their possibilities. 44:54 I also don't like the ideas of Feddy and stuff. 44:58 I mean, I understand why it exists, but at the same time, why would you want to get the 45:03 third world to onboard in an inferior, you know, way with a different experience? 45:10 Like I want everyone to have the ability to do cold storage, to have all of these cool 45:17 tricks that we are doing right now. 45:19 And probably sidechains are the best way to accomplish that. 45:23 That's one of the issues with Lightning. 45:25 You cannot do it. 45:26 You cannot do cold storage with Lightning. 45:28 It's fast to spend. 45:30 It's great to receive payments with it, but it's not for long-term storage. 45:35 Well, it also has a huge onboarding problem, which is each to onboard everyone to the Lightning 45:42 network, you need, everyone needs a, each person who joins needs to have a multi-signature 45:47 output on L1. 45:50 Whereas in sidechains, you can just have one person send a bunch of coins over and 45:54 then onboard people over there, which is sort of what you were saying. 45:58 Now again, like it's not, I don't know if this, I'm not saying that the BIP300 side 46:02 chain is the absolute perfect idea. 46:04 And in fact, it might not work at all. 46:07 But I do think it, it definitely has like, it's definitely has so many positive attributes 46:15 relative to what we currently, it's that it should certainly be tried, especially because 46:21 it has no downside or risk to the people who aren't using it. 46:26 Other than of course, like, you know, our attention and stuff and, you know, code review 46:29 is hard and things like that. 46:31 But I'm happy to do all that work or like, whatever, go through the process as I have. 46:36 Let's go to the comments section for a moment because, yeah, let's see, what have we got? 46:43 He says, BitGuin or BitGuin says, I am generally supportive of BIP300, but interested to hear 46:51 an expanded answer of greater fees for a sidechain, specifically if sidechains were available 46:56 today, an ETH copy would dominate BTC transaction fees. 47:01 Then very few bodies could control the BTC miner revenue, for example, Circle, then similar 47:09 to ETH, Circle could control the direction of Bitcoin, for example, introduce censorship in a hard fork. 47:17 Nodes could follow an evil hard fork as they don't want to lose their USDC. 47:22 This is BitGuin's comment. 47:24 Well, I think that last part was a little bit of a non sequitur, wasn't it? 47:27 I mean, so first with sidechains, we could have a copy of ETH for a long time now. 47:35 ETH fees, the total U.S. 47:37 dollar amount of fee paying customers has been much higher, much more than 10 times that of BTC fees. 47:44 So Ethereum for usage is more popular than BTC is. 47:51 That, you know, you could you could say that usage is fake or those people are being tricked or that's just because 47:57 Ethereum block time is different and they don't care as much about decentralization or like clients. 48:03 You could say a long list of things, but at the end of the day, the fee paying customers is a reliable indicator of actual. 48:14 It's like sales, so it's kind of something real. 48:19 And so, yeah, if we had that, then and we and if we were lucky enough to just steal all of Ethereum's economic activity. 48:28 One for one, I think we might actually steal more of it or there could be like synergies or something. 48:35 But assuming that we saw all that, then all those fees would be on Bitcoin. 48:39 There'd be 10 times as much transaction fees coming from that than there would be from the BTC layer one transaction fee, 48:47 coinbase transaction or what have you. 48:50 So all that's true. 48:53 But then where it becomes false is it's like this idea that people start to have control over things. 48:57 So if you issue alts or if you issue anything, you issue ordinals on let's say you issue ERC20 and the ETH L2. 49:09 How does that end up giving you, you know, a hard fork control over Bitcoin L1? 49:16 The answer is it does not. 49:17 Well, there's another question that I think is important because Florin wants to know, so sidechains are like another token that uses the Bitcoin mainchain. 49:27 That's the question. But I think he means another blockchain that uses the Bitcoin mainchain. 49:33 It's very similar. Yes, there's another blockchain that uses the Bitcoin mainchain and the token over there is Bitcoin BTC. 49:42 So it's like sometimes it's like an ATM, I say, BIP300 is like an ATM and you have the world of cash, maybe, and you have the world of the checking account and you go to the ATM, you put $20 in. 49:57 You lose the $20 bill, but you get $20 credited to your checking account. 50:00 And then similarly, you go somewhere else, you go to a different ATM, you withdraw the $20. 50:06 You lose $20 out of your checking account and you gain a $20 bill. 50:12 A lot of people seem very confused about this, which I attribute to just misinformation. 50:16 I think it is people out there just spreading stuff that they don't know. 50:20 Because this is like, you know, square one. So I never would have thought it's very bizarre. 50:24 Everyone knew that everyone I talked to knew this at the beginning of the year. 50:27 But then as the year has gone on, I get more and more basic questions sometimes. 50:31 So which is, I guess, fine. But but that is the idea is like you take your big point. 50:38 You have like point one, three Bitcoin. And then you you put it through the ATM into whatever. 50:47 A Zcash sidechain, which is has no it has no ZEC. 50:52 There's no ZEC. There's no Zcoin. But it does have the Zcash software. 50:58 So what you get 13.13 Bitcoin over there and then you can use it over there. 51:03 So there's literally no there's no new token. There's no anything. 51:08 The whole point of having it pegged one to one is so that no one ever loses any value. 51:13 This is impossible to scam. No one gains or loses any value. 51:16 So you can't have a scammer pumping the token and you can't have anyone losing their money because it's pegged one to one. 51:22 That's the whole point is to hope this is for the same reason why you don't have checking account money. 51:27 It doesn't like float against, you know, the cash that you get in an ATM. 51:34 They exchange one to one at par. So, yeah, I don't know. 51:40 But as far as I can tell, Drivechains are not decentralized, but they can be permissionless, meaning that any group of miners can set up their own Drivechain. 51:49 Is this correct? Well, that's a good question. I mean, first of all, I will answer that question. 51:54 But please let me know if you think that I've actually answered these people's questions or if people in the comments think that didn't answer my question. 52:03 Because I don't really know at this point. I've been doing this for so long. 52:05 I don't really know, like, what are people confused about or what what what does answer their question? 52:10 But to answer your question, there's something important about the way I think about this, which is that everything relies, everything that touches proof of work relies on the miners to some extent. 52:24 So even the Lightning Network requires that the justice transaction not be censored. 52:30 That is absolutely crucial. If the justice transaction is censored from the blockchain, then anyone could just steal from the Lightning Network. 52:38 You steal from the channels. You move the channel to one extreme and another extreme and you broadcast the old state. 52:43 You are never caught. You leave with the money. And after having spent all of it, you double spend. 52:50 So while it's true that those who use a BIP300 sidechain must trust miners more, it's almost not really the case that this is like if 51 percent is dead set against you. 53:09 They could block. You could have a ZK-SNARK chain that is provably that miners can't steal from. 53:18 But the withdrawal transaction still has to make it into L1. Miners can just censor that and hold all the money hostage. 53:25 The miners can censor any transaction and hold it hostage between the sender and receiver. 53:32 Miners can hold liquid to withdrawal hostage. So the federated model is the 51 percent model. 53:39 The 51 percent assumption is threaded into every single thing. 53:44 And the only way to get rid of it is to get rid of proof of work, which is not a good idea. 53:48 Proof of work is a good thing. We like proof of work. 53:52 So it's true that BIP300 has more of a risk. Didn't we say that earlier? It's more of a risk. 54:02 But the people who want the new feature, they want larger blocks or they want ZK-SNARKs or they want whatever it is. 54:09 Those people, they don't have another option. 54:16 So this improves their bad. The only option they have is to buy an altcoin, which is not a good option. 54:23 But what I'm trying to say also is that the thing that we assume, this 51 percent miner honesty assumption, is like that's also already assumed in Bitcoin. 54:37 It's true in Bitcoin it's not quite the same, but in Drivechain it's not quite the same either. 54:41 The 51 percent miners can't just steal the coins the next moment. 54:44 They have to steal them slowly over six months. 54:47 So they have to like, you know, there's this prison metaphor that people don't like, but I like it. 54:53 Because it's like you have this, it's just this one event, which every six months, which is which group of people is going to leave the prison, which bus or something. 55:03 And that's the only thing that the miners can screw up is they send the wrong bus out. 55:09 And the bus is identified by one hash and the full node has the right hash and layer one BTC sees the hash. 55:16 They just have to match. And it takes, it's very slow and transparent. 55:20 So it's not like, you know, the additional honesty hash rate L1 miner assumption in BIP300 is very, very, very tame. 55:36 So I don't know. I mean, I hope I'm answering people's questions. Is this like rambling and confusing or what? 55:41 A bit, but let me ask you something more specific. 55:44 Currently, we have the Liquid sidechain and we also have Rootstock, which has been rebranded to RSK. 55:50 Rootstock aims to basically be a backup for Ethereum. 55:54 If something goes wrong with Ethereum, you can port some contracts to that different sidechain, which is being merged mined already by about the hash rate. 56:03 So we already have merged mining, but there's not much action on Rootstock. 56:08 So there are two layers to my question. No pun intended. 56:12 But first of all, we have the differences between Drivechains and Rootstock and Liquid. 56:17 And then you have this question of Liquid and RSK obviously failed to get traction. 56:23 Why do you think that Drivechains are going to be different? 56:26 Well, it's true that they may not be, but I think we have quite a few reasons to think that they'd be pretty different. 56:32 I mean, so Liquid and RSK are both federated. 56:38 Liquid was not even open source until recently. 56:41 Liquid had a bug where they didn't even realize that anyone from Blockstream could just withdraw all the money at any time for months. 56:50 And there was this kind of like weird cover up about it that James Prestwich looked into. 56:55 On Liquid, all the transaction fees go to a wallet controlled by Blockstream. 57:01 The federated model relies on its setup so that it's based on the reputation of the people who are holding the keys. 57:12 So on L1, it's just an 11 of 15 multisig, even though it wasn't actually that in practice because of a bug. 57:19 But it's 11 of 15 multisig and no one knows who these 15 people are. 57:26 No one knows if they really are the only ones with the keys or if the keys were just generated by one guy and then given away to 15 people, which would make the security completely worthless. 57:36 The federation people don't get anything. 57:39 They don't get money in return for doing the job. 57:45 So there's an incentive misalignment. 57:47 So you have unknown people. 57:49 They're crucial to the whole thing. 57:51 They can rug the system. 57:52 If too much coin goes into the system, they can rug this system. 57:58 And so whereas with BIP300, it's all the same group all the time. 58:02 The miners drop, add the sidechains. 58:04 The miners do the withdrawals. 58:06 The miners collect the transaction fees. 58:08 So it's the same group. 58:09 And as the transaction fee, as the sidechain becomes more popular, it has more coins and more transaction fees. 58:14 So it's all aligned versus unaligned. 58:19 So, I mean, those are some reasons. 58:21 RSK, I think that RSK has some mysterious decisions. 58:29 But I think that people in ETH understand that the goal for BIP300 is to emulate all the altcoins and kind of break their spirit, so to speak, and say we can copy anything that's out there. 58:45 Now, currently, RSK doesn't do that. 58:47 RSK has their own version of Ethereum that is not exactly the same as Ether as the BIP300 sidechain we have is the exact copy of the latest Ethereum full node. 58:59 And what people who use Ethereum are hoping is they can buy in at a lower market cap, number two, and get the system to work and then have Ethereum flip in BTC. 59:16 So they don't want to switch to RSK. 59:20 Those people won't switch to RSK ever. 59:23 But if we copy everything and we just make it clear that no other sidechain has a future, then it's not so much that people will come back, it's so much they'll have no choice. 59:35 It'll be the ironically true version of the fake Bitcoin fantasy of people paying high transaction fees. 59:42 They will come back because there's just no future on any other chain. 59:45 I don't know. Does that make sense or not? 59:49 No, not really. 59:50 I mean, you did not really explain why a Drivechain with Ethereum scripting language would be any different in terms of success as opposed to RSK. 1:00:00 It's the whole ecosystem. 1:00:01 Okay, so RSK is federated. 1:00:03 RSK is not the exact same as ETH, whereas the goal is to copy it exactly. 1:00:09 But you can use the exact same flippening argument. 1:00:12 Which flippening argument? 1:00:15 No, because RSK does not inspire fear and dread in Ethereum people. 1:00:24 Because it's not a full idea. 1:00:26 Each federation, it's not a reusable process that you can use to copy anything. 1:00:32 So BIP300 is like an ATM, but it's also like a kind of Xerox machine. 1:00:38 You could copy any altcoin or any piece of software you could activate. 1:00:42 But with the federation, it's one event. 1:00:47 You pick the people who do the federation and you pick what they'll be doing. 1:00:53 Does this make sense at all? 1:00:54 BIP300 is a decentralized process. 1:01:05 It's like a long division or something. 1:01:07 It's something you would do to a sidechain to turn it into... 1:01:11 Excuse me, it's something you do to altcoin to turn it into a full node. 1:01:16 A sidechain full node on BTC. 1:01:20 I mean, that makes sense, but you can apply the exact same principle. 1:01:23 They, meaning Ethereum, had 72 million coins that were pre-mined. 1:01:29 Some of the early investors still have them. 1:01:31 Some of them are still motivated to pump the token and basically flip on Bitcoin. 1:01:38 And they have this move fast and break things mentality 1:01:41 because they already have a precedent in terms of breaking immutability. 1:01:45 So they don't care too much about that. 1:01:47 They can roll back whenever they want. 1:01:49 Their purpose is just to push these experiments for financial stuff. 1:01:53 I think Ethereum is more fintech than it is cyberpunk, 1:01:57 but it also has some cool stuff that you could find in cyberpunk literature. 1:02:02 But why would they want to come to Drivechains? 1:02:05 Because that's the point. It's not the issuer. 1:02:08 It's the user's demand. 1:02:10 So it's not the issuer. 1:02:11 The issuer always prefers to launch an altcoin and just sell the altcoin 1:02:15 and extract free money from that. 1:02:17 It's about whether or not there's a buyer. 1:02:21 And if we set the precedent that Bitcoin will do everything, 1:02:25 even things that most Bitcoiners don't like, which is absolutely essential, 1:02:32 we have to say we don't judge. 1:02:34 Even if only 2% of the people want to do EVM, 1:02:38 those two people go off on their own sidechain and they do that thing. 1:02:41 So it's about minority rights in a way. 1:02:45 So if we set this big precedent, then there's no demand for altcoins. 1:02:49 But it has nothing to do with the issuers or the suppliers. 1:02:51 Those people always hope, of course, that they can get, they can sell, 1:02:56 they can create, conjure the token out of thin air. 1:03:00 And then sell it for, conjure it for free and then sell it, 1:03:04 just dump it on retail. 1:03:07 But it has nothing to do with that. 1:03:08 It's the demand side. 1:03:10 There's only one way of really educating the masses 1:03:14 on why they should not buy Ethereum. 1:03:16 And that is if all those people are familiar enough with Bitcoin 1:03:20 to know that it has an Ethereum sidechain that is a copy of Ethereum. 1:03:25 So I realize I'm not explaining this very well, 1:03:29 but it's an ecological thing. 1:03:33 It's like, is there space for Ethereum? 1:03:36 Well, as long as Bitcoin has decided that there's things it won't do, 1:03:42 then there's always hope for an altcoin to replace Bitcoin. 1:03:46 But if we take that hope away, 1:03:48 then all the altcoins will just be dead, including Ethereum. 1:03:50 And then since there's an X amount of demand 1:03:53 for whatever silly thing Ethereum is doing, 1:03:57 X amount of demand for whatever, whatever you want to call it, 1:04:00 DeFi, whatever, 1:04:01 then since Bitcoin will be the only vessel that can receive that, 1:04:07 then it will all come to BTC. 1:04:10 But it's not as though, it certainly is not the case 1:04:12 that on day one we activate Drivechain, 1:04:14 then day two we activate the EVM and then everyone moves over. 1:04:16 That's certainly not going to happen. 1:04:19 But who do you think is going to move? 1:04:21 Is it going to be exchanges that currently have stuff on Ethereum, 1:04:25 contracts and tokens and stuff like that? 1:04:27 Because I see that there's this self-righteous, 1:04:31 legal abiding citizen argument that people present 1:04:34 and they say, we don't want the scammers to come to Bitcoin. 1:04:37 It's fine when they do stuff on Ethereum 1:04:39 because they have legal defense and they have PR and whatever. 1:04:42 But we want Bitcoin to have this clean image 1:04:45 that there are no scammers here, 1:04:46 which is, of course, naive. 1:04:48 You understand it's ridiculous. 1:04:50 The media has been saying bad things about Bitcoin forever 1:04:53 and tying bad things to us forever. 1:04:55 And we explicitly have numerous scams all the time on BTC, 1:05:01 as I'm sure you know. 1:05:03 Yeah, but that's not the point. 1:05:05 People are concerned that the government is going to come for Bitcoin 1:05:08 and they accept shit coins as this shield around Bitcoin 1:05:12 because they're the first ones to go to jail, right? 1:05:14 The shit coiners. 1:05:15 And Bitcoiners can just tweet all day long 1:05:18 and virtue signal about being the pure ones. 1:05:21 I think that is a double-edged sword, though, 1:05:23 because it says, if we're big, then we'll get the attention. 1:05:27 If we're serious about winning and we're the only game in town 1:05:30 and we're the biggest and the best and we're conquering the world, 1:05:34 then we will get the negative attention. 1:05:36 But yeah, if there's a bunch of other stuff, 1:05:38 it's a buffer and we want to be small, 1:05:41 but that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 1:05:43 We don't want to be small. 1:05:44 We want to take over the world. 1:05:49 There's a comment in the chat by Boyacaxa. 1:05:55 I'm not sure how you pronounce this. 1:05:57 But he says, Drivechains have a problem. 1:05:59 I want a two-way peg as well, but not one done by a vote. 1:06:03 What the fuck is that mess? 1:06:05 It's not Bitcoin, that's for sure. 1:06:08 Okay. 1:06:09 Well, I mean, this is, again, like silly people. 1:06:11 They don't know what they're talking about. 1:06:12 But, I mean, I'm happy to answer the question. 1:06:14 I don't mean to be rude to the person who asked the question. 1:06:17 But, you know, like the problem with voting is you have this, 1:06:21 like, mathematical certainty that once you have, 1:06:23 I think it's like eight or even nine people, 1:06:25 your vote is very unlikely. 1:06:26 You vote between, like, two things. 1:06:28 Your vote's very unlikely to affect the outcome. 1:06:31 So that's the problem with voting. 1:06:34 So people don't research their vote because they think, 1:06:36 I'm not going to cast the pivotal vote. 1:06:38 So it doesn't matter. 1:06:41 And when you have, like, a country like America, 1:06:44 where there's, like, 115 million registered voters 1:06:46 and there's this convoluted process, 1:06:48 most people's vote doesn't matter. 1:06:49 So that's the problem with voting. 1:06:51 So that person has an emotional reaction to the word vote. 1:06:54 But what really happens in BIFF 300 is more like a confirmation. 1:06:58 You see, when you have blocks that are built on the previous block, 1:07:02 it's kind of like voting for which tip to extend. 1:07:05 When you vote on one, you vote on all the others. 1:07:09 And what BIFF 300 does is more like a confirmation. 1:07:12 It's like a super confirmation of the withdrawal. 1:07:15 And if the withdrawal gets enough confirmations, 1:07:17 then it goes through. 1:07:19 That's kind of like what it does. 1:07:20 And it's especially unlike voting because in a vote, 1:07:24 you have two compelling options and you have people dragging the world 1:07:28 in two equal and opposite directions and also in the status direction 1:07:32 that benefits the two, you know, the two government parties. 1:07:38 In this, there is no such thing remotely in the slightest. 1:07:41 The sidechain node calculates the correct hash. 1:07:44 It does this automatically for everyone. 1:07:46 And then it's going to yell the hash in every direction. 1:07:49 It's going to put the hash in the SPV client of the sidechain node. 1:07:52 It's going to be in every sidechain header. 1:07:54 It's very easy to find. 1:07:55 Everyone can find it. 1:07:58 And so if there's one objectively correct answer, 1:08:01 that is not only one answer that is objectively correct, 1:08:05 but it's very, very easy for anyone to discover at any time. 1:08:08 So it's like if everyone knew, it would be like as if, you know, 1:08:12 in the United States, we have Republican and Democrat. 1:08:15 It would be as if every three months, 1:08:18 we put a gigantic sign up in Times Square that said either R or D. 1:08:26 And then you had to have some people whose job it was, 1:08:32 they would earn more money as long as the R and D's matched. 1:08:35 Their job was to set the R and the D like whatever, 1:08:39 like in Midtown or whatever, in downtown. 1:08:43 It doesn't really matter. 1:08:44 The point is it's like it's very easy to find the right answer. 1:08:47 No one is honestly benefiting from it being distorted at all, 1:08:51 especially because it's a hash. 1:08:53 So you can't like change it a little bit. 1:08:54 It either is completely different or it's completely the same. 1:08:58 And so it's not like a vote with lots of different people 1:09:03 and lots of different opinions at all. 1:09:05 It's like a confirmation. 1:09:07 It's no more a vote than is Satoshi using the longest chain rule, 1:09:14 if that's a vote. 1:09:15 And Satoshi has that line in the white paper, one CPU, one vote. 1:09:19 So he uses it kind of as a metaphor, as do I. 1:09:22 And I use it as this upvote, downvote metaphor 1:09:24 because I was thinking of a Reddit score back in 2015 when I designed it. 1:09:28 But it is not in any sense like a political vote. 1:09:33 There's one right answer. 1:09:34 Everyone can find the right answer, 1:09:35 and then it's just whether or not the hash that matches that 1:09:38 gets 13,000 upvotes or not. 1:09:41 And the word vote is, you know, it triggers people, 1:09:45 and I understand that, and I apologize for that. 1:09:48 But I don't know. 1:09:49 Maybe that person doesn't – 1:09:50 I would love to know if that person feels that I've answered their question 1:09:53 because I really feel like the sense in which BF300 uses the word vote 1:09:58 is not whatever they're thinking by a mile. 1:10:05 So I don't know. 1:10:06 Does that make sense to you, Vlad? 1:10:07 Does it make any sense or no? 1:10:09 I can tell you that you've got to work on your metaphors, 1:10:11 but otherwise it does make sense. 1:10:14 And I wish – so is there anything specific written on this topic? 1:10:18 I know that you have a company right now. 1:10:20 You have, like, a content producing team. 1:10:22 Maybe you should write a blog post about what voting means in Drivechains. 1:10:27 Yeah, I could. 1:10:29 Not you yourself, but someone from the team. 1:10:32 Yeah, maybe. 1:10:33 We have on LayerTwoLabs.com we have, like, infographics, 1:10:36 which I think are kind of nice. 1:10:38 And then you could read the BIP text. 1:10:40 And also one thing that was great, and we're working on this all the time, 1:10:44 is the software gets easier and easier to use. 1:10:47 Now you can download the software, 1:10:48 and it will all run in reg test mode with play money, 1:10:51 with just blocks just being found randomly. 1:10:54 And if you just – if you run that software, 1:11:02 then you'll see for yourself exactly what happens, 1:11:04 and you'll also see – you'll see the sidechain in the ribbon. 1:11:08 It will pop up the – what the correct hash is, 1:11:12 and then you'll see what's happening on L1. 1:11:15 You'll see what it takes for there to be – 1:11:18 like it's not voting between two things. 1:11:20 There's only one thing that's possibly correct. 1:11:23 And when the people introduce numerous incorrect hashes to try 1:11:28 and steal the money, they will – 1:11:32 they're only diluting the vote amongst themselves. 1:11:35 It's like all the dishonest people are splitting the vote amongst themselves. 1:11:39 So it's – I don't know. 1:11:42 I'm not sure if it's – if that explanation was comprehensible, 1:11:49 but I hope that it was. 1:11:51 Well, what's the – explain it to me like I'm five version of Drivechains. 1:11:58 Okay. That's a good – maybe I should – 1:12:01 maybe I should get Chad GPT to help me with that one. 1:12:04 I would say it is – it sounds like I'm five. 1:12:11 I don't know. 1:12:12 I would say like maybe – where are your parents? 1:12:18 No, I'm just kidding. 1:12:20 Well, okay. 1:12:21 What does this five-year-old already know about Bitcoin? 1:12:23 Is that a fair question? 1:12:25 Do they use Bitcoin or what? 1:12:26 I would say if it was really a five-year-old, 1:12:28 I would say it's altcoins but Bitcoin only. 1:12:32 I would say something like that. 1:12:34 So I would not explain all this minutia of how the peg works. 1:12:37 You know what I mean? 1:12:38 Is that fair or no? 1:12:39 I would say this is like you use – it's like you have an altcoin, 1:12:43 but you have no coin. 1:12:45 You only have BTC. 1:12:48 So you have whatever. 1:12:50 You have Ethereum's full node software, but there's no ether. 1:12:56 You have Monero's ring signatures. 1:12:58 You have Monero's – Monero addresses, Monero privacy, Monero bulletproofs, 1:13:06 but there's no actual coin. 1:13:07 You just send Bitcoin there. 1:13:09 So I don't think that I would explain like the minutia of the withdrawal 1:13:12 to a five-year-old, but maybe if they already knew about SPV proofs 1:13:16 or if they knew about Electrum or something, maybe I would give it a try. 1:13:23 So Boya Cox insists that there must be a better way to do two-way peg 1:13:28 than the vote mechanism. 1:13:32 Well, again, I think the vote mechanism isn't so bad. 1:13:35 But what exactly are they worried about, I would wonder? 1:13:38 Are they worried that the miners will steal the coins? 1:13:44 Because it's kind of hard. 1:13:47 It's like they have to do the wrong thing for a long time, 1:13:50 many months of having the hash be wrong. 1:13:53 It is like a prison where everyone can see you get buzzed through all these gates, 1:13:58 gate after gate after gate after gate. 1:14:00 Again, the vote thing is more of a confirmation. 1:14:04 So what they say, it's like I think a lot of people, 1:14:08 they have a problem with BIP300, but if you really dig down, 1:14:11 they kind of have like a problem with just proof of work itself, 1:14:14 which I don't think they intend to have that at all, 1:14:16 and I hope I'm not making anyone feel defensive by that. 1:14:20 But it's like how does Bitcoin really work under the hood? 1:14:24 The confirmations are measured by your full node, 1:14:28 and the confirmation is when a miner has chosen to build 1:14:32 on this, extend this blockchain tip. 1:14:38 So does that make sense? 1:14:40 The vote, maybe it should be replaced with like a trans-confirmation or something. 1:14:49 Something like that, I don't know. 1:14:51 Yeah, I have been hyping this very high-quality tweet. 1:14:55 And let's make it like this, I'm going to read it out loud, and then I'm going to play another ad, and then you get to comment on it. 1:15:00 So we got some cliffhangers here. 1:15:05 So first of all, I need to share my screen. 1:15:09 I wish there was some automation for this, like to press only one button and go back to my previous setting, but it's an open-source software, it's called Jitsi. 1:15:19 And I guess if we don't like it, we can improve it. 1:15:24 Anyway, ZenderCTV at ZND Toshi says, under BIP300 rules, 26% of miners can lock coins in a Drivechain indefinitely. 1:15:36 Imagine USA government mandating Foundry to never release coins from a privacy Drivechain. 1:15:42 Miners have the option to use Alarm, which is a vote that downvotes all proposals. 1:15:48 Thus, even if 74% votes in favor, the proposal still does not go through because it can never reach 51% in favor. 1:15:57 If there are miners that abstain from voting, then there is a lower percentage needed to lock indefinitely the coins. 1:16:04 Drivechain people should understand the risks. 1:16:07 BIP300 introduces voting, a democracy pillar that may come with states trying to influence sidechain security. 1:16:14 Voting should not be part of Bitcoin security assumptions. 1:16:17 Proposal refers to proposal to peg out coins from a Drivechain. 1:16:22 And there are more comments. 1:16:24 Let me play the ad for Satodime, which is a pretty cool way to turn your Bitcoin into cash. 1:16:30 Like an ancient paper wallet that exists under the shape of a card. 1:16:35 And then you can comment on this. 1:16:37 So you can take the time to think. 1:16:39 We'll be back. 1:16:41 Remember the paper wallet? 1:16:43 Ah, yes. 1:16:44 The good old days when you printed your Bitcoin private key on an offline computer. 1:16:48 It was so fun, but not really easy and totally not secure. 1:16:52 Today, we have Satodime. 1:16:54 A chip card that acts just like your good old paper wallet, but with all the modern security features and top-notch functionality. 1:17:01 It turns your Bitcoin into a bearer asset, which you can easily trade in person. 1:17:05 Thanks to NFC, you can use the Satodime card with your smartphone. 1:17:09 Creating a new pair of Bitcoin keys takes just two swipes. 1:17:12 Check your balance in real time. 1:17:14 Create multiple key pairs. 1:17:16 Whenever you want, you can reveal your Bitcoin wallet's private key with just a single click. 1:17:20 The simple, uncluttered interface lets you quickly see if a key pair has been unsealed. 1:17:25 Finally, the cold storage you've been looking for. 1:17:27 Available now on Satodime.io. 1:17:35 Okay, Paul, don't forget that you're muted. 1:17:37 I guess you sneezed, so bless you. 1:17:40 Now you get to comment on Zentoshi's recent leak. 1:17:44 Yes, this is a good comment. 1:17:48 Yeah, like will the problems ever stop emerging? 1:17:51 But I think what you have to keep in mind is this is, again... 1:17:55 Okay, so first of all, by design, it's supposed to be problematic for the users of the L2. 1:18:01 Because it's a question of ethics. 1:18:03 Who is gaining the new feature of the sidechain, like the larger blocks or the privacy or whatever? 1:18:13 That's the person who's getting the benefit, and so they should bear the cost. 1:18:18 Now, why is it like this? 1:18:20 Why is there an ability to downvote? 1:18:23 And why then can 26 defeat everything? 1:18:26 Well, this is because if a vote is canceled or stalls out, it's just going to take a couple more months to eventually be withdrawn. 1:18:36 So, like I said, this is a situation where everyone knows what the right answer is. 1:18:41 So it should be easy to get unanimous agreement to vote for the right thing. 1:18:47 And if there's not, it means that something is wrong. 1:18:51 And if something is wrong, it's better to delay and pause. 1:18:54 Because if the coins are stolen, if they're miswithdrawn, then you lose 100% of the value. 1:18:59 But if there's merely a delay or confusion, it's just another three or so months of time value of money... 1:19:08 ...that people can swap out at a low interest rate. 1:19:11 If people can sell the sidechain coins. 1:19:13 Oh, no, your camera is flashing. 1:19:15 Yeah, I'm going to replace it so you can keep talking. 1:19:18 Yes, I'll keep going. 1:19:25 What was I saying now? 1:19:27 It was so distressing to see the red battery thing. 1:19:30 It's always fear-inspiring when you see that. 1:19:33 So the people who bear the cost should be the ones who opt into the new feature. 1:19:39 It's better to have the withdrawal process fail, which is to say delay for another few months... 1:19:47 ...rather than have it result in a theft. 1:19:50 We actually want it to be conservative. 1:19:52 Because a theft is minus 100%. 1:19:55 And the delay is only minus time value of money for a few months. 1:19:59 So it's minus nothing. It's less than a percent. 1:20:02 Very little. 1:20:03 Now, with regard to that specific thing about what would happen... 1:20:06 ...if the US government told Foundry to hold the coins hostage. 1:20:09 I don't think any of that would work. 1:20:11 I think this is a question of what about the governments and mining pools. 1:20:16 And it has nothing to do with sidechains at all. 1:20:19 It's just a question that has its own merit. 1:20:22 And what we should do is we should make it as easy as possible to replace a mining pool. 1:20:28 And for miners to switch pools. 1:20:30 So that at the drop of a hat, if a mining pool does something that the users or miners or anyone... 1:20:36 ...holders of the currency don't like, they will switch. 1:20:40 And these people all have the same incentives. 1:20:43 The incentives are all aligned. 1:20:45 The miners collect the transaction fees. 1:20:47 The miners are only paid in BTC. 1:20:49 It's not like the miners get paid in whatever, like Turkish Lira or Euros or something. 1:20:56 They get paid in BTC. 1:20:57 So they want the BTC exchange rate to be high and not to crash. 1:21:01 They want Bitcoin to work. 1:21:02 They have vested interest in Bitcoin. 1:21:03 They have the 100 block maturity period. 1:21:05 So they have their incentives totally aligned. 1:21:09 And we want them to have the pool on a very short leash. 1:21:15 So if the pool, the edict comes down, the government edict comes down... 1:21:20 ...and it says the pool must do this, must do a certain bad thing, whatever it is. 1:21:25 Censor a transaction. 1:21:27 Censor a list of transactions. 1:21:29 Censor the withdrawal, kind of in this case. 1:21:32 Whatever. 1:21:33 If they do that, then we just want everyone to just leave the Foundry pool immediately... 1:21:37 ...and join a different pool. 1:21:38 This would be great news for the other pools. 1:21:40 They finally get the big break they've been waiting for... 1:21:44 ...which is the opportunity to muscle in on Foundry's market share. 1:21:49 That's the solution to the problem of pools. 1:21:52 It has nothing to do with Drivechain. 1:21:56 In the case of Drivechain, again, it's all perfectly aligned... 1:21:59 ...because the people who opt in to the new feature bear the risk. 1:22:04 It's possible that it won't work. 1:22:06 But if so, we should all learn that now because this is the fee. 1:22:10 This is the long run model for Bitcoin of fees only... 1:22:13 ...being enticing enough to keep the network alive. 1:22:18 So it's a multi-part answer. 1:22:21 He's right about that. 1:22:23 He's right that they can be delayed, but delay is better than minus 100%. 1:22:27 And the question of intimidating pools should just be solved a different way. 1:22:33 I've tweeted about this publicly, including recently... 1:22:36 ...which LayerTwo Labs is happy to find. 1:22:38 If we find the right people to work on a high-performance, open-source mining pool... 1:22:47 ...like server software or what have you... 1:22:51 ...that is something we are interested in making. 1:22:53 We're interested in supporting Stratum V2... 1:22:55 ...although I think Stratum V2 is overrated and doesn't even go far enough. 1:23:00 Because what we really want... 1:23:02 I think Matt Corral tweeted this recently, and I agree. 1:23:04 That's what I was getting. 1:23:06 Specifically, I'm sharing this tweet right now. 1:23:08 He says, if you want to make BIP300-slash-Drivechains-slash-decentralized-side-chains happen... 1:23:13 ...in a way that isn't embarrassingly insecure... 1:23:17 ...work on Stratum V2, work on Braid pool, bring back P2 pool. 1:23:23 Without substantial increases in mining decentralization, these things make zero sense. 1:23:28 This is what he said. 1:23:30 And he got fewer likes than Vortex. 1:23:32 I know. Isn't that weird? 1:23:34 I know. Yeah, that's very constructive of him, of course. 1:23:37 I think also, though, this is like his pet project and he wants to shill it. 1:23:41 And I think he's right to do so. 1:23:43 I think that I finally, after years and years of just being mystified... 1:23:48 ...and asking people to define, what do you mean by mining centralization? 1:23:55 I finally know what I think at least a few people who are smart are talking about. 1:24:01 They mean make it as easy as possible to switch pools if it misbehaves. 1:24:06 So I'm in full agreement with that. 1:24:09 Full and total agreement with that. 1:24:11 I happen to think one of my thoughts is, and actually I think that it's quite... 1:24:15 ...and I think Udi replied to Bluemat to say this... 1:24:18 ...is that the situation is actually not that bad... 1:24:21 ...because when's the last time miners have done anything wrong? 1:24:24 There's only a few times and they have weird extenuating circumstances... 1:24:28 ...that involve misunderstandings or something. 1:24:30 So it's not like the miners are really not being that evil. 1:24:35 So I think you could easily make a case that we don't actually need Stratum V2 right now. 1:24:45 Because the situation isn't that bad. 1:24:48 But nonetheless, we should constantly be trying to improve it. 1:24:50 I'm fully in favor of making the pools as vulnerable as possible... 1:24:56 ...driving their profit margins to zero... 1:25:01 ...making it so they own nothing but their name brand and their IP address or whatever. 1:25:06 And I think that would be healthy for Bitcoin to have competitive pools. 1:25:10 But the thing is, I think it's already very competitive. 1:25:14 I mean, don't you? What do you think about that? 1:25:16 What is the pool... 1:25:18 See, the thing about pools is, the pool is a good thing. 1:25:22 Without pools, we would never have small miners and we would be dead. 1:25:25 Without pools, there really would be... 1:25:28 We're so lucky that we have pools. It's not even funny. 1:25:31 Because if we couldn't have pools, then you would never be able to be a miner... 1:25:36 ...unless you had something like 1 3000th or some math that I have done. 1:25:41 Is that 1 4500th, I believe it was, or 2500th? 1:25:45 If you have that portion of the hash rate in the 10-minute blocks... 1:25:50 ...then you're finding one block on average every 31 days. 1:25:54 Which means that sometimes you're not finding a block for weeks. 1:25:57 I mean, excuse me, for months. For like three months. 1:26:01 So there's no way you can have a normal business plan with the revenue that uneven. 1:26:07 Right? So you're out of business if you're too small. 1:26:10 But because of pools, we can have these small miners... 1:26:13 ...and this one variance problem, they can just have completely be solved for them by the pool. 1:26:19 And it is very, very easy. 1:26:21 You can take a simple ratio. 1:26:23 What is the... 1:26:25 How easy is it for someone who has a hashing operation... 1:26:31 ...they have like a big warehouse full of miners or whatever... 1:26:33 ...they're a home miner, they heat their swimming pool with their mine or whatever. 1:26:36 How easy is it for that person to switch from one mining pool to the next? 1:26:43 Versus how easy is it for a mining pool to attract... 1:26:50 ...go from not having the customer, not having their hash customer... 1:26:54 ...to suddenly having that hash rate in the pool? 1:26:58 One of them, it costs almost nothing. 1:27:00 And the other one, you know, in a short time frame is like an infinite cost. 1:27:04 And over the medium term costs millions of dollars. 1:27:08 So already the ratio is enormous. 1:27:11 It is very appropriate balance. 1:27:14 And so the situation is honestly not that bad. 1:27:18 And the reason we have pools is because for statistical variance reason... 1:27:21 ...this is why a pool must be like 2-3% of the hash rate... 1:27:26 ...for its magic variance reduction properties. 1:27:29 It's a statistical thing. 1:27:31 It has nothing to do with sidechains or other software really... 1:27:37 ...or even the miners costs. 1:27:39 It has nothing to do with any of that. 1:27:41 Does that make sense? 1:27:43 Yeah. You asked me what I think about pools. 1:27:45 I actually have an article about it in my latest magazine. 1:27:48 That's called Breaking FUD. 1:27:49 It's open source. Anyone can download it. 1:27:51 I guess I'll put a link in the description. 1:27:53 There are also two shops where you can buy this... 1:27:56 ...but they're only in Europe and UK. 1:27:58 There's lnbitshop and there's shopinbit.com. 1:28:01 And I'm done chilling here. 1:28:03 But just for the record, I do have something which explains... 1:28:06 ...the dynamics of mining pools... 1:28:08 ...and why it's not as bad as people present all the time... 1:28:11 ...when they're like, oh, Foundry is so big... 1:28:13 ...they can 51% attack Bitcoin if they join forces with one other pool. 1:28:18 They say that stuff. 1:28:19 Yeah. At the drop of a hat, the pool, the pie chart can change. 1:28:24 Yeah. I think if anything, in the last two years... 1:28:28 ...we have seen how dynamic mining is. 1:28:30 When China kicked out most of their miners, there are still some. 1:28:34 There's still F2 pool. There's still Ant pool. 1:28:37 But I'm not sure from where they operate. 1:28:39 And that's the funny part because right now I'm in Romania, right? 1:28:42 I could be running my own ASIC miner with any pool that I want... 1:28:47 ...but it doesn't mean that I am under that jurisdiction... 1:28:50 ...or that I have to follow or comply with whatever they're doing. 1:28:54 I can just switch whenever I want. 1:28:57 And I wish more mining was like this... 1:28:59 ...but there's also that industrial side of it... 1:29:01 ...that is very large scale and that's much easier to seize... 1:29:04 ...and control by governments. 1:29:07 Yes. So mining has all kinds of economies and diseconomies of scale. 1:29:12 But maybe we can put some people's minds slightly at ease... 1:29:16 ...if we just point out some things like, for example... 1:29:21 ...it's kind of difficult to hide the physical location... 1:29:24 ...of a big mining operation, but it's not impossible. 1:29:28 And one reason why it's not that hard... 1:29:31 ...is because the actual job, the bandwidth... 1:29:35 ...even if you're running a full node... 1:29:38 ...you could run the full node, the Bitcoin full node... 1:29:41 ...which has these bandwidth requirements... 1:29:43 ...you could run that in like Tokyo. 1:29:45 It can be assembling the block... 1:29:47 ...or of course the pool operator can be doing this. 1:29:49 And then what is sent to the actual hashers... 1:29:52 ...the actual ASIC chips and everything... 1:29:54 ...is this very, very small, very small file... 1:29:58 ...which is just like the Merkle branch... 1:30:00 ...and the Coinbase transaction and the header. 1:30:03 This is a very, very, very small file... 1:30:05 ...like whatever, like 200 bytes or something. 1:30:08 And so that is small... 1:30:10 ...and that is small enough to fit behind Tor or whatever. 1:30:14 So in principle, you can always hide... 1:30:16 ...you can always try to hide the location of the mining rig... 1:30:19 ...hiding a huge rig that is of industrial scale... 1:30:23 ...that uses a ton of electricity. 1:30:25 That's very difficult. 1:30:26 But if miners were in the business of seizing... 1:30:32 ...mining equipment... 1:30:34 ...then that would just... 1:30:36 ...every miner would then come up with a plan for... 1:30:39 ...how do I hide my mining equipment? 1:30:41 How can I move to a place where... 1:30:44 ...people won't know that it's here... 1:30:46 ...or if they do, then they won't be able to take it easily. 1:30:50 So the whole thing is honestly quite healthy, I think... 1:30:54 ...and I don't really see... 1:30:56 So Stratum v2, happy to work on it... 1:30:59 ...happy to fund it... 1:31:01 ...happy to continue to work towards making it... 1:31:05 ...as easy as possible for... 1:31:09 ...for a miner to switch pools... 1:31:11 ...for a miner to identify that a pool is guilty of something... 1:31:15 ...and try to prove that to other people. 1:31:18 At the end of the day, the only bad thing miners can really do... 1:31:21 ...is reorg the chain or censor transactions... 1:31:24 ...from the L1 point of view. 1:31:28 They have no incentive to do either of those things... 1:31:30 ...because when they reorg, they are... 1:31:33 ...some other miner, which is possibly them... 1:31:35 ...is losing money because of the 100 block maturity idea... 1:31:38 ...which is brilliant. 1:31:39 And... 1:31:41 ...on top of that... 1:31:43 ...they have no incentive ever to... 1:31:45 ...to censor transactions... 1:31:48 ...because each transaction pays a fee. 1:31:50 And in fact, you have a built-in fraud proof... 1:31:53 ...which is the transaction itself. 1:31:55 Transaction itself, if it's broadcast... 1:31:57 ...and it's not being included in a block... 1:31:59 ...everyone knows that something is up. 1:32:00 And everyone also knows exactly what to do about it. 1:32:02 Just include it, and you know exactly what you get. 1:32:04 You get the transaction fee as your reward. 1:32:06 It's a perfectly, like, self-fixing... 1:32:09 ...self-healing equilibrium. 1:32:12 So... 1:32:13 There really is no... 1:32:14 So that was a neat thing from Zentoshi... 1:32:16 ...but I don't think it's... 1:32:18 I don't, you know... 1:32:19 I don't think it's a problem for BIP300. 1:32:21 Yeah, so let me show you this... 1:32:23 ...because I think Jameson Lopp... 1:32:24 ...and the critics are going to be like... 1:32:26 ...of course he's into Drivechains... 1:32:28 ...because he was a big blocker, right? 1:32:30 But he says, at what level of hash power distribution... 1:32:33 ...would you consider BIP300... 1:32:35 ...to be secure enough to support mainnet adoption? 1:32:38 How would you quantify, slash, measure it? 1:32:41 And Matt Corallo said... 1:32:43 ...great question, I don't know. 1:32:45 I don't know if I'd ever be super happy with it... 1:32:48 ...but if you have a lot of miners... 1:32:50 ...with no more than 1-2% of hash power... 1:32:53 ...small-scale sidechains are maybe reasonable... 1:32:56 ...never large-scale though. 1:32:58 This is what he thinks. 1:33:00 Okay, yes. 1:33:03 You think this is fair? 1:33:05 No, I don't. 1:33:06 But I think he can hold that as his own opinion... 1:33:09 ...which I think is 100%, 110% fair. 1:33:12 But I think the idea is... 1:33:14 ...each individual person should be pushing the envelope. 1:33:17 Transactions are different, right? 1:33:19 So there's your cold storage... 1:33:22 ...there's your life savings, there's your retirement... 1:33:25 ...and then there's the wallet. 1:33:27 You walk around with your spending money... 1:33:30 ...your coffee money. 1:33:32 And maybe that's a small percentage of your net worth... 1:33:35 ...but there you like having that on the large block sidechain. 1:33:38 So people are different. 1:33:40 Transactions are different. 1:33:42 The real world has transactions of great heterogeneity. 1:33:47 They're all different shapes and sizes. 1:33:50 So some of them are a good fit... 1:33:52 ...for an insecure large block sidechain. 1:33:56 Some of them are a perfect fit for that... 1:33:58 ...and they're not a good fit for anything else. 1:34:01 And some should only be on L1, of course. 1:34:04 I think everyone agrees with that. 1:34:06 Some should only be on a ZK-SNARK privacy... 1:34:11 ...extremely subversive transactions... 1:34:13 ...or darknet market purchases or whatever. 1:34:17 Privacy activists or anything sensitive... 1:34:20 ...subversive, political, whatever. 1:34:22 Maybe those people would want... 1:34:24 ...maybe those people should only use the privacy sidechain... 1:34:27 ...and they should not use something with the public... 1:34:32 ...blockchain public UTXO model... 1:34:36 ...or whatever, TXID model, chain analysis model. 1:34:39 So it depends. 1:34:41 It's all different shapes and sizes. 1:34:43 The idea of declaring that something is good or bad... 1:34:46 ...is a fallacy. 1:34:48 It depends on the situation, is my view. 1:34:52 Yeah, there's also a very good argument... 1:34:55 ...by Matthew Haywood, works at Blockstream. 1:34:58 And he was in the chat, I guess, a few minutes ago. 1:35:01 I hope he is still here. 1:35:03 He sent out this tweet... 1:35:05 ...which contains his, I guess, list of criticisms. 1:35:08 Let me share the screen. 1:35:10 Okay, great. 1:35:11 I had a disagreement with him before we started recording. 1:35:14 And that's where I told him, you know, just calm down. 1:35:17 We're going to do this live stream. 1:35:18 I'm going to read out loud everything that you have to say. 1:35:21 So he says right now... 1:35:23 ...we have no idea how incentives and such sidechains... 1:35:26 ...could affect Bitcoin. 1:35:28 Are the following still relevant to Drivechains... 1:35:30 ...or have they been addressed? 1:35:32 Do you know that? 1:35:33 Can't remember the source of these... 1:35:35 ...as it's a few years old notes I made. 1:35:38 So these are basically Matthew's notes. 1:35:41 And I'm going to open them. 1:35:43 It's too zoomed in. 1:35:44 Okay. 1:35:45 The need to soft for Bitcoin undermines the aims of weak coupling... 1:35:49 ...and opens up the potential for external incentives... 1:35:52 ...and political motivations... 1:35:54 ...to impact Bitcoin's own incentive model. 1:35:57 Although it may be possible to try and mitigate such risks... 1:36:00 ...by modeling the incentives of miners within a sidechain... 1:36:03 ...it is not possible to incorporate personal and political motivations... 1:36:07 ...unknown competitive advantages... 1:36:10 ...and seemingly irrational behavior into these models... 1:36:14 ...leaving them speculative at best. 1:36:17 Okay. 1:36:18 The first sentence I think he's referring to... 1:36:20 He could be referring to one of either two things. 1:36:22 Either this is a misunderstanding... 1:36:24 ...of what it's like to activate each sidechain... 1:36:27 ...or the first sentence is only talking about... 1:36:30 ...the need to soft fork BIP300 in the first place. 1:36:34 In which case I wholeheartedly agree with him... 1:36:36 ...that that causes a giant kerfuffle temporarily... 1:36:43 ...and then it will activate and then it will be over. 1:36:46 Or something else will happen, of course. 1:36:48 Anything could happen. 1:36:50 So I think that's what he's talking about. 1:36:52 But now you have removed the rest of the paragraph. 1:36:55 So can we bring it back or no? 1:36:57 Yeah, yeah. 1:36:58 I just wanted to focus the camera on you. 1:37:00 I'm also like a show director right now. 1:37:03 So excuse me. 1:37:05 You can see it now. 1:37:07 Yeah, okay. 1:37:10 Although it may be possible to... 1:37:12 Yeah, impact Bitcoin's own incentive model. 1:37:14 But you see, again, Bitcoin's incentive model is not... 1:37:19 It's pretty simple. 1:37:20 It's just... 1:37:23 The nodes follow the rules. 1:37:25 The blocks follow the rules. 1:37:27 Every transaction is checked for validity. 1:37:30 Miners minimize their costs and they maximize their revenues. 1:37:34 And so even though Bitcoin itself is this very complicated thing... 1:37:38 ...the incentives are not that complicated. 1:37:41 And so the... 1:37:46 Is he suggesting that because the sidechain exists... 1:37:50 ...miners will stop caring about maximizing their Layer 1 transaction fee revenue? 1:37:57 They get the Layer 1 transaction fee. 1:38:00 If a transaction pays a $5 fee, that's a $5 worth of incentive for them to include the fee. 1:38:05 That's the case kind of no matter what happens in the outside world. 1:38:11 Now you've moved the paragraph again. 1:38:13 I can't remember. 1:38:14 Yeah, there's a mention in the chat by Matthew. 1:38:16 He says, no, I meant you assume all miners act logically and according to your expectations. 1:38:22 And blocking SegWit Soft Fork because of ASIC boost but being okay with it via Hard Fork... 1:38:28 ...is an example of a weird incentive miner that you mentioned. 1:38:33 Not evil, but not predictable. 1:38:36 Well, I know that in Blockstream, it's just taken for granted... 1:38:39 ...that Greg Maxwell was correct about ASIC boost being the reason why SegWit was held up. 1:38:45 But there's actually... 1:38:46 This is a total minutiae point, but I'm fascinated by all Bitcoin history. 1:38:49 So I'm happy to ramble about this. 1:38:51 But there's an enormous amount of evidence to suggest that ASIC boost had nothing to... 1:38:55 Covert ASIC boost had nothing to do with SegWit activation. 1:38:58 So I know a lot of people don't agree. 1:39:00 But like one piece of evidence is that if this were the case... 1:39:05 ...that activating SegWit would brick ASIC boost... 1:39:10 ...when this would be worth millions of dollars... 1:39:13 ...then you would think that whenever SegWit actually did activate on August 1st, 2017... 1:39:20 ...that the hash rate would go down. 1:39:22 You know, maybe just a little. 1:39:24 But it doesn't change at all. 1:39:26 So I don't know why that... 1:39:29 Yes, regardless of why it was held up. 1:39:31 Yeah, I think the real reason is both more interesting... 1:39:36 ...and almost a better way of making his point... 1:39:38 ...which is that the miners came under the impression... 1:39:43 ...that not activating SegWit would help them get a hard fork block size increase. 1:39:50 And I think that that was a combination of things, including bad luck. 1:39:55 ...because we had this dispute, this dispute of like... 1:39:58 ...what do we do about the fact that some people want large blocks... 1:40:01 ...and some people want small blocks, which we didn't resolve... 1:40:04 ...and which was mostly just resolved by saying... 1:40:07 ...both of the two sides just assumed, oh, everyone agrees with us. 1:40:10 Everyone thinks that we're right. 1:40:13 So that was a very mature way of handling that disagreement. 1:40:16 But even though the correct side was not activated... 1:40:20 But even though the correct side won and I was a small blocker... 1:40:23 ...and you can look up, there's a site where people made... 1:40:26 ...they asked me for comments and I'm in the small blocker group. 1:40:29 So the fact that I even have to say that is a little depressing... 1:40:32 ...but I'm actually in favor of shrinking the layer one block size... 1:40:35 ...past not only from where it is now, four megabytes... 1:40:38 ...but past one megabyte. 1:40:41 But I think part of what happened was just that people were angry... 1:40:44 ...at scaling three and one miner left to go signal for Bitcoin Unlimited... 1:40:48 ...with nine percent and that just happened to be the same weekend... 1:40:51 ...that SegWit was shipped in the hackathon after scaling three. 1:40:54 So I think a lot of it was honestly just a weird coincidence. 1:40:57 And then I don't even think it ever occurred to the miners... 1:41:00 ...that they could hold up SegWit until after they just did this fluke thing. 1:41:03 But this is my own weird interpretation of the thing. 1:41:06 So let's see. 1:41:09 Miners do not act as you expect and you expect a lot of predictable behavior... 1:41:12 ...I think. 1:41:15 Well, if you think that behavior is totally unpredictable and random... 1:41:18 ...especially miner behavior... 1:41:21 ...then Bitcoin is doomed. 1:41:24 Because again, miner behavior equals proof of work... 1:41:27 ...equals Bitcoin basically. 1:41:30 For example, what about your belief that miners will always extend... 1:41:33 ...the longest chain or that they will never reorg more than 100 blocks... 1:41:36 ...or that they will never reorg more than 50 blocks... 1:41:39 ...or that the miners will never decide to censor transactions for no reason? 1:41:43 You actually are required to believe an awful lot. 1:41:46 Even when your wallet measures confirmations... 1:41:49 ...or your full node measures confirmations... 1:41:52 ...those confirmations only exist inside of a framework... 1:41:55 ...of beliefs about what miners will do. 1:41:58 It's literally not possible to have a confirmation... 1:42:01 ...unless you have a pre-existing framework... 1:42:04 ...of what you believe miners will do. 1:42:07 And the co-confirmation system... 1:42:10 ...and the co-confirmations thing is... 1:42:13 ...you think that all miners have received this block... 1:42:16 ...and you can't see of any reason why they would... 1:42:19 ...honestly be... 1:42:22 ...because they could have accidentally an orphaned block... 1:42:25 ...or an orphaned chain of one or two blocks. 1:42:28 This could happen just because of the fact that... 1:42:31 ...information travels at the speed of light... 1:42:34 ...or near the speed of light through fiber-optic cables... 1:42:37 ...and miners have stale blocks and orphaned... 1:42:40 ...but when you have five or six confirmations... 1:42:43 ...or when you deposit to an exchange... 1:42:46 ...and you get three confirmations or whatever... 1:42:49 ...all of that... 1:42:52 ...if you deposit to Kraken and they make you wait for three confirmations... 1:42:55 ...and then they credit you with the coin... 1:42:58 ...that is because of a belief that Kraken has about miners' expectations. 1:43:01 So the idea of miners acting the way you expect... 1:43:04 ...that is always the truth... 1:43:07 ...and I think there is absolutely no possible way of escaping from that... 1:43:10 ...like mental model or that framework. 1:43:17 Yeah, that's fine. I like when people ask questions... 1:43:20 ...and I don't care if people argue. 1:43:26 Yes, but I don't know, Matthew, if you were here before... 1:43:29 ...when I said there is a clear answer. 1:43:33 You can calculate the thing to do and code it as one hash... 1:43:36 ...and that thing is the same for a very long time... 1:43:39 ...and anyone who runs the sidechain node... 1:43:42 ...which is not mandatory, but I'm just pointing... 1:43:45 ...that anyone who runs the sidechain node in either its SPV or full form... 1:43:48 ...they will get the right answer... 1:43:51 ...and so at any given point in time there is only one correct answer... 1:43:54 ...and it's also very easy to find. 1:43:57 So someone could just... 1:44:00 Also, separately from that is also... 1:44:03 ...if they do the wrong thing, we know that it was intentional. 1:44:06 So we know they're basically pulling the plug on the whole... 1:44:09 ...proof-of-work sidechains project... 1:44:15 ...which I am fully prepared... 1:44:18 ...feel free, people in the future can... 1:44:21 ...find this video. 1:44:24 Oh, my thing's changed. Can you still hear me? 1:44:27 Okay, so people in the future can find this video and... 1:44:30 I hear you. 1:44:33 Okay, good. I have a weird globe spinning on my monitor... 1:44:36 ...so hopefully it goes away. 1:44:39 No, it's a YouTube issue, I think. 1:44:42 Okay, so people in the future can find this video and play it... 1:44:45 ...and say, look how wrong Paul was. I'm fine with that. 1:44:48 But if they are... 1:44:51 ...they will have killed all the transaction fee revenues... 1:44:54 ...if they do that, then they will also have killed any price appreciation... 1:44:57 ...that accrues to Bitcoin from being this multi-token thing... 1:45:00 ...that has sidechain... 1:45:03 ...sidechain properties and features. 1:45:09 So, yes. 1:45:12 And what can a node do to prevent the miners voting no? 1:45:15 There is one thing they can do, and luckily... 1:45:18 ...it has beautiful properties. 1:45:21 Which is that it also does not affect anyone who doesn't opt in to this thing. 1:45:24 So you opt in to spending your coins... 1:45:27 ...and moving them to the L2 blockchain... 1:45:30 ...the BIP300 sidechain. 1:45:33 You can further, if the miner tries to steal... 1:45:36 ...you can further opt in to trying to UASF to saying... 1:45:39 ...if this transaction ID that's stealing the coins is included in a block... 1:45:42 ...then I will invalidate the block. 1:45:45 So you can further try that. 1:45:48 And that may be an effective deterrent to the miners... 1:45:51 ...because they may think, oh no... 1:45:54 ...the nodes will reject the block with the theft... 1:45:57 ...so it's not going to work, and then they may give up. 1:46:00 The cool thing is though, even if they don't give up... 1:46:03 ...and lots of people do this... 1:46:06 ...those people who tried to UASF to block the theft... 1:46:09 ...they... 1:46:12 ...they are forked onto their own... 1:46:15 ...they are the ones who are on a minority chain with no hash rate. 1:46:18 So they know that they lost... 1:46:21 ...and then they just have to admit that they lost... 1:46:24 ...and then they go back onto the regular chain. 1:46:27 So it's very good, because it does not affect any of the other people... 1:46:30 ...who... 1:46:33 ...who may not want to care about this sidechain drama... 1:46:36 ...which is the whole point, is that they should not have to care... 1:46:39 ...about any sidechains that they're not personally interested in. 1:46:42 It should be like apps on an iPhone. 1:46:45 Okay, thanks for answering. 1:46:48 Yes, my pleasure. 1:46:51 Are you certain that we know how best to implement BIP300? 1:46:54 If you're talking about the lines of code... 1:46:57 ...then I would say I'm certain that I am not. 1:47:00 I don't know the best way. 1:47:03 I have already coded... 1:47:06 ...we have demo software, so we have a version where it works... 1:47:09 ...but that doesn't mean it is the best way that conforms... 1:47:12 ...to all Bitcoin Core's idiosyncratic... 1:47:15 ...little style guide and other things... 1:47:18 ...that is the best for a long-term code review. 1:47:21 And I certainly do not consider myself an expert in C++... 1:47:24 ...and I certainly do not... 1:47:27 ...I don't really want to do it... 1:47:30 ...without adult supervision, so to speak, which is why we hired Luke... 1:47:33 ...to help us prepare the pull request... 1:47:36 ...because Luke is, of course, a genius and he knows... 1:47:39 ...every version of Bitcoin Core, I think, back to front... 1:47:42 ...and I think that is partly why we paid him... 1:47:45 ...to help us prepare the BIP300 pull request... 1:47:48 ...which is, of course, only a request... 1:47:51 ...and he... 1:47:54 ...I think this is a good idea, though, because... 1:47:57 ...if people see the actual details... 1:48:00 ...I think if you read the BIP and look at the code, it looks a lot less... 1:48:03 ...it looks very harmless. 1:48:06 It's just spending your own coins to a script that unlocks... 1:48:09 ...with these super confirmation things. 1:48:12 No, it doesn't look harmless. People look at the benevolent dictator part... 1:48:15 ...and they're like, oh, this guy's trying to centralize Bitcoin. 1:48:18 Well, that's for the L2s. 1:48:21 That's not the L1, so maybe that is a misunderstanding... 1:48:24 ...so maybe I should reword that part. 1:48:27 But I think, if I can explain what I'm getting at with that... 1:48:30 ...is that it's much better... 1:48:33 ...if you go to a hotel, there's someone who owns the hotel... 1:48:36 ...and there's someone who manages the hotel, right? 1:48:39 You don't go to the hotel and then everyone sits down and they say, let's vote on... 1:48:42 ...how late the pool is going to be open and whether or not we're going to have... 1:48:45 ...how much the mini-bar drinks should cost, right? 1:48:48 Vlad, that's not how it works. 1:48:51 Is that correct? 1:48:54 It's like a restaurant. 1:48:58 There's a head waiter, there's an owner... 1:49:01 And there's a menu. You don't get to decide what's on the menu or how much it costs. 1:49:04 But you get to choose. 1:49:07 You get to go to another place that you don't like. 1:49:10 Precisely, exactly. So that's what I mean by that. 1:49:13 I hope I didn't trigger too many people in a misleading way... 1:49:16 ...with the benevolent dictator thing. 1:49:19 But I think usually the benevolent dictator phrase is honestly thrown around... 1:49:22 ...in a positive way. 1:49:26 It's used to refer to... 1:49:29 Many open source projects have that phrase attached to them. 1:49:32 And I think that is better than... 1:49:35 That is good. 1:49:38 Because you want someone who has a vision. 1:49:41 I think that's the best of all worlds. 1:49:44 Where you have benevolent dictators but they can't stop you from leaving. 1:49:47 I think that's the best of all possible worlds. 1:49:50 And not just that, you have options. 1:49:53 Because that's also what matters. 1:49:56 Of course, if you have only one option... 1:49:59 They can be like, you can leave anytime you want but you don't really have a choice. 1:50:02 Yeah, it's not a practical option. 1:50:05 I agree with you. 1:50:08 It's like Yuletown in every European city. 1:50:11 You have lots of pubs, lots of restaurants. 1:50:14 You get to pick your price range. 1:50:18 You get to pick your cleanliness standard, I guess. 1:50:21 Of course. 1:50:24 What kind of people you want to have around. 1:50:27 Yeah, is it a country club? 1:50:30 Or is it a CD? 1:50:33 Yeah, of course. 1:50:36 Is it no frills or whatever they call it? 1:50:39 Unpretentious? 1:50:42 Yeah, that's the idea. 1:50:46 But I think the main issue... 1:50:49 If we get rid of metaphors and stuff like this. 1:50:52 I think most people are afraid of miners. 1:50:55 And I had this discussion today. 1:50:58 With someone on Twitter who told me... 1:51:01 If Drivechains get activated by the miners... 1:51:04 Then we're going to fork off and create the real Bitcoin. 1:51:07 And I was like, so what kind of guarantee do you have that... 1:51:10 You're going to have the real Bitcoin? 1:51:13 It's going to be in a minority hash rate chain. 1:51:16 And that one is likely to get 51% attacked also. 1:51:19 By the same miners you dislike. 1:51:22 And whom you're disrespecting if you do that. 1:51:25 So that's a possibility. 1:51:28 So how can you prevent it? 1:51:31 No, Bitcoin is for virtuous people. 1:51:34 No, Bitcoin is a greed system. 1:51:37 Bitcoin is all about incentives. 1:51:40 Think about how infrequently we actually see 51% attack. 1:51:43 So for example, Bitcoin SV, the price is much less than 1%. 1:51:46 Which means that the hash rate is much less than 1%. 1:51:49 And yet we don't really... 1:51:52 I think there was once or twice. 1:51:55 But we really don't see it that often, do we? 1:51:58 Isn't that interesting? 1:52:01 So I think that it is not necessarily the case... 1:52:04 Bitcoin is not powered by virtue. 1:52:07 But it's not blind to ethics either. 1:52:10 I think there is an ethical dimension to people where... 1:52:16 Most people actually I think obey the rules. 1:52:19 As long as one important condition is met. 1:52:22 Which is that they don't want to look around and see other people breaking the rules. 1:52:25 And getting away with it. 1:52:28 So actually everyone is willing to obey certain rules. 1:52:31 This is my philosophy on life. 1:52:34 Maybe I should directly comment on the idea of... 1:52:37 So you're right that this thing of resisting the minor soft fork... 1:52:44 That is in practice actually a hard fork for them. 1:52:47 In the sense that it does the same thing that Bitcoin Cash does. 1:52:50 Where everyone who upgraded, but no one else... 1:52:53 Is put on their own network. 1:52:56 Which is not good. 1:52:59 Because you have a lot of indifferent people always. 1:53:02 You have people who upgrade, people who are indifferent. 1:53:05 And then the people who counter upgrade. 1:53:08 People who reject BIP300. 1:53:14 That last group is carved off and they're on their own network. 1:53:17 And they don't have, as you say, by definition... 1:53:20 They probably don't have the hash rate. 1:53:23 But I don't think that is why it's a bad idea. 1:53:26 I think it's a bad idea because BIP300 doesn't do anything bad to you. 1:53:30 If it activates on the Bitcoin Core blockchain. 1:53:33 You can run... 1:53:36 Luke doesn't agree with... 1:53:39 And Luke and Adam don't agree with this. 1:53:42 I've had this conversation with them once every few months for a long time. 1:53:45 I still don't understand their point of view. 1:53:48 I would still like to understand their point of view. 1:53:51 I'm giving it my best try. 1:53:54 I don't think they're right. 1:53:58 The old node that does not enforce BIP300. 1:54:01 It will not even notice that BIP300 has activated. 1:54:04 The only thing that will happen is you'll see OPNAP5 being used. 1:54:07 And that a lot of coins might be in there. 1:54:10 But other than that, nothing will happen to you. 1:54:13 So it's a completely victimless crime. 1:54:16 So that is the real reason why they shouldn't do it. 1:54:19 It's because they have some kind of paranoid belief that is incorrect. 1:54:22 I feel if these people... 1:54:26 I feel if these people would read the BIP or read the code. 1:54:29 I think they would see if they would read the code. 1:54:32 And this is why you see people ask. 1:54:35 There was a bunch of fake drama a few weeks ago about MEV. 1:54:38 And Drivechain. 1:54:41 Which I can talk about if you wish. 1:54:44 But you can see that Michael Tidwell asked Luke Dashjr. 1:54:47 Who is the one working on the pull request. 1:54:50 So he knows. 1:54:53 He knows that there is a risk of minor centralization or MEV. 1:54:56 Because of BIP300. And Luke just says no. 1:54:59 Because there really isn't. 1:55:02 Under the hood it is just a thing that you... 1:55:05 It's a type of script you spend Bitcoin to. 1:55:08 I think people... 1:55:11 They look at something from too far away. 1:55:14 They see it in this abstract lens. 1:55:17 It's bringing shitcoinery to Bitcoin or something. 1:55:20 But if they read the code. 1:55:23 They would see exactly the details of what it does. 1:55:26 And they would see that it is not... 1:55:29 It doesn't do these things. I think it does. 1:55:32 It doesn't do anything bad to the people on L1. 1:55:35 Who aren't using it. 1:55:38 Makes sense. 1:55:41 My cat got inside the room and he is erratic. 1:55:44 I don't know what he wants. 1:55:48 But let me play the last ad for the show. 1:55:51 And then we can come back and comment on Hadlonaut's tweets. 1:55:54 I think that's a good way to end this interview. 1:55:57 Because I like Hadlonaut. 1:56:00 I consider him a good friend. 1:56:03 I know him in person. 1:56:06 But at the same time I feel like his comments were very poorly informed. 1:56:09 And he influenced a lot of people indirectly. 1:56:12 By being in principle against any kind of change. 1:56:16 And saying that anything is a possible attack and we should be careful. 1:56:19 But I'm not sure he really understands what this is about. 1:56:22 And I don't want to sound condescending. 1:56:25 Let me play the ad and we can get back to this. 1:56:46 Get the latest iPhone. 1:56:49 Upgrade your computer. 1:56:52 Buy something sexy for your new girlfriend. 1:56:55 Book a trip to El Salvador through the Travel Hacking Service. 1:56:58 And also grab a copy of the latest Bitcoin Takeover magazine to read in the airplane. 1:57:01 Everything is integrated with a familiar shopping experience that doesn't track you. 1:57:04 And deletes your data after the order gets completed. 1:57:07 You also get a 3% discount if you pay in Bitcoin. 1:57:10 Try Shop and Bid today. 1:57:13 Or you can go to BTC-TKVR for a 5 euro discount on your first order. 1:57:22 Okay, so before I show the tweets. 1:57:25 Let me ask you this. 1:57:28 What is the worst possible comment that you received? 1:57:31 And made you wonder what the hell am I even doing here? 1:57:34 Why do I bother? 1:57:37 Well, the Vortex one was really weird. 1:57:40 He had gone out of his way to make every single part of every sentence. 1:57:43 Be like the opposite of something. 1:57:46 So that I was really like. 1:57:49 But those types of things don't really bother me as much. 1:57:52 Like if they're completely wrong. 1:57:55 Then I just think something got to this person like a long time ago. 1:57:58 Or like, you know, something like intercepted this person. 1:58:01 And you know what I mean? 1:58:04 Like what if someone came up to you and they started saying. 1:58:08 You know, like a giant spiders and costumes or something. 1:58:11 You'd just be like, okay, whatever. 1:58:14 You know what I mean? 1:58:17 Like it's not even that disturbing because you just think. 1:58:20 It's so weird that you just think that's not going to actually impact the world. 1:58:23 I think what is the worst? 1:58:26 Like what is the most actually demoralizing thing? 1:58:29 I think that's hard to say. 1:58:32 I'm going to have to think about that. 1:58:36 I'm trying to think. 1:58:39 I don't really normally sort in my head like most demoralizing thing. 1:58:42 I think the most demoralizing thing. 1:58:45 Well, one thing that is demoralizing is. 1:58:48 It sucks to look at the numbers when someone makes a tweet. 1:58:51 And then they have the numbers like the like retweet view number. 1:58:54 And then you really. 1:58:57 You spend a couple minutes thinking about. 1:59:00 Okay, how can I write like a really good response that's like polite. 1:59:03 That takes the person seriously and assumes good faith. 1:59:06 But you're thinking every time, every minute you do that, 1:59:09 the view number is going up and you are not going to get the same. 1:59:12 Amount of views on your response. 1:59:15 So if someone will do a thing, they get whatever, 1:59:18 they get some nonsensical thing and they get 90,000 views. 1:59:21 And then I'll write the thing, the reply. 1:59:24 The reply can only get. 1:59:27 You know, at best one 10th or maybe even a hundredth. 1:59:30 So, of course, any informed person will be reading for the back and forth. 1:59:33 But at the same time, you do kind of think like. 1:59:36 You kind of think like. 1:59:39 What is, should I, should I even reply here? 1:59:42 Which the answer is probably no. 1:59:45 Probably not on Twitter, but whatever. 1:59:48 It is what it is. 1:59:51 I think at first I think I did owe people a little something because the. 1:59:54 I'm glad you've disappeared again. 1:59:58 You know, people a little something because of Luke's pull request. 2:00:01 So I thought I'll go on Twitter and answer people's questions. 2:00:04 I think one thing that's disappointing is so few, 2:00:07 so many people just presume that like they have a. 2:00:10 They just think that. 2:00:13 Like, OK, sometimes I'll ask people like. 2:00:16 What is why? 2:00:19 Why don't you like this idea? 2:00:21 And they'll just like in a DM or something and they'll just say, 2:00:24 I don't even want to talk to you or whatever. 2:00:27 And you're like, OK, like, well. 2:00:30 Sometimes I feel like screenshotting those and I just tweet those. 2:00:33 I feel like sometimes I just like I'll be like, this is what I'm dealing with. 2:00:36 You know. 2:00:39 Now, let me share the screen on this particular tweet. 2:00:42 I think it echoes with the feelings of a lot of Bitcoiners. 2:00:45 And it's important to discuss this. 2:00:48 So how low not says. 2:00:51 And this was from three days ago. 2:00:54 Almost the more I read about BIP300, 2:00:57 the more it seems like a great way to introduce enormous amounts of 2:01:00 grift, complexity, risk and shit. 2:01:03 Coinesque functionality into the Bitcoin. 2:01:06 Not a fan. 2:01:09 And that's on top of my main sentiment that we should be extremely wary 2:01:12 of any change. 2:01:15 And this one got almost 500. 2:01:18 Not as many as the Vortex one, but still, 2:01:21 I think this resonates with a lot of people in the community. 2:01:24 Right. 2:01:27 But of course, isn't it bizarre, though, 2:01:30 because it's like this the original sidechain idea from Blockstream is 2:01:33 that's now referred to as shit, coinesque functionality or grift. 2:01:36 So that means that everyone who wrote the sidechains white paper, 2:01:39 Peter Weil, Greg Maxwell, whatever, 2:01:42 like those people are all which the sidechains white paper from 2:01:45 Blockstream has a section about issuing like assets and tokens, 2:01:48 as does the liquid sidechain, as I later point out to. 2:01:51 Well, 2:01:54 liquid has as one of its use cases issuing assets, 2:01:57 confidential assets. 2:02:00 Blockstream was all proud of that in January, 2:02:03 2017 or whatever, when they released that. 2:02:06 They were still proud in 2019 during Baltic Honey Badger. 2:02:09 Right. 2:02:12 I learned Ripple and stuff like that. 2:02:15 So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. 2:02:18 I remember people doing ICOs on liquid in 2020. 2:02:21 I mean, just for fun, 2:02:24 Samsung now actually did a real one and raised funds for a video game, 2:02:27 which I'm not sure it came out. 2:02:30 But anyway, 2:02:33 my point is that there was this culture shift where I think people 2:02:36 became too radicalized and forgot that all of these tokens were 2:02:39 objects. 2:02:42 And everything started from colored coins and counterparty. 2:02:45 And the reason why they did not continue on Bitcoin was because they 2:02:48 wanted to find a more scalable way to do it. 2:02:51 I think that was the reason. 2:02:54 The fees, the speed and stuff like that. 2:02:57 They experimented with whatever. 2:03:00 In the beginning, it was NXT, I think. 2:03:03 And also Omni was on Bitcoin. 2:03:06 And somehow Ethereum ended up getting part of that share 2:03:09 and becoming dominant for what it does. 2:03:12 But it's still interesting 2:03:15 how we ended up with a situation where these use cases 2:03:18 that were all along meant for Bitcoin to develop 2:03:21 are now being rejected. 2:03:24 The fact that you would even do it 2:03:27 in a way that doesn't harm L1, that's not good enough even. 2:03:30 It's like not even a trade-off. 2:03:33 I don't know. I don't understand it. 2:03:36 People bet on Taro and RGB that these are going to be the solutions. 2:03:39 But the reason why they cannot be the solutions 2:03:42 is that their investors, 2:03:45 like institutions that create stuff on Ethereum, 2:03:48 they don't care much about the fundamentals of the network. 2:03:51 They just wanted to build stuff because it helps them 2:03:54 evade some regulations. 2:03:57 And I can understand that frustration that they have. 2:04:00 They want to build stuff without having to file a lot of paperwork. 2:04:03 As a libertarian, I guess it makes sense. 2:04:06 But they don't want to rewrite the entire codebase from scratch. 2:04:09 And that's kind of the point. 2:04:12 If they want to switch to Taro or RGB 2:04:15 or whatever layer-free on Bitcoin, 2:04:18 they have to rewrite the entire codebase and relaunch everything. 2:04:21 And that's going to be maybe a few million dollars in development 2:04:24 and testing. 2:04:27 I agree with you. That's another reason why people will not switch quickly 2:04:30 is that it's just the ERC-20 standard 2:04:33 or whatever the standard is, that you're completely right 2:04:36 that people want something that facilitates easier comparison. 2:04:39 They want to say, 2:04:42 we are doing the same token that other people are doing. 2:04:45 They don't want it to be like a custom thing from scratch 2:04:48 because then it has all this extra new risk for no reason. 2:04:51 They want everything to be specialization of labor. 2:04:55 I can say something else also. There's one thing that I would say, which is that there's the Blockstream white paper. It has in it a mistake. It has this part about centralization of mining, which if you cut through all the wording and you refactor it, it basically says something 2:05:22 like, sidechains may be bad because whenever miners earn more money, that is bad. And so it's 2:05:32 basically whenever any sidechain merge mining transaction fee is collected by a miner, that 2:05:38 that's a bad thing. But that is exactly equal to whenever sidechains are being used, whenever 2:05:45 there's actual merge mining, whenever there's actual usage of the sidechain. So they have 2:05:50 literally a zero equals one logical statement in that part, which I think contributed to, 2:05:55 for some reason, the intellectual elite in Bitcoin deciding that sidechains might be bad because of 2:06:01 this reason. The reason ended up being that whenever merge mining sidechains are used, 2:06:07 there's a transaction fee that's collected. So that's certainly a weird thing that has, 2:06:17 I think, been a headwind for the sidechain idea. And the lack of the sidechain idea has just 2:06:22 encouraged people to do all this other stuff. And then as you say, something becomes a standard, 2:06:26 and then it has a center of gravity. I mean, I agree that Ethereum is bound to fail at one point, 2:06:33 but you need something to fall back on. I mean, not everything that's built on it is that bad. 2:06:41 You can argue that you can make improvements, but you want something to move stuff quickly, 2:06:46 to have a transition. And you don't want that transition to happen on Tron or whatever. I think 2:06:51 that's stupid, makes no sense. I think that we have to point out two important things. 2:06:58 One of them is that, let's see, how should I explain this? What were we just talking about? 2:07:08 I already lost my train of thought now. Damn it. This was really important. 2:07:12 It was about hoarding contracts in a very seamless way from Ethereum to some Bitcoin layer, 2:07:19 sidechain or layer free or whatever. 2:07:22 What were we talking about before then? I was talking about the Blockstream. 2:07:26 Oh, that's what you're talking about. Yes. 2:07:28 What did you say after that? I'll remember it in a second. I promise. What did I say? 2:07:37 Anyway, you're focused too much on this idea from 2014. 2:07:42 Okay. That was one of them though. That was the second one. Okay. The second one is an 2:07:46 important point. The second one is that you have to be able to do a lot of things at the same time. 2:07:51 It's important to point out, which is that back then, Ethereum was... Okay, good. I remembered 2:07:57 them both now. Back then, Ethereum really was much more of a scam. It's very different. It 2:08:03 has changed since 2015. Bitcoiners are still thinking about Ethereum in 2023, 2:08:13 the same way that they're thinking about it in 2015. That is ridiculous. It really was a scam 2:08:19 in 2015. Then it was very dumb in 2016, where you had the slocket and you had the DAO, but you 2:08:23 had the beginnings of differentiation. Now, after a lot of trial and error and stuff, it's been 2:08:30 changing and it's been improving. It's been getting worse in many ways, but they are using 2:08:38 trial and error. As Darwinian evolution shows us, trial and error is sufficient for a couple of tiny 2:08:47 molecules to take over an entire planet, given enough time. Now, the second thing to point out is 2:08:54 another thing that is different from 2014 to present, which is in the past, 2:09:01 it's certainly the case that Greg Maxwell, Luke Jr., all these people, I believe that in 2014, 2:09:09 they knew everything there was to know about every altcoin project. 2:09:16 I think Greg Maxwell really knew everything about Ethereum in 2014. 2:09:21 Today, I think the elite Bitcoin intelligentsia and elite Bitcoin technical minds, 2:09:28 I think they purposely avoid looking at Ethereum, so I think they know nothing about it. 2:09:33 They know literally nothing about it. If they went to an ETH technical conference, 2:09:37 they wouldn't even know what the words meant. They wouldn't know any of the issues, 2:09:42 and maybe you could say, well, who cares? But the problem with that is now we're really flying 2:09:47 completely blind because you don't know if someone has some really great idea somewhere 2:09:53 because you're not looking. That's another thing that's really different. I think when I 2:09:58 first got involved with Bitcoin, I really think that Greg Maxwell knew everything about every 2:10:01 altcoin, and Andrew Polstra, they knew everything about every altcoin and why it was a dumb idea. 2:10:06 Now, I think they know less than 0.1% about the whole wider design space, and I think even that 2:10:15 it's not even possible. I feel like I know a very little percent of what's going on in the 2:10:21 Bitcoin technical world. Probably there's plenty of people in the Ethereum technical world who 2:10:26 think that they know more than most, which is going to be like 1% or 2%, so no one can know. 2:10:32 Well, I wouldn't say that this is ignorance or bad faith. It's just that in 2014, 2015, 2:10:38 there was less stuff happening, and now there's too much stuff happening, and some people are 2:10:43 concerned that we have too many soft fork proposals at the same time because in the past, 2:10:48 we started with SegWit, and then it was obvious that we're going to add Schnorr signatures of 2:10:52 sorts, and then we had Taproot. There was consensus for that. It has been expected, 2:10:57 but now we have three or four of them at the same time, and people are confused, 2:11:01 and they're like, what the hell? But this is actually decentralization at play. 2:11:05 This is what you should be expecting, not the same five, six people proposing all 2:11:11 improvements. You have different teams, different ideas. 2:11:14 In particular, I agree with you completely, but the crucial thing is that we should have something 2:11:20 where something like sidechains doesn't have to be BIP300 necessarily, but we should have something 2:11:25 where someone can try an idea on Bitcoin without explaining it to everyone first, 2:11:31 without consensus, in other words. The consensus is the bad guy because consensus means you have 2:11:36 to explain it to every unremarkable person and get everyone to sign off on it. That is a situation 2:11:45 where very few people will even want to even introduce an idea into Bitcoin, let alone research 2:11:54 all the different ideas that there are. We want people to be really excited and to be hunting 2:11:58 ideas, going to the Ethereum conference and saying, oh, maybe I can find an idea and steal it, 2:12:02 bring it back to Bitcoin, launch it and be a hero. But there's no way, no one can be a technical 2:12:09 hero in Bitcoin if they have to justify their decisions to someone else. Justifying one's 2:12:19 decisions is not good, and the way to get away from that is to get away from the universal 2:12:23 consensus. The way to do that is to have something like sidechains, where you have 2:12:28 these places that are experimental, by design experimental. So we don't want to have something 2:12:40 where... The problem with having 115 million people vote in an election between two people 2:12:46 is kind of the same thing as having to have 115 million people come to consensus on a soft fork, 2:12:53 which is that most people are aware that if they put in the time... It's the exact same 2:12:57 problem with voting, ironically. If they put in the time to really learn something, 2:13:02 they're not necessarily going to make any difference. And in fact, it may be worse for 2:13:08 them. They may post on Twitter and they may get people making fun of them or whatever, 2:13:12 cancelling them. Many of these people, of course, they're in a situation where they're 2:13:16 trying to raise money for a startup or something else. They have their own project that they're 2:13:20 worried about getting code review for, or they're worried about their own reputation. And so we have, 2:13:27 again, as you said before, we Bitcoiners pride ourselves on being so independent and whatever, 2:13:32 but really, we are the most spineless and conformist, just like everyone else. And people 2:13:38 want to look the other way and they give into peer pressure. And it takes a very unusually 2:13:45 stubborn person or unusually wealthy or an unusually intelligent person to just 2:13:50 beat the peer review, which is overwhelming. So peer review and peer pressure is basically the 2:13:59 same thing. And those are not good. And consensus is not good. And consensus is very hard when you 2:14:05 have 115 million people. And that's why we probably just shouldn't have any more soft 2:14:08 forks. We should just do maybe the existing crop all seem fine to me, but I don't know how they 2:14:15 seem to other people. And I think we could do simplicity. I don't know, whatever. But I think 2:14:24 simplicity is going to be like five or six years before they even finish simplicity. So 2:14:28 I don't know. I don't want to handcuff myself to that. 2:14:30 But it was not the sales pitch about simplicity that it fits on a t-shirt. 2:14:36 Well, they haven't finished it yet. So again, they're putting everyone in an awkward position 2:14:40 if they want to endorse it or what have you. They should finish it. I think in general, 2:14:47 some of that stuff is a little too strong. The script versioning stuff. And so that is 2:14:51 like a hard fork. It's like a complete black box, but whatever. 2:14:56 I want to share another tweet before we end this session. At least two of them, actually. 2:15:03 One is by Alex Berg. Yes. And he says, so I'm not sure if this is relevant. It's contextual 2:15:11 to their conversation, but he says something about Drivechains and says Drivechains is 2:15:16 an opportunity for them to recycle the shitcoin funnel quote unquote built on Bitcoin. They saw 2:15:24 it play out with NFTs and ordinals and they want more. Like, who is they? 2:15:30 I don't know, but I have never purchased an NFT or an ordinal ever. But I think they're harmless 2:15:38 fun and I don't see a problem with it at all, between consenting adults. But I think the, 2:15:43 but yeah, I think, well, Alex B certainly is, he is, I think he is determined to destroy my 2:15:51 reputation and I don't think he's succeeding, but I think he's... 2:15:55 There's also Mr. Hoddle, but it's easier for you to just go out and start a fistfight with him. 2:16:01 I think he lives in your area or something. 2:16:04 Yeah, I think so also. But I think Mr. Hoddle actually came on the, we do the Twitter spaces 2:16:10 on Friday afternoon and he came and he spoke and he had a good time. I thought, I mean, 2:16:15 I don't know if he had a good time, but he asked, he raised numerous objections and then I 2:16:20 answered them. And then several, you know, many of the times he said, Oh, you're right. I was, 2:16:24 I was wrong. So he's even kind of like a reasonable guy. I think he's just like a little, 2:16:29 unless some of these people are just a little intense. 2:16:32 Yeah, but now he's going for the person and I think that's kind of terrible when you think 2:16:37 about it. He's looking into your past. He's saying, Oh, you, you work with Jeff Garzik. 2:16:42 Jeff Garzik is the guy who coded SegWit2x, right? That's evil. You have a guy who was 2:16:46 employed to do marketing or something. And he used to work for BlockFi. 2:16:50 Right. 2:16:51 And he uses that to imply that their two labs is compromised. 2:16:53 They didn't have anything to do with, you know, the demise of BlockFi, obviously. 2:16:58 And I think that the, I can add some detail though, to this, because I think newer people 2:17:03 may find it interesting, which is back in 2015, everyone was still friends. In fact, 2:17:12 there was a time when I, and I have all these emails and stuff from people. I have hilarious 2:17:16 emails. I have emails from safety and saying, thank you so much. If I can ever repay you one 2:17:20 day, I hope to, I hope to be able to repay you. Sometimes like for your, like I'm doing, 2:17:24 I've done a bunch of favors. I have this hilarious emails that I could like leak at any moment, 2:17:28 I suppose. But Blockstream was going to offer me this partnership in November of 2014. 2:17:36 And then I just met Roger Vier the next month in December. 2:17:40 Blockstream had these like lawyers they were trying to go through or something, 2:17:43 because they're worried about prediction markets being illegal. 2:17:47 And then Roger hired me on the spot to work on Bitcoin full time to work on my Bitcoin ideas. 2:17:54 He hired me away from Yale, away from my Dr. Nordhaus and the climate modeling. So 2:18:01 he did that like on the spot, because he's, he doesn't care about whatever he, 2:18:06 the more illegal prediction markets were probably the more he was in. And then, 2:18:11 but the reason I bring this up is because it's scaling one in September of 2015, the next year, 2:18:16 the two people from Blockstream came up to me and they said, oh, we're so happy that Roger 2:18:20 hired you. We were really, we were really hoping to make it work. We think this is a really great, 2:18:24 great fit. Everyone was actually friends back then. This whole thing about these people 2:18:31 all hating each other is a modern thing that, you know how it is, people have a falling out. 2:18:35 They never want to pretend or even remember back to the times when things were, 2:18:44 whatever, agreeable. I mean, there are people I used to look up to and I dislike right now, but 2:18:51 I just, so I still have some respect for them, but at the same time, I don't show it in person. 2:18:57 So I guess this is what you're talking about. Yes. So there was, you know, back then really 2:19:04 everyone was, there was most of the people were mostly still friends. It wasn't really until 2:19:10 things were still like barely being held together. Like there were still large blockers and small 2:19:15 blockers attending Scaling 3. That was when it kind of really, but that wasn't until October 2:19:19 2016. So that was, so people were still kind of friendly until then. And then it, then it 2:19:26 kind of went off the rails. There were instigators too. There were people who are climbing the, 2:19:32 climbing the ladder, people who have really no talent, but they were able to offend or whatever 2:19:38 the right people. I'm sure, you know, you'd have some idea of who I'm thinking of. 2:19:42 Or the initials SM. 2:19:46 Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So we have an SM, we have a SA, we have a, 2:19:54 who else? JC. We have a lot of people who are like the sociopath, chaos climbers, like a Peter 2:20:02 Baelish. And they just want to make everyone miserable so that they can collect some money 2:20:09 in return for not being able to code, not being able to do anything. And then, you know, 2:20:15 sell, sell some kind of grift. So that was my experience around that time. And yeah, 2:20:24 that stuff about like looking into people's past, I think that is ridiculous. So for example, 2:20:28 I'm the CEO of LayerTwo Labs, but of course, if people don't do what I tell them to do, 2:20:33 then it's only a matter of time before, you know, I don't tell them what to do with their paycheck. 2:20:38 Do you know what I mean? Like, so the CEO employee relationship is not one that's 2:20:43 like equality and consensus. You know what I mean? Like, like I tell people what to do. And then if, 2:20:49 if there's a disagreement, then the CEO wins, right? Or the person can get fired. So the, 2:20:57 what I mean by this is that people who aren't the CEO really should not be held that responsible. 2:21:02 They do, they cut some kind of deal. They do what they're told, but it's the CEO's ideas. So the 2:21:08 CEO's execution, at least. So what I'm trying to say is, you know, you know, it's funny, 2:21:16 we could play this game and we could go back all, like, all the, like everyone worked for 2:21:21 something funny. Michael Goldstein worked for 21, P.R. Arshad worked for BitPay. So everyone worked 2:21:27 for like, everyone worked for like a large blocker at some point, I think it's kind of a funny 2:21:32 result. And it's all just, you know, and like, we can count all the people who did, many people 2:21:37 did various ICOs. Samson Mao did an ICO on Ethereum, the INX or whatever. 2:21:45 Yeah, with Jamison Lopp and a couple of other guys. And they got a free pass because this is 2:21:51 where I was getting, because there's this higher class of people that are, you know, 2:21:58 because there's this higher class of Bitcoiners who are allowed to do whatever the hell they want. 2:22:05 And then you have these gatekeepers like Mr. HODL, whose purpose is to put you in line. 2:22:11 Whenever you tweet something they don't like, they just launch very angry attacks at you to 2:22:16 put you in line and make you feel ashamed of yourself and make you feel excluded unless you 2:22:21 behave in a way that they want. It's very interesting because I used to feel pressured 2:22:27 by these people. When I first started my podcast, I felt like these voices were very important 2:22:32 for the content that I was producing. And their praise meant a lot to me, even though it did not 2:22:37 quantify in more views. So it was kind of useless. And I set myself for failure by following this 2:22:44 path. Well, it's also the wrong thing to do. And it's unsustainable. And it's also like, 2:22:49 when I had a background in academic economics, and I knew people who worked for the Boston Fed, 2:22:57 for example. And yeah, sometimes people would talk about like, well, you know, isn't all this 2:23:02 econometric stuff just a bunch of BS or whatever? And people would kind of like, everyone makes 2:23:07 their peace with it somehow. They say, well, yes, it is. But they say, well, I'll just go along with 2:23:12 it. Like, you know, they say, well, I am trying to get ahead. I'm trying to get tenure. I'm trying 2:23:19 to get whatever. So people would go along with it, even though they would not, you know, they 2:23:23 wouldn't bet their own child's life on it. Because they don't believe in it. They don't believe in 2:23:29 whatever. You know, they don't believe in a generalized method of moments, or they don't 2:23:34 believe in whatever it is. So yeah, the same thing has happened in Bitcoin to a far greater degree 2:23:42 than I ever thought, than I ever perceived it happening in academic economics. So 2:23:49 but the good news is, is that because it's all open source, it actually is. I think it is like, 2:23:55 you know, I think it's actually easier to beat is faster to eventually replace. And I think it 2:24:01 also will be faster to have. It will be faster to have it actually fixed in the sense of like 2:24:11 a new project just replacing BTC if it comes if it all becomes too irrational. 2:24:17 So that's, that's what I kind of really think, which is kind of a funny thought, of course. 2:24:22 But yeah, the irony is all these people who think they're protecting Bitcoin, I really think they 2:24:25 by far they are the number one. They are like, if you imagine how how you imagine like, five years 2:24:31 from now, Bitcoin went to zero, it would be because of the weird cult and made it impossible to talk 2:24:37 about things. And some someone went broke and released some other project, or something else, 2:24:43 someone who just studied all the projects, release something and just imagine something, 2:24:48 coin X is released, and it has this great feature. And you know, then you've got whatever 2:24:53 sailor saying that it's there is no second best. So everyone's ignoring coin X, and then the 2:24:59 community coin X community grows and grows and grows. And so it would be that would be the 2:25:03 attitude that the arguments would be that's not selling money, right? But then you realize that 2:25:09 a very small subset of the world population cares about selling money, it could even be 2:25:14 better in a way that makes it sounder money, like it could have a smaller block size, or it could 2:25:18 have something else a shrinking supply or some other thing, you know, it could actually be 2:25:23 better as money better as payments and harder, sounder money. But still, people would say, 2:25:29 the sailor, these people, they would say, you know, immaculate conception or whatever. 2:25:35 They would say, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. 2:25:39 I mean, I do agree that immaculate conception matters a lot. And the fact that we don't have 2:25:45 any benevolent dictator helped the project become more resilient. 2:25:49 I do completely agree. But I'm just saying this is like they would come up with some way to not 2:25:53 pay attention to it. And they would say, we don't care about the feature. You know, whatever the 2:26:00 feature is that and they would say those people are all those people are victims of scams. There's 2:26:04 all there's all the shit coining. That's what they would say. So that so if you actually sit 2:26:08 down, I think and imagine like, okay, it's five years from now, it's 2028. Bitcoin is at zero. 2:26:13 How did that happen? I think the indispensable role would be the the weird cult. 2:26:20 Well, the weird cult is gonna see that it's because they activated some sort of 2:26:26 they let the corporations or whatever, they let them ruin Bitcoin. Yeah, that's what they think. 2:26:34 But see, in order to figure out who's right, they actually have to know something about the BIP, 2:26:38 which is when this is when for at least for BIP300. It doesn't it doesn't look great. 2:26:43 Yeah, let's get back to that. Because there's a lot of misconception. And there are lots of 2:26:49 bad opinions about it that are not founded on any sort of research. And I think that you have 2:26:55 some very nice YouTube videos on your channel. I think it's called Truthcoin, if I'm not mistaken. 2:27:01 And you reviewed some features in Drivechains, and you showed how you can move from Bitcoin to 2:27:07 a Zcash sidechain, and how the coins get sent from one client to the other. It's rudimentary, 2:27:14 but it gives you a pretty good idea of what's going on there. And I think that's useful to 2:27:18 watch just to blow your mind about what can be possible, Drivechains. And you can also, 2:27:26 if you're technically inclined, you can run the client that's available on GitHub, but I'm not 2:27:30 sure if it's up to date with your latest plans. It should be getting easier and easier. I think 2:27:36 very soon, hopefully within a few days, we'll have like Mac Windows versions that people can just 2:27:43 click, and it'll all be set up. It's set up for a reg test, play money, so that it's just set up 2:27:50 so that it doesn't... I hope that won't be too confusing for people, but my guess is that most 2:27:55 people don't really, they wouldn't really understand if we had like a testnet with mining, 2:28:01 or so we have the reg test, and you could just play money, play blocks, like one block every 2:28:06 two seconds or something. But there you can click on and see what it would be like if BIP300 were 2:28:13 activated in Bitcoin Core. I mean, there's this conversation that people have sometimes, and I 2:28:23 tend to agree sometimes. I can disagree the next day, but did you think about possibly activating 2:28:29 BIP300 on Litecoin just to prove... Yeah, I think that's completely fine, but I also think that it 2:28:35 won't... I don't know how persuasive that will actually be, but I'm totally fine on doing that. 2:28:40 I don't really even know how I would go about doing that, but if someone from Litecoin came 2:28:45 to me and they said, hey, we want to activate BIP300 on Litecoin, will you help us? I 2:28:54 would say yes. So I'll do it, but I don't know if... Is that really what's 2:29:00 holding people back? I'm not sure, but I would do it. It's also slightly different 2:29:06 than the SegWit case in a couple ways. So one way is back in the days of SegWit, when they did 2:29:12 activate it on Litecoin first, it was concerned about there being a bug in the code 2:29:16 or that anyone can spend. And Litecoin was much bigger back then in the consciousness, but 2:29:23 now who cares really about... Who even knows about Litecoin? Whatever. Not very many people, I think. 2:29:29 Another difference is that the whole point of BIP300 is kind of like to emulate altcoins, and it 2:29:35 has this economic longevity-based, like net present value model, which won't really apply 2:29:44 on Litecoin. So it won't really apply, but you can at least see what all the code does, and maybe you 2:29:51 can watch... 2:29:52 ...minor thefts happen, or something, or would them not happen. And then, or maybe it would be like an explosion in utility of Litecoin. Litecoin will gain a Zcash sidechain. Litecoin will be on darknet markets. Litecoin will gain an Ethereum EVM. People will start pirating ETH stuff. I mean, that also could be kind of funny. I don't know. So I'm absolutely not... I'm doing absolutely nothing. I don't know what's going on. 2:30:19 I'm trying to stop that from happening, and I will help if someone wants to do it, but I'm not really like... I don't wake up in the morning and say, okay, I'm really excited. 2:30:26 Now the next part of my plan is to activate BIP300 on Litecoin. That's not really why. 2:30:33 Yeah, but it's the testnet, but incentives, right? It's the one that brought up about $1 million when SegWit got activated in a SegWit address, and that bounty is still there if someone wants to break it. 2:30:47 They made a very good point. And the first transaction on Lightning was sent on Litecoin, which is interesting. 2:30:54 Because they were afraid to break stuff, so they just built on Litecoin and saw how it works. 2:30:59 There are some incentives to break, so there's a small amount of money to collect if you're able to figure that out. 2:31:05 And there are also some users that use that network, so you get some feedback from newbies who don't know how that works. 2:31:12 I think there are some benefits to this, specifically because it has some incentives. 2:31:17 On the long term, I think Litecoin has kind of secured its security budget because of Elon Musk, because it's merge mine with Dogecoin or the other way around. 2:31:27 So they make more money, I guess. The miners make more money from Dogecoin than from Litecoin. 2:31:33 Yeah, that's a useful example for people who ask about what if one sidechain becomes dominant. It's a very similar scenario. 2:31:42 Kind of crazy if you think about it. 2:31:44 It is, yeah. Who would have thought when they merged mine with Litecoin that they would be the wealthiest man in the world would endorse their meme coin. 2:32:01 Yeah, so I have been holding you hostage for about two hours and a half. It's longer than this. 2:32:09 Anyway, if you have listened up to this point, you're a hero and you deserve all the praise for sticking around and trying to learn how this works. 2:32:18 I have two more arguments to make before I let you go. 2:32:23 The first one is that when people are critical of Drivechains in principle, ask them this question. 2:32:30 If you are paid by the Ethereum Foundation or the banker elite or whatever to prevent Bitcoin from adding features that take away from the use cases of central banks or else of Ethereum, 2:32:45 do you think that your arguments would be any different to FUD Drivechains? 2:32:51 Well, I mean, I always wonder about that kind of thing. 2:32:53 Like I always think there must be some like as you hate to go, you hate to do that to unfairly accuse someone. 2:33:00 But at the same time, if you take out of a thousand people or whatever out of a hundred Drivechain critics or something, 2:33:08 there must be a few that either they have some kind of they have equity in some company or they are like social media manipulators. 2:33:18 You know, because we know that many of these such people are hired. 2:33:24 You know, even just people who like make memes or something, there's to some extent they have some agenda, some kind of a warfare. 2:33:32 So I hate to like, you know, accuse anyone of that, but I do think there must be some of those people mixed in. 2:33:37 And it could just be anyone who has any rival idea that would suffer in the market for attention or anything like that. 2:33:45 So that's too bad. 2:33:50 Okay. 2:33:51 Harlow and I just made fun of you for posting a job listing for a meme officer for LayerTwo Labs. 2:33:58 It's like who will be the meme lord slash specialist with a no idea is too spicy approach to make BIP300 memes that push buttons and cloud emoji. 2:34:11 Anyway, I'm not going to insist on this. 2:34:14 It's definitely interesting how we end up in these culture wars. 2:34:18 But we don't spend too much time talking about the technical details, but instead take it ideologically and personally. 2:34:26 It's more about how people feel about others as opposed to the quality of the code, which I don't want Bitcoin to turn into this. 2:34:35 But I guess it's a consequence of mass adoption. 2:34:38 And we don't have a choice, really. 2:34:40 Maybe Twitter is the worst place to debate stuff. 2:34:44 But I want to show you this. 2:34:46 So your original inscription 56,535. 2:34:50 I put the entire Bitcoin heads collection in it. 2:34:54 So you are forever, at least until the witness side gets pruned, immortalized on the Bitcoin blockchain. 2:35:02 I made you your Bitcoin experts expert. 2:35:05 And you said that it's a quote from Nick Carter. 2:35:08 And when I made this card, you also asked me to put something. 2:35:12 So it's also on Counterparty. 2:35:15 And people are going to call me a shit coiner for creating stuff on Bitcoin. 2:35:19 But it was fun. 2:35:20 So you can also get one of these cards for I don't know how much this is. 2:35:25 Anyway, it's like 80 bucks. 2:35:27 Nice. 2:35:28 Anyway, my point is that when I made this, I asked you what I should write for special attack and stuff like that. 2:35:35 Or weakness. 2:35:36 No, weakness. 2:35:37 And you said Ocarina of Time randomizers. 2:35:41 And that's where it hit me. 2:35:42 Okay, you are a 90s kid. 2:35:44 I think you're like four years older than I am or something. 2:35:48 You grew up with the Nintendo 64. 2:35:50 Yes, I did. 2:35:52 Maybe you also had a PlayStation. 2:35:53 I don't know if you're a Nintendo fanboy all the way through. 2:35:56 Or you're more of a multi-console owner. 2:36:00 And this is like a pun for multi-coiner or whatever. 2:36:03 But I was wondering if you had the chance to try Curse of the Kingdom, which is the latest Legend of Zelda. 2:36:09 No, but I've heard it's really, really good. 2:36:10 Oh, man. 2:36:11 I'm 80% done with it. 2:36:13 With the main story. 2:36:15 It's so, so good. 2:36:17 I mean, the dungeons are not as hard as the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. 2:36:22 So don't expect that kind of challenge. 2:36:25 It's overwhelming when you first walk in there and you're like, what? 2:36:29 There's so many places you could go. 2:36:31 That's a little rough. 2:36:33 That was a clever design for a dungeon for that point in the game. 2:36:37 Because by then you were committed. 2:36:41 But that was intimidating. 2:36:43 You're like, oh, my gosh. 2:36:44 Where am I supposed to go? 2:36:46 And you can beat that on a randomizer, which is impressive. 2:36:50 Yes, of course. 2:36:51 Yes. 2:36:52 The randomizer you often only need to visit one room. 2:36:55 Sometimes. 2:36:57 So you played it that many times. 2:37:00 I've played it many times, yes. 2:37:04 And I've watched a lot. 2:37:06 I watch online the whole, they do tournaments, they do races. 2:37:10 Yeah, it's fantastic. 2:37:12 Okay. 2:37:15 I wanted to know if you are into the latest Zelda games. 2:37:18 I guess you're a CEO now. 2:37:20 You don't have time for that. 2:37:22 Not right now. 2:37:24 It's in downtime at some point. 2:37:26 I'll take a vacation and I'll binge the game. 2:37:29 But did you try the one that came before it, Breath of the Wild? 2:37:32 Yes, of course. 2:37:33 Yes, very good. 2:37:35 This is like Breath of the Wild on steroids. 2:37:37 Yeah, they said there's three Breath of the Wilds stacked on top of each other. 2:37:40 I've heard stuff like that. 2:37:41 I don't really know. 2:37:42 Yeah, you have a sky section and the depths where it's underground. 2:37:47 And you have different types of enemies and different types of quests. 2:37:50 It's mind-blowing. 2:37:52 So much to do. 2:37:53 So distracting. 2:37:55 And some friends ask you to, for example, take a dive from the skies and land on a snowy mountain. 2:38:04 And climb down the mountain snowboarding on your shield. 2:38:09 And that's one of the coolest missions I encountered. 2:38:12 So dynamic. 2:38:13 So much to do. 2:38:14 So many genres integrated into this one small portion of the game. 2:38:20 Like SSX. 2:38:21 I'm not sure if you were into that. 2:38:23 Yes. 2:38:24 PlayStation 1. 2:38:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2:38:27 So good. 2:38:28 They put so much thought into this. 2:38:30 And there's also a shrine where basically you play Jenga. 2:38:33 I was like, fuck me. 2:38:36 Oh, my God. 2:38:37 So much stuff. 2:38:38 And only $60. 2:38:41 I got to finish it. 2:38:42 Maybe next month. 2:38:45 Just for the sake of the story, I got to end it. 2:38:48 And also, Paul, I appreciate your patience. 2:38:50 You are incredible. 2:38:52 I guess in the upcoming interviews, you're going to be debating Peter Todd on Stephen Lee Burr's show. 2:38:59 And you're going to go on Peter McCormack's show doing I don't recall exactly what. 2:39:04 But you're invited. 2:39:07 Yes. 2:39:08 Well, we'll see if they can find it. 2:39:10 They asked the same problem you did. 2:39:11 They wanted to do some kind of debate or conversation. 2:39:14 But they can't find anyone actually who wants to do it. 2:39:18 Because no one has actually looked into it. 2:39:20 Everyone just thinks other people have looked into it. 2:39:23 Which is crazy in this field where we say don't trust verify and we put that on T-shirts and hats and stickers and everything. 2:39:32 But we don't actually spend too much time verifying. 2:39:35 And it's kind of sad. 2:39:37 But also there is in the chat Chris from Mallorca Blockchain Days. 2:39:41 He's rebranding the conference to Bitcoin and Liberty. 2:39:44 And he wants you to come to Mallorca next year. 2:39:47 I'll try to make it. 2:39:49 I think it's in July. 2:39:51 Right. 2:39:52 I'll try to make it. 2:39:54 Okay. 2:39:55 Should we end it there, I think? 2:39:56 Yes, sir. 2:39:57 Also, don't forget to pick up your magazine at Tabcom. 2:40:00 I won't. 2:40:01 And those listening, there's going to be magazines at Baltic Honey Badger on Saturday. 2:40:06 And I'm done here. 2:40:08 I spoke too much. 2:40:10 I saw. 2:40:11 So basically it was very bright in your room when we first started. 2:40:16 Now it got dark. 2:40:17 Now it's dark. 2:40:18 Very nice metaphor. 2:40:20 It's the nature's way of saying, okay, you should stop. 2:40:24 Cool. 2:40:27 Okay. 2:40:28 Great. 2:40:29 Thank you guys for listening. 2:40:30 I hope you learned something from this episode. 2:40:33 Me too. 2:40:35 Thanks.