1
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He gave this talk about Lightning being broken a year and a half ago,

2
00:00:04,480 --> 00:00:08,880
but then, like, mostly people just, they treat it in a very weird way.

3
00:00:08,880 --> 00:00:11,040
They treat it like a very academic way.

4
00:00:11,040 --> 00:00:12,440
They say, aha, it's broken.

5
00:00:12,440 --> 00:00:16,520
And they almost say, good, because now we can give more talks about it, you know?

6
00:00:16,520 --> 00:00:20,840
But they don't, like, no one really would, like, say, you know,

7
00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:22,880
it would be like if you were on a ship in the middle of the ocean,

8
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and someone said, this ship is sinking.

9
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And people are like, aha, well.

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And then, next, we'll schedule the next conference, you know?

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It's kind of like, it's not really what you would do if you really thought it was
broken,

12
00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:41,880
but it is what you would do if you wanted to, like,

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the whole thing is just about impressing other academics.

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That's what it's become.

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And it's not practical.

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And that issue we were talking about previously about Monero, like, being, like,

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caring about the user actually getting something out of it.

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And the darknet markets is partly the key to that insight, is that, you know,

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people actually use it to accomplish a purpose.

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And that would be, like, the CEO who does not care about the stock price.

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They care about the actual product.

22
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Monero Talk is sponsored by Cake Wallet,

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00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:26,440
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32
00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:06,640
This week on Monero Talk.

33
00:02:06,640 --> 00:02:10,520
Douglas Duman interviews Paul Sztorc, an OG Bitcoiner and dev,

34
00:02:10,520 --> 00:02:13,280
and the inventor of Bitcoin Drivechains.

35
00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:16,760
The two discuss topics including Bitcoin stagnation,

36
00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:20,440
the potential of Monero to be the world's digital cash protocol,

37
00:02:20,440 --> 00:02:24,960
issues with lightning network adoption, Drivechains as a scaling solution,

38
00:02:24,960 --> 00:02:29,280
why Bitcoin has not adopted them, and the possibility of Monero to do so.

39
00:02:29,280 --> 00:02:34,040
They also discuss Monero's superior privacy technology and utility for payments,

40
00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:40,360
and the need for cryptocurrencies to provide actual utility beyond being a means of
speculation.

41
00:02:40,360 --> 00:02:43,360
Monero Talk starts now.

42
00:02:47,760 --> 00:02:50,760
All right, Paul, what's going on? How's it going?

43
00:02:50,760 --> 00:02:53,760
Thanks for having me on.

44
00:02:53,760 --> 00:02:58,760
I know in the background you're ordering food right now with Monero, which is
amazing.

45
00:02:58,760 --> 00:03:00,760
I'm just kidding.

46
00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:03,760
I wish I would if I could.

47
00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:07,760
That would be great. Uber eats Monero.

48
00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:10,760
How about just crypto adoption in general?

49
00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:14,760
Do you feel like you're able to use it for things?

50
00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:19,760
Well, as you may know, I've been a little critical,

51
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:25,760
sometimes in private among my friends and sometimes publicly on Twitter in front of
the whole world,

52
00:03:25,760 --> 00:03:28,760
saying that we don't do enough.

53
00:03:28,760 --> 00:03:30,760
We don't focus enough on the user.

54
00:03:30,760 --> 00:03:34,760
We are like a CEO that only talks about the stock price every day,

55
00:03:34,760 --> 00:03:38,760
but they don't actually go in to the office to say,

56
00:03:38,760 --> 00:03:41,760
why aren't people buying? Why don't people like the product?

57
00:03:41,760 --> 00:03:44,760
What are we spending too much money on?

58
00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:48,760
We don't do things enough.

59
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:57,760
And in that way, Monero is superior than even 90% of the legit,

60
00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:03,760
of which 99% of all cryptocurrencies are complete and total garbage.

61
00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:09,760
But even among the upper echelon of real ones, Monero is in a top percentile,

62
00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:13,760
so it deserves our respect on that basis.

63
00:04:13,760 --> 00:04:14,760
That means a lot coming from you.

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00:04:14,760 --> 00:04:16,760
And yeah, I totally agree. It is bizarre.

65
00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:17,760
That's like rule number one.

66
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If you're running a company, especially a tech company,

67
00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,760
it's understanding your customer and their needs and what they're actually using it
for

68
00:04:24,760 --> 00:04:28,760
and then designing towards that end goal.

69
00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:36,760
And I think what you've been expressing of late and sounding the alarms on in
Bitcoin land

70
00:04:36,760 --> 00:04:39,760
is that they're just not doing that, right?

71
00:04:39,760 --> 00:04:41,760
Right.

72
00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:44,760
And the weird thing is it is intentional choice.

73
00:04:44,760 --> 00:04:51,760
It's not even that anything is going wrong, except the most important thing, which
is the culture.

74
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But it's like we could decide that we can.

75
00:04:57,760 --> 00:05:00,760
It's very troubling because I think what really is the bottleneck

76
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is that people would have to admit to ourselves that we care about competing.

77
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And instead, Bitcoin tries to maintain this sort of like rule number one.

78
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Our victory is preordained, manifest destiny, et cetera.

79
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And so since it's a given that we will win and that it'll be $15 million a coin,

80
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a hyper Bitcoinization, then to bring it from that abstract world down to the
details

81
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is like you really have to own up to being a serious, whatever, seriously delusional
frame of mind.

82
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So it's kind of like the business owner is losing money or some severe drug addict
or something

83
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where it's kind of a big pill to swallow, I guess,

84
00:05:47,760 --> 00:05:53,760
which is a big problem because, of course, if you have a big problem and you...

85
00:05:53,760 --> 00:05:59,760
The only thing worse than having a big problem is having a big problem and being in
denial about it.

86
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It's like the ultimate form of hubris, right?

87
00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:09,760
Obviously, all these things you're saying, they mean a lot because it's coming from
you.

88
00:06:09,760 --> 00:06:11,760
I think we failed to get your background.

89
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I mean, you're not just like some guy who got into crypto yesterday.

90
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You've been around from the early days.

91
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That's true.

92
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Contributing to Bitcoin.

93
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You have a very high-level understanding.

94
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Can you give the audience some insight into who exactly you are

95
00:06:25,760 --> 00:06:29,760
and why they should even be listening to your opinion and your takes?

96
00:06:30,760 --> 00:06:32,760
Well, you know...

97
00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:36,760
I mean that in the best way because you're like...

98
00:06:36,760 --> 00:06:39,760
I have been around for a very long time and I have been actively involved.

99
00:06:39,760 --> 00:06:43,760
So, for example, there were these scaling Bitcoin conferences that were very big.

100
00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:48,760
That was like the beginning of the scaling war in 2015

101
00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:51,760
and everyone was going to meet and kind of talk.

102
00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:54,760
So, I was there for all of those.

103
00:06:55,760 --> 00:06:56,760
One, two, and three.

104
00:06:56,760 --> 00:06:58,760
I was on the program committee for the fourth.

105
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But then they started to suck.

106
00:07:00,760 --> 00:07:04,760
So, then I got off that sinking ship at the perfect moment.

107
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So, I think that's a short way.

108
00:07:06,760 --> 00:07:10,760
I have presented like building on Bitcoin, breaking Bitcoin.

109
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I go around the world to go to people's Bitcoin Wednesday event.

110
00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:17,760
So, I've been to quite a few.

111
00:07:17,760 --> 00:07:21,760
I've been invited to quite a few extremely technical...

112
00:07:21,760 --> 00:07:23,760
I'm always invited to TabConf.

113
00:07:23,760 --> 00:07:25,760
In fact, I keynoted twice.

114
00:07:28,760 --> 00:07:32,760
So, TabConf is a big technical Bitcoin conference if you didn't know.

115
00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:34,760
And are you a dev as well?

116
00:07:34,760 --> 00:07:36,760
Have you contributed to Bitcoin?

117
00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:37,760
Well, I have not.

118
00:07:37,760 --> 00:07:41,760
Nothing that I have invented or coded has been merged yet,

119
00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:43,760
although it's hovering around.

120
00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:47,760
It's hovering in near-Earth orbit.

121
00:07:47,760 --> 00:07:48,760
It's ironic.

122
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:50,760
One thing, I invented this thing called deniability.

123
00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:53,760
It's not especially amazing or interesting.

124
00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:58,760
It's a very old idea, but me and a collaborator produced this.

125
00:07:58,760 --> 00:08:03,760
It's basically just a GUI that just schedules sending money to yourself at random
times.

126
00:08:03,760 --> 00:08:05,760
And this is so that you can go out.

127
00:08:05,760 --> 00:08:09,760
You go out to the mall and your face is on a security camera

128
00:08:09,760 --> 00:08:12,760
and you are shaking hands with a friend.

129
00:08:12,760 --> 00:08:15,760
And then meanwhile, your money is moving around.

130
00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:18,760
Like you've pre-signed the transactions, but they go out at random times.

131
00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:20,760
So, then it looks like someone else has that money.

132
00:08:20,760 --> 00:08:22,760
It's just called deniability because you say,

133
00:08:22,760 --> 00:08:24,760
I don't own any Bitcoin anymore.

134
00:08:24,760 --> 00:08:26,760
And then it looks like since you send it to yourself,

135
00:08:26,760 --> 00:08:28,760
it looks exactly like you've sent it to someone else.

136
00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:31,760
It looks like other people have it.

137
00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:32,760
And it's very simple.

138
00:08:32,760 --> 00:08:35,760
And you can see this is a very – there's no controversy about this.

139
00:08:35,760 --> 00:08:40,760
You could easily have something else.

140
00:08:40,760 --> 00:08:44,760
You could write a program to do this that doesn't have to be in,

141
00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:50,760
but it's just better if it's in the graphical user interface of Bitcoin Core full
node.

142
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:51,760
There's a pull request for that.

143
00:08:51,760 --> 00:08:57,760
And it's exactly the kind of thing that they would not merge though.

144
00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:00,760
They don't want to merge anything useful or practical.

145
00:09:00,760 --> 00:09:03,760
And they especially don't want to take responsibility for the user experience.

146
00:09:03,760 --> 00:09:05,760
They want to drop the GUI completely.

147
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:07,760
They've wanted to do that for a long time

148
00:09:07,760 --> 00:09:11,760
and just make it like an industrial piece of high-performance software

149
00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:14,760
and have other people write the wallet, which is fine.

150
00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:18,760
But this is the kind of thing that they're not interested in.

151
00:09:18,760 --> 00:09:19,760
And I have these two BIPs, of course.

152
00:09:19,760 --> 00:09:24,760
This is the greatest piece of Bitcoin technology ever created,

153
00:09:24,760 --> 00:09:30,760
but it's so good that it's just too much to chew on.

154
00:09:30,760 --> 00:09:33,760
But BIP300/301,

155
00:09:33,760 --> 00:09:39,760
which allow you to basically send Bitcoins to and from other pieces of software,

156
00:09:39,760 --> 00:09:42,760
including something that could be an exact clone of Monero.

157
00:09:42,760 --> 00:09:43,760
Drivechains.

158
00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:44,760
Drivechains.

159
00:09:44,760 --> 00:09:45,760
Yeah, Drivechains.

160
00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:46,760
Now you developed Drivechains?

161
00:09:46,760 --> 00:09:48,760
You developed that BIP?

162
00:09:48,760 --> 00:09:49,760
Yes, I invented this.

163
00:09:49,760 --> 00:09:51,760
I wrote the BIP.

164
00:09:52,760 --> 00:09:55,760
I formed an organization called LayerTwo Labs,

165
00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:57,760
the founder and CEO of LayerTwo Labs.

166
00:09:57,760 --> 00:09:58,760
You can go to LayerTwoLabs.com,

167
00:09:58,760 --> 00:10:00,760
and you can see little pictures and infographics,

168
00:10:00,760 --> 00:10:03,760
and we have a video on what BIP300 does,

169
00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:08,760
and you can download our test software.

170
00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:12,760
Usually I put it out on releases.drivechain.info first,

171
00:10:12,760 --> 00:10:14,760
and then we put it out on LayerTwo Labs later.

172
00:10:14,760 --> 00:10:17,760
We have a new version coming out soon.

173
00:10:18,760 --> 00:10:21,760
I've seen you more recently than ever,

174
00:10:21,760 --> 00:10:24,760
but I know Drivechains has been around for a long time.

175
00:10:24,760 --> 00:10:25,760
Yeah, November 2015.

176
00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:26,760
Wow.

177
00:10:26,760 --> 00:10:27,760
Yeah.

178
00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:33,760
It had very bad timing because it was around the same time as SegWit.

179
00:10:33,760 --> 00:10:34,760
It's slightly older than SegWit even,

180
00:10:34,760 --> 00:10:41,760
but SegWit was like the thing that the community decided to go for in Scaling 2,

181
00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:43,760
which was December 2015.

182
00:10:44,760 --> 00:10:47,760
I was all for doing SegWit.

183
00:10:47,760 --> 00:10:50,760
It seemed like most other people were.

184
00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:53,760
It was this kind of compromised block size increase,

185
00:10:53,760 --> 00:10:57,760
so it placated the large blockers in addition to supercharging lightning

186
00:10:57,760 --> 00:11:02,760
and making lightning basically possible in the modern form.

187
00:11:02,760 --> 00:11:07,760
But yeah, I think history would have gone much, much, much better for Bitcoin

188
00:11:07,760 --> 00:11:12,760
if instead we had gone for BIP300 Drivechain type idea

189
00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:15,760
because what ended up happening in Bitcoin was a total disaster, I think,

190
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:21,760
as a result with SegWit where it didn't give the large blockers what they wanted.

191
00:11:21,760 --> 00:11:22,760
It wasn't ready.

192
00:11:22,760 --> 00:11:24,760
Someone threw out this date.

193
00:11:24,760 --> 00:11:25,760
They said April 1st.

194
00:11:25,760 --> 00:11:28,760
I don't know where this came from, but people thought, okay, we'll have SegWit.

195
00:11:28,760 --> 00:11:32,760
This was December 2015, so this is like the new year is going to start.

196
00:11:32,760 --> 00:11:35,760
It's like December 5th or something.

197
00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:38,760
And people thought, yeah, we'll have SegWit ready by April 1st,

198
00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:41,760
but then April 1st came and went and it wasn't ready,

199
00:11:41,760 --> 00:11:44,760
which is totally understandable if you understand software,

200
00:11:44,760 --> 00:11:47,760
but the whole environment was so contentious already

201
00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:53,760
and then it ended up not being ready until the hackathon after Scaling 3,

202
00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:56,760
which was October, like mid-October 2016,

203
00:11:56,760 --> 00:12:00,760
so it ended up being this long period of time and it was this miserable slog

204
00:12:00,760 --> 00:12:02,760
and it was just no one was getting what they wanted

205
00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:08,760
and it led to the scaling war and the BCH split.

206
00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:14,760
The unfortunate thing about that, many people, the prevailing view is that,

207
00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:18,760
you know, small blockers, we defeated the large blockers

208
00:12:18,760 --> 00:12:21,760
and now because we were victorious, like the price went up

209
00:12:21,760 --> 00:12:22,760
and everything was great.

210
00:12:22,760 --> 00:12:24,760
Right.

211
00:12:24,760 --> 00:12:27,760
But that prevailing view misses the most important thing,

212
00:12:27,760 --> 00:12:31,760
which is that in order to win, we all became like politicians

213
00:12:31,760 --> 00:12:34,760
and we came with this us versus them tribal mentality

214
00:12:34,760 --> 00:12:38,760
and that I think kills the goose that lays the golden egg,

215
00:12:38,760 --> 00:12:43,760
which is in fact dead in Bitcoin, which is sort of like the…

216
00:12:43,760 --> 00:12:50,760
The scaling war, the victory in 2017 caused a worse problem than it solved

217
00:12:50,760 --> 00:12:55,760
because the problem that it caused was that it created this attitude

218
00:12:55,760 --> 00:12:58,760
that Bitcoin is a finished project and it's already won

219
00:12:58,760 --> 00:13:01,760
and that resisting change is the way to go.

220
00:13:02,760 --> 00:13:05,760
That's when I left Bitcoin and for those reasons

221
00:13:05,760 --> 00:13:09,760
because I was just like, I mean, that was my interpretation at the time.

222
00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:10,760
Yeah.

223
00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:14,760
I mean, Samson Mao didn't win you over with his, you know.

224
00:13:14,760 --> 00:13:20,760
It came across as troubling to me.

225
00:13:20,760 --> 00:13:26,760
So why are you, I feel like you're more vocal than ever right now on this.

226
00:13:26,760 --> 00:13:30,760
Well, that's a good point.

227
00:13:30,760 --> 00:13:32,760
I mean, a lot of it I felt for a really long time.

228
00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:35,760
So like I felt in 2017 and I had said it also.

229
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:38,760
I said, well, is this the beginning of the end?

230
00:13:38,760 --> 00:13:44,760
Because we won, but in order to win, like all the people,

231
00:13:44,760 --> 00:13:47,760
the people who were against SegWit didn't know anything about it,

232
00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:50,760
but the people who were for it, they didn't really know anything about it either.

233
00:13:50,760 --> 00:13:54,760
They just knew the wrong people didn't want it, so we'll support it.

234
00:13:54,760 --> 00:13:56,760
So it had become political.

235
00:13:56,760 --> 00:14:03,760
I can define that in this context as when you have basically two groups

236
00:14:03,760 --> 00:14:06,760
and you know what the other group doesn't want.

237
00:14:06,760 --> 00:14:12,760
And so you just have this kind of spite-based social computation or something.

238
00:14:12,760 --> 00:14:16,760
Most of the people I know who are Republican,

239
00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:18,760
I think they don't really even care about, for example,

240
00:14:18,760 --> 00:14:23,760
an issue like a global warming, but they know that it's coded as a left issue.

241
00:14:23,760 --> 00:14:27,760
So they're going to buy a Ford F-150 and they're going to leave it on.

242
00:14:27,760 --> 00:14:30,760
They're going to leave it under my Hummer and they're going to leave it idling,

243
00:14:30,760 --> 00:14:33,760
you know, to own the libs or whatever, and vice versa.

244
00:14:33,760 --> 00:14:35,760
I'm just saying this is a part of it.

245
00:14:35,760 --> 00:14:38,760
And people have – there's a logic to it.

246
00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:42,760
They have a thought that is like I know those people are wrong.

247
00:14:42,760 --> 00:14:47,760
But I'm just talking about how this is very far from what someone would really do,

248
00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:52,760
which is that NASA has these satellites that record the surface temperature every
day

249
00:14:52,760 --> 00:14:55,760
and anyone can look some information up about this.

250
00:14:55,760 --> 00:15:02,760
But you don't have to have this – the people who shill global warming,

251
00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:04,760
they also don't care about global warming either

252
00:15:04,760 --> 00:15:06,760
because they don't care about like nuclear.

253
00:15:06,760 --> 00:15:10,760
What they want is to like get more political influence,

254
00:15:10,760 --> 00:15:13,760
vision of the anointed like Thomas Sowell type of thing.

255
00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:17,760
So I'm just saying this is a type of thing where people don't really care about the
thing.

256
00:15:17,760 --> 00:15:22,760
They care about this other stuff, the social baggage.

257
00:15:22,760 --> 00:15:25,760
And you could see that in 2017.

258
00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:29,760
And more vocal about it now I think because honestly I really –

259
00:15:29,760 --> 00:15:32,760
it's starting to get worried like lightning again.

260
00:15:32,760 --> 00:15:34,760
I kind of always had problems with it,

261
00:15:34,760 --> 00:15:40,760
but it's becoming clearer and clearer that everyone knows that it won't work,

262
00:15:40,760 --> 00:15:43,760
but people are still afraid to say anything about it.

263
00:15:43,760 --> 00:15:50,760
So I think you can see the culture has accumulated so much baggage.

264
00:15:50,760 --> 00:15:55,760
Like there's so many things that people know are wrong but that they won't say.

265
00:15:55,760 --> 00:15:57,760
And so that kind of makes me annoyed

266
00:15:57,760 --> 00:16:00,760
and it makes me more willing to say those things because I know that by now,

267
00:16:00,760 --> 00:16:05,760
as months and months go by, more and more people now are aware of those things.

268
00:16:05,760 --> 00:16:08,760
So for example, NASA's go on and on and on and on.

269
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:09,760
Is it too much?

270
00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:10,760
Go on and on and on.

271
00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:11,760
Absolutely not.

272
00:16:11,760 --> 00:16:12,760
There was a tab conf.

273
00:16:12,760 --> 00:16:20,760
There was Matt Corallo, a leading, leading person, co-founder of Blockstream,

274
00:16:20,760 --> 00:16:22,760
big lightning person.

275
00:16:22,760 --> 00:16:27,760
He gave this talk about lightning being broken a year and a half ago,

276
00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:31,760
but then like mostly people just – they treat it in a very weird way.

277
00:16:31,760 --> 00:16:33,760
They treat it like a very academic way.

278
00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:35,760
They say, aha, it's broken.

279
00:16:35,760 --> 00:16:39,760
And they almost say good because now we can give more talks about it.

280
00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:43,760
They don't like – no one really would like say –

281
00:16:43,760 --> 00:16:45,760
it would be like if you were on a ship in the middle of the ocean

282
00:16:45,760 --> 00:16:47,760
and someone said, this ship is sinking.

283
00:16:47,760 --> 00:16:49,760
And people are like, aha, well.

284
00:16:49,760 --> 00:16:55,760
And then next – we'll schedule the next conference.

285
00:16:55,760 --> 00:16:58,760
It's kind of like – it's not really what you would do

286
00:16:58,760 --> 00:17:00,760
if you really thought it was broken,

287
00:17:00,760 --> 00:17:04,760
but it is what you would do if you wanted to like –

288
00:17:04,760 --> 00:17:07,760
the whole thing is just about impressing other academics.

289
00:17:07,760 --> 00:17:09,760
That's what it has become.

290
00:17:09,760 --> 00:17:11,760
And it's not practical.

291
00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:14,760
And that issue we were talking about previously about Monero

292
00:17:14,760 --> 00:17:18,760
like caring about the user actually getting something out of it.

293
00:17:18,760 --> 00:17:23,760
And the darknet markets is partly the key to that insight.

294
00:17:23,760 --> 00:17:28,760
People actually use it to accomplish a purpose.

295
00:17:28,760 --> 00:17:33,760
And that would be like the CEO who does not care about the stock price.

296
00:17:33,760 --> 00:17:37,760
He doesn't care about the actual product.

297
00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:39,760
I love that you're saying that.

298
00:17:39,760 --> 00:17:41,760
I mean I couldn't agree with you more.

299
00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:46,760
I mean so where do you see this going for Bitcoin?

300
00:17:46,760 --> 00:17:50,760
I mean is it futile at this point?

301
00:17:50,760 --> 00:17:52,760
Well, I have discussed –

302
00:17:52,760 --> 00:17:55,760
It's like it's in this loop of – that it can't get out of

303
00:17:55,760 --> 00:18:00,760
because of the fact that number go up is the bigger concern

304
00:18:00,760 --> 00:18:03,760
and everybody's got their laser eyes on.

305
00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:07,760
And as long as the price is going up, everything is fine.

306
00:18:07,760 --> 00:18:09,760
Well, it's funny you mention that because –

307
00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:11,760
okay, so we're trapped in this loop,

308
00:18:11,760 --> 00:18:14,760
but we will get out of the loop at some point.

309
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:18,760
The question is just is it like a total death spiral crash landing, right?

310
00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:20,760
Or is it something else?

311
00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:25,760
But for example, one of the things that people told me all throughout last year

312
00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:29,760
was they said institutions are coming, the ETF is coming.

313
00:18:29,760 --> 00:18:31,760
People told me all that.

314
00:18:31,760 --> 00:18:35,760
They said like a pension fund is going to be buying BTC.

315
00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:42,760
And so they said it's – they sing this song about Bitcoin will be number one

316
00:18:42,760 --> 00:18:44,760
and it's too far ahead.

317
00:18:44,760 --> 00:18:47,760
They say it's all going to be Bitcoin and Ethereum.

318
00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:50,760
Often they would also say that.

319
00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:57,760
And so the – but we had the ETF and the price crashed on the news.

320
00:18:58,760 --> 00:19:03,760
It's like when everyone thinks something will be good, it's often bad.

321
00:19:03,760 --> 00:19:05,760
Everyone thinks something will be good for the price.

322
00:19:05,760 --> 00:19:08,760
That's usually a sign that it will be bad for the price.

323
00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:10,760
Still, no.

324
00:19:10,760 --> 00:19:15,760
But I think the – we will get out of it in some way.

325
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:17,760
So either the price will crash

326
00:19:17,760 --> 00:19:24,760
and that will stimulate a frustrated search for creative change.

327
00:19:24,760 --> 00:19:29,760
Or some people think that the fees will go up.

328
00:19:29,760 --> 00:19:34,760
My friend Alex Kravitz, he thinks eventually the L1 fees will be so high

329
00:19:34,760 --> 00:19:38,760
that it will be so annoying for regular users.

330
00:19:38,760 --> 00:19:42,760
They will demand a useful L2.

331
00:19:42,760 --> 00:19:45,760
Other people say it will just go – it will be mostly custodial

332
00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:49,760
and that that won't – that either will eventually – that it won't be a problem.

333
00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:50,760
Some people say that.

334
00:19:50,760 --> 00:19:54,760
Or they say eventually it will then go the same way as gold

335
00:19:54,760 --> 00:20:00,760
where since people aren't actually using it at all, they will –

336
00:20:00,760 --> 00:20:04,760
so yeah, but I think that what is the optimistic thing briefly

337
00:20:04,760 --> 00:20:07,760
is to just say that it's all open source software

338
00:20:07,760 --> 00:20:12,760
and it is hard to launch a new crypto coin.

339
00:20:12,760 --> 00:20:16,760
But it's a lot easier to do that than like start a new nation

340
00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:19,760
or start a new other currency, you know, like whatever.

341
00:20:19,760 --> 00:20:22,760
Start like whatever, Liberty Reserve or something.

342
00:20:22,760 --> 00:20:29,760
So as the public just understands crypto better,

343
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:32,760
as people get better at software development in general,

344
00:20:32,760 --> 00:20:37,760
eventually there will be competitive pressure in the form of something new.

345
00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:39,760
Something new will be launched that just doesn't suck

346
00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:43,760
and that actually does care about the user and that will be –

347
00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:46,760
now maybe you're going to tell me that that's Monero or something.

348
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:47,760
I don't know.

349
00:20:47,760 --> 00:20:52,760
But I think that it will – I think the sidechain idea is –

350
00:20:52,760 --> 00:20:55,760
that is a very important idea because people really disagree.

351
00:20:55,760 --> 00:20:57,760
You need it to be all different shapes and sizes.

352
00:20:57,760 --> 00:21:01,760
You want to have like privacy and then you also want to have like not –

353
00:21:01,760 --> 00:21:03,760
you really want to have all the whole thing

354
00:21:03,760 --> 00:21:05,760
and you want them to all be interoperable

355
00:21:05,760 --> 00:21:09,760
because Monero has disadvantages with the brand

356
00:21:09,760 --> 00:21:12,760
and like with getting liquidity on exchanges

357
00:21:12,760 --> 00:21:15,760
by actually caring about the real use case of privacy,

358
00:21:15,760 --> 00:21:18,760
you actually have some disadvantages.

359
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:22,760
So it would be nice to have – the sidechain idea lets you just have Monero

360
00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:25,760
when you want it, ring signatures when you want it,

361
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:27,760
bulletproofs, whatever, when you want those,

362
00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:29,760
and then you can also have something else,

363
00:21:29,760 --> 00:21:34,760
something that looks UTXO, transparent UTXO.

364
00:21:34,760 --> 00:21:38,760
Yeah, I mean it sounds like a great idea to me,

365
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:42,760
just like confidential transactions also sounded like a great idea

366
00:21:42,760 --> 00:21:44,760
and some of these other things you're talking about,

367
00:21:44,760 --> 00:21:46,760
they never get implemented.

368
00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:51,760
Like we're saying, I think it's the number go up blinders

369
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:53,760
and people are more concerned about that than anything else

370
00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:55,760
and it's like don't touch it.

371
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:56,760
Leave it be.

372
00:21:56,760 --> 00:21:57,760
It's going up in value.

373
00:21:57,760 --> 00:21:58,760
It's digital gold.

374
00:21:58,760 --> 00:22:02,760
In fact, that's one of the qualities of it, that it never changes.

375
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:06,760
But is there something else that's maybe going on?

376
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:13,760
Like is it basically controlled by a group of people that are determining this?

377
00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:17,760
I think it's more of a USSR thing than –

378
00:22:17,760 --> 00:22:21,760
well, I mean it's like a post-Stalin USSR thing.

379
00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:23,760
Like it's not really a dictatorship,

380
00:22:23,760 --> 00:22:28,760
but instead no one takes responsibility for doing the right thing.

381
00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:31,760
So instead it just kind of is a bureaucracy.

382
00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:37,760
It's a Kafka thing instead where a lot of the more senior people

383
00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:39,760
made a lot of money in Bitcoin

384
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:44,760
and then they either retired literally or de facto.

385
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,760
Like they're just whatever, traveling the world.

386
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:52,760
And the new people are afraid to either contradict them or one-up them

387
00:22:52,760 --> 00:22:55,760
because they kind of have a relative to where they were before,

388
00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:56,760
which was they were total nobodies.

389
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:59,760
Now they're Bitcoin core developers.

390
00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:03,760
And so now that's prestigious or whatever.

391
00:23:03,760 --> 00:23:06,760
And so they don't want to like do anything that –

392
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:10,760
which will be the mistake, of course, because –

393
00:23:10,760 --> 00:23:11,760
That's interesting.

394
00:23:11,760 --> 00:23:15,760
I wasn't really thinking of it in terms of like bureaucracy.

395
00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:20,760
I'm thinking is it like Blockstream that's controlling it

396
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:22,760
and they have an incentive?

397
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,760
They have very little formal control

398
00:23:25,760 --> 00:23:27,760
and then they're always quick to jump on that.

399
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:31,760
And then they always follow that truth up with a total complete lie,

400
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:35,760
which is they insinuate that they have no soft control either,

401
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:37,760
which is completely and totally false.

402
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:41,760
They have an enormous amount of chilling effect like a little comment

403
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:46,760
or a negative email or something is a veto.

404
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:48,760
And the fact that they don't admit that

405
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:52,760
and that they don't admit that it is not only bad for Bitcoin

406
00:23:52,760 --> 00:23:56,760
but bad for them also and just bad for everyone.

407
00:23:56,760 --> 00:24:00,760
And the fact that they don't fix that is a great moral failure

408
00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:02,760
of the whole Bitcoin community, mostly them though,

409
00:24:03,760 --> 00:24:06,760
that you should really just admit that they –

410
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:09,760
or they should just – they have several options.

411
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:14,760
But what they currently do is not –

412
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,760
they say we don't really control that much, which is true.

413
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:23,760
There's another company, Chaincode Labs, that controls sort of more,

414
00:24:23,760 --> 00:24:28,760
but they don't – but I wouldn't think of it in these terms.

415
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:34,760
I would say it's – the reason why –

416
00:24:34,760 --> 00:24:42,760
many people do believe that their number one job is not to break Bitcoin.

417
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:48,760
So when that's your point of view, like let's say you're running a restaurant

418
00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:52,760
and like maybe you changed the menu like every three years in the past

419
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:56,760
and maybe you had a fresh coat of paint every five years in the past.

420
00:24:56,951 --> 00:25:04,951
But now it's your job not to break the restaurant. So now you just kind of look the
other way on anything new. You're never going to do any like bold new thing that the
actual owner would do.

421
00:25:05,951 --> 00:25:15,951
The people in charge, you know, now of like merging pull requests and stuff, they do
not have a lot of upside if something goes really well.

422
00:25:16,951 --> 00:25:28,951
So like someone, Jeremy Rubin, can invent 119. If it's merged, he gets a lot of
upside. But the people who merge it do not get the upside.

423
00:25:29,951 --> 00:25:31,951
It seems like a story as old as time.

424
00:25:32,951 --> 00:25:33,951
It is. It is. It exactly is.

425
00:25:34,951 --> 00:25:44,951
And in technology, especially the technology space with competing technologies, you
have something that comes along, it does very well, becomes this behemoth, and then
it's just not able to pivot anymore.

426
00:25:45,951 --> 00:25:48,951
Yeah. Have you read The Innovator's Dilemma, a famous book on this topic?

427
00:25:50,951 --> 00:26:00,951
It's exactly that. It's like the graph of the hard drives or something, you know,
like they get better and better at making the big hard, but no one wants that
anymore because some other thing in the market will change.

428
00:26:00,951 --> 00:26:24,951
So for now, the space has moved so quickly that even though it has been like,
whatever, 15 years or so, it's a long time, but it's moved so quickly that there –
it's still – I think people only just recently have started to really get restless
for like second-guessing the whole, is Bitcoin a –

429
00:26:24,951 --> 00:26:33,951
I think the other thing is it's very hard to understand Bitcoin. For some reason, it
seems like hard drives or something is easier to understand, or even like reusable
rockets or something.

430
00:26:34,951 --> 00:26:39,951
Like the core ideas are easier to understand of just like how much hard drive space,
the cost.

431
00:26:40,951 --> 00:26:46,951
This is like – it's like so indirect where you want – it's about freedom of speech.

432
00:26:47,951 --> 00:26:51,951
So I think this is harder for people to understand why an idea is good.

433
00:26:51,951 --> 00:27:00,951
So, I mean, you're running around. You're sounding the alarms on this.

434
00:27:01,951 --> 00:27:02,951
Yeah.

435
00:27:02,951 --> 00:27:08,951
Do you think it's going to lead to a change? Do you think you get it to the point
where people are like, all right, let's do it. Let's add Drivechains. I mean –

436
00:27:09,951 --> 00:27:19,951
I think my short-term goal is just to try to – you have to break up the stigma a
little bit whenever you do something like this where you know most people don't
agree.

437
00:27:20,951 --> 00:27:27,951
Like if I go on Twitter and all my Bitcoin friends and audience and whatever, and I
say whatever, Bitcoin is doing the wrong thing.

438
00:27:28,951 --> 00:27:33,951
You know that most people will not agree with that. They only want to hear about how
everything's going great.

439
00:27:33,951 --> 00:27:41,951
So you just have to get a couple people to say it, and then you can get more people
to say it, and then there will be more people who are –

440
00:27:42,951 --> 00:27:48,951
they're in some kind of position where they deserve – they're low on the totem pole,
but they deserve to rise.

441
00:27:49,951 --> 00:27:53,951
And they need – those people need objectively – those people need like a mission and
a cause.

442
00:27:54,951 --> 00:27:57,951
They need something to show their high merit.

443
00:27:58,951 --> 00:28:05,951
And people such as yourself or like someone who's like more on the fringe of Bitcoin
in an altcoin land.

444
00:28:06,951 --> 00:28:15,951
Those people – so I think the short-term goal is to kind of just get the ideas out
there and just say, listen, I'm not going to go along with this sinking ship.

445
00:28:16,951 --> 00:28:19,951
And we need to care about the user.

446
00:28:20,951 --> 00:28:24,951
So I think that you just get that out there at first.

447
00:28:25,951 --> 00:28:37,951
And then I think we will try to put out – we're working on the software all the
time, but it is getting to a point where I think lots of people can use it, like the
Drivechain test software.

448
00:28:38,951 --> 00:28:40,951
So we have like a test signet.

449
00:28:41,951 --> 00:28:46,951
I think that will do a lot of the talking also because many, many projects in the
space, they don't put anything out.

450
00:28:46,951 --> 00:28:47,951
It's just vaporware.

451
00:28:48,951 --> 00:28:52,951
Or stuff is very hard to describe or stuff is debatable like in person.

452
00:28:53,951 --> 00:28:57,951
But then when the actual software is there, a lot of that becomes like a moot point
because it's like here it is.

453
00:28:58,951 --> 00:28:59,951
Here's the software.

454
00:29:00,951 --> 00:29:02,951
So I think those are the short-term goals.

455
00:29:03,951 --> 00:29:11,951
And long-term, I think something like Drivechain is inevitable, actually, I think.

456
00:29:12,951 --> 00:29:25,951
I just don't know if it will be like Bitcoin adding it happily or begrudgingly or if
something else will take over the space, which will eventually happen.

457
00:29:26,951 --> 00:29:30,951
If we neglect the needs of the end user enough, it will eventually lead to the death
of the project.

458
00:29:30,951 --> 00:29:42,951
I think that is, to me, not only is that straightforward, I think to me it is almost
like that's the thing we can be most certain of out of everything.

459
00:29:43,951 --> 00:29:46,951
Yeah, I mean, the market is going to react, right?

460
00:29:47,951 --> 00:29:49,951
If it's not doing what the market needs, they're going to go somewhere else.

461
00:29:50,951 --> 00:29:53,951
It's, once again, a story as old as time.

462
00:29:54,951 --> 00:30:00,951
A lot of people have contempt for the user and they think they can get away with
that because they say store value is used.

463
00:30:01,951 --> 00:30:07,951
Investing in it is, buying and owning the stock is being a customer of whatever,
which is not true.

464
00:30:08,951 --> 00:30:10,951
Or it's true in a very misleading sense.

465
00:30:11,951 --> 00:30:19,951
But that will be really hard when there is something that like everyone, like a
billion people in India use every day.

466
00:30:19,951 --> 00:30:26,951
And then those people are not going to be listening when you go up to them and you
say, oh, you should buy Bitcoin because it has a really high price.

467
00:30:27,951 --> 00:30:32,951
And then they'll say, is it like thing that they use every day?

468
00:30:33,951 --> 00:30:35,951
Is it like, let's say it's Monero just for fun.

469
00:30:36,951 --> 00:30:37,951
Is it like Monero?

470
00:30:38,951 --> 00:30:42,951
And they're like, yes, it's the thing that people use every day that will be money
to them.

471
00:30:43,951 --> 00:30:44,951
And everything else will not be money.

472
00:30:45,951 --> 00:30:46,951
They are mutually exclusive.

473
00:30:46,951 --> 00:30:49,951
So they're all locked in a battle royale.

474
00:30:50,951 --> 00:30:53,951
Only one coin will emerge, I think.

475
00:30:54,951 --> 00:30:55,951
I'm pretty confident.

476
00:30:56,951 --> 00:31:03,951
Others may exist, but they'll exist in the same way that tokens on BTC or on
Ethereum will exist.

477
00:31:04,951 --> 00:31:11,951
They'll have a market cap that is one one hundred thousandth or that is more like
something for fun.

478
00:31:12,951 --> 00:31:13,951
Ithaca dollars or something.

479
00:31:13,951 --> 00:31:18,951
So you do think it's going to be more of a one coin to rule them all.

480
00:31:19,951 --> 00:31:20,951
One protocol.

481
00:31:21,951 --> 00:31:22,951
I just think.

482
00:31:23,951 --> 00:31:24,951
That makes sense, right?

483
00:31:25,951 --> 00:31:28,951
Because you have this one protocol and then you have the Drivechains coming off of
it that are doing all.

484
00:31:29,951 --> 00:31:34,951
You have all the different blockchains, all the different protocols, but with just
one coin, 21 million coins.

485
00:31:35,951 --> 00:31:38,951
But like as many blockchains as are needed of all shapes and sizes.

486
00:31:39,951 --> 00:31:46,951
I think what we've had is the demand for blockchains of all shapes and sizes,
including a privacy shape.

487
00:31:47,951 --> 00:31:50,951
That is what has led to the endurance of the altcoins.

488
00:31:51,951 --> 00:32:00,951
So that's what people want is they want to customize the software, which is and they
want to continue to improve and develop the software, make progress with the
software.

489
00:32:01,951 --> 00:32:09,951
That's why altcoins have hung around for as long as they have and why we have things
like Solana, Aptos, these other things.

490
00:32:10,951 --> 00:32:14,951
So I think that demand is real, but I don't think.

491
00:32:15,951 --> 00:32:19,951
I just don't think people want to live in a world that has all these different
altcoins at the end of the day.

492
00:32:20,951 --> 00:32:27,951
It's not like you go to the supermarket and you take out banana coin and you buy
some bananas and you take out tomato coins and you buy some tomatoes.

493
00:32:28,951 --> 00:32:30,951
People just don't like that.

494
00:32:31,951 --> 00:32:32,951
They find that annoying.

495
00:32:33,951 --> 00:32:34,951
That would be like speaking a different language.

496
00:32:35,951 --> 00:32:39,951
Every time you want to buy bananas, you have to speak whatever, like Haitian Creole
or something.

497
00:32:40,951 --> 00:32:44,951
Yeah, one protocol to rule them all certainly makes sense, especially when it comes
to money.

498
00:32:45,951 --> 00:32:47,951
It makes sense more than almost anything else.

499
00:32:48,951 --> 00:32:49,951
The fear of losing the investment.

500
00:32:50,951 --> 00:32:52,951
You don't want to stick with a very, very small.

501
00:32:52,951 --> 00:32:57,951
If you're in like the lowest percentile of use, you would be afraid.

502
00:32:58,951 --> 00:33:01,951
You'd say this could go to zero and no one would care because no one's using it.

503
00:33:02,951 --> 00:33:06,951
Whereas if you say I'm holding the US dollar, you would say, oh, it would go to zero
and who would care?

504
00:33:07,951 --> 00:33:08,951
You'd be like, wait a minute.

505
00:33:09,951 --> 00:33:15,951
Many, many, many, many extremely important people and the entire US armed forces,
like lots of people would care.

506
00:33:16,951 --> 00:33:17,951
Then you think, okay.

507
00:33:18,951 --> 00:33:20,951
But if you're in a small one, you think, oh, this goes to zero.

508
00:33:21,951 --> 00:33:26,951
Who will shed a tear for me in Feathercoin or whatever?

509
00:33:27,951 --> 00:33:37,951
And to be clear, while you're one coin to rule them all, you don't think that
Bitcoin has proven that it's 100% the winner at this point.

510
00:33:38,951 --> 00:33:39,951
That's still up for debate.

511
00:33:40,951 --> 00:33:41,951
Again, there's a big contrast.

512
00:33:42,951 --> 00:33:43,951
Given its current situation.

513
00:33:43,951 --> 00:33:47,951
It's a night and day contrast between, I say one coin to rule them all.

514
00:33:48,951 --> 00:33:53,951
But I separate completely the asset from the technology stack.

515
00:33:54,951 --> 00:33:57,951
I think they have very little to do with each other.

516
00:33:58,951 --> 00:34:01,951
So it's really the UTXO set that Satoshi started.

517
00:34:02,951 --> 00:34:05,951
He achieved a minimum viable amount of usefulness.

518
00:34:06,951 --> 00:34:07,951
That's indisputed.

519
00:34:08,951 --> 00:34:11,951
So the technology got us to square one.

520
00:34:11,951 --> 00:34:21,951
And then from then on, it was just the Bitcoin UTXO set, which is like a binding
social glue that held everyone together for a long era.

521
00:34:22,951 --> 00:34:39,951
And then there's this, you know, as an open source technology, it was supposed to be
the case that if people wanted to use Bitcoin a different way, such as Vitalik, with
the Turing Complete scripts, they should have been allowed and encouraged to do so.

522
00:34:39,951 --> 00:34:45,951
But instead, there was no sidechains back then, 2013, 2014.

523
00:34:46,951 --> 00:34:55,951
And so the fact that Bitcoin, like Bitcoin right now, it does very well as being the
oldest coin.

524
00:34:56,951 --> 00:34:58,951
It is the one with the most key people.

525
00:34:59,951 --> 00:35:07,951
It's the US dollar of crypto, you know, in terms of being just the biggest and
therefore the most powerful network effect.

526
00:35:08,951 --> 00:35:12,951
The tech stack is what you cannot.

527
00:35:15,951 --> 00:35:17,951
The tech stack cannot.

528
00:35:19,951 --> 00:35:33,951
Yeah, right now in its current form, the tech stack will not be is not the winning
form for Bitcoin because it just can't it can't be used by only a small number of
people could use it at all, even on the Lightning Network.

529
00:35:33,951 --> 00:35:47,951
Right. And because of that, ultimately, it can lose its lead as being it's the UTXO
set can can also end up failing in terms of its social contract, because at some
point, people will just leave, leave the ship.

530
00:35:48,951 --> 00:35:50,951
Yes. And of course, it can contain the wrong people.

531
00:35:50,951 --> 00:35:54,951
So if the wrong people buy, they will drag it down.

532
00:35:55,951 --> 00:35:56,951
The wrong people buy in.

533
00:35:57,951 --> 00:36:10,951
So do you do you see other are you currently considering other protocols as perhaps
being able to compete with Bitcoin for being the one protocol or you're not there
yet?

534
00:36:11,951 --> 00:36:27,951
Anyway, I you know, I was actually I was hoping that as a as an impartial like I was
a small blocker, but I was hoping that what would happen would be that Bitcoin cash
would be a good competitor.

535
00:36:28,951 --> 00:36:30,951
And that would get BTC would sort of shape up a little bit.

536
00:36:31,951 --> 00:36:38,951
So it's kind of like if you have a someone who's lazy and you want them to compete,
then they have a rival.

537
00:36:38,951 --> 00:36:45,951
You know what I mean? Maybe they take, you know, like in this scenario, the user is
like a beautiful woman or something.

538
00:36:45,951 --> 00:36:47,951
And then there's only one guy on the island.

539
00:36:47,951 --> 00:36:52,951
But then the second guy will show up to fight, you know, for, you know, not maybe
not each other, but they have to like.

540
00:36:53,951 --> 00:36:54,951
They're both doing pull ups.

541
00:36:55,951 --> 00:36:56,951
Exactly. Right. Exactly.

542
00:36:57,951 --> 00:37:02,951
So but instead, what happened was Bitcoin cash, I think, was was not run very well.

543
00:37:03,951 --> 00:37:08,951
Sorry. I mean, I've you know, I'm just as you think you guys think I'm mean to.

544
00:37:09,951 --> 00:37:21,951
I mean, to Bitcoin or BTC or I mean to Monero, I mean, to everyone, I think Bitcoin
cash made so many mistakes that that would have been more foreseeable and that were
ongoing.

545
00:37:22,951 --> 00:37:26,951
And I just but nonetheless, they are a competitor.

546
00:37:26,951 --> 00:37:29,951
They are they are another another person.

547
00:37:29,951 --> 00:37:35,951
But I think the so far it has been very weak is what I'm trying to say.

548
00:37:36,951 --> 00:37:40,951
And so I hope that someone arrives who can compete better.

549
00:37:43,951 --> 00:37:44,951
So far, it's been very weak.

550
00:37:44,951 --> 00:37:56,951
You know, most of the stuff is just either complete scam or it's something like, you
know, again, I hate to be so on, you know, so on the whatever you want to call it
with this.

551
00:37:56,951 --> 00:37:58,951
Maybe I could try to be more indirect about it.

552
00:37:59,951 --> 00:38:00,951
Don't hold back, don't hold back.

553
00:38:00,951 --> 00:38:08,951
A16Z owns like a huge chunk of that out of the gate and this other stuff like that
is like their goal.

554
00:38:08,951 --> 00:38:12,951
OK, think about their payoff matrix in their head, like.

555
00:38:14,951 --> 00:38:18,951
A16Z, they want to lock in like a 10x or 20x and then get out.

556
00:38:19,951 --> 00:38:23,951
So that's why that's why Solana was the way it was.

557
00:38:23,951 --> 00:38:27,951
Now, it's something where it starts off.

558
00:38:27,951 --> 00:38:30,951
They don't care a lot about the long run full node cost.

559
00:38:30,951 --> 00:38:35,951
They want to just blast out a bunch of like parties, networking events, which is
exactly what they did.

560
00:38:35,951 --> 00:38:38,951
Marketing stuff, you know, and this is great.

561
00:38:38,951 --> 00:38:50,951
And this is I would even say that this the scam phase is almost like a necessary
bootloading, like a kind of it is a kind of stepping stone.

562
00:38:51,951 --> 00:38:55,951
But, yeah, you can't you can't necessarily trust people who launch an altcoin.

563
00:38:55,951 --> 00:39:00,951
But but Ricardo Spagni did a great job with Monero with the whole don't we this is
the don't buy Monero.

564
00:39:00,951 --> 00:39:02,951
He's the opposite of the CEO.

565
00:39:02,951 --> 00:39:05,951
He's like, don't don't talk about the stock price.

566
00:39:05,951 --> 00:39:14,951
It's just it just kicked all those people out of the culture, which is why it at
least is got some respect from me.

567
00:39:14,951 --> 00:39:18,951
I don't know what that's worth in the long run, in the grand scheme of things.

568
00:39:18,951 --> 00:39:21,951
But but I know a lot of people felt that way.

569
00:39:21,951 --> 00:39:30,951
The Bitcoin Uncensored crew kind of all felt that way, that they were like, this
project is about the only one that is about something.

570
00:39:30,951 --> 00:39:32,951
But Bitcoin Cash was about something, too.

571
00:39:32,951 --> 00:39:36,951
But they but I thought they were not very they were about the large blocker version
of Bitcoin.

572
00:39:36,951 --> 00:39:48,951
And it would have been very good for the end user to have two people who are each
each woke up every day to like development teams or other leadership teams or just
communities.

573
00:39:48,951 --> 00:39:53,951
They would wake up every day worrying about am I going to lose more people to.

574
00:39:54,951 --> 00:40:04,951
The other, you know, you want two political parties that Shumpeterian battle, this
epic battle, like like in whatever the whatever.

575
00:40:04,951 --> 00:40:06,951
There's another word for it in the UK also.

576
00:40:06,951 --> 00:40:10,951
But I don't we have Joseph Shumpeter in the US.

577
00:40:10,951 --> 00:40:16,951
So like this kind of like struggle over the the people's opinion that that would be
great.

578
00:40:16,951 --> 00:40:20,951
But when instead, you know, is that making some sense?

579
00:40:20,951 --> 00:40:22,951
Yeah, yeah.

580
00:40:22,951 --> 00:40:24,951
Created in a furnace. Right.

581
00:40:24,951 --> 00:40:29,951
I mean, do you think that we have like a great I mean, like Ethereum is clearly the
competitor to BTC.

582
00:40:29,951 --> 00:40:31,951
But Ethereum is very weird also.

583
00:40:31,951 --> 00:40:34,951
Like, you know, it's kind of like they're trying so many things.

584
00:40:34,951 --> 00:40:40,951
It's almost like it's not it doesn't it hasn't agreed to just nail itself down to
like one idea.

585
00:40:40,951 --> 00:40:45,951
It's kind of just saying we're going to keep changing things until we flip it.

586
00:40:45,951 --> 00:40:52,951
Bitcoin, I guess, is kind of like the overall philosophy, which I think, you know,
there's some merit to that as a strategy.

587
00:40:52,951 --> 00:40:58,951
But I think it's just what Ethereum is also has a very shady origin.

588
00:40:58,951 --> 00:41:01,951
People argue about to what extent does that matter?

589
00:41:01,951 --> 00:41:03,951
I think now it matters as time goes on.

590
00:41:03,951 --> 00:41:04,951
It matters less and less.

591
00:41:04,951 --> 00:41:05,951
I think that's clear.

592
00:41:05,951 --> 00:41:07,951
It used to matter an awful lot.

593
00:41:07,951 --> 00:41:09,951
Yeah.

594
00:41:09,951 --> 00:41:11,951
So how about how about Monero then?

595
00:41:11,951 --> 00:41:12,951
Where do you put Monero?

596
00:41:12,951 --> 00:41:20,951
Do you see it as a potential competitor to to be, you know, the global utility for
for digital cash?

597
00:41:20,951 --> 00:41:21,951
I do.

598
00:41:21,951 --> 00:41:26,951
But I think the one size fits all thing is tough for anything to work.

599
00:41:26,951 --> 00:41:35,951
The sidechain idea is the key idea for me because I'm so interested in the sidechain
really supercharges the competition idea.

600
00:41:35,951 --> 00:41:37,951
So I could be 300 type idea.

601
00:41:37,951 --> 00:41:39,951
It says you can have everyone.

602
00:41:39,951 --> 00:41:45,951
You're even more afraid because you you run sub chain number six, the Monero privacy
chain.

603
00:41:45,951 --> 00:41:47,951
But then next to you is.

604
00:41:47,951 --> 00:41:54,951
Some of the Zcash chain, and this is all just with BTC and the user can just move
at the drop of a hat and they don't lose any value.

605
00:41:54,951 --> 00:41:55,951
There's no exchange rate risk.

606
00:41:55,951 --> 00:41:59,951
So I want I want more competition.

607
00:41:59,951 --> 00:42:05,951
I think, you know, Monero has this caring about privacy is an important strength.

608
00:42:05,951 --> 00:42:13,951
And I would almost say that every instance where Monero suffers as a result, you
could hold it up as saying like like exchanges and stuff.

609
00:42:13,951 --> 00:42:19,951
And like you could say this is a real we don't do what other people want us to do.

610
00:42:19,951 --> 00:42:23,951
We do what we want to do, take it or leave it.

611
00:42:23,951 --> 00:42:28,951
And that is you know, that would be like, you know, that's I think that's actually
very attractive in the metaphor of the island.

612
00:42:28,951 --> 00:42:32,951
You know, it's like everyone is people are simping basically.

613
00:42:32,951 --> 00:42:34,951
And Monero is just like this.

614
00:42:34,951 --> 00:42:35,951
And look, this is what you get.

615
00:42:35,951 --> 00:42:38,951
OK, you know, I'm just doing pull ups in the corner.

616
00:42:38,951 --> 00:42:44,951
Right. The so the challenge.

617
00:42:44,951 --> 00:42:50,951
I mean, definitely the darknet markets is a sign of hope and also a canary in the
coal mine for BTC.

618
00:42:50,951 --> 00:42:57,951
The fact that so many people drop that the that use case and that Monero clings on
to it.

619
00:42:57,951 --> 00:43:02,951
The challenge is, can you convert that?

620
00:43:02,951 --> 00:43:05,951
That's like a wedge you jumped in.

621
00:43:05,951 --> 00:43:11,951
And I think just the timing is difficult, like being an old altcoin.

622
00:43:11,951 --> 00:43:16,951
Paradoxically, is this is where, you know, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I say such
and such.

623
00:43:16,951 --> 00:43:18,951
And then on Tuesday, Thursday, I say something else.

624
00:43:18,951 --> 00:43:23,951
But it's like I think.

625
00:43:23,951 --> 00:43:39,951
Being an old altcoin is kind of tough because the Bitcoin is such a center of
gravity in the past that now it kind of looks like there's a bunch of people who
like own a bunch of Monero and it's kind of like, I don't know, it'd be hard to.

626
00:43:40,951 --> 00:43:43,951
That tail emission, which kind of.

627
00:43:43,951 --> 00:43:47,951
Yeah, people care far too much about.

628
00:43:47,951 --> 00:43:51,951
About that, but that I think that does.

629
00:43:51,951 --> 00:43:56,951
People would always be thinking like, well, someone fork Monero and just delete the
tail mission and then we'll have to compare.

630
00:43:56,951 --> 00:44:01,951
I'm saying the tail emission, you know, plays into the well, there's always new
coins coming out. Right.

631
00:44:01,951 --> 00:44:06,951
So if you're showing up and being like, I don't want to be part of this project
where it's owned, but, you know, there's a couple of guys that have old coins.

632
00:44:06,951 --> 00:44:08,951
Yeah, which is the boat.

633
00:44:08,951 --> 00:44:09,951
Yeah.

634
00:44:09,951 --> 00:44:11,951
The idea of missing the boat. I think that's important.

635
00:44:11,951 --> 00:44:26,951
You need more than there's a well-known result in game theory and in political
science about an interest based coalition usually is not enough.

636
00:44:26,951 --> 00:44:32,951
So, in other words, if everyone is in the coalition just because it happens to be
better for them right now.

637
00:44:32,951 --> 00:44:37,951
That usually that usually doesn't even that usually fails to even form.

638
00:44:37,951 --> 00:44:40,951
And what do I mean by that? What am I talking about?

639
00:44:41,951 --> 00:44:45,951
The coalition needs like moral glue to hold itself together.

640
00:44:45,951 --> 00:44:57,951
So it needs to be based on things that are a large number of people can agree with
and understand over a long shifting time horizon where you say something like people
get into the law.

641
00:44:57,951 --> 00:44:59,951
They care about fairness.

642
00:44:59,951 --> 00:45:04,951
They care about people being treated fairly, like the late justice lady with the
blindfold and the scales.

643
00:45:04,951 --> 00:45:08,951
And it's hard to it's hard to get everyone to agree.

644
00:45:08,951 --> 00:45:14,951
You know, become if it's become like Hatfield versus McCoy very easily.

645
00:45:14,951 --> 00:45:22,951
If you don't have like someone saying this is what we all all of us should do
because it's hard enough.

646
00:45:22,951 --> 00:45:28,951
There's going to be criminals and defectors and like, you know, like anarchists of
the bad kind, violent anarchists.

647
00:45:29,951 --> 00:45:43,951
There'll be people who just or just people who are low on the totem pole and they
want to shake things up like a communist subversive communist to like just anything
like the chaos climbers.

648
00:45:43,951 --> 00:45:51,951
They're sometimes called ever since I think was in no opinion, wrote that post about
the about like Peter Baelish from Game of Thrones.

649
00:45:51,951 --> 00:45:53,951
The chaos is a ladder guy.

650
00:45:53,951 --> 00:45:54,951
I missed that.

651
00:45:54,951 --> 00:45:55,951
You have no idea what I'm talking about.

652
00:45:55,951 --> 00:45:57,951
Like some people, they know they can't.

653
00:45:57,951 --> 00:46:04,951
Their only chance to make it, you know, his only chance to take the Iron Throne is
if he causes like a lot of mayhem indirectly.

654
00:46:04,951 --> 00:46:07,951
And then that, you know, that.

655
00:46:07,951 --> 00:46:10,951
So you always have those people.

656
00:46:10,951 --> 00:46:12,951
So it's really hard to hold any coalition together.

657
00:46:12,951 --> 00:46:16,951
And this stuff, this crypto blockchain stuff, you have to form like a community.

658
00:46:17,951 --> 00:46:22,951
And so it's difficult when you have people who feel like they'll never be able to
join.

659
00:46:22,951 --> 00:46:24,951
They'll never feel like it's not fair.

660
00:46:24,951 --> 00:46:29,951
And I think people would feel that way for an old for something like Monero.

661
00:46:29,951 --> 00:46:30,951
Maybe you disagree.

662
00:46:30,951 --> 00:46:32,951
They'll show up and they'll say Monero.

663
00:46:32,951 --> 00:46:33,951
It was so obscure for.

664
00:46:33,951 --> 00:46:36,951
So how could I possibly have found out about it until now?

665
00:46:36,951 --> 00:46:37,951
I only heard about Bitcoin.

666
00:46:37,951 --> 00:46:38,951
And now I found out this thing.

667
00:46:38,951 --> 00:46:40,951
And now all the coins have been mined already.

668
00:46:40,951 --> 00:46:50,951
I would almost say that people need to either do UTXO fork of Bitcoin and swap the
technology in or start over completely from scratch.

669
00:46:50,951 --> 00:46:57,951
Knowing that you could say now, I think there would be appetite for someone to say
something like.

670
00:47:00,951 --> 00:47:01,951
I'm number one coin.

671
00:47:01,951 --> 00:47:04,951
Bitcoin is sort of failing us.

672
00:47:04,951 --> 00:47:05,951
So there's time for a new thing.

673
00:47:05,951 --> 00:47:08,951
Of course, when you launch that new thing and people want to.

674
00:47:09,951 --> 00:47:13,951
I get the whole network of like that's that's like invalidating the concept of
network effect.

675
00:47:13,951 --> 00:47:15,951
But it's difficult.

676
00:47:15,951 --> 00:47:17,951
I get what you're saying.

677
00:47:17,951 --> 00:47:19,951
But like I said, I think there's a few things to think about there.

678
00:47:19,951 --> 00:47:24,951
Right. Like Monero does have a tail emission, which so all the coins haven't been
mined.

679
00:47:24,951 --> 00:47:28,951
Right. There's always new coins that are going to be emitted, which I understand
that.

680
00:47:28,951 --> 00:47:33,951
But I think the other the other major point is just its utility.

681
00:47:33,951 --> 00:47:39,951
Right. So you're looking at it from the or you're describing it from the mindset of
an investment.

682
00:47:39,951 --> 00:47:47,951
Right. People want to be part of this thing that they join, where if they join early
enough, it turns into more money, which is literally what Bitcoin is.

683
00:47:47,951 --> 00:47:55,951
The only thing it's pitched at at this point, which is becoming troubling, because
even if that is the case, you can only TEDx so many more times.

684
00:47:55,951 --> 00:48:00,951
Right. Like, you know, when you read this math on a blog post.

685
00:48:01,951 --> 00:48:07,951
It's like, why are new people going to enter for for making a ton of money off of it
if it's only going to 2x at some point?

686
00:48:07,951 --> 00:48:11,951
Right. And when we arrive at that point.

687
00:48:11,951 --> 00:48:19,951
But with Monero or just a digital cash, it's like people it's not even about what is
the price?

688
00:48:19,951 --> 00:48:25,951
Is it going to be worth more tomorrow? It's I need this thing to perform some
function on the Internet.

689
00:48:25,951 --> 00:48:29,951
And there's nothing else that allows me to do that. But this tool.

690
00:48:29,951 --> 00:48:36,951
So I think I think it that will overcome this idea of, oh, wait, but it's an old
thing.

691
00:48:36,951 --> 00:48:42,951
Like, well, you're right. It's a mix. The weird thing, it is a mix and it's very
difficult to untangle.

692
00:48:42,951 --> 00:48:46,951
So like the QWERTY keyboard is not the optimal keyboard layout.

693
00:48:46,951 --> 00:48:54,951
It's it's kind of absurd. But because people got used to it, the network effects won
over in that case.

694
00:48:54,951 --> 00:49:00,951
If you think network effects are the most, I think network effects are very
important, as we've mentioned.

695
00:49:00,951 --> 00:49:08,951
But they can't be totally important because if they were, if they were overwhelming,
then the US dollar would just eventually become the currency of everything.

696
00:49:08,951 --> 00:49:11,951
Which, you know, that is slowly happening in the fiat world.

697
00:49:11,951 --> 00:49:19,951
But it's also the case that these fiat currencies are all, you know, slowly
committing suicide or rapidly in some cases committing suicide.

698
00:49:20,951 --> 00:49:33,951
And the other the other point, too, is it's it takes time to, you know, it's not
just network effect, but it's also people gaining trust in this utility for the
function that it's proposed to perform.

699
00:49:33,951 --> 00:49:40,951
If if new XYZ coin comes out tomorrow, newfangled technology, it's even more private
than Monero.

700
00:49:40,951 --> 00:49:43,951
Yes, Monero has a network effect and it's also proven itself.

701
00:49:43,951 --> 00:49:46,951
It has to be known to have that property. Yes.

702
00:49:46,951 --> 00:49:48,951
Proven for those purposes. Right.

703
00:49:48,951 --> 00:49:51,951
So, yeah, I think that's that's perfectly true.

704
00:49:51,951 --> 00:49:59,951
I mean, I think the the the advice would be to focus completely on the end user
experience and try to dial it up as much as possible.

705
00:50:00,652 --> 00:50:14,572
Even to the point of like, you'd want all you just want a lot of the privacy use
cases also is very big because there's a lot of stuff that people would prefer to be
hidden and it's also differentiating because so few people will actually go for it.

706
00:50:14,572 --> 00:50:32,172
I mean, people who do go so few suppliers, excuse me, suppliers of crypto. I mean,
I'm talking about like Zcash, where it's great technology, but their their
organization is sort of weird. And so it is an ambiguous state.

707
00:50:32,172 --> 00:50:54,252
So so back to the Drivechains then. So like, you know, knowing that these these
these altcoins have already blossomed, right, because of Bitcoin stagnating and not
evolving. If Drivechains happened, you know, five years ago, three years ago, maybe
it would have stymied some of that development.

708
00:50:54,252 --> 00:51:18,252
But these these ships have already sailed and they're building their own network
effects and they're building their own momentum. Does Drivechains adding it to this
point at Bitcoin, is it potentially not as impactful as, as what you may think or
originally thought it would be like all altcoins and then shift over or is there
something?

709
00:51:18,252 --> 00:51:48,212
I don't think that they would, but it's about the user. It's about the usage, the
usage, as you were saying, just a moment ago, where you would now be able to use
Bitcoin for the, you'd have a Bitcoin XMR address or something. And if you wanted to
send Bitcoin in that format, you would be able to. And then probably as the, you
know, the new darknet market, you know, it's not going to be able to do that.

710
00:51:48,252 --> 00:52:04,252
They would probably like first they'd have support for both XMR. We'd start to, it
would start to drift back slowly. I think most of the big reason why people use
altcoins is because of their genuine love of novelty and even of technology.

711
00:52:04,252 --> 00:52:30,252
So many of the people are, you have like a kind of a barbell where you have a lot of
people, the DGN gambler people who are just flipping it and they don't, they
couldn't care what it does, you know, like they couldn't care. In fact, if it does
nothing, almost the better, like the NFT, like, you know what I mean? Like it's like
the dumber it is, the better they want, they want, you know, whatever they want it
to be like sheeb, you know, it's a gamble.

712
00:52:31,252 --> 00:52:58,252
It's just, they're having fun and it is, it is literally entertainment is literally
gambling. It's not like a gamble the way most people use the word where they say
it's like a, they say, no, it's like literally they're going to the casino and
having fun so that you have that on the one hand of the barbell. On the other hand,
you have just the people just enjoy making things. They make, they enjoy making
software. Like I don't believe that, you know, a lot of these, these are like
someone is tinkering around with the software.

713
00:52:58,252 --> 00:53:26,252
They think, why shouldn't this exist? They make it, maybe they give themselves a
bunch of coins. But, you know, I think even that would not, those are like the ultra
high turnover. Those are like the terrible coins. You pre-mine, you, the coins that
actually make it into like the top 50, they have some kind of, some kind of angle,
they have some kind of novelty to them.

714
00:53:26,252 --> 00:53:46,252
And even something like NXT, which is ancient and it had a 100% pre-mine, but it was
like the first thing to do a 100%, you know what I mean? Like it had, it had a
genuine novel. So I think it's honestly represents human creativity to some extent,
not as much as I would like, because what I would prefer is that everyone compete in
launching sidechains.

715
00:53:46,252 --> 00:54:15,252
They don't have the baggage of a new coin and they can just write whatever software
they want. So I think actually the creativity has been clamped down. We have two
huge forces that interact, open source software, allowing enormous creativity. And
then we have the network effects of money and the fact that most altcoins are scams.
That baggage is the network effects of suppressing the creativity. The network
effects is in some sense a prison for someone who has a good idea, but they have no
way of getting it.

716
00:54:15,252 --> 00:54:36,252
Like if you have, what would you do if you had a great idea for improving Monero,
but for some reason it's just not happening. Like you just can't convince whatever
the right four or five people. Well, now the network effects has screwed the world.
You know, it has, it makes it worse for the world because it can't, we can't, we
can't get that idea into the world now.

717
00:54:36,252 --> 00:55:00,252
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718
00:55:06,252 --> 00:55:09,252
Come build Drivechains for Monero, man.

719
00:55:37,252 --> 00:55:48,252
So it's basically an integer that counts to 13,000. It's a little bit more than
that, but this, the L1 part is simple and the L2 is the one that watches all these
messages and interprets them.

720
00:55:49,252 --> 00:56:13,252
So anyone who adds BIP300 to their L1, they should be able to just copy and paste
our entire suite of sidechains that we have made and use them on. So if anyone adds
BIP300 to Monero, which is the easy part, I'm saying, I want to stress this is like
less than 1% of the total amount of software engineering that me and LayerTwo Labs
has done.

721
00:56:14,252 --> 00:56:26,252
If you add BIP300 to Monero, you can then copy and paste the sidechain. You can
use, we made a fork of Zcash. We made a fork of Ethereum. It's just Ethereum just
with the L1 coin.

722
00:56:27,252 --> 00:56:33,252
Yeah, but adding a BIP to Monero, right? I mean, Monero is a completely different
chain than Bitcoin, right?

723
00:56:34,252 --> 00:56:46,252
Yes, but there are some smart people that I've known that were associated with
Monero. They could read and understand the BIP, which is the actual BIP part is not
that hard.

724
00:56:47,252 --> 00:56:54,252
All this conversation about BIP300 is about these indirect effects, which is all
just a bunch of either concern trolling or sour grapes or some other kind of
nonsense.

725
00:56:55,252 --> 00:57:14,252
Take it from me. It's just anything that counts to $13,000. The way it works is by
offering miners fees on these chains. They say, listen, you're going to get
eventually one or more of these sidechains is going to be generating fees, and
that's why you should support the withdrawal system.

726
00:57:15,252 --> 00:57:23,252
In a nutshell, that's the idea. The L1 part is easy to code, I think.

727
00:57:24,252 --> 00:57:37,252
Yeah, I don't know. That might have even been proposed at some point in Monero. I
mean, there's other layer two ideas that have been proposed. There's merge mining
that's taking place with Monero or will take place.

728
00:57:37,252 --> 00:57:54,252
Tari is being designed to merge mine with Monero. DarkFi has announced that they'll
be merge mining with Monero. But just because something merge mines with it doesn't
mean it's connected to it in a drivetrain like way, right? I mean, those are two
separate concepts.

729
00:57:55,252 --> 00:58:22,252
They are. They actually split them into two BIPs because I thought it would make it
easier for people to understand. I'm not sure if I succeeded in that or not. But BIP301 is about a refinement to merge mining. BIP300 is the deposits and withdrawals.
And these are two completely different things that unfortunately people get confused
an awful lot. But merge mining was invented by Satoshi in 2010, and it has been in
continuous use on Bitcoin ever since.

730
00:58:23,252 --> 00:58:25,252
Namecoin was the first. Was Namecoin merge mining?

731
00:58:26,252 --> 00:58:30,252
Namecoin was the first merge mined coin and the first altcoin also.

732
00:58:31,252 --> 00:58:32,252
Yes.

733
00:58:33,252 --> 00:58:56,252
Invented by Satoshi, the altcoiner. But what I'm trying to say is merge mining just
means that when you find a block of one, you find a block of more, one or more other
chains. That's very easy to do. In fact, it cannot even be stopped.

734
00:58:57,252 --> 00:59:14,252
One counterintuitive property of merge mining is that it's the new coin that the
miners point to and they make the new block in a way that part of that block is a
valid block. So there's nothing that you can even do to stop merge mining. It's
fascinating.

735
00:59:15,252 --> 00:59:31,252
It's kind of an amazing piece of technology. And the fact that it's even possible is
fascinating. And the fact that it is not only possible but unpreventable is also
kind of just one of the great whimsical kind of concepts of Bitcoin.

736
00:59:31,252 --> 00:59:44,252
Because it's kind of like you have a train and you clip on more coal and the train
speeds up or something. It's bizarre. The miners don't do any additional work and
they get all the fees on all the chains.

737
00:59:45,252 --> 01:00:04,252
That already exists. I have a refinement of it, Blind Merged Mining, that basically
makes it so the miners don't need to be the ones who run the software. A middleman
can run the software and people bid over one transaction that is the block.

738
01:00:04,252 --> 01:00:21,252
And so it's the entire sum of the transaction fees in the block just becomes one
single L1 transaction. And that actually includes, takes care of all this MEV stuff
also, because the middleman would just do all of that and you have competition. So
the miners will never get cut out.

739
01:00:21,252 --> 01:00:22,252
Yes.

740
01:00:51,252 --> 01:00:57,252
It leads to a lot of malinvestment and a lot of wasted time and concentration,
unfortunately.

741
01:00:58,252 --> 01:01:12,252
The merge mining, I think, is fantastic. I'd love to see more of that on Monero,
making Monero more profitable to mine. I mean, that's one of the, quote unquote,
problems in Monero, right? It's not all that profitable to go mine.

742
01:01:12,252 --> 01:01:30,252
I mean, if you can merge mine with a bunch of other projects where there's no skin
off your back for doing it, it's like, it's a no brainer, right? I mean, so then
back to that question. So why didn't Bitcoin Cash adopt DriveChange?

743
01:01:30,252 --> 01:01:56,252
I don't know. I think they probably would if they, certainly people suggest it. I
think, maybe I'm not correctly understanding. To me, it's very easy to just add
Drivechain to something, I think. But I think a lot of people think that like the
founder is the only one, like only Jeremy Rubin could add CTV 119 to something.

744
01:01:57,252 --> 01:02:12,252
Like they really think like that's the case, even though all the time you get random
16 year old hacker person can just add X to Y. I don't know. I think maybe people
don't want to do it. I'm not sure about that.

745
01:02:12,252 --> 01:02:30,252
I think with the large blocker people, I think they really, it depends on what you
think the problem is, you know, because if you think I have a problem, there's an
infinite number of things you can do about that problem, right?

746
01:02:30,252 --> 01:02:51,252
So I think the Bitcoin Cash people just thought, these tech people are a bunch of
obstructionists. And as soon as we get rid of them, we'll get more merchant
adoption, we'll get more people. Raising the block size with a hard fork, they would
say is really not a big deal. So we can just do it again whenever we need to.
Longest proof of work, proof of work will decide.

747
01:02:52,252 --> 01:03:05,252
Even if it doesn't, the spinoff coins just give everyone free money. So it doesn't
matter. And I think that that's what they think the problem was. They think the
problem was having the obstructionists and sort of bad agents there.

748
01:03:06,252 --> 01:03:29,252
I think maybe if I were them, if I were in charge of Bitcoin Cash, like it depends
on what time period am I going to be put in. Like, if I'm going to be put in in
2017, I would have made a lot of changes in the past. I would have said, instead of
just stealth launching in August, we'll give people like six months worth of notice.

749
01:03:30,252 --> 01:03:55,252
We are hard forking into a new project. Here are the reasons why. Here's what we
plan to do in the future. You know what I mean? Like you put out, you basically like
you put out a resume, you're going to compete. You say, listen, I will split off
from this person. And this is what we're all about. Instead of it was a little
disorganized. If I'm put in charge of Bitcoin Cash today, then probably the first
thing I would do would be add drive to move all the Bitcoin Cash stuff to its own
chain.

750
01:03:56,252 --> 01:04:17,252
Move, like downgrade or reshift, backwards shift, the L1 to be BTC and then shrink
the block size. I'd say the smaller block size on L1, larger block size on Bitcoin
Cash. I would add all the sidechains that I think are great, whatever, Zcash,
Monero, etc. I'd add them in.

751
01:04:17,252 --> 01:04:26,252
But I would do that. But you see, that's just me. That's just my view of what the
optimal configuration is. So it doesn't really answer your question as to why they
didn't do it.

752
01:04:26,252 --> 01:04:33,252
Yeah, or Litecoin, right? I could see Litecoin doing it. They've added or did they
add a confidential chain?

753
01:04:34,252 --> 01:04:58,252
Yeah, they added a Mimblewimble extension block, these weird things. I think, yeah,
I think Litecoin could do it. There is another more practical reason, though, which
is that I never really, not until recently, like we had test software, but it was
based on an old version. It was version 16. And Bitcoin is now on version 25, 26.

754
01:04:59,252 --> 01:05:13,252
So I never really had something that was very easy to merge, even to BTC. And
Bitcoin Cash diverged from it. So it wasn't like they could just click. I have test
software.

755
01:05:13,252 --> 01:05:35,252
But it, I never really, like, put out something that would be easy for people to
just copy and paste. And this is, this is interesting, kind of, like, why did I
never do that? I think it was really because I kind of thought people have to
understand the idea first.

756
01:05:36,252 --> 01:05:59,252
And then they can help write the software. Or what I really thought was, back when I
wrote the post, I thought, I'll just put out this idea in English. I'll say, this is
what should be done. And then someone who's more of a specialist in C++ or more of a
specialist in Bitcoin Core, they will do it, they will implement it, whatever way
they think is best. And that's, that'd be the better, that's to be the best of all
the world.

757
01:05:59,252 --> 01:06:22,252
I have this idea, this, this reasoning for why a counterintuitive idea will, is in
fact, the best L2. So I kind of never did that. And even today, what I have is not,
but very recent, very soon, I have something very special coming, which is the Core
Untouched Soft Fork, CUSF.

758
01:06:23,252 --> 01:06:45,252
And this will make it very, very easy for any L1 to add BIP300. Because what it does
is it adds it in a way where the underlying L1 software is not modified at all. So
you run the 51% hash rate, run a new program alongside latest version of Bitcoin
Core.

759
01:06:46,252 --> 01:07:06,252
And it's simply that once that gets going, it should actually be easy to swap out
Bitcoin Core for even like Monero full node, and then just kind of see what breaks
and then tune it up. And then it would then it will be very easy for anyone to add.
It should be very easy for anyone to add.

760
01:07:07,252 --> 01:07:33,252
I don't want to say very easy, but certain things will change because you have to
scan the whole block the second. But other than that, it'll just be someone doing
the work of taking the BIP300. It'll no longer be like right now, it's like a lock
that's always morphing and a key that's always morphing.

761
01:07:33,252 --> 01:07:54,252
They kind of like morph together all the time because Bitcoin Core is constantly
changing, adding new, doing rebasing and also the junk in there. And so it's hard
for the BIP300 pull request into Bitcoin Core to also be stable.

762
01:07:55,252 --> 01:08:18,252
But when I do this Core Untouched Soft Fork idea, it will be independent now of the
changes to the underlying L1. And also the amount of BIP300 part of that, that will
also stop changing, it will be just the Bitcoin version of that. And so then it
would be possible for someone to build a Monero version of that, and then you should
just be able to plug it all together and then it should work.

763
01:08:19,252 --> 01:08:32,252
So there's too many things changing. Another network effect prison is the community
of GitHub maintainers or something. You have to deal with whatever changes are made
or not made.

764
01:08:33,252 --> 01:08:41,252
Would you ever be down to talk with devs in the Monero community about these kinds?

765
01:08:41,252 --> 01:08:42,252
Yeah, of course. No, absolutely.

766
01:08:42,252 --> 01:08:49,252
I think that would be exciting. Or maybe we could get you to attend a Monero
conference and talk in person with people.

767
01:08:49,252 --> 01:08:52,252
Oh, maybe. I mean, I don't know. I kind of got a lot on my plate.

768
01:08:53,252 --> 01:09:13,252
I'm sure you do. And you're focused. So I just want to get it out there because I
love the direction this conversation has gone and all these things we spoke about.
And I think if people really want to get into the nitty gritty with the tech,
there's tons of videos of you out there talking about drive trains. So I didn't
really focus on that.

769
01:09:14,252 --> 01:09:21,252
But if you can just kind of summarize, what is the main argument against Bitcoin
core adding it?

770
01:09:22,252 --> 01:09:38,252
No, they don't. They have such a poor understanding of it that I think it's not. I
have Steelman. There's the two that are most popular, which is this miners can steal
argument. And then there's this like it affects mining incentives.

771
01:09:38,252 --> 01:09:46,252
But those arguments are so bad that they almost shouldn't be Steelman because they
are actually – but those are the popular ones.

772
01:09:47,252 --> 01:09:52,252
I thought it was like a node. I thought like Peter Todd was making a node argument.

773
01:09:52,252 --> 01:10:08,252
Peter Todd fails to draw the all important distinction between the L1 node cost and
the cost of L1 plus L2. It's desired that the people running the sidechain, they
want to run more software. So they want more.

774
01:10:09,252 --> 01:10:25,252
The problem is just that everyone doesn't want more. And if you just let anyone do
anything, everyone is – the problem with Bitcoin SV, everyone must run the largest
block size in effect or Solana.

775
01:10:26,252 --> 01:10:33,252
Although from what I've heard, Solana has done a very good job of software
engineering. And even though they have super large, super frequent blocks, they
brought the cost down.

776
01:10:33,252 --> 01:10:45,252
But everyone must do the biggest thing. So the whole sidechain idea is that everyone
does the smallest thing and then people opt in to whatever else they want.

777
01:10:46,252 --> 01:11:02,252
That's kind of like everyone is going out to eat at a restaurant. Bitcoin SV, it's
like whatever food the most – whoever orders the most food, everyone has to order
that and everyone has to eat all of it and pay for it.

778
01:11:02,252 --> 01:11:09,252
I could tell you are very hungry, by the way. All your analogies involve food and
restaurants. Sorry about that.

779
01:11:10,252 --> 01:11:18,252
Everyone has to eat the most. And then with something like when you have a very
small block L1 but no sidechains, it's like everyone can only have the least.

780
01:11:18,252 --> 01:11:23,252
So if someone just orders soup and nothing else, everyone has to have that and pay
for that.

781
01:11:23,252 --> 01:11:37,252
And so Peter knows that with sidechains, you're allowed to go on to networks that
have more expensive. You're allowed to order more food. You have the soup, but then
you're allowed to order fish and chips or whatever.

782
01:11:38,252 --> 01:12:00,252
But then he mistakenly complains, even though he should know better. He complains
and says, well, that's bad because basically his version of the argument is
something like if that's the type of thing most people have for dinner, then – it's
weird because he draws it into the mining world.

783
01:12:01,252 --> 01:12:10,252
He paradoxically believes in multiple self-contradictory wrong things. So even to
steel man him almost gives him too much credit as well.

784
01:12:10,252 --> 01:12:22,252
But he thinks something like in order to be competitive, miners will have to run the
sidechain nodes, which means that each node is net giving more money to miners.

785
01:12:23,252 --> 01:12:29,252
But he says that this has increased their costs, even though it increased their
profits. If it increased their costs, they just do nothing.

786
01:12:29,252 --> 01:12:36,252
They say like the optimal miner will shift to one who does all these chains and the
node will be very expensive to run.

787
01:12:36,252 --> 01:12:46,252
Like it'd be very expensive to run the Solana chain. He's totally uninterested in
the fact that BIP301 means that the middleman could do that for you and then reduce
the cost of that to zero.

788
01:12:47,252 --> 01:13:00,252
He's also uninterested in the fact that the actual software costs are microscopic
percentage of miners' total costs to the point where the whole conversation is
inane.

789
01:13:00,252 --> 01:13:06,252
But he also, on top of that, he believes the falsehood that it's impossible to
defer.

790
01:13:06,252 --> 01:13:15,252
He actually contradicts himself on his point as well, but he thinks in order to be a
new miner, you have to run a node of the sidechain. So it's upfront cost.

791
01:13:15,252 --> 01:13:24,252
That's not true, but it's also the case that you could defer to a pool that has
existed for 30 years that just runs all the nodes.

792
01:13:24,252 --> 01:13:35,252
He says that's bad, but he wants to have it all different ways at once. It's bad if
they shirk the cost. It's bad if they have to pay the cost. It's bad if they don't
have to pay the cost.

793
01:13:35,252 --> 01:13:42,252
So it's all just a bunch of nonsense. What it really means is that he hasn't spent
any time looking into the idea.

794
01:13:42,252 --> 01:13:50,252
At Baltic Honey Badger in September, he said, no one's written code for this, even
though the software had been out for...

795
01:13:50,252 --> 01:13:54,252
The Zcash sidechain that we had made had been out for two and a half years at that
point.

796
01:13:54,252 --> 01:13:58,252
So he never visited drivechain.info. He knows basically nothing about the idea.

797
01:13:58,252 --> 01:14:09,252
Before he went on to do the debate at TabConf, he tweeted out that he was like,
well, I don't really know how this works, so I'll have to ask Paul some questions
live on stage or something.

798
01:14:09,252 --> 01:14:18,252
But that's the number one critic of the idea, hasn't visited the website and doesn't
even know that the software exists.

799
01:14:18,252 --> 01:14:32,252
So the whole thing has become kind of a travesty of what should happen because then
downstream from him, a lot of people assume that he knows what he's talking about,
which he doesn't at all.

800
01:14:32,252 --> 01:14:39,252
Well, maybe this pushes you into putting Drivechains on Monero.

801
01:14:39,252 --> 01:14:45,252
I mean, I certainly love to talk. If people want to do it, I will advise. I have a
lot that I'm doing.

802
01:14:46,252 --> 01:14:54,252
The whole point of inventing Drivechain was to make Bitcoin be able to do all the
altcoin things so that we wouldn't need the altcoins.

803
01:14:54,252 --> 01:14:57,252
So it's a little bit ironic.

804
01:14:57,252 --> 01:15:02,252
But that being the case, like I said, competition is good.

805
01:15:02,252 --> 01:15:06,123
So if we had Monero out there doing really, really well.

806
01:15:06,123 --> 01:15:11,123
That would be one of the things that would stimulate BTC to say, why aren't we doing
this?

807
01:15:11,123 --> 01:15:13,123
We could do this thing.

808
01:15:13,123 --> 01:15:22,123
And Drivechains would effectively solve, you know, you could interface with anything
else, right?

809
01:15:22,123 --> 01:15:25,123
So that would also kind of eliminate Lightning as well, right?

810
01:15:25,123 --> 01:15:33,123
That would be the solution there as well, because now you would be using some
sidechain for quick, easy, fast transactions.

811
01:15:33,123 --> 01:15:42,123
Yeah, I think I've written a post called Thunder where I compare Lightning to what
it would be like if you just had large block sidechains, 300 sidechains.

812
01:15:42,123 --> 01:15:51,123
And I think that Lightning has enormous disadvantages that the large block sidechain
doesn't have, especially because plenty of people are willing to run.

813
01:15:51,123 --> 01:15:57,123
The node cost is really not even that high for all the transactions in the world.

814
01:15:57,123 --> 01:16:04,123
It is high, but it is not, but it is like thousands, $2,000 a year or something.

815
01:16:04,123 --> 01:16:20,123
For like a huge, a blockchain has huge numbers of blocks, like one gigabyte blocks,
you know, which is we're nowhere near needing that kind of, there's nowhere near
like that kind of capacity.

816
01:16:20,123 --> 01:16:29,123
So there's about a trillion transactions, 1.1 trillion transactions on earth last
year, and it grows by, it doubles every five or six years.

817
01:16:29,123 --> 01:16:41,123
So if this were 10 cents worth of revenue, it'd be $110 billion in revenue for
miners every year, and that number would double every five or six years.

818
01:16:42,123 --> 01:16:51,123
Because there's an absolutely huge amount of money, but even that case, that is,
we're talking for that kind of money, the node cost is like $2,000 a year.

819
01:16:51,123 --> 01:16:54,123
So that, and this, and the bandwidth would be, it would be very difficult to hide.

820
01:16:54,123 --> 01:16:59,123
So the privacy would be challenging, but you have like Zcash, you have Monero
sidechain for that.

821
01:16:59,123 --> 01:17:04,123
You have all these, you know, people would move in when they want to like mix the
coins or whatever you want to call it.

822
01:17:04,123 --> 01:17:20,123
For certain use cases, they would use a certain chain, but then for everyday
payments, they would use the optimized, the chain that was just optimized for, you
know what I'm trying to say, and optimized for just quick, easy usage, or even
optimized for some transparency.

823
01:17:20,123 --> 01:17:29,123
The key is that you have to, it has to be the program that allows people to convert
freely from the private coin to the non-private.

824
01:17:29,123 --> 01:17:36,123
It can't be like an exchange or something where it would be, but as long as you have
the convertibility, they're really all of them.

825
01:17:36,123 --> 01:17:43,123
They're all private privacy coins that have just chosen temporarily to be in a
revealed state, and then they could go back at any time.

826
01:17:43,123 --> 01:17:51,123
And that's already what every privacy, every privacy coin, you could post
screenshots of your, of your wallet and say, I have this much Monero.

827
01:17:51,123 --> 01:17:52,123
You could always reveal.

828
01:17:53,123 --> 01:18:00,123
So, so you touched on it before, lightning, not really living up to its potential as
well.

829
01:18:00,123 --> 01:18:10,123
And now you're talking about sidechains, potentially a large block, big block sidechain could potentially do the job of LN, what LN is doing.

830
01:18:10,123 --> 01:18:13,123
Can you just give us more insight there into your thoughts about LN?

831
01:18:13,123 --> 01:18:16,123
Do you think LN is going to fail?

832
01:18:17,123 --> 01:18:31,123
It has become like a Frankenstein's monster type of a thing where it, a lot of
people like look the other way and they are just thought that it would be figured
out later.

833
01:18:31,123 --> 01:18:32,123
It's funny.

834
01:18:32,123 --> 01:18:38,123
Lightning is very similar to what Ethereum in 2015 was like, where it was like, they
had all these serious, serious problems.

835
01:18:38,123 --> 01:18:40,123
And everyone was like, Vitalik has said he will fix it.

836
01:18:40,123 --> 01:18:42,123
That was the answer.

837
01:18:43,123 --> 01:18:46,123
I just think, well, most people don't use it.

838
01:18:46,123 --> 01:18:48,123
They use custodial lightning, which is not lightning.

839
01:18:48,123 --> 01:18:51,123
This is just something else that has been labeled lightning.

840
01:18:51,123 --> 01:19:00,123
So when, but when, when you get to a point where people don't even care about that,
it's kind of like, is it even worth it to explain to these people why they are
wrong?

841
01:19:00,123 --> 01:19:02,123
Since they, they're not even at square one.

842
01:19:02,123 --> 01:19:04,123
They didn't realize they're not using lightning.

843
01:19:04,123 --> 01:19:07,123
What do you see as being the main failings of lightning?

844
01:19:08,123 --> 01:19:17,123
I think a problem with lightning is that you need a two of two multisig output on L1
just to join.

845
01:19:17,123 --> 01:19:22,123
So you already need to broadcast a lot of stuff on L1 for every single person who
joins.

846
01:19:22,123 --> 01:19:28,123
You could say maybe they join, but then they don't need to touch L1 ever again,
which is optimistic.

847
01:19:28,123 --> 01:19:38,123
But so that, but that drawback is big because you need to get everyone in.

848
01:19:38,123 --> 01:19:41,123
You know, everyone has to join at some point.

849
01:19:41,123 --> 01:19:46,123
Or so the biggest scaling bottleneck is the most important one is the onboarding.

850
01:19:46,123 --> 01:19:47,123
It actually doesn't matter.

851
01:19:48,123 --> 01:19:52,123
It would actually be kind of nice if it was a, it'd be good for the project.

852
01:19:52,123 --> 01:20:02,123
Hypothetically, if you could somehow, if it was some kind of like a roach motel
where you, you can onboard everyone and then they can't transact, but they're on
board, but they're too late.

853
01:20:02,123 --> 01:20:10,123
They're already in the network or something, you know, that would be kind of like
better from an adoption point of view, because you got 8 billion people in somehow.

854
01:20:10,123 --> 01:20:12,123
I'm not suggesting that that's possible.

855
01:20:12,123 --> 01:20:20,123
I'm just saying, trying to draw a contrast on this dimension of like, like not being
able to onboard.

856
01:20:20,123 --> 01:20:23,123
Well, that's, you know, it's like, other than that, Mrs.

857
01:20:23,123 --> 01:20:25,123
Lincoln, how did you like the play?

858
01:20:27,123 --> 01:20:29,123
Yeah, it's a critical, critical flaw.

859
01:20:29,123 --> 01:20:31,123
I mean, is there any way to overcome it?

860
01:20:31,123 --> 01:20:32,123
You think?

861
01:20:32,123 --> 01:20:33,123
There are ways.

862
01:20:33,123 --> 01:20:43,123
Ironically, it's BIB300 and CTV are the biggest ways of like onboarding people to
Lightning with fewer L1 bytes, but they are the ones that are the most held up.

863
01:20:43,123 --> 01:20:45,123
They're held up for years and years.

864
01:20:45,123 --> 01:20:51,123
Both of them were in like a quasi published state since like 2018.

865
01:20:52,123 --> 01:20:53,123
And so I don't know.

866
01:20:53,123 --> 01:21:05,123
But I think there is something else, which is that not only do you need L1 bytes,
but also your recourse involves touching L1.

867
01:21:05,123 --> 01:21:07,123
Not so with BIB300.

868
01:21:07,123 --> 01:21:12,123
You have like a market based recourse where you can sell the coins.

869
01:21:12,123 --> 01:21:16,123
You can say, I can't get these coins back to L1, but does anyone want to buy them?

870
01:21:16,123 --> 01:21:19,123
And you could sell them to people who would be able to get them to L1.

871
01:21:19,123 --> 01:21:23,123
And then you would think maybe they probably sell for like 98 cents on the dollar or
something.

872
01:21:23,123 --> 01:21:26,123
And so the whole thing will probably still work out okay.

873
01:21:28,123 --> 01:21:35,123
Because you can combine them on L2, fuse them and then have one guy bring like
100,000 coins back over.

874
01:21:35,123 --> 01:21:37,123
So it's a little more loose.

875
01:21:38,123 --> 01:21:52,123
And I just think that loose is good because being tight, like Lightning is too
obsessed with being able to give people their coins back on L1, even if the fee
situation doesn't make sense.

876
01:21:52,123 --> 01:21:58,123
So the byte cost is a big issue.

877
01:21:58,123 --> 01:22:00,123
You can't make it down to L1.

878
01:22:00,123 --> 01:22:05,123
So the fact that Lightning guarantees you get your coins back on L1, that guarantee
doesn't make sense.

879
01:22:05,123 --> 01:22:12,123
If the payment is for $7 or $10 and the fees are $10, then it's useless.

880
01:22:12,123 --> 01:22:21,123
So that is the core security model, but it does not survive in a high fee
environment.

881
01:22:21,123 --> 01:22:23,123
The HTLCs are useless.

882
01:22:24,123 --> 01:22:30,123
Do you think there's also a potential issue with securing the main chain?

883
01:22:30,123 --> 01:22:32,123
So as people move over to L1.

884
01:22:32,123 --> 01:22:33,123
Yes.

885
01:22:33,123 --> 01:22:38,123
The fees cannot be too mismatched without causing either conflict or vertical
integration.

886
01:22:38,123 --> 01:22:47,123
So if the miners, like I was saying before, $110 billion a year in revenue for
miners if you get every transaction and they're all $0.10.

887
01:22:47,123 --> 01:22:53,123
Which I think is, you know, that's napkin math, but I think that that's like, that's
something, that's some number.

888
01:22:54,123 --> 01:23:00,123
And that's $110 billion last year, and then it will have doubled to $220 billion in
five years,

889
01:23:00,123 --> 01:23:04,123
based on the current trend of just how many transactions there are on earth.

890
01:23:04,123 --> 01:23:12,123
So in a world where instead of going to miners, that all goes to like LN Supernode
or the ARK Supernode or whatever you want to call it,

891
01:23:12,123 --> 01:23:18,123
on L2, the miners are only getting less than 1% of that.

892
01:23:19,123 --> 01:23:25,123
The miners are going to say, well, we're going to write our own Lightning, start for
our own ARK Supernode.

893
01:23:26,123 --> 01:23:30,123
And when it's the miners doing it, the security model collapses completely.

894
01:23:31,123 --> 01:23:37,123
All these covenants will fall apart, including Lightning, will fall apart if your
counterparty is 51% hash rate.

895
01:23:39,123 --> 01:23:45,123
So either they vertically integrate or there'll be some conflict because the miners
will say, listen, you guys get all this money.

896
01:23:45,123 --> 01:23:49,123
We are the ones, we mine with the channel open and the channel closed and the
justice transaction.

897
01:23:50,123 --> 01:23:56,123
So they'll say, we're going to hold these hostage, or we're going to just, you know,
we won't, you know, we'll start up our own thing.

898
01:23:56,123 --> 01:23:58,123
Either conflict or vertical integration.

899
01:23:59,123 --> 01:24:02,123
The vertical integration, both are terrible in the same way.

900
01:24:02,123 --> 01:24:07,123
The vertical integration, like I said, the whole model of the Lightning network is
that you have the justice transaction,

901
01:24:07,123 --> 01:24:09,123
you take it to L1 if someone cheats you.

902
01:24:10,123 --> 01:24:15,123
If you can censor the justice, 51% hash rate can censor the justice transaction.

903
01:24:16,123 --> 01:24:21,123
So they, at that point, the whole security model of Lightning is non-existent.

904
01:24:22,123 --> 01:24:28,123
And all the coins are just given to the miners, which is ironic because that's where
BIP300 starts.

905
01:24:29,123 --> 01:24:36,123
But then we add a bunch of safety guardrails on top of that to make it work, which
you wouldn't have in Lightning or Covenant.

906
01:24:36,123 --> 01:24:44,123
So I think the fact that the fees mismatch, if all the fees are paid on the L2 and
none of it filters down to the miners,

907
01:24:45,123 --> 01:24:56,123
that makes it a huge disadvantage relative to Drivechain, where basically 100%,
99.99% of the, because people could bid.

908
01:24:57,123 --> 01:25:01,123
As long as there's two people bidding, as long as one of them prefers having a
little bit of money to having nothing,

909
01:25:01,123 --> 01:25:06,123
it will basically just be the cost of doing the bid minus the whole value.

910
01:25:07,123 --> 01:25:13,123
So it's like 99.99% of the value will go automatically to the miners on L1 in return
for doing absolutely nothing.

911
01:25:14,123 --> 01:25:17,123
They just mine the L1 transactions that pay the highest fee.

912
01:25:18,123 --> 01:25:19,123
They do exactly what they normally would do.

913
01:25:20,123 --> 01:25:23,123
So that is another big edge for my project.

914
01:25:24,123 --> 01:25:28,123
So I think that my project is the best in that dimension also.

915
01:25:28,123 --> 01:25:35,123
I think you're absolutely 100% correct that you have to think about the fee revenue
is important.

916
01:25:36,123 --> 01:25:43,123
Luckily, before Ordinals and before this new price run-up, I think many miners,
Bitcoin miners, were on the verge of bankruptcy or in bankruptcy.

917
01:25:44,123 --> 01:25:49,123
You could look up Marathon's cash balance sheet.

918
01:25:50,123 --> 01:25:54,123
You could see it was 300 million, 200 million, 90 million.

919
01:25:55,123 --> 01:26:02,123
You could see it's like, but then people, of course, the price is up now.

920
01:26:03,123 --> 01:26:05,123
So the Ordinal stuff happened.

921
01:26:06,123 --> 01:26:14,123
The Ordinal stuff screwed up lightning technology and it also screwed up the social
fabric where all these people now hate each other.

922
01:26:15,123 --> 01:26:19,123
Instead of everyone working together to make the project a success, fighting over
the fees.

923
01:26:20,123 --> 01:26:22,123
So I think that's a very important point.

924
01:26:22,123 --> 01:26:24,123
What's your overall take on Ordinal?

925
01:26:25,123 --> 01:26:30,123
Do you think they don't belong on Bitcoin or let the things play out the way they
should?

926
01:26:31,123 --> 01:26:37,123
More people don't take it for granted that whoever pays the most for the block space
is the rightful owner.

927
01:26:38,123 --> 01:26:40,123
So that is obvious to me.

928
01:26:41,123 --> 01:26:47,123
And if you don't allow them to get what they want via op return or something in a
tidy, organized way.

929
01:26:48,123 --> 01:26:52,123
I don't even think there really should be standardness rules.

930
01:26:53,123 --> 01:26:58,123
If you are standing in people's way, they're going to get what they want in some
other way.

931
01:26:59,123 --> 01:27:03,123
When did that ever work where they say, well, let them eat cake or something.

932
01:27:04,123 --> 01:27:07,123
You either do something about people's problem.

933
01:27:08,123 --> 01:27:10,123
What if a friend comes to you with a problem?

934
01:27:11,123 --> 01:27:12,123
You say, listen, I don't want.

935
01:27:13,123 --> 01:27:16,123
You could say, you could try to say, listen, I don't want to get involved with that.

936
01:27:17,123 --> 01:27:19,123
But maybe all that happens is you just lost a friend.

937
01:27:20,123 --> 01:27:21,123
It's like people don't want.

938
01:27:22,123 --> 01:27:24,123
They're coming to you because they want.

939
01:27:25,123 --> 01:27:26,123
You can't become part of the problem.

940
01:27:27,123 --> 01:27:29,123
Then they'll just say, well, I don't like that anymore.

941
01:27:30,123 --> 01:27:37,123
So the idea that we had this way, op return, and we had this other ways of people
getting what they want.

942
01:27:37,123 --> 01:27:42,123
The fact that that is breaking down is also bad in other ways.

943
01:27:43,123 --> 01:27:49,123
I think in a sane world, there would just be specialized sidechain that we have
made called the bid asset sidechain.

944
01:27:50,123 --> 01:27:53,123
Where people issue coins and they just write whatever they have, whatever they want.

945
01:27:54,123 --> 01:27:57,123
They have club, you and your golf league can make a coin and whatever.

946
01:27:58,123 --> 01:28:00,123
You give it to your friends, Paul coin or whatever.

947
01:28:01,123 --> 01:28:06,123
And so there would just be that and that activity would just be over there.

948
01:28:07,123 --> 01:28:15,123
And then there, the fact that it generates fees would be correctly interpreted as
making a sale to the customer, like doing what the user wants.

949
01:28:16,123 --> 01:28:18,123
So we would be happy about it and it'd be giving revenue to miners.

950
01:28:19,123 --> 01:28:20,123
You'd be using it.

951
01:28:21,123 --> 01:28:24,123
There wouldn't be this tug of war over like, is it a good thing?

952
01:28:25,123 --> 01:28:26,123
It would just be, yes, it is a good thing.

953
01:28:26,123 --> 01:28:33,123
And part of this is why the strategy of trying to police what happens on the
blockchain is doomed to failure.

954
01:28:34,123 --> 01:28:38,123
And why it stimulates all the altcoins being created in the first place and why sidechains are a good idea.

955
01:28:39,123 --> 01:28:40,123
So it's all the same topic, really.

956
01:28:41,123 --> 01:28:42,123
Yep, yep.

957
01:28:43,123 --> 01:28:44,123
Paul, thank you so much, man.

958
01:28:45,123 --> 01:28:46,123
Thanks for being a trooper.

959
01:28:47,123 --> 01:28:48,123
I know you're hungry on the outset.

960
01:28:49,123 --> 01:28:50,123
See you hanging in.

961
01:28:51,123 --> 01:28:52,123
This is amazing.

962
01:28:53,123 --> 01:28:54,123
Really loved it.

963
01:28:54,123 --> 01:28:59,123
Appreciate all the work, all the contributions you've made to the space and you
taking the time to be on the show.

964
01:29:00,123 --> 01:29:01,123
Thank you.

965
01:29:02,123 --> 01:29:03,123
Thank you.

966
01:29:04,123 --> 01:29:05,123
All right, man.

967
01:29:06,123 --> 01:29:07,123
Anything you want to put out there?

968
01:29:08,123 --> 01:29:09,123
Any last words?

969
01:29:10,123 --> 01:29:11,123
I don't know.

970
01:29:11,123 --> 01:29:13,123
Go to drivechain.info and actually run this test software.

971
01:29:14,123 --> 01:29:17,123
If you want to comment and if you want to see how just, it's an interesting social
experiment.

972
01:29:18,123 --> 01:29:20,123
All these people commenting on Drivechain.

973
01:29:21,123 --> 01:29:22,123
They have never run the software.

974
01:29:23,123 --> 01:29:24,123
They've never visited drivechain.info.

975
01:29:25,123 --> 01:29:26,123
So at least visit the site if you want to.

976
01:29:27,123 --> 01:29:28,123
Read the FAQ.

977
01:29:29,123 --> 01:29:34,123
If you're a true star, read the FAQ and then comment about it.

978
01:29:35,123 --> 01:29:44,123
If some higher level devs are really interested in what we were discussing here and
how possibly sidechains, Drivechains can be implemented on Monero.

979
01:29:45,123 --> 01:29:47,123
What's the best way to engage in those conversations with you?

980
01:29:47,123 --> 01:29:51,123
Join the telegram, t.me slash dcinsiders.

981
01:29:52,123 --> 01:29:53,123
It's a joke.

982
01:29:56,123 --> 01:29:59,123
And just hang out and discuss it there.

983
01:30:00,123 --> 01:30:02,123
I would just wait probably till the end of January.

984
01:30:03,123 --> 01:30:04,123
We finish this core and touch software.

985
01:30:05,123 --> 01:30:06,123
Who knows?

986
01:30:06,123 --> 01:30:07,123
Software always takes longer than you think.

987
01:30:08,123 --> 01:30:10,123
But I would wait for that and then I'd get involved.

988
01:30:11,123 --> 01:30:12,123
Very cool.

989
01:30:13,123 --> 01:30:14,123
Paul, thank you so much, man.

990
01:30:15,123 --> 01:30:16,123
Okay, thanks.

991
01:30:16,123 --> 01:30:17,123
Cheers.

992
01:30:18,123 --> 01:30:19,123
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993
01:30:20,123 --> 01:30:21,123
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994
01:30:22,123 --> 01:30:29,123
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995
01:30:30,123 --> 01:30:34,123
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996
01:30:35,123 --> 01:30:40,123
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997
01:30:41,123 --> 01:30:42,123
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998
01:30:42,123 --> 01:30:45,123
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999
01:30:46,123 --> 01:30:49,123
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