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Alright, we are live and joined by the ghost of Paul Sztorc.

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Yeah, I'm here. Let's do that.

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We'll give it a minute for people to sync up.

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So I just posted the thing on Twitter if you want to share it on there.

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Yeah, I don't see it. Did you tag me? Let me see.

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I did.

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Where is it?

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You can also just post it yourself.

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Livestream technology is getting better and better.

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It is getting a lot better.

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Yeah, I was trying to figure out OBS, which is like the software that people use.

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My computer couldn't handle it.

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So my wife suggested this platform we're using here, StreamYard, and it's so easy.

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I'm so impressed.

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If this goes well, man, I'm like, I'm sold.

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Yeah, well, I mean, it was pretty crazy when I was doing the debate with Kraywitz

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because it actually was a lot more difficult than I thought,

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and I realized that my expectations for it being easy were like kind of passively on
this sort of slope

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of it just getting easier and easier and easier.

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Yeah.

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And so I was like, why isn't it just like super easy now?

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But, yeah, I remember for years there was the joke that this would be like the last
thing that mankind invented.

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Yeah, right.

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Because it was like audio video stuff was so bad.

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Yeah.

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It was just so terrible forever, and it never worked.

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And now with Zoom, it's so ubiquitous that it's kind of – it could never have
reached that point unless it worked a little bit.

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Yeah.

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And now it kind of works. It kind of works now.

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Well, you know, there's parallels here with Bitcoin.

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How big blocks can we handle?

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Aren't there always? Aren't there always parallels?

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All right. So, hey, why don't we –

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Expectations about the future?

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Yeah. Why don't we jump in?

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First of all, thanks for joining me, Paul.

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For people that don't know, Paul and I were scheduled to debate about a year ago
now,

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and we were going to talk about BTC versus BCH on the Hotep Jesus YouTube channel,
and everything was going good.

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I was preparing. It sounds like you were prepared for it.

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Yeah, I was prepared.

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At the last minute, we had some BCH – some self-appointed guardians of the BCH
community decide that I was not a good enough representative of BCH

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because I was critical of some things going on. I spoke too highly of BSV, and so
they de-platformed me.

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Yeah, I went on Twitter moments before, and everyone was like, if you put Paul
against Steve, Steve's going to get crushed.

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Everyone in BCH was saying all these nice things about me.

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I had just watched – I was like, what am I going to do?

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Because I didn't really know who you were that much, begging your pardon.

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But I was like, who is this person?

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So I only found that – I think it was when the numpties thing was just starting, and
you had some three-and-a-half-hour thing with those other jokers.

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And I was like, okay.

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So I watched that twice.

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So I invested like seven hours into preparing.

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Wow.

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And then they were like, Vin Armani at the last second.

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You can almost see how completely thrown I am because it was Vin Armani with the
Free Ross shirt.

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Shout-out to the Free Ross campaign.

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But also – yeah, I was just thinking like, okay, how did this happen?

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Because I kind of even vaguely remember the TV show that Vin Armani was on, and you
should all – everyone should look that up if you aren't already aware.

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But I just couldn't – I was like, how could this – how did my life turn out this
way?

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I'm talking to Vin Armani.

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Vin Armani was being super nice to me before the debate.

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Hotep Jesus was being super nice.

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I was like, how did this –

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What happened to him?

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He's like an African-American thought leader from the Joe Rogan podcast.

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I was like, how is this even happening?

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And I was just like so completely thrown.

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Well, I was excited by it because I thought – I think it's a good sign that people
like Hotep are really trying to dig into Bitcoin.

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I watched some of his stuff after I saw him posting about Bitcoin.

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I was like, all right, this dude is really trying to sort things out.

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So I was really excited to talk with you in particular.

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And then – so first question for you.

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When My Replacement said that there's nobody in Bitcoin Cash who wants blocks that
are going to be a gigabyte in size –

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I already knew you were going to say that.

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Did you –

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Yeah, I didn't know what to do with that.

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Did you know going into it that that was like laughably wrong or did you think –

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No, I looked up – because he said specifically that anyone who says that is
attacking a strongman, which is like accusing someone of improper discussion
etiquette or something.

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But I remember explicitly numerous people talking about that as though it were
possible, and I remember seeing it on like an infographic on the official ABC
roadmap or something.

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So I was – if you rewatch the debate, you'll see that I'm completely thrown by that.

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And in particular, when he says it's a strongman, that puts me in a weird position
because now I have to figure out like is that true or is it a bluff or is it some
kind of trick?

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And yeah, I was completely thrown by that.

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But obviously many people take that view that no matter what the demand is in BCH,
the block size would be upped in order to accommodate it.

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So that was like – that didn't preclude blocks of any size as I remember.

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And I remember specifically this like one terabyte.

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There's like an infographic.

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Anyone can find this.

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But I didn't know if I was like – I was like I'm pretty sure I didn't misremember
that because that's a kind of very easy thing to remember, right?

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Roadmap, the block size, one terabyte kind of like the Holy Grail, finding the Holy
Grail or something.

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Mission accomplished like George Bush with the mission accomplished banner.

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And yeah, so I'm completely – I didn't know what to do with that.

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And then that was when I started to figure out like what's going to happen in the
BCH community as I debate then because will people even consider any of this
conversation legitimate?

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That was confusing.

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I was confused by that.

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Well, that was very confusing.

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And I don't exactly know why that was the metric he got hung up on.

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As you say, if you go to the Bitcoin ABC website, which was until recently the
dominant implementation of BCH, it has on their infographic scaling to one terabyte
blocks.

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So the representative of BCH was off by a factor of a thousandfold.

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And there was actually one part –

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But he's a strong man as well.

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So he's like anyone who says that is deceiving and is –

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No, no.

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It gets even better than that.

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So here's the height of irony and then we can start our proper conversation.

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Height of irony is part of the justification given for the deplatforming is because
I was a secret BSV shill.

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But in that debate, Vin says only those crazy BSV people want blocks that are a
gigabyte in size.

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And I'm thinking, dude, that is a great pitch for BSV.

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Like you're accidentally shilling for BSV because that's very consistent with the
big block philosophy.

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You just have big blocks as large as they need to be.

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So I just thought that was the height of irony.

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It was a pretty good conversation with Vin.

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It wasn't so much of a debate, of course, which is better.

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But, yeah, that was one thing in particular where I was like I don't even know like
–

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I don't even know like is this like a joke or it's just – anything goes at this
point.

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See, that's the kind of – this is the problem you have though to maybe lean into the
conversation,

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which is that this is a problem when you have this hard – you blasé about the hard
fork,

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which is that everything starts to become – everything goes from being nailed down
to being up free for all.

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Everything is up for grabs.

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So that's part of the problem.

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Yeah, well, I think that actually the other people in the big block Bitcoin world I
think are pretty consistent about having arbitrarily large blocks

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or blocks like the way back in like 2013 or 2014 or something, there was a great
wiki article written on scaling,

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and it was back of the envelope calculations with something like 600 megabyte
blocks,

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and you could have effectively global size roughly, give or take.

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Maybe that's wrong.

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Let's say that's wrong by, I don't know, twofold.

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Maybe it's twice.

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What was the figure?

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It was 600 megabyte blocks.

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Yeah, I think you need about – for the whole world,

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you need about eight gigabytes or something.

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Well, it depends on how many transactions per day you're putting on there.

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It does.

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It does.

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Yeah, but let's say it's in that range.

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Okay, we'll give it an order of magnitude range.

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That is still, I think, pretty consistent in the big block Bitcoin world that
getting in that range is just explicitly part of the roadmap.

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Of the people I've spoken with in big block Bitcoin until that point, the point of
that conversation,

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I think Venn was in a minority of one there.

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I think it's pretty explicit.

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So I don't think actually there was a big difference in philosophy.

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Though since then, ironically, I think we have seen the emergence of something like
a mid-block position.

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You have the small blockers in BTC, you've got the crazy big blockers in BSV,

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and then the people who are trying to be reasonable like Venn who are the
mid-blockers,

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like the worst of both positions in my opinion.

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Yeah, the mid-blockers have been there from both a game theory and a marketing point
of view.

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I guess they're related in the idea of positioning.

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They're screwed because they don't have a simple message anymore, whereas the small
block people can say protects your node,

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protects the network, tragedy of the commons.

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Right, right.

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So no free lunch.

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And then the large block people can say all that is wrong.

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Cheap transactions, abundance, and prosperity, and progress for everyone.

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And then the middle people, they have to argue this weird nuanced Goldilocks point.

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No one has been able to do it kind of successfully in my point of view.

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I just think in terms of just marketing and explaining it to people in a cozy way.

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Then it's like millions of other questions about which block size is right.

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How do we know that?

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How do we measure all the inputs?

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How do we know that we measured them correctly?

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How do we prove to everyone else that the measurement is right?

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And there's an implicit governance problem here too.

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Because in BSV, the philosophy is, look, we're going to try to lock everything down
as much as we can, open into protocol, let the miners decide.

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And BCH, they at least started being sort of anti-authoritarian.

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That we're not going to have this central group of developers say, this is what the
block should be.

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And they shouldn't be larger than this.

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But now with the mid-block position, you're right back in that circumstance where
you're trusting that there's going to be some central enlightened developer
committee that will shepherd the project through the shadow of doubt, right?

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Yeah, exactly.

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Good luck with that.

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Yeah, so you're right.

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Both of the small block and the large block can both say the status quo prevails.

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The small blocks can just say what is what it is and the fees will be high.

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And people will use credit.

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They'll use lightning.

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They'll use liquid.

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They'll use all these other things.

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And they'll only net it out later.

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It'll be like the Bank of International Settlements or something like that.

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Right.

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Or the gold.

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That gold thing they do like once a day in London, isn't it?

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Goldfix or something?

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Yeah.

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Yeah, yeah.

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And they just one phone call a day or something.

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So I want to sort of start here with an observation.

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I just want to say one more thing, though, is that you're completely right about
governance is the perfect word for it.

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It even reminds me of the idea of the centripetal governor on the train, the weird
machine that is cast to keep it at the exact velocity.

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Because, as you say, now you need this complicated thing that measures the block
size and then changes it in some way.

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And that is a totally different animal than just doing nothing.

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Yeah, it's a technical problem and it's a political problem.

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Because then you just have actual you're right back to square one.

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In my opinion, one of the problems I see with BTC is the governance structure.

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And it just seems like if you're a mid block here, you really haven't solved that
problem.

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The way to try to solve that problem is open up the protocol, try to lock it down as
much as you can.

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And then hopefully you're not going to have governance problems.

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But what I kind of want to start is just an observation here.

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So it seems to me in BTC.

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Correct me if I'm wrong and just I guess your analysis of it.

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It seems to be that there's a culture of stagnation now where BTC developers and the
supporters and the mini shills online have kind of concluded that there's no more
innovation that's necessary.

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That it's good as it is.

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High fees are totally fine.

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And or they say we just have to trust the biggest brain individuals to solve these
technical problems.

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And we're just going to buy the coin, hold it without thinking.

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And that's definitely the right decision.

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And I look at that and I go, OK, that's a problem.

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There aren't particularly many thinking people that I see in BTC.

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There's maybe a handful or maybe one.

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So that's my observation.

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I see more innovation and more development on the big block bitcoins.

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What do you think about that?

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Do you see the same thing?

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Yeah, not really.

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I think, well, it's weird because, to be honest with you, having been I've been like
reading.

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I've been observing the space for a really long time since at least 2011 when I was
sort of reading.

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And at this point, there's been accelerating progress in so many directions where
it's very difficult to even stay on top of what everyone is doing.

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In BTC even.

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And then let alone like also in BCH and BSV and then stuff going on in Ethereum and
stuff going on in Monero and Zcash.

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There's been like an explosion.

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And even if you do this 24-7, I don't even know the latest stuff that's in Lightning
or other things.

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So a lot of stuff.

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But I agree with you that as far as the layer one protocol, there has been.

221
00:15:00,000 --> 00:15:09,000
First of all, it was obviously this attitude that there's a purity contamination
frame that what we have is pure and perfect.

222
00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,000
And it's got us this far.

223
00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:19,000
So we don't want to contaminate it by letting any bad things in, which is horrible
because it's anathema to antifragility.

224
00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:21,000
And it's necessarily unsustainable.

225
00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:23,000
So that's a problem.

226
00:15:23,000 --> 00:15:28,000
But the other thing is not only is there an attitude, but you can see it.

227
00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,000
You can actually see it pretty clearly if you just look at when there were protocol
upgrades.

228
00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:40,000
So there used to be protocol upgrades like a few times a year, especially sometimes
there were like three or four at once.

229
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:46,000
And the last one was SegWit, which was technically released in like October 2016.

230
00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:52,000
And it wasn't activated until August 1st, 2017.

231
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:55,000
But since then, there's been no protocol upgrades.

232
00:15:55,000 --> 00:16:02,000
People have even been afraid to even talk about PTSD from the last upgrade.

233
00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000
But that's quite a length of time.

234
00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:11,000
So BTC protocols had no consensus level upgrades since SegWit.

235
00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:13,000
And before that, I don't even remember.

236
00:16:13,000 --> 00:16:19,000
I think it was stuff that was – I think it must have been December 2015 or something
like that.

237
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:26,000
So that would have been a long time ago, a long time with only one protocol change
versus – think about this.

238
00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:30,000
BCH and BSV, they haven't even lived independently that long.

239
00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:36,000
So BTC has been much more static than BSV, which is supposed to be the lockdown
protocol in a way.

240
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:41,000
That matters for the equilibrium long-run case, but I just – BTC is there.

241
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:43,000
The protocol is static.

242
00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:44,000
So let me ask you.

243
00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:46,000
They're trying to upgrade.

244
00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:51,000
There's a new – there is a new protocol upgrade that you probably know about, the
taproot.

245
00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:55,000
How long that could take years.

246
00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:56,000
Who knows how long that could take?

247
00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:58,000
So I want to clarify.

248
00:16:58,000 --> 00:17:08,000
When I say I see stagnation, I'm talking – I guess I'm packing into that the
relative importance of the projects that are being worked on.

249
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:14,000
So from my opinion, I also have been observing this for about 2011.

250
00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:20,000
It was whenever Bitcoin was somewhere around a dollar, just under a dollar, I
started to sort of pay attention to it and observing.

251
00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:30,000
And from – in that long, relatively long time perspective, it seems like the promise
of Bitcoin fell off the rails.

252
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000
It used to be about magic internet money.

253
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:34,000
It used to be about digital cash.

254
00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:39,000
And then maybe 2014, 2015, the philosophy started to change.

255
00:17:39,000 --> 00:17:41,000
I think there was a bit of a takeover that happened.

256
00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:52,000
So I see high fees as like an urgent, fundamental, essential problem that if it
doesn't get fixed, it's effectively a worthless technology until it gets fixed.

257
00:17:52,000 --> 00:17:54,000
It's not going to be digital cash.

258
00:17:54,000 --> 00:18:00,000
So I guess when I say I see stagnation, it's that that problem really isn't being
addressed.

259
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:05,000
Maybe there's other things that people are trying to build on top of it, but it
doesn't solve the fundamental scaling problem.

260
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:15,000
Even the Lightning Network that was hyped beyond belief has, in my opinion, it's
failed from the perspective of real-world usage.

261
00:18:15,000 --> 00:18:19,000
Like it's nowhere near ready for mass adoption.

262
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:20,000
You've got to run your own node.

263
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:22,000
You're going to have small amounts.

264
00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,000
It requires an on-chain transaction to even connect to a payment channel.

265
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:32,000
And if it costs $1,000 for an on-chain transaction, you're not going to even have a
– you're not going to connect to the Lightning Network.

266
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,000
So I see that as a massive failure.

267
00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:43,000
And I don't see the only – there's one project that I see that has the potential
right now to fix BTC, and it's what you're working on, Drivechains or sidechains.

268
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:47,000
So that's the kind of stagnation that I'm talking about.

269
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:58,000
And would you agree that like without your project or without sidechains, there's
really no attempt at solving the fundamental scaling problem because Lightning isn't
going to do it?

270
00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:00,000
Well, maybe.

271
00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:10,000
It depends because I do definitely believe in the whole layers philosophy, and
that's the way the world works.

272
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:13,000
It's also the way payments work, right?

273
00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:20,000
People who know each other have like their own layer of like credit, and they say,
okay, you bought the first round of drinks.

274
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:22,000
I will get the next round.

275
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:32,000
Then you have credit cards, and then you have a checking account, and then the
banks, those clearinghouses of which the Fed is like a super clearinghouse.

276
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:36,000
And then there are – there's Bank of International Settlements as I said.

277
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:42,000
So the real world does have these kind of layers of specialization at a huge scale.

278
00:19:42,000 --> 00:19:49,000
I don't think that's the best analogy though because you're still going to have
layers and big block Bitcoin.

279
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:51,000
You're still going to have payment processors, and that's a type of a layer.

280
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:54,000
You're still going to have things built on top of layer one.

281
00:19:54,000 --> 00:20:07,000
But if you're going the layered approach, it seems like you got to have the first
layer capable of handling a bunch of data and interface with it that doesn't cost
thousands and thousands of dollars.

282
00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:09,000
Well, in a way – well, yeah.

283
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:13,000
Well, certainly if layer one fees get too high – I mean the fees are set by supply
and demand.

284
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:21,000
So if there's no fee that someone isn't in some sense willing to pay the so-called
consumer sovereignty.

285
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:31,000
So really the only problem could be is that the fees become high, and people just
abandon the project.

286
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:36,000
And then fees would be low because the project would be – but they would be because
the project had failed.

287
00:20:37,000 --> 00:20:39,000
Well, I think we're sort of in that window right now.

288
00:20:39,000 --> 00:20:43,000
We saw the 2017 fee spike, and you had a bunch of people leave.

289
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:45,000
You had anti-adoption from businesses.

290
00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:54,000
So I don't think it's – I think the fees are less than they were now, but I think
that's from reduced activity, but not because of a clear failure of BTC.

291
00:20:55,000 --> 00:21:04,000
Well, it's true that obviously there was the 2017 run-up and then a collapse.

292
00:21:04,000 --> 00:21:13,000
But near the Bitcoin 2019 conference, and that was only summer of last year, the
fees rose again.

293
00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:17,000
The price rose again.

294
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:21,000
So I don't know that it's the case.

295
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:24,000
So what I'm saying is I believe in the layers idea.

296
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:33,000
If you want to have layers, then actually layer one should be the one that is the
least overhead if you want to build things up.

297
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:41,000
You want to have something so there's like a bunker where you have a radio and some
bottled water and some canned food.

298
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:43,000
But you don't live down there because it's miserable.

299
00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:45,000
That should be layer one.

300
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:48,000
It should be the safest, most resilient thing.

301
00:21:48,000 --> 00:22:01,000
And then the more – the things that are more user-friendly but less secure, those
should all be further up.

302
00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:04,000
So actually I think it should be almost upside down.

303
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:14,000
You can't – in point of fact with Drivechain, you can't – you could put a large
block sidechain on a small block main chain, and then you have the best of both
worlds.

304
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:26,000
But if the layer one is huge blocks, you could put a small block sidechain on top
of that, but it would be kind of pointless because the way Drivechain works is
asymmetric.

305
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:38,000
So you need to run all the nodes, all the parent and grandparent nodes, so the small
block person isn't getting the benefit of small blocks if it's in that architecture.

306
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:42,000
So it's better to have the small block be layer one.

307
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:53,000
I think there's another approach to be – to say if you have large blocks for layer
one, you don't actually need small blocks on a sidechain.

308
00:22:53,000 --> 00:22:59,000
Like what are the benefits that you're going to get from having the chain that has
higher transactions?

309
00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:01,000
I mean you can imagine some technological innovation.

310
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:09,000
But I mean like the – like BTC – like BSV makes sense, for example, as a sidechain
of BTC.

311
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:12,000
But BTC in my opinion doesn't make sense of a sidechain of BSV.

312
00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:13,000
Like if you already have the low –

313
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:15,000
Probably not. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

314
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:23,000
I mean unless there's some kind of thing where – there's some kind of tradeoff where
people don't want something.

315
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:28,000
Like maybe BSV doesn't want – they don't want SegWit, right, but BTC could have it.

316
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,000
But then it would really – it wouldn't be the small blocks sidechain.

317
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:32,000
It would be like the SegWit sidechain.

318
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:33,000
Right, right. Yeah.

319
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:35,000
So yeah, I would mostly agree.

320
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:45,000
So that seems – if we're talking about layers, in my opinion, that seems to make a
stronger case for having big blocks closer to the base layer.

321
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:48,000
But I want to ask you about like –

322
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:59,000
People seem to have no – the large block people often see no benefit at all to
having small blocks, whereas Drivechain just says anyone who wants anything, they
can have it.

323
00:23:59,000 --> 00:24:01,000
Well, I agree. I think that's important.

324
00:24:01,000 --> 00:24:06,000
I'm not in the position to say that there are – there would never be any benefit
from having small blocks.

325
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:13,000
I just don't have the intellectual capacity to understand what it would be if you're
talking about small block Bitcoin when you already have big block Bitcoin.

326
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:17,000
Cost of spinning up a new node.

327
00:24:17,000 --> 00:24:20,000
Node is difficult to spin up a new node.

328
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:22,000
The network needs nodes or it dies.

329
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:24,000
So it's an existential threat.

330
00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:33,000
There's a point I made against Vin Armani that when you have a pacemaker, you don't
necessarily go with the cheapest pacemaker because you need it to work.

331
00:24:33,000 --> 00:24:34,000
Yeah, yeah.

332
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,000
You'd spend extra money on the pacemaker.

333
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:48,000
But for something else, if you're just buying a six-pack of Miller Lite or
something, or something else that's frivolous and sort of replaceable.

334
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:49,000
Let's talk about nodes for a minute.

335
00:24:49,000 --> 00:25:00,000
Actually, let's do a little detour into nodes because it seems to me from my
understanding of the Bitcoin system that the role of full nodes is greatly
overstated.

336
00:25:00,368 --> 00:25:02,368
That actually they don't serve an essential security function of the network.

337
00:25:02,368 --> 00:25:07,368
So I'm OK with the idea of people not running their own nodes.

338
00:25:07,368 --> 00:25:12,368
I don't think that's necessary at all.

339
00:25:12,368 --> 00:25:17,368
And I would go so far as to say I'm pretty confident Bitcoin wasn't even designed
that way.

340
00:25:17,368 --> 00:25:22,368
I think in Satoshi's design, it was pretty explicit that regular people are not
going to be running their own nodes.

341
00:25:22,368 --> 00:25:27,368
So do you have a take on that?

342
00:25:27,368 --> 00:25:32,368
Yes, I think it's true that Satoshi didn't have in mind everyone running their own
node.

343
00:25:32,368 --> 00:25:37,368
But I don't think he had in mind it being impossible to run a node that would end
the whole network.

344
00:25:37,368 --> 00:25:42,368
So that's kind of an important thing.

345
00:25:42,368 --> 00:25:47,368
If the block size is infinite and it's filled with, you know, infinite bytes of
terabytes of random data.

346
00:25:47,368 --> 00:25:52,368
Well, there's a few points on that. First of all, there are no actualized
infinities.

347
00:25:52,368 --> 00:25:57,368
Maybe we could talk about that.

348
00:25:57,368 --> 00:26:00,368
Every atom in the known universe would be required to.

349
00:26:00,368 --> 00:26:03,368
Yeah. So that's a situation that would never happen.

350
00:26:03,368 --> 00:26:06,368
So the blocks are produced by.

351
00:26:06,368 --> 00:26:09,368
Because you're saying that there's no tradeoff.

352
00:26:09,368 --> 00:26:12,368
The block size has no effect.

353
00:26:12,368 --> 00:26:14,368
I'm just saying, well, take the extreme case.

354
00:26:14,368 --> 00:26:16,368
No, but that's not what I'm saying.

355
00:26:16,368 --> 00:26:31,368
What I'm saying is that in system in the real world as is designed, it is not the
case that large blocks that are going to be produced by majority of miners and
accepted by a majority of miners are going to be a problem for the network.

356
00:26:31,368 --> 00:26:34,368
Yeah. But you agree that there is a cost to higher blocks.

357
00:26:34,368 --> 00:26:39,368
So you just think there's some other feedback loop will intercept it first.

358
00:26:39,368 --> 00:26:46,368
There is a cost. It will be more expensive to connect to the network with larger
blocks.

359
00:26:46,368 --> 00:26:50,368
But that's I would see that's a feature, not a bug.

360
00:26:50,368 --> 00:26:51,368
Really?

361
00:26:51,368 --> 00:26:56,368
Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't I think that specialization is a good thing.

362
00:26:57,368 --> 00:27:13,368
So I'm totally fine with the idea of the capacity of the network growing by the
biggest entrepreneurs making more money because they're the only people that can
afford that level of infrastructure.

363
00:27:13,368 --> 00:27:15,368
Well, specialization is good.

364
00:27:15,368 --> 00:27:20,368
But in general, the lower costs are, the better that is for everyone.

365
00:27:20,368 --> 00:27:26,368
I mean, you could say the only people can afford to, I don't know, become a doctor
or something.

366
00:27:26,368 --> 00:27:30,368
Some anything that's an expensive project that would fit the analogy.

367
00:27:30,368 --> 00:27:43,368
So it's good to have some people specialize and be doctors since it's so if it's
expensive, then they have to invest a lot and then they get a high salary after they
graduate from medical school or whatever.

368
00:27:43,368 --> 00:27:49,368
But better, it would be just much everything would just be better if it was just
possible for everyone to be a doctor.

369
00:27:49,368 --> 00:27:58,368
It's kind of worked that way already with the Internet has deleted a lot of
professions like or at least made them more competitive, like a realtor or something
like that.

370
00:27:58,368 --> 00:28:01,368
But now anyone can do or publishing.

371
00:28:01,368 --> 00:28:05,368
It used to take to produce a show. It used to take like a whole crew of people.

372
00:28:05,368 --> 00:28:12,368
Yeah, well, I just thought this podcast is cheaply just being more expensive and
specialization.

373
00:28:12,368 --> 00:28:15,368
Specialization is good, but we don't want you.

374
00:28:15,368 --> 00:28:17,368
You're viewing costs in isolation.

375
00:28:17,368 --> 00:28:23,368
So there are there are theoretical costs and then there are costs and their effect
in the real world.

376
00:28:23,368 --> 00:28:26,368
So something like proof of work is an interesting example here.

377
00:28:26,368 --> 00:28:33,368
I think actually Bitcoin improves its security by proof of work difficulty being
higher.

378
00:28:34,368 --> 00:28:39,368
And the reason that it is more secure is precisely that the costs are higher.

379
00:28:39,368 --> 00:28:46,368
So you're restricting the amount of people that can add blocks to the chain by
having a high proof of work difficulty.

380
00:28:46,368 --> 00:28:58,368
Well, the proof of work is just a mirror of the all the money spent on the senior
age and the transaction fees and the state of mining hardware.

381
00:28:58,368 --> 00:29:02,368
So it isn't actually like saying that the proof of work is high.

382
00:29:02,368 --> 00:29:08,368
It's just saying that the price is high, basically, or that and or that transaction
fees are really high.

383
00:29:08,368 --> 00:29:15,368
Well, so if the proof of work is high, that means it costs a lot of money to add
locks to the chain.

384
00:29:15,368 --> 00:29:17,368
Yeah. And to attack the chief.

385
00:29:17,368 --> 00:29:24,368
I'm saying that an increased cost in that circumstance in the real world is actually
a good thing.

386
00:29:24,368 --> 00:29:30,368
It's good to have a high cost because if you had really low cost, anybody blocks to
the chain, it would be easier to attack.

387
00:29:30,368 --> 00:29:35,368
I think I would agree. But again, it doesn't matter because it's not like that's
something that that's not a parameter.

388
00:29:35,368 --> 00:29:39,368
There's no degree of freedom like no one chooses that number.

389
00:29:39,368 --> 00:29:44,368
That's just determined completely by the market price of Bitcoin.

390
00:29:44,368 --> 00:29:49,368
And so there's no whether that number should be high or should be low.

391
00:29:49,368 --> 00:29:53,368
It's now unless there's some dramatic redesign.

392
00:29:53,368 --> 00:29:56,368
There's no point in talking about it because you can't do anything.

393
00:29:56,368 --> 00:30:05,368
But there is definitely something valuable talking about it, because you can say it
is a it is a good sign that the costs, the difficulty is high.

394
00:30:05,368 --> 00:30:11,368
And I would say the same thing about large that they are very expensive to process.

395
00:30:11,368 --> 00:30:15,368
I would say, oh, OK, that is actually a good sign in the same way.

396
00:30:15,368 --> 00:30:20,368
I don't think so, really, because mining has what has several.

397
00:30:20,368 --> 00:30:27,368
But namely, it has the difficulty adjustment. So if mining becomes too difficult.

398
00:30:27,368 --> 00:30:31,368
Then miners drop out and it becomes easier. But that doesn't happen with nodes.

399
00:30:31,368 --> 00:30:39,368
If they become too difficult to run, they may, in fact, become even harder to run a
full node because you have to get the initial data from somewhere.

400
00:30:40,368 --> 00:30:43,368
Yeah, but there's still the same.

401
00:30:43,368 --> 00:30:45,368
Blocks are. Yeah.

402
00:30:45,368 --> 00:30:50,368
Well, so if blocks are too big that the majority of the network can't handle them,
there's a natural pressure.

403
00:30:50,368 --> 00:30:55,368
And then somebody who's putting out the trillion megabyte block right now is going
to get forked off the network.

404
00:30:55,368 --> 00:30:58,368
So there's a natural balance. Maybe.

405
00:30:58,368 --> 00:31:03,368
But I think that a trillion megabyte block, they're going to get forked off the
network.

406
00:31:03,368 --> 00:31:12,368
Well, they would. It may be more strategic if they want to take this route of
burdening the network to push rivals off.

407
00:31:12,368 --> 00:31:15,368
They probably wouldn't do it in one salient block.

408
00:31:15,368 --> 00:31:19,368
They would just be constantly they were doing this a thousand blocks that are.

409
00:31:19,368 --> 00:31:22,368
But it's not. It's not.

410
00:31:22,368 --> 00:31:24,368
You have to have majority miners.

411
00:31:24,368 --> 00:31:28,368
So the majority hash rate is what is going to determine what the actual chain is.

412
00:31:28,368 --> 00:31:39,368
So if there's there's enough miners that are pushing out some size blocks, then
that's the size blocks that the majority of miners can handle.

413
00:31:39,368 --> 00:31:49,368
Right. If they couldn't handle it, if there's like a few isolated miners that start
making blocks larger than the majority can handle, they will definitely get forked
off.

414
00:31:49,368 --> 00:31:54,368
Which means there's a natural balancing of the size of blocks that the miners are
producing.

415
00:31:54,368 --> 00:32:08,368
Well, I mean, if you're saying that there's some that's just aren't you sneaking in
a block size limit in some, you know, some phantom way, you're saying that 51
percent hash rate will just determine the block size limit.

416
00:32:08,368 --> 00:32:13,368
Yeah. Yeah. But you still think that you still think there should be a block size
limit.

417
00:32:13,368 --> 00:32:28,368
So there's a difference between saying there is an effective limit to the size of
blocks that miners can produce and say that there is a protocol specification that
says you are not going to produce a valid block as determined by the protocol if the
size is too large.

418
00:32:28,368 --> 00:32:32,368
I mean, there's definitely going to be a maximum block size in practice. Definitely.

419
00:32:32,368 --> 00:32:47,368
Yeah. Well, yes, I agree with that, but I don't really see how it's relevant
because, as I said, you could have people just pushing the envelope by making the
blocks slightly larger. It's the integral of all the blocks over the whole time.

420
00:32:47,368 --> 00:32:48,368
That's a problem.

421
00:32:48,368 --> 00:33:05,368
Yeah. Well, I think there's no, as I said, you need someone needs the network needs
to exist, first of all. So it is the case that people do need to be able to start up
a new node in order for the network to exist at all.

422
00:33:05,368 --> 00:33:11,368
Yeah. Well, the difference between the miners and the nodes. So if you...

423
00:33:11,368 --> 00:33:13,368
The nodes need to exist.

424
00:33:13,368 --> 00:33:15,368
Okay. And who are the people...

425
00:33:15,368 --> 00:33:16,368
Otherwise...

426
00:33:16,368 --> 00:33:19,368
Yeah. So play that out. Sorry. You said otherwise, what will happen?

427
00:33:19,368 --> 00:33:28,368
Yeah. If you can't start a node, you have no way of knowing that the network is
working, first of all, but also that you receive money for certain.

428
00:33:28,368 --> 00:33:32,368
Well, that's not true. You can validate your own transactions with SPV.

429
00:33:32,368 --> 00:33:34,368
Yeah. Well, you could. Yes.

430
00:33:34,368 --> 00:33:35,368
So that one's not correct.

431
00:33:35,368 --> 00:33:49,368
I guess you never know with certainty, but it's, this is the, it's like the strength
of evidence. So...

432
00:33:49,368 --> 00:33:50,368
Okay.

433
00:33:50,368 --> 00:34:09,368
SPV gives you a lot, gives you strong evidence that your block has been included,
your transaction has been included in the block. And you can guess, you can say,
well, you know, I just don't think that people would go through the trouble of
making a valid block header if the rules were wrong.

434
00:34:10,368 --> 00:34:29,368
But you don't, you don't, if you run the full node, you see, even if you run a full
node, you don't actually know that everything is fine because as far as you know, it
will be reworked soon or something. All knowledge is conjectural. But the full node
is the only way of looking at the network.

435
00:34:29,368 --> 00:34:45,368
Okay. So there's a couple of points here. One is, let's say that in the, in the real
world with a bunch of market participants, it needs to be possible to run a
non-mining node. Okay. I would agree with that. I would just say that...

436
00:34:45,368 --> 00:34:46,368
Yeah, and Satoshi wrote as well.

437
00:34:46,368 --> 00:34:47,368
Sorry?

438
00:34:47,368 --> 00:34:50,368
It's in the white paper, and Satoshi has written about it as well.

439
00:34:50,368 --> 00:34:51,368
Yeah, yeah.

440
00:34:51,368 --> 00:35:11,368
Right, right. But he also said it's going to be businesses, businesses that have an
incentive to validate other people's transactions, not your regular users. So I'm
okay with the idea of the costs being high to businesses to run a node, because they
have an incentive to, but only the people that have the incentive to run the node
should be running the node, not your average user.

441
00:35:11,368 --> 00:35:24,368
He said large payment processors, but I don't understand, doesn't that, so if I'm an
individual and I start a business that's a sole proprietorship, now the logic is
different now? Or if my, only when my business is very large?

442
00:35:24,368 --> 00:35:25,368
I mean, it's a cost.

443
00:35:25,368 --> 00:35:39,368
I mean, imagine if we're talking about getting access to the internet. So somebody
says, what, you're saying I'm a business, now I have to pay more for internet? Well,
yeah, I mean, that's the cost of doing business, right?

444
00:35:39,368 --> 00:35:59,368
Well, not really. I mean, I've been billed for work and billed for work using my own
home internet. But that's not really what I mean. I mean, why your distinction is
that only businesses should run a node? There's really no difference between an
individual and a business, really, I can start a business.

445
00:35:59,368 --> 00:36:00,368
I mean, okay.

446
00:36:00,368 --> 00:36:04,368
I don't see the difference.

447
00:36:04,368 --> 00:36:22,368
Okay, so here's the principle. Those who have a economic incentive to run their own
nodes, as determined by the market, should run nodes. Those who do not have a reason
to run nodes should not be running nodes. It doesn't matter if it's a business or an
individual or an academic researcher.

448
00:36:23,368 --> 00:36:39,368
Don't you think that thing would be better if it were cheap? Roger Ver is trying to
sell, he starts a Bitcoin store, the business. He wants to run a node to see if
people are paying him so that he knows whether or not he can ship the goods. How is
it any different if he does rogerver.com as an individual?

449
00:36:40,368 --> 00:36:57,368
You're not in a position to say what a good cost of infrastructure should be. It
just is what it is. Whatever the costs are, the individual is going to make the
decision. Do I need to make a decision that I'm not going to use Bitcoin because
it's a black box and I don't know what's going on in there.

450
00:36:58,368 --> 00:37:12,368
I have multiple businesses that are running their own nodes on BSV, which pushed out
multiple 300 megabyte blocks. In their judgment, they have made the decision. This
actually makes sense for me to run. I'm still profiting.

451
00:37:13,368 --> 00:37:23,368
Yes, but you understand that that's not very strong evidence at all. Because as I've
said, there's a thousand new blocks every week. So they pile up and it becomes
cumulatively more difficult.

452
00:37:24,368 --> 00:37:27,368
How is this any different from any other infrastructure cost in existence?

453
00:37:28,368 --> 00:37:45,368
I don't know. There's no guarantee. The Romans built a lot of infrastructure and it
helped them for a little while and then the Roman civilization collapsed. So there's
no guarantee of success.

454
00:37:45,368 --> 00:37:46,368
But of course there's no guarantee.

455
00:37:47,368 --> 00:37:59,368
You seem to be saying that there's this problem. You admit that the block size
cannot be large. You think that miners will...

456
00:38:00,368 --> 00:38:04,368
Wait, wait, wait. Paul, I never said the block size can't be large.

457
00:38:05,368 --> 00:38:06,368
What about infinite?

458
00:38:07,368 --> 00:38:09,368
Block size cannot be infinite.

459
00:38:09,368 --> 00:38:19,368
Yeah, but you admitted that. But didn't we already discuss this? That you said that
if the blocks were too large, it would become problematic for the network and
something would happen about it. Really?

460
00:38:20,368 --> 00:38:29,368
So there's a difference between theory and practice. When you'd say, could you have
a theoretically large block that is a problem? Sure.

461
00:38:29,368 --> 00:38:40,368
I'm saying in the real world, in practice, the blocks that are going to be produced
by majority miners are not going to be a problem. They're not going to be a
theoretical problem because nobody's going to produce an infinite size block.

462
00:38:41,368 --> 00:38:47,368
The only reason you can know that, it's called off-path reasoning. The only reason
you can know that is by considering what would happen if someone did do that.

463
00:38:48,368 --> 00:38:52,368
And what would happen if somebody produced an infinite size block? They would get
forked off the network.

464
00:38:53,368 --> 00:39:00,368
No, I'm just saying if, no, I'm not literally saying, I'm just trying to establish
the point that the large blocks aren't free.

465
00:39:01,368 --> 00:39:02,368
Okay, if that's your point.

466
00:39:03,368 --> 00:39:04,368
Do you think they're free?

467
00:39:05,368 --> 00:39:06,368
I never said they're free.

468
00:39:07,368 --> 00:39:14,368
Do you think they are or not? Well, because since now you've gone double back on
this point a few times, so now I'm going to make you admit that they're not free
before proceeding.

469
00:39:15,368 --> 00:39:22,368
Do you think that it's free, like blocks are 10 gigabytes each or 100 gigabytes
each, complete neutrality between those two blockchains?

470
00:39:23,368 --> 00:39:24,368
I have never said they're free, Paul.

471
00:39:26,368 --> 00:39:27,368
I would say explicitly.

472
00:39:28,368 --> 00:39:29,368
Okay, so the answer is no.

473
00:39:30,368 --> 00:39:31,368
Increase as the size of the block increases.

474
00:39:32,368 --> 00:39:34,368
Right, exactly. Right.

475
00:39:35,368 --> 00:39:36,368
Yeah.

476
00:39:36,368 --> 00:39:48,368
Yes, so I'm saying there's no guarantee that if this cost isn't contained, there's
no guarantee that Bitcoin succeeds as a result of being one value or the other
value.

477
00:39:49,368 --> 00:39:52,368
The cost does not have to be contained by a protocol specification.

478
00:39:53,368 --> 00:39:56,368
The cost is naturally contained by the incentives that miners are facing.

479
00:39:57,368 --> 00:40:03,368
Because if you produce a block that is larger than the majority of miners can
handle, then you will be forked off the network and lose money.

480
00:40:03,368 --> 00:40:07,368
Yes, but your justification for this theory is that, you know, we can't control it.

481
00:40:08,368 --> 00:40:09,368
It's an infrastructure cost and we can't.

482
00:40:10,368 --> 00:40:11,368
It is what it is.

483
00:40:12,368 --> 00:40:15,368
I didn't say it. I think we don't have to control it.

484
00:40:16,368 --> 00:40:29,368
The economic argument, the economic incentives are such that the miners cannot
produce blocks that are larger than the majority can handle without getting forked
off the network.

485
00:40:29,368 --> 00:40:34,368
There doesn't need to be developer wisdom or a protocol level specification at all.

486
00:40:35,368 --> 00:40:37,368
So that's your belief.

487
00:40:38,368 --> 00:40:39,368
Yes.

488
00:40:40,368 --> 00:40:41,368
And can I ask you about why you believe that?

489
00:40:42,368 --> 00:40:45,368
Like, for example, already we live in a world where the miners don't.

490
00:40:46,368 --> 00:40:58,368
I think most in July 2015, it was revealed in a very public way that miners don't
even download or validate any blocks for at least a little while after they come in.

491
00:40:59,368 --> 00:41:05,368
So the miners release a block header, which is 80 bytes, which contains nothing in
the block at all, zero.

492
00:41:06,368 --> 00:41:10,368
And they immediately start mining on that block to reduce their orphan rate.

493
00:41:11,368 --> 00:41:17,368
So they mine on the next block without even reading the block that was just mined at
all.

494
00:41:18,368 --> 00:41:19,368
And that was July 2015.

495
00:41:20,368 --> 00:41:24,368
And so there's no guarantee that anyone doing hashing.

496
00:41:25,368 --> 00:41:32,368
There is some argument that they would go back because they have no other way to
coordinate or something.

497
00:41:33,368 --> 00:41:39,368
But in practice, they have already been mining on a kind of blind way.

498
00:41:40,368 --> 00:41:48,368
So when you say the miners could handle, the miners are not really the ones
interested in handling at all.

499
00:41:49,368 --> 00:41:51,368
If there were no nodes at all, it would go off the rails completely.

500
00:41:52,368 --> 00:41:53,368
I think you would agree with that.

501
00:41:54,368 --> 00:41:56,368
So what is the question?

502
00:41:57,368 --> 00:42:11,368
Well, your claim that this, I'm asking to justify your claim that miners would care
if the blocks became large when they have no interest to do so.

503
00:42:12,368 --> 00:42:13,368
Okay, so there are a few things here.

504
00:42:14,368 --> 00:42:23,368
First of all, I don't think it's correct to say that all the miners, or to imply,
and maybe you weren't implying this, but that all the miners are doing like SPV
mining or mining on block headers.

505
00:42:23,368 --> 00:42:25,368
Well, certainly at least 70 or 80 percent.

506
00:42:26,368 --> 00:42:27,368
Was it that high?

507
00:42:27,368 --> 00:42:28,368
July 2015.

508
00:42:29,368 --> 00:42:35,368
In fact, one or two of them admitted to me in person that they have a shared mempool
and they all have servers that connect to each other.

509
00:42:36,368 --> 00:42:37,368
They probably have even more now.

510
00:42:38,368 --> 00:42:40,368
They all SPV and spy mine at this point, I think.

511
00:42:41,368 --> 00:42:47,368
If they didn't, they would be doing a bad job because they would be not giving their
customers an advantage.

512
00:42:48,368 --> 00:42:51,368
So I certainly think every pool should be SPV and spy mining.

513
00:42:51,368 --> 00:42:52,368
I think those are good things, actually.

514
00:42:53,368 --> 00:42:54,368
I agree with Sergio.

515
00:42:55,368 --> 00:42:57,368
So there's two responses here.

516
00:42:58,368 --> 00:43:04,368
One is to say, I don't think actually SPV mining is that big a deal.

517
00:43:05,368 --> 00:43:15,368
But let's say that there are theoretical weaknesses that come from SPV mining, that
you could have a situation in which there's a chain fork.

518
00:43:16,368 --> 00:43:26,368
Now, my second claim would be the incentives are sufficiently strong in Bitcoin such
that that behavior would be rewarded or punished, I should say, so harshly if it
ever actually causes a problem.

519
00:43:27,368 --> 00:43:29,368
Miners will learn and they won't do that.

520
00:43:30,368 --> 00:43:34,368
If there's a significant risk of being orphaned, then their behavior is adjusted.

521
00:43:35,368 --> 00:43:38,368
And I'll even be so generous as to say it could cause a problem.

522
00:43:38,368 --> 00:43:43,368
Like we can imagine some kind of bad chain split, a couple of blocks, and oh, now
you have a big reorg.

523
00:43:44,368 --> 00:43:45,368
I just don't think that's the end of the world.

524
00:43:46,368 --> 00:43:49,368
Yeah, it may not be the end of the world.

525
00:43:50,368 --> 00:44:00,368
Yeah, I agree that it's definitely possible to say something like, first of all, I
don't think, as I just said, SPV mining and spy mining, I think those are great.

526
00:44:01,368 --> 00:44:05,368
But what they do mean is that the miners don't know what it is that they're mining.

527
00:44:05,368 --> 00:44:12,368
So they have no idea if what they block their mining on contains an invalid
transaction or not until some length of time in the future.

528
00:44:13,368 --> 00:44:26,368
I think I also should mention that, I mean, I don't know, the conversation is wound
in a kind of narrow trench where we were trying to discuss the why it is important
for running a node to be cheap.

529
00:44:26,368 --> 00:44:40,368
And I just dug into this is we've only hit the first spur of this claim, which is
that if the network is, it doesn't exist, then well, if nodes become too difficult
to run, the network will just collapse and die immediately.

530
00:44:41,368 --> 00:44:44,368
So I just thought that would be like a very easy one to latch on to.

531
00:44:45,368 --> 00:44:46,368
But there are other reasons.

532
00:44:47,368 --> 00:44:49,368
If an asteroid hits, then Bitcoin will stop working. I would agree with that.

533
00:44:50,368 --> 00:44:51,368
Well, that's true.

534
00:44:51,368 --> 00:44:56,368
I just want to mention two other things first before I go back to the SPV spy mining
thing, which is that, well, maybe I shouldn't, I don't know.

535
00:44:57,368 --> 00:45:00,368
We have other things I think we can talk about rather than.

536
00:45:01,368 --> 00:45:02,368
Go ahead.

537
00:45:03,368 --> 00:45:07,368
Yeah, well, SPV and spy mining, it means that they don't know what's inside the
block.

538
00:45:08,368 --> 00:45:16,368
So if they mine, they could accidentally, it could be some time before they realize
that one of the blocks is problematic.

539
00:45:16,368 --> 00:45:22,368
And then how would they, first of all, how would they realize that a block is
problematic?

540
00:45:23,368 --> 00:45:24,368
Only by the running of the node.

541
00:45:25,368 --> 00:45:28,368
So someone somewhere with a node would be the only one who could raise the alarm.

542
00:45:29,368 --> 00:45:33,368
And so it is desirable to keep an eye on how expensive that alarm is.

543
00:45:34,368 --> 00:45:37,368
How many nodes would it take to prove that there's just one?

544
00:45:38,368 --> 00:45:39,368
Well, actually, that's actually not true.

545
00:45:40,368 --> 00:45:44,368
But I think I have some ways of making it so that I wrote a giant essay on fraud
proofs.

546
00:45:44,368 --> 00:45:53,368
But some actually, sometimes, but yeah, with one full node, it depends on, they
would just supply the entire block.

547
00:45:54,368 --> 00:45:55,368
Everyone would check the whole block.

548
00:45:56,368 --> 00:45:57,368
But it could be as easy as checking a transaction.

549
00:45:58,368 --> 00:45:59,368
Let's say that it's one node.

550
00:46:00,368 --> 00:46:06,368
So my point is to say that in the real world, it is always going to be the case that
there will be at least one node running.

551
00:46:07,368 --> 00:46:08,368
There will be at least one full node running.

552
00:46:09,368 --> 00:46:14,368
Because there's lots and lots and lots of people who do have the incentive to run a
full node.

553
00:46:15,368 --> 00:46:20,368
Now, relative the amount of people that will be using Bitcoin, it's a very small
amount of people who will be running a node.

554
00:46:21,368 --> 00:46:27,368
But we're going to have significantly more than one full node running, regardless of
how big the blocks are.

555
00:46:28,368 --> 00:46:34,368
And keep in mind, if the blocks are massive, that implies there's a massive amount
of economic transactions that are taking place.

556
00:46:34,368 --> 00:46:41,368
I don't think it does, because you can just send a miner to just send transactions
themselves all day and fill up the blocks.

557
00:46:42,368 --> 00:46:43,368
So theory versus practice.

558
00:46:44,368 --> 00:46:53,368
In practice, if you have terabyte blocks, which cost a lot to process, it is not the
case that you're going to have a miner sending a terabyte worth of transactions to
himself.

559
00:46:54,368 --> 00:47:00,368
And if he is doing that, there's not going to be enough economic activity to justify
it over the long run and he'll go bankrupt.

560
00:47:01,368 --> 00:47:02,368
But I don't see why at all.

561
00:47:02,368 --> 00:47:03,368
Think about this.

562
00:47:03,368 --> 00:47:07,368
He can even pay himself the transaction fees because he can just keep the block a
secret.

563
00:47:07,368 --> 00:47:08,368
It doesn't cost him anything.

564
00:47:09,368 --> 00:47:10,368
Why would he do that?

565
00:47:11,368 --> 00:47:15,368
Just to fill up the blocks, to be obstreperous, to be a troublemaker.

566
00:47:16,368 --> 00:47:21,368
So this is a business that's invested tens of millions or hundreds of millions of
dollars in mining equipment.

567
00:47:22,368 --> 00:47:27,368
It could be the NSA or the Israeli government, hacker department or Russian hacker
department.

568
00:47:28,368 --> 00:47:32,368
Someone with some guy with a gun who goes into the mining facility or mining pool.

569
00:47:33,368 --> 00:47:35,368
There's only seven or so big mining pools.

570
00:47:36,368 --> 00:47:38,368
One claim is that miners might do this.

571
00:47:38,368 --> 00:47:41,368
And I would say that's not going to happen because they're profit-seeking
businesses.

572
00:47:42,368 --> 00:47:45,368
The second possibility is that it's a malicious government.

573
00:47:46,368 --> 00:47:47,368
Well, that's a different argument.

574
00:47:47,368 --> 00:47:49,368
That's an interesting thing to evaluate.

575
00:47:50,368 --> 00:47:53,368
Malicious governments definitely can pose a threat to all the Bitcoins.

576
00:47:54,368 --> 00:47:55,368
Why don't they see it that way?

577
00:47:56,368 --> 00:48:00,368
Now, the idea of malicious to filling up really big blocks, I don't buy that.

578
00:48:01,368 --> 00:48:02,368
Why not?

579
00:48:02,368 --> 00:48:03,368
It doesn't really cost anything.

580
00:48:04,368 --> 00:48:05,368
I know.

581
00:48:05,368 --> 00:48:08,368
So you're just making more profits for miners in that scenario.

582
00:48:09,368 --> 00:48:14,368
No, as I just explained, the miner can make it so that only he earns his own
transaction fees and it costs nothing.

583
00:48:15,368 --> 00:48:17,368
So you're saying a majority of malicious...

584
00:48:18,368 --> 00:48:19,368
No, it doesn't need to be a majority.

585
00:48:19,368 --> 00:48:20,368
No.

586
00:48:20,368 --> 00:48:21,368
No, one miner.

587
00:48:21,368 --> 00:48:22,368
Anyone.

588
00:48:22,368 --> 00:48:23,368
Anyone with anything.

589
00:48:24,368 --> 00:48:25,368
All they do is they take a million...

590
00:48:26,368 --> 00:48:27,368
They have a bunch of DTXOs.

591
00:48:28,368 --> 00:48:30,368
They spend them all to private keys that they control.

592
00:48:31,368 --> 00:48:34,368
And they keep all those transactions secret until they find a block.

593
00:48:35,368 --> 00:48:37,368
They find a block and they pay themselves the transaction fees.

594
00:48:38,368 --> 00:48:39,368
Yeah, so I think there is a...

595
00:48:40,368 --> 00:48:41,368
I haven't even been thinking about it for like 30 seconds.

596
00:48:42,368 --> 00:48:43,368
I'm sure there's more elaborate things.

597
00:48:44,368 --> 00:48:45,368
Yeah, yeah.

598
00:48:46,368 --> 00:48:47,368
They do have...

599
00:48:48,368 --> 00:48:58,368
The essential component in any criticisms of the proof of work system in general,
not just big or small block Bitcoin, is what happens when you have malicious actors.

600
00:48:59,368 --> 00:49:03,368
Malicious states, I think in particular, is the strongest potential criticism.

601
00:49:04,368 --> 00:49:06,368
I could say the same thing. For example, I could give a theoretical argument.

602
00:49:06,368 --> 00:49:16,368
What happens if there's a majority of malicious nodes on the network that are easy
to spin up and they don't actually refer the right blocks to people.

603
00:49:17,368 --> 00:49:20,368
No, immediately though because of the way the Merkle root works.

604
00:49:21,368 --> 00:49:22,368
Okay, so they try to...

605
00:49:23,368 --> 00:49:26,368
They don't get banned off the network immediately.

606
00:49:27,368 --> 00:49:30,368
In fact, even saying you have a block, I think...

607
00:49:31,368 --> 00:49:32,368
I don't know this because it changes a lot.

608
00:49:32,368 --> 00:49:38,368
But I think just saying that you have a block and then not providing the block just
gets you banned for 24 hours.

609
00:49:39,368 --> 00:49:40,368
No, I'm not saying...

610
00:49:41,368 --> 00:49:44,368
So you can imagine the network splitting through a Sybil attack, right?

611
00:49:45,368 --> 00:49:46,368
Where you have 50% of the node...

612
00:49:47,368 --> 00:49:53,368
Okay, so I'm saying if the costs are cheap to run a node, then the risks increase
for the Sybil attack in theory.

613
00:49:54,368 --> 00:49:55,368
No.

614
00:49:56,341 --> 00:50:07,341
No, because actually the attacker doesn't pay any marginal costs for the number of
nodes. The attacker is just going to set up... No, the attacker is going to set up
one node, and then they'll just clone it a million times. They have a fully
trusted...

615
00:50:07,341 --> 00:50:18,341
Yeah, but they just have a fully trusted... They're going to be lying. You
understand? They're going to connect to everyone and they're going to say, I have
this giant blockchain. But if anyone ever asks, it could just pipe back to the
headquarters.

616
00:50:19,341 --> 00:50:21,341
Yeah, what I'm saying is all of the other...

617
00:50:21,341 --> 00:50:32,341
So they don't have to pay a marginal cost for their... Well, they do. They have to
pay some marginal cost, but it doesn't make a difference whether it's a small block
or a large block. There's no marginal marginal cost.

618
00:50:32,341 --> 00:50:40,341
Okay, well, the point is to say... I'm not sure about that last one, but the point
is to say that there are definitely theoretical...

619
00:50:40,341 --> 00:50:45,341
The zombie nodes have the same cost, large block or small block. There's just
zombies.

620
00:50:46,341 --> 00:50:49,341
But there's still a cost of spinning them up, right?

621
00:50:49,341 --> 00:50:53,341
Yeah, but it's the same with the blocks of small and large, contrary to your point.

622
00:50:53,341 --> 00:51:04,341
Okay, so let's say that's correct. My point is actually to say there are theoretical
problems, theoretical attacks that could happen in all Bitcoins.

623
00:51:04,341 --> 00:51:12,341
And it is an open question how Bitcoin, any system of Bitcoin, could respond to
state actors, malicious state actors.

624
00:51:13,341 --> 00:51:15,341
So I think the scenario...

625
00:51:15,341 --> 00:51:20,341
I think it's completely open, as if we know nothing about it. I think that's going a
little far.

626
00:51:20,341 --> 00:51:29,341
I think it was explicitly designed in the wake of the failures of Liberty Reserve
and EGOLD and these other things.

627
00:51:29,341 --> 00:51:37,341
That's specifically the problem that was solved. They said this thing was closed
down. We're going to make it so that if it's closed down, someone else can get it.

628
00:51:37,341 --> 00:51:45,341
All the nodes are equal, peer to peer. So really the problem with Liberty Reserve
was that the cost of running the full node was infinite.

629
00:51:45,341 --> 00:51:50,341
Because no one else could do it. There was no price that someone else could pay that
would restore it.

630
00:51:50,341 --> 00:52:03,341
So just as a side point, do you think that actually BTC is free from serious threats
from state actors? Like the state actually can't do anything to stop BTC?

631
00:52:04,341 --> 00:52:08,341
I don't think yet, but I think that's the aspiration.

632
00:52:08,341 --> 00:52:19,341
I agree that's the aspiration, but I don't think we're there either. We can
definitely come up with theoretical scenarios in which it's unclear how Bitcoin
would respond.

633
00:52:19,341 --> 00:52:31,341
I would just say with regards to the big block, small block distinction in the real
world with profit seeking actors, I think that is not a big concern.

634
00:52:31,341 --> 00:52:47,341
I don't think, oh, there's a flaw in the big block philosophy, which is what happens
if you have a minority of miners that are state actors that are not profit driven,
that are just raising the cost to the miners to run their own nodes.

635
00:52:47,341 --> 00:52:58,341
And the more I think about that, the worse that sounds, right? Because the only
reason that miners are running their nodes anyway, or mining at all, is because they
can make a profit.

636
00:52:58,341 --> 00:53:06,341
So if there's not actually enough economic activity on the network for them to
justify running their own node, then they're not going to be running it anyways.

637
00:53:06,341 --> 00:53:11,341
Then you're going to have like a dead chain or a chain that doesn't have a lot of
economic growth on it.

638
00:53:11,341 --> 00:53:15,341
I just don't think that holds much water at all.

639
00:53:16,341 --> 00:53:25,341
Really, an attack that costs zero dollars and doesn't require a majority hash rate,
you don't see how this totally undermines your position completely?

640
00:53:25,341 --> 00:53:31,341
No, that doesn't undermine my position because you're specifying it has to be a
minority, which means that...

641
00:53:31,341 --> 00:53:35,341
It doesn't have to be. It could be any amount. It doesn't meet the majority
requirement.

642
00:53:35,341 --> 00:53:57,341
It doesn't have to be a minority, right? So if it's the case that the majority of
miners have decided they're not making a profit because the costs of running their
mining equipment is too high, that is a demonstration that there is not enough
economic activity on that chain to justify running the mining equipment.

643
00:53:57,341 --> 00:53:59,341
So that would just be a failure of the chain.

644
00:53:59,341 --> 00:54:01,341
Yes. Right. Well, that's what I'm talking about. Yes.

645
00:54:02,341 --> 00:54:05,341
But that's fine. I'm just saying economics takes care of it.

646
00:54:05,341 --> 00:54:07,341
The point of the attack is to cause the chain to fail.

647
00:54:07,341 --> 00:54:16,341
What would you say if I told you, what would you say if I was, if you were the CEO
of Liberty Reserve or I were the CEO of Liberty, I don't know how, I don't know
which way the analogy should run.

648
00:54:16,341 --> 00:54:21,341
And someone was saying, oh, Liberty Reserve is going to be closed down by the Feds.

649
00:54:21,341 --> 00:54:25,341
And someone said, well, you know, the only reason they're doing Liberty Reserve is
so that they can make a profit.

650
00:54:27,341 --> 00:54:29,341
And then what would you even say to someone like that?

651
00:54:30,341 --> 00:54:35,341
Well, it doesn't matter because Liberty Reserve is going to get, Liberty Reserve is
going to get closed down.

652
00:54:35,341 --> 00:54:40,341
And these questions about profit are going to be, you know, you can answer them for
prison.

653
00:54:40,341 --> 00:54:44,341
So let's let's I don't I don't think that is correct.

654
00:54:45,341 --> 00:54:49,341
Let's but let's talk about you. You gave an interview with Daniel Kravitz the other
day that I thought was interesting.

655
00:54:49,341 --> 00:54:51,341
And you mentioned two other things, though.

656
00:54:51,341 --> 00:54:54,341
I mean, if you run a full node, you gain a lot of it.

657
00:54:54,341 --> 00:55:01,341
Well, first of all, not one thing I have to mention is that if it takes more than 10
minutes for the blocks to propagate, then the network, that's the criterion for the
network dying.

658
00:55:02,341 --> 00:55:05,341
So because the interblock time is 10 minutes.

659
00:55:05,341 --> 00:55:08,341
I'm not going to produce blocks that take more than 10 minutes to propagate to the
network.

660
00:55:08,341 --> 00:55:10,341
I just gave you an example.

661
00:55:10,341 --> 00:55:12,341
No, I gave you an example.

662
00:55:14,341 --> 00:55:16,341
Do you know, are you familiar with selfish mining?

663
00:55:16,341 --> 00:55:17,341
Yeah.

664
00:55:17,341 --> 00:55:18,341
Yeah.

665
00:55:18,341 --> 00:55:21,341
So the advantage is to the miner who finds the block, they have the first one to
have it.

666
00:55:22,341 --> 00:55:23,341
OK.

667
00:55:24,341 --> 00:55:25,341
That's it.

668
00:55:25,341 --> 00:55:28,341
It's the other miners who are forked off if the block is large.

669
00:55:29,341 --> 00:55:33,341
The miner who finds the mischievous block is forked on.

670
00:55:33,341 --> 00:55:37,341
The block is determined by the majority of mining.

671
00:55:37,341 --> 00:55:54,341
No, this is why I brought selfish mining is that the selfish mining tilts the
balance away from the majority into like someone who's 35 or 33 percent of the hash
rate because of the length of time it requires for them if they're not spy mining or
SPV mining.

672
00:55:54,341 --> 00:55:56,341
But the malicious miner can just decline to broadcast.

673
00:55:56,341 --> 00:56:00,341
That's the whole point of selfish mining is that they all have their own broadcast
strategy as well.

674
00:56:00,341 --> 00:56:06,341
Fortunately, spy mining does take care of a lot of this because they're all spying
on each other, so they can't even really selfish mine.

675
00:56:06,341 --> 00:56:07,341
It's all really good.

676
00:56:07,341 --> 00:56:11,341
They can just cut themselves off of the Internet.

677
00:56:11,341 --> 00:56:14,341
It's an example of a theoretical problem that is not actually a real world problem.

678
00:56:14,341 --> 00:56:18,341
There's been some interesting other criticisms of the whole idea of selfish mining
as well.

679
00:56:18,341 --> 00:56:20,341
I think Peter Rison's got some work on it.

680
00:56:20,341 --> 00:56:22,341
Yeah, but his work is backwards.

681
00:56:22,341 --> 00:56:23,341
No, but his work is backwards.

682
00:56:23,341 --> 00:56:26,341
And I think he had to recant it, so you shouldn't cite it.

683
00:56:26,341 --> 00:56:27,341
I don't know.

684
00:56:27,341 --> 00:56:28,341
I haven't read it.

685
00:56:28,341 --> 00:56:29,341
It's been a long time.

686
00:56:29,341 --> 00:56:32,341
Because his work was about meeting the block.

687
00:56:33,341 --> 00:56:37,341
His work ignored SPV and spy mining, which has made it the opposite of correct.

688
00:56:37,341 --> 00:56:41,341
As you say, there is spy mining or there are other techniques, which I'm not
surprised to hear about.

689
00:56:41,341 --> 00:56:43,341
No, but you can't just say this is theoretical.

690
00:56:43,341 --> 00:56:44,341
The whole thing is supposed to be theoretical.

691
00:56:44,341 --> 00:56:51,341
What if we were guarding a castle and we had guards in the front and we had guards
in the back and we had archers everywhere?

692
00:56:51,341 --> 00:56:54,341
And the enemy always attacks in the front.

693
00:56:54,341 --> 00:56:56,341
Say they never attack in the front.

694
00:56:56,341 --> 00:57:00,341
They always attack in the back gate where there's fewer guards.

695
00:57:00,341 --> 00:57:03,341
And then you say, well, we should move the archers from the front to the back.

696
00:57:03,341 --> 00:57:06,341
And then someone says, well, we've never been attacked.

697
00:57:06,341 --> 00:57:10,341
And someone says, we've never been attacked in the front, so we'll move the archers
to the back.

698
00:57:10,341 --> 00:57:12,341
We always get attacked in the back.

699
00:57:12,341 --> 00:57:14,341
We're not going to have any archers in the front.

700
00:57:14,341 --> 00:57:15,341
We're going to move them all to the back.

701
00:57:15,341 --> 00:57:18,341
And someone says, well, then we'll be attacked in the front.

702
00:57:18,341 --> 00:57:20,341
And then someone says, well, that's a theoretical thing.

703
00:57:20,341 --> 00:57:21,341
That's never happened before.

704
00:57:21,341 --> 00:57:28,341
I mean, this is like a funny conversation about security to just say, well, we
haven't been shot and killed by the enemy yet.

705
00:57:29,341 --> 00:57:31,341
I'm sure it's Nirvana for this world.

706
00:57:31,341 --> 00:57:33,341
I'm very happy to talk theory.

707
00:57:33,341 --> 00:57:34,341
Very, very happy to talk theory.

708
00:57:34,341 --> 00:57:42,341
But let me give you another analogy, which I think would represent my own biases
maybe more than your biases in this situation with Fortress.

709
00:57:42,341 --> 00:57:48,341
So imagine that you've got the Fortress and you've got, you know, you can see the
enemy in front of you.

710
00:57:48,341 --> 00:57:50,341
Maybe you can see the enemy behind you.

711
00:57:50,341 --> 00:57:51,341
And like, oh, that's good.

712
00:57:51,341 --> 00:57:53,341
Yeah, let's definitely watch our tail.

713
00:57:53,341 --> 00:57:58,341
And then somebody says, actually, guys, just so you know, there's helicopters.

714
00:57:58,341 --> 00:58:01,341
And like, actually, theoretically, like with the helicopter.

715
00:58:01,341 --> 00:58:02,341
No, no.

716
00:58:02,341 --> 00:58:06,341
Theoretically, you see the way the laws of physics work is that you can fly this
thing.

717
00:58:06,341 --> 00:58:07,341
It does this and it goes.

718
00:58:07,341 --> 00:58:08,341
We've got to protect that.

719
00:58:08,341 --> 00:58:11,341
And then somebody and then he goes, no, actually, you don't understand.

720
00:58:11,341 --> 00:58:12,341
There's drills.

721
00:58:12,341 --> 00:58:15,341
So you can, like, drill under the Fortress and then you can go.

722
00:58:16,341 --> 00:58:26,341
That type of that type of worrying about what is truly a potential threat in theory
can often distract from real work that needs to be done.

723
00:58:26,341 --> 00:58:27,341
It could be bike shedding.

724
00:58:27,341 --> 00:58:33,341
Yes. I mean, after Mehmed II invented cannons, that was it for the Fortress.

725
00:58:33,341 --> 00:58:35,341
So, yeah, so that was that was true, though.

726
00:58:35,341 --> 00:58:41,341
So anyone who said, hey, there's these cannons should run away from Constantinople.

727
00:58:41,341 --> 00:58:56,341
I think this is an interesting segue to like into more cultural, the subject of
cultures and the different bitcoins, because what I've seen in BTC and now in BCH is
a hyper focus on theoretical security.

728
00:58:56,341 --> 00:58:59,341
Like we've got to make the system 100% bulletproof.

729
00:58:59,341 --> 00:59:00,341
It's got to be.

730
00:59:01,341 --> 00:59:08,341
As you know, if I can just interrupt yet again, I know I've been interrupting, but I
feel like I mean, as you know, because from my work on Drivechain,

731
00:59:08,341 --> 00:59:12,341
I think it's totally fair for people who want to run the large block.

732
00:59:12,341 --> 00:59:15,341
I've always insisted that if people want to run the experiment, they should.

733
00:59:15,341 --> 00:59:24,341
I think, though, that the people in the small black land who say that this isn't
they claim injury and they say this is making my life more difficult.

734
00:59:24,341 --> 00:59:26,341
I didn't sign up for this. I think they have a legitimate claim.

735
00:59:26,341 --> 00:59:28,341
That's basically all I'm trying to say.

736
00:59:29,341 --> 00:59:38,341
Yeah, so I think the the culture that promotes and encourages hyper security is not
a an entrepreneurial culture.

737
00:59:38,341 --> 00:59:45,341
I don't think that's the right approach. That's kind of one of the reasons I really
like me is because they're saying, look, even if there's some problems, that's OK.

738
00:59:45,341 --> 00:59:54,341
Well, we'll sort them out after we've already scaled and the biggest of problems,
which in my opinion, I think in their opinion, is high transaction fees.

739
00:59:55,341 --> 01:00:00,341
So so when you see the BTC, you you think this is a benefit of the culture or like
where do you place it?

740
01:00:00,341 --> 01:00:05,341
Do you think they're too focused on security or there's the right focus on security?

741
01:00:05,341 --> 01:00:10,341
What do you think? Well, I think that you're right that.

742
01:00:12,341 --> 01:00:19,341
In general. It's like, yeah, I don't I'm not a fan of pessimism.

743
01:00:19,341 --> 01:00:23,341
So people say there's nothing we can do except keep the block size small forever.

744
01:00:23,341 --> 01:00:26,341
That kind of thing, I think, is sort of silly.

745
01:00:26,341 --> 01:00:30,341
And people have said stuff like that for thousands of years and they've never been
right.

746
01:00:30,341 --> 01:00:42,341
And people have said it used to be said that one famous example is that you need
like Europium or something to make a red CRT television.

747
01:00:42,341 --> 01:00:44,341
And so and there was not enough Europium.

748
01:00:44,341 --> 01:00:51,341
They were like in the 1970s, they were like, what are we going to do when only a few
people will be able to have color TVs?

749
01:00:51,341 --> 01:00:54,341
And then this will be a difference between the classes.

750
01:00:54,341 --> 01:01:03,341
And some people will live a life of luxury with a cathode ray tube, that TV that has
red in it.

751
01:01:03,341 --> 01:01:08,341
And other people have to make do with that. And this will be the end of the world.

752
01:01:08,341 --> 01:01:17,341
You know, now we have everyone has extremely cheap plasma screens, the liquid
crystal screens that are made of common elements.

753
01:01:17,341 --> 01:01:20,341
There's not an atom of Europium in them.

754
01:01:20,341 --> 01:01:33,341
And even if there was so much extra Europium has been found now that you could make,
you know, something like 5000 CRT old style TVs for every single person on the
planet Earth.

755
01:01:33,341 --> 01:01:38,341
And so, yeah, people what people really meant is that they just didn't know enough
about how to build.

756
01:01:38,341 --> 01:01:40,341
It was also all that stuff is nonsense.

757
01:01:40,341 --> 01:01:43,341
And people have always said, you know, there's always been like the Malthusian
people.

758
01:01:43,341 --> 01:01:45,341
And I hate the Malthusian people.

759
01:01:45,341 --> 01:01:51,341
And and, you know, other people like what was the Ehrlich or Limits to Growth?

760
01:01:51,341 --> 01:01:54,341
Those people, those people are like, you know, whatever.

761
01:01:54,341 --> 01:02:02,341
So I agree with you that the definitely the most salient difference is interactive
versus independent.

762
01:02:02,341 --> 01:02:06,341
Or I would say I guess I could say dependent versus independent or whatever.

763
01:02:06,341 --> 01:02:10,341
The point is the the small block people are like they want to build that.

764
01:02:10,341 --> 01:02:19,341
It's like that. Maybe you've seen the infographic of the the it would take more
energy that comes out of the sun or something to break your private key.

765
01:02:19,341 --> 01:02:22,341
It's like a safe that can never be opened, that type of thing.

766
01:02:22,341 --> 01:02:24,341
So they would be totally independent completely.

767
01:02:24,341 --> 01:02:27,341
And then no matter what happens, no excuses.

768
01:02:27,341 --> 01:02:34,341
You know, unbreakable, safe, safety deposit box, vault, that type of thing.

769
01:02:34,341 --> 01:02:36,341
That's what they like. They like independent.

770
01:02:36,341 --> 01:02:39,341
They like to stay not affected by it.

771
01:02:39,341 --> 01:02:41,341
Bitcoin user not affected. You remember that?

772
01:02:41,341 --> 01:02:43,341
Got to bring that back. Someone's got to bring that back.

773
01:02:43,341 --> 01:02:46,341
That was a great meme. That was the best. That was the best Bitcoin meme.

774
01:02:46,341 --> 01:02:52,341
Other than the wizard, maybe. But or maybe, yeah, Cosby coin was my favorite.

775
01:02:52,341 --> 01:02:55,341
But that'll never, no, that'll never come back.

776
01:02:55,341 --> 01:02:57,341
I mean, maybe it will. That'd be great.

777
01:02:57,341 --> 01:03:05,341
Someone out there listening can bring that back. But the large block people are more
like this reactive.

778
01:03:05,341 --> 01:03:09,341
They're not independent at all. They like.

779
01:03:09,341 --> 01:03:12,341
They like to say, well, just try this.

780
01:03:12,341 --> 01:03:18,341
And then when we have the problems, we'll just twiddle the knobs and we'll fix it
and then we'll just keep fixing it forever.

781
01:03:18,341 --> 01:03:21,341
Certainly, that has to be the way that it goes.

782
01:03:21,341 --> 01:03:29,341
Obviously, the BTC people are trying to push that onto other layers with with
debatable,

783
01:03:29,341 --> 01:03:35,341
with some success and some immense delay and some other failure or failure.

784
01:03:35,341 --> 01:03:42,341
But so it's not as though the BTC camp totally issues that type of thing and sort of
kicks it out.

785
01:03:42,341 --> 01:03:50,341
But the but yeah, definitely you're right that the large block group is not so much
into this whole set in stone type thing.

786
01:03:50,341 --> 01:03:55,341
They're like, we'll just figure it out on the fly. And that is an advantage.

787
01:03:55,341 --> 01:04:02,341
And but I worry that this conversation is totally misleading because, as you know,
my from the debate with Krawitz,

788
01:04:02,341 --> 01:04:10,341
my position is really not most of my position is just against the hard fork on
principle and has nothing to do with any of this.

789
01:04:10,341 --> 01:04:16,341
And in fact, I'm in favor of people trying all these experiments out anyway.

790
01:04:17,341 --> 01:04:29,341
That's the whole work on Drivechain. So I don't even know where because I can say I
can give back these arguments about why it is important for the no cost to be cheap,
which I absolutely believe in.

791
01:04:29,341 --> 01:04:37,341
The question, of course, is like how cheap I mean. I want to I want to just ask you
one question on the culture while we're on it.

792
01:04:37,341 --> 01:04:49,341
OK, so when we're making trying to make predictions about future growth, if we I
think we both identify that there's a little bit more entrepreneurial spirit,

793
01:04:49,341 --> 01:04:58,341
let's say in the big block camp versus a small block camp, they're OK with making
mistakes and not everything being perfect.

794
01:04:59,341 --> 01:05:08,341
I've become very pessimistic about BTC partially because of this reason where it
looks really, really bad to me from the outside.

795
01:05:08,341 --> 01:05:18,341
Like the the the idea that like I think it's entirely possible that blocks never
grow from one megabyte.

796
01:05:18,341 --> 01:05:28,341
I don't know if that's that will always be the case, but the fact that it's even on
the table that you could literally have no layer one protocol growth seems to be a
bad sign.

797
01:05:28,341 --> 01:05:40,341
So in terms of like betting on which coin has a more bright future, I'm weighing my
judgment pretty heavily with because of the cultural aspect.

798
01:05:40,341 --> 01:05:45,341
And I say, OK, if it's a bad culture, the coin is not going to do very well.

799
01:05:45,341 --> 01:05:49,341
If it's a good culture, it looks like it has more potential upside.

800
01:05:50,341 --> 01:05:59,341
So that's why one of the reasons I'm more of a big blocker when you're when you're
trying to weigh the future of the different coins.

801
01:05:59,341 --> 01:06:10,341
How much stock do you put in the cultural aspect versus the other calculation you're
making that makes you still more bullish on BSV or on BTC?

802
01:06:10,341 --> 01:06:25,341
Well, as I said, to take the last part first, most of it is just about a rejection
of the way the hard fork was used, which I regard as sort of frivolous and suicidal
in the case of BCH and BSV almost.

803
01:06:25,341 --> 01:06:28,341
But so that's a different thing altogether.

804
01:06:28,341 --> 01:06:39,341
But with regard to the culture, I think you can understand how sometimes people like
what if you went to the movie theater and the same the same movie was playing or the
same style was playing every time.

805
01:06:39,341 --> 01:06:43,341
Or you play the video game in the same style of video game was playing every time.

806
01:06:43,341 --> 01:06:56,341
This is a weird example. But at one point I came into possession of the video game
Breath of Fire 2, which has it starts immediately off with like death, religion,
people being orphaned and having their memories erased.

807
01:06:56,341 --> 01:07:03,341
And none of that stuff was in any like video game before. And it was just so
shockingly different that it leaves this crazy impression on you.

808
01:07:03,341 --> 01:07:13,341
So in art, people want variety and things. But think about like a bank, you know, or
like so some places like a nightclub, you want variety.

809
01:07:13,341 --> 01:07:27,341
But then there's other places kind of like a cheers type place where it's like the
same every time, but especially like a bank where people want they don't want their
bank to be like trying new experimental entrepreneurial things.

810
01:07:28,341 --> 01:07:40,341
So it's the question of the culture being bad is that is itself a complicated one,
because you can see how a lot of people are attracted to actually conservative
culture.

811
01:07:40,341 --> 01:07:50,341
And they say, well, you know what, those guys are just a bunch of, you know, Wall
Street, coke addicts over there, BSV, and they're gonna blow this whole thing up,
because they don't care.

812
01:07:51,341 --> 01:08:08,341
And I'm going to be left with nothing, Brad. So I'm going to invest in BTC, where at
least people there look like they, you know, like they, I don't know, like they,
they have used the same account for the last 20 years and go to boredom classes or
something.

813
01:08:08,341 --> 01:08:12,341
Yeah, yeah. Great point. So I'm going to get some more water, but I'm still
listening to you.

814
01:08:13,341 --> 01:08:29,341
So there, this is one of the reasons why, of the big block bitcoins, I am currently
more bullish on BSV, because there is, there is simultaneously more entrepreneurship
that I see, but also a concern where it matters.

815
01:08:29,341 --> 01:08:51,341
So, um, Yates has these hard forks every six months, I think that has been a
disaster as revealed by the upcoming, what looks like a network split. And, um, but
BSV, to their credit, the entrepreneurship is about building stuff on top of what
they want to be a stable fundamental protocol, like a rock solid, stable
fundamental.

816
01:08:51,341 --> 01:08:53,341
But that's the BTC argument, isn't it?

817
01:08:54,341 --> 01:09:13,341
It is, except that BTC doesn't, doesn't have the technology right now to justify
locking down the base protocol, because no technology currently exists to have
digital cash, the use case of digital cash on BTC, where it does on BSV.

818
01:09:13,341 --> 01:09:31,341
If they just, if BTC and BSV really aren't that different, except for this one major
protocol difference, which happens to be, I think, the most important protocol
difference, which is the one that makes a big block Bitcoin usable as digital cash
and BTC isn't there yet.

819
01:09:31,341 --> 01:09:49,341
Now, if BTC had some substitute, it had some second layer that was built on it that
actually worked, then I'd say, yeah, great. I like the conservative approach to the
protocol, but I just feel like they haven't, they don't even, you don't want to lock
down before you even have the protocol that can be used and can scale.

820
01:09:50,341 --> 01:10:05,341
Hmm. Well, I mean, you, but isn't contained within that a kind of prediction that
BTC will never create this knowledge that they need something else and then fix the
problem.

821
01:10:05,341 --> 01:10:22,341
It's really the same argument in favor of BSV back reapplied to the layer one BTC.
It's just BTC has been in first place for a very long time. There's no real reason
to, there's no, there's no big justification to, to, to motivate some big redesign.
Right?

822
01:10:22,341 --> 01:10:42,341
I think the reason that it's been in first place is largely because they're still
running on the network effects that entrepreneurs built for them. I think the
promise is that, well, at some future point, BTC will have changed such that you can
use it like digital cash because you build a layer two on it or whatever.

823
01:10:43,341 --> 01:11:10,341
Um, but I think, I think the word has not yet gotten out that, uh, for one that one
of the two layer two solutions that has been promised to be the panacea has just
failed. Like the lightning network is right now, not consumer ready. It's not, you
can't. Now, if you're a technically person, that hasn't been for a long time. It has
never been, but I, but still it aspires to be sort of ready.

824
01:11:10,341 --> 01:11:28,341
Yeah. But, but, but think about the difference in that, right? You got one. So, so I
think the momentum in BTC and a partial explanation for its number one position is
because people are still clinging on to the idea that this is the group that is
going to get us to the promised land. And yet they've failed spectacularly in one of
the two potential methods to get us there so far.

825
01:11:29,341 --> 01:11:56,341
Well, I don't know. Uh, it's certainly true. I mean, every, anyone who wants to make
fun of lightning network, I think we'll find a lot of ammunition, especially with
the all it's only 18 months away being spoken in like early 2015 or something like
laughably. So this is waiting for Godot. It is like the, uh, it's like the proof of
stake of Ethereum where it's like, uh, it's software takes a long time to be
finished, but lightning has made a lot of consistent progress. It's very slow, but
it's consistent.

826
01:11:57,341 --> 01:12:24,341
Uh, I don't think lightning actually will really help for scale because it does
nothing for onboarding. You need a layer one transaction. You need a layer, at least
one probably almost certainly in practice to, um, layer one transactions to even get
onto the lightning network once. And you probably need to get on it a few times and
you probably, you know, you need to update the channel balance occasionally. So you
probably need like, you know, a few layer one transactions to even use the lightning
network.

827
01:12:24,341 --> 01:12:41,341
And already, you know, I don't remember the exact math, but something like with the,
with Bitcoin's current block size, it can't onboard. It couldn't even onboard 6
billion people on planet earth if it wanted to in like fewer than like 40 years or
something absurd like that. So that's not happening.

828
01:12:41,341 --> 01:13:05,341
Yeah. Um, every payment network has a free layer on top of it called credit. I mean,
well, let's just get this out of the way. First of all, BTC is just one Drivechain
away from having BSV on top of it. And then your entire argument crumples to pieces,
but it may never get it. But there may reach a point where people realize that they
actually, they do desire that it may be too late or something.

829
01:13:05,341 --> 01:13:34,341
My whole argument with credit is that that would probably never happen because it
could probably never be too late, because the people who own BTC would just, they
would do a revolution against the current managers, for lack of a better word, the
Vladimir Atomback type people would just be dismissed, no offense to them. And then
they would just be, yeah, I'm just saying that it would have tested the small block
theory to basically to exhaustion.

830
01:13:35,341 --> 01:14:05,341
And then they would just say, Okay, we have the publicly available UTXO set,
everyone has it, we don't have a hard fork, which is hard fork to this, and then it
would be a big battle at that point going out. That was my whole conversation with
Cray was, I'm sure you want to talk about, but even without Drivechain, and there's
other things that were that were long predated, Drivechain that were Drivechain
like, some of them sort of got somewhat developed the extension block idea, and
other things that are, that are kind of like this,

831
01:14:05,341 --> 01:14:34,701
where there's a BSV block somewhere, and you sort of timestamp it. And then you just
net everything out and you and then all the nodes ignore everything that happens in
that special zone. Or they try to my point of one of the that's a long time, it's
very technical conversation that happened to know a lot about, but probably not in
the audience would care at all. So but the point is, you're just like one of those
away, or just one credit relationship. I hate the credit, the argument for credit,
because it's,

832
01:14:35,341 --> 01:14:50,541
it's a stupid argument that could work on anything. So it doesn't really mean
anything in payments land. But the point I'm trying to make is that just one of
those things replicates the entire BSV experience on BTC for like,

833
01:14:50,734 --> 01:15:01,414
for free for nothing. So you're so you're kind of like throwing up your arms, all
hope is lost. It's like right next to, okay, so I got to you just saying you figured
it out before other people did, but once they figure it out, they'll just copy it.

834
01:15:02,414 --> 01:15:22,174
So that last part, I like this is a central, essential disagreement, I think we'll
have. So this is a position I used to hold back. So I wrote a book back in 2014,
called What's the big deal about Bitcoin, it's like a basic introductory book. And
in there, there's a little paragraph, where I essentially make the argument you just
made that, well, if, if there are particular technological improvements that are
clear, they will help BTC, then the devs will just incorporate them.

835
01:15:22,174 --> 01:15:41,174
And once it's clear, now, I thought that was the case. But I no longer, I no longer
think that's the case. Because if I were to look back on that error in my own
reasoning, I would say, okay, that was a mistake of the theory for the practice,
that it would be clear, in theory, that if there's a superior technology, it will
eventually be incorporated into BTC.

836
01:15:52,174 --> 01:16:16,174
But in practice, now you're, now you're dealing with humans who have ego problems,
who have information asymmetries, who have lots of biases, who may have questionable
relationships with how they get funding, like some of the, like some of the BTC
devs, for example, I think are directly profiting from BTC's lack of scaling,
because they're offering pseudo sidechain that they skim a little bit of money from.

837
01:16:16,174 --> 01:16:45,174
So you have all kinds of, you have all kinds of real complexities, when you're
dealing with the actual, you're talking about actual humans involved, that would, in
their judgment, say, okay, now, we now know that the technology needs to be upgraded
like this, and we're going to do it, or you're banking on the idea that there's
going to be, despite the leadership saying, we're going to have, we're going to go
status quo, you're saying there's going to be a rebellion.

838
01:16:46,174 --> 01:16:53,174
Amongst some group of BTC proponents that would say, no, no, we have proof that
extension blocks are the way to go, and we're going to do it.

839
01:16:53,174 --> 01:16:55,174
Maybe we're starting it right now. I don't know.

840
01:16:55,174 --> 01:17:07,174
I would love to see it. But I think in practice, because that's sort of happened. I
mean, that's sort of what happened with the hard fork, is things got bad enough,
where people said, look, we have to just rebel against leadership and do a hard
fork.

841
01:17:07,174 --> 01:17:11,174
They weren't that bad, though. Empirically, they, I mean, look at it, look at what
happened.

842
01:17:11,174 --> 01:17:22,174
No, I think, look at what happened. I mean, the network failed. You had
anti-adoption for the first time. You had the cryptocurrency industry split to a
thousand parts. I don't view that as a success.

843
01:17:22,174 --> 01:17:37,174
Yeah, that was bad, but that was the, no, I agree. That's what I'm saying. Look what
happened. It was a disaster. The hard fork was a disaster, and now it's hard forked
again. It's hard forked a few times, in fact, and now it's going to, BCH is going to
hard fork in a major way yet again.

844
01:17:38,174 --> 01:17:48,174
Yeah, I know. I think hard forks are a last resort when leadership has demonstrated
that it is not going to upgrade the way that it should.

845
01:17:49,174 --> 01:18:10,174
So if that's correct, though, it seems like that, if your prediction, if part of the
reason you're still favorable to BTC is you think that people would either rebel if
the devs don't change plan or the devs who are currently in power will actually
change their plan or will actually upgrade.

846
01:18:10,174 --> 01:18:26,174
I think that's a very risky argument because we already have evidence that when they
had an opportunity to increase the block size by a small amount and keep the
cryptocurrency community unified around Bitcoin, and they failed. So I see actual
humans…

847
01:18:26,174 --> 01:18:31,174
How would they be unified, though? The small blockers wouldn't have felt unified?

848
01:18:32,174 --> 01:18:36,174
I think they would not have. No, that's a fair point.

849
01:18:37,174 --> 01:18:46,174
Thank you, because Dan Kravitz just said, he just steamrolled over that point and
said those are unpersons and straight to the gulags with them.

850
01:18:47,174 --> 01:18:52,174
It's a fair point. And I guess I would say this at the time.

851
01:18:53,174 --> 01:18:58,174
OK, put it this way. There are relevant economic actors and there are non-relevant
economic actors.

852
01:18:58,174 --> 01:19:03,174
Sometimes people who are non-relevant economic actors have very loud voices on
social media.

853
01:19:04,174 --> 01:19:11,174
And maybe they push their way around a little bit when we saw the failure of
SegWit2x and the failure to increase the block size.

854
01:19:12,174 --> 01:19:19,174
So it seems to me that the relevant economic actors would have been unified around
BTC had they just increased the block size.

855
01:19:20,174 --> 01:19:30,174
Eight megabytes would have been reasonable, but even something like two megabytes,
just to keep the BitPays happy, the Coinbase is happy, the early competent
entrepreneurs that were all like lookalikes, we have to increase the block size.

856
01:19:31,174 --> 01:19:42,174
So I see that as a failure of individual people's leadership that they allowed the
BCH hard fork to happen and people to rally around alternative chains.

857
01:19:43,174 --> 01:19:48,174
I see that as a failure of the actual individuals involved and that the same
individuals that are still in BTC.

858
01:19:49,174 --> 01:19:53,174
I agree with that, but my story is very different, which is weird, even though I
mostly agree.

859
01:19:54,174 --> 01:20:04,174
The failure was just the failure to think of the way, except ironically I don't even
know if I should even bring all this stuff up because a lot of it is ancient history
and I don't know if people would appreciate it.

860
01:20:05,174 --> 01:20:17,174
One thing that was very public is that, see in my view the failure is that there
must have been either some way of accommodating everyone.

861
01:20:18,174 --> 01:20:33,174
Both large blockers and small blockers, which is my present day position that I have
basically, that's like kind of the Drivechain angle, so a lot of it is designed
around that theory.

862
01:20:35,174 --> 01:20:44,174
Either it must be possible to accommodate everyone or it must be possible to prove
that we can't accommodate everyone because of some contradiction or something.

863
01:20:45,174 --> 01:20:49,174
That some law of physics makes it impossible for some reason, which I highly doubt.

864
01:20:50,174 --> 01:20:56,174
Again, that's the limits to growth people. Those people are just not creative. They
haven't thought it up yet.

865
01:20:57,174 --> 01:21:07,174
So either you can please everyone or you cannot, but if you can't you should be able
to prove that you can't and you should be able to prove that one group is better
than the other.

866
01:21:08,174 --> 01:21:12,174
One way of doing things is better than the other. It should be some way.

867
01:21:13,174 --> 01:21:23,174
I proposed exactly this way in May 2015, a billion years ago, which is now called
the Fork Futures idea.

868
01:21:24,174 --> 01:21:39,174
Instead I gave it a terrible title. I called it the Win-Win Block Size Solution, and
it's not even technically accurate because as I say, as I just told you, it really
is just a win-lose, but convince everyone.

869
01:21:39,174 --> 01:21:50,174
Losers to fold or something. Fork Futures is a much better phrase. I don't know who
came up with that phrase, but I think it was me. It may have been me. I don't even
know.

870
01:21:51,174 --> 01:22:00,174
In the past, I bring this up because I was just watching this BCH video. I think I
was watching it earlier today. It may have been recorded yesterday.

871
01:22:01,174 --> 01:22:10,174
People critique the Fork Futures idea as having this Keynesian beauty contest
problem, but I foresaw that back in May 2015, and I solved it.

872
01:22:11,174 --> 01:22:17,174
Anyone who wants to read the solution, I find I'm a little dismayed sometimes when
people from BCH don't know.

873
01:22:18,174 --> 01:22:24,174
I have written two things about it, two big things about how to do the Fork Futures
the right way such that you can compare a hypothetical future.

874
01:22:24,174 --> 01:22:30,174
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is it was a failure to do any of those things
was the real failure.

875
01:22:31,174 --> 01:22:43,174
You may be right, but I don't know that and the audience doesn't know that. You may
be right about large blocks good, small blocks bad, right?

876
01:22:44,174 --> 01:22:55,174
What I was talking about the failure of leadership in my story is that people just
assumed that they were right, both groups.

877
01:22:56,174 --> 01:23:02,174
I think every single person except for me and maybe two other people.

878
01:23:03,174 --> 01:23:05,174
Go to Scaling Bitcoin 2015.

879
01:23:06,174 --> 01:23:15,174
Oh, and then you have to tear out a couple people like Vlad Zamfir and some other
crazy people who are just there to pitch some harebrained scheme.

880
01:23:16,174 --> 01:23:22,174
No offense to them, but most of the people at Scaling Bitcoin won September 2015.

881
01:23:23,174 --> 01:23:29,174
They just assumed. They were like, I'm right, and now I have to convince everyone
that I'm right about large blocks versus small blocks.

882
01:23:29,174 --> 01:23:35,174
And I'm a large blocker and I'm right, and what a joke that I even have to come in
here and explain it to people.

883
01:23:36,174 --> 01:23:49,174
That's like most people are like that, but instead my point of view and the
leadership failure in my opinion was that no one figured out a way to build
something that worked even if they were wrong,

884
01:23:50,174 --> 01:23:54,174
which is exactly what Drivechain and Fork Futures both wanted to do.

885
01:23:54,174 --> 01:24:04,174
No matter what I think about anything, what would have happened would have worked if
those small blockers were right, and it also would have worked if the large blockers
were right.

886
01:24:05,174 --> 01:24:06,174
So that is the failure.

887
01:24:07,174 --> 01:24:14,174
That's kind of a lot, but I also want to touch on the non-economically relevant
people.

888
01:24:15,174 --> 01:24:18,174
I also have a different view on that, which is, again, the same but different.

889
01:24:18,174 --> 01:24:23,174
Well, let's come back to that because I want to respond to what you just said there
about your perception of failure.

890
01:24:24,174 --> 01:24:30,174
And then we're pushing an hour and a half here, so we should probably start winding
it down, but I just want to respond to this idea.

891
01:24:31,174 --> 01:24:37,174
So I agree it would have been far superior to have things like extension blocks,
which I remember.

892
01:24:38,174 --> 01:24:39,174
I thought that was a really cool idea.

893
01:24:40,174 --> 01:24:47,174
I don't claim to be a technical person, and if I remember correctly, miners were
signaling a significant percentage of them for a small amount of time for extension
blocks, right?

894
01:24:48,174 --> 01:24:49,174
And the second was ancient history.

895
01:24:50,174 --> 01:24:51,174
Oh, my God.

896
01:24:52,174 --> 01:24:55,174
I don't want to say the wrong person, but I don't want to not give credit.

897
01:24:56,174 --> 01:24:59,174
Also, I think it was Johnson Lau or someone.

898
01:25:00,174 --> 01:25:08,174
At some point, actually, there was an email on BitDev, I think January 2015, that
summarized it, and the names are mentioned.

899
01:25:08,174 --> 01:25:14,174
So Adam Back wrote a BitcoinDev email that someone should find.

900
01:25:15,174 --> 01:25:25,174
I think I have it on Drivechain because I've linked to so much corroborating stories
at this point somewhere, but Drivechain is now a giant library full of links to
everything, so drivechain.info, the site.

901
01:25:26,174 --> 01:25:41,174
But the point is there's this long history, but the point is it culminates in a
thought by Adam Back, which was that maybe everyone can get what they want, which
that was on the right track.

902
01:25:42,174 --> 01:25:45,174
And then people thought, no, we can't have that because we know that we're right.

903
01:25:45,174 --> 01:25:48,174
So everyone thinks, well, I'll find someone that works for both people.

904
01:25:49,174 --> 01:25:54,174
And then in reality, both the groups hate you because you're disloyal to them and
you're only loyal to the truth and the good idea.

905
01:25:55,174 --> 01:26:00,174
So that never works. That's the first and most important lesson in philosophy is
that they killed Socrates because they didn't like him.

906
01:26:01,174 --> 01:26:06,174
But then what happened was that issue lay dormant for a while.

907
01:26:07,174 --> 01:26:22,174
And then around much later, long after Scaling 2, like 2016 or something, it
resurfaced and it was sort of associated with Purse.io and there was this other
thing.

908
01:26:23,174 --> 01:26:26,174
I don't know if you want more history from my vague memories.

909
01:26:27,174 --> 01:26:33,174
The reaction was, again, how dare you? We're never going to let those people get
what they want.

910
01:26:34,174 --> 01:26:35,174
So that was like a giant mess.

911
01:26:36,174 --> 01:26:38,174
So I'm glad you brought that up.

912
01:26:39,174 --> 01:26:43,174
And they said, well, put SegWit in the extension block because it doesn't make any
difference to us.

913
01:26:44,174 --> 01:26:45,174
They were like, never.

914
01:26:46,174 --> 01:26:47,174
Right. That did seem like a good idea.

915
01:26:48,174 --> 01:26:52,174
I don't know. Maybe I was reading some of your work on it, but it seemed like it was
a very reasonable position.

916
01:26:52,174 --> 01:27:02,174
But this is the broader point I want to say, that I don't think most people are
playing the rational game.

917
01:27:03,174 --> 01:27:14,174
And I don't think like when you said it's a failure, you need to have proof that
your solution is better or that this other solution isn't going to work.

918
01:27:15,174 --> 01:27:20,174
I think that is a bar that cannot be reached because reality is too complex for
proofs of such things.

919
01:27:20,174 --> 01:27:34,174
And two, I think that also implies a certain level of thinking, of quality, of
methodology, of reasoning that people would be able to recognize a proof if there
was such a thing.

920
01:27:35,174 --> 01:27:39,174
So can I just say that when I say proof, I just mean argument or demonstration?

921
01:27:40,174 --> 01:27:43,174
Well, I mean, there's lots and lots of arguments.

922
01:27:44,174 --> 01:27:51,174
When I mean argument, I don't mean a premise. I mean like some kind of thing that
persuades people.

923
01:27:52,174 --> 01:27:57,174
Well, so that's a second. So if you analyze the quality of the arguments, that's one
thing.

924
01:27:58,174 --> 01:28:02,174
If you analyze its effectiveness for persuasion, that's quite a different thing.

925
01:28:03,174 --> 01:28:09,174
And so something that I've learned, Bitcoin has taught me a bit about people and
society and groups.

926
01:28:10,174 --> 01:28:23,174
I think relying on something like consensus or universal proof that we all submit to
the truth and can recognize this is a superior versus an inferior argument, I think
that's never, ever going to work.

927
01:28:24,174 --> 01:28:32,174
So I actually like the approach that some of the big block Bitcoiners took that
said, look, the time for debate is actually over.

928
01:28:33,174 --> 01:28:36,174
It should have been over a few years ago, and now we've got to start building our
own thing.

929
01:28:36,174 --> 01:28:43,174
And I'm reminded of an interview that Mike Hearn gave in, I think it was 2015, where
he was talking to somebody and he said,

930
01:28:44,174 --> 01:28:50,174
what I wish Gavin would do is revoke the commit access of the small blockers and
just push through the block size increase,

931
01:28:51,174 --> 01:28:53,174
because this is how the system was designed. This is how it needs to scale.

932
01:28:54,174 --> 01:28:56,174
And in hindsight now, I think I agree with Mike.

933
01:28:57,174 --> 01:29:00,174
I think the idea that you're going to hold hands and reason through things is very
naive.

934
01:29:01,174 --> 01:29:08,174
And I think it's also a weakness because if you have bad actors, even a small amount
of bad actors, they can forestall all progress.

935
01:29:09,174 --> 01:29:11,174
I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that.

936
01:29:12,174 --> 01:29:16,174
I think it's impossible. The truth cannot be found by consensus.

937
01:29:17,174 --> 01:29:20,174
So I actually don't – that maybe misunderstood my point.

938
01:29:21,174 --> 01:29:25,174
I don't think that – when I say you should be able to prove that there's no way,

939
01:29:25,174 --> 01:29:29,174
I don't mean like prove to everyone in the world or whatever that would mean.

940
01:29:30,174 --> 01:29:31,174
I don't even know what that would even mean.

941
01:29:32,174 --> 01:29:38,174
I just mean if it's really the case – and furthermore, if it's the case that some
people are just trolling and sabotaging the process,

942
01:29:39,174 --> 01:29:41,174
doing like a Polish veto to just like hold out.

943
01:29:42,174 --> 01:29:45,174
They're doing the – this is what's called an economic holdup problem that someone
can just say,

944
01:29:46,174 --> 01:29:48,174
well sure, this project is great and it will produce a million dollars of surplus,

945
01:29:49,174 --> 01:29:51,174
but you need my vote in order to do it because you need every vote.

946
01:29:52,174 --> 01:29:55,174
So I want $900,000 right now in cash.

947
01:29:56,174 --> 01:29:58,174
So what do you mean by proof then? Do you mean proof or persuasion?

948
01:29:59,174 --> 01:30:04,174
Well to me, I think that this is a giant – I don't want to go off on this tangent
right now because it could be a disaster.

949
01:30:05,174 --> 01:30:12,174
But I think the idea that proof is something special or irrefutable is a
misconception driven by mathematicians' egos.

950
01:30:13,174 --> 01:30:15,174
To me, a proof is no different than an argument.

951
01:30:16,174 --> 01:30:19,174
So any proof could be mistaken.

952
01:30:19,174 --> 01:30:21,174
So what's the point of calling it a proof?

953
01:30:22,174 --> 01:30:25,174
Okay, so then what were you looking for when you were saying you were looking for
some type of proof?

954
01:30:26,174 --> 01:30:27,174
I mean there were arguments, right?

955
01:30:28,174 --> 01:30:35,174
I said that – well as I presented in September 2015 about the Fork Futures idea, but
people were not interested.

956
01:30:36,174 --> 01:30:42,174
But that type of thing would – that is a switch that no individual small blocker or
large blocker controls,

957
01:30:42,174 --> 01:30:48,174
and it itself doesn't really know anything about small blockerism or large
blockerism or whatever.

958
01:30:49,174 --> 01:30:54,174
But nonetheless, it would tilt one way if small blocks would lead to a higher market
price in the future,

959
01:30:55,174 --> 01:30:58,174
and it would tilt another way if large blocks would lead to a higher market price in
the future.

960
01:30:59,174 --> 01:31:06,174
So that would be some demonstration that it would – but that's not the point of the
earlier argument was to say.

961
01:31:07,174 --> 01:31:12,174
Because remember that's me saying – I was saying before either everyone should be
able to get what they want,

962
01:31:13,174 --> 01:31:17,174
or it should be possible to prove that we can't have what we want.

963
01:31:18,174 --> 01:31:24,174
So that part would be easier to say, look, basically some people want X and some
people want not X.

964
01:31:25,174 --> 01:31:29,174
That would have been I think easier to demonstrate, although that itself could also
have been a mistaken thing.

965
01:31:29,174 --> 01:31:41,174
People for a long time thought this either has to be – one thing is that people
thought buildings either had to be made out of heavy building material.

966
01:31:42,174 --> 01:31:48,174
It could either be strong or light, but now we have aluminum and stuff that's
lightweight and strong.

967
01:31:49,174 --> 01:31:55,174
Yeah, but you think there could be such a thing as proof that we can't all get what
we want?

968
01:31:56,174 --> 01:32:04,174
Well, I think it's theoretically possible that the laws of physics produce that
unstoppable barrier, right.

969
01:32:05,174 --> 01:32:08,174
But I actually don't – as you know, because of what I'm doing with Drivechain,

970
01:32:09,174 --> 01:32:11,174
obviously I think that it is possible for people to get what they want.

971
01:32:12,174 --> 01:32:15,174
But my point is that no matter what, there should have been something that could
have been done.

972
01:32:16,174 --> 01:32:20,174
So if it really wasn't possible, I was just trying to exhaust the whole space
possibility.

973
01:32:20,174 --> 01:32:25,174
So if it really wasn't possible for everyone to get what they want, Drivechain and
Accenture blocks,

974
01:32:26,174 --> 01:32:30,174
oh, that's a fraud and that can't work and nothing can work in fact.

975
01:32:31,174 --> 01:32:38,174
And even other things like liquid simulator of a large block in a private consortium
doesn't work for some reason.

976
01:32:39,174 --> 01:32:40,174
It doesn't really make any sense to me.

977
01:32:41,174 --> 01:32:45,174
But even if it couldn't work, then you could still – you should be able to do the
four futures and say,

978
01:32:45,174 --> 01:32:50,174
look, here's how we will determine what is better by this one metric.

979
01:32:51,174 --> 01:32:53,174
But if that doesn't work, then there should have been some other way.

980
01:32:54,174 --> 01:32:57,174
The point is if it actually makes a difference, if it's going to have some physical
effect,

981
01:32:58,174 --> 01:33:04,174
you should be able to – it's not – knowledge about that effect should be possible to
create.

982
01:33:05,174 --> 01:33:06,174
It's not like there's some –

983
01:33:07,174 --> 01:33:08,174
Just a couple of things on that.

984
01:33:09,174 --> 01:33:12,174
I do feel like we can't – there's a lot more here that we can discuss for sure.

985
01:33:12,174 --> 01:33:20,174
But on the reliance on the four futures thing, I think that smells a bit of the
efficient market hypothesis.

986
01:33:21,174 --> 01:33:23,174
That I think too much weight – yeah.

987
01:33:24,174 --> 01:33:30,174
I think there's too much weight that's put into the uniformity of the distribution
of the information in people's minds

988
01:33:31,174 --> 01:33:39,174
to think that people – that the prices would accurately reflect the real world
probability of success.

989
01:33:40,174 --> 01:33:43,174
No, the four futures determine the market price of the two coins.

990
01:33:44,174 --> 01:33:45,174
Yeah, so –

991
01:33:46,174 --> 01:33:51,174
So you can buy a fork future for – what happens is – well, in my scheme, it's a
little more complicated.

992
01:33:52,174 --> 01:33:56,174
But the basic idea is you have these two – you create these two tokens in pairs
today,

993
01:33:57,174 --> 01:34:01,174
and they should trade at whatever – say current Bitcoin price is $10,000,

994
01:34:02,174 --> 01:34:04,174
and they should trade for $10,000.

995
01:34:05,174 --> 01:34:08,174
It should be interchangeable, one Bitcoin for this pair of tokens.

996
01:34:09,174 --> 01:34:19,174
And then after this fork happens, you can redeem the tokens of one kind for only the
large block Bitcoin,

997
01:34:20,174 --> 01:34:23,174
or the other tokens only for small block Bitcoin.

998
01:34:24,174 --> 01:34:27,174
And in that way, you should know today exactly what the prices will be in the
future.

999
01:34:28,174 --> 01:34:31,174
And you can do this – that was one thing at first.

1000
01:34:31,174 --> 01:34:37,174
But obviously, long before May of 2015, I was thinking about this,

1001
01:34:38,174 --> 01:34:40,174
because I was like, this would be one-shot kill for the block size debate.

1002
01:34:41,174 --> 01:34:45,174
But I was like, this won't work because of this Keynesian beauty contest problem.

1003
01:34:46,174 --> 01:34:54,174
And also the problem of – there's a related problem of who gets the ticker and other
status quo type things.

1004
01:34:55,174 --> 01:34:58,174
So there is a way, actually, of splitting it again.

1005
01:34:58,174 --> 01:35:03,174
And splitting it instead of into two tokens, into four tokens.

1006
01:35:04,174 --> 01:35:06,174
And some of the other tokens are redeemable.

1007
01:35:07,174 --> 01:35:11,174
You make like a grid, and some only are redeemable if certain things happen.

1008
01:35:12,174 --> 01:35:16,174
Like the coin is created at all, or the coin exists, or the coin gets the ticker.

1009
01:35:17,174 --> 01:35:21,174
And then no matter what happens, the right people who were right about things get
paid.

1010
01:35:21,174 --> 01:35:27,174
But importantly, with all that's canceled out, and then you can add and divide the
right prices,

1011
01:35:28,174 --> 01:35:34,174
and you can still get, here's the two prices for the two coins, that everything else
being equal,

1012
01:35:35,174 --> 01:35:40,174
that only one is large blocker and one is small blocker, and then one number should
be higher than the other.

1013
01:35:41,174 --> 01:35:43,174
And then I don't know why that wouldn't be convincing to people.

1014
01:35:44,174 --> 01:35:49,174
I would actually like to talk about that with you at some point, but I think that
would draw us into the woods.

1015
01:35:49,174 --> 01:35:52,174
I see potential problems with that.

1016
01:35:53,174 --> 01:35:59,174
It's ripe for manipulation, but I don't think we should talk about that in my
judgment right now.

1017
01:36:00,174 --> 01:36:03,174
I'm going to ask you one more question, and then we can wrap it up.

1018
01:36:04,174 --> 01:36:13,174
Which is, it seems that when you are banking on future technology as the rescuing of
BTC,

1019
01:36:14,174 --> 01:36:19,174
that you are not only making a theoretical and a technical judgment, but you are
making a social judgment.

1020
01:36:20,174 --> 01:36:24,174
This is the one where my beliefs have been flopped, and I now see the importance of
social,

1021
01:36:25,174 --> 01:36:30,174
the importance of humans, like individual competence in humans actually matters to
the development of Bitcoin.

1022
01:36:31,174 --> 01:36:36,174
And you would say that you're confident that the individuals in positions of power
right now in BTC

1023
01:36:36,174 --> 01:36:43,174
are reasonable enough that they will incorporate something like sidechains,

1024
01:36:44,174 --> 01:36:51,174
and that there are enough rebels in BTC that if leadership fails to incorporate
things like sidechains,

1025
01:36:52,174 --> 01:36:56,174
that they will hard fork away and create their better version of BTC.

1026
01:36:57,174 --> 01:37:03,174
Well, what I said in the debate with Craywitz, this goes against, we skipped the
point about the cultural parasites I had written down,

1027
01:37:03,174 --> 01:37:07,174
but that's not what you wrote, you said something else, I was going to respond with
cultural parasites.

1028
01:37:08,174 --> 01:37:14,174
But, yeah, the Twitter people who, yeah, well, it's important to just mention that
there are a lot of people out there

1029
01:37:15,174 --> 01:37:20,174
who are cheerleaders for BTC, but they don't really own a lot of BTC, and they're
actually not loyal to BTC at all.

1030
01:37:21,174 --> 01:37:25,174
They just want to sell steak dinners and books and things, and that's all a grift.

1031
01:37:26,174 --> 01:37:29,174
So, it's unfortunate that most people are not seeing that.

1032
01:37:29,174 --> 01:37:35,174
But, this cuts back to your point about social prediction, and what I said in the
debate with Craywitz was that

1033
01:37:36,174 --> 01:37:44,174
if it were ever the case where the market caps were going to flip, like you wake up
one day and BSV is the number one spot in BTC,

1034
01:37:45,174 --> 01:37:51,174
and at that point, once something flippens BTC, right, I would presume that probably
everything else on CoinMarketCap

1035
01:37:52,174 --> 01:37:55,174
is crashing towards zero the next day because it's such a disruptive event.

1036
01:37:55,174 --> 01:37:58,174
Maybe not, but that's kind of my lay of the land.

1037
01:37:59,174 --> 01:38:09,174
But, my guess is that once that happens, that would dramatically change everyone's
willingness to be a rebel versus a loyalist.

1038
01:38:10,174 --> 01:38:16,174
It makes perfect sense for most people to just say to themselves, I don't know what
Paul is talking about.

1039
01:38:17,174 --> 01:38:19,174
I don't know what Steve is talking about. I don't know what Dan Craywitz is talking
about.

1040
01:38:20,174 --> 01:38:22,174
BTC is number one. It's been doing fine. It's made me a lot of money.

1041
01:38:22,174 --> 01:38:26,174
I think that's a very reasonable point of view for people to just be like, it's
fine. Everything's fine.

1042
01:38:27,174 --> 01:38:31,174
So, it's only when it isn't fine, then they'll get creative really quickly.

1043
01:38:32,174 --> 01:38:40,174
The search for new ideas will become frantic, and then they will just either copy
the BSV ideas or whatever ideas,

1044
01:38:41,174 --> 01:38:44,174
or they'll copy the Drivechain ideas or whatever. So, I don't think it's a big…

1045
01:38:45,174 --> 01:38:46,174
I don't think you give much credit.

1046
01:38:47,174 --> 01:38:51,174
I'm not giving them any credit. I'm saying even if they're incompetent and they
screw everything up.

1047
01:38:52,174 --> 01:38:54,174
Still, the process will recover. Different people will show up.

1048
01:38:55,174 --> 01:38:58,174
Well, that's the part I'm not sure. So, this is interesting. So, you think it's more
likely…

1049
01:38:59,174 --> 01:39:00,174
I'm not giving them any credit at all.

1050
01:39:01,174 --> 01:39:08,174
You think it's more likely that, let's say, a failed BTC is going to spawn the right
people rebelling in BTC

1051
01:39:09,174 --> 01:39:14,174
than those types of people already having left and formed their own coin.

1052
01:39:15,174 --> 01:39:20,174
If there are the rebellious spirits who maybe start to think small blocks aren't
going to work,

1053
01:39:21,174 --> 01:39:24,174
and maybe Drivechain or lightning, none of these things are going to work,

1054
01:39:25,174 --> 01:39:33,174
why wouldn't they just trade in their BTC beforehand, get more BSV or BCH, and start
working there?

1055
01:39:36,174 --> 01:39:41,174
Well, it's unclear, but I think there's something to be said for all these…

1056
01:39:41,174 --> 01:39:47,174
You have all these passive investors, these lay people, who I think have shown up
and they bought into BTC.

1057
01:39:48,174 --> 01:39:50,174
And so, would you want to take all those people with you?

1058
01:39:51,493 --> 01:39:52,693
And so, would you want to take all those people with you, is the question.

1059
01:39:52,693 --> 01:39:57,493
How big is… How important is teamwork in having a big coalition?

1060
01:39:57,493 --> 01:40:05,493
I think BTC demonstrates that those people will show up when the time is right.

1061
01:40:05,493 --> 01:40:13,293
So, I don't think we have to focus on mindless investors that are throwing their
money at meaningless ICO projects and have no idea what they're talking about.

1062
01:40:13,293 --> 01:40:20,293
I think if you actually build a valuable product, eventually they'll come on board.

1063
01:40:20,293 --> 01:40:33,293
Yeah, but you see, you can also take the logic one step further, which is that if
people believe that BTC would copy or has the ability to intellectually appreciate
and copy the new ideas,

1064
01:40:33,293 --> 01:40:39,293
they would say, why would they ever invest in BSV, BCH in the first place?

1065
01:40:39,293 --> 01:40:43,293
So, that logic can kind of keep going back and forth in a zigzag.

1066
01:40:43,293 --> 01:40:52,293
I didn't understand that part. So, if they see the value of the ideas, why wouldn't
they just hop over to BSV?

1067
01:40:52,293 --> 01:40:59,293
One risk is that someone could make BSV squared. This has already happened. BSV is
basically BCH squared or something.

1068
01:40:59,293 --> 01:41:10,293
It's the new feature split off function just applied again. So, there could be a
risk that this just fans out into a nothingness.

1069
01:41:10,293 --> 01:41:21,293
Well, that's a theoretical risk, but when you actually look at the BSV community,
they are very focused on the culture of not splitting, and that's something unique.

1070
01:41:21,293 --> 01:41:34,293
It's difficult, though. Anyone can join the BSV community and split tomorrow. I
think it's not unique at all because when people split, when people first split,
everything is fine because they're the underdog and the community is new and
everyone's excited.

1071
01:41:34,293 --> 01:41:43,293
But then when the going gets tough, that is when it's truly tested for the first
time. We haven't seen any of that yet in BSV.

1072
01:41:43,293 --> 01:41:54,293
You don't think there's something to be said that in BCH, you have two big block
Bitcoins and one of them, the culture is an expectation of hard forks every six
months and the other is that the protocol is set in stone.

1073
01:41:54,293 --> 01:41:58,293
You don't think that's relevant? You don't think that's going to last?

1074
01:41:59,293 --> 01:42:13,293
The BCH hard fork every six months is not intended to split the network in two every
six months. I agree with you that it's frivolous and it's a bad idea.

1075
01:42:13,293 --> 01:42:29,293
Well, it depends because Monero does it to success as well as a couple of other
places, SiaCoin, I think they also do it to some success because it is certainly
much more convenient for software development to be able to hard fork every six
months for what that's worth.

1076
01:42:29,293 --> 01:42:42,293
BSV supposedly already hard forked their block size from 128 megabytes, as someone
told me on Twitter two days ago, to unlimited in February, which must be a hard
fork.

1077
01:42:43,293 --> 01:42:46,293
At least by someone's admission.

1078
01:42:46,293 --> 01:43:02,293
The story is and the narrative they tell in BSV is that that was what they call the
Genesis upgrade. And from that point, they were supposed to take off all of the
artificial constraints on the protocol and then keep it in stone.

1079
01:43:03,293 --> 01:43:12,293
But don't you understand what I'm saying? It's only been seven months since the last
hard fork and they say, well, everything's perfect. We nailed it. We nailed it this
time. Well, maybe they did. I don't know.

1080
01:43:12,293 --> 01:43:29,293
But we have to wait until the going gets tough and see how many people really stick
it out. And that is one of these core benefits of BSC. I think you would agree that
there are people there who just they want to stay unified and they want to stay
committed to.

1081
01:43:29,293 --> 01:43:39,293
They know it's not perfect, but they want to stay in one coin and not split off. And
these splits are humiliating.

1082
01:43:40,293 --> 01:43:54,293
Yeah, the BSV people definitely oversell the degree to which they claim the protocol
is locked down, like in this in this numpty show we're doing regularly. Criticize
that a lot. Technically, I think you can lock the protocol down.

1083
01:43:54,293 --> 01:43:59,293
Of course it doesn't make any sense because anyone in the protocol could leave and
that could be construed as a hard fork.

1084
01:44:00,293 --> 01:44:09,293
What matters is majority hash rate. When you're looking at the network is that which
is the longest, the chain with the most accumulated proof of work.

1085
01:44:09,293 --> 01:44:23,293
I think I understand what you mean, but I just have to point out that, you know,
BCH, that was a split from BTC and it didn't have a majority hash rate. And then BSV
was a split from BCH and it doesn't have majority hash rate. So it's the whole thing
is like a giant circus.

1086
01:44:24,293 --> 01:44:32,293
Nobody in BSV is going to make the argument that nobody will fork BSV. Of course,
there's literally nothing.

1087
01:44:32,293 --> 01:44:44,293
Yeah, that's kind of what I mean, though, is that some of the community will leave.
Eventually you have this. You're wrong to a problem. This is my prediction. I may be
wrong. So this would be great because I could be proven wrong. Someone could cut
this clip or whatever.

1088
01:44:45,293 --> 01:45:00,293
And even better, you could make prediction markets today on whether or not this will
happen. You can make futures markets on if this happens and you can bet on it. And
if the price is very different than what I expect, then I'd either have to be
putting up my own money or I would have to change my mind, which I often do.

1089
01:45:00,293 --> 01:45:21,293
I am very loyal to the prediction market prices and I don't believe in any kind of
manipulation. Those arguments are the same arguments people make against witchcraft
and other kinds of stuff. That's just ignorance of what's going on. So I'm a big
loyalist. So you can prove me wrong in the future or tomorrow by making good futures
markets.

1090
01:45:21,293 --> 01:45:49,293
But the prediction is that eventually there'll be some kind of disagreement over
something. One that we can see like a mile off. How can you miss it? Is this
mysterious plan to assign CSW what someone thinks are Satoshi's million coins based
on a court order from whatever, you know, Antigua or whatever the heck is going on.
Like, who knows?

1091
01:45:49,293 --> 01:45:57,293
So that will show up and people will disagree about it and then there'll be a split.
But it doesn't have to be that. It could be anything.

1092
01:45:57,293 --> 01:46:03,293
Well, that's actually, I think, the biggest one by far. If I have any criticism
specifically, I'd be asking.

1093
01:46:03,293 --> 01:46:14,293
As soon as once we're in the future, this is the exact same logic as the limits to
growth people, but in reverse. Soon as you get into the future, new problems will be
foreseeable. They grow up like little weeds.

1094
01:46:14,293 --> 01:46:42,293
Yes, it is a problem to equate all forks the same. I mean, or all splits the same. I
don't think it is a valid point even to point out that open source software can be
forked. Like, yes, that is part of the dynamics. However, the claim is that it
matters what type of culture you have and how open they are to the idea of splitting
the network.

1095
01:46:42,293 --> 01:46:56,293
And the more protocol changes you're making, the more likely it is that there's
going to be at some point some network split. So my point is to say it's actually
very valuable, I think, because the culture actually matters.

1096
01:46:56,293 --> 01:47:13,293
I think it's very valuable to have as part of your founding ethos, even if it's
mythological here, that we've locked down the protocol, we found the concoction
that's going to work, it's not going to change, none of the apps that you build on
this are ever going to be broken.

1097
01:47:13,293 --> 01:47:30,293
Whether or not that's literally true is an interesting question. But I think that is
important from a cultural standpoint. And so that's why I think that's one of the
reasons I think BSV has a better real world shot than BCH does, because BCH does not
have that approach.

1098
01:47:30,293 --> 01:47:47,293
Their culture, the people leading the project, many of them at least, are like,
well, we'll make the changes we have to make. We'll increase the block size when we
think there's appropriate network activity. But it'll be a decision that we make
when the time is right. I just see that as a problem because culture does matter.

1099
01:47:47,293 --> 01:48:11,293
I think culture does matter. It's the most important thing ever. The blockchain is
even a kind of culture in a way because it's a piece of knowledge that causes people
to behave similarly. So it is almost some culture. But I think the idea that because
BCH, the problem isn't that BCH hard forks every six months, I think.

1100
01:48:12,293 --> 01:48:22,293
The problem is that it was born of hard fork. And the hard forkers, the dissenters,
is a community of the disloyal. It's the town of thieves.

1101
01:48:22,293 --> 01:48:25,293
What would the alternative have been given the…

1102
01:48:25,293 --> 01:48:44,293
I agree with you. As you saw, when I was talking with Dan Kravitz, I used the
Snowpiercer analogy, which is that the alternative is to just suck it up and live on
the train until you think of a better plan. I said, don't leave the train without a
plan. That was what I was trying to tell him. Don't just say it sucks here, I'm
going to leave and then die immediately.

1103
01:48:45,293 --> 01:48:51,293
Well, first of all, the big block Bitcoin hasn't died. Second of all, they do have
plans. But importantly…

1104
01:48:51,293 --> 01:48:54,293
But don't you think it's sad? The relative performance is sad.

1105
01:48:54,293 --> 01:49:10,293
Don't you think that if you're an entrepreneur who's actually using Bitcoin, you
have to switch? Like if you are a payment processor or you are somebody like you're
trying to do a Twitch or a StreamAnity, one of these things that use small…

1106
01:49:11,293 --> 01:49:18,293
If you stay on the train, you're dead. You must have an alternative. Yours.org was
another one. So what do you do then?

1107
01:49:18,293 --> 01:49:24,293
Spoiler alert, they all die on the train anyway. But it doesn't mean it was a good
idea to leave the train.

1108
01:49:25,293 --> 01:49:35,293
What's the alternative? From an entrepreneur who's using Bitcoin for low fee
transactions, what do you do? And if you're stuck in BTC in 2016, 2017?

1109
01:49:35,293 --> 01:49:44,293
I think you do move, but I don't think that makes a difference to my argument. I
want to reply to what you said, but we have actually now threaded it a little bit
more.

1110
01:49:44,293 --> 01:49:52,293
Because I wanted to go back, because you were saying, I was saying it doesn't matter
that it's a hard fork except it's six months and it's born of the hard fork.

1111
01:49:52,293 --> 01:50:01,293
And then you were saying, and we already mentioned this actually, we talked about
this earlier where you said that the culture makes a difference of not making any
changes.

1112
01:50:01,293 --> 01:50:07,293
But that's the BTC small block argument, is that you don't make the change. Keep it
exactly as it was.

1113
01:50:07,293 --> 01:50:15,293
The BSV argument has an addendum. It's don't make any changes so long as the base
protocol can scale such that you maintain low transaction fees.

1114
01:50:16,293 --> 01:50:23,293
I know, but that's the thing is everyone wants to say it's perfect except for this
one thing and we'll just hard fork and then it'll be perfect.

1115
01:50:23,293 --> 01:50:33,293
That is not one thing. That is the founding technical parameter that in Satoshi's
design was supposed to be grown.

1116
01:50:34,293 --> 01:50:51,293
I think that's sort of true, but I also think that it's not really, I think it's
completely possible that it wouldn't be necessary to increase the block size at all
from where it is.

1117
01:50:51,293 --> 01:51:00,293
Since that's possible, then why bother?

1118
01:51:00,293 --> 01:51:03,293
So to you, I haven't seen, what was it called? Snow?

1119
01:51:03,293 --> 01:51:08,293
Oh my God, no one has seen it. It's terrible. It's a perfect analogy. It really
gives you guys a lot of credit.

1120
01:51:08,293 --> 01:51:15,293
That's the whole point of the analogy is to give you guys credit because the train
is like a dictatorship run by like insane people.

1121
01:51:15,293 --> 01:51:22,293
But you have to stay on the train because the temperature outside is like negative
170 degrees because of a failed global warming experiment.

1122
01:51:22,293 --> 01:51:24,293
What was it called? Snow?

1123
01:51:24,293 --> 01:51:31,293
Snowpiercer. It's funny because Adam Beck has tweeted about Snowpiercer like 5,000
times, so I just assumed everyone had seen it.

1124
01:51:31,293 --> 01:51:49,293
I'm generally uncultured, I think it's a safe bet. So to use that analogy, there
were lots of people on the train and maybe in theory they could have had a
resolution of extension blocks.

1125
01:51:50,293 --> 01:51:52,293
But given the fact that –

1126
01:51:52,293 --> 01:51:54,293
Yeah, I agree with you.

1127
01:51:54,293 --> 01:51:56,293
Okay, I want to answer your question.

1128
01:51:56,293 --> 01:51:59,293
It's valuable to say actually they haven't died.

1129
01:51:59,293 --> 01:52:15,293
I agree, but you understand my point of view is that the hard fork is not – as far
as I'm concerned, it's giving up and committing suicide immediately because you can
always hard fork for a million times to do whatever you like, but it doesn't matter.

1130
01:52:15,293 --> 01:52:18,293
So the whole point of the blockchain is to keep everyone on the one blockchain.

1131
01:52:18,293 --> 01:52:32,293
So to answer your question, what people should have done is all those people,
including the exchanges and everything, these people with a lot of money, they
should have formed some kind of group.

1132
01:52:32,293 --> 01:53:00,293
They should have played with scaling Bitcoin and sent delegates or whatever. They
should have negotiated, but they also should have formed their own group that is the
group for large blocks, but it has to have – as an essential founding concept, it
has to say whatever the small blockers want, we'll also give it to them as long as
it's not totally off the rails.

1133
01:53:00,293 --> 01:53:04,293
But you understand what I mean about this before letting people get what they want.

1134
01:53:04,293 --> 01:53:10,293
Small blockers already know. Small blockers already had what they wanted, which was
small blocks.

1135
01:53:10,293 --> 01:53:15,293
So their negotiating position was terrible, and their only option was the hard fork,
which I thought was a terrible option.

1136
01:53:16,293 --> 01:53:29,293
And in practice, I think probably – I don't know if I'm right about this, but I
would guess most BCH people would agree that actually hard forks aren't so great and
that maybe it hasn't gone as well as they thought it might.

1137
01:53:30,293 --> 01:53:44,293
But what they could have done instead was say, do some kind of research position and
research all of the ideas for how to – I'm glad you brought up SegWit2x because this
will feed into it perfectly.

1138
01:53:44,293 --> 01:53:57,293
Search for ideas as to how to get what they want, which they thought was large
blocks, but could probably have been something, a large extension block, or it could
have been massaged into something else.

1139
01:53:58,293 --> 01:54:00,293
And then they could have gotten that.

1140
01:54:00,293 --> 01:54:08,293
And the big mystery with SegWit2x is why it was a hard fork at all because with 83
percent of the hash rate, it could have been a soft fork.

1141
01:54:08,293 --> 01:54:13,293
And then it would have been guaranteed to succeed, and there would have been
basically nothing.

1142
01:54:13,293 --> 01:54:16,293
It's difficult to say because it actually becomes extremely complicated.

1143
01:54:17,293 --> 01:54:32,293
But my guess is that there would have been really nothing that the small blockers
could have done about the soft fork SegWit2x extension block other than to
themselves hard fork the network by trying to UASF block it or something.

1144
01:54:32,293 --> 01:54:36,293
But that would have put them on the minority non-status quo network.

1145
01:54:36,293 --> 01:54:37,293
So your recommendation is –

1146
01:54:37,293 --> 01:54:40,293
And then the whole situation would have been reversed.

1147
01:54:40,293 --> 01:54:43,293
They should have had a research committee? That's the solution?

1148
01:54:43,293 --> 01:54:45,293
Well, they failed to discover these other ideas.

1149
01:54:45,293 --> 01:54:53,293
Some of which were published on – as I mentioned before, I had them back on the
damaged mailing list, these other ideas for getting what they want.

1150
01:54:53,293 --> 01:54:59,293
Every big blocker who was around at the time that I have spoken with was in favor of
extension blocks, think it's a fine idea.

1151
01:54:59,293 --> 01:55:06,293
Even Roger Ver didn't jump onto BCH until SegWit2x failed. Nobody wanted that.

1152
01:55:06,293 --> 01:55:12,293
But this is the problem though, which is that they – that's the problem with
SegWit2x is that it was a hard fork.

1153
01:55:13,293 --> 01:55:23,293
Okay, so what was the way then for people who needed big blocks immediately to have
– or I should say people who needed low transaction fees immediately.

1154
01:55:23,293 --> 01:55:24,293
What were they supposed to do?

1155
01:55:24,293 --> 01:55:29,293
Well, it's not always possible with the laws of physics to construct something
immediately.

1156
01:55:29,293 --> 01:55:32,293
It's no matter what knowledge or skills or wealth you obtain.

1157
01:55:32,293 --> 01:55:33,293
That's irrelevant.

1158
01:55:33,293 --> 01:55:35,293
You can't always get what you want immediately.

1159
01:55:35,293 --> 01:55:37,293
Okay, but BCH wasn't that.

1160
01:55:38,293 --> 01:55:41,293
Okay, so you have a business that is – wait, wait.

1161
01:55:41,293 --> 01:55:42,293
I'm sorry, Paul.

1162
01:55:42,293 --> 01:55:54,293
If you have a business that is based on the existence of Bitcoin having low
transaction fees, you can either fork, use another coin, or die.

1163
01:55:54,293 --> 01:55:55,293
That's it.

1164
01:55:55,293 --> 01:56:00,293
Well, certainly if they – when you start a business, you plan for the future
presumably.

1165
01:56:00,293 --> 01:56:03,293
And if you can't – if your plans don't work out, then you die.

1166
01:56:03,293 --> 01:56:10,293
So if they really couldn't foresee that they would have this problem years in
advance, which in practice they did…

1167
01:56:10,293 --> 01:56:12,293
They foresaw it.

1168
01:56:12,293 --> 01:56:14,293
Absolutely, they should die.

1169
01:56:14,293 --> 01:56:17,293
Okay, so you think they should say, you know what?

1170
01:56:17,293 --> 01:56:18,293
Pure incompetence.

1171
01:56:18,293 --> 01:56:26,293
Better that I just – my business shuts down and I completely die than I risk forking
myself off the network.

1172
01:56:26,293 --> 01:56:29,293
The real world didn't happen that way at all though.

1173
01:56:29,293 --> 01:56:36,293
In the real world, all those people, BitPay and whatever, they knew about the
problem years in advance, and they engaged with discussions about the problem.

1174
01:56:36,293 --> 01:56:38,293
They did the research, and then they were steamrolled.

1175
01:56:38,293 --> 01:56:42,293
Well, they didn't – their research wasn't very good, was it?

1176
01:56:42,293 --> 01:56:45,293
What do you mean it wasn't good? It was perfectly fine.

1177
01:56:45,293 --> 01:56:46,293
I don't understand what you don't understand.

1178
01:56:46,293 --> 01:56:51,293
If they had just done one thing instead of another thing, there would have been no
hard fork, and they would have won easily.

1179
01:56:51,293 --> 01:56:54,293
With 83% of the hash rate, there would have been no contest.

1180
01:56:54,293 --> 01:56:56,293
The businesses or the miners?

1181
01:56:56,293 --> 01:56:59,293
It doesn't make any difference because SegWit2x was a big consortium of all of them.

1182
01:56:59,293 --> 01:57:01,293
Yes, that is the only thing that matters.

1183
01:57:01,293 --> 01:57:05,293
What the miners did is the reason that SegWit2x failed.

1184
01:57:05,293 --> 01:57:07,293
It had nothing to do with the businesses.

1185
01:57:07,293 --> 01:57:11,293
The miners did not run the software, and so we didn't get SegWit2x.

1186
01:57:11,293 --> 01:57:13,293
No, are you listening to what I'm saying?

1187
01:57:13,293 --> 01:57:16,293
You're not listening to what I'm saying.

1188
01:57:16,293 --> 01:57:18,293
Okay, I'm missing something.

1189
01:57:18,293 --> 01:57:19,293
Yes, you are.

1190
01:57:19,293 --> 01:57:26,293
The SegWit2x could have been melted down as an idea, abandoned, but recast as a soft
fork instead of a hard fork.

1191
01:57:26,293 --> 01:57:35,293
It would have had basically the same effect with a couple of – there would have been
some changes about SPV wallets and things.

1192
01:57:35,293 --> 01:57:42,293
There would have been some differences, but you could have written software to make
it look as though it was exactly the same proposal.

1193
01:57:42,293 --> 01:57:43,293
Okay.

1194
01:57:43,293 --> 01:57:45,293
As a soft fork instead of a hard fork.

1195
01:57:45,293 --> 01:57:47,293
Instead, they insisted it was a hard fork.

1196
01:57:47,293 --> 01:57:50,293
So that is why they needed permission.

1197
01:57:50,293 --> 01:57:52,293
Okay, so –

1198
01:57:52,293 --> 01:57:54,293
They didn't get permission, they lost.

1199
01:57:54,293 --> 01:57:56,293
Let me make it easy for you.

1200
01:57:56,293 --> 01:57:58,293
A soft fork wins every time.

1201
01:57:58,293 --> 01:58:01,293
With a hard fork, you could win, you could lose.

1202
01:58:01,293 --> 01:58:02,293
Okay, so –

1203
01:58:02,293 --> 01:58:04,293
But why would go with a hard fork?

1204
01:58:04,293 --> 01:58:09,293
In the world, the fact is that there's a lot of social dynamics.

1205
01:58:10,293 --> 01:58:18,293
And for businesses that have already agreed, okay, this is a plausible way to get to
double our network capacity immediately.

1206
01:58:18,293 --> 01:58:21,293
We have near universal industry agreement.

1207
01:58:21,293 --> 01:58:23,293
We have the majority of miners supporting it.

1208
01:58:23,293 --> 01:58:28,293
Why would you then think, oh, yes, there is a theoretical problem here, though,
blah, blah, blah.

1209
01:58:28,293 --> 01:58:34,293
So now we're going to actually change our plan and go with putting extension blocks
into a soft fork.

1210
01:58:34,293 --> 01:58:35,293
I mean, that's like –

1211
01:58:35,293 --> 01:58:36,293
I can think of a lot of reasons.

1212
01:58:36,293 --> 01:58:45,293
One reason is that it was very obvious to anyone paying attention to the culture
that most people, most of the people in the technical community,

1213
01:58:45,293 --> 01:58:52,293
there was even that Wikipedia page, which I'm even on, of all the people against
SegWit2x, which is a giant list of people.

1214
01:58:52,293 --> 01:58:56,293
But generally non-relevant economic actors, right?

1215
01:58:57,293 --> 01:59:10,293
Another thing – no, I don't think so at all, because some of the fanatics who
support Bitcoin and technologists who work on Bitcoin may contribute greatly to its
future success or failure.

1216
01:59:10,293 --> 01:59:11,293
So I don't think it's –

1217
01:59:11,293 --> 01:59:16,293
Wait, because they might be irrelevant economic actors because of their potential
future contributions?

1218
01:59:16,293 --> 01:59:19,293
I'll give you an easy way of understanding it.

1219
01:59:19,293 --> 01:59:24,293
Anyone can – once a business model is known, anyone can recreate it, right?

1220
01:59:25,293 --> 01:59:26,293
What do you mean recreate it?

1221
01:59:26,293 --> 01:59:34,293
Like once you have BitPay, if BitPay – just everyone on BitPay is in the same bus
and it's struck by a meteor, that's the end of BitPay.

1222
01:59:34,293 --> 01:59:38,293
But it's not like someone else would just pick up where they left off.

1223
01:59:38,293 --> 01:59:39,293
They start a new company.

1224
01:59:39,293 --> 01:59:40,293
No.

1225
01:59:40,293 --> 01:59:41,293
Sorry?

1226
01:59:41,293 --> 01:59:42,293
No.

1227
01:59:42,293 --> 01:59:43,293
No, I mean that's not how –

1228
01:59:43,293 --> 01:59:45,293
If they make money, then people would, yes.

1229
01:59:46,293 --> 01:59:47,293
It either makes money or it doesn't.

1230
01:59:47,293 --> 01:59:57,293
And at a very, very, very abstract level, I mean BitPay is an entity that has
specific connections, has a specific relationship with banks.

1231
01:59:57,293 --> 01:59:58,293
Sure. Oh, I agree with that.

1232
01:59:58,293 --> 02:00:00,293
So you can't just pick up where they left off.

1233
02:00:00,293 --> 02:00:02,293
Oh, I agree that it would take some time.

1234
02:00:03,293 --> 02:00:05,293
And they might be incompetent in doing it.

1235
02:00:05,293 --> 02:00:08,293
They could be more competent, right?

1236
02:00:08,293 --> 02:00:09,293
They could be, sure.

1237
02:00:09,293 --> 02:00:14,293
So no, I would disagree that you just pick up where people left off.

1238
02:00:15,293 --> 02:00:17,293
Well, I don't say immediately, but I say that in general.

1239
02:00:17,293 --> 02:00:18,293
Or in the long run.

1240
02:00:19,293 --> 02:00:20,293
Really? You don't think so?

1241
02:00:20,293 --> 02:00:21,293
I have no idea.

1242
02:00:21,293 --> 02:00:24,293
Think of Mt. Gox and the first Bitcoin exchange.

1243
02:00:24,293 --> 02:00:30,293
And he's got – there's like millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars
of throughput.

1244
02:00:30,293 --> 02:00:35,293
Or Silk Road is an even better example where the profits alone were in the millions.

1245
02:00:35,293 --> 02:00:40,293
The revenue was like hundreds of millions of dollars, even back in 2012.

1246
02:00:40,293 --> 02:00:42,293
I guess maybe I don't understand what you're saying, pick up.

1247
02:00:42,293 --> 02:00:45,293
Are there other payment processors?

1248
02:00:45,293 --> 02:00:47,293
Yes, there are other payment processors.

1249
02:00:47,293 --> 02:00:49,293
No, I'm saying – let's say Silk Road exists.

1250
02:00:49,293 --> 02:00:50,293
Silk Road is shut down.

1251
02:00:50,293 --> 02:00:51,293
What happens?

1252
02:00:51,293 --> 02:00:52,293
There's more Silk Roads the next day.

1253
02:00:52,293 --> 02:00:55,293
Or not the next day, but the next six months.

1254
02:00:55,293 --> 02:00:56,293
Okay.

1255
02:00:56,293 --> 02:01:00,293
Yes, and then when these other ones are shut down, then new ones pop up.

1256
02:01:00,293 --> 02:01:02,293
Because it's an idea that makes money.

1257
02:01:03,293 --> 02:01:05,293
That's simple enough, right?

1258
02:01:05,293 --> 02:01:10,293
Yeah, so when there's a demand for something, usually entrepreneurs try to fill the
demand.

1259
02:01:10,293 --> 02:01:11,293
Exactly right.

1260
02:01:11,293 --> 02:01:14,293
Especially if they know how, because they just saw a business doing it.

1261
02:01:14,293 --> 02:01:18,293
It's a little more complex than that, but okay.

1262
02:01:18,293 --> 02:01:20,293
It wasn't BitPay's fault that they were struck by a meteor.

1263
02:01:20,293 --> 02:01:24,293
And plus, once they are, all they have to do is email people and say, look, I want
to start what BitPay was doing.

1264
02:01:24,293 --> 02:01:26,293
Can you give me some idea of what they were doing with you?

1265
02:01:26,293 --> 02:01:28,293
I'd like to have the same relationship with you.

1266
02:01:28,293 --> 02:01:32,293
They probably would find it much easier than starting from scratch.

1267
02:01:32,293 --> 02:01:34,293
So that's what I'm trying to say.

1268
02:01:34,293 --> 02:01:36,293
Do you understand that so far?

1269
02:01:36,293 --> 02:01:37,293
I understand it.

1270
02:01:37,293 --> 02:01:39,293
I think it's very low resolution, but continue.

1271
02:01:40,293 --> 02:01:49,293
You can't as easily replace a lot of the people who are extremely technical in
Bitcoin because it requires a huge amount of investment.

1272
02:01:49,293 --> 02:01:50,293
Oh, I completely disagree with that.

1273
02:01:50,293 --> 02:01:58,293
No, I think the focus on technical expertise is a problem with cryptocurrency in
general.

1274
02:01:58,293 --> 02:02:03,293
This is your opinion, but I'm just trying to give you an idea of why they should
have been alerted.

1275
02:02:03,293 --> 02:02:04,293
It's on them.

1276
02:02:04,293 --> 02:02:10,293
If they really wanted to SegWit2x to succeed, they need to know all of the factors
that would have led to success or failure.

1277
02:02:10,293 --> 02:02:12,293
Yes, and the agreement.

1278
02:02:12,293 --> 02:02:15,293
The fact that they didn't know is just more evidence.

1279
02:02:15,293 --> 02:02:17,293
Have you been talking to them, Paul?

1280
02:02:17,293 --> 02:02:25,293
They were quite aware of a lot of the problems with the technical community, the
incredible myopia.

1281
02:02:25,293 --> 02:02:30,293
You're saying how they have known to do more research.

1282
02:02:30,293 --> 02:02:31,293
That's what you just said to me.

1283
02:02:31,293 --> 02:02:32,293
No, I'm not.

1284
02:02:32,293 --> 02:02:36,293
I'm saying I completely disagree that what was needed was more research.

1285
02:02:36,293 --> 02:02:44,293
I'm saying they needed to abandon the foolish anti-business people who thought
themselves technically wise years earlier because it was set in.

1286
02:02:44,293 --> 02:02:51,293
The pattern was that these people are not who we want leading a project, and they're
not going to scale it as we've seen.

1287
02:02:52,293 --> 02:03:01,293
Didn't you just tell me before that this problem showed up immediately, and there's
no time to react to it, and it's either die or fork, and we have to decide in 43
seconds?

1288
02:03:01,293 --> 02:03:03,293
No, that was not how I framed it.

1289
02:03:03,293 --> 02:03:06,293
No, the problem was around for a long time.

1290
02:03:06,293 --> 02:03:07,293
Yes, it was.

1291
02:03:07,293 --> 02:03:13,293
It became very clear that the BTC people were not competent or they were not
trustworthy.

1292
02:03:13,293 --> 02:03:14,293
They didn't understand business.

1293
02:03:14,293 --> 02:03:23,293
There was some bad mix of leadership qualities there where they had to eventually
make the decision to pull the trigger and say, we have to fork because we don't have
any other options.

1294
02:03:23,293 --> 02:03:26,293
It wasn't something that sprang up on them after a minute.

1295
02:03:26,293 --> 02:03:28,293
Again, no, but this is – well, that's what you were just telling me.

1296
02:03:28,293 --> 02:03:33,293
You were using this line against me that they can't do any prep work at all and that
they have to, but it doesn't matter.

1297
02:03:33,293 --> 02:03:34,293
I never said I don't.

1298
02:03:34,293 --> 02:03:35,293
Yes, you absolutely did.

1299
02:03:35,293 --> 02:03:37,293
You said they have to something or die.

1300
02:03:37,293 --> 02:03:39,293
That was what you were saying, fork or die.

1301
02:03:39,293 --> 02:03:40,293
Yes, that's important.

1302
02:03:41,293 --> 02:03:48,293
If you have cancer and it's pancreatic cancer and somebody says you have two years,
if you don't do anything, you're going to die.

1303
02:03:48,293 --> 02:03:50,293
That doesn't mean it's an immediate decision you're going to make.

1304
02:03:50,293 --> 02:03:55,293
Well, that's all I was trying to say is that two years is plenty of time for them to
discover the anti-cancer treatment.

1305
02:03:55,293 --> 02:03:58,293
Yes, which is why they eventually had the hard fork.

1306
02:03:58,293 --> 02:03:59,293
No, they didn't die.

1307
02:03:59,293 --> 02:04:06,293
Why do you think – BCH is more accepted than any other cryptocurrency on planet
Earth in terms of businesses.

1308
02:04:06,293 --> 02:04:08,293
It's not dead, nor is BSV.

1309
02:04:09,293 --> 02:04:12,293
It's underperformed as an investment, and it's going to be forked.

1310
02:04:12,293 --> 02:04:15,293
On one current metric, yes, the price is lower than BTC.

1311
02:04:15,293 --> 02:04:18,293
You can't say it's dead because the current market price is low.

1312
02:04:20,293 --> 02:04:21,293
I don't know.

1313
02:04:21,293 --> 02:04:31,293
I kind of think that I – well, I guess I can't, but that's kind of my personal
opinion is that if – what should – by what justification do you give?

1314
02:04:31,293 --> 02:04:47,293
When these people are onboarded to BCH, they may as well be onboarded to every other
cryptocurrency because most of them have much more in common than they – the
difference between fiat and crypto is very different, vast difference.

1315
02:04:47,293 --> 02:04:51,293
But once you have crypto, it's like QR code, private key.

1316
02:04:52,207 --> 02:05:00,207
If BTC's fees – imagine somehow BTC tomorrow hard forked the block size to a
trillion gigabytes or something, silly like that.

1317
02:05:00,207 --> 02:05:08,207
There's nothing stopping all those merchants from just adding BTC support. So how
does merchant onboarding move the needle at all?

1318
02:05:08,207 --> 02:05:18,207
You have to onboard people to BCH in a way that they can only accept BCH. I mean if
you figure out a way of doing that, then I'll join the BCH community.

1319
02:05:18,207 --> 02:05:19,207
Absolutely.

1320
02:05:19,207 --> 02:05:28,207
I mean that's not correct. So the value – part of the value of a currency comes from
your belief in your ability to use it as a medium of exchange.

1321
02:05:28,207 --> 02:05:33,207
And one part of that calculation is where the currency is accepted. So if I don't –

1322
02:05:33,207 --> 02:05:34,207
I agree.

1323
02:05:34,207 --> 02:05:37,207
Yeah. So in a very straightforward way, that's where –

1324
02:05:38,207 --> 02:05:55,207
It's very superficial to just take a snapshot of today and say who accepts it today.
Once the work has been done, anyone – like in the future, there might as well be
some kind of – it'd be BitPay or the Jaxx wallet or something where they can accept
any crypto.

1325
02:05:55,207 --> 02:06:01,207
And then there's no significant basis that doesn't discriminate between BCH and BTC.

1326
02:06:01,207 --> 02:06:06,207
I mean one would cost a lot to use and the other one would be cheap.

1327
02:06:07,207 --> 02:06:18,207
Maybe one has BCH mainnet and the other has BTC. One that can accept any of BTC
layer 1, BTC, the BCH Drivechain on BTC, the Lightning Network, whatever.

1328
02:06:18,207 --> 02:06:25,207
And so then it won't – the cost – there's no argument for the cost being different
or lower.

1329
02:06:25,207 --> 02:06:34,207
The one that is used as a medium of exchange is the one that is more likely to
become something like a store of value in the long run. So that would be –

1330
02:06:34,207 --> 02:06:49,207
I don't buy into this. I think the medium of exchange, store of value, that whole
thing is a big confusion. I don't even know at this point if I have the rhetorical
skill to untangle everyone, everyone, everywhere in BTC, BCH. It's hopelessly
confusing.

1331
02:06:49,207 --> 02:06:51,207
Okay. Well, we don't have to use those words.

1332
02:06:51,207 --> 02:06:56,207
If you could say method of payment, I would agree with you.

1333
02:06:56,207 --> 02:06:57,207
Okay.

1334
02:06:57,207 --> 02:07:01,207
Or I can use it onto a road or whatever.

1335
02:07:01,207 --> 02:07:03,207
Sure. Let's use that language.

1336
02:07:03,207 --> 02:07:07,207
Because no one else has used that phrase, so it's a virgin phrase.

1337
02:07:07,207 --> 02:07:20,207
Sure. I'm fine with that. So the cryptocurrencies that are more used as a method of
payment are ones that are likely to have more value relative to other
cryptocurrencies.

1338
02:07:20,207 --> 02:07:27,207
So an essential part of that is the fact that they are accepted. Now, it's not the
only part. It's not, hey, this coin is accepted, but nobody uses it.

1339
02:07:27,207 --> 02:07:31,207
Well, that doesn't mean you have a valuable coin, but it's a necessary component to
it.

1340
02:07:32,207 --> 02:07:40,207
But you do understand that no one is buying any cryptocurrency today based on the
method of payment today.

1341
02:07:40,207 --> 02:07:43,207
Everyone imagines a future where it will be different.

1342
02:07:43,207 --> 02:07:47,207
Yeah. I wouldn't use the language of everybody. That's definitely incorrect.

1343
02:07:47,207 --> 02:07:52,207
But I think the majority of speculation in cryptocurrency is about expected future
usage.

1344
02:07:52,207 --> 02:07:58,207
Yes, exactly. The game is about in the future, will everyone be accepting it in
their store?

1345
02:07:58,207 --> 02:08:07,207
Yeah. So one metric that you would use to see are things trending the right
direction for cryptocurrency is acceptance.

1346
02:08:07,207 --> 02:08:12,207
If it's a marathon, though, some guy can sprint out at front and that doesn't mean
they'll win.

1347
02:08:12,207 --> 02:08:21,207
Of course. I mean, it could be that BTC has a change of leadership or they're struck
on the road to Damascus and they increased the block size.

1348
02:08:21,207 --> 02:08:23,207
Like, of course, that is definitely a possibility.

1349
02:08:23,207 --> 02:08:30,207
But the point of bringing that up was actually just to say it is completely
incorrect to say that BCH or BSV are dead.

1350
02:08:30,207 --> 02:08:34,207
They jumped off the thing. They're not dead by one particular metric.

1351
02:08:34,207 --> 02:08:37,207
They are valued less than BTC.

1352
02:08:37,207 --> 02:08:41,207
OK, that's fine. I was just being maybe a little exaggerated.

1353
02:08:41,207 --> 02:08:44,207
Now I can't even remember where that thread. Where did that thread come from?

1354
02:08:44,207 --> 02:08:49,207
Well, we were talking about a lot of things, but you've been very generous with your
time.

1355
02:08:49,207 --> 02:08:53,207
We've now passed the two hour mark. I think this has been an awesome conversation.

1356
02:08:53,207 --> 02:08:58,207
Lots of other things that I feel like we could discuss, but we should probably wind
it down.

1357
02:08:58,207 --> 02:09:04,207
Anything else you want to you want to mention or throw out there?

1358
02:09:04,207 --> 02:09:09,207
Well, I'd like to recapture the last thread and figure out where it was, but I don't
know where it is now.

1359
02:09:09,207 --> 02:09:17,207
But I would like to emphasize more that the cultural parasite point that there are a
lot of people in BTC who are.

1360
02:09:17,207 --> 02:09:21,207
They are. They're like war profiteers or something.

1361
02:09:21,207 --> 02:09:24,207
I don't know the right metaphor, but they are.

1362
02:09:24,207 --> 02:09:32,207
They kind of are. They're like the raven in an animal farm where they trick all the
animals into being obedient slaves.

1363
02:09:32,207 --> 02:09:36,207
Yeah. And in return, Mr. Jones gives him bread or something.

1364
02:09:36,207 --> 02:09:43,207
And it's they're like, you know, the raven is like a priest or something where they
tell these people, you're going to reach the promised land.

1365
02:09:44,207 --> 02:09:47,207
And everything. Yeah. And there's no reason. No.

1366
02:09:47,207 --> 02:09:52,207
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But that doesn't mean that anything
is wrong with BTC.

1367
02:09:52,207 --> 02:09:56,207
That just means those people are deluded. Yeah.

1368
02:09:56,207 --> 02:09:58,207
There's one other thing I have to say. Yeah, please.

1369
02:09:58,207 --> 02:10:05,207
That in all the years I've seen Bitcoin, there has been this persistent delusion.

1370
02:10:05,207 --> 02:10:10,207
People show up to Bitcoin and they think all Bitcoin needs is this one thing for me
to be perfect.

1371
02:10:10,207 --> 02:10:18,207
And this is the John Seth meme. I just heard about Bitcoin and now I can fix it or
something.

1372
02:10:18,207 --> 02:10:21,207
I can't remember the meme. It's terrible, but you can look it up.

1373
02:10:21,207 --> 02:10:25,207
I just heard about Bitcoin. And how does it go?

1374
02:10:25,207 --> 02:10:29,207
I'm going to fix it, I think. That's how it goes. It's like Birdman or something.

1375
02:10:29,207 --> 02:10:34,207
And this is a very dangerous and a very attractive delusion.

1376
02:10:34,207 --> 02:10:37,207
And it's possible that I'm under the delusion with Drivechain.

1377
02:10:37,207 --> 02:10:45,207
I've tried to be pretty chill about Drivechain. So actually, I hope that most people
wouldn't be too upset about that angle.

1378
02:10:45,207 --> 02:10:49,207
But I do think that this is something that happens for some reason.

1379
02:10:49,207 --> 02:10:55,207
Bitcoin gets under people's skin and they think Bitcoin is so great and I want to be
part of it because.

1380
02:10:55,207 --> 02:10:57,207
The raven told me so.

1381
02:10:57,207 --> 02:11:02,207
I want to feel this is different from the first cultural parasite point.

1382
02:11:03,207 --> 02:11:14,207
This is like people want to feel like they contributed to Bitcoin and then they feel
like they Bitcoin is part of them and that there are some kind of crusading
philosophy.

1383
02:11:14,207 --> 02:11:18,207
But it's more that it's like people need to have one of their ideas in Bitcoin.

1384
02:11:18,207 --> 02:11:25,207
They feel this compulsive need. And I worry that first of all, I worry that
Drivechain is such a thing for myself.

1385
02:11:25,207 --> 02:11:33,207
But certainly I worry that everyone, most of what everyone says or does everywhere
on Bitcoin is just this delusion.

1386
02:11:33,207 --> 02:11:38,207
And that actually Bitcoin doesn't need SegWit. It doesn't need a block size
increase.

1387
02:11:38,207 --> 02:11:42,207
It doesn't need Satoshi's vision. It doesn't need anything.

1388
02:11:42,207 --> 02:11:44,207
And I think most of these things are delusion.

1389
02:11:44,207 --> 02:11:50,207
And the fact that some people got some of what they wanted some of the time and
others didn't.

1390
02:11:50,207 --> 02:11:55,207
It's really this kind of drama that plays out that it's mostly cosmetic and has no
relevance at all.

1391
02:11:55,207 --> 02:12:02,207
So I would just ask people to if I could get people out there to to think about
something, I would like them to think about that.

1392
02:12:02,207 --> 02:12:07,207
Is all of this just a delusion, this delusion that you need?

1393
02:12:07,207 --> 02:12:11,207
Bitcoin couldn't possibly succeed without my great idea.

1394
02:12:11,207 --> 02:12:18,207
That for some reason, this just every single almost everyone who encounters Bitcoin
feels the need to do this type of thing.

1395
02:12:18,207 --> 02:12:23,207
So that's one that's one little pet idea that I'm bouncing around.

1396
02:12:23,207 --> 02:12:26,207
Potentially all delusion.

1397
02:12:26,207 --> 02:12:30,207
One thought on that. I think you're actually right in your particular delusion.

1398
02:12:30,207 --> 02:12:34,207
I think it's important for people to recognize the feasibility of the coin.

1399
02:12:34,207 --> 02:12:44,207
If they're imagining something like a digital cash system and if you have small
blocks, you're presented with a problem you must resolve, which is how do you scale
or do you scale?

1400
02:12:44,207 --> 02:12:49,207
There's a there's another position here, which I think is a respectable position
that, you know, you could be content with Bitcoin not scaling.

1401
02:12:49,207 --> 02:12:53,207
It's like it's the bunker coin and not everybody's going to be using it.

1402
02:12:53,207 --> 02:12:57,207
And that's OK. I think that's a I think that's a reasonable philosophy one could
take.

1403
02:12:57,207 --> 02:13:06,207
But if you're trying to achieve something bigger than that, then you have to have
you have to you're forced into some layer to theory.

1404
02:13:06,207 --> 02:13:11,207
And if you look at a lightning network, I think that's not going to be the thing
that's going to bring scaling.

1405
02:13:11,207 --> 02:13:18,207
And so in my opinion, it looks like there's one good idea left other than a block
size increase that could save Bitcoin.

1406
02:13:18,207 --> 02:13:25,207
And it's what you're working on. You're you're in a weird position, though, because
this is actually mimicked in philosophy a lot.

1407
02:13:25,207 --> 02:13:34,207
You're in a weird position because it's probably wise to have the method of
thinking, which where you go, OK, now, if I'm concluding my ideas are the ones that
are necessary.

1408
02:13:34,207 --> 02:13:37,207
That's probably a mistake. Like that's a healthy methodology.

1409
02:13:37,207 --> 02:13:41,207
Same thing happens in philosophy when you go, you know, I think I actually solve
this philosophical problem.

1410
02:13:41,207 --> 02:13:47,207
But you might have, you know, you might have. And, you know, in this case, I think
it's important.

1411
02:13:47,207 --> 02:13:50,207
But that's I think that's a great note to end on. And maybe we'll be able to do this
again.

1412
02:13:50,207 --> 02:13:55,207
I think there's a lot more we can do here. All right. Great. Hey, thanks for having
me. Thanks, Paul.