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There will be no real non-controlled currency in the world.

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Because a lot of people from some propaganda hate Bitcoin Cash.

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It's a fair market, especially for Bitcoin Cash is having fun, staying poor.

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Today, BCH, $208.34, which is down.

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One BTC sat buys an amazing 308.5 BCH sats, and one ETH is 806 mega sats, also down
there.

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Selene, 30 days, is 671, and the Tokenaut TVL is actually doing pretty well at
16,284.

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Today, we have a panel of our BTC sibling chain guests to update us on all the
latest of what's happening in BTC world

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and what BCH is doing wrong and needs to do better to win them over.

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This has been inspired by Vlad, who did an eight-hour marathon stream recently
featuring a whole bunch of BCH guests.

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It's a fantastic stream. Go check it out if you haven't watched it.

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The whole thing is actually really, really good.

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But we are here to return the favor.

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So welcome to the show, starting with you, Vlad.

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How did you get into Bitcoin?

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Hi. So just for the record, I've always wanted to be on CoinSpice.

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It's been my dream since I was a teenager.

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Vin Armani, you seem to have lost some weight, and Colin, you grew your hair.

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It's very strange.

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But I guess people change over time, and everything changes.

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And I changed, too. I'm fatter than I was 10 years ago when I was watching
CoinSpice, hoping that I would one day join CoinSpice.

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You'll have to resurrect it. We've got to get those guys to come back, you know?

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We've got to convince them.

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Are we going to get the weather report from Mike and Space?

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I mean, CoinSpice, I also really enjoyed those guys, especially the BSV hash war
stream,

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which has now, I think, even been taken offline.

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So I'm really hoping we can dig up an archived copy of that,

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because that is an amazing piece of Bitcoin history for anyone that remembers that
one.

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Yeah, I think that was the peak of...

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I think Bitcoin had Bitcoin Uncensored, and Bitcoin Cash had CoinSpice.

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And that was the most fun we've ever had in this space.

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Then the bankers came, and they took over, in a sense.

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Now we're dealing with sailor narratives and trying to please the suits and
whatever.

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Paul wants to join the stream. Do you have a link for me to share?

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Yeah, it's just in the group there.

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In any case, Vlad, give us the story. How did you get into Bitcoin?

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Man, it's a long story.

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But it's a story of dismissing it and then looking at it again a year later or
something.

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So I remember I first read about Bitcoin in 2013, but at the time I was doing my
bachelor thesis, I think.

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I think the timeline checks out. I started university in 2011, so yeah.

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And I was very much interested in internet privacy.

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Here in Romania, there was this bill that was going to pass called ACTA, which was
going to limit access to the internet.

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And the purpose was to destroy piracy, which is very well embedded into the culture
in my country and in lots of parts from Eastern Europe.

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I don't think many of us would have learned English and got jobs in computer-related
stuff if it wasn't for the piracy of the 90s and the 2000s.

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And I actually got 100,000 signatures online. This was the peak of collectivism.

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But people actually signed that, and I was a celebrity for a week because of that.

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And I was serious about it. I looked into ways to make my internet connection more
private.

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I was looking into VPNs and whatever.

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And I stumbled upon Bitcoin on a meme page of all places.

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It was called 9gag.com. And there was this meme from Cyanide and Happiness.

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It's a series of comic books, which basically presented a burglar going to a normal
person saying, give me all your money.

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The burglar, of course, had that sock covering his face because that's how you
distinguish, I guess, villains from normal people.

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And the person basically said, I don't have any money. I just have Bitcoin.

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And then the burglar handed him some dollars and said, oh, take this. You need it.

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It reminds me of, I always like that one of the guy and it's the government tax
collector comes to him and says, give me all your money.

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And the guy says, I only have Bitcoins. And the government tax collector says,
that's not real money.

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And then the guy says, good. And then they both look at each other.

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And then the tax collector is like, give me all your Bitcoins.

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And I'm like, that is the best meme about the value of Bitcoin is money.

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It is funny. But I looked at what Bitcoin is at the time.

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I remember I just came back from a Deep Purple concert here in Bucharest.

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And yeah, Deep Purple, like old people, they're in their 70s, but still a rocking
concert.

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I looked at Bitcoin on Wikipedia and it said it's for banking the unbanked and the
third world and whatever the narrative was at the time.

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And I thought to myself, oh, you know, I have a bank account. I can send money to
whoever I want.

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I'm not unbanked. So why do I need Bitcoin? Anyway, it's stupid.

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And then I stumbled upon some FUD article saying that it's going to die and blah,
blah.

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I was like, OK, it's just maybe that the meme people on 9GAG were right.

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But I went to Paris two years later. I was an exchange student.

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And one of our professors, Lex Paulson, he had a class about advocacy for new and
emerging technologies.

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And my group was assigned to do a presentation about Bitcoin.

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And it was kind of amazing that I did my homework.

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I did the presentation in front of the class explaining about the 21 million cap and
how the blockchain works and blah, blah, blah.

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But I treated this as homework, so I didn't practice what I preached.

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I did my advocacy part. I got a good grade.

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And then I looked at the Bitcoin price. It was like three hundred.

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No, I think it was five hundred dollars at that point in 2015 or 16.

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No, it was 15. And that was basically what I was paying for rent.

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And I was eating McDonald's meals for 10 euro a day.

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So I was on a very tight budget.

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I was also thinking that I need to buy a whole Bitcoin if I wanted to get in.

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I was like, probably not a good time.

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But a year later, I actually wanted to buy. I had some savings.

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I was back home. Maybe I had like two hundred dollars.

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I wanted to buy Bitcoin. And then there was that article from Mike Hearn who said
that Bitcoin is a failed project.

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And I congratulated myself. I said, you know, Vlad, you're actually smart.

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You didn't buy this. It's a failed project. It never went anywhere.

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But I was spending a lot of time on the Silk Road at the time.

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Not for buying, but for researching what's going on.

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And there are a lot of websites on the dark web like Intel Exchange, which had
supposedly information given away by government agents or whatever, exposing
conspiracies and whatever.

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UFO pages. I was spending a lot of time because I was doing my master thesis this
time around about Internet governance.

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And this was like a chapter in my thesis about the dark web and what's happening
there.

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So, of course, a lot of the economy there was fueled by Bitcoin.

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And I don't know why I had this mental... How should I put it?

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I did not make the connection between Bitcoin being used and then someone saying
that it failed.

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Why does the opinion of a developer matter as long as there is an entire underground
economy that's using it?

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This proves that it's really not a failed project. It works.

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I didn't know the whole context of the block size wars. I've learned about
everything years later.

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I've read pretty much everything I could, including Roger Ver's book, which I think
I got my hands on like two years ago.

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And finally, the moment when I decided to buy Bitcoin was when the price went back
to $1,000.

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And that was when I realized, OK, there's a disconnect here between what I'm being
told in terms of media narratives and also what's happening on markets.

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The market is telling me that everyone else is wrong and maybe that there's more to
this than I initially thought.

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And then I spent most of 2017 investing in ICOs and chip coins that never went
anywhere because I had a job and I was making money.

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And I also watched from the sidelines what was happening with the Bitcoin Cash Fork,
SegWit2x.

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I was super confused. Bitcoin.com became a Bitcoin Cash website.

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Our Bitcoin was a Bitcoin website, but our BTC was a Bitcoin Cash, what do you call
these Reddit pages? Subreddit.

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Subreddit, yeah.

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So it was confusing. Then in 2018, I guess I picked sides and it made sense for me
that we're going to have lightning and layers and whatever.

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Like the internet scales in layers, so why shouldn't Bitcoin?

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And I was very hopeful about this until I actually used lightning and I ran a node
and I did all of that.

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And then I still kept the hope that it's going to get better, but it never did.

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And it just became more deranged in this sense.

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Like, don't worry, we'll fix it.

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Well, it's not efficient in its current state. Maybe we should centralize it more.

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You shouldn't run your home node from a Raspberry Pi.

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Let data centers run it.

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It's fine if layer twos are centralized as long as we keep the block size small and
anyone can run a node.

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And then it becomes absurd to the point that, yes, anyone can run a node, but it's
not very useful for being used as money.

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And in the meantime, we get ETFs and the bankers start controlling the narrative.

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And I don't recognize anyone anymore.

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I remember two years ago when I went to Nashville, and that was my first time in the
U.S., my first time at a United States conference, which I understand are bigger and
they do like to show off.

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But watching these politicians and, I don't know, it felt like for the first time I
was not part of a revolution anymore.

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And there was nothing exciting about it, maybe except the expectation that I might
get rich because of this.

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But that's not really why I came here.

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Like, I could have invested in Nvidia or something or Tesla and got similar results.

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I mean, famously, I've heard that particularly those conferences 2024 and maybe also
2021 or 2022 were just known for being the hype of like cult excitement that I've
had a guest on the show who was there.

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And she said it was like being in a cult where everybody was like on the same page,
like Michael Saylor, you know, was on stage.

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There was that one where Max Keiser said, like, fuck Elon, you know, and it was just
such a cult energy.

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I think that was 21, because after that, Max Keiser went on a tour and sold tickets
for people to listen to him whining about Elon Musk, basically.

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He pivoted.

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Robin, you're nodding along there.

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Let me get you in here.

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So you're currently at BTC Prague.

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Maybe you can give us a little insight into the BTC conference scene.

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I was just thinking about what Vlad just said, and I have a little fun side story
about that.

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A friend of mine, he found like some multi-level marketing scheme on the internet,
and they invited people to a cruise to basically brainwash them into joining their
system.

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And he was like, hey, let's just go on that cruise to see how it works and just see
how they are brainwashing people and we get a free cruise and everything.

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So we did that.

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And what Vlad just said about the 2024 Bitcoin conference reminded me of this
brainwashing thing on the cruise where they tried to hype up everyone with
irrational narratives.

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Yeah, just like trying to trigger people's primary reactions of group thinking.

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Robin, was it called…

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I can understand that.

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Sorry?

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This pyramid scheme or whatever, was it called WorldVentures?

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No, I think it was called Global Information Network or something.

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Okay.

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That was a very grand sounding name.

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I've been to one of their seminars at WorldVentures and they were saying, well, you
pay like $100 per month and then you're going to go on very exotic vacations.

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And basically the way that it works is that, of course, you have people who never go
on vacation and then people who profit off of them.

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And it's like Ponzi, where they're profiting off of people who pay but never go.

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But at one point they're going to want to go and they're not going to be able to
afford it or there's not going to be any money.

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The whole scheme depends on how early you get in.

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There's Paul.

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Hello, Paul. Welcome back to the Bitcoin Cash Podcast.

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Maybe I'm like backstage, like no one has acknowledged that I've popped up onto this
thing.

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And then I couldn't see or hear Robin, just a guest ID in use.

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Because both Vlad and Robin sent, so just FYI, there's something.

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Interesting.

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There could be like 50 other people here with Robin, Linus, and Link that are just
hidden off.

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They're all guest three in the link.

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I was like, what is going on?

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I was like, this is really weird.

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Top tier software for the real world.

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Hello to all the guest three listeners.

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Then you're talking to Vlad and then you start talking to Robin and I can't hear
Robin.

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And then I'm like, this is weird.

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And I was like, okay, I could hear Vlad.

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But anyway.

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It's actually a fourth world social experiment we're running on you.

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Like a Darren Brown production where we're going to reveal to you later that this
was all scripted.

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See how you'd react.

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Yeah, and it was interesting.

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So I got to hear all about Vlad, talk about how it was a cult.

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But then I didn't hear anything Robin said about how it's...

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But the cult...

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It must be the beginning of the end.

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It must be the beginning of the end when now everyone's turning on Michael Saylor
finally.

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Yeah.

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Because he was like, yeah, he's gone stage.

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He says, I never told anyone.

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No, I sort of disagree with that.

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Because Michael Saylor was smart enough to get people, by people I mean community
members, Bitcoiners.

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High profile influencers to invest in his SDRC or MSDR or whatever.

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So they're financially tied to the success of his Ponzi.

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They're mag holders.

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That's why I say long MSDR, short Bitcoin.

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Because the illusion that he has is that, oh, this is the same thing as buying
Bitcoin.

186
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But really it's not at all.

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The fact that the MNAV premium changes proves that they're exact opposites actually.

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If it was ETF, they would be like kind of the same thing, sort of, arguably.

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Even then, not really.

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But if it was ETF and it just said you buy one, we'll set aside a certain amount of
Bitcoin.

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But because he said that it can vary and because the crazy Asian CEO was like, oh,
the MNAV premium, yeah, it just went from 1 to 2.

192
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It could go to 10 or 20.

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I remember he said that on like, I don't know, like an official Bitcoin magazine
podcast or interview or something.

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And he's like, yeah, the MNAV premium could just keep going up like forever.

195
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And then Jim Chanos shorted it.

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He was like, yeah, it said 2, but it should really be less than 1 if you really
think about it.

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Yeah, I was like, yeah, yes, that is right.

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And it should kind of, honestly, arguably it should be zero if you add the overhead,
the agency costs, the risk of them just losing it.

199
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Exactly, right.

200
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So why would the taxes, the lawyers, everything, why would it actually be?

201
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It would be like 95%, but it would be like some weird like eigenvalue, eigenvector
thing where you just multiply by 95% like an infinite number of times and you just
end up with zero.

202
00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:14,000
So that's, but you know, we don't, we live in like a, you know, this is the thing.

203
00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:17,000
You know the podcast is lit when we start talking about eigenvectors.

204
00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:19,000
I have this background.

205
00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:20,000
I don't even know what that is.

206
00:18:20,000 --> 00:18:25,000
This is the curse of the economist often is that you kind of like figure out like
the equilibrium.

207
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:28,000
But then it's like, yeah, it takes like 15 years to get there.

208
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:36,000
And so often people just like, oh, and then like I thought like, because I was like,
when they came out with Snapchat, I was like, this is the stupidest idea.

209
00:18:36,000 --> 00:18:39,000
Because computers don't work that way.

210
00:18:39,000 --> 00:18:40,000
You can't just have disappear.

211
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:47,000
But now every, not only was Snapchat like, right after I said that, they were like
bought for like a billion dollars.

212
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:49,000
And then now everyone's doing disappearing messages.

213
00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:51,000
You know, it's like a really cool.

214
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:52,000
It's like a very useful thing.

215
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:54,000
Now, everyone's lawyers got them.

216
00:18:54,000 --> 00:18:55,000
You got them.

217
00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:56,000
They're in telegram.

218
00:18:56,000 --> 00:18:57,000
Now they're in signal.

219
00:18:57,000 --> 00:18:58,000
They're in everywhere.

220
00:18:58,000 --> 00:18:59,000
So everyone loves.

221
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:02,000
So I was totally probably don't work on any of them.

222
00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:03,000
Of course.

223
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:05,000
It's all a scam.

224
00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:07,000
I love it on WhatsApp.

225
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:11,000
It's like you can delete the message and it's like delete for you or delete for
everyone.

226
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,000
It's like, why would I want to delete my own message only for you?

227
00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:17,000
I know.

228
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:18,000
I always thought about that, too.

229
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:22,000
But I always when I saw that, I would always do like a kind of like a like a little
take where I look at the camera.

230
00:19:22,000 --> 00:19:24,000
Like, kind of like what?

231
00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:25,000
Like what?

232
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:27,000
And I never thought about how stupid it was until now.

233
00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:29,000
Of course, everyone goes to delete for everyone.

234
00:19:29,000 --> 00:19:31,000
It's like I'm going to delete it for me.

235
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:32,000
They're still going to see it.

236
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:36,000
And they're going to from their point of view, it looks like I wanted them to still
see it.

237
00:19:36,000 --> 00:19:37,000
That does sound.

238
00:19:37,000 --> 00:19:38,000
I think it's completely.

239
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:43,000
I think it's so that you can delete other people's messages in there and just delete
it for you.

240
00:19:43,000 --> 00:19:46,000
I don't want to see this message in my feed.

241
00:19:46,000 --> 00:19:48,000
But we can't delete them for everyone, right?

242
00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:49,000
That doesn't make any sense.

243
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:50,000
Is that possible?

244
00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:52,000
Can I just delete other people's messages?

245
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:53,000
Admins can.

246
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:56,000
And they might have just copied the same interface that admins have.

247
00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,000
That doesn't make any sense.

248
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:00,000
But I agree with you that that's the only way.

249
00:20:00,000 --> 00:20:02,000
That's the only theory that explains the data, I think.

250
00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:03,000
So I think you're right.

251
00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:05,000
But that's a terrible idea.

252
00:20:05,000 --> 00:20:09,000
Just have a little admin color or a little icon.

253
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:11,000
Delete for everyone.

254
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,000
Not give it to every option.

255
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:17,000
Especially when you have two people talking to each other.

256
00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:18,000
That's right.

257
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:20,000
It's a one-on-one conversation.

258
00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:23,000
You're just deleting your own half of the conversation.

259
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:24,000
That doesn't make any sense.

260
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:29,000
It's also funny that when you delete a message for both of you, then they see a
deleted message.

261
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:30,000
Yes.

262
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:33,000
Then it's that weird signal of like, what was the deleted message?

263
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:36,000
What did you delete there?

264
00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:38,000
Usually it's better to just leave it.

265
00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:41,000
Usually it's better like, okay, we're in this thing.

266
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:44,000
We're going to just plow forward.

267
00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:47,000
If I made a typo, I just got to retype it below.

268
00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:49,000
Even if it's something else.

269
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:51,000
It's like, oh, I think we should get married.

270
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:52,000
And then it's like, delete.

271
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:53,000
And then it's like, oh, sorry.

272
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:55,000
Can you pick up milk from the store?

273
00:20:55,000 --> 00:20:57,000
Sorry, typo.

274
00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:00,000
It's a smokescreen.

275
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:02,000
Does it happen often to you?

276
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:07,000
No, I was just wondering if that happens often to you.

277
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:10,000
I don't very frequently propose to someone by accident.

278
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:12,000
But maybe some people do.

279
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,000
It was just an example of something that you might want to take back.

280
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:17,000
That came to mind.

281
00:21:17,000 --> 00:21:22,000
That's a typical kind of scenario.

282
00:21:22,000 --> 00:21:29,000
I can just imagine that every couple of days he accidentally proposes to someone and
really he just wanted milk.

283
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:32,000
It's really challenging for him.

284
00:21:32,000 --> 00:21:37,000
Now I'm getting some insight into why he deleted the messages that he sent to me.

285
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:41,000
That's what it was the whole time.

286
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:45,000
He's going to go back and scroll through all the messages to me and be like, wait a
minute.

287
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:47,000
Yeah, exactly.

288
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:49,000
I should have had a life of happiness.

289
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:51,000
That's it.

290
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:53,000
Here we are instead.

291
00:21:53,000 --> 00:21:59,000
Sorry to everyone who missed out on marrying Paul as a result of the new
disappearing message.

292
00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:03,000
We have to ask, is the spell really broken?

293
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:10,000
Because Vlad is right that sometimes this is the way the cult works is that the
rational people just start leaving.

294
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,000
And the cult gets more insane.

295
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,000
Like when they have the rapture.

296
00:22:14,000 --> 00:22:16,000
They say the rapture is going to be on Tuesday.

297
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:18,000
Or whatever.

298
00:22:18,000 --> 00:22:20,000
The end of the world is going to be on Tuesday.

299
00:22:20,000 --> 00:22:22,000
Tuesday comes and goes.

300
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:24,000
Nothing happens.

301
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:26,000
Then usually a few people leave.

302
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:28,000
But then the cult is stronger than ever.

303
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:30,000
They'll say, well, it wasn't clear which Tuesday.

304
00:22:30,000 --> 00:22:32,000
There's another Tuesday next week.

305
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:34,000
Sometimes they make it pretty clear.

306
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,000
Sometimes they're like, it will be March 12th, 2012.

307
00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:38,000
Or whatever that was.

308
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:40,000
Yeah, but according to which calendar, right?

309
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,000
They made a whole movie about it.

310
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,000
Is it the Gregorian one?

311
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,000
Is it the Julian one?

312
00:22:46,000 --> 00:22:48,000
But I think it is ending.

313
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:50,000
I honestly think it is ending.

314
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:58,000
And the reason I know is because Bitcoin University, Matthew Cratter, he started
criticizing Michael Saylor before this happened.

315
00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:08,000
And if he's starting to put the pieces together and figure it out from how deep down
the rabbit hole he is, then clearly the message is getting around, right?

316
00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:13,000
He's like the fifth layer of abstraction of what's actually happening.

317
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:19,000
He's like so many layers deep in the matrix that if he's starting to be like, wait a
second, what's going on here?

318
00:23:19,000 --> 00:23:24,000
And so then he made that video calling out Michael Saylor of like, look at this guy
lying.

319
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:28,000
And he's so deep in it that he couldn't even just make it like a straight-up video.

320
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:35,000
He had to satirize it and be like, well, this looks kind of contradictory, but I'll
let the audience make up their own mind.

321
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:37,000
Ha, ha, ha.

322
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:43,000
He did a big audience capture problem, I think, you know, like where he wants the
views.

323
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:45,000
So you just work the format, right?

324
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:49,000
So you don't want to be like too – maybe not, I don't know.

325
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:54,000
I would think you would get a lot of views to just be like Michael Saylor fraud or
whatever.

326
00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:56,000
I don't know. I have no idea, though.

327
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:57,000
I don't pretend.

328
00:23:57,000 --> 00:24:00,000
I don't know that he was ever in the Michael Saylor camp, Matt Cratter.

329
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:04,000
I suspect he was always in the camp just by Bitcoin.

330
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,000
No, I think he was because –

331
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:11,000
So in the beginning when he started doing these videos, which by the way are awful,

332
00:24:11,000 --> 00:24:18,000
but at the same time they sort of became like a personal brand where he just types
and he switches tabs in his Chrome.

333
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:21,000
Like it's very low effort, but it works for some reason.

334
00:24:21,000 --> 00:24:27,000
Michael Saylor actually tweeted about him and said, this guy is offering very good
Bitcoin education.

335
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,000
And you got to understand that when he first landed on the scene,

336
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:39,000
Michael Saylor used some of his domains like hope.com and a couple of others to turn
them into Bitcoin education websites.

337
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:48,000
But what education meant for him was to change the narrative to drift away from
anything concerning cash and payments

338
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:55,000
and turning everything into savings and store value, digital energy, whatever, cyber
hornets.

339
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:59,000
He came up with a lot of these silly metaphors.

340
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:00,757
Actually, that's all he's got.

341
00:25:00,757 --> 00:25:11,757
All he's ever had was just silly metaphors and people were somehow oblivious of the
fact that there was a large headline with him losing $6 billion in one day as a CEO
during the dot-com bubble.

342
00:25:11,757 --> 00:25:20,757
And we're like, how's 6 billion to lose it though? I think that's people's logic
where they're like, well, at least he had the 6 billion to throw away, you know,
more than I've ever had.

343
00:25:20,757 --> 00:25:23,757
He made the front page. So people think, well,

344
00:25:24,757 --> 00:25:27,757
No such thing as bad publicity. He must have been doing something important.

345
00:25:27,757 --> 00:25:28,757
Yeah.

346
00:25:28,757 --> 00:25:36,757
Anyway, Saylor was very smart in some ways, and I think his strategy, pun
unintended, should be studied.

347
00:25:36,757 --> 00:25:43,757
He was able to capture the whole narrative yet on every podcast except for mine
because I never invited him.

348
00:25:43,757 --> 00:25:46,757
I always felt like there's something off about him.

349
00:25:46,757 --> 00:25:51,757
But he was able to become bigger than everyone who's ever given him a platform.

350
00:25:52,757 --> 00:25:55,757
Everyone is invited to your podcast except for Michael Saylor.

351
00:25:55,757 --> 00:25:58,757
No, that's not how it works.

352
00:25:58,757 --> 00:26:01,757
He's welcome on this call, by the way, if anyone wants to shoot him a link.

353
00:26:01,757 --> 00:26:03,757
Yeah, join us.

354
00:26:03,757 --> 00:26:05,757
Have a chat with him.

355
00:26:05,757 --> 00:26:08,757
Tell us all about how Stretch works.

356
00:26:08,757 --> 00:26:09,757
I'm keen to hear it.

357
00:26:09,757 --> 00:26:10,757
Yeah.

358
00:26:11,757 --> 00:26:16,757
But Robert, if you're there at Prague where he famously met, were you watching live?

359
00:26:16,757 --> 00:26:22,757
Were you in the audience when he was saying this famous clip that's now going
around?

360
00:26:22,757 --> 00:26:26,757
No, I wasn't in the audience.

361
00:26:26,757 --> 00:26:31,757
The famous clip was, I think, on the VIP stage, which was in the speaker's area.

362
00:26:31,757 --> 00:26:35,757
He gave a talk at the main stage as well.

363
00:26:36,757 --> 00:26:45,757
I went in there for a couple of minutes just to get a feeling for the level of
retardedness in the community.

364
00:26:45,757 --> 00:26:49,757
Was the audience still full when he was talking?

365
00:26:49,757 --> 00:26:54,757
Yeah, it was by far the most crowded talk of the entire night.

366
00:26:54,757 --> 00:26:56,757
It's depressing.

367
00:26:56,757 --> 00:26:59,757
But I feel like he's making people bullish.

368
00:27:00,757 --> 00:27:01,757
Sorry.

369
00:27:01,757 --> 00:27:15,757
I met a couple of people who were just more like business people, less like
cypherpunk developers, people who just bought Bitcoin to make money.

370
00:27:16,757 --> 00:27:22,757
And they seem to be changing their minds about Selah.

371
00:27:26,757 --> 00:27:30,757
They don't believe anymore that he's the savior.

372
00:27:30,757 --> 00:27:35,757
And then they start to question his narratives and the gamble that he makes.

373
00:27:35,757 --> 00:27:38,757
And I felt like that's a good thing.

374
00:27:38,757 --> 00:27:42,757
It's a sign that there's some healing going on.

375
00:27:43,757 --> 00:27:48,757
But do any of you guys actually know people who have strategy stock and all that?

376
00:27:48,757 --> 00:27:50,757
I've literally never met a single person in real life.

377
00:27:50,757 --> 00:27:52,757
I know a few.

378
00:27:52,757 --> 00:27:55,757
And I don't want to...

379
00:27:55,757 --> 00:27:58,757
Oh, man, it's hard to phrase this in a polite way.

380
00:27:58,757 --> 00:28:00,757
But these are nice people.

381
00:28:00,757 --> 00:28:01,757
These are kind of like...

382
00:28:01,757 --> 00:28:03,757
Okay, you ask these people...

383
00:28:03,757 --> 00:28:06,757
This is like Finance 101, where you go up to people.

384
00:28:06,757 --> 00:28:08,757
You just strike up a friendly conversation with them.

385
00:28:08,757 --> 00:28:10,757
And they say, oh, yeah.

386
00:28:10,757 --> 00:28:16,757
And you just say something like, well, what do you think fair value is for MSTR?

387
00:28:16,757 --> 00:28:18,757
What's the price target?

388
00:28:18,757 --> 00:28:20,757
Now, this is a hard question.

389
00:28:20,757 --> 00:28:24,757
But this is something that every real investor would do.

390
00:28:24,757 --> 00:28:26,757
Is they would look at the situation.

391
00:28:26,757 --> 00:28:29,757
And they would say, okay, I think...

392
00:28:29,757 --> 00:28:31,757
They'll have some answer in their head.

393
00:28:31,757 --> 00:28:32,757
You know what I mean?

394
00:28:32,757 --> 00:28:35,757
And they'll say, oh, I think the market cap...

395
00:28:35,757 --> 00:28:36,757
They'll say something.

396
00:28:36,757 --> 00:28:41,757
Like when people say, well, actually, for SpaceX, I think a $2 trillion market cap
is possible.

397
00:28:41,757 --> 00:28:44,757
Because if you look at whatever, they're going to just say something.

398
00:28:44,757 --> 00:28:50,757
Or they'll say, I think it should go to like $15 a share or something like that.

399
00:28:50,757 --> 00:28:52,757
But these people give...

400
00:28:52,757 --> 00:28:58,757
They give the wrong answer, which is they say something like, I think it can go up
from here.

401
00:28:58,757 --> 00:29:04,757
Or they say, I think Sailor knows what he's doing.

402
00:29:05,757 --> 00:29:09,757
And I'm just telling you out there, for anyone who's listening, that's the wrong
answer.

403
00:29:09,757 --> 00:29:13,757
The right answer for any other thing, like when you would think of like...

404
00:29:13,757 --> 00:29:16,757
This is what Hal Finney did with Bitcoin back in the day.

405
00:29:16,757 --> 00:29:18,757
Where he's like, you take out your...

406
00:29:18,757 --> 00:29:22,757
Even if it's just envelope math, you have some idea in your head where you say,
okay, listen.

407
00:29:22,757 --> 00:29:24,757
This is the value of all the money in the world.

408
00:29:24,757 --> 00:29:30,757
And then if you divide that by 21 million coins, you get like a few million dollars
per coin.

409
00:29:30,757 --> 00:29:34,757
So that's what a real investor would say.

410
00:29:34,757 --> 00:29:38,757
And a fake investor would say, I think it's going to keep going up or something like
that.

411
00:29:38,757 --> 00:29:40,757
And that's what all these people say.

412
00:29:40,757 --> 00:29:42,757
And it's depressing to watch.

413
00:29:42,757 --> 00:29:44,757
And these are not sophisticated people.

414
00:29:44,757 --> 00:29:50,757
And especially with Michael Sailor constructing these hybrid equity debt convertible
stuff.

415
00:29:50,757 --> 00:29:56,757
Where, frankly, you do need like a PhD in accounting to even figure out what's going
on.

416
00:29:56,757 --> 00:29:58,757
And that is a really bad sign.

417
00:29:58,757 --> 00:30:00,757
That's exactly what has happened in past crises.

418
00:30:00,757 --> 00:30:02,757
It happened in 2008.

419
00:30:02,757 --> 00:30:04,757
Where people didn't even know what they were buying.

420
00:30:04,757 --> 00:30:06,757
And there's that great scene where Big Shorty picks up the phone.

421
00:30:06,757 --> 00:30:08,757
I don't even think they know what they've done.

422
00:30:08,757 --> 00:30:10,757
Perfect line.

423
00:30:10,757 --> 00:30:12,757
And yeah, so there you go.

424
00:30:12,757 --> 00:30:14,757
I know some people, but it's not impressive.

425
00:30:14,757 --> 00:30:20,757
I do think just anyone who has MSG or one of those products.

426
00:30:20,757 --> 00:30:25,757
And how were they swept up into it?

427
00:30:25,757 --> 00:30:29,757
Because it's very ironic that the whole premise is about Bitcoin.

428
00:30:29,757 --> 00:30:33,757
And yet the more you know about Bitcoin, the more involved you are in the scene and
stuff like that.

429
00:30:33,757 --> 00:30:37,757
The less likely you would be to have some.

430
00:30:37,757 --> 00:30:39,757
You know what I'm saying?

431
00:30:39,757 --> 00:30:41,757
I don't know.

432
00:30:41,757 --> 00:30:43,757
Sorry.

433
00:30:43,757 --> 00:30:45,757
Yeah, I don't really know.

434
00:30:45,757 --> 00:30:47,757
I'm completely uninterested in these products.

435
00:30:47,757 --> 00:30:49,757
So he was like, oh yeah, I've got some whatever it's called.

436
00:30:49,757 --> 00:30:51,757
I don't even know which one.

437
00:30:51,757 --> 00:30:53,757
It's been down, I think.

438
00:30:53,757 --> 00:30:55,757
Let's change the topic.

439
00:30:55,757 --> 00:30:57,757
I know one person who mentioned that he has some.

440
00:30:57,757 --> 00:30:59,757
Okay, so they are real.

441
00:30:59,757 --> 00:31:01,757
They do exist.

442
00:31:01,757 --> 00:31:07,757
I've kind of been wondering if there's just some way that this is just another layer
of manipulation.

443
00:31:07,757 --> 00:31:09,757
But of course the world is a huge place.

444
00:31:09,757 --> 00:31:13,757
You know that it's not because the numbers are so big.

445
00:31:13,757 --> 00:31:15,757
But yeah, this is these retail investors who are swept up in the cult.

446
00:31:15,757 --> 00:31:17,757
And it's not great.

447
00:31:17,757 --> 00:31:19,757
Although you can often win.

448
00:31:19,757 --> 00:31:21,757
Yeah, I think that's a great point.

449
00:31:21,757 --> 00:31:23,757
Like him, he's making everyone money.

450
00:31:23,757 --> 00:31:29,757
Sometimes you just post the one-year price chart of MSTR, which is this huge
negative number.

451
00:31:29,757 --> 00:31:33,757
And then you can just like, I don't want to say win the debate.

452
00:31:33,757 --> 00:31:35,757
But you can just be like, well, this is what you're getting with him.

453
00:31:35,757 --> 00:31:39,757
And then I've done a thing too where I say, well, hey, listen.

454
00:31:39,757 --> 00:31:45,757
Before Michael Saylor, it went from like one cent to like $100,000.

455
00:31:45,757 --> 00:31:47,757
So it literally went like 10 million X up.

456
00:31:47,757 --> 00:31:53,757
But now Michael Saylor, you can go to SaylorTracker.com.

457
00:31:53,757 --> 00:31:57,757
It's the greatest thing, one of the best things to happen if you're trying to fight
the cult.

458
00:31:57,757 --> 00:32:01,757
Because it just shows you like, okay, yeah, he bought a lot of Bitcoin.

459
00:32:01,757 --> 00:32:03,757
But at really high prices.

460
00:32:03,757 --> 00:32:05,757
He actually hasn't made any money.

461
00:32:05,757 --> 00:32:07,757
He's lost a lot of money with Bitcoin.

462
00:32:07,757 --> 00:32:09,757
His MSTR has gone up.

463
00:32:09,757 --> 00:32:11,757
I don't know if this is the case.

464
00:32:11,757 --> 00:32:17,757
I strongly suspect that it was because the equity value is so low because the
expectations were so low.

465
00:32:17,757 --> 00:32:21,757
Like he had this fiefdom, this kingdom with a bunch of cash.

466
00:32:21,757 --> 00:32:23,757
MSTR had all this cash that he had like raised.

467
00:32:23,757 --> 00:32:29,757
And he's kind of limping along pretending to be a fake company, pretending to be
this analytics company.

468
00:32:29,757 --> 00:32:31,757
It's kind of fake. This is all speculation.

469
00:32:31,757 --> 00:32:37,757
So any lawyers who may be suing me right now for defamation, I just say this is all
my – I haven't looked into this at all.

470
00:32:37,757 --> 00:32:39,757
But this is the only thing – again, this is the only thing that fits the story.

471
00:32:39,757 --> 00:32:41,757
Why does he even have this company?

472
00:32:41,757 --> 00:32:45,757
Because people don't really use microstrategy products.

473
00:32:45,757 --> 00:32:50,757
It's not like Apple or something or Tesla where you see people driving the Tesla
around.

474
00:32:50,757 --> 00:32:53,757
You're like, oh, I guess that's a real company.

475
00:32:53,757 --> 00:32:59,757
So I think he had all this money, but then the equity holders realized he was just
going to waste it all and spend it all.

476
00:32:59,757 --> 00:33:01,757
Because it's cool to be this – you can expense all these things.

477
00:33:01,757 --> 00:33:07,757
You can get the private jet even if the company is fake and it doesn't really – so
apparently it has some revenues.

478
00:33:07,757 --> 00:33:12,757
But it had this giant pile of cash, and then it was very low.

479
00:33:12,757 --> 00:33:14,757
So I don't know. Someone can actually look into that and figure out if that's true.

480
00:33:14,757 --> 00:33:22,757
But I was trying to explain why the MSTR price go up after he started buying Bitcoin
if he hasn't actually made any money through the Bitcoin purchases.

481
00:33:22,757 --> 00:33:25,757
But yeah, who knows? I don't know. Is it even worth it?

482
00:33:25,757 --> 00:33:27,757
Well, he's not down that bad.

483
00:33:27,757 --> 00:33:31,757
He's down – so right now he's down $9.7 billion, which sounds bad.

484
00:33:31,757 --> 00:33:34,757
But it's only negative 15%.

485
00:33:34,757 --> 00:33:36,757
I mean, that's terrible. In Bitcoin – no, see, this makes sense.

486
00:33:36,757 --> 00:33:42,757
In Bitcoin terms, that's like a one day. It could turn around tomorrow. It could be
up 20%.

487
00:33:42,757 --> 00:33:48,757
But think about it like this. Most of the people that we all know who invested in
Bitcoin – I mean, you and I at least.

488
00:33:48,757 --> 00:33:50,757
I don't know about people who are new.

489
00:33:50,757 --> 00:33:55,757
People who have invested in Bitcoin have made 100x, 1,000x.

490
00:33:55,757 --> 00:33:59,757
Some people have made – you and I know people who have made a million x on Bitcoin.

491
00:33:59,757 --> 00:34:05,757
So Michael Saylor is one of the least successful Bitcoin investors of all time down
there at negative 15%.

492
00:34:05,757 --> 00:34:09,757
And those people are up here at plus 99 million percent, which is not even an
exaggeration.

493
00:34:09,757 --> 00:34:12,757
You'd think that would be a hyperbole, but it's literally not.

494
00:34:12,757 --> 00:34:19,757
For someone like Roger Ver who may have bought at less than $0.10 and then sold at
$100,000.

495
00:34:19,757 --> 00:34:24,757
Well, he'd be up 99 million percent on that.

496
00:34:25,757 --> 00:34:32,757
So Michael Saylor – some people – we've got Eric Voorhees over here and all these
other people.

497
00:34:32,757 --> 00:34:39,757
And then we've got Michael Saylor down at a negative number, whatever.

498
00:34:39,757 --> 00:34:45,757
So I'm not sure what to make of that, but it doesn't translate to the savior.

499
00:34:45,757 --> 00:34:52,757
Well, Paul, the funny part is that we are all governed by these funny narratives
that are very tribal.

500
00:34:53,757 --> 00:35:01,757
And according to the BTC Maxi narrative, Roger fumbled the bag and sold in 2017 to
buy BCH.

501
00:35:01,757 --> 00:35:03,757
And he has been losing ever since.

502
00:35:03,757 --> 00:35:06,757
He sold a lot, but I don't know.

503
00:35:06,757 --> 00:35:11,757
And he also sold – I know that he bought lots of other things when they were just
starting.

504
00:35:11,757 --> 00:35:17,757
Like a super early Zcash type of a thing is my understanding.

505
00:35:17,757 --> 00:35:21,757
I think Zcash, Ripple, Stellar.

506
00:35:21,757 --> 00:35:24,757
Just more diversification.

507
00:35:24,757 --> 00:35:27,757
But yeah, I don't know.

508
00:35:27,757 --> 00:35:39,757
Even 2017, that was a time when – by then BTC was already going up to almost
$20,000.

509
00:35:40,757 --> 00:35:47,757
So again, if you buy at $0.10 and you sell at $20,000, that's a lot.

510
00:35:47,757 --> 00:35:51,757
That's a lot more than negative 15%.

511
00:35:51,757 --> 00:35:53,757
It's just such weird analysis to me.

512
00:35:53,757 --> 00:36:01,757
The fact that if anybody who has that point of view is kind of like they've boiled
everything down to this kind of one-dimensional analysis.

513
00:36:01,757 --> 00:36:04,757
Because they can't handle any more than that.

514
00:36:04,757 --> 00:36:09,757
And it's just like if you sold at anything less than the top, bad.

515
00:36:09,757 --> 00:36:11,757
You must be a complete moron.

516
00:36:11,757 --> 00:36:16,757
And there's no – doesn't matter if they haven't done that.

517
00:36:16,757 --> 00:36:18,757
Doesn't matter if nobody has done that.

518
00:36:18,757 --> 00:36:20,757
Doesn't matter if that's super unlikely.

519
00:36:20,757 --> 00:36:22,757
Doesn't matter when you got in, when you got out.

520
00:36:22,757 --> 00:36:27,757
Doesn't matter what contributions or influence you had on the space or the scene.

521
00:36:27,757 --> 00:36:31,757
Besides just whether you timed the Ponzi correctly.

522
00:36:31,757 --> 00:36:33,757
Nothing.

523
00:36:34,757 --> 00:36:37,757
It's so weird seeing people – I mean, you don't see it now.

524
00:36:37,757 --> 00:36:40,757
But a few years ago, you see Roger makes a post.

525
00:36:40,757 --> 00:36:43,757
And some guy's in there being like, have fun staying poor.

526
00:36:43,757 --> 00:36:45,757
And you're like, what?

527
00:36:45,757 --> 00:36:49,757
Telling Roger to have fun staying poor.

528
00:36:49,757 --> 00:36:51,757
There's no logical –

529
00:36:51,757 --> 00:36:55,757
I think it's a reasonable thing to say if you're talking not about material wealth.

530
00:36:55,757 --> 00:36:57,757
But rather about some other kind of wealth.

531
00:36:57,757 --> 00:37:00,757
Say he's poor in other ways.

532
00:37:00,757 --> 00:37:02,757
Well, that's the funny thing.

533
00:37:02,757 --> 00:37:05,757
Because that's why the whole Bitcoin Jesus thing is so funny.

534
00:37:05,757 --> 00:37:09,757
Because he actually hates the name Bitcoin Jesus.

535
00:37:09,757 --> 00:37:11,757
He never wanted to be Bitcoin Jesus.

536
00:37:11,757 --> 00:37:14,757
And then people say, oh, who does he think he is?

537
00:37:14,757 --> 00:37:17,757
Like big-noting himself as Bitcoin Jesus.

538
00:37:17,757 --> 00:37:20,757
And instead he got crucified, and now they call him Bitcoin Judas.

539
00:37:20,757 --> 00:37:23,757
Which ironically makes him even more Bitcoin Jesus.

540
00:37:23,757 --> 00:37:25,757
More like Jesus Bitcoin Judas now.

541
00:37:25,757 --> 00:37:27,757
That's right.

542
00:37:27,757 --> 00:37:30,757
Of course, Jesus was hated at the time.

543
00:37:30,757 --> 00:37:32,757
For telling the truth, exactly like he did.

544
00:37:32,757 --> 00:37:35,757
He suffered and died and was buried.

545
00:37:35,757 --> 00:37:37,757
And then was born again.

546
00:37:37,757 --> 00:37:38,757
That's right.

547
00:37:38,757 --> 00:37:39,757
Exactly.

548
00:37:39,757 --> 00:37:43,757
He's just got to wait out his gag order, and then he'll be back.

549
00:37:43,757 --> 00:37:45,757
But I don't know.

550
00:37:45,757 --> 00:37:46,757
We'll see.

551
00:37:46,757 --> 00:37:47,757
We'll see.

552
00:37:47,757 --> 00:37:49,757
Michael Saylor is going to be going the other direction.

553
00:37:49,757 --> 00:37:51,757
The hero that becomes the villain.

554
00:37:51,757 --> 00:37:53,757
Or maybe it's the same cycle.

555
00:37:54,757 --> 00:37:57,757
Is Michael Saylor going to be the next Bitcoin Judas 2.0?

556
00:37:57,757 --> 00:37:59,757
There is no second Judas?

557
00:37:59,757 --> 00:38:03,757
I mean, he's sort of more sinister, I think.

558
00:38:03,757 --> 00:38:06,757
So he's kind of like more cutthroat and evil in a way.

559
00:38:06,757 --> 00:38:09,757
Because Roger always had this earnestness, I thought.

560
00:38:09,757 --> 00:38:12,757
And he was like.

561
00:38:12,757 --> 00:38:16,757
So it's kind of, I think people get a little more fun tearing him down.

562
00:38:16,757 --> 00:38:21,757
Whereas Michael Saylor is like, oh, I'm a cutthroat CEO.

563
00:38:22,757 --> 00:38:25,757
My headquarters are in the CIA building.

564
00:38:25,757 --> 00:38:27,757
Or across the street.

565
00:38:27,757 --> 00:38:28,757
Or whatever.

566
00:38:28,757 --> 00:38:31,757
And I don't know.

567
00:38:31,757 --> 00:38:35,757
He's also such a, with all the metaphors.

568
00:38:35,757 --> 00:38:37,757
You know what I mean?

569
00:38:37,757 --> 00:38:39,757
Roger would just be some guy talking.

570
00:38:39,757 --> 00:38:41,757
And then Michael Saylor is like, listen.

571
00:38:41,757 --> 00:38:43,757
It's like when they added electricity to hotels.

572
00:38:43,757 --> 00:38:45,757
You don't want to be in a hotel with no electricity.

573
00:38:45,757 --> 00:38:47,757
He's like a hypnotist or something.

574
00:38:47,757 --> 00:38:48,757
You know?

575
00:38:48,757 --> 00:38:49,757
So I don't know.

576
00:38:49,757 --> 00:38:52,757
It's just not as fun to talk to him.

577
00:38:52,757 --> 00:38:54,757
I like the analogies.

578
00:38:54,757 --> 00:38:59,757
That's one thing that I think is really positive and persuasive.

579
00:38:59,757 --> 00:39:03,757
And fun to think about is analogies for this stuff.

580
00:39:03,757 --> 00:39:06,757
And I think he's good at coming up with them.

581
00:39:06,757 --> 00:39:09,757
I also like his analogies for the same reason.

582
00:39:09,757 --> 00:39:10,757
Even though I agree with Paul.

583
00:39:10,757 --> 00:39:14,757
That it is basically reasoning by analogy.

584
00:39:14,757 --> 00:39:17,757
Used as a form of sort of hypnosis.

585
00:39:17,757 --> 00:39:19,757
Because analogies are very useful.

586
00:39:19,757 --> 00:39:20,757
Of course they exist for a reason.

587
00:39:20,757 --> 00:39:24,757
Which is for somebody who doesn't understand things at a deep level.

588
00:39:24,757 --> 00:39:26,757
You have to get them started somehow.

589
00:39:26,757 --> 00:39:28,757
So you give them a rough approximation.

590
00:39:28,757 --> 00:39:30,757
And that helps them get the first or second step.

591
00:39:30,757 --> 00:39:32,757
And then the more deeper you get into it.

592
00:39:32,757 --> 00:39:33,757
Then you can say, okay.

593
00:39:33,757 --> 00:39:34,757
You know when I told you.

594
00:39:34,757 --> 00:39:36,757
Like when I was in high school.

595
00:39:36,757 --> 00:39:37,757
My chemistry teacher said to me.

596
00:39:37,757 --> 00:39:38,757
He said, okay.

597
00:39:38,757 --> 00:39:41,757
For the first year, all we're going to do is lie to you about chemistry.

598
00:39:41,757 --> 00:39:43,757
We're going to tell you all these things about atoms.

599
00:39:43,757 --> 00:39:45,757
And about the way the material world works.

600
00:39:45,757 --> 00:39:46,757
And all this stuff.

601
00:39:46,757 --> 00:39:47,757
It's all fake, right?

602
00:39:47,757 --> 00:39:48,757
None of this is actually true.

603
00:39:48,757 --> 00:39:51,757
But it's how we kind of get you started on the right path.

604
00:39:51,757 --> 00:39:54,757
And then we'll take away the lies later.

605
00:39:54,757 --> 00:39:56,757
But if you don't ever take away the lies.

606
00:39:56,757 --> 00:39:58,757
Then it is just a scam basically.

607
00:39:58,757 --> 00:40:00,757
I think he's a huge bullshitter.

608
00:40:00,757 --> 00:40:04,757
And so the analogies amplify his ability to just.

609
00:40:04,757 --> 00:40:07,757
Like he'll say these things.

610
00:40:07,757 --> 00:40:08,757
And it's like it almost.

611
00:40:08,757 --> 00:40:10,757
It doesn't even matter if they're true or false.

612
00:40:10,757 --> 00:40:13,757
Like he'll say Bitcoin is digital credit.

613
00:40:13,757 --> 00:40:15,757
And then he'll say Bitcoin is digital capital.

614
00:40:15,757 --> 00:40:19,757
And then he'll say like Bitcoin is digital energy.

615
00:40:19,757 --> 00:40:23,757
And it's like they can't be all those things at once.

616
00:40:23,757 --> 00:40:26,757
It's all Manhattan real estate.

617
00:40:26,757 --> 00:40:28,757
And then so.

618
00:40:28,757 --> 00:40:32,757
But he uses the analogy just to evade criticism.

619
00:40:32,757 --> 00:40:34,757
He doesn't use it to really explain.

620
00:40:34,757 --> 00:40:36,757
He's a little too fast and loose with the truth.

621
00:40:36,757 --> 00:40:38,757
But he doesn't care.

622
00:40:38,757 --> 00:40:39,757
He doesn't even care.

623
00:40:39,757 --> 00:40:41,757
So it's not even a lie.

624
00:40:41,757 --> 00:40:43,757
And I find that annoying.

625
00:40:43,757 --> 00:40:45,757
Really and truly.

626
00:40:45,757 --> 00:40:47,757
I find it depressing.

627
00:40:47,757 --> 00:40:50,757
And many of the analogies don't make any sense at all.

628
00:40:50,757 --> 00:40:53,757
And you know.

629
00:40:53,757 --> 00:40:55,757
When Danny from Bitcoin.

630
00:40:55,757 --> 00:40:56,757
Where Bitcoin did.

631
00:40:56,757 --> 00:40:58,757
And he tried to ask some simple questions.

632
00:40:58,757 --> 00:41:00,757
That was so good.

633
00:41:00,757 --> 00:41:02,757
Those were the simplest questions you could get.

634
00:41:02,757 --> 00:41:04,757
Softball questions like.

635
00:41:04,757 --> 00:41:05,757
Hey a lot of.

636
00:41:05,757 --> 00:41:06,757
Now you're doing these.

637
00:41:06,757 --> 00:41:08,757
He basically said there's a lot of treasury companies.

638
00:41:08,757 --> 00:41:10,757
You are doing these preferreds.

639
00:41:10,757 --> 00:41:12,757
If they also do preferreds.

640
00:41:12,757 --> 00:41:14,757
How should we think about that?

641
00:41:14,757 --> 00:41:15,757
Whatever.

642
00:41:15,757 --> 00:41:16,757
And then.

643
00:41:16,757 --> 00:41:18,757
There was like this 45 minute tirade about.

644
00:41:18,757 --> 00:41:20,757
They don't compete with.

645
00:41:20,757 --> 00:41:22,757
These treasury companies don't compete with each other.

646
00:41:22,757 --> 00:41:24,757
But they actually do.

647
00:41:24,757 --> 00:41:26,757
And then the hotel electricity.

648
00:41:26,757 --> 00:41:28,757
And then we're all buying Bitcoin.

649
00:41:28,757 --> 00:41:30,757
Why are you criticizing.

650
00:41:30,757 --> 00:41:31,757
And then he was like Danny.

651
00:41:31,757 --> 00:41:33,757
You should be criticizing these companies that don't buy Bitcoin.

652
00:41:33,757 --> 00:41:36,757
It was like none of that was even the point.

653
00:41:36,757 --> 00:41:38,757
It was very disturbing.

654
00:41:38,757 --> 00:41:40,757
And so.

655
00:41:41,757 --> 00:41:44,757
He's clearly feeling some kind of pressure and insecurity.

656
00:41:44,757 --> 00:41:46,757
Which is good.

657
00:41:46,757 --> 00:41:48,757
Because maybe he'll stop weighing in on everything.

658
00:41:48,757 --> 00:41:50,757
Because you know.

659
00:41:50,757 --> 00:41:52,757
What if.

660
00:41:52,757 --> 00:41:54,757
Also us are getting trapped by him.

661
00:41:54,757 --> 00:41:57,757
Because we are complaining about him.

662
00:41:57,757 --> 00:41:59,757
For like an hour now.

663
00:41:59,757 --> 00:42:01,757
It's just like Donald Trump.

664
00:42:01,757 --> 00:42:03,757
Like you can't stop talking about him.

665
00:42:03,757 --> 00:42:04,757
And it makes him.

666
00:42:04,757 --> 00:42:06,757
It gives him much more power.

667
00:42:06,757 --> 00:42:08,757
For Donald Trump it was easier to see.

668
00:42:08,757 --> 00:42:10,757
I think for Michael Saylor.

669
00:42:10,757 --> 00:42:12,757
So but let's just not move then.

670
00:42:12,757 --> 00:42:14,757
I go for weeks and weeks at a time.

671
00:42:14,757 --> 00:42:16,757
Without thinking about Michael Saylor.

672
00:42:16,757 --> 00:42:18,757
So I'd be happy to move on to some other topic.

673
00:42:18,757 --> 00:42:20,757
If anyone else is willing to.

674
00:42:20,757 --> 00:42:22,757
I want to hear.

675
00:42:22,757 --> 00:42:24,757
Before.

676
00:42:24,757 --> 00:42:26,757
I know Robin is going to have to go.

677
00:42:26,757 --> 00:42:28,757
In the not too distant future.

678
00:42:28,757 --> 00:42:30,757
So I do want to hit a couple of key things.

679
00:42:30,757 --> 00:42:32,757
Maybe we can't do your whole.

680
00:42:32,757 --> 00:42:34,757
How you got into Bitcoin story.

681
00:42:34,757 --> 00:42:36,757
That we traditionally do with everyone.

682
00:42:36,757 --> 00:42:38,757
The opcodes.

683
00:42:38,757 --> 00:42:40,757
Because you wrote into the show.

684
00:42:40,757 --> 00:42:42,757
You know previously.

685
00:42:42,757 --> 00:42:44,757
Or into Vlad show really.

686
00:42:44,757 --> 00:42:46,757
To say you were loving the BCH VM opcodes.

687
00:42:46,757 --> 00:42:48,757
So give us your breakdown.

688
00:42:48,757 --> 00:42:50,757
And thoughts on that.

689
00:42:50,757 --> 00:42:52,757
Also specifically.

690
00:42:52,757 --> 00:42:54,757
Are we missing anything.

691
00:42:54,757 --> 00:42:56,757
Because they might be good.

692
00:42:56,757 --> 00:42:58,757
But is there any gaps you've noticed.

693
00:42:58,757 --> 00:43:00,757
I'm not super familiar with the opcodes.

694
00:43:00,757 --> 00:43:02,757
I just like skimmed the docs.

695
00:43:02,757 --> 00:43:04,757
And I found.

696
00:43:04,757 --> 00:43:06,757
That just got added.

697
00:43:06,757 --> 00:43:08,757
The functional codes.

698
00:43:08,757 --> 00:43:10,757
In last month.

699
00:43:10,757 --> 00:43:12,757
And I found that very interesting.

700
00:43:12,757 --> 00:43:14,757
Because that solves.

701
00:43:14,757 --> 00:43:16,757
A fundamental problem of script.

702
00:43:16,757 --> 00:43:18,757
If you want to build.

703
00:43:18,757 --> 00:43:20,757
Anything complex.

704
00:43:20,757 --> 00:43:22,757
Like a snark verifier.

705
00:43:22,757 --> 00:43:24,757
Then you end up with huge scripts.

706
00:43:24,757 --> 00:43:26,757
Or you have to enshrine.

707
00:43:26,757 --> 00:43:28,757
Very high level opcodes.

708
00:43:28,757 --> 00:43:30,757
For example pairing opcodes.

709
00:43:30,757 --> 00:43:32,757
That you actually don't want to maintain.

710
00:43:32,757 --> 00:43:34,757
And yeah.

711
00:43:34,757 --> 00:43:36,757
I think that solves.

712
00:43:36,757 --> 00:43:38,757
An interesting problem.

713
00:43:38,757 --> 00:43:40,757
And.

714
00:43:40,757 --> 00:43:42,757
Yeah.

715
00:43:42,757 --> 00:43:44,757
I wonder if you guys are working with snarks.

716
00:43:44,757 --> 00:43:46,757
Or if you're even trying.

717
00:43:46,757 --> 00:43:48,757
To build anything.

718
00:43:48,757 --> 00:43:50,757
On top of snarks.

719
00:43:50,757 --> 00:43:52,757
Or something.

720
00:43:52,757 --> 00:43:54,757
Maybe it's not necessary.

721
00:43:54,757 --> 00:43:56,757
Because you can scale on the base layer.

722
00:43:56,757 --> 00:43:58,757
You're not scared of that.

723
00:43:58,757 --> 00:44:00,757
So I wonder.

724
00:44:00,757 --> 00:44:02,757
If there's actually any need for snarks.

725
00:44:02,757 --> 00:44:04,757
Maybe for privacy protocols.

726
00:44:04,757 --> 00:44:06,757
Yeah. I mean as far as I know.

727
00:44:06,757 --> 00:44:08,757
It's kind of the same as like lightning network.

728
00:44:08,757 --> 00:44:10,757
Where everybody has this complete hopes.

729
00:44:10,757 --> 00:44:12,757
Where they think that big blockers hate lightning network.

730
00:44:12,757 --> 00:44:14,757
When nothing is further from the truth.

731
00:44:14,757 --> 00:44:16,757
If you go back and you listen to the block size.

732
00:44:16,757 --> 00:44:18,757
Everybody was just like.

733
00:44:18,757 --> 00:44:20,757
Why don't you just do both.

734
00:44:20,757 --> 00:44:22,757
Obviously you can do lightning network.

735
00:44:22,757 --> 00:44:24,757
And bigger blocks.

736
00:44:24,757 --> 00:44:26,757
In fact they're synergistic.

737
00:44:26,757 --> 00:44:28,757
Because if you have bigger blocks.

738
00:44:28,757 --> 00:44:30,757
The whole thing will just function smoother.

739
00:44:30,757 --> 00:44:32,757
And it's kind of the same with any of this.

740
00:44:32,757 --> 00:44:34,757
Like snarks or snarks or anything like that.

741
00:44:34,757 --> 00:44:36,757
Layer twos of any different variety.

742
00:44:36,757 --> 00:44:38,757
Where as far as I know.

743
00:44:38,757 --> 00:44:40,757
And certainly from my own point of view.

744
00:44:40,757 --> 00:44:42,757
I would love anybody.

745
00:44:42,757 --> 00:44:44,757
To come and build any of that stuff in BCH.

746
00:44:44,757 --> 00:44:46,757
It just doesn't happen as a combination.

747
00:44:46,757 --> 00:44:48,757
Of like you said.

748
00:44:48,757 --> 00:44:50,757
A. It's not super necessary.

749
00:44:50,757 --> 00:44:52,757
So it's not the priority that everybody is looking at right now.

750
00:44:52,757 --> 00:44:54,757
And B. It's just a small community.

751
00:44:54,757 --> 00:44:56,757
So the combined aggregate resources.

752
00:44:56,757 --> 00:44:58,757
Are too small.

753
00:44:58,757 --> 00:45:00,757
But as it grows.

754
00:45:00,757 --> 00:45:02,757
I'm sure more and more people who are interested in that stuff.

755
00:45:02,757 --> 00:45:04,757
Will jump in and do it.

756
00:45:04,757 --> 00:45:06,757
So you could.

757
00:45:06,757 --> 00:45:08,757
Or anybody could.

758
00:45:08,757 --> 00:45:10,757
Anybody who's listening.

759
00:45:10,757 --> 00:45:12,757
We've prepared all the building site.

760
00:45:12,757 --> 00:45:14,757
All the foundations are there.

761
00:45:14,757 --> 00:45:16,757
Have at it.

762
00:45:16,757 --> 00:45:18,757
We'd love that.

763
00:45:18,757 --> 00:45:20,757
I personally think blocks are too big.

764
00:45:20,757 --> 00:45:22,757
The more we come up with solutions.

765
00:45:22,757 --> 00:45:24,757
That allow us to compress UTXOs.

766
00:45:24,757 --> 00:45:26,757
I think the reaction among node developers.

767
00:45:26,757 --> 00:45:28,757
Should be great.

768
00:45:28,757 --> 00:45:30,757
If 10 people can have the same UTXO.

769
00:45:30,757 --> 00:45:32,757
Then we can reduce the block size.

770
00:45:32,757 --> 00:45:34,757
By 10X.

771
00:45:34,757 --> 00:45:36,757
From its current size.

772
00:45:36,757 --> 00:45:38,757
But there's no real energy.

773
00:45:38,757 --> 00:45:40,757
For that sadly.

774
00:45:40,757 --> 00:45:42,757
But yeah I think currently blocks are too big.

775
00:45:42,757 --> 00:45:44,757
It'd be cool to make them smaller.

776
00:45:44,757 --> 00:45:46,757
As these technologies keep getting better.

777
00:45:46,757 --> 00:45:48,757
Those ideas are becoming more prominent though.

778
00:45:48,757 --> 00:45:50,757
I mean Paul you're trying to do that.

779
00:45:50,757 --> 00:45:52,757
With E-cash right.

780
00:45:52,757 --> 00:45:54,757
Reducing the 10X.

781
00:45:54,757 --> 00:45:56,757
And also the filter guys.

782
00:45:56,757 --> 00:45:58,757
They also like that idea of smaller blocks.

783
00:45:58,757 --> 00:46:00,757
They maybe just have started with spam.

784
00:46:00,757 --> 00:46:02,757
And then they're going to get around.

785
00:46:02,757 --> 00:46:04,757
To smaller blocks later.

786
00:46:04,757 --> 00:46:06,757
But it's not even totally out of the question.

787
00:46:06,757 --> 00:46:08,757
In terms of growing prominence.

788
00:46:08,757 --> 00:46:10,757
For that type of idea.

789
00:46:10,757 --> 00:46:12,757
Interestingly.

790
00:46:12,757 --> 00:46:14,757
Well the block size you know.

791
00:46:14,757 --> 00:46:16,757
It's a blessing and a curse.

792
00:46:16,757 --> 00:46:18,757
Because of course more block space.

793
00:46:18,757 --> 00:46:20,757
Makes a lot of things easier.

794
00:46:20,757 --> 00:46:22,757
The full node has to do more work.

795
00:46:22,757 --> 00:46:24,757
So my reading of the scaling war.

796
00:46:24,757 --> 00:46:26,757
Which is very different than most people's.

797
00:46:26,757 --> 00:46:28,757
But it was like people couldn't disagree.

798
00:46:28,757 --> 00:46:30,757
On how much the full node should cost.

799
00:46:30,757 --> 00:46:32,757
So I think it's neat when you have.

800
00:46:32,757 --> 00:46:34,757
The mandatory L1.

801
00:46:34,757 --> 00:46:36,757
That should be cheap.

802
00:46:36,757 --> 00:46:38,757
That should be a very very cheap small block.

803
00:46:38,757 --> 00:46:40,757
And then you can just add on to that.

804
00:46:40,757 --> 00:46:42,757
The optional L2s.

805
00:46:42,757 --> 00:46:44,757
I always thought that was the real.

806
00:46:44,757 --> 00:46:46,757
What the real debate was about.

807
00:46:46,757 --> 00:46:48,757
And I didn't even.

808
00:46:48,757 --> 00:46:50,757
At the time I didn't even think of that as scaling.

809
00:46:50,757 --> 00:46:52,757
Because I just thought.

810
00:46:52,757 --> 00:46:54,757
It's the same software.

811
00:46:54,757 --> 00:46:56,757
But with a bigger block size.

812
00:46:56,757 --> 00:46:58,757
So it's not like doing more with less.

813
00:46:58,757 --> 00:47:00,757
Doing more with less would be like.

814
00:47:00,757 --> 00:47:02,757
More technology.

815
00:47:02,757 --> 00:47:04,757
That's what I thought the Lightning Network was.

816
00:47:04,757 --> 00:47:06,757
I think the smartest thing the large blockers ever did.

817
00:47:06,757 --> 00:47:08,757
Was hate on the Lightning Network.

818
00:47:08,757 --> 00:47:10,757
I didn't like it at the time.

819
00:47:10,757 --> 00:47:12,757
Because I thought a lot of the critiques.

820
00:47:12,757 --> 00:47:14,757
Of the Lightning Network in 2017.

821
00:47:14,757 --> 00:47:16,757
A lot of them were unfair.

822
00:47:16,757 --> 00:47:18,757
Some were kind of like half-baked.

823
00:47:18,757 --> 00:47:20,757
They were like this is just going to end up being.

824
00:47:20,757 --> 00:47:22,757
Banks 2.0.

825
00:47:22,757 --> 00:47:24,757
Which that ended up happening.

826
00:47:24,757 --> 00:47:26,757
But I think at the time.

827
00:47:26,757 --> 00:47:28,757
That was kind of clear.

828
00:47:28,757 --> 00:47:30,757
That that wasn't totally fleshed out.

829
00:47:30,757 --> 00:47:32,757
That was like a kid comes up to you.

830
00:47:32,757 --> 00:47:34,757
With a fair coin.

831
00:47:34,757 --> 00:47:36,757
And they say this coin is going to land heads.

832
00:47:36,757 --> 00:47:38,757
I'm certain of it.

833
00:47:38,757 --> 00:47:40,757
And they flip it and it lands heads.

834
00:47:40,757 --> 00:47:42,757
And it's like how impressed are you?

835
00:47:42,757 --> 00:47:44,757
You're just kind of annoyed honestly.

836
00:47:44,757 --> 00:47:46,757
One thing about the Lightning Network.

837
00:47:46,757 --> 00:47:48,757
One that remained undefeated the whole time.

838
00:47:48,757 --> 00:47:50,757
That people made.

839
00:47:50,757 --> 00:47:52,757
Was that there's not enough space.

840
00:47:52,757 --> 00:47:54,757
To even onboard people.

841
00:47:54,757 --> 00:47:56,757
To get the channels up.

842
00:47:56,757 --> 00:47:58,757
You need some kind of super convoluted thing.

843
00:47:58,757 --> 00:48:00,757
People were saying in the Lightning Network world.

844
00:48:00,757 --> 00:48:02,757
In 2017.

845
00:48:02,757 --> 00:48:04,757
They were saying we will invent something.

846
00:48:04,757 --> 00:48:06,757
To fix that.

847
00:48:06,757 --> 00:48:08,757
They had a lot of credibility back then.

848
00:48:08,757 --> 00:48:10,757
And so I believed them.

849
00:48:10,757 --> 00:48:12,757
They were totally.

850
00:48:12,757 --> 00:48:14,757
Because now it's all custodial Lightning.

851
00:48:14,757 --> 00:48:16,757
Blah, blah, blah.

852
00:48:16,757 --> 00:48:18,757
So the smartest thing you guys did was hit on Lightning Network.

853
00:48:18,757 --> 00:48:20,757
And I think that.

854
00:48:20,757 --> 00:48:22,757
Lightning Network.

855
00:48:22,757 --> 00:48:24,757
Is not going great.

856
00:48:24,757 --> 00:48:26,757
Interestingly also.

857
00:48:26,757 --> 00:48:28,757
It just happens to be the case.

858
00:48:28,757 --> 00:48:30,757
That from my point of view.

859
00:48:30,757 --> 00:48:32,757
The bandwidth used to be the bottleneck.

860
00:48:32,757 --> 00:48:34,757
Now bandwidth speeds have increased enormously.

861
00:48:34,757 --> 00:48:36,757
Especially you have like Elon.

862
00:48:36,757 --> 00:48:38,757
Remember Elon's tweet.

863
00:48:38,757 --> 00:48:40,757
One of my favorite Elon tweets.

864
00:48:40,757 --> 00:48:42,757
He was trying to shake their fist at the sky.

865
00:48:42,757 --> 00:48:44,757
Talking about what if people.

866
00:48:44,757 --> 00:48:46,757
I don't remember exactly what it was.

867
00:48:46,757 --> 00:48:48,757
It was something like what if people.

868
00:48:48,757 --> 00:48:50,757
I'm not going to make this up and screw it up.

869
00:48:50,757 --> 00:48:52,757
But it was something like.

870
00:48:52,757 --> 00:48:54,757
What if people in Brazil buy Starlink internet.

871
00:48:54,757 --> 00:48:56,757
And then the Brazilian government tries to.

872
00:48:56,757 --> 00:48:58,757
I don't know if it was Brazil or not.

873
00:48:58,757 --> 00:49:00,757
I'm sorry about the Brazilian government.

874
00:49:00,757 --> 00:49:02,757
If that's not who it was.

875
00:49:02,757 --> 00:49:04,757
But it was someone who was like.

876
00:49:04,757 --> 00:49:06,757
What if they try to make it.

877
00:49:06,757 --> 00:49:08,757
They outlaw it.

878
00:49:08,757 --> 00:49:10,757
They outlaw the case program.

879
00:49:10,757 --> 00:49:12,757
So Elon can just tweet.

880
00:49:12,757 --> 00:49:14,757
Shake their fist at the sky.

881
00:49:14,757 --> 00:49:16,757
And it was like.

882
00:49:16,757 --> 00:49:18,757
And now that internet is super fast.

883
00:49:18,757 --> 00:49:20,757
So.

884
00:49:20,757 --> 00:49:22,757
And now one thing I always say about.

885
00:49:22,757 --> 00:49:24,757
This internet bottleneck thing too.

886
00:49:24,757 --> 00:49:26,757
Is that you got people playing.

887
00:49:26,757 --> 00:49:28,757
Like I got friends who still play.

888
00:49:28,757 --> 00:49:30,757
Like Call of Duty and stuff.

889
00:49:30,757 --> 00:49:32,757
And you get like a mandatory Call of Duty update.

890
00:49:32,757 --> 00:49:34,757
It's like 120 gigabytes.

891
00:49:34,757 --> 00:49:36,757
You just routinely download these giant files.

892
00:49:36,757 --> 00:49:38,757
And then the larger blocks.

893
00:49:38,757 --> 00:49:40,757
Is improved.

894
00:49:40,757 --> 00:49:42,757
Like by leaps and bounds.

895
00:49:42,757 --> 00:49:44,757
Over the last 10 years.

896
00:49:44,757 --> 00:49:46,757
And the case for the Lightning Network.

897
00:49:46,757 --> 00:49:48,757
Has I think collapsed.

898
00:49:48,757 --> 00:49:50,757
And I think.

899
00:49:50,757 --> 00:49:52,757
The real problem with the Lightning Network.

900
00:49:52,757 --> 00:49:54,757
Is part of the cult.

901
00:49:54,757 --> 00:49:56,757
The cult is the number one dimension to watch.

902
00:49:56,757 --> 00:49:58,757
I think in crypto.

903
00:49:58,757 --> 00:50:00,757
This is the big.

904
00:50:00,757 --> 00:50:01,071
Because it's like.

905
00:50:01,071 --> 00:50:02,071
The cults have these like weird life cycles. You know. Like there's the Dan Larimer
cult.

906
00:50:02,071 --> 00:50:06,071
You know. Or there's the Vitalik cult. Or whatever. So there's all these cults.

907
00:50:06,071 --> 00:50:10,071
The cult is the thing to watch. And if the cult is too.

908
00:50:10,071 --> 00:50:14,071
Irrational. It means that we're all doomed. And Lightning.

909
00:50:14,071 --> 00:50:18,071
That's the important thing with Lightning. Is that it became a cult.

910
00:50:18,071 --> 00:50:22,071
But you need a little bit of cult. To kind of bootstrap. You need a little bit of.

911
00:50:22,071 --> 00:50:26,071
You know. What you might call. Cooperation.

912
00:50:26,071 --> 00:50:30,071
Yeah. But the way you pop the cult.

913
00:50:30,071 --> 00:50:34,071
Is just with better information. And people in the cult.

914
00:50:34,071 --> 00:50:38,071
Like you said. Consistently being proven wrong. So that people at the edges.

915
00:50:38,071 --> 00:50:42,071
Who are the most connected to reality. And the least connected to the.

916
00:50:42,071 --> 00:50:46,071
You know. Investing in the cult. I would like to hear an example.

917
00:50:46,071 --> 00:50:50,071
Of something the Lightning people were wrong about.

918
00:50:50,071 --> 00:50:54,071
Well yeah. For instance. Like what Paul is saying.

919
00:50:54,071 --> 00:50:58,071
That I think is a really good point. It's a very simple.

920
00:50:58,071 --> 00:51:02,071
Big blocker point. Made back in the day. Still true today.

921
00:51:02,071 --> 00:51:06,071
Which is that. By raising the block size. You are getting.

922
00:51:06,071 --> 00:51:10,071
By default. All of the world's improvement in internet infrastructure.

923
00:51:10,071 --> 00:51:14,071
And all of it's computer hardware improvement.

924
00:51:14,071 --> 00:51:18,071
Like that's a ginormous industry. Right? And they're working ceaselessly.

925
00:51:18,071 --> 00:51:22,071
Night and day. To figure out how to improve hardware.

926
00:51:22,071 --> 00:51:26,071
And internet connectivity. And all that benefit just flows.

927
00:51:26,071 --> 00:51:30,071
To Bitcoin. To BCH. As a result. Like with no expenditure.

928
00:51:30,071 --> 00:51:34,071
On the case. On the behalf of the BCH community.

929
00:51:34,071 --> 00:51:38,071
But I mean. One thing that specifically the Lightning Network community were wrong
about.

930
00:51:38,071 --> 00:51:42,071
I agree with Paul. Like they said. They'd find solutions.

931
00:51:42,071 --> 00:51:46,071
To the napkin math. That you can only onboard.

932
00:51:46,071 --> 00:51:50,071
Like however many people. In one megabyte blocks.

933
00:51:50,071 --> 00:51:54,071
And that just never appeared. Right?

934
00:51:54,071 --> 00:51:58,071
I think it has. One of the things that was frequently talked about.

935
00:51:58,071 --> 00:52:02,071
Was channel factories. That was a big talking point. Back in the day.

936
00:52:02,071 --> 00:52:06,071
They were talking about. It would be easier to build channel factories.

937
00:52:06,071 --> 00:52:10,071
If we had Cache no input. But they were also possible without it.

938
00:52:10,071 --> 00:52:14,071
And I think we've started to see that. You know the Arc team.

939
00:52:14,071 --> 00:52:18,071
Second in Arcade. Both made implementations of channel factories.

940
00:52:18,071 --> 00:52:22,071
So yeah. I think that's materialized.

941
00:52:22,071 --> 00:52:26,071
After 10 years.

942
00:52:26,071 --> 00:52:30,071
And like billions and billions of dollars in investment. It's starting to appear.

943
00:52:30,071 --> 00:52:34,071
It's a fair.

944
00:52:34,071 --> 00:52:38,071
Sorry? Without covenants.

945
00:52:38,071 --> 00:52:42,071
It's custodial. And also the channel factories have a horrific

946
00:52:42,071 --> 00:52:46,071
problem. Where one single person for free. They have no coins.

947
00:52:46,071 --> 00:52:50,071
They just join. They can then hold the whole thing hostage.

948
00:52:50,071 --> 00:52:54,071
These are the old version. Now okay. Here's the thing. It becomes a cat and mouse
game.

949
00:52:54,071 --> 00:52:58,071
In 2017 they said we'll come up with all this stuff. And then there was L2.

950
00:52:58,071 --> 00:53:02,071
And there was factories. Now each time. This stuff has like a two and a half year

951
00:53:02,071 --> 00:53:06,071
time period from when it's proposed. Then eventually people give up on it.

952
00:53:06,071 --> 00:53:10,071
But then they give up on it. It's like a magician. Or it's like when you're trying
to keep

953
00:53:10,071 --> 00:53:14,071
a young child happy. And you're kind of like. Well we don't have your

954
00:53:14,071 --> 00:53:18,071
favorite toy. But we've got ice cream or whatever. You just swap a thing out.

955
00:53:18,071 --> 00:53:22,071
And it takes a while. And this has gone on and on. And this is why I hate ARK.

956
00:53:22,071 --> 00:53:26,071
And I know Supertestnet likes ARK. Now I might be wrong about this.

957
00:53:26,071 --> 00:53:30,071
But you got to look at it from my point of view. From my point of view

958
00:53:30,071 --> 00:53:34,071
these two Bitcoin Cash people are kind of like getting the last laugh to some
extent.

959
00:53:34,071 --> 00:53:38,071
Because four times in a row I was kind of like maybe they'll be able to fix

960
00:53:38,071 --> 00:53:42,071
Lightning. Now I'm like hating on Lightning and saying Lightning sucks.

961
00:53:42,071 --> 00:53:46,071
Now the two of them are switching back and saying Lightning and Bitcoin Cash is
actually great.

962
00:53:46,071 --> 00:53:50,071
I don't think it's good at all.

963
00:53:50,071 --> 00:53:54,071
We should all be pluralists. We should try lots of things.

964
00:53:54,071 --> 00:53:58,071
All of us are subject matter experts. So we should weigh in on what we think is

965
00:53:58,071 --> 00:54:02,071
seriously worth trying. Should we try? It's like if we can put a man on

966
00:54:02,071 --> 00:54:06,071
the moon. Maybe we can put a man on the sun. And it's like

967
00:54:06,071 --> 00:54:10,071
no. That's probably not going to work.

968
00:54:10,071 --> 00:54:14,071
Lightning people have said three or four times. They had coin pools.

969
00:54:14,071 --> 00:54:18,071
They had channel factories. Every single time this hasn't worked.

970
00:54:18,071 --> 00:54:22,071
Then there was ARK. Then it was like Moon Settler. We were talking about

971
00:54:22,071 --> 00:54:26,071
ARK and he was like yeah it doesn't actually work without CTV.

972
00:54:26,071 --> 00:54:30,071
In the real world everyone does custodial Lightning anyway.

973
00:54:30,071 --> 00:54:34,071
And then all these objections about the ARK liquidity. You need more coins

974
00:54:34,071 --> 00:54:38,071
like eight times as many coins tied up than are actually circulating.

975
00:54:38,071 --> 00:54:42,071
And it's the opposite of how credit works where they say we will negative circulate.

976
00:54:42,071 --> 00:54:46,071
We won't circulate the coins but you can pay in advance. We'll settle up later.

977
00:54:46,071 --> 00:54:50,071
It's like you and your friend. Oh I don't have the cash but I'm good for it. This is
the way the real world works.

978
00:54:50,071 --> 00:54:54,071
Instead of no worry it's like oh I need to pay you eight times as much

979
00:54:54,071 --> 00:54:58,071
to buy this chicken sandwich. So that's no good.

980
00:54:58,071 --> 00:55:02,071
So maybe they'll fix all these things. But the point is this is

981
00:55:02,071 --> 00:55:06,071
exactly what Dan Larimer used to do. This is exactly what NXT and all this other
stuff would do.

982
00:55:06,071 --> 00:55:10,071
They'd say oh we're going to fix all this stuff later. The fix doesn't come.

983
00:55:10,071 --> 00:55:14,071
And it's ultimately I think a huge Rube Goldberg machine

984
00:55:14,071 --> 00:55:18,071
and it's not worth it. This is just to keep extending

985
00:55:18,071 --> 00:55:22,071
this is the gambling addict who's in denial that they have a problem.

986
00:55:22,071 --> 00:55:26,071
And the whole thing is just how can we avoid the pain

987
00:55:26,071 --> 00:55:30,071
of having to admit to everyone that we've screwed up

988
00:55:30,071 --> 00:55:34,071
and that Lightning was a big mistake. It's all just trying to keep the Lightning
idea moving.

989
00:55:34,071 --> 00:55:38,071
And say well you know sure those other things didn't work but now there's Arc

990
00:55:38,071 --> 00:55:42,071
and now there's going to be Cube and now there's other. The more new things that are
invented

991
00:55:42,071 --> 00:55:46,071
this is actually the clue that something is really wrong.

992
00:55:46,071 --> 00:55:50,071
Is there actually one called Cube?

993
00:55:50,071 --> 00:55:54,071
Clearly you haven't been paying attention. No but apparently I did because I made a
troll post

994
00:55:54,071 --> 00:55:58,071
saying you need Lightning Network to fix your Layer 1 and then you need Arc

995
00:55:58,071 --> 00:56:02,071
to fix your broken L2 Lightning and wait until you hear about Quasarix.

996
00:56:02,071 --> 00:56:06,071
Is that actually called Cube? If you have Quasarix that'll fix your Arc.

997
00:56:06,071 --> 00:56:10,071
I literally got it. Okay perfect. I even have the letters right.

998
00:56:10,071 --> 00:56:14,071
I don't think the Cube proposal attempts to fix Arc.

999
00:56:14,071 --> 00:56:18,071
I think the Cube proposal attempts to combine Arc with BitVM

1000
00:56:18,071 --> 00:56:22,071
and make it so you can do computation stuff inside of the point.

1001
00:56:22,071 --> 00:56:26,071
I think that's true. But I think the issue with Lightning is that it's

1002
00:56:26,071 --> 00:56:30,071
introducing all kinds of band-aids

1003
00:56:30,071 --> 00:56:34,071
to make it work for end-users because it's not working for end-users.

1004
00:56:34,071 --> 00:56:38,071
End-users just use Wallet of Satoshi and everyone was fine with that

1005
00:56:38,071 --> 00:56:42,071
until it got banned in the EU and so on.

1006
00:56:42,071 --> 00:56:46,071
Then new solutions came up like Spark for example and

1007
00:56:46,071 --> 00:56:50,071
they are just introducing lots of complexity, lots of

1008
00:56:50,071 --> 00:56:54,071
centralization and a lot of trust assumptions.

1009
00:56:54,071 --> 00:56:58,071
Now we invent these new narratives to gloss over these

1010
00:56:58,071 --> 00:57:02,071
facts. Spark is just non-custodial

1011
00:57:02,071 --> 00:57:06,071
because they write it on their website for regulatory purposes

1012
00:57:06,071 --> 00:57:10,071
because they want to lie to regulators. I think lying to

1013
00:57:10,071 --> 00:57:14,071
regulators is actually fine but they are also lying to users and users are lying to
themselves

1014
00:57:14,071 --> 00:57:18,071
telling themselves that it would be non-custodial even if it's not.

1015
00:57:18,071 --> 00:57:22,071
If the Lightning scaling vision would have been clear about that

1016
00:57:22,071 --> 00:57:26,071
in the beginning then nobody would have bought into it. If they had said,

1017
00:57:26,071 --> 00:57:30,071
we're going to build all kinds of stuff on top that is actually trusted and comes

1018
00:57:30,071 --> 00:57:34,071
with all kinds of complexity and all kinds of narratives to

1019
00:57:34,071 --> 00:57:38,071
make ourselves believe that it's actually what we promised, then nobody would

1020
00:57:38,071 --> 00:57:42,071
have bought into it. I feel like nowadays

1021
00:57:42,071 --> 00:57:46,071
we invent all kinds of new narratives to

1022
00:57:46,071 --> 00:57:50,071
make ourselves believe that stuff.

1023
00:57:50,071 --> 00:57:54,071
I don't look

1024
00:57:54,071 --> 00:57:58,071
at it that way. From my perspective, there was talk of the possibility

1025
00:57:58,071 --> 00:58:02,071
of doing channel factories and coin pools early on

1026
00:58:02,071 --> 00:58:06,071
and now we start to see them emerge.

1027
00:58:06,071 --> 00:58:10,071
Because we don't have CTV, there are

1028
00:58:10,071 --> 00:58:14,071
problems. They don't work as well as they would with CTV or

1029
00:58:14,071 --> 00:58:18,071
one of the other easier covenant opcodes

1030
00:58:18,071 --> 00:58:22,071
but they do work. I don't think it's accurate to say that

1031
00:58:22,071 --> 00:58:26,071
ARC is custodial. It depends on how

1032
00:58:26,071 --> 00:58:30,071
it's used, I suppose.

1033
00:58:30,071 --> 00:58:34,071
It relies on this covenant emulation thing.

1034
00:58:34,071 --> 00:58:38,071
And I think it would be fine to say, yeah, let's do ARC to solve it.

1035
00:58:38,071 --> 00:58:42,071
But then you should be very clear that

1036
00:58:42,071 --> 00:58:46,071
if you don't have CTV, sure you can make the users

1037
00:58:46,071 --> 00:58:50,071
also cosign but that is just impractical. You can

1038
00:58:50,071 --> 00:58:54,071
theoretically do it but you cannot do it in practice and nobody is trying to do it
in practice

1039
00:58:54,071 --> 00:58:58,071
because it's just so impractical. So they are resorting to custodial

1040
00:58:58,071 --> 00:59:02,071
solutions. You can say, yeah, it's one of an assumption but it's still custodial.

1041
00:59:02,071 --> 00:59:06,071
And I think people should just be more

1042
00:59:06,071 --> 00:59:10,071
clear about this fact that it's just fucking

1043
00:59:10,071 --> 00:59:14,071
custodial and that you cannot solve it without CTV because then people would

1044
00:59:14,071 --> 00:59:18,071
feel the pressure to actually activate CTV and not be like,

1045
00:59:18,071 --> 00:59:22,071
let's keep it stewing a little bit for another two or three years until we

1046
00:59:22,071 --> 00:59:26,071
actually know if it's what we want. Because that is a

1047
00:59:26,071 --> 00:59:30,071
bullshit narrative. And I also think

1048
00:59:30,071 --> 00:59:34,071
we should be clear that the original Lightning narrative just

1049
00:59:34,071 --> 00:59:38,071
failed. It failed because the original narrative was like, everyone

1050
00:59:38,071 --> 00:59:42,071
is going to run a Lightning node and people will make money with routing and
everything.

1051
00:59:42,071 --> 00:59:46,071
I remember that. I've actually run a node hoping that I'm

1052
00:59:46,071 --> 00:59:50,071
going to get routing. And it's not happening. This narrative

1053
00:59:50,071 --> 00:59:54,071
certainly failed and it's okay to say it failed. Even if you're not

1054
00:59:54,071 --> 00:59:58,071
opposing Lightning, it's okay

1055
00:59:58,071 --> 01:00:02,071
to say this failed and now let's try to fix it.

1056
01:00:02,071 --> 01:00:06,071
I'm fine with that. I think it is a valuable path to explore.

1057
01:00:06,071 --> 01:00:10,071
I don't think it's the best path for us, but I think it's

1058
01:00:10,071 --> 01:00:14,071
worthwhile doing it or trying it. But I think it's very

1059
01:00:14,071 --> 01:00:18,071
important to be aligned with truth and not tell ourselves bullshit all the

1060
01:00:18,071 --> 01:00:22,071
time. I don't remember a narrative saying that everyone

1061
01:00:22,071 --> 01:00:26,071
will run a routing node if it was everyone will run a node. And I think that

1062
01:00:26,071 --> 01:00:30,071
narrative has succeeded in that there are a lot of nodes

1063
01:00:30,071 --> 01:00:34,071
on phones now that people run. Just a standard Lightning wallet is

1064
01:00:34,071 --> 01:00:38,071
a node on a phone. But if you're saying that everyone is going to

1065
01:00:38,071 --> 01:00:42,071
run routing nodes and earn money, I don't remember a narrative that

1066
01:00:42,071 --> 01:00:46,071
everyone can make money by routing payments and everyone will want to do that.

1067
01:00:46,071 --> 01:00:50,071
I remember saying, it's good that anyone can, but I don't

1068
01:00:50,071 --> 01:00:54,071
remember saying the majority of Lightning users will also run routing nodes.

1069
01:00:54,071 --> 01:00:56,071
But that's maybe the case.

1070
01:00:56,071 --> 01:01:00,071
With Christian Decker, who is the inventor of L2,

1071
01:01:00,071 --> 01:01:04,071
and I think he's one of the most OG Lightning developers.

1072
01:01:04,071 --> 01:01:08,071
He's one of the lead developers of C Lightning and so on.

1073
01:01:08,071 --> 01:01:12,071
And he said that the original vision was that everyone runs a node

1074
01:01:12,071 --> 01:01:14,071
and he said he doesn't think that worked.

1075
01:01:14,071 --> 01:01:18,071
I also remember a tweet from Alex Busford where he said, I just made

1076
01:01:18,071 --> 01:01:22,071
one Bitcoin from routing fees. You can do this to run a node.

1077
01:01:22,071 --> 01:01:26,071
Some of us on this chat, we lived through

1078
01:01:26,071 --> 01:01:30,071
it and the logic, I don't know how clearly it was articulated, but the logic of the

1079
01:01:30,071 --> 01:01:34,071
scaling debate was, and I think it was poorly understood even

1080
01:01:34,071 --> 01:01:38,071
by the haters and the lovers on both sides, but this was the logic

1081
01:01:38,071 --> 01:01:42,071
if you dissected it, I think. I think this is just objectively the case.

1082
01:01:42,071 --> 01:01:46,071
Which is that the small blockers were saying, we don't want

1083
01:01:46,071 --> 01:01:50,071
the full node to cost more. So they were saying, we want to keep the

1084
01:01:50,071 --> 01:01:54,071
full node cost down. And they were saying, instead of running an expensive

1085
01:01:54,071 --> 01:01:58,071
large block node, and the small blockers

1086
01:01:58,071 --> 01:02:02,071
were kind of right to say, if you move it from one megabyte to eight megabytes

1087
01:02:02,071 --> 01:02:06,071
then maybe it'll just end up unlimited and then it'll be uncapped and

1088
01:02:06,071 --> 01:02:10,071
where would that end? And even people would say, such as Greg Maxwell would say

1089
01:02:10,071 --> 01:02:14,071
okay, even if we had unlimited block size, that would be a big improvement over

1090
01:02:14,071 --> 01:02:18,071
the world of JP Morgan or whatever that we have today.

1091
01:02:18,071 --> 01:02:22,071
But he was saying, we want to keep the node cost down.

1092
01:02:22,071 --> 01:02:26,071
The clear implication of that is that you wanted it to be easier for

1093
01:02:26,071 --> 01:02:30,071
more people to run the nodes. The lightning idea, the lightning

1094
01:02:30,071 --> 01:02:34,071
node, you're saying there's a lightning node on a phone. I have to kind of disagree
with that.

1095
01:02:34,071 --> 01:02:38,071
Because the logic of the lightning node is that it needs to talk

1096
01:02:38,071 --> 01:02:42,071
to a full L1 node. So the idea was that the L1 full node

1097
01:02:42,071 --> 01:02:46,071
that's with the small blocks, plus a second node on top of it

1098
01:02:46,071 --> 01:02:50,071
the combined cost would be less than

1099
01:02:50,071 --> 01:02:54,071
the Bitcoin cash node. But that is objectively no longer true

1100
01:02:54,071 --> 01:02:58,071
in the sense of psychology or utility theory and economics

1101
01:02:58,071 --> 01:03:02,071
or just in practice. Because people find it too annoying to use

1102
01:03:02,071 --> 01:03:06,071
yeah, take your pick. We got a really strong silent guy

1103
01:03:06,071 --> 01:03:10,071
strong silent type who's just vaping and laughing the whole time.

1104
01:03:10,071 --> 01:03:14,071
And that's great. But it's like, take your pick.

1105
01:03:14,071 --> 01:03:18,071
People don't run the lightning nodes, I think. The full stack

1106
01:03:18,071 --> 01:03:22,071
the intended lightning node where it's actually watching for

1107
01:03:22,071 --> 01:03:26,071
if someone broadcasts the old spend and it's going to trigger the HTLC or whatever.

1108
01:03:26,071 --> 01:03:30,071
I just think having a lightning app on your cell phone and saying

1109
01:03:30,071 --> 01:03:34,071
that that's a cheap node. Well then, how is that any different from all

1110
01:03:34,071 --> 01:03:38,071
the large blockers who are saying, oh, SPV nodes are real.

1111
01:03:38,071 --> 01:03:42,071
Yeah, you can explain it to them. Some of them weren't around.

1112
01:03:42,071 --> 01:03:46,071
Well, that's why I just think it's like all these things

1113
01:03:46,071 --> 01:03:50,071
complexity is the enemy of anything working in the real world

1114
01:03:50,071 --> 01:03:54,071
including in engineering. And the Bitcoin community actually kind of

1115
01:03:54,071 --> 01:03:58,071
loves complexity a bit for a few reasons, which is like it's generally a contrarian

1116
01:03:58,071 --> 01:04:02,071
community. It's also quite a technical community and engineers love playing

1117
01:04:02,071 --> 01:04:06,071
and fiddling with stuff at the cutting edge, which is always a bit more complex.

1118
01:04:06,071 --> 01:04:10,071
But at the end of the day, you just really want things to be simple, which is why
Satoshi was like

1119
01:04:10,071 --> 01:04:14,071
okay, here's a node. It's layer one. You just flood the network.

1120
01:04:14,071 --> 01:04:18,071
There's no routing. There's no central point. Like Cardano

1121
01:04:18,071 --> 01:04:22,071
they have all these different weird multiple different types of nodes

1122
01:04:22,071 --> 01:04:26,071
and stuff like that. Bitcoin is literally there's just one node. It's layer one.

1123
01:04:26,071 --> 01:04:30,071
Everything sends to everything. That's it. It's that simple. You can ask any node.

1124
01:04:30,071 --> 01:04:34,071
The engineering design couldn't be any more fundamentally

1125
01:04:34,071 --> 01:04:38,071
straightforward than that, except to the extent that, okay, then you have your
wallets

1126
01:04:38,071 --> 01:04:42,071
connect via SPV, which is exactly like a client-server model that

1127
01:04:42,071 --> 01:04:46,071
has existed in computer science forever. It just makes sense

1128
01:04:46,071 --> 01:04:50,071
that that is going to work. So as soon as then you add, okay,

1129
01:04:50,071 --> 01:04:54,071
we're going to add our lightning nodes, and now we have this unsolved routing
problem,

1130
01:04:54,071 --> 01:04:58,071
which not only is technically a huge amount of work to do, it's also

1131
01:04:58,071 --> 01:05:02,071
economically infeasible because the optimal solution

1132
01:05:02,071 --> 01:05:06,071
is just to converge on large hubs, which is exactly what's happened.

1133
01:05:06,071 --> 01:05:10,071
Whatever it is, BitRefill and three other guys run

1134
01:05:10,071 --> 01:05:14,071
like 90% of it. Yeah, exactly.

1135
01:05:14,071 --> 01:05:18,071
They end up being the large share of where all the routing

1136
01:05:18,071 --> 01:05:22,071
is going through, just because that's economically the most efficient

1137
01:05:22,071 --> 01:05:26,071
solution. At least the big bloggers knew that was going to

1138
01:05:26,071 --> 01:05:30,071
happen right from the start, and now it has. And even worse.

1139
01:05:30,071 --> 01:05:34,071
Currently, the entire ecosystem is gravitating. Not the entire ecosystem,

1140
01:05:34,071 --> 01:05:38,071
but large portions of the ecosystem are gravitating towards Spark.

1141
01:05:38,071 --> 01:05:42,071
Half, at least, of all lightning

1142
01:05:42,071 --> 01:05:46,071
users use some sort of wallet with a Spark backend.

1143
01:05:46,071 --> 01:05:50,071
And then I have Alex Gladstein talking to me about how when you do a primal

1144
01:05:50,071 --> 01:05:54,071
to primal zap on Nostar, that that's a lightning transaction and has the lightning

1145
01:05:54,071 --> 01:05:58,071
icon, and there's no lightning transaction that takes place

1146
01:05:58,071 --> 01:06:02,071
in the slightest.

1147
01:06:02,071 --> 01:06:06,071
So this is also like, I don't know, SuperTestCenter, if you saw

1148
01:06:06,071 --> 01:06:10,071
my, I know you weren't at TabConf, I thought, but I did the

1149
01:06:10,071 --> 01:06:14,071
lightning debate, and I tried to draw a distinction between like, okay, there is

1150
01:06:14,071 --> 01:06:18,071
a lightning cult, and then there's kind of like, the lightning technical community

1151
01:06:18,071 --> 01:06:22,071
is a lot, a large percentage of them, like Tadge Dryja, is not in the

1152
01:06:22,071 --> 01:06:26,071
lightning cult, even though he created lightning. These are a lot of people who are
very honest

1153
01:06:26,071 --> 01:06:30,071
about lightning. But another thing that happened from 2017

1154
01:06:30,071 --> 01:06:34,071
on, basically continuously,

1155
01:06:34,071 --> 01:06:38,071
is, this is very hard to articulate,

1156
01:06:38,071 --> 01:06:42,071
but basically it was, lightning was held up as

1157
01:06:42,071 --> 01:06:46,071
this idea of, this is how we scale Bitcoin.

1158
01:06:46,071 --> 01:06:50,071
There's a huge difference, so it's hard to articulate the idea, because in the

1159
01:06:50,071 --> 01:06:54,071
lightning technical community, it's usually pretty honest, and then in the lightning

1160
01:06:54,071 --> 01:06:58,071
white paper, there's this line that's often cited by the large blockers, where they
say,

1161
01:06:58,071 --> 01:07:02,071
well, hey, we need 133 megabyte blocks, actually, plus the lightning network

1162
01:07:02,071 --> 01:07:06,071
to make this work. But there was this idea

1163
01:07:06,071 --> 01:07:10,071
that took place in the culture. It was in everyone's brain, in the

1164
01:07:10,071 --> 01:07:14,071
BTC world, after 2017. So maybe it wasn't

1165
01:07:14,071 --> 01:07:18,071
written down, and it's not easy to find, but it was everywhere you went,

1166
01:07:18,071 --> 01:07:22,071
every person you talked to, they were like,

1167
01:07:22,071 --> 01:07:26,071
Bitcoin is the future of money, and lightning network

1168
01:07:26,071 --> 01:07:30,071
will scale it to 8 billion people. And that was the real idea that people

1169
01:07:30,071 --> 01:07:34,071
believed, and so that idea was

1170
01:07:34,071 --> 01:07:38,071
fake, and these people didn't know anything about channel factories. Now,

1171
01:07:38,071 --> 01:07:42,071
you could argue that this is a normal part of life, and this normal part of
specialization

1172
01:07:42,071 --> 01:07:46,071
of labor, like when I go to the supermarket, I don't really know anything about
where the

1173
01:07:46,071 --> 01:07:50,071
mushrooms come from, or whatever, how everything gets where it is.

1174
01:07:50,071 --> 01:07:54,071
So you could say, arguably, that's healthy, and a normal part

1175
01:07:54,071 --> 01:07:58,071
of just an advanced civilization. Of course, and I'm not asking these

1176
01:07:58,071 --> 01:08:02,071
people to be experts in whatever, channel

1177
01:08:02,071 --> 01:08:06,071
factories, but this is

1178
01:08:06,071 --> 01:08:10,071
what Robin was trying to say about, we should be honest about the fact that it's not

1179
01:08:10,071 --> 01:08:14,071
working, which is like, I don't know how to make the analogy totally work. It's like

1180
01:08:14,071 --> 01:08:18,071
if you said – Well, it's just getting bad information from the experts

1181
01:08:18,071 --> 01:08:22,071
or the people who – the problem isn't that you don't know

1182
01:08:22,071 --> 01:08:26,071
what happens to get all the vegetables in the grocery aisle, but if you then had

1183
01:08:26,071 --> 01:08:30,071
farmers, you were like, the mushrooms are not there this week,

1184
01:08:30,071 --> 01:08:34,071
and then you went to the farmer advocacy group or whatever, and they were like,

1185
01:08:34,071 --> 01:08:38,071
no, the mushrooms are definitely coming because we've got this new kind of
fertilizer that's going to

1186
01:08:38,071 --> 01:08:42,071
fix everything, and then suddenly everybody came to you and said, where's all the

1187
01:08:42,071 --> 01:08:46,071
food? And that's what you told them, and then later it turned out you'd just been
lied to.

1188
01:08:46,071 --> 01:08:50,071
It's like you're building a supermarket, it's not finished yet, and you're saying

1189
01:08:50,071 --> 01:08:54,071
there will be a bunch of stuff, a bunch of food here, and then we know that

1190
01:08:54,071 --> 01:08:58,071
it's 10 years later, the food's not arriving, or what's going to arrive is instead
going to be

1191
01:08:58,071 --> 01:09:02,071
like frozen TV dinners or something that's not quite the same.

1192
01:09:02,071 --> 01:09:06,071
I think that is really important, and I

1193
01:09:06,071 --> 01:09:10,071
don't even blame the lightning technical people, because the cult kind of became

1194
01:09:10,071 --> 01:09:14,071
self-perpetuating, but in this way, the lightning cult has become more dangerous

1195
01:09:14,071 --> 01:09:18,071
than I think anyone realized, or even

1196
01:09:18,071 --> 01:09:22,071
I think I'm the most pessimistic maybe out of everyone here,

1197
01:09:22,071 --> 01:09:26,071
that you have fed – you slaughtered the truth and fed

1198
01:09:26,071 --> 01:09:30,071
it to this monster, and it was getting stronger every day, and it's

1199
01:09:30,071 --> 01:09:34,071
spreading like a cancer, and I think it's very bad.

1200
01:09:34,071 --> 01:09:38,071
To me, it's amazing.

1201
01:09:38,071 --> 01:09:42,071
Sorry, you go ahead.

1202
01:09:42,071 --> 01:09:46,071
Let's play rock, paper, scissors or something.

1203
01:09:46,071 --> 01:09:50,071
Fine, I'll be short, because I'm not short

1204
01:09:50,071 --> 01:09:54,071
in real life. Anyway, it's amazing that this community

1205
01:09:54,071 --> 01:09:58,071
that hates so much people who step out of line, and basically

1206
01:09:58,071 --> 01:10:02,071
now they're not shy in calling this a church anymore. When they go to

1207
01:10:02,071 --> 01:10:06,071
conferences, they're like, oh, this is the gospel, the Bitcoin standard, and we

1208
01:10:06,071 --> 01:10:10,071
just went to church together, which is the conference. They're not shy

1209
01:10:10,071 --> 01:10:14,071
about suggesting that this is a huge cult, and

1210
01:10:14,071 --> 01:10:18,071
they have their class system, and they hate people

1211
01:10:18,071 --> 01:10:22,071
who are not like them. They hate shitcoiners. They hate people like

1212
01:10:22,071 --> 01:10:26,071
me, who are somehow part of their group, but

1213
01:10:26,071 --> 01:10:30,071
at the same time, not invited to events, but I can show up

1214
01:10:30,071 --> 01:10:34,071
because I paid a ticket or whatever. I get a free ticket from someone.

1215
01:10:34,071 --> 01:10:38,071
They hate me, but they don't hate people who promise them stuff,

1216
01:10:38,071 --> 01:10:42,071
but then it never happens.

1217
01:10:42,071 --> 01:10:46,071
Because that's what they're receiving. They feel good validation.

1218
01:10:46,071 --> 01:10:50,071
It doesn't matter if the thing that was promised gets delivered, if what you've been
promised is

1219
01:10:50,071 --> 01:10:54,071
a good time in the meantime. You all get to hang out at the conference. You all get
to

1220
01:10:54,071 --> 01:10:58,071
congratulate each other and feel superior, moral Bitcoiners that are

1221
01:10:58,071 --> 01:11:02,071
saving the world. That's really what's being sold, is participation in

1222
01:11:02,071 --> 01:11:06,071
a group and a crusade, just like any cult.

1223
01:11:06,071 --> 01:11:10,071
Yeah, maybe, but if I was a developer and I raised $100 million

1224
01:11:10,071 --> 01:11:14,071
to fix Lightning, like Matt Corallo, I think, did,

1225
01:11:14,071 --> 01:11:18,071
he raised a lot of money from Jack Dorsey to

1226
01:11:18,071 --> 01:11:22,071
rewrite Lightning in Rust, and he's still running a

1227
01:11:22,071 --> 01:11:26,071
third-party client, which, to be honest, is being used by Square right now

1228
01:11:26,071 --> 01:11:30,071
for their payments integrations. But still,

1229
01:11:30,071 --> 01:11:34,071
he hasn't really fixed Lightning. He just rewrote some parts.

1230
01:11:34,071 --> 01:11:38,071
But that's because it was never about fixing Lightning. That's why I see this a lot,
and I don't understand

1231
01:11:38,071 --> 01:11:42,071
how it hasn't clicked yet. The other example, which is the same case,

1232
01:11:42,071 --> 01:11:46,071
is Blockstream. People are like, well, Blockstream is going to deliver all this
shit.

1233
01:11:46,071 --> 01:11:50,071
No, they're not. They said they were going to do sidechains. They said they were
going to make this, that, and the other.

1234
01:11:50,071 --> 01:11:54,071
They've been running for 10 years. They've made freaking no products that are really
that

1235
01:11:54,071 --> 01:11:58,071
compelling or interesting. They only put them out there as marketing cover

1236
01:11:58,071 --> 01:12:02,071
because the actual transaction is, we will fuck up

1237
01:12:02,071 --> 01:12:06,071
BTC at the core level, and we need an excuse to get

1238
01:12:06,071 --> 01:12:10,071
paid off. That's exactly how politics works.

1239
01:12:10,071 --> 01:12:14,071
Oh, actually, I need to sell you this abandoned parking

1240
01:12:14,071 --> 01:12:18,071
lot for $400 million, even though it's worth $10 million,

1241
01:12:18,071 --> 01:12:22,071
the transaction is just for me to actually get a payoff. That's how corruption

1242
01:12:22,071 --> 01:12:26,071
works. It's the same thing. I doubt Matt Corallo was ever

1243
01:12:26,071 --> 01:12:30,071
planning to fix Lightning or whatever. He was just getting paid $100 million

1244
01:12:30,071 --> 01:12:34,071
to sandbag the whole thing. I don't think it was that much, anyway.

1245
01:12:34,071 --> 01:12:38,071
But what I'm trying to say is that everyone forgives

1246
01:12:38,071 --> 01:12:42,071
because everyone gets rich, right? So as long as the number goes up,

1247
01:12:42,071 --> 01:12:46,071
they forgive any promises that did not work out,

1248
01:12:46,071 --> 01:12:50,071
anything that did not get delivered, and they're like, it doesn't matter. I got
rich.

1249
01:12:50,071 --> 01:12:54,071
Have fun staying poor. Ha ha. Whatever.

1250
01:12:54,071 --> 01:12:58,071
One of the things that I really admire about what's

1251
01:12:58,071 --> 01:13:02,071
happened in the Lightning community is the prevalence of wallets that let you select

1252
01:13:02,071 --> 01:13:06,071
what node you're connected to. It's very common in

1253
01:13:06,071 --> 01:13:10,071
Lightning wallets for them to say, you can connect this to your own L1 node.

1254
01:13:10,071 --> 01:13:14,071
I think it's very likely that most users don't do that.

1255
01:13:14,071 --> 01:13:18,071
They never download an L1 wallet. They never go into settings. They never hook it
up.

1256
01:13:18,071 --> 01:13:22,071
But I don't think that is

1257
01:13:22,071 --> 01:13:26,071
the Lightning network's problem. I think that is a humanity problem. Everyone's just
like,

1258
01:13:26,071 --> 01:13:30,071
oh, well, I just want the easy thing, and I don't even want

1259
01:13:30,071 --> 01:13:34,071
to do the work of downloading a Bitcoin node.

1260
01:13:34,071 --> 01:13:38,071
I don't view that as a problem with the Lightning network that all the users choose
to use

1261
01:13:38,071 --> 01:13:42,071
it in some optimal way.

1262
01:13:42,071 --> 01:13:46,071
I think that's a humanity problem, and the Lightning network actually did it.

1263
01:13:46,071 --> 01:13:50,071
The developers of the Lightning network actually have done it the right way.

1264
01:13:50,071 --> 01:13:54,071
Isn't that what I said, SupertestNet, about the technical crowd is not

1265
01:13:54,071 --> 01:13:58,071
in the cult, and they're mostly okay.

1266
01:13:58,071 --> 01:14:02,071
Parallel to them is this huge idea that

1267
01:14:02,071 --> 01:14:06,071
includes Michael Saylor, where he's saying, and he'll say,

1268
01:14:06,071 --> 01:14:10,071
Bitcoin and these Layer 2 and Layer 3 and Layer 4 protocols

1269
01:14:10,071 --> 01:14:14,071
bullshit something about whatever.

1270
01:14:14,071 --> 01:14:18,071
Then he'll say the market will provide that or whatever. But then there's this whole
group of people who

1271
01:14:18,071 --> 01:14:22,071
think, well, the Lightning network is how we scale Bitcoin.

1272
01:14:22,071 --> 01:14:26,071
You could imagine maybe a parallel thing where you say, oh, I think

1273
01:14:26,071 --> 01:14:30,071
self-driving cars,

1274
01:14:30,071 --> 01:14:34,071
I think self-driving cars will be the next big thing. Their car has the self-driving
option,

1275
01:14:34,071 --> 01:14:38,071
but 99% of people get in the car and then they drive it

1276
01:14:38,071 --> 01:14:42,071
themselves. And they're driving it all around and they're getting into car accidents

1277
01:14:42,071 --> 01:14:46,071
and there's still 40,000 highway deaths a year. And then someone like you

1278
01:14:46,071 --> 01:14:50,071
could say, rightly so, totally fair, you could say, well, you know, this isn't a...

1279
01:14:50,071 --> 01:14:54,071
It's not the internet's fault. It's not a self-driving

1280
01:14:54,071 --> 01:14:58,071
car problem, it's a human problem. But it would still be false to say that

1281
01:14:58,071 --> 01:15:01,090
in this reality, it's a fake reality that I just made up.

1282
01:15:01,090 --> 01:15:05,090
But it would still be false to say that self-driving cars are the next big thing,
because objectively, no one cares.

1283
01:15:05,090 --> 01:15:16,090
And so Lightning is not the next big thing. And this is for a wide variety of
reasons, including that people don't understand it or care, and not limited to.

1284
01:15:16,090 --> 01:15:19,090
Yeah, it's just about reality.

1285
01:15:47,090 --> 01:15:49,090
...don't want their car to drive itself.

1286
01:15:49,090 --> 01:15:57,090
But it would be wrong to... I don't think that's the narrative, though, or at least
that's not the promise I heard. It's not that everyone will choose self-sovereignty.

1287
01:15:57,090 --> 01:16:04,090
It's that this is the path, or this is a path, that it can actually succeed at
making that an option for everyone.

1288
01:16:04,090 --> 01:16:09,090
And I think it has. I think everyone can run an L1 node and a Lightning node.

1289
01:16:09,090 --> 01:16:19,090
And that has been made available to everyone. You can make the pool available for
people to drink from, but you can't make them drink from it if they don't want to.

1290
01:16:19,090 --> 01:16:28,090
And I think the criticism is leveled at the wrong people. I don't think the
Lightning people, either the engineers or... I'm not aware of any cult people in
Lightning.

1291
01:16:28,090 --> 01:16:30,090
I don't think they have done it wrong.

1292
01:16:30,090 --> 01:16:41,090
If you're saying, okay, we build the Lightning part, but no one uses it, they prefer
custodial, or they prefer whatever, SPV, or they prefer some third thing, then why
keep calling it Lightning?

1293
01:16:41,090 --> 01:16:45,090
And why contribute to the narrative that Lightning is how we scale Bitcoin?

1294
01:16:45,090 --> 01:16:54,090
Because it's accurate. The scaling solution that works is available and continues to
be improved.

1295
01:16:55,090 --> 01:17:01,090
But I think most people just don't, at least we're in a stage where most people do
not want self-sovereignty.

1296
01:17:01,090 --> 01:17:04,090
Yes, but that's a reality that you have to adapt to.

1297
01:17:04,090 --> 01:17:11,090
This whole idea of Lightning is going to provide self-sovereignty to everybody, that
is within a larger bubble, to me, of the...

1298
01:17:11,090 --> 01:17:21,090
The real promise of Bitcoin was a peer-to-peer electronic cash that the entire world
is going to use, which is going to get them off of fiat currency, right?

1299
01:17:21,090 --> 01:17:22,090
And we're going to have sound money.

1300
01:17:22,090 --> 01:17:26,090
So, to me, that's the actual goal we're shooting for.

1301
01:17:26,090 --> 01:17:33,090
Now, of course, in that pursuit of that, is everybody going to become an expert in
Bitcoin and everything?

1302
01:17:33,090 --> 01:17:34,090
No, of course not.

1303
01:17:34,090 --> 01:17:40,090
But in order to get that technology to everybody, you just have to give the consumer
what they want.

1304
01:17:40,090 --> 01:17:41,090
That's capitalism.

1305
01:17:41,090 --> 01:17:43,090
That's how economics works.

1306
01:17:43,090 --> 01:17:44,090
Like, you can't...

1307
01:17:44,090 --> 01:17:47,090
People want what they want, and you just have to give them what they want.

1308
01:17:47,090 --> 01:17:51,090
Now, ideally, you pair that with something that is good for them.

1309
01:17:51,090 --> 01:17:58,090
But if they fundamentally don't want it, then trying to force it to them or say
there's a different or another option doesn't matter.

1310
01:17:58,090 --> 01:18:03,090
Like, a technology that is not adopted or that stays niche is not going to change
the world.

1311
01:18:03,090 --> 01:18:05,090
So, you have to be pragmatic.

1312
01:18:05,090 --> 01:18:07,090
I think it's more than mere preference also.

1313
01:18:07,090 --> 01:18:12,090
It's like, if they don't like it, maybe there's actually many hidden costs about it.

1314
01:18:12,090 --> 01:18:14,090
So, for example, let's say SupertestNet.

1315
01:18:14,090 --> 01:18:18,090
He has that example about the well or you can lead people to the fountain.

1316
01:18:18,090 --> 01:18:21,090
So, he's going to build a fountain.

1317
01:18:21,090 --> 01:18:25,090
You go to this community where everyone collects the rainwater in coconuts or
something.

1318
01:18:25,090 --> 01:18:26,090
That's what they do.

1319
01:18:26,090 --> 01:18:28,090
And then you build this fountain.

1320
01:18:28,090 --> 01:18:30,090
And you say, hey, listen, you don't have to wait for rain.

1321
01:18:30,090 --> 01:18:32,090
On a hot day, there's no rain.

1322
01:18:32,090 --> 01:18:34,090
Come to the fountain.

1323
01:18:34,090 --> 01:18:35,090
But for some reason, people just don't.

1324
01:18:35,090 --> 01:18:37,090
They don't go for it.

1325
01:18:37,090 --> 01:18:39,090
That's kind of one scenario.

1326
01:18:40,090 --> 01:18:46,090
But I think there's an infinite number of things you could conclude about why they
don't like the fountain.

1327
01:18:46,090 --> 01:18:48,090
Like, maybe they think it's poisoned.

1328
01:18:48,090 --> 01:18:50,090
Or maybe they just don't want to talk to anyone else.

1329
01:18:50,090 --> 01:18:52,090
Or maybe they don't like the fountain.

1330
01:18:52,090 --> 01:18:54,090
The coconuts are sacred.

1331
01:18:54,090 --> 01:18:55,090
Yeah, exactly.

1332
01:18:55,090 --> 01:18:56,090
Yeah, right.

1333
01:18:56,090 --> 01:18:57,090
So, yeah, exactly.

1334
01:18:57,090 --> 01:18:58,090
The coconuts could be sacred.

1335
01:18:58,090 --> 01:19:04,090
It could include a number of false beliefs, like superstitious beliefs.

1336
01:19:05,090 --> 01:19:09,090
But then you could still say, okay, you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to
install.

1337
01:19:09,090 --> 01:19:12,090
If it's what they like is staying at their house, then I'm going to install pipes.

1338
01:19:12,090 --> 01:19:14,090
I'm going to have running water.

1339
01:19:14,090 --> 01:19:18,090
Or if it's something else, I'm going to sell them bottled water if they don't like
talking to others.

1340
01:19:18,090 --> 01:19:20,090
But we're going to have the milkman come around.

1341
01:19:20,090 --> 01:19:21,090
Or we're going to ship people cartons.

1342
01:19:21,090 --> 01:19:22,090
Or we're going to do the giant.

1343
01:19:22,090 --> 01:19:24,090
So the work isn't quite done.

1344
01:19:24,090 --> 01:19:27,090
And you can always be upstaged.

1345
01:19:27,090 --> 01:19:30,090
Even if you're just a technologist building things.

1346
01:19:30,090 --> 01:19:38,090
Someone could say, at the end of the day, all the technology, you know, all of the
technology is related to, like, meeting people's needs.

1347
01:19:38,090 --> 01:19:42,090
So that's always going to be a trump card, even in the technological world.

1348
01:19:42,090 --> 01:19:47,090
You say, you know what, what this really needs is something else.

1349
01:19:47,090 --> 01:19:53,090
And so if people don't go for it, that is a clue, I think, of something deeper.

1350
01:19:53,090 --> 01:19:57,090
Not necessarily an accurate clue because some things are ahead of their time, right?

1351
01:19:58,090 --> 01:20:05,090
So, like, some things people try them, and actually they're the right idea, but they
don't work.

1352
01:20:05,090 --> 01:20:19,090
But I don't – I really – I think – I really agree, and I think – well, I'm not sure
how many – but I think Robin and I are, like, you have to say – we have to say out
loud that we have to break the spell about lightening doesn't work.

1353
01:20:19,090 --> 01:20:24,090
And so that we can just move – and then once we do, we just rip off the band-aid and
you just move on to something else.

1354
01:20:24,090 --> 01:20:35,090
I think people rightly understand that it's like a – the lightning network is so
inherently bound up in the propaganda for small blocks, just like every site has
their propaganda.

1355
01:20:35,090 --> 01:20:39,090
But then people are saying, oh, then it's going to be played, it's going to be –
everyone's going to clip it and whatever.

1356
01:20:39,090 --> 01:20:45,090
So in a way, it's – I think it's just killing BTC and it's making the whole thing
more into an irrational cult.

1357
01:20:45,090 --> 01:20:48,090
But that's my point of view, so I've said basically –

1358
01:20:49,090 --> 01:20:59,090
One of the things that makes me pessimistic in this space – or it's not even in this
space, it's just pessimistic about humanity in general – hang on, there's a truck
driving by.

1359
01:20:59,090 --> 01:21:12,090
One of the things that makes me pessimistic is I think that even if everyone knew
how to use Bitcoin, how to use lightning, how to be self-sovereign, they understood
all of that, and they also compared it with what's the alternative?

1360
01:21:12,090 --> 01:21:20,090
Well, it's having a bank control your money. I think if most people understood,
fully understood both of the implications of those, most people would choose the
banking option.

1361
01:21:20,090 --> 01:21:25,090
I think most people would say, I don't want the thing you told me of with the
self-sovereignty.

1362
01:21:25,090 --> 01:21:35,090
I want the bank to control my money and for them to be responsible, because there's
one thing that people hate the most in this world of ours, and it's responsibility.

1363
01:21:36,090 --> 01:21:41,090
Not public speaking, the number one fear in our world is responsibility.

1364
01:21:41,090 --> 01:21:47,090
If you did teach everyone how to use all this stuff, I think they would reject it
and say, I want the banks.

1365
01:21:47,090 --> 01:21:50,090
I want them to control everything so that I don't have to be responsible.

1366
01:21:50,090 --> 01:21:52,090
I mean, I think that's a good point.

1367
01:21:52,090 --> 01:21:58,090
And it's true that people are always going to be looking for ways to offload and
outsource responsibility.

1368
01:21:58,090 --> 01:22:12,090
But then you kind of get into a bigger like civilization scale discussion where, of
course, people outsource their responsibility and they outsource their
responsibility until whoever they've outsourced it to eventually abuses that and
then their life gets a little bit worse.

1369
01:22:12,090 --> 01:22:18,090
And then the cycle carries on until eventually they're in such a crap situation that
they're like, holy crap, we need a revolution.

1370
01:22:18,090 --> 01:22:19,090
We need to get the power back.

1371
01:22:19,090 --> 01:22:23,090
And then at that point, they discover, you know, it's like whatever.

1372
01:22:23,090 --> 01:22:26,090
But even then, it's like times like type of thing, right?

1373
01:22:26,090 --> 01:22:34,090
But even in the hard times, it's like 5% of the people become good men, become the
good men that the hard times create.

1374
01:22:35,090 --> 01:22:52,090
Because you can look at anywhere like Venezuela or anywhere that is in a hyper
inflating kind of currency situation like those people switch on quick when it
suddenly becomes a matter of like we can't eat unless this works.

1375
01:22:52,090 --> 01:22:56,090
Then all the lies and propaganda starts to fall apart pretty fast.

1376
01:22:56,090 --> 01:23:00,090
And suddenly everyone's a big fan of personal responsibility.

1377
01:23:00,090 --> 01:23:07,090
Part of the reason that most people don't want to be personally responsible is
actually because they live in societies where things are easy enough.

1378
01:23:07,090 --> 01:23:11,090
And most of the time, you can get away with not doing that.

1379
01:23:11,090 --> 01:23:19,090
Right. And so that lasts until there is a huge problem, which is just sort of an
inherent part of Bitcoin that we're kind of like do more prepping or something.

1380
01:23:20,090 --> 01:23:23,090
I just wanted to make a quick point before I leave.

1381
01:23:23,090 --> 01:23:27,090
I think it's interesting to look at the entire history of how Bitcoin evolved.

1382
01:23:27,090 --> 01:23:31,090
We started with Satoshi saying, yeah, don't worry about the block size.

1383
01:23:31,090 --> 01:23:38,090
We're just going to scale it up and it's no problem to have like 600 megabyte blocks
or whatever he said in his first email.

1384
01:23:39,090 --> 01:23:44,090
And kind of like everyone agreed with that until some point.

1385
01:23:44,090 --> 01:23:49,090
And then Satoshi left and then it became that huge debate.

1386
01:23:49,090 --> 01:23:59,090
And then suddenly we were like, yeah, no, we need small blocks for everyone to be
self-sovereign and to participate trustlessly.

1387
01:24:00,090 --> 01:24:13,090
And then we went on and maybe we had a short phase of people trying to make
lightning work with SPV clients, which is kind of like the same thing as what
Satoshi suggested just with small blocks.

1388
01:24:13,090 --> 01:24:22,090
But then eventually we ended up with the vast majority of the ecosystem just using
Spark.

1389
01:24:22,090 --> 01:24:27,090
And it's more centralized as it could have ever been with big blocks.

1390
01:24:27,090 --> 01:24:38,090
And that's kind of like absurd that we don't talk about that or that we don't see
that as clearly as the facts are.

1391
01:24:38,090 --> 01:24:46,090
And I find that a bit weird that we are always bending the narrative so much.

1392
01:24:47,090 --> 01:24:54,090
In practice, the lightning node is more expensive than the BCH node.

1393
01:24:54,090 --> 01:25:00,090
And in practice, the custodial lightning node has an infinite cost much higher than
any.

1394
01:25:00,090 --> 01:25:07,090
I don't actually agree with super testing, but I do think the burden of
responsibility falls more heavily on some people than others.

1395
01:25:07,090 --> 01:25:10,090
And I think also people are different sometimes.

1396
01:25:10,090 --> 01:25:15,090
So if there's something that I don't know a lot about, then you would want to
offload that responsibility to someone else.

1397
01:25:15,090 --> 01:25:19,090
You'd say, oh, I'm just really not very good at whatever it is.

1398
01:25:19,090 --> 01:25:22,090
We're playing some sport and I'm not good at it. And then people tell me, go over
here.

1399
01:25:22,090 --> 01:25:29,090
Like when I had to play on my friend's softball team, I was the catcher temporarily
because they were down to eight people and they got an automatic out.

1400
01:25:29,090 --> 01:25:33,090
So, of course, I just play the catcher, the easiest spot.

1401
01:25:33,090 --> 01:25:37,090
You know, that's not that hard. You have to do one or two things, though.

1402
01:25:38,090 --> 01:25:46,090
We're in a different space, though. We're all like makers and doers and podcast
creators and software designers and things.

1403
01:25:46,090 --> 01:25:50,090
People who make things for a living are often not in that role.

1404
01:25:50,090 --> 01:25:55,090
They are willing to take on responsibility and it doesn't resonate as much.

1405
01:25:55,090 --> 01:25:59,090
But I think most people, you look at them, they like being cheap.

1406
01:25:59,090 --> 01:26:07,090
But we might not know if I had to make like if I had to cook like a three course
meal or something at a Michelin star restaurant, I might suddenly become a lot less
opinionated.

1407
01:26:07,090 --> 01:26:10,090
And I would just be like, someone just tell me what to do.

1408
01:26:10,090 --> 01:26:17,090
Or I might just walk out and say, I don't want to be responsible for this beef
Wellington or whatever the hell, you know, whatever they have to make.

1409
01:26:17,090 --> 01:26:21,090
So I think if people actually really did know a lot, they might do different things.

1410
01:26:21,090 --> 01:26:28,090
Like they might want the responsibility because, yeah, you can coast for a while,
but ultimately you end up.

1411
01:26:28,090 --> 01:26:37,090
This is like, yeah, in the USSR had this appearance of stability and many other kind
of quasi authoritarian or super authoritarian.

1412
01:26:37,090 --> 01:26:44,090
Like they have it sort of looks OK at first. And then later on, you realize how much
it really had cost you.

1413
01:26:44,090 --> 01:26:51,090
But I think if people really knew everything about the whole lay of the land and
they wanted to get rid of responsibility.

1414
01:26:51,090 --> 01:26:56,090
Wouldn't instead they just go with they would go with SPV large blocks because they
say, now I'm not as responsible.

1415
01:26:56,090 --> 01:27:05,090
I've outsourced it to. Whatever large block world, but I was with four megabytes of
headers per year, which is.

1416
01:27:06,090 --> 01:27:12,090
Then if you want the path of ease, then I think BCH is free and things like that are
a much better solution.

1417
01:27:12,090 --> 01:27:14,090
I think one of the things I like about Bitcoin.

1418
01:27:14,090 --> 01:27:17,090
You would go with SPV large blocks.

1419
01:27:17,090 --> 01:27:24,090
I mean, yeah, I think we need something that works.

1420
01:27:24,090 --> 01:27:29,090
And currently what we are seeing is like people are using Spark or MicroStrategy.

1421
01:27:29,090 --> 01:27:32,090
And we don't have SPV of MicroStrategy.

1422
01:27:33,090 --> 01:27:34,090
That would be nice if we did.

1423
01:27:34,090 --> 01:27:38,090
Yeah, like we are far away from making it work.

1424
01:27:38,090 --> 01:27:43,090
Like if the hard path or like the proper path would work, then it would be good.

1425
01:27:43,090 --> 01:27:47,090
But it's not like it's making it way worse than the easy path.

1426
01:27:49,090 --> 01:27:52,090
There's another car right next to me, so I'll wait till he goes away.

1427
01:27:52,090 --> 01:27:53,090
Yeah.

1428
01:27:53,090 --> 01:27:57,090
The ice cream truck or like Carnival or something like that.

1429
01:27:57,090 --> 01:28:00,090
It's March by in a second or something.

1430
01:28:01,090 --> 01:28:03,090
It's in El Salvador.

1431
01:28:04,090 --> 01:28:05,090
Oh, okay.

1432
01:28:05,090 --> 01:28:10,090
I'm in Puerto Rico sitting next to a coffee shop, which is the only place I can find
reliable Wi-Fi.

1433
01:28:10,090 --> 01:28:11,090
That's cool.

1434
01:28:11,090 --> 01:28:12,090
San Juan.

1435
01:28:12,090 --> 01:28:14,090
Well, it's nice there.

1436
01:28:14,090 --> 01:28:19,090
I almost did the Act 20 tax scheme.

1437
01:28:19,090 --> 01:28:22,090
I was like, I don't know, this isn't right for me.

1438
01:28:23,090 --> 01:28:32,090
I think another important dimension is to quantify the notion of responsibility.

1439
01:28:32,090 --> 01:28:36,090
Because responsibility is not equal to responsibility.

1440
01:28:36,090 --> 01:28:39,090
Does responsibility mean I just have to take care of my key?

1441
01:28:39,090 --> 01:28:50,090
Or does it mean I need to understand about liquidity, channel management, and all
kinds of things that are just so far away from regular users that they will never do
it?

1442
01:28:50,090 --> 01:28:53,090
And I think that's a huge difference.

1443
01:28:53,090 --> 01:29:02,090
I think managing a key can be made reasonably easy such that a lot of people can do
it.

1444
01:29:02,090 --> 01:29:08,090
But I think pure lightning cannot be made practical for people.

1445
01:29:09,090 --> 01:29:11,090
Yeah, like the average person.

1446
01:29:11,090 --> 01:29:15,090
This is why I believe that we can pragmatically get Bitcoin to 8 billion people.

1447
01:29:15,090 --> 01:29:25,090
It's because even if the average person definitely does not want the full
responsibility of everything, the average person can look after their smartphone.

1448
01:29:25,090 --> 01:29:27,090
They can look after the cash in their wallet.

1449
01:29:27,090 --> 01:29:31,090
They can probably look after their passport and their valuable jewelry.

1450
01:29:31,090 --> 01:29:42,090
Those are all standard, normal things that everyone who isn't a very young child or
maybe in a nursing home and out of their mind can manage.

1451
01:29:42,090 --> 01:29:49,090
And then even for those other people, they can have people around them who are
trusted, who are directly adjacent to them.

1452
01:29:49,090 --> 01:30:04,090
So if we can make using Bitcoin as easy as managing one of those things, then
there's no reason that it couldn't become a global currency from the point of view
of people taking responsibility to do it.

1453
01:30:04,090 --> 01:30:11,090
They just need to not know any more than the very, very bare minimum, which is look
after this thing and tap to pay whenever you see the Bitcoin symbol.

1454
01:30:11,090 --> 01:30:14,090
And that's it. That's basically how tap to pay cards work.

1455
01:30:14,090 --> 01:30:21,090
So it's all about approximating that and hopefully improving on it as much as we
can.

1456
01:30:21,090 --> 01:30:23,090
And that was the whole big blocker philosophy.

1457
01:30:23,090 --> 01:30:25,090
It's basically just pragmatism.

1458
01:30:25,090 --> 01:30:34,090
I do think it's possible to make the inbound liquidity problem of pure lightning
intuitive and understandable for users.

1459
01:30:35,090 --> 01:30:48,090
And I think Phoenix has done a really good job of this by just saying, when you
receive an inbound payment in Phoenix and you don't have enough money, you just get
less than you were going to get.

1460
01:30:48,090 --> 01:30:53,090
And it tells you, hey, it cost a dollar to receive the inbound liquidity for this
payment.

1461
01:30:53,090 --> 01:30:58,090
And so that's why you receive ninety nine dollars instead of one hundred.

1462
01:30:58,090 --> 01:31:01,090
I've seen people try it and they get it.

1463
01:31:01,090 --> 01:31:03,090
OK, OK, I can understand it.

1464
01:31:03,090 --> 01:31:08,090
So I think it can actually be made to work in a way where the user doesn't have to
manage anything.

1465
01:31:08,090 --> 01:31:11,090
They just receive inbound liquidity when they need it.

1466
01:31:11,090 --> 01:31:14,090
And I think that's great.

1467
01:31:15,090 --> 01:31:18,090
Why is it failing in the market, though?

1468
01:31:22,090 --> 01:31:24,090
Remind me again which wallet you use to make your payment today.

1469
01:31:25,090 --> 01:31:28,090
I mean, I'm not representative for the masters.

1470
01:31:29,090 --> 01:31:35,090
I think if you look at the distribution of lightning wallets, most of them are using
Spark.

1471
01:31:35,090 --> 01:31:38,090
Most users are using Spark-based wallets.

1472
01:31:42,090 --> 01:31:44,090
I am certainly in a bubble.

1473
01:31:44,090 --> 01:31:46,090
I don't see that.

1474
01:31:46,090 --> 01:31:48,090
I don't see Satoshi dominating.

1475
01:31:48,090 --> 01:31:50,090
Wallet of Satoshi is by far the biggest.

1476
01:31:50,090 --> 01:31:52,090
And that is Spark.

1477
01:31:52,090 --> 01:32:03,090
Then you have these other ones like Blink, Cake Wallet for sure, and Bitcoin Beach
Wallet.

1478
01:32:03,090 --> 01:32:06,090
These ones, they're all using Spark.

1479
01:32:07,090 --> 01:32:11,090
I mean, three of the ones on there, I don't think they're very successful in the
market.

1480
01:32:11,090 --> 01:32:15,090
Wallet of Satoshi is very successful, but I bet Phoenix beats out all the other
three ones you mentioned.

1481
01:32:16,090 --> 01:32:22,090
Yeah, I think of the top ten, probably eight or nine are Spark.

1482
01:32:22,090 --> 01:32:26,090
Well, it'd be cool. I'd like to see a spreadsheet that makes this more clear.

1483
01:32:26,090 --> 01:32:28,090
It surprises me to hear that.

1484
01:32:28,090 --> 01:32:33,090
I know Spark has been very successful, but I don't think that they are eight of the
top ten.

1485
01:32:34,090 --> 01:32:38,090
Even if ten out of the top ten were non-custodial, it wouldn't convince me.

1486
01:32:39,090 --> 01:32:45,090
Fundamentally, the channel problem is a very inefficient way.

1487
01:32:45,090 --> 01:32:48,090
We can't open enough channels for everyone.

1488
01:32:48,090 --> 01:32:50,090
But there's more to it than that.

1489
01:32:50,090 --> 01:32:52,090
It's like the whole community has...

1490
01:32:52,090 --> 01:32:58,090
It's hard to get any reputable evidence because there's this funhouse mirror

1491
01:32:58,090 --> 01:33:06,090
where everyone's tempted to paint the lightning with a favorable brow or place in a
very favorable light.

1492
01:33:06,090 --> 01:33:08,090
People really want lightning.

1493
01:33:08,090 --> 01:33:11,090
The wishful thinking has corrupted basically everything.

1494
01:33:11,090 --> 01:33:14,090
People really want lightning to be good.

1495
01:33:15,090 --> 01:33:22,090
So now it's impossible to believe anything that so many times you investigate and
it's not true.

1496
01:33:22,090 --> 01:33:24,090
And this is true of every...

1497
01:33:24,090 --> 01:33:26,090
This is true of MSTR.

1498
01:33:26,090 --> 01:33:29,090
This is certainly true of BCH in 2017.

1499
01:33:29,090 --> 01:33:32,090
It's certainly true of Ethereum when it was getting started.

1500
01:33:32,090 --> 01:33:36,090
We all have to be idealists and optimists to some extent.

1501
01:33:37,090 --> 01:33:39,090
But I'm just saying it's certainly true of lightning.

1502
01:33:39,090 --> 01:33:46,090
And I'm just saying that the true lightning is much worse than it appears.

1503
01:33:46,090 --> 01:33:49,090
And so even however it appears right now, it's worse than that.

1504
01:33:50,090 --> 01:33:53,090
It's a big illusion that's cast over the whole thing.

1505
01:33:53,090 --> 01:33:56,090
But yeah, we don't really see it working.

1506
01:33:56,090 --> 01:33:59,090
I think the sun is setting on lightning.

1507
01:33:59,090 --> 01:34:01,090
Even with Barack inventing ARK and saying,

1508
01:34:01,090 --> 01:34:03,090
Oh, basically lightning, I fail to see it scaling.

1509
01:34:03,090 --> 01:34:06,090
So I invent this other thing, which is great.

1510
01:34:06,090 --> 01:34:08,090
But I think that's...

1511
01:34:08,090 --> 01:34:10,090
It's not the case that lightning...

1512
01:34:10,090 --> 01:34:11,090
If ARK had never...

1513
01:34:11,090 --> 01:34:14,090
Even if ARK works, which I don't think ARK will work.

1514
01:34:14,090 --> 01:34:19,090
I think it's just the latest in a parade of mutations of lightning.

1515
01:34:19,090 --> 01:34:21,090
That's not even the latest anymore.

1516
01:34:21,090 --> 01:34:22,090
CUBE is the latest.

1517
01:34:22,090 --> 01:34:23,090
That's what I mean, though.

1518
01:34:23,090 --> 01:34:24,090
But the fact that...

1519
01:34:24,090 --> 01:34:26,090
That's what I was trying to say before is that the fact that we have another one,

1520
01:34:26,090 --> 01:34:30,090
it kind of says, oh, people are getting tired of that old one.

1521
01:34:30,090 --> 01:34:32,090
It's like we've never seen...

1522
01:34:32,090 --> 01:34:34,090
We've never seen whatever...

1523
01:34:34,090 --> 01:34:35,090
Spider-Man fight...

1524
01:34:35,090 --> 01:34:37,090
We've never seen Superman fight on the moon before.

1525
01:34:37,090 --> 01:34:39,090
It's like they're just coming up with a new thing.

1526
01:34:39,090 --> 01:34:41,090
Oh, they did that in Superman 3.

1527
01:34:41,090 --> 01:34:43,090
Yeah, I think it was in Superman 4.

1528
01:34:43,090 --> 01:34:45,090
That's why I said it as a joke.

1529
01:34:45,090 --> 01:34:47,090
Yeah, with Nuclear Man.

1530
01:34:47,090 --> 01:34:51,090
And it looks absurd, but it's very meme-able.

1531
01:34:51,090 --> 01:34:53,090
So the point is...

1532
01:34:53,090 --> 01:34:56,090
To make it quickly, Wallet of Satoshi has, at least on Google Play,

1533
01:34:56,090 --> 01:34:58,090
they show the number of downloads.

1534
01:34:58,090 --> 01:35:01,090
And Wallet of Satoshi has a million downloads.

1535
01:35:01,090 --> 01:35:06,090
And Phoenix has like 100,000 downloads.

1536
01:35:06,090 --> 01:35:08,090
So roughly...

1537
01:35:08,090 --> 01:35:12,090
I would be prepared to believe that Wallet of Satoshi bought the downloads

1538
01:35:12,090 --> 01:35:13,090
for some commercial.

1539
01:35:13,090 --> 01:35:17,090
It's like...

1540
01:35:17,090 --> 01:35:22,090
It's like even if ARK worked, the idea...

1541
01:35:23,090 --> 01:35:24,090
I'm talking about ARK.

1542
01:35:24,090 --> 01:35:25,090
I'm switching back temporarily.

1543
01:35:25,090 --> 01:35:26,090
I finished my thought.

1544
01:35:26,090 --> 01:35:28,090
About Barack's ARK and Cube.

1545
01:35:28,090 --> 01:35:32,090
Even if those worked, which I don't think they will,

1546
01:35:32,090 --> 01:35:34,090
the premise that lightning would have been just fine

1547
01:35:34,090 --> 01:35:36,090
if they hadn't been invented,

1548
01:35:36,090 --> 01:35:40,090
that is at least contradicted by the inventor of ARK, Barack,

1549
01:35:40,090 --> 01:35:42,090
and also me, for what it's worth.

1550
01:35:42,090 --> 01:35:44,090
So we don't think that.

1551
01:35:44,090 --> 01:35:46,090
Now, I don't know if...

1552
01:35:46,090 --> 01:35:47,090
I don't know.

1553
01:35:47,090 --> 01:35:49,090
Maybe it'll all work.

1554
01:35:49,090 --> 01:35:50,090
It's great.

1555
01:35:50,090 --> 01:35:51,090
We all love lightning.

1556
01:35:51,090 --> 01:35:52,090
Imagine if we could switch it around.

1557
01:35:52,090 --> 01:35:53,090
A world where everyone uses...

1558
01:35:53,090 --> 01:35:54,090
I don't know.

1559
01:35:54,090 --> 01:35:57,090
Big Wallet and Blink Wallet also have 100K.

1560
01:35:57,090 --> 01:36:00,090
So they have as much as Phoenix.

1561
01:36:00,090 --> 01:36:07,090
So I think it's pretty fair to say that 9 out of 10 lightning wallet users

1562
01:36:07,090 --> 01:36:10,090
use a Spark thing.

1563
01:36:10,090 --> 01:36:13,090
When I talk to someone, 9 out of 10.

1564
01:36:13,090 --> 01:36:15,090
I think it's more like 95%.

1565
01:36:15,090 --> 01:36:16,090
Yeah.

1566
01:36:16,090 --> 01:36:18,090
When I talk to people using lightning,

1567
01:36:18,090 --> 01:36:21,090
they clearly have no idea what the word custodial even means,

1568
01:36:21,090 --> 01:36:26,090
let alone they're saying several million miles from...

1569
01:36:26,090 --> 01:36:29,090
I mean, they shouldn't know.

1570
01:36:29,090 --> 01:36:31,090
I don't need to know.

1571
01:36:31,090 --> 01:36:35,090
They are using custodial lightning.

1572
01:36:35,090 --> 01:36:36,090
Especially because they'll be like,

1573
01:36:36,090 --> 01:36:37,090
oh, I'll send you some sats.

1574
01:36:37,090 --> 01:36:39,090
They send me like 10 sats.

1575
01:36:39,090 --> 01:36:40,090
They arrive instantly.

1576
01:36:40,090 --> 01:36:42,090
And I never opened any channel.

1577
01:36:42,090 --> 01:36:44,090
It's like the whole thing's fake.

1578
01:36:44,090 --> 01:36:45,090
That's the problem.

1579
01:36:45,090 --> 01:36:46,090
It's fake.

1580
01:36:46,090 --> 01:36:47,090
It's all lies.

1581
01:36:48,090 --> 01:36:49,090
It'll all be lies.

1582
01:36:51,090 --> 01:36:55,090
It isn't necessarily true that if you didn't open a channel,

1583
01:36:55,090 --> 01:36:57,090
then you didn't receive the money.

1584
01:36:57,090 --> 01:37:00,090
It's possible that they paid for the channel opening fee for you,

1585
01:37:00,090 --> 01:37:01,090
and you really did receive the money.

1586
01:37:01,090 --> 01:37:02,090
That's true.

1587
01:37:02,090 --> 01:37:03,090
You're right.

1588
01:37:03,090 --> 01:37:04,090
You got me there.

1589
01:37:04,090 --> 01:37:05,090
But these people, there's no way.

1590
01:37:05,090 --> 01:37:07,090
And when they were sending me 10 sats or something,

1591
01:37:07,090 --> 01:37:09,090
there's no way that they would pay.

1592
01:37:09,090 --> 01:37:10,090
There's no way you can receive the money.

1593
01:37:10,090 --> 01:37:11,090
You're right.

1594
01:37:11,090 --> 01:37:12,090
It's true.

1595
01:37:12,090 --> 01:37:13,090
You're all right.

1596
01:37:13,090 --> 01:37:15,090
You got me there on that little.

1597
01:37:15,090 --> 01:37:16,090
That's theoretically possible.

1598
01:37:16,090 --> 01:37:17,090
Of course, they arrive instantly.

1599
01:37:17,090 --> 01:37:23,090
That's also a clue that they're prioritizing the fake user experience

1600
01:37:23,090 --> 01:37:29,090
over showing the reality of what Tadge Dreiser was describing,

1601
01:37:29,090 --> 01:37:33,090
which is the Lightning Network is these bi-directional two-of-two channels

1602
01:37:33,090 --> 01:37:36,090
that are linked by HTLCs.

1603
01:37:36,090 --> 01:37:38,090
To me, that's what the Lightning Network is,

1604
01:37:38,090 --> 01:37:40,090
or that's what the word refers to.

1605
01:37:41,090 --> 01:37:42,090
And that's not.

1606
01:37:43,090 --> 01:37:44,090
So I don't know.

1607
01:37:44,090 --> 01:37:45,090
You're right.

1608
01:37:45,090 --> 01:37:46,090
They could have paid for the channel open,

1609
01:37:46,090 --> 01:37:50,090
and then the block could have actually been found immediately,

1610
01:37:50,090 --> 01:37:53,090
and then they could have just displayed one confirmation.

1611
01:37:53,090 --> 01:37:54,090
Sure, yeah.

1612
01:37:54,090 --> 01:38:02,090
I think that none of the wallets that make the inbound capacity problem simple,

1613
01:38:02,090 --> 01:38:05,090
none of them show pending, and they really should.

1614
01:38:05,090 --> 01:38:08,090
They just show received, even though the channel is still pending.

1615
01:38:09,090 --> 01:38:11,090
So I do think that's a problem.

1616
01:38:12,090 --> 01:38:13,090
I don't think that is a problem.

1617
01:38:13,090 --> 01:38:15,090
That's an interesting area, right?

1618
01:38:15,090 --> 01:38:19,090
Because in Selene that we use, we just use bch0conf,

1619
01:38:19,090 --> 01:38:22,090
and it just works every single time.

1620
01:38:22,090 --> 01:38:25,090
And yes, okay, technically, yes, you need confirmation, yada, yada, yada.

1621
01:38:25,090 --> 01:38:27,090
But in the entire history of Selene,

1622
01:38:27,090 --> 01:38:31,090
we've never had one problem with any user with any transaction ever.

1623
01:38:31,090 --> 01:38:35,090
And so why are we going to degrade the UI?

1624
01:38:35,090 --> 01:38:38,090
The reason why you need to have that UI that just instantly arrives

1625
01:38:38,090 --> 01:38:40,090
is because that's how Fiat works.

1626
01:38:40,090 --> 01:38:43,090
It's what people expect, especially now.

1627
01:38:43,090 --> 01:38:46,090
I mean, maybe 10 years ago or 12 years ago,

1628
01:38:46,090 --> 01:38:50,090
Bitcoin was the cutting-edge thing that everyone, wow, this is instant.

1629
01:38:50,090 --> 01:38:54,090
But now people are just like, duh, my payments are instant.

1630
01:38:54,090 --> 01:38:58,090
Well, I think if it's an L1 payment, then it's like a channel open.

1631
01:38:58,090 --> 01:39:00,090
It isn't instant in Bitcoin.

1632
01:39:00,090 --> 01:39:03,090
You can't treat it like it's Fiat because it's not Fiat.

1633
01:39:03,090 --> 01:39:06,090
It works differently, and the sender can take the money back.

1634
01:39:07,090 --> 01:39:10,090
They effectively can't, so it's never a problem.

1635
01:39:10,090 --> 01:39:13,090
How do you solve the double-spending problem in BCH?

1636
01:39:13,090 --> 01:39:15,090
Well, see, that's the thing.

1637
01:39:15,090 --> 01:39:18,090
It's just zero-conf is reliable in almost all cases.

1638
01:39:18,090 --> 01:39:20,090
So obviously, we still have a blockchain.

1639
01:39:20,090 --> 01:39:22,090
Obviously, we still have proof-of-work.

1640
01:39:22,090 --> 01:39:25,090
Obviously, you still need to accumulate time, right?

1641
01:39:25,090 --> 01:39:27,090
Is it only reliable because people aren't doing it?

1642
01:39:27,090 --> 01:39:32,090
Or is it reliable because you found some way to solve the double-spending problem?

1643
01:39:32,090 --> 01:39:36,090
Well, I mean, there's future ideas that we could implement.

1644
01:39:36,090 --> 01:39:44,090
But the basic premise is that just when your node relay policy just accepts first
seen as a rule,

1645
01:39:44,090 --> 01:39:47,090
which is how Bitcoin worked until BTC broke it,

1646
01:39:47,090 --> 01:39:50,090
and since we don't have RBF, that doesn't exist at all,

1647
01:39:50,090 --> 01:39:57,090
between those two things, you have 99.999% reliability just off the bat.

1648
01:39:57,090 --> 01:40:03,894
And if you're doing anything under, of course, like $1,000 or $10,000 the majority
of the time...

1649
01:40:03,894 --> 01:40:07,294
$10,000 the majority of the time, then people, it's going to be more effort to fraud
that

1650
01:40:07,934 --> 01:40:11,454
than it is the amount of money that it's worth.

1651
01:40:15,054 --> 01:40:17,854
When Peter Todd decided that... Oh, hang on, there's a truck next...

1652
01:40:19,774 --> 01:40:20,734
When Peter Todd decided...

1653
01:40:20,734 --> 01:40:21,854
So I have to go.

1654
01:40:22,974 --> 01:40:24,334
Thank you so much, Paul, for being here.

1655
01:40:25,054 --> 01:40:28,734
And great, as usual. It was nice to drop in on you guys.

1656
01:40:28,894 --> 01:40:32,094
And I'll see you guys later.

1657
01:40:32,094 --> 01:40:32,414
Thank you.

1658
01:40:32,414 --> 01:40:34,734
We can talk about that later. I'm very intrigued by that.

1659
01:40:36,094 --> 01:40:41,774
When Peter Todd decided that he didn't like ZeroConf and he made LibreRelay,

1660
01:40:41,774 --> 01:40:50,094
it was no longer the case that 99% of nodes were running the software that made it
difficult.

1661
01:40:50,094 --> 01:40:55,054
And so I started to see video guides saying, here's how to steal from merchants on
Bitcoin.

1662
01:40:55,054 --> 01:40:58,254
You download Electrum wallet, you connect to a LibreRelay node,

1663
01:40:58,254 --> 01:41:01,774
and then this thing will say it showed up, but then you can take it back.

1664
01:41:01,774 --> 01:41:06,734
And when I saw that, I was like, clearly, maybe in BCH no one's done that yet.

1665
01:41:06,734 --> 01:41:11,214
But just saying a filter policy can solve this, I don't think is accurate.

1666
01:41:11,214 --> 01:41:13,054
Well, that's the thing. That's exactly what I was saying.

1667
01:41:13,054 --> 01:41:17,934
It can't fully and forever and for all time solve the problem.

1668
01:41:17,934 --> 01:41:22,094
And so we're lucky that to this point, nobody has made a concerted effort

1669
01:41:22,094 --> 01:41:24,414
to attack it, like you said, right?

1670
01:41:24,414 --> 01:41:26,574
So that's possible that that will happen in the future.

1671
01:41:27,134 --> 01:41:32,174
But when that happens, there are solutions and I think we're already working on.

1672
01:41:32,174 --> 01:41:36,734
So BCH already also has double spend proofs, right?

1673
01:41:36,734 --> 01:41:40,254
So what you can do is you accept a transaction and then you monitor for double
spends,

1674
01:41:40,254 --> 01:41:44,174
and then you alert the user if you see a double spend within,

1675
01:41:44,174 --> 01:41:45,934
it's like two or three seconds, right?

1676
01:41:45,934 --> 01:41:49,614
And you know, and now there's actually even another proposal,

1677
01:41:49,614 --> 01:41:53,134
which is still very vague, called Sunlight,

1678
01:41:53,134 --> 01:41:59,614
which is that you would be checking to see if people publish their lower difficulty
mining shares

1679
01:41:59,614 --> 01:42:03,374
so you could see what the hash rate was actively mining on.

1680
01:42:03,374 --> 01:42:10,014
So you could be like, okay, 95% of the hash rate is already loving these shares,
right?

1681
01:42:10,014 --> 01:42:16,494
So it's true that double spending is always a theoretical possibility.

1682
01:42:16,494 --> 01:42:21,054
And in fact, it's even a practical possibility in some tiny minority of cases.

1683
01:42:21,054 --> 01:42:27,214
But every payment system in the world has some percentage of error in it, right?

1684
01:42:27,214 --> 01:42:29,374
Visa is used globally by billions of people.

1685
01:42:29,374 --> 01:42:32,574
And there's fraud, there's times where the internet goes out,

1686
01:42:32,574 --> 01:42:34,574
there's times where the terminal machine is broken.

1687
01:42:34,574 --> 01:42:39,054
You don't need to hit 100% to have a working payment solution.

1688
01:42:39,054 --> 01:42:42,734
Pragmatically, 99.99% is good enough,

1689
01:42:42,734 --> 01:42:46,494
because almost nobody is ever going to hit those problems in practice.

1690
01:42:46,494 --> 01:42:49,614
And when they do, you can have a backup for that,

1691
01:42:49,614 --> 01:42:56,254
whether it's showing a message, oh, potential fraud detected, don't trust this
payment.

1692
01:42:56,254 --> 01:43:00,094
And that might happen to one person, one in 100,000 payments or whatever,

1693
01:43:00,094 --> 01:43:01,854
and they'll be annoyed at that one thing.

1694
01:43:01,854 --> 01:43:04,814
But that's not going to stop a payment system becoming globally viable.

1695
01:43:05,374 --> 01:43:09,694
Also, I think the strongest argument with this entire story is that

1696
01:43:11,054 --> 01:43:14,334
the original RBF was like, yeah, it's opt-in.

1697
01:43:16,654 --> 01:43:18,734
You can still use whatever you want, right?

1698
01:43:18,734 --> 01:43:25,774
And then at some point, it was like, yeah, no, we're going to do full RBF,

1699
01:43:26,334 --> 01:43:28,494
because it's just stupid to use RBF.

1700
01:43:28,494 --> 01:43:32,894
And then it became paternalistic, and people didn't even have the option anymore to
use it.

1701
01:43:32,894 --> 01:43:37,134
And I feel like that was not very honest.

1702
01:43:37,134 --> 01:43:42,254
It was a weird story that fell off.

1703
01:43:44,414 --> 01:43:46,014
Yeah, well, we could always say that.

1704
01:43:46,014 --> 01:43:47,854
The big blogs could always see that coming.

1705
01:43:48,734 --> 01:43:51,694
That's why this whole thing is so funny, because it's like,

1706
01:43:51,694 --> 01:43:54,974
Peter Todd is busy sabotaging and destroying our network,

1707
01:43:54,974 --> 01:44:00,574
and he's managed to undermine the reliability of zero-conf transactions.

1708
01:44:00,574 --> 01:44:03,534
That's been a project of his for the last decade,

1709
01:44:03,534 --> 01:44:06,414
and he's been supported and cheered on by the community.

1710
01:44:06,414 --> 01:44:11,934
And it's like, well, if you put a bunch of arsonists in your house,

1711
01:44:11,934 --> 01:44:14,654
and then you're later like, oh, shit, our house is on fire.

1712
01:44:14,734 --> 01:44:18,734
It's like, no, you encouraged that the whole time.

1713
01:44:18,734 --> 01:44:21,134
Not to say, of course, I'm going to leave now.

1714
01:44:21,134 --> 01:44:22,174
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me.

1715
01:44:22,174 --> 01:44:22,894
Thanks for having me, man.

1716
01:44:22,894 --> 01:44:25,294
Yeah, it's very interesting discussions.

1717
01:44:26,414 --> 01:44:27,054
Bye, Robin.

1718
01:44:27,054 --> 01:44:28,094
Thank you for coming.

1719
01:44:28,094 --> 01:44:28,734
Talk more soon.

1720
01:44:30,094 --> 01:44:32,734
Two out of three of our discussions have been very interesting.

1721
01:44:32,734 --> 01:44:34,734
We spent way too long on Michael Saylor.

1722
01:44:34,734 --> 01:44:35,614
Yeah, no, I agree.

1723
01:44:36,494 --> 01:44:42,174
I agree, but we have to somehow get through a marathon stream.

1724
01:44:42,254 --> 01:44:44,574
Super, do you want to pick the next topic, then?

1725
01:44:46,334 --> 01:44:48,734
You're welcome to, if you've got something else.

1726
01:44:48,734 --> 01:44:49,694
What do you want to discuss?

1727
01:44:49,694 --> 01:44:54,654
Well, we briefly started talking about filters, and that has come up again.

1728
01:44:54,654 --> 01:44:57,534
Perhaps that could be a good segue into the filter talk.

1729
01:44:57,534 --> 01:44:58,734
Yeah, let's hear it.

1730
01:44:58,734 --> 01:44:59,454
I'm fascinated.

1731
01:44:59,454 --> 01:45:03,934
I mean, I have my takes that my listeners will be familiar with,

1732
01:45:03,934 --> 01:45:06,974
so I think maybe we should start with you guys,

1733
01:45:06,974 --> 01:45:08,814
where you're at on filtering.

1734
01:45:08,974 --> 01:45:13,374
I don't know, where are you at on the whole filter brigade?

1735
01:45:13,374 --> 01:45:16,254
I consider myself part of the filter brigade.

1736
01:45:16,254 --> 01:45:24,014
I think mempool filters are a good idea for some of the reasons I was just
mentioning,

1737
01:45:24,014 --> 01:45:26,254
about improving payment experience for users.

1738
01:45:27,614 --> 01:45:32,654
I think it's a good idea, and I think it's a good idea to have a filter brigade.

1739
01:45:32,654 --> 01:45:35,134
I think it's a good idea to have a filter brigade,

1740
01:45:35,134 --> 01:45:37,454
about improving payment experience for users.

1741
01:45:38,814 --> 01:45:42,174
But yeah, I think they're, in general, a good idea.

1742
01:45:42,174 --> 01:45:49,854
And in theory, the PIP 110 software proposal is an attempt to encode

1743
01:45:49,854 --> 01:45:55,214
some of the mempool filters as also being consensus rules.

1744
01:45:55,774 --> 01:45:58,014
And I think some of that is okay.

1745
01:45:58,014 --> 01:46:02,014
I think some of those could be made consensus rules in the way that they describe.

1746
01:46:02,974 --> 01:46:06,734
But specifically with that BEP, I think it goes too far,

1747
01:46:06,734 --> 01:46:08,814
and it bans things that are good.

1748
01:46:09,934 --> 01:46:13,774
Namely, it bans opif from being used in Tepri transactions.

1749
01:46:13,774 --> 01:46:19,134
And so that is the main reason why I am not supportive of it.

1750
01:46:20,174 --> 01:46:23,934
Because it goes too far, and instead of just banning bad things,

1751
01:46:23,934 --> 01:46:25,134
it also bans good things.

1752
01:46:26,334 --> 01:46:31,694
So I recently did a debate with Chris Guida about it,

1753
01:46:31,934 --> 01:46:35,134
and I encouraged people to search YouTube for the PIP 110 debate,

1754
01:46:35,134 --> 01:46:37,614
and we had a recent one that's really interesting.

1755
01:46:38,414 --> 01:46:41,054
Yes, it's on the Forrest Hoddle channel.

1756
01:46:41,054 --> 01:46:44,414
I watched that debate, and I also recommend it.

1757
01:46:44,414 --> 01:46:48,174
It was quite interesting to hear that sort of clash of opinions.

1758
01:46:48,174 --> 01:46:50,414
But one of the things that Chris said in that debate,

1759
01:46:50,414 --> 01:46:53,614
and which I've also heard Bitcoin Mechanic say,

1760
01:46:53,614 --> 01:46:59,614
is they accept that you are asking for them to make changes to the proposal,

1761
01:46:59,614 --> 01:47:00,894
and they say, okay, fair enough,

1762
01:47:00,894 --> 01:47:03,614
you have some things you don't like, you want them changed.

1763
01:47:03,614 --> 01:47:10,094
But from what I understand, if those things were changed to be as you prefer,

1764
01:47:10,094 --> 01:47:14,734
it would not switch you from against the proposal to in favor of it.

1765
01:47:14,734 --> 01:47:18,254
It would just make you go from against the proposal to neutral.

1766
01:47:18,254 --> 01:47:18,814
Is that right?

1767
01:47:20,254 --> 01:47:22,494
If both of the changes I propose were made,

1768
01:47:22,494 --> 01:47:25,214
then I would move to in favor of the proposal.

1769
01:47:26,094 --> 01:47:28,494
If they stopped doing the opif,

1770
01:47:29,934 --> 01:47:32,574
if they stopped targeting opif specifically,

1771
01:47:32,574 --> 01:47:35,134
and just targeted the inscription envelope,

1772
01:47:35,134 --> 01:47:39,134
and if they modified the activation method

1773
01:47:39,134 --> 01:47:42,654
so that the user-activated software doesn't happen,

1774
01:47:44,334 --> 01:47:46,414
has a blank date that doesn't get set

1775
01:47:46,414 --> 01:47:51,614
until after there's a significant economic minority in favor of this.

1776
01:47:52,894 --> 01:47:54,494
If they made both of those changes,

1777
01:47:54,494 --> 01:47:58,174
then I would support the bill, not just be neutral on it.

1778
01:47:58,974 --> 01:48:00,174
If they only made the one change,

1779
01:48:00,174 --> 01:48:03,854
if they just changed the opif to just target the inscription envelope,

1780
01:48:04,574 --> 01:48:06,094
I wouldn't exactly be neutral.

1781
01:48:06,094 --> 01:48:08,974
I would still recommend people against running the software

1782
01:48:08,974 --> 01:48:11,854
because I think the user-activated software in August

1783
01:48:11,854 --> 01:48:14,654
will likely cause users of it to get forked off the network.

1784
01:48:15,534 --> 01:48:19,614
But I would at least support miners activating the other rules,

1785
01:48:19,614 --> 01:48:22,014
like just the consensus changes they made,

1786
01:48:22,014 --> 01:48:23,454
I would support that part.

1787
01:48:23,454 --> 01:48:26,094
And so that's why I think they said that's not enough.

1788
01:48:26,094 --> 01:48:30,734
They're definitely not going to modify the user-activated software component.

1789
01:48:30,734 --> 01:48:33,614
And so if we made his other change, he still wouldn't support it.

1790
01:48:35,054 --> 01:48:38,974
But yeah, that's because I think even if he did change

1791
01:48:38,974 --> 01:48:40,654
the consensus change that I want,

1792
01:48:41,214 --> 01:48:43,374
still the activation method is also dangerous.

1793
01:48:43,374 --> 01:48:45,454
So I wouldn't support it unless they change both of them.

1794
01:48:46,174 --> 01:48:48,494
Yes. So pragmatically speaking then,

1795
01:48:48,494 --> 01:48:52,734
because I'm trying to hear from their point of view,

1796
01:48:52,734 --> 01:48:56,254
it sort of makes sense to me, setting aside the technical element,

1797
01:48:56,254 --> 01:49:00,974
but politically, if you change these things, I would jump on board.

1798
01:49:01,694 --> 01:49:05,134
You might be one of the only people that is sort of in that camp,

1799
01:49:05,134 --> 01:49:07,054
or do you think if they made those changes,

1800
01:49:07,054 --> 01:49:10,014
it would win them significantly more support,

1801
01:49:10,014 --> 01:49:12,254
like yourself and others as well, too?

1802
01:49:15,214 --> 01:49:16,494
I don't know about significantly.

1803
01:49:18,174 --> 01:49:18,814
Probably not.

1804
01:49:19,614 --> 01:49:24,494
I think that I am also a very niche minority opinion in the Bitcoin space.

1805
01:49:24,494 --> 01:49:28,734
And so I'm probably not the very uniquely only person

1806
01:49:28,734 --> 01:49:31,054
who has the set of opinions that I have about this.

1807
01:49:31,774 --> 01:49:33,134
There's probably not very many of us,

1808
01:49:33,134 --> 01:49:35,854
and it probably wouldn't win them a huge amount of support

1809
01:49:35,854 --> 01:49:37,854
if they did make the changes that I want.

1810
01:49:38,414 --> 01:49:41,374
Yeah. See, that's kind of where the rub is for them,

1811
01:49:41,374 --> 01:49:44,094
because even if they liked your ideas,

1812
01:49:44,094 --> 01:49:45,374
which I think they probably don't,

1813
01:49:46,014 --> 01:49:51,934
then it still kind of wouldn't make sense for them to adopt it just for that reason.

1814
01:49:51,934 --> 01:49:54,974
And when you say, especially about changing the date,

1815
01:49:54,974 --> 01:50:01,134
that they need to build more consensus for that kind of a change,

1816
01:50:01,134 --> 01:50:05,054
which I agree with, and I think probably actually a lot of people

1817
01:50:05,054 --> 01:50:07,054
who are being critical of it agree with,

1818
01:50:07,614 --> 01:50:11,694
the problem is they've kind of snookered themselves in a way

1819
01:50:11,694 --> 01:50:13,934
because first they got in a panic,

1820
01:50:14,574 --> 01:50:15,934
which was when they were going to do,

1821
01:50:15,934 --> 01:50:19,134
oh, we need a three-month emergency fix.

1822
01:50:19,134 --> 01:50:22,494
And then they then walked that back to be this one-year change

1823
01:50:22,494 --> 01:50:24,414
to August or September.

1824
01:50:24,974 --> 01:50:28,734
But now that's kind of what they bet their chips on, right?

1825
01:50:28,734 --> 01:50:31,054
That's now where they have the momentum,

1826
01:50:31,054 --> 01:50:32,334
they have the energy,

1827
01:50:32,334 --> 01:50:35,294
they have at least among themselves aligned on,

1828
01:50:35,294 --> 01:50:37,934
okay, this is going to be our game plan.

1829
01:50:37,934 --> 01:50:40,574
And sort of fracturing that or delaying it,

1830
01:50:40,574 --> 01:50:42,574
then something else will be the trending topic

1831
01:50:42,574 --> 01:50:45,934
on Bitcoin, Twitter, and their whole chances go to zero

1832
01:50:45,934 --> 01:50:47,534
if they delayed it at this point.

1833
01:50:47,534 --> 01:50:48,494
What do you make of that?

1834
01:50:50,174 --> 01:50:54,094
I think it's a problem.

1835
01:50:54,094 --> 01:50:58,334
They are likely to fork themselves off of the network.

1836
01:50:58,334 --> 01:51:01,774
And I think it is fallacious to be like,

1837
01:51:01,774 --> 01:51:04,814
well, we've already come this far, we have to see it through now.

1838
01:51:04,814 --> 01:51:08,094
No, if it's a bad idea, you can just stop doing it

1839
01:51:08,734 --> 01:51:10,974
and come up with a better idea, fix the idea,

1840
01:51:10,974 --> 01:51:14,334
and then do the good idea that's not problematic.

1841
01:51:15,614 --> 01:51:16,654
I mean, yeah, I agree with you.

1842
01:51:17,374 --> 01:51:19,374
I agree that it is a fallacy.

1843
01:51:19,374 --> 01:51:21,774
It is a bit of a sunk cost fallacy,

1844
01:51:21,774 --> 01:51:24,654
but that's kind of what we're here to speculate about,

1845
01:51:24,654 --> 01:51:27,294
I guess, the fact that once you've, you know,

1846
01:51:27,294 --> 01:51:30,414
they say when you're in a hole, like step one is stop digging, right?

1847
01:51:30,414 --> 01:51:33,054
So I think, and you think it sounds like

1848
01:51:33,054 --> 01:51:36,174
that they have dug themselves into quite a bit of a hole,

1849
01:51:36,174 --> 01:51:38,974
but how could it be sort of presented to them

1850
01:51:39,534 --> 01:51:42,574
that they would think, okay, you know,

1851
01:51:42,574 --> 01:51:46,414
we got to stop making things worse for ourselves.

1852
01:51:46,414 --> 01:51:49,214
Like, I think they just know the reality that

1853
01:51:49,214 --> 01:51:52,094
whatever the chances of BIP110 activating,

1854
01:51:52,654 --> 01:51:57,134
even if it's relatively low, if they now walk it back

1855
01:51:57,134 --> 01:52:00,254
and then retool for like a later second salvo,

1856
01:52:00,814 --> 01:52:04,094
like that's just not coming, even if they had a better idea

1857
01:52:04,094 --> 01:52:06,894
or they had, you know, it's kind of like,

1858
01:52:06,894 --> 01:52:09,854
you couldn't really imagine that with BCH,

1859
01:52:09,854 --> 01:52:12,494
you know, back in the day, like Amore was kind of like,

1860
01:52:12,494 --> 01:52:14,254
let's split, everybody did it and split.

1861
01:52:14,254 --> 01:52:16,814
And then BCH was like rolling and it was rolling.

1862
01:52:16,814 --> 01:52:21,294
If it had been like, oh, okay, let's negotiate another round of,

1863
01:52:21,294 --> 01:52:24,254
let's figure out a better way to do this, this, that, or the other,

1864
01:52:24,254 --> 01:52:26,574
there probably just never would have been a BCH, right?

1865
01:52:26,574 --> 01:52:28,414
And in fact, that's why BCH came up,

1866
01:52:28,414 --> 01:52:32,094
because several attempts at compromise had failed.

1867
01:52:32,094 --> 01:52:34,094
And, you know, you can't die on every hill,

1868
01:52:34,094 --> 01:52:36,094
but you do have to die on a hill

1869
01:52:36,094 --> 01:52:39,614
because otherwise you just get pushed back forever, right?

1870
01:52:39,614 --> 01:52:42,494
And that's the point that they are at emotionally,

1871
01:52:42,494 --> 01:52:43,614
from what I understand.

1872
01:52:44,574 --> 01:52:45,774
Well, I don't know how to,

1873
01:52:48,174 --> 01:52:50,734
the only thing I can do is present my reasons for stating

1874
01:52:50,734 --> 01:52:54,014
why I think the way I do and try to persuade people to them.

1875
01:52:54,014 --> 01:52:58,494
And so that's been the primary tactic I've been trying to do.

1876
01:52:58,494 --> 01:53:01,614
And you are accurate, I don't seem to sway many of them.

1877
01:53:02,574 --> 01:53:07,534
But yeah, I don't feel that as a failure on my part.

1878
01:53:07,534 --> 01:53:10,414
I feel it as a success that I am stating my reasons

1879
01:53:10,414 --> 01:53:13,054
and giving them and making them known.

1880
01:53:13,774 --> 01:53:15,134
And so I feel good about that.

1881
01:53:15,134 --> 01:53:19,934
And I merely pity the fact that they are so wrong

1882
01:53:19,934 --> 01:53:22,894
and hardened in their ways.

1883
01:53:24,174 --> 01:53:26,574
Yeah. Do you have any speculation?

1884
01:53:26,574 --> 01:53:30,654
And of course it is just speculation on what's going to happen.

1885
01:53:30,654 --> 01:53:34,974
Are they going to get the mandatory signaling,

1886
01:53:34,974 --> 01:53:36,094
fork themselves off,

1887
01:53:36,094 --> 01:53:38,414
and then kind of reality is going to wash over them

1888
01:53:38,414 --> 01:53:41,214
and they'll think, okay, let's, you know,

1889
01:53:41,214 --> 01:53:43,454
maybe that is when they start to revisit.

1890
01:53:43,454 --> 01:53:45,134
Or do you think, like we've been talking about

1891
01:53:45,134 --> 01:53:46,174
with the cult mentality,

1892
01:53:46,174 --> 01:53:48,974
they're all going to double down and create,

1893
01:53:49,694 --> 01:53:52,254
I don't know, are they going to go for a proof of work,

1894
01:53:53,054 --> 01:53:55,534
change and just split off?

1895
01:53:55,534 --> 01:53:59,694
Like that seems to be something Luke is kind of open to.

1896
01:53:59,694 --> 01:54:01,934
Where would you expect this to go,

1897
01:54:01,934 --> 01:54:03,774
given that we're two months out?

1898
01:54:05,774 --> 01:54:06,334
I really don't.

1899
01:54:07,294 --> 01:54:10,254
All of those things seem like pretty decent possibilities.

1900
01:54:12,894 --> 01:54:16,334
It'll probably just be a mess, a small mess, I should say.

1901
01:54:16,334 --> 01:54:18,654
The small number of people who are in favor of this fork

1902
01:54:21,294 --> 01:54:22,574
will probably go various ways.

1903
01:54:22,574 --> 01:54:24,174
Some of them will double down on,

1904
01:54:24,894 --> 01:54:29,694
let's actually continue working on this new fork of Bitcoin,

1905
01:54:29,694 --> 01:54:33,294
and some of them will probably come back to regular Bitcoin.

1906
01:54:33,294 --> 01:54:35,534
I hope that those people can rally

1907
01:54:35,534 --> 01:54:37,054
and then make a good proposal

1908
01:54:37,054 --> 01:54:41,214
and then move forward with something that's not bad.

1909
01:54:42,254 --> 01:54:44,254
But yeah, other than I think

1910
01:54:44,254 --> 01:54:46,414
that this small contingent of people

1911
01:54:46,414 --> 01:54:48,814
will have a mess come August,

1912
01:54:48,814 --> 01:54:50,574
that's about the only prediction I'm willing to make

1913
01:54:50,574 --> 01:54:52,094
as to where it's going to go.

1914
01:54:53,054 --> 01:54:54,254
Yeah, okay.

1915
01:54:54,254 --> 01:54:56,334
I want to get Vlad's take on the same thing,

1916
01:54:56,334 --> 01:55:00,494
but I'm actually just checking the BIP110 signaling.

1917
01:55:00,494 --> 01:55:02,574
Shout out to WickedSmartBitcoin,

1918
01:55:02,574 --> 01:55:07,054
wickedsmartbitcoin.com slash BIP110 underscore signaling,

1919
01:55:07,054 --> 01:55:08,414
and you can have a look.

1920
01:55:08,414 --> 01:55:10,494
They, in this latest signaling period,

1921
01:55:10,494 --> 01:55:12,574
which is 13 out of 18,

1922
01:55:12,574 --> 01:55:14,414
which is just about to finish,

1923
01:55:14,414 --> 01:55:18,254
they've found 16 blocks signaling in favor,

1924
01:55:18,254 --> 01:55:20,414
or 0.8 percent.

1925
01:55:20,414 --> 01:55:22,574
That is actually up from the previous,

1926
01:55:22,574 --> 01:55:23,774
which was seven blocks.

1927
01:55:23,774 --> 01:55:27,214
So they've more than doubled in this last period,

1928
01:55:27,214 --> 01:55:30,814
although they're still a very, very tiny fraction,

1929
01:55:30,814 --> 01:55:32,494
but they constantly say

1930
01:55:32,494 --> 01:55:36,414
that they're relying on sort of a snowball effect

1931
01:55:36,414 --> 01:55:38,014
as people get on board.

1932
01:55:38,014 --> 01:55:39,774
And I mean, do they have time?

1933
01:55:39,774 --> 01:55:47,934
Let's see, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256.

1934
01:55:48,894 --> 01:55:50,174
Let's round up to 1%.

1935
01:55:51,054 --> 01:55:52,814
Let's imagine they have 1% right now.

1936
01:55:53,454 --> 01:55:57,134
There are three more difficulty periods before August.

1937
01:55:57,774 --> 01:56:01,214
So if they double again, they'll be at 2%,

1938
01:56:01,214 --> 01:56:02,894
and if they double again, they'll be at 4%,

1939
01:56:02,894 --> 01:56:04,494
and if they double again, they'll be at 8%.

1940
01:56:05,934 --> 01:56:11,294
So if they can double every time,

1941
01:56:11,294 --> 01:56:12,814
which I don't think they can,

1942
01:56:12,814 --> 01:56:15,214
it's costing them quite a bit of money and capital to double.

1943
01:56:15,214 --> 01:56:19,134
I imagine with the strategy they've pursued of renting at rate,

1944
01:56:20,094 --> 01:56:22,814
and I don't think that they have enough income

1945
01:56:23,454 --> 01:56:25,454
to support continuing to do that.

1946
01:56:26,334 --> 01:56:27,214
But even if they do,

1947
01:56:30,014 --> 01:56:31,294
they could get them up to 8%,

1948
01:56:31,294 --> 01:56:35,694
which is nowhere near the 51% that they need at minimum.

1949
01:56:36,894 --> 01:56:40,494
I mean, their logic is kind of like a mechanic has said several times,

1950
01:56:40,494 --> 01:56:43,134
like he thinks 10 to 20% somewhere in there

1951
01:56:43,214 --> 01:56:46,574
is sort of the breakpoint that then it would quote-unquote

1952
01:56:46,574 --> 01:56:49,854
game theoretically force the other miners to get on board,

1953
01:56:49,854 --> 01:56:54,814
or obviously it would be a much more topical thing among people as well.

1954
01:56:55,854 --> 01:56:58,654
People start to get antsy and nervous.

1955
01:57:00,094 --> 01:57:01,374
Maybe? I don't know.

1956
01:57:05,534 --> 01:57:08,734
I think any antsiness or nervousness among miners

1957
01:57:09,614 --> 01:57:12,254
plays against them adopting BIP 110.

1958
01:57:13,134 --> 01:57:18,094
I think narratively, if they did end up getting into the realm of 20%,

1959
01:57:19,214 --> 01:57:21,054
which again, I don't think they will.

1960
01:57:21,054 --> 01:57:24,814
I think they're going to get maybe somewhere close to 2%.

1961
01:57:25,294 --> 01:57:27,294
This is where I expect them to top out,

1962
01:57:27,294 --> 01:57:30,814
or considerably under 2%, let's put it that way.

1963
01:57:32,734 --> 01:57:34,414
But if they end up getting up to 20%

1964
01:57:35,294 --> 01:57:38,094
and miners start getting antsy and saying,

1965
01:57:38,094 --> 01:57:40,734
what are we going to do about this?

1966
01:57:40,734 --> 01:57:42,894
I think the narrative that's more likely to emerge

1967
01:57:42,894 --> 01:57:48,014
is that BIP 110 is an attack on the network.

1968
01:57:50,254 --> 01:57:53,214
More likely than siding with the attackers

1969
01:57:53,774 --> 01:57:59,454
is that they would shore up, make a rallying cry of

1970
01:58:01,534 --> 01:58:04,734
doing something contrary to it, like a user-rejected software.

1971
01:58:06,974 --> 01:58:08,734
I think that is more likely than that.

1972
01:58:09,294 --> 01:58:15,854
First of all, I think it's unlikely that they'll get beyond 1.6% of cache rate.

1973
01:58:15,854 --> 01:58:17,934
If they do end up getting to 20%,

1974
01:58:17,934 --> 01:58:21,134
then I think it's unlikely that other miners are going to side with them.

1975
01:58:21,134 --> 01:58:22,894
I think it's more likely that miners will say,

1976
01:58:22,894 --> 01:58:26,094
this is a serious attack and we need to do a user-rejected software

1977
01:58:27,614 --> 01:58:31,774
or a miner-rejected software to fight against it.

1978
01:58:32,894 --> 01:58:37,534
Yeah, the miner-rejected or the URSF type of ideas I find fascinating

1979
01:58:37,534 --> 01:58:44,014
because if I was in BTC, which I'm not,

1980
01:58:44,014 --> 01:58:48,414
but if I was, I would say, guys, let's just get this ready just in case.

1981
01:58:48,414 --> 01:58:51,694
If I truly was against the filters and everything,

1982
01:58:51,694 --> 01:58:55,454
I would say, look, let's just at least have a contingency plan

1983
01:58:55,454 --> 01:58:57,774
just as a matter of being pragmatic.

1984
01:58:57,774 --> 01:59:01,774
But at the same time, I understand that a lot of people might think,

1985
01:59:01,774 --> 01:59:04,174
well, there's no point making a contingency plan

1986
01:59:04,174 --> 01:59:06,814
for something that's not even a real threat.

1987
01:59:06,814 --> 01:59:12,654
And I understand that in making that URSF or planning for it,

1988
01:59:12,654 --> 01:59:15,934
you would then give a whole bunch of fresh ammunition

1989
01:59:15,934 --> 01:59:19,214
to the filter people to be like, look, it is going to happen.

1990
01:59:19,214 --> 01:59:23,694
That's why they're preparing a URSF, you know?

1991
01:59:23,694 --> 01:59:25,534
So it makes sense.

1992
01:59:25,534 --> 01:59:26,174
Sure.

1993
01:59:26,174 --> 01:59:27,054
Politically not.

1994
01:59:27,054 --> 01:59:30,894
I am in favor of a user-rejected software proposal,

1995
01:59:30,894 --> 01:59:32,174
and so I wrote one.

1996
01:59:32,174 --> 01:59:34,654
Four months ago, I made a prototype

1997
01:59:34,654 --> 01:59:36,894
of one of my typical proof-of-concept software,

1998
01:59:38,014 --> 01:59:40,814
but that's all that I know how to write, so that's what I did.

1999
01:59:40,814 --> 01:59:44,574
And I put it out there, and it has not gained significant traction.

2000
01:59:44,574 --> 01:59:47,854
A Telegram group did emerge where people discussed

2001
01:59:47,854 --> 01:59:51,854
whether to make a real version, and the consensus was,

2002
01:59:51,854 --> 01:59:56,734
no, not unless they get more hashrate, more than 1%.

2003
01:59:57,774 --> 01:59:59,614
So, yeah, we'll see.

2004
02:00:01,054 --> 02:00:04,494
I do think they'll probably end up with a bit more than 1% at this point.

2005
02:00:05,614 --> 02:00:06,814
So we'll see.

2006
02:00:06,814 --> 02:00:08,574
That's a really interesting insight, though,

2007
02:00:08,574 --> 02:00:14,814
that it was an idea that was seriously considered.

2008
02:00:14,814 --> 02:00:18,414
You think there is an appetite for, at some threshold,

2009
02:00:18,414 --> 02:00:22,014
people would be like, okay, this has gone far enough.

2010
02:00:22,014 --> 02:00:24,814
We really need to make sure it's not going to happen.

2011
02:00:25,374 --> 02:00:26,094
That's interesting.

2012
02:00:27,054 --> 02:00:27,454
Maybe.

2013
02:00:27,454 --> 02:00:29,854
I don't know how serious it was considered.

2014
02:00:30,414 --> 02:00:32,734
There was a Telegram channel with some serious people in it.

2015
02:00:32,734 --> 02:00:34,174
Aaron Van Weerdum was in there.

2016
02:00:36,174 --> 02:00:37,534
Shinobi is in there.

2017
02:00:38,174 --> 02:00:38,734
I'm in there.

2018
02:00:38,734 --> 02:00:41,134
I was the one who kind of got it going.

2019
02:00:42,574 --> 02:00:43,454
So there's like three.

2020
02:00:44,014 --> 02:00:45,614
I think WickedSmartBitcoin is in there.

2021
02:00:46,414 --> 02:00:47,934
ZND Toshi is in there.

2022
02:00:47,934 --> 02:00:52,174
But everyone except me doesn't want to do it,

2023
02:00:52,174 --> 02:00:54,654
or doesn't want to do a user-rejected software.

2024
02:00:55,374 --> 02:00:57,614
Every other serious person is saying,

2025
02:00:57,614 --> 02:01:00,974
no, not unless they get a significant amount of hashrate.

2026
02:01:01,694 --> 02:01:02,194
Right.

2027
02:01:03,134 --> 02:01:05,854
And you think it would be like 2% or more

2028
02:01:05,854 --> 02:01:08,494
that would be quote-unquote significant in that context?

2029
02:01:08,494 --> 02:01:10,174
Different people have given different numbers.

2030
02:01:12,014 --> 02:01:14,974
The one that got the most attention in there was 1% as a trigger.

2031
02:01:15,534 --> 02:01:17,374
Several people said, if they get more than 1%,

2032
02:01:17,374 --> 02:01:18,734
then I'll start working on a user,

2033
02:01:18,734 --> 02:01:21,134
on a real version of what I made.

2034
02:01:22,574 --> 02:01:23,934
Another person said 2%.

2035
02:01:23,934 --> 02:01:25,294
One person said 20%.

2036
02:01:25,294 --> 02:01:28,254
He said only if they got the 20% of hashrate

2037
02:01:28,254 --> 02:01:29,534
would he consider working on one.

2038
02:01:30,334 --> 02:01:31,694
So we'll see.

2039
02:01:31,694 --> 02:01:32,094
We'll see.

2040
02:01:32,094 --> 02:01:34,494
But there is a place for discussion of it,

2041
02:01:34,494 --> 02:01:36,174
which is a Telegram channel I made.

2042
02:01:36,174 --> 02:01:38,254
Anyone can reach out to me if they want in there.

2043
02:01:39,614 --> 02:01:42,014
And I would certainly welcome anyone

2044
02:01:42,014 --> 02:01:44,814
who wants to help make a real version of this.

2045
02:01:44,814 --> 02:01:46,734
I think it would be great to start working on it now

2046
02:01:46,734 --> 02:01:48,254
and start getting a review on it

2047
02:01:48,254 --> 02:01:50,094
so that if it becomes necessary,

2048
02:01:50,094 --> 02:01:51,694
which is unlikely,

2049
02:01:51,694 --> 02:01:54,174
but if they start crossing these thresholds

2050
02:01:54,174 --> 02:01:54,974
where people start saying,

2051
02:01:54,974 --> 02:01:56,734
hey, it might be worth worrying about now,

2052
02:01:57,614 --> 02:01:59,214
we won't have to start then.

2053
02:01:59,294 --> 02:02:01,694
It would be great to already have something in the works

2054
02:02:01,694 --> 02:02:03,934
and say, now this needs review

2055
02:02:03,934 --> 02:02:08,254
and start getting hashrate behind it.

2056
02:02:09,294 --> 02:02:10,974
Yeah, I think that's very smart.

2057
02:02:10,974 --> 02:02:12,094
Decentralized Creative says,

2058
02:02:12,094 --> 02:02:14,494
are we going to talk about BCH on this show?

2059
02:02:14,494 --> 02:02:16,654
And the answer is yes, maybe, and no,

2060
02:02:16,654 --> 02:02:17,534
which is that, yes,

2061
02:02:17,534 --> 02:02:19,934
we already kind of did a little bit with the opcodes,

2062
02:02:19,934 --> 02:02:22,174
and maybe we'll chat about it more.

2063
02:02:22,174 --> 02:02:26,094
But also, this is the BTC crossover stream,

2064
02:02:26,094 --> 02:02:29,614
and we have guests who are in a good position

2065
02:02:29,614 --> 02:02:33,374
to give us insight about the current state of BTC.

2066
02:02:33,374 --> 02:02:36,974
So in the same way that Vlad did plenty of chat about BCH,

2067
02:02:36,974 --> 02:02:40,894
I'm definitely planning to keep doing a lot of chat about BTC.

2068
02:02:40,894 --> 02:02:43,374
So if you're looking for BCH insights,

2069
02:02:43,374 --> 02:02:44,334
I mean, you can keep listening.

2070
02:02:44,334 --> 02:02:45,774
Maybe we'll touch on it,

2071
02:02:45,774 --> 02:02:48,494
but that's not the primary directive of this show.

2072
02:02:48,494 --> 02:02:50,414
Of course, there's all the other episodes of the podcast,

2073
02:02:50,414 --> 02:02:52,574
and there's all the Bliss streams and everything

2074
02:02:52,574 --> 02:02:54,734
for plenty of chat about BCH.

2075
02:02:54,734 --> 02:02:56,894
Vlad, talk to me about these filters.

2076
02:02:56,894 --> 02:02:58,654
Where are you at on that?

2077
02:02:59,934 --> 02:03:01,614
So no offense to SuperTestNet,

2078
02:03:01,614 --> 02:03:03,934
I think he's one of the smartest people in Bitcoin,

2079
02:03:03,934 --> 02:03:05,534
but it's a huge waste of time.

2080
02:03:06,414 --> 02:03:09,294
And I wish this was used for something more productive.

2081
02:03:09,294 --> 02:03:13,134
It's been almost one year since Luke started,

2082
02:03:13,134 --> 02:03:14,254
no, it's been longer,

2083
02:03:14,254 --> 02:03:19,294
since he reported Ordinal says a critical vulnerability

2084
02:03:19,294 --> 02:03:21,454
and said that they're on attack.

2085
02:03:22,574 --> 02:03:23,614
And it's been going,

2086
02:03:23,694 --> 02:03:26,094
and this deranged one has been going for too long,

2087
02:03:26,094 --> 02:03:28,094
and it kept us from actually accomplishing

2088
02:03:28,094 --> 02:03:29,214
something more meaningful.

2089
02:03:29,854 --> 02:03:32,414
I remember when we were very close

2090
02:03:32,414 --> 02:03:34,334
to the great script restoration.

2091
02:03:35,294 --> 02:03:36,894
In the meantime, Rusty Russell,

2092
02:03:36,894 --> 02:03:38,654
who was the champion of the proposal,

2093
02:03:38,654 --> 02:03:40,494
actually left Bitcoin altogether.

2094
02:03:42,014 --> 02:03:46,254
And we were close to activating UpCat at some point,

2095
02:03:46,254 --> 02:03:52,334
and then CTV, and then CTV and CFS, CFSF, I think.

2096
02:03:53,774 --> 02:03:56,734
Yeah, CFSF, yeah.

2097
02:03:57,614 --> 02:04:00,254
Anyway, these were heavily influenced

2098
02:04:00,254 --> 02:04:04,974
by the Covenant soft forks that already exist on BCH,

2099
02:04:04,974 --> 02:04:06,254
which is an admission,

2100
02:04:06,254 --> 02:04:08,414
which Jeremy Rubin made on my podcast.

2101
02:04:08,974 --> 02:04:10,974
My point being right now is that

2102
02:04:11,854 --> 02:04:14,414
we could have used this time much more productively

2103
02:04:14,414 --> 02:04:17,134
to build something that actually helps Bitcoin

2104
02:04:17,134 --> 02:04:19,134
become better money

2105
02:04:19,134 --> 02:04:21,214
and make the value proposition greater

2106
02:04:21,214 --> 02:04:24,574
and maybe fix lightning or something.

2107
02:04:24,574 --> 02:04:27,374
And yet we're stuck trying to define what is spam

2108
02:04:27,374 --> 02:04:30,174
and trying to promote all of these edge cases

2109
02:04:30,174 --> 02:04:32,414
where, well, maybe someone's going to put child porn

2110
02:04:32,414 --> 02:04:34,814
on a blockchain, and let's not call it child porn.

2111
02:04:34,814 --> 02:04:36,654
Let's call it CSAM or whatever.

2112
02:04:37,374 --> 02:04:42,734
And then let's make core developers like Gloria Zhao quit

2113
02:04:43,454 --> 02:04:45,934
by basically bullying her for months

2114
02:04:45,934 --> 02:04:48,094
and turning her into this enemy,

2115
02:04:48,094 --> 02:04:51,054
even though she's been one of the most prolific contributors

2116
02:04:51,614 --> 02:04:52,574
to the project.

2117
02:04:52,574 --> 02:04:55,134
And then let's split the community into camps.

2118
02:04:55,134 --> 02:04:56,654
It all sounds like upside up to me.

2119
02:04:57,734 --> 02:04:58,734
And honestly, I refuse to participate.

2120
02:04:58,734 --> 02:05:01,734
I would rather spend my attention on something else.

2121
02:05:01,734 --> 02:05:03,734
No, you don't. You go and make podcasts about it.

2122
02:05:03,734 --> 02:05:06,734
I've been on your podcast specifically to talk about this.

2123
02:05:06,734 --> 02:05:09,734
Sure, but I make a new podcast every week.

2124
02:05:09,734 --> 02:05:13,734
I'm not like Mechanic or whatever, who's always talking about this.

2125
02:05:13,734 --> 02:05:18,734
I'm not like Matt Cratter, who seems to have developed an obsession with telling
people to rent Hashrate.

2126
02:05:18,734 --> 02:05:20,734
I move on.

2127
02:05:21,734 --> 02:05:24,734
I get someone who talks about a topic.

2128
02:05:24,734 --> 02:05:28,734
If I find it interesting, I have that topic once again with someone else.

2129
02:05:28,734 --> 02:05:34,734
But if it's really not something that I find interesting, I just let it be a
one-time thing.

2130
02:05:35,734 --> 02:05:38,734
And I think it's been since September or something.

2131
02:05:38,734 --> 02:05:41,734
I think you've done more than one episode about BIP110.

2132
02:05:41,734 --> 02:05:43,734
Okay, man, do some research.

2133
02:05:43,734 --> 02:05:49,734
See how many of them were actually about BIP110 and how much of a proportion that is
compared to.

2134
02:05:49,734 --> 02:05:52,734
The amount of content that I put out there.

2135
02:05:52,734 --> 02:05:54,734
All right.

2136
02:05:55,734 --> 02:06:00,734
But no offense, SuperTestNet, I do believe that your time is better spent doing
something else.

2137
02:06:00,734 --> 02:06:04,734
I remember you were doing Hedgehog, which was interesting.

2138
02:06:04,734 --> 02:06:09,734
You did a lot of crazy and at the same time useful stuff.

2139
02:06:09,734 --> 02:06:14,734
I remember there was a tool that you made for finding coin joints in blocks.

2140
02:06:14,734 --> 02:06:16,734
That was cool.

2141
02:06:16,734 --> 02:06:21,734
I used that for a while just for my personal curiosity.

2142
02:06:21,734 --> 02:06:23,734
I think it's built into Mempool Space now.

2143
02:06:23,734 --> 02:06:25,734
I mean, probably not my code.

2144
02:06:25,734 --> 02:06:27,734
They probably didn't even know about my code and just wrote their own.

2145
02:06:27,734 --> 02:06:33,734
But I think Mempool Space has one of their little Mempool goggles things to look for
coin joints.

2146
02:06:33,734 --> 02:06:39,734
So I was happy to see that it's being done by better software makers than me.

2147
02:06:39,734 --> 02:06:41,734
I'm not saying it's better.

2148
02:06:41,734 --> 02:06:43,734
I just think it has nicer UX.

2149
02:06:43,734 --> 02:06:46,734
But yours was finding the latest block.

2150
02:06:46,734 --> 02:06:53,734
Basically, you could scroll through the pages to see every block and how many coin
joints there are in every block.

2151
02:06:53,734 --> 02:06:58,734
And you could distinguish between one that's made by Wasabi, because they had more
inputs and outputs,

2152
02:06:58,734 --> 02:07:03,734
and one that's made by Samurai, which I think had five inputs, five outputs.

2153
02:07:03,734 --> 02:07:05,734
I don't know.

2154
02:07:05,734 --> 02:07:12,734
Mine had a lot of false positives, because if an exchange happened to have several
people receiving the same amount,

2155
02:07:12,734 --> 02:07:17,734
mine would say, that's a coin joint, which I guess technically it is.

2156
02:07:17,734 --> 02:07:21,734
But it's not like they're not deleting their logs or anything.

2157
02:07:21,734 --> 02:07:25,734
So it doesn't have the same properties of a normal coin joint.

2158
02:07:25,734 --> 02:07:27,734
But yeah, mine had a lot of false positives.

2159
02:07:27,734 --> 02:07:30,734
Yours might be considered false positives, too.

2160
02:07:30,734 --> 02:07:38,734
What I'm trying to say is that you're a smart guy, and you could use your energy for
something much more productive and useful for Bitcoin.

2161
02:07:38,734 --> 02:07:42,734
Would you guys like to hear what some of my latest Bitcoin projects have been?

2162
02:07:42,734 --> 02:07:44,734
Yeah, let's hear it.

2163
02:07:44,734 --> 02:07:48,734
So I've been working in the past couple of months.

2164
02:07:48,734 --> 02:07:51,734
There have been three things that have held my attention.

2165
02:07:51,734 --> 02:07:53,734
One of them is point-of-sale software.

2166
02:07:53,734 --> 02:07:58,734
One of them is disintermediating hash rate markets.

2167
02:07:59,734 --> 02:08:03,734
And I forget what the third one is.

2168
02:08:03,734 --> 02:08:09,734
Oh, making educational tools about the potential outcomes of the fork stuff.

2169
02:08:09,734 --> 02:08:13,734
So I bet you guys would be interested in hearing about the disintermediated hash
rate market idea.

2170
02:08:13,734 --> 02:08:16,734
I would love to hear that. Tell us.

2171
02:08:16,734 --> 02:08:24,734
Cool. Have either of you two ever purchased or acquired in some manner an ASIC?

2172
02:08:24,734 --> 02:08:27,734
No, but Jet might have.

2173
02:08:27,734 --> 02:08:33,734
Some people buy an ASIC or get one at a meetup or whatever, and they'll plug it into
their wall.

2174
02:08:33,734 --> 02:08:36,734
And it asks you for something.

2175
02:08:36,734 --> 02:08:41,734
The first thing that happens is connect your computer to it, and it says, give me a
Stratum link.

2176
02:08:41,734 --> 02:08:48,734
And Stratum is a protocol by which a computer can tell an ASIC, a mining machine,
what to do.

2177
02:08:48,734 --> 02:08:51,734
Here's the block I want you to mine. Here's the block from before it.

2178
02:08:51,734 --> 02:08:54,734
Here's the transactions I want you to put into it.

2179
02:08:54,734 --> 02:08:57,734
That's all done using something called the Stratum protocol.

2180
02:08:57,734 --> 02:09:01,734
So it'll ask you for one of those, and there's a couple of ways you can get one.

2181
02:09:01,734 --> 02:09:06,734
You can either run mining software on your computer, and it'll give you a Stratum
link,

2182
02:09:06,734 --> 02:09:09,734
and your own computer will tell your miner what to do.

2183
02:09:09,734 --> 02:09:16,734
But most people, what they end up doing is they go to a pool, like F2 pool or Ant
pool or one of these big pools,

2184
02:09:16,734 --> 02:09:21,734
and they'll get a Stratum link from them and plug that into their miner.

2185
02:09:21,734 --> 02:09:24,734
And then they get a payout. It's regular.

2186
02:09:24,734 --> 02:09:32,734
Once a day, or depending on how powerful your machine is, you'll get $3 or something
like that.

2187
02:09:32,734 --> 02:09:37,734
But what people often have, what they discover is that it's costing them more money,

2188
02:09:37,734 --> 02:09:41,734
or usually it's for most people, it's costing them more money to run the machine

2189
02:09:41,734 --> 02:09:47,734
through increased electricity bills than they're making from whatever pool they
picked.

2190
02:09:47,734 --> 02:09:53,734
So there's a solution to this, or one thing that people can do instead of just
pointing it at a pool

2191
02:09:53,734 --> 02:09:55,734
is you can point it at a hashrate market instead.

2192
02:09:55,734 --> 02:09:58,734
Have either of you ever heard of hashrate markets before?

2193
02:09:58,734 --> 02:10:00,734
I've definitely heard about it.

2194
02:10:00,734 --> 02:10:05,734
I don't know that I'm, and I know it's also related to, or maybe it's related to
this idea

2195
02:10:05,734 --> 02:10:13,734
that Bitcoin Cash Autist has of making a coin that tracks the price of hashes

2196
02:10:13,734 --> 02:10:17,734
using the on-chain difficulty, because the difficulty is on-chain,

2197
02:10:17,734 --> 02:10:23,734
so you can calculate how much a hash should cost in Bitcoin terms.

2198
02:10:23,734 --> 02:10:27,734
So I feel like there's, again, maybe that's not what you're doing,

2199
02:10:27,734 --> 02:10:30,734
but I feel like that's related to this idea.

2200
02:10:30,734 --> 02:10:32,734
It might be related.

2201
02:10:32,734 --> 02:10:37,734
In the Bitcoin space, there are three hashrate markets that I've researched.

2202
02:10:37,734 --> 02:10:40,734
I think there's probably a couple others, but the ones that I looked into

2203
02:10:40,734 --> 02:10:48,734
when I got interested in this niche area of Bitcoin are NiceHash, MiningRig Rentals,

2204
02:10:48,734 --> 02:10:53,734
and the newest one is called Brain's HashPower, which is run by Brain's Pool.

2205
02:10:53,734 --> 02:10:56,734
They also now are running a hashrate market.

2206
02:10:56,734 --> 02:11:00,734
And what you can do with these things is instead of giving a stratum link from a
pool,

2207
02:11:00,734 --> 02:11:07,734
you can give your mining equipment or your computer, your ASIC, a stratum link from
a hashrate market,

2208
02:11:07,734 --> 02:11:13,734
and then your machine will stay dormant while it's waiting for someone to rent it.

2209
02:11:13,734 --> 02:11:15,734
And you get to set a price.

2210
02:11:15,734 --> 02:11:21,734
So you can say, like, my break-even point is I need $5 a day for you to rent this
machine.

2211
02:11:21,734 --> 02:11:23,734
That's when I'm making money.

2212
02:11:23,734 --> 02:11:26,734
And so only if someone comes along and sees your listing and is like,

2213
02:11:26,734 --> 02:11:31,734
yeah, I'm willing to pay $5 a day for this amount of hash power,

2214
02:11:32,734 --> 02:11:37,734
then it'll turn on and start running, and then you're happy.

2215
02:11:37,734 --> 02:11:40,734
Then you're making money.

2216
02:11:40,734 --> 02:11:43,734
So this exists. This is out there in the world.

2217
02:11:43,734 --> 02:11:52,734
And it occurred to me that, in theory, that should be a more efficient way of mining
than pointing it at a pool.

2218
02:11:52,734 --> 02:11:55,734
Hang on, let's wait a second.

2219
02:11:55,734 --> 02:12:02,734
Can either of you guess why or think of a reason why that might be more efficient
than going to a pool, theoretically?

2220
02:12:02,734 --> 02:12:08,734
Well, would it be because you have all the different mining distributed amongst all
those different people,

2221
02:12:08,734 --> 02:12:12,734
and so they can individually set their rates.

2222
02:12:12,734 --> 02:12:16,734
So then when you're coming to buy, it's a hashrate market. That's what it is.

2223
02:12:16,734 --> 02:12:20,734
So you could just take up the amount of liquidity that you need,

2224
02:12:20,734 --> 02:12:25,734
whereas a pool, if they had in excess of that amount of capacity,

2225
02:12:25,734 --> 02:12:32,734
they would be losing money on the overheads for that hash that they were not using
at any given time.

2226
02:12:32,734 --> 02:12:37,734
So that's one reason I can think of. And the other is also just the overheads in
general.

2227
02:12:37,734 --> 02:12:40,734
I didn't think of that reason. That sounds perfectly right.

2228
02:12:40,734 --> 02:12:44,734
I think you're right. That is a reason why it'd be more efficient that I didn't
think of.

2229
02:12:44,734 --> 02:12:50,734
The reason that I thought of why it would be more efficient is because,

2230
02:12:50,734 --> 02:12:56,734
let's say that a miner who has an ASIC, often they want to find whoever's going to
pay them the most.

2231
02:12:56,734 --> 02:13:01,734
They want to find whatever pool is offering the best rates at the current time.

2232
02:13:01,734 --> 02:13:04,734
And so you might do some research, but some of them might not be available to you.

2233
02:13:04,734 --> 02:13:09,734
Some mining pools require KYC. Some of them are only available to people in certain
countries.

2234
02:13:09,734 --> 02:13:14,734
Some of them require specialized contracts. So you might not be able to get the best
deal.

2235
02:13:14,734 --> 02:13:18,734
You might not even know what the best deal is. But basically, with a hash rate
market,

2236
02:13:18,734 --> 02:13:22,734
you could theoretically outsource this. You could find the best deal you know of,

2237
02:13:22,734 --> 02:13:27,734
one that's going to pay you $7 a day for your equipment.

2238
02:13:27,734 --> 02:13:31,734
You could say, all right, I'm going to go to, instead of pointing my thing at that
pool,

2239
02:13:31,734 --> 02:13:36,734
I'm going to point my ASIC at a hash rate market, set my minimum to $7 a day.

2240
02:13:36,734 --> 02:13:42,734
And if no one can beat that, I will rent from myself and point my hash rate at that
pool.

2241
02:13:42,734 --> 02:13:48,734
So now I'm getting $7 a day. But if someone knows a better place, a better place to
point my machine at,

2242
02:13:48,734 --> 02:13:55,734
maybe one that pays $10 a day, they can rent it from me, point it at this better
place and split the difference.

2243
02:13:55,734 --> 02:13:58,734
And I get more money than I was making. They get some money.

2244
02:13:58,734 --> 02:14:05,734
And it outsources the discovery of the best place to point your machine to the
market.

2245
02:14:05,734 --> 02:14:11,734
And it gamifies it and incentivizes people to do this because you can earn money by
finding the best place.

2246
02:14:11,734 --> 02:14:18,734
Whereas if you're just doing it on your own, whatever one you find, even if you do
your research really well,

2247
02:14:18,734 --> 02:14:24,734
and you find the very best one on Tuesday, on Wednesday, there might be a different
place that's the best place to go.

2248
02:14:25,734 --> 02:14:35,734
So it just makes it, I think, theoretically, it turns your targeted revenue stream,
your targeted income, into a minimum income.

2249
02:14:35,734 --> 02:14:41,734
And that's theoretically more efficient than going to a pool.

2250
02:14:41,734 --> 02:14:46,734
So that's my theory for why people, in theory, miners should be using,

2251
02:14:46,734 --> 02:14:52,734
it should be the more dominant strategy is instead of going directly to pools, to go
to hash rate markets.

2252
02:14:52,734 --> 02:14:56,734
But that's not what we see. Most people point them at pools instead.

2253
02:14:56,734 --> 02:15:01,734
And I think the reason for that is because of the brokerage fee.

2254
02:15:01,734 --> 02:15:09,734
When you point at a nice hash or mining or rentals or these other ones, there's a
couple of downsides.

2255
02:15:09,734 --> 02:15:18,734
And one is they take a 3% fee. They also take custody of the funds of whoever is
paying you for renting your hash rate.

2256
02:15:19,734 --> 02:15:22,734
And sometimes they don't give you your money. They don't pay out.

2257
02:15:22,734 --> 02:15:27,734
There are people who have signed up for these things, and then suddenly they start
doing shotgun KYC,

2258
02:15:27,734 --> 02:15:32,734
and they won't give you your payouts or even the person who's renting from you, they
won't give them their money back

2259
02:15:32,734 --> 02:15:36,734
because you're from the wrong country, they learned during the KYC process.

2260
02:15:36,734 --> 02:15:44,734
So all of those things combined to say, look, I'm not going to do, even if I did it,

2261
02:15:45,734 --> 02:15:49,734
if I found a place that's going to pay me $5 and then I decided to rent for myself,

2262
02:15:49,734 --> 02:15:55,734
so I put $5 a day into this market to rent for myself, I'm not going to get $5 out.

2263
02:15:55,734 --> 02:16:04,734
Even if that's what the pool pays, I'm going to lose 3% of that to the broker.

2264
02:16:04,734 --> 02:16:09,734
So I'm going to get less than I would if I just pointed it at the pool itself.

2265
02:16:09,734 --> 02:16:13,734
So it was in discovering all of this and thinking about hash rate markets that I
came up with a protocol

2266
02:16:13,734 --> 02:16:17,734
for disintermediating hash rate markets and eliminating the broker.

2267
02:16:18,734 --> 02:16:21,734
So with all that preface, do you have any questions so far?

2268
02:16:22,734 --> 02:16:26,734
Yes. So my question is, and you're kind of touching on it a little bit at the end
there,

2269
02:16:26,734 --> 02:16:31,734
but I think it's in the same vein, which is the example you gave at the start

2270
02:16:31,734 --> 02:16:34,734
was somebody who has a home miner that they put on their desk,

2271
02:16:34,734 --> 02:16:38,734
and maybe they don't have a lot of infrastructure around it or whatever.

2272
02:16:38,734 --> 02:16:43,734
It's just for home miners, and then if you obviously link up a lot of them,

2273
02:16:43,734 --> 02:16:47,734
it becomes a decent pool of hash rate that people could rent.

2274
02:16:47,734 --> 02:16:53,734
But then you're going on to the medium and large size miners

2275
02:16:53,734 --> 02:16:58,734
either haven't caught on to this yet or they haven't found a reason to switch.

2276
02:16:58,734 --> 02:17:07,734
How do we know what is the spread of people using which markets?

2277
02:17:09,734 --> 02:17:13,734
Oh, well, that one is at least pretty easy because they are marketplaces.

2278
02:17:13,734 --> 02:17:16,734
They have to make the listings available.

2279
02:17:16,734 --> 02:17:24,734
So you can go and see what amount of hash rate is available on these renting
websites

2280
02:17:24,734 --> 02:17:30,734
and compare it to how much is the actual hash rate at work in pools.

2281
02:17:30,734 --> 02:17:34,734
Like compare the unrented hash rate to the ones that's actually at work doing stuff.

2282
02:17:35,734 --> 02:17:38,734
So you could make that comparison. I haven't done it to check.

2283
02:17:38,734 --> 02:17:43,734
If I had to guess, I would guess there's somewhere around 10 terahash.

2284
02:17:43,734 --> 02:17:48,734
That'd be my expectation of just having done the little bit of research I've done.

2285
02:17:48,734 --> 02:17:52,734
I would guess about 10 terahash is on hash rate markets,

2286
02:17:52,734 --> 02:17:55,734
and I think we're at about a zetta hash.

2287
02:17:55,734 --> 02:18:01,734
So it's like maybe 1%, somewhere around 1% of total hash rate

2288
02:18:01,734 --> 02:18:04,734
is available for rent on hash rate markets is my guess.

2289
02:18:04,734 --> 02:18:07,734
I don't know how exactly I got that impression,

2290
02:18:07,734 --> 02:18:09,734
but I looked at several of the websites where you can do this,

2291
02:18:09,734 --> 02:18:12,734
and that number jumps out as a possible sum.

2292
02:18:12,734 --> 02:18:15,734
That sounds right, but it would be growing, right?

2293
02:18:15,734 --> 02:18:21,734
Like this hash rate markets is a sort of a quote unquote relatively recent
innovation, right?

2294
02:18:21,734 --> 02:18:24,734
So how long has this been going on for?

2295
02:18:24,734 --> 02:18:26,734
Well, NiceHash has been around for quite a while,

2296
02:18:26,734 --> 02:18:28,734
and Mining Rig Rentals is even older than NiceHash.

2297
02:18:29,734 --> 02:18:31,734
So they've been going around for quite a while.

2298
02:18:31,734 --> 02:18:33,734
They had some competition, though.

2299
02:18:33,734 --> 02:18:40,734
There used to be this thing called cloud mining where you would –

2300
02:18:40,734 --> 02:18:46,734
well, it had a similar model, at least the ones that weren't scams had a similar
model.

2301
02:18:46,734 --> 02:18:49,734
But some of these things would go pretty far back.

2302
02:18:49,734 --> 02:18:55,734
They are becoming more popular now with the BIP-110 stuff happening

2303
02:18:55,734 --> 02:18:59,734
because a big strategy of the BIP-110 people is to rent hash rate

2304
02:18:59,734 --> 02:19:05,734
and point it at tools that are signaling for BIP-110.

2305
02:19:05,734 --> 02:19:09,734
So there's more demand now than there has been before for this stuff,

2306
02:19:09,734 --> 02:19:11,734
and therefore more people are –

2307
02:19:11,734 --> 02:19:16,734
it's more profitable now than it has been before to point your rigs at a hash rate
market.

2308
02:19:16,734 --> 02:19:20,734
So we're seeing some of that, which I think is really cool, actually.

2309
02:19:20,734 --> 02:19:27,734
The BIP-110 people are so, I guess, serious about what they're trying to do

2310
02:19:27,734 --> 02:19:29,734
that they're willing to pay money.

2311
02:19:29,734 --> 02:19:31,734
They're actually putting their money where their mouth is

2312
02:19:31,734 --> 02:19:35,734
and essentially paying miners to – or buying the equipment,

2313
02:19:35,734 --> 02:19:39,734
or I guess not fully buying, but renting the equipment to make this thing happen.

2314
02:19:39,734 --> 02:19:44,734
I think that's really neat, and I want to give them kudos for doing that.

2315
02:19:44,734 --> 02:19:48,734
It's having a significant economic impact in changing the market space,

2316
02:19:48,734 --> 02:19:51,734
and it got my attention and got me thinking about this space, too.

2317
02:19:51,734 --> 02:19:54,734
So kudos to you guys for doing that.

2318
02:19:54,734 --> 02:19:55,734
I think that's really cool.

2319
02:19:55,734 --> 02:19:56,734
Yeah, I agree.

2320
02:19:56,734 --> 02:19:58,734
If anyone in the BIP-10 community is watching.

2321
02:19:58,734 --> 02:20:00,734
I think it's a super fascinating innovation.

2322
02:20:00,734 --> 02:20:04,734
I'll let you get on with what you're going to explain the next step in a minute,

2323
02:20:04,734 --> 02:20:07,734
but just to linger on that point just for a moment,

2324
02:20:07,734 --> 02:20:10,734
I think that's a super, super interesting case

2325
02:20:10,734 --> 02:20:14,734
because it's sort of almost coming full circle in a way

2326
02:20:14,734 --> 02:20:19,734
to this sort of pure theory of Bitcoin in that you can imagine

2327
02:20:19,734 --> 02:20:22,734
that if hashrate markets became more and more prominent

2328
02:20:22,734 --> 02:20:25,734
because of the advantages like you were explaining,

2329
02:20:25,734 --> 02:20:29,734
then you could get to a point where even theoretically 100% of the hashrate

2330
02:20:29,734 --> 02:20:33,734
would be available on the hashrate markets,

2331
02:20:33,734 --> 02:20:39,734
and so whoever wanted to get signaling for any specific proposal

2332
02:20:39,734 --> 02:20:42,734
could buy up to the amount that they needed to make it,

2333
02:20:42,734 --> 02:20:46,734
and then it would become a bidding war amongst groups of supporters

2334
02:20:46,734 --> 02:20:51,734
for different proposals who is going to put the most money on the line

2335
02:20:51,734 --> 02:20:53,734
to show that they are serious,

2336
02:20:53,734 --> 02:20:57,734
that their proposal should be the one adopted, right?

2337
02:20:57,734 --> 02:21:02,734
And then the miners have just, you know, Satoshi's one CPU, one vote,

2338
02:21:02,734 --> 02:21:08,734
but just abstracted through a market and available to the whole world

2339
02:21:08,734 --> 02:21:10,734
for people interested in Bitcoin governance.

2340
02:21:10,734 --> 02:21:15,734
I think that's a fascinating idea, and they've created that.

2341
02:21:15,734 --> 02:21:19,734
But in order to get there, I think you need to get rid of the broker

2342
02:21:19,734 --> 02:21:22,734
because as long as the broker is there, he has to charge fees,

2343
02:21:22,734 --> 02:21:27,734
he has to do KYC on his users, and he has custody of user funds,

2344
02:21:27,734 --> 02:21:32,734
and that means it's going to be less efficient

2345
02:21:32,734 --> 02:21:37,734
than if you bypass him and go directly to a pool.

2346
02:21:38,734 --> 02:21:42,734
In a sense, a pool is renting hash rate for most of its users.

2347
02:21:42,734 --> 02:21:45,734
Unless your foundry owns all of their equipment,

2348
02:21:45,734 --> 02:21:48,734
they're making contracts with their users.

2349
02:21:48,734 --> 02:21:51,734
They're saying, if you have a mining farm and you point it at our pool,

2350
02:21:51,734 --> 02:21:54,734
we'll pay you a certain rate for the use of your equipment,

2351
02:21:54,734 --> 02:21:56,734
and that's a rental contract effectively

2352
02:21:56,734 --> 02:21:58,734
because they don't own the machines.

2353
02:21:58,734 --> 02:22:01,734
Whoever the mining farm is that's contracting with them,

2354
02:22:01,734 --> 02:22:03,734
they're the ones who own the machines,

2355
02:22:03,734 --> 02:22:06,734
and the pool is effectively just renting it and mining blocks with it

2356
02:22:06,734 --> 02:22:08,734
and giving a payout.

2357
02:22:08,734 --> 02:22:14,734
Most mining pools are effectively participating in hash rate markets.

2358
02:22:14,734 --> 02:22:19,734
They're just not doing it through nice hash and brains hash power.

2359
02:22:19,734 --> 02:22:24,734
They're just doing it directly with mining farms, making direct contracts.

2360
02:22:24,734 --> 02:22:27,734
But I thought it'd be cool to get rid of the brokers

2361
02:22:27,734 --> 02:22:32,734
and make this more accessible to people with at-home miners,

2362
02:22:32,734 --> 02:22:34,734
and so I thought of a way to do it.

2363
02:22:34,734 --> 02:22:37,734
The way that I thought of to do it is you leverage the fact

2364
02:22:37,734 --> 02:22:39,734
that proof-of-work is self-validating.

2365
02:22:39,734 --> 02:22:44,734
So if I say that I have a machine that can do one terahash of power,

2366
02:22:44,734 --> 02:22:48,734
of hashing, as someone who wants to rent that from you,

2367
02:22:48,734 --> 02:22:50,734
I can validate it by giving you a block template

2368
02:22:50,734 --> 02:22:55,734
and seeing how many leading zeros you get over time.

2369
02:22:55,734 --> 02:22:57,734
I can say, okay, after one minute of hashing,

2370
02:22:57,734 --> 02:23:00,734
you should get this many leading zeros,

2371
02:23:00,734 --> 02:23:03,734
and after two minutes of hashing, you should get this many leading zeros,

2372
02:23:03,734 --> 02:23:06,734
and over time, it should increase.

2373
02:23:06,734 --> 02:23:08,734
So my proposal is pretty simple.

2374
02:23:08,734 --> 02:23:11,734
It's still have the people make a listing and say,

2375
02:23:11,734 --> 02:23:14,734
I've got a machine that can do this much hashing,

2376
02:23:14,734 --> 02:23:17,734
and here's my rate, or here's how much I want for it.

2377
02:23:17,734 --> 02:23:20,734
But the renter, instead of going through a broker,

2378
02:23:20,734 --> 02:23:24,734
he just makes a lighting payment to the hasher

2379
02:23:24,734 --> 02:23:27,734
or to the person with the equipment once a minute.

2380
02:23:27,734 --> 02:23:29,734
He says, here's the block template I want you to work on.

2381
02:23:29,734 --> 02:23:32,734
Start working on this, and I'm going to investigate

2382
02:23:32,734 --> 02:23:34,734
after a minute whether you've reached your target,

2383
02:23:34,734 --> 02:23:36,734
and if you have, I will give you a payout,

2384
02:23:36,734 --> 02:23:37,734
and then I'll do it again.

2385
02:23:37,734 --> 02:23:39,734
The next minute, I'll check if you've reached your target,

2386
02:23:39,734 --> 02:23:42,734
and I'll give you another payout, and you just keep doing that.

2387
02:23:42,734 --> 02:23:45,734
As long as the payer, the renter, keeps paying,

2388
02:23:45,734 --> 02:23:48,734
the miner keeps hashing, and as long as the miner

2389
02:23:48,734 --> 02:23:51,734
keeps hitting his targets, the renter keeps paying,

2390
02:23:51,734 --> 02:23:52,734
and now you don't need a middleman.

2391
02:23:52,734 --> 02:23:54,734
You don't need a broker.

2392
02:23:54,734 --> 02:23:58,734
You just have the renter and the hasher and no one in between,

2393
02:23:58,734 --> 02:24:01,734
and I think that would work,

2394
02:24:01,734 --> 02:24:04,734
and it would make it so that that's the way to go

2395
02:24:04,734 --> 02:24:06,734
if you have an at-home miner,

2396
02:24:06,734 --> 02:24:10,734
or even if you're a bigger entity,

2397
02:24:10,734 --> 02:24:12,734
it's theoretically more efficient than going to pools

2398
02:24:12,734 --> 02:24:15,734
because you outsource the discovery

2399
02:24:15,734 --> 02:24:18,734
of the best place to mine at.

2400
02:24:18,734 --> 02:24:22,734
And you could even make it, quote-unquote,

2401
02:24:22,734 --> 02:24:26,734
scam-free, I believe, because you can publish,

2402
02:24:26,734 --> 02:24:29,734
like you said, the proof of work is self-validating.

2403
02:24:29,734 --> 02:24:32,734
You could publish a proof of that, so maybe not on BTC,

2404
02:24:32,734 --> 02:24:37,734
but I'm almost certain on BCH, where we have the improved VM,

2405
02:24:37,734 --> 02:24:40,734
you could have, instead of having those one-minute

2406
02:24:40,734 --> 02:24:42,734
lightning payments that you were talking about,

2407
02:24:42,734 --> 02:24:45,734
you could have a one-minute on-chain transaction

2408
02:24:45,734 --> 02:24:50,734
which locked up the funds for the hash rate in an escrow,

2409
02:24:50,734 --> 02:24:54,734
which would be either refundable to the original person

2410
02:24:54,734 --> 02:24:58,734
after a time lock, or the miner, the hasher,

2411
02:24:58,734 --> 02:25:01,734
would be able to grab if they could provide a proof

2412
02:25:01,734 --> 02:25:05,734
of a proof-of-work template or whatever

2413
02:25:05,734 --> 02:25:10,734
matching the difficulty level that was specified.

2414
02:25:10,734 --> 02:25:13,734
So you could make it...

2415
02:25:13,734 --> 02:25:15,734
If you were doing it once per minute,

2416
02:25:15,734 --> 02:25:17,734
you'd probably have to do it on a larger time frame

2417
02:25:17,734 --> 02:25:20,734
than once per minute, because let's say that they only have

2418
02:25:20,734 --> 02:25:23,734
half of a tera hash, but they're claiming they have

2419
02:25:23,734 --> 02:25:26,734
one tera hash. If there's a time lock on there,

2420
02:25:26,734 --> 02:25:29,734
they could just mine for another minute,

2421
02:25:29,734 --> 02:25:31,734
or mine for however long it takes them,

2422
02:25:31,734 --> 02:25:35,734
and then provide the proof, and so they'd get the money,

2423
02:25:35,734 --> 02:25:38,734
even though they didn't actually have one tera hash.

2424
02:25:38,734 --> 02:25:43,734
Whereas with lightning, because the payments can be so rapid,

2425
02:25:43,734 --> 02:25:45,734
I think it's a...

2426
02:25:45,734 --> 02:25:47,734
Well, anyway, yeah.

2427
02:25:47,734 --> 02:25:49,734
Cool, so it sounds like you like the idea.

2428
02:25:49,734 --> 02:25:50,734
You're even adding to it.

2429
02:25:50,734 --> 02:25:52,734
Yeah, of course I like the idea.

2430
02:25:52,734 --> 02:25:55,734
I think it's a great idea, because then this is what I'm saying,

2431
02:25:55,734 --> 02:25:59,734
and then if you had people making those escrow contracts,

2432
02:25:59,734 --> 02:26:03,734
so they're effectively putting up hash rate bounties

2433
02:26:03,734 --> 02:26:08,734
on-chain, locked in the UTXOs, this is the signaling,

2434
02:26:08,734 --> 02:26:10,734
or this is the template, or whatever.

2435
02:26:10,734 --> 02:26:13,734
This is what I want you to do, which could even be off-chain, right?

2436
02:26:13,734 --> 02:26:17,734
So you could even just publish a hash on-chain of,

2437
02:26:17,734 --> 02:26:23,734
here's a link to a document that has what my exact specifications are.

2438
02:26:23,734 --> 02:26:26,734
Here's the amount of mining that I need done,

2439
02:26:26,734 --> 02:26:29,734
and here is the escrow, which you can unlock

2440
02:26:29,734 --> 02:26:32,734
if you can match that criteria.

2441
02:26:32,734 --> 02:26:35,734
So then if you have those on-chain, then, again,

2442
02:26:35,734 --> 02:26:38,734
you've got a disintermediated market, exactly like you're saying,

2443
02:26:38,734 --> 02:26:42,734
because then you can scan the chain, and you can show a dashboard,

2444
02:26:42,734 --> 02:26:44,734
and you can visualize it however you want,

2445
02:26:44,734 --> 02:26:47,734
of here are the current bounties, and then, of course,

2446
02:26:47,734 --> 02:26:50,734
you can compute a market price, market liquidity,

2447
02:26:50,734 --> 02:26:52,734
the depth, and everything like that.

2448
02:26:52,734 --> 02:26:56,734
And then you just connect your wallet to it,

2449
02:26:56,734 --> 02:27:00,734
your wallet connects to it, and you could just say,

2450
02:27:00,734 --> 02:27:05,734
it would be like Binance or something, but on-chain for Hashrate,

2451
02:27:05,734 --> 02:27:08,734
which is, I want to support this proposal,

2452
02:27:08,734 --> 02:27:10,734
or I want the network to be going in this direction.

2453
02:27:10,734 --> 02:27:16,734
Let me buy templates for that thing directly out of your wallet.

2454
02:27:16,734 --> 02:27:18,734
And that also improves censorship resistance.

2455
02:27:18,734 --> 02:27:21,734
I'm sure you have thought this through as well, too,

2456
02:27:21,734 --> 02:27:25,734
which is that if for some reason somebody is trying to censor me,

2457
02:27:25,734 --> 02:27:29,734
the answer is always, well, another miner will put it in,

2458
02:27:29,734 --> 02:27:31,734
and there's enough miners that someone will put it in.

2459
02:27:31,734 --> 02:27:34,734
Well, with this system, that means you could be that somebody.

2460
02:27:34,734 --> 02:27:36,734
You could just be like, okay,

2461
02:27:36,734 --> 02:27:39,734
I need to get this payment through for $100,000.

2462
02:27:39,734 --> 02:27:42,734
So you're going to launch your Hashrate and push it through,

2463
02:27:42,734 --> 02:27:45,734
and you get most of your money back because you also mine a block,

2464
02:27:45,734 --> 02:27:48,734
and so you get the rewards and the fees for mining that block.

2465
02:27:48,734 --> 02:27:53,734
Yes, exactly. Exactly. I think that's so cool.

2466
02:27:53,734 --> 02:27:55,734
I think that is super cool.

2467
02:27:55,734 --> 02:27:59,734
Well, if any BCH developers also agree that it's a good idea,

2468
02:27:59,734 --> 02:28:01,734
go for it. Make it. Make it happen.

2469
02:28:01,734 --> 02:28:05,734
And then maybe we Bitcoin people can copy it.

2470
02:28:05,734 --> 02:28:08,734
Yes. I think you might have a hard time with copying it

2471
02:28:08,734 --> 02:28:11,734
because it will almost certainly involve a bunch of protocol upgrades

2472
02:28:11,734 --> 02:28:13,734
that you probably won't be able to get through.

2473
02:28:13,734 --> 02:28:17,734
But, yeah, I really hope somebody does take this idea and run with it.

2474
02:28:17,734 --> 02:28:22,734
So let me mix in this idea about the Hashrate coin as well, too,

2475
02:28:22,734 --> 02:28:26,734
because I think that's related, right?

2476
02:28:26,734 --> 02:28:30,734
So the idea is, and I can send you more about this afterwards,

2477
02:28:30,734 --> 02:28:34,734
but Bitcoin Cash Odyssey has this idea of trying to sort of price

2478
02:28:34,734 --> 02:28:36,734
the world in energy, right?

2479
02:28:36,734 --> 02:28:41,734
That energy is a more fundamental currency than Bitcoin

2480
02:28:41,734 --> 02:28:44,734
or than fiat currencies or gold or whatever, right?

2481
02:28:44,734 --> 02:28:50,734
And that is approximated through proof of work in an unfakeable way,

2482
02:28:50,734 --> 02:28:54,734
exactly like you were saying, that the proof of work is unforgeable,

2483
02:28:54,734 --> 02:28:56,734
basically self-validated.

2484
02:28:56,734 --> 02:29:01,734
So in that case, then, on BCH, the difficulty adjusts

2485
02:29:01,734 --> 02:29:03,734
every single block.

2486
02:29:03,734 --> 02:29:06,734
And from, of course, you have access to the on-chain data

2487
02:29:06,734 --> 02:29:08,734
from within the chain itself.

2488
02:29:08,734 --> 02:29:12,734
So you can see what the difficulty is and then figure out

2489
02:29:12,734 --> 02:29:16,734
how much energy was spent to produce that proof,

2490
02:29:16,734 --> 02:29:21,734
which gives you a price in BCH sats for that energy.

2491
02:29:21,734 --> 02:29:28,734
So if you had the Hashrate markets, you could then also track

2492
02:29:28,734 --> 02:29:32,734
or calculate those markets, not in terms of BCH,

2493
02:29:32,734 --> 02:29:36,734
but just in terms of raw energy spend,

2494
02:29:36,734 --> 02:29:43,734
which I'm sure there's a synergy or overlap there somewhere.

2495
02:29:43,734 --> 02:29:44,734
Maybe.

2496
02:29:44,734 --> 02:29:47,734
But I want to circle back to something Vlad said.

2497
02:29:47,734 --> 02:29:50,734
He said that he wishes that I was working on some things

2498
02:29:50,734 --> 02:29:54,734
that are more useful to the Bitcoin ecosystem than...

2499
02:29:55,309 --> 02:30:22,309
the fork stuff. Well, I just want to mention that if it wasn't for the fork stuff
that was happening, I wouldn't have started paying attention to Hashrate markets.
And so I wouldn't have come up with this idea. So I want to thank all the people who
are doing the fork stuff for bringing my attention to something where I can come up
with a significant improvement to Bitcoin. So thank you, BIP110 people. Keep on
bringing my attention to good things.

2500
02:30:23,269 --> 02:30:34,949
Yeah, and I completely co-sign that for all the coverage that I have done of the
filter drama and especially Bitcoin Mechanics' personal involvement in it.

2501
02:30:34,949 --> 02:30:47,589
And I've said many times that I think he's completely on the right track when it
comes to like ocean mining, decentralizing the templates, and now it's turned into
this Hashrate renting.

2502
02:30:47,589 --> 02:31:13,589
I think this is all brilliant stuff. And this is stuff that I would love to have
more of in BCH. And it's something Bitcoin, broadly defined, definitely needs, which
is that the mining industry, despite being one of the most economically significant
parts of the whole thing, also gets some of the least attention from, like you're
saying, this decentralized ideas and thinking.

2503
02:31:13,589 --> 02:31:33,989
That is not my experience. I think many of the top developers in the Bitcoin
ecosystem work for mining companies, and they're constantly improving their
software. And that comes out, you know, the Stratum software that started coming out
recently is really cool. The Datum software from the Ocean team is really pushing
the innovations there.

2504
02:31:33,989 --> 02:31:53,429
What's his name? Portland Hoddle, his work at Mara with their custom mining, the
private mempool stuff they've been doing. There's a lot of innovation in the Bitcoin
space that's been coming out from the mining scene. And I think it's really
expressive of the fact that they've got a lot of talented developers working in that
industry and part of the industry.

2505
02:31:53,989 --> 02:32:17,829
Yeah, maybe you're right, or probably I would say, yes, you are right, which is kind
of maybe because the reason that I am not seeing it, well, although I'm fascinated,
maybe you have a theory for me on this is that, like in the entire history of the
BCH podcast, 180 plus episodes, I don't think we've had any episodes with miners,
like just in and it's something that I want to do at some point.

2506
02:32:17,829 --> 02:32:40,789
But just in my experience, in my journey of Bitcoin, I don't run into many miners.
They just, A, they seem to have their own somewhat segregated, you know, sub
community. And then also B, BCH is a much smaller percentage of the hash rate. Of
course, like it's tiny. So for that reason, they're much less interested in what's
going on in BCH, I guess.

2507
02:32:40,789 --> 02:33:10,389
Yeah, my experience has been a bit different. I often, in 2023, I lived in Austin,
Texas. And Austin is one of the places where they combine. There's a lot of Bitcoin
developers in Austin. At one point, we had three different coworking spaces for
Bitcoin developers. And there's also a lot of the mining industry that's centered in
Texas and Austin's the capital. So at our BitDevs and at some of these workspaces,
you got to interact a lot with people who were working on mining stuff.

2508
02:33:11,349 --> 02:33:13,109
And it was a really wonderful and magical time.

2509
02:33:13,589 --> 02:33:34,149
But I think this whole mining stuff is just fascinating. And I would love to be more
aware of it and more involved in it and so forth. But for whatever reason, I think
I'm in like maybe like one Telegram group that the miners talk about stuff. So I try
and keep an eye on it. But I'm actually surprised.

2510
02:33:34,149 --> 02:33:34,949
I see you now.

2511
02:33:34,949 --> 02:33:37,349
There we go. All right. Now ask a question.

2512
02:33:38,309 --> 02:34:05,349
It wasn't a question. I was just saying that Adaptive Block Size Limit pointed me
towards a little home miner that's specific, like a space heater, essentially. And
considering that these miners are just throwing away heat anyway, and the cost to
heat is the same, right? I think I might buy a couple of these and heat my house
over these cold Canadian winters with them. So I might be the first miner on the
show.

2513
02:34:05,589 --> 02:34:29,029
Cool. There you go. Yeah, that's another thing that's been innovative. There's a lot
more mining stuff now. At the most recent BitDevs here in Puerto Rico, not the most
recent one, like two or three BitDevs ago, the guys from Parasite Mining, which is a
mining pool in Bitcoin, came and they've got an innovative thing they're doing where
they combine lottery mining with pool mining.

2514
02:34:29,349 --> 02:34:44,869
And they make it so that if you're mining as part of the Parasite pool, and your
machine is the one that finds a block, you get a whole Bitcoin. And then the
remainder two point something Bitcoin is split up between the other participants in
the pool.

2515
02:34:45,429 --> 02:34:58,709
And they're able to leverage the fact that people love lotteries as part of their
marketing for their pool. They're able to go around and say, if you mine with us,
you get a chance at a whole Bitcoin every time we find a block, which is neat.

2516
02:34:58,789 --> 02:35:01,509
I mean, I think that's neat that people can offer these sort of features.

2517
02:35:02,389 --> 02:35:12,789
Yeah, it is super cool. I love the idea when I heard about that, because if I had
hashrate and stuff, I feel like I'd be pointing it to that pool. Maybe it doesn't
make sense if you have an enormous amount of hashrate.

2518
02:35:12,949 --> 02:35:23,589
But if you have a small amount of hashrate, I would totally be on board with that,
where you're getting a chance at the lottery, because it feels so bad for people who
are those tiny miners, right?

2519
02:35:23,989 --> 02:35:31,669
Yeah, you get a chance at the big one. But even if you don't get the big one, you
still get the regular rewards. Just they're smaller than other miners pay out.

2520
02:35:33,189 --> 02:35:41,349
Yeah, I think it sounds like a good trade. I don't know, Vlad, have you interviewed
a lot of miners? How much visibility do you have in the mining scene?

2521
02:35:42,069 --> 02:35:55,429
I've interviewed some people from Brains, which is the first mining pool in Bitcoin.
It used to be called miningbitcoin.cz, and then it became Slushpool. It was
cordially referred to as Slushpool.

2522
02:35:55,909 --> 02:36:07,909
Satoshi himself noticed it in 2010. And I've had Slush on my show. I've had his
friend Stick, the two of them co-founded Trezor, and also ran Slushpool for a while.

2523
02:36:07,909 --> 02:36:36,789
And recently, I traveled to Prague to interview the current people running
Slushpool. And right now, I'm in a group with some people from F2Pool on Telegram,
and we're trying to figure out a mutually convenient time to record something,
because apparently, I got their attention, their CEO and founder, I'm not exactly
what his name is, but on Twitter, he's SatoFishy, and he is one of the first people
to fly into space with SpaceX, which

2524
02:36:37,909 --> 02:37:00,389
is quite amazing, to be honest, when you think about it. He was a pioneer of Bitcoin
mining, and then he started this lifestyle where he was flying every day to a
different country just to stamp his passport, which I could never really understand.
But I guess it's what you do when you run out of stuff to accomplish, and you're
rich and have no reason to work anymore.

2525
02:37:01,109 --> 02:37:13,509
And now he's going to be an astronaut, which is amazing. And I hopefully will
interview someone from F2Pool soon. It's just weird. Maybe I should message them
right now, since I remembered. Thank you for the reminder.

2526
02:37:13,509 --> 02:37:33,669
They're the only pool that's come out explicitly against BIP110. So that is a cool
thing. If anyone ends up making a user-rejected software client, maybe we could
pitch it to them and say, here's how you can run, not just state your opposition to
BIP110, but run it as code.

2527
02:37:34,629 --> 02:38:03,029
Yeah, I mean, the whole history of mining in Bitcoin I find really fascinating,
because maybe in another world, in another reality, things went differently around
the block size war, around this filter war. Even after BCH split off, there was for
a long time people interested in this idea called the Bitcoin mining parliament,
which was because people into Bitcoin like proof of work,

2528
02:38:03,189 --> 02:38:29,109
and they like the blockchain. They like blocks. They understand that it's hard to
fake and that you have skin in the game. And so people constantly come up with these
ideas about miner signaling and stuff like that. But it's still pretty, what's the
word, basic. It's still pretty underdeveloped in terms of, it's only now in 2026,
nearly coming into the end of the second decade of Bitcoin,

2529
02:38:29,109 --> 02:38:47,909
that stuff like these more advanced hash rate markets is starting to catch on and be
looked into, or even the miner signaling like dashboards. There's so much more that
could be done with that. It seems like a really unexplored area of Bitcoin.

2530
02:38:47,909 --> 02:39:12,229
And it's also just been fascinating and a learning point for everyone. I think that
miners, on average, aren't interested in throwing their weight around in governance,
because from the white paper, one CPU, one vote, like the idea was they were going
to be the ones driving the coin in the direction that they chose. But that's never
really manifested. It seems more like they come in once other people have...

2531
02:39:12,229 --> 02:39:34,709
Well, they did with Segwit. There was quite a big battle in which miners took
various sides and had a big voice when we were activating Segwit. There was less of
that, I suppose, with Taproot. Almost everyone seemed on board with Taproot. So
there wasn't as much controversy. And now the BIP110 thing is the next thing we've
been doing.

2532
02:39:34,709 --> 02:40:01,509
And one miner has, I guess there's two. Yeah, I was saying that there used to be
some significant participation in governance discussion from miners back when we had
the Segwit wars, or the block size wars. There were miners who really wanted Segwit,
like Slushpool was one of the miners who actually preferred running the BIP140
gates. And there was miners who were really opposed to it.

2533
02:40:01,509 --> 02:40:29,509
I think Bitmain was... I'm not sure. They weren't a pool, though. But there was a
pool that was running Bitmain's hardware, and they didn't like Segwit. With Taproot,
there wasn't as much opposition. Hardly anyone disliked Taproot when that was
proposed. So I didn't see like, there wasn't a real opposition from any miners or
any participation in the governance there that I observed, other than just running
it. I mean, miners did signal for it. So I guess that's a participation.

2534
02:40:31,509 --> 02:40:45,509
And now we're in the BIP110 thing, and there's one pool that seems largely in favor
of it, which is Ocean, and at least one pool being F2Pool, who has stated their
opposition to it. So there's some minor participation in governance.

2535
02:40:45,509 --> 02:41:05,509
I'm fascinated about Taproot. I've still never understood, because at the time, I
wasn't following Bitcoin overall, I guess, as closely. I certainly wasn't following
BTC in any great depth, how that sort of got activated and reached consensus.

2536
02:41:05,509 --> 02:41:23,509
And I've even heard people, especially in light of the filter discussion now, people
sort of trying to track back in the history and be like, wait, how did this become
so popular and universally endorsed and then activate in hindsight?

2537
02:41:23,509 --> 02:41:52,509
I think it was oversold, to be honest. The narrative behind Taproot for many years,
before it was called Taproot, was that we're going to bring Schnorr signatures to
Bitcoin. And it was not the Schnorr upgrade that we expected. To have that, to a
more complete degree, we also required the cross-input signature aggregation, or
CISA, something that we seem to have forgotten about. But it was still part of the
conversation in 2021, I think.

2538
02:41:54,509 --> 02:42:08,509
So Taproot is basically like half of the way to get there, to get Schnorr signatures
on Bitcoin. But for some reason, we got to this point where we don't talk about
Schnorr anymore.

2539
02:42:08,509 --> 02:42:33,509
And the benefits that Taproot gives are actually pretty small. You can have better
deniability because it will not be obvious on the main chain whether or not it's a
multi-sig spend or if you open the lightning channel or whatever. So that's sort of
the extent of it. You have a new address type, which makes the UX worse.

2540
02:42:34,509 --> 02:42:44,509
And I think one of the benefits is going to be if we're going to get a post-quantum
upgrade, like BIP 100, what's the number for it? 360.

2541
02:42:44,509 --> 02:42:45,509
360, right.

2542
02:42:45,509 --> 02:43:14,509
If we're going to get that one, it's going to be built on top of the existing
Taproot architecture, which is cool. It makes it more necessary, gives it more
utility in hindsight. But it's not something that makes Bitcoin a better form of
money. It's not something that really helps with adoption. It's like a bet that some
developers had that multi-sig was going to be a much bigger deal. And it didn't turn
out to be such a big deal outside of institutions.

2543
02:43:15,509 --> 02:43:31,509
Speaking on quantum there, maybe let's hit that briefly. How do you feel about BTC's
level of quantum preparation? Are you worried about that? Do you think things are
moving in the right direction? Is quantum all a scam? What's going on there?

2544
02:43:31,509 --> 02:43:33,509
Is the question for me or Super?

2545
02:43:33,509 --> 02:43:38,509
Either. I want to hear both of your takes on it. So whoever wants to jump in first,
go for it.

2546
02:43:39,509 --> 02:44:05,509
I think he's smarter than me, so maybe I can talk first and then he'll correct me.
But I think we have some of the smartest developers in the world thinking about ways
to fix Bitcoin's vulnerability to quantum computing. Specifically, CDSA, which is
the elliptic curve digital signature aggregation. That one is what's actually
vulnerable to quantum.

2547
02:44:05,509 --> 02:44:22,509
What a quantum computer can do is derive the private key from the public key. So
there are certain address types that reveal the public key, which are more
vulnerable than others. So I think that we have some of the smartest people working
on the problem.

2548
02:44:22,509 --> 02:44:37,509
The real problem is just the culture and the complacency and the fact that some
people claim that that's not even necessary. Bitcoin is perfect. Satoshi left us
with this ideal design that should not be changed at all.

2549
02:44:37,509 --> 02:44:59,509
I also think that the quantum debate opens up Pandora's box for increasing the block
size because all of the post-quantum signatures are much larger in size. And I do
believe that for the sake of maintaining the usability of Bitcoin, you should
increase the block size to at least match the current degree of transactions per
block.

2550
02:45:00,509 --> 02:45:24,509
And if we're not going to do that because it's controversial, it will only make
Bitcoin worse overall, more expensive to use. Some people might like that. They
dream about $100 fees. But I'm not sure most users will be willing to join the
Bitcoin network and pay $100 fees when they have much cheaper options which don't
have too many tradeoffs in terms of security.

2551
02:45:24,509 --> 02:45:36,509
They can wait an entire day to get the same thermodynamic security as one Bitcoin
confirmation and you only pay one cent for that. I think most people will be fine
with the tradeoff.

2552
02:45:36,509 --> 02:45:57,509
But yeah, TLDR, it's not something that I worry about technically. It's something
that I worry about culturally that people will be against it. And to be honest, once
this quantum conversation started, we forgot about actually scaling Bitcoin and CTV
was one way to scale Bitcoin.

2553
02:45:58,509 --> 02:46:15,509
DriveChains is also one way to scale Bitcoin. DriveChains is going to get a hard
fork this summer, which is going to use the technology just to prove that it works
and everyone else was possibly wrong in dismissing it. And CTV is something that
scales Bitcoin in time.

2554
02:46:15,509 --> 02:46:40,509
So if you have times of lower demand for block space, you can actually broadcast
your transaction at that time, thus making the fees more efficient and making the
fee market more predictable. That's something that's cool because you have moments
when there's a lot of demand for block space and the fees get high. And then you
have moments like right now when you can get into the next block with a sub one
Satoshi per Vbyte fee.

2555
02:46:41,509 --> 02:46:57,509
I think CTV is smart. It's been around for a long time. It's been tested. But guess
what? Jeremy Rubin is in the Epstein files, right? And now a lot more people hate
him than before. And for better and for worse, we seem to have this culture where it
doesn't just matter.

2556
02:46:57,509 --> 02:47:26,509
I used to think that Bitcoin is a meritocracy, right? And the best idea wins. But it
turns out it's also about who's promoting that idea. And if it comes from Greg
Maxwell, then it's going to be regarded like it comes from Satoshi or something or
the second most important person after Satoshi. If it comes from Jeremy Rubin or
someone else who worked at MIT, or if Gavin Andreessen comes back and says, we can
do this, it's not going to be taken seriously.

2557
02:47:27,509 --> 02:47:56,509
So, yeah, not very bullish on the culture. I'm still trying to change it. That's why
I do my podcast. I try to bring people from around the space, promote new ideas and
show what can be done on the Bitcoin design. That's why I had the Bitcoin cash
episode. That's why I had the Zcash episode. These are all Bitcoins. They're
different versions of the same software that have different optimizations that we
can still bring to BTC, except that the culture somehow has become very complacent.

2558
02:47:57,509 --> 02:48:01,509
Maybe we should liquidate Ziller first and then talk about upgrades. I don't know.

2559
02:48:01,509 --> 02:48:19,509
Concurrently with the Bitcoin 10 activation signaling, there's also an activation
client for OpcTV. And it has also been like we're in the middle of its signaling
period. So miners could be signaling to activate ZTV right now and users could be
running Ziver.

2560
02:48:20,509 --> 02:48:35,509
I don't know what the users would do. I don't think it's a user-activated software.
I think it's a miner-activated software. But I think Moonsettler is involved in that
project. So if you want to have him on your podcast and talk about that.

2561
02:48:35,509 --> 02:48:40,509
I've had him on my podcast for 12 hours straight. That's my absolute record.

2562
02:48:40,509 --> 02:48:43,509
Can you talk about that?

2563
02:48:43,509 --> 02:48:48,509
Yeah, he talked about a lot of stuff in 12 hours.

2564
02:48:49,509 --> 02:48:50,509
Cool.

2565
02:48:50,509 --> 02:48:53,509
No toilet break. Just 12 hours of talking.

2566
02:48:53,509 --> 02:48:56,509
Surprise to the vocal cords held up.

2567
02:48:56,509 --> 02:49:05,509
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about from the slide you had about the
stuff that you wanted to know from me? Because I'm going to be getting gone here
pretty soon, too.

2568
02:49:05,509 --> 02:49:13,509
Yeah, I mean, honestly, there's loads of stuff. I would love to ask you about
actually a lot of this different stuff.

2569
02:49:13,509 --> 02:49:19,509
But I also kind of want to get, just to mix it up, some of your thoughts on some of
the BCH stuff.

2570
02:49:19,509 --> 02:49:25,509
So maybe if you want to mention quickly quantum and then also like one-minute
blocks.

2571
02:49:25,509 --> 02:49:35,509
I don't know if you know, but this is the thing that the BCH community is
considering to do next year is to cut the block time 10x and go from 10-minute
blocks to one-minute blocks.

2572
02:49:35,509 --> 02:49:43,509
Of course, the coinbase reward and the difficulty algorithm and the block size and
everything would be adjusted 10x.

2573
02:49:43,509 --> 02:49:48,509
So it's not like we're 10x-ing the scalability or something like that.

2574
02:49:48,509 --> 02:49:53,509
It's just increasing the frequency that a block comes in.

2575
02:49:53,509 --> 02:49:56,509
So I'm wondering what your take is on that.

2576
02:49:56,509 --> 02:49:59,509
So quantum and one-minute blocks.

2577
02:49:59,509 --> 02:50:05,509
So on the quantum stuff, I personally am not worried about quantum vulnerabilities.

2578
02:50:05,509 --> 02:50:10,509
I think quantum computers are, I suspect that they don't work.

2579
02:50:10,509 --> 02:50:19,509
There's some fundamental limitation that makes it so that they can't do what some
researchers claim they might be able to do in the future.

2580
02:50:19,509 --> 02:50:25,509
If they can, everyone seems to, every year it's going to be another 15, 20 years
before they can do this stuff.

2581
02:50:26,509 --> 02:50:29,509
And they've been saying that since the 60s or something.

2582
02:50:29,509 --> 02:50:30,509
So we'll see.

2583
02:50:30,509 --> 02:50:33,509
But I am in favor of giving people options.

2584
02:50:33,509 --> 02:50:44,509
And so if anyone is concerned about quantum vulnerable signatures, I think they
should have the option of using quantum invulnerable signatures.

2585
02:50:45,509 --> 02:50:50,509
And to me, you had on this podcast today, one of the voices.

2586
02:50:50,509 --> 02:50:52,509
Hang on, there's a truck coming.

2587
02:50:52,509 --> 02:50:59,509
You had on your podcast today, one of the voices who I think has provided the most
recent,

2588
02:50:59,509 --> 02:51:02,509
has done something incredibly innovative in that department.

2589
02:51:02,509 --> 02:51:11,509
Robin Linus, a couple of months ago, came out with a paper called VinoHash, which
paves the way for, or which paved the way, rather,

2590
02:51:11,509 --> 02:51:22,509
and illustrated that it's possible to do hash-based signatures on Bitcoin today
without needing, and those are quantum resistant.

2591
02:51:23,509 --> 02:51:31,509
And so then after he published the VinoHash paper, some of the guys from Starkware
elaborated on it and demonstrated that on L1 right now,

2592
02:51:31,509 --> 02:51:39,509
in a non-standard but valid transaction, they showed that you can do a quantum
resistant signature.

2593
02:51:40,509 --> 02:51:52,509
The transaction is really big, but it's within comparable levels of size to the
quantum resistant signature proposals given by the people who are involved in
BIP360.

2594
02:51:52,509 --> 02:51:54,509
But it works today. It's a thing.

2595
02:51:54,509 --> 02:52:05,509
You have to go to a direct miner submission unless the Bitcoin software gets updated
or more clients come out with this form of signature, but they work.

2596
02:52:06,509 --> 02:52:14,509
We have a form of quantum resistant signature in Bitcoin right now, and it's thanks
to some research by Robin Linus, who was just on your show.

2597
02:52:15,509 --> 02:52:17,509
That's amazing. That's very, very cool.

2598
02:52:17,509 --> 02:52:20,509
And I remember seeing that go past on my feed.

2599
02:52:20,509 --> 02:52:22,509
I did not dig into all the details.

2600
02:52:22,509 --> 02:52:25,509
And for sure, Robin is a fascinating guy.

2601
02:52:25,509 --> 02:52:32,509
Of course, we already had him on a roundtable episode here, so we couldn't go into
all the details.

2602
02:52:32,509 --> 02:52:35,509
But maybe another time, I'll see if I can get him back.

2603
02:52:35,509 --> 02:52:38,509
Because the amount of different stuff, we didn't get into BPM at all.

2604
02:52:38,509 --> 02:52:41,509
I have so many questions about all of that, honestly.

2605
02:52:41,509 --> 02:52:49,509
I would be super in favor of seeing someone make a software implementation of these
hash-based signatures they came up with,

2606
02:52:49,509 --> 02:52:54,509
and then getting a push in Bitcoin Core, or maybe in LibreRelay.

2607
02:52:54,509 --> 02:53:00,509
I think the LibreRelay people would be even more open to it, to saying this is an
allowed transaction type.

2608
02:53:00,509 --> 02:53:03,509
And if you did that, then I think that would satisfy a lot of people.

2609
02:53:03,509 --> 02:53:07,509
If you said, here's some wallets that support quantum-resistant signatures right
now,

2610
02:53:07,509 --> 02:53:09,509
I think that would alleviate a lot of people's concerns.

2611
02:53:09,509 --> 02:53:12,509
Yeah, yeah, very true, very true.

2612
02:53:12,509 --> 02:53:13,509
Okay, and one-minute blocks.

2613
02:53:13,509 --> 02:53:14,509
What do you think?

2614
02:53:14,509 --> 02:53:16,509
Are we barking up the wrong tree?

2615
02:53:16,509 --> 02:53:17,509
Are we completely mad?

2616
02:53:17,509 --> 02:53:20,509
Is there something possibly good here?

2617
02:53:20,509 --> 02:53:21,509
Don't care?

2618
02:53:21,509 --> 02:53:23,509
What's the thinking?

2619
02:53:23,509 --> 02:53:28,509
I didn't know you guys were doing that until you sent that PDF over.

2620
02:53:29,509 --> 02:53:33,509
So this is completely all new territory to me as far as your current motions.

2621
02:53:33,509 --> 02:53:39,509
In the past, when I thought about very rapid block times in proof-of-work networks,

2622
02:53:39,509 --> 02:53:42,509
I think that they are generally bad ideas.

2623
02:53:42,509 --> 02:53:47,509
The longer you can get the block times, the better for decentralization.

2624
02:53:47,509 --> 02:53:52,509
Because when blocks start propagating through the network,

2625
02:53:52,509 --> 02:53:57,509
the miner who found the block has an advantage

2626
02:53:57,509 --> 02:54:00,509
compared to other people who have to validate the block.

2627
02:54:00,509 --> 02:54:05,509
They have to take extra time doing that and not mining while they're doing it,

2628
02:54:05,509 --> 02:54:10,509
not mining on the latest block, whereas he, whoever found it, doesn't have that.

2629
02:54:10,509 --> 02:54:18,509
And so the relatively longer time there is between the previous block and the next
block,

2630
02:54:18,509 --> 02:54:22,509
the less of an advantage he has compared to other miners on the network.

2631
02:54:22,509 --> 02:54:28,509
So generally, my thought is 10-minute block times even are too fast.

2632
02:54:28,509 --> 02:54:32,509
And it would be better if blocks came out something like once every hour.

2633
02:54:32,509 --> 02:54:39,509
So I think that's the wrong direction for decentralizing mining to go into faster
blocks.

2634
02:54:39,509 --> 02:54:42,509
And I also don't think that when it...

2635
02:54:42,509 --> 02:54:45,509
I assume the push is so that people don't have to wait as long

2636
02:54:45,509 --> 02:54:48,509
as they're making a transaction for a confirmation to show up.

2637
02:54:48,509 --> 02:54:49,509
Yes.

2638
02:54:49,509 --> 02:54:52,509
But I also don't think one minute is very good either.

2639
02:54:52,509 --> 02:54:55,509
If you're standing at the coffee table for one minute waiting for a confirmation,

2640
02:54:55,509 --> 02:54:57,509
that's still really bad.

2641
02:54:57,509 --> 02:55:02,416
It seems to be the wrong approach unless you can get it down to about 15 seconds.

2642
02:55:02,416 --> 02:55:09,416
So without having looked into it, except in previous thoughts on the subject, in
general, it doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

2643
02:55:09,416 --> 02:55:19,416
I mean, it's interesting to hear you say that you think even one hour blocks would
be good because, like you said, you wanted to maybe lower the block size, one hour
blocks.

2644
02:55:19,416 --> 02:55:39,416
This is a super test at Bitcoin. Super Bitcoin, I think, could be quite an
interesting experiment, actually, between these various ideas that are maybe not
super prominent in the community, but you've got an interesting combo of them.

2645
02:55:39,416 --> 02:55:53,416
I mean, nobody has done longer blocks, basically, in any cryptocurrency, as far as
I'm aware. Everyone has always gone faster to try and improve the UX, basically.

2646
02:55:53,416 --> 02:56:09,416
Yes, but I don't think that L1 UX is very good unless you can get it down to 15
seconds. And if you do that, then I think you're really sacrificing decentralization
in a terrible way.

2647
02:56:09,416 --> 02:56:21,416
So yes, 10 minutes hasn't shown itself to be very harmful yet, but I think in the
future we may find out that that's way too fast.

2648
02:56:21,416 --> 02:56:39,416
Interesting, interesting. OK, all right. That's kind of everything I wanted to.
Well, given that we're running out of time, that's the bulk of what I wanted to
cover. I don't know how much more time you've got. Maybe we could do one more topic
or if you've got to go.

2649
02:56:39,416 --> 02:56:52,416
No, I think that's it. This is a good three hour podcast so far. So I want to thank
you for your time. But yeah, I think I'll head out and just wish you well in your
continued podcasting endeavors.

2650
02:56:52,416 --> 02:57:08,416
Thank you for coming on. It's been great talking to you. I'm always interested in
following your Twitter perspectives. Like I told you before, you have a very
interesting, unique mix of takes. So I really appreciate seeing that diversity of
opinion and free thinking. Thank you for coming on the show.

2651
02:57:10,416 --> 02:57:12,416
You're very welcome. See you guys later.

2652
02:57:12,416 --> 02:57:28,416
See you later. OK, Vlad. So what are we at now? Yeah, we're at about three hours. So
if we can knock out another 45 minutes or so, you'll be the record holder for the
longest marathon VCH podcast.

2653
02:57:29,416 --> 02:57:41,416
I mean, I do like records, but it's not owed to me. I wasn't the only one who talked
for four hours. But I can do 45 minutes if you want.

2654
02:57:41,416 --> 02:58:02,416
Well, we'll see how long we go. I guess that's the spirit of it. I don't know that
we're going to hit eight hours unless we can rustle up some fresh guests. But given
that you did eight hours, I thought we should at least make a decent crack at it.
Tell me, where are you at on one minute blocks? Have you been following or looking
into any of this?

2655
02:58:03,416 --> 02:58:23,416
I gave it a thought. Supertestnet is very conservative when he says one hour blocks.
You can only have one hour blocks if you enable zero conf, which Bitcoin does not.
It's been defaulted. So the client for Bitcoin Core now defaults to RBF on by
default.

2656
02:58:24,416 --> 02:58:48,416
And most people will assume that if you do enable RBF, you need to wait for a
confirmation. And the mentality is that a transaction is not final unless you do
that. And we know what Satoshi said about this in his first reply to James A. Donald
back in November of 2008.

2657
02:58:49,416 --> 02:59:07,416
And then later to Dan Larimer, who said, well, you cannot have adoption and get
people to wait for 10 minutes to get a confirmation. And then Satoshi said something
about zero conf and said, if you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time
to explain it to you. Sorry. I don't know. We drifted away.

2658
02:59:08,416 --> 02:59:28,416
One minute blocks can be a good idea if mining is sufficiently decentralized. I also
believe that a lot of people operate on the same mentality as they did 10 years ago
during the block size wars when they were assuming that the Internet is slow and
bandwidth is expensive and storage is also expensive.

2659
02:59:29,416 --> 02:59:47,416
And maybe that faster blocks is not such a bad idea now that we have Starlink. Now
that we have faster Internet across pretty much every provider around the world, we
have 5G for mobile, which is much faster than anything that we had in 2016.

2660
02:59:48,416 --> 03:00:03,416
And maybe it's not really centralizing mining unless I guess you're mining in the
middle of the desert or something or in the Amazon forest and you don't have any
access to cable Internet. But even in that situation, you have access to Starlink.

2661
03:00:04,416 --> 03:00:09,416
Or maybe there's 4G Internet, which is just good enough for a few megabytes every
minute.

2662
03:00:10,416 --> 03:00:24,416
The concern about mining centralization because you need more data, I don't think
it's necessarily valid. There's stuff out there like Caspa, which does blocks every,
I think it mines 10 blocks every second or something.

2663
03:00:24,416 --> 03:00:37,416
It's really crazy. And it doesn't orphan any blocks. It has its own design. But that
one is possible. So I think one minute blocks in BCH is conservative in comparison.

2664
03:00:38,416 --> 03:00:58,416
OK, sounds like you're actually kind of interested. You're kind of open to it, which
is quite interesting to hear. I mean, I do wonder if maybe if we make this change,
whether maybe like the covenant upgrades or like anything else, that it then starts
to trickle more into the BTC discussion.

2665
03:00:59,416 --> 03:01:20,416
I think it's pretty radical. It took the BCH community a long time to sort of chew
over it and think, maybe this is a good idea. There's also people then concerned
about, oh, well, it's not the real Bitcoin. Satoshi said 10 minutes. It's like some
sacred number. I can't see it taking off in the BTC community immediately, but maybe
on a long enough timescale if we did it. I don't know.

2666
03:01:20,416 --> 03:01:42,416
I remember I was on a podcast with a guy named Yoshi Levo or something who lives in
Liberland, and he was doing a campaign for Roger Revere's clemency, or I'm not sure
exactly what it was. It was FreeRoger.org. And he was raising some money and he sent
me a token, asked me to install a wallet.

2667
03:01:42,416 --> 03:02:08,416
What he did was send me the token and then asked me to donate the token to some
address. And all of this happened within the same block. And I was thinking, it's
really not an elegant design that essentially you're spending the same money
multiple times before you get a block confirmation. And I think with a one minute
block, this could be solved by getting a confirmation faster and that increases the
security of the transaction.

2668
03:02:08,416 --> 03:02:18,416
So if you're going to be using this as cash, it just makes it more difficult to
perform essentially double spends before the confirmation.

2669
03:02:18,416 --> 03:02:46,416
Yeah, that's part of the idea and part of the sort of logic is that, yeah, obviously
for four use cases that require confirmations, you get them faster. And then
obviously you can chain zero conf transactions together. But specifically in the
case where you're doing stuff in DeFi and then you want to make a cash payment, it's
really nice if that's not a long time of like, well, we're kind of waiting, hoping,
you know, because the DeFi is more likely to be subject to some.

2670
03:02:46,416 --> 03:02:58,416
May have or whatever, you know, so it's just kind of like if the blocks are coming
quicker than that, that won't be as much of a problem, that's definitely one of the
upsides to the to the proposal.

2671
03:02:58,416 --> 03:03:11,416
Jonathan is asking me to bring up and get your thoughts on BTC once BCH has. I'm
sure you know, I've got that thread where I've just been slowly compiling all the
various things that the BCH community has done.

2672
03:03:11,416 --> 03:03:29,416
You're in there at least once. I know for funding, crowdfunding, you were talking
about, oh, what happened to all our crowdfunding? And on BCH, we still have that. We
have fund me, we have the contract setups that was sort of what people were asking
for back in the block size war and so forth.

2673
03:03:29,416 --> 03:03:42,416
I mean, we still have it's still not super advanced, to be honest, like it works and
it's good. But and it takes a lot of the community thinking, OK, is this a good
proposal, etc. So it does have its flaws and there's a lot we can do to develop it.

2674
03:03:42,416 --> 03:03:56,416
But we do still have that kind of stuff. What do you make of that list of things? Is
there ever an item or length of that list that you would then think, oh, you know
what, time for me to cut and run and switch to BCH?

2675
03:03:57,416 --> 03:03:59,416
Where do I find that list?

2676
03:03:59,416 --> 03:04:06,416
I'll send it to you. It's called BTC once BCH has. I'll put it in there.

2677
03:04:06,416 --> 03:04:08,416
I really don't want to talk about something.

2678
03:04:08,416 --> 03:04:15,416
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You might have. Yeah, I'm fairly sure you would have seen
it, but it might be in there.

2679
03:04:15,416 --> 03:04:20,416
OK, so introspection, Upcat, ABLA. What's ABLA?

2680
03:04:21,416 --> 03:04:26,416
That's the block size limit algorithm that adjusts our block size.

2681
03:04:26,416 --> 03:04:27,416
Oh, yeah, yeah.

2682
03:04:27,416 --> 03:04:28,416
Transactions. Yeah.

2683
03:04:28,416 --> 03:04:32,416
The dynamic block size, something that was proposed with Unlimited.

2684
03:04:32,416 --> 03:04:33,416
Yeah.

2685
03:04:33,416 --> 03:04:34,416
Like 10 years ago.

2686
03:04:34,416 --> 03:04:36,416
Exactly.

2687
03:04:36,416 --> 03:04:41,416
VM limits GSR, I guess, stands for rate script restoration.

2688
03:04:41,416 --> 03:04:42,416
That's it. Yeah.

2689
03:04:42,416 --> 03:04:47,416
So this thread, the start of this thread, this is from September of 2024. Right.

2690
03:04:47,416 --> 03:04:53,416
And so at that time, VM limits was proposed, but it hadn't locked in.

2691
03:04:53,416 --> 03:04:57,416
It hadn't activated, then activated in 2025.

2692
03:04:57,416 --> 03:05:00,416
And then you can go down the thread and look dead.

2693
03:05:00,416 --> 03:05:02,416
Robin Linus is in there a few times.

2694
03:05:02,416 --> 03:05:04,416
I should have asked him about that.

2695
03:05:04,416 --> 03:05:06,416
I'll have to remember to ask you about that.

2696
03:05:06,416 --> 03:05:09,416
But we did 64 bit integers.

2697
03:05:09,416 --> 03:05:14,416
We have like cache script tooling and covenants tooling that BTC doesn't have

2698
03:05:14,416 --> 03:05:17,416
because you guys don't have the covenant stuff to need it.

2699
03:05:17,416 --> 03:05:23,416
The bigger ints, that is better for snarks and so forth.

2700
03:05:23,416 --> 03:05:29,416
Obviously, yeah, we have our brand that we have fixes from like, what's it called?

2701
03:05:29,416 --> 03:05:31,416
The great consensus cleanup.

2702
03:05:31,416 --> 03:05:34,416
We've already fixed all those things.

2703
03:05:34,416 --> 03:05:38,416
We've got cash tokens for state on your UTXOs.

2704
03:05:38,416 --> 03:05:40,416
We've got multiple op returns.

2705
03:05:40,416 --> 03:05:44,416
We've got the ability to throw out hijack.

2706
03:05:44,416 --> 03:05:47,416
We've got op return tokens.

2707
03:05:47,416 --> 03:05:54,416
Let's see, no segwit taproot, liquidity-based stable coins,

2708
03:05:54,416 --> 03:06:00,416
a culture that can reject bad actors, opmul and opcat,

2709
03:06:00,416 --> 03:06:06,416
VM limits, non-propaganda BTC research,

2710
03:06:07,416 --> 03:06:11,416
supertest that was asking for a reliable annual upgrade schedule,

2711
03:06:11,416 --> 03:06:13,416
which we have, I forgot that he was in this thread,

2712
03:06:13,416 --> 03:06:16,416
or I would have asked him about that.

2713
03:06:16,416 --> 03:06:21,416
Our bank runs, the unlimited mempool chains,

2714
03:06:21,416 --> 03:06:26,416
quantum-resistant stuff, better wallets, basically,

2715
03:06:26,416 --> 03:06:31,416
dev culture of shipping stuff, documentation of the hijacking,

2716
03:06:31,416 --> 03:06:35,416
funding, number 26, that was one where I quoted you.

2717
03:06:35,416 --> 03:06:40,416
And then the most recent one is these Bitwise opcodes,

2718
03:06:40,416 --> 03:06:44,416
opinvert, opupdown, aka left, right, shift,

2719
03:06:44,416 --> 03:06:46,416
and other stuff like that.

2720
03:06:46,416 --> 03:06:52,416
So this is just my attempt to sort of create the impression

2721
03:06:52,416 --> 03:06:57,416
for people or help update them to the impression that BCH is not just,

2722
03:06:57,416 --> 03:07:00,416
like you said, it's not just BTC with bigger blocks,

2723
03:07:00,416 --> 03:07:04,416
because fundamentally that's not interesting or captivating

2724
03:07:04,416 --> 03:07:05,416
to people.

2725
03:07:05,416 --> 03:07:08,416
We need to be able to prove that with our smaller community

2726
03:07:08,416 --> 03:07:12,416
and different mentality, we've produced a lot of good stuff

2727
03:07:12,416 --> 03:07:13,416
out of it.

2728
03:07:13,416 --> 03:07:16,416
So this is kind of how I'm trying to get that message out there.

2729
03:07:16,416 --> 03:07:19,416
I mean, I'm not sure what you expect me to say right now,

2730
03:07:19,416 --> 03:07:23,416
like admit that you guys did a much better job scaling Bitcoin.

2731
03:07:23,416 --> 03:07:24,416
You did.

2732
03:07:24,416 --> 03:07:26,416
I mean, it's not a gotcha.

2733
03:07:26,416 --> 03:07:29,416
I'm not here to – in fact, I don't know what you're going to say.

2734
03:07:29,416 --> 03:07:33,416
Jonathan just said in the comments that he wanted

2735
03:07:33,416 --> 03:07:35,416
to get your thoughts on it.

2736
03:07:35,416 --> 03:07:41,416
But like I said, my angle was is there some point of this list

2737
03:07:41,416 --> 03:07:43,416
getting longer and longer that you would eventually be like,

2738
03:07:43,416 --> 03:07:48,416
okay, maybe BCH just is the better option overall?

2739
03:07:48,416 --> 03:07:50,416
I would like to see some privacy stuff.

2740
03:07:50,416 --> 03:07:54,416
Like if you guys activated zero cash in its latest iteration,

2741
03:07:54,416 --> 03:07:58,416
I would be very interested because you already have

2742
03:07:58,416 --> 03:08:01,416
a pretty good network effect and merchant adoption.

2743
03:08:01,416 --> 03:08:03,416
I would love to see some of that.

2744
03:08:03,416 --> 03:08:06,416
But my point is that I think the tipping point,

2745
03:08:06,416 --> 03:08:09,416
and you were right in a recent tweet that I saw from you

2746
03:08:09,416 --> 03:08:12,416
where you said that you should stop trying to appeal

2747
03:08:12,416 --> 03:08:17,416
to what people want and just get adoption, hash rate,

2748
03:08:17,416 --> 03:08:21,416
listing exchanges, trading volume, the stuff that's really undeniable

2749
03:08:21,416 --> 03:08:24,416
because that's really what builds the network effect.

2750
03:08:24,416 --> 03:08:28,416
If you're building good technology but nobody cares

2751
03:08:28,416 --> 03:08:32,416
or only a bunch of geeks care about it but nobody comes to use it,

2752
03:08:32,416 --> 03:08:34,416
that's a big problem.

2753
03:08:34,416 --> 03:08:37,416
And that's something from which we should also learn.

2754
03:08:37,416 --> 03:08:42,416
I know that in Bitcoin we've had the botanic spider chain,

2755
03:08:42,416 --> 03:08:45,416
which was shut down last week, I think, or this week.

2756
03:08:45,416 --> 03:08:46,416
I'm not even sure.

2757
03:08:46,416 --> 03:08:48,416
The time goes by very fast.

2758
03:08:48,416 --> 03:08:53,416
But that was essentially a way to bring the Ethereum EVM on Bitcoin

2759
03:08:53,416 --> 03:08:55,416
with some trade-offs.

2760
03:08:55,416 --> 03:08:58,416
But still, you could have had all the expressivity

2761
03:08:58,416 --> 03:09:01,416
that Ethereum smart contracts are giving you.

2762
03:09:01,416 --> 03:09:04,416
And that one somehow got no traction.

2763
03:09:04,416 --> 03:09:07,416
And I see patterns with Citrea,

2764
03:09:07,416 --> 03:09:11,416
which was promoted as something that's going to be big,

2765
03:09:11,416 --> 03:09:14,416
the first ZK roll-up on Bitcoin.

2766
03:09:14,416 --> 03:09:16,416
I'm not sure how many users they have,

2767
03:09:16,416 --> 03:09:18,416
but I haven't seen anything in my feed from people saying,

2768
03:09:18,416 --> 03:09:20,416
oh, this is so cool.

2769
03:09:20,416 --> 03:09:24,416
Maybe it happened in the first couple of weeks of this launching.

2770
03:09:24,416 --> 03:09:27,416
And now they're talking about launching their own token,

2771
03:09:27,416 --> 03:09:29,416
which they said they would not.

2772
03:09:29,416 --> 03:09:32,416
But what I presume this means is that they're in dire need

2773
03:09:32,416 --> 03:09:35,416
for some funding to keep going.

2774
03:09:35,416 --> 03:09:38,416
And that's why they need to launch a token.

2775
03:09:38,416 --> 03:09:42,416
And it's really unfortunate that, on one hand,

2776
03:09:42,416 --> 03:09:45,416
we have this culture that says we build on Bitcoin.

2777
03:09:45,416 --> 03:09:48,416
Everything that's not on Bitcoin is a shitcoin.

2778
03:09:48,416 --> 03:09:51,416
But then you get the technology that gets built on Bitcoin,

2779
03:09:51,416 --> 03:09:54,416
and nobody's using it because they're psyched into holding

2780
03:09:54,416 --> 03:09:56,416
and doing nothing else.

2781
03:09:56,416 --> 03:10:00,416
And I think it was part of the 2018 presentation

2782
03:10:00,416 --> 03:10:03,416
from Baltic Honey Badger by a guy that I like to call

2783
03:10:03,416 --> 03:10:06,416
Guacamole Zocola,

2784
03:10:06,416 --> 03:10:09,416
because he blocked me and he called me a lot of names,

2785
03:10:09,416 --> 03:10:11,416
so I don't want to give him too much credit.

2786
03:10:11,416 --> 03:10:13,416
But he did put that on the slides,

2787
03:10:13,416 --> 03:10:18,416
that any attempt to get people to spend their Bitcoin is a scam.

2788
03:10:18,416 --> 03:10:21,416
And if you try to get people to spend their Bitcoin,

2789
03:10:21,416 --> 03:10:23,416
you're a scammer.

2790
03:10:23,416 --> 03:10:26,416
It's really unfortunate that that somehow

2791
03:10:26,416 --> 03:10:29,416
got treated very seriously.

2792
03:10:29,416 --> 03:10:33,416
And I remember I was talking to some organizers

2793
03:10:33,416 --> 03:10:37,416
of the El Salvador Adopting Bitcoin Conference in 2022,

2794
03:10:37,416 --> 03:10:40,416
and they were discussing whether or not they should allow

2795
03:10:40,416 --> 03:10:44,416
some businesses to set up some booths at the venue.

2796
03:10:45,416 --> 03:10:47,416
And one of the guys said,

2797
03:10:47,416 --> 03:10:49,416
well, aren't these scammers if they ask people

2798
03:10:49,416 --> 03:10:51,416
to spend their Bitcoin?

2799
03:10:51,416 --> 03:10:53,416
And we actually had to have a conversation about this

2800
03:10:53,416 --> 03:10:55,416
in the debate, like, wait a second,

2801
03:10:55,416 --> 03:10:57,416
what does this mean?

2802
03:10:57,416 --> 03:10:58,416
What do you mean scammers?

2803
03:10:58,416 --> 03:11:02,416
Well, they're trading something which is depreciating

2804
03:11:02,416 --> 03:11:05,416
for the Bitcoin, which is scarce and depreciating,

2805
03:11:05,416 --> 03:11:07,416
like you should not be spending your Bitcoin

2806
03:11:07,416 --> 03:11:10,416
for papusas or whatever, like snacks.

2807
03:11:10,416 --> 03:11:13,416
It's just crazy.

2808
03:11:13,416 --> 03:11:15,416
Yeah, money has to circulate.

2809
03:11:15,416 --> 03:11:17,416
Sometimes I think it would be a good idea

2810
03:11:17,416 --> 03:11:21,416
if we logged off, just shut down all our accounts

2811
03:11:21,416 --> 03:11:25,416
for a week and went back to reading the white paper first

2812
03:11:25,416 --> 03:11:27,416
and then maybe some Nick Szabo articles

2813
03:11:27,416 --> 03:11:31,416
about God protocols, blockchain, smart contracts,

2814
03:11:31,416 --> 03:11:33,416
like just to philosophically remind ourselves

2815
03:11:33,416 --> 03:11:35,416
why we're here.

2816
03:11:35,416 --> 03:11:38,416
And then come back to where we are

2817
03:11:38,416 --> 03:11:40,416
and try to figure out what went wrong

2818
03:11:40,416 --> 03:11:43,416
or how we can improve our path.

2819
03:11:43,416 --> 03:11:47,416
I don't see too much introspection, pun intended,

2820
03:11:47,416 --> 03:11:50,416
like people looking in the mirror and saying,

2821
03:11:50,416 --> 03:11:52,416
well, we started from this idea.

2822
03:11:52,416 --> 03:11:55,416
I've seen this video from Trezor

2823
03:11:55,416 --> 03:11:58,416
when they launched in 2014, I think, or 2013.

2824
03:11:58,416 --> 03:12:00,416
They launched the Kickstarter campaign

2825
03:12:00,416 --> 03:12:03,416
and they had a bunch of high-profile Bitcoiners

2826
03:12:03,416 --> 03:12:05,416
endorsing the product.

2827
03:12:05,416 --> 03:12:07,416
And one of them was Gavin Andreessen,

2828
03:12:07,416 --> 03:12:10,416
who said that Trezor is right in the step direction

2829
03:12:10,416 --> 03:12:14,416
to enable Bitcoin as a payments network.

2830
03:12:14,416 --> 03:12:17,416
And that was so cool, just hearing these words

2831
03:12:17,416 --> 03:12:19,416
like Bitcoin as a payments network.

2832
03:12:19,416 --> 03:12:21,416
That's what it was all about.

2833
03:12:21,416 --> 03:12:24,416
And then somehow we decided that, well,

2834
03:12:24,416 --> 03:12:27,416
since it's scarce and there is a vague mention

2835
03:12:27,416 --> 03:12:30,416
in the white paper about this being mind-like gold,

2836
03:12:30,416 --> 03:12:33,416
then maybe we should turn this into digital gold

2837
03:12:33,416 --> 03:12:36,416
and promote this as an institutional asset

2838
03:12:36,416 --> 03:12:39,416
that they should be holding on their balance sheets.

2839
03:12:39,416 --> 03:12:42,416
And, of course, these people want...

2840
03:12:42,416 --> 03:12:44,416
So Bitcoin is not a proof-of-stake system.

2841
03:12:44,416 --> 03:12:46,416
It's a very evident statement.

2842
03:12:46,416 --> 03:12:50,416
But once you get very big investors buying large chunks,

2843
03:12:50,416 --> 03:12:52,416
they do have the social capital

2844
03:12:52,416 --> 03:12:55,416
to discourage improvements from being made.

2845
03:12:55,416 --> 03:12:58,416
And they can say, well, I'm happy with Bitcoin as it is.

2846
03:12:58,416 --> 03:13:00,416
Don't touch it. Don't change it.

2847
03:13:00,416 --> 03:13:04,416
If you do touch it and you do add scaling or privacy,

2848
03:13:04,416 --> 03:13:06,416
you're going to be competing with what I'm offering,

2849
03:13:06,416 --> 03:13:09,416
which is an ETF or paper Bitcoin or whatever.

2850
03:13:09,416 --> 03:13:11,416
And I don't want that to happen.

2851
03:13:11,416 --> 03:13:13,416
So just keep it the way it is.

2852
03:13:13,416 --> 03:13:17,416
Maybe it's not useful for the way in which it was intended to be,

2853
03:13:17,416 --> 03:13:20,416
but it's very useful for this institution.

2854
03:13:20,416 --> 03:13:22,416
And this is where we're at right now.

2855
03:13:22,416 --> 03:13:23,416
We're stuck.

2856
03:13:23,416 --> 03:13:26,416
And I see in my podcast,

2857
03:13:26,416 --> 03:13:28,416
I interview a lot of frustrated developers

2858
03:13:28,416 --> 03:13:30,416
who are trying to get their way

2859
03:13:30,416 --> 03:13:33,416
or putting their life and effort

2860
03:13:33,416 --> 03:13:35,416
and energy and everything

2861
03:13:35,416 --> 03:13:39,416
into pushing this tiny upgrade like CTV.

2862
03:13:39,416 --> 03:13:42,416
That's why I had Moon Settler talking for 12 hours,

2863
03:13:42,416 --> 03:13:46,416
because it was his way of expressing himself

2864
03:13:46,416 --> 03:13:50,416
after so many years of seeing attempts

2865
03:13:50,416 --> 03:13:54,416
that seemed hopeful that somehow failed in the last moment.

2866
03:13:54,416 --> 03:13:58,416
And he's also disillusioned with Adam Back in particular,

2867
03:13:58,416 --> 03:14:00,416
because there is a story about him

2868
03:14:00,416 --> 03:14:03,416
and in 2022, I think,

2869
03:14:03,416 --> 03:14:07,416
one year after the Tapper upgrade,

2870
03:14:07,416 --> 03:14:11,416
the CTV guys were going to go for a speedy trial,

2871
03:14:11,416 --> 03:14:14,416
which means that they were going to try to get the miners

2872
03:14:14,416 --> 03:14:17,416
to signal support for activating this.

2873
03:14:17,416 --> 03:14:20,416
And Adam Back was personally triggered by this

2874
03:14:20,416 --> 03:14:22,416
and he entered the CTV Telegram chat.

2875
03:14:22,416 --> 03:14:24,416
You can still find that.

2876
03:14:24,416 --> 03:14:26,416
It's called Cult of the Covenant.

2877
03:14:26,416 --> 03:14:31,416
You scroll up until I think it was May of 2022 or something.

2878
03:14:31,416 --> 03:14:34,416
You're going to see how Adam Back personally

2879
03:14:34,416 --> 03:14:36,416
spent about a week demoralizing everyone

2880
03:14:36,416 --> 03:14:39,416
and telling them that they don't have technical consensus

2881
03:14:39,416 --> 03:14:41,416
and they're doing something wrong

2882
03:14:41,416 --> 03:14:43,416
and they're bad actors

2883
03:14:43,416 --> 03:14:45,416
and they're trying to destroy Bitcoin.

2884
03:14:45,416 --> 03:14:48,416
He was presenting every piece of FUD out there

2885
03:14:48,416 --> 03:14:50,416
about CTV, why it's not good,

2886
03:14:50,416 --> 03:14:54,416
including a video from Andreas Antonopoulos

2887
03:14:54,416 --> 03:14:57,416
where he said that covenants are a trap

2888
03:14:57,416 --> 03:15:00,416
for getting governments to confiscate Bitcoin,

2889
03:15:00,416 --> 03:15:05,416
which he admitted later that was a wrong assessment.

2890
03:15:05,416 --> 03:15:08,416
It was a mistake for him to say that,

2891
03:15:08,416 --> 03:15:12,416
but still it's out there and it was used for propaganda.

2892
03:15:12,416 --> 03:15:16,416
And you would assume that if Blockstream is this propaganda machine

2893
03:15:16,416 --> 03:15:18,416
for keeping Bitcoin tame,

2894
03:15:18,416 --> 03:15:22,416
he would at least, I mean by he, I mean Adam Back,

2895
03:15:22,416 --> 03:15:26,416
would at least have a couple of sock puppets or whatever.

2896
03:15:26,416 --> 03:15:28,416
Just accounts that do the dirty work,

2897
03:15:28,416 --> 03:15:32,416
but he did this himself and he killed the movement in one week.

2898
03:15:32,416 --> 03:15:34,416
Then Jeremy went on a hiatus.

2899
03:15:34,416 --> 03:15:39,416
I think he took one year away from working on Bitcoin stuff.

2900
03:15:39,416 --> 03:15:42,416
And the whole movement that was very hopeful

2901
03:15:42,416 --> 03:15:45,416
about making Bitcoin more useful in this way.

2902
03:15:45,416 --> 03:15:47,416
And useful means, for example,

2903
03:15:47,416 --> 03:15:49,416
being able to open a million lightning channels

2904
03:15:49,416 --> 03:15:51,416
in one transaction or something

2905
03:15:51,416 --> 03:15:55,416
to perpetuate what is really inefficient right now.

2906
03:15:55,416 --> 03:16:00,416
It's not ideal, but at least it could be slightly better.

2907
03:16:00,416 --> 03:16:02,416
It's very much in line with the ideology

2908
03:16:02,416 --> 03:16:05,416
and the narrative of what Bitcoin is.

2909
03:16:05,416 --> 03:16:08,416
It's just that my personal theory about CTV

2910
03:16:08,416 --> 03:16:10,416
is that it never got pushed

2911
03:16:10,416 --> 03:16:14,416
because it was not created by Blockstream.

2912
03:16:14,416 --> 03:16:18,416
I think that Blockstream essentially is not the sidechain company,

2913
03:16:18,416 --> 03:16:20,416
is not the satellite company,

2914
03:16:20,416 --> 03:16:22,416
is not the hardware wallet company,

2915
03:16:22,416 --> 03:16:25,416
Block Explorer, Liquid Wallet or whatever.

2916
03:16:25,416 --> 03:16:28,416
It's the company that's trying to pitch to investors

2917
03:16:28,416 --> 03:16:32,416
the fact that they're in control of the upgrades that come to Bitcoin.

2918
03:16:32,416 --> 03:16:35,416
And I think that their track record proves this.

2919
03:16:35,416 --> 03:16:37,416
That they pushed Segwit,

2920
03:16:37,416 --> 03:16:39,416
they pushed the Lightning Network

2921
03:16:39,416 --> 03:16:42,416
as the one true solution for scaling Bitcoin.

2922
03:16:42,416 --> 03:16:46,416
They have one of the clients for enabling the Lightning Network,

2923
03:16:46,416 --> 03:16:48,416
which is called C-Lightning,

2924
03:16:48,416 --> 03:16:52,416
and it got rebranded into Core Lightning.

2925
03:16:52,416 --> 03:16:56,416
And they also had three of their cryptographers

2926
03:16:56,416 --> 03:16:59,416
working for them at the time, pushing Taproot.

2927
03:16:59,416 --> 03:17:01,416
And there was no actual opposition for it.

2928
03:17:01,416 --> 03:17:03,416
Nobody said it's a bad idea.

2929
03:17:03,416 --> 03:17:05,416
Everyone was cheerful and said,

2930
03:17:05,416 --> 03:17:08,416
yes, this is how we improve Bitcoin.

2931
03:17:08,416 --> 03:17:12,416
It's just that we haven't had anything significant since.

2932
03:17:12,416 --> 03:17:16,416
And we see some efforts from Blockstream accounts.

2933
03:17:16,416 --> 03:17:18,416
Whenever something new comes along

2934
03:17:18,416 --> 03:17:22,416
and a new proposal is pushed and gets some momentum,

2935
03:17:22,416 --> 03:17:24,416
they sort of discourage it.

2936
03:17:24,416 --> 03:17:27,416
And I think the biggest effort from Blockstream

2937
03:17:27,416 --> 03:17:29,416
towards improving Bitcoin lately

2938
03:17:29,416 --> 03:17:31,416
was from Rusty Russell,

2939
03:17:31,416 --> 03:17:33,416
who proposed the great script restoration,

2940
03:17:33,416 --> 03:17:35,416
which packaged some ideas together.

2941
03:17:35,416 --> 03:17:38,416
He said, let's have Upcat and CTV and Mull

2942
03:17:38,416 --> 03:17:39,416
and this and that.

2943
03:17:39,416 --> 03:17:42,416
Basically, all this until she upcodes

2944
03:17:42,416 --> 03:17:44,416
and everything that is useful.

2945
03:17:44,416 --> 03:17:48,416
And not try to judge each of them individually

2946
03:17:48,416 --> 03:17:49,416
according to their merit,

2947
03:17:49,416 --> 03:17:52,416
but give the developers a tool set

2948
03:17:52,416 --> 03:17:56,416
that they can use for making interesting stuff.

2949
03:17:56,416 --> 03:18:00,416
And right now, Rusty quit Bitcoin.

2950
03:18:00,416 --> 03:18:01,416
And I don't know what this means

2951
03:18:01,416 --> 03:18:03,416
for the great script restoration.

2952
03:18:03,416 --> 03:18:07,416
I heard SupertestNet when he said that

2953
03:18:07,416 --> 03:18:09,416
I think it's a bit mischievous,

2954
03:18:09,416 --> 03:18:11,416
or I don't know how to describe it.

2955
03:18:11,416 --> 03:18:14,416
Like you're going to push this BIP-110

2956
03:18:14,416 --> 03:18:18,416
and say you want to filter this type of transactions.

2957
03:18:18,416 --> 03:18:19,416
And if this one activates,

2958
03:18:19,416 --> 03:18:23,416
then they also have CTV coming along the line,

2959
03:18:23,416 --> 03:18:25,416
almost as if the activation of CTV

2960
03:18:25,416 --> 03:18:29,416
is conditioned by BIP-110 first.

2961
03:18:29,416 --> 03:18:30,416
I don't know.

2962
03:18:30,416 --> 03:18:31,416
To me, it makes no sense.

2963
03:18:31,416 --> 03:18:33,416
Well, I think he was just saying

2964
03:18:33,416 --> 03:18:36,416
that there's currently a client that in theory,

2965
03:18:36,416 --> 03:18:38,416
but I mean, of course, in reality,

2966
03:18:38,416 --> 03:18:40,416
nobody seems to be talking about it.

2967
03:18:40,416 --> 03:18:42,416
Nobody's made a dashboard.

2968
03:18:42,416 --> 03:18:44,416
There's not CTV guys everywhere hyping up,

2969
03:18:44,416 --> 03:18:47,416
like we're going to activate CTV.

2970
03:18:47,416 --> 03:18:49,416
I think he was just saying that theoretically

2971
03:18:49,416 --> 03:18:51,416
there is a client out there

2972
03:18:51,416 --> 03:18:55,416
and the desired window is currently ongoing.

2973
03:18:55,416 --> 03:18:59,416
But it is kind of a sad case of nothing's happening.

2974
03:18:59,416 --> 03:19:01,416
It's just Bitcoin.

2975
03:19:01,416 --> 03:19:03,416
It's actually so political like that.

2976
03:19:03,416 --> 03:19:06,416
It's not really so much about the blocks

2977
03:19:06,416 --> 03:19:07,416
or the hash rate or whatever.

2978
03:19:07,416 --> 03:19:09,416
That all comes down to what are people talking about?

2979
03:19:09,416 --> 03:19:10,416
What are people excited about?

2980
03:19:10,416 --> 03:19:12,416
What are they pushing for?

2981
03:19:12,416 --> 03:19:15,416
You know, nothing happens accidentally.

2982
03:19:15,416 --> 03:19:18,416
It takes a whole community pushing it

2983
03:19:18,416 --> 03:19:20,416
to make it go anywhere.

2984
03:19:20,416 --> 03:19:22,416
It's really depressing when you realize

2985
03:19:22,416 --> 03:19:25,416
the hopes and expectations that this project had

2986
03:19:25,416 --> 03:19:27,416
and all the energy and all the money

2987
03:19:27,416 --> 03:19:31,416
that was spent on developers and the conferences.

2988
03:19:32,416 --> 03:19:34,416
And I think one major reason why

2989
03:19:34,416 --> 03:19:36,416
I'm not excited about going to conferences

2990
03:19:36,416 --> 03:19:39,416
is that I already know what to expect.

2991
03:19:39,416 --> 03:19:41,416
I didn't go to BTC Prague because

2992
03:19:41,416 --> 03:19:43,416
I don't expect anything interesting to be happening.

2993
03:19:43,416 --> 03:19:46,416
It's just a large party where you hang out

2994
03:19:46,416 --> 03:19:48,416
with some people you know from Twitter.

2995
03:19:48,416 --> 03:19:50,416
And that's kind of the only purpose.

2996
03:19:50,416 --> 03:19:53,416
And conferences used to be places where

2997
03:19:53,416 --> 03:19:56,416
important proposals were being presented

2998
03:19:56,416 --> 03:19:59,416
for making Bitcoin more useful.

2999
03:19:59,416 --> 03:20:02,416
I think you guys are doing a good job with BCH Bliss

3000
03:20:02,416 --> 03:20:04,291
because that's sort of the place where...

3001
03:20:04,291 --> 03:20:07,291
you talk about the work that's been done over the past year and what can come next.

3002
03:20:08,291 --> 03:20:13,291
We don't have too much of that. And when there's an announcement, usually so...

3003
03:20:14,291 --> 03:20:19,291
I think for some reason we became deranged enough to accept federations as just good

3004
03:20:20,291 --> 03:20:25,291
enough solutions for scaling and adding features. I think a large role was played

3005
03:20:26,291 --> 03:20:31,291
by the normalization of custodial Lightning. When in the beginning they were saying,

3006
03:20:32,291 --> 03:20:37,291
well, it's just $10. It's fine. You shouldn't worry too much if this liquidity

3007
03:20:38,291 --> 03:20:43,291
provider that sets up your Lightning node decides to steal from you. It's not such a
big deal.

3008
03:20:44,291 --> 03:20:49,291
And then they sort of increased the amount. That's normal. You said $100.

3009
03:20:49,291 --> 03:20:54,291
And then they said, well, there's a good track record for Wallet of Satoshi.

3010
03:20:55,291 --> 03:21:00,291
They never stole from anyone. So I trust that they're going to be honest.

3011
03:21:01,291 --> 03:21:06,291
And then they built this layer that's called e-cash on top of it. It's built by this
guy

3012
03:21:07,291 --> 03:21:12,291
Kalle who did Cashew. That's the name of the project. And what it does is to provide

3013
03:21:13,291 --> 03:21:18,291
some privacy for custodial Lightning. So if you have funds in Wallet of Satoshi,

3014
03:21:19,291 --> 03:21:24,291
with this custodian, you can at least transact without giving too much information

3015
03:21:25,291 --> 03:21:30,291
to the custodian and between custodians. It's basically reinventing banking.

3016
03:21:31,291 --> 03:21:36,291
And once again, it's depressing because Bitcoin was released as an answer to e-cash,

3017
03:21:37,291 --> 03:21:42,291
which was a centralized way of having Internet money that has privacy.

3018
03:21:43,291 --> 03:21:48,291
And it sort of solved the double spending problem with incentives.

3019
03:21:50,291 --> 03:21:55,291
It was game theory, not cryptography, that got us to this point.

3020
03:21:56,291 --> 03:22:01,291
And also it gave a very fragile type of privacy that says in chapter 10 of the

3021
03:22:02,291 --> 03:22:06,291
white paper that as long as you don't reuse the same address for receiving
transactions,

3022
03:22:06,291 --> 03:22:11,291
you're probably fine, which turned out to be just, I guess it was just good enough

3023
03:22:12,291 --> 03:22:17,291
for its time for 2008, 2009. This was the best Satoshi could give us.

3024
03:22:18,291 --> 03:22:23,291
So we shouldn't judge too harshly. But it's not like we haven't had a decade and a
half

3025
03:22:24,291 --> 03:22:29,291
of research, academic papers and protocols that got published. It's just that I
think

3026
03:22:30,291 --> 03:22:35,291
there's also a sort of arrogance that was perpetuated in the Bitcoin world where

3027
03:22:36,291 --> 03:22:41,291
we believe that there is no second best, like truly. And right now, I think the
Bitcoin

3028
03:22:42,291 --> 03:22:46,291
dominance is like 56 percent or something. I haven't looked too much lately, but
that

3029
03:22:47,291 --> 03:22:52,291
was the percentage. So if your project is 56 percent of the entire market and your

3030
03:22:53,291 --> 03:22:57,291
assumption is that everything else is a shit coin that's going to die on a long
enough

3031
03:22:58,291 --> 03:23:03,291
time frame, I don't think it's healthy. Like there is real competition.

3032
03:23:03,291 --> 03:23:08,291
It used to be 90 percent Bitcoin and 10 percent everything else. It doesn't seem
like

3033
03:23:09,291 --> 03:23:15,291
we're going back to that status quo that we have had. And yet we're so complacent,

3034
03:23:16,291 --> 03:23:21,291
dangerously complacent to the point where the project is much easier to capture.

3035
03:23:22,291 --> 03:23:27,291
Another aspect of it is the fact that so, OK, we dismiss every other project as

3036
03:23:27,291 --> 03:23:32,291
dangerous and horrible shit coin that's going to die. But we are also horrible at

3037
03:23:33,291 --> 03:23:37,291
keeping track of our own project's history. And the more you discover about the
people

3038
03:23:38,291 --> 03:23:42,291
who are involved and what they're trying to build, we're going to realize that what

3039
03:23:43,291 --> 03:23:47,291
Robin is doing, what Casey is doing with Ordinals and everything else was already

3040
03:23:48,291 --> 03:23:53,291
discussed at some point more than 10 years ago on Bitcoin Talk, on IRC channels.

3041
03:23:53,291 --> 03:23:57,291
And the reason why it hasn't happened was, first of all, there were not enough

3042
03:23:58,291 --> 03:24:02,291
resources in terms of paying developers to do it. Secondly, maybe they haven't

3043
03:24:03,291 --> 03:24:07,291
figured out some stuff that maybe we got later with some extra features with Segwit

3044
03:24:08,291 --> 03:24:15,291
and Taproot. But my point is that nothing new is really happening and innovation is

3045
03:24:16,291 --> 03:24:20,291
happening somewhere else, which is becoming increasingly agnostic and independent

3046
03:24:20,291 --> 03:24:26,291
from Bitcoin. We used to think that shit coins are just copies of Bitcoin with small

3047
03:24:27,291 --> 03:24:33,291
changes. But now something like Ethereum is so much different. Something like Monero

3048
03:24:34,291 --> 03:24:38,291
has become so much different. Zcash is also very different from what it was 10 years

3049
03:24:39,291 --> 03:24:45,291
ago. But our mentality is still stuck in the year 2017. And it is very hard for me
to

3050
03:24:46,291 --> 03:24:50,291
compute. Even this argument that you shouldn't have one minute blocks and if

3051
03:24:51,291 --> 03:24:55,291
anything, they should be one hour blocks is something that you would say in 2017,

3052
03:24:56,291 --> 03:25:01,291
but doesn't make as much sense today with the technology that we have and the access

3053
03:25:02,291 --> 03:25:06,291
to the Internet and everything else. And I'm not even sure how we can fix this

3054
03:25:07,291 --> 03:25:13,291
because you present the facts, but they're still not convinced that they're true.

3055
03:25:13,291 --> 03:25:17,291
Maybe that the market will solve this and the only solution is that we promote

3056
03:25:18,291 --> 03:25:23,291
competition to Bitcoin. And once we see the developers leaving and we see that

3057
03:25:24,291 --> 03:25:29,291
nothing interesting is happening outside of the circle jerking cult, maybe then when

3058
03:25:30,291 --> 03:25:34,291
the price doesn't go up according to expectations, we're going to have an actual

3059
03:25:35,291 --> 03:25:38,291
renaissance of development. It's really unfortunate, for example, Paul is

3060
03:25:39,291 --> 03:25:44,291
launching Zcash in August, which is going to be in two months and a week or

3061
03:25:45,291 --> 03:25:51,291
something. I think the planned date for launch is the 21st of August. For a long

3062
03:25:52,291 --> 03:25:57,291
time, Paul was the most convinced Bitcoin maximalist and he was like, no, we don't

3063
03:25:58,291 --> 03:26:02,291
need to launch any more altcoins. We can take everything and bring it to Bitcoin.

3064
03:26:03,291 --> 03:26:09,291
And it's really sad that it got to this point where he lost his patience and he's

3065
03:26:10,291 --> 03:26:14,291
been patient. He proposed drive chains, I think, in 2015 for the first time.

3066
03:26:15,291 --> 03:26:19,291
So being around for more than a decade and pushing this idea and then realizing

3067
03:26:20,291 --> 03:26:24,291
that you're getting mocked and ignored and it's never happening and then you

3068
03:26:25,291 --> 03:26:29,291
realize, well, you're only young and full of energy and hopeful once in your life

3069
03:26:29,291 --> 03:26:33,291
and then you don't want to wait 50 years until you see that you're vindicated.

3070
03:26:34,291 --> 03:26:38,291
And then you see that Ethereum gets PolyMarket, which is a prediction market,

3071
03:26:39,291 --> 03:26:44,291
which was Paul's idea and everything else is happening elsewhere. It must be

3072
03:26:45,291 --> 03:26:50,291
really depressing. I wouldn't want to be in Paul's shoes right now, but I think

3073
03:26:51,291 --> 03:26:54,291
he's doing well. He raised five million for his project recently, which proves

3074
03:26:54,291 --> 03:27:00,291
that there is still some hope and sanity in the market. I wish him all the best.

3075
03:27:01,291 --> 03:27:05,291
But once again, I think we should have, if anything, there should be more hard

3076
03:27:06,291 --> 03:27:09,291
forks of Bitcoin and let them compete. Let's see what the market thinks about

3077
03:27:10,291 --> 03:27:14,291
all of them. If anything, Bitcoin Cash has been very resilient in ways that were

3078
03:27:15,291 --> 03:27:19,291
initially not expected. I think there's some fireworks outside. I'm not sure if

3079
03:27:20,291 --> 03:27:24,291
Yeah, I could hear that. I was wondering if somebody had just started drilling in

3080
03:27:25,291 --> 03:27:26,291
the next room or something.

3081
03:27:27,291 --> 03:27:34,291
I think there's a wedding or birthday or whatever. They had a party. What was I

3082
03:27:35,291 --> 03:27:40,291
saying? Yeah, Bitcoin Cash, the expectations were that it was going to fail.

3083
03:27:41,291 --> 03:27:45,291
And there were many moments when it seemed like the movement has died out.

3084
03:27:46,291 --> 03:27:51,291
I think that the BSV fork was one of the first moments when there was doubt

3085
03:27:52,291 --> 03:27:56,291
whether or not the movement is going to make sense. And then I think BSV took

3086
03:27:57,291 --> 03:28:01,291
the argument of large blocks to the absolute absurd point of giga megs.

3087
03:28:02,291 --> 03:28:07,291
That was what Calvin said. And it makes no sense to have that kind of throughput

3088
03:28:07,291 --> 03:28:15,291
without actual demand for it. But I think they sort of put BCH in a shade and made

3089
03:28:16,291 --> 03:28:21,291
it look like it's tame and uninteresting because this other fork is going for much

3090
03:28:22,291 --> 03:28:27,291
larger blocks and has more aggressive marketing. And then there was also the

3091
03:28:28,291 --> 03:28:34,291
moment when Omari started demanding for a tax so that he gets paid from every

3092
03:28:34,291 --> 03:28:38,291
block that gets mined. I'm not sure what the percentage was. I think four or five.

3093
03:28:39,291 --> 03:28:40,291
It was eight, I think.

3094
03:28:41,291 --> 03:28:47,291
Yeah, it's since been, I believe it's now 32 percent. So it's like the typical

3095
03:28:48,291 --> 03:28:50,291
government tax that goes up.

3096
03:28:51,291 --> 03:28:55,291
I've spoken with people who told me that they stopped believing in Bitcoin Cash

3097
03:28:56,291 --> 03:29:02,291
the moment when Omari left. And maybe it was a painful fracture. Maybe some people

3098
03:29:02,291 --> 03:29:09,291
left along with Omari, like maybe he had a dev team and ABC was the main Bitcoin
Cash

3099
03:29:10,291 --> 03:29:14,291
client. I know that now you have something else that's called the Bitcoin Cash node,

3100
03:29:15,291 --> 03:29:21,291
which actually ran like a year or two ago. And I posted the results. My point is
that

3101
03:29:22,291 --> 03:29:27,291
there are many unfortunate events in the lifecycle of BCH, but it's been pretty

3102
03:29:27,291 --> 03:29:33,291
resilient. The fact that right now it's flipping Litecoin, which as I'm aware, is

3103
03:29:34,291 --> 03:29:38,291
being used in some circles in the US and it's listed by payments processors that
don't

3104
03:29:39,291 --> 03:29:44,291
support BCH. It's kind of a big deal. Congratulations for that. And the fact that

3105
03:29:45,291 --> 03:29:49,291
new community members are coming to BCH and they believe in it and they build on it.

3106
03:29:50,291 --> 03:29:54,291
That's also something that should not be neglected because ultimately the value of

3107
03:29:54,291 --> 03:30:01,291
things is given by the people who use it. So kudos to this one. I didn't think I
would

3108
03:30:02,291 --> 03:30:06,291
say it like maybe four or five years ago. I would think, oh, I would never go on a
Bitcoin

3109
03:30:07,291 --> 03:30:12,291
Cash, BCH podcast and admit that they were right about something. But it seems like

3110
03:30:13,291 --> 03:30:19,291
Bitcoin BTC was not exactly as successful in the ways that I expected. It became

3111
03:30:20,291 --> 03:30:26,291
something else, which sometimes I feel weird for endorsing. And I don't mean the
whole

3112
03:30:27,291 --> 03:30:32,291
Epstein stuff. That's just maybe the icing on the cake. There's more stuff
underneath

3113
03:30:33,291 --> 03:30:39,291
with promises of upgrades and all the conferences that I attended were serious

3114
03:30:40,291 --> 03:30:45,291
developers were talking about stuff that never happened. And an ideology of Bitcoin

3115
03:30:45,291 --> 03:30:50,291
maximalism that sort of makes sense when you think about it in very basic terms
like,

3116
03:30:51,291 --> 03:30:56,291
OK, we want this one project that has the best chances to win to actually get there.

3117
03:30:57,291 --> 03:31:01,291
And if we're going to fragment our efforts, then maybe we will never get there.

3118
03:31:02,291 --> 03:31:06,291
So let's just focus on this one. But then what does it even mean to focus on this
one?

3119
03:31:07,291 --> 03:31:11,291
Because there is nothing significant happening to make it work in the way that it
was

3120
03:31:11,291 --> 03:31:17,291
intended. There is institutional adoption there. There is this whole paper Bitcoin

3121
03:31:18,291 --> 03:31:22,291
summer thing that happened last year. And ironically, most of these treasury
companies

3122
03:31:23,291 --> 03:31:28,291
sold at a loss and they just wanted to get out as quickly as possible, which is a
really

3123
03:31:29,291 --> 03:31:33,291
bad sign, by the way. For the people who still hope that Bitcoin is going to be a

3124
03:31:34,291 --> 03:31:39,291
successful treasury company asset, I got some bad news for you. The signals from the

3125
03:31:40,291 --> 03:31:45,291
market are not positive. Saylor himself sort of pioneered this movement with paper

3126
03:31:46,291 --> 03:31:51,291
Bitcoin and issuing stocks or other assets on top of the Bitcoin held in a reserve.

3127
03:31:52,291 --> 03:31:58,291
He's not doing very well. He's underperforming. There are some people who actually

3128
03:31:59,291 --> 03:32:04,291
did an index of whether that would have happened if Saylor bought some other coins

3129
03:32:05,291 --> 03:32:09,291
and he could be performing much better if he wasn't only buying Bitcoin all the
time.

3130
03:32:10,291 --> 03:32:17,291
So the ideology is really falling apart in key parts. And I think the most painful
one

3131
03:32:18,291 --> 03:32:22,291
is the price because everyone expected, especially when the ETFs got approved a

3132
03:32:23,291 --> 03:32:27,291
couple of years ago, that the price is going to go parabolic and these institutions
are

3133
03:32:28,291 --> 03:32:31,291
going to be buying our bags for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I remember

3134
03:32:32,291 --> 03:32:36,291
narratives like, oh, they're going to be begging me for my scarce Satoshi's and they

3135
03:32:37,291 --> 03:32:42,291
will want them and I will not sell them to them because I'm such a convicted hodler

3136
03:32:43,291 --> 03:32:47,291
and whatever. That never happened. These guys are not idiots, OK? BlackRock, they

3137
03:32:48,291 --> 03:32:52,291
know what they're doing. They're not going to be pumping your coin to the million

3138
03:32:53,291 --> 03:32:58,291
dollar point. They know exactly how to suppress the price. They've been doing this

3139
03:32:58,291 --> 03:33:02,291
to gold for a long time. I don't know why anyone thought that this was such a

3140
03:33:03,291 --> 03:33:07,291
brilliant idea and we're all going to get rich. I guess some people got rich. I'm
not

3141
03:33:08,291 --> 03:33:12,291
going to complain. The network is still out there. It can still get fixed. The price

3142
03:33:13,291 --> 03:33:17,291
did much better than expected. When I first got into Bitcoin, I never even dreamed

3143
03:33:18,291 --> 03:33:23,291
of a hundred thousand. I was thinking, oh, maybe that ten thousand that we reached

3144
03:33:23,291 --> 03:33:29,291
in November of 2017 and then 20,000. I was really happy with that. If we never went

3145
03:33:30,291 --> 03:33:35,291
to 100k, that was really fine as long as we got adoption and we actually started the

3146
03:33:36,291 --> 03:33:40,291
revolution. But right now it doesn't feel much like a revolution. It feels like we

3147
03:33:41,291 --> 03:33:46,291
actually got lucky investing into something early on, which became just another
asset

3148
03:33:47,291 --> 03:33:52,291
for the elite class. I'm not going to try to speculate on what they're doing and the

3149
03:33:55,291 --> 03:33:59,291
reasons why they're investing in Bitcoin, but I think essentially it boils down to

3150
03:34:00,291 --> 03:34:05,291
making more US dollars in different ways. So we basically invented this for them and

3151
03:34:06,291 --> 03:34:11,291
we popularized it for them and then we handed the project to them to just have fun.

3152
03:34:12,291 --> 03:34:16,291
And now we're cocked at the helm just watching them make more US dollars, hoping

3153
03:34:17,291 --> 03:34:22,291
that we're also going to make more US dollars. But why? Why are we even here?

3154
03:34:23,291 --> 03:34:29,291
I've seen a bunch of people retire, quote unquote, just leave in the sunset saying,

3155
03:34:30,291 --> 03:34:34,291
okay, I've made my gains or whatever. I think Bitcoin has given to me everything
that

3156
03:34:35,291 --> 03:34:40,291
I expected I'm out. I used to despise that, but now I sort of respect it because

3157
03:34:41,291 --> 03:34:45,291
at least they're not contributing to a broken culture anymore. And they sort of

3158
03:34:46,291 --> 03:34:50,291
admitted that this was the goal all along, just to make a lot of US dollars.

3159
03:34:51,291 --> 03:34:56,291
I just wish we fixed something because there is so much virtue signaling. When I

3160
03:34:57,291 --> 03:35:01,291
first stumbled upon Bitcoin, there was this Wikipedia page that said it's about

3161
03:35:02,291 --> 03:35:06,291
banking the unbanked. It doesn't really scale for that. And the solutions that we

3162
03:35:06,291 --> 03:35:12,291
created for banking the unbanked are in the spirit of 18th and 19th century

3163
03:35:13,291 --> 03:35:18,291
colonialism, where you give the people who have, I guess, more difficult economic

3164
03:35:19,291 --> 03:35:23,291
conditions, you give them also the second class experience where they never touch

3165
03:35:24,291 --> 03:35:28,291
the blockchain. They trade on this federation or something that was built

3166
03:35:29,291 --> 03:35:34,291
explicitly for their use cases, which is suboptimal and also depressing when you

3167
03:35:34,291 --> 03:35:42,291
think about it. In a perfect world, there would never be a block size war in the

3168
03:35:43,291 --> 03:35:47,291
first place. We would just compromise on something and be like, OK, let's get four

3169
03:35:48,291 --> 03:35:52,291
or eight megabytes. We did get four megabytes with SegWit, so I'm not even sure

3170
03:35:53,291 --> 03:35:57,291
where the disagreement was. Maybe it was just the hard fork or maybe it was just

3171
03:35:58,291 --> 03:36:03,291
people not liking each other and wanting to break away from that context.

3172
03:36:04,291 --> 03:36:10,291
But I feel like the revolution that I joined never happened. And now maybe that I

3173
03:36:11,291 --> 03:36:14,291
might have made some US dollars, but it doesn't really make me happy. It doesn't

3174
03:36:15,291 --> 03:36:19,291
make me wake up in the morning and say, let's go and get another shop to adopt

3175
03:36:20,291 --> 03:36:25,291
Bitcoin. I feel sorry for the businesses or waiters or waitresses that I tipped with

3176
03:36:26,291 --> 03:36:30,291
Custodial Lightning because I think some of these services even shut down. So if

3177
03:36:30,291 --> 03:36:35,291
they haven't used that for some gift card on bit refill or something, then they

3178
03:36:36,291 --> 03:36:42,291
basically lost everything to the custodian. And I don't know where this is going to

3179
03:36:43,291 --> 03:36:47,291
end. I'm hopeful that guys like Robin or Supertestnet are going to use their big

3180
03:36:48,291 --> 03:36:52,291
brains for something good. But the question is, will it get adopted? That's the

3181
03:36:53,291 --> 03:36:57,291
other issue. Robin wants to build something that's called Shielded CSV, which is

3182
03:36:57,291 --> 03:37:05,291
basically a way to replicate the Zcash shielded pool on Bitcoin. But if nobody's

3183
03:37:06,291 --> 03:37:09,291
going to use that because they all want to huddle, then it's going to be just

3184
03:37:10,291 --> 03:37:14,291
another disappointment. So first, I think we need to work on the culture and get

3185
03:37:15,291 --> 03:37:19,291
people to try stuff, maybe adopt like I had a campaign last year where I was

3186
03:37:20,291 --> 03:37:24,291
telling people adopt the shit coin. OK, you know, it's a shit coin. Don't invest

3187
03:37:24,291 --> 03:37:29,291
money in it. Just join the community. See what they're building. Try to figure out

3188
03:37:30,291 --> 03:37:34,291
how you can bring this to Bitcoin. Have like a six months journey and come back

3189
03:37:35,291 --> 03:37:39,291
and see what you're learning from that. Because not everything is just a lazy copy

3190
03:37:40,291 --> 03:37:47,291
of Bitcoin. There's stuff out there that actually tries new ideas and innovates in

3191
03:37:48,291 --> 03:37:53,291
ways that maybe we're not on Bitcoin or at least not yet. I think we need like a

3192
03:37:54,291 --> 03:37:59,291
post-maximalist ideology where we're not afraid to look into stuff and there is no

3193
03:38:00,291 --> 03:38:04,291
shame in doing it. Like you're saying, OK, Bitcoin Cash is doing a good job. Let's

3194
03:38:05,291 --> 03:38:09,291
take some of this, bring it to Bitcoin. Or Litecoin is doing a good job with their

3195
03:38:10,291 --> 03:38:15,291
MWeb or whatever. Is that compatible with Bitcoin? Are there limits to this? Is this

3196
03:38:16,291 --> 03:38:22,291
useful at all? If anything, I think there's too much gatekeeping and a bad culture.

3197
03:38:22,291 --> 03:38:28,291
If we had much more of an openness to experimentation, maybe we would get to

3198
03:38:29,291 --> 03:38:36,291
this idea of adopting Bitcoin for payments much faster. The problem is that I think

3199
03:38:37,291 --> 03:38:44,291
we got corrupted by the sailors and the Black Rocks and everyone else who turned

3200
03:38:45,291 --> 03:38:49,291
Bitcoin into digital gold in the worst sense. Because digital gold used to mean

3201
03:38:49,291 --> 03:38:53,291
that you can mine it with your computer and it's scarce. But what it means right now

3202
03:38:54,291 --> 03:38:58,291
is that it's hard to move around and costly to move around, even though that's no

3203
03:38:59,291 --> 03:39:05,291
longer the case. The fees have become so small that the miners are pivoting to AI

3204
03:39:06,291 --> 03:39:10,291
because they make more money with their infrastructure doing that. And it also

3205
03:39:11,291 --> 03:39:16,291
means that it's being held by custodians, just like gold. And it's really

3206
03:39:16,291 --> 03:39:20,291
unfortunate that we got to this point. I don't know. Long rant. Do you want to

3207
03:39:21,291 --> 03:39:23,291
comment on any of these points?

3208
03:39:24,291 --> 03:39:29,291
You can continue as long as you want. I think this is good. This is clearly

3209
03:39:30,291 --> 03:39:34,291
something that you need to be able to say that maybe you haven't been able to get

3210
03:39:35,291 --> 03:39:39,291
out there in the same way. So if you want to keep going, I have a couple of things

3211
03:39:40,291 --> 03:39:44,291
to ask you. But as far as I'm concerned, carry on as you have been.

3212
03:39:45,291 --> 03:39:51,291
It's also funny that last year I went to BTC Prague undercover. I didn't buy a
ticket.

3213
03:39:52,291 --> 03:39:55,291
I don't want to give any money to these assholes because they treated me in a

3214
03:39:56,291 --> 03:40:00,291
horrible way after I interviewed Roger. And I don't feel like I deserved any of

3215
03:40:01,291 --> 03:40:06,291
that. But someone came up to me, a fellow podcaster who's also a book author and

3216
03:40:07,291 --> 03:40:10,291
high priest in some ways. And he told me, oh Vlad, it's so good to see you. So

3217
03:40:11,291 --> 03:40:14,291
unfortunate that you're not doing your podcast anymore after you interviewed

3218
03:40:15,291 --> 03:40:21,291
Roger. And I was attending this event just a few days after I interviewed Vitalik.

3219
03:40:22,291 --> 03:40:26,291
And that was even bigger than the Roger of Year interview. Vitalik got me like

3220
03:40:27,291 --> 03:40:32,291
70,000 views on the first week. It was crazy. The chat was going crazy. I don't

3221
03:40:33,291 --> 03:40:37,291
know what's special about this guy, but after talking to him, I've gained more

3222
03:40:37,291 --> 03:40:42,291
respect for what he's doing because I realized, OK, he's not overrated in any

3223
03:40:43,291 --> 03:40:46,291
way. He's really that smart and he understands what's going on, even if he's

3224
03:40:47,291 --> 03:40:53,291
the subject of memes and people project a lot of ideas and thoughts onto him that

3225
03:40:54,291 --> 03:40:59,291
aren't really true. But my point is that the perception is very different from the

3226
03:41:00,291 --> 03:41:05,291
reality. And these people are stuck in a circle jerk bubble where they make up

3227
03:41:06,291 --> 03:41:11,291
narratives. They say even about Roger, for example, they said once he started

3228
03:41:12,291 --> 03:41:16,291
supporting BCH, they said, well, he sold all of his Bitcoin and now he's poor.

3229
03:41:17,291 --> 03:41:23,291
Stuff like this. They don't know anything. They're just trying to create these

3230
03:41:24,291 --> 03:41:29,291
narratives that are convenient for perpetuating the cult. And I'm sorry that I

3231
03:41:30,291 --> 03:41:34,291
contributed to this cult because now I realize how it really works. I'm happy

3232
03:41:35,291 --> 03:41:40,291
that I'm outside. I'm proud of the people who still listen to my podcast, despite

3233
03:41:41,291 --> 03:41:46,291
being not pure enough or whatever that means. And I guess I'll keep going for as

3234
03:41:47,291 --> 03:41:51,291
long as I find it interesting, because I'm not sure about you, Jeremy. Why do

3235
03:41:52,291 --> 03:41:57,291
this podcast? And I see your producer that became very bored right now. He's

3236
03:41:58,291 --> 03:42:02,291
looking at me like, is this guy just had dinner? That's what he's like. Digesting.

3237
03:42:02,291 --> 03:42:03,291
That's what's going on.

3238
03:42:04,291 --> 03:42:08,291
Well, what I was going to say is that I don't know why you do this podcast. Maybe

3239
03:42:09,291 --> 03:42:12,291
you feel like you're serving your community or something. But I think the

3240
03:42:13,291 --> 03:42:17,291
primary purpose should be that you're learning for yourself and you're growing

3241
03:42:18,291 --> 03:42:22,291
and feeling like you can contribute to the project in more meaningful ways.

3242
03:42:23,291 --> 03:42:26,291
Because that's also what I feel about my podcast. I don't do it for my audience.

3243
03:42:27,291 --> 03:42:30,291
Honestly, I don't care who's listening. I just do it because I want to learn

3244
03:42:30,291 --> 03:42:35,291
something new every week. And when I learn something new, I feel like I have no

3245
03:42:36,291 --> 03:42:39,291
idea what I'm going to do with this knowledge, but I do like learning. So it's

3246
03:42:40,291 --> 03:42:43,291
a very selfish project from this point of view. I don't care too much about what

3247
03:42:44,291 --> 03:42:48,291
the audience wants, but it seems like they like what I'm doing. So keep going.

3248
03:42:49,291 --> 03:42:54,291
I don't know. I think in some ways I do it the opposite and in some ways the same.

3249
03:42:55,291 --> 03:42:59,291
Like, why do I do the podcast? Honestly, I do it for humanity. Humanity needs

3250
03:43:00,291 --> 03:43:07,291
Bitcoin to succeed. It's that or we get captured by the bankers and it's all over.

3251
03:43:08,291 --> 03:43:12,291
And I knew that once I got into Bitcoin and it's still true now. And when I

3252
03:43:13,291 --> 03:43:19,291
started the show at the start of 2021, it was right after Amore had split off

3253
03:43:20,291 --> 03:43:24,291
with eCash in November of 2020. And also coincidentally at that time, I had

3254
03:43:25,291 --> 03:43:29,291
been taking a break, but I became more interested in Bitcoin. The price was

3255
03:43:30,291 --> 03:43:36,291
skyrocketing at that time. And so I looked into it and I thought Amore's left.

3256
03:43:37,291 --> 03:43:40,291
BCH is actually the answer that we've been waiting for. Like you said, it was

3257
03:43:41,291 --> 03:43:45,291
a very traumatic time and a lot of other people had left. So I looked at that

3258
03:43:46,291 --> 03:43:50,291
and I thought, oh, BCH was never going to work with him there as a benevolent

3259
03:43:51,291 --> 03:43:55,291
dictator, which he says is just a joke about Linux and everything. But truly,

3260
03:43:56,291 --> 03:43:59,291
you can't advertise a project like that and say it's decentralized even in a

3261
03:44:00,291 --> 03:44:03,291
shocking way like that. So after he was out, I was like, this is it. This is

3262
03:44:04,291 --> 03:44:09,291
BCH's one shot to actually prove the big block thing to overcome the hijacking

3263
03:44:10,291 --> 03:44:13,291
and et cetera, et cetera. And so I got involved. And then in December and

3264
03:44:14,291 --> 03:44:17,291
January, I was working on things. And, you know, after I had sort of invested

3265
03:44:18,291 --> 03:44:20,291
some money and I'd done a couple of little different things, I thought, what

3266
03:44:21,291 --> 03:44:25,291
else more can I do to make this a success? And I thought, well, it's not the

3267
03:44:26,291 --> 03:44:29,291
node protocol that I need to code. That's going great. In fact, that was one

3268
03:44:30,291 --> 03:44:35,291
of my biggest things at the time. But the community needs a rallying point and

3269
03:44:36,291 --> 03:44:39,291
a mission. And they also need to debunk, get debunked from a lot of this

3270
03:44:40,291 --> 03:44:44,291
propaganda on both sides. One, of course, there was loads of BTC propaganda.

3271
03:44:45,291 --> 03:44:47,291
And I was like, I'll get around to debunking that. But in the short term, I

3272
03:44:48,291 --> 03:44:51,291
actually needed to fix the BCH community that also had loads of propaganda.

3273
03:44:52,291 --> 03:44:55,291
Like the price doesn't matter was like one of the big copes that I had to be

3274
03:44:56,291 --> 03:44:59,291
like, oh, guys, the price does matter. The price indicates public sentiment.

3275
03:45:00,291 --> 03:45:04,291
It indicates liquidity. It's a measure of popularity. You know, it's one of

3276
03:45:05,291 --> 03:45:06,291
the most attention attracting things.

3277
03:45:06,508 --> 03:45:33,508
BCH could possibly have. So I had to like, get through that. There was also just
loads of griping and whinging and regressive trauma and so forth in the BCH
community. So I had to make the podcast, make it at least decent enough and get some
signal out there. So that then I would have the clout to go in the telegram groups
and be like, this guy's just whinging and complaining like this cannot be the way
forward. And that got some pushback at the time. And I was like, no, I'm not going
to do that.

3278
03:45:33,508 --> 03:45:44,788
At the time, some people sort of saw what I was trying to do and they supported it,
although mostly quietly, you know, at the time, I didn't get, you know, tons of
messages saying like, oh, Jerry, this is a great idea.

3279
03:45:44,788 --> 03:45:56,068
But I just saw that people were like some people were starting to say that what I
was saying was right. And then also, you know, some people got cheesed off and
eventually had their little rage quit or their little moment.

3280
03:45:56,068 --> 03:46:03,908
Because ultimately, if you're just whinging and complaining like that is not the
answer as much as BCH might have had some things right.

3281
03:46:03,908 --> 03:46:13,668
And we did and always have, you know, whether it was the lightning network or the
big block scaling was viable or whatever, there's a lot that BCH has had wrong.

3282
03:46:13,668 --> 03:46:29,908
And that's what I posted just the day or two when I was talking to Justin Bonds, you
know, it was amazing talking to him and trying to explain to him that the BCH now in
2026 is wildly different from the BCH of 2020.

3283
03:46:29,908 --> 03:46:43,668
Like there's been six years of huge upgrades, which are important not only
technically, but they're also important from a cohesion and a narrative point of
view that just the community has reoriented and got back on the same page.

3284
03:46:43,668 --> 03:46:58,148
And like you said, the network effect is simply growing again, you know, from those
years from where the big block of community pre-BTC split was becoming more and more
of a minority because while there was so much propaganda and control of the media
channels,

3285
03:46:58,148 --> 03:47:03,188
but also, you know, things were felt the small block way in the box as well.

3286
03:47:03,188 --> 03:47:08,868
And then the BSV split and the XCC split, you know, that's a shrinking and a
shrinking group.

3287
03:47:08,868 --> 03:47:15,428
But from 2022, 2023, and especially through to now, the BCH community has started
growing again.

3288
03:47:15,428 --> 03:47:18,388
And the reason is because it's doing the right things.

3289
03:47:18,388 --> 03:47:27,188
It's actually just confronted a lot of the nonsense and lies that within the BCH
community were affecting it from succeeding.

3290
03:47:27,188 --> 03:47:33,108
And then, you know, also changed our attitude and our public presentation.

3291
03:47:33,108 --> 03:47:39,428
You know, I mean, obviously, I've spent a lot of time trolling you, so I'm
interested to hear your thoughts on that.

3292
03:47:39,428 --> 03:47:40,868
I never took it personally.

3293
03:47:40,868 --> 03:47:49,028
And I did see some spite there sometimes, and you're making fun of me, but it's
fine.

3294
03:47:49,028 --> 03:47:56,388
As long as it progresses, the understanding of how Bitcoin works and or how it
should work, I'm fine with it.

3295
03:47:57,188 --> 03:48:03,508
I do remember at one point that you asked the community to give you like a grant and
you were asking for like,

3296
03:48:03,508 --> 03:48:06,948
I don't remember exactly, like $5,000 per month or whatever.

3297
03:48:06,948 --> 03:48:12,628
And I think David Shares was very much against it, saying that you don't deserve
that.

3298
03:48:12,628 --> 03:48:16,068
Yes. And where is he now? That's the thing.

3299
03:48:16,068 --> 03:48:18,308
You know, that was like a couple of years ago.

3300
03:48:18,308 --> 03:48:26,148
He was flaming out and raging as a result of the issue with George Donnelly and
censorship for people who want it.

3301
03:48:26,148 --> 03:48:28,788
There's an episode, I think it's episode 111.

3302
03:48:28,788 --> 03:48:32,548
You can go back and listen to the show where we covered all that in detail.

3303
03:48:32,548 --> 03:48:38,708
There was this touchpoint around the Reddit thing, and he was raging and whinging
because he wanted things to go one way.

3304
03:48:38,708 --> 03:48:40,948
And I even invited him on the show to give his point of view.

3305
03:48:40,948 --> 03:48:41,908
He didn't want to do that.

3306
03:48:41,908 --> 03:48:47,028
And so then afterwards, he tried to like slander me that I was this evil person in
the community or whatever,

3307
03:48:47,028 --> 03:48:49,588
and that I had unfairly got this like money,

3308
03:48:49,588 --> 03:48:55,748
even though I have delivered on every single thing basically that I've ever promised
to the BCH community.

3309
03:48:55,748 --> 03:49:00,788
And so it was just, yeah, you know, like that's an example of what I'm talking
about,

3310
03:49:00,788 --> 03:49:07,828
that there was people who have those negative attitudes in the community that had to
be purged, essentially,

3311
03:49:07,828 --> 03:49:10,068
you know, putting it that way is maybe a little harsh,

3312
03:49:10,068 --> 03:49:13,348
but they had to find that this was not the project for them,

3313
03:49:13,348 --> 03:49:20,228
or they at the very least had to have their influence go down in order for things to
reorient in the correct direction.

3314
03:49:20,228 --> 03:49:28,388
And so to the extent that you or other people that I go around like, you know, Eric
Wall or even maybe John Carvalho,

3315
03:49:28,388 --> 03:49:34,948
I don't know, different people, Bitcoin mechanic, all these different characters
that I go to,

3316
03:49:34,948 --> 03:49:41,108
and I individually like troll you or mock you or, you know, it's not malicious.

3317
03:49:41,108 --> 03:49:46,788
I'm not doing it because I'm trying to, you know, insult you or tear you down or
anything.

3318
03:49:46,788 --> 03:49:49,668
It's because I'm trying to get your attention.

3319
03:49:49,668 --> 03:49:55,348
And that's been the hardest thing about it, you know, was now it's maybe a little
bit different.

3320
03:49:55,348 --> 03:49:56,948
Now the situation has changed.

3321
03:49:56,948 --> 03:50:02,308
But certainly four or five years ago, like you said, you wouldn't have thought you
would be on a show like this,

3322
03:50:02,308 --> 03:50:05,268
and you maybe wouldn't have taken any of the ideas discussed seriously.

3323
03:50:05,988 --> 03:50:07,028
And it's just been a lot.

3324
03:50:07,028 --> 03:50:12,308
It's just like, you know, a wolf pit or a gladiator type of thing on Twitter.

3325
03:50:12,308 --> 03:50:17,188
You know, it's not like you can't get credibility if you just come in as Mr. Nice
Guy.

3326
03:50:17,188 --> 03:50:21,028
That's not how, like, you know, all male communities work.

3327
03:50:21,028 --> 03:50:25,588
You have to prove that you know your stuff before people will take you a little bit
seriously.

3328
03:50:25,588 --> 03:50:29,428
And that might mean taking a few knocks, and it might mean handing out a few.

3329
03:50:29,428 --> 03:50:31,188
And so I've had to do that.

3330
03:50:31,188 --> 03:50:38,148
But I do, and in each of you, like, my approach is tailored to your individual
personality,

3331
03:50:38,148 --> 03:50:41,828
to what I think will help connect the message the most.

3332
03:50:41,828 --> 03:50:49,908
And I usually do try and balance the mocking and the ridicule and the memes and
whatever with,

3333
03:50:50,868 --> 03:50:54,068
you know, posts that are more constructive.

3334
03:50:54,068 --> 03:50:56,948
And hey, why don't you look at this and so on and so forth.

3335
03:50:56,948 --> 03:51:02,228
But to be fair, I have on at least one or two occasions, I have genuinely been
frustrated.

3336
03:51:02,948 --> 03:51:08,468
It took so long to maybe get you to take these ideas seriously.

3337
03:51:08,468 --> 03:51:10,068
But I'm glad that you have.

3338
03:51:10,068 --> 03:51:12,948
And, you know, now there'll be no need for it, right?

3339
03:51:12,948 --> 03:51:15,268
I won't need to anymore.

3340
03:51:15,268 --> 03:51:21,828
And it is I'm only doing it in service of BCH and in service of Bitcoin, you know,

3341
03:51:21,828 --> 03:51:26,628
to the extent that I'm able to debunk different pieces of propaganda and whatever.

3342
03:51:26,628 --> 03:51:29,348
I don't think that can hurt Bitcoin.

3343
03:51:29,348 --> 03:51:31,028
And I'm not involved now.

3344
03:51:31,028 --> 03:51:35,668
I own zero BTC, and I'm not involved in the BTC community at all.

3345
03:51:36,308 --> 03:51:40,868
So if the BTC community can figure out the answers, then great.

3346
03:51:40,868 --> 03:51:45,348
They can all just ignore me, block me, mute me, whatever many of them have.

3347
03:51:45,348 --> 03:51:46,628
And that's fine.

3348
03:51:46,628 --> 03:51:52,468
But the reason that that's not a sustainable or viable strategy is because at least
some

3349
03:51:52,468 --> 03:51:54,948
of what I'm saying is true.

3350
03:51:54,948 --> 03:51:58,228
And you can't, you just can't ignore that forever.

3351
03:51:58,788 --> 03:52:01,348
So like coming full circle, you know, why did I do the podcast?

3352
03:52:01,348 --> 03:52:04,148
I mean, I do the podcast because I think humanity needs Bitcoin.

3353
03:52:04,148 --> 03:52:06,148
But there's also a selfish side.

3354
03:52:06,148 --> 03:52:13,188
Like you said, to me, the podcast is also more of a self-improvement project in that

3355
03:52:13,188 --> 03:52:19,108
for the podcast to get like at the time when I started it, I was in lockdown in
London

3356
03:52:19,108 --> 03:52:22,468
during coronavirus at one of the just lowest points in my life.

3357
03:52:22,468 --> 03:52:24,708
It was absolutely horrible.

3358
03:52:24,708 --> 03:52:29,348
And I was thinking, like, why is all this stuff happening?

3359
03:52:29,348 --> 03:52:33,828
Like, I have all these ideas or I'm able to predict that this is how things will go

3360
03:52:33,828 --> 03:52:37,428
with Bitcoin specifically, because I'm so obsessed with it and been following it for

3361
03:52:37,428 --> 03:52:38,148
such a long time.

3362
03:52:38,148 --> 03:52:41,188
But, you know, why can nobody else see this?

3363
03:52:41,188 --> 03:52:44,228
And then I was like, well, because someone like me who thinks I have a different
point

3364
03:52:44,228 --> 03:52:46,068
of view isn't getting it out there.

3365
03:52:46,068 --> 03:52:52,228
And so in creating the show, I've now been able to be full time, you know, working
in

3366
03:52:52,228 --> 03:52:55,028
the BCH community, which is just like my dream job.

3367
03:52:55,028 --> 03:52:55,908
Like, I just love it.

3368
03:52:55,908 --> 03:52:58,468
I work, like you said, I mean, you kind of said the opposite.

3369
03:52:58,468 --> 03:53:02,228
But, you know, I'm sure at a certain point, you know, you wake up every day
thinking,

3370
03:53:02,228 --> 03:53:04,628
fuck, yeah, like, what else would I rather be doing?

3371
03:53:05,188 --> 03:53:10,468
I mean, if I didn't have this podcast, this mission, you know, Bliss and Celine and
everything

3372
03:53:10,468 --> 03:53:12,868
that I'm doing, like, what would I do with my life?

3373
03:53:12,868 --> 03:53:16,708
I'm sure I could figure out something like, you know, before I was doing this stuff
full

3374
03:53:16,708 --> 03:53:19,668
time, you know, I would travel around the world or get drunk.

3375
03:53:19,668 --> 03:53:23,828
Nowadays, I'd probably like to do a lot more, you know, bachata dancing or maybe I'd
get

3376
03:53:23,828 --> 03:53:25,028
into woodworking or something.

3377
03:53:25,028 --> 03:53:25,428
I don't know.

3378
03:53:25,428 --> 03:53:29,428
You know, I'd find some other passionate way to spend my time.

3379
03:53:29,428 --> 03:53:35,588
But really, like somebody said, it's one of those, what do you call it, like
quotable

3380
03:53:35,588 --> 03:53:40,948
things where it's like, think about what is the most important thing you could be
doing

3381
03:53:40,948 --> 03:53:45,028
with your life and then think, do I wake up every day doing that?

3382
03:53:45,028 --> 03:53:46,308
And if not, why not?

3383
03:53:46,308 --> 03:53:48,308
You know, it's as simple as that, right?

3384
03:53:48,308 --> 03:53:54,868
So I can't see any point where I could have more leverage on improving humanity than
doing

3385
03:53:54,868 --> 03:53:55,188
that.

3386
03:53:55,188 --> 03:53:59,188
But in doing that, it's a personal challenge for me, which is the amount of skills
and

3387
03:53:59,188 --> 03:53:59,988
stuff I've had.

3388
03:53:59,988 --> 03:54:04,148
Like, I'm not a very public type of person by default.

3389
03:54:04,148 --> 03:54:08,468
I mean, maybe similar to you in that, like, I have a strong privacy mentality and I
always

3390
03:54:08,468 --> 03:54:09,188
find it ironic.

3391
03:54:09,188 --> 03:54:13,508
All these guys that are talking about privacy, but it's like, I know what you look
like,

3392
03:54:13,508 --> 03:54:13,908
bro.

3393
03:54:13,908 --> 03:54:15,908
Like, clearly, you're not that into privacy.

3394
03:54:15,908 --> 03:54:19,988
If you were, you wouldn't be posting yourself on the internet everywhere.

3395
03:54:20,628 --> 03:54:22,068
That's not what privacy means.

3396
03:54:24,148 --> 03:54:27,828
If anything, privacy and security are tied together.

3397
03:54:27,828 --> 03:54:33,508
If you're this guy that nobody knows who he is and he makes one privacy mistake,
maybe

3398
03:54:33,508 --> 03:54:35,988
that you're going to disappear for various reasons.

3399
03:54:35,988 --> 03:54:37,268
You have enemies or whatever.

3400
03:54:37,268 --> 03:54:39,428
Nobody's going to know that you disappeared.

3401
03:54:39,428 --> 03:54:41,028
You can get replaced very easily.

3402
03:54:42,628 --> 03:54:44,068
There are some layers to this.

3403
03:54:44,068 --> 03:54:49,428
I think Peter Todd said this to me, which is very true, that sometimes your house is
safer

3404
03:54:49,428 --> 03:54:52,388
if you let the kids play on your lawn.

3405
03:54:53,028 --> 03:54:53,748
Yes.

3406
03:54:53,748 --> 03:54:57,748
Because there's going to be lots of eyes on your house and nobody's going to come
breaking

3407
03:54:57,748 --> 03:54:58,868
into your house.

3408
03:54:59,908 --> 03:55:06,708
So sometimes being out there, but being also careful with the information that
you're giving

3409
03:55:06,708 --> 03:55:14,068
out is much better than being this paranoid person who's only using Tails OS and
logs

3410
03:55:14,068 --> 03:55:17,588
into stuff with one-time passwords and I don't know.

3411
03:55:18,228 --> 03:55:20,708
Uses Tor and Monero for everything.

3412
03:55:21,908 --> 03:55:26,868
There are some benefits to that, but I'm not saying that you should be chasing that
kind

3413
03:55:26,868 --> 03:55:29,108
of lifestyle because it has lots of trade-offs.

3414
03:55:30,228 --> 03:55:35,428
Being able to participate in debates publicly, representing yourself.

3415
03:55:35,428 --> 03:55:38,788
For example, I understand why Cobra doesn't want to reveal his face.

3416
03:55:38,788 --> 03:55:41,588
He's most likely very rich or Tamos or whatever.

3417
03:55:42,228 --> 03:55:48,548
But for the average person who just discovered Bitcoin or Monero or whatever, who's
super

3418
03:55:48,548 --> 03:55:53,748
paranoid about their identity online and whatever, I do understand the concerns.

3419
03:55:53,748 --> 03:55:59,188
I'm pretty sure we're training some AI right now by live streaming on YouTube and
there's

3420
03:55:59,188 --> 03:56:03,828
going to be someone using these statements potentially against us in the future.

3421
03:56:03,828 --> 03:56:05,988
I don't know where this is going to end.

3422
03:56:06,628 --> 03:56:13,428
It's just that I think we're evolving human beings and it's part of this large
political

3423
03:56:13,428 --> 03:56:19,108
game that we learn and we express opinions about what we want and essentially what
we

3424
03:56:19,108 --> 03:56:26,628
get is the lowest denominator of what everyone wants eventually, which is
unfortunate.

3425
03:56:26,628 --> 03:56:33,668
We're not getting the best stuff out there, but if we voice our opinion and we try
to

3426
03:56:33,668 --> 03:56:38,628
raise the standard a bit, at least hopefully the outcome will be a bit better.

3427
03:56:39,828 --> 03:56:42,548
That's what keeps me going, at least.

3428
03:56:42,548 --> 03:56:45,668
I hope I'm not going to get depressed again in a few years.

3429
03:56:45,668 --> 03:56:54,628
But my point is that I also think during the pandemic, I realized that I was working
for

3430
03:56:54,628 --> 03:56:59,908
Bitcoin Magazine, which was interesting as an experience, but I was super
undervalued

3431
03:56:59,908 --> 03:57:04,148
and I was basically the janitor picking up what everyone else throws away.

3432
03:57:04,148 --> 03:57:08,948
I was writing the stuff that the other writers did not want to write.

3433
03:57:08,948 --> 03:57:12,548
That was kind of my job there and I was getting paid by the article.

3434
03:57:12,548 --> 03:57:17,428
So I didn't have a full-time gig, even though I was working full-time for them, but
they

3435
03:57:17,428 --> 03:57:19,748
were only paying me when something was getting published.

3436
03:57:20,788 --> 03:57:23,508
And during the pandemic, I sort of rage quit.

3437
03:57:24,468 --> 03:57:29,988
I was like, you know, screw you guys, I'm going to double down on my podcast
project,

3438
03:57:29,988 --> 03:57:32,788
which I started like a year prior.

3439
03:57:34,468 --> 03:57:41,188
And it was possibly the best decision of my life, meaning that it was the first time
when

3440
03:57:41,188 --> 03:57:43,668
I realized, OK, I'm not making any more money right now.

3441
03:57:44,308 --> 03:57:48,868
I might as well work on a personal project that doesn't make any money and keep
going

3442
03:57:48,868 --> 03:57:49,988
until maybe it does.

3443
03:57:50,868 --> 03:57:57,508
And in hindsight, it was crazy, but also I was able to make this work somehow.

3444
03:57:58,788 --> 03:58:05,188
And I feel sorry for spending so much time in the cult and not paying attention.

3445
03:58:05,188 --> 03:58:07,188
For example, I missed out on DeFi Summer.

3446
03:58:07,188 --> 03:58:13,348
I missed out on lots of movements that could have potentially taught me something
and made

3447
03:58:13,348 --> 03:58:14,468
me rich or whatever.

3448
03:58:15,428 --> 03:58:22,468
But I did miss out on stuff which could have been very educational and I could have
brought

3449
03:58:22,468 --> 03:58:25,668
some ideas to Bitcoin if I was a bit more courageous.

3450
03:58:26,228 --> 03:58:33,028
But I think I'm doing that now, even though I'm sure that the people who cast me out
or

3451
03:58:33,028 --> 03:58:38,068
excommunicated me or whatever verb you want to use, I don't think they're listening
anymore

3452
03:58:38,068 --> 03:58:38,708
or they care.

3453
03:58:39,268 --> 03:58:44,148
But I'm very flattered that when I invite them on my podcast, they always say yes.

3454
03:58:44,388 --> 03:58:47,668
Nobody says, oh, you're such a horrible shit coin or I don't want to talk to you.

3455
03:58:48,468 --> 03:58:53,508
They all think maybe that they have this naive missionary mindset where they think
that if

3456
03:58:53,508 --> 03:58:57,588
they talk to me for a couple of hours, they're going to convert me or something.

3457
03:58:58,308 --> 03:59:01,908
Or maybe that they think that they're much smarter and they want to dunk on me.

3458
03:59:01,908 --> 03:59:03,908
But I don't care too much for that.

3459
03:59:05,108 --> 03:59:12,628
And for example, I have the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, Corey Clipson, I think.

3460
03:59:13,348 --> 03:59:19,908
He wants to join my podcast again, even though we're very opposed in terms of where
we stand

3461
03:59:19,908 --> 03:59:21,028
with Bitcoin right now.

3462
03:59:21,588 --> 03:59:28,388
He was on the side of institutional adoption and he advised Sequence, which was a
company

3463
03:59:28,388 --> 03:59:33,908
that started their own BTC reserve and became a treasury company.

3464
03:59:33,908 --> 03:59:36,868
And then they sold everything at a loss, which is very funny.

3465
03:59:37,428 --> 03:59:42,548
But he was behind that and he still believes that it was a good move, but maybe the
timing

3466
03:59:42,548 --> 03:59:46,948
was bad or whatever, or maybe that the people behind the company, Sequence, did not
have

3467
03:59:46,948 --> 03:59:48,548
enough conviction to hold.

3468
03:59:48,548 --> 03:59:53,028
Or I'm not sure exactly what the explanation is going to be or the post
rationalization.

3469
03:59:53,668 --> 03:59:58,308
But he is very popular with Bitcoiners and he would like to join my show.

3470
03:59:58,308 --> 04:00:03,268
And I'm genuinely flattered and would love to have a debate with him about this.

3471
04:00:04,228 --> 04:00:14,148
And I'm happy that despite all of the negativity in the community and this tendency
to create

3472
04:00:14,148 --> 04:00:21,828
a unitary cult that thinks alike and acts like what Michael Saylor calls the hive
mind

3473
04:00:21,828 --> 04:00:22,948
of cyber hornets.

3474
04:00:24,628 --> 04:00:30,468
There is still some place for contrarians, and I'm not sure if I'm the best of
contrarians,

3475
04:00:30,468 --> 04:00:36,148
but I'm out there expressing some skepticism and people like to engage with this.

3476
04:00:36,148 --> 04:00:38,468
So it's good.

3477
04:00:38,468 --> 04:00:43,748
Like, I don't have real reasons to complain other than we haven't really delivered
on

3478
04:00:43,748 --> 04:00:45,508
the promises of this technology.

3479
04:00:46,388 --> 04:00:48,228
And I've said this on another podcast.

3480
04:00:48,228 --> 04:00:53,508
I don't remember which one, but I was on a date during the pandemic with a girl.

3481
04:00:53,508 --> 04:00:55,268
I think the year was 2020.

3482
04:00:55,828 --> 04:00:58,628
And she asked me, I was telling her about Bitcoin.

3483
04:00:58,628 --> 04:00:59,828
I was very enthusiastic.

3484
04:00:59,828 --> 04:01:02,148
And she asked me, okay, so where can I pay with this?

3485
04:01:03,588 --> 04:01:05,028
And I will never forget my answer.

3486
04:01:05,028 --> 04:01:07,268
I was like, you shouldn't pay with this.

3487
04:01:07,988 --> 04:01:10,068
It's not meant to be used for payments.

3488
04:01:10,788 --> 04:01:15,108
And then she looked at me very confused, like, how is this even money if you don't
make payments

3489
04:01:15,108 --> 04:01:15,828
with it?

3490
04:01:15,828 --> 04:01:17,828
I was like, maybe you can buy a gift card.

3491
04:01:19,028 --> 04:01:22,548
But yeah, it felt like I wasn't interesting or cool.

3492
04:01:23,588 --> 04:01:24,308
And she was right.

3493
04:01:24,308 --> 04:01:25,588
Like, where do you pay for this?

3494
04:01:26,708 --> 04:01:28,468
Where do you pay with this for stuff?

3495
04:01:28,948 --> 04:01:37,748
And it wasn't like the adoption hasn't even reached the point that it can.

3496
04:01:37,748 --> 04:01:43,188
I'm aware that Jack Dorsey did some stuff with his company that's called Square to
add some

3497
04:01:44,628 --> 04:01:48,228
options at the payments terminals to choose Lightning.

3498
04:01:49,108 --> 04:01:51,748
But I think the whole setup requires KYC.

3499
04:01:52,788 --> 04:01:57,588
Because I remember they had a booth at the Bitcoin conference this year in Las
Vegas.

3500
04:01:58,468 --> 04:02:04,948
And I tried to get their $20 free Bitcoin on the Lightning network.

3501
04:02:05,508 --> 04:02:10,148
And the first thing they asked me was to sign up to Square and then provide my bank
account

3502
04:02:10,148 --> 04:02:11,268
to receive that.

3503
04:02:11,268 --> 04:02:13,348
I was like, I don't have an American bank account.

3504
04:02:13,348 --> 04:02:16,468
And they said, we're sorry, we cannot let you join.

3505
04:02:17,028 --> 04:02:18,148
You cannot participate.

3506
04:02:18,708 --> 04:02:26,308
So maybe that their whole adoption scheme relies on being registered with your KYC
data to

3507
04:02:26,308 --> 04:02:27,108
this custodian.

3508
04:02:27,748 --> 04:02:29,428
I don't think that's the way to do it.

3509
04:02:29,428 --> 04:02:32,308
That was never the Bitcoin way.

3510
04:02:32,308 --> 04:02:33,828
Maybe it's useful on the short term.

3511
04:02:33,828 --> 04:02:37,428
And some people don't care because they buy it from exchanges anyway.

3512
04:02:37,428 --> 04:02:39,748
So they're like, who cares?

3513
04:02:39,748 --> 04:02:45,348
It's just the coins that I would draw from Coinbase or Kraken that I use for
spending.

3514
04:02:45,348 --> 04:02:48,228
It's not much different from using your credit card.

3515
04:02:48,228 --> 04:02:51,108
But at least you're using Bitcoin, sort of.

3516
04:02:52,388 --> 04:02:52,948
I don't know.

3517
04:02:53,508 --> 04:02:58,228
Well, realistically, and this is a really important topic, I think, which is that
realistically,

3518
04:02:59,508 --> 04:03:03,028
the world has to operate with some level of those systems.

3519
04:03:03,028 --> 04:03:03,908
It just does.

3520
04:03:03,908 --> 04:03:09,908
Even in a hyper Bitcoinized world, not every single person is going to be coin
joining,

3521
04:03:09,908 --> 04:03:15,268
trading, you know, and honestly, even when the whole world was based on cash before
digital

3522
04:03:15,268 --> 04:03:19,428
payments was a thing, you know, there was still payments that you needed to make
that

3523
04:03:20,308 --> 04:03:24,068
were related to companies and could be traced to this and that and the other.

3524
04:03:24,068 --> 04:03:24,308
Right.

3525
04:03:24,308 --> 04:03:26,788
So that's going to be an aspect of it.

3526
04:03:26,788 --> 04:03:30,548
And it's in a way, it's part of Bitcoin winning, right?

3527
04:03:30,548 --> 04:03:35,988
So people who are kind of like, well, everyone should be in full cypherpunk mode.

3528
04:03:35,988 --> 04:03:40,948
I'm just saying that the people who choose to be in that mode should be included
also.

3529
04:03:40,948 --> 04:03:46,788
Like you shouldn't push the adoption and the whole payments economy to be in line
with

3530
04:03:46,788 --> 04:03:49,908
whatever regulations are in place in the U.S.

3531
04:03:49,908 --> 04:03:50,388
Exactly.

3532
04:03:50,388 --> 04:03:53,828
It's conditioned by adhering to this system.

3533
04:03:54,628 --> 04:03:55,268
Yes.

3534
04:03:55,268 --> 04:03:55,988
Yeah, exactly.

3535
04:03:55,988 --> 04:03:56,948
I agree totally.

3536
04:03:56,948 --> 04:03:58,068
And so I think that's where...

3537
04:03:58,068 --> 04:04:00,228
We're just reinventing banking if we're doing that.

3538
04:04:00,228 --> 04:04:05,028
It's like, even in the gold world, if you come with a gold coin that's not stamped
by

3539
04:04:05,028 --> 04:04:09,668
the king of your country or whatever, and it's from somewhere else, it's still gold.

3540
04:04:09,668 --> 04:04:10,948
They will accept it.

3541
04:04:10,948 --> 04:04:15,748
Maybe they will give you less stuff for it.

3542
04:04:15,748 --> 04:04:16,628
I don't know.

3543
04:04:16,628 --> 04:04:20,628
Or maybe that they will evaluate the purity before they actually accept it.

3544
04:04:20,628 --> 04:04:21,508
But they accept it.

3545
04:04:22,628 --> 04:04:23,348
Exactly.

3546
04:04:23,348 --> 04:04:23,748
Exactly.

3547
04:04:23,748 --> 04:04:25,668
It does need to be a global payment system.

3548
04:04:25,668 --> 04:04:32,148
And so it's really going to come down to making the minimum possible concessions on
that front

3549
04:04:33,108 --> 04:04:35,668
to get it to be a global currency.

3550
04:04:35,668 --> 04:04:36,788
There's going to be some of that.

3551
04:04:36,788 --> 04:04:41,188
So I think, yeah, some people are too naive that, oh, we cannot have any of that.

3552
04:04:41,188 --> 04:04:42,228
No, there's going to be some of that.

3553
04:04:42,228 --> 04:04:46,308
But on the other hand, you also need people pushing back on that.

3554
04:04:46,308 --> 04:04:49,988
Because in a vacuum, if nothing is done, if there aren't people working on

3555
04:04:50,628 --> 04:04:58,708
cutting-edge privacy solutions, if there aren't people working on ways to obfuscate
transactions,

3556
04:04:58,708 --> 04:05:04,228
if there aren't people working on the legal and the regulatory side saying that

3557
04:05:05,908 --> 04:05:11,188
Bitcoin needs to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, then it's going to fade
away.

3558
04:05:11,188 --> 04:05:17,508
And it's just going to be enveloped by the same forces that already control banking.

3559
04:05:17,508 --> 04:05:20,308
It's just kind of like the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

3560
04:05:20,948 --> 04:05:27,428
The price of a free Bitcoin is eternal work from us, the community who have

3561
04:05:28,148 --> 04:05:30,628
Bitcoin's better interests at heart.

3562
04:05:30,628 --> 04:05:32,708
Because if we're not going to do it, nobody will.

3563
04:05:32,708 --> 04:05:35,588
And that'll be the end of it in 20 years.

3564
04:05:35,588 --> 04:05:38,548
People will look back and think, oh, yeah, that was a nice idea.

3565
04:05:38,548 --> 04:05:42,868
But ultimately, we're back in the same hellscape we were.

3566
04:05:43,588 --> 04:05:45,828
People will be trying to invent a new Bitcoin.

3567
04:05:45,828 --> 04:05:47,988
I mean, of course, now there's just a million cryptocurrencies.

3568
04:05:47,988 --> 04:05:54,708
But something genuinely new, a new paradigm shift like that to try and escape the
box.

3569
04:05:54,708 --> 04:05:55,268
Same again.

3570
04:05:56,708 --> 04:06:02,308
Also, we have to be aware that while we were fighting about what the ideal block
size should

3571
04:06:02,308 --> 04:06:06,948
be, the banking system has caught up with making payments convenient.

3572
04:06:07,588 --> 04:06:09,988
Paying with your card used to be cumbersome.

3573
04:06:09,988 --> 04:06:12,068
You had to swipe your card.

3574
04:06:12,068 --> 04:06:13,668
You had to type your PIN.

3575
04:06:13,668 --> 04:06:15,668
Sometimes you had to sign the receipt.

3576
04:06:16,228 --> 04:06:17,908
It wasn't very nice.

3577
04:06:17,908 --> 04:06:20,788
But now you just tap with that NFC chip.

3578
04:06:21,748 --> 04:06:24,228
And that's pretty much it in most cases.

3579
04:06:24,228 --> 04:06:30,788
Sometimes if they're having some sort of antiquated accounting system, they ask you
to sign the

3580
04:06:30,788 --> 04:06:31,508
receipt still.

3581
04:06:32,388 --> 04:06:34,228
But that doesn't happen too much anymore.

3582
04:06:34,788 --> 04:06:41,348
So nowadays, when you choose to spend Bitcoin, you're voluntarily opting in for a
more

3583
04:06:41,348 --> 04:06:42,948
inconvenient system.

3584
04:06:42,948 --> 04:06:47,988
And the user experience for Bitcoin used to be much superior to that of banks.

3585
04:06:47,988 --> 04:06:53,988
So on this front, I think we sort of lost the battle by choosing to fight for 10
years

3586
04:06:53,988 --> 04:06:58,948
on how to make this technology work instead of actually pursuing adoption.

3587
04:06:59,508 --> 04:07:06,068
And Roger Ver was right when he said that we're going to waste a decade just
stalling

3588
04:07:06,068 --> 04:07:06,708
adoption.

3589
04:07:06,708 --> 04:07:07,828
That could have happened.

3590
04:07:09,108 --> 04:07:14,708
And maybe that he was ahead of his time with the understanding of what adoption
means and

3591
04:07:14,708 --> 04:07:16,548
what merchants actually require.

3592
04:07:17,748 --> 04:07:23,908
And where I'm going with this is that if we're going to catch up and we're going to
make

3593
04:07:24,308 --> 04:07:31,028
this technology work, we need much easier user experience to the point where your
grandma

3594
04:07:31,028 --> 04:07:35,668
can use it without thinking what's going on, without knowing anything about what the

3595
04:07:35,668 --> 04:07:40,548
blockchain is, without caring too much about how this technology operates.

3596
04:07:42,308 --> 04:07:51,748
And I compare this with AI a lot because we had this resurgence of AI technology and
LLMs

3597
04:07:51,748 --> 04:07:52,308
and whatever.

3598
04:07:53,108 --> 04:07:59,268
I'm aware that it came in various moments of our history and that was also part of
the

3599
04:07:59,268 --> 04:08:01,988
dot-com bubble, this idea of AI.

3600
04:08:02,548 --> 04:08:03,988
But now it's much more advanced.

3601
04:08:03,988 --> 04:08:11,108
And in order to use something like Cloud or ChatGPT or whatever, you don't need
instructions.

3602
04:08:11,108 --> 04:08:16,068
You don't need to be explained by someone how the technology works, how neural
systems

3603
04:08:16,068 --> 04:08:21,508
work, how it's stored somewhere on the server or you're operating it locally and how
tokens

3604
04:08:21,508 --> 04:08:22,708
work and whatever.

3605
04:08:22,708 --> 04:08:24,308
Nobody needs to explain this to you.

3606
04:08:24,868 --> 04:08:31,268
You just open a website, you type what you need to be using, you can opt for the
premium

3607
04:08:31,268 --> 04:08:36,788
feature for which you're going to pay, or you can get the free version, which is
limited

3608
04:08:36,788 --> 04:08:37,748
in its capacity.

3609
04:08:38,468 --> 04:08:43,908
But everyone understands why they need this, what it's good for, and finds a way to
integrate

3610
04:08:43,908 --> 04:08:45,588
it into their workflow.

3611
04:08:45,588 --> 04:08:51,028
And I wish we had something similar with Bitcoin where you want to adopt it, right?

3612
04:08:51,028 --> 04:08:52,388
You want to use it for payments.

3613
04:08:52,388 --> 04:08:57,428
And then there's a meme in Bitcoin right now that you need to listen to 40 hours of

3614
04:08:57,428 --> 04:08:59,988
podcasts every week to understand what this is.

3615
04:09:00,948 --> 04:09:05,748
It's really unfortunate that this technology requires so much, quote-unquote,
education

3616
04:09:05,748 --> 04:09:08,788
on how to use it when it should be simple.

3617
04:09:09,428 --> 04:09:15,188
And I think the guy from Coinspice, I don't know if you watched Coinspice or you're
aware

3618
04:09:15,188 --> 04:09:20,708
of that show, but Colin did a very cool advertisement for Bitcoin Cash.

3619
04:09:21,188 --> 04:09:22,388
It's just cash, bro.

3620
04:09:23,188 --> 04:09:29,348
You can find the video on YouTube where there's this guy explaining how Bitcoin
works to the

3621
04:09:29,348 --> 04:09:29,748
clerk.

3622
04:09:31,348 --> 04:09:36,148
And then there's someone else who just walks in, takes whatever he wants to buy, and
then

3623
04:09:36,148 --> 04:09:37,348
pays for it and leaves.

3624
04:09:37,348 --> 04:09:39,028
And that's kind of the point.

3625
04:09:39,028 --> 04:09:39,988
And that's what it should be.

3626
04:09:39,988 --> 04:09:42,068
And I think it's such a good campaign.

3627
04:09:42,628 --> 04:09:49,908
It's unfortunate that it didn't become as popular as it deserves to be.

3628
04:09:49,908 --> 04:09:54,788
I think it has very good production value and it sends a message that we need to be

3629
04:09:54,788 --> 04:10:01,028
reminded of perpetually, that this is supposed to be money that we spend, not some
sort of

3630
04:10:01,740 --> 04:10:02,820
made up fantasy about reinventing the meaning of money.

3631
04:10:03,140 --> 04:10:06,220
There's actually a guy who does a podcast that's called What Is Money?

3632
04:10:06,540 --> 04:10:12,700
And he's using very fancy words to explain how this technology works and why

3633
04:10:12,700 --> 04:10:17,060
people choose to transact in this specific way and how it enables the

3634
04:10:17,060 --> 04:10:20,420
elimination of barter, like fundamental economic stuff.

3635
04:10:20,420 --> 04:10:25,820
But he went on for hundreds of episodes of just intellectual

3636
04:10:26,820 --> 04:10:31,420
masturbation of fancy words and ideas that you can summarize very easily.

3637
04:10:32,700 --> 04:10:37,460
And I think that's a good way to explain where Bitcoin is currently at, where

3638
04:10:37,860 --> 04:10:42,740
people overcomplicate something that is supposed to be very simple, which is

3639
04:10:43,300 --> 04:10:46,100
you have money, you make payments, and that's pretty much it.

3640
04:10:46,940 --> 04:10:52,020
I think when people ask, like, and it doesn't happen so often anymore, but

3641
04:10:52,780 --> 04:10:59,900
I got into cryptocurrency in April of 2016 and I remember when people would come up
to

3642
04:10:59,900 --> 04:11:01,940
me and be like, oh, what can you tell me about this?

3643
04:11:02,220 --> 04:11:05,060
I would always go like, well, start with the white paper.

3644
04:11:06,060 --> 04:11:10,780
And now it's like you don't have to know anything about it because I feel like I

3645
04:11:10,980 --> 04:11:15,100
really just want to kind of hammer on the point that it's just money.

3646
04:11:15,100 --> 04:11:20,420
Like, what do you have to know about your dollar bills and your credit cards and

3647
04:11:20,420 --> 04:11:25,540
your dollar bills in your wallet that you can spend it somewhere and get a good or

3648
04:11:25,540 --> 04:11:26,500
service that you want?

3649
04:11:27,340 --> 04:11:27,820
Welcome back.

3650
04:11:28,140 --> 04:11:32,660
I mean, I haven't heard anyone actually trying to explain to you where the dollars

3651
04:11:32,660 --> 04:11:38,460
are printed and what the serial number means and what the different versions of the

3652
04:11:38,460 --> 04:11:40,580
dollars are and how you can identify them.

3653
04:11:40,660 --> 04:11:45,460
Of course, there are people who are into this and they collect all sorts of money
and

3654
04:11:45,460 --> 04:11:49,740
they want to know more about the serial number and they collect rare numbers.

3655
04:11:50,180 --> 04:11:52,980
And they want it to be in mint condition and stuff like this.

3656
04:11:53,420 --> 04:11:57,740
Like, I respect that, but it doesn't mean that everyone using money needs to get to

3657
04:11:57,740 --> 04:11:58,340
that level.

3658
04:11:58,780 --> 04:12:04,220
And I used to also be in the run your own node cult or else you're not using
Bitcoin.

3659
04:12:04,900 --> 04:12:06,540
And that's super unrealistic.

3660
04:12:06,580 --> 04:12:12,300
Like, you expect every normie to use their computer to install a software and then

3661
04:12:12,300 --> 04:12:16,420
wait for about a few days for it to sync and then finally use the money.

3662
04:12:17,220 --> 04:12:18,300
It is a bit crazy.

3663
04:12:18,340 --> 04:12:21,060
Like, people need to receive the money and then spend it.

3664
04:12:21,260 --> 04:12:22,260
And that's pretty much it.

3665
04:12:23,500 --> 04:12:24,820
Participate in the economy.

3666
04:12:26,300 --> 04:12:26,500
All right.

3667
04:12:26,500 --> 04:12:29,660
My laptop might just completely die at any given point.

3668
04:12:29,700 --> 04:12:34,700
I have plugged it into the power, but we'll say it's a pretty old laptop, so it
might

3669
04:12:34,700 --> 04:12:35,500
just give up.

3670
04:12:35,540 --> 04:12:41,900
I did not anticipate we're doing like a five hour show that it would.

3671
04:12:41,900 --> 04:12:43,580
It's only four hours, 30 minutes.

3672
04:12:44,060 --> 04:12:47,940
Don't take the next 30 minutes for granted.

3673
04:12:48,860 --> 04:12:49,660
Are you guys tired?

3674
04:12:51,860 --> 04:12:58,180
I thought I would be starting to flag a little bit, you know, but no, I'm still
still

3675
04:12:58,220 --> 04:12:59,180
still pretty with it.

3676
04:12:59,260 --> 04:13:02,860
I've still got a bunch of topics, actually, to ask you about.

3677
04:13:05,300 --> 04:13:07,580
What is it still watching this?

3678
04:13:07,580 --> 04:13:08,820
Let me check the live stream.

3679
04:13:09,180 --> 04:13:14,300
Yeah, the number was it was going up last I saw people were loving those rants.

3680
04:13:15,260 --> 04:13:18,460
I'm on your website and this is your YouTube channel.

3681
04:13:20,020 --> 04:13:21,820
OK, how many people are actually watching?

3682
04:13:21,820 --> 04:13:25,980
Leave a message in the chat like just let us know that you haven't just left your

3683
04:13:25,980 --> 04:13:26,700
computer on.

3684
04:13:27,340 --> 04:13:28,820
I'm sure I'm sure there have been a few.

3685
04:13:28,820 --> 04:13:30,900
There was about 250 people watching on Twitter.

3686
04:13:30,900 --> 04:13:33,780
Maybe there was a few more on YouTube.

3687
04:13:34,140 --> 04:13:35,340
Oh, I got to retweet that.

3688
04:13:35,780 --> 04:13:41,100
Good activity in the chat has been going as well.

3689
04:13:41,100 --> 04:13:45,260
Jingle Bob says, still watching, thank you, Jingle Bob, one of our dedicated

3690
04:13:45,660 --> 04:13:56,820
listeners, CSD Sindh, we see such ASC 1686 says, howdy, maybe from the Midwest.

3691
04:14:00,260 --> 04:14:02,060
Or the South, right, not the Midwest.

3692
04:14:03,020 --> 04:14:05,180
They say howdy in the Midwest.

3693
04:14:05,180 --> 04:14:05,780
I don't think so.

3694
04:14:08,380 --> 04:14:09,180
Who else we got here?

3695
04:14:09,300 --> 04:14:13,300
I got some feedback from John Silverblood who says, sorry, Vlad, I didn't mean to

3696
04:14:13,300 --> 04:14:18,340
throw this at you specifically, was hoping to hear Robin and SuperTestNet's views on

3697
04:14:18,340 --> 04:14:21,860
it and looks like it turned into a bit of a depressing monologue.

3698
04:14:22,380 --> 04:14:26,180
It's very interesting to hear and I wish things were different.

3699
04:14:26,580 --> 04:14:30,540
For reference, I haven't watched many of your episodes, just snippets here and

3700
04:14:30,540 --> 04:14:36,700
there and a BCH one, but listening to your recall story with accuracy, with the

3701
04:14:37,140 --> 04:14:41,620
accuracy you do is actually really impressive.

3702
04:14:41,620 --> 04:14:44,340
Glad you came on and challenged Jeremy to do this.

3703
04:14:44,660 --> 04:14:45,300
Oh, thank you.

3704
04:14:45,660 --> 04:14:46,380
This is nice.

3705
04:14:47,180 --> 04:14:53,620
I wish Robin and SuperTestNet and Paul actually stuck around for the interesting

3706
04:14:53,620 --> 04:14:58,300
part, but this is something I've learned during my podcast, like people loosen up

3707
04:14:58,300 --> 04:15:02,820
after a while, in the beginning, it's awkward, they just get to meet each other.

3708
04:15:03,220 --> 04:15:07,700
You're rambling about various topics and then you finally find the focus and that's

3709
04:15:07,700 --> 04:15:09,980
when it gets good, usually after the first hour.

3710
04:15:10,260 --> 04:15:14,860
That's why I usually do two hour interviews because the first hour is usually

3711
04:15:14,860 --> 04:15:17,900
awkward, but then it gets much better.

3712
04:15:18,300 --> 04:15:21,180
Unfortunately, most people don't listen past the first hour.

3713
04:15:22,500 --> 04:15:26,820
Well, you need to just chop off the first hour and just release it like an hour and

3714
04:15:26,820 --> 04:15:27,220
a half.

3715
04:15:29,900 --> 04:15:31,860
But live streams, it's very unpredictable.

3716
04:15:31,860 --> 04:15:35,020
It's like a radio show or something, except that there is no format.

3717
04:15:35,100 --> 04:15:42,540
There is nobody to establish what is the maximum amount of minutes or for how long

3718
04:15:42,540 --> 04:15:43,220
you can talk.

3719
04:15:44,180 --> 04:15:48,820
It's not like TV or radio where you have like 30 minutes and then 15 minutes of

3720
04:15:48,820 --> 04:15:51,460
advertisements and then maybe something else.

3721
04:15:52,780 --> 04:15:54,700
So the format is cool.

3722
04:15:54,700 --> 04:16:00,060
It's just that it requires good organization with timestamps and something that
helps

3723
04:16:00,100 --> 04:16:04,340
people identify the talking points that they want to hear about.

3724
04:16:04,460 --> 04:16:07,460
Fortunately, we have AI nowadays and it's amazing.

3725
04:16:08,100 --> 04:16:12,340
On Apple podcasts, they integrated something which basically lets you navigate

3726
04:16:12,340 --> 04:16:18,420
through the transcript and search for keywords and it jumps automatically to the

3727
04:16:18,420 --> 04:16:21,180
moment when that's being discussed and it's really cool.

3728
04:16:22,060 --> 04:16:23,420
Yeah, it is. It is really cool.

3729
04:16:23,460 --> 04:16:29,540
I mean, one of my favorite things about AI in a similar vein is like if I remember,

3730
04:16:29,540 --> 04:16:34,740
oh, I was talking on the show about this this long time ago, or I remember somebody

3731
04:16:34,740 --> 04:16:38,580
said this, you know, I kind of know who said it roughly when they said it, what the

3732
04:16:38,580 --> 04:16:40,100
topic was or whatever.

3733
04:16:40,380 --> 04:16:41,940
And I need to track down the source.

3734
04:16:42,340 --> 04:16:43,940
AI is amazing for that.

3735
04:16:44,180 --> 04:16:49,540
Absolutely amazing in a way that even like Google search yet just can't match, you

3736
04:16:49,540 --> 04:16:49,740
know.

3737
04:16:51,540 --> 04:16:56,340
I know I use it for that also for researching or finding stuff.

3738
04:16:56,740 --> 04:17:03,540
And the hallucination rate has become much less obvious, at least like sometimes I
have

3739
04:17:03,540 --> 04:17:06,380
to trust it that it's right, but I still check the source.

3740
04:17:07,820 --> 04:17:09,500
But it's become better over the years.

3741
04:17:09,540 --> 04:17:14,700
In the beginning, it was just making up stuff and that was depressing.

3742
04:17:15,220 --> 04:17:19,220
It felt like you were wasting your time, prompting when it was.

3743
04:17:19,740 --> 04:17:23,940
It wasn't able to say, I don't know or I cannot give you the data.

3744
04:17:24,060 --> 04:17:25,460
And that was also very recent.

3745
04:17:25,460 --> 04:17:32,900
I remember using Grok for putting the transcript from YouTube and then generating

3746
04:17:32,900 --> 04:17:33,980
timestamps from it.

3747
04:17:35,100 --> 04:17:37,300
And sometimes it was hallucinating.

3748
04:17:37,740 --> 04:17:42,580
It was basically taking information about the guest and assuming what he could have

3749
04:17:42,580 --> 04:17:47,780
talked about because the amount of context that I gave to it and the transcript was
much

3750
04:17:47,780 --> 04:17:50,740
more than I was allowed to process with my Grok account.

3751
04:17:51,220 --> 04:17:55,860
So instead of saying, hey, you're limited to this amount of tokens or whatever, it
was

3752
04:17:55,860 --> 04:17:59,180
just making up some timestamps that were not true.

3753
04:17:59,220 --> 04:18:02,740
And at first I was confused as to why it does this.

3754
04:18:03,860 --> 04:18:08,100
Right now, it's much better, the amount of progress is really impressive.

3755
04:18:08,940 --> 04:18:10,940
Yeah, have you been using it to build stuff?

3756
04:18:10,940 --> 04:18:12,260
I was doing the other day.

3757
04:18:12,660 --> 04:18:19,860
I was trying to vibe code some BCH stuff and honestly, it's getting pretty good.

3758
04:18:20,340 --> 04:18:25,260
Obviously, that relies on there being enough documentation of the tooling and stuff
like

3759
04:18:25,260 --> 04:18:32,660
that. But it was pretty good in that under an hour, I was able to get my app with
Wallet

3760
04:18:32,660 --> 04:18:35,540
Connect and that I could just connect my wallet.

3761
04:18:35,580 --> 04:18:39,980
And then it was making these certain kinds of transactions going to a certain
address.

3762
04:18:40,260 --> 04:18:42,140
I didn't do any Covenant stuff.

3763
04:18:42,540 --> 04:18:45,100
Maybe I'll have to try that in the next iteration.

3764
04:18:45,420 --> 04:18:46,500
But I was super impressed.

3765
04:18:46,500 --> 04:18:53,860
And then Max, he made a prediction market that he also just he's not a big
programmer

3766
04:18:53,860 --> 04:18:58,580
type of guy. As far as I know, he's a little bit technical, but he made what's
called

3767
04:18:58,580 --> 04:19:05,700
it's called ClownMundo.com, I think Clown World, ClownMundo.com and any BCH person
can

3768
04:19:05,700 --> 04:19:10,540
just make a prediction market as long as you're willing to trust whoever made it as
the

3769
04:19:10,540 --> 04:19:14,380
Oracle. And yeah, you can just link up your wallet and stuff.

3770
04:19:14,380 --> 04:19:21,340
So once we've got Wizard Connect integrated into more of the wallets, and also once

3771
04:19:21,340 --> 04:19:25,420
there's a little bit more documentation, it all gets fed into the next round of AI,
it's

3772
04:19:25,420 --> 04:19:30,460
going to be so easy to make BCH apps, even powerful ones.

3773
04:19:30,660 --> 04:19:35,620
Just I need a BCH app that just does this, add Wizard Connect, boom, and then it
will

3774
04:19:35,620 --> 04:19:38,100
just plug into all the wallets and stuff automatically.

3775
04:19:38,100 --> 04:19:40,060
It's going to be amazing.

3776
04:19:40,060 --> 04:19:44,500
I feel like this is what we need for the actual idea of magic internet money.

3777
04:19:44,500 --> 04:19:49,140
Like that's finally going to be actually coming true, where people who want to make
any

3778
04:19:49,140 --> 04:19:54,420
kind of website that interacts with money in any way will just be able to do it in a

3779
04:19:54,420 --> 04:19:57,580
couple of hours with very little starting point.

3780
04:19:58,860 --> 04:20:05,100
I think the entry fee has been lowered so much, you used to have to pay someone to
do

3781
04:20:05,180 --> 04:20:06,460
this kind of stuff for you.

3782
04:20:06,940 --> 04:20:13,820
Now, all you need is time management and the willingness to organize everything,
because

3783
04:20:14,020 --> 04:20:19,140
if you're using, especially I think, Opus 4.8 is really amazing.

3784
04:20:20,700 --> 04:20:26,380
I've been using it since 4.3 or something, and I'm not sure exactly what the
difference

3785
04:20:26,380 --> 04:20:28,860
is, but it's been very consistent.

3786
04:20:30,700 --> 04:20:35,140
So, for example, you give out an idea of how to build an app, it's going to suggest
how

3787
04:20:35,140 --> 04:20:38,900
you're going to build it step by step, and then basically you feel like you're the
one

3788
04:20:38,900 --> 04:20:41,420
working for the AI and not the other way around.

3789
04:20:42,060 --> 04:20:45,300
It's telling you, OK, this is the first step, this is what you need to do.

3790
04:20:45,300 --> 04:20:49,620
Once you're finished, tell me and I'll give you the next sequence of code and tell
you

3791
04:20:49,620 --> 04:20:50,780
exactly what to do with it.

3792
04:20:51,500 --> 04:20:55,900
But what I like about it is that it also tells you when you're wrong.

3793
04:20:56,180 --> 04:21:00,780
Like if you have a bad idea, it's going to tell you why it's a bad idea or why you

3794
04:21:00,780 --> 04:21:02,220
shouldn't go forward with that.

3795
04:21:02,260 --> 04:21:07,460
So in a way, it's like having an engineer friend watching over your shoulder and

3796
04:21:07,460 --> 04:21:11,380
telling you how you can reach your goal, which is really good.

3797
04:21:13,140 --> 04:21:19,740
What I don't like is that I think sometimes it forgets what it told you to do

3798
04:21:19,740 --> 04:21:25,500
earlier or loses context, and then it's going to give you instructions which are not

3799
04:21:25,900 --> 04:21:30,340
compatible with the previous instructions that you received, or it's going to forget

3800
04:21:30,340 --> 04:21:35,940
that it told you to do something after a few prompts and it will make mistakes on

3801
04:21:35,940 --> 04:21:38,740
code that was generated by Cloud itself.

3802
04:21:38,740 --> 04:21:45,620
So sometimes you need to basically take the whole conversation, put that in a file

3803
04:21:45,980 --> 04:21:52,060
like a TXT file or whatever, and then send it to Cloud so that it can read once
again

3804
04:21:52,140 --> 04:21:57,540
and get the context of your conversation and continue from where you left off as

3805
04:21:57,540 --> 04:22:01,620
opposed to hallucinations or whatever else may happen.

3806
04:22:02,180 --> 04:22:03,220
It's more costly.

3807
04:22:03,220 --> 04:22:08,300
I sometimes think that this is made on purpose by Entropic so that when it loses

3808
04:22:08,300 --> 04:22:11,460
context, you're going to get angry and do more prompts.

3809
04:22:11,460 --> 04:22:16,260
And basically you're paying for all the tokens that you're burning doing this.

3810
04:22:16,780 --> 04:22:20,460
So they make more money off of you because you have to do backtracking.

3811
04:22:21,460 --> 04:22:29,020
Or you have to paste the whole code that it generated because you need to debug what

3812
04:22:29,020 --> 04:22:34,220
happened. And that's also super expensive, like a large prompt with a lot of
context.

3813
04:22:34,220 --> 04:22:36,060
It burns many tokens.

3814
04:22:36,060 --> 04:22:41,580
Maybe you're going to be paying $10, $15, $20 for just one large prompt.

3815
04:22:43,300 --> 04:22:49,940
Yeah, I find it tends to, like for me, it quote unquote just works up until a
certain

3816
04:22:49,940 --> 04:22:54,260
point. And then at a certain point, I don't know whether it's complexity or how long
I've

3817
04:22:54,260 --> 04:22:55,900
been using it or whatever.

3818
04:22:56,140 --> 04:23:02,700
And then suddenly it just starts to like kind of first a couple of little errors
start to

3819
04:23:02,700 --> 04:23:07,740
creep in and then it just explodes like errors or it does something really weird
that I'm

3820
04:23:07,740 --> 04:23:09,420
like, what what is this?

3821
04:23:09,420 --> 04:23:11,140
This is not what I wanted anymore.

3822
04:23:11,300 --> 04:23:15,140
And I guess, yeah, maybe some people have more of a conspiracy mindset that they're

3823
04:23:15,140 --> 04:23:17,740
deliberately limiting the tokens or whatever.

3824
04:23:17,740 --> 04:23:22,060
I don't know whether it just gets out of a certain range of the context of our
conversation

3825
04:23:22,060 --> 04:23:26,260
just gets too long and it loses the thread or I don't know.

3826
04:23:26,780 --> 04:23:32,780
I don't know. But it is kind of weird as a software developer that I used to have to

3827
04:23:32,780 --> 04:23:34,620
figure out all these things one by one.

3828
04:23:34,900 --> 04:23:40,300
And then the earlier AI models, you could kind of auto prompt while you were doing
your

3829
04:23:40,300 --> 04:23:41,380
work in the normal way.

3830
04:23:41,660 --> 04:23:44,980
And then at a certain point, I was just like, OK, I barely even need to look at the
code

3831
04:23:44,980 --> 04:23:49,300
anymore. And now, yeah, if I'm just vibe coding something like you don't need to
look at

3832
04:23:49,300 --> 04:23:53,980
the code. In fact, you just iterate on it over and over and over until you have like
a

3833
04:23:53,980 --> 04:23:56,260
final PR that you're ready to do.

3834
04:23:56,260 --> 04:23:59,220
And then you would want to manually review it step by step.

3835
04:23:59,260 --> 04:24:01,780
But people are not even necessarily doing that.

3836
04:24:01,820 --> 04:24:05,340
They don't even have to. You just say every once in a while on Twitter, somebody
like,

3837
04:24:05,380 --> 04:24:10,260
oh, our AI that we had auto deploying to production just nuked everything and we're
all

3838
04:24:10,260 --> 04:24:13,820
fucked. And you're like, OK, well, maybe you should have realized that that wasn't
the

3839
04:24:13,820 --> 04:24:18,580
best idea. But I can understand the instinct to do it because it's just so much
faster.

3840
04:24:18,940 --> 04:24:22,060
And if it works out, it works out until it doesn't, basically.

3841
04:24:23,180 --> 04:24:29,060
I've built my website, which is Bitcoin-Takeover.com using Claude and also the
podcast

3842
04:24:29,060 --> 04:24:33,540
page, which is Bitcoin-Takeover.com slash audio.

3843
04:24:34,540 --> 04:24:39,580
Basically, what I did was replace WordPress, which I was using and was very
convenient

3844
04:24:39,620 --> 04:24:43,420
with something which is pure PHP and HTML and JavaScript.

3845
04:24:44,420 --> 04:24:51,580
And I see very good results in terms of optimization and page load speed, which is
very

3846
04:24:51,580 --> 04:24:57,740
important. On the other hand, it has some weird quirks and bugs, which I haven't had
the

3847
04:24:57,740 --> 04:25:02,500
time to fix, but I will get around to them because I think Claude is very good for

3848
04:25:02,820 --> 04:25:05,100
completing 90 percent of your project.

3849
04:25:05,740 --> 04:25:10,300
And then you're left with that quirky 10 percent that you need to figure out with
lots of

3850
04:25:10,300 --> 04:25:13,340
prompts. But still, it's much better than nothing.

3851
04:25:13,340 --> 04:25:20,100
I was using WordPress, which had cumbersome plugins that were eating up lots of

3852
04:25:20,100 --> 04:25:25,980
resources. And every time you were adding something, it was making your page slower
and

3853
04:25:25,980 --> 04:25:29,700
your database more convoluted and larger to load.

3854
04:25:30,940 --> 04:25:36,220
So I'm happy that at least there is this option and you can optimize for it.

3855
04:25:37,100 --> 04:25:40,380
I don't know, I think we're going to be living in a wild world in a couple of years.

3856
04:25:40,380 --> 04:25:44,380
Like you said, the barrier to entry has just been lowered so much, which as a
software

3857
04:25:44,380 --> 04:25:51,180
developer, it's interesting that some software developers feel so threatened by it,
you

3858
04:25:51,180 --> 04:25:53,740
know, and they really don't want to embrace it.

3859
04:25:53,740 --> 04:25:59,540
They really want to avoid kind of thinking about, OK, well, maybe this has just

3860
04:25:59,540 --> 04:26:05,220
obsoleted like 20 years or 30 years of my skill that I've developed.

3861
04:26:05,620 --> 04:26:09,660
But I kind of see it as the other way around because I have way more ideas than I
have

3862
04:26:10,020 --> 04:26:15,180
time to program them and I don't have enough money to hire all the people that I
need to

3863
04:26:15,180 --> 04:26:16,380
program those things.

3864
04:26:16,620 --> 04:26:22,380
And to the extent AI helps them or me, then it just speeds up the rate at which I
can put

3865
04:26:22,380 --> 04:26:24,060
out all the different ideas I have.

3866
04:26:24,500 --> 04:26:26,260
So I think it's better.

3867
04:26:26,260 --> 04:26:30,460
But somebody said to me the other day, which I think was very accurate, that
basically

3868
04:26:30,700 --> 04:26:35,780
as an engineer, you need to become more product minded, like the role that a product

3869
04:26:35,780 --> 04:26:43,700
manager would typically be in a software company is so much more powerful now as a

3870
04:26:43,700 --> 04:26:50,740
result, because maybe that engineering like code monkey skills are not as relevant

3871
04:26:50,980 --> 04:26:56,180
anymore. And honestly, engineers should be the best place to have been learning and

3872
04:26:56,180 --> 04:26:59,500
thinking through those points of view over the years.

3873
04:26:59,540 --> 04:27:06,980
But if they've neglected that to just stick to figuring out the Boolean logic, then
you

3874
04:27:06,980 --> 04:27:09,860
kind of played yourself because AI has replaced that.

3875
04:27:10,180 --> 04:27:13,340
But in the same way, it's done the same thing for like designers, for instance, you

3876
04:27:13,340 --> 04:27:16,260
know, I'm not a great designer and there are great designers and that's it.

3877
04:27:16,300 --> 04:27:21,340
But you can get 90 percent of a great designer, maybe more if you just go on Ford
and

3878
04:27:21,340 --> 04:27:24,060
say, make this a cool design.

3879
04:27:24,060 --> 04:27:25,140
I want these colors.

3880
04:27:25,140 --> 04:27:30,260
I want it to be user friendly or I want it to imitate this or that app that I like
the

3881
04:27:30,260 --> 04:27:31,220
look and flow of.

3882
04:27:31,620 --> 04:27:32,980
And boom, there you go.

3883
04:27:33,020 --> 04:27:38,980
So, yeah, I just think everybody's being impacted somewhat in the same way.

3884
04:27:40,260 --> 04:27:47,540
I think this way that we interact with AI makes me wish I got my degree in
literature or

3885
04:27:47,540 --> 04:27:50,980
something that made me very good with describing situations.

3886
04:27:51,860 --> 04:27:56,500
Sometimes I feel like I'm lost for words or I don't know exactly what I want and
it's

3887
04:27:56,500 --> 04:27:58,100
much easier to be specific.

3888
04:27:59,060 --> 04:28:03,940
And use the right words to describe what you want as opposed to prompting aimlessly

3889
04:28:03,940 --> 04:28:05,100
until you figure it out.

3890
04:28:06,820 --> 04:28:10,500
But I feel like that's more true with images, that's why one of the most interesting

3891
04:28:10,500 --> 04:28:15,060
things is you have an idea in your head, like I really like mid-journey, I got to
say

3892
04:28:15,060 --> 04:28:16,460
mid-journey is absolutely amazing.

3893
04:28:16,780 --> 04:28:22,060
And it's kind of like you have an idea and I'll describe my idea and I feel like
it's a

3894
04:28:22,060 --> 04:28:23,780
pretty good description of my idea.

3895
04:28:23,980 --> 04:28:28,300
And then what comes out, I'm often like, oh, that is my idea that it matches the

3896
04:28:28,300 --> 04:28:32,380
description. But also it's kind of gone in a different direction that I wouldn't
expect.

3897
04:28:32,380 --> 04:28:36,700
Or sometimes it will be like that's one of the four things that it generates or the
eight

3898
04:28:36,700 --> 04:28:37,900
things you do, two or three reps.

3899
04:28:37,900 --> 04:28:42,580
And then you're like, OK, this is the one that I was thinking of, but I like this
one

3900
04:28:42,580 --> 04:28:49,620
more. And so then you kind of have that human machine synergy, which I'm sure things

3901
04:28:49,620 --> 04:28:54,340
are going to be more and more driven in that exact way, because it's very cool.

3902
04:28:54,420 --> 04:29:01,060
It's just so fast to iterate that it can come up with new variations, like not quite

3903
04:29:01,060 --> 04:29:06,980
instantly, but close enough to that somebody who is working without AI just cannot
get

3904
04:29:06,980 --> 04:29:09,740
through that number of reps to figure out.

3905
04:29:09,740 --> 04:29:10,860
And then it's creative.

3906
04:29:10,860 --> 04:29:14,460
It's fun. Of course, you just say, like, I want this idea and then it comes up with

3907
04:29:14,460 --> 04:29:15,420
something you didn't expect.

3908
04:29:15,420 --> 04:29:17,860
And then you think, oh, maybe let's go further in that direction.

3909
04:29:18,060 --> 04:29:19,980
And it comes up with another thing you didn't expect.

3910
04:29:19,980 --> 04:29:26,020
So the latest scope, and I'm going to use this argument to get back on track with
the

3911
04:29:26,020 --> 04:29:31,500
main topic, I think the greatest scope of this cycle is that cryptocurrency is going
to

3912
04:29:31,500 --> 04:29:37,020
be AI money and not used by humans for payments, almost as if all along we have been

3913
04:29:37,060 --> 04:29:45,620
building this for autonomous computers to be settling debt or making transactions
with

3914
04:29:45,620 --> 04:29:47,460
each other for various reasons.

3915
04:29:47,980 --> 04:29:51,300
And I was at ETH Denver earlier this year.

3916
04:29:51,300 --> 04:29:52,580
I think it was February.

3917
04:29:53,580 --> 04:29:55,980
And this was like the main talking point.

3918
04:29:55,980 --> 04:29:59,140
The event wasn't as large as other Ethereum conferences.

3919
04:29:59,140 --> 04:30:05,540
They're admittedly accepting the fact that much of the community has found other

3920
04:30:05,540 --> 04:30:12,100
interests or has migrated to Solana, but lots of builders were very excited about
this

3921
04:30:12,100 --> 04:30:18,900
use case of making, for example, self-driving cars make payments whenever there is
some

3922
04:30:18,900 --> 04:30:25,060
sort of damage happening or just getting AI to manage portfolios or whatever and

3923
04:30:25,060 --> 04:30:29,500
settling everything with Ethereum, which is what they want to make useful or stable

3924
04:30:29,500 --> 04:30:30,380
coins or whatever.

3925
04:30:31,380 --> 04:30:36,460
And I've also seen some of this in Bitcoin, where people say, well, the future of

3926
04:30:36,460 --> 04:30:42,300
payments is just AI agents settling because obviously they cannot have bank
accounts.

3927
04:30:43,100 --> 04:30:49,100
And most people are reluctant in terms of allowing some AI to access their bank
account

3928
04:30:49,100 --> 04:30:51,740
without any restrictions or just trusting them with this.

3929
04:30:52,180 --> 04:30:58,300
So it's easier to set them up with a wallet with like $20 or whatever it is that
you're

3930
04:30:58,300 --> 04:31:00,780
comfortable allowing your AI to manage.

3931
04:31:02,540 --> 04:31:05,540
And it does feel like defeat, right?

3932
04:31:05,540 --> 04:31:11,020
Because the point of this was to maximize human freedom and bring more freedom of

3933
04:31:11,020 --> 04:31:14,300
transactions and bank the unbanked and whatever.

3934
04:31:14,820 --> 04:31:18,700
And then you're like, oh, we failed, but at least the AI can use it.

3935
04:31:18,700 --> 04:31:24,300
And I do expect this to be a major bullish narrative during the next cycle with

3936
04:31:25,180 --> 04:31:31,660
companies bragging about how they can integrate Bitcoin payments for settlements of

3937
04:31:31,660 --> 04:31:33,100
whatever with their AI.

3938
04:31:34,380 --> 04:31:38,020
I don't know. I'm like, well, it's just a win.

3939
04:31:38,500 --> 04:31:43,140
It's a cope, you're right, in the sense that it's kind of like, well, we built a
thing

3940
04:31:43,140 --> 04:31:47,180
and it doesn't really do what we thought or what we wanted, but it does this other
thing.

3941
04:31:47,180 --> 04:31:49,260
So that was what it was the whole time.

3942
04:31:49,260 --> 04:31:51,700
So it is a bit of a retrospective cope.

3943
04:31:51,700 --> 04:31:56,660
But it's a good thing for crypto in that it will help crypto get adopted faster.

3944
04:31:56,820 --> 04:32:01,660
And by it becoming money for automated payments, it will then have increased network

3945
04:32:01,660 --> 04:32:03,060
effect, liquidity, et cetera.

3946
04:32:03,220 --> 04:32:06,540
And then it will be more compelling as money for humans.

3947
04:32:06,540 --> 04:32:12,900
So I think in a way it's going to come around and go full circle on those cycles.

3948
04:32:12,900 --> 04:32:15,020
I think cycles is done, man.

3949
04:32:15,020 --> 04:32:18,780
Like, OK, maybe there will be another cycle or whatever.

3950
04:32:18,780 --> 04:32:24,100
But people who are just looking for these gains and these gains, like the coins are

3951
04:32:24,100 --> 04:32:27,660
becoming less and less correlated to each other over time.

3952
04:32:28,260 --> 04:32:31,660
BTC is going to pump less and less every single cycle.

3953
04:32:32,140 --> 04:32:36,540
Now people are off to putting their money into AI or they'll be moving off to
something

3954
04:32:36,540 --> 04:32:44,940
else. The halving is less and less of a market shock each time, both in terms of
people's

3955
04:32:44,940 --> 04:32:49,620
awareness of it and also in terms of the percentage of supply that it's changing.

3956
04:32:50,100 --> 04:32:56,500
So it really is just I think the super cycle was a hoax and a scam.

3957
04:32:56,740 --> 04:32:59,500
And the next cycle, like it's not coming.

3958
04:32:59,500 --> 04:33:06,020
I feel like crypto to get another cycle, quote unquote, cycle has to it has to be
useful.

3959
04:33:06,300 --> 04:33:11,260
The next cycle has to be the coins take off that people are actually using and
there's

3960
04:33:11,260 --> 04:33:13,180
real demand driving it.

3961
04:33:13,180 --> 04:33:16,580
Like, I don't think there's another round of scam in it.

3962
04:33:16,620 --> 04:33:22,660
There's altcoins and then ICOs and then NFTs and then treasury companies.

3963
04:33:23,300 --> 04:33:26,460
I think we're out of we're out of bullshit.

3964
04:33:26,980 --> 04:33:34,100
I think we're going to. So initially in 2016, one of the biggest use cases that
kicked off

3965
04:33:34,180 --> 04:33:39,940
the bull market for Ethereum was DAOs or DAOs or whatever you want to call them,

3966
04:33:39,940 --> 04:33:42,500
decentralized autonomous organizations.

3967
04:33:42,900 --> 04:33:49,140
And I think after we have had the bad experience with institutions, people are going
to

3968
04:33:49,140 --> 04:33:53,860
come up with automated institutions on a blockchain run by AI.

3969
04:33:54,020 --> 04:33:56,500
I think I feel like this is going to be the next narrative.

3970
04:33:56,500 --> 04:34:00,260
And they will say, well, of course, it failed because of human corruption.

3971
04:34:00,580 --> 04:34:02,300
They'll try to make like a Mt.

3972
04:34:02,300 --> 04:34:08,540
Gox type of narrative out of it or FTX or BlockFi or whatever.

3973
04:34:09,260 --> 04:34:13,740
And they will say, well, this time we figured this out with crypto that you can
actually do

3974
04:34:13,740 --> 04:34:17,060
autonomous organizations that are run by AI.

3975
04:34:17,220 --> 04:34:19,900
I totally see that happening from the Ethereum team.

3976
04:34:20,420 --> 04:34:25,460
And I totally see that happening on Jimmy Fallon with Paris Hilton going to promote

3977
04:34:25,460 --> 04:34:28,220
something just like she did with her NFTs.

3978
04:34:29,740 --> 04:34:35,260
And I don't know, it's just that I think that old narratives can be brought back in
a

3979
04:34:35,260 --> 04:34:38,660
different context to make up like Ethereum Foundation.

3980
04:34:38,660 --> 04:34:41,300
If you're listening to this, just take some notes, OK?

3981
04:34:41,300 --> 04:34:43,540
Because I need my bags to pump.

3982
04:34:44,460 --> 04:34:50,300
Someone sent me some of these and if those can be used for agentic payments, I'm not

3983
04:34:50,300 --> 04:34:53,300
going to care. I still have a Trump card that hasn't pumped.

3984
04:34:53,300 --> 04:34:55,020
Like, please pump my bags.

3985
04:34:56,540 --> 04:35:00,700
Like from the original Series One collection that Trump announced in 2022 or

3986
04:35:00,700 --> 04:35:01,180
something.

3987
04:35:01,807 --> 04:35:05,807
ETH is cooked, man. ETH is actually done. Bloody, what's his name? David Hoffman on
Bankless.

3988
04:35:05,807 --> 04:35:10,807
He's like, I've sold my stack. It's all over. Turns out we haven't actually built
anything.

3989
04:35:10,807 --> 04:35:15,807
If you watch the recent Bankless ones, I watched a little bit of one the other day.

3990
04:35:15,807 --> 04:35:20,807
They are straight up like in full capitulation, like, oh, we built all this stuff.

3991
04:35:20,807 --> 04:35:27,807
2017, 2020, it was all flying. ETH was this amazing money that was just flying
around.

3992
04:35:27,807 --> 04:35:32,807
It was this amazing money that was going to change the world. But now it kind of
isn't.

3993
04:35:32,807 --> 04:35:37,807
We haven't really built anything that matters. Just what are we doing here?

3994
04:35:37,807 --> 04:35:45,807
It's a weird coincidence, right, that the Ethereum Foundation did a restructuring
and they cut off some of the funding that was going to their marketing.

3995
04:35:45,807 --> 04:35:52,807
And then David Hoffman decides suddenly that Ethereum is not useful anymore.

3996
04:35:52,807 --> 04:36:03,807
I mean, come on. And to be honest, I do think that he's going to pivot to Zcash
because he's had some Zcash people on and he seemed very fascinated with the
concept.

3997
04:36:03,807 --> 04:36:10,807
Maybe that the Zcash Foundation or whatever is going to have some money to pay him
for marketing and he's going to keep going.

3998
04:36:10,807 --> 04:36:16,807
My point is that Ethereum did some useful stuff, especially on the research side.

3999
04:36:16,807 --> 04:36:23,807
And what they did with, for example, creating rollups, ZkRollups, they're very
interesting.

4000
04:36:23,807 --> 04:36:29,807
And they're a way to do something similar to sidechains, but in a different way that
uses math.

4001
04:36:30,807 --> 04:36:45,807
I think it's underrated. And the fact that they always came up with some weird use
case, which somehow got a lot of traction like the ICOs and DeFi Summer and NFTs.

4002
04:36:45,807 --> 04:36:55,807
There's some merit to that. How the hell do you even pitch something as dumb as
let's tokenize JPEGs, but you don't actually own the JPEG?

4003
04:36:55,807 --> 04:37:02,807
You don't store the JPEG on the blockchain, it's on some third party server, but you
can trade this on this platform.

4004
04:37:02,807 --> 04:37:10,807
And we're going to sell this monkey JPEG for, it's not even the JPEG, it's the token
of the JPEG for thousands of dollars.

4005
04:37:10,807 --> 04:37:14,807
And people are going to take this seriously and they're going to say this is the
future of art.

4006
04:37:14,807 --> 04:37:21,807
It takes balls and it takes big brains to be able to come up with this because it's
so ridiculous.

4007
04:37:22,807 --> 04:37:33,807
When you break it down outside of the narratives and you take away the greed that
people felt in terms of how do I flip this or how do I sell my art for a lot of
money?

4008
04:37:33,807 --> 04:37:39,807
Every mediocre artist out there who knew how to use MetaMask suddenly became a
genius.

4009
04:37:40,807 --> 04:37:42,807
I mean, there is something there.

4010
04:37:42,807 --> 04:37:51,807
And I did go to a couple of Ethereum conferences and they do have some of these more
institutional type of art people coming there and saying,

4011
04:37:51,807 --> 04:38:03,807
well, I set up this organization where people can tokenize their art and we have
serious collections by whatever authorities that decided that this is real art.

4012
04:38:03,807 --> 04:38:06,807
I mean, Ethereum has things going for it.

4013
04:38:06,807 --> 04:38:08,807
I'm not saying it's going to die.

4014
04:38:08,807 --> 04:38:10,807
It will still be around and so forth.

4015
04:38:10,807 --> 04:38:17,807
But I can just see the intellectual collapse in their community.

4016
04:38:17,807 --> 04:38:21,807
Once upon a time, it was, yeah, we're going to flip BTC.

4017
04:38:21,807 --> 04:38:22,807
They're flipping.

4018
04:38:22,807 --> 04:38:24,807
We're coming for them.

4019
04:38:24,807 --> 04:38:26,807
And then it was ultrasound money.

4020
04:38:26,807 --> 04:38:28,807
We're going to be actually taking over.

4021
04:38:28,807 --> 04:38:30,807
Proof of stake, the merge.

4022
04:38:30,807 --> 04:38:31,807
They did the merge.

4023
04:38:32,807 --> 04:38:40,807
To be honest, if you look at the interview with Adam Beck and Greg Maxwell, they
were on a podcast in 2014.

4024
04:38:40,807 --> 04:38:47,807
I wish I would remember the name of it, but it's the only one that you can find on
YouTube where Greg Maxwell is actually on a podcast.

4025
04:38:47,807 --> 04:38:51,807
I'm trying to think of the name, but it will come later, hopefully.

4026
04:38:51,807 --> 04:38:56,807
They were making fun of the whole concept of proof of stake and they were saying
it's never going to work.

4027
04:38:56,807 --> 04:39:00,807
And if you look at all the FUD previous to the merge, they were saying it will never
work.

4028
04:39:00,807 --> 04:39:02,807
And they're not going to be able to do it.

4029
04:39:02,807 --> 04:39:03,807
And this is the end of Ethereum.

4030
04:39:03,807 --> 04:39:05,807
They're going to crash the network.

4031
04:39:05,807 --> 04:39:12,807
The merge is going to be a catastrophic event where this can happen and this other
catastrophic phenomenon can occur.

4032
04:39:12,807 --> 04:39:14,807
And it never happened.

4033
04:39:15,807 --> 04:39:19,807
It didn't happen, but it was both ways, though, because I agree with you.

4034
04:39:19,807 --> 04:39:26,807
There was lots of FUD beforehand that they wouldn't successfully pull off the merge
and the proof of stake would be fundamentally broken and blah, blah, blah.

4035
04:39:26,807 --> 04:39:29,807
And of course, yeah, that was mostly like FUD and wrong.

4036
04:39:29,807 --> 04:39:36,807
But it was also the other way around where the ETH people were like, once we have
proof of stake, you aren't going to believe it.

4037
04:39:36,807 --> 04:39:38,807
We're going to be burning through coins.

4038
04:39:38,807 --> 04:39:40,807
The market cap is going to be rocketing up.

4039
04:39:40,807 --> 04:39:43,807
Everyone's going to see how genius our idea was, et cetera, et cetera.

4040
04:39:43,807 --> 04:39:45,807
And then, of course, none of that happened.

4041
04:39:46,807 --> 04:39:49,807
That's the marketing side, but the technical side actually has some merits.

4042
04:39:49,807 --> 04:39:59,807
And the fact that they took an idea which obviously couldn't scale and they came up
with solutions to make it scale is also proof that they were pretty creative.

4043
04:39:59,807 --> 04:40:03,807
Because Vitalik came up with something which obviously could never scale.

4044
04:40:03,807 --> 04:40:11,807
Or not to the promises of a world computer or whatever it is that it got redefined
as every cycle.

4045
04:40:11,807 --> 04:40:13,807
It was the DeFi platform.

4046
04:40:13,807 --> 04:40:16,807
It was the ICO machine or whatever.

4047
04:40:16,807 --> 04:40:18,807
The everything machine.

4048
04:40:18,807 --> 04:40:20,807
I think there's an actual book that's called this.

4049
04:40:20,807 --> 04:40:28,807
But they were able to come up with ways first with layer twos and then they figured
out how to do on-chain scaling with roll-ups.

4050
04:40:28,807 --> 04:40:31,807
And they said, well, maybe that layer twos are not necessary anymore.

4051
04:40:32,807 --> 04:40:42,807
I think part of the reason why it's in such a dire bear market right now is that
many of these people who built layer twos and companies and whatever, they're not
happy.

4052
04:40:42,807 --> 04:40:45,807
They invested a lot of capital in deploying this.

4053
04:40:45,807 --> 04:41:00,807
And then they realized that the leader of the project decided to pivot away from
this approach of scaling and try to be more like Solana, but in a way that uses
smarter cryptography as opposed to centralized servers.

4054
04:41:00,807 --> 04:41:03,807
There is some merit to it.

4055
04:41:03,807 --> 04:41:06,807
I'm not saying it's a flawless project.

4056
04:41:06,807 --> 04:41:16,807
But the expectation from the Bitcoin camp was that it was going to fail in
situations when obviously it did much better than expected.

4057
04:41:16,807 --> 04:41:18,807
It's just like BCH.

4058
04:41:18,807 --> 04:41:24,807
I mean, layer twos is just like the ETH version of Lightning Network.

4059
04:41:24,807 --> 04:41:26,807
They actually have the Raiden Network.

4060
04:41:26,807 --> 04:41:31,807
I think one of the authors was one of the co-authors of the Lightning paper.

4061
04:41:31,807 --> 04:41:33,807
Exactly.

4062
04:41:34,807 --> 04:41:39,807
He actually worked on something which was like Lightning on Ethereum, but with a
token.

4063
04:41:39,807 --> 04:41:43,807
And for some reason, it never went anywhere.

4064
04:41:43,807 --> 04:41:45,807
It got a lot of hype.

4065
04:41:45,807 --> 04:41:46,807
There was Plasma.

4066
04:41:46,807 --> 04:41:48,807
There was, what was the other?

4067
04:41:48,807 --> 04:41:51,807
It was like Casper or something called.

4068
04:41:51,807 --> 04:41:53,807
Casper.

4069
04:41:53,807 --> 04:41:55,807
Some nonsense like that.

4070
04:41:55,807 --> 04:41:57,807
That one was never used.

4071
04:41:57,807 --> 04:41:58,807
That's right.

4072
04:41:58,807 --> 04:41:59,807
All these things.

4073
04:41:59,807 --> 04:42:04,807
It's just the label that somebody has that they package up as a genius idea.

4074
04:42:04,807 --> 04:42:08,807
They get millions and millions of dollars invested into it.

4075
04:42:08,807 --> 04:42:10,807
Somehow or another, it doesn't work out.

4076
04:42:10,807 --> 04:42:11,807
Some of the investors are mad.

4077
04:42:11,807 --> 04:42:16,807
Some of them just write it off as, well, you're investing in new tech, and it
doesn't always work out.

4078
04:42:16,807 --> 04:42:17,807
The narrative fades out.

4079
04:42:17,807 --> 04:42:19,807
Everyone forgets about that thing.

4080
04:42:19,807 --> 04:42:26,807
And then a fresh batch come in to re-hype it, reheat the same nonsense under a new
label.

4081
04:42:26,807 --> 04:42:29,807
That's just what I see over and over and over again.

4082
04:42:29,807 --> 04:42:34,807
It happens in ETH just as much as it does in BTC, basically, from my point of view.

4083
04:42:34,807 --> 04:42:39,807
And to be honest, it happened in BCH as well, too, until we started getting things
right.

4084
04:42:39,807 --> 04:42:40,807
That was the same thing.

4085
04:42:40,807 --> 04:42:41,807
Oh, we're going to have Wormhole.

4086
04:42:41,807 --> 04:42:43,807
We're going to have SLP tokens.

4087
04:42:43,807 --> 04:42:46,807
We're going to have Bitcoin mining parliament.

4088
04:42:46,807 --> 04:42:47,807
All this.

4089
04:42:47,807 --> 04:42:52,807
Every community just has to go through this until they actually start hitting on
some real stuff.

4090
04:42:52,807 --> 04:42:55,807
But this is how evolution happens, actually.

4091
04:42:55,807 --> 04:43:06,807
You have to come up with iterations and fail, and then come back, pick up basically
what makes sense from all the iterations, and try to improve on that.

4092
04:43:06,807 --> 04:43:11,807
And I think Ethereum, to be honest, is the most experimental place in all of crypto.

4093
04:43:11,807 --> 04:43:15,807
Of course, you're going to have the Ethereum killer.

4094
04:43:15,807 --> 04:43:24,807
I think one of the first ones was called NEO, and then there was EOS, and then there
was Polkadot, and now there's Solana.

4095
04:43:24,807 --> 04:43:31,807
And there's always been Cardano, which was always technically inferior, but had very
good marketing.

4096
04:43:31,807 --> 04:43:50,807
My point is that there are many attempts to bring this one down, but it's actually
Ethereum that came up with the bull market narratives and sort of set the trends
every cycle in regards to what is fashionable, what's the new cool use case that
brings the next million users.

4097
04:43:51,807 --> 04:44:03,807
And if you think about it in this very cynical way, I think all the libertarians and
all the anarchists are already here trying to build stuff and having their own
purpose.

4098
04:44:03,807 --> 04:44:06,807
How do you get the normies to care about this tech?

4099
04:44:06,807 --> 04:44:15,807
In the beginning, they're not going to listen to any of the pitches concerning
sovereign money or being able to unbank yourself or whatever.

4100
04:44:15,807 --> 04:44:18,807
They'll say, I'm fine with my life, it's comfortable.

4101
04:44:18,807 --> 04:44:25,807
But then you basically trigger their greed when it comes to something as stupid as
monkey JPEGs.

4102
04:44:25,807 --> 04:44:34,807
And then they'll say, well, of course this one has value because this other person
bought it for $1,000, so I'm going to buy it for $1,000 and try to flip it for
$10,000.

4103
04:44:34,807 --> 04:44:43,807
And if they stick around long enough, they'll actually understand how the tech
works, because once they lose their money, they'll try to rationalize what happened
if they're smart.

4104
04:44:43,807 --> 04:44:51,807
If they're not smart, they will just go back to whatever they were doing with their
lives and say, okay, this was all a scam all along, this is not for me.

4105
04:44:51,807 --> 04:44:54,807
But those who stick around actually end up building stuff.

4106
04:44:54,807 --> 04:44:59,807
If they're smart scammers, they'll come up with the next scam.

4107
04:44:59,807 --> 04:45:05,807
If they're principled people like Robin, for example, his first involvement in the
space was with an ICO.

4108
04:45:05,807 --> 04:45:07,807
He doesn't talk about that too much.

4109
04:45:07,807 --> 04:45:17,807
But Robin Linus, or Linus, I'm not sure how you refer to him, but in German it's
Linus, started out as a developer for an ICO project.

4110
04:45:17,807 --> 04:45:25,807
And he felt deeply regretful for his contributions to that, and then decided that he
wants to build something legit on a project that's not scammy.

4111
04:45:25,807 --> 04:45:28,807
And that's how he came up with BitVM.

4112
04:45:28,807 --> 04:45:30,807
It took him years to get there.

4113
04:45:30,807 --> 04:45:38,807
But my point is that from all of this scamminess, you're going to have smart people
who get in for the simple reason that they wanted to get rich.

4114
04:45:38,807 --> 04:45:41,807
And then they will realize they didn't get rich.

4115
04:45:41,807 --> 04:45:43,807
They will try to rationalize why they didn't get rich.

4116
04:45:43,807 --> 04:45:48,807
And then you're going to get a different kind of adoption and expand your community.

4117
04:45:48,807 --> 04:45:59,807
And I think the people who engineered this and they thought about Ethereum as being
this place where you're going to have lots of crazy ideas that maybe are too crazy
for Bitcoin.

4118
04:45:59,807 --> 04:46:03,807
I think the Peter Thiel kind of people, right, who put their money everywhere.

4119
04:46:03,807 --> 04:46:04,807
They're not tribal.

4120
04:46:04,807 --> 04:46:13,807
They don't care which one is going to succeed, but they just fund everything out
there, hoping that it's going to somehow disrupt the status quo.

4121
04:46:14,807 --> 04:46:26,807
I sort of respect it once you look at it from this cynical perspective where it's
not necessarily about building the best stuff, but it's also about marketing
something so that it brings more users.

4122
04:46:26,807 --> 04:46:33,807
Because let's be fair, there are not too many people who came to Bitcoin Cash for
the token system.

4123
04:46:33,807 --> 04:46:38,807
And cash fusion is not necessarily the most popular way to use Bitcoin Cash.

4124
04:46:39,807 --> 04:46:57,807
But if you do come up with a stupid game or something, or just a system that gets
people to trade tokens for stupid reasons, like tokenize Magic the Gathering, or
whatever is popular with kids nowadays, Minecraft NFTs, or I don't know.

4125
04:46:57,807 --> 04:47:01,807
Maybe it will get more young people to care about this network and onboard them.

4126
04:47:01,807 --> 04:47:21,807
And maybe it's scammy in retrospect because people lose money, but it's also
valuable because people who previously never cared about this end up getting
involved in this and potentially making valuable contributions that advance the
technology and potentially help us get closer to the goal.

4127
04:47:21,807 --> 04:47:30,807
Because I think ultimately, and the smartest people in the room will agree, it
doesn't matter which one of the projects is going to win.

4128
04:47:30,807 --> 04:47:35,807
Of course, it matters from the selfish reason that we want our bags to be the
successful ones.

4129
04:47:35,807 --> 04:47:40,807
We want to tell everyone that they were wrong, and we want to get stupid rich.

4130
04:47:40,807 --> 04:47:55,807
But if one of them succeeds and pushes humanity towards more freedom and separates
state and money and achieves all of these beautiful ideals, then honestly, I don't
care if it's going to be BSV.

4131
04:47:55,807 --> 04:47:57,807
I will accept it.

4132
04:47:57,807 --> 04:47:59,807
I'll say they got it right.

4133
04:47:59,807 --> 04:48:06,807
I don't think it will happen because they have that confiscation opcode, which they
embedded.

4134
04:48:06,807 --> 04:48:09,807
Proof of court, yeah.

4135
04:48:09,807 --> 04:48:10,807
Screw them.

4136
04:48:10,807 --> 04:48:13,807
I don't want it to be BSV, but if it's BSV, I will accept it.

4137
04:48:13,807 --> 04:48:20,807
I will say, okay, I'll buy some BSV and use it if this is the money that is actually
cypherpunk and is useful.

4138
04:48:20,807 --> 04:48:22,807
If it's going to be BCH, cool.

4139
04:48:22,807 --> 04:48:28,807
If it's going to be BTC, then I guess I will just dunk on everyone and be like, I
was right all along.

4140
04:48:28,807 --> 04:48:30,807
But I don't care about that part.

4141
04:48:30,807 --> 04:48:36,807
I think I had my ego destroyed so many times over the years that I don't care
anymore.

4142
04:48:36,807 --> 04:48:43,807
If it's going to be Monero or Zcash or Zano or whatever is fashionable out there, I
don't care anymore.

4143
04:48:43,807 --> 04:48:47,807
I just want something to actually work and bring us closer.

4144
04:48:47,807 --> 04:49:05,807
The problem of fragmentation, I think, is only temporary until we wake up and we
realize either that we can put all of it in one network or else we can just accept
that we're going to have instead of 21 million coins on this deflationary economy,

4145
04:49:05,807 --> 04:49:11,807
we're going to have maybe 500 million coins on this economy where you can swap
between assets.

4146
04:49:11,807 --> 04:49:15,807
And if that's going to bring more freedom to the world, I don't care.

4147
04:49:15,807 --> 04:49:16,807
Honestly.

4148
04:49:16,807 --> 04:49:22,807
Yeah, so I want to hit on that, which is where do you think – well, let me put it
like this.

4149
04:49:22,807 --> 04:49:34,807
I have got this new theory, which is that BCH needs to stop basically trying to
appeal to old OGs to come back.

4150
04:49:34,807 --> 04:49:38,807
And to be fair, we've done – some of that is fine.

4151
04:49:38,807 --> 04:49:43,807
And, of course, some people who have left BCH will want to come back and see that
we're doing things right and all that.

4152
04:49:43,807 --> 04:49:55,807
But my general trend that I've noticed, which was emphasized by my recent
discussions with Justin Bonds, was like over and over again, I see these people who
have left.

4153
04:49:55,807 --> 04:49:59,807
They're a bit traumatized or they're out of touch with what's going on.

4154
04:49:59,807 --> 04:50:02,807
And it's like they had their time in BCH and they got it wrong.

4155
04:50:02,807 --> 04:50:04,807
And that was why there was splits.

4156
04:50:04,807 --> 04:50:05,807
There was chaos.

4157
04:50:05,807 --> 04:50:07,807
There was bad reputation.

4158
04:50:07,807 --> 04:50:08,807
BCH wasn't working.

4159
04:50:08,807 --> 04:50:11,807
Of course, you can blame it all on the hijacking or conspiracy theories.

4160
04:50:11,807 --> 04:50:16,807
But at some point, you've got to take some responsibility that it wasn't all just
that.

4161
04:50:16,807 --> 04:50:19,807
It was also like if you're doing the wrong thing, you're getting bad results.

4162
04:50:19,807 --> 04:50:20,807
Own up to it.

4163
04:50:20,807 --> 04:50:22,807
And so now, BCH is doing a lot better.

4164
04:50:22,807 --> 04:50:29,807
And it has, while some people have stuck through all that chaos, a few of them,
which is good to have that wisdom and experience.

4165
04:50:29,807 --> 04:50:36,807
At the same time, those people have had to significantly change their views as a
result of all that learning.

4166
04:50:36,807 --> 04:50:43,807
And the new people who have been coming in are some of the best ones, like people
who pop up from wherever because crypto is open.

4167
04:50:43,807 --> 04:50:48,807
And they just get involved in BCH and they start contributing massively.

4168
04:50:48,807 --> 04:50:51,807
And I'm like, that is how we're going to win.

4169
04:50:51,807 --> 04:50:56,807
We're just going to get more and more of those people who are just popping up who
you just completely wouldn't expect.

4170
04:50:56,807 --> 04:50:58,807
Maybe don't even have a background in crypto.

4171
04:50:58,807 --> 04:51:03,807
But whatever it is about BCH that resonates with them, they get drawn into the
project.

4172
04:51:03,807 --> 04:51:18,807
And then that's how the culture becomes more unique and productive is because
suddenly we have ideas that are not just being rehashed from the same people that
have been there previously or that returned and are out of touch with what's going
on.

4173
04:51:18,807 --> 04:51:28,807
From your point of view, what would you like to see in the BCH culture and mentality
and outreach public perception going forward?

4174
04:51:29,807 --> 04:51:31,807
You kind of already talked about that for BTC, I think.

4175
04:51:31,807 --> 04:51:35,807
But for BCH, what advice would you give us?

4176
04:51:35,807 --> 04:51:43,807
I mean, I'm obviously a horrible benchmark because I don't have much skin in the
game and I don't really use BCH.

4177
04:51:43,807 --> 04:51:46,807
So you shouldn't really care about what I'm saying.

4178
04:51:46,807 --> 04:51:51,807
But I do like the fact that there is that guy, Matteo, the French guy.

4179
04:51:51,807 --> 04:51:53,807
Yeah, he's amazing.

4180
04:51:53,807 --> 04:51:56,807
I met him in Amsterdam.

4181
04:51:56,807 --> 04:51:59,807
And there's also Kalisti who's building interesting stuff.

4182
04:51:59,807 --> 04:52:02,807
These guys were not around during the block size wars.

4183
04:52:02,807 --> 04:52:03,807
At least I'm not aware.

4184
04:52:03,807 --> 04:52:06,807
I don't remember them being around.

4185
04:52:06,807 --> 04:52:14,807
It was much louder and more arrogant people at the time that I was sort of dueling
on Twitter and trying to dunk on.

4186
04:52:14,807 --> 04:52:17,807
It's a bit unfortunate that I don't get to.

4187
04:52:18,807 --> 04:52:21,807
I think I said this at the beginning of the podcast.

4188
04:52:21,807 --> 04:52:26,807
I said this joke that, oh, you look different being Armani and Colin.

4189
04:52:26,807 --> 04:52:28,807
These things have grown your hair.

4190
04:52:28,807 --> 04:52:35,807
I wish it was Coin Spice, the show that actually had me on and had me actually admit
that there is some merit to BCH.

4191
04:52:35,807 --> 04:52:46,807
It didn't turn out to be because people move on with their lives and there are
cyclical generations involved in every project that try to put their best effort and
build something meaningful.

4192
04:52:47,807 --> 04:52:54,807
But I think in a way it's better that it's not been Armani and Colin and the Coin
Spice guys.

4193
04:52:54,807 --> 04:52:59,807
I think it's actually cool that BCH had...

4194
04:52:59,807 --> 04:53:01,807
Maybe it's not the second chance.

4195
04:53:01,807 --> 04:53:07,807
Maybe it's like the third or fourth and there's a new wave of people coming in and
deciding that the technology is useful.

4196
04:53:07,807 --> 04:53:17,807
I remember at one point in 2018, I think it was Vitalik who said that he's going to
plan to use the BCH block space to unload data from Ethereum.

4197
04:53:17,807 --> 04:53:23,807
And that Bitcoin Cash was going to become this data availability layer for Ethereum.

4198
04:53:23,807 --> 04:53:33,807
Which maybe could have been bullish, but it also takes away part of the identity of
why Bitcoin Cash still exists and what it's supposed to be doing.

4199
04:53:33,807 --> 04:53:37,807
It's supposed to be much more than some other projects, just data layer.

4200
04:53:37,807 --> 04:53:41,807
And what can I say?

4201
04:53:41,807 --> 04:53:58,807
It's beautiful that you have new people coming in who are not necessarily in this
for the vendetta, for the long-term counts of Monte Cripto kind of story where
you're trying to have revenge on the people who did something wrong to you.

4202
04:53:59,807 --> 04:54:04,807
I think Paul said this, that maybe the big blockers lost the war.

4203
04:54:04,807 --> 04:54:14,807
Like they did not change Bitcoin, but most of them became stupid rich because they
didn't stay in this monoculture of one coin to rule them all.

4204
04:54:14,807 --> 04:54:21,807
And they invested in Ethereum and other projects that made them even richer than if
they only held Bitcoin.

4205
04:54:21,807 --> 04:54:24,807
And a lot of these guys are now billionaires.

4206
04:54:24,807 --> 04:54:28,807
I'm not sure to which extent this criteria applies.

4207
04:54:28,807 --> 04:54:32,807
It's actually criterion for singular.

4208
04:54:32,807 --> 04:54:34,807
So this criterion applies.

4209
04:54:34,807 --> 04:54:41,807
But it's really interesting that this space was developed and how it developed after
the block size wars.

4210
04:54:41,807 --> 04:54:44,807
Because at the time, Bitcoin had a huge dominance.

4211
04:54:44,807 --> 04:54:54,807
You had Brian Armstrong tweeting about Stellar and Ripple and all the other altcoins
being distractions and we're going to get sidechains.

4212
04:54:54,807 --> 04:54:57,807
To this day, we never had real sidechains.

4213
04:54:57,807 --> 04:55:06,807
Blockstream, the company that wrote the paper about sidechains, came up with a
federation and conceded that it's just good enough.

4214
04:55:06,807 --> 04:55:09,807
And then got community backlash.

4215
04:55:09,807 --> 04:55:19,807
It never worked out for them, which I think is poetic justice for all the harm that
they did in dividing the community during the block size wars.

4216
04:55:19,807 --> 04:55:21,807
At least they were never successful.

4217
04:55:21,807 --> 04:55:24,807
So there is some justice in the whole situation.

4218
04:55:24,807 --> 04:55:32,807
But also it came at the expense of adoption and all the momentum that Bitcoin had.

4219
04:55:32,807 --> 04:55:35,807
And now it seems like there is less of it.

4220
04:55:35,807 --> 04:55:40,807
And we're dealing with more dire competition from other payment systems.

4221
04:55:40,807 --> 04:55:43,807
Like Apple Pay was not around during the block size wars.

4222
04:55:43,807 --> 04:55:45,807
And Google Pay was also not around.

4223
04:55:45,807 --> 04:55:47,807
Now they're so convenient, right?

4224
04:55:47,807 --> 04:55:53,807
I double tap this button on the side of my phone and then it brings up the card I
pay with it.

4225
04:55:53,807 --> 04:55:59,807
It also has a privacy benefit, meaning that the receiver will not see my full name.

4226
04:55:59,807 --> 04:56:02,807
Which is not something that you get when you tap your card.

4227
04:56:02,807 --> 04:56:05,807
So Apple Pay is cooler from this point of view.

4228
04:56:05,807 --> 04:56:08,807
But I don't want this to be the money.

4229
04:56:08,807 --> 04:56:12,807
We're trying to fix the money also from the monetary policy point of view.

4230
04:56:12,807 --> 04:56:15,807
Also from the privacy point of view.

4231
04:56:15,807 --> 04:56:21,807
There are many advantages that Bitcoin as a concept has compared to fiat money.

4232
04:56:21,807 --> 04:56:26,807
And it seems like we're not very good at pushing this.

4233
04:56:27,807 --> 04:56:32,807
Except for the situation of, well, this is going to make you rich because there's
fewer of it.

4234
04:56:32,807 --> 04:56:35,807
And if demand increases.

4235
04:56:35,807 --> 04:56:37,807
Do you remember stock to flow?

4236
04:56:37,807 --> 04:56:40,807
Yeah, of course I do.

4237
04:56:40,807 --> 04:56:42,807
I like scams.

4238
04:56:42,807 --> 04:56:45,807
That was the highest level of copium.

4239
04:56:45,807 --> 04:56:49,807
Where people assumed that the demand is going to remain constant.

4240
04:56:49,807 --> 04:56:52,807
Or else grow in time.

4241
04:56:52,807 --> 04:56:53,807
And the supply is limited.

4242
04:56:53,807 --> 04:56:56,807
And therefore the price is going to go up according to this model.

4243
04:56:56,807 --> 04:57:02,807
And the guy who came up with it actually rewrote the whole model multiple times.

4244
04:57:02,807 --> 04:57:05,807
So that he would always be right.

4245
04:57:05,807 --> 04:57:07,807
And people chose to believe in that.

4246
04:57:07,807 --> 04:57:11,807
Knowing fully, I'm pretty sure Adam Beck is aware that it's a scam.

4247
04:57:11,807 --> 04:57:13,807
And it's not good enough.

4248
04:57:13,807 --> 04:57:15,807
But he promoted it.

4249
04:57:15,807 --> 04:57:20,807
And Seif Adina Moos, who is this supposedly very smart Austrian economist.

4250
04:57:20,807 --> 04:57:21,807
He endorsed it.

4251
04:57:21,807 --> 04:57:22,807
And said, yeah, this is it.

4252
04:57:22,807 --> 04:57:23,807
It's going to work.

4253
04:57:23,807 --> 04:57:28,807
I'm pretty sure they used it as this self-fulfilling prophecy.

4254
04:57:28,807 --> 04:57:32,807
Hoping that if enough people are going to believe that it's the case.

4255
04:57:32,807 --> 04:57:34,807
Then this will happen.

4256
04:57:34,807 --> 04:57:36,807
Obviously it did not happen.

4257
04:57:36,807 --> 04:57:39,807
Because human nature is not that predictable.

4258
04:57:39,807 --> 04:57:42,807
And you cannot engineer it in this way.

4259
04:57:42,807 --> 04:57:47,807
But the fact that people still believe in it after it got reinvented.

4260
04:57:47,807 --> 04:57:48,807
It got broken.

4261
04:57:48,807 --> 04:57:51,807
And then the guy said, well, maybe I got this data wrong.

4262
04:57:51,807 --> 04:57:52,807
Let me change this parameter.

4263
04:57:52,807 --> 04:57:54,807
And now it looks like we're back on track.

4264
04:57:54,807 --> 04:57:56,807
It's just crazy.

4265
04:57:56,807 --> 04:58:01,807
And the fact that this is the only killer app that we have had so far.

4266
04:58:01,807 --> 04:58:03,807
Just the number go up factor.

4267
04:58:03,807 --> 04:58:07,807
And the expectation that there's only 21 million Bitcoin.

4268
04:58:07,807 --> 04:58:11,807
And therefore, if the demand is going to remain constant.

4269
04:58:11,807 --> 04:58:15,807
The price will go up parabolically.

4270
04:58:15,807 --> 04:58:17,807
It's crazy.

4271
04:58:17,807 --> 04:58:19,807
Instead of actually making it useful.

4272
04:58:19,807 --> 04:58:23,807
And saying, well, it's nice that you buy Bitcoin.

4273
04:58:23,807 --> 04:58:25,807
But then you can also spend it for this.

4274
04:58:25,807 --> 04:58:26,807
There are some shops.

4275
04:58:26,807 --> 04:58:28,807
I'm not saying that there's no adoption at all.

4276
04:58:28,807 --> 04:58:30,807
But it became worse.

4277
04:58:30,807 --> 04:58:33,807
And with the huddle mentality, it will only get worse.

4278
04:58:33,807 --> 04:58:35,807
Because what I've seen here in Europe.

4279
04:58:35,807 --> 04:58:40,807
And you've also witnessed it if you went to Slovenia for BCH Bliss.

4280
04:58:40,807 --> 04:58:43,807
The adoption is stalling or else disappearing.

4281
04:58:43,807 --> 04:58:45,807
Because of new regulations.

4282
04:58:45,807 --> 04:58:50,807
And these companies realize that they have to pay extra legal fees.

4283
04:58:50,807 --> 04:58:52,807
To become compliant.

4284
04:58:52,807 --> 04:58:55,807
And then they have to collect all the data about their customers.

4285
04:58:55,807 --> 04:58:57,807
And it's just too much work.

4286
04:58:57,807 --> 04:59:01,807
It makes no sense for them to support a way to pay.

4287
04:59:01,807 --> 04:59:04,807
That incurs the cost of like €10,000 or something.

4288
04:59:04,807 --> 04:59:09,807
And then also recurring cost of, I don't know what lawyers cost.

4289
04:59:09,807 --> 04:59:12,807
Just for the purpose of processing data.

4290
04:59:12,807 --> 04:59:15,807
Or hiring a firm that's going to handle it.

4291
04:59:15,807 --> 04:59:19,807
And the volume of payments that they were receiving from just supporting Bitcoin.

4292
04:59:19,807 --> 04:59:22,807
Was just not high enough to justify the costs.

4293
04:59:22,807 --> 04:59:26,807
Because the culture is designed in such a way.

4294
04:59:26,807 --> 04:59:28,807
That it encourages you to huddle.

4295
04:59:28,807 --> 04:59:31,807
Which according to some people means that you should never spend.

4296
04:59:31,807 --> 04:59:34,807
And I don't want to go back to Saylor.

4297
04:59:34,807 --> 04:59:37,807
But my point is that as we were huddling.

4298
04:59:37,807 --> 04:59:41,807
Not caring too much about the world around us.

4299
04:59:41,807 --> 04:59:43,807
And what's happening with policy.

4300
04:59:43,807 --> 04:59:47,807
The restrictions in terms of regulations got much worse.

4301
04:59:47,807 --> 04:59:50,807
To the point where adoption became more difficult.

4302
04:59:50,807 --> 04:59:54,807
If there's going to be companies that do accept Bitcoin payments.

4303
04:59:54,807 --> 04:59:57,807
It will be large corporations that can afford the fee.

4304
04:59:57,807 --> 04:59:59,807
But once again it makes no sense for them.

4305
04:59:59,807 --> 05:00:02,807
Because it's not profitable to accept Bitcoin for payments in Europe.

4306
05:00:02,807 --> 05:00:04,793
Under the current regulations.

4307
05:00:04,793 --> 05:00:06,793
Like you can't possibly stay profitable unless you have very high volumes of
payments.

4308
05:00:06,793 --> 05:00:10,793
And Bitcoin is not really used for payments.

4309
05:00:10,793 --> 05:00:14,793
So it's a chicken and egg problem that was made worse.

4310
05:00:14,793 --> 05:00:18,793
By the fact that we just didn't care.

4311
05:00:18,793 --> 05:00:22,793
For example the Zcash people to be honest are doing an amazing job in the US.

4312
05:00:22,793 --> 05:00:26,793
Lobbying Congress and going to the top regulators.

4313
05:00:27,793 --> 05:00:31,793
And talking to them trying to explain why privacy makes sense for the average
person.

4314
05:00:31,793 --> 05:00:35,793
And it's in line with the US Constitution.

4315
05:00:35,793 --> 05:00:39,793
And they should not ban that.

4316
05:00:39,793 --> 05:00:43,793
If anything they should leave it alone.

4317
05:00:43,793 --> 05:00:47,793
Or try to protect it with their regulations.

4318
05:00:47,793 --> 05:00:51,793
I don't think we have that kind of money here in Europe for lobbying.

4319
05:00:52,793 --> 05:00:56,793
And the members of the European Parliament are usually controlled.

4320
05:00:56,793 --> 05:01:00,793
I'm not going to say this.

4321
05:01:00,793 --> 05:01:04,793
But some of them are controlled by lobbyists.

4322
05:01:04,793 --> 05:01:08,793
Or they're more easily persuaded by resourceful entities that have the money to just
talk to them.

4323
05:01:08,793 --> 05:01:12,793
Take them to dinner or whatever.

4324
05:01:12,793 --> 05:01:16,793
Explain to them how this works.

4325
05:01:16,793 --> 05:01:20,793
Or just groups that send a lot of emails.

4326
05:01:21,793 --> 05:01:25,793
And I think also the complacent culture in Bitcoin enabled bad regulations.

4327
05:01:25,793 --> 05:01:29,793
To the point where this stuff happened.

4328
05:01:29,793 --> 05:01:33,793
And we're saying oh it doesn't matter because we're holding them self custody.

4329
05:01:33,793 --> 05:01:37,793
And there's nothing they can do about it.

4330
05:01:37,793 --> 05:01:41,793
And we're going to make our payments between ourselves at conferences and whatever.

4331
05:01:41,793 --> 05:01:45,793
And this is going to enable the underground economy.

4332
05:01:45,793 --> 05:01:49,793
Well we don't have much of that.

4333
05:01:49,793 --> 05:01:53,793
It's very difficult to use Bitcoin in any useful way right now.

4334
05:01:53,793 --> 05:01:57,793
I think in the US it's even worse.

4335
05:01:57,793 --> 05:02:01,793
But here in Europe it used to be the case that some companies were accepting BTC.

4336
05:02:01,793 --> 05:02:05,793
And they had integrations with payments processors that were making it easy.

4337
05:02:05,793 --> 05:02:09,793
Now the payments processors gave up.

4338
05:02:09,793 --> 05:02:13,793
Because the volume was not that high.

4339
05:02:13,793 --> 05:02:17,793
And the legal fees don't justify this expense.

4340
05:02:17,793 --> 05:02:21,793
So from this point of view we failed the adoption factor.

4341
05:02:21,793 --> 05:02:25,793
Specifically because we were lazy or complacent.

4342
05:02:25,793 --> 05:02:29,793
Not caring about what's going on with regulations in Europe.

4343
05:02:29,793 --> 05:02:33,793
Maybe that there are parts of the world where it's much more free.

4344
05:02:33,793 --> 05:02:37,793
I'm aware that there's Serbia for example.

4345
05:02:37,793 --> 05:02:41,793
Where they're not part of the European Union.

4346
05:02:41,793 --> 05:02:45,793
And for example they have ATMs in Serbia where there are no limits for KYC.

4347
05:02:45,793 --> 05:02:49,793
In Europe right now it's that anything above 2000 euro has to be KYC.

4348
05:02:49,793 --> 05:02:53,793
Then has to go for a bank.

4349
05:02:53,793 --> 05:02:57,793
Which is really bad when you think about it.

4350
05:02:57,793 --> 05:03:01,793
The bankers were able to get in bed with the legislators.

4351
05:03:01,793 --> 05:03:05,793
So that the bank became an essential part of the economy.

4352
05:03:05,793 --> 05:03:09,793
You cannot actually engage in for example purchasing a car or buying a house.

4353
05:03:09,793 --> 05:03:13,793
Without using a bank account.

4354
05:03:13,793 --> 05:03:17,793
And they only use this for the reason that they say.

4355
05:03:17,793 --> 05:03:21,793
Well there's not going to be any more criminals or money laundering.

4356
05:03:21,793 --> 05:03:25,793
Which is bullshit.

4357
05:03:25,793 --> 05:03:29,793
If you want to have crime you're going to be using banks and you're going to bribe
them.

4358
05:03:29,793 --> 05:03:33,793
As we have lots of examples from Deutsche Bank.

4359
05:03:33,793 --> 05:03:37,793
The British one.

4360
05:03:37,793 --> 05:03:41,793
I think it was Barclays or whatever.

4361
05:03:41,793 --> 05:03:45,793
There's a lot of larping to legislators about solutions.

4362
05:03:45,793 --> 05:03:49,793
And they tend to be in bed with whoever appears to be resourceful.

4363
05:03:49,793 --> 05:03:53,793
And takes them to dinner or something.

4364
05:03:53,793 --> 05:03:57,793
And we haven't been able to do that at least not in Europe.

4365
05:03:57,793 --> 05:04:01,793
And it's only going to get worse.

4366
05:04:01,793 --> 05:04:05,793
And the more we huddle and not care about what's happening around us.

4367
05:04:05,793 --> 05:04:09,793
The more difficult it's going to become when we finally decide that it's time to use
our Bitcoin.

4368
05:04:09,793 --> 05:04:13,793
Maybe that the price is high.

4369
05:04:13,793 --> 05:04:17,793
But in order to be able to sell you're going to have to provide documents that you
don't have.

4370
05:04:17,793 --> 05:04:21,793
And it will be a Kafka-esque situation where you have something.

4371
05:04:21,793 --> 05:04:25,793
Maybe you're going to be able to sell peer-to-peer.

4372
05:04:25,793 --> 05:04:29,793
Meet someone in a dark alley with a large suitcase of cash or whatever.

4373
05:04:29,793 --> 05:04:33,793
Assuming that there's still going to be cash by the time we are done with this.

4374
05:04:33,793 --> 05:04:37,793
And we decide that huddling has led us to the desired result.

4375
05:04:37,793 --> 05:04:41,793
So did Bitcoin enable more freedom?

4376
05:04:41,793 --> 05:04:45,793
I think if we wait long enough and not care about the world around us, then no.

4377
05:04:45,793 --> 05:04:49,793
And to me Bitcoin was never about this citadel meme.

4378
05:04:49,793 --> 05:04:53,793
Which was very popular in the pandemic.

4379
05:04:53,793 --> 05:04:57,793
That you're going to get so rich that you're going to move to this faraway place.

4380
05:04:57,793 --> 05:05:01,793
Outside of the fiat world.

4381
05:05:01,793 --> 05:05:05,793
Where you're going to live in a feudal system with fellow Bitcoiners.

4382
05:05:05,793 --> 05:05:09,793
And you're going to have a class system according to how many BTC you're holding in
your wallet.

4383
05:05:09,793 --> 05:05:13,793
So if you don't hold more than 100 you're going to be washing someone's toilet.

4384
05:05:13,793 --> 05:05:17,793
My point is that I was never into this idea.

4385
05:05:17,793 --> 05:05:21,793
And I was more drawn to the concept of let's try to use this money to improve the
world around you.

4386
05:05:21,793 --> 05:05:25,793
And try to maybe not change the world.

4387
05:05:25,793 --> 05:05:29,793
But at least help your family, help your neighbor.

4388
05:05:29,793 --> 05:05:33,793
Help people in a way that's tangible and makes sense.

4389
05:05:33,793 --> 05:05:37,793
And brings more happiness around you.

4390
05:05:37,793 --> 05:05:41,793
And if more people did this maybe it could scale at a higher level.

4391
05:05:41,793 --> 05:05:45,793
Unfortunately my optimist approach to it.

4392
05:05:45,793 --> 05:05:49,793
Is not the most popular approach.

4393
05:05:49,793 --> 05:05:53,793
To this as a whole, to this system.

4394
05:05:53,793 --> 05:05:57,793
And we are in this situation where.

4395
05:05:57,793 --> 05:06:01,793
I guess there's a lot of reasons to complain about stuff that didn't go well.

4396
05:06:01,793 --> 05:06:05,793
Does anyone still listen to my rants?

4397
05:06:05,793 --> 05:06:09,793
I think it's good.

4398
05:06:09,793 --> 05:06:13,793
I think we do want to wrap it up soon.

4399
05:06:13,793 --> 05:06:17,793
I have a couple more things here but we'll just open up a whole new Pandora's box
with that.

4400
05:06:17,793 --> 05:06:21,793
I was wondering if you have any questions for me.

4401
05:06:21,793 --> 05:06:25,793
Or I guess for Jet if he comes back.

4402
05:06:25,793 --> 05:06:29,793
Or anything you want to know about BCH or point of view on something.

4403
05:06:29,793 --> 05:06:33,793
Now you've got the chance to ask it.

4404
05:06:33,793 --> 05:06:37,793
If you do, fine. If you don't, also fine.

4405
05:06:37,793 --> 05:06:41,793
Someone just sent me $3 of BCH to my wallet.

4406
05:06:41,793 --> 05:06:45,793
Thank you very much.

4407
05:06:45,793 --> 05:06:49,793
I'm using Selene which I understand is very cool.

4408
05:06:49,793 --> 05:06:53,793
Selene, highly recommended to everyone. The vest.

4409
05:06:53,793 --> 05:06:57,793
It's very lightweight. It loads fast. It's not cumbersome.

4410
05:06:57,793 --> 05:07:01,793
At some point that cum wallet was popular in the community.

4411
05:07:01,793 --> 05:07:05,793
Yes, but they started adding more and more junk.

4412
05:07:05,793 --> 05:07:09,793
And caring less and less about the BCH community.

4413
05:07:09,793 --> 05:07:13,793
And so Khaleesi and I had to start Selene wallet.

4414
05:07:13,793 --> 05:07:17,793
Yes, of course we are.

4415
05:07:17,793 --> 05:07:21,793
Of course, absolutely we are.

4416
05:07:21,793 --> 05:07:25,793
It is very funny.

4417
05:07:25,793 --> 05:07:29,793
I'm sure you're used to rehabilitate their image.

4418
05:07:29,793 --> 05:07:33,793
You're always saying on your show, now they've stopped saying that BCH is Bitcoin.

4419
05:07:33,793 --> 05:07:37,793
And they've rebranded to Orange and give them a look and everything.

4420
05:07:37,793 --> 05:07:41,793
Great, and I hope that's good. I hope it does open their minds of people

4421
05:07:41,793 --> 05:07:45,793
to their products and services because they're still great.

4422
05:07:45,793 --> 05:07:49,793
I don't want to say anything bad about them. Clearly they've moved away from having
a BCH focus.

4423
05:07:49,793 --> 05:07:53,793
And that's fine. They're following their own business interests.

4424
05:07:53,793 --> 05:07:57,793
It's up to us to attract them back, actually, to just make a thriving economy that
they want to be a part of.

4425
05:07:57,793 --> 05:08:01,793
But the fact that they were not making those tools and services

4426
05:08:01,793 --> 05:08:05,793
is the opportunity for Selene and other products to come in

4427
05:08:05,793 --> 05:08:09,793
and fill that gap, basically.

4428
05:08:09,793 --> 05:08:13,793
I can argue that the Bitcoin.com wallet was never BCH first.

4429
05:08:17,793 --> 05:08:21,793
It always had more stuff added to it.

4430
05:08:21,793 --> 05:08:25,793
There was a tab for news. There was always some other stuff.

4431
05:08:25,793 --> 05:08:29,793
And they added the swapping features and whatever.

4432
05:08:29,793 --> 05:08:33,793
So they always had a bit more than just the wallet where you receive funds

4433
05:08:33,793 --> 05:08:37,793
and you send funds from it, like Selene.

4434
05:08:37,793 --> 05:08:41,793
We're going to add all that stuff eventually, too.

4435
05:08:41,793 --> 05:08:45,793
We have the Explore tab, which we just haven't.

4436
05:08:45,793 --> 05:08:49,793
There's a lot of ideas and concepts we have for that, but it's just one step at a
time.

4437
05:08:49,793 --> 05:08:53,793
And the most important thing is, of course, that it's a usable wallet.

4438
05:08:53,793 --> 05:08:57,793
So you can actually just send and receive BCH onboard people

4439
05:08:57,793 --> 05:09:01,793
in a very lightweight, quick way, impress them with their first use of
cryptocurrency,

4440
05:09:01,793 --> 05:09:05,793
and then build from there.

4441
05:09:05,793 --> 05:09:09,793
But we have loads of other ideas for stuff to do.

4442
05:09:09,793 --> 05:09:13,793
We don't want to compromise that central, simple, slick onboarding use case to do
it.

4443
05:09:13,793 --> 05:09:17,793
But who knows?

4444
05:09:17,793 --> 05:09:21,793
Worst case scenario, it's open source and anybody can fork it

4445
05:09:21,793 --> 05:09:25,793
and rip out all the junk or whatever they don't like.

4446
05:09:25,793 --> 05:09:29,793
And that's it, really.

4447
05:09:29,793 --> 05:09:33,793
I think it's really cool that nowadays these wallets are more like exchanges

4448
05:09:33,793 --> 05:09:37,793
that enable you to swap between assets.

4449
05:09:37,793 --> 05:09:41,793
And it's cool that it's sort of permissionless.

4450
05:09:41,793 --> 05:09:45,793
And it doesn't require any data.

4451
05:09:45,793 --> 05:09:49,793
You can do a swap, and then you're going to collect a fee as the wallet developer.

4452
05:09:49,793 --> 05:09:53,793
And it generates its own economy.

4453
05:09:53,793 --> 05:09:57,793
I think the Edge Wallet and the Cake Wallet people were very smart to figure this
out

4454
05:09:57,793 --> 05:10:01,793
and integrate it very soon.

4455
05:10:01,793 --> 05:10:05,793
Any final last words or any last topics you want to cover?

4456
05:10:09,793 --> 05:10:13,793
Last topic? I don't know.

4457
05:10:13,793 --> 05:10:17,793
I did see that some BCH people went to Xano.

4458
05:10:17,793 --> 05:10:21,793
That's like the cool project right now.

4459
05:10:21,793 --> 05:10:25,793
And I do like the idea behind Xano.

4460
05:10:25,793 --> 05:10:29,793
I'm just not sure that the tech stack that they're using is necessarily the best
one.

4461
05:10:29,793 --> 05:10:33,793
They're running on the same technology as Monero, which is CryptoNote.

4462
05:10:33,793 --> 05:10:37,793
With something that's called Zarkanum for issuing tokens.

4463
05:10:37,793 --> 05:10:41,793
I spent some time looking into it.

4464
05:10:41,793 --> 05:10:45,793
And I wish them all the best. I hope it succeeds.

4465
05:10:45,793 --> 05:10:49,793
It's just that the time for tokens has sort of faded.

4466
05:10:49,793 --> 05:10:53,793
At least during this cycle.

4467
05:10:53,793 --> 05:10:57,793
And they were not able to come up with any compelling use case outside of MemeCoins
and the StableCoin.

4468
05:10:57,793 --> 05:11:01,793
So I don't know. Maybe in the future

4469
05:11:01,793 --> 05:11:05,793
it will work better.

4470
05:11:05,793 --> 05:11:09,793
Oh, you put something on the screen?

4471
05:11:09,793 --> 05:11:13,793
I think we've kind of covered most of the slides.

4472
05:11:13,793 --> 05:11:17,793
Maybe the one thing we should do before we wrap up is we've got to play that clip

4473
05:11:17,793 --> 05:11:21,793
of Michael Saylor for the historical records. We did a whole discussion of it

4474
05:11:21,793 --> 05:11:25,793
earlier, but we didn't actually play the original clip.

4475
05:11:25,793 --> 05:11:29,793
I want to say something which I hope

4476
05:11:29,793 --> 05:11:33,793
SuperTestNet is going to hear.

4477
05:11:33,793 --> 05:11:37,793
He's working so much on this BIP110 stuff.

4478
05:11:37,793 --> 05:11:41,793
He's almost dogmatic about the need for Bitcoin to

4479
05:11:41,793 --> 05:11:45,793
filter some types of transactions that he thinks are not good.

4480
05:11:45,793 --> 05:11:49,793
But he's sort of working on his own

4481
05:11:49,793 --> 05:11:53,793
time in moments when maybe

4482
05:11:53,793 --> 05:11:57,793
he could make money doing something useful.

4483
05:11:57,793 --> 05:12:01,793
While Luke Dash Jr. is making $750,000 per

4484
05:12:01,793 --> 05:12:05,793
year as the CEO of Ocean Mining.

4485
05:12:05,793 --> 05:12:09,793
So he actually has a very large financial incentive

4486
05:12:09,793 --> 05:12:13,793
to promote this and spend his time telling people what

4487
05:12:13,793 --> 05:12:17,793
kind of software they should be running. Whereas SuperTestNet is just this

4488
05:12:17,793 --> 05:12:21,793
independent developer who probably doesn't get paid for it.

4489
05:12:21,793 --> 05:12:25,793
And I feel like he could be building something that's actually useful.

4490
05:12:25,793 --> 05:12:29,793
I don't know. Money talks. All right, let's hear from

4491
05:12:29,793 --> 05:12:33,793
Michael Saylor, the state of BTC

4492
05:12:33,793 --> 05:12:37,793
discussion at the moment.

4493
05:13:03,793 --> 05:13:07,793
So there you have it. That's all, of course, flat-out lies.

4494
05:13:07,793 --> 05:13:11,793
It's been documented so many times and there's a bunch of people that have

4495
05:13:11,793 --> 05:13:15,793
produced all the clips and receipts that, of course, that's all complete lies.

4496
05:13:15,793 --> 05:13:19,793
It's the exact opposite of what you say.

4497
05:13:19,793 --> 05:13:23,793
It's funny when he chuckles like I said to you, I'm never selling you Bitcoin.

4498
05:13:23,793 --> 05:13:27,793
He knows!

4499
05:13:27,793 --> 05:13:31,793
Yeah, exactly.

4500
05:13:31,793 --> 05:13:35,793
Cry harder and have fun staying poor

4501
05:13:35,793 --> 05:13:39,793
like he didn't say it, but that's clearly what he was thinking.

4502
05:13:39,793 --> 05:13:43,793
All right. Yeah, so I guess, anyway, we do

4503
05:13:43,793 --> 05:13:47,793
let's just put it like this. We have a segment we always do on the show.

4504
05:13:47,793 --> 05:13:51,793
Last segment is always message to the community where you get a chance

4505
05:13:51,793 --> 05:13:55,793
to say to the BCH community, to the audience

4506
05:13:55,793 --> 05:13:59,793
of the Bitcoin Cash Podcast, whatever you think the BCH community

4507
05:13:59,793 --> 05:14:03,793
needs to hear, whether it's criticism, encouragement, a funny

4508
05:14:03,793 --> 05:14:07,793
story, like whatever you like. What does the BCH community need to hear?

4509
05:14:07,793 --> 05:14:11,793
So what you guys need to hear is that in the Bitcoin

4510
05:14:11,793 --> 05:14:15,793
BTC world, we had this story of the remnant

4511
05:14:15,793 --> 05:14:19,793
like this guy who always sticks around and believes in

4512
05:14:19,793 --> 05:14:23,793
his ideology no matter what, which is not very

4513
05:14:23,793 --> 05:14:27,793
applicable because BTC guys, they got rewarded every

4514
05:14:27,793 --> 05:14:31,793
four years on the clock with high prices that enabled them

4515
05:14:31,793 --> 05:14:35,793
to get rich, whereas the BCH guys, they never really had

4516
05:14:35,793 --> 05:14:39,793
that sort of euphoric moment. They never had the moment when they felt

4517
05:14:39,793 --> 05:14:43,793
like, oh, we're so winning right now. This is it. Everyone

4518
05:14:43,793 --> 05:14:47,793
agrees with us. We are the winning team. And in spite of

4519
05:14:47,793 --> 05:14:51,793
not winning, you guys kept going. I guess this also

4520
05:14:51,793 --> 05:14:55,793
explains why there was a changing of the guards at least once.

4521
05:14:55,793 --> 05:14:59,793
There was a moment when Omari left and a new bunch of developers

4522
05:14:59,793 --> 05:15:03,793
had to step in to pick up the pieces and rewrite

4523
05:15:03,793 --> 05:15:07,793
the client software and whatever. But I guess you guys always had multiple

4524
05:15:07,793 --> 05:15:11,793
node implementations, so it wasn't so dramatic.

4525
05:15:11,793 --> 05:15:15,793
But my point is that you guys stuck around and still

4526
05:15:15,793 --> 05:15:19,793
chose to believe in what you're building. And the outcome is pretty

4527
05:15:19,793 --> 05:15:23,793
positive, meaning that you have a bunch of opcodes that

4528
05:15:23,793 --> 05:15:27,793
are actually useful that enable or maximize,

4529
05:15:27,793 --> 05:15:31,793
dare I say, the ways in which you can use the stuff that Satoshi left us

4530
05:15:31,793 --> 05:15:35,793
with. So it's really cool. It's something that I wish

4531
05:15:35,793 --> 05:15:39,793
happened in BTC also, and we didn't have all of this silly

4532
05:15:39,793 --> 05:15:43,793
infighting. And we have this term called bike shedding, which means

4533
05:15:43,793 --> 05:15:47,793
we're just delaying for no reason something until more data appears

4534
05:15:47,793 --> 05:15:51,793
or maybe someone more famous is going to endorse the project to

4535
05:15:51,793 --> 05:15:55,793
the point where it comes back into discourse.

4536
05:15:55,793 --> 05:15:59,793
But you guys don't have this problem, and it's really

4537
05:15:59,793 --> 05:16:03,793
admirable. I presented the same argument to Colleen

4538
05:16:03,793 --> 05:16:07,793
and to Steve when they were on my show.

4539
05:16:07,793 --> 05:16:11,793
Do you think that if Michael Saylor came in and he bought billions of dollars worth

4540
05:16:11,793 --> 05:16:15,793
of BCH, you could be able to develop the protocol to

4541
05:16:15,793 --> 05:16:19,793
the same extent? And I'm not entirely sure that would be the

4542
05:16:19,793 --> 05:16:23,793
case. I think to a great degree, this much fiat money

4543
05:16:23,793 --> 05:16:27,793
corrupts projects, especially open source projects. And then you're going to get

4544
05:16:27,793 --> 05:16:31,793
developers who are there just to be sure

4545
05:16:31,793 --> 05:16:35,793
that nothing meaningful ever happens and just introduce

4546
05:16:35,793 --> 05:16:39,793
endless bickering and

4547
05:16:39,793 --> 05:16:43,793
infighting and cause drama.

4548
05:16:43,793 --> 05:16:47,793
I think we have a lot of drama in BTC.

4549
05:16:47,793 --> 05:16:51,793
BCH? Not so much. You guys used to be bitter for a while.

4550
05:16:51,793 --> 05:16:55,793
I remember when I was posting my podcast links on

4551
05:16:55,793 --> 05:16:59,793
RBTC on Reddit.

4552
05:16:59,793 --> 05:17:03,793
In a way, they were saying, well, we cannot censor you because

4553
05:17:03,793 --> 05:17:07,793
we decided that this is a free platform where anyone can

4554
05:17:07,793 --> 05:17:11,793
post. But on the other hand, we don't like what you're saying and we don't like you
personally.

4555
05:17:11,793 --> 05:17:15,793
So just keep that in mind every time you post. I felt like

4556
05:17:15,793 --> 05:17:19,793
it was very passive-aggressive and I honestly

4557
05:17:19,793 --> 05:17:23,793
didn't come back. I don't use Reddit too much nowadays. I don't

4558
05:17:23,793 --> 05:17:27,793
like it that much. Our Bitcoin, our BTC, I don't care.

4559
05:17:27,793 --> 05:17:31,793
They're both awful from this point of view.

4560
05:17:31,793 --> 05:17:35,793
But I feel like the spirit of the community has changed for the better.

4561
05:17:35,793 --> 05:17:39,793
And maybe that it was necessary for some people to leave. I'm happy that it's not

4562
05:17:39,793 --> 05:17:43,793
Roger or Jihan or someone else big who's pushing

4563
05:17:43,793 --> 05:17:47,793
the project. I guess you guys are not happy about it because maybe you could get
much

4564
05:17:47,793 --> 05:17:51,793
more attention for what's happening in BCH if

4565
05:17:51,793 --> 05:17:55,793
Roger was around to be the cheerleader for the project and he

4566
05:17:55,793 --> 05:17:59,793
went on Tucker Carlson or Alex Jones or

4567
05:17:59,793 --> 05:18:03,793
whatever and promoted BCH. That could help, especially to

4568
05:18:03,793 --> 05:18:07,793
the libertarian and sovereign individual kind of

4569
05:18:07,793 --> 05:18:11,793
audience that listens to these shows. But you also got the organic

4570
05:18:11,793 --> 05:18:15,793
development, which I think is valuable. People

4571
05:18:15,793 --> 05:18:19,793
coming in and contributing on a voluntary basis

4572
05:18:19,793 --> 05:18:23,793
without any promises of success, without any kind of

4573
05:18:23,793 --> 05:18:27,793
track record that's going to make them feel like they're going to get rich soon.

4574
05:18:27,793 --> 05:18:31,793
And there's no price tag for stuff like this

4575
05:18:31,793 --> 05:18:35,793
and it's the kind of contributions that open source projects that

4576
05:18:35,793 --> 05:18:39,793
are truly decentralized deserve.

4577
05:18:39,793 --> 05:18:43,793
Congratulations. Sorry for some of the mean stuff I've said over the

4578
05:18:43,793 --> 05:18:47,793
years. I was wrong in some ways. I was right in other ways.

4579
05:18:47,793 --> 05:18:51,793
It's very hard to beat network effects.

4580
05:18:51,793 --> 05:18:55,793
But at the end of the day, it's all permissionless open source

4581
05:18:55,793 --> 05:18:59,793
software. And we're on the mission to create the best

4582
05:18:59,793 --> 05:19:03,793
form of money. And the market speaks as we're working on this kind

4583
05:19:03,793 --> 05:19:07,793
of stuff. And in the end, I guess, may the best project

4584
05:19:07,793 --> 05:19:11,793
win. And I hope it will be the best one and not just the one that has the best

4585
05:19:11,793 --> 05:19:15,793
branding and marketing. The one that actually can onboard everyone

4586
05:19:15,793 --> 05:19:19,793
to provide to them more financial freedom. Maybe I

4587
05:19:19,793 --> 05:19:23,793
sound like Roger right now, but I'm not sure if I can say anything.

4588
05:19:23,793 --> 05:19:27,793
We don't need Roger anymore. We just get you instead.

4589
05:19:27,793 --> 05:19:31,793
Problem solved. Two birds, one stone.

4590
05:19:31,793 --> 05:19:35,793
And don't listen to my podcast. Don't listen. It's only for smart people.

4591
05:19:35,793 --> 05:19:39,793
There's no smart listeners to this show. Everybody knows that V-caches

4592
05:19:39,793 --> 05:19:43,793
are all stupid anyway. So they definitely should not listen to that.

4593
05:19:43,793 --> 05:19:47,793
Anything but Bitcoin Cash.

4594
05:19:47,793 --> 05:19:51,793
Anything but Bitcoin Takeover Podcast.

4595
05:19:51,793 --> 05:19:55,793
That's good. Okay. Shout out to our fund me contributors.

4596
05:19:55,793 --> 05:19:59,793
Majumalu, Eyes on the Ball, Molecular, the show we love.

4597
05:19:59,793 --> 05:20:03,793
I like big ints that I cannot like.

4598
05:20:03,793 --> 05:20:07,793
Emergent Reasons. Appreciate what you do. Hope you all will stay grounded in truth
and reality.

4599
05:20:07,793 --> 05:20:11,793
Real money for the world. Cash Dragon. Essential work. Thanks.

4600
05:20:11,793 --> 05:20:15,793
Ricky Carl and HP, our patrons and our sponsors, General Protocols.

4601
05:20:15,793 --> 05:20:19,793
Check out bchbull.com. Of course, you can find more about

4602
05:20:19,793 --> 05:20:23,793
the show, information, FAQs, etc. at bitcoincachepodcast.com.

4603
05:20:23,793 --> 05:20:27,793
Particularly for this episode, if you are new to

4604
05:20:27,793 --> 05:20:31,793
the show, if you're from the BDC community, bitcoincachepodcast.com

4605
05:20:31,793 --> 05:20:35,793
and go to the FAQ section, there's loads of information

4606
05:20:35,793 --> 05:20:39,793
there about BTC as well and sort of a BCH perspective

4607
05:20:39,793 --> 05:20:43,793
on a lot of things, including a lot of it being propaganda and

4608
05:20:43,793 --> 05:20:47,793
lies and debunking all the different areas of it. So

4609
05:20:47,793 --> 05:20:51,793
I'm just saying, it may be worth considering some of that.

4610
05:20:51,793 --> 05:20:55,793
At least don't trust Verify that we are just

4611
05:20:55,793 --> 05:20:59,793
clueless morons by checking for yourself.

4612
05:20:59,793 --> 05:21:03,793
Yeah, that'll just about do it. Vlad, any final shout-outs you want to give?

4613
05:21:03,793 --> 05:21:07,793
No, I'm fine. I talk too much.

4614
05:21:07,793 --> 05:21:11,793
Alright, Jed, any final shout-outs?

4615
05:21:11,793 --> 05:21:15,793
Alright, and my shout-out goes to Vlad and our

4616
05:21:15,793 --> 05:21:19,793
other guests on the show today, SupertestNet,

4617
05:21:19,793 --> 05:21:23,793
Robin and Paul. I'm very glad, well, Paul was returning, but I'm glad

4618
05:21:23,793 --> 05:21:27,793
everybody could join for the first time

4619
05:21:27,793 --> 05:21:31,793
and I think it's really important to have those kinds of dialogue

4620
05:21:31,793 --> 05:21:35,793
and thank you, Vlad, for helping to coordinate that,

4621
05:21:35,793 --> 05:21:39,793
for doing that original BCH stream and then challenging

4622
05:21:39,793 --> 05:21:43,793
us to return the favor. I hope it's met expectations.

4623
05:21:43,793 --> 05:21:47,793
It hasn't reached eight hours, but relative to the average

4624
05:21:47,793 --> 05:21:51,793
length of my average show, we're well over

4625
05:21:51,793 --> 05:21:55,793
this is like two episodes at least.

4626
05:21:55,793 --> 05:21:59,793
Two long episodes worth of content, so

4627
05:21:59,793 --> 05:22:03,793
I'm sure the dedicated listeners will have plenty to chew over.

4628
05:22:03,793 --> 05:22:07,793
BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH,

4629
05:22:07,793 --> 05:22:11,793
I promised I was going to do this dance

4630
05:22:11,793 --> 05:22:15,793
and I forgot. Yeah, I think he does it like this, right? It's like

4631
05:22:15,793 --> 05:22:19,793
kind of like sad. BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH, BCH.

4632
05:22:19,793 --> 05:22:23,793
And then you give me the middle finger and that's how it ends.

4633
05:22:23,793 --> 05:22:27,793
All right. See you later.

4634
05:22:27,793 --> 05:22:31,793
Let me recap the earning call.

4635
05:22:35,793 --> 05:22:39,793
They said, Mike, don't touch the Bitcoin stack.

4636
05:22:39,793 --> 05:22:43,793
Now I'm buying more while they're fighting into black.

4637
05:22:43,793 --> 05:22:47,793
Engine running clean, watching debt transform into the Bitcoin

4638
05:22:47,793 --> 05:22:51,793
dream turned on the BTC drive. No shame in my face.

4639
05:22:51,793 --> 05:22:55,793
65 billion and I'm still winning the race. They panic when I say

4640
05:22:55,793 --> 05:22:59,793
sell a little coin just to prove the whole market doesn't break or get

4641
05:22:59,793 --> 05:23:03,793
destroyed. Company fine. Bitcoin fine. World still spins.

4642
05:23:03,793 --> 05:23:07,793
You scream Ponzi while the weak cave in. Bitcoin

4643
05:23:07,793 --> 05:23:11,793
getting stronger. Every cycle reborn while I keep building through the middle of the

4644
05:23:11,793 --> 05:23:15,793
storm. I'd like nothing better than to rip your wings

4645
05:23:15,793 --> 05:23:19,793
off. Every short position

4646
05:23:19,793 --> 05:23:23,793
getting weaker when we lift off.

4647
05:23:23,793 --> 05:23:27,793
I'd like nothing better than to rip your wings

4648
05:23:27,793 --> 05:23:31,793
off. We use the equity ATM. Yeah, yeah.

4649
05:23:31,793 --> 05:23:35,793
We said it was pride. Then this DRC machine came alive on the side.

4650
05:23:35,793 --> 05:23:39,793
More tools, more options, more fuel for the fire while the shorts pray

4651
05:23:39,793 --> 05:23:43,793
every quarter that the stock expires. I buy Bitcoin like

4652
05:23:43,793 --> 05:23:47,793
development land. Buy it low, build it up, then expand what we can.

4653
05:23:47,793 --> 05:23:51,793
Put the profit back again into more BTC. That's the difference between

4654
05:23:51,793 --> 05:23:55,793
conviction and jealousy. I'd like nothing better than to

4655
05:23:55,793 --> 05:23:59,793
rip your wings off. Watching every short seller

4656
05:23:59,793 --> 05:24:03,793
realize there's no second best.

4657
05:24:03,793 --> 05:24:07,793
I'd like nothing better than to

4658
05:24:07,793 --> 05:24:11,793
rip your wings off.

4659
05:24:11,793 --> 05:24:15,793
There is no second best.

4660
05:24:17,793 --> 05:24:21,793
There is no second best.