1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,680
Alright everybody, welcome, welcome here, we've got another great episode, special
guest

2
00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:25,800
Paul Sztorc, Paul, many of you no doubt know, he is the main guy behind the
Drivechain and

3
00:00:25,800 --> 00:00:32,120
Bitcoin Hivemind protocols, also does a lot of blogging, a lot of work in Bitcoin,
very

4
00:00:32,120 --> 00:00:37,920
happy to talk with him today about Drivechain and a bunch of topics during these
pretty

5
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:38,920
interesting times.

6
00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:41,520
Paul, thanks a lot for joining, welcome.

7
00:00:41,520 --> 00:00:42,520
Thanks for having me.

8
00:00:42,520 --> 00:00:46,280
Yeah, appreciate it, just kind of a little funny thing to start, we were talking
pre-show

9
00:00:46,280 --> 00:00:51,680
how I should introduce you, you don't like the word founder, as in founder of those
protocols,

10
00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:52,680
is that correct?

11
00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:59,400
Yeah, I think that conjures this metaphor of the Silicon Valley startup, and I've
always

12
00:00:59,400 --> 00:01:07,040
thought that that metaphor was a mistake and a sort of illusion, and that there are
these

13
00:01:07,040 --> 00:01:10,720
people out there and they're all starting this, they're like the founder, they're
the

14
00:01:10,720 --> 00:01:13,800
king of their little startup, and then they're going to make a lot of money.

15
00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:16,760
And I don't like, yeah, people would do their like, when you see like the shirts,
people

16
00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:21,480
make like the shirts that have whatever on it, I don't want to call anyone out
specifically,

17
00:01:21,800 --> 00:01:27,160
but you know what I mean, like, like an Ethereum shirt or something, something like
that, in

18
00:01:27,160 --> 00:01:30,080
the early days, and then they're like, this is going to be really big.

19
00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:34,000
The founders will make a lot of money because they own a lot of coins.

20
00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:42,560
And I'm still an adherent to the old, like, Bitcoin uncensored world where there's a
tremendous

21
00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:48,080
emphasis on keeping your head down and regulatory arbitrage.

22
00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:54,000
And it's kind of, when they use the phrase, the Bitcoin users, that was always a
kind

23
00:01:54,000 --> 00:01:55,000
of joke.

24
00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:02,400
And there was a euphemism for like, people buying hard drugs and prostitutes or
something

25
00:02:02,400 --> 00:02:03,400
on the internet.

26
00:02:03,400 --> 00:02:08,360
And so that was what they, whenever they said, well, but what about the Bitcoin
users?

27
00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:09,360
That was a joke.

28
00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:14,600
Like the audience knew they were talking about sort of unsavory characters, the dark
part

29
00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:18,200
of the world that we try not to look at or talk about.

30
00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:21,320
But then sometimes their guests wouldn't know, they would think that it would just
be someone

31
00:02:21,320 --> 00:02:23,200
downloading an app or something.

32
00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:28,040
And so I've always, I've always hated the metaphor of the startup.

33
00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:32,400
And I think the founder kind of, founder kind of tilts it too far in that direction.

34
00:02:32,400 --> 00:02:33,480
But we didn't quite even resolve it.

35
00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:36,000
And I think I said the main guy, what would you prefer?

36
00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:38,440
The main guy is fine.

37
00:02:38,440 --> 00:02:40,200
That's why he asked me before, what do you want to say?

38
00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:42,800
And I was like, I don't know, just say the guy behind Drivechain or whatever.

39
00:02:42,800 --> 00:02:44,560
Isn't that, that's good enough, right?

40
00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:45,560
It's fine with me.

41
00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:46,560
It's fine with me, man.

42
00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:47,560
Yeah.

43
00:02:47,560 --> 00:02:48,560
Drivechain.info, everyone.

44
00:02:48,560 --> 00:02:49,560
Yeah.

45
00:02:49,560 --> 00:02:51,520
We'll plug it enough, I'm sure, during this episode.

46
00:02:51,520 --> 00:02:52,520
A lot, I'm sure.

47
00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,280
But yeah, that's definitely where I wanted to start.

48
00:02:55,280 --> 00:02:56,280
We talked about it.

49
00:02:56,280 --> 00:02:58,520
We interviewed you actually about two and a half years ago.

50
00:02:58,520 --> 00:02:59,520
I was checking.

51
00:02:59,520 --> 00:03:00,520
Yeah.

52
00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:01,520
A long time ago.

53
00:03:01,520 --> 00:03:02,520
Yeah.

54
00:03:02,520 --> 00:03:04,520
I think we'll talk about some of the same topics, some other different ones, of
course.

55
00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:07,680
But I know you've been working on this a long time and I know that it was sort of a
means

56
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:09,640
to an end for the Truthcoin project.

57
00:03:09,640 --> 00:03:10,640
I know.

58
00:03:10,640 --> 00:03:11,640
Oh my God.

59
00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:12,640
It's been going on forever.

60
00:03:12,720 --> 00:03:15,040
How deep do we want to go on just an update?

61
00:03:15,040 --> 00:03:16,040
Well, yeah.

62
00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:20,720
I mean, we have in the last, over the last two and a half years, it's obviously
been,

63
00:03:20,720 --> 00:03:25,920
I mean, there was no software before and now we have pretty decent software that has
like

64
00:03:25,920 --> 00:03:33,000
sort of a, I don't want to say a slick user interface, but it's almost, it's just a
couple

65
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:39,840
more, a couple more things and then it will be possible for a random person to just
download.

66
00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:47,720
I mean, soon, we almost, we just got like Windows binaries, but they won't be here.

67
00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:53,560
So we're like, we were kind of like Linux only for a long time, but very soon, maybe

68
00:03:53,560 --> 00:03:58,880
even by the time, I don't know when this will air or a week afterwards or something,
it

69
00:03:58,880 --> 00:04:06,480
should be possible to, for regular people to just download this testnet software and

70
00:04:06,480 --> 00:04:14,960
then make, send coins from the first piece of software to other pieces, the test
side

71
00:04:14,960 --> 00:04:15,960
chains that we have.

72
00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:20,320
We have some test ones and you can send coins to other chains and then use them over
there

73
00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:22,080
and then send them back.

74
00:04:22,080 --> 00:04:27,200
And in so doing, you'd be able to see for yourself exactly how Drivechain works,
which

75
00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:38,840
I think at this point is the way that 99.9999% of people who ever understand it will
come

76
00:04:38,840 --> 00:04:39,840
to understand it.

77
00:04:39,840 --> 00:04:45,880
So that's the route that most people, I mean, I try very hard to explain it, but it
just

78
00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:50,800
doesn't seem to work, but I'm not deterred because when people respond, it's just
clear

79
00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:58,680
from what they say that they have not taken in what I have tried to describe, which
could

80
00:04:58,680 --> 00:04:59,680
be my fault.

81
00:04:59,680 --> 00:05:03,840
But the point is working on the software and particularly trying to make the
software work

82
00:05:03,840 --> 00:05:12,120
really well and try to have it have this GUI that explains what's going on or just
lets

83
00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:13,600
you see what's going on.

84
00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:21,360
That is my new strategy for advocating for the project to basically finish it, but
also

85
00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:23,840
finish it in a way where you can kind of see what's going on.

86
00:05:23,840 --> 00:05:29,360
I think that, I mean, another thing, this is similar to what happened with Truthcoin

87
00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:35,840
or Hivemind, which is that how well it parallels what happened with Bitcoin, where
you would

88
00:05:35,840 --> 00:05:42,200
read all these explanations and then I was like, okay, I did tons of reading and I
was

89
00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:43,200
excited.

90
00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:50,040
The first thing I read was the Silk Road piece about people who are drug addicts
have successfully

91
00:05:50,040 --> 00:05:52,680
been using this to buy drugs.

92
00:05:52,680 --> 00:06:01,120
And I was like, okay, those lay people could figure it out and merchants needed it
because

93
00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:03,040
they couldn't accept credit cards.

94
00:06:03,040 --> 00:06:06,800
So I was like, oh, I thought it was too late.

95
00:06:06,800 --> 00:06:09,560
Everyone has figured it out already.

96
00:06:09,600 --> 00:06:16,600
So I was kind of gung ho about it and I downloaded the software at that point just
to try and

97
00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:19,520
see if I could figure out how it worked.

98
00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:26,320
And I got some coins from Gavin's Faucet and then I waited for the six confirmations
and

99
00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:28,080
then I was like, good, I have six.

100
00:06:28,080 --> 00:06:34,480
And then I closed the window and then I went about my day and like, I don't know, a
day

101
00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:39,040
and a half later I opened it up and then it was like, oh, I have somehow now I have
like

102
00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:43,040
250 confirmations or whatever, you know, instead of six.

103
00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:45,600
And I was like, where did these extra confirmations come from?

104
00:06:45,600 --> 00:06:50,040
Like, I had no real idea about how it worked until I used it.

105
00:06:50,040 --> 00:06:54,280
So that's kind of where I'm thinking now about taking Drivechain.

106
00:06:54,280 --> 00:06:55,280
You got to do it that way, right?

107
00:06:55,280 --> 00:07:00,360
Back to the using joke, I mean, I think once you do start, once you try it, once you
go

108
00:07:00,360 --> 00:07:05,400
through the steps, whether you're, I guess, a developer or even just the user, once
you

109
00:07:05,400 --> 00:07:10,680
start using it, you really do start to understand sort of the why and how it works.

110
00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:12,800
The software is there, it's available.

111
00:07:12,800 --> 00:07:16,400
I have to admit myself, I haven't tried it.

112
00:07:16,400 --> 00:07:20,240
I know it's like testing that still like very like, oh, that's fine, you know, and
we constantly

113
00:07:20,240 --> 00:07:21,240
improve it.

114
00:07:21,240 --> 00:07:28,120
So, of course, every version is now very shameful in respect to the current version.

115
00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:33,880
And even the current version is the one that Patrick and I are tinkering on is that
we

116
00:07:33,880 --> 00:07:38,240
have the newest version, which is even better, and it's shameful for people to
download

117
00:07:38,240 --> 00:07:40,080
the old version.

118
00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:44,960
But it does work and you can send coins to different pieces of software and back,
which

119
00:07:44,960 --> 00:07:45,960
is the goal.

120
00:07:45,960 --> 00:07:49,600
And you can mostly see what it's doing.

121
00:07:49,600 --> 00:07:50,760
So that's nice.

122
00:07:50,760 --> 00:07:52,960
Using it would obviously be the best way for people to learn.

123
00:07:52,960 --> 00:07:59,800
But for those that haven't, and I know you've done this a thousand times, can we
just quickly

124
00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:07,480
provide an overview why Drivechain and sort of what would be the benefit of using
Drivechain?

125
00:08:07,480 --> 00:08:14,440
Yeah, well, OK, it's weird because for some reason it's much more challenging to
explain

126
00:08:14,440 --> 00:08:17,520
than I originally had thought.

127
00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:21,360
And I think there must be some kind of social or emotional reason for this, because
the

128
00:08:21,360 --> 00:08:27,480
objections people have are all ones that I anticipated when I wrote the original
November

129
00:08:27,480 --> 00:08:31,400
2015 blog post about this idea.

130
00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:37,280
And every objection I've gotten since, it's kind of surprising to me.

131
00:08:37,280 --> 00:08:43,360
If I reread the old post, I'm just like, yeah, I knew exactly where the stumbling
would be,

132
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:46,000
but I've done apparently not enough to.

133
00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:51,800
But yeah, what it does is one thing, the problem it tries to solve is that people
are very

134
00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:59,760
different and we all disagree about what Bitcoin should do or what it should be.

135
00:08:59,760 --> 00:09:05,120
And for the most part, we don't disagree enough for it to be problematic.

136
00:09:05,120 --> 00:09:14,720
But eventually you have stuff like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, et cetera, Zcash.

137
00:09:14,720 --> 00:09:18,040
So there are these disagreements among people.

138
00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:23,920
So there's one school of thought says that, well, everyone can just deal with it
and,

139
00:09:23,920 --> 00:09:32,920
you know, we'll just, we don't, everyone, Bitcoin is preordained to win and
everything

140
00:09:32,920 --> 00:09:37,880
else is a scam that will collapse into the dust in ruin.

141
00:09:37,880 --> 00:09:44,040
And everyone will be saying, please let me into the Bitcoin Citadel, please, you
know,

142
00:09:44,040 --> 00:09:48,080
whatever, be a good servant or whatever it is.

143
00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:51,000
So that's this one view that people have.

144
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:56,280
But I think that that is pushing it just a little too far.

145
00:09:56,280 --> 00:10:00,880
And so I've gone with this Drivechain idea, which is the original concept behind
side

146
00:10:00,880 --> 00:10:04,560
chains, which is that if you really want Bitcoin to do something else, you should be
able to

147
00:10:04,560 --> 00:10:11,360
start a completely new piece of software that has no coins on it, no Bitcoin.

148
00:10:11,360 --> 00:10:18,000
And you can send Bitcoin from Bitcoin Core over there and over there you can do
whatever

149
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:23,000
you like and the coins can change hands an unlimited number of times in an unlimited

150
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:24,600
number of ways.

151
00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:28,200
And then the new owners can redeem them.

152
00:10:28,200 --> 00:10:29,840
This is the trick.

153
00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:36,520
The new owners can redeem them back for original layer one Bitcoin Core BTC.

154
00:10:36,520 --> 00:10:39,760
So Drivechain is a layer two, like the Lightning Network.

155
00:10:39,760 --> 00:10:44,560
And sort of the two, well, I'm sure there's more, but the two benefits that I'm
hearing

156
00:10:44,560 --> 00:10:49,240
from the answer and what I understand anyway, is that one, it can help with scaling
over

157
00:10:49,240 --> 00:10:52,000
time because you're not doing everything on the main chain.

158
00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:54,600
And the second is that you can sort of do what you want.

159
00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:55,600
You can be creative.

160
00:10:55,600 --> 00:10:57,200
You can do other things.

161
00:10:57,200 --> 00:11:00,880
Not talking about any risks or problems, but those will be the two main benefits.

162
00:11:00,880 --> 00:11:07,720
I think it discharges this negative energy that builds up when people say they want,

163
00:11:08,040 --> 00:11:10,040
you can see it with the scaling war.

164
00:11:10,040 --> 00:11:14,080
Some people said they want, and you even see it now about what was the last, we had
this

165
00:11:14,080 --> 00:11:21,520
absurd dust up over that variable name being changed from blacklist to blocklist or
whatever.

166
00:11:21,520 --> 00:11:22,520
So people disagree.

167
00:11:22,520 --> 00:11:24,840
We live in a world where people disagree.

168
00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:29,680
And I think it was only because the Bitcoin community was small and had a unified
purpose

169
00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:33,000
that it made it like the first five years.

170
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:39,480
And then if people disagree and you see what happens when people disagree, well,
they either

171
00:11:39,480 --> 00:11:45,840
try to change Bitcoin into what they want or they have to leave or they do a fork or

172
00:11:45,840 --> 00:11:46,840
they do something else.

173
00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:52,000
So whatever it is, I see it as this ominous threat to Bitcoin and also a lost
opportunity

174
00:11:52,000 --> 00:11:56,000
because who's to say that the new thing is better?

175
00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:57,940
It could be better.

176
00:11:57,940 --> 00:11:59,760
It could be worse, of course.

177
00:11:59,760 --> 00:12:04,920
And so this is the key with the original sidechains concept, it just says, well, if

178
00:12:04,920 --> 00:12:08,000
people want to try the new thing, they can.

179
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:10,320
And if they're happy with that, then they're happy.

180
00:12:10,320 --> 00:12:12,900
The old people don't have to put up with the new thing.

181
00:12:12,900 --> 00:12:19,000
So they're firewalled, they're safely ignoring everything that's happening.

182
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:24,560
The design, the chief design consideration of Drivechain is that the main chain be
able

183
00:12:24,560 --> 00:12:34,200
to ignore as much as possible, to the greatest possible extent, everything done by
the sidechains.

184
00:12:34,200 --> 00:12:37,920
So it is first and foremost conservative, actually.

185
00:12:37,920 --> 00:12:43,560
And it's much more conservative than, for example, SegWit, which is a mandatory
block

186
00:12:43,560 --> 00:12:45,020
size increase.

187
00:12:45,020 --> 00:12:48,360
And I think it's even more conservative than actually doing nothing because then
going

188
00:12:48,360 --> 00:12:54,980
without Drivechain and doing nothing at all because there will be this problem
growing

189
00:12:54,980 --> 00:13:01,360
beneath the surface as people's dissatisfaction or misunderstanding or whatever you
want to

190
00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:04,040
call it will slowly be rising up.

191
00:13:04,040 --> 00:13:10,520
So I actually think it is the sort of the premier Bitcoin maximalist project.

192
00:13:10,520 --> 00:13:14,320
But a lot of them don't feel that way.

193
00:13:15,080 --> 00:13:20,400
Instead, it's often cast as like this weird, risky project, which is a very
interesting

194
00:13:20,400 --> 00:13:21,760
misinterpretation of it.

195
00:13:21,760 --> 00:13:22,760
We can talk about that a little bit.

196
00:13:22,760 --> 00:13:27,160
I mean, first of all, I definitely recommend people to look at your blog, of course.

197
00:13:27,160 --> 00:13:28,480
I was listening to our last interview.

198
00:13:28,480 --> 00:13:29,480
I said this at the beginning.

199
00:13:29,480 --> 00:13:33,600
I'd say it again for sure, like definitely a wealth of knowledge in all of your
various

200
00:13:33,600 --> 00:13:34,600
blogs.

201
00:13:34,600 --> 00:13:41,440
Yeah, that site drivechain.info has like tons of like, there's like memes, there's
explanations,

202
00:13:41,440 --> 00:13:43,360
there's links to giant videos.

203
00:13:43,400 --> 00:13:47,720
I have like the YouTube series of videos that you can find in there in the
literature section.

204
00:13:47,720 --> 00:13:51,600
There's like blog posts, there's answers, I think, to pretty much every question one

205
00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:53,680
might have. And you have the FAQ.

206
00:13:53,680 --> 00:14:00,640
I have a part where I respond to expert critiques, the peer review section.

207
00:14:00,640 --> 00:14:02,360
Yeah. Yeah. That's where I wanted to go next.

208
00:14:02,360 --> 00:14:08,040
In fact, the risk tradeoffs you just mentioned are listed on the main page, which I

209
00:14:08,040 --> 00:14:12,120
definitely encourage people to read, which I think you just you just touched upon.

210
00:14:12,120 --> 00:14:14,720
But we can we can still talk about the benefits as we go on.

211
00:14:14,720 --> 00:14:18,320
But I think just in the interest of time, I'm curious to see if there's any updates
or

212
00:14:18,320 --> 00:14:22,920
any latest, because, you know, two critiques you basically have mentioned.

213
00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:25,960
Do you want to go through those and maybe if there's any sort of latest thoughts?

214
00:14:25,960 --> 00:14:30,400
Well, I think it's better if people read them, I think, because it's the type of
thing

215
00:14:30,400 --> 00:14:31,720
that should be considered carefully.

216
00:14:31,720 --> 00:14:38,760
But as I say, if you read them on the site, I even say at the beginning, I say both
of

217
00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:47,560
them are so tangled up that they're false in like so many different ways and for so

218
00:14:47,560 --> 00:14:53,280
many different reasons that when I try to explain it in person, I often trip myself
up

219
00:14:53,280 --> 00:14:57,960
because there's just so many every aspect of them is false.

220
00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:00,800
Let me just read them, though, in case someone's like jogging and listening to this.

221
00:15:00,800 --> 00:15:03,480
Yes, I think they will now they want to know what they are.

222
00:15:03,480 --> 00:15:05,600
Yeah. You're talking about the miners can steal.

223
00:15:05,600 --> 00:15:10,880
And then this super obscure one about minor centralization censorship.

224
00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:12,040
Yeah. Mining centralization.

225
00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:18,040
The data gets too too heavy on the main chain because you have to bring data back
from the

226
00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:21,920
sidechain on the main chain to make sure they're reading each other.

227
00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:23,320
I guess you want to start with that one.

228
00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:29,200
Sure. The second one about onerous requirements, as I said, this is just one version
of the

229
00:15:29,760 --> 00:15:35,200
misinterpretation of the whole design is so that everyone should be able to ignore
the

230
00:15:35,200 --> 00:15:36,640
sidechains as much as possible.

231
00:15:36,840 --> 00:15:42,360
Right. So this is a critique that says that I haven't lived up to that.

232
00:15:43,280 --> 00:15:48,640
And it says that it says wrongly that even though use regular users don't need to

233
00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:51,920
download the. sidechain.

234
00:15:53,360 --> 00:15:59,160
Blockchain or run any sidechain full node software, it's still the case that miners

235
00:15:59,160 --> 00:16:01,600
need to do that, which isn't even true.

236
00:16:02,560 --> 00:16:06,960
So that's not even true because of this other thing called Blind Merged Mining that I

237
00:16:08,280 --> 00:16:11,200
invented. But and it's also not true.

238
00:16:11,200 --> 00:16:12,720
I mean, it's again like everything.

239
00:16:12,840 --> 00:16:16,040
The whole stack of concepts is completely false.

240
00:16:16,080 --> 00:16:21,440
But it's not even true that I mean, today we just have hashers who just shot to 56
hash,

241
00:16:21,480 --> 00:16:27,400
whatever they're given. And then we have the pool mining pool operators who give the

242
00:16:27,400 --> 00:16:32,760
hashers the thing. And so the real story isn't even isn't anything like there being

243
00:16:32,760 --> 00:16:35,040
miners that would need to do anything.

244
00:16:35,360 --> 00:16:37,840
But people say that that's how we should think about it.

245
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:40,800
Or what if that was that way or etc, etc.

246
00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:47,680
So so that's the first leg of the misunderstanding is that that this is a

247
00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:52,680
requirement. Just one question, though, I mean, how does that compare to to what
happens

248
00:16:52,680 --> 00:16:54,160
in merged mining today?

249
00:16:54,760 --> 00:16:55,760
Because it happens.

250
00:16:55,800 --> 00:17:01,120
That's a good point, as we have for a while, we had we still have as far as I'm
aware,

251
00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:08,000
but we had Namecoin being merged mined with Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Litecoin.

252
00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:12,840
And if I'm I'm not sure that you should definitely talk to an actual miner.

253
00:17:12,840 --> 00:17:17,600
But my understanding was actually what happened was miners would run they'd have to

254
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:28,040
run the Namecoin software because it was this weird way of mining a Namecoin block
such

255
00:17:28,040 --> 00:17:34,400
that you also happened to produce a valid BTC block.

256
00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:36,680
So that was really the software you had to run.

257
00:17:37,440 --> 00:17:40,560
And so it was even more invasive, the regular merge mining.

258
00:17:41,200 --> 00:17:44,920
This is much less invasive because you don't even need to run the sidechain node at
all.

259
00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:48,720
But in both, you do have to have the Merkle root on the main chain.

260
00:17:48,760 --> 00:17:52,480
Yes, but you have the the Merkle root is in a coin based transaction on the main
chain.

261
00:17:52,480 --> 00:17:58,280
But of the old chain, I mean, now you only need the the coin based transaction on
the main

262
00:17:58,280 --> 00:18:02,520
chain, which you have in every case, no matter what, as long as you have the
blockchain,

263
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:04,080
especially if you're a miner.

264
00:18:04,440 --> 00:18:07,320
So what data comes from the auxiliary chain?

265
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:09,120
There is an entire blockchain over there.

266
00:18:09,120 --> 00:18:11,760
So there's a whole block, but it could be in any format you like.

267
00:18:11,760 --> 00:18:18,040
But we have a kind of sidechain template to make it easy for people to, as easy as

268
00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:23,160
possible for someone to fork and just make a new Drivechain or a new sidechain.

269
00:18:23,320 --> 00:18:28,400
I call them sidechains, but I'm still fighting this war over the terminology, but no

270
00:18:28,400 --> 00:18:34,840
one else is. So they might call these the sub chains, the child chains.

271
00:18:35,040 --> 00:18:36,320
You might call those Drivechains.

272
00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:39,800
I did want to ask you about that, too, but just on the point then about the data,
the way

273
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:44,360
that sidechains would work is the data that would get back to the main chain.

274
00:18:44,960 --> 00:18:48,880
As far as I understand, you posit it's less data that would have to be stored on the
main

275
00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:54,440
chain describing the sidechain than would happen in regular merge mining with an
altcoin.

276
00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:59,000
Well, there are a lot of variations, so I'm not sure that I could totally commit 100

277
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:04,920
percent to like exactly how many bytes this or that is required.

278
00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:12,320
But all of that stuff, the point is that everything the sidechain is doing that

279
00:19:12,320 --> 00:19:20,800
Drivechain cares about, Drivechain V, which is BIP300, to be a little more clear,

280
00:19:20,800 --> 00:19:27,600
like BIP300, that only all that's just looking at stuff in Coinbases and then
checking

281
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:37,480
to see if certain the withdrawal transactions, which are very rare, it sort of flips
the

282
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:39,880
switch on whether or not those are valid or invalid.

283
00:19:40,200 --> 00:19:45,480
But it's all looking it's only looking into the Coinbase of main chain Bitcoin
blocks,

284
00:19:45,480 --> 00:19:53,040
which it already has, because that stuff is that that got into the main Bitcoin
chain

285
00:19:53,040 --> 00:19:55,200
blockchain fair and square, just like everything else.

286
00:19:55,280 --> 00:20:00,560
So so you every node has to download all the transactions.

287
00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:05,040
And so this is just when something's in a Coinbase transaction, it's just, you know,

288
00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:08,200
that miners put it there.

289
00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:10,280
So that's a common convention.

290
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:11,360
SegWit also does that.

291
00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:12,960
A lot of things do that type of thing.

292
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:15,480
Any other thing to add then on that?

293
00:20:15,480 --> 00:20:16,560
Yeah, I think it's better.

294
00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:20,640
You know, this is like a complex technical argument, and I think it is.

295
00:20:21,560 --> 00:20:26,000
I'm happy to talk about it, but I would prefer because, you know, when I produce a
piece

296
00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:31,840
of writing, I have an opportunity to like really sit down and sort of try to edit it

297
00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:34,800
and then make it good.

298
00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:37,960
And then people ask me about it and then maybe I tinker with it some more.

299
00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:40,520
And so I think it's better if people read it on that site.

300
00:20:40,520 --> 00:20:44,760
But yeah, you can go to if you go to Drivechain.info and just scroll down a little
bit, you'll

301
00:20:44,760 --> 00:20:50,280
eventually see a part where it says, you know, where I respond to common critiques.

302
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,480
I have that FAQ and I have a peer review, Common Critiques, and you can click the
link

303
00:20:54,480 --> 00:20:55,920
and it will take you to that site.

304
00:20:56,200 --> 00:21:01,480
And at the bottom of that site where I have the two arguments, I have I haven't
finished

305
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:02,960
one of them, but one I did finish.

306
00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:11,280
I have a post about why Drivechain is harder to understand than other soft forks.

307
00:21:11,880 --> 00:21:17,320
So if you are familiar with the history of soft forks, it may be more difficult for
you

308
00:21:17,320 --> 00:21:19,280
to understand Drivechain because it's very different.

309
00:21:19,880 --> 00:21:22,320
And this kind of never occurred to me before.

310
00:21:23,440 --> 00:21:28,680
But then it did occur to me, and so I wrote that piece, which has six or so reasons
why

311
00:21:28,680 --> 00:21:35,440
it's very, very different than SegWit, you know, like all the soft forks that
Satoshi

312
00:21:35,440 --> 00:21:36,560
was initiating.

313
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:41,560
Yeah, very different from like check, lock, time, check, lock, time, verify.

314
00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:46,480
We have a lot of words, I was just noticing that we have a lot of words in Bitcoin
where

315
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:51,560
it's like they start validate, verify, you know, blockchain, Bitcoin, mainchain, we
have

316
00:21:51,560 --> 00:21:53,320
a lot of words that are like very similar to each other.

317
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:59,160
I'm trying very hard to only say the right word, but it's finding it difficult all
of a

318
00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:04,080
sudden. But yeah, check, sequence, verify, check, lock, time, verify, those type of

319
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,960
things. What are some other soft forks?

320
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,240
P2SH, right?

321
00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:11,000
That was a soft fork at some point.

322
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:14,920
The UASF would be a different type of fork then, though, right?

323
00:22:15,640 --> 00:22:20,360
Well, that was a different style of activation of a fork, but to activate SegWit.

324
00:22:21,480 --> 00:22:28,040
But SegWit, SegWit's pretty different in itself, since it was really kind of a hard
fork, to

325
00:22:28,040 --> 00:22:33,760
be honest with you, since it's the regular Bitcoin blockchain was kind of
obliterated from

326
00:22:33,760 --> 00:22:37,280
that point forward and this new one was created.

327
00:22:38,640 --> 00:22:43,760
So it's actually a very violent change to the blockchain, but not a lot of people
know.

328
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:48,160
So few people know anything about that, that I think if I worry that if I even talk
about

329
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:53,640
it, this will be flagged as like SegWit flat-eartherism or something and I'll be

330
00:22:53,920 --> 00:22:55,560
unpersonate or whatever you want to call it.

331
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:59,120
No, well, anyway, we can we can keep moving on that then.

332
00:22:59,120 --> 00:23:04,080
But I mean, I was still curious because of the two critiques that you mentioned,
sort of

333
00:23:04,080 --> 00:23:08,880
the latest feedback and update from other developers.

334
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:12,800
I mean, you listed a lot at the bottom of that page as well.

335
00:23:13,120 --> 00:23:14,280
Well, I haven't really.

336
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:20,960
There's been no like I've been going less and less interested in going to Bitcoin

337
00:23:20,960 --> 00:23:27,400
conferences over time, in part because I think the quality has declined a lot and a
lot

338
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:32,640
of like sociopaths have moved in, I think, and sort of captured them, which is this
is

339
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:36,320
this geeks, mobs and sociopaths essay that everyone should be familiar with.

340
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:42,480
You've linked to that. Yeah, I really think that's very important for

341
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:44,960
Bitcoiners to read.

342
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,480
But the other thing is, you know, because of Covid and everything, a lot of that's
been

343
00:23:48,480 --> 00:23:51,640
shut down. And so there just hasn't been a lot of talking.

344
00:23:51,720 --> 00:23:55,560
But, yeah, I have spoken to people in person.

345
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:03,320
You know, like as recently as last year, and yeah, a lot of people, you know, I've
said

346
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:07,000
I don't know if I should name them by name, but I know you don't have to drop names.

347
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:12,320
I was just curious. I have a lot of people named in the list and so that I can sort
of

348
00:24:12,320 --> 00:24:13,880
say, like, this is a real list.

349
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:15,840
It's not like some stupid list.

350
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:18,800
And those are some of the people I've talked with.

351
00:24:18,960 --> 00:24:25,680
And, yeah, some of them will say things like, if Bitcoin had it, I would use it.

352
00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:30,400
But I don't think that Bitcoin should add it or something like that.

353
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:33,760
Or one person said, these are like very elite people that I respect.

354
00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:36,080
And so you should respect them, too.

355
00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:39,160
And they say, but they say these things that are very silly to me.

356
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:48,200
One of them said, one of them said, I think it's too much of a risk for the users.

357
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:55,240
And I said, well, do you think the users should be able to sell their Bitcoin for
fiat

358
00:24:55,240 --> 00:24:56,760
currency? And I said, yes.

359
00:24:56,760 --> 00:24:59,800
And I said, do you think they should be able to sell their Bitcoin for altcoins?

360
00:25:00,266 --> 00:25:03,826
And they said, yes, of course, because what are you going to say?

361
00:25:03,826 --> 00:25:06,186
You can't say no. And then I say, well, what do you know?

362
00:25:06,226 --> 00:25:11,746
This is just this is basically just this is less risky than that.

363
00:25:11,746 --> 00:25:20,906
This is just sending your Bitcoin to a certain kind of script on the main chain and
then, you know, hoping to get it back from the script.

364
00:25:21,666 --> 00:25:24,986
That's that's definitely as big as the risk could ever be.

365
00:25:25,906 --> 00:25:40,106
I do also think that some of the stuff on there is a kind of death cult in Bitcoin
or something, a kind of there's a kind of weird fringe that is very sort of
religious and is very conservative.

366
00:25:40,426 --> 00:25:47,906
And I think that's behind the second critique is just like anything that could
possibly ever contaminate Bitcoin must be exterminated.

367
00:25:47,906 --> 00:25:51,026
And the Bitcoin is perfect and preordained to take over the world.

368
00:25:51,186 --> 00:25:59,026
So if you believe that type of thing, then you cannot obviously come around to my
point of view.

369
00:25:59,026 --> 00:26:04,586
I think a lot of it also is that I'm giving people what they want, which some people
don't like.

370
00:26:04,586 --> 00:26:08,186
I'm saying Roger Ver could get what he wanted on BTC.

371
00:26:08,546 --> 00:26:11,186
I'm saying even Vitalik Buterin could get what he wanted on BTC.

372
00:26:11,186 --> 00:26:14,546
A lot of people find that to be abhorrent, like emotionally.

373
00:26:14,546 --> 00:26:18,586
I think it's a lot of the critiques are are irrational.

374
00:26:19,586 --> 00:26:24,586
Hey, just a quick break to remind you that this show is sponsored by HODLHODL.

375
00:26:24,586 --> 00:26:31,946
HODLHODL is the fastest and most secure way to buy or sell Bitcoin without
verification and with the lowest fees on the market.

376
00:26:31,946 --> 00:26:36,906
Trade in any country in the world for any payment method and any currency.

377
00:26:36,906 --> 00:26:45,386
So go ahead and sign up with the link HODLHODL.com join crypto voices and get a
discounted trading fee forever.

378
00:26:45,626 --> 00:26:50,666
HODLHODL.com join crypto voices when you sign up, you won't regret it.

379
00:26:51,146 --> 00:26:55,186
Thanks again to Max, Roma and everybody over at HODLHODL for the support.

380
00:26:55,186 --> 00:27:03,466
And a reminder, they also organized the very well run and fantastic Baltic Honey
Badger Bitcoin conference every fall in Riga.

381
00:27:03,986 --> 00:27:07,986
So head on over to HODLHODL.com join crypto voices.

382
00:27:08,106 --> 00:27:09,626
Thanks again and back to the show.

383
00:27:10,626 --> 00:27:16,626
You're making me think about another question I had, which I hadn't asked yet.

384
00:27:16,626 --> 00:27:21,626
Taking a step back, I wanted to ask you this, like you've been in Bitcoin a long,
long time.

385
00:27:21,626 --> 00:27:34,626
If you looked back at all of the various scaling proposals, how they have been
activated or not been activated, what is your sort of general summary today like
towards Bitcoin?

386
00:27:34,626 --> 00:27:36,626
I don't know, like something as simple as like positive, negative.

387
00:27:36,626 --> 00:27:37,626
How do you feel?

388
00:27:38,626 --> 00:27:39,626
Just bird's eye view.

389
00:27:39,626 --> 00:27:40,626
How do you think it's gone?

390
00:27:40,626 --> 00:27:41,626
Are you surprised?

391
00:27:41,626 --> 00:27:42,626
Are you surprised?

392
00:27:42,626 --> 00:27:44,626
Oh, I think still positive.

393
00:27:44,626 --> 00:27:48,626
I am. I'm very concerned, but I think it is still positive.

394
00:27:48,626 --> 00:28:06,626
I think that the I mean, for instance, I don't support like the decision to just
jump ship suddenly to BCH in 2017 was something that I did not think would work.

395
00:28:06,626 --> 00:28:13,626
And obviously, right now, it looks as though I was right about that, as were many
people.

396
00:28:14,626 --> 00:28:20,626
And I certainly don't really support leaving for altcoin land.

397
00:28:20,626 --> 00:28:27,626
So that's that's something that you have to bring up, because a lot of people say,
like, how do you feel about this or that?

398
00:28:27,626 --> 00:28:29,626
And it's like, well, what's your what's your plan?

399
00:28:29,626 --> 00:28:34,626
You know, this is like when I was talking with the Krayowitz debate, it's like the
Snowpiercer train.

400
00:28:34,626 --> 00:28:41,626
It's like, well, you can complain, but what's the plan is to just leave the train
and just die immediately from frostbite, you know, like.

401
00:28:41,626 --> 00:28:51,626
So in many ways, it's a failure of the dissidents to come up with anything enticing
as an alternative.

402
00:28:51,626 --> 00:28:54,626
So a lot of the plans are terrible.

403
00:28:54,626 --> 00:28:56,626
These these other projects.

404
00:28:56,626 --> 00:29:04,626
So but about scaling, I mean, I think the summary is just that Bitcoin is it is a
type of programmable money.

405
00:29:05,626 --> 00:29:29,626
And it has since it is programmable and controlled by computer software, it's
different from the US dollar and gold in that it has the property that you could
design ways of moving it that, you know, that produce these these other layers.

406
00:29:30,626 --> 00:29:34,626
So you can't really you can do it with credit.

407
00:29:36,626 --> 00:29:38,626
You can do that with any money, which is how the US dollar does it.

408
00:29:39,626 --> 00:29:49,626
I know this is something that interests you, this hierarchical structure of with the
base money and broad money, M1, M2, M3, euro dollars.

409
00:29:49,626 --> 00:29:51,626
I know that you are very interested in that.

410
00:29:51,626 --> 00:29:52,626
So maybe we can talk about it.

411
00:29:52,626 --> 00:29:57,626
But that is all achieved with credit, with people agreeing to do act a certain way.

412
00:29:57,626 --> 00:29:58,626
They could act otherwise.

413
00:29:59,626 --> 00:30:12,626
It's just that since it's all tied up in extremely formal and important, you know,
legal contracts and governments and, you know, the army, Fort Knox, et cetera.

414
00:30:13,626 --> 00:30:18,626
Yeah. In de facto, it does not break down.

415
00:30:18,626 --> 00:30:37,626
It does work as designed, producing the side effects, of course, that, you know, the
government can force banks to do basically be police officers and the sort of
deputized is the term right where the bank is supposed to be watching for illegal
activity instead of just being the best at moving your money around.

416
00:30:38,626 --> 00:30:45,626
It's supposed to not just specialize in doing that, but also specialize in law
enforcement.

417
00:30:46,626 --> 00:30:59,626
Which is obviously different from like Panera Bread or something where they just
they they're interested in whether or not you paid for your bread, but they are not
very much interested in anything else that you're doing.

418
00:31:00,626 --> 00:31:04,626
Obviously, like anyone, they would if you shot someone in their store, they would
report a crime.

419
00:31:04,626 --> 00:31:06,626
But that's very different from what banks are supposed to be doing.

420
00:31:07,626 --> 00:31:11,626
Supposed to be doing a lot to enforce laws.

421
00:31:12,626 --> 00:31:14,626
So that's the credit world.

422
00:31:15,626 --> 00:31:18,626
So you can do anything with credit, but then you get into all this political stuff.

423
00:31:19,626 --> 00:31:21,626
Bitcoin is already doing that, by the way, and they have for a long time.

424
00:31:21,626 --> 00:31:22,626
I mean, yeah, of course.

425
00:31:22,626 --> 00:31:23,626
Absolutely. Everything.

426
00:31:23,626 --> 00:31:25,626
Well, yeah, almost everything.

427
00:31:26,626 --> 00:31:34,626
Once anything of value exists, there's usually a complex nexus of stakeholders in
that thing.

428
00:31:35,626 --> 00:31:44,626
So even if you have a car, you might own the car, but maybe someone else drives it,
your friend or children or something.

429
00:31:44,626 --> 00:31:45,626
I don't know.

430
00:31:45,626 --> 00:31:50,626
But so you have different users of the car and people who operate the vehicle.

431
00:31:50,626 --> 00:31:55,626
But then you also have this concept that there's a risk if you drive a car that you
might hit other people.

432
00:31:56,626 --> 00:31:58,626
So there's driver's license.

433
00:32:00,626 --> 00:32:05,626
And even then there's all this other stuff about the brand of the car, suppliers of
the car.

434
00:32:06,626 --> 00:32:13,626
So even just once something exists, there's this complicated world of, are you
allowed to just junk the car?

435
00:32:15,626 --> 00:32:19,626
In some states, you cannot leave a junked car in your driveway because it's an
eyesore.

436
00:32:20,626 --> 00:32:22,626
So the life cycle of the car.

437
00:32:22,626 --> 00:32:24,626
So this is a very complicated situation.

438
00:32:25,626 --> 00:32:26,626
I like where you're going, actually.

439
00:32:26,626 --> 00:32:27,626
It's interesting.

440
00:32:27,626 --> 00:32:31,626
I don't want to completely derail the Drivechain discussion, but I think we'll come
back to it.

441
00:32:32,626 --> 00:32:33,626
Because this is one of the things I always think is interesting.

442
00:32:34,626 --> 00:32:36,626
There's definitely no problem scaling Bitcoin.

443
00:32:37,626 --> 00:32:42,626
As Hal Finney said, possibly Bitcoin banks and obviously exchanges today are Bitcoin
banks.

444
00:32:43,626 --> 00:32:45,626
Just sort of a real world question as of late.

445
00:32:45,626 --> 00:32:55,626
What do you think, in the span of two weeks, you had Kraken in the state of Wyoming
being granted a banking license,

446
00:32:55,626 --> 00:32:58,626
which is quite incredible as far as I'm concerned.

447
00:32:58,626 --> 00:33:00,626
A real United States banking charter.

448
00:33:01,626 --> 00:33:09,626
And then two weeks later, the DOJ goes after BitMEX, which isn't even in a United
States jurisdiction.

449
00:33:09,626 --> 00:33:15,626
And at least theoretically, we know this is theoretically, is not open to US
customers.

450
00:33:15,626 --> 00:33:17,626
What did you think about just that juxtaposition?

451
00:33:18,626 --> 00:33:19,626
That's fascinating.

452
00:33:19,626 --> 00:33:24,626
I thought you were going to say, and then PayPal did the reverse where they were a
bank and it sort of became an exchange.

453
00:33:25,626 --> 00:33:26,626
Really, did they not?

454
00:33:26,626 --> 00:33:27,626
They did.

455
00:33:27,626 --> 00:33:29,626
Because you can't move the coin.

456
00:33:29,626 --> 00:33:30,626
You can't redeem the coins.

457
00:33:31,626 --> 00:33:32,626
Embarrassing side product.

458
00:33:33,626 --> 00:33:34,626
Isn't that weird?

459
00:33:34,626 --> 00:33:36,626
PayPal became a Bitcoin exchange.

460
00:33:36,626 --> 00:33:37,626
PayPal is the third one.

461
00:33:37,626 --> 00:33:38,626
Let's get to PayPal in a second.

462
00:33:39,626 --> 00:33:42,626
Yes, this is a fascinating world of credit.

463
00:33:43,626 --> 00:33:47,626
And with credit, you can do anything because you just have a blank piece of paper.

464
00:33:47,626 --> 00:33:48,626
You just write, I will do this.

465
00:33:48,626 --> 00:33:49,626
You will do that.

466
00:33:49,626 --> 00:33:50,626
And then you both sign it.

467
00:33:51,626 --> 00:33:57,626
You can do anything as long as the courts allow you.

468
00:33:57,626 --> 00:34:01,626
They'll enforce the contract and they won't use the contract.

469
00:34:01,626 --> 00:34:07,626
So if you say, I will sell you cocaine or something, that would be evidence of
illegal activity.

470
00:34:07,626 --> 00:34:11,626
So the government controls what contracts can be written.

471
00:34:12,626 --> 00:34:20,626
But what is subject to that important proviso, you can then do whatever you like as
long as it's a valid contract.

472
00:34:20,626 --> 00:34:21,626
So you can do whatever you like.

473
00:34:21,626 --> 00:34:23,626
And what do I think about it?

474
00:34:23,626 --> 00:34:24,626
Well, I don't know.

475
00:34:24,626 --> 00:34:25,626
Let me kind of answer your earlier questions.

476
00:34:25,626 --> 00:34:26,626
How do I feel about scalability?

477
00:34:26,626 --> 00:34:29,626
And all I'm saying is Bitcoin is programmable.

478
00:34:29,626 --> 00:34:38,626
So it has the property that you can build these other things on top of it that are
also programmable.

479
00:34:38,626 --> 00:34:52,626
So if you have any kind of cool software thing, whatever you want to call it,
lightning network, Drivechain, state chains, you can kind of inherit upwards.

480
00:34:52,626 --> 00:34:55,626
You don't have to go into the credit world.

481
00:34:55,626 --> 00:35:02,626
So this is like you're trying to go across the room without touching the ground
because the ground is lava or whatever.

482
00:35:02,626 --> 00:35:04,626
It's like you're trying not to touch the credit world.

483
00:35:04,626 --> 00:35:07,626
The credit world is cheating because you can do whatever you like there.

484
00:35:07,626 --> 00:35:08,626
Right.

485
00:35:08,626 --> 00:35:18,626
But you are then in the political world and money is supposed to be individualist
and is supposed to subvert collectivism.

486
00:35:18,626 --> 00:35:20,626
It's supposed to be private.

487
00:35:20,626 --> 00:35:22,626
So money, it doesn't actually doesn't have a great.

488
00:35:22,626 --> 00:35:23,626
It's weird.

489
00:35:23,626 --> 00:35:26,626
I was going to say the money doesn't have a great relationship with credit.

490
00:35:26,626 --> 00:35:29,626
That's obviously that sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

491
00:35:29,626 --> 00:35:30,626
But I take your point.

492
00:35:30,626 --> 00:35:42,626
It's kind of like the core concept of money is one that is distinct from it's very
different from like owing someone a favor or having prestige in a group.

493
00:35:42,626 --> 00:35:44,626
Money is this like kind of private thing.

494
00:35:44,626 --> 00:35:47,626
You don't care where other people got their money as long as they pay you.

495
00:35:47,626 --> 00:35:50,626
They say they're going to pay you ten thousand dollars or whatever.

496
00:35:50,626 --> 00:35:52,626
You don't ask any questions about where they got it.

497
00:35:52,626 --> 00:35:55,626
And no one asks you any questions about you.

498
00:35:55,626 --> 00:35:58,626
So there's I think one good way of putting it.

499
00:35:58,626 --> 00:36:01,626
Money is how we take care of the people we don't know.

500
00:36:01,626 --> 00:36:03,626
So it's something that scales.

501
00:36:03,626 --> 00:36:06,626
Money is inherently a scale thing.

502
00:36:06,626 --> 00:36:08,626
If I can make this one.

503
00:36:08,626 --> 00:36:21,626
This is a very important tangent to go on, which is that I made this point a few
weeks ago, which is that if you had five or six or seven people on a desert island
stranded.

504
00:36:22,626 --> 00:36:26,626
But they were immortal and they lived for thousands of years.

505
00:36:26,626 --> 00:36:29,626
They would eventually invent a lot of things.

506
00:36:29,626 --> 00:36:32,626
They would invent electricity eventually.

507
00:36:32,626 --> 00:36:35,626
They would invent roads.

508
00:36:35,626 --> 00:36:37,626
They would invent insulation.

509
00:36:37,626 --> 00:36:39,626
They would invent windows.

510
00:36:39,626 --> 00:36:44,626
But if there's only seven people on the island, I think they would never invent
money.

511
00:36:44,626 --> 00:36:46,626
They just wouldn't need it with seven people.

512
00:36:46,626 --> 00:36:47,626
No.

513
00:36:47,626 --> 00:36:53,626
It'd just be a very simple credit system, just like you have with your brother and
sister, you know, taking out the trash one night.

514
00:36:53,626 --> 00:36:55,626
The other person does it the other night.

515
00:36:55,626 --> 00:36:57,626
They would have contracts where they say, you owe me this.

516
00:36:57,626 --> 00:36:58,626
I owe you that.

517
00:36:58,626 --> 00:36:59,626
Yeah.

518
00:36:59,626 --> 00:37:00,626
I make the fire.

519
00:37:00,626 --> 00:37:01,626
I use the example all the time.

520
00:37:01,626 --> 00:37:02,626
I make the fire today.

521
00:37:02,626 --> 00:37:03,626
You make the fire tomorrow.

522
00:37:03,626 --> 00:37:04,626
That's for sure preceded.

523
00:37:04,626 --> 00:37:06,626
Reciprocity is obviously huge.

524
00:37:06,626 --> 00:37:10,626
And it's in all throughout Mother Nature as well as many precedents.

525
00:37:10,626 --> 00:37:14,626
Sidney Homer made that point actually in his tome, History of Interest Rates.

526
00:37:14,626 --> 00:37:20,626
Like credit in all times and all places definitely has preceded money for sure.

527
00:37:20,626 --> 00:37:21,626
Yeah.

528
00:37:21,626 --> 00:37:22,626
I would agree.

529
00:37:22,626 --> 00:37:26,626
Money is a technology for fix.

530
00:37:26,626 --> 00:37:30,626
Well, money has the property that it works even if you don't know the other person.

531
00:37:30,626 --> 00:37:31,626
Yeah.

532
00:37:31,626 --> 00:37:32,626
So that's the clever thing about it.

533
00:37:32,626 --> 00:37:35,626
And it works if the other person dies, if you die.

534
00:37:35,626 --> 00:37:37,626
So that's its benefits.

535
00:37:37,626 --> 00:37:38,626
Yeah.

536
00:37:38,626 --> 00:37:45,626
Once you go away, if you're an early settler, if you're traveling away from a place,
you're

537
00:37:45,626 --> 00:37:49,626
going to have to leave with either some sort of barter or with money.

538
00:37:49,626 --> 00:37:50,626
Yes.

539
00:37:50,626 --> 00:37:51,626
It's always been connected to travel.

540
00:37:51,626 --> 00:37:52,626
Yeah.

541
00:37:52,626 --> 00:37:53,626
Think about it.

542
00:37:53,626 --> 00:37:54,626
You have to travel with money.

543
00:37:54,626 --> 00:38:00,626
And that's because you're away from the people who you know, your friends and family
that

544
00:38:00,626 --> 00:38:03,626
would protect you or vouch for you or whatever.

545
00:38:03,626 --> 00:38:04,626
Yeah, for sure.

546
00:38:04,626 --> 00:38:05,626
I like that tangent.

547
00:38:06,626 --> 00:38:07,626
We cycled into too many.

548
00:38:07,626 --> 00:38:08,626
What were we originally talking about?

549
00:38:08,626 --> 00:38:09,626
Oh, yes.

550
00:38:09,626 --> 00:38:16,626
You wanted to ask about not PayPal, but the divergence in how people were treated,
Kraken

551
00:38:16,626 --> 00:38:17,626
and BitMEX.

552
00:38:17,626 --> 00:38:18,626
BitMEX.

553
00:38:18,626 --> 00:38:19,626
Yes.

554
00:38:19,626 --> 00:38:20,626
Well, yeah.

555
00:38:20,626 --> 00:38:29,626
I mean, with BitMEX, obviously hindsight is 20-20, but BitMEX was, I don't know.

556
00:38:29,626 --> 00:38:30,626
I don't know what to say about it.

557
00:38:30,626 --> 00:38:33,626
I mean, it was always going down this road.

558
00:38:34,626 --> 00:38:41,626
The exchanges always had problems with getting banks to help them since the days of
Mt.

559
00:38:41,626 --> 00:38:42,626
Gox.

560
00:38:42,626 --> 00:38:43,626
Right.

561
00:38:43,626 --> 00:38:44,626
This has always been a problem.

562
00:38:44,626 --> 00:38:48,626
And so what can you do except get a cozier and cozier relationship?

563
00:38:48,626 --> 00:38:55,626
I mean, so that was always like the Coinbase was always going to be reporting to the
IRS.

564
00:38:55,626 --> 00:38:57,626
I thought that was a good thing when they started doing that.

565
00:38:57,626 --> 00:39:01,626
Not necessarily a good thing for their customers.

566
00:39:01,626 --> 00:39:07,626
Not necessarily convenient for them as employees or managers.

567
00:39:07,626 --> 00:39:10,626
Not necessarily good politically or whatever.

568
00:39:10,626 --> 00:39:12,626
I just thought this is the evolution.

569
00:39:12,626 --> 00:39:16,626
It's a natural evolution of the enterprise.

570
00:39:16,626 --> 00:39:18,626
So they all have to be.

571
00:39:18,626 --> 00:39:22,626
The idea of Kraken being its own bank, I don't know.

572
00:39:23,626 --> 00:39:27,626
How different is that from just having a really good relationship with an existing
bank?

573
00:39:27,626 --> 00:39:33,626
I mean, I think that's probably superior because you don't have to explain all this
stuff to the centralized regulator.

574
00:39:33,626 --> 00:39:34,626
Yeah.

575
00:39:34,626 --> 00:39:38,626
So, I mean, Kraken now will have a reserve account at the Fed.

576
00:39:38,626 --> 00:39:39,626
Yeah.

577
00:39:39,626 --> 00:39:48,626
You know, people say gentrification of Bitcoin in some disparaging way, some in a
good way.

578
00:39:48,626 --> 00:39:51,626
I think that's something to keep your eye on.

579
00:39:52,626 --> 00:40:01,626
How would Amir Taki feel about people mostly, you know, about the way, I don't know.

580
00:40:01,626 --> 00:40:05,626
I think that's an important thing to watch.

581
00:40:05,626 --> 00:40:17,626
Is it going to lose some of its subversive quality from which it ultimately derives
its uniqueness and its value?

582
00:40:17,626 --> 00:40:19,626
There is no way.

583
00:40:19,626 --> 00:40:23,626
I agree with the people who say that Bitcoin should not scale.

584
00:40:23,626 --> 00:40:33,626
Like the BSV people, I just saw, because I don't know why I do this to myself, but
they had a weird series of presentations.

585
00:40:33,626 --> 00:40:38,626
And they want you to know who your miner is.

586
00:40:38,626 --> 00:40:40,626
That miner has like a fixed ID.

587
00:40:40,626 --> 00:40:46,626
So this is like undoing the whole point of mining, which is that the ID is fluid.

588
00:40:46,626 --> 00:40:47,626
Yeah.

589
00:40:47,626 --> 00:40:49,626
The ownership in the set is fluid.

590
00:40:49,626 --> 00:40:50,626
Yeah.

591
00:40:50,626 --> 00:40:55,626
But they want that to be fixed so that you can just connect to them via, it's
basically just like client server.

592
00:40:55,626 --> 00:40:57,626
And they're just the server.

593
00:40:57,626 --> 00:40:59,626
And you're the client.

594
00:40:59,626 --> 00:41:01,626
So they unpeer to peer it as well.

595
00:41:01,626 --> 00:41:03,626
So they, you know, they kind of flip it all around.

596
00:41:03,626 --> 00:41:09,626
And then they say, probably correctly, as far as I know, that they can get better.

597
00:41:09,626 --> 00:41:13,626
They can get immense scale and a great user experience.

598
00:41:13,626 --> 00:41:15,626
And I agree with that.

599
00:41:16,626 --> 00:41:18,626
I mean, I don't know why that wouldn't be the case.

600
00:41:18,626 --> 00:41:23,626
But obviously you can do that with Venmo or with PayPal or whatever.

601
00:41:23,626 --> 00:41:29,626
And that is, you know, then you're back in the world of credit.

602
00:41:29,626 --> 00:41:33,626
I mean, you are explicitly when they say we want to know who the miner is.

603
00:41:33,626 --> 00:41:41,626
So that's a good way of making this framework that we introduced do a little bit of
work in your head.

604
00:41:41,626 --> 00:41:48,626
You know, as you in the audience can use that framework on this BSV strategy,

605
00:41:48,626 --> 00:41:54,626
which is that it is crashing into the credit world where you can, again, you can do
anything very easily.

606
00:41:54,626 --> 00:41:59,626
With client server, it's very easy to say that server decides what happens.

607
00:41:59,626 --> 00:42:02,626
And we just agree.

608
00:42:02,626 --> 00:42:03,626
You just obey the server.

609
00:42:03,626 --> 00:42:04,626
Yeah.

610
00:42:04,626 --> 00:42:05,626
It's interesting, too.

611
00:42:05,626 --> 00:42:07,626
I remember years ago, I can't remember who was saying it.

612
00:42:07,626 --> 00:42:11,626
It was around the times of the XT and classic implementations.

613
00:42:11,626 --> 00:42:13,626
But I don't think it was people from there saying it.

614
00:42:13,626 --> 00:42:21,626
But this idea of miner centralization and identity being attached to it has
definitely been thrown out a lot over the years.

615
00:42:21,626 --> 00:42:22,626
Yeah, I know.

616
00:42:22,626 --> 00:42:24,626
I heard know your miner at some point.

617
00:42:24,626 --> 00:42:25,626
Was that a thing that I heard?

618
00:42:25,626 --> 00:42:26,626
It might have been.

619
00:42:26,626 --> 00:42:28,626
That's one of the weird days of 20s.

620
00:42:28,626 --> 00:42:30,626
I think, well, Bitcoin XT was 2015, was it not?

621
00:42:30,626 --> 00:42:31,626
Yeah.

622
00:42:31,626 --> 00:42:32,626
But that's what I'm talking about.

623
00:42:32,626 --> 00:42:33,626
Five, six years ago.

624
00:42:33,626 --> 00:42:38,626
And then I think 2016 was the year of all the blockchain without Bitcoin.

625
00:42:38,626 --> 00:42:40,626
That was just crazy.

626
00:42:40,626 --> 00:42:42,626
That was the craziest.

627
00:42:42,626 --> 00:42:45,626
That was the most stupefying year.

628
00:42:45,626 --> 00:42:47,626
It just couldn't make any sense.

629
00:42:47,626 --> 00:42:48,626
Yeah.

630
00:42:48,626 --> 00:42:50,626
And then Ethereum taking off and so on and so forth.

631
00:42:50,626 --> 00:42:54,626
Well, anyway, I want to keep a focus on these scaling issues.

632
00:42:54,626 --> 00:43:00,626
I just can't help myself, though, because I think there's just so many interesting
events that are taking place.

633
00:43:00,626 --> 00:43:05,626
Obviously, it's, you know, pretty heady days, scary days for a lot of people around
the world and whatnot.

634
00:43:05,626 --> 00:43:10,626
But like one more with what just happened then, like PayPal, you mentioned it.

635
00:43:10,626 --> 00:43:18,626
I think it's part of the natural progression of these companies are becoming big if
they want to operate.

636
00:43:18,626 --> 00:43:21,626
If they want to move U.S. dollars around, they need an account at the Fed.

637
00:43:21,626 --> 00:43:25,626
They either need to get one from a bank or they need one themselves.

638
00:43:25,626 --> 00:43:29,626
Would it be better if they all just like declare bankruptcy and close down for
Bitcoin?

639
00:43:29,626 --> 00:43:30,626
I don't think so.

640
00:43:30,626 --> 00:43:32,626
So I think it just is what it is.

641
00:43:32,626 --> 00:43:37,626
I was doing another interview and the PayPal news was like there were hints of it
for a long time and it was coming.

642
00:43:37,626 --> 00:43:38,626
I didn't even read.

643
00:43:38,626 --> 00:43:40,626
I was asked someone like, oh, you know, PayPal now and Bitcoin.

644
00:43:40,626 --> 00:43:41,626
What do you think?

645
00:43:41,626 --> 00:43:45,626
And like we're mid show is like, oh, actually, are they going to allow withdrawals
or not?

646
00:43:45,626 --> 00:43:46,626
And I looked it up.

647
00:43:46,626 --> 00:43:47,626
I was like, yes, of course.

648
00:43:47,626 --> 00:43:48,626
Well, that was funny.

649
00:43:48,626 --> 00:43:49,626
They should.

650
00:43:49,626 --> 00:43:50,626
I thought they would.

651
00:43:50,626 --> 00:43:52,626
But then, you know, again, that's the bias of us.

652
00:43:52,626 --> 00:43:53,626
We're Bitcoiners.

653
00:43:53,626 --> 00:43:55,626
So we just think, of course they will.

654
00:43:55,626 --> 00:43:56,626
Oh, yeah.

655
00:43:56,626 --> 00:43:58,626
I'll be able to get my private key and everything.

656
00:43:58,626 --> 00:44:01,626
And it'll be it'll be like blockchain, blockchain that info.

657
00:44:01,626 --> 00:44:02,626
Of course.

658
00:44:02,626 --> 00:44:04,626
And I'll be like, I'll be able to just have it.

659
00:44:04,626 --> 00:44:05,626
Right.

660
00:44:05,626 --> 00:44:06,626
It's exactly revolute over here.

661
00:44:06,626 --> 00:44:07,626
Yeah.

662
00:44:07,626 --> 00:44:08,626
That is absolutely.

663
00:44:08,626 --> 00:44:09,626
Can you even send Bitcoin?

664
00:44:09,626 --> 00:44:11,626
I think you must be able to.

665
00:44:11,626 --> 00:44:12,626
Right.

666
00:44:12,626 --> 00:44:13,626
You can send it.

667
00:44:13,626 --> 00:44:14,626
Well, I'm going to go off of now.

668
00:44:14,626 --> 00:44:17,626
I'm going to go off of revolutes rules because it's the same over here.

669
00:44:17,626 --> 00:44:21,626
But like you could send it to like other I'm sure you can send it to other users of
PayPal.

670
00:44:21,626 --> 00:44:22,626
Yeah, that would be a good question.

671
00:44:22,626 --> 00:44:27,626
See, that's what obviously other Bitcoin user, other PayPal people with a PayPal
account.

672
00:44:27,626 --> 00:44:29,626
It's just a bookkeeping transaction behind the scenes.

673
00:44:29,626 --> 00:44:33,626
As far as they're concerned, it's no different than switching from, you know.

674
00:44:33,626 --> 00:44:34,626
Right.

675
00:44:34,626 --> 00:44:36,626
British pounds to euros or whatever.

676
00:44:36,626 --> 00:44:38,626
So that's easy for them.

677
00:44:38,626 --> 00:44:40,626
But withdrawing, you cannot withdraw to your own wallet.

678
00:44:40,626 --> 00:44:42,626
But I was wondering about the big pay thing.

679
00:44:42,626 --> 00:44:44,626
Like, can you use PayPal to pay?

680
00:44:44,626 --> 00:44:47,626
That would be just amazing if you could not.

681
00:44:47,626 --> 00:44:49,626
You know, that's like how it is with revolute.

682
00:44:49,626 --> 00:44:52,626
Like it's a purely synthetic instrument.

683
00:44:52,626 --> 00:44:53,626
And I don't know.

684
00:44:53,626 --> 00:44:54,626
Good, bad is what it is.

685
00:44:54,626 --> 00:44:58,626
I mean, they got, you know, 300 million plus users.

686
00:44:58,626 --> 00:44:59,626
Well, we're in the credit.

687
00:44:59,626 --> 00:45:00,626
This is the credit world.

688
00:45:00,626 --> 00:45:01,626
So we're back in the credit world now.

689
00:45:01,626 --> 00:45:04,626
So now you have to.

690
00:45:04,626 --> 00:45:06,626
Yeah, I think it's good for Bitcoin, of course.

691
00:45:06,626 --> 00:45:10,626
Again, it's part of this natural progression.

692
00:45:10,626 --> 00:45:18,626
But, yeah, I think this is something that I think I definitely think that money and
banking just mystifies people.

693
00:45:18,626 --> 00:45:23,626
And I certainly, you know, I've learned a lot of new stuff just this year.

694
00:45:23,626 --> 00:45:25,626
And, yeah, it's difficult.

695
00:45:25,626 --> 00:45:31,626
But I think that if you want to be involved in Bitcoin, you have to know a little
bit about.

696
00:45:31,626 --> 00:45:37,626
If you don't, if you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say the credit
world, then that could be my fault.

697
00:45:37,626 --> 00:45:43,626
But I think that you should definitely try to figure out what I'm talking about with
that.

698
00:45:43,626 --> 00:45:48,626
And I think what programmable money allows is to do things where you don't have to
take it on faith.

699
00:45:48,626 --> 00:45:52,626
You know, you don't have to have that pool of cash and then that pool of IOUs.

700
00:45:52,626 --> 00:45:59,626
Can you summarize your sort of lay of the land for what different L2 technologies
look like then with Bitcoin?

701
00:45:59,626 --> 00:46:00,626
Yes.

702
00:46:00,626 --> 00:46:06,626
So sidechains are one, you know, a collection of multisigs, i.e. lightning is
another.

703
00:46:06,626 --> 00:46:08,626
Is there another kind?

704
00:46:08,626 --> 00:46:10,626
Well, there is state chains.

705
00:46:10,626 --> 00:46:12,626
There are a few that have been suggested.

706
00:46:12,626 --> 00:46:21,626
Some are, there's that one obscure one that a few people have played around with
that was related to hardware.

707
00:46:21,626 --> 00:46:22,626
Right.

708
00:46:22,626 --> 00:46:25,626
There was like a weird trusted thing.

709
00:46:25,626 --> 00:46:26,626
Opendime?

710
00:46:26,626 --> 00:46:28,626
That's not what I was thinking of.

711
00:46:28,626 --> 00:46:33,626
But I was thinking of like, I think Evan Goodsire posted something about it at some
point.

712
00:46:33,626 --> 00:46:34,626
T-chain or something.

713
00:46:34,626 --> 00:46:36,626
Oh, yeah, yeah.

714
00:46:36,626 --> 00:46:42,626
So there's been, I bring that up as an example because there are a lot of like small
ones that people aren't very interested in.

715
00:46:42,626 --> 00:46:43,626
Yeah.

716
00:46:43,626 --> 00:46:45,626
But the big, obviously the big one is lightning.

717
00:46:45,626 --> 00:46:55,626
Lightning is, lets you create off-chain transactions, a set of them that have the,
it's interesting.

718
00:46:55,626 --> 00:46:57,626
You can reinterpret them however you like.

719
00:46:57,626 --> 00:47:04,626
I mean, every lightning transaction is a valid Bitcoin transaction, but many of them
you don't need to broadcast.

720
00:47:04,626 --> 00:47:07,626
You can go from in a big sequence from one to the other.

721
00:47:07,626 --> 00:47:15,626
Lightning has a disadvantage in that you need, it's absolutely required.

722
00:47:15,626 --> 00:47:23,626
I mean, in practice, you really need two Bitcoin transactions on layer one in order
to onboard people to the lightning network.

723
00:47:23,626 --> 00:47:31,626
But you could make a lot of crazy improvements, which we won't make anytime soon.

724
00:47:32,626 --> 00:47:34,626
But I think you could chop it down.

725
00:47:34,626 --> 00:47:48,626
I don't know how, what the theoretical limit is, but it's probably something like, I
don't know how you could possibly get any better than, maybe it'd be 32 bytes
on-chain per person.

726
00:47:48,626 --> 00:47:55,626
And each transaction is like, for a regular transaction is like 250, 225 bytes or
so.

727
00:47:55,626 --> 00:47:59,626
So already it's like 500 bytes.

728
00:47:59,626 --> 00:48:09,626
But even if you did the craziest science imaginable, you could only chop it down to
like a tenth of that.

729
00:48:09,626 --> 00:48:16,626
And in practice, that's probably going to be, just in practice, you need people to
like get Bitcoin somehow.

730
00:48:16,626 --> 00:48:21,626
And then they need to open a channel.

731
00:48:22,626 --> 00:48:35,626
So in order for the lightning network to work, it needs to know where to pay you if
everyone else, their computers are all struck by asteroids or something.

732
00:48:35,626 --> 00:48:42,626
And so what I'm trying to say is it's not great for onboarding.

733
00:48:42,626 --> 00:48:49,626
It is really good for, it's phenomenal for people who interact a lot who don't trust
each other.

734
00:48:49,626 --> 00:48:52,626
It's phenomenal for speed.

735
00:48:52,626 --> 00:48:54,626
So I think it's great.

736
00:48:54,626 --> 00:48:58,626
I think for point of sale, it may be the ultimate lightning niche.

737
00:48:58,626 --> 00:49:06,626
Because when you buy the coffee or whatever, one thing is that you can't wait.

738
00:49:06,626 --> 00:49:07,626
You can't wait at all.

739
00:49:07,626 --> 00:49:11,626
I mean, you definitely can't even wait like for one confirmation.

740
00:49:11,626 --> 00:49:13,626
That would take forever.

741
00:49:13,626 --> 00:49:14,626
So that won't work.

742
00:49:14,626 --> 00:49:15,626
Already I complain.

743
00:49:15,626 --> 00:49:18,626
Before you could just swipe the credit card and run through.

744
00:49:18,626 --> 00:49:21,626
And now you have to put the stupid chip in.

745
00:49:21,626 --> 00:49:23,626
And then it beeps at you.

746
00:49:23,626 --> 00:49:25,626
And you have to take it out and put it back in.

747
00:49:25,626 --> 00:49:27,626
Then it beeps at you for leaving it in for too long.

748
00:49:27,626 --> 00:49:34,626
It's like this weird song and dance with the chip cards, which already is too long.

749
00:49:34,626 --> 00:49:37,626
A lot of places do the apps now.

750
00:49:37,626 --> 00:49:38,626
First world problems, Paul.

751
00:49:38,626 --> 00:49:40,626
Yeah, first world problems, certainly.

752
00:49:41,626 --> 00:49:49,626
Some places like Breakfast Style Place, they want you to pay in their app, which
obviously is better for them.

753
00:49:49,626 --> 00:49:52,626
It's like they're kind of a credit card.

754
00:49:52,626 --> 00:49:54,626
You have kind of a credit relationship with them.

755
00:49:54,626 --> 00:50:00,626
Maybe they bill you at the end of the month or maybe you pay up front like the gift
card type world.

756
00:50:00,626 --> 00:50:03,626
So the gift cards are great for these.

757
00:50:04,113 --> 00:50:13,833
The gift cards are phenomenal for any company because, of course, they can easily
with software just debit the gift card account behind the scenes.

758
00:50:13,833 --> 00:50:19,353
And then they don't have to pay for any of the credit card services, which are
expensive.

759
00:50:19,353 --> 00:50:28,833
You know, that's why those places, you try to get Chinese food and it'll say like
minimum five dollars, minimum ten dollars, whatever it is to use a credit card.

760
00:50:28,833 --> 00:50:32,753
Because the card stuff is expensive.

761
00:50:32,753 --> 00:50:36,353
It's like whatever it is, like seventy five cents plus like two percent or
something.

762
00:50:36,513 --> 00:50:41,873
Yeah. So the credit cards cost a lot and these places are trying to get out of it.

763
00:50:41,873 --> 00:50:43,913
So they have all these various schemes.

764
00:50:44,193 --> 00:50:48,713
One is this gift card sort of pay in an app scheme.

765
00:50:50,753 --> 00:50:52,553
So that might be a future with that.

766
00:50:52,873 --> 00:50:57,753
But with Lightning, it's great because Lightning transaction will settle instantly.

767
00:50:57,753 --> 00:50:59,673
You can just go there and settle.

768
00:51:00,513 --> 00:51:03,833
Some people argue that zero conf is actually safe.

769
00:51:03,833 --> 00:51:05,073
This is a debated point.

770
00:51:05,713 --> 00:51:12,793
If you go in person and your face is on their security cameras and your phone is
there, it connects to their Wi-Fi or something.

771
00:51:13,393 --> 00:51:27,073
And then you steal by reorging the transaction out, you replace by fee or you do
whatever, phony attack or something.

772
00:51:27,073 --> 00:51:31,393
You buy the coffee, but then you don't pay for it.

773
00:51:31,993 --> 00:51:40,913
Obviously, the computer will know immediately, their computer will know, and they
could just call the police and just say this person stole his coffee.

774
00:51:40,913 --> 00:51:45,113
So I don't know if so.

775
00:51:45,113 --> 00:51:48,073
Some people argue that zero conf on chain is actually pretty safe.

776
00:51:48,433 --> 00:51:52,273
I know that BCH obviously pushes that in their user experience.

777
00:51:52,273 --> 00:51:53,113
They push that.

778
00:51:53,113 --> 00:52:01,753
I know that Roger has worked really hard to make his app like work really fast when
people pay.

779
00:52:02,353 --> 00:52:16,273
It doesn't seem, you know, doesn't have that many users, of course, but you don't
like see a bunch of stories in the news about people constantly double spending each
other, you know, that you think that you might see if that were a problem.

780
00:52:16,273 --> 00:52:17,553
So maybe zero conf is safe.

781
00:52:17,553 --> 00:52:20,993
I don't know. People have to experiment, right, in a big thing like that.

782
00:52:20,993 --> 00:52:22,353
So that's Lightning Network.

783
00:52:23,393 --> 00:52:29,113
But Lightning Network, you know, the concern with Lightning Network is how
irrational the supporters have become.

784
00:52:29,113 --> 00:52:38,313
The people who work in the Lightning Network are very sane and grounded, and they
are doing a lot of hard work.

785
00:52:39,193 --> 00:52:40,553
A lot of supporters are crazy.

786
00:52:40,553 --> 00:52:48,593
You know, they just like it doesn't make it, you know, they think Lightning is the
messiah and it's going to save BTC.

787
00:52:48,593 --> 00:52:52,353
And if anyone complains about anything, you just say, oh, Lightning, whatever.

788
00:52:52,833 --> 00:52:53,913
So that's kind of annoying.

789
00:52:54,393 --> 00:52:55,473
I think it's pretty early, too.

790
00:52:55,593 --> 00:53:04,473
I mean, like the the growth of the channels was pretty fast in 2018, 2019, this
year, not as much.

791
00:53:05,153 --> 00:53:12,033
Like you said, if we get to that place where it's like ubiquitous and e-commerce and
point of sale, I don't know if you have thoughts.

792
00:53:12,033 --> 00:53:13,873
It seems to me it'll be a long way away.

793
00:53:13,873 --> 00:53:20,633
And that's actually kind of what I was trying to tie it together with just sort of
the state of Bitcoin's scaling, because it's interesting.

794
00:53:21,233 --> 00:53:26,393
You know, who would have thought, I don't know, you have all these like crazy
occurrences like Mt.

795
00:53:26,393 --> 00:53:32,273
Gox and whatnot, like, you know, six years ago and forward, all these hacks, all
these issues.

796
00:53:32,513 --> 00:53:36,073
But as far as I can tell, I mean, for sure, the most and we just talked about it
with PayPal, right?

797
00:53:36,073 --> 00:53:46,273
Like the most onboarded, like ubiquitous form of of sort of scaling up Bitcoin has
been via the centralized exchange.

798
00:53:46,433 --> 00:53:49,273
Yeah, I don't think that a lot of people buy.

799
00:53:50,233 --> 00:53:55,193
And leave the coins on the exchange because they don't know what to do.

800
00:53:55,193 --> 00:54:05,793
And they do know correctly that if they move the coins off the exchange, there's
some chance that they will not do it the right way or they'll do it in an insecure
way.

801
00:54:06,113 --> 00:54:08,273
And then the coins will be lost.

802
00:54:08,833 --> 00:54:12,033
So a lot of people treat it like plus most people are familiar with a brokerage
account.

803
00:54:12,193 --> 00:54:15,593
Yeah. Maybe not most people, but most people who invest.

804
00:54:15,793 --> 00:54:18,873
Right. So they know that how does a brokerage account work?

805
00:54:18,913 --> 00:54:33,553
You know, these days, the last 30 years or whatever, you open a web browser, you go
to the broker site, you deposit cash, you move the cash, different lights on your
screen turn on.

806
00:54:34,473 --> 00:54:41,553
You have now you have whatever you have shares of Apple instead of cash.

807
00:54:41,593 --> 00:54:52,193
And then one day you I mean, you look at all the numbers on the screen and then you
hope that you'll be able to withdraw cash later and have more cash than when you
started.

808
00:54:52,953 --> 00:54:55,433
But even when it's cash, it's just checking deposits.

809
00:54:55,553 --> 00:54:56,913
Yep. It's all an IOU.

810
00:54:57,153 --> 00:54:58,833
It's not literally cash, but it's U.S.

811
00:54:58,833 --> 00:55:02,353
dollars. So most people are familiar with that setup.

812
00:55:02,393 --> 00:55:14,873
They're not. No one is familiar with like taking the Apple shares off the brokerage
account and in their house by writing down a mysterious seed phrase.

813
00:55:14,873 --> 00:55:17,473
And, you know, most people are not very familiar with that.

814
00:55:17,673 --> 00:55:18,313
They're like, what?

815
00:55:18,593 --> 00:55:23,993
Yeah. And I'm definitely not criticizing or like not thinking that it's not going to
work.

816
00:55:23,993 --> 00:55:34,073
These other layer two solutions, just by stating that, obviously, exchanges are the
way that we've scaled, even though everyone that's really hardcore Bitcoin doesn't
want them to be the way that we're scaling.

817
00:55:34,633 --> 00:55:37,273
It just seems that, you know, like you said, that that is the easiest way.

818
00:55:37,273 --> 00:55:43,473
Well, that has been the point of least resistance or path of least resistance, I
should say.

819
00:55:43,633 --> 00:55:52,713
Yeah. Exchanges have a very interesting relationship with Bitcoin, though, actually,
as Dan Krawitz pointed out a long time ago, I think like many years ago.

820
00:55:54,633 --> 00:56:14,713
There will come a time when they will be the natural enemies of Bitcoin, actually,
because they will prefer to live in a world where people are switching back and
forth, where Bitcoin is kind of a niche thing that is still subordinate to the U.S.

821
00:56:14,713 --> 00:56:34,633
dollar. And so it's when the when or when slash if the moment comes where Bitcoin
could take over the whole world, if that could ever possibly happen, exchanges would
be natural enemy of that moment, actually, because then they'd be immediately out of
business.

822
00:56:34,993 --> 00:56:38,593
Many people would probably even say Coinbase has already become that.

823
00:56:38,713 --> 00:56:40,233
Some people, yeah, do wonder about that.

824
00:56:40,233 --> 00:56:41,233
Yeah. I don't know.

825
00:56:41,673 --> 00:56:51,393
Yeah. And Drivechain Drivechain is kind of like an on protocol like exchange
system where they have to exchange a par.

826
00:56:51,993 --> 00:56:53,553
So I guess it's very different in that way.

827
00:56:53,553 --> 00:56:59,233
But it's still similar in this kind of like this concept of there being different
places.

828
00:56:59,353 --> 00:57:01,433
Well, yeah, I mean, self-sovereign and all those things.

829
00:57:01,833 --> 00:57:03,593
So that's kind of where I was hoping to.

830
00:57:03,953 --> 00:57:10,593
We took the long way, but I think we can get back to it, like to come back to the
sidechain concept, come back to Drivechain.

831
00:57:10,633 --> 00:57:12,233
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to talk about that.

832
00:57:12,273 --> 00:57:14,193
It seems to be a little self-indulgent at some point.

833
00:57:14,193 --> 00:57:15,513
I thought it'd be at least nice to talk about.

834
00:57:15,753 --> 00:57:21,353
You have to talk about lightning and you have to talk about I mean, there are these
other things of state chains is another layer to there.

835
00:57:21,513 --> 00:57:24,193
Anything could be a layer. I mean, credit is layer two, of course.

836
00:57:24,233 --> 00:57:25,513
Sure. As we were saying.

837
00:57:25,553 --> 00:57:28,593
But that's the then you're in the political world.

838
00:57:28,793 --> 00:57:36,713
Yeah. But yeah, Drivechain is layer two, where it's the weakness of Drivechain is
that it.

839
00:57:37,713 --> 00:57:45,073
It relies on the sidechain being popular and that their users will be using it.

840
00:57:45,713 --> 00:57:57,113
Transaction fees will be generated over there and people, everyone around will be
happy that they have the option to use the site, each specific sidechain.

841
00:57:58,313 --> 00:58:04,153
So but but in its favor is that Drivechain doesn't need all of the different little
sidechains to be popular.

842
00:58:04,433 --> 00:58:08,273
If one is unpopular, it can just collapse on its own and be defeated.

843
00:58:08,353 --> 00:58:21,433
So this is why some people levy various critiques with Drivechain is kind of a
little bit like you're opening a big beachfront boardwalk or something where a lot
of different restaurants can compete.

844
00:58:21,833 --> 00:58:24,833
And then people will say, well, some of the restaurants will fail.

845
00:58:25,673 --> 00:58:27,593
And you're like, oh, yeah, but that's kind of the whole point, though.

846
00:58:27,593 --> 00:58:31,313
The threat of failure is what enforces quality.

847
00:58:31,353 --> 00:58:40,833
So that's the thing that but but that is a way that so but then, you know, the
freedom to try anything you like, even things that will fail.

848
00:58:41,153 --> 00:58:44,273
That is what allows for the innovation and creativity.

849
00:58:45,313 --> 00:58:46,793
So that is all by design.

850
00:58:46,793 --> 00:59:05,513
And a lot of it is extremely, it's certainly, you know, like what they say with
lightning, with the reckless meme, certainly the same for Drivechain, but like it's
exactly the same as lightning, where if you don't want to use it, you can just
ignore it.

851
00:59:06,513 --> 00:59:22,873
And certainly, if we're really taking a proper account, the changes required, the
changes that were made to Bitcoin to accommodate the lightning network, which is
SegWit, right, that is a much, that is a much crazier change than BIP300.

852
00:59:23,553 --> 00:59:24,553
Can you describe that?

853
00:59:24,993 --> 00:59:26,033
Why that is the case?

854
00:59:26,033 --> 00:59:30,353
Well, the blockchain used to be a vector of transactions.

855
00:59:31,193 --> 00:59:34,353
So there's this big list starting with a Coinbase transaction.

856
00:59:35,793 --> 00:59:44,393
And then if you took a Merkle tree of those, there was this root and the root was in
these little 80 byte headers.

857
00:59:45,473 --> 00:59:48,153
And that used to be how it all worked.

858
00:59:48,153 --> 00:59:51,513
And the transactions were referred to by TXID, which was their hash.

859
00:59:52,473 --> 00:59:52,993
Yeah.

860
00:59:53,593 --> 00:59:54,793
And that was all very tidy.

861
00:59:57,113 --> 01:00:12,633
Now, it's almost difficult to even articulate the image of what you'd have to draw,
but there is instead at least two different versions of the blockchain that are very
different from each other.

862
01:00:12,673 --> 01:00:19,393
And the SegWit one is the one that is the real version now.

863
01:00:19,593 --> 01:00:22,073
So it changed drastically.

864
01:00:22,113 --> 01:00:31,273
But one of the most obviously perceptible changes is the increase in the block size,
the violation of the one megabyte block size limit.

865
01:00:31,473 --> 01:00:36,193
That's something that anyone should be able to understand that the blocks, they're
really very small.

866
01:00:37,193 --> 01:00:38,073
block size limit.

867
01:00:38,273 --> 01:00:46,193
That's something that anyone should be able to understand that the blocks, there
really was a cap on the block size before.

868
01:00:46,473 --> 01:00:47,833
And now there really is not.

869
01:00:48,433 --> 01:00:51,713
I mean, excuse me, it's still kept at four megabytes.

870
01:00:51,713 --> 01:00:58,873
And in practice, it's kept at around 2.3, 2.7 or so because of this complicated
interaction with weight.

871
01:00:58,873 --> 01:01:11,993
But you see, the fact that this is so difficult to explain is part of why you and
the audience should be able to easily tell that this is like something weird
happened here.

872
01:01:12,033 --> 01:01:16,033
Because there is no longer even a block size, there's a block weight.

873
01:01:16,873 --> 01:01:18,593
The weight is kept at four megabytes.

874
01:01:19,113 --> 01:01:22,233
And I think it's Sergio Damon Lerner or someone, I don't want to misspeak.

875
01:01:22,233 --> 01:01:36,433
I think he did show, or someone showed, it is theoretically possible to produce like
a 3.99 megabyte transaction that would fill up the block almost or something.

876
01:01:37,073 --> 01:01:44,353
But since the new transactions are counted a different way, they have to also be
counted the old way.

877
01:01:44,353 --> 01:01:47,113
They're counted by weight, but they have to also be counted the old way.

878
01:01:47,833 --> 01:01:51,193
The signatures are separated.

879
01:01:51,233 --> 01:01:52,633
This is the way SegWit works.

880
01:01:53,953 --> 01:02:06,993
Yeah, you see, like, this is horrible to explain, but it's like there's one megabyte
of total of the old data, which in the new versions of the transactions, as measured
in the old way, have no signatures.

881
01:02:07,033 --> 01:02:10,953
Yeah, but you see, like, this is what I'm saying, though, the explanation becomes
very convoluted.

882
01:02:11,073 --> 01:02:34,793
And this is like, you know, Drivechain doesn't make any of these weird demands about
completely changing the transactions or the fact that the Merkle root, the Merkle
root in today's Bitcoin headers is not the Merkle root of the Bitcoin transactions,
which is, you know, yeah, that was how it was very tidily designed before.

883
01:02:35,033 --> 01:02:38,673
With like a little, there was like a giant, there were like a bunch of little
squares.

884
01:02:38,673 --> 01:02:39,393
Those are the headers.

885
01:02:39,393 --> 01:02:43,353
And then there was like a little triangle and there was like a long rectangle.

886
01:02:44,473 --> 01:02:45,553
That was how it was before.

887
01:02:45,553 --> 01:02:50,033
Now it's like something very strange with at least two triangles.

888
01:02:50,273 --> 01:02:50,953
Yeah, definitely.

889
01:02:50,953 --> 01:02:54,393
Anyone who's who's interested should should keep learning about those differences.

890
01:02:54,393 --> 01:03:00,273
But maybe I was wondering if I had perhaps teed up something the way that you just
described the SegWit activation.

891
01:03:00,273 --> 01:03:03,233
What would be the difference then?

892
01:03:03,233 --> 01:03:07,233
Or, as you would say, I think much better with the BIP300 activation.

893
01:03:07,433 --> 01:03:08,993
Oh, you're talking about activation now.

894
01:03:08,993 --> 01:03:10,873
Well, yeah, obviously.

895
01:03:10,913 --> 01:03:23,353
So I have a very that's interesting that you ask that because I have a very
different interpretation of the 20s, like scaling three was October 2016.

896
01:03:24,153 --> 01:03:28,753
That was the third scaling Bitcoin conference in Milan, Italy.

897
01:03:30,033 --> 01:03:32,233
And that was presented there.

898
01:03:32,633 --> 01:03:36,513
But the reason I bring it up is to all those two big things about it.

899
01:03:37,913 --> 01:03:50,193
One is that the scaling Bitcoin conference was a resolution to this problem that I
mentioned before that people disagree, the Drivechain problem, basically what I
mean in my head, that it's a Drivechain problem.

900
01:03:50,193 --> 01:03:52,593
But to everyone else, it's the scaling Bitcoin problem.

901
01:03:53,393 --> 01:03:55,113
Which is really not about scale.

902
01:03:55,113 --> 01:04:10,633
And it's really about humans disagreeing with each other and not being able to
decide what to do because they need to work together because the blockchain enforces
this teamwork where every single person's software will report the exact same
blockchain down to every single byte is identical.

903
01:04:11,513 --> 01:04:20,713
So we had this problem, the scaling problem, as you may know, and that 2015, it
started to get very nasty.

904
01:04:20,833 --> 01:04:25,273
I mean, it's always been nasty, but it's been getting nastier and nastier over time.

905
01:04:25,273 --> 01:04:34,393
By 2015, there was XT and there was Mike Hearn, Gavin, and these other maneuvers
were being attempted behind the scenes.

906
01:04:35,593 --> 01:04:37,793
There was this and that going on.

907
01:04:37,833 --> 01:04:40,433
So they said, we'll have this conference in September 2015.

908
01:04:40,433 --> 01:04:45,073
And then again, December 2015, separated only by three months.

909
01:04:46,073 --> 01:04:58,873
In the December conference, the general, there was a wide agreement among everyone,
including me, that the prudent thing would be to finish SegWit.

910
01:04:59,313 --> 01:05:06,593
One of the SegWit just happened to increase the block size, which no one thought was
bad at the time.

911
01:05:06,593 --> 01:05:12,873
In fact, everyone at the time thought this is just further evidence of how great
SegWit is or how great the Bitcoin developers are.

912
01:05:12,913 --> 01:05:22,833
They're such geniuses or that it was fate that Bitcoin triumphed over the world
because this thing happens to show up that fits all the criteria.

913
01:05:22,873 --> 01:05:28,273
It does all these things and enables Lightning to work better, fixes transaction
malleability.

914
01:05:28,553 --> 01:05:34,913
And it also is the two megabyte block size increase plus a little bit of extra.

915
01:05:35,153 --> 01:05:38,073
So this was just like, oh, my God, who could disagree with this?

916
01:05:38,873 --> 01:05:40,233
It was like it fell out of heaven.

917
01:05:40,433 --> 01:05:42,393
It almost sounded like you're talking about SegWit2x when you say that.

918
01:05:42,593 --> 01:05:43,793
I'm not talking about SegWit2x.

919
01:05:43,793 --> 01:05:48,273
I'm talking about the fact that it passively increased from one to four.

920
01:05:48,553 --> 01:05:53,273
But in practice, it increases the block size to like 2.3 or 2.7 or something.

921
01:05:53,273 --> 01:05:54,193
Yeah, just so.

922
01:05:54,193 --> 01:05:55,473
But that was kind of a lot of what.

923
01:05:55,513 --> 01:05:57,553
Yeah, right. So I would not want anyone to be confused.

924
01:05:57,553 --> 01:05:59,913
This had nothing. This was long before SegWit2x.

925
01:06:00,233 --> 01:06:01,193
It had nothing to do with that.

926
01:06:02,033 --> 01:06:04,833
And now we went a long time until 2016.

927
01:06:04,833 --> 01:06:10,913
So the first important thing is that this was a kind of this was Scaling 3.

928
01:06:10,913 --> 01:06:18,033
This was the moment that a lot of large blockers, SegWit was promised for April
2016.

929
01:06:18,033 --> 01:06:27,553
But you know how software development is that was, you know, it was delayed and it
wasn't ready and it wasn't finished until the hackathon directly after Scaling 3.

930
01:06:28,473 --> 01:06:30,553
Milan, which was October 2016.

931
01:06:30,833 --> 01:06:32,273
So that's one of the reasons why I bring it up.

932
01:06:32,273 --> 01:06:33,953
It just happened to be when SegWit was finished.

933
01:06:34,873 --> 01:06:41,633
So that's a very important date when it was sort of shipped and said, this is what
you have to do to activate it.

934
01:06:42,433 --> 01:06:51,593
But of course, it was also important because it was the third Scaling Bitcoin
conference and people wanted to know about, you know, there was Ethereum was getting
big that year.

935
01:06:52,593 --> 01:06:53,793
ICOs were getting big.

936
01:06:54,793 --> 01:06:56,113
Weird experiments were happening.

937
01:06:57,153 --> 01:07:00,673
So people wanted to know about what are we doing next?

938
01:07:01,473 --> 01:07:05,953
And most of the presentations at Scaling 3 weren't even about scaling.

939
01:07:06,513 --> 01:07:11,713
A lot of them were about fungibility or kind of like governance philosophy.

940
01:07:12,753 --> 01:07:14,113
So a lot of them weren't about anything.

941
01:07:14,113 --> 01:07:15,153
And there was only really two.

942
01:07:15,153 --> 01:07:23,953
There was just Schnorr signature aggregation and the one that I presented about was
Drivechain sidechains.

943
01:07:26,433 --> 01:07:28,993
And those were the only two really that had anything to do with.

944
01:07:29,073 --> 01:07:48,673
A lot of them were about Lightning, or I think three or so, but Lightning was
already, you know, that was like, that wasn't an innovation anymore, because that
was already the plan from 2015 that we'll add SegWit and then it'll be, we'll have
this Lightning thing.

945
01:07:50,113 --> 01:07:54,113
This was the, I'm just trying to speak like as if I were some general aggregation.

946
01:07:54,433 --> 01:08:05,473
All the people there, a lot of them had fiercely different views, but I'm just
trying to speak as though I'm this like layperson who could understand everything,
which is a weird position to be in.

947
01:08:06,433 --> 01:08:11,393
So, because a lot of people there had extremely different views.

948
01:08:12,993 --> 01:08:21,793
And in fact, a few people left, after they got the program, they complained that
there was not enough about scaling.

949
01:08:22,433 --> 01:08:28,753
And a few, at least one Chinese miner, like changed his flight and left like the
same day and didn't even stay for the conference.

950
01:08:29,713 --> 01:08:39,793
Right after the conference was the, so the two reasons that I'm trying to get at
were SegWit shipped at scaling three, but also the blockade of SegWit began at that
time.

951
01:08:40,353 --> 01:08:46,033
And this is this contentious SegWit activation that you refer to.

952
01:08:46,753 --> 01:08:51,553
And I think it had very little to do with SegWit itself.

953
01:08:52,753 --> 01:08:57,473
I think probably the miners liked SegWit actually and wanted it to activate.

954
01:08:58,513 --> 01:09:00,113
But almost no one agrees with me.

955
01:09:01,153 --> 01:09:02,753
I don't know what people think, honestly.

956
01:09:02,753 --> 01:09:10,273
I think it's this weird, but I really do think that miners honestly believed that
larger blocks would be good for BTC.

957
01:09:10,993 --> 01:09:25,313
And they honestly thought that if they withheld SegWit, they could convince
developers to help them increase the blocks, increase the kind of intellectual and
cultural leadership.

958
01:09:25,313 --> 01:09:27,073
I think that actually is controversial.

959
01:09:27,073 --> 01:09:29,713
A lot of people just think that to say the miners would want bigger.

960
01:09:30,513 --> 01:09:40,033
A lot of people thought that the miners were like, well, at the time, there was a
weird theory about the Chinese government is controlling the miners and trying to
sabotage Bitcoin.

961
01:09:40,993 --> 01:09:46,593
I remember that being that was articulated by people, just like weird thoughts like
that were happening.

962
01:09:48,353 --> 01:09:53,393
And a lot of people just assumed it was almost everyone was assuming bad faith at
the time.

963
01:09:53,393 --> 01:09:54,353
A lot of people still do.

964
01:09:55,073 --> 01:10:07,153
Almost no one would even be willing to say something like miners wanted what's best
for Bitcoin and what's best for Bitcoin is whatever large blocks are.

965
01:10:07,233 --> 01:10:14,033
Or what's better for Bitcoin is a scaling conference that is run a little bit
differently.

966
01:10:14,033 --> 01:10:17,953
I had a very different conception of it personally.

967
01:10:17,953 --> 01:10:28,433
I thought of it as a kind of like a summit where there's a bunch of people, a bunch
of armies nearby, and you invite the world leaders to kind of see what you can work
out.

968
01:10:29,313 --> 01:10:33,073
But it became with scaling three, it became extremely academic.

969
01:10:33,073 --> 01:10:38,273
And, you know, it's like share your share your technically impressive idea.

970
01:10:39,553 --> 01:10:41,633
Like there was Mimblewimble was presented there.

971
01:10:42,193 --> 01:10:44,913
But what did that really have to do with scaling Bitcoin?

972
01:10:44,913 --> 01:10:47,313
That could have been and it ultimately became an altcoin.

973
01:10:48,273 --> 01:10:58,353
It's just strange is far too strange to attach to Bitcoin by any strategy other than
Drivechain would have been the only even way that you could have articulated it.

974
01:10:59,393 --> 01:11:02,193
But, you know, that would never have been articulated at the time.

975
01:11:02,193 --> 01:11:08,673
And so that but just like why does that so that I remember that Andrew Polster gave
a wonderful presentation.

976
01:11:08,673 --> 01:11:11,953
I remember Mimblewimble and it was I really do mean that he explained it very well.

977
01:11:11,953 --> 01:11:13,713
The presentation is very cool.

978
01:11:13,713 --> 01:11:14,913
I encourage people to watch it.

979
01:11:14,913 --> 01:11:16,193
Yeah, I agree.

980
01:11:16,193 --> 01:11:18,273
But why exactly does that get an hour?

981
01:11:18,273 --> 01:11:22,273
It's why should there be anything at scaling Bitcoin other than people?

982
01:11:23,073 --> 01:11:36,833
So I had a completely different interpretation of basically scaling Bitcoin and a
lot of what happened throughout the entire 2015, 2016 period.

983
01:11:37,393 --> 01:11:42,433
In my view, it's just a bunch of people who, you know, couldn't communicate to each
other and couldn't measure things.

984
01:11:42,433 --> 01:11:51,953
And so that's why I was trying to shill this the fork futures idea that we can have
people bet on which coin will have a higher price.

985
01:11:51,953 --> 01:11:54,993
And that way we'll all know which one has the highest price.

986
01:11:54,993 --> 01:12:03,633
And so I had a lot of stuff about trying to measure what would be good for Bitcoin,
you know, publicly and transparently.

987
01:12:04,993 --> 01:12:11,553
But really it just separated into these two groups that became very insular.

988
01:12:11,553 --> 01:12:21,313
And yeah, there was there was there was basically no good faith assumptions as of
after scaling three.

989
01:12:21,313 --> 01:12:22,273
That was the end of that.

990
01:12:22,273 --> 01:12:31,873
Even during it, it was like people, you know, Samson was giving out the hats and
Roger was giving out stickers and all kinds of shenanigans were being done.

991
01:12:33,153 --> 01:12:35,713
The hat said, well, you know, I don't know.

992
01:12:35,713 --> 01:12:36,833
Well, moving forward then.

993
01:12:36,833 --> 01:12:41,713
So when August of 2017, SegWit finally did get activated.

994
01:12:41,713 --> 01:12:42,273
Yes, it did.

995
01:12:42,273 --> 01:12:45,553
Bitcoin Cash fork happened split.

996
01:12:45,553 --> 01:12:46,913
Happened to be on the same day.

997
01:12:46,913 --> 01:12:47,633
Isn't that weird?

998
01:12:47,633 --> 01:12:50,913
I don't know if there was supposed to be like some strategy for that.

999
01:12:51,473 --> 01:13:02,833
It's weird because if there was, I can't I just can't believe that because then they
did with SegWit2x, the large block, the what you might call the extremist large
blocker coalition.

1000
01:13:02,833 --> 01:13:11,473
I don't know exactly how to describe them, but, you know, the people who prefer
large blocks and they kind of want to brazenly charge forward.

1001
01:13:12,433 --> 01:13:18,593
Well, with hindsight, you can see that it truly was much more brazen than.

1002
01:13:18,593 --> 01:13:22,193
Yeah, I mean, they really did think I was talking to them a lot of the time.

1003
01:13:22,753 --> 01:13:27,553
A lot of these people, they would say stuff like the miners are already running.

1004
01:13:28,593 --> 01:13:29,953
I don't remember what it was called.

1005
01:13:29,953 --> 01:13:32,193
It was the Jeff Garzik version that had 2x.

1006
01:13:32,993 --> 01:13:35,313
It was a different thing, like Bitcoin, whatever.

1007
01:13:35,313 --> 01:13:35,553
Yeah.

1008
01:13:35,553 --> 01:13:36,193
What was it called?

1009
01:13:36,193 --> 01:13:37,313
I don't even remember.

1010
01:13:37,313 --> 01:13:38,593
It's on the tip of my tongue.

1011
01:13:38,593 --> 01:13:42,913
Maybe it was Bitcoin version 1.0 or that was part of it, but that wasn't what it was
called.

1012
01:13:42,913 --> 01:13:44,353
But they'd say miners already running that.

1013
01:13:44,353 --> 01:13:49,633
But they were telling me that this is in the run up to November 2017.

1014
01:13:50,593 --> 01:13:51,713
So this is like October.

1015
01:13:52,353 --> 01:13:53,553
Actually, I think it was in August.

1016
01:13:53,553 --> 01:13:56,353
So it was after SegWit activated because I remember it was during the eclipse.

1017
01:13:56,353 --> 01:13:56,593
Remember?

1018
01:13:56,593 --> 01:13:57,793
There was that crazy eclipse.

1019
01:13:57,793 --> 01:13:58,673
Yeah, yeah, I do.

1020
01:13:58,673 --> 01:13:58,993
I do.

1021
01:13:59,793 --> 01:14:01,873
So that was when I was around that time.

1022
01:14:02,593 --> 01:14:05,233
And yeah, this person said this one thing to me.

1023
01:14:05,233 --> 01:14:07,713
They said like, no, they're already a very influential person.

1024
01:14:07,713 --> 01:14:13,393
They said they're already running the version of the software that upgrades to two
megabytes.

1025
01:14:14,433 --> 01:14:20,673
And I could not get them to understand that there's no measurable difference

1026
01:14:22,833 --> 01:14:30,593
between that software and the real software until November, until the two megabyte
thing.

1027
01:14:30,593 --> 01:14:31,633
I said, there's no difference.

1028
01:14:31,633 --> 01:14:34,193
You have no way of knowing that and it doesn't even matter.

1029
01:14:34,193 --> 01:14:38,833
They were hung up on this idea that they had shaken the various hands and

1030
01:14:42,113 --> 01:14:43,233
they'd achieved this thing.

1031
01:14:43,233 --> 01:14:48,353
And I was like, even that doesn't matter because it won't have any effect on them at
all.

1032
01:14:49,953 --> 01:14:51,553
I remember telling him about the cheap talk.

1033
01:14:51,553 --> 01:14:54,433
It's what we in the game theory business call cheap talk.

1034
01:14:54,993 --> 01:14:55,553
Yeah.

1035
01:14:55,553 --> 01:15:00,513
Because it doesn't have any effect on anything until the two megabyte activation.

1036
01:15:00,513 --> 01:15:03,313
And then it could have a big effect and they could easily.

1037
01:15:03,566 --> 01:15:04,206
Switch back within four hours or within eight hours.

1038
01:15:04,206 --> 01:15:09,486
And so the victory is not guaranteed at all and up to a week before there was some
buggy, there was some buggy thing.

1039
01:15:09,486 --> 01:15:11,486
There was a bug. I think people bring that up a lot.

1040
01:15:11,486 --> 01:15:13,486
It's worth bringing up, but I think people do.

1041
01:15:14,486 --> 01:15:20,486
You know, if the thing is, if SegWit2x were more popular, the bug would have been
found earlier.

1042
01:15:20,486 --> 01:15:23,286
And even if it wasn't, it would have been patched quickly.

1043
01:15:23,286 --> 01:15:27,286
So there wasn't off by one bug, but I actually don't think that's the case.

1044
01:15:27,286 --> 01:15:34,606
There wasn't off by one bug, but I actually don't think that's that's that wasn't
like what was fundamentally driving the situation.

1045
01:15:34,606 --> 01:15:36,806
It wasn't like an increased four billion bitcoins.

1046
01:15:36,806 --> 01:15:46,366
Yeah. And really all it's all it demonstrated was that it was so the software was
not was already unpopular before the activation.

1047
01:15:47,286 --> 01:15:54,326
Timeline ended. So before November, the two megabyte part, because people hadn't
even looked at it, people would look at it.

1048
01:15:54,326 --> 01:16:01,846
Right. If you're like, let's say you work at Kraken and they say we have to upgrade
because there's going to be this two megabyte thing.

1049
01:16:02,966 --> 01:16:10,206
It's your job, you know, if you're like, you will read it to see, you know, what
Jeff Garzik did.

1050
01:16:11,126 --> 01:16:14,286
Maybe you wouldn't catch the off by one error, but you would.

1051
01:16:14,286 --> 01:16:17,286
And then you would run it in like reg test mode or whatever.

1052
01:16:17,926 --> 01:16:21,886
And you would someone would have found it.

1053
01:16:22,406 --> 01:16:30,766
So it's just because that is an effect and not really just a knock on effect of how
doomed it was from the start.

1054
01:16:31,006 --> 01:16:37,206
It's interesting we've gone on this path because I remember because I was listening
to our last episode before this interview.

1055
01:16:37,206 --> 01:16:40,686
And because we interviewed you, I guess, was like April of twenty eighteen.

1056
01:16:41,126 --> 01:16:44,686
We'd interviewed Trace Mayer maybe September of twenty seventeen.

1057
01:16:44,686 --> 01:16:49,166
So it's after we had activated it before the 2x fork date.

1058
01:16:49,886 --> 01:16:57,966
And he made the same point that you said about this three month difference in the
scaling conferences was although that was a couple of years before.

1059
01:16:57,966 --> 01:17:09,606
Like he said, you know, in September of twenty seventeen, like we're well past the
point where Bitcoin's like this collegial, you know, community based sort of project
that everybody's trying to, I don't know, collegially share ideas.

1060
01:17:09,926 --> 01:17:14,006
Yeah, a lot of goodwill had disappeared by the time scaling three had started.

1061
01:17:14,046 --> 01:17:16,646
And that was. Yeah, that was already that was already twenty sixteen.

1062
01:17:16,846 --> 01:17:25,166
So so it's interesting that you bring that up during this pod now, because that's
sort of what I wanted to bring it back to was, I mean, take a point.

1063
01:17:25,206 --> 01:17:30,326
They're saying about SegWit activation being quite a bit more complicated than BIP300.

1064
01:17:30,326 --> 01:17:34,446
So what what would be any changes required with BIP300?

1065
01:17:35,206 --> 01:17:42,006
Well, the problem now is that we have BIP300 does require a soft fork to enforce
traction.

1066
01:17:42,006 --> 01:17:47,406
So it's in a similar position to where the lightning network was before SegWit
requires something.

1067
01:17:47,646 --> 01:18:00,486
Yeah. I think the real problem now is I kind of wonder if like like will BTC ever
activate a soft fork again?

1068
01:18:01,766 --> 01:18:04,086
I mean, yeah, because it has been a while.

1069
01:18:04,086 --> 01:18:10,526
If you can look at there used to be many there used to be many soft forks starting
from Satoshi.

1070
01:18:11,046 --> 01:18:13,686
And Satoshi did many.

1071
01:18:13,686 --> 01:18:18,926
Satoshi even did, I think, at least two hard forks.

1072
01:18:20,566 --> 01:18:23,046
One was when he added all the opnops.

1073
01:18:24,806 --> 01:18:29,526
When we repurpose an opnop, that is a soft fork.

1074
01:18:29,526 --> 01:18:33,046
But when he added the first ones, it was a hard, hard fork.

1075
01:18:33,046 --> 01:18:39,326
And he even had like a post on Bitcoin Talk that was like, please upgrade by this
date or something.

1076
01:18:40,526 --> 01:18:42,086
But of course, back then, it didn't matter.

1077
01:18:42,086 --> 01:18:46,406
Anything released by Satoshi is obviously blessed to be the canonical thing.

1078
01:18:46,406 --> 01:18:50,606
So obviously creating Bitcoin from scratch from a blank piece of paper is a hard
fork.

1079
01:18:50,606 --> 01:19:01,686
So but and the other one was he changed the counting rule from heaviest change to
the from the longest chain to the heaviest chain inflation.

1080
01:19:01,806 --> 01:19:09,886
The the thing about the inflation bug that was reorged out so that never that in the
version that that your software will download now, that never happened.

1081
01:19:10,686 --> 01:19:12,046
And that was a long reorg.

1082
01:19:12,046 --> 01:19:13,166
That was a different kind of failure.

1083
01:19:13,366 --> 01:19:14,766
Ah, OK.

1084
01:19:14,766 --> 01:19:16,526
I thought I've heard people describe that as a hard fork.

1085
01:19:16,526 --> 01:19:18,326
But I guess so do I.

1086
01:19:18,326 --> 01:19:20,046
But I don't think that they're right about that.

1087
01:19:20,766 --> 01:19:22,766
First of all, it doesn't exist now.

1088
01:19:22,766 --> 01:19:27,046
So there was a block that was once valid.

1089
01:19:27,286 --> 01:19:29,566
And now that's a soft fork, though.

1090
01:19:30,286 --> 01:19:31,566
There are two things.

1091
01:19:32,006 --> 01:19:32,766
There is one.

1092
01:19:32,806 --> 01:19:33,326
There are two.

1093
01:19:33,326 --> 01:19:36,486
There's a couple that have funny exceptions, but they are soft forks.

1094
01:19:36,486 --> 01:19:41,846
There's the one about you can't have the exact same TXID and you think that would
never happen because the hash.

1095
01:19:42,286 --> 01:19:46,526
But what everyone overlooked was that the coinbase can be blank.

1096
01:19:47,006 --> 01:19:48,646
And so then it will be the same.

1097
01:19:49,486 --> 01:19:51,806
And then so that was fixed.

1098
01:19:51,806 --> 01:19:56,286
But there's two instances where it's there's two UTXOs.

1099
01:19:56,286 --> 01:20:04,166
You can find these funny UTXOs that are the same and they are manually flagged in
the code as being valid.

1100
01:20:04,766 --> 01:20:10,566
They're typed out like this output in this block is valid or it's very funny.

1101
01:20:10,606 --> 01:20:11,446
It's a kind of quirk.

1102
01:20:11,726 --> 01:20:14,846
I think if bugs happen in the future, they might have some similar quirks.

1103
01:20:14,846 --> 01:20:15,046
Right.

1104
01:20:15,046 --> 01:20:17,406
But I don't want to interrupt your train of thought or want to get back to your
train of thought.

1105
01:20:17,446 --> 01:20:19,646
You said this time might be different.

1106
01:20:19,766 --> 01:20:20,126
Oh, yeah.

1107
01:20:20,126 --> 01:20:21,446
So it's about activation.

1108
01:20:21,486 --> 01:20:21,686
Yeah.

1109
01:20:21,686 --> 01:20:23,566
So there used to be a lot of soft forks.

1110
01:20:24,286 --> 01:20:27,086
Then we had this nightmare.

1111
01:20:27,166 --> 01:20:27,926
It should have been.

1112
01:20:28,166 --> 01:20:39,806
I mean, by should, I mean, if it were following the same timeline as previous soft
forks, then after scaling three hackathon, SQL would have been released.

1113
01:20:39,966 --> 01:20:46,566
It would have been activated via miner hash rate signaling, BIP9 version bits.

1114
01:20:47,526 --> 01:20:51,126
And like there would have been like a month of kind of like figuring out what to do.

1115
01:20:51,766 --> 01:20:57,806
The signaling would have been then at 95 and then it would have activated like, you
know, by December, by the end of the year, it would have been active.

1116
01:20:58,446 --> 01:21:10,406
Instead, some miners started signaling like 9% or something started signaling for
Bitcoin Unlimited, which was pointless in itself.

1117
01:21:10,406 --> 01:21:16,926
But the 9% meant that it wouldn't get to the 95% that have historically been
required.

1118
01:21:16,926 --> 01:21:27,246
So it was the kind of the Bitcoin Unlimited software didn't really do anything other
than threaten a vague hard fork for which the hash rate signaling would have been.

1119
01:21:28,886 --> 01:21:29,886
Superfluous.

1120
01:21:30,726 --> 01:21:33,046
Yeah, so we had a lot of activations before.

1121
01:21:33,446 --> 01:21:41,406
Then normally this would have activated in keeping with the timeline in December
2016 ish, something like that.

1122
01:21:41,926 --> 01:21:43,886
Instead, we had to do this weird other thing.

1123
01:21:44,886 --> 01:21:49,526
SegWit activates in August 1st, 2017.

1124
01:21:50,526 --> 01:21:52,646
Now that's 2017 with a 7, right?

1125
01:21:52,646 --> 01:21:54,246
So that's actually a long time ago.

1126
01:21:54,846 --> 01:21:56,046
And there have been nothing since.

1127
01:21:56,766 --> 01:21:57,046
Yeah.

1128
01:21:58,006 --> 01:21:59,246
No soft forks have activated.

1129
01:21:59,286 --> 01:22:05,526
That's not to say there's been no R&D and no, there have been many Bitcoin releases
since then.

1130
01:22:06,926 --> 01:22:11,166
But there have been no changes to the protocol.

1131
01:22:11,646 --> 01:22:15,686
So when will the next one be?

1132
01:22:15,726 --> 01:22:16,966
What does the timeline look like?

1133
01:22:17,006 --> 01:22:23,086
Is it now going to take three to four years per soft fork?

1134
01:22:23,926 --> 01:22:27,806
So that's the real question now is like, how long does it take to solve fork?

1135
01:22:27,806 --> 01:22:40,726
It may take forever because it may literally take forever because people may decide,
well, you know, taproot, Schnorr is cool, but not cool enough to care because maybe
people just don't care.

1136
01:22:41,406 --> 01:22:51,966
Certainly now that this is the other side of that gentrification concept we brought
up before, which is like now more and more people join Bitcoin, but they are not the
same as the people who adopted it first.

1137
01:22:52,366 --> 01:22:56,686
People who care about technology, innovation, blah, blah, blah, cryptography.

1138
01:22:57,006 --> 01:23:01,886
So they may not care about anything.

1139
01:23:02,446 --> 01:23:05,966
And so I don't know.

1140
01:23:06,446 --> 01:23:20,486
And the other thing is that it was such a traumatic activation and it raised this
specter, this question of who controls Bitcoin, which is a terrifying question to
people.

1141
01:23:20,766 --> 01:23:32,766
So the question, no one wants it to go back to the way it was, to that contention
and to be asking that question, does Vladimir control Bitcoin and why not?

1142
01:23:33,326 --> 01:23:39,086
Who does? Do the ideas in the culture around Vladimir control Bitcoin?

1143
01:23:39,086 --> 01:23:40,566
Is that how it works?

1144
01:23:40,566 --> 01:23:41,686
Do miners control Bitcoin?

1145
01:23:42,686 --> 01:23:52,006
And then people try to kind of shove it somewhere else, maybe, or they say, do the
economically significant nodes control Bitcoin?

1146
01:23:52,006 --> 01:23:55,526
But then is it circular reasoning, you know, do the exchanges control?

1147
01:23:55,526 --> 01:23:56,566
They control the ticker.

1148
01:23:56,926 --> 01:24:04,486
So they control Bitcoin, like, so then it opens this Pandora's box and people don't
want that.

1149
01:24:05,086 --> 01:24:13,486
And people don't want, you know, just it was just kind of a terrible thing.

1150
01:24:13,486 --> 01:24:15,366
So no one wants it to be like that.

1151
01:24:15,726 --> 01:24:27,686
And as a result, many people, prominent leaders, intellectual Bitcoin leaders, have
taken the view that they should just not talk about activation.

1152
01:24:28,686 --> 01:24:30,926
Yeah. So they've adopted that strategy.

1153
01:24:31,486 --> 01:24:32,646
So that's kind of interesting.

1154
01:24:32,646 --> 01:24:34,446
But it means that activation is very slow.

1155
01:24:34,566 --> 01:24:38,286
Certainly want to stay away from the term like roadmap and timeline.

1156
01:24:38,286 --> 01:24:39,126
Right. Yes.

1157
01:24:39,126 --> 01:24:41,326
That was originally considered a normal thing.

1158
01:24:41,526 --> 01:24:47,446
There was. Remember, there was like an official roadmap that was published on
Bitcoin Core at some point.

1159
01:24:47,646 --> 01:24:48,366
Yeah, I do.

1160
01:24:48,366 --> 01:24:49,446
About scaling.

1161
01:24:49,886 --> 01:24:53,126
But then then there was talk about updating it.

1162
01:24:53,126 --> 01:24:56,246
That was all shot down, like violently shot.

1163
01:24:56,246 --> 01:24:57,926
Is that's a that's an excellent example.

1164
01:24:57,926 --> 01:25:04,526
That the first roadmap, the the kind of it was like before.

1165
01:25:05,246 --> 01:25:06,446
When exactly was that?

1166
01:25:06,446 --> 01:25:07,286
It was like before.

1167
01:25:07,286 --> 01:25:08,726
It wasn't that long ago, actually.

1168
01:25:08,726 --> 01:25:13,046
I mean, it was one roadmap that was like that was around the era of scaling, too.

1169
01:25:14,006 --> 01:25:15,846
And then there was another one that was like.

1170
01:25:17,166 --> 01:25:27,206
After scaling three, maybe, maybe that's the one that I'm thinking of, but then it
was all the you know, the reaction was totally different, but that never came to
fruition, that was just discussed on the mailing list.

1171
01:25:27,326 --> 01:25:30,246
But it was like that was the whole point is it didn't go anywhere.

1172
01:25:31,206 --> 01:25:32,846
And everyone was like, there is no roadmap.

1173
01:25:32,846 --> 01:25:35,366
There is no Bitcoin Core.

1174
01:25:36,206 --> 01:25:36,966
It's just nothing.

1175
01:25:37,526 --> 01:25:38,326
Nothing exists.

1176
01:25:38,646 --> 01:25:39,606
So where does that leave us then?

1177
01:25:39,606 --> 01:25:43,326
I mean, Taproot, Schnorr on the one hand and then Drivechain on the other.

1178
01:25:43,566 --> 01:25:51,686
Yeah, well, Drivechain would be optimistically it would be like third in line after
what is the next thing?

1179
01:25:52,406 --> 01:25:53,726
SigHash no input, right?

1180
01:25:53,966 --> 01:26:04,766
That would be second in line after Taproot, Schnorr, Graftroot, EverythingRoot,
whatever, you know, Mast, etc.

1181
01:26:05,486 --> 01:26:06,886
They wrote a lot of things into this.

1182
01:26:09,286 --> 01:26:22,966
Yeah, I don't know what the future holds for this particular concept of, I mean, I'm
fully in favor of just trying BIP9 activation, but a lot of other people are not.

1183
01:26:23,966 --> 01:26:38,846
I mean, so I don't know if this, I don't know exactly like what to make of this
situation because we don't know like, I don't know, I think a lot of people are in
the situation where they just don't know exactly what to do next.

1184
01:26:38,886 --> 01:26:44,886
They're just like going to talk about how to activate Taproot for a long time.

1185
01:26:45,446 --> 01:26:54,886
But yeah, even I like some of the stuff that's talked around now is like, okay, what
we'll do is we'll put this, this is like what other people say.

1186
01:26:56,086 --> 01:27:06,046
And it makes some of it makes sense, but it's like we'll put this big thing on where
it'll be like after three years, it will activate via UASF or on a certain day.

1187
01:27:06,966 --> 01:27:11,166
It's gonna be a mandatory activation, you have to upgrade your software by then.

1188
01:27:12,046 --> 01:27:17,486
So force the user, you know, at gunpoint to upgrade the software, which I always
don't like.

1189
01:27:18,446 --> 01:27:19,726
But they'll say we'll do that.

1190
01:27:19,806 --> 01:27:21,366
That's any upgrade is like that, though.

1191
01:27:21,366 --> 01:27:23,486
So they'll say we'll do that.

1192
01:27:23,486 --> 01:27:30,166
And then it will say optionally, they can activate it with 95% signaling at any
time.

1193
01:27:31,166 --> 01:27:40,846
And that will, the theory is that since it will be inevitable, they'll just say why
not activate it earlier.

1194
01:27:40,846 --> 01:27:55,566
And then, because a lot of this is framed around like the miners being evil and
trying to withhold or thwart, you know, thwart Bitcoin and withhold Taproot, because
that's what happened with SegWit.

1195
01:27:56,526 --> 01:27:59,206
Obviously, I think it's situation is completely different right now.

1196
01:27:59,206 --> 01:28:05,206
And so I'm not sure that that's still, you know, I don't think that's the right way
to think about it.

1197
01:28:05,206 --> 01:28:16,286
I don't know if there's, I don't know if the right way to think about it is the
pre-SegWit, you know, the pre-SegWit way where they just run whatever they're given.

1198
01:28:17,086 --> 01:28:18,486
Maybe it won't go back to that.

1199
01:28:18,526 --> 01:28:23,446
But I mean, there's no reason for them to, they're not trying to get anything
anymore.

1200
01:28:23,686 --> 01:28:28,126
There's no like Jihan Wu trying to get block size increase on BTC.

1201
01:28:28,566 --> 01:28:41,126
In fact, if you really think about it, now that these other things exist as distinct
projects like Bitcoin Cash, it's really their worst nightmare that BTC would hard
fork to like have like an 8 megabyte block size or something, right?

1202
01:28:42,006 --> 01:28:43,286
Isn't it? I mean, so.

1203
01:28:44,006 --> 01:28:45,166
I definitely agree with that.

1204
01:28:45,486 --> 01:28:48,446
So that angle of it is reversed.

1205
01:28:48,686 --> 01:28:52,086
The other angles, I think mostly are just, you know, they don't apply anymore.

1206
01:28:52,726 --> 01:28:53,726
Some do, I guess.

1207
01:28:54,526 --> 01:28:56,966
So anyway, I think try BIP-9 to see what happens.

1208
01:28:57,206 --> 01:28:58,286
But I'm really worried.

1209
01:28:58,326 --> 01:29:02,246
It does seem to be a cultural paralysis, as I said, like people don't know.

1210
01:29:03,286 --> 01:29:12,886
They won't even like release the, no one like wants to even bring up one particular
kind of strategy.

1211
01:29:14,286 --> 01:29:15,686
So that's a weird thought.

1212
01:29:16,766 --> 01:29:18,366
I'm not exactly sure what to do with that.

1213
01:29:18,566 --> 01:29:32,046
And what it may mean, since I think you have to, with something like technology, I
don't think that view that I articulated earlier about Bitcoin being preordained to
win.

1214
01:29:33,046 --> 01:29:38,326
I think that, you know, the Bitcoin UTXO set is sort of preordained for greatness.

1215
01:29:38,646 --> 01:29:43,806
But I think that the, just say the owners, you understand what I mean by that?

1216
01:29:43,806 --> 01:29:46,966
Like, you know, Bitcoin is the thing you want to own.

1217
01:29:48,446 --> 01:29:50,886
But I think with technology, it's just too difficult.

1218
01:29:50,886 --> 01:30:07,806
If you can't ever react to what other people are doing or take advantage of
innovation, there will eventually be some kind of competitor, some kind of altcoin
or hard fork that would threaten and ultimately displace it.

1219
01:30:07,846 --> 01:30:13,006
If it really was just determined to never react at all.

1220
01:30:15,006 --> 01:30:17,726
So I think you do have to have these upgrades.

1221
01:30:18,206 --> 01:30:27,086
And I don't know if, you know, the last time with the UASF, there was like a,
there's this guy, Shaolin Fry, who was like an anonymous person.

1222
01:30:28,086 --> 01:30:42,206
Maybe you need like these weird, and who is explicitly non-core, because core, the
official stated political position of Bitcoin core, quote unquote, like as far as to
the extent that that sentence makes any sense.

1223
01:30:43,006 --> 01:30:46,406
But if you'll remember that a lot of people, they were against the UASF.

1224
01:30:46,406 --> 01:30:48,246
Greg Maxwell was, yeah, the most notable.

1225
01:30:48,246 --> 01:30:56,966
That's what I'm trying to say. Like a lot of people like Greg Maxwell or something,
they would say like, they would, people would say, prominent people would say like,
I don't think the timing is right.

1226
01:30:57,206 --> 01:30:58,806
I don't think that this is appropriate.

1227
01:30:58,806 --> 01:30:59,966
This is mob rule.

1228
01:31:00,246 --> 01:31:02,566
So a couple people were against it.

1229
01:31:05,006 --> 01:31:10,846
But there was no like mainstream, like Bitcoin core says that you should UASF.

1230
01:31:11,326 --> 01:31:15,286
The UASF was in fact, and UASF was actually not ever used.

1231
01:31:16,366 --> 01:31:24,886
The miners folded at the last minute and activated SegWit with BIP9 anyway, right
before the UASF were forced them to do it.

1232
01:31:25,686 --> 01:31:31,166
So it's kind of like someone who's on death row, like killing themselves like the
day before or something, which is sort of a common thing.

1233
01:31:32,846 --> 01:31:33,926
Did you know that the people do that?

1234
01:31:33,926 --> 01:31:38,246
They work out weird ways with like a radiator to like kill themselves the day before
they're going to be executed.

1235
01:31:38,326 --> 01:31:40,886
Is it more more common than not that they die the day before?

1236
01:31:40,886 --> 01:31:42,366
I don't think it's more common than not.

1237
01:31:42,366 --> 01:31:44,526
But I think that it happens.

1238
01:31:44,526 --> 01:31:46,646
And it's an interesting little window into human nature.

1239
01:31:47,366 --> 01:31:54,206
But whatever way, similarly, they activated it without the UASF before the UASF
would have forced them to.

1240
01:31:54,206 --> 01:31:56,446
So that's kind of a weird little thing to bring up.

1241
01:31:56,846 --> 01:32:02,006
It's a tease up another, I think, apparent question, especially for a listener
that's listening to this, trying to follow along.

1242
01:32:02,006 --> 01:32:08,486
And maybe someone doesn't know the history as well of, you know, these various
upgrades and some of the force that happened.

1243
01:32:08,766 --> 01:32:15,246
They might be listening to this and then wondering the obvious question to you would
be like, if you're third in line.

1244
01:32:15,286 --> 01:32:16,806
Right. And that's optimistic.

1245
01:32:17,046 --> 01:32:24,326
Are you positive about the way things are with Drivechain, sidechain, you know,
being merged in or?

1246
01:32:24,926 --> 01:32:32,446
Well, I don't think it's appropriate to think about it like as if it as if it's in a
passive way.

1247
01:32:32,446 --> 01:32:35,286
Like what I I think.

1248
01:32:36,766 --> 01:32:41,326
People's opinion about it would change rapidly.

1249
01:32:41,366 --> 01:32:50,806
So I'm focused on finishing it and making sure that, you know, the user experience
is good so that people can give it a try.

1250
01:32:50,846 --> 01:32:57,166
And again, that means we would need to have the people use the testnet.

1251
01:32:58,486 --> 01:33:06,766
We need like a little windows.exe that people could click if they are willing to do
that.

1252
01:33:06,766 --> 01:33:07,886
But, you know, most people are like that.

1253
01:33:07,886 --> 01:33:12,446
They just like will download the exe and click it, not verifying any binaries.

1254
01:33:12,486 --> 01:33:14,046
And we need some other things.

1255
01:33:14,046 --> 01:33:21,926
Yeah, I know people probably won't, but we'll have all the stuff there for them to
do deterministic build and verify the binaries and whatever.

1256
01:33:23,006 --> 01:33:27,806
But so hopefully they will do that, but many of them will not.

1257
01:33:28,206 --> 01:33:29,286
And so that's what I mean.

1258
01:33:29,286 --> 01:33:31,526
Like we have to like it has to get to that point.

1259
01:33:32,206 --> 01:33:37,966
It has to get to the point where people have a better understanding of what it is
doing.

1260
01:33:38,446 --> 01:33:42,326
Yeah. So I think that is what I'm mostly interested in.

1261
01:33:43,006 --> 01:33:56,246
And I don't think that it is like some kind of static thing, like as if like as if
you had asked if I go to the casino tomorrow, how do you feel about like getting red
on the roulette wheel or something?

1262
01:33:57,246 --> 01:33:59,766
You know, I would say I feel like 50 percent on that.

1263
01:33:59,806 --> 01:34:10,566
But give us another analogy that it is like, well, it is about ideas in people's
heads that change and people are persuaded in various ways.

1264
01:34:10,566 --> 01:34:12,806
So what would it be like?

1265
01:34:15,246 --> 01:34:23,366
I don't know. I mean, I think one thing I would point out is that a lot of people,
when people first heard about Bitcoin, they almost always think it's a stupid idea.

1266
01:34:24,086 --> 01:34:26,806
Certainly I did. I was like, this is the stupidest thing.

1267
01:34:26,966 --> 01:34:32,326
I got some kind of weird libertarian like email about Porkfest and they were like,
we now have Bitcoin.

1268
01:34:32,326 --> 01:34:34,286
And I was like, these fucking libertarians.

1269
01:34:34,286 --> 01:34:37,166
I was like so in such a bad mood when I first read about it.

1270
01:34:37,166 --> 01:34:38,766
And I was like, this is so embarrassing.

1271
01:34:39,086 --> 01:34:47,886
I literally I think I unsubscribed from the the like the Porkfest like mailing list,
like because of that, because of that.

1272
01:34:47,886 --> 01:34:52,126
So like, you know, I was like, this is so stupid.

1273
01:34:52,126 --> 01:34:53,646
You can't make your own currency.

1274
01:34:53,646 --> 01:34:54,966
There's too much network effect.

1275
01:34:55,486 --> 01:34:57,926
Yeah. So why would they even try this?

1276
01:34:57,926 --> 01:35:09,126
Embarrassing. So that's something I would say is that is something where a lot of
people's opinion was a certain way and then it flipped around immediately.

1277
01:35:09,126 --> 01:35:10,326
And we see that that happens a lot.

1278
01:35:10,326 --> 01:35:14,046
Oh, it happened with with gay marriage in the United States.

1279
01:35:14,646 --> 01:35:19,526
I think it's going to happen with drugs at some point in the United States sort of
already is.

1280
01:35:20,526 --> 01:35:30,926
You know, whatever, like 10 years ago, smoking marijuana was like this heinous thing
that you could never even talk about.

1281
01:35:30,926 --> 01:35:39,926
Yeah, people have totally different attitude towards it now, you know, similarly,
like, you know, the 90s, the 80s.

1282
01:35:39,926 --> 01:35:43,286
So you see, like people's ideas can change suddenly.

1283
01:35:43,286 --> 01:35:46,326
So it's a little bit more like that.

1284
01:35:46,886 --> 01:35:53,606
But but I think that everyone in Bitcoin should be concerned in general about the
fact that there hasn't been any soft fork at all.

1285
01:35:53,926 --> 01:35:58,566
If if you if you just ignore SegWit, then the last one was like December 2015.

1286
01:35:58,806 --> 01:36:04,166
So that's that's the length of time it took to clear one and move on to taproot.

1287
01:36:05,726 --> 01:36:08,486
So that's five years ago, a long time, five years.

1288
01:36:10,206 --> 01:36:14,166
You know, I hope that's not the new rate, right, because what the heck is that?

1289
01:36:14,166 --> 01:36:15,246
That's slow.

1290
01:36:15,486 --> 01:36:21,646
Yeah, it's actually I never thought about that way, because on the one hand, really,
the main thing is transaction malleability.

1291
01:36:21,646 --> 01:36:23,006
Right. And it wasn't the only thing.

1292
01:36:23,006 --> 01:36:24,966
But the way you said that, I never thought about it.

1293
01:36:25,086 --> 01:36:29,126
If you just ignore SegWit and look back to December 2015.

1294
01:36:29,486 --> 01:36:31,606
Well, I mean, I wouldn't I certainly don't say ignore SegWit.

1295
01:36:31,606 --> 01:36:32,766
I'm just trying to say, what is the rate?

1296
01:36:32,766 --> 01:36:34,966
Like one soft fork every whatever.

1297
01:36:35,366 --> 01:36:36,286
That's all I was trying to do.

1298
01:36:36,686 --> 01:36:37,726
So you have to have at least one.

1299
01:36:37,726 --> 01:36:41,326
But I was saying, if you ignore that, like, I mean, you can count it.

1300
01:36:41,406 --> 01:36:46,126
But then it's the rate would be, you'd have to go back to August.

1301
01:36:46,126 --> 01:36:49,926
And that's one every three years and change or three and a half years.

1302
01:36:50,446 --> 01:36:54,206
So I would say, like, is that good?

1303
01:36:54,206 --> 01:36:58,446
Is that bad? Some people definitely say it's good because they say, don't mess with
my Bitcoin.

1304
01:36:58,846 --> 01:37:01,166
Certainly, I empathize with that point of view.

1305
01:37:01,166 --> 01:37:10,806
That's one of the purposes of Drivechain at all, is to just allow the main chain to
just completely ossify and just say, if you want to change anything,

1306
01:37:11,926 --> 01:37:15,406
go somewhere else and we can have all these places that compete.

1307
01:37:17,486 --> 01:37:20,326
And even better, those people, those places can compete with a blank slate.

1308
01:37:20,326 --> 01:37:22,086
They can redo Bitcoin.

1309
01:37:22,446 --> 01:37:28,886
They could do redo Bitcoin a sidechain where just the glitch of malleability is just
fixed from the beginning.

1310
01:37:29,646 --> 01:37:31,486
But the TXID doesn't cover the signature.

1311
01:37:32,406 --> 01:37:34,166
There'll be nothing messy at all about that.

1312
01:37:34,726 --> 01:37:47,766
You can do a different version where you're working heavily with someone who designs
hardware or something so that they can have like in a Bitcoin ASIC or a signature
verification ASIC or something.

1313
01:37:48,206 --> 01:37:52,766
You're going to have all these people do these weird ideas, but away from the layer
one chain.

1314
01:37:52,766 --> 01:37:56,006
But, yeah, the idea of when could I use it?

1315
01:37:56,686 --> 01:38:02,886
I would say if people want to use it, they should just use it on this testnet that I
have and learn about it.

1316
01:38:03,886 --> 01:38:06,686
But, yeah, when would it come to BTC?

1317
01:38:07,126 --> 01:38:18,086
That is a very interesting question, but certainly it won't come to BTC at all if
people don't understand what Drivechain is and if they don't like it.

1318
01:38:18,206 --> 01:38:21,766
So obviously those are two hurdles that you have to jump first.

1319
01:38:22,166 --> 01:38:34,046
I don't think that it's like I don't think it is a mechanical time based thing like
wait every five years for the next soft fork.

1320
01:38:34,886 --> 01:38:39,446
I think it's a function of how Bitcoiners feel about this and that.

1321
01:38:40,446 --> 01:39:02,566
I think the real reason why there haven't been soft forks as you know, since SegWit
was that most of the R&D development went to Lightning and people did not there just
there haven't been as many ideas in BTC.

1322
01:39:02,686 --> 01:39:12,286
Part of it, I think, is this culture also did take over about the BTC is perfect and
we defeated culturally.

1323
01:39:12,286 --> 01:39:16,886
It was all about defeating SegWit2x in November of 2017.

1324
01:39:17,886 --> 01:39:21,326
So that happened and then the culture just reorganized completely.

1325
01:39:22,006 --> 01:39:30,926
This was always a part of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin user not affected meme that you can't
be pushed around by whoever.

1326
01:39:31,486 --> 01:39:32,606
So that was always part of Bitcoin.

1327
01:39:32,606 --> 01:39:42,846
But the culture of Bitcoin reorganized around this idea is like its central
operating principle that Bitcoin would resist all attempts to change it.

1328
01:39:43,286 --> 01:39:57,486
And that the people who argued for staticity, keeping things the same, those people
were guardians and protectors of Bitcoin so that all that culture reorganized to put
maintaining status quo.

1329
01:39:59,763 --> 01:40:01,443
As the most important thing.

1330
01:40:01,443 --> 01:40:04,563
So I think that's the real reason it was this cultural thing.

1331
01:40:04,563 --> 01:40:10,003
I think that well, I think that's a you know, that has good aspects.

1332
01:40:10,003 --> 01:40:20,083
But I think in general that that would be the you know, that would be the downfall
of Bitcoin is if it cannot make improvements over time.

1333
01:40:20,483 --> 01:40:22,083
Of course, never, never say never.

1334
01:40:22,083 --> 01:40:26,083
But you must think that possibility is quite a bit lower than than higher.

1335
01:40:26,443 --> 01:40:28,123
Oh, I'm very optimistic about Bitcoin.

1336
01:40:28,123 --> 01:40:30,043
I own tons of Bitcoin.

1337
01:40:31,283 --> 01:40:32,283
I think Bitcoin is great.

1338
01:40:32,483 --> 01:40:36,803
Certainly, though, it's a lot like what I said before about it's not like a roulette
wheel.

1339
01:40:37,123 --> 01:40:40,483
It whether or not Bitcoin is great, it depends on what people do.

1340
01:40:40,483 --> 01:40:43,763
And so I think that they will do the right thing.

1341
01:40:44,763 --> 01:41:13,523
Eventually, the right thing being come up with better ideas for how to improve
Bitcoin and how to talk to other people who disagree or who want things that people
want, whatever, say cash, no input, coming up with better activation methods that
are like that don't lead to either minor blockade or like kind of

1342
01:41:13,523 --> 01:41:20,323
a Twitter mob rule or having like benevolent dictator people come up with better
ideas.

1343
01:41:20,323 --> 01:41:33,083
I mean, I kind of weirdly think that Drivechain is such an idea for because the
Drivechain handles adding and removing the sidechains from like the list of
sidechains that you can send and receive from.

1344
01:41:33,323 --> 01:41:36,523
So weirdly, actually, is a kind of like a meta point.

1345
01:41:36,563 --> 01:41:43,083
But but whatever, I mean, Drivechain is also just like some weird thing that I
dreamed up with and like worked out with some other person.

1346
01:41:43,483 --> 01:41:49,443
So why should that just automatically be on the timeline to get shoved into BTC?

1347
01:41:49,563 --> 01:41:53,563
So it won't that can't happen unless people.

1348
01:41:55,923 --> 01:42:06,403
Sort of learn a little bit, you know, to learn everything about it, but they do have
to learn about it, about what Drivechain is doing and what it especially what it's

1349
01:42:06,403 --> 01:42:10,683
not doing to the regular mainchain Bitcoin.

1350
01:42:12,123 --> 01:42:16,443
So, yes, in order for that to be the case, there has to be there have to already be
some cool sidechains.

1351
01:42:16,483 --> 01:42:28,083
That's the other thing is, in addition to getting it to work, I'm then going to turn
my attention to getting we're going to get like a Zcash sidechain and we're going to
get a large block sidechain.

1352
01:42:29,083 --> 01:42:37,443
Probably, you know, the stuff that the software I was working on with Truthcoin,
Hivemind, I'll try to turn that I'm kind of a perfectionist.

1353
01:42:37,443 --> 01:42:41,883
So I'm actually switched my attention away from that to work on Drivechain.

1354
01:42:41,883 --> 01:42:54,083
But when it returns to it, I have like a little list of improvements I have to make
to to Bitcoin Hivemind to what was Truthcoin, the peer-to-peer Oracle

1355
01:42:54,723 --> 01:43:08,323
event derivatives prediction markets thing that so I'd want that stuff to exist on
the testnet first so that people can see, oh, I, you know, just send coins around.

1356
01:43:08,323 --> 01:43:12,363
I can do things so that so that would be important as well.

1357
01:43:12,403 --> 01:43:21,163
Nice. Certainly, if you want to, you know, if you're just out there listening, you
always have to wonder like you don't want to be like too early unless there's
something in it for you.

1358
01:43:21,163 --> 01:43:23,963
Right. You know, like if you're an investor, you want to be the earliest.

1359
01:43:24,443 --> 01:43:30,003
But if you're just a regular person, you want to always be like, you know what I
mean?

1360
01:43:30,203 --> 01:43:31,683
You can't be like the first guy.

1361
01:43:31,683 --> 01:43:34,363
What's a good example of this where?

1362
01:43:36,763 --> 01:43:42,003
I don't know, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but you never want
to like be like this is something too soon.

1363
01:43:42,363 --> 01:43:43,803
You always have to like look around.

1364
01:43:43,803 --> 01:43:45,603
You mean like the fast follower idea?

1365
01:43:45,603 --> 01:43:51,963
Yeah, exactly. Once it starts to become trendy, you want to be like, oh, yeah, I was
always into Drivechain or whatever.

1366
01:43:52,963 --> 01:43:54,043
That's interesting, actually.

1367
01:43:54,043 --> 01:43:58,923
But I didn't expect the conversation to go sort of down the different paths that we
took.

1368
01:43:58,923 --> 01:44:04,683
But but I think it's sets up how difficult it is to merge something into Bitcoin.

1369
01:44:05,163 --> 01:44:08,083
Truthcoin was definitely on the list of stuff I wanted to get an update on.

1370
01:44:08,643 --> 01:44:20,843
But with Drivechain still, if people still don't quite know and just for the
simplified sort of synopsis for for listeners, Drivechain, the idea is truly to be
able to try anything that you want.

1371
01:44:21,243 --> 01:44:26,243
And it won't affect basically the wealth or the security of anyone on the main
chain.

1372
01:44:26,483 --> 01:44:28,323
Well, it won't negatively affect it.

1373
01:44:28,643 --> 01:44:32,043
I think this would be essential for the hash rate security in the long run.

1374
01:44:32,083 --> 01:44:34,443
I'm also thinking about the tangentially as well.

1375
01:44:34,443 --> 01:44:36,283
Sorry, just to interrupt the Ethereum.

1376
01:44:36,763 --> 01:44:39,443
Yeah. DeFi madness that has occurred as of late.

1377
01:44:39,443 --> 01:44:41,403
Fees have really skyrocketed on Ethereum.

1378
01:44:41,403 --> 01:44:42,403
Hashrate has as well.

1379
01:44:42,683 --> 01:44:45,723
But fees have gotten perhaps.

1380
01:44:45,723 --> 01:44:46,763
That's important point.

1381
01:44:46,763 --> 01:44:50,563
And the congestion has gotten perhaps too high for some of these dApps on Ethereum.

1382
01:44:50,843 --> 01:44:53,483
Well, with fees, there is something to be said about.

1383
01:44:53,483 --> 01:44:59,203
So the way merge mining traditionally worked, you could mine two blocks at once.

1384
01:44:59,203 --> 01:45:01,723
You could mine a Bitcoin block and a Namecoin block.

1385
01:45:02,403 --> 01:45:07,643
Namecoin would pay you in Namecoins and they would be worth Bitcoins.

1386
01:45:08,003 --> 01:45:16,683
And so there was a time when a miner would earn like three thousand dollars from a
Bitcoin block back in the day.

1387
01:45:16,883 --> 01:45:20,323
And they would also earn like five bucks worth of Namecoin.

1388
01:45:21,603 --> 01:45:23,763
So be like three thousand plus five.

1389
01:45:24,923 --> 01:45:33,203
And but with the way I've set it up with Blind Merged Mining, the miners earn, all
the BTC they earn is on the main chain.

1390
01:45:33,363 --> 01:45:40,243
So they just earn a big glob of the one coin of BTC, not layer one.

1391
01:45:41,763 --> 01:45:49,203
And they get that from someone on the main chain who pays themselves the transaction
fees over in the sidechain world.

1392
01:45:51,563 --> 01:46:02,083
But the reason I bring this up is because there is a there's a fees like dilemma,
which is that some people want fees to be low or they say.

1393
01:46:03,083 --> 01:46:06,603
If you say, well, Bitcoin fees are they're up, they're five dollars, ten dollars.

1394
01:46:06,963 --> 01:46:12,763
They'll say, well, you know, just wait for the weekend and they'll go down or
they'll say they are ten dollars anymore.

1395
01:46:12,763 --> 01:46:17,843
They're only whatever, nine dollars, you know, or they'll say they're back down.

1396
01:46:18,003 --> 01:46:24,963
They'll say they'll make a tweet where they say something like, well, they've been
ten cents for the last four days.

1397
01:46:24,963 --> 01:46:27,723
So so blah, blah, blah.

1398
01:46:27,763 --> 01:46:34,723
But the point is, all these arguments imply that it's good for the fee rate to be
low.

1399
01:46:36,723 --> 01:46:45,363
And they say, OK, it's true that high fees is inconvenient, but often the fees are
actually not high, so don't worry about it.

1400
01:46:46,203 --> 01:47:04,763
But paradoxically, the reverse is also stated, which is that the aggregate amount of
money collected in fees by BTC miners that must go up in order to ensure the long
run hash rate security.

1401
01:47:06,643 --> 01:47:12,483
So people have this kind of they're trapped in this dilemma and they need to have it
both ways.

1402
01:47:13,483 --> 01:47:29,603
In the world where there's no Drivechain and in the world where there's no merge
mined alt coins or sidechains, so in the world where there's only this one block
size that's that was one megabyte, it is now sort of four megabytes, but it's
complicated.

1403
01:47:30,603 --> 01:47:33,803
If there's only four megabytes of space, that's a fixed amount.

1404
01:47:34,963 --> 01:47:43,043
And it's going to be best case scenario, it's going to be four megabytes multiplied
by the average fee rate will be the total area of that rectangle.

1405
01:47:44,043 --> 01:47:48,883
And they want the area of the rectangle to be very large.

1406
01:47:49,883 --> 01:48:03,403
Because we want total fees to be very high for security, for hash rate security, but
people want the height of the rectangle to be very low, they want the average fee
paid to be cheap.

1407
01:48:04,403 --> 01:48:31,923
And this has gotten sort of silly to the point where I think some people don't even
realize that they have these two different thoughts in their head at once and they,
I'll get it from both ends, you know, if I even try to talk about this, because I'll
just some people will say, well, you know, fees will be high or they'll say fees
aren't even that high or they'll say like the opposite thing, but there's this giant
dilemma about what to do about that.

1408
01:48:32,443 --> 01:48:49,083
But the point I was trying to make is that with Drivechain, all these transactions
are happening over in the sidechain world, but just the total amount of money paid
in fees shows up as one transaction on the BTC layer one main chain.

1409
01:48:49,083 --> 01:49:03,603
And so it doesn't matter if there's a million or a billion or a trillion on a given
sidechain, all of that fees show up efficiently on layer one BTC.

1410
01:49:03,603 --> 01:49:11,603
Is that a lot of the reason behind the statement you made earlier about how you
think that Bitcoin would be much better off with a sidechain feature than without?

1411
01:49:11,723 --> 01:49:20,523
Well, yeah, it's the only way I know of meeting all these criteria at once, because
you want to have the amount of money coming in and fees to be very high.

1412
01:49:22,403 --> 01:49:28,923
And yet there's a natural limit, I think, on how much people will tolerate.

1413
01:49:29,363 --> 01:49:40,043
I've gotten in trouble for arguing with this, but I don't know of any, you know, I
still don't really see any refutation to this idea that I've published an idea.

1414
01:49:40,043 --> 01:49:44,363
I wrote an essay, Hashrate Security in the Long Run, I think it was called.

1415
01:49:45,083 --> 01:49:47,403
But the.

1416
01:49:49,163 --> 01:50:00,643
And well, in it, I say that probably fees won't go up in a sustainable way, so I
argue that the fee rates won't go above like maybe five, ten.

1417
01:50:00,643 --> 01:50:08,723
So I could be wrong about this empirical question, but I say they won't go above
like five, ten, fifteen dollars for a significant length of time.

1418
01:50:09,163 --> 01:50:14,403
And this is where I think the point is sort of misunderstood or taken cheaply.

1419
01:50:14,763 --> 01:50:23,563
People will say, well, look here during this one part where the Bitcoin price was
skyrocketing by 20x or something, people put up with these fees.

1420
01:50:23,763 --> 01:50:33,563
Yeah, of course, they don't care then because the amount of money they're earning in
Bitcoin appreciation more than compensates them for their stupid fifty dollar fee.

1421
01:50:33,563 --> 01:50:37,563
So when the price of Bitcoin is mooning, no one cares about the fees.

1422
01:50:38,123 --> 01:50:40,523
That's not a representative situation.

1423
01:50:40,523 --> 01:50:46,043
What you need for Hashrate Security, 365 days a year, 24-7.

1424
01:50:48,043 --> 01:50:56,883
You know, you need every, on average, every half can be above, but half can be below
and half have to be above.

1425
01:50:57,363 --> 01:51:06,643
On average, people have to be paying like a lot of money for fifty dollars, two
hundred dollars per transaction.

1426
01:51:07,323 --> 01:51:09,483
So that's a lot.

1427
01:51:10,443 --> 01:51:11,883
Some people say we'll get that.

1428
01:51:13,043 --> 01:51:24,923
And they may be right, as you said earlier, that how Finney, he had a kind of view
that was Bitcoin will be the layer one, but he couldn't articulate.

1429
01:51:24,923 --> 01:51:31,843
I think this is my guess, because he was speaking long ago in 2009, like 2010 or
2010.

1430
01:51:31,843 --> 01:51:34,683
It may have been a long time ago.

1431
01:51:35,403 --> 01:51:41,603
And he he he couldn't really articulate any layer two other than the credit one.

1432
01:51:41,603 --> 01:51:45,323
So he had the idea of the bank, Bitcoin bank, Bitcoin would be used to settle.

1433
01:51:47,683 --> 01:51:50,923
I think it's I think it's very clear that.

1434
01:51:52,923 --> 01:52:03,283
You would prefer these technical layer twos that inherit the trust, minimizing
properties of layer one to the greatest extent possible.

1435
01:52:04,843 --> 01:52:07,243
But he was trying to articulate this idea of the layers.

1436
01:52:08,883 --> 01:52:18,683
And so obviously, if there are many layers, then who cares about no one will care
about a fifty dollar fee, that would be very inexpensive.

1437
01:52:20,083 --> 01:52:26,563
So I think that all that is accurate, but that assumes that there will be these
layers on BTC.

1438
01:52:27,243 --> 01:52:33,403
So BTC needs to make the right progress on those layers if it does not.

1439
01:52:33,403 --> 01:52:40,003
So, you know, because it can't be completely reliant on Lightning, I think, because
Lightning can't onboard.

1440
01:52:40,963 --> 01:52:45,883
You can't onboard people to Lightning without layer one, so it doesn't do anything
for onboarding.

1441
01:52:47,883 --> 01:52:53,643
It does, once people are onboarded, they may not need to touch the main chain again
for a very long time.

1442
01:52:55,043 --> 01:52:57,363
But the path to Lightning is through layer one.

1443
01:52:58,363 --> 01:53:13,843
You need some other thing, ideally, where with Drivechain, you can, it is possible
to onboard people without well, many people and people, a million people can be
onboarded with just one.

1444
01:53:14,363 --> 01:53:26,963
You have someone like Roger, a rich Roger Ver style person, deposits like whatever,
10,000 coins into the large block sidechain, and then he onboards all those people
over there.

1445
01:53:27,963 --> 01:53:32,403
So you can onboard an unlimited number of people with just the one setup.

1446
01:53:33,403 --> 01:53:35,003
So that needs something like that.

1447
01:53:36,163 --> 01:53:52,243
For the fees to rise, you need either these other layers, credit, whatever,
Lightning, you need them to exist to drive all this demand on layer one.

1448
01:53:52,243 --> 01:53:56,363
If there's only layer one, I'm very skeptical that people will put up with it for a
long time.

1449
01:53:57,643 --> 01:54:02,363
And so far, we have seen that a few times where the fees go up, and then they come
down.

1450
01:54:03,363 --> 01:54:12,323
And, you know, it's very hard to interpret why, but my guess is that the high fees
deflate the enthusiasm that people feel.

1451
01:54:12,323 --> 01:54:25,443
They're like, this is the future of money, and they're like, I'm paying $20, and
they're like, and maybe they don't give up on it, but they say, well, I'm definitely
not going to make as few transactions as possible.

1452
01:54:26,043 --> 01:54:28,603
And maybe I'll just make the one, the buy and hold.

1453
01:54:29,523 --> 01:54:38,363
So I think there's a strong negative feedback, is what I'm trying to say, is that
when the fees go up of a certain level.

1454
01:54:38,643 --> 01:54:45,723
The other thing is people try to argue historically, they say, well, the fees were
once a billionth of a cent, and then they became a millionth of a cent.

1455
01:54:46,323 --> 01:54:52,243
Then they were one cent, and then they were 10 cents, and then they were a dollar.

1456
01:54:52,923 --> 01:54:54,723
So why would it be any different?

1457
01:54:54,723 --> 01:55:00,483
They're going to go from $1 to $10, and people argue that a lot.

1458
01:55:01,243 --> 01:55:02,963
I think that's kind of ridiculous.

1459
01:55:02,963 --> 01:55:16,923
I mean, it's clear to me that in most people's everyday experience, you know, 10
cents, one cent, a millionth of a cent, and a billionth of a cent, those are all
equally negligible to most people.

1460
01:55:17,003 --> 01:55:19,723
They give that no thought at all.

1461
01:55:20,723 --> 01:55:31,923
And then a dollar is when they would start to think, like a dollar per transaction,
they'd be like, oh, and then $10, they really start to matter.

1462
01:55:31,923 --> 01:55:40,523
I mean, most, I don't know what the statistic is, but I think most transactions like
done in the U.S. are like, less than $20 or something.

1463
01:55:40,523 --> 01:55:43,523
So I don't know exactly the exact numbers.

1464
01:55:43,723 --> 01:55:48,323
I saw your debate with Dan Held about this topic, precisely.

1465
01:55:48,523 --> 01:55:51,283
It's definitely not one I want to probably pursue too much more on the show.

1466
01:55:51,283 --> 01:55:52,603
We've definitely been going a while here.

1467
01:55:52,963 --> 01:56:01,963
But is there anything there, like from that side of the debate, which you've
mentioned all of those points, and is there anything there that you find compelling?

1468
01:56:02,043 --> 01:56:07,283
Yeah, I was really not persuaded.

1469
01:56:08,003 --> 01:56:19,723
I was really just, I thought that instead he was just re-articulating these, like,
these mischaracterizations that it's like, there's a trend, there's evidence.

1470
01:56:21,523 --> 01:56:24,643
Yeah, I don't think there is a trend, because I don't think that it matters.

1471
01:56:24,643 --> 01:56:29,643
One cent to 10 cent, I don't think even matters for people, and everything that
happened before doesn't matter.

1472
01:56:31,363 --> 01:56:34,723
$100 or $10, that does matter.

1473
01:56:35,723 --> 01:56:37,243
So I don't think there's a trend.

1474
01:56:37,283 --> 01:56:47,843
He had this, he has this view that there are comparables, like how when you close on
a house, you have to like do a title search for like $200.

1475
01:56:49,123 --> 01:56:50,963
And he's like, well, this is a lot cheaper than that.

1476
01:56:52,723 --> 01:56:56,803
I don't really see them as related at all.

1477
01:56:57,683 --> 01:56:59,323
I don't know why that is a thing.

1478
01:57:00,403 --> 01:57:04,043
He had a view about wire transfers being $75.

1479
01:57:05,043 --> 01:57:13,443
Even though that's very confusing, because the actual cost for the banks themselves
is like, you know, two cents or something.

1480
01:57:13,443 --> 01:57:16,883
And my bank lets me do some for free sometimes.

1481
01:57:16,883 --> 01:57:20,203
So it's very hard to figure out the real cost.

1482
01:57:22,603 --> 01:57:33,963
And then he had a view that, yeah, he reacted very negatively to my conception that
there could be competitors to Bitcoin that would make the fees go down.

1483
01:57:34,523 --> 01:57:42,483
And when I say competitor to Bitcoin, what I really mean is like a fork of Bitcoin
that changes nothing at all, except something related to the fees.

1484
01:57:43,443 --> 01:57:45,003
So the block size could be an example.

1485
01:57:45,363 --> 01:57:49,163
But BCH would not be an example, you understand, because they changed lots of stuff.

1486
01:57:49,163 --> 01:58:01,043
They added Schnorr before BTC has, but they also just like changed a lot of things
around and tried to mess with, what's that thing they really hate?

1487
01:58:02,123 --> 01:58:03,163
Replaced by fee.

1488
01:58:04,243 --> 01:58:07,763
They tried to change around stuff about block propagation.

1489
01:58:07,763 --> 01:58:16,763
So I'm just saying just something that basically is Bitcoin Core, you know, from a
technology point of view, but just changes something about fees.

1490
01:58:17,043 --> 01:58:24,883
And then I can go even further than that, which is I say, just stamp out a bunch of
identical copies of the exact same Bitcoin Core.

1491
01:58:25,883 --> 01:58:31,443
So you stamp out something else that has a four megabyte weight limit and a one
megabyte block limit.

1492
01:58:32,443 --> 01:58:34,003
Couldn't that be a competitor?

1493
01:58:34,003 --> 01:58:35,963
Like people would say, well, it's the same.

1494
01:58:36,683 --> 01:58:40,843
It's just as technically reliable and it works the exact same way.

1495
01:58:40,843 --> 01:58:45,123
So it easily integrate it into these apps or whatever.

1496
01:58:45,723 --> 01:58:49,363
And I would say that just the fact that this is possible.

1497
01:58:50,363 --> 01:59:03,123
It puts BTC in a difficult spot as far as competitiveness is concerned, because
that's obviously for like we're doing a title search on a house or something, a wire
transfer.

1498
01:59:03,123 --> 01:59:18,243
I can't just like stamp my fingers and create, you know, Chase Manhattan Bank 2 and
then make Wells Fargo 8 or something and just conjure them out of thin air that are
copies.

1499
01:59:18,283 --> 01:59:24,563
And when the copies start out, what is the fee rate on a brand new altcoin?

1500
01:59:24,563 --> 01:59:25,363
It's like zero.

1501
01:59:25,363 --> 01:59:27,563
So, yeah, I think it's pretty.

1502
01:59:27,563 --> 01:59:41,483
I wasn't really a very negative reaction to that, but I think that instead I was
just convinced that it's just more of this cultural idea that I'm just cheerleading
for Bitcoin and say that its success is preordained.

1503
01:59:41,563 --> 01:59:47,083
And it was also framed as me being the pessimist.

1504
01:59:47,083 --> 01:59:51,963
I let it get away from me, even though I tried not to.

1505
01:59:52,443 --> 01:59:58,403
Really, again, with Drivechain, I have to post, I say in the post about hash rate
security.

1506
01:59:58,403 --> 02:00:11,363
I say about that with MergeMind, large block sidechain, the fees collected would be,
you know, many orders of magnitude higher than the U.S.

1507
02:00:11,483 --> 02:00:14,203
defense spending in the future or something.

1508
02:00:14,243 --> 02:00:16,123
So it would be very high.

1509
02:00:16,123 --> 02:00:31,163
So it was actually optimistic article, but it was since it critiques doing nothing,
it critiques this cultural concept that Bitcoin is pristine and everything new is a
corruption.

1510
02:00:31,883 --> 02:00:34,563
So we have to fight back everything away from Bitcoin.

1511
02:00:34,563 --> 02:00:39,163
So it's very hard to go up against that type of cultural idea.

1512
02:00:39,603 --> 02:00:43,923
What do you think about what was happening with with Ethereum in the last couple of
months?

1513
02:00:44,363 --> 02:00:53,203
Is it just too early, too mature of a platform or is that stuff that as well perhaps
illuminates how it could be very easily done on a sidechain?

1514
02:00:53,403 --> 02:00:54,443
Well, I mean, yeah.

1515
02:00:54,723 --> 02:01:01,243
How can you not laugh at, you know, when Vitalik was saying before he was making fun
of this is a similar thing, though.

1516
02:01:01,763 --> 02:01:10,443
It's the contradiction that I was laying out before about fees that's in everyone's
head, which is that Vitalik was making fun of Bitcoin fees before being high.

1517
02:01:10,763 --> 02:01:15,683
He's saying the intranet of money can't cost five dollars transaction or whatever he
said.

1518
02:01:15,963 --> 02:01:20,763
Right. But now his thing costs five dollars transaction or more.

1519
02:01:21,163 --> 02:01:23,563
So but this is people can't have it both ways.

1520
02:01:23,683 --> 02:01:24,643
Bram Cohen.

1521
02:01:24,643 --> 02:01:27,043
And he's making more fees this year than Bitcoiners.

1522
02:01:27,403 --> 02:01:34,363
There was a good essay written by Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, that's going to
fall into his grave.

1523
02:01:34,483 --> 02:01:35,643
It's going to be on his gravestone.

1524
02:01:36,603 --> 02:01:38,603
I wonder how he feels about it sometimes.

1525
02:01:39,523 --> 02:01:41,963
But he wrote an article called.

1526
02:01:44,523 --> 02:01:49,643
It was called Bitcoin's Ironic Crisis, I think it was called, and it was very short.

1527
02:01:49,963 --> 02:01:51,843
I think it was just like a couple of paragraphs.

1528
02:01:53,203 --> 02:02:02,043
And it was about everyone was complaining about high fees, and he just wrote this
thing in plain English that was just like.

1529
02:02:03,243 --> 02:02:08,123
Yeah, because it's so good, basically, and because it's the demand for it is so
high.

1530
02:02:09,043 --> 02:02:11,803
And that was great, you know, because what do you think this is?

1531
02:02:11,843 --> 02:02:14,643
This is just supply and demand curves intersecting on a chart.

1532
02:02:14,963 --> 02:02:21,043
So supply is fixed can only mean because people like the product.

1533
02:02:21,163 --> 02:02:24,123
So that's fine.

1534
02:02:24,163 --> 02:02:25,723
So that's similarly for Ethereum.

1535
02:02:25,763 --> 02:02:29,843
It's like, well, you know, people like the product.

1536
02:02:29,883 --> 02:02:33,003
They're paying for it. I think this is a better way of measuring.

1537
02:02:34,003 --> 02:02:39,843
Comparing chains is to see the transaction fees paid.

1538
02:02:39,883 --> 02:02:46,923
Unfortunately, it's not a reliable metric because you can have miners just paying
themselves like trillions of fees.

1539
02:02:48,603 --> 02:02:50,283
So that is not a reliable.

1540
02:02:51,003 --> 02:02:59,643
You actually can't, though, because if you think about it, they'll trigger that 100
block rule about maturity.

1541
02:02:59,803 --> 02:03:02,083
So it's not completely free.

1542
02:03:02,363 --> 02:03:07,963
Yeah, but nonetheless, not a reliable metric.

1543
02:03:08,003 --> 02:03:19,003
But as a concept, if you could only measure the real stuff that is showing, you
know, how popular the blockchain is, how much people are paying and all this fees.

1544
02:03:19,283 --> 02:03:21,243
And I think we will eventually get here.

1545
02:03:21,243 --> 02:03:28,043
Actually, it doesn't really address or solve the problems we're talking about, but
just a question of context or definition.

1546
02:03:28,403 --> 02:03:31,723
I really like Conrad Graf wrote an article about this like years ago.

1547
02:03:31,723 --> 02:03:34,683
Like, we've called it the fee market forever.

1548
02:03:34,803 --> 02:03:36,603
People kind of think it should be called the fee market.

1549
02:03:36,603 --> 02:03:43,723
But like in what other market in the world do we call the, you know, the transaction
fee, the cost, the name of the market?

1550
02:03:43,763 --> 02:03:44,763
You know, like it should be.

1551
02:03:45,363 --> 02:03:52,763
He used the word up, which I think is a bit verbose, like transaction inclusion, you
know, called the confirmation market or whatever we need to say.

1552
02:03:52,803 --> 02:03:55,923
I mean, at some point, I think people will grasp on like there is real value.

1553
02:03:55,963 --> 02:03:57,963
It's not just fees for fees sake.

1554
02:03:58,243 --> 02:03:59,603
I'm not familiar with that.

1555
02:03:59,923 --> 02:04:00,923
That's fascinating.

1556
02:04:01,563 --> 02:04:11,923
Well, it's also fascinating that he chose a convoluted word because really, though,
it's I think some people have used the phrase block space market, which actually
that is really what it is.

1557
02:04:11,963 --> 02:04:13,923
You just look at the axes will give it away.

1558
02:04:14,283 --> 02:04:28,443
The price is on the always on the vertical axis and the and then the X axis is the
thing like in economics, it's whatever it'll be like, you know, peanut butter and
jelly or something.

1559
02:04:28,443 --> 02:04:32,403
But it'll be like, yeah, oil, whatever it is, oil.

1560
02:04:32,443 --> 02:04:33,843
Yeah, it'll be this much.

1561
02:04:33,923 --> 02:04:36,083
This will be the demand schedule and the supply schedule.

1562
02:04:38,003 --> 02:04:41,363
And so that's what's really being sold is bytes.

1563
02:04:41,803 --> 02:04:47,203
So it's really bytes of the Bitcoin block of the Bitcoin block chain.

1564
02:04:48,243 --> 02:04:49,723
So it's really the block chain market.

1565
02:04:51,883 --> 02:04:54,603
It is interesting that it became the fee market.

1566
02:04:55,603 --> 02:04:57,883
I agree with him that that is a.

1567
02:04:59,323 --> 02:05:00,323
A puzzling.

1568
02:05:00,677 --> 02:05:01,677
How did that happen?

1569
02:05:01,677 --> 02:05:09,677
I don't know where we'll go, but you would think, especially if if we do get into
this, if we do go mainstream here at some point, I don't know, maybe not.

1570
02:05:09,677 --> 02:05:18,677
Maybe we'll just call it the fee market forever. But it would be interesting if you
start to actually use a different term that defines the market for what it is.

1571
02:05:19,677 --> 02:05:27,677
I actually have a way, I think, a superior way of doing fee estimation, but I think
it should just wait.

1572
02:05:27,677 --> 02:05:34,677
I'll put it in the Drivechain test net and then everyone can just see if they like
it.

1573
02:05:34,677 --> 02:05:41,677
But, yeah, I think it's going to be something like four lines of code and it won't
touch the mempool at all or do any of this other weird stuff.

1574
02:05:41,677 --> 02:05:49,677
The current fee estimation is like completely crazy. And so what my conception of it
is much simpler.

1575
02:05:49,677 --> 02:05:53,677
And then I think it'll just be, you know, it'll just be Bitcoin fees.

1576
02:05:53,677 --> 02:06:02,677
You want to be you want to be calling it a market because this thing will just tell
you this is the price of making it to the next block and you either pay it or you
don't.

1577
02:06:03,677 --> 02:06:09,677
And so it'll just be simpler. There won't be any of this stuff about like in six
blocks.

1578
02:06:09,677 --> 02:06:12,677
I mean, I mean, I have to two rails one. Right.

1579
02:06:12,677 --> 02:06:18,677
I don't really get the six block thing. And most people, when they want to pay for
something, they want to pay for it like immediately or they don't care.

1580
02:06:18,677 --> 02:06:22,677
They need to have a few days or they want it immediately.

1581
02:06:23,677 --> 02:06:36,677
So I guess I could set it up with two rails. I just do it, stamp it out twice, once
for the next block and once for, you know, any block in the next few.

1582
02:06:36,677 --> 02:06:46,677
But here's the other weird thing is that if you really think about it, things like
weekends notwithstanding, there's no real reason for the fee rate to like really be
that different, is there?

1583
02:06:46,677 --> 02:06:57,677
I mean, because certainly at like 4 a.m. there aren't that many transactions in New
York City, but isn't that 4 p.m. in Beijing or whatever?

1584
02:06:57,677 --> 02:07:03,677
So then it's like actually New York City was a bad example because, of course, at 4
a.m. everyone has to get their dollar pizza.

1585
02:07:03,677 --> 02:07:04,677
Right.

1586
02:07:04,677 --> 02:07:10,677
Assuming that COVID goes away. But, you know, like in Kansas City or something, you
know, because the world's a big place.

1587
02:07:10,677 --> 02:07:17,677
Certainly there's the Pacific Ocean. But in general, like why would the fee rates
like really be that different?

1588
02:07:17,677 --> 02:07:25,677
People could do a little arbitrage. But basically I think there will just be the fee
rate.

1589
02:07:25,677 --> 02:07:41,677
So I'm not that sure that they will really, even though there's this intraday
variation and intraweek variation in the fees, that may just be because Bitcoin is
still so small.

1590
02:07:41,677 --> 02:07:51,677
If you really thought about like what about globally, is there actually a lull, I
guess, when the sun is over the Pacific, right?

1591
02:07:52,677 --> 02:08:01,677
Maybe. But again, not a lot of people stay up late. A lot of people work the night
shift or whatever. It's not as though that's so many time zones.

1592
02:08:01,677 --> 02:08:12,677
Yeah, but basically the idea is to just calculate. You just it's so simple. It's not
even like what would end up being a program is even simpler than to explain it.

1593
02:08:12,677 --> 02:08:30,677
But the idea is to just take first one thing is to take all the empty block space,
like all the unsold space, and you count that as being a giant transaction that paid
zero fees and consumed all those bytes.

1594
02:08:30,677 --> 02:08:46,677
So that's the first thing is you throw that in the mix to get like the average
price. That's the other thing. You're calculating the average fee rate in the block,
but you count all the unsold spaces having sold for zero.

1595
02:08:47,677 --> 02:08:57,677
This is even easier than doing that, because all you have to do is look at the total
amount of fees, which is in the Coinbase transaction already. You just whatever it
is, minus 12.5.

1596
02:08:57,677 --> 02:09:06,677
So that's super easy. And then you just divide it by four megabytes weight or one
megabyte, whichever price you want, you can easily obtain either one.

1597
02:09:07,677 --> 02:09:21,677
So that's total fees over total block, which is the average by definition. So you
don't actually have to like scroll through them all. And then you just use something
called exponential smoothing. You just smooth that number.

1598
02:09:21,677 --> 02:09:30,677
So you just there's this ancient forecasting technique of just you take on period
one, you take the last thing.

1599
02:09:30,677 --> 02:09:33,677
And it gets weaker further back you go.

1600
02:09:33,677 --> 02:09:48,677
Yes, exactly. I'm trying to wonder how to explain it using words over a podcast, but
it's like if you were measuring the temperature and you had a Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but you just started this project on Tuesday.

1601
02:09:48,677 --> 02:10:04,677
Tuesday, you do nothing. And then Wednesday, you'd use Tuesday's number as the
forecast. And then you compare it to Wednesday, and you see what was the difference.
And then you use some kind of combination. Historically used like 90% the old number
and 10% the new number.

1602
02:10:05,677 --> 02:10:23,677
And then when you get to Friday, you have your old number, which is now a composite
forecast. And then you have Friday's number. And then when you get to Saturday,
you're blending it the whole time. You get to Saturday, you have the number that you
blended from Tuesday through Friday. And you compare that to Saturday's number.

1603
02:10:24,677 --> 02:10:42,677
And yeah, so then you just kind of just, it's just this kind of giant blurred
average. But the thing is, oh, and then you just give it a little bit extra, you
round up a little bit. So then whoever pays that fee will be paying higher than the
average, and they should always make it into the next block.

1604
02:10:43,677 --> 02:11:05,677
Obviously, there's no guarantee of that. But there's no guarantee of anything. So
this is like better than what currently is done. You wouldn't believe what's
currently done is this extremely complicated simulation thing that takes into
account the mempool, which is stuff that hasn't even happened yet, and may never
happen, and could be manipulated, and is different for everyone. Everyone sees a
different mempool, actually.

1605
02:11:06,677 --> 02:11:21,677
There's no guarantee that people's mempools will be the same. So the current thing
is totally convoluted in my point of view. And so yeah, you do just do this, and
then that's just the fee. But then you see the fees naturally come down if there's
any unsold block space, because you have the zeros in there.

1606
02:11:21,677 --> 02:11:50,677
Yeah, and then of course, the user can obviously open up a little advanced tab and
move a slider around and pay whatever they want. But this would just be like the
prevailing fee. And it's constantly bid up too, since you round, you give it a
little extra, you give it like 2% extra or so from the average is what you show the
user. Then the fees are constantly going up in a world where everyone is, everything
is full, which is also desirable.

1607
02:11:51,677 --> 02:11:55,677
The binaries in the software, that will be eventually a new client?

1608
02:11:56,677 --> 02:12:19,677
Yeah, we already have, we have new software. And so just the software has a bunch of
stuff. It has BIP, BIP300/301. 300 is basically Drivechain, but the BIP is
called hashrate escrows. And 301 is Blind Merged Mining. Blind Merged Mining is not
required. In fact, the sidechains, you have so much freedom, you have no idea
what's going on over there.

1609
02:12:20,677 --> 02:12:28,677
It could be anything. They could do something that doesn't work. They could do
something that has no cryptography in it at all. So like, who knows what's going on
over there.

1610
02:12:28,677 --> 02:12:29,677
Sure.

1611
02:12:29,677 --> 02:12:50,677
But I highly recommend that people just use our template and just blind merge
mining, they get all of Bitcoin's hashrate for free. And they don't bother. And it's
very easy for the miners. They don't have to think about adding you, they just have
to think about receiving more money. So that's nice and tidy. So that's 300, 301.

1612
02:12:51,677 --> 02:13:15,677
But of course, there's extra stuff in there, because we added a lot of GUI stuff for
the sidechains. So obviously, there's no superfluous changes. This fee rate thing
would be the first like superfluous change, but you understand that fee estimation
has nothing to do with the actual Bitcoin protocol at all. And in fact, the users
can set their own fees. So it doesn't really affect anything.

1613
02:13:15,677 --> 02:13:34,677
We've done a lot of other things. If you download our software, you'll see that.
Well, one thing we had to add the miner back in because it has been removed from
Bitcoin Core because no lay people who download it mine with it. So we have a cool
little miner in there. That's very funny.

1614
02:13:34,677 --> 02:13:36,677
Yeah, but this one you will have to mine on the sidechain, right?

1615
02:13:36,677 --> 02:13:58,677
Yeah, well, it's our testnet. So there's no one mining it. So if we don't mine it,
nothing happens. I'm just saying as a practical matter when you have a new network.
So yeah, me and the other people, you have to mine it because this is a testnet. So
this is a fake. This is basically an altcoin. It's an altcoin that's very honest
about the fact that it is not money.

1616
02:13:59,677 --> 02:14:21,677
So we have that. But we also changed a lot of stuff like the receive page is just
the Bitcoin address with the QR code and like the new button and the copy button. We
like deleted all that other stuff. We moved it to like you can click a button and
look at the old thing if you want, but it's a giant mess.

1617
02:14:22,677 --> 02:14:41,677
So a lot of the stuff in the QT client of Bitcoin Core, I just think it's just
terrible. So we just changed a lot of user experience, GUI stuff. So this will just
be one of those. It'll be in that category of things. But it doesn't really have
anything to do with Drivechain specifically at all.

1618
02:14:42,677 --> 02:14:54,677
Oh, another thing we added a comma. We have the decimal points because there's eight
decimal points. We put a comma after four. This is four and then the comma and then
another set of four, which helps immensely.

1619
02:14:55,677 --> 02:14:56,677
I've seen you write that way.

1620
02:14:57,677 --> 02:15:04,677
Yeah, I sometimes do that when I write. In fact, sometimes I do with two, but I
think I'm going to switch to four now on the other side of the decimal point.

1621
02:15:04,677 --> 02:15:11,677
But you prefer that rather than, I mean, some wallets allow you to just look in
different denominations anyway as a default.

1622
02:15:11,677 --> 02:15:17,677
They do, but don't you think sometimes that makes me really confused about the
amount of money that I have.

1623
02:15:17,677 --> 02:15:18,677
A little bit, yeah.

1624
02:15:18,677 --> 02:15:33,677
You know, it's like a lot of orders of magnitude. I'm not sure that the whole, the
other thing, it's M and then it's a mu, two things that start with an M, even though
it looks like a U because it's a Greek micro.

1625
02:15:35,677 --> 02:15:41,677
So I don't know, certainly Americans are not familiar with that type of thing.

1626
02:15:42,677 --> 02:15:47,677
I'm not sure. And then why have it be two things when it said you said one comma.

1627
02:15:49,677 --> 02:15:59,677
I don't know. And then like thousandths of a coin, you know, people are more used to
cents and, you know, hundredths of a coin.

1628
02:16:00,677 --> 02:16:03,677
I don't know. I just kind of, it's never really, I've never really liked it.

1629
02:16:04,677 --> 02:16:20,677
And then there was something I think, I don't remember what it is. Maybe I think the
Bitcoin Cash Block Explorer I saw a few months ago had something where on the right
side they did group three digits space, three digits space and then two digits.

1630
02:16:21,677 --> 02:16:24,677
And space is like a European way.

1631
02:16:24,677 --> 02:16:32,677
That looked pretty good. But again, I don't really like the space. And I liked, you
know, I think groups of three are fine, but I just thought, why not?

1632
02:16:33,677 --> 02:16:37,677
Since it's eight, we just chop it into two groups of four.

1633
02:16:38,677 --> 02:16:42,677
Then you clearly know when you look at the comma, if you're on the left or right
side.

1634
02:16:43,677 --> 02:16:50,677
So actually, I like it a lot what we did. And I'm certainly in favor of people being
able to configure that however they like it.

1635
02:16:51,677 --> 02:16:53,677
But yeah, I'm just, we made all these things.

1636
02:16:54,677 --> 02:16:55,677
You will have that for sure.

1637
02:16:56,677 --> 02:16:57,677
Of course.

1638
02:16:58,677 --> 02:17:06,677
And yeah, definitely the spaces. I had to get used to that as a American raised, but
of European ancestry coming over and trying to learn spaces.

1639
02:17:07,677 --> 02:17:08,677
And then the commas are the decimals.

1640
02:17:09,677 --> 02:17:14,677
Yeah, over there in Europe. And then they do the, they swap the commas and decimals,
which is like very distressing.

1641
02:17:14,677 --> 02:17:15,677
Yeah.

1642
02:17:15,677 --> 02:17:28,677
When you see that, you're like, what? Oh, because it's like, it's supposed to be
like $17.80 or something, but then it's like, what? Like $1,000? Like what? And then
you're like, oh, yeah, it's different in Europe.

1643
02:17:29,677 --> 02:17:38,677
Try as well for this monetary base project. I mean, like when I go into the Bank of
Iran, which is still a top 30 currency, I go into the Bank of Iran and the whole
calendar is in Persian.

1644
02:17:38,677 --> 02:17:39,677
Oh, yikes.

1645
02:17:39,677 --> 02:17:44,677
Old Persian calendar. It's like, there's a lot of converting that needs to be done
to get into a readable format of.

1646
02:17:45,677 --> 02:17:47,677
Yeah, your cool table. You should show your table. I'm sure you have.

1647
02:17:48,677 --> 02:17:50,677
Our Western Gregorian calendar.

1648
02:17:51,677 --> 02:18:05,677
Well, there's a good example of the, this is so funny. I happen to see this a couple
of different times, but the Napoleonic era, they tried to like redo the calendar to
make it like more scientific or something. And it never, never caught on.

1649
02:18:06,677 --> 02:18:09,677
They just started with like one. It was a revolutionary thing.

1650
02:18:10,677 --> 02:18:20,677
It was New Year. And then they changed the number of months and the number of days
in a month and the number of days in a week. And they changed all the stuff around
and no one hated it or something.

1651
02:18:20,677 --> 02:18:37,677
Or they just secretly ignored it and they had to go back to the old calendar, which
is a good metaphor for network effects and why it's, you have to be very careful
about, you know, the hard fork is not a solution to the problem of governance
because it is not, it's not competitive enough.

1652
02:18:37,677 --> 02:18:54,677
Calendar's a really interesting one there too. I think along with language as well.
But like Steve Hanke, we had him on the show and he's not a fan of Bitcoin, but
certainly I think a pretty decent and fair free market economist definitely has the
right idea when it comes to making sure communist dictatorial regimes are
disparaged.

1653
02:18:54,677 --> 02:19:09,677
Not a fan of crypto, unfortunately, but he's got this whole idea to do another
calendar. And I just, I see it sometimes in like Forbes and, you know, it's like
making every month 30 days and then every like every six years you extend seven days
or something.

1654
02:19:09,677 --> 02:19:24,677
He came at it with the attempt to make the financial world more consistent because
sometimes some days you can have dividends and yields that sort of trick the
investor or surprise the investor depending on how many days of the month there are.

1655
02:19:24,677 --> 02:19:53,677
Oh, interesting. Yeah, there are these various tricks that people employ. I know
that there was, I know a researcher who had to use, he tried to use weekly data for
something and he had to pick Wednesday because there's so many market holidays. And
there's like in the US, like on Monday and it's like Thanksgiving, Tuesday,
Thursday, Friday, and then sometimes there's Tuesday. So he had to like make that a
consideration. Maybe Bitcoin, you know, with it would just be all UTC time.

1656
02:19:54,677 --> 02:19:56,677
It'll be on the blockchain one day.

1657
02:19:56,677 --> 02:20:12,677
I'm not sure how, if we've lost the listener at this point talking about this level
of detail. But no, I think anybody knows it's done some research and whether you're
a developer or not, you certainly come across a lot of these standards.

1658
02:20:12,677 --> 02:20:24,677
It will be interesting to see if that, yeah, that unit of account, how that shakes
out when Bitcoin really becomes even more dominant. I mean, I don't know if you want
to do anything more on Drivechain. I still wanted to ask you about Truthcoin.

1659
02:20:24,677 --> 02:20:25,677
Yeah, sure, ask.

1660
02:20:25,677 --> 02:20:31,677
First question, I keep saying Truthcoin, you keep saying Truthcoin. Why don't you
just change it back to Truthcoin?

1661
02:20:32,677 --> 02:20:48,677
Well, Truthcoin was the name of the paper. And I haven't changed the name of the
paper. The way I see it is. Yeah, it is kind of weird. The name really has sort of
stuck. I guess maybe I change it back.

1662
02:20:48,677 --> 02:21:03,677
You know, this is the thing about names is you're like, oh, should I change it? So
as a lot of people probably know, because I keep repeating this story so much, but
there was Truthcoin was like right before the era when a bunch of stupid project
named coin like showed up.

1663
02:21:03,677 --> 02:21:04,677
Yeah.

1664
02:21:04,677 --> 02:21:25,677
So there are all these projects, you know, Feathercoin, whatever, you know,
Terracoin, you remember all this stuff. There was this giant era of these projects.
Previously, there were no such projects. So when I named it, it was actually like an
original name, relatively speaking, and it was really referencing like Namecoin.
That was really what I was aiming at.

1665
02:21:26,677 --> 02:21:47,677
But unfortunately, there are all these other, you know, terrible copy projects that
were like whatever coin. So I was like, okay, I'll change it and I'll put Bitcoin in
the name. People know it's going to be a sidechain of Bitcoin. This was like in 2015
or whatever, when Blockstream had first introduced this concept to the public.

1666
02:21:48,677 --> 02:22:09,677
There was no like naming conventions or sidechains. There still really aren't. And
so I was like, okay, I'll call it Bitcoin Hidemine instead. And then it was like,
that was like right before all this other stuff, Ethereum, Counterparty, whatever
got big. So it's like, it's been like a giant nightmare with the name.

1667
02:22:09,677 --> 02:22:34,677
But it's not really that important because it's all been R&D. I try deliberately not
to make it super polished and like shill to the public because it's not really at
that stage yet where it would benefit from that kind of thing since I do want it to
be something that works for the long haul and is not just like a kind of ICO scam.

1668
02:22:35,677 --> 02:22:46,677
So why not change the name back? I don't know. I think still you could use Truthcoin
to refer to like the paper and the idea and there could be like different takes on
it.

1669
02:22:47,677 --> 02:23:04,677
So Bitcoin Hidemine could be a take on Truthcoin. There were in fact a couple of
people's different versions in the past. But now I have my, I have the preferred
version on the site, which is like, you know, fork of Bitcoin core C++ version.

1670
02:23:05,677 --> 02:23:13,677
That's the other thing. A lot of people think like, oh, did you give up on that? The
weird thing is it sort of finished it. And that was what really happened.

1671
02:23:13,677 --> 02:23:14,677
I've heard you say that.

1672
02:23:15,677 --> 02:23:27,677
It's definitely one of the strangest paths because it kind of threaded this weird
needle. If it had come later, I would have emulated like Monero and just launched it
as an altcoin.

1673
02:23:28,677 --> 02:23:40,677
And if it had come earlier, I think it would have gotten a lot of crazy attention
and it would have been something like Namecoin at first, but it would have grown
into its own thing.

1674
02:23:41,677 --> 02:23:50,677
It might have even become something like there may have been some kind of like a
dispute or a split or it may have been something like Ethereum or I don't know.

1675
02:23:51,677 --> 02:23:57,677
But it kind of just the timing was like right in the middle. And so it's in limbo,
which is very weird.

1676
02:23:58,677 --> 02:24:07,677
But it doesn't really matter because without the sidechains technology to link it
all together, I don't think it's not so much that it wouldn't be good for Bitcoin.

1677
02:24:08,677 --> 02:24:11,677
I just think it just wouldn't really work as what I really wanted to do.

1678
02:24:12,677 --> 02:24:29,677
People still have this conception of prediction markets that it would be like sports
betting or they have a conception of the Oracle problem that is extremely, you know,
we'll figure it out later or whatever.

1679
02:24:30,677 --> 02:24:43,677
The goal for the project that I would like is really something where you have you
can make these trades and these assets in a very reliable way.

1680
02:24:44,677 --> 02:25:06,677
Like we're talking like Vladimir Putin wants to kill you kind of way or, you know,
whatever, because it would be something like, you know, benefits, tangible benefits
to Russia and the world if his adversary is elected instead of him.

1681
02:25:07,677 --> 02:25:17,677
So I am envisioning this like high consequence world with a lot of pressure coming
on suddenly to the project.

1682
02:25:18,677 --> 02:25:25,677
So you see, I can't really afford to do it these other ways where they just kind of
start, copy something, launch, and then they kind of do the agile software
development.

1683
02:25:26,677 --> 02:25:32,677
This is that like what we're talking about at the very beginning as if it were a
startup, because I don't envision it being that way.

1684
02:25:33,677 --> 02:25:51,677
I envision it being more like Bitcoin where you have to have it kind of finished out
of the box because at any time there could be an extremely, let's say, offended
group of people coming for to disrupt the project.

1685
02:25:52,677 --> 02:25:53,677
So I have a very different view and I don't.

1686
02:25:54,677 --> 02:26:00,677
And mostly this other view has caught on that sort of agile software T-shirts, you
know, view.

1687
02:26:02,677 --> 02:26:03,677
So that's a weird thing.

1688
02:26:04,677 --> 02:26:09,677
I would definitely encourage listeners, if they haven't, to check out your speech
that you did in Anarchapulco a couple of years ago.

1689
02:26:10,677 --> 02:26:16,677
That, I think, was a very good description, specifically regarding voting and
democracy, which is interesting to me.

1690
02:26:16,677 --> 02:26:20,677
Yeah, I tried 20 minutes to cram in like, what is the project for?

1691
02:26:21,677 --> 02:26:29,677
I have a great sequel to that, but it's like still in all this in note format and
there's no like appropriate venue.

1692
02:26:30,677 --> 02:26:34,677
So I was thinking maybe I'll just record it at home and put it on YouTube.

1693
02:26:35,677 --> 02:26:46,677
But yeah, the cool thing is the sequel touches on a lot of stuff that I think is
sort of new, but very, very reliable.

1694
02:26:47,677 --> 02:26:52,677
But that first thing, that was just basically just futarky and like some basic
stuff.

1695
02:26:53,677 --> 02:27:10,677
But nonetheless, in 20 minutes, I think it does leave you thinking like, oh, my God,
in the future, could the government be run as well as a competitive private
enterprise with competition?

1696
02:27:11,677 --> 02:27:14,677
You don't have to burn it all down or overthrow it or wait till a massive crisis.

1697
02:27:15,677 --> 02:27:22,677
Yeah, or try to ignore it or these other things that it would just be run
efficiently.

1698
02:27:24,677 --> 02:27:27,677
And that idea is sort of that's inspiring to me.

1699
02:27:28,677 --> 02:27:31,677
And I think most of the people in the audience got it.

1700
02:27:32,677 --> 02:27:34,677
And there's a good reaction to it there.

1701
02:27:35,677 --> 02:27:37,677
So that talk is great.

1702
02:27:38,677 --> 02:27:39,677
And I crammed it into 20 minutes.

1703
02:27:40,677 --> 02:27:44,677
And I'd like to give the sequel at some point because the sequel has a lot of stuff
about.

1704
02:27:45,677 --> 02:27:48,677
But it's weird because there's a lot of moving parts to this movement.

1705
02:27:49,677 --> 02:27:55,677
So if people feel skeptical, I don't blame them.

1706
02:27:56,677 --> 02:27:57,677
But that first part was very simple, was it not?

1707
02:27:58,677 --> 02:28:02,677
It was just like, yeah, this is something that pays off more if the person gets
elected and does well.

1708
02:28:03,677 --> 02:28:09,677
So if that's trading for zero dollars, then you know that something's up.

1709
02:28:10,677 --> 02:28:11,677
So it's a pretty simple idea.

1710
02:28:12,677 --> 02:28:13,677
What's the word I'm looking for?

1711
02:28:14,677 --> 02:28:16,677
Like, it's not the I guess correct the correct prediction, but it's.

1712
02:28:17,677 --> 02:28:18,677
Yes, this is a big difference.

1713
02:28:19,677 --> 02:28:22,677
This is in the sequel, which is that people always bring up like manipulation or
they bring up like this or that.

1714
02:28:24,677 --> 02:28:26,677
It's not so much that you predict the person will win.

1715
02:28:26,677 --> 02:28:35,677
You're also in this scheme, you're predicting that they'll win and they'll do well
on something else like the unemployment rate or the GDP of the country or something.

1716
02:28:36,677 --> 02:28:38,677
So they have to win and hit the number.

1717
02:28:39,677 --> 02:28:41,677
And then it pays off well.

1718
02:28:42,677 --> 02:28:43,677
And the other thing is you can you can short that.

1719
02:28:45,677 --> 02:28:46,677
You can make these weird combinations.

1720
02:28:47,677 --> 02:28:51,677
It's very, you know, when I'm through with the user interface, it should be very
simple.

1721
02:28:52,677 --> 02:28:55,677
But it may be hard to describe over a podcast.

1722
02:28:56,677 --> 02:28:58,677
But like horse betting, you can parlay it with other.

1723
02:28:59,677 --> 02:29:04,677
You can do all these things where you can say like, yeah, in horse betting, you can
say, well, one of the top three horses win or whatever.

1724
02:29:05,677 --> 02:29:13,677
You can do these things where you say, OK, I have no idea if this person wins or
not, but if they do win, I know that they'll do badly.

1725
02:29:14,677 --> 02:29:20,677
And you can set it up so that you make money in every single situation other than
the situation where they are elected and they do well.

1726
02:29:21,677 --> 02:29:23,677
So you have a very efficient market very easily.

1727
02:29:24,677 --> 02:29:25,677
And there's all these other things, too.

1728
02:29:26,677 --> 02:29:28,677
People don't appreciate the problem of liquidity in prediction markets.

1729
02:29:29,677 --> 02:29:30,677
It's constantly killing.

1730
02:29:31,677 --> 02:29:34,677
It's been killing prediction markets for the last 40 years.

1731
02:29:35,677 --> 02:29:39,677
But I have in the SQL presentation, I have exactly what to do about that.

1732
02:29:40,677 --> 02:29:42,677
So I'm extremely enthusiastic about this idea, of course.

1733
02:29:43,677 --> 02:29:46,677
And nothing there is dampening your enthusiasm.

1734
02:29:47,677 --> 02:29:48,677
You think it's going to come to fruition?

1735
02:29:48,677 --> 02:29:55,677
Right. It's the thing is where there is a lot of problems, but I don't see any of
them as being.

1736
02:29:56,677 --> 02:29:57,677
I don't see any of them at all.

1737
02:29:58,677 --> 02:30:01,677
Even liquidity is big, but there is an easy way.

1738
02:30:02,509 --> 02:30:15,509
You can build like what I in the presentation, I have a metaphor of an engine and
you can build it as long as you pour fuel into the engine, it will produce all the
liquidity you need.

1739
02:30:15,749 --> 02:30:19,949
So then it changes it from how do we get liquidity, which is obscure thing.

1740
02:30:20,029 --> 02:30:26,509
So I have a metaphor of like a screwdriver, which is similar to the engine metaphor,
of course, basically the same thing.

1741
02:30:26,509 --> 02:30:31,709
But it's like with your bare hands, you cannot unscrew a screwdriver usually.

1742
02:30:31,749 --> 02:30:35,149
I mean, you could try or screw one in really tight.

1743
02:30:36,349 --> 02:30:37,989
But with a screwdriver, it's very easy.

1744
02:30:39,069 --> 02:30:40,829
So you need the screwdriver, but you need fuel.

1745
02:30:40,829 --> 02:30:49,349
You also need you also need a hand, a human hand, just can't get anything done
without the hand or you know what I mean?

1746
02:30:49,389 --> 02:30:51,709
You need some kind of you always need some kind of fuel.

1747
02:30:52,429 --> 02:30:54,589
So you transform it into a need for fuel.

1748
02:30:54,589 --> 02:30:58,909
And then from there, you can just it's just a matter of finding money.

1749
02:31:00,669 --> 02:31:05,589
And then people will wonder, what am I see a bad economist?

1750
02:31:05,589 --> 02:31:10,269
Is he crazy? He's just talking about getting donations or something.

1751
02:31:10,309 --> 02:31:19,549
But the answer to that question is also, no, you can there is a way to conjure up
enough money to make the markets enough liquid.

1752
02:31:19,669 --> 02:31:25,829
There's also ways of forcing people to care about markets they wouldn't otherwise
care about that they would ignore.

1753
02:31:25,869 --> 02:31:28,109
So so there's a lot of problems.

1754
02:31:28,149 --> 02:31:29,029
So that's the cool thing.

1755
02:31:29,069 --> 02:31:36,349
The second presentation is like me having spoken about prediction markets to people
for most of my life.

1756
02:31:37,309 --> 02:31:46,029
I have collected all of the the dirt or the kind of the muck of just everyone's
complaints.

1757
02:31:47,029 --> 02:31:54,189
And and it's it's interesting because the solution for a lot of them, I have this
crazy slide on there.

1758
02:31:54,429 --> 02:31:57,349
Maybe I should pull it up because I even I can't quite remember it.

1759
02:31:57,349 --> 02:32:01,709
But I talk about I'm going to talk about seven things and then have them in a list.

1760
02:32:01,709 --> 02:32:10,909
And then the next slide is them arrayed in this weird shape with arrows connecting
them all because they're actually all related to each other a lot.

1761
02:32:11,869 --> 02:32:13,909
And then I bring up labels.

1762
02:32:13,949 --> 02:32:16,789
I have all the labels of the connections.

1763
02:32:17,469 --> 02:32:21,309
So I go through how they're actually all connected, really.

1764
02:32:21,309 --> 02:32:33,109
So to me, it's clear that none of them will be problematic because I have what I
view as like the two ingredients or whatever that fix all seven of them.

1765
02:32:33,829 --> 02:32:43,149
But most people, I think they just have their one thing and they think, well, what
about, you know, those types of markets won't be liquid or anything.

1766
02:32:43,149 --> 02:32:46,109
People won't care about those markets or so.

1767
02:32:46,109 --> 02:32:59,349
Unfortunately, you kind of have to explain them all at once, which is why I find
this this idea of giving this second talk so interesting, because you have to you
either learn why all seven are false.

1768
02:33:00,349 --> 02:33:03,229
Or you just or you just don't.

1769
02:33:03,229 --> 02:33:05,709
So it's since they're all connected.

1770
02:33:05,709 --> 02:33:06,709
Did you find the slide?

1771
02:33:06,709 --> 02:33:08,949
Oh, no, I didn't even open it, but I can look it up.

1772
02:33:08,949 --> 02:33:09,469
Let me see.

1773
02:33:09,469 --> 02:33:10,909
It's a very interesting slide.

1774
02:33:10,909 --> 02:33:26,349
Our listeners definitely are probably noticing a theme if they haven't already is
that even when when you want to talk about all the good stuff, you're prepared and
ready to illuminate us on the vast array of critiques and problems, potential
problems that could happen, which is very thorough.

1775
02:33:26,469 --> 02:33:29,189
I don't think that I think critiques are very important.

1776
02:33:29,189 --> 02:33:30,749
So I think that that is a good.

1777
02:33:32,709 --> 02:33:36,789
That is a good you know, there's nothing we have to make ideas better.

1778
02:33:38,309 --> 02:33:50,029
Through critique, and so I think critiques are good, I don't want to spend a lot of
time on an idea if it's bad, so I think it's good to collect the critiques, usually
smart people have similar critiques.

1779
02:33:51,309 --> 02:33:55,629
So there's also much more fun to talk about, it's more dramatic while you're pulling
up the slide.

1780
02:33:56,349 --> 02:34:00,549
Speaking of names, it was BTC one that was Garzik software.

1781
02:34:00,549 --> 02:34:01,589
It was BTC one.

1782
02:34:01,589 --> 02:34:08,029
Yeah, it was like BTC one, but it was like because it was like one one point, not
Garzik, but Garzik being the lead maintainer.

1783
02:34:08,309 --> 02:34:08,909
So that was it.

1784
02:34:08,909 --> 02:34:10,789
I kind of thought that I hadn't remembered it.

1785
02:34:10,789 --> 02:34:19,629
But really, I had because I remembered it was something about being 1.0, whereas
Bitcoin has always been 0.16, 0.19, 0.20.

1786
02:34:19,829 --> 02:34:20,229
Yeah.

1787
02:34:20,389 --> 02:34:22,269
OK, I got the presentation open.

1788
02:34:22,309 --> 02:34:27,029
And yeah, would you like I don't know, like, is there some kind of teaser you want?

1789
02:34:27,029 --> 02:34:29,349
Like, maybe you can just post the one slide or something.

1790
02:34:30,229 --> 02:34:34,589
But yeah, and it's funny that there's like, yeah, it's when you look at it, it looks
crazy.

1791
02:34:34,589 --> 02:34:36,669
But you have to just trust me.

1792
02:34:36,669 --> 02:34:37,429
It all makes sense.

1793
02:34:37,629 --> 02:34:38,269
I even have this.

1794
02:34:38,269 --> 02:34:41,869
I think I have a yeah, I have a joke written into the notes of the slide.

1795
02:34:41,989 --> 02:34:43,549
I said, by the end, it'll all make sense.

1796
02:34:44,589 --> 02:34:46,109
Let's just say that we'll post it.

1797
02:34:46,109 --> 02:34:46,509
Sure.

1798
02:34:46,509 --> 02:34:47,469
Yeah, it is.

1799
02:34:47,469 --> 02:34:49,269
The slide is called Atlas of Part Two.

1800
02:34:49,589 --> 02:34:54,109
Well, when you do part two, definitely we'll have to circle back for another
interview.

1801
02:34:54,309 --> 02:34:54,989
Well, listen, that's good.

1802
02:34:54,989 --> 02:34:56,069
I think we've covered a lot of ground.

1803
02:34:56,069 --> 02:34:56,709
Interesting.

1804
02:34:56,709 --> 02:34:59,389
Some interesting thoughts on the history as well.

1805
02:34:59,709 --> 02:35:01,029
I did want to ask you one more.

1806
02:35:01,309 --> 02:35:11,669
What do you think about all of the like censorship that's going on in the digital
world outside of crypto, you know, like Twitter and Facebook and whatever?

1807
02:35:12,029 --> 02:35:15,789
Particularly, I guess it's happening in the US, a lot of uncertainty surrounding the
elections.

1808
02:35:16,189 --> 02:35:24,749
But this idea of free speech versus like a platform just curating content versus
downright manipulation.

1809
02:35:24,909 --> 02:35:36,669
Yeah, well, I mean, I think, you know, the view that I hold on that is I think the
view that has been articulated by a lot of smart people, which is that.

1810
02:35:37,669 --> 02:35:49,389
You when you claim to represent truth, you have put yourself on the, you know, it's
only a matter of time before you the downfall are destroyed.

1811
02:35:50,429 --> 02:35:51,269
So it's ironic.

1812
02:35:51,909 --> 02:35:59,509
Truthcoin, I've always hated the name, actually, that I've always hated that it
ended up being the name of the blog and of my Twitter handle.

1813
02:35:59,509 --> 02:36:01,709
But my last name is too difficult to spell.

1814
02:36:02,229 --> 02:36:15,269
The truth can just refer to the fact that in the protocol, people had an incentive
to lie about what happened, like in past events and things like what was the GDP of
the country who won the election?

1815
02:36:15,269 --> 02:36:17,309
They had a big incentive to lie up front.

1816
02:36:17,709 --> 02:36:27,109
And instead, it was about getting them to report, you know, give a truthful report
of uncontroversial things that were easily measured and already happened.

1817
02:36:27,109 --> 02:36:31,469
So that's so even though the name Truthcoin is now the name.

1818
02:36:32,789 --> 02:36:44,469
It makes absolutely no claim of absolute truth at all, and I regret that it's even
possible for anyone to think that that's the case, because it's the opposite of what
I believe.

1819
02:36:44,509 --> 02:36:45,149
What do you believe?

1820
02:36:45,149 --> 02:36:52,949
Just I believe there is a philosophical term is called fallibilism, which is that
we're actually mistaken about everything that we believe.

1821
02:36:53,949 --> 02:36:58,109
And we could be wrong about anything that we think we're right about.

1822
02:36:59,429 --> 02:37:01,909
It's actually kind of uncontroversial when you state it like that.

1823
02:37:01,909 --> 02:37:04,869
But very few people take it seriously.

1824
02:37:05,309 --> 02:37:13,909
Actually, if you really think about it, this is that problem that keeps popping up
where people just assume they just say, well, we'll just do this.

1825
02:37:13,909 --> 02:37:16,669
We'll do whatever Twitter will just delete all the fake news.

1826
02:37:17,389 --> 02:37:30,909
So, you know, that they don't know which news is fake and which is you don't know
until after the fact, you know, so the game is over, who who was the, you know, the
who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.

1827
02:37:30,949 --> 02:37:33,589
So what do you think the next iteration of Twitter will be?

1828
02:37:34,069 --> 02:37:40,269
Is it going to be something on a decentralized platform or is that just we have to
Twitter is a very strong network effect.

1829
02:37:40,429 --> 02:37:47,709
We will have to watch as they slowly destroy themselves, which they have been doing.

1830
02:37:48,229 --> 02:37:58,509
I mean, you know, it's you know that they have this type of when was this when was
this like first kind of getting raised this idea of Twitter?

1831
02:37:58,549 --> 02:38:05,909
That was like I think it was it was it was like 2016 maybe when it was first like
noticed that they had it.

1832
02:38:06,029 --> 02:38:09,389
They were not neutral as far as American left to right politics.

1833
02:38:09,429 --> 02:38:10,989
Yeah, like in a big way.

1834
02:38:10,989 --> 02:38:11,669
They were like.

1835
02:38:13,549 --> 02:38:17,029
They're like they allow all the they had like all kinds of like crazy.

1836
02:38:17,069 --> 02:38:29,029
You could have like they were I remember they were like Islamist Islamic extremists
who were like calling for murder who would be allowed on, but then there would be
like some other stuff.

1837
02:38:29,029 --> 02:38:36,389
Joe Rogan had a good one a couple of years ago, I guess now already with with Jack
Dorsey and with maybe just a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago.

1838
02:38:36,669 --> 02:38:38,309
Yeah, but what did he say on there?

1839
02:38:38,349 --> 02:38:40,309
He said like he was sorry, basically.

1840
02:38:40,349 --> 02:38:41,549
But what did he really say?

1841
02:38:41,589 --> 02:38:42,469
Do you remember?

1842
02:38:42,509 --> 02:38:52,149
He brought up a lot of stuff about the UN and like values that they have to their
values are trying to be in line with like the UN natural rights code of conduct.

1843
02:38:52,149 --> 02:38:52,869
I can't remember.

1844
02:38:52,909 --> 02:38:56,029
So they're like, you know, we're going to try to do better or whatever.

1845
02:38:56,029 --> 02:39:01,269
Or we're not responsible because it's the UN who is responsible for truth and we
just copy it blindly.

1846
02:39:02,149 --> 02:39:04,869
So this is a weird, you know, that's no good.

1847
02:39:04,909 --> 02:39:11,349
I mean, I don't know what your opinion of him personally, but I think he's
definitely like he's a Midwesterner, like down to earth guy.

1848
02:39:11,349 --> 02:39:23,669
But I mean, it's once you get into in charge of that beast and if you he brought in
a lady, I can't remember her name, who was in charge of like the censorship
regulating content.

1849
02:39:24,389 --> 02:39:26,469
Ministry of office, the Ministry of Truth.

1850
02:39:26,989 --> 02:39:33,389
She definitely seemed to make a lot of contradictory statements during that
interview about why they censored this person, why they didn't do that.

1851
02:39:33,869 --> 02:39:36,509
And it just seems unwinnable.

1852
02:39:36,549 --> 02:39:36,949
Yes.

1853
02:39:36,989 --> 02:39:38,509
Well, you see, this is the problem, though.

1854
02:39:39,709 --> 02:39:40,629
There is no.

1855
02:39:43,669 --> 02:39:45,869
There is no foundation to truth at all.

1856
02:39:46,869 --> 02:39:49,029
There is no foundation to truth at all.

1857
02:39:49,029 --> 02:39:54,109
So there is no principle by which truth can be reliably obtained.

1858
02:39:55,149 --> 02:39:59,389
Sounds like the argument that did you hear the argument that Jordan Peterson had
with Sam Harris?

1859
02:39:59,549 --> 02:40:01,269
No, but that sounds very interesting.

1860
02:40:01,309 --> 02:40:03,309
They argued the meaning of truth for like an hour.

1861
02:40:03,629 --> 02:40:04,709
And I think they had to restart it.

1862
02:40:04,909 --> 02:40:05,709
I see.

1863
02:40:05,749 --> 02:40:06,429
OK.

1864
02:40:06,429 --> 02:40:07,869
And what did Sam Harris say?

1865
02:40:07,869 --> 02:40:12,509
Because he has this weird book about where he has like a moral foundation that he
conjured out of thin air.

1866
02:40:13,109 --> 02:40:14,869
Maybe David Deutsch brought him around.

1867
02:40:14,909 --> 02:40:15,909
I don't know. Later.

1868
02:40:15,949 --> 02:40:17,229
I don't want to try to summarize that.

1869
02:40:17,229 --> 02:40:18,869
That would be impossible.

1870
02:40:18,989 --> 02:40:19,869
Difficult. Yeah.

1871
02:40:19,909 --> 02:40:21,069
They're both pretty smart, aren't they?

1872
02:40:21,109 --> 02:40:28,029
Yeah, I think they're both smart, but certainly definitely they both hold ideas
strongly that many people could disagree with.

1873
02:40:28,029 --> 02:40:29,869
But also, you know, a lot of good points.

1874
02:40:29,869 --> 02:40:31,909
And I think they have a lot of good faith towards each other.

1875
02:40:32,229 --> 02:40:33,669
I saw them in Ireland, actually.

1876
02:40:34,229 --> 02:40:34,829
Oh, yeah.

1877
02:40:34,829 --> 02:40:36,469
They're both reasonable people.

1878
02:40:36,549 --> 02:40:37,749
Yeah, I think they're reasonable about it.

1879
02:40:37,749 --> 02:40:44,029
And generally, this goes back to the main question why I was asking it was just the
state of, I don't know, cancel culture.

1880
02:40:44,029 --> 02:40:46,149
And yes, well, it's all related.

1881
02:40:46,149 --> 02:40:47,469
It's profoundly related to this.

1882
02:40:47,709 --> 02:40:59,909
There's no the reason that there's no way of always getting truth is that you you
could always encounter something that revealed to you that the reliable method
actually wasn't so reliable.

1883
02:40:59,949 --> 02:41:09,189
So you could wake up tomorrow in the Matrix pod and then you'd be like, oh, I
thought I was talking to Paul Sztorc yesterday, but now I don't know that maybe I
wasn't.

1884
02:41:09,229 --> 02:41:10,229
Maybe it was an illusion.

1885
02:41:10,669 --> 02:41:12,869
Yeah. And you could always that could always happen.

1886
02:41:13,709 --> 02:41:15,469
So you always and it's a good thing.

1887
02:41:15,789 --> 02:41:19,629
You always have the opportunity to improve your knowledge and revise it.

1888
02:41:20,109 --> 02:41:23,949
You can delete any mistakes that you had before and revise them.

1889
02:41:24,189 --> 02:41:33,549
But that means that everything that you currently have written on the slate,
including the slate itself, all of that is transitory.

1890
02:41:33,549 --> 02:41:34,789
You just conjured it there.

1891
02:41:35,429 --> 02:41:39,989
And it's all any any part of it could be a mistake.

1892
02:41:40,149 --> 02:41:44,269
And so that is why there is no sure path to truth.

1893
02:41:44,829 --> 02:41:51,869
And certainly not by hiding away information that you think is wrong from everyone.

1894
02:41:53,509 --> 02:41:55,189
You know, there's no sense in that.

1895
02:41:55,349 --> 02:41:56,829
What about a Bitcoin UTXO?

1896
02:41:57,389 --> 02:41:59,229
Well, OK, this is that's another good point.

1897
02:41:59,269 --> 02:42:11,229
This is also related to why it's the network effects of money are so strong and also
related in a couple other ways to why BCH was not an effective way.

1898
02:42:11,269 --> 02:42:23,589
Why altcoins are sort of bad and why BCH was not the most effective tool to achieve
large block Bitcoin world that Roger wanted to bring about.

1899
02:42:23,709 --> 02:42:31,109
So this is great because it's the difference between information and other types of
things that you provide.

1900
02:42:31,149 --> 02:42:34,429
And information is really a kind of sort.

1901
02:42:34,549 --> 02:42:37,669
It has these variations like there's ones and zeros in a computer.

1902
02:42:38,669 --> 02:42:46,029
And when you say something is a one in the computer, what you really mean is that
the one has been pulled up and the zero has been pushed down.

1903
02:42:46,789 --> 02:42:47,949
That's been sort of sorted.

1904
02:42:49,229 --> 02:42:51,989
And you can't express a certain idea without.

1905
02:42:53,869 --> 02:43:06,629
Without like on expressing, this is going to sound weird like a fortune cookie, but
the point is that when you express a certain type of idea, you're saying all other
variants of the idea are de-expressed.

1906
02:43:07,269 --> 02:43:16,149
So if you say what day was it yesterday and someone says Wednesday, they're unsaying
all those other things.

1907
02:43:16,349 --> 02:43:19,669
Tuesday, they're unsaying Monday, they're unsaying Sunday.

1908
02:43:20,589 --> 02:43:30,749
So what Bitcoin is doing is sorting and it is sorting valid transactions in and it
is pushing all the invalid transactions out.

1909
02:43:31,389 --> 02:43:34,069
And that is part of why SPV mode works at all.

1910
02:43:35,069 --> 02:43:51,029
It's also part of why the blocks don't become overcrowded with garbage data the way
that Usenet did and became unusable because there's the limit and because it's
sorted by fees.

1911
02:43:51,589 --> 02:43:56,749
So the sort is pumping information into Bitcoin.

1912
02:43:57,629 --> 02:44:09,869
And so the UTXO, you always know a lot of things about it, if it's included in a
block or if you can examine it yourself, you have more reliable access to truth.

1913
02:44:10,629 --> 02:44:12,589
But there are still a lot of things about it that you don't know.

1914
02:44:13,029 --> 02:44:25,629
But the fact that a certain UTXO is in BTC and not in BCH or something else, that is
itself kind of an interesting, a fundamental sort of interesting thing to point out.

1915
02:44:25,909 --> 02:44:33,229
What even about the, bringing it back to what we're talking about earlier, what
about the UTXOs that are now made on native SegWit type addresses?

1916
02:44:33,469 --> 02:44:35,229
So that's an interesting point itself, right?

1917
02:44:35,229 --> 02:44:43,269
Because now in the new software, it does not discriminate between those two and it
can interpret them both.

1918
02:44:43,549 --> 02:44:54,229
When it has to talk to older software, it has to make a weird version that has no
signature that anyone can spend and give it to the old version of the software.

1919
02:44:54,589 --> 02:44:57,269
And the old version of the software will look very different.

1920
02:44:57,789 --> 02:44:59,149
It'll look like it has no signature.

1921
02:45:00,389 --> 02:45:08,549
And the new version of the software, it is really the old transactions that are
flipped into a new form.

1922
02:45:08,629 --> 02:45:10,309
This is very difficult to explain.

1923
02:45:12,669 --> 02:45:22,669
But yeah, SegWit and the software in general is an interesting realm where stuff is
joining the status quo.

1924
02:45:22,749 --> 02:45:24,789
And before there was no distinction made.

1925
02:45:25,389 --> 02:45:34,469
So in the past, before OPNOP2 was used for check, lock, time, verify, I think,
before it wasn't used for anything.

1926
02:45:34,469 --> 02:45:42,989
And so it wouldn't matter if you used OPNOP2 in any transaction you made for any
purpose.

1927
02:45:43,109 --> 02:45:44,229
It just wouldn't do anything.

1928
02:45:45,229 --> 02:45:56,909
But once the soft fork took hold and took effect, it then became something that
sorted invalid transactions from valid transactions.

1929
02:45:57,669 --> 02:45:59,309
So it's quite a weird thing.

1930
02:46:00,109 --> 02:46:03,749
Yeah, well, the point is that there's no reliable access to truth.

1931
02:46:04,229 --> 02:46:11,989
And so on social media, it's not a good idea to try to pretend that you know what
the truth is, because there's a lot of people on there.

1932
02:46:12,629 --> 02:46:17,549
And they have a lot of expertise in their own lives and their own experience, first
of all.

1933
02:46:18,109 --> 02:46:23,269
But many of them are also just experts in a certain industry or field of science.

1934
02:46:23,829 --> 02:46:28,909
And as you know, when you are an expert in something, everyone there disagrees.

1935
02:46:28,989 --> 02:46:31,349
If you go to an academic conference, there's no agreement there.

1936
02:46:31,429 --> 02:46:34,269
It's not like, you know, people there agree on anything.

1937
02:46:34,309 --> 02:46:38,949
They're all talking about how to rewrite the textbooks for the future.

1938
02:46:39,509 --> 02:46:41,269
So they're editing the textbooks, you know.

1939
02:46:42,269 --> 02:46:43,389
They're changing it all around.

1940
02:46:44,749 --> 02:46:45,549
And you can't.

1941
02:46:45,589 --> 02:46:49,989
This is now a meme with COVID of following the science.

1942
02:46:50,149 --> 02:46:53,989
But there is no sense at all in which science can be followed.

1943
02:46:54,909 --> 02:46:58,509
Science is the rejection of experts.

1944
02:46:58,869 --> 02:47:07,749
And even the motto of the Royal Society in London was Nullius Inverba, which is take
no one's word for it or follow no one.

1945
02:47:08,309 --> 02:47:10,669
So there's no sense in which you can follow the science at all.

1946
02:47:10,789 --> 02:47:12,469
Science isn't something that you follow.

1947
02:47:13,429 --> 02:47:19,429
It is constantly being created by your own mind and by other people's minds through
human creativity.

1948
02:47:19,869 --> 02:47:23,589
And so when you have Twitter, everyone's creating new science all the time in their
brain.

1949
02:47:24,389 --> 02:47:31,869
And the last thing you want to do is block off some in some kind of category.

1950
02:47:32,349 --> 02:47:35,509
So you say some some pre-existing category.

1951
02:47:36,509 --> 02:47:43,349
You say that everything that implies that something about, I don't know, I don't
want to pick on anything in particular, really.

1952
02:47:43,349 --> 02:47:59,989
Something about COVID, all posts about something with COVID or something about
whatever it is, whether or not, you know, I don't know, trans rights or something,
anything in some category is a priori assumed to be wrong.

1953
02:48:00,269 --> 02:48:01,509
And experience as well.

1954
02:48:01,709 --> 02:48:05,629
Well, you don't know that until you listen to what people have to say.

1955
02:48:05,829 --> 02:48:18,909
So since it's objectively not going to work, it's only a matter of time before
Twitter just winds down into destruction.

1956
02:48:18,909 --> 02:48:31,229
I mean, it's become so popular just from network effects and new people joining and
Donald Trump and the decline of the traditional news business model.

1957
02:48:32,149 --> 02:48:34,749
And, you know, COVID has everyone trapped in their house.

1958
02:48:35,149 --> 02:48:37,029
So it has so many things going for it.

1959
02:48:37,629 --> 02:48:39,389
So it can maybe survive for a while.

1960
02:48:39,389 --> 02:48:44,669
But this idea is one that is ultimately not going to work.

1961
02:48:44,669 --> 02:48:51,509
And for that reason, people will eventually become bored with it or just frustrated
with it.

1962
02:48:52,389 --> 02:48:57,509
For that reason, people will just become annoyed with Twitter because they'll see
something.

1963
02:48:58,069 --> 02:49:05,509
Someone will say something, you know, that is approved by Twitter, and then they'll
just be wondering, but what is the other side of that argument?

1964
02:49:06,309 --> 02:49:11,069
And they will not they won't find it interesting at all to pay attention to Twitter.

1965
02:49:12,509 --> 02:49:14,069
So we'll see how long that takes.

1966
02:49:14,069 --> 02:49:15,469
I don't know. It could take a long time.

1967
02:49:15,749 --> 02:49:16,629
It's very interesting, man.

1968
02:49:16,989 --> 02:49:20,709
One more, I think, just as we wrap it up, it's it's related.

1969
02:49:20,709 --> 02:49:22,709
It's why I brought up the UTXO.

1970
02:49:22,709 --> 02:49:25,189
It also relates to, I think, Truthcoin or to Hivemind.

1971
02:49:25,589 --> 02:49:38,709
Like a lot of people had the hope that, you know, this decentralized blockchain
technology would be able to do a lot more things that, you know, would improve our
experience and our access to knowledge and so on and so forth.

1972
02:49:39,469 --> 02:49:54,669
I'm thinking specifically about it was a quote from Greg Maxwell, particularly in
response to Ethereum and how a lot of the original ideas behind the smart contract
technology or world computer or whatever.

1973
02:49:55,669 --> 02:49:58,789
Had to do with like calculating things and doing a lot of calculation.

1974
02:49:58,789 --> 02:50:00,509
He just put it pretty succinctly.

1975
02:50:00,509 --> 02:50:05,389
He's like, you know, the point of a blockchain is not to calculate it, it's just to
verify.

1976
02:50:06,269 --> 02:50:11,869
So the calculation sort of model can you can just run wild with that, right?

1977
02:50:11,869 --> 02:50:12,789
Like with a lot of ideas.

1978
02:50:12,789 --> 02:50:18,229
And that's, you know, goes back to our discussions on fees and Ethereum fees these
days and DeFi and whatever.

1979
02:50:18,709 --> 02:50:25,469
But if the point is just to verify, obviously it works very well with money, it
works very well with Bitcoin.

1980
02:50:26,069 --> 02:50:32,829
Do you think we'll get to any other real like use case solutions?

1981
02:50:32,829 --> 02:50:34,389
And obviously I'm thinking of Truthcoin here.

1982
02:50:34,389 --> 02:50:36,949
I'm not I'm not saying that that Truthcoin won't be one.

1983
02:50:37,389 --> 02:50:42,949
Like, is it going to help us get back to sort of a better world than we currently
are with the censorship and Twitter and these social things?

1984
02:50:43,909 --> 02:50:44,989
Well, I think so, yes.

1985
02:50:45,549 --> 02:50:48,349
Well, I think our world is also, you know, it's pretty good, all things considered.

1986
02:50:48,349 --> 02:50:57,989
Right. Cancel culture is annoying, but life certainly was terrible for many
different little minorities of people.

1987
02:50:57,989 --> 02:51:03,429
So I actually think mostly I'm like an optimist, really.

1988
02:51:04,949 --> 02:51:11,709
So I think it's just a matter of time before the right ideas are found and the right
mistakes are corrected.

1989
02:51:11,829 --> 02:51:17,349
And it is unfortunate that Twitter fumbles such a basic sort of free speech thing.

1990
02:51:17,349 --> 02:51:30,909
I do empathize a little with what he was saying about like there are some some
nations have passed laws against like Holocaust denial and stuff that they
theoretically like must enforce, I suppose.

1991
02:51:31,469 --> 02:51:32,949
Sure. I don't know the details.

1992
02:51:33,829 --> 02:51:38,909
So, first of all, is there a framework for like what blockchains can do and what
they cannot do?

1993
02:51:39,909 --> 02:51:46,669
I don't know, but it would probably involve whenever you need lots of people to
agree on things, because that's what the blockchain does.

1994
02:51:47,349 --> 02:51:50,189
Everyone looks at the same. You look at it and everyone gets the same thing.

1995
02:51:50,189 --> 02:51:54,429
So where is that helpful?

1996
02:51:55,149 --> 02:52:00,429
I would say, I mean, I had this post a long time ago about dimensions of digital
scarcity.

1997
02:52:00,469 --> 02:52:04,229
So whenever you needed something to be digital and scarce.

1998
02:52:04,989 --> 02:52:07,149
So certainly this would include money.

1999
02:52:07,789 --> 02:52:13,789
It would include some kind of some kind of like standing or reputation in various
flavors.

2000
02:52:14,469 --> 02:52:17,189
Names. Obviously, you can't have someone stealing your name.

2001
02:52:19,189 --> 02:52:27,629
And similarly with names comes, I think, also like the ICO assets like stock and
bond type thing.

2002
02:52:28,469 --> 02:52:34,629
You know, you'd be like you can't have someone issue Tesla stock if they're not
Tesla, but you still want that to be.

2003
02:52:34,829 --> 02:52:36,909
And Caitlin Long has pointed out that that has been done.

2004
02:52:36,949 --> 02:52:40,309
You know, definitely shares are not calculated correctly, counted up correctly.

2005
02:52:40,469 --> 02:52:41,549
Oh, really? That's fascinating.

2006
02:52:41,589 --> 02:52:45,749
Yeah, that's so great of her to point that out, because that is very interesting.

2007
02:52:46,909 --> 02:52:48,949
So I think that's all that stuff's fair game.

2008
02:52:50,349 --> 02:52:54,909
Certainly. I don't know if I would completely agree.

2009
02:52:54,909 --> 02:52:57,909
I don't know exactly about what I understand.

2010
02:52:57,909 --> 02:52:59,389
I think what Greg Maxwell was saying.

2011
02:52:59,589 --> 02:53:00,909
Paraphrasing to keep in mind.

2012
02:53:01,229 --> 02:53:03,749
You don't need to put any of the computations on.

2013
02:53:04,989 --> 02:53:13,629
Obviously, a verification is a kind of computation, but, you know, you would want to
put as little on the blockchain as possible.

2014
02:53:13,789 --> 02:53:19,549
I would agree with that because it's an inconvenience, an imposition on everyone
since everyone has to use it.

2015
02:53:20,269 --> 02:53:21,309
It's a kind of commons.

2016
02:53:22,029 --> 02:53:24,909
So anything you can shove off of it, you would want to shove off.

2017
02:53:26,869 --> 02:53:31,669
Related to that, I think you would want to shove a lot off.

2018
02:53:32,349 --> 02:53:39,229
One idea I had, I mean, I think eventually the Bitcoin will be used to fix kind of
most of the problems of the Internet.

2019
02:53:40,029 --> 02:53:43,029
That's obviously a big claim.

2020
02:53:43,029 --> 02:53:49,269
But I think eventually we will have like something like email where you have to pay
a little bit for each message.

2021
02:53:49,909 --> 02:53:56,469
But as I was mentioning to you, I think before the show started, the I think the
real thing is introductions.

2022
02:53:56,629 --> 02:53:58,109
You really just need the introduction.

2023
02:53:58,269 --> 02:54:03,469
Then you just message them back and forth with your computer, with Telegram or
WhatsApp or whatever.

2024
02:54:04,229 --> 02:54:15,989
You just need the introduction where you get their name, you get their public key,
and they pay you a little bit of money to read the message or they say, you know,
whatever they have to say.

2025
02:54:16,109 --> 02:54:21,749
I'd like you to, whatever, be an advisor to my startup or whatever, whatever it is
you're trying to tell them.

2026
02:54:22,469 --> 02:54:27,749
So, again, it's this idea of information being a sort and people having limited
processing power as humans.

2027
02:54:28,109 --> 02:54:30,549
You need to have the right information sorted for you.

2028
02:54:30,989 --> 02:54:39,509
It's also related to the fact that the Internet today, most of the things about it
that suck, you know, the Internet mostly works phenomenally.

2029
02:54:40,869 --> 02:54:45,629
But most of the things that don't work are situations where some adversary is
sorting against you.

2030
02:54:45,669 --> 02:55:01,109
It's like the advertising model when you try to use Google or anything else,
whatever, whatever it is, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they're sorting ads into
your thing that you don't necessarily want to see.

2031
02:55:01,869 --> 02:55:04,469
But they're also sorting, they're changing everything around.

2032
02:55:04,927 --> 02:55:09,927
In the experience to trick you into continuing to engage by any means necessary.

2033
02:55:09,927 --> 02:55:12,927
So the sort idea comes back.

2034
02:55:14,927 --> 02:55:18,927
So I think that'll be a big thing, like just getting the right introductions.

2035
02:55:18,927 --> 02:55:23,927
And then from then on out, you just can communicate off-chain with them.

2036
02:55:23,927 --> 02:55:27,927
So I think there will be an opportunity for something like that.

2037
02:55:28,927 --> 02:55:29,927
An opportunity for something like that.

2038
02:55:29,927 --> 02:55:34,927
In particular, I had some harebrained sort of designs.

2039
02:55:34,927 --> 02:55:43,927
I do think that eventually there could be, I mean, I think Namecoin was a project
that had tremendous potential as a sidechain.

2040
02:55:43,927 --> 02:55:54,927
And with everything we've now learned and what we now know, I think the potential is
even greater.

2041
02:55:54,927 --> 02:55:56,927
You could have all this great stuff there.

2042
02:55:58,927 --> 02:56:02,927
All the darknet markets would have readable names.

2043
02:56:02,927 --> 02:56:05,927
Everything would be like HTTPS by default.

2044
02:56:05,927 --> 02:56:06,927
You wouldn't have to pay.

2045
02:56:06,927 --> 02:56:10,927
You wouldn't have to renew domains next year.

2046
02:56:10,927 --> 02:56:13,927
But you could also do all these other kinds of crazy things.

2047
02:56:14,927 --> 02:56:20,927
Have you ever seen now, if you watch a YouTube video, they have to give you the
little thing, follow us on Twitter here, follow us on Facebook here.

2048
02:56:20,927 --> 02:56:23,927
They'll have different names, maybe they're similar.

2049
02:56:23,927 --> 02:56:29,927
You could just have like one unified name across all of the platforms.

2050
02:56:29,927 --> 02:56:32,927
And then you could do stuff about the Twitter impersonators.

2051
02:56:32,927 --> 02:56:35,927
I think there's all this potential is there with this stuff.

2052
02:56:35,927 --> 02:56:39,927
If you could just have the registry of the names somewhere.

2053
02:56:39,927 --> 02:56:47,927
And it could just be in the Namecoin world, it could just be this hash that just has
this JSON that you could give them.

2054
02:56:47,927 --> 02:56:49,927
Because it's your identity.

2055
02:56:49,927 --> 02:56:52,927
You can say, look, look me up on the index.

2056
02:56:52,927 --> 02:56:56,927
I published a blog post about this called Codex, I think.

2057
02:56:56,927 --> 02:56:59,927
Here I am in the index, look me up, this is my name.

2058
02:57:00,927 --> 02:57:01,927
And this is the hash.

2059
02:57:01,927 --> 02:57:06,927
And then you can just give them the JSON, the JavaScript list or whatever.

2060
02:57:06,927 --> 02:57:12,927
And it just has all your login usernames, your email, your reusable Bitcoin address.

2061
02:57:12,927 --> 02:57:18,927
You know, there'd be a 47 payment code or something, and it would just open a little
chat between you and them.

2062
02:57:18,927 --> 02:57:21,927
So I think that the potential is immense.

2063
02:57:21,927 --> 02:57:28,927
I think, unfortunately, I think something happened that slowed progress in Bitcoin.

2064
02:57:28,927 --> 02:57:31,927
The obvious candidate is the scaling war.

2065
02:57:32,927 --> 02:57:42,927
But something happened that changed the culture away from being progressive and
doing new things.

2066
02:57:42,927 --> 02:57:52,927
And it changed it around to being conservative and very much this purity
contamination concept instead.

2067
02:57:52,927 --> 02:57:56,927
And I think just a lot of that is just scaling war.

2068
02:57:56,927 --> 02:58:00,927
I think also rise of altcoins and Ethereum.

2069
02:58:01,927 --> 02:58:03,927
I think a lot of that is unfortunate.

2070
02:58:03,927 --> 02:58:08,927
And I think that Drivechain, and now I'm becoming like a one trick pony or
whatever.

2071
02:58:08,927 --> 02:58:12,927
But Drivechain could maybe fix a lot of that.

2072
02:58:12,927 --> 02:58:20,927
Because when people would do new things, it would just be known that inevitably this
would become part of Bitcoin's greatness.

2073
02:58:20,927 --> 02:58:23,927
Or it would just turn out to not be so good.

2074
02:58:24,927 --> 02:58:28,927
That used to be a commonly believed thing in Bitcoin.

2075
02:58:28,927 --> 02:58:31,927
It's just if anyone invents anything, it'll just be added to Bitcoin.

2076
02:58:31,927 --> 02:58:35,927
But now, I think that's not believed.

2077
02:58:35,927 --> 02:58:41,927
And rightly so, because look at how difficult it is to just like activate Taproot or
something.

2078
02:58:41,927 --> 02:58:48,927
So the scaling war really did raise, it really did have nothing to do with
scalability, as I've always said.

2079
02:58:48,927 --> 02:58:55,927
Because it just raised this question, how do we decide what should be in Bitcoin and
the protocol and out of it?

2080
02:58:57,927 --> 02:59:02,927
And that question turned out to have no real answer.

2081
02:59:02,927 --> 02:59:09,927
So the question was just like, we will just keep it as it is, except when we add
SegWit.

2082
02:59:09,927 --> 02:59:14,927
So it had this kind of like, the point is that it's not, it isn't figured out.

2083
02:59:14,927 --> 02:59:16,927
That's the point, it's such a mess.

2084
02:59:16,927 --> 02:59:18,927
Let's not end it on such a mess.

2085
02:59:18,927 --> 02:59:24,927
What should we, I do wonder, this is a whole other discussion, but we got to find a
way to wrap up the pod.

2086
02:59:24,927 --> 02:59:26,927
But I do want to bring this up just right now.

2087
02:59:26,927 --> 02:59:28,927
Let's just keep all this stuff, it's great.

2088
02:59:28,927 --> 02:59:29,927
We can, we can, yeah.

2089
02:59:29,927 --> 02:59:35,927
Did you ever read this, there's this book on aging, quite interesting, guy from
Harvard.

2090
02:59:35,927 --> 02:59:37,927
He's been on Joe Rogan as well.

2091
02:59:37,927 --> 02:59:39,927
It's not just about like living long and healthy.

2092
02:59:39,927 --> 02:59:43,927
Like it's about living to 150 years and like he thinks that that's coming pretty
soon.

2093
02:59:43,927 --> 02:59:46,927
It's called Lifespan, Lifespan by David Sinclair.

2094
02:59:46,927 --> 02:59:49,927
The book came out about a year ago, literally a year ago.

2095
02:59:49,927 --> 02:59:53,927
It's a very interesting book, you know, it talks about, you know, like I said, not
just like living healthy,

2096
02:59:53,927 --> 02:59:56,927
but like a lot of the scientific breakthroughs and this and that.

2097
02:59:56,927 --> 03:00:01,927
But he had this chapter literally where it's like the biggest thing I fear is a
global pandemic.

2098
03:00:01,927 --> 03:00:07,927
And he used an example, which was very like horrifying, frightening, like, you know,
Spanish flu style,

2099
03:00:08,927 --> 03:00:15,927
but like 10 times worse, like the risk of touching a doorknob could seal your fate,
something like that.

2100
03:00:15,927 --> 03:00:17,927
And that's so much different than now.

2101
03:00:17,927 --> 03:00:19,927
First of all, I just don't know how we even square that.

2102
03:00:19,927 --> 03:00:24,927
I mean, that is a scary, like to compare that with now, obviously now seems quite,
quite mild.

2103
03:00:24,927 --> 03:00:26,927
But imagine that it did come to that.

2104
03:00:26,927 --> 03:00:30,927
Like, I don't know, you just said like global, like revolution at that point,

2105
03:00:30,927 --> 03:00:31,927
like lockdowns won't even matter.

2106
03:00:31,927 --> 03:00:32,927
I don't even know.

2107
03:00:32,927 --> 03:00:35,927
It's a crazy thing to contemplate.

2108
03:00:35,927 --> 03:00:42,927
In a weird way, the pandemic today has probably improved.

2109
03:00:42,927 --> 03:00:48,927
People now know a lot more about they have the masks, they have the cleaning
supplies,

2110
03:00:48,927 --> 03:00:50,927
they have enough toilet paper or whatever.

2111
03:00:50,927 --> 03:00:56,927
But probably the future pandemic would go better for us than it otherwise would
have,

2112
03:00:56,927 --> 03:00:59,927
since we have a kind of trial run with this one that isn't actually that bad.

2113
03:00:59,927 --> 03:01:02,927
Yeah, but are we really following like the quote unquote rules?

2114
03:01:02,927 --> 03:01:03,927
I mean, is it really?

2115
03:01:03,927 --> 03:01:07,927
This is the thing, though, about the rules is exactly as I said before,

2116
03:01:07,927 --> 03:01:10,927
there's no like there's no source of truth for the rules.

2117
03:01:10,927 --> 03:01:11,927
It's just trial and error.

2118
03:01:11,927 --> 03:01:16,927
So then the people who make the rules frequently make mistakes or contradict
themselves.

2119
03:01:16,927 --> 03:01:24,927
So and it is true that if you look at a country like Taiwan has like no cases a long
time running now

2120
03:01:24,927 --> 03:01:29,927
and they learned a lot from SARS in 2003 and they do a lot of contact tracing,

2121
03:01:29,927 --> 03:01:31,927
which a lot of people don't like for privacy.

2122
03:01:31,927 --> 03:01:34,927
But they have like a glowing they're also an island.

2123
03:01:34,927 --> 03:01:37,927
But I mean, they're going through this with like flying colors.

2124
03:01:37,927 --> 03:01:44,927
And you wonder, I think about it like I don't know the rules, the lessons that will
really be taken to heart.

2125
03:01:44,927 --> 03:01:46,927
It should take a completely different direction.

2126
03:01:46,927 --> 03:01:48,927
So there should be technological improvement.

2127
03:01:48,927 --> 03:01:52,927
So I think the big thing, I don't know how long this will take,

2128
03:01:52,927 --> 03:01:56,927
but one day I would hope that there would just be inexpensive UV light everywhere.

2129
03:01:56,927 --> 03:01:57,927
Yeah, yeah.

2130
03:01:57,927 --> 03:02:02,927
So they would be able to put it in every air duct or every.

2131
03:02:02,927 --> 03:02:03,927
That's a good point.

2132
03:02:03,927 --> 03:02:08,927
You know, and then that will kill every airborne pathogen, basically.

2133
03:02:08,927 --> 03:02:13,927
So if you just do that, I was I first I was always scratching my head.

2134
03:02:13,927 --> 03:02:16,927
I was like, why do we have the baseball made?

2135
03:02:16,927 --> 03:02:22,927
You know, all the major league sports in the United States, football, et cetera,
basketball.

2136
03:02:22,927 --> 03:02:24,927
Why aren't they like in there?

2137
03:02:24,927 --> 03:02:29,927
You know, just building the UV lights everywhere, like the locker rooms and stuff.

2138
03:02:29,927 --> 03:02:30,927
And you can program them.

2139
03:02:30,927 --> 03:02:36,927
So obviously it's not great for humans, but there is a style of light UV.

2140
03:02:36,927 --> 03:02:42,927
I think it's like C or something where, you know, it's safe for humans.

2141
03:02:42,927 --> 03:02:44,927
You can even look at it with your eye, but you just can't.

2142
03:02:44,927 --> 03:02:46,927
I think you can't have it on for too long.

2143
03:02:46,927 --> 03:02:47,927
Yeah.

2144
03:02:47,927 --> 03:02:48,927
And yeah, they just turn it on for you.

2145
03:02:48,927 --> 03:02:56,927
You just have a thing where, I don't know, every minute it turns on for five seconds
or every 30 minutes it turns on for like 10 seconds.

2146
03:02:56,927 --> 03:02:57,927
I don't know.

2147
03:02:57,927 --> 03:02:58,927
They can figure this.

2148
03:02:58,927 --> 03:02:59,927
My point is they can figure it out.

2149
03:02:59,927 --> 03:03:02,927
You know, you just have this thing putting a light on a timer.

2150
03:03:02,927 --> 03:03:04,927
That's, you know, our species can handle that.

2151
03:03:04,927 --> 03:03:06,927
So I was like, I don't know why they don't do all that.

2152
03:03:06,927 --> 03:03:08,927
You know, they could have just done all that.

2153
03:03:08,927 --> 03:03:11,927
We have to get to the point where it's more like air.

2154
03:03:12,927 --> 03:03:29,927
We treat air a little bit more like water, where we have these immense processes for
collecting water, sterilizing it, shipping it to people, and then taking it back,
you know, from sewage or whatever.

2155
03:03:29,927 --> 03:03:30,927
We could just do that.

2156
03:03:30,927 --> 03:03:31,927
That's all I see.

2157
03:03:31,927 --> 03:03:33,927
It's just we don't have the right pipes or whatever, you know.

2158
03:03:33,927 --> 03:03:34,927
I think that would be big.

2159
03:03:34,927 --> 03:03:41,927
That's much bigger than all this stuff about masks and, you know, hand washing, not
touching your face, better nutrition, you know, nutrition.

2160
03:03:41,927 --> 03:03:58,927
But the other thing, though, is in addition to the UV lights, which I hope to live
in a future where they just install them everywhere and they're just mass produced,
so they become very inexpensive, you know, at scale when you produce a lot of
things, the price will plummet.

2161
03:03:58,927 --> 03:04:00,927
You have to make all these sales every year.

2162
03:04:00,927 --> 03:04:02,927
Eventually, they'd be as cheap as regular lights.

2163
03:04:02,927 --> 03:04:06,927
Certainly, you wouldn't use them as regular lights because they are harmful.

2164
03:04:06,927 --> 03:04:08,927
At a certain point, you get a sunburn and things.

2165
03:04:08,927 --> 03:04:09,927
But, yeah, there would be time.

2166
03:04:09,927 --> 03:04:11,927
There would be some kind of systems.

2167
03:04:11,927 --> 03:04:15,927
You know, you have a thermostat in your house to just regulate the air.

2168
03:04:15,927 --> 03:04:18,927
And, again, yeah, a lot of people have central air.

2169
03:04:18,927 --> 03:04:19,927
You have HVAC.

2170
03:04:19,927 --> 03:04:21,927
You can just put it in that one spot.

2171
03:04:21,927 --> 03:04:23,927
Plenty of people already do this.

2172
03:04:23,927 --> 03:04:25,927
That was the thing even before COVID.

2173
03:04:25,927 --> 03:04:28,927
So I don't know why that didn't just explode into the scene.

2174
03:04:28,927 --> 03:04:42,927
This actually is an important thing to kind of talk a little bit about, which is
that the lockdowns have the effect of competing with rival solutions to COVID.

2175
03:04:43,927 --> 03:04:53,927
So the people who benefit from the lockdowns, that would be like Netflix, Amazon,
Prime, they are now natural enemies of the vaccine, for example.

2176
03:04:53,927 --> 03:04:57,927
And they're now natural enemies of also the vaccine.

2177
03:04:57,927 --> 03:05:01,927
Those are all natural enemies of my wacky UV light plan.

2178
03:05:01,927 --> 03:05:03,927
You know what I mean?

2179
03:05:03,927 --> 03:05:05,927
These are all competing solutions, actually.

2180
03:05:05,927 --> 03:05:07,927
But the other thing is the vaccine.

2181
03:05:07,927 --> 03:05:11,927
As a species, we can now sequence the virus, like, in a day.

2182
03:05:11,927 --> 03:05:18,927
So they sequence the whole virus in a day, but we can't build the vaccine for, you
know, a year and a half.

2183
03:05:18,927 --> 03:05:19,927
That's unacceptable.

2184
03:05:19,927 --> 03:05:28,927
We should be able to produce a working vaccine, like, the next day, and then we
should be able to mass produce it much faster.

2185
03:05:28,927 --> 03:05:40,927
We should be able to reproduce the vaccine, you know, faster than any virus could
possibly dismantle human cells and turn them into copies of itself.

2186
03:05:40,927 --> 03:05:42,927
So it's just we have terrible technology.

2187
03:05:42,927 --> 03:05:54,927
This is like a Peter Thiel answer to the question, which is that we have become
complacent, and we don't have the new things that the next generation will take for
granted.

2188
03:05:55,927 --> 03:05:58,927
You know, think about how you get clean water.

2189
03:05:58,927 --> 03:05:59,927
You take all that for granted.

2190
03:05:59,927 --> 03:06:02,927
You don't know anything about how a sewage treatment plan works.

2191
03:06:02,927 --> 03:06:05,927
Never thought about it in your life, maybe.

2192
03:06:05,927 --> 03:06:06,927
Who cares?

2193
03:06:06,927 --> 03:06:07,927
You shouldn't have to think about it.

2194
03:06:07,927 --> 03:06:09,927
This is your birthright as a human.

2195
03:06:09,927 --> 03:06:16,927
So there should be all this other stuff in there as well for taking care of the air.

2196
03:06:16,927 --> 03:06:18,927
So that's my thought on that.

2197
03:06:19,927 --> 03:06:25,927
Again, all the strategies are fallible, so people should be able to either not adopt
them or adopt different strategies.

2198
03:06:25,927 --> 03:06:28,927
You know, we have that guy Francis Puyo, right?

2199
03:06:28,927 --> 03:06:34,927
He's ignoring all masks, but he's doubling down on oysters.

2200
03:06:34,927 --> 03:06:36,927
Yeah, everyone should be able to.

2201
03:06:36,927 --> 03:06:41,927
Everyone should be able to do that, as long as they don't take such a big risk that
they kill everyone.

2202
03:06:41,927 --> 03:06:48,927
But it seems like it was obvious after a good while that that wasn't the case with
this.

2203
03:06:48,927 --> 03:06:54,927
Yeah, it's very important to keep in mind that the people advocating the lockdown
are now natural.

2204
03:06:54,927 --> 03:07:00,927
People who benefit from the lockdown are natural enemies of other COVID solutions.

2205
03:07:00,927 --> 03:07:01,927
Yeah.

2206
03:07:01,927 --> 03:07:03,927
So it has nothing to do with lockdown's good or bad.

2207
03:07:03,927 --> 03:07:06,927
It's just like this is not a good...

2208
03:07:06,927 --> 03:07:08,927
A lot of people benefit from this, you know?

2209
03:07:08,927 --> 03:07:12,927
Yeah, and other potential solutions are pushed out.

2210
03:07:12,927 --> 03:07:18,927
And if they have control over the government, they will get their way a
disproportionate sense of the time.

2211
03:07:18,927 --> 03:07:23,927
It went from some comments about the messiness of the state of Bitcoin to COVID.

2212
03:07:23,927 --> 03:07:25,927
How do we finish it on a good note?

2213
03:07:25,927 --> 03:07:26,927
What's the good note?

2214
03:07:26,927 --> 03:07:27,927
Well, there is a new...

2215
03:07:27,927 --> 03:07:34,927
Okay, I don't know when this will air, but very soon we have sort of working right
now.

2216
03:07:35,927 --> 03:07:38,927
We have a Zcash sidechain for a Drivechain.

2217
03:07:38,927 --> 03:07:52,927
So if you're wowed by the ultimate privacy of Zk-snarks, which are very intimidating
and weird, you should be able to take that for a spin.

2218
03:07:52,927 --> 03:08:00,927
You should be able to send some coins from DriveNet, which is like Bitcoin Core,
over to the Zcash sidechain.

2219
03:08:00,927 --> 03:08:03,927
You should be able to send to Z-address and then send from...

2220
03:08:03,927 --> 03:08:04,927
Z-drive or something it was called?

2221
03:08:04,927 --> 03:08:05,927
Yeah, Z-side.

2222
03:08:05,927 --> 03:08:06,927
Z-side.

2223
03:08:06,927 --> 03:08:10,927
And then you can send it among Z-addresses.

2224
03:08:10,927 --> 03:08:15,927
And, you know, who knows if it has severe bugs or whatever.

2225
03:08:15,927 --> 03:08:21,927
I mean, you know, you're giving your best shot, but that should be coming out,
testing it now.

2226
03:08:21,927 --> 03:08:23,927
So I'm testing it.

2227
03:08:23,927 --> 03:08:25,927
It worked yesterday, so...

2228
03:08:25,927 --> 03:08:26,927
Great.

2229
03:08:26,927 --> 03:08:27,927
So that's kind of cool.

2230
03:08:27,927 --> 03:08:28,927
Great, Paul.

2231
03:08:28,927 --> 03:08:30,927
Well, listen, thank you so much for your time.

2232
03:08:30,927 --> 03:08:31,927
It's been a good one.

2233
03:08:31,927 --> 03:08:36,927
Yeah, definitely surprised me on some of the avenues we went down, but learned a lot
myself.

2234
03:08:36,927 --> 03:08:38,927
Hope the listeners did as well.

2235
03:08:38,927 --> 03:08:43,927
So as we close it then, any links, places they should go?

2236
03:08:43,927 --> 03:08:44,927
Oh, links.

2237
03:08:44,927 --> 03:08:46,927
Well, it depends on the kind of person you are.

2238
03:08:46,927 --> 03:08:50,927
I mean, if you want to learn about Drivechain, drivechain.info is a really good
link.

2239
03:08:50,927 --> 03:08:55,927
I do thank you for plugging the Anarchapulco video, I think is good.

2240
03:08:56,927 --> 03:08:58,927
That's bitcoinhivemind.com, yeah.

2241
03:08:58,927 --> 03:09:00,927
I'll link it in the show notes.

2242
03:09:00,927 --> 03:09:06,927
And if you go bitcoinhivemind.com slash vid2, it redirects you to YouTube, because I
had to share it with so many people.

2243
03:09:06,927 --> 03:09:07,927
Nice.

2244
03:09:07,927 --> 03:09:09,927
I had to redirect.

2245
03:09:09,927 --> 03:09:13,927
But it's also embedded on the front page.

2246
03:09:13,927 --> 03:09:17,927
Yeah, and I do think that only has like a few thousand views or something.

2247
03:09:17,927 --> 03:09:20,927
And I actually did always think that that deserved more.

2248
03:09:21,927 --> 03:09:26,927
There were a bunch of people I was going to email, and I was going to say, can you
show this video?

2249
03:09:26,927 --> 03:09:28,927
But I just kind of never got around to it.

2250
03:09:28,927 --> 03:09:29,927
It's just like classic.

2251
03:09:29,927 --> 03:09:31,927
I'm kind of a weird guy.

2252
03:09:31,927 --> 03:09:32,927
So that's good for that.

2253
03:09:32,927 --> 03:09:36,927
I think if you want to learn about that, it's about why should I care about
prediction markets at all?

2254
03:09:36,927 --> 03:09:39,927
Isn't that just a harebrained scheme?

2255
03:09:39,927 --> 03:09:42,927
Isn't that just gambling?

2256
03:09:43,927 --> 03:09:46,927
That video shows you why.

2257
03:09:46,927 --> 03:09:49,927
I think it's actually kind of on par.

2258
03:09:49,927 --> 03:09:53,927
Prediction markets could be as important as bitcoin itself.

2259
03:09:53,927 --> 03:10:00,927
It could be the next kind of thing where bitcoin replaces or sort of tunes up
banking.

2260
03:10:00,927 --> 03:10:06,927
And prediction markets could tune up every corporation and government.

2261
03:10:06,927 --> 03:10:16,927
So if you care about lazy politicians or CEOs that don't work very hard, then that's
a big angle for that.

2262
03:10:16,927 --> 03:10:18,927
So I think that's good.

2263
03:10:18,927 --> 03:10:21,927
I don't know if TruthcoinDebtInfo is this blog that I have.

2264
03:10:21,927 --> 03:10:22,927
It's pretty great.

2265
03:10:22,927 --> 03:10:28,927
Truthcoin on Twitter, although I've been trying to use Twitter less and less because
it is in the debt spiral.

2266
03:10:28,927 --> 03:10:32,927
And especially crypto Twitter is, but for similar reasons.

2267
03:10:32,927 --> 03:10:35,927
Similar reason is that you learn it and then it gets old.

2268
03:10:35,927 --> 03:10:38,927
You just think, OK, this is what crypto Twitter believes.

2269
03:10:38,927 --> 03:10:40,927
And it becomes sort of static.

2270
03:10:40,927 --> 03:10:42,927
And it says this is the truth.

2271
03:10:42,927 --> 03:10:44,927
But then it becomes boring.

2272
03:10:44,927 --> 03:10:47,927
So yeah, Telegram.

2273
03:10:47,927 --> 03:10:49,927
So Telegram is more fun.

2274
03:10:49,927 --> 03:10:50,927
And we have a Telegram.

2275
03:10:50,927 --> 03:10:55,927
There is a Drivechain Telegram group, t.me slash dcinsiders.

2276
03:10:55,927 --> 03:11:00,927
So that's the Drivechain Telegram group.

2277
03:11:00,927 --> 03:11:02,927
And you can come in there and hang out.

2278
03:11:02,927 --> 03:11:03,927
I'm there every day.

2279
03:11:04,927 --> 03:11:07,927
Yeah, I definitely concur as well about the blog.

2280
03:11:07,927 --> 03:11:08,927
I said it on the last show.

2281
03:11:08,927 --> 03:11:09,927
I'll say it on this one.

2282
03:11:09,927 --> 03:11:13,927
The wealth of knowledge can learn a lot of things about Bitcoin that you wouldn't
find in other places.

2283
03:11:13,927 --> 03:11:15,927
So yeah, Paul, thanks a lot for coming on.

2284
03:11:15,927 --> 03:11:18,927
We'll link to all of that in the show notes and more.

2285
03:11:18,927 --> 03:11:20,927
I got a list of the stuff we chatted about.

2286
03:11:20,927 --> 03:11:24,927
Yeah, wish you all the best with Bitcoin Hivemind and Drivechain in the immediate
future.

2287
03:11:24,927 --> 03:11:31,927
And hope to talk to you again soon about the second video and certainly much more as
time goes by.

2288
03:11:31,927 --> 03:11:32,927
Thanks for having me.